HWEILAN SAT FOR A WHILE AFTER SORAN HAD LEFT. She was still angry. She wasn't going to prance off to some western court, dress in gowns, curtsy, and fawn over some spoiled lordling.
But she knew her uncle was right. Her mother was doing her best for her. Or at least what she thought was best.
And so it went, round and round in her head, going nowhere.
Something tingled on the back of her neck.
Something was watching her.
Hweilan looked around. Nothing but row after row of stone coffins, the mountain rising behind them, and the scraggly winter-bare trees that managed to burrow their roots into the rock. Overhead, the scythe wings were long out of sight. Even the blurry eye of the sun, resting on the tip of the peaks, had dimmed behind thickening clouds. No birds. No breeze. Nothing.
But Hweilan knew the feeling. A hunter developed it. Scith said that all beasts had this sense, though it seemed to have gone to sleep among humanity. But those men who spent much time in the wild, who knew the land and became part of it, learned the old ways, the flow of the blood from ancient times… it would waken in them. And like any tool, it could be honed with use.
Hweilan took up her father's bow and headed home, but she decided to take a different path-another of Scith's lessons. The Nar learned to hunt by watching the wolf packs. Wolves knew the ways of the swiftstags, for the large deer were creatures of habit, always following the same paths. A predictable creature was easy prey.
So Hweilan took another path that led her round a shoulder of the mountain and into deeper woods. The feeling of being watched did not lessen.
The sun fell behind the peaks, and the woods dimmed. Shadows fell together and deepened, like a convergence of streams.
Hweilan's new path took her through another graveyard-the one used by the Damarans of Highwatch who were not of the High Warden's family. Situated on broader, more level ground, this yard housed real graves. Gravestones, ranging from small slabs set level with the ground to marble pillars taller than Hweilan, marked each resting place.
Statues of Torm in all his manifestations-a young warrior, a knight mounted on a golden dragon, a venerable knight, and an armored warrior with the head of a lion-stood watch at the four corners of the graveyard, all looking outward. Black iron rails fenced the graveyard between the statues, and the path ran between two gates, one on each end.
Hweilan passed through the first, quickening her pace. The feeling of being watched pressed on her.
She smelled it before she saw it.
The aroma of freshly turned soil. Thick and loamy. Rich. But something else. Beyond smell really. More of a heaviness on the brain. Something… foul.
Then she saw it. An open grave.
No one had died recently. Why would there be a freshly dug grave? Hweilan's throat had gone very dry. She tried to swallow.
Just go, she told herself. Run back. Tell someone.
She lifted one foot to do just that. Then stopped. She'd feel ten times the fool going back without at least having a closer look.
She left the path and took a few steps toward the fresh hole. It was not a new grave. It was an old one. Hweilan read the inscription upon the rectangular pillar of stone at the far end of the wounded ground: