Eagle Eye was panting deep in his chest as he climbed. Foamy sweat collected on his lion’s body, staining the white plumage of his neck and Kerian’s leather breeches. Her legs were achingly cold. But the desperate gamble was paying off. The lights had risen to maybe forty feet and swooped in flat circles, never rising any higher. By twos and threes, her erstwhile pursuers winked out like dying embers. Already the number of lights had fallen by half. They were giving up the chase.

Kerian was too exhausted to rejoice. She steered Eagle Eye in a wide turn for camp.

From that height she could see the silvery line of Lioness Creek, named in honor of Kerian herself. Beyond it burned the campfires of her people’s temporary home. The survivors of Qualinesti and Silvanesti were crammed into the narrow strip of land between the valley’s mouth and the creek, thousands packed into an area that represented the only safety from the nomads outside and the mysterious forces in the valley.

Eagle Eye had fallen into an easy lope. Once every four or five beats, he held his wings out and glided. He was very tired.

So was his rider. Kerian couldn’t remember the last good sleep she’d had. The challenges of life in the valley were partly to blame, but she was a fighter and accustomed to physical privation. Much harder to face were the unresolved difficulties of her relationship with her husband.

Gilthas of the House of Solostaran was Speaker of the Sun and Stars, king of the exiled elf nation. Just before the departure from Khuri-Khan, he had dismissed Kerian as head of his army. Their breach over whether to bring their people to Inath-Wakenti had seemed irreparable, calling up all the old enmity between royal Qualinesti and forest-dwelling Kagonesti. But with the deed done, with their people in the valley, those differences had been overshadowed by the day-to-day needs of the nation and by one other inescapable fact.