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faint was that
image.” Vestor’s eyes met those of the Praetor but did not flinch from the
glare he received.
    “You will create another mirror, and you will watch for
those dangers.”
    “Each
one will shatter after use, I fear.”
    “No
matter. You will only use them when I am here, then.”
    “And
what of the golds for the equipment for your armies?”
    “Oh…you
will have that.” The graying Praetor smiled coldly. “We will need them to
conquer Illegea, Aellyan Edyss or not.”

5
    A lucius
glanced back over his shoulder, looking westward in the twilight along a
snowswept road that was visible only because of the three-yard-tall black poles
on each side, each pole a hundred yards from the next. He could see no one
following him, not that he expected to, since his Talent-senses revealed
nothing living nearby—except for him and Wildebeast.
    He
looked at the way ahead, guiding Wildebeast to the right as the road made a
sharp turn southward for the last two vingts before it reached Emal, descending
through a natural cut in the river bluffs that followed the curve of the river.
    After
removing the skull mask, Alucius wrapped his black wool scarf more tightly
around his face as he rode into the chill section of the road where direct
sunlight reached but for a few glasses in winter. The sun had already set
behind the river bluffs to the west, flat stretches of grasslands in four of
the five seasons, but in winter an expanse of snow swirled into drifts by the
unrelenting wind off the Aerlal Plateau, less than twenty vingts to the north.
    Most
of the troopers returning from furlough would travel the lower road along the
river, but Alucius preferred the bluff road, cold as it was, because it took a
full day and a half less than riding south to Dekhron and then taking the river
road back east-northeast to Emal. As it was, even by the bluff road, the ride
from the stead to Emal was a hard three-day ride, and could be as long as five
days, if the roads were muddy, because once Alucius left Iron Stem and the
eternastones of the high road, the way eastward was by the local clay roads.
Winter travel did offer one advantage. The roads might be rough, but they were
frozen as hard as the stones of the high road.
    After
Alucius passed through the cut and reached the flat section of the road below
the bluffs, he could see the town less than a vingt away to the south, perched
on a higher section of ground, a low bluff overlooking the now-frozen River
Vedra. The arched stone bridge that crossed the narrows to the matching bluff
on the south side was the only safe crossing of the river, except in winter, in
the more than three hundred vingts between the point where the river gushed
from beneath the head-wall of the Aerlal Plateau—some one hundred and twenty
vingts generally east-northeast of Emal—and Dekhron itself. The Lanachronan
community of Semal, that clustered around the south end of the bridge, was
scarcely more than a hamlet, and the Southern Guard had stationed but a single
squad there to guard the bridge—mainly to collect tariffs from what few traders
there were. The pale off-white limestone walls of the hundred or so dwellings
at Emal faded into the snowy backdrop of the fields on the bottomland barely
above the flood levels of the river. On the other hand, the steep-pitched slate
roofs—stark and dark—stood out, almost floating on an endless sea of white.
Thin trails of smoke wound into the darkening silver-green sky.
    Alucius
rode past houses shuttered tight against the cold and the bitter wind off the
plateau, acrid-iron bitter—as always. Glimmers of light escaped through cracks
in the shutters, and the smell of burning coal made the northeast wind even
more bitter. As Wildebeast carried Alucius down the main street, his hoofs
crunched on the packed snow, snow that was more than knee high beside the houses.
    The
militia outpost stood at the south end of Emal, just above the river, on the
low bluff that passed