:Selenay and the King already knew how to pack for this sort of trip,: Kantor said, and left it at that.

Once out of the capital, they moved down the road with a purposefulness that was positively frightening. There was no way to properly convey the effect—they weren’t menacing, but they seemed to exude a sense of needing to go somewhere in a hurry, a sense that somehow made everyone move out of their way without noticing that it was happening. It was uncanny. The first time he saw it working, he felt the hair go up on the back of his neck, and Kantor’s wordless reassurance.

This could have looked like some sort of parade, all of the Companions and their uniformed Heralds, with the single spots of Healer Green and Guard Blue among them. It didn’t; Alberich could tell by the faces of those who gathered to watch them pass through their towns and villages that they gave no such impression. The expressions that the common folk wore were uniformly grim. Perhaps the people of Haven had not yet grasped the seriousness of the situation, but the people of the towns and villages knew it. There was no cheering, and the hope he saw in their faces was tinged with desperation.

:They know, don’t they?: he asked Kantor.

:Better than those in the cities. Everyone knows everyone in a village; when their youngsters go off into the Guard, everyone knows every word in every letter that comes home. And—everyone knows when someone isn’t going to come home again.:

Ah. He shifted in the saddle, careful to do so with Kantor’s stride so as not to throw him off. Well, that was something he wouldn’t know about—letters from the front lines, and a village’s interest in them. His mother couldn’t have read a letter even if he’d been allowed to send her one from the Academy.

And he remembered, for the first time in a long, long while, the first line of the oath he had sworn when he joined the Academy. The temple is your mother and your father is Vkandis Sunlord…

It was still true. Just not in the way that those who had listened to him swear that oath intended.

They stopped for the night around dusk, outside a village—which one, he didn’t know; they went past it too quickly for him to read the faded sign in the uncertain light. The Herald in the lead broke off down a side lane and the entire group followed, slowing as they did so. The lane was overgrown, entirely grass-covered, eventually bringing them to a tiny cabin set off in a clearing, with no sign of any inhabitant about it.

:That’s because there isn’t an inhabitant. This is one of the Waystations,: Kantor told him. :We’re two days’ journey from Haven at my usual pace; three or four by horse.: