Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(44)

"I think this is where Jes picked up the girl," he said, glancing around at the ground. He turned his back to the stone formation and knelt in the thick, spring-short grass. "There are several sets of his tracks. Do you see how much deeper Jes's print is here than it usually is?"

A branch moved behind his head. Seraph hissed a warning and called her magic.

"Now there is no need for that, Raven," said the man who rolled nimbly out from under a particularly thick area of foliage that gathered in front of the stone formation. "It is you who have invaded my home, not the other way around."

Lehr got to his feet and dusted off the knee of his breeches. "Mother," he said. "This is Jes's forest king."

He looked more like a grubby farmer fallen on hard times, thought Seraph. The tunic he wore was patched on top of older patches. His feet were bare and his hands were the knobby-knuckled, dark-nailed hands of a man who had worked the land.

She'd always wanted to see Jes's friend, and on any other day she would have had a number of questions for him. But nothing mattered except Tier.

Seraph bowed her head shallowly so she could keep her eyes on him. "We are sorry to disturb you," she said. "We are following the woman's tracks to the place where my husband's horse died."

"You won't find it trying to track her from here, Hunter. I didn't bring her by ways you can follow." The forest king grinned, revealing yellowing teeth that looked sharp, and his eyes stayed cold and watchful. "The place you speak of is outside my realm, but you can follow the girl's tracks starting from the big waterfall. Let me loan you a guide."

He turned and looked at the brush behind him. It shuddered briefly then a rangy vixen emerged. Seraph felt no magic, though beside her Lehr stiffened as if he heard something odd, but the vixen stared at the bedraggled forest king as if he were talking to her before setting out at a trot without looking at Seraph or Lehr.

The forest king waved his hand at the fox. "Follow her - she won't wait."

"My thanks." Seraph bowed again and started out after Lehr, who was already headed deeper into the forest.

It was chilly near the falls where the cold river water was pounded to vapor at the bottom of its descent. The fox shifted nervously while Lehr paced by the river. The moment he found Hennea's trail and knelt beside it, she left without waiting for gratitude.

Lehr rose to his feet and set out at a gait scarcely slower than he'd used to follow the fox. Even so, the sun was low when they broke free of the trees at last and began climbing a narrow path up the rock-strewn side of a mountain.

"Lots of traffic here," said Lehr, pointing at a rock scored by a shod hoof. "More than usual for such a remote place."

"Hennea was here," Seraph reminded him. "The huntsman and his men."

Lehr shook his head. "More people than that have been here. Some of the tracks are pretty faint, but I'd say five or six horsemen were here a month or more ago. Their tracks go up the mountain and back down again. Isn't that what we're looking for?"

Seraph nodded. "If you find anything that might have belonged to them, a bit of cloth or hair, get it for me." She wiped the sweat from her face to clear her eyes. "I can use it to get more information."

"Like you did from Frost's bridle," Lehr began moving again, but only at a walk. His change of pace might have been to allow him to observe the tracks more clearly, but Seraph suspected it was more likely to allow her to catch her breath.

They didn't slow long, and after a few miles Lehr seemed to forget she was there. The trail he followed snaked across the foothills and into the crevices of the Ragged Mountains.

Seraph's calves ached, then burned as they hadn't since her Traveling days. Farming was hard, but climbing at a jog in the mountains was a different sort of work. Lehr didn't seem bothered by it, even though he wore the pack she'd filled with things they might need.

When Lehr stopped, she wondered if he were finally getting tired, but then she really looked at where they were.

The deer trail they'd been following had widened into a piece of open level ground as big as the kitchen garden. In the center of the cleared area, a waist-high white rock with an unusual flat top broke through the dirt.

The grass in the clearing was knee-high, unusually tall for this time of year this high in the mountains. It carpeted the ground in dark bitter green, except for a large mound of disturbed earth to one side, a burial mound large enough for a horse.

"Why did they bury the horse?" asked Lehr.

"Sometimes," said Seraph, "the Blighted Places can recharge their magics. The bodies will tend to attract people or animals, and it's best to get them safely buried. There are also stories about odd things happening to the bodies of people who die of Shadow Blight - things that don't happen if the bodies are safely buried."

"Weren't they afraid of the magic?"

"Maybe," said Seraph. "There are a lot of Rederni who can sense magic - especially the ones who spend a lot of time out in the mountains. Maybe because in earlier times, when the Shadowed's hand was heavier on the mountains, the people who couldn't sense the Blighted areas didn't survive." Tier had said that he could sense such places - she pushed hope away and said, "There isn't any magic that I can feel now - likely the huntsman felt the same. Take a look around, would you, and tell me what you find."