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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 3068775" data-attributes="member: 3448">The next several days passed uneventfully.  At one point, a herd of antelope charged across the path, pursued by a great cat, but Ilsbet stayed out of their way and watched as they passed by her.The Seachen lands lie in a great bowl, with mighty bluffs rising up along its borders to lead to the level of the rest of the Spice Lands.  Towards the end of the fifth day of her escape, Ilsbet entered the switchback path that climbs one of the bluffs to the fort that guards the northwest approach.  The trail was long and arduous, but by the end of daylight, she had reached the gate.One of the guards at the gate held up a hand.  “Halt.”  She looked Ilsbet up and down, noting the rags on her.  “What business brings you to the edge of our lands, slave?”Ilsbet hefted her backpack, glad that if her pursuers had been slain, news had yet to reach the border forts.  “My mistress has sent me to travel abroad and deliver messages and goods to her trade partners.  It was not my place to ask what she sent or why.”“No,” agreed the guard.  “It seems a shame that she would send you abroad without guards, where you are sure to be assaulted and gang-raped by the men of the outside world, and likely killed.”Ilsbet paused; she knew that was what they said the world beyond the Seachen lands held, but she viewed that peril as still better than the hell that had defined her life as a slave.  “It is her right to do with me as she wishes, even if I am raped and murdered.  I did not question her orders.”“It is indeed her right.  It just seems a waste,” the guard said, before shaking her head as if to clear away the thought. “There is an inn within the fort, to the left as you enter.  You will be able to get a dinner there, and a space in the common room for the night.”In case she was being watched, Ilsbet went in to the inn as a slave actually on a trade mission would have.  While there, she even took advantage of the opportunity to eat a real meal.  Her rations would last her another week, at least, but any extra meal was a little more time before she would go hungry, and after days of cold jerky, even the mediocre stew was welcome.  After the dinner, Ilsbet slipped out of the inn through the side-door onto the alley that served as the inn’s privy.  She then slipped to the end of the alley, and carefully picked her way from shadow to shadow until she reached the fort’s north gate.  The gate was still open, although she knew that it would be closed soon.  The guard contingent on the approach from beyond the Seachen lands was much heavier than the pair guarding the entrance to the valley, but they paid her no mind as she walked casually through.  Their duties were to guard the fort against intruders from the north, not to prevent escape.   Ilsbet would have liked to start the trip into foreign lands at the beginning of a day, but even one night in the inn would greatly increase her risk of recapture.  With freedom so close at hand, she could not take that risk.She traveled several hours, deep into the evening and through the early hours of night to put distance between her and the fort before scratching out a rough bed of moss and leaves.  But no hunters roused her at night, and as day gave way to day, she began to believe that she was actually free.  But while free, she was not safe.In the middle of the night after the third day of travel past the fort, she woke with a start at a pain in her neck.  A large spider, nearly two feet in diameter, had stung her with a vicious double stinger.  Ilsbet fought the pain and murmured the words to a Scorching Ray, but between the surprise, the confusion of suddenly awakening, and the pain, she garbled enough of the words and gestures to prevent the spell from taking effect.  But even if she did not succeed in killing the spider, she certainly frightened it.  In long jumps, it bounded away from her, suddenly convinced that its prey was not as helpless as it had thought.Ilsbet rubbed at the puncture.  The wound had not really hurt her, but she was fairly certain that the spider had poisoned her, even though she could not yet feel any effect.  Just to be on the safe side, Ilsbet cast an Invisibility effect.  If the poison did weaken her, she wanted the best chance to hide that she could get.  Within minutes, the precaution paid off.  A wave of nausea wracked her body as the poison nearly overwhelmed her, and she collapsed into a feverish unconsciousness.</blockquote>

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