The Tree of Black and White (The Shadowdancer Chronicles, Book Two)

Chapter Seven

Selene woke to meat sizzling on a rock next to the fire. She stretched and glanced around the makeshift camp. Red was reading from an odd looking book, while Kareth performed his ritual camp cleanup. Jon would be out dusting the trails, no doubt, ensuring that their tracks were not stumbled upon by anyone that might be looking. She was becoming used to such mornings. The light had just begun show its splendor, but Selene knew that they would be gone, moving before it crested the tree line.

            But at that particular moment, Selene was famished.

            “I don’t suppose you could throw some eggs in, maybe a little butter?”

            Kareth glanced over at her and smiled. “You could always climb a tree,” he said, pointing to the canopy that towered a hundred feet above them.

            “I’d rather not,” she replied with a shutter. Heights were definitely not her favorite thing.

            “You can learn a lot from the top of a tree,” Jon’s voice cut in. “Like the fact that there are only seven leagues between us and the wall.”

            Selene glanced to Jon and then to her father, but he paid no heed to the news. “Mordom,” she pondered. “We are near Mordom. I have heard stories about Sir Ian.”

            “Sir Ian is older than I, my dear,” Kareth stated. “I am afraid he is not the man he once was.”

            She frowned at that, an eyebrow raised in confusion, but Red’s voice stopped any retort she had been brewing.

            “The Lord of Mordom is who we have to worry about, not its heir.” Red placed the book he had been reading away in his pack after carefully wrapping it in cloth. “I have felt something…odd, in the Araj since moving closer to Mordom. It is a presence, a familiar one…”

            “Familiar how,” Kareth asked.

            “I have felt it before, a long time ago.” Red put his pack over his shoulder. “Come, we can reach the western perimeter by nightfall if we hurry.”

            Selene raised an eyebrow, but Kareth waved off her concern as Red turned and began moving south. “He will tell us when he is ready,” Kareth said with a smile.

            Understanding Red was an experience all in itself. He was not as her father had spoke of him in his stories. This Red was different, a more serious version…perhaps too serious. He was always speaking of the Araj like it was something that everyone understood. Selene did not understand it, and though Kareth and Jon seemed to act like they did, she knew that there was something about the Araj that even they were not aware.

            As she was gathering her things she heard Jon whisper to Kareth, though she was certain she was not meant to hear.

            “Do you think it is possible? I heard the stories as well,” Jon whispered.

            Kareth glanced at him, and then at Selene, as if he knew she was eavesdropping despite her best efforts. “Later,” was his only reply.

            The rest of the day moved on without pause. They stopped to rest little, making their way across the northern face of the Salt Mountains quicker than anticipated. She caught up to Kareth then, not quite sure why she felt she needed an explanation, but curious nonetheless.

            “Father,” she said, still getting over the awkwardness that was calling a man who had been a complete stranger only months before, father. “What exactly is the Araj?”