The cabin held five people: Old Raven, a woman who looked about the same age, a young woman who Anna assumed was Young Raven’s wife, and two children, a toddler and a baby. The old woman was fixing something at the stove, the young woman assisting her with the baby slung on her back, and the toddler was being amused with a carved figure of a horse by Old Raven, with both of them on the floor on a bearskin. Anna paused in the doorway, not exactly sure what to do now, and not wanting to offend anyone. Because suddenly that seemed to be the most important thing, that she not offend any of these gracious people who were hiding her from someone who was dangerous to them all, not just her.

“Be welcome to our house,” said Old Raven. “Please come in, and sit down. If your aunt does not manage to rid herself of McDaran in a reasonable length of time, we would be pleased if you would share our evening meal and rest with us through the night. And, indeed, you may stay as long as it takes your aunt to be rid of the wretched creature.”

“Thank you, grandfather,” she said. She came in and gingerly took a seat on a stuffed deerskin. The toddler turned to look at her, but found his horse much more interesting.

Young Raven went to a shelf and came back with an actual glass mirror. “This will do reasonably well for all of us to watch with the eyes of an eagle,” he said, laying it on the floor where all three of them could look at it. “It is made of sand, which is earth, forged in fire, which is my power, and Father can use anything he cares to. So let us all see what we can see.”

She assumed that meant she was to contribute to the effort by using the magical tools she knew to add to the scrying session. So she felt for one of those lines of power—and without any surprise found one running right under the village. She felt the shield that Young Raven had spoken of, and that it was using some of that power, but there was plenty more to spare. She teased a little magic away from it, drew it up through the earth into her hands, let the power fill the mirror, then wrote the glyph for “seeing” over it, keeping her Aunt Jinny firmly in her mind as she did so.

The mirror misted over, and then suddenly filled with an image. It was as if she was a bird above her aunt’s cabin; her aunt was down at the stile, and facing off against her, on the other side of the stile, was Billie McDaran.

He had dismounted and was holding his horse by the reins, but tightly, just under the poor thing’s mouth, grinding the bit down into the lower jaw. As Anna concentrated on them, it was as if the “bird” swooped closer to land just above her aunt’s head, and thin voices came into her head in such a way that she couldn’t tell if she was actually hearing them or if they were in her mind. Her excitement at finally being able to master scrying to this extent was tempered by what they were saying.