“Maia!”
Not even an echo.
“Please!”
Surely her mother would have heard his shouts, even in this fog. “Maia’s mother—if you can hear me, please answer!”
He waited long minutes for some sort of response—a shout, returning footsteps, the beat of a dragon’s wings. But the air only grew heavier, the silence more dense.
And what if her family had been turned? For whom did her family breed dragons? He shuddered to think that he stood here shouting out his position, inviting his own doom.
He turned to retrace his steps back to the statue in the ruins, his hands shaking and his feet numb. He needed to reclaim his sense of direction. After several minutes of tramping, he knew that he had missed it somehow. He took a bearing on the brighter patch of sky where the sun dwelled, then started a circular path, expanding with each turn, in hopes of coming across the statue in the courtyard again.
When the bright patch neared its zenith, he abandoned the effort. If it could be found, he most certainly would have found it by now.
What had happened here? He trudged through the wet undergrowth toward the ridge the girl had indicated, watching each approaching shadow with supernatural fear until it confirmed itself as a tree or log or pile of stone. He touched them as he passed, to be certain of their solidity. Shaking, he drew his tunic closer. A strange, arcane glamour permeated this mist, something dark and elusive that teased him with statues, and with images of little girls, who then vanished without trace.
The voice of young Maia repeated in his head, again and again, If you’re at war, why are you here gathering berries? Why had Mer sent him into the mountains? He’d be far more useful recording events in Cinvat.
“Oh Asha, Source of All Truth, without doubt I am the most miserable servant you ever endured.”
Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he stumbled upon a thick patch of cindervine growing out of the cracks in a rock outcropping. The leaves blazed with their autumn colors, the vines laden with cinderblack, dripping with dew.
He fell to his knees and bowed his head. “Praise to the Source for showing mercy to this humble fool. I terrorize myself with imagined dangers, when all along you only mean to show me what I seek.” A tear of thanks melted into the dampness collecting on his skin. He emptied the contents of his basket—pens and ink and flint box—wrapped them together with the bread in his parcel, and poked it all into his tunic. Then he slung his waterskin on his shoulder and set to filling the basket with fruit. Soon it was heavy enough that it no longer bounced on his back. He sat with the basket resting on the ground behind him long enough to make an entry in his book:
Waeges’ Day, 207th y. 4th Age: Huge patch of cinderblack on the high ridge east of Cinvat, possibly one day (?) on a direct path. Revealed to me by Asha, Source of all Truth, through the auspices of a young girl, Maia, whom I met in a courtyard previously unknown to me. This was a singularly strange event; I pray one day to retrace these steps, to find the ruins and the girl again.
It wasn’t the thorough sort of entry that would please Mer, but it would have to do. He hefted his load and started west, slightly north, downhill toward his home. Earlier than he expected to, he descended out of the clouds into familiar terrain of oak and moss.
The sight of Cinvat’s domes and towers gleaming in scattered beams of sunlight quickened his heart and added length to his stride. He couldn’t wait to deliver his bounty, glad to leave behind him the mists that shrouded the uplands.
Soon he hailed the city guard, who swung a gate beside the eastern portcullis open for him to enter, and he hurried through crowded streets toward the Temple Library. As the throng jostled and bumped him in passing, Daen felt an edge, an urgency that troubled him. He slid into a doorway to watch and listen.
Everyone moved with unusual haste. A troop of foot soldiers marched past in double-time. Dragons bearing mounted warriors circled overhead in greater numbers than was normal. Expressions were fearful, voices clipped or strident. Panicked conversations jumbled together in his ears, but he listened, taking mental notes the way he’d been trained to do, planning ahead to the entries in his record.
He heard “armies” and “battle” and “Dahak” again and again.
Finally he grabbed a courier by the sleeve as he passed. The boy spun about with fear rather than annoyance or anger in his face.
“I beg pardon, young sir, but can you please tell me why everyone’s in a panic?”