Sonder moved quickly.
These lands were not as cruel as the Irath wastes she remembered, but neither were they kind.
Bushes clawed at her clothes, grasses sometimes rose higher than her shoulders, their blades cutting her arms raw as she forced her way forward with no path to follow.
The meadows teemed with life: green hills rolling under the wind, the air loud with the hum of insects.
Yet the farther west she pressed, the more that life soured. The grasses deepened to a bruised hue, pocked with patches of rot. Birds circled above, their cries sharp and urgent, like warnings.
Sometimes, when she stopped by a stream to drink, she thought she heard voices, faint, carried on the reeds. Whispers, or the echo of laughter. They vanished the moment she looked around, leaving only the sound of running water.
She wondered if she should have told the Yellow Mage about the Irath King. But if he truly was who he claimed to be, then either he already knew, or he had no need to.
The march on Irath was no secret. The whole world had heard of it.
By the second day, the land itself seemed to resist her. The grass gave way to sodden thickets that lashed her arms and tangled her steps.
The ground softened beneath her boots, mud clutching at her ankles as though reluctant to let her go.
She did not sleep that night, but wandered through it. Speed was what the hour demanded, and in her state, rest would not have come even if she tried.
She hacked through branch and bramble, progress slowing to a crawl. At last, with a desperate push, she broke free of the undergrowth and stumbled onto open ground.
Before her stretched a vast river, wide as a sea, running north and south beyond sight. Its restless surface mirrored the darkening sky.
Sonder sank to her knees in the wet grass, chest heaving. Across the water, the land rose again, a black line of trees massed against the horizon.
The House of Lustre must lie beyond them.
As she stared across the water at that shadowed treeline, a thought pressed into her mind.
It seemed that all the darkness, all the misery and decay of Irath, had not vanished at all, only been driven outward, into the lands that surrounded it.
And the thought alone almost made her weep.