Frost on the Grasslands | Shelha Series 1 | ✔

Chapter Eight: Attacker's Tracks

Step lively, my friend, the trail is fading,

Like pond ripples waving or scent in the air;

A tracker's a reader of lives in the making,

And secrets that nobody means to share.

A half day west of Rockhall, the South Forest dissolved into two joined landscapes. The north-side one was a toothy swath of land, stretched along the clifftop. Rock crests as tall as saplings cradled cirques of plants that could not seem to decide whether they belonged in a forest or a desert. The rocks cut the wind to a breath, reducing all sound to the muted buzz of crickets.

Sethral stopped where she could start to feel the heat wafting off of the rocks into the forest. "Alright, Silver. You're the only one camouflaged enough to scout here."

"Can't you fly?"

"This is Drakon territory. Anything we want to see makes itself invisible from above, and I'd be an instant target. Now look." She drew a line in the dirt. "Say this is the cliffs. What we're facing right now is the Westwind Crags; they go a long way west, but they're not wide. Like this." She drew a second line parallel to the first and tapped the space between them. "Maybe a quarter day wide. Their north edge is the cliffs, and their south one is the South River. It makes a gorge here, right after it forks... right here." At their end of the Westwind Crags, the river sent an offshoot almost straight south towards the Highlands. "That's the Seren River. And this block right here, between the two rivers, that's the Leslands. That's where you don't want to go. Ever."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. And you're not going there regardless."

Silversand made a fearsome scowl. "I'm not scouting anywhere if you won't tell me why the Leslands are dangerous."

"Hunting Coppertails."

Silversand gasped. "There are things that hunt Coppertails? Like, besides Drakons?"