By mid afternoon we had broken through to a wide somewhat overgrown trail that looked familiar. Taking my bearings from the glimpses I could catch through the trees of the mountains surrounding us, I recognised it as a trail that led from Obernewtyn to hot springs at the foot of the high mountains, which had been a favourite destination for everyone at Obernewtyn until the discovery of the caves in the west of the valley where hot springs bubbled up into pools that heated the air. That the Teknoguild were cultivating their wintergarden there, and had constructed a kitchen and several sleeping chambers, ensured that the cave pools were now more popular than the more distant open-air springs. The trail to the wintergarden caves had also been widened to enable the passage of small wagons, which meant there was a good deal more traffic along it. These days almost no one used the older trail save for Rushton and me on the rare occasions when we had managed to get away alone, and we had found it even more appealing for the privacy it had offered us.

Gahltha bade me mount up and I realised that he meant me to ride along the trail. I did not argue, for aside from not wanting to leave boot tracks, I could sense the horse wanted to gallop. Rearranging the sword along one side of the webbing, and balancing it with the pack on the other, I mounted up carefully. When I was settled, Maruman sat between my thighs as before and, aware of Gahltha’s impatience, I settled back and gripped hard with my knees. He moved in a few steps from a walk to a canter and stayed at that pace for some time. I knew he would have liked to gallop after the maddeningly slow pace of the morning, but that was out of the question while encumbered with so much baggage.

Thinking of the open-air springs had roused thoughts of Rushton and Obernewtyn and while the coercive net kept me from grief, I was still troubled by thoughts of how Rushton might have taken my disappearance so soon after his offer of the handfasting wreath. Yet there was no point in fretting on it, for I could not communicate with him, and very soon the mountains would offer a tainted barrier that I could not cross with my mind, no matter how I longed to do so. Better not to look back.

Yet the thought of seeing the hot springs where we had swum ached my heart.