The company rode out of Pullen the following morning into a fresh, clear dawn. Twice Irenya looked over her shoulder at Fenith’s house, at the circular red and mauve turret that had been her bedroom for two nights. She fancied she saw a face at one of the windows, her own, the part of her that would have liked to stay dreaming under that soft slate roof, gazing out over an idyllic landscape of mountains and waterfalls.
But the idyll had already been shattered.
The party would ride for many days before they reached Ilkyrie. It won’t come to war in that time, surely. Riadan and Piro couldn’t possibly mobilise armies so fast. The news had come via a carpet merchant and a pot mender travelling from the town of Kalinda. They had managed to sail down the Melflow to Oban and ridden overland to
