The necessity of moving the entire tribe – including both the very young and the very old – forced the Red Shields to first travel overland, to where, at Soaring Eagle’s command, they had first concealed their canoes along the northern bank of the Airaduinë. Hunters ranged ahead, behind, and to the flanks, whether in the form of bats or jungle predators. In this way they not only provided warning of impending danger, but also provided fresh game for the cook fires each evening.

For Wren, the journey was of an agonizing pace. Alone, she could have winged her way back to the dam, and Ghveris, by the time the tribe reached their canoes. Every day and night that passed brought the council closer, and made it more likely that Liv would have already departed from Bald Peak by the time they arrived. That wouldn’t be a disaster – the only real problem would be if they didn’t get to the council in time – but she wanted to arrive with Liv if it was possible. Then, too, she worried about Ghveris.

He had Miina to wait with him, and the Elden soldiers who held the bridge, but no real friends. In the short months since the Antrian had awoken, in the depths of the Tomb of Celris, he’d spent nearly all his time with the small group of companions who had accumulated around Liv. It might be silly to worry about him being lonely, with everything else that was happening, but Wren couldn’t shake the thought. And she didn’t even have a way of sending a message back to him, to let him know that she was safe and on her way.

Still, there was also something comforting about finally being back with her own people. Wren found it easy to fall into the familiar rhythms: hunting, scouting, setting watches at night, taking a turn watching her cousin’s daughter. There were more children – and all around the same age – than she could recall journeying with the tribe, going back decades.

The thing that struck her, unexpectedly, with a sense of disorientation was that since she had been a little girl herself, Wren’s father had always been chief. Before her mother’s death, before the ill-conceived plan to resurrect Ractia, through the entirety of her life it had been Nighthawk Wind Dancer who had listened to the scouting reports of the hunters, who had called a halt each evening, who had set their pace and chosen their route. And now it was Soaring Eagle.

It wasn’t that her cousin’s husband made any wrong choices; he simply made different ones. Wren often found herself thinking of what her father would have done, and having to bite her tongue. It had been Soaring Eagle, after all, who had preserved their tribe, who had led them away from Ractia and back across the jungles. What right did Wren have to question him now, when he’d proven his ability?

The journey accelerated once they had reached the canoes. Finally, the children and the elderly could be packed into the boats, secured in the carved out trunks of fallen trees, while the strong arms of the hunters paddled them upriver. Soaring Eagle made certain that there were always scouts in the air, circling the small fleet of canoes as they pushed against the current.

Soaring Eagle found her, the night before they would reach the fortified rift. The new chief settled down next to Wren, legs crossed, before a cook-fire upon which several gutted birds roasted on a spit. “What can we expect?” he asked. “This is a journey I’ve taken before; but once we cross the ocean – you are the only member of this tribe who has travelled Isvara.”

Wren laid a cloth across her lap, then dug a jar of oil and a whetstone out of her pack. Once she had the cloth oiled, she began working on the first of the two enchanted daggers Jurian had made for her, before his death. “We’ll go to Bald Peak first,” she explained, “and see whether we can catch Liv before she leaves. It’s better if we can: then we’ll just travel with the Whitehill contingent all the way to the council. There’ll be more than enough mages to manage waystones, and we’ll essentially just be along for the ride.”

“If your friend has already left?” Soaring Eagle asked.

“That’s why Miina is waiting with Ghveris,” Wren said. “We’ll ask some of the Elden soldiers at the bridge to send us to Bald Peak, and then Miina will be fresh and ready to take us on to Al’Fenthia. That’s an Elden trading city in the mountains. I’ve met the elder who essentially runs the place, and I’m certain she’ll help us get where we need to go. But we’ll have to march overland, as I understand it, and the nights are cold that far north, even in the summer.”

“And you’ve never been to our destination before?”

Wren shook her head. “No. Calevis was the only one who went, and that was after I’d already left to join up with Liv.” She hesitated a moment. “And you’ll meet Ghveris tomorrow. He’s an Antrian.”

Soaring Eagle frowned. “Like Karis?”

“No.” Wren shook her head. “He was one of us, back during the war. He was injured, and they put him inside one of those metal bodies so that he could keep fighting – but as near as I can tell, everything ended before they actually got a chance to use him again. We found him sleeping beneath the Tomb of Celris, in the far north.”

“Ghveris. You don’t mean –”

“The Beast of Iuronnath, yes,” Wren told him, with a smile. She held her dagger up to examine it in the firelight and, satisfied, placed the weapon back in its sheath. Then, she pulled out the other one and set to work again. “Though he isn’t really like the stories. I mean, he’s an incredible warrior, and he knows a lot about managing an army. You can tell he used to be a commander,” she said, the words tumbling out like a rushing cascade. “But he’s not just some bloodthirsty monster that spends all his time carving through his enemies. He’s mostly –”

“What?”

“Lonely, I think,” Wren admitted. “Everyone he ever knew is gone. He had to learn a whole new language, just to understand everyone around him. He doesn’t like going to sleep – I think half because he slept so long, and half because of the nightmares.”

“Every warrior knows about those,” Soaring Eagle agreed. “You trust him.”

It wasn’t a question, but Wren answered anyway. “I do.”

The chief examined her for a long moment, and Wren dropped her gaze to the blade she was working on. “Very well. If he’s won your trust, he has mine, as well.” He stood, clapped her on the back with his hand, and then made his way around the fire to where his wife and child were.

☙

The Elden scouts at the bridge saw them coming, of course: they’d raised watchtowers to get a good view of the lake, and downriver, and there was not only no way to hide a dozen canoes, but the Red Shields had made no effort to conceal themselves. By the time they pulled the boats up onto the bank, just beneath the dam, Ghveris and Miina were waiting for them.

Wren got out as soon as the men had dragged the canoe halfway up into the mud, her Dakruiman boots sinking in nearly to the ankles. Then she reached back, and accepted Blossom from her cousin, gripping the little girl beneath her arms and lifting her over the muck.

“Here.” Ghveris strode forward, and extended his enormous, steel-shod arm.

Wren could feel Blossom tense in her arms. “It’s alright,” she murmured. “He’s a friend.”

Ghveris settled the girl in the crook of his arm, then helped both Wren and Calm Waters onto the shore, giving them a great gauntlet to grasp hold of until they were on solid ground. Wren watched him carefully pry himself free of the muck, and then, once he was clear, set Blossom down on the land.

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“You must be careful by the riverbank here,” the Antrian told the little girl, in Lucanian. “There are great lizards that swim in the water, large enough to eat a full-grown man. They look like logs. I knew of them long ago, but I am not certain what our people call them now. Can you tell me?”

Blossom nodded. “We call them Cipactli.”

Wren wasn’t surprised that he’d used the language, or that her cousin’s daughter had understood. In the decades since Calder’s Landing was established, on the coast, most of the tribe had learned to speak Lucanian for trading purposes.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” she told Ghveris.

“You do not need to apologize,” he assured her, in that rumbling, inhuman voice. “I knew you would come back. There is nothing left in these jungles that could stop you, Wren.”

The words caught at her, somehow, and Wren found herself standing there, looking up into her friend’s burning blue eyes, until Soaring Eagle and Miina joined them. “This is Ghveris, who I told you about,” she said to her cousin’s husband. “And Miina of House Däivi – she’s Liv’s cousin. Miina, Ghveris, this is Soaring Eagle, the Chief of the Red Shield Tribe, and his wife Calm Waters, my cousin. This little one is their daughter, Blossom.”

Soaring Eagle extended his arm, in the way of the eld, and Miina clasped it.

“We should get everyone up to the waystone,” she said. “The sooner we get over to Al’Fenthia, the sooner we can catch up with Liv.”

“Any word?” Wren asked.

Miina nodded. “We’ve had runners going back and forth, with both Al’Fenthia and Bald Peak. They’re already north of the pass, heading for the Hall of Ancestors, but Elder Aira is waiting to escort us.”

Wren couldn’t help but let out a groan, but if she was honest with herself, she’d expected it. In the meantime, she saw that Soaring Eagle and Ghveris were examining each other, in the manner of two warriors who were each deciding which of them would come out on top in a fight.

“You look young to be chief,” Ghveris said. “But that can be good. It means you are not set in your ways. Willing to change.”

“My wife’s cousin tells me that somewhere beneath all that metal, one of our people is buried,” Soaring Eagle shot back.

“Not much of one, now,” Ghveris answered. “Hardly any.”

“If the two of you are finished?” Wren grabbed each of them by the elbow and tugged. “I’d like to get us all to Al’Fenthia.”

☙

The canoes were all pulled up on shore, with the help of the Eld, and everything the Red Shields had brought was carried up to the waystone and stacked there. They ended up needing to make the trip in three stages, and Wren made certain that she and Ghveris went on the first. By the time the entirety of the tribe was across, runners had been sent to fetch Elder Aira, who came down to the trading quarter to welcome them, with several of her guards.

“I don’t suppose most of your people can ride?” she asked Wren. The old woman leaned on her cane, looking over the tribe with narrowed eyes.

Wren shook her head. “There’s no horses native to the jungle,” she explained, “or even the mountains to the north. Every once in a while the Lucanians bring some to Calder’s Landing, but they really aren’t suited."

“We’ll need extra wagons, then,” Aira decided.

It took the rest of the day, the night, and into the next morning for travel arrangements to be made to Aira’s satisfaction. A dozen wagons finally made their way north, with not only supplies and tents loaded into them, but the children and elderly of the Red Shields, as well. Most of those who could fly preferred to do that, ranging out around the procession and exploring the northern forests, but many of the mothers, like Calm Waters, remained with their children.

Wren did accept a loaned horse, since she’d gotten comfortable enough riding after all the time she’d spent with Liv, and rode alongside Miina while Ghveris trudged along the road next to them. They split their time between accompanying Aira, or the Red Shields in the wagons.

“Livara will already be settled in,” Aira explained, as they rolled along the Elden road north. “Politicking and getting into trouble, no doubt. I would have enjoyed being there to see it. She’s going to drive a lot of the elders absolutely mad.”

“Why didn’t you go ahead, then?” Miina asked. “It couldn’t have been only to wait for us.”

“I have my reasons,” Aira said, but would not explain further.

They camped each evening in Elden tents, and Aira had been certain to secure warm wool blankets and furs for the cool nights. Many of the Red Shields had a difficult time adapting to the temperature, and they huddled around the cook fires once the sun went down.

There was plenty of food packed in the wagons, but the hunters quickly adapted to the terrain, and began to bring back deer, quail or even fish from the northern streams. As Wren had learned herself, a bat form could be used this far north, but something like an owl would have been better.

“Without any blood-letters, however, there’s no point in wishing for that,” Soaring Eagle grumbled one evening, while they were sitting around a cook fire. “That is going to be a difficult thing to accept. We are the last generation of Great Bats, one way or the other. Our children, and our grandchildren, what few there are, will have only a single form.”

“Don’t be so certain,” Wren told him. A moment’s thought, and she shifted to her cougar form, and then back again. “Ghveris helped our friend Arjun figure out how to turn the rite into a spell,” she explained. “I expect anyone who’s imprinted the word of blood could do it.”

That particular piece of information sent a wave of excitement through the Red Shield Tribe, one which lasted all the way up until their arrival at the Hall of Ancestors. Wren found herself fielding questions from one person after another, and demonstrating her cougar form more than a few times.

When they reached the great, towering cedars whose trunks had been carved into dozens of animal shapes, the children emerged from the wagons, dashing about from tree to tree in glee. Blossom, among others, pestered the Elden guards with questions: what was the name of that bird, or that strange, long bodied creature – an ermine, it turned out, and it had a white coat that blended in with the snow quite well.

They left their weapons with a Whitehill camp of guards, near sunset, and Aira led the wagons by torchlight along a ring road of packed earth, to a place where they could set up camp. Wren swung down from the saddle of her loaned horse when she saw Baron Crosbie and Kazimir Grenfell emerge from their camp.

“Where’s Liv?” she called out, over the rumble of wagon wheels and the shouts of men unloading.

The two older men exchanged looks, but it was Grenfell who spoke. “She’s gone to visit one of the unconquered Elden houses,” the old mage explained. “Keri went with her, and Kaija took a good number of guards.”

“Bælris?” Severi, one of the elders from Al’Fenthia, asked. He was an old man with hardly any hair left, and Wren privately thought that he was often irritable more for the sake of causing trouble than anything else.

Crosbie shook his head. “No, though they’ve been trouble enough, as well. Lord Inkeris’s aunt wants to make a marriage alliance, as it turns out.” He raised his hands before any of the Eld could correct him. “Yes, I understand you all do things differently – but that’s essentially the price of her vote. A man from her family to father our queen’s first child.”

“She didn’t say yes, did she?” Miina asked, with a scowl.

“Not yet,” Grenfell assured them. “Which is why she’s gone to this other house, to try and find more votes. The Kaulris.”

Wren and Ghveris exchanged a glance. “Can you point us to where they’re camped?” she asked. “She’ll want to know we’ve arrived.”

Aira caught her by the sleeve, with a grip that was surprisingly strong for an old woman. “No. If she’s gone to House Kaulris, she can’t be interrupted.”

“Interrupted from what,” Ghveris rumbled. Those who didn’t know him as well as Wren did might not have noticed – his voice was inhuman at the best of times – but there was a note of warning there, of danger.

“Their word is Kau - Fear,” Miina explained. “They don’t often come to councils, and to be honest, no one misses them. They’re a bit terrifying, all done up in black robes and veils and what have you.”

That didn’t make Wren feel particularly more comfortable, and she rounded on Aira. “What are they going to be doing?” she demanded.

“I’ve known Elder Raija for many years,” the old woman said. “If she’s bothered to come all the way out here and speak to Livara, she has a reason. And she’ll want to know exactly what manner of woman she’ll be dealing with. There is a spell – you Lucanians would call it an archmage spell,” she explained, nodding to Grenfell and Crosbie.

“It draws out the worst fears of the person it is cast upon, and forces them to confront those fears – things they may not even have been able to admit to themselves.”

“And this is what they’re doing to Liv?” Wren asked. You should have been with her. The voice was her own, and it wouldn’t be silent. This is what comes of trusting other people with her safety.

Ghveris laid his gauntlet on Wren’s shoulder. “We will find her,” the Antrian rumbled, and the hatch on his shoulder opened, revealing the multi-barrelled weapon beneath. “And we will make certain she is safe.”