The chilly autumn rain poured down as the horses trudged along the South Road, nine days north of Circle Bay. For the first seven days, the road had followed the coastline and they’d stayed in fishing villages when they could find one, but then the main road had curved west, cutting through a forest. It wasn’t the Terril Forest—they were too far east and the trees weren’t tall enough—but the area was heavily wooded.

According to their maps, the reason the road had turned inland was to go around the Bluewater River’s massive estuary, which gradually fanned out to form Tyrsall Bay. The road would lead them to a bridge over the river, and then to Tyrsall itself, which was built on the north shore of the bay. Smaller trails led off from the South Road to the numerous fishing villages dotted along the coastline and the south shore of the bay.

The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was constant, and the road was growing muddier by the hour. They’d estimated it would take fifteen days to travel from Circle Bay to Tyrsall, but if the weather didn’t let up soon, it would certainly take longer.

Corec tugged the hood of his cloak more firmly over his head to keep the water from dripping down his helmet and into his cuirass. He looked up when Boktar dropped back to ride beside him.

“Ellerie thinks we should stop for the day if we can find an inn, even if it’s a few hours early,” the dwarf said. “Do you know of any coming up?”

“I’ve never actually gone this way before.” Corec turned to Katrin, who was riding on his other side. “You’ve taken the South Road, right?”

“Just the once, but it was six years ago and we were going in the other direction. Nothing looks familiar, except the trees and the rain.”

“I guess we’ll just have to keep going and see,” Boktar said.

They rounded a corner then and saw a village, but it was a scene of chaos. People were wandering around in the rain shouting to each other, while in the distance, a large building burned. Nobody was making an effort to put out the fire.

“Let’s go check it out,” Corec said to the dwarf, then turned to Katrin. “Stay here, just in case.”

She frowned at him but nodded.

The two men joined Ellerie at the front of the column, staring at the bedlam and trying to make sense of what was going on. Some of the villagers appeared to be injured, with others helping them to walk. Two men were carrying someone between them, and there were bodies in the road that weren’t moving.

Treya came up to the head of the group and then kept riding, calling back over her shoulder, “I’m going to go help.”

Corec spurred his horse after her. “I’m coming with you.”

They dismounted once they’d neared the commotion, looping their reins around a nearby hitching post. Ellerie and Boktar were leading the rest of the group toward them.

“What’s going on?” Corec asked a man who was walking past him. When the man didn’t reply, Corec tugged on his shirt sleeve. The man turned, but his eyes weren’t focusing on anything. There was blood on his shirt but he didn’t seem to be injured. Corec asked the question again, but the man just looked confused.

Treya had crouched down next to one of the bodies in the road. She reached out to touch it, then stood and shook her head sadly. “We need to find whoever’s in charge.”

They continued down the road until they came to two men wearing matching scale armor shirts over padded gambesons. It looked like some sort of soldier’s or guardsman’s uniform. One of the men was kneeling in the road to support the other, who was unconscious.

The kneeling man called out to someone else a few buildings away. “Priest! We need your help!”

The priest, wearing gray and white robes that marked him as a follower of The Lady, hurried over. He turned out to be a very young man, barely of an age to shave judging by the thin mustache he was attempting to cultivate.

“Wh…wh…what happened to him?” the boy priest asked, staring down at the men.

“One of the ogres hit him in the chest with a club,” the guard said. “You’ve got to help him!”

“I’ll try.”

“I’ll help,” Treya said. “I’m a healer.”

The priest transferred his wide-eyed stare to her. “Oh, thank you! So many people are hurt! They’re all coming to the temple, but I don’t know what to do.”

“Then we should bring this one there, too. Let me see if it’s safe to move him.” Treya knelt down and touched the man’s forehead briefly, then returned to her feet. “His ribs and arm are broken, and he’s bleeding on the inside, but I think we can take him indoors without making things worse. It’s better than leaving him lying in the mud, at least.”

“Thank you, Priestess,” the other man said, then looked around as if trying to figure out how to carry his friend.

Corec stepped up. “I’ll support one shoulder if you get the other. Treya, which arm is hurt?”

“The right one, but it’s a mess. We need some other way to carry him.” She turned to their companions, who were approaching. “Boktar! Bobo! Come help!” When they reached her, she said, “All right, you four, pair up. Lay him flat, and two of you face each other and reach under his shoulders, and two more under his lower back. Try not to put any pressure on his ribs or his arm. Priest…what’s your name?”

“Davi.”

“Davi, you and I will hold his legs.”

Corec ended up at the injured man’s right shoulder, facing the other guard, whose name turned out to be Jase. They laid the broken arm across the man’s stomach and tried not to jostle it as they lifted him up into the air. The group carried him feet first so the priest could direct them to his temple, a plain wooden building a bit larger than a cottage. It was already crowded with other wounded.

Ellerie followed after them, stopping to pick up the fallen man’s sword from where it lay in the street, while Katrin and Shavala stayed behind to watch the animals.

Once they were inside, Treya said, “All right, lay him down. Carefully.”

The only furniture in the room were the pews, so they laid him on the floor. As soon as they were done, several other villagers came over to Davi, begging for help. The boy appeared overwhelmed, looking back and forth between the man lying on the floor and the other wounded people.

“I’m going to go get my salves,” Bobo said. “Some of these folks don’t look too bad. I’ll take care of the ones I can.”

“Thank you,” Treya said, sounding relieved. “Priest Davi, are you a healer?”

“No, Priestess; I’m sorry.”

“Then I’ll take care of this man. You go around to everyone else and find out how they’re hurt. Help them if you can, or talk to Bobo—the man who just left—when he gets back. If it’s serious, bring them to me, but I don’t know how many people I can heal.”

Davi nodded and went to speak to his parishioners, while Treya knelt down and laid her hands on the injured man’s chest and arm. Her hands began to glow with a pale white light.

Corec took Jase to the side. “She’ll be able to help him. What happened here? You said there were ogres?”

Ellerie and Boktar joined them, and the guard looked at the three of them, appearing to notice their armor and weapons for the first time.

“Yes,” he said. “Ogres, I think. What else could they be? They were big and tall, and they just came out of nowhere and started attacking people. I’ve got to tell Baron Pavik!”

“Baron Pavik?” Corec said. “Is that who you work for?”

“Yes, Will and I were here guarding the baron’s tax man. The ogres got the tax man. I’ve got to tell the baron about that, too.”

“What happened to the ogres?” Boktar asked.

“They all ran off after a while, west, into the woods. I don’t know why—Will and I tried to fight them, and a few of the locals with pitchforks and shovels, but we didn’t do much good.”

“They’re trying to scare you off,” Boktar said. “It sounds like a group of young males who broke off from their clan. Ogres don’t send out raiding parties unless they’re looking to expand or start a new clan, and I don’t know of any ogre clans this close to Tyrsall.”

“If they’re trying to establish a new clan, won’t they come back?” Corec asked.

“Yes, until they drive the people away so they can claim the area for themselves.”

Jase said, “Then I’ve got to tell the baron right away, but I can’t leave these people alone.”

“Where’s the baron?” Ellerie asked.

“Pavik Village is east and north of here, overlooking the sea.”

“The sea?” she said. “That’s got to be thirty, thirty-five miles away, at least.”

“Closer to forty, with the trails I’d have to take,” the guard replied. That meant it would take him at least a day to reach the baron and another day to get back. “You’re sure they’ll come back?”

“If they’re anything like the ogres near Stone Home, they will,” Boktar said. “But no, I can’t say for sure.”

“How many were there?” Corec asked.

The man shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw six at least, but I could hear more than that.”

Corec wasn’t sure how Ellerie and Boktar felt, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what the man in the dream had said. He spoke to the guard. “You should go find the baron and bring back as many men as you can. I’ll stay here until you get back, in case the ogres return.”

Ellerie eyed him sharply but didn’t say anything, while Boktar simply nodded in agreement.

“I don’t know who you are,” the guard said. “I can’t leave if they might come back.”

Corec said, “We’re just passing through, but I can stay here as well as you can. You said that you need to get to the baron. The other option is to force everyone to leave the village until the guards arrive, but you can’t do that in this rain, not with the weather growing colder.”

Jase pursed his lips, then nodded reluctantly. “All right. I’m going to go ask the healer if Will will be able to ride. Excuse me for a moment.”

After he’d left, Ellerie said, “You should have talked to us before deciding we’d stay here.”

“I only said I would stay. I wasn’t really expecting you to stick around.”

“I’m not going to just leave without helping them! But we should have talked about a plan first. One of us could have gone for the baron, so the guard could stay. The people here know him, and they don’t know us. Or we could have sent one of the men who live here, so we could all stay.”

Corec nodded. He’d gotten too accustomed to making decisions for the group without consulting anyone else, and he’d have to try to break that habit. “Good point, but the guard knows the baron, and he knows the fastest way to reach him.”

“Maybe,” Boktar said, “but now we need to figure out what to do about the ogres.”

#

Treya focused her healing senses on the injured guardsman, trying to identify his most serious injuries. His right arm was broken, but so were several ribs, and the topmost of those had shattered into broken edges, severing nearby blood vessels. She needed to heal the blood vessels, but if she didn’t do something about the rib first, the sharp edges would just cut into them again.

Unfortunately, she had no idea how to heal a break like that. When she’d broken her own rib fighting the drake, the two sides of the bone had remained in place, and she’d simply applied enough healing to keep them that way. Now, though, she needed some way to push the bone fragments back into position. Her regular healing magic wouldn’t do that, and she had no way to reach beneath the man’s skin.

How did other healers do it? Priest Telkin could tell her, but he wasn’t here, so she’d have to make do on her own. She placed both of her hands over the man’s chest and focused on the breaks in his ribs.

Her healing senses were separate from her regular senses, but to her, they’d always seemed more like sight than anything else. However, as she tried to examine the back side of the rib, she realized she could almost feel what she was doing. It was as if she had extra fingers—fingers that could reach through the man’s armor and skin. But fingers were too thick for the delicate work that was needed. She needed something different. She extended thin tendrils of nothingness into the guard’s upper chest.

As the tendrils curled around the fragments of rib, Treya realized that the sensation was the same as when she actually healed someone. They seemed to be an extension of the healing itself, rather than part of her healing sense. But could they do something other than feel? She tightened her pull on the tendrils, pressing two of the bone fragments back together, then applied a thin layer of healing magic between them. The fragments stayed in place, so she reached for another, then another.

Treya lost herself in her work, and was startled when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She blinked as she remembered where she was. Looking up, she saw that Jase, the other guard, had tried to get her attention. Treya stood and faced him, her knees hurting from kneeling for too long.

“Priestess,” the man said, “how is Will?”

“You don’t have to call me that—I’m not a real priestess. Just call me Treya. Your friend will live, but he’s still in bad shape. If I can, I’ll try to heal him more later, but no matter what I do, the broken bones are going to take time.”

“I suppose he has to stay here, then?”

“Yes, he can’t be moved right now. Perhaps later.”

Jase nodded. “Will you watch over him for me? I have to go to Pavik Village and let the baron know about the ogre attack.”

“I’ll stay here for as long as he needs me, and then I’ll leave him in in Priest Davi’s care.”

“Thank you.”

As he left the temple, another man came in, limping and dark with soot. He had one arm wrapped around a shorter woman, as she supported him to walk.

Bobo and Davi were busy with others, so Treya hurried over to the newcomers, helping the man to sit.

“What happened?” she asked, as she knelt down to check his injury.

It was the woman who responded. “The fire at the inn jumped to our house. He ran back in and a beam fell on him. We came here to see if that new boy, Davi, could fix his foot.”

“Was tryin’ to get the dog out,” the man said, “but he was too scared of the fire to come with me. I’ll be all right, miss. Milly insisted I come, but I’ll heal up on my own.”

“The dog got out just fine,” the woman said, exasperated. “It was you that didn’t.”

“Let me take a look,” Treya said. “Then we’ll see if Priest Davi can help.” She rolled the man’s pant leg up and saw burn marks on his shin, but when she extended her healing senses, she found that his ankle was sprained too. She’d seen enough sprains during her mystic training to recognize it. “We’ll need to get that shoe off.”

“I can do that, Priestess Treya,” Davi said, coming up to them.

“Thank you,” she said, standing. “After that, wash his leg with water and soap. Did they teach you how to take care of a sprained ankle?”

“Umm, I think so. Rest it, and dip it in a bucket of cold water?”

“Yes, or use ice if there’s any in town. You can also wrap something around it to cut down on the swelling, but not too tight.”

“You’re not going to heal him, Priestess?”

“I’m no priestess, and I’m not a very good healer. I need to save my strength in case there’s another serious injury.” She waved to Bobo and raised her voice. “Can I get some of that burn salve and the wound ointment?”

Bobo finished wrapping a bandage around a young boy’s arm, then brought the jars over to Treya. “At this rate, I suspect we’ll use up everything I’ve got. I wish I hadn’t sold so much—this temple has a disturbing lack of supplies.”

Treya shrugged. “We might as well use it if we have it. That’s what it’s for.”

“Indeed.” Bobo returned to his patient.

Treya turned back to Davi. “After you’ve washed his leg, use this one first,” she held up the wound ointment, “on any scrapes or on the deeper burns. It’ll help prevent infection. Then, use the burn salve on top of all the burns, even the ones you used the other ointment on. When you’re done, cover everything with clean bandages. Got it?”

“Yes, miss.”

#

The horses and mules were nervous from all the commotion, so Shavala calmed them as best she could, while she and Katrin switched out the bridles for halters and lead ropes, then set up a picket line.

“Did that man say it was ogres that did this?” Katrin asked as they worked. She looked scared.

“Yes,” Shavala said, pointing to a footprint in the mud, twice as long and twice as wide as a normal man’s foot.

Katrin stared at it for a moment before speaking. “Have you ever seen one before?”

“No. They sometimes visit the southern border camps to trade, but the rangers say it’s difficult to talk with them because they can’t speak any language but their own, which isn’t much of a language.”

“Trade? What would ogres trade?”

Shavala shrugged. “I’ve heard they bring animal skins and furs. I don’t know what they ask for in return.”

Once all the animals were tied up, they looked down the road. The fire in the large building was burning slowly because of the rain, but it had reached other buildings nearby. The villagers had finally organized a bucket line to try to put it out.

“Should we help them?” Katrin asked.

“I don’t know if two more people would really be of much help. Let me try something first.”

Was rain easier to manipulate than wind? Shavala closed her eyes and reached out for it. She’d sensed rain before, as part of her training, but she hadn’t tried to do anything with it. Once rain had fallen from a cloud, not much could be done, and her elder senses hadn’t extended far enough to reach the clouds back then. Now, though, if she focused solely in one direction, she could feel the lower layer of clouds—the layer that was heaviest with moisture.

“Shavala?” Katrin sounded concerned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to help.”

As she concentrated, Shavala realized that each cloud consisted solely of water, just as the other druids had told her. There was always water in the air, of course, but usually it was part of the air and not a separate liquid. It seemed strange to her that clouds were essentially the same thing as fog, but could somehow float much higher up in the sky.

Meritia had told her that there were two ways to make it rain. One was to make the temperature cooler, so more of the water would condense back into a liquid, but after Shavala’s experience on the Osprey, she was wary of attempting to manipulate the wind, and she didn’t know of any other way to make the air cooler. The other option would only work if there was already a rain cloud. If she could make more of the water droplets move, and bump into each other along the way, they’d become heavy enough to fall out of the air.

The water droplets in the cloud were too small for her to feel them individually, so she called to them as a whole, as if she was calling water from an underground stream. It worked, but it didn’t make much of a difference until she reached higher up into the clouds. The higher the droplets were, the more others they gathered on the way down.

Shavala laughed as she realized it had worked, but the heavier rain was falling fifty feet from where it was needed. She hadn’t accounted for the wind, so she moved closer and adjusted her aim, Katrin following along behind her.

Finally she had it right. Satisfied with the torrential downpour she’d caused over the burning buildings, Shavala stopped and faced upward, closing her eyes as she felt the rain on her face. She’d hardly used any magic at all in months, other than starting campfires, and the spell had come to her more easily than she’d expected. Was there some truth to Corec’s dream? Did the binding sigils enhance their magic?

Most of the buildings that were on fire would still likely burn to the ground—they were too far gone to be saved—but Shavala was satisfied that the flames wouldn’t spread any farther. The bucket line came to a confused halt as the villagers peered around, wondering why the storm had gotten so much worse right over their heads. They shook themselves out of it and resumed what they’d been doing, but now they focused on trying to save the buildings where the fire hadn’t gotten bad yet.

Shavala continued the spell for as long as she could, having to keep tight control over it to accommodate the movement of the clouds and the shifting of the winds, but soon, she fell to her knees, gasping for air.

Katrin wrapped her arms around her. “Are you all right? I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Neither did I.”

“Let me help you up. You’re getting your new coat all muddy.”

Katrin helped her to stand, and Shavala leaned against one of the cottages lining the road as she caught her breath.

“I don’t think they need our help with the fire anymore,” she said.

Katrin laughed. “No, I guess not. You stay here and rest while I water the animals, then we can go find the others.”

There was a water trough near where they’d set up the picket line, so Katrin returned there and took the horses and mules off the line one at a time to give them a chance to drink.

By the time Shavala was able to join her, Corec, Ellerie, and Boktar had returned from the temple.

“Where are the others?” Katrin asked.

“Still helping with the wounded,” Corec said. “Between the ogres and the fire, there are a lot of them.”

“What should we do?”

Ellerie said, “We’re going to try to track the ogres. They went west.”

Corec nodded. “Once we know how many there are and where they’re at, we’ll come back and set up a lookout, so we can watch out for them in case they come back. Hopefully the guards will arrive by the time they return.”

Shavala winced at the thought of Corec and Boktar crashing through the forest in their armor. “I’ll track them,” she said. “I can move a lot faster than you.”

“Alone?” Corec asked, concerned. “You can’t fight a group of ogres by yourself.”

“I thought you weren’t trying to fight them. They won’t see me. You didn’t see me when I was tracking you.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Ellerie said. “If we all go together, then we’d at least have a chance if they do see us.”

“I trained with the rangers,” Shavala told her. “I can hunt and track as well as them. I’ll find the ogres and follow them to wherever they’re going, and they’ll never know I was there. The armor is too loud and too slow.”

Ellerie nodded reluctantly.

“We can leave our armor behind,” Corec said.

“It’s almost nightfall,” Shavala said, “and the clouds are too heavy for any moonlight to get through. You can’t see in the dark, and if you use your mage lights, the ogres will see them. And you don’t know how to run in the forest without making a sound. The ogres will hear you if you get close, and then you’d have to fight them without any armor. I can do this faster and better on my own.”

“You can see in the dark?” he asked.

“I can see movement, and my elder senses will show me everything nearby, no matter how dark it is.”

He frowned but nodded. “How many days did you follow us without us knowing you were there?”

“Four, and sometimes I got almost as close to you as I am now.”

Boktar said, “I suppose the rest of us could start setting up some defenses, just in case the ogres return before the guards get here.”

“I can place an alarm ward along the western edge of town,” Ellerie said.

While the others started making plans, Shavala took off her quiver and handed it to Katrin. She couldn’t afford to fight the ogres, and she’d move faster without it. “Can you take this and my bow and get them both out of the rain?”

“Of course.”

She gave Katrin her coat and her blue scarf next, then hid her rune from view. The more she blended in with the forest, the better.

“Are you sure you should do this?” Katrin whispered to her. “Aren’t you tired from the spell?”

“I feel…tingly. Like I need to do something. Anything. I won’t use any more magic, though.”

She made her farewells, then headed to the western edge of town to pick up the trail. The ogres probably wouldn’t be difficult to track, but the sooner she got started, the sooner she’d find them. She caught sight of their footprints in the mud, and ran after them.