The Alturans had left the trees behind not long ago, and no more could be seen ahead. As the sun rose Ella felt the heat of it, and the day had barely begun. She could hear the groans and gasps of the already weary soldiers. The only ones who seemed unaffected were the bladesingers — as unperturbed as always — and the High Enchantress herself.
Ella still hadn’t relinquished her burden. The High Enchantress seemed content to let her carry the Lexicon. Ella had transferred her essence and one of her scrills into a pocket in her grey dress, determined not to let them get away from her again. She didn’t have her green silk dress anymore though — it was deep in a lake somewhere in Petrya.
She wrestled with thoughts and ideas. There was something in Killian’s ability that made sense. Something that had its place deep in the fabric of the history she had been taught. In the myths of the Evermen and the relics of the past.
She thought of Evrin Alistair’s story about the man who healed the broken body of his love by drawing runes on her skin. Perhaps there was more truth to that tale than the old animator realised.
The High Enchantress had quizzed her on every aspect of her time away from Altura. Ella had told her everything. Well, almost everything. She’d left out the personal details — her discovery about who her parents were, Killian’s life, his tender moments. She still didn’t know how she felt about him, but she couldn’t get the image of his blue eyes out of her mind.
How could he have left her like that? He’d simply fled. Again. Ella didn’t know what to think. Where had he gone?
The High Enchantress was anxious to get back to Sarostar and tell the High Lord of the Primate’s role in the theft of the Lexicons. Ella wondered if Evora also knew about her. Did anyone question what had happened to High Lord Serosa’s children? Or were they too afraid of Tessolar? Likely most believed Serosa’s children had come to some accident, and never made the connection with Brandon’s war orphans. Ella would be surprised though if Lady Katherine hadn’t told some of her closest friends to keep an eye on them — perhaps Rogan Jarvish, or even the High Enchantress herself. Ella would ask her, when the right moment came.
There was complete silence now except for the wheezing breath of the soldiers and the stamping of their boots. The hours passed in a daze. Marching for a whole night and the entire next day simply seemed too much to ask.
The scouts had come across an isolated wall of rock that would provide some shade from the burning sun. It beat down now mercilessly. Ella hadn’t known the sun could even grow so hot, it felt as if she was in a furnace. The heat radiated from the pebbled yellow sand. She knew without the thick soles of her boots she would never be able to walk on it.
The party halted when they reached the rock wall, and one moment Ella was in the sun’s direct gaze, the next she was in blessed shade. She fell thankfully to her knees, simply content to be breathing and out of the scorching heat.
A soldier passed over a water bottle and she drank deeply, letting some of the water run down her neck and trickle between her breasts. She handed the bottle back.
The grey dress was hideously hot; it seemed to soak up all of the heat and hold onto it. Not for the first time Ella wished she was wearing white.
~
"MOVE out!" a voice called. Ella’s eyes jerked open with a start. She’d fallen asleep. How long? It couldn’t have been more than a few moments. The soldiers around her groaned but shot up with alacrity — these were trained veterans after all.
"Here," a soldier said, smiling. He handed her a hardened piece of bread and some kind of dried meat. She smiled her thanks.
Suddenly there was a great noise in the distance — a terrible shrieking, snarling sound.
It was the creature.
"Quickly! Form up!" Captain Joram called.
They moved into formation, the scouts on the fringes, the bladesingers in the centre flanking the High Enchantress and Ella. She felt much safer having them around her, but she’d heard the soldiers’ stories, spoken in hushed tones on the march. Whatever the thing was, it had faced a bladesinger and won.
The pace grew even faster now. Even the High Enchantress began to look weary, unable to hold up her implacable exterior. The bladesingers still seemed calm, but their mouths were set in grim lines. They had a score to settle with the owner of those cries.
Ella concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Rocks were becoming scarcer now, being replaced with dark yellow sand. Rather than remaining flat, the ground began to rise and fall like the waves of the sea, forming dunes that had to be climbed and then descended, uphill and then downhill, over and over. Looking ahead all Ella could see were dunes, one after the other, like a great sandy ocean as far as the eye could see.
The heat finally began to slacken as the sun began to fall towards the horizon.
"We’re on the edge of the Hazara now," Captain Joram said to the High Enchantress.
She nodded, "Take us in. The creature may fear the open ground."
It was nearly sundown when one of the scouts ran up, panting. Everyone heard him report. "Men, armed men."
"Petryans?" Captain Joram frowned.