They hit the stone hills at dusk on the fourth day.
Hills wasn’t quite the right word. It was broken country a long stretch where something ancient had shoved stone pillars and jagged ridges up through the flat packlands, the way teeth press through soft gum. The pillars dwarfed the great hall back in Ashenveil. Between them ran narrow, twisting corridors thick with shadow. A column of eight riders could move through here for a full day without a single soul spotting them from any direction.
Tarn took the lead.
He’d ridden through the stone hills twice before, on southern patrols when he was younger. Without stopping to think, he guided them toward a small spring at the base of a particular pillar three miles in. The horses caught the smell of water before anyone in the saddle did. They
