It was late afternoon when they departed, and they flew until the night enveloped them. The blue-gray line of the ocean and clouds was left behind, along with the freezing cold of the coastal air. The inland darkness was warm and soft, a welcome change. The land stretched away before them, an unbroken rippling of green treetops and dark ridgelines dotted with lakes and laced with rivers, hemmed away behind the coastal cliffs and mountain peaks. Far distant, caught in a patch of fading sunlight, an ice field’s glimmer was hard and bright against the enfolding dark.
Hunter Predd turned Obsidian downward to find a campsite. After several minutes of searching, they landed in a clearing atop a broad wooded rise that gave Obsidian several choices of perch and routes of escape and his riders a good view of the surrounding countryside. It wasn’t that they expected trouble, just that they knew enough to be ready for it. It was a country about which they knew virtually nothing. There could be things there that would kill, things that they had never encountered before. Even if they avoided whatever it was that warded Castledown, there would be other dangers.
While Hunter Predd unsaddled Obsidian, groomed his feathers, and watered and fed him, Rue Meridian set about preparing their meal. They had agreed to forgo a fire, to avoid attracting unwanted attention, so she settled for cold cheese, bread, and dried fruit from the stores she had brought from the ship. When Hunter Predd joined her, she brought out an aleskin and shared it with him between bites. They ate their meal in silence, watching the darkness deepen and the stars appear. Light from the full moon rising in the north was brilliant and cleansing, and the land took on a fresh white cast amid the shadows. Atop the rise, the woods were silent. Within the trees, nothing moved.
“How long will it take us to get to where we’re going?” the Wing Rider asked when they were finished eating. He sipped from the aleskin and handed it over to her. “Your best guess will do. I just need some idea of how to pace my bird.”
She drank, as well, and put the container down. “I think we can get there by late tomorrow if we leave at sunrise and push through the day. It took longer coming out, but we were feeling our way and nursing our wounds, so it went more slowly. We’d lost half our power and much of our steering. Your Roc will fly faster than we did.”
“Then we take a look around and see who’s there?”
She shrugged. “When I was a girl and we played hide-and-seek, I learned that the best way to find someone was not to look too hard. I learned that instincts are necessary, that you have to trust them. We can have a look at the bay where the Jerle Shannara put Walker and the others ashore. We can fly inland until we sight Castledown. But I don’t think we can be certain that what we’re looking for is at either place.” “Or even aboveground.” She gave him a sharp look.
“What I mean is that the Druid told us the safehold was belowground. That’s all.”
She nodded. “We’ll have to look sharp, in any case, to find them. They won’t just be standing around waiting.”
“We’ll have Obsidian to help with that.” The Wing Rider gestured to where the bird roosted in the dark on a broad outcropping of rocks. “That’s what he’s been trained to do, to look for things we can’t see, to hunt for what’s lost and needs finding. He’s good at it. Better than you and me.”
She eased her injured leg into a new position. It ached from being locked about the Roc during their flight, even for only the two hours they had traveled. How much worse would it be by tomorrow night? She sighed wearily as she rubbed it back to life, careful to avoid the knife wound. It was no worse, she supposed, than she had imagined it would be. She’d already checked the bandage, and there was no evidence of bleeding. The stitches were holding her together so far.