Aletheia woke up the next morning with the feeling that her intestines had gone for a stroll while she slept. Her stomach hurt like a stab wound. Her limbs itched. Her head ached, and her blood felt toxic as it circulated through her arms and down her legs. Intense nausea hung at the back of her mouth endlessly. That had been the price of saving Melitas’ life.

Melitas himself was not so troubled. The healing potion knitted his wound quickly, and Aletheia’s spell had cured him of any trace of the Hydra’s venom. He paraded about camp like a toddler, pronouncing that it was time to wake up.

“We have no time to waste,” he said. “The Boyar toils while we sit about. Aether knows who might beat us to the punch.”

He was a tall, strong, red-haired, and conceited boy who did nothing calmly or quietly—hence the failure of their ambush on the Hydra the previous day. At seventeen, he had departed his studies only recently and had not seen much of the world.

She was always shocked to think he was a mere three years younger than her.

“Beat us?” Trito said. The elf smoked a pipe. “Does someone else have our map?”

“Who knows?” Melitas said. He flinched as he rocked on his feet, grabbing hold of his shoulder with a pained look. “Better not to find out, I say.”

“Your unsure feet have slowed us down.” He nodded toward Aletheia. The elf always spoke calmly, without any accusation. “We should not rush her.”

“I’m okay,” Aletheia said as she sat upright. She was not okay; the world twirled around her as she moved, and she had to hold back sizzling vomit in her throat. “Where’s the sword?”

Trito had it at his side, where he tapped it. “Under guard.”

She nodded. “Melitas is right. I’ll be fine. But the Boyar won’t be, if we don’t hurry.”

Trito watched Aletheia with his pupilless eyes for a moment. Then he shrugged, and he tossed her the sword. He leaped to his feet and gathered his things. Melitas did the same, slowly, and Aletheia was ready third. And with camp packed, they mounted their horses and set out upon the endless plains of Veshod.

The grass was yellow and stretched to the horizon in all directions. The Hydra’s lair was nearer to the shore, but now they set off inland, past small villages and large swathes of cultivated land. They moved as quickly as they could without hurting harming their horses.

The jolting of a fast trot was miserable while spellsick. It still beat walking.

Before Aletheia’s translation spell had worn off last night, she’d quickly written the meaning of the runes down in her journal. Now she studied it again, reading it aloud as the paper bounced in her hands:

“Over my domain // Concealed within the woodlands // Where the wall looms on the horizon // Bury me there at last, beneath my tree against the cliff.”

“That’s all?” Melitas said. “There must be something more to it than that. That’s not a map at all. It’s hardly even a riddle.”

“It’s a hint,” Aletheia said.

“I would have thought the magician who slew the Hydra would be able to work it out,” Tirto said softly.

Melitas was a bad horseman and struggled to control his mount on the road. “I can’t work it out, because it doesn’t mean anything. Like one of those bad poems on the walls of Pyrthos.”

“It’s enough,” Aletheia said. “His domain was Korabel, in the south. That’s where Ziroslava Bornimir lived. Over it, in the woodlands, must mean a hill or mountain. The Oldwall that connects to Veshod’s Spire should be visible from its northern side, so that tells us where to look. And—there’s a cliff. Somewhere.” She sighed. It wasn’t much. “It’s something. We’ll find it.”

“If it exists at all,” Trito said.

“We’ll find it,” Aletheia repeated. “We have to.”

They spent three days on the road. Aletheia recovered quickly, and soon the spellsickness had passed. There was not much fraternization between them while they traveled.

When rations ran thin, she took her bow and set out to hunt a meal for them. Veshod was a rich and populated realm, and hilltops everywhere were pimpled with wooden fortresses and castles. That meant the land—and the game—technically belonged to lords. Hunting and poaching meant the same thing here.

But she was an adventurer. Laws were not really her concern.

She found a place on a loosely wooded hill and near a running stream. First she found a twig, and she enchanted it with an illusion of scent: as her hand trailed across it, began to reek of acorn. Next she found a place nearby with a good line of sight. Finally she imagined herself where she stood, and she painted herself out of existence. She saw herself disappear. She turned herself invisible—to eyes, ears, and nose.

Then she waited.

It didn’t take long. A buck soon strolled out between two trees.

A single arrow from her elven bow felled it. It made no sound as it died.

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She fetched Trito to help her move the kill back to their camp. He was strong enough to haul the creature himself, by the antlers, and he did. She trailed behind him with alert eyes on their surroundings.

“You know the magic of an elven Huntress,” he said, right as they broke through the trees. “Was she the same one who left you that bow?”

Aletheia held the bow in her quiver unthinkingly. She shook her head.

“It’s a confusing story,” she said. “I can’t explain it. She did. But it wasn’t hers.”

“But a Huntress was your mentor.”

“Only for a little while.” This was not a topic that brought Aletheia joy. “She sacrificed her life for mine, and… she left her mark on me.”

Trito said no more. He hauled the buck in silence. Despite his strength, it still looked like a tiring ordeal. Aletheia watched and frowned.

“You never use magic,” she said.

“Should I?” said the elf.

“All elves know some spells. I can feel your Essence. But you didn’t use it once during the battle, and you aren’t using it now. Why not?”

Trito let the antlers go and stretched his back. He was nearly two feet taller than Aletheia. She hated how small she felt beneath him; it had been different, when she was younger, when it didn’t seem to matter. But now she loathed how short she was.

He smiled down at her.

“It’s a confusing story,” he said. “I can’t explain it. But maybe I’ll try, some day.”

They said nothing further after that. Soon they prepared their meat, eating as much as they could, and they set a watch schedule for the night. Veshod was safer than most of the other realms of Esenia, but the Hydra was not its only monster. Goblins, rogue magicians, adventurous orcs, and countless more abominations and chimeras lurked through these grasslands.

Aletheia took the last watch. A drowsy Melitas woke her before collapsing into his blankets.

Fortunately, she wasn’t tired. She spent an hour or two gazing at the stars from the heights of their hilltop camp. The Aethereal Aurora was clear tonight. Overhead a rainbow of colors snaked along the sky, writhing and shimmering in the heavens. A wide curtain of green was straight above her, and it danced slowly as she watched. Distantly, toward the horizon, a spiral of red twisted, and countless smaller shapes moved behind it.

She felt the colors as much as she saw them. These were no true aurora. She was peering directly into the Aether, to the world of pure magic that existed far above the physical plane. It was visible anywhere in Esenia, but it could only be appreciated at night. She was watching mana cascade down from one dimension to another.

The mana lights distracted her from her worst thoughts. She was anxious that the Oak of Spring would prove only a legend. She was nervous that she would never be able to find it, even with her “map.” She was worried that they would be too slow to save the Boyar with its magic anyway.

But worst of all, she was lonely—and that proved the hardest feeling to shake.

She stood to walk around, to distract herself, and to explore their immediate surroundings. She found rocks, trees, some water, and grass. Lots of grass. She gave up quickly, yet as she returned to her companions, she glanced down the hill, and she spotted something new in the distance.

A flame.

It came in their direction.

Aletheia crouched and watched as it approached. She spotted from movement rather than shape that it was a man with a torch, riding quickly on a horse. They were far from any roads here, but he seemed to follow a straight line—toward their camp.

She hesitated to wake her companions. No one had any reason to come this way. It must have been a lost traveler, or a poacher. There was no alternative. The only person who could have been looking for them, knowing where they were, would have been a Seeker of the Tower of Pyrthos, a mage-hunter. But that was impossible, unless….

She roused her companions. The elf awoke instantly, but Melitas groaned and complained.

“There’s someone coming,” she said. “Get up.”

“It’s nothing,” Melitas said. “Just a traveler. Leave me be.”

“Get up,” she hissed. She grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him upright, before darting back toward the edge of the hilltop to see the man again.

It was definitely a man. He grew larger quickly, and soon he would be upon them. She saw his face reflected in the amber light of the fire; he was older, grayed, maybe fifty, but he looked strong. He had a sword at his side, and he wore chain armor.

“Get your weapons,” she whispered, coming back toward their burnt-out fire. “I’ll cloak us.”

“Who is it?” Melitas said, loudly.

“I think it’s a Seeker,” Aletheia said.

Suddenly the young magician’s bravado vanished. His features froze open. He stared ahead. “A Seeker? Coming for—for you?”

“My phylacteries were destroyed. He’s coming for you.”

“That’s—”

“Be quiet!” Aletheia said.

Trito held his spear and leaned forward silently. He watched Aletheia.

She used her hunting spell again. She took stock of all the things around her, and her two companions, and she channeled her willpower into making them disappear. The fire, the bedrolls, their horses nearby, Trito, Melitas, and at last herself, all of them were smothered from the senses.

Then they were invisible.

It was a large illusion. It could be broken easily, if he came directly to their camp. But this way they would be able to surprise him.

The horseman rounded the top of the hill. His fire shone onto Aletheia, only feet away—and through her.

He had no visible markings. No uniform. His sword and armor both looked mundane. In his right hand was the torch, but in his left hand was a simple compass, of the most primitive sort: a rod of metal suspended in a cup. He stopped momentarily and glanced the compass over, looking one way or another as the needle settled in a direction.

Once it had, he looked directly at Aletheia, and he spurred his horse forward. A gray horse, large, a mare. The man was unfamiliar to her, but as she stared into the approaching horse, she gasped as she realized—

Melitas appeared from the hilltop, breaking the spell.

“You’ll regret searching for me, pawn!” he roared.

His hands crackled as he gathered mana into his body. The dark night was washed away by a flood of white, as balls of flame appeared at his fingertips. The horse and its rider reeled in surprise; the man dropped his compass and drew his sword, taking the torch into his left hand.

“Don’t!” Aletheia shouted.

But Melitas didn’t listen. He raised his hands to throw his spell.

She tackled him. It wasn’t much of a tackle—he weighed twice as much as her—but it knocked him off-balance, and that gave her enough time to pull mana from his Essence. She tapped him, draining him like she had last night, and the fire disappeared.

“Get off me! I won’t let them take me back to be made a servitor! You can’t—get off!”

He struggled against her. He would have been stronger than her, but with the help of magic she managed to pin him to the ground.

“Stop!” Aletheia said. “Stop it!”

“Get! Off!”

“Calm down!”

“Get—"

Her patience snapped. She grabbed hold of his head and used Sleep, whispering an enchanted word of somnolence and reaching out for the now-faded Essence of the young magician with her mind. She smothered it, like she was choking him, until he slowly lost energy, and at last he fell harmlessly to sleep.

She gasped as she fell off from him and to the grass.

The horseman stared at her. He seemed extremely surprised—too surprised to do much of anything except gawk.

Trito stood. He had been invisible, but now he materialized before the horse and its rider. He glanced between them calmly, and at Aletheia.

“You know this man,” he said.

“No,” she said. “But I know his horse."

The horseman smiled. He leaned forward in his saddle.

“I take it that you’re Aletheia, then,” he said, in a clear Katharos accent. “Eris and I have been looking for you all week.”