The Eye of the Hunter Read Free Page B

’round by walls. This place, though, has no fortress walls. Just a tower…and a small one at that.”
    Riatha turned her silver gaze away from the stone and toward Gwylly. “Should we look, I deem we would find the remains of a stable, or mayhap a kennel—a place used long ago for housing a steed or a team for quick flight across the land when the need arose. They would light the signal fire, then run.”
    Faeril brushed a stray lock of coal black hair from her eyes and looked through the door gap and out at the spinning snow. “Who would they have Warned? I mean, who lived in here and out there when the tower was built?”
    “Aleutani, I think,” answered Aravan. “For even then they brought their herds of
ren
here in the long summer days when the grass is lush and green, even as they do unto this day.”
    Faeril nodded, for she had seen some of the antlered
ren
in their winter pastures in the deep, sheltered vales along the rim of the Boreal Sea.
    Again the land trembled, and Faeril stepped to the tumbled-down entrance. “Will it be safe to sleep here tonight? I wonder, with the quakes…”
    Riatha smiled at the wee damman. “Safe enough, little one. The land out here on the edge of the foothills is yet a distance from the Grimwall, and farther still from Dragonslair.”
    Glancing up at the Elfess, Faeril nodded again, then turned and stepped out into the storm, leading the others back to the sleds.
    It took one more trip for them to transfer the needed supplies into the stone ruins. While the Elves busied themselves with the bundles, Gwylly and Faeril set about trying to find wood for a fire. Although the Warrows did find a stable of sorts out to one side—it, too, fallen into ruin—they found no wood to burn.
    No sooner had the Warrows returned than B’arr stepped in through the doorway, with Tchuka and Ruluk behind, the sledmasters having staked their teams. B’arr laughed when Gwylly asked what they would do for firewood, and so, too, did the other two sledmasters when the buccan’s query was translated into the Aleuti tongue. As B’arr and Ruluk unwrapped whole frozen salmon and, using hand axes, began hacking the fish into great chunks, Tchuka disappeared outside, returning in a moment with what appeared to be slabs of dirt. To Gwylly’s amazement, the sledmaster set these afire.
    “Turf,” said Aravan, as if that explained all.
    At the blank look on Gwylly’s face, Riatha added, “Some call it peat. Yet by any name, it burns.”
    Gwylly shook his head in rumination. “I saw the mound near the stable, but I thought—”
    “—that it was just dirt,” Faeril finished for him, for it had been her assumption as well. “But I should have known,” she admitted, “for I am from the Boskydells, where there are fields of fireplace turf, near Bigfen and Littlefen both.”
    “Hah!” exclaimed B’arr, saying something aside to the other Aleutans that brought smiles to their coppery faces.Then he turned to Aravan. “No, not firedirt,
Anfé
; it is
ren møkk
…you name, dung. From
ren
.”
    Now Aravan laughed. “Fewmets! Deer fewmets! Dried dung. Ah, Sledmaster, thou dost show me the errors of my ways.” Great grins crinkled Gwylly’s and Faeril’s features, for Warrow and Elf alike had been fooled.
    Riatha too smiled, fleetingly, then grew somber, distracted, turning her gaze toward the unseen Grimwall. “What appears to some as one thing is oft completely different to the eyes of another, and even then its true nature might not be known, might be something else altogether.”
    Gwylly stared into the glow of the dung fire, his thoughts miles away. He watched as the writhing white plume of the pungent smoke was borne swirling upward above the wall, where it was shredded by the moaning wind. And the buccan wondered at what else they might encounter that would fool them all, something perhaps deadly in its deception.
    B’arr stood, interrupting Gwylly’s bodeful thoughts.