Raffi let the throb subside. Then he said, ‘It’s not a real bee. I put the sign of the bee on a stone at the bottom of that track we came down. Someone just stood on it.’

9

The Watch is unsleeping. Never relent in the search; never turn back.

Rule of the Watch

Journal of Carys Arrin

Larsnight

7.16.546

I’ve lost them.

And this is so infuriating I can hardly get the words down, but what stopped me was a spell.

There’s no other word for it. Every time I tried to cross that bridge I found myself back where I started! It seems to be some sort of power field to confuse the mind – I can’t believe that it actually changes matter in any way or that the bridge can have only one end. In all my training, the Watchleaders insisted that the powers of the Order were an illusion – I can see fat old Jeltok now, banging his cane on the table. Well, it’s an illusion that’s worked on me.

Galen Harn had crossed. I found traces of a campfire on the bank and scraps of food – fungus of some sort. Maybe they brew a concoction of this and drink it to counteract the spell. Too risky to try without knowing more.

In the end I had to give up. Even leading the horse into the swamp would have been useless – the whole area was thick with reedbeds and alder; soft, probably deep. I almost screamed with frustration, and kicked the black rotting chains of the thing with hatred.

What makes it worse is that they’re travelling by night. Ham is cunning, he’s been hunted all his life; he knows how to blend with the leaves and the land, though I don’t believe that nonsense that the keepers can turn into trees and stones.

It was well after dark when I turned back from the bridge and though I’d slept a little I was tired. Yesterday I sold the pack-beast and most of the goods in a village beyond the fields – speed is more important now. But I kept the horse, and that’s one advantage. They’re on foot.

I rode him back up the stony gully and turned east, quickly crossing the fields in the dark. My plan was to follow the river upstream until I could cross it. The wind was chill and the stubbly ground uneven; worst of all it rose constantly, and the river ran below in a steep cleft with ash and elder springing out of the sides. There was no way down – I just had to keep going, further away from the bridge all the time.