Garinor looked into the woman’s eyes, then reached out his hand and offered her the bloodstone. She gave him a patient smile and then turned toward a tree that had a door in it. She opened it for him and gestured silently for him to go through.
Like the times before, there was a void of darkness that didn’t go away until he closed the door. The woman hadn’t followed him, but she had shown him the way out. The room he entered was in a very small barn and the scent of hay filled his nostrils. Something about the room was unlike the other rooms he had visited. It seemed more real to him, as if it completely filled his senses. He knew in his heart that he had been freed from the labyrinth.
He walked across the barn floor and when he reached the outside, he saw the leaders of the brown and white camps approach him from a small house nearby.
“You have returned,” said the woman.
“But without the stone,” added the man.
“Yes,” Garinor nodded. “I failed in the end.”
“Not entirely, for perhaps you have learned something on this journey. But if not, you still are alive to continue your quest. I believe you were heading to the north?”
“Yes,” he said again.
She motioned him over to a white horse that was already saddled and looked anxious to run. “Climb aboard and go the north with speed. And may you meet your destiny.”
Numb, Garinor did as he was told. The horse wasn’t well-trained to carry him, but it was a fast horse and he clung on tightly. They rode due north alongside a stream and at one point passed by a house on the eastern bank. Dejected about his failure in the labyrinth, he skipped past the house and kept on course.
As the evening sun sank from the sky, Garinor found himself forced to stop. He approached a large contingent of men who looked as if they were an army on patrol. He worried about interfering with them, but he was also hungry and disappointed, and he wondered if perhaps he should tempt fate and stop to ask them for directions.
The horse pawed at the ground, anxious for Garinor to decide one way or another. It seemed to be nervous about the group, but Garinor kept hold on the reins while he decided. He could run off to the east and try to go around the army, but he feared stumbling into a sentry and being taken for a spy. The horse’s whinnies grew louder as he waited there, and he needed to decide before the horse itself gave away their position.