The path continues on and on through the forest. The white rocks that littered the forest floor have disappeared. Maybe they weren’t natural after all, but some ancient border between the nations. Mandollel might know, but he’s talking about the mission and I don’t want to interrupt him to ask. Finally, someone might explain something to me too.

  “The first location is just across the border. We’ll reach it by nightfall. We’ll camp at the edge of the forest for the rest of the day and move through the open plains only once it gets dark again.”

  This whole plan still makes no sense to me. I know teleporting around Kerthar would have been a bad idea. Lictor said that the third teleport would already have drawn countermeasures. Why isn’t a whole army doing this? Though bringing an army might have been too slow to organize, even with access to the Mountain Ride.

  I shadow my eyes from the sun. It sits directly above us, hotter than I’m used to. “Why are we really doing this? This can’t have been the best way to handle this.”

  “That’s the weird part. This is,” Finna says. She’s been quiet for a while, just listening to Mandollel talk and looking happy about her backpack that’s lighter now. “He took me to watch what happened to some of their other tries.”

  Rworg and Mandollel perk up at that. Mandollel even stops walking for a moment and glances back at her. Seems they all have their own versions of being recruited and what they have seen.

  “They took maybe fifty people on a single Ride. He said they’d risk it just once and he was still white as a sheet when we went. The Kertharians swarmed over them like ants. Mages popped out of the air, left and right. Portals opened for soldiers to run through. The bastard got an arrow through the dome that time.” She smiles at the memory, a gleam in her eyes. “Another time, they teleported ten guys in at different locations. We watched with Lictor from far away as they all exploded. He said teleportation causes a ripple or something and that the Kertharians have locked down the border. Five people, in a single group, were the maximum that didn’t tip them off.”

  “Huh,” I say. Tenorsbridge really has gone to insane lengths to get this far. Or is it just Lictor, who has? From everyone else’s viewpoint, they were just having breakfast while a whole war was planned and years of preparation happened. They really must have trusted him.

  Lictor. Alone, trying things out thousands of times. Having the same discussions over and over again, seeing people getting killed and arrows shot through his own head probably quite a few times, too. I feel almost sorry for him.

  I do. Even if I don’t want to.

  We walk a moment in silence as I think. Rworg grunts lightly with every other step and Finna and Mandollel both look to be deep in thought.

  “I guess all that doesn’t really matter, because we are here now,” I say finally. “Tell me about the stakes. How are we supposed to use them?”

  “We just stick them into the ground,” Finna says.

  Mandollel sighs. “It’s a bit more involved than that.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, we have to watch the magic take hold.”

  Finna makes a blrrrr sound with her lips. “That takes maybe like an hour.”

  Rworg seizes the moment and sits down on a tree stump next to the path. Beads of sweat drip from his brow.

  “I didn’t say it was much more involved,” Mandollel says, but even he chuckles lightly. “Anyway, the stakes are designed to pull ambient mana from the earth. They will create an anchor for the device to focus on the effect it creates. The magical engineering is honestly quite impressive. Especially concerning the timetable.”

  “They just can’t have done all this in just two days. Does anyone believe that for real?” I ask.

  Mandollel shakes his head. “Not really.”

  “No way,” Finna says.

  “You don’t trust our allies?” Rworg asks, arms dangling between his legs as he sits.

  Mandollel and Finna stare at Rworg for a moment. He cracks a smile and shrugs, winces.

  Mandollel chuckles lightly. “Good one, but try to avoid moving your right arm.”

  “Seriously!” I shout. “The device was meant for blowing up the whole country. Have they been planning on attacking Kerthar or why did they have something like this?”

  “They have a lot of crap,” Finna says. “I went through most of the storages before Lictor caught me. And he wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t cheated.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Mandollel waves to get us all moving again. “We can speculate while walking. Come.”

  Rworg reaches out and I offer him my hand to help him up. My hand vanishes into his and I grab on with my other hand. There’s no sensible way to grip his enormous fist, so I hold on to the edge of his bracer. He leans on my hands to rise, and I don’t so much pull him up as try to keep from falling over.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  I should be the one thanking him. There’s no way I can repay what he did, even if I help him up every time he rises until we’re both older than Gran. Even with what he said, I just can’t think of it the way he does. Maybe one day I will, like he said.

  Mandollel taps his foot and adjusts the massive sword on his back as he waits. “My hypothesis is that Tenorsbridge hasn’t been preparing for war, not as such. They just have too much time on their hands to prepare for unlikely events and too little common sense to realize when they prepare something that’s much worse than anything that might happen.”

  “I can vouch for them not having any common sense,” Finna says. “I’m still angry about the spoons.”

  I chuckle. Judging from his face, Rworg has no idea what she’s talking about. I’m not sure either if she told me the story about the wizard shrinking the spoon on a Ride or in the real world.

  There’s not that long to go before we’re completely beyond what any of us has experienced before. I can’t wait.

  “As I was saying,” Mandollel continues. “They prepare a lot. The Mountain Ride just gave them a tool to do it beyond every sensible limit. I think they will calm down later, but as the current situation is so dire and their toy is brand new…” He lets his voice trail off.

  “I wouldn’t really call it a toy.” It feels ridiculous that such a thing exists in the world. But I guess the world is much larger than I really understood.

  Mandollel scoffs. “In proper hands, it might not be. They’ve turned it into a trifle, a gimmick, a mirage of security. Alas, such is the way of people.” He waves his hands dismissively.

  Everyone walks on quietly for a while.

  “But not of elves?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  “There are no elves where I come from,” Rworg says seriously. “Too few trees.”

  “We don’t need…” Mandollel says, but stops after he turns to look at Rworg and sees the smile he’s holding back. He pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “Next time, I won’t agree to anything unless I can pick the team myself.”

  Finna guffaws. I smile as well.

  Still, I can’t help being interested. I’ve seen mages before, but never an elf. They live in legends. The stories about their forests are impossible. Tales of walls that circle around something, but if you ever get to their other side, you’re still on the outside. Yet, somewhere where you have never been before. The story never made any sense to me. There are stories of the same elves appearing over multiple millennia, but even they don’t live that long. I think?

  “We’re soon at the edge of the forest,” Mandollel says.

  The forest is thinning. Trees are further apart, thinner and stubbier. The sky is higher than back home, much too blue and without a single cloud in sight. The underbrush is squat, scrubby, the leaves waxy and dark green. Staying hidden here will be harder, everything visible from further away. At least we haven’t seen any more teratomes or Kertharians. I was planning to hunt for something to eat, but with Rworg stomping about and Finna muttering and spitting constantly, that’s not going to happen.

  “This is as far as we came. I know a place,” Finna says, pointing north. “It’s that a way.”

  “I’ll find us something fresh to eat.” I’ve had days of meeting new people and learning new things packed into the last twelve hours. Getting to do something familiar and spend a moment with just myself sounds like bliss. The area looks suitable for shooting hare. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

  “I guess I could cook it by magic?” Mandollel says, eyeing the rabbit carcasses.

  I gutted, cleaned and prepared them already, so I’m not sure why he is so hesitant. Though I guess we shouldn’t light an actual fire this close to the border.

  “Can you just do whatever you want with magic?” Finna asks. “Could I do it too? Opening locks would be useful.”

  Mandollel takes off a large pot from his backpack. It’s been strapped on the outside of the bag, a shallow dome with a lid stacked on top of it. “How long a lecture do you wish for?”

  “Actually, I’m going to go check on Rworg.”

  “I’m well,” Rworg says.

  “And sitting right there,“ Mandollel says.

  Did they spend all the ten Rides practicing witty banter and heckling each other? I smile at the thought, but realize I don’t know anything about any of them. “How did you learn magic in the first place? Or everything that you can do?” I wave a hand at the pot, the handle of the sword hanging on his belt, at everything.

  Mandollel finger traces the side of the pot and leaves a faintly glowing line behind it. He’s drawing the runes directly onto the dull gray metal surface, instead of drawing them into the air, like I’ve seen everyone else do. He leans closer and breathes on the runes, both hands holding the pot. The runes flare like embers, their blue shine growing brighter. “Hmm, as Rworg needs to rest and we have to wait for the sun to go down, I guess I could. Entering the plains in broad daylight wouldn’t be prudent.”

  I smell the air, trying to catch the scent of ozone, but it’s not there. Maybe this wasn’t a real spell? What part of magic even causes that smell?

  Mandollel gestures at me to put the rabbits into the pot, waking me from my thoughts. I do, and the meat starts to sizzle the moment it hits the bottom. The pot is amazingly light and thin, I can almost see light shine through it. Actual fire would probably burn right through it, but now it radiates intense heat.

  Mandollel turns the rabbits around with a long and slender knife, searing the skin. He uses no oil, but the meat doesn’t stick to the pot. The scent of the meat washes over me, but it’s weird that there’s no smoke or burning wood with it. My mouth starts to water just the same.

  Mandollel waves his arm at Finna. She passes him a water skin, then stands and walks to Rworg.

  “In the small pocket,” he says, gesturing at his backpack.

  Finna pulls out a small pouch of something and tosses it to Mandollel, who catches it with his other hand without even looking up from the pot. Finna rolls her eyes.

  “I heard that,” Mandollel says, then pulls open the threads holding the pouch closed. He takes something from the pouch and pours it into the pot from his fist, a stream of white and green and brown. “Rabbit meat is so lean that we’ll let it sit for at least two hours.”

  The whiff of steam smells exactly like the tents of the Kertharians. My stomach rumbles.

  “So, a tale about learning magic?” Mandollel says. “Very well, just remind me to channel more mana into the runes once they start to dim.”