Sirri nodded. “The birds have not been seen since, though some of us have looked for them cautiously, but the woman has been seen again recently.” She glanced at the leader of the Twin Mountain tribe. “By a child. We have no reason to doubt this girl’s story; she is not prone to making up fanciful tales.

“She says she encountered the woman close to her village. The woman asked her to deliver a message. It contained an apology for the attack on the hunters. She claimed it was an accident, that she did not know what her birds were doing until it was too late. Her true intentions were to befriend us.

“Then she saw you fly past,” Sirri met Auraya’s eyes levelly, “and changed her mind. She decided to leave Si, after telling the child to give her tribal leader a different message. She said if the Siyee ally themselves with Circlians they will gain an enemy even stronger.”

Auraya felt a chill. “What did this landwalker look like?”

“Her skin was dark. She looked young and strong.”

“Her clothing?”

“She was dressed in black and wore a silver pendant.”

The chill became a shiver of cold that ran down Auraya’s spine.

“Ah.”

“Have you heard of this woman before?”

Auraya shook her head. “No, but I have encountered people like her. She may be a member of a cult from Southern Ithania. I must tell Juran about this.”

Closing her eyes, she called out Juran’s name.

:Yes? he replied.

:I think a Pentadrian has been snooping around in Si. She told him what she had learned.

:A woman with birds; a man with vorns. The five leaders our spies named include two women.

:Yes. What shall I tell the Siyee?

:Everything. All of Northern Ithania will know of these sorcerers soon enough. This might nudge them into signing an alliance.

Auraya smothered a sigh and opened her eyes. What am I getting these people into? she asked herself, yet again. What would I be abandoning them to, if I didn’t try to persuade them to seek our protection? She looked around at the anxious faces of the Speakers.

“Juran and I believe we know what she is, just as she recognized what I am. She is a Pentadrian sorcerer,” she told the Speakers. “We have encountered two others. The first entered Toren with a hunt of vorns. The creatures were larger and darker in color than their wild relations and appeared to obey mental orders. Their master’s only intention in entering Toren appeared to be to cause terror and death. Rian found and confronted the man, who fled when it was clear he could not win the fight.