The Warslayer(8)

Protected or not, her arms and the tops of her thighs tingled with the cold while the rest of her sweltered under several layers of squeaking, creaking, and jingling leather, buckram, and steel, and after a minute she knew she was going to get the usual raw place under her right arm where the shoulder-piece always rubbed. At least her feet didn't hurt. Her armor was a pain in the ass to march in, but the boots were comfortable.

"Hey guys, you know what? I reckon I'd better go back and change clothes after a—"

She turned back. She'd been expecting to see the dressing room, or at least the doorway and a chunk of wall. But there was nothing there. Only a square raw spot on the forest floor where something had been.

Glory felt her stomach clench with panicky nausea. Suddenly she felt trapped, though she was in precisely the same situation that she'd been in the moment before. But now even the illusion she could leave was gone. Nothing was left but the forest, her strange companions, and her idiotic bravura.

They were staring at her again.

"Oh, well. Never mind. Look. Why don't you . . . um, tell me about yourselves, hey?" She still didn't know what Belegir and company thought she could do for them, but whatever it was, it had to be easier than being a Media Personality. And if somehow this still turned out to be a joke, at least it was one of the elaborate interdimensional kind.

"We are the disciples of the great mage Cinnas the Warkiller," Englor began proudly. "In every generation . . ."

" . . . there can be only one," Glory finished automatically.

"No. Three," Englor corrected her kindly.

She'd caught up to the others, and they'd started walking again. Helevrin kept glancing at her suspiciously, but Englor was frankly worshipful.

"Um. Sorry. Go on."

She'd have to remember that these people didn't watch a lot of television, though apparently they'd seen enough to have gotten her into real trouble.

"For a hundred generations the legend of Cinnas the Warkiller has been a beacon to his people. Though he died in the moment of his greatest triumph, his works live on!"

"That's reassuring," Glory muttered. Dead, then, is he? Precious little use to you now.

"Only now—"

"If she isn't going to help us, she doesn't need to know," Helevrin interrupted brusquely. It didn't look like she was going to forgive Glory for making Belegir and Englor cry any time soon.

"I— But— Well— Oh, yes, of course. You're right," Englor faltered, glancing from Glory to Helevrin.

The journey continued in silence.

* * *

Two hours later they were still walking through the same forest, and if not for the consistent presence of the sun on her left hand, Glory would have been willing to swear they'd been walking in circles the entire time. She could feel the tendons in her legs thrumming like a plucked guitar string, and her back ached, but despite her physical discomfort, Glory actually felt better than she could remember feeling in months. All the grinding weight of the show and the media spotlight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she was no longer surrounded by people wanting her to be perky and photogenic when she felt grumpy and dull. And if these people had her confused with Vixen, at least they were innocent and up-front about it—not a bunch of supposed media-savvy grown-ups who ought to know better.

Helevrin hadn't thawed, but Glory had stopped worrying about it, because it was taking all she had to keep up with her. The three mages might be short, but they scuttled through the forest at an amazing rate.

The sun had been high overhead when they'd first started out of Duirondel. Now the shadows were long and the light had a twilight ruddiness, but at last Glory began to see signs of change in her surroundings—the trees began to thin, and grass began to poke up through the drifts of leaves, the stalks growing longer and the clumps thicker until Glory realized she wasn't walking through a forest with occasional grass, but a grassland with occasional trees.

"Are we there yet?" she muttered under her breath. She'd thought she was in good physical shape from the show, but cross-country hiking used unfamiliar muscles.

She looked up, watching something besides her own feet for the first time in hours, and the vista had the impact of a blow.

There was nothing before her but kilometers of flat open plain covered with golden autumnal grasses. It stretched on in an unbroken sweep until it passed over the shoulder of the earth. She could see the wind as it gusted across the prairie, making dips and shadows in its grassy surface. If a wheat field could be a thousand miles wide it would look like this: so vast and featureless that for a moment the placid blue sky seemed close enough to crush her like an open hand. She staggered back, throwing up an arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the westering sun. A grass ocean, with no place to run to, nowhere to hide . . .