---Chapter 4

...hurrying into the room, he found only a pair of shoes and a torn dress left behind on the floor. The wild beasts already had her ---

The Hunt For Honey, a work of fiction credited to Sir Carryon.

When I made it back to the cart, Shyven was already there, leaning against it with one hand as he lazily watched the traffic going by.

His eyes lit up when he saw me and he said lightly, “been enjoying the town?”

“Not entirely,” I told him, but did not elaborate further. “Did you find anything?”

Shyven nodded. “Yes, in fact. A few clues to help us on our way. I want to show them to you. You’ll have to come back to the inn with me.”

“What about the horses?”

“Layla is stabled near the hotel. We can put your stallion and cart there as well.”

Shyven moved to the front of the wagon and climbed up on the seat. It was not until I saw the energy of this movement that I realized how excited he was. Like a lizard, he hid it under a calm expression. But he was bubbling with eagerness inside.

I fastened the horse back into his pulling position and hopped up beside Shyven, taking the reins in one hand as I made Dee back around and start down the bridge. It only took a few minutes for Shyven to direct me to the stable.

It was a fine, large place with a spacious lot outside for parking wagons. The stables inside were dry and well padded with straw. Our horses would be comfortable there, waiting while we were gone.

The inn was a huge, rambling place with stone lions crouching next to the open double-doors and a curiously paved walkway leading towards it. I could not figure out what the pavement was made of, though it was very hard, smooth and contained fragments of seashells embedded in it. It was odd to see shells so far from their home.

Inside the doors was a prosperous common room, with brightly woven carpets on the floor and checkered curtains on the windows. It was clean, tastefully finished and set with gleaming tables. Different from most of the inns I had seen before.

The innkeeper was a big, burly man who looked as though he could and would throw rioters out with his bare hands. Shyven nodded to him as we went past, and the big man winked in return.

Up three flights of carpeted stairs and down a long hall that ran through one wing of the inn, we came to a door that was fit for nobility to dwell beyond. It was tall, thick, and made of wood that was polished to a golden gleam. An inked symbol curved across the front of it, representing a crown being carried by a raven.

“This room was always set aside for the queen’s use,” Shyven murmured, looking behind us to make sure that no one else was in that part of the inn. The silence of a library hung over the hall.

“Locked?”

“It was, but not anymore. The ‘keep gave me the key.”

Shyven opened the door, which turned on silken hinges to let us inside. The first apartment of the suite of rooms was a sitting room, set with chairs, tables, and a grandfather clock that was ticking ominously in the corner. I could not help feeling as if we were breaking in to a place that was not our own, coming on some nefarious mission. Though the innkeeper owned the place and had given us permission, I still walked as if stalking a deer in the forest. And Shyven moved with little noise as well.

“It’s odd,” I commented in a soft whisper, “that someone would have a room dedicated just to sitting in.”

Shyven gave me a blank look, before nodding once and leading me on into another space. This was the bedroom, decorated with stern, austere but feminine taste. Black drapes hung at the windows, picked out with gold. Maroon ones with a cherry blush protected a giant four-poster bed. The chairs were comfortable and sported knit doilies on the backs. A chest of drawers in the corner and a vast wardrobe had carvings of birds and flowers on them.

Shyven beckoned me over to the drawers and opened the top one. Inside, hairpins, necklaces and other jeweled ornaments lay in confusion. He ran his thin fingers over them, displaying the wealth that had been left in the drawer.

“The innkeeper says that she never left anything valuable behind before. The queen always took her things with her when she left, to prevent robbery.”

With a quick, quiet motion like a hunter, Shyven closed that drawer and opened the next ones down in quick succession. They were full of neatly folded clothes, all sorted into different layers. Then he moved over to the wardrobe and showed me a set of sparkling black dresses, all set off by jewels, sashes or hems in various colors hanging inside. I stood staring at them with a frown, then looked around at the room with more care than I had before.

Peeking out from under the bed was a pair of dancing slippers. When I lifted up the drapes to look underneath, I also saw high heels and bathroom slippers, but no walking shoes. Not all queens, I suppose, have walking shoes. But I had the feeling that no matter how fancy they were, the Ebony Queen would have them.

Shyven nodded at my discovery before pulling back the drapes of the bed. It was perfectly straight and well-made, but there was a note pinned to the pillow. I stooped down to look at the piece of yellowed paper, reading the fine, spidery script on it;

‘I go.’

That was all it said.

“But where does she go, and why?” I shook my head slowly, not understanding. “And how has this room stayed undisturbed for so long? You said she went missing almost ten years ago.”

“The innkeeper has preserved it just as she left it,” Shyven explained, “he said that it has become a sort of museum to him now, a last memory of the missing queen. They were good friends, though never in a way to make the king jealous. He stayed here sometimes, too, in a suite that connects with this one. But, foolishly, no one else has thought of searching these rooms for a clue. No one from the outside, that is. The innkeeper looked through them when she went missing and found no clue. But he remembers the last time he saw her leave...”

My gaze flicked up to him sharply. “She must have departed in a hurry to leave these things behind.”

Shyven nodded agreement. “And not alone, either.”

“You mean a kidnapping?”

“That is what it seems like.” He turned back to the drawers and looked over the jewels once again. “The innkeeper said that she left only about a week after having stopped here. She had been planning to stay for a month, or at least that is what she said. But on the seventh day of her stay, the innkeeper looked up from helping an elderly man sort out his coins at the desk to see the Ebony Queen come sweeping down the steps, a black-clad man at either elbow. He says he did not see any weapons, though they could have been carrying them. The handmaid was running behind, her face looking oddly pale, afraid. But the innkeeper was busy and did not have time to pay much attention to the party. He simply saluted and called, ‘leaving, your highness?’ to which she replied, ‘for a little at least, Erdric. That was all. The last time he saw her. He worried when she did not return by evening and had searching parties sent out. Soon the city watch was alerted, and they searched as well. They could find no sign of her. The Ebony Queen was gone. And she had already walked out on the king, before coming here to stay, so he did not make as large an effort to recover her as he could have. The king claims that it was not a kidnapping: she was just escaping him further.”

I shook my head slowly. “But in that case, she would have taken her things. It doesn’t make sense for her to run away like that, instead of simply crossing the border into another country. To Creel or over the mountains to Frizzeen in the east. She could have asked for protection, and no one should have bothered her in those places. As it is, with the note, the clothes...it looks like someone stole her away.”

“That is certainly what it seems like.” Shyven put a hand to his chin, pacing back and forth for a moment in the middle of the room.

“The trick will be,” I commented, “figuring out where they took her. And if it was kidnappers, it’s likely that she is dead by now. I’m just surprised there was no ransom demand.”

“Hmm...” Shyven did not make any other comment, still pacing back and forth. Though I could guess what had happened to the queen now, we still did not know where she had been taken or if she was still alive. A direction was what we really needed to know.

With a sigh, I leaned over the pillow on the bed again and inspected the note. I tried to flip it up to see the other side, but it was pinned tightly to the pillow. Reaching down, I pulled the pin out and set it aside, about to flip the sheet of paper. I stopped myself, leaning closer to look at it. Traced faintly under the place where the head of the pin had sat (so long by now that the paper was permanently dimpled) was a black line. A few of them, I saw once my eyes had adjusted to the dimness under the canopy. They were arranged into a tiny arrow, so small that it had fit under the pinhead.

“I go...” I murmured to myself, feeling a spark of excitement, “I go — that way. Shyven, look out the window! What direction is this?”

I held out my hand at the same angle as the arrow indicated. Shyven gave me a curious look, then took a tiny compass from his pocket. “I don’t need a window. Let me see, that is just a point north of northeast, it appears.”

He held the compass over my outstretched hand to make sure of the angle, then noticed the paper.

“What have you found?”

“A direction.” I straightened, picking up the paper and passing it to him. “See the arrow?”

He squinted at the paper, held it up to the light by the window and then snorted softly. “You have good eyes, Gray One. I would not have noticed that even if I removed the pin. And I doubt anyone else before has, either. The question is, how accurate was the paper’s placement? It might have been moved, or the pillow scooted when the maid cleaned the room.”

“True.” I fingered the slightly rusty marks on the pillow where the paper had sat. “It looks like the pin has stayed in one place a long time, but it could have been moved at first. And the pillow probably was shifted to look under it. But--”

I stepped back, waving a hand at the bed. “The pillow had to be in nearly the same position all the time. And the paper would have been situated in roughly that direction. We don’t need an exact direction. The Queen herself probably did not know a precise one. Northeast is all we need to go on.”

Shyven’s eyes lit up. “You’re right. Northeast it is. And we’ll find more clues along the way.”

I nodded once in agreement. If the Ebony Queen had been kidnapped, she would have wanted someone, the innkeeper perhaps, to follow her in hopes of a rescue. She would have been forced to write the letter to put on her bed, but had hidden one clue on it. Other hints could be out there to set us on the track, even if it was just towards a pile of moldering bones.

“They must have left in a closed carriage,” Shyven was muttering, “so that no one would know who was inside. The men in black probably hired it beforehand or brought it with them. We can’t ask after that. We’ll just have to follow the direction in hopes of more clues.”

I nodded again. That was my line of reasoning as well.

---

But we did not leave Daggasta right away. Shyven said that he had a few contacts in the city he wanted to check in with before we left, so we would have to spend the night there. When the innkeeper discovered the quest we were on, he insisted on giving us free rooms for the night. Not ones in the rich wing of the inn, of course, but not poor rooms by any means.

As evening set in, Shyven left to find his mysterious ‘contacts’. I sat in the room, ate dinner when it was delivered and stared boredly at the wall. After a few minutes, I remembered my Vhoe and decided to get it from the cart, as well as check on Dee one last time. I stood up and strolled out of the room, shutting the door and turning around swiftly as light feet pattered by behind me. But it was only a maid, head bowed and dark hair hiding her face as she paced away. A tray was held in her hands, silver against the black and white of her formal uniform.

I told the innkeeper what my destination was and left, walking down the edge of the street the short distance to the big stables.

There was apparently no one at the stables when I came up to the side door. It hung open and the rows of stalls were empty of any human occupant. Down the row, I could see Dee, standing with his head slanted out of the stall to peer up and down the aisle. When he saw me, his yellow eyes sparkled and he whickered hopefully. I walked down to run a hand through his black mane and tap his nose.

“You’re comfortable, it seems. I wish we were out of the city. It makes me jumpy. As if there is always someone walking up behind me... but we will leave tomorrow, I suppose. Then it’s into the woods towards the northeast. I haven’t been in this part of the woods before, but I hear that it is mostly unpopulated.”

Dee rubbed his bony chin on my hand to tell me that he was listening and appreciated the words, even if he did not understand all of them.

After making sure that he had feed and water for the night, I ambled down the aisle towards the door. I did not see a stable boy or any other sign of movement, though I knew that there were at least three young men who worked in the stables. They had been there earlier that day.

As I approached the door, a slight noise caught my attention from the empty stall nearest it. Just a faint creaking, the sound of leather moving. Thinking it was one of the workers, I turned towards it without hurry.

“I--”

A figure stepped out of the stall, dressed in obnoxiously green leggings, a long, multi-tiered cape of brown and a black mask that hid his face. In one hand, he carried a long rod of heavy, whippy wood.

Thwack!

My reactions are pretty fast, but were not quick enough to save me from the blow. He swung it with an expert whip of his wrist, bringing it ringing across my head just above the brow, on one side. I staggered back, gasping and trying to raise a hand to protect myself. But my head was whirling, and he followed faster than I could even fall out of the way.

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Whack!

He hit again, and blurry darkness spun around me. I don’t even remember falling or being dragged away. The next thing I knew was the cold, miserable feeling of sludgy water washing around me. It was all over me, in my hair, and soaking through my clothes.

I came to a dim consciousness of things, only to see that I was laying in the dark under an arch of stone, probably the curved foundation of a bridge. Sluggish water was flowing by me on one side, while I was wedged in the wet mud on the other. It was the only thing that saved me from drowning, as there seemed to be a weight tied to my ankles that had also got stuck in the sludge.

A terrible smell filled the air, moist and musty, putrid above all else. I groaned and tried to pull myself out of the wetness, all my fears of dank, dripping places coming to the front of my mind. But with my ankles tied and my head still whirling with pain, I could do nothing. The effort I made sent me back into a foggy world of non-thought.

After some time, it was broken by a small, flickering light. I heard a sharp intake of breath and the sound of someone moving beside me. Instinctively, I grasped at the person and felt a hand clasp on mine. My eyes opened, and I saw Shyven crouching there, a guttering lantern held in one hand while he pulled at me with the other.

“Gray One, who did this?”

I blinked and shook my head. “A weight, on my feet...cut it away. Get me out of this wetness...please.”

I closed my eyes and felt Shyven drag me half up on the vaguely drier shore under the bridge. He unsheathed his sword and sliced through the rope at my feet, freeing me from the weight’s pull. He half-carried me further up onto a patch of grass to the side and I felt him wiping at the muck on my forehead.

“Quite a blow,” he hissed through his clenched teeth, “you must be made of iron. Who—?”

“I don’t know who he was. A man...hiding in the stables. Green leggings that made my eyes hurt, brown cape--”

“Curses! I told him to stay away from you,” Shyven growled, “he’ll pay for this. But we have to get you back to the inn now. I’ve had some adventures of my own this eve.”

He did not even ask me if I could walk. Which was a good thing, as one might as well have asked a drowned kitten. I was shivering by then, and the world was starting to go in and out like a fuzzy dream. I don’t really remember how he got me back to the inn. He claims to have dragged me over one shoulder part of the way, before he met the innkeeper come looking for both of us. Then things were simpler, getting me back to my bed.

Shyven commanded dry clothes, warm water and bandages to be brought, along with mulled apple cider containing a shot of something much stiffer. I can’t remember, but he told me that I drank it well enough, though getting me to stay in bed was much more difficult.

After a while, I came to and saw Shyven sitting on the edge of the cushion, looking down at me speculatively. Beyond him stood the maid whom I had seen earlier. She was clutching a bowl of warm water and staring at me with an anxious face. I gazed at it in blurry surprise. It was the same girl. The one who had been in the palanquin, but without the face powder or fancy dress. The same one who had tried to make me buy stolen clothes in Rockyford.

I tried to start up and say something, but Shyven forced me back down. “Lay still, Gray One. You’ve caused enough worry in one night, getting mugged, without making yourself worse. Go to sleep.”

And as if on command, I did.

For a while I will have to explain things as they were told to me later, since I do not remember much of them. Just disconnected pieces, fit together with fluffy, jagged edges.

It seems that Shyven had been followed, during his rounds, and almost caught a few times by two pairs of mysterious men in black. Very like the ones the innkeeper had seen with the queen so many years before. These wore black masks over their faces and were definitely armed.

Shyven had been careless at first and left a trail to follow, so that they almost got him in the common room of one small inn. But he had escaped and hurried back to our inn to warn me we had to leave town right away.

The thing was, I was already gone. Our innkeeper had told him that I was at the stables, but when he went there, it was being shut up for the night by one of the stable boys. The boy had seen nothing because, he admitted eventually, a stranger had put his horse up before and given all the hands a little extra tip for their services. Meanwhile suggesting pointedly that they use it in drink at the nearby inn before it shut for the night. This stranger was carrying a rather heavy, whippy cane with him.

Suspecting something, Shyven had searched the ground and found heavily leaden footsteps leaving the stable for the street. It was a few hours later that, combing the river banks, he found me wedged under one of the smaller bridges.

But that was not the end of our troubles. Even after I had been warmed and tended to, the blow to my head (repeated blows, actually) and the deep soaking I had received both set in. I fell in and out of terrible dreams, thrashing at the blankets. Or laying still and shivering as if it were a freezing day in winter instead of the most pleasant time of summer.

And all the time he tried to keep me from rolling out of bed, Shyven was worried about the masked men coming after us here. The maid, I was told, was very helpful the whole time. She seemed truly anxious about my health and brought various hot drinks, extra blankets and so on. In the pampering department, they had me all set up.

The problem was is that I had caught what is called among my people the Trengarll fever. Because we live in a dryer, warmer climate than Shardland, the effects of prolonged cold and damp on my people can be severe.

So I shivered and dreamed, and according to Shyven, spoke deliriously of the nightmares. He said that at one time I told him in painfully spoken words, “there is a dungeon, deep underground, where the floor is made up of mud and the prison walls drip with slime. The prisoners are chained to the walls and lay in water! It is so wet they rot! They rot alive!”

Which is a scene from the darkest fears of my mind, not somewhere I have ever been. I hope with sincerity that I never will be, either.

To continue with the story, Shyven decided at some point in the night that we simply had to leave town, no matter how fevered I was. A doctor could not be summoned, because he was afraid that it would be an agent of his enemies. Shyven had the maid fetch the innkeeper, and they carried me to my wagon. There, I was packed in a heap of quilts on my cushion, while Shyven hitched both Dee and Layla to the front of the cart.

“Sir,” the maid said hesitantly at that point, “do you...do you need a nurse to go with you and look after him? I have done some nursing in my time.”

“I don’t know when I will be back this way,” he returned, mounting the seat and looking down at her solemnly.

“I don’t care,” she said with some spirit, shaking her head so that her hair fluttered to each side. “There is nothing and no one here for me.”

Shyven hesitated, but he did need someone to look after me while he drove, so that I would not throw off all the blankets or crawl out of bed in a fit of delirium.

“Very well. I will pay you well, if you will come with us until he is a little better. And I will try to arrange transportation wherever you want to go to, in the next town we meet.”

The girl had nodded and climbed aboard. The innkeeper let her go as well, waving us off with his huge hand, “good luck! Find the queen and all will be repaid.”

The wagon bumped away into the darkness of the night, heading north. The streets of the town and the grand church at the end of it were passed, upon which we entered the thin, much-used forest at the edge of the city. Roads, stumps, and footpaths led in every direction. Shyven chose one going in the direction he wanted and followed it by the faint moonlight.

It was only when a thin grayness was starting to rise in the sky that he finally stopped the cart behind a thick growth of trees and decided to make camp. The maid, who claimed her name was Tayra, had experienced quite a trip with the stumps and rocks Shyven had hit in the dark. Not to mention my uncomfortable thrashings to occupy her. Once the wagon stopped, she came tumbling out, pale-faced and with her hair looking a little wild.

“How is he?” Shyven asked, moving to break dead limbs from a nearby tree.

“Still shivering, sir,” the girl had replied, trying to straighten out her hair with a few swipes of her hands. “I think we’d better start the wood stove in there.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Shyven jerked down an armload of brittle sticks and took them inside, building up a good fire in my little stove. Soon he and the maid were far too warm in the little enclosure, but I was, apparently, still cold. Or at least imagined that I was still cold and wet, which led to the same thing.

Wearily, Shyven took down the pot and pan to make a sort of early breakfast and late-night snack combination. For me, he heated water and added herbs, forcing me to drink it.

Not long after that, while he and Tayra were eating breakfast, I stopped shivering and lay very still. According to them, I was hardly breathing. Though I wondered later if they had moved the blankets to check or just based this idea on the cover’s muffled movement.

The maid moved quickly over to feel my wrist and said that my heart was still beating. Shyven frowned at me and tried to think what he would do if I started to gasp my last.

Little did they know that this was actually a sign that the Trengarll was on the wane. I was starting, in a small way, to recover. But they thought that I was unnaturally still. It seemed I had lost all of my strength and was dipping off of the deep end.

In this state of worry, they spent the rest of the morning sleeping in shifts while the other watched me. Then, about noon, Shyven pressed on again, trying to find the least-used paths towards the northeast. The ground gradually sloped upwards in the mountain valley between the ridges, then the path took a sudden turn up a more accessible slope of the ridge. This was a hard haul for the horses, so that both Shyven and Tayra got out to walk. As they walked, Shyven asked about the girl’s name, as it was one from his own homeland (rarely visited by northerners I gather) of the southern swamps. The girl blushed and jumped a little, before explaining that her family had simply liked the names of the southerners. She wasn’t really from the south. The Y was an affectation.

Shyven snorted at this and explained that originally, there had been no I in the language of the swamp people. Nor any E, thought that came in later. In the old tongue, his name would have been spelled Cyvan and pronounced with a sound at the end which was not as harsh as our N, having more of an ‘ahn’ noise to it. But by the time he was born, the language had become mixed with the general Shardland tongue and his name was now said with quite hard edges. Shy-ven.

If I had been conscious of the world at the time and in an explanatory mood, I might have tried to pronounce my original name for them. But that would have only made them look blank, laugh or ask too many questions, so it is probably best that I was not awake at all.

That evening, they camped on a high point of the ridge, in the middle of a large tangled mound of brush and trees. There was just a small, oval clearing in it, hardly big enough for the horses and cart. He let them graze, but on picket lines, while the nurse tried to get me to drink broth.

“He just lays there all pale and quiet,” she complained anxiously, coming out to Shyven with little of the soup drunk and most of it spilled, “what is wrong with him?”

“He was hit on the head harder than most people could survive and thrown into the river for half the night. You go figure,” he told her, grimly sharpening his sword blade on a smooth stone he had picked up.

Tayra bit her lower lip and tried to brush some of the broth from the front of her dress, but it had soaked in. “It’s just that he seemed more conscious earlier. More alive. Now he lays as if dead and hardly breathes, though still has a strong pulse.”

“Some sort of shock or something.” Shyven shrugged, looking up at her pointedly. “You said that you were a nurse. Go tend him! I’m no doctor.”

Tayra shook her head sadly and trailed back into the wagon, staring down into the bowl as if it would give her an answer. As she went, she muttered, “I meant for people who were sick, not almost lifeless!”

It was not long after that when I came to, for a short amount of time, my mind telling me that there was something I had to hear nearby. At first I thought I was dreaming again, but if so, it was the first dream in a while that was a pleasant one.

It was the sound of the Vhoe, weaving silver webs through the inside of the cart. And it was not being played by inexperienced hands, either, but as a true Creelin would play it. The cold, silver song was played with more strumming and wavery flutes than I would play it, but with almost as much knowledge of the Vhoe’s working.

I opened one eye slowly and turned it to peer out around the mountain of blankets on top of me. The girl was sitting on a stool by the stove, the Vhoe across her lap. Her hands moved up and down on it in quick, soft flight as she bent over the neck in concentration. But her face was towards me and lit by the fire. It was the same face, I was sure, as the powdered princess in the litter and the thief of Rockyford.

I opened both my eyes at this and she caught the movement, head jerking up and hand dropping from the Vhoe.

“You’re alive!” She jumped up, putting the Vhoe down less gently than I would have liked, and darting from the wagon. “Shyven, he is awake!”

The tall, angular form of my partner, on this quest, came in the door and he took off his hat to stoop beside me. “Gray One. Are you leaving us?”

“No, you fool,” was all I had the energy to say before falling back into a heavy, feverish sleep again.

But I was well on the way to recovery and once the Trengarll starts to wear off, it goes swiftly. The next day I was awake for a few hours at a time, though still too weak to do much with myself. That night I slept well and naturally, awaking to hear Shyven’s voice calling outside, “Tayra! Oh, Tayra! Where has that crazy girl got off to?”

Prying myself from the bed, I shoved off the blankets and put myself in full dress, that is, up to boots and leather vest. I was just thumping the second boot firmly onto my heel when the door opened and Shyven came inside. His eyes darted to me for a moment, once again with a speculative look.

But all he said was, “Tayra is gone. I can’t find her anywhere. I wonder if I should go searching?”

I blinked and looked around the interior of the wagon. A thin piece of bark was resting on top of the stove, marked with something black.

“I would look at that first.”

Shyven snatched it up and read, “You do not need me any longer. I shall leave, for now...”

He looked up at me quizzically. “What a strange girl! I told her we would pay her and buy transportation for if she wanted at the next village.”

“She is a strange girl,” I agreed, “perhaps more than you know. I didn’t feel like hashing it out yesterday, but—”

I told him about my encounters with her in Rockyford and Daggasta. I had been intending to confront her with it today and ask for an explanation, but she had prepared herself against that by leaving.

“This could be serious indeed.” Shyven began pacing back and forth, as far as he could go in the confined space of the wagon. “She could be an enemy. Or working for them. What if she has gone to tell them where we are, or where we are heading? Curse me, I shouldn’t have trusted anyone to come with us in this game! She could have even poisoned you!”

He spun around, pointing a finger at me almost accusingly.

“I don’t feel poisoned. Not any more,” I told him wryly, running a hand through my thick, brown hair in an attempt to work out some knots that had accrued over the last few days.

“It might be a long-term poison so that she could get away!”

“Be sensible, Shyven.” I shook my head at him. “If she wanted me dead, all it would take is a quick poison and you would think that the Trengarll fever had killed me. Or she could have poisoned you, also, just as easily. As to alerting our enemies...maybe. But why not closer to Daggasta? And who is she to be dressed as a boy-thief, then a princess in a palanquin? Perhaps...”

I looked up at him. “How old would the Ebony Queen be now?”

It was Shyven’s turn to smile at me a little. “Much older than that whip of a girl. Tayra would have only been a little child ten years ago.”

“What about daughters? Did the queen have any children before she walked away?”

Shyven shook his head. “None known of. I see what you are thinking, my friend, but I don’t believe it adds up. No, it is much more likely that she is a spy. What I am wondering is, what is the habitation nearest to our present location?”

I stood up stiffly and pulled myself over to the cupboards. It felt very good to be on my legs again, but they were still a little weak. Opening the cupboard, I drew out a curled, stained map of the wide peninsula Shardland sat on. It showed the land up to the Creemont mountains. Then over to the sea in the east and all the way across the grasslands towards the west, where Shardland gave way to other countries before reaching another sea. It also showed down to the southern ocean, but that was not important to us.

What was important now was the woodland we were in. Though it abutted the Dardec, it was not technically part of them. This small slice above Daggasta, all the way to the mountains, was called Cedarwheel. A town of the same name was marked in it, and another off to the south-west called Framm. Any others were too small to note.

Shyven looked at the map carefully, but then shook his head. “We are still many miles from Cedarwheel, and Framm is far to the west. Either there is a smaller village she knew of...or she has a contact waiting with horses nearby. I’ll have to see if I can pick up her trail outside.”

Putting the map away, I said, “I’ll help you.”

“You really shouldn’t.” Shyven gestured back at the bed. “You should rest. You barely lived through that ordeal.”

“Thanks for taking care of me,” I returned, making sure my knife was still in its sheath, “but I’m not getting back into that bed for at least six hours. And if you try to make me...”

I adjusted the knife a little more. Shyven threw up his hands in defeat and sighed with exasperation, then led the way outside.