Enough!

She had no time for this. Two days she had, if he had been telling the truth. Knowing what manner of man he was, she knew he might as well have been lying.

She wiped her face with the back of a hand as she rose and looked around. What magic sustained the Guardian’s altar she did not know. How the maze wove its sorcery into the angles of its path she could not guess, because there was actually only one route to walk once you started on the path. The many landscapes visible from within remained invisible now that she stood at the center, but by an odd trick of the view she could see from here at the center a complete vista of the ordinary land around her, all the approaches to this pinnacle, even those that ought to be blocked from her view by spurs and heights.

A pair of hawks floated on a thermal far above. To the west, on an impossibly narrow path, a mountain goat picked its way along the slope. A thread of smoke rose beyond the nearest hill, but it smelled of sheep and a drowsy shepherd strumming a simple tune on a two-stringed lute. A family of rock mice skittered below thickets of sprawling heath-pink. Stunted pine trees grew low to the ground, and spiny broom poked its first flowers from their hairy sheaths. The wind moaned along the height. Otherwise, the land was empty. She was utterly alone.

The mare waited beside the burbling crevice, watching her with interest or, perhaps, disdain. Beside the horse, a bridle hung from an iron post hammered into the rock.

With some difficulty, she slid the harness over the mare’s head and, after a few problems with the ears, got it correctly settled and buckled. She had grown up in a village, and while her own family hadn’t been wealthy enough to own horses or even a donkey or mule, as a girl she had hired out on occasion to the stable master at the local inn and learned the rudiments of harness care and use. Those skills had aided her when she had first come to the reeve hall, after Flirt had chosen her.

Flirt was dead.

The wind stung her eyes. A weight crushed her chest, a haze of grief rising to fill her vision and weaken her body. But she could not succumb now. She could let Flirt’s death overwhelm her, or she could use it to make her strong enough to do what must be done. First, evade Lord Radas. Second, observe, and decide what to do next. This simple plan must sustain her as she walked into an unknown landscape: her life after the death of her eagle, or her death after her own death.

She led the mare to the edge of the cliff. The sheer drop did not dizzy her. Reeves learned quickly not to fear heights. Or maybe the great eagles never chose as reeves any person likely to fall prey to that particular fear.