“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said uncomfortably.
“Well, you are a princess, and thus uneducated in certain areas,” said Bert. She smiled, which took a little of the sting out of her words. Anya thought of herself as highly educated. She was going to be a sorceress, after all, and had read at least two hundred books.
“We will talk about this some more,” said Bert. “Later. You should come to our camp, for dinner and to sleep tonight. The forest is never really safe, and more assassins might be about. There is also someone I want you to meet.”
“Thank you,” said Anya. She hesitated before adding, “We accept your kind invitation.”
“It’s not exactly an invitation.” Bert gestured at the many green-and russet-clad robbers around them, standing silently by, all of them armed to the teeth with longbows, swords, axes, daggers, and one who even had something that looked like a scythe. “I’m not giving you a choice. We may still decide to rob you after all.”
Ardent growled and the hair all along his back stood up. Anya let her hand fall lightly on his head, and the rumbling in the dog’s deep chest subsided. Even if Bert did take her few silver coins and the snuffbox, right at that moment Anya thought this would be a worthwhile trade for a decent dinner and the prospect of a restful sleep in some sort of bed, rather than curled up with a dog, a frog, and a cold-blooded, poison-skinned newt in a hole under a tree, which had been her likely prospect for the night.
Besides, she was curious about what Bert meant when she talked about sharing things between those who had too much and those who had too little, and how, being a princess, she was uneducated. This was a challenge. Anya couldn’t bear not knowing about something once it was mentioned. If this was something new to learn, then she would learn it.
“Follow me,” said Bert. “Stay close. The path is tricksome. It gets dark under the trees early, and the silver moon is not up for hours.”
*
Before too long, it was completely dark, and Anya had to hold the back of Bert’s belt, stumbling along behind the leader of the robbers. Ardent followed at her heels, occasionally offering useful instructions a moment too late, like “watch out for that sticking-up tree root.”
After what felt like at least an hour or even two spent stubbing her toes and shins and getting her face scratched by brambles, Anya couldn’t help herself.
“Will we be there soon?” she asked.
“Very soon,” said Bert. She slowed, so Anya had time to react and not crash into her, then stopped. “We will wait here for a few minutes. It will be easier … and safer for you … to go on when there is some moonglow. Look to your right.”
Anya blinked off into the darkness. At first she couldn’t see anything at all, not even vague shapes. She held her hand up in front of her eyes and couldn’t even see her fingernails.
“I can’t see a thing,” she protested. “It’s too dark.”
“Wait, just a few moments more,” said Bert softly.
Anya kept peering into the darkness. Ardent made an interested wuffling noise by her side, indicating that he saw something. Shrub made a sound too, and even Denholm let out an unexpected and slightly eerie croak.
“What?” asked Anya, irritated that they were all reacting to something she couldn’t sense. “I still can’t see a … ”
Her voice trailed off. There was a shimmer in the sky above her, the delicate hint of light, slowly becoming a pearly glow. As Anya watched, the faint curve of the small moon, the silver moon, rose and split the sky into two halves, of light and darkness, delineating the horizon she couldn’t see before. It continued to rise, the beautiful light beginning to etch out details. Anya saw the outlines of tall trees and tumbled rocks that looked white in the moonlight. They were fallen in a line around the edge of a bare hill, and there was a broad stair of damaged stone leading up to the crest.
“We go up, and then down,” said Bert. “Only a little way now.”
Robbers ranged ahead of them, not all going up the steps, but some taking the harder way up the slope, slipping between clumps of briars and thorny bushes.
Bert went carefully up the cracked and crumbling steps, Anya and her companions following. The silver moon climbed too, for it was the fast moon, crossing the horizon in a matter of hours. The larger and slower blue moon would follow, but it shed little light by comparison with its silver companion, and if it was low in the sky it could often hardly be seen.
At the top of the steps, Anya expected to find the crest of the hill, but instead she found herself on the lip of a great bowl of worked stone, with one half terraced into at least twenty or more levels going down to a large flat area some seventy or eighty feet below. There was a well-shielded fire burning down there, and Ardent was stretching out already, nose quivering at the scent of cooking meat.
“Oh!” Anya exclaimed. “It’s a theater!”
She had seen drawings of the buildings left by the ancients who had preceded the current inhabitants of Yarrow, but she had never seen any firsthand. Whoever the ancients were, they had worked in stone, leaving behind a legacy of ruins dotted about the country. Many of those ruins were of amphitheaters or arenas, always semicircular in shape, with a dozen or more terraces for the audience to sit and watch the stage below.
“Yes,” said Bert. “It is only one of our camps. We sleep where spectators once sat, and it is deep and hidden, so none can see our fire from afar. Come—there will be hot water for washing, and nettle tea, with roast boar and rabbit and wild yams cooked in the ashes, with honey cakes to follow.”