Chapter Twenty-Nine, Part II

                                    

                                              
The forest seemed to welcome him. Familiar trees sighed overhead in the spring mountain breeze. Dappled sunlight flickered on the forest floor beneath the canopy, seeming to dance with joy at Derol's return. Occasionally, a larger shadow would block the dappled light and Derol would look up to watch a dragon pass briefly overhead before it disappeared into another tree.
                          
Derol knelt before the hearth in his shelter, the cove, and turned over a piece of venison as it browned over the fire. He'd found his old shelter, the one his da had shown him, untouched in all of the time that he'd been away. The Karume hadn't found it in his absence. He and Astrid had fortified the wall of fallen brush that he used to mask the cove's presence, covering it with green leaves and other vegetation to make it appear like a natural slope against the rock that rose up behind it. Emric had provided him with a spellstone to hide the smoke of his fire from observant eyes.
                          
Further up the mountain ridge, where Arethia officially ended and the northern unnamed mountains began, the riders had soon found a magic wall of the type that the mages of Yennar Lei had described closing off Arethia's southern borders, too. A test party soon affirmed that the magic wall worked in both directions. A person could neither enter nor leave Arethia by land or air. The Karume mages had full control over the borders.

                          
Derol knew that the riders had hoped the Karume had spared the northern border, so that they might escape Arethia after their great task of hiding the eggs. They knew that with the Karume's heavy use of bound magic, it was only a matter of time before the dragons began to sicken once again.
                          
But Derol tried to leave the worrying about the dragons to the dragon riders. He had his own purpose to pursue here.
                          
At the slight snap of a twig, he raised his head and froze. Slowly, he put his eye to one of the sight holes he'd left in the brush cover over the cove. It was only Astrid, as he'd known it would be. He'd been teaching her how to move through the forest without sound. From the grimace she bore, he knew she regretted her misstep. Good. She was learning.
                          
She padded soundlessly the rest of the way to the cove and pushed aside the dangling vines that concealed its opening. She smiled briefly at Derol's greeting but bore a perturbed look. From her belt she untied two cloths and spread them on the flat stone near the hearth. Bright red berries glittered in one, and in the other lay a collection of greens.
                          
"It's a bit early for most berries yet, but these ones were ripe," Astrid said. She sat back and sighed.
                          
"What's happened?" Derol asked.
                          
Astrid looked to the ground. "I saw my sisters," she said quietly.
                          
Derol sucked in a breath. "You know you weren't supposed to go find them yet," he said, but held back on a fully chiding tone. He sensed that now wouldn't be the time for a scolding.
                          
"They didn't see me," Astrid said. "And I didn't go find them. They were in the woods. They came for berries too. They were with some other kids, and one of the Karume was with them. She was watching them."
                          
Derol sat up straighter at this. "How far did they come?"
                          
"Close to the edge of the ridge, then they followed alongside it. They stayed to the lighter forest."
                          
"Good," Derol said with relief. They'd seen parties of wood choppers and hunters, all accompanied by a Karume watcher, but Derol hadn't expected any parties to stray as far as the boundaries he'd set for Astrid. She had been near the edge of her boundary, near the ridge, but Derol knew that there was a berry patch there, which explained why she'd run into a foraging party.
                          
"Did they look well?" he asked.
                          
Astrid grinned. "They were pranking their watcher," she said. "Made her think there was some creature in the woods, but really it was just them throwing sticks when she wasn't looking."