By morning, the rain had stopped pretending it might end.
It fell straight and fine through the trees, too soft to be called a storm and too persistent to be called weather. Sava had called it gate-rain the night before and offered no further comfort. It soaked the world into one color. Pine, stone, road, cloak, horse, boot, hand. Everything grey. Everything waiting.
The company moved north in a narrower line than before.
No one said Halen’s name, or asked whether the stone overhang had been enough, but Kellan looked south twice before the first mile was done.
No one had ordered it. No one needed to. The broken road and the greymaws had taken some of the south out of them. Men who had ridden loosely now kept nearer to their neighbors. Hands drifted toward sword hilts when birds lifted suddenly from the brush. Horses were led more often than ridden, especially where the road became sloped stone beneath wet needles.
Nobody laughed at Kellan for walking beside the bay horse.
Nobody mentioned that he kept one hand near its bridle whenever the trees pressed close.
Talia slowed first.
Darion understood why a heartbeat later.
Corin noticed Talia noticing, which seemed to trouble him more than the greymaws had.
The road climbed all morning.
It did not climb honestly. Honest roads rose with effort and admitted what they were doing. This one pretended to wander. It would lift through a fold of trees, level for twenty paces, then turn around a shoulder of dark rock and reveal that the world had fallen away behind them. The river they had crossed the day before became a pale wound far below. The southern hills blurred into mist. The sky lowered until the ridges looked as if they were holding it up by stubbornness alone.
Merrowgate did not appear.
That was almost worse.
The road had promised it too often now. In names. In warnings. In the way Sava looked north without explaining what she saw. But the city itself remained hidden behind weather and stone, as if it had heard them coming and withdrawn.
Kellan kept looking for it.
Maeron caught him doing it for the sixth time and said, “Staring will not make mountains polite.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You have nearly ridden into two trees.”
“I’m walking.”
“Then you have nearly walked into two trees, which is harder to excuse.”
Kellan glanced ahead, then lowered his voice. “How far now?”
Sava rode near the front. She did not turn. “Far enough.”
“That is not a distance.”
“In the North, it is.”
Maeron nodded solemnly. “A traditional measurement.”
Kellan looked to Darion for help.
Darion gave him none.
The boy was learning.
The road left the trees near midday and came onto a long shelf of land above a valley filled with mist. The shelf had been cut into the hillside generations ago, perhaps longer. Old retaining stones supported it along the outer edge, each slick with moss and rain. Some had shifted. Some had fallen away entirely. The company passed in single file where the drop opened beside them.
Below, the mist moved like slow water.
On the far side, dark shapes rose and vanished. Hills. Towers of stone. The lower arms of Greyspine, perhaps. The land ahead had begun folding into itself, layer after layer of rock and weather.
Darion had seen mountain country before.
He had never liked the way it made men feel watched.
Sava raised one hand.
The line stopped.
Ahead, the road widened into a flattened place beneath three leaning pines. A low wall of stacked stone marked its edge. Beyond the wall stood a building that looked less built than endured: one long room, two smaller sheds, a roof weighted with slate, and a chimney giving up a thin line of smoke.
At the center of the open ground were seven fire rings.
Not one. Seven.
Each ring had been built of dark river stones, placed carefully and maintained despite the rain. Old ash filled them. Charred wood lay stacked beneath a shelter. Beside the nearest ring stood a post with strips of faded cloth tied around it, each strip darkened by weather until no original color remained.
Kellan slowed. “Is that an inn?”
“No,” Sava said.
“A watchpost?”
“Once.”
“What is it now?”
Sava looked at the rings. “Last fires.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Maeron dismounted carefully. “That is the trouble with old customs. They sound foolish until you are wet enough to respect them.”
Corin surveyed the place. “We are stopping?”
Talia looked at the sky, then at the road ahead. The rain made the decision for her before pride could interfere.