《Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People》


 Opening

    The people


    And the King


    Are the Kingdom.


    The winds of early spring keen over the shores of the Celta Sferyn, the Dragon Sea of the north, troubling the red sands at Rodrantir, the jet-black grains among the black boulders of M¨®r Feria, and the white sands at white-walled Andrastir, ancient queen of cities. The dead are restless in their cairns; armor upon the bones of warriors centuries gone trembles and rattles: new peoples walk these lands and do not know the names of the dead.


    A millennium past, a mighty race rose out of the rich hills of Peria, makers of a vast empire. They called themselves the Sferiari, the People of the Dragon, possessing great art, great science, and great magic. Rumor of their power spread far beyond the bounds of empire, and that alone helped hold them secure. But legends of their wealth, too, spread far; and tales that their magic was a thing of blood: that any child of a Sferan mother might be born to wield the power of the High Kings. That tale was not wholly false; as to the truth, as a later High Priest of the Lord of Death was moved to grumble when questioned about his devotion to so grim a patron: ¡°Men fear discipline far more than they fear death.¡±


    When the Sferan empire broke, barbaric folk, drawn by the glitter of glory and gold, swept in over the scattered pieces. Some protected fragments¡ªRodrantir behind her unassailable walls, Daria across the wild sea, rockbound M¨®r Feria¡ªkept much of their imperial character for centuries, while the hordes overwhelmed the rest, even the Sferan heartland, green Peria, though that was her own fault.


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    Talherne High-king, troubled by rebellious barons, called the chieftain of the wild Geillari to his aid in controlling what little remained in his Sferan hands. Berulf came with his stern sons; and Talherne earned the name ¡°Last-king.¡±


    The remnants of the twelve great Houses of the Sferiari were forced back, but slowly, every foot of ground the invader gained nourished with the blood of both sides. And still the younger race pressed in and raised their beaded and feathered tokens, rude imitations of silken imperial banners, over the rubble of ruined imperial cities.


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    Smoke rolled across the view in her Mirror, pierced by spear-flash and the shrieks of men. She breathed upon it, a blossom of flame: another vista, another prospect in her land, but the same scene, the same cries. Another breath; yet another battle. Pausing, she glowered one-eyed at it, her thoughts coiling in serpentine deliberation.


    It was not the warfare that troubled her: men brawled and bit like any other beast. Neither did she care for the mewling of affronted ghosts. But the lack of a proper king offended her. These new folk entered into her power in ignorance, and their unschooled kinglets squandered her ancient gift. She had a debt to pay; and if from time to time she grumbled over her own long-ago choice, she did not excuse herself. Uralia¡¯s children were not served by this untidy feuding.


    Once again she breathed upon her mirror. This time it showed a darkened man-hall, of imperial fashion, polished and elegant. Presently it also showed a rumpled brown robe bearing a stout, sleepy figure. Marennin bent her one eye upon it darkly.


    You become like them.


    I am like them, the figure retorted over a chuckle.


    Marennin ignored this. I want.


    Of course. You are the very incarnation of Desire. Perceiving that he had amused her, he bowed. What, then?

 I: Changeling (pt 1)

    I: Changeling


    Rothesay fled.


    Panic and Rage warred for mastery of her. Of the two, Rothesay favored Rage. Fear churned in her belly, cold and sickly till she feared she would vomit as she ran. Much better to turn, face down the peril, fight back in fury¡¯s lively blaze. But an unaccustomed push from good sense, seldom her close companion, kept her flying now, for they were five men grown, the chieftain of the holding and his sturdy carls, and she was alone and not yet seventeen.


    They meant her no harm, so to speak: the whoops and cries ringing in the budding woods were more merry than cruel, and they laughed as they pleaded for her to stop. Ordinarily the Harrowater men left her well enough alone, partly for the temper, and fists, of her foster-brother Alrulf, and partly for awe of old Padriag-na-Clure, whom they called a wizard and Rothesay called master. Ordinarily, they did not surprise her alone in the forest, and themselves half-drunk with new ale, either. She planted a thin hand on a dew-slick fallen trunk, vaulted lightly into a patch of greenbriers, and wished on every scratch and runnel of blood about her ankles: I wish I had more power than they do! I wish I had any power. . . .


    She wanted to be angry, wholly angry and not afraid. She wanted the power to send them flying from her, to make her fury matter. She did not want civility, not now: she wanted their fear, so abject they would never presume to affront her or her sisters again; so deep that they would stand away from her in awe when she walked in the town. She wanted to be older, and stronger (bigger¡ªno; she was quite tall enough, thank you, albeit a little more flesh to her bones would be nice). She wanted an arsenal of spells to make her a force to be reckoned with throughout the Fergubragh coastland and beyond; but Padriag had not (yet?) taught her anything usefully offensive.


    She leaped from a grey rock, and slid more than ran down the slope below, upon a thick blanket of old leaves treacherous with dew. She was not flying blindly: she knew the Forest behind Harrowater well. They did, too, of course, if not better; but the one place she might possibly hide was not far away.


    Down the tumbling defile, cutting up and out by the three oaks, and over the next stiff fold: there it was. She did not stop for a view. They had been toying with her, savoring the chase, careless of her path, but now they guessed and redoubled their speed, though she heard the disbelief in their cries.


    Here was the haunted peerie-hall, or so folk called it, High Court of the Little People of Peria, built into the flanks of Deorgan-hill where ancient beeches grew strangely gnarled. Its bracken-hung entrance moved about queerly, it was said, and changed size, being sometimes a black maw to swallow a giant, sometimes a tough squeeze for a stoat, and sometimes not to be found at all, not even if one had marked the spot with banners. Not that many tried. Colder tales than peerie-magic whispered about the hill: ravens flocked there in unusual numbers, and more than one sober carl had seen, and heard, a great black dog with eyes of flame baying on the hilltop under a merciless white moon. And the Lord of Death Himself was said to walk the hill at times, and watch the darkening world.


    Rothesay did not know if Padriag believed in any of the Great Ones¡ªor in the little ones, for that matter. But neither did he disbelieve, and a mild I¡¯ve-never-met-one was thin armor against time-honored terror. The villagers feared to go near the hole, Rothesay among them. But outside, she knew she was in trouble, whereas inside, she only might be.


    There: the dark mouth of the hill gaped hungrily before her, girl-high, and she dived through, tumbling in a bruising somersault onto smooth flags. Rolling wildly back onto running feet, she crashed straight into unyielding stone. Reeling, she found emptiness to her left and blundered into it, following the labyrinth wherever it went, so long as it was away from the men. A muddle of voices echoed after her; out of it, she heard one phrase ring clear: ¡°¡ªbe outbraved by a girl?¡± She blundered faster.


    All at once, walls and floor dropped away, and she pitched forward into the blind dark, down a few steps, to land with a clatter amid a litter of hard, poky objects. She froze, stifling a groan, listening. No spectral hands grabbed at her out of the cold and musty silence, no bodiless voice demanded her business. Only the light behind her own eyelids moved in the blackness, and, as her heart slowed, she heard again the distant murmur of voices.


    She sat up cautiously. Things scraped metallically on the stone floor. Recovering some of her wits, she flexed her hands as Padriag had taught her, felt for the powers, and held a bit of pale magelight in her palms.


    The vaulted room was larger than her whole hut. A great mound dominated the opposite half of the circle, an untidy heap of objects topped by some sort of chair. No sign of another exit, nor any sure place to hide. She thought fast.


    Quickly she loosed her braids and teased them into a rakish mess. Her errand in the woods this morning had been spring foraging for her family and for Padriag; festooning her arms with the pokeweed from her sack, she started back up the stairs and into the echoing passage. A little thought turned the magelight a deathly blue, and she set it to glow upwards from just under her chin. She worked up a drool and foam about her mouth, assumed an expression of horror and agony, and began to moan¡ªvery realistically, like someone who has just pitched face-first into a pile of hard poky things.


    She heard the voices ahead falter and fall silent. Rounding a turn, she saw their leader, Fil the Blackhand, chief of the Harrowater branch of Clan Dunhaldring, frozen and gaping at the apparition drifting apparently bodiless out of the gloom. With a little concentration she brought her hair up, floating, and sent tendrils of it reaching towards them. The men stepped back. She crept forward a little faster. They jumped backward, stumbling, bumping into one another, and one of them, young Solla, she thought, the braggart of the village, tripped and fell with a shout. Rothesay extinguished the magelight, and, thoroughly spooked, the men bolted. She heard Solla scramble to his feet and stagger after them, fear feeding on fear.


    She followed them silently till they were back outside and arguing angrily, fearful and ashamed of their fear. Fil wanted to try again; the others said he was mad, but they were going to go get their ducks and then a bowl, or two or three, more like, of the new mead at the hall.


    Fil objected desperately, ¡°But what about the girl?¡±


    There was a pause. Rothesay, child of the strange noblewoman who had died on Harrowater¡¯s shores so many autumns ago, might be an outsider, but she was their outsider, one they had defended more than once against cousins from Outing and Faldghyll. Decent human feeling, even for a whore¡¯s fosterling, demanded some kind of rescue effort. Afraid they would try, Rothesay loosed a long, hoarse howl. She meant it to be a shriek of the bloodcurdling variety, but her throat, tight and raspy from her panicked flight, let out only a rough bellow unexpectedly low-pitched, weird and grating. Then there came a thudding of feet pounding away through the undergrowth, and the silence of solitude.


    She glared out after them, but a great glee welled up in her: she had made them run. She thrust her fists skyward in a rush of triumph, cracked her knuckles on the low stone ceiling, and chuckled ruefully over the torn skin and showered weeds. It occurred to her that inventiveness was a kind of power, and one she could claim. Maybe she could come home from this hole and wrap herself in its dark dread and mystery: then see if men would dare trouble her again! Presently satisfied that they were well and truly gone, she lifted her chin, pulled her spine to regal straightness, and mocked their fear by boldly making her way back to the vaulted room, guided safely by magelight now a warm, familiar gold. She looked about, with proprietary interest.


    The chair atop the heap was almost a throne, with a small heap of its own on the seat: a helm of strange and fierce device, the teeth of a skull within gleaming palely in the middle of age-blackened armor. Under the ancient warrior¡¯s ruined feet, the mound itself was a pile of armored bodies¡ªhis last foes, she guessed from their irreverent disarray¡ªarmored, but not armed: to prevent their challenging him after death? So this was a barrow of some kind, and no peerie-hall at all. She looked about interestedly for ghosts and was disappointed to see not a flicker of a spectral aurora. Ghosts troubled her not at all; there were a few about town she knew well, to say nothing of Padriag¡¯s cohabitants up in the old Sferan villa, and she would have liked to know who might haunt here, and what they would reveal. Had she dreamt this was a burial-hall, and not the gateway to the peerie-realm, she would have visited years ago. She tossed her head in disdain for ¡®common knowledge,¡¯ and vowed she would not fall victim to it again!


    A sword lay by the old warrior¡¯s feet; small jewels glittered on its scabbard. His own weapon, probably; and her heart leaped. Her brother Alrulf was handsome, strong and young¡ªand poor. A sword of his own, now: he could go far with that, a lot farther than being a lowly hayward, in thrall to his own clan, tending other men¡¯s cattle and struggling to earn a place his mother¡¯s lack of standards had otherwise denied him. A sword would give him a seat in the clan council, a voice equal to old Fil¡¯s, maybe even¡ªshe hardly dared think it¡ªmake him one of King Kelmhal¡¯s own hearthwards. She picked her way over the bones and armor and gathered it up, half-afraid it would vanish into dream. She made a shy, respectful bow to the warrior¡¯s remains, prayed for his spirit¡¯s rest, and begged his blessing. It¡¯s for a good man, she wanted to tell him; but all in silence, reluctant to break the breathless, ancient stillness. Then she drew the blade, to see how it had survived the years.


    A soundless thunderclap slammed the breath from her, pain like fire seared her whole body as though every muscle strained to its limit and beyond, tearing her asunder. She never noticed the floor hitting her.


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    Rothesay¡¯s eyelids fluttered open¡ªshe could tell because she could feel them, light as nervous butterflies¡ªbut to no purpose: she could see nothing. Her ribs hurt, as from falling on hard poky objects like ancient armor, and she remembered where she was. She sat up sharply, and swayed far forward, banging her nose on her knees. Startled, she summoned the magelight again, with giddy hands that seemed to have a life of their own, and stared about her. The old bones lay quietly.


    Other than bruises, she felt now no pain at all; she felt marvellous, with that tremblingly weightless sensation that usually followed upon overexertion. I wonder what I¡¯ve been up to? She eyed the sword warily where it lay on the cold flags. It made no answer.


    It was an exquisite piece of metalwork, of plain and flowing lines, beautiful and compelling¡ªand steel, iron forged to imperial temper. The Geillari were swiftly learning the art of ironmaking, but as yet, King Kelmhal alone among the Dunhaldring bore anything like this prize: sword or spearhead, knife or axe-blade, his clansmen wielded bronze. She had seen the king¡¯s sword, the steel like water under the sun, once a year at the harvesttide festival; she had never before seen iron, though she knew it was supposed to be black, like charcoal, like the Lord of the Earth Himself. She glanced up, round-eyed, at the slumped skeleton on the throne. Who could he have been, rich but crownless, buried with respect but without splendor? No memory of what history she had learned of Padriag suggested anyone, though, to be sure, Padriag¡¯s version of history touched more heavily on the ebb and flow of wolf-dynasties and the lordship of beech and willow, than on the seasons of men.


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    She took up the crackling, brittle scabbard, looking for a hint. Padriag had taught her a spell, her favorite to date, for opening one¡¯s mind to the story of an object; but nothing much came to her now, a trace of ancient violence and perhaps shame, but beyond that, only a queer and starry silence, like nothing else she had ever felt. Frowning, she looked in the usual way. There had been a writing, embroidered on the once-black leather amid flowery tooling; she could make out few of the fine letters, and not enough to spell words in any of the languages Padriag had taught her. More interesting, though, was the large medallion dangling from the buckle by a knotted thong: two serpents, lichenous bronze and blackened silver, looped, knotted, each biting the other¡¯s tail: the kalasin, an ancient symbol and she knew it well. What was different was the blossom nestled in the center of the coils, five petals translucent in seashell delicacy.


    Sferan this old hole certainly was, by the grace and elegance of every line from chair leg to helm to stitchery, to say nothing of the steel; and so, very old: Dunhaldring had dwelt in this land fully two centuries now. Today, anything Sferan brought a pretty price among the Geillan conquerors. With what she might find in here, she realized with a dawning thrill, she might pay her foster-family¡¯s kin-debt, no, make them one of the wealthier families in the clan! She bounded up, heedless of bruises, meaning to sift through the remains for whatever she could carry away before word could spread, and others rifle her hole. But instead of coming up neatly on light, lissome feet, she found herself flying, as it seemed, entirely weightless¡ªweightless until, flailing madly, she crashed into the bones.


    She lay very still, while the bouncing and slithering subsided -- in the dark, for her magelight had collapsed again -- and she marvelled at this curious rebellion of her body, where every command was smoothly obeyed with tripled or quadrupled effect.


    It was the sword, she supposed: that¡ªblast¡ªhad thoroughly addled her. A fine gift for a beloved brother! Where there was ancient wealth, of course there would be powerful magic as well. She made light yet again and crept back to it, without attempting to stand, not yet ready to face up to whatever curse she had loosed.


    She stared steadily at it. There had been voices, before she woke; only a shred of a memory of a dream of voices remained; but one of them had been¡ªits. She thought it looked back at her, now, watchful, waiting; but then, she often thought many wild things, she chided herself, and she was certainly not now at her clearest. Then she drew a breath, screwed up her face and all her courage, and, shivering, grabbed the hilt again.


    Nothing happened.


    She lifted it gingerly, and disappointment crushed her. It was much too light for a real sword. It had been perhaps a ceremonial sword, a shell of burnished tin and not steel at all, buried with the warrior in token while the real one passed to his heir¡ªor his vanquisher. No wonder she had felt no emanation of its history. She sheathed it; then, cringing, drew it again. There was no blast. It was fine. And it looked nice. Let Alrulf decide for himself if it were wholly junk, or if it might be traded away for something useful: a cloak, maybe, or an axe.


    She stood up and swayed, and decided against trying to take out anything but the sword and the pendant just yet, she felt so queer. Stumbling awkwardly out into the sweet air, she found that it was nearly sunset. The whole of the day gone! The family would be worried, worried and hungry: with Thyrne married, and Elflin and her beloved Mina buried two winters ago, the three littlest ones looked to Rothesay for mothering, and here she was two miles from home and their supper half in her sack and half spilled across the threshold of some forgotten Dragon-lord¡¯s forgotten tomb. She wrapped the sword in her tattered once-green cloak and staggered homeward under the trees, not dizzy, but giddy, feeling no earth under her feet, yet so careful that she tripped only twice and caromed off only one tree-trunk.


    Over the shoulder of Deorgan-hill she climbed, hurried through Dead Man¡¯s Hollow, and finally breasted the ridge and looked down on the little fingerlet of the sea, narrow and straight as if cut by some unthinkable harrow, to which the village owed what renown it had. Brown stone cliffs, mast-high, shaped a channel only a few feet less slender than a single slender fishing boat of the north-coast folk, so that it seemed little more than a long step, for a leggy fellow, from one cliff to the next. Rothesay slithered down through the bracken to the sea-path at cliff¡¯s edge to the west gate, and the rope bridge beyond.


    To her right, a tall grey stone in the likeness of Sorche, Lady of Fire, gazed with a cryptic smile into the flaming West; to her left, Ges the Silent, Who was Death, with stars for eyes watched the world unmoved. From this height she could see also north to the cliff head, and the standing figures there of Maolin the Earth-lord and Dere, Night. Sferan names, Geillan tradition. Rothesay dropped a spray of sassafras at the feet of each western guardian¡ªthe honors at the Lady¡¯s feet greatly outnumbered those at the Lord¡¯s, but Rothesay answered to a strong sense of fairness¡ªand swayed over the bridge into Harrowater. Almost at once she met the eyes of one of the brown-robed brethren, come from King Kelmhal¡¯s seat at Dunford to bring word of some foreign holy man they called a Prophet; sad and reproachful eyes. Averting her own, she climbed carefully down the path cut in the landward slope of the hill and hurried through town. Padriag ignored these new founts of human wisdom as cheerfully as he ignored the old, and though she herself was curious to know more about the whole business, just now she felt altogether too queer and anxious to be safely home.


    Home, on the far side of the village, was a wattled gray bulk huddled where beach ran out from under stumpy dark trees, beyond the east-stones of Kavin of the Air and M¨®r the Lady of Knowledge, beyond the huts even of the edgelings, those remnants of the older lords of Peria who had not retreated before the invader. Drat! The east end needed thatching worse than ever. She had meant to tend to that this morning, and surprise Alrulf by having it patched before he came back. Instead she had spent the last couple of days painting a border of knotted rose-vines about the door and window. She was very proud of the result¡ªbut she was going to regret it in tomorrow¡¯s rain. The ragged wicker door dangled open from someone¡¯s recent passage, and she smelled soup.


    Pushing in, she was greeted with a joyful squeal. Matkin, Thyrne¡¯s little son, not yet a year old and already running, caught sight of his foster-aunt and fled coyly back to entangle himself in his mother¡¯s skirts, squealing with laughter.


    Thyrne, eldest of Anie¡¯s mixed brood of many fathers, started up from the soup pot as the truant oiled in and hunkered down on the only chair, a block of Sferan marble against the mud wall, as though hoping to blend into it.


    ¡±Whera you been¡ª?¡± she began in rough Sferan, her curt tone changing to wonder as Rothesay slid the sword into view. The little ones, Brannar, Meryth, and Persli, crouched over their bowls, stopped eating to gape. Matkin, uninterested, and finding that his aunt had forgotten to chase him, bobbled eagerly back to her and demanded to be picked up by pounding on her knees.


    ¡°It¡¯s for Alrulf,¡± Rothesay said unnecessarily, and unsteadily.


    Thyrne bent a fierce searching gaze upon her, on the draggled hair and the scraped knee and torn trousers (men¡¯s gear, Alrulf¡¯s castoffs: she had long outgrown the hand-me-downs of any woman for miles about), and the face unusually pale under an amazing collection of smudges. Dropping the soup ladle, she dunked a corner of her apron in the water jug and applied it vigorously to the smudges. Rothesay submitted with the patience of a kitten; but presently she found herself trembling all over, and then thinking of the chase and the barrow, the sword and the bruises, the priest and the thatching, and not least the magic that shook her limbs and that had robbed her of the day, began to cry.


    Thyrne squeezed her shoulders hard. ¡°Roshi¡ª? Someone has been awful to you?¡±


    ¡®Being awful¡¯ was family language, remnant of their childhood speech, for the harassment attendant on being a whore¡¯s get. Drawing a shuddering breath, Rothesay patted her sister¡¯s hands and launched a marginally coherent recital, not helped by Thyrne¡¯s plying her with soup, bread and question, nor by discovering she was ravenous.


    ¡°Uh!¡± Matkin commanded, raising his arms. ¡°Uh!¡±


    ¡°He means ¡®up,¡¯ ¡± his mother prompted.


    ¡°I speak fluent Baby,¡± Rothesay admonished her gravely.


    ¡°So pick up him!¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to¡ª¡± Rothesay began uneasily.


    ¡°You?¡±


    Rothesay waved the jibe away impatiently. ¡°I¡¯m afraid to. . . . Ever since I woke up, I¡¯ve felt so strange: as though I were made of soap bubbles, and everything else were, too, for that matter. Just walking, I push myself over. I¡¯m afraid if I pick you up, love,¡± she said to Matkin, who grinned toothlessly, ¡°I will up and toss ¡¯ee right through t¡¯ roof!¡±


    ¡°Not to be silly, look you,¡± said Thyrne. ¡°Pick up him¡ªhurt he¡¯ll be in heart if you neglect to spoil him.¡± Thyrne, proud woman, disdained her native Geillan tongue and spoke instead the Sferan, as if she were a woman of rank in the clan. She did not speak it well, being also too proud to mingle with the edgeling folk, but tried to pick it up unobtrusively from her young sisters, who were not.


    ¡°Better a broken head than a broken heart,¡± said Rothesay, her cheer beginning to recover, and, dispelling a sniffle, gathered up the joyous Matkin, very carefully. ¡°Soap bubbles,¡± she said to Thyrne through his wild brown fuzzy hair, by way of confirmation.


    Thyrne snorted, having no patience with mystery. ¡°Half starved you are, is all,¡± she said, refilling Rothesay¡¯s bowl. ¡°Ah¡ªbe all right here, then, will you?¡± she inquired worriedly. ¡°I¡¯ve to get back to Mat, of course¡ªI left his supper him, but he would have me home the night. . . .¡±


    ¡°Oh, aye,¡± Rothesay replied airily, and keeled over onto the hard dirt floor.


    Thyrne jumped up with a gasp. Meryth shrieked. ¡°Roshi!¡± yelled Brannar, leaping up and over her bowl in one move. Startled but unhurt, Matkin scrambled off her chest and batted her in the face. Rothesay burst into giggles.


    ¡°Oh¡ª!¡± An outraged Thyrne snatched up her son, to restrain herself from kicking Rothesay in a tender spot. Brannar cheered, laughing too. ¡°Bad as she is, you,¡± Thyrne snapped at her.


    ¡°We¡¯ll be all right,¡± said Rothesay, gathering herself back onto her seat, unable to smother a grin. The joke worked a tonic in her veins, driving out dread.


    ¡°Huh!¡± Thyrne wrapped up in her shawl; Matkin stuffed some of it in his mouth. She paused in the doorway and glared thoughtfully at her uncanny sister.


    They were little alike: Thyrne, blonde as sunshine and sturdy as oak, her hard blue eyes about on a level with Rothesay¡¯s bony shoulder, was in every line a child of her father¡¯s race. Rothesay was little more than a loose plait of long willow-withies, with eyes green as a whole forest, and her dark hair shone with a queer wine-colored light. Only Padriag remembered the mother well enough to note the daughter¡¯s striking likeness; most folk looked on her queer coloring, her improbable height, and especially the unearthly androgynous beauty of her face and supposed her to be fairy-sired after all, as the dying mother had claimed. Now they wove stories about her, and dressed her in the cloths of their fancies. They said she had a ¡®way¡¯ with animals: the orneriest pig in the sty would make a fawning fool of itself at her approach, and the king of the badgers ran at her bidding to keep her and her sheltering family from starving, be the winter never so cold. This was so much nonsense, of course. The only thing about pigs was knowing how to scratch where they itched, same as with people; and there was no such folly as a ¡®badger king.¡¯ Badgers were matriarchal.


    Thyrne had long ago ceased heeding, or arguing against, the stories, and only worried that the bratling¡¯s scrawniness would keep her from ever wielding a proper spear, and who would wed her then? Neither had she any love for Padriag; still, mage¡¯s apprentice was better than whoreling, and might yet win her some honor. ¡°Well, never thought I¡¯d say it, but¡ªtake yourself off t¡¯ auld wizard, first thing the morning. Mind me?¡±


    ¡°I mind,¡± said Rothesay meekly. She glanced back at the three littlest sisters. ¡°Thanks.¡±


    Thyrne grunted a retort and hobbled out with her son and her limp, both in their way her trophies of war.


    Later, Rothesay snuggled with her little sisters like kittens on a single pallet beside the smoldering fire. She and Cherusay had been refugees from a court of some kind: misty scraps of careless infant memory glimmered with traces of bright silks and burnished mail aglow in the light of candles countless as stars: Daria across the Dragon Sea, said Padriag; sister and subject-realm of the immense power Peria once had been. Now Daria¡¯s castaway listened to the high soughing of the wind through the tattered thatching, and sighed. The roof would have to wait.

 I: Changeling (pt 2)

    The next morning found Rothesay, true to her word, at the top of the hill on Padriag¡®s doorstep. No greeting answered her knock and hail: the wizard had not yet returned from this latest of his odd little disappearances. Shrugging, she murmured the small charm that asked the wizard¡¯s door to loose its latch for her, her slim fingers sweeping gracefully in the accompanying gesture. The door, darkly friendly¡ªmost objects in the wizard¡¯s home were at least partially awake, and of widely variable tempers¡ªobliged; the latch clicked and she slipped inside, into the dim cavernous hall and its familiar smells of rare incenses and old pipe smoke.


    Stone mosaics colored the polished floor; the rooms were wide and airy, though the bright frescoes were fading. This had been the main house of a villa of fair breadth. The outbuildings, the barns and stables, servants¡¯ quarters, shops and smithy had long ago burned in war, or been pulled down to raise Harrowater; what remained had been only modestly restored by Padriag, but it still staggered the Geillan imagination to know that it had been the home of a nobleman of no very exalted rank. The Sferan cities that lay countless leagues to the south, some still unconquered, shimmered in local imaginations as wonders of gold and light at the very edge of reality.


    She puttered about her usual tasks with unusual care. The dusting was easy: there was little damage she could do with only a feather duster for weapon. The broom gave her a few scares, as when a thoughtless thrust bowled over the standing mirror and a still more witless recovery bent a corner of its brass frame in her hand; though she was almost more afraid of its cover coming off than of its breaking: what she had seen in it when with the wizard more than inspired her to leave it alone when without him; it had a macabre humor. But when the copper pot slipped from her polishing cloth like a seed squirting from its pod and shot out the kitchen window (luckily open under its deep eaves, for airing) into the garden, she began to think she had had enough of housekeeping for a while.


    She carried the surprised pot back in, very thoughtfully. Setting it down, she balled up one thin hand into a fist, and regarded it as if it were one of the many fabulous puzzles that crowded the wizard¡¯s shelves. Of a sudden, out she half-strode, half-tripped to the garden again, not heeding the doorlatch bending under careless pressure, seized up a plank of ash that had been waiting too many summers to become a garden bench, and propped it up against the window opening. Then she paused, looking again at her fist. The skin seemed thinner, more delicate than ever across her tattered knuckles; the ash, very hard. She thought about the chieftain, and the wild leer she had imagined on his face as she ran; she remembered the perfectly real taunts of the hunters, and threw all her force into the ash. The wood burst in two with a sharp retort, almost as one with the crack of wood on skull.


    She blinked up at the dark eaves and the cloud-streaked strip of sky beyond them. The crest of her forehead throbbed with blunt pain; groping, she found a knot already swelling in her hairline. Beside her lay two pieces of ash, cleanly broken, but she could not recall feeling an impact, either of hand or head. A little while longer she lay, hoping that this was not the beginning of a new pattern in her life, to knock herself daily senseless, then dragged herself out of the wet grass and into the house.


    Later, clean and poulticed, she settled herself with tea and a slim codex in front of a small and cozy fire, moodily sucking her bloodied knuckles, hoping to do no more mischief. If she had had some thought of laying into Blackhand Fil, the plank cautioned her against it; how ash compared with human meat she did not know, but rather fancied the wood would prove much the hardier of the two. She wondered who now might have a side of beef hanging where she could slip in and take a poke at it. (And what would they say if they came in and caught me beating up their larder?) She chuckled it off and turned to her text, fire-magic of the Sferan warrior-mage Artame, to work on her translation; but her mind was not on her parsing. Who would have beef hanging at this season?


    Shortly, she gave up her pretense of study. She tidied up codex and cup, gathered a few apples and a small cheese into her tunic skirts for the family, tucked the sword under her arm and trotted off, still unsteady on her queerly powerful feet. Down the wizard¡¯s round green hill, picking a route to circle rather than pass through town, she ran weightless as mist, vanishing into the willows at the edge of the common fields, black with the tilling and the damp, on under the eaves of the east-side woods. But she did not go home, she kept on eastward, coming out on a remote section of the beach among concealing brown crags. There for hours more, she played at hurling rocks and stones, boulders, really, into the roaring grey-green surf, without coming any closer to understanding what the old tomb¡¯s magic had wrought in her.


    The sun was setting, knifing a last gleam between low, sodden cloud-skirts and the lowering hills as she at last approached her house.


    They had company: three horses stood in the sandy, shell-strewn yard, nosing disgustedly among the salt-hardy weeds for something sweet. Rothesay stopped dead. These were no slow, stupid farm animals. Their plain, sturdy trappings conveyed nothing to her, but the creatures themselves rippled with strength, strength matched to speed, and they looked up intelligently at her approach. She knew all the local horses. No one in Harrowater owned such beasts. Who did, that they would ride to the door of the meanest hovel in a remote fisher-hamlet, and why? Without thinking to ask the horses, Rothesay bolted for the door of her home.


    Before she had cleared two uncannily long strides, a man stepped out, slamming the feeble old door back on its leather hinges, breaking loose more cracking withies. Sheen of helmet, glint of mail in the dull light set her scrabbling to stop, slithering into the sand. Apples rolled free, to the great interest of the horses.


    ¡°Huh! She¡¯s here!¡± the man barked over his shoulder. ¡°Get up, girl.¡±


    Rothesay climbed shakily to her feet as two more strangers stormed out amid a small knot of bleating children, the littlest sisters, Brannar, Meryth, and Persli, followed by a growling Thyrne.


    The first man reached for Rothesay¡¯s arm. Brannar, ten and fearless, broke from the flock and seized his baldric. ¡°Roshi, run!¡± she shrieked. He tore himself effortlessly from her hungry grasp and flung her roughly to the sand.


    Rothesay vaguely noticed her weight shift oddly, as if body moved ahead, towing thought after, but paid no heed in her rage. Her thin avenging fist swept up smashing into the side of the man¡¯s helmet, numbing hand and arm with the shock: he measured his length and more upon the ground. She had a moment of deep gratification before the second man snarled, leaped past his friend and drew his sword to frighten her. Sunset glimmered on the length of the blade like a corpse-light.


    Rothesay obligingly panicked. And out flashed the barrow sword, sped by a will other than her own; again she felt her body move seemingly without her. Steel on bronze whispered and chimed, the stranger¡¯s sword whirled flickering into the dusk, and the barrow-blade stooped like a falcon to the kill. Rothesay rebelled, tried to reclaim command of her flesh from whatever demon-power possessed it, and the descending sword broke the man¡¯s shoulder instead of severing his neck. A last, insolent flourish defied her shock and the blade licked into the open face of the man¡¯s helmet, once, twice as he crumbled to the sand, clutching his arm, choking in pain.


    From beyond the ridge of grass-crested dunes, the cold surf rolled its thunder over the silence in the yard. Sand crunched under someone¡¯s tread: the third and last standing carl edged toward his fellow writhing at Rothesay¡¯s feet, but he did not look at him. Following his riveted gaze, Rothesay saw at last what still compelled his fascinated horror, what vision rooted her family in silent thrall. The side of the first man¡¯s head, helmet and all, could have collected rainwater. Something darker pooled there now. Aghast, Rothesay turned to her sisters, seeking some token of reassurance, some wakening from the nightmare darkening about her, and found in their white faces only terror of the changeling.


    She could bear no more. With a little wail of desolation, she turned and fled, blundering, into the gloom.


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    An hour later she fetched up, bruised, torn, shaking with horror, on Padriag¡¯s back doorstep, huddled in under the wide eaves away from the wanton rain that cast itself upon the earth, wiping rain and tears from her face with the back of a hand equally wet. With the sword clenched under her arm, her thin shoulders hunched against the wet, she reached for the door-charm, meaning to hide out here till the wizard chose to return from wherever he had gone.


    The heavy wooden door swung open silently. Silhouetted in the cheery yellow light, a little round button mushroom of a man beamed kindly up at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, overcome by a sudden delight. ¡°Stand on one foot!¡±


    Stunned, but habituated to Master Padriag¡¯s erratic fancies, Rothesay complied wordlessly. The little man began to chuckle, and then to laugh, a soft but deep and fruity spasm that rippled through his whole body. ¡°The very picture of a southern black heron! Come in, my dear. Tea¡¯s hot and the cakes are just¡ªabout¡ª¡±


    ¡°Burned!¡± Rothesay, smelling the tang, sprang for his oven door. The forgotten sword crashed to the flags, her overwhelmingly obedient body flung her over the kitchen bench, and she sailed gracefully into the rack of pots and pans that hung by the fireplace. Tin and copper rang down around her.


    ¡°No, the first batch burned,¡± Padriag amended, following placidly. He stood gazing down on her, a slight smile crinkling his cheeks like an old apple. She stirred, cautiously; pans slithered away like pieces of ancient armor as she looked back up, eyes brim-full of two days¡¯ terrors; then she seized the hem of his brown robe and wept into it bitterly. With immense tenderness, then, he patted her wet hair, before bending low to murmur, ¡°As will this batch in a minute.¡±


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    Rothesay shook herself, bewildered; more pans slid away. ¡°Oh. Right.¡± Padriag moved off to the hearth oven. ¡°I¡¯ll just pick these up, then,¡± she said vaguely, suiting action to the tone. Moving as if in a dream, she eased each one back into its rightful place, and when she turned to find the wizard, it was at the table laid with white cloth, yellow candles, gold cakes, and dark, dark tea.


    She tried several times to tell him what had happened, but he shushed her, claiming that in no wise could she give an intelligent account with stomach empty and mouth full and would she pass the cream or must he charm the pot? Then there was the washing up, which Padriag always performed¡ªor had her perform¡ªin silent reverence, and indeed the ritual served her well this evening, a warm and calming immersion in the eternity of a mundane chore.


    At last they settled by the fire in Padriag¡¯s great hall, in a half-sphere of firelight, the room beyond lost in the night. Aided by a foamy tankard of Padriag¡¯s ale, she told in a low, quiet voice about the hunters and the barrow, the sword and her queerheadedness since; and the men at her home, and what happened there.


    ¡°The one¡ªI guess I killed him,¡± she murmured dully. ¡°He¡¯s dead¡ªhe must be dead, and I hit him. . . . So I think that the sword is an agent of evil magic. It¡¯s too light to be real, and yet it broke the other man. Master?¡±


    Padriag picked up the sword from the fur at his feet and chuckled. ¡°Is it?¡± he inquired brightly, stroking the tooling of the scabbard. ¡°Just fetch down the Hallack, will you, ywysta?¡±


    She obeyed with a sigh. Kief Hallack was author of a monstrous great tome of arcane practices, Padriag¡¯s favorite reference work; and also, apparently, of the alchemical mystery whereby lead might be transmuted into parchment, retaining only its weight as a reminder of its former character. The book took an evil delight in its heftiness. Without love, she clasped the almost cubic volume to her heart, vowed to provide Master Padriag with so much furniture as a bookstand, and heaved mightily.


    Flying over backwards, she feared desperately for the fate of such a mighty codex upon the stones, and pillowed it on her midriff. ¡°Whoof!¡± It was the last thing she said, or did with breath, for some minutes; but a clatter by the hearth diverted her from her impacted lungs.


    The barrow sword had fallen to the floor as Master Padriag lay back limply in his seat, arms dangling loosely at his sides, his body quivering like a tea-jelly with spasms of silent laughter. Rothesay hurled imaginary imprecations at him.


    She had recovered her breath, the book, her seat and her ale before Padriag recovered himself. Still chuckling, he ground a knuckle into the corner of his eye to clear away the tears, and asked reasonably politely for what she thought had happened.


    Frowning, she put down her ale and lifted up the Hallack to balance it on one hand. It was rather awkward to hold single-handed, but it was not heavy. ¡°I guess I tried too hard.¡±


    ¡°Mm-hmm.¡± Padriag blinked thoughtfully at her, still smiling. ¡°Thank you, child¡ªand I¡¯d like you to take care of a little something for me.¡±


    The ¡®little something¡¯ turned out to be nothing less than a complete reorganizing of the wizard¡¯s library, followed by moving half the woodpile from the back porch to the niche by the main fireplace and the other half into the kitchen, and capped by bringing the keg of ale up from the cellar¡ªand then taking it back down when Padriag decided it took up too much space in the kitchen. He hated to be crowded. Sporadically, he would call for this or that volume¡ªand of course the one had to be put back to make room for the next on the little gaming table. Rothesay fulfilled her tasks faithfully, in silence though strongly suspicious of their spurious nature. It would do no good to ask why: the master would explain only when the thing had run its course. But he would always explain, and she had learned faith, and patience.


    She did not fail to notice that it was all vastly easier than it ought to have been. She shortened the work by carrying four times as many books as she had known herself capable of, and felt limited by volume rather than by weight, at that; and as for the keg, by rights she should never have budged it. At least, by the time Padriag had her put the last book away and they sat down to a late supper of apples and cheese, she had gained a new idea of how heavy things were now.


    She said as much when he asked if she had learned anything. Padriag shook with soundless laughter again. ¡°Roshi, my dear, in most respects you have been easily the quickest of all my apprentices, but when a matter touches you personally, you promptly quit thinking. If I told you that I had carried the keg up from the meadhall, should you more reasonably infer that ale were suddenly lighter or that I were suddenly stronger?¡±


    ¡°Um.¡± Rothesay put down her tea and flexed her hands thoughtfully. ¡°I do seem to be a bit more capable.¡±


    ¡°A bit,¡± he agreed with a twinkle. ¡°A triggered spell for strength is fairly simple to shape, though quite expensive to imbue¡ªhe must have had a friend who was a worker: that sort of thing is not for the buying. It will wear off presently. It was intended, you see, for a¡ªa ¡®last wind¡¯ you might say, a final effort in battle.¡± His smile turned wistful. ¡°My guess is that he never had a chance to use it. So I did. Did you think I was being entirely frivolous?¡± He rose, took a few steps to the newly-piled wood, pitched two more sticks into the fire, and returned to his seat.


    ¡°Books are better organized, too,¡± said Rothesay, snapping an apple in two, and privately rejoicing that she did not mash it into sauce. ¡°But who was ¡®he¡¯? Where did he come from, and what could have happened?¡±


    Padriag turned the sword in the firelight and peered at the inscription on the sheath. ¡°Runedaur,¡± he announced.


    Rothesay started, and signed one of the glyphs for warding off evil.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be superstitious,¡± Padriag chided her. ¡°Runedaur are only men.¡±


    ¡°Right.¡± Born men they probably were; but possessed by demons at their Oath-taking, according to legend. One Runedaur fought like ten ordinary warriors, it was said, and they drank the blood still warm, and in their halls feasted on the slain. They moved like ghosts and no wall could bar them. They could look into a man¡¯s eyes and lay bare his soul, sap his will and compel him to unspeakable acts. Breathe no word against them, for the very wind bent to their desire, and brought them word of what men thought most secret and secure. Their sorcerous women called up storm and plague on the lands without; within their halls, the Runedaur harlots called up other, no less violent storms no man could withstand. And if that old hole was a Runedaur¡¯s tomb, then it was fitting that Death and his minions haunt that hill, for the Runedaur were the Silent One¡¯s chiefest priests.


    Once upon a time they had also been the chiefest weapon in the hand of the High King of the Sferiari, their dread power leashed and compassed to the royal will for the shaping of an empire and centuries of peace after. Only the true king held the secret that commanded the Knights of Death. Only with the Master of Runedaur lay the authority to anoint that king. And since Talherne had died childless, no one of that line now lived in Peria, and the Runedaur ran lawless, serving whichever master offered the brighter coin, while Peria bled.


    ¡°Quite old,¡± he went on absorbedly, seeming not to notice her preoccupation. ¡°Seventeen hundred, twenty-six of the Order, here; do you see?¡±


    Padriag¡¯s finger traced out the letters for her, but still she could not read the words: no vowels?


    ¡°Almost five centuries ago,¡± he mused; ¡°well before Berulf¡¯s Conquest; this fellow saw the glory days of old Peria. ¡®Arngas.¡¯ Arngas. I wonder which one? I shall have to send to their mother-house, at Colderwild: Dav maybe will know.¡±


    ¡°¡®Fortune¡¯ Dav?¡± she snorted.


    ¡°That is no way to speak of the Master of Runedaur,¡± said Padriag placidly, but with a twinkle.


    ¡°Master of marauders, you mean.¡±


    ¡°But a matchless scholar!¡± he laughed. ¡°I must ask his opinion. It is no tin mock-up, my dear, but a true sword, and¡ª¡± he tapped significantly at the smith¡¯s mark just below the hilt, ¡°M¨®riad-made, which is more to the point.¡±


    ¡°Ooo!¡± She snatched it from the table and studied it with new eagerness: the smiths of remote M¨®r Feria were fabled, and the blades from their forges were matters of legend. Iron had been their trade secret for centuries, and still in steel they had no peer. Especially they worked in star-steel, the rare metal cast from the heavens and that all the North now called M¨®riad-steel; her whole sword seemed made of the stuff.


    ¡°As you say¡ªoo. And Dav will be no less interested than you, child.¡±


    Rothesay tore her eyes from the mythic wonder in her hands, to frown at Padriag in honest puzzlement. ¡°You¡¯re really going to¡ªto talk with. . . . But they¡¯re destroying the country, Master! They betrayed King Talherne when Berulf invaded, and there¡¯s been nothing but war for two centuries and at their profit off the Geillari and the old Sferan houses alike! Er¡ª¡±


    Padriag blinked her quizzically to silence. ¡°I must ask, little one, what you know of war and conquest, beyond traveller¡¯s tales and bard-song? Anstrede has known an uncommon peace since Berulf¡¯s Conquest, barring the occasional border-feud¡ªwith other Geillari, you observe. Bear in mind that it is seldom useful to take the vanquisher¡¯s word about the vanquished. Our lord Kelmhal is on good terms with the Order.¡±


    ¡°You mean it¡¯s a lie, then? They didn¡¯t betray the High King?¡±


    ¡°That might depend on your definition of ¡®betray.¡¯ If your protectors are themselves slaughtered, does the failure of their purpose imply a betrayal of it?¡±


    ¡°Is that what happened?¡±


    ¡°Dear heavens, child, I have no idea! I meant only to suggest that whatever you may have heard might have some significance other than the obvious. If we wish to learn more about this fellow Arngas, and understand what happened to you, consulting with his Order is probably a practical first step¡ªthough not if you take them from the outset for faithless liars.¡±


    She looked down at the blade again, wondering what it had seen. Perhaps Arngas had been one of the hearthguard of the High King himself, in his day; though Andrastir was far away. She rubbed her eyes wearily: the hour was late, and she was unused to staying up past sunset. Padriag shooed her off to the kitchen-loft to sleep in a nest of spare blankets amid a fragrance of onions and old apples, and the milky fur of a few cats.


    She quite failed to notice that she could not call to mind anything prior to tea with the wizard.

 I: Changeling (pt 3)

    Ten miles away in the high hall of Dunford Stonekeep, Hautiger an-Velaker, Baron Sulk, Lord of Maightier and Enmath-in-Daria, closed his eyes and rubbed the crest of his nose with daintily weary fingertips. The wild tale pouring forth from his Perian host¡¯s henchman owned no part of sense, but the essence of it was failure. Hautiger did not care how three armed men failed to capture a young girl, and felt that their creativity had been better employed in making results than excuses. Now he needed some excuse himself, for pursuing the matter without betraying the keenness of his interest.


    He drained his cup and held it carelessly aside, and the boy scrambled to fill it. Only one boy to serve him; and a boy, at that: the brash new masters of Peria had so very much to learn yet of civilized ways.


    Civilized: the Darian traced his host¡¯s form with diplomatically veiled scorn, noting the coarseness of Kelmhal¡¯s woolen tunic, red as bright blood and garishly trimmed in wild yellow fringe that matched his beard and hair. The singular garment ended at elbow and knee, baring Kelmhal¡¯s hairy limbs bound in wide leather wrist-braces and soft fringed boots. Hautiger was sheathed in layer upon layer of patterned silks and fine linens, each garment subtly cut or folded back to display something of the one beneath; only his face was bare, from chin to false hairline, and what of his hands not hidden under many rings.


    He sipped at his mead¡ªa good brew, he conceded, having discovered that he liked it sweet, as the Geillari made it, better than the bone-dry Darian¡ªand glanced about the hall. Pale polished granite, great blocks shaped and inlaid with a sweet skill their new owners believed was magical, soared overhead, throwing back whispering echoes that unnerved this superstitious race: not a little of Kelmhal¡¯s bold reputation sprang from his temerity to dwell heedless among Sferan ghosts, and mock their insubstantial rage. Hautiger wondered if Kelmhal or his ancestors had discovered yet that one spot that must be here, in what the previous owners had called the Great Chamber, where every whisper converged, to be heard as clearly as if whispered in one¡¯s own ear.


    Room opened off from room through wide portals, half-covered now by hanging blankets of bright and rude pattern. The floor, a fine purple porphyry, sparkled with stars of M¨®riad-steel: the old Perians had had (and still had, where they endured) a fascination for constellations, and each great House took one as token. There by the vast hearth, the firelight struck sparks from the inlaid steel in the pattern of the Hunter, sign of the House of Morag¡ªor would, but for Kelmhal¡¯s big trestle-table above it, and the braided rushes and herbs the Geillari considered so necessary to proper housekeeping. Doubtless it was, on the packed-earth floors of the wooden halls they raised for themselves; Hautiger failed to be impressed by the weeds being new laid down in his honor.


    Rude they might be, and seeming so out-of-place in their new homes¡ªwhen they used them; yet they were formidable warriors, crafty and dogged; even their women trained to the spear, and fought by their men in almost equal numbers (though docile enough in the house, he noted). Moreover, they held loyalty to be a man¡¯s sovereign virtue. Part of Hautiger¡¯s errand in this land was to discover what might draw that loyalty; another part being, whose loyalty was most worth His Darian Majesty¡¯s while.


    It would be sweet to get home. Still, the hunting had been good sport; His Majesty of Daria, R¨²mil an-Herumer, being a sporting man himself would be amused by the tales, at least, for Hautiger¡¯s official report would be a disappointment. Kelmhal was not their man: the Haldr, the high chief of the Dunhaldring, king of Peria¡¯s wild north coast, yes, but without influence beyond his own mountains. Nor was there point in trying to win Kelmhal¡¯s overlord, Bruic, who ruled Anstrede, as near as Hautiger could make out, solely by virtue of his clansmen being too busy battling raider or neighbor to challenge him. Hautiger wondered how the Viscount Ruchier or Lord Grumarre, on similar errands elsewhere in this ravaged land, were faring. Personally he doubted that there was anyone in Peria yet who wielded enough power to be worth Daria¡¯s interest.


    Now Kelmhal at thirty-seven was yet a bachelor, and thereon hung this little fracas before him. Hautiger naturally had not subjected his gentle lady to the rigors of crossing the Dragon, to visit so rude a chieftain; yet neither was he inclined to spend his nights in chilly solitude. Kelmhal had been happy to discuss knowledgeably what his seat and his clan had to offer to the comfort of the flesh; and when rumor surfaced this morning of a girl, a whore¡¯s foundling yet said to be a child of the Ceidha, thirteen-year-old bells chimed in Hautiger¡¯s brain.


    It was impossible, of course. The ship that had borne old King Herumer¡¯s dangerous daughter and her half-fay bastard to a watery death in the depths of the Dragon Sea, had itself foundered with all hands: none had survived. Still, he wanted very much to see the wench, just to quiet the bells. The agent who shattered that vessel had cost Hautiger dearly.


    And the fools had blown it. Drunk too much at an inn¡ªno, these barbarians had no such thing; it would be the local chief¡¯s home and ¡®mead-hall,¡¯ he believed¡ªso that it was no task at all for a girl-thing with even a scrap of spirit to overpower them, as this fellow seemed to be insisting had happened. Why flaunt your inebriated incompetence, ale-wit?


    A sudden violence jerked him from his covert sneering: Kelmhal had seized his hapless lieutenant¡¯s shirt-front in a commanding fist. Hautiger recoiled: such a move was mortal insult on his side of the Sferyn, even between man and master. But the assaulted Geillath, far from objecting, only dropped his head back, slightly, a gesture the Darian regarded as disgustingly submissive but which for the Geilla betokened his absolute fealty to his lord.


    Kelmhal stared hard into his man¡¯s face. Hautiger made a quick double-take, and straightened attentively. Was Kelmhal¡ª? Yes, by the gods! The Darian smothered a little smirk that doubted his host¡¯s capabilities; but he watched nonetheless with a greedy interest, for Kelmhal had what Hautiger never would.


    The Geillan war-bands, wolf-packs bringing down an ancient lion of the mountains, came to Peria for gold, they came for glory, and they came for magic. They found them all; and none of it quite what they fancied. The wealth mocked them: splendid houses they feared to dwell in, rich fields whose crops waned under their untutored plows, artistry and beauty that neither made nor maintained itself. The blood-price of glory was grievously high, and drove them to a fury of vengeance and an ever-higher price. As for magic¡ªthey knew the tale:


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    Ages ago, when the Second Perians were barely more than the naked children of the gods, Uralia, High Priestess of the World Mother, of her authority forbade the destruction of a dragon¡¯s egg, but instead tended it with hot sands from her tribe¡¯s altar-hearth, and guarded it with such fragile spells as the gods had given humankind. After seven years it broke forth, twice as long as a tall man yet scarcely as thick as his thigh, and utterly black. Its talons, already the length of Uralia¡¯s forearm, shimmered like pearls in the dust; and the tongue, lolling out between icicle-teeth in the huge ungainly head, was forked, blue, veined in black. And each great baleful eye glowed with a light more purple than the sky beyond the sunset.


    The thing glistened in its birth-slime, which Uralia wiped clean with her hair. And when the tribe would not offer so much as a squirrel for meat for the hatchling horror, Uralia fed it with her own body, silent and unflinching as the dreadful beast devoured all but her long black hair.


    Then it turned to her people and spoke like grating stones in their simple tongue, a cryptic phrase long graven at every Sferan lintel-stone:


    ¡°Life gives aye for life; now, honor for honor.¡±


    Summoning Uralia¡¯s twelve children by name, it breathed its fire upon them, and they were not burned, though their rabbit-skin wrappings fell as ashes to the ground. To the cowering tribe the monster spoke again: ¡°Behold your masters. Uralia¡¯s children, and their children¡¯s children, shall command yours so long as my power endures. And this shall be their token.¡±


    The dragon called Listas, the youngest, a child not yet come to womanhood, to take her mother¡¯s obsidian knife and cut the fist-sized pupil from the dragon¡¯s left eye. Black, searing blood spewed over the child¡¯s hand, but she did not tremble or falter, but cut clean. As bidden, she placed a drop of the blood on the tongue of each of her siblings, and her own, and magic burned into them: they spoke without words, from mind to mind; brought forth fire from nothingness; shifted their bodies to whatever form they desired; they flew.


    Then they stood once more before the dragon, awed to silence. Spreading her newborn¡¯s gossamer wings, then she roared her name: ¡°I am Marennin!¡± and soared above the sunset, and was gone.


    Uralia¡¯s children turned, naked and majestic, and their people grovelled before them, beholding the last of Marennin¡¯s signs. Whatever they had been before, blond or brown or ruddy of hair, brown or blue of eye, all twelve had changed: their hair, their mother¡¯s black; their eyes, the midnight-purple of the dragon¡¯s; and ever after, whatever shape they took, still their eyes remained the same dark and amethyst hue, and so the High-Sferan born would aye be known.


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    Listas washed clean the stone from the dragon¡¯s eye and held aloft an orb as large as the eldest brother¡¯s fist. From its depths burned a violet flame that cast strange shadows among those who from that day called themselves the Sfer-iare, the People of the Dragon.


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    After the children of Uralia¡¯s children, magic was indeed passed down in the blood¡ªif erratically. Knowing what to do with it was not.


    Hautiger noted Kelmhal¡¯s fingers flex, his lips move in a charm kept close under his breath, noted them with a distant professional interest. For those who wielded magic by blood, the actual gesture or words meant nothing, were nothing but a focusing device. For the merely trained wizard, however, they were considered crucial. Hautiger had only the rudiments of training; his lady wife, on the other hand, possessed both the blood-power and far more training than Kelmhal dreamed existed.


    For Kelmhal, that blood-magic, the heirloom of his ancestor¡¯s bloody marriage to the Moraigh heiress of Dunford, manifested in part as an ability to perceive another man¡¯s thoughts, if he chose. He seldom chose: most thoughts of most men bored him, even when they made sense, and he wished often enough that he could shut out their spoken babbling and boasting as easily. He did not advertise his distaste, but used men¡¯s fear of his Sferan power just enough to get what he wanted. Now, one of his hearthwards lay dead, one wounded, and one too excited to give a coherent accounting. Kelmhal poured all his skill and power, cobbled out of three decades¡¯ trial and error, into the hapless Kelmric¡¯s mind. Kelmric shivered in his grasp, but endured the assault on his psyche as faithfully as the one on his shirt.


    After a long moment, Kelmhal released him with a little shove of disgust: the images in Kelmric¡¯s mind were no more ordered than his spoken words; nor did Kelmhal know how to distinguish what a man had truly seen from what he only believed he had seen. Rothesay¡¯s boyish appearance puzzled him.


    ¡°So a little girl¡ª¡± he retreated to speech.


    ¡°She wasn¡¯t little, I keep telling you! ¡ªMy lord. Skinny as a rail, but every bit as tall as me, Lord!¡±


    ¡°Whatever!¡± snapped Kelmhal, already exasperated to distraction.


    ¡°A tall one, eh?¡± Hautiger intervened. Cherusay had been of middling height; but the reputedly Ceidhan father would have sired a tall child, if tales spoke true; tall, and more. ¡°Is she comely?¡± he inquired ardently, glad for a chance to pursue one interest under the veil of another.


    ¡°Oh, beautiful¡ª!¡± the rattled man retorted, his tone conveying both the degree of her pulchritude and the improbability of his ever voluntarily coming within arm¡¯s reach of her again. Imitating his master¡¯s imitation of imperial ways, he too spoke the High Sferan speech, though the Darian found Kelmric¡¯s accent almost impenetrably thick.


    ¡°But where does a bratling kin-thrall girl get a sword, Kelmric? You¡¯re sure it wasn¡¯t a stick?¡± Kelmhal grappled with whichever fragment of the puzzle stumbled into mind.


    ¡°It was a sword, my lord,¡± Kelmric repeated, through gritted teeth. ¡°And a man¡¯s sword, no dainty Da¡ª¡± He broke off, glanced guiltily at his lord¡¯s Darian guest, and stammered. Hautiger disdained to notice. If the new Perians did not distinguish between the grace of a court sword and the weight of one reserved for battle, should he rub their noses in their crudity?


    ¡°A good, solid sword,¡± Kelmric went on awkwardly. ¡°Disarmed Forld with it, near took off his shoulder¡ªand then she strikes, fwick, fwick!¡± He mimed two quick blows. ¡°Could ha¡¯ took out his eyes, but she didn¡¯t.¡±


    Kelmhal smacked the tabletop, rattling the wine bowls, and rounded on the fourth man present. ¡°Sounds like one of your accursed breed, C¨²rullan!¡±


    The man so addressed lounged at his ease by the hearth, evincing no interest in the wrangle. He affected most un-Geillan raiment of unrelieved black, without so much as a shimmer of satin to betray movement or intent to move; but steel at hilt and pommel winked about him like stars in the night. Two pairs of stilettos openly adorned each forearm in black wrist-sheaths, four more brazened the tops of his tall boots, a sword swung at each hip. A cruel scar marred his brown face from the corner of his lip to his ear, mute marker of a time when he had received almost as good as he had given. Once upon a time, years ago in Herumer¡¯s court, Hautiger had seen Herumer¡¯s acknowledged master assassin sit just so, aloof from the bright courtiers and idly stropping a tool of his trade. This C¨²rullan, too, kept his hands busy, and though it was no knife that glinted in the firelight, unaccountably Hautiger took the more care not to turn his back on him. He was embroidering.


    Earlier, catching Hautiger¡¯s fascinated stare, the fellow had turned his work to display it for him. Out of the black cloth in the hoop, a hummingbird shimmered at the edge of life out of fiery gossamer silks wrought in stitches of matchless delicacy: Sferan artistry had not been wholly crushed under conquering Geillan boots. Hautiger snorted. Two centuries of occupation and war, which the Sfera of Peria had steadily if stubbornly lost, and still the brawling Geilla worshipped the meanest scrap of the once-glorious civilization his own invasions helped pull down.


    Most of the scraps. King Kelmhal had introduced this black C¨²rullan as ¡°my pet Runedaur,¡± and made it clear to Hautiger that Dunford maintained good relations with the Order, as another tradition out of her ancient days when she was known as Anvedras Silverlost. One of C¨²rullan¡¯s functions at Kelmhal¡¯s court was to read for him what remained uncharred of the old books of Anvedras, and the names of her defenders who fell to Kelmhal¡¯s remote grandfather. Then his bard-priests could honor the Sferan dead with their own and so, perhaps, quiet the whispering ghosts: it had occurred to Kelmhal that these, too, were ancestors. Hautiger wondered if C¨²rullan had explained the architecture and Kelmhal failed to understand; or if he merely catered to the Geillath¡¯s superstitions.


    Yet though Kelmhal might keep fair with Colderwild, most of the invaders, Hautiger believed, no matter how settled, at their fondest avoided the dark knights; and more commonly, as the Sferiari were pushed further into the remote hills, dared to hate them openly. It might seem politically inexpedient in these times to make alliance with a Runedaur-friendly lord. Yet with common human perversity, some of those who hated the Order most were quickest to hire, or attempt to hire, its considerable, and expensive, power.


    Cherusay had tried. Daria still wondered¡ªavidly¡ªjust how she had intended to pay.


    Now C¨²rullan did not look up at his lord¡¯s charge, but only growled, ¡°Not to me.¡±


    ¡°Well, damn it, man, don¡¯t just sit there! I¡¯ve got a man dead, Kelmric says; that much is clear, though little else is. Chuck that bloody girl-craft and make yourself useful!¡±


    Hautiger, foreigner though he was, winced superstitiously at his host¡¯s bold rudeness, convinced that Kelmhal suffered a serious confusion as to which of them was the pet. C¨²rullan himself paused to look up at the coast-king with discomfiting thoroughness. Then, sighing, he rose and came over, to lay a hand on the Geillath¡¯s broad shoulder.


    ¡°Kelmhal, ywyst,¡± he said, his growling voice warmed by a kindliness Hautiger was not fool enough to believe, ¡°sit.¡± Kelmhal sat. ¡°Kelmric?¡± At the Runedaur¡¯s waved suggestion, Kelmric plunked down promptly and watched the knight with round eyes. ¡°Now, attend me,¡± C¨²rullan went on patiently, levelling a skeletal finger at Kelmric¡¯s chest and then sweeping it up in a wide arc that just missed his nose, till he pointed back at himself; and no one of the three marked that the Runedaur now commanded the complete attention of them all.


    ¡°I shall ask you a few questions, friend Kelmric. Take care,¡± and a breath of threat cooled his voice, ¡°take care to answer only the question asked! Volunteer nothing! Only if it seems that you cannot answer as asked, then speak, to correct my error but no more. Got it?¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir!¡±


    ¡°Good lad.¡±


    In a few quiet minutes, barring only a couple of outbursts from the agitated carl, swiftly choked back at the warning snap of Runedaur fingers, the tale of Kelmric¡¯s adventure from his departure from Dunford to his return, lay plain and unbelievable before them. C¨²rullan turned back to his hoop.


    ¡°Wait just a bloody minute!¡± Kelmhal barked. ¡°That¡¯s preposterous! That¡¯s impossible! How did the girl do that? Where did that sword come from?¡±


    ¡°Beats me,¡± said C¨²rullan. ¡°I thought you wanted to get his story straight.¡±


    ¡°I want a story that makes sense, damn it!¡±


    The Runedaur roared with sudden laughter. ¡°Do you! Sense comes more expensive than you know, Kelmhal!¡±


    ¡°Teodhan drown your mystic¡¯s prattle! What do you make of it, as a warrior?¡±


    ¡°How shall a warrior not be a mystic? Never mind, never mind! I make this,¡± he grinned, and shrugged: ¡°something¡ªodd¡ªhappened in Harrowater. And the explanation¡¯s as likely to come calling here as a coney is to hop on your meat-spit.¡±


    Kelmhal drew a deep breath of patience. Then to Kelmric he said quietly, ¡°Assemble a company to return to Harrowater in the morning. I want to know what all this means by tomorrow evening. You¡¯re in command.¡±


    ¡°Yes, my lord. As you will, my lord.¡± Kelmric bowed low and left, a downcast man. C¨²rullan marked the tight set of his shoulders with masterful interest.


    ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ¡Þ


    Night stirred languorously. ¡°So, the little gift has passed on,¡± She purred. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time idle; I think.¡± Her companion offered no comment. He never did, of course: it was, She thought, one of His most appealing traits. One of them. Instead He traced what could be thought of as a finger delicately over the outline of what might as well be a breast; and She writhed in pleasure, and turned to Him again.

 II: Outlaw (1/3): Flight

    II: Outlaw


    Dawn slipped rosily into the attic, waking Rothesay gently. She lay in peace for a long moment, listening to Padriag putter about in the kitchen below, raising a fragrance of tea and toast. She leaped happily to her feet, tumbled the width of the room and bowled hard into the last of the wizard¡¯s potatoes. Her stomach knotting, she remembered. She was a bewitched murderess, and an outlaw.


    Rolling to her back, she lay among the vegetables and stared into the careless rafters. Kelmhal came seldom to Harrowater; even his seasonal clan-moots, held at Fair-times, took place three miles away in Outing. Rothesay had seen him twice, that she could recall. It was often so; nonetheless a sense of a chieftain¡¯s presence pervaded a clan: in the setting aside of produce or product for the paying of levies, in Fair prizes awarded in his name, even in casual mead-hall threats to haul a neighbor before his justice. If one¡¯s lord was a source of nuisance and trouble at times, still in his hand was found justice, in his walls, safety, and in his name, family. And if the bonds of fealty frayed a bit at the edges, among the whores and the beggars and the slaves, still they wove the cloth of community: an outcast was as good as dead.


    She was as good as dead. What would the king¡¯s justice demand of her?


    She sat up, carefully, thinking grim thoughts. What would she demand of justice? Who the devil were they, the men at her home, arrayed as if for war-moot? Why were they there? If they had not come storming out like that, frightening her, shoving Brannar around like a bunch of bullies¡ª


    She squelched that line of thought, not without a shudder: Padriag would not like her making excuses, and she had unarguably done¡ªwhat she did. She desperately wanted an excuse, a way out, a way back to her old familiar self, raunchy pursuers and all; but she wanted Padriag¡¯s friendship still more: in thirteen years, no punishment had weighed so heavily with her as being sent home, away from his enchanting hall, disgraced.


    Well, she thought, I¡¯m still here. She drew a firm breath, straightened her tattered tunic, lifted her chin¡ªand slunk down to the warm, dim kitchen. The teapot whistled at her familiarly, and Padriag looked up from the fire.


    ¡°Good morning, dear!¡± he called brightly, not at all the address for a desperate felon, and it snatched her from the grip of nightmare guilt more powerfully than secret runes and mystic passes. Startled, she began to consider her predicament afresh, and sat down at the table abstractedly.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± said the wizard, pulling toast from the fire and piling it on a trencher.


    ¡°Hm?¡±


    He touched her hand lightly. ¡°You are bigger than anything that can ever happen to you,¡± he reminded her.


    ¡°¡®I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me,¡¯ ¡± she repeated back as she always had, dutifully, without believing a word of it, but wishing, as she always had, not to disappoint him.


    ¡°A little butter, a little of Pinnar¡¯s raspberry sauce¡ª?¡±


    ¡°I made that.¡± She often worked with the old edgeling widow, trading chores and gossip for scraps of half-forgotten Imperial cookery.


    Padriag chuckled. ¡°Did you indeed? You have taken to heart my counsel to study only with the best! Will you continue to heed it?¡±


    ¡°Of course! Er¡ª why?¡±


    Padriag seated himself comfortably, broke a sweetcake, and dipped it unhurriedly in his tea. Rothesay drew a deep breath and tried to practice her patience.


    ¡°I¡¯ve made inquiries,¡± Padriag said suddenly. Rothesay glanced at the hearth and saw an empty saucer there: for the cat, Minalece, or Kri the rat?


    ¡°Yes, Master?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll have heard of our lord Kelmhal¡¯s Darian visitor?


    Of course. The clan had been abuzz with the gossip. Men boasted of the deer or goose they had taken for Kelmhal¡¯s hosting, women bragged of their ale or pickles chosen for the guest¡¯s table. Indeed, she had heard of little else.


    ¡°The one you would not let me go ask about my mother?¡± she replied coolly, and not without some vinegar.


    Padriag¡¯s little eyes twinkled. ¡°Sheath your claws: they¡¯ll never scratch my old hide. Aye, the same¡ª who, hearing of a half-fay whore¡¯s child in the neighborhood¡ª your pardon, dear¡ª took a fancy to, ah, try you himself.¡±


    Rothesay grinned wickedly. Her canine teeth were ever so slightly too long, an inheritance from her mother, had she known it; it gave even her prettiest smiles a somewhat feral character, and made others suitable for scaring misbehaving children.


    Padriag paid no heed.


    ¡°Those were some of Kelmhal¡¯s hearthguard, sent to fetch you to Dunford Keep. A handsome place, the Stonekeep,¡± he went on reflectively; ¡°not much changed from Alcieta¡¯s time. . . . The wounded man has been lodged at the Hall and Thyrne has taken the children¡ª as I always thought she should; and the other fellow lit off for Dunford last night. I think it goes without saying, dear, that you ought not stay here and wait for Kelmhal. His sense of humor is widely underrated, but it runs a little on the rough side.¡±


    Rothesay, who in thirteen years had not travelled even the ten miles to Dunford, stared aghast. ¡°¡®Go¡¯? Go where? Wait! Pinnar¡¯s Marigold is farrowing soon, and I have to help!¡±


    Padriag chuckled. ¡°A old sow like Marigold can manage, even without the elf-child¡¯s aid.¡± From the folds of his robe, he pulled two pieces of parchment, each folded to a small square and one sealed with honey-gold wax. He opened the other. ¡°This is a map of Peria. Here is Harrowater; Andrastir, the capital: I should avoid that, were I you; the Myrinine Forest; and,¡± he finished triumphantly, ¡°Colderwild Hall.¡±


    ¡°What!¡±


    ¡°This,¡± he indicated the sealed paper, ¡°is a letter for Dav.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± said the wizard placidly, ¡°no one will follow you into Colderwild.¡±


    It was spring, and the early sun ran slender fingers through the forest, turning the new leaves to green jewels glowing in a dark matrix of branches. The air was cold and sweet; washed clean of winter¡¯s staleness, it was scented like a bride in a fragrance musky with wet loam and spiced with resin. A noise of water from freshened creeks filled the world. Rothesay had no attention to spare for the splendor of the dawning year.


    She had a number of skills, of sorts: raspberry sauce and small charms aside, she could put a sling-stone through a bullseye at a hundred paces; climb a tree like a cat; catch a fish barehanded; and she could hide, like a stone on a mountain, a splinter in a woodpile, a raindrop in a creek. Later that morning, sitting almost nose-deep in a hollow behind a knee-high waterfall, she had watched half a dozen horsemen gallop through the shallows not ten feet away. Then she had crouched still as a boulder, dark soggy cloak plastered to her, among the mossy rubble where the track from Harrowater cut deeply through the grey Coast-ridge rock, and heard conversation not meant for her:


    ¡°What¡¯s a wizard want with a girl-thrall, anyway, Breagga?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s a wizard, you dolt, he¡¯s not a corpse!¡±


    Incensed by the sniggering that followed this witticism, she almost betrayed herself with a quick-flung stone; mastering herself swiftly, she had dropped back down just in time to be missed by a last, suspicious survey before Breagga and friend entered the cutting.


    Now she lay, damp yet but no longer dripping, stretched thin and low as a cat along a branch of a huge old spruce, its thick needles shadowy and green about her, while horsemen conferred in a jumble of irritable voices on the road below. Here the Outing track joined the North Road, that ran west to Dunford and far Feillantir, east towards Sparca, arrow-straight under the overarching trees: the remains of an ancient Sferan highway. Most of the men wore the vibrant red-and-yellow striped cloaks of Kelmhal¡¯s household, but two she recognized as nobles as much by their casual arrogance as by the glory of their plumage: surely these were the Darian lord and his¡ª nephew, was it? Their raiment was of unfamiliar cut and subtle of color, and the wide borders were stiff with rich and jewelled embroideries; unfamiliar, yet they nagged at memory. Perhaps her mother¡¯s kin had worn such?


    The Dunhaldring warriors chafed before the strangers¡¯ silent disdain. Crossly, their leader summoned them as for battle-muster, and his harsh bark subdued their grumbles.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    ¡°Clansmen! Stout Dunhaldring! You fret like war-horses yoked to a farmer¡¯s cart. And why not? It seems more a nursemaid¡¯s part than a warrior¡¯s, to fetch home a truant brat. But think again! Though no task is too mean even for a king, if it be done in the name of hospitality,¡± at which he shot a grim glance at the foreigners, ¡°remember! Our cousins Ottu and Forld, on this same errand were slain or broken. We seek, not for a child, but for a kinslayer!¡±


    A great cry broke from the foremost horseman: ¡°Ottu!¡± His spear flashed, thrust skyward; and his comrades roared and their spears leaped up like a bronze thicket. Rothesay gripped her branch and cowered. Guilt for the death and injury at her hands racked her till her stomach roiled, guilt, and terror of the warriors¡¯ vengeance; that it was an accident, a freak of an ancient magic, might count for something, but she doubted if, in this mood, they might not dismember her before she ever saw King Kelmhal¡¯s court.


    Presently Kelmhal¡¯s men rode out, some east, some west; to her frustration, the two strangers lingered under her tree. She considered how accurately she could drop a fat blob of spit down the neck of the elder one, but restrained herself, as much from a dry mouth as good sense.


    The younger man, possessed of brown hair in three tiers of meticulous curls, turned to the elder. ¡°Respects, Uncle; and if that ravening horde does find her, just how do you propose to extricate her from their fangs?¡±


    The language was the High Sferan¡ª and accented Darian. So, these were her homewreckers: one false-haired old tub¡ª fifty, if he was a day¡ª and one primped, horse-toothed ferret? For all their blatant wealth, she curled a fastidious lip: the wizard¡¯s apprentice could afford a little choosiness. But she pressed forward to catch Uncle¡¯s reply.


    ¡°Why, I shall offer to pay the honor-price of the dead and wounded, on her behalf. She is poor, they say,¡± he chuckled strangely, ¡°and surely cannot do so herself? Then, being thus indebted to me, she must be bound to¡ª me.¡±


    His nephew eyed him suspiciously. ¡°And¡ª? What¡¯s the fuss? Kelmhal¡¯s got some pretty ones you haven¡¯t tried yet, handy in his own kitchen! Why so keen for this one?¡±


    Uncle was slow to reply; Rothesay bared her teeth. If the spruce¡¯s needles had been thicker and more concealing, she would indeed have spat down his neck.


    ¡°You are young, Ebya, but you must have heard tales. The clansmen called her name ¡®Roshi.¡¯¡± He gave the youth a tutor¡¯s glance.


    ¡°So?¡± his unwilling pupil retorted.


    ¡°So how would you shorten ¡®Rothesay¡¯?¡±


    Ebya¡ª short for Ebier¡ª stared. ¡°That¡¯s a Darian name.¡±


    Hautiger sighed. ¡°Perhaps ¡®Cherusay¡¯ means more to you?¡±


    ¡°The Orthundrysel, who tried to be queen?¡±


    Rothesay lost her grip on the branch, dislodged a chunk of bark in the recovery, snatched it from the air as it fell and missed the segue.


    ¡°¡ª Runedaur, to help her take the throne. She had a child¡ª¡±


    ¡°Named Rothesay?¡± Ebya guessed eagerly, his ennui dispelled.


    ¡°And rumored to be a Ceidhan bastard,¡± Hautiger said smoothly. ¡°I hardly think Cherusay herself still lives. No. There would have been a considerable noise from Peria if she had! But if she lived long enough to reach shore, and the child survived . . .¡±


    Ebya¡¯s enthusiasm ebbed as swiftly as it had flowed. ¡°You fancy returning the girl to the embrace of her family?¡± he mocked, then brightened with new interest. ¡°Would there be a reward?¡±


    Hautiger laughed. ¡°The embrace of her family? As well send her to the embrace of a nest of serpents! The girl will do well to stand clear of the House of Orthunder, at least without powerful allies! As for my interest¡ª well, bastards have threatened thrones before, and Cherusay¡¯s would be particularly threatening, even should she prove to have none of her mother¡¯s, er, spirit. Think of the House of Eirenseld, or of Cashellan! Who waves her under our good King Rumil¡¯s nose just may be able to lead him by it¡ª don¡¯t you think?¡±


    Ebya and Rothesay both thought Hautiger¡¯s interest ran still deeper, but she was in no position to inquire, Ebya did not, and Hautiger went on to suggest, meaningfully, that he breathe nothing of this to their host.


    ¡°Why?¡± his nephew demanded. ¡°What would he care anyway?¡±


    ¡°Boy!¡± Hautiger scoffed. ¡°Not Darians alone would command Daria¡¯s power, if they could! The old Perian clans want their country back. The Geillari want to crush the Sferan power¡ª what remains of it. Daria keeps herself carefully neutral: we should not like to betray old alliances; but neither do we care to incur the enmity of powerful new neighbors. If Rumil could be goaded into taking sides here¡ªeh?¡±


    Ebya stared at his uncle for some while before remarking, with a breath of genuine compassion, ¡°Glad I¡¯m not her,¡± and kicked his horse and set off westward, impatient for his dinner.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s pretty spiritless of you,¡± Rothesay called after him, after Hautiger, too, had gone; but her voice trembled in her throat, and she could not at once muster the strength to climb down.


    ¡®Tried to be queen¡¯¡ª! Padriag had never hinted at an ambition so exalted. Did he know? she wondered, and crushed the thought: of course he did, but what did such things matter to one who could not remember (so he said) Kelmhal¡¯s father¡¯s name, yet could tell the local wolf-lineage back seventeen generations? She laid her cheek along the branch, feeling the living strength within, the innocent power of a being concerned only with the great matters of wind and weather, and wondered if she would ever find the strength to climb down.


    Presently a lone rider passed beneath, returning to Dunford, red and yellow stripes aflutter at his back. What had the boy meant¡ª ¡®Orthundrysel¡¯ simply meant a woman of Orthunder¡¯s clan, regardless of her rank; though that was the ruling house in Daria, there were many families therein, both noble and lowly; what was ¡®the¡¯ Orthundrysel? And ¡®Don¡¯t tell Kelmhal.¡¯ In that case, while she might be a valuable pawn, as yet only one man knew about it, and the more distance she could put between herself and the smooth Darian baron, the happier she was likely to be. She slithered swiftly down the tree and faced away from the road, southward, where no


    track made by humankind led at all.


    And Dread gripped her like the hand of Winter. At her feet the tamed land ended: before her lay the ancient Waste, empty, inhuman. The world was vast and dark to men; only here and there over Earth¡¯s broad breast flickered the hearthlights of homestead or clan-hall, a few lonely stars in an impenetrable night of wilderness.


    Cobweb threads of road linked the little stars, and here she imagined leaving even that wisp of order. Wilderness was jealous. Subtly, relentlessly it strove to reclaim its usurped domain by root and tendril, web and nest, wherever the vigilance of mankind faltered. Not for cleanliness alone did a housewife beat her rafters and change out her rushes, but rather as a holy guardian, defender of the ordered hearth against the encroachment of the Wild. And people too long away from roof and hall, alone in the heart of its cold power¡ª they went queer, it was said, forgetting their names, becoming wild creatures themselves, gathered back into His fold by the lord


    of the Waste, the Hunter in the Green, Dagn the Piper.


    The rules were different, the whole cloth of life was an alien weave, out there. At home she was ¡®the fairy-child,¡¯ ¡®the madwoman¡¯s foundling,¡¯ ¡®the wizard¡¯s apprentice¡¯; she was ¡®a friend of pigs and edgelings¡¯ and she was ¡®the stranger¡¯¡ª the stranger: words like these wove her into the tapestry of Harrowater and the clan of Dunhaldring, words like these shaped her place, herself. What would she be, out there, without a word at all? In wilderness was oblivion. What if she could not win through?


    She unfolded her map, and tried to wring reassurance from its laconic marks: after ¡®forest¡¯ was marked ¡®field¡¯; after that, ¡®moors¡¯; she could name the distances, but the leagues were meaningless, and she could not tell when she would next see another human face, friendly or un-.


    More hooves thudded far down the road, drawing nearer. She sprang away from the tree and barged into the undergrowth, slipped on leaves and crashed to her back upon the sword and her small pack. There she lay, frightened and annoyed, till the hoofbeats faded again. A moment longer she stayed, to glower back at a trio of inquisitive squirrels. She had not vanished into infernal phantasmagory as she crossed the border of her imagination; indeed, she was just as conscious of embarrassment over the edge as at home. Thus reluctantly comforted, she dragged herself up and limped, clammy and bruised, away down the tangled slope.


    Still she kept uneasy watch, her eyes starting at shapes in bark, at knotholes and curious crotches, at ruffles on the leafy floor, straining to see the eyes she felt watching her with no compassion for the trespasser from the tilled fields. She fingered her little bag of charms where it dangled above her quickened heart, and stumbled in thought over rhymes and words to fend off unfriendly power; but it was the land itself that she feared. Wilderness was jealous, and her charms were small.


    She might be lost entirely to the human world.


    Not any time soon, she realized quickly. The rugged land made for slow going. It was often difficult to find a way up the rougher northern faces of the ridges, and the undergrowth on the gentle southern slopes grew rampantly, a melee of viny strife. Struggling through a dense stand of laurel, scratched and sweaty, she paused, toying with the notion of presenting herself to the Darian lord and peremptorily demanding his aid in establishing herself in her mother¡¯s land, deigning to permit him to be one of her court. She sucked distractedly at a bleeding knuckle, and looked about her at the thick tangles of laurel, quiet and tranquil in the silver light. Through the branches she could see, a few yards off, a young doe rabbit, sitting up on her haunches, nose atwitter with bright interest in Rothesay¡¯s scent.


    ¡°Look at you,¡± Rothesay grumbled at her, forgetting her knuckle. ¡°All you¡¯re supposed to be, and no more, and right where you should be. Nobody cares if your parents were married, nobody cares what your mother was, was she a queen among rabbits or¡ª well, I guess there aren¡¯t rabbit whores, are there?¡± she laughed. ¡°Aye, well, Mother Rabbit, you¡¯d best head on down the hill: I passed a fox¡¯s den not too far back up the slope there. That¡¯s it. Get along, ywysta.¡±


    Delicately the rabbit lowered her forepaws to the serene earth and bobbed off with perfect nonchalance. ¡°Shall I be superstitious and read this as an omen, that there are foxes back homeward while rabbits go in peace southward?¡± Rothesay called after her, but only a robin answered.


    She looked back up the way she had come. The laurel seemed equally thick, and wearisome, in all directions. She made a rude gesture with her thumb and nose in Hautiger¡¯s imagined direction, and then pressed on down the ridgeback. An imperious attitude alone would not compel the Darian lord to her bidding; Padriag had taught her how to acquit herself with courtesy among the wild folk that wandered the tamer woods around home; but she had no idea how to move her own kind. And at that, there might be some contention over just what that kind was.


    No, she was ill-prepared to take on the likes of Orthunder and Cashellan and¡ª that other one. She would leave the foxes behind. But she did not mean to be always a rabbit.


    In the afternoon, she struck a path going her way, and strode more briskly, her confidence bolstered by this unexpected human token. An old Sferan lane, it climbed the next ridge by aid of wide, clean-cut steps in the rock. At the switchbacks, weathered stone benches nestled beside stony troughs or pools, choked now with loam and debris, though at one a spring still trickled from the breast of a carved goddess. The Elanic style, she knew from Padriag¡¯s comments about his house, which was¡ª about the same period as her sword, she realized with a start, and hurried past.


    At the ridge¡¯s crest, she found the remains of the villa which the path had served: one more of the haunted fragments of that great civilization that had faded southward like the ebbing of a tide, leaving behind these ghostly ruins, pale empty shells abandoned on a dark shore. The broken buildings, silent proof of Dagn¡¯s relentless power, unnerved her as a broken body never had, and she fled, wild and heedless through the heedless wild.

 II: Outlaw (2/3): Loss

    As the light waned towards sunset she left the forested hills for the wide meadows of the Carolanth. No folk dwelt here for miles about, though shepherds must surely wander the rich fields from homes in the south. Rothesay hurried over the naked lands, nervously singing a twilight-protection song and trying to remember her geography. What was in the Carolanth? other than kingdoms of aurochs and swans. She wished Padriag had said a little more about human animals.


    Upon a gentle rise in the grass, she came to the edge of the deep past.


    Nineteen great grey stones stood in a long ellipse stretching from northeast to southwest. Eighteen of them were twice her height, their outward faces incised with many complex lines and unreadable shapes, unreadable except for two unmistakable eyes that stared over the eons from the top of each. The nineteenth, at the southwest point, looked like a stony tooth with a notched tip; standing straight, she could just peep through the notch. Season and weather permitting, she would have seen there the last fire of the last sun of the year.


    This was work older by far than the Sferan empire, older than Marennin herself. Near Harrowater, high on the last ridge, a straight line of smaller stones watched the rolling of the sea, though Padriag could not tell her why. He could say only that they were wrought by some tribe of the Ceidha, the Elder People, the Fair Folk. The eyes in the stones here, though gracefully drawn, had an inhuman look.


    She drew back in amazement at the eyes. The stones at Harrowater had no such graven ornament; she could not think when she might have seen them in waking life. But in her dreams¡ªthey haunted her now and again, not these bare lines but the living orbs the stones only remembered, brooding and remote. Sometimes they looked at her; sometimes not, but she could never see what else was the object of their . . . consideration.


    Rothesay¡¯s long eyebrows drew together as she studied the ring of stones. She tried to imagine their smiths; my father¡¯s people, she reflected. She knew nothing about him, not even his name; she could not recall ever hearing her mother speak of him. I am like to the builders here, and all I know are fireside tales and antique rumor.


    Still, she felt kinship enough to escape the dangerous hour of sunset by leaning her back against a cool grey slab inside the ring and taking a bit of supper. She seldom thought about the mystery of her father, though she had more than reason to believe her mother¡¯s tale was truth. Padriag said that men who were born to the Dragon¡¯s magic shaped and directed their power, all the time, with such chants and charms as he himself used only for teaching, and which she, once taught, discarded like empty husks, except as she liked the sheer sound of them.


    ¡°Then you are a dragon!¡± she exclaimed. She had long suspected something of the sort.


    ¡°I forget,¡± he smiled. ¡°But certainly no fay spirit needs words to stir what is¡ªer, at least half her nature!¡±


    Now she tried the story-spell, that had failed so oddly on the sword of Arngas. Here at the between-time, neither day nor night, in a place of ancient magic the spell should work wonderfully. This time, though, as she pulled it forth, she attended to its¡ªshape? a dreamlike form that no geometry of the waking world could compass, and that bloomed, or flowed, from casting to conclusion. For her it also had textures, and something like mass, and, once learned, a kind of location. One could ¡®feel¡¯ it with chanted words, as if the syllables were hands by proxy, or dust cast upon an invisible thing to reveal its surfaces; but once you knew where it was, so to speak, knew how to find it, what were the words for? Could Sferan magicians not remember, from one summoning to the next, where they had ¡®left¡¯ it?


    The spell opened . . . .


    . . . . And there had been festival here, in the gay sunshine; and immeasurable grief in the moonlight. Seasons bent; dancers wild and dancers solemn passed like blossoms, leaves, snowflakes, on many winds. Stars wheeled, matched by glowing eyes at the stations of the stones. The oval ring pulsed through the years like the heart of the people that raised it. Then little people came, short and dark, beside whom the dancers seemed like veiled lanterns; and then only the dark people remained, bewildered by the stones, and the dancing ceased.


    Rothesay blinked. The settling evening was only a little dimmer; she could still see her oatcake, pale on her lap. She had thought about sleeping the night in the ring; but the immensity of time within pressed on her like all the weight of the rock that shaped it. Rolling to hands and knees, she dragged herself beyond the circumference, and lay in the wet grass and sucked air as though she had not breathed in centuries. She hoped that was not in fact the truth; who could tell, at such an hour?


    Straightening wearily, she cast a last, curious look at the fairy ring, and trudged on.


    By midnight she had slipped deep into what had once been Erodonica like a weasel into a burrow. She glimpsed bright-cloaked clansmen twice again, once away westward as she crossed a broad road, and once at the edge of a town by the light of gate-torches flickering and spitting in the drizzling rain. She carried Padriag¡¯s token, a wizard¡¯s tassel that begged professional passage for her among the Geillan tribes; but she intended to avoid all human habitation. True enough, as Padriag had said, that no one in his right mind would follow her into Colderwild; but that did not prevent someone from following her to Colderwild. Moreover, women simply did not travel alone, and she was keen to the impropriety of her position, whatever Padriag might think; between the dangers of the wild and the chagrin of social indecency, she preferred the danger. Figuring that pursuers would seek out village and hall first, for their own comfort as much as for guessing the quarry¡¯s mind, she kept to the empty meads; but now the wet weather and the shelterless land argued hard otherwise. Unable to sleep in the sodden open, yet fearing men, she merely plodded on, till, stumbling and shivering, she found a remote byre. A handful of sheep stirred as she dropped among them, and finding no danger, slept again.


    The corner of Cluthmere she nipped through next day bustled, but not with the usual business of springtime. Oxen, harnessed by pairs to their plows, stood all but forgotten in half-turned mud, while men turned new-polished spears in the sunlight, and raised their voices in joyous anger. Now and again someone, disgusted with the turn of an argument, maybe, would remember his business and goad the team on for a furrow or two, before being drawn back by the siren lure of setting his fellows straight. Soon, Rothesay knew, their women, or boys yet short of manhood, would be set to drive the plowing, to free the men for their eager preparations. She knew the signs. Only a few years ago Harrowater, too, burned with this same restless fire, as Kelmhal laid plans for summer campaigns. Alrulf had been too young then for a chance to win booty and renown, and perhaps his family¡¯s freedom from kin-thrall; too young for war, but not for plowing. But Thyrne earned her limp in one of those summers; and the love of Mat.


    Rothesay wondered what clan these folk belonged to, and whom they meant to contest for land or loot; but though summer was the season for war and she meant to be far away by then, she did not wish to be taken for a spy. All her thought bent to airy stealth; striving to move as invisibly as the wind, with a breath she called on the Lord of Air, great Kavin, traditional patron of the land of Peria. Sleek as a hare, she skittered along hedgerows, writhed down ditches on her belly, bolted for the shadow of stone-piled Geillan cairns; and noted, irrelevantly, that the little blue stars of skybright bloomed for Geillan and Sferan dead equally. She reminded herself to mention this to Padriag; then remembered that it would be some while before she would have the chance. A wave of homesickness for her family swept over her -- but not for the wizard, whom she felt uncritically certain of seeing again, most probably after doing something foolish.


    In mid-bite, near the end of her midday meal taken furtively under a plank bridge with her still-soggy toes almost in the rivulet, a sudden fire flared in her heart and she flung off her rabbitish desire for stealth. What matter who pursued her? She was dangerous. She snatched up a stone from the stream bed to see if her power could crush it; and bruised her hand, but not her spirit: so there were limits to this strength? It was well to know. Flinging off her cloak as well, she drew herself boldly to her full height, smacked her skull into the plank and knocked it awry. Snarling, she set the board to rights, and strode off, defying, now even hoping for, challenge.


    All that met her that bright afternoon was a muddy east-west track. No sign could she see of a southward turning; shrugging, she crossed, forcing a way into the wilderness of budding sloe and sumac beyond, in a mood to spit even in Dagn¡¯s cold green eye. Wiry vines of old honeysuckle impeded her not at all, and she acquired thick anklets of twisted vine and grass before noticing them, but the raspberry canes ripped at her and her threadbare garments. The day grew hot, and the land steamed in the bright sunlight.


    Presently a queer sensation began to creep over her: a shade of horror, a wisp of rage and despair, like echoes of something long forgotten. She stopped, glanced about, strained to listen. The sun shone cheerily in the blue-washed sky, over birds busy singing for their mates or rustling up a nest; an enterprising bee hummed past; a mouse skittered by under the greening grass where no blood spilled. No; no blood anywhere to be seen, and only the rich smells of warm dirt and grass rising in the soft air. The twilight chill she imagined was only a fancy.


    Ahead of her, several leagues distant, the land rose in the first of the great downs that stretched saddlelike between the mountains of Tre-Uissig and rugged Sparca. She strode forward briskly to meet them, clean heights above whatever she had stumbled into, ghostly magic or morbid fancy. In a moment she stumbled into something hard in this spongy land, stubbed her toes against something solidly real under the grass.


    It was dull and dark, and metal, half-buried in the soil, new grass leaping up about it. She pulled away the weeds from a helm rather like the one in the barrow¡ª


    ¡ªthe world reeled, out of the darkling sky a blade flashed straight for her eye-slits, she leaped back¡ªand sat down hard onto a squishy tussock. A startled mouse bounded several inches straight up between her knees and fled in annoyance.


    Rothesay blinked in the quiet sunlight. Her breath came quick, her thoughts slowly. There had been screams of battle in the rain, long ago. She was sure it was long ago. Quite sure.


    She rose up carefully. She did not touch the helm again, had no wish to lift it up and see the skull within cracked across the orbits, nor blind baby mice nestling in a brainpan. ¡°No fair,¡± she grumbled, hastening for the beckoning heights. ¡°I get giant¡¯s strength, and hallucinatory battle. No fair!¡±


    In the summer that followed Berulf¡¯s Winter, the Princes of Morag were Scaramor Tammas and Suriag Dyntari, cousins born in the same hour to twin fathers, and neither sorceror nor astronomer could say which was the elder. They had grown up the most affectionate of rivals, and each fought harder for the other¡¯s respect and envy than for that of any other soul, till so skilled were they in every grace and art, that two more perfect knights could not be found among the Sferiadh. Dark Scaramor might be bolder and stronger; red-haired Suriag more grave and scholarly, but not less proud and high-spirited. Joyfully they shared in fame and in the love of their clan; they shared their jewels, their swords, even their boots, for they were much of a size. One thing only they could not share: Kiselle Aurhei, the daughter of Andragon the philosopher; and she was loath to choose.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Their fathers perished in the Rebellion of the Lions, that had inspired Talherne High-king to summon the wild Geillari; their lord grandfather¡¯s death in the hungry winter just past left them, eighteen and untried, the masters of Morag. And then they faced one more thing they could not share: the lordship of Morag. It must at last fall to one or the other; they shrank from pressing that choice, which both ardently desired, and said that the time was evil, the clan too unsettled, with the grim Ollaf Bearkiller hunting and harrying their folk even before spring dawned. When that danger had been crushed, was time enough to settle the succession.


    A raid in early spring drove the folk of rich Genresdale flying from their burning homes to the high keep at Genallic; then that, too, fell, before the Moraigh knights could muster to its defense. A third of the dalesmen died there, another third fled into the wild and were lost, and those who limped at last into the Moraigh stronghold at Farhallic found small comfort, for the harvest had been poor, with more folk set to arms than to tend the fields in that last war-scarred year; provisions were desperately low.


    The princes led a raid of their own, striking not to kill but to steal, and snatched meat from the very teeth of the enemy and plundered his stew and his kettles too. The starving Morachari ate well for a few days, and praised their young lords in prayer and song, but it little soothed the humiliation of raiding, raiding like bandits¡ªor barbarians¡ªinstead of standing forth in proper battle, that rankled in the princes¡¯ hearts.


    Ollaf was forced to pause to feed his own and replenish his stores. Morag regrouped, drawing in clansmen from the southern dales of Erodonica and from the near banks of the Coull; but those from the wide fields beyond were lost, and the ashes in their empty towns were cold.


    The warriors of Morag abandoned Farhallic to the old and the feeble: it was a strong place, but it would be all too easy for the Bearkiller to block the mouth of its narrow gorge and hold the place in siege. Rather than risk them all in a stony trap, Scaramor led half their force in one band, styling themselves the Shadow Serpents, while Suriag commanded the rest, as the Ghost Hawks; and sported still, snake against bird. Then through the spring their two little armies snapped and bit at the Geillan band like curs worrying a mountain bear, stalling, stalling, buying time for their elders and children, their sick and wounded, to hunt and gather and¡ªwith the blessing of the Holy Ones¡ªgrow strong again.


    That gave Ollaf no great concern, who ignored Farhallic for now. Far more worrisome to him was the chance of some stronger House, Kinnaith maybe, or Rhyllandon, or dread Andras, answering a Moraigh call for aid. But so far as he could tell, no such call was made; at least, no reply ever came.


    By the Solstice, the Bearkiller had taken good measure of his quarry. He knew who they were and what they wanted, and he was weary of their harassment. Their forces were small but that much quicker, and they knew this land well. Not since spring had they let themselves be caught in battle, wherein a man might earn honest glory: dearly though they wanted it, they could ill afford it. Yet even knowing that, Ollaf was loath to close with them, for they had a magic, a flying fire. Burned once, with a dozen men lost to a grisly flaming death, the war-chief was more than twice wary. He did not know enough of Sferan sorcery to know its costs and risks, did not know that if he pressed hard and fiercely enough the Sferan spell-casters would be unable to attain or sustain the concentration they needed, nor that he could simply starve them to powerlessness. Ollaf brooded, wondering how best to play his adversaries. Then Kiselle Aurhei fell into his hands.


    She had attended the little Moraigh bands, first with one and then the other of her lovers, and back again. In her hands lay one of the flame spells, and she had spent the better part of her strength wielding it. Now she crept away under cool cover of a short near-solstice night, seeking a way back to rest at Farhallic; and stumbled unawares upon a Geillan scout patrol.


    With this prize in hand, Ollaf asked for two men bold enough to risk slaughter at the hands of the Dragon-lords, men to save their brothers from the horror of the magic fire-death by creeping near the separate camps, to be taken prisoner, and surrender false news.


    Angwald Longarm and Rack Full-moon (so named for his wholly bald and well-scarred skull), pressed hard by their Sferan captors, at last confessed, each the same story: he was a messenger between the Bearkiller and the other Moraigh prince, to whom Ollaf offered alliance, aid in assuring the Moraigh lordship, and the hand of Kiselle, who had not left at all but gone to the other camp to the man she truly loved. And each captive claimed he was on his way back to Ollaf to report that the other prince had accepted. At dawn, the Geillari would stand with their new ally and cut down his challengers.


    Scaramor was quick-tempered even at his best; now he was weary, hungry and frustrated. As reward for this ugly fool¡¯s-tale he slew the doughty Longarm with one blow, where he crouched helpless in the grip of Scaramor¡¯s lieutenants. Then shame bit deep, and he passed a long and sleepless night, doubt and anger twined in a smoky dance in his hot blood, doubt leading anger, and then anger, doubt. His men caught his mood; as they talked into the night, reason twisted and struggled to escape the shame of the killing of a defenseless prisoner. Before dawn he knew, they all knew, that the spy spoke truth: Suriag had betrayed them. And there was only one thing then to do.


    Suriag, ever more thoughtful and slower to act, for his part seized Rack¡¯s full moon in both his hands and burned into the man¡¯s thoughts, and read there the whole sordid stratagem. He laughed grimly, scornfully, that this Geillan brute thought so shallow a scheme could trick men who had the gift of the Dragon. Knowing that Scaramor could, and would, do just as he had done and as easily, Suriag gave it not another thought, but slept deeply.


    Dawn came slow and grey with rain. Suriag woke to his watch crying the alarm, crying with a shock and dismay he had not heard this whole bitter season. He looked out upon the charge of Scaramor¡¯s troops, and knew with despair that Scaramor had believed. Maybe, maybe if every man of his own cast all weapons aside, their brothers¡¯ wrath would be foiled. But now from the north the barbarians came, as if bringing the promised aid; and he dared not disarm before them, for he knew they meant death to all.


    Then his own slow fury kindled, rage and hurt that his friend from the cradle thought no more of him than this. If Scaramor thought Suriag capable of such a betrayal¡ªwhat did that say of Scaramor¡¯s own heart? Drawing his blade, he roared a roar that cracked into a wail of such desolation that all who heard it quailed and cowered; and he rushed forward to doom, and cared nothing for who followed or failed him.


    Folk said after, that Suriag died of his wounds in Scaramor¡¯s arms; and Scaramor closed his friend¡¯s eyes and slew himself, piercing his heart with Suriag¡¯s bronze dagger, overwhelming its encrusting rubies with the ruby of his own heart¡¯s blood. And that blade, and many others, too, were thus lost to men, for no one ever came to tend the bodies of the fallen men of Morag. The Geillari took their own away; but a strange dread fell all about the field later called Morachallow, and they would not go near the bodies of the Dragon-lords for any price.


    The Geillari triumphed; but not Ollaf Bearkiller. He took the captive Dragon-woman, Kiselle of Andragon, for his wife that very night of victory, and never saw another dawn, for she cut his throat with his own knife. As for Kiselle herself, some tales say one thing, and some another. Some hold that, having killed Ollaf, she took her own life in her grief for her beloved princes. Some say she fled in the night, already with Ollaf¡¯s child. And still others say that indeed she fled, but with the seed of one or another of her lovers, for that was why she sought to return to Farhallic at the first.


    So the power of Morag broke on Moraigh swords. The Geillari swept through like a scythe on the last stalks of harvest; and besieged Farhallic and burnt it to the ground, and their own people followed into the gentle swales


    of Erodonica. But though the fields of the final battle were among the richest in the northern lands, no living man cared to try them with a plow.


    Rothesay knew the tale well, for the edgelings at home were the northern remnant of Morag, and remembered their doomed young lords with love sweetened by the bitter centuries since; but she had had no idea where the Morachallow lay. She hastened across the vale of blood long faded and pressed on across the fields.


    She stopped at sunset by a pool full of swans; too weary even to eat, she slept at once, soothed by the rustle of last year¡¯s reeds, though it was poor substitute for the rumble of the surf at home. Waking to a cold blanket of fog, she hastily cast all the protective spells Padriag had ever shown her, appalled that she had forgotten them the night before: fogs and mists were bewildering-magics, favorite entrapments of Dagn and his wild retainers. Men stayed indoors when the white mists crawled. She hunkered low among the reeds and waited till Areolin¡¯s sunfire burned the vapors away before she moved. A little marsh-bird shared her wait, and her cake-crumbs. I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me, she told it earnestly, reciting the phrase like a charm rather than a conviction, and thought wistfully of raspberry sauce.


    The land lay empty all the next day; she saw neither home nor track, and she sang out loud, just to hear a human voice. By afternoon she reached the feet of the downs. Long sunlight streamed across the treeless slopes. A small but enthusiastic brook tumbled down the hillside, sometimes crashing from pot-sized pool to pool in the grey rock, sometimes sluicing down channels that might have been carved by hand, so straight and even they were. Rothesay climbed with a will, not pausing for a cold, clean drink till she was well above the soggy meadowlands and her head was clear of mists and hauntings. Her spirits rose with the land, and she capered goatlike from rock to boulder along the stream. Passing its spring bubbling out of a tiny crevice, she bounded out onto the wide, flat crown of the great hill as the still-yellow sunset gleamed straight across it.


    The wind poured in a great torrent over the hilltop, tugging and snapping at her tunic and baggy breeches as if it meant to rip them away for sheer mischief. Rothesay spread her arms wide into it. All that breathes is mine, saith the wind; and all petitions borne on breath do I hear. Before her the eastern lands rolled away into grey evening shadow and blurred with the sky, and she felt as though she danced upon the roof of Peria. She cast off her pack and danced indeed upon the hilltop, for a few moments free of both past and future. Then she unbound her braids and cast her heavy lengths of hair, still damp in part from the rain two days ago, upon the air to dry.


    She pulled off her clumsy brogans to air her feet as well, and despite the stiff breeze, a great reek of rosemary rose about her. A sprig in a shoe was supposed to bring good luck to the traveller; Rothesay had padded hers with as much as she could pack in and still tie the thongs. Her feet were crosshatched with rosemary-needle impressions. She poked at the dank herbs, but decided against waiting for them to dry. Reluctantly, she bound her feet up again, but left her hair free: she was alone with the wind, and still by law a girl.


    A Geillan woman past the age of menarche kept her hair religiously braided for propriety¡¯s sake; the Sferan woman also, but her religion was fashion and her arrangements were elaborate and ornamented. No peasant was too poor to twist an intricate art in the wealth of her own hair, and flaunt feathers and flowers, shells or pebbles in the coils. And though the Geilleisil broadly regarded their Sferan sisters as effete, puny things, they lusted for the Sfereisil style, and embraced every imperial cosmetic art they could learn. The rage of austere Geillan priestesses against painted lips and scented bosoms went unheeded, especially by the young.


    Rothesay could twist a pretty plait or two, but not when it was heavy with damp, and not with the great Wind-lord trying hard to style it for her. She gave up trying to thwart the divine help, beyond forcibly holding the bulk of it out of her face, and started down into the generous Meredale, grey in the evening.


    Kavin watched her go with some interest. She smelled of Night, and He wondered greatly what involved the Lady with mortals this time. Soon enough to ask: She approached from the east as Areolin¡¯s light fell away westward, and He looked forward to Her touch, and how it gentled Him.

 II: Outlaw (3/3): Bumps in the Night

    Twilight filled the sheltered dale with a tide of grey quietness. Windows of clustered cottages gleamed, and she hoped she could wheedle an apprentice wizard¡¯s welcome from someone. Now out of the wind, she left her hair undone: she was man-clad, she might as well go wholly manlike, though only bards usually wore it so long. She had little doubt that she could play the part. At home her only serious suitor, much to everyone¡¯s amusement, was Dagobeord, who was widely believed¡ªthough no one could ever prove it¡ªto prefer boys. And surely no one here would have heard tales out of Anstrede yet; she would be safely anonymous. She hurried down from the lonely hills, leaped over a wall of dry-laid stone into well-tilled mud, leaped back out and trotted around from the blind rear of the first stone cot into a fracas.


    A handful of Geillan bloods played knock-a-ball with the edgeling cottager. Rothesay knew the sport. She wondered what terrible sin the crofter had committed: having a face that the chieftain¡¯s son disliked, perhaps. That would be that noble youth there, his yellow beard split in a bigger laugh than any of his cronies, and braided tight the better to flash the bright silver of his heavy torque. More silver sparkled in the embroidery of his bold-checked tunic, and on the rings of his hands as he shoved the stumbling cottager back into the circle of the others¡¯ fists.


    ¡°Now just a minute!¡± she chided, striding up, as if they were the squabbling Harrowater infants who half-feared the wizard¡¯s apprentice.


    Cold stares froze her in mid-step. Old habit seized her in an icy grip: kin-thralls, only one slippery step above fine-thralls paying for their crimes in servitude, hardly dared address their free cousins; challenging the lords of the clan was begging for unhappiness. One, short and stocky and no more than her own age, thrust the battered peasant at her like a weapon. She caught him by his shoulders as effortlessly as so much feather-down¡ªand a wonderful warm delight welled up in her.


    She set the man gently aside and turned back to the noble bullies. A wide grin shone white in her face all unbeknownst to her; but sight of it, and her queer canines bared, drove the stocky youth to step sharply back, and then to cover this chagrin by raising the stakes: his sword rasped forth to chastise the unarmed interloper.


    To her own surprise, Rothesay whirled, bounced a heel in his crotch, stole the hilt from his suddenly-loosened grasp and, coming round, sent the blade-tip flicking into his face, twice, just as Arngas¡¯s sword had done at Harrowater. Two swift runnels of blood striped his cheeks as he stared, blinked and stared and hardly dared believe the miracle that he still could see. Rothesay stared too. That magic was not in the old Runedaur¡¯s weapon, then?


    Roaring his rage, the silver-torqued leader bared his own sword and lunged for her, heedless of the crofter scuttling from his path. Then the man behind him, a tall, gaunt figure hidden deep in a cloak of dark and bardic blue, pulled him up short with a fierce hand on his shoulder. The lordling shrugged him off indignantly; but he waited on the dark one¡¯s pleasure.


    Rothesay studied him warily. The Geillari regarded their kings with reverence; their bards, with awe. The bard, wielder of words, kept the story, the very soul, of his clan. He it was who remembered and interpreted the ancient laws of all their race, and so was first among the four, the only four, professions free to travel unchallenged across their land: bard, smith, healer, mage. The power of a bard¡¯s satire could bring plague, pox, or blight; he saw the future in the staves of his poetry; he could weaken a brave man¡¯s arm with one withering glance. Padriag had once, quite offhandedly, taught her a charm to avert a bardic curse; she summoned it now, her grip flexing on her stolen sword.


    The bard fixed his hard gaze upon her bosom. But her breastbands squashed her modest endowments quite flat; puzzled, she put up an involuntary hand, and felt the blossom-kalasin, still warm from her body, displayed upon her jerkin and blazoning her with dark meaning in its gay petals. He turned the stocky youth, standing stiff as a plank, and tipped his face to see the delicate wounds so precariously laid at the edge of each orbit. Avoiding Rothesay¡¯s stark face, he pulled his princeling closer and muttered low into his ear.


    ¡°So?¡± that one demanded gracelessly, not taking his eyes from her.


    The older man shrugged. ¡°There are but five of us; four, armed. But that is not the whole of it¡ª¡±


    The man cast Rothesay an ugly sneer. ¡°But it¡¯s only a girl!¡± he spat.


    The bard looked her over once more. ¡°Of course it is,¡± his tongue agreed, his face denied, and he drew his kinsman after him. ¡°Of course it is. Come, Guthrac, Halthu. Good evening¡ªah, mistress.¡± Irony whispered beyond the reach of challenge.


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± she bluffed, unable to believe she had pulled it off. ¡°Get along, then.¡±


    ¡°Or what?¡± roared the young noble, rounding back on her again.


    Mischief flared hot in her thin insides. Baring her teeth in a deliberate grin, she made the captured blade twitch like the tail of a waiting cat.


    ¡°Or not. . . .¡±


    The bard grabbed his prince¡¯s cloak and dragged him away into the dusk.


    Watching them go, Rothesay saw an amazing, an exhilarating thing: she saw their backs as they departed. Never mind that one or another face glared back at her defiantly over a shoulder, it was their backs that spoke to her soul. When a gloom of trees well down the lane finally swallowed them from view, she stabbed her new-won prize into the earth before her and punched both fists skyward in an exultation of triumph. Then she flung her arms wide as a soaring eagle¡¯s wings and danced, whirling herself tightly about, her feet beating a hard tattoo on the ground.


    From the tail of her eye, she caught sight of the edgeling family standing mute, staring at her. She snapped at once to normal posture, slightly hunched with sheepishness, blinking back at them with wide eyes. But, the flush of power flowing still warm within her, she unfolded like an opening petal to her full height again, and her broad white grin repossessed her face.


    ¡°Good evening, Mother,¡± she said politely, speaking Harrowater-Sferan, ¡°and would you have a bit of supper to spare a poor traveller?¡±


    By moonlight made fickle by the raveling cloud, Rothesay crossed the dark Merestream by stepping-stone, to climb the flanks of Great Cernefell, barren and windswathed in the roaring midnight.


    ¡°Mind the tubs.¡±


    The family had so bidden her at parting, and precious little else they had to say. If anything, Rothesay¡¯s intervention only assured them of retribution sterner than the rudeness they had just escaped. She offered to stay in their defense, though the thought so alarmed her she could barely stammer it. The crofter shrugged, and murmured a phrase, about a single stone against a tide. He started when she finished the quote, from the Classic poet Ddreio: ¡°yet joined in a great company/shall lonely stones turn back the sea.¡± But he only shrugged again, and, disheartened, Rothesay paid for her meal with such coin as she had, stacking logs for them with her queer strength, and singing the frightened children to sleep with her voice lovely and hollow as the wanton, eternal wind.


    She left then, not staying the night. Once her blood cooled, she felt herself trembling like a harp, though she felt neither cold nor afraid. The bronze blade of her problematic prize shivered in her grip as she turned and hefted it. As if I knew what I was doing with it! she chided herself in alarm; though I did well. . . . I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me; and for the first time she wondered, Well, maybe¡ª?


    A sword, however, was an ell of metal treasure, a portable fortune¡ªand the difference between freeman and noble. Its former owner would not idly accept its loss. The crofter refused to take it, and Rothesay reluctantly swathed it together with the sword of Arngas across her back. Murder in Anstrede, theft in the Meredale: she stood a good chance, she felt, of becoming eastern Peria¡¯s most wanted outlaw before coming within miles of Colderwild. To her own surprise, she laughed aloud at the thought, drawing fresh stares from the wary family, and she set off into the night with a will.


    Mind the tubs. Rothesay watched the ghostly ground shifting from silver uncertainty to black emptiness, and scowled. These tubs were ¡®holes in the ground; big ¡¯uns.¡¯ When the track they promised her led her by several depressions larger than Padriag¡¯s hall and almost half as deep, she breathed easier and strode more lightly, and almost tumbled into a shadow no moonlight could dispell.


    Lying flat under the wind and clutching the tough grass, she groped, found a small rock, and lofted it into the darkness. One heartbeat; two; three and four before she heard, clear but remote, amplified by the shaft, the clack of stone on stone. She sucked a deep breath and crawled well away before venturing to stand again.


    The ¡®tub¡¯ was scarcely ten or twenty feet broad, its contours irregular, and dropped forever, or as near as made no difference to whomever dropped in. She wondered what had made it, and whether its appearance improved by Areolin¡¯s holy sunlight, but she did not stay, pressing on with unplumbed care till she had skirted half a dozen of the dreadful pits, and, crossing Great Cernefell at last, descended into Scealdale with Little Cernefell beyond, crowned with cold stars. That which followed, eddying up from that first troubled pit, took no shape by which to be seen or known.


    At last the moon, just at the full, sank to the western rim of the dark world; the east paled, but not yet to lighten the land, as Rothesay paused at the crest of the path bending down from the last of the downs. Weariness ached in her bones, but it was not for fatigue that she hesitated.


    Now was neither day nor night, neither the waxing nor the waning of the month; another step and she would tread the plunging slope, walking land that was neither peak nor vale. Times between times, places between: the veil between worlds thinned, magics peaked in power, fay or mortal either might easily stumble into the other¡¯s world. Padriag had works he performed preferentially at dawn or dusk, on the shore where the white waves laced the hem of the sea about his ankles. Yestereve she had a village to run to; here, she stared down into inky emptiness. She looked back.


    The wind had fallen almost still in the last hour; only a few fine hairs lifted on the air to tickle her cheeks. But away in the northern darkness, now a roar was rising, the voice of a mighty gale bearing down to sweep the whole world clean.


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    The track bent sharply down; the slope fell perilously. One stiff gust from the torrent approaching and she might descend from Caelhill without the aid of feet, and break her neck on the unseen stones on the way. With only moments to choose, she fled recklessly for the dim path, and the questionable shelter of the stony hillside.


    The roaring surged above her head, whined over the dark gulf beside her, dropped away, and then came thundering back up to meet her. The path wrenched back in a hairpin bend; Rothesay missed the turn, slithered over the gravelly berm, tumbled briefly down the lumpy slope and snapped like a dishrag about a writhen shrub. The wind¡ªif wind it was¡ªfell still.


    There were eyes in the stillness. Rothesay twined all her long limbs about the bush, and slowly turned her head, though she was certain that she did not want to see whatever might be there.


    With the eyes in her face, she saw the shadowy ground, the black horizon, the westering stars pale in the last of the night. Without them, she ¡®saw¡¯, clearer, nearer, more immediately real, two broad eyes, like glowing pits, portals to a long fall to elsewhere. If they had had a color, they would have been yellow, wan and weird as an ailing moon.


    No, maybe like feeble firelight in a lonely window; she could almost believe she saw movement, deep within. She screwed up her face, trying to ¡®see¡¯ better, before remembering that she ought not. . . .


    The yellow pits billowed into one pallid maw, the maw wolfed her down, she tumbled gibbering into the witchlight, her stomach swooping with the fall even though she could feel the shrub still hard and prickly in her grip.


    The shrub, a stunted tree, rather, was holly. Tiny scratches began to burn on her face and hands, and she shrank away from the needling leaves. She wondered what it portended: the Geillan clans were wont to bury their dead with a shining leaf of it on the tongue, for the safe passage of the soul; in imperial tradition it symbolized immortality. Both considered it holy to the Lord of the Dead. Nonetheless she hugged its limbs tighter, clinging to its solidity, and strained to see rocky hillside instead of witchy pit.


    No hill could she see at all. She could feel the bush, feel even the sharpness of stones digging uncomfortably into her thigh, but she could not see them. She was¡ªin a cave, a great cavern, maybe; there was a subterranean silence, and an impression of vastness all around her. The yellowness had faded like sunset into a profound violet glow.


    ¡°Ah. It¡¯s you.¡± The voice rolled out of the purple darkness like imprisoned thunder. ¡°You are a little fool.¡± The thunder was disappointed.


    Rothesay paid no heed to the insult, which she considered only observation anyway, but her heart climbed to her throat at the phrase, "it¡¯s you". Me, who?


    Steel scraped slowly over stone. Pebbles rattled down from a height. Glossy and black as a thing carved of jet, casting violet gleams like flashes of strange fire, a vast creature emerged like Shadow taking form. Jaws, as long as Rothesay was tall, parted slowly, ice-pale teeth the size of her legs glimmered in the strange dimness. Then, as suddenly as the blinding golden fire that belched forth over the blue tongue, without needing to see the empty whiteness where the left pupil should have burned like a coal, she knew the dread author of this magic about her. Being roasted by Marennin: she felt the high honor of this death even through the terror; though less honor and more life would have been her preference.


    The flames bathed her in hot glory¡ªand did not burn. The great dragon looked at her astonished face and laughed, doom, doom, doom, like monstrous drums deep underground. ¡°You are all bone,¡± grumbled Marennin, flicking her tongue disdainfully over her snout. ¡°And what should I say to Padriag?¡± The drums chortled again.


    ¡°But¡ª¡± Rothesay moved to touch herself, to verify that she was not two ells of charred meat, and banged her arm on a tough branch. ¡°What¡ª?¡±


    ¡°You are like a kitten, baffled by her reflection. You are in my mirror.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± This was magic beyond her apprentice¡¯s comprehension; especially, she wanted to know exactly what the word ¡®in¡¯ meant here. But at least she now understood the dragon¡¯s recognizing her: on her thirteenth birthday, to her fright and lasting awe, Padriag had shown her to the dragon, through his own mirror (which behaved like a window at the time; could his, too, hold a being ¡®in¡¯ it in this curious possessive way?); Marennin evidently remembered. ¡°Oh. You, er, were you looking for me, Majesty?¡± she squeaked politely, jittery after a long spell of uncomfortable silent scrutiny.


    ¡°No.¡±


    Rothesay squirmed as the monosyllable chopped conversation dead. She appeared to have no power to look away; experimentally, she let go of a branch of the shrub. Perhaps if she disengaged from it entirely, she could simply walk off and resume her journey. Perhaps Marennin would think it rude. Perhaps having the Dragon of Peria annoyed with one would not be altogether in one¡¯s best interests. Right.


    ¡°I look for the king,¡± said Marennin after what seemed like hours. ¡°You are a fool, Bones-that-walk; unless you live. Yet then, you may do.¡± She chuckled again like falling boulders. ¡°Indeed, child of Ystalyfera, you may serve me best of all.¡±


    ¡°Oh, good,¡± Rothesay thought weakly, and was horrified to hear it as spoken.


    ¡°Find the king.¡±


    Kelmhal? What was worse, now: returning home to a charge of magical kinslaying, or offending a dragon¡ªthe Dragon¡ª?


    The purple glare of a baleful eye stabbed into her baffled brain; she put up an involuntary hand to ward off its brilliance and banged the branch again. ¡°Spare me the trifles; they are Tryddaini. Find the Eye: the king wakes the fire. Men will see.¡±


    A hundred questions tumbled over one another in her thoughts: who? how? what were Tryddaini? Ystalyfera? The one that tumbled forth was, ¡°Er, what am I to do with him¡ª?¡±


    After a moment of what might have been surprise, Marennin laughed again, louder than before, like a whole hillside collapsing, and Rothesay whirled dizzyingly away, thistledown in a tempest. A many-tentacled black horror grabbed at her face out of the dimness; she screamed and flung herself backwards, scraping her side through dirt and stones. It was the holly, and the sky paled with the advancing dawn.


    There came an unearthly shriek from the slope above her head, a keening of rage and indignation. The unseen eyes, eclipsed by the power of the dragon, blazed in frustration and roared away like a mighty wind over the top of the hill.


    A lark sang in the quietness.


    Rothesay crawled out from under the bush, dragged herself three yards up to the bend in the path, and blinked, dazed with magic, stupid with fatigue, at the burning sunrise. She shook her head slowly, trying to unravel the cryptic words of the dragon. Find ¡®the king¡¯; find ¡®the Eye¡¯: she was fairly certain that those were two different requests¡ªor orders? What if she failed? If she succeeded, what was she to do¡ªpunch the king on the shoulder and yell, ¡°Tag!¡±?


    She rubbed her eyes fiercely. That thing that had hunted her: now she came to think of it, she thought she could recall a sense of surprise, and outrage, when she tumbled into its gaze, and guessed that Marennin had somehow possessed it, used it to snare Rothesay. But she had not been looking for me; she caught me by accident. . . . And now she wants me to find a king. Holly, she remembered with a start, staring down at her recent shrubby shelter, was also a token of the high kingship. Little jewels of blood still welled through her skin from its scratches.


    Dawn came to the heights as a yellow flood over the rumpled backs of pale cloud running to the end of sight about the top of Caelhill. Somewhere below, men woke to crawl about their rounds of toil in greyness; up here, Rothesay was alone with the waking of warmth and color: the yellow light brought blue to the ancient sky, gold to the frosted grass, green to the winter-darkened yew nestled in the crook of the path. She sat and ate the edgeling-woman¡¯s bread slowly, drank deep of the dashing Caelghyll nearby, and crawled under the yew to sleep the hours of revealing color away.


    Just before sleep claimed her, one last question surfaced, briefly: what the devil did a dragon know about kittens. . . ?


    As Rothesay woke in the deepening evening, stretched coldly, and prepared to trudge on, a stranger rode up to the rescued edgeling¡¯s door. He was too finely clad for any Geilla, in red and green satins and a wide-brimmed hat as blue as summer even in the dusky light. He paused, gazing about for signs he expected, and whose absence raised his brows and his hackles both. Nonetheless he spoke softly to the worried woman who peeked through the door; softly, suavely, in her own tongue; and, hardly knowing what she did, she let him in.


    Sitting on their bench, a mug of sour ale at his elbow, the stranger displayed his bundle of gifts: fresh linen to replace winter¡¯s worn woollens; ribbons as gay as his own merry plumage for the awed woman; soft-stuffed dolls, with delicate faces and hands of scented wood; a cunning horse on bobbing wheels; bags of seed for the spring planting.


    Turning at last to the silent husband, the splendid visitor said, ¡°Beyond that, friend, I can point you toward refuge, if you wish it.¡± He gestured toward the riches at his feet. ¡°And now you must tell me why I do this.¡±


    ¡°L-lord?¡±


    ¡°¡®Sir,¡¯¡± said the stranger. ¡°Last night Gyrthu¡¯s sons came and made sport of you. Someone¡ªintervened.¡± He sat back and lit up a fragrant pipe. ¡°Tell me about him.¡±


    Rothesay made little progress that night, as thick clouds settled in and even she, possessed of what Padriag inadequately called ¡®respectable¡¯ night vision, could see too little. She knew she wanted to bear west hereabouts, but the forest here was dense and dark, and the land was a careless tumble, haphazard of direction. This trip seemed endless enough; she had no wish to embroider it with lost circling, and camped grumpily, shortly after full dark, under a spruce¡¯s bower near the sound of a spring. She was careful to sprinkle a bit of her cake as an offering to the spirits of the spring and the dell, hoping to ward off malice, and avoid any cousin of last night¡¯s eyes. Still rested from her day¡¯s sleep, she dozed fitfully, lying often awake to brood, to worry, and to fear, till fear ran dry and what remained ignited in anger, a fury with the gods and all the world, with Kelmhal and Marennin, Ottu and the baron and everyone who had the slightest part in driving her into this damnable exile.


    Sleeping well at last, just before dawn she dreamed she climbed a steep-sided mountain of crystal, up through a band of drifting cloud to emerge at the rim of a small valley, a shallow saucer near the mountain¡¯s peak. Moveless stars glared down from a night of unfathomable blackness upon a queer, flat-roofed house, pale as moonlight, near the middle of the bowl; a spring as bright as the stars bubbled from the shadowed doorway. Below the clouds there had been a howling or wailing, but here all was quiet. For a moment, she thought it was somehow Padriag¡¯s house, and offered a step to run home to it; then she sensed it was nothing of the sort, but something inexpressibly vast and dangerous¡ªand she was expected.


    Waking with a start, she blinked stupidly at a roof of hundreds of bushy green tails dangling from the rafters, and recognized the spruce and the fact that it was morning before she was wholly sure of who she was herself. With that came recollection of her anger, and, warmed as if by strong drink, she washed briskly in the spring, packed up and set off with vehemence, eating as she went, determined to end this hike as swiftly as possible, the sooner to¡ª


    The sooner she might¡ª


    She drew all blanks. Past her fancy of this Colderwild, her imagination utterly failed her. Old habits triumphed: the coals of anger cooled to ashy embers, and she pulled her cloak of worry tighter about. What was to become of her, half-human stringbean, clanless and bewitched? Would she ever return to Harrowater and Padriag¡¯s warm kitchen, or was she to stay at Colderwild, an exile forever? Or go traipsing on till she found Marennin¡¯s front door to ask, Please, Majesty, what king? She had a sudden vision of herself wandering door to door inquiring, Are you the king? till she passed into legend, like the ghost ship that must sail till it found, built anew, the harbor town it had once betrayed, or that Classical skeptic searching for eternal Truth. What was in Padriag¡¯s letter to the Runedaur? Why would he send her among demons? Why had she not brought a blasted oilskin?

 III: Teginau (1/3): A Friend in Need

    III: Teginau


    At fourteen, he stood upon the threshold of manhood: his Proving would be that very Midsummer. That ancient danger-laced ritual was an occasion of high drama for a community, and often of terror for the boy; Raian had years ago decided for himself that there was greater glory in making the Proving an anticlimax. Wolf and bear skins of his own providing made his bed at home, and he had given as gifts falcon eggs and fist-sized crystals, won from the barren peaks of the Uissig, to both his father¡¯s chieftain and his mother¡¯s prince. Scars of tooth and fire decorated his young skin already, and his once-fine nose crooked aside. The black of his left eyebrow made a sharp jag where a wildcat¡¯s claw almost took his sight a year ago, and an upturned crescent moon at the base of his throat marked where a wolf once laid bare the living veins. No, there would be little the priests of Kavin could offer to challenge his mettle at Midsummer.


    Restless always, he had left the city two nights before, this time burning with the fire of a queer dream, a vision he was strangely reluctant to put before even the High Priestess of Night. No explanations were forthcoming out here, either, only rain and huge old trees who kept their ancient wisdoms hoarded deep in their silent hearts. He savored his vision alone.


    There had been a bit of excitement yesterday, when the small boy-pack that followed him like dogs discovered his absence and came tracking him. He had led them a merry chase, for a while, a short while, till the fun of it evaporated like mist in the blaze of his dream, and he let their unabated enthusiasm carry them farther and farther from the rocks where he sat still and stony, outwaiting their impatience, before he too ran off, away from all paths and the tamed world. He feared no Piper, for he had found no greater mentor.


    Another rain rolled in that evening. Shortly before he settled in under a ledge of rock, he cast a last glance around and saw, not ten yards off, a hound, tall, slim, and white as moonlight, seeming almost to glow in the green-misted twilight. He stared, agape and breathless, but before he could frame even a thought to move, she turned, elegant and queenly, and sprang away into the rain-veiled woods. He shook himself; but there was neither profit nor sport in hunting blind in the dim wet, so he wrapped himself in cloak and dry leaves, to sleep, though he stared out often even after the gloom blinded him utterly. Night and dreams brought no repeat of the previous night¡¯s terrible exhilaration, nor any explanation nor afterthought, despite his day¡¯s fast; and he woke in the dawn cooler than yestermorn, schooled himself to patience, and set to the serious business of tracking the white hound.


    No trace of a print could he find between the trees where she had stood. Had he dreamed early? He moved on, puzzled and pensive, after the way he thought she had gone. Then gazing ahead, he glimpsed down the glen something that looked in the dawn light like a walking tree-branch. He watched till he was sure that it, at least, was no phantom; then, leaving aside the dream-hound, he crept down after this new interest.


    The quarry trod lightly. Maybe it was elvish: that would be a rare prize! It had an eldritch look. The rain wore steadily away at its traces, but the soft and soggy earth yielded even to a delicate step.


    All too soon, it¡ªor he: Raian had had a fair view of the stranger across a crooked gorge a while back¡ªhad discovered the pursuit, and moved with an eerie lightness over the sodden mould. Raian too followed more warily, watchful, when the dark larch woods grew still, against ambush; but this spoor excited him, this joy burned bright and new: he had never before hunted a man. He closed slowly, the rain despite.


    Waterfalls, small but urgent, thundered white through the dark, craggy land. A cold wind blew, sucking the warmth from him; he shivered, and snarled at himself for weakness, and thought fiercely on his prey. And then the tracks vanished.


    Astonished first, he cast further and further about. Here the bones of the Tre-Uissig lay in vast sheets, sloping down toward the broken Caiar Glen like a roof over some subterranean city, and leaf and needle lay thin, or not at all. In growing rage and disappointment, he lost even his last clear trace of the trespasser, and stood finally, silent and sullen, listening to the mocking laugh of rain upon the stones.


    Shuddering with cold, he huddled into his dripping cloak and thought now of shelter, and fire. He knew this area well, at least. Here on the shoulder of the Catrocks stood a grove of ancient fir down against the cliff-wall, that should surely be dry, deep within. He jogged for it, hugging himself, stamping for warmth. The dark bulk of the great old fir his people called the Elder Pendiu, more than four ells thick in the bole, loomed up through the veiling rain.


    Something flapped wildly out at him, a great greenish moth¡ªor a winged tree-branch. He leaped aside, groped without thinking for a stone and flicked it sharply after the fleeing creature, striking it solidly in the head. The moth-man dropped with the stone. Raian eased up, forgetting rain or chill.


    A long slender object, or two together, maybe, well-wrapped in dark rags poked up beneath the stranger¡¯s pack, higher than his hooded head. Raian noted it incuriously, and rolled his victim over with a cautious foot.


    He tossed his head, shaking loose his plastered hair. When you catch a wolf, you kill it, skin it, take its teeth and claws; he belatedly realized he had no idea what to do with a successfully-bagged man. Boy, he amended, studying the slack face, and an unfortunately pretty one at that: one could almost see him as just an inordinately tall girl. He grinned at the idea of a girl taller even than his father Wylfric, then stepped back as the dark lashes fluttered, and wished he had brought his spear. His dream seemed far from him.


    Rothesay jerked to her feet, and grabbed at her splitting head to hold it whole. She glared darkly at the figure before her, dismissed the obvious child as too small and young, and human, to be the demon that pursued her, and spun about, groping in the downpour for some glimpse of the hunter, even as something began to waken in a dim corner of her mind.


    Raian, for all his great-sized spirit still bodily small for his age, knew that kind of dismissal all too well. With a roar that cracked humiliatingly into a squeak, he hurled himself at the back of the stranger¡¯s knees.


    Rothesay leaped, and discovered why she leaped as she floundered to miss the boy beneath her. He somersaulted away and bounded to a ready crouch, shoving back his overlarge hood with an oath. Then his war-scowl faded slowly to disbelief, and finally to reluctant mirth. ¡°What ara doing, lad?¡± he demanded, fighting not to laugh.


    She cut short her slow backstepping, stopped fumbling, one hand at the back of her head on the blade of¡ªmust be the barrow-blade, she could feel the scabbard through the blanket¡ªthe other hand up behind her back trying for the hilts of the Meredale sword. Her thoughts tumbled: a fool¡¯s way to carry a weapon! . . . I haven¡¯t heard a voice in . . . What am I doing¡ªlad? . . . voice in a long . . . ¡®lad¡¯? Oh. Right.


    Raian sized up his prize swiftly: an adventuresome idiot, messenger possibly¡ªlooked like Geillan bard¡¯s hair, though cloak and clothes were green; old enough to have got bone but no meat, say sixteen. No obvious clan token. ¡°Who arta?¡±


    ¡°A stranger,¡± she began, and Raian spat and laughed.


    ¡°Ya would be that,¡± he mocked complaint. It was a grave crime against hospitality, to ¡®bag¡¯ one who claimed a stranger¡¯s place: so much for the hunter¡¯s glory this time! ¡°Eci, have I nothing fora, stranger, so, little point then in your claiming. Though I¡¯d offer meat and mead at once, had I them.¡± He clenched his teeth against chattering, steeled himself against shivering as excitement chilled, and glanced back at the firs.


    ¡°Dry¡ªuh, dry enough in there,¡± Rothesay pointed out, trying to pitch her voice low enough to support the boy¡¯s error. Raian¡¯s quick ears caught the change, and he flashed the ¡®lad¡¯ a wry, understanding grin. She decided that a laconic manner was the way of wisdom, till she figured out how best to play this game.


    They sheltered together among the roots of the Elder Pendiu, as magnificent a lord of the forest as Rothesay had ever heard tell of. Padriag should hear about this one. Its bole stood as the pillar of a great circular hall, thirty or forty yards across, roofed with great limbs that drooped at their ends to form low-hanging eaves that were almost walls. The floor was dry, and soft with fine needles that lay ages thick. Resinous spice blent with the rain-smell, sweeter than Padriag¡¯s incense.


    Raian swelled under her admiration for this treasure of Tre-Uissig, and told her tales as they munched on her sweetcakes, of councils held beneath it that were unmatched in wisdom; and spells, wrought here by priest or bard, that were yet unbroken; and lovers¡¯ trysts that bore uncanny fruit.


    ¡°Like you?¡± she asked, hearing a smugness in his tone; and he grinned, and winked.


    Well he might, she thought, still trying to make sense of what she saw, and heard. Black hair¡ªas best she could tell in the wet¡ªand violet eyes: by legend the coloring of the High Sferan born, though she recalled no mention of freckles. His green cloak was circular, as the edgelings made it, though they now wore roundels on the shoulders that were only inoffensive decoration, where Raian¡¯s were bold blazons of his House¡ªor Houses, maybe: the two were unalike. A circlet of fine wire, twisted and braided with meticulous Sferan skill, bound his brow, though his sodden bangs had escaped its command. But his baggy tunic rioted in big checks of red, yellow, green and blue, green-fringed at hem and elbow; his yellow leggings, now thoroughly grubby, were cross-gartered by many-colored leather bands. His torque and arm braces, like his circlet, were copper, the mark of a younger son of an obviously wealthy family; but a family of what race? A young Geillan noble might be proud of such a broken nose, or that white crescent at his throat¡ªshe shuddered at the thought of how close he must have come to a grim death¡ªbut surely the old imperials did not prize blemishes, however honorably won? He addressed her in what seemed a kind of stew of both the Geillan and High Sferan, that wanted all her concentration to untangle.


    ¡°Do¡ªh¡¯r¡¯m, er, got a name?¡±


    ¡°Raian na Drogh,¡± he replied promptly, mingling races in his name as well: ¡®drogha¡¯ was Geillan for ¡®black.¡¯ ¡°And you¡ª?¡±


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    ¡°Ro¡ªuhh, Rothric.¡± She blushed at this deception; but still more at the indelicacy of being young, female, and unescorted. Padriag might not understand; Raian surely would.


    The violet eyes regarded her intelligently. ¡°Uh-huh. Strong name, Rothric. What¡¯s your House?¡±


    She faltered again, unwilling to say Dunhaldring and waken any association with queer news from the north. Orthunder? She almost grinned, dourly: true it might be, but she suspected she owed them no loyalty. She opened her mouth to give Padriag¡¯s affiliation, and suddenly realized that she did not know it, had never known it, nor ever wondered: the wizard seemed a sovereignty in his own person. ¡°I am a student of the wizard Padriag,¡± she offered lamely.


    Raian nodded. ¡°Heard there¡¯s a school of wizards, requires you to forswear birth-hall and bloodright. Like that? I¡¯m Kinnaith and Dunwyrding.¡± He displayed the roundels on his cloak, one bearing a black dragon rising, twisting against a field of green; the other showing a spray of wheat against a constellation of stars¡ªNeis the Swan.


    ¡®Kinnaith and Dunwyrding¡¯: a marriage not just of one adventuresome couple, but a couple of adventuresome tribes? She brimmed with wonder; Raian grinned, and told another tale.


    Almost two centuries before, three extraordinary men met.


    Anlaf, proud young king of the doughty Dunkerring, crossed the Saddle from the Carolanth and looked down into the broad meads and fens of Merthow Astrad, that he had planned to take for his people. He looked, and scratched at his fair beard, and turned his eyes south, south and west, where the rugged uplands of Tre-Uissig rose, dark and green. Perhaps he thought the highlands a challenge, and so more glorious in the conquest; and if it was difficult to take, then what a stronghold it would be in turn, unlike the fat defenseless fields below. Perhaps he had heard tales of the dreadful fen-wights, bodiless emanations of the swamps, and thought it wiser not to arouse their cold malice. Perhaps he cast the eagle feather from Dunkerring¡¯s lofty crest and saw how Kavin bore it towards the mountains. But though many songs told and still tell of the terrible midges of the Merthow fens, no tale says how Anlaf hated them.


    He turned his army to the highlands, and such was his force of character, and the love his people bore for him, that they embraced this challenge with all the fire of their fierce desire.


    Word came to Inriall, prince of the House of Kinnaith, of the barbarian threat. Then in the long Glen Westhial, as the white mist thinned at the rising of the sun, two bitter lines scarred the tender grass: one drawn with geometric precision in green silk and burnished bronze; one, three times thicker, a restless braid of checkered wools and blood-lust. Inriall looked out from under bushy brows.


    Suddenly he handed down his banner to his young page and, right hand held high for parley, spurred his great horse to the middle of the glen, and waited. Surprised, but not to be outdone, Anlaf went to meet him, but on foot, for he felt his own mount, stout and sturdy pony that he was, shamed by the magnificent white stallion of the Dragon-lord.


    To Anlaf¡¯s further surprise, Inriall too dismounted, and sent his horse back to his lines riderless.


    They were much of a height, Sferath and Geillath, and their hair shone, Anlaf¡¯s like the young sun, but Inriall¡¯s like moonlit snow. Anlaf bore the Sferath¡¯s quizzical study with wary fortitude, while his own gaze devoured Inriall¡¯s shining cuirass, cast to the likeness of powerful muscles, and the lapped bronze plates like the belly-scales of a dragon, all engraved with fine and elaborate tattoos and studded with emeralds.


    His attention flickered further to the silent Sferan ranks behind, every man of them helmed and armored, if none so bright as their master. Little like were they to the retreating fragments of House Morag he had routed last summer in Erodonica, after Ollaf of the Dunbrandeing died. At his own back he had three times their number, that chafed noisily against this delay of slaughter; but he began to sense that the uncanny stillness of the foeman was not want of fortitude.


    ¡°Your people wrestle?¡± Inriall asked suddenly, without preamble.


    Anlaf stared: the Dragon-lord spoke his tongue, lilting strangely. It was a fool¡¯s question, though: wrestling was a man¡¯s art, without which he could scarcely be called a man at all. He nodded cautiously.


    ¡°Good,¡± the Sferath grunted. ¡°I¡¯ve a mind to take your measure, son, before we do business,¡± he indicated the ranked warriors with a sharp nod that tossed his white forelock. ¡°And show you mine,¡± he added, stripping off his articulated gauntlets and tossing them idly into the grass.


    Anlaf narrowed his eyes. ¡°You jest.¡±


    Inriall rubbed the side of his nose and peered at Anlaf shrewdly. ¡°Umph. I dare say, jest. I am reputed odd. Odd,¡± he repeated meditatively. ¡°Yet I mean what I say: we shall wrestle, you and I, and know one another.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    The older man shrugged. ¡°I had a dream.¡±


    This was reason enough to the Geillath; or would have been, had it come from the lips of a kinsman. He did not expect it from any of the Dragon-folk; though for no reason that he could now imagine.


    Anlaf won the match, though the sun stood at the noon before he did. Inriall won the Geillath¡¯s respect, and his love. The Dunkerring came to the highlands as invaders and stayed as brothers, and called themselves then the Dunwyrding, for they too were now dragon-folk.


    From the reverence in the boy¡¯s voice, thought Rothesay, old Prince Inriall had won Raian¡¯s love as well.


    ¡°We still wrestle, to settle dispute,¡± Raian concluded, and grinned. ¡°Fair chance to watch a good match most any week!¡±


    He talked, not for a garrulous nature, but for the comfort of his stranger. He longed to know more of wider lands, and would have interrogated ¡®Rothric¡¯ closely; but though the traveller answered when he asked, the replies were brief, and shadowed with some sorrow or trouble. The long bundle proved to be a pair of swords, a mighty treasure; but so grim was his companion¡¯s mood when they were shown¡ª¡°Doom and destiny,¡± he had growled, as if naming them in bitterness¡ªthat Raian at once dropped deeper inquiry. At least for now. Maybe later there would be time for friendship, and the opening of hearts, and minds. He was quite certain the name was false; but he was himself fond of being mysterious; and had not the legendary hero Arac Fearnoth travelled under many names? He struggled not to pry, but instead pressed for word of the lands Rothric had seen, and the people there and their ways. When he discovered that Rothric had not merely seen, but actually lived by the ocean, though, he all but forgot tact in his eager envy.


    Rothesay paid no heed to his hero-worship. The rush of power that had flooded her when the Meredale bullies backed down, had ebbed swiftly before an unending round of plodding days and solitary nights, and hatred of her weirdness and her predicament blossomed. She glowered at her two swords, emblems of her exile, swathed again to oblivion in her thin blanket like a furled battle-standard for a vagabond. Raian dreamed of travel, and she of home: we are each in the wrong story, she thought.


    She peeled off her brogans, a sticky mass of sodden leather and rosemary mash. Her feet were pale, her toes like strange white prunes. ¡°What I would not give to be dry again,¡± she groused, more to herself than to her companion.


    Raian¡¯s heart swelled. This strange wizard-boy, this wide traveller of many mysterious adventures, with neither gold nor jewel but two fine swords instead¡ªand what was most on his mind was being warm and dry. Thornac said that veteran campaigners dreamed more of simple comforts than of wreaths of glory. What more had Rothric seen, that did not pass his lips? Raian¡¯s own accounting of wolf hunts and mountain-daring suddenly seemed small and without consequence, beside his half-formed fancies of Rothric¡¯s bold deeds.


    ¡°It is not far to home,¡± he burst out, then faltered, remembering the miles. ¡°At least, we could be there by. . . ¡±


    ¡°After dark?¡±


    Raian considered. ¡°Yes,¡± he admitted, slumping. He so wanted a chance to be as great in hospitality as his adventurer was in his dreams.


    ¡°Before midnight?¡±


    ¡°Yes, easily,¡± he snapped, startled, and looked up into a face half-hopeful, half despairing.


    ¡°Could we get in?¡± Harrowater, being remote, seldom locked its gates, or even guarded them; but most towns she knew of did.


    A great grin spread over Raian¡¯s pleasant face. ¡°One way or another!¡±


    All the way back, through the narrow glens and rocky passes of the eastern Uissig, Raian debated within himself. There was more sport in climbing the wall, more pride, he thought, in flaunting his reputation at the gate. When the sun set and the rainy darkness blinded them, he made a golden magelight in the air, a lamp with neither wick nor bowl. The wizard¡¯s apprentice made no comment, and Raian made a private promise to learn some more elegant, more impressive variant. He pressed on firmly.


    An immense voice spoke a single melodic word that filled all the forest in the night. Rothesay grabbed for her sword-hilts; Raian smacked his lips. ¡°Ah! The Sonthe bell. We are almost home, friend!¡±


    The trees ended before a deep fosse, beyond which an empty slope climbed steeply to the foot of a high wall, as the bell tolled again.


    ¡°Bell?¡±


    ¡°Yah. Have your people no such chime?¡± His question came muffled by wet weeds and loam as he scrabbled about the roots of the trees, searching.


    Rather than admit, Yes, it clanks, she only said, ¡°Not so splendid . . . . What are you looking for?¡±


    ¡°Ach, dwch!¡± he swore. ¡°The rope¡ªwe had a rope here! Around here,¡± he admitted, staring about at the walls of black night that the little magelight held not so very far back. He could not seem to find his finding-spell, either. ¡°For climbing the wall . . . .¡±


    ¡°Can we not?¡± she suggested hopefully.


    Rain rattled. Raian shrugged, and turned to follow the lip of the fosse.

 III: Teginau (2/3): Hearth and Home

    The great tetrapylon at the Dawn Gate of Teginau had been built in the pride of the House of Kinnaith. Its four pillars were cut from green marble in the likeness of dragon¡¯s legs, with massive m¨®riad-steel claws clutching huge white marble spheres. Oil lamps dangled like shining dewdrops from the tips of the three spurs carved at the back of each leg, and a wheel of twelve more lamps hung from the center of the overarching dome, washing the wide stone floor with a steady golden glow.


    The gates themselves stood wide. Within, more lamps high on posts lit the open square and the broad avenues that struck off from it; the wet cobbles glistened. Rothesay stared, amazed at the lights. ¡°Is it festival?¡±


    ¡°What? No,¡± said her guide, staring himself but blind to what might have impressed Rothric¡¯s fancy. ¡°At least, Sowingfest is weeks off and we don¡¯t start decorating yet. Ho, Malthes! Nargallond!¡±


    The two guards, helm and armor gleaming under the lamplight, glanced up from their dice. ¡°Yah, na Drogh,¡± grinned one, the owner of a thick brown beard braided with copper wire. ¡°High time you found your way home. Thornac¡¯s set to flay you, let him but catch you.¡±


    Raian flashed his teeth. ¡°He can try!¡±


    The second guard, as burly as his fellow though his face was hairless as a boy¡¯s, waved the dice cup at Rothesay. ¡°Another present for the Prince, or the Chief? It¡¯s been off its feed, perhaps! Not like you, boy, to bag straggle. Where¡¯d you find her?¡± He grinned at his jibe.


    ¡°His name is Rothric,¡± Raian said pointedly. ¡°He is a stranger. He comes from the north, on an errand for his master, the wizard Padriag.¡±


    Rothesay was grateful for the introduction. The guards glanced over her, shrugged, and waved them on. ¡°Welcome to Teginau, stranger,¡± the bearded one said gravely. Then he called out helpfully, as they passed into the square, ¡°Owar the tailor, on Weavers¡¯ Street, makes the most charming gowns and aprons¡ª!¡±


    Raian gripped ¡®Rothric¡¯s¡¯ arm sympathetically, as the two guards howled at the jest. ¡°No offense, friend, but you do look like a girl. Grow out your beard, would help.¡± Rothesay rubbed at her chin, crushing a grin. ¡°Er, when you can, of course.¡±


    ¡°As soon as I can,¡± she agreed gravely.


    She tried to shake off the queer feeling of walking into a trap. She was back in the safety of civilization, and great civilization, at that: she should be breathing easy for the first time since maybe the Meredale, and not ¡®reaching¡¯ for a warding-spell. She set her jaw, and walked resolutely beside her host. And watched, her breath short and her muscles hard.


    Beyond the square, the great boulevard rose gently at first, and then more steeply. High walls of decorative stone pierced by strong but elegant gates only half-concealed the many-storied structures¡ªcould they really be houses?¡ªthat stood behind, engulfed in gardens, and all topped by the acorn-cap roofs that the Sferiari loved. Small lanes and alleys, some also warded by gates, slipped off from side to side, down which she glimpsed other walls, doors, and avenues. And everywhere, lights: more lamps on posts, where the larger lanes met; at the greater gates in the walls; some even in the gardens. Light shone from the many windows sheltered at the back of deep porches: though the hour was late by Harrowater¡¯s reckoning, the citizens of Teginau showed few signs of retiring. More than one splendid home that they passed roared like a great water with the chatter of many voices, and unfamiliar instruments making half-heard music. Raian shook his head at one.


    ¡°Andramor and Tegi: they spend fortunes on parties. Everyone goes, of course; but watch your back. And your tongue!¡± He strode on; she was glad, not to go where she should watch her back, or more than she did of late. But she was beginning to think that the journey to Teginau was less than the journey in Teginau, that arriving at the city of one¡¯s home was not at all the same thing as arriving home: Teginau sprawled in her imagination as huge as a whole country. All of Harrowater would fit between one cross-street and the next!


    A large cloaked figure rounded the curve higher up; Raian at once melted back into the shadow of a dark gate, pulling Rothesay after. The man stalked purposefully past, swinging a heavy-headed cudgel and glancing all about, alert as a hunter. He did not note the deeper shade by the mortuary gate, and Rothesay almost forgot him in her interest in the dim tombs within, pale marble shapes in a skeleton of a garden barely touched by the mountain spring; but when Raian moved on, without comment or evident concern, ¡°Who was he? Thornac?¡± she puzzled, recalling the guard¡¯s remark.


    ¡°Nah¡ªThornac¡¯s my tutor. That was a City-watch: we are out past curfew. Let him but catch us, it¡¯s a rare drubbing for us, and a fine for Da.¡± He glanced up at her as he realized that his father would in no way owe a fine for Rothric. ¡°Jail for you, I should think.¡±


    ¡°What!¡± Harrowater had none, but Kelmhal at Dunford did; she did not like its rumor.


    ¡°Just till morning,¡± he said dismissively. ¡°Then you pay the magistrate.¡±


    She pulled up short. ¡°But the guards at the gate: why didn¡¯t they¡ª?¡±


    ¡°They know me!¡±


    ¡°The¡ªthe city watch doesn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Galhur? Yah, and that well!¡± he exclaimed, his eyes dancing with meaning. ¡°And the magistrates! Oh, oh, I see. Malthes and Nargallond¡ªgate guards, them: not letting in anyone who doesn¡¯t belong. Enforcing curfew¡ªthat¡¯s the watch¡¯s worry.¡±


    ¡°Oh, well! Once you¡¯re in, they don¡¯t care what you do?¡±


    Raian grinned. ¡°Yah. Good fellows, Malla and Nargo. Here¡¯s my gate, anyway.¡±


    It was metal, bronze maybe, knotted and braided like rope; beyond, a neat cobbled alley served a variety of tree-laced buildings, as though a village the size of Harrowater were walled and warded against the stone bewilderment of the city without. A door opened well down the alley and an elderly woman stepped out, a basket on her hip, her scolding voice answered from within by a man¡¯s placating laugh; she snorted her scorn, and crossed to a door opposite. Rothesay heard it snap shut, and saw a small window glow with a lamp behind.


    Raian shook the gate gently, but it was locked fast. ¡°Just checking. Here, give us a hand up, lad: I¡¯ll go over the wall, then open for you.¡±


    Rothesay stood alone on the strange streets, feeling much more wildly the sense of a trap; or as though she trod upon the back of some vast slumbering creature, that might waken at a careless step and notice her, rather like the eyes over Great Cernefell. Heartbeats stretched into eternity; her glance darted up and down, watching for the dreadful watch, and she ¡®touched¡¯ every warding-spell she possessed. At long, long last, it seemed, the latch clanked, the gate drew back, and she was ushered in amid a rustle of vines to Raian¡¯s curious home.


    He locked up carefully behind them. Then, ¡°Welcome to Raingold Enclave,¡± he said with great formality, making a deep bow.


    ¡°You honor me and all my family,¡± she replied equally formally, bowing back. ¡°Er, we¡¯re home, then?¡±


    ¡°Yah, sure!¡±


    Through the mazy enclave, a family¡¯s private holding within the great city, they wound on past slaves¡¯ quarters, gardeners¡¯ housing, even a smithy: Raingold of Kinnaith-Dunwyrding were numerous and important, with enclaves also in Alforrow, and Iril, the seat of Kinnaith. Raian¡¯s father was Horse-master to the Prince of Tre-Uissig; his mother was the Kinnathen Librarian.


    Raian spoke the title with radiant pride. Rothesay marvelled, firstly that a woman held a post; and secondly and more at the very thought of a Sferan library unscathed by war. Her fancy fell far short. Padriag owned some seven hundred volumes; as many more had burned at Anvedras long ago. But more than eighty thousand works were kept and cared for under the scrupulous eye of Linnas na Sul, Kinnatysel, Wylfricschara. A thousand were the fruit of the third extraordinary force in the alliance of the Uissig: Godrach, the Bard of Dunkerring, Anlaf¡¯s mentor and his closest friend. Godrach lost no time in learning the Sferan sorcery called writing, nor in demanding it of anyone aspiring to attain the rank of bard¡ªor to keep it. And so the lore of his race, the Songs of the Dawning and the Tugach Laws, the Kerring Chronicles and the Witch-boy stories and all the Riddles of Fradh, and so much more, were first committed to everlasting memory. Rothesay lusted for such a hoard; but the Library was at Iril.


    A beautiful door, untidily framed in leafless vines, opened into a wall like a cliff-face; within, stone stairs spiralled down to the right, up to the left, and they climbed to a torchlit landing and turned, down a hall whose colored mosaics resembled neither Geillan nor Sferan art, as Rothesay knew them: in the dimness they looked like arguments in geometry, explained by a poet.


    Raian now moved as warily as a forest creature, and Rothesay recalled the tutor Thornac who would flay him. She was deep in regret for accepting the invitation, never dreaming that a wish to be warm and dry would lead to such a labyrinth, when Raian slipped them at last into a long, low room and softly closed its heavy door with unmistakable gladness. Hanging by fine chains over a small altar against one wall, an oil lamp burned in a pierced bronze vessel, that scattered vague yellow stars upon the walls and ceiling. There were several beds, mats raised in carved wooden frames to knee-height and invitingly piled deep with furs and blankets. None were occupied; she wondered if their owners were away, nonexistent, or just still up like the rest of this peculiar nest of nightbirds. She let her pack fall to the floor.


    A boy started up from the darkness between two farther beds. ¡°Raian!¡±


    ¡°Sh! Sh! Sh!¡± Raian hissed fiercely.


    ¡°Where hava been, targa?¡± the other wailed, heeding him not at all but hurrying over to take his damp and dirty cloak. ¡°Out for two days, and the rain so bad! Come, here, sit by the grate and do off your boots. Shall I fetch¡ª¡±


    Raian seized his young servant by his plump shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled and his yellow curls bounced. Having thus stunned him to silence, he let go, but slowly, ready in case he started fluttering again.


    ¡°Good, then. Supper; wine; dry clothing.¡± He ticked off his commands on his fingers. ¡°Lots of everything. And,¡± he pressed a rigid finger firmly to his lips, and held it up warningly. The boy nodded, round-eyed and anxious to please, and scurried aside. Raian turned to beam a proper welcome at Rothric, when from the door the boy bleated, ¡°Thornac¡ª¡±


    Raian whirled with a fiery glare. But, ¡°¡ªcan wait. Till morning, I should think,¡± he said levelly, a temperance that surprised Rothesay, who expected nobility to be rude, even violent. The little yellow-haired servant was lucky in his master.


    She was shown to ¡®the grate¡¯, a heavy bronze screen set in the stones of the floor, and on it stood low stools with thick cushions and luxurious tassels, and a small round table. A draft rose through, deliciously warm and dry. Raian plopped heavily onto a seat, wrenched off his short boots, and upended them on the grate. Rothesay joined him joyously. Padriag¡¯s villa had such grates in each of the main rooms, all connected by narrow tunnels under the floor: she had crawled in them as a child, as long as she could see no spiders, but she had imagined they were for the ease and comfort of the wizard¡¯s four-, six-, eight- and no-legged guests and servants; certainly they had never been warm. She asked and Raian explained, surprised, the furnaces down in the scullery that fed the vents throughout his home. Padriag used his for a root cellar. Rothesay determined to set him straight, when she returned.


    Long leagues away, over the cold sea and beyond to the very knees of the Dur Manthanor, Hautiger an-Velaker also settled in warm relief above the hypocaust in his private suite. His servants hastened to peel away his travelling garb, heavy with the melt of a late snowfall upon spring mud, and envelope him instead in the weight of thick silk robes and furred slippers. Mead, a parting gift from Kelmhal, warmed gently above a brazier fire that smoked with sweet incense. Beyond his door, the voice of his steward snapped like the bark of a watchdog, keeping at bay the dependents, officers and courtiers with all their urgent affairs that only his excellency could put right. Nothing that could not wait for morning would pass the formidable Gerrender.


    Then, as a pretty little girl¡ªHautiger seldom remembered servants¡¯ names, but the face was new, and a good choice for which he must commend Gerrender¡ªpressed a cup of the steaming mead into his hands, the watchdog at the door and all the hungry horde fell silent. The servants within paused in their ministrations, and glanced at the door. Hautiger sighed, and stared sightlessly at his shuttered window.


    He heard the door open, heard the rustle as all the staff flowed out like an ebbing tide; or as if the room rose to a height exalted beyond their measure, as the one who entered no doubt intended. He drew a long breath, turned, and favored his lady wife with a familiar smile.


    Asilay el-Seremay had been a beauty in her prime. Many still thought her so; Hautiger knew the magical mask for what it was, for she did not trouble to maintain it for him. A long moment froze between them, pierced between their locked gazes, these lovers and adversaries, each weighing how best to use the other in their respective devices. They had grown much alike, over the years.


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    She was thin, even gaunt, as though her sorcery consumed her body like a fire. Her many robes, all of colored gossamers, stirred in the lightest breeze: one could think that a stronger wind might scatter her like ash. Only her hair weighted her down, massive golden ropes piled and coiled with jewels about her skull. And that, too, was illusion, of a sort: a great part of that gold had grown on other heads than Asilay¡¯s. To the Darian eye, hair signified power; female slaves had theirs cropped to the jaw, and males were shaved entirely. Their loss was their owners¡¯ gain: Hautiger possessed several luxurious veils to his naturally-naked pate. Yet still he sniffed, covertly, of course, at Asilay¡¯s enhancements; nor ever suspected the hilarity that the courtesy of Geillan hospitality hid from Dunhaldring¡¯s bewigged guest.


    Asilay glided to the other chair upon the hypocaust and perched there like one of her infernal ravens on the rooftrees. She twitched her skirts into order, and lanced her husband with her pale gaze. ¡°And what was so very¡ªexciting?¡ªin the southland?¡±


    He would tell her. He knew he would tell her, give her whatever she wished to know. He could hardly hope to find Cherusay¡¯s brat without Asilay¡¯s aid; yet he could wish he still had choice in the matter. At least she could do no more than feel the pulse of his heart. What he saw with his eyes, and what he thought, remained his own, closed to her; he was not yet reduced to being merely a large flightless spy for her. And he still could command the manner of his revelations.


    ¡°Mead, my dear¡ª?¡± It might have been as much answer as offer, for a moment, till he extended the cup, relishing even this small frustration. ¡°Sweet mead.¡±


    ¡°Another time, perhaps. What was in Anstrede?¡±


    Hautiger refilled his drink, swirled it idly, then leaned forward to smirk, ¡°Oh, nothing. Nothing. Only your late lamented cousin¡¯s elfin brat.¡±


    For a moment there was silence as his words made no sense, conveying an impossible image. Then the dead waked and walked in her thought: she shuddered to a chill of horror as though the cold breath of the ghosts of the betrayed whispered on her neck. And then a tidal rush of avarice, that drowned all else: the witch¡¯s pale eyes blazed. ¡°No! Where is she? Where do you have her?¡± she cried. Her talonlike hands clutched the arms of her chair, and her gaze darted about the room, as if the girl might be stowed in a corner among the luggage.


    ¡°I do not,¡± he admitted with a grunt. ¡°Kelmhal¡¯s oafs blundered, and frightened her off. They, ah, sought her for me, for a time, but she eluded them.¡±


    ¡°Sought her for you? You took Kelmhal into confidence?¡± Asilay poised for rage; but his indignant surprise reassured her, more than his angry reply, and she remembered that while he might be boring, he was at least not stupid. ¡°Fled, did she? Where to, I wonder?¡±


    Hautiger shrugged. ¡°Southward.¡±


    ¡°South¡ªwhat a fantastic notion,¡± she retorted sardonically, and he flushed.


    ¡°Bah. All of Peria lies that way¡ªcan you find her, woman? I¡¯ve sent for Haukur, to be ready for the morning.¡±


    She nodded, but absently, already retreating towards that inner place of magic. ¡°Of course. Haukur will do¡ªvery nicely. But not tomorrow. I shall need, ah, a few days. A few.¡± She pressed him then for every detail that might in any way touch upon the girl, all that he could recall and some he had not known he knew, and took her leave, oblivious to the dull, murderous mood at her back: it was so very familiar.


    Asilay fluttered to her suite in a dream, there to accept only the least of ministrations from her attendants before dismissing them and bolting her heavy door to secure her solitude. Long she leaned against it, her head spinning with implications.


    Eirenseld: her mother¡¯s clan, and Cherusay¡¯s, claiming descent from the elder Darians, children of the Moon and proud of it, despising the Sferan House Orthunder and desiring its ruin; Cashellan, who stood with Cherusay against her father: their resentment of her half-brother, the king Rumil, slumbered now, but uneasily; the flames of her own hatred, that she had thought quenched in the Celta Sferyn all those years ago. And the treasure. Oh, yes, the treasure, the mysterious wealth to whet even the gold-glutted Runedaur appetite. This brat¡ªwhat had been her name? Rossay, Thessary? ah, no, Rothesay: for the snow-clouds¡ªthe child could know nothing about it. Yet maybe, just maybe enough resonance remained between Cherusay¡¯s blood and Cherusay¡¯s gold, that a certain sorcery might catch its fading echoes.


    Not without catching the child, first. And so much to prepare . . . . Asilay fled for the warded room of her magical works, her thought so bent on its desire that the finding and freeing of the secret latch, the opening of the hidden door, the traversing of the twisting, narrow way happened as if done by servants¡¯ hands and servants¡¯ feet. The candles blazed up at her gesture and she scarcely knew that she moved; but now she stopped to look about, and remember.


    The round room at the top of the Lady¡¯s Tower was known to the residents of Castle a Geste, from without; they sometimes saw its eight dark windows flicker when their lady pursued her arcane studies. Its approaches were not; they were secret, and surely filled with traps; and though the centuries had faded the stains of the blood of a Geste¡¯s architect from the stones, the power of that grim sacrifice still guarded those hidden ways from the unwarded trespasser. None but the sorceresses of Eirenseld had seen the eight arches, or the narrow apse at their hub under its blue glass dome; and few of those had seen the thoroughness with which its current mistress stocked it with every available aid to magic.


    Cunning chests held stibnite, galena, mispickle, orpiment, flowers of sulfur, and tin, rotten or bright, in their many compartments; shelves and tables groaned under beakers of oils, jars of quicksilver, pots of grave wax; there were casks of Isorchian incense; a treasury of jewels, sapphire, ruby, amber, onyx and zircon, feathers of native silver, warts of copper. Codices and scrolls packed one vault of the eight-chambered room; and one housed Asilay¡¯s particular fascination. In here lay the bones, pale and cold, of countless ravens, all carefully sorted and arrayed, but for a few skeletons left whole, with silver wire for sinew. Ravens¡¯ beaks lay ordered on their special shelves, ravens¡¯ feathers filled many baskets with soft darkness, raven-skin parchment waited on the desk to be written over in inks of raven¡¯s blood. And caged in gold and silver, one living bird brooded over the corvine mortuary below, the sudden candleglow at Asilay¡¯s entrance hardly rousing him enough to lift a feather.


    Asilay paused, considering her stockpile. All was neat, arranged to exacting order; she knew the place of the least metatarsal as well as any dragon knew its hoard. But it had been so long ago that she had managed to obtain one tiny snip of her cousin¡¯s chestnut hair . . . there. In an insignificant-looking drawer closed in a small silver jewel-case, a folded scrap of waxed silk that cracked as she opened it, but the one dark curl was still there. Ah, yes.


    To the apse between the inmost legs of the arches, she brought a shallow silver bowl, and lit the candles about: dark blue for swiftness; and incense: Rodrane cedar, to rouse the pulse of kinship. A doll, made of silk and stuffed with herbs and her own hair and blood and spittle, her manikin, blackened now and hard from many occasions of the use it would once again serve: that, too, upon the slate-slab altar.


    Then she must make a nuisance retreat to the kitchens and butteries of Castle a Geste, for wine and cakes, wroth with herself for being so giddy as to forget them at the first, and she spent the wait upon her sleepy maid stilling herself to steady attention. She warned the old woman to assure that no one sought the Lady of a Geste for three nights, at least, as her noble husband would understand aye well, and hastened back to her work.


    The offerings arrayed, she opened a grey ash box, polished with antiquity, and drew from its furred nest a silver-hilted obsidian blade¡ªand, for the first time since she first dared to lift it, Asilay hesitated.


    Sarra Khel was the knife¡¯s name, a name in the old tongue of Daria that was remembered now by few. Sarra Khel was by ancient use forbidden to any but the matriarch of Eirenseld¡ªand that was not Asilay but her aunt, her mother¡¯s sister, Arrowy el-Narronwy, eldest daughter of an eldest daughter in unbroken succession back to Oraay the Moon, the Daughter of the Night.


    That little detail had not stopped her before. Arrowy was far from here in the king¡¯s city of Teffan Lir, nor had she so much as set foot in a Geste in thirteen years, nor ever shown more than a token interest in the affairs of her clan. No, what slowed Asilay¡¯s hand now was once again the breath of ghosts: Arrowy, second bride of the old Orthunder king Herumer, was the mother of Cherusay.


    Arrowy, for all her self-preoccupation still not a witch to be trifled with, had had her suspicions about her daughter¡¯s sea-cold death, and kept an unsleeping, though subtle, eye on her niece even now, knowing Asilay¡¯s jealous hatred all too well. Asilay dropped Sarra Khel back into its furs lest any hint of what now burned in her be borne over the miles from the sacred blade to stir the coals of its lawful mistress¡¯ interest. She closed the box and fixed its latch, slowly and resentfully. She had used Sarra Khel for so long¡ªand Arrowy had never even touched it¡ªit should be hers, she who cared, to use as and when she pleased. When Arrowy died at last¡ª


    ¡ªthe knife, and the matriarchy of Eirenseld, passed to the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter. And that would be the brat-child Hautiger lost in Anstrede!


    Asilay rocked on her knees, battling to master the spells of inner discipline to dam her rage and sluice it to her will. Springing once more to her feet, she let that fury roar into her warding-spells, to raise an unassailable castle of magical force about her work, that neither demon nor any resonance with Arrowy might pass. Blue fire licked up the eight pillars that closed her round and roiled beneath the dome high overhead. Away on the North-gate walk, a lone sentry, stomping dutifully through the piling slush, saw the glassy bubble glow like an eye, and he made the sigil against soul-capture, and then stomped on.


    Spent of that first wave, once more Asilay took up Sarra Khel, to call on her mother Moon, and grandmother Night, the Well of Creation, to aid her; lighting the oil-soaked charcoal in her brazier, she summoned Sorche of the Flame and begged the strength she would need; with a fist of granite from the heart of the Dur Manthanor, she invoked Maolin the Earthshaker, that the ground the child walked would announce itself to her; and with the sweet cedar smoke she besought the Windlord to blow her towards blood like hers, towards all that was left of Cherusay alive upon the earth. And she added the curl of hair to the fire.


    Then swiftly, with familiar ease, she slipped out to fetch the raven from its cage, pinning it in a hard grip against its wild struggles. Above the bowl on the altar, she snapped its neck, gutted it with the holy knife, drained blood and entrails into the bowl. Into the bloody cavity she tucked the manikin, closing it well in, winding it about with black silk threads. She swallowed its eyes, that its sight should be hers; drank just a taste of the blood in the bowl, and moved, fluttered nervelessly to a window and thrust it wide, as the spell began to grip.


    Deep under the eaves of the Great Hall ravens huddled, unseen through the dark and the biting snow, but she felt them, knew them in her soul. Summoning all her furious power, she closed the spell and flung her spirit forth into the night.


    A gaily clad man with a hat as blue as summer, in a place where he was no stranger at all, took a pull on his ale and stretched his feet to the fire gratefully. ¡°Ah! My, that¡¯s nice. I wonder what the poor folk are doing.¡±


    An appreciative chuckle ran around the room at the old jest. One man only did not join the laughter, though he did allow a smile: the wolf-haired one standing taut as a bowstring on the hearthstone, impatient for the conclusion of the story. Blue-hat grinned up at the hot sapphire eyes that would have burned him away, leaving the tale revealed, if they could.


    ¡°But somehow I thought the one little girl¡¯s remark the most telling,¡± he went on, serenely drawing out his narrative. ¡°As I thought over all the father could tell me, the little one up and said, almost defiantly, and I quote:¡ª¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡± snapped his victim, eyes flashing dangerously.


    ¡°¡®I thought ¡®she¡¯ was pretty!¡¯¡°


    Ire vanished before surprise. The other men and the lone woman in the room stirred, and Wolf-hair murmured, ¡°Now, that¡¯s interesting.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡± Blue-hat grinned. ¡°Children can be so bloody hard to fool. We should send all the students to practice before them.¡± Here he poked at the youngest of the group, a fluffy-headed young man of nineteen who looked far too mild to keep such dangerous company.


    Cheerfully refilling Blue-hat¡¯s plaintive mug, the youth smiled blandly. ¡°I think we have enough to do¡ªbabysitting Masters.¡± He returned the mug with a pointed air.


    This time even Wolf-hair added a harsh bark to the burst of indignant mirth. ¡°Well answered! Tread warily, Peri,¡± he warned Blue-hat, ¡°for you dance with one of my best.¡±


    Peri froze with the ale but a hair away from touching his lips, and shot the best a glance of dark suspicion. The response was an easy laugh and a clear denial: ¡°Peace, sir! It¡¯s clean.¡±


    ¡°Kind of you,¡± Peri grunted amiably, and drank. ¡°Mm¡ªnow you say you¡¯ve had a similar tale from Anstrede?¡±


    ¡°Dunford.¡± Wolf-hair passed him a ribbon of parchment, and stalked across to thrust open the window while Peri extracted meaning from the jumbled-looking marks on the paper. Not a large man, Wolf-hair moved with a powerful grace reminiscent of hunting cats, or of a winter¡¯s bonfire; and his air of treading at the breaking edge of dance enchanted warier minds than most of his enemies possessed. Even now Peri, Wolf-hair¡¯s peer in most respects and with a piece of an intriguing puzzle in his hands, was briefly beguiled into watching as the simple act of pushing back a shutter became a gesture of immanent sensuality. The woman had hardly taken her eyes from him all evening, though she worked an embroidery; but those who knew the both of them generally attributed this to a desire to cover her back.


    ¡°Ho, ho¡ªkilled the one fellow and Marked the other, eh? And unquestionably a girl?¡± Peri put down the parchment and turned to the woman. ¡°What are you of the Silver teaching your novices these days, Mistress? Even among the Black, Marking is¡ªhow shall I say?¡ªsomething of an anachronism.¡±


    The grim woman only shook her regal head slightly, but Peri was pleased to have caught, fleet as the crescent moon behind racing cloud, a wisp of smile. She was not one easily pleased, though he looked forward to making a more strenuous attempt, later on.


    Wolf-hair laughed from the window, flashing a strong white smile under his dark moustache. ¡°Windhome¡¯s women are Death¡¯s own mistresses,¡± he pointed out.


    ¡°Aye, but at dagger-play,¡± growled the lean man sitting in a limber knot, by preference on the hearth-rug. What dust might be there could make little difference to the care of his clothing, for he looked a proper beggar, and sported a black eye-patch. ¡°C¨²rullan there says a sword. Bit of an art, Marking with sword-tip. Can¡¯t call to mind more than a few dozen of us who can, and but three who do.¡±


    ¡°But those three could be mistaken for ducks, if it suited them,¡± said the woman dryly, her low voice husky, soft, and ironic. She pulled a thread gently taut, her needle flashing like a tiny golden star.


    ¡°And I should hate to think they were at all accounted for,¡± Wolf-hair grinned more widely, to more laughter. ¡°Whoever he is, though, I hope he has good reason for calling our hand¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªWithout leaving so much as a hint of a sign¡ª¡± Peri interrupted.


    ¡°¡ªAnd alarming a town or two. I shall go to meet him.¡± Wolf-hair, long dark lashes veiling the blue fire of his eyes, glanced down at the woman with a curious smile. ¡°Or, as it may be, her.¡±


    The woman addressed as Mistress nodded back graciously, and, slowly curling the tip of her tongue to catch her silken thread, pulled it in, trapped the thread neatly between strong canines, and bit it through, a potent little dance that did not fail to quicken the pulse of every one of her companions. ¡°Good idea.¡±

 III: Teginau (3/3): Close

    Rothesay was three days in the mountain city, roaming with Raian and his liege-boys by day, sleeping like puppies in his bed of undreamt-of softness at night -- except the night they spent on the floor of the governor¡¯s palace¡¯s lowest buttery, having gotten locked in accidentally. That was the night the Prince of Kinnaith came to visit, and held high court, and the governor of Teginau laid a great feast. Raian was not invited. That honor went to his elder brother, sixteen and soon to be knighted, who had no interest in and less use for a precocious tyrant and his rag-tag friends. By now, though, Rothesay had collected that lack of invitation or permission or authority put no bar on Raian¡¯s will, and with heart in throat followed unquestioningly as the boy smuggled the two of them in past guards distracted by his other ¡®men.¡¯


    They watched from above, through screens upon the second-floor balcony. In the echoing hall below, candle lights and magic lights shone upon expanses of gold beaten in reliefs of horsemen and mountains, and glinted from gold-touched frescoes of voluptuous dancers: not for the feast-hall the beautiful but austere images in Raian¡¯s home, that actually were geometric discussions, old and renowned. The redoubtable Thornac, a much younger man than she had expected but twice as severe, struggled to make Raian learn them, but had not yet been able to answer, ¡°Why should I, when I can just call you?¡± This intractability scandalized Rothesay, who wanted to know everything; she missed Raian¡¯s chagrin at disappointing Rothric, and would have been almost as astonished as Thornac at his burst of scholarship in the weeks that followed.


    Deep-throated trumpets heralded the entrance of the Prince. All the colored, gilded, jewelled throng, the cream of Teginau¡¯s hybrid crop, rose to their feet and fell silent. A crier, with a body like a barrel and a voice that seemed to come from one, stepped out, a cloth-of-gold koli over her deep blue gown making her glow in the firelight. Her bronze-footed staff made the stones ring; a great crystal glittered at its top, high over her head, and the bright ribbons snapped and danced with the force of her punctuation. It was a ruld weara, a Geillan rod of law, shaped by the incomparable Sferan touch. The Dunhaldring staff looked rude and clumsy now in Rothesay¡¯s memory.


    ¡°Lords and ladies, the powers and wisdoms of green-stoned Teginau!¡± she boomed in majestic cadence. The Geilleisil were proud of their reputation for powerful voices. ¡°Behold your Prince, Gudric Adalyar Ethain, Firstborn of Kinnaith and Blood-brother of Dunwyrding, Master of the High Uissig¡ª¡±


    ¡°They say that about the Chieftain, too,¡± whispered Raian.


    ¡°¡ªProtector of the land and all that rightfully dwell therein, Lord Puissant and Beneficent, the Son of the Wind! Behold him and make glad song!¡±


    Ethain was an old man with a white beard; Rothesay thought there were emeralds or some such scattered like green stars in its curls. Emeralds upon his sleeves flashed as he raised his hands in blessing over the heads of his folk bowing like grain as he passed. An anthem rose and followed in his wake, till the huge hall rang.


    On the lofty upper floor, Rothesay sat with her nose poking through the decoratively pierced screen, the better to press her eyes all but through, enthralled by the beauty and the pomp and the dignity below. Her feeling of being caged had waned somewhat; she enjoyed this show immensely. But Raian watched Rothric: the ragged garments a grey and faded shadow of their former forest green, darned profusely with threads cannibalized from the ravelling hem; the brogan-laces so shortened by the many mending-knots that they barely held shoe to foot; even the lean and wind-burnt cheeks: these tokens of the traveller sang to him their own anthem of realms beyond the high walls of Teginau, an enchanted maze of strange new challenges and unexpected glory. Out there lay greatness, and he burned to know if he measured up to it. He turned his dream of a few nights ago over in his mind, and resolved to put it before Rothric, in a quieter moment.


    Later that night on the hard earth of the buttery¡¯s floor, he held his tongue. They had eaten well in their inadvertent captivity, and shared a truly great laugh over their ridiculous plight; the midst of folly was not the time to speak of dreams of bone-stirring magnificence.


    Escaping next morning, he missed the awful news. A day spent dodging Thornac, weaseling into the game-theatres to watch some of the juridical wrestling, and laying plans for taking Rothric crag-climbing next day, kept him from the gossip till nightfall.


    ¡°They¡¯re going to kill him!¡±


    Raian¡¯s little army convened before dawn in a sheltered niche where the north aqueduct pierced the city wall. Rothesay crouched on the stone lip, trailed her fingers in the dark, hurrying water, and tried not to hear her young friend¡¯s anxious rage. This scheme was beyond madness. The other boys, some of them legal men older than their impetuous leader, stirred uneasily, as unhappy as she.


    ¡°Calion,¡± Raian said sternly, his passion abruptly, spookily, harnessed. ¡°Remember when we lost our way in the blizzard? Just a few months ago! Who saved us then, eh? Brahald¡ªwho took the lashes when you lost your father¡¯s prize ram?¡±


    ¡°Yah, well, I think he also ate him!¡± Brahald, a stocky boy from a Dunwyrding farm, in town for schooling, retorted, to a tremor of nervous laughter. Raian silently awaited a better answer. ¡°Yah, all right, then, I love him well,¡± the other conceded miserably. ¡°But, Rai: this is¡ªthis is law, boy! What matter if we don¡¯t like it? We can¡¯t defy law!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s law. Is it right?¡±


    All twelve of his boys as one stared at him, and then at their feet. Rothesay watched the water begin to sparkle with the growing dawn. A breeze blew through the silence.


    ¡°I¡¯m coming up for Proving this summer. The priests have been hammering all the Ways of a Man into my head since Yule. I remember that it says, ¡®a man stands for the right, though all the world stand against him.¡¯¡± His voice was low and level, his arms relaxed at his sides, his feet planted apart as though he stood braced for storm. And small as he was, one could believe that it was he would last, and the storm pass.


    ¡°It says also,¡± countered the oldest of the pack, a tall darkhaired beanpole once called Wolfpup, now Wolfman, for his impressive hairiness that Raian jovially suggested he in fairness share with peachfaced Rothric, ¡°that a man stands in support of his people.¡±


    ¡°Yah,¡± nodded Raian. ¡°I reckon Dagn na Urthan is ¡®my people.¡¯¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s mine, too!¡± snapped Wolfman, his loyalty burned.


    Raian thrust out a hand to him. ¡°I can¡¯t save him alone!¡± It was barely more than a murmur; but his eyes blazed with the fire in his heart.


    Wolfman stared at the hand. Raian¡¯s glance swept the rest of the group, a silent summons to battle. But it kindly passed over Rothric, the stranger, who knew neither Dagn nor the law of Teginau, who had nothing to gain and maybe everything to lose.


    Rothesay had heard about Dagn last night, all night. She sat upon the hypocaust while the yellow-headed servant-boy took an hour to comb out her great length of hair and twist it in a mage¡¯s fourfold plait, and Raian talked the while and for hours more. Dagn was a vagabond in the mountains of the Uissig, living his own life with neither clan nor city to speak for him, or to tax him. No one knew to what race he belonged; Raian liked to think he was a son of the old savage folk who lived half-wild in Peria even before the Sferiari came. He liked the boys who braved his cliffs and crags, who looked to him as a mentor in a grand and solitary independence that seemed to them to mark the very root and core of manliness, the boys who called him by the name of the Lord of the Wild. He hunted the mountain sheep; but was also known to stop a traveller or two, if he thought they might have something of interest, and trade with them¡ªwhether they agreed to the trade or not. Prince Ethain and Fiodric the Wyrdrald had decreed that he must declare a city or a family affiliation, depart, or be destroyed, but for seven years he had eluded the hand of Uissig law. Now he was caught, to be burned alive in the square at noon today, vagabondage being one of the gravest offenses a society knows, a threat to everything that means anything, a betrayal of the forces that hold chaos at bay and make community possible. Rothesay fingered Padriag¡¯s travelling-token, her only defense against a similar charge, and prayed to pass unnoticed. And yet¡ª


    What, honestly, was so terrible about it? True enough, that if many men tried to live as Dagn na Urthan, society would disintegrate, and chaos reign; but the fact was, they simply did not. Who would? Who gave Dagn a portion of bread when his own provision fell short? Who tended him in sickness, and to whom would he turn when age began to cripple his bones? Above all, who would remember him after Death had taken him from the world? No, few men regarded freedom from clan obligations as worth the price of everlasting oblivion.


    ¡®It¡¯s law. Is it right?¡¯ No, not hardly, she thought. This Dagn had thrown away more than he realized, perhaps, or maybe he was only mad; in any case, he was the one bereft, and the law¡ªHarrowater and the Dunhaldring had a similar prohibition, of course, but had had no occasion to raise it, in her memory¡ªthe law would destroy him for impoverishing himself? Had they not more important things to fear, like raider neighbors?


    It was not right; something was deeply wrong about it, though she could not frame it satisfactorily in her thought. She looked at Raian¡¯s outstretched hand, and remembered the weird strength in her own.


    Raian coughed in surprise as she clasped it. Before he could protest, however, Wolfman clamped his own upon their joined hands, his furry chin raised high, and one by one all the rest added theirs to the defiant pile. Raian let out a whoop of joy; but more because he knew it was expected than because he felt it. Glad though he was for Dagn¡¯s sake, he was abruptly a young man with a problem. He had realized¡ªhe could not say exactly when, but by this morning he knew¡ªthat ¡®Rothric¡¯ was a girl.


    In the hammering of their strategy, then, his attention flopped like a beached fish, sometimes keen upon their goal to the exclusion of all else, sometimes wondering how to ease his first recruit out to safety without betraying her. Girls troubled him, fay, unfathomable creatures he preferred to avoid. Having spent three days of great good fun with one violated everything he knew, or thought he knew, of their kind, and he had now no time to think. She ought not to be a part of this hazard; she ought not to be traipsing alone across Peria with a pair of swords at her back, either. She ought not to have been as simple a friend as she had been, nor as much plain fun; yet there she was, and the first to stand up with him, for someone she did not even know, just because he had asked.


    They had to succeed, and get themselves clear of trouble in the bargain: he owed it to her.


    Rothesay wondered if the disguise was necessary, or even helpful. She had on an old badgeless cloak that Calion had dredged up from somewhere, tattered and worn but still green, and a great-brimmed felt hat that cast her face into deep shadow; a crooked cane on which she was to lean as if lame; and smudges of ash on her chin and lips, to give her an unshaven look. (Shaving being an art unknown in Harrowater, she now understood the naked chins of the one guard at the gate and the two Darians at home, though the purpose for the practice escaped her.) Wolfman had at first suggested they dress ¡®Rothric¡¯ up as a girl, but Raian crushed that idea heavily, explaining, somewhat inadequately, that poor Rothric took quite enough of that sort of teasing.


    A heavy wooden platform, head-high, had been erected in a market square just down from the governor¡¯s palace. The prisoner was to be lashed to the post in the middle, upon an oil-soaked pile of brush and faggots; after proper ceremony, and spells to thwart the ghost¡¯s vengeance, whatever noble citizen held the Venheuri priesthood of Death this year, together with the priestess of Sorche, would light the pyre with torches held ready at hand. Rothesay had passed nearly within arm¡¯s reach of the construction earlier, and felt the evil of its aura almost as a palpable thing, and smothered a sudden urge to smash the whole pile into so much kindling-wood.


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    An air of carnival anticipation seemed to underlie the morning¡¯s market. Rothesay hobbled out to join folk already beginning to gather about the skirts of the platform for a good view, though her heart screamed to flee. The Dunhaldring had no such horror as this, only beheading, which was at least swift; and most crimes, in any case, were paid for in silver, or in service. Here all about her the life of the market proceeded busily, trade moved in lively dance, a macabre celebration of death. Rothesay wondered if the Runedaur celebrated burnings as lustily, and what Ges Himself thought of the proceedings held more or less in His honor. Death, they said, came only when the soul could bear the burdens of life no longer; it was no triviality to magnify those weights, and call Death before His time. Why, then, this sense of sport?


    Though the morning seemed endless, the noon-bells at last rang out from the towers in all the public squares of the city, a great music that shivered in the air long after the last chime struck. The merchants folded away their booths and cleared the square. Their places were swiftly filled by the vigorous citizenry, many with their midday meals in hand or basket, as if it were a civic picnic. Many also came armed with humiliation in the form of rotten produce. Rothesay shifted restlessly. She had seen no sign of her cohorts since they dissipated from Calion¡¯s home this morning; had they found the disturbances they sought? When would they move? Could they move?


    A brisk drum staccato rattled down the alley from the Citadel of Law and Teginau¡¯s grimmest dungeon beneath it, quickly drowned by a roar from the crowd. Down marched a column of men-at-arms, white-and-blue striped Dunwyrding tunics peering from under Kinnaith¡¯s articulated armor. Down rode the Teginau governor and the two senior magistrates on restless stallions. Then a curious oblong: on one side, three long columns of priests in the black robes of death¡ªnot the warrior Runedaur, but the civic Venheuri, men of the city who served this three-year tour of duty as the lot fell to them, and who looked askance at those who made a career of Death¡¯s service; and on the other, three of priestesses in Sorche¡¯s fiery red. In front walked another black-robed, black-veiled death-priest, and a scarlet-swathed fire-priestess glided behind, but these two glittered and gleamed, their official robes stiff with gold embroideries and bright gems, and torches flared in their hands, pale in the sunlight. Boys walked behind each, carrying the delicate frames of fanciful silken parasols. Fore and center in their square, naked but for a leather breechcloth and his rope bonds, walked a giant of a man, tawny hair and beard uncombed, unbraided, as wild-looking as the heights he loved to roam, Dagn of the Wastelands. He walked tall, and beamed beneficently at the hordes of Teginau, looking as though he were on his way to a feast, and not his own roasting. Rothesay shuddered, and wished darkly that the gawkers should have a taste of fear and fire, and not this genial, hapless lunatic. Then more soldiers, and lastly Prince Ethain himself, beside a high Dunwyrding noble who stood in place of the absent chieftain, with a score of courtiers at their backs.


    The soldiers and the dignitaries assembled behind the pyre. The priests and priestesses climbed the wooden steps in file with their victim, and bound him tightly to the stake. Dagn watched with remote interest, as a full-fed cat watches a mouse. Crazy, surely; but what was that to die for?


    A small disturbance brought the attention of the men-at-arms, but it was not the one she hoped for: a knot of brown-robed men, more such priests as visited Harrowater, pressed forward, crying out. But it was not the wrongness they protested; they shouted something about false gods falling before the God of Mercy, and then they were hustled away. A good idea, mercy; but Rothesay had the clear impression that they did not mean it for judgment in this life.


    The magistrate came forward and read out the crimes, and a tedious sermon on the duties of citizens that protect their rights and honors. Next to Rothesay, a peasant fellow eyed the speaker and hefted a scabby turnip meditatively. Then the high priest and priestess between them performed an elaborate ritual punctuated by their attendants¡¯ shaking tiny bells. Rothesay heard almost none of it, her anxiety for any sign of her partners in transgression stretching unbearably. Overhead a great, gloomy raven circled .


    What seemed like hours later, the black and red partners in this public dance of death reached formally for their respective torches: the moment had come, and Raian had not. Rothesay jigged desperately in place.


    ¡°Here, yer wood¡¯s rotted, Holiness!¡± Her voice broke in a terrified, sheepish bleat as she put a hand on the nearest timber, having no idea what she intended, except delay.


    ¡°What?¡± Sorche¡¯s priestess snapped, startled from her magical trance.


    ¡°Rotted!¡± she squeaked, feeling now as idiotic as frightened, and gave a great shove. The effort shoved herself to the ground. The pyre stood firm, and crowd and soldiers and all turned to stare, puzzled, suspicious.


    But the evil she had felt before flooded her senses now at the touch. Maddened with the horror of it, she flung herself back at the sturdy oak. This time it cracked and shuddered as her feet found purchase, the timber bent and splintered, the pyre tipped, and priests, priestesses, bells, torches and Dagn slid crashing into the dignitaries and all their horses. The pyre-fuel caught and blazed.


    Chaos ripped away the veil of civility in the square. Some of those most heavily armed with vegetables for the sport of tormenting the condemned (once the fire should be lit and the holy folk withdrawn from range), now turned their armaments heartily against soldiers, courtiers, and all, for the soul of the commoner is seldom far from anarchy. An inrush of fresh soldiery from the Citadel tripped over a tide of pigs loosed from market-carts standing at the square¡¯s edge for transport home, and a sudden, inexplicable flood of goats, geese, and chickens escaped from every household pen for blocks around. And then all were fleeing from the prize of today¡¯s market, a matched pair of huge black bulls who took all but matching paths through the madness, and no one marked the black-haired, violet-eyed elf of disaster who hunkered under a cart and shook with triumphant laughter.


    In the middle of the square, Rothesay wrenched timber from beam and bashed them to satisfactory firewood against the flagstones, moving from one to the next when scarcely a piece large enough to swing remained in her hands. Maybe a quarter of the platform had thus fallen to her before her fury began to be appeased, and, cooling, she sensed a strange and empty silence.


    Looking up, she found herself ringed by several score or so of townsfolk, guards, and even the prince on his horse, watching her with round eyes, not venturing to interfere.


    Fury faded utterly. ¡°Oh, no,¡± she whispered, and spun and bolted for the thinnest part of the ring. Every ounce of the magical strength of Arngas she poured into her legs, as a cry of pursuit went up behind her. She lowered her head and thought of nothing but speed, her feet finding the shortest way to a gate on their own. Cats, chickens and children scattered before her; an overbold soldier held his ground and she did not know it till her shoulder jarred on his plates and he clattered aside.


    The gate neared, but she was anticipated: the portcullis thudded into place, and she dared not match her power against the thick bronze. What else? Crying and fainting she could do later. Jump? A low opening gaped between the stone arch of the tetrapylon and the top of the portcullis bars. A desperate leap, the sickening shifting of a loose flagstone under her toes, flung her into the bars only a few ells short of the top; and, followed by shouts and screaming, she scrambled up, over, and leaped to the roadside grass and fled to the bosom of the wild.


    Cover, screening was the idea of fleeing the road and turning at once to the forest (as she told herself later; only that, and certainly not any feeling of escaping to ''home''). Bashing her way through laurel and briar, she soon realized that the Uissig highway would have sped her further and sooner. Then the slope dropped out from under her and down the hillside she slithered on her back. Grabbling madly at the loam, trying to steer clear of uprushing tree-trunks, she slid away with far more speed than any mere road could have afforded, however well run. Then even the slope ended and she dropped two fathoms through open air into a turbulent pool.


    The river snatched her away, tossing and twisting her about. She fought to get her face above the foam, and then to keep it above. Her shins banged the rocks and then she struggled to keep her feet high as well. Her tailbone banged instead.


    Down between a pair of troll-like boulders she was carried, mere flotstam, tumbled about in another pool and flung over the lip of a falls at least twice her own height. The weight of the plunging water bore her down and shoved her head into sand. She wrenched about, planted her feet and thrust, caught a current and shot headfirst through the rapids below. Rocks peeled her arms and elbows and cracked her knees. A faceful of water from a standing wave made her choke and realize she had been screaming. Then the river-channel bent sharply and poured into a deeper, quieter though still swift-flowing stretch. As she caught her breath, at last it occurred to her to try to get out of the water. Embarrassed, she stroked for the bank and crawled out shaking. She lay for a while, staring at nothing till slowly a grin crept across her face. She would never have chosen such a trip but¡ªsince she was alive and whole¡ªwhat a thrill it had been, after all! At length she sighed, pulled herself to jellylike legs and stumbled on, still grinning.


    Areolin the Sailor of the Sun approached the western peaks when she dropped exhausted into the soft needles beneath the Elder Pendiu. She had no idea how she had found her way here, still less where she would go next. Her pack and her swords, her blanket and her own cloak lay under Raian¡¯s bed in Raingold Enclave, and there they would stay till world¡¯s end if she had to fetch them. She pressed her hand to her bosom: the faint, damp semi-crackle told her that Padriag¡¯s map and letter were still with her. Yet she could hardly go on with no more than a stolen cloak and hat to her name. She stared up into the branches as she rolled her dilemma over ponderously, and was suddenly asleep.


    ¡°Waaagh!¡± she yelped, leaping up like a cat.


    ¡°Relax, it¡¯s me!¡± Raian laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve brought you something.¡±


    She blinked. She had not slept long, only enough for the sun to slip below the hills. ¡°Uh. Hi,¡± she mumbled. ¡°How did you¡ª? I didn¡¯t even know¡ªI mean, I¡¯m lost, really; I¡¯m here by accident.¡±


    ¡°No, I wouldn¡¯t say that. Seems an accident to you, yah, but they do say that this old tree draws fate instead of water by the roots. As for me, well, you left a trail like a charging cow till¡ªwhat, did you fall in the Kellstream?¡±


    ¡°Yes¡ªwhatever it¡¯s called.¡± She shivered, half-grinning, and her eyes grew round at the recollection of that wild, watery tumble down the stony breast of the Uissig. The bruises were just beginning to throb, and she was deeply grateful they were not fractures.


    He laughed, at once sympathetic with the terror and envious of the thrill. ¡°Here.¡± He handed her her forgotten property. ¡°I know how the Kell twists. I took a chance that you might have ended up here, if you hadn¡¯t broken your neck and drowned.¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m not so lucky. Um, thanks.¡±


    ¡°We saved Dagn,¡± he explained simply. ¡°He burned his bonds and escaped¡ªwhat with half the Watch chasing you. Wolfman¡¯s going to take him out a knife and some stuff tomorrow. Now,¡± he stood up expectantly, and picked up a tall black bow. A fat pack crushed his cloak to his back. ¡°How far do we travel before supper?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± she yelped.


    ¡°You did say you don¡¯t mind travelling after dark. How far before supper?¡±


    She flung her own belongings to her back and marched out from under the tree. ¡°You aren¡¯t coming!¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t go alone. I will help you meet the perils of the road,¡± he promised chivalrously, striding after her.


    She gaped at that, all the horror of the morning rising again like an undead spirit. She did not understand what had overcome her in the square, but the shattered oak vividly spelled for her the terrible price of an unguarded temper. She cast wildly about for an answer. Seizing on a fallen trunk, she snapped it in two against a standing bole. ¡°I am the perils of the road!¡± she roared. ¡°Who will help you meet me?¡±


    Raian blinked; he had not missed her performance in the market-square; but stoutly he asserted his faith that she would not harm him. Bursting into tears, she hugged him with a delicacy that would not have ruptured a soap bubble, picked him up and wedged him by the pack in a crotch of a dogwood, blew her nose and ran.


    Raian roared and struggled; but he had done on his pack altogether too securely; he would be long enough getting free of it. A huge raven soared down, following the crash of Rothesay¡¯s passage; for sheer pique, he raised his bow and shot it.


    As he worked his way free, he realized that he had never taken a chance to tell her of his dream. Strange and remote it seemed now, that vision of standing as king before all of Peria, with a storm like a huge black dragon at his back. He wondered if she would laugh.


    At sunset in Castle a Geste, Asilay el-Seremay screamed and dropped to the stony floor.

 IV: A Power to Be Reckoned With (1/3): Adrift

    IV: A Power to be Reckoned With


    Teginau was more than a week behind her. She had kept assiduously to the wild, skirting sometimes miles out of her way to avoid human encounter. Only once did she dare a town, a full hungry day after her provisions had run out and spring foraging proved too scanty; one coil from the copper Padriag had given her, and their fair prices, filled her pack well, and a full stomach was remarkably soothing. She had not noticed the strange looks shot her way, at her darting green eyes and her wizard¡¯s-braid pearled with oak catkins and leaf-litter, as she was busy concentrating on not bolting like a surprised fox. But that night the villagers put bowls of milk outside, bolted themselves in by bright firesides, and spun old tales of the power of the Piper in the Wild, and new ones of the stranger who was surely His latest catch.


    A spring bubbled out into a small moss-wreathed pool. A dogwood petal, white as the Moon Boat, floated upon the wavering images of iris-blades and yellow narcissus. Crouched nearby, His back to a mighty tulip poplar, the Piper raised His flute and trilled a pensive fragment. The narcissus bowed.


    He had long ago given up trying to keep the Lord of Winds in view. Kavin was a beguiling dancer, but hard to follow as He nosed through the flowers or around the trunks, eternally restless; and of course if He stopped, He faded at once and could not be seen at all, unless He spoke. There were few among the Great Ones who could tolerate this for long; Dagn was one.


    ¡°Well?¡± said the Air, slowing to trail His hand over the pool. The petal whirled.


    Dagn lowered His flute and frowned. ¡°What has been done, can never be wholly undone.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± He dived suddenly into a bramble-patch and came up with leaves in His silver hair.


    Dagn¡¯s tree-shadowed eyes paled to frost. ¡°Do you miss the point? That hurts.¡±


    ¡°Pain happens.¡±


    ¡°Even to you?¡±


    The Jester-god flashed him a white grin. ¡°Even to Ges.¡±


    Dagn made a small bow, not without a shiver. ¡°Well, you¡¯d know.¡± Kavin chuckled, and spread His arms and soared up into the budding branches, and looked then like a bird made of light. Death had no friends; the Jester alone could be said to have something like amity with the Silent One, known also, for no reason that Dagn could fathom, as the Father of Comedy.


    Swooping near to earth, ¡°Well?¡± Kavin asked again as he passed, trailing a flutter of leaves.


    Dagn sighed. The girl was lovely, with eyes of her father¡¯s kind, His favored folk, and the seduction proceeded so pleasantly. ¡°It¡¯s so important?¡±


    ¡°Important!¡± Kavin whirled, instantly angered. Leaf-litter whipped upwards in a tight spiral. ¡°Let Hell take ¡®importance¡¯!¡± And then He laughed: thunder split the forest stillness, trees bowed low and birds fled for their nests. Several mighty clouds rushed up to hear their Master¡¯s bidding. Grinning, Kavin waved them off, and they went back to rain on Lake M¨®rath and the Tarasforoth heights. To Dagn he smiled and murmured, ¡°It¡¯s interesting.¡±


    Dagn glared skeptically. ¡°The Spinner sent you?¡±


    ¡°No; Oraay.¡±


    ¡°What, is She jealous?¡±


    ¡°For all I know.¡±


    ¡°Or care,¡± Dagn grumbled. Kavin grinned, and took a run, leaped at a neighboring tree-bole and jumped sideways and up for the slender branch above Dagn¡¯s head. He let himself dangle, first by his knees, then his heels, and swayed gently, craning back his head to look down at the Piper. His hair waved like silver seaweed. He reached down to tousle Dagn¡¯s nut-brown curls, then dropped full on him, sending leaves and twigs flying from the floor and buffeting the narcissus to the ground. Regathering Himself, he danced off through the forest, giving the Piper a fleeting hope that He had gone entirely, before roaring back.


    ¡°Well?¡±


    Dagn shrugged. ¡°I shall see her again anyway.¡±


    ¡°No doubt; the Ceidha have always heard You. Well?¡±


    The Piper looked at His flute. ¡°As You will, Lord.¡±


    ¡°Thanks.¡±


    And then He was gone; and for a peaceful hour the forest lay perfectly still, and Dagn played not.


    On the night that the faintest sliver of the new moon first smiled tentatively from just above the sunset, she sat hunched over a small fire, toasting a bit of bannock twisted on a stick. She watched steadily as the light waned and the stars burned bright against the bosom of Night. She stood abruptly, and spread her arms wide, holding her stick aloft.


    ¡°I wished for power, and I was given power,¡± she intoned, in her best high-priestess imitation. Then she added under her breath, ¡°Half-drowned in it, to be sure; had You noticed?¡± To the stars again she cried: ¡°I ask now for the power to wield that power well and wisely! Hear me, all ye spirits of earth and air, fire and night!¡±


    For several heartbeats she stood like a linden sapling reaching for the white stars. A small breeze rustled over the grass, curled about her thin ribs, pulled her hair playfully into her face, and was gone. No lightning split the heavens; no mountain heaved beneath her; not so much as a dog barked to answer her. Only the crescent Smile of Heaven gleamed more brightly as the darkness deepened. Rothesay dropped her arms with a snort. ¡°Right.¡± Squatting, she resumed toasting her bannock. After a bare moment, she rose again and waved the pastry-twined stick like a wand at the dark sky. ¡°It is said that the Great Ones bestow what it amuses Them to bestow. Very well: when I die, I get to be High Clowness of Heaven!¡± The Moon, at least, seemed entertained.


    She returned sulkily to her small supper. The night passed very slowly.


    The next evening, she looked out through the branches of a lilac bush in new leaf, across black fields at the walls of a town. Sferan-built, the stones and shapes declared; but the western Gate sported two clan roundels high on wooden staves above the gatehouse. Strings of blue-painted wooden beads and long white feathers hung from one, green and yellow beads and foxes¡¯ tails from the other; the stretched hides in the centers were painted, the one with a flying hawk, the other with three fox heads. The fox token stood higher, and probably the hawk-folk would move on in another season of conquest. She clicked her tongue at how uncouth the banners looked, after the silken splendor of Dunwyrding of Tre-Uissig.


    A few days back, she had forded the Osse, the northern border of the rich jewel of Aellicia. Unlike the Carolanth, Aellicia lay in peace, her cheery folk occupied only with the proper business of spring, reminding Rothesay poignantly of home. She did not know that this was the peace of the tyrant. The power of the warlord of Aellicia was not the least in Peria: he kept an iron order among his own thanes, being as swift and generous in reward as in revenge; and he had lately quelled Aellicia¡¯s perennial struggling against the domination of southerly Maldan, by returning the compliment. Odhru of Dun Brean still claimed the title of high-king over the clans of Maldan; but Maldan bowed to Deorgard of Aellicia.


    Rothesay saw only quiet fields, busy foxes and busier mice, nothing to drive her to rend the world to hapless bits. She had come to like the wild by day, among creatures with little better to do than eat; just this morning she had spent a few exhilarating hours sharing a slide with a tumble of otters, hurtling down the slope, the mud like silk over her naked skin, and alternately crashing into the cold river-pool in huge wings of spray, and trying to cut into it sleek as a knife. The otters, perhaps recognizing the smell of the Ceidha, accepted their overlarge playmate with aplomb, accepted the cakes she shared with joy, and whistled after her when she took her reluctant leave.


    The piping farewell staggered her. A great void opened in the world, a grief as deep and hollow as the loss of her mother dropped her to her knees on the creek-bank. Tiny bluets and springing mint swirled sparkling together in a sudden rain of tears and she could not even name what was gone.


    She fought the grief, groping to understand. Sitting in the mint, wiping her cheeks with a muddy hand, she searched wildly, and she found a name, a word that seemed to fit; of course, how silly: she was lonely.


    The horrid events at the burning in Teginau bridged into unreality. All her years at Harrowater came into bright focus in the fairy light of homesickness. She had never had to be alone before, that she could recall; never, apart from the occasional night in Padriag¡¯s loft¡ªand that always with cats, ferrets and the like¡ªslept apart from the puppy-pile in Anie¡¯s cot. And how she missed Raian, and his joyful lordliness: she had not had a better friend and playmate since Mina died¡ªthough she had no wish to return to the imprisonment of his walled city. Lonely. Only natural. That was it. She splashed her face clean again and hurried on. She fought to ignore how working up the nerve to venture among humans again seemed rather to deepen the loss, than soothe it; that was silly.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Now this town presented itself, and night was coming on.


    Night. What terrors the dark had held for her weeks ago scarcely troubled her now, though she was not sure whether to think she had worn fear out through overuse, or had become so acclimated to the sensation that a feeling of primordial horror now merely signified that it was bedtime. Ignorance of local lore helped: she would not spend a willing night back on Deorgan-hill, even now. As for natural hazards, Padriag had taught her enough of courtesy that it was not the wild folk that she feared, not even the lords of the local wild; and as for the rogues among them, there seemed to be fewer among wolves than among men. Not to mention, she thought, flexing her hands meditatively, she had become a hazardous character her¡ª


    Something moved, a vague grey puffball at the edge of sight that first glance failed to resolve; but the second glance launched her from under the bush as from a spearthrower¡¯s chuck, so that she shuddered on nerveless feet long before the word ¡®spider¡¯ finished forming in her thought.


    Not that the trip had been without a crawly visitor or two, nor yet her home, and certainly not Padriag¡¯s. What of it? That one was here, now, and bore all the burden of her exile in its fat little body. Willing herself to calm, she ordered herself back under the bush; and glanced at the city walls instead, still orange in the light of the sunset. If she delayed, the gates would be shut, and she would be out here with the spider.


    She hungered for friendly company; the town felt like a waiting cage. She looked back down at the lilac. The spider had reached the ground and was crawling toward her pack. Grabbing the pack, she flung it to her back and hurried across the broken ground for the gate, and shivered and squirmed at a whole bodyful of inexplicable tickles. I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me. I am. Truly.


    The gate stayed open and she relaxed, slowing to a more normal gait. Smells of fish and mud and wet rope swirled out in greeting, familiar and yet strange, lacking salt. Again, Sorche and Ges warded this westward door.


    A beggar sat by the Deathlord¡¯s image, leaning his back against the wall still warm from the day¡¯s sunshine. A dark bandage covered one eye, and he pulled a black cloak close about him, but his bald head was bare and his leather hat lay by, invitingly upturned in the dust beside him. She could not see his hands, enfolded in the cloak, but the feet sticking a little too far out from his ungartered trews looked strong and sturdy, and she wondered what his tragedy had been, apart from the missing eye. Drawing level with him, she paused to break off half a coil of her copper, and drop it in the empty hat.


    ¡°A blessing on you, stranger,¡± she bade him, hoping he would eat tonight and not go hungry, and hoping that Thyrne¡¯s husband Mat was being good to the sisters dumped in his household by Rothesay¡¯s precipitous departure. She passed on, deep in childhood prayers for her family¡¯s prosperity, and glad enough for herself for the patronage of the wizard; but she would rather be home and hungry, than well-fed and wandering.


    Behind her, a surprised man with an eyepatch lifted the metal from his hat in two spidery fingers, as delicately as if it were a rare blossom; then looked up to grin at the surly gatekeeper, watching from his post above. That worthy shook his head disapprovingly, thinking that the benefactor in the little transaction below looked more in need of charity than the recipient; he vanished from view, descending stumpily with the sun, down the stairs within the wall to close his gate and lock up against the night. The queer-looking beggar-man had gone in that time; but the gatekeeper¡¯s wide if shadowed view down the several alleys that converged on his post revealed no one but the charitable newcomer, glimpsed in a bit of torchlight far down the street. He muttered again to himself about the queerness of the world, and puffed back up to his little house.


    Rothesay had the wild, scandalous notion to ask for a seat in the meadhall, as if she were indeed a man, however youthful. But the Geillari who had taken the river-city of Nancaras and named it instead Floodholding, had discovered the Sferan industry of the alehouse and inn. Traffic on the broad green back of the Nanfeill, the Deepflood, though barely a fragment of its old imperial volume, brought a lively trade to the new citizens, so long as the boatmen were able to enjoy their traditional comforts. Maybe one day the Geillari would press on, or perhaps the Sferiari upriver would strike back; but for now, there was profit in peace. Rothesay was directed to an old establishment of deep porches right on the waterfront.


    The proprietor was a thin, sallow man, richly ornamented, but all in copper: the Floodholding Geillari had not yet decided what sort of status to accord one who sold hospitality. He began sullenly enough, but quickly sang an obsequious tune when his effeminate-looking customer flaunted a wizard¡¯s tassel. Then a modest influx of regulars, riverboatmen as well as townsmen, kept his time full enough. Rothesay was glad: there was something slavish about him, undignified in a freeman.


    Being early, she had been able to choose an obscure corner, dim and hopefully less than companionable: now here, she was nervous again, and though glad enough of the general company, she hoped to avoid it specifically. She rebuked herself for not having anticipated simple hazards such as conversation, planned to retire directly after supper, and drank her ale uneasily.


    Ale: another folly. She knew better than to drink on an empty stomach, but while an early arrival provided a good seat selection, it meant supper would not be ready yet; and the proprietor had not even asked, but had served her a man¡¯s horn promptly. She should wait; but she had little else to do with her hands. She watched the play of the locals, listened to their joking and merry bragging, slunk deeper into her corner when the plump serving-girl simpered and giggled and batted her golden lashes over the refilling of Rothesay¡¯s ale. Rothesay pulled Calion¡¯s old hat lower over her face to smother her entertainment. Maybe I should tell her I prefer boys? Contemplating the ruckus that would likely ensue if the girl betrayed any such confidence to the brawny boatmen quickly changed her mind, but she still chuckled into the ale-foam at the idea.


    She wondered vaguely why it was so very bad for a man to love another man; but more than that, she wondered why these fellows here, for instance, would take it as a personal insult if they thought she was a he casting admiring glances their way. Other wrongs would be less virulently addressed: if they thought she was a thief, the drubbing they would mete out might be no less severe but it would be relatively impersonal, free of the indignation evoked by another man¡¯s lust. She watched some of the more outrageous of them leer and grab at the serving-girl, who only laughed and dodged. Now, would they not be puzzled and annoyed if she wanted to beat them up as they would a man?


    Mulling over this and other oddities of people, and dodging the girl¡¯s flirtations, Rothesay moved through two pints of ale without ever seeing the bottom of her cup. Warm and comfortable, she discarded her cloak on the bench beside her, but kept the hat pulled down. The walls seemed less close, the ceiling not so threateningly low, as when she had come in. She was somewhere deep in an elaborate but wonderfully lucid exegesis on diplomacy between the sexes, when war broke out.


    A fraternal war, she reflected, looking across at the conflict escalating from the two original combatants to include allies and would-be mediators alike. Then a higher authority joined in: the stout housewife stepped up, laying a sturdy broomstick about the shoulders of the miscreants smashing her crockery and tumbling the furniture about.


    But the skull of an Aellician riverman is harder than the boulders of the stream, and his body tougher than twisted rope; and the old woman¡¯s enthusiastic arguments had as much influence as a tiller in the rapids. More crockery smashed. The sallow innkeeper yelled and waved his hands.


    Buoyed in dream, Rothesay looped her way over, removed the broom politely from the housewife, and applied it to the nearest meaty shoulder. The working end of the broom snapped off, and the man, turning, found a curiously deadly-looking stick waving swordlike under his nose. The broom-wielder lunged, dropping aim to a lower, more vital target, and the brawling boatman screamed and tripped himself in a confusion between flight and fortification.


    Then the broken broomstick leaped and struck, stinging and biting in a wicked dance, as if it lived at the touch of elvish sorcery. From shoulder to buttock to back it flew; and twirled, vanished, and reappeared in a flash of pain across a thigh or an ear, chastising and not injuring with a fine accuracy of power Rothesay would not have credited had she been clear-headed enough to notice.


    Her targets did. Half smarting, half affrighted by the witchy stick and its scarecrow master, the brawlers dropped their quarrel and fled for the street. Gratified, Rothesay watched them go, then turned to inspect her weapon with the care of a veteran.


    The fog broke. For the fourth time, ordinary awareness returned, and she looked on the broomstick and screamed.


    ¡°Yaaaaah!¡±


    She flung it down, and leaped away from its animated rebound. When it fell again, she pounced on it, stomped upon it with both feet, heedless of the thinness of her shoes. ¡°Yaaaaah!¡±


    A sudden bark of male laughter chilled her. She froze in mid-stomp and looked up.


    Three of the most resplendent men she had ever seen, proclaimed nobles by their silks and their pride, and especially their swords, stood watching her. One was shadowed under the wide brim of a bright blue hat, but a quizzical grin shone through his beard. One, a stocky fellow with a mess of grey curls and an encouragingly sunny face, though he wrapped himself in a shimmering green cloak looked like a farmer playing at dress-up out of his lord¡¯s wardrobe. And the third, rippling in blue satin, rocked in his black boots and laughed again.


    Oh, hell, she thought dismally. Nobility again, jewel-colored trouble, as bully-like as Harrowater¡¯s headman but multiplied according to the degree of their lordliness; and Sferan to boot. And the mood of this lot, suggested by the mirth of the one with wolf-pelt for hair, soothed her not at all; though there was an odd quality to the laughter that she could not pin down. Now, however, she groped from her half-stooped pose for the broomstick under her feet, and snatched it up across her chest as a talisman, at least, of protection.


    ¡°Now, what a prize are you?¡± The words were Sferan and, as far as she could tell, utterly unaccented. Wolf-hair stopped laughing to grin at her in some kind of disbelief. Fierce, sapphire-blue eyes glittered out of a brown weathered face, over a nose like an eagle¡¯s beak; his dark moustache curled down around his infuriating grin till the point ends cleared his sharp jawline. She did not think he was particularly old, perhaps thirty, despite the iron greying of his dark hair; he lacked an inch or two against her, though he was far better-muscled¡ªwhich counted for nothing against the dweomer that lay on her. But this was no hearthward, no house-carl she faced now. Some instinct warned her that any contest with this man was lost before it was begun, and she backed away from his menace unconsciously, her forest-dark eyes locked on his blue ones, as entranced as the sparrow before the snake. His grin widened slightly, as he raked her body slowly with a stare as though she were wearing nothing at all, and he liked what he saw.


    Unfortunately for him, it was a ploy Rothesay knew all too well. The great lord¡¯s boorishness served only to crack her shell of fear: she did not show her ire, but only straightened, and returned just the same sort of gaze¡ªand displayed a flicker of disappointment at what she pretended to see. Meeting his eyes again, she was delighted to catch in them a glint of surprise. Then he swept off his plumed cap in a great, graceful bow, as much in mockery as respect.


    ¡°Will the Lady of the Deadly Broom honor us with her presence at dinner?¡± he invited silkily, gesturing towards a small table under the window.


    As gladly as a lamb with wolves. She flushed hot with embarrassment at the acknowledgement of her gender. Now there was nothing for them but to take her for a loose woman, the loosest of women, and only one use to be made of her.


    ¡°ThankyoubutIhavetogonow,¡± she murmured hastily, stepped backward, and halted, thwarted: all her belongings were still in her dark, safe corner¡ªbeyond the men.


    A touch on her shoulder startled her; she spun and struck. The beggar from the gate tumbled across the floor, acrobatically enough for one motivated by far more force than his own, finishing in an adroit crouch, five astonished yards away.


    ¡°¡ªLauren?¡± breathed one of the nobles behind her; but not the graceful rude one, who stepped on the end of the beggar¡¯s fallen staff, making it snap up into his hand, and made of it an invitation of another sort.

 IV: A Power to Be Reckoned With (2/3): Master

    Hope blazed up in her¡ªif hope it could be called, for it was a strange new creature, with teeth and a lashing tail, a creature that had last seen battle-fire in the Meredale. Boldly she struck out at him, aiming for the shoulder of his sword arm as a good place for a fat bruise to¡ª


    From his pose like melting ice, a sudden movement glittered. Her arm smarted from palm to shoulder and her stick clattered across the floor.


    Shocked by the betrayal of the barrow-sword magic, she stared bereft from her fallen weapon to her tingling palm, to her enemy.


    He looked¡ªangry. Eyes narrowed, he shook his head ominously. ¡°No,¡± he growled, ¡°you did not dismiss our good landlord¡¯s barbarians like that.¡± At his glance and nod, the splendid farmer retrieved her stick and returned it to her with a merry flourish: he, at any rate, seemed highly entertained, he and his friend with the hat.


    Rothesay strangled back a horror of tears, an embarrassment she would die rather than loose now. But what was left, since the fighting power had capriciously abandoned her? None of the little magics she had learned of Padriag would be of any use against a trio of lordly rogues¡ªwould they? She glanced at them, gauging whether she or they could make the better speed if she ran.


    Abruptly her opponent lowered his weapon and leaned one-handed on it, a quizzical look once more on his face. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll be damned,¡± he murmured, then nodded to the window-table. ¡°Sit down, girl.¡±


    She measured the distance to her belongings in the corner. ¡°Oh, no, lords, indeed, I really have to go . . . . ¡°


    ¡°So you said,¡± he purred, noting the object of her glance and with a wave ushering the little party that way. To her thorough surprise, the beggar joined them, as comfortably as if he were clad in the gayest silks, or the rest were as ragged as he. ¡°Ah, where to, if I may ask, my dainty?¡±


    It was her last cast. If there were a tender Goddess-mother; if Teodhan, Lord of Water and of Love, in this river-town could hear a silent prayer; if even the nameless new God of Mercy had mercy to spare for one who knew Him not, then the very name of the demons to whom she ran would spill the arrogance of these peacocks¡ªand friend¡ªlike so much blood. Drawing herself up, cold and queenly she replied, ¡°Colderwild.¡±


    They stared.


    Presently the graceful one smoothed his long moustaches with a heavy hand and forced himself to reply, ¡°How¡ªconvenient. . . . Yet have a care, chit: there are those who would more gladly kill you than spit on you, for no greater cause!¡± He gestured to the bench and, defeated, she sat.


    ¡°Do you have a name, little one?¡± the man in the blue hat inquired, almost gently, oiling onto the opposite bench.


    I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me. Ah. Ha. Ha. ¡°Rothesay, sir,¡± she replied dejectedly. She eyed her forgotten horn in its bracket: the simpering wench had at some time refilled it¡ªagain. She wanted to dump it over the girl¡¯s silly head.


    The graceful one, their seeming leader, checked in the act of taking seat by her. She wilted under his fierce glare. ¡°Um¡ªyour lordship?¡± she amended haplessly, wondering what ailed the beastly fellow now.


    He made no reply, but stared down at her as if all her life and history were written plain upon her face for him to read. She saw his lips slowly shape her name, that she tended to forget was conspicuously foreign.


    ¡°Dere¡¯s Blood!¡± he thundered, before she could explain. ¡°Cherusay lived?¡±


    For answer nine stone of hurtling young woman took him in the ribs and they crashed to the floor. He writhed in her grasp like a snake and she loosed the futile hold, instead seizing his ears in two slender, powerful hands with all the weight of their owner pinning his head.


    ¡°What do you know of my mother?¡± she roared into his moustache.


    ¡°That answers that,¡± he remarked dryly.


    A hand took her shoulder in a grip both gentle and curiously compelling and pulled her back. ¡°Peace, child! The disappearance of the Daughter of Daria has been common gossip all the length of the Dragon Sea for years.¡±


    Freed, her captive snapped to his feet in one swift move like a snake¡¯s strike. Rothesay sat on the floor, shivering, glancing up at the lord of the green cloak whose hand still lay on her shoulder, and at the leader, whose bright eyes burned down at her out of a starry vault of thought. One phrase rolled about her own brain like a marble in a large and empty pan: Daughter of Daria.


    ¡°Where is the Lady Cherusay?¡± he asked at length.


    ¡°Oh¡ªdead. Your lordship.¡± Whatever else, she could not bring herself to own him with ¡®my lord.¡¯ ¡°Thirteen years ago.¡±


    One black eyebrow lifted, but he replied, not precisely in sympathy, but perhaps with forgiveness for her tackle, ¡°Ah. I honor your grief.¡±


    ¡°I thank you,¡± she murmured, equally correctly. ¡°But it¡¯s an old grief, and I have learned peace.¡±


    ¡°It is well for you,¡± he replied enigmatically. ¡°What did an-Velaker want of you?¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°Courtesy, courtesy, brother!¡± Green-cloak chided his friend. ¡°Shall we sit down as strangers? I,¡± he said, offering a thick, ring-encrusted hand to Rothesay to help her to her feet, and bowed low, ¡°am Tarrant, out of Kingscroft in Andrastir; this rogue here is my brother in spirit, Peridar, of Kingscroft as well.¡± He waved broadly at the table, and the blue-hatted fellow lifted it with a grin and a half-bow. ¡°And here, this is Master Lauren of Raven¡¯s Trace, whom you knocked like a bowling-pin¡ªyou know, Lauren, you will be a long time living that one down!¡±


    ¡°Aye, and properly so,¡± the beggar agreed, grinning at Rothesay¡¯s astonishment. ¡°But what, exactly, would y¡¯ say was my error?¡± His tone reminded her of Padriag at his most tutorial, and Tarrant¡¯s wide face wrinkled up thoughtfully, like a good pupil though he was forty-five if he was a day.


    ¡°Master of incorrigible instructors,¡± grumbled her erstwhile prisoner. ¡°Not now, Lauren!¡±


    The others laughed, and Tarrant concluded, ¡°Master Dav, of Colderwild.¡±


    The Demon-lord himself¡ªand he looked the part, too! He was a blaze of blue silk, lined and outlined in black leather, with fiery blue sparks of sapphires scattered upon his boots and hands, at his throat and glittering from under his grizzled hair, bright sapphires set in his ears and bright eyes in his weathered face. His great, gleaming cloak, sweeping down around him like an aura, was blue also, with some fire-bright design she could not see.


    Rothesay discovered that a whole body could stammer. Curtsy? No skirts¡ªit would look idiotic. Bow? That was for men. Punch his face? Tempting; but he might hit back, and she doubted that he fought like the girls of Harrowater, who were the only foes she had ever triumphed over by knowing what she was doing.


    She managed an awkward, bow-like twitch, and dropped herself on the bench, none too soon. She had anticipated another fortnight¡¯s travel yet to reach the end of her world at Colderwild; now the end of the world stared her in the face out of blue-fire eyes, and she was empty-handed.


    No, not quite: there was a letter. She was supposed to give this creature Padriag¡¯s letter. She fumbled through the lacings of her tunic, slipped the precious packet from among the windings of her breastbands, and passed it wordlessly to¡ªDav, Master of Runedaur, quite probably the single most dangerous man in all the Dragon-sea lands.


    The softest crackle attended deft fingers unfolding her paper protection. The Demon-lord¡¯s hard eyes scanned the contents swiftly; but their movement followed no line of text. Just as it occurred to her to question the Master¡¯s literacy, he asked suddenly, ¡°Did you make this?¡±


    ¡°I did not!¡± she snapped, smacking her hands on the table in indignation. Her right one landed in an unexpected platter of stew: intent on her worries, she had not marked the arrival of food, nor of the wine for her companions. Gravy cooled on her fingers, and she could find no cloth to clean them.


    Pointedly affecting not to notice, the Master of Runedaur frowned on her paper again. ¡°Then, I am at a loss, chit: is this some metaphorical suggestion that I am a lost soul? or merely misguided?¡± And he let Padriag¡¯s map drift to the table.


    Mortified, she started after the proper packet, mentally juggled hands, and finally fished in her shirt with her less competent but clean left hand, and prayed for no lewd offer of assistance. She checked for the yellow seal lest she mysteriously should be carrying any other embarrassments; and the door burst open.


    Only the head of a lank-haired young man poked around the jamb. Grinning apologetically, he announced without preamble: ¡°Night-watch, day-watch, Aelmard¡¯s hearthwards, and some of Thyrgan¡¯s, too. About sixty, thirty either way.¡±


    The men around her sighed in exasperation.


    ¡°Bother,¡± said Peridar, and drained his mug.


    ¡°I feel unloved,¡± Tarrant complained cheerfully, loosening his sword. ¡°We should teach Deorgard respect.¡±


    ¡°Damn Deorgard,¡± Dav snapped, seizing up Rothesay¡¯s pack and extracting her swathed swords. ¡°Which one do you favor?¡±


    Wide-eyed, wondering how he knew what they were, she selected the one she knew to be the barrow-sword, and gratefully cleaned her hand upon its ragged wrapping. Dav tossed the other one to Peridar.


    ¡°Come with me, chit,¡± he ordered, heading for the inn¡¯s kitchen, and slinging her pack on his own back. ¡°West water-gate, one hour!¡±


    ¡°Aye, then,¡± said Master Lauren as he vanished out the window.


    She was unexpectedly pleased to follow and watch Master Dav, moving as he did like living silk. Then the outer door of the dark little servers¡¯ pantry swung shut on her heels, for he had stopped silently, listening at the inner door. Her racing heart pounded too loudly in her ears, and she pushed suffocation, trying to breathe less noisily. The Master himself might have been a pantry shadow for all the sound he made.


    ¡°¡ªin their drink?¡± snarled a voice beyond the door.


    ¡°N-no, my lord,¡± stammered their innkeeper. ¡°I carry nothing of the sort in this house, as well I told¡ª¡±


    ¡°Then drop this in their next round, thrallspine! No demon can endure it, and it¡¯s blessed, besides.¡±


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    In the scrap of light from a knothole, Rothesay saw the Master¡¯s blade glint. ¡°Stay out of my way,¡± he murmured, and kicked open the door.


    Four armed men startled violently as blue-satin lightning struck the center of the floor, without the faintest clap. Steel flashed, another bolt of silence.


    ¡°Gor take you! You said they were unaware!¡± yelled one, shoving the innkeeper aside and fumbling for his own weapon.


    ¡°Never that,¡± Dav drawled, unmoving.


    The closest man lunged savagely, mail clinking. The Runedaur wavered like smoke, the stroke slipped past his shoulder and his own sword swept up, parrying, not against the man¡¯s blade, but the inside of his arm above the elbow. A desperate gasp broke from the man, blood spurted to the floor; as his knees buckled in shock, the Runedaur flicked his sword-tip across his assailant¡¯s throat, and the fellow was dead before he hit the floor. Dav had not yet moved one booted foot.


    The other three hesitated for a moment¡¯s surprise. Then as one roaring mass they charged together. Three swords thrust for the unarmored chest of their lone opponent, and clashed in empty air, and the Runedaur sprang back up from his crouch through the belly of the midmost man. The other two struck hard at his unguarded back, but he was already turning, pirouetting with their comrade: one blow went wild, and the other bit deep into the wrong flesh, wringing one last cry of pain from the parting soul.


    The offending warrior leaped back aghast, but Dav¡¯s blade, freed again from its bloody sheath, kissed his neck just below his ear and he expired with a sigh. The fourth man bolted out the back door, and Dav swept on to strike down the innkeeper.


    White with terror, the wretched man flung himself to his knees. ¡°Ai! Have mercy, great lord! Spare me!¡±


    To Rothesay¡¯s surprise, and the miserable innkeeper¡¯s, the deadly blade paused. The Runedaur master cocked his head.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    The innkeeper¡¯s jaw flapped. ¡®Why?¡¯ A fool¡¯s question! But there it was; and suddenly the very asking of it made the bedrock truth, ¡®because I want to live,¡¯ sound uncomfortably hollow and inadequate. There must be something more; what would satisfy this vengeful blade, what could possibly excuse his part in the Dragon-lord¡¯s betrayal? He made a desperate cast into unfamiliar waters. ¡°F-for the love of humanity, lord,¡± he pleaded tenderly, blinking the mists from his pale eyes.


    The Runedaur slumped in disappointment and slew him.


    Rothesay, in hard pursuit as the Master beckoned and flew nimbly from the room, managed to reflect that the innkeeper had won mercy, after a fashion: his face, frozen in death, still looked hopeful.


    Dav plunged out into the night, paused, and shoved her down the alleyway ahead of him. ¡°I am,¡± he remarked, as they dodged through an archway, ¡°in grave danger¡ª¡± as they leaped up a stone stairway and Rothesay¡¯s heart leaped to her throat, ¡°¡ªof succumbing to the belief,¡± as they emerged onto a flat roof and she breathed relief: that kind of danger, ¡°¡ªthat no one, outside my Order, thinks.¡± He scouted the rim of the roof for their next step, and came back to look in her eyes. ¡°I go on quest. Once we¡¯re home,¡± he added, and leaped off the roof onto a pursuing clansman.


    There were six more behind that one. Rothesay waited while they looked up, failed to see her and turned to mob Dav, before gulping a terrified breath and jumping down on them herself.


    As she scrambled painfully to her feet among her scattered but recovering enemies, she heard the Runedaur¡¯s disgusted snarl: ¡°Next time, aim yourself, fool!¡±


    Swiftly baring the sword of Arngas, she attacked the clans¡¯ warriors with the ferocity, and success, of a hayward shooing crows. They parted before her, regathered behind her, hesitant in their own attacks, buffeted between the dread rumor of Runedaur madness and the plain silliness of this one. Seeing real threat in the fancy-looking one, as two of their number died in as many strokes, most turned their wrath on him, and Rothesay scored blood on their divided attention, then goat-hopped away from their renewed interest. Desperately she tried to ¡®locate¡¯ the sword¡¯s magic, tried to remember how she had twice disarmed trained fighters, how she had embarrassed that Master Lauren¡ªwho still had her bit of copper, she recollected distractedly; and neatly severed her opponent¡¯s sword hand.


    Startled at the return of skill, she slapped at the air vainly with her sword and threw herself aside as anxiety overrode the veneer of control on her excessive strength. Tumbling over fallen bodies, she gagged on horror, and rolled shuddering to her feet.


    In the quiet alleyway, the Master alone moved, picking his way towards her with catlike fastidiousness. Rothesay drew a deep breath, wondering whether to be glad of his victory or not.


    She was in full swing towards her rear by the time the noise registered with her; Arngas¡¯ sword cut a tight spiral, steel sparked and rasped, a sword rang ownerless against the far wall, and the man who had wielded it fled for the safety of distance, as much as his feet could provide.


    Rothesay blinked owlishly into the Runedaur¡¯s face, dimly visible in the gloom.


    ¡°I was going to ask, rudely enough, if anyone was at home in there,¡± he said softly, tapping her forehead with a hard fingertip. ¡°But maybe the better question is: how many?¡±


    Horrified at the idea, Rothesay tried to take some kind of inner inventory, but he interrupted with a little snort. ¡°Let¡¯s go, chit. You¡¯ll live at least as long as it takes me to get some answers.¡±


    Padding after, she wondered if the remark was a joke of some kind; and though she noted that he had said ¡®at least as long¡¯ and not ¡®only as long,¡¯ she thought it might be well to tell this creature as little as was politely possible.


    Floodholding writhed around in wrenching alleyways, a child¡¯s Teginau; its streets were often so narrow that one need do little more than step from an overhanging storey to one across the way, as the Harrow at home only appeared. Dav so stepped, pursuing a straighter path than any lane afforded. He swarmed up gates like a cat, danced along rooftrees as easily as on a highway, slid from one slated acorn-sloped roof to another with the abandon of an otter in a stream, waited with such thin patience for Rothesay that she swiftly came to fear his veiled temper more than any fall, and long before they reached the city wall, she walked easily, and dared to run a little, on the airy Sferan gables. Indeed, the roofs of the town seemed homier than its hearthsides.


    Some of their way led through air so; some, through fire. Descending to cross a wider boulevard, they found a dark lane going the Master¡¯s way, and slipped quickly along. Few folk walked abroad after curfew; those who did, seemed less inclined to take notice than to avoid it. Then a few doors ahead, torches glimmered in a crossways, carried by more of the watch and guard out hunting demon-men. Dav thrust open the nearest door and swept in. Rothesay thoughtfully shut it behind her.


    In its Sferan days, this hall opening straight off the street would have been a shop, its owner¡¯s family cloistering in the privacy of the rooms upstairs. The Geillari, reluctant city-folk at best, preferred more immediacy to friends and cousins, however, and the two fugitives stepped at once into a cozy homeliness.


    A sturdy-faced woman spinning wool at the hearth¡¯s edge glanced up, squawked, and grabbed for the spear that was never far from a Geillisel¡¯s hand. A litter of children sprouted from sleeping-furs under the far wall, and their burly father leaped up from the mending of a saddle. Then Rothesay saw a strange thing, a thing she did not believe even as she watched, not merely unprecedented but never even imagined before, though she would see it again, and stranger, in time to come. Dav, never slowing his stride, swept off his plumed hat and made them the deepest courtesy; and so strangely humble and gracious was his manner that the wife dropped her hand from her spear-shaft and retrieved her fallen spindle, and gave the intruders no worse than a curt nod of greeting, while the father shrugged and sat and took up his work again. To the children, the Runedaur lord made a grave salute, earning himself awed gapes and thrilled squeaks.


    Thus unhindered, they passed swiftly on to the rear garden-door and a reek of pigs without. The door snicked shut behind them; and then they heard from the man a surprised shout: ¡°Hey!¡± Dav cleared the garden in three bounds and leaped the low wall into the alley behind. Rothesay dropped after him. Peeking back through a chink by the gate, they saw the man open his door, take a long, uneasy look into his yard, count his pigs, make a sign against hauntings, and quietly retreat. Dav grinned hugely, looking more than ever like a wolf, and ran silently on.


    Nearing the city wall at last, they came to the open doors of a stable. Bidding her stay, Dav walked in, took a large coil of rope, and walked out, without drawing a glance from the three carls at dice around a lonely lantern.


    ¡°You¡¯re stealing it?¡± Rothesay whispered indignantly, then clapped a hand to her mouth as she recalled just whom she was reprimanding.


    The Runedaur¡¯s grin flashed yet again. ¡°Misplacing it.¡±


    He did not go to the gate, but found a stretch of wall dark between few torches. He snared a toothy crenellation in a bight of his rope, pulled the cord snug and passed it to Rothesay.


    ¡°Climb quickly, chit: we are only between passes of the watch, for they¡¯ll not leave Wall Street unguarded long, however hot the hunt.¡±


    It was not an art she possessed, but sheer strength made a passable substitute. The top gave her an awkward moment, in making the transition; and sudden cries below told her she had not climbed quickly enough. She flung herself into the narrow walkway and looked down.


    The Runedaur climbed, already above the heads of the hearthwards clustering beneath. Some of them grabbed the rope to shake him loose, and two more bent their bows. In fright, Rothesay snatched up her end of the rope and hauled mightily, hand over hand, as hard as she could. Dav bounded up the wall like some bizarre jackrabbit, and the first arrows clicked on stone as she pulled him over the parapet.


    Safe, he glanced at her queerly, then shrugged off her pack and tossed it back to her. ¡°Remind me not to cross you,¡± he quipped lightly, and dropped off the far side.


    Rothesay followed much more circumspectly; they left the rope hanging and ran for the woods. Pursuit, outside after nightfall, was no man''s folly; Floodholding was content to have exorcised the evil spirits back into the emptiness where they belonged.


    The evil spirits ate apples as they walked; Dav had evidently picked up more than rope in the stable. Rothesay was famished: the smell of the stew she had never had a chance to taste still lingered on her fingers; and by the time they reached the riverbank, she had reduced her apples to polished, chitinous stars, and was tempted even by them.


    Men and horses awaited them, mere shadows in the moonless gloom.


    ¡°Y¡¯re late,¡± chided one in Master Lauren¡¯s voice.


    ¡°Sightseeing,¡± said Dav, swinging to the saddle of a great stallion-shape. Rothesay edged closer and clutched at his horse¡¯s tail, feeling comfort in the beast¡¯s massive presence. Bolting from the horsed demon-men in the dark seemed an empty enterprise; anyway, she still had Dav¡¯s letter. ¡°What are you carrying?¡± he demanded then, noticing bulging saddlepacks here and there. She hoped it was food.


    There was a pause.


    ¡°Presents,¡± a shadow said firmly. ¡°From Aelmard and the Dunfarragealt. After all, with most of his household guard out chasing you around the city. . . . And they looked unappreciated, stashed away in a dark hole like that. . . . ¡±


    Dav snorted. ¡°A locked dark hole, perhaps?¡±


    ¡°Lock?¡± said a second, incredulous shadow. ¡°That was supposed to be a lock? Thought it was a brass decoration!¡±


    ¡°We took that, too,¡± said the first one.


    There was general laughter, and then Dav made a toss. ¡°Lauren! Look what they were going to put in our wine!¡±


    Something rustled in his fingers. Lauren sniffed warily, then grunted in disgust and passed the small bag on.


    ¡°What is that¡ªfalloweed?¡± Master Peridar was offended. ¡°You can¡¯t poison first-year novices with falloweed!¡±


    ¡°Aelmard hires cheap assassins,¡± someone suggested.


    ¡°Seemingly,¡± said Dav. ¡°Are there any other matters?¡±


    ¡°Who¡¯s the girl?¡± several voices demanded curiously.


    ¡°Bar Lady Cherusay¡¯s daughter Rothesay, I don¡¯t know. I¡¯ll send word when I do.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d better!¡± More laughter.


    ¡°Can we keep her?¡± That was Tarrant.


    To Tarrant¡¯s surprise, Dav¡¯s mirth rang out, clear, joyous, and alone, a strange sound in the wilderness at night: the forest seemed to hush around them, and to listen intently. ¡°A rare challenge, that, my friend!¡± he replied, chuckling at a jest only Rothesay could share and did not. ¡°Well, then: is there aught else? No? Ceisamaa.¡±


    A deep silence fell at that ancient word. No one moved, or seemed even to breathe. No longer held back by the pressure of human chatter, the darkness flowed in among them deeper than ever. Rothesay held her breath, straining to see by any scrap of starlight, the moment when these infernal creatures would cast off their human forms to ride the night as demons. Seconds became minutes; minutes became eternity.


    Leather creaked; cloth whispered; men began to murmur. Horses¡¯ hooves thunked quietly in the loam as the group shifted. A shadowed rider loomed up beside Rothesay and lowered a hand. She took it mutely, unthinking, and the shadow said in Peridar¡¯s warm, rough voice, ¡°Well, little one, you gave me a rare amusement in the Meredale, and no mistake! Gyrthu¡¯s still seething over our intrusion into his closed little country; but all to the good, that.¡± He slapped her shoulder gently, then bent low and lightly kissed her forehead. ¡°Go in peace: you travel well, travelling with our boy Davio. I¡¯ll see you in Colderwild at the Midnight.¡±


    Then he was gone as the group dispersed, melting into the night like snow on the ocean, and Rothesay was left all alone with the Master of Runedaur, bound for his haunted home.

 IV: A Power to Be Reckoned With (3/3): Question

    They swam the Nanfeill, rather than ford it several miles up, and pressed on for hours more, Rothesay clinging still to the dangling tail of the horse. He was an uncommon animal, who thought of himself in a way she understood roughly as Dark Walking; gravely courteous to this shy new humanling, he allowed the abuse of his tail like a tolerant uncle, but she sensed a wild, black humor in him, remote now, but unsleeping. She held his tail respectfully.


    They camped an hour or so before midnight, by the stars. Stupid with fatigue, Rothesay blinked at their jewelled glory and yearned only to shut her eyes against them and sleep for a week. Dav swiftly laid and lit a small but encouraging fire, gave her a large, sweet bannock and a leather flask of water, then, settled himself, asked gruffly, ¡°You have something for me?¡±


    Remembering, she passed over Padriag¡¯s letter hastily. He snapped the seal and spread it open with a sharp crackle, and leant to turn it towards the fire. By chance or design, she could not see the text; she watched his face closely, anxiously. It was a lean face, a hard face, but above all it was an intelligent face, fierce with a white fire of concentration and alive with curiosity. It was not necessary to like it. It was folly, possibly fatal, to disregard it.


    ¡°Is that the sword?¡±


    Disentangling herself from the baldric, she handed it to him without comment. Still no trace of his thoughts was forthcoming, as he perused the marks on scabbard and blade. Rising quickly to his feet, he tried the sword, sliced the air with practice moves, first with one hand and then the other.


    He was frighteningly beautiful to watch. The beauty of his gesture was clean and pure, free of ornament, free of any meaningless move. Controlled as a hawk¡¯s strike, as abandoned as a meteor¡¯s fall, ultimately it was precisely as the Master meant it to be.


    She forgot to eat. Not till he sheathed the steel again and melted suddenly back down to his seat, did the spell break.


    ¡°You¡¯re beautiful!¡± she blurted, and at once wished she had not: she did not want his reciprocal attention, still less his admiration. She remembered how uncannily hard to hold he had been at the inn, when she laid him out, and was not about to count on either capricious skill or ungovernable strength against his focused intelligence, if he had a mind to ¡®try¡¯ her like¡ª


    Pieces fell into place. There was the Darian baron whose lust had driven her out on this road; and the Runedaur had asked her what¡ªsomeone¡ªhad wanted with her: the name escaped her, but she recalled that it had a foreign, even Darian, sound.


    ¡°Yes¡ª?¡± The Runedaur master, observing the change in her thoughts with an accuracy that would have humiliated her, probed for the result so delicately that she never noticed it as intrusion.


    ¡°Who¡¯s¡ªthat lord you asked me about? What was his name?¡±


    ¡°Hautiger an-Velaker?¡±


    ¡°Thank you; I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s the same one, but I didn¡¯t meet him, only some of King Kelmhal¡¯s guards, because he had this foreigner come visit who¡ªum, who¡¯d heard something of me¡ªat least that¡¯s what Master Padriag heard from Kri or Minalece. They¡¯re kind of spies of his: Kri is the rat and Minalece is the cat; I don¡¯t know why she doesn¡¯t eat him except she¡¯s not stupid.¡±


    ¡°Chit,¡± the Runedaur interrupted, ¡°can you tell a coherent story?¡±


    She flushed and tried again, her earlier resolve to reveal as little as possible completely forgotten. ¡°I went into a barrow¡ª¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    Writhing away from the memory, she hedged, ¡°I¡ªwas being chased . . . .¡±


    ¡°By¡ª¡±


    ¡°Some¡ªsome duck hunters . . . .¡±


    ¡°Duck hunters don¡¯t go in barrows?¡± he asked next, deliberately skirting the objective of the chase.


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t think of any place else to go. People there don¡¯t know it¡¯s a barrow, just this hole in the Hill; nobody goes there because it¡¯s haunted. It¡¯s supposed to be a door to the peerie-king¡¯s halls, and a place where the Lord of Death walks sometimes. . . .¡± Her voice trailed off as she remembered sinkingly that her audience was no one less than Death¡¯s high priest, the Venheuri notwithstanding.


    ¡°Ah, the so-holy site,¡± he murmured dryly. ¡°You hoped they would fear to follow you in?¡±


    ¡°Yes, but it only challenged them, so I had to think of something to scare them off.¡±


    That, he demanded to see, and she found herself reenacting her play in the barrow. He forwent having her muss her hair again and was perfectly willing to imagine the weedy garlands, but otherwise the rendition was exact, down to the magelight and the drool. The Master laughed till the tears came. It was the most nearly human she had yet seen him; it almost made him likeable.


    ¡°An inventive chit, take her for all!¡± he conceded, overriding the last spasms and wiping his eyes. ¡°So, girl, having routed your enemies: what next did you devise?¡±


    Few men regard questions as anything more than verbal mining tools for extracting nuggets of information, useful, even indispensible, but only picks and shovels. Heedless, or ignorant, of the power of a question to alter the mind of the one who answers or even contemplates an answer, the unaware risk a change that may well be the design of the one who asks. Many men, on discovering that the man they fought was the lord of fighters who were themselves legendary for their skill, generally considered it prudent to yield, to cast down their own weapons and answer him promptly and courteously, and never knew that they thus moved from his lesser to his greater sphere of power. For skill at swordplay, Dav of Colderwild was justly ranked among the best; at the arts and powers of questioning, the community of Runedaur, at least, held him to be incomparable.


    By midnight, Rothesay was as well known to him as to Padriag. She told him more of her fears and dreams, her sorrows and joys, than she had ever expressed openly to the wizard, and what she shied away from putting to words, nonetheless showed itself in gesture, in tone of voice and body, in her unflaggingly honest eyes: a language the Runedaur knew very, very well. He saw her whimsy; and her charitable worry for the rest of the world, echoed in that absurd half-coil of copper Lauren now prized above all the gifts ever sent in supplication¡ªor bribery¡ªto the Knights of Death. He saw an irrepressibly cheerful soul wrapped still in the veil of childish dreams, a threadbare veil now and no shelter at all from the storms of Daria sure to follow the errant babe. He thought of Hautiger, the guest of Dunford, and wondered how close behind her the first gales blew. True, he had a mind to summon a storm of his own, as Padriag must surely know; and he wondered greatly what had possessed the old wizard to send this child into his power.


    Of the Master¡¯s power, Rothesay discovered only that things sounded different when told to Dav, than to Padriag. For one, her wistful wish to know more of her mother¡¯s place in the world, Padriag regarded as a vanity, a triviality unworthy of the scholarly intellect and a preoccupation with the pitifully small human world while the vast realms of Otherness, from snakes to stars, went begging. Yet she sensed that Dav considered it a perfectly legitimate quest for real power, and if anything damned her for faintness of purpose. She lost her own trail of thought and wavered confused between the two perspectives. Where was the true path?


    The Runedaur broke in on her confusion. ¡°Your friend Padriag wants you to become one of our Order; shall I honor his wish?¡±


    Rothesay had no way, then, to know that Dav had already decided to take her, nor that every part of his apparently irrelevant question, each word of its phrasing as well as its timing hard on a bewildered moment, was perfectly crafted to elicit her acceptance. But she was astonished by the request. Dav let her jaw flap for a moment, mildly surprised at her surprise, and handed her the letter to read Padriag¡¯s request for herself.


    She had to grin, wryly, at the paper. ¡°He¡¯s like that, you know,¡± she said, sighing. ¡°People things don¡¯t matter much to him. If you had been a badger, he probably would have explained everything in excruciating detail, before he ever let me out the door.¡±


    ¡°Indeed. . . . What have you to offer?¡±


    She took stock anxiously. Not wealth, certainly; and birth did not count with their Order, for, as Padriag had succinctly written, ¡®birth is of no consequence to Death¡¯: if green-cloaked Tarrant seemed more farmer than lord, it was probably because he was. If the Runedaur, as legend said, might welcome a runaway slave¡¯s bastard yet refuse a prince¡¯s child, what was it they sought?


    She felt strangely impoverished. Discounting her grotesque strength and erratic skill as adventitious, she rummaged through her soul, ransacked her inner house for something truly her own, that this stern lord might even remotely value.


    In fact, Dav needed no reply: that she wanted to answer at all, was all the point of his query in the first place. Long before she opened her mouth, he knew she had already done as he willed and joined his ancient Order in her dreams, where it counted. Still, he let her find something to offer, something to value, as a first exercise in her education¡ªand his own.


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    She thought. She liked to be useful; she liked to make people happy; she wanted to love as many people as possible and be loved by them in return: not, she thought, items of great interest to a world of warriors. What, then? She liked to be fair, and honest; playmates and neighbors had sometimes turned to her for mediation; but fairness and honesty she imagined were the very least the Order demanded of her postulants. Only one other quality presented itself: she might be unwise, but she was not stupid. Padriag had often praised her for a quick wit. If she did not know what the Runedaur wanted of her, she could certainly find out.


    ¡°Well,¡± she ventured at last, ¡°I learn fast.¡± And she flushed with unexpected pleasure at his nod of grave approval.


    He showed nothing of it to this lanky scrap of girl, but of all the wonders he had yet seen of her, nothing startled him like the simple answer she gave now. It was a good answer, a plain and humble answer; but was it accident that it went to the very heart of those things he himself cherished most? The Master of Runedaur recognized coincidence¡ªmuch the way he recognized poisonous vipers. He made a mental note to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with Padriag, then gave his attention to his new charge.


    ¡°Then, chit, we make it your turn. What would you learn now?¡±


    There were a great many things, but one was uppermost. ¡°Sir¡ªyou haven¡¯t seemed the least bit surprised by me¡ª¡±


    ¡°You mistake me: I have been little but surprised by you. Only observe that I am not paralyzed by it.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Then you don¡¯t, er, know why I¡¯m this way, strong and all? I was thinking, or hoping, that since this was on account of your old knight Arngas, or seemed to be, that maybe you knew what it was all about. Master Padriag was thinking a strength-spell charged on the sword; but that does not quite fit right.¡±


    ¡°No, it does not. Yet I am not sure I like the more fitting tale any better, girl.¡± His glittering gaze stabbed at her as if the difficulty were somehow in her, and answered briskly, ¡°This would seem to be that Arngas who, old legend holds, once did some favor for Dere, the Lady Night. She is said to have rewarded him by giving him the strength of a giant¡ª¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s fists clenched convulsively. The water bottle was in one of them.


    Shooting a surprised glance up at the former contents, she beheld a wavering, wobbling jewel of darkness, rippling with golden and silver lights, swelling with appalling speed. She had just time to realize that her body would never respond fast enough.


    Cold rivulets tickled into her ears and down her neck, and off her cheeks to her collarbone; drops hung in her brows and droplets spangled her lashes. Her sodden tunic clung to her breast and her heartless companion convulsed on the ground in the throes of a silent and deadly glee. Rothesay hoped he choked.


    Presently, still quivering, he drew from his saddlebag a white cloth; and broke up again as he handed it to her. ¡°¡ªdrowned cat!¡± was all she caught, and all she needed. Not till she was dried did she realize the cloth was his shirt. She could not in decency return it all dank and dirty, nor could she keep the rich silken thing as if it were a gift; he made no move to reclaim it, however, and she was left fidgeting it into folds and refolds.


    He did not at once take up his story again, but wanted to try out her strength, and test her limits and possibilities. A moment¡¯s reflection, however, and perhaps her despairing expression, bought him off with the lateness of the hour; he relented and resumed his telling of the legend of Arngas.


    ¡°He had made himself the finest swordsman of his day, and in a notably short time: that training which a thousand years of Runedaur interest had winnowed to fifteen years of study, Arngas alone reduced to a mere five.¡±


    ¡°How?¡± Rothesay breathed.


    ¡°Because, chit, he studied first, not the art of the sword, but the art of learning itself. His fighting skills are lost to us¡ªor, ah, were¡ªbut his techniques of teaching and of learning are the very soul of us today.


    ¡°But as to you, girl, there is a little more to the tale. Dere gave Arngas strength, and a wish: legend says that he wished that his strength and skill with a blade would endure forever. There are a few more years of many deeds, in the wars of that time; and then we know only that he vanished.¡± He paused while Rothesay rubbed her eyes and tried to work out what this meant to her.


    ¡°He¡ªhe didn¡¯t wish that he himself would endure forever,¡± she observed.


    ¡°An unlikely wish, for one of us. I should very much like to see that barrow for myself. Peria has many wild and empty regions; we are not always lucky enough to die at home, or with a friend at hand. Yet someone buried him, well enough by your account: not Runedaur, though, nor did they send word. But it seems he had his wish¡ªsword-mistress.¡±


    A small squeak escaped her under the impact of the title. ¡°But I¡¯m not! Er, not always. Why?¡±


    He shrugged dismissively. ¡°A triviality. I would guess that you are your own ruling power, and you know nothing of swordplay: you seem to do best taken at unawares. That is often the most difficult transition for a student: once he has developed his art to a fineness, to trust himself, to surrender will to skill. Of more interest to me is the matter of a fanciful story proving to be both factual and accurate. Much more interest.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t believe the old stories, sir?¡±


    ¡°You use the word ¡®believe¡¯ too carelessly, chit. Now: is there anything else you would learn quickly before bed?¡±


    ¡°No, sir,¡± she sighed, taking the hint gratefully. ¡°Um, what should I do with your shirt, sir?¡±


    ¡°My shirt?¡± When she held it up, he repeated, more pointedly, ¡°¡®My¡¯ shirt?¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t mine¡ª!¡± she protested.


    ¡°Nor yet yours. Still another thing to learn quickly. Hang it on yonder bush till morning.¡±


    She obeyed skeptically, dubious of what was to learn about the ownership of a garment, and unwilling to pursue the issue now. She cleared a flat space by the fire, plumped her pack into a pillow, draped her thin cloak loosely over her, and, curling into a half-ball, stared into the fire for a full minute before glaring up at Dav, who had been watching with great interest.


    ¡°So, another legend proves true?¡± he said, grinning at her ire.


    ¡°What legend?¡±


    He turned his head and blew a pale plume of breath into the cold night. ¡°Yet, damp as you are, you seem comfortable enough. You are truly a child of the Ceidha, then?¡±


    ¡°I guess so.¡±


    He continued to watch her, knowing that his attention distressed her, and why. At the moment she was wondering what other tales he had heard of the elder race, and what he meant to do about them. She was miserably afraid of him: she had almost a warrior¡¯s alertness for his least gesture, and jumped like a cat if any move crossed a certain radius, unconscious to her, almost a visible entity to him. He characterized her fear as being some nine parts superstition to one part sex. Gender, he amended wryly. For while she surely had some idea what a man did with a woman, and probably recognized lust when she saw it, if she had ever felt the yearning for ecstasy in her own flesh, he would cast off his Chain of office and bust himself back to acolyte. In a real way, she feared him in that one part simply for not being female. A pointless fear this night, or even this year: though admittedly lovely, with the clownish grace of an adolescent cat, all legs and wide-eyed wonder, still, ignorance was not to his taste: he liked a partner who could give as avidly as receive. Seventeen was a rare old age to be still the innocent; he wondered how much was owed to the protective patronage of the wizard (though he doubted the yokels of Harrowater grasped the extent of Padriag¡¯s reputation), and how much might be some attribute of her father¡¯s race.


    He was pleased, however: she was not letting her fear overmaster her, no shrieks or hysterics, and even now settled for sleep with the intent, at least, of ignoring him if he was only going to stare. That reminded him.


    ¡°Bravely done tonight, girl,¡± he observed, pleased also with her spirit in the town. Then he pulled his own thick cloak warmly about, and prepared to sleep, lightly.


    Rothesay thought it was nice of him to say so, but, frankly, she knew better. If bravery meant doing the sensible, constructive thing in spite of all fear, then the last thing she could recall doing bravely was running away from Blackhand Fil.


    ¡°Master?¡± she ventured softly, granting him his lawful title at last, ¡°Does it count as courage if you were more afraid not to?¡±


    A heartbeat later she all but jumped out of her skin as Dav appeared suddenly in front of her. He seized both her shoulders as she leaped to fumbling feet; but his expression drove out all fright.


    Half-turned to the fire, she stared amazed into a face that seemed a hundred years younger than when she had last seen it. The role of Master of Runedaur, with all its cares and concerns, had fallen away, leaving only Dav, a naked boy of maybe thirty-three, staring back at her with an astonishment that bordered on reverence. Then suddenly he enveloped her in a powerful hug, full of passion but not the passion that she blindly feared: so might a man, searching without hope through the ashes of war, greet the unlooked-for survivor.


    ¡°That you can even ask¡ª!¡± he murmured in her hair.


    Astounded, she endured the embrace, till after a moment, and very gingerly, she ventured to return it, and patted his shoulderblades hesitantly.


    He laughed aloud and broke out of the hug to clasp her shoulders again. ¡°What is that for?¡± he asked, grinning broadly.


    She thought that was her question. ¡°I don¡¯t know! I just thought maybe you needed it.¡±


    ¡°No, you don¡¯t know, do you,¡± he agreed, pointing up her ignorance once again, but with incompatible warmth, and thumped her forehead as he had in the Floodholding alley. ¡°But by all the Holies, there is fertile ground in there! Good night¡ªagain¡ªchit.¡±


    Not all her puzzlement over the Master¡¯s bewildering, chaotic ways could fend sleep off for long now. Her heavy eyes closed finally over a vision of him, back in his former place, gazing into the fire, smiling the half-smile of an unfathomably joyous soul.

 V: Initiate (1/5): Kenning a Dark Horse

    V: Initiate


    Rothesay knew many casual epithets for madness; for two days she applied them all methodically, over and over like an incantation, to Padriag. As magic, it had no effect, except to make her wonder from time to time if the words did not more properly belong to herself: there was a certain wonderful unreality in the idea of chasing the Master of Runedaur cross-country in order to become, like him, one of the elite guard of a Perian High King who no longer existed. But no: the rigor of the journey had a solid reality that was dismally convincing.


    They moved on just after breakfast under a clear pink dawn. Dav, mounted on his great black war-horse, plunged down the south slope of the hill at full gallop; Rothesay dashed after, clutching at her cloak, her small pack pounding rhythmically between her shoulderblades and Arngas¡¯s rag-wrapped sword banging the back of her head. The Runedaur vanished at once, of course; but the damp ground kept a clear track for her, and taking this in the nature of a trial, she followed doggedly.


    The day turned fine and bright, and her spirits recovered. All about her rose the sweet green fragrance of high spring and now and again a wood thrush sang out or squirrels chased across her path. Gradually she slowed, just till she could sing a little, and answered the birds with her own song, clear and low.


    Around noontime, she caught up the Master, leaning on a rock in the sunshine, almost as straight as if he were standing. The horse cropped nearby at a small patch of thyme. Dav did not trouble himself to speak, merely nodded at the saddlebags as an invitation to eat; and as he seemed disposed to stay put, she rested gladly.


    When she recalled the point of this woodland wandering, a chill of apprehension closed around her, and she wondered what Master Padriag could have been thinking. The Runedaur, kingless for centuries, uncontrollable by the warring Geillari or the embattled Sferiari, had become lawless, plunderers who took by force what had once been given them by right. She did not want to be a thief, and could not imagine herself stealing anything. Excuse me, poor old widow-wife, I was just passing through and took sort of a fancy to this fine little piglet, if you don¡¯t mind too much. . . . Surely Padriag did not mean for her to be a robber! What, then? She had never seen a Runedaur before, not even the one rumored to live at Dunford, nor heard of one in Harrowater which, though small and not renowned for anything, was nonetheless a well-fed community. Hearsay was a rotten nut; but the nut once had sound meat.


    ¡°Master?¡± she ventured warily. ¡°Do the Runedaur truly live by plunder?¡±


    His eyes flashed, but he grinned. ¡°Perhaps¡ªif you choose your words carelessly.¡±


    ¡°Ha? What? What¡¯s the difference?¡± she babbled, her heart sinking.


    He shrugged, his grin remaining. ¡°Any stupid brigand can burn out a farmer, take his grain and his stock, and live well enough for a few weeks. We cultivate our sources; that way they continue to, er, provide. I don¡¯t think they begrudge us the provender,¡± he went on mockingly, ¡°so much as the daughters.¡±


    She bristled. ¡°I don¡¯t think I could ever steal from the poor folk.¡±


    ¡°Poor folk have nothing to steal. But as you wish. You may fleece the rich.¡±


    Rothesay stared, her sense of humor fled before the dread of him, and she gave the light words the gravity of cold lead. Rich meant noble, for the most part, and therefore sacrosanct; certainly, she thought, they would at least stick together. ¡°Who¡¯s ¡®rich¡¯?¡±


    ¡°A very good question, chit,¡± he said, and she marked his approval if not his amusement. ¡°We are not indiscriminate. We have friends, a few, who make gifts freely: naturally, they and their people and lands are respected. Your lord Kelmhal¡ªyour former lord¡ª,¡± and he grinned wider at her start, ¡°is one such. Then there are, er, friends by duress, you may say, who must be reminded from time to time of the path of wisdom. They are the source of most of our goods, for we despise them. And then there are enemies; another rich source.¡±


    Rothesay shivered; the sun seemed clouded over. ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a thief,¡± she murmured.


    ¡°If I thought you did, I would not have you. An untrustworthy ally is worse than none.¡± When she looked up, puzzled, he laughed. ¡°As to the rest, you may come to think differently of it. Come, girl.¡±


    He had mounted up then, but rode no faster than she could comfortably walk. He was a hard man to read, but as they travelled together, scarcely speaking, she imagined that he was both surprised and pleased that she had caught up with him in the first place, and that she was with him now. And slowly she began to sense a dark aura of amusement about him which she thought she should resent if she knew its springs.


    In the evenings, by their fire, he told her tales of the Runedaur. He did not have the storyteller¡¯s art, to cast his listener into the web of the story to forget herself; he seemed to be reciting things learned off by heart. Yet in his plain speech, neither did he intrude himself, and she listened hard, wondering what they were to mean to her.


    One night the first Runedaur, Dekailos, walked a forest road alone. Oraay in Her fullness silvered his path and Fernog Forest-lord streaked it with sable shadow and Dere¡¯s gems glittered over all.


    A brigand leaped to the path before him with a blade that flashed in the light and vanished in the shadow. ¡°Give over your weapons!¡± he cried.


    And, ¡°I have none,¡± Dekailos replied.


    ¡°Then give over your purse,¡± said the brigand. Dekailos loosed his bag, heavy with gold, and gave it over without a word.


    ¡°Now your cloak!¡± said the brigand. Dekailos unclasped his silver clasp and gave over his thick furred cloak.


    ¡°And your hat!¡±


    Dekailos undid his cap strings and gave over his sable cap.


    ¡°And your boots!¡±


    Dekailos loosed his laces and pulled off his fine bullhide boots and gave them over.


    ¡°Your belt!¡± the robber next demanded, and that, too, Dekailos gave him.


    ¡°Your robe!¡± he cried. Dekailos did off his silks and surrendered them.


    The brigand gathered all the goods of Dekailos and vanished back into the darkness, leaving Dekailos naked beneath the moon and the stars and the trees.


    Thus did Dekailos become the wealthiest man Night or Day has ever beheld.


    ¡°What?¡± Rothesay yelped when Dav stopped, apparently finished.


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it? He just¡ªlet himself be robbed?


    Master Dav sighed. ¡°Go to sleep, chit,¡± he said, and settled himself to do the same.


    After his death, the followers of Dekailos said, Who shall lead us now?


    Some said the leader should be determined by force of arms, as that would show who was most powerful. Others said the wealthiest of them should lead, he who commanded the greatest worldly skills. Some said they should draw lots, trusting to the gods.


    Kossassos the sweeper laughed at them. ¡°You will have to choose how to choose before you can choose!¡± he said.


    ¡°Very well,¡± they said, ¡°you shall choose a leader for us!¡± And it was their turn to laugh.


    Kossassos looked at them all, and then pointed to a boy of barely twelve winters. ¡°You! You shall lead the Runedaur!¡± he said.


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    Such folly could only be divinely guided. The Runedaur took the boy and set him on the throne of bones and laid the silver Chain about his neck. ¡°Lead us!¡± they cried.


    And the boy looked at them all, and rose from the throne of bones and went to the sweeper and did off the Chain from his own neck and put it on Kossassos.


    ¡°I don¡¯t get it.¡±


    ¡°You will. Good night.¡±


    One night they spent fireless on the floor of a small stand of firs in a hollow with a stony stream running through it. The water made a pleasant, soothing music to Rothesay, who missed again the distant boom of the surf at home. The spicy fragrance of the firs rose on the misty air; breathing deeply, she felt it drawn into her very blood as a sweet delight, at once new and as familiar as¡ªher mother had worn fragrance rather like this. Her earliest memories were stirred, and, though tired, she lay awake long after the Master rolled up in his cloak and seemed to fall asleep at once.


    She remembered a garden, a small grassy clearing, slate-colored in the moonlight, ringed by towering dark trees sighing under a gentle breeze. A tall fountain, all silver in the shivery light, whispered and gurgled. People in long pale ribbons and silvery silk garments that seemed to float about them danced around and about it, singing, with many laughing interruptions and someone complaining through his laughter, ¡®Hey! Shape it up!¡¯ A drum and a flute led the dance, and she was supposed to be asleep in some sort of a basket, under a tent of her mother¡¯s cloak, with someone¡¯s sword for a tent-pole. She must have gotten up to join the dance, or perhaps to play in the fountain; at any rate, she had fallen in: she remembered clearly the cold water enfolding her, and her nightdress (white, with pale blue flowers; it had been her favorite) plastered to her. And strong arms lifting her up and a deep laugh, belonging to someone she called uncle or cousin, though he wasn¡¯t really, who carried her in the dance after that, to her everlasting delight and gratitude.


    She remembered standing in a great hall that had been prepared for festival, for the winter solstice, with a big tree all decorated in the middle; but the hall was dark, for all the household was asleep, and she could just make out the tree by the starlike glitter of the gold and silver sun-ornaments on the branches. And someone came in, a guard, who was as far as she was concerned the captain of the guard; he had been away for some time and had not been able to help decorate the tree, and she was there because she wanted to share it with him, so he would not miss out. He had carried her back to her cradle: she remembered the feel of his mailed shoulder under her cheek, not cold, for he was warm underneath. . . . She shivered. She remembered him also from the time she and Mama were taken off the big boat and put into the little one, and she was too frightened to cry, for Mama was angry in a terrible silent way Rothesay had never seen before, that shook her young world to its roots.


    She shook herself, and blinked thoughtfully in the blackness. Suddenly a certain wig-wearing Darian nobleman seemed unpleasantly familiar. Not from the great ship, but on the wharf some time before; he gave her¡ªa candy? It was red, and it spooked her, or something about him had spooked her. She had carried it to the far gunwale, and dropped it in the water; she remembered leaning far over to watch it swirl into the green shadow of the ship, her doll clutched tightly under her arm lest she, too, fall in, and Mama had gasped a low strangled gasp, and gently but firmly pulled her back. That was only natural, she thought now; yet something still troubled her, something was not quite natural about it, but she fell asleep before she could work it out.


    In the morning Dav coolly commended her to watchfulness.


    ¡°These eastern lands are placid enough, compared to the west of Peria; yet even here, outlaw bands prowl, and trooped warriors overeager for conquest; and there are other hazards.¡± He pointed westward with his chin. ¡°It is a hundred miles to the edge of the Myrinine Forest, but the tendrils of its power are long and only high summer withers its reach. I have walked within it¡ªbut I will not willingly do so again.¡±


    She did not press him for the story, for tales of the monsters of Myrinine were many; but Padriag had been there, too, more than once, and he said that behaving civilly, like an honorable guest, was entirely adequate passport, albeit one apparently inaccessible to most folk. She scowled pensively: the yellow-eyed thing that had hunted her over the Caelfell might be one of those ¡®tendrils,¡¯ and she could imagine no courtesy that would have turned its ravening hunger. Equally, she could not imagine anything eager to take a taste of Padriag, for all his image of fat jollity; and she wished he would not overestimate the potency of his apprentice by underestimating his own.


    They breakfasted at a small but thriving farmstead, where the family could not do enough for their noble guest, all but chewing the food for him. They served Rothesay politely, though she sensed their mingled pity and contempt for her, and a freshened fear of the Master: their daughters, after a brief courtesy, were quickly shooed off to chase the chickens. Rothesay blushed, but did not correct their misconception, nor allow it to interfere with the best breakfast she could remember eating.


    On their way again, crossing the farmer¡¯s fields as though on Dav¡¯s private highway, Rothesay tapped at the Runedaur¡¯s knee. ¡°Master? Maybe I¡¯m stupid, but that didn¡¯t look like theft, by any name.¡±


    Dav glanced back at the farmhouse reflectively. ¡°I believe we did him a favor once,¡± he replied vaguely, and returned to silence, alert, listening silence which was apparently habitual to him, leaving her to her thoughts.


    She grinned at the sunshine, having no one else to share her amusement. You great fraud! she thought of her new master, and reflected that there were other things said of the Runedaur: it was whispered that if you had no other recourse, if your cause were just (or at least in line with the Order¡¯s interests), and if you dared approach Colderwild Hall, Runedaur were powerful advocates. Presumably they were also expensive.


    So it was true. The sunshine seemed suddenly warmer and brighter. She could enjoy that face of being a (Great Mother of the World!) Runedaur.


    From somewhere nearby came a sense of deep amusement, connected, she thought, to Dav¡¯s being a fraud. It was the horse, Dark Walking. He disagreed, however: the Master of Runedaur was not kind but crafty, building his power, like a lord stallion, from a calculated mix of fear and endearment. He was a sire who took meticulous care of his vast herd¡ªDark Walking seemed to regard anyone Dav had any business with as a kind of subordinate horse¡ªto profit it; but there was no sentiment behind, to give an example, Dark Walking¡¯s own airy stable or the sweet, fresh water.


    Rothesay apologized for not having bespoken the stallion since that first night, but she was a little distracted, uncertain of her place or fate; moreover, Dav evidently never considered Dark Walking more than ¡®just a horse,¡¯ an attitude that was unfortunately catching, for which she apologized further. Dark Walking ignored this, his equine sense of courtesy unable to grasp either point as an offense. Perceiving only that this half-human wished for harmony, he extended his casual welcome to the Runedaur community, letting her know she might visit with him when she would feel overwhelmed by her new life.


    What was it like at Colderwild? Overly busy, like all human pursuits; with rather less malice and more gaiety than Dark Walking observed at other halls; for the most part, it was just fine¡ªfor a horse. Rothesay laughed.


    ¡°Something amuses you?¡± said Dav.


    ¡°Er¡ªoh¡ªwell, it was nothing, really,¡± she dissembled helplessly. It was usually quite pointless trying to describe these exchanges to other folk.


    But she was to learn that nothing was insignificant enough to escape the Master¡¯s curiosity. He reined up and awaited satisfaction. She opened her mouth, but that hot blue gaze withered all self-assurance. She dropped her eyes, writhed under her pack, and finally murmured to the ground, ¡°Just something . . . your, um, horse . . . er, said. . . .¡±


    In the stillness that followed, she heard high and away the liquid notes of a wood thrush as he rejoiced in the sunlight, untroubled by strange men with terrible eyes that bored holes in the skulls of the apparently impertinent.


    ¡°Look at me.¡± His voice compelled like a cracking whip. She obeyed, glumly, almost looking through her own eyebrows at him. He sighed explosively. ¡°This is not your native humor, or I am no judge of character at all.¡± After a pause, he added, ¡°Nor yet mad. . . . What¡ªdid¡ªmy horse say?¡± he asked politely, with acidity restrained.


    ¡°I asked what it was like at¡ªyour hall, and he said it was splendid for a horse. . . . It loses something in the translation, lord,¡± she mumbled, ducking her head in embarrassment and hunching her shoulders. Recalling that this was how Padriag said she resembled a heron, she almost stood on one leg, but refrained: she did not want to try explaining that, too.


    ¡°It does,¡± he agreed neutrally. ¡°Ah¡ªwas that all?¡±


    ¡°No!¡± Rothesay shot back, stung at last. She met him gaze for gaze. ¡°His box is at the southwest corner of the stables, and his is the nicest, though they all seem to be much to the credit of your Order. There is a well in the center of the yard, and you had a trench dug down the middle, and a pumping device built, so that twice a day the horses get fresh running water¡ªboys do the pumping. He has a big beautiful patterned blanket which you gave him; and you often sit by the well in the moonlight when you want to be alone to think.¡±


    Dav¡¯s expression did not so much as flicker; but after a long, still silence, leather creaked softly as he swung slowly down from the saddle, never taking his eyes from her face till he stood solidly upon the ground. Then he stared at the horse, who munched at the weeds unheeding.


    ¡°This is a sorcery you learned from the old wizard?¡± he asked presently.


    ¡°No, Master; it isn¡¯t sorcery at all.¡± Under Dav¡¯s quick glare, she explained, wishing she did not babble so when startled, ¡°No, no, not a bit of it. You talk to him all the time yourself; you just don¡¯t bother to listen for an answer.¡± This revelation succeeded so well in startling him as to renew all her delight. She let him stand for awhile in silence, patently listening unsuccessfully. ¡°It¡¯s a bit of an art¡ªlike listening to anyone,¡± she said gently. She had not learned it from Padriag, she had always done it, and only been glad to discover that the old wizard had the habit, too.


    Dav snorted. He folded his arms, hesitating. ¡°How intelligent is he?¡±


    ¡°Very. You know that.¡±


    ¡°I knew he was intelligent for a horse. How intelligent is he?¡±


    Rothesay shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d say you¡¯re well suited.¡±


    Dav shuddered. After a moment, he tried again. ¡°Why does he allow himself to be ridden?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s a horse.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s intelligent, you said,¡± Dav snapped. ¡°If that¡¯s true, he should be out gamboling in the fields with his mares, not barging into battles where he might be injured or killed at any moment¡ªGirl!¡± he barked, momentarily undone.


    A gurgle of laughter burst from her lips. She clasped hasty hands to her face, but the damage was done, the genie loosed, and she collapsed to the soft bosom of the earth in a speechless ecstasy of merriment, her broad, fruity laughter ringing in the silent air, fair revenge for all Dav¡¯s amusement at her. Silently the master turned away, expressionless, and pillowed his grizzled head against the stallion¡¯s shoulder, till Rothesay recovered her senses and sat up, wiping her eyes and watching him uneasily.


    Slowly he looked around at her. An unfathomable fire burned in his eyes. Slowly he touched one finger to his brow: a salute. ¡°This is why we keep novices,¡± he said softly, as if to someone she could not see, ¡°that their innocence may lay snares for our unchallenged follies.¡± The strange fire flamed suddenly into real mirth, crinkling all the lines in his hard face, and he reached down a hand to haul her to her feet, and slapped her shoulder, and launched himself back into his saddle.


    ¡°Come then, Winddancer!¡± he cried to the horse. ¡°We dance to our foolish deaths together!¡± Dark Walking¡ªWinddancer¡ªpranced aside, then horse and rider raced ahead, danced a tight ring while she ran after, then charged on again.

 V: Initiate (2/5): Crossing Lines

    At sunset, they crossed a broad and even highway. The land here was green and open; not a tree could be seen for miles about. Small white clouds of sheep floated slowly over the far grassy swells. The road ran on a raised causeway some three feet high, flanked on both sides by shallow ditches full of brown water, darting polliwogs, and cresses. Rothesay picked a sprig to nibble, and looked west, to where three hilltops bore crowns of tall stones, ancient Ceidhi rings. Though not more than a mile off, they looked strangely remote, as though they stood in some other land than that which stretched beneath her feet.


    In the middle of the road, Dav paused. Its cambered top was fully six yards wide, smoothly bricked in three stripes; the middle one was red: the high king¡¯s personal lane. Straight as a rule, it cut the world from horizon to horizon. Now nothing stirred over that diameter but a pair of curlews calling mournfully from the high air, and a bit of breeze that trifled with the grass. But in her thought ghosts of generals long gone marched by unseen, bound westward for conquest or homeward in glory; in their train, soldiers loudly eager or silently weary. She imagined the creaking of the heavy wains of foreign merchants and traders with exotic wares.


    Dav pointed southeast. ¡°The road to Andrastir.¡±


    Rothesay stopped nibbling. Andrastir! Padriag might prefer to avoid that ancient wonder, but the fabled city called to her, boasting of marbled parks where the daughters of emperors strolled, wide boulevards where the great heroes paraded, wharves that welcomed fleets from the edges of the world. ¡°Do we go that way?¡± she asked hopefully.


    Dav did not answer. He was looking at the road. ¡°So well these served to carry the will of the empire out,¡± he waved northwestward, ¡°so well they served to carry the armies of the invader in.¡±


    He left the road and pressed on south.


    They camped that night in a small wood just south of another, smaller highway, and shared a rabbit Dav had caught. Rothesay was still thinking of enemies advancing up roads as if personally invited. Come to think of it, they had been personally invited.


    ¡°Master? Why did¡ªer, what happened to the Last-king?¡± She spoke cautiously, careful of her words. ¡°In the north, at least, we hear that the Runedaur were the high king¡¯s guard and that you¡ªthat they betrayed him when Berulf turned on him; and I, er, wondered what the truth of that is.¡±


    ¡°We did.¡±


    His brief reply was not even curt, only casual. Shocked, she stared as he went on gnawing a thighbone, but her indignant silence provoked no excuse from him. ¡°What good are you, then?¡± she snapped.


    He grinned, recognizing his own cold voice thrown back at him, and that she used it unawares. But he left that trifle unaddressed, for now, to reply, ¡°Suppose that I think we are some good. Can you propose an answer for me?¡±


    She sat back and bit her thumb pensively. Padriag had often enough insisted on examining the other fellow¡¯s point of view, and she thought she was good at it, but this exercise made her think she had never really tried at all. How to see an evil act in a good light? If she succeeded, would she then be evil, too? Was this her first step towards demonhood? But Padriag¡ª


    ¡°No?¡± the Runedaur said after a silence. She shook her head. ¡°Shall I?¡± After a hesitation, she nodded, reluctant but curious. ¡°What did Talherne do?¡±


    ¡°He called in the warlord Berulf to help him put down the princes who were in rebellion against him.¡±


    ¡°Why were they in rebellion?¡±


    She tried this one more warily. ¡°They wanted more power for themselves?¡±


    ¡°That, always.¡± Dav flashed his predator¡¯s grin. ¡°Is that always wrong?¡±


    Suspecting a trap in the word ¡®always,¡¯ she dodged. ¡°A king must have power if he is to protect his people.¡±


    Dav cocked an ear. ¡°If he is to what?¡±


    ¡°Protect his people¡ªthe king and the lord and the clan-chief and even the stupid village chief¡ªthey defend the people and see to the laws and keep justice and all.¡±


    ¡°Do they,¡± he said neutrally. ¡°And we, the Order of Runedaur: we are to defend the defender.¡±


    ¡°So I¡¯ve heard.¡±


    ¡°And when the defender calls an alien army against those whom he is supposed to defend¡ª?¡± The cold dawn of a new perspective suddenly chilled her confident righteousness. ¡°We are sworn to the king. When this man Talherne betrayed the crown, we abjudged his authority and,¡± he shrugged, ¡°left him to the justice of the world.¡±


    ¡°But what else could he have done, with his own people against him?¡± she protested.


    ¡°He could have tried being a better king.¡±


    Berulf accepted Talherne¡¯s invitation, and his gold, but he said to his thanes, ¡°What manner of man calls a stranger, not even heart-kindred, to strike down his blood-kin? And he is no king whose own earls heed him not!¡±


    The Godenaldring, the Council of Elders, considered this in long moot, whether to participate in the treachery of Talherne was a man¡¯s work or a devil¡¯s; but as the night deepened, and their disgust also, it seemed to them that prophecy was on Berulf¡¯s lips. Perhaps the gods had brought them to this hour, their fists yet heavy with the last victory of Menovargia, for this very reason. They noted the signs. How fair the winds and tides had been, that sped the messengers between Berulf and Talherne, strangely fair! How curious, that the harvests of Menovargia had been rich and plentiful these last few years, strengthening the arms of the Golden Clans, where Peria had seen only deepening famine. Men spoke anew and with ringing voices of that comet that had blazed against the constellation of the Dragon, and when was that but in the year that Berulf had won manhood?


    They called him before them and said, ¡°We will go with you to the Wyrd-land, the Dragon¡¯s country, but not as hirelings. We go as lords, and you will lead us to our greatest glory.¡± Then bards made songs over the richest sacrifices the Geillari had ever offered up, and burned sweet smoke to please the gods, and the stars looked down on the bronze glitter of the spears of Berulf¡¯s armies as if into a mirror.


    Only the bard Narhald the remote, owned by no man, spoke against them, saying that by neither sacrifice, smoke nor song could they escape the taint of the Dragon-king¡¯s evil, if they took his pay. Not one of those who now made ready to sail to Peria would ever wear the golden crown; though he spoke, he said, not curse, but prophecy of his own.


    With the wind of the dawn, the great red sails bellied, the oars struck out, and countless ships took flight over the mile-broad bosom of the Teodh-nan-Feill, to Talherne¡¯s last stronghold at Feillantir. Narhald watched from the western shore, and lit his pipe and turned away.


    They leaped from their ships screaming their battle-lust. The Lions, the princes in rebellion, turned their forces like an architect¡¯s machine and cut them down like straws. But the straws kept coming. Every westerly wind bore still more ships on its breath, ships filled with madmen, as it seemed to the beseigers, and Talherne¡¯s own troops burst from the city and struck as one with the wild men. When the third morning paled over the harbor thick with still more blood-colored sails, the beseigers, as hungry as the beseiged and aghast at the savages who knew no rule of war, broke and fled. Talherne watched the rout from the dark walls of Feillantir, and danced in triumphant delight.


    Galbric Longhair turned to stare at him, appalled and revolted.


    They stood on the wall with the king of the Dragon-kings, the three Geillan chiefs: Berulf, sixty and grey but still tall and strong; and Galbric and Felka, his right hand and his left. Galbric son of Gundr was first among Berulf¡¯s liegemen and hearthwards, as well as his heart-brother; Felka the Grim commanded the half of the army that now drove the Sferan Lions like sheep. Talherne had bidden them there to watch rather than lead, saying that great generals wielded men as men wield swords. They came, still dazzled by the great king and his magnificently-armored troops and his polished marble halls and the rumor of the wisdom of the Sferiari. They came, but they chafed, and their swords were restless at their sides.


    Galbric glared now at Talherne, still surprised that the king was so small, a full head shorter than himself: a short, scrawny old man with a scrawny beard, who shook his thin fists in the air and cackled with glee over the blood of his people spilled and their honor trampled.


    ¡°Who calls you king?¡± he asked of no one, certainly not Talherne, who did not know the Geillan speech. And his sword leaped, as if its own bronze spirit revolted against this unholy little gremlin¡¯s wearing the name of a king of men. Talherne¡¯s body fell in a fountain of blood. His head fell somewhat farther; the gold crown of the Sferiari struck from the stones a golden chime, and rolled almost to the feet of Felka. The barbarian picked it up dumbly, with fingers that scarcely felt it, like a man ensnared in dream.


    Galbric¡¯s shock at his own deed glissaded to battle-alarm: they were not alone on the wall. A dozen of their honor guards stood, colorful in red and green wool and gilt leather, and equally restless in idleness, in an uncomfortable mass away from Talherne¡¯s retainers, like jewels in their fine silks and almost twice the Geilliadh¡¯s numbers. For a moment every man of them, Geillan and Sferan, gazed stunned at the sudden corpse. Then Prince Caoine, last of Talherne¡¯s faithful, turned with a shriek to the forgotten black border of the bright patchwork of uneasy allies. Not less than thirty Runedaur, the high king¡¯s personal guard, ringed them all.


    ¡°Will you do nothing?¡± Caoine screamed.


    Galbric¡¯s grip clenched tighter on his sword. Berulf moved, only a slight shift to readiness. No man matched even one Runedaur and lived to tell of it; Galbric would die; but not alone.


    Master Iridon glanced at the prince, who recalled belatedly that Talherne chose his guard from that branch of the Runedaur who did not speak, and thought as most men did, that Iridon and his kind no more answered an address than did their silent Lord. Only a phrase came to mind, like a memory of some scrap out of some ancient tale, though he could never afterward place it: I am Death, not Judgment.


    Iridon looked at Felka, and the golden glory in his hands, and to the wonder of all, spoke, and in the barbaric tongue. ¡°Do you know its name?¡±


    ¡°Teillorn,¡± said Berulf quickly, knowing his henchman¡¯s ignorance.


    The Runedaur turned to him. ¡°What does it mean?¡±


    ¡°Circle of Sorrow.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    Berulf faltered. Iridon nodded. ¡°Who answers that, wears it.¡± Then he turned as if to leave the wall. Caoine screamed again.


    ¡°Is that all you will do?¡±


    Iridon thought about it. He walked back, stooped and lifted Talherne¡¯s head by the fine grey hair and tossed it over the parapet. Then the Runedaur flowed like shadow before sunrise, and were gone from the wall. The battle the fifteen Geilliadh had to leave the palace at Feillantir became a matter of legend.


    Later Rothesay spoke into the quiet night, ¡°The Runedaur reshaped their vow to mean the office, and not the man.¡± She thought Dav was probably asleep; she also imagined he would answer.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said.


    ¡°So, you¡¯re shifty, and mutable according to the circumstances.¡±


    ¡°Absolutely,¡± he chuckled, relishing the irony.


    She raised up on an elbow. ¡°Standing firm is a virtue,¡± she challenged, scowling unseen.


    ¡°Often. Is it always?¡±


    ¡°I should like to be thought¡ª¡± she began coldly.


    ¡°Answer the question asked,¡± he snapped. Then, once more conversational, ¡°Is it always a virtue to be¡ªrigid?¡±


    She lay back down, worsted for now. Dav went back to sleep.


    They travelled the next day in silence, a cross and suspicious silence on her part. Early in the morning they struck another highway, where it bent southward by a great stone-paved circle, an old Sferan site of Kavin¡¯s airy worship, used now by the Geillari: charred wood in the central pit suggested a recent ceremony. Along this road, tracks branched straight out to either side, to clusters of farmsteads near or farther: the Geillari found the Sferan villas well served their preference for small scattered towns, and they filled them more gladly than the cities.


    Traffic was sparse: a small party of a bard and his apprentices, and a blacksmith with a wagon, who stared without friendship and hurried on. Dav spoke up enough to explain. The road, of old the Cannisbe Way, now marked the uneasy border between the Dun Fearic of the kingdom of Wexsa to the east, and the Dunaltrealt¡¯s Daradvag on the west. Dun Fearic served Odhru the Brean, but Daradvag answered to Deorgard the upstart; and as the Houses of Ristover, Carastwyth, and Andras lay just across the river, or at Andrastir, they were both that much more uneasy about strangers on the road.


    ¡°We should not be troubled; it is not so many seasons since our latest foray to, ah, dissuade the clans from hindering the Order¡¯s travels.¡±


    ¡°But you don¡¯t count on that?¡± she asked, hearing reservation in his voice. The Master laughed. No, you wouldn¡¯t, she thought; ¡®He who keeps not faith, expects only faithlessness,¡¯ after all.


    Folk tending their lands watched curiously as the travellers passed. Late in the afternoon, an elderly shepherd waved his boy away, and the lad ran for a clustered village a mile over the green. Dav hauled Rothesay up behind him; though he spoke no word, she felt his scorn for her awkwardness.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never ridden before,¡± she mumbled. The ground seemed a long way down. She very much wanted something to hold onto, and equally had no wish that it be Dav himself.


    ¡°Indeed. And your first ride shall be uncommonly brief, if you do not hold on, unless your balance is as uncanny as your strength.¡± He reached back for her arm and planted it firmly about his waist. He glanced around at her, and licked his leering lips. ¡°You¡¯re a leggy one!¡± he observed merrily, and urged Dark Walking¡ªWinddancer¡ªto a brisk pace.


    She overcame an urge to leap right back off. Instead, ¡°I could squish you,¡± she growled, trying to be threatening.


    ¡°Yes; then what?¡±


    She had no answer, but nursed her rage and humiliation in silence. Not for long: the strangeness of riding soon occupied all her thought, as her thighs stretched and her back ached and her bony backside wore thinner than ever. An increasingly miserable hour later, she suddenly realized what had provoked the Master¡¯s remark: sitting about on a level with him, she was now no taller; the most of her height must be in her legs. Very well; but had it been so very necessary to be lewd about it?


    ¡°Ah, Midlands hospitality,¡± said Dav.


    She started, then looked out. Shadowed against the reddening sunset, more riders approached, coming quickly along a side road that lay ahead and below them, down on the floodplain of a great river. One or two carried spears, glinting bloodily.


    The highway descended through a wide cutting in the high bank to the bottomlands, and they briefly lost sight of the company.


    ¡°Do you think you can hold yourself on without, ah, squishing me? Do so,¡± he ordered without waiting for answer, and goaded the stallion to full gallop.


    As the world lurched beneath her, she grabbed him with her other arm as well, and the horse with her legs. Her head cracked into his, dislodging his hat; she snatched it, slipped, and recovered, thanked him silently for sparing her another rude comment on her performance, and struggled to find the rhythm of this surging career. Dav yanked her close. Plastering herself to his back, she moved with him and he with the horse, and the crazy tumult became swift and seamless flight.


    She peeked past his ear. Ahead, a long grey bridge leaped the dark breadth of the water in seven vast spans of crumbling magnificence. On the near shore, a rubble of stone marked the destruction of the old bridgehouse, and several other buildings as well. Glancing westward as they cleared the high bank, she saw the other horsemen taken by surprise by the trespassers¡¯ gait, saw them leap at once to the gallop, but she and Dav should win this race, she thought.


    They shouted in Geillan as they neared. ¡°Alt-realt! Alt-realt! Liberty breathing, vengeance bleeding! Oeroe!¡±


    ¡°King Donalt¡¯s out for glory points again,¡± Dav snorted.


    On the road before them, a weird white bonfire blossomed suddenly; she felt its heat just as Winddancer reared with a scream and plunged aside. Dav hauled him back at once, straight through the fading ghostly flame. The air seemed full of tiny sparks that prickled her face and hands.


    ¡°Loosen up, damn it!¡± Dav¡¯s remnant voice was a hoarse whisper. She almost let go entirely, then the horse leaped the first of the scattered boulders and she scrabbled for the Master''s belt for a handhold. Another fireblossom burst open, this time falling behind them. An arrow smacked into the hard saddle leather just above Dav¡¯s knee, as several others clattered into the rocks. The horse danced neatly through the tumbled stones at a pace that appalled Rothesay, and then they were on the open bridge, flying across to the grim southern towers. Dav laughed. ¡°They think those stones lie just as they left them, when they ruined this place a score of years ago.¡±


    Intrigued, she turned her thought to the horse. There burned familiarity, but in some distant place; he knew this lie, had trained on it and trained well. And she saw also a bright, fierce playfulness, a revel of skill and power. Dreamlike, in Dark Walking¡¯s thought the pallid stones were also foxes, with teeth to break a careless leg, foxes that he, great stallion, spurned with his hooves. Once past, he wanted to turn and scream his triumph at them; but the other part of him, the rider, set his heart on speed, and the stallion emptied his own into the wind.


    She blinked and tried a glance back, and saw their pursuers stopped, picking an uncertain route for themselves. As she looked, a giant spear, as it seemed, smashed into the rocks from somewhere ahead, and a second pierced the bank below the bridgehead. Two great machines on each of the southern towers readied two more missiles. Another handful of arrows rattled upon the bridge under the horses'' hooves or fell to the bosom of the river, but the party behind conceded and drew back. Dav galloped all the way to the southern gate, the portcullis rolled up, and they trotted into haven.


    A horseman, helmed much as Arngas once had been, with several more men on foot behind him, barred their way and swept them with a hard survey, then saluted curtly. ¡°Master,¡± he acknowledged.


    ¡°Captain Dacharion,¡± Dav returned, and the man¡¯s eyebrows leaped up.


    ¡°You know me?¡±


    ¡°But of course. Did you not rout that foray up the Farrastream last year? How do like the Sternbridge for a post?¡±


    ¡°More interesting,¡± Dacharion conceded with a grunt, clearly reappraising the Runedaur reputation. ¡°Will you ask the hospitality of the Bridge-watch, or go on up to the castle?¡±


    Dav paused. Rothesay wished she could see his face. ¡°Which do you recommend?¡±


    For all his unease, Dacharion could not wholly restrain a wry grin. ¡°You ought to pay Lord Cathforrow a visit,¡± he allowed, ¡°but you¡¯ll find warmer welcome here.¡±


    ¡°I never refuse local wisdom,¡± Dav replied gravely. ¡°We will lodge here, then, Captain, by your leave. Show me where I may wash: no need to scare Cathforrow more than I shall!¡±


    He grasped Rothesay¡¯s arm, pulling her toward the horse¡¯s near side and extending his foot for her to step down by. She crawled stiffly from her perch, but when her feet found the safe ground, her legs buckled and she sat down hard on the cobbles. Dav dropped lightly to his feet and reached down to pluck the remains of his hat from her. The crown was crushed, and the gay plumes, snapped, dangled mournfully. He considered it while she waited for his wrath.


    ¡°Thank you for saving my hat,¡± he said at last, speaking with great care. Plainly he fought back laughter; equally plainly, he meant it. He regarded the hat a moment longer, then carefully and firmly settled it on her head. ¡°Captain? Where will you house us?¡±


    Despite weariness¡ªshe did not walk nearly so long or so vigorously alone as she did chasing the Runedaur, and three days of it had devoured her¡ªRothesay lay awake for some hours that night. She ached in strange new ways, but it was not only soreness that chased sleep from her. Even as her buttocks still remembered the pounding of the horse, her arms and breast and thighs still seemed to feel the hard body of the Master clasped close against her. She blushed in the darkness, and writhed against a fey pleasure that she did not understand.


    At last she gave up and struggled stiffly to her feet. Dav was still out, on his call of courtesy, if it was courtesy, to the Lord of Ristover. She stumbled out onto the balcony, and hearing the river whispering past fifty feet below, wished for a swim; and found the narrow stairs, little more than jutting wall-stones, that led down from Captain Dacharion¡¯s private porch to a small jetty. In the eddy in its embrace, hidden by the black cloud-veiled night, she peeled off her rough garments and slipped into the silky water and for a timeless while forgot soreness and strangeness, exile and faithlessness, under the comforting touch of Teodhan, gentle Lord of Water and of compassion. She crawled back to bed without bothering to dress, and slept at last dreamlessly.


    She woke in the morning straight to the recollection that she was sharing this room with the Master. Dacharion had surrendered his own apartments to honor his august guest, placing Dav in a stony alcove well-softened with thick furs and silks; the novice had a pallet and blanket on the floor next the wall. Silently, warily as a small hunted thing, she turned her head.


    ¡°Good morning,¡± said Dav. He stood before a small, elegant table, and combed his moustaches in the captain¡¯s mirror. Rothesay curled into a tight ball, pulled the blanket over every bit of bare skin below her chin and wondered how to get into her clothes without getting out of her wrap. Dav looked around at her silence. ¡°Good morning,¡± he repeated, and when she peeked up, grinned insufferably. ¡°Bit of a dilemma?¡±


    ¡°Good morning,¡± she mumbled back, as if politeness would inspire him to go away.


    ¡°We could see who¡¯s faster,¡± he offered mockingly, exchanging the comb for a razor and beginning to lather his chin. She sat up cautiously, and when he turned back to the mirror, made a strike for her bundled clothes. The man remained intent upon his toilet. She dressed swiftly, clumsily, several times getting her cold, wet braid¡ªstill plaited in the fourfold handiwork of Raian¡¯s little servant, though practically felted by now¡ªcaught into the windings of her breastbands, and making of those an untidy mess that would be falling to her waist ere noon. She lashed the crossgarters about her calves with wrath. By the time she was done, he was leaning casually against the table, watching her; she had no idea how long.


    She blushed. ¡°Amused?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± he replied thoughtfully. ¡°Are you ready now?¡±


    ¡°Er, for¡ª?¡±


    ¡°Breakfast comes to mind.¡±


    She blushed again, feeling abominably stupid. She nodded, hunching into her shoulders. Breakfast¡ªwould it be with the garrison soldiers, like supper? They had teased her, or tried very hard to do so, ragging the ¡®boy¡¯ about whether ¡®he¡¯ thought even the Runedaur could make a man of him; she had idiotically suffered for a while, till she realized that, in the safety of the Master¡¯s escort, she need not. Then she had turned and brightly pointed out that she did not want to be any kind of man: she was a girl and she was going to be a sorceress. That had worsted them, briefly.


    Suddenly she frowned at Dav. ¡°How did you know I was a girl? Back at the inn, when I was, er, in the brawl?¡±


    To her surprise, he told her. ¡°Women put their weight forward, more on the balls and toes; men ride more on their heels,¡± he began, demonstrating. He showed her differences in gesture, in speed and in character of grace; subtleties in the use of eyes and tensions of the mouth; even breathing, high in the chest to low in the belly. He warned her that no one woman, nor any one man, showed all the appropriate traits: one watched for an overall impression¡ªand for incongruities. Yes, it was a lot to remember, he agreed; most interesting things were. With practice, observation would be as habitual as breathing. And with that, he told her how to breathe, and turned to go down to his breakfast, and she followed awkwardly, for the first time in waking memory confounded by trying to breathe and walk at the same time.


    In the mess hall, while the Master sat again with Dacharion, she gave up on the breathing instruction for a while, in favor of practicing the manly nuances and trying to observe the reactions. Then she carefully downed a mug of small beer, stared deep into it for a long time, and set about clearing her place with all the feminine character she could recall. Breakfast ended suddenly.


    As she hobbled sorely after Dav and Dark Walking as they passed at last under the iron¡ªiron! and it was just as black as rumor made it; she wondered what it felt like, as it looked like a very hole in the stuff of the world¡ªgate of the Sternbridge, Dav glanced down at her. ¡°Quirky sense of humor you¡¯ve got, chit.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Clearing out the breakfast-hall like that.¡±


    She beamed, surprised and delighted that someone, even Dav, saw her joke. ¡°Oh! They did notice, then, did they?¡±


    ¡°Without knowing what they noticed, yes, they did indeed. And you played it not too broadly, either. Well done.¡±


    Her spine straightened with the praise, and she walked gladly for a ways, as the stony street wound up the high and hilly riverbank. The bridge-town of Carastloel leaned into the steep slope: second and even third storeys, facing riverward, opened onto ground level behind. The road twisted beneath the wall-girded sheaf of towers of dour Cannisfell Castle; and out of its shadowy gate a horsed troop rode across their way.

 V: Initiate (3/5): Price of Knowing

    Twenty horsemen looked like an army on that narrow route. Their armor in the silvery morning light glinted, little flashes of lightning before a storm. At their fore rode three who wreathed their steel in silk, a blood-red shimmer encrusted with silver stars shaping the constellation of the Scythe; and the first of those wore a crown.


    His lank black hair hung past his shoulders, framing a hollow, pocked face; the deep-set eyes were grey and keen as the spears at his back; but not old, not more than twenty-five, perhaps; his thin lips set in a perpetual smile of cynicism. He could have been nice-looking with a real smile, Rothesay thought, but she was distracted more by the tiny silver bells dangling in the ends of his hair by no power that she could discern.


    ¡°Good morning, Master,¡± he drawled softly. ¡°Leaving my fair city so soon?¡± His voice trembled with a sorrow that his cold smile mocked, and he eased his great black horse closer, and closer again.


    ¡°Yes,¡± said Dav.


    Treskiel na Cathforrow colored slightly, confused as the Master¡¯s straightforward reply offered nothing, not insolence nor challenge nor uncertainty, no opening at all for sparring with words. He cast again. With a nod to his ranked horsemen, ¡°Do you mean to pass us?¡± He veiled the threat with a further smile.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Do you mean to stand there?¡±


    The prince liked this reply no better than the first one. This was one of the prime reasons he disliked dealing with the Runedaur: it was like boxing with ghosts. Then his glance caught the ragtag scarecrow clinging to Dav¡¯s cloak-hem, that eyed him with familiar unease. He pressed his own horse still closer; though the Runedaur did not move, his new postulant tried to melt into the horse¡¯s flank. Treskiel reached out with his long silver-wrapped whip to tap Rothesay under the chin; rubies on his gaunt hand burned like red stars. The Runedaur master straightened; but Treskiel¡¯s delight in having provoked the man faded at once: the look on the Master¡¯s face was the anticipation of rare entertainment. Suspicious, he withdrew his whip; but not his tongue.


    ¡°Recruiting from the turnip-eaters? No doubt you find them readier to your hand.¡± He watched the ragtag sidelong to see how his hook had set.


    ¡°This one¡¯s Darian.¡±


    Treskiel¡¯s grey eyes flashed to Dav¡¯s in surprise, and irritation at having lost the fish again. ¡°Darian, now? You ought to train more closely to home, Master; has the Order given no thought to sharing her knowledge with her own race? Had we all your legendary prowess at the sword, we might yet be masters of our own land!¡±


    Even Rothesay could not mistake the steely bitterness of an old and widely-cherished grievance. But Dav only inclined his regal head. ¡°You are always welcome at my hall, Cathforrow,¡± he said mildly, ¡°and any time you care to seek our tutelage, we shall be pleased to teach you all that you may wish to learn.¡±


    If Rothesay heard the offer, Treskiel heard the rebuke. Cold fire blazed in his deep eyes, as it had so often the night before; but he sat taller in his saddle, straight and kingly, and wafted one languid hand towards his men. As smartly as a troupe of horsed chain-dancers, the soldiers parted, and Dav nodded graciously once again to the Prince of Ristover, and departed up the dark way between them. Rothesay hurried after, only too glad to be gone, and they passed on unhindered, out of Carastloel into the fir-clad silence of the great southern hills.


    This land had known no other masters than the Folk of the Dragon, and seemed now little perturbed by the troubles of the north. No one here would be mocked as an edgeling, and ¡°pig-man¡± would mean the blond barbarian, who ate turnips, instead of the dark imperial, who loved acorns. Padriag had always been amused that the two clashing races each relished what the other considered only fit for swine; Rothesay resented ¡°pig¡± as a pejorative either way, as she had better friends among the Harrowater livestock than she did among their keepers.


    The road, the best-kept she had seen since Teginau, followed the valley of the foaming Daorlas. Neat little towns dotted the way, with mills to put the busy river to work, and only hedges for walls against the wolves of the mountains.


    Her ears pricked up at the southern accent all about her. Teginau-Sferan seemed clipped and lilted; this speech lolled and almost slurred. What did the voices of Anstrede sound like to men of these lands, who heard not the guttural tongue of the invader?


    And all the speech about her now was courteous: as they climbed into the southern foothills, respect for the Master of Colderwild grew with every turn into something bordering reverence. Not in these lands the superstitious fear of the Geillari, nor the frosty resentment of Ristover; not here, where the influence of the mother-house of Runedaur ran like water underground from her high hill, unseen yet mastering. Rothesay began to reappraise her companion. In all their travel together, the Master had been permitting her the most outrageous familiarity in her address, till she had quite forgotten his due. Though unused to speaking to anyone of rank, she hoped she knew what was proper; but after the first day or so of forgetting her place, letting her tongue slip, and cringing from reproof that never came, she had fallen full into the habit of speaking to him as if to old Padriag, all forgetting that he was anything but damnably irritating.


    Captain Dacharion, and Prince Cathforrow and his troops, had begun to remind her. When they stopped to take their noon meal in a beautiful little town that was rich enough to sport gold balls on the pillars of its gates and gold shingles on the rooftrees of its great houses and gold oak-leaf-shaped doorhandles at its inns, and the celioner, the master of the town, all dressed in rich robes stood quietly by while Dav ate, and even poured him his wine, it came fully home: if there was no longer a high king, the Master of Runedaur, at least, remained.


    She followed more shyly in the afternoon, abashed to accompany one who could, and probably did, treat with kings and potentates of distant lands, Isorchia, Rodrantir, Inkirth, M¨®r Feria and beyond, one who could summon armies¡ªor dismiss them, as at Carastloel. She found it hard to breathe, and she dared not look up at him.


    Or rather, she tried to follow shyly, and to feel abashed by the great lord¡¯s presence. It remained that Dav of Colderwild was damnably irritating, and it was difficult to feel reverential toward one whose morning urination in the wild woods had been for many days one¡¯s first firm wake-up call. Moreover, she still held the moral high ground. Runedaur behaved treacherously, and their Master thought no shame of it. Dav had praised her that morning, and she had felt pleased; and yet of what worth was such praise?


    ¡°Was it really?¡± she asked out of nowhere, a little chill in her voice. ¡°Lord,¡± she added, perfunctorily.


    ¡°Beg pardon?¡±


    ¡°You said my performance this morning was well done. But you admitted yesterday that Runedaur can¡¯t be trusted. So why should I believe you? Maybe I just made a stupid idiot of myself there.¡±


    ¡°We can be trusted.¡± There was laughter in his. When she looked up dubiously, he grinned wickedly. ¡°Of course, that hangs on precisely what it is you trust us to do.¡±


    Her look of silent suspicion was query enough. ¡°Why should I lie to you about your, ah, performance?¡± he went on.


    ¡°I have no idea.¡±


    ¡°Obviously; then you have no idea why I should be truthful with you, either.¡±


    ¡°Right.¡±


    ¡°Is it possible that I might have reasons or purposes for either truth or falsehood?¡±


    ¡°Yes; at least, I¡¯d hope you¡¯d have reason!¡±


    ¡°Then do you suppose if you could learn my purposes, you might then know what you could and could not trust me to do?¡±


    She stared up at him, stepped into the gutter that bordered the road, flailed like a windmill to recover. Then she stumped along sullenly, working the wrench out of her ankle. ¡°People should be honest because it is right to be honest.¡±


    ¡°It would make life easier,¡± the Master conceded. ¡°Is easier better?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not about being easier,¡± she said scornfully. ¡°It¡¯s about right for its own sake.¡±


    ¡°My apologies; I go too fast for you. There are men who are true and trustworthy because they please to be; is it so?¡±


    ¡°Yes; they¡¯re called ¡®good men,¡¯¡± she drawled.


    ¡°And there are men who are not, because they do not please to be, yes?¡±


    She bit her tongue on ¡®like you¡¯ and said only, ¡°Yes, there are.¡±


    ¡°How do you tell one from the other?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± She started as the question ambushed her.


    ¡°Before you place your trust, of course.¡±


    Her thoughts scattered like so many chickens. A quarter of a mile later, she finally sighed, ¡°I cannot. And that is why men should be honest, so that one isn¡¯t always having to wonder who can be trusted.¡±


    ¡°It would make life easier,¡± he returned blandly. ¡°Prince Treskiel, now: do you think he can be trusted?¡±


    She snorted. ¡°Not as far as I could kick him!¡±


    ¡°Which implies more trust than it used, I fancy!¡± Dav laughed, and she sighed, disgusted. ¡°Still, you misjudge him; perhaps you confuse courteousness with goodness? Treskiel of Ristover, rakehell or not, will die rather than betray his own given word: such is his pride. But you would be wise to note that he is not above goading you into error, into being the first to break trust¡ªand freeing him to do what he will.¡±


    She glanced up. ¡°Is that why you kept your temper so well?¡±


    ¡°Kept my temper? The likes of Cathforrow have no power over my temper, chit; I have no desire for what he imagines is bait! But that is matter for another lesson. As for trust, now¡ªwhy do I trust Cathforrow?¡±


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°Er¡ªyou know something of his, um, purposes?¡±


    Dav reined up and dismounted, standing to lock her eyes with his. ¡°Aye,¡± he said softly, ¡°I know him well. And you will trust me¡ªor not¡ªby knowing me. By knowing: not by blind expectation that I will do as I ought¡ªor that I won¡¯t, if you¡¯ve a cynical turn.¡± He fell silent; the silence awaited her reply.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡ªthat isn¡¯t easy . . . .¡±


    ¡°Worse than that, chit. When you succeed, it breaks your heart.¡± And he turned and walked on up the valley.


    Areolin¡¯s light failed early in the deepening vale, and the young moon followed hard behind. Under the starlight, the pale stones of the road laid a dim ribbon between dark mossy banks. A cold air flowed down, and a steam rose from the churning Daorlas. Still Dav walked on till, hours later, a dark bridge leaped the foaming river to carry the road to the eastern bank. A massive stone house shouldered this western end of the bridge, large enough to host a small army, but it stood silent now and empty.


    He sent her into what seemed to be a caretaker¡¯s quarters with orders to start up a fire, while he settled Winddancer in the stable behind. She was forced to make a magelight to discover where in the interior blackness she was supposed to do that, and was startled to find within all that she needed: a bundle of kindling, wood neatly stacked, several small tin boxes with flints and striking-steels, even candles. When she had a bright blaze going in the firepit, Dav came in with a bucket of water from the river, and the clay pot with the stew that an old woman in the last town had pressed upon them for their supper. He poured each into fine bronze pots to hang above the fire, and Rothesay came to the slow conclusion that the house was not an abandoned ruin.


    Before she could ask more about it, the Runedaur lit a candle in her fire and went into a small side room. Altar furnishings glimmered; Dav knelt with the candle before a cabinet beneath, and rattled the fastening.


    ¡°Ah! Who changed the lock, now?¡± he murmured to himself. Curiously pleased, or at least amused, by this event, he set about defeating it, first with dagger-tip, then, when that failed, with an evilly slender bodkin hidden in his boot, and whistled a soft tune to his work. At length the cupboard opened and he withdrew a golden bowl, a gold-and-ivory tray, a shimmering blue-green cloth, a few more small but rich-looking objects like fire-colored stars in the candlelight.


    Remembering the rope in Floodholding, ¡°Er, misplacing stuff again?¡± she inquired cautiously.


    He shot her a sidelong glance, but grinned. ¡°This is,¡± he began, and paused to weigh words, ¡°here for my use.¡±


    ¡°It was locked,¡± she challenged, and he laughed aloud.


    ¡°Of course!¡±


    Carrying the booty to the fireside, he knelt and began an elegant, unfamiliar ritual. The silk koli draped his shoulders and hooded his head with aquamarine shot with gold; a few of the small objects were gold rings blazing with fire opals, which he set upon his fingers. He filled the bowl with wine that the celioner had given him at midday, held his hands above it, and chanted softly; she recognized the Old High Sferan, but she could not translate quickly enough to follow the meaning, though she caught mention of several of the Great Ones. Lastly he took a pinch of what was certainly salt from a tiny crystal dish, and sprinkled it in, and breathed upon it, and she gasped as the dark wine cleared and turned as blue as the koli on his head.


    ¡°The witches don¡¯t have all the tricks,¡± he chuckled, and stood up with the bowl and a bit of cake on the tray, and headed for the door. ¡°Coming?¡± he invited.


    Outside, the moving air gusted towards a breeze. Death¡¯s high priest clutched at the delicate koli several times on his way out upon the bridge before turning to Rothesay with an unsacerdotal oath: ¡°Here, you wear the damned thing!¡±


    In the middle of the span, he faced upstream, and with several more chants, spilled the wine and crumbled the biscuit into the white-fringed darkness below. Returning, he explained, ¡°I¡¯m expected to invoke amity between the Silent One and the Lord of Waters, to keep Daorlas tame between his banks, when I pass this way. I don¡¯t usually bother¡ªnot in full, anyway¡ªwhen it¡¯s just us.¡±


    Surmising that ¡®us¡¯ meant Runedaur, and that the pronoun now included her, she asked, ¡°Why did you now, then?¡±


    ¡°Because, chit, I no longer know what I know¡ªthanks to you and your manthare, Arngas. Spare me the deeper inquiry,¡± he warded off her budding questions with an upraised palm, ¡°I have no answer for you yet. Is the stew hot?¡±


    She stifled one set of questions, as well as her dismay at the priest¡¯s admitted neglect of duty, by trying another. Over supper, she asked, ¡°What is this place? Why is it stocked, if no one lives here?¡±


    ¡°There used to be a resident keeper, and longer ago, a small permanent garrison as well. Now it¡¯s only left in order for convoys that pass, far less frequently than they used.¡±


    ¡°Convoys of what?¡±


    ¡°What is the name of the river yonder?¡±


    ¡°Daorlas¡ªer, ¡®gold-water¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Have you marked the use of gilt in the towns we¡¯ve passed? and how every town has a stronghold in its square? Daorlas has his springs in the richest of the empire¡¯s mines, and this is the Gold Road to Andrastir.¡±


    The second Perians came down from the mountains of the south, where their remote grandfathers had been masters of snow-craft; but that was no longer remembered, only hinted at by folk-tales of the deeds of ice giants. Instead they said they were descended from the Kinstrife of Isorchia, when seven great princes fought one another for twenty-one years, till the gods themselves intervened lest they destroy the world. And M¨®r, Knowledge, held forth seven tokens of fate, and the prince who drew the Ship set sail with all his clan, coming to Peria, where the far-travelling Callem¨®rine traders had told them the land was fair and the streams filled with gold.


    O Maolin, First-smith, maker of the foundation of the universe!


    Holy is thy Hammer, mighty are thy fists of stone.


    You raised the mountains from the deep places,


    You burned the darkness in your forge and made it stone to bear the weight of all-that-is.


    You lifted the land up to the light of heaven.


    You are the maker of gold and richness,


    You filled the dark and the hidden places with treasure:


    Starlight you bent and forged into silver,


    Your hammer sang and sunlight became gold,


    And you cast it like grain in the high holy waters of the world


    Dav did not cross the river the next morning, but left the road for the wilderness once more. The new-leafing trees, oak, ash, and beech, of this hilly forest were huge pillars of antiquity, and the floor thick with moss between their massive roots was clear and open, so that Rothesay felt that she walked in a vast green-lighted, green-carpeted temple. The temple held another stone circle of the fairy folk, this one surrounding a spring in a deep, silent pool; Dav looked down at her thoughtfully.


    ¡°What do these mean?¡± he asked, and she could only shrug. He continued to stare, his blue eyes burning and remote as if he might make her a glass through which he could see to time long past, and the answer he desired. She felt first vaguely derelict of her scholastic duty; and then suddenly, wrenchingly, bereft: these were hers, and yet by ignorance no more hers than his, whose blood bore no kinship here. She spun away, teeth sinking hard and unnoticed into her knuckled fist. The Master raised an eyebrow, and moved on in silence.


    They had one brief adventure in the afternoon before they reached the Runedaur hall, an encounter Rothesay considered wholly avoidable. Dav, catching a whiff of a cooking-fire, discovered a small band of ruffianly fellows, half a dozen or so, and, without a word to her, spurred Dark Walking to full gallop through their midst, himself standing on the horse¡¯s rump and wailing like fourteen ghosts. Turning to find the men had not the good sense to flee but grabbed for their axes and their clubs, he returned as he had come, sword drawn. Halfway back, he dismounted in a flashing somersault into a knot of them, and the horse, rearing, laid into others with hooves and teeth. The abandoned Rothesay danced on the edge of the clearing in shock and surprise and then, without thinking, swept out the sword of Arngas and charged in after.


    Her next awareness was of an awful stillness, in which the rapid whisper of her breath in her nostrils seemed to fill the world. A man lay at her feet, staring at the budding leaves with pale eyes that did not see them. He was not a pretty bit of humanity; but then, ugliness was nothing to be killed for. She wondered hollowly who his mother was, and how pretty a baby he had been, how long ago.


    Dav appeared silently at her elbow and picked her sword up out of the loam. Taking it, she followed him wordlessly to a mossy spot a little way off, out of sight of the camp, and accepted a rag to clean the blade. She wiped it swiftly but thoroughly, before marching smartly into the trees to relieve her revolted stomach. When she returned, white and shaking, Dav handed her what she thought was the water flask; the strange stuff burned wonderfully down her throat and stung her nose with a wild, sweet fragrance like a whole forest of cedar in the sunshine, and the world disappeared in a bright crystal glitter as her eyes filled with tears. A blessed warmth spread inside her.


    ¡°Varajeyas,¡± Dav grunted, answering the question she was not yet capable of asking, as she fought not to cough. ¡°Tie this.¡±


    She wiped her eyes and looked, to find him binding a ruddy cloth about his bloody forearm; his satin sleeve hung in tatters. She obeyed promptly, for the time forgetting her horror. They exchanged no word beyond one or two working comments on the bandaging; then Dav cleaned his own blade, and called the horse, still restless and fretting, to him. He stroked and patted Winddancer¡¯s satiny hide and murmured unintelligibly. Rothesay envied the beast, feeling in need of more than a little patting and murmuring herself. She turned and gazed off through the trees, finding a fleeting oblivion in the yellow sunlight that slanted in, unchanged, unstained.


    The Master of Runedaur, slightly tattered and bandaged but otherwise unruffled, squatted abruptly in front of her. ¡°What,¡± he asked levelly, ¡°by the Blood of the Moon Lady prompted you to do that?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± When she continued to stare, Dav went on with acid exasperation. ¡°You will learn not to act without reason; I am hoping that on this occasion, if reason is too much to ask, you have at least an explanation.¡±


    What confounded Rothesay most was that the Master perceived any question at all. ¡°But, you¡¯re the teacher!¡±


    Dav in his turn stared back for a long time. ¡°So it seems,¡± he agreed softly. ¡°Thank you; that is¡ªmost revealing. Your man back there,¡± he said, changing the subject abruptly with a jerk of his head towards the clearing, ¡°is¡ªwas¡ªone Jerrast, twenty-five or twenty-six, a vicious cutthroat my countryside is well rid of, though a fair hand with horses and dogs. He had a bit of family in Leinne Hythe¡ªa sister or so, a wife, and his mother, of course.¡±


    Here Rothesay realized hotly how much she hated this sovereign bastard. ¡°Oh, thank you!¡± she snapped, fighting sudden tears and renewed sickness both. ¡°Why tell me? I can¡¯t do anything about it now¡ªunless you count feeling miserable. . . .¡± She broke off, unwilling to be any more revealing.


    His eyes flashed with sudden heat. ¡°I do count it,¡± he replied in a low voice. ¡°Jerrast and his kind kill without troubling to know or care who their victims might be; the Order will not bear murderers of that kind in her circles. If you will kill, you will pay the price of understanding what you do.¡± He stood and, looking down at her, shrugged elaborately. ¡°Feeling miserable is not the response to understanding that I would choose¡ªit is demoralizing, and a drain on the spirit¡ªbut it is assuredly better than nothing.¡± He swung to his saddle as lightly as ever, and at once resumed their journey, giving her no opportunity to prove his understanding, nor his response of choice. She did manage to bawl out a question about burial, but his answer was a brief, scornful glance. How she hated him!


    Later she would come to know that the Perian underworld had learned long ago that the sudden, personal interest of Runedaur was a surer harbinger of death than a royal warrant; and if anyone had escaped them, he had not been so foolish as to advertise the fact.

 V: Initiate (4/5): Home, Sweet Home

    The sun was low behind them when they came out of the trees back to the river, much younger now. Across the gravelly shallows, wide fallow fields lay already in shadow; but beyond them, steep tree-crowned hills glowed with green fire in the long golden light. To the south leaped up the cloud-dark bulk of the Dur Nefraith, the great mountain-wall that warded Peria¡¯s southern border; above, their snowy peaks gleamed saffron and rose. Over all, the windless sky softly blent turquoise into gold, preparing an unearthly cloth to receive the white jewels of night.


    Tiny yellow jewels were appearing, on the knees of the hills only a mile or so distant: a small town of neat white houses nestled in two neighborly hollows, and the villagers were lighting their lamps. Rothesay could see a few wains, drawn by oxen, heading homeward in the evening. There was no sound of surf, but it was a pleasant, homely place, and she was heartened, splashing across the broad ford with Dark Walking¡¯s tail in her fist.


    But Dav turned south, along the river and not across the fields, and she saw it: black and sharp against the pale sky, dark crown of a broken spur of rock, the high towers and toothy battlements of Colderwild Hall.


    Coming just now, at the fag end of a grim day, it was a dreadful sight. Rothesay let go the tail and stood, stock-still and staring, too tired to weep. A far cry from Padriag¡¯s snug little bungalow atop his windswept knoll rolling soft under sweet green grass: from the westernmost tower of this fortress one could drop a pebble five hundred feet down into the feisty waters below. And as evening fell over Harrowater far away, Padriag¡¯s diamond-glass windows would be flowing cheerfully with lantern-light; but in yonder fastness not one light shone.


    Dark Walking tossed his head and snorted. Freeing her feet by main will, Rothesay stumbled after him like one bogged in a nightmare. She wanted to cry, or scream and bolt for home; but there waited only Kelmhal and the justice of the Dunhaldring. Ahead lay the demon-house of traitors and derelict priests. Now, crazy Dagn of the hills about Teginau seemed not so crazy after all; but the city tried to kill him, just as Dav¡ªand she, and she; she could not forget that¡ªslew the outlaws of the forest here. There was no place for her but Colderwild. Bard, smith, healer, mage and king alone might lawfully travel; all others remained bound to village, clan, or temple, and could hope only for decent mastery. In the Runedaur, she seemed to have lost on that score; but at least she could tell her new master what she thought on her first view of this, the mother house of his accursed, treacherous, murderous Order.


    ¡°It¡¯s awful.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be petulant.¡±


    She glared at him, knowing herself to be in the wrong and resenting the admonishment. But, hungry, and tired more from the boredom of walking than from exertion, Dark Walking was eager to be home; for his sake, Rothesay clutched his tail again and forced herself into a quick trot, and thought less of unwelcoming fortresses and more of clean stables sweet with hay. The surprised Runedaur allowed his horse the extra speed, and the beast took all he was offered and pressed for more. Soon they were flying over the springy lawn, Dark Walking with native graciousness making no better speed than Rothesay¡®s best. So they crossed the half mile of grass from the ford to the foot of the cliff, and Dav checked them.


    ¡°So eager to come to my awful place, chit?¡±


    Rothesay sucked air. ¡°Dark-wal¡ªer, Winddancer,¡± she puffed, ¡°wants to get home.¡±


    ¡°My horse again,¡± sighed Dav in aggrieved tones. ¡°It is a little thoughtless of you, girl, not to suppose that I might want to get home. It is, after all, home, however awful.¡±


    She squirmed under his caustic mockery, and wondered if she would ever hear the end of that unfortunate remark. ¡°Would it help if I said I¡¯m sorry?¡±


    ¡°That would depend on why you said it,¡± he replied coolly.


    She glanced up at him, then up at the cliff, tree-studded and narrowly climbable on its north face, sheer and smooth upon the west above the water. ¡°It wasn¡¯t really fair,¡± she admitted. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen it inside, yet.¡±


    ¡°Can it be?¡± he laughed. ¡°Is there hope for the hayseed, after all?¡±


    She whirled on him at this last bite at pride and hope, and suddenly there came back to her the Darian youth¡¯s remark about ¡°the Orthundrysel, who tried to be queen,¡± and the Runedaur Peridar¡¯s phrase in Floodholding about the ¡®Daughter of Daria.¡¯ She drew herself up with queenly pride. ¡°I¡¯ll thank you not to address me in that fashion,¡± she said with icy hauteur, a tone she had never before used and which secretly delighted her.


    For answer, she received the back of his hand across her face, a solid cuff and not a slap, that knocked her back a step and made her vision swim. It frightened her particularly in that it was delivered wholly without passion, without anger, quite matter-of-factly.


    ¡°No action without understanding.¡± He dismounted with a bound and led Winddancer up under the cliff, where a narrow ledge had been cut into the rock, barely five feet above the level of the water and rising with the streambed. The river, dark and swift, stretched no more than seven or eight yards broad here, frayed white where it was torn by great stones, broken bones of the hills. Trees stood tall on the further shore, where a steep shoulder of the westward hills blotted out the sunset and half the sky.


    Robbed of her fleeting pride, Rothesay followed in weary resignation; but the beauty of the land seduced her. The evening air, river-chilled, was sweet with the clean scent of the breaking waters and a bounty of mint nearby. The sleek rock, a grey schist richly streaked with galaxies of mica, glittered as they passed in the last light. Above the rapids, the rock ledge leveled off and bent away to the left, skirting a small lake where the river widened and the tops of the western hills reflected upon its rippling surface.


    Just before they stepped from the narrowing ledge onto the thin strip of sand between water and wall, Rothesay noticed a door set in the stone, cunningly worked so as to appear a part of the cliff, but door it was, perhaps six feet high at the top of the arch and scarcely two feet wide. She opened her mouth, intending to mention it to Dav, but hastily reconsidered: he would scorn her for supposing that he did not know or could forget his own domain, and doubly for not bearing the horse in mind. Under the lacerating tutelage of the Master¡¯s sarcasm, she was quickly learning to think first.


    The sandy beach broadened, and soon blended into firm soil, overgrown with fresh-smelling small plants. Beside them, the mountain wall roughened and fell back away from the water, till at last their path turned up the hillside by way of a few broad steps cut into the stone, and from there circled up the southern flank of the hill. A little way to her right, Rothesay heard the rush and gurgle of a small stream hurrying down to the lake, and through the trees caught now and then a glimpse of pale foam.


    Dusk lay thick about them under the trees, and for a time there was a deep silence as the day-dwellers retired and the night-dwellers had not yet awakened. The horse¡¯s hooves fell almost silently on the loam. The world seemed to shrink down to no more than they could see about them, manifesting just so far ahead of them, and vanishing imperceptibly behind. She murmured her twilight-song, as she had every night and dawn, the more fervently as her Runedaur companion never made any such protection; but this place seemed more like the Dunhaldring woods around Harrowater than masterless wilderness.


    The path wound to the left about the hill, rising gently and steadily, bending a little in and out of small hollows and glades where the trees stood thicker or a small spring bubbled. Now and again it would zig sharply left for a stretch before zagging back to the right again. To Rothesay, not knowing how far they had yet to go, it seemed endless, every step ached, and she felt wearier and sorrier than she had since Floodholding. Dark Walking would have borne her willingly, but the Master, himself dismounted, made no offer. He strode buoyantly, and she set herself grimly to match him.


    At last, bearing full north again and meeting a broad track sweeping in from the east, the way left the trees below and, curling up westward around a tall outcrop, opened onto a great stone circle, as flat and smooth as a silent lake: a temple to the Air. North away spread a clear black horizon, empty below, a glory of stars above; eastward rolled endless miles of the stiff and shaggy hills; at their back to the south, the dim crowns of the Dur Nefraith; and over all the vast glittering bowl of stars; and they were come at last to the gates of Colderwild.


    It was still black. The mother house of Runedaur stood in blackness unrelieved, somber and smooth as night. Songs told of nine towers; at this hour, they might have made a veritable forest, for all she could make out. But the two foremost, twins above the Gate, rose clearly to two merciless horns, their crowns shaping between them the bow of an empty crescent.


    ¡°I might warn you,¡± said Dav, remounting and starting across the stone circle, ¡°it gets a little riotous after sundown.¡±


    Rothesay studied the silent castle intently as they approached, and wondered what Dav¡¯s idea of riot might be. It looked about as riotous as a tomb.


    A cold wind greeted them as they crossed the circle, embraced them with dim swan wings, swift, feathery, strong. Beside her, suddenly Dav began to sing softly, under his breath: she could make out neither tune nor words, but thought it was a hymn to the Lord of Winds. It was oddly comforting.


    They crossed the dike that defended the eastern wall by a swaying rope and timber bridge. Ahead, the empty Gate loomed wide before them. Now Rothesay could see, above and to the sides like skeletal eye-sockets to the Gate¡¯s gaping mouth, two archways too large for windows, and rather large for doorways. Doubtlessly they served some device for defending the Gate; doubtlessly, too, their evocative design was no mere quirk¡ªhard on a peaceable visitor, and dampening to his spirits, to say nothing of how it would work on a simple footman under orders to assail these grim walls. Rothesay squashed a wild terror that she was about to be swallowed alive; besides, how Master Dav would sneer if she ran!


    Yet just before she passed into the shadow within, she saw the grim stone glint and glimmer, sparkle in the hard starlight as with crystal atomies. Then they left the starlight and the glitter and the rushing wind behind for the quiet dark of the tunnel.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    It was broad enough for three horsemen to ride comfortably abreast; and it wound curiously, side to side, in a graceful serpentine line. Dav, however, did not, except the slightest bit to give his new belonging some room, for down the center it was just possible for one to hold a straight line, and Rothesay could see, many yards ahead, a slim oblong illuminated dimly, but redly, as by torchlight. As she clung to his cloak-hem, the Master went his straight, even way, and Winddancer¡¯s hooves rang loud in the silence, a quick, steady heartbeat of homecoming. No, not silence: the tunnel echoed to a confused, chaotic sound from beyond. Riot?


    In the third bend to the right, however, Dav, his pace unvarying as ever, bent aside to follow the curve of the wall for no reason that Rothesay could see, however she strained, then once again took up the straight path.


    What had he skirted? Even as she wondered, the end of the tunnel opened broad and ruddy before them into a cobbled courtyard, walled ahead, with torchlit arches to left and right. Three people raced through in pursuit of another unseen; two more battled with quarterstaves on the top of the wall before them; wild whoops and yells rang in the night. Only her companion¡¯s imperturbability assured Rothesay that the castle had not been overrun, that no massacre, such as ended the rule of the Kings of Peria, awaited them within.


    A shadow hurtling from above barely missed the horse¡¯s nose as it emerged from the passageway. Dav never checked, or even looked, as his would-be assailant rolled aside with alacrity, but remarked placidly, ¡°Nice timing, Rory.¡± The young man stared up at him in plain awe, then turned to Rothesay with the beginnings of a wry remark that died in his throat as he met her face. Then they were past, and she did not catch what he yelled to others behind him.


    The right-hand archway took them through a quieter yard and past a garden-hemmed house, then left through a small portico of fountains and more arches, and she was lost in the labyrinth of Colderwild.


    A seeming battle stormed through the place. Ahead, up a sloping way, a lone swordsman neatly fended off three others; down from a low wall tumbled grappling wrestlers; and from beyond a row of flowering cherry trees came suddenly the rhythmic chanting of people preparing to swing or heave something heavy¡ªbut her amazement was lost in profound embarrassment. The skulker from above had worn no shirt at all, nor shoes nor leggings, having indeed nothing but a tattered loincloth between him and a complete state of nature. Even Alrulf coming in hot from the fields wore more than that!


    For that matter, no one but she and the Master, and the solitary swordsman, wore much more, and the wrestlers, she fancied, were wearing less. Runedaur women¡ªdid they retire while the men ran thus wild? Did they care? What did they wear? As she worried this unforeseen issue, a singularly well-dressed person, all in black, appeared by the horse¡¯s head, and Dav stopped. This was an old man, but very erect, with thin white hair swept back from an imposing profile. He took the bridle with an air that brooked no opposition, but his voice was mild.


    ¡°Welcome home, Master.¡±


    ¡°It certainly is, Nessian,¡± Dav replied heartily, if cryptically. ¡°I¡¯ll see to the horse.¡±


    Nessian did not budge. ¡°You are injured, Master, and you will wish to see the lady Carialla. As will your young guest.¡± He held up a hand for the reins.


    Dav glanced down at her. ¡°Damnably true. Why don¡¯t I just give you my Chain and be done with it?¡±


    ¡°The reins will be sufficient,¡± said Nessian blandly, still waiting.


    Dav flipped them to him, swung his leg over the horse¡¯s head and slid from the saddle. Nessian bowed slightly, Dav snorted and swept past. But as Rothesay, unbeckoned, scurried after him, he called back over his shoulder, ¡°Watch out, Ness¡ªhe talks, and my young guest is going to teach him to read and write, too!¡±


    He strode on up the wide promenade with vigor, giving Rothesay no chance to ask about the impeccable old man. They turned northwards again, crossed a small brook by a graceful wooden footbridge, and the massive keep towered before them: two wings pale as a fog flanked a great round tower, beyond which loomed one of even greater height. Two or three tall windows glowed with light inside.


    The footbridge ended at a grey-flagged circle with a fire-pit a good four yards across at its center, cold now and clean of any ash. Then stretched a broad white pavement ringed about with black pillars, and set with two crescent-shaped pools between whose horns their path lay. Swords clacking woodenly, a dueling pair of men, one rapidly losing ground to his much smaller opponent, moved onto the pavement from her right; Rothesay stopped and watched as finally the big fellow¡¯s foot, forced to another step back, met nothing, and he dropped heavily into the water, shattering its black stillness into spray. He came up swimming for the far side; as the little man darted around and leaped across the crescent¡¯s narrowing arm, though, he retreated to the middle, treading water and inviting his foe to come in and get him. This invitation was declined with silent dignity, the dry one reaching in daintily to retrieve the other¡¯s weapon eddying on the ripples. Rothesay ran after the master of this riot, and wondered, among other things, just how deep the pools were.


    Dav bounded up the broad steps to the great bronze doors and swung one open with ponderous ease. As he hesitated to one side, something hurtled out, pale, fist-sized and chest-high. It narrowly missed Rothesay, and flew on, vanishing into the night. Then he entered and she followed after, blinking and dazzled.


    The echoing entryway, bright and warm with golden lamps in mirrored sconces, was empty of any missile launcher, but full of stunning beauty. The wealth of the Runedaur was not wholly in skill at arms and macabre jest. Pale grey stone, almost misty-looking, flowed up in the likenesses of silver-laced trees whose slender branches met, braiding and knotting loosely in the vaults, and flowering in white marble blossoms with jewelled hearts. Underfoot, water-lilies bloomed in an intricate mosaic, white, green, black and silver, polished bright as water so that one walked, as it seemed, unsupported between the heights and the depths. From somewhere unseen, the harplike ripple of falling water echoed from the stone.


    Rothesay had not seen such magnificence since infancy, and that was heavy and dark with aged woods; or maybe since the golden weight and somber geometries of the palaces of Teginau; nothing like this cloud castle. Bewildered she gazed on mirrors and mosaics, tiles and tapestries; through archways glimpsed further halls and illuminated passageways. Seeing so much, she saw almost nothing, but the stone trees and the water-lily flags, and the lights.


    A short sculptured corridor brought them under the great dome. Above, and again above that, the lofty vaults were ringed about with two levels of balconies, and filled with a radiance like immanent moonlight. No lamps burned there: a silver chandelier carried instead countless crystal spheres that shone as if by imprisoned stars. Magelights of some sort, she supposed silently, but made permanent by powerful magics.


    Dav paused on the threshold. ¡°Hessarif and his Tribe built this place for us,¡± he said softly, ¡°and through the centuries the friendship of the Runedaur and the M¨®riad has not failed.¡± He glanced at her to see what she thought now of his awful house, but she did not notice, staring and staring like any peasant who ever made it so far; and he permitted one dark eyebrow to flicker.


    Crisply he strode out across the floor. Rothesay stepped more gingerly, caught up wholly in the illusion of air and water. Then a shadowy motion caught the tail of her eye. From the first balustrade a great, black, winged shape like a vast and dreadful bat swept down at her and she leaped back. Abruptly it seemed to explode in midair, cobweb brushed past her face as the thing crashed to the floor and rolled and slid right to her feet. The silver light shivered weirdly as the great chandelier swayed and danced above.


    Then it was bounding to its own soft-booted feet, shaking loose its black and tangled cloak, but not swiftly enough. Dav sprang past her, slender sword glinting, and smacked it smartly across one buttock. ¡°Ghost!¡± he yelled.


    ¡°Yield!¡± it cried, a baritone bark of surrender.


    Dav sheathed his sword. The apparition pushed a black hood back from the sheepish smile of a young man, and Rothesay¡¯s still-pounding heart seemed to turn quite over. He was tall, taller than she, and rangy, smooth-skinned and curly-haired, and his eyes were dark and humorous.


    ¡°Welcome home, Master,¡± he said, his rueful smile acknowledging his defeat.


    ¡°Thank you, Kahan.¡±


    ¡°You were not supposed to have company,¡± said Kahan.


    ¡°But I did.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Kahan¡¯s wide grin came to full blossom. He made Rothesay a gracious bow. ¡°Welcome to Colderwild.¡±


    ¡°Prove it!¡± she shot back. This was welcome?


    Dav laughed. ¡°The chit has a point! I wonder what a peaceful homecoming would be like?¡±


    ¡°Impossible?¡± she suggested, still rattled.


    ¡°Probably. I wonder also what else lies between me and my journey¡¯s end? Your penalty, my Ghost, shall be to precede me to your Mistress¡¯s chambers.¡± He pointed meaningfully toward a further hall. Kahan sighed, gathered up his cloak, and went with the air of a man marching to his doom.


    Past bubbling fountains, down a soaring aisle in a stone forest in whose glens jewelled shrines to the Great Ones glimmered behind starlike candles, up cascades of stairs, around shadowy corners, his apprehension proved unfounded. No further assaults awaited them; indeed they met no other person, except a young boy, a page, perhaps, clutching a burden; as he overtook them on flying feet, he called out ¡°Welcome home!¡± and sped on.


    Before a beautiful carven door they stopped. Kahan, by this time jumping at shadows and fancies of shadows, raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before the blow landed and he nearly knocked on the nose of the woman there. He yanked back his hand as if burned, whipped himself aside and plastered his back to the wall. This was more than nervousness, Rothesay thought as his eyes closed in mute prayer; this looked like naked fear.


    The woman in the doorway was small and slight, not pretty but striking-looking, pale with big dark eyes and a wide, unsmiling mouth; an incongruous spray of freckles dappled her nose, but she was not young, approaching forty, perhaps. Her glory was her hair, which she wore loose after the fashion of a maiden¡ªor a queen: rich and glossy, chestnut-dark shot with white like captive lightning-bolts, it framed her face in a thick mane that seemed possessed of a living energy that defied braiding or binding. So Rothesay first beheld her whom reputation made more awful than her lord: Carialla, Lady of Colderwild, sorceress of fire and of night, Mistress of Runedaur.


    Her keen eyes spared a fleeting glance for the vanished Kahan, flicked over Rothesay with remote curiosity, and swiftly began taking Dav apart.


    ¡°Damnation!¡± she exploded, catching sight of his arm. ¡°Now what?¡±


    Dav beamed like afternoon sunshine, ¡°Ah, the tender concern of my gentle lady!¡±


    Carialla swung at him a vicious backhanded blow, from which he weaved aside easily, still smiling. He seemed not the least put out by this assault, nor did she seem chagrined by its failure.


    ¡°I¡¯ll have a look at it,¡± Carialla said icily, ¡°but you can tell Sothia what you did to your shirt.¡±

 V: Initiate (5/5): Life, and Death

    She stepped aside to admit them, and Dav sailed in serenely, bowing unctuously as he passed. But Nessian was quite mistaken: Rothesay did not wish to see the lady Carialla at all; not now. Stiff with reluctance, yet having no choice that she could see, she started after Dav one more time, stepped on the toe of her shoe, and fell sprawling upon Carialla¡¯s floor. It was an exquisite carpet under her nose, she had to admit, but its beauty doubtlessly improved with a certain distance.


    The heavy door shut all but silently. As she struggled for her feet, tangled with sword, scrip, cloak, and trembling, she heard Dav say dryly, ¡°I have brought you a present, my dear.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± Carialla replied through her teeth.


    Then Dav¡®s hand was under her elbow, and Rothesay found herself effortlessly restored to her feet. He dusted her off, straightened out the sword, adjusted her cloak, and then, scrutinizing her face, whipped out a handkerchief and wiped briskly at her nose, cheeks, and chin. Making do with the result, he took her shoulders and turned her to face an impatient, wary Carialla.


    ¡°Mistress, it gives me extraordinary pleasure,¡± said Dav, grandly and trying not to laugh, ¡°to present to you¡ªRothesay, Lady Cherusay¡¯s daughter.¡±


    Carialla¡¯s scathing eyes lashed at the Master. Finding no trace of trickery, for all his amusement, she turned to critique this gift. ¡°Indeed? And where did you happen to find such a treasure?¡±


    ¡°In Nancaras¡ªadrift out of old Paddy¡¯s northern den,¡± said Dav softly.


    The hairs prickled at the nape of Rothesay¡¯s neck with superstitious alarm at that irreverence; but she was thoroughly gratified by Carialla¡¯s ¡°Oh!¡± as though Padriag¡¯s very name were voucher enough.


    The Mistress of Colderwild Hall studied her narrowly, trying to piece together Cherusay¡¯s blood, Alrulf¡¯s outworn rags, and the wizard¡¯s villa. Rothesay, wondering if these two were husband and wife, or at any rate lovers¡ªno, that thought died even as it was born; man and wife, perhaps¡ªwondered if Carialla thought she were Dav¡¯s latest amusement. But the quizzical look from Mistress to Master had nothing of either suspicion or anger in it.


    Dav returned Carialla¡¯s gaze. ¡°She tends pigs, too,¡± he said levelly.


    That was the nicest thing Rothesay had heard on any voice in weeks. ¡°Some of my best friends are pigs,¡± she assured Carialla, an edge of desperation in her voice. The lady only gazed at her for a moment, then closed her eyes expressively. With a wave of a thin white hand, then, she beckoned them to the fire.


    They were in a warm and cozy apartment, carpeted and hung about with tapestries of rich and intricate design that soaked up the flickering firelight. Two big carven chairs sat companionably about the hearth; before a tall, slender window shuttered now against the night, there hung a wide loom; there was a work in progress. In another window, a candle burned on the deep sill. There were tables in the corner, a workbench of some sort and a slanted writing-desk; and all around the fireplace the walls were lined from floor to lofty ceiling with shelves full of books, piled scrolls, and curios including, at a guess, half a dozen human skulls. A full skeleton hung on wires in a niche, and someone in execrable humor had vested him with a jaunty plumed cap, a smoking-pipe in his teeth and his hand bones fastened around a drinking horn. Rothesay averted her eyes, feeling that even an enemy, dead, deserved more respect than this poor chap suffered. Dark reds were everywhere in the apartment, and browns, and traces of dull green and black, and here and there a glint of crystal or gold: altogether, she thought, like stepping inside a bloodstone.


    The big chairs were fatly cushioned in stuffed silks. Carialla waved Rothesay to one, settled herself into the other, set Dav on a stool before her, and began unwrapping his arm.


    ¡°I thought you went after a swordsman?¡±


    ¡°Rothesay it is,¡± said Dav, cheerfully improbable. Rothesay, perched on the edge of her chair and trying to find some way to sit with the responsible weapon, made a swift attempt to lift it up to show her and, forgetting her strength, nearly threw herself out of the seat. Dav buried his face in Carialla¡¯s lap and pounded out his silent mirth on the arm-cushion. After a moment¡¯s tolerance, Carialla seized him by the hair and straightened him up again.


    ¡°Ah, my dear,¡± he began a trifle breathlessly, smiling broadly.


    A soft knock at the door interrupted him, and Nessian entered even as Carialla barked, ¡°Come!¡± He bore a huge tray heavy with many vessels, whence came heartbreakingly toothsome aromas, and Rothesay devoutly wished for a dearth of suppertime ceremony.


    ¡°Ah!¡± Dav sighed. ¡°This is why I keep you, Ness. Courtiers must watch their toes scrupulously; but a good cook may take all the liberties he pleases. Unhand me, woman! I have great matters to¡ªow!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll unhand you when I¡¯m done,¡± said Carialla coolly. ¡°Here, boy¡ªbring that to me.¡±


    A child of perhaps ten had come in behind Nessian, lugging a large urn. He set it between Carialla and the fire, laid some clean white cloths in her hand, and at her nod of dismissal, dashed off again.


    ¡°Who was that?¡± Rothesay asked, shy, but irritated that the boy was given no name.


    ¡°Flick, they call him,¡± said Carialla, not looking up. ¡°Cisconnar is his right name; I advise you not to use it to his face.¡±


    Nessian was at Rothesay¡¯s elbow, uncovering dishes in deft and eerie silence and piling their contents in attractive patterns on a long white plate. There was complex cookery here: she recognized the young scallions, left long, green and fresh; and the yellow flowers and twigs shining out of some of the stuffs must be carrot bits; but most of the ingredients, however homely and familiar they might have been in their original character, were become mysterious strangers decked in exotic and unlikely raiment.


    Nessian held out the finished art, so full that only some of the edges of the plate showed, and with a shock Rothesay realized that the whole thing was for her. Mother Goddess! There¡¯s enough here for my whole family!


    The old man¡¯s misty eyebrows lifted delicately at her evident dismay. ¡°There is something you find unacceptable?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± she started, staring up at him, unable to grasp the concept of unacceptable food.


    Dav turned around sharply. ¡°Take it and eat. Nessian, this is Rothesay. You needn¡¯t take it as a compliment if she cleans that plate: she hasn¡¯t eaten often enough to know the difference between beauty and ballast. Incidentally, she is our newest novice. Go ahead and quarter her with the Silver, but I want her dressed in the Black.¡±


    Nessian blinked. Even Carialla paused to look up. ¡°In the Black,¡± the old man agreed after a pause, inclining his white head in the faintest nod of acquiescence, though it was plain that he meant to have an explanation.


    Carialla was more direct. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°That should become superbly clear¡ªtomorrow. In the meantime, Ness, I hope we have something in the presses to fit her, for I grant those bits of dustclouts she¡¯s wearing only a few hours more endurance.¡± As though clothes had reminded him, he turned to Carialla. ¡°We are wanting a Cleansing, Priestess. We have killed today.¡±


    She closed her steely eyes wearily. ¡°You are the damnedest nuisance. Who, by the way?¡± Then, sharply: ¡°¡®We¡¯?¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s first step into culinary heaven tripped over a memory of eyes, bloodshot and empty, in a face she could not recall wearing any living expression. The food wedged vengefully in her throat; was that where her sword had¡ªwhere she had. . . .


    She was startled out of a grisly eternity by the feel of something cold and hard pressing into her hand. ¡°Awp!¡± She jerked back, feeling it as the sword hilt, and sloshed cold wine onto her knees. Dav patiently closed her fingers on the goblet stem, draped a napkin across her lap, suggested she get a grip on the cup if not herself, and returned to Carialla.


    Rothesay sipped gingerly at first, in case Runedaur wine jumped out of the cup and slapped one around the way the stuff that was not water in Dav¡®s flask did. The wine behaved itself. It behaved very well indeed. As Padriag preferred beer, she seldom had wine; only if Widow Pinnar had a bit to share on a high holy day, the local vintage, of course, and well watered to conserve an old woman¡¯s resources. This wine was not local, it was one of the best in Peria, if not the best in Colderwild¡¯s cellars, and it was not watered at all. Rothesay drank it with astonished relish.


    She set to again on Nessian¡¯s tasteful platter, having learned at Poverty¡¯s knee that a faint or squeamish appetite was a luxury she could ill afford. ¡®Eat up, the Holies only know when you¡¯ll eat again,¡¯ old Auntie Megar used to order, when she would bring her niece¡¯s orphans a pot of something hot: a gruff old sow, but full of kindness little the worse for being righteous, and full of good advice: eat. So she obeyed now, and washed down every savory mouthful with the sweet, fragrant wine as an exquisite counterpoint. She thought she could tolerate a great deal to be able to eat like this every once in a while.


    On honest reflection now, food or no food, she had very little of which to complain. Of course Master Dav made his own rules¡ªthat was endemic to being nobility¡ªbut more important, he was a living monument to intellectual prowess. That sword-like mind, cutting cleanly through rubbish and confusion, excited and stimulated her, and the only boon she craved was to be allowed to watch it work. She looked at him with shining eyes, where he perched still on the stool at Carialla¡¯s feet and bent over the plate they shared on the Lady¡¯s lap.


    Carialla, noticing her gaze, motioned to Nessian, who went at once to refill Rothesay¡¯s cup.


    And the awesome Lady: what power lay incarnate in her! how gracious she was, to receive such a tattered scrap of girl-thing as Rothesay in her very quarters, and set before her food and drink for a princess! Rothesay met the lady¡¯s dark and piercing eyes with a huge, happy smile, and waved her goblet in salute. A minute nod from Carialla, unnoticed by Rothesay, and Nessian collared the floating goblet and filled it again. . . .


    ¡°. . . And, wouldn¡¯t thee know¡¯st, that bad old sow took t¡¯ kitten like ¡¯t was all of her ain¡ª¡±


    Slowly, so perhaps she would not notice it had been absent, Sense slunk back into Rothesay¡¯s wine-dark brain. Dav and Carialla sat like carven stone, staring at her with glittering eyes, silent, fascinated¡ªbut not, she suspected, with her story. Her cup was empty, her plate gone (empty, if the weight in her belly meant anything, though she could not recall eating); Nessian¡¯s fingers touched the goblet¡¯s bowl, and she snatched it away protectively, horrified.


    ¡°Incredible,¡± murmured Carialla.


    Why do I have to keep mentioning pigs to this lady? ¡°Not sho incredible ash your forb¡ªfrob¡ªforber¡ªcourtesy, m¡¯lady,¡± Rothesay mumbled back, responding to a remark she belatedly realized had not been meant for her at all. Oh, stupid!


    Carialla¡¯s eyes flashed. ¡°You mistake me,¡± she said, showing her teeth. ¡°You are not likely to credit me with courtesy again.¡± She broke off a piece of dark bread, powdered it with something white, and passed it to Rothesay, who, having no alternative idea, ate it, worrying. Not courtesy?


    Lord and lady conferred quietly, and then Carialla rose swiftly and strode from the apartments. Dav turned to watch his new possession eat; Rothesay, more dreadfully clearheaded with every bite, suddenly found it impossible to chew with so dry a mouth, and no place to set the last bit of bread aside. She swallowed at last, the lump sticking painfully in her chest, and waved the remainder helplessly. ¡°I can¡¯t eat all this, lord. . . .¡±


    Dav grinned, anticipating something awful. ¡°You will learn soon enough not to say that again,¡± he laughed softly. Then he was on his feet. ¡°Come, chit; bring your bread. One last, er, adventure, and then you shall have a real bed to sleep in.¡± His eyes danced over her and he shrugged coyly: ¡°All by yourself, too!¡± She blushed.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Out Carialla¡¯s carven door, down polished halls and stairs, to darker, rough-hewn corridors well underground they strode together, seeing few others, and those running. Rothesay, freed from Dav¡¯s disconcerting stare, ate up the bread and, feeling steadier now, ventured to ask, ¡°Where is everybody?¡±


    ¡°Playing.¡± An arrow whirred between their heads. Rothesay tripped; Dav paid no heed.


    But Colderwild was vast and intricate, and not all the players she had seen or guessed at outside would fill a quarter of these halls. When she said as much, Dav shrugged.


    ¡°Sometimes we host two or three of the other houses at once,¡± he offered.


    ¡°Still not enough.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± He stopped by a curious silver-chased door and laid a finger to his lips. ¡°One of the mysteries of our Order,¡± he whispered dramatically, and opened the door, leaving her wondering if the mystery were the numbers of Runedaur or the lightless chamber within.


    Down a dark tunnel she glimpsed Carialla by a fire far off in an echoing hall, seeming to stand in a sphere of firelight suspended in cavernous night. Then Dav whisked her aside into a small room. Mirrored candles lit the room through drifting steam. Rothesay smelled hot lavender-scented water before she saw the great copper tub in middle of the raw stone floor, and her heart leaped. A bath¡ªa hot bath, and the Runedaur rich enough to buy more soap than she could use! She looked about for a clothes peg. Dav¡®s blue satin tunic hung on it.


    ¡°Drop them on the floor,¡± he advised, working on a boot. ¡°You won¡¯t be wearing them again anyway; although¡ª¡± he suddenly snagged the ragged hem and fingered it, ¡°we may keep them for costume.¡±


    He returned to the boot. Rothesay clung to her bits of dustclout. They were all she had: her cloak, her scrip, and her sword she thought were still in Carialla¡¯s apartments, though no memory remained of having removed them. Damn that wine. And Carialla. And Nessian. And this whole horrible establishment!


    And the most horrible part of it all now tossed his boots negligently aside, stood up and¡ªRothesay spun away with a little gasp as Dav loosed his belt.


    His mocking voice followed over her shoulder. ¡°You might wait a private turn. You might ask Sothia to draw a second bath. You might draw me into a lengthy and ultimately pointless discussion upon the nature of modesty and being obsessively clothed. You have only to ask my lady¡ªto wait a bit.¡±


    Rothesay turned back to him slowly, stricken, her thoughts fluttering like a trapped bird between the two imponderables: challenging Carialla¡¯s temper; or bathing! with the master marauder of all Peria. . . .


    The master marauder, wearing earrings and a wild, antic look, stalked up to her as she stood paralyzed with dismay. For a long moment he gazed deep into her horror-dark eyes.


    ¡°BOO!¡± he boomed, leaping straight up and flailing. Descending, his hand caught her thin shoulder in a hard grip, and he commanded magnificently, ¡°Choose now to have always been free to bear the naked truth and delight the way out of darkness! ¡ªthe teacher has spoken,¡± he added, pointedly.


    Utterly baffled, Rothesay¡¯s brain grabbed for what sense it could, and chucked her confusion with her clothes in an echo of Dav¡®s abandon.


    ¡°Good. Bathe.¡± Dav slipped sensuously into the bath. Naked, Rothesay danced anxiously on the flags, then plunged in after, hasty for the cover of the water.


    She drew into a little ball on her side of the tub, to avoid the touch of Dav¡®s feet stretched out beside her. Dav offered her a white cloth and a soap from a little stand beside the tub; she accepted them numbly, trying to figure just what had happened to get her into this position. For one wonderful moment, she had felt¡ªwell, like a prisoner released into sunshine, and the whole world was so simple, and easy. Dav vanished underwater, scrubbing at his hair; she watched the bubbles. Runedaur magic: demon-sprung, people said; Master Padriag had never offered an opinion. One of Dav¡®s feet broke the water beside her, and she stifled a lunatic urge to play piggies on the slender toes. Nothing will ever get this insane again. Ever. Gingerly, she applied her soap.


    ¡°I used to collect virgins,¡± Dav remarked conversationally, surfacing again. Rothesay submerged. The hair of Dav¡®s thigh tickled across her buttock, however, and she came up swiftly, trying to pretend her fiery blush came from the heat of the water.


    ¡°I did. I admit it,¡± he went on, as if she had expressed interest. ¡°A grotesque folly on my part.¡± His voice was taut, as if indeed confessing an error.


    Rothesay peeked out of her washcloth. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Exactly, chit. ¡®Why?¡¯ indeed? Because a man is supposed to do so,¡± he replied, apparently mistaking her question. ¡°Virgins are the great prize; are they not? Four years.¡± He glared at her sternly and waggled an admonitory washcloth. ¡°Four years. I admit this only to show how easy it is to slip into thoughtlessness, how comfortable to accept someone else¡¯s thinking. Four years I persisted in this mindlessness. I was eighteen before I allied myself¡ªwith myself; before I sided with my own observations in the face of the world¡¯s opinions; before I acknowledged what I had known for years.¡± He glared now into memory, only able to admit the blunder because denial would be a still greater breach.


    ¡°What was that?¡± Rothesay asked shyly.


    ¡°Virgins are boring,¡± said Dav flatly. ¡°When was the last time you washed your hair?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°That long ago? You¡¯ll wash it now, chit.¡±


    Twenty minutes later Rothesay stood wrapped in a huge white towel of delicious softness and cedared fragrance, between Dav¡®s widespread feet as he finished plaiting her still-dripping hair. The braid he had made went down her back, and she was glad to be thus turned away from him, for he was still naked, wearing only a cloth across his neck to keep his own hair from dripping down his back. She had a vague idea of what an adult male might look like, unclad, thanks to the lewd humor of some Harrowater youths who thought it a great joke to flash their genitals at Anie¡¯s daughters. The girls had always played their part, shrieking and running and setting Alrulf up for yet another fight; but she had not looked closely then, and did not want to now. Still, she could hardly help but know that the Master¡¯s body was as lean as his face, not heavily muscled, but sharply defined, every vein and sinew cleanly cut as if from sleek brown river stone; and liberally scarred: the Master of Runedaur had lived no gentle life. Queer now to find him placidly braiding a young village waif¡¯s hair and singing softly, as if nothing else mattered in all the world.


    He had washed it for her, too, out of swift exasperation with her own childish efforts: her scalp still tingled in the afterglow of the vigorous massage from his fingertips. And she had scarcely set comb-tooth to hair before he had relieved her of that as well.


    She sighed. She was deeply confused, and tired of it. ¡°You¡¯re mad, you know.¡±


    She could feel him tying something to the end of her braid. ¡°Hmm?¡±


    ¡°Mad. You. Nessian. This whole place¡ªit¡¯s nothing like the normal world!¡±


    She felt him stand. A gentle but compelling hand on her shoulder turned her to face him. It was a rude remark, and she knew it; but she meant it, and she was too tired to apologize for stating an honest opinion: if he chose to run a madhouse, let him accept the consequences. She met his eyes squarely, not caring if he would hit her again.


    He studied her face. He was not angry; nor amused. Seeming to satisfy himself of her sincerity, he said in a strange quiet voice, ¡°Believe me, I know well you do not say that for compliment¡¯s sake; nevertheless¡ªI am unspeakably grateful.¡± And he swept her a deep and splendid bow.


    Rothesay stared. Dav stared back¡ªand snatched her towel. ¡°Awp!¡± she squeaked. Dav scrutinized her, despite her floundering, like a horse trader at purchase, snorted, and returned the cloth to her.


    ¡°We¡¯ll see what a few weeks¡¯ decent eating shall do. I wonder: do you need to eat more to support Arngas¡¯s strength?¡± He frowned thoughtfully, but squandered little time on the question, and turned back to the big towel chest.


    The garment he offered was a simple shift without sleeves, woven of old linen, thin, soft, supple as water. She held it dumbly as he shut the chest, apparently taking none for himself.


    ¡°Er¡ªaren¡¯t you¡ª?¡±


    ¡°I go before my Lord as He will take me in the end anyway,¡± said Dav, abandoning his towel completely.


    Rothesay looked at the linen. It was so thin, and short, as to be almost no clothing at all anyway. This is my world now, and my life. . . . Slowly she handed it back. Sighing deeply, then, she drew off her towel, folded it slowly, and laid it on Dav¡¯s stool. The worst of this, she thought, looking at her hands, is having no pockets. . . .


    Dav spoke no word, but silently opened the door to the chamber beyond. She hesitated.


    ¡°Master,¡± she ventured, rubbing vaguely at her hips in an instinctive search for pockets, ¡°do you really worship¡ªDeath?¡±


    He laughed quietly. ¡°A year¡¯s answer or none, chit; both yes and no will lie to you now. You tell me¡ªa year hence.¡± And he stepped out into darkness.


    This great chamber gathered gloom like closely-held breath. Hushed, expectant, Rothesay followed her new master along the wall, which leaned out away from her in tiers to quickly vanish from view. Clothed with the dark, as it were, she lost some of her affronted modesty; the freedom of nudity was a luxury seldom indulged, and she delighted in the rare pleasure of cold silken air caressing her in unexpected ways. She forbore to speak, or to question: the silence was complete, save for the stone under her slapping bare feet. Dav trod silently. Embarrassed, she corrected her own footfall till only a soft whisper remained that she could not wholly erase. How did he do that?


    Soon enough, they faced Carialla. Hooded and gowned in lustrous milky satin spilling like moonlight about her, she sat enthroned upon a gleaming black chair, iron or wood, intricately wrought. Fire danced in the great brazier at her feet, and sweet incense embraced them in drifting veils.


    Out here the floor was worked and polished. As she approached the fire, Rothesay realized that Carialla was not at the center, but just within a circle Rothesay could see inlaid in the stone, a handspan wide and gleaming like her own sword: M¨®riad-steel. More elaborate designs of the same stuff vanished into the shadow of the brazier itself.


    At the edge of the circle, Dav stopped. So did Rothesay, in the brazier¡®s revealing light trying to find some nonchalant crossing of her arms that afforded any concealment.


    In the hollow dark, Carialla¡¯s voice rang low, casting shivering echoes through the unseen vastnesses.


    ¡°What would you at the Fire of Death, bloody-handed ones?¡±


    Dav answered clearly, ¡°We have turned life against life, and brought Death untimely, before His office.¡±


    The reminder struck Rothesay like a physical blow. Rich supper and richer wine threatened to erupt from her; fighting it down, she shuddered and shook, buffeted by a gale of anguish. Demon-spurred memory rode the wings of storm through her brain. Baths, nakedness, wine, riot, betraying highways, vast mazelike cities and condemned vagabonds, alien circle-stones, yellow eyes and dragon orders, haunted battlefields, barrows, sword-changing, and murder, murder twice over¡ªall the nightmare since gathering pokeweed in the hills of home howled in unanswerable torment. She longed to wake to the wizard¡¯s apple-loft, or the drafty old hut and Brannar¡¯s saucy laughter; or to a half-remembered nest of creamy linen that smelled of spruce and dark lavender-washed hair. She dropped to a crouch and clutched at her knees.


    ¡°What would you at the Fire of Death, bloody-handed ones?¡± she challenged again.


    ¡°We have paid evil with evil, and are taken in Evil¡¯s snare,¡± Dav replied. Rothesay shuddered.


    Carialla softened. ¡°What would you, children?¡±


    Dav spread his hands. ¡°We would transform our evil, and sow life anew,¡±


    Evil! I don¡¯t want to be someone who has killed a person, she cried out silently. Pointlessly: nothing, no part of the fabled Runedaur magic could alter that at all.


    ¡°Dare the circle.¡±


    Carialla rose from her seat, half-circled the brazier and stood before them, a dim silhouette haloed in gossamer gold where the light touched the translucence of her robes. She raised a small silver knife, then swept a symbolic Door for them to enter. Taking Dav¡¯s hand, she drew him in between her and the fire, then looked down at the miserable huddle that was Rothesay. The priestess had seen this sort of thing often enough before, knew well the terrible vulnerability of a soul in such a state, a vulnerability that Runedaur training alone, as far as she knew, could armor¡ªand that let such training succeed at all. Dav, she knew, would have been working towards this since he had first collected the girl. For all that, however, her impatience remained unappeased. Stifling a sigh, she reached down and closed a slender but commanding hand on the girl¡¯s arm.


    Rothesay, riven from any will of her own, suffered herself to be pulled to her feet and drawn towards the fire. She drew a shaky breath that trembled towards a sob, and let a sudden whiff of the incense distract her. This was high ritual before the gods; she should be paying attention. Dav had said something¡ªcurious. Transformation? What was that? What about atonement, and not ever being able to make up for taking a human life?


    Dav knelt by the fire. Clumsily, Rothesay copied him. Carialla completed her circle, plunged a hand into a dark urn by her chair and cast a grey powder into the brazier. The fire smothered, and darkness fell. A thick sweetness billowed out, threatening to smother everyone; Rothesay¡¯s eyes stung and watered, sending twin rivulets coursing down her cheeks.


    A lone, hollow-throated bell tolled once. The fire reincarnated in unearthly tongues of blue and violet. Carialla sang out in the Old High tongue beyond the reach of Rothesay¡¯s understanding, and Dav prostrated himself on the floor. She followed suit. Above them, Carialla circled, chanting.


    Rothesay found the smooth stone pleasantly cold to her skin, and its hardness softened by the fact that the hour was well past midnight of a day of dream and nightmare tangled beyond ravelling. Before the Runedaur witch completed her second orbit, Rothesay was asleep.

 VI: Home of Vagabonds, Mother of Orphans (pt 1/4): Challenges

    VI: Home of Vagabonds, Mother of Orphans


    Rothesay sprang wildly awake: how late the morning! The clear light slanted down from a high window much too steeply. Where would the children have got to?


    Better question: where had she got to? She stared around, unable to account for the airy chamber with its exuberantly frescoed walls, tall windows framed in carven timbers, and a half dozen of double bunks like the one beside her. Colderwild.


    She sat down again, fingering the heavily embroidered linens. Morning in Colderwild: now what? Her eye traveled to a small table by the bed, and a chair draped with folds of black cloth. Dress her ¡®in the Black,¡¯ Dav had said. She fingered a fold of the silken stuff: clothes indeed. Man-fashion they were, she found as she covered her nakedness swiftly, though the over-tunic hung longer than customary among Sferan men, past her knees, and the side points almost touched the floor. The trousers, too, were loose and long; no laces for cross-garters were forthcoming, nor yet any kind of footwear. But she smoothed the heavy silk of her sleeve with pleasure: whatever its style, it felt wonderful.


    Quickly she straightened the disordered blankets, soft as fur and smelling cleanly of lavender, and noted thoughtfully that only one other bed was covered. It, too, had by it a chair, a small table with some candles, and a mug and plate and a small pile of furled scrolls. Remembering that she too had personal belongings somewhere about this pile, Rothesay nosed about and discovered under the foot of her bed, not her pack, but a wooden tray with the small knife, tin cup, water flask and amulet-bag which comprised all her worldly wealth¡ªexcept the sword, and the blossom-kalasin. She scowled and nosed further, but they were not in this room. In a moment, neither was she.


    The hall without, though beautifully pillared, was empty and uninformative; but down the wide stairs she found, first, double doors whose painted and gilded splendor suggested more importance than she yet wished to confront. To the right, light flowed in through narrow windows flanking a door of less exalted design, which brought her out under a shadowed porch into a sunlit courtyard, flagged with many-colored stones. Across the way, another wing of Colderwild¡¯s great keep rose against a fine blue sky; to the west a garden flowered with fruit trees in bud. From around the next corner to her right came voices. She braved the corner.


    She faced a loose semicircle of a score of youths, clad much like herself, intent on a lean black figure at the center. Master Dav turned and pierced her with a look as intense and remote as starfire.


    ¡°Here,¡± he announced to the group, and beckoned Rothesay over.


    Surprised murmurs broke out among the younger ones; the elders, better trained, made no outburst, though their widened eyes darted over her. One alone, at the far end of the arc regarded her wholly impassively, showing no sign of surprise, nor of recognition, though she knew him: Rory, the Master had called him, the one who had failed to drop on Dav from above. At the near end, Kahan, tallest of the lot and seemingly the eldest, greeted her with laughing eyes and a white smile, and she felt unaccountably, but gratefully, safer.


    Dav made no introduction, no explanation. Having placed her before the group, he ranged himself beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and extended his arm. Mystified, Rothesay hesitated, then raised her own. Dav bent his elbow. So did Rothesay. He jumped forward. So did Rothesay. Abruptly he strode forward, appropriated a pair of wooden training swords from the two nearest boys, tossed one to Rothesay and struck a challenging pose. She held her ground, but imitated his stance, albeit halfheartedly. Dav dropped his attitude, and turned inquiringly to his pupils.


    They shifted restlessly, and then Rory strode purposefully forward. Sunlight gleamed on his copper curls, but his brooding dark eyes rivaled Dav¡¯s intensity, and the drooping ruddy moustache gave him an almost sullen look. She remembered his heavy muscles; though now veiled in black silk, he seemed no less intimidating. Standing before her he mimicked her pose, relaxed from what Dav had shown her but uneasy still. Then he swept his own sword up and around in a great arc, and regarded her expectantly.


    She glanced at Dav. He gave no sign of his expectations. Turning back to this new playmate, she discovered him folding his arms with a disgusted snort. Dav nodded, and held up a significant finger.


    ¡°What told Rory he would not succeed?¡± With no answer forthcoming from the group, Dav raised a eyebrow at Rory. ¡°I noted that you recognized it at once,¡± he said approvingly, and the young man flushed with pleasure. ¡°Tell them what you saw.¡±


    Rory grinned, which transformed him suddenly from a stormy young thunder-god to a jovial sun deity. ¡°She looked to you! Even if she had mirrored me, it would still have been you she was truly following.¡±


    ¡°Good. Challenge: why should a villein chit who till a week ago knew me only by the very worst of my reputation, obey me so implicitly now? One mark towards knighthood for whomever answers that within¡ª¡± he whistled thoughtfully, ¡°say, two months. Yourself included, chit.¡± He stalked towards her, and the group of boys, in some sense dismissed, erupted into a dozen virulent skirmishes. Kahan and Rory swiftly put down insurrections against themselves and, as the vanquished sought out easier game, drew up in Dav¡¯s wake.


    Could the force of repulsion between two magnets be felt as all the work of one against the other, it would have described neatly the approach of an indifferent Kahan and a bristling Rory. Kahan, slender, loose-limbed and dreamy-eyed, might be nineteen or twenty; rock-solid Rory, less tall but more massive, she took to be her own age. And whereas Kahan bestowed on her the full measure of his friendly curiosity, Rory spent half his attention suspiciously on Kahan.


    She herself was more concerned with their pensive, inscrutable master. Something¡ª


    Dav moved, a minor explosion; Rothesay sat gasping in the dust, unhurt but considerably startled. She ignored his proffered hand.


    ¡°What was that for?¡± she demanded.


    ¡°Comparison,¡± he returned shortly. The hand became imperious. He swept her to her feet and swept off, expecting to be followed, and so he was.


    They crossed the courtyard of colorful flagstones, and statues of several ancient styles, ducked through a colonnade connecting the palatial keep with a huddled pile of smaller halls, rounded the wing that stretched toward the south like a lion¡¯s paw, stepped into the semicircle with the two crescent pools and Rothesay almost danced in a joy of homecoming for mere recognition¡¯s sake. Not since breakfast at the Sternbridge, and Teginau before that, had she seen the same place twice over since leaving home.


    Between the lion¡¯s paws rose the high steps to the great door she had entered last night; a hundred feet above, the great gilded dome shone like a second sun. The most of the stone that upheld it, without as within, was pale as mist in the mountains, and glittered like crushed crystal. The towering javelin windows, many perhaps five times her height yet scarcely more than her breadth, stood framed in slender pillars of black rock like twisted ropes. The slates of the acorn-cap roofs below the dome made mosaic patterns for eagles¡ªand for a pair of men now running along the gilded gables and sliding crazily down gilded flashings to disappear in the folds before she could cry out.


    A quartet of servants like farmhands, armed with shovels and rakes and wheeling a couple of barrows full of muck, rumbled past. Though they touched their breasts respectfully before the Master, they grinned, and gave him more than twice their shovels¡¯ length of berth. In a moment, though, Rothesay spun at the sound of combat behind her, and found one fleeing before Rory, now in possession of the man¡¯s rake. With a quick jab, Rory buckled his knees for him, swept the rake¡¯s teeth down in a vicious bite at the unguarded back, and at the last minute hooked them gently under his victim¡¯s trouser-belt. The farmhand grinned round sheepishly.


    ¡°Yuus kehhp¡¯n ys honor tow-us,¡± he apologized in a drawl almost too lazy to leave his lips. After a moment she worked it out: Just keeping ¡®yous¡¯ on your toes.


    For a moment longer Rory dared him to try to escape with or without the shreds of dignity intact, then tossed the rake to one of his fellows and turned to chase after Dav, who had paid no more heed than a dragon to a kitten.


    They passed the huge fire-pit, cut through the stand of cherries she had passed the night before, leaped the little brook, and waded into a torrent of black and grey wolfhounds that then swirled into a furry whirlpool about her, sniffing at her new scent eagerly. Then it was down a few steps under an archway into a wide courtyard that reeked of coal-smoke and¡ªsomething, an unfamiliar metallic stench that made her head swim, and the hounds fled. To one side a black marble sculpture showed the Earthshaker battling the Lao-serpent; to the other stood a youthful runner frozen in porphyry. More statuary, rather soot-smudged, graced the open doorways of the smithy, itself an art of stone, and its sturdy outbuildings.


    Among the eight or nine men in the yard, she recognized Nessian by his silver head gleaming in the spring noonlight; the big red-bearded fellow, naked but for a colorful loincloth and half a hundred beaded necklaces, amulets and bracelets, was surely the swordsman who had fallen in the pool last night, and there was his small opponent opposite. They were head to head with a small burly man in smith¡¯s leathers who turned in his stubby fingers¡ªher missing sword. She glared, but before she could make a move to reclaim it, ¡°Leoff!¡± Dav barked. They all looked up, but the small knight with the dainty grace of a great lady seemed most directly interested. ¡°I¡¯ve a¡ª¡±


    The big redheaded man stomped over to Rothesay, cutting Dav off. For a moment he stared thoughtfully at her, his fists on his hips. Then he swept her up in a huge bear hug, a hug that lifted her off her feet. There he hefted her for several heartbeats, and she had the odd sense that he was weighing her, in some mysterious way taking her soul¡¯s measure rather than her body¡¯s.


    ¡°¡ªone for you to try, of your courtesy, Arms-master,¡± Dav finished, slightly ironically, when Redbeard put her down again.


    The little man raised one elvish eyebrow fastidiously. He raked her over slowly in a professional appraisal, noting her height with a glance at his large colleague. He was himself fine-featured and colorless, his fair thin hair and moustache making small contrast with a face so pale that the thin white scar from temple to jaw barely showed. But his eyes were dark, cavernously dark, and his black garb lent him a spectral look.


    Presently he sighed, and held out one slim white hand. Kahan respectfully placed in it the wooden sword he still held; a wide-eyed Rory had to poke Rothesay gently with his before she noticed him and took it stupidly in nerveless fingers. Bright curious stares ringed her like so many bale-fires. She flushed hotly, scrubbing one sweaty palm on her tunic skirts; she did not look at Kahan, preferring to imagine his kindly sympathy and fearing to see aught else in him. Leoff attacked.


    ¡°Awp!¡± Rothesay leaped away, dropping her weapon and nursing a shocked hand.


    Ignoring Leoff¡¯s indignation, all the more bitter for its silence, Dav retrieved Rothesay¡¯s fallen sword, and considered her thoughtfully. Then he sneered, cynically, knowingly. Yearning to swing it into his teeth, she all but snatched the blade from him, and Leoff was upon her again. This assault she parried deftly, and some half dozen blows passed between them before she wondered what in the name of the World-mother she was doing; again her hand smarted, and the wooden blade rattled away over the cobbles. Someone behind her, Kahan or Rory tossed it to Leoff, and the Arms-master himself returned it to her, his pale face alight with astonishment. He tried again, and she waved the blade at him as if she were shooing crows, crying despairingly, ¡°No! You don¡¯t understand¡ªit isn¡¯t me!¡±


    ¡°Oh, that is unarguable, chit!¡± Dav spat.


    A few furious moments later, it was Leoff¡¯s sword rebounding from the smithy wall. He let it lie, and stared transfixed into her sheepish face.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Now, what am I to think, Dav?¡± he asked softly in the quiet sunlight. ¡°I should have taken as axiomatic, that an angry fighter is a losing one¡ªtill now.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Rothesay murmured.


    ¡°Yes, you are,¡± snapped Dav. ¡°Let¡¯s hope training will correct that! ¡ªI have been wondering how best to train her to a blade,¡± he went on to Master Leoff. ¡°And you¡¯ll note she has small advantage in other areas.¡± He took two quick steps towards her, and once again she found herself knocked without recourse to the ground. She blinked bemusedly at the long brown hand and the strong ruddy one offered from either side; rather than fuel the palpable heat between them, she refused both with a wan smile and stood up again by her own office.


    Dav wrapped up a brisk explanation of Rothesay and the sword of Arngas with a mention of yesterday¡¯s skirmish in the woods. The big knight¡®s grin split his vast red bush, and his thunderous mirth rolled out to echo from Colderwild¡¯s towers. Nessian, nodding courteously to Rothesay, appeared satisfied of last night¡¯s question. Leoff still stared, amazed.


    ¡°Dav! What a challenge!¡± he breathed. He sounded delighted, as if a ¡®challenge¡¯ were a gift more rare than jewels.


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it? You might say she is literally of two minds! Teach her the letting-go¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªAnd what a power we shall have returned to us, to prove the hounds of Peria!¡±


    ¡°Something of the sort,¡± Dav drawled.


    Rothesay sat with Kahan, Rory, and lunch upon the second-highest horn on Colderwild¡¯s walls, and looked out on the wild spring in southern Peria. Below the walls, at the cliff¡¯s foot, the wide river-meadows were emerald jewels of young grass. The two towns could be seen plainly: Dorchastir, not a mile away where a stream sparkled down from the hills to the young Daorlas, and Kavinsrae on the valley floor a mile or so beyond that. North away, across the Daorlas, the stiff hills wore spring lace of white, pink and tender purple mists upon their shadowy shoulders. And somewhere far beyond lay the rim of the Dragon Sea, and Harrowater¡¯s snug harbor. Padriag¡¯s peas would be blooming.


    She, seated, and Rory, crouching, leaning against the crenelations that ringed the top of the tower, did hearty justice to a sweet, nutty loaf and a wedge of fine old cheese; Kahan nibbled a sliver of each, little more than a symbolic gesture of communion. Her tour of Colderwild had been exuberant. Shelving animosity, her guides had led her at a full run through all the best places: a secret passage into the kitchens, the place where one Morcai fell to his death last summer, and where to jump from the wall to the stables¡¯ thatched roofs standing out most clearly, if not their relative positions: Teginau was as orderly as a geometer¡¯s text by comparison with this rambling maze.


    Certainly Colderwild was run like no other place she knew. The boys climbed, fought and ran in the most precarious places, and no adult demanded their caution. The hapless Morcai, in Kahan¡¯s phrase, was ¡®entitled¡¯ to his death.


    ¡°You have to ask yourself if a thing is worth getting killed for. If your answer is yes, who am I to hinder you?¡± Kahan had explained.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t right or wrong,¡± Rory added. ¡°It¡¯s how you rank things. I let you make your choices, and you can damned well leave me to mine.¡±


    ¡°What if I don¡¯t know how to choose?¡± objected Rothesay.


    Kahan had smiled and cocked an inquiring eyebrow.


    ¡°What do you need to make a choice?¡± Rory asked her.


    ¡°Uh¡ªknowledge?¡± she ventured.


    Rory snapped his fingers. Kahan¡¯s smile broadened. ¡°You may survive,¡± he laughed gently.


    She looked out now on the flower-frosted land and shook her head, unable to picture such complaisance to death in herself. Of a sudden, Rory burst from the preoccupation that had held him nearly silent through lunch, and demanded, ¡°When would you have been hungry?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Hawk-man asked if you were hungry, and you said, I could eat. When would you have been hungry, if we hadn¡¯t eaten now?¡±


    ¡®Hawk-man¡¯ evidently meant Kahan. She wondered what he had done to earn that appellation; then considered Rory¡¯s question. Suppertime would have had her belly rolling, to be sure, but petty inner turmoil hardly qualified as hunger. And missing tomorrow¡¯s breakfast, or even lunch, she could bear, reluctantly. ¡°Tomorrow¡¯s supper, I guess. Why?¡±


    ¡°Huh!¡± he grunted, staring.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    Kahan answered. ¡°An exercise in personal grammary. Though we use the same words, we do not all mean the same things by them. Rory, here, will be ¡®hungry¡¯ by suppertime; Lore-master Merry gets ¡®hungry¡¯ at the mere thought of food. If you are going to control someone, it helps to know how he talks to himself.¡±


    ¡°Am I going to control people?¡±


    ¡°Are you going to be Runedaur?¡±


    ¡°What about what you said before¡ªabout making your own choices, and letting others make theirs?¡±


    Kahan laughed. ¡°Who can¡¯t¡ªor won¡¯t¡ªmaster his own soul must be thrall to one who will master it for him. And someone else will, when you do not. You have been warned.¡±


    ¡°Right.¡± She crushed a bit of bread into a doughy ball, and changed the subject. ¡°Thank you for showing me around today. It¡¯s the closest thing to common hospitality¡ª¡± She cut herself off, not wishing to be rude, however truthful.


    Rory snorted. ¡°Not by half, it isn¡¯t!¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re hiding out,¡± Kahan apologized.


    ¡°It¡¯s your grace day,¡± Rory explained. ¡°There¡¯ll be a Welcoming supper for you tonight, and then you¡¯ll have till dawn. After that¡ªwell, you¡¯re in it with the rest of us. Meantime, the safest place in Colderwild is within your reach!¡±


    Even as the words left his mouth, Rory sensed danger. From his crouch against the battlements behind, a mighty froglike leap carried him halfway across the tower¡¯s top; but Kahan, swift and powerful as a striking snake, took him down in midair. Rothesay leaped to her feet, heart in mouth as the two tumbled violently over the flags. In a sudden tableau, live bronze in Rory¡¯s hand glinted against Kahan¡¯s throat. Something twitched; the blade chimed softly as it fell, and the frozen moment boiled into fresh violence, leaving in her mind a floating afterimage of Rory¡¯s fury, and Kahan¡¯s broad, tranquil smile.


    She glanced down from the tower to the top of the wall below. Thirty feet, maybe: farther than she cared to jump. The only exit was through the trapdoor they had come up by, the trapdoor upon which this battle raged. She watched the tumult apprehensively. It was as like to the brawling of Harrowater bullies, this silent, deadly game, as a midwinter¡¯s wolf fight was to the butting of rams in a sheep pen. And tomorrow she would be ¡®in it with the rest of us¡¯?


    Rothesay bit her thumb. Arngas¡¯s gifts might not be truly hers, but they were in her keeping, and accessible to her use¡ªpartially; certainly she had no other hope of defending her skull from a cracking. What could Padriag want, sending her into this? Well, she might not be Arngas, but she would certainly put him to as much use as she could make.


    ¡®Hawk-man¡¯ should be snake-man, she thought, as Kahan¡¯s sinuous limbs coiled remorselessly about his opponent¡¯s body. Rory flung them both backwards, intending to land on Kahan; Kahan managed a pirouette. Rory loosed his grip to catch himself on his hands, and kept on rolling. But Kahan¡¯s arm slipped from its lodge on Rory¡¯s chin to his throat. ¡°Ghost!¡±


    ¡°See you¡ªin hell first!¡± Rory strangled on his reply, and went slack.


    ¡°Mother Goddess!¡± Rothesay shrieked, as Kahan oiled up from under Rory, whose unconsciousness was plainly no feint.


    ¡°He won¡¯t yield to me,¡± Kahan complained wistfully, as Rothesay dropped to her knees beside the vanquished and slapped at his face, wishing for water. ¡°I give him marks for tenacity, but I have to recall some for bullheadedness. It is sometimes useful to surrender.¡±


    Rory blinked, and flung himself away, then caught her startled face, and blushed hotly. ¡°Son of a¡ª!¡±


    ¡°You can take my kitchen duty tonight,¡± Kahan suggested, ¡°cooking and serving. Beats scullery!¡± he pointed out, as Rory looked mulish.


    Rothesay glared from one to the other, and settled on Kahan. ¡°Look, was that necessary? Can¡¯t you give each other a little peace?¡±


    Kahan glanced sunward. ¡°We¡¯ve given each other a good two hours¡¯ peace. And necessary? It is my duty to him, as a brother in the sacred Order,¡± he smiled broadly, and winked. ¡°I expect no less from him.¡±


    ¡°As tomorrow,¡± Rory put in, still a little sullen and rubbing his throat, ¡°it will be our duty to you.¡±


    ¡°And yours to us.¡±


    Rory looked thoughtful. ¡°Never jumped a girl before¡ªlike that.¡±


    It was not a lewd remark, Rothesay realized with surprise, though the reference was clearly intended: it was strategy, and not sexuality, on which he mused now. She was puzzled. Runedaur had the reputation of rutting goats, yet so far only Dav had regarded her with anything like lust, and was only being rude, at that.


    ¡°Question?¡± asked Kahan.


    She blushed. She would no more give voice to these thoughts than dance naked on the walls. ¡°Um¡ªhow is it you¡¯re not knighted yet?¡± She instantly regretted this subject, too, but it was better than the other.


    Kahan laughed low and dangerously. Rory clapped a hand to his face. ¡°Oh, gods!¡± He crossed back to kneel by her. ¡°Look, Sugar,¡± he said earnestly, his red brows knitting, ¡°you don¡¯t want to talk about something, just say so, and no apologies! But you go getting embarrassed about something, and you¡¯re giving people all kinds of openings to mess with you. As for lying¡ªthat is one thing you don¡¯t do! Ever!


    ¡°Unless,¡± Kahan chuckled, ¡°you are teaching someone how to perceive a lie. For the time, you might as well resign yourself to having your thoughts read, accurately or not, by every non-witch in the place. You might learn the art yourself, if only for self-defense.¡±


    ¡°How do you like having your thoughts read?¡± Rothesay shot back.


    ¡°Oh, no one reads my thoughts. I don¡¯t think anymore, you see.¡± He laughed, but it was a gentle merriment, and she could not stay cross with him. ¡°What was that about not being knighted?¡±


    ¡°Well¡ªI thought you were knighted at fifteen or sixteen? The squires of Teginau¡ª¡±


    ¡°A¡¯n¡¯t Runedaur,¡± Rory said bluntly. Kahan agreed with a shrug.


    ¡°When do Runedaur get knighted, then?¡±


    ¡°Whenever. Dav was eighteen, I believe. Your, er, patron Arngas¡ªsixteen? Mostly between twenty and twenty-five or so. Whenever the Masters agree.¡±


    ¡°What do you have to do?¡±


    ¡°Depends on who you are. My requirements aren¡¯t Rory¡¯s, for example.¡±


    ¡°How do you find out what your requirements are?¡±


    There was a bit of head-scratching over that one. ¡°Likely,¡± Kahan grinned at last, ¡°by being knighted and seeing what you¡¯ve done!¡±


    ¡°You do Challenges,¡± said Rory.


    ¡°Like the one about finding out why I obey Master Dav?¡±


    ¡°Pooh, that¡¯s minor! That¡¯s trivial¡ªjust an exercise in sorting out what matters to you. Any decent conversation ought to turn that up. I mean a challenge, like the beaut I was handed this morning!¡±


    Kahan perked up, all ears. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± asked Rothesay.


    ¡°I,¡± said Rory grimly, ¡°am to steal the Earl of Maldan¡¯s mistress!¡±

 VI: Home of Vagabonds, Mother of Orphans (pt 2/4): Knight Games

    Kahan¡¯s pealing laughter echoed still in her thoughts. She glanced at the door. He should be here soon, to show her the way to supper. She was back in the frescoed chamber of the morning, which she now knew as the Silver Novitiates Hall, that housed the girls who were to be Runedaur sorceresses. Her unknown roommate had been in during the day: the bedclothes were rumpled, and a scroll tossed carelessly upon the chair. Rothesay wished she would come in. Other than her own reflection in the horses¡¯ watering trough, she had not seen a feminine face all day. Kahan was pretty enough, but girl-talk did not come easily while the other person was juggling knives.


    She had spent the rest of the afternoon with the Arms-master, learning chiefly that giant strength did not mean giant endurance; and that Master Leoff¡¯s patience was of a uniquely diabolical magnitude. She would have been glad to collapse, frustrated and exhausted, early on, but such was Leoff¡¯s courtesy, and bottomless tolerance of the stupidest errors, that she could not bear to disappoint him. Time and again she gathered herself for one more effort she had not known she could make; thrust and parry, she fought for that fleet lightning in his dark eyes that betrayed his approval. And sweetest of all, Dav watched throughout. She hoped he noted well what results a little civility could have!


    It was he, in fact, who called an end to the session, when she lay crumpled and gasping on the cold flags and Leoff, himself unruffled, awaited her composure. ¡°Call it, Lee. I¡¯ve seen enough.¡±


    She had been too occupied with her heaving lungs to wonder what he had meant, and later, here on her bed, had been too grateful to collapse for a while. She wondered now. He¡¯d seen enough? Whose session was it?


    She rubbed her arms and shoulders in their silken black sleeves, relishing the rich softness of the fabric, and determined to get a grip on herself. Up till now, she had lived at the beck and whim of events¡ªmostly, she realized, out of loyalty to, and faith in, Padriag. And while that loyalty and faith was unchanged, its object was far away, no likely guide in this shifting black and silver maze. Time she was looking out for herself.


    A laudable ambition, doubtlessly; however, she had small idea just what it entailed. This wholly preoccupied her for a time, till presently she was startled by a soft thud on the black oak door. Kahan! There was an ally. He had offered her warning about letting others think for her; neither should she let him do so, but she felt she could trust him as a sounding board. She bounded softly to the door and flung it open for him.


    And Dav laughed at the feelings fleeting unconcealed over her face.


    ¡°I am desolated to disappoint you so, chit! Ah¡ªmay one ask whom it was you so blithely anticipated?¡±


    Never lie, Rory said. She might refuse to answer; yet¡ª¡°Kahan said he would take me to supper,¡± she said coolly, meeting his eye, more briefly than she had intended. She cast a quick, hopeful look down the hall, and back.


    Dav¡¯s eyes glittered strangely. ¡°Ah! It would be, of course.¡± His shark¡¯s smile broadened. ¡°Perhaps I should Challenge him, to lay bare to you all his devices for commanding your, ah, enthusiasm¡ªwithout losing it thereby. Know that it is Kahan¡¯s intent, chit, and no accident, that you anticipate him so.¡±


    He started down the hall and she pattered after, startled. No! One could not contrive to be that likable¡ªnot that consistently, for that long, at any rate. Maybe the threatened Challenge was designed to force Kahan to discover his own ¡®devices¡¯; she would certainly learn something if he had to share them with her. ¡°Will you?¡± she ventured to ask.


    ¡°No. He could. I shall have to think of something else.¡±


    ¡°Like telling Rory to abduct the Earl of Maldan¡¯s mistress?¡±


    Dav snorted. ¡°That sounds like one of Leoff¡¯s games. Mistress, hey? I wonder what he wants with Sunny? ¡ªAnd he never said abduct, chit.¡±


    ¡°¡®Steal.¡¯¡±


    Dav shrugged coyly. ¡°There are thefts and thefts! We shall see what the boy devises. You, now: is Kahan in any way responsible for that other light I saw in your face?¡±


    ¡°What light?¡± she blinked, trying to recall.


    ¡°Did I not know better, I should have called it battle lust. Care to tell me about it?¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    His mouth quirked. ¡°I¡¯m the teacher.¡±


    That took her aback. Padriag had instilled in her a great joy of learning, which carried, in her mind at least, implicit acceptance of the teacher. But she had just determined to think for herself. . . . She wavered. Should she lay this project before him¡ªher teacher?


    From half a pace behind, she studied him anxiously, this whiplike man. Who was Dav? Where was he from, what did he want, what ruled his life? Who would he have been, if Fate had not brought him here?


    Dav glanced back at her as if she had spoken, and stopped. He looked human all of a sudden, almost as he had the night she met him, the hard veneer of a commander of men fallen away, unveiling the naked soul as bound to death as any other.


    ¡°Already?¡± he murmured, apparently to himself. A light dawned in the sharp face, a pale gleam of something that might be glorious should it rise in full; almost he smiled, a genuine smile of real delight. Suddenly he laughed, swung a steely arm about her shoulders and crushed her to him in a boisterous bear hug. He tousled her dark hair ungently and, laughing at the mess, swiftly unbound her braid and raked it with his fingers into a mockery of order. ¡°That¡¯s better.¡± He took a strand and turned it in the light. ¡°Color of garnets, or wine. One of your chiefest weapons, chit, Arngas notwithstanding. You will learn how to use it, at the very least¡ª¡± he cut off her budding protest, ¡°¡ªso as not to misuse it.¡± He glanced at her sternly, and burst into laughter again.


    Rothesay pushed her dark, heavy curtain back behind her shoulders. ¡°You are the oddest man!¡±


    ¡°But you have met so few of us!¡± His eyes danced. ¡°Come on!¡±


    He was in full run by the time his second foot met stone. Rothesay fled wildly after.


    They came to a high hall and a great pair of black and silver doors: Dav flung them open and posed theatrically before a tumultuous multitude. A flying wooden dagger made a velvet snap upon his chest and rattled to the floor; and in the astonished hush, the Master toppled backward and measured his length on the stone.


    A darkhaired boy of sixteen, eyes bugging, scrambled across the nearest tabletop and paused uncertainly. Dav lay open-eyed and unmoving: Rothesay, just beyond his head, could not even see that he was breathing. The boy edged off the table. The dog beneath it opened his eyes, then closed them again.


    ¡°Don¡¯t do it, Cobry!¡±


    ¡°No, get him! Finish him off!¡±


    ¡°Wait, he didn¡¯t say Yield!¡± Advice burst from other boys like quail flushed from the quivering underbrush. The rest, close to a hundred or so men, watched silently. Rothesay caught sight of Kahan, his face alight with an unholy glee of anticipation.


    Cobry¡¯s training knife lay two or three handspans from Dav¡¯s right knee. The boy crouched and circled toward it, his eyes drinking in every detail of Dav¡¯s pose, hunting hungrily for a betraying flicker of tension. Suddenly he dived for the weapon, a flat, skimming slide to carry him crashing into Dav¡¯s body, blade first.


    Cobry¡¯s impact seemed to flip Dav from the floor, and he landed fighting on the boy¡¯s back as Cobry slid to where Dav ought to have been. A tidal wave of cheers and shouting poured from the feast hall, but Cobry was already ¡®dead.¡¯ Rothesay could not tell if, knowing a contest with the Master was already lost, Cobry merely yielded at once (¡®scared¡¯ to death? she wondered), or whether Dav had ¡®killed¡¯ him instantly; but she saw the pair repeat a brief sequence, at first slowly, then swiftly, before getting up. Apparently death by Dav was educational.


    Dav wrapped one arm around Cobry¡¯s shoulders, claimed Rothesay¡¯s waist with the other and entered into his hall, his shark¡¯s smile spread broad and white and his blue eyes afire. The boy flushed and grinned, half abashed, half elated; Rothesay looked and looked about her.


    This was not Colderwild¡¯s great feast hall, she learned later, but it was lofty enough, and like much of the keep, carved in the likeness of deep forest; two or three boys had found perches in some of the lower stone branches. Down the center of the hall ran a fire pit twenty ells long, filled with fire tonight against the spring night¡¯s coolth. The far end held a raised dais with a long table, and a lone occupant with her back to the bright tapestries, who did not cheer Rothesay: Carialla. Wrapped in heavy white robes over a blood-brown garment, the Lady leaned on the table, her thin jaw propped on her knuckles with a patience that made one want to hurry. Rothesay¡¯s stride broke, and she fell out from Dav¡¯s dancelike tread without knowing how or when she had fallen into it. She could not quite recover it.


    Dav released Cobry with a companionable shove, drew Rothesay into a bound onto the dais and turned them as one to look out over the people of Colderwild.


    They were a brightly colored lot, in red linens and green silks gold-laced and jewel-sprinkled. Only she and the boys, and Dav, sported the legendary black. A ripple of silver caught her eye, and slowly she realized that there were women in the throng, a dozen or so, besides Carialla and herself. One, a pretty lady in her thirties, maybe, held an infant on her lap; and a number of small children darted, climbed, even crawled about, not obviously attached to any given adult. More dogs lounged about, waiting for suppertime treats.


    Dav grinned out over his people. ¡°Who recalls the story of Arngas?¡± he challenged abruptly. Several black-swathed arms shot up; Dav nodded at one. A round-faced boy, an immature thirteen, perhaps, stood up. His thin voice echoed on the quiet stone.


    ¡°Arngas went on Quest for the Lady Dere, and recovered the Moon Bow from the giant Arach. For this deed the Lady bestowed on him the greatest power of his enemy, which was his strength, and granted him a wish besides. And Arngas wished that his strength and his sword-skill would endure forever unchanged. He was the greatest swordsman of his age.¡±


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ¡°Succinct!¡± Dav acknowledged with approval. ¡°Who believes this tale?¡±


    A rustle like wind in the grass passed through the room. Then against the middle of the wall to Rothesay¡¯s right, one bare brawny arm sprang up and Caltern, redhaired Master of Horse, unleashed his rolling laughter.


    ¡°Cal, you believe everything,¡± said Dav scornfully. Caltern only laughed again, and did not lower his arm. Dav turned to Rothesay, but spoke for the room to hear. ¡°Chit, if your brother Alrulf found a fine house and plow with no owner, should he let them lie idle, spoil and rust, because he did not buy them?¡±


    ¡°Er¡ªno. . . .¡±


    ¡°If you had only your own thumb with which to write in the dirt, and one day you found quill, ink, and paper, should you refuse to use them because you had not thought of them nor made them yourself?¡±


    Rothesay decided on the moment¡¯s spur that it was better to die for a little spirit than waste slowly away under the wilting stare of a hundred bored people.


    ¡°Better to learn calligraphy, I should think.¡±


    Dav¡¯s shark¡¯s smile spread wide, and he bowed. ¡°I wish you joy of your art, chit.¡± And such was Rothesay¡®s distracted state of mind that only then did she perceive Dav¡¯s trap for her. He seemed about to turn away without further comment, then turned and stabbed a finger at her. ¡°Rothesay,¡± he announced to the crowd, and fingered a fold of her black sleeve meaningfully. ¡°Yes.¡± He looked at her and raised a lean eyebrow as if satisfied of something. ¡°Welcome to Colderwild,¡± he finished softly, and waved invitingly at the hall.


    Boyish cries of invitation to sit here, no, here, broke out as Dav turned to Carialla. Louder than them all, the silent wave of Caltern¡¯s beckoning arm drew her. As she made her way toward the genial Horsemaster¡¯s table, she caught sight of Kahan, who waved her cheerfully on, but manifestly meant to join her: lightly he leaped up on the nearest of the tables ranged in long rows paralleling the fire pit, and, gathering himself hugely, flung himself into the air, somersaulting across the blazing gap.


    Rothesay¡¯s heart skipped. The Runedaur community paused briefly, casually respectful of the move, and went back to talk, or combat, as Kahan landed acrobatically on the table beyond. He waved again at her and went on to Caltern, table by table, like steppingstones. He stepped politely around people, and they politely leaned or lifted their beers to let him pass, and Rothesay laughed aloud, thinking of more than one child in Harrowater who would revel in table manners like these.


    Dav¡¯s introduction of her had been cryptic enough, but no one pressed for explanation. The men among whom she picked her way were knights proper, she supposed. A few seemed to be Dav¡¯s age, rarely younger, mostly older though no one approached Nessian¡¯s venerable sixty. She wondered what made these proud, violent men follow a young man, and shivered involuntarily. She did not know if Dav were indeed best suited to lead this lot, but she wanted no part of his overthrow, if only because of her squeamishness for blood and pain. Uneasily she looked into the faces raised in greeting, hunting for hint of intrigue, as if she would know it if she saw it.


    Few were handsome; none, not even the one scarred as if by fire, truly ugly; all of them, lean or broad, bearded or clean, wrinkled, smooth, or battle-scarred, compellingly interesting. And though they openly appraised her physical form with pleasure as she passed, often nodding as if to the artist behind this creation, the welcome she felt was warm, without leer or slyness. By the time she reached Caltern¡¯s table Rothesay felt, for the first time in her adolescence, like an appealing person rather than a succulent pork.


    Just as that thought crossed her mind, she met the Horsemaster¡¯s eyes, and Caltern¡¯s laughter boomed out again. Of all Kahan¡¯s alleged mind-readers, surely the Masters were the best, but she did not mind, not Caltern at any rate, whose high good humor implied a fair measure of human charity. She plunked happily down on the bench beside him, all thought of uprisings forgotten as she discovered that the loincloth was no more: apart from his jewelry, the Horsemaster was entirely unclothed. Rothesay suffered an instant¡¯s shock, sucked air¡ªand released it along with any expectations of normality. Whatever else this Order of Death was about, predictability was no part of it. Possibly that was apposite.


    ¡°Good girl,¡± Caltern rumbled, and handed her a wooden trencher.


    Kahan oiled in beside her. ¡°How does it feel to sit next to one of the most dangerous men in all the Dragon Sea Kingdoms?¡± he laughed, indicating Caltern with a playful toss of his head.


    Rothesay shrugged. ¡°Oh, well¡ª! After bathing with the most dangerous one¡ª!¡± She broke off.


    Too late: she had already the attention of everyone in earshot, silence spreading like a ripple in a pool from her unfortunate revelation. The boy setting out tankards of some fragrant drink froze with one poised above the table. Caltern glowered balefully.


    ¡°Think I couldn¡¯t break that little cock¡¯s comb like a dead branch?¡± he growled low in his throat.


    Rothesay quashed a fleeting hope that he was not serious, and wondered if it were even possible to apologize. She herself could probably break the little cock¡¯s comb¡ªproviding he couldn¡¯t move¡ªbut the thought did not cheer her.


    ¡°Break him? You couldn¡¯t even touch him!¡± Kahan grinned, comfortably indignant.


    Caltern¡¯s scowl melted to mirth. ¡°Need to trust your gut, girl.¡± He held up an educational finger. ¡°You knew I was joking. Then you thought better of it. You think too much. Order¡¯ll fix that.¡± He poked the tip of her nose gently, laughed, and turned to scrutinize his mug. The server, released by Kahan¡¯s light challenge, had laid out his burden and gone on; Caltern glanced after him, and took Rothesay¡¯s.


    Kahan took Caltern¡¯s. A stiletto appeared magically in his hand and he stirred the drink with it, stabbed the depths, and brought up a small dark bean. ¡°Artist!¡± he accused the absent assassin, and showed Rothesay the Death¡¯s glyph carved painstakingly on the tiny flat of the bean. ¡°Cooked, so as not to rattle in the cup,¡± he added, and ate it. ¡°Go ahead, take a drink. The trap¡¯s sprung¡ªit only counts if you don¡¯t find the ¡®poison¡¯ before you drink much, and it doesn¡¯t count for you tonight anyway.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s nice.¡± Rothesay tried her drink, gingerly, then delightedly. It was a cold tea, flowery and spicy, sweet enough in its own way that she declined the pot of honey offered by the grizzled knight across the table, but Caltern took a huge dollop. This was so popular a drink with the Colderwild residents that a large vat was kept by the kitchen doors, ready for the dipping and exempted from being poisoned.


    ¡°Unless you count contact poison on the dipper itself,¡± Kahan amended. ¡°Or on the handle of the vat lid.¡±


    ¡°There were some interesting booby traps under the lid last winter,¡± said a knight, a young one newly belted, perhaps, in his mid-twenties or so. Kahan introduced him as Garrod.


    ¡°Weren¡¯t there!¡± Kahan agreed ruefully, rubbing his breastbone tenderly. ¡°And at least one packed a mean wallop!¡±


    ¡°Who set them? I left for Rose House about then, but I never did see anyone claim his ghost¡ªthough I saw a good half-dozen kills.¡±


    Kahan¡¯s face blazed with a sudden maniacal light, like sleepy coals spurting a jet of fire, startling Rothesay already accustomed to his languid, dreamy manner. ¡°It was the Runt!¡±


    ¡°Flick?¡± Garrod howled with laughter.


    ¡°And he didn¡¯t collect his ghosts, he was happier keeping everyone mystified. Inventive, that boy! We should send him to be M¨®riad-trained. Watch your step, my friend: he hasn¡¯t stopped at vat lids.¡±


    Garrod grinned, nodding thanks for the warning, and he and Kahan as one sipped a tiny amount of tea and savored it.


    Garrod¡¯s nostrils flared. He swiveled casually on the bench, then struck like a snake at the boy sitting behind him just before the boy could slither under the table. Holding his prisoner by a twist of hair, Garrod spat his mouthful back into his cup. ¡°Babe, if you must use a poison with flavor, don¡¯t put it in a familiar drink!¡±


    The boy twisted around to stare at his intended victim in bewilderment. ¡°But it doesn¡¯t have a flavor!¡±


    Garrod laughed, ruffled the hair and cuffed him. ¡°Then you¡¯d better improve your sense of taste! Here, take this and get me a fresh cup. A clean cup!¡±


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just drink that, since you set off the trap?¡± Rothesay asked as the boy danced off.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to empty my guts before I¡¯ve put anything in them,¡± he replied dryly.


    ¡°It was real poison?¡± she squeaked.


    ¡°Chorris root extract¡ªa violent purgative, but not lethal.¡±


    ¡°Though you may wish it were!¡± Kahan murmured.


    ¡°Did you really taste it? Or did something else tip you off?¡±


    ¡°Yes and yes. You were facing him: you must have seen him squirm. As for taste¡ªwhen you can identify the provinces of Peria by the flavor of the water in your cup, chorris root becomes relatively obvious.¡±


    Servers moved up the aisles between the tables, bearing steaming trays and baskets of bread. Only half were boys: the others were men, including one older man in black, and two women. Rothesay saw Rory one aisle over, unloading his tray. She was about to venture a wave, when he caught sight of them, and her heart quailed at the dark fury that swept over his face. He snapped bitterly back to his work; and she had made no sign of greeting, or even recognition. Beside her, Caltern mountain rumbled pensively. Kahan swirled his tea. Garrod glanced at the three of them and shook his head.


    Food came, a culinary celebration of the springtime: hot stuffed grape- and cabbage-leaves piled like logs, dark green and light; strong herbs, spinach, onion, and mustard, in a steaming soup for the winter-starved heart¡¯s lust for lifesap; hearty young-barley meal; two kinds of mead and a cherry wine; and bread so rich the aroma alone might sustain life.


    Full of the savory smells welling up to envelop her, the room hushed at no signal Rothesay could sense. The men at her table sat motionless before the feast, not looking around or at anything in particular; by the silence, no one did in all the hall. Fire crackled quietly. Rothesay bit her lip and, gazing wistfully at the soup, and awaited a drama.


    Kahan leaned close to murmur in her ear, ¡°Pass the bread?¡±


    Slowly she complied, cringing as the slender withies of the basket creaked loudly in her fingers. Kahan helped himself to a modest chunk and plied the honey pot generously, letting the sweet gold overflow and pool silently on his plate. At her stare, his easy smile widened, and he nodded toward the front table. There Carialla sat, eyes downcast in deep thought; Dav wrenched a pepper-mill with deft, violent grace, whipped it aside, and pounced on his supper.


    ¡°He does not come here to meditate,¡± Kahan laughed quietly, as diners began to move again and conversation woke languidly. He displayed a bit of honeyed bread. ¡°You must honor the death that sustains your life, be it only a stalk of grain¡ªbut no one will tell you what form your honor must take, or when. This silence is traditional and most of us enjoy it.¡± He paused pensively, watching his master, and nibbled a crumb. ¡°But I think Dav does not breathe without honor.¡±


    Rothesay scowled. That rude, evil-humored, treacherous rogue, feel honor?


    Caltern rolled six stuffed leaves onto her trencher, a dozen onto his own, and shoved the platter at Kahan, who took one. Before she could speak, Caltern added a huge scoop of meal, mashed a crater in it and waved a small pitcher at her. This held a beautiful clear yellow sauce, tart and sweet at once; as she drizzled it into the crater, Caltern half-emptied the meal-bowl onto his green logs and narrowly missed her forehead in passing the remainder to Kahan. A chunk of bread dropped past her nose as the bread basket passed by above, and then Caltern was staring at her.


    ¡°Done with that?¡± he growled, claimed the pitcher, and flooded his plate with sauce. Sticking a huge finger in the loop of the handle, he spun it end over end and flipped it over her plate to Kahan, who speared it on his own finger, let it turn twice more around, and dripped a trace on his meal before spinning it on to Garrod. Garrod snatched it bodily from the air and set it quietly on the table. It looked unnatural.


    Kahan snorted. ¡°Knights! They¡¯re soo stuffy!¡± Garrod grinned.

 VI: Home of Vagabonds, Mother of Orphans (pt 3/4): Revel

    The leaves, cabbage and grape, were tender and juicy, filled with slivered baby beets and young pea-pods; she polished them off, and three more, before even beginning to think about conversation, or of offering a tidbit to the hound snuffling at her bare foot. Beside her Caltern worked steadily down through his pile; to the other, Kahan picked delicately at an amount that would, she thought, scarcely feed little Persli.


    Persli. She had spared her family scarcely a thought since Floodholding. What, and how, were they doing, while she was dressing in silk, sleeping on down, and stuffing herself on luscious dishes beyond the compass of fantasy?


    Heartsick, she leaped to her feet¡ªand froze in puzzlement with the Horsemaster¡¯s big hand heavy on her head. She sat again. Caltern looked at his hand.


    ¡°Huh! Some wish,¡± he grunted. ¡°Oughtn¡¯t¡¯ve made it off your seat!¡±


    The strength of Arngas had thwarted him. She started to babble an apologetic protest, but he cut her off. ¡°Big rush¡¯ll keep till morning. Won¡¯t help them, your running off all redeless into darkness.¡± He pinched at her ribs and, catching only cloth, plopped his chunk of honeyed bread onto her half-empty plate. ¡°Eat.¡±


    ¡°But, Master¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡®Cal.¡¯¡± As the informality stunned her, the Horsemaster poked her nose again and said firmly, ¡°You belong here.¡±


    She shut her jaw, pondering. That might be true, now; but they were still her family, and she loved them. ¡°Mas¡ªah . . . but it isn¡¯t fair, my having all this while they are cold and hungry,¡± she objected.


    Caltern shrugged. ¡°Don¡¯t know about ¡®fair.¡¯ Family? Who, exactly?¡±


    As the Horsemaster slowly cleaned his laden plate and another, Rothesay told him all about her people in Harrowater, about Brannar the bold, winsome Meryth, and sickly, spirited Persli, all brain and no body; Thyrne, the good mother; and Alrulf, whose character took on truly heroic stature in her paean.


    As she was about to start in on neighbors, beginning with Pinnar, Caltern glared her to silence. ¡°Think the best move is to go back and starve with them?¡±


    She had no answer. Put like that, it did seem empty; but neither could she stay in bitter luxury at home in Colderwild. Caltern watched her inner battle for a moment; then, rummaging among the many necklaces tangled in the thick red hair on his chest, he pulled up a long crystal, a pillar of tourmaline, and held it out to her. She took it gingerly, careful not to tug the silken cord still looped about his neck, uncertain what this meant.


    ¡°Magic fairy elf wand,¡± he said. ¡°Go on, wave it. What would you wish for them?¡±


    She laughed, a trifle giddily between homesickness and enchantment with the big man¡¯s whimsy. ¡°Oh! Well, well, we¡¯ll have to start with a farm of his own for Alrulf. A big, stout house with no drafts, and a flock of the best sheep in the north.¡±


    ¡°Sheep, not cows?¡±


    She flashed him a puzzled look. ¡°Sheep eat peas, the vines and all.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t know. Next?¡±


    ¡°A fishing boat, all white. Ponies for the girls, and fine woollen gowns, so red and so green, and linen shirts, and copper pots. A housekeeper¡ªGyrna would be perfect: she¡¯s a young widow, or not so very old, and her babies all died, and she likes the girls.¡±


    ¡°Go on.¡± He tapped the crystal with a thick nail. ¡°Unlimited wishes here tonight.¡±


    ¡°Right! More land, better, too, for Mat and Thyrne, and better stock: they¡¯ve had naught but grief from their present lot, or what¡¯s left of it. And a boat for Mat, and woollen cloaks, and a copper kettle for Thyrne. And¡ªand a colt for Matkin, that he might grow up with it.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± he growled when she stopped. ¡°No castles, or chests of gold and jewels?¡±


    She laughed, rather darkly. ¡°Ow, nay! They¡¯d not be happy with all that¡ªhard to gossip over the back fence of a castle, and with the neighbors all jealous, at that!¡±


    ¡°Aye¡ªand neighbors¡¯ feuds are called ¡®war,¡¯¡± Kahan chuckled.


    ¡°Good girl,¡± said Caltern, retrieving his crystal from her grasp. ¡°Hey! You, almost a knight!¡± he barked at Kahan. ¡°You get all that?¡±


    ¡°Yes, Master,¡± he grinned back.


    ¡°Do it.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Master. By Lightsolstice?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯ll do. But subtly.¡± He stuck a finger under Rothesay¡¯s jaw and shut it for her.


    ¡°B-b-b-bu-! I¡¯ve done nothing worthy of all that!¡±


    And the master grinned hugely, wickedly, and spread his big arms wide. ¡°You will!¡±


    Then they were rising, clearing away the dishes in a twinkling of artful hands, and piling tables and most of the benches back against the forested walls. A few benches remained at the ends of the hall, for those who still lingered over their supper, though they had to hold their plates like picnickers. Someone started a dancing beat on a deep-voiced drum, and was swiftly joined by others, till the very stones throbbed to a chorus of passion. Men began to clap and stomp, steadily at first, then faster and faster, the drums thundering after, exploding at last into a demoniac crescendo, yipping and howling like a blood-crazed wolf pack. ¡®Stuffy¡¯?


    Steel crashed on stone. The wolves subsided; the drums flowed together in a hot, sensuous sound that entered her body like a possessing spirit, and tried to lift her flesh in dance. Kahan plucked her sleeve, interrupting the possession, and led her around a widening circle of people to the front dais. The high table was now hidden under a burden of pies, cakes, creams and sweets, and Kahan¡¯s long, deft fingers snared half a dozen golden sugary nuggets, more than he had a right to be able to hold, slipped her three of them, and pointed her back towards the center of the circle.


    The steely crash had been somebody¡¯s sword: as she looked, a second was flung across the first. Someone was dancing there, dancing like flame¡¯s flickering, if flame were ever so black. Looking up from the brown feet flashing gay and unharmed about the cold blades, she saw it was Dav. And a third sword rang to the challenge.


    He danced as he had wielded her sword on the hill after the Nancaras, as he had mounted or dismounted Winddancer, or simply walked: to move was to dance, to feel the suppleness of his body¡¯s power as an act of nature, as a thing that happened as a leaf unfolded or lightning burst. And the thing-that-happened was his will: she would thrill to joy or grief, hope or fear, love, laughter, or peace, at the bidding of the least gesture of the master.


    ¡°Well,¡± Kahan murmured almost apologetically, ¡°he is Master of Dance.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°A Runedaur House has five Masters and five Mistresses. Ours are Arms-master, though it¡¯s the Arms-mistress at Kingscroft; Dance-master; Horse-master, or Ship-master at Windhome; Lore-master; Healer-mistress¡ªor -master, again at Windhome; Music-mistress, Magic-mistress¡ªthat¡¯s Carialla; can you tell?¡± he grinned, ¡°Hunt-mistress; and two are the Open Hand. One each are the Master and Mistress of the House, and two of those are Master and Mistress of all. Usually both of those live here at Colderwild, like Dav and Carialla, but it isn¡¯t necessary. You¡¯ve met all our Masters except the Lore-master, but if you wait by this table long enough, you¡¯ll amend that!¡±


    ¡°You mentioned him; he likes to eat?¡±


    ¡°Passionately! The only thing better than eating is learning. I really don¡¯t know where he ranks women.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that other one?¡± she asked still unable to look away from Dav, with five and then six blades to play among. ¡°About a ¡®Hand¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Oh, the Open Hand? You might call them Masters of Service. In Colderwild, they¡¯re Nessian and Sothia.¡± A seventh sword rang down, and Kahan laughed. ¡°Six is my limit! So far. Dav¡¯s gone to eighteen before.¡±


    Then a dozen boys launched a sortie upon the sweets table, an orchestrated military effort with flanking maneuvers and feints to imaginary defenders. They carried the victory, and attempted to carry the table, but the ancient oak and its sweet burden defeated them. Rothesay thrust her two remaining cookies in her sash and leaped to join them.


    ¡°Get the other end!¡± she shouted, pushing the nearest six that way. She heaved, they heaved, and the table rose, somewhat higher on her end. The pastries trembled as the war band, now in possession of a prize they never seriously expected to take, struggled to a consensus of where to go with it. Too late.


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    Drumbeats pounded an urgent alert. Perceiving the marauders, the rest of Colderwild surged to the defense: though any two of them could have overpowered the young raiders and many of them could have done so singlehanded, they were not about to leave all the fun to someone else.


    Rothesay dived for cover under the table, but a swift, powerful arm seized her about the waist and flung her into the air. Six hands caught her and held her aloft, and with bloodcurdling howls of triumph bore her at a run down the length of the hall. Her struggles to escape availed her nothing, despite her power, for her captors offered no resistance to her efforts and often aided them¡ªwell past what she wanted, to the point of uselessness, and her great web of hair betrayed her, tangling about her. They opposed only her descent to the floor, and Arngas¡¯s strength could not abet the strength of earth¡¯s desire for earth. And she could no more catch hold of their arms or sleeves than of so much smoke.


    The hall whirled: they flipped her head over heels onto her feet in the corner. She caught her balance against the wall and spun around, fighting free of her hair, as they upended a table to block her in.


    The thickset fellow with the greying raven beard grinned. ¡°This,¡± he announced, pointing into her corner, ¡°is prison. You are the prisoner of war. We go to claim your ransom!¡± He tossed a cookie high into the air, caught it in his teeth, and winked saucily. Then he exploded in a back flip with half-turn, landed on running feet, and ran yipping back to the melee. His cohorts followed, as silent and slinky as shadows.


    Rothesay stood, stymied and laughing, watching them go. Her late compatriots: would they stage a rescue? Were there any left? Then she saw knight battling knight: the adults had fallen into factions, warring gleefully among themselves; or, quite likely, it was every man for himself. Watching eagerly for Kahan, she fished in her sash for her cookies, and found nothing.


    Thief! She shook helpless fists after Ravenbeard. He had to be in his fifties, she thought, and ought to be jouncing a triple lapful of loud, strong grandchildren, rather than outplaying the whole nursery. Well, he should have the courtesy to bring her some replacements: it was a gaoler¡¯s duty to tend to his prisoner¡¯s needs, especially a prisoner worthy of ransom, and she needed a tart and some seedycakes, and more tea, for a start.


    She danced impatiently in her corner, watching the strange games of the Runedaur knights and wondering whom to cheer. A curious figure caught her eye, a strange island of calm in the sea of uproar. He moved placidly about the contested table, making his choices with the care of a gem merchant. Then with a small plateful of goodies in one hand, and a mug in the other¡ªvery full, for she saw him sip from it without tipping it¡ªhe made his tranquil way among assaults and brawls towards the great doors. Bodies flying in attack swept before him, blades¡ªreal steel! she realized with a shock¡ªflashed behind him, and he might have been alone in all Colderwild for all the notice he took.


    He wore a faded blue tunic, frayed at the dangling corners, sleeves rolled serviceably to his elbows, and his stained leather apron reminded her of Dufgar the Harrowater tanner. She thought of the smith who held her sword, and considered that the servants of the Runedaur must be well accustomed to their masters¡¯ lunacies. This fellow was lanky and slightly stooped, with the rigidity of seaweed; large bony hands carried their burdens delicately; thin mousy hair strayed into pale, preoccupied eyes deep-set above a narrow, broken nose and a slack jaw that hollowed his cheeks. Not yet thirty, she thought.


    Just before the doors, his gaze drifted her way. The absently-parted lips lifted in a sweet smile, revealing tall front teeth, twisted and chipped but clean. He changed course with his next step and ambled over to her.


    ¡°Hullo, I¡¯m Rothesay,¡± she said kindly, after a time in which he merely stood and gazed interestedly at her.


    He nodded and bobbed his head towards the dais. ¡°So Davi sayed, come to make more our loves.¡± He proffered his plate and she accepted a beautiful tiny swan carved of sugar-paste, with thanks. ¡°Tha¡¯rt not playing,¡± he observed, looking her barricade over.


    ¡°I¡¯m in prison!¡±


    ¡°Guess tha art, at that,¡± he mused. For all her travel, his accent was new to her. He took a drink of his cup. ¡°Er, what is¡¯t imprisons tha?¡±


    She pointed back towards the battle. ¡°Ravenbeard and his two liegemen. They went to ransom me,¡± she replied, licking sugar crystals from her lip.


    The tanner stared vaguely at the crowd and his jaw dropped further. ¡°Ravenbeard?¡±


    ¡°Him; the one in the gold shirt and the red sash, the one fighting with¡ª¡± she stopped short: it was Nessian. She had thought him too urbane for these follies, but there he was, and by his elegant smile, enjoying himself hugely. Yet he puzzled her. Runedaur were supposed to be the finest warriors in several lands. Dav, now, moved a blade with a surety that let one understand without question that if he missed, he was only toying. Nessian moved gingerly, even uncertainly, and held his sword as if he were not altogether sure which was the business end.


    Nonetheless, Ravenbeard was making no headway at all.


    ¡°With Nessian?¡± the tanner caught on, and laughed. ¡°Ravenbeard¡ªaye. ¡¯T was raven once; long agane.¡± His eyebrows wrinkled together, and he looked worriedly from the overturned table to the knight and back. ¡°How doth he confine thee¡ªfrom oot there?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s part of the game,¡± she explained patiently.


    ¡°Ah! Tha¡¯rt a prisoner of rules,¡± he nodded, apparently reassured that no strange new magic was at work. ¡°Why does he get to make them?¡±


    ¡°Did he make this up? I thought it was a regular piece!¡±


    ¡°And if it were, what of it?¡± Before she could devise a reply, he went on thoughtfully, ¡°There is a courtesy called ¡®honorable confinement.¡¯ The prisoner¡ªespecially a ransomable one!¡ªis made free of his captor¡¯s demesnes by day, by honor bound not to escape. But by night he must be properly locked up so that he hath an honorable time to try his bars and escape of his own wits.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Seems to me, if they meant to keep thee from the play, at least they could set th¡¯ a guard to enforce it¡ªif he could. What wouldsta do, if tha wert truly so imprisoned?¡±


    Put like that, the good sense was clear to see. Rothesay put her hands to the table¡¯s edge and bounded out. ¡°Thanks!¡±


    The tanner grinned back. ¡°Na, seest that nothing held thee here but theyne own fancy. I did nothing to free thee¡ªlook, my hands are too full¡ªexcept ask th¡¯ a lot of fool¡¯s questions. Likely tha¡¯lt have to ask them theyself next time.¡±


    ¡°Likely,¡± she laughed. ¡°What is your name, O Releaser of Fools?¡±


    The tanner¡¯s jaw dropped further than ever, and the pale eyes went round. Rothesay froze, stricken: ¡®the Releaser¡¯ was a title of the Lord of Death.


    But the tanner began to laugh gently, and his sweet foolish smile returned. ¡°Well, I¡¯m honored!¡± he murmured, shrugging loosely. The movement was too large, lifting and rippling the whole of his fluid body like weed in the tide, and the tea sloshed high in his cup, giving him an anxious moment as he swooped after it. He smiled again in happy pride as he caught the stuff and the liquid settled in peace at last. ¡°Merrithorander.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°My name. Tha asked.¡±


    ¡°Right! Thank you,¡± she smiled. It figured that the Master would have a simple name, while the simpleton had a tongue-twister as long as his gangly legs. She made him a flowery bow, her dark hair shadowing her round. Merrithorander grinned and bowed back, almost lost his tea again and threatened his pastries, too.


    ¡°Guess I¡¯ll go before I lose them all,¡± he said ruefully. He cocked his head, almost to the horizontal. ¡°Go thee and play, then, my new friend.¡± He waved his cup in salute, turned and drifted away like ambulatory kelp.


    Rothesay ducked, bobbed and slithered her way past leaping, dancing, sword-juggling combatants, back to the dessert table, eager to try something of each delicacy. Tonight was better than Harrowater¡¯s Lightsolstice Fair. Come to think of it, it should be just about Summersgate, what she supposed Raian had meant by ¡°Sowingfest¡±; maybe this was some part of that high holy day¡¯s festivities. In which case it seemed the Runedaur forsook the rituals for the blessings of the Mother of All and went straight to the feasting. It figured. Equally they surely did not do without the more private and personal invocations of fertility traditional to this festival, though. She would be wary.


    Kahan lay sidelong on a nearby bench, hand propped to cheek, watching the mayhem; he flashed his white teeth in a joyous smile as she drew near, and sat up. Rory drifted silently up beside her. ¡°Hullo,¡± she said, a little shyly, and offered him a choice from her plate. ¡°All done work?¡±


    ¡°Yes; thanks,¡± he murmured. ¡°Here.¡± He gave her one of his two mugs of tea.


    ¡°You look idle,¡± she said to Kahan, offering him a choice as well.


    ¡°Me, idle? No! I¡¯m killed,¡± he explained, picking a small piece of candied violets.


    ¡°A prisoner of rules,¡± she suggested, remembering the tanner¡¯s words. ¡°Suppose I invoke necromancy, and declare you a witch-corpse, and send you back in to fight?¡±


    ¡°Now there¡¯s a new idea!¡± he laughed. ¡°Did you get that from Master Merry, or are you naturally inventive?¡±


    ¡°Master Merry?¡±


    ¡°The Lore-master¡ªthe one you were having such a chat with from behind that table.¡±


    Rothesay gaped. ¡°Lore¡ªthat bubblepate?¡±


    With a wild peal of merriment, Kahan toppled backwards off the bench, legs in the air, helpless with mirth. Rothesay¡¯s green eyes narrowed, and she leaned out over him to deliver the killing blow: ¡°I also thought he was a tanner!¡±


    Kahan shuddered, unable to draw a breath. Maybe he would have the grace to pass out. Glancing back, she found even Rory succumbing to a smile.


    ¡°That apron? It¡¯s to keep the ink off of him,¡± he explained. ¡°Don¡¯t blame you for mistaking him, and Hawkman oughtn¡¯t laugh, because getting someone to underestimate you can be better than armor sometimes. You¡¯re going to have a powerful advantage that way, Sugar.¡±


    Two knights, strong fingers locked gaily about each other¡¯s throats, abruptly turned the scuffle into a shuffle, and, still strangling each other, began a goat-footed dance. A nearby drum picked up the rhythm, and more dancers leaped in as pipes cried out gay and abandoned. Rory spun, extending an invitational hand to Rothesay.


    ¡°But I can¡¯t dance!¡± she protested, laughing, delighted in the asking as she had never been in Harrowater.


    Rory shrugged cheerfully. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter¡ªjust shuffle along in the right direction. The steps¡¯ll come to you sometime or other.¡±


    So she accepted the hand, let herself be swept away into the Runedaur dance like thistledown in the laughter of the maelstrom. The Order danced in changing sets, intricate and vigorous; by the time the first breathless dance ended, she must have done a turn with everyone in the hall over three feet tall, many of them, like Caltern, wearing only jewelry and knives. The musicians changed; singers joined them, mingling human voices in strong polyphonies, telling tales noble and bawdy, heroic, tragic, gay; and Colderwild danced.

 VI: Home of Vagabonds, Mother of Orphans (pt 4/4): Fire and Bed

    Towards midnight, the mood changed. Rothesay was sitting one out with the pretty lady, Terge, a witch of shadow-magics, clothed in same as if in a flowing gown, but she suckled her babe unhindered. They had been introduced by Rothesay¡¯s last dance partner, a young gallant named Mardiel, who kissed her hand with the flair of a foreign prince and commanded her to the dance floor. He was sprightly and graceful, though at times he had to run to keep his place among the longer-legged people about him, for he was all of five years old. He escorted her here to ¡°my lady Terge,¡± who was not his mother but his lady-love, bowed extravagantly, and vanished under the benches in search of imaginary foes.


    Terge received his attentions with a grave courtesy that pleased Rothesay, but they had small chance to discuss the boy. The drums surged suddenly to still-greater dominance. If she had thought the party lively before, she was now shown that she had had no concept of life at all, that what had so far passed was staid and reserved, the essence of placidity.


    The howling and yipping rose sevenfold. People clustered upon the length of the fire pit; Rothesay, feeling lifted up by the rushing tide of passion in the hall, rose effortlessly, stepped as if on air to join them. Rory and Kahan exploded into existence on either side of her, Rory ululating wildly and dancing with every step. Kahan looked the same as ever, except for a fire burning in his eyes; she sensed his rapture like a tautened harp string, and thought if she should touch him, she would feel him vibrate.


    The fires had burned down to embers, hotter than the flames had been. Men with scarves over their faces worked the coals with long-handled rakes, spreading them smooth and even, pulling big chunks off to one side, inflaming the Runedaur as much as the coals. Across the pit, Nessian flung back his silvery head and bayed into the vaults. A cheer roared out and heads turned toward the dais.


    Dav stood at the head of the pit, naked now but for a black knotted loincloth. His lean face blazed brighter than the coals before him, a terrible, joyous light that stole Rothesay¡¯s breath and made her want to hide: surely no mortal could bear such ecstasy for long and live. In the thundering of the drums, he stepped out onto the coals, and danced.


    Hard muscles rippled under his scarred skin as he tripped a Springtime hay upon the fire, light and sure and unscathed as Kavin¡¯s holy wind. Midway down the firepit, lest any think his mastery stopped at his feet, he dived forward in a swift somersault and came up roaring with laughter, shaking glowing sparks from his dark hair. At the fire¡¯s end he turned, stooped, and scooped up a double handful of embers and spilled them from his fingers like golden coins. His laughter echoed the shuddering drums, and he leaped at last to the cold floor.


    Rothesay clapped her hands to her ears to protect them from the freshened storm of ecstatic lunatics around her. Runedaur crowded toward the head of the hall, gaily following one another down the searing path whose heat threatened her even from behind the line of masked fire-rakers. She caught a glimpse of Dav down at the end, seized in a black-satin bear hug by Master Leoff, and had the startling impression, before she was jostled out of view, that Dav responded with a kiss of equal ardor. Then it was her turn to be crushed in a powerful hug: Rory¡¯s arms wrapped around her, lifted her clear of the floor, and something of his gay passion seemed to flow into her at the touch. Green eyes met gold in a moment¡¯s ineffable communion. Then he screamed like a mountain cat, released her, and bounded into the fire.


    The sudden flood of excitement she had felt ebbed away as suddenly, leaving her cold with terror before the menace of the coals. A lean hand took her shoulder; she felt emptiness behind her and backed into it hastily, gratefully. Other Runedaur flowed around her, shadowing her with their eagerness for a turn; they could have it and welcome. She drew a steadying breath, and discovered she was pressed snugly against a warm chest. She glanced at the hand on her shoulder. It was Kahan¡¯s. And he was indeed vibrating.


    She looked back into his eyes, but she did not understand what she saw there. Her first impression was of a mind so far removed from the formal walks of thought as to be no longer human. And then she thought, perhaps it was more human than she could understand. She wished, not for the first time, that she was not so tree-top tall. She longed to hide her face on his shoulder, but even on his, she would have to stoop, a bit.


    Dav appeared at her elbow. Dismissed by his master¡¯s nod, Kahan lifted her hand like a butterfly upon his own, kissed it lightly, and stepped to the head of the coals. Then he burst into a violent display of acrobatics, whipping his slender body through cartwheels, handsprings and flips all down the length of the pit. It was hard to believe a human could move so fast, still less the languorous Kahan. The Runedaur screamed approval; and Nessian then followed, elegance personified.


    ¡°Do I have to do that?¡± Rothesay asked in a small voice.


    ¡°Do you want to?¡±


    She looked at Dav curiously. The fire in him was remote now, like a hearth-fire banked for the night; now he was the languid one, his passion spent, the memory of it lingering in a lazy half-smile, the sapphire eyes half-veiled. He had pretty lashes, she thought. Then she glanced back at the coals, and the joyous fire-dancers.


    ¡°No,¡± she answered slowly. ¡°But I almost wish I did.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Dav purred, putting unexpected power into so soft a word. ¡°Very good. You have some wisdom¡ªpsst! Look!¡±


    She looked¡ªand her heart stopped. Mardiel stood at the edge of the fire, both small fists raised high, and then he walked, to the rhythmic cheers of Colderwild. Halfway along, he began to run, and at once one of the rakers snatched him onto the side and hoisted him high. Rothesay glimpsed his victorious face just before he bent to examine a foot.


    ¡°Oh! Did he get burned?¡±


    ¡°Probably.¡±


    Rothesay raised outraged hands to shake him, thought better of it, and merely waved them furiously. ¡°You let that baby go out there, knowing he could get hurt?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll risk crippling his body before I¡¯ll risk crippling his spirit. Did you see his face? Whatever befalls him in life, though he may be destroyed, he will never be defeated! All we need to teach him now is some skill.¡± He laughed. ¡°If it had been serious, we would have heard at once. What of it? Even I take a burn now and again.¡±


    ¡°But he¡¯s just a baby!¡± she protested tenderly.


    ¡°The ¡®normal¡¯ world,¡± Dav muttered darkly. ¡°It is ¡®normal¡¯ to refuse one¡¯s own power, and, worse, to deny it to others, sometimes in the name of ¡®love.¡¯ Mardiel has power, but no skill. You have skill, and almost no power. Which will prove the quicker student?¡± He laughed again as her eyes flashed green indignation for being likened to an infant, and he stroked her cheek with an idle finger.


    Liquid fire spilled from cheek to loins, even to feet and fingertips, that same gledelike pleasure at the Sternbridge stirred this time to flame. Her breath came short, and she stared dark-eyed at him, transfixed, terrified that he would touch her again, hoping that he would. Mindless lust in village louts was an enemy she knew and fled; erotic sensuality was a beguiling stranger whom she did not recognize either in Dav or herself, a stranger she would have followed like the Piper of Spring and discovered her mistake afterward. She stared at him, waiting for that frightening, thrilling call.


    Dav permitted himself little amusement in her response. Whatever might be made of her, however she might serve his will, she was his now, he had accepted her, clothed her with the black mantle of his ancient family: it was intolerable that any one of that holy body be so much the puppet, answering to strings pulled by the fickle world. Padriag claimed to have taught her intellectual discipline; it must be Colderwild¡¯s more arduous task to teach her the discipline of the soul. He shifted his mood and stroked her cheek again.


    Rothesay blinked, the fleeting thrill of the first touch evaporating beyond recall, and wondered if she was supposed to think of the Master as a father or a brother.


    Dav grunted. ¡°You and Lacie can pack off to bed now. From here, the festivities go on beyond the interest of either of you.¡±


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    ¡°What? Who?¡± She looked around blankly. The wild ecstasy still howling around them seemed to be coalescing, drawing in to some hotter fire that reminded her of something far away and yet recent, immediately past, a very nice feeling of¡ª


    ¡°Lacie!¡± Dav barked.


    A vision of silver and gold slipped from the roaring crowd to join them. She appeared to be twelve or thirteen, dark-eyed but with hair like barleycorn in sunshine, and clad in a simple silver shift that flowed about her developing womanhood quite scandalously. But Rothesay was suddenly glad. Company¡ªthe other inhabitant of the Silver Novitiates¡¯ Chamber! ¡°Hullo!¡±


    Dav nodded. ¡°Good night, babes.¡±


    Lacie broke off her fascinated appraisal of Rothesay to glance about the hall knowingly. ¡°Oh, right,¡± she agreed. She smiled at Dav. ¡°Lightsolstice, maybe.¡±


    Dav cocked an eyebrow. ¡°Whenever you wish,¡± he said politely.


    ¡°As long as it isn¡¯t you? No fear of that, O lord and master! I¡¯d as lief bed with a rabid werewolf!¡± The girl delivered this archly, as if it were a telling blow.


    Dav¡¯s grin flashed. ¡°Perhaps a more apt likeness than you could know, infant. Go on, now.¡±


    ¡°Ooh!¡± Worsted, Lacie, like Rothesay moments before, waved slim fists of aggravation in his face, spun on her heel, flounced away, stalked back, seized Rothesay¡¯s sleeve, and flounced away again.


    The two, having escaped giggling into their chamber from an escort of nearly a dozen goodly young men, stayed up later into the night over tea and cakes and the most nearly normal conversation Rothesay had had since home. Nearly, but not quite.


    At home, young girls dreamed and talked of whom they hoped the priestesses would choose as husbands for them. The nuptial night itself, the coin of maidenhead paid for the stature of womanhood, was mystery reserved for the Anointing, the girls¡¯ initiation like the boys¡¯ Proving, and maidens anointed but not yet wed kept their ritual secrets from their younger sisters¡ªapart from gruesome horror stories imparted with such relish that they could only be lies, or so the young ones hoped. And the married ones, however young, imparted no more than those wise and knowing looks that infuriated their former equals. Rothesay, still not yet come to menarche, had only the wild tales to go on. Lacie, Laciera, ignorant of this ignorance, blithely chattered on about her dreams for the demise of her maidenhood, plainly without virtue of marriage; and as the girls at home debated who they should most like for a husband, she argued over who at Colderwild would be best for a first lover. Despite her jibe earlier, she had not in fact ruled out Dav himself.


    ¡°The rub there, of course, is no matter how much you read, or play, you just do not know enough to interest him if you¡¯re a virgin and he really does so hate to be bored. The town girls¡ª¡± Rothesay supposed she meant nearby Dorchastir or Kavinsrae, ¡°say I should go with Kahan, who is a sweetheart of the first water, but I was sort of planning on Lightsolstice and he¡¯ll be in Windhome then.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± said Rothesay, wistfully trying to reconcile her image of a lovely young man with that of a ¡®sweetheart¡¯ who would deflower a young girl. And how would the town girls know anyway? She did not at all know how to play this game, so alien to Geillan propriety; Lacie¡¯s simple enthusiasm baffled her. ¡°Um, how about¡ªGarrod seems nice,¡± she hedged.


    ¡°Garrod¡¯s an angel,¡± Lacie agreed. ¡°An angel with steel teeth, maybe. And so good-looking, I could kill him. He¡¯s celibate.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what I say. What a waste! Don¡¯t ask me why; it¡¯s some philosophic thing. They all go through a spate of it sooner or later, but he¡¯s been on it longer than most and I¡¯d hate to waste my youth waiting for him to get over it. How about Nessian, though? You¡¯ve met him¡ªisn¡¯t he so courtly?¡±


    ¡°Not to mention sixty!¡± Rothesay retorted, shocked. A girl was sometimes given to a much older man, especially if he was wealthy or important, but no one pretended that it was a desirable match.


    Lacie gave her an arch look. ¡°Tell him that. He¡¯ll be complimented: he was sixty before I was born!¡±


    Which made ¡®well-preserved¡¯ an understatement. Rothesay cast about for someone respectably closer to Lacie¡¯s own age. If she fancied the Masters, ¡°How about Leoff?¡±


    Lacie shrieked and clapped her hands to her mouth, eyes dancing with horrified mirth. ¡°Oh, no! Didn¡¯t you know?¡±


    ¡°Know what?¡± Rothesay took the bait uneasily.


    She lifted a fair and shining tress. ¡°He¡¯s my father!¡± She patted Rothesay¡¯s hand in kindly compassion as she blushed deeply, and added generously, ¡°You can have him, if you don¡¯t mind he¡¯s short.¡±


    Most girls of Rothesay¡¯s acquaintance, however randy they perceived other men to be, refused to believe their own fathers ever entertained the most fleeting thought about the process of begetting, still less offered them to girlfriends like toys. Before she could fumble any reply, though, Lacie went on thoughtfully, ¡°But you¡¯re virgin, too.¡± She looked her tall roommate over. ¡°Bit old for that, aren¡¯t you?¡±


    Rothesay squirmed. ¡°Um¡ªwho¡¯s your mother?¡±


    ¡°Cusie¡ªCusiera. She¡¯s a weaver in Dorchastir. She comes up here sometimes to work with Carialla.¡±


    Rothesay shuddered. ¡°Brave woman.¡±


    ¡°I know what you mean,¡± Lacie nodded, then yawned hugely. ¡°Oh! I¡¯m for bed, girl. Sorry to keep you up¡ªmorning¡¯s going to come for you a lot earlier than for me, because they mean it, about ¡®dawn,¡¯ but it is nice to have company.¡±


    As they undressed for bed, Rothesay asked carefully, ¡°Your parents don¡¯t live together?¡±


    ¡°Dorchastir¡¯s her home, and she doesn¡¯t want to leave it,¡± Lacie explained from inside her shift. Rothesay waited till she emerged.


    ¡°Why would she marry him, if she won¡¯t live with him?¡±


    ¡°Marry! Never that! Runedaur don¡¯t marry¡ªwell, not in the usual way. More like, you marry the Order, so you¡¯re sort of married to everyone in it. Mama isn¡¯t Runedaur, but¡ªwell, you¡¯ll catch on.¡±


    ¡°Then Dav and Carialla aren¡¯t¡ª?¡±


    Lacie screamed and laughed. ¡°You do have a head for nightmare, don¡¯t you? Go to sleep! Bad enough they have to share Colderwild, without being shackled together, too! Ooh!¡± She flung her pillow at Rothesay. ¡°Good night!¡±


    ¡°Fetch the master.¡±


    On the low couch, Asilay el-Seremay stirred slightly, and her eyelids fluttered. The dark, remote eyes of Nuassay Ceru, her kinswoman and first apprentice, darted to the little blonde slave kneeling on the carpet; the girl, startled out of daydream, leaped up and hurried to the door, heart in mouth: Nuassay, in her own interests, was an indifferent mistress, but in service to her teacher-cousin she struck swiftly and hard.


    For all that, once she was out of sight and out of immediate reach, the girl ambled; passing a friend, they chatted, briefly, till a ranking chambermaid came in view; ordered to a new task, she excused herself, at once meek and smug, with the information that she was already on errand for Lady Nuassay. The chambermaid, knowing all too well the indolence of slaves, cuffed her anyway for good measure, but went on her own way and did not interfere. Thus Hautiger did not reach his lady¡¯s sickbed for half an hour or more. But Nuassay, too, knew the ways of slaves: he arrived just about when she expected him, and Asilay was awake and aware and had already made a few private arrangements with her apprentice.


    ¡°Teginau,¡± Asilay croaked even as he pulled up the tasselled stool to sit by her. ¡°She¡¯s in Teginau!¡±


    ¡°Is, or was?¡± Hautiger frowned, taking her cold hand in his. ¡°It¡¯s been weeks, my love¡ª¡±


    Asilay tossed her head fretfully; Nuassay had already informed her of the dreadful loss of time. Her free hand moved feebly across her belly, seeking to soothe the agony of a wound that did not exist, not in flesh, not in her flesh. For reason of hazards like this, she did not shape-change, to dare the world in her own, altered, body, but instead borrowed the bodies of her ravens; else she would have died of that arrow, as the bird had died in the southern land.


    She had almost died anyway, of the shock and power strained. That strain . . . she refused to despair. She would be long months recovering her powers, a setback, but no permanent loss; not that. A matter of months, nothing more, and meantime the girl was still to be found.


    ¡°Haukur,¡± she whispered. ¡°Send Haukur. He can track¡ª¡±


    ¡°That he can,¡± the baron murmured.

 VII: Mors Tower (pt 1/2): Occasion of Learning

    VII: M¨®r¡¯s Tower


    Dawn came for Rothesay with fingers of creeping horror. She woke abruptly, staring up into dimness with a nightmare sense of lurking danger, and groped for memory: there was some reason why she should fear¡ª


    Something cold and sharp pricked her throat almost painfully, just beside her windpipe, as a black shadow whispered menacingly, ¡°Ghost.¡±


    Rothesay screamed.


    So did Lacie, shooting bolt upright in bed.


    The shadow chuckled. ¡°Sorry, Lacie,¡± Rory apologized. ¡°Guess nights¡¯ll be a little more exciting for you, too, now!¡±


    With a disgusted groan, Lacie flung herself back into her coverlets and buried herself. Rothesay, heart still racing, glared up at her vanquisher. She did not dare move, for his blade had not. ¡°Well? Now what?¡± she demanded, softly for Lacie¡¯s benefit.


    ¡°Well, if you think you can get out of this, try. If not, you say, ¡®yield.¡¯¡±


    She was silent for a moment, certain that Arngas would never have been taken this way, but no ideas came. ¡°Yield,¡± she mumbled at last, despising the taste of the word. Rory withdrew his blade. She still did not move, except to pull her blankets close: having no nightclothes, she might as well have been bound hand and foot. Remembering that she was supposed to pay some sort of forfeit, she sighed. ¡°So, what do you want me to do?¡±


    In the starlight, Rory¡¯s eyes were huge. ¡°Oh, my aching possibilities! Damn that man!¡± he breathed. He looked away, whistling softly in obvious resignation, and rubbed his chin pensively. A whisper like a breeze over dry grasses sounded loud in the stillness, and he looked at his hand as the source of the noise. ¡°Can you give a shave?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she snapped.


    Rory grinned. ¡°You willing to learn?¡±


    It was certainly better than whatever possibility had him aching. She wondered who ¡®that man¡¯ was ¨C Dav, probably ¨C and what he had to do with Rory¡¯s ghost options. ¡°Right now?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°Before lunch. Go on back to sleep, Sugar,¡± he said generously. He gathered up a coil of rope and moved silently toward a window, then paused and looked back. ¡°What¡¯ll you give me for the chance to sleep in?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°I ghosted away a week¡¯s worth of chores, getting in here first. Even got the Hawkman! What¡¯ll you give me to keep away the seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths?¡±


    ¡°What do you want?¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you easy! Can you sew?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Needles were much too dear; she had never held one, only a notched fishbone with which to darn her coarse-woven ¡®dishclouts,¡¯ and that without grace.


    ¡°Braid?¡±


    ¡°Well, of course¡ª¡±


    ¡°Make me a headband. See you, Sugar.¡± And he was gone out the window like smoke. Rothesay dived back into her pillow for what was to be the last time for years to come.


    So began life at Colderwild, a life much like a running game of ¡®fox and goose,¡¯ except that there was no time out; no safe base; and who was fox and who was goose depended on who won or lost any encounter. The only rule seemed to be that, in the presence of anyone not of the Order, the assault must be so subtle or concealed as to be perceptible only to the involved parties: detection voided the ghost-contract between the combatants, and both victim and victor became ¡®ghost¡¯ to their betrayer. Days, therefore, when folk from Dorchastir and Kavinsrae trafficked in and out, passed in some peace¡ª deceptive peace, for nerves strained more tightly, senses stretched closer to their limits, than during the wild abandon of night. Visitors, their own neck hairs prickling in the tension of their hosts, stayed no longer than necessary, and left wondering, carrying whispered tales of the demonic aura of Colderwild.


    And visitors there were. Lords, greater and lesser, came from time to time, chiefly, in Dav¡¯s phrase, to bargain with Death. Most of these departed more uneasily than they came; though that fall Rothesay watched as one man, an insignificant princeling from the western marches, left amid his small entourage in nothing less than astonishment, turning often in his saddle to look back at Colderwild¡¯s towers as if to make sure they still stood. Dav had been singularly good-humored that night.


    Priests came, and philosophers, but Colderwild¡¯s favorites were the poets. They were usually the most interesting, with songs and tales and news from all over Peria and beyond. And they were often the boldest, staying sometimes for weeks at a time. Elraic Marre, the First Poet of Sferan Peria, seemed to be more than half a Runedaur himself, and was in fact one of that select number the Order styled her Friends.


    Rothesay saw little of them; indeed, little of Colderwild. She was in training.


    Formal training, she discovered, far from being mandatory, was¡ªas a rule¡ªnot even provided: it had to be stalked, taken, won. Knights and masters in the pursuit of their own perfection, squaring off with one another or playing at feats of agility and daring, provided constant example of heights of skill that were yet to be attained; if a novice wished to learn how to dance a tautened rope or split one arrow with another, however, he had to seek it out. Sometimes it was as simple as asking. Sometimes he might have to collect a dozen or so fellows, to make it worth the desired instructor¡¯s time. Sometimes the teacher laid down his own demands that must be met first, strange and obscure perhaps but later shown to be teaching devices to the very skill in question, when they were not simply to relieve the knight of an unwanted chore. Study being self-sprung, it was therefore possible to putter about the Order for years without ever attaining knighthood; so long as one could bear being pounded, poisoned, and pounced upon, and stayed at least moderately useful, no one minded. What a soul had to show for itself at the calling of Death was its private affair.


    And sometimes, best of all and broadly envied, one became the object of a knight¡¯s own self-training. Leoff took to Rothesay like a child with a magical toy. In her lay the chance to try his blade against a legend¡ªif he could induce the current incarnation not to interfere. In this, Dav took a part, not so much in helpfulness as in refusal to be left out of the challenge, till Rothesay felt, as she complained bitterly to Lacie late one night, like a wine jug.


    ¡°A what?¡±


    ¡°A wine jug¡ªI¡¯m just a container for what they¡¯re really interested in!¡±


    Lacie laughed sympathetically. ¡°Well, you could seduce them,¡± she suggested at length.


    Rothesay¡¯s brows beetled. ¡°Don¡¯t you ever think about anything else?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t you ever think about it at all?¡± she marvelled in return.


    Not if I can help it, she sighed inwardly, crouching later, sword athwart, waiting for Leoff¡¯s move and trying dutifully to follow his cryptic advice and ¡®lose herself in action.¡¯ There at least was one small blessing of living with the Arms-master from his first call at dawn till his final, reluctant dismissal barely shy of midnight: she could not tell if Leoff recognized her even as a living creature, let alone a girl.


    The masters¡¯ first tack was to train her in reverse. Taking the art as given, they sought to begin with teaching her the faith, the trust that allowed the artist of the sword to let go and let his powers flow. This succeeded occasionally. What the knights of Colderwild discovered swiftly, the students were weeks in working out: that the more violently Rothesay was startled, the more likely she was to win an encounter; whereas if she was given time to think, and therefore doubt, she would try to win, and hand them the victory.


    Slowly Rothesay¡¯s focus expanded from aching lungs to cold flagstone to the murmur of low voices speaking in the sky at her back, and her head throbbed. She recognized the signs. Leoff had knocked the wind out of her¡ªagain; never an accident, but retribution for some particular piece of folly. What had it been this time?


    ¡°Ignorance,¡± she heard Leoff muse. ¡°That would seem the choice, brother. The body must know, of course, and that much has been handed us; but it is not enough.¡±


    ¡°She must know,¡± Dav agreed. ¡°Or live unconscious¡ªer, more so than usual.¡±


    ¡°Back to basics,¡± Leoff sighed. ¡°To teach her¡ªwhat she already knows; to have her practice what is already perfected, till she forgets what she does not know she knows.¡±


    Rothesay rolled over to find the Arms-master grinning down at her, a wide grin of deep merriment, as uncharacteristic of him as flowers of midwinter. In his bone-pale face, it made him look like Death incarnate; yet the mirth was real and pure, a delight in life¡¯s prankish humor.


    ¡°Come, girl. We begin anew.¡±


    So she began to learn the Seven First Moves, their names, forms and philosophies, and some of their simpler variations, and began to define and understand her body¡¯s strange new inclinations. ¡®Oh, I¡¯m trying to ¡®parry¡¯!¡¯ Leoff watched in delight as a new power emerged from thick shrouds of stupidity and frequently kicked himself, and Dav as well, for having tried to buck old wisdom in the first place.


    For Rothesay, the simple magic of names dispelled a great weight of apprehension. Once reluctant even to move lest she do something she did not understand, now she tried her powers with unforeseen delight; and when Leoff was briefly distracted by others wanting his attention, played at finding the differences between the magical prowess and her own beginner¡¯s attempts.


    Leoff, receiving this for explanation upon catching her at it, stared. Suddenly a war whoop broke from him, a startlingly huge cry for so small a man; it echoed back from Colderwild¡¯s walls in ringing exultation. He seized her about the waist in a crushing bear hug, stepped back, and attacked.


    Reassuming his air of grave reserve, he spoke as they worked, explaining, almost apologizing for his outburst. One of the fundamental principles of learning was no more than the ability to discriminate between what one actually did and what one desired to do: simply said; yet since it carries the burden of acknowledging that one¡¯s present actions are wrong, very few folk over four years of age, said Leoff, ever dare apply it.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡ªa good way¡ªto stay stupid,¡± Rothesay puffed, with barely breath to spare even for her short end of the conversation.


    ¡°So it is. And there are no stupid Runedaur¡ªliving,¡± Leoff agreed solemnly, and bowled her to the ground. ¡°If you will let your feet cross like that, your speed must be as inhuman as your strength. Here, little sister, you may err and err, and err again; risk your skill, and fail freely; blunder, stumble, and fall, for, here, your errors will be corrected. Welcome your mistakes, for they are the trophies of daring; and they are friends¡ªhere¡ªwho serve you warning that you do not yet have all you need to take the victory. Ignore them and die. Despise them and die.


    ¡°Now, I have just seen you at play, as you said, at play with your inexperience and your potential, and that is the second of the principles of learning. Play is the will to risk¡ª¡± he paused, reconsidering. ¡°Play is the joy of risk, and so, it is the occasion of learning. Fear is the demon, the traitor that will betray you to the object of your fear, the gaoler of the soul. He who fears cannot learn; but he who plays has all the world for a school.¡±


    ¡°What¡ªabout¡ªhard work?¡±


    Leoff grounded his sword with a flourish and gracefully folded both hands on it as on a cane. ¡°Where play and work are one, there is a knight of the Runedaur. Now, little sister, play with me!¡±


    Leoff¡¯s sense of play took strange turns. One afternoon, he tumbled her violently into the fountain at the east end of the yard; when she extricated herself at last, she found him leaning against the north wall, head pillowed against his forearm, his sword-hand dangling limply.


    ¡°Master?¡±


    He made no reply. She approached warily. A few white-gold strands of his hair floated with a shiver, as though he trembled, though it might have been a breath of breeze. ¡°Master?¡±


    Still he did not answer. She marked his arm¡¯s length, plus sword-reach, and approached that circumference, and saw that he was indeed trembling, shivering all over. Alarmed, she dropped her training sword and stepped up to seize his shoulders. She had just time enough to feel the trembling cease under her fingers before he knocked her to the ground.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    He stood over her, his eyes like fire, his sword twitching above her nose daring her to move. ¡°So,¡± he breathed softly, ¡°you are Dav¡¯s child, then?¡±


    ¡°What??¡±


    He grinned his skull-like grin. ¡°Come. Watch this.¡±


    Leoff took off running. Light as a cat he darted through the maze of Colderwild, or on the maze, running on walls and roofs like Dav in Floodholding, everywhere from the massive curtain-wall that guarded the keep from the east, to the healing-houses and their pleasant gardens that looked straight down the unwalled western precipice. Serving-folk from the villages ignored him like so much weather; a few knights challenged him and were cut down without his troubling to claim Ghost. Rothesay finally thought he was looking for something, when he stopped on the roof of a wing of the rambling library, and beckoned her to approach silently.


    Below, the alley next to the King¡¯s Hall was a well of white light in the afternoon. Dav stalked briskly through it, unillumined shadow, every line of his countenance clear warning even to her not to interfere with him. Leoff stole her sword from her inattentive grasp and leaped down in front of him.


    ¡°Not now, Lee!¡± she heard him snarl. Her sword clattered as he knocked Leoff¡¯s toss irritably away.


    Leoff attacked anyway. Dav dodged, rolled, snatched up the sword and kicked at Leoff¡¯s belly as he rolled on to his feet and Leoff leaped, twisting in air like a cat; Rothesay thought the kick had not found its mark.


    Training swords clattered together, swirled and slithered apart and slashed suddenly, each finding only air. The masters circled. Dav¡¯s left hand glittered suddenly with his dagger; Leoff switched sword-hands and whipped off his black sash. He struck with the sword at Dav¡¯s body and with a loop of the sash at his dagger. The little blade ripped the cloth but let it slide to entrap Dav¡¯s wrist; Dav dropped the dagger to seize the cloth and yank Leoff¡¯s hand; the Arms-master somersaulted under Dav¡¯s sword-arm, abandoning the sash with one last tug to trouble Dav¡¯s balance. By chance or design, his sword was up to block Dav¡¯s swing.


    He hesitated a moment, his back to his opponent: something seemed to have caught his eye where the cobbles met the wall. Even Rothesay would have ignored this, except to use the hesitation against him, and he turned only just in time to trip Dav¡¯s attack. He forced Dav back and down, then used his advantage to glance again at the corner. Dav came flying back up, Leoff thoughtlessly raised a parry with his empty hand and only at the last instant brought up his sword, Dav glanced at the corner that was so distracting to his foe and Leoff clubbed the back of his head hard enough to knock him into the wall. Dav slowly folded to the ground, closing his hands delicately about his skull.


    Leoff grounded the tip of his sword, piled his graceful hands on the pommel and glanced up to beckon Rothesay down. She slid from the roof to the garden-wall and leaped to the alley well out of Leoff¡¯s reach. Dav rolled over, wiping blood from his brow.


    ¡°Curiosity is the master of the Master of Runedaur,¡± said Leoff, grinning, and offered Dav a hand back to his feet.


    ¡°Whoreson blackguard,¡± Dav grumbled.


    She played; but she woke one dark pre-dawn in no mood to play with anyone at all. More than a fortnight had passed since she had ridden in under Colderwild¡¯s dark arches at Dav¡¯s heels, and she felt she had learned little more of the place than the path from her bed to the training lists. Her body ached from unaccustomed exertion and a skinful of bruises¡ªnot all of them gifts of Leoff, she admitted, glancing over her carefully contrived deadfalls at windows and door with grumpy satisfaction. The booby-traps had so far brought her four nights¡¯ almost-unbroken sleep, since she first set them up last week, not to prevent but only to give loud notice of midnight assaults; she had been careful to devise a different arrangement each night, and Lacie knew better than to disturb them. And she never slept in the same bed twice. Once she had even slept under Lacie¡¯s.


    Lacie was not exempt from the game of Ghost, but only from assaults in her sleep: those training to magic often chose this, as they could ill afford the exhaustion. They were required to understand that the wide wild world would not be so considerate, and their martial skills would thereby be lessened; Lacie explained her choice by saying that she would sleep, and fear be damned: she would not ransom her sleep now against fear of any foe yet-to-be, for was not that simply giving that unknown enemy power over her today, or tonight? Rothesay did not altogther understand, nor know why Dav approved.


    This morning, she did not want to know, wanted no part of any of it, and Leoff least of all. In sudden anger, she slipped (already dressed; she had slept clothed since that first hazardous dawn) out into the silent halls. Down to the kitchen she crept, alert all the way for any stray play-foe.


    Sothia was already awake, if she ever slept at all. She was Nessian¡¯s coequal, Mistress of the Open Hand; her domain was the kitchen and the presses. A huge ring of keys jingled at her belt, failsafes to rescue novice lockpickers: Colderwild locked things up purely as challenge and entertainment, and locks changed as often as someone brought home a new sort to try. As for the valuables they warded: Rothesay finally learned who owned Dav¡¯s white silk shirt. The Order did not recognize the principle of ownership. Whatever was within its holy power, belonged to all members equally, from master to novice; whether golden goblets and jewels in the treasury, sword or mail in the armory, or Sothia¡¯s spices, Dav¡¯s shirt, Caltern¡¯s necklaces, or Rothesay¡¯s sword, the Order acknowledged nothing more than association, and anyone possessing both interest and skill to take something, might do so, being obliged only to give the thing proper care. And anyone wanting it back might do likewise. Such contests had sometimes blossomed into epics, engulfing all Colderwild and even some of the other houses in vast mock wars, the original prizes forgotten. Shoes alone could be considered property, since they wore to the unique shape of one set of feet, and even they might be borrowed. It was a long time before Rothesay appreciated the nature of the wealth implied in this custom: only those who fear that they will have nothing need to cling to possession. And the Runedaur mocked the need to own as a sign of impoverishment of the soul, and of fear.


    So, now, Rothesay knew she did not need to ask Mistress Sothia¡¯s permission to take what she pleased from the buttery for her breakfast, except that she was more in a mood to smash a door than fiddle with a lock. She asked politely.


    Sothia looked her over thoughtfully, smiled, and led the way. Rothesay sighed. Perhaps she could spend the day shadowing this gentle, silent woman, a veritable well of tranquility. She was old, older than Nessian; a mist of fine grey hair cascaded unbound to her waist; her skin, burnt nut-brown under the sun of many flaming summers, wrinkled finely all over her face, pulling close against her still-beautiful cheekbones like the skin of an old apple. Her eyes were very dark.


    It was a peaceful thought, staying by Sothia, but Rothesay craved company, ordinary company and casual chatter, and she would get no speech from the Mistress. Sothia practiced the ¡°whole silence,¡± utter abstinence from word or gesture for communication, scorning even the complex Runedaur sign-language, making her will and wishes known solely by force of physical attitude. It was not necessary to learn the art oneself to understand one of the Silent: that was their art, and no one ever misunderstood Sothia. One whole house of the Runedaur, Rose House deep in the great Mathstrede Forest, scorned to speak; knights or students from the other halls often spent months or years in residence there, studying this art of silence.


    Still, it was not an art suitable for idle gossip, Rothesay thought. She accepted the Mistress¡¯s proffered apples and cheese, and fled for the top of the Tower of Stars, perversely choosing complete solitude if she could not get conversation.


    Here where Kahan had strangled Rory on her first day in the hold, she leaned back against the parapet, ate, and watched the great dome of glittering stars slowly grow pale with Areolin¡¯s rising. Soon Leoff would be knocking at the door of the Silver Novitiates chamber. What he would think when he found her not at home, or what retribution would be hers for fleeing her training, she did not care to guess; but she could not stick one more hour of it. She bit into her last apple and wondered when she would find the courage to come down from her starry haven.


    The limb of the sun broached the edge of a crenellation with a line of golden fire, studded with golden stars where the light spilled through the deep-cut grooves that marked the seasons of the stars. Then a black shadow blotted the gold.


    ¡°Well, hey, Sugar! What are you doing up here? Master Lee¡¯s looking for you.¡± The shadow Rory vaulted to the tower-top. He was barefoot, evidently for free-climbing, any sound of his approach masked by the stiff and steady eastern wind.


    ¡°And if he¡¯s sent you to fetch me, you¡¯ll have to fight for it!¡± she snarled, grimacing around her breakfast.


    ¡°Hey, no, not me,¡± he protested.


    ¡°Just out for a casual morning¡¯s wall-climbing?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Against the dawning glare, she could see his shoulders hunch. ¡°Just out for a morning think.¡± After a long silence, he shifted to the shelter of the northern wall. The sunlight struck bright coppery sparkles in his hair and moustache, but had no power to lighten his glum expression. ¡°So how¡¯s training?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about it!¡± she almost shouted, feeling as bruised in soul as in body. ¡°I don¡¯t want to think about it, and I don¡¯t want to go back down to it!¡±


    Rory flashed her a sympathetic grin. ¡°Have they given you the Frustration Lecture yet? about great achievement being born of great frustration? Ever see Master D get frustrated?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t seen anything but Master Leoff¡¯s face, and the ground of the training field,¡± she grumbled, shoving her hand against her nose for demonstration. ¡°And I¡¯ve got half a hundred Ghost debts to pay off yet¡ªincluding yours. Especially yours. I¡¯m never going to work my way clear!¡±


    ¡°Nuh-uh. Bad form, making predictions you don¡¯t want to come true¡ªand just leaving them that way, I mean. Now finish it off by saying, ¡®Never if I don¡¯t¡ª¡¯ whatever.¡±


    She sighed explosively. ¡°Well, what can I do? Say, excuse me, Master of the greatest warriors in the world, but I have to go pare potatoes because I lost to an undersized pimplefaced adolescent novice?¡±


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like you have to jump when a Master says ¡®frog.¡¯ Beg off politely and do what you like. You don¡¯t even have to say anything past the ¡®excuse me.¡¯ And it¡¯ll free him up for the rest of us to pester. You have to understand masters. They¡¯ll let you believe any fool thing you want to, and they¡¯ll take every advantage of whatever those fool things make you do, till you bury yourself in a grave of your own digging. Then they dig you up, smack the dust off you, and say, ¡®Now exactly why did you do that?¡¯¡± He snorted. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you this, though: you¡¯ve won some respect. Don¡¯t think I could stand two solid weeks with the Wraith!¡± Then he sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. ¡°I mean, ¡®not yet!¡¯ ¡± he amended, biting off his aggravation.


    Rothesay, though, was so relieved, she flung her arms around him and hugged him. ¡°Well, hey,¡± he chuckled, hugging her back, ¡°let me be the one to set you straight anytime, Sugar!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry I shouted at you, Rory,¡± she apologized, releasing him.


    ¡°Yuh. It¡¯s not worth it, it¡¯s never worth it, losing your temper, you know. All it gets you is vacuity of the brain and lots of practice saying you¡¯re sorry. Oh, gods, look who¡¯s lecturing on temper! What a joke!¡± He laughed, but bitterly. ¡°That¡¯s my bugbear, you know, my demon. I can quit being angry, though I maybe don¡¯t as often as I should, ¡¯cos it doesn¡¯t feel so good at first. What I want is not to go over the edge in the first place.¡±


    ¡°Is that possible?¡±


    ¡°You ever see the Hawkman blow off?¡±


    She had not, and it seemed unlikely in Kahan; but she wisely refrained from suggesting that Rory ask his arch-rival for advice. It was a cruel irony, she thought, that the one who possessed what Rory needed most, was the one person from whom Rory could accept nothing at all. ¡°Well, I can ¡®blow off.¡¯ If you find the secret of staying collected, come tell me about it first!¡±


    Rory stuck out a brawny hand. ¡°First one to get the answer tells the other. Deal?¡±


    ¡°Deal.¡±


    They shook, and then she left him to his morning think as she ran off in search of Leoff, to release herself properly from the prison of his kind interest in her. She took the stairs from the trapdoor, however, feeling far from ready to attempt Rory¡¯s perilous route.


    She was to call Rory ¡®brother¡¯¡ªeven Master Dav might be called brother¡ªand he seemed in truth as fond a brother as Alrulf, whom she missed daily. She marvelled. Runedaur were rumored to be demons, yet she had found nothing demonic at Colderwild, except a fascination for skulls. They were said to be sexual profligates, and that, too, seemed to be libel. Apart from Lacie¡¯s pubescent fascination, Rothesay observed no lasciviousness on anyone¡¯s part, certainly none directed at herself. She had frankly expected to be ravished sometime in her first few nights here, had steeled herself for it as an inevitability from the day she left Padriag. Out on the road or in the wild, her own mistress, she would have flatly served any lecherous rogue his own teeth, and maybe his ballocks as well, rather than let him touch her. Coming here, though: she had imagined herself a kind of servant of the hall, and it was only a matter of time before some lord or lordling made clear how little voice a servant-girl had.


    And no one did. That Rory, for example, could sit and simply talk, could give a hug without taking a grope¡ª amazed her, and she wondered where the evil rumors of animal lust and orgiastic rites could possibly have originated. Then she wondered warily, Or is it me?


    She found Leoff four Ghost matches later, two of which she initiated herself and all of which she won, and used to reduce her own debt burden. Along the way she remembered at last her unsupported decision on her first day here to think for herself, and realized that for two weeks she had done nothing of the sort.


    Leoff made her a gracious little bow and gestured delicately to the racks of wooden training swords. The sweet pungence of the cedar oil with which she had rubbed down the tools of her novitiate twice daily, rose thickly about her from two boys, Cobry and another she could not name, busy at the task themselves. Their rubbing paused at her approach, and they glared up askance, ready to give battle for possession of Leoff¡¯s attention.


    ¡°Good morning, Master!¡± she greeted him with new cheer, folding her hands behind her back to decline his invitation.


    ¡°Not playing today, little sister?¡±


    ¡°Begging your pardon, Master Leoff, I¡¯d rather not! There is a great deal else I should like to do now!¡±


    ¡°Indeed? What, specifically?¡±


    ¡®Specifically¡¯: the simple word was one of a Runedaur¡¯s favorite tools for whetting attentiveness, for many a wild notion, many a bitter grievance, many a fawning compliment had met its death on its keen point. Rothesay¡¯s jaw flapped for a moment, bereft of the true, but uselessly vague reply of, ¡®everything!¡¯ Then brightly she parried, ¡°What are my possibilities?¡±


    There came a thaw in midwinter. A wisp of a smile appeared under the Arms-master¡¯s impossibly-pale moustache. ¡°Where can you best find out, and most quickly?¡±


    ¡°Umm¡ªthe Lore-master?¡± And a longstanding desire to investigate Colderwild¡¯s libraries burst into full consciousness.


    ¡°Let it give you joy,¡± said Leoff courteously, bowing.


    ¡°I hope you¡¯re not offended, Master?¡± she said anxiously. One slim eyebrow rose, and she blushed, abashed without knowing why.


    ¡°Do you accept anything that is offered you?¡± Leoff inquired.


    ¡°No, sir . . . ?¡±


    ¡°Do you take something offered, turn it into something else, then hold the giver accountable?¡±


    ¡°No, sir.¡±


    ¡°To take offense, intended or not, is to surrender mastery. Think on this.¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir. Thank you very much.¡±


    ¡°As well thank the wind for one more breath to draw.¡± Then he turned to the boys.

 VII: Mors Tower (pt 2/2): Learning Curve

    The warm sunlight of early summer spilled through many tall crystal-paned windows, flooding the high room with light, bringing a dawnlike twilight even to the mazy alleyways winding among shelves twice as tall as Rothesay could reach. There seemed to be thousands of works, the brass or ivory caps of scroll-cases protruding from uncounted pigeonholes, and gilt-leather spines of bound codices and folios striping whole lengths of the thick, ornamented boards. Tall tapestries and maps¡ªsometimes one and the same item¡ªblanketed the ends of bookshelves and the few scraps of wall left between shelves and windows, and many more hung efficiently together on cunning racks with swinging arms. Wide tables attended by cushioned stools clustered before the windows, their bright polish casting glimmering lights away into the stony vaults above. Rothesay was awed and delighted; yet an uneasy sense of familiarity seemed to echo back out of forgotten wells of memory. Where¡ª?


    Smells of leather, paper, ink and age hung in the air; especially ink. Following her nose and a soft scraping sound into a wide, north-lit bay, she came upon the Lore-master¡¯s lair.


    Here were shelves of bottles, bins of colored powders, and racks of brushes, knives and chisels. Master Merry bent deep in concentration over a worktable, his lanky body folded to the perpendicular at the hips and propped on his arm so that one bony shoulderblade poked up like an ungainly wing, and his neck swooped low. Streaks of green striped his ash-gold head, suddenly brightened as he raked the dangling strands back, out of his work, without troubling to put his quill aside first. Before she could laugh, he looked up and grinned.


    ¡°Hullo, Rothesay! Wondered if e¡¯er tha¡¯d learn to escape Lee¡¯s courtesy!¡±


    ¡°Good morning, Master! I might not yet, if I hadn¡¯t run into Rory this morning. There is so much I don¡¯t know yet about the ways of this place!¡±


    ¡°And place full of folk who¡¯ll freely exploit that!¡± Merry laughed.


    ¡°Even you?¡±


    ¡°Nature gives no quarter for ignorance,¡± he confessed cheerfully. ¡°What wouldsta now?¡±


    In short order, she had a tour of his domain, beginning with his work at hand, recopying a five-century-old map of Andrastir. A good deal of his work involved recopying crumbling manuscripts, as much for his own enlightenment as for the preservation of the Order¡¯s treasures, and he seemed to have almost as much copied into memory as onto fresh vellum. Almost any remark provoked a scrap of rhyme, a verse, or a whole tale out of the ages.


    ¡°How do you remember all that?¡± she asked, awed.


    ¡°Eh? Seek¡¯st to seduce me?¡± he inquired brightly.


    Shocked, she blurted, ¡°No!¡± And then hoped he was not offended by the vigor of her denial, despite Leoff¡¯s advice.


    ¡°Then ask indeed how I do remember such stuff as if tha wished to know for theyself, and not to flatter me.¡±


    She looked long and hard at him, feeling as puzzled and blindsided as at one of Master Leoff¡¯s master blows; yet he looked as foolishly engaging as he had the night of her Welcoming. Considering, she saw that her question had been no request for instruction, but only a conversational device, though she was genuinely amazed at his mnemonic capacity.


    ¡°Something wrong with everyday conversation?¡± she hazarded.


    ¡°Now, that depends. Hadsta been a boy, I might have let it pass.¡± He shoved aside a globe, a model of the celestial sphere in a cunning bronze mount, and sat down to make his point more comfortably. There were ladders in the library, but she learned that the recesses carved into the sides of the shelves like hand- and foot-holds, were just that, and Master Merry had conducted a good part of the tour walking on the curio-strewn tops of the shelves, fifteen feet above the floor. ¡°Or maybe I might still have taken it amiss,¡± he went on thoughtfully. ¡°Questions are important tools, not to be dulled by careless use. This is a power, Rothesay, to see what lies implicit in the things of everyday. Unexamined, they are traps for the unwary, and shape one as not always desired! Now, everyday women learn to beguile a man through flattery, and especially flattering questions¡ªand they will play this play whether they truly want him or not. And if they succeed, then like so many victors they do come ultimately to contempt for the ones whom their power commands.¡±


    ¡°But, Master¡ªthe Runedaur are all about acquiring power over others! And is there not something of contempt in your talk of ¡®everyday women¡¯ and ¡®everyday people¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Well asked! That is indeed a danger, wherever power is used.¡± All at once she recalled Dav¡¯s ¡®grave danger¡¯ on the roof in Floodholding: an awareness, and rejection, of imminent scorn. Then Merry went on, ¡°Cansta think of a time when no power of man or woman avails?¡±


    ¡°Umm¡ªdeath?¡± she said, her voice very small.


    ¡°Tha seest somewhat why we are who we are,¡± Merry smiled. ¡°Now ask thy question anew.¡±


    Bewildered for a moment, she recalled it with a jolt of absurd satisfaction. ¡°How do you remember so much, Master?¡±


    ¡°I want to.¡±


    ¡°Wait a minute!¡±


    ¡°Na, ¡¯t is true enough: desire is the first step to any power! Brother Davi¡¯ll not be bothered to carry the whole of ¡®Peregrine Arnaf¡¯s Lay¡¯ in his head, not when he can shout for me. When tha wish¡¯t, come and learn then the strategies of lore.¡±


    ¡°Lore has strategies?¡± she asked, following him back down to his work corner. Leoff made strategy seem the exclusive province of combat.


    ¡°Power does,¡± said Merry. ¡°Lore is a power.¡±


    She passed the morning helping with the Lore-master¡¯s project, learning his tools and his art and several new songs. Master Merry had a good voice, a bright tenor, and, discovering that Rothesay could hold a tune, indulged a passion for counterpoint till the high arches rang. Other voices joined in, sometimes in song and sometimes complaint, from a few men and a woman, busy reading or making copies themselves at some of the other tables. From time to time Rothesay paused to appreciate the pleasure of not being beaten upon, even through padded leather armor. She could almost feel her bruises healing.


    ¡°Nearly dinnertime,¡± Merry announced suddenly into a late silence of brushstrokes, and she learned cleanup.


    As she wiped abluent from her hands, a man strode abruptly to Merry¡¯s table, a man who made her recoil with one hand waving vacuously about her hip till she realized she was reaching for a weapon that was not there.


    Here was a Runedaur, a real Runedaur, the black warrior of all her earlier fancies about the Knights of Death. Power crackled about him, a cold air of violence resentfully suppressed swirled in on his wake; dark-bearded, dark browed, he stared at her like a wolf eyeing a chicken. So intense was his aura of deadly menace that it took her a moment to realize that he was clad, not in strange armor of black demonhide, but only homespun and a leather apron, and instead of hideous nameless tools of pain and murder, his only apparent weapon was a small cloth bag. By then his glance had let her go, and turned to Merry questioningly.


    The Lore-master, still finger-deep in brush-cleaning, looked thoughtful, then nodded in some signal Rothesay could not read. But the stranger flicked open his bag, pulled out a brown, wrinkled mass of what looked like sausage-skins, counted out four and tossed them to the table. He glanced back at Rothesay, skeptical, dubious; he did not need to say, I am to trust my back to the likes of you? to make her burn with indignation, and then he was gone as brusquely, and silently, as he had come.


    She watched till the great east doors closed him out, and turned back to Merry. She almost asked about the stranger-knight, but decided against awarding the boor that much courtesy, and instead picked up one of the skins, soft and supple and marvelously thin. There was nothing about the Lore-master¡¯s workplace that suggested any likely use for them. ¡°What are these?¡±


    Merry¡¯s head shot up, both scruffy eyebrows rising in an arch of surprise, and vehement disapproval. ¡°Know¡¯st not?¡± he demanded. When she shook her head mutely, startled by his displeasure, he looked her over carefully and one eyebrow dropped. ¡°Ignorant and virgin,¡± he murmured, as if to himself. ¡°Learn this, then, lesta come to motherhood unaware: these a man may use to keep his seed from the womb of his lover. No seed, no child. Dosta follow?¡±


    She nodded, blushing furiously, dropping the skin hastily. Merry¡¯s brushes splashed quietly. She stared at the crumpled little pile. ¡°But, Master¡ª¡± She broke off, biting back the observation that the man who brought them seemed more the sort to rape and let the seed be damned, but Merrithorander cocked his head to the horizontal and regarded her with mild inquiry. Unexpectedly emboldened, she ventured blindly, ¡°But, well, why? Who uses them? Nobody seems¡ªwell, nobody¡¯s tried me . . . .¡± And then she longed to sink into the stone beneath the keep, but Merry answered.


    ¡°Na, of course not. Th¡¯art new: tha ask¡¯st first.¡±


    Now it was her head that shot up, and her eyes went round. ¡®Ask¡¯? What was this ¡®ask¡¯? And who, her? She thought she would sooner die than invite a man to bed. She stared at him, wondering what lusts burned beneath his idiot¡¯s demeanor; yet it was hard to take this scarecrow creature for a male at all, much less as anyone¡¯s impassioned lover. Then his slack smile, still dangling sideways, broadened suddenly, and one eyelid flickered: it might have been a wink; or it might not.


    Thoroughly undone, she spun away, blushing royally. Would she ever learn Kahan¡¯s warning about mind-readers? And what a thing to be caught thinking! True, he had not seemed offended, but nonetheless . . . and the very idea of asking someone for. . . . She almost fled there and then straight back to Master Leoff¡¯s training ground, for there only martial embarrassment lurked, easily mended.


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    And then she saw that she had spent a fortnight learning how to kill, with no more qualm or chagrin than for learning to cook. Only her incompetence had troubled her. Where had she ever learned that it was less evil to skewer a man, than to stroke him? She stuffed her fingers deep into her hair and peered back, shaken, at the Lore-master.


    Merry cocked an amiable head at the towering shelves. ¡°Books are often easier to talk to. Dosta come up after lunch, I¡¯ll finda some. But tell, now: does it soothe thy soul to distress thy hair?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°A place of peace, this our Order,¡± he said irrelevantly, and fished a splendid jewelled bone comb from his rat¡¯s-nest of a desk behind the worktable. She stood dumbly, suffering him to make smooth again the hair above her braids, as a suspicion dawned that a propensity for odd, irrelevant remarks was some prerequisite for Runedaur mastery. In this she was not wholly wrong, and had she marked the slight easing of her dismay, and the restoration of sense, that followed on the Lore-master¡¯s comment, she might have been more suspicious.


    Done, Merry pitched the costly comb heedlessly back to his desk into a pile of rags and leather scraps, and ambled off like very fast walking kelp, for Colderwild¡¯s kitchens.


    Padding after the Lore-master, she suddenly remembered Raian, and his refusal to learn his geometry because he could always call on his tutor¡ªlike Dav calling for Merrithorander and his memory. It still seemed a dereliction; she said as much to Merry.


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand! One should strive to learn all one can.¡±


    Merry made no reply at first. Then, ¡°All at once?¡± he marvelled, awed.


    ¡°Er¡ªwell, of course one has to start somewhere . . . . ¡±


    ¡°Ah, aye. So tha dost.¡±


    They descended a spiral stairs together in silence as Rothesay¡¯s color rose.


    ¡°One must choose,¡± mused Merry. ¡°What if I choose differently than tha?¡±


    ¡°Oh! Then we would know more between us?¡± she hazarded.


    The Loremaster gave her an uncertain glance. ¡°Tha¡¯d not scorn my choice?¡±


    ¡°Oh, no! At least, I don¡¯t think so. Maybe if you picked something truly silly¡ªbut maybe it wouldn¡¯t seem so foolish if I knew more about it?¡±


    Merry¡¯s only reply was a thoughtful, almost interrogative hmm? Presently he spoke again, thinking out loud: ¡°Master Cal studies only horse.¡±


    ¡°And food! All right, then,¡± she conceded after a polyphonic laugh, ¡°it¡¯s good some folk should specialize.¡± She mulled silently down the hall in his wake. No, one person could not learn everything. Then there existed a power, and so certainly a strategy, in surrounding oneself with people of various gifts, who would answer and gladly when shouted for. In that, the young master of boys was learned indeed, and she apologized in thought¡ªthough she meant to learn everything herself anyway. How to choose what not to learn? ¡°Aiye! I thought learning everything was everything! Are there no absolute principles, then?¡±


    ¡°Oh, but yes!¡± said Merry, and pointed down the steps to the raucous under-kitchen. ¡°¡®To the best of thy power, never miss lunch!¡¯¡±


    It was mayhem. In the low-arching cavern under the lesser feast hall, half a hundred people tried variously to snatch a quick bite, work in small groups on collective dinners, compete for space, supplies and inventiveness, or simply interfere with one another for sheer mischief. Rothesay¡¯s noon meal for the last two weeks had been a picnic carried to the lists -- or the hall, the day it rained -- by a shy little peasant girl from Dorchastir, and she joined in joyously. The grim knight of the morning was nowhere in view.


    She discovered the smooth slate wall next to one of the greater fireplaces, on which people wrote in colored chalks, listing so many tasks to be done about the hold; beside them, others had written in many hands the names of whoever claimed responsibility for them. She stared, enchanted: plainly, the Order expected even its drudges to read! Most of the names had been crossed through and a new one added after it; and the more onerous the chore, the longer the list of names, roughly in order of decreasing age. It was a common ploy of the older, more competent students to sign up for something truly offensive, such as cleaning out the stables or the toilets, specifically to pass them on to their well-Ghosted juniors. Her own name was nowhere to be seen but she did not care to inquire about it just yet.


    Arguments raged in many circles. At one table, a one-eyed fellow rolling dough engaged an apple-peeling matron in a combative discussion on the nature of the fundamental substance of the world. Rothesay felt smug that she knew some of the arguments: the Geillari had no grasp of such concerns, and folk at home used to mock Padriag¡¯s interest, though not in his hearing. Next to these two, the talk was political: ¡°The Madroch¡¯s got the Midlands by the throat. Once Odhru submits¡ª¡±


    ¡°Him? He¡¯ll die first!¡± the speaker laughed.


    ¡°¡ªAndrastir¡¯s for it, and the throne¡¯s taken! And then what country will this be?¡±


    And of course, where Caltern was, all talk centered on horseflesh, in the most passionate argument in the room, though the laconic Horsemaster himself contributed little more than an infuriating grin.


    Dav was there. Rothesay had not seen him since Leoff waylaid him the other day: his brow and nose were still scabbed. He sat on a low stool between a hearth and a bucket of water and pared potatoes with frightening speed, splashed them clean in the bucket, then cast them aside in a high and graceful arc. Ten feet away, Ravenbeard met the descending tuber with a pair of flashing knives, the resulting slices piled into a wide wooden bowl, and never once did his fingers touch food.


    As she watched in awe, a dagger whirled out of the crowd behind her and took the next potato out at the top of its arc. Ravenbeard grabbed wildly after it, his own blades dropping into the bowl, and caught it by the hilt at the very end of his reach.


    Amid broad laughter and some applause, Rothesay spun around, and in the middle of the kitchen steps, Master Merry bowed and bowed, whipping his lanky hair about and grinning like a lunatic. Once again the dagger flew from behind her; Merry plucked it from the air with all the cleverness his looks belied, tucked it away at the nape of his neck, winked roguishly at Rothesay and eeled his way into Caltern¡¯s group, who were already eating.


    ¡°Nice recovery, Kiel,¡± she heard Dav remark to Ravenbeard.


    ¡°Huh! And no mistake!¡± he agreed, chuckling. He tossed the potato for himself and sliced it as it fell. ¡°And if it¡¯d been cooked yet, you know old Merry¡¯s pig-tickler would¡¯ve had a string on it! Hullo, chickie! Have a seat and rub some garlic, there¡¯s a good babe. Word has it you¡¯ve escaped Leoff, so eat up: soon¡¯s the boys catch on, you¡¯re back on the choreboard¡ª¡±


    ¡°Hey, that¡¯s right!¡± crowed a passing youth, possessor of a huge bowl of mushrooms, a long brown pigtail and an unfortunate complexion but also a gay and rakish grin. Ulflaed, she thought his name was; and him some chieftain¡¯s runaway son? ¡°Hey, she¡¯s free!¡± he shouted to the room. ¡°Chain¡¯s off! Put her up¡ªand she¡¯s got my Stables, Flick. Mark that for me!¡± Ten-year-old Cisconnar, the same child who brought linens to Carialla the night of her arrival, pulled up a tall stool to the wall as Ulflaed turned and poked a finger in her face. ¡°Dibs on your serving me my supper tonight¡ªin case you had any other plans.¡±


    Rothesay smiled a honeyed smile as all mischief welled up in her. Even before she moved, she saw his face change, saw him begin to fold away from her, saw him start to offer his burden of fungi for objection; but he was a heartbeat too slow. She crashed into him at the hips, rolled him to the stone floor, tangled his arms swiftly behind his back¡ªand then lost them as, fearing to use too much force she exerted too little, and he pulled them free. But then she had his pigtail, a knee in his back and her garlic-paring knife pricking gently under his chin. ¡°Ghost,¡± she purred.


    ¡°Awww¡ªyield!¡± he grumbled.


    ¡°How nice. Serve yourself supper, then.¡± She released him, and rose to scattered applause and a few cheers. She had reckoned correctly that several pounds of mushrooms flung across the floor would not greatly disturb anyone except the one who had to chase them all down and wash them again; and she was letting him off easy, at that. Primly she took her seat again, gathered up her own fallen fruits, and resumed her task.


    Ravenbeard¡ªKiel¡ªoffered her a thick slice of potato for a tidbit. ¡°Like I said!¡± Eat: so she did, as he went on, ¡°See, Lee wanted your, shall we say undistracted attention, so he invoked the privilege of holding you unaccountable for anything anyone laid on you, at least till he was done with you. That¡¯s ¡®Chain¡¯s on,¡¯ meaning a Master¡¯s Chain, though, hell, I could call it, or baby Garrod.¡±


    ¡°And ¡®Chain¡¯s off¡¯ is returning things to normal.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s exactly right. Everybody grumps and grumbles when the Chain goes on, but they sure make up for it when it¡¯s off! Student¡¯s got a memory like nobody else when it comes to keeping track of exactly who owes him what, let me tell you: there isn¡¯t a one of them¡¯s forgotten just what you¡¯re promised to do, and¡ªyou note how the names only get marked through and not wiped off? That¡¯s so we can see who was the previous whattayacallem, who was responsible, so in case you bum out on him, we know who to nail for it. If we can¡¯t find him, we go to the next one up, and like so, but it doesn¡¯t mean you can just skip out on everybody, because that¡¯s exactly who¡¯ll come looking for revenge: everybody!¡±


    Kiel, apparently capable of endless talk and no more willing to give a conversational advantage than Leoff a martial one, rattled on then into descriptions of tasks by which her name was being enthusiastically added; but she listened only partially as she scanned the names for Kahan¡¯s, and concluded at last that it was not there. She had not seen him about the Hall; was he gone, or only ¡°Chained on¡± with someone else?


    Dav intervened when her instructor began to detail toilet-cleaning: ¡°Shut up, Kiel.¡±


    The knight thrust his knives defiantly into the pile of potato slices and folded his burly arms across his chest. ¡°Make me!¡±


    ¡°No!¡± roared a worker at the opposite corner of Kiel¡¯s table, a stringy man stringing beans. ¡°No, not now! Hell¡¯s bloody breath, I¡¯m¡ª¡±


    Dav and Kiel collided with elemental force, whipped suddenly into a tight cyclonic spiral in which bronze and steel flickered like Kavin¡¯s lightning. With only an instant to escape, Rothesay failed to choose between a dive and a leap, attempted both, and fell prostrate on the floor just in time to cushion the toppling men. A flailing foot overturned Dav¡¯s bucket, and a cold flood soaked her front.


    ¡°¡ªhungry,¡± the stringy man snapped as Kiel, chortling almost too richly to speak, yielded.


    ¡°So? Start it cooking, Jennas,¡± Dav suggested, pulling Kiel to his feet. Jennas swept the potatoes into the cauldron boiling in the fireplace, followed by his own work and that of a couple of other contributors. The two wet combatants stripped casually before the fire; Dav hung their clothing on pot-hooks, as Kiel accepted a mop from a helpful neighbor and set to vigorously and playfully on the spreading puddle. The floor disgorged a stone-grey wolfhound, who snuffled and lapped at the water helpfully.


    The high spirit that had moved in her all morning was with Rothesay yet. Steeling herself, she obeyed its impulse; and no one hooted, no one jeered, no one noticed anything at all out of the ordinary. Only Dav, turning to find her own dripping black garments offered on dainty fingertips for hanging by the fire, raised an eyebrow in token of a surprise that gratified her deeply. He splayed the clothing over a hook, and then made her a slight bow.


    ¡°I stand corrected,¡± he murmured, his eyes twinkling.


    She made him a queenly nod, though she struggled to keep from covering her nakedness, and sat down once more to finish the garlic.

 VIII: Carialla (pt 1/3): An Eye for Power

    VIII: Carialla


    Rothesay had not leisure that afternoon to return to Merrithorander¡¯s library: Carialla sent for her.


    Dressing again after the meal and cleanup, in garments not yet wholly dry, Rothesay felt her spirits sink at murmurs of awe and sympathy, mixed with a grisly curiosity, from the other students. But she straightened her spine, and followed Flick¡¯s lead to Carialla¡¯s chambers, though she scarcely noticed the child¡¯s challenge halfway along, nor her own triumph.


    The door opened before she could knock. She was not encouraged by Carialla¡¯s slim, lowering brows, either, though she was beginning to recognize that a look of brooding storm was, if not natural, at least little worse than habitual with the Mistress. As on her first night, she was waved to a cushioned chair by the hearth, where a bright fire vied with the afternoon sunshine for the honor of overheating the room. Rothesay was glad she was still damp, yet Carialla was robed as heavily as ever. A fat gray cat watched her sit, then hurled itself into her lap and rolled over lasciviously. Carialla seated herself with that grace more usually associated with felinity, and stared deep into Rothesay¡¯s wide guileless eyes.


    ¡°A fortnight I¡¯ve waited,¡± the Mistress purred, a distant, threatening thunder. ¡°Lee owes me.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Lady,¡± Rothesay murmured vaguely, glad it was the Arms-master who drew Carialla¡¯s lightning; presumably Leoff could hold some of his own against his Mistress.


    ¡°I knew your mother. That is¡ªclose your mouth, girl. That is almost more than you can say yourself, apparently. Do you know anything of her, other than the name?¡±


    ¡°Er¡ªshe was noble, Lady. That¡¯s why Padriag taught me things. Reading and¡ªum, such.¡± She did not care to say ¡®magic¡¯ and invite the Runedaur sorceress to humiliate her trivial skills in the arcane arts as Leoff did in the physical ones.


    Carialla¡¯s eyebrows lifted. ¡°Then you know even him less well than you think: the Hand of the Dragon does not trouble with birthrank any more than do we. I do not value you for any presumption of a Darian rank, which you do not own, but only because you are Cherusay¡¯s child. No, not even that; because you were with Cherusay, when she was lost.¡± Carialla, her voice having never risen above a murmur, fell fully silent for a thoughtful moment, then added offhand, ¡°What value you possess intrinsically is yet to be shown. So, you come down now from Kelmhal¡¯s country, from Bruic¡¯s, in Anstrede. They still call it Anstrede, I believe?¡±


    ¡°Yes, Lady. Except they make it ¡®ean-streeda.¡¯ ¡±


    ¡°Anstrede, Elomar, Maldan¡ªall of them kingdoms of lesser kingdoms: why have the barbarians no one king among them? Not even Fergil, last of Berulf¡¯s line?¡±


    Of course Carialla knew this, as well as she and probably better, but another of her new teachers asked, and she answered. ¡°Because of the pact. About the Three Treasures.¡±


    ¡°The pact,¡± Carialla agreed. ¡°They are rivals among themselves¡ªbut they do not let their rivals make them forget their enemies. Which,¡± she smiled thinly, ¡°is more than can be said of their enemies. Yes, the pact, to rein rivalry in the face of the enemy.¡±


    The night of Talherne¡¯s death, and their own slender escape, Berulf¡¯s after-court was very quiet. The three chiefs on their cushioned camp stools sat about the hearth-fire, silent over their mead. Berulf sat at the east, the place of honor; Galbric had the south, the place of vigor, and Felka the north, the seat of power. In the problematic west, on a red pillow on a low chest, Teillorn glowed in the firelight like a fairy thing, present and yet incalculably remote.


    Who should wear it? Berulf, whose enterprise this was? Galbric, whose deed won it? Felka, who already commanded fully half of them, and to whom the gods seemed to cast it? A bard had stood behind each man¡¯s shoulder, till they withdrew to take counsel among themselves and the gods. The bard Narhald, it seemed, stood behind Teillorn even now, and his words, unrepeated by any since they left his own lips, thickened the silence.


    Berulf¡¯s bones ached. He should wear the crown, he grumbled to himself, if only because his remaining years were shortest¡ªif they were even to be years. The Sferan tooth had bitten deep into his old thigh, and it was an iron tooth: the Geillari believed that a wound from steel was deadlier than any other. The Runedaur had spoken poetry on the wall this morning; but Berulf was inclined to disregard the poetry on a foreign voice. Then what must he do? He had meant to supplant Talherne, of course¡ªbut not like this, a guest slaying his host. Such a deed fed the demons who clustered beyond the firelight, beyond the warded walls, and weakened the gods. He began to reckon the cost of the sacrifices of kine and swine that would be called for, and the poems and songs to be demanded of his bards and the gifts that they must have. He would need much booty from this land.


    Felka eyed the crown with a craftsman¡¯s eye. Long ago he had almost sold his birthright to become a bright-smith himself; he admired the art of it, even though its style¡ªCallem¨®rine, though he could not know that, never having heard so much as rumor of that vanished race¡ªdispleased him. It had a light look, almost playful, that only some bardic satire could ever have named ¡®sorrow.¡¯ But it was bootless to waste good drinking time on wondering who would wear it. That man would be rald dunrald, king of the kings, whom the bards chose, as they had gone to do. He reached for the mead jug.


    Galbric drank the golden light of the magical crown and not his honey brew, and hungered to taste its weight and power.


    The bards woke them just before dawn. In the night they had woven a great poem, seeking wisdom in the staves. The poem remembered that there were three great tokens of the Dragon-kings, all potent with deep magic. First and eldest was Teillorn the revered; strongest was the Sword, Maerre the Kindler; but greatest and most dangerous of all was the Sferemath, the Eye of the Dragon: who wielded the Eye wielded Marennin herself. The poetry (and the restraint of bardic rivalry on behalf of their respective kings, as well, though that was never openly spoken) demanded a high-king who possessed all three¡ªand no one, not even the Dragon-lords themselves, knew where the other two were to be found.


    Felka laughed. Berulf sighed. Galbric made no sign, veiling his fury from bardic eyes, but he set his poets on the hunt before the sun had risen another fingerspan.


    ¡°So it has stood for two centuries. They grow restless.¡± On the arm of her chair, Carialla rattled her fingernails rhythmically. They were neither long nor polished, Rothesay noted disappointedly. Paintings and sculptures showed noble Sferan ladies with nails impressively long and excitingly colored, and she thought they looked so elegant.


    ¡°They have one of the Three. What if they could find another?¡± she mused.


    Rothesay blinked, then leaped to her feet, sending the cat flying. ¡°My sword!¡±


    ¡°No, girl. Maerre would have burned your little cobweb mind to nothingness, and what walked out of that tomb would not have been you. Metaphorically speaking,¡± she added, chuckling at some joke out of Rothesay¡¯s ken. And as Rothesay dropped back to her seat, clutching her burning thighs, she laughed outright: ¡°You will be Runedaur when you can jump from under a cat scatheless!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not funny,¡± Rothesay grumbled, but low, a chattel¡¯s flirt with dignity.


    ¡°It will be.¡± She lifted a delicate glass filled with what looked like water and was probably that wild stuff in Dav¡¯s flask, but she drank deeply of it before she spoke again. ¡°We are expensive allies.¡±


    ¡°Um,¡± said Rothesay, her thoughts skidding, trying to follow Carialla¡¯s. ¡°Yes, Lady.¡±


    ¡°Your mother wanted our aid. Did you know?¡±


    ¡°To help her take the throne,¡± she murmured, staring through a memory of spruce branches at the top of a Darian wig.


    ¡°Aye, the Pearl Throne. No little bauble, regicide and usurpation, and alliance after.¡±


    ¡°But¡ªwell, why? Did she have any kind of claim?¡± Rothesay did not want a rogue king-slayer for a mother, but she could imagine no royal ties for her, either.


    Carialla shrugged, her eyes, strangely bright, never leaving Rothesay¡¯s. ¡°She was old king Herumer¡¯s first-born child¡ªmaybe his only child,¡± she all but whispered. ¡°Some call that a claim.¡± Watching Rothesay turn stark white, she smiled, showing her canines.


    Then another thought drove that incomprehensible royalty of her parent safely from Rothesay¡¯s mind.


    ¡°You let her die! You didn¡¯t help her!¡± Rothesay shrieked, stumbling to her feet again, half-prepared to choke Carialla on the spot, or try to.


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    ¡°Did we not?¡±


    The cool disclaimer cut through Rothesay¡¯s shock. ¡°Um. You did?¡± She hulked awkwardly, arrested in mid-threat over the smaller woman.


    ¡°No.¡± Carialla watched dispassionately as confusion contorted the girl¡¯s face, before deigning to explain. ¡°We had barely opened the flirtation with a few letters, she and I¡ª¡±


    ¡°You?¡± Rothesay blurted. ¡°Not, um, Master Dav?¡±


    ¡°Do sit down.¡± The purring voice made the few syllables an unspeakable threat; Rothesay¡¯s suddenly-buckling knees dropped her compliantly back in her chair. ¡°Not,¡± she went on, ¡°Master Erriol. Dav was still a sword-happy brat; how old do you think he is? But why myself and not Erriol? Reputation, I fancy.¡± Carialla flashed her teeth again.


    ¡°Reputation? But you couldn¡¯t have been more than a girl yourself!¡±


    ¡°Shall I thank you for the compliment or rebuke you for muddy vision? Never mind. Look now at a spirited and ambitious princess. Look at power to take a throne, a power possibly for the buying. The usual fees are: gold, and influence, and both together worth still more. The world knows Cherusay proposed to hire us. The world still wants to know what coin she had to barter with, and, most especially¡ªwhere is it now?¡±


    The witch began to laugh long and softly, her shoulders shaking in a mirth Rothesay did not share or understand. Carialla¡ªwho, Rothesay thought despairingly, could still be called beautiful when she laughed¡ªthought she might have a clue to her mother¡¯s secret hoard? She, who could not even find this room unaided? She thought of the hearthwards who had ridden to Harrowater at the whim of Baron Fancy-name, who had heard of a half-Ceidhan child nearby. . . . So that¡¯s what he had wanted: he too had thought she was the key to treasure! And so, then, did every other fortune-hunter who had ever heard the name of Cherusay. She shivered, as implications sprouted like deadly tentacles of unguessed peril. Colderwild itself seemed a trap waiting to spring¡ªand its mistress toyed with the trigger. Her eyes wide, she stared horror-deep into Carialla¡¯s. I will never be safe again! she screamed, but soundlessly, in the hollow of her heart.


    ¡°Ignorance is a fool¡¯s security: you were never safe,¡± snapped the witch as if she had heard. ¡°Except as men thought you were dead,¡± she added with a shrug. ¡°Nor do you know the half of your peril. Why did Daria not take Peria, when Talherne fell?¡±


    Rothesay shook her head sharply, rattled like a child¡¯s toy at this new turn. Carialla answered the question for her.


    ¡°She was¡ªah, busy. King Orhade had much the same troubles with his barons as had his cousin Talherne, but he proved the wiser of the two: he kept his crown and his head both. He made swift peace at home, to send at once to Peria and claim the crown by blood kinship.¡± Carialla chuckled. ¡°Alas, that mattered nothing to the barbarians; and the Perian princes regard the Darians as scarcely more Dragon-blooded than the invaders. Daria was far over the sea, and too weak yet to press her claim; she could be ignored. Orhade then tried the indirect route, pitting one chieftain against another. Thus he created a few powerful overlords out of a gaggle of petty jealousies; thus do the high-kings of Anstrede, Elomar and Maldan owe their power to the machinations of their rival across the sea.


    ¡°But the claim might still be made, though two centuries of estrangement have thinned the blood still further. They say no one will wear Teillorn, who does not also possess the Sword and the Eye. And yet,¡± she amended, slow as dripping honey, ¡°and yet it might be that one who wields enough dragon-magic might do without one or the other: having three out of four, we may say. Such a man might once have been Orhade of Daria. Such a man today might be¡ªyour uncle, Rumil. What if he could find one, even one, of the lost treasures, eh?¡±


    Rothesay faintly shook her head. The idea of calling the king of Daria ¡®uncle¡¯ fit into her imagination as well as a pig in a pint-pot, and she sat mute and stupid. But feeling obliged to make some sort of sensible remark, she managed to work out, ¡°Or, um, one of the Sferan princes?¡± Cathforrow¡¯s sunken face swam into memory, and she hoped Carialla would say no.


    The witch of Colderwild chuckled. ¡°Could one of them command the fealty of the rest¡ªoh, perhaps. Rumil has the power of a whole people behind him; the Perians are rent by many ancient grudges. But the Geillari, now: they are sworn to this; they will live by this. And some of them have the blood-power.¡± She rattled her fingernails again. Then her thin lashes fluttered, half-veiling her brooding gaze. Her hands rose, seeming to cup something before her breast, a cup tipped toward Rothesay. Light swirled suddenly there, light laced with silver whiteness bright as splinters of sunlight, that pierced the eye and made all else dim. Then she held, or appeared to hold, a globe of amethyst crystal as large as Caltern¡¯s clenched fist: firelight glanced off its perfect, polished shoulder, rich violet light gleamed in its depths like dark wisdom in the eye of some ancient, magical creature. Three silver claws clasped it from above, themselves surmounted by a flower of five mother-of-pearl petals with a center of clustered diamonds that flashed and flamed.


    Rothesay cried out and reached toward the glittering thing. ¡°That!¡±


    ¡°You have seen it before?¡±


    She had, she knew she had, but all that remained was the recognition. No frame of place or time anchored the shining wonder to any other memory; she could connect it with Daria only because her recollections since washing ashore in Harrowater left no room for it.


    ¡°No matter,¡± said Carialla, so informed, letting the beautiful image vanish; and the sun-bright room seemed dimmed. She folded her thin hands and her eyes gleamed, like a cat¡¯s who has scented cream. ¡°No matter,¡± she purred. ¡°You have thus answered my foremost question. I did not think Cherusay could be fool enough to offer what she did not have to give; yet it seemed incredible that she indeed possessed it. She did have it, eh? Memorable, isn¡¯t it?¡± she grinned.


    ¡°Is that,¡± Rothesay breathed, as image and legend suddenly merged, ¡°is that the Sferemath?¡±


    ¡°The Eye of the Dragon: aye, indeed. The greatest treasure of the Sferiari, the manifest symbol of our race.¡± She swirled her crystal cup, making its contents glimmer. ¡°And if I could put that in a man¡¯s hands? Help him take the crown as well, and hold both¡ªeh?¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s head snapped up. ¡°You, um, want a puppet king?¡±


    ¡°A king of my choosing, answerable to me, amenable to my influence, very much so.¡±


    ¡°But not¡ªnot a Runedaur king?¡±


    Carialla merely stared, a pale, bland look; only much later did Rothesay recognize it as betrayal, however remote, of the Mistress¡¯s shock. ¡°No,¡± she said, repressively; and then a giggle escaped her. ¡°No, that would not be at all suitable. Men are not ready for such, ah, rule. But you see how I was . . . interested, in treating with Princess Cherusay.¡±


    ¡°But where could she have gotten it?¡±


    Carialla seemed surprised. ¡°Why, I imagine¡ªfrom your father, girl. It seems to have been in no mortal hands.


    ¡°Now, you have seen it, I must guess in your mother¡¯s hands¡ª¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know where it is!¡± Rothesay almost shouted. And I wouldn¡¯t tell you if I did!


    Years ago, Padriag had shown her a simple little spell for veiling her thoughts from magical prying. She had never learned it; there was no one in Harrowater with any such talent, however many had the desire, including herself. She wished mightily for it now.


    ¡°We can teach you,¡± Carialla drawled, and grinned a little as Rothesay turned away wishing chagrin were fatal. ¡°But you¡¯ll find such magics of use only outside our walls.¡±


    Rothesay looked back. ¡°You reserve your greater spells for people of rank.¡± She was not resentful; it was only the way of the world.


    But it seemed to anger the Mistress. ¡°Our greater spells are for whoever cares to risk them,¡± she snapped. ¡°That most often follows experience, as does rank¡ªbut neither necessarily. No, girl, they¡¯re of no use because the reading of the Runedaur is not magical, and so cannot be magically blocked.¡±


    ¡°Not magical?¡± She was startled. The way she ¡®read¡¯ animals was not magical, either, as she had told Dav, but she had never experienced it from people. She told Carialla about ¡®talking¡¯ with Dark Walking.


    ¡°How? Do you know?¡±


    ¡°No, Lady. I just do it.¡±


    ¡°And men just walk, never knowing how they move, and thus does rope-walking seem like sorcery. We will teach you our art. And we will teach you the only means of thwarting it.¡±


    ¡°In exchange for¡ª?¡± Rothesay asked suspiciously. Carialla shrugged.


    ¡°You tell us.¡±


    At once she remembered Caltern¡¯s price for sending aid to her family; and she remembered them with a freshened agony of homesickness. Their faces filled her sight, their laughing chatter, their foolish jokes, even their shrieking fights rang in her ears. An unguessable time later, then, a soft murmur said, ¡°You may go now.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Rothesay snapped a hundred leagues back to Carialla¡¯s rooms, to find herself sweltering and half-suffocating in the heat. ¡°I thought¡ªweren¡¯t you going to make me tell you where Mother¡¯s treasure went?¡± she babbled, as the dread fell away that had pressed on her since she was first summoned.


    ¡°I have learned enough for now. We may try stronger measures later¡ªspells for remembrance,¡± she reassured coolly, seeing Rothesay blanch. ¡°If you do not know where she stowed it, you may recall things that will serve us for hints. Would you like¡ªoh, to remember your grandmother, perhaps?¡±


    Grandmother: an image of formidable power somewhere away at the top of silken skirt folds deep enough to hide in. What would it be like, to remember a time when she was always warm, well fed, and welcome? To remember Cherusay herself . . . but to do that she must become a pawn in Carialla¡¯s game. What a demon¡¯s bargain.


    She drew up her head and gazed steadily at the witch, a long, appraising stare, so remote from fear that she did not even note its absence. ¡°Of course I would. But I don¡¯t know about your price.¡±


    Carialla stared back. Terror returned on the flood, but Rothesay held her gaze for one more moment, not in defiance but desire, a desperate wish not to lose the fearlessness she had just tasted, and recognized only as she lost. She dropped her eyes, and missed the gleam of approval in her Mistress¡¯s.


    ¡°You may go.¡±


    Rothesay nodded, rose, and shambled away, awkward between a lust to be gone and a fear of offending. Then one of Carialla¡¯s mirrors pulled her up short. If Padriag¡¯s belongings were half-awake, Carialla¡¯s seemed acutely perceptive: the room felt crowded with watchful souls. Look at me. Demanding ones, too. But she had so seldom seen her reflection that her own image was almost a stranger¡¯s; she obeyed recklessly. She watched herself raise a hand to her face. It was all angles and planes, and the mouth was too wide. ¡°Er, Lady? What did she look like? My mother?¡±


    Carialla raised an eyebrow. ¡°Had I ever learned that, you would now be Princess Rothesay el-Cherusay of Daria, and maybe my own king would be competing for your hand.¡±


    Rothesay blushed and slunk out.

 VIII: Carialla (pt 2 of 3): Demons

    She closed the door softly behind her, and, freed from Carialla¡¯s pool of dread, her sense of the ridiculous burst up for air. ¡®Princess of Daria¡¯¡ªshe laughed merrily aloud at the notion.


    ¡°Ha, ha¡ªauugh!¡±


    Her low laugh leaped to a screech as twelve stone of partly-trained muscle smashed into her ribs and took her to the floor. Floor, flesh, and black satin whirled about her and she came up possessed of a wrist in one hand, a throat in the other, an elbow pinned under one knee and a solar plexus under the other. She stared down into Ulflaed¡¯s sulky face.


    ¡°Er¡ªGhost,¡± she remembered to claim.


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. What do you want?¡± He glared up at her from under dark lashes. In such a predicament, students of briefer residency vented frustration verbally on the victor; longer-term students generally were cross with themselves. She was not certain which Ulflaed was, but sensed an undercurrent to his ire that she could not quite place; thwarted revenge for the mushrooms, most like. Well, it was his problem.


    ¡°The latrines, for Rory.¡±


    ¡°Whatever,¡± he said gracelessly, and she loosed her hold.


    He eeled free just as soon as her grip was slack enough and bounded to light and soundless feet. The indefinable undercurrent spread as open gloating over his face, and he eased towards her, cocked for further battle. ¡°Ah-ah-ah,¡± he chided softly. ¡°I didn¡¯t yield, infant!¡±


    Rothesay bolted.


    The end of Ulflaed¡¯s sash, weighted for the purpose, snared an ankle and she crashed once more to the floor, with stunning force. When the stars cleared, she was Ulflaed¡¯s prisoner¡ªand a little pressure from his fingertips below her ear threatened to bring the stars back.


    ¡°Ghost!¡± he grinned. She thought hard for a way out, but he teased her consciousness again. ¡°Come on, infant, yield or pass out: it¡¯s all the same to me!¡±


    She sighed. ¡°Yield.¡±


    ¡°Wonnnderful.¡± He clamped his mouth to hers¡ªand she flung him six feet into the wall. ¡°Hey!¡±


    ¡°Hey, yourself!¡± she growled, eyes flashing like a cat¡¯s as she leaped up. From what little she had absorbed yet of the queer ways of this place, she was certain that Ulflaed¡¯s attempted claim was well out of bounds, though she did not know why.


    Ulflaed did. He sighed. ¡°Damn, I should learn! Sorry, Sister. But, holy Dere, girl, you¡¯re tempting! No!¡± he yelped, flinging out a hand to ward off something. ¡°Not the Temptation Lecture!¡±


    Rothesay half-grinned, despite herself. ¡°Haven¡¯t heard it.¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you in for a treat!¡± He gathered himself back to his feet and reeled in his weighted sash, bound it about his waist and finally ventured, ¡°Kiss of Peace, then?¡±


    That was different. That, she had learned about two weeks ago, scant hours before Leoff decided she should be his own personal playtoy. Rory, barbered to his satisfaction, had turned to kiss her, and she had darted back indignantly, turning to all-out flight when he tried again with a dangerous new light of mischief in his eyes. She had fled, but Rory proved the swifter, running where she dared not walk, leaping where she scarcely dared climb. Cornering her at last, he had disengaged her adamant will with a cryptic exclamation: ¡°Look, if I have to kiss the Hawk-man, then by all that¡¯s holy, Sugar, I get to kiss you!¡± And in her instant¡¯s bewilderment, he had. To her sheepish embarrassment, it had been a kiss brotherly enough, despite his enthusiasm, altogether unlike Ulflaed¡¯s attempt of a moment ago. Only after he had collected his prize had Rory troubled to explain the Order¡¯s Kiss of Peace. It served many ends: greeting, farewell, apology, celebration, condolence, thanks; sometimes several at once; often it filled those nameless spaces that no mere word could compass. She had been cross with Rory for several minutes for not explaining sooner.


    Still a little warily, now, she exchanged a decorous peck with Ulflaed; and laughed.


    ¡°What?¡± he demanded sharply.


    ¡°Us¡ªkissing, while watching that no one¡¯s hands get too near a knife, and minding our balance¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªAnd that no one else is sneaking up the hall on us!¡± he joined in the humor. ¡°And I don¡¯t forget I¡¯ve won a Ghost claim. Serve me supper after all?¡± He leered triumphantly.


    ¡°Do I have a choice?¡±


    ¡°I could think of something else!¡±


    ¡°Supper¡¯s fine!¡±


    ¡°Done. Busy?¡± he asked suddenly.


    ¡°Er¡ªno, I don¡¯t think so¡ª?¡±


    Ulflaed cocked his head in invitation, flung a companionable arm over her shoulders¡ªup over her shoulders, she was half a head taller than he¡ªand drew her off down the hall. Rothesay bore the arm warily for a few steps before asking, ¡°Is there, well, a ¡®truce time¡¯ between Ghosts? For how long?¡±


    He jumped a yard away, at full alert. ¡°No, there isn¡¯t!¡±


    They stared at each other mistrustfully for some seconds, and then the boy laughed. ¡°No truce time, but there is a Truce Hole. That¡¯s where we¡¯re going. Truce till we get there, though?¡±


    ¡°Gladly!¡±


    ¡°What was so funny?¡± he asked as they fell into stride. ¡°You came out of Dragon-lady¡¯s lair, and¡ªlaughed!¡±


    ¡°Oh. She said I could be princess of Daria.¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡± The chieftain¡¯s son-turned-Runedaur pondered that, then glanced up, around, at the halls of his strange home with deep satisfaction, and laughed also.


    The Tower of Night was ornamented at its peak with three huge dragon-faces, mouths agape, stone tongues lolling. Ulflaed, standing with Rothesay atop Colderwild¡¯s southern wall, stared up the sleek sides of the tower and whistled softly, and from the southeastern mouth a rope presently tumbled. He caught an end and presented it to her with a bow. ¡°After you, Princess.¡±


    Owing to the overhang of the dragon¡¯s head, she was unable to climb walking the wall as she had in Floodholding; Ulflaed showed her how to grip the rope with her feet, and, ignoring the height above and the drop below, she climbed slowly, feeling like a spider dangling on a single hopeful thread, and praying that the wind idling about the tower stayed lazy.


    ¡°No infants! No infants!¡± shrilled a voice above, and she flushed and hesitated, ¡®infant¡¯ being the seniors¡¯ word of blanket scorn for Colderwild¡¯s neophytes.


    ¡°Shut your yap, it¡¯s Rothesay!¡± a more enthusiastic, and older, voice squelched the first: ¡®infant¡¯ was a term not of physical age, but of ¡®Runedaur age,¡¯ as the students called it. ¡®Youngest¡¯ of all, she qualified, but the older boys pleased to make an exception.


    Her head cleared the dragon¡¯s jawline, and she found a snug cave for half a dozen or more friendly souls crowded in its jowls. From the far side, one arm wrapped cozily about a stony tooth, Rory flashed her his sun-god smile and she beamed right back.


    ¡°Oh, yes!¡± Dark, lanky M¨®ravn, crushed thinner than ever between Rory¡¯s bare, muscular thigh and blond Hael¡¯s well-wrapped stoutness, breathed in sensuous ecstasy at sight of her. His eyes twinkled. ¡°Wondered what Ulfie was bringing for treats!¡±


    Arnaf of the broken tooth put out a sturdy arm to help her over the lip, and yelled back down, ¡°Thanks, Ulf! You can go now!¡±


    ¡°Yeah, go away! ¡¯Bye, Ulf! Get off!¡± the others chorused cheerfully, and Arnaf added a raspberry.


    ¡°Any of you ever want to come back down out of there?¡± Ulflaed threatened companionably, his voice from somewhere well above the lower wall.


    ¡°While my dark beauty and all my desire is up here? You crazy?¡± M¨®ravn yelled back, to general laughter.


    ¡°Shut up, Ravn! Make your Sister feel like the prize chicken at a cock-fight, why don¡¯t you,¡± Rory snapped, though his appreciative grin was anything but brotherly. ¡°Here, Sugar, have a sit, and remember we are all still very young!¡±


    ¡°¡®Sister,¡¯ well, they do say incest is best. Ow!¡± M¨®ravn yelped as Hael punched his skull. ¡°Peace,¡± he offered gravely, handing her a sweetcake. ¡°It was only a paean to your womanly glory.¡±


    Rothesay accepted the cake, but had to grin at the word ¡®womanly.¡¯ ¡°We are all still very young, Brother,¡± she admonished him equally gravely, her green eyes dancing.


    M¨®ravn raked her with a critical stare. ¡°Could be, at that. Flick, quit hogging the wine or you can¡¯t come up here any more!¡±


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    ¡°I brought it!¡± the boy protested, but handed it over.


    ¡°That can be fixed,¡± said Hael. Deftly he plucked the bottle from M¨®ravn¡¯s grasp and personally passed it to Rothesay with a flourish. M¨®ravn seized his knee in a pincer grip. Hael¡¯s scream brought her heart to her mouth almost to meet the wine and she choked; but the scream was plainly not one of pain and the other boys roared with laughter. Hael jerked and twitched and pounded on M¨®ravn as he fought to win free of the dreadful tickling grip.


    ¡°Hey! You¡¯re going to pulp the rest of us!¡± Arnaf protested.


    ¡°You almost kicked me out!¡± added Flick.


    ¡°Really? Tickle him again, Ravn!¡±


    ¡°You shut up!¡±


    ¡°There is,¡± said the one boy who had not yet spoken at all, a brownhaired sheepdog named Juris, ¡°something to be said for maturity. But that is not a matter of age.¡± He rose as well as he could and made a cramped, but passable, bow to her.


    ¡°You¡¯re only twelve, Juris!¡± snapped Flick.


    ¡°Point made,¡± he retorted. With peace restored, Ulflaed finally climbed in.


    They had a sizeable feast: sacks of sweetcakes, several loaves of bread and a few rounds of cheese, as well as a couple dozen of apples, a basket of roasted acorns, and Flick¡¯s wine. Rothesay wondered why they had troubled to carry so much up to this eyrie, then watched astonished as every crumb vanished: few creatures can eat as active human boys can eat, and these were exceptionally active.


    ¡°Ugh!¡± Arnaf moaned, flexing his shoulders. ¡°Cobry twice, and you, and Hael, and Ulflaed¡ªand you!¡± he pointed ferociously at Rory, who flashed a superior grin. ¡°You three times¡ª¡±


    ¡°Four.¡±


    Arnaf frowned fleetingly, but ignored it and went on. ¡°And Garrod twice, and Harlan Grey, and Master Merry¡ªnow I know why we worship Death: ¡¯cos after you¡¯re beat up enough, it starts sounding like a jolly idea!¡±


    ¡°Poor baby!¡±


    ¡°Could be worse,¡± said M¨®ravn philosophically, toying with a final acorn to make it last. ¡°Far as I¡¯m concerned, it¡¯s been a damned holiday, with His Ladyship out of the place!¡±


    ¡°Who?¡± demanded Rothesay, over the others¡¯ chorused groans.


    ¡°Who?¡± M¨®ravn echoed in lofty disbelief. ¡°Surely you¡¯ve met our good Lady Kahan? Bastard never sleeps¡ªand sees to it that you don¡¯t, either!¡±


    ¡°He doesn¡¯t quit¡ªever!¡± Flick agreed.


    Juris evidently felt the subject worth opening his mouth for only the second time. ¡°When you¡¯ve had more than you can stand; when you think you won¡¯t live to make it to bed again; when you¡¯re so tired you can¡¯t find the floor except by falling on it¡ªthat¡¯s when he shows up to beat the snot out of you, that last snot you didn¡¯t even know you had left.¡±


    ¡°And then he hits on you again!¡± Ulflaed added, grimacing.


    ¡°Wish he¡¯d learn when to lay off,¡± Hael grumbled.


    ¡°Oh, you bunch of girls! ¡ªSorry, Sugar,¡± Rory patted her knee. ¡°He¡¯s got to, fools! You think Deorgard¡¯s going to stand politely by some day, while you catch up on your beauty rest? A few bruises to teach you you¡¯ve got snot left you didn¡¯t know about¡ªthat isn¡¯t just going to save your skin someday, but maybe the skin of whoever¡¯s with you who might really be out of snot!¡±


    ¡°OOH! Would you listen to who¡¯s sticking up for the Hawkman!¡± M¨®ravn crowed, then roared as Rory seized a vicious handful of hair, twisted hard, and pulled away before M¨®ravn could retaliate. M¨®ravn grabbed after him, and Ulflaed kicked M¨®ravn.


    ¡°Simmer down, damn it! This is the Truce Hole! Rory, man, you¡¯ve got to get over this Kahan thing!¡±


    ¡°Yeah!¡± piped up Flick. ¡°What is it, anyway? You¡¯ve got muscles Kay never heard of¡ª¡±


    He was cut off by booing laughter. ¡°Hark at the baby ogling over muscle!¡± Hael jeered. ¡°Afraid you¡¯re not going to get any, Runt?¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t muscles I¡¯m concerned about,¡± Juris murmured, but only Rothesay seemed to hear, or to catch his secret grin.


    ¡°Where is Kahan?¡± Rothesay turned the topic, only to discover Rory liked this one even less than the other.


    ¡°Dunno. Off on some assignment somewhere,¡± answered M¨®ravn. ¡°Probably that¡¯s what¡¯s got our boy Rory here stoked up: not being sent on one himself¡ªlike the rest of us babes. Damned fool hothead! Think they¡¯re going to entrust anything to your flash temper?¡±


    Every one of Rory¡¯s inarguably well-developed, and well-displayed, muscles displayed themselves ominously, but he contained himself gloriously, not betraying temper by so much as a raised voice. Rothesay reminded herself to compliment him on his control, later when there was no mocking audience; then she recalled that his desire was not to get angered in the first place: the compliment would be hollow.


    A silver bell chimed faint but clear over the roofs, walls, and gardens of Colderwild.


    ¡°Coming, Mistress,¡± Hael sighed heavily. He lurched to his feet, waded through his fellow students, gathered up several bights of the rope and tumbled headfirst out over the dragon¡¯s tongue. A long-drawn, fading wheeeeee floated briefly up, truncated by a harsh grunt trailed by cursing.


    ¡°Misjudged the swing,¡± Arnaf, watching over the side, reported with a grin. He pulled on a pair of stout leather gloves. ¡°That¡¯s my call, too! Eat warily tonight!¡± And he too slipped from the eyrie.


    ¡°What¡¯s the bell?¡± She had heard it every afternoon from the lists, but Leoff had never paid it heed.


    ¡°Sothia¡¯s starting supper. Everyone who¡¯s supposed to help cook, that¡¯s your summons,¡± said Flick. ¡°You cooking too, Rory?¡± he asked, watching the redhead take up the rope in turn.


    ¡°No,¡± he said, and dropped from view.


    ¡°I am,¡± sighed Rothesay, and climbed down very slowly. She meditated deeply on leather gloves on the way: whatever magic had toughened her sinews, it had not hardened her hide.


    The rope ended at the top of the ramparts, by the door to the stairwell within. Rory had evidently climbed, or jumped, from the wall; he waited casually by the doorway below at the tower¡¯s foot. As Rothesay looked down, Arnaf emerged from the lower door, all too heedlessly. The resulting conjunction was concise, violent, and Rory¡¯s.


    She burst from the tower door herself just as Rory genially hauled a grimacing Arnaf back to his feet. ¡°Like I said,¡± he grinned smugly, displaying four powerful fingers. Arnaf¡¯s face twisted indignantly, and he drew back an ill-considered fist. Rory snarled. ¡°Move like that and you¡¯ll make it five, Shit-for-liver! Cover your ribs, keep that elbow down¡ªit¡¯s not a chicken¡¯s roost!¡±


    Arnaf subsided sullenly. ¡°I¡¯ll get you, see if I don¡¯t!¡± he muttered as the three of them moved off together.


    ¡°You try,¡± said Rory agreeably.


    Supper preparations were almost as boisterous as the noon-meal. Garrod was in a musical mood, making a nuisance of himself with a pair of wooden spoons, with which he played every pot, pan and kettle in the kitchen, without melody but with a fine ear for tones, nor yet above trying to ring one out of a poor student¡¯s skull. A small, disheveled woman armed with a huge carrot guarded his back from the jovially annoyed workers, and she sang as she grabbed the inattentive, corrected their posture, struck them in the belly and ordered them to breathe. Fine grey hair escaped from a knot at the nape of her neck and floated into her face.


    She grabbed the Horsemaster¡¯s naked buttocks in a playful squeeze to persuade him to move them out of her way, only to have them waved saucily back at her. She smacked him, and he swept her up in one mighty arm and planted a hearty kiss on her mouth. Then he chomped off a third of her carrot. She twitched, making some sharp move out of Rothesay¡¯s view, and Caltern dropped her with a yelp like a startled cur. She landed lightly, half-crouching, and for a moment the two stood, eyes locked, the towering Horsemaster and the diminutive woman. Then she stretched up, poised like a hummingbird before a hairy red flower, her lips puckered for a kiss. Caltern pursed his own, and they exchanged a piquant token of peace, before he turned her by the shoulders and pointed out Rothesay. The woman brightened and came dancing through the supper-bransle, grinning a gap-toothed grin.


    ¡°Hello, little one!¡± she chimed, though she was scarcely more than half Rothesay¡¯s height. ¡°I¡¯m Maarfi the Music Mistress, pardon the alliteration. When can you come up to my hall? I¡¯ve been that cross with Lee, keeping you all to himself all these weeks, and you so pretty and he never noticed once, now, did he?¡±


    ¡°Well, no¡ª¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s fine with you? Well, everything in its time. Have you any music theory? Any science of harmonic intervals? Well, any astronomy, then? Ah, names but no numbers; pity. Can you sing? Do so.¡±


    Rothesay stammered into one of Artame¡¯s spell-songs. Maarfi tilted her nose. ¡°Trying to impress me with your Classical knowledge? Come up tomorrow with something ribald on your tongue. You¡¯re out of Geillari-land; you must have picked up some ripe ones.¡± Then she fixed Rothesay¡¯s posture, made her breathe as Dav had done in Carastloel, and turned to rescue Garrod again.


    ¡°She doesn¡¯t just do music,¡± said Rory close by Rothesay¡¯s left ear. ¡°No, don¡¯t move, Sugar, or you¡¯ll lose a kidney.¡± She sucked a breath¡ªand felt the point of confirmation sharp above her belt cord. ¡°She can make sound-spells that¡¯ll knock a falcon out of the sky, or hear what¡¯s said a league off. Ghost.¡±


    Before they could negotiate the price of inattention, the sound of the upper door crashing open brought all the work-music to silence. At the top of the stairs stood M¨®ravn, garbed for travel, his pleasant face twisted in ugly fury. Half of what he shouted into the stillness was swallowed in stony echoes; the words she could catch were hard to string together, but she eventually gathered that he felt that the Order was deliberately avoiding teaching him the arts he came to learn, to keep him a slave to their decadent and licentious whims. A final roar ending in ¡°¡ªcocksucking frauds!¡± finished with the crash of the door slamming shut again.


    Conversation resumed slowly, as Caltern hauled his bulk up the stairs and out.


    ¡°Huh. And I thought I had a temper,¡± Rory murmured softly. ¡°Ravn¡¯s cooked himself one fine dish of crow to eat.¡±


    ¡°Could it be true, about them not teaching him, I mean?¡±


    Rory grinned, but the smile had a wistful kink in it. ¡°It probably is true. Sugar, you can¡¯t just saunter in here and learn whatever you choose, you learn what the Masters bloody well want you to learn¡ªor nothing, I guess. Ravn¡¯s problem is, he doesn¡¯t trust them. Me, now: I want to be the finest, fastest, deadliest warrior in the North, same as Ravn or anyone; but I figure, they want me to be that, too! It¡¯s in their best interests, isn¡¯t it, to surround themselves¡ªcover their backs¡ªwith the best? So if they set me up to learn something maybe I don¡¯t like, like,¡± he paused, his mouth working around something bitter, ¡°like I can¡¯t be trusted on account of my temper, well, holy moon tits, maybe I¡¯d better learn it, ¡¯cos that¡¯s a big hole in my, let¡¯s say nature, that somebody could maybe use against me someday. But it isn¡¯t pretty, Sugar. Listen, people say we get possessed by demons at knighthood. That¡¯s a hell of a joke: if anything, we get unpossessed! Demons aren¡¯t ¡®things¡¯ that come and get you, they¡¯re just a way of thinking about these, call ¡¯em holes in your soul¡ª¡±


    Unable to resist, Rothesay solemnly lifted one bare foot and inspected the bottom. Rory snorted and yanked her braid for revenge.


    ¡°Anyway,¡± he went on, tossing his head towards the stairs, ¡°I figure Ravn¡¯s just gotten a good hard look at a ¡®demon¡¯ he doesn¡¯t want to own up to, and now he¡¯s running scared. It happens. Hope the meathead doesn¡¯t get into too much trouble before he figures out he¡¯s running from his own shadow. Here, let me help you finish that up: company for supper tonight.¡±


    He seemed to have forgotten he had won a Ghost claim. She did not remind him.

 VIII: Carialla (pt 3 of 3): Worth Fighting For

    Supper itself was a quiet affair just before sundown, as usual, till the arrival of the guests raised heads and hearts: three Runedaur from Raven¡¯s Trace, the itinerant house-without-a-hall, travelling with three from Rose House. One of the Ravens was a poet and a singer, and presented his news in song. The overlord of Maldan, Odhru the Brean, was making a push for Andrastir, and Princess Aristande of House Andras asked the Runedaur to stand with her and Carastwyth against him. Clearing away the supper dishes then became an exercise in tactics: ¡°Don¡¯t take that bowl: it¡¯s a Carastwyn cavalry! And that wine puddle¡¯s the river mouth!¡± Some of the boys who were supposed to have scullery duty with her, lingered over the knights¡¯ talk and no one urged them to be about their work; Rothesay then did only as much as she felt was strictly fair before listening in herself, and thus stumbled right into step with Runedaur custom.


    She heard no formal decision, but a consensus of agreement seemed to arise: in two weeks¡¯ time, the Order would ride to battle. Students, it appeared, were to go along, or not, as they themselves felt ready for the trial.


    No two of them had the same opinion of the prospect. Arnaf fairly slavered for the chance, and groaned so loudly over having to wait a fortnight that Rothesay began to wonder who he was trying to convince. Cobry was simply stunned: rather like Rothesay herself, he had been so caught up in the details of his study that its purpose had been wholly driven from his thought, and he said frankly that Ghost games were one thing but real killing was something he had yet to weigh. Rory and Ulflaed, both veterans of other campaigns, meant to go, neither of them for glory. Ulflaed seemed to have some ulterior motive he would not discuss; Rory grumbled something about having two weeks to master suturing, and she realized he was a particular student of the Mistress Healer. Lacie, having torn herself away from ogling the singer of the Ravens, said softly that she too would be there: ¡°We learn that you don¡¯t kill till you know him so well that it will hurt to end his life, and then only if the death is still worth the hurt. But that¡¯s assassination, that¡¯s personal. I just don¡¯t know about war.¡±


    Rothesay toyed silently with the end of a braid. Scared sick, still her only thought was to go and fight, just to show Thyrne that she was, too, marriageable.


    She left the students¡¯ brooding to listen again to the adults at their planning. The three visitors from Rose House of course were Silents, but these were signing Silents; watching the curious beauty of their gesture made her forget war and fired her with a desire to learn this art, and soon. She settled at the elbow of the younger of the two Silent men, a flirtatious rake well pleased with her attention who obligingly taught her a phrase. When she grasped its meaning, however, she went pink to the ears, shook her head mutely and exited as politely, and as quickly, as she could contrive.


    She escaped out into the courtyard, to be alone with Night and her thoughts of Death and lust. What would it mean to kill someone?¡ªintentionally, she reminded herself darkly. And what would it be like to go intentionally to someone¡¯s bed? She tried to drive the heels of her hands into her bewildered brain through her forehead. The little brook under the well-leafed cherry trees made a pleasant thoughtless noise and she headed toward it.


    By the north wall of this courtyard, a soft, unidentifiable sound reminded her like a dash of icy water that Colderwild was the last place outside a battleground where she could afford to be woolgathering. As she froze, taking stock of her position, her surroundings, and her possibilities, a body dropped from above directly behind her, catching her in the circle of its arms like a score at rings-and-bottles. ¡°Hi!¡± said Kahan, and squeezed her.


    She sank an elbow in his ribs and whirled to take a poke at his jaw, or where his jaw should have been, terribly glad to see him but remembering keenly what she was in this madhouse to learn, after all. Her blow went wild and she tumbled neatly over his practiced shoulder, praised herself for the grace of the resulting somersault, and twisted up for a lunge at his belly. Kahan went down too obligingly, planted a foot in her stomach and lofted her on over, then flipped himself over in a catlike pounce, pinned one wrist and her throat, and dropped asprawl upon her. ¡°Ghost!¡±


    She stabbed at his ribs with her training knife, intending to retort, ¡°Ghost, yourself,¡± but his snakelike midsection arched up and snapped down on her hand, trapping it just long enough for the hand on her throat to prove that it had the mastery. Suddenly infuriated, because victory had seemed so hopeful for a moment, she yielded in a surly bark; but Kahan only gathered her up in a hug and began to laugh.


    ¡°By the gods, was there ever such a place? Where else is attempted murder a warm welcome home?¡± He hugged her tightly as she began to grin, too. ¡°Thank you for the battle. You¡¯ve learned a lot since I left!¡±


    ¡°Where have you been? Are you allowed to say?¡±


    ¡°Making wishes come true.¡± He ticked them off on his fingers, as they sat where they had fallen. ¡°Your Alrulf¡¯s master of Pinnar¡¯s farm, so he has an inheritance, even if it is ¡®edgeling¡¯, and she has a strong back around the place. Your sisters are living with Thyrne and Mat and their new sheep and copper kettle. The ladies all have something pretty to wear¡ªoh, that Meryth¡¯s going to be a heartbreaker! I may have to marry her myself¡ªand Alrulf and Mat have spears and bows, and a fishing boat between them. The ponies and the other boat will come later. We do look after our own, my friend!¡±


    She hugged him thoroughly and pressed him for the smallest details. He complied, lounging close by her in the cool spring night and shamelessly and blatantly encouraging her to think he was the most wonderful person in all Peria till she laughed aloud.


    Perhaps startled by the sound, a mouse bolted across the stones, barely visible even to Rothesay in the starlight. Kahan¡¯s head snapped around as if jerked, to follow it, and she felt his body tense, then relax again slowly.


    ¡°What, not afraid of mice, are you?¡± she teased, tempted to call the creature to her hand.


    ¡°Hnh? No¡ª¡± He shook his head, a tight little shimmy to shake off something, and bounded to his feet. ¡°Is there supper left? I should eat. Man-food: carrots? peas? or radishes¡ªdo we have any radishes? I¡¯d love a radish. No, I¡¯m not afraid of mice¡ªbut I tend to be acutely aware of them for days, after trips like this!¡±


    ¡°Trips like what?¡±


    He grinned down at her. ¡°Two questions: how quickly could you go home and come back, with time for business while you¡¯re there; and what do people call me?¡±


    ¡°Lady Kahan?¡±


    He whooped with laughter. ¡°Sorry: wrong name, similar reason! What else do they call me?¡±


    ¡°Hawkma¡ª¡± She stared, hard, back where the mouse had been. ¡°You can turn into a hawk?¡± she breathed.


    ¡°No, not all by myself. But our Mistress finds it so easy to get me to assume hawk-shape that I think I am in danger of becoming Carialla¡¯s errand-bird, and never a knight at all!¡±


    A quick glance revealed the mirth in his eyes that betrayed the complaint; still, she was troubled. Padriag was very coy about shape-changing. The body wore whatever form the soul believed in, and the risks in altering belief were high.


    Kahan kicked gently at her foot. ¡°Radishes!¡± he said plaintively.


    She came to her feet from a roll well out of his reach, and he laughed at her smug look. As they walked down together into the kitchen, he asked why she was not on the list field with Leoff, and she told him of her escape thanks to Rory¡¯s advice. Kahan chuckled.


    ¡°No, you don¡¯t have to jump when a Master says ¡®frog,¡¯¡± he agreed as she turned to reach deep into the cool root barrel. ¡°And it¡¯s downright hazardous to jump when a senior student says ¡®ghost.¡¯¡ªGo ahead, say it, it¡¯ll make you feel better.¡±


    She had frozen in place, trapped between his one gentle hand on her windpipe and the point of his dagger right between the braids at the base of her skull. ¡°Bastard!¡± she spat.


    ¡°See? All better. Now add ¡®yield¡¯ and we¡¯ll go have a picnic somewhere.¡±


    ¡°I will, I swear by all the gods I will get you for this!¡±


    ¡°I hope you do,¡± he replied, his cheerful sincerity briefly confounding her wrath. ¡°Come on, yield, I¡¯m hungry!¡±


    She opened her mouth to commend him to starvation, remembered Rory¡¯s fate at his hands, and snarled. ¡°Yield.¡±


    As soon as he released her, she spun around hunting hungrily for anything she might recognize as an ¡®opening,¡¯ but something in his manner stayed her: how could anything so relaxed still seem so dangerously alert and ready? His eyes danced over her. ¡°You must¡¯ve been idling while I was away, if no one¡¯s jumped you in the latrine yet!¡±


    ¡°Nooo!¡±


    ¡°Yeees!¡±


    She writhed, muscles knotting, and then she flung herself blindly at his chest. For thirteen years life had flowed like the weather, one day as much like its predecessor as the slow-shifting seasons allowed: days of dearth, days of plenty, festive Fair days¡ªthe sisters chasing down Alrulf to decorate him forcibly in their daisy wreaths¡ªand days of mourning: how bright the sun had been on the snow, the morning after Mina died of her fever in the night under the single blanket they shared. Death was no more a stranger than His son Winter, but came round in His turn like the seasons.


    Only now the seasons themselves were cast into confusion. Nothing in the last month had been anything like the lifetime before; even the flavors in her mouth and the accents in her ears were alien to her now. She pounded on his breast, rather feebly because he held her in so close, but there were no tears, only a semi-articulate roar of insanity. He held his arms lapped around her shoulders and rocked gently on his feet, saying nothing, only letting the torrent howl past; once or twice she felt him shift position and only later learned it was to warn off would-be assassins.


    She at length puffed out that she knew just how poor old M¨®ravn felt, and she had half a mind to run off and go with him.


    ¡°Oh, Ravn¡¯s finally run, has he?¡± he chuckled, a little sadly, she thought, but she could not see his face, not with hers pressed into the hollow of his neck. ¡°No, love, you don¡¯t know how he feels. This,¡± he squeezed her gently, ¡°this is like, oh, stripping off our clothes, Geillan tunics or Sferan jerkins or Isorchian great-robes, down to our skin to put on black-and-silver. But when you strip down to your soul¡ªyou¡¯re in for a few surprises. I ran for the mountains, myself,¡± he cocked his head southwards. ¡°Stayed out for a month, nearly froze to death. Nothing at all like just being confused by this place.¡±


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s encouraging!¡±


    He chuckled. ¡°Ah, sweet anticipation! Can I have my radishes now?¡±


    She pushed slowly away from him, rubbing mindlessly at her scalp: Kahan was in great need either of a shave or another week¡¯s growth and his bristles had prickled. She glared at him warily, reluctant to turn her back again. She backed up carefully to the root-barrel, reached cautiously into its depths, found a beet and considered that Arngas¡¯s strength ought to enable her to put a nasty sting to it, thrown. She flung a whole handful of roots, radish, beet, and carrot, at him then, and vegetable war escalated thence, spilling out into the night and acquiring nearly all the rest of Colderwild before midnight.


    A high-vaulted room; on a stone dais a great bed, thick with white blankets and dark furs, untidy under a disarray of books and scrolls, and letters crumpled beneath the bodies of three sprawling cats. The bedposts, thick as a man¡¯s leg, had been carved by a master and gleamed with the glory of golden oak in the firelight, but their owner seemed to care little, obscuring one as an elaborate cloak-peg while two more served as map-hangers. But the slate floor was clean, bare except for two wide rugs, one at the hearth, one at the first of three tall windows. A clothes-press, two chairs, a writing desk were almost the only other furniture in the apartment.


    Dav stood, barefoot on the rug, window thrust open, looking deep into the night. A silver chain slithered through his fingers, rhythmically between his hands, slippery, almost liquidly supple; he liked the metaphor. Runedaur adapted, they had always adapted: they had met the challenge of two millennia and more and still walked the land, as much like what they had been in the beginning as the man grown was like the infant. Adapt, change, and grow¡ªor die. And sometimes¡ªhe paused, and pushed the twisted silver links together, feeling them mesh till a length of it formed, not a ribbon but a bar, locked and hard¡ªsometimes it was in the way of wisdom to set firm, and stir the adaptation of others in their turn.


    Erriol had been a wise Master; the Order had prospered in his term. Apart from enforcing the respect, if seldom the fealty, of the Geillan warlords, he had also demanded a blossoming of art and skill within the Order herself, driving against the urge to conserve more than create in this war-ridden age. But he had had little respect, still less interest, for the mass of men outside her holy Circle: if violent men chose to battle for a single day of rule, squandering their powers on rage and vengeance with nothing left for making a life worthy of a man; if the many allowed themselves to be yoked to squalor and debasement for the privilege of being protected by the few who created most of the hazard in the first place; if they did no more than dream of something better, Erriol would not be so indelicate as to interfere, and, frankly, the sooner stupidity killed itself off, the better. He turned his own considerable powers to awakening the powers of his people; Dav acknowledged a great debt to the man, though they had often disagreed, once to the very threshold of death.


    Dav looked out. Only stars brightened the night: no torches flared on Colderwild¡¯s dark walls, no lights burned in the vastness of the Cristcasel Forest that stretched for leagues northward, and the moon was old. He unrolled the map of Peria in his mind across the darkness, seeing, there, the far rugged mountains of intransigent Sparca; there, the rich fields of Elomar whence he himself had sprung; there, Andrastir at the mouth of the Holywell on the windy Gulf Rhostial. And everywhere, blood flowed.


    The grey stones of Dorrocan¡¯s Wall of Sparca were black with the blood of the men of Dunhaldring and Dun Garlaf on the one side, with that of the House of Rhyllandon on the other. Blood dimmed the clear waters of Feillantir harbor, where Wegrulf warred with his brother Eglaf for mastery of the Teodh-nan-Feill. Grass rose green in Aorin¡¯s Vale in Elomar, nourished by the blood of Dunbrodie and Lostforth. And from Sfellias to the Ferinlath, a ribbon of blood marked the retreat of the southern Sferan clans into the mountains.


    Dav drew the circle of ¡®his¡¯ people considerably more broadly than had Erriol. It was, after all, out of that bloody slurry that jewels like Kahan, or Alfiera of Raven¡¯s Trace, or this preposterous Darian chit emerged; who, he wondered in black fury at the waste and confusion, who lay dying even now who might have been another Arngas in his own right, another Sianna? Stupidity was not slain by stupidity at all; rather, murder and violence merely spread the contagion to the survivors, tenfold. Who might have known that awakening of the soul that was all the aim of his Order, whose mind was now dark with vengeance and blood-lust?


    War interfered with Dav¡¯s exercise of joy and duty. He would no longer brook the interference.


    He knew the Mistress¡¯s desire. Fortunately, her dreams and his turned alike on a unified country. And unity was possible. More Geillan blood than Sferan spilled of late, in internecine contests for land and power, yet they were still one folk; it should be between Geilla and Sfera that peace would be more hardly won. Yet there, too, was hope. In the highlands of Tre-Uissig, the House of Kinnaith and the Dunwyrding stood in fast alliance against the rest of Peria: hope was there, though the Kinnatiari were regarded by long tradition as a peculiar lot at best, a tradition the Dunwyrding had managed to marry into. There was Dav himself: if a drop of Sferan blood ran in his veins, it was a secret known to gods alone, yet he stood as the fell master of a most ancient Sferan power, and no Sferan noble questioned the fitness of the match or denied him honor therefore. There would be peace.


    One king. Arms alone would not keep one secure, not from others eager for that power. A respect less susceptible to challenge was demanded; that was the duty of history. No king was ever wholly safe from usurpation, but some of the damnedest fools had worn, and kept, crowns solely because powerful men respected the myth of their lineages. This upstart Deorgard, now: men would grow accustomed to his rule; if his heirs should prove strong enough for long enough, the habit of deference alone would carry the occasional weak or foolish descendant, till one of that blood came to appear, as he might well claim, divinely appointed. And as to that, who was to say he was not?


    Carialla and Dav did not mean to wait on history. If a strong leader did not emerge, they would create one; and the old tokens of empire would veil history¡¯s lack well enough to start. And now Padriag had dropped Lady Cherusay¡¯s daughter in their laps. How very interesting.


    A soft knock at his door broke his thought. A student, it would be; a knight or witch seldom gave warning by troubling with formalities. He thought about ambushing the child, but he could guess who it was. Hael might announce himself with a knock, but he would expect his Master to attack. ¡°Come.¡±


    The door opened slowly, silent on its hinges: Dav liked a low threshold of alertness. For a moment the doorway was empty, and then Hael peeked past the jamb, from well out in the hall. Not bad.


    ¡°Master?¡±


    ¡°Come in.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s about M¨®ravn, sir,¡± he said softly, not moving.


    ¡°Yes. Truce,¡± said Dav, smothering a smile.


    ¡°Thank you, sir.¡± Hael entered, but still warily, carefully checking behind the door as he closed it. ¡°You said truce, but maybe somebody else hadn¡¯t,¡± he explained bashfully.


    Dav shrugged. ¡°Or Maolin might shake the earth, and all my spears and axes fall out on you. No, don¡¯t look!¡±


    Hael froze. ¡°There are no spears behind your door, Master. Just a couple of banner poles.¡± But there was uncertainty in his voice.


    ¡°And a roasting-spit.¡±


    Hael did not ask why; he too had used some strange things as weapons, whatever was to hand, and had a few things under his own bed that would be hard to explain to a stranger. He kept forgetting to put them back.


    ¡°M¨®ravn¡¯s run, sir.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    The monosyllable slapped the youth. ¡°You¡¯ve got to bring him back!¡± he all but shouted.


    ¡°And prove to him that he is a slave?¡±


    Hael started, and then sagged. ¡°But, but you can¡¯t just let him go . . . like you didn¡¯t want him, like he wasn¡¯t worth anything to you . . . .¡±


    Very gently, Dav replied, ¡°But I don¡¯t want him, if he does not want us. Be here gladly, or not at all: I¡¯ll waste none of my life¡¯s span forcing someone else to waste his.¡±


    ¡°But he does want to be here! This is what he wants more than anything else, what he¡¯s always wanted! He¡¯s just¡ªnot thinking,¡± his voice sank, low and glum, confessing the greatest sin his master recognized.


    ¡°I know. That was for you, Hael: don¡¯t run from me hoping I¡¯ll prove your worth by running after you.¡±


    The boy¡¯s pink face paled as the Master¡¯s words pierced to the heart. But he had been many years at Colderwild, and if he had not yet learned all he needed to know, he had learned much about how to tell insult from instruction¡ªand about why Runedaur bothered instructing at all. ¡°Yes, Master,¡± he managed to murmur; and found himself wrapped in Dav¡¯s arms. That, however, he had long since come to terms with, and returned the embrace easily.


    After a moment, Dav gave him a little shove toward one of his chairs. ¡°M¨®ravn.¡±


    Hael sat without speaking: once chastised, twice wary, and he looked at Dav askance.


    ¡°Chasing him down won¡¯t mean to him what it would to you, boy.¡±


    Hael tried believing that. It was hard to imagine that someone would dislike being sought after; but he was a queer fish, M¨®ravn. He might very well take it the wrong way. ¡°What do we do, then, Master?¡±


    ¡°We let him go.¡±


    ¡°NO! Why?¡±


    ¡°Because he¡¯s M¨®ravn,¡± Dav said simply. ¡°What is his greatest fear?¡±


    Hael had no need of Runedaur mind-spells, nor even close friendship, to answer. It seemed to glare from M¨®ravn like light from a balefire; even new acquaintances often noticed. ¡°Being a prisoner.¡± He tugged uncomfortably at his yellow beardlet as a strange and alien point of view supplanted his own for a moment. ¡°But, sir. . . . How will he know to come back?¡±


    ¡°He came freely at the first. Whatever brought him then will bring him back.¡±


    ¡°Unless he¡¯s too proud to admit he was wrong.¡± Hael thought that was likely the case with M¨®ravn¡ªand then his pink cheeks flushed red as he wondered if that, too, was more his own truth than his friend¡¯s.


    ¡°Then we would not be able to teach him anything anyway.¡±


    Hael stared at the rug between his feet, and tugged and twisted harder than ever on his beard. The silence deepened in the apartment. He formed and aborted several approaches to speech, and finally sighed heavily. ¡°I think I see that you can¡¯t go after him¡ªyou, or any of the masters, or the knights. I . . . I think you can¡¯t even catch him up somewhere just to say hi, without making him feel spied on, like you had a net out for him.¡±


    ¡°Very good.¡±


    Again the boy let the silence fall, as the words behind his teeth feared to leave his tongue. At last he forced them out, ¡°I, uh, I think I should go along. To, uh, remind him that it¡¯s still home. Here. If you see what I mean. Sir.¡±


    ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°I¡ª¡± Hael swallowed hard. ¡°I think I should, uh, go tonight. I know where he¡¯s gone. I think.¡±


    Dav matched his body to the boy¡¯s, and considered what it evoked in his soul. Good: leaving the haven of Colderwild terrified him, but not blindly, not to the point of stupidity. He might exhaust himself with over-alertness in a few days, but little worse. ¡°See the Hunting-mistress for whatever you need. And then some: I doubt Ravn went any too well prepared!¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir.¡± The youth hauled himself heavily to his feet.


    When he reached the door, Dav added, ¡°Come home when you¡¯re done.¡± When Hael glanced back, Dav saluted gravely, touching his fingertips to his forehead with a small bow. Hael blinked in surprise, returned the salute hastily, and walked out with his back a little straighter than when he had entered.


    89999999999999996ygh

 IX: Battles (pt 1/3): Sides of the Line

    IX: Battles


    Rothesay shook her head gently. The helmet fitted so snugly over her coiled braids that it moved with her like a part of herself, some strange insect skull of boiled leather and bronze bands. She tapped her new bronze cheekbones anxiously, and sickened herself imagining what they were meant to prevent: edge of sword or axe slicing the tender flesh, cracking the thin bone above the teeth and smashing it into her mouth, her teeth themselves like pebbles tossed in a bloody foam on her tongue and choking in her throat when she would try to scream. . . . Her belly roiled, she chilled, then flushed hot again under the brassy morning sun. She fluttered the breast of her coverings, mail, leather, linen and all, to fan herself, and wished for coldness, darkness, silence, stillness.


    On second thought, she wished just to be away, home, and happy.


    Her mail shirt, tiny bronze rings riveted into a supple metal cloth, must weigh several stone, but she needed to touch it to assure herself of its protective presence. She had grown accustomed to the strength of Arngas against the things she encountered daily; yet there was still so much disparity between the weight she expected and the heft she experienced, and the hauberk felt like so much wool. Absently she stroked the brown neck of the horse between her knees: Stand-in-grass¡ªTams Longleg, as Caltern called him¡ªfound it heavy enough.


    She liked Tams. As Rory had spent the fortnight practicing surgery, she had spent it learning to ride, and she and the Longleg had taken to one another. He had a brilliant turn of speed when the mood took him, but that was seldom. His was a phlegmatic soul¡ªCaltern remarked that if Tams died on his feet at dawn, no one would notice the difference before sundown¡ªideal for a nervous novice rider in any case, but he liked Rothesay¡¯s easygoing humor, that did not try to make a battle-charging thunderbolt of him. They ambled comfortably together as the Runedaur train wound down from the mountains and along the great river to the sea.


    Like all his kind, he had no capacity for anticipation. The threat of battle roused no unease in him; but his rider¡¯s subdued terror this morning, so unlike her usual idle cheer, troubled him. His ears flattened, and he snorted and whuffled till she remembered to pat him, which soothed her as much as him, or more.


    Though the morning was still early, sweat stuck her linen shirt to her ribs and she pulled at her garments again, but the draft made small difference in the muggy heat, and was vaguely unpleasant besides. Everything irritated. Even the rich green of the grassy swells over which the armies sprawled seemed bilious, and the glaring day-stars of sunlight burning on spearhead and shield clawed the eyes. A mile behind her, Andrastir¡¯s cloud-white walls reared, but the dawn wind from the harbor beyond had failed and the smell of the sea was lost to her, leaving steaming grass, horse piss, horse sweat, man-sweat, her own sweat. She tried not to breathe.


    ¡°Hot already, or just nervous?¡± asked Rory, easing his horse up beside her. Like her, over all his gear he wore a great black tabard, silver-edged, the silver skull of the Runedaur gaping upon chest and back, three incongruous silver butterflies rising from its maw. Their brothers out of Kingscroft wore the same, but with a spray of silver holly leaves in one corner.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she snapped.


    He nodded, chewing idly on a stalk of grass. ¡°You should be all right.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good, if all my friends die?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s a hellspawned game. You can take the misery as it comes, like a mountain; or you can make a whole mountain range out of that and all your fancies about what might be, too.¡±


    ¡°More Runedaur wisdom?¡± she sneered.


    ¡°Yuh-huh. You¡¯re free to be as miserable as you please, Sugar.¡±


    ¡°I want to be not miserable at all!¡±


    ¡°You can do that too. You could¡¯ve stayed home¡ª¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she sighed.


    ¡°¡ªor you could lose yourself in action.¡±


    She glimpsed his grin beneath his cheek guards, and swung a gloved fist at it. He dodged with a laugh; she was glad to have missed, reassured of his skill.


    A small company rode past: deep blue trimmed with a double line of copper, the colors of Carastwyth, but these had triskelions of silver thorns for a badge. To Rothesay¡¯s question, Rory explained that the thorny emblem marked the second son of Carastwyth, and so the men were those of Prince Mathspen, himself a mere child now mounted at the rear deep in a forest of protective retainers.


    She glanced back. Bright pavilions were pitched hardly a furlong away, peeking over a little knoll. Blue and copper pennants floated from the peak of one; the purple and silver of Andras trailed from another, and black and silver ribbons marked the Order¡¯s tent, brought and pitched by Kingscroft. The crowd before the tents shifted and parted, and she saw a rider who seemed to be helmed in silver, till she realized it was hair, and that of Princess Aristande herself. A grim, powerfully-built woman, whitehaired in her fifties, she would not ride into combat like a barbarian girl bent on marriage, but moved now to her post of generalship on the knoll itself. Men spoke with deep respect of her eye for strategy, and she was eagerly rumored to be writing a book on the art. Her standard-bearer followed, holding tall a great silver wand; at its tip, flared dragon-wings of rich purple silk, ribbed with silver and spangled with dew-bright gems, spread far outside the elaborate silver ring meant to encircle the device: Andras refused to be contained by any force, even tradition.


    Rory seemed in no hurry to place himself wherever he was supposed to be, but stayed by Rothesay, identifying for her all the colorful tokens they could see, both nearby and across the swale, where the armies of the Brean milled restlessly. Dun Hildr flourished yellow leather, blue beads and a roan horse¡¯s tail; and Dunamblach, red leather, blue and white tassels, and a pair of grey wolf¡¯s paws. Dun Fearic¡ªshe recalled the name from her ride with Dav a month ago¡ªstood under black leather stretched in a batlike shape, and yellow beaded leather ribbons. High-king Odhru¡¯s own Dun Brean raised dark red hide; and what looked like white and black beads, said Rory, were strings of lion¡¯s teeth and shark¡¯s teeth respectively. He should know: it was Dun Brean he had fled to become Runedaur.


    The imperial forces lined the swelling hills in silent, stoic array; now and again Rothesay saw one man or another tip spear or bow to measure his place against a comrade and adjust his position minutely. Against them, barely a furlong beyond, the Geillari massed like a dammed flood, their only apparent arrangement being to face their foes. Shouted slogans roared across, laced with the hawk-screams and corbie-cries of the women among them vowing Sferan livers for their stewpots on the night.


    Time was, when the spectacle of a woman, man-large as she seemed to the gracile Sferiadh and her face a rictus of battle-madness, rushing them with an ululating shriek as keen as her long spear, drove Sferan soldiers to rout. A Geillisel, out to prove by her own valor the strength of the sons she could bear, was an apparition beyond the reach of Sferan nightmare. Only among Runedaur was such a diabolical perversion as a woman warrior to be found; not even Aristande laid hand to more than a pocket knife. And so, perhaps, by such grim association the simple imperial foot-soldier may have credited his foe with greater power than she in truth possessed¡ªthough he called it ¡°dishonorable¡± to strike so weak a creature as a girl, to explain his retreat.


    No more. Now, the Sferiadh schooled themselves to think of her more as an overlarge blonde carrion-crow. Some few considered it almost a moral duty to destroy these monstrosities in feminine form; yet far and away most simply preferred to avoid them, where possible, and to kill quickly, where not. Yet it remained that, by this custom, the Geillari could command more to the battlefield than the Sferiari could.


    Rothesay reckoned up the numbers uneasily. There might be a thousand imperials, including some two hundred Runedaur; there had to be twice that many of the Geillari, or more, but they had no friendly city with great high walls at their back. She wondered how that affected the balance, and what victory, for either side, would look like.


    A small troop stood apart to the north, not clearly with the Sferan forces yet plainly not King Odhru¡¯s; they were white, grey and silver, even to their horses. If there were women among them, she could not tell from here. ¡°Who are they?¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°The grey company, there on that little rise.¡±


    Rory looked, and looked at her. ¡°Maybe you ought to go lie down, Sugar.¡±


    Her startled glance met his real concern for her. Abruptly she understood: ghosts, and Rory could not see them. There were none at Colderwild, as far as she had been able to search out since escaping the Arms-master; that puzzled her, but she had not had time to think about it. She peered now eagerly at the phantom troop, trying to better make out their armor and their former colors. ¡°Never mind, they¡¯re already dead,¡± she reassured Rory vaguely.


    ¡°Yuh? Maybe I¡¯ll just go lie down, then.¡± He worked his helm strap into a more comfortable place under his beard. ¡°They on our side?¡±


    ¡°I guess they¡¯re on their own side.¡±


    ¡°Better them than me.¡±


    Over the rise, and passing straight through the dead platoon, came a band of maybe three dozens of cavalry, as gold as the dead were silver. Garbed in red and orange and yellow, and their long spears like banner poles riotously ribboned with the same, they rode huge blond and cream beasts in a perfect phalanx. Gold and bronze gleamed about them. Rothesay could hear a silence fall among the northern forces of both armies as the fiery riders neared; and then a howl of anger surged wavelike from the Geillan warriors, and one of savage cheer from the Sferiari, as the phalanx chose sides.


    ¡°All right, who are they, then? I know they¡¯re living!¡±


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Rory cupped his hands to his mouth and added a welcoming ululation that all but burst her ears before he replied with fierce joy, ¡°Ever hear of the Sisterhood of Sorche?¡±


    Her head whipped back around to stare at the newcomers settling in among some of the Andreisi troops. ¡°They¡¯re real?¡±


    So it seemed. Back in Harrowater, the Sisterhood was little more than a nursemaid¡¯s tale, told to scare naughty little girls into proper docility. ¡°The Sisters will come and take you away, if you don¡¯t get down out of that tree, missie! And you will never have a house and never get a husband, you¡¯ll have to live in the Wild with dirty hands and filthy hair and have only leaves and raw fish to eat!¡± The Sisters took up spears, never to lay them down for spindles; they raised swords, not babes, and barred anything male from their company. In Harrowater, even whores were less despised, by Geillari and edgelings alike.


    Rothesay chuckled wickedly. Despised¡ªunless they were bringing those spears and swords in on your side, seemingly!


    Close at hand, a small force of their own folk flowed past on foot, a black cloud, with one bolt of silver: a woman Rothesay did not recognize, a Kingscrofter by the black holly leaves chasing her hem. Unarmed, unarmored, she came to daunt the enemy with magic¡ªand to tempt them to kidnap. Her very presence offered a measure of protection to those near her, as the Geillari would seek to take, and not destroy, this well of power for their someday sons. Raids for the Gifted were the plague the Sferiari hated most; edgelings had clung to their homes by pretending to have no magic, and therefore none to pass on. But the sorceresses of the Runedaur were unlike other women. Rothesay had heard tales of how some of them sometimes permitted themselves to be taken, only to prove that the word ¡®prisoner¡¯ was a matter of perspective. Carialla was renowned for this game, and more than one Geillan chief had paid the Runedaur handsomely to come take her home¡ªto come persuade her to go home¡ªagain. The power to walk in someone else¡¯s dreams, they found, was not one to be mocked.


    Many wore Colderwild¡¯s simple butterflies, and many of those bore faces she did not know: rarely was more than half a hall home at once. Thirty had come down from the hall, students excepted; half again as many had materialized from nowhere over the last week. And they were all knights, moving to the front lines in simple gear, while she and the other students, mounted and richly appointed¡ªher tabard flashed with jewels, the bronze of her helm was silver-chased and she could feel her white horse-tail crest bob every time she moved her head¡ªheld the rear. Rory explained: the Geillari knew the Sferiari held their princes and their commanders, who of course must be their greatest warriors, at the rear. When they would meet the Runedaur knights and masters, and taste their terrible skill, what must they think of the Runedaur rear-guard?


    Rothesay stared at him. ¡°You¡¯re joking!¡±


    He shrugged, grinning. ¡°Far as we know, they haven¡¯t caught on yet.¡±


    ¡°So what happens when they make it back here and find I can¡¯t even scare crows?¡±


    ¡°So long as it surprises you, they¡¯ll find out they were right!¡± he laughed.


    Another handful of Runedaur strode past, most with holly, two with roses; some with birds that probably represented Raven¡¯s Trace though on the black-clad knights they looked like doves. Then one with a butterfly on his gauntlet reached up to slap her knee and she looked down into Kahan¡¯s vast white smile.


    All her distress and discomfort melted away, and she was back on the road along the Holywell, idling with her friend in the Colderwild war-train, talking of everything and nothing, the pleasantest days she had known since¡ªshe could not say when.


    She had challenged him the first day out with Dav¡¯s remark that Kahan was contriving to command her favor; he had laughed. ¡°Of course! What else better to do?¡± At length he explained, with dancing eyes, ¡°I¡¯m finding out what manner of man you like. And I¡¯m finding out whether I like being such a man. Won¡¯t it be nice if I do?¡±


    ¡°Idiot!¡± she had retorted, but in laughter.


    And she discovered what he thought of war¡¯s killing. A man went to war because he was willing to die, if need be, ultimately for some reason important only to himself. For Kahan, it was purely and simply for love of Dav; and if Rothesay did not understand that at all, who said she should? By his very presence on the battlefield, he had accepted death as a possible destiny, and one he had preferred over standing by, idle, and alive.


    ¡°Some men go only because they¡¯re afraid their comrades will think them cowards,¡± she had pointed out.


    He agreed. ¡°They prefer to die under their own names than live under the name of coward.¡±


    ¡°So you oblige them?¡±


    That had cost him his smile. ¡°If it has come to that, to war¡ªyes, I oblige them,¡± he said softly. They had kept silence then for a long time.


    Now there was no time for more talk, only to clasp hands, to command one another to come out alive ¡°or I¡¯ll never speak to you again!¡± and to wave. At least, she waved; Kahan kissed his fingertip and pointed firmly at her, and she blushed and grinned like a fool, and watched him walk on without really seeing him, the half-moon light of last night seeming suddenly more real than Areolin¡¯s summer glare hammering upon her now.


    He had whispered truce in her ear, and catching her sleeve, drew her a little way across the grass, away from the campfire where disquietingly cheerful knights and witches sang softly in turns, and students squirmed.


    Their shadows were black in the wash of silver light, on the grass as gray as wolf hair; the skin of his face looked like star-steel. ¡°May I kiss you?¡± he asked simply. And waited patiently while she discovered where she had dropped her jaw. And assured her, eyes twinkling, ¡°I won¡¯t break if you say no!¡±


    She shook her head, a flutter of contradiction, not refusal. ¡°No! It¡¯s, it¡¯s¡ªwell . . . . No one¡¯s ever asked before!¡±


    He grinned, ruefully, at some memory at once humorous and painful. ¡°No, we never do, do we?¡± he chuckled, seeming to understand her entirely. Then he dipped his head and raised wide eyes, quite foolishly, and clasped his hands patiently. ¡°May I?¡±


    A surprised cough burst from her. ¡°Er . . . yes?¡± And shivered, though the night was too warm.


    The tips of two long fingers stroked her cheek once, and again. His eyes were lost in deep shadow, except for a remote star each, the reflections of what she could not guess. If his mouth did not smile, neither did it seem grave; altogether he had the look, she thought, of the rapt absorption of an infant discovering another child. And then the stars under his brows blinked out, he leant forward, and touched his mouth to hers.


    A spiderweb of lightning laced from her lips, to her ears, to her spine and down every limb; she felt as effervescent as when she first awoke in Arngas¡¯s tomb, as though she had become a creature of froth and not flesh and bone at all, and in danger of melting to the earth. If his eyes were closed, hers were wide open, but she saw nothing, the whole world was become the soft warmth of their lips touching, their breath mingling. He smelled of leather, and of the heather ale that had been offered around after supper, and¡ªof himself, she supposed, a salty muskiness; she liked it. His fingertips slipped to her neck, glided to her shoulder, to the naked skin just under the edge of her linen neckline and the trespass startled her back to flesh again, a young girl in a man¡¯s arms, quite mortal, and alive. A strange frisson, like fear and yet splendidly unlike, shivered through her, and the breath trembled in her. She suffered his other hand to slide round her satin-clad waist and he drew himself against her till their bodies touched from knee to breast; he was very warm, but she shivered again, and hoped her knees held. His mouth opened, slightly; the tip of his tongue brushed the edge of her lip; she gasped and the tongue was gone, but he pressed her mouth with his a little more warmly. Her hands, uncertain what to do with themselves, fumbled at his sides as satiny as her own, so delicious against her palms and fingers, delighting in the muscular hardness of him under his thin slithery coverings; but she did not venture to embrace him in return, instead blushing like a child guilty of stealing apples, as if liking the feel of him under her hands was trespass of her own. She hoped he didn¡¯t mind¡ªor notice.


    The fingers on her shoulder crept back up her neck, tickled and tingled under her ear, giving her a delicious shudder, and thrust deep into her hair despite her braids. He pulled her close, stepped into her as if he would blend them into one body; her head cradled in his hand, he kissed her strongly, pressing her mouth open with his and again tasted her lips, the edge of her teeth, the tip of her tongue and withdrew his own. Confused, she froze, puzzled by the hollowness of their open mouths conjoined; till he sent his tongue again, wet, warm, flesh-sweet, heather-bitter, curling playfully around hers and then returning, reluctantly maybe, to its own place and at last she understood she was being invited, over the border into this unknown country. Shyly she ventured forth her own tongue, felt the hard, slick threat of the border-guard of teeth, and, passing them, found herself joyously welcomed, his tongue writhed about hers seeking to find some way to hug it utterly around, his lips pressed and nibbled at hers and gently he sucked at her as if he would drink in her very soul, her thighs turned to water and her knees did buckle.


    His embrace tightened till she found purchase again; the border closed, though he suckled at her lips a little while yet, as though some sweetness lingered there that he would not leave behind. Her lips pressed after his, loath to give them up, and he kissed them again, but lightly, and pulled his hand from her hair to stroke her cheek again. His eyes shone, and his almost-smile played about his face.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said, quite seriously, though his smile broadened.


    But she was not yet ready for smiles, only gazed straight back at him, with nothing at all between her ears and only wordless memory upon her tongue.


    His face softened. ¡°So, it¡¯s like that, is it?¡± he murmured. She did not understand, nor kissed his fingertip when he touched it to her still-parted lips. He stroked her satin back, pressing hard with the heel of his hand, returning her gently to their old character of contact, for she had grown used to his massaging her shoulders, hands, arms, even feet and calves, in recent weeks; and, his arm still about her waist, ambled back through the dim moonlight to the Runedaur campfire.


    The hot and terrible morning slammed back into her thought, just as a mass of Andreisi-colored spearmen closed Kahan¡¯s back from sight. Her head snapped sharply around to Rory, but long since too late: he was nowhere in view. And she spat a curse between her teeth. Mother Goddess Tuhudre, why did You ever bother making men?


    Rory had eaten breakfast with her, quieter than usual; she had attributed it to the day¡¯s impending horrors, till they had wiped clean their bowls and he asked suddenly, ¡°Why¡¯d you kiss him?¡±


    ¡°He asked!¡± she barked, embarrassed that anyone noticed, annoyed that he chose to make it any of his business, distressed most especially that he cared.


    He bent to tighten a bootlace savagely. She glared at his back. Girls in Harrowater used to brag when men quarrelled for their favors; she did not understand. Jealousy turned even the pleasantest fellow into a mangy, bad-tempered cur snarling over a bone¡ªand wholly intent on the other curs rather than the contested bone, at that. Rothesay saw nothing for a bone to brag about.


    ¡°Kiss of Peace?¡± he had suggested, straightening again, and the flush in his face could be only his boot-lacing inversion. She relented: this cur, if he must be one, contrived to hide his mange as best he could, and hardly snarled at all, not where the bone could hear, at least. She kissed his lips resolutely; but his moustache tickled under her nose and she jerked away, her face wrinkling in surprise.


    At once her heart wrenched, fearing that she had given him yet more cause to snarl, but the sun-god beamed delighted from his face in the dim mess-tent, and he shoved a stubby finger at her. ¡°That¡¯s how you know it a¡¯n¡¯t your sister kissed you!¡± He made her a salute, and, still grinning, strode out into the light.


    And now he had stormed off somewhere, wrathful and brooding; and if he died today without having made peace with her, she would learn spirit-summoning so she could call him up and berate him for it for the rest of her natural days.


    But anger made a fine tonic for battle. Caltern mustered her company¡ªnot all the masters were at the fore¡ªand trumpets sent up a chorus of brazen screams and men roared like a monstrous tide, and had Caltern¡¯s laconic command not leashed her to her fellows, she had charged with the first line, over the middle lines if necessary, all dread burned away. She fidgeted, her young companions fidgeted, together they screamed encouragement towards whatever companies they recognized, and their horses stamped.

 IX: Battles (pt 2/3): Bloody Business

    Phalanxes of black, violet, blue and Sorche-gold advanced westward into the Geillan ranks, great spear-points driven slowly into a vast body. The body flinched back; the Sferiari cheered, Rothesay¡¯s little group cheered and she with them, but Caltern only watched, silent as a mountain in sunset. Now he moved, his slight shrug a summons to them to follow after, off towards the north, following the crest of their slope.


    Geillari from the rear, impatient for their chance at glory, spilled out around the flanks, some south towards the river, more northwards. Noticing, Rothesay marvelled at Caltern¡¯s prescience, that clearly anticipated this. And they were not a quarter-mile away when the Geillari noticed them as well¡ªand chose to turn to support their north-flank brothers.


    The power of reputation, as Rory had hinted? Caltern turned to give his small command a great, wicked grin. Rothesay laughed, and thumped Tams¡¯ shoulders, needing something to do with the excitement that raged in her. She fumbled for her sword-hilt. Arngas¡¯s sword again: Leoff had tried to interest her in one whose balance he said was better suited to her, but when she found the nerve to tell him that she and it were in this together, his dark eyes flickered with amusement and he conceded.


    Suddenly they were engulfed from behind in a mass of purple-clad spearmen. Caltern nodded to himself, snapped his huge fingers for his company¡¯s attention, and pointed further north. Over yet another low wave of this motionless green sea, another horde of wild wool-clad warriors, under yet another banner, came screaming. The spearmen of Andras flowed coolly down to meet them; Rothesay, gulping for air, did not notice her sword now in her hand instead of its sheath as Caltern led them after.


    He stopped them partway down the slope, and lifted a finger to point at a hexad of students from Kingscroft: archers, who leaped from their mounts and sent flock after flock of silver-tipped, silver-fletched black arrows over the heads of Andras. Lacie and a gaunt youth, silver-clad, watched their flight with a weird intensity, and the arrows burst into flame as they struck.


    The Geillari had archers of their own; their bows had not the reach of the Runedaur weapons, but they were strong enough to rain bitter bronze among the Andreisi ranks, and thick enough to find any gap in the upraised shields: a score of purple spearmen fell before the armies met below in a deafening thunder of wrath.


    Caltern charged down, his students flying behind. The Andrasadh who had lingered by their fallen friends surrendered the wounded to the young Runedaur and ran on to rejoin their company. Rothesay sheathed her blade to help gather the fallen; Caltern ordered her and Flick and a Kingscroft boy to keep their weapons drawn and stay horsed, for they looked much too fine to stoop to any such work. ¡°Later,¡± he growled.


    Later came soon: they bore the hurt men carefully back to the healers¡¯ tents and went out for more, wherever the shifting tide of battle ebbed away from their own. Caltern let them do off the fancy helms and tabards in favor of plain ones, another small move in a game of mental tactics, as the Geillari would wonder just where was the lord of the horsetail crest, for example, and where would he strike.


    All too soon Rothesay saw plainly that they needed whatever little edge they could gain. As at Feillantir two centuries before, the strength of the Geillari lay in sheer number, and it seemed that every hour brought more marching over the hills from beyond. Three times, the Geillan flood rose to make the Sferan army an island, cut off from the Andrastiri haven; three times the city stemmed it with a sortie of her own. Rothesay helped in one: a force of the Geillari came too close, for her liking, to the healing-tents where her carefully-gathered treasures lay¡ªshe had worked so hard in their collection that she felt fiercely proprietary over them, men whose names she did not know, and one woman of the Sisterhood, her bright yellow tunic made more flamelike by her own blood¡ªand in rage she had charged, on foot, with a handful of Carastwyadh just as Andrastir opened her gates. Arngas entirely possessed her in that hour, for she was far beyond thinking.


    Caltern seized her by the scruff of her tabard when she would have pursued the retreating Geillari towards the river. She broke free in outrage, but he had slowed her up enough to point out that they were about to be all on their own as Carastwyn and Andrastir both were drawing back. Reluctantly she withdrew with him, and stumbled then, nearly swooning from the heat. Caltern half-carried her back to the shelter of the pavilions and made her take off her helm and drink miontas, a vinegar water steeped with mint and willow bark, and sweetened with honey.


    She drank it greedily, then lay on her back in the shade of the Runedaur command tent, and thought she should get up and clean her blade¡ªeventually. As she watched fat puffs of white cloud drift serenely seaward, suddenly the world darkened, as if some mountain of cloud blotted the sun. She leaped to her feet, and stared aghast.


    A monster towered over the battlefield, her head where Areolin should have stood in the sky; she had serpents for hair, and four thick tentacles served for arms: each wielded in turn a spear, an axe, a sword and a club. Some strange golden cloth wrapped her round, but left her great pallid breasts bare, and blood flowed from them, dripping onto the field. To her right glided a vaguely female form of ice, and to her left, one of smoke and fire. It was the Aveghar, the Demoness War, and Her handmaidens, Pride and Anger.


    Rothesay pointed and gibbered. One of the Runedaur healers tied a last knot in someone¡¯s bandage, and came and took her hand and gently drew her into the tent. Rothesay shoved away the offer of more miontas. ¡°Open your eyes and look at the world around you!¡± she shouted.


    ¡°Not till you drink this,¡± the old man replied threateningly.


    She glared wildly and pulled away, never noticing his surprise at being unable to hold her even with a certain pressuring grip, and stomped back out into plain, bright, overbearing sunlight and the harsh clamor of uninterrupted warfare. She stomped back in, grabbed the cup from him, and poured it down.


    ¡°Lie down.¡± She did. Someone came and laid a wet cloth on her cheek, but she rose again a few minutes later at the sound of more wounded being carried in. She gave the wet cloth to one of them, at last wiped as much as she could off her sword with a fistful of grass¡ªthe gore itself hardly troubled her; she was stiff and sticky with enough of it already, and none of it her own¡ªand went back to work.


    She fell in with a boy from Rose House and they labored together through the burning afternoon. Too soon she learned the sign for ¡°mortal¡±, meaning the wound; and also how to curse by gesture. The boy, who gave his name as the first two fingers of his right hand brushed along his right cheek and off the side of his nose¡ªwith the thumb extended back towards the ear; he insisted on that¡ªlooked often towards the river, and cupped his left hand upward, rocking gently, with a worried look. She could only shrug.


    They stood on the slight slope above the fighting, below the Princess and her lieutenants, catching their breath and looking for their next task, when she heard the roar of a familiar voice: Dav¡¯s. She heard him, but she saw Rory first, Rory riding with Ulflaed and some unknown others a little further into the fray. Then Dav leaped to stand up on Winddancer¡¯s saddle, and pointed urgently downslope. Only a few dozen yards from Rory¡¯s band, a mass of Dun Brean¡¯s folk closed on a handful of black-and-silver footmen. Rory wheeled, Ulflaed and the rest hard behind. Rothesay¡¯s heart skipped: one of the threatened footmen was Kahan.


    Rory yanked back savagely on his reins, almost throwing his mount into Ulflaed¡¯s, and the others behind scrambled for control. Then they bounded forward again, but in that hesitation Dun Brean engulfed their prey and black-and-silver vanished from view.


    Three Geillari gleefully availed themselves of the fine target Dav presented for flung spears. Almost casually, he ducked one, snatched the other two from the air, dropped back into his seat as he whipped them about to serve himself, and charged after Rory. Rothesay danced helplessly on the trampled turf, grabbed her sword¡ªCheek-nose whistled sharply in her ear just as a great cry went up riverward, and pointed.


    A long ship, black as a finger of night glided up as silently, her great black sail gravid with the wind from the gulf. Rothesay had seen her before, or her own sister, off the Harrowater headland now and again; a sure omen of misfortune, men said¡ªand doubly if she was no ghost but living Runedaur. She certainly had not the sense to put ashore when night fell, or she held some letter of marque from the laws of darkness best left unchallenged. But Cheek-nose thrust out a rocking, cupped palm and whistled a wild exultation.


    Her sail dropped, her black oars shipped out smartly and drove her for the beach. She seemed omen evil enough for the Brean¡¯s forces, who began to draw back; and then they saw a good dozen of bright Sferan sails following her down the wind. Geillan horns blared a retreat. Rothesay spun and chased after Dav.


    Black-clad men lay on bloody turf, glimpsed behind others massed in her way; beyond them, Rory¡¯s half-dozen of cavalry tried to force an equine wall against a horde of dark-red-leather armored wild men, and their unmarried sisters still wilder. From the other side Dav dismounted in a great leap towards the wounded, and Winddancer reared against the retreating Geilladh.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Then, as a parting remark, a bronze-bladed axe wheeled under Winddancer¡¯s flashing hooves and plunged into the belly of one of the fallen. Dav pivoted, darted after; a Geillath screamed, and Dav returned, somersaulting right under his horse, and slid on his knees to the hurt man¡¯s side just as Rothesay broke through.


    One-eyed Harlan Grey clutched weakly at the axe half-buried in his body. His face twisted in bitter rictus; Dav bent close and touched his brow, and shuddered, and Harlan¡¯s face cleared. She did not catch Dav¡¯s quiet question, only Harlan¡¯s whispered reply: ¡°Not here.¡±


    A grim glance from Dav was all the command she needed. She approached Harlan, to take him up in her magic-steeled arms, but he stopped her with a frown, and a finger pointing weakly.


    ¡°Not that.¡±


    Take off her hauberk? Of course¡ªthe bronze rings would make an ungentle cushion. She bent over and let it slither swiftly over her head to the ground. The hurt man gestured again, and layer by layer, leather, padding and all followed till she was down to her sherte, sweat-soaked and clinging but so deliciously cool in the breeze she all but sobbed with relief. Then she gathered up Harlan and stood.


    He rolled his one eye at her breast, mounded up against his shoulder and fairly bursting its transparent linen cover, and winked. ¡°¡®S better.¡±


    She flushed, to his amusement. But he was going to die; and he had always been kindly in a remote way, and if he wanted to spend his last hour ogling her, then he might and welcome. Through a world glittery in unspent tears, she bore him to the healers¡¯ tent, and not till a fog of physicians closed him from view did she remember Kahan. She whirled, her heart wild.


    A thinner fog veiled him, over by one wall: only two bent over his cot. Wounded, then, but not so sorely as Harlan. Resolutely she backed away, out of the way, and went outside to wait.


    Cobry came and sat silently beside her, and Lacie a little later; then Juris; Ulflaed; and Arnaf the overeager, his dirty cheeks bearing two clean stripes like not-paint though his empty gaze was dry now. Then a handful of black-clad sailor students drifted up, wordlessly sharing wineskins around. Presently nearly thirty young would-be Runedaur sprawled unspeaking on the grass and watched the sunset redden as though even Areolin¡¯s blood spilled. The wind from the gulf faded to a sigh.


    ¡°Well, damnation,¡± said someone wearily.


    Rothesay restrained herself till after supper, before intruding on the healers to check on Kahan. He lay in one of the smaller tents on the hilltop, where the Sferan armies placed their wounded: pavilions with light, loose walls that Lord Kavin might pass easily, but gently, and honor those who had fought in His honor. Kavin always came, aware that men imagined their wars somehow involved Him; through all the ages He had never been able to fathom the connection, but He never failed to try.


    Kahan was awake, fidgeting and restless with discomfort, on a cloak tossed over a thick pallet of sweet grass. He greeted her with a radiant smile, and a peremptory command to sit and amuse him, ¡°because my leg hurts like hell and my head¡¯s spinning. Did you bring me any wine?¡±


    She expected him to make light of his wound, or wounds, which he did, after a fashion: ¡°It won¡¯t keep me from sailing with the Jetsam¡ª¡± the renowned Runedaur humor evidently extended to ships¡¯ names; no Geilla in all the North Coast lands would beard fate like that¡ª¡°though I¡¯ll have to lie about like a log on the deck, I suppose, bleagh! that¡¯s nasty wine, oh, right, it¡¯s got that healer-wort in it.¡±


    But he made no feint of comfort, instead letting her know quite graphically and not a little petulantly just how and where he hurt.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you supposed to be acting brave, and telling me it¡¯s practically nothing?¡± she laughed, both amused and bemused.


    ¡°Why? So you may know me for a liar, or a lunatic? How are you to know how to fuss over me if I don¡¯t tell you? There, you¡¯re laughing, I feel better already, go get me some good wine and not this doctored stuff and come tell me what¡¯s troubling you, ow, son of a demon-spawned pig¡ª!¡±


    She had no words yet for her first taste of battle; an amorphous, exhilarated horror that massed just over the horizon of her thought. But the other trouble was clear and present, passing in whispers among all the Runedaur students. ¡°Rory,¡± she said softly.


    To her surprise, he had no idea what she meant. He had been in no position on the field to notice anything but the enemy, whom he insisted on calling the ¡°opposition.¡± She hated breaking the news to him.


    When she did, halting and awkward, he covered his face with his long hands. ¡°O all ye gods¡ªwhy me?¡±


    ¡°I had no idea he hated you so,¡± she murmured, uncomfortably twisting the tassel end of her belt.


    ¡°Oraay¡¯s Blood, I wish he did!¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Her head snapped up, looking for the sudden fever that crazed him.


    ¡°I¡¯ll bet I know exactly when he saw me! Oh, no, it couldn¡¯t have been a moment sooner, or later, could it?¡± he snarled bitterly.


    ¡°What¡ªyou¡¯re babbling. Let me get you a cold cloth.¡±


    ¡°Yes, do¡ªand put out that candle, this night¡¯s too beastly hot as it is. Can you do magelight? And I¡¯m not babbling. Shut up for a minute and I¡¯ll tell you about it.¡±


    She crushed her lips on a protest and a laugh, changed the light though the weather was pleasant, and daubed his forehead while he talked.


    ¡°It was this big fellow, my height, must¡¯ve been twice my weight¡ª¡±


    ¡°Twice your weight¡¯s still small.¡±


    ¡°Hush. Big, I say. Short sword and buckler. Shoved the buckler at my face and went to cut me like a stalk of wheat. I grabbed the top of his buckler, pushed it down, blocked his sword with his own shield. He wasn¡¯t expecting that at all; I pushed it all the way down,¡± Kahan straightened his left arm out and what would have been down if he had been standing, ¡°and he went to yank it back up and I used it like the top of a fence, leaped over, smashed my knees into his face. Stupid Runedaur trick, but it worked. Don¡¯t know what his clan gods will say to him about dying by a knee in his windpipe. Why am I telling you this?¡±


    ¡°Rory.¡±


    ¡°Mother of the world,¡± he swore. ¡°I¡¯ll bet he caught me in mid-jump. I bet he never had a chance all day to do something spectacular. And now he¡¯s gone and done something spectacularly stupid instead and won¡¯t that make him sweeter to live with!¡±


    ¡°The¡ªother students think he betrayed you,¡± she quavered, unwilling to admit her own doubts.


    ¡°So did you. That¡¯s all right; there¡¯s no shame in being young and stupid. What, you think thinking comes naturally, like walking? But people who really know how to walk can do so on a rope a hundred feet in the air, right? Right. There¡¯s an art to thinking really well, too. It¡¯s fun, you¡¯ll like it, your cloth¡¯s gotten all hot again.¡± He pushed her hand querulously from his face.


    ¡°It¡¯s a shame you two can¡¯t be friends,¡± she soothed, patting his cheeks and brow again with a freshened cloth. ¡°You¡¯re very much alike, you have common likes¡ª¡± In the close company of the war train, she had seen a great deal of the two of them in the last fortnight, if seldom at the same time.


    ¡°No, we don¡¯t,¡± he grumped. ¡°I have likes: juggling, and butterflies¡ªyou didn¡¯t know that, did you? I¡¯m the House expert on mountain butterflies. And even I don¡¯t know where the suns-in-glory go.¡±


    ¡°And women?¡± she teased, but with a little bite, remembering Lacie¡¯s remarks about ¡®the girls of the village.¡¯


    ¡°More than you know,¡± he replied, somberly, but with a finger poking ticklishly at her ribs. ¡°But Rory¡¯s one, sole interest, as far as anyone can make out, is besting me. I wouldn¡¯t mind, except he doesn¡¯t enjoy it even when he succeeds.¡±


    ¡°Er¡ªno?¡±


    ¡°No! He just gets angrier! It¡¯s my fault for losing, or something. I don¡¯t know. I think if he would simply hate me, he could quit measuring himself against me, and find some peace. At least he¡¯d be easier to live with.¡±


    ¡°As an enemy?¡± she wondered, doubtfully.


    ¡°Enemies are easy. Known ones,¡± he amended. ¡°Friends are easy. But I don¡¯t know what in hell to do with him. He¡¯s better than I, in many ways, and I¡¯ve told him that. By the Holy Moon, I¡¯ve been here six years, he¡¯s been here three and he¡¯s already nearly my match in most things. He is my match with a sword.¡±


    ¡°But your first weapon is a knife, isn¡¯t it?¡± She herself had not yet chosen her first, or preferred, weapon; Leoff suggested that it might as well be the sword, but that there was no need for haste.


    ¡°Don¡¯t remind him. Demons take him: sing me a song. You¡¯ve a beautiful voice and I¡¯ll go to sleep.¡±


    She laughed and obliged, and sat by him for some while after his slow breath assured her that he slept.

 IX: Battles (pt 3/3): Runedaur Business

    Next morning the Sferan armies gathered to withdraw into Andrastir. Tents and banners were struck; gear, and the dead and wounded, were piled onto wagons; and amid a triumph of horns and drums, the victors poured slowly and majestically back into their great city, her honor untarnished and her security reassured. Proud trumpets; but Rothesay, watching from the side, thought the pride seemed hollow, somehow: the pride of the doomed. The Geillan tide rose, and showed no signs of ebbing. Yesterday had but stemmed it, for a time. Some of them knew it.


    Rothesay watched, because the Runedaur remained on the field, not to enter till tomorrow, with ¡®Runedaur business¡¯ yet to be finished at sundown. She watched the parade, and drummed her heels impatiently on Stand-in-grass¡¯s flanks; he ignored her. Andrastir! She could hardly wait to walk its fabled streets¡ªthe Avenue of the Imperium, the Way of Arches, the Gold Road¡ªand to see its thousand temples and peer into its countless markets. She wondered if students would be allowed to buy anything¡ªI certainly hope I¡¯m not expected to steal it! Bother ¡®business.¡¯


    Hint of that business rose from the edge of the field of battle: two plumes of dark smoke. Two Runedaur had died in the night; two pyres now burned, tended by silent wardens from among the Kingscroft Healers. A solemn and respectful farewell it might seem, but for the tendency of the smoke to change colors: a puff of dark red, a twist of smoky green, a sudden billow of purple rose in the greyness. Kahan had laughed, a soft, sad laugh for he had been fond of Harlan. ¡°That¡¯s just to put the wind up everybody else,¡± he explained, grinning guiltily. ¡°They know we do cremations¡ªthey think that¡¯s all we do, or they hope it is¡ªso they know what the smoke is. The colors, well, they¡¯re free to speculate on what they mean!¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re frauds, you mean,¡± she said severely.


    He chuckled. ¡°Hey, is it our fault they take us too seriously? Didn¡¯t I warn you something about running your own mind? I know I did. Fluff up my pillow for having forgotten it.¡±


    She had beaten him with it instead, very gently, and left him to sleep.


    Rory she had not seen since before supper yesterday. Turning away from the armies¡¯ withdrawal and back towards camp, she saw him now, walking up from the quayside; walking with Dav. She hurried Stand-in-grass back to the corral, but Rory had vanished again by the time she was done. And Dav was gathering students in the little grassy ¡®court¡¯ at the center of camp.


    They sat in a rough circle, the oldest next to Dav¡ªor opposite him; the newest, like herself, huddled as far out of the line of those fire-blue eyes as they could.


    For a long time, no one said a word. Dav sat like a stone, not waiting, merely present, like stone, earth, or the wind. Rothesay scowled, confused, and shifted restlessly, and exchanged puzzled glances with a boy from Raven¡¯s Trace. Then one of the senior students, a beefy youth wearing Kingscroft¡¯s holly, spoke up curtly.


    ¡°So, did Rory betray us, or not?¡±


    The rest of the group inhaled, very quietly, as one. All eyes turned towards Dav.


    ¡°What does it mean, to betray?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Are we going to play word games?¡± Beefboy snapped cynically.


    ¡°If you had no words, what would you think?¡±


    ¡°About Rory?¡± Lacie, not far from Rothesay, asked. Dav with an upturned palm invited her to consider it.


    Rothesay sat back and thought about it. How did one think anything without words? She looked around at the clustered students, a sombre black ring-shadow¡ªrather grubby¡ªwith a few gleams of silver-grey, and a splash of red, green, or yellow among the older, bolder ones. Color¡ªone could know color without words, she supposed. And faces, and moods¡ªlike that smug fellow over there from Rose House.


    The Runedaur Silents, like Sothia: how did they think? What would Sothia have seen, watching Rory yesterday? The charge, the halt, the charge again¡ªwhat had Rory seen?


    ¡°Who else was there?¡± Lacie asked. ¡°Maybe it was something else that caught his attention.¡±


    A bold-looking girl about Rothesay¡¯s age spoke up scornfully: ¡°And all the sheep jump off Conclusion Cliff assuming it¡¯s all about Kahan!¡±


    Rothesay glanced at her, grass-stained feet thrust out from under a tattered grey hem. Kahan¡¯s dart of the night before returned unbidden to her mind: So did you.


    ¡°Maybe he saw someone he really loved,¡± a small boy piped up from behind Rothesay¡¯s elbow.


    ¡°Then it sure as hell wasn¡¯t Kahan!¡± roared the beefy boy, and several others, including Green-toes, joined loudly. Dav glanced at the youth; but he did not laugh.


    ¡°There might have been something else,¡± the Master mused, as if considering it. ¡°How would you know?¡±


    ¡°We could ask,¡± said Lacie.


    ¡°Know your man,¡± agreed Dav. Many of the students shifted uncomfortably, as the reminder bit them. ¡°But,¡± he went on briskly, ¡°suppose we have asked, and he has confirmed your darkest suppositions: it was Kahan, and he hated the thought of riding to his aid. What then?¡±


    ¡°Then I know I can¡¯t trust the dog,¡± Beefboy shot back promptly.


    ¡°Why?¡± Dav snapped up one finger. ¡°Does Rory hate you?¡± A second finger joined the first: ¡°He is Runedaur: will he be tomorrow what he is today?¡±


    Next to Dav, a gaunt young man who reminded Rothesay powerfully of Prince Cathforrow held up a finger of his own. ¡°If Rory¡¯s loyalty is worth something to you¡ªwhat¡¯s the surest way to kill it?¡± Cathforrow¡¯s own cynical smile curled his pale lips.


    All eyes turned to him¡ªincluding Dav¡¯s. Pseudo-Cathforrow looked back at his master and shrugged. ¡°Grieve him for a stupid student mistake any of you could make,¡± he answered himself.


    Beefboy shot to his feet, fists clenched. ¡°Mistake!¡± he bellowed. ¡°That ¡®mistake¡¯ cost Harlan One-eye his life!¡±


    ¡°It did?¡± Dav gaped, round-eyed, as astonished as if the boy had claimed that Andrastir floated off across the bay. Then his scorn burned afresh, ¡°Your omniscience astounds me.¡±


    Beefboy trembled, but held his ground. ¡°Do you say that it did not?¡± he demanded, but more fragilely now.


    ¡°I say that you cannot know that¡ªnot in any meaningful sense of ¡®know.¡¯ Thus it is something that you choose to believe,¡± Dav returned. Again he held up a finger. ¡°Challenge:¡ª¡± and every head snapped up at that magic word, ¡°why?¡±


    The burning gaze of the Master of Runedaur seared all the circle of his students with that question. Rothesay bit the back of her thumb. I didn¡¯t!¡ªI did. I did. Why, indeed?


    Dav rose abruptly, waved dismissal, and stalked off towards the healing-tent. Rothesay started. ¡°Hey, wait a minute!¡±


    If he heard her, he did not answer; maybe half the students, equally taken aback, looked bewildered from one to another. ¡°What manner a talk¡¯s this?¡± the puzzled Raven¡¯s Trace boy burst out. ¡°This is teaching? What are we supposed to think?¡±


    This provoked an inordinate amount of laughter, to Rothesay¡¯s ear. From reminiscent kindliness, to the amused tolerance for an imbecile, to wild scorn, the older students howled, but none offered a reply as they too left the circle, many in anger, some deep in thought. The newer students watched them go till some of them, too, left in aggravation.


    Rothesay stayed. Pseudo-Cathforrow alone of the seniors lingered; she wondered why. He held his place, arms looped loosely about his knees, as only his eyes moved, following those who walked off, till only Rothesay, Cobry, and the boy from Raven¡¯s Trace remained.


    ¡°Want to help me pack up the big tent?¡± he invited unexpectedly.


    The Raven boy lifted his chin, and shot a pointed look at Pseudo-Cathforrow¡¯s holly leaves. ¡°Tha canst make me.¡±


    ¡°No more I can,¡± he agreed blandly. ¡°You can go right ahead and be a parasite.¡±


    The boy bolted angrily to his feet. ¡°I am not a parasite!¡± he barked, and stalked proudly towards the main Runedaur pavilion. Pseudo-Cathforrow laughed softly, and rose to his feet like smoke ascending.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Rothesay stood up too, finding herself nearly a head taller. ¡°You can¡¯t make him¡ªexcept by ridicule?¡± she asked coolly.


    He winked back. ¡°As long as he lets me!¡± He started off. ¡°Coming?¡±


    Cobry rolled to his feet and followed.


    ¡°You¡¯re from House Ristover, aren¡¯t you?¡± Rothesay asked. The resemblance was too striking; she could bear it no longer. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t Treskiel,¡± he chuckled, darkly. ¡°How did you come to meet my esteemed relative, pretty sister? Tell me: does he well? All in good health, I hope?¡±


    Rothesay started to ask how he knew she had seen the Prince, then thought about Runedaur ¡®mind reading¡¯: she must have been staring, and he must be used to people catching the resemblance. Even his voice¡ªhis accents were smooth, cultivated; he was not of the humbler branches of the great House. ¡°I was with Master Dav.¡±


    ¡°Oho, you¡¯re the one!¡± He stopped, his face alight. ¡°Curse of Arngas, and all that?¡± He raised a hand in an eager invitation to arm-wrestle.


    She took it uncertainly; there was no table, but he pushed, hard, she supposed; she could scarcely tell, except that she was obliged to resist. As an afterthought, she pushed back. The mysterious scion of Ristover flipped himself over his own right shoulder, and snatched back his hand from her surprise-loosened grasp.


    ¡°Damn,¡± he murmured with a grin, shaking out his hand. Cobry folded his arms, smugly proprietary. ¡°Sorchone am I. And exceeding glad,¡± he looked her over appreciatively, ¡°that I found that out,¡± he shook his hand again, ¡°ah, beforehand!¡± He gave her a sultry wink.


    ¡°Don¡¯t even think it,¡± she growled. She saw surprise flicker on his face, and then¡ªdid he look hurt? It was too brief to tell; Cathforrow¡¯s cynical smile reappeared.


    ¡°My cousin,¡± he said, answering what she had not yet asked. ¡°Tell me he looked well. In the flush of health. All robust and full of vigor?¡±


    She thought back. The Prince had not seemed the least unwell, though ¡®robust¡¯ would never have come to mind. ¡°I suppose so.¡±


    ¡°She supposes so.¡± Sorchone sighed elegantly. ¡°Babe, do you not understand that if misfortune befall the good Treskiel ere I am properly knighted here, they will come to get me?¡±


    ¡°¡®They¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Ristover,¡± he replied, as another man might have said, ¡®plague.¡¯ ¡°Here, let you take the center pole, while we lesser mortals do the corners.¡±


    At sunset, the Runedaur mounted a perimeter guard. The rest gathered in a sober, silent circle at the center.


    Two Runedaur had died in the night, the smoke, both the true and the false, of their pyres now only wisps. Harlan Grey was one. ¡°Dav probably killed him; they were pretty good friends,¡± Lacie confided to Rothesay, and to Rothesay¡¯s horrified stare returned one equally appalled: ¡°A belly wound is a nasty way to die!¡±


    ¡°But¡ª¡±


    ¡°But what? Everyone goes to Ges at last, even the Great Ones! If all you can do for someone is make the going gentle¡ªwell, wouldn¡¯t you?¡±


    Rothesay truly did not know. The prospect worried her. She sat now at the edge of the circle and chewed the back of her thumb uneasily, till the silence seduced her to peace.


    Not a sound but the eternal wind could be heard over all the camp. Several people near her, she slowly realized, breathed together in one of the meditation rhythms; she did not know which one. Then she noticed that she was doing it too. Maybe the whole group was.


    The last limb of the sun vanished beyond the earth, and a long summer¡¯s twilight lay full upon them. A man stood up, somewhat across the circle from her; he looked strikingly like Harlan Grey, save that he had both eyes. Rothesay straightened eagerly: Harlan¡¯s ghost?


    ¡°Harlan was my brother,¡± the apparation said over the still-silent crowd. ¡°We were born at Colderwild; I came down here to Kingscroft.¡± He gave a nod toward Andrastir¡¯s distant walls, themselves ghostly in the half-light. ¡°He was forever asking me if we of the Holly had found the king yet.¡± He paused and seemed to sigh; then he chuckled. ¡°I¡¯ll keep looking, Harlan,¡± he laughed softly, and sat down again.


    ¡°Mallacagan was my father,¡± said a young man, standing in his turn. He held out a staff in both hands: it gleamed with a high polish that its deep carvings seemed to ripple. ¡°He was a swordsman of two blossoms, like Dav and Rystan¡ªbut he was, he was¡ª¡± he paused to let his throat loosen again. ¡°He loved working wood best. Life, and death¡ª¡± the youth pointed out designs in the wood that only the witch-sighted, or his immediate neighbors, could have made out, ¡°he made it so that at every step it was, in its way, um, finished; each cut, or shave, see, and you could have said, that¡¯s good, that¡¯s done. It¡¯s not, it¡¯s not more complete now than it was,¡± his voice broke, ¡°than it was five¡ªyears ago¡ª¡¯s just more¡ªelaborate, see?¡± He stopped to weep quietly for a moment, and wiped his face on his sleeve. The staff glimmered with the movement. ¡°And now he¡¯s as, as elaborate, as he will ever be. But he was always. . . .¡± Mallacagan¡¯s son stopped, and gazed into the west so long that he might have turned to wood himself. Then he finished quietly, ¡°He was always complete.¡± He sat down slowly. The staff began to pass from hand to appreciative hand.


    So the hours went. One by one, those who had known the dead rose to tell some tale, often to share some jest to broad unstraitened laughter. Dav stepped forth, and in silence danced, and his gesture brought surprise and mirth, boldness and sorrow, emptiness, and then a swift infilling of wonder. Rothesay lost the worry that had nagged at her since Harlan¡¯s brother recalled her Dragon¡¯s-quest to her, as she yearned to dance like that; and for the rest of the evening joined in wholly with the rest, learning with those who had not known the dead from those who had.


    A woman with a voice like sunrise and all the art of a bard sang a song of the deeds of Harlan Grey, but none of them were great or glorious deeds. Instead, there was a verse about how as a novice knife-thrower he learned to quit missing to the right by attempting to miss to the left; Rothesay overheard a couple of grateful student sighs at that one. There was one about repeatedly besting Dav at some game, till Dav at last worked out just how Harlan was cheating. And Rothesay gathered from a verse about his great pastime of woman-watching that he had at least magic enough to make up for his missing eye, but she never discovered how he had come to lose it. From the tales told and the verses sung, she had to conclude that it was a battle-wound: not one story or song came any closer to combat than its training.


    Wines went round, and ales, and the wake grew merry, but never loud: anyone who tried to chat however quietly with a neighbor, was promptly kicked by some other neighbor who wanted to hear the singer or speaker of the dead, or just the silence in between. A conversation sometimes crept away from the circle; sometimes it crept out to those standing guard, or up to the healing-tent. Food, in convenient finger portions, went round, and the deeper silence was lost till midnight.


    Late in the night, Rory rose to speak. The students, at least, stopped eating to listen.


    ¡°I left Dun Brean when my father gave me my dead brother¡¯s spear. I wanted¡ªI mean, I thought there ought to be more to a life than working yourself into a foaming frenzy. Every year.


    ¡°I ran off; got good and lost in the Sindasawood. One day, I¡¯m down to my last strip of jerky, and,¡± he stopped, his face knotted, and he drew a few hard breaths. ¡°And this little one-eyed gnome pops up from under a mushroom.¡± In the moonlight, Rothesay could see him grin reminiscently. ¡°That¡¯s how it seemed¡ªyou know how he could move in the woods. So it¡¯s like one of those old Ceidha-tales, where the bad son is rude and greedy and gets cursed with boils but the good son¡ªwell, he asked and I gave him that last bit of jerky. Then he asks who I am and I tell him all about Father and my bloody clan, how the first thing they want to do after a war is go plan the next campaign till I want to scream, ¡®What¡¯s the point?¡¯ ¡®They think I¡¯m a coward,¡¯ I tell the gnome, ¡®but it¡¯s not that: it¡¯s just that, if I¡¯m killed, I¡¯d like it to be for some reason! Is that asking too much?¡¯ and he says, ¡®Sometimes.¡¯ Sometimes it is.


    ¡°Anyway, I say, ¡®I¡¯m not going back, I don¡¯t belong,¡¯ and he says, ¡®Got just the place for you.¡¯¡± Rory spread his hands and his listeners laughed, especially the ones who had doubted him before: now they understood, now the Mystery of Rory¡¯s Halt was solved. Most of them had the grace to feel a little sheepish, if not outright embarrassed.


    ¡°He was right,¡± Rory finished. ¡°You give the gnome your last bite and he gives you a kingdom.¡± He sat down amid many hands reaching from the kingdom to touch him with their company. Rothesay picked her way over to give him a hug, but she had to wait her turn.


    At midnight, Dav entered the moonlit circle at the center. A long koli of some dark, sheer silk, weighted with silver charms against the breeze, made him an uncertain shadow. He carried a kind of yoke with a bronze bell at either end; rapped sharply with a padded hammer, each sang a pure, eerie tone, one high, one more than an octave below, on the fifth.


    The notes had names, Rothesay thought; there was so much she missed while Leoff commanded her to the list-field. And one represented life, and the other was death? Something like that. Dav struck each in turn, first high, then low.


    Two knights brought out two cloth-covered crates, to which they bowed respectfully, and left. When full silence had returned, Dav held his bells high and struck the higher one once.


    Some of the Runedaur took up the note, humming, or cooing with open mouths. Rory beside her did not, till Dav struck the second bell. Rory took that one, albeit an octave still lower. After a moment, Rothesay added her voice to the first note, which seemed as though it could use the support. For several minutes, the two-note chord hung like an aural mist over the company; only near at hand could Rothesay hear any breach, as hummers or singers broke for breath to continue.


    Then it began to change. Rory rose to the higher note, as did several others of their neighbors, and the tone seemed to spread out from them. For an instant, maybe every throat tuned to the same note; and then slowly the chord returned, strengthened, and then the deeper note rose to prominence. For some minutes, the chant bounded slowly, from almost-pure low to high and back again, as though the music itself breathed in the pattern of tones.


    The music shifted and seemed to split: Rothesay¡¯s half of the circle had the high note, and they raised it in volume and power; she gulped for breath and it slowly fell away as the other side of the circle sent back a wave of the lower tone. And then the Runedaur assembly rang like a bell, from side to side across the circle. The sides themselves began to shift, sending the crest of the wave rolling around the ring, first widdershins, then sunwise. Rothesay found it great fun; it seemed to her that if anything should summon ghosts, a funeral like this ought to do it.


    After what seemed like an hour, Dav began to touch the bells again, in time with the singers; softer and softer fell the human voices, and softer the metal ones, till they ceased as one.


    Pure silence returned. Wind fluttered the few remaining tents. Oraay blazed across the whispering grass. Dav stooped, and pulled the cloths from the crates. In each one a white owl sulked. The Holies only knew where Dav had found them in the plains at Andrastir, but Rothesay¡¯s heart ached for them: let them go!


    And he did.

 X: Andrastir (pt 1/4): Art and Artifice

    X: Andrastir


    So this was a great city.


    So this was Andrastir.


    Late afternoon threw long golden spears through the thick roof of leaves. One or two lucky casts reached the thin undergrowth of a few brambles and a wisp of a grass Rothesay did not recognize. She sat, leaning her back against the bole of an oak that had been an acorn in Berulf¡¯s day: its vast crown spread an early, green twilight that Areolin¡¯s spear-casts only enhanced, like a few small candles in a great dim hall. Before her, the shadowy ground ran eastwards as flat as a lawn and then dropped off; Rothesay could just see the top of a ruinous stone wall over the edge. Beyond that, the crowns of sycamores and poplars billowed on down the hill, still bright and green under the open sun, down to what looked like a fishing village as remote as Harrowater. There, a white beach trimmed the edge of Gulf Rhostial, blue-black and littered with whitecaps. Above, above her, the great oak waved its outermost branches and talked loudly to the wind.


    In a long line of spooky silence, the Runedaur had paraded through Trysfarin Gate in yesterday¡¯s midmorning. The white and vitreous stones of Andrastir¡¯s famed walls blazed at them over the grass, brilliant even from a mile off, eye-searing near at hand under Summer¡¯s high sun. Paired pillars of the same glossy quartzite warded the road, taller, and taller yet, as the Gate drew nearer, a visual drumbeat pounding out the rising power of their builders to whoever dared their highway.


    Shadow lay under the sun at the feet of the walls: the swell of the open plains broke at a deep fosse gouged into the earth. Sharp stones rimmed it with peril, and thornbushes filled its depths and climbed up against the gleaming walls themselves. A heavy bridge fortified with scorpions and arbalests carried the road across.


    The Gate itself: no tetrapylon, as at the Dawn Gate of Teginau, but two vast dragons, sitting erect, patient as the ages. Their adjacent wings made the roof, at once sheltering and threatening, some forty or more feet over Rothesay¡¯s head; their outer wings curled down, half-concealing somber men of the Gate watch.


    Rothesay stared and shivered, despite the muggy heat. The colossal mass of the great stones oppressed her, in the pillars and the figures, and especially in the house-sized blocks of the lowest tiers of the walls themselves. How could they ever have been moved at all, what deep reservoirs of magic must have been broken just to aid rope, wheel, and sinew? A hundred tons apiece¡ªand how many of them in the miles of the wall!


    The Gate gaped. The soaring, graceful arches of the dragons resembled no mouth ever seen, yet once again Rothesay fought off a horror of being swallowed, far stronger here than at the entrance to Colderwild. The fear of looking truly idiotic, if she were to break rank and flee, overmastered her, however, and numbly she kept her pace. Her impatience of the day before seemed to belong to someone else entirely; how could she ever have wanted to enter such a, such a¡ªshe could not think what. She glanced about, distracting herself from her improbable fright by attempting to admire the workmanship. My, how smoothly finished were the curves of that complicated cranny where a dragon¡¯s neck met shoulder and wing¡ª


    The snowy stone itself was almost pure of any lesser, darker inclusion. But the details of the dragons and other graven ornament were well outlined where lichens clung and dusts from a thousand past years had shelter from a thousand years¡¯ rain. And, there on the dragon¡¯s shoulder¡ªa swift¡¯s nest. Mama-swift peered out warily, and then swooped off. Up from the thorny fosse rose a small music of crickets, and a smell of rabbits. And Rothesay strode into Andrastir, grinning like a fool.


    Beyond the dragons, they entered a cleft in the lower, outer Wall, open to the sky and bright on either side with beautiful colored tiles; a few heat-drowsy bowmen looked down from the embattled heights. Then came the second, inner Wall, half again as high, pierced by a pillared and half-pillared archway nine or ten yards deep: mysterious holes in its barrel ceiling commended peaceable intentions to any entrant.


    The end of the passage erupted out into an enormous city square. Buildings three and four storeys tall walled it around, window-pocked cliffs split by the hairline cracks of countless little alleyways, while here and there wider chasms opened for streets and avenues into the city beyond. Three lofty arches, sheer architectural extravagance, marked their road¡ªthe Way of Arches, surely!¡ªon its true-eastward progress across to a tetrapylon in the far wall of civic edifices. Tall marble statues presided over fountains in the various quarters, and many smaller ones adorned the edges. A sea of people in jewel-hued garments filled the square and lapped about the margins of the road. Rothesay had never seen so many people in one place: crazy Dagn¡¯s thwarted burning in Teginau drew not a quarter of this crowd.


    They were curiously quiet; something less than market-day noise hung in the air as every eye marked the Runedaur passage. Maybe they were supposed to be cheering, or something; at any rate, children threw flowers as the parade passed. But they threw them jerkily, nervously, and Rothesay found it simple to match child to parent, as they kept glancing back into the massed adults, from whom came grim nods to continue.


    But there were a few: bold little fellows, and even a few girls, who threw their bouquets with mischievous violence and laughed at their own daring. Up ahead, one boy, about six, maybe, darted up and away, playing at tag with the black fringe or points of Runedaur tunics, squealing with the thrill when he scored a touch. Once, twice, his gleeful shriek rang out, then turned to terror on the third: Rothesay saw a burly arm snatch him up and he vanished from her view. A quick glance into the crowd revealed a horrified woman, her upraised hands frozen in impotent claws before her as she made no move to reclaim her son. The flower-throwing children melted back into the adult forest. The boy¡¯s screams abruptly stopped. Silence rippled out as the Runedaur marched on.


    Then the child burst from the ranks ahead and ran to the motionless woman; freshened crowd-noise drowned what he piped to her, but he seemed likely to tear her apron off in his excitement. Rothesay saw the mother shake her head dumbly, and then scream and push the child away. He hesitated, seeming puzzled, and then ran back to disappear again into the Runedaur line. He popped into view once more, this time straight ahead, high on a pair of black-clad shoulders, and he waved both his little hands. Lacie, walking next to Rothesay, giggled.


    Beyond the eastern tetrapylon, city more like Teginau sprawled, though nowhere in Teginau did the streets lie nearly so level. Rothesay looked about at the walled gardens of hundreds of family enclaves and noticed, peripherally, that Lacie too stared about her with awe. Of course: she was accustomed to the little towns about Colderwild. Rothesay felt almost smug, having actually lived in a big city, if only for a few days. Maybe she could give Lacie a few pointers, later on.


    Then city faded suddenly into farmland. Rothesay gazed upon rolling meadows of goats and cows, and fields of barley just beginning to gain a little height. That was Andrastir? a pompous square surrounded by barely more than mountainous Teginau? Huh! But she said nothing, only watched the sleepy livestock and wondered with a sudden agony how Thyrne¡¯s new sheep were doing, and Alrulf and Pinnar, and the girls. She had not even had a chance to say good-bye.


    A mile through gentle hills and a couple of winding streams further on, they came upon more city, gilded temples, fabulous painted statues, and another square larger than the first; markets were clearly in full swing. Beyond that, still more city, great houses with gleaming ornamental towers and decorated gates, and a huge park with a lake full of swans, and more city, and then a quarter-mile of woods. Rothesay and Lacie turned to each other and gawped wordlessly.


    Then the rolling road rose steadily to another magnificent gate¡ªRothesay began to feel quite jaded: ¡®oh, just another impressive artwork,¡¯ and then felt stunned at that in turn¡ªand city greater than they had yet seen, more monumental statues, fountains, miniature but exquisite gardens, temples like vast jewel boxes, and houses taller than ever, five and even six storeys in parts. The road broadened to twice its original width, and the Runedaur passed among gem-spangled horsemen, and bright-colored litters and sedan-chairs whose occupants seldom deigned to peep out, liveried servants, and glittering processions of priests or priestesses who nodded with grave courtesy. And this time there was fanfare. As they climbed into a high sector that seemed to have an overall octagonal arrangement, trumpeters and drummers in House Andras¡¯s purple and silver colors greeted them at every intersection, and a herald cried out words of praise for their valor in the battle. Rothesay¡¯s head swam in the glory.


    At last, at long last they turned, northward. Some great enclave lay on the west; to the east a huge garden bloomed, and beyond and through its trees, Rothesay glimpsed a greater forest of towers than even Colderwild boasted: the Imperial Palace itself. Flags whipped from the peaks: she recognized Andras¡¯s purple dragon, and Carastwyth¡¯s blue and copper heron; the red and silver might be Ristover and the yellow and violet matched the emblems the Moraigh edgelings of Harrowater kept hidden, but she could not name any other. Twelve flew there; but the Moraigh banner bore long tails of black, and flew lower than the rest. Her gaze fell; she could guess what it meant, though Pinnar and the other edgelings at home still lived.


    They crossed another avenue, this one lying west by northwest, greater even than the one on which they had entered, and it passed on under elegant arches to the grounds of the Palace. Then at last there rose the gate of Kingscroft, a festoon of cheerful stone skulls grinning southeast at the Palace through the blossoming trees of yet another splendid garden.


    Inside, the Runedaur train disintegrated into chaos. Rothesay lost three Ghost challenges and won two, before a strange young woman in silver seized her arm, fell to Rothesay¡¯s counterattack, and waited, laughing, for Rothesay to help her up again so that she could say, ¡°Hi! You¡¯re Colderwild¡ªand new, too. I¡¯m Annteodha. Call me Teo. C¡¯mon, I¡¯ll show you around!¡±


    Colderwild was a maze built piecemeal by hundreds of independent architects each constructing whatever he fancied, without regard to any predecessor. Kingscroft seemed to be the product of one inspired artist, only later sabotaged by playful, not to say eccentric, successors; it had, at least, an overall symmetry. Sometimes this helped in finding one¡¯s way about; sometimes not, such as the place where a fine carved door, matching one from the north, should have entered the Great Hall from the south, but the door-latch instead dropped the floor out from under one. Ah ha ha. But Teo did admit she was impressed by the way Rothesay caught the door handle so as not to fall into the room below. Not till Teo cried Truce, however, would Rothesay trust the girl¡¯s lifting-spell to carry her back to firm floor again.


    A fine dinner awaited them, all the better for being cold, and then their Kingscroft hosts swept the students from the other houses out into their city, small groups of them barrelling off in all directions.


    Rothesay delayed to visit Kahan in the infirmary, a pleasant, airy little stone house in the middle of the Kingscroft gardens. He urged her to get out and have fun, recommended a sweetshop in ¡®Blackwell,¡¯ and asked if she could maybe bring him back an ale from Drummers Inn. ¡°Mistress Healer says I can¡¯t have any yet, but she¡¯s only saying that to liven my appetite. Please? Just ask the Bursar for some tokens. We don¡¯t have one at Colderwild: hey, what¡¯s to buy in Kavinsrae?¡±


    ¡°Ladies¡¯, er, favors?¡±


    He grinned. ¡°Why buy, when barter is so much more fun?¡± When she looked bemused, though, he did not laugh, but only took her hand and murmured, ¡°Oh, dear,¡± with an odd, pensive smile.


    Sorchone showed her where to find the Bursar, and then Teo, Rory, and Lacie joined them and bustled out into the streets. The Kingscrofters had no interest in the Palace¡ª¡°Faugh, you can see that any time, just hop across the street, mind the groundskeepers when you go through the garden,¡± said Sorchone¡ªbut wanted to hurry off to the afternoon markets. ¡®Blackwell¡¯ suited them fine: it turned out to be two blocks of shops directly above Hollycrown Harbor, renowned for the high quality of its wares and the sophistication of its patrons.


    Here Rothesay saw long and excitingly-tinted fingernails to her heart¡¯s satisfaction, and not just on the ladies. Gentlemen, too, had themselves painted, brow, cheek, lip and hand, and when Teo towed them all into a cosmetics shop, Sorchone too indulged. He came out with a tiny black star under each eye, and dark red lips, but he took only a clear varnish on his nails. Rory flatly refused. Teo mocked him for a barbarian with no style, but, to Rothesay¡¯s surprise, Sorchone neither laughed nor coaxed, and something in his open, rather empty manner made Teo flush and desist.


    Rothesay gaped at Lacie, who looked more like twenty than twelve when the shop¡¯s artists were done with her. Rory and Sorchone both made her extravagant bows, and for the first time Lacie actually looked bashful.


    Rothesay wanted the brilliant, fiery red varnish for her own hands, but the shop-mistress insisted on a wine red ¡°to complement my lady¡¯s marvellous hair.¡± Wine-red too was the lip color chosen for her; at last Rothesay stared into a silver mirror at a woman she did not recognize, with high and blushed cheeks and turquoise-shadowed eyes outlined with black antimony. The looks on Rory and Sorchone¡¯s faces, shown Rothesay¡¯s new one, made her want to scrub it all off at once so that they could be friends again, but she resisted bravely, and even managed to giggle with Lacie and Teo over it.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Then they called at a dressmaker¡¯s. Lacie and Teo both found samples already made that fitted them well enough; Teo urged Rothesay to be measured for one to be made for her.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how long we¡¯re staying,¡± Rothesay hedged. She dearly wanted a dress; she had not worn one since she became the tallest female on the Coast when she was fourteen, yet she could not bear to have to wait for one to be made. ¡°I don¡¯t think I can wait.¡±


    ¡°But, dear, they just don¡¯t make any your size otherwise!¡± Teo objected.


    ¡°Oh, but they do,¡± Sorchone intervened, smiling. ¡°But you must know your shops. Come, children; this way.¡±


    ¡°What¡ªoh! Oh, Shoni, no!¡±


    ¡°Shoni, yes,¡± he purred, taking Rothesay¡¯s arm paternally. ¡°Marron¡¯s is always of the finest quality, and they are unquestionably the first star of fashion, no?¡±


    ¡°Well . . . yes, but. . . .¡±


    ¡°But what?¡± Rothesay demanded suspiciously.


    ¡°They¡¯re expensive,¡± said Sorchone blandly. ¡°But we are heroes today, so worry not, babes.¡±


    Marron¡¯s lay discreetly behind a high marble wall of antique, understated elegance. Within, shapely trees and fragrant flowers around several small, tinkling fountains made a pleasant garden to welcome patrons. The entire front of the shop opened onto the garden, with bolts of bright cloths and piles of sumptuous furs displayed under the light shade of flowering vines. Wooden statues with painted faces wore samples of Marron¡¯s renowned craft¡ªand some of them were as tall as Rothesay.


    ¡°Madame Sindau,¡± Sorchone bowed low over the hand of the woman who glided forth to greet them. This was a magnificent lady, as tall as Sorchone and probably twice as old, though her shining black hair showed not a thread of white. She was gowned in a shimmering silvery net over a deep blue robe, subtly jeweled, which she wore unbelted the better to veil the loss of a girlish waist; but her bust was more than ample, and bore two large shell-pink roses in the cleft. Hers was a stern, commanding face despite its delicate paint, and haughtier than any queen might show: Rothesay felt as though her own gawky presence tainted the very air about Madame. Maybe it was only the blue dress, but Rothesay ¡®reached¡¯ gingerly for her bard-protection charm.


    Sorchone gestured wordlessly to present Rothesay. Madame Sindau raked her over critically enough, but in her eyes sparked a gleam not unlike Master Leoff¡¯s when presented with a problechallenge.


    ¡°My limits?¡± she rapped in a curious husky voice, not taking her eyes from Rothesay.


    ¡°None.¡±


    ¡°The occasion?¡±


    ¡°Mmm¡ªafternoon walking party.¡±


    ¡°Hmmm.¡± Madame turned to survey her shop, her jewelled hands on her hips.


    In short order, Rothesay felt like a puppet in a shadow-box, such as Raian had shown her in Teginau: a prop on which to display a dizzying flurry of fabrics, gowns and jewels to the audience of her friends and Madame. Even Rory seemed to enjoy the game, once startling everyone by abruptly voicing his disapproval of a wine-colored gown ¡°¡¯cos it¡¯s too much of that color already, a¡¯n¡¯t it?¡±


    At last, Madame Sindau escorted Rothesay to a tiny mirrored room at the back, with an armload of new garments to put on in privacy. Rothesay hung them carefully on the many hooks, and hesitated, uneasy.


    A small window above her head, just large enough to crawl through, let in light and air, its grille pushed wide. She eyed it, and listened.


    An easy leap, an elbow catching the sill, and her head and arm thrust through. She snagged the hair of a very grubby boy outside, standing on the shoulders of another, who panicked and ran off through Marron¡¯s back-alley shrubbery. For a moment the smaller fellow dangled, screaming, solely by his hair in her fingers, and she gave him a vengeful little shake before she let go, adding grimly, ¡°I¡¯ll remember you!¡± She dropped back down, but disrobed facing the window, her back to the little door.


    One of the joys of Sferan clothing lay in the abolishment of breastbands. Sferan women wore instead a kind of short shirt, usually sleeveless, that ended just under the breasts. The front was cunningly shaped to hold, even coddle, rather than squash, but the great joy, from Rothesay¡¯s perspective, was that it was perfectly impossible for a sennw to fall down, as even the most carefully wrapped band was all too prone to do. Presumably one might fall open instead, but only if one were careless with its lacing. Rothesay double-knotted.


    She looked at the one provided by Madame. They might be low-cut to be revealing, as favored by Madame herself as well as Lacie; they might also be padded with tufts of lamb¡¯s wool or little bags of scented linen-scrapings, another of Lacie¡¯s artifices. This one¡ªa gay dandelion color, embroidered with flowers and stars of a paler yellow, it matched the underskirt she had already donned¡ªthis was ridiculous. Did Madame think she had no breasts yet at all?


    She grabbed her black tunic up across her nakedness and cracked open the door. Madame seemed to be deep in talk, maybe argument, with Sorchone, and Rory, who looked particularly mulish, but she noticed Rothesay at once and strode swiftly to her aid. Sorchone followed. Annoyed, Rothesay tried to convey her dilemma to Madame out of his hearing.


    ¡°Please, Madame, this¡ª¡± she tried to slip the sennw through the door out of sight of Sorchone, ¡°¡ªcould you, I mean, do you have one, maybe, that, um, has room for¡ªuh, me?¡± She pointed discreetly to the perfumed padding that completely filled the little garment.


    Madame took it, bemused, and then, to Rothesay¡¯s uttermost chagrin, turned to Sorchone and raised one plucked eyebrow inquiringly, imperiously, imperatively.


    ¡°She¡¯s real,¡± Sorchone answered simply, as though it were obvious, whatever it was.


    Madame exhaled softly through narrow nostrils; Rothesay felt sure that that breath would have flamed, if it could. ¡°Does your Order mock me?¡± she growled, with almost manly depth and power.


    ¡°We honor you,¡± Sorchone protested. ¡°The best of quality and first in fashion: said I thus?¡± he appealed to Rothesay, who nodded. To Madame he continued, ¡°Where else¡ªno, where better¡ªto bring a maid of her, ah, proportions?¡±


    Madame glowered, her dark gaze flicking between them. Then her mouth twitched, and at last she let out an undignified snort, half disgust, half laughter. ¡°Well,¡± she began, and looked down at the little sartorial ploy in her hand. ¡°Well! You¡¯re demons all. A moment, my dear,¡± she half-curtsied to Rothesay, ¡°and we shall put this to, er, rights. Anhela!¡± she bellowed, striding off towards a tall and sturdy shop-girl, who nonetheless jumped and cringed before her indomitable mistress.


    ¡°What?¡± said Sorchone¡¯s innocent gaze to Rothesay¡¯s glare, and then he glanced down at the black tunic she clutched before her as if she had let it slip too far. ¡°Suppose I explain when you¡¯re dressed?¡± Rothesay snapped the door shut on him.


    Shortly a brilliant turquoise butterfly fluttered out of the cocoon of Marron¡¯s dressing chambers and spread her wings upon the garden¡¯s scented air. Rothesay leaped lightly onto a marble bench, raised her skirts, blue, then pale rose, then dandelion yellow, just enough to show off delicate sandals that were little more than slender ribbons of the same hues laced over her feet, and danced a pattering step. Sorchone, laughing, raised a hand to her; accepting regally, she leaped down again and the tissue-thin silks billowed up around her in a great tricolored flower, and she blushed and beat them back into place with a hasty hand.


    Still holding her fingertips, Sorchone looked into her face, radiant with awe and delight. He did not ask, Have you never had pretty new clothes before? Why state the obvious? Nor could he bear to spoil this new joy with ugly care, not least because doing so would not further his romantic ambitions; yet as the senior student present, on him lay the onus to keep his people alert. Hmm.


    The newness of these lovely things endangered her, if faintly. Teo, certainly, and maybe even this little Lacie, had been jaded enough by Runedaur wealth to scorn their new finery if assaulted by misfortune or miscreant, or even a fellow student out a-Ghosting; Rothesay, though, would surely attempt to save these new things, and maybe fail her own self, as well as her companions, in divided concern. Yet to tell her so outright would spoil that wonderful new fun shining from her astonished face.


    Sorchone knew well, by now, that two horns of a dilemma could be resolved into one¡ªwith Master Dav¡¯s mystery, the right question. Thus, ¡®shall I keep her alert and safe, or let her enjoy herself a bit longer?¡¯ only widened the breach; such a question only made clear the horns, and offered nothing towards resolution. No, the constructive question was always, How to do both? How might he waken alertness, in the very midst of the fun?


    He kissed her fingertips¡ªperipherally aware of Rory¡¯s resentment; oh well¡ªand then announced to them all, grandly imitating actors¡¯ imaginings of Runedaur masters¡¯ pronouncements: ¡°I declare Truce: a Truce of Pretty New Clothes.¡± He bowed to Teo and Lacie as well. ¡°As they are all afternoon wear¡ªwhat! Oh, never, sweetheart! You would never dream of wearing such fluff after sunset! We shall find you evening wear at the Hall¡ªfor the hours remaining until sunset, we shall none of us train any of us except in the dark arts of noble society. Thus I will it be so.¡±


    Teo snickered. Lacie laughed. Rothesay smoothed her skirts wistfully, but she grinned at his performance, and he felt satisfied of his aim.


    ¡°But now you must have something, Rory; you and Sorchone look so frightfully dull next to us,¡± Lacie announced.


    ¡°Not from here!¡± Rory all but snarled, his dark eyes ablaze.


    ¡°Well, of course not,¡± said Rothesay, puzzled. ¡°This is a women¡¯s shop.¡±


    ¡°Ah,¡± said Sorchone. ¡°And ¡®hmm.¡¯ And thus we are led, children, to the philosopher¡¯s question: what does it mean, then, to ¡®be¡¯ a ¡®woman¡¯? But you must know, love, that the patrons of Marron¡¯s are, as a rule, patrons, and seldom if ever patronesses, if you follow me.¡±


    ¡°Er, no¡ª?¡±


    ¡°Marron¡¯s sells to men,¡± Teo translated brusquely. ¡°Men of¡ª¡±


    ¡°Remarkable,¡± suggested Sorchone.


    ¡°¡ªexceptional,¡± Teo preferred, ¡°taste.¡±


    ¡°What!¡±


    ¡°Exceptional,¡± her hallmate concurred. ¡°Like Marron¡¯s shop-, er, -folk themselves. But we may take our philosopher¡¯s question to Raven¡¯s Trace: their Mistress Healer, Lolosta, is as magic, nor nature, has made her. Like the staff here, though maybe theirs is more art and less arcane.¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s eyes bugged at Marron¡¯s marble wall. ¡°All of them?¡± she breathed, remembering Madame¡¯s two roses.


    ¡°Oh, but certainly.¡± He took Rory¡¯s arm. ¡°Come, brother: let us look elsewhere for man-rags with which to do our ladies justice!¡±


    It took the combined wheedling of Teo, Lacie and Rothesay to persuade Rory to yield up his Runedaur black¡ª¡°But it¡¯s ever so hot, Rory! You give me the headache just thinking about you!¡± Lacie scolded¡ªfor something brighter, but in a shop only a little less refined than Marron¡¯s, they coaxed him into a tunic of an airy linen in rich goldenrod boldly embroidered in black. Sorchone evaded the blood-red that Lacie wanted for him¡ª¡°Red suits me but so ill¡±¡ªand decked himself in cream and Rhostial-blue instead.


    Rory kept trying to pull his tunic longer. Neither young man could bend over, or bend far at all, without displaying anatomy that Society decreed should be veiled, but Lacie mocked his discomfort: ¡°Oh, come, Master Fusswort! You¡¯ve worn less. You usually wear less!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve worn less,¡± he agreed with another tug. ¡°I¡¯ve worn nothing at all. Funny, though, how much nakeder you feel when you¡¯re wearing what¡¯s supposed to cover, but don¡¯t!¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± said Sorchone. ¡°Fully clothed excites no prurience. Nor yet fully nude, though those who seldom behold it, seldom believe that. As with any magic, it is the borderland wherein the power lies!¡± He raised his arms high in a dancer¡¯s mien, put forward a pointed foot, and, thus levered, thrust one hip forward as sharply as a blow. The tunics were not merely short, they were closed at the sides only by their sashes, and Sorchone¡¯s fell open upon half a lean buttock carved in perfect alabaster.


    Only for an instant. He dropped his pose, the silken curtains closed, his gaze swept the two girls. Lacie, well pleased, coquetted; Rothesay had not yet broken the glaze of her surprise, and he released her from his attention before she did. ¡°Oh, yes, we were going to find your sweetshop, were we not?¡±

 X: Andrastir (pt 2/4): Unattended

    Though he had not done so at Marron¡¯s, at the sweetshop Sorchone paid for their delicacies with one of the Kingscroft bursar¡¯s bronze coins. The proprietress squinted at it, not suspiciously, but rather as if she expected it to explode in her hand.


    ¡°Is thar going tah be a tax, soor?¡± she demanded, in accents that struggled for a melody of refinement.


    ¡°Sooner or later, will there not?¡± he replied smoothly. ¡°We¡ª¡±


    ¡°Harr! Students!¡± bellowed the voice of some gargling bear who, from the tone of his epithet, might be a ¡®student-catcher¡¯ the way some hungrier fellows were ¡®rat-catchers.¡¯ Rothesay spun about.


    A storm of a man bore down upon them. Gaudily clad in violent Geillan checks bound with no fewer than three Sferan sashes, he whomped over the cobbles towards them in huge black boots of alien fashion. A matched pair of swords, short and long, swinging over his right hip, and a necklace of throwing daggers were at best only probable emblems of Runedaur affiliation. Far more certain was the severed head swinging by its own long dark hair from his belt and clearing a very wide path through the crowd for him. Men blanched, women gasped and veiled their faces. But though their servants shrieked and yammered, the Andrastiri elite recovered their masks of aplomb swiftly, and instead served up their coldest disdain for this unspeakable display of vulgarity.


    The man grinned, minus a few teeth, beneath braided brown moustaches, as he strode up to the students. ¡°Hey! None o¡¯ my lot with yer¡ªyer got summat agin Waterspooks? Eh?¡±


    ¡°Oh, no,¡± Lacie retorted briskly, and shrugged one shoulder prettily, ¡°but they were all drunk!¡±


    The strange knight laughed. ¡°An¡¯ were they, then? Who drunk ¡¯em? You, eh?¡±


    As Lacie started, confused, Sorchone nodded at the dangling head. ¡°Who¡¯s that?¡±


    Rothesay, battling for composure herself, fought not to flinch away as the stranger swept the grim trophy up for display, bringing with it a reek, unexpectedly of tannin. But she caught the knight¡¯s swift glance at the bronze token still pinched in the fingers of the sweetshop-mistress, who stood frozen, caught between a desperate impulse to revulsion and a commercial instinct never to offend anyone who could put a coin in her till.


    ¡°Some counterfeiter,¡± the knight said loudly, and let the head fall again. ¡°Hey, city boy, put a couple o¡¯ them in yer bag fer me.¡± He pointed a very brown, gnarly finger at a tray of honeycrusts. Sorchone returned the bag to the shopkeeper, who scooped in a large fistful for him and attempted a smile. The knight scanned her small store keenly. ¡°Nice place,¡± he rumbled, and whomped out.


    The students followed. Rothesay, glancing back, saw the sweetshop owner sink weakly onto a stool, as a sympathetic servant-girl pressed a small cup into her hands.


    They followed him past the Black Well itself, a spring that filled an elegant fountain in a gazebo of sculpted black marble where the neighborhood drew its water; down stone stairs to the next street, rather shabbier than Blackwell, and down another ruder and rougher staircase, and another, down to the east end of the Hollycrown harbor itself, to Drinkers Lane and Drummers Inn.


    Business was quiet at this hour; they took their beer on the deep porch overlooking the grubby street and the waterfront, where they were joined, silently but companionably, by the innkeeper.


    ¡°Torgald,¡± said the knight, by way of introducing himself, and pointed with his chin towards the nearer of the two sleek black ships at anchor a little way out. ¡°Storm at Morning¡ªsweetest bark on the water. Any of yer lot comin¡¯ with, when we sail?¡±


    Teo said she was thinking about it.


    Torgald nodded. ¡°Then you¡¯d best meet m¡¯ mate, here.¡± He raised the head again. Rothesay, soothed by the smell of salt in the air, found the stomach to look at the dreadful ornament. The thing had been tanned, evidently, and not left to rot, and the bottom of the neck had been sewn up neatly; the eyes, too, had been closed. Glancing up at Torgald, she was amazed to see his own eyes glitter as with unspent tears. ¡°Colden,¡± he said. ¡°My best friend. I hope he¡¯s in hell, the stinkin¡¯ devilspawn!¡±


    ¡°What did he do?¡± Lacie breathed, awed.


    ¡°Th¡¯ viperspittle asked me to carry him around like this till Darkturning. His idea of a real belly laugh, see. O¡¯ course, I knew that, din¡¯t I, when I fell in with him? Allus one fer keepin¡¯ up the image, Colden: he¡¯d carry a couple o¡¯ noggins about like this whenever he called in port. It was his fashion to behead a cove he¡¯d had to kill, see; tanned ¡¯em, o¡¯ course, ¡¯cos he drew the line at stinkin¡¯ like a demon. ¡®Lookin¡¯ the part¡¯s enough, Gally,¡¯ he says to me, and¡ª¡± he poked one of his twisted-root fingers at Rothesay¡¯s ribs, ¡°he allus made sure to smell right pretty fer the ladies. But he took an arrow bad last winter, in a bit of a dance we had with an Ilmatian pirate, off Seal Head, up Orothonia way.¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s jaw dropped. Orothonia¡ªall the way out in the Great Ocean¡ªmarked the easternmost edge of the known world.


    ¡°Aye,¡± said Torgald, catching her amazement, and thrust out a foot in its enormous thick boot. ¡°Hide o¡¯ the black seal, these: I caught him meself, an¡¯ had these made by one o¡¯ they Orothonian tribeswomen, just as they make their ane. Nothin¡¯ in the world better for keepin¡¯ a paw warm¡ªan¡¯ dry,¡± he added, with almost religious passion in his gargling voice. ¡°But, Colden: he figgers, after all the blokes he¡¯s bounced around like this, it¡¯s only his own just desserts, see? An¡¯ me, now, carryin¡¯ on ¡®upholdin¡¯ the image¡¯ in his place. Bugger the pustule.¡± Torgald dived swiftly into his beer.


    A respectful silence fell. Rothesay closed her eyes and tried to grasp this strange sense of friendship; she supposed it related somehow to Dav¡¯s willingness to kill his dear friend Harlan Grey. Still, she thought, it is true that we all have to die someday, and what useful purpose could be served pretending otherwise? And if one had to die¡ªshe recalled Rory¡¯s remarks just before the battle, about taking misery as it came, or building it up beforehand with fearful imaginings into something overwhelming, and still having to take the misery as well, anyway. This Colden fellow: he sounded as though he had decided he did not need to take the misery at all, not if he could make merry of it. But it seemed to be hard on Torgald.


    After a moment, she ventured to tell him so: ¡°It, er, doesn¡¯t seem to be much of a laugh for you, sir.¡±


    Torgald grinned. ¡°Sure it is. There¡¯s me thinkin¡¯ o¡¯ him¡ªlaughin¡¯ his head off, yer might say! But I miss him, see? That¡¯s all. Don¡¯t you mind me gettin¡¯ sob-faced, time to time. That¡¯s just me gettin¡¯ used to a world with no Colden in it, an¡¯ I ain¡¯t in a hurry.¡±


    ¡°But you called him ¡®viperspittle¡¯. . . .¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Torgald said gently. ¡°You shoulda heard what he called me¡ªwhen he could.¡±


    The innkeeper stirred. ¡°Ah remembers ¡¯im: ¡®bloody pox on a mangy dog¡¯s anus¡¯ ¡¯uz one ¡¯f his¡¯n, aye?¡±


    ¡°Sounds like,¡± agreed Torgald. ¡°An¡¯ never th¡¯ same one twice. Bit of an artist, that way.¡±


    The innkeeper looked gravely at the head of Colden. ¡°¡¯S mighty inhospitable, tah bring a man under mah roof, an¡¯ gi¡¯ ¡¯m no drink. Mother!¡± he called in through the doorway, ¡°bring us a new ale, lass, aye?¡±


    The ¡®lass,¡¯ as grey as the innkeeper, ambled out with another mug and a great jug. Her husband nodded gruffly at the head, now on the bench beside Torgald, and she set the mug beside it. Then she drew back, her eyes narrowed.


    ¡°Naow, reckon Ah¡¯ve swatted that¡¯n wi¡¯ mah broom for th¡¯ lahst time.¡±


    ¡°You never connected!¡± Torgald protested.


    She raised her eyebrows. ¡°Ah did: he knew mah rules abaowt cursin¡¯. Took it like a man, ¡¯im. Colden, wasn¡¯t ¡¯e? An¡¯ yah¡¯d be Gally.¡± She glanced out at the two black ships. ¡°Thank yeh lot for comin¡¯ daown.¡±


    Torgald nodded, but said softly, ¡°Times are changin¡¯, Bery.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t they always.¡±


    The students left Torgald drinking Colden¡¯s beer ¡°on account of him not havin¡¯ anywhere to put it any more,¡± and took Drinkers Lane on its twisting way back up the hillside. The crudely cobbled street veered drunkenly to manage the slope, and sprouted a drinking-house at almost every bend. Eyes watched them from the dim porches. Now and again, someone growled a threat at the pretty, rich children daring this unfashionable boulevard, and each time, Sorchone stopped, an overbright interest in his eyes. Rumor of them sped ahead; shortly, the loud-muttered remarks became, ¡°Aw, shit, Kingscrofters.¡±


    ¡°They ain¡¯t armed. . . .¡±


    ¡°Bet? G¡¯wan, find out for us!¡±


    Rothesay found to her delight that she could feel deliciously beautiful and murderously dangerous at the same time.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Sorchone turned them suddenly into a low, arched tunnel; the coolness under the stones bathed them with relief for a short space. They emerged into another, higher street, more tree-veiled, cooler, and all but silent. As they crossed to another alleyway, the trees and the stillness and the smell of plants seized Rothesay, and she stood and stared.


    Weeds rioted in every crevice. Many of the trees grew in the street itself, scattering cobbles away from their roots. Half-rotted shutters hung awry in some windows, tree branches thrust through others, the remains of roofs sagged dangerously where still more trees had not supplanted them. A broken well cupped a stagnant pool of rainwater and green scum, amid a Dagn¡¯s-garden of white laceflower, purple thistles, yellow sorrel and sprawling witchgrass.


    She shook her head, hard, and ran after the others, down the alley into another ruined street, this one warded by a grimy marble statue of a dancing boy, whose arm and half a leg lay in pallid fragments at its base. From here Rothesay could see, above the grove of trees growing through the roof of some abandoned temple, not so far off the bannered pinnacles of the towers of the Palace. Yet they had a similarly desolated market square to pass yet, before they stepped out once more, as through a veil, into the lavish wealth of Tir Sferyn, the old imperial neighborhood that drowsed oblivious to the ruin at its margin.


    Rounding the Palace through the encircling gardens, along pebbled paths by shapely mounds of brilliant flowers, exactingly trimmed lawns, clear pools rippling with shimmering red, golden and silvery fish, they walked in silence, nibbling sweets and staring at the fashionable lords and ladies decorously doing the same. Rothesay wondered what the pretty people did the rest of the time, and then realized that the blazing silver head of the woman sprinkling crumbs into a pool across the way belonged to Aristande, Princess of Andras. More interesting, if that was the word, were the dozen or so purple-liveried men-at-arms much closer to hand that she suddenly noticed grimly watching her watch the princess.


    ¡°Ghost,¡± Rory whispered in her ear. She jumped a foot away, but he had made no threat; only, when she met his eye, he cocked his head at the guards, and grinned.


    They passed Kingscroft, took a twisting staircase down into yet another neighborhood surrendered to the Lord of the Wild, and, escaping there, arrived in a street of metalsmiths. A weird, acid reek hung in the air, but there Sorchone brought them to the shop of a spindly old coppersmith, who welcomed them heartily, closed up his store and drew them into his small and shabby garden behind. His wife greeted Sorchone like a favorite son, fussed over his friends as if they were rare treasures, kissed them all and fairly forced supper on them. Sorchone sighed blissfully over the woman¡¯s stuffed grape leaves and, leaning over to Rothesay, he murmured, ¡°My beloved cousin will never know what he¡¯s missing!¡±


    Rothesay nodded, unaware of how dimly Ristover would view their heir¡¯s welcome here in so lowly a place; she was still thinking of the empty places.


    Kahan thanked her with his glorious smile for the beer they had brought up in a lidded pail from Drummers.


    ¡°Oh, yes, old Ellan, and his wife Berythane¡ªgreat friends of the Order, from way back. Drummers has been a Runedaur haven for, oh, ye gods, centuries, not with Ellan and Bery all that time, of course, but you know what I mean.


    ¡°Gally¡¯s got Orothonian boots? I¡¯m jealous! I wonder if we¡¯ll head back up that way this summer?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll miss you,¡± she said, but not too wistfully, unsure of just how much feeling she wanted to own up to, or even recognized.


    ¡°No, you won¡¯t,¡± Kahan laughed. ¡°Master Lee¡¯ll see to that: you won¡¯t have time to think of anything except where his next blow is coming from and how much, how terribly much, you want a decent sleep!¡±


    ¡°Oh, thanks a lot!¡±


    ¡°Forewarned is forearmed,¡± he grinned.


    She opened her mouth, found no retort, but suddenly thought of a new ¡®shape¡¯ for the magelight spell, and, like condensing smoke, two more arms seemed to emerge from the slit sleeves of her walking-gown.


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s very good,¡± Kahan said, surprised, but recognizing them for illusions.


    ¡°Well, you said I should be four-armed,¡± she said innocently, and laughed as he attempted to beat her with a pillow.


    Sorchone slouched in and peremptorily ordered her to leave: Teo had found evening garb that should fit her well enough and if she presumed to wear her afternoon stuff an hour longer, he would personally make her a fashion-Ghost.


    ¡°You and what army?¡± she retorted, but she went, loath to give up her first pretty dress yet eager to see what was expected of evening.


    Arms folded idly, Sorchone watched her dance off, then glanced down at Kahan¡¯s couch without so much as turning his head. ¡°You¡¯ve but begun to intrigue her,¡± he drawled, ¡°and you shall be gone for¡ªwhat shall it be: six months? eight? Do you not fear she¡¯ll forget you entirely, and you shall have to begin all over again, and maybe over her interest in another?¡±


    Kahan gave him a slow wink. ¡°I¡¯ve begun to intrigue her,¡± he agreed. ¡°And in my absence she will make more of me in her imagination than I could ever be in truth. If anything, she will over-anticipate me, six months from now, and if I fail to disappoint her then, I shall be a wonder indeed, but it will be such fun trying!¡±


    Sorchone raised an eyebrow, grinned, and made him a bow.


    Under the soaring oak Rothesay sprawled, and gnawed a sweet birch twig. The ¡®fishing village¡¯ down on the beach was of course no village, but only one more district of the great city. Yet like the oak at her back, Andrastir rotted from within: large enough to hold two dozens of Teginaus, once upon a time it had held a full dozen of them, and the streets between them blossomed with pillars, and statues, and flowering trees.


    Half a dozen of them had died. Of the other half¡ªoh, their main streets and their chief enclaves still bustled, but behind them lay decay, empty houses with rotting timbers; and behind them in turn, small now but spreading, islands of living wilderness. Parks for noble ladies to ride in were become perils haunted by outlaws, and even the dogs ran in wolflike packs. In the Swale, the gentle valley between Tir Sferyn on the hill called Caiernarrand, and this height, Windgate, a hunting reserve once stretched, but to pass through it she had had to face down a giddy horde of hounds who only half-remembered men who threw meat scraps instead of stealing them.


    As for this place under the oak: flat as a lawn it was, and by her story-spell, a lawn it once had been, smooth and level as a green lake, spread about a fine marble mansion. But by the time the long-ago acorn had sprouted tall enough for a vigilant groundskeeper to uproot it, the keepers had gone, and weedier plants grew taller still, for a time. Now the old oak swallowed up all the sun here, and time had hammered the house behind into an open, walled garden for Dagn the Piper: wild cherries and a bright sycamore danced to the Gulf wind where flowers of Sferan society once danced to flutes and harps.


    Andrastir rotted, its districts mere clumps and clusters tenuously connected on decaying branches of boulevards. The fishing district below might just as well be a far hamlet on a desolate coast.


    Having mashed one end of her twig to splinters, Rothesay turned it over and began on the other. When the war-train had first ridden out, the first time she had set foot out of Colderwild in a month, a sensation as of coming up for air had taken her; she had volunteered for scouting duty as often as they would entrust it to a novice. Coming into Andrastir yesterday, for all her supposed enthusiasm for the treat, seemed like suffocation once again. And through her dismay at the broken palaces and lost streets, she recognized¡ªa kind of smugness. The Lord of the Wild was lord still. A strange delight filled her at that thought, strange, and yet faintly familiar, as though it came from long ago or very far away. Dimly she remembered that the thought had once terrified her; strange. Certainly she felt more at her ease out here than in the Kingscroft enclave.


    Well she might! she laughed at herself, and laughed aloud. ¡®Ease¡¯ in a Runedaur hall came only to the dead, or nearly dead. She had done off her light afternoon garb for richer, heavier evening wear but no one called any kind of truce and her whole left side still throbbed from the bruising where treading on her unfamiliar skirts in flight had flung her down a flight of stairs. There had been no respite; the Kingscroft students knew their own hiding places all too well. Half-blind with fatigue, in the wee hours she finally sought sanctuary in the infirmary, and found half a dozen other students, including Rory and Cheek-nose, already dozing there. She had curled up with Lacie under Kahan¡¯s cot for what remained of the night.


    Now she was run off on her own. Who was to mind? She thought she was beginning to grasp the Runedaur concept of rules: a null set, as far as she could determine, barring a few items that were more like gentleman¡¯s agreements anyway. Nothing forbade her sleeping outside the Runedaur enclave, nothing, it seemed, forbade her from doing whatever she wished. So she had discovered, when Carialla discovered Rothesay¡¯s intention to come down to this battle.


    Carialla asked her not to go. Rothesay dug up nerve enough to reply that she would rather go. Carialla explained the importance of finding the Sferemath; Rothesay expressed perfect willingness to help¡ªafter the battle. Carialla detailed the risks of war. Rothesay held her ground.


    At first Rothesay actually entertained the hope that Carialla would not mind too much. Then, in terror of the Lady¡¯s potential wrath, she had played a little game with herself: how long can I keep this up before I crack? and laughed, jitteringly, at herself as she played. Then as she began to sense Carialla¡¯s manipulations, she grew angry, determined to win this contest at any cost, the ¡®prize¡¯ forgotten.


    She paused here in her demolition of the birch twig, gazed out through the tossing mulleins and carrot-flowers to the blustery Gulf. It occurred to her now that if she had won, then, in that mood: if Carialla had yielded to Rothesay¡¯s anger¡ªoddly, she would have felt no gladness. Satisfaction, certainly; triumph, possibly. But not pleasure. Come to think of it, no argument she had ever won in anger had left her with anything but a bad taste. Maybe that was what Kahan had meant about Rory?


    Finally, though, she had persisted out of sheer wonder. For Carialla argued. She persuaded. She scolded scaldingly. She did not threaten, though, except in an indirect way that a careful listener¡ªand Rothesay was quickly learning to listen very carefully¡ªcould see was no real threat at all. She had gone so far as to mention spells to rouse the dead, as Rothesay might be, from their rest and drag them forth to be harassed by the living once again.


    But never did Carialla directly forbid her to go. Rothesay finally realized that she was never going to.


    For that alone, Rothesay almost stayed in Colderwild with her. If it had not been for Flick making oblique insults about the cowardice of girls, she would have. She writhed a little, embarrassed now at having been goaded by a child¡¯s taunts. She remembered Sorchone¡¯s merry wink when they packed up the battle tent, and his conspiratorial explanation: ¡°As long as he lets me!¡± So, the Runedaur taught some way of becoming proof against insult. Chalk that one up as a ¡®must learn¡¯!


    But as for rules: if the Mistress of Runedaur could not, or would not, demand obedience even in something so important, who lesser could demand it in lesser affairs?


    Gloom deepened under the oak. The shadow of the high hill dimmed the fisher-home below and reached across the restless greying Gulf towards the vague East. Rothesay began to wonder what fruits the land about her might yield; she had brought nothing to eat from Kingscroft.


    A tiny black hand, black as coal and no bigger than the ball of her thumb, proffered a bunch of wild onions. Unaware that she had even moved, Rothesay stood now plastered to the bole of the tree, her gaze terror-fixed on the little figure before her.

 X: Andrastir (3/4): Onions

    Figures: there just beyond stood another. And another, and another, as her awareness, expanding explosively, revealed a fair two dozen of them surrounding her. She was trapped. The peeries had found her at last¡ªin Andrastir, of all places. No wonder Padriag told her to avoid the city!


    Stricken, quite certain that Arngas the great swordsman had no tricks against a knee-high adversary, she dragged her gaze back down to the nearest one. Patiently it still held out the onions.


    Onions?


    Strawberries, or apples (had it been the season): these were potent fairy lures with which to ply a hapless mortal¡¯s fatal trust. Onions, on the other hand, even wild ones, lacked greatly for seductive appeal.


    Maybe that was the idea.


    Slowly she slid back down to a squat, and considered the onion-bearer.


    It looked something like a black weasel going two-legged. Its head was over-large, then, with a kittenish flattened snout, and a much deeper skull, and from cheek to jaw it was quite hairless and its black skin gleamed. But its eyes were big, round as marbles, and as green as her own. Strings of beads glimmered in its fur, or its furry garments; beads of pearl and amber, she thought. And beads as fine as mustard-seeds weighed its long catlike whiskers into deep, slowly bobbing crescents.


    Movement in her periphery slammed her spine against the trunk again. Some of the others ventured nearer, with gifts, or bribes, held forth: a bundle of greens, a cluster of day lilies, a wild carrot, an armload of¡ªyes¡ªstrawberries.


    ¡°<Fear>¡± said the onion-bearer. He sounded astonished.


    ¡°<Of us>¡± mused the one with the strawberries.


    ¡°<She is part human>¡± came from another.


    ¡°<Is it her humanness that fears?>¡± wondered Onions.


    ¡°<They are estranged>¡± Carrot pointed out.


    Rothesay understood them much as she understood horses, pigs, squirrels and the like, except with words, words she had never heard before, words on soft voices rather like human boys.¡¯ ¡°<What?>¡± she yelped¡ªand slapped both hands to her mouth, for the syllable that burst out was not the Sferan one she expected.


    ¡°<See how young she is,>¡± said Strawberry. ¡°<Only a babe, far too young to be out alone!>¡±


    ¡°<Excuse me! I¡¯m almost seventeen!>¡± And she rolled her tongue, as if the unexpected speech could be tasted.


    The silence that replied reminded her greatly of how she herself, just last fall, had answered a neighbor-child¡¯s boast of three whole years.


    ¡°<Seventeen¡¯s a lot for humans!>¡±


    Again a polite silence.


    ¡°<So how old are you?>¡± she demanded.


    That produced amusement. ¡°<Older than you,>¡± said Carrot.


    Onions held out his other hand. ¡°<Come with us.>¡± He spoke firmly but gently, as to a straying infant.


    Rothesay snapped back to her feet and stared down at the unyielding ground. ¡°<What¡ªdown there?>¡± They seemed surprised that she needed to state the obvious; where else? ¡°<How? And how would I get back?>¡± though she thought, would I get back?


    Strawberry tipped her head. ¡°<Have you never even learned how to [walk]?>¡±


    Rothesay struggled with the odd term, which meant so much more than placing one foot after another; ¡®travel¡¯ might have served, or even ¡®fly,¡¯ except that it had the commonness of ¡®walk¡¯ even as it meant something magical.


    ¡°<Someone comes,>¡± a whisper rustled from peeries well off to her right, and the whole crew vanished, faded into the twilight. Rothesay barely had presence of mind to hide, too. She slipped silently up into a crack in the old oak, but almost fell out when she heard, entirely in her head, the voice of Strawberry saying encouragingly, <You¡¯re almost there!>


    Through a split in the oak¡¯s old hide, she saw Sorchone appear in her glade. He moved all but silently himself, and paused now, and looked about.


    ¡°You¡¯re better than I thought,¡± he said aloud, and the Sferan tongue sounded strangely alien to her. He spoke quietly, to himself; he plainly did not expect her to hear. Then he slipped out of her view, but she stayed where she was, for now.


    Onions poked his head into the crack near hers. ¡°<Yes¡ªlike that!>¡± he said. ¡°<Can you go farther now?>¡±


    ¡°<No,>¡± she said quickly, having no idea what he meant, but determined not to try anything that she did not know how to undo. If ¡®farther¡¯ meant ¡®into the peerie-realm,¡¯ she would like to work out how to go ¡®nearer¡¯ first. And before that, just what the creature was talking about at all. She had climbed into an oak¡ªwhat of it?


    ¡°<He¡¯s gone,>¡± said Carrot. ¡°<Come and eat.>¡±


    She climbed back out and sat again at the foot of the tree. The peeries laid their gifts on leaves at her feet, but she did not yet touch them. A suspicion tickled at the back of her mind and she looked at the creatures heavily. ¡°<Were you lot looking for me, at all?>¡±


    ¡°<No,>¡± said Onions, rather surprised. ¡°<But we saw you, and knew you would hear us. It has been very long, since anyone with whom we could speak has come this way.>¡±


    ¡°<Master Padriag advised me not to come here.>¡±


    Onions bowed. ¡°<So should we. The city is perilous.>¡±


    He did not seem to mean hazards like outlaws or wild dogs; she had a clear image from him of the city itself, roads and homes and shops and humans all together, as a fantastic vampire that might suck the very soul from the unwary. She frowned, perplexed.


    ¡°<The humans have no king,>¡± Onions went on.


    I knew this was coming, didn¡¯t I? she thought. ¡°<Not at all,>¡± she said brightly. ¡°<They have lots of kings!>¡±


    He waved an impatient little hand. ¡°<Job-bosses,>¡± he derided them, much as Marennin had. ¡°<They have no [king].>¡±


    Rothesay struggled with his meaning. The word conjured up images: a mountain¡¯s peak; a heart, pulsing unseen in a creature¡¯s breast; the moveless axle of a turning wheel; the pole star; a bonfire; a horizon seen from a height. ¡°<Er, no,¡± she agreed. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose they have anyone like, um, that.>¡±


    ¡°<So they fall upon one another, without beauty, surrendered to rage. And their spears find many more marks than the bellies of other men.>¡±


    She looked up sharply at that. His little face set grimly.


    Carrot spoke up, a bare whisper. ¡°<That will not be tolerated for long.>¡±


    Rothesay turned to stare hard at him. ¡°<Is that a threat?>¡±


    ¡°<I but spoke. Yet let it be a warning.>¡±


    ¡°<To me?>¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°<Are you beholden to your mother¡¯s people?>¡±


    Rothesay thrust shaking fingers deep into her hair. ¡°<But¡ªyou¡¯re talking about a high-king, I think¡ªeven when they do, they still have wars and all. In other countries.>¡±


    Carrot, Strawberry, and several of the others made dismissive noises. ¡°<Other [lands].>¡±


    This word again weighed so much more than a mere Sferan, or Geillan, equivalent. They were earth-creatures, peeries; Rothesay thought she would probably never grasp the depths of the word, but it clearly had a limited breadth. Only Onions seemed pensive, as though a less parochial spirit struggled in him.


    ¡°<Marennin has asked, er, told me to find ¡®the king,¡¯>¡± she told them.


    ¡°<We know.>¡±


    ¡°<I kind of thought you did.>¡± She glowered at them. ¡°<Why me?>¡± she burst out, so harshly that several of them jumped.


    ¡°<You are both us and them,>¡± Strawberry pointed out, mildly amused.


    ¡°<She said she wasn¡¯t looking for me!>¡±


    ¡°<Why should she?>¡± Strawberry puzzled. ¡°<It is right that when she looked¡ªthere you were.>¡±


    ¡°<No, it isn¡¯t! That¡¯s just¡ª>¡± She reached for a word for ¡®chance,¡¯ and found nothing.


    ¡°<And now you have found us, though you were not looking for us,>¡± said Onions.


    A tiny flame of hope lit up in Rothesay. ¡°<Um¡ªcan you help?>¡± she ventured.


    ¡°<We are kin,>¡± Onions observed.


    ¡°<Marennin commands,>¡± said Carrot.


    She shivered. ¡°<I¡¯m supposed to find an eye, too.>¡±


    ¡°<The Eye,>¡± Strawberry agreed. ¡°<The Eye of the Dragon.>¡±


    ¡°<Mother Goddess!>¡± Rothesay bounded to her feet again, and smacked her head in self-reproach. ¡°<Carialla wants it, too!>¡± And, Do I get much stupider? she demanded of herself. Why didn¡¯t I see that before?


    She had a stew of impressions from them then: <not stupid, only very very young.> <She-who-walks-in-Dream¡ª> <A Land under the Eye¡ª> <Someone comes> and they vanished again, even as she recognized Sorchone in their thought.


    She made no effort to hide, half-annoyed with the intrusion, still frightened by the reminder of Marennin¡¯s task, though it seemed more hopeful now. ¡°<What?>¡± she roared at him when he came around the tree. Again it was not the Sferan word, but he did not seem to notice.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    He strained to see her in the darkness. ¡°You had been here,¡± he observed; ¡°I chanced your return.¡±


    The syllables, even the character of his voice, sounded now stranger than the peeries had at first hearing. He himself looked queer, maybe more solid or more opaque than he¡ªshould?


    According to what code? What was she thinking? What was he? What was she? <We are kin.> <Half us and half them.>


    Panicked, she seized two fistfuls of his tunic. ¡°What am I?¡± she shrieked at him.


    Sorchone had lived long under the Order¡¯s wing. Perceiving a crisis of soul, he made no resistance, but tried for the unexpected: ¡°Runedaur,¡± he replied gently.


    How does one properly torment oneself with unanswerable questions, if other people have answers? Moreover, it was an answer she did not want. She thrust him away, abruptly irritated instead of frightened, nor yet more sane for that. ¡°I want to go home!¡±


    ¡°Colderwild?¡±


    ¡°No! I don¡¯t know. I have no home, there is no home!¡±


    ¡°Of course there is.¡±


    ¡°Where?¡± she demanded hotly, knowing he bluffed.


    ¡°Ah, well, you cannot get there tonight. Will you but trust me on this for now, and shall we return to the hall?¡±


    She glared. ¡°You came to take me back?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± He did not know what burdened her, but he knew that he did not know, and knew better than to add another straw. He could hardly tell her, now, what had brought him after her; not in full, not in all the forms he had been blithely imagining. He settled for part. ¡°But I like you. I came looking for your company only for my own pleasure.¡±


    He struck near the gold. The terror of being utterly unique and alone, familyless, faded from her in the warmth of his affability, and he began to look, and sound, familiar again. She glanced down at the fairy offerings. It might be rude not to accept them, now (¡°We are kin¡±), but she could not bring herself to touch them; she felt as though she had just had some terribly narrow escape, and though that was not from the peeries, still she found no appetite for their gifts. Not now.


    Still, ¡°I like it out here,¡± she objected.


    ¡°It is a lovely night.¡±


    She sat down abruptly, facing the faint glow of Rhostial away off under the moon. The rising night wind tossed the trees, but if it tossed the waves, not even Rothesay could make them out.


    Sorchone eased down beside her. To his surprise, she leaned against him; to his amused frustration, the action was only friendly. He tried a touch on the hair over her temple and asked, as if idly, ¡°Where did home use to be?¡±


    She told him a little of Padriag¡¯s hall; turned away from him as she was, she did not see his eyebrows rise in recognition. And she spoke of Harrowater, her sisters and Alrulf. ¡°But that wasn¡¯t home, either, you know; it was just¡ªwhere I lived. Mother and I came from Daria.¡±


    ¡°¡®Rothesay¡¯ is no Sferan name,¡± he agreed, his only sign that he had heard it before.


    ¡°I was four, and we came over on a great ship with green and white sails, and many boxes packed up with clothes and cushions and, oh, just everything: it was a very great fuss. But one day everyone was stiff, and angry, and silent, and men had swords drawn, and they readied the little white after-boat and put some things in it, baskets and such, and then Mother and me, and lowered us down to the water; and then we just drifted away.¡± After a moment, she turned to look at him, as if he might have an answer. ¡°I don¡¯t understand why they did that. We had blankets and food¡ªbut only a cobweb chance of ever reaching land. If they¡¯d wanted to murder us¡ª¡± It was the first time she had ever voiced the thought that sometimes shaped her nightmares, but she covered it quickly. ¡°Well, why didn¡¯t they just pitch us over the side?¡±


    Sorchone turned his head slowly. ¡°Why, indeed. . . . That ship foundered; only its broken prow was ever recovered: did you know?¡± She shook her head. ¡°Rumor had it that the Lady Cherusay¡¯s enemies chose that voyage to destroy her¡ª¡± he stroked her temple again at her shiver, ¡°and when the ship itself was lost, that she took them down with her.¡±


    ¡°But we weren¡¯t even there.¡±


    ¡°Someone else would appear to have had other plans.¡±


    She turned away again. What had his name been, that mailed knight? He had been at the front of the men with their blades drawn, and his too, and watched them be swung down to the boat without a word from his mouth; but there had been death in his eyes.


    ¡°That vessel meant to bring you here, to Andrastir,¡± Sorchone remarked.


    ¡°Mother was going to hire the Runedaur.¡±


    ¡°I wonder how.¡±


    Rothesay stiffened, and shifted uncomfortably. ¡°Carialla knows,¡± she growled.


    ¡°I should not wonder. But so do you.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± she demanded, rounding on him, but he only chuckled, and ran a fingertip smoothly down her arm.


    ¡°Babe, learn that thought and flesh are not two things but one. Did I not have you in my arms, I should never have seen it in this mirk, but I felt it: a strange dread you have of a favorite old tavern-riddle.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s strange about it? Anyone who thinks I know, thinks I know where it is, too, and doesn¡¯t that make me a jolly prize!¡±


    ¡°Mmm. There is that.¡± He chuckled again. ¡°But am I not an odd one to fear, there? If you know, and I extort it from you: how long would Carialla permit my entrails to remain where I am fond of them to be?¡±


    That wrung a small laugh from her as well. ¡°She is the most horrible woman¡ª!¡±


    ¡°She is a very powerful woman. Be glad she is a friend.¡±


    ¡°A ¡®friend¡¯ as long as I¡ª¡± She stopped, remembering her earlier thoughts. ¡°She didn¡¯t want me to come down to the battle, you know.¡±


    ¡°Surely no one did. You are so very new, after all.¡±


    She turned to stare at his dim face. ¡°But she wouldn¡¯t forbid me. I maybe know something she desperately wants, and she let me go anyway.¡± She expected Sorchone to offer an explanation. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to make a point. ¡°Why?¡±


    He was a long time in replying, staring out to sea for a while himself, or deep into the invisible trees. At last, very slowly, he suggested, ¡°Because there is something else that she wants even more?¡±


    ¡°Such as¡ª?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°I could but hazard a guess. And one that you should find incredible, I fancy. Tell me, someday, when you find it out.¡±


    Exasperated, she snorted, and turned to the Gulf once more. Sorchone studied the faint illumination of the curve of her cheek, and with a long, slow exhalation, stilled his soul, that it might be rippled by the tremors of hers.


    There was confusion: typical in a novice; he recalled his own in sympathetic amusement. And she was certainly on edge about something, maybe several somethings, but fortunately he did not seem to be one of them. He had offended her on first meeting and she had not yet forgiven him that, but she was not holding it against him.


    He wondered what it was, exactly, that she wanted in courtship; he found her hard to read. That of course was why he had come out after her: Skill is a demanding mistress who grants her devotees only brief triumphs but forever pushes them to still greater challenges.


    Her thoughts shifted; she was about to speak¡ª


    ¡°Why did you want to be Runedaur?¡± she asked, still watching the distant water.


    ¡°Did I want to be Runedaur?¡±


    She turned then. ¡°Oh! Then you also came here¡ª¡± she bit off ¡®against your will¡¯ because, in honesty, she was not in this against hers, but only for lack of any other idea what to do with herself. But the heir of Ristover must have had many choices, even if he scorned some of them now. ¡°¡ªEr, though you didn¡¯t want to?¡±


    ¡°No, I came indeed of my desire. I apologize: your question assumed that desire, and I, alas, have an old student¡¯s graceless habit of attacking assumptions like street thugs. Carvallyn na Muir.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Carvallyn¡ªwhy I did want to be Runedaur. He came often to Ristover¡¯s interminable High Councils, which I attended unwilling from the time I was old enough not to spit my pablum at the ministers. He spoke so seldom, yet so clearly. . . .¡± He trailed off, memory-wrapped, and absently stroked her shoulder. ¡°Had all the councillors been Runedaur, all business had been concluded in a quarter-hour, including formalities, and the lot of us could have knocked off and gone fishing.¡± He sighed. ¡°I had to learn that. How I lusted to learn that!¡±


    She liked this well; he required no special Runedaur art to see that. Sorchone rose to extemporaneous poetry then in celebrating the adamantine Runedaur intellect¡ªas uncommon a seduction as an ardent young man ever wove, but never was it said of Runedaur that they clove to the customary to the scorn of what worked.


    Training to the sword, he said, honed thought like a blade itself: in such a debate, one dare not stray from the topic, nor trust flashy technique to blind an opponent to the emptiness of one¡¯s arguments.


    ¡°But, however it clarify one¡¯s own mind,¡± he sighed, ¡°it does not follow that a duel of wits is won like a duel of swords, for in the former, victory surely goes to the unarmed fool rather than the master perfected.¡±


    ¡°Whaat?¡±


    ¡°Oh, but wit is both weapon and weakness¡ªinsofar as we consider rhetorical victory a ¡®win.¡¯ Alas, one who lacks the wit to wage a meaningful war also, by that same deficit, lacks the means to perceive that he has lost! How often have I seen men spurn the hardest proof¡ªwith so masterful a rebuttal as, ¡®Oh, rubbish¡¯¡ªand cling to a folly? How often have I been commanded to Council?¡±


    She giggled. ¡°Er, but not, I take it, at a Runedaur council?¡±


    ¡°Sweet love, a Runedaur council is like nothing you have ever witnessed. But you may see one this very summer: Dav has called the Order to Colderwild, come this next month of Dannin.¡± He tipped his head so that his fine black hair fell across his face. ¡°Will you attend?¡±


    ¡°Well, of course, if I may; I mean, of course,¡± she amended, as she recalled that she probably need ask no permission. ¡°I live there, after all; I suppose it¡¯ll be hard to avoid, actually.¡± The planning needed for such a hosting began to stir in her thought, and stirred a rush of excitement: what fun, to arrange such hospitality, with never a fear about the cost!


    ¡°You will be Runedaur, then?¡±


    She missed the note of caution in his voice. The Order taught her acolytes power, real power that made trifles of Rothesay¡¯s fantastic strength and borrowed sword-skill; if she would not be at their mercy, it seemed she must be one of them. And, she swore silently, ultimately that would be on her terms. ¡°Yes.¡±


    Stillness, Shoni, he bade himself.¡ªThis can be done to serve all ends; there is always a way to meet all ends. And, with deliberate clumsiness, he drew out his training knife and lunged at her.


    She shrieked and leaped away, too hard; tried to recover, too vigorously; and forgetting to curl, belly-flopped onto the ground. Sorchone sprang after and pulled a pratfall of his own to give her time to escape. Hearing her laugh as she found her feet again, he offered up a prayer of thanks to Ullenna, Lady of Love, and Her attendant, the little jester Conaill. A bit of folly, to lighten the heart; a bit of sport, to warm the blood; and¡ª?


    Rothesay bolted past the oak, back to the broken manor-house and darted in. She scrambled up a big old apple tree, listened to hear Sorchone follow her in, then shinnied out over the wall and dropped. Sorchone doubled back out, she fled around to the far side, dived in through the remains of a window, and Onions hissed, ¡°<Here! In here!>¡±


    Without hesitation, she leaped into the apple tree¡ª


    Vastness. Color, roiling and turning with no place for light or shadow. Down, yes, and up; but no weight, no sense of ground beneath her feet. And no feet. Rothesay flailed, or thought she did, or at any rate meant to, but there seemed to be nothing to flail, unless it were her panic itself.


    <What¡¯s happened? Where am I¡ªwhere¡¯s ¡®me¡¯?> No sound came, though bodiless intensity screamed.


    She was not alone. This¡ªspace¡ªwas full, alive with presences. A hundred responses overlapped, like leaves of a book, forming an almost solid reply:


    <Here.>


    <This¡ª>


    <(an image of Sorchone, saying)Thought/flesh; flesh/thought>


    <What asks>


    ¡®What asks¡¯: she seized on that. I¡¯m asking, she thought. I. Me. Rothesay. She ran a few memories through her mind, beads on a string, worry beads, touchstones of herself: Padriag¡¯s rough brown hem; Persli¡¯s wit; thinking Arngas¡¯s sword had been a tin counterfeit; Kahan the hawk-man; her darkhaired doll, with real hair and bright black eyes¡ª


    Familiarity flooded her, a familiar fright. <I¡¯ve been here before!>


    Tiny¡ªhow tiny she had been, a mere infant, and sometimes she fell, down through the bottom of her cradle, a long fall into this very emptiness full of presences, and the silent voices, like those of Onions and Carrot and Strawberry, and yet different.


    <Oh. Them.> Strawberry sniffed contemptuously. <The [Darian] Folk. How like them to frighten a babe!>


    <They didn¡¯t mean to!> Rothesay retorted, peeved. No, they had not meant to; she struggled to recall. Possibly they had even tried to soothe, but frightened she had been, and waked the whole nursery with her shrieks till even her grandmother came. And Grandmother made for her a guardian doll, to stand watch and keep her safe in the nursery, an unsleeping doll: ¡°See,¡± said Grandmother, pointing out the doll¡¯s shining black eyes, high-polished lodestone, ¡°they will always watch and keep the Otherworld Gate tight shut.¡±


    <Lodestone! That would do it,> observed Onions. He seemed exasperated. <It obviously worked.>


    It had; there had been no more such falls¡ªtill now. And now, warded with a name for this, Rothesay relaxed, a bit, and tried to look around her, if ¡°look¡± it could be called.

 X: Andrastir (pt 4/4): Familiarly Strange

    Sorchone stood by the apple¡¯s bole and breathed very, very evenly. A knight of the Runedaur could walk blindfold with ease -- and many could run -- down unfamiliar halls; some of the masters, the ones with a taste for such skill, could run blind through wilderness. Blind combat was a favorite part of training, a game Sorchone played well. Now drawing on all his skill, once again he stilled himself, for any sign of an adversary, or quarry, within these ruined walls.


    Rothesay was not here.


    He looked up into the dim branches. If she had run back up into the tree, he had heard no sign nor sound of it, still less of her branching out again. A master could have known if she were up there, he supposed; at least, he intended to have so much skill in time. But for now he would resort to other means.


    Assured of his solitude, he turned awareness within. Silently, he called up the syllables to open a finding-spell. He had power enough at hand for so simple a working; nonetheless he felt his knife, his real, bronze blade, not the wooden training toy, grow warm at his side: in this he kept such power as he could not bear to contain in himself; it was his talisman, his ¡®magic canteen,¡¯ as he sometimes wryly called it, though it held many times over what he himself could endure.


    The ¡®light¡¯ created by the spell, a fine golden glimmer invisible to those not witch-sighted, filled his folded, cupped palms. He raised his hands over his head, and opened them, releasing the light, directing the glow up through the branches to the outermost leaves; spreading his arms, he sent it out and back to earth like a golden mist, and everything it touched sang in his mind, a cacophonic music of shapes and places and textures.


    The feel of the power flowing through his soul was, as always, an almost physical pleasure, but this time he observed also its alienness. Trying his senses without magic, as he had done just a moment before: unusual it might be, but it was natural, human, no less human than a keen thought or a perfect gesture. But the spell felt strange; if it had a nature, he might have thought it almost reptilian. On consideration, it always had, but he had always ignored that, buried that beneath the effort to make it more. He felt faintly queasy.


    As he closed the spell, it brought him one last impression: in the tree, in the very stuff of the tree itself, he thought he saw a swirl, as of a thick fog or smoke disturbed by some recent passage. But there was no Rothesay, not anywhere in the reach of any of his powers.


    He stepped back, frowning in thought, but not unease. She was here, and now she is not, nor gone by any means I can make out. Thus either I am overlooking something I know, or I am encountering something new. Either way, I am vulnerable. He turned slowly, stretching his awareness out through the little enclosed grove, letting the apple ward his back for him, and someone tackled him to the ground¡ªfrom behind.


    ¡°Awp¡ªphh!¡ªuh, hi!¡± Rothesay squeaked as he writhed about to strike.


    He seized her throat, but forbore to press: her eyes in the dimness already showed white all around. She clutched at his tunic.


    ¡°Back to the Hall? Good idea! Yes, let¡¯s, why don¡¯t we?¡± she babbled, but without the sense to get up to do so.


    It is a rare and potent thing, to be a young man on a sweet warm night in late spring, sprawled beneath a lovely but distressed young woman. He loosed her throat and kissed her.


    ¡°Mmphha!¡± She leaped away in surprise, stumbling to her feet. ¡°Oh! Oh, that was rude of me, Shoni, I¡¯m, uh, sorry . . . .¡± She put one vague hand to her lips, as though her fingers might make more sense of the event than her mouth had.


    ¡°The apology is mine,¡± he replied smoothly, flowing to upright himself. ¡°It was callow of me, to take such advantage of your distraction.¡± He felt no little distraction himself: on the one hand, roused and unslaked lust cursed the interruption; on the other, being thus mastered by impulse, however fleetingly, shamed his self-mastery. Trying to be Runedaur could be a damned pain, at times. And there was the little matter of her curious disappearance and return, and the alarm that radiated like cold moonlight from her, demanding immediate heed. ¡°Roshi, where were you? You¡¯re frightened.¡±


    ¡°No, oh, no, really, I¡¯m just¡ªer, let¡¯s go back?¡± she pleaded.


    She still touched her lips as though she touched his kiss. She felt thoroughly rattled, like a leather ball in a kickball game, bounced from one weird boot to another, yet however weird kissing still seemed to her, it struck her now as wonderfully human. She wanted to plunge back into it, if she could think how. And she did not want to tell Sorchone, or anyone¡ªany human, she thought, with a little shiver as she saw how she distanced herself from the name¡ªwhere she had just been or what she had done, and mostly she wanted to forget it herself, just now.


    Sorchone grabbed her shoulders. ¡°Don¡¯t push me away!¡± She blinked stupidly, wondering if that meant she should hug him, but then he let go one hand to caress her cheek. ¡°You¡¯re frightened,¡± he repeated softly. ¡°Tell me why.¡±


    Right: if she were frightened, he must be wondering if whatever-it-was might come get him too. ¡°Oh¡ªno, it¡¯s all right,¡± she assured him. ¡°It¡ªuh, it¡¯s not, uh, here.¡± In a manner of speaking, it was; she could cross into the Otherworld probably at any point in this one; or could, once she had worked out what Onions had been trying to show her.


    ¡°Don¡¯t push me away,¡± he said again, gently but implacably. ¡°Are we not friends?¡±


    ¡°Oh! Yes, of course we are, Shoni. But¡ªoh, please, I don¡¯t want to talk about it now, all right?¡±


    Both his hands stroked her face, and he shook his head. ¡°You look as though you had looked on the dead,¡± he murmured.


    ¡°No, I quite like ghosts.¡± She peered at him in the gloom. ¡°What do you want of me?¡± she asked suddenly, not knowing why she asked at all, much less then.


    Sorchone laughed in surprise. What did he want, indeed? In many ways, she seemed so much more like almost-seven than almost-seventeen. He squeezed her shoulders affectionately, and, taking her arm, started for home. ¡°I think,¡± he answered slowly, smiling, ¡°I want you to grow up.¡± It occurred to him that Kahan had seen this long since. That would explain a great deal about his approach. ¡°And I think your Kahan must be my best friend.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Ah, no, and that I do not want to talk about now, all right?¡± he echoed her. ¡°Kingscroft dances tonight; will you dance with me?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d like that.¡± After a while, she sighed. ¡°Shoni?¡±


    ¡°Hmm?¡±


    She sighed again, more deeply, but there was nothing for it, so she tried to ¡®disembowel¡¯ him.


    Back through the Swale they passed in truce, silent guardians of one another¡¯s flanks. Then Sorchone led the way through a derelict district. Pocked and root-cracked lanes wound back and forth up the lower northern slopes of Caiernarrand; Sorchone cut them short by way of crumbling stairs and brick-littered alleys.


    Stone struck stone, somewhere ahead. He pulled her into an arching hole in the wall that had once held a door, and peered cautiously out. The half-moon would not rise for an hour or so yet, but the stars were bright enough to wash the ruined tenements with a thin grey pallor¡ªand deepen the shadows. Rothesay peeked out around him.


    Three¡ªfive¡ªno, six men lurched into the alley¡¯s mouth. Sorchone melted back, as if to seek the deeper reaches of the room at his back, but stopped almost with a jerk. Wood, too weakened and weary to groan, sagged underfoot: no more than two ells¡¯ length was left of the former floor, and neither could guess what lay beneath, bare ground or deep cellar.


    Footsteps beat erratically in the alley, but they were trying to beat softly. Once or twice, a stray thump joined them. Once, someone growled indistinctly, and someone else hissed a whisper.


    The footsteps stopped short of the arched doorway. Then a red glitter, like a faint powdering of ruby dust, spread along the alley¡¯s far wall, along its floor, and, presumably, along the near wall as well, thinly illuminating the bricks and the breaks: someone out there had magelight.


    Rothesay saw its sheen glint in Sorchone¡¯s eyes as he turned to her. There was meaning in his glance; she could only hope she understood. She felt more than saw him leap for the door, and then an explosion of golden light usurped all vision. A hand¡ªSorchone¡¯s¡ªgrabbed at her wrist, and they burst into the alley, barreled through the blinded vagabond band like balls through ninepins, and ran.


    Pursuit thundered after them. But after the almost instinctive, ¡°After them!¡± the yells from the men became strange, nonsensical: ¡°Arroot! Sonder!¡± ¡°Arroot! Cap lace!¡±


    ¡°Signals!¡± she heard Sorchone mutter. ¡°Damn and blast.¡± Darting from lane to alley to broken boulevard, he fled like a fox. Other voices answered their pursuers, near, far, some even from rooftops. ¡°Well, two can play at that.¡± He rounded a corner, redoubled their speed, turned another corner, stopped short and bellowed, ¡°Arroot! Novarre!¡± Then he pushed Rothesay into an empty room, and paused to gulp for breath.


    ¡°What¡ªwas that?¡± she gasped, as silently as possible.


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    ¡°Novarre¡ªname of the street opposite this one. Hope that they buy it! Ah, then: let us see what may be down here.¡± He made his own magelight, keeping its golden glow dim as he played it over the floor. Apparently disappointed, he collapsed it, and the blind dark reclaimed them. ¡°Nothing helpful here,¡± he murmured, surprisingly close to her ear. ¡°A bit further, then, hmm?¡±


    ¡°Why are we running? We can¡¯t handle them?¡± She had no desire to fight; she had less desire to run, and still less for Sorchone to think her weak.


    ¡°We could kill them.¡± A thoughtful moment later, he added, ¡°At least, I could. Sometimes, babe, honor obliges power to flee.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± And I wanted power so I¡¯d never have to flee again!


    Back outside, Sorchone crept, silent as shadow, deeper into the maze of rotting architecture. No sound of pursuit could they hear, not running feet nor shouted cant, but the young Runedaur moved as though hunted by a Master. Rothesay¡¯s shoulders began to ache as if she carried a massive weight. The night stretched into eternity.


    At last, nearing the heights of Caiernarrand, Sorchone found a particularly narrow alley that seemed to please him. He hurried along it for perhaps twenty yards, and then froze. Rothesay bumped into him. A whiff of meat just beginning to go bad hung on the heavy, warm air.


    ¡°Now, what¡ª?¡± he murmured warily, and pushed gently at a shadow in the shadowy wall. Old wood muttered annoyance at being disturbed, and the unpleasant smell thickened. They stepped in softly, and Sorchone, casting his magelight upon the floor, cast himself into pure black silhouette for his companion behind and lit up a man almost at her left elbow. With all the grace and accuracy of Arngas, Rothesay loosed her belt knife and plunged it into the outlaw¡¯s belly.


    Too much force. He scarcely quivered, yet her forearm sank into the meat of him almost to her elbow, and she felt the cloth of the back of his shirt wipe her knife-hand. Appalled, she tried to yank away and he came after, his tongue-lolling leer unchanged. A stench of putrefaction rose like a choking fog.


    Sorchone flung one arm about her shoulders and thrust the other against the outlaw¡¯s chest; the man swung away as she pulled free her hand, but she was too maddened with horror to note that he swung, or to make sense of the sash rising from about his neck to the low ceiling beam. Gibbering faintly, she flung her knife away and flapped her sticky wet arm about as if to shake it clean again. Sorchone¡¯s voice roared indistinctly in her ears.


    A sudden blow; the world buzzed softly and faded into pale shades of grey and brown. A time of no time later, blackness returned, gilded at the edges with magelight, and stone was damp under her hands and the air was damp and cool and her head thundered.


    ¡°You hit me,¡± she mumbled thickly.


    ¡°I did,¡± Sorchone replied gently, and gently added, ¡°and I may do so again, if you will lose your senses again.¡±


    Rothesay sat up sharply, trying to push herself away from her own, stinking hand. ¡°Gaaaaah¡ªawph!¡± A gout of cool water dashed into her face. ¡°What¡ª?¡±


    ¡°This is an old cistern. Wash your hands, and let us continue. I¡¯ve a rare eagerness to be home.¡±


    Still she sat, glaring at her guilty limb, till Sorchone reached over gently and pulled it into the water for her. She let him wash it for her, numb as a child, and stared at it when it was clean again, as if making sure it was truly her own flesh. ¡°I¡ªoh, Shoni, d-did I kill him?¡± she whimpered at last.


    ¡°Not you, love. He had been dead a day, at least.¡±


    Abruptly she remembered the neck cloth. ¡°He¡ªhe killed himself?¡±


    ¡°Not with his hands tied behind his back. I fancy he was executed, but whether as a traitor or trespasser, I could not say; though, belike, we should have been companions to him.¡±


    She still stared at her hand. The sensation of cold raw entrails sliding over her skin, up her arm, swallowed all the world, and she shook and shuddered. ¡°Oh-oh-ohwphhh!¡± She bounded to her feet, and swiped her sleeve across her dripping face. ¡°Would you stop splashing me! Listen, you¡ªyou¡¯ve no idea how horrible that was, how disgusting, how, how, eww, aaughh¡ª¡±


    Sorchone clasped both her shoulders firmly, breaking the entrancement of her own hand, forcing her gaze from it to him, stilling her. ¡°I would rather not even imagine. But you, babe: can you imagine how it had felt, had your arm fallen off and acted all of its own accord?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Humor me.¡±


    ¡°Err¡ª¡± She remembered one old tale, of a wicked enchanter¡¯s severed hand that crept through windows to strangle infants; something like that, then. And what it must feel like, the cold, dead, wet corpse-flesh upon her arm, her disembodied arm . . . . She writhed, revolted, and shied away from the thought.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± Sorchone murmured. ¡°Imagine it, then, as though it happened to someone else entirely.¡±


    ¡°What are you getting at? ¡ªRight, right: ¡®humor you.¡¯ Fine.¡± It remained a disgusting, loathsome thought, and she told him so.


    ¡°Oh, but of course; there is naught to be done about that. But you, love: do you not notice?¡±


    ¡°No. I don¡¯t. Notice what?¡± she demanded sullenly.


    ¡°Are you not so much calmer, when you put that thought, the very same thought, as if in the mind of another, not your own?¡±


    Her eyebrows tried to merge in bewilderment. ¡°Am I?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t thrown water in your face again,¡± he pointed out.


    She frowned, and stared again at her hand, and sank once more into the grisly memory, from which she was snatched by Sorchone¡¯s seizing her nose and chirping wildly, ¡°Teedle-eedle-eedle-eedle-eedle!¡± as he jumped up and down. She leaped away from him, clasping her nose protectively.


    ¡°You¡¯ve gone completely mad,¡± she breathed softly, and he laughed.


    ¡°But I am Runedaur: what else? Now, you: would you be mistress of yourself, or enslaved to your own fancies?¡± A tip of his head towards the black archway through which he must have hauled her from the corpse¡¯s room made clear which fancies.


    ¡°What? ¡®Enslaved¡¯¡ªthat¡¯s silly, I¡¯m not¡ªno such¡ªit¡¯s just¡ª¡± and yanking her hand away from her nose, stared at it and fought not to vomit.


    ¡°Are you not? If you are mistress, dismiss it from your mind!¡±


    She shook her head, slowly, her eyes huge and helpless. ¡°I can¡¯t. I can¡¯t, Shoni. That¡¯s impossible¡ªI¡¯ll never forget that¡ª!¡±


    ¡°True enough,¡± he conceded cheerfully. ¡°But you can command just how you remember it, and rob it of all power to distress you!¡±


    And now she stared at him instead of her hand, a wordless stare that begged for his explanation. Gently he took that hand and as gently fastened it on her nose. ¡°There, now: hold firm and, whenever that loathsome thought rear up again in your soul, take your nose, thus¡ªtwist, but gently¡ªand shout, ¡®Shoni¡¯s got a great big whanger!¡¯¡±


    Rothesay flung her hand from her face and gasped, ¡°What!¡±


    ¡°Come, come, Mistress!¡± he chided, at once merry and implacable. ¡°Hand,¡± he took it; ¡°nose,¡± he pushed her resistless hand onto it, ¡°and: say it!¡±


    A snort of reluctant laughter escaped her as she thrust her hand down again. ¡°This is stupid! What¡¯s a ¡®whanger,¡¯ anyway?¡± she demanded suspiciously.


    His eyes danced, all innocence. ¡°Whatever you wish it to be, babe! ¡ªA great sense of folly, perhaps,¡± he added, before she could object. ¡°Come, do as I say!¡±


    He reached for her hand, but she dodged his grasp; slouching, she touched her nose, then straightened with an exasperated giggle. ¡°No! You¡¯re just making sport of me. It was really horrible, Shoni, and you¡¯re¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªAlready reviving you from it,¡± he purred.


    ¡°Er¡ªwhat?¡±


    He grinned. ¡°But, you see, babe, you will never, ever be able to think of . . . that . . . again, without also thinking: ¡®What¡¯s a whanger?¡¯¡±


    Her jaw dropped. ¡°No!¡±


    ¡°Yes!¡±


    ¡°No. Er. Really?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°Try it.¡± And cocked a masterful eyebrow when she looked at her knife hand, and snorted most gracelessly. She pitched him into the cistern for reparation, but he took her with him, and a glorious water battle ensued.


    Still more gloriously, as at length they dangled breathless and laughing from the cistern¡¯s stone lip, she accepted, first, his arm about her shoulders and second, his diplomatically offered mouth.


    More like seven than seventeen. He sighed inwardly, broke off gently. ¡°We are missing the dancing,¡± he deflected.


    ¡°Oh. Right. You said.¡± Her confusion between relief and disappointment almost made him laugh aloud; he kept silent, but noted it as optimistic for the future. She turned, set her hands upon the stone to haul herself out¡ª


    ¡°Not that way, love,¡± he smiled, showed her the glyph carved in the wall, and vanished down into the water. Surfacing a moment later, he explained, ¡°Many of the old cisterns connect. By this under-way, we shall avoid our hunters, and come out through the north-quarter baths, and be but a block from home.¡±


    She glanced around the low-vaulted chamber, deep beneath some once-fine mansion. ¡°Whyever did they build their cisterns to connect? Couldn¡¯t thieves get into those baths, or something, and¡ª?¡±


    ¡°They did not build them so,¡± he grinned. ¡°We, ah, amended them. Come.¡±


    Back in Kingscroft at last, several of her dancing partners remarked on her wet but no longer squelching garments. ¡°Well,¡± she trilled giddily to one, ¡°you¡¯re naked and I¡¯ll bet I¡¯m cooler anyway!¡±


    And in the Silver Novitiates Chamber, her young roommates thought it great fun that she gathered everyone¡¯s pallets and pillows together so they could all sleep in one great friendly familial heap. Rothesay slept in the middle, walled on all sides against the long uncanny day.

 XI: The Grasp of the Madroch (pt 1/3): Living Proof

    XI: The Grasp of the Madroch


    Raian, styled na Drogh, twirled his stylus end over end over end, from one finger to another in one direction, then back, in smooth circles of distraction; when that failed to produce inspiration, he changed hands. On the desk before him, neatly inscribed in dark wax, lay his working of Sfane M¨®rlos¡¯ derivation of latitude from the length of day, one of the proofs so gracefully presented in the mosaics of his home. Only a short while ago, working it through for the third tedious time, comprehension had dawned in radiant glory: its intricate elegance lit up his mind, amazed him with unexpected beauty, ignited pride in his own intellectual power. He had turned, physically turned in his seat, to share the prize by explaining it over again to Rothric.


    After she had left him wedged in the tree, the burn of wounded pride drove him home, leaving her to tread her lonely pilgrimage and him to scorn all womankind as pigheaded fuddlebrains. That had lasted a day or two. Then he decided she had been too distressed to hear any other counsel but flight; but when he would have followed after, he could find no trace, either owing to her queerly light tread or having fallen in another Uissig stream. He had some impression that she was heading south; but she had never said where, still less why. To blunt the fangs of frustration and fear, he had flung himself into the studies in which she had caught him short, till he almost succeeded in forgetting why the hunter had become the scholar. Till today.


    After a while, he flung the stylus down. It bounced up animatedly and, as if making a break for it, cartwheeled out the open window. From the garden two floors below came a skirl of girlish shrieks:


    ¡°Eek!¡±


    ¡°Cena, it flew in your hair!¡±


    ¡°Eeew, a bug!¡±


    Raian made a break for the street.


    The heat of the long summer day, beaten into the stones of the city by Great Areolin¡¯s golden hammer, flowed back out into the sunset-shadowed air, mingled with the heady breath of jasmine and gardenia, clematis and rose that embraced all Teginau in green and pliant arms. And the city surrendered, cast off the businesslike dolor of the day, to indulge Summer¡¯s seduction. The chatter on the streets or through enclave-gates took on a lyrical lilt. Gauzy-dressed women rippled out into the rosy sundown glow, and men with flowers spilling from their hands followed laughing after.


    Raian stalked alone like one last shard of winter. He passed an inn of the cheaper sort; in its porch lingered other shadows: silent with fatigue, dark in the travel-stained clothes that were probably their last possessions, a group of refugees from the destruction of Fallwdd in the lowlands only a fortnight ago.


    Raian slouched past, pretending to take no notice. Then he spun about and marched back, holding himself tall.


    ¡°Welcome to Teginau.¡± He did not smile; their grief was too fresh for that.


    The group stirred, shuffled; some reply emerged, murmured too low to be made out. Raian pulled out a palmful of silver coins, Uissigari binta, from his pocket and laid them on the low wall of the porch near the man he took to be their leader¡ªthe father, maybe, or eldest uncle.


    The man stiffened like one struck, and a small fire kindled in his weary eyes; Raian saw the muscles of his face tauten with hatred of his need for the little silver pile. ¡°We¡¯ll not take that,¡± he sneered, or tried to. A woman holding a sleeping child turned her face away.


    ¡°I am Raian na Drogh, of Raingold,¡± he pointed back up the street, and then nodded at the coins. ¡°When you are rested, stranger, is time enough to talk about fair exchange.¡± He made the band a little bow and started to turn away. Uncle grabbed his shoulder and stared at him a moment longer, before thrusting out a scarred and bandaged hand. Raian took it carefully. Uncle took the coins with his free hand. ¡°We¡¯ll be there, Raingold,¡± he swore huskily. The light of pride recouped that lit the stranger¡¯s face, Raian never after forgot.


    He had done it for Rothric: tired, tattered and bewildered, they had reminded him of her. Was she, too, fleeing the conquest of her home? Somehow, that did not seem to fit; there was the wizard she had mentioned¡ª


    ¡°Woooo-woo-woo!¡±


    A ring of assailants sprang up around him, with taunting voices and threatening moves. In his preoccupation, Raian had wholly forgotten his usual street caution. He slapped his back to the alley wall beside him and both his dirks leaped to his hands.


    His attackers hooted with laughter. ¡°Oh, what is it¡ªdreaming of your girlfriend, na Drogh?¡± cooed Calion.


    ¡°Thinking of sticking me with those, boy?¡± drawled the Wolfman invitingly.


    Raian sighed, half-relieved, half-embarrassed, and slipped his knives back in his sleeves. ¡°Yah, lads, guess you caught me fair!¡±


    ¡°Yah, that we did!¡± agreed squeaky little Fraoch, coquetting up against him like some hussy girl. Startled and uncomprehending, Raian shoved him away.


    ¡°Question is, how?¡± Wolfman chuckled darkly. ¡°What¡¯s on your mind, dream-boy?¡±


    ¡°His long-lost sweetie, no doubt,¡± chimed in Brahald. ¡°Thinking back on those¡ª¡± he thrust a dramatic hand deep into his blond curls and struck a harlot¡¯s pose, and in throaty accents finished, ¡°nights of wild passion.¡±


    Wolfman glowered, mostly as a tease, but there was real question in his face as well: ¡°My boy went and got himself made a man, and without a word¡ªnot one word¡ªto me? Tch, tch, tch.¡±


    ¡°What??¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be coy, boy. Your precious Rothric¡ªor was it,¡± his voice trilled into falsetto, ¡°Rothrica?¡±


    Raian was stunned. ¡°What are¡ªyou¡ªtalking about?¡±


    They stared back, momentarily silenced. Wolfman recovered first, with a wild howl of disbelieving laughter. ¡°You mean¡ªyou didn¡¯t¡ªdidn¡¯t you know¡ªwoo-hoo-hoo!¡±


    The others brayed, and struck up a chorus: ¡°Rothric is a gir-ull! Rothric is a gir-ull!¡±


    ¡°And you slept with her!¡±


    ¡°Three nights!¡±


    ¡°Or was it four?¡±


    Raian struck for the Wolfman¡¯s bushy beard, his left sleeve and right knee. Though Wolfman was a good head taller, two years older, and a fair enough street fighter, he was no match for his young leader, especially not in this mood. In a few fierce moments, Raian had him pinned to the alley cobbles.


    ¡°I knew Rothric was a girl,¡± he grated savagely. ¡°I also knew she didn¡¯t want that known¡ªand tried to respect that! What I¡¯m trying to ask, you great rug, is: how do you come to know that¡ªand why now?¡±


    Calion held out his hand. In the alley¡¯s shadow, the three coins looked like little moons in his palm. Raian leaped up, releasing the Wolfman. In a moment, all four boys were displaying their silver booty: twelve coins, twice what he had given the refugees, and not binta at all.


    ¡°And those mean¡ª?¡±


    ¡°This fellow¡¯s in town,¡± Wolfman began.


    ¡°Looking for this girl,¡± Fraoch interrupted, with a glare at Wolfman. ¡°I see him at the East Guardhouse, showing this picture¡ªcharcoal or something, sketched on parchment, looks like Rothric. Only he says Rossathay or something, and asks if anyone¡¯s seen ¡®her,¡¯ says she¡¯s dressed so and so and so, like a boy, and I say, I saw her, and he gives me one.¡± Fraoch held up one for display. ¡°So I play dumb¡ª¡±


    ¡°Acting natural,¡± murmured Brahald.


    ¡°And coax two more out of him, and think: why not look out for my brothers?¡± He gestured expansively to the other three, who all pulled heroic poses. ¡°I say, go find Calion¡ªhe knows more.¡±


    ¡°And I said Brahald knew her better¡ª¡±


    ¡°Who sent him on to me,¡± Wolfman intervened. Brahald smacked the side of his head. ¡°I told him you saw her last.¡±


    Raian scowled. ¡°Who is ¡®he¡¯?¡±


    Wolfman licked his square teeth. ¡°Foreigner¡ªI mean foreign, not just Lowland! Oily sort,¡± he went on thoughtfully, ¡°sort of a vampire, you ask me.¡± He grinned hugely, savagely, and stretched out his twined hands to crack his furry knuckles. ¡°I think we ought to show him the dark side of Highland hospitality¡ªif you take my meaning. After you collect yours, lord-to-be.¡±


    At that, Raian looked ruefully down at himself. Lightsolstice was little more than a week off; he was wearing the white short tunic, vestlike falca, and leggings that marked him as one of the youths awaiting the Proving on that holy day. Traditional garb, meant to symbolize stainless honor and strength in purity, its chief function, he believed, was to announce to every tedious old gaffer in the country or the city that they had one last month in which to inflict their opinions on the youths thus glaringly set apart; he had studied in his rooms ever longer and harder as this month of white wore on.


    Stainless and pure he was no longer, nor even quite whole: his tussle with the Wolfman left him more dapple-grey than white, a sleeve dangled loose, and one knee had ripped out and blood stained the shin.


    ¡°Your nanny¡¯s going to blister you for that!¡± Fraoch laughed.


    ¡°Her last chance. Where¡¯s this foreigner?¡±


    They strode off, Raian at the center of the square of boys and brooding on Wolfman¡¯s epithet. For now, the others treated the nobleman¡¯s son with barely more respect than each other; they were all boys together¡ªWolfman¡¯s legal manhood notwithstanding. In a short while, though, when the priests of holy Kavin were done with him, Raian would be indeed a lord, to be revered, even feared, by them. Of course, once they too were men before the law, he could, and would, award them places in his house and guard, especially as he was a younger son and no one would be too particular about his choice of friends. But there was still an awkwardness to get over till then: that loyal little bantam Fraoch, nobly born himself, had two more years of childhood yet to go. Raian wondered if it would work, to make him a kind of page for the time.


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    When they reached a low tavern in the Teamsters¡¯ Quarter, it was all but full dark: a ribbon of purple over the western horizon glowed like a dragon¡¯s eye, the spear-point of Saclir Feith Mountain black as its pupil. Raian stared back at it unblinking.


    ¡°He¡¯s in there,¡± said Wolfman, peering through a broken shutter. ¡°I¡¯ll go get him.¡±


    ¡°No, stay here. In fact, all of you, get out of sight,¡± Raian ordered. ¡°I¡¯m going in.¡±


    ¡°Dagn¡¯s Hounds you will, boy. ¡®Men only,¡¯ in the Cock¡¯s Comb. You walk in there¡ªespecially dressed for Proving!¡ªand they¡¯ll Prove you, all right: one of those ¡®how far can he fly?¡¯ proofs.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the idea. Stay out of sight. And don¡¯t come to my rescue: let him do that.¡±


    Raian na Drogh proved to fly less far than a cock, and a little further than a corn sack of similar size. He hit the cobbles rolling easily, but feigned hurt till the dark foreigner feigned compassion, and came hurrying out to him: Wolfman had described his liegeman well, and Raian had made a loud scene in the smoky inn. He let the stranger help him to his feet.


    ¡°Ra Iann a Drog?¡± the man inquired presently.


    Raian remembered to be surprised. ¡°You know me?¡±


    ¡°Boys, they say: so big, so dark, dressed white.¡± He cast a critical eye over Raian¡¯s tattered clothes, and grinned. ¡°Hey, it was, yes? Look, I¡¯m looking for a girl, pretty girl, very pretty girl, but dressed like a boy. Here.¡±


    He handed over a scrap of parchment; Raian turned it to the Cock¡¯s Comb¡¯s lamps. It was not charcoal. He tried to smudge an edge of the sketched hair, with little success, and wondered what made the mark. As for the sketch itself, it was a fair enough likeness.


    ¡°A girl? Dressed like a boy? What for?¡±


    The man shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s scared. She¡¯s running. She maybe thinks it¡¯s a disguise.¡±


    ¡°Running from what?¡±


    ¡°Family enemies,¡± he said smoothly. ¡°We want to find her first.¡±


    ¡°Before her family does?¡±


    The foreigner shot him an evil look, then decided to treat it as a joke. ¡°You¡¯re funny. I am paid by Eirenseld, to take her home to Eirenseld¡ªher mother¡¯s people.¡±


    Eirenseld. Raian had heard the name, but little more. One of the older clans of Daria, he thought. He was also sure this weasel-like lordling spoke the truth; he wondered why it sounded like an unpleasant truth for Rothric.


    ¡°What¡¯s her name?¡±


    ¡°Your friends say she calls herself Rothric.¡± Raian stared patiently. Presently the foreigner pulled out one of his silver coins¡ªthey¡¯re Darian, then, Raian thought¡ªand pressed it into the boy¡¯s palm. ¡°I must hurry.¡± When Raian still made no reply, he added a second, and, finally, grudgingly, a third. Raian rolled them thoughtfully in his hand.


    ¡°They¡¯re pulling your leg,¡± he said suddenly, coolly. ¡°Or, rather, they¡¯re pulling mine: they¡¯ve been teasing me about girls one way or another for weeks.¡± He plucked at his formerly-white silk in explanation. ¡°I can¡¯t help you.¡± He made the man a bow and strode back into the night.


    A block later, his ¡®men¡¯ rejoined him, celebrated his duplicity, admired his information-collection (which evolved into full-blown interrogation by the time they neared Raingold Enclave), and stared in surprise as he approached a lone woman nursing an infant in a dark inn-porch.


    ¡°I found these¡ªin a gutter,¡± he said, giving her the Darian coins. ¡°Uthaar the moneychanger in Silver Street¡¯s the best.¡±


    She looked down at them as if she would cry. ¡°Your mother shall be very proud of you,¡± she murmured in a rich Lowland brogue. Raian bowed and hurried away; and only too late wondered why she had said ¡®shall be.¡¯


    For his part, the Darian Haukur knew he had been lied to, but that rather pleased than annoyed him. He knew where this naive child lived; shadowing him for a few days should reveal a great deal, and it was even possible that he was hiding the girl somewhere nearby. The quest might prove far shorter than he feared. He ambled back in to the Cock¡¯s Comb, bought a round for all, and listened to yet another account of the wild, failed attempt to burn a vagabond back in the spring.


    He loitered all next day near Raingold¡¯s main gate on the steep-falling Street of the Emeralds, but the boy never appeared. Haukur wiped a snarl from his lips. If the brat had been confined as punishment for spoiling his pretty clothes, he would have to find some other approach. At last, querying a servant, he learned that, far from being confined, Raian had stayed the night with his friend Fraoch, and had not come home at all.


    Fraoch was at home at Treestone Enclave, at his supper, said a servant. Raian, he thought, had left a few hours before, as far as could be told in the tide of boys that surged in and out under the law of no moon. Where to? Anywhere was likely with that band!


    The next day no one claimed to have seen Raian at all, and no one but the tutor Thornac cared: the boy was known to wander for days at a time. Haukur worried that his mark had given him the slip, after all, till he learned about the impending ceremony of manhood that the ruined white clothes had portended. He resigned himself to the wait, took his ease in Teginau¡¯s inns, paid several courtesy calls to the sacred courtesans in the Fane of Night, and generally spent Hautiger¡¯s money in the best comfort he had had since leaving a Geste.


    Days passed. Raingold grew uneasy, then angry, with the truant. Then, three days before Lightsolstice, the morning Raian¡¯s vigil was to begin, the household panicked: their man-to-be was gone. Haukur cursed the boy, the inns, the courtesans, Rothesay and all Eirenseld, but none of them inspired him with where to go next.


    So C¨²rullan, having dogged him as far south as he felt warranted, dressed as a Raingold servant and nudged him towards Aellicia, Floodholding, and, with any luck, Colderwild.


    On a cool and misty dawn early in Dannin, Raian na Drogh woke in his sweet spruce-bough nest, rolled to his feet, and shivered into clothes still damp from swimming the Nanfeill the night before. For a moment he stood, listening to the wakening woods. Then he planted an ungentle foot on the blanketed mound beside him and shoved enthusiastically.


    ¡°Rise and greet the blushing Maiden of the Dawn, sluggard!¡±


    The blankets growled. Raian shoved again. A dark and furry head appeared and Wolfman pried open one dawn-despising eye. ¡°Madman!¡± he swore, not for the first time. ¡°How did I ever let you bewitch me into this?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re stupid?¡± Raian suggested. Wolfman erupted from the blankets like a vengeful ghoul from its grave. Raian dodged, rolled, and came up flinging their smaller cookpot at his friend¡¯s naked belly. ¡°Go get us some water, man, and I¡¯ll start a fire.¡±


    ¡°Suppose I just piss in it?¡±


    ¡°You mean you don¡¯t? What the devil do you do to the oatmeal, then?¡±


    Wolfman swatted him and grumbled off to his task, leaving his own clothes till after his swim.


    ¡°Otterman, I should call you,¡± Raian observed as his friend dressed at last after having used the washing-up as an excuse for one last swim.


    Wolfman grunted and laced his boot savagely. ¡°Can¡¯t call you ¡®man¡¯ anything, boy. Tell me again why it was so monstrously urgent that we go, right then, not even stay for your own holy Proving.¡±


    ¡°Because he¡¯s a killer, Wolf. I have to find her first.¡±


    Wolfman flicked an ant off his knee. ¡°You think that was her they meant last night?¡± He jerked his head riverward, signifying Floodholding, their three days¡¯ interrogation of its inhabitants, and one last tavern even scummier than the Cock¡¯s Comb.


    ¡°How many tall skinny raggedy idiots can there be this side of the Myrinine?¡±


    ¡°That idiot sounds like she can use those swords you mentioned¡ª¡±


    ¡°Against a Darian assassin? And now maybe the Runedaur have taken her. . . . Do you know anything about the Order, Wolf?¡±


    Wolfman licked his teeth. ¡°Only what they do to people who can answer ¡®yes¡¯ to a question like that,¡± he retorted. ¡°My boy-man, I¡¯ll eat Darian assassins for breakfast, and pick my teeth with berserker¡¯s bones, but I never counted on tangling with the Death-knights. Not that.¡±


    Raian looked down at him soberly. ¡°Do you want to go home?¡±


    Wolfman glared up, turned his head and spat. ¡°Madman,¡± he growled, hoisted up with his pack, and struck off southward.


    A mile or so later, the heavy mist (¡°¡®Blushing,¡¯ my fat fettucas,¡± the Wolfman snarled) was slashed by the lion-scream of war pipes from high in the eastern air. Answering pipes from the west howled their defiance. A roar as of a wind rising to smash the very hills rolled up the valley. The two friends¡¯ eyes met: battle! Needing no word between them, they scrambled down the deepening glen to catch a glimpse of the contest, and fought to attain both speed and silence.


    When they dropped out from under the roof of fog, silence meant nothing: the air shuddered with the pounding of boots and hooves; roared with the gale of shouted slogans, orders, insults; rang with bronze and the screams of death. Raian swarmed up a tall beech and skinnied out on a limb for a comprehensive view; Wolfman followed but, a stone or so heavier, stayed close to the trunk.


    A snow lion and black vulture feathers made the token of the blue-and-yellow easterners; an inverted great-axe and a horse¡¯s tail marked the yellow-and-black westerners. Presently Raian¡¯s quick eyes picked out smaller bands within each army: men of closer kin, most likely, used to drilling together. Watching the monolithic clash, Raian suddenly wished he could reach out and pick up this band and bring them in flanking from over here; shape this group into a wedge to drive through that one. The great-axe men were outnumbered, and the men of the snow lion fought with terrifying ferocity; but the ferocity seemed almost frenzy, and if the Great-axes could only pierce here, and here, and here, draw the Snow-lions into that marshy flat by the stream, gain control of yonder thicket, they could yet tip the balance. Wolfman watched his young friend punch the air or strike the branch, and laughed, thinking he understood the enthusiasm: he himself fought down his first rush of battle fever and an urge to leap down and join in, on either side or none but his own.


    The mist lifted, steaming, and Areolin climbed to noon. The warriors of the Snow Lion owned the valley. For a little while, the golden light seemed like a victor¡¯s mantle upon their triumph; and then, stern and pitiless, it burned away the veil of glory to expose glory¡¯s price. After War¡¯s exuberance came Death¡¯s labor, and the survivors turned slowly, weary as the dance of rage stilled in their blood, to gather up the dead and the dying. Deep in the beech¡¯s green shadow, Raian and Wolf sat silent and sick.


    Wagons came over the eastern hillside, and horses with litters and sledges, and all through the melting-hot afternoon men gleaned the bloody crop, till only the western dead, despoiled of everything but their yellow-and-black shirts, remained. Soon their great-axe sisters and mothers would race the sunset and the wolves, maybe even a lion of the four-footed kind, to bring their fallen in out of the reach of ghouls and blood-spirits.


    Not till the last wagon vanished back over the hill did either youth venture to move. Wolfman slipped down first. Following thoughtfully, suddenly Raian glimpsed movement, to the west, where the little stream emerged from a dark glade.


    Under the trees, out of reach of Areolin¡¯s revealing rays, a woman stood half-crouched¡ªor something in woman-shape, for she could not have been less than twelve feet tall, upright. Naked she was, wrapped loosely in the long leafy vines that were her hair. She had been cruelly beaten: ugly bruises and black-oozing gashes mottled her dim green skin from breast to belly to thigh. She reached out with dripping hands twisted like claws towards the battle-clearing, where the stream vanished in the black churned mud and no green herb showed from forest edge to edge. Her black lips drew back in a curl of rage and pain from wolflike teeth, and a pinpoint of red fire flamed in each black eye.


    Raian blinked and shook his head, and she was gone. He half-slid, half-fell the rest of the way to the ground.


    ¡°You all right?¡± said the Wolfman, startled.


    ¡°Yah. Come on, let¡¯s go.¡± He led the way around the eastern edge of the clearing, careful to keep under cover of the forest roof, though he felt certain the thing would not cross out into the sunlight.


    ¡°I kept wishing I¡¯d had charge of that battle,¡± he went on quickly, trying not even to think about her. ¡°I just know I could have won it for the other army.¡±


    ¡°Yah, a great strategist now, you are,¡± Wolfman sneered, out of a habit of mockery, though he was quite prepared to believe Raian could do nearly anything. After a moment he added, ¡°So, what would you have done?¡±


    Raian told him, talking fast, walking fast, eager to be out of the creature¡¯s domain before twilight, eager also to believe that she was only a phantasm of the afternoon¡¯s heat. He fluttered his tunic to fan air over the sweat trickling down his body, to little effect. The linen stuck where it touched.


    Wolfman stopped him with a hand on his arm. Alarmed, Raian pulled in return. ¡°Come on, Wolf!¡±


    ¡°Ssh!¡± Wolfman did not move except only his head, scanning, searching the silent forest. Too silent. Raian¡¯s daggers flicked to his hands and his back met Wolfman¡¯s.

 XI: The Grasp of the Madroch (pt 2/3): Prisoners of the Warlord

    A shout came down the hillside behind them, and the snapping of undergrowth before a runner¡ªthen two runners. Before they could move, another shout answered from ahead, down the valley and much nearer. To the west lay battle-churned bog¡ªand possibly a wounded woman-thing, who might also be heat-madness. They bolted west, leaping for rocks and firmer-looking patches. Then Wolfman yelped and stumbled with an arrow in his thigh. They turned, and four of the Snow Lion men were upon them: three leaf-bladed spears and a nocked longbow advised them to surrender.


    The archer barked a demand. Raian stared, confounded, before recognizing the strange tongue as a kind of Geillan at all. Guessing, he tossed down his knives. Wolfman, on the ground, followed suit, but added, ¡°What the hell was that?¡±


    The archer and the spearmen exchanged glances. Raian supposed he had guessed wrong, but they were not complaining. The command was repeated, slightly abbreviated, and louder. Raian shrugged and lifted his empty hands.


    One of the spearmen shot an exasperated glare at the archer, that was also a request for cover. Stepping forward, he yanked Raian¡¯s cloak forward and fingered, first, the embroidered wisdom-maze of Dunwyrding, and then the constellation of Kinnaith. Tossing aside his spear, he grabbed the Wolfman¡¯s similar cloak, and almost lifted him to his feet by it. He spoke sharply, but to his fellows, not to the ignorant strangers.


    The spearmen pressed closer, hot in discussion, as puzzled by the Geillan badge on a Sferan mantle as Rothesay had been months before. But the archer had a low tolerance for riddles. He did not need to know the whole clan story of a prisoner to know what to do with one: disarm, disable (except to walk, and he was already regretting the furry one¡¯s wounded leg), despoil, and present to the captain and jockey for a prize; then brag for as long as the story was good. Life was as simple as you chose to make it, for Gothlac Ironbow. He chose swiftly.


    ¡°Not bad for camp bread.¡± Wolfman broke a piece between his fingers moodily. The stew given the prisoners had been unexpectedly tasty as well. ¡°You suppose it¡¯s their custom to give the condemned a last good meal?¡±


    ¡°Could be,¡± Raian glanced over at the small corral of captive great-axe warriors, who had been given the same. ¡°But their surgeon did well by your leg, from what I could see, so I doubt it¡¯s your last. How does it feel?¡±


    ¡°Shut up.¡± Wolfman rolled away from his empty bowl to stare up at the thick stars. Raian gave his shoulder a squeeze, but for his part watched the rude court convened at the fire scarcely ten yards away.


    Raised on a thick pile of new-cut turves, the Snow Lion men set a wooden chair, deeply carved, brightly painted¡ªand cunningly made, quickly assembled or taken apart for travel. The huge man who sat there now, his booted feet planted on the turves as though they symbolized the whole earth, had to be the Snow-lion chieftain himself. White streaks in his thick brown hair and beard suggested that he would look like his own token in none too many more summers.


    Deorgard. Raian had heard the name before, but Tre-Uissig, secure in the fastnesses of the mountains, spent little interest on lowland folk. Raian regretted the smug oversight; he began to fear that his people might soon regret it, too, if too late.


    Deorgard. The name meant ¡®man-wolf¡¯ in the language of the Geillari. ¡°Bastard stole my name,¡± the Wolfman grumbled.


    ¡°Nah, just their form,¡± Raian retorted. Ddarwath was the Sferan equivalent, yet the Uissig spoke a mingled speech, and Athgarw, as it had become there, would mean nothing to either Geilla or Sfera anywhere else.


    He watched the last of the captains give his accounting, and even listened to what he could hear. He was beginning to catch on to this Maldan dialect. The surly archer¡¯s first word to him¡ªsomething like Gaeioosiurnaamunkhlean-gurt¡ªhe had worked out as ¡®Give us your name and clan-gurt,¡¯ though that final syllable still escaped him. And when these men spoke slowly, as they did before the fire when they wanted their speech to carry, he understood them well enough. He thought he might even be able to mimic their drawl. Would they notice, and think he mocked them? Or would they only find him more intelligible than otherwise?


    After the reports, the great chieftain spent fully an hour, by the moon, dispensing gifts, from confiscated weaponry to copper, silver, even gold bracelets from his meaty arms. To one hero, though, he gave the massive gold torque from about his own neck, and the camp erupted with screaming approval and thundering swords on shields. Raian took note of this popular character: tall, homely, his grim face flushed now with pride. In a moment he vanished in a mob of congratulators; and then more drink went around, and a bard stepped forward.


    Raian rubbed his eyes. The sorrow-songs of these Geillari, like his own, were slow and heavy, and he was exhausted, having borne the brunt of the Wolfman¡¯s weight as well as his cynicism as their captors marched them over the hills that day. He felt no apprehension for either themselves or their quest: any Geilla would recognize the friendship-duty that lay on him. A man who owed a friend¡¯s loyalty needed no other safe-conduct across any country, and those whom he met were obliged to give him aid. Wolfman¡¯s fretting over execution or enslavement wearied him; and the mournful chant cataloguing the incomparable virtues of men he did not know bore him swiftly to sleep.


    Sing now the songs of our bold brothers,


    Fear-scorning, foe-defying,


    Bright their spears in the sun-glade flashing,


    Iron-toothed hounds first in the blood-score.


    No more shall we see the faces long loved,


    Lifting our hearts like the sun¡¯s dawning,


    Beautiful they were to us, bewitching to women,


    But in the Dead-halls no eye brightens.


    Gone is their music, stilled are their voices,


    Sweeter than bard-song in the ears of kinsmen.


    They shall not call out our names in gladness


    From the Silent-realm till the World¡¯s turning.


    Thundering Gothmir, born sword-handed,


    First to the fray when the war-pipes wailed ....


    In the morning the war camp broke swiftly and headed, to Raian¡¯s delight, south. They put a heavy pack on him, which he determined to bear as if it were nothing; but the Wolfman was loaded into a cart with enemy wounded. Though they soon struck a highway as smooth as Sferan skill could make it, the cart was no great triumph of art, and he bounced over the hills in misery. It was, he asserted when they stopped for the noon meal, a way of beating a man to death while being able to claim, ¡°I never touched him!¡±


    The third day of their journey with Deorgard¡¯s company pressed on after sunset, and ended by the ruined gates of a city, Raian¡¯s first view of the devastation wrought by his Geillan kin upon his Sferan cousins. In the rising moonlight, the tumbled blocks of shattered walls looked like a demented Ceidha stone-ring, an undead home to the ghosts of vengeance.


    But the army turned, and entered by cheers and torchlight between the lapped ends of a towering timber palisade. In the mountains of Tre-Uissig, the Geillari raised homesteads of wood, steep-roofed, short-walled, their pillars graven with the history and lineage of the family, the rooftrees and eaves warded by the family¡¯s daemons and spirits freed by wood-chisel from naturally-gnarled limbs and roots. But this place was a city of such halls¡ªa city by Geillan standards, if little more than a large village to Raian of Teginau.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    To the tallest hall, of double-tiered and slab-shingled roofs and the greatest garrison of ridgepole spirits, the more important great-axe¡ªDuncardrogh¡ªprisoners were brought, and the peculiar half-Dragon, half-human boys as well. The Wolfman was spirited away by a murmuring throng of healer-women: a devil had got into his thigh wound, and he blazed with a fever. When he babbled and mumbled all last night, Raian had worried; since he had fallen white and silent today, Raian feared he had brought his friend to Ges¡¯s Gates. He watched anxiously as the grim women bore Wolf¡¯s litter away down an arborlike walkway. His own impatient herder almost knocked him off his feet in urging him into the side aisle of the Great Hall, to await the king¡¯s pleasure.


    Raian sat cross-legged on the pallets piled against the low wall; small as he was, he could barely have stood erect here under the eaves, but only a few feet away, the line of tree-bole pillars met the roof at three times his height. And the torches that burned on every pole could not dispel the lofty shadows at the very peak.


    In the storied pillars, he expected to see marks of the Snow-lion¡¯s glorious Dunmadroch fathers. Instead the bright-painted carvings told of a green Serpent who wore a wreath of flame. He glanced up the hall. Deorgard¡¯s great war-throne was even now being assembled on a cloth on the raised earth¡ªno, stone: Sferan marble, he thought darkly¡ªat the head of the hall; down on the rush-strewn floor, but to the throne¡¯s right, the side of honor, stood a more solid stool, with green serpents for arms and a green cushion with flame-colored tassels. So even this Geillan city was not the great war-lord¡¯s native hearth.


    Aurochs horns blew. Backed by two bards and a dozen mail-clad spearmen, a man strode up the hall and took the serpent-throne: gold-haired, gold-bearded, proud and cold of glance. His men arranged themselves behind him, to Raian¡¯s eye looking more like massed threat to the overlord than liegemen in service. Perhaps the Serpent chafed under the Lion¡¯s claw. Then, heralded only by the silence spreading like cold wine spilled, Deorgard walked the hall alone, unarmed and unguarded.


    Even among a race of men scorned by the Dragon-lords as crude and clumsy giants, Deorgard was big. Taller than Raian¡¯s father Wylfric, twice as massive, his thigh could not be compassed by Raian¡¯s belt, nor his shoulders by Raian¡¯s uttermost embrace. All in black he walked, from his flowing mantle to his black-fringed tunic to trousers and garters alike, as if the colors of his own clan straitened him too narrowly, he who would make himself the lord of many. Berulf himself, it was said, often went thus in black. Against this the gold that covered his arms, spangled his hands and draped his neck gleamed like the pure fire of life and power, and he passed like a demigod, a sullen son of Earth and Fire.


    The Serpent-king kept his seat till Deorgard passed the hearthfire. Then he sprang up, swept off his great green cloak and threw it open upon the rushes and the stones before his high king¡¯s boots and Deorgard missed not a step as he trod across the gay embroidered cloth. Stepping upon the raised dais, he turned, flung his mighty weight upon his throne, slouched heavily on one arm rest and dangled a knee over the other. A dim blue shadow flickered from the far aisle, and the same ancient bard of the war-camp three nights before ranked his strange power behind his master¡¯s left shoulder. Over Deorgard¡¯s head, he held aloft in old, blue-veined hands a thick crown of hammered gold, then slowly settled it upon the high king¡¯s brown head. For a bare moment the king sat moveless; no one in the hall seemed to breathe. Then Deorgard nudged the heavy band with one huge thumb, setting it ever so slightly askew, and waved for court to get on with it.


    With great fanfare the Duncardrogh men were brought to Deorgard¡¯s feet. Their chieftain, a young stumpy brownbearded fellow named Harka, whom Raian had learned to like and respect on the trek, stood forward to speak for his people. In a loud, clear voice, following the bard¡¯s instruction, in several stanzas he proclaimed Deorgard his lord and theirs. Then he named it high honor to be in their turn regarded as the people of so great a war leader and king.


    This part, almost a poem in its own right, was Harka¡¯s own invention, outside the ritual conducted by Deorgard¡¯s bard, and it succeeded in surprising the king. He sat up slowly, like a lion at stretch, raked his knifelike stare over this newest sword-point vassal, to cut the veil of deceit such pretty words might embroider. Raian could not see Harka¡¯s face, but he noted the young king¡¯s straight spine with approval. Harka meant what he said, as Raian knew already, and the Geillari held such sentiments as noble and manly¡ªin poetry; they were, however, thought old-fashioned, even quaint, in the flesh. Deorgard¡¯s glance flicked to the back of the Serpent-king¡¯s blond head, and Raian wished he could read the warlord¡¯s thought. Would it be, ¡®You should speak so fittingly¡¯? Or was it, ¡®You, I understand¡¯?


    Then Duncardrogh¡¯s nobles each had to come forward, lay their hands in Deorgard¡¯s, affirm their chieftain¡¯s pledge and make their own. Bards in the aisle across the hall from Raian made a music of harps and bells, and a soft but bone-stirring thunder of man-sized tambours, for each. At the end the Duncardrogh were seated with honor on floor-cushions at the Serpent-king¡¯s right hand, awaiting feasting later as brothers. And at last, long last, Raian na Drogh, still in his double-blazoned Sferan cloak, came before Deorgard the Madroch, king in Aellicia, lord of Maldan, who looked down at him as if he were an odd bug that stirred an idle curiosity before being squashed.


    The bug felt puny and fragile. Raian loved his mother, willowy lady, but he wished that she had given him rather more of his father¡¯s stature than her own. Mastering himself with all his force, he went to one knee as he had seen young King Harka and his nobles do, yet strained to make the crown of his head reach the dim, smoke-veiled ridgepole far above.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± the bard demanded ponderously. His voice must have been smoother, more resonant in his youth, but it could not have been more powerful; nor lower-pitched.


    ¡°I am Hadrad Wylfhaer Wylfring Traga Gulfwisa Wylfric Raian, of the Dunwyrding, Second-born and Second-son of Iril ma Sunarre¡ª¡±


    That was enough for Geillan convention; more than enough, for outside the Uissig, only bastards gave their mother¡¯s lineage. Raian knew it, but he dared his captors to sneer: in his mountains, both lines mattered. ¡°¡ªma Corandere ma Tersyn ma Linnas ma Meyal ma Linnas, Kinnatysel.¡±


    A glower from Deorgard cut off the snickering like a scythe in the hay. ¡°Half-breed,¡± he observed curtly, the first word outside ritual he had troubled to speak all evening.


    Raian raised his chin. ¡°Double-blooded.¡±


    Chastened once already, his men waited on their high king before venturing opinion. They waited long. Deorgard stared inscrutably at the boy, and the boy stared boldly back, unblinking though his eyes began to sting before the king raised one bushy eyebrow. Then the bard would have spoken again, but Raian was not done answering as he understood the question: ¡°I am a man of Raingold Enclave, of the city of Teginau, queen of the Tre-Uissig.¡± He should not have said ¡®man,¡¯ properly speaking; still, it was only the feebleminded or sickly who were ever denied manhood¡¯s yoke, and he knew himself to have long since surpassed the priests¡¯ demands.


    Deorgard stabbed him again with his glance, and this time did not check the mirth of his men, old and new, that erupted at this claim. Only Harka did not laugh, nor Deorgard himself, nor the ancient bard who bent to his king¡¯s ear


    ¡°What brought you to my battle?¡± Deorgard himself asked next.


    ¡°Chance alone, Athariad. I am seeking a friend, who is pursued unaware by a man who would harm¡ª¡± Raian did not know whether to say ¡®her¡¯, which was true, or ¡®him¡¯, which was her wish and which in any case made it easier to elicit news of her. But the Geillari distrusted a man of hesitant speech, believing that the honest man spoke both boldly and plainly, confident of his truth. Raian hurried on, hoping his lapse was too brief to count against him, ¡°¡ªhim. I ask all men who have ever known the blessing of friendship to give me aid and succor!¡± He could not in courtesy look away from the king to address all present, but he made sure to project his voice to the walls.


    The king¡¯s gaze narrowed; the bug fought not to squirm.


    ¡°Name?¡± Deorgard demanded.


    ¡°Rothric,¡± Raian replied promptly, but less surely. How could he explain how he did not know his supposed friend¡¯s very name?


    The old bard bent to Deorgard¡¯s ear again, but the king waved him back irritably. ¡°And you would have me do what?¡±


    Raian spread his hands. ¡°Only grant my companion and me shelter for a day or two, till he is fit to walk again, and safe passage out of your land¡ª¡±


    Deorgard¡¯s men interrupted with laughter again, and one cried loudly, ¡°¡¯T is ay loong wak thet t¡¯t¡¯ aind of t¡¯ Maddroch¡¯s gddahsp!¡±


    ¡®T is ay loong wak¡ªah: ¡®it is a long walk, that, to the end of the Madroch¡¯s grasp.¡¯ No doubt, thought Raian. He raised his cupped hands like a priest offering libation: Teodhan¡¯s sign. ¡°Teodhan, Who is the fountain of that sweet love that flows from the heart of a friend and restores a man¡¯s soul, and strength, and valor: let His holy gift be praised by the honor that we do one another¡¯s sacred bonds!¡± It was not quite the proper invocation, which he last heard half-asleep a few weeks ago, at a cousin¡¯s betrothal yet, but he was pleased with it. He hoped the king was.


    ¡°Pretty,¡± said Deorgard, as murmurs ran through his hall. He nudged the rim of his crown again. The bard visibly ached to whisper to him again, but held his peace, oak-stern and straight. Then the king gave the bug one last, black gaze, and squashed him. ¡°No.¡±


    His men pounded their spear-butts on the floor as Deorgard stretched magnificently, unhooking his indecorous knee from the armrest at last. Raian only just made out his command to the bard: ¡°Take him to my chamber, and get a collar on him.¡±


    ¡°No!¡± Raian was on his feet without knowing that he moved.


    The hall fell silent, almost silent, watching for the strange boy¡¯s further humiliation. Deorgard leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees¡ªand grinned. ¡°Maybe a willow-switch?¡±


    An erring child¡¯s perennial chastisement. Raian stiffened, furious: furious, and impotent as a child.


    ¡°Thrice a liar, and once a boor,¡± the king explained, his grin fading like moonset in the night of his ferocity. He snapped his big fingers, and as the Dunmadroch warriors laughed and hooted, the grim old bard stepped down, gripped Raian¡¯s shoulder in iron claws and forced him from the hall.


    As they reached the hall gate, open wide to the sweet summer night, soft and sweet as the sleep of the heedless gods, Deorgard¡¯s bellow halted them: ¡°Hey, Bradgith!¡± With a mighty heave, and then another, he flung his great black boots down the hall. ¡°Make him understand I want ¡¯em clean by dawn!¡±


    Bradgith shoved Raian toward the boots. Numbly he picked them up. He could refuse, if he had a mind to be beaten. But it seemed a fruitless rebellion, fruitless, and worse: if he was going to extricate himself and the Wolfman from Dunmadroch enslavement, he was going to need a clear head and whole bones. He followed the bard dully.

 XI: The Grasp of the Madroch (pt 3/3): Trial by Boots

    Bradgith lit a single oil lamp in the anteroom of the king¡¯s house¡ªthe Serpent-King¡¯s house, surrendered to his overlord¡¯s use¡ªand the dim yellow glow washed over many fine things, carved chests and stools, bright blankets and hangings, that nonetheless managed to convey a war-camp¡¯s transitory character, as though the house and the furnishings knew the new resident would move on in a few days and they could sink back to their accustomed temper. Big canvas bags and leather travel-boxes, strangers awaiting unpacking, crowded the herb-carpeted floor.


    Raian noted that, for all the richness of the furnishings, the sad little lamp was no more than a bowl of oil with a wick: even the peasants at home, though their bowls might be simple clay and not worked gold, still veiled a lamp with a bit of oiled cloth or gut so that it illuminated, like sunlight behind high cloud, rather than burned one bright hole in one¡¯s sight. If he could have thought of a way to achieve the effect magically, he would have done, for scorn¡¯s sake.


    He steeled himself against a shudder at the cold touch of the hinged bronze band Bradgith closed about his neck. The lock snicked. And then he heard the old man mutter soft, strange syllables, and felt him touch the lock: a warding-spell. Raian spun away, and stared up at him in horror.


    ¡°We too have our magics, Dragon-son,¡± Bradgith chided him, smugly.


    Raian stared up at him, tall even as the weight of his years began to bend him down. ¡°I am also a son of the Golden Clans, holy one.¡±


    It was perilous to look a bard in the eyes: he might do more than merely read the challenger¡¯s soul. Raian frankly hoped he tried. He could hold his own, for a little while, and even losing such a contest would win him at least some guess about the extent of the old man¡¯s power, which was more than he had now. Behind those dark, hollow orbs lay all the lore and law of Dunmadroch. Raian wondered what he would think of the Kinnaithen-Dunwyrding library, and the legacy of Godrach.


    Bradgith disdained the challenge of a child, even this one. ¡°You are here, and not in the stables or the kitchens, because you interest the king, son of the Dragon. You will stay by him as his body-thrall, and teach him what he will know of your people¡ªyour mother¡¯s people,¡± he amended, amused, seeing Raian¡¯s protest rise in his eyes. ¡°There is much we need to understand.¡±


    ¡°You will not conquer the mountains of the Uissig!¡±


    The bard¡¯s steady gaze, though it never left Raian¡¯s face, seemed to pass through the youth to some remoteness. ¡°No,¡± he agreed in an old, dry murmur. And then his shaggy grey brows knitted: ¡°No?¡± He stepped back from Raian and eyed him up and down, still scowling thoughtfully.


    Wondering what I¡¯m good for, Raian thought grimly. He stepped back, and fingered his dreadful new ornament. ¡°Why?¡± he demanded coldly, raising anger to beat down his fear.


    Bradgith surfaced from his far pool of thought, and raised his grey eyebrows.


    ¡°This,¡± Raian gestured fiercely at his collar. ¡°This is done to war-captives and vagabonds. I have given my Houses and my cause, thus I am no wanderer. And I have never raised any weapon against the Madroch, thus I am no enemy!¡±


    Bradgith¡¯s expression did not flicker. ¡°Is not one lie-spoken an enemy of all?¡±


    Anger failed. Raian felt sick. Yes, he had spoken lie, after a fashion, but¡ª¡°Wise one,¡± he cast, now desperately, ¡°when the bard Fergu dressed as a woman, to win the Princess-under-Mountain for his king: did King Badroc lie when he called Fergu Nilka the White Maid?¡±


    Interest fluttered upon the old man¡¯s deep-riven face. But he shrugged. ¡°Who are you to challenge my king?


    ¡°I shall send in a girl with what you need,¡± he went on abruptly, moving softly to the door. There he paused, and turned back to wink, though not in friendship. ¡°If you behave, you need not be chained to the bed.¡±


    The door snicked shut. Raian stood where he was, staring at nothing and shivering in shock. Prisoner. Slave! And ¡®Rothric¡¯ still unaware of the peril that stalked her. How could he have failed her so, her, and his faithful Wolfman too? He stared stupidly down at the huge boots still clutched in his hand.


    Who are you to challenge my king?


    An arrogant fool, is who. What a great commander I am! To think that men¡ªreal men, proper men¡ªcould be led like the children of Teginau! Blindly he turned about, as though by some miracle a door back into his enclave might lie hidden in the shadows. The room seemed still more alien.


    Who are you to challenge my king?


    Though the slave-collar laid lightly about his throat, he felt it choked, found it hard to swallow past. Wolfman¡ªwhere was he, what would Dunmadroch lay on him, if he lived? Would he, too, wear a collar? Raian¡¯s knees failed him, dropped him to the rushes of the floor. Hagurd of Coppertree! he called his friend¡¯s half-forgotten name in his heart, I am so sorry! Too wretched to beg an impossible forgiveness, he folded onto the conqueror¡¯s floor and surrendered his heart¡¯s blood to Despair¡¯s icy fangs.


    Who are you to challenge my king?


    He blinked, snorted, stared up at the ceiling. If I¡¯d folded like this when I had that wolf in my face last winter, he sneered at himself, I wouldn¡¯t have lived to gibber like a coward now.


    There wasn¡¯t time to fold then, he reflected.


    Oh? So it¡¯s acceptable strategy, is it, to fold when there is time?


    No! No¡ªbut what am I to do? What? With that wolf, it was strike, or die. What the hell can I do here?


    Well, rolling around on the floor weeping like a babe isn¡¯t it.


    He sat up sharply, shrugging off the demon as a disappointed woodcrafter discards a bit of flawed wood. He glared at the boots in his hand, looking through them into the future. Who, indeed? Who did he need to be, to challenge Deorgard?


    The door opened. The ¡®girl¡¯ came in, an axe-faced woman in her forties, who glared at him in impersonal hatred and began brusquely laying out a sleeping-pallet at the foot of the king¡¯s bed. She wore a shawl of Dunmadroch colors; a kin-thrall, Raian supposed. When she thrust at him a basket of leather-soaps and cleaning rags, he defied her hostility to ask courteously, ¡°Who are you?¡±


    She gaped vilely, baring a few uneven yellow teeth and the withered stump of a severed tongue. He flinched, as he was meant to, but he recovered before she could savor her bitter triumph. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    She glared more wildly at that, and stormed out, slamming the door. Raian shrugged. He regretted it, but he would not allow her savagery to unmake his civility.


    He spent the next hour discovering every corner, every crevice, every crack of his royal prison, investigated every box and shelf therein, even crawled under the bed to study the lashings beneath the hay-stuffed mattress. He had lost the dirks from his sleeves when he and Wolfman had been captured, but he still had his boots, and though the knives he kept in them were not favorite, they were sharp, and they were here.


    At last he sat, cross-legged on Deorgard¡¯s bed, and weighed the king¡¯s boots in his hands. He could escape the room¡ªBradgith had not bothered even to witch-ward the door, and it bolted from within. He could probably escape the royal ¡°enclave¡± into the town without, and maybe even that as well. But not with the Wolfman, sick and wounded; and then there were unknown miles to sneak through, marked by their collars¡ªhe expected Wolf, if he lived, would fare no freer than he¡ªas escaped thralls and liable to death on sight by any Geilla who found them.


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    He could talk to the king: as his personal slave, he should have rich opportunity. But Deorgard had denied him in court, which boded ill for a private change of heart. Thrice a liar¡ªso, he had been caught on all three hedges, and the Geillari were slow to forgive erring speech; but why a boor? He could not imagine whence that charge came but it hardly mattered: would a king of Deorgard¡¯s temper subsume his pride to the friend¡¯s-quest even of a man grown? That course, too, seemed hopeless.


    Slave. Thrall. The ugly names twisted knifelike in his thought, and his dragon-dream of the past spring rose wraithlike to mock his ambitions. The Horse-marshal¡¯s son of bright Teginau, enslaved to an oafish warlord who thought reed floors and smoky timbers made a great city¡ªhe clutched the king¡¯s boots in his hands as if to crush them from existence as his impotent rage burned through him.


    Clean the boots? He would more gladly stuff them down the kinglet¡¯s throat. He would do no such thing, he would cast them down and let the lout trip over their muddy pile. Deorgard could call him slave, but he could not make him one.


    He looked at the boots, black calf-high monsters so big he could get both his own feet into one, and he did not throw them. Any child could throw the boots and a tantrum. Any slave could ruin the boots for spite, feigning incompetence. Oh, how that would impress the great king!


    Raian turned the boots over and about. He knew boot repair well: a Uissigari climber¡¯s best friends were a trusty pair of warm footgear. These, roughened, stiff and tattered, had been too many weeks in indifferent hands. Raian would be ashamed to let even old wild Dagn be seen in such, if they came from his hands.


    I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me: Rothric¡¯s prayer-like murmur in anxious times came back to him now. No, he would not let the kin-thrall¡¯s bile poison his courtesy; and he would not let Dunmadroch thralldom¡ªthis attempt at thralldom¡ªpoison his pride. No slave could offer challenge to Bradgith¡¯s mighty king. I will show you, he thought; I will show you a man. Raian of Raingold took wild Fury in his young hands and bent her to his will on the king of Maldan¡¯s boots.


    Deorgard¡¯s thundering arrival, long after midnight, failed to wake Raian, so heavily he slept at last. The Serpent-king, Droghr of Dun Thorwil, paid him no more heed than so much luggage, but Harka glanced down at him in stern pity. The pity tried to become something else; but there was no time to consider it, in attending on his new over-king.


    When his thanes had gone at last, Deorgard sat on the edge of his bed and examined his boots. Surely they were his boots. He explored each with more than a critical eye: no blades nor needles, poisoned or plain; not so much as a maliciously-placed burr. Yet they looked almost as fine as the day they were new, oiled, supple, even the laces new-cut.


    He leaned over the footboard and glared down at the strange boy. Then he glared up at Bradgith, who but lifted his eyebrows and covered the lamp.


    Raian woke to a brisk kick on his buttocks. Grabbing wildly for consciousness, he struggled up on the small straw pallet at the foot of the Madroch¡¯s bed, on which he had slept curled like a dog. A rough blanket he had never seen before slid from his bare shoulders. A pale grey light drifted down from the smokehole high above: dawn.


    ¡°You disappoint me, boy.¡±


    Deorgard sat on a stool before him, leaning on his knees, big bare feet spread wide. His frosted brown hair stood out in wild tangles around his broad face, and he had gotten no farther in his own dressing than his breechcloth.


    Raian blinked, fighting an urge to scrub at his sandy eyes, fighting for dignity. ¡°Oh? In what way?¡±


    ¡°¡®Master,¡¯¡± the king amended with a predatory growl.


    Raian considered. Deorgard stood a full head taller and more, outweighed him thrice over, commanded the armies of many great clans and most of Maldan. Raian scarcely commanded himself¡ªfor the moment. ¡°Master,¡± he agreed. Fully awake now, he kept his voice even, civil, for a man gave respect where it was due. ¡°How have I disappointed you, lord?¡±


    A glitter in the king¡¯s brown eyes suggested that he marked the tone, but he only moved one stubby finger to point at Raian¡¯s own boots. ¡°Expected you to try to put one of those through my throat in the night.¡± Deorgard¡¯s scorn burned in his voice. ¡°Coward?¡±


    His boot-knives¡ªand still there: Raian could see the tip of one hilt gleam in the dimness. But, murdering Deorgard? The idea was too preposterous. ¡°Canny. What would your death gain me?¡±


    ¡°Vengeance.¡±


    ¡°Vengeance can wait.¡±


    Deorgard narrowed his eyes. Abruptly one meaty hand twitched, flipping to Raian a dark and slender object, a comb, carved of fragrant wood. Taking the hint, Raian rose grimly to try the king¡¯s hair. He schooled himself to be heedless of his nakedness, and then he was glad of it: let the great Madroch wonder about the scars that boar-tusk and wolf-tooth had left on belly and thigh.


    ¡°Ow! Don¡¯t pull, boy!¡± Deorgard snarled at his first effort.


    ¡°A little pain is the price of beauty¡ªso my mother says,¡± he added pointedly, remembering Bradgith¡¯s expressed interest in her heritage.


    The king twisted his massive torso around slowly, ponderously, to glare up at him, incredulous. Raian held his breath. Deorgard¡¯s arm slammed back into his ribs, tumbling him backwards, but he had not been caught unaware, and rolled back lightly to his feet. Deorgard snorted like a horse and turned away for him to continue.


    The king¡¯s hair was thick, long and recalcitrant. One more wallop from the king¡¯s elbow taught him the price of carelessness, and he quickly tumbled on the trick of clutching a fistful tightly while combing out the ends first. Dressing hair as if he were a maidservant offended him deeply, almost as much as the public humiliation in court the night before, but still he refused to surrender to his temper. If he must be a hairdresser, then by Night and Fire he would be the best hairdresser the Madroch had ever known. He would command the king¡¯s respect¡ªone way or another.


    Then he must help the king dress, with no chance to do likewise by himself, probably as a further humiliation. Raian clad himself in impeccable imagination.


    Finally, Deorgard sat again on his stool, feet planted wide to claim the earth, and lunged abruptly aside for his boots. Plunking them down between his knees, he glared up at Raian as if to exact an accounting.


    There was magic for ridding a thing of that-which-did-not-belong, useful on one¡¯s person against, say, an infestation of lice, curiously ineffective against the excess of phlegm that attends a cold. Raian had tried it on Wolf, the first night of his fever, but to no avail. The magic involved having a clear idea of what the object or person in question properly was, which was why it was so hard to use on oneself in sickness, given the difficulty of remembering, when ill, just what health felt like. Raian lacked a healer¡¯s grasp of what the Wolfman was in wholeness, and worse, the fever itself kept slipping in his thought to the side of that-which-belongs, despite his fiercest concentration.


    He had done his best by the boots by ordinary means, with a stiff brush in the kin-thrall¡¯s basket and with his knives. Then he had worked the spell on every grain of dust he could see or imagine, every stain, smell, or dampness, outside or in, till they were, truly, cleaner than when they first left the shoemaker¡¯s hands. And the soles, though of two thicknesses, were unpadded except for a layer of grass: unthinkable. Only the lowliest Uissigari peasant, when he wore shoes at all, went thus. So Raian had cut pads from the woollen blanket that covered his mat, and when those seemed too thin, tripled the thickness. A seam on the left boot wanted a few stitches, too, but he had no tools for that, as he said now to Deorgard¡¯s silent question.


    The dark brows knitted. ¡°What,¡± rumbled the king, ¡°did you do?¡±


    Surely he saw that they were clean, cleaner than he had any right to expect. Perplexed, Raian explained about the brush and the magic. Deorgard turned a suspicious eye on his footwear, and glared at Raian again.


    ¡°The Dragon of the World spills her blood to give you puny darklings magic, and you use it to clean boots, boy?¡±


    ¡°I use it to command my world. Master.¡±


    Deorgard snorted. ¡°And you command boots to be clean.¡± He prodded one with his thumb. ¡°Why?¡± Seeing Raian again confused, he growled, ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just spit on ¡¯em? Afraid of me, eh?¡±


    Raian shrugged. ¡°You could beat me. With or without reason, I suppose.¡±


    ¡°So? If you¡¯re not afraid to get hurt¡ª?¡± he nodded at the long purpled scar that slashed down over Raian¡¯s left ribs.


    Raian lifted his chin. ¡°You made it clear before all your court that I am only fit to clean your boots. If you go out with grubby ones, would they not think me unfit even for that?¡±


    The grim dark eyes wrinkled up, in amusement or perplexity, Raian could not tell. ¡°Well, well, well,¡± he murmured in unaccustomedly low tones. ¡°Well, now, there¡¯s something I¡¯d never have thought.¡± Suddenly he snatched up a boot and shoved in his foot. Encountering the wool softening, he shot a hard glance at Raian, but made no remark, and pulled on the other. The flick of a finger ordered Raian to lace and tie them, and then the big man bounded to his feet, bounced lightly in their newly cleaned and cushioned gear, and started for the door. He glanced back at Raian and grinned hugely. ¡°Coming out like that, boy?¡±


    As Raian scrambled to dress, the king bellowed his thunderous laughter and strode out like the passing of storm.

 XII: Counsels (pt 1/3): Opening Positions

    XII: Counsels


    ¡°Highness?¡± The voice of the chamberlain echoed softly but insistently in the dim room. ¡°The sun stands at the noon, my lord. The council convenes.¡± He paused, scarcely breathing, listening for the long-drawn breath of his master surfacing from magical trance. There, yes; and the slight cough to waken a voice gone to sleep.


    ¡°I come, Huw.¡±


    Lord Huw bowed, full knowing that Prince Treskiel had not yet opened his eyes, could not see the gesture, and withdrew silently. Treskiel, drawing another, deeper breath, smiled, knowing Huw bowed. Barely forty, the lord chamberlain was as fixed in propriety as a man of eighty. A good trait, he thought, in one so close to a prince¡¯s coronet: betrayal was in such poor taste.


    Treskiel¡¯s eyes opened at last with his third breath. The chamberlain knew Treskiel¡¯s rhythms, how he most liked to return from trance, and would have timed his call to a nicety, that the prince should appear in council in proper time. And Treskiel troubled himself never to offend Huw¡¯s stern taste; far from it, he showed himself keen to exemplify it. If only all allies required so little for maintenance.


    Sight of shadowed stone; smell of roses, and dust, and expensive soaps; sound of the small fountain trickling in its niche; sense of the weight of his body pressing the deep cushions of his chair: he embraced the Outerworld again slowly. He could hasten this, he could make the transition instantly if he chose¡ªbut why? Why shock the psyche, when one might seduce it instead? He filled his lungs once again, savoring the expansion, the intrusion of the sweet, priceless, precious air into the depths of his body, and held it trapped for a long moment to suck like juice every drop of its vital force before luxuriously releasing it, spent.


    He flexed his hands where they rested on the stick across his lap, then closed them about it and drew them over its length. Irregular, scarred with deep cracks in the wood¡¯s crude grain, it was nonetheless as smooth as polished, as polished it had become in the ages of its use. Treskiel took it up and turned it in his long fingers. It was an ugly thing, like nothing else in his apartments. But then, his had not been the choosing of it. Twisted and grotesque as the hour it had been cut from the tree, perhaps it was as well: certainly it was no thing to inspire greed¡ªnot in any soul that could not perceive the balefire glow of the power simmering within.


    The talisman of Cathforrow. How long it had served them¡ªa millennium, now? And some part of the magic of each one of its inheritors poured into it, to keep the family strong. Clan legend held that the first Cathforrow, Lonan na Valle, who had ripped it from the lightning-riven thorn, gave up his life to his descendants by emptying the whole of his power into it.


    Treskiel lifted a thin eyebrow. In his darker moments, he could understand such an act as no sacrifice at all, but an escape. He fingered the opal pendant on his breast, a thoughtless habit when he was thoughtful: his own, personal talisman of magic. What a queer thing the dragon-magic was, at once as familiar as the sound of one¡¯s own thought and yet also alien, and other. Treskiel felt it within like some wild animal shut up in a house, and nosing querulously into all the corners. The more he engaged it in use, the stronger he made it; it, and his uneasy fancy that it was only a matter of time before it destroyed the house to break free. Thus, from time to time he drained it off; all sorcerors did or went mad, pouring their power into some other vessel to keep it at hand, in case of need, yet still safely, sanely, apart. His was the opal. The staff, too, he filled from that dark spring, and the great ruby Orb of Ristover as well.


    His eyes narrowed at the thought of the Orb. Maybe it was arrogance to imagine that he filled it. The thing seemed less an object than an intelligence, and to drink what power it pleased, and when. Its springs welled in every Ristovrein mind, even those not gifted¡ªor cursed¡ªwith Marennin¡¯s power: sheer reverence had unexpected potencies. Still, it permitted his use of it, and the more deeply, he suspected, precisely because he regarded it as an ally rather than a possession. Like Huw.


    Oh, the Council in Andrastir, yes. He sighed once more, once more savoring the depths of respiration, touched the stick¡¯s silver foot to the floor and stood up smoothly. His hand gripped its gnarled head just level with the head of his own femur. How droll, to have an amulet of magic that upheld an aging chieftain as well as it supported his chieftainship! Treskiel looked forward with no pleasure to aging into such a need; still¡ªhe pulled it lightly into the air to snatch it by its middle, and smiled coolly¡ªsurely that was a better prospect than the alternative of not having the chance to age at all. He strode, almost glided, from the room.


    The Great Hall at Carastloel drowsed in cool shadow. Fat Captain Garragan drowsed against a stone pillar; his prince sent a ripple of magic like a fistful of spiders down the man¡¯s neck and chuckled darkly as the man leaped awake, armor slapping.


    Only the handful of lords councillor resident at Cannisfell Castle stood in attendance below the throne. Andrastir had called the Grand Council too proximately to summon all of Ristover¡¯s council, or that of most other Houses for that matter. This annoyed Treskiel. Though he had every right to attend on Andrastir alone, if he pleased, councillors expected to be consulted, and they were kept happier¡ªand quieter¡ªwhen they thought they had a voice. Aristande had no need for such abruptness, but at least his own very real indignation with her should help smooth his courtiers¡¯ affronted feathers of pride.


    Before so small a gathering, he did not restrain himself from leaping up the steps of the dais three at a bound. The youngest of them was ten years his elder, and they ought to be reminded occasionally that he should outlive them handily. He spun adroitly about, stilled himself, and moved only his eyes to meet each of theirs in silent turn. Then he seated himself gracefully, laid the black staff of Cathforrow across the arms of the throne of Ristover, and made them a slight nod. ¡°Advise me, my lords,¡± he murmured, smiling thinly, and nodded to Huw.


    The sending of an eidolon demanded skill, and power; to send one that could see and hear as well, doubly or trebly so. Though every prince and princess in Peria possessed magic, not all of them cultivated it to the same extent¡ªold Vannin of Tregaron, now, could barely raise a magelight, or so it was said¡ªand for something like this sending, most relied on a retainer devoted to the craft, to raise the necessary energies and weave them so subtly. Treskiel shaped his own. Only Clar Meyl of Rhyllandon did likewise, and she was fully three times his age.


    For this, then, had he spent the last hour entranced, and now the roused power roiled within him, the wild beast paced and bayed for release. Ordinarily the recitation of all his titles, at the invocation of council, gave him a secret, childish thrill, but just now the beast yearned to open strange jaws and bite Huw¡¯s head from his body and get on with it. Peripherally he noted how his lords stirred uneasily, beholding the feral stare their prince turned upon the side of the chamberlain¡¯s head. Oh, for a mirror! though in some ways their faces shone truer . . . .


    Gods. Now Huw called upon the gods. Treskiel almost did bite him. Since he had spat in Their high holy collective faces five years ago the earth had not swallowed him, nor cloud of flaming ash engulfed him, nor flood flushed him and his from the land though he scorned Teodhan most bitterly of all. For five years he had uttered not a single holy Name save in savage blasphemy¡ªthough only in private, alone. He glanced at his councillors, solemnly following Huw¡¯s sombre prayer. The hearts of his people were given to the gods; however betrayed by Heaven, Treskiel would not threaten his own rule by threatening that devotion.


    Thus he endured the solemnities. A psychic hour for every minute of Huw¡¯s summoning, and at last the chamberlain turned, began to turn, imagined beginning to turn toward the prince of Ristover and the spell broke the floodgates of Treskiel¡¯s soul. Did he raise his staff and his fist, or were they forced by the power raging to complete itself? Still, he directed it, channeled it through his will into the pattern he chose for it, made it make for him a semblance of himself, and a bridge to Andrastir.


    And the power at Andrastir answered. The flood of Treskiel¡¯s magic met the sea long prepared for it, and the Prince of Ristover, in his seat at Carastloel, turned his proud head and saw not the red granite of Cannisfell but the black stone of Andrastir¡¯s Sky Hall, fifty miles away.


    Smoke become ice: the polished black marble of the Sky Hall chilled the sight as well as the touch, from the floor to the light-starred vault of the great dome above. Rothesay felt devoutly grateful for the coolth. The black silk of Runedaur formal dress had many fine properties, not all of them evident to the careless, but it was beastly hot in this unseasonable simmer. Beside her, Lacie lifted her golden hair gracelessly from her neck and flapped a fan with dangerous vigor for its delicate construction: the silvery silk was no cooler.


    In compatriot heart, she turned the fan on Rothesay. ¡°Do you know,¡± she whispered, ¡°there are spells for keeping you warm in the cold, so why has no one worked out one for keeping cool?¡±


    Rothesay shrugged. ¡°So when will you?¡± she whispered back with evil cheer, and received a sharp whack with the folded fan, for this was another obnoxious student ploy: never suffer anyone to utter any complaint about anything whatsoever without charging him, or her, with its correction. The Kingscroft Loremistress claimed it was a corruption, in style if not in intent, of an ancient M¨®riad prayer, ¡°and from ages of such teaching are we become steel-masters, look you,¡± she had said, rather smugly, being M¨®riad-born herself.


    ¡°And the sooner the better,¡± Rothesay added now to Lacie, and pressed her back into the cold stone. Below, thirty feet below the gallery in which the Runedaur students gathered, the great chamber filled slowly. Three days before the Solstice, the heads of the remaining Sferan Houses sought counsel together, groping for recourse against the rising barbarian power, though two centuries of such councils had yielded no answers.


    The walled octagon of the palace complex, imaginatively called the Ardassiann, the Octagon, measured a full mile on the diagonal. The palace itself centered in the north part, surrounded by the capital Residences of Andras, Carastwyth, Lostforth and Listas; the Sky Hall commanded the south.


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    Architectural extravagance hallowed the approach to the Hall. The citizen great or lowly entered by the Gate of Heroes at the southernmost angle, then passed along a wide marble-paved colonnade between colored pillars, still more fabulous gardens, and the Residence of Tregaron on the east, and on the west a small swan-filled lake for House Celtannan. Then wide, shallow steps lifted one up to three wide, double-pillared archways, thirty feet tall, into a tiled loggia enclosing a courtyard and a fountain; on the north of this, forty-foot arches billowed, topped by acorn-capped domes of many-colored stone. The quartz-white courtyard dazzled, a snowfield out of which bloomed mosaic flowers of rose, lilac, Rhostial-blue and shamrock green, and gold, real gold, like captive sunlight limning every leaf and petal. Four towers, their cupolas upheld on corbels of roaring lions¡¯ heads, swept skyward at the corners.


    Floating above the domes of the north loggia like an uncanny cloud, the Great Dome rose like indrawn breath. The awed gaze danced upon the fluted lip just above a ring of jewellike windows, then rolled up and over the ribbed immensity, and back, till the swellling mound at last hid the summit from sight. But the uttermost spire, a sun-gold spear, thrust its famous diamond-cluster finial back into the courtyard¡¯s view. The fire of Calion¡¯s Phial could be seen across Andrastir from the Gulf to the White Wall.


    Under the north gallery, six thirty-foot-tall swordsmen, hammered in relief on three ponderous bronze-and-gold doors, warded the way into an airy anteroom, from whose sky-blue walls a mosaic crowd of somber-faced, gaily-jewelled kings and queens of stronger days glared down upon their diminished descendants. And then three more doors, made of black bronze and set with twelve constellations of diamonds, opened into a cavern.


    Walls, pillars like ancient trees, bays, quarter- and half-domes, and the Great Dome, nearly a hundred feet broad and its zenith a hundred and half a hundred feet above like a sky itself: all were hewn and polished from the same black marble. Windows pierced the walls at every level, round or star-shaped ones spaced rhythmically with slender shafts, smaller and smaller at each higher tier. Even the Dome was pierced, fist-sized apertures lined with mirrored tin and filled with the whitest glass art and magic together could devise.


    The effect was of a cathedral of night, a night filled with stars, a hundred moons, hundreds of radiant comets. The Hall itself was hard to see for the brilliance of the lights it admitted.


    Rothesay had not yet come this magnificent way.


    No, they came through the Gardens, over the Ardassiann Wall (no more than twenty feet high anywhere), ducked and dodged the territorial hostility of the staffs of the various Residences, and emerged into the Sky Hall by the odd doors and passages for the invisible people who scrubbed and polished, kept the incense stocked and the sacrificial goats fed. Or, twice she had come by way of a tunnel, one of ¡°several¡± according to the Kingscrofters, from the deep Runedaur cellars into the cisterns under the Palace, and then they had a maze of a time getting out of the Palace and its grounds and into the Sky Hall¡ªthrough the back, of course.


    The Hall itself might be hard to see but it illuminated its contents. Today it was full of people, every last one of whom looked, by dress, wealthy enough to buy Harrowater and everything and everyone in it. Priests and priestesses of the greater gods clustered there, as well as the retinues of lesser deities. An entire company, looking to Rothesay like bards in their deep blue robes, proved to be astronomers. Rich magistrates and civic officers brought camp stools for comfort. The College of Magic at Andrastir, Rhylliauveth, filled a large wedge of floor with green and gold gowns, while across from them a smaller wedge of apricot-and-gold marked the professors of the rival Feillantiri college, Marchoneveth. The Feillantiri faculty had long since fled that city for sanctuary in Andrastir; two centuries, Rothesay thought, two hundred long years, and it was still called New College here.


    Some of the more important colleges of philosophy had also sent representatives; and a few independent teachers, whom Rothesay was assured were greatly famous, stood in attendance. And masters and mistresses of the Runedaur could be seen, here and there, milling through the throng not unlike sheepdogs.


    Musicians had been relegated to the first gallery, along with all the students of the various schools. This included the Runedaur students, of course, though some of their number¡ªRory was one, as well as Sorchone¡ªhad climbed the walls to the purely decorative second balcony sixty feet above the floor.


    And all that number made scarcely half the assembly. Nobles of every House, by rank entitled to speak and vote in Council, filled the cushioned benches crowded between the massed notables and the great circle of circles at the center of the Hall, to serve their respective princes with their counsel.


    Twelve magnificent thrones faced one another across the inlaid floor of the Wheel of Council, each one centered on mosaic discs laid in the colors and emblems of each House: magic circles, like the one in Padriag¡¯s villa, and charged to earth the energies of the eidolon-spells. Some of the princes attended in person: Princess Aristande, already in her place in a cascade of purple silks, was one, as was Prince Mathspen of Carastwyth, who looked to be all of ten years old and kept having to be told not to swing his legs. Nor drum his feet. Nor slouch so¡ªah, but wait: the courtier at his side gestured curtly to their blue-and-copper entourage clustered behind, a page went scurrying, and presently a fat cushion was stuffed behind the boy¡¯s back.


    The Houses of Peria being supposed the descendants of each of Uralia¡¯s twelve children, the order of precedence of their rulers followed that order of birth. Had the high king himself hailed from Listas, he would have had to be content to be named last in such an assemblage. But there was an exception.


    Thirteen circles defined the Wheel. The odd one, centered on the north, contained not a throne but a statue, looming twelve feet tall, carved of jet and set with one amethyst eye and one silver: Marennin. Rothesay tried to keep out of its sight, certain that, whatever its sculptor had intended, or believed, the great dragon was quite capable of using it as she pleased.


    The Imperial Herald¡ªa post doggedly manned by its heirs through two centuries bereft of an empire¡ªstanding in the center of the great Wheel faced the rearing statue and shook a silver sistrum. The vast hall fell silent. A bird piped without.


    ¡°Foundling of Uralia!¡± His voice rang out as clear as a bardic bell. ¡°Last to look upon the stars but first of all of us, the people you made your own, Mother of Magic, Under-Queen of the Land of Peria, Warden of the Myrinine and Keeper of the Fire of Errodar¡ªMarennin na Sfere! Welcome, Majesty; honor us with your counsel!¡± Again he shook the sistrum, and four horns at the Quarters trumpeted a complicated fanfare.


    And wouldn¡¯t they be surprised if you did? Rothesay asked in the privacy of her imagination.


    ¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡± Lacie whispered.


    Rothesay started, unaware that she had given any outward sign of her inner entertainment; indeed, aware that she had not. ¡°Stop that!¡± she hissed back.


    The Herald turned to the first throne sunwise of the statue. Its black wood was set with amethysts, and the mosaic beneath it made an intricate play of hundreds of shades of purple. Aristande sat as still as a statue herself, but her eyes glittered with life, and one finger tapped slowly upon the shaft of a tall beribboned spear like a staff in her left hand. ¡°First-born and First-son, Andras! Your people prosper under the lawful rule of Her Radiant Highness Aristande Andoni Aril na Eldorre, Priestess of the Dawn, Magister of Andrastir and of Oestry and Tallerod, Countess Maldan and Sindasa, Baroness Losttaine, Knight-of-honor of the Order of the North Star, Knight-of-honor of the Order of Ullan, bright light of Law unto all Peria! Welcome, Aristande Andoni, Andreissel; honor us with your counsel!¡± Again the sistrum shivered, and the pipers played a different flourish.


    The Herald faced the next throne. The child-prince of Carastwyth stiffened and straightened and raised his chin high. His fiery red hair had been tightly braided, and the plaits glinted like the burnished copper of the Carastwyn standard.


    ¡°Second-born and First-daughter, Carastwyth! Your people prosper under the lawful rule of His Radiant Highness Mathspen Glassglian Kiondrogadh na Kavinel¡ª¡±


    Rothesay sighed with approval at the lavish names. She herself owned more than the one, she knew, and once she had been able to lisp them all, but only ¡®Rothesay¡¯ remained to her recollection now. Surely if she submitted to Carialla¡¯s memory-magic, she could recover them; it might be worth it, for that alone.


    Mathspen¡¯s titles blurred past her, leaving her with only the impression of a little boy struggling as a porter under too many hefty packages. She glanced at the ten remaining thrones. If that herald goes through all this for each and every one, he won¡¯t get through the roll call before it¡¯s time to break for supper! ¡ªWe are going to break for supper, aren¡¯t we?


    ¡°¡ªWelcome, Mathspen Glassglian, Carastwyndan; honor us with your counsel!¡±


    The Herald turned to the third throne. Black and almost-black in the darkness of its green, laced with gold lightning, it stood empty: Rhyllandon held Sparca, the northeasternmost tip of Peria, and their ruler would attend the council through an eidolon. Rothesay craned to watch. If the House of Andras had a strong military reputation, that of Rhyllandon lay in sorcery.


    The Herald shook the sistrum, then held it aside and with his left hand swept a kind of silver wand through a flourishing gesture. The mosaic emblem under Rhyllandon¡¯s throne blossomed with a miniature aurora, its wavering curtains of white-green and white-blue rising from the tiled pattern to engulf the throne in thin, cold flame: Andrastir opened its end of the Passage. The rising chatter of the onlooking crowd fell once again almost to the silence granted to Marennin.


    For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Rothesay, even from thirty feet above and forty away, caught the flicker of the Herald¡¯s glance to Aristande. The voice of the crowd died utterly. The soundless aurora began to fade.


    Swiftly the Herald repeated his magical call. He was an older man, gray-haired and dry-looking, and it seemed to Rothesay that he labored with effort. The glowing colors swirled about Rhyllandon¡¯s throne more vividly than before. Every eye strained to force a human shape out of the inchoate energies.


    The spell failed again. The hall roared. Aristande raised her spear and crack! its bronze butt smote the tiles. The clamor abated, most of it, and she turned to give some word to an attendant. The Imperial Herald turned to her in open dismay, and then anger when he saw who approached.


    ¡°That¡¯s the Magister of the Rhylliauveth!¡± Lacie whispered, as something like a huge peony was borne on a green-and-gold litter into the center of the Circle. It took Rothesay a moment to make out the short but impressively fat woman amid the ruffling layers of rose and white silks; her age was unreadable on her pale face, the hue of her hair, or lack of hue, hidden beneath a long rose-colored koli. She was set down facing Rhyllandon¡¯s seat, and her black-clad, black-masked bearers assembled at her back, as identical in size and form as quadruplets. The Herald glowered, without heed from her; her right hand lifted idly, the little pink fingers flicked and curled, and the aurora of Rhyllandon¡¯s Gate in Andrastir blazed to burn the sight. Awe rippled the sea of murmurs.


    And the fires went out. And the throne of Rhyllandon stood empty still.


    The Magister bent her head towards Andras, and in the surprised quietness announced coldly, ¡°Rhyllandon answers not.¡±

 XII: Counsels (pt 2/3): Naming the Play

    ¡°Ooo!¡± Lacie squealed, and Rothesay directly beside her barely heard her over the storm of astonishment thundering below and beside them.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡ªI mean, Aristande invited everybody, right?¡± Rothesay bent to shout in Lacie¡¯s ear. ¡°And, she must have thought they were coming. So, this is some huge insult, then; just to the Princess, or¡ª?¡±


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t be so ordinary!¡± Lacie shouted back, suddenly sounding far older than almost-thirteen. ¡°Or, well, you might as well, I guess, because of course that¡¯s what they¡¯ll be thinking,¡± she waved a scornful hand at the assembly below, ¡°and you always need to know what the Dedekos think. But, really¡ª¡±


    ¡°Who?¡± Rothesay broke in with a bellow. ¡°What¡¯s ¡®Dedekos¡¯?¡±


    Lacie glanced up, surprised. After a moment, she shrugged. ¡°There¡¯s no explaining in this racket! But, really, think! What if something¡¯s happened up there? What if Rhyllandon can¡¯t answer?¡±


    ¡°You think that¡¯s what it is? Aaow!¡±


    Lacie had stomped on her toes. ¡°No! I don¡¯t! I¡¯m too busy thinking ¡®I don¡¯t know what it is so why don¡¯t I find out¡¯! Sssh¡ª¡±


    Peace had returned on the floor below, if a softly grumbling one. The Herald, alone once more at the center, shivered the sistrum and intoned, ¡°Pass, Rhyllandon!¡±


    Flushed, with effort or chagrin, his lips set in a hard line, he turned now to the dark throne upholstered in every shade and hue of red. His sistrum bells rang, his hand summoned, the pallid flames swept up and rushed together, twisted into a searing white star that flung shadows to the walls and vanished.


    A soft cry of surprise rushed through the hall. The Herald himself suffered a fleeting pause before tolling his announcement. Rothesay mistook this at first for shared revulsion, as she recoiled into the stone at her back from the face of Treskiel na Cathforrow.


    But Lacie pointed excitedly. ¡°Look! Look at that!¡±


    ¡°At what?¡± Rothesay murmured under the Herald¡¯s introduction of the Fourth-born Second-daughter¡¯s House and lord.


    ¡°He¡¯s made two! Two! And¡ªdragonsblood! Look! The other one can see, too! Gods, that¡¯s work!¡±


    ¡®The other one¡¯ evidently meant the older man standing behind the prince¡¯s right shoulder, and clearly looking about him, with dignified attention.


    ¡°They say he does all his own magical work. A real wizard, this Ristover. Doesn¡¯t he look just like Shoni, though!¡± Lacie had pressed up to the railing as though two fewer feet of distance would improve her view. Most of the other students about them also leaned towards the amazing eidolons of Ristover. ¡°Ooo, he knows he¡¯s good, too: just look at him pretending not to be smug¡ªoh! Ha, ha!¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    Lacie glanced back to where she slouched trying to disavow interest. The blue eyes danced like flames of mischief. ¡°He¡¯s just seen Rhyllandon¡¯s not here. And he was miffed before he was surprised¡ªthe showoff!¡±


    Rothesay looked down. Cathforrow appeared to scrutinize the crowd, perhaps to veil an excessive interest in Rhyllandon. There was something odd, subtly wrong about him, and his aide¡ªhis chamberlain, a somebody Kelforth, with a cargo of titles of his own to keep the Herald busy. After a moment, she worked it out with a start, then wondered at her own surprise. The light fell differently in Ristover¡¯s hall than here under the Dome of Stars. The highlights and shadow upon the two men lay at odds with the direction and quality of the light here, making them look as if they had been cut out of one painting and pasted upon another. In a way, they had.


    ¡°You wrinkle up your face when you¡¯re thinking; did you know that?¡± Lacie whispered. ¡°You need to stop making yourself so easy to read!¡±


    Rothesay failed to blush, being already too flushed with heat, but she smoothed her face to neutrality. Eidolons, being only images, could not be hurt by, say, arrows. But, ¡°Could you throw magic at him?¡± she whispered back.


    ¡°At Cathforrow?¡± Lacie squeaked, as shocked as Rothesay would have been at a suggestion that she waylay Master Leoff.


    Rothesay waved impatiently. ¡°At whomever! Through an eidolon, I mean. I know weapons won¡¯t hurt them, but¡ª¡±


    Lacie twisted a blonde curl meditatively. ¡°Ye-es. Sure. You¡¯d get the spellcaster, though, rather than . . . no, wait, you could get the one imaged, too. . . . ¡°


    ¡°And you play with your hair when you¡¯re thinking!¡±


    Lacie dropped her hand hastily.


    ¡°Welcome, Treskiel Alan, Ristovredan; honor us with your counsel!¡±


    The prince broke off his study of the crowd to nod graciously. Now he glanced upwards, searching the servants, musicians, pages and students who filled the gallery. His gaze took in Rothesay with a flicker of recognition but nothing more, then passed on.


    ¡°You¡¯re eye-catching, all right,¡± Lacie observed, mistaking him. ¡°But leave him alone: he¡¯s got an awful reputation as a woman-eater.¡±


    ¡°A what?¡± Rothesay squawked. Then she ground her teeth against her ignorance: ¡®what?¡¯ seemed the whole of her vocabulary since leaving Harrowater.


    ¡°Oh, nothing gruesome, I don¡¯t mean that. It¡¯s just, well, like having a sweetmeat: you eat it, you like it, you forget about it and go get a new one. See?¡±


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to anyway,¡± Rothesay retorted obliquely.


    Lacie sighed. ¡°I just don¡¯t understand you.¡±


    Like falling, the rush and tingle of air flashing past, but on the inside of the skin, and nothing but vast airy hollowness where the mass of bone and muscle should be: the exhilaration of sluicing the Dragon¡¯s magic through a spell and doubly and trebly violent, the greater the spell. An icy gale, so cold it burned, poured through Cathforrow.


    None of this rapture would Treskiel permit to show in his countenance as he appeared in Andrastir, no more than he would have permitted a spectator in his bedroom. Though the mages among them must know how he felt¡ªmust envy how he felt¡ªthat was no cause to expose it. Slowly he unlidded his eyes as the gale flowed away. Astounding, that he still sat his seat like a lion on its rock, and did not lie in a boneless giggling heap upon the floor. Like an artist adding that one last deft line of pigment, Treskiel donned a small, perhaps faintly bored, smile.


    He flicked a glance sidelong to catch the look on Princess Clar Meyl¡¯s face¡ªand stiffened in anger as he was denied the triumph: the black-green throne was empty. Rhyllandon had not come.


    She had not come? His eyes darted to Aristande in surprise, and alarm. Aristande gazed back, hard and grim. He turned away in disgust.


    She thinks she¡¯s so damned inscrutable, he thought wearily. But she is offended. Offended! Demons take all military minds and their self-centered pride! Did she, could she know Clar Meyl so poorly? For himself, Treskiel felt the stirrings of fear. Not that Rhyllandon¡¯s rocky Sparca had been overthrown; Dorrocan¡¯s Wall was a formidable line to cross, and the northern barbarians too unsubtle to have concealed the massing of the forces necessary to break it. That far line was bloody indeed, but with skirmishing, not conquest.


    No. She had chosen to stand away from Council, the canny old Princess of Rhyllandon. She knows, he thought; she knows us well, knows that we will meet to bicker and gabble over ancient precedents and slights, whose the duty to do thus, whose the right to that, till we come to no more in the end than this body has done since the head of Talherne Last-king fell from the battlements of Feillantir.


    She has left us.


    Treskiel looked up dark-eyed at the towering Dragon, and the chill of his own thoughts shocked him. Clar Meyl, Clar Meyl! Now we are truly broken! The floor rocked beneath him, and his command of his eidolon-spell flickered. In a different panic to recover it, all his attention turned to his magic, and for some endless time he busied himself with its intricate pattern, shunning any thought beyond it.


    Yet he could not remain preoccupied forever. Slowly his gaze passed over the crowd about him, as if he looked on something already far away and long ago, a mere memory of a High Council in a world long dead. Sad little images, so solemn and pompous, unaware that they no longer mattered. Above them, students in the high gallery: youths and maids, the budding fruit of a dead tree¡ªamong them that Darian Runedaur, hah! we are indeed no longer the people that we were! What world are they doomed to look upon, to live in, now that our world crumbles before they can walk it? Who shall name their lands and lords?


    He stared, scornful and despairing, over the crowd, heedless of the Herald. Cringing bureaucrats; squabbling collegians; the pedlars of divine favors, pimping for Heaven, the various clergy; Residential staff of the several Houses (including Rhyllandon¡¯s; he could not now tell if their sovereign¡¯s defection had also surprised them); Runedaur.


    As Treskiel picked out Dav in the crowd, the Master¡¯s gaze, truly inscrutable, met the prince¡¯s.


    Whose world comes to pass now?


    Not yours, Treskiel vowed in sudden fire, hoping, almost praying, that the rumor of Runedaur soul-reading actually fell short of the truth. Not you!


    Dav looked away first. Treskiel exulted. Then he sat through the formalities, most of them, with the absorption of a general at an unpromising troop review. What was left to work with?


    Not much, he sighed, looking at the faces of the great lords he knew, and knew how bitterly they would fight to restore the ancient ways¡ªa kind of necromancy, he reflected with a black chuckle, an attempt to revive the dead, or at least reanimate it. Alas, if there was much to work with, we would have no need for such work at all!


    His gaze drifted again to the balcony full of students, and as his mind wandered, bleak and grim over barren history, he himself saw not the seed deep below the surface of his thoughts.


    Beside Treskiel, the fifth throne, lavishly enamelled in marigold yellow and studded with amethysts, stood empty also, save for a branch of ash-wood dyed black, leaf and twig. The Herald raised his hand, but not in magic. A lone trumpet played one sweet clear note; then another joined it on the third, flatted; another sounded the fifth, and the last horn took the octave of the first. The mournful chord strengthened like a cry, and fell away.


    ¡°Fifth-born and Third-daughter, Morag!¡± the Herald wailed through the echoes. ¡°Your people are scattered from hearths long cold, and ghosts watch from the sea-cliffs.¡± He spun back to the statue of Marennin and boomed, ¡°Avenge them, Majesty!¡±


    And the people in the Hall echoed as one, ¡°Avenge them!¡± Lacie and Rothesay, taken by surprise, missed the cue.


    The Princess Aristande was a big-voiced woman. In the breathless pause after the shout, what was meant to be a personal grumble carried clearly: ¡°That is the point of today, after all!¡±


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Rothesay sickened. Her family lived up there, among the Moraigh ghosts. War, she thought, is a ring with no end.


    ¡°Sixth-born and Third-son, Tregaron!¡±


    Tregaron attended in person. Or, Rothesay amended, in not-quite person. She had noted him before, a shrivelled dotard gumming his lips as though trying to eat his own silvery beard. In his enveloping silks of brown spangled with silver, he looked as though he had just popped his head up out of a drift of dewy autumn leaves, and a ridiculous little brown hat made it worse. For all her pity and youthful horror, she had to fight off a regrettable laugh. The watery eyes seemed to grope through fog towards the Herald at the sound of the prince¡¯s names, but wandered off into unguessed realms once it passed. His attendant, his son, perhaps, not young himself but still hale, stood grimly by. The prosperity of Tregaron¡¯s people had not depended on poor old Vannin Teag, the Tregarthan, for a long time now.


    The Herald turned again. ¡°Seventh-born and Fourth-son, Celtannan!¡± he bellowed at the throne that shimmered with opals and mother-of-pearl, twined with green, blue, and violet.


    Wham! Metal slammed stone.


    ¡°Celtannan is a myth!¡± thundered a new voice. Cathforrow¡¯s staff struck the floor as he snapped to his feet. ¡°Never, in all the ages of our power, has there ever been a backside to warm that chair, never has there been so much as an impostor of an eidolon within its circle! Highness!¡± he turned to Aristande, and swung his staff wide¡ªcausing many to flinch instinctively away, and Rothesay to wonder if the prince could indeed cast spells through his eidolon. ¡°A very real enemy reaves through our lands in this living hour; may we¡ªplease!¡ªforgo the pleasantry of invoking a Perian House that never existed!¡±


    Aristande regarded him steadily, ignoring the retainers of the child-prince and the dotard, and the two as-yet-uncalled Houses with living representatives. Rothesay leaned her elbows on the railing and thought, Good idea. According to tradition, Celtannan had been the wanderer of his family, and the legend was that, some time before the founding of the empire, his entire House set sail on a voyage of discovery from which none had ever returned. All the Houses held¡ªor once held¡ªregions of Peria as their own, little countries within the greater; all but Celtannan.


    Presently the Andreissel nodded. ¡°Pass, Celtannan,¡± she agreed, her voice like gravel.


    The Herald grimaced, but, ¡°Pass, Celtannan!¡± he repeated, an echo far louder than the original.


    Palest sprucewood made the eighth throne, and its cushions were grass-green and white-trimmed: the colors of Kinnaith, Raian¡¯s mother¡¯s House. Rothesay looked forward to seeing again the prince with the emeralds in his white beard, and eyed the gallery about her, looking for a way to slip over to the west side so she could see his face.


    But the Herald turned past Kinnaith¡¯s seat without a flicker, turned to the ninth circle and the slight young woman as golden-blonde as Lacie amid robes of grey and wine. ¡°Ninth-born and Fourth-daughter, Felindras! Your people prosper under the lawful rule of Her Radiant Highness Kelianna¡ª¡±


    But wait, Rothesay thought desperately, missing the names and titles of the ninth House. What happened to Kinnaith? You¡¯d call a myth, but leave out a real House? Maybe Lacie knew something.


    ¡°Kinnaith?¡± Lacie snorted softly. ¡°They haven¡¯t called Kinnaith since the Conquest! Didn¡¯t you know? That lot went and married the enemy. They¡¯re almost considered non-Sferan.¡±


    Rothesay stared at her. ¡°No wonder they¡¯re losing,¡± she said at last.


    ¡°Mmmmm-hm,¡± Lacie agreed with cool contempt.


    At last came another eidolon, of the House of the Tenth-born, Fifth-daughter Gariel. The image appeared uneventfully, a lone man, dark-haired, slouched and dishevelled, a silver goblet perched in his fingers on the armrest. He, too, startled at the sight of Rhyllandon¡¯s empty seat, but he turned his questioning gaze not to Aristande, but to Treskiel, or so Rothesay guessed from the set of his head.


    ¡°Welcome, Ddonan Tamhair, Gareidan!¡± The Herald hesitated fractionally, set his lips and defiantly went on, ¡°What news of Celtannan, Gariel?¡± Gariel had been the favorite sister of the wandering Celtannan and she had almost always known of his whereabouts, or so the story went. Thus the custom of asking the sovereign of the one House about the other, as if the affection continued.


    ¡°Oh, for the love of the under-gods,¡± the Prince of Gariel muttered. ¡°Why, none. Fancy that. And for why? Maybe because¡ª?¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Gareidan,¡± Aristande interjected. ¡°We did that already.¡±


    Ddonan belched. ¡°And who anointed you high-king? What the hell do you want? That if we wag our tongues enough, the heat of our breath will burn our lands clean?¡± He flung out an arm, the one unencumbered by his drink. The summer-sleeve, Rhostial-blue silk trimmed rose and gold, fell away, exposing a thick white wrapping streaked with a spreading black-red stain. ¡°Talk fast, woman. We have little blood left to spill for you here.¡±


    ¡°You are assailed?¡± Aristande demanded in quick concern.


    ¡°When are we not?¡± he bellowed back. ¡°Get on with it!¡± He drained his cup noisily, and it vanished from his hand, to reappear in a moment once again full.


    Aristande nodded to the Herald, who sidled uneasily away from Gariel, and addressed the black-and-orange throne of Lostforth Last-son.


    Rothesay, followed by Lacie, had nudged and wormed her way to the south, just over the problematic seat of Celtannan; thus she had a good view of the eidolon of a young man, in black robes lined with flaming orange, that appeared there. Thin, long-faced and scruffy-bearded, he had the earnest, uncertain look of one appointed to an unfamiliar task: uncertain what was expected of him or what he should do, but anxious to do it well¡ªwhatever it was.


    The Hall was struck silent. The dumbfounded Herald blurted, ¡°Who are you?¡±


    He clutched at a book in his lap. ¡°Uhhh¡ªactually, I¡¯m, I¡¯m¡ª¡± He glanced about, caught sight of the astonished retinue of Lostforth-in-Andrastir. ¡°Oh, I guess you, erm, didn¡¯t get, uh, the message. Well, you see¡ª¡±


    Ddonan leaned over, thrusting the image of his wounded arm lance-like at the image of the youth. ¡°Don¡¯t. Ex. Plain,¡± he growled. ¡°Some godsbedamned philosophical bollocks, get started on it, you¡¯ll never shut up. Name?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Nnnaaaymmmuh. What people call you?¡±


    ¡°Mwyllin a Gau.¡±


    ¡°Fine. Your people prosper, and all that offal. Welcome to the Futility Festival.¡± He belched again, and pointed the Herald firmly at the sky-blue-clad matron awaiting her introduction as the Princess of Listas Last-born. Lacie grabbed Rothesay¡¯s sleeve and dragged her to the back stairs and out.


    Once outside, the younger girl collapsed in pealing laughter.


    So Rothesay ¡®killed¡¯ her. It took more work than she expected since Lacie, having been born into the booby traps and ambushes of Colderwild Hall, seldom was truly as off her guard as she let herself appear, and she was quick with a dagger. Furthermore, since they had come here on ceremony, Lacie had not brought a training knife but a real one. Rothesay lost her head at the sight of live bronze, Arngas took over and she won but, sulky and frustrated, she had no stomach to claim a prize.


    ¡°Why not?¡± her victim inquired solicitously.


    ¡°I want to learn this stuff,¡± Rothesay grumbled. ¡°I: me, Rothesay. But how can I, if Arngas keeps jumping in and doing it for me?¡±


    ¡°Mmm,¡± Lacie replied noncommittally. ¡°Oh! Let¡¯s go back down to the cisterns, shall we? It¡¯s ever so much cooler down there, and I¡¯ve seen all I want of the Council; how about you?¡± Rothesay followed with a will.


    ¡°Soooo, what is it?¡± Lacie whispered later as they hid in a cupboard in one of the palace¡¯s many kitchens, waiting for an argument of cooks to disperse. ¡°You think it¡¯s cheating, having Arngas¡¯s powers?¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°But it¡¯s only cheating when you¡¯re not playing by the same rules¡ª¡±


    ¡°Shhh.¡±


    The cooks, in a final burst of shouting, stormed out of the kitchen. The girls eased out of the cupboard, slipped through the cave-like depths of the kitchen, crept down the narrow stone steps to the water. Rothesay made a magelight, partly because they needed one, but mostly to show that she could.


    Its golden glow revealed a forest of fluted columns running off into darkness, holding a ribbed and vaulted ceiling not more than ten feet above the level of the water. Inverted arches, ribbing, and vaults drooped ten feet below in the mirror-land of the obsidian surface, but the true footings of the columns stood twice that deep, or so it was said. Along the walls just above the water ran a ledge, barely wide enough for one person to walk comfortably; the girls followed it till they were out of sight of the steps, then as one kicked off their sandals and sat and splashed their feet in the cold water. They leaned together against the chilly, damp wall and pulled deep draughts of cool air into their chests.


    ¡°Anyway,¡± Lacie went on, offering a biscuit from her belt-pouch, ¡°if we were to run a race, and I went the racetrack and you cut along by some other way¡ªand pretended you hadn¡¯t, by the way¡ªthat¡¯s cheating ¡¯cos we¡¯re not actually running the same race but one of us is pretending we are. See? But in the game of survival¡ªit¡¯s kind of the point, that you use whatever you¡¯ve got. That¡¯s what the game is, right? And not everybody¡¯s got the same things. Some are stronger, faster¡ª¡± she paused, and smirked a little, ¡°¡ªor prettier!¡± and she laughed. ¡°And¡ªbig point, here¡ªyou can¡¯t pretend to win! You either pull it off or you¡¯re dead.¡±


    Rothesay bent forward to scoop a handful of water to her mouth, half-expecting Lacie to attempt to shove her on in. It felt so lovely and cool down here, that her spirits perked up like a watered flower, and she hoped the girl did try. She was ready for it. But Lacie, perhaps disinclined to risk soaking the rest of her treats, forbore.


    ¡°Win by whatever means possible?¡± she echoed after her drink.


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s just survival,¡± Lacie shrugged. ¡°Almost no one plays just survival. Just about everyone¡¯s got something¡ªsomething!¡ªthey¡¯d rather die than do, or die than permit, or whatever it is. Just survival really isn¡¯t much of a prize. There are blind fish in here, you know,¡± she said, crumbling a bit of biscuit into the cistern.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t?¡± Rothesay asked again, and again Lacie shrugged.


    ¡°Survive bedridden? hoping someone remembers to come and take your piss and shit away, and clean you off?¡±


    ¡°Erm.¡±


    ¡°Survive hated by whoever it is you wanted to love you?¡±


    ¡°Ah, er¡ª¡±


    ¡°Survive hated by the one person you can¡¯t ever escape? Oh, gods, do I sound like I¡¯ve grown up among teachers, or what?¡±


    ¡°Yes, but thanks.¡±


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s something, I guess.¡±


    After another biscuit, Rothesay mused out loud, ¡°Very well, so it¡¯s not cheat-ing to have Arngas¡¯s gifts. I guess it¡¯s that I feel cheat-ed.¡±


    ¡°What!¡±


    ¡°Well, look: I want to know what I can do, my own self. But it¡¯s as if I keep getting rescued by somebody else at the last minute. Damn it, sometimes even at the first minute. You can¡¯t learn anything if someone keeps doing it for you!¡±


    ¡°Oh. I get it. Yeah. I want my own glory, too.¡± Lacie looked at her hands, then raised them up, and out, spread like two fans, and sent ten threads of brilliant blue light streaming towards the ceiling. Where they struck stone, they shattered, scattered, each fragment growing as fast as flight over every edge and line till the ceiling seemed drawn by the finest pen in luminescent blue ink out to thirty feet away.


    ¡°Oooo, that¡¯s pretty.¡±


    ¡°Thanks.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not reflected in the water.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I wonder why.¡±


    ¡°Is it good for anything?¡± Rothesay could not tell if the hair-thin lines might be bright enough to read by.


    ¡°Well, you can see how the stones go¡ªlook, you can see where some of the brickwork¡¯s fallen away. I made it up to go caving under the Hall¡ªdidn¡¯t you know about the caves? I¡¯ll show you when we get back¡ªand it shows the edges of big nasty deep holes and stuff.¡± They watched the blue lines fade slowly. ¡°But, you,¡± Lacie went on, ¡°you might just have to put up with Arngas, and try and find something else to be yours. You could study magic with me, and we could have a competition.¡±


    ¡°Huh.¡± Rothesay sulked, resenting the idea of having to ¡®put up with¡¯ anything and privately vowing to find some way of beating Arngas. As for competing with Lacie in magic, she suspected she had a further unfair advantage, being not wholly human. She writhed at that, glanced uneasily about for any sign of a jewelled black whisker, and changed the subject. ¡°Hey, who was that, in the Sky Hall¡ªthe one from Lostforth? That wasn¡¯t their prince?¡±


    ¡°Gods only know. Probably not. Lostforth keeps trying out different philosophies, and you just never know, with them. I heard a rumor that they¡¯d once tried rulership-by-lottery: you drew the short straw, you were in charge. I don¡¯t believe it; I don¡¯t think even they are that mad; but it shows you the sort of talk they, um, inspire.¡±


    Rothesay laughed. ¡°They sound interesting.¡±


    Lacie grinned slyly. ¡°Well, that¡¯s Kahan¡¯s House.¡±


    Rothesay pushed her in.

 Counsels (pt 3/3): Making Contact

    Casting a major spell demanded considerable strength, of spirit if not of body. Treskiel likened it to sailing: however much wind filled one¡¯s sails, if the tillerman wearied and faltered, so failed the ship. Indeed, if the ship were not brought home to port ere the tillerman broke, she might be overborne by the gale, capsized, destroyed. The earnest young man representing Lostforth was the first to take leave of the Council, after nearly three hours of dismally barren wrangling, and shortly afterwards, Gariel too withdrew. Treskiel knew Prince Ddonan¡¯s chief wizard, whose aura ¡®colored¡¯ the eidolon; and unless the man were already wearied from some other cause, he should not have succumbed yet. Probably it was Ddonan¡¯s injury, not to mention deepening inebriation, that caused Gariel to retire.


    He was damned glad of it, though. Having a double eidolon to sustain as well as intelligent participation in council, he felt he had run more than double the course, but he was far too proud¡ªhe chuckled mirthlessly at himself¡ªto have left early. That, and he was not about to risk missing anything, neither great decision proclaimed nor unintended nuance let slip. Who could say what he might need to know?


    The six Houses remaining agreed to adjourn, with nothing more than ¡°Fight on!¡± for a strategy among them. And ¡°We are to ¡®fight on,¡¯ my lords,¡± Treskiel reported dryly to his councillors when he closed his spell at last. They erupted in indignation, and seemed perfectly disposed to rant and rage, shadow-boxing together at the folly of Andrastir, to what end Treskiel could not imagine, and he dismissed them, rather sharply. He fairly quivered with fatigue and his head ached like a smith¡¯s anvil, and he wanted them well away before he slipped and betrayed either fact. Only Huw he entrusted to bring him, in perfect discretion, a headache-powder.


    Alone in the Great Hall at Cannisfell, Treskiel na Cathforrow put his face in his long hands and astonished himself with weeping, long, deep yet dry sobs that shook him like an ague. The wracking of his body redoubled the pain in his head to a blinding agony and yet still he wept, desperate to empty himself of a bottomless grief he could not name. Not even five years ago had he wept like this.


    An eternity later, physically unable to sustain it longer, he slowly subsided to heavy, irregular, gasping breaths.


    ¡°Highness?¡± Huw asked mildly at his elbow. There was a cup of a cloudy, cool broth in his hand, and cool concern in his eyes.


    Treskiel shook his head slightly, though he regretted it as he did. ¡°Reaction,¡± he explained curtly, and, taking the cup, added an attempt at a smug smile to confirm the lie: ¡°That was quite a work, you know.¡±


    Huw seemed to accept this. ¡°Indeed, my lord. I regret Her Highness of Rhyllandon was not there to appreciate it.¡± He watched his charge drink the medicinal brew, giving Treskiel, not for the first time, the impression of a Master of Horse tending a prize stallion. ¡°A curious matter, the defection of Rhyllandon,¡± he went on pensively, and glanced at his prince for comment.


    Treskiel felt strongly disinclined to provide it just now. ¡°I will send to Clar Meyl in the morning. Have the falconer report to me at the second hour. Now I will go up to see the Ristovrysel.¡± He returned the cup to Huw. ¡°Let my supper be sent with hers there.¡±


    ¡°Very good, Radiance.¡±


    Treskiel, already beginning to be comforted by the headache-powder, rose and started for the far doors with what he was sure was no sign of his recent strain, but he stopped at the bottom of the dais as the black maw of grief suddenly threatened to open again. ¡°Huw?¡±


    ¡°Yes, my lord?¡±


    ¡°A world is ending, Huw,¡± he said softly, not looking back, his own words taking him by surprise. ¡°You¡¯d think there would be¡ªfanfares. Portents. Falling stars. Earthquakes.¡±


    ¡°Yes, my lord.¡±


    Yes, my lord, Treskiel thought darkly. Agree with whatever madness the head under the coronet spews forth, so long as tomorrow¡¯s duties are not significantly unlike today¡¯s. He turned, to bend a glittering gaze upon the patient chamberlain, and had the satisfaction of seeing the man flinch. ¡°There will be. If I have to make them myself.¡±


    A fraction of a hesitation. ¡°Very good, my lord.¡±


    Treskiel snorted and bounded out, though he had to pause two or three times on the staircase to ease the pounding in his head.


    The Ristovrysel was in her garden, several large stone planters brimming with flowers and dwarf fruit trees at the very top of Cannisfell¡¯s western tower. A rainwater catchment in scroll-carved marble leaked its contents in a musical trickle to a small, shallow pool at the center. Daliowna Atil, Ristovrysel, sprawled belly-down on a cushion by the pool, elbow-deep in the water, satin-slippered feet entwined and waving over her back so that the unbound ribbons of one brushed her bare shins rhythmically. Three matronly ladies-in-waiting started as Treskiel strode out of the domed chamber that covered the stairwell and, at a jerk of his head, lumbered to their feet and hurried past and away.


    Her attention caught by their movement, Daliowna raised her chin from the lip of the pool to look wildly about. ¡°Kel!¡± she cried gleefully. ¡°I¡¯m catching fish, Kel! I¡¯m catching fish and I will catch you one and we will eat him!¡±


    Treskiel smiled, and sat down on the edge of her couch. She rolled onto her side, pillowing her head on the stone edge of the pool, heedless of her hair falling into the water, and raised dripping hands, clasped tight about an imaginary fish, to his face. ¡°Eat him,¡± she commanded solemnly. Equally solemnly, he gently bit her thumb.


    ¡°Ow! No, Kel, no, that¡¯s not the fish!¡±


    He smiled and drew her by her shoulders to sit up by him. Her sleeves were soaked to the shoulders; her glorious chestnut ringlets rioted in gleaming disarray, except for the one side, darkened and streaming with pool-water. Scolding blue eyes flashed at him.


    A different grief assailed the Prince of Ristover, though he still smiled. She was becoming quite the beauty, he thought; and no brotherly sentimentality could subvert his fastidious standards. She looked very much like their mother, whose face and grace had inspired a generation of poets in her native highlands.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bite my fingers,¡± the beauty ordered him crossly. ¡°Then I won¡¯t be this many any more.¡± She spread both her hands wide. ¡°How many is this, Kel?¡± she asked plaintively, holding them out for him to see.


    ¡°Ten, sweet. That¡¯s ten. But you are more than that.¡± He ranged four of his own fingers beside hers and counted them out for her. ¡°Fourteen. You¡¯re fourteen. And you¡¯ll still be fourteen even if I bite them all off!¡± and he grabbed a hand and pretended to try to eat the fingers. She squealed with laughter and fought to escape, and he would have let her if the pool had not been in her inconsidered way. Instead, he snatched her up and crushed her to him in a desperate hug. She had not been able to grasp any quantity greater than ten, if indeed she grasped that, for five years.


    But at least she could attempt it. At least she could chase after make-believe fish, or delight in a rose from his hand, could scold and tease him as she would. He who had been born her twin had for five years known only the silence of the grave.


    Once, Daliowna had been as remarkable for her wit as Mother for her beauty. Once, both she and her twin brother Killown had been marked for fosterage with Andras, under the particular tutelage of the strategist Aristande, for both children showed a keenness of mind that Treskiel, twelve years the elder, frankly envied, and¡ªfrankly¡ªwould have feared, had they been closer in age. As it was, he had delighted in grooming Killio as the likely heir of Ristover after him, having only just come to the throne himself. The boy had had flair, and a real gift for command, a perfect alloy of charm and steel. Now there was only that damned Runedaur whore Sorchone. Blood-duty notwithstanding, Treskiel had never seriously pictured himself as a father, but he would see to it rather than permit Ristover to be ruled by his cousin. If only he could contrive a son that was even a ghost of his lost Killown!


    And he had delighted in appraising every eligible Sferan male and damning each one as utterly inadequate to his sister¡¯s hand. But now. . . . What could she hope for now? If only she could remain in body like to the child¡¯s mind left to her! Yet already she was losing the delicacy of childhood, beginning to acquire the solidity of adulthood; the priestesses of Dere and Oraay had begun to hound him about her someday woman¡¯s rites. Foolish old hens! What could they say, that she would remotely understand?


    Treskiel rocked her gently where they sat, till she wriggled away. ¡°No, Kel, you¡¯re too hot today. I¡¯m all cool. I¡¯m wet!¡± She patted his face with one of her dripping sleeves. ¡°There!¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Princess,¡± he said gravely.


    She nodded, satisfied. Then she hopped off the couch and skipped across the flagstones. ¡°I want to go play with Killio, now, Kel. Where¡¯s Killio? He doesn¡¯t want any fish but I will feed him one anyway.¡±


    Every day. Every blessed day. Treskiel crushed his eyes shut, as if that would shut out the grim truth. He had long ago given up trying to explain to her what had become of her twin. ¡°You already did, sweet. He was just here, but Lady Sennana had to take him away to get a dry shirt.¡±


    ¡°Did I splash him?¡±


    ¡°Very much, you wicked girl.¡±


    ¡°And he yelled at me!¡±


    ¡°We heard him all over the castle, and Captain Garragan promised to scold him for speaking to you so.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s old and fat and you should watch out for him,¡± she said importantly.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Though he smiled at that, she peered back anxiously at him.


    ¡°Are you sad, Kel?¡± she asked suddenly, strangely, in the gentlest of voices. ¡°Are you ready to come back to me from the sad place? Come back, Kel, because¡ªlook!¡± She reached down for a handful of water and flung it into the air. Probably she meant to please him with the way the drops sparkled in the sunlight, but most of it caught him full in the face, and she gasped in dismay before she laughed. He pulled a silk from his sash and dabbed patiently at his face till she stole it from him to do the task herself. Then she took his dried face in her two hands and studied it thoughtfully. ¡°Were you doing magic, Kel? You were doing a lot of magic, weren¡¯t you?¡± Oddly, it was not a question. Whatever little she understood, somehow Dali always knew how he felt. ¡°Can you do me some magic, Kel, please?¡±


    That was almost the last thing he felt like doing just now, but he brushed an errant curl from her eyes and murmured, ¡°Like what, sweetness?¡± But he knew what she wanted, knew when he came up here that she would ask this.


    She curled onto the stones at his feet and leaned against his knees. ¡°Make me remember, Kel,¡± she said softly. ¡°Make me remember Mother. And Killio.¡±


    He stroked her head, the weary weight of his hand pressing her close. Why fear any gods when no hell held greater torment than life itself could inflict? ¡°Yes, love,¡± he whispered. ¡°And do you remember what to do?¡±


    She snuggled into him. ¡°I close my eyes.¡± She tipped her face up so he could see. ¡°And I pretend to look at the sky. With no clouds,¡± she added quickly.


    ¡°Well done, Princess,¡± he murmured, and, now with both hands, began gently massaging her forehead and temples. He glanced at the opal on his breast, for focus, sighed deeply, and opened his memory-spell, casting it net-like upon¡ªif that were the word¡ªDali¡¯s psyche, that now seemed to breathe under his hands. And then the sensation of net and soul and even of hands melted away, and it seemed that he walked within her, with her though not of her, like wandering through a heavy mist. Here and there mist condensed into more or less solid masses: the image of Lady Sennana, who had departed on Treskiel¡¯s arrival, was a vague dark cloud already fading, but the image of Dali¡¯s fancied fish was bright and sharp, gold and yellow, cold with wet and so perfectly geometrically conceived as to be a philosopher¡¯s ideal fish. Garragan, too, stood out clear and hard, vividly colored with her loathing of him, and creatively envisioned with vampiric fangs. Treskiel shook his head, amused.


    He attuned his memory-net to thoughts of their brother. He had had to use his own thoughts and memories when they first began this kind of spell-working; not ideal, for his elder-brother¡¯s view of Killown so little resembled her twin-thoughts, but close enough that, with work, he had been able to capture an image or two, to ¡®bring¡¯ them within her crippled mental grasp. Once she had hold of a memory this way, it often blossomed, sometimes almost exploded, into a re-living intensity¡ªfor as long as he held it there for her. He could seem to find no way for her to keep one, not even one, without his presence. When he withdrew, all that would remain for her was the memory that he had done this for her, like leaving her with a cup that could only ever hold the fragrance of its wine.


    It was better than nothing. He trolled the ¡®net¡¯ through the mists, idly looking for something new to amuse her. For his own interest, he very much wanted her memories of the capsizing that, almost drowning her, had drowned her wits, and their brother and mother and nearly twenty kinsmen as well. He doubted it had been natural, storm or no. Yet, tune his searching net as he would, he could find no trace of it, nor of anything at all within a week of her near-death. Strange; he imagined that images so dramatic¡ªthe unveiling of the new pleasure-yacht that she had so pined for, much less the raging lake and the grip of a horrid cold death¡ªwould be hard to destroy.


    He touched on a recollection of Killio¡ªand swiftly crushed a fresh onrush of grief (again! he thought, bewildered and angered by this sudden plague of passion; the eidolon-spell must have taken more out of him than he had reckoned on) for fear lest Dali, soul-entwined with him as they were now, suffer it with him. She stirred, and he knew she had caught a hint of it, fleetingly, but he hid it away and she let it go.


    Instead, he pulled in for her a time, not long before the deadly cruise, when she and Killio had spent a merry hour roping yet another hapless tutor into a mathematical quagmire. At least, it was a quagmire to the poor man, and certainly at least treacherous boggy ground to Treskiel, but the twins danced over it like will-o¡¯-the-wisps utterly at home.


    On the Cannisfell stones at his feet, Dali sat motionless, playing once again with her lost brother, along ways only the two of them seemed able to wend. Treskiel, too, sat enthralled by phantoms more real, for now, than the sultry afternoon garden about them. He let himself revel in Killio¡¯s hawklike keenness, in that brilliant penetrating gaze that belied his nine years, though he knew it would only fuel his rage, later, that such promise would be broken.


    At long last and yet all too soon, the tutor had fled and the twins, growing tired, were about to turn querulous. Treskiel himself shivered with fatigue, and he let the spell fade. He stroked his sister¡¯s hair again, easing her back to the present, and tipped her face to see if he had pleased her.


    To his shock and dismay, her blue eyes welled with tears. ¡°Oh, Kel,¡± she whispered, chin quivering. ¡°Oh, Kel! I used to be clever!¡±


    She leaped up and flung herself into his chest, and sobbed aghast. And the only power that the mighty sorceror-prince of Ristover could wield now was to hold her and despair.


    That night, in a porch cooling slowly in darkness, Dav lay back on the couch Kingscroft had set aside for him. Silent guardian, Mael na Brin, Master of Kingscroft, crouched nearby.


    Nothing guaranteed such a guardian¡¯s fidelity; both parties understood and acknowledged that the warded could betray the warden¡¯s outward focus, just as the warden might take any advantage of the warded one¡¯s lowered defenses. Both acknowledged that their respective choices, to betray or not, colored and shaped the character of their personal bond. And finally, both understood that, as they were Runedaur, neither fidelity nor betrayal was always what it might appear to be.


    Tonight, Mael preferred that Dav achieve his aim. There were many reasons for this, but they did include the consideration that the Mistress of Runedaur, distant as she was, would be the better pleased for that success.


    Dav breathed deeply, and stilled himself for sleep. His hand closed upon a silver amulet, set with moonstones, lying upon his breast as the Outerworld faded away.


    And it seemed as though he stood between two great pillars of rough-worked stone, towering above him; white stars burned without a twinkle in Night¡¯s far black dome. A path fell steeply away before him, marked with pale stones along the border.


    Lightly he tripped down the craggy trail. Dark grasses grew tall and rustled beside him, as he neared the floor of the valley. Stones gave way to tussocks of moss, and the air grew warm and moist, scented with strange drowsy flowers. Pools appeared among the mosses.


    A grey owl swept in from his left, and he followed it into the deepening marshland, upon stones that seemed to find his feet rather than himself to find footing. Then he saw, out of the shadows across the fen, a silvery glimmer approaching, as if upon a mirror of his own trail. He stopped and awaited her by a small pool.


    Carialla glided up and stood at the pool¡¯s edge opposite. Whenever she came to him in dream, she appeared wearing like a crown a slender wreath of tiny yellow flowers: thus, she said, could he always know that the sending was true, for no one¡ªno one!¡ªwould ever fancy the terrible sorceress so foolishly bedecked, especially not before his eyes. It amused him. No doubt she knew her craft; but he thought it unlikely that he would ever mistake another for her, regardless of the accuracy of mere image.


    ¡°The Council?¡± she asked across the still black water.


    He shrugged. ¡°No more than it has ever been. A mirror to reassure themselves that they are still the Dragonfolk.¡±


    ¡°They ignored Kinnaith, as usual?¡±


    ¡°Of course. But this time they also passed over Celtannan. At Cathforrow¡¯s insistence.¡±


    ¡°Ah!¡± she purred. ¡°And how does our princeling?¡±


    Dav grinned. ¡°Coming along well, very well indeed. He has begun to see himself as more than Ristover at last. And,¡± Dav¡¯s eyes flashed, ¡°so have some of the others: the Gareidan, Ddonan, looks to him, for one. And by the end of Council, so did the Felindreissel, and the pup from Lostforth.¡±


    ¡°And the Magister of the Rhylliauveth?¡±


    He snorted. ¡°She looks to him, but not for lordship. Her, ah, rut grows deeper; pardon the jest.¡±


    Carialla kept a silence as delicate as it was pointed. Presently she continued, ¡°And Clar Meyl?¡±


    There was a brittleness in her question. Dav looked at her askance. ¡°No word,¡± he said shortly, and briefly described the failure of the Rhyllanden connection. ¡°Have you had news, Lady?¡±


    ¡°No. Not¡ªnews.¡± She turned from him as if to look up the dream-valley, though he knew that what he saw and what she saw in this place held only slight resemblance. ¡°Something has happened up there.¡± She shook her head slowly. ¡°Sparca is fallen as silent as the dead. There are no dreams there this night.¡±


    Dav¡¯s dark eyebrows rose. ¡°Windhome should know something.¡± The seafaring Runedaur hall harbored in the very tip of Sparca.


    ¡°I have not yet Called them; I was waiting to hear of the Council.¡±


    ¡°When I wake, Mael and I will Call up there.¡±


    ¡°And I. And Sothia shall contact Rose House: though they are farthest away, they often hear clearest.¡± The dream-Carialla hugged her own thin shoulders as if chilled. ¡°This past winter, under the full moon of Tisorc,¡± she went on slowly, gazing unseeing at the star-filled pool at their feet, ¡°I had a letter from her. Quite an ordinary letter, such as she sends¡ª¡± She broke off, and a thin, mirthless smile twisted half her mouth, ¡°Ah. Hmm. Perhaps I should say, ¡®sent¡¯? Such as she sent, then, when she knew I would hear anyway, one way or another, and wished that I know her opinion. And always she includes word of my old family.¡± She chuckled. ¡°Men dread her; yet as princess of her people is she an old broody-hen jealous of her least chick: not one Runedaur out of Rhyllandon, but she has tried to seduce him back into Sparca¡¯s nest!


    ¡°This time, she wrote that my mother asked, once more: Was I her true daughter?¡± She looked up from the pool into Dav¡¯s eyes. ¡°She had the specific question penned in moonsilver ink. There was enchantment in that asking; my answer would be, this time, truly my last.¡± She sighed, and smiled ruefully. ¡°Perhaps¡ªah, perhaps!¡ªI should not have felt so . . . nagged. I might not have been so swift to an ending. I might have paid closer heed,¡± she finished softly.


    Dav nodded. Just when one thought one had undone the last little snare in one¡¯s soul, something new turned up. So it would always be, as long as life lasted; so was there no point in savaging oneself over it. Only do what had to be done and get on with it. ¡°How do you see this connected?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°Only that, whatever it is, it was long planned. I might have known more.¡±


    Dav grinned, knowing how the Mistress of Runedaur loathed her slightest ignorance. ¡°Maybe.¡± He bowed low. ¡°Good night, Lady. Tomorrow night, then.¡±


    ¡°Tomorrow night,¡± she agreed, and spread her arms and became mist, fading into the darkness of his dream. He became a dragon¡ªit was his dream, after all¡ªand soared straight for the vault of stars above.


    Breaking through a cloud of burning sparks, he woke on his couch. Mael turned at once. Dav slapped his shoulder. ¡°Let¡¯s get Urlaf and Call Windhome.¡±

 XIII: Price of Peace (pt 1/3): Setting Out

    XIII: The Price of Peace


    Storm raged in the great Gulf Rhostial. Wind howled down the streets of Andrastir and rain hammered almost horizontally into the walls; every shutter¡ªevery shutter that still sheltered a living person¡ªstood barred tight against the savage play of Kavin of the Air and Teodhan, Lord of Water.


    Of course it was play. Or so the Runedaur thought as, housebound in Kingscroft, they raised nearly as much torrent indoors. More than once, Rothesay fled out through the rain to find shelter in some empty old mansion, just to catch her breath. Not even the Kingscroft Library was off-limits during such confinement. The Infirmary had been restricted to the most grievously wounded, as the less hurt, like Kahan, began to take a livelier interest in Ghosting: once, he had leaped from apparent slumber to ¡®cut her throat,¡¯ though it had cost him bitter pain and all he demanded as a prize was that she help him back into bed. Oh, and did he not deserve at least a kiss for helping hone her nerve?


    Still, at least he was still here, as the storm pinned even the mad Runedaur sailors in port. Since he was wakeful, she seldom stayed out long, but returned, with a swiftly-growing power of stealth, to play at chess or dice with him, and to talk. She asked him about Lostforth. He shrugged.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s our people¡¯s legend, inquisitiveness. In my clan, though, it¡¯s just an excuse for nosiness, and my family was worse: my old man was a hell of a busybody; still is, probably.¡±


    ¡°Do you ever get to see him?¡± she asked, trying to feign a merely polite interest.


    If he sensed her sudden hunger to know anything about fathers, he made no sign of it. ¡°I get not to see him,¡± he retorted with unexpected frost. He glanced up at her start, and softened. ¡°He used to beat us, all of us, even Mother, even when she was with child. I used to run away a lot. There was this wonderful crazy old bird up on the other side of the glen: I¡¯d go stay with him for, oh, days, weeks, as long as I could get away with. But I suppose it¡¯s him I have to thank,¡± he spat the word out sourly, ¡°for my being Runedaur.¡±


    ¡°He, er, sent you here?¡±


    ¡°Hah!¡± Kahan laughed scornfully. ¡°He¡¯d shit himself, he¡¯d have an apoplexy, if he knew I was here. He sent me, all right, but not by intention!¡±


    ¡°What did he do?¡± she breathed. And he winced and shut his eyes and she wished that she could recall the question, un-spin it from the thread of Time.


    But he answered, without opening his eyes, ¡°He beat Mother again, broke my head when I tried to interfere. And she gave birth that night, though it was months too early, and died the next day; the baby hung on into that night; would¡¯ve been a sister. I was holding her when she finally quit breathing.¡± He sighed, a long, deep, rolling sigh. ¡°The day after, I couldn¡¯t get my other sister or my brothers to leave, they were that terrified of Father. Beastly, beastly temper he had. Has. I don¡¯t know. And I¡ªoh, I¡¯m his son, all right!¡±


    ¡°You?¡± she teased, but gently. ¡°You haven¡¯t got any temper at all!¡±


    Kahan opened his eyes, and his slow and easy smile spread like incoming tide across his face. ¡°No, I guess I don¡¯t. Not any more.¡±


    ¡°What happened?¡± She did not tell him of her pact with Rory, not because she thought he would mind, but that Rory probably would. She hoped Kahan¡¯s solution would turn out to be something Rory could use.


    ¡°Dav happened,¡± he replied, grinning wickedly. ¡°It took him no time to find out every little thing that would fire me up, and he poked, prodded, pinched, twisted, stung, stabbed and tweaked every last one, every day, day after day¡ªnot like Father, by doing anything I could proudly hate him for, just stupid obnoxious stuff, stuff I felt stupid about afterwards, and I couldn¡¯t even beat him up for it, couldn¡¯t even get close, and of course that only burned me up more than ever.¡± He covered his face and laughed through his long fingers. ¡°Oh, ye gods, I was such a mess!¡±


    ¡°Why did you even stay?¡± she marvelled.


    He chuckled. ¡°Lots of us come because it¡¯s a last resort. Where do you go after that? But I finally did run, again. I told you about that, or I mentioned it. There were a couple, three days I was too enraged even to sleep, and I realized I was going to be angry, furiously angry my whole life and there wasn¡¯t a damned thing I could do about it, and I just bolted. Master Ramad found me, the Hunting-master¡ªHunting-master at the time, now it¡¯s Mistress Iril¡ªand brought me home, and I just lay in the infirmary for days. Just lay there. I was so tired, though not in body; just so tired of¡ªof anger.


    ¡°So one day I¡¯m tired of just lying there, too, so I get up, wander out, wander about, and Master D drops down in front of me, in that little passage behind the Library. And he¡¯s got this grin, the one that¡¯s just daring you to try and smash it in, and he says¡ª¡± Kahan paused, and his gaze drifted off to the oil lamp, the only light in the shuttered room though it was only afternoon. The thin sound of tearing wind came distantly from the storm. ¡°You know,¡± he laughed, ¡°I forget what he said! Just that it was one of the things I hated most: I remember that. And I remember,¡± his eyes half-closed, ¡°I remember feeling obliged to get angry about it; obligated, just as if it were a horrible chore I¡¯d agreed to do and he was here reminding me of my promise, and, gods! I was so weary of it! But I tried one more time to summon the strength for it¡ªand that¡¯s when it dawned on me that it was an effort . . . that it was a thing to be chosen, or not, rather than something that just happened to me. And I said, ¡®Well, a pox on that!¡¯ And, you know, not even that with any energy!¡± He glanced up at her from his pillows, eyes twinkling, to see if she shared the humor.


    She grinned back. ¡°What did he say to that, then?¡±


    He grinned more broadly. ¡°¡®Welcome home.¡¯¡±


    ¡°And that was it, then? Just like that?¡±


    ¡°That was it, but you say ¡®just like that?¡¯ like it was easy. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve conveyed the proper degree of exhaustion. Remind me someday; I¡¯ll chase you over the hills till you¡¯re screaming with fatigue and then I¡¯ll go on chasing you till you¡¯ve nothing left even for whispering. Then try saying, ¡®Just like that?¡¯¡±


    ¡°All right, all right, I¡¯m sorry! But . . . .¡±


    ¡°Yes? And are you going to diddle that pawn all afternoon, or are you going to play him?¡±


    Rothesay found a spot for the pawn. ¡°So, why doesn¡¯t Master Dav do that to Rory? He helped you over it; why not him?¡±


    Kahan nudged one of his own pawns a square. ¡°Most likely because Rory¡¯s challenge isn¡¯t temper.¡±


    ¡°What! Are we talking about the same boy? Middling tall, redhaired, red moustaches, sometimes really surly?¡±


    ¡°Have you ever seen him lose his temper?¡±


    ¡°Well, er, not really lose it, no. But I know he¡¯s been really angry sometimes.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure he thinks he has. But compared to me, O thou Beautiful, he¡¯s been, at worst, just a bit peeved. And I didn¡¯t tell you the precise thing that drove me away from home, only the stuff that led up to it. It was my beating my younger brother Lhian bloody, for reason of his stupid refusal to get the hell away from Father and his beatings. Mindless fury. He screamed, ¡®You¡¯re just like Father!¡¯ and if I¡¯d been any older, or bigger, I probably would have killed him for that. And I knew it, and I ran, in sheer sick terror of myself. Ever put a river rock in a fire?¡±


    ¡°They¡ªthey sometimes explode.¡±


    ¡°Uh-huh. One moment, dull old rock. Next moment, rock shards flying like arrowheads. That¡¯s temper. That was me. Maybe Lacie remembers. I know M¨®ravn does: I put him in the infirmary with a concussion, over a raisin-cake.¡± His dark eyes danced at her appalled astonishment. ¡°But haven¡¯t I grown up into just the loveliest dear?¡±


    She laughed aloud. ¡°Haven¡¯t you, though!¡± And, feeling greatly daring, she leaned over and swiftly kissed his cheek.


    ¡°Hey, you missed!¡± he pouted, pointing to his pursed lips. She blushed and drew back shyly, though she smiled; he went on pointing. She blushed more deeply, writhed, laughed nervously; he went on pointing, puckered, seeming prepared to wait all day for her amendment. She glanced around the room. No help there, and when she looked back, he was still waiting. She made a start, froze, started again and drew back; finally, she drew a deep breath and dived forward.


    At their touch, his lips melted away beneath hers. Again she froze, and, confused, her eyes sought his.


    They merely waited. Half a finger¡¯s breadth separated their lips.


    She tried to work this out. Probably, she thought, he wanted to kiss as they had the night before the battle. And¡ª? Maybe he wanted her to want it, too? Which would make this her call, then. . . . She wished greatly she had already been through Initiation; on the other hand, this probably had not been specifically covered in the teachings: what to do when a half-trained Runedaur demands a kiss and then expects one to push it on him.


    Maddened by a horde of thoughts as a horse in a cloud of flies, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his.


    His mouth replied with utter gentleness. Her bunched muscles unclenched, slowly, and though she did not relax wholly against him, a sense of ease began to warm her. Not this time the terrible thrill of before; he clasped his arms comfortably about her, touching no strangeness, and she gave all her attention to this meeting of mouths.


    Fate seldom trespasses on the quick peck, but the kiss that seems bent on eternity has spread the mat, lit the lamp, and opened the door for Him.


    ¡°Next!¡± came Sorchone¡¯s cheerful bid from the doorway.


    Rothesay leaped to her feet, face scarlet, wiping her mouth hastily, but she recovered quickly enough to wave, only a little unsteadily, at Kahan: ¡°Be my guest!¡±


    Both young men laughed. ¡°And were we better acquainted, you and I, I should do just that,¡± Sorchone drawled, ¡°but I fear lest you mistake me today!¡± To Kahan, he apologized dryly, ¡°Another time, brother.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll pout,¡± he replied, grinning. ¡°What did you want, damn your untimely backside?¡±


    ¡°Untimely? There¡¯s gratitude: I will have you to know, I had the grace to leave and come back later.¡±


    Rothesay started, and glanced from one to the other, looking for the laughter that had to be there; he could not possibly have¡ª


    ¡°He did, too,¡± Kahan agreed. ¡°You should beat him, for failing you as a fellow Runedaur and teaching you the price of your inattention!¡±


    ¡°I should beat you, for distracting me!¡±


    ¡°Oh, but no,¡± Sorchone purred. ¡°Never think it, babe, that your attention is ever at any command but your own.¡±


    His voice lay soft over steely intent; glancing at Kahan, she saw the same steel glinting in his eyes even though he smiled. ¡°Right. Sure,¡± she agreed uneasily, stepping away from them both, and Sorchone turned to Kahan.


    ¡°Captain Urlaf meant to sail with the midnight tide, as you knew, but he has, ah, been persuaded to stay for the Lightsolstice feast.¡±


    ¡°As I knew.¡± Kahan laughed. ¡°I¡¯m crushed, to have to attend such a monstrous festivity!¡±


    ¡°Aye. And I am sure I am loath to disappoint you of that after all, but it seems you will sail tonight indeed. And it is I envy you this time!¡±


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°Why?¡± he asked, over Rothesay¡¯s plaintive, ¡°Noo!¡±


    ¡°Rhyllandon¡¯s gone,¡± Sorchone almost whispered, his grey eyes agleam.


    ¡°¡®Gone¡¯? What do you mean, ¡®gone¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Gone. Vanished. Pffft! No one there, no one home.¡±


    ¡°Go on!¡±


    ¡°Verity, children. Windhome¡ª¡±


    The door exploded open. Lacie, Teo, Cobry, and a youth named Pentallan from the Storm at Morning poured into the room, all talking at once.


    ¡°Have you heard?¡±


    ¡°Every house empty!¡±


    ¡°We sail t¡¯ night, join t¡¯ search!¡±


    ¡°I want to go, too!¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t everyone?¡±


    ¡°Swim, then, baggage!¡±


    A sharp glance from Sorchone cut short the clamor. No one offered combat for the role of spokesman, but let him speak as they made themselves comfortable on the other couches; Pentallan seated Lacie snugly on his lap. Cobry snagged the flagon of ale from the tiled sideboard and passed it round.


    ¡°Our mysterious Mistress conveyed unease to our mysterious Master; I¡¯ve no wish yet to know how. But it was past midnight after Council, and I hunted Rory down the Long Gallery, and we made truce on finding the Moot-hall alight and full of Masters. They had just bespoken Windhome¡ªI recognized Mistress Aleid¡¯s face in Urlaf¡¯s mirror; do you know her?¡± he added in an aside to Kahan. ¡°No? I give you joy of the meeting; she is¡ªwhat shall I say?¡ªonly more full of life than any woman, anyone, I have ever met.¡±


    ¡°An¡¯ she shares,¡± Pentallan added happily.


    ¡°Bountifully,¡± Sorchone agreed. ¡°But this night she had no more to share than word that Rhyllandon has been deeply withdrawn of late; brooding, she said, and much concerned with their bloodline: who was, and who was not, of their House. They had noted it, but given it scant heed. She was unsurprised that Clar Meyl had not attended Council. But Carialla¡¯s concern moved her, and she agreed to ask an audience with the Rhyllanthysel.


    ¡°The Waterspooks spent yesterday and this morning searching through Sparca; they still search, but it is so: they have found no one, nor any stock, not even a hound. Hearthstones still warm. A candle, guttered.


    ¡°Some great spell is being worked there¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡®Being¡¯ worked?¡± Rothesay broke in, and Sorchone nodded.


    ¡°It is not yet complete; so says the Windhome Magic-master. Probably the Lightsolstice will close it, for this year we see also the dark of the moon, that day.¡±


    She nodded. Padriag had been planning works around that conjunction since Yule.


    ¡°Master Urlaf thinks yonder storm will break tonight, and then he means to make all speed home. What will you find there, I wonder?¡± Sorchone finished, looking at Kahan, and at Pentallan, with open envy.


    Talk burst out afresh, everyone marvelling, everyone speculating on every means and motive they could collectively imagine. Rothesay participated only peripherally. She had a strong and alarming sense that, if she did not know what had happened up there, she knew someone who did.


    She waited till after midnight before pursuing it. The storm indeed abated after nightfall, and she lingered with Kahan, helping him make ready for the voyage. In talking of his trip, he explained the strengths of the different Runedaur halls, and encouraged her, once she felt more settled in, to travel likewise and farm herself out to each of them. Sailing and weather-lore, of course, were the special province of Windhome. Rose House was the home of the Silents, and that meant far more than sign language, as they were at the root of the rumors of Runedaur soul-seeing. For statecraft, politics, diplomacy, and intrigue: right here in Kingscroft. They also excelled, quite naturally, in all urban arts, and the great joke was to speak of the Kingscroft Fashion-master. He was properly styled the Master of the City, a fine arrogance that the Lord High Mayor of Andrastir invariably resented, but no one of the Order ever used that title except in the Lord High Mayor¡¯s presence.


    ¡°Call it silly if you will, but fashion matters, in a place like this. The Raven¡¯s Trace Hunting-master himself says it¡¯s just like learning coloring and camouflage in the wild! And if you want to learn how to pass yourself off undetectably in a crowd¡ªspeak to the Fashion-master.¡±


    ¡°I think Sorchone¡¯s aspiring to that post,¡± Rothesay remarked, rolling a tunic into a tight log and stuffing it into Kahan¡¯s canvas bag.


    ¡°He¡¯ll be good at it,¡± he smiled.


    ¡°And Raven¡¯s Trace?¡±


    ¡°What trace does a raven leave as it flies?¡±


    ¡°Erm. None?¡±


    He grinned. ¡°Got it in one. They¡¯re the deepest, darkest, stealthiest sneaks of all of us. Starts with woodcraft. Then you get serious about it.¡±


    ¡°What about Colderwild? What¡¯s Colderwild good for?¡±


    His grin broadened. ¡°Juggling. Or, puzzle-working. Or puppetry. Braiding. Weaving. How to take it all and make the world be whatever you want it to be.¡±


    Her eyes narrowed. ¡°Oh, really? Gods, are they? And they want a Peria all at war and bleeding?¡±


    His grin widened so far that his face seemed fair to split. ¡°Well,¡± he drawled, ¡°you do the best you can with what you¡¯ve got.¡±


    She helped carry his litter back down Drinkers Lane to the still-windy harbor, then let him use her as a crutch as he hopped one-legged from the litter to the edge of the pier. She lowered him down into competent hands in the rowboat that would carry him out to Sharkbait, passed down several pails of ale that Ellan and Berythane brought out from Drummers, and watched till long after he had vanished into the starless mirk. Sharkbait and Storm at Morning sent up a colorful volley of fireworks and then, presumably, raised sail and raced away on the wind. Lacie walked her back up to the hall.


    ¡°I¡¯m¡ªI think I¡¯ll go back out. For a walk,¡± Rothesay mumbled as they reached the door to Kingscroft¡¯s Silver Novitiates chamber.


    ¡°Sure. Uh, that¡¯ll be nice.¡± She paused, seeming to forget to enter the room. ¡°So it wasn¡¯t quite Lightsolstice,¡± she confessed abruptly. ¡°So much for plans!¡±


    ¡°What wasn¡¯t? What plans?¡±


    ¡°Talla¡ªPentallan.¡± She rolled her eyes up at Rothesay, and sighed. ¡°He¡¯s really lovely!¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to know, do I,¡± she replied levelly.


    Lacie giggled. ¡°You? No, you probably don¡¯t!¡±


    ¡°Right. Er. Sweet dreams?¡±


    ¡°Count on it!¡±


    Rothesay fled, but stealthily.


    Out across the Swale, back to the hilltop at Windgate she hurried, cloaked with the wind. Under the old oak she sat again, and waited expectantly.


    Onions came to her alone.


    ¡°What happened¡ªer, <what happened in [Sparca]?>¡± Whatever this peerie-speech was, it was hers also, now.


    ¡°<Ah, the Rider-of-moonlight!>¡± Somehow Rothesay knew he meant Clar Meyl. ¡°<She has unbound her people from the Earth. As once your father¡¯s people did, long ago. Rhyllandon¡ª>¡± here he meant the original son, ¡°<¡ªhad a Ceidha-key. Now, she has used it.>¡±


    ¡°<Oh, that explains everything, that does. Where did they go?>¡±


    Onions was surprised. ¡°<Nowhere. They are [right there],>¡± he assured her.


    Rothesay rubbed her temples fiercely. The images she had from the peeries gleefully defied all reason by being several contradictory things at once. Like dream-stuff.


    ¡°<Like dream-stuff,>¡± he agreed. ¡°<Raw substance.>¡±


    ¡°<Fine. Fine. Let¡¯s not push it all at once. So. She¡¯s gone into¡ªDreamland, shall we call it? And taken every last man and his sixth cousin of an entire House?>¡±


    Onions held out his hand, or paw. ¡°<Come.>¡±


    She stared at it. ¡°<Er. I kind of like it here.>¡±


    ¡°<You must learn.>¡±


    ¡°<I¡ª>¡± But he had said her magic word. Breathless, shivering, slowly she extended her hand, he clasped a fingertip, and the world that she knew fell away from them.


    She was beginning to make sense of the experience. The world she knew, for the most part, had been defined for her. This one, on the other hand: this one demanded definition from her. Like clay, she thought. You could not ¡®shape¡¯ clay into, say, fire. But until you did shape it in some way, it remained formless, taking only such shape as clay would from random finger-twitches.


    Intention. The trick is intention.


    She looked about, her head aching with concentration, and the vividness of the view burned into her brain. There was the lawn; there, the unfamiliar grasses, the tops of the trees disappearing down the hill. And the sycamores blazed white, the leaves seared green, the stones grey and glittering even as she could see, equally plainly, that the moonless, overcast night was utterly dark. She was not seeing ¡®green,¡¯ so much as knowing ¡®green.¡¯


    But not far. Turning, she ¡®saw¡¯ the ruins of the old manor house, and the apple tree within it, saw even the place in its trunk where she had first crossed ¡®through.¡¯ All the places she had already been in the Outerworld shone with this queer not-quite-sight. The unknown places remained ¡®dark,¡¯ untouched, unformed.


    She looked down, intending to see herself. And¡ªlimbs! fingers! feet! Just where they should be, and looking pretty much as expected as well, except for something she could only describe as a ¡®glow,¡¯ that lay distinctly dimmer over her many bruises. Hmm.


    She turned her hand before her face¡ªand felt swiftly vertiginous as the world beyond her fingers threatened to run together and melt away, till she looked at it, command alive in her frightened thought. Tree became tree again. But she sensed that it might, for sheer mischief, shift again once her attention, or her intention, shifted. Oh no you don¡¯t.


    She spent some time trying to force both the background and her immediate target of interest to stay stable in her thought, till Onions, amused and baffled, suggested she simply not bother. Reluctantly, she let it go.


    <Listen,> said her uncanny teacher, and she gave heed to the sounds here. The falling wind; a music of crickets; a passing owl: these sounds seemed much as she knew them, but they had a curious depth, as though they had as much shape as a jar or an apple, a shape that suggested something like age, or, maybe, universality. The wind not only sounded hollow but ¡®felt¡¯ hollow as well, sort of vase-shaped, and the mouth of it unguessably far away and unthinkably long before: it took her breath away.


    And there were other sounds, or things like sounds. There seemed to be a music of the trees, and the oak behind her sang its own slow melody, and the grasses whined softly. Even the earth beneath her: some vast dark chord rumbled far below the range of any hearing ear, but the soul felt its tremor. She wondered what it meant.


    Then, <Intend [Sparca],> said Onions in her mind.


    What in the world¡ª? Did he mean for her to ¡®intend¡¯ whatever song of the earth rang in the stones of the north? No, she realized abruptly, he meant to ¡®intend¡¯ all of it, light, color, sound, weight, shape. And she must do it ¡®correctly,¡¯ whatever that meant; she had to get Sparca ¡®right¡¯ in order to get it at all. She frowned. <How? Just make it up?> The idea of spinning a whole country out of the thread of her fancy tickled her, but she doubted she wielded such godly power.


    <You have never been there,> Onions mused. <Ah, but humans make maps. You have seen maps?>


    <Of course.> She recalled Padriag¡¯s map, with a jolt of homesickness, still under her bed in Colderwild.


    <They are a very great magic,> he informed her gravely. <Fold the map,> he directed. <Touch this place to [Sparca].>


    She closed her eyes, to imagine the map. Andrastir was but a tiny cartoon of rooftops and a gated wall; it would have to serve as sign for this particular hill. Sparca¡ª


    As she imagined crumpling the map, light burst across it, ruler-straight lines as fine as hairs and blazing white, crossing and radiating all over her image of the map. Several ran through the cartoon of Andrastir, and at least three of those passed through Sparca. Startled, still she thought, I should maybe keep it on one of those? <Er. Got it.>


    <Then step over.> After waiting patiently through several fruitless minutes, he repeated, <Intend [Sparca].>


    It was like turning away from one thing toward another; it was like stepping across a threshold; it was like feeling a change in the air. She was still in the Otherworld, which stubbornly resisted all her efforts to force it into shape. She calmed herself by attending to her own body, and sensed Onions beside her, seeming nearly her own size for now. Presently she hit on the trick of ¡®reaching¡¯ for the world as she ¡®reached¡¯ for a spell, and was rewarded with the trunk of a pine tree, and cold mountain air.


    <Come, now,> said Onions, and slipped as through a veil back into the solid Outerworld.

 XIII: Price of Peace (pt 2/3): Mysteries

    Rothesay looked down a steep-falling glen, that lay faintly grey under a night ablaze with stars: the storm at Andrastir had not touched Sparca, though the southern edge of the sky was hemmed with cloud. ¡°<I¡¯m¡ªreally here?>¡±


    Onions wrestled silently with the word, ¡®really.¡¯


    She hurried on, ¡°<I mean, all of me? Under the tree, back on the hill where we were: is, er, anything there?>¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°<Warm bent grass?>¡±


    She started to object, No, I meant anything of myself, and then realized that, to the peerie, even an impression of her buttocks on the earth probably counted as something of herself. And, quite possibly, it counted enough that they could work a magic from it. The thought made her shudder; and then it made her wonder whether she, being in some sense kin to them, could do so, too.


    Well, another time for that. ¡°<I¡¯m really here?>¡± she asked again, not expecting a reply. The chilly air flowed silkily around her, slim air-sprites embracing her sensuously; they smelled of pine and dewy bracken. Onions, once again knee-high to her, slipped noiselessly down between the rocks and the writhen trees, and she hurried after.


    Not far below, they came to a neat homestead, a small, square, stone-built house, its lower level half-underground, its upper-story window-sills almost within her reach. No light burned within, but at this hour, none was expected. A smell of the farmyard prowled about the barn and sheds.


    Not an animal warmed the stalls with breath, or stirred the straw: no cat hunted along the rafters, not even a mouse could she find. And yet, there remained a suggestion of warmth in the still and dusty air; a sense of presences, as if she wandered among ghosts. Or, no, she thought; as if I were the ghost moving among the unseen shadows of the living . . . . Leaving the barn, she made a magelight and, feeling like a burglar, crept down the steps to the door of the house and pushed it open.


    The place might indeed have been burgled, or maybe looted by invaders: it was empty, not just of its people but of every furnishing. Not a rug or chair, not a table or a pot could she see. And once again that same strange impression, that everything and everyone that should be there, actually was, but invisible, untouchable.


    No, wait: a little three-legged stool perched at the edge of the ash-filled hearth. She picked it up. A design had been drawn on the seat, a spiral pattern, like but not quite the well-known wisdom-maze. Some of its lines were smudged; an experimental finger easily rubbed away a bit of the blue chalky powder.


    Onions tugged at her tunic. Looking down, she saw him holding out his hand again: come. This time, she only nodded.


    And watched carefully, as he moved them between the worlds, moved them an infinite distance that was not distance at all.


    She intended intensely, not at all sure what she should intend, but, like ¡®finding¡¯ a spell where she had left it, she ¡®found¡¯ sense and shape, though not sound. All about her lay the kitchen of the little Sparcan house, as before, but full now. There stood the table and the benches, there sat baskets and plates and pots and jugs, rugs warmed the stone walls, and every one of them bore the mark of a blue spiral.


    And there were people. An elderly man and two hale ones, two matronly-looking women, a mixed bag of four or five younger people, a handful of children; an indefinite pile of dogs seemed to be sleeping by the hearth, and a cat crouched on the high window-sill. All the human faces seemed drawn and grim, and utterly unaware of her or her companion; indeed, not a one of them, human or not, moved, or could be seen even to breathe.


    The packed-earth floor beneath her, the air about her, all the Sparcan world, thrummed and strained. She felt a great yearning, or a weight as of a river on the flood pressing urgently against a dike soon to break. A great spell is being worked, Sorchone had said.


    Onions nodded. <She is not yet done.>


    ¡®She¡¯ meant the princess of Rhyllandon. And ¡®done¡¯: Rothesay¡¯s heart chilled. The peerie meant that the ¡®Rider-of-moonlight¡¯ was both still spell-casting, and still living. And the completion of the one would complete the other.


    <We have to stop her!>


    <?>


    <We have to save her!>


    <[???] It is what she wants. How shall it ¡®save¡¯ her, to thwart her?>


    <We can work that out later,> Rothesay growled. <How do we cock this up?>


    Onions wrinkled his little face so that his jewelled whiskers bobbed. At last he shrugged. <I have not the power.>


    <Damn!>


    <Be careful of your words here,> he reproved her sharply, and she turned pale.


    <Right, right. Sorry.¡ªEr, Padriag?> she hazarded. <Does he¡ª? Could he stop it?>


    <I think not,> Onions answered, but uncertainly.


    <Marennin?>


    <Assuredly.> After a moment, he added with some amusement, <Will you ask her?>


    Rothesay thought about it. Her memory in this place seemed sharply enhanced; the dragon loomed in her thought as almost more real than the table at hand and, clear and sharp as a winter¡¯s dawn, Marennin¡¯s predator¡¯s soul. How to explain sweet compassion to such a creature? Moreover, did not Marennin owe her very existence to such an act of sacrifice? How would she understand Rothesay¡¯s plaintive urge to intervene?


    How did Rothesay understand it herself?


    She looked at the motionless figures clutching one another¡¯s hands around their little hearth. She had no idea how far they were from Doroccan¡¯s famous contested wall. If Clar Meyl succeeded, then none of these people gathered here ever need fear the invader¡¯s spear again; if she did cock up the Rhyllanthysel¡¯s spell, might she not be condemning one or more of this family to death instead? And a war-death, at that, a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable. Clar Meyl¡¯s death would at least count for something.


    ¡°All right,¡± she whispered at last, deliberately speaking Sferan. ¡°I want to go back, now.¡± On her own, she swiftly called the map back to mind, folded as before, and¡ª


    An Onions strangely out of all proportion put out a hand that somehow covered her whole self, to restrain her. <If you will use the map,> he cautioned, <then you must know exactly where you were, if you wish to return to exactly where you were.>


    <I do!> she shot back, rattled: she had a vivid picture from him of her winding up days away from Andrastir. <Er, but couldn¡¯t I just [intend] that hilltop?>


    <Intend it [where]?>


    <Oh.>


    <I know [where] my home is. Once I return us, you too will know [where] we came from.>


    <Relative to Sparca, you mean?>


    He paused, puzzled. <Relative to yourself,> he replied, obscurely even for him.


    As the old oak braced her spine once more, she understood him. Just as spells seemed to have something like location in her thought, so this hilltop now also stood in a unique ¡®location.¡¯ A ¡®location¡¯ for a location, that was in no physical way the original location . . . she shook her head brusquely. Words, Padriag often said, could break one¡¯s thought, if they were asked to take more weight than their nature permitted.


    She sighed wearily; the hours were very wee indeed. Without a word, then, the little peerie reached up and touched her hand, once more to take her swirling down his strange paths. When he let go, she continued ¡®on¡¯ for a moment more, all on her own, and blinked in sleepy surprise at the back of the Kingscroft vegetable gardens.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. She hesitated a few minutes, wondering if she felt up to risking going in to bed, or whether she would not rather sleep right here among the¡ªshe laughed¡ªonions. A glance at the stars warned her that dawn was not far off, and soon the kitchens would be in full roar for the holy day¡¯s feasting; she just might sleep longer in bed.


    She did. For all the passion for the game of Ghost, nearly everyone also lusted for a day of ease, and slept that night and well into the morning, the better to eat, drink, and dance on the day. For that matter, for all that day, Ghost attacks met no defense fiercer than, ¡°Yes, right, I¡¯m dead, bugger off and don¡¯t spill my ale dammit.¡± It was marvellously dispiriting to martial ambition, and soon even the most dogged self-trainer had given up slaughtering everyone else, for games of greater folly.


    But first there was ceremony. An hour before noon, a boisterous parade burst from Kingscroft¡¯s front Gate, and joined a river of brightly-clad Andrastiri, welling from every enclave to flood the streets. Song and cymbal, drum and dancing echoed from the stonework. Effigies of Areolin, huge and elaborately bedecked with roses and chamomile, bobbed upon the swell: every great family seemed to vie for Richest Representation of the Sun.


    And Sunwise around the Ardassiann the golden river poured, utterly commingled. Great lords ringed with a retinue of lesser lords paced among servants taskless for the day. And great or lowly, at their own pleasure the paraders stopped at any door along the way: every gate stood open to courtyards full of tables heavy with meat, mead, and sweet treats, as every family vied for Richest Victuals in Honor of the Sun.


    At last a great crowd gathered in the square before the Gate of Heroes. With much singing, gold-garbed clergy of Areolin lit two great oaken bonfires, and all the magnificent effigies were flung into the flames. Drums thundered and bells rang, and, still singing, Areolin¡¯s Servants spilled into the mass of worshippers to lead them in a dance about the fires. Rothesay found her hand taken by a smiling androgynous creature in one of Areolin¡¯s spiky golden headdresses, and towed sunwise in a lively vine-step. She in turn grabbed for her neighbor¡¯s hand. He bowed out, a little stiffly, and reluctantly, she thought: he was grey-haired and jowl-faced, and all about the square the elderly retired to the edges taking small children with them, leaving the dance to men and women in their prime. A stocky man in his thirties, perhaps, with Carastwyth colors twisted into the design of his own family emblem, claimed her flailing hand and danced after her.


    Another ring of dancers formed closer in, and more further out; behind her, Lacie¡¯s voice suddenly bawled in her ear, ¡°Oh, go ahead and kiss him, Prudy!¡±


    Rothesay, lithe on her feet, missed not a step as she cast the Carastwyath a suspicious glare, and he, with a quick, pointed glance at her Runedaur tunic, glowed with avid innocence.


    Down the searing path between the two fires, petitioners half-danced, half-ran: women seeking cleansing of sins, or a fertile belly, or both; lovers pledging troth; anyone sick of a malady remedied by light and fire; a small parade of white-clad youths becoming men, who joined the dance as they emerged. Lavender and eyebright in sheaflike bundles or braided wreaths joined the flames, and the smoke sweetened.


    She might have danced there all day, had not Sorchone, and a heartbeat later Rory, cut her out of the dancing rings. ¡°Home, babe!¡± Sorchone bawled to be heard. ¡°We¡¯ve more serious feasting there!¡± Rothesay allowed herself to be pulled away, but danced all the way back to Kingscroft, and teased both of them into dancing with her.


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    Kingscroft¡¯s front garden remained open, providing treats and drinks to whatever celebrants dared the gates, but passage to the rear courtyards had to be won by contesting the guards. As Rothesay personally discovered, a would-be visitor did not have to win the contest to win entry; she lost, badly but hardly shamefully, to the Kingscroft Arms-mistress. Gulda, a Geillan-born little thing about the size of Leoff and possessed of a very similar style, looked down at the fallen Rothesay as though considering which of several desperately-warranted lectures to begin, but barked a quick laugh, waved her in, and turned to threaten someone else. Thus the Kingscroft Solstice feast was joined over time by a handful of outsiders who, having learned that mere daring sufficed, wandered the back gardens in a daze, and had to be rescued from time to time from the traps.


    Of the games of great folly, Hunkerhawser was a favorite, with two contestants crouching on rickety little boxes at either side of a pool, and attempting to knock one another either off his box or, better still, into the water, by yanking a long rope between them. Giants, Mages, Peeries involved two teams, who agreed each among themselves just before each match what kind they would all be: giants had the right to chase mages, mages chased peeries, and peeries chased giants. After a timing volley of mock spellcasting, each team revealed its chosen character and the race was on, the fleeing team¡¯s members attempting to reach the haven at their end of the field before the pursuing team caught, and abducted into its own ranks, any stragglers. It clearly had no point other than an excuse to run, increasingly drunkenly, back and forth over the lawn. And Ullenna¡¯s Purse was a kissing game, played in a circle with a men¡¯s half and a women¡¯s, and demanding that one of each, on command from whomever was ¡®it¡¯ at the center, race to see if one of them could kiss the ¡®it¡¯ before being caught and kissed by the other. Rothesay gave that one a pass; and anyway, she was drenched from match after match of Hunkerhawser: strength alone was no guarantor of victory.


    At sunset, Kingscroft lit its own bonfire. Here no one sought release from sin; instead, everyone interested twisted some shape in roses, lavender and eyebright, taken from great fragrant stacks, and invested it with some gratitude, to be cast into the fire and conveyed to the heavens. Rothesay twined a wreath circumscribing a five-rayed star, and sat staring at it as the evening deepened, wondering what she should represent by it.


    Rory dropped down beside her, and showed her his own figure of a butterfly, its lavender wings dotted with red and yellow flowers. ¡°I don¡¯t know what I want it to be for, though,¡± he mused, unknowingly echoing her own dilemma. ¡°Just being alive a year later counts for something. Counts for a lot!¡± He shook his head. ¡°And, I learned rope-walking. And I¡¯ve got a really sweet touch with a suture-needle¡ªbut I guess that¡¯s more for somebody else to be grateful for!¡± he added with a laugh that she shared. He scratched her back idly. ¡°It¡¯s just, I¡¯ve got this feeling that there¡¯s something else I shoulda done. Something more important. Something really important.¡±


    She nodded. She had plenty for which she owed thanks in some direction, including the lovely, delicate, rose-cream-filled pastry half-eaten in her left hand, as well as the simple fact of being already too full of wonderful food to eat the rest of it. Compared to just this past winter, she had become obscenely wealthy, at least by association, and if half of what Kahan claimed to have done back in Harrowater were true, her family there shared in it. They would be on the beach now, with the rest of the clan sending a bonfire adrift on the waves, and the boatmasters would sail about the floating pyre, bearing all the prayers of the village.


    All the Geillan prayers. The Harrowater edgelings would be sneaking in their own celebrations, quietly passing from home to home while the Dunhaldring rioted on the shore. Would Pinnar be finding kinder treatment, now that Alrulf was in some sense her heir; or would Alrulf be still more scorned by the clan for the same reason? Rothesay looked at her little wreath. She wished she could say, I¡¯m grateful that the edgelings aren¡¯t being beaten up any more. That would be something worthy of thanks.


    ¡°I think,¡± she said slowly, ¡°I think I¡¯ll be grateful that my head hasn¡¯t exploded from all that I¡¯ve been learning.¡±


    ¡°Good one,¡± he agreed soberly.


    She had in mind all the strange ways of the Runedaur, so unlike Harrowater¡¯s; but more than those, the ways of Onions and her kinship there made her feel that between Equinox and Solstice, she had fallen out of one world into one wholly strange. She wondered what Rory had in mind. What was it like, there in his heart? There were magics, she knew, for entering another¡¯s soul. Yet even as she recalled that, she shrank from the thought of entering his, not with dislike so much as dread: Rory himself seemed to find no great joy there.


    She laid a kind hand on his arm. ¡°Let¡¯s go ask Master D what he¡¯s grateful for!¡± And was rewarded with his sun-god grin.


    Dav stood with Mael and an elderly woman with sunken blind eyes that nonetheless seemed to watch the two students approach, one of the Kingscroft sorceresses. As they came near, they caught the words ¡®Rhyllandon¡¯ and ¡®occupation.¡¯ Much of everyone¡¯s festivity today had been modulated with fascination for the mystery up north.


    But, ¡°What am I grateful for?¡± mused Mael, a tall, twisted willow of a man. He swirled wine in his silver cup, and breathed deeply of its fragrance. ¡°Mmmm, that¡¯ll do,¡± he purred for answer.


    The woman, one Sunarre na Sur, chuckled. ¡°I? For you, girl, aye?¡± Rothesay blushed, confused.


    ¡°And you, sir?¡± she asked Dav then.


    His blue eyes blazed like his sapphire earrings, and his shark¡¯s grin flashed. ¡°For everything,¡± he murmured passionately, and shaking his head to toss his hair awry, barked a laugh to the sunset. ¡°For everything!¡±


    The fires blazed the brighter as the sunset faded. Presently the students realized that an informal convocation in the front garden was growing larger and quieter, and the back gardens were emptying. They hurried up to the outskirts.


    Dav, Mael, and Gulda sat about a brazier with several strangers. The guests were not Runedaur. By their pine-colored garb, they were Rhyllands. By their talk, they were the Lord Chamberlain and several other notables of the Residence of Rhyllandon-in-Andrastir. And a little diffident but persistent questioning revealed the old woman enthroned still beneath a silken sun-shade to be the sister of Clar Meyl the vanished Rhyllanthysel.


    One of the Kingscroft knights stood up from the grass and the already-quiet throng fell silent.


    ¡°Here is the tale, as we in lands far from Sparca have heard it,¡± his voice rang clear, and Rothesay heard in it some echo of the cadences of Geillan bards. Looking sharply, she thought him a bit large and fair for a Sferan man. So even a trained bard might, like Rory and Leoff and even Dav, leave his clan for the black and silver


    ¡°Once upon a time, Rhyllandon wandered forth from his home, as oft he would. Passing deeper into the forest than ever he had done before, he came upon a wren caught amid briars. The bird fluttered and struggled, but stilled as Rhyllandon drew near, and suffered his touch as he untwisted the thorns. Then would his brothers and sisters have marvelled at this, for he was often thought cold and even cruel, but soon the bird was free.


    ¡°Then it flew thrice about his head and perched on his shoulder. It spoke and he understood, for the speech of birds and of serpents is not so dissimilar. And it gave him warning that his friend, the King of the Ceidha, was even now assailed by the Giants of the East, and sore beset. ¡®I will lead you,¡¯ said the wren, and flew still deeper into the forest.


    ¡°Rhyllandon followed at once without waiting to send for any aid; he went alone into the wood.


    ¡°And came out upon a hillside and saw below, the armies of the Giants and the armies of the Ceidha in close combat, and he saw that it went hard with his friends.


    ¡°Then did he raise all the power that was in him, and all the art he had taught himself and all the art he had learned of the Ceidha. Into the armies of the giants he hurled fire, and blasted them with levin-light¡ª¡±


    ¡°That one¡¯s still a Rhyllands mystery,¡± Lacie sighed hungrily at Rothesay¡¯s elbow. ¡°Carialla can.¡±


    ¡°Sh¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªand wrested boulders from the mountainside to dash them down. But a strange black fire ringed the King of the Giants round, and no magic could touch him. All the day and into the night the battle raged without pause and the Ceidha were driven ever back and their fiery blood burned the grass. Then Rhyllandon reached to the deeps of his power and opened a well of magic that had never before been tapped¡ªand which has never been touched since. And he sent against the King of the Giants a bolt that lit all that shadowed valley like the sun at the noon. And the black fire was rent and the King of the Giants died. But Rhyllandon, too, fell.


    ¡°The power that poured through him broke his limbs each from the next, down to the smallest, and he fell to the earth. Then he must have died, but the giants fled without their king, and the Ceidha came to Rhyllandon and with all their arts healed him of his hurts.


    ¡°Then was Rhyllandon amazed, for he seemed to be filled with a white fire, a fire that flashed forth at the bending of his least finger, or his knee or his hand.¡± Rothesay frowned and flexed her own fingers and tried to imagine such a light.


    ¡°But his friend the Catha-king warned him that he had done too much, more than even their arts could mend. ¡®Here in the ambit of our power,¡¯ said the king, ¡®you may be as you are now. It is your return home that must grieve you. I beg you will stay with us, for I fear you will suffer sorely if you leave us.¡¯


    ¡°¡®I am prince of my people,¡¯ Rhyllandon answered him, and his friend the king understood.


    ¡°¡®So it must be. Return home, Cathallyn, and tend to your people. But accept this gift of us. If ever you find the burden of the Outerworld press you too hard, this will return you to us.¡¯ And the King of the Ceidha gave into his hands a magical key.


    ¡°So they parted in friendship and love, and Rhyllandon returned to his home. And at once he understood the warning of the king. For when he crossed the threshold of the worlds, the white light within him changed and became instead a terrible fire. Nothing of it could be seen, but at the bending of his least finger, or his knee or his hand, an agony consumed him. The Ceidha could give him the wholeness of his bones, but the pain of their breaking could not be assuaged.


    ¡°Yet he remained with his people for many years after this, enduring in silence for their sakes.¡±


    He sank smoothly back onto the grass. Under the canopy, the old woman nodded gravely, and putting a hand to her throat, spoke in turn. There must have been magic in her touch; there was certainly magic in her voice, which carried over the wide lawn as sweet and clear as a wood thrush¡¯s piping:


    ¡°Well told. I thank you. And so it is said among us also. We still have¡ª¡± she broke off. When she resumed, her sweet tone held a bitter edge, ¡°we had, as an heirloom, the very box in which the Key was kept. I myself have held that box; I felt the weight of its years; I felt the flicker of power in its wood, ash-wood. . . .¡± Her voice trailed into recollection, and of their own her hands shaped a space perhaps the size of an infant¡¯s head. Then she sighed. ¡°And we tell also another tale.


    ¡°Rhyllandon the father of our House had a wife, here, but he had also a fairy wife. When he left the Ceidha that last time, she gave him their son, new-born that night. Malyag, his name. He grew to full manhood in but a single year. He returns to us now and again. My grandmother spoke with him once, when she was a child.¡± The old woman smiled. ¡°Or so she liked to tell.¡±


    Dav stirred. ¡°What became of Rhyllandon? What was his fate?¡±


    The old woman did not answer. After a moment, the Lord Chamberlain spoke up, his jowly face puckered in a sour smile. ¡°Certainly every Sparcan precinct claims to shelter his grave. Yet many say that he used the Key at last, and returned to the Otherworld¡ªmust have done, for the Box of the Key is empty now, is it not?¡± he pointed out with an overly credulous smile. Then he shook his dark head proudly. ¡°Myself, I think it always was.¡±


    ¡°Whence came the Box, then?¡± the old woman snapped at him. ¡°Can you look on it and say that that was made by any mortal hand?¡±


    ¡°No longer can I, certainly,¡± he drawled, and made no device to hide his bitterness. ¡°She has gone, our Princess, and taken it with¡ª¡± he drew a deep and steadying breath to contain himself before his hosts, ¡°them.¡±


    Talk turned then from legends to rancor, as the remnant Rhyllandon-in-Andrastir reawoke to their abandonment. Rothesay noticed Dav, in the cover of evening and the crowd, withdraw towards the Kingscroft great-house, and she reached to nudge Rory even as he poked at her. He grinned as they slipped after the Master. She did not, sobered by a kind of relief. If people could accept the legend of the Key, she would not have to choose between being the only one around who knew what had happened and admitting that she talked to peeries.


    With great caution Rory approached the small, dark side door that Dav had used, motioned for Rothesay to follow, and Dav clubbed the both of them into greater wisdom. He also made them go back out and try again, twice over, and exhorted them to an attentiveness that Rothesay privately thought had to be purely fabulous.


    ¡°Oh? Am I fabulous?¡± said their teacher, and mocked her when she beat her head against the wall: ¡°Then are you beaten by your own fancies of the world. Now,¡± he went on, resuming his errand, ¡°I am going to bespeak Carialla. She was Rhyllandon; did you know? You shall be my wards.¡±


    They watched then over the same couch that Master Mael had guarded the few nights before. They did not speak; Dav had not bidden them to silence, but neither one knew this magic and feared to disturb the spelling. They both jumped away when Dav sat up sharply after only a few minutes. The Master looked at them distantly.


    ¡°She has of course seen that Box,¡± he said, as if continuing some conversation with them. ¡°I did not care to ask so, ah, openly¡ª¡± he tipped his head more or less towards the garden they had left, ¡°but I wondered what, exactly, this ¡®key¡¯ was thought to be.¡±


    The two students gazed uncomprehending at him, and then Rothesay started. ¡°Oh! There¡¯s no reason for it to have been anything like a house-key, is there!¡±


    And, ¡°Nor Geillan nor Sferan, neither,¡± Rory chimed in quickly.


    Dav grinned. ¡°Yet it seems Rhyllandon has thought exactly that all these ages. Well,¡± he yawned and stretched, lured Rothesay into attacking this purely illusory moment of weakness and sat on her back as he went on, ¡°there seems little for us here to do about it except finish our festivities.¡±


    She flung him off with a shudder of magical strength. Dav fled gardenwards and she had not the sense not to pursue till she woke to Rory nursing her back to consciousness in a dark hallway. And so relieved was she that folk were finding their own solution to Sparca¡¯s mysterious vanishment, that she could even laugh at herself for her folly, even before her head stopped pounding.

 XIII: Price of Peace (pt 3/3): Silent Rites

    The most of the Colderwild contingent left Andrastir over the next two days, in groups of three or four when they did not simply slip off without ceremony, alone. Rory took off by himself, sighing that he had better get on with Master Lee¡¯s challenge. The Earl of Maldan, she learned, was King Odhru¡¯s strong right arm, lately blood-sworn to destroy the upstart Deorgard; why Leoff wanted his latest mistress, no one could fathom.


    ¡°But that a¡¯n¡¯t my business,¡± he shrugged. ¡°Master Lee¡¯s not even Maldan: he¡¯s out of Elomar, like Dav. Wish me luck, Sugar.¡± She did; and kissed him soundly, as well.


    She herself was sent home in the company of two knights, neither of whom she knew. The one, a muscular man of about forty, had not been home to Colderwild in over a year; he gave his name as Istander, claimed the outlands of Feillantir as home, and sounded so much like the Loremaster that she now placed Merrithorander¡¯s unfamiliar accent. Not that Istander used it much; she quickly discovered that he could go for days without bothering to speak. As for their companion, he was wholly Silent. Not till their second day of travel did she realize that he was the very same boor she first met in the library, his black and torrid scorn abandoned, and he only grinned when he saw Rothesay recognize him at last. Istander called him Stormath.


    They travelled easily, making no great speed, idling up the Maldan side of the Holywell and openly flouting Geillan ire. Nearly every night they called at some holding, naming themselves strangers. The Geillari owed three nights¡¯ hospitality to anyone, friend or foe, who made such a claim; only such a guest¡¯s striking the first blow released them from that geas. Every hall welcomed them, stinting nothing, indeed sometimes seeming bent on killing them by filling them till they burst. Thus bearded, the Geillari did their utmost to provoke the Runedaur into making that first, freeing strike, only to have the deadly cheer of Stormath and the implacable contentment of Istander twist frustration¡¯s knife deeper. Rothesay felt as if she might suffocate in the smoke of smoldering Geillan rage.


    In one holding, however, a queer, cold taint roiled beneath the anger. The Geillari seemed distracted, sullen and edgy, unable to properly hate the three unwelcome guests; temper broke out in erratic shards, swiftly blunted, and though often aimed at the Runedaur, seemed meant for some other target. One man broke courtesy so far as to hurl his eating dagger at Stormath; Stormath¡¯s placid civility, taking the knife from the air as if it had only been offered for the guest¡¯s use, allowed the masque of hospitality to lurch harmlessly on.


    Rothesay slept in fits that night. Once, she bolted to a stand, ears ringing with a fragment of a far-off scream; it might have been only dream-sound, but at her feet, Stormath rose silently onto one elbow and for a long time they listened together. The quiet breathing of fifty men whispered through the great hall. Lulled at last into embarrassment at taking such fright, Rothesay eased back down onto her blanket. Stormath did not move.


    They accepted hot broth at dawn, to depart before the sun was full up. The other halls they had antagonized had offered effusive protest when they wanted to leave, in some to the edge of belligerence, as though to force them to overstay their three days¡¯ grace. Here, though not a murmur objected to their departure, a dull, hopeless pleading seemed to well from the kin-thralls who fed them and fetched their horses. And all three horses shied and danced as they approached the lapping arms of the palisade, and in the half-light Rothesay could see why. If the living made no objection to their going, the dead did: pale shivering forms filled the gate and the passage beyond, and reached and grabbed for the three riders. She wondered what they wanted, but Stand-in-grass demanded her whole attention to pass them.


    Istander and Stormath set a slow pace that day. Rothesay thought they were as sleepy as she. Istander mused aloud about their queer lodgings. ¡°A loud ¡¯un, th¡¯ chief o¡¯ they folk. But his son, quiet as a stane. Didsta mark him?¡±


    She had indeed. ¡°Once I saw this wolf caught in a trap. I thought he kind of looked like that wolf.¡±


    Stormath nodded. ¡°Aye,¡± said Istander as if in reply, and pulled out a gold coil of three wraps. ¡°Midnight.¡± Stormath chuckled darkly, tossing his head in dismissal, and Istander put his rejected bet away.


    Her companions seemed not the least bit drowsy, yet they idled through the forested hills. She yearned to put as many miles as she could between her and that creepy village, but Istander would stop and meticulously examine and sketch out every other weedy flower, and Stormath read a book as he let his horse follow Istander¡¯s, Rothesay¡¯s, or its own appetite. At long last, just before she had made up her mind to scream with frustration, Stormath cocked a brown eye at the westering sun, an orange star pricking through the thick roof of leaves. Istander picked out a camping site where a thicket of young hazel edged a clearing, and sent Rothesay to find water. They could not have come more than two leagues from the holding. ¡°Hey,¡± he chuckled as she looked aghast, ¡°at least tha canst sleep early, then!¡±


    The shadow of evening spread slowly through the forest. Rothesay did sleep early, pillowed on moss, blanketed by heavy warm air smelling of trees and horses, comforted by crickets. If she never slept in a bed again, she thought, drifting off, she could count it no great loss if this were the gain. Except she could do without the erratic thunk, thunk of her fellow travellers amusing themselves with a knife-throwing contest.


    She woke abruptly, wondering how they were even seeing their target, for they had made no fire, the evening being so warm. But they had stopped their game; instead, from some way behind her came a man¡¯s voice, a grovelling voice, and as she strained for the words, she saw the forest before her gleaming as if every twig and leaf had been crafted of copper and gold. There was a fire¡ªmust be a veritable bonfire!¡ªbehind her, somewhere near the voice. Before she could leap up in surprise, a hand squeezed her shoulder and shook it gently. Stormath put a finger to his lips.


    ¡°Ye maun help us, masters,¡± she heard the Geillan voice say, heavy with surrender. ¡°We can take na more.¡±


    ¡°Iiif youu cann take noo morrre,¡± returned a weird, echoing boom of a voice that sounded mostly like Istander, through some sort of speaking-tube, ¡°then rise, rise annd strike with yourrr own haaand!¡±


    There was a pause. Then, in tones lower still and yet suddenly less dreary, the Geillath grumbled, ¡°Easy for you to say. You don¡¯t have to live with it.¡±


    ¡°WHAAT?¡± roared the unearthly Istander-voice. Rothesay sat up silently, and twisted about to see, six yards and as many old trees away, the great fire in the clearing where she had left their horses tied. On his knees, a man in Geillan garb flopped to his face before it. No horse stood there now, nor could she see Istander. His voice seemed to come from all points at once.


    But the visitor seemed to have regained some spine. He sat up again, and though he spread his hands as if in supplication to the flames themselves, he repeated, more boldly, ¡°You do not pay our price. For us to strike, ¡¯t is kinslaying, and the very crime we would see punished!¡±


    Only silence replied. The man¡ªshe recognized him now, a warrior of only modest rank from the holding¡ªmade no move, his hands still held out to the fire, waiting. There was nothing else he could do. He had passed his own hall¡¯s ghosts, dared the night and the wood-spirits and all the entrapments of Dagn and Dere, to risk the ire of the Runedaur. He had paid too dearly to depart empty-handed¡ªwhatever it was that he wanted.


    Istander seemed to materialize beside Stormath, in the shadow of one great tree. He must, she thought, have spent no little time with Raven¡¯s Trace, to pass so soundlessly. The two knights exchanged glances that suggested some sort of concord, and then they looked expectantly at her. Startled, she waved vague hands, Istander grinned, and raised his curled fingers as a tube to his mouth.


    ¡°And ourrr price? Whaat will youu offer DEATH!¡±¡ªhe shouted the word, and the man jumped so hard he came to his feet, and Rothesay almost joined him¡ª¡°to take yourr kinnsmaaaaann fromm youu?¡±


    The man shuddered, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Then slowly he knelt again and reached to a leather sack that slumped at his side, and with obvious effort hauled it in front of him. He loosened its thongs, stretched its mouth wide, and poured onto the bare earth before the fire a stream of seeming flames: gold rings, gold chains, gold amulets, golden brooches.


    Stormath nudged Istander, passing to him a cloth bag no bigger than his palm. Istander stood and lobbed it high; it dropped as if from the branches, or the sky, right between the Geillath¡¯s knees. The man leaped once again to his feet, and looked wildly about.


    ¡°Gooo hooome,¡± Istander intoned. ¡°Pooour that inn thy evenning¡¯s meead. Annd then¡ªas you love your claan!¡ªsee that none stirr fromm their cots tillll Dawnn¡¯s trumpet call! Heeed nooo sounnd norr cry! Annyone abrooad the night muust DIIIIIE.¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s last glimpse of Istander was of his one hand swirling in a pattern of magic, and the vast fire snuffed out like a single candle.


    What am I doing? she thought frantically. Well, yes, fine, I¡¯m sneaking outside the chief¡¯s house of a strange clan in the middle of the night and talking the dogs into thinking we¡¯re all family here, to help a couple of really strange men I hardly even know sneak into said house to steal said chief¡¯s son. A year ago, a season ago, I was learning to keep a house and wondering if I¡¯d ever have a son or daughter of my own and would they be pretty and strong and now I¡¯m a warrioress in training who¡¯s about to have someone else¡¯s son who is by all accounts raving mad, and if his family wakes up to it, we¡¯re all dead.


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    Just when I think life can¡¯t get any stranger, it does.


    Good boy! Who¡¯s a fine dog, then? Yes, yes, I¡¯ve got a bit of rabbit for you, too, love.


    She thumped the shoulders of¡ªwell, approximately ¡®Bite Squirrels¡¯¡ªaffectionately, and sighed. At least this part made sense, simple sense. The dogs knew them, after all. She had visited more with them anyway, when here as a guest, than with their uneasy masters; and she had learned that Stormath and Istander had a habit of seducing the canines wherever they visited, ¡°for never dosta know when tha mayst want a friend.¡±


    A low, eerie hoot barely crossed the threshold of hearing, from the darkened chief¡¯s hall off to her right. Her head snapped around. All but invisible, Stormath beckoned to her from the doorway: she could only just make out his face and hand, as his dark clothes were below the grasp even of her night-sight, and then that too vanished. She patted the dog again, urged him to stay where he was, and hurried after Stormath. Bite Squirrels trotted cheerfully after.


    Why the rooftree carvings of the family spirits did not scream aloud at their trespass, she did not know. Perhaps Istander had some magic to keep them silent. They seemed strangely inattentive. Or perhaps it was something to do with the strange speech he had made all that day:


    He had started at breakfast, breaking his bannock thoughtfully and musing aloud, ¡°A devil¡¯s bargain, it is, the chief¡¯s. He cannot forswear his own son, for his other folk must think, ¡®If he turn agin his own boy, how shall I know him stand by me?¡¯ Nor yet can he let it a¡¯ go on, for then still his people must doubt him!¡±


    ¡°Let all what go on?¡± she had asked, having missed the most of last night¡¯s doings, and with Istander¡¯s explanation, wished she had never asked. The young man, it seemed, was a blithe horror: having tortured kittens and piglets to death as a child, he now did the like by the clan¡¯s slaves, kin-thralls and fine-thralls, anyone too lowly to be championed against the chief¡¯s only son.


    ¡°And, and that warrior in the night? He came to ask us to, um, kill the killer for them?¡±


    Stormath had made a pensive noise. Istander shrugged. ¡°Came to ask us to relieve them of the burden. They said not how.¡±


    ¡°But they¡¯ll assume we¡¯ll, er, kill him,¡± she observed. ¡°Er. Uh. Will we?¡±


    ¡°Might. Might not.¡±


    Stormath tipped his head meaningfully towards the south. She understood: they would take the creature with them, home to Colderwild, and worry about it there. Her stomach sank at the thought of the long trek in such horrid company.


    ¡°Er. But it¡¯s still not right, stealing him away from his home and all.¡±


    ¡°So it is not. Nor yet right to leave him among those powerless to stay him.¡±


    Stormath flipped a pretty brooch to her. Ah, yes: especially not when we¡¯ve been paid to remove him.


    ¡°We are priests,¡± Istander went on. ¡°Who better than us, to hear prayers for release?¡± He winked at the reminder of the Silent One¡¯s power.


    ¡°Prayer!¡± she spat, flinging the brooch back at Stormath. ¡°It¡¯s assassin¡¯s pay!¡±


    ¡°Is it?¡± Istander asked mildly, ducking as Stormath deflected the brooch at him. ¡°Didsta hear him, last night? Tha¡¯st never seen a killer¡¯s contract made, girl, a man¡¯s right to breathe weighed out with no more passion than tips a tradesman¡¯s scale. ¡¯T was not that, that brought our supplicant out in the mirk!


    ¡°Think on¡¯t: what wouldsta do, theyself, if tha wert ane of they?¡±


    ¡°Err, lock him up?¡±


    Stormath growled. In his dark face she saw clearly that he, at least, would rather die: that, to his mind, killing a man was less an evil than hobbling him.


    For the rest of that day, Istander came back again and again to the challenge of the clan¡¯s point of view, until it seemed to her as though he were trying to make her, by sheer force of talk, into blood-kin at that accursed hall, or at least heart-kindred. She did not want their dilemma. Chance had made it theirs, not hers, and she felt sorry for them in direct proportion to her relief that it was so. Istander, and Stormath too in his odd wordless way, seemed bent on making it her problem. Only when the two of them turned now and again to consider tactics, did she have any relief from them.


    Stand-in-grass was no help. Once he grasped that a member of that human herd had gone bad, hurting the herd, he saw the way clear. Why did not the great mare of the herd drive the crazed one away? The wolves might get him, but that was the bad one¡¯s problem: he himself had broken what bound him to the safety of the others.


    Because that¡¯s not¡ªthat¡¯s not human. Because that¡¯s like doing just what he did, even if it is for a better reason. Or it seems like a better reason. And that¡¯s not good enough.


    Abruptly, she wondered if she could talk to Stormath like this. Excusing herself from the vaguely baffled horse, she marched back to the silent Runedaur where he lay reading his book again, plucked it away from him (which he must have permitted, she reflected later), and asked him what in hell they were doing.


    Stormath was impressed, but he wasted little time being so. They assume we will kill him, he replied far clearer and far more quickly than any horse or dog; but they do not know that we will: that is their one solace. Driving him out is all but certain death, to him or to whomever he might later take up with, and that must be on their hands if they take that course. But surrendering him to us: what do they know, but that we might make him Runedaur? Stormath laughed. Surely they must think him a likely enough candidate!


    Then he¡¯ll be our problem, she brooded. Then it¡¯s us who get to worry about what to do with him.


    We have more powers than they. And yet, we might kill him. But if we do, it will not be as they would kill: not in fear, nor anger, nor loathing; not for revenge nor even as prevention.


    And that makes it better somehow?


    Stormath shrugged. Death comes. If through our hand, then at least He comes without evil intent, that the soul may be the sweeter when it returns.


    Rothesay thanked him, returned his book, and edged away. There was something he was not saying, even in this wordless way, something that seemed as large and important as the earth under their feet, but she could not give it a name.


    Now she looked up in the dim night at the carvings of the clan¡¯s gods. Istander had done a fair job of talking all three of them into something close to sworn fealty here; she could almost believe he loved this Geillan holding nearly as dearly as his own kin. Indeed, if she had not known that he had only met them but three nights since, she would have thought so. And maybe the guardian spirits themselves had been tricked. Though for her part, it was not wholly trickery. The more she had thought about it, the sorrier she felt for these people, and memory of the wretched kin-thralls who had brought them breakfast-broth wrenched at her heart and drove her to a silence and a caution she had not before achieved.


    She tiptoed among the sleeping men¡ªmen who, if she and her friends succeeded, would wake to peace once more. Bite Squirrels followed, making the braided rushes crackle, and now and again someone snorted and brushed a wagging, hairy tail out of his nose. Her heart leaped to her throat, but no one woke, all bound securely in the heavy arms of the Runedaur herbs in their mead.


    Stormath pointed out a larger cot under a window, and she looked down on the face of their horrible prize. Istander stood opposite. She saw his teeth flash pale in the darkness, and he mimed lifting.


    Oh, right, well, at least I¡¯m good for something, she thought sourly, and lifted the man as silently as she could. For all her care, his head lolled suddenly and struck the cot frame with a whack that sounded like a thunderclap to her wild nerves, but he never stirred.


    Her companions guided her safely back out through the maze of men. Stormath opened the great gate. Bite Squirrels barked one indignant demand for more rabbit as she walked out with her prize and with Istander, and Stormath shut the gate again. She heard the huge log bar slide home within, a soft scrabble as Stormath climbed the wall, and then they all started back through the midnight forest to their waiting horses. Finding her burden well and truly drugged, irritably she draped him shawl-like over her shoulders, nor took much care to spare his head a banging.


    The only virtue to the rest of their trip home was that it was swift. She thought she had travelled fast and hard with Dav; she erred. Their miserable baggage made for miserable company, if he were given his voice, cursing his captors with the most obscene words Rothesay had ever heard. So the two knights shut him up by tethering him to one saddle or another and travelling too briskly to leave him breath to spare for it. When they made their brief camps, they gagged him till mealtime, and if he preferred to curse than eat, why, they gagged him again and let him starve.


    Strangest to Rothesay was the air of the Runedaur. They might have been malicious, spiteful, vengeful, to such a hurtful creature as this; might have mocked him with his new powerlessness, or devised a hundred partial payments for the crimes of which his own clan accused him. Instead, as they bound or unbound him, saw to his feeding, his toilet, or his bedding, he might have been only an odd two-legged horse for all the feeling they displayed. Istander made no more effort to bespeak him¡ªwhose name they never asked, and he never volunteered¡ªthan he did to Rothesay.


    On reflection, she could think of only one instance wherein they made any effort to communicate something to the man. As they sat about their first camp (already beyond Carastloel, so quickly had they fled his clan¡¯s land), Istander and Stormath made a game of fetching logs, ever thicker and heavier, for Rothesay to break with her hands for their fire. They played, entirely ignoring the prisoner, but long after, it finally sank in on her that the game had been staged for him. Surely he had seemed just a little more cautious after that.

 XIV: Monsters (pt 1/3): Mad Science

    XIV: Monsters


    Sorchone was right: a Runedaur moot was like no council she had ever seen.


    The Vasty Hall of Death was the name of the great dark cavern where she had fallen asleep in the midst of the High Priestess¡¯s rites. It was not dark by day: seven high northward windows admitted a shadowless light that the cloud-pale limestone spread evenly everywhere. And now, by torch and magelight they lit it at night as well. Seen from the ford of the Daorlas, the rough northern face of Colderwild¡¯s rocky perch shone with a cluster of seven golden eyeslits.


    ¡°You know,¡± Rothesay mused aloud, gazing across the sunset-dim floodplain to the rock wall as Daorlas¡¯s sand crunched between her toes, ¡°we could climb that, and get in by a window.¡±


    Cobry hauled himself upright, out of the shallows. She noted peripherally that the waterfall cascading from his almost perfect nakedness made only a musical trickle compared to the thunder that had poured from her clothes.


    ¡°Hall¡¯s full of knights,¡± he observed. ¡°So they¡¯ve probably left all the traps unset. Yeah, sure, let¡¯s!¡±


    It took them close on an hour, and cost Cobry scrapes and abrasions that made Rothesay slightly fonder of her garments, but at length they propped their elbows on neighboring sills, and looked down into the great gallery.


    Steep-rising tiers of benches had been carved into the sides, all the way up till the walls started to lean in again to become the domed, stalactite-studded ceiling. Knights and witches half-filled them all, but few of them beneath the window-slits; and those few, Rothesay reckoned, were in their way all but traps themselves. A fire burned in the central pit: though the summer night lay hot upon the two students on the cliffside, the Vasty Hall was as cold as it had been on her first night here.


    Silence filled the great empty space, welling from nearly five hundred Runedaur. It usually did. No one even coughed.


    The first time she had investigated the moot, Rothesay had been able to stand this for maybe ten or twenty heartbeats. Then she had held her confused peace, reluctant to draw anyone¡¯s¡ªeveryone¡¯s¡ªattention with any remark, and finally left, utterly bemused, after a quarter-hour of soundless impatience.


    She was wiser now, if far less comfortable in her window-perch; and as it happened, she had hardly to wait before, on the third tier, towards the east, an unfamiliar man clad in the Silver rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and asked the silence, ¡°What does it mean, to pray?¡±


    Rothesay shot a glance to the great doors on the south. Terge, the shadow-sorceress she had met at her own Welcoming Feast, had Recorder¡¯s duty tonight, seated at the high, narrow bookstand; a white quill in her hand flickered as she swiftly added the question to the Moot Book.


    The questioner sat down again. Silence resumed. Rothesay and Cobry waited. Perhaps five minutes later¡ªan amazingly brief span¡ªa woman on the first row rose and asked, ¡°Can a god want?¡± Terge¡¯s quill danced again as the woman reseated herself, and, O amazing celerity, another man stood up at once to add, ¡°If yes, then why?¡±


    Two people from opposite sides rose almost as one, quietly picked their way down the tiers of seats and left, nodding as they passed three others coming in, who paused to let Terge show them the Moot Book and then dispersed to various seats. Probably no one would take much notice if the two students climbed in¡ªRothesay looked down at a drop of no more than four yards down the polished slope from the windowsill over the three-yard thickness of the stone, and then the fall of a fathom from the slope¡¯s end to the topmost tier¡ªand left by the doors, but it seemed rude nonetheless. Moreover, she had personal reasons to avoid notice. She clicked her tongue in signal to Cobry, and tipped her head back towards the cliff¡¯s foot.


    ¡°How often do we have moots?¡± she asked, as at last they ambled east towards the Kavinsrae road. The latest crop of grass in the broad river-meadow had just been cut and lay now drying for hay, and the sweet smell rose all about them.


    ¡°Dunno. First one I¡¯ve seen, and I¡¯ve been here three years. But, couple years ago, Raven¡¯s Trace had one, mostly just them but Mistress Carialla went, and then, same season, Rose House did too and that¡¯s when old Garrod went and stayed a while. Funny things, aren¡¯t they?¡±


    She agreed, not asking if the questions raised were ever discussed. They were; often loudly, vigorously, and even violently, but never in the moot itself. Mealtimes had become remarkably educational in recent weeks. Among the lessons she had learned was to take her suppers in hiding. For she herself was the chief reason for this moot.


    It seemed that the Runedaur had, over the ages, come to regard the gods as something like figures of speech and nothing more, metaphors that only the simple and superstitious took literally. The story of Arngas, and Rothesay¡¯s undeniable powers, had shaken that belief to its foundations, and the response of the Order of Runedaur to such a conceptual earthquake was to poke and prod among the rubble and devastation with the avidity of ghouls for corpses. That they could have been so deeply, fundamentally wrong¡ªapparently wrong¡ªwas more an occasion for rapt fascination than for dismay. ¡°Oh, gods, I haven¡¯t had this much fun since Geilla-Davi took the Chain and Master Armaolin asked what a Runedaur is!¡± chortled a knight from Kingscroft, a man so elderly and battle-battered that he could barely move himself from a litter to a seat on the lowest tier. And then he caught what he had said and roared, ¡°Oh, gods, I guess I¡¯d best be fair careful of my expletives now!¡±


    ¡°How often do you get a chance to rethink the basis of existence?¡± Garrod had asked her, when she tried to shake some proper horror of chaos into him.


    ¡°How often do you want to?¡± she shot back. He patted her gently.


    ¡°If I am not overcome by surprise of this magnitude,¡± he suggested, smiling, ¡°shall I not be proof against any trick of a merely mortal opponent?¡±


    So he might be; but she was not proof against the inquisitiveness of Runedaur. Every last one wanted to see her sword, her strength, and such skill as could be shocked out of her, for himself. She was fast growing astoundingly furtive, keenly alert to the least irregularity that offered a Runedaur any concealment from which to jump her, or to surprise her with a yell of, ¡°Hey! You, girl! Come here and let¡¯s see if you can lift this!¡± This very morning she was summoned to see if she could lift a horse, but she escaped while that bunch worked out how she might do so without hurting the horse¡¯s belly; ¡°Maybe a leather sling and a pulley,¡± she heard as she slithered away around a corner and up the far stable wall. Yesterday, it was a quarter-ton lead ingot and a quarter-ton bale of hay lashed snug. The ingot was work enough, but she could not lift the hay at all, as she could find no way to get a grip on the awkward hulk.


    Tonight, Cobry showed her the secret entrance behind the Dorchastir butcher¡¯s middens. An old well with a rotting wood cover (¡°We bring a new one¡ªa new rotten-looking one¡ªout here every so often,¡± he told her); a drop of four or five ells to cold water and a descent of a fathom to a sidewise tunnel just big enough to kneel in and twice her full extension, fingertips to pointing toes. That tunnel sloped a little upwards as well, and then one broke air in a twisting passage, nature¡¯s work only triflingly aided by art, that writhed through the deep stone to the caves under Colderwild.


    They crawled out at last in a lower buttery, and then Rothesay bounded up to the main kitchen four steps at a stride.


    Smoke from ages of cooking-fires sharpened the smell of the air here to a throat-piercing edge, but, soft and dense as gold, the summery perfume of honey and the intoxicating fragrance of strawberries sheathed it tonight. The half-dozen people sitting about the tables seemed to be there just to breathe. She hurried past them to the big copper kettle, swung free of the hearth on its crane, and plucked down a wooden spoon without looking.


    She prodded the deep ruby mass¡ªspun sharply about, wielding the spoon menacingly, and felt almost certain that at least one of the men at the table, and maybe one of the women, too, relaxed out of attack-readiness¡ªthen scooped up a spoonful and critically watched it slide, ooze, and at last plop back down. A freshened aroma of strawberries wafted up, twining invisible arms coyly about her. Nice, she thought, unmoved, but the proof¡¯s in the eating of you. Taking a delicate nibble of the gel still clinging to the spoon, she rolled it slowly over her tongue, considering, pondering, picking up every last nuance and examining it exhaustively before putting it aside for the next. And at last she grinned. Damn, I¡¯m good. Take that, you old Arngas. I bet you couldn¡¯t even boil water without burning the pot.


    ¡°Well? Well? Is it ready yet?¡± impatient helpers boiled over into voice. Rothesay turned her grin on the group sitting at the table, and the four now jamming the main doorway. This was her second batch of strawberry preserves; the success of the first accounted for this near dozen of assistants: they were the ones who had Ghost-won the chore of crocking¡ªand the attendant privilege of sampling as they went.


    ¡°Patience, patience,¡± she cooed, casting a spark-spell into the wood ready-laid in the hearth and swinging the pot back in. ¡°All this great lot has to get back to a boil, yet. You¡¯ve time for a beer or two¡ªwhat the devil¡ª?¡±


    A distant, confused echo of argumentative people rolled down the narrow steps winding from the southern courtyard, an echo swiftly overborne by its original as the argument came down as well, counterpointed with some huge, rather poorly-made bell being struck at random. One last, loud bonk resounded in the last turn, and the cheap bell fell silent. ¡°Ah, shit!¡± said the entire argument, and then also fell silent.


    Her assistants gazed warily at the archway; Rothesay stayed by her cauldron, stirring, stirring and straining to see.


    The Colderwild smith¡ªwhat was his name again? something like Vakiloth, and him M¨®riad¡ªstumped down the last half-flight till he could just peer under the arch. ¡°Lend a hand, with youse, right?¡± he groused peremptorily, and then noticed Rothesay. His beard split in a grin that outshone his bald head, and he pointed at her like flinging a spear. ¡°Hey, now we¡¯ve got it! Come, then!¡± Copper studs in his leather vambrace flashed in the firelight with the sweep of his summoning arm, and he vanished back up the steps without waiting to see that she followed.


    ¡°But I¡¯ve got to stir this¡ª¡± Rothesay began, when Gatha, something like Carialla¡¯s right-hand witch, took the long spoon from her and gave her an encouraging shove. Rothesay sighed, wiped her hands on her short summer tunic, and grumbled off after the smith. Glancing back just as she ducked the low arch, she saw the spoon stirring all on its own, and her eyes widened. The preserves were thick; even she felt the force needed to disturb so much. Gatha was a sorceress to reckon with, then.


    Vakiloth stood just below the small square landing where the stairs made a turn; two men and a woman filled the last steps above it. Solidly wedged between them, half on its side, a fine great kettle barred the passage.


    Rothesay stared. Had the pot been made all of gold, she would have been less astonished. But it was black, black as the stones of Colderwild¡¯s outer walls, black as the Earthshaker¡¯s face. A whole cauldron, all of iron. Vakiloth grinned.


    ¡°And can you pick that up, eh?¡±


    She shrugged. At least this was a strength contest with a point. Marvelling, her preserves forgotten, she gazed over the wonder, looking for a good leverage spot. The uppermost edge of the rim: experimentally, she grab¡ª


    ¡ªfalling, a hard band crushing her ribs, she leaped convulsively, hurling her back into the wall of the stairwell. She flung her arms wide, clutching desperately at the stone. Vakiloth blinked at her in surprise, and she realized that the hard band had been the pressure of his arms, catching her.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°Are you all right, love?¡± said the woman; Lanag?, from Raven¡¯s Trace.


    ¡°What happened?¡± the young man beside her asked, in curiosity rather than concern. ¡°Did you faint, or what?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Rothesay echoed.


    Before she could sort her sensations enough even to begin to shape a reply, Vakiloth reached mildly for her uphill hand. Numbly she let him take it, and his swift but gentle shove in her belly tumbl¡ª


    The four Runedaur looked down at the redhaired dishrag slumped, moveless, in the depths of the sidelong pot. Several from the kitchen squeezed up the narrow way, in time to see the curious young man reach in, pulled up an arm and let go; it dropped bonelessly.


    ¡°Well, now, what d¡¯y¡¯ make of that?¡± someone murmured.


    Vakiloth licked a finger and held it under her nose, then quickly grabbed an arm, the curious young man seized the other, and they popped her out.


    ¡ªleaping in cold terror, smashing into a man on the steps below her, who staggered back but held firm.


    ¡°You all right?¡± asked Vakiloth warily.


    ¡°Oh, sure!¡± Rothesay shot back, clutching her rescuer¡¯s tunic, her eyes huge, staring back over her shoulder at the dreadful pot. ¡°Naturally! Why not?¡± Slowly, grudgingly, helpless memory yielded to fancy, to make at least a kind of sense of¡ªnot ¡®the experience¡¯; there was no ¡®experience¡¯ for memory to grasp. Instead. . . .


    ¡°Speak.¡± The command came so gently from the man who had caught her this time, one Kiellod, a Colderwilder, that she had no thought to resist.


    ¡°Like,¡± she began, groping for words. ¡°Like a candle,¡± she said at last, and looked back at Kiellod. ¡°You know? When you snuff it out,¡± she shuddered on the word ¡®snuff,¡¯ ¡°and then bring another flame close to it, right away, but you don¡¯t touch it¡ªhow it¡¯s all aflame again, just like that?¡± She stared back at the iron pot. Like that, she thought: the whole world snuffed out and then¡ªsnuffed?¡ªback in again. Not an unpleasant sensation; not any sensation at all. Utterly horrible.


    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡±


    Her heart leaped to her throat. Still more horrible: Dav¡¯s voice from up the stairs. Oh, merciless gods, not Master Inquisitive, not now!


    In a moment, he stood across the wedged kettle from her, full of the story, his eyes keen and blazing.


    ¡°Try it again.¡±


    ¡°No!¡±


    ¡°You are afraid?¡±


    ¡°Yes! And you¡¯d be, too!¡±


    His head tipped regally. ¡°I do not doubt it. Try it again.¡±


    ¡°NO! Why?¡±


    ¡°I am the teacher,¡± he said, just short of smiling.


    She weakened; though even as she did, she saw why she did. It occurred to her that that ought to make a difference, but she had not the will for it just now. Not wholly. ¡°S-so, teach me something,¡± she demanded, stalling. Her voice quavered, but at the moment she feared the pot more than she feared the Master.


    He nodded slightly. ¡°Then: because you are afraid to do so.¡±


    ¡°I sh-should do a thing, because I¡¯m afraid to?¡±


    ¡°Are you harmed?¡±


    ¡°Well¡ª¡± She checked herself over. Though they told her how she had fallen, she was not even bruised, thanks to their quickness. ¡°Er. No,¡± she admitted. Dav said nothing. The rest said nothing. Her palms sweated, she shook like a bowstring, but at last, with a little sob, she ventured one fingertip slowly towards the pot, hoping at every quarter inch that Dav would call off the test. The black surface of the kettle looked like a hole in the world, a hole that nonetheless grinned like a goblin at her, waiting to swallow her into oblivion again. A finger¡¯s breadth away, she stopped, swallowed hard, prayed violently to no one in particular, crushed her eyes shut and touch¡ª


    ¡ªsuspended, Kiellod¡¯s hands in her armpits, her buckled knees level with her navel, and she stood up sharply, wet with sweat.


    ¡°Again,¡± said Dav.


    She glared across at him, a steady glare of cold hate. One day, you bastard, I will have the power to kill you. If he read this in her, he made no reply, and in fury she grab¡ª


    ¡ªsuspended, as before. She jerked to her feet. ¡°This is very tiresome,¡± she grated. ¡°And I¡¯ve¡ª¡±


    ¡°Again.¡±


    Staring him full on, with not a glance for her object she swung her hand all but indifferently into contact. This time, Kiellod let her drop almost no way at all; she had only to reassume command of her abandoned body. Dav glanced inquiringly at the smith.


    Vakiloth fumbled in the deep pockets of his leather apron and fetched out an iron ring, a palm¡¯s breadth across, and held it out to her. She recoiled, shot Dav a glance of mingled rage and dismay, ground her teeth, and took¡ª. And agai¡ª. And by the third time, she was too embarrassed and angry to care about the damnable iron: the world fell away, the world came back, and one day she would beat his grin into his teeth.


    Vakiloth scrabbled in a pocket again and came up with a small orangish flake, which he passed to her. She turned it in her fingers, snapped it in half, handed the pieces back, puzzled.


    ¡°Well, now, that¡¯s interesting,¡± said Dav.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got preserves boiling!¡± Rothesay shouted at him.


    ¡°Do you? Well, one more trial: are there gloves down there?¡±


    Someone passed up leather gauntlets from the hearthside tools, Rothesay put them on and, knowing full well what he was about, did not wait but seized the rim of the black pot. And pulled. It scraped free of the far wall with a long metallic shriek and rolled on its bottom edge; she groped for control, braced it with her thigh¡ª


    ¡ªslumped against Kiellod halfway down the stair. The rest held the kettle, saving it from tumbling on down and crushing them. Dav stepped into it by way of passage through the landing, and crouched to stick a finger in the hole in her trousers, just below the fraying hem of her tunic.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry; stuff gets torn,¡± she mumbled, fearing reprimand, though how anyone¡¯s clothes could be expected to stay whole in the unending violence of training, she did not know.


    ¡°Here.¡± Dav draped a corner of his own thin silk sleeve over the edge of the pot.


    Feeling bolder, since the leather gauntlets had negated the weird power of the iron, she pulled off a glove and gingerly touched the silk.


    Nothing happened.


    ¡°Well, well,¡± Dav murmured. ¡°Well, let be, now; though your mistress may summon you to her, when she learns of this,¡± he grinned.


    ¡°Gaaah!¡± broke from her not wholly unwilling, and she retreated to her preserves, in their beautiful, warm, friendly, ruddy-brown copper pot.


    At long last she sat, bowl in hand, crosslegged on the table in the scullery. She had the last half-cupful of preserves that no crock nor belly of her assistants could accommodate, and idly she stuck a laden spoon in her mouth and watched a visitor from Windhome wash out the copper pot.


    A guest, she would have called him before the moot, but Runedaur had funny ideas in hosting as in everything else. Of course there was four times the cooking, and therefore cleaning, to be done, just to feed everyone, on top of the summer-work of putting up all manner of preserves against the winter, haying, and so forth, but the Runedaur, wherever they came from, fell in with all of it just as if it were their own home.


    ¡°It is,¡± the Waterspook pot-washer, Beorlaf, replied when she remarked on it. ¡°And it¡¯s one of the homes that know it.¡±


    Rothesay mulled that over as she sucked the spoon clean. ¡°Very well, sir, I give up: what do you mean, one of the ones that, er, know it?¡±


    Beorlaf pulled up the chain to raise a gate in the pipe from a roof-cistern, letting a vigorous stream of water splash into the cauldron. He stepped back, to be heard over the swift gurgling. ¡°Everywhere¡¯s home,¡± he grinned, and winked. ¡°Most of ¡¯em don¡¯t know that, though. Some of ¡¯em don¡¯t even want to let you in the door. You have to act special, there. They wouldn¡¯t believe you, if you said you¡¯d come home there.¡±


    ¡°I can just imagine.¡±


    ¡°Just don¡¯t let yourself start believing what they believe. It¡¯s home, whatever they think, and you do what you have to do.¡± He shoved the pipe-gate closed again and thrust a hairy blond arm into his copper pool, to slosh away the remains of the soap.


    Rothesay took another spoonful of strawberry sweetness. And here is a ranking knight¡ªBeorlaf¡¯s name on the choreboard was always struck through; almost always, unless, as tonight, he wanted the task¡ªdoing what he had to do, the washing-up, while a novice almost too new to find her way around her own hall sat by and looked on, eating a treat. He made up for it, though, once he had the pot hung back in the hearth. He attacked bruisingly, but informatively, and, once he had Ghosted onto her his place in the haying, let her practice on him a new blocking move and a throw.


    And then he was gone, and her sample of preserves was gone, and her bowl and spoon washed up and put away, and she had imposed an entirely unnecessary degree of order upon the kitchenware, and she could not find the copper polish, and now nothing stood between her and thinking about iron.


    What the hell had all that been about? Plainly there was no point in asking her new masters; indeed, plainly she now had more reason than ever to slink and hide because sure as Areolin rose in the morning every last one of these mad jackdaws would want to see it for himself. It was sheer amazing that the entire moot had not come crowding down after Dav.


    Did Padriag know anything about it? She wished she had a mirror like his, or that she could fly north and ask him¡ª


    With that thought, and with only a slight kind of ¡®wobble¡¯ in her bearings, she ¡®intended¡¯ the old oak on the knoll in Andrastir.


    Nothing happened.


    She tried again, and again more wildly, scrabbling for the least hint of the vertiginous peerie-realm. The stones of the scullery slept and she could not touch their dream.


    Wait, girl, wait: something Master Merry had said, only a few days ago, about learning being like climbing into the mountains; that the path was never a steady ascent, but rose and dipped and¡ªyes, yes, only persevering took one at last to the peaks, but it was a screaming nuisance that she should have stumbled into a ¡®dip¡¯ in learning to travel the peerie-land just when she really needed the knack. She closed her eyes, ferociously attempted to relax with one of the breathing techniques, felt irrationally resentful when it succeeded, and, steadier now, reached for the Otherworld again. And this time she did not trouble herself with reproach or anger when her efforts failed, over and over.


    Still, when she opened her eyes to the same old everyday scullery after she had lost count of all her attempts, she calmly plucked a fist-sized stone where it had loosened from its mortar in the hearth, and calmly but with great force shattered it against the wall. In a strange cool rage, she passed from the room in great gliding strides, and flowed more than climbed up the stairs¡ªand stopped halfway.


    Halfway places: fens, shores, slopes, and doorways, and stairways, places neither one thing nor the other, where the Wall of the worlds was thinnest. Of course, of course! She giggled, a little embarrassed, feeling much as she might if she had just been failing of her best sword-play against the dazzling attack of a tree bole.


    And tried again, and though she stayed yet in Colderwild, she thought she could feel, or maybe hear, the Otherworld now, nearer to her ¡®touch.¡¯ And she sensed that she would not pass through even here, however she tried, though whether the barrier were her own feebleness or some innate impenetrability, she could not say.


    When in doubt, Leoff said, always assume that the fault is in you. You will learn so much, in attempting redress, that even if¡ªperhaps singularly because¡ªyou never succeed in your original object, you will have made for yourself unguessable power.


    True enough, she thought, but none too hopeful of your original object and I want to go to Andrastir. Now.

 XIV: Monsters (pt 2/3): Facing Fear

    So, the worlds could not be crossed at any point, but some places were easier of passage than others. Memory of the white lines that had intruded on her imagining of Padriag¡¯s map, back in Andrastir with Onions, rushed back to mind, but only as memory, dim and powerless, and, she was sure, none too accurate. She had paid little attention when Padriag tried to teach her geography; had he said anything of such lines? She tried the archway at the top of the stairs, and the doorway out into the courtyard. Midnight lay over the dim stones of Colderwild; and she looked at the main keep and the wan yellow light high up in Carialla¡¯s window. There must be places where great magic worked better than elsewhere, and who would know the local patterns better than, oh buggers, the Mistress?


    As Rothesay shifted from foot to foot, weighing the risks of such a consultation, voices echoed up from a stairwell across the courtyard, from under the great house called the King¡¯s Hall. She shrank back into the depths of an elderberry bush.


    ¡°¡ªan imprisoned soul,¡± she heard Merrithorander muse aloud. ¡°He has learned aye well how to clasp Cuernaio¡¯s Locks.¡±


    ¡°Only one way out, then,¡± said an unfamiliar woman¡¯s voice, an impassive voice.


    ¡°He can be useful on his way,¡± Dav put in curtly. Rothesay could see them now, through the tangle of leaves and incipient fruit, as they strode for the keep. Dav glanced sharply at the bush, but said nothing and made no sign; still, she was certain that he not only knew someone was hiding there, but who she was as well. She sat motionless till long after they had gone.


    Midnight. Maybe not the best hour for finding the best place to pass between the worlds. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and excused herself from the consultation with Carialla for now. Slinking like a weasel, she crept off to the healing-houses, three neat little stone cottages on the very edge of the western cliff; the airy rush of Daorlas¡¯s rapids a hundred fathoms below lulled the sick and weary into sweet sleep, and Rothesay could not smell so much as a whiff of the iron-reek of the armory far across Colderwild. Hidden well in a nest of aromatic ferns, she slept undisturbed till dawn.


    ¡°Welcome back.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Mistress.¡±


    ¡°You have been avoiding me.¡±


    Rothesay hesitated, realized it was probably already too late to dissemble even if there had ever been any point in it, and murmured stupidly, ¡°Yes, Mistress.¡±


    ¡°You are afraid of me.¡±


    It was not a question. It did not need to be. But why not also announce, The sky is blue, or Water is wet, as well? ¡°Well, yes, Mistress.¡± There might, just possibly, have been the faintest sardonic resonance in Rothesay¡¯s voice, chastisement for stating the pathetically obvious.


    ¡°Look at me.¡±


    Swallowing hard, Rothesay slowly raised her eyes from her own bare and dirty toes to Carialla¡¯s face, without raising her head. Strange, how brown eyes could look so hard and cold.


    ¡°You avoid me. Does this lessen your fear of me?¡±


    ¡°Er¡ª¡± Rothesay¡¯s gaze dropped again, and in sudden panic she yanked it back up.


    ¡°It but postpones it. What becomes of a fear unfaced?¡±


    ¡°It, er, grows?¡±


    ¡°Therefore¡ª?¡±


    Rothesay almost laughed in surprise. ¡°I, er, should come up more often?¡±


    Carialla only flicked one eyebrow.


    She sat deep in the same cushioned chair as before, still heavily robed in cream-colored silks, though mercifully no fire burned on her hearth this hot morning and a bit of breeze idled in through the tall windows. Whatever work had previously hung on her loom must have been finished, for another one, mostly in dark green, filled it today. The jaunty skeleton had lost his tankard and now held a garland of pale pink roses. Rothesay wondered again who he had been, but had no doubt now that he had been Runedaur, and kin by humor to Colden the severed head, besides.


    Carialla upturned a tall hourglass on the little table beside her, and nodded for Rothesay to take the other chair. ¡°You¡¯d best be comfortable.¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s neck hairs prickled as she sat down gingerly, and then she gritted her teeth: the Mistress held out one of Vakiloth¡¯s iron rings. ¡°Oh. That.¡± She sighed, and opened her hand¡ª


    ¡ªCarialla, leaning forward on her knees, pulled the ring away, and watched her face so intently that Rothesay blushed, hoping she was clean enough. ¡°What is the date?¡±


    ¡°Er. The seventeenth day of Dannin?¡±


    The witch again touched the ring to Rothesay¡¯s hand¡ª


    ¡ª¡°Five, taken thrice, less eight?¡±


    ¡°Seven.¡±


    Again the ring¡ª


    ¡ªa flicker: the Mistress¡¯s face, shadowed in thought, not a foot from her own¡ª


    ¡ªCarialla settled back into her cushions, and turned the iron ring slowly in her fingers. Rothesay waited to be quizzed, but this time the quiz was silent. Absent-mindedly, she remembered to breathe, and scratched at a slight prickle on her left wrist, and yelped in pain, and alarm at blood welling freely from an inch-long gash. ¡°Hey! Hey, that wasn¡¯t¡ª!¡± Telling the Mistress of Runedaur that it was not very nice to carve up one¡¯s unconscious guests sounded stupid before she ever voiced it, and she bit it off, but angrily, and squeezed hard to stanch the wound.


    ¡°Here.¡± Carialla laid aside the iron and, taking Rothesay¡¯s reluctant hand, dabbed it with a white cloth dampened with a pungent metheglin, and bound it securely. ¡°A small price, for so great a learning.¡±


    ¡°Whose learning?¡± Rothesay demanded indignantly.


    Carialla flicked an eyebrow again. ¡°You feel nothing in that state. Nothing at all. Moreover,¡± Carialla¡¯s eyes gleamed, and her voice dropped, ¡°you do not even bleed.¡± She glanced aside at the hourglass. Its upper bulb was empty. As Rothesay¡¯s jaw dropped, the witch went on, ¡°Nor do you breathe.¡±


    Rothesay¡¯s jaw stayed dropped. ¡°How long could I go on like that?¡±


    ¡°I do not know. I have never seen the like, girl. But I am loath to try you further: I have already robbed you of an hour, and though you returned as readily from that hour as from a moment¡¯s trial, I cannot conscience a longer test.¡±


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Rothesay shot Carialla a sharp glance at the word ¡®conscience,¡¯ as being, to Rothesay¡¯s mind, almost an irony. If the witch noticed, she ignored it.


    ¡°You would do well to learn how much, or how little, is needed for the effect. I myself have already learned this: that to cast a spell while I hold this ring,¡± she rolled it from one palm to the other, ¡°requires my uttermost effort; with the ring, and this nugget¡ª¡± she held up what looked like a small, shrivelled grape, not yet a raisin, ¡°¡ªI can do nothing at all.¡±


    Rothesay gazed at the metal in the Mistress¡¯s hands till she no longer saw it, but Padriag¡¯s hearth. The old wizard knew everything. Didn¡¯t he? He had no iron in his house, she knew well; was that chance, or choice? Chance, she thought; surely he would have told me about it, if he had known. Slowly, as though possessed and directed by Carialla¡¯s question rather than her own will, she put forth her hand and took the nugg¡ª


    ¡ªfalling to the rug, she flung her hands down to catch herself, jarring her shoulderblades. The wrinkled little blob of iron bounced away to smirk at her from a leaf in the carpet pattern.


    But, ¡°What,¡± Carialla¡¯s iciest voice poured down on the back of her neck, ¡°is this?¡± She planted a slippered foot on Rothesay¡¯s hand.


    ¡°Um¡ªit¡¯s my, um, hand, Mistress.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a wrist begging to be broken.¡± Releasing the hand, she raised the girl back up by her chin, till their eyes were on a level. ¡°You do not know how to fall,¡± she growled.


    Rothesay decided not to offer the observation that falling was not a thing one learned, that it happened all on its own without any effort or skill on anyone¡¯s part; not even as a joke.


    ¡°Go to . . . ¡± Carialla¡¯s gaze wandered to the window. ¡°Ragalda. She is here from Rose House. You have no other duties till you can fall aright: my Chain is on.¡±


    A week later, she had worked up to dropping as much as ten feet onto turf, to the clear pleasure of her Silent instructress. Ragalda, a Geillisel in her middle twenties, only a little shorter than Rothesay and almost as willowy, wore the martial Black rather than the magical Silver, but she wore it woman-fashion, not manlike. Rothesay, imitating her, immediately found great need of skill in falling, as she kept stepping on her skirts at every unexpected move. Ragalda could run Colderwild¡¯s obstacle courses in hers; Rothesay was envious and bruised, and her skirts were torn.


    Then she was amazed to learn that Ragalda had actually been one of the Sisterhood of Sorche, before seeking the Runedaur. Why had she left? Well, the Runedaur had more to teach, for one; the Sisterhood limited its prowess to battle. And, most unlike the Order, the Sisterhood was jealous of its members, permitting no dual loyalties: one either belonged exclusively or not at all. Forced to choose, then, Ragalda had chosen the one that forced no choice.


    And there was also the matter that the Sisterhood worshipped Fire, and Fire¡¯s goddess. Among the Runedaur, Ragalda found leave to wonder what ¡®worship¡¯ really meant, and what it was worth; she had been enjoying this Moot, if ¡®enjoy¡¯ might be used of a passion so fierce and eager.


    Rothesay shook her puzzled head, baffled by ¡®worship,¡¯ finding no echo of any such feeling in her own soul, and flung herself from the roof of the stables. The hair of the man she almost scalped with her dive glinted like copper in the hazy afternoon glow, and as she rolled upon the straw-padded ground, she realized with a grin that the attack¡ªwhoof! it was the ¡®Serpent¡¯ grab, by the knees, and she had been expecting ¡®Lion¡¯s Jaws¡¯ on her neck, argh argh argh¡ªcame from Rory.


    She was not too happy to see him to try to break free, however, nor surrendered till she had to spit straw to cry ¡®Yield!¡¯ Gloriously, Ragalda granted her a free hour to go and visit, and soon once again they sat atop the Tower of Stars with bread, wine and cheese.


    He had indeed pulled off his Challenge, and the lady in question was even now somewhere in the hold, being entertained by Master Lee. Rothesay begged for the story.


    He grimaced. ¡°Well, you know, the Challenge was, to ¡®steal¡¯ her, right?¡±


    ¡°I remember that; what did they mean?¡±


    ¡°Did I know? I just thought it meant, grab her and run off, never gave it a thought till there I am, in Earl Stakr¡¯s mead hall, looking like I¡¯m Dun Brean again, right, and watching this really pretty woman hand-feed him bits of goose. Everyone¡¯s watching her, and him, and most of ¡¯em jealous, too. I¡¯m trying to figure out ways to get out, once I¡¯ve got her; tricks, like turning all the horses loose, or tying them all together, all kinds of stuff. And I think, whatever I do, it¡¯s going to be a load of work. Stakr¡¯ll be after me, all his men¡¯ll be after me, for honor¡¯s sake some of them, and some of ¡¯em just to rob the robber. They might light beacon-fires, and then the whole countryside would be against us. Oh, and not to mention the small detail of the quean herself objecting to the project! One huge, monster load of work, all the way. Then I think, but this is Master Lee¡¯s Challenge.¡± He glanced sidelong at her, and bit his cheese.


    ¡°So?¡±


    ¡°¡®So¡¯? ¡®So¡¯? Hey-yah! So you need to spend a lot more time with him than you did, Sugar! Master Lee worships levers. You know levers? Push a little here, move a great big thing over there?¡±


    ¡°Of course I know what levers are!¡±


    ¡°So, Master Lee¡¯s master motto is, ¡®the greatest effect with the least effort.¡¯ Leverage. So I knew I had to think of an easier way to do this. ¡¯Cos if I¡¯d brute-forced it, even if I pulled it off, Master Lee¡¯d probably disqualify it, or something.¡±


    ¡°Well? Out with it: what did you do?¡± She bounced a bun off his head for emphasis.


    Rory half-grinned around his cheese. He also blushed. ¡°Wellll¡ªwhat if the lady wanted to go?¡±


    ¡°What if¡ª? You seduced her?¡± Rothesay squeaked. Rory shrugged. ¡°But, but the earl, and all his men, they¡¯d still be after you. And madder than ever, I should think!¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I thought about that, too.¡±


    ¡°And?¡±


    He squirmed. ¡°¡®And.¡¯ Erm. Well, after, you know, after she agreed to run away with me, I, uh, had a little talk with her. About whether she¡¯d rather have all the excitement of us being chased all the way to the Holywell, and whether Stakr¡¯d be mad enough to burn her at the stake for forsaking him, if we were caught; or if, you know, she truly wanted to get away. Took a bit, getting her to see that those were two different things, but finally she said she wasn¡¯t stupid, of course she¡¯d want to get clear. Been wanting to leave for a long time anyway, it turned out; funny. So I said. . . .¡± His voice faded, and he stared unseeing into the stones of the wall opposite. The bit of cheese he had been rolling between his fingers as he spoke, he now mashed thoughtlessly flat.


    ¡°Said what?¡±


    He shrugged again, almost a shudder. ¡°I told her how to, how to, uh, well, lose Stakr¡¯s interest. Make him think he was the one who didn¡¯t want her anymore. Took a couple of days; meantime, I, I¡ª¡± he sighed explosively and pitched the cheese-mash off the tower. ¡°I made myself a name. Wrangled some of the big boys into picking fights with me, so I could bloody their stupid untrained noses. Stakr throws her over for this little slip of a girl and I¡¯m such a hero everyone figures I¡¯m bloody well entitled to her¡ªwell, one slow learner wanted to fight me for her even then, but the others laughed him out of the hall¡ªand off we rode and here the hell we are.¡±


    He finished in so savage a voice that she could only stare in wonder. ¡°What, er, what¡¯s the matter, then? You¡¯ve got her, and now you¡¯re stuck with her? ¡ªIs she expecting you to marry her?¡± she yelped.


    ¡°Huh! I¡¯d deserve it if she did, wouldn¡¯t I?¡± he snarled. ¡°Oh, no: see, I¡¯ve just been setting her up to get bored with me, now! Gods!¡± he swore, bounding to his feet. He strode to the parapet with a vehemence that gave her a moment¡¯s horror that he was going to fling himself from it. But he rounded about, and flung his arms wide instead.


    ¡°All ye gods above and below! It¡¯s too easy! Once you know, oh, just a cute trick or two, I mean, hell, I¡¯m just a student, nothing like a knight, much less a buggering master¡ªI mean, these were people!¡± he shouted as if she had suggested they might have been parsnips, and she could only stare in shock. ¡°And I worked them like puppets on sticks. Demons and darkness¡ªcan you imagine what I¡¯d do if I were good at it?¡± He stopped, panting as though he had been running, and though he fixed his wild glare on her, she was not certain that he saw her. ¡°And¡ªI can¡¯t not do it, now,¡± he went on, and now he pleaded, as though she might have some power to undo his. ¡°They don¡¯t have the first idea why they do what they do most of the time. And I do, or some of it¡ªso, so now, whether I meddle, or I don¡¯t: I¡¯m still the thrice-damned puppetmaster. Compared to them,¡± he amended. ¡°I¡¯m still the one who says how it goes, or doesn¡¯t, or what the hell.¡± His head swung from side to side, his eyes groped the stones as if looking for a door, an escape. ¡°What do I do now?¡± he whispered, perhaps not to her. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t be able to do this. What the hell do I do?¡±


    She sat very still, not to startle him like some wild bird. Had he ever run off, like M¨®ravn, or Kahan? She thought she understood his dismay; and yet, right now I could use a bit of a first idea why people do what they do! ¡°Are you going to,¡± no tactful expression came to mind so she blundered on, ¡°er, run away?¡±


    He snorted, and seemed to recover something of himself. ¡°What the hell for? I¡¯d still know too much. Too much and not enough. They know,¡± he waved a brawny arm at Colderwild laid out far below. ¡°They know this stuff.¡± He sighed like a sob and slumped as limp as uttermost exhaustion back down beside her. ¡°They¡¯re the only ones in the world who¡¯ll even know what in hell I¡¯m talking about.¡±


    Rothesay put her arm across his shoulders and he leaned against her, and they sat together silent till Sothia¡¯s bell chimed. And one with his unhappiness was her inexplicable joy. She suddenly felt that she liked him immensely. It was a long time before she thought to wonder why; still longer to learn the sweetness of the fear of power.

 XIV: Monsters (pt 3/3): Blood

    Summer¡¯s power grew to His peak. Though Areolin had begun to ride down the southern sky, the heat rose, and the land sweltered. Standing a watch on the Sunrise Tower, determined to stand strong, Rothesay grimly ignored her sweaty misery, grimly ignored her sweatless misery, her buzzing head and dizziness, and then ignored everything, would she or would she not, till she woke with a thundering headache¡ªbut in blessed coolth and dimness in one of the infirmary cottages. Rory came and visited her there, a welcome end to an embarrassing succession of lecturers on sun-poisoning, including Dav personally. All Rory said was, ¡°Serves you right for being stupid. Eat these blueberries.¡±


    He himself seemed to be feeling better. ¡°Yeah. Sorry I haven¡¯t seen you much this last week; Master Lee and I, we, uh, had a lot to work out.¡±


    ¡°What did he say?¡±


    ¡°About being a puppetmaster?¡±


    Rory sprawled along the low stone parapet that walled the cliff side of the cottage porch. For heat¡¯s sake, he wore only a kind of twisted breechcloth that left his cheeks as bare and browned as the rest of him, and the setting Sun jeweled him down with copper sparkles from all his fine red hairs. Rothesay, deep-shadowed by the low roof, privately grinned at the effect. Now he stared down for several silent minutes at the river so far below. Suddenly he lay flat, and stretched an arm down to pluck a stalk of mint from an imperfection in the cliff. ¡°Well,¡± he said at last, biting the stalk and sending the cool fragrance bursting about them, ¡°he never did, not in words I could tell over to you. He couldn¡¯t get over celebrating the fact that I had a proble¡ª¡¯scuse me, challenge!¡ªwith it in the first place. You¡¯d have thought my being all plagued about it was the greatest joy of his personal life.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand. What¡¯s that mean?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me. When I know that one, I won¡¯t be only a fullfledged Runedaur, I¡¯ll be an almighty master myself.¡± He chuckled, but it was a wicked sound. ¡°Master Lee and Master D¡ªtwo master-talks in one summer. Hasn¡¯t this been a master-ful season!¡±


    Master Dav? Oh, right: that misunderstanding in the battle. ¡°That must have been pretty hard on you, everyone thinking it was all about Kahan like that,¡± she said kindly.


    He turned his face to her slowly, his gaze now black and remote. ¡°Who thinks it wasn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Er¡ªer¡ªonce we realized that, that Harlan, you know. . . .¡±


    ¡°Harlan!¡± He spat the name. ¡°Really tall, a¡¯n¡¯t he? ¡ªwasn¡¯t he,¡± he amended bitterly. ¡°No, sorry, Sugar: all I saw was the Hawk-man. And you can think whatever you like about that.¡±


    He gazed away westward again. She struggled for composure, with no idea what to think except that she did not like it at all. Presently she found breath to say, very evenly, ¡°I like Kahan.¡±


    He glanced back, puzzled. ¡°Well, yeah. Hawkman¡¯s got a lot to like.¡±


    And he meant it. ¡°Er. You say that?¡±


    ¡°Whyn¡¯t I say it? Am I stupid?¡±


    ¡°No! Nor are you very consistent, are you?¡±


    Now he laughed. ¡°Inconsistent, huh? I must be nearly a master already!¡± He rolled off the wall. ¡°You feel up to walking about yet? Sun¡¯s about down.¡±


    They ambled out into the gardens, already shadowed by the heights west beyond Daorlas. Others had anticipated them, singly, paired, or in quiet conversational threes, and idly weeding or mulching as they talked. In the melting air, some like Rory wore as much as a breechcloth; many, like Master Caltern even in winter, went naked. Across the garden, among the beans, a woman of Sothia¡¯s generation wore a broad straw hat to hold a linen veil across her back and shoulders, and a sack on a strap. Her naked old feet were quite clean: the Order permitted bare Runedaur but not bare earth, and the mat between the vegetables lay as much as a foot thick, not a crumb of soil showing. The Order eagerly, albeit cheaply, bought hay that untimely rain had ruined; farmers shook their baffled heads, but they took the money.


    Rothesay walked and feared no Ghost attack: she herself was clothed, in a thin linen shift like a sheet with a head-hole, reserved for invalids. Perhaps she did not need such aegis, though.


    Padriag used the Sferan calendar, and so she knew it well enough, though every year had brought fresh confusion in trying to relate his temporal wishes to those of Harrowater. Dannin was one of the four ¡®long¡¯ months, with an extra week, the celestial week, in addition to the usual four. The celestial week had something of extra holiness about it, most commonly observed by semi-idleness. Even the Runedaur seemed inclined to participate. The mood all week so far had been unusually mellow. Perhaps it was only the weather. Best to be safe, and wear the invalid¡¯s linen. Runedaur did sometimes train in heavy heat, just for practice.


    To one side, a verbal bout picked up a little energy: ¡°And we¡¯re right back to my original question! Is a god to a normal man, as that man is to a halfwit?¡±


    ¡°But you¡¯re still assuming gods! What about other explanations for the girl¡¯s power?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think much of the last one; got a better?¡±


    The Moot, in the coolth of the Vasty Hall, had neither abated nor settled on any one line of inquiry. Rothesay wondered how they ever would.


    Some wag had planted the sunflowers in maze-form, and they were already tall; giving the maze a pass, she and Rory ducked through the grape arbors and came out behind another strolling couple. A young man in a student¡¯s summer black and his right arm in a sling walked with a woman half-silver of hair and all silver of dress. The youth waved his good arm in some expostulation.


    Rothesay dropped back. Rory, stopping with her, scowled thoughtfully. ¡°Who¡¯s he? One of ours?¡±


    ¡°Yes. No. Er. Not as a student. I think. Sort of a, er, guest.¡± Brusquely, Rothesay explained about the loathsome Geillath she had helped kidnap. ¡°They¡¯ve had him before the Moot, at least twice that I know of. I don¡¯t know why we let him go about like this. He¡¯s dangerous!¡±


    Rory grinned. ¡°So are we! Hey, Mistress Frele, there, she¡¯s the Rose House Healer and I¡¯ll wager a week of chores she broke his arm herself. But what¡¯s his story: demon-dazed? possessed?¡±


    ¡°I¡ªer, I don¡¯t know. I¡ª¡± She broke off, gritted her teeth, kicked herself soundly and confessed, ¡°Well, I¡¯ve never thought to ask, actually.¡±


    Rory searched her scarlet face, then squeezed her shoulders in a one-armed hug. ¡°Hard to do, when you¡¯re in the thick of it, Sugar. Hardest time of all.¡± Then he scrunched his eyes shut, making his drooping red moustache square out, to read from some inner scroll, ¡°The warrior keeps his soul remote though his body engages.¡±


    ¡°Right. If I weren¡¯t so tired, I¡¯d make you eat yonder moss.¡± She draped herself upon the benchlike lip of a fountain, dangled one leg in the tepid water, and stared up at the fading sky.


    ¡°You want to go back?¡±


    ¡°Not yet.¡±


    Rory continued to stare after Mistress Frele and her escort. ¡°That¡¯s ¡®the other one,¡¯¡± he murmured.


    She rolled her eyes but not her head at him. ¡°What ¡®other one¡¯?¡± He glanced back at her sharply; she thought he wanted to dodge the question, but his gaze flickered towards the main keep and suddenly she remembered the small company coming up from under the King¡¯s Hall, and Merrithorander¡¯s odd comment. ¡°And what¡¯re ¡®Cuernaio¡¯s Locks¡¯?¡±


    He scowled, thinking deeply. ¡°Oh, them,¡± he said at length. ¡°Probably it was ¡®Kornayos¡¯ or something originally; it¡¯s a Callem¨®rine thing. A lot of our stuff is. And the Locks, well¡ª¡±


    He slapped both arms across her, pinning her to the fountain-kerb, and blew a loud raspberry into her stomach. She shoved him off, laughing, almost shoving herself into the water. ¡°Hey!¡±


    ¡°Made you laugh,¡± he taunted.


    ¡°Yeah, so?¡±


    He rubbed his moustache. ¡°If it was important that you didn¡¯t, for some reason: could you hold it in?¡±


    ¡°I guess so. Sometimes. I guess it¡¯d depend on¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªon why it was so important. Yeah. Like if you¡¯re being a spy or something. Like that. That¡¯s some of our training. But it¡¯s not just how to hide what you¡¯re feeling, it¡¯s how to even feel something completely different, or nothing at all, if you need to.¡±


    ¡°Oh, joke away!¡±


    ¡°No joke, once you know how. But the Locks¡ªsee, you can do it so, so powerfully¡ªand especially if you don¡¯t know how you did it¡ªthat sounds stupid but I mean, some people just kind of stumble onto it, and if you don¡¯t know how you did something, you don¡¯t know how to undo it, see? Some people¡¯ve Locked themselves up. Can¡¯t feel anything. Don¡¯t feel anything. Like living dead, or something.¡±


    Rothesay tried to imagine this. ¡°If you can teach people how not to feel,¡± she said slowly, ¡°then you can teach them how to feel. Er?¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯d they want to learn?¡± When she peered up for explication, he said, ¡°Can¡¯t do anything you don¡¯t want to do. You¡¯re Locked, you can¡¯t even want to get unLocked.¡±


    She shivered. ¡°Ugh. But, that doesn¡¯t seem to be his problem; he seems to feel things. Anger, anyway.¡±


    ¡°Fear, too, then. Anger¡¯s just fear in a mask.¡±


    Rory stared after the troubled Geillath, and Rothesay remembered that they had not been talking about him. ¡°What ¡®other one¡¯?¡± she repeated.


    He gazed down at her as if from some vast height. When he finally spoke, it was to tell about some old Dun Brean kinsman who had died of the sun poisoning.


    She made some inane reply, by way of swallowing her surprise, and her pique. Clearly he regretted having let something slip; she needed no special Runedaur mind-seeing for so pointed a change of subject. She had snared a bit of initial training in that peculiar art, from Ragalda and also Istander: something about causing one¡¯s own body to match the target¡¯s body in all its patterns of slack and tension and pose, and trying to see what thoughts arose out of it. She rolled off the fountain-side to her feet, to stand and try the technique now, to see what it was he would not say. Rory¡¯s remote scowl burst into a coruscation of laughter, and he tumbled her into the pool for her audacity. But she managed a secure grip and took him in with her, and he cracked his skull on the stone feet of the marble water-nymph, and they retired together to the healing-houses to get him stitched closed again.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    There he left her, to pass the night in invalid¡¯s peace (¡°Why don¡¯t you attack me while I¡¯m sick, so I learn what real endurance is?¡± ¡°I might. Maybe when you¡¯ve been with us longer.¡±) But she would not be left in peace. Despite a desperate weariness, at full dark she slipped from the house and crept like a cat back across the grounds to the King¡¯s Hall and the cellar-ward stairs.


    The young moon had long set; Summer¡¯s stars were thick. Darkness breathed through Colderwild¡¯s stone promenades and mantled her about. The narrow threshold glimmered, an arched slot of dim grey in the blackness of the wall, from a torch or magelight far below.


    A small group of visiting Runedaur ambled up the stony path. They paused at the stair door, clustered shadows among shadows. Rothesay could make out no words, but a voice queried, another declined, and the shadow-cluster moved on, slightly smaller, as one lean part of it split off, filled the doorway, and descended under the Hall.


    So this was no secret to anyone else. No reason for her to be hiding and skulking, then. Yet still she waited, waited until the nearby courtyards and passages seemed empty enough, and crept down the stairs. At the bottom, the lonely torch sent its glow also down a long barrel-arched corridor. Doors, some closed, some gaping, lined both sides. Halfway to the farther darkness, two hounds slept outside one from which yellow light flowed, and a mumbling sound.


    One dog lay flat on his side, paws a-twitch; the other, his head on his forelegs, opened his eyes to blink at her. Between them, the door stood open inward upon a small stoop or landing; from it a half-flight of stone steps spilled down into a vaulted room filled with light and men.


    The device hanging above them from the peak of the vaulted ceiling looked like a drum, a yard deep and two across, a drum of a score or more of narrow plates. Inside the drum must be a big chandelier: light from what seemed a hundred candles blazed out of the bottom of the drum, and out of the top as well to be bounced back down from the whitewashed ceiling. Candles veiled by white silk screens lit worktables about the room, though they were currently ignored. All the two dozen or so men stood, quiet as statues, about the narrow table directly under the light-drum.


    A naked man lay there; naked, except for some odd patterned red garment close about his torso. He was the source of the mumbling: his head lolled back and forth upon his pillow, and he talked, randomly and drunken. At his one side, the Loremaster and a Raven¡¯s Trace student bent over a well-lit writing-table; at his other side stood Dav.


    Dav¡¯s hand moved with a bronze glitter to point at something on the strange garment; Merry looked, nodded, turned back to the desk and wrote or sketched something with brisk, sure strokes.


    Rothesay reeled. Not a garment. Not a garment. The material draped along his sides was no fabric but his own flesh, cut and folded away to reveal the secret inner parts of him, that glistened and pulsed for the edification of the gathered Runedaur. The Loremaster was, presumably, mapping their progress.


    What was this? He could not live; from such a wound there could be no recovery. Would a dying Runedaur consent to his own vivisection, at the hands of his no less ghoulish cronies? He seemed in no pain. And now she saw Dav turn, bend close to the subject¡¯s face and lay a hand lightly on his brow. Then he looked up, and nodded, and Rory¡ªshe had not marked him before¡ªunstoppered a crystal flask and poured the clear contents slowly over the naked organs. The mumbling slowed and softened.


    Suddenly he spoke up quite clearly, a demanding, and Darian, snarl: ¡°Aye, Lord: gone for Runedaur she has, and I for double fee!¡± His head rolled again, and he seemed to see Dav. ¡°Ale, boy!¡± But he wandered back into delirium without waiting for answer. Dav frowned in deep thought.


    Rothesay backed away. The sweet taint of blood filled her nostrils but she did not bolt; too weary and twice too sick to run, she fled at an ambitious shuffle for the stairs.


    A shadow in the stairwell seized her arm with a twist that brought her up short, and Ragalda pinned her with her eyes.


    Think!


    Rothesay wrenched her arm free but stood there, eye to eye with Ragalda. No clear thought came to her, but loathing twisted like a worm within her, in her own entrails, loathing for Colderwild and everyone in it. And if Ragalda was trying to ¡°tell¡± her something in the way of the Silents, Rothesay was deliberately refusing to ¡°hear.¡± Something froze, deep in her soul. She turned her shoulder to slip past. Ragalda did not stop her.


    Rothesay dragged herself all the way back to the healing-houses. Two forces warred to be her foremost thought, one of fire and one of ice. She burned with fury at Ragalda¡ªinterfering smug know-it-all of a hellfiend¡ªand entirely failed to connect it with the woman¡¯s final lack of interference. Yet at the same time fear chilled her: not the panicky anxiety she knew so well and hated, but a strange wintry stillness, where every thought came hard and clear. Once, she had feared the Runedaur from a folly of ignorance. Now, she feared what she knew.


    She had to get away.


    Damn Ragalda anyway! Rothesay blinked back hot tears, sneaked to her cot¡ªa light burned in the Mistress Healer¡¯s window and she heard a soft unintelligible voice answered by a low laugh¡ªcurled up undiscovered on her pillow and almost cried again for success at her own stealth. I¡¯m just still sick! she told herself angrily.


    And well I should be, she thought, chilling again. The image of the Darian stranger¡¯s guts swam before her, along with their macabre audience. Padriag could never have intended this. She would go back. As soon as she was strong enough to travel, she would slip out; she could pretend she was going to Kavinsrae, or even just out playing in the mountains; she could be days away before anyone began to wonder what had become of her. She would head for Andrastir, and Onions, and then just step ¡®through¡¯ to the old villa. And there she would be, as safe as anywhere could be, safe from these human-faced demons. She could almost smell the old apple-loft around her again.


    And yet¡ªwhy wait for Onions? Without knowing how, she knew, simply knew that there was a passage or portal, or whatever-it-was, a thin place between the worlds right here, here in the house on the edge of the cliff. She slipped from bed and ¡®intended¡¯ Padriag¡¯s villa.


    No light leaked from his windows; was he asleep? Had she ever actually known him to sleep? Half elated at her success, half worried, she cautiously opened the door.


    Padriag was not asleep. He sat, smiling placidly, in his chair in his great hall. No fire burned in its pit¡ªoh, yes, and she was to tell him what his hypocausts were for, not root cellars and passageways at all¡ªand the great room was quite dark. She wondered what he was doing, sitting up in the gloom, but she rushed over, dropped into her seat, and poured out all her tale, one long swift sentence that doubled back over itself as she recalled left-out bits, till it became an intricate knot that only a rope-master could unravel. But at last she brought it down to the horrible vivisection under the King¡¯s Hall.


    ¡°And it¡¯s true, it¡¯s all true that they are demons, you couldn¡¯t know, they seem so¡ªso human sometimes so I know you couldn¡¯t have known or you wouldn¡¯t have sent me there or is that what you sent me to find out? And I¡¯ve found it out. How do we stop them, Master? They¡¯ve been around for ages and they¡¯re so powerful but we can¡¯t just let it go on. Master, what do we do?¡±


    Padriag sat with his hands folded over his round belly, beaming kindly at her as he did when waiting for her to see the obvious. She was too rattled to be annoyed.


    ¡°I suppose,¡± she ventured slowly, ¡°I suppose we have to know exactly what they do and how they do it. You can¡¯t stop someone doing something if you don¡¯t know what the something is, or how he¡¯s going about it.¡±


    The wizard smiled.


    ¡°But¡ªbut that means¡ªstudying there . . . .¡±


    His eyes twinkled.


    ¡°So¡ªI¡ªhave to go back¡ª?¡±


    Padriag only smiled. And as he sat there, he slowly crumbled away, faded on the faint night breeze. He seemed quite content about it.


    She woke with a cry. The herb-fragrance of Colderwild¡¯s healing-houses was about her, the soft rush of Daorlas¡¯s waters a thousand feet below floated up. A dream; it was only a dream, and there was no peerie-passage here. She stared out of her window at the stars above the black shapes of the western hills. The wizard was all right; it was only a dream.


    Only a dream, and yet it had truth. The only way to fight the Runedaur was with their own tools, and those she would gain only here. War, she thought, means learning the enemy¡¯s devices and beating him at his own arts.


    In the darkness, she giggled, sleepy and giddy. I shall write a book: Rothesay¡¯s Treatise on War. And for ages to come young gentlemen shall be forced to read it by tyrannical tutors, if they are to be thought educated men. And so shall my name pass down the centuries, a plague and a curse upon all students of destruction!


    Still grinning, strangely comforted of her loneliness, she fell at last into a heavy sleep without dreams.


    Asilay el-Seremay hurried through the labyrinth towards the top of the Lady¡¯s Tower. The familiar passages twisted strangely, the very stone seemed softened, like corpse-flesh before the onset of rigor. But hurry she must: profane hands had gained her chamber of magic, inhuman hands that even now probed among her arcane tools and devices, selecting one, raising it to the inspection of some deadly intellect, replacing it as if unchanged and yet some powerful essential quality, disturbed by this unsanctified touch, vanished, as a figure in smoke vanishes before the faintest breath.


    The magic was dying. The next corner must be the last before the door! The magic was dying. Whence came these stairs? Who, who dared intrude?


    The magic died. Power ebbed like warmth from a corpse. Trying to scream, the sorceress woke.


    No soft corridor, but her own bed; no fleshy walls, but bed-hangings, pulled open to admit the mild night. Her magical sanctuary remained inviolate, as potent as ever. But¡ª


    When her beating heart had eased somewhat, she rose silently. Pulling close a silken robe, she padded to a chest beneath the nearest window, drew out an ornate cedar box, opened it to the starlight. Nearly a dozen jewels glittered in separate velvet nests, glittered with more than the sheen of Summer¡¯s stars alone, as though a wisp of candle flame flickered in the remote heart of each. All but one. She lifted it free.


    It was the moonstone, a perfect milky oval the size of the end of her thumb, lightless now as any mere gem. Haukur was dead.


    Asilay dashed the box to the floor, her rage engorged by the bang, the snapped hinges, the rattle of skittering stones. Then only her hard breath broke the dark silence. And her stupid slaves slept on.


    She stooped herself to regather the luminous jewels, clutched them hard in her two hands before dropping them back in the ruined box. She would have traded every one, spent every spy she owned, in exchange for Haukur¡¯s success. Dead. Dead in the south-land, the brat lost, and now what was she to do?


    Asilay sank to the floor, and leaned against the chest. Some strength had returned to her since her misadventure this past spring, strength she had sent mostly into magical recovery, reserving little to her body: thin before, she was gaunt now, and wholly grey in what of her own hair she had left, and the three yards from here back to her bed might as well have been three miles. Yet she would not rest even if she made the crawl. Since spring, the boy-god Sleep had become the most hateful of flirts, beguiling but seldom surrendering, and then only briefly or, as tonight, bedight in horrid dreams, and she cursed Him even as she hungered for Him.


    Why? she wondered dully. Why do we even bother? All our dreams come in the end to nothing but the dust of the grave; why bother with the farce of chasing them, as foolish as a child grasping for a treat dangled out of reach by a cruel cousin? She sighed. Next time, she should just empty all her soul into the raven, fly with it, become it in its simple mindless life till it too flew beyond the world.


    At the far end of the room, on her blanket before the door, one of Asilay¡¯s slaves stirred, moaned in her sleep, mumbled, and lay quiet again. The animal sound breathed on the coals and Asilay¡¯s anger reignited.


    Enough. If she must be denied Sleep, she would scorn Him in turn with Industry. Now, she thought, hobbling erect again, where was Nuassay? Oh, curse every wandering soul: the woman had gone to Daur-a-siger, another one of her innumerable sisters pupping yet again. Thoroughly vexed, Asilay muttered an idle curse against the hapless babe, a curse never completed.


    Of course an aunt goes to attend! Something of her own soul blooms now in another. Nuassay had gone to pluck the blood-string of power. A child should love his aunt, honor her, and heed her, now, and later, when she might have need of him.


    Yes, there was much power in blood. Such a damned waste that, with the brat lost, there was no one, nor nothing, now that that scrap of hair was spent, of blood close enough to Cherusay¡¯s¡ªno one in Asilay¡¯s power, that is. There was old Arrowy, Cherusay¡¯s own mother, of course, but Asilay would have as much chance gaining anything from Arrowy as from the Perian dragon Marennin. As for the king, Rumil, half-brother to Cherusay: Asilay chuckled darkly, swaying, silent in her silent bedchamber, idly imagining worming her way into the royal bed to get his child¡ªEirenseld and Orthunder, as Cherusay had been¡ªin herself. Yet even if she had been able to picture herself the seductress, at her age and especially now in her ravaged state, she was quite barren: no living child had her belly ever delivered, not with all the healers¡¯ aid. A laughable fancy. Now, if one of her own sisters, fecund as cows¡ªand about as enticing, she added with a private, bitter laugh, except of course Sonaay, the youngest and as lovely as Asilay in her prime¡ª


    Oh. Oh, yes. Such a babe would serve admirably. The whole plan spooled swiftly out before her inner sight; Asilay groped blindly for the chest and sat, unaware that she moved. Sonaay at fifteen was ripe for court¡ªAsilay had friends there¡ªshe would teach her all her old arts¡ªand at last, who better to midwife than the babe¡¯s devoted aunt¡ªAsilay would feign a stillbirth, and then¡ªoh, then! she would summon to her the bastard brat who alone held the key to Cherusay¡¯s hidden treasure.


    Asilay glared at her bed, distantly damned Haukur for getting killed and inconveniencing things so annoyingly, shuffled to her desk, lit a taper, opened an ink bottle.


    Upon this thirty-second day of Dannin, do I, Asilay, eldest of Seremay, write fond greetings to you, Sonaay. Thrice-beloved sister are you! Come at once to a Geste, I beg you, dearest. . . .

 XV: Riddling (pt 1/3): Patterns Interruptus

    XV: Riddling


    When the light from the crack dimmed till she could scarcely make out the lines in her own palm, Rothesay stretched and prepared to go out once more.


    At her best guess, the crack opened in the cliff wall a hundred feet below the healing-houses, and several hundred feet above the Daorlas. She could not see out of it, as it was easily twice her arm''s length and little wider than her palm edge-on, but the rock of it was pale and glittery, and admitted enough light into her cubby-cave to read by¡ªif the page were bright, the letters firm and dark, and the day without fine and cloudless.


    Light it admitted, but little heat. Summer had always made her head swim, even before she tried standing watch on Colderwild¡¯s black walls, and this summer¡¯s heat had seldom been broken in rainy mercy; here, deep under the Runedaur hold, the subterranean coolth seduced and soothed her¡ªand the subterranean dark hid her away from her hold-mates.


    She dawdled to eat an apple, slowly and deliberately. Sometimes she wished she could stay right here forever, only sneaking up to the surface to raid the library, and never pay any attention to Runedaur ever again. She stopped chewing in mid-bite, her face crushed against the recollection of a living man disembowelled. Desperate to escape, her thought flicked to her half an apple in her hand, and danced about another memory she had been loath to keep.


    Sorchone¡¯s got a great big whanger.


    For a moment, she wondered if she might try the same stupid trick to free her mind of the latest horror. She had to admit, now, that her only recollection of the grisly corpse in Andrastir was that it had been grisly, until Sorchone turned silly; the grisliness itself had become remote, powerless. Maybe she could do it; maybe that was what the rest of them did. Hah! Well, it was one thing to get quit of something merely disgusting, and quite another to shake off all moral shame at all. No, she wanted no equanimity about murder, and worse than murder. She would be no demon.


    But, by the hells, she must learn the powers of the demons, if she were to escape them. And, sighing, she ate up the last of the apple, and set off through the writhing passages in the rock, crawling, even slithering on her belly like a serpent. Of course she blocked what little light she had at once, but she knew her way well by feel; and there was always magelight, if she did not mind giving advance warning of her approach. She did mind.


    Presently she paused at a crack into the ceiling of a hewn tunnel below, listened carefully, and dropped lightly through. To her right she knew the narrow hall bent in a few yards to an unfinished end; left led towards the mazelike butteries and cellars, and the under-stairs. Utterly blind, she felt her way softly to the door, stood quietly, letting her breath still, listening. Satisfied of silence beyond, she pushed open the door¡ªpleased that she had thought to oil its hinges¡ªand stepped into the further blackness, this one smelling of ancient oak and old wine, and thoughtfully shut the door at her heels.


    Something resisted; something firm. She leaped away, turning to face the unknown unseen unseeable, and her effort not to scream was undone by her tumble backwards over a sidelong barrel. Another barrel scraped her back, and her buttocks struck stone between them. Had there been light, she must have presented a clownish sight with her knees at her shoulders and her bare feet waving above her head.


    ¡°You¡¯ve a gift for stealth, apart from that,¡± said Dav in the blackness.


    ¡°I hate you!¡± she shrieked, and wrenched herself to her feet.


    ¡°Yes, I know.¡±


    She brushed her tunic back into place, though neither of them could see her discomfiture. ¡°How long have you been waiting in there?¡± she demanded, with savage glee that he would, of course, have to have waited.


    ¡°Not above a quarter-hour. You¡¯ve been quite punctual, this last week.¡±


    She stuffed her fist in her mouth, not to scream her humiliation. Mastering herself, she observed, almost coolly, ¡°You¡¯ve been watching me?¡±


    ¡°Apart from yourself being of such interest¡ªI like students.¡±


    Her cherished horror swooped free. ¡°Oh, really?¡± she shrieked, and the echoing stone made her subdue her voice to a grating hiss: ¡°You like them to study cutting up people?¡±


    ¡°Ah,¡± said the Master softly in the dark, satisfied of something. ¡°When the occasion presents itself, certainly. Had you stayed, you had learned much.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to learn¡ªthat, thank you very much!¡±


    ¡°No? I lose my bet. I had you pegged as a healer.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t healing!¡± She made the stones ring again.


    ¡°Have you had supper yet?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I have not; dine with me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not hungry. . . .¡±


    ¡°You will be,¡± he said gently, suddenly within arm¡¯s reach. ¡°Come, chit.¡± Feeling then terribly, deeply lost, she followed the faint whisper of him out of the maze, up to the kitchens, and outside.


    Kavin¡¯s Tower had an acorn-cap roof standing on four pillars, one at each cardinal direction, and the floor beneath that roof was flat, without so much as a kerb at its edge. Wind, warm and dry, flowed through unhindered. Dav leaned his back against the north pillar; Rothesay sat at the edge of the trapdoor in the center. They ate in silence, cold squash soup from little pails, new apples, a jug of cream shared between them. The sun had set into the western hills beyond brilliantly gold clouds, but the sky above was blue still, and Ullenna¡¯s pink Girdle glowed across the east.


    Rothesay bore the silence as long as she could. ¡°You brought me up here so you could explain to me how cutting live people open is acceptable healing study,¡± she prompted him sourly.


    ¡°More to ask what troubles you about it,¡± he replied, scraping around in the bottom of his soup tin.


    She thought she ought to vomit; a pity, that her stomach was so complacent. Her mouth worked around several retorts, then settled on saying, slowly, as to an imbecile child, ¡°Hurting people is bad.¡±


    ¡°Like . . . running a sword through someone?¡± Dav rattled his spoon into the tin and set it aside to look up at her at last.


    The novice sword-mistress flushed, sweating doubly in the warm evening. ¡°That¡¯s different.¡±


    He nodded thoughtfully. ¡°Several distinctions present themselves to the observant eye,¡± he agreed. ¡°Which do you consider the most significant?¡±


    ¡°He was helpless,¡± she replied at once, pleased that her voice stayed level: she had learned, though she did not always keep in mind, that Runedaur considered that the moment their opponent raised the volume, they had him. Or her. ¡°A free man has a chance to defend himself.¡±


    He nodded again, then with a bit of apple slowly mimed a couple of sword-strokes, then spread his arms wide. ¡°Ah, you have worsted me, disarmed me, I am at your mercy. What now will you do with me? What must you do with me?¡±


    She eyed him uneasily. ¡°I don¡¯t have to kill you.¡±


    ¡°No more you do. But, I am in your power. What do you do?¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t do just anything I want with you,¡± she tried next.


    ¡°What limits you?¡±


    She chewed that over warily. She wanted to argue that goodness, basic human decency circumscribed her¡ªand gladly¡ªbut she figured he had as many answers to a novice disputant as to a novice warrior.


    ¡°But I don¡¯t intend to beat you,¡± he said, and grinned as she blushed again, this time for the nakedness of her thoughts.


    ¡°What do you want, then?¡± she demanded, little aware of her own glowering pout.


    ¡°I want to show you what you do not know, which is: why you do what you do.¡± At her silent glare, he went on, ¡°What limits you is your code of good and evil. It controls you¡ªyet yours was not the writing of it. Challenge: write it. Write it as it now is. You may find you wish to amend it.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± she challenged back.


    ¡°You may find some, ah, clauses contradict others,¡± he said mildly. ¡°You may find that evil will can hide behind the best intentions, and good actions, ill-considered, may yield evil outcome.


    ¡°But to return to our . . . study. His helplessness distressed you. Was he always helpless?¡±


    ¡°Against you? Probably.¡±


    He grinned. ¡°Except he had the choice not to encounter me at all.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t give you the right to cut him open!¡±


    ¡°If he tries to kill me, or those I love, may I try to kill him?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s war, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°So it is. Now, would it suit such of your code as you recognize, if I should consider it human¡ªgood¡ªto kill, if I must, sparing my victim as much suffering as I may?¡±


    She thought about it, searching his words for traps. ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Our subject, then: we did not hurt him.¡±


    Her jaw dropped. How could he be such an idiot? ¡°You killed him!¡± she screamed, and waved her fists and sprayed soup across the stone flags from her forgotten, and now crushed, tin.


    ¡°But we were going to do that anyway.¡±


    ¡°Er. Hah?¡± she said, dabbing at the mess, either in distraction or for distraction.


    ¡°When we study pain¡ªand we do¡ªwe are our own subjects. Conscripts are so pointless. They¡ªnot unreasonably¡ªah, object to the inquiry too much to yield reliable insights. A volunteer participates with a whole heart.¡±


    Rothesay paled. ¡°Do¡ªdo I¡ªhave to¡ª?¡±


    Dav¡¯s scorn flared. ¡°Did I say ¡®volunteer¡¯?¡± Then, almost visibly settling his hackles down, added gruffly, ¡°As it frightens you, however, I recommend that you do. Let the depth of your fear measure the imperative to face it. You will find strength beyond. And know that it is from such studies that we have learned many ways to remove pain. The man died without discomfort.¡±


    ¡°But . . . but . . . cutting¡ªpeople¡ªopen. . . .¡±


    ¡°Now you must look to the hidden parts of your code, chit. If we had any right to kill the man at all, to save our own souls we had also an obligation to do so gently. This we did. Not only gently, but¡ªeconomically,¡± and he laughed softly. ¡°As long as we doomed him to die anyway, shall he not die to extend our powers to heal?¡±


    After a long while she asked, in a small voice, ¡°Who was he?¡±


    ¡°Do you wish to mourn him?¡±


    ¡°N-no. Well, maybe. I mean, we killed him and I¡¯m¡ª¡± Her voice trailed off, and she stared absorbedly at her thumbs, and did not see Dav¡¯s milder glance.


    ¡°He was a hired assassin.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± Well, in that case¡ª! said her voice in righteousness.


    ¡°You may mourn that ever he came to that.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± she mumbled, contrite again.


    ¡°And we would not have admitted you to that study until you did mourn him.¡±


    That snapped her head back up so she could stare at him. She saw only a man leaning comfortably against the north, his face unreadable. Then he glanced aside, down into the bailey-canyon below, and his grin flashed.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    She followed his glance, but could not see what lay at the tower¡¯s feet from her conservative seat. She rolled to her knees and shuffled closer. Light lingered on their tower top, but shadow filled the courtyard like still grey water. Deep below them, a bevy of orange will-o-wisps danced and flew, gold pennant afterimages tracing their paths. Matching paths¡ªnearly so; what was familiar¡ª?


    ¡°Juris is doing well with Carving Water,¡± Dav observed, and she caught on: the will-o-wisps swept through the Seven First Moves. She started to ask what caused the glow, when a faint hint of cedar-smoke reached her, and she remembered the hard, fire-blackened tips of many of the training weapons.


    ¡°We burn them?¡±


    ¡°Look,¡± said Dav, rolling closer to the edge. ¡°That¡¯s Cobry, on the end. Watch and you¡¯ll see how he puts a little, almost a hook just at the end of his stroke¡ªNo! Ah, well done, boy! Has he got it? See if he can do it straight twice¡ªah. Still, better than it¡¯s been. He¡¯ll get it now.¡± He propped himself on his elbow and turned to look at her.


    Rothesay remained entranced by the ribbons of fireglow below. She saw the little hook in Cobry¡¯s stroke, saw Juris¡¯s smooth elegant line, saw someone¡¯s wild wobbling path. She began to wonder what her own strokes would show. Yes, Arngas of course, his would be perfect curves, probably like that fourth player. ¡°Who¡¯s the good one?¡±


    ¡°Rory.¡±


    She felt her cheeks flush, as if she had just embarrassed herself in the sport below, and then her jaw set in determination to play well.


    Dav slapped her arm. ¡°Let¡¯s go down.¡±


    The boys welcomed them into the game, Rothesay almost as buoyantly as Dav. The Arms-master from Raven¡¯s Trace, a grey weathered man still tall though he was reputedly over ninety, lit another pair of swords for them with a spark of magefire. Dav showed then the merit of being Master of Dance. The Arms-master called the Moves freely, in no pattern, and even Rory¡¯s lines wavered and wobbled between one Move and the next, while Rothesay and Flick¡ªhe being until then the most erratic of the players¡ªscrambled in the air for direction. Dav, though, danced, each Move flowing into the next as though there were only one Move, endlessly long, endlessly varying. So they played under the nearly-full moon for almost a quarter of Her passage.


    In laughter she helped the boys put the weapons away, and then Juris and Rory tagged along as she took Dav¡¯s and her own supper things to the scullery to wash up. Juris tried to pull her crushed tin back into shape and failed, but made no sign of amazement when she successfully straightened it.


    ¡°Handy, that,¡± he did say, and grinned as he added, ¡°and I bet you¡¯re tired of hearing about it!¡±


    She grimaced. Rory laughed. ¡°Might as well get used to it, Sugar. You can¡¯t shut up everybody in the world, and you never know who¡¯s next to make a fuss.¡±


    She drew breath to shout at him, failed for words, realized he was only right, too right, and threw up her hands¡ªinstead of throwing something she might break. ¡°¡®Get used to it¡¯?¡± she snarled.


    His golden eyes met her green-dark ones squarely. ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± he said deliberately, ¡°ask me.¡±


    Understanding startled her and she grinned back on the ebb of ire. ¡°Right.¡±


    ¡°Plans for the Arch?¡± Juris interrupted through a yawn.


    ¡°The what? Oh!¡± The Arch of Autumn, the eleventh day of Ilmeres, was only two days off. King Kelmhal¡¯s great Fair would begin at Dunford then. Last year¡¯s had tried to marry her off to Dagobeord if only for the duration, and had therefore cut short her participation as she fled to Padriag¡¯s villa to escape the humor of her countrymen. She still resented it. Now she ducked out of the scullery into the under-kitchen to see the thick garlands of yellow straw and purple strawflowers as if for the first time. Preparations had gone ahead while she had gone to ground¡ªagain.


    ¡°I keep doing that,¡± she murmured, and was almost as surprised as the boys by her words: she was sure she had been about to ask how the Order celebrated. ¡°Hiding, I mean.¡± They probably knew she had been, maybe even knew where and had only been letting her think she was hidden. The ghost of embarrassment arose once more¡ªbut it was a thin phantom, and she was so very tired of it. A sigh, and it dispersed; and a victory worthy of its own celebration passed unheeded, with only the sigh for a fanfare.


    ¡°Yuh?¡± said Juris. ¡°So stop.¡±


    She glanced at Rory, to catch him squinting at her along some invisible shaft. ¡°Yeah,¡± he agreed, but slowly. ¡°Only¡ªonly¡ªI don¡¯t know how to say it¡ª¡± He cut short, his whole being tense and pursed as if that would flush the words out of some unguessable undergrowth. Juris in turn watched him like a cat¡ªor like Dav.


    Rory waved a hand. ¡°See¡ªnow you see it, right? That you keep doing something? It wa¡¯n¡¯t a bad thing to do, maybe your best strategy¡ªthen, I mean, then when you didn¡¯t notice you were, er, doing it¡ªthat sounds stupid, how could you not notice what you were doing¡ª¡±


    ¡°Pattern,¡± suggested Juris. ¡°Not the action. The habit of the action.¡±


    Rory snapped his fingers in enlightenment. ¡°Thanks. I¡¯ll beat you to a pulp for it later. But, yeah, that¡¯s the trick. You don¡¯t have to have Masters pound you into the dirt to point out your¡ªpatterns. Only, now that you¡¯ve seen yours, you sort of know what you¡¯re doing. You don¡¯t have to just stop,¡± here he shot Juris a superior glare. ¡°You can go ahead and hide. But now you can¡ªthink about it. ¡®Do I really want to¡¯ or not.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s nice,¡± she said, and stuck her right fist sideways to intercept Juris¡¯s leap at her. He grabbed her wrist, though she was certain she surprised him, and she could either fall back or let the wrist snap. Or try to flip over backwards rather than just fall.


    Stars spun about her. Warm strong fingers probed her skull and neck. Someone picked pieces of something off her face and chest, and there was a ceramic sound. The whole world throbbed painfully.


    ¡°Nothing broken¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªexcept crockery¡ª¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well.¡± Rory¡¯s exasperated face appeared among the stars. ¡°Fire¡¯s demons, Sugar! Maybe you want to learn a stunt before you try it!¡±


    The two boys helped her sit up. They were still in the kitchen: so far, so good. At Rory¡¯s instruction, Juris lit a bright blue magelight right in her face. ¡°No, hold still. All right, good.¡± Juris banked the light, and she could see the bowls and cups, and pieces, scattered about her, and a wooden shelf knocked free of the wall behind. ¡°Good. Can you stand?¡±


    ¡°Do I have to?¡±


    ¡°Hell of a bed,¡± observed Juris, setting the shelf to rights, and she groaned, and tried, and succeeded.


    They walked her to her long-forsaken bed in the Silver Novitiates Chamber. As they entered, Lacie almost set a false-fire spell on them¡ªharmless but painful¡ªbut, grasping the approximate situation, fetched arnica and boneset from her personal stash.


    ¡°Girl,¡± she sighed, when they told her what had happened, ¡°have you ever done a back flip before? Before Arngas got you, I mean? Or ever?¡±


    ¡°Er, no.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t want for guts then,¡± Juris chuckled. ¡°But, brains¡ª?¡±


    ¡°Oh, go away!¡± Lacie scolded.


    The boys gone, Lacie fussed from the edge of Rothesay¡¯s bed and bathed her face from the water jug. ¡°Are you going to be all right for Arch-day?¡±


    ¡°I just bumped my head,¡± Rothesay groused. ¡°Master Leoff¡ªer, your father¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡®Master Lee.¡¯¡±


    ¡°¡ªyes, that one. He¡¯s hit me worse.¡±


    ¡°He knows what he¡¯s doing. That wall didn¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s just a bump!¡± She put up with being daubed, though, as it felt so nice, but sleep was probably far from her tonight. ¡°Um. Arch-day? Why? What do we do?¡±


    Lacie brightened, sprang away, and came dancing back flourishing a silver-satin gown. The gold of a sewing needle flickered, dangling on a silvery thread from half a stitchery butterfly. A flock of butterflies, all silver, swept over both shoulders. ¡°We dress up,¡± she announced, draping the gown on her front. ¡°In The Colors. Sothia¡¯s got a set for you all ready¡ªof course it¡¯s black. Probably plain, so you can decorate it yourself.¡± A moment¡¯s dismay over the short time left dimmed her glee, and then passed. ¡°But if you take care of it, you can decorate it for years and years. Carialla¡¯s can stand up by itself now, or almost. I started on this one last year. The dress was too big for me then¡ª¡±


    ¡°We dress up. Anything else?¡±


    Lacie tossed the dress aside and pounced back on the bed. ¡°Oh, yes! It¡¯s Harvest day!¡±


    ¡°Well, yes¡ª¡±


    ¡°No, it¡¯s Runedaur Harvest day. Ssh! We have a great feast at midday, and then we go out to the Hallen Field¡ªyou know, just east of the hold, beyond the bridge¡ªand we set up these thrones for Dav and Carialla. And this great crowd comes up from Kavinsrae¡ªnot just the local people, but oh! just everyone, from all over. And they ask for gifts, or services.¡± She dimpled and laughed. ¡°Maybe, ¡®a golden goblet.¡¯ Like that. But if they can describe it well enough¡ªif it¡¯s maybe something we took, or maybe they gave it to us in tithe or something¡ªif they can name it, we give it right back again!


    ¡°They can ask any of us for anything, but they mostly ask for the big things from the Master and Mistress. We students get to run fetch things. Us, they mostly ask for service. For a day, or for all eleven days. Or if it¡¯s just one day, it could be, oh, a day next winter.


    ¡°The rule is, you give them exactly what they ask for.¡± She spoke solemnly, but her blue eyes glittered.


    The glitter gave Rothesay the expected pause. ¡°You mean¡ªsay they ask for a golden goblet, you might give them . . . a buttercup, maybe?¡±


    ¡°Ooo, that¡¯s a good one!¡± Lacie clapped. ¡°Yes, just like that! In Kavinsrae and Dorchastir¡ªprobably in any of the towns near our halls, I expect¡ªthey know the game so very well, and they¡¯ll ask in riddles, maybe, and let you go rack your brains for a week to find out they meant an egg, just an egg.¡±


    Rothesay grinned. ¡°I like riddles.¡±


    ¡°There you are, then. And at sunset we have a dance. And then we do it all again two more days, and then we join the towns¡¯ fair for the rest of it.¡±


    Eventually Lacie wound down and went back to sleep. The night was very old. Rothesay lay awake still, thinking over all the riddles she knew. She pictured the face of someone receiving his buttercup ¡°goblet,¡± and laughed. Perhaps it was rather a rotten trick, but it was funny.


    Wasn¡¯t it? Of course the butt of the joke would not think it funny; the butt never did. And it would be a dull old world without any jokes. . . .


    You may find some, ah, clauses contradict others.


    Now wait a minute; this is different. This is just having a little fun!


    Like . . . trying to make you marry Dagobeord. But you¡¯re still sore about that.


    After a while, she thought, It¡¯s only funny for the joker. It¡¯s hardly ever fun for the joked. Then it occurred to her to wonder, Why is it funny for the joker? And then, What is ¡°funny¡±? She rubbed her eyes and rolled to her side to sleep. But the demon of unanswerable questions was wide awake.


    Well, what does Dav think is funny? What does Dav even think?


    If you have an idea about how a sword might move, that is unlike how a sword will move, that assumption could well be your last. Beware your assumptions: the Order, within her halls, whispered, thundered, sang this lesson in a thousand little ways, not least in never assuming that one was safe. Maybe this Harvest game was their way of trying to teach others the same awareness. That would be, um, nice. Awareness was probably a good thing to have.


    It was good to be nice to people; you should not let someone else fall down, for example. But if you never let an infant fall, he would never learn to walk. . . . Maybe you should never push someone down. Maybe. But if you tried to push them down, they could learn to push back, or keep their balance, or something else useful.


    Ah. Why let an infant learn to walk at all? Because he will be helpless all his life if he does not and you will not always be there to provide for him¡ªand anyway, wouldn¡¯t he want to learn to provide for himself, and for someone else, the way you do?


    That seemed hopeful. Rothesay rolled to her back. It is good to¡ªdo things that help other people be able to do things. Hah, well, that does not admit to cutting them open! ¡ªNo, wait: the one being cut open was not one being helped, he was being killed for, for, for being, um, counter-helpful himself, for being a killer. . . .


    Being rightly killed for being wrongly a killer? How did that work? Rothesay chewed that briefly, then shoved it away, unready for it. Back to that disembowelling. If they did learn useful healing stuff (like what? Well, you¡¯d see where things were supposed to go, in case someone else were, say, gored open by an ox and the bits fell out¡ªbleaugh), then they certainly were doing a thing that helped other people¡ªnot the victim¡ªbe able to do things. . . .


    Rothesay stared up at the ceiling as it grew paler in the spreading light, and took up her pillow and beat Lacie awake with it.


    The girls breakfasted together, but Lacie was uninterested in Rothesay¡¯s dilemma. ¡°I mean, can you even tell the difference¡ªyou personally¡ªbetween ¡®that¡¯s disgusting¡¯ and ¡®that¡¯s evil¡¯? And that one¡¯ll take you right in to Master Merry and whether if it¡¯s beautiful, it¡¯s good. Which is stupid, because¡ªlook, there¡¯s Queen Myllia, or Dourchon Vrai, and the whole point of their stories is their being so beautiful, or handsome, and they both being evil and killing people, right? Philosophers!¡± she snorted. Rothesay dropped the subject.


    The game of Ghost slowed to almost nothing as people prepared for Arch-day. The Moot, too, emptied out, and a tacit understanding spread that it would not continue, not formally, after the Fair-time. Rothesay joined a flower-gathering party, from which couples occasionally dropped out, to rejoin later, ruffled, breathless and cheerful, grass-stained and leafy-haired; they did not always drop very far out, and only Rothesay tried not to notice. Nor to¡ªoh, no! Not really?¡ªhelp.


    She found Sothia and her new dress clothes. Lighter and finer than the ones she had worn on her first morning in Colderwild, they felt like black gossamer. They were summer-cut, too, so the sleeves only tied closed with a few ribbons. And though war-boots existed that, like these, bared the shins from knees to toes, covering only soles, ankles and calf with tough hide, these were of dance-slipper delicacy. She dressed in them all and danced for Sothia, but did not trust the abatement of Ghost and changed back into her scruffy everyday garb before taking leave of the Mistress.


    As the day called the Arch of Autumn opened, clear and dry, students lined the parapet upon the east wall of Colderwild. Below them fell an awkward, tumbled slope, full of boulders and hidden holes, and holes exposed by someone¡¯s fall into them, as Rothesay had done some weeks ago: awkward terrain for an embattling army¡ªand rumored in the towns to be the graves of enemies of the Order. Beyond the slope stretched a wide smooth lawn, dim green in the dawn-light, cut by a dusty streak that was the road down to Kavinsrae. Beside the road, someone was already erecting a silken pavilion.


    ¡°That¡¯s Lord Benniforth¡¯s,¡± said a girl, a guest up from Kingscroft. ¡°The rumor is, he¡¯s going to ask for help to take down the Brean.¡±


    ¡°An offensive? That¡¯d be a change,¡± grumbled Cobry, leaning through the crenellations.


    ¡°Why bother?¡± put in Rory. ¡°There¡¯s that Madroch, stomping all over Maldan. Let him do it. Then get him. Then you only have to do it once, see.¡±


    ¡°If he asks for help to take down the Brean,¡± said Rothesay slowly, ¡°or whoever-it-is . . . then suppose we go into Dun Brean and knock his feet out from under him, and leave. Does that count?¡±


    They laughed. ¡°Yeah, you could do that,¡± Rory mused, stroking his moustaches.


    ¡°Maybe Benniforth will ask us to defeat the Brean,¡± suggested the Kingscroft girl, Morva.


    ¡°Then we could play him a game of chess!¡± Cobry laughed.


    ¡°How about, ¡®to remove him from power¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Install his heir.¡±


    ¡°See what you¡¯ve started?¡± Rory chided Rothesay through a wicked grin.


    A boy from Rose House whistled and pointed. A short caravan of donkey-wagons breasted the hill, to pull off the road opposite the Benniforth camp, followed by half a dozen mounted men-at-arms with blue and silver banners.


    ¡°That¡¯ll be the Marchess Cuildon,¡± said Rory. ¡°She¡¯ll want something political, too.¡±


    ¡°Good luck to her!¡± Morva laughed.

 XV: Riddling (pt 2/3): Threshing

    Baking under the early afternoon sun, the Runedaur milled in Kavin¡¯s Circle at the south end of the lawn. A white silken pavilion had been raised in the center of the Circle and two thrones, black-stained wood laced with silver inlay, stood upon thick black-and-white carpets beneath. These were flanked by eight more upholstered chairs, some black, some bleached, and all the Masters and Mistresses of Colderwild Hall seated themselves there. A few of the senior knights and sorceresses stood about them in the thin shade of the silk; nearly all the rest of the hold, plus guests, made do in full sun, and everyone had fans.


    Rothesay admired hers, black silk stretched over a black frame with silver fittings. More she admired the jugs of scented water being passed around, for wetting the fans and the twisted headscarves that many were wearing, including herself. The headscarves made an unusual element of fashion, but a good soaking one kept a head beautifully cool, whatever it looked like. One man filled the crown of his big black leather hat with water and jammed it on his bald head: it fitted so snugly that the water trickled out only a few drops at a time, and he looked a little more conventional, apart from his trickles.


    Everyone dressed gloriously, as Lacie had promised. Carialla¡¯s gown was stiff with white embroideries, silver threads, and starry gems. She wore also a great silver collar, linked plates embossed with skulls, and one almost large enough to be a breastplate had diamond eyesockets and teeth. Beside her, Dav glittered in ornaments of jet and obsidian. Both went bareheaded, alone among them all.


    And around and among the chairs, chests and boxes stood open, revealing golden, silver, jewelled treasure, coins, gems, plate, ornaments; or bolts of costly cloth¡ªincluding the work Rothesay had glimpsed in Carialla¡¯s loom¡ªand furs. A sheaf of swords and another of spears gleamed beside Dav; and a basket of herb bundles, talismans and odd polished fingers of trees, by Carialla. To the sides of the pavilion they had arrayed humbler fare, rakes and shovels, baskets of potatoes, pots and crocks.


    Rothesay expected Lord Benniforth or the Marchess to approach the pavilion first, but after the two-note fanfare from Garrod, the lone Runedaur herald, the mayors of Kavinsrae and Dorchastir walked up together, trailing a variegated entourage of wives, merchants, and flower-bearing children. The two mayors bowed together under the pavilion, and solemnly required of the Runedaur their ancient duty, to protect and to aid those who lived under the shadow of their walls. That sounded plain enough, she thought, and hard to make trick of; and the Master and Mistress agreed equally solemnly. Then every one in the mayoral party made request of some small item or other¡ªfans seemed popular today¡ªand Garrod played them a cheerful retreat.


    That was the signal for a slow chaos. Beyond the encampments of Benniforth and the Marchess had gathered most of the population of the two towns, as well as many from towns and settlements all up and down the Daorlas, and from Carastwyth to the east and Ristover and Andras from the north and west. These now bore down on the Runedaur, but slowly, even cautiously. The Runedaur spread out to meet them.


    An old man who reminded Rothesay strangely of the widow Pinnar back in Harrowater approached her, to ask shyly for a gold coin.


    ¡°It dahn¡¯t hev t¡¯ be any big a tall,¡± he assured her, as if it would help.


    Only that, when they could ask for anything? ¡°Why don¡¯t you ask for a whole bag of gold?¡± burst out of her uninvited.


    The old man ducked his head, but he grinned. ¡°Nah, miss. Bags¡¯re o¡¯ hemp, if t¡¯ be any use a tall!¡±


    She conceded with a bow and a laugh, and ducked into the pavilion to pick out a nice fat one for him. He looked at it for a long time as if he might cry, then pocketed it with a smile and wished her a full harvest and a life of joy. She swelled as he shuffled off. Maybe being Runedaur was not all so gruesome after all.


    A woman she recognized as the Dorchastiri brewer collared her next. Hands planted on her stout hips, she studied Rothesay critically, before nodding to herself.


    ¡°A¡¯ right, you, then¡ªRowshi, is¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Yes, Mother.¡±


    The brewer pursed her lips thoughtfully, and began, ¡°Uh want that what can never be stolen, nor given awa¡¯. Many things can mak¡¯ one, but yuh¡¯ll mak¡¯ mine. It can be smaller than flea or big as sea, but mine ¡¯ull be¡ª¡± again she appraised Rothesay and shook her head, ¡°abaht yur length¡ªbut thrice yur girth. Yuh¡¯ll mak¡¯ it o¡¯ nothin¡¯, till I can see it¡¯s done. Yuh ken?¡±


    Rothesay blinked. ¡°Er. No, I don¡¯t!¡±


    The woman laughed, showing all her few teeth, and slapped her on the arm. ¡°If yuh¡¯ve not figgered it by Fair¡¯s end, come up t¡¯tahvern wi¡¯ yur forfeit, and we¡¯ll see it done!¡±


    Forfeit? she thought as the brewer stomped away.


    ¡°Oh,¡± said Flick, when she grabbed him to ask, ¡°if you don¡¯t work it out for yourself, they get to ask for another thing.¡±


    ¡°In a riddle again?¡±


    ¡°Maybe, maybe not.¡± He grinned. ¡°But if they do, and you don¡¯t get that one, either, sure you owe them a third!¡±


    The nobles waited until the third afternoon, and then Lord Benniforth deferred to the Marchess. Runedaur made an unobtrusive screen around the Harvest pavilion, which only student water-bearers passed. Rothesay, taking a turn fetching water cold from the hall¡¯s deepest well, caught the old Marchess¡¯s testy rebuke:


    ¡°Fenustad faces me across Sionane, who is no great stream!¡±


    That evening at the dance, held in the King¡¯s Hall, Colderwild¡¯s greater feast hall, she joined the other water-bearers huddled in a dark corner, to share scraps of eavesdropping. The Marchess, it appeared, feared the Geillan presence in westernmost Maldan, across the river Sionane that ran down from the Rusannmar heights; she had gone so far as to ask for the head of the Geillan kinglet who ruled there.


    ¡°No, she didn¡¯t,¡± said Lacie. ¡°Alduf said¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡®The head of the lord of Fenustad,¡¯¡± Alduf, Hael¡¯s cousin from Raven¡¯s Trace, quoted himself.


    A pause settled as the several students tried to wrest alternative meanings from the words.


    ¡°The Brean?¡± suggested Cobry. ¡°Fenustad¡¯s Maldan, and he¡¯s over-lord¡ª¡±


    ¡°Sure, why not?¡± Flick joined him. ¡°And Benniforth wants the Brean: you could do two gifts in one move.¡±


    Rory snorted. ¡°Odhru calls himself high-king. I could call myself Areolin but I¡¯d still need a torch in the dark!¡± The group laughed and he went on scornfully, ¡°That Madroch¡¯s eating Maldan like bread and jam, and the Brean gets the crumbs.¡±


    Alduf nodded. ¡°Nor even them for much longer. I¡¯ve seen him, the Aellician. We passed through¡ªwell, they call it Angowin¡ªlast winter. Big man, big, huge man! A right battle-lord, too.¡± The Geillan-born, Alduf and Rory, exchanged glances of mutual understanding. Rothesay wondered, not for the first time, if Geillari in this Sferan Order ever felt like traitors. Rory had fled his war-mad clan¡ªto train as a still-greater warrior, and one in service to his clan¡¯s long-time foes. What was he thinking?


    What is your code? she asked silently; and, I need to get mine written¡ª


    ¡°Getting his head off¡¯s no trouble,¡± Rory was saying. ¡°Getting back out with it: that¡¯d be work!¡±


    She squeaked. ¡°Er. We have to? Just because someone¡¯s come and said, I want this, we have to go kill him?¡± A plague of murder, born of simple Harvest demands, swept through her imagination.


    The entire group turned to stare at her.


    ¡°¡®Have to¡¯? Sugar, we never, ever¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªever¡ª¡± Juris piped up.


    ¡°¡ªever¡ª¡± Lacie added.


    ¡°¡ªever!¡± said Alduf, but more in mischief than for guessing Rory¡¯s thought, and laughed as the redhead punched knucklepoints into his arm.


    ¡°¡ªforfeit the right to say No.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll look things over for ourselves,¡± said Lacie. ¡°And if we don¡¯t like it, we won¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s why they say we¡¯re such untrustworthy allies. We a¡¯n¡¯t shy about changing our minds, about saying, Oops, sorry, we were wrong.¡±


    ¡°Means we hardly ever say Yes we will in the first place,¡± said Juris. ¡°And not everyone pays attention; they just hear what they want. But ¡®We¡¯ll consider it¡¯ ¡¯s about the best they¡¯ll ever get.¡±


    ¡°But when we do decide to do something¡ª!¡± Rory dropped a heavy fist to their table and all their crockery jumped and trembled.


    ¡°Of course, there¡¯s the Oath,¡± Alduf mused, swinging his leather tankard to swirl his ale.


    Rory scowled. ¡°Aye? You know what it says?¡±


    Alduf shrugged. ¡°So tell me.¡±


    ¡°Me? I¡¯m asking you!¡±


    ¡°Do I look like I¡¯m knighted yet?¡± Alduf yelped.


    ¡°Oath? The one to the Perian high-king?¡± asked Rothesay. ¡°You don¡¯t know it?¡±


    ¡°You learn it at your knighting,¡± said Lacie. ¡°It isn¡¯t written down anywhere.¡±


    ¡°What if you don¡¯t want to take it, then? They tell you it and you find you just can¡¯t stick it? Are you¡ªsort of especially Runedaur if you don¡¯t, because you didn¡¯t forfeit the right to say no even to that?¡±


    They gaped. They stared at one another. Finally Rory shook his head and laughed. ¡°Good one! Beats me, Sugar. I¡¯ll worry about that on the day!¡± He drained his tankard and slammed it down. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s dance!¡±


    She joined him happily, but only for the one. Then she slipped off alone to the library, took stylus and tablet from the niche Master Merry had allotted her, and considered once again her written code of good and ill.


    Into the tablet¡¯s dark wax she carefully carved the words, I should do what I say or not say it.


    She stopped and looked it over. Yes, that one seemed all right. Since she had begun this work three days ago, she had written not one sentence that had survived further consideration. Now she was about to start on another, when a weary image arose:


    I agree to dig Widow Pinnar¡¯s latrine for her. Then I find out she does not need one, but wants the hole to hide a body. I should not do this. I said that I would, but I did not know, then, that it was to be used for an evil end. Does the lie negate the obligation? Should I always hedge, saying I will do this if you are yourself completely good and honest?


    She sighed. She had already written off perfect honesty as being neither attainable nor desirable. Telling a woman that her husband was a fool might be honest but it could serve no good end.


    She smeared that one into oblivion with the rest, and cut again:


    It is good to uphold one¡¯s kin and friends.


    Even when they are in evil mood? Then would it not be best to restrain them, to protect them from an act of folly or evil? Perhaps it is good to help one¡¯s friends be good.


    ¡®Be good¡¯¡ªhow, exactly? She had not yet been able to pin down one action as always and incontrovertibly good; how does one know when to abet and when to interfere? Even ¡®It is good not to hurt people¡¯ had evaporated in consideration of one, surgery, and two, having to refuse an unwanted suitor. Every single dictum, thus far, needed an addendum: except when. . . .


    She sighed again and shoved the stylus and wax aside. Lifting one of the library¡¯s magelight lamps, she carried it to the shelves reserved for ethical philosophies, and pulled out several scrolls and codices to read at the table.


    An hour or so later she shoved them all aside and pillowed her head on her folded arms. Either the philosophers, too, had nothing to say, or she was too dull to understand them. A dry ripple and a thunk meant one of the books had slipped and fallen to the floor; she jumped to retrieve it, suddenly anxious for any harm to it.


    Why do I think that it is good, to care for books? Because then I may have the use of them, and others may have the use of them, for longer; and why is that good?


    Because I like them, she thought rebelliously.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Now, now, that is no basis for good-and-evil: what of those who like doing harm, like that madman I helped steal last month? But rumor in Colderwild said that the youth in fact hated what he would do, and wished that the Runedaur would destroy him. What, then? Did they actually exist, people who liked hurting and harming?


    And if they did, was there some greater purpose served by their doing what they liked, perhaps being therefore why they liked it? She shuddered, and hoped not.


    As she put the book to rights, a scrawl out of line with the rest on its page caught her eye, and she opened there. Another hand had added commentary, between and down the side of the main text, not uncommon in this library:


    rules are a map


    a map guides a traveler over a countryside but no traveler through life ever walks the same ways twice


    there can be no map for a land never before seen


    No rules?


    She frowned, and traced a finger slowly over the scrawl. Who wrote it? she wondered, and then without another thought ¡®reached¡¯ for her story-spell.


    And in another moment gasped and shoved the book across the table. This time the impression was rather like a¡ªa flavor, perhaps. And the ¡®flavor¡¯ of the scrawl was exactly that of her barrow-sword. Arngas.


    Hastily, she tidied away the books and writing tools, and hurried off to bed, to bury any thought in sleep.


    Her bonds of sleep snapped at dawn. She sat up with a laugh, bounded into her clothes, tried to ¡®kill¡¯ Lacie, who knocked her back with a spell that for one instant undid all command of one¡¯s limbs, rolled away and danced out of the chamber. An hour later she stood under the eaves of the Flaming Horse, the Dorchastir tavern. She flourished her shovel like a spear and greeted the brewer cheerily: ¡°Good morning, Mother! And where would you be wanting your hole?¡± For good measure, she added, ¡°You aren¡¯t going to be burying anyone in it, are you?¡±


    The brewer shot her a narrow glance, and chuckled darkly. ¡°Demons, the lot of yuh. Burryin¡¯, is¡¯t? Nah, girl, there¡¯s none t¡¯ be burried here without som¡¯un falls in and drahns in ¡¯is own shit.¡±


    The Fair wound its merry way through the next week. The game of Ghost picked up again. Moot-guests went home, most of them, though Frele, the Rose House Mistress of Healing, stayed on with the Geillan captive in apartments high in the main keep, not far from Carialla¡¯s. Colderwild seemed empty, and Rothesay missed Kahan terribly. She wondered what he thought was good, and what was evil.


    And old Padriag¡ªwhat was his code like? What was he doing? Thyrne, Matkin, Persli? She plunged into a pit of homesickness and hid away in her cave again. Rory tried to cheer her up once and she had not the heart to scorn him entirely, but he perhaps sensed her facade, and let her be after that, to her freshened despair. Then one evening, sneaking up to the butteries to steal a bit of supper, she heard someone talking to Sothia.


    Carialla.


    Standing rock-still in the shadows, she thought, if she could not go back to Harrowater¡ªnot yet¡ªshe could go yet further, at least vicariously, to a home she could not now bring to waking memory.


    ¡°Well, girl.¡± Carialla¡¯s fingernails rattled on the arm of her chair.


    Sunlight poured in through the slender windows, too-bright shafts slashing the shadows, to the confusion of the eyes¡¯ adjustments. Rothesay shuffled backwards till she stood wholly in the shade between windows, and peered through the drifting dust motes to the Mistress in her own pool of dimness. At least the windows were open again, admitting a slight breeze, and no fire burned in the afternoon swelter. Carialla still wore heavy-seeming robes; Rothesay tried to imagine her in winter: so swaddled she would roll if she fell?


    ¡°Why do you want this?¡±


    Rothesay jumped. This was Carialla¡¯s own request, that they search Rothesay¡¯s childhood memories; now she wanted Rothesay to justify the project? ¡°I¡ªwant to remember my¡ªwhen I was little. People. What it was like, then.¡±


    Rattle. Rattle. ¡°You seek in the past what you do not find in the present.¡±


    Rothesay froze, too naked even to herself. ¡°No! I¡ª! No, I just want to remember!¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    Rothesay found she was breathing hard, as if she had been running. Why? What kind of silly question was that? ¡°W-why do you think?¡± she shot back.


    ¡°What I think about what you want can hardly matter to you, girl. What will memory gain you?¡±


    ¡°Why are you quizzing me about your own task?¡± she cried, waving her arms wildly.


    ¡°Are you my tool?¡±


    ¡°No!¡± And then she wanted to balk, afraid of having transgressed; but some new, sterner spirit stiffened her.


    ¡°Then claim your portion of this work!¡± the witch snapped. And, ¡°Close your mouth,¡± she sighed. ¡°Sit.¡± Gingerly, Rothesay took the fat chair opposite. ¡°What do you at the least hope that memory will give you?¡±


    For a moment Rothesay thought in futility. Then she considered not remembering. At last she said slowly, ¡°Peace. I think. Because if I didn¡¯t, I¡¯d always wonder. . . .¡±


    ¡°A good beginning,¡± Carialla purred. ¡°What else?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d¡ªknow things.¡±


    ¡°Why do you want to know things?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°You never know what¡¯ll come in handy someday.¡±


    ¡°True enough. I shall note that as a reach for power, however diffident. What else might memory gain you?¡±


    ¡°Who I was.¡±


    Carialla tipped one hand palm up, a deprecatory gesture. ¡°Aye. Who you were may have something to say about who you are. Have a care, though, that it does not dictate who you may become. What else, now?¡± After a moment, she prompted quietly, ¡°Would you find love?¡±


    Rothesay did not at once reply. She stared into the pool of sunlight in the windowed bay, seeing through it into another sunny spot, years ago and far away. Carialla should not talk of love. What could she know of it, her and her quest for a puppet-king? How could she but scorn such tenderness? Rothesay hastened to hide the thought even as it rose¡ªand then reflected that the tender feeling wanted a champion. She looked up boldly, or as boldly as she dared. ¡°No. Not real, present love. But it would be nice to know about¡ªif it was there.¡± In truth she did want to burrow away into whatever friendly recollections she might find, but she knew before she spoke that it was a fool¡¯s desire.


    Carialla nodded. ¡°If it was there. I think it was; but it is prudent to consider the chance of disappointment. Thus, then: peace; knowledge; identity; and the opportunity, maybe, of kin-feeling. Are these enough? For you will also find terror. A child¡¯s fears are as deep as any; never mind that an adult may laugh at their cause, it is terror all the same. And¡ªcertain aspects of our earliest days are veiled, for mercy¡¯s sake, it may be.¡±


    ¡°I just¡ªwant to know.¡±


    Carialla¡¯s brown eyes glittered above a small smile. ¡°The greed for knowledge may be the most painful, but it is surely also the least deleterious. When you are sure of yourself, then come¡ª¡± she dropped a small cushion between her feet, ¡°lean back against my knees and we will begin.¡±


    Rothesay hesitated, not for fear of this work, but for wondering how certain she was to be. Carialla sat with eyes downcast, perfectly motionless, as if prepared to wait for years. Rothesay bore this for little more than a dozen heartbeats, and then knuckled across the carpet and settled on the pillow.


    And shifted to accommodate her ill-padded tailbones more comfortably.


    And slightly uncrossed her legs to ease up on her ankles.


    And rolled her shoulderblades back.


    Carialla touched her temples, and all awareness of ankles, pillow, room spun away.


    She had expected to remember in the ordinary way, seeing the world from two or three feet high. Instead she found a dreamlike double perspective: though aware of the child¡¯s point of view, she perceived herself¡ªher grown self¡ªas a kind of ghost walking by the side of a misty, translucent Carialla. She could not look at her child-self, except down at her front. But though the infant Rothesay might be bound in cradle or lap, the ghost-Rothesay could wander freely about, looking more closely at what she pleased, though not all such attempts brought clarity.


    ¡°No, you cannot see more clearly now that which went unheeded then,¡± said the ghost-Carialla. She, it seemed, depended on ghost-Rothesay¡¯s movement; but she could suggest, and Rothesay was not prepared to contest her. And once Rothesay had gone somewhere, Carialla could return to it independently.


    On this occasion, Rothesay seemed to be two or so, and peering around a door into a room lit by candles, a roaring fire and a raging argument. Cherusay stood at a table, pounding it with her knuckles till the candle-flames flickered. Heavy winter robes of green and scarlet pronounced rather than hid the slightness of her figure; Rothesay blinked in surprise at how short she was, none less than the average but she would scarcely have reached her grown daughter¡¯s shoulder. A great dark braid rippled down her back, and silver glinted from the riband binding her brow.


    A tall man in robes of wine and gold paced the length of the room like a trapped cat. Darkhaired, dark-eyed, his pointy beard and moustache roused in the ghost-Rothesay all her childish fright. How she had feared this man! And the room wavered, became for a moment a sunnier space with this same dark lord, but Carialla murmured, ¡°Not yet. Not yet. Return to the room glimpsed round the door.¡±


    And again Cherusay banged the table. At Carialla''s touch, Rothesay began to disengage from the infant¡¯s fright, to look with older eyes at the pacing man.


    ¡°I do not concede, Balamer!¡± Cherusay shouted, and the man whirled on her.


    ¡°They will destroy you, Highness!¡±


    ¡°Let them try! ¡ªOh, damnation! Not again!¡±


    Rothesay, ghost and child, quailed, shocked. Cherusay had turned on her no face of joy, but of exasperation at the end of its course.


    Carialla again touched her arm. ¡°Let it pass. Behold: a young mother, a late night, a¡ªspirited debate. And a child who, it seems, would not stay abed.¡± The amusement in her voice Rothesay found reassuring. Then it irritated her to be reassured by Carialla.


    A young man bounded out of an unremarked corner and swept the babe up and out into the hall though she wailed and fought against him. ¡°Oh, Dor, thank you!¡± Cherusay¡¯s voice followed them.


    Rothesay tried to break free of the memory. Carialla shifted, and they sat once more in her room. ¡°Dor¡± had been her captain-of-the-guard¡ªthe man on the boat. Feeling that she owed the Mistress some accounting, she explained, briefly.


    Carialla stroked her hair. ¡°One more time, then. Let us find some cheerier thought on which to end.¡±


    Again the witch¡¯s fingers brushed her brow, and they stood in a sunny room of clean white plaster and pale ash wood. An immensely fat woman, pale hair cropped to a jawline that sprouted several tufts of straggling hair, sat spinning by the window. Rothesay knew her as an important woman who must be obeyed, and implicitly trusted; Carialla pointed out the short hair that marked her as a slave. ¡°And the Darians regard a beard on a woman as unattractive, yes, but also as a sign of one god-touched, and they are thought to harbor hidden powers and insights.¡±


    ¡°Er. Are they? Do they?¡±


    Carialla shrugged. ¡°How would we know?¡±


    The infant Rothesay, though she gazed at the spinning woman, toyed with a bit of feather that had worked free of her cradle pillows, when a door crashing open behind her made her jump. In strode Cherusay like green-clad storm surge, and the infant¡¯s delight in Mama pulled up short: was this bowstring tension wrath or exhilaration?


    Cherusay flung herself to the gleaming wood-slab floor at the slave-woman¡¯s feet and buried her head in her soft lap. Rolls of fat rippled under a creamy apron as the princess pounded on her knee. ¡°Mali, Mali, Mali! How can they be so stupid?¡±


    Mali chuckled, a deep, froggy sound. Setting her spinning aside, she lifted away Cherusay¡¯s silver coronet and smoothed her hair. ¡°Who is it this time, pet?¡±


    ¡°All of them! Saying one thing privately¡ªbut, oh! quite another in council! Jonner, Agatur¡ªI could bite them, indeed I could! Damn them all!¡± She shook herself free of Mali¡¯s lap and turned to scrabble across the floor on hands and knees straight for Rothesay. ¡°Let¡¯s go bite them all!¡± she laughed in the delighted child¡¯s face.


    ¡°Cherusay¡¯s own suite,¡± murmured Carialla. ¡°This should be interesting.¡±


    Rothesay hungered to stay and watch her mother play with her child-self, a hunger that ached to her toes. Meekly she followed Carialla¡¯s bidding, to set the witch free to explore while she herself watched Cherusay.


    ¡°Here, this bench is an unlocked chest. Open it, girl, and let us see what it contains.¡±


    Rothesay jumped. ¡°Open it? Won¡¯t they¡ªnotice¡ª? Er.¡±


    ¡°If you ever looked in it, your memory will shift to that time; that is all. Yet¡ªno, do not. I promised you a pleasant thought on which to end, and this,¡± she waved towards the princess rolling across the floor with a babe too young yet to walk, while the slave Mali scolded her for being a boy-girl still, oh the scandal: an old, well-worn scold, uttered only for its familiarity. ¡°This seems bright enough.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re done?¡±


    ¡°For now. You are weary.¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m not!¡±


    The memory faded into memory¡¯s usual dreamspace, and Carialla¡¯s quarters, now grey-pink in the wake of sunset, reasserted their claim on reality. Fatigue hit Rothesay like a boulder.


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    ¡°There is a pallet by my bed for your use.¡±


    ¡°N-no, thank you, Lady. I think I¡¯ll go¡ª¡± she crawled forward from her seat, and thought better of all the stairs, all the halls between herself and her own bed. ¡°Right. Thank you.¡± She forced herself to her feet for dignity¡¯s sake, and found enough life left in her for a chuckle at Cherusay¡¯s lack of it. Beyond that, she wanted to weep, but she was far too exhausted to bother. She stumbled off, almost unconsciously accepting the apple Carialla pushed on her, clicked through a curtain of beads to the witch¡¯s sleeping chamber and dropped to a thick linen-clad feather mat.


    Carialla was at her loom when Rothesay woke at dawn. A light breakfast of bread, honey and fresh eggs lay on the table in the windowed bay; a cursory nod from Carialla invited her to eat. Rothesay ate with the view: the fourth-floor vantage laid most of the courtyard in sight, and the gardens toward the healing-houses. The green of the gardens twined with Areolin¡¯s dawning gold under a clear blue canopy, but she could not rejoice in its beauty. Colderwild¡¯s cisterns had reached extraordinarily low levels as the nearly rainless weeks passed, and everyone now took a turn at pumping from the wells.


    Her first thought waking had been to fret over how to take leave of the Mistress. She might ¡°beg off¡± easily enough from Master Leoff or even Dav, but Carialla seemed, to Rothesay¡¯s fancy, like an overheated jug that might explode at an unwary touch. And she wanted to get away, to think, and to cry in private. Memory may bring you as much grief as joy¡ªoh, true, too true. Memory cut deeper than any sword and she wanted to curl up around it, around the pain she would not have forgone even if she had known how it would be.


    Helping pump water made an impeccable excuse. Cheered, she sucked one egg clean, and only then remembered the lump of salt with its grater. She ate a second egg, salted; taking the shells in her pocket to throw into the garden on her way, she explained a little too jovially about the pumping, and rose to leave.


    Carialla caught the flying shuttle, and stopped. Around the loom, she studied the girl, giving her a fleeting fright that the Mistress might countermand her¡ªbut I should protest if she does, Rothesay thought, but I¡¯ll crack and cry, right here in front of Madam Horrible if I try, oh please don¡¯t say anything¡ªand at last nodded shortly. ¡°Tonight again, then?¡±


    ¡°Oh, yes, Lady. Er, thank you,¡± and she bolted for the wells.

 XV: Riddling (pt 3/3): Kernels

    She lost a maddening number of Ghost challenges that day, finishing, shortly before supper, by terrifying both herself and Juris: in frustration she swung a mighty backhanded blow that missed, merely ruffling the top of the boy¡¯s brown silky hair¡ªand shattering her wooden blade to toothpicks against the wall.


    Master Caltern rounded the corner while the two combatants still stood stunned.


    ¡°Aye?¡± he said, once he had worked out what had happened. Then, ¡°Jump!¡± he bellowed, and leaped into the air. Startled, they too jumped, and glanced about for whatever attack might be avoided this way.


    Caltern went on jumping, bounding in place, waving his massive arms, and all his necklaces and jewelry flew about. ¡°Jump!¡± he commanded like thunder. So they did.


    ¡°Shake!¡± he ordered next, and shook himself like a wet dog, sending his red hair flying, then down through his shoulders, hips and knees, to a kind of pattering dance of his hairy bare feet. ¡°Nah, shake! Good and hard! Good! Now, clap!¡± He swung his arms wide and slapped his palms together with a great crack, then again and again, faster and faster until the three of them made the stone walls ring with their applause.


    ¡°Right, then,¡± he said at last, planting his fists on his hips and staring at their bewildered faces. ¡°No tellin¡¯ when death will come, or how. If you¡¯re not ready to die, you¡¯re not living,¡± he told Juris, who was still a little pale for all their exercise. ¡°And you never know when you might be His instrument¡ªo¡¯ course we¡¯d all favor actin¡¯ a-purpose, but it ain¡¯t always ours to choose, hey? Now, both of ya: ya want to wallow in the piss you scared out o¡¯ yerselves, or learn?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Juris yipped like a stung puppy, and Rothesay almost laughed that for once the ¡°what?¡± was not hers.


    Caltern sighed. ¡°Boy, you ain¡¯t moved of your own will since I come round that corner. Wet yourself like this in real combat, and how long you gonna ask your enemy to stand around while you wipe yourself? I¡¯ll ask again: you want to go on shiverin¡¯ and shakin¡¯ till you¡¯re too tired to keep it up, or you want to learn from this little adventure?¡±


    Silly question. Both students pricked up hopefully.


    He leveled a thick, callused finger at Rothesay. ¡°Now, you: it¡¯s to your credit you¡¯re upset you nearly killed one of your mates. What would you think of someone who wasn¡¯t? Aye, there¡ªI see you get it. Right¡ªbut that credit¡¯s only good for a heartbeat, meanin¡¯ you don¡¯t get more the longer you fret. What¡¯s it for, this fright of yours?¡±


    Juris and Rothesay stared at the Master, then at each other. ¡°¡®For¡¯?¡± Rothesay echoed.


    ¡°Fear is for warning. Fear¡¯s always for warning. That¡¯s the learning. Here¡¯s the trick: you have to get chuck of the fear to get the learning. Faster you can do that, the faster you¡¯re master.¡± He paused to await the obvious question.


    ¡°Er, Mas¡ªCal? How do you ¡®get chuck of the fear,¡¯ then?¡± Rothesay obliged.


    ¡°Firs¡¯ thing I did, babe.¡±


    ¡°What, just now?¡± Juris cried. ¡°All that¡ª?¡± he flapped his arms about.


    ¡°All that,¡± Caltern agreed, smugly, Rothesay thought. ¡°Not the only way, o¡¯ course. Effective¡ªbut you¡¯ll want quicker, when it comes to it. Still, that¡¯ll start you gettin¡¯ the feel o¡¯ it.


    ¡°You gotta get chuck of what your fear thinks is goin¡¯ on, before you can master what is goin¡¯ on. Any mood too hot or too cold might as well be dust in your eyes. Notice it. Then embrace it. Then chuck it.¡±


    ¡°¡®Embrace it¡¯?¡± Rothesay repeated.


    ¡°Get its teachin¡¯. Ever¡¯thing ya do, ever¡¯thing ya feel, everything that happens, teaches ya. What should yours ¡¯a taught you?¡±


    ¡°That I need to be more careful!¡±


    Caltern¡¯s caterpillar eyebrows had the power of arching, independently, halfway to his scalp. One did so now. ¡°There¡¯s a time for careful, and a time for wild. Don¡¯t want to get so careful you can¡¯t cut free! Let¡¯s say you need more control, instead. But what kind of control?¡± He squinted as if to think better. ¡°Now, were you maybe worked up already, goin¡¯ in?¡±


    And she burst into tears. She barely noticed Caltern gently waving Juris away.


    She blubbered out her pain beside the Horsemaster, sharing a nearby bench, till embarrassment took over: no, no more! I feel like such a soggy hat¡ª


    ¡°Nah,¡± rumbled Caltern as she gently pushed away at last. ¡°A human¡¯s gotta mourn, lass, or ¡¯e ain¡¯t human. Losin¡¯ yer whole family¡ªmost anyone¡¯d say that¡¯s worth cryin¡¯ over. ¡¯Specially me.¡± When she glanced up at him, surprised, he murmured, ¡°Aye, I¡¯m the last o¡¯ my lot. I was ten, nice little farm over Trysnefra way. You can see a bit o¡¯ intermarriage in me,¡± he patted the top of his lofty red head. ¡°That¡¯d be m¡¯ grandfather. Came an¡¯ lived as Lostforth, instead o¡¯ takin¡¯ Granna back to Dunbrodie. Then one day Dunbrodie came lookin¡¯ for more farmland. We lost.¡± He shrugged.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she whispered.


    ¡°Thanks.¡± He leaned back and stretched hugely. ¡°Ya can¡¯t live there, though, in yer grievin¡¯, I mean. Takes ever¡¯one different, and ya gotta take yer own time comin¡¯ out. But ya gotta watch you don¡¯t get stuck there. Too early yet for you, you¡¯re only just now facin¡¯ it. But keep it in mind. No traveler in life ever travels the same land twice, and holdin¡¯ on to what¡¯s done while life goes on¡¯ll only make ya mad, sure as sunrise.¡±


    She started at his choice of words, but if he noticed, he made no sign.


    ¡°Feelin¡¯ a bit quit of it now?¡± She wiped her nose and nodded. ¡°Right, then. This other one¡¯s smaller and easier, then. Ya coulda killed the boy, but ya didn¡¯t, so which¡¯ll give ya more power tomorrow: crawlin¡¯ on yer belly for shame an¡¯ chagrin, or offerin¡¯ thanks for the tip?¡±


    ¡°The tip?¡±


    ¡°The hint? the warnin¡¯ about keepin¡¯ a clear head?¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t be thankful I nearly killed him!¡±


    ¡°If you¡¯d¡¯a missed more gently, you¡¯d¡¯a missed a damned powerful learnin¡¯.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± Powerful, indeed! ¡°But, I can¡¯t like it, all the same.¡±


    He chuckled like honey pouring. ¡°Oh, ya can. It¡¯s a right scary thing to like, so it is, but it¡¯s still yer friend. Treat it like one. Challenge: practice likin¡¯ it. I¡¯ll see ya again in a fortnight, an¡¯ you¡¯ll tell me about it.¡±


    She rubbed her nose again. In a very small voice she asked, ¡°What about¡ªactually killing someone? When you didn¡¯t mean to?¡±


    ¡°Ah.¡± His look was kindly, though she was certain he knew of her two kills. ¡°What about doin¡¯ somethin¡¯ ya didn¡¯t have the power not to do?¡±


    ¡°Um¡ªyou go find the power, er, not to do it again?¡±


    ¡°Sounds good to me. Think ya come to a good place for that?¡±


    As good as any she was likely to find; she could think of no other place to learn how to command what she had become. She nodded.


    ¡°Me, too. O¡¯ course, once ya learn not to be stupid enough to follow a sword-master into a melee, you¡¯ll be enough of a swordmaster yourself to go ahead and follow!¡± He shared her small laugh, and then went on, ¡°Sometimes, when ya make a prime mess, it¡¯s possible to clean up. Offer reparations. You¡¯ll want to look up their families, see about payin¡¯ the one lad¡¯s blood fee, and all.¡±


    ¡°And¡ªthat¡¯s it? Pay off, and go home whistling?¡±


    ¡°What else ya got in mind? Summonin¡¯ their souls to beg pardon? Even Carialla won¡¯t do that¡ªand maybe they¡¯ll refuse to pardon! ¡¯Cos some folks¡¯ll refuse all amends, if it means they can make you go on crawlin¡¯. Then, all ya can do is give ¡¯em your best and, aye, go home whistlin¡¯. Ya did your part. And like I said, ya don¡¯t get more credit for bein¡¯ more sorry.¡±


    ¡°You¡ªjust forget it, after that?¡±


    He rubbed his beard, and then grinned. ¡°You¡¯ll never forget it. Put it by, though. And if ya ever find yourself slackenin¡¯ in your trainin¡¯, pull it out to flog yourself back to business. And about that trainin¡¯¡ªI can think of a few exercises, for controllin¡¯ power. Come muck stables in the mornin¡¯, and I¡¯ll show ya.¡±


    She returned to Carialla that evening in greater humor. Caltern¡ªnot all Runedaur were demonlike. Maybe she should become one of his particular students; she could already talk to his four-legged charges. She accepted a cup of wine from the mistress, while they discussed where next to explore, and savored its rich sweetness, pleased that she had learned how to drink the stuff without betraying herself to idiocy.


    ¡°And what did Master Cal have to say?¡± Carialla asked suddenly. When Rothesay¡¯s jaw dropped, she said dryly, ¡°¡¯is way o¡¯ talkin¡¯ ¡¯s a mite contagious.¡±


    Rothesay blushed, but she grinned. More carefully, then, she said, ¡°He told me how he lost his family.¡±


    Carialla nodded. ¡°Consider, then, that one king over these peoples will make such losses at least less common. Ah, you like? Come, then; sit.¡±


    They returned to the unlocked chest in Cherusay¡¯s apartments; it contained linen undergarments, sennw and skirts, in which the infant Rothesay was fond of dressing, or attempting to dress, and in which she was hugely indulged. There was also a small box of dark wood inlaid with pale, which she could not open, but it was half again too small to hold the Sferemath.


    They explored the walls, seeking any imperfection that might suggest a hidden cavity. Or perhaps under the bed: Darian beds lay on a platform too low for even an infant to scrabble beneath, but if the bed could be moved¡ª


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Now the sleeping chamber was dim, gold-lit by the embers of a fire in the open hearth. Mali snored on a pallet by the fire; Rothesay the child, this time perhaps three, sat upright on Cherusay¡¯s bed, clinging with both fists to the thick pelts piled upon it. Cherusay in a white nightgown sat on the floor, back braced to the wall, feet braced to the bed, and pushed in synchrony with the slave¡¯s rasping snores.


    When she swung around onto her knees, the child climbed warily to the edge. Looking down onto the pale polished slabs, she heard her mother murmur a charm, and a long plank quivered, and separated from its partners. Cherusay dextrously pried it aside, revealing a hole as long as a forearm, its depths lost in the darkness till the princess lit a pale green magelight.


    A black-swathed bundle, bigger than a man¡¯s fist, lay in one corner; it appeared to be tied with a long lock of dark hair. Bright in the magelight, though, was an icicle of silver, almost the length of the hole, with a transverse grip of some dark stuff finished on each end with a pearly stone. This the princess lifted out, and tipped before the enchanted child¡¯s view.


    ¡°Careful, it¡¯s sharp,¡± Cherusay murmured as little-Rothesay reached out, and smiled. ¡°But perhaps it¡¯ll not harm you, love.¡± She laid it on the bed, then quickly closed up her hole and pushed the bed back¡ª


    The two memory-walkers paused to investigate the hiding-hole as best they might. Carialla felt fairly certain that the black bundle hid the Sferemath; Rothesay noted two more items: a small wood-and-pearl box, and what looked like a snail-shell so perfectly wrought in gold that a golden snail ought to thrust out gold feelers.


    ¡ªand caressed the icicle-shaped dagger with satisfaction. ¡°Mali shall make us a scabbard for this tomorrow. Wearing this, we shall know who is friend and who is foe!¡±


    ¡°I remember her wearing that,¡± ghost-Rothesay murmured. ¡°Everywhere, and she was always sort of stroking it. I thought that was because its scabbard was mink; at least, I always wanted to pet it!¡±


    ¡°A pretty toy,¡± observed Carialla; ¡°I do not recognize its make. Well, this suggests where the Sferemath was; would she have brought it on ship with you, I wonder?¡±


    ¡°Er, wasn¡¯t that the point of the trip?¡±


    ¡°So many think; yet she may have meant only to persuade me of her possession. Did she trust me not to rob her of it? We should have traveled to Daria to perform our part, if we would; time enough then to pay us on completion. I do not know.¡±


    Rothesay feared that this discovery would end their exploration, but Carialla wished to study Cherusay. ¡°Where the Eye was tells me nothing of where it is. Perhaps we shall find your recollection of her packing it up¡ªperhaps in the extent of her distress at your infant curiosity, if you probed too near her hiding places.¡±


    They tried, logically enough, the one time Rothesay had actually seen the treasure. The pre-dawn air was sweet with mid-summer fragrance; a door from the sleeping chamber stood open on a tiny garden, where Cherusay sat by a dark pool. Perhaps three, Rothesay toddled out, dragging her doll. Cherusay sighed on noticing her, but smiled, and beckoned her to her side. The child cut short her intent to climb into her mother¡¯s lap: it was occupied. Glinting violet, seemingly lit from some great depth within, lay the most beautiful jewel Rothesay had ever seen. Drawn, as all childish hands are drawn towards what commands their attention, she reached for it¡ªhesitated, because adults are capricious, and jealous of their wonders¡ªthen dropped her doll and lifted it in both hands. Cherusay¡¯s fluttered near, in case of accident.


    Rothesay put her face close to it, till she could feel her eyelashes brush its crystal, trying to see into the depths; she wanted to climb in and go exploring.


    Cherusay gently took it back, gazing at her child in wonder. ¡°It does not frighten you,¡± she murmured. Rothesay only stared; was it supposed to? But the princess wrapped it again in its black linen. ¡°I will be glad when it is¡ªIt wants too much¡ªOh, never mind, babe!¡± And she pulled a silver necklace over her head, to let the little girl play with the mother-of-pearl bauble at its end, a favorite treat. Cherusay took them both back to her bed then, the mysterious bundled prize tucked between them in the pillows, but what she did with it afterwards was not in front of Rothesay.


    For several more sessions, they explored Cherusay¡¯s quarters. A small, windowless chamber off the main room contained her clothes, and various of Mali¡¯s tools, including oils for rubbing down her ¡°pet¡± and for doctoring Rothesay¡¯s infant bottom: indeed some early experiences were best forgotten.


    Strangely, however, Cherusay protected this room with a violent jealousy, flying into a fury if any other servant presumed so much as to polish the door handle. Rothesay, once left sleeping in the care of another, younger woman, woke to the sound of the closet door opening and let out a shriek of outrage, to the slave¡¯s deathly fright, though the child understood no more than Mama said No. Carialla noted after that how anyone other than Mali made furtive study of the door, fascinated by its dreadful prohibition. Yet once the young man ¡°Dor,¡± visiting in the evening and amusing the child by spinning a top for her as he and Cherusay talked, entered the forbidden closet and brought out a robe to drape around the princess, without her so much as watching even a little sharply.


    Carialla laughed. ¡°Ah, yes! Divert and distract: well done, Highness!¡± she said softly. ¡°And see how she moves to yonder corner when someone knocks, and feigns unease about it when they enter?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s special about that corner?¡±


    ¡°Nothing, or I have no craft at all. Lady Cherusay, I think I would have liked you well!¡±


    Rothesay grinned, and felt just a little less cold towards the Mistress.


    Venturing out, they explored a great wooden house of rooms clustered about a busy hall with one great open hearth at its center and large bronze braziers in its corners, often lit even in summer. The house itself was a dower house, Carialla guessed, set apart in one of the royal gardens by King Herumer for his divorced wife¡¯s use rather than rouse the ire of Eirenseld by banishing her outright¡ª


    ¡°What?¡±


    Carialla paused. ¡°Curious, that the principal should know so little of her own well-known tale. Briefly, then: Herumer¡¯s first marriage brought him no children at all; his second, to Arrowy el-Narronwy, gave him only a daughter¡ªyour mother. Some years later, impatient and aging, he divorced her to marry . . . I forget; some child. She bore him Rumil and his brother before he died, though it is a loud rumor that neither boy was his. And Princess Cherusay, inarguably his by temperament alone, by all accounts, was not one to surrender her claim as eldest, whatever her father may have willed. She was proud and dangerous from a very young age, and the infamous autumn elk-hunt was not the first attempt to destroy her.¡±


    Rothesay stared her question, especially as a secretive little smile flickered in the Mistress¡¯ glance at her.


    ¡°The hunt, upon the knees of the Dur Manthanor, in the middle of Tallerod, the Hunter¡¯s month. An unseasonable blizzard¡ªno one believes it were natural at all, though they do happen¡ªtook them, and half the party was lost, including the princess.¡± Carialla¡¯s smile grew, savoring the irony. ¡°She alone returned, a month later, in time for her own funeral, quite strangely dressed and jeweled. And, presumably, pregnant.¡±


    Rothesay swallowed. Eventually she said, ¡°Oh.¡± She gazed about at the spruce-bordered gardens. The great height of the dark trees cropped the sky to a modest turquoise oval; no glimpse of the Dur Manthanor, the greatest mountains in the Dragon-sea lands, could be had through the thick needles. Her¡ªfather?


    ¡°I have no magic to take us there,¡± Carialla murmured softly. ¡°But, oh! it is to be wished!¡±


    Rothesay nodded distantly. Then she shook herself, and chased after her toddling self chasing her mother¡¯s hem across the grass.


    Arrowy sat by a fountain, spinning a black wool; the child petted it, and recollection of its softness and smell rocked the adolescent girl. Grandmother gazed down at her uncanny descendant from some deep and distant thought. Rothesay had an idea of how grandmothers were supposed to be. Back in Harrowater, Anie¡¯s mother had been mortified by her whore-daughter¡¯s brood and kept her distance, but she doted on her respectable children¡¯s children, fattening them on treats even as she exhorted them to grow up strong and beat them if they ever whined. Arrowy seemed almost perplexed by Rothesay, as though, having borne a daughter, it had never crossed her mind that the daughter might do so as well. When she spoke to the child at all, it was in adult tones. Only when it came to her dolls did some merrier light shine in her.


    Dolls as tiny as a thumb, dolls the size of a child. Dolls of wood, dolls of fine cloth stuffed with sweet or pungent herbs. Rothesay had a favorite, half her own size, made and clad by a generous spirit with tougher linen to survive being dragged through the hedges by its neck or its black-yarn hair. Most of Grandmother¡¯s dolls rather frightened her, though, and she seldom ventured to approach them. But Arrowy would watch as she did, if she did, and murmur to herself and take the doll up for further work. Some few became friendlier then; most became scarier, and the child Rothesay watched astonished when they were given as gifts to people who seemed delighted and honored to receive them.


    ¡°You are sensitive to such things,¡± Carialla observed, as they shared wine after the night¡¯s work. She waved lightly about her apartments. ¡°Can you say which of these things bears an enchantment?¡±


    ¡°Most of them. Especially the mirrors. And your loom. Not the furniture, though.¡±


    Carialla glanced down. ¡°An enchanted footstool? There¡¯s a droll thought.¡±


    Rothesay grinned. Then she slunk down in her seat. ¡°I was a right brat, then.¡±


    ¡°You were a child.¡±


    Of course true; but she had just perceived herself hot, screaming, her hands and flying hair slimy with her own snot, when Cherusay had taken the precious doll away to sew up a great gash in its head. That it came back all neat and clean and with a new dress¡ªsewn on, of course, to keep the thing clad¡ªhad not mollified her in the slightest. Well, not that she let on: she did like it, but she was far too proud to admit it, and sulked for hours.


    They watched the packing-up for the great voyage, but Cherusay had not, to Rothesay¡¯s knowledge, ever again approached the cubbyhole under the bed, and nothing resembling that ball of black cloth could be glimpsed in the packing.


    ¡°Hell of hells,¡± Carialla murmured, disappointed. They were watching ¡°Dor¡± load boxes onto a cart bound for the wharf. ¡°That young man has something on his mind, though, does he not?¡± He had been unusually grim recently, and even though he rocked the young Rothesay in his arms as he had ever done, he did not smile until she forced him to¡ªand sometimes not even then.


    ¡°He should,¡± Rothesay muttered. It would not be so much longer before he stood at the fore of those forcing them onto the afterboat.


    She and Carialla at last trod the deck of the doomed ship. The voyage had been pleasant, but for one storm that thrilled the little girl: she stood in the bow and shrieked back at the wind, with ¡°Dor¡± crouched behind and clinging to the sheets for both of them. He had become more his old self once they set sail, sweet and quiet and patiently attentive on his volatile princess. Rothesay called him ¡°Dorridor,¡± a childish folly that embarrassed her now; Carialla seemed not to notice, to her relief.


    Rothesay the child swung happily in her hammock as the ship gently rocked, and turned her doll end over end as she sang to herself, until a strange silence from without the cabin sank in upon her. She crept out on deck into a fair morning and a wordless war. Cherusay bent to make only one request from the armed men ordering her into the boat: her cloak and Rothesay¡¯s, and a glance from ¡°Dor¡± sent another man running, running as though in fear of Dor, back to the cabin to fetch them.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you coming, Dorridor?¡± she had demanded, alarmed as the boat swung out over the side without him. It made no sense: he had always gone where they went.


    A small, fey smile crept free then on his face. ¡°Not just yet,¡± he called softly, and something like real amusement lit his eyes, for the first time in a very long time.


    And that was all right, then, at least as far as Rothesay had been concerned. Turning to share her complacency with her mother, she was struck silent with terror of the deadly light in Cherusay¡¯s eyes, and buried herself under the princess¡¯s silken skirts.


    Carialla took them back aboard the ship. ¡°Look,¡± she said, pointing about. Not more than half the seamen were standing; many lay about in odd corners of the deck. The child had thought nothing of it, adults were always such peculiar creatures. ¡°There seems to have been¡ªsome difference of opinion.¡±


    ¡°Are they dead?¡± Rothesay breathed. No blood was visible, but some of the men must have fallen: no one would sleep so contorted.


    ¡°Dead then, or dead later.¡± She turned to study Dor, to revisit the several minutes between the child emerging on deck and her descent over the side, over and over again. ¡°Girl,¡± she said, just before Rothesay drew breath to scream, ¡°this man meant to die. Expected to die. And soon.¡±


    ¡°Er. Oh? Um. Going to kill himself in remorse, or something?¡± A queer bitterness had been growing in her, as she saw through memory after memory Cherusay¡¯s deep affection and trust for him¡ªtrust and affection that had at least appeared reciprocated.


    Carialla looked at her steadily. ¡°The ship foundered¡ªand you were not there. By my guess, he knew the date set. Perhaps his masters included that boat for his own escape; or maybe it was meant for deceit: that he should believe he was to be spared, and he given the wrong date of destruction. And I think,¡± she continued softly, ¡°he was not deceived, and had some other means to guess when they would strike.¡±


    Rothesay started. ¡°You mean¡ªhe saved us?¡±


    ¡°I do. Oh, yes. I do.¡±

 XVI: Challenge (pt 1/3): Biting the Gauntlet

    XVI: Challenge


    Another hearth; another rooftree lost in height and smoke. Another dais at the far end of the hall, upon which stood a cunning chair, swift-assembled, swifter taken down to chase its battle-ridden master. And another hearth-throne, set below the dais and to the right upon the rush-strewn earth, and the man who sat upon it sunk in drink and brooding. Above him on the war-throne, Deorgard slouched, hulking like a storm beyond the hills, while a young bard of his newest sword-point vassal stood forth to sing of yesterday¡¯s contest that had delivered his clan into the Madroch¡¯s power.


    Maglad the Grim, first among the Dunmadroch warriors lined in honor against the right-hand wall, sighed gratefully over his own drink. A long day it had been, full of court: not all the rites of new fealty alone, but today, the nineteenth day of Folgad-orn, the harvest-month, called for all manner of business. Yes, the feast of First-fruits had been lavish, as Dun Padanring sought to impress their new overlord¡ªMaglad belched softly, still stuffed¡ªand so had the business, brought to the Madroch rather than to the Padanr: debt settlements, land trading, hiring contracts for the coming harvest season, even a couple of handfastings. The Dun Padanring Fair should have begun today also, but had been postponed until the morrow; something to look forward to, especially as the victors would be first choice for Fair-marriage, and no one said that had to last beyond Fair¡¯s end.


    He gazed over his mead-horn not at the singer, but at his great lord; or rather, at the constellation of Deorgard and his three satellites. On the stool at the king¡¯s right, privileged to pour the war-lord¡¯s mead this night, his face flushed brighter than the gold torque new-laid upon his neck¡ªMaglad could not at once recall the man¡¯s name, but the bard would be singing it soon enough, the strongest and boldest of the survivors of his side yesterday. What though he lost? All men fell, soon or late, to the Unvanquishable One, whom the imperials called the Silent, the Reaper of men; and venomous treason might deliver mere victory. Valor alone won the praise of Song, and the immortality of the deathless staves. This warrior, too, would be highly prized in the marriage-mart.


    Behind Deorgard¡¯s left shoulder, cloaked and hooded though the night was warm and the firelit hall hot, the Dunmadroch bard Bradgith stood, a moveless blue shade, inscrutably deep. Now, there was something: in a few days, the bards would all head off for Fordhafoc for their great competition. People would have to settle for simpler song for a month, but there would be a riot of news at the end of it; that, and there was no denying that, well, it was sometimes a relief not to have the poem-masters about. One could shed the feeling of being watched for something song-worthy¡ªnoble or satiric.


    And most interesting, most compelling was the least of the four on the dais, least in stature and status alike, the witch-boy, the Wyrdling, Deorgard¡¯s slave, coiled now at his master¡¯s feet and watching, listening to the Dun Padanring singer not, it seemed to Maglad, in entertainment so much as in judgment.


    Maglad took a quick, deep draught of his mead, embraced the heat of the liquor despite the heat of the evening. He had once considered the bard¡¯s path for himself, being both tune-clever and word-witty, till he found that no foeman held such terror for him as a master bard¡¯s rebuke, nor as the mockery or¡ªMother Night!¡ªsheer attention of his own clansmen. He dropped his gaze back to the singer and shrugged off the slave-boy, the young hawk watching, it seemed, for a mouse of error.


    He was not Runedaur, to follow the thought through: that a claim unchallenged was a claim granted. Few in the hall remarked the boy¡¯s judgmental pose, but they felt it: as the cooling evening makes a man draw in upon himself long before he notices it to mention, even to himself.


    Not even Raian noticed. He had other aims. They said in song that a man was honored by service to a great master, the honor mounting with the master¡¯s greatness. For this, yesterday¡¯s enemy stood today to pour his conqueror¡¯s wine: Deorgard the Madroch must be very great indeed to have overcome such a hero as he. But Raian strove to best even this, and his implacable pride said that it was Deorgard who was honored, to be served by the likes of Raian na Drogh.


    Men would have laughed¡ªhad they noticed it to mention. They did not. But what begins as a cooling evening may become a frosty midnight in time.


    It was long past an all-too-warm midnight before Raian, dismissed at last, stumbled out to the Dun Padanring haystacks to fling himself into the lower slopes. He felt exhausted, too exhausted for sleep. Not that his chores were so heavy; rather, most days he used himself far less than he was once wont, clambering and hunting in the mountains of the Uissig. And though idleness, drumming his heels while waiting to be called, proved surprisingly tiring, this too was not the drain on his soul.


    It was the pretense, hour after hour through the endless days: the mask of pride, the semblance of honor that he wore, doggedly, pretending that his servitude were somehow a badge of greatness. He hated, personally and savagely, every cup he carried, every garment he folded, every moment¡ªand there were hours of them¡ªwaited in silence, pretending, always pretending, feigning a glory he loathed. Seven years: the Madroch could hold him no more than that. But seven years, of this? He felt he would die an old withered man before this Yule; he would be a dead-wight indeed long before his term was up. If only he could just sleep, sleep through it all. . . .


    Wolf dropped beside him a few minutes later. For a while the two friends lay together without need of speech, and watched the slow-drifting stars.


    ¡°Your man asleep?¡± Wolf murmured presently.


    Raian shrugged, a rustle in the hay. ¡°Maybe. He¡¯s got a girl.¡±


    ¡°Mine, too.¡± Wolf had been given to Maglad. After a moment he added, ¡°He married?¡±


    ¡°The Madroch? Was. She died¡ªtook cold, or something; I forget. His sons, too.¡±


    Wolf blinked. ¡°They all took cold?¡±


    ¡°No¡ªsorry¡ªI mean, they¡¯ve all died. Different things. ¡¯S got a daughter, though.¡±


    ¡°No, thanks.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s married,¡± he grunted, missing the jest. Then he sighed. ¡°I should have been in temple today.¡±


    Wolf considered, then started. Today would be¡ªabout the eleventh of Ilmeres, the holy day they called at home the Arch of Autumn, and the middle of Teginau¡¯s own harvest Fair; Wolf had been pleased that these Geillari celebrated it well enough. And so it was also Raian¡¯s birthday. Raingold should have spent today making thanks for their lord¡¯s son and his continued health, thanks not just to the gods but to their friends and neighbors all. Wolf whined softly, for a secret Raingold recipe, involving cheese melted with cream and crumbled sausage on the most wonderfully thin and crispy flatbreads, was to date his most avid weakness. Had Dunmadroch been able to cook it¡ªno, it would not have reconciled him to his thralldom, but it would have made it a world more bearable. Wrenching his thoughts sadly from his lost indulgence, he replied with an effort at cheer, ¡°So you¡¯re fifteen¡ªHah!¡± And he laughed, wickedly. ¡°Yah, boy, at least you missed your ma dressing you like a ham for the marriage market!¡± After his own fifteenth, Wolf regularly lost his way in the mountains when his birthday neared, to escape his mother¡¯s matchmaking; as this occurred shortly after Yule, he had grown remarkably snowcrafty.


    Raian made no reply. Wolf scowled at the stars. Some demon seemed to be sitting on his friend¡¯s heart. Raian had been unusually¡ªfor him¡ªsober since their enslavement, of course; but not like this.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    He tried a shot in the dark: ¡°She¡¯s probably all right¡ªRothric, I mean.¡± Raian only grunted. Wolf¡¯s frown deepened. ¡°You sweet on her, boy?¡±


    Raian had only lately begun to consider girls. He was also cutting molars, and the question struck his uncertain psyche like a bit of carrot on a tender gum. ¡°Who? Rothric?¡± he yelped. But it was a ridiculous question. Rothric was as likely an object of his sweet affection as the Wolfman himself¡ªbleeeaugh, well, rather more likely. But still ridiculous. ¡°Don¡¯t be silly,¡± he grumbled, slumping into indifference again.


    Wolf glared into the night. What, then? As he groped for another shot, his friend spoke suddenly.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never lost before.¡±


    Wolf¡¯s eyes flew wide open, but he made no reply.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never lost before,¡± Raian repeated, softly, wonderingly. Losing¡ªlosing was something that happened to other people, poor sods that they were. He had not thought of himself as above that, it had merely seemed self-evident: Raian na Drogh suffered the rare, occasional setback¡ªbut he never lost. Till now. Till now and, losing, lost everything: pride, freedom, power, his own and his friends¡¯ as well, and only with the Death-knights was there hope that his arrogant folly had not lost Rothric her very life. ¡°I¡¯ve lost everything.¡±


    In the straw beside him, Wolf lay unmoving, scarcely daring to breathe, waiting, like a man benighted waiting for some glimmer of a dawn he fears might suddenly have failed him for aye.


    Raian began to talk, idly, musing over their many adventures, but he made light of them now.


    ¡°Hold on, boyo¡ªthat boar that opened your leg last fall, and there¡¯s me portering you and him both down the mountain, that was no joy-party!¡±


    ¡°Oh, we¡¯re strong enough!¡± Raian mocked them. ¡°But this¡ª¡± he waved his arm at the snoring village packed full with impromptu Fair housing, ¡°this wants more than that! This¡ª¡± Words failed him; what, indeed, was he lacking? What brought him triumph over every challenge of his boyhood, only to fail him at the first test of manhood? ¡°How do we win at this?¡±


    After a moment, Wolf shrugged. ¡°You¡¯ll think of something.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I will?¡± Raian leaped to hands and knees to glare down at Wolf. ¡°It was my arrogance that brought us¡ªboth!¡ªto this, and you think I¡¯m just going to ¡®think of something¡¯ that will get us out?¡±


    ¡°You got old Dagn out.¡±


    ¡°Aaaargh!¡± He pounced, seizing Wolf¡¯s shoulders. He wanted to shake him, to beat sense into his head against¡ªbut there was only the hay beneath him, crackling and prickling mildly. How, how could he be such a furry idiot? Raian flung himself back onto his back. ¡°Oh, right, I¡¯m just going to spin us a plan to cast down Deorgard and compel all the Golden Clans to bow and let us pass like kings over the land. No doubt the Runedaur, too, will bow and open Colderwild and let me take Rothric out¡ªand they¡¯ll hand me that Darian¡¯s skull for a keepsake, as well! Oh, ho, ho.¡±


    Wolf grinned at the starry sky. If not dawn, then some pale precursor to it glimmered on his horizon. ¡°Sounds good to me,¡± he chuckled, and rolled over to go to sleep.


    Raian stared openmouthed at Wolf¡¯s bare, hairy back for a futile moment, then snarled and rolled the other way; hay and its sweet must tickled in his nose. Pounding a gap with his fist proved grimly satisfying, and soon he too slept.


    Late in the night he dreamed. He thought he stood in a vast silent cavern, gazing up, eye locked to eye with the great dragon Marennin. Her glossy black scales rippled away into dark invisibility, and a fire burned in the depths of her one violet eye, burning into him, but he withstood it, refusing to be consumed. The eye shone, bright and reflective as water. And presently he realized that the fire was not within, but behind, a reflection of a great hearth-fire somewhere at his back.


    He had no sense of turning, but now he stood before that fire, the Dragon gone, and instead of the cavern, a rude cave. Beyond the fire sat a woman, cloaked and hooded. She moved and the hood shifted, and terror bolted through him for fear that the hood should fall away, for he knew somehow that the woman within was too terrible for a man to behold and live, terrible and great. Hastily he dropped his gaze to the fire, and saw the pyramid of logs shift and a dull coal flared to new life, from red through yellow to white in an instant and it exploded¡ª


    Raian was blown backward out of the cave out under the stars, tumbling in a great roaring froth. He rolled among stars and comets and fish and ferns, flowers and bears and temples, a thousand things, ten thousand things, all the things. As he struggled for the surface, a hand gripped his arm and Rothric tugged him with her to crawl out upon a great pale rock. There they stood together, dripping and panting, and watched the torrent bursting from the black hillside.


    She turned and beamed at him. ¡°It¡¯s time, you know,¡± she said cheerfully, and dived back into the flood. He grabbed after her, but could not move, could not budge: he was frozen, imprisoned inside a stone statue of himself. Furious, he wrenched mightily and broke free. He shot a glance of despite at the statue¡ªa pompous, supercilious-looking thing, he thought, jowly and old, and he leaped in after Rothric. ¡°Hey!¡± he shouted, or tried to, fighting a mouthful of foam and tiny houses. Summoning his utmost effort, he tried again: ¡°Hey!¡±


    ¡°Hey, yourself,¡± the Wolfman hissed, shaking him harder, and ordinary night-stillness wrapped him round again. Raian sat up and stared about. The world seemed too empty and thin, too finely detailed, to be the real one. Wolf shook him again, but gently, companionably. ¡°Just an old dream, then, boyo,¡± he murmured, curling back into the hay with a yawn. Raian blinked as the dream-mists faded, and lay down again, his back pressed close to Wolf¡¯s. He dreamed again, this time about stealing the Madroch¡¯s Fair cattle, and woke ravenous for beef.


    He bit Wolf¡¯s shoulder instead and they had a fine fight. Wolf bloodied Raian¡¯s nose, but Raian pinned him at last, a few early-risen onlookers paid off small bets among themselves, and the sun rose. Another day of captivity: Raian, his blood still high from the sport, glared out upon it and spat.


    After the Fair, for which he was wanted for any amount of judging, Deorgard took off hunting, day after day. The bards departed for Fordhafoc. The young bloods of Dun Padanring rode with the Dunmadroch forces, along with those of Duncardrogh and the others swept up in the conqueror¡¯s wake. The village seemed glad enough to see them go forth and, while presumably grateful for the game brought in, rather gritted its collective teeth over the extra work of potting all that the ravenous hunters themselves could not devour.


    Then a boar gored Deorgard¡¯s spear-bearer; that evening, the king finally asked Raian about his scars. He answered briefly; once so proud of his exploits, he would now trade them all to have won only his first night in Deorgard¡¯s court. The king glowered his brooding glare for so long after his last, cursory comment on the white half-moon at his throat¡ª¡°Oh, that,¡± the one he usually forgot, being able to see it himself only in a mirror, ¡°that was a wolf. I think I gave the teeth to my mother¡±¡ªthat he spluttered, ¡°That¡¯s all, lord! I¡¯m only fou¡ªfifteen!¡±


    Deorgard said nothing, but next morning he took Raian with him on the hunt. Raian was still too proud to feel the honor, but he was so delighted with the change in duty that he let himself wholly enjoy the day. And though there was no opportunity for a display of notable bravery or cunning, he acquitted himself well, nor was the only one to forget, for the space of a cheerful exchange, that he was only a slave. Men at table that night acknowledged his presence with a brusque nod or a grunt as he served them, and next day Maglad, too, brought his Dragon-thrall.


    The hunt roamed ever further from the Dun Padanring hall, then took to camping nights, rather than return within walls. Raian and Wolf had more work out here but they almost enjoyed it, being closer to what they loved. It had its hazards, though. Deorgard commanded from Raian tales and songs of the Tre-Uissig; while Wolf, caught once tossing a flaming stick for his own amusement, was pressed into juggling before the whole camp. Released at last, he collapsed beside his friend and all but shook from the strain.


    ¡°You were good,¡± Raian assured him.


    ¡°Yah, and I had to be or drop one in someone¡¯s lap!¡±


    Raian laughed. ¡°You should have: they¡¯d have thought it was hilarious!¡±


    ¡°Except whoever I¡¯d scorched, and wouldn¡¯t he get to beat me then!¡±


    ¡°True, that.¡± Raian passed him their ration of beer, and knelt behind him, trying once again to discover the secret of the collar lock. He would not even imagine running, not though they lay in the bosom of the trackless Wild, till he was certain that flight would succeed: more than mere death, he feared being put in chains. No need to acquire more obstacles than they faced already! ¡®Haste goes hungry,¡¯ as well the young hunter knew.

 XVI: Challenge (pt 2/3): Pursuing the Game

    Day after day the hunting band wandered till, late one afternoon as they took thought for the night¡¯s camp, a rider in strange colors approached across a clearing, right hand held high for parley. Yellow hair flowed from under his leather helmet, unbraided in further token of peace. Finding no hostile reception, he rode up to announce himself in a loud clear voice. Heathr he was, hearth-ward of Dunagdaen of the kingdom of Bordegund, not a day¡¯s ride to their west. His king, Hlafarr of the Dunare, with his entourage had been seeking the Madroch these three days and more; Hlafarr was even now scarcely half a mile distant and, begging the leave of the noble warriors before him, he, Heathr, would wind his horn to summon his master before Deorgard.


    Leave being warily granted, Heathr raised a curling ram¡¯s horn and blew a clear, hollow note to startle the drowsy sunset. They waited not long before half a hundred riders rumbled into their clearing, some wearing the green with yellow double-stripes that mantled Heathr, some in checky of bright red and white, but most in even stripes of blood-red and midnight-blue bound by fingers of yellow.


    Hlafarr, he of the twisted gold banding his wild red hair, and gold wire braiding his equally red beard, swept down from his horse and strode toward the Madroch with a young darkhaired man hurrying to keep up. Dunmadroch men drew their mounts together to bar his impetuous path and he halted, but he flung a high, proud stare at Deorgard. The war-king considered, then reached out a booted foot to shove the rump of Maglad¡¯s bay, and his protectors drew aside. The young man stood forth, gripping tight his red-yellow-blue ribboned staff.


    ¡°Great king!¡± he boomed, slowly so that his words reached every ear: no bard he, but he had learned somewhere how to shout a speech. ¡°Fame flies before you like a white herald-bird. Even in fair Bordegund have we heard of the might of Dunmadroch, before whom armies fall like grain in the harvest. We know how the Snow Lion cast down the Great-axe in the Glen of Slaughter, Berongil. We have heard the lamentation of the Bears of Dun Aenwin. And word has come to us, also, of the happy vales of Aellicia, where all men name Deorgard their king and high-king.


    ¡°Who would defy one so gifted of the gods? for surely the Holy Ones hold him in high esteem! Who would deny so auspicious a lord? Who could wish to live outside the light of his glorious name?


    ¡°Therefore do we, the people of Dunagdaen,¡± here he turned to bow to the contingent of green and yellow, ¡°of Dun Eftring,¡± he bowed to the red and white, ¡°and of Dunare¡±¡ªhere, Hlafarr himself bowed, and all those of the red, blue and yellow with him¡ª¡°do petition Deorgard the Madroch, Master of Men, to accept us also as his people. For this gift do we of Bordegund bring gift of our own.¡± He nodded to Heathr, who sounded his horn again.


    In the center of the Bordegundians, one figure had sat slumped: asleep, bored, or disgusted, Raian, peering over Deorgard¡¯s shoulder from his stallion¡¯s rump, could not tell. Now he was led forth, a balding, brown-bearded, potbellied man, and Raian saw that the man¡¯s arms were bound at his back, and a slave-collar glinted upon his neck. But he straightened as he came near, held his head high, and met Deorgard¡¯s stare resolutely.


    ¡°Here do we of Bordegund deliver unto Deorgard the Madroch, Lion among Men¡ªToryarl, the Manan, king in Fenustad, and all his people, Dunmanan and Dun Flotweland both, behind him. Accept him, and his people and land, if you would accept us, Rald Dunrald!¡±


    Raian felt Deorgard shift in his seat before him. The big man was quite taken aback. Well he might be, for the Geillari had no real precedent for this sort of capitulation. Even Harka of Duncardrogh, for all his very real pride in serving the man who had overmastered him, still had insisted on being overmastered. Perhaps these Bordegundians, sensitive to possible charges of cowardice, had made war upon Fenustad by way of acquiring proof of their hardihood, taking the lesser foe to escape the greater.


    All bards had gone to competition, except for a handful of mid-ranked youths, whose counsel no one sought. Bradgith would not have been present anyway, preferring not to camp for less than war. No one ventured to advise Deorgard now, nor did he seek any. He sat now quite still upon his horse, and stared at the Dunare herald.


    Raian knew that stare. Deorgard used it often, but especially when he was puzzled or confused and, rather than betray this, would thus force confusion back upon the other. Silence filled the glade. Summer¡¯s heat hung about them, dry and smelling of dusty straw from so many rainless days, and not a breath of air stirred. Grasshoppers rustled, and a wood thrush called from deep in the trees.


    King Hlafarr fidgeted. The herald did not move, but Raian thought he looked increasingly worried. Finally, Hlafarr burst out, ¡°Will you have our gift, Lord?¡±


    Then Deorgard moved, to yawn. Crooking a finger, he summoned the ¡°gift,¡± but a snarl beat back the men who would have accompanied him. Tapping his horse¡¯s flanks with his heels delicately, the bound Toryarl eased himself forward.


    ¡°You¡¯ll serve me?¡± Deorgard growled.


    Toryarl looked him up and down through a considering scowl. At last he nodded, once. ¡°Aye. And my people.¡±


    Deorgard raised his glance to Hlafarr. ¡°Loose his hands. He¡¯s no use to anyone like that.¡±


    Hlafarr signed to his herald, who swept up to obey. Deorgard stretched in his saddle, gazed appraisingly at the weather¡ªclear and blue yet again¡ªand the clearing already welling with shadow, and Hlafarr raised his hand.


    ¡°Lord,¡± he said mildly, ¡°we are not yet unborne of all our gifts.¡±


    Deorgard turned the stare upon him again.


    After a moment the king of Bordegund hurried into the presentations: three gold cups, each set with blue and yellow gems, the colors of Dunmadroch; three heavy gold bracelets, each three fingers wide and Hlafarr looked openly anxious when he saw how badly his artisans had underestimated the thickness of the war-lord¡¯s forearms. At least the brightsmiths had not been so foolish as to make closed bands, and Deorgard idly pried two of the three wide enough to fit, passing the third to his own herald to hold with the cups. Three gold torques followed, and for the first time the Madroch seemed genuinely pleased. Raian felt the rumble of his interested, ¡°Hmmm!¡± though only Maglad, close by his lord¡¯s right hand, might have actually heard it. One of the torques ended its braided and beaded curve in two walnut-sized heads, one, a man¡¯s, his eyes wide and teeth bared in battle-rage; the other a ravening wolf. Deor-gard, man-wolf, the wolf in man-shape. The king examined it closely, passed it to Maglad and the men closest about him, who praised it gladly, then took it back and wrapped it about his throat. Raian thought he had never seen a man look so relieved as Hlafarr of Dunare.


    ¡°And lastly, lord, accept this!¡± Hlafarr held out his hand, and the gangly redhaired youth behind him, surely his son or nephew, placed in it a stiff, yard-long palm-wide object swathed in fine red wool. Hlafarr whipped away the wrapper to display a sword sheathed all in black leather, its hilts bound in black thongs, and all Deorgard¡¯s men pricked up with wide eyes. The Dunare king drew the blade left-handed, laid it across his red-wool-draped arm, and presented it to the war-lord, in silence, letting the gift say what only it could.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It looked like a sliver of fog, or a shard of a river at twilight, the steel wonder. And though Hlafarr stepped forward to hand it up to the great king, Deorgard swung one leg over his horse¡¯s head and dropped¡ªwith a lightness that had never yet failed to startle a new acquaintance¡ªto the ground to meet him. He took it up studiously, turned it to gaze down each near-invisible edge, tipped it to make the still-blue sky above ripple up and down in its length, stepped free of the horses to carve the air into deep chunks. Then he grinned, flashing all his teeth, even the three gold ones. Thrusting the point deftly at Hlafarr¡¯s chest, he thundered, ¡°Done!¡± And all the clearing rang with deafening cheers.


    Soon a great bonfire drove back the deepening twilight. Meat and mead were lavished upon everyone, even the thralls. Toryarl the slave-king shared Raian¡¯s duties for the Madroch, and so the boy was close enough to hear when Deorgard bent Toryarl before him and demanded, quietly, half in question, ¡°You will serve me.¡±


    Toryarl shrugged. ¡°Thus I said.¡±


    ¡°And¡ª? If it had not been for¡ªeh?¡± Deorgard tipped his head slightly in the direction of the now-raucous redbeard.


    Toryarl¡¯s eyes flickered, expressionless, towards the man who had bested him, then appraised the Madroch. A reluctant grin tugged at the corner of his sullen mouth. ¡°Sooner or later, I¡¯d imagine. Lord,¡± he added, but the swift crack of Deorgard¡¯s laughter drowned the word, and almost silenced the whole camp. The great king bounded to his feet, dragged Toryarl to him by his tunic, spun him about, and wrestled with the hasp of the slave collar.


    ¡°My lord,¡± began Hlafarr, fumbling quickly at his belt pouch, Raian guessed for the key. But with a howl of impatience, Deorgard stuffed all eight fingers under the band, making all the muscles of his great arms bulge and Toryarl¡¯s eyes bug, and the collar snapped. Deorgard tossed the wreck aside, staggered the still-choking Toryarl with a mighty clap on the back, and made him sit, facing the fire, at his feet. A crook of his finger summoned Hlafarr to sit beside the new-freed king, and Deorgard seated himself magnificently above them. Men cheered again, and the mead flowed.


    Raian had not cheered. Not that he thought his unwelcome master did not deserve it; what living man deserved it more? Nor was it only that cheering was neither expected nor particularly welcome from a thrall. He was, rather, distracted. Hlafarr, and this Toryarl¡ªsomething about them nagged at his thought, and he kept staring at them as if sight of them might jog it loose.


    The clear night cooled. The bonfire faded as nearly two hundred men sank into sleep at last, and the grey starlight gave faint silver form to the world. Horses whuffled, tree-frogs and crickets rang like tiny brass bells, the dry air chilled. Sentries paced like ghosts, Wolf snored gently, and Raian stared at the stars. The Scythe dangled from the Pole star.


    Hlafarr, and presumably his barons, the lords of the two other clans of Bordegund, yielded to Deorgard before he had even asked¡ªand seemed pleased enough about it. Toryarl, too, conceded that the Madroch would be master ¡°sooner or later.¡± Maybe the Geillari tide rolled now more over other Geillari than Sferiari, but that was only because there were so many more of them. High in the Tre-Uissig the Sferan folk had met the invader with welcome, made him as much Sferan as they became Geillan, and thought, smugly, oh, smugly, that they had thereby escaped the menace. But Geilla would take Geilla almost as readily as Sfera; and most considered Dunwyrding to be nearly as Sferan a prize as could be wished. Time would be, and soon, when this Deorgard, or one like him, brought battle once again to the highlands, and no offer of brotherhood would stay his sword. The first Geillan clans scattered through the new land like children turned loose on a treasure-hunt. They would surge back as a united force that Kinnaith-Dunwyrding could not match.


    Raian watched the Pole star twinkle above the sullen airs. By the time Deorgard took thought for the highlands, he would have the power of many kingdoms behind him. But his was the will, he the Pole star of Geillan ambition. Wait¡ªthere was a kingdom or two, down toward Andrastir, who did not recognize the Madroch; Dun¡ªwhat was it?¡ªBrean, yes, and one other, of the kingdom of Wexsa; and the Brean styling himself Earl of Maldan, truly enough until just a few short years ago. Perhaps the Brean might raise enough resistance to keep Deorgard busy, away from Tre-Uissig. Or if not him, some northern king. Raian scowled into the darkness. But competitors might compete for the Uissig, especially if she seemed¡ªas of course she must; the wonderful steel sword of Dunare¡¯s gifting had not seemed quite so amazing to the boys of the Tre-Uissig¡ªa delectable prize.


    What if the Uissig had to face only one man mad for conquest? The Pole star. If he could be turned¡ªthen all who followed him must likewise turn.


    Raian had no idea what might dissuade Deorgard from an assault on his mountain home. But of all the chieftains of the Geillari, he was the only one of whom Raian had any chance to learn anything. If Deorgard became, indeed, high-king of the Perian Geillari, he whose word would be law to them from Dorrocan¡¯s Wall to far Elomar, then if he said nay to Tre-Uissig, she must be safe, for at least so long as his reign lasted.


    Raian stared unwinking at the sparkling Pole star. And Bordegund had come willing¡ªif only because harvest was so near and they feared a loss of harvesters, or crops ridden down and burned¡ªand Fenustad seemed to think it all but fated. What that meant, he could not yet see. Meanwhile, he must study his man until, when he and Wolf escaped at last, he could bear home not only warning, but intelligence. Hah! Of all the prizes of the hunt he had won for prince and chief, this would be the greatest.


    Wolf sucked thoughtfully at his teeth, when Raian shared the idea with him as they roused the breakfast fire in the dusty dawn. Presently he cautiously suggested that whatever was to befall Rothric, whether the triumph or the failure of that Darian scoundrel, had surely come to pass by now, meaning, he explained, that escape was no longer so urgent. ¡°And I could stick this,¡± he tugged at his collar and curled his lip, ¡°if I could think I was really a spy. In disguise, like.¡±


    Raian¡¯s jaw dropped, and then he grinned and hugged him fiercely. ¡°You great lunk!¡± He seized Wolf¡¯s ears and planted a fat kiss on his hairy cheek. Wolf yelped and flung him off. But instead of leaping to the fight, he pointed an arch finger at him and gloated, ¡°See? I told you you¡¯d think of something!¡± Then they fought.


    Thereafter their predicament lay lighter upon them. Raian succored himself, when the sense of his bondage bit deepest, in reveries of how he would stand before Prince Ethain and Fiod the Wyrd in the Privy Closet where they received their most sensitive counsel.


    Seven years was all that Geillan law allotted to enslavement. Would Deorgard be high king by then? Raian chuckled darkly. If he did not slow his pace, he might do it in seven months. Good. For if Wolf and he found escape too soon before that, their intelligence would be that much less valuable. Raian looked up from stirring breakfast and waved imaginary magical gestures to all the quarters of the circle of the horizon and willed all the clans of the Galring folk to yield to Deorgard. Wolf stared, but asked no question.


    And it could be worse. Kin-thralls often came in for much worse than indifferent treatment, kicked or made the butts of cruel jests. As the king¡¯s personal property, however, he was as out-of-bounds as any of Deorgard¡¯s gear, his bow or his belt or his spoons. Given Maglad¡¯s status, Wolf fared but slightly worse.


    ¡°And at least we¡¯re not in Daria,¡± Raian pointed out as they cleaned up the oatmeal-kettle.


    ¡°Hey?¡±


    ¡°Darian slaves are for life.¡±


    ¡°No!¡±


    ¡°True!¡±


    ¡°The¡ª¡± Wolf balked for an adequately savage epithet. ¡°Well, that¡¯s just evil. I¡¯m just sorry I never had a chance to smash our man¡¯s teeth in, then. Grr!¡±


    The Dunmadroch kettle had never become so clean since it first left the bronzesmith¡¯s forge.

 XVI: Challenge (pt 3/3): Courting Trouble

    By that evening, they were guests of Hlafarr the Are, in his city that had once been Androllys, seat of the westernmost province of House Andras. Its new owners called it Torkyn, Battle-town, and filled it even more awkwardly than the Geillari of much smaller Floodholding: parks had been turned into pasturage, houses torn down in ghost-exorcisms, and Raian sickened when he recognized one burned-out shell as a former college and library. Mercifully, they left next day, moving north towards hill country. Hlafarr seemed eager to give his new lord a thorough tour of Bordegund.


    Deorgard, however, had taken a strong liking to Toryarl of Fenustad. He praised Bordegund in noble words but brief and turned resolutely south and west. Raian saw Hlafarr tear at his red beard, but he grinned before Deorgard and bowed to his whim.


    A day or two later, at his border Hlafarr paused.


    ¡°Allow me to leave you, lord, with our noble brother,¡± he nodded, rather ungraciously, at Toryarl. ¡°Not the duties of my court alone call me back: on my north and west lie the House of the Bear, and that of the Hawk¡ª¡± by which he meant, Wolf and Raian realized with a start, Tregaron and Felindras¡ª¡°and we patrol against them without rest. I am over late to ride the border myself. Perhaps one day the might of Dunmadroch shall join with us to scour them from the mountains, and open new lands for our people!¡±


    Deorgard stirred. Perhaps impatience for that conquest tugged at him; perhaps, also, he sensed Hlafarr¡¯s attempt to seduce him away from Fenustad and resented the manipulation. But Raian thought, ¡°Oho! So that¡¯s why you wanted Dunmadroch¡¯s overlordship!¡± And he wondered further, seeing in Hlafarr¡¯s face the flush of suppressed wrath: was this man the sort to turn against his tool when it had done the work asked of it?


    In the event, Deorgard fell more silent than usual on the further ride, but when Toryarl apologized mildly, ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ve no such challenges to offer you, lord: Andras seldom crosses the southern river,¡± the Madroch relented with a laugh.


    ¡°We¡¯ll get them,¡± he shrugged, and his mood lightened.


    Riding slowly into Fenustad, they rode into harvest season, and harvest festivities. Though still smarting from Bordegund¡¯s late war, as Deorgard¡¯s army passed, the farmers laid aside their work to hurry to meet them in the villages, the gathering-places for the far-flung holdings. News of their king¡¯s release from bondage had flown ahead, and joyous riot met them. Deorgard wallowed in their adulation, gave gifts lavishly from the further hoard that Bordegund pressed on him at parting¡ªsome of which being lately looted from Fenustad, on one occasion he happened to return a ring to its former owner: Wolf overheard the commotion it raised and pointed it out to Raian, though Deorgard himself never learned of it.


    Deorgard was made to supplant each local chief, whom harvest tradition carried in a litter together with his wife, wreathed and crowned in braided wheat and oats, sunwise around the palisaded walls. He rode with the wives, he accepted the first apples or the last sheaf or whatever was being celebrated that day; he judged their mead and their cakes and their cattle at the fairs; he even held court for them¡ªto an extent.


    For all his air of irritable power, Deorgard loved courtly pomp like a child: Raian, so often dressing the king for the occasion, had finally learned to read his charge¡¯s fidgeting. But the business of court he loathed, equally childishly. Without Bradgith to bind him to his duty, Deorgard put up with two or at most three petitions for justice, before abruptly closing court and storming off to some other duty, archery practice, perhaps, or spear-chucking, or swordplay. From village to village, petitioners followed after him, hoping to be heard, anxious to be heard, desperate to be heard. Many gave up, to what final settlement Raian never learned. Some tried to bribe the heralds to place their cases foremost. The heralds stayed up late, drinking and considering their bribes and bemoaning as usual the annual defection of the thrice-damned bards. Being often left to serve Engobrad, Deorgard¡¯s herald, when the king retired with some woman, Raian acquired an unwitting headful of issues, but it gave him something to think about when mending shields proved insufficiently demanding of his attention.


    One enterprising group called at Deorgard¡¯s quarters, but there was only the dragonfolk-thrall to greet them: the king had ridden out an hour or more before. No, he had not entrusted his slave with his destination. Raian looked at their weary, wretched faces, at how they stood, aimless in the doorway, bereft of their own and only destination.


    Well? Deorgard would never know, so long as he, Deorgard, could avoid it. Raian sucked a cold breath and chanced it.


    ¡°Masters,¡± he began, with all of what scant diffidence he could assume, ¡°it is not my place to speak¡ª¡±


    ¡°Of what?¡± demanded the particular plaintiff, a tall, rangy man burnt brown between his yellow thatch and yellow-gray beard.


    ¡°I have overheard his majesty speak of your case¡ªnot secretly!¡± he added hastily, throwing up a warding palm. ¡°Only considering it with one of his older men.¡±


    All four men¡ªthe plaintiff and his equally-blond son, the dark lugubrious defendant and his sunnier berry-brown brother¡ªfixed him with hungry eyes. Raian waited, contriving to look anxious till the father, after a sharp glance that swept the other three, urged him gently, ¡°Speak, boy. If ¡¯t was openly spoken, ¡¯t is fair to speak again.¡±


    ¡°Yes, master. He said¡ªat the last I heard, you understand¡ªthat he would ask you, Freeman,¡± he nodded to the elder brother, ¡°what you would have done, if it had been your father¡¯s cow in question, and what you would have expected of your father in return. And you the same,¡± he went on to the yellowbeard, ¡°if it had been your father¡¯s pasture: what would you expect of him? Iyuhh His Majesty thought to set that as your guide, for we are surely most just to our own people, and by this is the love among us strengthened. Unlike among the imperials,¡± he added in his own voice, and was sourly gratified to see all four take the note he intended. It was true enough, though: no people was free of fraternal strife, but the last two centuries starkly bared the divisiveness of the Sferiari and the cohesion of the barbarians.


    Father Yellowbeard scowled, and his son still more fiercely. The elder brother¡¯s woe deepened. But the younger one laughed. ¡°Ay, well, there¡¯s wisdom enough! Let us take that old cow and throw t¡¯ whole village a feast. And won¡¯t we look like great men then!¡± he added, when the others hesitated.


    How dearly the Geillari admired hospitality! Raian suspected a stingy streak among the other three, but this way they lost more or less equally. They shook on it, there in the doorway, and left without further heed of the thrall¡ªsave the younger brother, who gave Raian an outrageous wink before he hurried after.


    Raian gaped, the Madroch¡¯s sherte forgotten in his hands. Was that only thanks¡ªor did he know, did he suspect? Raian had heard no such thing, of course. Deorgard was even less likely to discuss a case than hear it in the first place. He had overheard the heralds, Deorgard¡¯s man Engobrad together with Toryarl¡¯s and the local chief¡¯s, as they debated which cases they could set before the king.


    Deorgard would never know. The heralds would never know. The bards¡ªvery well, the bards would probably never know that a slave boy had put his own words in the mouth of the king. Please.


    He turned back to his work and froze. Two of Toryarl¡¯s own thralls, both rather elderly men, hastily resumed their own tasks. Trying to feign nonchalance, he hurried through his work. At last one of his unwelcome companions sidled over.


    ¡°Said he so, the Man-wolf?¡± the gaffer ventured cautiously, as if the answer might bite him, but his only reply was a stern glance and a lifted chin. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°¡¯T is fair to say what was openly said!¡± Raian echoed Father Yellowbeard, masking his real fear behind the spoken one.


    The old man cowered, and tried to laugh. ¡°I¡¯d not thought him so wise¡ªwell, well! Well!¡± He must have been satisfied, for nothing more came of it except Wolf thumping him soundly for his temerity.


    Two days later saw them at Toryarl¡¯s own hall. Raian discovered that rumor of the purely-Geillari¡ªthe ¡°wild¡± Geillari, as folk in the Uissig thought them¡ªspoke truth about one custom: a man, a nobleman, who held another in brotherly esteem did offer the women of his house for the pleasure of such a friend. The man so honored must in turn refuse the wife¡ªamid lavish compliments¡ªbut refusing a daughter, unmarried herself and of suitable age, of course, or close cousin if the host were daughterless, amounted to insult and repudiation. Children were not merely accepted but hoped for, partly as such a father was expected to gift the mother handsomely, wealth she would bring to whomever she married. Deorgard¡¯s own daughter had such a child. Toryarl was a man blessed with five daughters. One was too young, but the twins and the other two were not, and, once Engobrad had at last slid witless under the tables, Raian spent his nights blushing under Toryarl¡¯s haystacks. Wolf did not understand Raian¡¯s squeamishness.


    ¡°No? Would you do that, with your sister and¡ªand me?¡±


    ¡°If she wanted you,¡± Wolf retorted, with mock scorn Raian was too preoccupied to catch. ¡°Though I don¡¯t count¡ªI¡¯m not nobly cursed, I mean born. ¡¯Course, Nehest¡ª¡± ¡°cat-woman¡± was only her nickname, and Raian was not sure he knew her right name¡ª¡°she¡¯d claw out my eyes if I tried it with someone she didn¡¯t like. Toryarl¡¯s lot seem like chicks of the same hatching, if you follow me. How about the eldest, that redhead? You¡¯d better not close your eyes till she¡¯s happy, I bet!¡±


    There was a silence. Finally Raian ventured, ¡°Uh? Wolf? How¡ªer, how do you do that? How do you know she¡¯s happy, I mean?¡±


    ¡°Oh, ye gods. Yah, boy, you were the one who stood truant for Proving!¡±


    Raian stared aghast at the stars, being eaten now by mustering clouds. ¡°I thought that was just¡ªtests of courage and, and hardihood, and ritual re-birth¡ªwhich always sounded beastly silly. . . .¡±


    ¡°It was. Well, mine was. My cousin thought his was the greatest thing.¡±


    ¡°The one who became priest of Teodhan?¡±


    ¡°Teodhan and Mauri, yah, that one.¡± Wolf sighed. ¡°Up to me, is it, then? All right, Rai, let me think about it.¡±


    Raian meekly fell silent to wait. Presently, when Wolf began to snore, he did not rouse him.


    He could not get a straight answer out of him anyway. He could get barely a coherent word. It seemed to be the funniest thing Wolf had ever heard, ever, in his entire life, that Raian had been innocent enough to think Proving was only about bravery. ¡°Woo-hoo! So it¡¯s true! I always thought it¡ªyour kind are sooo sheltered when you¡¯re infants, and sooo wicked when you¡¯re grown! Wow!¡± Still, he was loyal enough to keep close the source of his hilarity, even when some other thralls tried to torture it out of him. Raian gave up on him and began to look for some more sympathetic advisor. But not very hard.


    And then they were within a fortnight of Mid-autumn, the re-balance of Light and Dark. One of the villages held a Nutting Day festival, and all the unmarried men wrestled to be Hazelnut King, to choose his Fair bride and Queen from the single women; to everyone¡¯s secret relief, his glorious majesty the high king declined to participate. Toryarl¡¯s son did, but his competitors respected and trusted his father enough to beat him if they could. Blackberries came in, and even Deorgard went picking, accompanied by the redheaded daughter, and at least for this day silenced the young men beginning to grow restless for fiercer sport.


    The bards returned. For three days, all work ceased at noon as, after the noon-meal, everyone gathered at the village bonfire-hearths to hear their bards stand forth with news from every corner of Peria and beyond. Deaths of chieftains of faraway clans, and the election of their successors; names of champions of many sports and the tales of their victories (amid many a murmur of ¡°I could best that¡± and wagering to attend next year¡¯s matches); battle and war and plunder; interesting challenges of the law and their resolutions. The Prince of near-mythical Rodrantir had warred with the Sorceror-king of far Isorchia, to a draw, and his emissaries sailed up and down the Dragon Sea, plying mercenaries with gold. A rain of toads in Talkirth; dragons sighted in the mountains of Inkirth; Ilmatian pirate raids against Daria.


    As for the bards¡¯ great annual Competition: many great songs and poems had been offered and taught, with which to brighten the long dark nights of winter to come. Several locals had done very well; Toryarl¡¯s senior bard sang a song, for the best part of an hour, praising one of his subordinates who had surpassed him in the contests, though his jaw strained and he begged to retire to his cot when he had done. They had crowned the King of the Bards; Raian did not catch the name, but, this being his thirteenth straight crown, he seemed to be known as Again.


    ¡°What, Again?¡±


    ¡°Not Again!¡±


    ¡°Yes, Again!¡±


    Strangest was the news they kept for last. At sunset on the third day, Bradgith, the most senior bard present and winner of plenty of his own prizes, stalked around the great bonfire and told the silent crowd of the silence of Sparca.


    Bards of Dunhaldring and Dun Garlaf had come late to the Competition. They themselves had ventured over the Wall, touched with their own hands the lintels and beams of empty houses and barns, stirred with their own fingers the dust of hearths forgotten, and felt, everywhere, the breath of ghosts. Voices could be heard at night, they said, rumor of laughter and song in the distance, a great distance that yet seemed just at hand. One night they had endured, and then fled, and every one of them swore, between Maolin below and Dere above, they would never tread there again. No, they had not yet composed their songs of it: the dread still lay too heavy on them. But when those songs were made, once they were heard, not the boldest Geilla would cry them fainthearted.


    Everyone retired rather early that evening, and huddled close with one another, and listened in the dark to the night-sounds from the forest beyond their palisade walls.


    Justice came or, rather, returned. Bradgith held his lord firmly to his royal duty; and if the judgments rendered were often cursory, even arbitrary, at least they came from the king. It is probable that there were resentments; but there was no higher court under Heaven.


    But soon the defendants before Deorgard became his own men of the many clans. Young men, full of their power, grow swiftly fractious. They would fight: one another, or the farmers, for want of sterner foes. There had even been a rape, though she in return had nearly excised one of his kidneys and the healers were uncertain of his life. Toryarl¡¯s Godenaldring, the Council of the Wise, came before Deorgard and begged him to take the dogs¡ªah, the young heroes away, to find them sport to match their high hot blood.


    Deorgard nodded, then stared at them till they went away. He meant to stare then at Bradgith, but the old man in his wisdom closed court at his king¡¯s first glance.


    Toryarl pulled at his gold-braided moustaches. ¡°Come with me to the buckwheat harvesting in the morning. It may be my little land has challenge for you yet.¡±


    Side by side they sat their mounts, Deorgard¡¯s black monster dwarfing Toryarl¡¯s stout bay, upon the crest of a hill high above the fields, for Fenustad¡¯s western marches approached the rocky spine of Peria. The sun burned fine and golden in the easternmost skirts of a flawless blue sky; the weeds and grasses, chest-high to the horses, rippled down from the two kings to the brown fields below, already half-striped in trim windrows. The harvesters sang to keep rhythm, and their voices floated up the sweet air to their kings.


    Corn and grain


    Corn and grain


    Die for us and rise again


    Grain and corn


    Grain and corn


    All that dies shall be reborn


    Beyond the fields, the land rose in another green swell, and beyond it a line of still higher hills. Then all along the western rim, the hem of the sky had been torn, roughly dagged by the dark summits of the Dur Rusannmar. And tallest of these, sombre as green shadow, rose the smooth, even sides of a great double-toothed peak. Toryarl pointed.


    ¡°The Myrinine,¡± he said. And Deorgard glowered west as though the mountains, too, must yield to his gaze.

 XVII: The Myrinine (pt 1/5): Mad With Daring

    XVII: The Myrinine


    Tall sweet grass bent and rolled away from them up the slope, glimmering green under the breath of morning. Half a mile distant, the forest-wall leaped up from the meadow-land, the shadowed green of pine and fir, hornbeam and beech, but green still, cool-looking in a dawn already hot. Behind the wall the land rose swiftly, dark against a pale blue sky, but the clustered peaks they had watched all yesterday lay hidden now by their lowest skirts. A speck swept into the sky and sped down the wind towards them, resolved into a young kestrel that pulled up, hovered before them, lost interest and sailed away into the south.


    ¡°That it?¡± drawled Thardr, a dour Cardrogh just behind Maglad. A murmur of agreeable disdain rippled out from him. Deorgard¡¯s silence damped it, and only the wind whispered.


    Then the Madroch chuckled. Heads turned. He laughed, softly; men began to grin. Then he bellowed a mighty battle-laugh for the utter joy of strife, and while men were still drawing breath to echo him, he pounded his heels into his horse¡¯s flanks and sprang away, first among them all, his Bordegundian sword a lash of sun-flame, and he charged the fastness of the Myrinine.


    Two hundred of them they were, men of many clans but Maglad¡¯s ringing voice, loosed first, led them all in one great cry: ¡°Deorgard!¡± And the company echoed like a storm, ¡°DeorGARD!¡± and the hooves of their horses thundered for the trees.


    Raian might have lost his seat at the king¡¯s back, if he had not grown well-used to the royal sense of humor (notwithstanding that he would have been royally punished had he fallen and let the Madroch¡¯s ribboned spear dip). He had gauged Deorgard¡¯s timing well, clung tight to banner, lord and horse, and bent sidelong to peer under Deorgard¡¯s left elbow for a glimpse at the fabled forest.


    He had never seen the sea. He had dreamed of it, though, dreamed that it rose and rushed across the land to smash over him where he clung against a crumbling dream-cliff. These dour trees loomed like that monster wave, surging up to blot away the sky and engulf them. He braced himself against a shock of impact, as if the gloom of the trees had the weight of deep water.


    Under the long arms of the front-ranked trees they passed, king, slave, and mount, making for a dimmer slot now seen to be a gap like the beginning of a path. And like hitting a wall, the horse shied and screamed. Deorgard yanked it round at once, but the wild veer jarred Raian from his perch. His arm, gripping Deorgard for all honor, felt all but doubly dislocated, but if it could not save his seat, at least it stayed his fall enough that he kept his feet: the spear and its flying blue and yellow ribbons stayed high and erect.


    Shivering, eyes rolling, the horse would not pass the trees for all the king¡¯s horsemanship. Now the swiftest of the other horsemen rode up into the same wall of refusal, and the air filled with the cries of spooked horses inflaming one another¡¯s terror while their riders fought to master them. The dogs, hunting hounds and battle-dogs alike, slunk about, trying to avoid the hooves and yet draw close to their masters, tails and heads sunk in abjection.


    At last the company quieted. Men looked to the Madroch, while the horses still eyed the silent shadow under the trees. Deorgard glared into the wood. Not a shaft of sunlight could be glimpsed beyond the first line of trunks. The great height of the trees, thick and heavy with needle and leaf, swallowed up every golden drop long before it could find the floor.


    It seemed clear enough within, with little undergrowth; once their sight adjusted, and they ducked to look up-slope, they could see a fair way up the hill: well clear enough for a horse to walk at ease, but never a one could be made to try it. Deorgard dismounted at last in disgust.


    He held a brief council. For all that they had now some respect for this overgrown shrubbery since Thardr¡¯s sneer, none would turn away. And none would willingly be turned away, left to tend the timid horses while their fellows marched on to a glorious challenge.


    Someone suggested drawing lots. Another volunteered the seven youngest, who in outraged turn offered combat to any who tried to compel them.


    ¡°In the Uissig, we¡¯d settle it by wrestling,¡± Raian murmured just behind the king, not so close as to seem to advise, or even suggest, but rather as one speaking idly to himself; yet not so loud that any but Deorgard heard.


    The king let his followers wrangle till tempers just began to boil up, before ordering wrestling matches. A brief flurry of surprised objections¡ªchiefly to the time, but the king¡¯s glowering nod towards the trees made sufficient reminder that the Myrinine would still be there when they had finished¡ªand they threw themselves eagerly into the contests, often as much performing for Deorgard¡¯s amusement as competing for a place in the adventure. In this spirit, even Raian and the Wolfman were obliged to a match, with one another, being only slaves; and for that reason also neither was in danger of being left behind, though later Wolf privately admitted to a mad hope of it.


    To winnow six out of the two hundred took no little time, and they took their noon meal late, there under the forest eaves, when the last man was thrown down. The losers took their fate with grace enough: they were, plainly, less fit than their brothers to dare unknown perils, but only little less, and even the horse-wards upon so noble a venture would wear more glory than those who had stopped home and never come at all.


    Raian could not help reflecting that if no one had stayed home, everyone would starve over the winter and there would be nothing to plant next spring. If it was not glorious, surely it was not less worthy of honor; but no one made songs about it.


    The plan had been to climb straight for the summit, not more than five miles, call it two leagues by the dells and swells of uneven ground, from last night¡¯s camp; there to raise a great beacon-fire and return. Before nightfall: they were bold, not bollocks.


    Too late for all that now. So they sported through the afternoon in the shadow of the Myrinine, and made for their night¡¯s camp a bonfire there, taking what wood they pleased from the forest fringe. Wains from the Fenustad holdings a league behind them, meant to meet them after their conquest, arrived with meat and mead and made the night merry indeed. The wagoneers were at once conscripted by the six horse-wards. Deorgard consented to the trade, and next morning all the original band, many of them savagely hung over, plunged horseless into the forest.


    Deorgard strode like a lion, through the slot that he and Raian had sought yesterday; a deer track, perhaps, a long bare streak through the ankle-deep carpet of ferns. Raian skipped nimbly after, still carrying his spear; behind him, Maglad the Grim, Wolf in his wake. Another half-dozen followed them, but most entered all along the edge of the wood and spread out, running and leaping through the dim park-like expanse. A greyhound pressed close to Raian¡¯s knees, its eyes rolling; a chorus of dismal baying from the dogs that refused to follow echoed after them under the leaves.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    After the queer balking of the animals, they had expected to feel¡ªa sense of doom, or foreboding at least, some taint of the glamour of the wood. Men looked to their fellows known to carry magic, to see if they had any rumor from the Otherworld. Raian ¡°listened,¡± as he thought of it, for that thinning of the stuff of the world, as he knew it around, say, the Elder Pendiu, the tree under which he had first sheltered with Rothric.


    There was nothing. Only the usual dimness under trees heavy with the full weight of summer¡¯s growth, and the air was still, sticky with the heat. Most of the company had left tunics and leggings both behind in camp, running along now in breechcloths alone, the king among them. They shouted and laughed to one another, mocking the Myrinine: it was after all only a forest, however old and deep. No place for a man alone, sure, but the minions of the Piper in the Wild fled before men banded together in their strength, and even Dagn Himself would not meet so many.


    Still, Raian wished they would pipe down. Even an ordinary wood should be listened to.


    The lowest branches stood out a foot or more above the heads of the tallest of the Geillari, and such fern and bracken as grew in this dim shade reached no higher than their ankles, so that they could see one another well enough in the grey-green twilight. Getting lost from the party would require an effort of stealth, especially as the slope here was smooth. Within a furlong or two, however, the land began to undulate, paralleling the slope. The track upon which the king strode followed the bottom of a gentle but deepening trough. Raian could see several dozen men to either side, all careful not to outstrip their lord, but those beyond were hidden by the crests to either side. Deorgard snorted like a boar and struck off the track, crossing up to the top of the left, southern rise, Raian, Maglad, Wolf and several others following close after. There he stopped and glared off through the woods.


    The rest of the army also noticed that they had begun to lose sight of their flanks. Deorgard made no sign or sound, but his lieutenants cried in signal through the now-rolling wood, and the outliers drew in. Deorgard waited till they filled the two swales on either side of his rise, and men on the southern and northern crests no longer glanced searchingly into the hidden spaces beyond, before starting sharply uphill again.


    Now Raian had more of silence. The ground was soft, springy with moss, and made little enough sound under soft boots treading now more warily. But apart from the men, the only sounds were those of a drowsy forest in a late summer¡¯s morning, a rustle of wind far above, the occasional laughter of birdsong. He wondered what he was trying to hear; a dragon¡¯s bellow? a snow lion¡¯s cough?


    The swell of land up which the king strode grew flatter, even slightly dished, and began to be edged with milky quartz, like ridges of crude white teeth breaking through mossy gums (Raian licked tenderly at his own), and the sides fell away more steeply. The trees crowded in the swales more closely, though not on the ridge, and they could no longer see so far ahead, or to the sides. No trees grew in the lane between the white stones, but the towering giants to either side kept still a deep branching roof above them. Raian and Maglad could have walked easily abreast of the Madroch; neither had the temerity and instead flanked him, left and right. Wolf came on barely a pace behind and between them.


    Then the rising slope ended. Cleft as by a monstrous axe driven in from the east, from ridge and trough alike the land fell steeply to a torrent that bounded down from the north, in many short white falls that spilled into dark pools, and it disappeared away southward. Across the stream reared a ragged black wall, dripping from many seeps, its top lost in the high foliage.


    Deorgard stopped. Hands on hips, he glared down at the cut like a housewife at a spoiled floor; then up, as if he could see the peak of their ambition through the trees. Suddenly he leaped out, and landed twenty feet down, heels plowing the loamy slope as he skidded another fathom. Raian leaped after him, misjudged his own landing slightly and bounced his backside on the mercifully-soft earth. Deorgard was already running to his right, upstream, leaping up the narrow ledges at the waterside. Raian charged after. Behind him, Maglad and Wolf followed hard, Wolf¡¯s distinctive ¡°Wooo-haah!¡± ringing over the rushing voice of the water. The rest chased after as they could, more than one enthusiastic leaper bowling an earlier one over into the rocky pools, to much cursing, but no fighting: if there were many such checks, they would need all spare time for travel, to be back before dark. But not a dog would follow now. Forced to choose between hound and king, their masters gave up and left them, to whine and await their return.


    The gully of the stream veered back toward the west, towards the heights. The ledge narrowed and vanished, and Deorgard plunged across the stream at a deep pool, swimming before he reached the far side. There the bank rose like a broken stair, steep as a ladder and then steeper, and the sharp black rocks cut at their hands as they scaled the last twenty feet. Then in a level place like a shady lawn they stopped for breath and to await the stragglers, when a scream broke from the water below, bubbled, and died.


    Men still upon the rocky climb stopped. Deorgard strode to the edge and looked down. For a long moment, only wind and water spoke, and a raven laughed. Presently one last man started up the rocks, white-faced.


    ¡°Fergunor,¡± he said, as soon as his head was level with Deorgard¡¯s feet. ¡°He was the last, just behind me. I saw him go under. He¡ª¡± The man reached the top and spread a brown-stained hand helplessly. ¡°He didn¡¯t sink.¡± He took a deep breath, wiped at the water still dripping from his scruffy brown beard, and his gaze writhed about as though trying to escape what memory saw. ¡°Like he was pulled. Hard.¡± The young man, not more than twenty, Raian thought, twisted his head away. ¡°I could see his face, through the water¡ªamazed. . . . I stuck my spear-butt in after him, but I could feel nothing . . . and then something grabbed that down, too!¡± He caught Deorgard¡¯s quick stare at the spear he carried, and he held it out dully, in a gashed hand that dripped blood unheeded on the moss. ¡°This was his. It caught on the rocks.¡±


    ¡°Keep it,¡± Deorgard ordered. Then his eyes narrowed at the silent, crowded men. ¡°How many are we?¡± he barked.


    They had been two hundreds and three, not counting the two slaves. They counted now one hundred and eighty-two. Hackles rose. Men spoke of having missed this friend or that, but all had supposed them merely somewhere else in the throng. The king chuckled darkly.


    ¡°Will we find them cowering about the lower slopes when we return¡ª?¡± he began.


    ¡°Never!¡± shouted someone, and many murmurs agreed.


    Deorgard flung up a restraining palm. ¡°Will you go and hunt them, then?¡± He was answered with silence, and he thundered, ¡°Shall we all turn back to seek them?¡±


    Silence.


    Deorgard nodded. ¡°We will sing their names in tonight¡¯s camp.¡± His fierce gaze travelled over them, noting each, and appeared to decide that a reminder to stay alert and to watch one another would be waste of good breath. No one spoke further, save Kavin, or one of His attendants, stroking the far outer leaves above. The light dimmed, as though clouds covered the sun.


    Then, ¡°Lord! Lord!¡± shouted someone right behind Raian: Kerrnev, the youngest of the band, barely a whole year older than Wolf. His outflung hand pointed across the glade, and his voice rang wild and exultant.


    Beyond the beechy lawn, a stand of pines began, dark as eventide beneath its shadowy branches. And in the gloom, two pale glimmers, like the ghosts of barn cats¡ªbut cats seven or eight hands at the shoulder: snow lions, the token of the Dunmadroch. One stalked down from the north, and its eyes glowed like red coals; the other prowled up from the south, with eyes of greenest foxfire. They passed one another, never taking their eyes from the adventurers, and¡ª


    Some swore later that the red-eyed one passed in front of the other; some cried the opposite; Raian saw them pass, ghost-like, through one another. And then they turned west, up into the Myrinine, and were gone. Men hallooed, and pursued as though every human bliss lay within those pallid hides.

 XVII: The Myrinine (pt 2/5): Mad With Fear

    Raian remembered little of the wild chase that followed. The land dipped, rose, and plunged this way and that; the forest lay clear, then tangled, then cleared again, but whenever the way seemed doubtful, a glimpse of glimmering ghost-stuff far off through the trees set the pursuit springing after again. He knew nothing but the heady lust of the hunt. His blood drummed. His lungs swelled and gushed on deep draughts of laughter, and his muscles thrust their power again and again upon the earth. Life was in the chase, and the chase was all, and the hunting horns rang through the wooded world.


    He tripped. Heading nose-first for the thick-needled floor, he realized he had not seen the branch that snared his foot, could not have seen it, and could scarce see his own brown arm thrust out to catch him: Night was almost upon them.


    ¡°Hey!¡± he yelped, hit, rolled, and leaped up again. ¡°Hey¡ªwaaaugh!¡± as a man behind slammed into him and they both fell.


    Maglad jumped at once to his feet, throwing Raian an instinctive hand up, and shook his head like a wet dog. ¡°Where is the king?¡± he shouted, peering wildly about through the trees and the galloping throng. ¡°Deor-GARD!¡± he bellowed, and then loosed the war chant of Dunmadroch:


    ¡°Come ye forth, come ye free, Madroch arising!


    ¡°Come to the battle-call, ride to the raid!


    ¡°Madroch forevermore, du! Ho, oeroe!¡±


    Dunmadroch men wheeled round like horses to a bridle hard-yanked. Among them, Duncardrogh, Dun Padanring, clans Agdaen and Manan, Aenwin, Flotweland and the rest, turned to answer the challenge; then, recalling their status now as allies, rallied to Maglad¡¯s cry. And so they woke, out of a collective dream into a mutual nightmare.


    Shouts went up, men calling for friends or brothers lost in the gloom, but tentatively, as all drew in to Maglad: what nameless else might follow their calls? A hand gripped Raian¡¯s arm; Wolf¡¯s hairy chest brushed Raian¡¯s back and his beard tickled in his ear. ¡°Here¡¯s hell, right enough,¡± Wolf muttered. Raian said nothing, but shifted his weight closer to his friend. They steamed and sweated like driven horses, and both took comfort in the living heat between them, and the human smell.


    ¡°QUIET!¡± The thunderclap burst among them: Deorgard. Behind the sudden silence of the men, the Myrinine Forest murmured and chuckled, patient and old. The last light faded.


    ¡°Camp here,¡± grunted Deorgard, and hurled himself to ease upon the ground.


    Few things comfort like the chieftain¡¯s implacable confidence. Slowly, the rest followed his example, as best they could, hunkering down close like a vast wolf-pack, feeling the bolder for the closeness of their brothers in the blind dark.


    ¡°Light!¡± commanded the king, and men who had the gift spread magelight under the trees, gold, green, silver, blue glowing strangely from the very air, nowhere and everywhere, shadowless. Some muttered and complained against the witchy aura, though none wanted the dark.


    Again they named themselves over, and a grimmer fear, unlike their earlier frantic dismay, settled on them. Only a hundred and thirty-nine, barring the two thralls, remained, and no voice of some brother wandering lost reached them from the depths of the wood.


    Their blood chilled with their sweat. They were hungry, having eaten nothing since the morning, and they were desperately thirsty. This was to have been a raid, not a campaign. Most had brought at least a packet of provision, biscuit and jerky, enough for a light lunch and no more; these the king forced to be shared out by distributing his own. And many had waterskins, all dry now, though no one could recall the drinking.


    The soft rush of a cascade reached them between the low voices and the high whisper of unseen leaves. Was it far? ¡°Let the witch-sighted find it for us,¡± grumbled someone, and ¡°Hear him!¡± cried others, then swiftly hushed.


    ¡°We are not water-bearers,¡± the proud handful of dragon-gifted warriors retorted.


    Deorgard snapped his fingers. Raian understood. Rising, ¡°I will go,¡± he said coolly, far more coolly than he felt: he had not seen Fergunor pulled down into the pool that morning but he wished that he had, for the truth was usually quite tame beside his too-lively fancy.


    He schooled his face to impassivity that it might not betray the fear in his belly. Then a sudden flock of moths, big as an outstretched hand and pale as opal swooped about his head and fluttered into his face, drawn perhaps by the highest figure in the eerie glow.


    ¡°Douse the lights!¡± the band cried out, fearing what more than moths might be drawn from the dark fastnesses. Then muttering against the dark rippled through them, but swiftly muted lest the sound, too, draw evil notice. Groping and fumbling man to man, they passed their empty skins towards where they had last seen the slave-boy.


    He could hardly carry water for so many, in one trip, alone, but even before they had put out the magelights, Wolf stood up with him, unasked. No one else volunteered. They were not water-bearers. And if on this occasion pride but masked fear, Raian at least could not grudge it them. Wolf, he discovered, had other reasons for like indulgence.


    Plugged bladders dangling all about them, the two picked their way along a lane opened for them through the silent warriors. Once clear, Raian cast a faint shimmer on the ground ahead of them, from his feet to some ten yards ahead, the limit of his reach with it. Not more than a furlong took them to the tree-entangled bank of the water. Fireflies winked, tracing idle paths through the dark beyond the water. Away from the stream, the silence of the Myrinine lay hollow, a vast hunger waiting for the slightest sound from them to devour. But here the splashing and purling blinded their one distance sense: anything could approach, and they unaware. Their heads turned all about, looking and looking and never enough.


    Raian heard Wolf draw a deep breath, and ¡°Scared, boyo?¡± he murmured, half an octave too high.


    Raian crushed a cold giggle. Scared? He opened his mouth for some sarcastic remark, and the giggle escaped, and he snorted, trying to master himself and Wolf too tittered helplessly and they dropped to the damp ground together and gibbered, quietly, fighting for silence. At last Raian managed, ¡°S-scared? So what¡¯s this place got that¡¯s worse than Curfew-wards?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s this place got for magistrates?¡± Wolf hissed back. ¡°Rai¡ªI¡¯d meant to nick off, instead of fetch water . . . but. . . .¡±


    Raian nodded, though Wolf could not see. ¡°Yah,¡± he agreed softly. ¡°Me, too¡ªat first.¡± But now the ¡®fireflies¡¯ had begun to fly as matched pairs, as like to green eyes as ever drifted idly through a dark air.


    They watched in silence for an unknown time, Raian racking his memory for any spell that might be even remotely useful, and all he could recall fully was one he used for projecting his voice to annoy his brother. Screaming would bring who-knew-what upon them, and even with magelight he could not see far enough fast enough to run. Sitting quietly screwed up the horrible waiting tension that much tighter¡ªand was a bore, besides. Of all actions, and inaction, that Raian could then imagine, doing what they came to do was better than nothing.


    ¡°What the hell,¡± he murmured, and reached for the first skin. ¡°Ah¡ªby your leave,¡± he added, aloud, and dipped in his bottle.


    ¡°Whose leave?¡± Wolf whispered, startled.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Raian waved a vague arm. ¡°Who knows? Oughtn¡¯t we be gentlemen about it anyway?¡± and laughed, a little less of a giggle than before; pleased, he laughed again.


    ¡°Yah. Sure,¡± Wolf agreed warily. ¡°By¡¯er leave,¡± he mumbled, feeling at once silly and profoundly respectful. They filled their burdens, drank deeply themselves from their cupped hands¡ªand maybe it was only their sweat-salted lips that made it so, but never had water tasted so sweet¡ªand gathered their collection and shuffled back to the waiting men.


    Thanks were gruff, indifferent-sounding, but men made way for them. Twice more they went to the water, joined the last time by Kerrnev. And when thirst was slaked, men began to sing.


    Lay after lay they shared, some in common¡ªwith the occasional variant, for which fight was offered, that Deorgard commanded should wait for the sun¡ªbut most were the hearth-tales of many holdings. The king demanded of Raian a song of the dragon-lords. His memory blanked, as it had with his magic, leaving only the last one he learned before leaving home, an ancient favorite of the newly-Proved: unbearably lewd. He sang it, for the king commanded, though he felt certain that even his voice blushed. The genre seemed new to this Geillan horde, but though at first startled, they understood the point of a chorus and joined in lustily.


    At last, vigor waned. Some stood sentry, listening to the night, while the rest attempted sleep. Deorgard at least slept almost at once, snoring gently, using Raian¡¯s belly for a pillow. Raian snarled inwardly, and lay awake, plotting in vain before he slept.


    He woke just enough to notice when the watch changed, and when it changed again. He thought it might be the fourth change when he roused more fully, enough to note his hunger and to wonder if it would keep him uselessly awake now. Then he was flung wholly alert by a harsh mutter:


    ¡°How many watches, now?¡±


    ¡°Six, aye!¡±


    Six! He hoisted up onto his elbows. Deorgard whuffled but did not seem to wake.


    ¡°And ne¡¯er a glim o¡¯ dawn¡ªnought but hellsmirk all about.¡±


    ¡°Tha¡¯s lost count. Or hast pulled short shifts!¡± someone else growled, heavy with drowse.


    ¡°Take that back, thou! Twice through I¡¯ve sung Minorgard¡¯s Lay, and ¡¯t is an hour¡¯s chanting, that one!¡±


    ¡°Sing slower,¡± retorted the sleepy one, and silence returned, but not wholly.


    Raian drowsed uneasily, listening as the rustlings of sleepers, shifting in search of retreating comfort, came more often, and more determined. Even Deorgard curled onto his side, took his own elbow for pillow. Raian, too, curled up, but kept his face turned skywards, fully awake now, watching for the least thinning of Night¡¯s shadow. At least the fireflies, twinned and singular, had gone.


    Wolf rolled over, poked till he found Raian¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Chants, I don¡¯t know. But it¡¯s my bladder says this¡¯s been a hellish long night. Think this old forest¡¯ll understand if it¡¯s scared the piss out of me?¡± Raian could not tell if Wolf meant to be funny or not.


    Together they crept on all fours to spare their fellow sleepers, out to find a tree away and yet not too far away from their companions. A Cardrogh on watch greeted them dismally as they passed. Preparing himself at his own tree, Raian heard a curious little sound from Wolf at his. For all he could tell, his friend was gently patting the tree-bole with great tenderness, followed by an awkward, reverent whisper: ¡°It¡¯s not like among men. Right?¡± And then the sound of water being unborne. On reflection, Raian too offered polite intentions.


    They crept back among more men waking to a similar awareness. Murmurs rose, as eyes strained for any light. Where was the dawn? Men cursed the dark, their hunger, their clumsy brothers, and the forest. Where was the dawn? And how could the king sleep so blithely?


    ¡°When,¡± Deorgard¡¯s voice rolled through the blackness, and all quieted at once, ¡°When have you ever known the sun not to rise?¡±


    Some sense of comfort answered that; then someone cried out, ¡°And when have you ever broached the Demonwood?¡±


    ¡°Aye! Aye! Hear him!¡± Men leaped up, crying out. ¡°The Demonwood!¡±


    Deorgard seized Raian in a savage grip. ¡°Light!¡± he snarled in his ear, and as Raian cast a dim golden spray to the leaves above, he roared out, ¡°Du! Ho, oeroe! Are you men¡ªor girls?¡±


    They paused, blinking in the grateful light, light that glinted upon raised spears, and not a few drawn swords. ¡°Make a fire,¡± Deorgard grunted.


    And, ¡°A fire!¡± someone echoed. Men sprang to the work, some to clear a circle before the king. Their brothers with axes, seeing no deadwood to hand, set with savage glee upon a robust pine, whose resinous wood would give a fine homely light. The forest resounded, chock! chock! chock!


    At last the tree wavered. Everyone stopped in talk and labor to watch, and cheer the last strokes. A mighty sigh of tearing foliage and the tree toppled slowly, its remaining heartwood shrieking with the strain. The shriek swelled to a scream, a man¡¯s bellow as of a bitter battle-wound, and a dark jet spurted from the gash in the trunk like blood from some monstrous vein.


    The scream choked off. The branches crackled loudly as they shattered under the tree, and the forest fell silent.


    Then, ¡°Gods of hell!¡± a strangled voice sobbed, and a man in the checky of Dun Eftring stumbled forward through the broken branches. A terrible keening broke from him, and broke the spell of immobility that had seized them all. Out of the tumult of horror that rose at the bloodlike geyser, and puzzlement at the Eftring spearman¡¯s dismay, news found no sure path but was overtaken by a swift-running flood of panic.


    Men screamed and yammered. Many turned to flee, and turned again daunted by the waiting wood, only to look again upon the dreadful fallen pine and recoil. No few simply bolted. And Raian stood agape and ignorant and Wolf yelped, ¡°What? What?¡±


    Deorgard thrust his fingers in his mouth and blew an auger-sharp whistle. Roused by some instinct, Raian began to struggle free of the Dunmadroch battle-horn and still its thong nearly took off his ear as Deorgard seized it up. A great ringing blast stunned the woods, and panicking men turned towards command like hungry infants to the teat.


    And, ¡°Whaaat?¡± Deorgard demanded, and his exasperation steadied them. The Dun Eftring men ceased their keen and their noblest-born, taking something from his cousin, advanced on the king.


    ¡°This!¡±


    He held forth an armband of gold; it looked like one Deorgard had given an Eftring only a few weeks ago, shaped of intertwined hounds¡ªa popular motif in the Midlands.


    ¡°Aye?¡± barked Deorgard. The noble Eftring glanced back at his kinsmen, and the one who had first cried out, Samnach Spear-beater, stumbled forward.


    ¡°But it is Hamlech¡¯s,¡± he blurted into the stillness, and hiccoughed. ¡°¡¯T was round about the branch¡ªthat branch¡ª¡± He waved vaguely at a point that must have been four fathoms above the earth, when the tree stood.


    ¡°Aye? What of it?¡± roared Deorgard. ¡°A man hangs a bauble in a sapling, and half a lifetime later a bunch of nursery-wives fell the tree and think it wore jewelry!¡± He spat.


    Raian held his tongue. Now was not the time for lessons in philosophy, to teach that the branches of a sapling were not carried aloft as it grew into a tree but stayed forever at their first height.


    For a moment they dared to believe. Then Samnach screamed. ¡°This was my brother¡¯s! His this morning, not someone¡¯s an age ago! Here¡ªhere is his scratch, that he made when you gave it!¡±


    ¡°And what of the blood?¡± cried another, echoed by his fellows. ¡°We all saw it bleed!¡±


    Another confused yammering arose. Raian left Deorgard¡¯s side, and picked his way to the black pool at the base of the trunk. Shuddering, he dipped in a finger. It was sticky as blood is, but it smelled of pine, not meat.


    ¡°It¡¯s not blood!¡± he cried, and though his voice was thin and shrill, he saw Deorgard nod. But others near him shouted him down.


    ¡°Blood! Blood! Trees that bleed¡ªour brothers are enchanted and we are tricked to murder them!¡±


    Again the Dunmadroch horn sounded, but this time they paid no heed.


    ¡°You brought us here!¡± shouted someone, and Raian groaned¡ªsomeone, some idiot just had to say that, oh yes.


    ¡°Silence!¡± bellowed the king, and his voice achieved what his horn did not. A restless stillness followed, for a moment.

 XVII: The Myrinine (pt 3/5): Darkness and Blood

    Raian, deep in a secondary forest of tall Geillari men, heard from somewhere, maybe out at the edge, the yelp of a nervy man startled, then a scream of pain, a roar, and another scream. And a madness seized the band.


    Before he could move, an elbow or spear-butt rocked his brains for him and his light collapsed. More screams, running feet, bronze thunking into flesh.


    ¡°Demonwood!¡± someone shrieked, the first who had given it the name, maybe. ¡°It wants blood! Give it blood! Drink, damn you!¡±


    Wolf tripped over Raian; Raian seized him and made another light, just in time to see someone rip his axe back out of another man¡¯s chest. Bloodspattered, Raian rolled wildly away, and found his feet, his boot-knives in his hands and Wolf at his back with his own bronze fangs bared.


    ¡°Just like¡ªBottom Street!¡± Wolf panted, fending off someone¡¯s wild backstroke.


    Raian grinned, though the warriors about him were no rival boy-gang. Still, in this madness they were only bigger, battling without plan or point. He kicked the back of someone¡¯s knees, and brought his dagger-butt down solidly on the man¡¯s head.


    And saw Deorgard¡ª


    ¡ªturning from a late assailant, his own sword entangled in the dead man¡¯s ribs¡ª


    ¡ªto see a short sword in mid-arc towards the royal throat¡ª


    Raian stabbed into the shadow beside him, burying both daggers in the assailant¡¯s armpit. The swordsman screamed, his grip broke, his blade rang on the king¡¯s thick golden torque and cut a little neck skin. The man fell to his knees, and then Maglad¡¯s spear pinned him dead to the earth. Deorgard speared Raian with a quick, queer glare, freed his own blade at last and turned away while Raian tried to wrest free his own.


    As sudden as its flow, the madness ebbed. Men stood or knelt, or bent puking, aghast. And in the silence a laugh went up, a strange, fey chuckle. Everyone who could looked about for its author, though every last man knew he did not want to see.


    At the edge of their light, a red fox trotted briskly past. His pink tongue lolled out between sharp white teeth, giving him a laughing leer, and then he tossed his head lightly and sprang away out of sight.


    The band huddled together, apart from their carnage; sat quiet as weary children and made no murmur when Raian, and the one or two others magelight-gifted, let the darkness return. Only their own rough breathing could be heard as they sat and waited to learn if ever they would know a dawn again. And when at last, at last, dim forms emerged and did not fade as fancy shifted, some wept, and were rather envied than scorned.


    One night, the younger Fox came to the hall of Andras the warrior. He pretended to go for the chickens, but when the man and his dogs rushed out to protect the coop, Fox darted into the house and stole the fire from the hearth. He tried to hide it in his fur, as his elder brother carried the fog in his, but the light of it shone out anyway. Andras saw him go, but Grey Fox let loose the fog and soon Red Fox was lost into the wild land again.


    ¡°But I shall find him!¡± vowed Andras in a thunder of rage. ¡°He cannot hide long with his coat so bright!¡± And he gathered his retainers, and picked six of the most skillful at arms, and with swords and bows they marched out at dawn to take back their fire. And evening came, and morning again, but the seven warriors did not return.


    The next night, Red Fox came to the hall of Carastwyth. He pretended to be dead, and the maidservants of Carastwyth brought him in, intending to take his fine thick fur to wrap the baby. But when they turned to find the skinning-knife, up he leaped and stole the fire from the hearth. He hid it in his fur, and again he was seen, and again his elder brother hid him in fog, and he laughed as he ran.


    Then Carastwyth went to her altar, and poured sweet oils (for she had no fire for incense), and chanted the chants to Maolin the Foundation and M¨®r of Art. ¡°How can I punish Fox, who has stolen my fire?¡± she asked, but They said, ¡°Fox is of the House-that-is-no-house, a retainer of Dagn. Ask of Dagn how his servant is to recompense you!¡±


    Angry, Carastwyth summoned all her plowmen and woodcutters out to destroy the forest that bordered her home, but she and all her people vanished, and their tools rusted under the twining vines. And still neither had Andras returned.


    The next night, Fox came to the hall of Lostforth. He sat on the threshold with his sharp ears pointed up, and his bright eyes glittered as he considered the youth bent over his book. Lostforth looked up and saw Fox. Then Fox grew greatly daring, or he knew his man: boldly he walked into the hall to the hearth, with Lostforth watching his every step. He took the fire, hid it in his fur, and, his courage breaking at last, bolted for the door. But Lostforth snatched up a taper from his table and touched it to the fur as Red Fox scampered past. The candle lit at once, and Lostforth fixed it in place, took up his quill and began to write, ¡°The gait of Red Fox resembleth. . . . ¡° and took no further heed.


    The next night, Fox came to the hall of Gariel. A merry feast rang under the rafters, and Fox slipped in among the guests. He helped himself to a roasted dove and a mazer of mead before he stole the fire, tucking it into his fur, and he fled laughing.


    The feast became a riot of angry, disappointed guests. Gariel in a rage did not wait for the dawn but charged into the night to avenge the insult to her hospitality. And a dawn came, and another, but she too did not return.


    The next night, Fox came to the hall of Celtannan, but it was dark and he went away disappointed.


    Then he went to the hall of Felindras, in disguise as a hunting hound. He lay among the hounds near the hearth and with them received a bone from the supper table, before he leaped up, stole the fire and ran away. His laughter rang over the hills. Then Felindras gathered her hunters, all who could be spared, and they studied the spoor of the Fox in the yard and when Dawn came, silently they crept after him, as relentless as a tide, and all their hounds among them too were angry at Fox¡¯s trickery, and yearned to bite him. But evening came and another dawn, and Felindras did not return, and Gariel did not return, and Carastwyth was gone, and Andras too could not be found.


    The next night Fox came to the hall of Ristover. Ristover saw him at once. ¡°Ho, Fox! I know why you have come. Let us play at dice for my fire! I shall throw, and you shall throw, and whoever throws the highest shall have the fire.¡±


    ¡°Let it be so!¡± said Fox, and Ristover threw out her die.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Five! Well, Fox, beat that if you can!¡±


    So Fox took the die, cupped it, rattled it, and blew upon it.


    ¡°Come, Fox!¡± Ristover commanded. ¡°Throw, and be done with it!¡±


    So Fox threw. But while he had held it so close, he had marked it with his claws and his sharp teeth. ¡°Ha, ha! It is a six!¡± he laughed, and he took Ristover¡¯s fire and ran into the wild. But Ristover picked up the die and saw the marks: all the sides had been made six! Then her rage blossomed, and in the morning she took her six cleverest woodsmen, and off they went after Fox. But evening came, and another dawn, and Ristover did not return.


    And Felindras was lost, and hot-headed Gariel, and pious Carastwyth, and Andras the eldest.


    Fox came next to the hall of Kinnaith. Again he disguised himself as a dog, but here he was recognized. Yet he was given a place, and bones from the table, meaty bones, for the hounds of Kinnaith eat well. He was sore puzzled, but he thought to himself, ¡°This will prick their hides!¡± and he stole the fire. Kinnaith watched him run off, and he laughed louder than Fox. Then he held his wife close and said, ¡°There are many ways to be warm. Let us make rugs and blankets for our walls! And as for light, are not some of us blind and yet make their way? Let not the rest of us prove less able in our few hours of darkness, than they in their endless night!¡± And then they made such games in the dark that Fox almost returned to play with them; it is said that, sometimes, he does.


    Fox came next night to Morag in the north. Morag had built an elaborate hall, almost a maze: an enemy who stumbled upon the way in, would not find his way out in a hurry. Fox dipped his tail in water and dragged it behind him as he worked his way in. But the wet in his tail almost put out the fire when he hid it in his fur (this is why the tip of his tail is always white); worse, the first part of his path had already dried when he was but halfway to freedom, and every man, woman, child, dog and duck of Morag¡¯s House was almost upon him when at last he burst out again. Even so, they had surely captured him, but Grey Fox his elder brother shrouded him in his fog again. And Red Fox laughed for glee.


    Morag heard that laugh, and her anger turned to ice within her. Vowing revenge for her violated home, when dawn came she herself led forth her huntsmen, for never would she ask of another what she would not do. And upon evening, and another dawn, they returned not.


    Fox went to Tregaron and, nipping and yipping among the feet of the horses, roused them to shake and shatter their stables. And while Tregaron rushed to soothe them, in slipped Fox to the hearth and stole the fire, and ran away laughing once more.


    Now, some of the horses had hurt themselves in their fright, so it is hard to say which angered Tregaron more: the injury to his hall, or to his herd. But next morning, he and his stoutest men rode out to hunt the fox, and their mounts too were hot for revenge. But evening came, and morning, and men and horses all were gone into the wild.


    Then Listas, the youngest and the most far-sighted, sought out her brother Rhyllandon, for his magic. ¡°Listen, brother,¡± she said, ¡°Fox has lured away our brothers and sisters, and taken them into the wild places. Surely they are become retainers in the House-that-is-no-house. Seek you them, and unspell them, I beg you!¡±


    Rhyllandon of the dark thought yet loved his sister and he said, ¡°I will do as you ask.¡± And he put on the shape of a serpent all green and gold. But he left about his neck a silver thread, so that he should always remember his true nature. And into the wilderness he went.


    First he looked among the lions, till he saw one larger and stronger than all the rest. Gliding to this one, he struck with one fang and drew a little blood and cried aloud his brother¡¯s name: ¡°Andras!¡± And the lion shook off its form and became a man again, sitting in the dust. ¡°Go home,¡± said Rhyllandon. ¡°Go to our sister Listas. Get some fire from her.¡± And Andras, for once in his life meek as a babe, did as he was bidden. And the hearth of Andras blazed at his returning.


    Rhyllandon looked next among the horned aurochs, for the proudest of them all. And he scored his sister Gariel with his serpent¡¯s fang, and over her blood cried her name, ¡°Gariel!¡±


    And there she sat, blinking and bewildered, and meekly she went to Listas as the serpent Rhyllandon bade her, for fire to welcome her guests again.


    He watched the hawks in their craggy home, till he saw the canniest hunter among them. Then he hid beside a rabbit he had charmed, till the hawk stooped for it. Twice the hawk was the swifter, but the third time the serpent Rhyllandon struck faster, and drew her blood and cried, ¡°Felindras!¡± And the hawk shook off her form and would have fallen, but she remembered her magic and set herself gently down to hear his word. And she too went to Listas for fire.


    Among the bears, he sought out the bravest, and struck his brother Tregaron with his fang and cried out his name. Tregaron wished to seek at once for his missing horses, but Rhyllandon told him not to be a fool, but to get his fire first. And so he went to Listas.


    He lay out upon a rock in the sun and warmed himself near where the blackbirds sang in the reeds. They scolded him, and darted at him to drive him away from their nests, but he waited for the most daring, with the brightest red on her shoulders, to come near, and nearer still, and then in a flash of green he bit her with one fang and cried, ¡°Ristover!¡± And he sent her to Listas the youngest for fire.


    Long he crept among the setts of the badgers, seeking for the deepest, cleverest burrow. And then he drew the blood of Morag, but he slithered out above the ground while the angry badger pursued him, before he spoke her name.


    And so were the children of Uralia freed from the roofless court of the Piper in the Wild, and returned to their cities. And Fox has never been tamed.


    It was a Sferan tale, of course. Raian had never before wondered if the Geillari had any such lore. Perhaps they will now, he thought grimly, if ever we return to tell it!


    The light grew, and men roused to the mournful task of naming, and somehow burying, the slain. But they cried aloud at a new horror and a wonder: not a corpse remained, nor so much as a smear of blood upon the mould. Only Hamlech¡¯s Tree lay broken on the ground, dark sap¡ªit must be sap¡ªdripping from its cracked and shattered limbs. The grey light spread, but it was only grey, as though a vast storm-cloud lay above the trees, though the air smelled not of rain but of some acrid taint, like a smithy. And now there were but ten and a hundred of them.


    Deorgard rose and made a show of tightening his sword-belt. ¡°Let¡¯s go home.¡±


    ¡°Home?¡± yelped someone. ¡°How, lord? Which way? Even if one of us dared to climb these accursed trees, there is no sun to guide us!¡±


    Deorgard cocked his head. Then he shrugged, ¡°We follow the stream.¡±


    How their hearts leaped: of course! Swiftly they assembled in battle-form, all grief, and all wonderment, put off till they could be unburdened in peace. To the stream they marched and, assured of its safety from the night before, they drank deeply now, and refilled the waterskins, and ignored their rumbling bellies. Then a young Eftring, when all were done, pulled back his kilt and relieved himself into the hurrying water.


    Not half a dozen paces from the king he pissed, and whether they were the gnarled roots of the alder across the stream or the fingers of a huge gray and ancient hand, Raian could never have said, but they rose from the flood and seized the youth by his member and dragged him under before any man else could blink.


    He himself had scarcely time to squeak. Beyond all shock, no one else made a sound, though they moved well back from the edge. Raian scowled¡ªthere was no pool among the mossy rocks big enough to hide a child, much less a whole man, but not a hint of Dun Eftring¡¯s bold red and white checks glimmered below the surface. Barely daring to draw breath, the host turned and followed their grim liege down the stony trough, desperate for home.

 XVII: The Myrinine (pt 4/5): Earth and Fire

    The stream bed became a waste of broken rocks, boulders gripped by the writhen roots of great silent trees. For hours they scrambled and stumbled along the treacherous way, but ever down, gratefully down towards somewhere the forest border and freedom. Almost they could ignore the small angry black flies that swarmed up from the water¡¯s edge, little monsters that buzzed a low buzz, almost a growl, and stung like fiery needles. Raian, trying a spell for warding off raindrops that proved ineffective, began to puzzle how to craft a new spell, and for the first time wondered whence the old ones had come.


    The acrid taint in the air sharpened, but no one ventured a complaint. Bellies rumbled. Game they saw in tantalizing plenty: deer leaped the stream and paused to watch them struggle past. Grouse exploded out of hidden crevices. A wild pig, blackhaired and red-eyed, fat on summer¡¯s browsing, glared from half a spear-cast away before trotting off disdainfully. And some meaty, silvery fish that they could not name began to appear in the growing pools to snap at the flies, which now grew less. For that alone they had spared these saviors, but no one now dared eat of anything in this place: what if ¡¯t were not trees alone their enchanted kinsmen became?


    Noon surely came, and surely passed. No one begged a halt, though many shook with hunger. All thought only of an ending to this wood. Let us but win free of the farthest reach of its accursed shade, and then there shall be such a feast and such a fire as shall be sung of by our remotest descendants!


    The bank on the right rose to a rough cliff of perhaps thrice a tall man¡¯s height; to the left across the stream, the land became a sheer wall for a few yards up before crumbling away under grasping roots. And up the ravine a ceaseless roar grew with their every step to overwhelm the broken rush of the water beside them.


    Raian glared, recalling waterfalls in the Uissig. The ruggedness of the cliffside that now began to crowd them toward the water, reassured him that they should be able to scale the slope to come, but few of them had brought anything so unheroic as rope and some of those were among the vanished. There was indeed, he recalled with lighter heart, one fall where he and Wolf and the rest spent many a Summer¡¯s hour leaping into the glassy stream above to be flung over the lip and drop thirty feet into the profound pool below. ¡°But not here,¡± he muttered aloud, thinking of grey branchy hands from the depths. Beside him, the cliff forced an ever-narrower path beside the water, and that less a path than a boulder-crawl.


    Deorgard climbed onto a flat-topped rock, and stopped. A growl reverberated from him, low and viciously angry. Raian peered past his knees.


    Ahead, a great dam as of giant beavers¡¯ work spanned the breadth of the creek. Flotsam of past years¡¯ flooding piled against the cliff that now bent across their way and joined the farther wall, and the water that had flowed between them roared down into the bowels of the Myrinine and vanished from the daylit world.


    Men pressed up to view the grievous wonder. Then someone laughed aloud, chucked his spear down the hole and dived after.


    ¡°Fool!¡± Deorgard bellowed after him, and rounded on the rest. ¡°That was his own work, and no sorcery! Anyone else? Eh? Kill yourself¡ªbefore you have to meet something you don¡¯t like? Do it now and get off my hands!


    ¡°The rest of you: I¡¯m¡ªgetting¡ªout.¡± He invoked no god, but he spoke the words like a vow. And his silence demanded the same oath of them.


    He turned away from any reply, scanned the debris and the rocky barrier for a path of ascent and began at once to climb. Raian scrambled after. Lighter and lither, he cleared the brink first and crouched low, gazing through the trees and listening, listening.


    The land sloped gently away from them, for as far as he could make out. Maybe half a hundred yards below, the forest-shadow lightened, the trees themselves seemed a brighter green despite the overcast. And something in their bent and knobbly postures, so unlike the straighter boles around them, spoke to him of apples. Please, Lady Mother Tuhudre, let it be so. He could eat a treeful by himself.


    Wolf and Maglad were the last to reach the top. Raian tore his eyes from the seeming orchard, half-fearing that it would vanish from the world if it vanished from his sight, but Deorgard¡¯s pensive scowl stopped his news. The king glared at his followers, half of whom had sunk to their backsides while wearily awaiting the rest.


    ¡°Where¡¯s Tibba?¡± he barked. ¡°Geroff¡ªHlafstarr¡ªOsgur¡ªnot you, the other one¡ª¡±


    They searched among themselves, amazed. ¡°He was here! he climbed just before me¡ªI was following his boots!¡± or ¡°I remember that he was right beside me¡ªI gave him a hand once, and then I looked to my own footing¡ª¡±


    No one, it seemed, had seen any man evaporate into the harsh air. But only three and seventy stood now above the cliff.


    ¡°Wrrraaaugh!¡± Deorgard loosed a long, wordless howl and charged the cliff, wrenched a battle axe from the back of the man who wore it, bursting its straps, slammed his boots into a hard brace at the edge and smote the rocks below a fearsome blow. Two small boulders broke free at the stroke and leaped crashing down through the trees. Again and again he struck, as though he would free his people by destroying the earth that had swallowed them. Sparks flew among the ringing echoes.


    I¡¯m not sharpening that, Raian thought dully, almost as though it mattered. All the rest stood silent, struck dumb by the fury of the king.


    The haft cracked and broke. Deorgard dropped it and straightened slowly, staring.


    Up over the lip of the cliff, shadows rose. Black, not as wool or coal but like holes in the stuff of the World, holes into Night Eternal¡ªholes out of which two cold yellow eyes, perfectly round, shone with a fey light. Half a hundred, maybe, and though they were small, no larger than a man¡¯s lower leg, dread flowed from their presence like the chill of a subterranean air. If they had other features, they were not perceptible to Raian¡¯s mortal eyes.


    Deorgard dropped back, one step. His fists clenched. ¡°Give me my men.¡±


    The men around Raian tensed, straightened their spines in pride and awe of their king, and Raian not the least among them. He held his breath.


    And reply formed in his thought, though the shadows hung silent:


    They are the price of your story.


    And, as certain as he was of the unheard words, was he certain of their stark sincerity. Suddenly he knew: there was no malice in the Myrinine. None at all. And their peril was tenfold the greater, a hundredfold. If any of them emerged alive, they would be no more than a handful and if he were one of them then some one or ten of the men standing tall and breathless beside him must die.


    He set his young jaw. He would live. Whoever else would do so, must find it in his own soul to win out.


    ¡°Story be damned!¡± barked Deorgard. ¡°Give me my men!¡±


    But the shadows faded like the coming of dawn, and were gone. Deorgard stood alone at the cliff¡¯s brink, motionless but for the bunching and knotting of his great fists. His men waited.


    He wrenched around and glared at Raian. ¡°Peeries?¡± Raian could only spread his hands: neither had he ever seen such things. Deorgard snarled. ¡°Charms against ¡¯em?¡±


    ¡°Against peeries? Yes, of course. Er¡ª¡±


    ¡°What?¡± he roared.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Raian shrugged. ¡°The only one I know¡ªyou want a copper bowl, and fresh milk.¡±


    The king continued to glare at him as if he had wilfully learned what they could not now use. ¡°Ah, faugh,¡± he spat, and turned and stumped down the gentle slope. The rest rose to follow heavily.


    And they were apple trees that Raian had seen, trees in full bearing. Great clusters of shy ruddy globes bent low the boughs, and a huge windfall littered the ground to make footing treacherous. Not that they trod upon many, instead snatching them up and devouring them entire till their beards matted with juice and hunger abated at last. Now they could see the sky at last, though little good it did them, the gray, featureless roof; but it was better than an endless upward depth of leaves.


    After a brief rest they struggled on. The idle slope grew gently less, till soon they walked a floor as level as a windless lake, deep under the trees. They had no longer a hint as to their right road.


    Shortly a deeper shadow proved to be a wall of stone rising, as it seemed from earlier glimpses, well above the shoulders of the trees. They debated climbing, though everyone hungered for sight of anything beyond the forest. This time Deorgard ordered protection-charms, whatever any of the witch-sighted could contrive; he also ordered watchfulness, commanded men to speak with anyone at hand as they climbed, and thus they began the ascent.


    For once Deorgard was not at the fore, trying to keep an eye on everyone at once, as though his personal attention were their only security. A young Padanring cleared the trees first, and his joyous laugh heartened everyone below.


    ¡°It¡¯s this ridge¡ªthen it falls away on the other side, a right steep walk, or climb,¡± he called down. ¡°And¡ªand to the right, a lot of smoke; I think that¡¯s where it¡¯s all coming from¡ª¡±


    It was the queerest sensation of Raian¡¯s life. He had once been tossed in a blanket, a small child at a fair. This was rather like that: the rock beneath him rippled, pressing him up, then dropping away, as easily as the blanket. That was all. He glanced about at others near him. Then a strange deep roar, from an unimaginably huge bull, rolled over the world, and the rocky ridge simply tossed him aside.


    He fell upon a pile of men similarly thrown down. Boulders crashed among them, crushing some. And the young Padanring of the joyous cry fell to be impaled through the chest upon a dead sapling blackthorn. Several men stared at his rag-doll body dangling ten feet above them and bolted.


    Deorgard pulled himself from beneath several well-bruised men, and quietly ordered the youth cut down.


    ¡°And me, lord,¡± whispered another. Deorgard turned to find one of his own Dunmadroch men half-buried under a six-foot chunk of the wall. They pulled it away, but everything below his knees had been shattered. Healers in a village might have saved him, as a cripple, but they had only one balm for him here. Deorgard knelt, laid a hand on his brow, spoke softly for a minute and listened for several, though the earth again shrugged beneath them, and the smoky sky flickered orange.


    Just behind the ear: a small cut, only a flick of a good knife-point, and the soul released to the waiting-land beneath the uttermost North, to one of the hells there, to the Glades of Peace, or¡ª


    ¡°To the Hall of Heroes,¡± the king murmured, as if giving directions. ¡°Now¡ªwhat¡¯s this hell?¡±


    Eight others begged a like release. Someone piously observed that it was the Earthshaker¡¯s will. Deorgard grunted noncommittally.


    ¡°Aye? Well, at least He¡¯s also willed us rocks enough for a cairn!¡±


    So passed the afternoon. They camped at the cliff-foot that night, and one of the bards¡ªthey had had ten, now they had six¡ªventured a eulogy. Its kind reception gratified him, though his audience was too weary to care for art, caring only for the familiar.


    Raian and Wolf sat leaning together, each sensing the other¡¯s rumbling belly but for long exchanging no other sign. Presently Raian murmured, ¡°Wolf?¡±


    ¡°Yah?¡±


    ¡°If you want to get out of this¡ªout of this story, I mean¡ª¡±


    ¡°The story of the forest?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the one. Then you¡¯d better know that you¡¯re going to get out of it. Know it. Wishing won¡¯t work it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m with you, my man,¡± Wolf said placidly.


    Raian drew breath to berate him, then shut himself up. It might be as stupid a reason for belief as could be contrived¡ªunless it worked. ¡°Whatever it takes,¡± he sighed.


    After a breakfast of hoarded apples, three and fifty set out next morning, hoping only for a downhill path. Twelve dead of yesterday¡¯s quake; one could believe eight fled. No more vanishings, though no one seemed sure if that were a good sign or not.


    They marched along the cliff, and almost at once the land fell sharply. Light came from somewhere beyond the trees, as though a clearing lay below them, and they hurried down. Then the trees parted, ended, even the ferns underfoot ended. A furlong of barren earth, patches and swirls of brown, white, red, even coppersmith-green, lay between them and another wall, this one smooth and sheer, though more trees crowned its top. They stopped short, angry at this wretched, haphazard land, but one of the Dun Agdaen men strode on, snarling, ¡°There are always handholds.¡± The rest, even the king, paused to summon the will to follow after, so that he had cleared a dozen paces when the ground broke beneath him. He fell with a scream into muddy orange water. He thrashed violently as he sank beneath a white steamy plume, breaking up more of the rough crust; a reek of rotten eggs wafted from the hole, a damp reek, an unpleasantly warm reek. Deorgard took his spear from Raian and slammed its bronze butt onto the ground before him, then ventured after. It broke through on the third blow, he backed up a yard, and bent to touch the ground.


    He yanked his hand up and backed away further. ¡°Hot,¡± he growled, and nodded at the man-sized hole beyond. ¡°He boiled.¡±


    ¡°What is this?¡± someone whispered, though his voice carried in the stillness. ¡°Are we all dead and walking the Waiting Land among the hells?¡±


    ¡°Bugger that,¡± snarled the king, and strode back up into the trees, before turning to transverse the slope.


    Mad they thought him, but it was a wonderful, living madness, better than their own horrid fancies, and they hurried to follow him.


    All that day the acrid smell sharpened, till their nostrils burned. The cloud-gloom deepened, and sight grew ghostly as the high smoke drifted lower. Deorgard ordered protection-charms again, around the whole company against the stuff: fog, mist, or smoke, Deorgard reasoned that a man could lose his way among one as well as another.


    A ravine crossed their path, sheer-sided. Hot mist curled from its unseen depths. Deorgard chucked an angry stone into it, then turned to walk along its edge. It ended a mile or so later, in another level place thick with great old trees. Raian for one felt safer: if these leafy giants had had time to grow too large for five men to link hands about their trunks, the earth beneath them must be steady enough. But which way from here would take them back down the mountain, they could not tell. The sky above darkened as though evening approached¡ªor the mother of all storms.


    As they considered which way to go¡ªand eager they were to go, in any way: every man¡¯s skin prickled, and all Wolf¡¯s hair except the braid down his neck stood straight out from his body¡ªthe World Egg split asunder.


    So the bards said. And that was about how it sounded, Raian thought, dazzled to blindness by the lightning-stroke, and he yelped at a blow to his shoulder that struck him to the ground.


    Crackling, a roar of flame, Wolf¡¯s knee in his back and a stab of pain from his shoulderblade, Wolf¡¯s arm hauling him to his feet and a foot-long splinter of bloody wood being tossed aside, in a glare of fiery light. Fire leaped from the riven tree to its neighbors.


    ¡°Leave him!¡± That was Deorgard¡¯s voice.


    ¡°¡ªheart-brother!¡± came the anguished reply.


    ¡°Live to mourn him!¡± roared the king.


    ¡°Come on!¡± Wolf hissed. ¡°This old forest¡¯s that dry¡ª!¡±


    Raian ran, his senses slowly recovering.


    ¡°Splinter,¡± gasped Wolf, ¡°big as me¡ªright through old Harbeanr¡ª¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s Deorgard?¡± Raian croaked, straining to see through the billowing smoke, and coughed.


    Wolf pointed in answer. Deorgard set a good pace but not his best, turning often to seize the arm of someone overtaking him, to shove the man onward. His wits returning, Raian realized that not everyone fled this way, though where they were now, he could not tell. He set his own sights on Deorgard, clung to Wolf¡¯s kilt-belt, and plunged on.

 XVII: The Myrinine (pt 5/5): Water and Sky

    Fire roared up behind them. The forest before them seemed to dance, and their own shadows blinded them to the ground they must tread. Raian thought they were running upslope, or perhaps that was only the nightmare sense of trying to outrun the pursuing peril.


    Their shadows vanished as the treetops above caught the blaze. Smoke gusted about them. Once again they were knocked to the ground as the earth shivered. Merciless gods¡ªhave You all turned against us? Raian thought. He smelled burning hair.


    A glimmer of white beneath the blazing trees caught his eye. To his right, a stag, a white stag dipped its great rack and turned, and walked coolly away. Raian grabbed Wolf, redoubled after Deorgard, pointed out the stag to him and ran after it.


    No doubting it now: they struggled uphill. And the fire, borne on a rising wind, outstripped them. The stag vanished, but Raian ran on.


    And pulled up short at the edge of the world. Wolf skidded on the rocky edge and fell on his buttocks, his boots dangling over emptiness. Deorgard, two paces behind, lurched over them. Pebbles loosed by Wolf¡¯s save splashed ten fathoms or more below. Maglad swore, as Raian and Wolf scrambled back from the edge. Deorgard peered down.


    What the water might be, mountain lake or ocean of mystery, they could not see in the smoke, but coolness wafted from it and there was no steam. Then screams behind them turned them back: a wall of flame roared up in the last trees, a handful of their companions burst through it, Deorgard set one foot back towards them and a limb thick as a tree dropped blazing towards him.


    He looked up, shifted to dodge, Raian flung himself into his chest and bore them both over the edge. He just had time to roll free of the king and prepare to hit, and to grin as from far above him came a faint ¡°Wooo-haah!¡±


    A madness of bubbles thundered up around him. Only then did he think to fear the depth, or the lack of depth, but down he plunged, touching nothing. The water was warm, warm as a gentle bath. And still he plunged, nor slacked his speed until, wondering how long he could go on falling, he opened his eyes.


    A pearly city gleamed below his feet. Amazed, he turned about and swam for it. Silver gates swung open for him at the touch of beautiful, strong youths with floating hair and flashing white teeth, and giggling girls surrounded him and brought him into a palace of many arches and glimmering halls. Tutors came and instructed him in deep arts and he studied for several years, till an old priest, whitehaired but hale, summoned him: We will Prove you at last, he said¡ª


    ¡ªand Raian coughed and coughed and coughed, as though trying to expel his lungs through his burning throat and Wolf said, ¡°Yah, Rai, come on back to me, boy!¡±


    Sand gritted under his cheek. It seemed to be night.


    ¡°He¡¯ll live?¡± growled Deorgard¡¯s voice.


    ¡°Can¡¯t kill this one!¡± Wolf retorted in scorn.


    Raian crushed his eyes shut against a drumming headache and sat up slowly, trying to sort out what was real. ¡°Where are we?¡±


    ¡°That island¡ªwe made it.¡±


    Raian pried his eyes back open, and stared up at Wolf staring back down at him. ¡°Island?¡± Wolf¡¯s face above his beard had a gleam of burnished bronze, in the light of a palisade of fire along a cliff-top and its rippling reflection below. Lightning silvered it erratically, but the thunder seemed to be withdrawing.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know what happened to you, sinking like that. I thought maybe something grabbed you, and I wasn¡¯t having any of that! You all right now?¡±


    ¡°Island?¡± Raian repeated stupidly.


    Deorgard¡¯s great arm swept him up by his belly, and he pounded Raian¡¯s back.


    ¡°Gaaaah¡ªall right, all right, I¡¯m fine!¡±


    They were seven on the island: Raian and Wolf; Deorgard and Maglad; the young Kerrnev, the first to spot the snow lions so long ago; the Dunmanan junior bard Jav, and a short, redhaired Cardrogh, Shilka¡ªKing Harka¡¯s younger brother. They had swum perhaps two furlongs to reach the island, that Raian had been the first to point out, they said, once they realized there was neither beach nor ledge beneath the cliff on which to rest. Of others who jumped with them, some had never come back up, and some, poor swimmers at best, had not made it so far. Wolf gave Raian a quizzical look then. Raian was an excellent swimmer. What happened to you? Wolf wanted to know, but Raian had no recollection of swimming at all, and could only shrug. He half-feared entering the lake again, lest he go searching for that dream-palace. If Wolf had been just a little slower to pull him out, would he be dead now¡ªor a man Proven?


    They slept by turns on the little beach. The lightning and thunder ceased at last, and rain began, heavy, and like the lake, curiously warm. By dawn the fire on the cliff had almost faded, though smoke still curled from it.


    The circuit of their island was little more than six furlongs, and rose to a central peak crowned by one ancient, massive holly tree that left no room for more than three of them to stand there at once. The peak itself rose above the tops of the tallest trees on its flanks, and gave a fine view of their trap: a lake walled by smooth cliffs, in parts maybe as much as two hundred feet high, lowest at the place whence they had jumped, and often undercut¡ªas where they had jumped, or they had been smashed just above the water¡¯s edge. They could make out no crack or gap in them, though that might have been a trick of the rain. There was one huge hole, big enough that an oak tree could have grown on the lip and had room to spread, but its lower edge had to have been four or five man-lengths above the water.


    On their island, apples grew, and hazels, and oaks. The five Geillari turned up their noses at Raian and Wolf¡¯s acorn harvest, laughed at Raian sacrificing the remains of his tunic to use as a soaking-bag for them, but when the aroma of their roasting rose from the deadwood-fire, they began to reconsider. Deorgard stared his stare at Raian when he silently offered the king a palmful, then turned and stared pointedly at the cliff from which Raian had knocked him clear of the fire. Then he stared again at the boy.


    You have to be high king so that I can save my people, at least for another generation, Raian thought, meeting his stare.


    Deorgard tried an acorn. So did the rest. Thereafter, though they rolled their eyes or sighed when facing another meal of acorns, they ate all that the two Wyrdlings could provide. Fortunately, the dry summer that had made the fire so potent had done the same by the acorn bounty.


    Clouds hung over them for a week, and it rained often, as the long drought broke at last and the Lady of the Rains caught up on Her work. They caught birds, even a swan once; turtles; and a thick, copper-colored snake. They had no further fear of eating of the Myrinine, or their fear of starving proved the greater. But never a fish did they see in the warm blue waters about them. Noting this, even Wolf refrained from swimming again: of all the marvels they had seen, a lake without fish came close to being the most uncanny of them all.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Jav sang for them, shyly offered one or two of his own works. And they talked¡ªor Kerrnev did, dreaming of what heroes they would be when they were home at last. They would be earls, and Jav would be King of the Bards with his lay of their deeds.


    ¡°And you will be high king of all our people!¡± he crowed to Deorgard. ¡°Men will flock to the banner of the conqueror of the Demonwood!¡± Deorgard stared at him, but Kerrnev was too intoxicated with his prophecy to notice.


    Jav sat combing out Deorgard¡¯s hair. The young bard kept his comb as close as other men kept their knives or closer as, in the swim, Deorgard himself had let the steel gift of Dunare fall to the depths. And by now Raian had learned that what he thought was his first humiliation was nothing of the sort. Among the ¡°wild¡± Geillari, men dressed men¡¯s hair. Only the most love-besotted husband suffered his own wife to touch his locks, and Deorgard would no more have permitted a woman to comb him than to bathe him.


    Now Jav murmured as he worked, ¡°Well you might, lord. And well you should.¡±


    ¡°Should?¡±


    ¡°Is it not what we came into this land for, under Berulf? I am proud of my little Fenustad: we are prosperous and skilful, and none are braver. But we are only a little land, after all.¡±


    ¡°But now we are Maldan, all of us Maldan together, being yours!¡± Kerrnev joined in exultantly. ¡°One day we¡ªwe!¡ªshall be Peria. Let it be soon, lord!¡±


    Deorgard grunted and stared out across the lake, dimpled under yet another rain, though the seven were dry enough in their leafy lean-to. Suddenly some unseen fire roared up in the great cave across the water, lighting up its roof, and rumbled with a sound more felt than heard. They exchanged glances, but no one felt moved to speak.


    That night a keen wind drove the rain away, supplanting it with a sharp, clear chill. The clouds fled and they saw by the stars that they were facing south, the first hint of orientation they had had in many days. Huddled for warmth, all seven watched together for the dawn, and Jav led a cheer as Areolin¡¯s fire burned the tree-fringed cliff and blue leaped into the sky. Breakfast was a merry meal in the welcome light.


    Raian climbed their little peak, to get out from under any tree-shade. Again he looked upon the weary sheerness of the gray walls, as much as three furlongs distant towards the west. Some shores had steep, narrow beaches, as well as he could make out, and the occasional tree or shrub had managed to root itself in some tiny crevice, but nothing looked like anything he was willing to try scaling; not yet. Perhaps they should try to weave a raft to get closer. The darkness of the rock obscured any detail from a distance. That jump in the dim dark stripes, for instance, just east of the great cave: was it a trick of the eyes, a break in the pattern¡ªmany places in the Uissig butted angled rock layers against quite vertical stripes¡ªor a split in the wall?


    A split, he thought, the more he looked at it, and his heart fluttered. He should swim over and see¡ªwith a log, he thought, looking down into the strange water, clear to an awesome depth. Water was always said to be blue, but in his experience it was usually green; the profound dark-turquoise-colored expanse below puzzled him. He looked away from it, back to the irregularity. It led to easily the highest point in all the ringing wall¡ªbut there were no trees up there.


    The others agreed eagerly that it looked like a crack or cleft, and it grew more convincing as the Sun rose and crossed the south. The log they had been using for a bench they rolled down the beach for him, and Wolf tore at his beard for worry.


    ¡°Look,¡± said Raian levelly. ¡°It¡¯s either the rest of our lives here or¡ªthat.¡± He waved at the water. ¡°We made it once, didn¡¯t we? And this time we go charmed. I¡¯m well-rested, well-fed¡ª¡± and mad to get out of here, he did not add aloud, and at last they let him go. He went, he said, because he was smallest and fastest; true enough, but the greater truth was that he could not have borne waiting on the shore, idle and helpless.


    It was a cleft. He could see the dark and darker banding in the rock shift as he drew nearer, and then he glimpsed the fingertip-twigs of thrawn pine trees growing further in. He grew quickly too warm in the warm water but he thundered on, and crawled out onto a steep patch of black shingle and looked up the crevice. Yes! They could do it. He turned and sent up a spray of gold magelight stars.


    The rest had not remained idle and helpless, but anticipated triumph, or a last desperate gasp, by collecting flotables of their own. Soon enough they all stood on the shingle, and surveyed their climb. This split in the wall leaned back, but steeply, half-choked with rock litter: a scrabble, rather than a climb or a walk, two hundred feet and some, and they would be free of their lake prison.


    Slowly, not to send loose chunks bouncing down on the heads or hands of the ones below, they climbed through the last of the afternoon. Raian reached an uncertain point, when the last two fathoms proved sheer but the walls squeezed close together; he paused to consider his route and the others rested for a moment. And a rumble like a smithy-fire roaring up from a forge for giants reverberated from all the walls, followed by a vast, soft thump that sea-wise Geillari would have thought a giant¡¯s sail catching the wind, and then it whumped again. A darkness fell over them in their crack, a monstrous shadow; another thump of the air and a great downdraft pushed them into the rock, trees bent and soughed, and the sun shone clear again.


    The seven companions looked up and down at one another, but no one spoke. Just then no one wanted to know what it was; so long as it did not bar their way, it was welcome to be Marennin herself. Raian wedged himself in the crack and inchwormed to the top. With a little help from shared linked belts, all soon crawled up, and stood in the cold free wind rushing over the top of the world.


    A magnificent view spread out below them. The mountainside fell away southward, smooth and bare as a floor or a wall and unable to decide which to be, before vanishing, a hundred yards down, under broad smoky firs. To their right the sinking Sun turned the uttermost west to a blinding glare; then, half south again they looked along the line of the Dur Rusannmar, peak after green shaggy peak, some taller than their own barren pinnacle, out to a confusion of shoulders and shouldering cloud, and the rugged southern rim of the world. There, ten, twenty leagues away marched a dim palisade, receding still further south as it stretched east. Raian, who loved geography, knew it must be the Dur Mathlune, that guarded the rich vale of the Hallowdale, the heart-land of the Sferiari.


    And beyond that again, a guess and no more of the vast snowy crests of the Dur Nefraith, the southern wall of Peria.


    The shadows of the Dur Rusannmar and their own height stretched far over the green dells and swells of the east, but brighter, greener arcs streaked the dimness, where loftier hills still caught the golden light. Rushing thither, eastward and a little south, a pale torrent dashed along the southern feet of the Myrinine, down out of some hidden glen in the Rusannmar: the Sionane, Raian figured.


    Quietly, in the blent Geilli-Sferan that the Uissigari folk used, Raian pointed out the Mathlune mountains to Wolf, and then had to repeat for the quick-eared king, though in his own dialect. Deorgard listened with his noncommittal stare.


    ¡°This river?¡± he demanded next, nodding down at the grey ribbon a mile or so beneath them.


    ¡°The Sionane¡ªyou¡¯d think it was the headwaters of the Holywell, but that¡¯s over there¡ª¡± he pointed to a fine silvery hair glinting here and there below the Mathlune ridge. ¡°It flows out of Ceisaa Lake in the Hallowdale. And that¡¯s the Sindasawood, beyond Sionane there.¡±


    ¡°Another wood,¡± murmured Kerrnev wearily.


    ¡°Reputation?¡± demanded Deorgard.


    ¡°Very beautiful. They say Ceidha-folk live at its heart.¡±


    ¡°Mph,¡± said the king.


    ¡°And there,¡± said Jav, helpfully and hopefully pointing to the nearby shoulder of their own mountain that hid all their view of its eastern skirts, ¡°that is Fenustad. Your¡ªSheeonanni?¡ªwe call the Kalleoda. My father¡¯s holding stands right on its banks¡ªthe Last House of Fenustad.¡±


    ¡°The First,¡± Shilka corrected, and they stared at him. ¡°For us, aye?¡±


    And they hurried down into the trees. They pushed on well into the night, as long as Raian and Jav¡¯s magelights held out and they had a sure downward path. For a few hours only they slept, just before dawn. Twice the next day they had to skirt sudden gorges across their path, but they reached the banks of the Sionane by twilight, and thundered upon the gates of the fence of the First House at midnight.

 XVIII: Portents (pt 1/3): World Shaking

    XVIII: Portents


    Sunset turned the red stone walls of the tower room to the hue of old blood. The awkward, bony youth who hunkered out of the way on a crate for a stool, his jaw hanging slack as he gaped at his mentor, gave a guilty start that propelled him almost in one motion to the westward window. He tore his eyes from the robed man like a fluted pillar at the center of the room, and watched Areolin sink beyond the far hills. Hoping hoping hoping that he gauged the half of the disk¡ªthe oddly-flattened disk¡ªaccurately, he swallowed hard but still croaked, ¡°Now, lord!¡±


    Treskiel na Cathforrow closed his spell. In the utter silence of the small room, something made a small, an embarrassingly small, tik!


    The young man¡¯s bunched shoulders plunged, in disappointment and vicarious shame. Treskiel did not notice, but stared into his own palm as if some great mystery of the world lay there. The young baron Doreith squinted, and craned his neck, and Treskiel turned his hand towards his protege.


    There he had held his opal pendant, his personal reservoir of magic. Now he held a fine gold chain, swaying slightly beneath his hand; a filigree-gold gem-cap; a palmful of pale, shimmering dust; nothing more. Doreith¡¯s eyes grew round. Treskiel smiled his small, understated smile.


    ¡°But nothing¡¯s happened!¡± the boy blurted.


    The floor rolled beneath them like the deck of a ship, and settled, the tower swaying gently still. The two sorcerors, master and protege, stared at one another. Doreith opened his mouth to offer admiration, and the tower shuddered. Books, beakers, globes on the shelves bounced and danced. Treskiel leaped to save a particularly fine sphere of quartz, Doreith grabbed a stuffed cat and watched a crystal decanter shatter at his feet, scrolls rained down around them. A window embrasure cracked, and snapped one of its shutters. Shrieks, cries, and crashes of distant chaos rose from the castle without and the town beyond.


    And then the earth rested again, as if it had never danced. The tower stood firm. For a moment everyone in or around Carastloel fell silent, on edge for further shock. Something snapped somewhere, followed by a rush and a rough clatter of stones into a street, and nothing more. As it was apparently safe now to raise a great clamor, they did.


    In the tower, Treskiel¡¯s legs buckled as the magical drain caught up with him. Doreith flung the stuffed cat into the prince¡¯s face in his haste to seize him but he did save Treskiel¡¯s knees from cracking into the flagstones, and heaved him over to the cot. Treskiel fought for consciousness.


    ¡°Radiance?¡± Doreith bleated, fanning the gaunt face with a flapping hand.


    Treskiel gave up. Huw would see to the city. Happily there were no fires, though he did not know how he knew, nor at this time cared. ¡°Send for the gem merchants,¡± he managed to mumble to the boy. ¡°Opals.¡±


    ¡°Radiance?¡± Doreith repeated, and tugged gently at the quartz globe still clutched to the prince¡¯s chest. It came away, and Treskiel¡¯s hands fell slack; carefully he returned the globe to its tri-claw base, and set about cleaning up, with one uneasy eye on his mentor.


    Huw woke the prince at noon the next day, Treskiel¡¯s explosive fury at having slept so long blowing past the chamberlain like a gale upon a mountain. Doreith slept on, curled on his pallet¡ªsilk-covered and stuffed with down, for he was the baron of Catmentur, but a pallet still, for the student¡ªand Treskiel went down to attend to his shaken country.


    It was a week before he had leisure to summon the jewelers, but then, it would be a week and more before he felt up to attempting more than his own magelight. There had been a curious feeling, just after he awoke that noon: that a vast tide had ebbed, but would return on the flood tenfold, if he permitted it. The spending of magic, like any strength, magnified its own store, upon recovery; perhaps it was possible for enough magnification to destroy the storehouse. He did not care to find out in himself.


    Doreith watched him intently as he explored the cool, slippery pebbles with long fingers. Pale lights of pink and iridescent blue glimmered and winked in the white depths of some, green fire and gold flashed from the black opals. He scooped up a palmful¡ªone of the jewelers bit his stylus; ah, the man disliked disorder¡ªand listened to their delicate slithering rattle as he poured them back onto their black rabbit-fur bed. Then he closed his eyes and slid and rolled each one slowly through every nook of his hand.


    Ah. That one. Egg-shaped, the size of his thumb; an image of an intricate maze winding deep into green and gold depths opened in his thought, an alluring maze. Yes, he could go there.


    ¡°Set this,¡± he said, opening his eyes. ¡°In silver, I think.¡±


    ¡°A pendant, as before?¡± the older jeweler, the one who had known better than to wince at any act of nobility, asked with a bow.


    ¡°But of course.¡±


    When they had gone, Doreith coughed gently. ¡°Er. Opals, lord? Er. Why?¡±


    ¡°I like opals.¡±


    Doreith shot him a sidelong glance. ¡°Only that?¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    The young baron looked away, shrugged, and shifted uncomfortably. At last he fished in a pocket and pulled out a walnut-sized stone, held it out for inspection. Dark, dark gray and glittering, polished no more than a river might contrive, it was an object only a child could prize.


    Treskiel smiled. Doreith was in most endeavors as incompetent as a child, save two. One was his gift for sorcery. Doreith had been happier, born to a lowlier station where he could have devoted all his energies to this craft. If he liked a piece of mere gneiss for a talisman, let him have it.


    ¡°Plainness that pleases will serve you better than richness that does not. Only consider my staff.¡± He brushed aside the boy¡¯s effulgent gratitude. ¡°Now, I had thought to study comets next.¡±


    ¡°Th-that would be excel-extraordinary, lord. Um. Lord?¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°You will recall Re¡ªmy frien¡ªthe Viscount Reisson? Only he, I talked to him just after we, I mean you roused the Bull, and he would, it¡¯s his, he asked if, could would could you find have a place in maybe your um court? He¡¯s a poet.¡±


    Treskiel was well used to Doreith¡¯s stuttering ramble, and coped by mostly not listening until the end. ¡°A poet? Delightful. Send for him, then. Ah¡ª¡± he cut off another rush of thanks with a raised palm, ¡°¡ªand do you know any astronomers?¡± Doreith¡¯s other gift was that he placed or withheld trust uncannily well: if his barony was run more by his officers than by himself, at least it was manned by competent and loyal people, by all the accounts of Treskiel¡¯s spies. If Doreith liked someone, that was almost voucher enough.


    Doreith started. ¡°Astr-? Er. L-Lord Irne¡¯s son, second son, Varaan na Dare. We fost-, he was my, at Lord Carnane¡¯s, in Catladyan¡ª¡±


    ¡°Excellent. Send for him also. Then join me in the tower.¡±


    ¡°Y-yes, lord. At on¡ªimmedi¡ªnow, lord¡ªI mean then¡ª¡±


    Colderwild, too, felt the tremor, though mildly: crockery rattled, and ripples ran in and out over the surface of the water in the cisterns and pools, even the ale or wine in people¡¯s cups. And though the rumor from the Silver ran that some great expenditure of magic had accompanied the quake¡ªcause or coincidence, they could not say¡ªother upheavals interested the Runedaur more.


    ¡°Of course, you know what¡¯s been happening in Maldan.¡±


    Supper in the Hall of Fire, where Rothesay had first been welcomed, and four members of Colderwild¡¯s community had returned from many months a-wandering, and everyone ate quietly, the better to hear the news.


    ¡°Changin¡¯ overlordship,¡± observed Caltern. ¡°Who is it now¡ªthat Midland kinglet?¡±


    ¡°Deorgard,¡± agreed one of the newcomers, a boyish-looking man called Navan, or sometimes Facechanger.


    Caltern frowned. ¡°Don¡¯t think so. Maderoc, maybe?¡±


    ¡°Yes¡ªthat¡¯s his clan: Deorgard the Madroch.¡± The Sferath Navan had curious Geillan pronunciation, to Rothesay¡¯s northern ear; she wondered if it were wrong, or dead on for its region.


    ¡°The one out of Aellicia.¡±


    ¡°The same. Know where he is now?¡±This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    There was a chorus of shrugs. ¡°Buggering some new little kingdom,¡± Rory murmured in Rothesay¡¯s ear. She giggled.


    ¡°Brandhad,¡± said Dav. Rothesay shot a questioning look at Rory, but Ulflaed, who had returned with Navan and the rest, whispered, ¡°Seat of Fenustad. Western Maldan,¡± he added, when she still looked puzzled, and Rory jumped in, ¡°As far west in Maldan as it¡¯s possible, without you¡¯re in the mountains!¡±


    Navan looked smug. And, ¡°The Myrinine,¡± he corrected.


    A soft, surprised roar ran around the hall. Caltern belched. ¡°Maybe it¡¯ll eat him!¡±


    ¡°Well!¡± Dav purred, leaning back in his seat till he lay, almost as straight as if he were standing, from seat-edge to chair-back. ¡°Have any of us followed?¡±


    No one, to the best knowledge of the newcomers, had infiltrated either King Toryarl¡¯s host or Deorgard¡¯s. Many of the diners that evening volunteered, including Nessian, to Rothesay¡¯s considerable surprise.


    ¡°They¡¯ll probably try to pass as someone¡¯s slave,¡± Ulflaed informed her later. ¡°You¡¯d be amazed, how close a slave can be to someone. And, you know us, whoever it is will find some way of dumping his work on some other poor sod!¡± He laughed, but neither Rothesay nor Rory did.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she said seriously. ¡°We seem¡ªor at least the knights seem¡ªto do an awful lot of real work!¡±


    ¡°They say you can tell a novice by how much they try to get out of,¡± put in Juris.


    Cobry blushed visibly. ¡°But, what¡¯s the point of getting knighted and all that, if you¡¯re going to have to work like a slave anyway?¡±


    Rory grinned. ¡°It¡¯s work to a slave. To a knight, it¡¯s just life. So they say.¡±


    Ulflaed nodded. ¡°The way I heard it, a knight always knows he¡¯s going to, say, have a decent supper, have a good place to sleep, clothes to wear. He doesn¡¯t have to try, doesn¡¯t have to work at it. They say once you¡¯re knighted, you go off and watch the clouds blow by for a week, or a month, or a year, and then you get bored and then washing dishes is more interesting than not washing dishes, exactly because you don¡¯t have to.¡±


    Cobry stared his open disbelief. Rothesay had a strong suspicion that Juris felt the same way but was trying to hide it, as though he had heard the same and meant to pretend that he believed.


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not going to be me,¡± Cobry said, as much in admitting he was not up to the task, as refusing to pass as a slave. ¡°But¡ªthe Myrinine!¡± His eyes glowed. ¡°It scares me to my sandals! But I mean to go, someday!¡±


    ¡°Just make sure you¡¯re always polite,¡± Rothesay put in. ¡°Um¡ªthat¡¯s what my old, um, mentor used to say. He¡¯s a wizard.¡±


    ¡°Polite?¡± Juris echoed. She shrugged.


    Rumor drifted around next day that Master Leoff would be the one to go. Rothesay tried to picture the elegant little man passing as a slave. Lacie laughed, and pointed out a little old beggar-man hobbling through the cherry trees towards the main keep.


    ¡°That¡¯s not Leoff!¡± Rothesay exclaimed.


    ¡°Bet me¡ªgo attack him!¡± Lacie retorted. Rothesay needed no more.


    That evening, Dav stood before his empty hearth as a little old Geillan beggar-man sat gracefully sipping excellent wine beside him, talking as old friends will. The apartment door crashed open between one word and the next. In burst a young Geillan warrior, short and slender for his breed, maybe, but bristling with indignation. His rough-beaten, but steel, sword pointed unmistakable threat at the Master of Runedaur.


    ¡°If you use our techniques,¡± Dav drawled, ¡°you¡¯ll give yourself away to anyone who recognizes them.¡±


    ¡°Like you,¡± said the young warrior, and dropped back into a popular Geillan stance.


    The beggar-man looked around. ¡°Excellent form. You¡¯ve studied them well. Weight too far forward, as one overeager; flashy, intimidating sword-angle¡ªthey win half their battle in imposing appearance, as you seem to know.¡±


    The young man swept his sword around into Runedaur waiting-pose. ¡°I,¡± he announced, ¡°am to be the infiltrator.¡±


    ¡°Do we know you?¡± asked Dav, and the young man grinned with delight.


    ¡°We met formally some years ago, Master, but most recently at the battle before Andrastir. Sorchone am I, out of Kingscroft. And Mistress Gulda has set me this Challenge: to discover the Madroch¡¯s sense of being!¡±


    Dav and Leoff understood: one¡¯s sense of being, as the Runedaur meant it, dictated one¡¯s ultimate aim and purpose. The three conferred then, and at last Leoff deferred to his young usurper. ¡°Do you mean to join them as itinerant warrior?¡± asked Dav.


    ¡°I thought to pose as one out of Dun Gilwin,¡± said Sorchone, stroking his dark-green/light-green checky tunic, ¡°especially as they have but recently submitted.¡±


    ¡°You might,¡± agreed Leoff. ¡°Yet you might obtain more, passing for slave. A vassal attends his lord in public, seldom in private until he proves himself in some extraordinary act; a slave passes unseen, and hears what is uttered in what is thought to be secret.¡±


    Sorchone bowed. ¡°Slave I will be, then. I thank you, Masters.¡±


    ¡°And your greatest caution must be¡ª?¡± Leoff prompted, one pale eyebrow barely lifting.


    He hesitated. Discovery he did not fear; instead, proving himself a Runedaur spy, should he ever wish to make the claim, would be a beastly chore in itself. In a Sferan court, more caution was needed, but it seemed unlikely that the Geillari yet thought themselves of any interest to the Order. ¡°Teach me, Master.¡±


    Leoff inclined his head graciously. ¡°Then: to convince your observers without convincing yourself.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Master,¡± he replied politely; he understood the advice, and yet it puzzled him, or Leoff¡¯s concern for it puzzled him. Well, he would keep it in mind.


    ¡°Well met again,¡± said Dav, ¡°and well spoken. We look forward to your most interesting return.¡±


    Taking leave of the masters, Sorchone considered calling on Rothesay. Perhaps it might be more amusing to call on her later. Ah, but there was always the risk of not having a later in which to call.


    He bowled her over in the middle of the stables, demanded for penalty that she walk the gardens with him, and laughed at her astonishment.


    ¡°Where did I come from? But I sat by Facechanger all through supper!¡±


    Rothesay thought back. Navan had sat between a massive brown bear of a man, Vakiloth the smith¡¯s brother, and an austere, pinched sorceress¡ª


    ¡°You dressed as a woman?¡± she yelped.


    ¡°And Navan¡ªLoela¡ªas a man. In fairness, Facechanger has always done so; if I surprise you as much, may I guess that I managed well?¡±


    ¡°Why not? You must have learned much from¡ªwhat was it? Marron¡¯s?¡± Sorchone bowed. ¡°But now you¡¯re all done up like a Geillath! And before you ask, no, if it weren¡¯t for your voice, I wouldn¡¯t have known you in that, either!¡±


    ¡°You flatter me. Now, come: tell me all about our Moot, and how you liked it, and how passed your summer!¡±


    She saw him off at dawn, and tried to hide any anxiety for him: a pleasant thought, even if it arose of nothing more than friendship. Nothing more than¡ª? he wondered, as he urged his horse across the Daorlas ford. Do I truly value friendship so lightly? No; indeed I should like to be that one¡¯s lover, but better a true friend than a false bedmate. And yet better still, maybe, a true friend who is also bedmate, a conjunction that appeared rare outside the Order. And the conjunction must be ¡®more¡¯ than either of its parts. Very well, then: ¡°nothing more than¡± friendship with the wine-haired Darian¡ªwell, not yet!¡ªand no scorn reflected upon Friendship. Sorchone was at peace before he reached the further bank.


    Knowing these lands well, he passed swiftly across Ristover, though roads were few. He left his Geillan disguise behind, intending to be taken as a Sferan prize once he reached Fenustad; yet even in quite small hamlets he was taken as a Ristovan prize, being recognized as a Cathforrow. Despite the heat, and his taste for more colorful garb, he resorted to his Runedaur black, just to fend off his countrymen, and still occasionally stooped to outright stealth until he reached the Andreisi west. Yet travelling among his people, he gradually sensed that some change had come over his cousin¡¯s court. A new respect, a new pride, seemed to be budding. Young nobles of the further reaches of Ristover had an eagerness to attend, and rumor said that poets and philosophers from other Houses asked to join them. Sorchone had long known that the Order had been grooming Treskiel towards mastery of the remaining Sferiari; interesting, that the prince¡¯s response should be, first, in the arts. What, if anything, might he envision militarily? Sorchone could not guess, but if it kept Treskiel alive and whole till Sorchone was out of the House¡¯s reach, it was all fine with him.


    He paid a call of courtesy on the Marchess Cuildon when he came to Obath; she may have entertained doubts that one slim youth could grant her Harvest request, but none that hers was in fact his errand. As this misapprehension loaded him with gifts and goods for his further road, he did not correct her; besides, what he learned would aid the Order in choosing whether, or how, to serve her.


    From Obath, he wandered further up the Sionane. The Marchess may have called him ¡°no very great stream,¡± but he was rocky and turbulent; suitable fords were few, and he bore no bridges. Yet Sorchone could see the Marchess¡¯s fear this year: Sionane¡¯s water ran low, great stretches of rock lay bare, jutting up among ever smaller pools. Rain had finally broken while he stopped at Obath, with a great storm the night of the equinox, and it went right on raining as though to re-balance the world against the earlier drought. Sionane began to fill again, but it would take more than a few days¡¯ downpour to restore him to his wont. Treacherous fording still, and no place to risk a horse; but determined footmen might venture across¡ªso long as they understood that retreat would be a challenge.


    At last he found a crossing he liked. A league back, he had passed opposite a Geillan homestead, a ¡°freehold,¡± he believed they were called, large and prosperous-looking, huddled behind its wooden palisade on the north bank. Meadowland rolled from the farm up towards the Rusannmar mountains, and the dark fringe of the Myrinine. He turned loose his horse, repacked his gear¡ªa light load, as he did not mean to do more than give a good impression of a desperate traveller; but thanks to the Marchess, a rather rich one, which he expected to win him at least the good humor of his captors when it was stolen from him. He had left all weapons back in Obath, a partial trade for his gifts perhaps, to cause no fear among the Geillari that a raid from Andras was underway or imminent; besides, if he came to need any, his opponents carried plenty. Thus decorated, he picked his way over the rocks in the last light of evening.


    The next day he crept back towards the freehold under shelter of the woods to its north, and spent the day spying out the habits of the family. He found a thick stand of fir just over the first hill from their gate, along the path to their current cow-pasture; sleeping there, he should be both reasonably dry for the night, and, if he slept late enough, probably surprised by the two eldest sons next morning. They were big strapping lads and he was small, and of course famished from his travels¡ªthat he could be as well-fed as a princeling could well be and still play a starving beggar to conviction gave him no great joy, but there seemed to be no hope for him that way¡ªand he should be well on his way to grovelling servitude by lunchtime tomorrow. From what news he would glean from them, he could arrange his further plans later.

 XVIII: Portents (pt 2/3): Wyrd Stirring

    Next night he crouched in a corner with half a dozen kin-thralls, one of whom was no more than half-witted. He had been waked at dawn by the shrieks of the youngest daughter, the first to spy him; fortunately, she had quickly waked her brothers and cousins, who ran him down as he fled ineptly through their woods. They were still boasting of the capture, sitting with their father and uncles around the hearth, as proud as if Sorchone had been a small army of Sferiari. The mother of the hall sneered at their new possession¡¯s small and scrawny stature, not more than her own height and maybe half her weight; sneered, but made sure he had an extra plate of stew, and smacked the other thralls who tried to steal it away. One of the boys suggested giving their prize to King Toryarl and Sorchone¡¯s hopes bounded, but Mother worried him by saying loudly that he would be no use to anyone without he was fattened up some first. Father laughed. ¡°Naaay, lass! Them¡¯re all for bein¡¯ lik¡¯ thaat!¡± To cover his own laughter, Sorchone swiftly imagined their having said something incomprehensible, and stared at them as if he might learn their speech just by looking hard enough. One of the cousins flung a boot at him.


    ¡°And Toryarl be wantin¡¯ for some cheer, wi¡¯ Madroch gone i¡¯ t¡¯ wood,¡± Father went on, shaking his head, and the whole family sobered. They sat in an uneasy silence, and then the father rose to take down a large brown jug: something important, Sorchone guessed from the widened eyes of his family. It proved to be wine, and even the kin-thralls were given small cups; one restrained the half-wit until the father solemnly raised his own mug high above his head. ¡°T¡¯ Madroch: safe home, then.¡± They drank in silence, and then put all the household to bed.


    Apart from a couple of clumsy escape attempts over the next few days, Sorchone worked well, reasoning that the better he performed, the better a gift he would make. His new mistress had charge of him, though her sons wanted to take him to help work the livestock, for the anticipated hilarity of watching the little man struggle with their tasks. She kept asking him for magic; he kept looking for ways to seem to grasp her meaning without betraying his grasp of her tongue, and she set an elderly aunt to teach him how men should speak. If he proved too quick a student, would they notice?


    A quick student, he now understood Master Leoff¡¯s advice, and it worried him. To give the impression of fearfulness was child¡¯s play: curl the shoulders so, contract the belly thus, bug the eyes, and for good measure call vividly to mind anything that had ever frightened one. Done properly, the fear conveyed excellently well, for though it was born of artifice, it was real fear.


    And like any fear, it clouded the mind. He was in grave danger of attending to an event, great or trivial, as his mask and not as himself, and though that would support the impersonation, that would not necessarily be his best choice. Sorchone wrestled within himself. How to play a part to conviction, without self-conviction? If he played it too long too well, might he convince himself that he was a timorous prisoner of events, and not his own master? He took to waking earlier than the rest, to have a time for meditation; and seized moments when he was reasonably sure he was not observed, to remind shoulders, belly, eyes, mind, and especially breath, of what courage and serenity felt like. And if anyone did catch him at it, he could always blush and cringe, and let them laugh at him. That, at least, had no power over him. If it ever did trouble him, their mockery, he decided he would take that as his cue to get out and go home and restore himself.


    Now it seemed the family had in any case planned a trip up to Toryarl¡¯s seat, a week hence. They would take Sorchone¡¯s small treasures, his silken clothes, his small steel belt-knife, his fine bristle-brush as gifts to their king¡ªand yes, the slave himself. ¡°He¡¯m worth more in t¡¯ gifting, than he be about t¡¯ house!¡± said Father. Mother pursed her lips, but made no contest.


    And that night the palisaded gates rumbled as though another quake rocked the earth, and a fierce, bedraggled, but living band, seven unlooked-for heroes, roared into the household.


    Come the morning, the disrupted hall woke slowly. The thralls, of course, were first afoot after the mistress and her sister-in-law, to stoke the cooking-fire, fetch water, start great rashers of bacon frying. The mistress was frantic, sharper-tongued than Sorchone had yet seen her; he wished he could teach her even one of his breathing exercises, to calm her mind.


    Deorgard! The great warlord himself, come right to her very own hall! Nothing was good enough, clean enough, tasty enough¡ªthough the bright side of that, from the thralls¡¯ point of view, was to be given the rejects which were truthfully good enough for anyone. The children were her next victims, to have all their chores done before the king arose, barn and stable shoveled and fresh, animals brushed, eggs and milk fetched. She set Sorchone to drawing water, as a task he should manage well enough alone and requiring the least effort to convey what was wanted. Bucket by bucket, he filled the kettles and cauldron, and watched the hurrying work-bransle like watching an unearthed ant-hive. Soon the hall simmered in the aromas of venison roasting and bread baking for the day-meal.


    The king, of course, had been given the master and mistress¡¯s own apartment, the one private room in their home and a feature only of the more prosperous freeholds at that. He slept soundly, if all the snores therein were his own: a second bed had been arranged for one of his companions, and pallets for the two slaves they brought with them. Of the other three, one was plainly a son of this house, and his mother seemed torn between rousing him, too, as she had ever done, or letting him sleep. Eventually she left him in peace with the guests.


    Presently, bleary-eyed but erect, the king¡¯s thralls strode out of the royal apartment to request bathing-water, soap, and cloths. This being something of an honor, Mother fetched all that was required herself, albeit using Sorchone¡¯s hands and back for the actual portering. Sorchone did his best to look appropriately intimidated, and not laugh: he kept picturing how the proud Treskiel would accept a small room off the barn for noble quartering, and a wooden stool among the rushes while hot water was poured over him for a bath.


    When his clean majesty and his clean lieutenant emerged at last, they put Deorgard on the dais at the head of the hall in the father¡¯s chair¡ªa chair with a back, another sign of their wealth¡ªcushioned with a deep pile of the family¡¯s best furs, and presented all the household to him, thralls and dogs excepted. Then there must be a tour of barn and byre, and fortunately for everyone¡¯s thin-mastered anticipation, the renewed rain forestalled a tour of the fields and orchards. They returned to the hall, Mother, her sisters-in-law and daughters-in-law brought forth a bounteous if simple feast, and towards its end her son Jav shrugged into his blue robes and stood before the dais to sing.


    Sorchone began by listening indifferently. Geillan boasting-songs usually bored him, and he was supposed to be ignorant of the language, besides. Instead, he watched the listeners. Soon, however, the tale spun by the young bard taxed all his power to pretend he could not understand. He had been among the Geillari before, had seen more than one local hero start in surprise¡ªand pleasure, but surprise still¡ªat some bardic embellishment of what he had done.


    Not these. King, lieutenant, heroes and slaves watched their bard solemnly, even grimly. A wince, a tightened jaw, a sombre sigh, as the song stripped away friend or brother from the original two hundreds down to this bare handful, by perils weird and marvellous even in a poet¡¯s fancy: again and again, Sorchone caught himself staring, taken by the tale. At least no one noticed, enchanted themselves.


    An hour he sang to the hushed household. And when he thundered at last the praises of the Seven Masters of the Wood, a long and respectful silence rewarded him, and he retired to his stool all pink above his red-gold beard.


    Deorgard, slouched forward with both his elbows on his knees, rolled the family¡¯s one silver goblet back and forth between his hands and let the silence spread. At length, though, the young bard caught his father¡¯s eye and made a tiny, anxious nod. Father then stood up from his cushioned stool below the dais, to praise the king and his hardy companions, and to demand that the gods reward their heart and courage with prosperity and undying fame. The Geillari seldom want for words, but Father made an awkward work of it; not from him his son¡¯s poetic prowess, and Sorchone felt a little embarrassed for him, the more so as he plainly embarrassed himself. Deorgard seemed not to notice, though whether in truth or in courtesy, Sorchone could not tell. Father finished by kneeling before his king and giving the silver torque from his neck into the king¡¯s hands.


    Deorgard accepted it gruffly, admired it, though it would never fit his own neck, and passed it to his lieutenant to hold. If he then considered how to reply, it was more pause than Father could bear, who in his nervous excitement pressed still more gifts on him: the goblet the king already held, and then the steel belt-knife he had taken from Sorchone.


    At Deorgard¡¯s flicker of interest in the steel, Father quickly explained about his recent capture, gestured urgently to his wife to produce the captive, and pushed Sorchone to his knees before the king. And O! blessed luck, he said ¡¯t was plain the gods sent the creature to be a prize for the Lord of the Wood. Sorchone ducked his head. If it looked like fright, so much the better. Having weeks of work, at his best and subtlest manipulations, yanked out from under him challenged even his self-mastery.


    ¡°Has it got a name?¡± he heard the king ask.


    ¡°He¡¯m not got our speech, lord,¡± Father admitted. ¡°We don¡¯t know.¡± Someone¡¯s fingers snapped, and then a young Sferan voice spoke to him:


    ¡°What is your name?¡±


    He jerked his head up. He had marked the one slave-boy last night as certainly Sferan and, noting the evident companionship between him and the older, hairier one, guessed that they both must be. He wondered greatly what their stories were; but if they were also prizes of Deorgard¡¯s, he should soon discover them.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    He assumed an attitude of hopeful surprise at the sound of his native tongue. ¡°Sorchone.¡±


    Deorgard barely turned his great head to stare, suspiciously, Sorchone thought, at the boy; young man, rather: he was beginning to get some meat on him. The translator stared back levelly¡ªand Sorchone hastily masked his astonishment at this boldness in a feint of anxiety. Now, who, he wondered keenly, are you?


    ¡°He one of your people?¡± the king growled.


    ¡°No, lord.¡± His gaze darted dispassionately over Sorchone. ¡°I do not know his House.¡±


    Sorchone¡¯s cloak with its Ristovan badge had been given to the eldest daughter; he bore no identifying tokens. Then how do you know I am not of your people¡ªoh! There was only one House who might be so sure of knowing an outlander. Ah, well, two, but all Rhyllandari were gone¡ªwherever they went. Kinnatiari, are you fellows, then?


    Deorgard considered this shortly. He glared at Sorchone, who stared back as one too frightened to move while plans were made for him in an incomprehensible tongue. Then the king nodded to Father, accepting the gift. Sorchone had not prayed in years but he made one now, a burst of wordless gratitude. He wondered who among the pantheon might be a patron of expedience. The Wind-lord Kavin, maybe, with his variable temper; or the angel Lheinne, Areolin¡¯s Dog, the swiftest of the roving stars. Both.


    The afternoon revised the family¡¯s plans to travel to Toryarl¡¯s seat at Brandhad-town: Deorgard would go tomorrow. The household fell into a flurry of preparation, but the Seven Heroes were pressed into idleness, and the younger children vied to serve them, even the two thralls.


    Sorchone followed the translator and his friend about like a lost puppy. They slept often: if a tenth of the bard¡¯s song were true, he could not blame them. The furry one in particular was given to soft outcries like, ¡°Oh, sweet gods: blankets!¡± before burying his face in them. Awake, they drank as much ale and ate as much bread as the household would grant, and the family were generous.


    Late in the day the one called Raian took pity on the king¡¯s latest acquisition. He had been watching Sorchone respond blankly to the youngest daughter, who considered him ¡°hers¡± as being the first to spot him, and who was both kinder and bossier than the rest.


    ¡°You have no idea what¡¯s happening, do you.¡±


    Sorchone tried to flush, and felt himself succeed. ¡°I am a prisoner of these¡ª¡± he decided to balk at ¡°barbarians,¡± and instead finished, ¡°¡ªthese people: I understand that!¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a slave.¡± Raian flicked his own collar meaningfully. ¡°Did you get that?¡± Sorchone hunched sullenly into himself and looked away. ¡°What¡¯s your House?¡±


    ¡°Ristover.¡± Presently he looked back up at them, to ask politely, ¡°And yours?¡±


    ¡°Kinnaith-Dunwyrding.¡±


    Sorchone¡¯s surprise did not need pretense: he had not heard the double name used before. He leaped on the part he was expected to understand. ¡°Kinnaith, then?¡± And he began to sing softly:


    ¡°Oh, old Andras he wanted fat venison,


    ¡°but young Listas liked acorns hot.


    ¡°Merry Kinnaith whistled a wheetle a dew,


    ¡°whistled up a fat acorn-and-venison stew,


    ¡°and the three of them cleaned the pot!¡±


    At their now-blank looks, he said shyly, ¡°Have you never heard that one?


    ¡°Now proud Andras, he wanted a mansion fine,


    ¡°but mild Listas, one simple hall.


    ¡°Canny Kinnaith whistled a wheetle a doh,


    ¡°whistled nine upon one, fine above, plain below,


    ¡°and nobly sheltered them all.


    ¡°Oh, bold Andras, he would a-swimming go,


    ¡°but fair Listas in breezes would play.


    ¡°Crazy Kinnaith whistled a wheetle a dare,


    ¡°whistled up a bright boat with sails so fair¡ª


    ¡°and Celtannan stole it away!¡±


    That won at least a grin from them. ¡°Is that not why your families have names like Riversmoke, and Cloudfallow?¡±


    ¡°Raingold,¡± Raian agreed, and then offered his family¡¯s sengwyth, pausing to think how to put it in plain Sferan:


    ¡°A rain


    ¡°of gold


    ¡°prospers all.¡±


    ¡°Coppertree,¡± said Wolf, adding likewise,


    ¡°A tree


    ¡°of copper


    ¡°lights the forest.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re called sengwyth¡ªosenga-wit, braid-verses,¡± Raian explained to Sorchone¡¯s widened eyes. ¡°The Galring, what you call Geillari, have this tradition. Or at least Dunwyrding do,¡± he amended, as he realized he did not know how widespread the custom was; certainly he had heard none since leaving home. ¡°A simple one is: ¡®A man/and a woman/make a child.¡¯ Or, ¡®Fire/and ice:/both burn.¡¯¡±


    ¡°¡®A cow/and the plow/make the furrow,¡¯¡± said Wolf. ¡°¡®The land/and the water/shape the river.¡¯ It¡¯s a braid because it¡¯s three parts: something, something else¡ªand the fact that they¡¯re different.¡± He mimed plaiting in air.


    Sorchone nodded. Wistfully, he said, ¡°A braid is stronger than a single strand. . . . If these people have the habit of braiding even in their thought: is that why they are such a strong folk?¡± He looked away at nothing as he spoke, but glanced back out of the far corner of his eye to see how they would take it. Impassive, indifferent, the one called Wolf, but Raian looked uncomfortable.


    Raian realized that this Sorchone was the first¡ªshould he call them ¡°wild¡± imperials? he wondered with an inner giggle¡ªpurely Sferan man he had ever met. He had given them little thought, not bothering even to resent their long-ago betrayal of his Kinnathen ancestors; certainly he had never considered what these times might mean to them, they who saw only their own fall in the rise of Geillan power. His capture must bite Sorchone doubly hard, then.


    ¡°Some of us dream of winning our old lands back,¡± Sorchone went on, but shook his head. ¡°I do not see it. Yet¡ªsuch might not seem a victory to you. Aye?¡± he ventured.


    Ah. That touched a nerve. He saw wariness in their faces, anticipation of his censure for their mingled blood. It was short-lived. Defiance supplanted it, scorn of his scorn, pride, and derision for anyone blind to their worth even before Wolf curled his lip, ¡°Us half-breeds, you mean?¡±


    Sorchone ducked his head again, clasped his hands tight together. Backbone, spirit, exhilarated him; mere defensiveness exasperated him and it was not now his place to redress it. He struggled for an aura of abjection. ¡°No! Only¡ªyou have kin, blood-ties either way? The triumph of either one would be at least some loss for you¡ª?¡±


    Wolf¡¯s surprise suggested that he had never thought of that; but something else entirely was going on in Raian. Sorchone¡¯s best efforts could not make it out¡ªbut, then, neither could Raian himself. It would wait. What a very interesting venture this was proving to be. He changed tack. ¡°What was the bard¡¯s song? I thought¡ªit seemed to affect you very much.¡±


    They told him then of their Myrinine adventure; he was the first one they had had, to whom they might unburden themselves of their thoughts, and they talked volubly, startling themselves in their eagerness to speak aloud to anyone. And now he could indulge all his astonishment. Snow lions! The ground but a crust above a boiling stench? A tree with a bracelet¡ªyes, Sorchone understood about the height of branches¡ªand if it was not blood that spilled from it, it also resembled no sap Sorchone knew. A blue lake, with never a fish: incredible.


    ¡°You saved his life, then, twice, your¡ªmaster.¡± Sorchone spoke the word in revulsion. ¡°Why?¡±


    Raian shrugged. ¡°He¡¯s got the key.¡± He tipped his head to set off his collar.


    No, but no. That is not the least part of it, thought Sorchone. He recalled Raian¡¯s earlier pride in the teeth of the king. Who are you?

 XVIII: Portents (pt 3/3): Fate Bearing

    In his previous nights with the family, Sorchone had not been consigned to the barn with the other thralls, for fear of his running away. Instead he had slept in the private room, on the floor by the mistress of the house, a chain clipped to his collar and the other end wrapped in her hand; each night at least once, he had gently looped it back into her slackened grasp. Tonight he was packed again into the same room, far more crowded now. The thrall Raian assembled for him a pallet of straw like his own. Sorchone sat upon it, arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees trying to presume on as little space as possible, when the king stomped in.


    Deorgard glared down at Raian as if all the world were his fault. Raian stared back, impudently for any Sferan servant, stared as one accepting not so much blame for the world as credit. That the king tolerated this interested the young Runedaur keenly. Possibly this Deorgard, too, liked spirit.


    Slowly the king announced, making the last word as heavy as his fist, ¡°I want to be home.¡± For a moment more he glared, then stretched hugely, yawned, and sighed, ¡°But Toryarl¡¯s a good man.¡±


    This argument mystified Sorchone, the more so as it appeared to make perfect sense to Raian. Fortunately, Deorgard abruptly thought better of something, and lumbered back out into the hall. ¡°What does he say?¡± Sorchone whispered to Raian.


    The boy paused in straightening the king¡¯s bedding. Sorchone expected a literal translation, which would force him to ask for more; Raian appeared to go off on some random tangent instead.


    ¡°The Galring give gifts. For everything. A guest gifts his host. The host heaps gifts on his guests. They gift new fathers and new fathers gift everybody. They close contracts with gifts. A king,¡± he nodded towards the wall through which Deorgard¡¯s bass rumble alternated with Jav¡¯s light tenor, ¡°sheds gifts like dogs shed hair. Especially! for brave work, battle-triumphs, and such. Only, after all we did, he¡¯s got nothing right now. Nothing, nor enough people to appreciate it if he did. He had a sword, of steel, that he got from Hlafarr of Bordegund, and he had to drop that in the lake or go down with it. He¡¯s got his rings and bracelets, and he¡¯ll probably give them to the household in the morning, but he¡¯s not giving them to Maglad and the rest because it¡¯d be like¡ª¡± he paused to think of some example that the Sferath might share. ¡°Like giving someone a nod when you ought to hold a feast in their honor? At home, he could do the thing right. But Toryarl¡ªthat¡¯s the local king¡ªhe¡¯s Deorgard¡¯s. Sworn to him. So anything that¡¯s his, is his king¡¯s, and he¡¯ll have enough for the Madroch to do justice with¡ªand he¡¯ll be glad, proud to give it, too. He could do the same with Jav¡¯s family¡¯s stuff, here, but what he wants to do¡¯d put a bigger hole in their wealth than in Toryarl¡¯s. They¡¯d be honored, of course, if he beggared them. But I think he gets a lot of his respect, and honor, from¡ªwell, he¡¯s got a sense for how much is ¡®royal¡¯ and how much is¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ªcruel,¡± Wolf interjected, when Raian hesitated for a word.


    Raian nodded, a bit distantly. On reflection, he doubted that Deorgard thought this out, any more than a cat thought out how to wend its way among breakables without disturbance; cat and king alike acted of their nature alone.


    Sorchone listened raptly, both to the meaning and the words. The boy seemed to lose track sometimes of the border between the Sferan tongue and the curious blend he shared with Wolf; many words, Sorchone had to say over in his own mind, several times, to get the meaning. Surely the Order knew it existed, this blent tongue, and maybe some Runedaur spoke it, though, come to think of it, he rather thought they seldom bothered with mountain-wrapped Kinnaith. Many Geillan nobles affected the Sferan speech, Odhru the Brean among them, but Deorgard evidently did not trouble with it. Sorchone wondered how this new language would fare, and determined to learn it himself.


    Presently Deorgard stomped back in, followed by Maglad. Raian and Wolf tended to discarded boots, cloaks and belts, but no one seemed to have work for Sorchone. Deorgard stared at him, while he tried to work out if he should play bold, like Raian, or frightened as he thought a slave would seem. He was spared an immediate choice, as Deorgard ordered the lamps snuffed, and the hall slept at last.


    A league to the next freehold. Two more from there to Brandhad-town. Two of Jav¡¯s brothers had run ahead yesterday, after the song, and the party were expected. Toryarl¡¯s people from many freeholds overflowed his little town, and a feasting grander than any Raian or Wolf had yet seen awaited them. ¡°Hai! The Seven Heroes! Hai!¡± men cried, and the high, eerie war-hoots of the women shook the air.


    Jav sang again, circling the bonfire-hearth of Brandhad. ¡°He¡¯s been practicing since yesterday,¡± Wolf observed in Raian¡¯s ear. Then after a deeply respectful pause, Bradgith rose, to charge the gods with rewarding such heroes, as Jav¡¯s father had done before; and to inflame the people by demanding to know what manner of folk must deserve such men, and such a king, among them?


    The town exploded. Dance, riot, mock-battle and some few brawls in earnest proclaimed the high heart of the people. All seven, even the thralls, were seized, hoisted onto shoulders, and paraded all about the town, outside round the palisade, inside through both streets; pelted with bread, and flowers from the women, doused with ale before they were set down at last at the hearth-circle. Raian and Wolf laughed and pounded one another, except that girls pulled them apart to salute them heartily. Raian noticed that he was celebrating with his captors, but just now he could not bring himself to mind. They had done a great thing, a wonderful thing, and they had survived, and he must rejoice or die.


    Deorgard strode to the hearth-side. The crowd fell silent. With a little prompting from Bradgith, he gave himself to them as king, and was received by more wild cheering. Then he set about the giving of gifts to his companions, and host, while the people listened, and sighed their approval.


    Sorchone, still following Raian and Wolf as well as he could in the uproar, sensed an anxiousness in Raian. He expected the thralls to be set free; disappointing, at least to him, as they would leave and he forever wonder about them. Deorgard did give both youths heavy torques of braided silver and copper, and wide bracelets, and even a paired short sword and dagger set. But no mention was made of thralldom or freedom till he awarded one of Toryarl¡¯s kin-thralls to Wolf, and Sorchone to Raian.


    Raian had been wondering what he should do if Deorgard did free them. He had hardly begun his study of the man, had framed no plan for his high-kingship, but neither could he imagine any reason for staying on; rather, he would be as glad to get away as a drowning man to draw a free breath. Except that he needed more time.


    Later, heedless of the laughing dance filling the night at the center of the town, he kicked moodily at the log palisade. Slave still. He could continue his work¡ªho, ho, his fancy of work. Damn. By all the gods, damn and damn! Maybe I should have killed him, that first night.


    Wolf careened against the wall nearby. ¡°One of these days, boyo, I¡¯ll just kill him.¡±


    Sorchone, crouched beside them, listened intently as only Runedaur can, and eventually heard in these Kinnathen word-children their Sferan and Geillan parents¡¯ features. Kill him¡ªunderstandably; but this Raian was almost as much relieved as affronted. For himself: well, he might not be Deorgard¡¯s, at least not yet, but he was close enough.


    Suddenly, standing alone in the dark, Raian laughed. ¡°What the hell¡¯s so funny?¡± growled Wolf, and Raian laughed again, louder and freer.


    ¡°Us! Great world-shapers we are, heroes of the land, and collared like dogs!¡±


    ¡°Yah. I noticed. I noticed, boyo. What¡¯s so damned funny about that?¡±


    Raian only laughed harder, leaned against the wall to hold himself up against his own mirth. Wolf felt himself start to grin, for no better reason than the contagion of amusement understood or not, and launched himself into Raian¡¯s belly. He soon had his friend pinned, as Raian could make no defense in the weakness of his laughter, and then his own unexpected success seemed so terribly funny that he could only roll on the grass beside Raian and howl. Sorchone watched them by the dim light of the distant fire, and wracked himself to understand.


    When at last his breath sobbed its way back to something like composure, Raian wiped his tear-streaked face, rolled to his feet and thrust a hand back down to Wolf. ¡°Come, man. We can¡¯t be kingmakers rolling in the dirt.¡± They both snorted, and almost lost themselves again, but Wolf took the hand and pulled himself up.


    ¡°What the devil do I do with him?¡± he demanded of Night, with a wave towards the elderly, nearly-toothless man sitting cross-legged a short way off, his new possession.


    ¡°What do I do with you?¡± said Raian, looking at Sorchone though he spoke to himself. Then he grinned. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right: I¡¯ll think of something,¡± he said airily. He was braced for Wolf¡¯s tackle, however, and this time the fight went as it usually did.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Sorchone, cleaning the king¡¯s boots that night at Raian¡¯s command, revisited in his thought all that curious merry exchange. Most of the words were lost to him, but their mirth shone like a moon, a light in a dark night, and he grinned.


    One last exchange that night puzzled both Raian and Sorchone. Bradgith entered the room given over to Deorgard¡ªand Deorgard alone, the lieutenant, Maglad, being given another room for himself and Wolf¡ªand the king drew something out of his belt-pouch, something that clinked softly as if it were two or more, and dropped it into the bard¡¯s gnarled hand. ¡°That mean it worked?¡± said the king.


    Bradgith rolled whatever-they-were in his palm. ¡°Of course.¡±


    Deorgard snorted, and the bard bowed and retired.


    ¡°Has the old man magic?¡± Sorchone whispered to Raian.


    ¡°That¡¯s Bradgith, the king¡¯s chief bard,¡± Raian replied as warning. ¡°Yes, he does. Why?¡±


    ¡°May I guess that he made a protection-charm for the king, for his king? A powerful challenge to it would break it.¡±


    Raian stared. Presently he asked slowly, ¡°But if a, a powerful challenge broke it¡ªwouldn¡¯t that mean that it failed?¡±


    Sorchone shrugged. ¡°It had done its best, but¡ªyes, I would say that his majesty¡¯s greater magic were your faithfulness.¡±


    Raian¡¯s eyes narrowed, and he lay long awake.


    Deorgard hurried home. From town to holding to hamlet, he passed as swiftly as Toryarl¡¯s horses would bear them¡ªand as Bradgith, keen to the duties of a sovereign, would permit. Jav accompanied him, to sing the tale of the Myrinine mastery at every hearth and hall. Their entourage grew, as younger brothers and elder sons of those who had been lost to the Demonwood now begged to be numbered among the great king¡¯s housecarls. Raian scratched his head.


    ¡°What troubles you?¡± Sorchone asked, one night as they were deep in young King Harka¡¯s land, circumambulating the Tarasforoth hills warded by the silent, deadly hunters of House Felindras.


    Raian struggled to know himself. ¡°He started with two hundreds. He lost almost all of them. That¡ªwell, does that not trouble them?¡± He did not wait for Sorchone¡¯s opinion, but, fighting down pride, begged Maglad¡¯s attention, and asked him.


    Maglad¡¯s lip curled. ¡°Is the king a nursemaid? We who went, went of our own will, like men.¡±


    Shilka, too, heard the question, and he nodded. ¡°We only wanted him for to lead us there, aye? Not for him, is it, to see us safe out again, like so many children!¡±


    Raian bowed his thanks, and came away very thoughtful.


    Wolf agreed with Shilka¡¯s sentiment; then he frowned. ¡°Who was it, that first night, cried out, ¡®Yooou brought us here!¡¯¡± He mimicked the complaint in a high, whiny voice. ¡°Wasn¡¯t any of us Heroes, at least. Shouldn¡¯t ever have gone, if he was thinking he had some kind of a right to come back!¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Raian agreed slowly. ¡°But maybe a leader has some responsibility to lead, er, well. Not into folly.¡±


    Wolf laughed. ¡°Maybe a man¡¯s got a responsibility to say Bugger that, to folly!¡±


    Raian grinned. ¡°Well, there¡¯s that.¡±


    Sorchone, his grasp of their speech growing swiftly, understood enough of this. Here again, it seemed, was one more clue to the strength of the Geillari as against the Sferiari, who did expect to be led out as they were led in; that, or, fatalistically, to be spent like so many coins. Maybe it was no surprise after all, that the newest Master of Runedaur was born of so hardy a race.


    And the homecoming of Deorgard the Madroch saw a riot to make Fenustad¡¯s feasting a mild little picnic. For a week all the clan poured through Tilderuld, the seat of Angowin, in one long fair celebrating all their king¡¯s conquests, human and otherwise. Dunheorbrann came in from eastern Angowin, piled gifts in their king¡¯s hall and reveled in the shared glory. The people ate, drank, gamed and sported, and the king ate, drank and played more than any two other men. Raian had a new task: not to revel so much himself that he could not drag the Madroch from mead-hall to bed some time between midnight and cock-crow.


    He learned, personally, what a hangover was. He learned also that, given a choice, getting one from beer was preferable, far preferable, to one from mead. With this wisdom, then, he tiptoed about his morning chores not only to spare his own head but with just a bit more sympathy for his loath-to-wake majesty; till one night Sorchone pressed on him a steaming cup of some sort of tea. Next day he felt, as he explained to a groaning Wolf, like a wrung-out dishrag, but neither sick nor in pain. Wolf threatened to break his arm if he did not share this great secret. And thereafter, only Sorchone noticed, to his huge amusement, that the two of them acquired a magical aura in the eyes of Dunmadroch, that they could drink anything and yet seem none the worse for it next day.


    Sorchone¡¯s own bind had been eased by time. Fear and confusion were appropriate for his first days in apparent captivity. Now he should seem no worse than resigned, and even venture a bit of humor as he grew accustomed to this new life. Moreover, Geillan scorn for their thralls turned directly on their thralls¡¯ own spine, or lack of it. True, insolence begged for a beating, and even a spark of spirit would be thrashed¡ªat first. It was the bolder, tougher thralls, who endured the chastisement and stood up straight again, whose burdens, of chores and punishments both, lessened. Their masters simply liked them better. Sorchone grinned as he eased and straightened himself; yet he kept up his private practices of thought and mood.


    On the seventh day, the bards of Dunmadroch held a great storytelling, by way of marking the end of festivities. Around the bonfire-hearth of Tilderuld, they sang beneath the frosty stars tales of Deorgard¡¯s forefathers down seven generations to the present. Bradgith had the last place, and from sunset sang for two hours the tale of all the summer¡¯s conquests. Then in the pause that honored his song, a star fell blazing, a searing white streak down the northern sky to plunge into the northeast.


    Men leaped up, pointing. The hairs on the back of Raian¡¯s neck rose: there where its path ended, to the best of his reckoning lay the Tre-Uissig, and home. A minute later, another star, not so bright, shot down a similar track, though it seemed to vanish while still high above the earth. For another hour stars fell, one or two every few minutes, and then became rarer and rarer, till people wearied of watching for them, and left the black, glittering night to withdraw into their warm, golden, smoky halls.


    The small crowd gasped in one breath of awe.


    ¡°Was that, er, did you, I mean your spell cause, er, shake it, um, down?¡± the baron Doreith stammered, in part from the cold at the top of the tower.


    Treskiel did not reply. It was what he intended, and his spell had unquestionably done¡ªsomething. And yet his soul still reeled from an impression of vast, unguessable distance. How high rode the spheres of the stars? He had reached for them, and felt such an abyss of emptiness that he almost dropped to the flagstones to clutch the breast of the familiar earth; only pride kept him afoot. And this, too, he knew: whatever was that flash of light in the north, it was almost companionably close by comparison; not even so far as, say, Sparca.


    ¡°Them,¡± Doreith amended, at another streak.


    ¡°Did you do that, Radiance?¡± murmured someone in the small throng at Treskiel¡¯s back; Reisson, Doreith¡¯s poet-friend. The young astronomer Varaan, kneeling at the tower¡¯s edge and vigorously sketching the night sky, glanced back. Treskiel shrugged.


    ¡°That was our objective, was it not?¡±


    ¡°Ooo, two more together!¡± That was the Lady Perelle, Varaan¡¯s sister and a fair sorceress herself, when she could be pried away from flirting with Reisson, under whose cloak she now sheltered from the chilly night.


    ¡°Watch,¡± said Treskiel. ¡°Watch, and record. I,¡± he pressed his fingertips wearily to his forehead, ¡°I will retire for now.¡± He cast a quick, unfriendly glare at the stars and hurried to hide from their uncanny remoteness beneath a solid roof.


    From Castle a Geste, the bright star seemed to fall far to the southeast. Though the rest streaked into anywhere out of the high west, Asilay noted that first one with particular interest. Peria, where the brat was; what did this mean? She turned back to her still-sobbing sister.


    ¡°Nay, come, dearest! Shake off these foreign mores! Time was, when our great House answered only to our mother Moon and not these heavy-footed Perian louts, a woman bore what child she pleased, and when she pleased. We suffered no man¡¯s scorn; we granted to no man the right to an opinion at all!¡±


    Sonaay looked up, her pretty face blotched, her eyes filled with tears and doubt. Asilay daubed her face with a square of pale silk.


    ¡°No, my love,¡± she went on warmly. ¡°It¡¯s Rumil who should quake. With his child in Eirenseld¡¯s power, he should quake indeed. Ah, you have some House-pride yet!¡± she said lightly, seeing a glitter of political sense in Sonaay¡¯s young face. ¡°And you shall live here in a Geste with me. Never fear; Aunt Arrowy never comes, never cares. And when you are delivered of the babe, just see how many fine young men will court you as never before!¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Sonaay sniffed hopefully.


    ¡°Trust me, my love.¡±

 XIX: Holy Days (pt 1/3): Question of Balance

    XIX: Holy Days


    Rain in Colderwild. The cisterns filled, and overflowed in torrents down cliff or hill. Paving-stones and roof slates grew slick and the students of the Black and the Silver banded together, hunted out and trapped their seniors who had the surest footing, to compel the teaching of balance¡ªand recovery. Now having learned to fall correctly proved its worth; and even so, more teaching followed as the healing-houses filled with sprains, contusions, and broken limbs, or more than usual.


    Under Mistress Enllian¡¯s eye, Rothesay set and splinted Flick¡¯s sword arm, and helped him into dry clothes. There had been no need to help him out of wet ones. Nearly everyone playing on the rain-slick stones had simply stopped bothering to dress at all, and before long Rothesay, having been Ghosted in the middle of peeling out of clinging soaking clothes once too often, gave up and ran as naked as the rest.


    In Harrowater, no one played in the rain. Apart from bathing, or having to fish in inclement weather, people avoided getting wet at all, as far as they could. Colderwild answered the fear of catching cold with great steaming mugs of boneset tea¡ªcoincidentally useful¡ªand cabbage salads, and lots and lots of hot baths. These last were communal and festive, and often in the rain as bathers filled fountain-basins from kettles hung over sheltered fires. Nor had Rothesay any fear of the opinions of the townsfolk upon her nakedness: they seemed to share Harrowater¡¯s idea of a wetting, and stayed fast home. The Runedaur had their home to themselves.


    In the baths, learning to hide underwater with a straw naturally arose, as did the idea of developing one¡¯s wind or stilling one¡¯s body to hide without one as long as possible. Learning how to resuscitate someone new to the techniques also came up, practiced upon Arnaf and on Rothesay with mocking admonitions about how often stubbornness summoned Death to His office. She and Arnaf, though publicly thanking their instructors, met later in shared mortification, building ever more elaborate designs for humiliating them in turn ¡®one of these days.¡¯ Immensely cheered by having a companion in chagrin, they returned to play bolstered by conspiratorial glee. Learning how to drown someone in his own bath came as an afterthought.


    The weather chilled as Autumn wound the year down. Hot outdoor baths became no more than weekly affairs. The red and gold fire of changing leaves spread slowly down from the southern heights, enveloped them, and rushed to meet the leaf-blaze working its solar way from the north. Rothesay woke up.


    That was how it seemed to her, every year: with the autumn equinox, called by the Sferiari Dureya, ¡®the Sunset¡¯¡ªwhen all the living world was said to be turning to sleep, something bright and fiery sparked within her, tingled through her veins like waking to a glad day. As a child she had been careless enough to insist on this to her neighbors, which won her no friends; out of that old habit, she said nothing now to her new community. But she watched the high-flying geese and thought, not for the first time, how much she wanted to follow, to travel the world. Then Iril the Hunting-mistress invited her hunting, and she accepted with astonished delight. Into the vast Kaine Forest behind Colderwild they wandered, sometimes for days on end.


    A queer and wonderful sense of homecoming buoyed her, as she wandered through woods she had never seen before, a sense she was loath to examine too closely lest it vanish, like a dream at the touch of dawn. Mistress Iril eyed her askance, and when they would return, draped and dangling with rabbits and fat geese, set Rothesay in the library with texts on wood-madness, full of warnings of the power of the Piper, especially at this season.


    Rothesay glanced at the writings, found them powerless and tiresome, especially the illustrations of Dagn Himself, none of which seemed quite right. She might entertain fancies of running off to live wild by day, but night only reminded her of her bed of thick furs, her feather-stuffed pillow, her pile of manuscripts to read in between dissuading attacks with a raised short bow, her latest armament of interest. If there were some way to build a library in the Wild, then she might be in danger. One near a hot spring, for hot baths. And with a place to stash a pretty silken dress, or two.


    Iril herself was Silent, like Sothia. A lean, spare woman of perhaps forty, she seemed to Rothesay to be the most stripped-down person she had ever met. No jewelry adorned her; tunic, trousers and boots were only just enough to protect her skin and no more; of course she never spoke, but nor did she ever move except for what was needed. Never an extraneous sigh, a shoulder shifted, a nose rubbed. Only her eyes moved, to track a rustle or a bird-call. Trying to read this stillness, Rothesay found the same emptiness she sensed in her barrow-sword, the silence of Arngas.


    Phrases came back to her:


    Oh, no one reads my thoughts. I don¡¯t think any more, you see.


    We will teach you our art. And we will teach you the only means of thwarting it.


    there can be no map for a land never before seen


    She shivered. ¡°Mistress?¡± she asked one night over their small fire. ¡°Do you, er, think?¡±


    Iril¡¯s brown eyes wrinkled in amusement, and nothing more. Rothesay gazed into the fire and avoided thinking further about it just now.


    Colderwild had celebrated Dureya, the equinox, the Sunset of the Year, with games of balance: hunkerhawser, rope-walking, log-rolling; with intricate, braiding set-dancing; and with a bright bonfire in the central fire-pit that they kept tended the whole week. Now a great Quarter-day approached, Wintersgate, and no hint of preparations stirred the Hall.


    ¡°It¡¯s a high holy day up north,¡± Rothesay said to Lacie the night before the great day itself.


    ¡°So it is here, too. Maybe the biggest, bar the Midnight at Yule.¡±


    ¡°But we haven¡¯t done anything! No cooking, no garlands ¡ª !¡± No charms against hauntings, she refrained from adding, having a sense that the Runedaur would laugh at that one.


    ¡°We don¡¯t prepare for it. We just do it. If you¡¯re up at dawn and go to the Vasty Hall, you can see some of it, if you like.¡±


    She did. Lacie, wakened, stuffed her head further under her pillow and refused to join her, saying that if Death wanted to take her in her sleep, He could just go right ahead. Rothesay ¡®killed¡¯ her and landed her with scullery duty that night, and hurried off through the chilly dim corridors for the Vasty Hall.


    Garrod was dancing when she arrived. Half the rest of the community filled the stone tiers to watch, and they were all, even the sorceresses, dressed in black. Rothesay glanced down at herself. Not everything she wore was black anymore, not since her sunstroke, and Mistress Iril insisted on dark green or brown; but her luck was with her this morning.


    For the rest of the day, people took turns dancing at the center of the Hall, sometimes to music or singing, sometimes to soft drums, sometimes in silence. Rothesay watched, fascinated, and slowly it came to her that the dances were stories. Later she asked if the stories, the dances, grew and changed each year; Garrod agreed that it was so. A story-dance: the idea stirred something in the depths of her soul. She thought she would quite like to be one of those dancers; next year, not with the childish jumpings-about that served her now in private moments of joy.


    Very few people breakfasted. The day-meal was whatever an individual dug up for himself. Few spoke, and then in whispers.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Last to dance was Dav, at sunset. Thirteen white stones, hollowed into bowls, made a wide circle and he wound in and out among them with a grace that took her breath away. The light faded, the Hall lay utterly dark even to her eyes, and still Dav¡¯s feet could be heard soft upon the stones. Then there was silence. After a while, people filed out slowly, though some remained, for how long she did not learn.


    And still there was silence, and no one lit torches in the halls. Only the lesser dining hall had light, from the long hearths in the floor, and everyone pitched in to make an impromptu supper of whatever needed little cooking. Lacie¡¯s scullery tasks were few and light, and she stuck her tongue out at Rothesay.


    In Harrowater, noise was the order of the day, to scare away evil intent, to bar the Door Between the Worlds. Gifts of food would be set outside, to placate peeries and ghosts and the Dark Folk, while within men raised a hearty riot. Padriag usually travelled, back to his occult birth-hearth, neighbors said, though Rothesay knew that on at least one occasion, he had gone to Feillantir city. He had bought her a scented soap there.


    Colderwild embraced the silence and the dark. Many, she found, embraced the silence literally, to speak no word till Yule; Dav was one. No one lit so much as a candle, let alone torch or magelight. This made blind-training the rule, at least after nightfall. Again Rothesay found her peculiar gifts also a handicap: she could see passably well long after her companions were blinded, and she rather resented that they must learn sightless skills more quickly than she, till Lacie, exasperated, suggested that if it bothered her that much she should wear a blindfold.


    For a week, no one cooked. Many simply fasted, though students, especially the younger ones, were encouraged to eat at least at midday. Some of the children, like little Mardiel, tried to imitate their elders, but apples, cheeses, nuts and small breads were kept piled within easy reach of small people. No one hushed their play, but they felt the quietness, and whispered their games¡ªoften quite loudly.


    At the end of the week, a shadow of normal life returned. Cooked meals reappeared, at least, and the first one, though only soup and bread, seemed like a Fair feast. Some who had kept silent all week now spoke up, quietly; many continued their speech-fasting. People lit candles and torches again, but few, and briefly; the library filled, though, and stayed well lit until late into the nights. Rothesay wrestled and wrangled within herself, and finally surrendered pride to desire and went in search of Dav.


    She found him in his apartments. Though she had made up her mind, still she stood for a long time before him, trying to unbend enough to say the words, wishing he would just read her mind and knowing full well he would force her to speak, may the gods pitch him into the hells. But how he had moved, like wind made visible, like a glitter and a shimmer, and she would kill all pride to feel such light and fire in her own limbs.


    ¡°You are Master of Dance.¡± At least that part was painless. ¡°I w¡ªI¡ª¡± She shut her eyes, blushed, drew a breath and shot it out. ¡°I want to be a dancer.¡±


    As though stirred by her speaking out, a memory awoke. She grinned and added, deliciously: ¡°You lose your bet.¡±


    He laughed, and made an acquiescent nod. She wished he had the grace to grumble, so that she could gloat properly. Damn and bother the man.


    Studying with a silent instructor began strange, but swiftly grew to seem, not merely natural, but necessary. Once she grasped what he wanted, she wondered how he would ever have conveyed it, if obliged to attempt to say it. Only once did he offer her any words, a week after they had begun: he pointed into an open codex so that she might read there:


    Do not despise the children


    She who loved children shot him a shocked look. With a wave, he asked her for the First Passage, from ¡®earth¡¯ position to ¡®air,¡¯ and she sighed and stumbled through it. He repeated it flawlessly, like a leaf fluttering. She glared. His glance flicked at the book again.


    Do not despise the children, the small beginnings of great power to be. Oh.


    ¡°But I get so cross with myself, Master! You make it look effortless, and I¡ªI feel like an oaf and an idiot!¡±


    He grinned, and swept out of the room, summoning her after with a tip of his head. They ran down to the first floor and over to the women¡¯s wing, and found Terge in the quarters she shared with the Music-mistress, her sister Maarfi. Terge¡¯s infant, nursing the night Rothesay had first seen her, had begun to walk; Maarfi¡¯s two-year-old daughter, her wispy hair as red as Master Cal¡¯s, held her little cousin¡¯s hand and crooned at her encouragingly. Dav, delighted to have found what he wanted so readily, bowed extravagantly to the child and withdrew again.


    ¡°Master Leoff says that it¡¯s play that makes a Runedaur,¡± Rothesay offered sheepishly, and his raised eyebrow said, Then play! So she drew a deep breath, forgot¡ªor tried to avoid thinking about¡ªhow she wished she could move, and blundered with a lighter heart through such moves as she could yet make.


    Visitors came, apparently to hole up in Colderwild till Spring returned. Elraic Marre, the First Poet whose earlier visit had been only a rumor to her, returned with a small entourage. A handsome man, especially for a man of fifty, who wore his grey hair swept back like a mane, he was almost a pleasure to be ogled by, and ogle he did. Lacie urged Rothesay to go ahead and flirt back¡ªlearn how, you great silly girl! ¡ª as he was perfectly safe, the three young men he had brought with him being as far as his lust extended. He deigned to enliven a few evenings with some of his songs, though he apologized for declining later. Runedaur silence in the last few weeks of the year was, he said, something he looked forward to from Lightsolstice on, and he would rather not trespass on it.


    ¡°Oh, is that it?¡± Mistress Maarfi shared a mead-bowl with him in the supper-hall. ¡°I¡¯d have thought you would have flocked to Carastloel with the rest!¡±


    ¡°Ah, you have heard of Cathforrow¡¯s court, then? I was invited, of course¡ª¡±


    ¡°Implored is more like,¡± smirked one of his young men.


    ¡°¡ªbut I sent him my prettiest regrets, promised him a poem for his Winter Court, and begged off till spring. I am too old to be undoing my traditions even for a prince, my dear.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s commissioned quite a lot of new work, so we hear,¡± Maarfi went on. ¡°Some young architect out of Lostforth, isn¡¯t there, with new ideas for an amphitheatre, come together with a Garis singer and harper?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s certainly rebuilding the River Road: it was a pleasure, riding the last miles to the Gold Road. And he¡¯s all but begun his own college of magic, though, there! he has much to teach, that lad. Of course the rest of Peria want to know what he is using for money.¡± Elraic paused, and glanced demurely down at his elegant fingers.


    ¡°I¡¯ll take the bait,¡± Navan, Facechanger, jumped in. Rothesay wondered how the apparent young man, being actually a young woman, took to the poet who liked young men. Navan had flirted heartily with Rothesay, or tried to, early on, and Rothesay¡¯s usual confusion in such matters was gravely complicated by not knowing if she were supposed to know Navan¡¯s sex or not, or if Navan even cared. Rothesay, at least, was still too shy to ask. ¡°What is he using for money?¡±


    ¡°Brass tokens,¡± Elraic replied. ¡°Of no value, none at all, but to jackdaws and magpies; save that he has ordered a new tax¡ªa quarterly tax, if you care for such detail¡ªwhich, he graciously allows, may be paid in: proper coin, or in his little tokens, or both. Or in works.¡±


    ¡°Hey! That¡¯s how we do it!¡± yelped Navan. ¡°Who taught him that?¡±


    Laughter ran around the hall, though no one offered an answer. Then Carialla stirred, in the shadow of a pillar where she sat almost as still as Iril, to rattle her fingernails on the arm of her chair. ¡°It is just possible we have someone in his household,¡± and she almost smiled. ¡°A great lord should have great resource, I think.¡±


    ¡°Oh, but you never told him it was our strategy¡ªhe would never have used it, then!¡± Navan laughed.


    ¡°You mistake him,¡± Carialla murmured. ¡°To use our devices is not to use us. There are those who cannot, or will not, make the distinction; Cathforrow is not so straitened.¡±


    Rothesay sighed privately, and withdrew to the library, as the First Poet showed no signs of being poetic that night. So the rude Prince Treskiel had some praiseworthy habits. He could be clever enough to use something, if he found it useful, even if he disliked the author. And he was doing proper princely things, roads and all, for his people. And he seemed to be attracting all manner of gifted artists and thinkers to him. Rothesay imagined a palace, like the governor¡¯s in Teginau, or Kingscroft, filled with lights and works of art and fancy people dancing to fine music, and that sunken face with its cold humor at the center of it. Why could not bad people be wholly bad, so that one need not feel half this and half that about them?

 XIX: Holy Days (pt 2/3): At Home With Death

    She poked moodily among the books and codices she had chosen for tonight. ¡®Bad¡¯? What¡¯s ¡®bad¡¯? Treskiel was not ¡®bad,¡¯ he was rude, and she wanted him to be bad so that it would be good that she disliked him. No, she thought with a bitter deprecating laugh, so that I will be ¡®good¡¯ for disliking him.


    She shoved the books away and prowled into Master Merry¡¯s corner. He at least had not given up speech for the season.


    ¡°Why,¡± he asked, once she had done pouting about the prince of Ristover, ¡°why dosta depend thy mood and thy sense, from him?¡±


    ¡°Er. What?¡±


    Merry grinned, tipping his head far sideways. His lank hair almost dangled into his candle-flame, she jumped with a gasp to rescue him, and, once set straight again, he thanked her sheepishly. ¡°But, the Prince, now¡ªor any living soul. They are what they are, to thy liking or not. If tha¡¯lt hang thy joy on them, any of them, th¡¯art¡ª¡± he plucked a small white feather out of the cushion under his elbow, and puffed to set it adrift in the air, ¡°¡ªso, at the mercy of whoever they may be.¡± He picked it back out of the air, and held it steady between two long blue- and red-stained fingers. ¡°Found thy joy in what never changes, and then so dost thy joy endure.¡±


    ¡°Oh! Great advice, Master. What never changes?¡± she asked dryly.


    He brushed his thin bent nose idly with the feather, while regarding her from deep in some thought. Then he brightened. ¡°Didsta think, just now, ¡¯t was an accident, with my candle and my hair?¡±


    She glanced involuntarily from him to the flame, and back. He was after all a Master, she reminded herself, however much an idiot he seemed, but, yes, she had thought just that, as far as she had thought at all. She nodded, reluctant to admit what apparently was an error, but curious.


    ¡°¡¯T was my device, to hang thy heart¡ªor at least thy tenderness¡ªupon me. We come to cherish those whom we aid; as though to prove to ourselves we were right, so. ¡®I acted on that one¡¯s behalf; therefore, he must have deserved my action!¡¯ Dosta see?¡±


    ¡°It makes sense,¡± she admitted, ¡°but I¡¯ll have to see more of it, to really believe it.¡±


    He grinned more widely. ¡°Well answered, but look now: dosta see in theyself aye more fondness for such a fool as I? Even a little?¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯ve always liked you!¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Because I am a fool, who needs looking after.¡± And he gave that flicker of an eyelid that might be a wink.


    She opened her mouth to protest, but shut it again: he was right, that was a great part of his peculiar charm. And it was deliberate? She studied him with a new unease. ¡°I don¡¯t think I want you¡ªor anyone!¡± she added hastily, not to hurt his feelings, and kicked herself for perhaps playing still into his game, ¡°¡ªmaking me feel this way or that.¡±


    He nodded, slowly, blue eyes dancing. ¡°Good.¡±


    ¡°Er. ¡®Good¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Tha dislikes, first, my intent, that I intend it at all; and second, thy dependence. And seest that th¡¯ already depend¡¯st thy mood from those, like his Radiance, who intend neither one thing nor another? Master the one dependence, and tha¡¯lt master the other.¡±


    ¡°I¡ªshouldn¡¯t be bothered that his Radiance is a lout?¡±


    ¡°Is he here, to trouble thee?¡±


    ¡°Well, no¡ª¡±


    ¡°And if he were, would it help, thy grousing that he was not as tha¡¯d have him be?¡±


    ¡°If he¡¯s rude, he ought to pay the price of it!¡±


    ¡°And if he cares nothing for thy little snub¡ª?¡±


    She stopped herself from saying that he should care; what did a great prince care about¡ªwell, even Princess Cherusay¡¯s only child was just a powerless nobody, at least at present. She gritted her teeth. How humiliating, to be nobody!


    ¡°Na, th¡¯art following the wrong path, Rothesay. The price of rudeness is: to endure the censure of other folk. There are those who find it cheap even at that, even if other folk are great, or greater than themselves. They pay it, easily, undaunted.


    ¡°Yet, there art tha left, cross and indignant, and they untouched by it. Now, what good dosta serve by stewing in theyne own wrath?¡±


    Her eyes narrowed, part question, part sullenness for her own ignorance. ¡°What do you suggest?¡±


    ¡°Master the one dependence, master the other,¡± he repeated cheerfully, and he poked a finger at his candle. ¡°Undo this my power over thee.¡±


    ¡°By¡ªdisliking you?¡± she hazarded, hoping for contradiction.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°By retaining the power to dislike me, whatever I would or not.¡±


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°Begin by knowing that tha canst do so, at all.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± she said flatly, for the moment willing to concede anything a Master or Mistress claimed was possible. ¡°Then what?¡±


    ¡°Then learn out of what ground a mood arises.¡± He rolled lightly to his feet, and ambled away into the library stacks. ¡°Corandere,¡± he said, pulling down a slender scroll. ¡°Calmarath; Gaioar the Elder; Maelstar. The basic teachings.¡± He piled two more scrolls, thicker ones, and a small book into her arms. ¡°Bring me thy questions from these. My Chain is on.¡±


    ¡°I¡ªI¡¯m learning to dance¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oh! Excellent!¡± He flapped his hands as if to shoo her on. ¡°Continue, then: tha¡¯lt need the one study for the other. Or, tha¡¯lt find one study serves the other. Tell Davi he¡¯s teaching under my Chain.¡± And Merrithorander winked openly.


    She soon learned why Merry thought the studies related. Mood, said the ancients, arose from the body: keep the body still and silent, and so followed all feeling. Rouse motion, rouse emotion. The reverse was also true, as a calm spirit produced a calm body, or agitation, restlessness; Merry likened it to a breeze that might stir a leaf, while a leaf might be flapped to cause a breath of wind. An untutored person had more command of his body than of his spirit, to choose whether he rested or ran; bunched every muscle or slackened them, all or selectively; what pose he took or abandoned. The slightest physical change yielded some different movement in the soul. And in dancing, she learned that any frustration she felt spoiled her grace, while it seemed that any grace she achieved produced not only satisfaction but some sweetness of its own. Now she knew what Master Caltern had been about, when she had nearly decapitated Juris; Merry laughed when she told him how they had jumped about.


    ¡°Aye, aye, just so! Though there are subtler methods, happily. Motion, of soul or of flesh, yields emotion.¡±


    ¡°Sorchone said something about that¡ªabout soul and flesh being not two things, but one!¡±


    ¡°Aye,¡± said Merry, ¡°as one end of a sword and the other. Think of something¡ªsomething vivid. Call it to mind, as if ¡¯t were real and now.¡±


    After a moment, she settled on the hour that ¡®Dor¡¯ had forced her mother and herself into the after-boat. She still felt a breathless confusion about a betrayal that was a salvation. How she wanted to summon him back, to demand an accounting!


    Merrithorander described the scene then, down to the color of the sails and the silvery sheen of Mother¡¯s gown. ¡°Aye,¡± he said softly, ¡°he loved tha well, that one.¡± He looked up wistfully into her dark face. ¡°Tha canst have him back when tha mourns him aright.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± she said politely, and they left it at that.


    Snow came early, only a couple of weeks after Wintersgate. White softness drifted down, filled all the hold with a peace that Elraic Marre cheerfully likened to a death, a drowsy death come late in a long and well-lived life. ¡°I should like to die so myself¡ªbarring the snowball fights across my grave.¡± A window-shutter shuddered under a muffled impact. Rothesay flung down Corandere¡¯s treatise, and bolted out to join the war.


    A few mornings later, M¨®ravn returned with Hael, or rather, with Hael¡¯s body, draped over a horse. Weary, not having slept for days, he insisted on personally carrying him, heavy across his shoulders, into the funerary chamber in the great keep. There he sat vigil, and required Mistress Enllian to direct him in cleaning and preparing the corpse, rather than do it herself. Elraic joined him for a time, and Dav, but Enllian kept others away.


    The next day smoke, plain gray smoke, rose into the sunlight from a pyre in the fire-circle, the bitter smell of charring meat blending with sweet resinous incenses and herbs: those who had known Hael circled the fire, and from time to time pitched in handfuls of sweet stuffs from bronze pots arrayed along their path. Rothesay wondered if she should.


    ¡°I really liked Hael,¡± Lacie sniffled. ¡°He was just everybody¡¯s big brother, but kind of mine especially. He was a big old cuddly doll and I don¡¯t know if he could ever have killed anybody¡ªunless they were trying to hurt one of us, and then watch out! And it would just be really sweet if you wanted to remember him, even if you only ever saw him that one day.¡±


    So she did. Finishing her circuit with one last toss of cedar incense, she turned and almost walked straight into the bleak, haggard scarecrow that was M¨®ravn.


    His hollow eyes flicked to where her offering flared suddenly. ¡°Thanks.¡± He drifted, almost stumbled away and began his own circuit. She dearly wanted to ask what had happened, but knew she would just have to wait. M¨®ravn looked nearly dead himself.


    They sang their bell-tones for Hael that evening, and Elraic made a sweet poem, a short one to say that beauty did not depend on length, neither of stanzas nor of years. M¨®ravn then slept for two days, and finally, after supper one night, sat in the students¡¯ favorite corner of the supper-hall and told them how it was.


    ¡°We were coming home,¡± he said, staring into the shadows beyond their little group. Then he glanced around the hall, deliberately looking at all he could make out, and nodded. ¡°Home.¡± No expression either lightened or darkened his face; the ground of his mood seemed to be as dead as his friend. ¡°Camped; made a stew; started singing. He said he itched. Then he said he was freezing; I touched him and he had a hell of a fever, so we bundled him up, built up the fire. Then his chest hurt him and he couldn¡¯t breathe, and he died. Couple of hours, maybe, the whole thing.¡± He watched the wine he swirled in his cup for a moment. ¡°Damn stupid death,¡± he said suddenly, bitterly. ¡°He always thought he was a coward, you know? And all summer¡ªwe ran into a few things, ran away from a lot, and he did damned good, and he¡¯d finally figured out that, hey, it¡¯s all right to run away sometimes¡ªhe¡¯d been so amazed that I¡¯m not the least bit shy of running from what I can¡¯t handle and he¡¯d finally understood there¡¯s ¡®brave¡¯ and there¡¯s ¡®stupid¡¯ and I wish you could have seen him a week ago. . . . You could see it in him. He just looked¡ªstronger. He thought it was the funniest thing, that he¡¯d got the courage he wanted¡ªor saw what he had¡ªonce he let himself run from things. . . . Mother Night, he looked good.


    ¡°Then he goes and gets killed by what? An evil spirit we¡¯d camped on top of? Not a curse: he never had any enemies to be cursed by. And the stew didn¡¯t even give me gas; but,¡± he sighed, and ran a hand back through his black hair, ¡°Mistress Enllian says there are things poison to one man, that another man¡¯ll die if he don¡¯t eat.


    ¡°But there it is, children, Hael¡¯s Lesson: you could die between this breath and the next. And what in all the hells are you going to do about that?¡±


    His brief bitterness had faded. He finished his wine slowly, and then he wept.


    Rory watched him for a while, then leaned over and hugged him hard, and nodded to the rest. They piled on, grabbing any bit of M¨®ravn left exposed by the others; Rothesay clung to his left calf as if it were her own doll and Flick tucked the other foot under his arm, until their victim at last started to laugh.


    ¡°All right, all right! We¡¯re home, already!¡±

 XIX: Holy Days (pt 3/3): Alight With Life

    Yule, the Midnight of the year, arrived amid many expeditions into the snowy woods for evergreens, red-berried holly branches, white-berried mistletoe bunches. Those few who had resumed speech after the first week of Wintersgate fell silent again, but it was a silence taut with expectation, full of grins and laughter. M¨®ravn, too, had fallen Silent after that homecoming night, and Rothesay was pleased, and a little relieved, to see that he had begun to smile a bit himself. More guests arrived, including Peridar who had helped Dav find Rothesay in Floodholding; he greeted her with a hearty kiss, a raised finger to say, I told you so, and two quick gestures to indicate that he would speak to her come the holy day.


    Rory chose silence for the season, though he had also elected to sign, and Rothesay quickly picked up some skill in ¡®chatting¡¯ with him. Dav would not sign with her, though he seemed to approve of it generally; well he might, as she felt that it was like dancing with her hands alone. When she signed this to Rory, he started, stared at his hands, and grinned.


    <Never felt like a dancer before>


    <But you¡¯re always one for a dance!>


    Grin. <Set-dancing¡¯s practically combat. Not like what Master D does> He turned his hands again under his thoughtful gaze. <But suturing, or setting a bone, or straightening vertebrae¡ªI guess I maybe dance with my hands that way>


    Lacie¡¯s hands danced suddenly down between them. <I can think of some other dances we can do with our hands!> and her signs were both emphatic and lascivious. Rory just gave her a wink, and she laughed, and dodged Rothesay¡¯s training dagger.


    The eve of Yule, the last night of the year, saw nearly all of Colderwild huddling outdoors on the towers and walls or in the open courtyards, watching the stars. The young moon, a little short of her first half, had set hours before, and no fire or candle burned anywhere in the hold. From the mountains behind to the forest beyond them, starshine upon snow was the only light in the world.


    Two of the previous Loremaster¡¯s particular students and one of Merry¡¯s, all knighted now, were astronomers, and set up on the Tower of Stars with bobs and angles. Clouds skittered over the heavens, and Rothesay clearly heard one of the astronomers swear, to be soothed by one of his fellows. Beside her on the wall under the Tower of Night, Flick shivered and stomped his feet, but he was too proud to accept her invitation to join her under her cloak. Rory snorted, shoved the younger boy aside, and huddled in gladly. Then he poked her in the ribs, tucked his unlit torch under his arm and signed, slowly in the faint light,


    <So how come you¡¯re so warm and cozy?>


    She shrugged. <Just naturally hotblooded, I guess>


    Rory¡¯s undignified snort made her look round in puzzlement, but he only stared across innocently at the astronomers on the far tower.


    At last one of them raised his hand and, a moment later, sent a brilliant white flare streaking into the dark sky. With one voice, Colderwild roared. Those armed with hand bells brandished them vigorously. The two great bronze bells at either end of the hold began to toll their deep, sweet voices. The astronomers lit torches, passed the flame to the people standing by them, who in turn lit the brands of their further neighbors. Someone touched off the huge pile of logs in the fire circle and a great cone-flower of golden light blossomed. With the flame came song, as folk sang as their torches caught; the hand bells slowly faded, light blazed in a great meandering necklace, and Colderwild sang much as they had on the field before Andrastir, or for Hael, but livelier now, quicker to change from one tone to the other, and the two-note chord leaped and twisted, danced across the hold from wall to wall like a flame of song.


    For perhaps a quarter of an hour the song played, before dissolving into laughter and cheering. Everyone filed, or leaped, from the walls and high places and hurried within, lit fires in every hearth, set cauldrons of cider and wine mulling with honey and fine spices. Black garb was cast off for green, red, and gold robes instead. Songs of the more usual kind, with melodies and words and verses, spread through the halls. Those who had been silent seemed bent on making up for it, as though speech welled up behind a dam that now burst. Someone launched a kissing-chain: take one, pass it on. Rothesay, having accepted a determinedly friendly salute from Rory, passed hers on to Elraic, who, as expected and hoped, received it with great decorum. Lacie rolled her eyes, but she crowed, ¡°At least you played!¡±


    The party rocked and reeled till dawn. Hungrier people roasted acorns and apples, geese and turnips, but many simply drank their way to the sunrise. The game of Ghost did not abate, though Rothesay saw more than one encounter which she was sure neither victor nor victim was sober enough to remember next day. The first fiery limb of the Sun blazed above the southeastern heights¡ªits position carefully marked by the Lore-students, as the last one had been marked yestereve¡ªeveryone cheered, banged things and rang bells again, and by the time Areolin fully cleared the earth, nearly everyone had gone back to bed.


    Rothesay did not. Though groggy from staying up the whole night, she had drunk little, and still felt like dancing, if rather more gently than earlier. She wandered through the now-quiet passages, out into the half-snowy, half-icy courtyards where she tossed another log onto the great fire, and ambled up along the walls. A sharp whistle from Kavin¡¯s Tower brought her head up, and Master Cal gave her a friendly wave.


    ¡°Just keepin¡¯ an eye out,¡± he explained when she had climbed up to him. ¡°And there¡¯s little Navan on the east wall. Garrod was up on Night, but I told him two was enough.¡±


    ¡°Who assigns guard duty on the holy days?¡± she marvelled.


    ¡°Assigns?¡± Caltern took another deep swig of spiced tea, still warm in its well-blanketed little pot. Then he shrugged. ¡°Whoever¡¯s got a sense of survival assigns himself. Or herself. Then if you see it¡¯s pretty well covered, you leave it to whoever¡¯s more wakeful than you are.¡±


    ¡°What if you go to sleep on them yourself?¡±


    The big man shrugged again. ¡°Nothin¡¯s perfect.¡ªTea? Good for ya.¡ªCome out here, find your guards asleep¡ªGhost ¡¯em. Beat the devil out of ¡¯em. Then go away and remember nothin¡¯s perfect. What¡¯re ya gonna do about that? Depose the gods an¡¯ make your own world to show ¡¯em how it¡¯s done?¡± He put his mug down daintily, took her wrist, planted one foot behind hers, and gently shoved his fingertips into the base of her throat, gently, but it still made her cough. Worse, it made her want very much to step back away from him, but his foot was there, and beyond that the emptiness of the open air and a long drop. Had he put any intention into it, not all her peculiar strength could have kept her from going over the edge.


    ¡°You could get killed any time. By anything. Ravn got that in his face¡ªlucky him, he¡¯ll work it out before the rest of ya.¡±


    He let go and Rothesay edged over and leaned to peer down into the spiky tops of spruce trees, far down the cliffside below the tower. A stupid death, M¨®ravn had said. And so had Mina¡¯s been, her foster-sister; and her mother¡¯s. Going into battle was different: death was the point, even if one¡¯s own was not precisely planned for. Just going along in one¡¯s life and then suddenly dropping dead like poor Hael: what was the point to that?


    ¡°Why¡¯s there got to be a point?¡±


    Her jaw dropped. Wrinkling her nose, she retorted, ¡°Back in Floodholding, Master D was about to kill this fellow and he cried, ¡®Spare me!¡¯ and Dav said, ¡®Why?¡¯¡±


    ¡°Sounds like him. Good question. What was the answer?¡±


    ¡°Good question?¡± she cried. ¡°Here¡¯s a good question: why do Runedaur masters ask crazy questions, like ¡®Why do you want to live?¡¯ and ¡®Why should there be a point to anything?¡¯ and think they¡¯re good questions?¡±


    She had to leave Caltern after that, as he could not seem to stop laughing. Too much Yule wine, maybe.


    Alone she climbed the Tower of Night herself, nestled in the same southeastern dragon¡¯s mouth that the students used for the Truce Hole. Her view looked down upon the meeting of the Dorchastir-Kavinsrae road and the track by which Dav had first brought her, neither of them much more than a horse-trail through the snow. Dav¡¯s Track (as she thought it; Colderwild called it only the Back Road) disappeared under the snow-heavy boughs of Kaine Forest through which Mistress Iril had led her hunting. Beyond the Kaine rose the teeth, white now, of the Dur Daorfen and faint beyond them a hint of the high Dur Nefraith. Blue the sky and white the dazzling world under an untroubled sun; a good omen for the coming year, or so she hoped.


    The Sferiari looked on the year as a kind of Great Day, and they counted a day from one midnight to the next. Yule, the Midnight of the year, was for them an intercalary day, counted with neither the last year nor the coming one. The Geillari began their year with the spring equinox, making today the thirtieth of Thaer-orn, Dark-month, but not less holy for that. Either way, a feast greater than last night¡¯s partying would begin at sundown; toothsome smells were already beginning to waft up from early cooking.


    Padriag used the Sferan calendar, and Yule always gave Rothesay an airy feeling of standing outside time, as though from this day the future could become anything and the past could have been anything. This year, that seemed to have come true.


    Last Yule she had been, as ever, a foundling, ¡®the¡¯ outsider of her little village, the wizard¡¯s apprentice. Now she was the granddaughter of a dead foreign king and niece of a current one, and long ago saved from death by someone who seemed to be working also for her would-be killers, people out to stop her mother from taking the throne with a hidden treasure, perhaps the greatest treasure of the land she now called home.


    Two men had died at her hands, her strange enchanted hands that sometimes seemed to belong to someone who was himself long dead. She ducked her head shamefully. There at least was something comprehensible: she had killed twice, and if it had happened almost accidentally, still she was responsible and she owed¡ªsomething.


    She puzzled over that for a bit. Geillan law demanded that a killer pay the blood-price of the victim. That set everything right, as far as the law cared. The dead man¡¯s family, however, were all too likely to go on trying to exact further vengeance; the murder itself might have been vengeance for some still earlier retaliation, ultimately for some crime lost now even to the bards¡¯ recall. She agreed that paying over a sum of gold seemed inadequate to a man¡¯s life; but what else was one to do, after all? If we¡¯re just going to go on feuding, why should I even so much as apologize?


    Dav had spoken in ritual, not of atonement but of¡ªtransformation. I guess, she thought slowly, I¡¯d better learn what that means. And slowly she decided that, whatever else she did in the coming year, she must settle those two debts somehow. Dying at any point seemed fearsome to her, but dying with even one unresolved murder on her name was surely a particularly bad idea.


    Why, though? That must be something to do with her moral ¡®code.¡¯ She grumbled and pitched a cranky snowball far out beyond the wall. She was getting beastly tired of that project, and the more so as ineffable bits kept arising, like the weird emptiness that was the ¡®emanation¡¯ or something of Arngas who wrote cryptic notes about ¡®no rules¡¯¡ª


    What would you think if you had no words? Dav¡¯s question after the battle before Andrastir leaped suddenly back to mind.


    ¡°Aaaaaugh!¡± she bellowed.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    ¡ª aaugh!


    ¡ª augh


    ¡ª ahh


    echoed the stones of the hills. She stared out at the snowy land and with great deliberation refused to be embarrassed. Whether people notice me or not, whether they think me silly or ridiculous or uncouth, it¡¯s no business of mine. And there¡¯s not much I could do about it, either. She put her thumb to her nose and waggled her fingers dismissively at the world and, suddenly cheered, rolled to her feet and prepared to climb out.


    She grasped a stone tooth by which to swing out onto the rope¡ªand froze. Oh, hell. Oh, all the hells. She sat back down sharply, still clinging to the tooth.


    Find the king.


    Oh, yes¡ªthat, too: in addition to suddenly being an enchanted murdering royal granddaughter, I am also apparently in service to a dragon. The Dragon.


    What did that mean, anyway? You don¡¯t really want Treskiel, do you, Majesty? And if you do, what, am I supposed to go waylay him and drag him off to, to¡ª?


    She let go and bit the back of her thumb. On the one hand, here it was midwinter, more than half a year since she was first, um, commissioned, and Marennin had not so much as demanded a progress report. The great dragon was very old; doubtlessly, time passed differently for her, so maybe all these months scarcely mattered. Rothesay hoped so. On the other hand, she could hardly put it off forever¡ªwhatever ¡®it¡¯ might be. She wished she could ask Padriag.


    Well, why not? If she was to so much as pay the one fellow¡¯s blood-price, go she must back into the North to do it¡ªmaybe the Runedaur would let her simply send the payment somehow, but that seemed like cheating, oh my aching ¡®moral code¡¯!¡ªand could she pass so close and not visit her old teacher?


    In sudden delight, she flung herself over the stone dragon¡¯s teeth, seized the rope and swung wildly wide.


    ¡°Yeeahhah!¡±


    ¡ªahhah!


    ¡ªhah


    ¡ªah


    Far to the north, torches, candles and magelights drove the early afternoon darkness from the halls of Castle a Geste. After the solemn daytime rites invoking the return of Areolin into the northlands, the people fought the early night with weapons of wine and ale, song and laughter, music, dancing, feasting, and flirting. At one end of the Great Hall the Solstice Tree sparkled, bedecked in gilt suns. At the other, by the roaring hearth Sonaay elrwna-Seremay sparkled in the midst of a fair-sized orrery of admirers. Her sudden laughter pierced the merry crowd-noise, pierced to the heart of her eldest sister, brooding alone in the shadows of her now-habitual corner.


    Asilay el-Seremay rolled her cup of wine slowly in her wasted hand. Time was when it was she, Asilay, who turned the head of every young blood in the province, Asilay in the center of every fashionable circle, ¡®Asilay¡¯ on every poet¡¯s tongue.


    Sonaay¡¯s pregnancy had not yet thickened her waist beyond the power of artful drapery to conceal. Not that her admirers would have minded. In the capital¡¯s decadent circles, yes, perhaps folk might have lifted a supercilious nose. In Eirenseld¡¯s homeland, though, the old ways lingered, and a young woman of proven fecundity was rather more valued than not, for otherwise, how would anyone know whether a girl were merely chaste¡ªor cursed with barrenness?


    Asilay¡¯s hand clenched her goblet. She hurled it then at the head of the young slave at her feet and, half-blinded by the inner smoke of wrath concealed, grabbled her way from the merry hall. Away, into the dark and cold of her secret passages she hurried, acid instead of blood burning in her veins. No one must see, no one must guess that she bore Sonaay anything but a doting sister¡¯s love.


    They were few in Eirenseld who were so blind, except the one who needed most to see.


    Not long after her sister¡¯s unremarked departure, Sonaay gave a little start. Wondering, she waited, the conversation about her passing unheard. Then it came again: a giddy little flutter as though some tiny butterfly tried its wings for the first time, deep in her belly. ¡°Oh!¡±


    The chatter around her faded. Before her radiant face, her audience of admirers paused, curious, expectant of some new festivity. Sonaay¡¯s hands flew to her abdomen.


    ¡°I felt the child!¡±


    In another gay hall another girl only a little younger than Sonaay also laughed and played before a court of admirers, though ones considerably more circumspect than their Eirenseld counterparts. For one thing, Daliowna Atil though incomparably lovely was nonetheless still a child before the law. More importantly, everyone knew that Prince Treskiel¡¯s spies watched for the least hint of unseemliness towards his sister, and no one cared to probe the sorceror-prince¡¯s definition of ¡®unseemly.¡¯ That she was a half-wit was plain to all. That she must under no circumstances be treated as such was just as plain: the one man ever caught at it still dangled from Cannisfell¡¯s towers though his bones were three years¡¯ picked clean and many had broken away as the wind dashed them into the stones¡ªand him no churl but a noble son of Tregaron. And however bitterly House Tregaron had protested his murder, they had no one the match of Treskiel na Cathforrow.


    Yet admirers Daliowna had in abundance. A child-minded wife was but a trifle to pay for alliance to such as the Cathforrows; a beautiful one and a pleasant, still better. Therefore Treskiel employed many spies¡ªand some, people said and shivered deliciously, were never men at all but vipers and weasels under manlike enchantment. Daliowna teased and played and revelled in the Solstice celebrations in unparalleled security.


    As his sister and his courtiers and his growing stable of young brilliants danced in his glittering hall, Treskiel Alan withdrew, for a while, to walk his frosty battlements. Frosty, not snowy: knowing their lord¡¯s habits, the servants of the castle kept them scrupulously shovelled clear, even in the midst of blizzard. If a snake might be enchanted into man-form, the converse spell must also exist. Treskiel smiled to himself.


    Above, the dim stars of midwinter. He cast them a wary glance; he had not again probed the mystery of their height since the night of meteors, and only slowly had he been able to force himself back out-of-doors under their lofty indifference. Now before him, however, close and familiar lay the starless velvety black of the barbarian-controlled lands beyond the satin-black river. Below him, as if within the grasp of his own hand, lights sparkled throughout Carastloel, merrymaking in many halls besides his own. Prosperity graced Ristover and her people bestowed their gratitude evenly upon their gods and their mysterious prince. How nice, he thought, wondering again what Heaven had to do with it, what divinity had ever inspired the least workman to replace so much as a loose cobble in a street, much less rebuild a road. Other powers in the world pressed far stronger claims upon respect. Treskiel lifted his gaze once more from his people¡¯s homely constellations to the emptiness of the north and east, towards dark Sparca, and mused upon Catha-keys.


    And a floor below the brilliant feast-hall, in the very middle of a long and doorless hall, Captain Garragan eyed his two hooded companions, took a coin from the bag they offered and bit it dubiously. Then his eyebrows rose, and he smiled.


    In Angowin, the Geillari celebrated the northward return of the sun as joyously as the imperials. Hearthfires and torches blazed in every holding, torches blazed in long lines through the snow-packed forest as merrymakers paraded from hold to hold singing and begging and crying down blessings as they went according to the hospitality of the house.


    Deorgard did not parade but stayed in his royal hall, to receive the singers and pelt them with fistfuls of honey-candies and bright brass trinkets. Among the trinkets flew the occasional gem, semiprecious or precious, and even a ring of copper or gold, and the king roared with laughter as the revellers scrabbled and squabbled among the rushes for every last treat. He roared still more when, as happened often enough, a real fight broke out for possession of one bauble or another. Then he would often order the combatants to wrestle, and on one of these occasions, late in the night and deep in his cups, he turned to give Raian a huge wink.


    He was lucky to find him there at all. This one night no thrall had any duty¡ªnever mind that it must mean double chores on the morrow. Raian grimaced more than grinned at Deorgard¡¯s acknowledgement, and rose and withdrew alone into the shadowy side-aisle and sipped his mead.


    For much of the previous fortnight the king and his entourage guested in Maglad¡¯s hold. There Raian had seen Deorgard¡¯s one surviving child, his daughter Angolaf, she being married to Maglad¡¯s eldest son. He had also seen Angolaf¡¯s attendant kin-thrall, and could only stare.


    About his own age, maybe a year older, Gulda was taller than he¡ªthough he had recently been shocked by realizing that he had somehow become nearly as tall as the Wolfman, if yet much bonier¡ªbut she was surely the loveliest thing in woman-form the gods had ever sent to grace the earth. He wanted to compose a poem likening her braids to rippling rivers of gold. Her eyes reminded him of the waters of the lake that had been their prison in the Myrinine, a beautiful blue in a girl¡¯s eyes but nothing less than weird in a lake and he could not think how to turn all that into something complimentary. Word-trammelled, then, he had said nothing at all, till Wolf slugged him one evening.


    ¡°What do you want to go staring like that for? Give a girl the creeps, why don¡¯t you!¡±


    Far from stirring him to action, this reproof only knotted him more tightly in nerves and confusion. Eventually his own slave Sorchone offered a suggestion. Raian thought it sounded a bit too urbane. Sorchone proposed that urbanity was what this race craved, what they had come into this land to possess. Raian had only just wound himself up to giving it a try when Deorgard left for home.


    So he sat now, never tasting the mead, hardly knowing that he drank at all. He had no idea what he might have done then, had he actually spoken to the girl. Maybe she would have wanted him to kiss her, and he would have had to be an idiot. If kissing was as simple as it looked¡ªor maybe there was some subtle art to it that he should know¡ª


    Shadow fell between him and the unheeded firelight. Startled from his gloomy reverie, he looked up as the shadow sank down, fragrant with cooking-spices and washing powder, and he recognized Embroch, one of Deorgard¡¯s lesser cousins. A pleasant-featured, pleasant-humored widow in her twenties, she had been a friend to him since his arrival, and often encouraged him to talk not of imperial battles and strategies, as Deorgard demanded, but of his family and the minutiae of his life back home. Now he felt something rough and crumbly touch his hand.


    ¡°Here,¡± she said, her voice as always seeming on the edge of laughter, ¡°I tried to make that honey-cake you described, but I must use raisins until you teach me how to know winterberries!¡±


    ¡°Mmph,¡± he replied around a mouthful. It was not quite right; being no cook himself, he must have overlooked or mistaken one ingredient or another, but it was delicious in itself and he told her so as soon as he could. ¡°Thanks!¡±


    She shrugged and pushed dismissively at her hair, which he abruptly noticed flowed unbound, a heavy silken cape about her shoulders. As abruptly, he seemed to forget how to breathe. A few crumbs clinging to his fingers felt like huge embarrassments, and he wiped them away in a sudden daze. ¡°¡¯T is no night to be glooming, alone in the dark,¡± she observed warmly, and took his hand and flowed easily back to her feet, and waited.


    He had no awareness of gaining his own feet. Neither had he any thought to decline¡ªhe had not missed Embroch¡¯s deft accent on ¡®alone¡¯ and he felt now like a being all of fire and air¡ªbut against the chance of her disappointment or his chagrin, he had to speak. So he hesitated, and stammered, ¡°I¡ªdon¡¯t know what to do. . . .¡±


    Embroch tipped her head, half-veiling her face with her swinging hair, and smiled oddly. ¡°I do,¡± she said simply, and led him from the hall.


    Flame spilled across a mirror. When the shifting veils cleared, the mirror showed again a darkened man-hall. Marennin waited.


    You sleep, she grumbled at the rumpled, drowsy figure that shuffled into view.


    I do, he chuckled.


    The dragon paused. Then, Do you dream? she asked, diverted.


    Yes. I dream.


    The dragon¡¯s tail twitched, shattering a splinter of rock. Celtannan used to dream, she mused.


    No doubt, he replied. How may I serve you, Majesty?


    Marennin stretched to lay her long head on her long forepaws and yawned luxuriously. My king has waked. We must prepare for him.