Eamon looked at Shea before turning to address Braden. “Yes. Shea called them shades. They spoke with the voice of our loved ones who had gone before. Even with Shea’s warning, we nearly lost two of our number.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t something your imagination dreamed up? Maybe something influenced by the superstitions of others?” Braden carefully didn’t look in Shea’s direction as he said that last bit. She got the message though. He didn’t really believe. Even after his own experience, he doubted.
She didn’t waste any of her breath trying to convince him otherwise. To do so would be pointless, and she loathed wasting her time on useless endeavors.
“I heard Daniel’s voice,” Daere said without looking in their direction. “As clear as on the day he died. Do you think I too imagined it, Braden?”
Braden stared at Daere, who didn’t acknowledge his attention. He had an expression on his face, sadness with a hint of longing in it. There was history there. The kind that ended in tears and heartbreak.
A different person would have been tempted to poke and prod until they knew all the details. Shea made a mental note to avoid any mention of the name Daniel and to keep away when the other two were near each other. She didn’t want to get sucked into whatever was going on between them.
“I heard him as well,” Trenton said into the tense quiet. “I also heard my mother. It was harder to resist their words than it should have been.”
“The shades know your innermost fears, those thoughts and dark urges that we like to pretend don’t exist,” Shea said, setting her ale down. “Their voices can be mesmerizing and are difficult to resist even for seasoned pathfinders.”
“You said there were other things hidden there,” Eamon said.
All eyes found Shea as she gazed unseeing at the table. She came back to herself when Fallon spoke, “Have any others gone in and been able to come back?”
Darius shook his head. “None that we know of so far, but we haven’t re-established communication with a small group that was supposed to head south last week. I’m still waiting to hear back from my scouts.”
“What are the chances that we would have come out of that without your help?” Fallon asked Shea.
She frowned in thought. “It’s doubtful you or your men would have made it out. Quite frankly, it’s a miracle I found you. Everything I’ve ever been taught says you and your men should be lost. Eamon’s team is a little more difficult to gauge. They weren’t as deep in as you. One or two of them might have wandered back out by sheer luck. Unlikely, but still possible.”
Shea stiffened as she realized what she’d just admitted. Fallon’s expression was a cold tundra as his hands clenched around the goblet he’d been holding. After a long, tense moment where the rest of the people at the table found places to turn their eyes, Fallon took a deep breath and released it very slowly.
“How do we make it so that their chances are higher?” Fallon asked, his tone measured, with a false sense of calm.
Shea rubbed her thumb against the smooth wood of the table. She didn’t want to answer that, knowing before she spoke that he wouldn’t like her reply.
“It’s not possible.”
Braden made a derisive sound that Shea ignored.
“There’s a reason pathfinders play such a significant role in the Highlands. If there was a way to cut them out and learn the mist’s secrets, the villagers there would have done so by now,” Shea said.
“You know these secrets though,” Braden said, his eyes hard.
Shea turned to face him, her expression outwardly calm while inwardly she took exception to his tone. It made her want to take her fork and stick it in his neck.
“Some, but not what enables us to travel the mist.”
“That is convenient.” There was a pause before the word convenient as Braden made it clear what he thought of her excuse.
“Now see here,” Buck started, his voice angry. Eamon touched him on the shoulder and gave a minute shake of his head. Eamon’s face was hard as he turned back to the table.
Their reactions weren’t unexpected. It was something that might have happened when they worked together, someone casting aspersions on her abilities, and Buck or Eamon coming to her defense. What was unexpected was the sour look on Trenton and Wilhelm’s faces, their expressions darkening at the implication behind the general’s words.
It was a surprise, given Shea had been half convinced the two merely tolerated her for Fallon’s sake.
Their anger helped spark her own. She was tired of the superior attitude and veiled disrespect Braden had treated her to since she’d appeared. She didn’t know what problem he had with her. Quite frankly she didn’t care. She was done with it.
She pinned him with her gaze and did something she rarely contemplated with people who annoyed her. She explained why things were the way they were. “The last part of our training is very ceremonial. Much like your cleansing ceremony to be adopted into the Trateri, if I had to guess. I can give you parts, but that won’t help you, since the critical component, the thing that makes us able to walk through it without getting lost, is my people’s most closely guarded secret. They only reveal it to those responsible for the last part of our training. I couldn’t give it up even if I wanted to.”
Braden held her eyes with his own. Whatever thoughts he had were hidden behind an impenetrable mask. He reminded her faintly of Fallon before she’d learned how to read him.
“That is unfortunate,” Braden said. “Without the Telroi’s abilities, it will be difficult to protect our forces from this new danger.”
He’d backed down. Shea had half thought he would continue to push. She took another sip of her ale and listened as the conversation moved away.
“We’re looking at a fifty percent attrition rate if we continue to lose our men to this. If reports are to be believed, this mist can appear and disappear in seconds with no rhyme or reason,” Darius said, looking around the room.
“And we can’t keep our men in camp for long. Our supply chains would collapse,” Henry of the Horse clan said. He was the oldest person in the room, his hair white but his eyes clear and sharp. Shea had heard rumors that he had founded the Stray Wind Troop, a group widely known throughout the Trateri as being spies.
“We could go into the Highlands. Find these so-called pathfinders and force them to show us how to tame the mist,” Braden suggested.
Shea tensed. She’d dropped her guard too soon. She should have foreseen this. Of course, they would want to go into the Highlands, which at the moment had the largest population of people with a skill now in high demand. The general was like a dog with a bone.
“The thought had occurred to me,” Fallon said.