Page 38 of Homeward for a Spell

It’s cold comfort.

They bed down that night by a small lake. Sage takes the first watch, still not saying anything to Araphi.

It’s miserable, and Araphi can’t get comfortable on the hard ground, no matter how much she tosses and turns. Toward sunrise, she gives up the ghost of sleep and pokes her head out of her tent to stare at the lightening sky, watching each star disappear into the pink and violet dawn.

The second night is much the same. Exhaustion and a dozen aches and pains from another day in the saddle pull her into sleep, sending her into wild, twisting dreams of long miles on the road.

Until a violent, heartrending scream wakes Araphi before dawn. She sits up, wrenching a muscle in her back as she looks around. Outside her tent the fire is down to embers, and Araphi shivers in the freezing morning air. Standing over the smoldering wood, Tea screams again.

Oh gods, what now?

Araphi returns to grab her boots. By the time she’s pulled them on and emerged, Sage is already standing by the firepit, while Nura, Bramble, and Remy stumble out of their own tents.

“It’s gone!” Tea shouts.

Sage holds up a hand. “What’s gone, Tea? Can you calm down, please?”

“Calm down?” Tea shrieks. “How can I calm down when it’s gone?”

“What’s gone, you mad wizard?” a sleepy Nura grumbles. “Your wits?”

“My book! My last book!” Tea wails. “It was here. I left it by the fire last night after my watch. But it was far from it, I swear. The log must’ve turned, and it caught aflame, and…” With a moan, she stoops to fish a few scraps of charred, clothbound cover and parchment from the pit.

“Seems like nothing but bad luck for this journey,” Araphi says. She’d meant to keep that thought to herself, but it slips out.

The glare Sage shoots her makes Araphi’s insides curl with regret. She clamps her mouth against anything else she might say.

“I suppose the only thing we can do is keep moving,” the ranger says. “Pack up. Let’s get going. The sooner we’re in Briarwall, the better. Perhaps they’ll have a nice book to replace yours in the garrison’s library.”

Judging by the crestfallen look on Tea’s face and her slumped shoulders, this seems an unlikely hope.

By day three of stony silence from her party leader, Araphi is about to burst. Though Tea is the picture of melancholy, Bramble and Nura are companionable enough. Even Remy thaws a bit as Araphi badgers him for the name of his favorite song—it turns out to be “The Witchlight Maker”—to play by the fire that night. But none of them are Sage. Araphi is ready to corner the ranger and demand answers—about Ollie, and about what happened in the hot spring. Or at the very least, demand that Sage speak to her again.

But there’s been no privacy on the road, so Araphi resolves to find some tonight. Surely in Briarwall there’ll be a place to have a proper conversation.

When at last the garrison comes into view in the early evening, Araphi asks, “Is this it?”

“What were you expecting?” Sage asks dryly.

Briarwall really is nothing more than a sparsely populated military outpost set among towering pines, surrounded by a tall timber fence. The main building is much smaller than her Aunt Menorath and Uncle Baremon’s estate in Ashaway. Treehouse watchtowers built into the pines offer a view of both sides of the fence, in the center of which stands the famed gate. It’s solid looking, yes, built from whole pine trunks shorn of their branches and secured to the massive frame with iron. Nevertheless, the fence extends on either side of the Queens’ Road only so far as the encampment has been carved out of the trees, rendering it a poor safeguard on first sight. But every schoolchild in the capital and beyond knows that Briarwall defends them from the wild creatures through spellwork rather than woodwork. The gate is at the center of a wall of magic built by the greatest defensive casters from Harrow’s past ages. All along the border of the Northlands, small towers stationed miles apart act as magical links, covered in runes like those carved along the frame of the gate. If one of the towers were damaged, then the wall across that stretch of land would be weakened. But while the gate stands, the wall stands, and it has never been brought down.

In its shadow squats a collection of rough wooden houses no larger than those of Hexham, if more sturdily built to withstand the cold. Canvas tents are set up in one corner of the encampment, where lanterns cast an orange glow over Queensmen milling about and the horses snuffling in the cold air, their steps churning up the muddy paths.

Tea sniffles as she stares up at the gate. A howling breeze rips along the edge of the wooden wall, sending Araphi’s cloak billowing behind her and stripping a scroll from Tea’s hands, which she’d been studying as they rode. The wizard makes a tired, fatalistic noise as it flies away in the wind, but Araphi manages to catch it through luck as it dances past.

She rides over to Tea and offers it back.

“Thank you,” Tea says gloomily.

“Of course,” Araphi says. “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?”

Tea nods. “I’ve read about the gate, of course, but that’s nothing compared to the real thing. I’m finding, in fact, that much of the world is nothing like what I’ve read.”

“Glorious, isn’t it?” Araphi says, trying to lighten Tea’s spirits.

“Decidedly not. Imagine how bad the lands beyond the wall are going to be.” She shudders.

“I’ve not read much about those. Have you?”