''The wind and rain for company, and yet I'm filled with bliss,'' Olidra silently quoted a Vahnatai travelling song. He felt in the mood for singing out loud, but was all too aware of his lack of ability in that respect. The silence of the evening around him had its own appeal, and he did not want to break it with his voice.
The lizard he was sitting on seemed to be in equally high spirits as her rider. Excited to leave the city in what must be – Olidra quickly calculated – over a year, she was eagerly pacing ahead, hardly able to hold herself back as he reined her in to a slow walk. Urgency or not, he wanted to have some time to take in the countryside and enjoy the sights a bit.
Or what little was remaining of the sight. The sun had sunk until it was perched on the horizon behind him, and the land was already turning to a a dark grey. He was riding on the road that ran up the side of the hill east of the city, and hoped to travel a lot of the night through.
Once he arrived at the glade ''ieb'hron'' around midnight – likely before then, at his current pace –, he would camp there. The road was completely safe until it went deeper into the woods, and he could venture that far without daylight. The Windy Forest glade was an excellent spot for a traveller to rest, well sheltered against the wind despite its name, on solid, dry ground.
And close by the testing caves of the ''forachid'', too. The entrance was only a few minutes away from the road that led on to Mehdav, and lay past the glade. ''It was here that Aidra slept on the evening before the exam, which got him expelled,'' he remembered, and all the worries were suddenly back.
''Where has he gone?'' The further away he was from Avtris, and the more he thought about it, the more flimsy his hope that Aidra had reached Mehdav looked. ''And what about the plot? These conspirators... Pinra and Korvah... what are they up to?'' At least that was one worry he could firmly put at the back of his mind. ''Find Aidra now, worry about the academy later.''
He had reached the top of the hill and looked around him. Behind, the view of the Sapphire City: Its roofs now mirroring the midnight-blue sky above, the streets were empty in the darkness. The town was quiet, but hundreds of little pinpoints of light where shining through its windows, showing that it was not entirely sleeping. Ahead, the thinly wooded plain, divided by the straight road leading northeast. He rode on.
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The plains were eerily silent apart from the sound of his hoofsteps, and Olidra drew his cloak tight around himself to fend off the cold that was beginning to invade his body in spite of the weak warmth charm he had put around himself. Above the trees, the twin gibbous moons hung low above the horizon, at the same time soothing and menacing.
Kuhvi, his lizard, had been slowed down by the cold at first, but another, stronger warmth charm had done well for the cold-blooded steed, and she was presently galloping along quite fast. In another two hours, he would have reached ''ieb'hron''.
''All in a single day,'' he marvelled. Had it really been only this morning that he had been walking through the streets of Avtris, and only midday when the study of Aidra's diary had given him the revelation that should have come so many months ago? So much had happened in the intervening time...
But the day would soon be over, he realized from the position of the two gibbous moons. ''They are like the hands on a clock,'' he remembered teaching the astronomy students himself. ''Their phase can tell you the time of the month, their position the time of day. The comparison of their relative phases can reveal the season and would even tell the year if necessary.'' It was getting close to midnight. He had been riding more slowly than anticipated, but he was gaining now, and would be arriving soon.
The silence and darkness left no distraction to his mind, and his thoughts were running freely. ''What about the conspiracy?'' The laws of magic were strict. Two men would have to be very bold indeed to plan their violation within the heart of an academy as reputable as Oriath. ''Why the inquisition? Why would the agency send in auditors when none of the locals had any suspcions?'' Could Aidra have been not the only one who had become witness to suspicious incidents? Or had someone turned their cloak?
''With the audit still in progress, with how much paranoia will they regard strange behaviour?'' Olidra suddenly had a nagging worry. ''I left under the cover of darkness on short notice with no explanation whatsoever – will that not look suspicious?'' His only hope was when he returned, accompanied by Aidra as a witness, any such suspicions would lose their base as he could reveal the true conspiracy. Assuming it ''was'' the conspiracy that the auditors had come to investigate, of course. And assuming the auditors didn't take enough of an interest to follow and hunt him down before he returned.
His thoughts turned back to the events of today. The people he had met... ''how easily can I be tracked?'' He realized with sinking spirits, that he had been about as discrete in today's preparations as a child playing at being a spy. ''The lady at the food store can tell them everything, assuming the auditors have enough patience to sift through the stories of her extended family. They will know I am heading to Mehdav.'' The fake herbalist could prove more difficult to talk to, unless he was offered money. The crystal trader and blacksmith would be only secondary sources, as they knew nothing of his journey, but their information would be interesting – the amount of supplies he had acquired were for more than a simple trip to the next town. ''Who else did I see?''
The memory of the lizard-rider was like another revelation.
“How could I have been so stupid? This is still the middle of the examination season! There was another test scheduled three days ago – it was the morning of the fourth day, and the Proctor was returning from the ''forachid''!” He was so agitated that he had begun talking out loud. He did not care, and just went on, holding a one-sided conversation with Kuhvi.
“He was alone, and on the way back from the cavern. That means the candidate died,” Olidra commented sadly. “Yet more potential claimed by our merciless testing system.” He did not know who the candidate was – only the members of examination board themselves knew the names – and was only aware of the schedule by which the tests were held.
“He need not be dead,” he tried to calm himself. “If he was sufficiently bitter, he might have decided to leave without returning for his assessment at all.” But then why the great hurry? “From the way his lizard almost ran me over, there was something really urgent about the outcome of this particular test. I can't think how it was something other than a death...” he trailed off, lost in thought.
It was two full hours until he reined in Kuhvi and dismounted. The glade lay there in the moonlight before him, each blade of grass lit in sharp contrast even in the depth of night. He renewed the warmth charm on himself and Kuhvi, then spread the blanket on the ground, wrapping himself up in it.
The winter sky above was clear enough to show what seemed like over a hundred stars, and the sight of them, as Olidra stared upward into infinity, stayed with him in his dreams as he drifted into an uneasy, but very restful sleep.
