into the cell, she resisted the urge to reach out a hand as well. Pevan closed her eyes, holding the image from Dagdan's Witnessing in her mind, her speech slowing as she concentrated. "Everyone be... quiet. I can... follow, but need to... think hard."
For a wonder, Notia did as bidden. Pevan pushed the Four Knot from her mind, quickly followed by Dagdan. The world came down to the image of Van Raighan's sleek, lean face disappearing into a circle of sky and the unseen but instinctively known outline of the Gate's residue.
Any number of places for miles around could have been under that patch of open, blue sky, but only one of those places held the afterimage of this Gate's twin. She checked, first, to see if the Wilder had gotten lazy and aligned both Gates the same way around; no such luck. They were too clever for that. How had they known when she was out of the way?
In all likelihood, they'd just watched for the first sign of humans attacking the Wildhawk, which meant being somewhere with line of sight to the town. On the hills around the Federas valley? Nothing in Dagdan's Witnessing showed the kind of strain that came from Gifts employed close to a Sherim, so they were probably somewhere to the North.
Pevan's hold on the remnants of the Gateway started to slip as she pondered the location of the other end. She rode the panicked mental grab down, then relaxed and slipped her mind back around the disturbed patch of floor. Rather than try to figure out the alignment of the Gate's other end by turning it on the spot, she spun the world around herself in a dizzying wash of power, rushing out to the shores of her brain and receding only slowly.
The slightest hitch as the Gate met the orientation of its twin let her fix the whole arrangement in place, and for a second the world bent to her imagination, the cell and the building above it rotating in place through seventy or eighty degrees. Dimly, Pevan heard Dagdan's queasy gulp. Stresses wound up by the outright violation of physics gushed to ground themselves down the path of least resistance; the tunnel cut through Realmspace by the fading Gateway.
The whole structure lit up like alcohol catching fire, and Pevan struck, her own Gateway a whirlpool spinning down through the fabric of the world, drilling through to a mossy patch on a ridge almost eight miles away. As it opened, the Gateway became a hot wire of pain through her brain, right at the limit of what she could hold. She reeled, grabbing one of the bars to steady herself.
There was no way she could hold it open for long. Desperately, she wrapped her mind around the sense of the Gateway's other end, feeling the hill, committing it to memory. Before fatigue tore her skull apart, she let the Gate go, gasping with relief, grasping for the slippery image of the far side. The pain dropped from a fire to a low, throbbing ache, warning Pevan just how close to her limit that single Gateway had taken her.
Behind her, Notia said, "What happened? Where'd the Gateway go?" Her tone made it an accusation.
"Shut up and let me concentrate." Pevan filed the memory of her destination away in a quiet corner of the back of her mind where Notia's pestering couldn't dislodge it. On a good day, she'd be able to make the eight-mile trip in only two Gates, but logic fatigue sent a steam-hammer pound through her head at the mere thought. Better to use three, maybe even four stages. She said, "Dagdan, with me," and dropped through a short Gate to the North side of town.
The Witness followed without question. Unfortunately, so did Notia. Pevan resisted the urge to let the Gate close with the woman still inside.
Notia said, "Hold on, Pevan, what-" and cut off sharply, her teeth clicking together, as Pevan dropped through another Gateway, moving North again, testing her impaired range. She emerged, Notia hard on her heels, into a sharp blast of wind, exposed on the brow two shallow valleys over from the old city.
Dagdan followed through, and Pevan made another jump, bringing them out within striking distance of their destination. Trees dotted the dell before them, giving way to gorse, heather and low shrubs in the bottom where a hidden stream burbled. The far slope rose markedly higher than their current vantage, steep and broken with patches of bare grey-brown limestone, ugly, lumpen scabs on the landscape.
Somewhere on the far side of the vale beyond that grim scarp, Van Raighan fled with his secrets. Notia was saying something, but Pevan blocked her out, reached for the nook at the back of her mind where she'd stored the memory of the previous gate. She cringed at the throb of her head as she spun the final Gate in the sequence, but it opened in the untamed grass at their feet without a hitch.
She hesitated, expecting Van Raighan's Wilder ally to be waiting in ambush, but no attack came. Might the Wilder have a reason to wait, get her isolated? If it was powerful enough to stretch a Gateway across eight miles of the First Realm, her Gate would pose it no obstacle at all. On the other hand, if she went through first and got hit, she might lose the Gate, stranding her with the Wilder, and Dagdan and Notia five miles from a town that might still be under attack from the Wildhawk.
Better to play it safe. "Dagdan, take a look."
The Witness lay down beside the Gate and tucked his chin around the edge. After a moment lying still, he pulled himself through, rolling around the lip of the opening in a slide that looked oddly like falling out of bed. At least, it did until gravity on the far side of the Gateway pulled Dagdan back against the ground, upside-down relative to Pevan.
"All clear." Inverse gravity did nothing to muffle Dagdan's call; he was confident in his judgement, and far too experienced to be confident without total certainty. And he'd spoken quickly enough that there hadn't been time for any Wilder to Coerce him into speaking. Where was Van Raighan's ally? Why not cover the thief's escape?
Pevan took a deep breath and dived head-first into the Gate. It wouldn't help much, but moving faster would make her a harder target. Through the most vulnerable part of the jump, as gravity netted her plunge and hung her for a second in mid-air, she screwed her eyes shut and bowed her head to her chest, arms ahead of her for futile protection. Navigating purely by the feel of the Gate beneath her, she realised Notia had hesitated, and seized the moment to let the Gate snap shut.
The Four Knot would be furious when Pevan collected her again, but at least Pevan had a moment for concentration. Her boots thumped into a carpet of moss coating a slab of stone almost broad and flat enough to be a table, except that it rose less than a foot out of the thick grass around it. She took a few seconds' thought to properly memorise the place; a convenient spot for a Gate next time she needed to travel North in a hurry.
Grass rippled up and down the hillside, soft footing beneath warning that the valley bottom would be marshy. The wind was stiffer here, smelling of a raw, dry cold; the hill was too exposed for much in the way of flowers this early in spring. Clouds scudded across the sky, thicker than back above the town.
"Take a look at this, Pev." Dagdan had walked a little way up towards the crest of the hill, studying the grass.
It wasn't hard to spot what had earned his attention. The grass was bent flat in clumps, green stems silvered by moisture, reflecting daylight made grey by the cloud cover. Footprints, spaced wide. It could just have been the Wilder, long-legged and striding as it arrived for the rescue. But why not arrive by Gate? Or, if the trail was left by someone leaving, why not leave by Gate as well? Rel would have been able to tell.
"What do you think?" Dagdan looked up, his cheery face awkwardly out-of-place on the dreary slope. "Van Raighan?"
"Probably whoever came for him." Pevan thought for a moment. "I'll follow it up once we know the town's safe."
Which meant collecting Notia. Steeling herself, pressing a hand to her brow as if she could push the headache out through the back of her head, she opened a Gateway back to the hill where they'd left the other woman and dropped through. A yelp of surprise answered her feet as they narrowly missed delivering a much-needed kick to the trainee Four Knot's backside.
Pevan used the moment while the Four Knot recovered to get herself upright and steal the first word. "Come on, we need to get back to town." Dagdan emerged fr
om the Gate and she let it close beneath him, spinning open the next one in sequence as fast as she could.
Notia rallied too quickly, though. "What the hell do you think you're playing at, Pevan? You had no right to strand me here!"
"You're not stranded." Pevan waved a hand at the Gate. "Get going."
"Now hang on, missy." It was hard not to blink as Notia waved a finger in her face, almost sticking it up her nose. "I am your Four Knot. We need to have a long talk about your discipline."
Pevan fought down outrage, snapped her gaping mouth shut. She drew strength from Dagdan's quiet obedience as he dropped gracefully through the Gate. "Great. We can do exactly that just as soon as we know the town is safe and Van Raighan's back in custody."
Turning away from the other woman, she stepped off the edge of her Gateway, pulling her knees up to her chin in the drop so that she spun heels-over-head, backwards, to land on the far side. It was cheap showing off, but she felt better at the end of it, sharing a quick, snatched grin with Dagdan. She managed to get her face straight again as Notia emerged from the Gate's mouth in a flurry of skirts and irritation.
Pevan's lip curled as she realised the other woman had jumped expecting Pevan to close the Gate beneath her, not bothering to choose an