ALL IN A DAY’S WORK

Mini Conto — No Quarter 73

Arlana placed the flat of her hand on the cold face of the massive standing stone. She closed her eyes, at first concentrating on the roughness of the ancient granite as she scraped her fingers across it, tracing the edges of the runes carved into the monolith’s surface. Despite the sharp spring chill in the air, she felt a fiery warmth blossom beneath her palm. Focusing intently, she fused her spirit with the ley energies that joined sites of power throughout Caen to the remote stone circle where she now stood.

Something was amiss. The energy flows she felt humming and vibrating far below the surface seemed oddly muted to her. Arlana frowned, puzzled.

She could still perceive subtle movements in the ley lines, like ripples in the stream, each provoked by changes in the natural world or efforts of her fellow blackclads of the Circle Orboros as they tapped deep into the flows of energies. Her fellows were endlessly whispering to one another through the network, or using its powers to cross long distances in the blink of an eye.

Since Arlana was a wayfarer, it had fallen to her to bring her companions through the ley lines the previous evening to this isolated valley high in the Wyrmwall Mountains, just north of Ironhead Station. The entire network in this region was snarled and disrupted, affected by recent dragon activity, including the spilling of great quantities of blighted blood. She had appraised the region and thought she understood its peculiarities, preparing to do her part to help repair them. What she sensed this morning was something else — the flows had changed.

This area was noticeably empty of life. Cocking her head, she listened to the whistle of the breeze through the bare branches, the drip-drip-drip of melting snow, and the creaking of trees. Absent were the piping cries of hawks and the soft squelching of paws over wet, fallen leaves. Just the sound of her companions breaking down their camp —

“Arlana, the Dawnwaster! Are we getting a move on, or what?”

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Arlana sighed, her reverie shattered. She pivoted to scowl at a tall woman leaning against a standing stone at the far edge of the circle, a piece of waybread in her hand and a woldwatcher at her side. The towering construct of rune-engraved granite and branches of oak tied together with hempen bindings loomed protectively over her, like an oversized watchdog.

“Hallis, the Scourge of Morning!” Arlana called out harshly. “Can’t you give me five minutes to wake up properly, for once in your life?”

“Any day but today. We’re on foot, you see,” said Hallis, smiling broadly.

The wayfarer raised her eyes heavenward. “You’ve tormented me every morning since Bradigus took you on as a wilder. I don’t understand what he ever saw in you.”

“Aside from my ‘superlative talent’ in crafting the bones of the earth, you mean?” replied the stoneshaper. She idly flicked a piece of loose bark from the construct and fussed at the ropes binding its joints. “Maybe he just admires my patience and generosity,” she finished, offering the waybread to Arlana with a flourish. “Breakfast — you’ll need to keep up your strength on the trail.”

“Thanks,” Arlana mumbled, snatching the bread from her friend’s hand.

“After you, fearless leader!” Hallis said brightly. She then jerked her head at the woldwatcher and ordered, “Follow, Cragbones!”

They were on a mission much like the others that had occupied them over the past two years, so many that Arlana had lost count: restoring the flow of ley energy in areas decimated by the clash between Dragonfather Toruk and his blighted brood. It had been the first time in sixteen centuries Lord Toruk had forsaken his stronghold in the Scharde Islands to wage war against his offspring. As the wayfarer regarded the burned and barren slopes around her, she wondered how long it would take for the area to recover. Blight was pernicious.

During the conflict, the dragons raked one another so violently with their terrible claws that they sent great gouts of blighted blood to rain down over the mountainsides, poisoning the landscape. Despite the efforts of many in the Circle Orboros in the intervening years, several large regions remained severed from the ley line network.

Thus, it was that the wayfarer was picking her way over rock and root through blackened patches of what were once yew and oak trees, hiking north up a deserted valley to a secluded site that had been cut off by who knows what ever since the conflict.

As was now their regular pattern, Arlana was joined by Hallis — with her ever-present woldwatcher Cragbones — and two others:

a chatty tow-headed stoneward named Fendiran and Vadim, a laconic reeve hunter born out in the wilds of Khador. Fendiran always kept three woldstalkers hovering close by him, although, the stoneward would pointedly remind Hallis, he did not bother to name them like pets. Woldstalkers were extremely simple wolds, slaved to Fendiran’s will and capable of doing little on their own, but able to unleash considerable firepower.

The two women typically handled most of the direct work on the standing stones making up the Circle’s ley line sites. Hallis

could use per powers to shape the stones as required, repairing them by coaxing cracks together, or even raising new rocks from the earth. Arlana listened to the pulse of Orboros, guiding the fastidious labor of restoration. It was her job to ensure the newly placed or repaired stones interacted properly with the energy flows below the surface of the world.

Fendiran used his woldstalkers to take watch against the approach of any enemies, circling the site chosen and staying always on the move. By contrast Vadim stood still and silent as the monoliths — until he wasn’t there. The Wolf of Orboros spoke clumsy Cygnaran and the blackclads only passable Khadoran, plus he wasn’t much of a talker to begin with. Arlana had to give it to him: he possessed an uncanny instinct for danger.

Today, they were forced to hike far up the valley, their thick cloaks flapping wildly in the chilly wind. Hallis and Fendiran had fallen into lockstep, chattering amiably. Arlana and Vadim followed wordlessly behind them in single file.

“We sure must’ve drawn a short straw to have to trek all the way out to this insignificant site,” said Fendirian. “Now Alchiere —

that’d make for a decent adventure. Discovering hidden energy flows in those lush, unexplored lands. Expanding, not just restoring, our sites of power . . . You’d have to get Syval the Salt Wind to notice you to get sent to one of her domains.”

“Or maybe Vaskis the Knotkeeper,” mused Hallis, “Although of all the potents we’d ever cross paths with, Morvahna the Dawnshadow has the most pull. Don’t you think?”

“Then there’s Zu! I’ve heard giant reptiles dwell there, large as argus and even more voracious,” recounted the stoneward with relish. He regaled them with spurious tales of territories beyond the Meredius.

“You’ve convinced me, Fendiran, the Word-Weaver. Arlana, why don’t you ask Bradigus to send us there next?” Hallis suggested with a soft laugh.

Arlana sighed. “Bradigus knows we can handle ourselves here. A lot of those exotic missions are given to those the potents wouldn’t be sad to lose. This job is a reward, believe me.”

“Hmph. And what do you think, Vadim the Chinwagger? You could stand some more adventure, surely,” Hallis said to the reeve hunter, who eyed her from beneath his thick wolf’s pelt.

He gave a hiss. “Stand ready!” With a bound he leaped past them and vanished into some brambles ahead.

Fendiran was already waving his woldstalkers into position around the group, pushing Arlana and Hallis brusquely to the center. The humor in their expressions was gone. Cragbones assumed a defensive stance in front of the stoneshaper.

Arlana held her breath, her fingers loosening and tightening around the haft of her voulge. Her expression darkened as she assessed the exposure of their position, with thin tree cover and only a smattering of small rocks and boulders behind them. Broad slopes of slippery scree and patches of snow rose on either side. Ahead, her view was impeded by the snarl of tangled bushes into which Vadim had disappeared. Her ears strained to catch any sounds.

The thunder of heavy feet pounding the earth came to the huddled druids with breathtaking swiftness. A strange, syncopated rhythm beat on the ground, which trembled with the violence of each leap.

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Then it was upon them: a hideous monstrosity of bristling spines and flexing muscles, with an odd number of limbs. Its asymmetrical frame twisted and lurched unsteadily, but as it reared and crashed down, it easily reached the height of the woldwatcher. A growl rumbled from its throat and then became a primal roar as it tilted its head back, revealing slick traces of dark blood congealed along a gash in its thick hide. It flashed an array of snaggled, razor-sharp fangs, and flecks of froth flew from its jaws. Vestigial wings and cruelly curved black talons made its origins all too clear. Dragonspawn.

Dual bolts sang through the air, embedding themselves deep in the dragonspawn’s flank just as Fendiran urged his woldstalkers to float smoothly forward to attack. A brightening glow kindled at the base of each woldstalker and followed the curve of their wooden frames upward to fill the constructs’ gleaming beryl eyes. The stones blazed with power as each of the three woldstalkers emitted a beam of emerald light to sear the beast. It lashed out with two forward arms, its claws catching one of the woldstalkers, which spun away. Cragbones then stepped forward, bringing its heavy stone fists to bear, its runes illuminating a brilliant green.

Vadim burst from the thicket, his battle blade drawn. “It’s alone, and weak!” he shouted.

At the reeve hunter’s assessment, Arlana and the stoneward lost no time in closing with the flailing dragonspawn, hammering blows on the monster. His cleft blade flashing, Vadim took a swing at its flank, then leapt back. Its fangs met air, but it then whipped its barbed tail back behind it. Luckily, Cragbones caught the brunt of the attack and retaliated with a punch that gave a sickening crack of bone.

In minutes it was all over. The creature’s twisted bulk spilled black blood onto the melting snow and flattened grass, which already began to shrivel and shrink with the effects of blight. The stink of seared flesh rose in their nostrils.

“All in a day’s work,” mused Hallis.

“Yeah,” murmured Arlana, kneeling to examine the fallen dragonspawn. She eyed the ugly slash that the beast had borne before they had added their own. She pursed her lips.

“I guess this won’t be as dull as I’d thought,” commented Fendiran.“Better go on,” said Vadim.

As they neared their destination at the head of the valley a couple hours later, Arlana privately observed that Fendirian might be right in that their mission might have become downright interesting. She herself didn’t need interesting. She’d have preferred simple, and safe.

Blighted land occupied much of the slope to the west and part of the valley floor. The blackened stumps of trees protruded like broken teeth from the thin blanketing of snow that still clung to the hillsides, and here and there lay boulders twisted into fantastical shapes by blight, akin to wax that had been held to a candle. Only the occasional blighted plant life pushed forth: strangling vines and garish weeds that wound about healthy foliage at the peripheries of dead patches, bending and choking them.

Arlana knew these peaks, for she had been born in a small village not many valleys over. She had vague recollections as she inhaled the scent of the mountains awakening in spring. She was glad to sense underlying vigor in the land despite the devastation sown by Toruk and his brood, but she would need to guide the power of Orboros deep beneath the earth around the toxic ground until it could again connect with the spider’s web of energies running through the Wyrmwall. They would need to draw new stones from the earth, she reasoned, and weave their rituals of restoration in conjunction with the right configuration of the moons and stars.Then, they mounted a crest that afforded the first clear view she’d had of the site, and Arlana gasped.

The handful of monoliths that comprised the stone circle were cracked and defaced, not by any beast or blight, but by some dark and deliberate artifice. Several of the rune-covered pillars had been hewn to resemble beasts and then smeared with sinister earthen and reddish tints.

Hallis was clenching her jaw, and even Fendiran held his tongue, rubbing his face meditatively as he glanced at the trembling stoneshaper.

“It’ll be fine,” Arlana said. “It’s ugly, but we can fix this.”

Only a few steps farther, however, they came across a wide, dark-red smear and a confused muddle of tracks. Vadim raced ahead, holding up a hand wordlessly to stop them from following. Arlana held her breath until his deep voice carried down to them.

“Clear!” A pause. “A body. Rhulic.”

As one, the team ascended the final slope and arrived at the edge of the ruined circle to find the reeve hunter kneeling over a mangled, inert mass of flesh at the foot of the tallest of the monoliths. He flipped the corpse onto its back with his crossbow.

Hallis recoiled and looked away, but Arlana forced herself to study the dead dwarf. Many deep gashes scored his flesh, and thick blood matted his beard. One eye was swollen shut. Still, it was not these wounds that made the wayfarer’s breath catch in her throat but the terrible deformation of the body: an eruption of spines along one arm and the neck, a distorted skull and masses of teeth bulging from a too-small mouth, still agape in a silent final cry.

Fendiran broke their moment of contemplation, muttering in a low voice, “If it’s all the same to you, I suggest we get our work over with as quickly as possible and get back to Bradigus.”

Arlana nodded. The group came alive with activity, setting up camp and a worksite. Fendiran sent his woldstalkers to hover at the periphery, and Hallis ordered Cragbones to patrol the site, while Vadim slipped noiselessly down the incline to scout the environs.

The wayfarer approached the vandalized pillar where the disfigured body lay and placed her palm on its surface, pointedly avoiding the brownish drips. Her senses melded with the igneous rock, extending down to its foundation. She felt the dormant power beneath the site as one would hear a murmur in the dark, and the connection sent a shiver through her spine. Then, it faded. Poor Hallis would have her work cut out for her.

Arlana gazed up at the smashed pinnacle of the stone, where blows of a heavy hammer, she supposed, had fashioned the top of the pillar into a sinuous head. She could make out the flare of nostrils, and there the curve of fangs implied by some darkened pigment. A dragon.

ALL INA DAY’SWORK 101

She shivered, though she had not encountered any foul power in the stone. Nor had she detected the presence of intense blight. This site, perched on a high rocky outcropping at the back of a canyon, was cut off by the blighted land to the southwest, but she did not believe any fell magic had tainted it. Who had damaged the stones, and for what purpose?

As she took in the landscape, the twang of a crossbow and a sharp cry suddenly drew her attention to the east side of the circle. She caught a flurry of motion and the sound of sliding scree. A drawn-out curse in Khadoran rose from the north, and Vadim emerged at the edge of the circle, his dark brows knitting beneath the shadow of his pelt, his jaw clenched.

“One dwarf, watching. Maybe a scout, maybe his friend,” Vadim announced, pointing at the corpse. “I missed my shot. Dwarf went east.”

“You’ll have to follow,” Arlana ordered, “We don’t know what kind of danger we’re in here, and we’ve hours of hard labor ahead of us before there’s any chance of channeling the energies here back to the nearest ley line conjunction.”

With a nod, Vadim went in pursuit of the scout.

“We might not even be able to return to the other site safely on foot anymore,” Fendiran whispered sharply.

“Blighted Rhulfolk!” exclaimed Hallis. “We don’t even know how many there are!”

“Well, that’s what Vadim’s going to find out. The Ironhead Enclave could support thousands of Rhulfolk, but out here? They’d be scratching a living from rock, living off moss and marmot meat.”

“And what if they’re stark raving mad from blight?” asked the stoneshaper, her voice rising.

“What if they slaughtered their own?” Fendiran added.

Arlana shook her head. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she answered slowly. Gazing back at the dead body in its pool of dark blood, she thought of the enraged dragonspawn they had killed. The image of the mysterious wound on the beast floated to the front of her mind. Could the dwarf have fought the creature before climbing up here to die?

She wrestled with the urge to reach out to her fellow blackclads through the nearby ley lines. They were cut off until they could restore the standing stones and create a proper energy flow. Their backs were to the hard face of a mountain. Below, who knew what twisted, blight-induced peril awaited. Arlana smirked, considering this wasn’t the kind of excitement Fendiran always said he was longing for.

“C’mon, Fendiran, Panicmonger of Orboros, I’m going to need a hand moving the dwarf’s body. Might as well erect a cairn for him. We ought to prepare our ritual to cleanse that blight and repair the stone before moonrise. So, move!” Not all of her peers would have bothered, content to allow the corpse to be consumed by scavengers. Arlana felt the dwarf had suffered enough indignity.

An hour later, Vadim returned to report a small entrance to a Rhulic settlement cut into the rock on a high ledge along the eastern slopes of the valley. There was no telling how large it was.

“Very quiet there,” Vadim explained to them slowly, as if searching for better words and failing.

“Did you see anyone? Were they armed? Obvious defenses? Blight?” prompted Hallis.

“No,” said the reeve hunter.

Hallis and Fendiran shared an eye roll, but Arlana laughed. “I think Vadim would tell us if an army of blighted Rhulfolk were charging through the valley. No, we don’t understand this situation fully yet. Let’s stick to what we know. Night is falling, and we still need to scour that monolith and have Hallis start her stone-curing magic by moonrise.”

Gratefully, they retreated into the comfort of routine. Nonetheless, Arlana pulled Fendiran aside. “Think you can put together a sentry stone?”

The stoneward nodded gravely. “Just in case?” “Just in case.”

Arlana woke at first dawn, parched and shivering under her black cloak. The smell of the bundled herbs burned at the grave cairn the evening before still hung about her dark hair, which she untangled with her fingers and wove into a thick, loose braid. Hallis lay next to her, legs tucked to her chest, snoring softly — a peaceful morning, for a change.

The three blackclads had toiled into the black of night to purge the blighted toxins from the earth around the pillar while Vadim kept watch. The druids had gathered around the woldwatcher, which drove its heavy fists into the tainted soil, and they had channeled their collective wills through the construct. The carved symbols on Cragbones’ frame blazed as if with greenish fire.

<Art>Illustrations>Card and Board Games>High Command>Gargantuan Might>Ley Lines_Nestor>

Hallis had collapsed onto her bedroll the second Arlana had managed to coax a similar glow from the runes on the monolith’s surface. The wayfarer and the reeve hunter also slept soon thereafter, well weary from the unexpected rigors of the day, while Fendiran paced, standing the first watch.

Now the stoneward slept, and Vadim was nowhere to be seen, which Arlana took as a sign that all was well. She drained her water skin, took in the view of the valley, now curling with thick fog, and returned to the monolith for a moment’s meditation. The rock felt freezing to her bare skin, but when she sent her spirit down through this stone, only a tepid warmth kindled beneath her touch. Had the previous evening’s ritual failed?

Arlana’s eyes darted about the stone circle, searching for some sign of intruders. All was as it had been the previous evening, but the pillar . . . the pillar seemed different. Just as she’d experienced the day before at the previous site, the warm, enveloping power of the land seemed dimmed, diminished. Blight in the area alone couldn’t account for this overnight change, surely.

She went to Hallis and jammed an elbow into the side of the still-drowsing stoneshaper. “Listen,” she whispered, “Something’s wrong with the monolith.”

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Hallis merely grunted and turned her back to her companion.

“Hey! It’s morning, and the stone seems less powerful now,” Arlana insisted.

“What?” Hallis was stirring at last.

“Look, the same thing happened yesterday, at our previous campsite. The stone felt fine in the evening, but in the morning, it felt different.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing, Arlana. Let’s check the monolith for new damage, but I’m sure we would have heard intruders. Then again,” she grinned drowsily, “Fendiran was on watch.”

The women rounded the stone pillar, examining it, and Hallis had Cragbones lift her up to feel for cracks at its peak where she had mended the rock to efface the dragon effigy. Nothing.

Heavy footfalls broke the still of early morning, and Vadim burst into the circle, breathing heavily. “The cairn knocked over. The dwarf’s body gone. Taken! I search the valley and see many Rhulfolk. But, fog.”

Blood rushed to Arlana’s head. “We need time,” she muttered.

She shook Fendiran awake and ordered, “Finish that sentry stone, now!”

She turned to Hallis. “I can’t take us through the ley lines. I need you to try, at least try, to work on the easterly stones. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just — the thinnest connection. We can’t escape on foot through the fog.”

Hallis frowned and shook her head, “You know I can’t finish in time. We have to take a stand.”

“That may be true, but we’ll try all the same. And keep alert!”

“Arlana, you know how blight affects living creatures. There’s a madness within them. I don’t think we’ll have a choice but to put them down,” Fendiran said. He was already running his hands over the raw stone, using his will to mystically carve into it potent runes. They appeared beneath his hands, faster than any chisel could have done, but it was still a slow and laborious process.

The wayfarer gritted her teeth. What a fool she’d been not to ask the group to work through the night on their defenses. She’d been so sure the Rhulfolk were few in number. And if they were crazed by blight, why had the scout fled rather than attacking? And now, why approach in the day when they could have come in the night to retrieve their dead kinsman?

“Keep at it, all of you, and none of you move from here until I give the word. I’ll teach them to respect the Circle Orboros!” Approaching the monolith and feeling the vibration of energy gathered within, the wayfarer let her mind join its flow. In a flash, she vanished.

What were you thinking? Arlana chastised herself farther down the slope. She had sought to instill confidence, but Vadim probably saw through her words. She only hoped

they would keep on task. As she tried to pick her way down

the mist-filled valley to head off the approaching foes, the shortcomings of her plan were becoming apparent.

She stopped in her tracks and crouched, palms to earth, forcing herself to calm, for her heart to slow, remembering her training. She began to listen, and slowly sounds carried to her: the soft shuffle of feet, the stifled rasp of whispers in the Rhulic tongue, the clink-clank of metal. Gritting her teeth, she summoned all the energy she could for this act of daring. She disappeared again . . .

. . . And assumed solid form at the flank of the gathered

Rhulfolk with a crackle of lightning and a boom of thunder. She cast her thin arms wide so her cloak billowed out, and she brandished her voulge with a mighty yell, steeling herself to vanish again before the dwarves could organize a proper attack. She’d lead them on a merry chase for as long as her power availed her.

But the Rhulfolk flung themselves to their knees and emitted a great wailing. A small chest tumbled from the arms of one, sending a handful of coins and gemstones to sparkle on the damp ground.

“Mercy!” cried an elder dwarf in slightly accented Cygnaran. “Be merciful, druid! Spare us!” The old woman ventured a glance at the young wayfarer, who stood stock-still, uncertain. Barely a dozen Rhulfolk were cowering before her. Arlana observed no telltale signs of blight. The odd pickaxe and hammer they had been holding lay abandoned on the ground.

Perhaps seeing that destruction was not immediately raining down, the elder dwarf rose to her feet. She studied the blackclad intently, then took a step forward.

Arlana finally found her tongue. “Back! You desecrated our standing stones. You have been tainted by the blight. I saw your kinsman.”

“Saw and killed him, you mean!” the woman retorted, having apparently gotten over her fear enough to work up a sense of indignation.

The eyes of several others looked at her nervously, and it was clear most of them feared antagonizing a blackclad, even a young one such as she.

The old woman continued, “You slew a son of our clan! Aelfric was mad, yes, touched worse than the rest of us by the dragon filth and obsessed with the accursed creatures. We watched over our kin here in this valley that we thought abandoned by all. Why have you come to disturb our misery? Take this tribute and begone!” cried the elder, pointing at the small chest.

“We found your kinsman already dead there,” Arlana countered. “We came here only to restore our stones that have stood here for many years. The pillars were defaced, painted in blood . . . ”

“Ha!” barked the elder. “Mud, you mean — mixed with rust and ashes and river clay for pigment. It’s the work of one, though Aelfric is — was — handy with a hammer. We feared the blackclads and, save for him, shunned those uncanny stones. I thought blackclads knew what blood looked like.” One of the other dwarves hissed at her, trying to get her to settle down, but she waved him off.

Arlana flushed. Then she told them hesitatingly, “We killed a dragonspawn at the mouth of the valley. It was wounded and enraged. I think . . . Perhaps it slew your Aelfric.”

One of them began to weep openly. Arlana could just make out his comrades muttering to him in Rhulic, “You couldn’t have stopped Aelfric. It wasn’t your fault he slipped away.”

“You claim you’re innocent, but when you took Aelfric’s body, you did something to the great stones. I felt it myself. Explain!” the wayfarer suddenly accused them.

“Your stones mean nothing to us,” replied the elder coolly, raising her eyebrows. “We only wanted to bury our dead. You claim innocence, druid, but we know your kind were involved in this! Our kinfolk who fled Ironhead after the dragon battle said blackclads were there! It was your actions that brought them to our home. Can you tell me that your kind had no part in the devastation of these mountains?”

Arlana said nothing at first. It was complicated, a matter she would never have shared with outsiders, even if she could claim to understand it fully. The fact was, the dwarf was not wrong — members of her order were at least partially responsible for what had transpired here. Krueger the Stormlord, she thought, recalling the most pervasive rumors.

Arlana chose her words carefully, comprehending that these Rhulfolk were more victims than aggressors. She knew her order had fostered a fearsome reputation, but she had rarely had occasion to benefit from that. “I will not speak to what my order may or may not have done. We mean your people no harm. We have work to attend, and then will go. If you do not attack, nor will we. The blight threatens us both. Take your tribute.”

The elder and the others shared looks and a quick whispered conversation. She said, “You say you slew the dragonspawn that was Aelfric’s bane. I thank you for this. But remember that we have tended this blighted valley that no druid deigned to tread until the dragons fought. Be not so quick to accuse,” chided the elder. Fixing Arlana with a twinkling blue eye, she gathered up the chest and fallen gemstones. Then she rose and marched from the glade.

Arlana let loose a thin breath of relief, careful not to slump, to betray that she had been as afraid of a clash as they. As the other Rhulfolk beat a hasty retreat, somewhat less brashly, the elder called back to the druid, “Look to your own, blackclad! Get gone from here!”

When Arlana returned to the stone circle, the other blackclads assailed her with so many questions that she had to shout them down before she could recount the odd exchange.

“One thing still troubles me,” she finished. “I still can’t explain the way the standing stones seemed to change overnight.”

Hallis and Fendiran stared at her blankly. But Vadim nodded toward the base of the monolith, eyes narrowed.

Frowning, Arlana approached the stone and ran her fingers along the surfaces until she encountered an unexpected groove, and then another — extra runes that would have been hidden to casual observers. She pressed to the ground to examine them. They were freshly inscribed.

“Morvahna? These symbols mark the stone as Morvahna’s,” the wayfarer said.

Vadim caught her eye and nodded again — this time toward Hallis.

“Hallis? You did this? Why?”

Her friend did not bother to act surprised, though she gave Vadim a sharp look, then tilted her head back and sighed. “I had hoped we could slip out of here without this becoming a thing. I’m not the first blackclad forced to take on extra orders from another potent. She only wanted me to add her mark, with a little discretion. Seemed simple enough. You can’t say no to Morvahna, and why would I?”

“Oh,” said Arlana with dawning comprehension. “Oh.”

Hallis folded her arms across her chest and shrugged. “She might’ve put in a good word for me.”

Mute for once, Fendiran crossed his arms and let his light mane fall forward to hide his face. Vadim shifted from one foot to the other.

“Why didn’t you tell me, if you knew?” the wayfarer accused the reeve hunter.

“I just tell you. And the Circle — always secrets.”

Arlana exclaimed in frustration. “Hallis, I can’t believe you let me confront those dwarves without all the facts. We were heading toward bloodshed! With a weakened stone, no less!“

”Well, not exactly,” Hallis admitted. “That stone is repaired, and any blackclad could use it for basic needs. Nobody will be the wiser — only someone like you would notice, Arlana. Those extra runes just allow Morvahna to regulate who taps into its full power. A shift in territorial boundaries. Not our concern.”

Arlana chewed at her lip. An uneasy silence fell over them. It was true such regulatory runes were not uncommon on certain standing stone sites, though usually reserved for those deep within a potent’s central holdings. Morvahna doing this here was a sneaky move, intended to allow her to seize new regions before her rivals. Smart, but underhanded. Arlana did not like being caught up in such games. Still, she could not blame her friend for having ambition. Within the Circle, it was the only way to advance.

“Well, thankfully it didn’t come to violence. Even if I could reach Bradigus now, I know what he’d say. He would just want us to finish up and move on,” Arlana said finally, crossing her arms tight across her chest. “It’s just . . . You could have told me, Hallis. I needed to know this.”

“I know. I know.”

Arlana contemplated Fendiran’s half- assembled sentry stone crowding the circle, their packs pushed aside in their rush to defend themselves, and the primitive dragon visages — colored mud! — that marred the massive stones.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” sighed the wayfarer.

“This is at least a week’s work, if we’re being honest,” put in Hallis, throwing her arms wide in exasperation. “We’ll have to create more monoliths to guide the flows past all that blight in the valley.”

Arlana gave a rueful laugh, thinking suddenly of the elder. “I think I know some skilled stoneworkers we might ask to quarry the stone we need. But we’re going to have to ask really, really nicely. Perhaps make some promises.”

Then she pushed the stoneshaper’s shoulder gently. “Come on, Hallis, the Star-Reacher. We might as well help you try to impress Morvahna.”