As soon as Ali had gone Mave carefully began to lay wards around the camp, settling spider thin weaves of spirit and earth in a protective circle that would be difficult for Shadowspawn to cross. It wasn’t certain that the wards would hold and the assault of a fist of trollocs but it should make them difficult to find. Even the White Tower wasn’t certain of the full capabilities of Myrdraall but these wards had worked the other night at the farm.

She lit the fire with a flick of fire which set the kindling crackling. Mave wasn’t sure a fire was a good idea, there might be more than trollocs in the woods, but according to Ali and her map there were few if any settlements between here and the outskirts of Gheldan. She stared into the fire, enjoying the warmth as she pondered the situation. Crossing the wilderness was likely to take alot of time, time that her enemies, the Tower’s enemies would be using to try to decipher Velma’s research. But what could she do? Risk the ways again? She might end up even further from her goal. Perhaps the pattern had bought her here. If Ali really was a Tav’aern might it be fate that they had met? 

Ali returned almost an hour later, slipping out of the forest with three dead rabbits strung from a stick by twine he must have been carrying. Each of the hares was dabbed with blood where the arrow had found its mark. If he was nervous from wandering a trolloc haunted forest he didn’t show it. He seemed like a tall and handsome hero out of legend. Well if heros out of legend had greenery stuffed through their belt.

“Wild onions,” Ali said as he lopped into the camp and noticed her looking. Mave nodded her head and covered her bush by pulling a pot from the saddlebags of the bedraggled mule. She had no skill at field craft or hunting but she should have imagined it was something like that.

“You didn’t see anything to worry about?” she asked quickly. Ali shook his head as he set the rabbits down on a rock. Their throat had already been cut and the blood drained. She carried the pot down to the stream that flowed between the mossy rocks and filled the pot half full with clear stream water before placing it on the fire to boil. Ali skinned the rabbits with practiced ease and in a few minutes they had rabbit and wild onions boiling in the pot.

“I’m afraid the more I think about it the more I think those trollocs were here to block just the kind of flight we tried,” she said as she settled back on a stone, eyes scanning the woods. 

“That means they are here for you and not for me,” she went on turning the problem over in her mind.

“Until we figure our why, you wont be safe anywhere, trollocs might not attack a city but the Shadow has other agents that might find you.”