When they had ridden a little way, Ivradan stopped.
"Here I must leave you," Ivradan said. "There is much work to be done to repair this latest incursion, but I do not envy you your part. Each of us has a task to perform—and may Erchane's grace defend you on your journey!" Setting heels to his mount, he sent it pelting back the way they'd come, wheeling in a wide arc toward a nearby clump of sheep. His dog put on a frantic burst of speed and circled wider, barking authoritatively. Between them, dog and rider managed to get the wooly beasts moving faster and in reasonably good order. The familiar sight woke a pang of homesickness in her.
Stupid beasts. I suppose this Call of the Allimir's needs a brain to work on, which means they'll be looking for the witless brutes until Kingdom Come, Glory thought sourly. Sheep weren't as stupid as cabbages, but just barely.
Kurfan woofed hopefully, looking after the sheep, but seemed to resign himself to the task at hand, encouraging Marchiel to close up with the two riders. Glory and Belegir rode on for a while in silence, until Glory finally broke it.
"You know I'm not a real hero," she said lamely. "You know I'll do what I can for you—but I'll need your help. You need to tell me about your world—what it's like. What I should expect. You can start with this Oracle of yours, for one. Why are we going there?"
Belegir thought carefully and hard before he answered. "The Oracle of Erchane first told us we must find a hero to save us—that was when Evesal was still alive to tend the shrine. I do not know how she survived as long as she did," he added musingly. "She moved quickly against any who might defy her."
Which seemed to leave Belegir and his mates right out, if truth be told.
"So this Evesal's dead now and there's nobody home. So why are we going there?" Glory asked. In her admittedly limited experience, oracles were run by collections of women in sheer draperies, who either read their prophecies out of dusty old books or made them up on the spot.
"The Oracle itself is undamaged, of course. Its magic remains. And perhaps it will explain why you are here and what we must do now," Belegir said, sounding hopeful.
Glory realized with a sudden sinking feeling that Belegir had no more idea of what to do in this situation than she did.
"And what if this Oracle of yours dummies up?" she asked.
"Do you think Erchane will withhold her grace from us?" Belegir asked, sounding so horrified that Glory hastened to assure him that no, nothing could be further from the case, of course she wouldn't. And Belegir believed her, which only made Glory want to scream louder as soon as the time for advanced screaming rolled around.
She tried a few more questions, but they all seemed to lead immediately into conversational dead ends. It wasn't that Belegir didn't want to help her in any way he could, it was just that he seemed so convinced that there was nothing he could do. Figuring out what was going on here was like trying to solve an Agatha Christie with half the pages missing, and doing the Sherlock wasn't something that Vixen would have done. Vixen never borrowed trouble—just waited for it to show up and hit it with her sword. Eventually Glory stopped prodding him.
The journey settled into a quiet rhythm—ride for an hour, walk the horses for a while, then ride again. At least the frequent dismounts kept her from stiffening up, though Glory knew she was going to be sore by tomorrow morning.
After a while she realized she was straining her ears to hear traffic noises, or the sounds of planes flying overhead, and that she wasn't going to hear either one. Except for the sound of the horses, the wind through the long grass, and the distant calls of unfamiliar birds, everything was quiet in a way that a truly inhabited place could never be. The only things in the sky were the black shapes of high-wheeling birds—hawks, she supposed, or eagles. Serenthodial stretched out around her like a sleeping golden lion, leading her eye toward a horizon as infinite as the ocean's. In the distance ahead, she could see the mountains towering skyward, their lower slopes clothed by the forest she'd come through only yesterday, though so many strange things had happened since then that it seemed a very long time ago.
At last they came to a road.
It was pounded earth, two wheel-ruts with a hummock of brittle dispirited grass running between. Its presence changed the scope of things immediately. Roads implied traffic to run on them, cities for them to run between, but this haunted land seemed to hold neither. Belegir turned his pony onto the road with a small grunt of approval.
"This will take us past Mechanayas. It is halfway to the Oracle and I believe that the well there is still good; we should stop there to eat and give the horses a longer rest."