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“We will have Broad Foot, and the badger,” Numair said. “And we have protected ourselves, from time to time. Mortals have survived in the Divine Realms before.”
Weiryn sighed. “That’s what I thought you would say.” His brush and ink pot disappeared. Palms down, he tapped the inked surface of the wood. “At least I can tell Sarra that I tried.” Like bark that was barely attached to its parent tree, the surface with the map cracked away from the wood, thinned until it could have been heavy parchment, and rolled itself up. Weiryn gave it to Numair. “You need not fear that it will go to pieces, or that water will smear the marks,” he said grumpily.
Daine leaned over and kissed the god’s forehead. “Thanks, Da.”
When the three returned to the main room of the cabin, Broad Foot, dripping, was on the table. “Are we ready?”
Sarra offered them cloaks—a blue one for Daine, a black one for Numair. Once the two mortals had donned them, she handed over their packs.
“How do you want to do this?” Numair asked Broad Foot. “You can’t use your power to move us, and—forgive me, but—I doubt that you can walk at our pace.”
Broad Foot looked at the mage; Numair jumped. Visible through the opening of his cloak, his cream-colored shirt twisted. When it stilled, a deep pouch had formed in the cloth over Numair’s belly. The duckmole vanished, then reappeared in shimmering fire, tucked into the pouch. He looked back and up at Numair. “The view from here should be very nice,” he said as Daine and her mother giggled. “Mind you don’t bump me.”
Sarra hugged Daine. “You’ll come to stay a bit when your war is settled?” she asked. “Please?”
“I will, Ma—I just don’t know when that will be.”
“We’ll know. We’ll come for you on the holiday that’s closest.” The woman scanned her face intently. “You’ll visit for a season, or two?”
“I’ll come, Ma.”
“Promise?”
Daine hugged her mother hard, tears in her eyes. “I promise. We—we’ll catch up on the time them bandits took from us.”
Sarra gave her a last squeeze, then turned to Numair. Daine slung her pack and quiver over her shoulders, then looked at her father.
Weiryn leaned down and kissed her gravely, first on one cheek, then the other. “We shall see you again, so what’s the point of good-byes?”
“None at all,” she said, and brushed a hand along his horned crown.
Weiryn opened the door; they filed outside. “Straight down the path,” instructed Broad Foot. “We’ve a couple of hours of light still.”
Daine let Numair take the lead. She glanced back only once, to see her mother crying in the circle of Weiryn’s arm. They both waved. She waved, too, and didn’t look again as the path led her into the woods and out of sight.
They walked quietly, descending into a mountain forest on a much-used track. Listening for the voices of the People, as she did in walks at home, Daine once more had that odd sense of being deaf. Her physical ears picked up the rustle of small creatures moving on the forest floor and the many calls of local birds. Magically she heard nothing. She had no way to know what was said in the conversation between a squirrel and a jay—though she could guess from the rage in the squirrel’s voice and the mockery in the bird’s. Far in the distance, her sense for immortals registered a small herd of killer centaurs on the move. About to warn her companions, she realized that the centaurs were traveling in the opposite direction. Soon afterward, they faded from her awareness.
“Goddess bless,” Numair said, coming to a halt. They were in a dark hollow where only slivers of light touched the ground. The cause of the early twilight grew beside the path: a white oak tree, or what Daine thought might be an oak, except that it was the largest that she had ever seen. If she and Numair stretched out their arms, together they still could not reach all the way around the bole.
“She is a First Tree,” Broad Foot explained. “From her acorns, the first mortal white oaks were born.”
“Her?” asked Numair, looking down at his passenger.
“She is a god,” the duckmole said. “She is aware. All of the First Trees are.”
Daine snatched her hand from the bark.
Stepping back, with Broad Foot held away from him, Numair bowed deeply, sweeping an arm before him as if the tree were a queen. Straightening, he frowned. “What’s that noise?”
“What noise?” chorused Daine and Broad Foot.
Numair approached the girl, hand cupped around one ear, and bent. “Easy, there,” the animal god cautioned. Giving Daine a half turn, Numair put his ear close to her pack. Now Daine heard a thin, high shrilling.
Numair opened one of the pack’s side pockets and reached inside. When he drew it out again, he brought a small clay pot with a wax seal, and a darking.
“Now where did you come from?” he asked, holding the blot up to eye level.
“Is it the one that’s been following me about Da’s?” inquired Daine.
Shaping a head for itself, the darking nodded.
“Were you in my pack by accident?”
The inky creature shook its head.
“You wanted to come?”
The darking nodded.
Daine shrugged and held open the breast pocket of her shirt. “Pop it in here, then.” Numair hesitated, then dropped the creature into its new residence. “Now we’ve each got a passenger.” She smiled into his face, so close to her own just then. Briefly, his eyes changed; a strange, burning excitement filled them, and made her catch her breath.
He straightened abruptly. “We shouldn’t dawdle,” he said, striding off down the path. “We’ve a lot of ground to cover.”
Puzzled, confused—feeling as if she’d glimpsed something important, only to have it vanish—Daine trotted to catch up.
They walked long after dark, stopping only to eat a brief supper. As night drew down, Numair called light from the crystal on his staff to illumine the way. At last the path emerged from under the trees. They had come to the rim of a stretch of water—a large pond, or a lake.
“Temptation Lake?” asked Numair, looking out over the water.
“Yes, indeed,” Broad Foot said. “And I could do with a swim.”
Daine sighed her relief and let her bow, quiver, and pack slide to the ground. The thick, lush grass that grew almost to the water’s edge looked better than the softest feather bed at that point.
Numair first lifted the duckmole from the pocket in his shirt, putting him on the ground, then removed his own pack. “Broad Foot, if I bespell our camp for protection, will it inconvenience you?”
Broad Foot clapped his bill in a laugh. “No, not in the least. Though you don’t need to spell it—Temptation Lake is sacred. No one of the Divine Realms would harm anyone here. If anything does happen, mind,” he added, looking at them soberly, “just call or think my name, and I’ll come. And remember—don’t drink the water!” He vanished in a cloud of silver light.
Numair gave his pack to Daine. She pulled out folded squares of cloth and spread them. There was more cloth in their folds than she had expected. Laid flat on the ground, they were big enough to wrap each of them completely.
Exhausted, Daine stripped off her boots, dagger, and belt, and freed the darking, who vanished into the shadows. “Don’t let me step on you,” she warned, and heard a squeak in reply. “I hope that means ‘yes,’” she muttered. Rolling herself in her blanket, Daine watched as Numair gathered rocks, placing them in a circle around their things.
Once the stones were placed, he walked counterclockwise around the rim of his circle. She couldn’t hear what he said, but when he finished the first circuit, all noise from outside the barrier stopped. He walked the circle again; this time, when he was done, the rocks began to glow faintly. To Daine’s surprise, they warmed, throwing off a mild heat without scorching the grass. The third time that he walked his route, black fire glittering with white sparks flowed behind him. When he completed this circle, the mag
ic blazed, then vanished. The only sign that he had done anything was the glow and warmth that came off the stones.
“We’re shielded from sight and sound.” He tugged off his boots.
“And the rocks?” she asked.
He smiled tiredly. “We only have one blanket and a cloak each. You know I don’t like to get cold.” Using his cloak as a pillow, he rolled himself into his blanket and turned on his side, his back toward her. “Good night, magelet.”
Dreams brought Daine once more to that vast, empty space. There were the Great Gods, standing in a wheel of linked arms. Their focus was the changing thing that wore the colors of the Chaos vent. Daine got queasy as she watched its constant shifts—did others feel ill when she shape-changed?—but this time she kept her eyes on circle and captive. The creature leaped for a gap between Kidunka and the Thief, and was blocked by the white barrier that made a dome between gods and it. The creature shrank into the center of the ring and fell in upon itself until it was a heaving mass.
