Chapter 7
Tharnirion
Rodger emerged from the palace bolthole into dense woods. While the woods were much too thick to ride through, their very thickness made tracking the princess much easier. Her footsteps may not have left much trace on the deciduous leaf litter, but Rodger's expert eye noted those traces, and also noticed the odd twig that had been bent by the passage of a human sized figure. Of more interest, Rodger also found a tiny scrap of green silk gauze that appeared to have caught on the broken stub of a twig, a rather expensive cloth that was out of place in the wilderness. It wouldn't be all that easy to spot, given its leaf-green colour, and a garment made from it might camouflage its wearer, but it also seemed that it was delicate, and more likely to get caught and tear. Finding another, slightly larger chunk, Rodger wondered to himself whether the princess' outfit had been chosen specifically to leave traces behind. The scrap of cloth had been cut, but had been torn at one corner, as if it had been made to tear loose easily. He hadn't discussed his love of hunting with Aichiko, so it seemed likely that Jade didn't know about it, and it was a reasonable conclusion to guess that no other serious contenders had any decent ability with hunting given that she was leaving such obvious traces behind her... at least obvious to
him
.
On reaching the edge of the woods, Rodger could see traces of a person's passage through the grass in the direction of the travelling stone that Xenia had mentioned. It would be faster from this point to ride, but it would also make a more obvious trail than walking. However, anyone coming from the woods would be highly unlikely to have a mount, and so would lose ground even if Rodger was riding and left unmissable tracks. So, risks calculated, Rodger pulled Bronze's case from his armour, commanded it to become large, and set off at a gallop for the travelling stones, casually following the grass bent in Jade's wake. On arriving at the stone gateway, he had a choice of direction; the tracks didn't show which direction Princess Jade had taken. However, he had a rough map that he had drawn by hand from library maps. He pulled it out and examined it. From that, he could see that one choice would take her much closer to Lysannum, and the other led further away. Given the hordes of suitors whom she would no doubt consider to be unsuitable, she would not risk encountering them.
After putting the map away again, Rodger travelled through the stones to the further destination, where he faced another choice, between travelling onward via the stones to a destination in a forest, or crossing the plains to a forest with a different set of travelling stones on a different branch entirely. Rodger cast about for tracks, and thought that he had found some, leading across the plains. He estimated that a person on foot could have crossed the plains, given the head start Jade enjoyed...
if
she had exceptional stamina, which the stories he had heard strongly suggested that she did. He pulled out his spyglass and examined the plains, but saw nothing of interest. Still, it was worth taking the time to go look, he decided, and reined Bronze around and set off at a gallop, leaning forward in the saddle more so he could examine the ground ahead, if only poorly given the speed, rather than to increase his speed.
Princess Jade had dashed from the woody copse where she had emerged from the bolthole, and through the travelling stones, taking care to head away from Lysannum, where there were likely any number of would-be suitors who could never catch her unless she made a foolish mistake and blundered into them. She was setting her suitors a test of their hunting skills, and not one of how lucky they were. Going in the other direction took her out into the countryside, where her pursuers would need to rely upon skill rather than luck.
Once there, Jade had a choice: to take the next leg of the travelling stone network, try to hide and sneak through the forest, or to leave the forest, cross the plains, and enter the forest there, with its own branch of the travelling stone network. Unlike Rodger, Jade knew that to continue along this branch of the travelling stone network would lead her to a recently-established village, where her arrival would be noted, and she was not yet far enough from the travelling stone here to be safe from immediate discovery. That left only the plain. Fortunately, herds of grazing beasts, both wild and domesticated -- cows and sheep for the most part, with some deer -- kept the grassland cropped short and too disturbed by countless hooves for her footprints to be readily noticeable. However, there was no time to waste, if she was seen on the plains, the challenge would cease to be a test of her suitors' hunting skills, and more a test of stamina. While she was confident that she'd win such a test too, even against a mounted contestant, it wasn't what she was interested in.
Jade took a swig of water from her skin, then slung it back over her shoulder, and took off at a run for the forest across the plain. It took her over an hour, she estimated, based on the position of the sun. She revelled in the feeling of being able to pick her own destination and let herself go, without having to worry about where her bodyguards were or would be. Her legs and chest burned with her efforts, and she delighted in the sensation. Lesser runners might have complained about the pain of prolonged exertion, but Jade enjoyed it, feeling almost euphoric as she pushed herself to her greatest speed. Her long black hair stopped flowing in the wind behind her as she ran, as the sweat of her exertion plastered it to her scalp and back like a soggy length of rope. One good thing about her flowing, layered, gauzy dress was that its open weave allowed the breeze to flow through it, carrying away sweat and heat.
Jade reached the forest, but she did not stop, only reducing her speed so that she could safely avoid any obstacles rather than running headlong into them with too much speed to avoid them. She leaped across the stream that ran through the forest, and continued on to the travelling stones. However, while these travelling stones led to two perfectly good destinations for her purpose, there was another good alternative. She ran to the travelling stones, and slowed and stopped carefully so as to still leave tracks that suggested that she had passed through them, then she walked backwards, very carefully, placing her feet in her own footprints until she got to the stream, where she jumped into the water.
The usual course of wisdom when breaking one's trail by backtracking to water was to always travel downstream, since upstream disturbances could lead to the water becoming clouded, and that would flow downstream and be visible to any pursuers. However, Jade was a good swimmer, and the stream was deep and slow, so she swam against the flow of the water until she came to a waterfall. Jade took advantage of the spray from the falls to cover the water that drained from her clothing as she climbed out of the water onto the rocks beside the waterfall. She stood there a minute, allowing the majority of the water in her clothes to drain onto the already-wet rocks, rather than onto drier ground, before she moved on into the forest. She considered the land before her, and decided to head for one last Travelling Stone, one on yet another branch of the magical network, and most importantly, the direction she would travel led to a nexus of four paths, where she could choose any of them or set out into the forest. That should be sufficient to give her the time she needed to find somewhere that she could rest.
Rodger picked up Jade's trail at the edge of the forest to which she had run. It had taken almost an hour of riding up and down the forest's edge to find a trace of her, but now Rodger shrunk and pocketed Bronze so that he could track her on foot. He made good time, since Jade hadn't been moving slowly, trying to conceal her trail, but rather seemed intent on reaching some location quickly. When Rodger came to the river tributary that she had leapt across, he leaped across too... then brought himself to a sudden stop. One of the prints that he was following was doubled... only barely, but just enough for his expert eye. He followed the trail onward, looking very closely now, and found another doubled footprint, and a third and a fourth. That was enough to convince him that Jade had doubled back to the stream... an old trick. He was impressed at the skill with which she had executed it too, her feet had been placed down only a small fraction of an inch out of perfect alignment in a few of the prints.
On arriving back at the stream, Rodger faced a quandary. Which way had Jade gone? Conventional wisdom said that any experienced person would go downstream to save energy and avoid having their spoor washed downstream to their pursuers. However, this particular stream was deep and slow, and it was entirely possible that an energetic young woman might swim upstream undetected. Rodger must consider that his quarry was intimately familiar with this entire region, whereas he had only swotted up on the lay of the land from books and hearsay over the last couple of days. However, he had his map... if only copied by hand out of a number of books.
Rodger unfolded his map and examined it closely. He had drawn in woods, hills, mountains... and the network of Traveling stones. Now that he looked at the travelling stone network, he noticed that there was a major nexus within one step of the new line of stones, with a travelling stone not really all that much beyond the waterfall that lay upstream. If she reached
that
nexus, she could effectively break her trail, and it would take quite a lot of luck to pick it up again.
Rodger considered his options... he could continue pursuing Princess Jade, or he could try to get ahead of her, and wait for her to come to him. He looked at the map. It was rough country between the falls and the travelling stones it seemed that she was seeking, and the going would be very difficult... but he had Bronze. There was a good reason for it to be a royal treasure of Galadon, and that reason was that Bronze was inexhaustible. A living horse could only gallop for a relatively short time before needing to rest, but Bronze could gallop faster than any horse alive, and could keep it up for as long as its rider could remain astride it, and little things like rough or thorny brush wouldn't faze it, as long as its rider was appropriately armoured.
Speed would be of the essence, Rodger could not afford to waste a moment by travelling upon anything other than the most direct route. Fortunately, since in Etherion's universe, there were four magnetic poles, Northing, Easting, Westing and Down, and like poles attract rather than repel one another, and the magnetic poles coincide with the points of the tetrahedral worlds, a compass with four needles capable of independent movement can tell its user not just direction, but can be used to calculate an absolute position on -- or above or inside -- that world. So, Rodger having marked his scribbled map with the locations of points of interest in their correct relative spatial positions, he could easily work out the correct direction and distance in which to travel with a few pieces of straight wire held appropriately upon the map. So, in less time than it takes to explain how he did it, Rodger had a bearing to follow, and once astride Bronze with a compass in his hand and pointing in the right direction, he commanded his steed to its full speed, put his compass away, then hunkered down behind its neck and hung on.
Bronze's hooves beat against the ground like a drummer performing a drum roll, and it galloped directly toward its destination, deviating only for tree trunks and large branches; everything else it just pushed through, twigs and branches screeching against its metal hide or Rodger's plate armour, or crackling as they were broken or were brushed aside. The din and whipping of branches against Rodger's armour went on and on, and Rodger dared not look up for fear of being swept from his steed's back by a low hanging branch, even though he was wearing his helmet. Then, suddenly, most of the din was over, and there was only the too-rapid pounding of hooves and the whistling of the wind in Rodger's armour.
Rodger knew that the travelling stone nexus was sited upon another plain, and the relative silence meant that he was close, so he looked up, and brushed broken foliage from himself. He could see the circle of stones... and he could see that he was late.
Princess Jade, wearing a tattered garment of leaf-green silk that did little to hide her body, abruptly stepped out from between two of the travelling stones. Rodger drew in a deep breath so that he could shout to her before she stepped through another travelling stone gateway, but even
that
was too late.
