“It’s not the first time I’ve been to battle with you,” Siger said. “Magic fires I don’t understand, but assassins in the bushes I do. And Carlion wants to see if my boasted ability to detect traps is real.”

As the winter afternoon waned under a skim of high cloud, they rode north to find what the fire had done. An acrid stench met them as the breeze blew steadily out of the winter sky. The taig roiled below and around; their mounts jigged, snorting and switching their tails. Kieri tried to comfort the taig and knew Orlith and the elves were doing the same, but the wounds were too great.

Well before they reached the actual site, they could see a gap in the forest ahead—light pouring in where trees, even in winter, had scattered it. Then the extent of the damage spread before them, a wide swath heading north. All within it was consumed to soot and ash; trees on the margin were blackened, limbs on one side burnt away. Kieri shuddered. All the horses shied and refused to go nearer.

“It’s like a great road leading north,” Siger said. “Wider than the Guild League roads, even … but why didn’t it spread to the side?”

“A weapon they could aim,” Kieri said. “And halt here, as a warning of what they could do.”

Carlion was off his horse, tossing his reins to a henchman, and walked ahead. “Sir King, there are tracks here. Two humans, both in boots, and some other marks I do not understand.”

“They launched it there to burn back north?” Kieri asked.

“Not with the wind we had last night,” Siger said. He, too, dismounted and looked at the ground. “Magical flames or not, it would move with the wind, not against it.”

“Then—how did they get ahead of it to stop it?” Kieri asked. He dismounted; he wanted to see any tracks for himself.

“Someone already in place,” Siger said. “But how they stopped it, once the flames were moving like that, I don’t know.”

“There’s an arrow,” Carlion said, pointing. He stepped forward.

“Hold!” Kieri said. Carlion stopped, looking back at him in surprise. “We don’t know if the magic is exhausted: I don’t want to risk you.”

“Better me than you, Sir King. You have another good armsmaster, and the world has more of my kind than yours.” Carlion walked out onto the ash some distance and bent to pick up something. Then he whirled to face Kieri.

“Sir King! It is a King’s Squire’s arrow! One of your Squires!” He looked around. “And there’s another—and another—”

“How did the shafts survive?” Kieri asked. “It is not possible …”

“I’ll bring them all,” Carlion called. “Garris knows their marks.”

Shortly he was back, showing the five arrow shafts. “I’d think the shafts would burn, leaving only the metal tips, at most,” Kieri said. He picked up one of the shafts—scorched, indeed, but the pattern of rings that identified the archer still faintly visible on the blackened shaft. He turned it in the dimming light, trying to see … and his heart stopped, then thumped loudly before racing.