Prince Nera Mossveil's Arc

Chapter 22 of 23

Nera pushed the fawns up through the moss into a stand of low pine. Luminara kept pace on foot beside his stirrup. The half-day she had bought was already spending itself, and the country ahead opened into bare slope where nothing would hide a string of six fawns from the sky. He had heard the sound twice in the last hour and pretended he had not. Now he heard it again, closer, a dry beat like sailcloth snapped against wind. Two dragons, working the northern line for the fire tribe's queen, sweeping wide. Luminara stopped. She turned her face up through the pine crowns and listened. "Fire scouts on the wing. A pair. They will cross this slope in a quarter hour." "There is no cover past the trees," Nera said. "If they see the fawns from above, we lose them all." "I did not come alone." She lifted two fingers to her mouth and gave a short, flat whistle. A striped courier dropped through the branches and landed on a low bough, goggles pushed up, wings still. Tempo Flux. Behind the courier, on a heavier wing beat, came an older fairy in purple and gold that Nera had only seen in the council hall. Aldric Moonwhisper set down on the moss and did not bow. "The office sent me when the envoy sent word. We have one working left in the pouch for cloud cover. One casting. It will hold an hour over a mile of ground." Nera looked at the six fawns roped behind his horse and at the open slope. An hour and a mile was the slope and the ridge beyond it. "Cast it." Aldric knelt and opened a small leather pouch. He poured grey powder into his palm and spoke three words Nera did not catch. The powder lifted straight up through the pines as if pulled on a line. Above the crowns it spread, thickened, and became low grey cloud that moved with them as Nera put the horse forward onto the open ground. Tempo Flux flew ahead at treetop height as a spotter, one hand on the hilt of a small blade at the belt, the other signing back the line of the dragons' sweep. Luminara walked at the tail of the string. Aldric held the casting, eyes closed, moving at a fast walk beside the horse. The dragons crossed twice above them. Nera heard the wingbeats pass directly overhead, once, then again farther east. Neither turned. The cloud held. At the ridge line the ground broke down into thick spruce and the sky closed in on its own. Aldric let the working go and sat down hard on a stone, breathing through his teeth. "Done. They will quarter this slope for another hour and find nothing." Nera counted the fawns. Six. He turned north into the spruce. The sky was no longer his enemy for the afternoon, and the herd he had not yet found was one ridge closer.