Telari's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

The rest never came. Telari stood on the tower platform at dusk, watching the treeline. The pale scout was out there, running east with what it had seen. If it reached whoever sent the seal, the enemy would know her face, her tower, her lions. She could not let it warn them. "We don't wait for morning," she told Katt. "That scout has a head start. We ride now." Katt was already down the ladder, checking the horses. His wounded arm moved stiff, but it moved. "It's on foot," he said. "We're mounted. We run it down before it reaches the black tower." He looked up at her, steady. "Point us the way." Telari whistled. Leia dropped from the platform first, grey and silent. The white lion followed. She knelt and gripped the grey lion's ruff. "Track the pale one," she said. "East. Fast." Leia's nose went to the ground where the scout had stood. Then the cat bolted into the dark, and they chased her. They rode hard through the black trees. Branches tore at Telari's braid. The lions ran ahead as pale shadows, noses down, cutting the trail. An hour east, Leia slowed and crouched. Telari reined in. Through a gap in the trees she saw it—the scout, pale and thin, moving quick across open ground toward a distant dark shape on the horizon. A tower of black stone. It had almost reached its masters. "There," Katt breathed. "It's close. Too close." Telari swung off her horse. The scout was far, past good bowshot, and running. One arrow. She had one chance before it passed the tower gate and was gone. She nocked and drew. Her arms burned from the ride. She let out her breath and held on the pale shape. The white lion broke cover first. It tore across the open ground, faster than any arrow, and the scout turned at the sound. That turn was all Telari needed. The pale thing stopped, and she loosed. The arrow crossed the dark and took it through the neck. The scout dropped without a shriek, thirty paces from the black tower's door. Katt reached the body first. He rolled it with his boot. "Dead," he said. "It never called out." He looked up at the tower rising black against the stars, silent, its narrow windows dark. "They don't know we're here." Telari pulled her arrow free and wiped it clean. Leia and the white lion circled at her side, breathing hard. The scout was down. No warning had reached the black tower. But she was standing at its very door now, closer than she had ever meant to come tonight. Somewhere inside, the hand that paid for dead armies still slept, unaware. "We caught it," she said quietly. "Now we know where they sleep." She looked at Katt, then at the black stone above them. "And they don't know we're watching."