Wise or not, it felt wrong.
The tracks we followed now were the deep cuts of hard-ridden horses. The soil under the forest roof was moister and held the trail better. At first, they had ridden for distance and speed, and a child could have followed their marks. But after a time, the trail descended into a ravine and followed a twisting stream. I rode with my eyes on the trees overhead, trusting Myblack to follow Malta’s lead as I watched for possible ambush. An unspoken concern occupied my mind. The Piebalds the Prince rode with seemed very organized, almost to a military level. This was the second group of men who had waited for the Prince, and then ridden on with him. At least one member of the party had not hesitated to sacrifice his life for the others, nor had they scrupled at slaughtering all those who followed them. Their readiness and ruthlessness bespoke a great determination to keep the Prince and bear him on to whatever destination they had in mind. Retrieving him was very likely beyond our abilities, yet I could discover no alternatives save to follow them. Sending Laurel back to Buckkeep to fetch the guard was not feasible. By the time she returned, it would be too late. We would lose not only time, but the secrecy of our mission.
The ravine widened and became a narrow valley. Our quarry left the stream. Before we departed it, we paused briefly to refill waterskins and share out a bit of the Fool’s purloined bread and some apples. I bought a bit of Myblack’s favour with the apple core. Then we were up and off again. The long afternoon wore on. None of us had spoken much. There was little to say unless we worried out loud. Danger rode behind us as well. In either direction we were outnumbered, and I badly missed my wolf at my side.
The trail left the valley floor and wound up into the hills. The trees thinned and the terrain became rocky. The hard earth made tracking more difficult, and we went more slowly. We passed the stony foundations of a small village, long abandoned. We rode past odd hummocky formations that jutted from the boulder-strewn hillside. Lord Golden saw me looking at them and said quietly, ‘Graves.’
‘Too big,’ I protested.
‘Not for those folk. They built stone chambers to hold their dead, and often entire families were interred in them as they died.’
I looked curiously back at them. Tall dead grass waved on the mounds. If there was stone beneath that sod, it was well covered. ‘How do you know such things?’ I demanded of him.
He didn’t meet my eyes. ‘I just do, Badgerlock. Put it down to the advantages of an aristocratic education.’
‘I’ve heard tales of these sorts of places,’ Laurel put in, her voice hushed. ‘They say tall thin ghosts rise from those mounds sometimes, to capture straying children and … Oh, Eda save us. Look. The standing stone from the same tales.’
I lifted my eyes to follow her pointing finger. A shiver walked up my back.
Black and gleaming, the stone stood twice as tall as a man did. Silver veined it. No moss clung to it. The inland breezes had been kinder to it than the salt-heavy storm winds that had weathered the Witness Stones near Buckkeep. At this distance, I could not see what signs were carved into its sides, but I knew they would be there. This stone pillar was kin to the Witness Stone and to the black pillar that had once transported me to the Elderling City. I stared at it, and knew it had been cut from the same quarry that had birthed Verity’s dragon. Had magic or muscle borne it so far from that place to this?
‘Do the graves go with the stone?’ I asked Lord Golden.
‘Things that are next to each other are not always related to one another,’ he observed smoothly, and I knew he evaded my question. I turned slightly in the saddle to ask Laurel, ‘What does the legend say about the stone?’
She shrugged one shoulder and smiled, but I think the intensity of my question made her uneasy. ‘There are lots of tales, but most have the same spine.’ She drew a breath. ‘A straying child or an idle shepherd or lovers who have run away from forbidding parents come to the mounds. In most tales they sit down beside them to rest, or to find a bit of shade on a hot day. Then the ghosts rise from the mounds, and lead them to the standing stone. And they follow the ghost inside, to a different world. Some say they never come back. Some say they come back aged and old after being gone but a night, but others say the opposite: that a hundred years later, the lovers came back, hand in hand, as young as ever, to find their quarrelling parents long dead and that they are free to wed.’
I had my own opinion of such tales, but did not voice them. Once I had stepped through such a pillar, to find myself in a distant dead city. Once the black stone walls of that long-dead city had spoken to me, and the city had sprung to life around me. Monoliths and cities of black stone were the work of the Elderlings, long perished from the world. I had believed the Elderlings had been denizens of a far realm, deep in the mountains behind Kettricken’s Mountain Kingdom. Twice now I had seen evidence that they had walked these Six Duchies hills as well. But how many summers ago?
I tried to catch Lord Golden’s eye, but he stared straight ahead and it seemed to me that he hastened his horse on. I knew by the set of his mouth that any question I asked him would be answered with another question or with an evasion. I focused my efforts on Laurel.
‘It seems odd that you would hear tales of this place in Farrow.’
She gave that small shrug again. ‘The tales I heard were of a similar place in Farrow. And I told you. My mother’s family came from a place not far from the Bresinga holdings. We often visited, when she was still alive. But I’d wager that the folk around here tell the same sort of tales about those mounds and that pillar. If any folk do live around here.’