The days flowed one into another, a stream of unbroken solitudes. Dahrima hunted the shaggy elk and the tusked pigs of the wilderness whenever she grew hungry. She walked by day beneath the titan trees, rediscovering the hills and grottoes of her youth. Once, while she sat dreaming atop a windswept hill, an eagle landed on her shoulder. It must have mistaken her for a crag of yellow stone. When she turned her head it flew away, yet she saw it later flying above a meadow with the sun at its back.
After the first few weeks she spent most of her time near the Falls of Torrung, where the water plunging into the lake replaced the forest’s silence with its own gentle roar. She had come to the falls with her cousin Chygara many times as a girl, hunting the wily tigers that came down from the White Mountains in summer to stalk the elk herds. It had been three centuries since she had seen the place, but it was much the same. A hundred colors of leaf and blossom adorned the cleft hillside and the high cliff beyond it. The great leaves of the Uygas had begun to fall; they floated across the lake in shades of red, yellow, orange, and brown.
At the edge of the lake, at the foot of the ancient falls, she found the peace that had eluded her for so long. She continued roaming the forest, hunting when she felt the call, but always she returned to the sweet thunder of the Torrung. A shallow cave across the lake from the torrent became her sanctuary. She slept there more often than not, on a bed of elk hides and brown reeds.
When the Udvorg had returned to the northlands, she had marched with them across Vod’s Pass. Vireon and Alua had ridden upon fine Uurzian steeds at the head of the procession, gifts from the new Emperor of Uurz. Dahrima had not spoken with Vireon since the day he requested that she join the war council, but the promise of his suspended judgment hung over her head during every league of that northward journey. She had never answered for killing Varda of the Keen Eyes, though her spearsisters spoke of it only as a duel of honor. Dahrima herself was no longer sure of the reason for the fight, or the killing. She remembered only the burning rage in her breast and the blue blade of Vireon in the witch’s fist. Had she killed Varda to protect Vireon from the witch’s influence, or because she was jealous of Varda’s closeness to the Giant-King?
Dahrima could not answer that question if Vireon were to ask it. Nor could she answer it in her own heart. Vireon was King of both Uduru and Udvorg now, and he must uphold the laws of the blue-skins. Dahrima’s crime had placed him in a precarious position: Pardon her and offend his new people, or punish her and risk losing the loyalty of the remaining Uduri who served his house.
Dahrima knew that she could not bear the chastisement of Vireon, or the loss of her station at his court. So she had done the only thing she could rightly do. When the legion of Men and Giants came down from the pass onto the wide, rolling plain of Uduria, she fled into the night as she had done before. Yet this time she spoke first with her sisters and made them understand. They must stay to serve the King as she could not. She explained her reason, and they grudgingly accepted it. Vantha wanted to come with her, but Dahrima forbade it.
“You have taken the vow,” she reminded Vantha. “You must serve Vireon.”
“You too have taken the vow,” said the Tigress.
“And I have broken it,” said Dahrima. “I must be the last one to do so.”
Vireon had camped in the shadow of the mountains, within a day’s march of Udurum. In the morning they would enter the city gates to cheers and celebrations of victory. Then would come days of memorial services and feasts to honor the fallen Men, Giants, and Uduri who had died for their King. Vireon would bury the red diamond deep in the vaults of his palace. Yet Dahrima would see none of these things.
She ran north while the camp was asleep, and entered the deep forest of the Giantlands well before sunrise. For weeks now she had wandered these wilds alone, regaining the calm that her spirit had lost, and trying to put Vireon’s judgment from her mind. She had spared him from a painful decision, and spared herself from humiliation and heartbreak. Yet she had rediscovered the ancient ways of her people, the sweetness of northern rains, the freedom of the untamed woodlands, the scents of bark and leaf and Narill blossoms alive with honey.
The Uygas rising tall in every direction made her feel small as a child again. The walls of moss on their trunks faded from bright green to blue and orange as the summer waned. Beneath their endless canopy of leaves she forgot the bloody slaughters of Khyrein swamp and Sharrian valley.
When winter came full upon the forest, she would find some deeper cave in which to shelter. There would be bears, wolves, and great cats to hunt in the highlands for their thick furs. For now she wore a simple tunic of Uurzian fabric, green as the Stormland grasses, cinched at the waist by a belt of black leather. Her feet were bare against the tufted earth, and she enjoyed the touch of moss and leaf as she walked. Her axe lay forgotten in the shadows of her modest cave, and she carried her longspear when she hunted. There were no enemies to vex her in the forest of Uduria. This, too, she enjoyed.