"Mittens!" Aga spat as a traitorous shard of obsidian on a chain pointed in the same direction as the last five stones. Her fat little pony whickered a worried noise, tossing its head. “Right sorry, Footle. Didn’t mean to startle you,” Aga soothed, offering th

"Mothers help us," Ionia groaned. "What are you asking it, and what is it telling you that has you in such a snit?"

"I done asked a dozen things, an' they're all pointin' in the same direction what I know can't be right."

Xagar looked ahead at Ionia and Aga arguing on horseback and back, picking a cuticle, frowning at as a tiny bubble of purple blood prickled at the edge of his thumbnail.Shelini had perhaps overstated the case for horses. The two horses and the all-pack--at least he was fairly sure that’s what she’d called the fine boned, long-necked oddity loaded with their provisions--elicited a great deal more anxiety from him than he from they. Footle, Aga’s fat, chestnut-colored little pony, was well enough. All horses are all mad in their hearts, but perhaps her diminutive size paired with Aga’s kept the animal’s sanity closer at hand.

The all-pack, Mellum, kept her own counsel. Bridle nor rope kept her trotting on her too-tiny cloven hooves behind them.The quiet squash of her cud-chewing unnerved Xagar more than Marigold’s nips and squeals. She was plotting something behind those horizontal pupils.

“Shelini! You swore to me the Wayfinder was the extent of the magicks you’d laid on me.” Ionia’s mount, Marigold, a midnight-black Sobian Blue stallion the size of a war horse with the temperment of a wet cat, flicked his ears in sympathy at his mistress’ annoyance. It had been love at first sight for horse and sorceress alike, each recognizing an equal in their respective fields. Marigold bowed to Shelini--most animals did. But In the two days since leaving Pravama, Aga had already mended Xagar’s hand twice for the crime of grooming, as he as the only one tall enough to brush the whole of the beast, avoiding the stallion’s teeth herself only through a steely command in Elvish.

“Oh-ho, I did no such thing!” Shelini retorted, looking up from her a whirling drop-spindle she carried as she walked. Xagar thought it best not to question how the much older, much shorter woman kept his pace with such ease, idly spinning yarn from a fluff of all-pack wool all the while.

“We’re Travel-Bound, as well,” she wriggled her little finger, where a simple silver band glinted.One of Ionia’s rings, a hunk of lapis in white gold filigree, glimmered in response.

Ionia clucked her tongue.

“Oh, that’s hardly magic. I’ve no less than five Bindings set on Aga, and there’s only three she could point to. It’s only sensible, keeping your companions under a magical eye.”

Aga frowned.

“If it ain’t your doin’, somethin’s off. There ain’t a chance in the darknesses the amaranthine person is where my scryin’ stones’ve been pointin’.”

“Might I inquire after my lady and my friend’s distress?” Xagar asked. “I believe I may have passed this way before. It’s really quite lovely.”

“Like as not, you have,” Shelini said, letting her spindle drop.

“An’ if he has, it’s all the better we go there,” Aga countered. “It ain’t there. I’d known if it was.”

“Oh?” Shelini said, looping thread into the growing ball at the base of her spindle.

“I’dve felt it, easy as anything.”

Shelini tutted.

“Ah-ah, but you’re too young and well-educated to believe in all of that mystic Fae nonsense!” Shelini chided. “I’m much older than you and couldn’t tell you if Oronlee even still stands.”

“She’s too well educated to believe in many things, and here we are lost, all the same,” Ionia grumbled.

“Oronlee’s... over there,” Aga argued. “Ain’t the same. An’ it ain’t ‘mystic fae’ nonsense if I got a stone keyed to it,” Aga protested, waggling her wrist, where a pink river tumbled pebble hung on a thin, silver-grey rope of tight, clean square knots. With a scoff, Aga offered her arm to Shelini’s outstretched hand for inspection.

“Sugar Mountain fireflight! You won’t find it many other places, not naturally, at least. Clever, very clever! ” She smiled. “But not your work entirely, hmm?”

Aga jerked her hand away.

“Took me a while to learn my knots, much less magicks for ‘em. Gran’s hair, gran’s knots, fireflight from the creek out front of gran’s, where her bones is buried at. So’s it ain’t mystic anything,” Aga insisted, pulling her sleeve over the bracelet. “Just a ward such as a six-month apprentice could lay. So’s I’d know.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Oh! Sugar Mountain! Such a lovely village,” Xagar sighed, his face falling at the speed

of slow realization. “Ah. I see. Perhaps I could find a way around and regroup on the other side?”

Shelini gave him a gentle slap to his upper arm.

“Hiding your guilt away will heal neither you nor those you’ve wronged,” her dark eyes flicked up to meet Ionia’s pale ones. Ionia looked away with a sniff.

“Hang his guilt,” Aga groused. “Ain’t as if I want to go through there, either. Send gold, don’t send gold, there’s fault in it, either way.”

“But the stones have been quite insistent, hmm? And you know what they say, ‘a journey of a thousand miles…’”

“What of it?” Ionia demanded.

Shelini scratched her head.

“You know, I’ve forgotten the second half? ‘A journey of a thousand miles sometimes might lead through uncomfortable places but it’s quite necessary’, let’s say.”

Aga sighed. “Xagar, pass me your knife, will you? An’ you can spin ‘bout anything into thread, yeah, Shelini? I got neither time nor patience for a proper knot-rope.”

“Oooh, I can! Clever, clever, clever!” Shelini clapped. “I hope you recognize the gem of a student you have in Aga, Ionia.”

Aga huffed, sawing a thin length of her own hair off near her scalp, passing the long, pale lock to Shelini, who looped it into the notch at the top of her spindle.

“I beg your pardon, ladies, but I am just as magic-proof as any other ogre, I’m afraid,” Xagar said, watching Aga sort through the stones hanging around her neck as Shelini twined the lock of her hair with the all-pack wool into a fine thread.

“You might be, but…tourmaline? You up to it?” Aga asked the stone, yanking it from its chain. “The stone ain’t. Talismans is talismans.”

“My friend is correct, though even fine talismans and wards seem to drain quite quickly, applied to an ogrish body.”

Shelini laughed, passing the thread of all-pack and Aga hair back to the grim-faced elf-girl.

“Most ogres do not wear wards Aga’s had a word with, much less those fixed to her hair,” Ionia groused, the compliment lost in contemptuous creases around her mouth.

Aga waved her arm to Xagar, who offered his hand. Her lips formed silent spells and prayers too quickly to follow she knotted the hair-thread and tourmaline into place with six tight, sure square knots.

Ionia raised an eyebrow.

“Last one’s a local,” Aga explained. “But the less we speak of Her, the better. Now. Let me go out ahead. The dogs’ll be along, an’ they’re only so friendly as suits ‘em. Prolly none left what’ll remember me, but the big ones got charms to match mine.”

A din of yips and barks sounded ahead.

“Ah!” Shelini smiled. “That’ll be the dogs!” She walked ahead, keeping a careful distance between herself and Footle.

Ionia grumbled, squeezing her stallion’s ribs. Servile, idiot beasts down to the last, dogs were beneath Ionia’s contempt, even those who served useful functions, like the Sugar Mountain guard.

Xagar frowned, fingering the stone on his wrist.

“You do no one any favors lingering, boy,” Ionia chided.

“Of course not, my lady,” Xagar agreed with a short bow, taking a small, staggering step forward.

“Go ahead. Between Aga’s ward and myself, no harm shall come to you.”

“With respect, my lady, harm to myself is not chief among my concerns.”

Ionia sighed. From her seat atop Marigold, she easily pressed the palm of her hand to the top of Xagar’s head.

“You’re trying, boy,” she said. “That’s quite a lot more than most can say. Go on.”

“Purposes stated!” a high voice, heavy with the rough accent of Aga’s home territory rose over the dogs. “Names’n titles all, lest dogs got you et!”

“That ain’t never Sorcha Bailey!” Aga called back.

Unseen fingers snapped, revealing a girl several years younger than Aga. Long, green gown and glossy red curls pinned about her fair face clashed with the rangy wolfhounds whose growls ceased at the raise of her hand.

“Beat my own heart and breathed my own lungs, Ragana Leighis?” the girl answered, falling to her knees as her wide blue eyes set on Ionia. “Brung th’ Lady an’ not told us afore? Humbled myself, lady, humbled th’ village whole.”

Xagar fought to follow the elf-girl’s speech, gaining a new appreciation for the standards of Kanglais grammar Aga did choose to utilize.

“Rise, child,” Ionia sighed. “No need to humble yourself, nor your village, especially when you wear a glamor for simple watch duty. The dogs I can understand, but yourself? Especially if you insist on invisibility.”

Sorcha bowed again, waving her hand to remove the dogs’ glamors revealing a pack of mangy terriers of questionable parentage.

“Never cared for it, their own selves,” she admitted. “Kept mine, if’s not offended to the lady?”

Ionia tutted.

“The lady will find no offense in anything if you would allow her and hers rest and passage.”

“Nat’rul, nat’rul,” the girl prattled, her eyes narrrowing at Xagar. He shrank behind Footle’s flank, struggling to make himself as small and apparently gentle as he could manage.

“He’s our guard, harmless as you please, ‘less someone’s lookin’ to do harm to us,” Aga said, trotting Footle to stand between Xagar and Sorcha’s dogs.

Sorcha gave a curt nod, unable to contain her excitement. Cooing in a creole of Elvish and her strange Kanglais cant, she rushed to Aga, arms outstretched. Turning, she whistled to the dogs, who retreated down the path.

“Followed ‘em, then, lot of y’all, met Merry.”

“Yes, yes, merry met,” Ionia said, tilting her head toward the girl.

The girl shook her head, pointing down the path with her chin.

“Merry. Met Merry. Cousin’a Vandana. Set you straight, she’ll’ve done.”

“Merry?” Shelini cried, nearly dropping her spindle. “ I do hope your Merry is the same Merry as mine! Ooh, what a small world it truly is! Or perhaps it is only so for magic handlers.”

“It would seem that way,” Ionia snipped. “You first, boy. Guard,” she commanded.

Xagar stepped alongside Marigold, careful to stay out of the stallion's blind spot. Xagar had learned the stallion's feelings on surprises and being led by anyone other than Ionia. Ionia was far kinder than she let on, he thought, to maintain such a plodding pace entering the village. Xagar watched his mistress’ face as the smile plastered to her face drained from her eyes. Too kind, risking her reputation, riding with him at her side. Ionia's eye's darted to hold Xagar's, something like shared understanding passing between them for a moment.

But Xagar was quite sure he'd only imagined it.