or so until she came to the meadow she sought. She set her pack down and opened it.
"Eighty-three," she said to herself, taking out the leather bag she'd gotten in town as well as the bag from her trunk, "and a hundred and forty-one."
She took one of the mermori out and stuck it into the ground, point down, so it stuck up like a short fencepost. She took another out and measured it with her fingers then paced out a distance from the second. She did the same with the third and the fourth as the moon crept across the sky.
"What do you do, Mother?"
She'd been so involved in the mermori that she hadn't heard him. The low, velvety voice sounded so much like Tier's that she had to swallow. Despite her excellent eyesight and the moon she couldn't see Jes in the night.
"I've told you some stories about the Travelers," she said, setting the last mermora she held into the earth, and walked back for more.
He didn't reply immediately. She heard no footstep, but was not surprised that he'd followed her back to the pack.
"Yes," he said close enough that the warmth of his breath touched the back of her neck. Traveler-bred though she was, the vast difference between her daytime son and this, more dangerous Jes disconcerted her; a mother should not fear her child.
"We are the descendants of the wizards who lived in Colossae long before the Shadowed came to destroy mankind," she said, ignoring the shiver Jes's voice had sent down her spine.
"Yes," he acknowledged, pacing beside her as she took a handful of the mermori to an empty spot in the meadow and continued to measure out distances. He was barefoot.
Only she and Tier knew what her gentle-natured child became away from the safety of the cabin.
"Colossae was a great city of learning, and wizards came from all the earth to study and learn there. For generations they gathered and learned magic and forgot wisdom, until at last they created the greatest evil their hearts had ever imagined."
She had told her children very little about the Travelers, hoping that they would all become Rederni, like Tier. But Lehr and Rinnie carried the Traveler's looks, and Jes carried the Traveler's curse.
It had occurred to her, lying awake in her bed before she'd left it, that with a priest who knew too much and garbled truth with lies, it might be a good idea to teach her children more. She'd start tonight with Jes.
"By the time the wizards realized what they had done, it was too late to undo their making, almost too late to control it. As it was, only a great sacrifice could stop their creation, and Colossae was killed to imprison the Stalker, before it could destroy the world," she said. "The wizards who survived were sent to Travel the earth and keep it free of the Stalker's corruption, because such evil, even bound, was not without power. Even so great a sacrifice as a city of light and knowledge could not hold it completely, nor keep it forever."
"Yes," Jes said again. This time she caught a glimpse of eyes glowing a bit red in the night.
"What is it?" she asked. "Is there someone here?"
"Not now," he said, at last, a growl in his voice that wasn't quite human. "But there have been hunters in the forest who do not belong. They hunt for sport and that offends the forest - and they've come too near to the cabin for my liking."
"The new Sept is supposed to be quite a hunter," she told him. "Some of the nobles the Sept brought with him from Taela stayed when he left. Is this hunting something that you must stop?"
"No," he replied after a moment. "The forest king told me he will take care of these men if necessary." Seraph shivered a little at the tone of her son's voice when he said "men" - it told her that her son, in this aspect at least, did not consider himself one. "This forest yet has the power to keep out killers who hunt wastefully," he said.
Seraph set another mermora.
"You were talking about Colossae," he reminded her after she'd placed the mermora she held and was walking back for another handful.
"Ah, yes." She decided it was too much trouble to keep coming back so she transferred all that were left into the largest bag and carried that with her.
"It was decided after the wizards left and the city