it became plain some of the horses were close to collapse, as were most of their riders. Luralyn bore scant signs of fatigue but her companions all slumped from their mounts to stumble into near-instant slumber.
“The advantage of being born to the saddle,” she said, dismounting alongside Vaelin. “Stahlhast will sleep mounted if the need arises.”
Vaelin’s gaze was focused on Sherin. Having lagged behind for several miles, she brought her pony to a halt a dozen feet away and climbed slowly from its back. “Don’t!” Luralyn said when Sherin unfastened a bundle of sticks from her pack and began to build a fire. “The smoke will be seen for miles.”
“Your brother’s gift has already told him where we are,” Vaelin said.
“But not his scouts,” she returned, casting a wary glance at the horizon.
“Assuming he won’t come himself.”
A spasm of worry passed over her features. “That’s certainly a possibility. But still, I’d prefer not to take the risk.”
Vaelin took a blanket from his own pack and walked to where Sherin sat on the ground, settling it on her shoulders. She gave a listless nod of thanks but said nothing.
“You touched it,” he said. “That was not wise.”
“She tried to stop me.” Sherin glanced at Luralyn, now unfurling her bedroll on the ground. “But the Princess told me it would be this way. After all her scheming I had hoped it might be another lie, but as you were . . . dying, I saw it must have been part of her design all along. So I had Luralyn take me to the stone and I touched it. I needed to. As the Princess needed to sing her song and you needed to fight that animal.”
“I lost,” Vaelin pointed out. He wanted to reach out and clasp her hand but restrained himself. Even given what she had risked to save him, he still doubted her current regard would allow for such intimacy. “What concerns me now is what you lost,” he said. “Gifts always exact a price.”
She raised both hands, turning them and flexing the fingers. “Pain, I suppose. Healing you hurt a great deal and it was not simply a matter of laying my hands upon the wound and watching it mend itself. Your flesh needed to be remade, skin, muscle, nerves and veins all woven back together. Without my knowledge I doubt I could have managed it. It was like I was feeling it as I healed it, like the wound was part of me. It left me . . . drained.”
“I’m sorry. I would never have wished . . .”
She waved him to silence, shaking her head. “The healing wasn’t the worst of it. When I touched the stone, it . . . took me.” Her face clouded in confused remembrance. “It was like being drawn through a door, dragged, in fact. Taken to another place, a place where all is chaos. Like a storm made of screams, each one a different voice. I thought it would drive me mad, but then it changed, found form. I saw . . .”
She fell silent, closing her eyes as a shudder ran through her. Vaelin made no effort to prompt her, finding he feared what she might say next. “Once, years ago when I journeyed to the western coast,” she said, eyes still closed, “I had the luck to glimpse a tiger. I thought it the most beautiful creature I would ever see. White fur striped in black, eyes like opals. We stared at each other for a time, then it bared its teeth at me and bounded off into the forest, and I never forgot it. That’s what I saw, Vaelin. All the swirling chaos and fury of that place formed itself into that tiger and that forest. I believe whatever lurks there plucked it from my head and made it real. For it was real. That place beyond the stone is as real as anything in this world.
“It came for me, not snarling, but sniffing, tasting the scent of my terror and wonder. I could feel its hunger like a bottomless well, and when I dared to look into its eyes I saw understanding there. It knew what I was, it knew what I wanted. And it had no desire to give it to me, it just wanted to sate the emptiness inside it. Then . . .” A baffled tone crept into her voice, along with the faintest note of amusement. “It seemed to smell something it didn’t