Chapter One
The brilliant blue azurias of the Randburg plains spread out before them, a sight so stunning that every poem the scops sang about Randburg opened with a description of its wildflowers. Lucinda, sometimes called Land-Stepper for her wandering ways, wished she could appreciate them.
Simon, the itinerant knight who had not as yet abandoned her to her fate, whatever that might be, kept his eyes on the plain and said, “Are they still watching?”
Lucinda didn’t look over her shoulder but felt the prickle at the base of her neck. “I think so.” They’d been aware of the queen’s soldiers since they’d left the Edel city of Lycetia and headed across the border to the independent realm of Randburg.
“Do they just want to make sure we stay on this side of the border? Or are they hoping to catch us unawares?”
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question—he posed it on average twice a day—but she answered as if she hadn’t already answered a dozen times. “The latter,” she said. “They’re afraid to be too direct.”
“Because of Night Star.”
“Because of Night Star.” Night Star was the mistake they’d made and which they must correct, no matter the cost. The god Grundhyrde had charged them with traveling across the sea to Elleorn, there to find the sorcerer Hawisa and seek her help in putting Night Star, an elder god, back to sleep—for Lucinda had mistakenly awakened her to her true self as Feorbana the Destroyer. But in the meantime, the soldiers of Edel were frightened by Night Star and that was some protection.
Simon tsked his tongue. “And perhaps not only Night Star. You have a tendency to keep opening pits beneath their feet.”
“Only when they get too close.”
“I would prefer a confrontation.”
Never mind that they were significantly outnumbered. She didn’t answer him but stared out over the azurias, wishing she could appreciate them, wishing she were still a wanderer, going the way the wind blew.
“I’m sorry if my conversation is tedious,” Simon said at her non-response.
Lucinda turned abruptly to him. “Have you been here before?”
“To Randburg? Twice, both times with Lord Stephen. Since it shares a border with West Randburg, the lord held discussion with the folk from time to time. They have no lords here, of course.”
“Nor do they on Rothwil,” she said. “And yet no one there decides their own fate, either.” She gestured at the plains, full of flowers, empty of folk. “Where are the good citizens of Randburg?”
“Mostly in the villages along the coast.”
“This land is obviously fertile. Why aren’t there more farms?”
Simon shrugged. “They’ve always been fisherfolk. As a rule, folk don’t like change.”
They began walking across the meadow, Lucinda wincing as she crushed the azurias beneath her boots, thankful when they stumbled onto a cart track that led south and presumably to the fishing villages Simon had mentioned.
The track was dusty, as if it hadn’t rained in some days. She saw no sign that anyone had passed this way recently. She crouched and placed her palms against the dirt. Then, impatiently, she gouged beneath the dirt until her fingers scraped against stone. Ignoring Simon’s look of concern, she closed her eyes and pushed her hands against the stone, probing, listening—
—hearing the ancient scream. She yanked her hands free, jumped to her feet, and tamped the dirt back down over the stone with her boot.
She grabbed Simon’s arm and pulled him forward. “The faster we’re out of this land, the happier I’ll be.”
*
They reached a small village an hour or so before nightfall, the cart track terminating nearby. No one came out of the cluster of cottages to greet them or even to demand to know what they were doing though she and Simon made no secret of their arrival. She didn’t expect the same generosity of treatment as when she’d traveled with Lord Stephen but she was traveling with a knight and possessed some immanence herself, and usually that was enough to spark interest from at least one nosy person. And even as a mere wanderer, she’d traveled extensively in the Stone Island and had never been this thoroughly ignored. Each door remained firmly closed and every window stubbornly shuttered.
At one end of the huddle of houses she saw a shrine to a god and walked in that direction, saying to Simon, “Do you see any sign of a tavern or inn? Or a shrine-thane?”
As she drew closer she could see the wooden structure was painted red on one side and black on the other, a combination of colors she didn’t recognize as belonging to any god she knew. She hoped they didn’t belong to Night Star.
“I don’t see anything that looks like a tavern,” Simon reported. “And as you yourself can see, there’s not a single person out and about.”
“Do you suppose one of these is the mundbora’s house?”
“No mundboras in Randburg,” he said.
“How do they make decisions?”
She glanced up at Simon, who shrugged and said, “Lord Stephen only ever spoke to the folkmoot. They have a different name for it, but I don’t remember what it is. All he did was promise that if they continued to leave us alone we would return the favor. They didn’t strike me as people who would feel the need to seek the wisdom of an elder before making a decision about what must be done.”
“Then what is their folkmoot for?”
“I suppose to resolve disputes that haven’t been resolved in another way.”
“You mean by thievery, coercion, or murder?”
“That’s my understanding of it,” Simon said.
She traced a finger over the rune carved into the wooden side of the shine, peering closely at it by the light of the fading sun. It was unfamiliar to her.
“Can you read this?”
Simon peered at the rune. “I don’t think so. It looks like the rune for Os, but facing backward, and if that’s the rune for Sigel, what’s it doing beneath the ground?”
“I thought I heard Sige speech,” said a voice behind them. Lucinda started, then turned. A young dark-haired man, having no more than fifteen winters, stood beaming at them from the open doorway of the nearest croft. “Good morrow. You must be the trespassers Dristen warned me about.”