was not entirely equal - even with its burdens much lighter than they had been six weeks before - to keeping pace with the flint-hard war-horses. Narknon loped along beside them, dashing off into the bushes occasionally on her private business, reappearing silently ahead of them, waiting by the trail for them to catch her up. They paused for lunch and a cold supper; but they continued on in the twilight. After the sunset was gone, Harry could see a glow in the northeast.
"It is a great bonfire on the plain before the City, to mark the opening of the trials tomorrow at dawn," Mathin told her. Harry wondered if any of the other trials riders were seeing things in the flames.
Her mind wanted to feel nervous and restless that night, but her well-trained body and that extra whatever-it-was sent her off to sleep before she had time to argue. At dawn when the trials were beginning, they were in the saddle again, riding easily and listening to the breeze, Harry half expecting to hear the distant clash and yell of combat. Slowly they rode all that day, that they might not arrive tired. The pack horse had given up complaining, and marched on resignedly.
They rode around the edge of a gaunt grey rockface at sunset and suddenly before her was a vast field, the Hills rising sharply at its perimeter. The plain was speckled with fires, and in the swiftly falling shadows she could make out the many-legged shapes of huddled horses and huddled men, and the angular silhouettes of tents. There were too many of them; her heart jumped out of its usual location and began beating frantically against the base of her throat. She raised her eyes to the watching Hills again: surely this great flat plain was not a natural phenomenon in this rugged land? And yet what labor could have flattened the Hills so?
Mathin was staring across the fires as if he would recognize the owners of the dark featureless tents even from here. She thought with his long eyes he might succeed. "Mathin, do you know how this plain came to be - has it always been here?"
Mathin, still looking out over the plain, said, "There is a story that Tor met the Northerners on this plain, and held them away from the City for nine days, and the heat of that battle melted the rocks of the Hills, which made a pool; and when the pool became hard again, it was this plain."
"What happened on the tenth day?" asked Harry. But Mathin put Windrider into a trot without answering. Sungold trotted obediently behind her, his ears pricked stiffly at the scene before him. He was ready for anything Harry might ask him to do; he gave her a little confidence. But the other riders here had known of the laprun trials perhaps all their lives; perhaps they had been training for them nearly as long.
Mathin glanced back at her. "We are opposite the gate to the City; you cannot see it from here. You will see it after the trials."
"Mathin."
His head turned warily back to her, anticipating a question he would not wish to answer. She saw his eyes glint in a yellow gleam of firelight.
"Are there other women at the trials?"
He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Northerners for nine days and melt a hole in the Hills, and Aerin and her dragons. He said gruffly, "A few. There are always a few. Once there were more." He put Windrider forward again, and in the click of hooves she had to strain to catch his last words: "It would be a great thing for us, and for our daughters - a damalur-sol."
Damalur-sol. Lady Hero.
They set up their own small and travel-stained tents not far in from the ring of Hills they had just left. She felt the drifting shadows of other Hillfolk as she rubbed Tsornin down, and when she came back to the firelight of the small blaze she had - rather efficiently, she thought, with the first of Mathin's three methods of fire-making, which simply involved the correct application of a tinder-box - started in front of their tari, there were four such shadows sitting on their heels around it. Mathin came into the light as she did, carrying his saddle. He joined the four, and after