A heron the colour of sea-foam raised its eyes, and launched into the sky. Its voice, when it spoke to the air and the earth was the mingling of ghost-songs and distant memories of herons that had been alive a thousand years ago. It circled over remnants and ruins: places that had once teemed with life, and were now eaten by age, overgrown by weeds, crumbled to dust. It flew westward, gliding over the massed camps of humanfolk and scarle. They turned their eyes upwards, and cried out that a charmed enemy and spy was above them. Bows were strung, and arrows were loosed, but too late. The mounts of the draig-riders spread their wings and beat slow, rhythmic flaps upwards, but they were too slow.
So the bird (that was not a bird) turned north, sailing over the Dragon Gates, which had not been so much as a dream when she last walked here. And so, she followed the road north, curious, searching, hunting.
At last she caught a scent of the death-magic that the young woman had spoken of, and the heron descended, wings outstretched, casting no shadow, for this was a body made as much from illusion as mass.
She found a man walking alone in the woods and gardens that surrounded an unpleasant fortified tower. He looked at her, and there was startlement and fear in his eyes. The stench of necromancy was all about him. She could almost taste the tethers he had spun out: chords of bleak magic to bind and hold tortured souls.
But, she thought: this was not his magic. No. It was a borrowed magic.
And there were other, still older and more earthy hints about him.
There was something that he carried.
An object. Or perhaps a broken piece of an object?
A thing of great and ancient power.
She alighted on the ground to get a better look at him, unafraid, and yet cautious.