Across the meadow, into the forest, through the tangle of the alder thickets, Roric followed the rider. The other’s horse went effortlessly through the densest underbrush, and Goldmane followed.
It disturbed him that he could not see the rider clearly. Maybe it was the sun’s glare, or the speed they were going, or the thin blue mist that rose from the boggy soil under their horses’ hooves, but when Roric looked at him directly all he could see was a shadowy outline.
And yet he had seen his face, thin and yellow, dark eyes within enormous bony eye sockets burning like the last coals on the hearth on a winter’s dawn. If it was a Wanderer who had sat and talked with him outside the manor’s guesthouse, this could not be the same one.
They came up from the boggy lowlands at last, their horses scrambling on the thin soil that overlay a steep rocky hill. Roric looked around, thinking they could not have come so far so fast. This hill marked the western boundary of King Hadros’s kingdom, and even by road and sea it should have taken a full day to reach here, yet it appeared that only an hour had passed since the rider appeared at the mares’ pen.
“Where are we?” he called to his companion. “Where are we going?”
The other did not answer or even acknowledge that he had heard. Roric looked ahead, toward the top of the hill, and saw two lichen-spotted standing stones that he could never before recall seeing, leaning together as though to form a gate.
The rider went straight through. Goldmane made to follow, but Roric held him back for a moment, looking off toward the distant sandstone escarpment that rose over Hadros’s castle. Whoever this person was, he seemed able to move space and time.
But then the stallion jerked his head against the bit and followed through the gateway of the standing stones.
And emerged into a world Roric had never seen.