The canal network of the lowlands gives way to days on horseback along the northward mail roads, and finally the rangers leave human routes entire to slip into the trackless foothills of the Eastern Ranges.
They pass the time by teaching each other history.
"...So after the Seventh Border War resulted in the first burning of Hightop," Lilli explains earnestly, poking the campfire with a stick, "the Fürsten ended the problem of the Eastern Ranges by demediatising the eastern clans, retroactively recognising marriages between the ranges as not morganatic, and thereby forcing the Western Range states to grudgingly recognise the terms of peace demanded by the formation of those marriages. Of course, they still considered marriages into the Plains families morganatic, leading to the Eighth Border War and the second burning of Hightop, but due to our people's resistance to term limit reform, that is still arguably not solved."
"Term limit reform — ?"
"Ah, well. Since our elders do not tend to simply die off from office, positions of authority come to be held by those who eventually seem somewhat — "
"Somewhat!" snorts Taelin.
"...Conservative."
"You are making your history sound like a long series of petty grudges and quarrels at weddings!" Pepperidge exclaims, hand pressed to her head. "At least my ancestors died out, leaving forgetfulness and obscurity to dignify them!"
"Oh, well, since a quarrel at a wedding is more or less the origin of the division between Highland and Plains...you have us to rights, I'm afraid, little wolf." Lilli shrugs unconcernedly. "As you say, your people are not much different, save for lack of eyewitnesses!"
"Probably why they hate us," Taelin says cheerily.
Pepperidge bites her lip over a reply. "Hate tends to precede reasons, not flow from them," she says eventually, dry and quiet. "But fewer hate than not, I hope."
Lilli scowls at her cousin. He shifts ruefully.
"That was flippant, Professor," he says apologetically. "On a serious subject, you see, and not a tactful one."
"But true enough." She looks around at them. "And the rangers, far from home, would be the ones to know."
Taelin beams at Lilli. "See? The Professor understands."
Pepperidge takes Lilli's hand. "There. No throwing things at your cousin."
"My head thanks you, madam!"
Lilli sulkily winds her into an embrace. "Amaranth is the best of women," she says.
Across the clearing, stitching thorn rips in a cloak, one of Taelin's rangers says something inaudible to another and follows it with a soft but filthy laugh. Pepperidge knows them only by nickname; Tiny, she thinks. A soldierly joke at her expense, no doubt, ribald but unmalicious.
The crisp, lithe swish of Lilli springing upright says that her hearing is better, and her temper less even. The Professor's calming hand, extended towards her, lands on empty air; the elf is moving already, fluttering across the camp like a windblown autumn leaf.
Tiny glances up and freezes, wide-eyed, needle wobbling unheeded in midair before him. He stares up at the wrathful poet he finds abruptly planted before him.
Taelin muffles a curse and makes to rise, but this time Pepperidge's hand finds its mark.
"Your ranger," she acknowledges; "my poet."
He casts Lilli a dubious look, but gestures Pepperidge on. She can't hear the exchange as she picks her way across the firelit ground, but it takes no genius to interpret Tiny's stammering but I was only joking mien.
Lilli's stance shifts. She thrusts one hip out, and hovers a hand, palm open, above it, as if to rest it akimbo.
Pepperidge knows that the impeccably maintained, unused, knives they wear at the small of their backs have cultural significance; she also thinks she understands the total silence that the elves abruptly fall under. She extends her stride.
"Madam Professor," Tiny says, cringing, as she approaches.
"Heyo, Tiny," she says soothingly.
"I must apologise," the ranger says. He sounds mortified, and he keeps his eyes on Lilli, stiff with outrage. "I said a thing I'd doubtless have though better of, were you an elf. I'm shamed, Professor."
As she'd thought. "Would that my students were half so diligent to admit a fault and correct themselves," she says dryly. "You're a fine soul, Tiny, and it speaks well of you." She threads her arm deliberately though Lilli's cocked one. "Poet," she adds gently, and tugs Lilli to turn away and return to their spot.
"Professor," Taelin says genially, saluting their return with his tea.
"If you've any words for Tiny to cap that, speak them or hold your peace," she tells him, gesturing with her eyes that it's neither for Tiny's, nor Taelin's benefit.
He takes the hint and hauls himself up. "Of course. A moment, ladies."
"What happened then?" Pepperidge asks softly, when he goes. "It seemed you threatened violence."
Lilli, sinking back to sit, wraps arms around her knees and gnaws her lip. "No. And yes." Her hand flutters to touch the blade at her back. "This is — this is not a weapon, Amaranth. This is — " she moves the hand to press her temple, gesture helplessly. "Honour is an abstract. But my honour is also this. Every Highland elf bears one. There isn't even a separate word for it — it is my honour."
She glances nervously through her lashes to gauge whether Pepperidge follows, and sighs.
"Sit? There's a story — " her hope-filled patting on the patch of log beside her works; Pepperidge sits, turned a little toward her, watching her face intently. "In the far north, you see," she points northward, "in a land which is icebound and dark all the year, there was once an elf. He spent the most time of all his people alone in the snow, far from home. Perhaps something evil found him there, or he found it; perhaps something went wrong in his mind. Perhaps it had always been wrong.
"One day he didn't come home, long enough that they gave him up for dead. And then a child went missing from a human village." She clasps her hands tightly, looks down at them. "Terrible, but not unknown. Until the second, the third...and then they suspected, and hunted him with fire and iron across the ice, and found him where he had taken the children, and killed them, and eaten them."
She glances at Pepperidge, then wordlessly sneaks a hand over to clasp over one of the Professor's.
"I have an...ancestor-aunt?..across many generations. She lives in Hightop and brews beer. But this is a true story, Amaranth. When she was young, she was one of the hunting party across the ice. She was one of the ones who held him fast. They struck off his fingers with an iron cleaver, so that he could never snatch another with them, you see? They struck off his fingers, and he only cursed at them. Then they took iron pincers and tore out his teeth, so that he could never eat another, and he only spat at them."
She is gripping the Professor's hand too tightly. Or she is gripping Lilli's. Perhaps both.
"They struck his name from memory, said he was no longer people, that he was only people-eater, the ghul, a monster, and he only tried to fight them.
"But then they took his honour from him, and before his eyes they broke the blade. And then, then, he screamed."
Lilli shudders and falls silent. After a few breaths, Pepperidge quietly says, "And then?"
"Oh, and then they left him naked on the ice to die." Lilli scoots up the log to press herself against the professor's comforting warmth. "When I was a child, this was the most terrifying campfire story," she adds. "Dreams of the ghul chased me through the nights, his bloody paws and screaming toothless mouth and his rage. Awful." She laughs falsely, as if coaxing the return of good cheer. "They hunt him, they break his body and kill him, but what hurts him, Amaranth, what hurts him is the judgement that he is dishonourable. An elf's honour is not a weapon. It is not for fighting. To draw it, to even think of drawing it, is far too serious a matter."
Pepperidge strokes her thumb slowly across Lilli's hand. "Lilli." She waits for the elf to meet her eyes. "What happened here?" she asks again, even gentler than before.
Lilli sighs heavily. "Soldiers can be less than mannered," she begins, and Pepperidge snorts good-naturedly.
"You need not explain that to me, madam poet! I do believe it's universal."
"One of Taelin's privates was commenting on your exotic beauty," Lilli explains to the toes of her shoes. "Only — "
"My what, excuse me? I think my ears fail me!"
"Hush," Lilli says with a burst of fierce sincerity. "You bewitch. Blind, he's not, but disrespectful — " her teeth clench. "He spoke of you as a thing to have, as if your opinion on the matter was no matter. And if you were of my people, and present at the saying, none would gainsay you holding your honour against such a thing yourself!"
They are silent for a moment.
"I don't pretend I fully understand your honour. And I expect my people's concept of it is different enough," Pepperidge says finally. "But we have a phrase — 'to defend someone's honour,' Lilli."
Lilli looks at her with wary hope.
"You held yourself honour-bound to protect me?"
The elf nods.
"I understand that well enough." The Professor gently frees her hand from Lilli's still-tight grip, and raises it to stroke the elf's hair.
"You do?" Lilli whispers.
"Yes, bumblebee, I do."
Lilli lets out a long breath, and drops her head to rest on the other woman's shoulder.
"Thank you," Pepperidge murmurs, and kisses her hair.
Weeks of winding northward through the foothills sees them reach the mouth of a narrow valley. Lilli is gleeful: "We of the Fist o' Ribs were a cadet branch of the Water Over Stone croft. There's no proper Water Over Stone now — not since the Eighth Border War — but their croft used to be here. Some of our elders remember the houses here. That's why it's the Old Glen."
Pepperidge breaths deep of pine-heavy air in the falling gloom, and smiles back at Lilli's excitement.
"I taught her how to fish in the lake here," Taelin says cheerily.
"He's a scoundrel." Lilli aims a slap at his shoulder. "There are no fish in it."
"She tried for an admirably long time."
They set up camp near the lake, and Taelin takes his turn to swearingly cook.
"Swive a wyvern — Professor!" Frantically scraping at the bottom of a cookpot, he spares a second to thrust a waterskin in her direction. "Run down to the lake quick, please?"
She obliges, striding into the dusk, and is gone hardly any time, not long enough to get there and back, when all the grass suddenly moves. It's gentle, as if there were a breeze; the stalks all bend in the direction of the lake, hesitate, then lean back away from it.
There is no breeze. The fine hairs all over Lilli's skin prickle; she meets Taelin's eyes across the fire. He casually sets aside the smoking cooking pot and starts to rise.
Mist starts rolling over everything, billowing from the direction of the water. There is still no breeze; it simply should not move so fast. This is magic.
"Amaranth?" Lilli calls, in a carefully calm voice. No answer comes.
Taelin raps on the pot with a knife to call his rangers' attention. He scarce needs to; this is uncanny.
"We're all gong to go down to the shoreline and have a look for the Professor," he says genially. "Longeye, Spuds — take the poet and circle eastward, I'll take Tiny and Princess round to the west. Nobody strays alone, no heroics, and sing out sharpish if you see anything unnatural."
They move carefully into the thickening fog, listening, feeling the shifts in vegetation around them and underfoot as they clear the trees and near the water.
"Professor?" Taelin calls. There's nothing but silence, barely even the rustle of grass underfoot.
"Amaranth!" Calm be damned; Lilli calls urgently, heart quivering in her chest, and flinches at Taelin's light touch on her shoulder.
"Go east. Follow the water's edge. Stay together," he says, low and firm and kind, and leads the other two rangers away. One stride and he is a silhouette; two and he's lost to view.
"Poet, if I may," Longeye murmurs. "I'll have the van, if you could mind the rear?" She rapidly looses her sash, bowlines it to the belt beneath, and passes the free end to Spuds, who likewise fastens and passes the free end of his own sash to Lilli. Stooping to pluck a long reed, the ranger carefully taps about with it until she locates the rim of the loch.
"Professor," Taelin calls, somewhere over yonder.
"Professor?" Longeye echoes, and smoothly starts them along the shore, keeping them a systematic reed's-length from the water and covering ground with the easy, wary ranger's gait.
Lilli keeps a light grip on Spuds' sash, keeps pace, and adds her anxious voice to the calls. "Amaranth!"
"Professor?"
"Amaranth!"
They have not quite met on the opposite side of the lake when the mist, equally abruptly as it rose, dissipates. The moon glares down onto the still black lake.
"Amaranth!" Lilli calls shrilly.
"Lilli?" the Professor's voice comes back, faint and confused.
The elf clutches her chest and gulps for air. It takes a few moments for her to realise what Longeye is staring at, perturbed.
In the centre of the black lake is a tiny island, scarce more than a rocky outcrop and a few tufts of grass. Pale in the moonlight, Pepperidge stands surrounded by water.
After reassuring yelling and hurried conferral, Taelin and Lilli pick their way out to the island, wading thigh-deep, probing the footing with sticks and lighting the way with hastily fashioned torches. The Professor, when they arrive, is wringing her hands absently. She looks exhausted.
She is completely dry.
"Amaranth," Lilli says gratefully, rubbing a hand over the prickling hair on her nape. "Are you well?"
"Quite well," Pepperidge says tiredly, leaning into her.
"What happened?" Lilli asks, stroking her back.
"I — there was — " Pepperidge frowns hard, as if trying to maintain the fading memory of a waking dream. "It was suddenly very misty. I tried to turn back, but there was — I thought it was a person. At first I thought it was a person."
Lilli does not think the Professor is aware that she is craning her neck to look upward in remembered consternation.
"But so very tall," Pepperidge murmurs. "And I think — it had antlers."
The elves look at each other.
"Ah," Taelin says noncommitally. "The ghost."
"It was saying something." Pepperidge murmurs. "But I could hear none of it, only silence. But I knew it was speaking. And it walked — I don't think I meant to follow it — "
"You'd not be the first."
"How did I come here?"The Professor blinks at them, and gestures at the water.
"The ghost walked. And it walks strange ways." Taelin shrugs away any further mystery. "It's dark, and treacherous footing, Professor. One of us had best carry you ashore."
Lilli immediately scoops up the Professor, and cradles her tight to her chest all the way to shore. Taelin goes ahead with torch and stick, and hurries their way as much as he dares.
Pepperidge falls almost instantly asleep in Lilli's arms.
"She's not harmed," Taelin tells Lilli, although he looks too concerned to be very reassuring. "I saw it once, when I was a boy. Just another summer camping outing."
"You never told me." Lilli peers as close as she can at Pepperidge's face.
"It took some years for the nightmares to go," Taelin says shortly.
