It was going to be a day to remember. Javid was due back from his long journey and Lusana was to sit at her first official meeting of the council. Myriam hoped that Javid would be back in time to take his seat at the council meeting, he was a respected member and always had a lot to say about the way the province was governed. The other members listened to him. He got things done!.

Lusana was predictably nervous. For the umpteenth time she asked Myriam to go over her opening statement with her. Myriam was amused, It would take Lusana seconds to make the statement of truth to the council. The one statement that was, by tradition, required by all new members at their first sitting.

‘But it’s not so much the words’, Lusana insisted, ‘it’s the way that they are spoken. I want everyone to have no doubt as to my sincerity as I speak them’

‘Everybody knows that you will make an excellent councillor, that’s why you were elected, young as you are Lusana’, Myriam reassured her sister.

‘You make it sound so easy’, Lusana protested. ‘There are so many problems to overcome, how will I know which way to vote?’.

Myriam smiled, ‘You don’t have to solve all of our problems all by yourself, you will get some help from the other members!’

‘I suppose so’, Lusana didn’t appear to see the humour in Myriams reassurance.

Myriam chuckled. ‘You’ll do just fine, you wait and see’.

A growing commotion out in the village square finally drew them both to the door. The seat of the commotion seemed to be centred about two strangers who had, encouraged by the crowd eager hear the news, secured the rickety podium which dominated the greenery of the village square and was used only infrequently nowadays for public announcements. The two sisters joined the crowd around the podium straining to hear the news being broadcast. Myriam heard the words.
Apparently, earlier that day, a strangers, while passing through the village, had told the of a vicious attack by the dark ones on a caravan which had been skirting the deadlands in the far north of the kingdom .
The caravan had been laden with goods for trade in this area and had been accompanied by several council officials from this very village, who had agreed to join the escorting force of the merchants caravan in return for company and comfort on the return journey.

Lusana turned to Myriam. ‘Javid’

Myriam looked dazed, ‘No....No’

‘Come Myriam’ Lusana tugged at Myriam's sleeve , ‘Back to the house, cast for him, find him!’

‘Yes.....yes, I’ll find him, I have to find him!’.

They forced their way through the crowd back to the house and while Myriam readied herself for another cast Lusana went through the ritual of darkening the room and placing lit candles about to give her sisters magic the added strength it would need for such a long and arduous casting. Myriam doubted that this ritual, thought up by Lusana actually strengthened her casting powers but it did have a calming effect on Myriam and it did appear to help her focus her power more acutely so she waited patiently while Lusana went about meticulously getting everything just right.

Finally Lusana announced. ‘Ready, it’s time to begin’.

Myriam closed her eyes and concentrated her thoughts to the north. At first it was like an imagining of the land about her but soon she could sense that what she was seeing was real. It was difficult to say for certain when the images she was sensing ceased to be those of memory and became actual images of the land . She felt no sudden jolt of transition, it was just the growing sense of certainty that she was indeed flying high above the land watching events take place.
The vague impressions of villagers tending the fields at the outskirts of the village gradually became recognisable as people she knew and took on more solid forms as the sense grew stronger. Then she was away, soaring like a bird in the sky, keen eyes missing nothing on the ground far below. She divided her attentions easily while losing nothing of each individual source.
These were her watchers and she could cast up to a dozen without losing appreciable control or effectiveness of any.
Myriam spread her watchers in a line running from east to west while she travelled steadily northward in search of the Caravan. In an attempt to cover more ground she went higher and higher until she could just sense the mist, many miles to the west across the dead lands.
Once she thought she saw movement in the dead lands, a vague impression of something moving at speed to the mist but then it was gone and she was too intent on finding the remains of the caravan to despatch a watcher in that direction.

After what seemed like hours they reached the Northern region where the caravan was said to have been attacked. The land here undulated in gentle wavelike mounds broken here and there with rocky outcrops of white stone cliff like ridges which dropped sheer for hundreds of feet. The pebbly road south twisted around these cliff faces and hugged the valleys formed by the rolling hills, turning back southward at every opportunity.
Myriam sent two watchers groundward while keeping the others high to afford a wider arch of view from above. Two prone figures lay near the base of a small green hill, limbs tangled beneath lifeless bodies. Summoning her courage, she went to investigate. Neither was her husband Javid. These were soldiers, guards from the main caravan and they had died in battle. They had suffered terrible wounds from huge razor like talons, the bodies had been horribly mutilated. Myriam hoped that the mutilation had happened after death.
She carried on northward, the caravan must be somewhere near. Bodies appeared more regularly along the road, all as badly mutilated as the first two. This was surely the work of the dark ones, not even animals treated prey like that. She was certain that the next body she came across would be that of her husband but time and time again she failed to see the familiar form of Javid lying amidst the blood and gore on the road.
She came to where the main body of the caravan had been ambushed. Dead soldiers lay all around. The animals had been taken, along with all the supplies and the wagons had been stripped of everything metal, even down to the metal bands on the wheel rims. The merchants had been ordered to the central wagon, presumably by the guards and that is where Myriam found them. It was difficult to tell one from the other, or even to count their number. They had suffered greatly before they died.
As she searched the through the horrific remains for any sign of Javid she suddenly realised that some of the tangled limbs she was seeing were too small to belong to the wealthy merchants of the caravan.
The sudden shock of realisation almost caused her to abandon the search and let her watchers just snap back to her waiting body. Children! Then she remembered that the merchants often travelled with their whole families on these long journeys. Only the thought of finding her husband kept her at the scene.
She searched the ground about the remains of the caravan in ever widening circles for hours before finally giving up the search. Of Javid and the other councillors from the village she found no trace. Perhaps the news was false and the councillors did not travel with the caravan.
Perhaps Javid was back in the village already, on his way to greet his wife who had flown with her soul on a fools errand.

Miriam's eyes opened once again to the dimly lit room to find Lusana watching intently for the telltale reaction which would confirm their worse fears as to the fate of Javid and the other councillors . ‘You did not see them , did you!’. Lusana stated, looking closely at Miriam's face.

‘No, but the caravan has indeed been attacked, they are all dead. It’s terrible, those poor people, how they suffered’. Myriam wept.

‘It was the dark ones ?’. Lusana asked, sure of the answer.

‘Yes, they travelled deep into the kingdom to get iron. They took every bit of metal from the caravan, and the animals. They killed the people, all of them, even the children of the merchants’.

‘They must be getting more and more desperate for metal. How far will they go?. How long will it be before they feel strong enough to come out in force and try to take our land?. The mines in the south are still rich with metal, and lightly defended’. Lusana spoke the words which had already formed in Myriam's mind.

‘Lusana’, Myriam whispered urgently, grasping her sisters arm with surprising strength, ‘This was no wild raiding party which attacked the caravan, this was planned and carried through with merciless efficiency. Something is directing the beasts, leading them with a discipline we have never seen before’.

‘Then we have to be ready for them when they come’, Lusana said quietly.

Lusana’s first speech to the council was not the one that she had expected to make. Instead of the formal, ritualistic speech of acceptance which was expected, she spoke of the old days when the Howlim raided the villages almost daily and how once again that threat was upon them. She spoke of her fears that the occasional half hearted raids from which most of Crellendom was subject to today were soon to increase beyond anything that any of them had seen before.

She retold the story of the massacre of the caravan in the North and how the raid was organised and ruthless in it’s execution. Never before had the dark ones been so efficient in the execution of a large raid such as this.
Lusana held the council’s attention while she spoke of her fears that the dark ones had found a leader, one who could enforce discipline upon the wild hordes and forge them into a fighting army of beasts which could march on the kingdom at a moments notice and sweep all opposition aside unless the Crell acted now and strengthened it’s defences accordingly. The threat of an organised army of Howlim rampaging freely through the kingdom could not be ignored, no matter how uncertain the facts were!

Javid’s party had failed to return and not a word had been heard of their whereabouts. The best military minds of the council were absent, lost, probably dead or worse.

The council, as Myriam expected, refused to take any positive action on such flimsy evidence after Lusana’s rousing speech, but the sombre mood of the councillors as they left the chamber was sign enough that she had planted the seed of awareness which would surely grow.

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