Telari's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

Katt slept three days in the tower's snug quarters. His arm healed slow but clean. Telari changed the wrapping each morning and watched the woods from the high platform. She could not rest. She never learned who sent the pale creatures. Someone had ordered them into her forest. If she waited, another might come while Katt was too weak to lift a sword. On the fourth day, Katt sat up and flexed his fingers. "It holds," he said. "Take me back to that camp." "You're not fighting," she said. "You keep watch. I search." She whistled, and the two lions rose from the platform floor. The white one stretched. Leia padded to the ladder first. They rode to the dead camp before noon. The torches had burned out. The pale bodies lay where they fell, cold now, no blue light left in any of them. Telari knelt by the tall leader's corpse and searched it while Katt stood guard with his good hand on his sword. She found a folded paper inside the leader's rotting coat. The ink had run, but she read enough. It was an order. It named a price paid for dead soldiers raised to fight. It named a place east of Daggerfall where more would be sent if these failed. And it carried a wax seal she did not know—a black tower stamped in the wax. Telari held the paper up so Katt could see. "They didn't come on their own," she said. "Someone paid to make an army of the dead. This wasn't the last of them." Katt's jaw tightened. "Then we know who to hunt." "We know where," she said. "Not who." She stood and folded the paper into her belt. The leader was dead. The camp was searched. But the answer only pointed further out, to a black tower east of the city and a hand she had never seen. Leia growled low. Telari turned. Far through the trees, past the dead camp, a single pale shape stood watching. Not attacking. Just watching. Then it slipped back into the dark and was gone. "A scout," Katt said. "They know we came back." Telari drew an arrow but did not shoot. The pale thing was already too far. Whoever sent that seal knew their soldiers had failed. Now they knew Telari had found the order. She lowered the bow. The search was done. She had her answer, and the answer was worse than not knowing. A stranger with a black tower seal wanted the dead raised as soldiers. He knew her face now. And he would not stop at nine. "We rest tonight," she said. "Then we ride east." She looked at Katt, at his bound arm, at the lions at her side. She was not alone. She would need all of them for what came next.