Lilly crossed her blades to catch Tavis's thrust, instantly realizing her mistake. His free sword came under her guard and raced for her belly, forcing her to jump back or be struck. He pressed his advantage, keeping her dancing back as Ayawa looked at Gersius and shook her head.
“You say she has your skill, but her reactions are still slow,” Ayawa stated.
“She knows the moves but doesn't have the experience to put them to use effectively,” Gersius replied. “That is why it is important for her to practice them.”
“One would think she would have improved with all the time she spent training with Gedris,” Thayle said as she leaned into Gersius.
Gersius wondered that as he considered Lilly's strange behavior the past few days. They had arrived in the north, locating the region the Doan had attacked. He made a war camp and immediately sent scouts to find the enemy, but no trace of them remained. Sarah and Shadros began making flights to try and locate them, but Lilly asked to be excused from them. She wanted to spend time with Ayawa and her family, saying they were practicing and talking about Ayawa's culture. Lilly repeated that she felt Ayawa's people might be like the Doan in some ways. She felt if she understood those ways better, there might be some hope for talking.
Lilly made a risky move by spinning to the side and slashing out, hoping to regain the offensive. However, Tavis was ready to sweep her blade wide and press her again, forcing her once more on the defensive.
Gersius suspected there was a lot more talking and very little practice going on. He was going to have to arrange a regular practice session if Lilly was truly going to improve in her combat. She would need it if she planned to stand face to face with the Doan and try to reason with them.
Tavis spun into Lilly's guard and swept her swords wide, ending their duel with a blade to her throat. Lilly growled and admitted defeat, stomping back to Sarah to drop into her lap.
“Child, not in public,” Sarah scolded.
“Please, just hold me,” Lilly begged as she wrapped her arms tightly around Sarah.
“That is so sweet, Gedris said and got up so she could move to Ayawa. The southern woman looked horrified when Gedris fell into her lap and took up the same warm embrace as Lilly had.
“You two are undisciplined,” Ayawa moaned and gave Gedris a swat on the rear. “At least I can correct you.”
Thayle struggled not to laugh as Tavis put his swords away and took up a seat on a log across from Gersius. They had come to discuss the failure to find any trace of the Doan, a fact that was bothering everyone. Their trails often ran to the very base of the mountains, but from there, they vanished into thin air. It was as if they sprouted wings and flew over them, prompting Sarah to suggest a very disturbing possibility. She thought they might be using cages carried by dragons to fly them over the mountains, allowing them to strike where ever they please. Gersius prayed this wasn't the case because it meant they could avoid his army in favor of terror attacks. But why hadn't they attacked any of the villages if there were dragons to carry the cages? Something about the situation wasn't right, and he began to suspect these attacks might be to lure him away from the real army.
Ayawa agreed that this might be a diversion and the real attack could come somewhere else. She also pointed out how this was an example of the Doan's improved tactics. Their dragon leaders were making them unpredictable, and Gersius had to take that into consideration.
Sarah had brought up the topic of Training Tavis again, trying to reason with Ayawa. This time Tavis took Ayawa’s side as the woman insisted they didn’t need her training. Ayawa appeared almost insulted that Sarah would even make the suggestion. Sarah tried to argue that she could teach him how to use the fire in perfect safety and that he could teach others, effectively eliminating the risk. Ayawa balked at the whole idea and said it was time for Tavis to turn away from fire weaving. He knew plenty of other weaves that were effective in combat and didn't need fire. Sarah was ready to dig in and fight the stubborn woman, but Thayle talked her down over the bind.
What caught Gersius's attention during the spat was the strange interplay of looks Ayawa and Lilly shared, especially when Ayawa insisted Tavis didn’t need Sarah’s training. Ayawa looked frustrated every time she glanced at Lilly, leaving Gersius to wonder why. He could only assume that Ayawa felt guilty that she was helping train Lilly in sword fighting while refusing to allow Sarah to train Tavis.
Gersius stepped in to change the subject, and the matter dropped, but he could feel Sarah's disappointment over the bind. Since joining their bind, Sarah had become fond of teaching others. It started with the small group of falcons, then expanded to the women who offered to join the order of Astikar. She also trained Lilly and Shadros in dragon ways, then added Mingfe to the fold. Sarah's strong motherly nature showed in all its glory as she earnestly sought to teach those she saw as younger.
“Which is everyone,” Thayle had whispered in his ear as she read his thoughts.
Gersius agreed that Sarah would probably mother everyone she could if she had the time. Her dragon instinct to take charge and guide was so powerful she found it hard not to meddle in Lilly and Thayle's life. Lilly loved the attention, but Thayle was a little more resistant. She fully embraced it when they were in the valley, but in camp, Sarah had to let her be the champion of Ulustrah. Thayle didn’t want any more jokes about her mother coming to call her to dinner.
Mingfe, Shadros, and many of the sub-commanders joined them later, all debating what to do. Gersius listened to many suggestions that they leave a garrison and send the bulk of the army west. One particularly aggressive officer wanted to cross the mountains and search for the enemy on the other side. Mingfe agreed with him and suggested that the Doan would not expect such a bold action.
Gersius agreed it would be bold but near impossible. There was no easy pass over the mountains except in the east, and the narrow trails they could use would slow their progress to a crawl. This led to a debate over how the Doan were doing it, and only one person had an answer.
Sarah argued that the Doan had to be using dragons to move the forces and that the attacks on the villages were likely being done by small numbers. She suggested no more than thirty men had attacked those villages. She felt the raids were meant to get their attention and draw them north. When asked why they would do such a thing, Sarah said she believed the enemy wanted to lure them closer to their dragons.
Faces looked ashen at the thought that a dozen dragons might dive out of the sky and incinerate half the army before they knew what had happened. Sarah reminded them that she was often in her dragon form now just for such an eventuality. She stood guard over the camp every night and often well into the day until the priests of Astikar could take over watching the skies. They even had a complement of fifty weavers who could lend a great deal of support to fend off a flying dragon. Still, this meant that Sarah was on almost constant duty, watching and waiting for an attack.
Ayawa did most of the explaining about how the scouts were searching and what had been found so far. She described the trails left by the march of the Doan and how they always came from the north and returned the same way. They always originated in an open field or barren hill, but that was where the trails ended. On several occasions, they found items taken from the villages and left behind as if intentionally wanting them to know where they went.
“Why would they do that?” Thayle asked.
“I suspect this is part of their plan,” Ayawa replied. “Sarah may be right, and we are being lured into a trap, or Gersius could be right, and this is to distract him from where they truly intend to attack. Either way, we can't be certain unless we can locate their army.”
“Which is impossibly skilled at hiding,” Mingfe said. “They must be using the weave to conceal themselves.”
“I don't see how,” Tavis said as he considered the options. “It is possible to become hard to see if you remain motionless or to obscure sight from a distance, but to hide a whole army?” He shook his head as if the notion were impossible.
“I want to believe that Sarah is right about the cages,” Shadros said. “We saw how they were used in the attack on Calathen.”
“I want to agree with that as well,” Ayawa stated. “But those cages are heavy and would leave an imprint on the ground. We followed three separate Doan paths to soft ground where their tracks just stop.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“It has to be weaving,” Mingfe said again. “My people have a saying that even a snake leaves a trail on the sands.”
“I don’t get it,” Lilly stated as she looked up from Sarah’s arms.
“A snake often doesn’t leave a trial you could follow,” Gersius said. “But the desert sand is so soft that everything leaves a trail, even a snake.”
“There is another option,” Gedris said with a heavy heart. “They are using priestesses of Ulustrah to regrow the plants and hide the trails.”
That caused many a sour look but brought Ayawa to the forefront.
“I am not so sure that is possible,” Ayawa said. “We never discussed this idea much, but when you took those seals from the temple, the priestesses of Ulustrah who were fighting us suddenly couldn't cast their blessings.”
Gersius looked at Thayle, who was stunned by the revelation. He asked for more details, so Ayawa explained the fight and how it turned suddenly. Mingfe nodded in agreement and said that she, too, noticed that the women of Ulustrah suddenly became useless.
“Could that be how they are using the blessings against the goddess's wishes?” Thayle asked. “They were doing something to the seals?”
“In which case, we need to be wary because they still have Astikars,” Sarah growled as she rubbed Lilly.
Gersius had to let this thought simmer in his mind for a bit. If what Ayawa and Mingfe saw was true, then the seals had to be the link. Whatever they did with them in that temple somehow allowed them to coerce divine power. Likely there were other temples with other seals, all being used in some grand plan. Finding the missing seals should be the highest priority, but his lands were in danger, and his people were calling for help.
This left Thayle and Mingfe moving to dismiss Gedris's idea, but the woman wasn't done yet. Gedris pointed out another way to use the goddess's power if the Doan took the women of Ulustrah captive.
The mood became dark and tense as people considered the unpleasant idea that women of Ulustrah had been captured and smuggled to the Doan. Nobody wanted to say out loud what might be happening to those poor women, but it was clear by the expressions on their faces that everyone was thinking it.
Thayle then had to admit that despite liberating all the internment camps, several hundred known priestesses were still unaccounted for. They had been taken from homes and temples early in the conflict but never surfaced after the liberation. The assumption was they had escaped and fled east, but no eastern temple reported refugees.
Now the possibility was taken seriously as Gersius asked if there was a way to tell if the ground had been recently blessed. Thayle said the only real indication was fresh growth or an area that was much healthier than the surrounding land. The problem was a skilled priestess knew how to gently coax a plant that was trampled back up. If they had time, they could hide a trail easily.
Gedris reminded Tavis and Ayawa how the assassins found them one night by following the fresh growth she created to hide their passage. The two nodded as they remembered the ambush then Tavis suggested they return to one of the sites. They would bring some women of Ulustrah with them to search where the trail ends and see if they could locate anything out of the ordinary.
Gersius agreed with the plan but urged them to make the search swiftly. The more they lingered here, the more certain he was that this was a distraction. Sarah asked him why and he explained that he believed these attacks were meant to be distractions, drawing his army away from the border keeps. If the enemy suddenly appeared behind the keeps, two-thirds of his army would be cut off and trapped. They would be annihilated before he could reach them, and the empire would be lost.
He wanted to move closer to the keeps while still being in the shadow of the mountains. This way, he was in a position to help unless the enemy came around the mountains and attacked from the east. This also put pressure on the Doan as their spies would likely report his movements. They would see his move further west as an aggressive action meant to support Gams in his harassment campaign. With their own front being threatened, they might have to act quickly and abandon some long-term plans. Many pointed out the risk of the move, but Gersius was determined. Unless he knew where that army was, he had to focus on the things he did know. Time and again, it all came back to the missing army, and not knowing where it was paralyzed them.
When the discussion came to an end, Sarah carried Lilly as she went to the changing ring to take her dragon form. The night sky was closing in, and she wanted to be ready to watch for any danger. Lilly would fly as well tonight, the two searching north along the mountains for any sign of the Doan.
They changed and nuzzled for a moment before taking to the sky. Sarah had to fly a little slower to allow Lilly to keep up, but they stayed close for a little bit, talking about the war. Lilly had changed after hearing Gersius's dark words the other day. She still wanted to find a way to talk to the Doan, but she also wanted to find this missing army. Maybe Gersius was right, and crushing this army would cause the Doan to pause and reconsider. Was it possible they would be willing to talk after suffering such a large defeat?
It was a beautiful night full of light clouds and bright stars as the mountains began to pass underneath. Lilly veered off and went west as Sarah went east.
“I love you,” Lilly said over the bind as Sarah headed away.
“I love you too, Fly high and be safe, my wife,” Sarah replied.
Lilly sighed and looked down, using her dragon sight to search the ground for any sign of their enemy. Just as the nights before, she saw nothing. It was miles of relatively undeveloped land, cut by the occasional river flowing out of the mountains. An hour into her flight, she flew over one of the ravaged villages and began to circle it. The scouts had combed this area a dozen times, searching for where the Doan went. Lilly briefly wished she had arrived while the attack was going on so she could have done something. Of course, if she did find the enemy, her instructions were to run back and tell Gersius where they were.
She swept lower, searching the fields north of the town to see the swath of trampled grass. She followed that path with her dragon sight that was sharper than that of a hawk. It went several miles north until it was practically at the base of a cliff, where it stopped. Lilly flew over the spot several times before a thought came to mind.
“Why didn't anyone think of this before?” Lilly sighed as she spread her wings and touched down in the field. She looked about warily, but her sharp eyes spied nothing moving in the land or air. Carefully, she went to where the trail ended and looked over the grass. She wasn't skilled enough to determine if the plants had been blessed to hide the trail, but she didn't need to be. Lilly lowered her slender snout to the grass and sniffed, using her dragon senses to detect the Doan.
“A bunch of men,” Lilly said to herself. “I smell blood and something earthy.” She used her long slender neck to reach over the grass, searching for where the scent continued.
“It passes through here, but this grass looks untrampled,” Lilly said as she realized Gedris was right. “So they are using priestesses to cover their tracks.” She began to stalk the trail, sniffing her way along as the path went into a heavily wooded area clinging to the side of a steep hill. Lilly found the trees an annoyance but was determined to follow the trail. She noted the dense growth of ferns in this forest and wondered if they were more blessings to hide the trail. The path led into a pass between the hills at the base of the mountain. Lilly walked beside a meandering stream for the next hour, following the scent.
“Sarah?” Lilly called over the bind to see if her wife was in range. Sarah didn't respond, and Lilly could feel her someplace far to the east. She was alone in the night with nothing but her wits to keep her safe. She was becoming concerned about her current course of action and the potential danger she was in. Already she had deviated from her course and Sarah's instructions to stay high in the sky. Maybe she should go back and tell Gersius about discovering that she could follow the hidden trail by scent. It was then she caught a new scent, something stronger and slightly floral with a hint of smoke. Lilly looked about as the moonlight created dark shadows in the past. Her vision easily saw through the gloom as she sniffed at the breeze. The scent was coming from upwind and reminded her of some of Ayawa's people.
Lilly followed the scent by sniffing at the breeze, slowly getting closer and closer to a rocky hillside that led to a narrow gorge between two steep cliffs. A few gnarled trees clung to the hillside, growing at odd angles on the loose soil. The moonlight bathed everything in long shadows, but Lilly could detect the scent getting stronger. She noted it had changed as well, changing as if she was getting hints of several creatures.
“Those are humans,” Lilly said to herself as she paused at the base of the hill, wondering if she was being watched. “Have I found the Doan?” She looked at every ledge, crack and large boulder, searching for any indication that she wasn't alone. The night revealed nothing but her nose didn't lie and she knew the unmistakable scent of a human. Not only was it humans, but several of them were female, judging by the scent.
The wind was blowing out of the narrow gorge, carrying with it the elusive scent that made Lilly pause. In that space, she would be confined, but was it worth the risk to potentially discover the Doan?
“Maybe I should find Sarah to come with me?” Lilly said but worried that whoever she was smelling would be gone by the time they got back hours from now. She sniffed for a few moments and decided it couldn't be more than five individuals. She would hate to bring Sarah all the way back here to surprise some sheep herders or a remote rancher.
She crept into the gorge, walking openly down the center over a small trickling stream. The walls rose rather steeply, but nothing moved on them or the ridge line above. A few minutes later, the scent was stronger, but the gorge opened into a pocket with a steep rocky hill. From here, Lilly could more strongly smell the smoke and something cooking. Finally, her eyes caught a distant light that seemed to dance in the shadows of the distant rocks.
“A fire,” Lilly said as she twisted her head. She crept closer, the scent becoming clearer until she could see the flames under what appeared to be a tent with an almost haphazard shape. She could see nobody around the flames, and as she returned to sniffing, she understood why. The sources were moving closer, but she struggled to spot them. After an intense search, she caught sight of a single form hiding behind a rock.
“I can see you,” Lilly called. “You may as well come out.”
The shape moved slowly as it crept out from behind the rock. Lily could see it was a woman with tan skin and dark black hair. She wore a top that left her shoulders and stomach bare, but around her waist was a skirt made of three colors, all in earthy tones. The woman's eyes were a steely gray with a tense gaze as she stepped boldly out so Lilly could see her.
“Stand where you are,” Lilly called from a safe distance and waited for the woman to come to a stop. “Now, call your friends out, or I will dig them out.”
The woman never took her eyes off Lilly even as she said something in a language Lilly didn’t understand. Lilly was surprised to see three more forms emerge from behind rocks or low places in the slope and make their way to the woman. Each was another woman with the same tanned skin and intense gaze. They were similarly dressed, but the other women had only two colors in their skirts and stood behind the first one.
Lilly felt her heart racing as the women gathered up and stood their ground boldly. She had never seen people who looked or dressed like this before, and she was almost certain they were Doan. Now that she had found them, she didn't know what to do. They didn't seem to be threatening her, but at the same time, Lilly wasn't about to take any chances. She stood a safe distance away and studied the women as they waited in silence. She finally decided that she had to speak to them, or this lucky break would go to waste.
“My name is Lilly,” she said with an intense stare. “Who are you?”
The women didn't respond right away. Instead, they huddled together, the one with three colors in her dress seeming to be in charge. She eventually silenced the others and turned back to Lilly before steeling herself.
“I am Ithica of the stone scale bloodline, far walker of the Do’an,” she replied with her shoulders set strongly.
Lilly felt her heart race to hear the name of her enemies spoken by a native for the first time. She almost trembled at the thought of how lucky she was to find these women hidden so deep in the mountains. She assumed that a far walker was some kind of scout, meaning the Doan army was nearby. Every instinct told her to run back and tell Gersius what she had found, but this was her chance to speak to her enemies. Maybe, she could find a way to open a dialog, and the course of the war changed. It was a risk, but Lilly would do anything to alter the course they were set on and save the lives of more dragons. She made one final call to Sarah, hoping she was close enough to hear. When no reply came, Lilly turned back to the silently waiting women.
“I can’t turn back now,” Lilly whispered and made her decision.