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TWO

All summer long Salamander, or Ebañy Salomonderiel, to give him his full Elvish name, had been riding through Deverry and tracking his brother down, but he’d done it slowly by a long, winding road, because the People never hurried anywhere, and for all his human blood, he’d been raised among the elves. Right at first, just over the Eldidd border, he’d found a pretty lass who’d taken to more than his songs; he idled in Cemmetyn with her for a pair of pleasant weeks. Then, once he was up in Pyrdon, a noble lord paid him well for entertaining the guests at his daughter’s wedding—six merry days of feasting. After that, he wandered through Deverry, always heading north to Cerrgonney, but sometimes lingering in an interesting town for a few days here, a lord’s dun for an eightnight there. When he’d scried Rhodry out and found him besieged, he’d put on a good burst of speed, but only until he saw the siege lifted. Then it had seemed that his brother would be perfectly safe for a good long time, so he’d dallied again with another lass who’d been faithfully waiting for him since the summer before. It had seemed terribly dishonorable, after all, to just ride out quickly after she’d waited for such a long time.
And so it was that he was some hundred miles to the east of Graemyn’s dun on the sunny afternoon when Rhodry escorted the herald and the councillor there. He’d made an early camp by a stream, early simply because he was tired of riding, and tethered his horses out in a tiny meadow before he went down to the running water to scry. He saw Rhodry trembling as Camma told him her news, and with so much emotion behind it, the vision was strong enough so that he actually could hear—though not with his physical ears—something of what was said. It seemed, indeed, that he stood beside his brother as Benoic took the matter in hand, then the vision vanished abruptly, banished by his own flood of reeling. He leapt to his feet and swore aloud.
“By the gods!” He shook his head in amazement. “Who ever would have thought it, indeed? I can’t believe Jill would desert him, I quite simply can’t.”
Kneeling again, he stared at the sun-dancing water and thought of Jill. Her image built up slowly, and when it came, it was oddly wavering and blurred. She was sitting in a mountain meadow and watching while Perryn tethered out three horses, including her Sunrise. His first thought was that she was ill, because she sat so quietly, her mouth slack like a half-wit’s, yet it was hard to see, because the vision was so misty. With a toss of his head, he dismissed it.
“Now, this looks most dire, peculiar, and puzzling. I think me I’d best try for a better look.”
When he called aloud in Elvish for Wildfolk, four gnomes and a sylph materialized in front of him.
“Listen carefully, little brothers. I’ve got a task for you, and if you do it, I’ll sing you a song when you’re done. I want to go to sleep, and I want you to stand here and watch for danger. If anyone or any animal comes toward me, pinch me and wake me up.”
The gnomes nodded solemnly, while the sylph dipped and hovered in the air. Salamander lay down on his back, crossed his arms over his chest, and slowed his breathing until he felt that his body was melding with the sun-warmed earth. Then he closed his eyes and summoned his body of light. Unlike human dweomer-masters, who use a solid, bluish form shaped like their own body, the elven thought form is much like an enormous flickering flame, yet with an ever-shifting face peering out of the silver light. Once Salamander’s form lived steady in his imagination, he transferred his consciousness over to it, at first only pretending to look out of its eyes at his body lying below, then seeing the world in the bluish etheric light. He heard a sound like a sharp click; he was out, on the etheric plane, looking down from the flame shape at his sleeping body, guarded by the Wildfolk, and joined to him by a long silver cord.
Slowly he rose up, orienting himself to the valleys, bright red and glowing with the dull auras of plants, and to the stream, which exhaled elemental force in a rushy silver curtain that rose high above the water. Getting entangled in that curtain could tear him apart. Carefully he moved away from it before going higher, then thought of Jill. He felt a certain tug pulling him in her direction, and set off to follow it, For a long ways, impossible to measure on the etheric, he sped over the dull-red forests, broken here and there by brighter patches of farmlands, tended by the peasants whose auras gleamed around them, pale yellows and greens, mostly, in the bluish light of the plane. As he traveled he became more and more aware of Jill’s presence, pulling him forward.
Yet in the end he had a guide. He had just flown high over a small stream when he saw one of the Wildfolk coming toward him. In its proper sphere the creature was a beautiful nexus of glowing lines and colors, a deep olive, citrine, and russet with a spark here and there of black, but it was obviously in distress, swelling up twice its size, then shrinking and trembling.
“Here, here, little brother,” Salamander thought to it. “What’s so wrong?”
For an answer it spun and danced, but dimly he could feel its emotions: rage and despair for something it loved. He remembered then Jill’s gray gnome.
“Do you know Jill?”
It bobbed and swelled with joy.
“I’m her friend. Take me to her.”
The gnome swept on ahead of him like a hunting dog. As he flew after, dodging round the curves of a hill, Salamander saw far below him the mountain valley, a red-glowing bowl of grass, dotted with the dim silvery auras of the horses, and two human auras, Perryn’s a strange green and gray that Salamander had never seen before, Jill’s pale gold—but enormous, swelling up around her, sending off billows, then shrinking again but to a size far too large for any human being. When he dropped down toward her, he saw Perryn turn and say something. From the young lord’s aura came a light-shot surge, spilling over Jill like an ocean wave. In response, her aura billowed and sucked the magnetic effluent up.
Salamander hovered, trembling with shock. At that moment, Jill looked up, straight at him, and screamed aloud. She had seen his body of light.
“Jill, I’m a friend!”
Yet although she could see him, she couldn’t seem to hear his thought. She flung herself to her feet and pointed at him, yelling all the while at Perryn, who merely looked puzzled. Salamander swooped away, following the silver cord as fast as he dared back to his body, which lay safely where he’d left it with the Wildfolk still on guard. He swooped down until he hovered over it, then let himself go. Again the click, and he felt flesh wrap him round, warm and painfully heavy for a moment. He dismissed his body of light then sat up, slapping his hand thrice on the ground to seal the end of the working. The gnomes looked at him expectantly.
“My thanks, my friends. Come travel along with me for a while. I’ll sing you the song I promised, but I’ve got to make speed, A good friend of mine has been well and truly ensorceled.”

In a flood of silver light the dawn climbed up purple mountains and washed over the meadow, a green torrent of grass that swirled in the summer wind. Jill sat on their blankets and watched Perryn, crouched down by the fire, where he was heating water in a little iron kettle. He took his razor, a bit of soap, and a cracked mirror out of his saddlebags and began to shave, as calmly and efficiently as if he were in a bedchamber. Jill had a vague thought of slitting his throat with the long sharp steel razor, or perhaps her silver dagger, but thinking was very difficult.
“You’d best eat somewhat,” he remarked.
“In a bit.” Speaking was difficult, too. “I’m not truly hungry.”
Idly she looked away, only to see her gray gnome, hunkered down some yards beyond Perryn. She was so glad to see the little creature that she jumped up and ran over, but just as she bent down to pick it up, it snarled, swiped at her with its claws, and vanished. Very slowly she sat down right where she was, wondering why the gnome was so angry at her. It seemed that she should know, but the memory wouldn’t return. She picked up a pebble from the grass and stared at it, a constant wavering flow of crystalline structure made visible, until Perryn came to fetch her away.
All that morning they rode through the forest, following long, roundabout trails. Every tree was a living presence, leaning over the trail and reaching down to her with, brushy fingers. Some frightened, her; others seemed perfectly harmless; still others, a definite few, seemed to be asking her to befriend them, with a trembling outreach of leafy hands. When she looked away from the trail, the forest changed into a maze of solid walls, broken only by shafts of sunlight, as heavy as stone. Although at times Jill considered simply riding away from Perryn, she was hopelessly lost. Every now and then she thought of Rhodry and wondered if he was trying to follow them. She doubted that he’d believe her when she told him that she hadn’t ridden away of her own free will—if, indeed, he ever caught them. How could he find her, when the whole world had changed?
Every color, even the somber gray of the rocks, seemed as bright and glowing as a jewel. Whenever they came to a clearing or a mountain meadow, the sun poured over her like water; she could swear that she felt it dripping and running down her arms. The sky was a solid dome of lapis lazuli, and for the first time in her life she truly believed that the gods traveled across the sky the way men travel across the earth, just because the color truly did seem fit for divinities. Under the heavy burden of all this beauty, she felt as if she were reeling in her saddle, and at times tears ran down her face, just from the loveliness. Once as they rode through a meadow, a pair of larks broke cover and flew, singing their heartbreaking trill as they went up and up into the azure, crystalline sky, their wings rushing and beating in a tiny thunder. Jill saw then that whatever else might happen, that moment, that beating of wings, that stripe of sound would all endure eternally, as indeed would every moment, a clear note in the unfolding music of the universe. When she tried to tell Perryn of the insight, he only stared at her and told her she was daft. She laughed, agreeing with him.
That afternoon, they camped early near a good-sized stream. Perryn took a line and hook from his gear, remarked that he was after fish, and wandered away upstream. For a long time Jill lay on the bank and stared into the water, watching the Wildfolk in the eddies, a white foam of little faces, traces of sleek bodies, little voices and lives, melding and blending into each other. It seemed that there was something that they wanted of her, and finally she stripped off her clothes and joined them. Giggling, laughing, she ducked and splashed in the water with the undines, tried to catch them as they swam away from her, and for the first time she heard them clearly, giggling in return, calling out her name, Jill, Jill, Jill, over and over again. Then suddenly they shrieked and disappeared. Jill turned in the water and looked up to see Perryn, standing on the bank with a string of three trout in one hand. Her heart sank, just as when a pupil looks up from a game to find her tutor glaring with a piece of unfinished work in his hand.
Yet when she clambered up onto the bank, he was far from angry with her, catching her, kissing her, wrapping her round with his desire until she wanted him, too, and lay down willingly with him in the grass. Afterward, he got up, dressed, and methodically began cleaning the fish, but she lay naked in the soft grass and tried to remember the name of the man she once had loved and who, or so she suspected, still loved her. Although she could see his face in her mind, her memory refused to give up his name. Puzzling over it, she got up and dressed, then chanced to look down at the stream. The Wildfolk were back, staring at her reproachfully.
“Rhodry, Jill,” they whispered. “How could you have forgotten your Rhodry?”
She doubled over and wept, sobbing aloud. When Perryn came rushing to comfort her, she shoved him away so hard that he tripped and fell. Like a frightened animal she ran, racing through the long grass of the clearing, plunging into the forest, only to catch an ankle on a root and sprawl headlong. For a moment she lay there panting, seeing how dark the trees were, how menacingly they reached down to grab her. Now they looked like a line of armed guards, raising weapons high. When he came to fetch her back, she went without arguing.
That evening he built a fire and skewered the trout on green sticks to roast them. Jill ate a few bites, but the food seemed to stick in her month, the fish suddenly as cloying as pure honey. Perryn, however, wolfed down his share as if he were starving, then fell asleep by the fire. She watched him for a long time. Although it would have been ridiculously easy to kill him, the memory of the forest stopped her. If he died, she would be alone, trapped out there, starving, wandering in circles, growing more and more panicked—with the last of her will she wrenched her mind away from the thoughts that were threatening to turn her hysterical. Shaking, suddenly cold, she stared into the fire, where the spirits were forming and falling in the flames, dancing along the wood that this pair of humans had so thoughtfully provided. Jill could almost hear them talking in the hiss and crackle. Then a log burned through and fell with a shower of golden sparks. In the rushy dance of flame, a proper face appeared, golden and shifting. When it spoke, it was in a true voice, and one with authority.
“What is this, child? What’s so wrong?”
“Wrong?” She could barely stammer. “Is it?”
For a moment the face regarded her; then it was gone. Somewhat bewildered, unable to think, Jill lay down next to Perryn and fell asleep.
As formless as water, the days slipped into one another. Jill couldn’t count them; she’d lost the very idea of counting, as if the part of her mind that dealt with things like nights and coins had fallen out of her saddlebags and gotten lost in the grass. Whenever he spoke to her, it was hard to answer, because her words became lost in the splendor of the forest, Fortunately he rarely spoke, apparently contented with her silent presence near him. At night, when they made camp, he was an eager lover, wanting her in their blankets often before they’d eaten, then bringing her dinner like a page as she lay drowsily by the fire. His slow hesitance, his shuffling walk, his vague smiles and stumbling words—all were gone. He was all laughter and calm efficiency, all strength and life as he strode through the wild country. She supposed that his daft mousiness was simply a shield he put up when he was forced to live in the lands of men.
She was proven right when they rode into a village to buy food at the open market. Perryn became his old self, looking aimlessly this way and that, stumbling through every simple sentence as he haggled for cheese and peaches, for loaves of bread from the baker. Since Jill could speak no more clearly than he could, she was of no help to him. Once she saw a farmer’s wife watching them in puzzlement, as if she were wondering how a pair of halfwits like they could survive on the road.
With the shopping done, they went to a tiny tavern for ale. After nothing but spring water to drink, the ale tasted so good that Jill savored every sip. Although the little room had dirty straw on the floor, an unswept hearth, and battered tables, she was happy there. It was good to see other people, her own kind, good to listen to human voices instead of the endless wind through the forest and the chatter of streams. A balding stout fellow, wearing the checked brigga of a merchant, gave her a friendly smile.
“Here, lass,” he said. “Why do you carry a silver dagger?”
“Oh, ah, er, well,” Jill said. “My father was a silver dagger, you see. It’s a reminder of him.”
“A pious gesture, truly.”
Jill had the sudden startling experience of hearing him think: A pretty lass, but stupid; ah well, wits don’t matter in a lass. The thought was as clear in her mind as if he’d spoken aloud, but she decided that she was only deluding herself. When it was time to leave the tavern, she wept, simply because they were going back to the lonely wilderness.
That afternoon they rode through low rolling hills, where the pine forest thinned, and farms appeared in sheltered valleys. Jill had no idea of where they were; all she knew was that the sun rose the east and set in the west. They made camp, however, in a place Perryn knew well, or so he said, a tiny vale, along a stream, and bordered with white birches. Before he lit the fire, he gave Jill a kiss.
“Let’s lie down,” he said.
All at once, the thought of making love with him filled her with revulsion. When she shoved him away, he caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. Although she tried to wrestle free, his superior strength told against her. He grabbed her, lifted her, and laid her struggling on the ground. She fought against him but even as she did, she knew that she was slowly, inexorably giving in to him, fighting with only half her strength, letting him steal a kiss here and there, then a caress, then finally surrendering, letting him take her, press her down, and turn her world to a fire of pleasure. When he lay down next to her, he started to speak, then fell asleep in openmouthed exhaustion.
Jill lay next to him and watched the sunset coming through the branches like a shower of gold coins. The white birches glowed with an inner fire, as if they were watching them and blessing them in silent presences. She could hear the stream running nearby in little voices, the aimless chatter of the Wildfolk. Just as the sunset was fading into twilight, Perryn sat up with a yawn and a gasp. She saw dark circles under his eyes, two livid pools of shadow. For a moment he stared, at her as if he hardly knew where they were.
“Are you all right?” Jill said.
“Oh, er, well, just tired.”
Yet as the evening wore on, she realized that things went far beyond his being tired. When they ate, he gobbled the food, then fell asleep again. She sat by the fire and watched the birches glowing, bending close, it seemed, to study this pair of intruders in the grove. For one moment she thought she saw someone standing among the trees and watching her, but when she got up for a closer look, the shadowy form disappeared. In a bit Perryn woke again and stumbled over to the fire. A leap of flame washed his face with light and seemed to cover it with blood; his eyes seemed great hollow rents in a mask. Jill cried, out at the sight.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
Yet she had no words to tell him what she instinctively knew, that their afternoon’s lovemaking had driven them to a crisis point, just as when a warrior rides a charge, thinking of naught but the flash of steel around him, only to find himself behind the enemy line, cut off and alone when it’s too late to ride back.

When he left Graemyn’s dun, Rhodry had no idea of which way to ride. For the first day, he went west, but at sunset the gray gnome appeared at his camp and threw itself into his arms to cling to him like a frightened child.
“There you are! Here, my friend, where’s Jill?”
The gnome considered, pointed east, then disappeared. I’ve wasted a whole blasted day, he thought. Then, even in the midst of his despair, he felt that strange sensation of being watched.
For three days more, he rode east. He felt more like a storm than a man, his rage and desperation mingling to drive his mind this way and that, tearing his reason to shreds as he swept down the forest road. At times, he wanted to find her only to slit her throat; at others, he swore to himself that if only he could have her back, he would never ask a single question about what she’d done with Perryn. Gradually he felt more hopelessness than rage. Perryn could have taken her any way at all, slipping deep into the forest where he’d never find them. His one hope was the gnome, who came to him at odd moments. Always it pointed east, and it was filled with fury, gnashing its teeth and clutching its head at any mention of Perryn. Sooner or later, or so Rhodry hoped, it would lead him back to Jill.
Late on a day when white clouds piled in the sky and threatened rain, Rhodry was riding along a narrow track when he came to a clearing. Beside the road was a small wooden round house with two oaks growing in front of the door. He dismounted, led his horse over, and called out a halloo. In a few moments an aged man with the shaved head and golden torc of a priest of Bel came out
“Good morrow, Your Holiness,” Rhodry said.
“May the gods bless you, lad. What troubles your heart so?”
“Oh, by the hells, do I look as wretched as that?”
The priest merely smiled, his dark eyes nearly lost in wrinkled folds of pouched eyelids. He was as thin as a stick, his ragged tunic hanging loose, his fingers like gnarled twigs.
“I’m looking for someone, you see,” Rhodry went on. “And I’ve about given up hope of ever finding her. A blond lass, beautiful, but she always dresses like a lad, and she carries a silver dagger. She’d be riding with a skinny red-haired fellow.”
“Your wife left you for another man?”
“Well, she did, but how did you know?”
“It’s a common enough tale, lad, though I’ve no doubt it pains you as if you were the first man ever deserted by a woman.” He sighed with a shake of his head. “I haven’t seen her, but come in and ask the gods to help you.”
More to please the lonely old hermit than in any real hope of getting an omen, Rhodry followed him into the dim, musty-smelling shrine, which took up half the round house. On the flat side stood the stone altar, covered with a rough linen cloth to hide the bloodstains from the sacrifices. Behind it rose a massive statue of Bel, carved from a tree trunk, the body roughly shaped, the arms distinguished by mere cuts in the wood and the tunic indicated only by scratches. The face, however, was beautifully modeled, large eyes staring out as if they saw, the mouth so mobile it seemed that it would speak. Rhodry made a formal bow to the king of the world, then knelt before him while the priest stood to one side. In the shadowy light it seemed that the god’s eyes turned his worshipper’s way.
“O most holy lord, where’s my Jill? Will I ever see her again?”
For a moment silence lay thick in the temple; then the priest spoke in a hollow, booming voice utterly unlike his normal tone.
“She rides down dark roads. Judge her not harshly when you meet again. One who holds no fealty to me holds her in thrall.”
Rhodry felt a cold shudder of awe laced with fear. The god’s eyes considered him, and the voice spoke again.
“You have a strange Wyrd, man from Eldidd, you who are not truly a man like other men. Someday you’ll die serving the kingdom, but it’s not the death you would ever have dreamt for yourself. Men will remember your name down the long years, though your blood run over rock and be gone. Truly, they’ll remember it twice over, for twice over will you die.”
Suddenly the priest threw up his hands and clapped them together hard. Dazed, Rhodry looked around. The statue was only a piece of wood, cleverly carved. The god had gone.
All that day, while he traveled fast along, Rhodry puzzled over the omen. What did it mean, that Jill rode down dark roads? He desperately wanted it to mean that Perryn had somehow forced her to come with him rather than her going willingly, but it was hard to convince himself of that, because Jill could have slain the lord easily if he had tried violence. Still, he clung to the first bit of hope he had that she still loved him. His heart was so torn for love of and fear for her that he never remembered the rest of the omen til years later, that, contrary to all nature and all sense, he would die twice over.
On the morrow, the meaning of the part of the omen that dealt with Jill came clearer when he reached a small village. In the tiny tavern he got his first hot meal and tankard of ale in days. As he was eating mutton stew by the unswept hearth, the tavernman strolled over to gossip.
“You’re the second silver dagger we’ve seen in here lately,” he said. “Or, well, I don’t suppose this lass was truly a silver dagger.”
“A blond lass?” Rhodry’s heart was pounding even as he spoke casually. “Beautiful, but dressed like a lad?”
“Just that! Do you know her?”
“I do. How long ago were she and her red-haired lad in here? I’d like to see Jill and Perryn again.”
The tavernman considered, scratching his bald spot.
“Not more than four nights ago, I’d say. Friends of yours, are they? Neither of them are much for words, I must say.”
“Oh, Perryn never says much, truly.” Rhodry tried to sound cheerfully friendly. “But usually his lass is good for a bit of chatter.”
“Indeed? Then she must be ill or suchlike, because it was hard for her to say two words together. One of those thick-headed lasses, think I, all pretty face with nothing between her two ears.”
“Here, I hope she wasn’t ill. She’s usually as bright as a lark and twice as merry.”
The tavernman considered a long moment.
“Well, maybe she and that man of hers had a bit of a scrap. From the way she looked at him, I’d say he beats her a good bit. Fair terrified, she looked.”
Rhodry’s hand tightened on the tankard so hard that his knuckles went white. Riding down dark roads, he thought, I see.
“But be that as it may, lad, they went south when they left here. She said she was riding south, to find her grandfather.”
For a moment Rhodry was puzzled. Nevyn! he thought. Of course that’s how she’d describe him.
“Well and good, then, and my thanks.” He tossed the man a piece of Benoic’s silver.
Leaving the tankard unfinished, Rhodry rode out fast, heading for the crossroads and the track that would take him south.

The tavernman watched, rubbing Rhodry’s coin, until the silver dagger was out of sight. All at once he felt both guilty and frightened. Why had he lied like that, and all for the couple of coins that the strange fellow had given him? He hated to lie. Dimly he remembered arguing with the fellow, but here, after all he’d said, he’d gone and done it. He wished he had a horse, so that he could ride after the silver dagger and tell him the truth. He shook himself and looked up. The village idiot, poor old Marro, was shuffling along the street. The tavernman flung him Rhodry’s coin.
“Here, lad, take that home to your mother, and tell her I said she’s to buy you cloth for a new shirt.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Marro ran off. The tavernman went back to his customers.

“South?” Salamander said aloud. “How by every boil on the Lord of Hell’s balls did Rhodry know to turn south?”
The Wildfolk clustered around his campfire seemed to be pondering the question.
“My apologies, little brothers. Just a rhetorical question.”
Stretching, Salamander got up and frowned at the night sky while he wished he’d scried Rhodry out earlier. Since he was not much more than an apprentice at dweomer, it was difficult for him to scry without a focus of some sort and impossible when he was occupied with something else, such as riding horseback, As he thought about it, he supposed that Rhodry was riding south out of a simple desperation that had brought him a silver dagger’s luck. Without dweomer, he himself would never have been able to track Jill down, because that strange man of hers knew the woods as well as a wild deer did. As it was, of course, he knew exactly where they were, just ten miles to the northeast of him, so that, indeed, Rhodry was to the north of them, and on the right road by heading south, The question was, how did Rhodry know it?
“Tomorrow, little brothers, tomorrow we track this bear to his den.”
In unease the Wildfolk rustled around, him shoving and pinching each, other, opening their mouths in gaping expressions of despair and hatred. Salamander shuddered in honest fear. For all he knew, the man that had stolen Jill was a dweomermaster of great power, and he was riding to his doom.
“You know, I suppose I really should contact Nevyn and tell him about all this.”
The Wildfolk all nodded a vigorous yes.
“But on the other hand, suppose I do, and he tells me that I should leave this nasty mess strictly alone. How then could I redeem myself for my dilatory ways this summer? I think me I’d best just just continue on.”
The Wildfolk threw their hands in the air, stuck out their tongues at him, and disappeared in a wave of pure disgust.

In the morning, the dark circles under Perryn’s eyes looked as purple as fresh bruises against his unnaturally pale skin. His red hair no longer flamed; rather it was as dull and matted as the fur of a sick cat. He worked slowly, taking things out of his saddlebags, staring at them for a moment, then putting them back while Jill sat nearby and watched him.
“You truly do look ill,” she said.
“Just tired.”
She wondered why she cared if he were ill or not, but in truth, she was coming to see him as much a victim of his strange powers as she was. The thought came to her only intermittently, however; thoughts of any sort were rare these days. The pieces of gear in Perryn’s hands seemed to be changing size constantly, sometimes swelling, sometimes shrinking, and they had no edges in any proper sense, just lines of shimmering force that marked where they met the air. Finally he pulled out a plain rod of iron, about a finger thick, set in a wooden handle.
“Thank every god,” he said. “Here I thought I’d lost it.”
“What is it?”
“A rambling scribe. Never tell anyone I’ve got one, will you? You can get hanged for carrying one in Cerrgonney.”
None of this made any sense at all. She forced herself to pick it apart, a little at a time.
“We’re still in Cerrgonney?” she asked at last.
“We are, but in the southern part. Nearly to Gwaentaer.”
“Oh. And what’s that thing for?”
“Changing a horse’s brand.”
“And why will they hang you for having one?”
“Because only a horse thief would carry one.”
“Then why are you carrying one?”
“Because I’m a horse thief.” Jill stared openmouthed at him.
“Where do you think I get the coin we’ve been spending?” He was grinning in amusement, “I take a horse from some noble lord, sell it to one of the men I know, and well, there we are.”
Somewhere, deep in her mind, Jill remembered that thievery was a wrong thing. She thought about it while she watched him repack the saddlebags. Thieving was wrong, and being a horse thief was the worst of all. If you took a man’s horse, he could die out in the wilderness. Da always said so. Da was always right.
“You shouldn’t take horses,” she said.
“Oh, I only take them from men who can afford the loss.”
“It’s still wrong.”
“Why? I need them, and they don’t.”
Although she knew that there was a counter to this argument, she couldn’t remember it. She leaned back and watched the sylphs playing in the light breeze, winged forms of brilliant crystal, darting and dodging after each other in long swoops and glides.
“I’ll be leaving you here later,” Perryn said in a moment. “We’re low on coin, and I’ve got to take a horse.”
“You will come back, won’t you?” Suddenly she was terrified, sure that she would be hopelessly lost without him. “You won’t just leave me here?”
“What? Of course not. I love you more than I love my life. I’ll never leave you.”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her, then held her close. She was unsure of how long they sat together in the warm sun, but when he let her go, the sun was close to zenith. She wandered over the stream and lay down to watch the Wildfolk sporting there until she fell asleep.

Late that same afternoon, Rhodry came to Leryn, one of the biggest towns in Cerrgonney with about five hundred houses huddled behind a low stone wall on the banks of the Camyn Yraen. Since Leryn was an important port for the river barges that brought the mountain iron down into Deverry, he was planning on buying a passage downriver for a ways to save himself some time and to give himself and his horse a much-needed rest. First, though, he went to the market square and asked around about Jill and Perryn. Quite a few of the locals knew the eccentric Lord Perryn well.
“He’s daft,” said the cheese seller. “And if that lass is riding with the likes of him, she’s even dafter than he is.”
“A bit more than daft he is,” snorted the blacksmith. “I’ve wondered many a time where he gets all those horses.”
“Ah, he’s noble-born,” chimed in the cloth merchant. “The noble-horn have horses to spare, they do. But I haven’t seen him in many long week now, silver dagger, and I’ve never seen a lass like you described.”
“No more have I,” said the cheese seller. “She sounds a bit of a hard case, she does.”
As he went back to the cheap tavern he’d marked earlier, Rhodry was wondering if Jill and Perryn had taken a different road south. If so, he’d have to abandon his plans for the river, in case he passed them by. As he was stabling his horse, a fellow came out to join him, a rather nondescript man with the bent back of a wandering peddler.
“You the silver dagger who was asking for Lord Perryn?”
“I am, and what’s it to you?”
“Naught, but I might have a bit of information for you for the right price.”
Rhodry took two silver pieces from his pouch and held them between his fingers. The peddler grinned.
“I came up this way from the southeast. I stayed one night in a little village inn, oh, some thirty miles from here, it was. I was trying to get my sleep about dawn that night when I heard someone yelling out in the stable yard. So I sticks my head out the window, and I see our Perryn arguing with this blond lass. Seems like she was leaving him, and he was yelling at her not to go.”
Rhodry handed over the first silver.
“I’m going to find no one, she says,” the peddler went on. “Seemed like a cursed strange thing to say, so it’s stuck in my mind, like.”
“So it would. Did she say where ‘nev yn’ was?”
“Not truly. But she did say to his lordship that if he tried to follow her to Cerrmor, she’d take his balls off with her silver dagger.”
With a laugh, Rhodry handed him the second coin, then dug out a third for good measure.
“My thanks, peddler, and it gladdens my wretched heart that you lost that hour’s sleep.”

When Rhodry left the stable, Merryc laughed quietly under his breath. It was a good jest, to make the silver dagger pay for the false rumors that were going to mean his doom.

Jill woke suddenly at the sound of horses coming. She sat up wondering why she hadn’t tried to escape before Perryn returned. Now it was too late. She stood up, very slowly, because the ground seemed unsteady under her feet. As she walked back to camp, the grass swelled and billowed, as if she trod on a huge feather mattress.
“Jill! Fear not! Rescue is at hand, though truly, as a shining avenger one could want better than I.”
Startled, she spun around and stared openmouthed at the man dismounting from his horse on the other side of the clearing. For a moment she thought he was Rhodry, but the voice and the pale hair were all wrong. Then she remembered him.
“Salamander! Oh ye gods!”
Suddenly she was weeping, doubling over as she sobbed, throwing herself from side to side until he ran over and grabbed her tight.
“Whist, whist, little one. All’s well, more or less, anyway. You’ve been ensorceled, but it’s over now.”
The tears stopped, and she looked up at him.
“It was true, then? He has the dweomer?”
“I’m not so sure of that, but you were ensorceled well and truly. Where is he?”
“Off stealing a horse from someone.”
“And the horse dung, too, no doubt. This lad sounds stranger and stranger.”
“You might well say that and twice. Please, we’ve got to get away before he gets back.”
“Not that, because I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”
“But he’s dweomer.”
Salamander smiled lazily.
“It is time for all truths to be known. So am I.”
She pulled away, staring at him.
“How else did I know you’d been ensorceled, and how else would I have found you? Now come along. Let’s get your gear on your horse. I want to curse this fellow to the three hells, and then we’ve got to be on our way. Rhodry’s got a long head start on us.”
At the mention of Rhodry’s name, she began to sob again. Salamander pulled her close into his arms.
“Na, na, na, little one. Remember you’re a warrior’s daughter. There’ll be time enough for tears later, when we’re well away from here. We’ll find your Rhodry for you.”
“Oh ye gods, I don’t know if your brother will even want me back.”
“My . . . here! How did you find out?”
The urgency in his voice stopped her tears.
“I . . . well, I had a true dream. I saw your father.”
“Gods! If you have that kind of power, and this fellow still . . . well, he may be a bit more powerful than I thought, but cursed if I’ll run until I get a look at him. Let me saddle your horse for you, and you tell me the tale.”
As best she could, Jill told him about Perryn and the events of the last few days, but it was difficult for her to find words to put things in any sort of order, or indeed to remember exactly how long she’d been traveling with Perryn. At times it seemed a few years, at others months. She was shocked when Salamander told her that it had been at most a fortnight. While he listened, he grew angry, until finally he cut short one last stumbling sentence with a wave of his hand.
“I’ve heard enough, little one. This ugly bastard should be flogged and hanged, if you ask me. I wonder if I can get him to a lord’s justice.”
“Not here. All the lords are his kin.”
“And who will believe me when I come to them talking of dweomer, besides? Well, there’s other kinds of justice in the kingdom.”
When she looked at him, she saw his anger like ghostly flames burning over his face and looked away again. Yet the vision jogged her memory.
“Was it you I saw a while back? I saw an elf all covered with silver fire in the sky.”
“It was, true enough. But you were seeing only a well . . . call it an image of me.”
She nodded, the thought and the memory slipping away again. She wondered why he was so angry with Perryn, but it seemed at somehow she should know the answer.
Salamander was just finishing tying her bedroll behind the saddle when he paused, cocking his head to listen. It was several minutes before she heard the sound of hoofbeats, three horses coming fast. Ducking and dodging among the trees, Perryn rode up with two chestnut colts following him along. As Salamander walked to meet him, Perryn dismounted and ran the last few yards.
“Who are you?” Perryn shouted. “Jill, what are you doing?”
Although she was shaking too hard to speak, her saddled and loaded horse was an obvious answer. When Perryn started to run to her, Salamander stepped in between. Perryn swung at him flat-handed. All at once Wildfolk swarmed into existence and mobbed him, a good hundred of them biting pinching kicking punching as they fell upon him like dogs on a tossed bone. Perryn screamed and yelped, hitting blindly at an enemy he couldn’t see, and finally went down under them, a tossing, heaving mound.
“Enough!” Salamander yelled.
The Wildfolk disappeared, leaving Perryn trembling and whimpering on the ground.
“That’s better, dog,” Salamander snarled. “A fine scion of the Wolf clan are you, a horse thief and a wife stealer both!”
He flung up one hand and chanted a long string of Elvish words under his breath. Suddenly Jill saw a green-and-gray glow streaming around Perryn—no, it was emanating from him in a cloud of light. From it stretched long smoky tendrils that tangled her round. She suddenly realized that she too stood in a similar cloud, but that hers was pale gold.
“Do you see that, Lord Perryn? Do you see what you’ve been doing?”
Perryn looked from her to himself and back to Salamander, then suddenly moaned and hid his eyes with his hands. The gerthddyn said a few more Elvish words, then snapped his fingers. A golden sword made of what seemed to be solid light appeared in his hand. He swept it back and forth, slashing at every tendril that bound her to Perryn. The light lines snapped like cut tether ropes and slapped back to him. Perryn screamed, but she felt her mind and her will come back to her, and with them a revulsion, a burning hatred for this man who’d broken her like a wild horse. When Salamander chanted again, the glowing clouds and the sword vanished. Perryn raised his head.
“Don’t look at me that way, my love,” he whispered. “Oh, by Kerun himself, you’re not going to leave me, are you?”
“Of course I am, you bastard! I never want to see you again in my god-cursed life.”
“Jill, Jill, I beg you don’t go! I love you!”
“Love?” She felt her natred burning in her mouth. “I spit on your idea of love!”
When Perryn began to weep, the sound was beautiful to her. Salamander looked as if he was thinking of kicking him, then restrained himself.
“Listen, you!” he snarled. “Out of sheer pity I’ll tell you one thing: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses this way, or it’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”
Slowly Perryn got to his feet to face the gerthddyn, and his face worked as if he was desperately trying to summon some dignity.
“I don’t know who you are,” he whispered. “But I don’t have to stay here and have you pour vinegar in my wounds. I can’t stop you from taking Jill away, so go. You hear me! Get out!” His voice rose to a shriek. “Go away! Both of you!”
Then he fell sobbing to his knees again.
“Very well.” Salamander turned to Jill. “Let us leave this whimpering dolt to whatever justice the gods have in store for him.”
“Gladly.”
In a swirl of joyous Wildfolk, they mounted their horses. A big black gnome with purple splotches threw the lead rope of the pack horse up to Salamander, then disappeared as they rode away. Jill glanced back once to see Perryn stretched out on the grass, still weeping in a sea of swelling emerald, with his gray nuzzling his shoulder in concern. Nothing had ever pleased her as much as his pain.
For about a mile they rode in silence, until they came free of the trees to one of the muddy tracks that passed for a Cerrgonney road. There Salamander paused his horse, waved at her to do the same, and turned in his saddle to look her over in sincere concern. She could only stare blankly back at him.
“How do you feel, Jill?”
“Exhausted.”
“No doubt, but you’ll get your strength back in a bit.”
“Good. Will the world ever hold still again?”
“What? What’s it doing at the moment?”
“Well, everything’s all . . . not hazy, exactly, but nothing will hold still, and these colors . . . everything’s so bright and glowy.” She hesitated, struggling with the unfamiliar task of forming sentences. “Nothing has edges, you see. It all sparkles and runs together. And there’s no Time anymore. Wait, that’s not right. But it is.”
“Oh ye gods! What did that lout do to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“My apologies, just a rhetorical question. Jill, this is blasted serious.”
“I could figure that out myself, my thanks. Will I ever see the world like it really is again?”
“You mean, will you ever see it as you used to, because as for the world as it really is, my turtledove, that’s what you’re seeing right now. Before, you’ve only seen the dull, dead, dark, and deceiving surface, as most people do.”
“But here! These colors, and the way everything moves—”
“Are real enough. But, truly, most inconvenient withal. The gods are kind, turtledove. They let most men see only what they need to see, and hide the beauty away. If they didn’t, we’d all starve, because even a simple act like picking an apple from a tree would be a momentous and ominous event.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“No need for you to believe it, actually. Belief has no bearing whatsoever on your current and most dire condition. Belief is an illusion, and truly, all that men see is illusion as well, because the universe is naught but a rushy net of pure power.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is, but this is no time for us to argue recondite matters like a pair of Bardek sages. That little round-ear bastard has hurt you worse than I feared, Jill.” He paused for a long, troubled silence. “I’m not truly sure what to do about this. Fortunately, our esteemed Nevyn will.”
“Salamander, you’re babbling! What did Perryn do to me?”
“Well, look, you saw those lines of light, didn’t you? What he was doing was pouring life force into you, more than you could possibly use or handle. Look, every time you two lay down together, he gave off a tremendous amount of life force. It’s not solid like water but it’s more solid than a thought, and it can be transferred back and forth. Normally, whenever a man and woman are together, they each give some out and get some back, all in balance. Now, I doubt me if this truly makes sense to you.”
“Oh, but it does.” Her disarranged mind was casting up images, of Sarcyn and Alastyr, of the dark dweomer that had touched and tainted her life the summer before. For a moment she nearly vomited. When she spoke again, it was only in a whisper. “Go on. I have to know.”
“Well, then, somewhat’s wrong with Perryn. He was pouring the force out like mead at a lord’s feast, more than you could ever possibly replace in the ordinary course of things. And all that extra power was running free in your mind, free to be used in any way you wished, but since, alas, you had no idea of what to wish for, or indeed that it was even there, then it took the first channel it found to run in, like water again, if we may expand and polish our image my turtledove, that escapes from a river only to follow a ditch. You can’t lie and say you’ve no dweomer talent, you know.”
“I don’t care! I never wanted to have anything of the sort.”
“Oh, of course not, you lackwit! That’s not what I’m saying. Listen, these are dark and dangerous matters indeed, and the source of many a strange thing. No one who studies the dweomer of Light would fool with them carelessly, the way Perryn seems to have done.”
“Are you telling me he follows the dark path?”
“I’m not, because that poor, weak, bumbling idiot obviously could do naught of the sort. I know not what Lord Perryn may be, my little robin, but I do know that we’ve got to get you far, far away from him. Let’s ride. We’ll reach some safe spot, and then I’ll see what Nevyn thinks of all this.”

After Jill rode away, Perryn had just enough strength to unsaddle his horse and send him out to graze. He lay down on his blankets and fell asleep, waking for a few moments at sunset, then sleeping the night away. When he woke in the morning, he rolled over, automatically reaching for Jill, and wept when he remembered that she was gone.
“How could you leave me? I loved you so much.”
He forced himself to stop crying, then sat up and looked around the camp. In spite of his long sleep, he was still tired, his body aching as if he’d been in a fight. When he remembered the man who’d taken her away, he turned cold all over. Dweomer. What else would have shown him that peculiar vision of clouds of light and golden swords? See what you’ve been doing, Lord Perryn. But he’d done nothing at all, only loved her. What did ropes of mystic light have to do with love? And she’d said that she hated him. He shook his head, refusing to cry again.
At last he forced himself up and began packing his gear. He’d already placed himself in danger by staying so long; the lord who once had owned these colts might come looking for them. As he worked, he wondered which way to ride. He couldn’t go back to Nedd, not for a long time, not with Benoic’s wrath waiting for him. You’re twice a dolt, he told himself, first taking another man’s woman—and then losing her. Benoic would heap scorn on him for years over this, he knew. After the splendor of having had someone to love, of having had someone who had loved him—he refused to believe that Jill had never loved him—his life stretched ahead like a bleak, foggy road. It seemed to take him forever to leave the spot. He would just get some small task done, like rolling up his blankets, when something would make him think of Jill, and he would weep again. The dapple gray stayed close to him, nuzzling his shoulder or nudging him in the back as if to say that he should cheer up.
“At least you love me, don’t you?” Perryn whispered. “But a horse is a wretchedly easy thing to please.”
Finally he was ready to set out, with his gray saddled and his pack horse and the two new colts on lead ropes. He mounted, then merely sat in the saddle for a long time and stared at the place that would hold his last memories of Jill. Where to go next? The question seemed insuperable. At last, when the gray was beginning to dance in irritable restlessness under him, he turned back northwest. Not far away was the town of Leryn, where he knew a dishonest trader who would take the colts and ask no questions. All that day he rode slowly, and the tears came and went of their own accord.

Rhodry might have taken a barge passage immediately if it hadn’t been for the gray gnome, who came to him early on the same morning that Salamander caught up with Jill. The little creature was ecstatic, dancing around and grinning so broadly that it exposed all its long pointed teeth.
“Well, little brother, I take it you know that Jill’s left Perryn.”
The gnome nodded, then pointed to the southeast.
“Is that where Jill is?”
The gnome shook its head no, then pantomimed Perryn’s graceless walk.
“Oho! How far away is our dear Lord Perryn?”
The gnome shrugged and waved its hands as if to say not very far at all. Rhodry debated for a long while. On the one hand, he wanted to be after Jill; on the other, his desire for revenge was like a lust. Finally the vengeance won.
“Well and good, little brother. I’ll saddle up my horse, and you lead me to him.”
The gnome grinned and jigged, pointing always off to the south and east.
It was late in the afternoon when Rhodry came to a scrappy little village, a huddle of houses at the top of a hill without even a proper wall around it. Although there was no tavern, the blacksmith’s wife kept a few barrels of ale in her kitchen for thirsty travelers, but she refused to have a silver dagger in her house. She did, however, let him buy a tankard and drink it out in the muddy yard, where chickens scratched near a small sty that held a pair of half-grown pigs. The woman, a stout sort with wispy gray hair, set her hands on her hips and glared at him the whole time as if she thought he would steal the tankard. When he was done, Rhodry handed it back with an exaggerated bow.
“My thanks, fair lady. I don’t suppose you get many travelers through here.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, that’s all, a tall, skinny fellow with red hair and—”
“You’d best go over to the baker’s then. A fellow like that bought a tankard from me not half an hour ago, and he said he needed to buy bread.”
“Oh, indeed? He didn’t have a lass with him, did he?”
“He didn’t, just a couple of extra horses. Too many horses, if you ask me. Didn’t like the look of him, I didn’t.”
Following her directions, Rhodry hurried along the twisting street. When he reached the house with the big beehive clay ovens in the front yard he saw Perryn’s dapple gray, his pack horse, and a pair of colts tied up nearby. He laughed aloud, just a quick snatch of a berserker’s chuckle, and thanked Great Bel in his heart. As he tied up his horse, he could see Perryn through the open door, handing over some coppers to a fellow in a cloth apron. Rhodry strode in. His hands full of loaves, Perryn turned and yelped, a satisfying gulp of pure terror.
“You bastard,” Rhodry snarled. “Where’s my wife?”
“Oh, er, ah, well, I don’t know.”
His face pale, the baker began edging for the door. Rhodry ignored him and went for Perryn. He grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the stone wall so hard that Perryn dropped the bread. Rhodry kicked it out of the way and slammed him again.
“Where’s Jill?”
“I don’t know.” Perryn was gasping for breath. “She left me. I swear it. She left me on the road.”
“I know that, dolt! Where?”
When Perryn smirked at him, Rhodry hit him in the stomach He doubled over, choking, but Rhodry straightened him up and hit him again.
“Where did she leave you?”
Half blind from tears in his eyes, Perryn raised his head. Rhodry slapped him across the face.
“I know you’re going to kill me,” Perryn gasped. “Not going to tell you one rotten thing.”
Rhodry saw no reason to admit that he’d sworn a vow to leave him alive. He grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him forward, and slammed into the stone again.
“Where is she? If you tell me, you live.”
“I don’t know, by the gods!”
Rhodry was about to hit him in the stomach a second time when he heard noises behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the white-faced baker, flanked by the blacksmith carrying an iron bar and two other men with threshing flails at the ready.
“Now what’s all this, silver dagger? You can’t ride in and just murder someone.”
“I’m not going to murder anyone. This whoreson piss-pot little bastard stole my wife away, and now he won’t tell me where she is.”
The four villagers considered, glancing at one another and at the sword at Rhodry’s side. Even though the four of them would have had more than a good chance against one man, no matter how skilled with a sword, it seemed they were the prudent sort.
“Ah well,” the blacksmith said. “Then it’s no affair of ours, if he’s been meddling with your woman.”
“Just get him out of my house,” the baker moaned.
“Gladly. Rats don’t belong in a granary.”
Rhodry twisted Perryn’s right arm behind his back and shoved him out of the bakery. When his victim struggled, Rhodry swung him sideways and knocked him against the wall of the next house so hard that he screamed.
“Where’s Jill?”
“I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
Rhodry hit him in the stomach so hard he vomited, falling to his knees. When he was done, Rhodry hauled him up, twisted his arm again, and then marched him round the bakery to a big stone shed. He threw him face forward against the wall, peeled him off and turned him round, then shoved him back again. By then Perryn could barely stand up.
“For the last time, where is she?”
Gasping, Perryn wiped feebly at the blood pouring from his nose and from a cut over his eye. Rhodry unbuckled his sword belt and let it drop.
“Come on, coward! Draw on me, if you dare.”
Perryn merely gasped and sniveled. Rhodry’s stomach tightened in sheer contempt.
“You base-born little half-gelded swine!”
Rhodry jumped him, grabbed him with one hand, and began hitting him as hard as he could with the other. The pleasure of beating Perryn filled his entire mind, just as when a sheet of flame races through the forest and sweeps everything before it. Suddenly he remembered the holy vow he’d sworn to Benoic. He let Perryn go and leaned him back against the wall. Fortunately, the lord was still breathing. He looked at Rhodry for a moment with glazed eyes, one of which was already swelling shut, tried to speak, gasped, then crumpled, sliding slowly down the wall to the ground. Rhodry gave him one last kick and turned to find the four villagers, standing as solemnly as judges, and three small boys, wide-eyed with excitement. Nearby was the gray gnome, clapping its hands and grinning while it did a little victory dance. Rhodry retrieved his sword belt and buckled it on while he caught his breath.
“There. I didn’t murder him, did I now?”
They all shook their heads in agreement.
“I thought silver daggers didn’t have wives,” said one of the boys.
“I did. Let me tell you somewhat. If ever you find another silver dagger with a wife, then you keep your blasted little paws off her.”
The lads looked at Perryn, then nodded again. When Rhodry walked toward them, they all parted to give him plenty of room and fell in behind him like an honor guard while he fetched his horse. He mounted and rode out, heading northwest to return to the river. His hands were bloody, bruised, and aching, but he’d never enjoyed a pain more in his life. As soon as he was out of sight of the village, the gnome appeared on his saddle peak.
“That was a splendid bit of fun, wasn’t it, little brother?”
With an evil grin the gnome nodded a yes.
“Now, am I going the right way? Is Jill heading for the river?”
Again, it nodded yes.
“Is she going to Cerrmor?”
It waggled its hands and shrugged its shoulders to show that it didn’t truly know. It occurred to Rhodry that place names would mean nothing at all to the Wildfolk.
“Well, if she’s on the river, I’ll catch her up, sure enough. My thanks, little brother. You’d best get back to Jill and keep an eye on her.”

Out of compassion on the one hand and a sense of having seen justice done on the other, the blacksmith and the baker picked Perryn up and carried him into the baker’s cow shed, where they laid him down on a heap of straw. Perryn could barely see them out of his swollen eyes. His chest ached so badly that he was sure Rhodry had broken a couple of his ribs and his lower lip was split and bleeding. The baker’s wife brought out a bowl of water, gave him a drink, then washed his face for him.
“Didn’t like the look of that silver dagger, I didn’t. Here, did you really take his wife?”
Perryn mumbled out a sound, that passed for “I did.”
“Huh. I don’t see why any lass would take you over him, but then, lasses is flighty sometimes. Ah well, you can stay here for a day or two, lad, if you’ll give me a couple of coppers for horse feed.”
Perryn nodded a yes, then fainted.

Irritated to the point of rage, Nevyn sat in his chamber and glared at Salamander’s image as it danced over the glowing coals in the charcoal brazier. The gerthddyn seemed honestly bewildered.
“But I couldn’t leave Jill with that lout—”
“Of course not, you, dolt! That isn’t the point. The point is this Perryn himself. You’ve left behind a gravely ill man—”
“Who repeatedly raped my brother’s woman.”
“I know that, and I’m furious about it, but what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s deathly ill.”
“If he dies, what loss will it be?”
“Hold your tongue, you chattering elf!”
Salamander’s image shrank back and turned pale. Nevyn took a breath and controlled himself.
“Now listen, Ebañy. If Perryn continues on this way, he’s going to pour out his life force until there’s precious little left. Then he’ll get some illness—most likely a consumption of the lungs—and die, just as you’ve guessed. But in the meantime, he’ll also be harming other women because he can’t help himself. He’s like a man with a plague, spreading foul humors and contagion over the countryside even though he doesn’t wish another soul harm. Now do you see?”
“I do at that, and my apologies.” Salamander did look sincerely chastened. “But what could I have done? Ensorceled him? Roped him like one of his horses and dragged him along with us? Jill can’t bear the sight of him, and in her state—”
“Well, true enough. Let me think . . . the nearest dweomerworker is Liddyn of Cantrae. He can possibly find our Perryn and corral him. Truly, your first concern has to be Jill. Form a link with her aura and then—slowly, mind you—draw off some of that excess magnetism. The process should take some days, because you’ll have to absorb it yourself. Or, here, expend it. Do some of your wretched little tricks with it. It might amuse her.”
“I doubt me if any show of dweomer will do more than terrify her now.”
“Maybe so. Ah ye gods! What a nasty mess you’ve dropped in our laps!”
“So they have. Here, one more strange thing about Perryn. When I first saw him, I opened up my sight and looked into his soul. I was thinking perhaps that he was some man linked to Jill by his Wyrd or suchlike.”
“Was he?”
“I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t read his soul.” All at once Salamander looked rueful. “Truly, I must have let my rage, wrath, and righteousness override my reason. I kept seeing him as some of half-human monster, not as a man at all.”
“Valandario’s been telling you and I have been telling you that dweomer demands that a man keep his feelings under control. Do see now what we mean? Ye gods!”
“You have my true and humble apologies, O master. Here, since I’ve seen Perryn, I can scry him out whenever you or Liddyn need my aid.”
“And doubtless we will. He’s got to be caught.”
“True enough. I wasn’t thinking. It was just seeing our Jill so . . . well, so broken and so shamed. It ached my heart.”
“It aches mine, too.” Nevyn realized then that part of his anger at Salamander was only a spillover from his rage at what had happened. “I only wish I could come join you. If you’re riding south, maybe I will. It depends on how things go here.”
“Where are you, by the by?”
Nevyn managed a laugh.
“My turn for the apologies. I’m in the gwerbret’s dun in Aberwyn.”
“Ye gods! I’m surprised Rhys will let you cross his threshold.”
“Oh, he bears me no particular ill will. Lady Lovyan asked me to come with her and pretend to be a legal councillor. She’s going to try one last time to get Rhys to recall Rhodry.”
“No doubt the hells will melt first.”
“No doubt. On the other hand, Rhys loves Aberwyn, and he might do what’s best for her in the end.”
When Salamander looked profoundly skeptical, Nevyn sighed in agreement. Being stubborn was a crucial part of a noble-born man’s honor, and Rhys, like all Maelwaedds, would never betray his.
After finishing his talk with Salamander, Nevyn went to the open window and leaned on the sill to look out. From his chamber high up in the broch, he could see the gardens, a long reach of lawn lit with a hundred tiny oil lamps, where the ladies of the court were having an evening entertainment. Minstrels played, and the noble-born danced among the flickering lights. He could hear them laughing, half out of breath, as they circled round, stamping and slapping their feet in time to the harps and wooden flutes. Ah, my poor Jill, he thought, will you ever be as happy as they again?
His anger came close to choking him, a cold fury with Perryn, with Rhys, stubborn men who insisted on having what they wanted no matter what the cost to anyone else. Rhys was the worse, he decided, because his refusal to recall his brother could plunge Eldidd into open war. And then all those noble lords below would ride in a circling dance of death, this entertainment long forgotten. He pulled the shutters closed so hard that they banged like thunder in the chamber and turned away to pace back and forth. Finally he shook the mood away and turned to the brazier again. When he thought of Rhodry the image appeared in an instant. He was standing, his back to the wall, in a crowded tavern and watching a dice game while he sipped from a tankard. At times, when Rhodry was in a particular melancholy mood, Nevyn could reach his mind and send him thoughts, but tonight he was preoccupied and oddly enough, not at all unhappy. At times he smiled to himself as if remembering a triumph. Most odd, Nevyn thought. Why isn’t he brooding over Jill?
When someone knocked on his door, he canceled the vision. Lady Lovyan came in, her plaid cloak caught at the shoulder with a ring brooch set with rubies winking in the candlelight.
“Have you had enough of the dancing, my lady?”
“More than enough, but I came to see you for another reason. A speeded courier just rode in from Dun Deverry.” She handed him a piece of parchment, tightly rolled from its long sojourn inside a message tube. “This is supposedly for my eyes alone, but I doubt if Blaen would mind you reading it.”
After the long ritual salutations, the letter itself was brief: “I am in Dun Deverry in attendance upon the king. He tells me only that he’s most interested in talking with a certain silver dagger known to you. Would the dragon roar if our liege usurped one of his privileges? By the by, Lord Talidd seems to have found a friend in Savyl of Camynwaen. Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl.”
“Humph,” Nevyn snorted. “Blaen isn’t much of a man at subterfuge.”
“Rhys would have understood that message in an instant if he’d read it.” Lovyan took the letter back and dropped it into the glowing charcoal. The smell of burning leather drifted into the room, and Nevyn hurried to open the shutters. “The news about Savyl of Camynwaen’s troubling. I do not like the idea of Talidd’s finding another gwerbret to plead his case with our liege.”
“No more do I. Ye gods, this is all getting vexed!”
“Do you think Rhys would rebel if the king overrode his decree of exile?”
“Not on his own, but he might be persuaded by men who think they have a chance at the rhan if he died childless.”
“Just so. They’d try to push him into it, anyway. On the other hand, if the king does intervene, then Rhys could stop my nagging tongue without losing any face.”
“True enough. He could bluster about the decree all he wanted in front of the other lords but accept it privately.”
“So I hope. Well, we don’t even know if the king truly plans to recall Rhodry.” She looked at the twisted sheet of parchment ash in the brazier, then picked up the poker and knocked it into dust. “Let us hope that Blaen sends us more news soon.”

Rhodry had no trouble buying passage on a barge that was making the run down to Lughcarn. His horse shared the stern with the barge mules that would pull the boat upriver again; he had a place to sleep in the bow with the four crewmen, who spoke to him as little as possible. The rest of the barge’s hundred feet were laden with rough-shaped iron ingots from the smelters of Ladotyn up in the high mountains. Although the barge rode low in the water, the river current was smooth and steady, and for three days they glided south, while Rhodry amused himself by watching the countryside go by. Once the hills were behind them, the grassy meadows and rich grain fields of Gwaentaer province spread out, green and gold in the late summer sun, flat and seemingly endless.
On the fourth day they crossed the border into Deverry proper, though Rhodry didn’t see much change in the countryside to mark it, Toward noon, the bargemaster told him that they’d make Lughcarn that night.
“It’s the end of our run, silver dagger, but I’ll wager you can find another barge going down into Dun Deverry.”
“Splendid. This is a cursed sight faster than riding, and I’ve got to reach Cerrmor as soon as ever I can.
The bargemaster scratched his beard thoughtfully.
“Don’t know much about the river traffic south, out of the king’s city, but I’ll wager there’s some.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, whether there is or not, you’ll be only about a week’s ride from Cerrmor then.”
By late afternoon, Rhodry saw the first sign that they were coming close to the city. At first he thought he was seeing clouds on the southern horizon, but the steersman enlightened him. A dark pall of smoke hung in the air, smoke from the charcoal ovens, smoke from the charcoal itself as it fed the forges to turn rough iron into Lughcarn steel. By the time they turned into the docks just outside the walled city, his linen shirt was flecked with soot. The docks themselves and the warehouses just beyond were grimy gray. As he rode through the gate in the soot-blackened city walls, Rhodry was thinking that he’d be very glad to leave Lughcarn behind.
Yet it was a rich city under the soot. As he searched for a tavern poor enough to take in a silver dagger, Rhodry passed fine houses, some of them as tall as a poor lord’s broch, with carved plaques over the doors proclaiming the name of one great merchant clan or another. There were temples all over the city, too, some to obscure gods usually relegated to a tiny shrine in the corner of a temple of Bel, some, like the great temple of Bel itself, as large as duns, with gardens and outbuildings of their own. Until he finally found the poor section of town, down by the river on the southern bank, he saw very few beggars, and even among the wooden huts of the longshoremen and charcoal burners he saw almost no one in rags and not a child who looked in danger of starving.
He found a shabby tavern whose owner agreed to let him sleep in the hayloft of the stable out back for a couple of coppers. After he stabled his horse, he went back in and got the best dinner the place offered—mutton stew lensed with grease and served with stale bread to sop up the gravy. He took it to a table where he could keep his back to the wall and looked over the other patrons while he ate. Most of them looked like honest workingmen, gathered there to have a tankard while they chewed over the local gossip, but one of them might have been a traveler like himself, a tall fellow with straight dark hair and skin colored like a walnut shell that bespoke some Bardek blood in his veins. Once or twice, Rhodry caught the fellow looking at him curiously, and when he’d finished eating, the fellow strolled over to him with a tankard in his hand.
“Have you come from the north, silver dagger?”
“I have at that. Why?”
“That’s the way I’m heading. I was wondering what the roads are like up in Gwaentaer.”
Now, that I can’t tell you, because I came down on a barge.”
“A good way to travel when you’re coming downriver, but not so good going up. Well, my thanks, anyway.” Yet he lingered for a moment, as if wondering about something, then finally sat down. “You know, a silver dagger did me a favor once, a while back, and I wouldn’t mind returning it to a fellow member of his band.” He dropped his voice to a murmur. “You look like you hail from Eldidd.”
“I do.”
“You wouldn’t be Rhodry of Aberwyn, would you?”
“I am. Here, where did you hear my name?”
“Oh, it’s all over the south. That’s what I mean about returning a favor. Let me give you a tip, like. It seems that every misbegotten gwerbret has riders out looking for you. I’d head west if I were you.”
“What? By the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what are they looking for me for?”
The fellow leaned closer.
“There’s been a charge laid against you by a Tieryn Aegwyc up in Cerrgonney. He claims you took his brother’s head in battle.”
Instantly, Rhodry understood—or thought he did. No doubt Graemyn had put the blame on him in order to reach a settlement in the peace treaty. After all, who would believe a silver dagger’s word against that of a lord?
“Ye gods! I did no such thing!”
“It’s of no matter to me. But like I say, you’d best be careful which way you ride.”
“You have my thanks from the bottom of my heart.”
All that evening, Rhodry kept one eye on the tavern door. If that charge stood up in a gwerbretal court, he would be beheaded as the holy laws demanded. Fortunately, his years on the long road had taught him many a thing about avoiding trouble. He could no longer ride the barges south, not when they could be called to the bank at any point by the king’s guard and searched. He would have to slip south on back roads and, of course, lie about his name. Cerrmor itself was big enough so that he’d be able to stay unknown for at least a day or two. Once he found Jill, he’d have a witness on his side. Besides, he reminded himself, Nevyn’s there too. Even a gwerbret would listen when the old man spoke.
In the morning, he rode out the east gate to plant a false trail. Much later, when it was too late, he realized that Tieryn Benoic would never have been party to such a falsehood.

“Someone worked you over good and proper, lad,” said Gwel the leech. “Who was it?”
“Oh, er, ah, well,” Perryn mumbled. “A silver dagger.”
“Indeed? Well, it’s a foolish man who earns a silver dagger’s wrath.”
“I . . . er . . . know that now.”
In the polished mirror hanging on the wall of the leech’s shop, Perryn could see his face, still blue, green, and swollen. “You should have had this broken tooth out long before this,” Gwel said.
“True-spoken, but I couldn’t ride until a couple of days ago. He broke some of my ribs, too.”
“I see. Well, you give silver daggers a wide berth after this.”
“You have my sworn word on that.”
Having the tooth pulled was more painful than having it broken, since it took much longer, and the only painkilller the leech could offer him was a goblet of strong mead. It was some hours before Perryn could leave the leech’s shop and stagger back to his inn on the outskirts of Leryn. He flopped down on the bed in his chamber and stared miserably at the ceiling while his mind circled endlessly round and round like a donkey tied to a mill wheel: what was he going to do? The thought of returning to Cerrgonney to face his uncle’s scorn made him feel physically sick to his stomach. And there was Jill. It seemed as the days went by that he loved her more than ever, that he’d never appreciated what he had until he’d lost it. Thinking that most men were no different about those they loved was no consolation. If only he could talk to her, beg her to let him explain, tell her how much he loved her—he was sure she would listen, if only he could get her alone, if only he could get her away from that fellow with the terrifying stare and the even more terrifying dweomer. If only. He didn’t even know which way they’d gone.
Or could he find her? In his muddled state, half mad with pain and the aftermath of the leech’s mead, he found himself thinking of her as his heart’s true home, and with the thought came the pull, the sharp tug at his mind that had always shown him the way to other homes. Slowly, minding his aching jaw, he sat up on the bed and went very still. Truly, he could feel it: south. She’d gone south. He wept, but this time in rising hope, that he could track her down, follow her along until he had a chance alone with her, and somehow—oh, by great Kerun himself—steal her back again.

“Now this is passing strange,” Salamander announced. “Rhodry’s still heading south, but by the ears of Epona’s steed, why is he taking every rotten cow path and village lane instead of riding on the king’s good roads?”
Jill turned to look at him. They were sitting on the bow of a river barge, and Salamander was using the foaming, sun-flecked waters as a focus for scrying. Since she still was seeing with power, the water seemed like solid, carved silver, but she could remind herself now that what she was seeing was only illusionary. She refused to believe that she was seeing a hidden reality no matter how often Salamander insisted on it.
“Does he seem to be looking for a hire?”
“Not in the least, and I’ve been watching him for two days now. It seems that he knows where he’s going, but he’s being cursed careful on the way.” With an irritable toss of his head, he looked away from the river. “Well, I’ll spy out the esteemed brother again later. How are you feeling this morn?”
“A lot better. At least things are holding still most of the time.”
“Good. Then my unpracticed cure is actually working.”
“You have my heartfelt thanks, truly.”
For a while she idly watched the southern horizon, where Lughcarn’s smoke hung like a tiny cloud. She wished that she could simply forget about Perryn, that Salamander had some magic that would wipe her mind clean of his memory, but she knew that the shame she felt would nag at her for years. She felt as unclean as a priestess who’d broken her vows and was somehow to blame, too, for her abduction. If she’d only told Rhodry, or called to Nevyn earlier, or—the “If only’s” ran on and on.
“From the hiraedd in your eyes,” Salamander said abruptly, “I think me you’re brooding again.”
“Oh, how can I not brood? It’s all well and good to chase after Rhodry, but I imagine he’ll only curse me to my face when we find him.”
“Why? You were no more at fault than one of the horses Perryn stole.”
She merely shook, her head to keep tears away.
“Now, here, Jill, my turtledove. Your mind’s back, you can think again. Let me tell you somewhat. I’ve been thinking about our horse-stealing lord, and I’ve talked with Nevyn, too. There’s somewhat cursed peculiar about that lad. He has what you might call a wound of the soul, the way he pours out his life at will.”
“But I’m the one who fell right into his wretched arms. Ah, ye gods, I never dreamt that I was as weak-willed as some slut of a tavern lass.”
Salamander growled under his breath.
“Haven’t you listened to one blasted word I said? It’s not a weak will. You were ensorceled, dweomer-bound and dweomer-muddled. Once his life force swept over you, you had no will of your own, only his will. All his lust ran to you like water through a ditch.”
For a moment she wanted to vomit as she remembered how it felt to have him smile at her in his particular way.
“Why do you call it a wound?” she said.
“Because it’s going to kill him, sooner or later.”
“Good. I only wish I could be there to watch.”
“And no one expects you to feel differently, my delicate little lass. But can’t you see, Jill? You’re as blameless as if he’d tied you down and raped you by force.”
“Ah ye gods, and that’s what I hate most. I felt so beastly helpless!”
“You were helpless.”
“Oh, true enough. It’s a cursed hard thing to admit.”
“Boils need lancing, on the other hand.”
When she threw a fake punch his way, he smiled.
“Truly, you’re coming back to your old self. But don’t you see the curious thing? Given that Perryn has no true dweomer, then where by all the hells does this power come from? What gave him the wound?”
“As much as I hate to talk about the worm-rotted bastard, I’ll admit the question’s of some interest.”
“Of great interest, especially to Nevyn. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no answer.”
“Well, if anyone can find it, it’s Nevyn.”

“Precisely. Especially once he gets his hands on him.”
“Is he planning on hunting Perryn down?”
“Not truly. I’ve been waiting to tell you this until you were stronger, but I think you can bear it now. Perryn’s been following us.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Salamander caught her hand and held it between both of his.
“You’re in no danger now, none at all.”
“Not now, maybe, but what about when we’re out on the roads again, following Rhodry?”
“By then Perryn will be on his way to Eldidd under armed guard. Here, there’s a dweomerman at court named Lord Madoc. Have Perryn arrested as soon as he enters the city, then send him to Nevyn. From what you told me, that rambling scribe in our lordling’s saddlebags is more than enough reason for the king’s wardens to take him under arrest.”
“So we’re going to Dun Deverry?”
“We are. And we may not have to leave it, either. Do you know Rhodry’s cousin Blaen of Cwm Peel?”
“I do.”
“The good gwerbret’s at court at the moment. Nevyn wants us to speak with him. It seems that the king’s sent out the word that he wants to see Rhodry. Apparently the various gwerbrets are keeping watch for him, and when they find him, they’ll send him straight to Dun Deverry.”
“The king? What—”
“I don’t know, but I think me we can guess. The king knows Rhys won’t be getting any more heirs for Aberwyn.”
“Recall.”
“Just that. So soon enough, Jill, you’ll be having a splendid wedding.”
“Oh, will I now? You sound like a village idiot. Think! They’re never going to let the heir to the most important rhan in Eldidd marry a silver dagger’s bastard. The best I could hope for is being his wretched mistress again, living in his court and hating his wife. Well, if he even wants me anymore. What do you think this is, one of your tales?”
“I have the distinct and revolting feeling that I was thinking just that. Jill, please, forgive me.”
She merely shrugged and watched the farmland gliding by. A herd of white cattle with rusty-red ears were drinking from the river, watched over by a lad and two dogs.
“Do you forgive me?” he said at last.
“I do, and my apologies, too. I’m all to pieces still.”
“So you are. After you’ve baited our trap for Perryn, you could just ride away without seeing Rhodry, if you wanted.”
“Never. Maybe he’ll curse me to my face, but I want to tell him that I always loved him.”
Salamander started to speak, but she covered her face with her hands and wept.

The king’s palace in Dun Deverry was enormous, six broch towers joined by a sprawling complex of half-brochs, surrounded by outbuildings, and protected by a double ring of curtain walls. As an honored guest, Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl, had a luxurious suite high up in one of the outer towers, so that he had a good view of the gardens that lay between the pair of walls. In his reception hamber were four chairs with cushions of purple Bardek velvet well as a table and a hearth of its own. Although Blaen cared little for such luxuries as things in themselves, he appreciated them as marks of the king’s favor. Besides, his wife, Canyffa, was accompanying him on this trip, and he liked to see her surrounded by comfort. A tall woman with dark hair and doelike brown eyes, Canyffa was as calm as he was excitable. Although their marriage had been of the usual arranged sort, Blaen privately considered that he’d been exceptionally lucky in his wife. At moments, he could even admit to her that he loved her.
This particular morning Canyffa had been called to wait upon the queen in Her Majesty’s private chamber—a signal honor, but one that had come her way before. Blaen perched on the window-sill in their bedchamber and watched as she dressed with special care. After one of her serving women laid out several dresses on the bed, she sent the lass away and studied the choices, finally picking a modest one of dove-gray Bardek silk, a color that showed off the reds and whites of her husband’s clan’s plaid to advantage.
“I think Gwerbret Savyl’s wife is going to be attending the queen this morning as well,” she remarked. “I assume that my lord would like me to keep my ears open.”
“Your lord would like naught better, truly. What’s the wife like, anyway?”
Canyffa considered before answering.
“A weasel, but a lovely one. I gather that they’re well suited.”
“In weaselhood, perhaps. No one would call Savyl lovely. Cursed if I know why he’s sticking his oar in this particular stream! Camynwaen’s a long way from Belglaedd. What use can Talidd possibly be to him?”
“I believe they’ve got blood kin in common, but still, the point’s well taken, my lord. I shall see if I can cultivate the lovely Lady Braeffa.” She paused for a quick smile. “But if I’m going to sacrifice myself this way, I shall expect a handsome present from our Rhodry when he’s recalled.”
“Some of the finest Bardek silver, no doubt. I’ll make sure he honors you properly. Well—if we can get him recalled, anyway.”
While Canyffa was off with the queen, Blaen had a guest of his own, a powerful man who was worth another sort of cultivation.
He had his page fetch a silver flagon of mead and two glass goblets, then sent the lad away. The gwerbret filled the glasses with his own hands and gave one to his guest, who took an appreciative sip. The recently ennobled Lord Madoc, third equerry to the king, was a slender man of about forty, with neatly trimmed blond hair barely touched with gray, and humorous blue eyes. He was also, or so it was said. Nevyn’s nephew. Indeed? Blaen thought to himself. But I’ll wager he’s another sorcerer, nephew or not. Since he’d been a successful horse breeder in Cantrae province before his recent court appointment, Madoc certainly did his job well, and he had a plain yet decent sort of manners that allowed him to fit into the court as smoothly as any minor lord—if not more so. Yet, every now and then, there was something about the way he looked or smiled that implied that the power and pomp of the court failed to impress him.
“My thanks for the invitation to visit you. Your Grace,” Madoc said. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Simple hospitality, in a way. I know your uncle well.”
“Of course. I had a letter from him recently. He’s quite well.”
“Splendid. Is he still in Eldidd?”
“He is, Your Grace. Lovyan, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, has taken him into her service.”
I’ll just wager, Blaen thought to himself. More like he’s taken her into his, whether she knows it or not.
“That’s good news,” he said aloud. “Our Nevyn’s getting a bit old to travel the roads with a mule.”
“His health’s a marvel, isn’t it, Your Grace? But then my mother is still alive and sharp as a sword, and her past seventy.”
“Let’s hope the gods grant that you inherit their stamina, then.” Blaen gave him a friendly grin. “Lovyan’s kin to me, of course, my mother’s sister.”
“So I’d heard, Your Grace, but then, there’s been quite a bit of talk of late of your cousin Rhodry.”
“No doubt. Trying to keep a secret at court is generally a waste of time. The gossip started buzzing, I’ll wager, the moment our liege summoned me here.”
“A bit sooner than that, truly.” Madoc shook his head in mock sadness. ”The first rumors, Your Grace, were that the king might summon you.”
“I’ll wager you, know, then, that our liege is looking for my scapegrace cousin.”
“I do, at that, and the gossip is that the king means to override his sentence of exile.”
“Well, I can’t really tell you if that’s true or not. I haven’t been worn to any secrets, mind—our liege hasn’t told me, that’s all. I’ll guess that he’s not sure yet.”
“Most like, Your Grace. Overriding a gwerbret’s decree is naught to be done lightly.”
“Just so.” Blaen paused for a long swallow of mead. “But curse it all, the king can’t do one thing or the other until Rhodry’s been found.”
“Still no news, Your Grace?”
“Not a shred. By every god and his wife, what’s wrong with those packs of idiots that the gwerbrets call riders? The kingdom’s big, sure enough, but they should have found one silver dagger by now.”
“So you’d think, Your Grace.” For the briefest of moments, Madoc looked troubled. “I truly thought they would have tracked him down quite quickly.”
“So did I.” Here was the crux, and Blaen paused briefly. “In fact, I was wondering if perhaps you’d help with the hunt.”
“Me, Your Grace? Well, I’d certainly do anything that my duties here allow, but I’m not sure what I could do.”
“I’m not truly sure either, but I suspect a man known as Nevyn’s nephew might see things hidden from others.”
Madoc blinked twice, then smiled.
“Ah, Your Grace. You know about the old man’s dweomer, then.”
“I do. He went out of his way to let me know, last summer, it was. He seemed to find it strangely easy to see things a long way away.”
“So he can, Your Grace. Let me be blunt. If I could scry Rhodry out, I would, but I’ve never seen him in the flesh, and so I can’t.”
Blaen had a gulp of mead to hide his surprise. He’d been expecting a lot of fencing before Madoc admitted the truth, but here the man had just spat it out.
“I see,” Blaen said at last. “Pity.”
“It is. I may be able to get you news some other way. His Grace is right. Things are growing worrisome. Rhodry really should have been found by now.”
“Just so. Do you know what my worst fear is? That some of the men whose clans stand to inherit Aberwyn when Rhys dies may have taken steps to have the legitimate heir removed.”
“Ye gods! Would they stoop so low?”
“Aberwyn is one of the richest rhans in the kingdom, and it’s going to grow richer. Just a year ago the king gave the city a more liberal charter. One of the terms was that Aberwyn would have a share in the royal monopoly on trade with Bardek.”
Madoc nodded, a grim little smile twisting his mouth.
“His Grace’s point is well taken. Well and good, then. If His Grace will excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
Blaen was expecting Madoc to leave the chamber, but instead he went to the window and looked up at the sky, where white clouds billowed and tore on the edge of a summer storm. He stood there while Blaen downed two more goblets of mead and wondered what the man was doing; finally he turned back, looking troubled.
“Rhodry’s almost to Drauddbry, and he seems to be traveling south. He’s bought himself a second horse to make speed. It would appear that he’s heading for Cerrmor.”
“I wonder what they want in Cerrmor.”
“They, Your Grace?”
“Well, isn’t Jill with him?”
“My apologies, Your Grace. I forgot you wouldn’t know. He and Jill were separated by an unfortunate turn of events. She’s following along after him with a friend, a gerthddyn who gallantly offered to escort her. The last I heard, they were coming to Dun Deverry to beg your aid.”
“Which they’ll have, of course.” Blaen considered for a moment. “Have you ever met my cousin or his woman?”
“I’ve not, Your Grace.”
“They match each other like a pair of fine boots. If Rhodry’s going to inherit Aberwyn, I’d rather see Jill beside him than the noble-born sheep his mother would pick for him.”
“But isn’t she common-born?”
“She is, but details like that have been arranged away before. I’ll have to think on it.”
Several hours later, it occurred to Blaen that he implicitly believed what Madoc had told him. I’ve seen dweomer before, he reminded himself, but still he shuddered. What had Madoc been reading in the cloudy sky?

Thanks to the rain, the bargemen had hung canvas across the bow of the barge, an imperfect shelter but better than none at all. Jill wrapped her cloak around her tightly and watched Salamander staring at the foaming water rushing by. Every now and then his mouth would frame a silent word or two. By then, her sight was nearly back to normal. The water was merely water; Salamander no longer changed color to reflect what he was feeling. There was only a certain vividness to colors, a certain urgency to patterns of line and shape, to remind her of the splendors she had seen when she’d been bathed in forbidden power. With a grudging self-mockery, she had to admit that in a way she was sorry to lose that dangerous beauty. Finally Salamander turned to her to whisper.
“I’ve just been talking with Lord Madoc. He wanted to know where I’d last scried Rhodry out so he could tell Blaen. Not that it’ll do much good, truly. A speeded courier still couldn’t catch up with him.”
“True enough, but the courier could tell the gwerbret in Cerrmor to watch out for him.”
“If he stays in Cerrmor.”
Jill raised her hands in a gesture of frustration. She was wishing that she hadn’t taught Rhodry the ways of the long road so well. For days now he’d slipped through the net of riders looking for him like a fox through a hedgerow.
“Well, we’ll be in Dun Deverry tomorrow,” Salamander said. “And we can talk with Blaen directly.”
“Good. You know, in spite of everything, I’m really looking forward to seeing the king’s city. I’ve wandered over this kingdom since I was eight years old, but I’ve never been there. There aren’t any hires for silver daggers in the king’s own lands.”
All at once the gray gnome popped into being, not a foot away from her. When she held out her hands to it, it hesitated, screwing up its face at her.
“Oh, here, little one! What have I done to make you so angry with me?”
It held out for only a moment longer, then threw itself into her. She hugged it tight.
“I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me. I’ve missed you.”
Smiling, it reached up to pat her cheek.
“We’ll be back with Rhodry soon, with any luck. Have you visited d him? Is he well?”
It nodded yes to both questions, snuggling against her like a cat.
“I wish I knew where he was going.”
The gnome looked up and pointed at her.
“He’s following me?”
Again it nodded yes, but so indifferently that she wasn’t sure if it had truly understood. Salamander had been watching all of this closely.
“Interesting and twice interesting,” he pronounced. “But I wonder what it means.”

Although the leech advised Perryn to stay in Leryn for at least five days to recover from the beating, he left town as soon as he could possibly ride. Once he’d tuned his mind to Jill, her presence ached him like another wound, drawing him after her. Yet his longing was tempered with fear, of the strange fellow with the moonbeam pale hair who had taken her away. As he thought things over, he wondered if he had somehow dreamt that terrifying scene where he’d seen clouds of colored light and glowing swords. Every time he tried to convince himself that he’d been dreaming, he came up against the inescapable fact that Jill was gone. He simply refused to admit that she ever would have left him of her own free will; there had to be another man involved, and him a powerful one. Although most people in the kingdom dismissed tales of dweomer, Perryn had always instinctively believed they were true, that indeed there was a thing called dweomer and that with it men could work marvels. Now, to his very cold comfort, he’d been proven right. His one consolation in all this was that if he didn’t have Jill, neither did Rhodry.
Three days’ ride brought him to Gaddmyr, a large, prosperous town behind a double ring of stone walls. Although he would have preferred to avoid the town entirely, he was too low on provisions. Normally he hated being in towns, packed in with a lot of smelly, sweaty people, bound up in their petty human concerns like pigs in a sty, but that night he found it a certain comfort to sit in the tavern room of a shabby inn with human beings around him to distract him from his constant, aching longing for Jill. Out in the forest, he would have missed her constantly; there, he could drink down strong ale and try to forget her. When the tavernman came by to ask him if he’d be spending the night, on impulse he said that he would.
“But, er, ah, I don’t truly want to share a chamber with someone. Could I, oh, ah, sleep out in the hayloft?”
“No reason why not. Plenty of room out there.”
Perryn got himself another tankard of ale and found a seat in an out-of-the-way corner. Although he was planning on simply drinking himself so blind that he’d be unable to think, the tavern lass hanged his mind. She was a round-faced little thing, with dark hair and knowing dark eyes, and a smile that promised a few nteresting hours if not much more. Perryn decided that she was a much better way to distract himself from thoughts of Jill than a hangover would be. He chatted with her for a few minutes, asked her name, which was Alaidda, and found, as he’d expected, that she was utterly cold to him. When she turned to go, he gave her one of his smiles. Although he’d never understood what he was doing the smile worked as it always did. Alaidda stared at him, her lips half parted, her eyes stunned as she lingered beside him. When he smiled again, she cast a nervous glance at the tavernman, then came much closer.
“And is the innkeep going to mind if you talk a bit with a customer?”
“Oh, he won’t, as long as it’s just talk.”
“What are you, then? His daughter?”
“Hah! Far from it.”
“Indeed?” Perryn paused for another longing smile. “So—part of your hire is keeping his bed warm.”
Alaidda blushed, but she moved closer still, until her full breasts were brushing his arm. He smiled yet again and was rewarded by seeing her eyes go all dreamy as she smiled in return. When Perryn saw that the tavernman was engrossed in conversation with a pair of merchants, he risked laying his hand on her cheek.
“He doesn’t look like much of a man to me. A lass like you could use a little better company of a night. I’m sleeping out in the hayloft, you see. Out of . . . er, well . . . out of the way. I could go out there right now.”
“I could follow in a bit, but I can’t stay long.” She giggled in an drunken way. “But then, it won’t take long.”
With another giggle, Alaidda hurried away to the kitchen. Perryn lingered long enough to finish his ale and allay the tavernman’s suspicions, then slipped out to the hayloft. Since the lass had something to hide, he didn’t take a candle lantern. He found his gear in his horse’s stall, hauled it up the ladder, and stumbled around in the dark until he got the blankets laid out and off. As he sat waiting in the mounded hay, he began to wonder why he was even bothering with this seduction. No woman would ever match his Jill. The thought of her brought him close to tears, but in a few minutes he was distracted by the sound of Alaidda climbing the ladder. He went to meet her and kissed her before she got any thoughts of changing her mind.
“Oh ye gods!” She sounded honestly troubled. “I hardly know what’s wrong with me, running after you like this.”
“Naught’s wrong. Come lie down with me, and I’ll show you why you did.”
Meekly she let him take her to his blankets. At first she was shy in his arms, but with every kiss he gave her, he could feel not only a growing sexual tension, but a power, a strange dark feeling that rose from deep within and flooded him until it was almost more demanding than the sexual force. As the power grew, she responded to it, whimpering in his arms at every caress. Finally she caught his hand.
“I don’t have time to take my dress off. Just pull it up, and now. Please?”
As soon as they were finished, she gave him one last kiss and a sincere confession that she wished she could stay all night, then hurried back to her jealous man. By then, Perryn was so exhausted that he was glad she was gone. He fell onto his blankets and stared up into a strange light-shot darkness that revolved slowly around him. When he tried to close his eyes, the feeling of motion persisted, so strong that he wanted to vomit; he opened his eyes in a hurry. He could feel cold sweat running down his back and chest, and his trembling lips felt bloodless and cold. Although he wanted to get up and go ask for help in the tavern, he knew that he could never climb down the ladder without breaking his neck. He could only lie there, gripping the straw under him, and pray that he wasn’t dying.
Panic hit him like waves slapping a pier in a storm. He found himself remembering the dweomerman who’d taken Jill away, the fellow taunting him, then adding one last insult: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses, or it’ll kill you. At the time, Perryn had assumed the fellow meant that some outraged husband would murder him or suchlike, but now he realized the truth. Something was wrong, very gravely wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. Did the dweomerman know? Would he help if he did? Not likely from the hate-filled things the fellow had thrown into his face. In a confused babble, his thoughts went round and round until at last he slept, tumbling into a darkness without dreams.

About two hours before noon on the morrow, Jill finally got her first view of Dun Deverry when the barge tied up at the riverside piers about a half mile to the north. For a long while she stared at the massive walls that curved around the city, rising high above them on its seven hills. Even from their distance she could just pick out the roofs of the king’s palace. Floating high above the towers and snapping in the wind were tiny flecks of yellow that had to be the cloth-of-gold banners of the Wyvern throne.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Salamander said. “Let’s get those horses unloaded and get on our way. Just wait until you see the gates.”
The gates were easily twelve feet high and twenty broad, and they were carved all over with panels of key patterns set round with bands of interlace. The iron banding was stamped as well with rows of interwoven spirals and rosettes. Since the walls were a good twenty feet thick, they walked through a sort of a tunnel and found yet another set of gates at the other end, just as elaborately decorated as the first. Beyond them was a wide public space, planted with oak trees around a central fountain, where a marble wyvern rose from the spray. From this park the narrow streets unwound, spiraling through the houses and up the hills, or twisting down through shops and taverns toward the lake to the west. Everywhere Jill looked she saw people hurrying about on some business or another, or here and there the splendidly dressed riders of the king’s own guard.
Salamander led her to the inn he had in mind, a three-story broch rising in the midst of a grassy garden. She looked at the roof, covered with fine slate, and noticed that the windows glinted with glass.
“We can’t stay here! It’ll cost a fortune!”
“Jill, my miserly turtledove.” The gerthddyn shook his head in mock sadness. “If so, I shall earn a fortune in the tavern room to pay for it. I cannot stand cheap inns. They stink, and the mattresses are crawling with bugs. If I wanted to sleep on a floor, I would have been born a hound.”
“Well, but there’s plenty of decent inns that cost less.”
“Why cavil over a few silvers? Besides, someone is meeting us here.”
As they led their horses up to the gates, a burly young man strolled out. He glanced with some appreciation at Salamander’s beautifully woven cloak and gold-trimmed horse gear, then bowed.
“Is this silver dagger with you, sir?”
“He is. My bodyguard. Have you a chamber on the second floor?”
“We do. I’ll just call the lad to tend to your horses, sir.”
“Splendid. The first things we shall want are baths.”
But they had to postpone this by now necessary luxury for some time. When Jill followed Salamander into the tavern room, which had Bardek carpets on the floor and silver sconces on the walls, she saw a tall man in the plaid brigga of the noble-born pacing back and forth near the hearth. The sight of him wrung her heart, because Blaen looked so much like her Rhodry.
“That’s Gwerbret Blaen!” she said.
“Of course. He’s the one who’s meeting us here.”
“He doesn’t know about . . . well, about Perryn, does he?”
“Of course not! Don’t you think I have any respect for your honor? Leave that part of this to me.”
As they walked over, Blaen saw them and strode to meet them. Although Salamander made him a courtly bow, he barely returned it, instead catching Jill’s hand and giving it a hard squeeze.
“It gladdens my heart to see you, Jill, though it’d gladden it more if Rhodry were with you.” He looked around and found the tavernman staring gape-mouthed at the sight of the gwerbret greeting a silver dagger as an old friend, “Innkeep! Send up a flagon of your best mead to their chambers! And a plate of cold meats, too.”
The chambers justified Jill’s worst fears about expense. Not only were they carpeted, but all the furniture was beautifully polished wood, as heavily carved with interlace as anything in a lord’s dun. The flagon and the plate, both silver, arrived promptly. Blaen handed the servant lass coins worth twice what the refreshments, cost and dismissed her peremptorily.
“Now,” said the gwerbret, pouring himself a gobletful. “Lord Madoc’s told me, gerthddyn, that, you know how to do more things than spin tales, so you can speak freely. Do you know where Rhodry is?’”
“Almost to Cerrmor. In fact . . . ” He paused to glance out the window to check, the sun. “I’d say he’s in Cerrmor at the moment, But why is he there? That, alas, I cannot say, Your Grace.”
“No more can anyone, apparently, curse them all.” Blaen glanced at Jill. “Pour yourself some mead, silver dagger. You’ve had quite a journey. By the way, Jill, how did Rhodry come to leave you behind?”
“Ah, Your Grace, that’s a strange tale indeed.” Salamander broke in smoothly. “Rhodry was on a hire in Cerrgonney, you see.”
“I’d heard somewhat about Benoic and his unlovely kin.”
“Well and good, then. Well, Rhodry had left Jill at the dun of a certain Lord Nedd, the man he rode for, but he never came back for her. Fortunately I came along—I’d been looking for her for reasons of my own, you see. I scried Rhodry out and found him riding south. I refuse to believe that he simply deserted her.”
“No more do I.” Blaen pledged her with his goblet. “Don’t think that for a moment, lass.”
Jill forced out a brave smile.
“So, after much thought, brooding, and ratiocination, I arrived at the conclusion that someone, for reasons most recondite and unknown, was luring Rhodry south. We have a hint or two that he was told that Jill had left him and was coming after her. Be that as it may, he’s been acting like a hunted man all the way south from Lughcarn, while before that he traveled openly. Either somewhat happened to him in Lughcarn, or someone told him a falsehood of some sort.”
“That would stand to reason, truly.” Blaen sighed and drank heavily. “I’ll wager this has somewhat to do with the situation in Aberwyn. You know Rhodry has enemies, don’t you?”
“We do, Your Grace, Has the king made a decision as yet about a recall?”
Jill turned away and busied herself with pouring a goblet of mead. She wished that she could simply drink herself into forgetting that Rhodry was being taken away from her.
“Jill,” Blaen said. “You look heartsick.”
“Why shouldn’t I be, Your Grace? I’m losing my man. Do you think they’ll let Rhodry marry a woman like me?”
“I see no reason why not, once I’ve done ennobling you. I’m settling land in your name over in Cwm Pecl. The gods all know that there’s plenty to spare in my province.”
Your Grace!” Jill could barely speak. “You’re far too generous! How can I—”
“Hush. Listen, Jill, Rhodry’s no weak younger son any longer. Once we get him recalled, he’ll be Aberwyn’s only heir, and that means he’ll be the gwerbret when his black-hearted brother dies. He’ll be in a position to demand the wife he wants, no matter what his mother or the rest of the noble-born think of it.”
Salamander laughed.
“And there you are, my turtledove—an ending exactly like one of my tales.”
“So it seems.”
Jill smiled, because they both wanted her to be pleased, but she felt the dweomer cold down her back. When Blaen launched into a monologue on Eldidd politics, she wandered away to the window and looked down on the garden below. Salamander had told Blaen a pretty tale, sure enough; she could see how it would protect her. If Rhodry wanted nothing more to do with her, everyone would assume that he’d merely tired of her and left, as men so often did to their women. And if he forgave her . . . the thought staggered her, that she, of all lowly commoners, might someday be the wife of a great gwerbret. For a moment she was terrified, thinking of the responsibilities, the power that could be hers. Lovyan would teach me she thought, if Rhodry even wants me anymore, that is.
But as the thought came to her, so did another . . . or not precisely a thought, a feeling, rather, a sudden urgency. Rhodry was in danger. She knew it with complete clarity, that he was in the worst danger of his life and that in this moment of danger he was thinking only of her. She shut her eyes and thought back to him, tried desperately to reach him, to warn, him. Images flickered in her mind, as hazy as those seen when a person is first falling asleep, ever-changing glimpses: Rhodry on a narrow street, Rhodry ducking down an alley when some of the city wardens strolled by. Although the images flickered, the feeling of danger grew until she could barely breathe. He was talking with, someone—he was asking about Nevyn, asking about her—they were lying, saying that she was in Cerrmor, giving him friendly directions—
“Rhodry, don’t go!”
She heard a crash, looked around dazed and realized, that she’d dropped the goblet she was holding. Blaen and Salamander had whirled round, to look at her. She had screamed her warning aloud.
“What by the gods?” Blaen said.
“Rhodry’s in Cerrmor. He’s in danger. I know he is. I saw—I felt it. I tried to warn him.” She tossed back her head and sobbed because she knew that the warning had never reached him. “We’ve got to get to Cerrmor. We’ve got to leave now.”
Blaen set down his goblet and hurried over to pat her shoulder awkwardly as she wept, as if he thought her mind turned weak and childish by grief, but Salamander was taking her warning in dead seriousness. Through her tears she saw him snap his fingers over the charcoal brazier in the corner, then stare intently into the lambent flames. She forced the tears back and wiped her face on her sleeve.
“Ah ye gods!” There was panic in his voice. “I can’t find him! Jill, I can’t scry him out!”
The chamber seemed to swell around her, and the light grew painfully bright. The silver flagon on the table threw off sparks like a fire.
“Call to Nevyn,” she said.
Then Blaen grabbed her and half led, half shoved her into a chair. She slumped back and watched Salamander, bending over the brazier. His tunic seemed to ripple around him as if he stood in a breeze. She was afraid to look at the intricate carpets.
“Jill, do you need a chirurgeon?” Blaen said.
“I don’t, my thanks. It’s just the fear.” She forced herself to raise her head and look him in the face. “Your Grace, don’t you see what this means? Remember Alastyr? If Salamander can’t scry Rhodry out, someone’s hiding him—with dweomer.”

As it danced over the flames, Salamander’s image looked close to tears. Nevyn himself felt a weary sort of rage, cursing himself because he should have seen this danger coming. Had the Lords of Light sent some omen that he’d overlooked? He quite simply didn’t know.
“I can’t find him either,” Nevyn thought.
“Is he dead, then?”
“He can’t be, because Jill would know if he were. When you consider how much she saw of his danger, I think we can trust that she’d feel his death. How soon can you get to Cerrmor?”
“We should arrive tomorrow.”
“Ye gods! What are you going to do, turn into birds and fly?”
“Naught of the sort, truly.” Salamander managed a faint smile. “The king has placed one of the royal riverboats at Blaen’s disposal. We’ll leave soon, and not only will the current be running our way, but we’ll have a crew of rowers. The Belaver runs cursed fast from here to Drauddbry, I’m told.”
“Splendid. Is Blaen going with you?”
“He’s not. The intrigue at court would gripe your very soul, and he doesn’t dare leave. We have letters from him, though, for the gwerbret in Cerrmor. Are you going to join us there?”
“I’ll leave at once. I never dreamt they would go as far as this. Can’t you see what must have happened? Rhodry’s rivals must have hired one of the Bardek blood guilds to dispose of him.”
Salamander’s image, floating above the fire, looked intensely puzzled.
“How would petty lords from Eldidd even know those guilds exist?”
“Well, some merchant or other must have told them, or . . .  I see what you mean. It sounds very farfetched once I say it aloud.”
“Then what’s happened?’
“What indeed? Be very careful until I reach Cerrmor. Ye gods, I’ll have to take a ship! I can’t leave until I’ve spoken with Lovyan, of course, but I can start packing. Her Grace is out hunting with the gwerbret at the moment.”

Down on the Eldidd coast, it was a bright sunny day, although the wind that whipped the silver-and-blue banners of Aberwyn was chilly and the shadows that lay in the great ward of the gwerbret’s dun were positively cold. As she stood beside her horse, Lady Lovyan glanced doubtfully at the sky.
“It might be a bit windy to fly the falcons.”
“Oh, let’s try our luck, Mother,” Rhys said.
He spoke with such forced cheer that she knew this hunting party was merely an excuse to speak with her alone.
“By all means, then. We’ll have a good ride if naught else.”
They mounted and rode out of the dun into the streets of Aberwyn. Behind them came the falconers, with the hooded birds on their wrists, and four men from Rhys’s warband as an escort As they wound their way through the curving streets, the common folk bowed to their overlord, who acknowledged the gesture with an upraised hand. Occasionally—and quite spontaneously—boys and young men cheered him. For all his stubbornness, Rhys was a good ruler, scrupulously fair in his judgments over everyone but his younger brother, and his townsfolk appreciated him for it.
When they left the city, they turned north on the river road that followed the Gwyn, sparkling and full from the summer’s heavy rains. Among the willows and hazels that grew along the water, Lovyan saw a tree or two that were turning yellow.
“It seems that autumn’s coming quite fast this year,” she remarked.
“It does. Well, we’ve had a wretchedly cold summer.” Rhys turned in his saddle to make sure that his men were following at a respectfully far distance behind, then turned her way. “Here, Mother, I’ve got somewhat to ask you. It’s about little Rhodda.”
“Indeed?”
“I was thinking that I might formally adopt the child and legitimize her.”
Lovyan was caught with nothing to say. Rhys gave her an ironic smile that must have cost him dear.
“It’s time I faced the harsh truth of things. I’ll never give Aberwyn an heir.”
“The gwerbretrhyn can’t pass down in the female line.”
“Of course not, but she’ll marry someday, won’t she? Have a husband, maybe a son or two. At least they’ll have some Maelwaedd blood in them.”
“If the Council of Electors accepted her husband as your successor, anyway.”
“There’s precedent for it, hundreds of years of precedent.” He tossed his head in anger. “Besides, at least it’ll give my vassals pause. Ye gods, don’t you think it aches my heart? I know cursed well that every tieryn in Eldidd is already scheming and politicking to get my lands for their son when I die.”
“True-spoken, alas. But you know, my sweet, there’s a much easier solution—”
“I will not recall Rhodry.”
His mouth settled into the tight line she knew so well.
“As His Grace decides, of course, but how can you adopt the child without her father’s permission?”
“Rhodry’s an outlaw. Under the laws she has no father.”
“Very well, then. I’ll think the matter over, since His Grace persists in being as stubborn as a wild boar.”
He merely shrugged the insult away and went back to watching the road in front of him. Lovyan wondered why she even bothered to hint, scheme, and badger to get her youngest son home. Rhys simply couldn’t bear to let Rhodry inherit, she thought. Now, if Rhodry would only get a son on that Jill of his, but there she is, poor lamb, riding all over with him and sleeping out in the rain on the ground, and the Goddess only knows what else. Doubtless her womanly humors are utterly disrupted and—
Suddenly Rhys’s horse went mad. Lovyan could think of it no other way as the black neighed and bucked, then reared, striking out with its forehooves as if at an enemy. Rhys flew forward, caught himself on its neck, then slipped sideways as it bucked again. Although he was a splendid rider, the horse was rearing and pitching in utter panic, and he’d been taken off-guard. She heard his men shouting, heard other hoofbeats, but Rhys’s black twisted, bucked, then slipped and went down, throwing Rhys hard and falling on top of him. She heard a woman screaming, then realized that the voice was hers.
Suddenly the escort was all around her. One man grabbed the bridle of her frightened palfrey and led her away; the others dismounted and rushed to their lord’s side. Back under control, Lovyan gestured at the man holding her horse.
“Ride back to the dun! Bring Nevyn and a cart!”
“My lady.” He made her a half-bow from, the saddle, then galloped off.
Lovyan dismounted and hurried over just as the horse struggled to its feet, its off-fore dangling and broken. One of the riders blocked her way.
“My lady, you’d best not look.”
“Don’t speak nonsense! I’ve tended my share of wounds in my day.”
She shoved him aside and knelt down beside Rhys. He lay so still that at first she thought him dead, but when she touched his cheek, his eyes fluttered open, His face twisted in agony as he tried to speak.
“Whist, whist, little one. Well have Nevyn here soon.”
He nodded, then stared up at the sky, his mouth working in pain. Blood ran down his face from a slash over his eye; she could see that his left leg was broken, probably in several places. Yet she knew that the worst damage might have been done internally where no chirurgeon could heal, not even Nevyn. She could only pray to the Goddess until at last the old man rode up at the gallop, with a wagon rumbling after. Nevyn swung himself down from his horse and ran over.
“Does he live?”
“Barely.”
Lovyan got out of the way and stood with the escort by the side of the road as Nevyn went to work, straightening the leg and roughly splinting it. As he ran his long graceful hands over Rhys’s body, she saw him shaking his head and swearing under his breath, and her heart turned cold. At last Nevyn called the carter to help him lift the injured gwerbret into the wagon. By then, Rhys had mercifully fainted. Lovyan got in with him and cradled his bloody head in her lap. Nevyn watched, his ice-blue eyes unreadable.
“I want the cold truth,” Lovyan said. “Will he die?”
“Well, my lady, I simply don’t know. His Grace is a truly strong man, and he’ll fight for his life, but it’s very grave. A weaker man would be dead already.”
To jostle the injured man as little as possible, they rode slowly back to Aberwyn. Over and over, Lovyan saw the accident in her mind. Why did the horse panic? There wasn’t so much as a mouse running across the road. It had happened like dweomer. Suddenly she went cold all over and called out to Nevyn, who was riding a little behind. He urged his horse up to ride beside the cart.
“Nevyn, this accident was a most peculiar one.”
“The man you sent to fetch me said as much, my lady. May I suggest that we discuss it privately?”
“Of course.” She felt her fear like a hand at her throat. The old man apparently agreed with her sudden insight.
Rhys’s wife, Madronna, met them at the gates. A willowy blond woman, she was pretty in a vacuous sort of way, but now her childlike face was composed by an iron will. Lovyan had to admire her daughter-in-law, who was sincerely fond of her husband.
“His chamber’s prepared,” Madronna said. “How bad is—”
“Bad, truly, but not the end. We’ll nurse him through this between us.”
While the men carried Rhys to the chamber, Lovyan went to her suite, took off her blood-soaked dress, and washed thoroughly. She put on a clean dress, a somber one of gray linen, then looked at herself in a mirror. The face that looked back seemed to have aged years since the morning. She was painfully aware of the deep wrinkles slashed across her cheeks and the numb, half-dead look of her eyes.
“Ah, Goddess, am I to bury another son?’
She laid the mirror down and turned away, knowing that she would do just that, for all Nevyn’s skill with his herbs. Yet she could not cry. She found herself remembering the day her second son was brought home to her, her gentle Aedry, just sixteen that summer, brought home wrapped in a blanket and tied over his horse, killed riding with his father in a war. She stood in the ward and watched while they cut the ropes and brought him down, and she never allowed herself one tear, because she knew the warband was watching, and if she cried at all, she would start screaming like a madwoman. She felt the same now. No matter how furious Rhys made her, he was still her firstborn son.
With a toss of her head, she left the chamber and went down to the great hall. Over on the riders’ side, the men were drinking steadily and saying little, even the ten men of her own that she’d brought as escort. As she walked past, she motioned to her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor. He hurried over to the honor table and knelt at her side.
“Will he live, my lady?”
“I can only hope so, Captain. I need to send a speeded courier to Dun Deverry. The king has to be informed of this. Pick the man you think best and get him ready to go.”
“Done, my lady, but it had best be one of Rhys’s men.”
“For the formality, I suppose you’re right, but I can’t command them.”
“But, my lady, you’re the regent here now.”
“Oh by the gods, so I am! It’s all happened so fast that I can barely think.”
“It would take anyone that way, my lady.” He hesitated, honestly sympathetic, but bound by considerations of rank. Finally he spoke again. “Your Grace, you know that I’ve had my differences with the gwerbret in the past, but it aches my heart to see your grief.”
“My thanks.”
When he looked up, she suddenly remembered Rhodry, and what Rhys’s death might mean. The battle-grim warrior kneeling beside her loved Rhodry like a son, and she knew that Cullyn was as torn as she was. If Rhys died—even if he merely lay ill for months—the king would have the perfect reason to recall his brother, and Rhys would be unable to say a word in protest. She wanted Rhodry home with all her heart, but to have it take this?
“Ah gods.” Her voice sounded like a moan, even to her, and she forced herself to stay in control of her rising tears. “Captain, fetch me a scribe and the captain of Rhys’s warband. We’ve got to get that message to Dun Deverry as soon as ever we can.”

For hours Nevyn worked on the injured gwerbret, but even as he set the broken leg and stitched the bad cut over the eye, he felt his hope receding. Sooner rather than later, Rhys would die. The fall had damaged one of his lungs—Nevyn could hear that by putting his ear to the gwerbret’s chest—but how badly he couldn’t know. The one good sign was that Rhys was not spitting up blood, which would mean that the lung had been punctured by a splinter from one of his many broken ribs. In time, it might heal, though he doubted it. What was worse was the damage to his kidneys. By opening up his second sight Nevyn could see the gwerbret’s aura, and in it the centers of the various vortices of etheric force that correspond to the major organs of the body. Although such a diagnosis was rough, he could tell that something was severely wrong internally, centered on the kidneys. Just how severe, again, he couldn’t say. He knew that time would make it all horribly clear.
Finally he’d done what he could do. Propped up on pillows, Rhys lay gasping for every breath he drew on the enormous bed, with its blue-and-silver hangings, worked all over with the dragon symbol of the rhan. His raven-dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and when he opened his eyes, they were cloudy.
“Will I live?”
“That depends on you to a large degree, Your Grace. Are you going to fight to live?”
Rhys smiled, as if saying that the question was superfluous, then fainted. With a sigh, Nevyn went to the chamber door to let in his wife, who had patiently waited all the long hours. She gave him a tremulous smile, then ran to her husband’s side.
“If he looks the least bit worse, send a page for me immediately, my lady. I’m going down to the great hall to eat.”
“I will, good herbman. My thanks.”
Nevyn came into a somber hall. The warbands ate silently; the servants moved among them without saying a word. Alone at the head of the honor table, Lovyan was picking at a bit of roast fowl, eating a bite, then laying her table dagger down and staring into space. He sat down at her right hand.
“You should try to eat, Your Grace.”
“Of course, but everything tastes like dirt from the stable yard. I’ve sent a messenger off to Dun Gwerbyn to fetch my serving women. I rather feel the need of them.”
“Just so. As regent you’ll have much serious business to attend to.”
A servant came with a trencher of fowl and cabbage, as well as a tankard of ale. Hoping he wouldn’t offend Lovyan, Nevyn set to. He was hungry after his hard afternoon’s work. She choked down a bit of bread like a dutiful child.
“I also sent a speeded courier to Dun Deverry,” she remarked. “He’ll go by ship to Cerrmor, then ride from there.”
“Good, but truly, I think I’ll send a message of my own. The king needs to know of this before . . . as soon as possible, and my messages travel faster than horses.”
“No doubt.” She shuddered like a wet dog. “Tell me the truth, my friend. When you slipped and said “before,” you meant before Rhys dies, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I did. My apologies. It may take weeks, but . . . ”
She nodded, staring at her trencher, then suddenly pushed it away. Although she seemed on the verge of tears, she tossed her head and sat up straight looking at him steadily.
“Let’s lie to his poor little wife,” she said. “Let her have a bit of hope. It’s hard to be widowed, when you’ve only been a wife for a year.”
“So it is, and I agree. Besides, the gods may intervene and let him live. I’ve seen one or two cases where I’d given up hope, only to have the patient recover.”
“Well and good then.” Yet her weary voice implied that such a hope was one that she would deny herself. “And what of that accident? There wasn’t even a fly buzzing round his horse.”
“So I thought, from what your messenger told me.” He hesitated, wondering how much to say. “I’m not truly sure what happened, but I’ve made a few guesses. I suppose that poor beast was put out of its misery?”
“It was. The riders told me that it would have been in agony the whole way back to the dun, so they slit its throat and gave the meat to a nearby farmer.”’
“Well, I doubt if it could have told me much, anyway.”
“Here, can you speak with animals?”
“Not in the least, my lady, I assure you. But I might have done a thing or two and judged its reactions. Well, as I say, doubtless naught would have come of it, anyway. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Most animals have what men call the second sight—that is, they can see the Wildfolk and a few kinds of apparitions. It’s possible that the horse was frightened by malicious Wildfolk or by some sort of vision.”
“A vision? A ghost or suchlike?”
“Or suchlike. There’s never been a report of a ghost or banshee along the river road before, and they’re generally tied to one place.”
“I’ve never heard reports of any other sort of vision along that road either.”
“Just so. I think we can conclude that the vision or the Wildfolk or whatever it was was deliberately sent there.”
“Sent?” Her face went very pale.
“Just that, my lady. I’ll wager that someone used dweomer to try and murder your son. When I find out who he is, then I swear to you, he’ll rue the day he was born.”
“My thanks.” Although she spoke in a whisper, she was calm, the cold, bitter calm of a warrior surveying the field. “You told me that there was evil dweomer working behind Lord Corbyn when he rebelled. I never thought to see a blood feud worked by dweomer, but that’s what this must be, isn’t it? First they try to kill Rhodry, and now they’ve succeeded with Rhys. For some reason they hate the Maelwaedd clan.”
“Ye gods, you’re right enough! And Rhodry is . . . ” He caught himself barely in time. There was no need to burden her with the truth at this particular moment. “Out somewhere on the roads. Well, doubtless the king’s men will find him soon. The gods all know that they have more reason than ever to look for him.”
Lovyan nodded, staring blindly down at her plate. Nevyn got up and went to the fire. He had to tell Salamander immediately that he could no longer come to Cerrmor. He would have to do his best to keep Rhys alive until the king made up his mind to recall Rhodry and instate him as Aberwyn’s heir. He had another piece of information to pass along, too, the grim truth that Lovyan had seen, that the matter had gone far beyond the politicking of Eldidd lords. The dark dweomer was waging war on the Maelwaedd clan.

The king was having his hair bleached. In the midst of his private chamber, Lallyn the Second, high king of all Deverry and Eldidd, sat on a low bench carved with grappling wyverns while the royal barber draped towels around his liege’s shoulders. As an honor to his high rank, Blaen was allowed to kneel at the king’s side and hold the silver tray of implements. Ever since Madoc had come to him with the news, he’d been trying to have a private work with Lallyn, but in all the pomp that surrounded the king, private words were difficult to get. Even though the king sincerely wanted to hear what he had to say, this was the first chance they’d found all evening.
Carefully the barber began packing the king’s wet hair with lime from a wooden bowl. Soon Lallyn would look like one of the great heroes of the Dawntime, with a lion’s mane of stiff, swept-back hair to add further to his six feet of height, Such a hairstyle was a royal prerogative, and, as the king remarked, a royal nuisance, too.
“Blasted lucky, aren’t you, Blaen? Look on our sufferings and be glad you were born a gwerbret’s son.”
“Glad I am, my liege.”
The barber wrapped two steaming-wet towels around the king’s head and fastened them with a circlet of fine gold. “My liege, it will be some few minutes.”
“It’s always more than just a few. You may leave us.”
Bowing, walking backward, the barber retreated to the corridor. Blaen sincerely hoped that the king was going to believe his strange tale.
“Now, Blaen, what’s this urgent news?”
“Well, my liege, do you remember Lord Madoc?”
“The sorcerer’s nephew? Of course.”
“Here! You know that Nevyn’s a sorcerer, my liege?”
Lallyn grinned at him while he adjusted a slipping towel.
“I do, at that. There’s quite a tradition, passed down from king to marked prince, about sorcerers named Nevyn. The name’s something of an honorific, or so my father told me, handed on like the kingship. In times of great need, one Nevyn or another will come to aid the king. I always thought it a peculiar tale and wondered why my father would tell me such a lie—until those gems were stolen, and lo and behold, a Nevyn appeared to return them to me. I prayed to my father in the Otherlands and made my apologies quite promptly, I tell you.”
“I see. Well, then, I trust my liege will believe me when I tell him that Madoc has dweomer, too.”
“Ah, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I’m glad enough to know, but is this what you had to tell me?”
“Not at all, my liege. I’ve learned that dweomermen have ways of sending messages with their thoughts. Madoc came to me earlier with urgent news from Nevyn. He begged me to tell you, because he knew it would be difficult for a man of his rank to gain a private audience with the king, and this has to be kept private for as long as possible. Soon the whole court will know, because a speeded courier’s on the way from Aberwyn, but Nevyn wanted Your Highness to get the news first.”
“I see. And what is this grave matter?”
“Rhys of Aberwyn had a bad fall in a hunting accident today, my liege. They doubt if he’ll live long—an eightnight, perhaps; at the most, a month.”
The king stared at him for a moment, then swore in a way more fitting for a common-born rider than royalty.
“I agree, my liege. You can see why I thought it best that my liege heard this news straightaway.”
“Just so.” The king gingerly settled a slipping towel while he thought things over. “And I’m most grateful to you for it. Eldidd politics are always dangerous.”
“So they are. No doubt my liege needs no reminding that the line of succession in Aberwyn will break as soon as Rhys dies.”
“No doubt. I’m also quite aware how much your exiled cousin means to you, Your Grace. Rest assured that the matter is under my consideration.”
Blaen felt the formal tone of voice like a slap across the face. He was being reminded that no matter how often they hunted or drank together, no matter how easily Lallyn would jest with him when the mood took him, the king was as far above him as he was above the common folk.
“My humble thanks, my liege. Your consideration is all that I’d ever ask for in this matter.”
The king nodded with a glance away.
“Tell the barber that he can come back, will you? I want these towels off and now. I have some serious thinking to do.”
In spite of the king’s return to a more familiar tone, Blaen knew that he’d been dismissed. As he rose and bowed, he was wondering just what Talidd of Belglaedd and his allies had been telling their leige.

“I know Blaen will take good care of him, but I hate to leave Sunrise behind,” Jill said.
“Oh, come now, my turtledove.” Salamander was busy tying shut his saddlebags. “Every lad in the royal stables will be fussing over him, and with luck, we won’t be gone long.”
“I doubt me if we’re going to have that kind of luck.”
He paused, turning to look at her. They were in the inn chamber with their packed gear strewn around them.
“Well? Do you think—”
“I don’t.” He sighed elaborately. “I was merely trying to console.”
There was a brief knocking at the door, and Blaen strode in without waiting for an invitation. With him were two serving lads who immediately began gathering up the gear.
“The galley’s ready,” Blaen announced. “I’ll accompany you down to the docks.”
“His Grace is most kind.” Salamander made him a bow. “And our liege the king as well.”
“Indeed? I’ve found out—or, I should say, my lady found out—exactly why Savyl of Camynwaen is taking a hand in this affair. His younger brother has a slight claim to Aberwyn.”
“Truly?” Jill said. “I never heard Lady Lovyan mention him.”
“Well, it’s not truly the sort of thing my aunt would dwell upon. You see, Rhodry’s father had two bastard daughters with a mistress of his. Savyl’s brother married one of them.”
“Two daughters?” Salamander broke in. “Well, fancy that! Or . . . here, of course. You mean Gwerbret Tingyr.”
“And who else would I be meaning?”
Jill gave Salamander a subtle sidewise kick.
“No one, Your Grace.” Salamander covered smoothly. “I’d merely forgotten the gwerbret’s name.”
“Ah. Well, it’s hard to keep all the noble bloodlines up in mind, truly. Here.” Blaen tossed Salamander an embroidered cloth pouch. “Use this wisely.”
Whistling under his breath, Salamander hefted the pouch and made it jingle.
“From the weight and the sound, Your Grace, there must be a cursed lot of gold in here.”
“As much as I could raise. I intend to get it back from my scapegrace cousin once he’s Aberwyn, mind.”
Although he spoke casually, Jill could hear the tension in his voice, a wondering, perhaps, if he were bankrupting himself to little end. Once again she was overwhelmed by the sheer weight or ruling, the smothering web of obligations and intrigues that overlaid even something as fine as Blaen’s and Rhodry’s love for each other. Salamander made the gwerbret an exaggerated bow.
“We shall do our best to protect His Grace’s investment.” Then he flicked his long fingers and made the pouch disappear, seemingly into nothingness.
By then it was just sunset, and long shadows filled the curving streets. When they reached the wooden wharves to the south of the city, the sky had turned a velvet blue-gray with twilight. Over the grassy riverbanks bold swallows swooped and twisted. Riding low in the water some little way from the masses of barges and skiffs was the royal galley, about forty feet long and sleek as a ferret. There were red shields painted with the royal gold wyvern at every oarlock, and the men who lounged at the oars were wearing white shirts embroidered with the wyvern badge and long lines of interlace.
“The king’s elite?” Salamander raised an eyebrow.
“The same,” Blaen said. “I can’t tell you, though, if our liege is doing this for Rhodry’s sake or mine.”
“Surely the king doesn’t want to see Eldidd at war?” Salamander said. “Because if Rhodry doesn’t return, war is what we’ll have. Each clan will be accusing the others of murdering the rightful heir and claiming the rhan for themselves.”
“I’m sure our liege knows that as well as you do.” Yet Blaen sounded oddly stiff, a bit frightened, perhaps. “I’m not privy to all his thoughts, gerthddyn.”
At the sight of Blaen, the galley’s captain hopped to the pier and hurried over with a bow. While the servants loaded the gear aboard, Jill turned away and watched the smooth-flowing river. Desperately she tried to scry Rhodry out, but her untrained mind could show her nothing. All at once she felt another fear and involuntarily yelped aloud.
What is it?” Salamander said.
“Perryn. He’s close by. I know it.”
She spun around, half expecting to see him in the crowd behind them, but there was no one there but curious passersby and a few longshoremen. Yet up in the velvet sky it seemed to her that she saw a long tendril of mist, reaching down toward her. Salamander saw it, too. When he threw up one hand and muttered a few words, the tendril vanished.
“He’s in town, all right. Madoc will be taking care of that, Jill. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Still, can’t we get on that wretched boat and get out of here?”
“This very minute. There’s the captain signaling us aboard.”

Perryn paused just inside the south gate of the city. Just a moment ago he’d felt Jill’s nearness; now the trail had suddenly gone cold. His dapple gray stamped impatiently and tossed its head. When they’d ridden into the vast city earlier that afternoon, the gray had nearly panicked. It had taken all of Perryn’s horse empathy to calm it, and even so, it was still restless.
“Here, you! Are you going in or out? It’s time to close the gates.”
Perryn turned to see two city guards hurrying toward him, one of them carrying a torch. The cavernous gateway was already quite dark.
“Oh, er, ah, well . . . in, I think.”
“Then don’t just think—move, man!”
As Perryn obediently began to lead his horses toward the inner gate, the guard carrying the torch raised it high to shine the light full on his face.
“Your name wouldn’t be Lord Perryn of Alobry, would it, now?”
“It is at that. Why?”
The torch bearer whistled sharply, three loud notes. The other guard grabbed Perryn’s shoulder with his left hand and slammed his fist hard into his stomach, so quickly that Perryn had no time to dodge. He doubled over, retching, as two more guards ran up and grabbed his horses’ reins from his helpless fingers.
“Good work! You’ve got the weasel Lord Madoc wanted, right enough.”
“Talks like a simpleton, his lordship told me, and he must be one, too, to answer to his name like that.”
Although the world still danced around him, Perryn forced himself to raise his head and look in time to see a guard rummaging through his saddlebags. With a bark of triumph, he held up the rambling scribe. When Perryn made a feeble grab at it, another guard slapped him across the face.
“None of that, horse thief. The only thing this scribe’s going to write for you now is your death writ.”
They disarmed him, bound his hands behind him, then pushed him along through the streets. Those few people still out at night stopped to stare and jeer when the guards announced that he was horse thief. At one point they met a slender young man, wearing the plaid brigga of the noble-born, who was followed by a page with a torch.
“A horse thief, is he?” the young lord said. “When will you be hanging him?”
“Don’t know, my lord. We’ve got to have the trial first.”
“True enough. Well, no doubt I’ll hear of it. My mistress is quite keen on hangings, you see.” He gave the guard a conspiratorial wink. “She finds them quite . . . well, shall we say exciting? And so I take her to every single one.”
At last they reached the guard station at the foot of the royal hill and turned Perryn over to the men there, though the man who’d first recognized him stayed to escort him into the royal compound itself. By then Perryn had recovered enough from the blows to feel the terror: they were going to hang him. There was no use lying to the king’s officers; the rambling scribe would hang him on its own. Although at one point he did have a sentimental pang that he’d never see Jill again, at the root he was too terrified to care much about that one way or another. What counted was that he was going to die. No matter how hard he tried to pull himself together and face his death like a warrior, he kept trembling and sweating. When his guards noticed, they laughed.
“You should have thought about this rope when you were putting one on another man’s horses, you cowardly little bastard.”
“There must be a bit of fun to being hanged, lad. Why, a man gets hard, then spews all over himself when the noose jerks.”
They kept up the jests the entire time that they were dragging him through the warren of sheds and outbuildings that surrounded the king’s many-towered broch complex. In the flickering torchlight Perryn was completely disoriented. By the time that they shoved him into a tiny cell in a long stone building, he had no idea of which way north lay, much less of the layout of the palace grounds.
The cell was about eight feet on a side, with fairly clean straw on the floor and a leather bucket, swarming with flies, in one corner. In the door was a small barred opening that let in a bit of light from the corridor. Perryn stood next to it and tried to hear what the guards were saying, but they moved down along the corridor and out of earshot. He heard: “Of course Lord Madoc’s interested in horse thieves; he’s an equerry, isn’t he?” before they were gone. All at once his legs went weak. He slumped down into the straw before he fell and covered his face with his hands. Somehow or other, he’d offended one of the powerful royal servitors. He was doomed.
Perryn had no idea of how long he’d sat there before the door opened. A guard handed him a trencher with half a loaf of bread and a couple of slices of cold meat on it.
“Pity that we had to take your dagger away, lad.” His smile was not pleasant, “Just use your teeth like a wolf, eh? In the morning one of the undercouncillors will be along to see you.”
“What for?”
“To tell you about your rights, of course. Here, they caught you red-handed, but you’ll still get a trial, and you’ve got the right to have your kin by your side. Just tell the fellow, and he’ll get a herald to them.”
“I don’t want them to know. Ah ye gods, I’d rather die slowly in pieces than look my uncle in the eye over this.”
“Pity you didn’t think of that before, eh? Well, I’m sure it can all be arranged. If you don’t want your kin here, no need to waste the herald’s time.”
The warder handed in a tankard of ale, then locked the door. Perryn heard him whistling as he walked away.
Although, the food and drink were unexpectedly decent, Perryn ate only to pass the time. The thought of Benoic and Nedd learning of his shame had taken his appetite away. Sooner or later they would, too, no matter whether they were there to watch him hang or not. He thought of the warder’s words, that he might have thought of all this before, and wept a few tears for the truth of it.
“But I didn’t really steal them. They followed me, didn’t they?’
“Only in a manner of speaking.”
He yelped and leapt to his feet, scattering the bread into the straw. There was a man standing on the other side of the door, a pleasant-looking fellow with blond hair and blue eyes. The sheer bulk of the elaborate embroidery on his shirt proclaimed him a member of the king’s household.
“I’m, Lord Madoc. Guards, bring him. out.”
“Are you going to hang me right now?”
“Naught of the sort. I want a few words with you, lad.”
They bound his hands, then marched him along to the wardroom, a long, narrow chamber with an oppressively low ceiling. Down one wall was a row of sconces, and lit torches; down the other, a narrow table spread with the tools of the torturer’s trade.
“I’ll confess,” Perryn bleated. “You don’t have to do anything to me.”
“Splendid, but I wasn’t planning on having you tortured. I want look at you. Guards, tie him to the wall; then you can get back to your dinners.”
“My thanks, Your Lordship.” The guard captain made him a bow. “Do you have any idea of when he’ll go to trial?”
“Oh, he won’t be tried here. Our liege is remanding him to Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn. This little idiot raped the daughter of one of the gwerbret’s highly regarded subjects, and under Eldidd law her father has the right to cut him to pieces.”
Perryn’s knees buckled. If he hadn’t been tied to an iron ring attached to the wall, he would have fallen.
“Huh,” the captain snorted. “A fine figure of a noble lord he is, raping women and stealing horses!”
Once the guards were gone, Madoc turned to Perryn and considered him with eyes so cold and distant that Perryn began to sweat again.
“Do you know who Jill’s father is, lad?”
“I don’t, my lord.”
“Cullyn of Cerrmor, that’s who.”
Perryn yelped, a strangled little sob.
“Just so. They’ll give him a sword and shield, hand you a dagger to defend yourself, then turn him loose on you. Think you’ll win the ritual combat?”
Perryn shook his head no.
“I doubt me, as well. And even if you had all the gold in the world to offer as compensation, Cullyn wouldn’t take it instead of your blood. So, are you going to face him, or are you going to do as I say instead?”
“Anything, my lord. I’ll do anything. Please, I never raped her, I truly didn’t. I thought she loved me, I truly did.”
“I know, and your stupidity is the one thing that’s saving you now. If I untie you, will you give me your word of honor that you won’t try to escape?”
“Gladly. I doubt me if I could run, my lord, the way I feel.”
“No doubt.” He stepped back and considered him in a strange way, his eyes moving as if he were looking all around Perryn rather than at him. “Truly, you’re halfway to being dead, aren’t you?”
The lord’s words seemed true enough. As soon as he was untied, Perryn staggered and would have fallen if it weren’t for Madoc’s support. The equerry half led, half hauled him down the room to a low bench by a hearth, where some tinder and small sticks were laid ready for a fire. Madoc laid on a pair of logs, then snapped his fingers. Fire sprang out and danced along the wood. Perryn screamed. He clapped his hands over his mouth to force a second scream back, then swiveled around, crouching, to stare up at Madoc in terror.
“Well, you looked chilled, lad. Thought we’d have a bit of a blaze. Now, you young dolt, do you see what you’ve gotten yourself tangled up in? From now on, you’re going to do exactly what I say, or . . . ”
“I will. Anything at all, my lord. I swear to you on the honor of the Wolf clan and the gods of my people.”
“Good. Remember that during your trip to Eldidd.”
“I’m going there? You said you wouldn’t . . . ”
“I said I wouldn’t let Cullyn get hold of you. There’s another man there who very much wants a chat with you. My uncle.”

---

---

TWO

All summer long Salamander, or Ebañy Salomonderiel, to give him his full Elvish name, had been riding through Deverry and tracking his brother down, but he’d done it slowly by a long, winding road, because the People never hurried anywhere, and for all his human blood, he’d been raised among the elves. Right at first, just over the Eldidd border, he’d found a pretty lass who’d taken to more than his songs; he idled in Cemmetyn with her for a pair of pleasant weeks. Then, once he was up in Pyrdon, a noble lord paid him well for entertaining the guests at his daughter’s wedding—six merry days of feasting. After that, he wandered through Deverry, always heading north to Cerrgonney, but sometimes lingering in an interesting town for a few days here, a lord’s dun for an eightnight there. When he’d scried Rhodry out and found him besieged, he’d put on a good burst of speed, but only until he saw the siege lifted. Then it had seemed that his brother would be perfectly safe for a good long time, so he’d dallied again with another lass who’d been faithfully waiting for him since the summer before. It had seemed terribly dishonorable, after all, to just ride out quickly after she’d waited for such a long time.
And so it was that he was some hundred miles to the east of Graemyn’s dun on the sunny afternoon when Rhodry escorted the herald and the councillor there. He’d made an early camp by a stream, early simply because he was tired of riding, and tethered his horses out in a tiny meadow before he went down to the running water to scry. He saw Rhodry trembling as Camma told him her news, and with so much emotion behind it, the vision was strong enough so that he actually could hear—though not with his physical ears—something of what was said. It seemed, indeed, that he stood beside his brother as Benoic took the matter in hand, then the vision vanished abruptly, banished by his own flood of reeling. He leapt to his feet and swore aloud.
“By the gods!” He shook his head in amazement. “Who ever would have thought it, indeed? I can’t believe Jill would desert him, I quite simply can’t.”
Kneeling again, he stared at the sun-dancing water and thought of Jill. Her image built up slowly, and when it came, it was oddly wavering and blurred. She was sitting in a mountain meadow and watching while Perryn tethered out three horses, including her Sunrise. His first thought was that she was ill, because she sat so quietly, her mouth slack like a half-wit’s, yet it was hard to see, because the vision was so misty. With a toss of his head, he dismissed it.
“Now, this looks most dire, peculiar, and puzzling. I think me I’d best try for a better look.”
When he called aloud in Elvish for Wildfolk, four gnomes and a sylph materialized in front of him.
“Listen carefully, little brothers. I’ve got a task for you, and if you do it, I’ll sing you a song when you’re done. I want to go to sleep, and I want you to stand here and watch for danger. If anyone or any animal comes toward me, pinch me and wake me up.”
The gnomes nodded solemnly, while the sylph dipped and hovered in the air. Salamander lay down on his back, crossed his arms over his chest, and slowed his breathing until he felt that his body was melding with the sun-warmed earth. Then he closed his eyes and summoned his body of light. Unlike human dweomer-masters, who use a solid, bluish form shaped like their own body, the elven thought form is much like an enormous flickering flame, yet with an ever-shifting face peering out of the silver light. Once Salamander’s form lived steady in his imagination, he transferred his consciousness over to it, at first only pretending to look out of its eyes at his body lying below, then seeing the world in the bluish etheric light. He heard a sound like a sharp click; he was out, on the etheric plane, looking down from the flame shape at his sleeping body, guarded by the Wildfolk, and joined to him by a long silver cord.
Slowly he rose up, orienting himself to the valleys, bright red and glowing with the dull auras of plants, and to the stream, which exhaled elemental force in a rushy silver curtain that rose high above the water. Getting entangled in that curtain could tear him apart. Carefully he moved away from it before going higher, then thought of Jill. He felt a certain tug pulling him in her direction, and set off to follow it, For a long ways, impossible to measure on the etheric, he sped over the dull-red forests, broken here and there by brighter patches of farmlands, tended by the peasants whose auras gleamed around them, pale yellows and greens, mostly, in the bluish light of the plane. As he traveled he became more and more aware of Jill’s presence, pulling him forward.
Yet in the end he had a guide. He had just flown high over a small stream when he saw one of the Wildfolk coming toward him. In its proper sphere the creature was a beautiful nexus of glowing lines and colors, a deep olive, citrine, and russet with a spark here and there of black, but it was obviously in distress, swelling up twice its size, then shrinking and trembling.
“Here, here, little brother,” Salamander thought to it. “What’s so wrong?”
For an answer it spun and danced, but dimly he could feel its emotions: rage and despair for something it loved. He remembered then Jill’s gray gnome.
“Do you know Jill?”
It bobbed and swelled with joy.
“I’m her friend. Take me to her.”
The gnome swept on ahead of him like a hunting dog. As he flew after, dodging round the curves of a hill, Salamander saw far below him the mountain valley, a red-glowing bowl of grass, dotted with the dim silvery auras of the horses, and two human auras, Perryn’s a strange green and gray that Salamander had never seen before, Jill’s pale gold—but enormous, swelling up around her, sending off billows, then shrinking again but to a size far too large for any human being. When he dropped down toward her, he saw Perryn turn and say something. From the young lord’s aura came a light-shot surge, spilling over Jill like an ocean wave. In response, her aura billowed and sucked the magnetic effluent up.
Salamander hovered, trembling with shock. At that moment, Jill looked up, straight at him, and screamed aloud. She had seen his body of light.
“Jill, I’m a friend!”
Yet although she could see him, she couldn’t seem to hear his thought. She flung herself to her feet and pointed at him, yelling all the while at Perryn, who merely looked puzzled. Salamander swooped away, following the silver cord as fast as he dared back to his body, which lay safely where he’d left it with the Wildfolk still on guard. He swooped down until he hovered over it, then let himself go. Again the click, and he felt flesh wrap him round, warm and painfully heavy for a moment. He dismissed his body of light then sat up, slapping his hand thrice on the ground to seal the end of the working. The gnomes looked at him expectantly.
“My thanks, my friends. Come travel along with me for a while. I’ll sing you the song I promised, but I’ve got to make speed, A good friend of mine has been well and truly ensorceled.”

In a flood of silver light the dawn climbed up purple mountains and washed over the meadow, a green torrent of grass that swirled in the summer wind. Jill sat on their blankets and watched Perryn, crouched down by the fire, where he was heating water in a little iron kettle. He took his razor, a bit of soap, and a cracked mirror out of his saddlebags and began to shave, as calmly and efficiently as if he were in a bedchamber. Jill had a vague thought of slitting his throat with the long sharp steel razor, or perhaps her silver dagger, but thinking was very difficult.
“You’d best eat somewhat,” he remarked.
“In a bit.” Speaking was difficult, too. “I’m not truly hungry.”
Idly she looked away, only to see her gray gnome, hunkered down some yards beyond Perryn. She was so glad to see the little creature that she jumped up and ran over, but just as she bent down to pick it up, it snarled, swiped at her with its claws, and vanished. Very slowly she sat down right where she was, wondering why the gnome was so angry at her. It seemed that she should know, but the memory wouldn’t return. She picked up a pebble from the grass and stared at it, a constant wavering flow of crystalline structure made visible, until Perryn came to fetch her away.
All that morning they rode through the forest, following long, roundabout trails. Every tree was a living presence, leaning over the trail and reaching down to her with, brushy fingers. Some frightened, her; others seemed perfectly harmless; still others, a definite few, seemed to be asking her to befriend them, with a trembling outreach of leafy hands. When she looked away from the trail, the forest changed into a maze of solid walls, broken only by shafts of sunlight, as heavy as stone. Although at times Jill considered simply riding away from Perryn, she was hopelessly lost. Every now and then she thought of Rhodry and wondered if he was trying to follow them. She doubted that he’d believe her when she told him that she hadn’t ridden away of her own free will—if, indeed, he ever caught them. How could he find her, when the whole world had changed?
Every color, even the somber gray of the rocks, seemed as bright and glowing as a jewel. Whenever they came to a clearing or a mountain meadow, the sun poured over her like water; she could swear that she felt it dripping and running down her arms. The sky was a solid dome of lapis lazuli, and for the first time in her life she truly believed that the gods traveled across the sky the way men travel across the earth, just because the color truly did seem fit for divinities. Under the heavy burden of all this beauty, she felt as if she were reeling in her saddle, and at times tears ran down her face, just from the loveliness. Once as they rode through a meadow, a pair of larks broke cover and flew, singing their heartbreaking trill as they went up and up into the azure, crystalline sky, their wings rushing and beating in a tiny thunder. Jill saw then that whatever else might happen, that moment, that beating of wings, that stripe of sound would all endure eternally, as indeed would every moment, a clear note in the unfolding music of the universe. When she tried to tell Perryn of the insight, he only stared at her and told her she was daft. She laughed, agreeing with him.
That afternoon, they camped early near a good-sized stream. Perryn took a line and hook from his gear, remarked that he was after fish, and wandered away upstream. For a long time Jill lay on the bank and stared into the water, watching the Wildfolk in the eddies, a white foam of little faces, traces of sleek bodies, little voices and lives, melding and blending into each other. It seemed that there was something that they wanted of her, and finally she stripped off her clothes and joined them. Giggling, laughing, she ducked and splashed in the water with the undines, tried to catch them as they swam away from her, and for the first time she heard them clearly, giggling in return, calling out her name, Jill, Jill, Jill, over and over again. Then suddenly they shrieked and disappeared. Jill turned in the water and looked up to see Perryn, standing on the bank with a string of three trout in one hand. Her heart sank, just as when a pupil looks up from a game to find her tutor glaring with a piece of unfinished work in his hand.
Yet when she clambered up onto the bank, he was far from angry with her, catching her, kissing her, wrapping her round with his desire until she wanted him, too, and lay down willingly with him in the grass. Afterward, he got up, dressed, and methodically began cleaning the fish, but she lay naked in the soft grass and tried to remember the name of the man she once had loved and who, or so she suspected, still loved her. Although she could see his face in her mind, her memory refused to give up his name. Puzzling over it, she got up and dressed, then chanced to look down at the stream. The Wildfolk were back, staring at her reproachfully.
“Rhodry, Jill,” they whispered. “How could you have forgotten your Rhodry?”
She doubled over and wept, sobbing aloud. When Perryn came rushing to comfort her, she shoved him away so hard that he tripped and fell. Like a frightened animal she ran, racing through the long grass of the clearing, plunging into the forest, only to catch an ankle on a root and sprawl headlong. For a moment she lay there panting, seeing how dark the trees were, how menacingly they reached down to grab her. Now they looked like a line of armed guards, raising weapons high. When he came to fetch her back, she went without arguing.
That evening he built a fire and skewered the trout on green sticks to roast them. Jill ate a few bites, but the food seemed to stick in her month, the fish suddenly as cloying as pure honey. Perryn, however, wolfed down his share as if he were starving, then fell asleep by the fire. She watched him for a long time. Although it would have been ridiculously easy to kill him, the memory of the forest stopped her. If he died, she would be alone, trapped out there, starving, wandering in circles, growing more and more panicked—with the last of her will she wrenched her mind away from the thoughts that were threatening to turn her hysterical. Shaking, suddenly cold, she stared into the fire, where the spirits were forming and falling in the flames, dancing along the wood that this pair of humans had so thoughtfully provided. Jill could almost hear them talking in the hiss and crackle. Then a log burned through and fell with a shower of golden sparks. In the rushy dance of flame, a proper face appeared, golden and shifting. When it spoke, it was in a true voice, and one with authority.
“What is this, child? What’s so wrong?”
“Wrong?” She could barely stammer. “Is it?”
For a moment the face regarded her; then it was gone. Somewhat bewildered, unable to think, Jill lay down next to Perryn and fell asleep.
As formless as water, the days slipped into one another. Jill couldn’t count them; she’d lost the very idea of counting, as if the part of her mind that dealt with things like nights and coins had fallen out of her saddlebags and gotten lost in the grass. Whenever he spoke to her, it was hard to answer, because her words became lost in the splendor of the forest, Fortunately he rarely spoke, apparently contented with her silent presence near him. At night, when they made camp, he was an eager lover, wanting her in their blankets often before they’d eaten, then bringing her dinner like a page as she lay drowsily by the fire. His slow hesitance, his shuffling walk, his vague smiles and stumbling words—all were gone. He was all laughter and calm efficiency, all strength and life as he strode through the wild country. She supposed that his daft mousiness was simply a shield he put up when he was forced to live in the lands of men.
She was proven right when they rode into a village to buy food at the open market. Perryn became his old self, looking aimlessly this way and that, stumbling through every simple sentence as he haggled for cheese and peaches, for loaves of bread from the baker. Since Jill could speak no more clearly than he could, she was of no help to him. Once she saw a farmer’s wife watching them in puzzlement, as if she were wondering how a pair of halfwits like they could survive on the road.
With the shopping done, they went to a tiny tavern for ale. After nothing but spring water to drink, the ale tasted so good that Jill savored every sip. Although the little room had dirty straw on the floor, an unswept hearth, and battered tables, she was happy there. It was good to see other people, her own kind, good to listen to human voices instead of the endless wind through the forest and the chatter of streams. A balding stout fellow, wearing the checked brigga of a merchant, gave her a friendly smile.
“Here, lass,” he said. “Why do you carry a silver dagger?”
“Oh, ah, er, well,” Jill said. “My father was a silver dagger, you see. It’s a reminder of him.”
“A pious gesture, truly.”
Jill had the sudden startling experience of hearing him think: A pretty lass, but stupid; ah well, wits don’t matter in a lass. The thought was as clear in her mind as if he’d spoken aloud, but she decided that she was only deluding herself. When it was time to leave the tavern, she wept, simply because they were going back to the lonely wilderness.
That afternoon they rode through low rolling hills, where the pine forest thinned, and farms appeared in sheltered valleys. Jill had no idea of where they were; all she knew was that the sun rose the east and set in the west. They made camp, however, in a place Perryn knew well, or so he said, a tiny vale, along a stream, and bordered with white birches. Before he lit the fire, he gave Jill a kiss.
“Let’s lie down,” he said.
All at once, the thought of making love with him filled her with revulsion. When she shoved him away, he caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. Although she tried to wrestle free, his superior strength told against her. He grabbed her, lifted her, and laid her struggling on the ground. She fought against him but even as she did, she knew that she was slowly, inexorably giving in to him, fighting with only half her strength, letting him steal a kiss here and there, then a caress, then finally surrendering, letting him take her, press her down, and turn her world to a fire of pleasure. When he lay down next to her, he started to speak, then fell asleep in openmouthed exhaustion.
Jill lay next to him and watched the sunset coming through the branches like a shower of gold coins. The white birches glowed with an inner fire, as if they were watching them and blessing them in silent presences. She could hear the stream running nearby in little voices, the aimless chatter of the Wildfolk. Just as the sunset was fading into twilight, Perryn sat up with a yawn and a gasp. She saw dark circles under his eyes, two livid pools of shadow. For a moment he stared, at her as if he hardly knew where they were.
“Are you all right?” Jill said.
“Oh, er, well, just tired.”
Yet as the evening wore on, she realized that things went far beyond his being tired. When they ate, he gobbled the food, then fell asleep again. She sat by the fire and watched the birches glowing, bending close, it seemed, to study this pair of intruders in the grove. For one moment she thought she saw someone standing among the trees and watching her, but when she got up for a closer look, the shadowy form disappeared. In a bit Perryn woke again and stumbled over to the fire. A leap of flame washed his face with light and seemed to cover it with blood; his eyes seemed great hollow rents in a mask. Jill cried, out at the sight.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
Yet she had no words to tell him what she instinctively knew, that their afternoon’s lovemaking had driven them to a crisis point, just as when a warrior rides a charge, thinking of naught but the flash of steel around him, only to find himself behind the enemy line, cut off and alone when it’s too late to ride back.

When he left Graemyn’s dun, Rhodry had no idea of which way to ride. For the first day, he went west, but at sunset the gray gnome appeared at his camp and threw itself into his arms to cling to him like a frightened child.
“There you are! Here, my friend, where’s Jill?”
The gnome considered, pointed east, then disappeared. I’ve wasted a whole blasted day, he thought. Then, even in the midst of his despair, he felt that strange sensation of being watched.
For three days more, he rode east. He felt more like a storm than a man, his rage and desperation mingling to drive his mind this way and that, tearing his reason to shreds as he swept down the forest road. At times, he wanted to find her only to slit her throat; at others, he swore to himself that if only he could have her back, he would never ask a single question about what she’d done with Perryn. Gradually he felt more hopelessness than rage. Perryn could have taken her any way at all, slipping deep into the forest where he’d never find them. His one hope was the gnome, who came to him at odd moments. Always it pointed east, and it was filled with fury, gnashing its teeth and clutching its head at any mention of Perryn. Sooner or later, or so Rhodry hoped, it would lead him back to Jill.
Late on a day when white clouds piled in the sky and threatened rain, Rhodry was riding along a narrow track when he came to a clearing. Beside the road was a small wooden round house with two oaks growing in front of the door. He dismounted, led his horse over, and called out a halloo. In a few moments an aged man with the shaved head and golden torc of a priest of Bel came out
“Good morrow, Your Holiness,” Rhodry said.
“May the gods bless you, lad. What troubles your heart so?”
“Oh, by the hells, do I look as wretched as that?”
The priest merely smiled, his dark eyes nearly lost in wrinkled folds of pouched eyelids. He was as thin as a stick, his ragged tunic hanging loose, his fingers like gnarled twigs.
“I’m looking for someone, you see,” Rhodry went on. “And I’ve about given up hope of ever finding her. A blond lass, beautiful, but she always dresses like a lad, and she carries a silver dagger. She’d be riding with a skinny red-haired fellow.”
“Your wife left you for another man?”
“Well, she did, but how did you know?”
“It’s a common enough tale, lad, though I’ve no doubt it pains you as if you were the first man ever deserted by a woman.” He sighed with a shake of his head. “I haven’t seen her, but come in and ask the gods to help you.”
More to please the lonely old hermit than in any real hope of getting an omen, Rhodry followed him into the dim, musty-smelling shrine, which took up half the round house. On the flat side stood the stone altar, covered with a rough linen cloth to hide the bloodstains from the sacrifices. Behind it rose a massive statue of Bel, carved from a tree trunk, the body roughly shaped, the arms distinguished by mere cuts in the wood and the tunic indicated only by scratches. The face, however, was beautifully modeled, large eyes staring out as if they saw, the mouth so mobile it seemed that it would speak. Rhodry made a formal bow to the king of the world, then knelt before him while the priest stood to one side. In the shadowy light it seemed that the god’s eyes turned his worshipper’s way.
“O most holy lord, where’s my Jill? Will I ever see her again?”
For a moment silence lay thick in the temple; then the priest spoke in a hollow, booming voice utterly unlike his normal tone.
“She rides down dark roads. Judge her not harshly when you meet again. One who holds no fealty to me holds her in thrall.”
Rhodry felt a cold shudder of awe laced with fear. The god’s eyes considered him, and the voice spoke again.
“You have a strange Wyrd, man from Eldidd, you who are not truly a man like other men. Someday you’ll die serving the kingdom, but it’s not the death you would ever have dreamt for yourself. Men will remember your name down the long years, though your blood run over rock and be gone. Truly, they’ll remember it twice over, for twice over will you die.”
Suddenly the priest threw up his hands and clapped them together hard. Dazed, Rhodry looked around. The statue was only a piece of wood, cleverly carved. The god had gone.
All that day, while he traveled fast along, Rhodry puzzled over the omen. What did it mean, that Jill rode down dark roads? He desperately wanted it to mean that Perryn had somehow forced her to come with him rather than her going willingly, but it was hard to convince himself of that, because Jill could have slain the lord easily if he had tried violence. Still, he clung to the first bit of hope he had that she still loved him. His heart was so torn for love of and fear for her that he never remembered the rest of the omen til years later, that, contrary to all nature and all sense, he would die twice over.
On the morrow, the meaning of the part of the omen that dealt with Jill came clearer when he reached a small village. In the tiny tavern he got his first hot meal and tankard of ale in days. As he was eating mutton stew by the unswept hearth, the tavernman strolled over to gossip.
“You’re the second silver dagger we’ve seen in here lately,” he said. “Or, well, I don’t suppose this lass was truly a silver dagger.”
“A blond lass?” Rhodry’s heart was pounding even as he spoke casually. “Beautiful, but dressed like a lad?”
“Just that! Do you know her?”
“I do. How long ago were she and her red-haired lad in here? I’d like to see Jill and Perryn again.”
The tavernman considered, scratching his bald spot.
“Not more than four nights ago, I’d say. Friends of yours, are they? Neither of them are much for words, I must say.”
“Oh, Perryn never says much, truly.” Rhodry tried to sound cheerfully friendly. “But usually his lass is good for a bit of chatter.”
“Indeed? Then she must be ill or suchlike, because it was hard for her to say two words together. One of those thick-headed lasses, think I, all pretty face with nothing between her two ears.”
“Here, I hope she wasn’t ill. She’s usually as bright as a lark and twice as merry.”
The tavernman considered a long moment.
“Well, maybe she and that man of hers had a bit of a scrap. From the way she looked at him, I’d say he beats her a good bit. Fair terrified, she looked.”
Rhodry’s hand tightened on the tankard so hard that his knuckles went white. Riding down dark roads, he thought, I see.
“But be that as it may, lad, they went south when they left here. She said she was riding south, to find her grandfather.”
For a moment Rhodry was puzzled. Nevyn! he thought. Of course that’s how she’d describe him.
“Well and good, then, and my thanks.” He tossed the man a piece of Benoic’s silver.
Leaving the tankard unfinished, Rhodry rode out fast, heading for the crossroads and the track that would take him south.

The tavernman watched, rubbing Rhodry’s coin, until the silver dagger was out of sight. All at once he felt both guilty and frightened. Why had he lied like that, and all for the couple of coins that the strange fellow had given him? He hated to lie. Dimly he remembered arguing with the fellow, but here, after all he’d said, he’d gone and done it. He wished he had a horse, so that he could ride after the silver dagger and tell him the truth. He shook himself and looked up. The village idiot, poor old Marro, was shuffling along the street. The tavernman flung him Rhodry’s coin.
“Here, lad, take that home to your mother, and tell her I said she’s to buy you cloth for a new shirt.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Marro ran off. The tavernman went back to his customers.

“South?” Salamander said aloud. “How by every boil on the Lord of Hell’s balls did Rhodry know to turn south?”
The Wildfolk clustered around his campfire seemed to be pondering the question.
“My apologies, little brothers. Just a rhetorical question.”
Stretching, Salamander got up and frowned at the night sky while he wished he’d scried Rhodry out earlier. Since he was not much more than an apprentice at dweomer, it was difficult for him to scry without a focus of some sort and impossible when he was occupied with something else, such as riding horseback, As he thought about it, he supposed that Rhodry was riding south out of a simple desperation that had brought him a silver dagger’s luck. Without dweomer, he himself would never have been able to track Jill down, because that strange man of hers knew the woods as well as a wild deer did. As it was, of course, he knew exactly where they were, just ten miles to the northeast of him, so that, indeed, Rhodry was to the north of them, and on the right road by heading south, The question was, how did Rhodry know it?
“Tomorrow, little brothers, tomorrow we track this bear to his den.”
In unease the Wildfolk rustled around, him shoving and pinching each, other, opening their mouths in gaping expressions of despair and hatred. Salamander shuddered in honest fear. For all he knew, the man that had stolen Jill was a dweomermaster of great power, and he was riding to his doom.
“You know, I suppose I really should contact Nevyn and tell him about all this.”
The Wildfolk all nodded a vigorous yes.
“But on the other hand, suppose I do, and he tells me that I should leave this nasty mess strictly alone. How then could I redeem myself for my dilatory ways this summer? I think me I’d best just just continue on.”
The Wildfolk threw their hands in the air, stuck out their tongues at him, and disappeared in a wave of pure disgust.

In the morning, the dark circles under Perryn’s eyes looked as purple as fresh bruises against his unnaturally pale skin. His red hair no longer flamed; rather it was as dull and matted as the fur of a sick cat. He worked slowly, taking things out of his saddlebags, staring at them for a moment, then putting them back while Jill sat nearby and watched him.
“You truly do look ill,” she said.
“Just tired.”
She wondered why she cared if he were ill or not, but in truth, she was coming to see him as much a victim of his strange powers as she was. The thought came to her only intermittently, however; thoughts of any sort were rare these days. The pieces of gear in Perryn’s hands seemed to be changing size constantly, sometimes swelling, sometimes shrinking, and they had no edges in any proper sense, just lines of shimmering force that marked where they met the air. Finally he pulled out a plain rod of iron, about a finger thick, set in a wooden handle.
“Thank every god,” he said. “Here I thought I’d lost it.”
“What is it?”
“A rambling scribe. Never tell anyone I’ve got one, will you? You can get hanged for carrying one in Cerrgonney.”
None of this made any sense at all. She forced herself to pick it apart, a little at a time.
“We’re still in Cerrgonney?” she asked at last.
“We are, but in the southern part. Nearly to Gwaentaer.”
“Oh. And what’s that thing for?”
“Changing a horse’s brand.”
“And why will they hang you for having one?”
“Because only a horse thief would carry one.”
“Then why are you carrying one?”
“Because I’m a horse thief.” Jill stared openmouthed at him.
“Where do you think I get the coin we’ve been spending?” He was grinning in amusement, “I take a horse from some noble lord, sell it to one of the men I know, and well, there we are.”
Somewhere, deep in her mind, Jill remembered that thievery was a wrong thing. She thought about it while she watched him repack the saddlebags. Thieving was wrong, and being a horse thief was the worst of all. If you took a man’s horse, he could die out in the wilderness. Da always said so. Da was always right.
“You shouldn’t take horses,” she said.
“Oh, I only take them from men who can afford the loss.”
“It’s still wrong.”
“Why? I need them, and they don’t.”
Although she knew that there was a counter to this argument, she couldn’t remember it. She leaned back and watched the sylphs playing in the light breeze, winged forms of brilliant crystal, darting and dodging after each other in long swoops and glides.
“I’ll be leaving you here later,” Perryn said in a moment. “We’re low on coin, and I’ve got to take a horse.”
“You will come back, won’t you?” Suddenly she was terrified, sure that she would be hopelessly lost without him. “You won’t just leave me here?”
“What? Of course not. I love you more than I love my life. I’ll never leave you.”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her, then held her close. She was unsure of how long they sat together in the warm sun, but when he let her go, the sun was close to zenith. She wandered over the stream and lay down to watch the Wildfolk sporting there until she fell asleep.

Late that same afternoon, Rhodry came to Leryn, one of the biggest towns in Cerrgonney with about five hundred houses huddled behind a low stone wall on the banks of the Camyn Yraen. Since Leryn was an important port for the river barges that brought the mountain iron down into Deverry, he was planning on buying a passage downriver for a ways to save himself some time and to give himself and his horse a much-needed rest. First, though, he went to the market square and asked around about Jill and Perryn. Quite a few of the locals knew the eccentric Lord Perryn well.
“He’s daft,” said the cheese seller. “And if that lass is riding with the likes of him, she’s even dafter than he is.”
“A bit more than daft he is,” snorted the blacksmith. “I’ve wondered many a time where he gets all those horses.”
“Ah, he’s noble-born,” chimed in the cloth merchant. “The noble-horn have horses to spare, they do. But I haven’t seen him in many long week now, silver dagger, and I’ve never seen a lass like you described.”
“No more have I,” said the cheese seller. “She sounds a bit of a hard case, she does.”
As he went back to the cheap tavern he’d marked earlier, Rhodry was wondering if Jill and Perryn had taken a different road south. If so, he’d have to abandon his plans for the river, in case he passed them by. As he was stabling his horse, a fellow came out to join him, a rather nondescript man with the bent back of a wandering peddler.
“You the silver dagger who was asking for Lord Perryn?”
“I am, and what’s it to you?”
“Naught, but I might have a bit of information for you for the right price.”
Rhodry took two silver pieces from his pouch and held them between his fingers. The peddler grinned.
“I came up this way from the southeast. I stayed one night in a little village inn, oh, some thirty miles from here, it was. I was trying to get my sleep about dawn that night when I heard someone yelling out in the stable yard. So I sticks my head out the window, and I see our Perryn arguing with this blond lass. Seems like she was leaving him, and he was yelling at her not to go.”
Rhodry handed over the first silver.
“I’m going to find no one, she says,” the peddler went on. “Seemed like a cursed strange thing to say, so it’s stuck in my mind, like.”
“So it would. Did she say where ‘nev yn’ was?”
“Not truly. But she did say to his lordship that if he tried to follow her to Cerrmor, she’d take his balls off with her silver dagger.”
With a laugh, Rhodry handed him the second coin, then dug out a third for good measure.
“My thanks, peddler, and it gladdens my wretched heart that you lost that hour’s sleep.”

When Rhodry left the stable, Merryc laughed quietly under his breath. It was a good jest, to make the silver dagger pay for the false rumors that were going to mean his doom.

Jill woke suddenly at the sound of horses coming. She sat up wondering why she hadn’t tried to escape before Perryn returned. Now it was too late. She stood up, very slowly, because the ground seemed unsteady under her feet. As she walked back to camp, the grass swelled and billowed, as if she trod on a huge feather mattress.
“Jill! Fear not! Rescue is at hand, though truly, as a shining avenger one could want better than I.”
Startled, she spun around and stared openmouthed at the man dismounting from his horse on the other side of the clearing. For a moment she thought he was Rhodry, but the voice and the pale hair were all wrong. Then she remembered him.
“Salamander! Oh ye gods!”
Suddenly she was weeping, doubling over as she sobbed, throwing herself from side to side until he ran over and grabbed her tight.
“Whist, whist, little one. All’s well, more or less, anyway. You’ve been ensorceled, but it’s over now.”
The tears stopped, and she looked up at him.
“It was true, then? He has the dweomer?”
“I’m not so sure of that, but you were ensorceled well and truly. Where is he?”
“Off stealing a horse from someone.”
“And the horse dung, too, no doubt. This lad sounds stranger and stranger.”
“You might well say that and twice. Please, we’ve got to get away before he gets back.”
“Not that, because I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”
“But he’s dweomer.”
Salamander smiled lazily.
“It is time for all truths to be known. So am I.”
She pulled away, staring at him.
“How else did I know you’d been ensorceled, and how else would I have found you? Now come along. Let’s get your gear on your horse. I want to curse this fellow to the three hells, and then we’ve got to be on our way. Rhodry’s got a long head start on us.”
At the mention of Rhodry’s name, she began to sob again. Salamander pulled her close into his arms.
“Na, na, na, little one. Remember you’re a warrior’s daughter. There’ll be time enough for tears later, when we’re well away from here. We’ll find your Rhodry for you.”
“Oh ye gods, I don’t know if your brother will even want me back.”
“My . . . here! How did you find out?”
The urgency in his voice stopped her tears.
“I . . . well, I had a true dream. I saw your father.”
“Gods! If you have that kind of power, and this fellow still . . . well, he may be a bit more powerful than I thought, but cursed if I’ll run until I get a look at him. Let me saddle your horse for you, and you tell me the tale.”
As best she could, Jill told him about Perryn and the events of the last few days, but it was difficult for her to find words to put things in any sort of order, or indeed to remember exactly how long she’d been traveling with Perryn. At times it seemed a few years, at others months. She was shocked when Salamander told her that it had been at most a fortnight. While he listened, he grew angry, until finally he cut short one last stumbling sentence with a wave of his hand.
“I’ve heard enough, little one. This ugly bastard should be flogged and hanged, if you ask me. I wonder if I can get him to a lord’s justice.”
“Not here. All the lords are his kin.”
“And who will believe me when I come to them talking of dweomer, besides? Well, there’s other kinds of justice in the kingdom.”
When she looked at him, she saw his anger like ghostly flames burning over his face and looked away again. Yet the vision jogged her memory.
“Was it you I saw a while back? I saw an elf all covered with silver fire in the sky.”
“It was, true enough. But you were seeing only a well . . . call it an image of me.”
She nodded, the thought and the memory slipping away again. She wondered why he was so angry with Perryn, but it seemed at somehow she should know the answer.
Salamander was just finishing tying her bedroll behind the saddle when he paused, cocking his head to listen. It was several minutes before she heard the sound of hoofbeats, three horses coming fast. Ducking and dodging among the trees, Perryn rode up with two chestnut colts following him along. As Salamander walked to meet him, Perryn dismounted and ran the last few yards.
“Who are you?” Perryn shouted. “Jill, what are you doing?”
Although she was shaking too hard to speak, her saddled and loaded horse was an obvious answer. When Perryn started to run to her, Salamander stepped in between. Perryn swung at him flat-handed. All at once Wildfolk swarmed into existence and mobbed him, a good hundred of them biting pinching kicking punching as they fell upon him like dogs on a tossed bone. Perryn screamed and yelped, hitting blindly at an enemy he couldn’t see, and finally went down under them, a tossing, heaving mound.
“Enough!” Salamander yelled.
The Wildfolk disappeared, leaving Perryn trembling and whimpering on the ground.
“That’s better, dog,” Salamander snarled. “A fine scion of the Wolf clan are you, a horse thief and a wife stealer both!”
He flung up one hand and chanted a long string of Elvish words under his breath. Suddenly Jill saw a green-and-gray glow streaming around Perryn—no, it was emanating from him in a cloud of light. From it stretched long smoky tendrils that tangled her round. She suddenly realized that she too stood in a similar cloud, but that hers was pale gold.
“Do you see that, Lord Perryn? Do you see what you’ve been doing?”
Perryn looked from her to himself and back to Salamander, then suddenly moaned and hid his eyes with his hands. The gerthddyn said a few more Elvish words, then snapped his fingers. A golden sword made of what seemed to be solid light appeared in his hand. He swept it back and forth, slashing at every tendril that bound her to Perryn. The light lines snapped like cut tether ropes and slapped back to him. Perryn screamed, but she felt her mind and her will come back to her, and with them a revulsion, a burning hatred for this man who’d broken her like a wild horse. When Salamander chanted again, the glowing clouds and the sword vanished. Perryn raised his head.
“Don’t look at me that way, my love,” he whispered. “Oh, by Kerun himself, you’re not going to leave me, are you?”
“Of course I am, you bastard! I never want to see you again in my god-cursed life.”
“Jill, Jill, I beg you don’t go! I love you!”
“Love?” She felt her natred burning in her mouth. “I spit on your idea of love!”
When Perryn began to weep, the sound was beautiful to her. Salamander looked as if he was thinking of kicking him, then restrained himself.
“Listen, you!” he snarled. “Out of sheer pity I’ll tell you one thing: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses this way, or it’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”
Slowly Perryn got to his feet to face the gerthddyn, and his face worked as if he was desperately trying to summon some dignity.
“I don’t know who you are,” he whispered. “But I don’t have to stay here and have you pour vinegar in my wounds. I can’t stop you from taking Jill away, so go. You hear me! Get out!” His voice rose to a shriek. “Go away! Both of you!”
Then he fell sobbing to his knees again.
“Very well.” Salamander turned to Jill. “Let us leave this whimpering dolt to whatever justice the gods have in store for him.”
“Gladly.”
In a swirl of joyous Wildfolk, they mounted their horses. A big black gnome with purple splotches threw the lead rope of the pack horse up to Salamander, then disappeared as they rode away. Jill glanced back once to see Perryn stretched out on the grass, still weeping in a sea of swelling emerald, with his gray nuzzling his shoulder in concern. Nothing had ever pleased her as much as his pain.
For about a mile they rode in silence, until they came free of the trees to one of the muddy tracks that passed for a Cerrgonney road. There Salamander paused his horse, waved at her to do the same, and turned in his saddle to look her over in sincere concern. She could only stare blankly back at him.
“How do you feel, Jill?”
“Exhausted.”
“No doubt, but you’ll get your strength back in a bit.”
“Good. Will the world ever hold still again?”
“What? What’s it doing at the moment?”
“Well, everything’s all . . . not hazy, exactly, but nothing will hold still, and these colors . . . everything’s so bright and glowy.” She hesitated, struggling with the unfamiliar task of forming sentences. “Nothing has edges, you see. It all sparkles and runs together. And there’s no Time anymore. Wait, that’s not right. But it is.”
“Oh ye gods! What did that lout do to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“My apologies, just a rhetorical question. Jill, this is blasted serious.”
“I could figure that out myself, my thanks. Will I ever see the world like it really is again?”
“You mean, will you ever see it as you used to, because as for the world as it really is, my turtledove, that’s what you’re seeing right now. Before, you’ve only seen the dull, dead, dark, and deceiving surface, as most people do.”
“But here! These colors, and the way everything moves—”
“Are real enough. But, truly, most inconvenient withal. The gods are kind, turtledove. They let most men see only what they need to see, and hide the beauty away. If they didn’t, we’d all starve, because even a simple act like picking an apple from a tree would be a momentous and ominous event.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“No need for you to believe it, actually. Belief has no bearing whatsoever on your current and most dire condition. Belief is an illusion, and truly, all that men see is illusion as well, because the universe is naught but a rushy net of pure power.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is, but this is no time for us to argue recondite matters like a pair of Bardek sages. That little round-ear bastard has hurt you worse than I feared, Jill.” He paused for a long, troubled silence. “I’m not truly sure what to do about this. Fortunately, our esteemed Nevyn will.”
“Salamander, you’re babbling! What did Perryn do to me?”
“Well, look, you saw those lines of light, didn’t you? What he was doing was pouring life force into you, more than you could possibly use or handle. Look, every time you two lay down together, he gave off a tremendous amount of life force. It’s not solid like water but it’s more solid than a thought, and it can be transferred back and forth. Normally, whenever a man and woman are together, they each give some out and get some back, all in balance. Now, I doubt me if this truly makes sense to you.”
“Oh, but it does.” Her disarranged mind was casting up images, of Sarcyn and Alastyr, of the dark dweomer that had touched and tainted her life the summer before. For a moment she nearly vomited. When she spoke again, it was only in a whisper. “Go on. I have to know.”
“Well, then, somewhat’s wrong with Perryn. He was pouring the force out like mead at a lord’s feast, more than you could ever possibly replace in the ordinary course of things. And all that extra power was running free in your mind, free to be used in any way you wished, but since, alas, you had no idea of what to wish for, or indeed that it was even there, then it took the first channel it found to run in, like water again, if we may expand and polish our image my turtledove, that escapes from a river only to follow a ditch. You can’t lie and say you’ve no dweomer talent, you know.”
“I don’t care! I never wanted to have anything of the sort.”
“Oh, of course not, you lackwit! That’s not what I’m saying. Listen, these are dark and dangerous matters indeed, and the source of many a strange thing. No one who studies the dweomer of Light would fool with them carelessly, the way Perryn seems to have done.”
“Are you telling me he follows the dark path?”
“I’m not, because that poor, weak, bumbling idiot obviously could do naught of the sort. I know not what Lord Perryn may be, my little robin, but I do know that we’ve got to get you far, far away from him. Let’s ride. We’ll reach some safe spot, and then I’ll see what Nevyn thinks of all this.”

After Jill rode away, Perryn had just enough strength to unsaddle his horse and send him out to graze. He lay down on his blankets and fell asleep, waking for a few moments at sunset, then sleeping the night away. When he woke in the morning, he rolled over, automatically reaching for Jill, and wept when he remembered that she was gone.
“How could you leave me? I loved you so much.”
He forced himself to stop crying, then sat up and looked around the camp. In spite of his long sleep, he was still tired, his body aching as if he’d been in a fight. When he remembered the man who’d taken her away, he turned cold all over. Dweomer. What else would have shown him that peculiar vision of clouds of light and golden swords? See what you’ve been doing, Lord Perryn. But he’d done nothing at all, only loved her. What did ropes of mystic light have to do with love? And she’d said that she hated him. He shook his head, refusing to cry again.
At last he forced himself up and began packing his gear. He’d already placed himself in danger by staying so long; the lord who once had owned these colts might come looking for them. As he worked, he wondered which way to ride. He couldn’t go back to Nedd, not for a long time, not with Benoic’s wrath waiting for him. You’re twice a dolt, he told himself, first taking another man’s woman—and then losing her. Benoic would heap scorn on him for years over this, he knew. After the splendor of having had someone to love, of having had someone who had loved him—he refused to believe that Jill had never loved him—his life stretched ahead like a bleak, foggy road. It seemed to take him forever to leave the spot. He would just get some small task done, like rolling up his blankets, when something would make him think of Jill, and he would weep again. The dapple gray stayed close to him, nuzzling his shoulder or nudging him in the back as if to say that he should cheer up.
“At least you love me, don’t you?” Perryn whispered. “But a horse is a wretchedly easy thing to please.”
Finally he was ready to set out, with his gray saddled and his pack horse and the two new colts on lead ropes. He mounted, then merely sat in the saddle for a long time and stared at the place that would hold his last memories of Jill. Where to go next? The question seemed insuperable. At last, when the gray was beginning to dance in irritable restlessness under him, he turned back northwest. Not far away was the town of Leryn, where he knew a dishonest trader who would take the colts and ask no questions. All that day he rode slowly, and the tears came and went of their own accord.

Rhodry might have taken a barge passage immediately if it hadn’t been for the gray gnome, who came to him early on the same morning that Salamander caught up with Jill. The little creature was ecstatic, dancing around and grinning so broadly that it exposed all its long pointed teeth.
“Well, little brother, I take it you know that Jill’s left Perryn.”
The gnome nodded, then pointed to the southeast.
“Is that where Jill is?”
The gnome shook its head no, then pantomimed Perryn’s graceless walk.
“Oho! How far away is our dear Lord Perryn?”
The gnome shrugged and waved its hands as if to say not very far at all. Rhodry debated for a long while. On the one hand, he wanted to be after Jill; on the other, his desire for revenge was like a lust. Finally the vengeance won.
“Well and good, little brother. I’ll saddle up my horse, and you lead me to him.”
The gnome grinned and jigged, pointing always off to the south and east.
It was late in the afternoon when Rhodry came to a scrappy little village, a huddle of houses at the top of a hill without even a proper wall around it. Although there was no tavern, the blacksmith’s wife kept a few barrels of ale in her kitchen for thirsty travelers, but she refused to have a silver dagger in her house. She did, however, let him buy a tankard and drink it out in the muddy yard, where chickens scratched near a small sty that held a pair of half-grown pigs. The woman, a stout sort with wispy gray hair, set her hands on her hips and glared at him the whole time as if she thought he would steal the tankard. When he was done, Rhodry handed it back with an exaggerated bow.
“My thanks, fair lady. I don’t suppose you get many travelers through here.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, that’s all, a tall, skinny fellow with red hair and—”
“You’d best go over to the baker’s then. A fellow like that bought a tankard from me not half an hour ago, and he said he needed to buy bread.”
“Oh, indeed? He didn’t have a lass with him, did he?”
“He didn’t, just a couple of extra horses. Too many horses, if you ask me. Didn’t like the look of him, I didn’t.”
Following her directions, Rhodry hurried along the twisting street. When he reached the house with the big beehive clay ovens in the front yard he saw Perryn’s dapple gray, his pack horse, and a pair of colts tied up nearby. He laughed aloud, just a quick snatch of a berserker’s chuckle, and thanked Great Bel in his heart. As he tied up his horse, he could see Perryn through the open door, handing over some coppers to a fellow in a cloth apron. Rhodry strode in. His hands full of loaves, Perryn turned and yelped, a satisfying gulp of pure terror.
“You bastard,” Rhodry snarled. “Where’s my wife?”
“Oh, er, ah, well, I don’t know.”
His face pale, the baker began edging for the door. Rhodry ignored him and went for Perryn. He grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the stone wall so hard that Perryn dropped the bread. Rhodry kicked it out of the way and slammed him again.
“Where’s Jill?”
“I don’t know.” Perryn was gasping for breath. “She left me. I swear it. She left me on the road.”
“I know that, dolt! Where?”
When Perryn smirked at him, Rhodry hit him in the stomach He doubled over, choking, but Rhodry straightened him up and hit him again.
“Where did she leave you?”
Half blind from tears in his eyes, Perryn raised his head. Rhodry slapped him across the face.
“I know you’re going to kill me,” Perryn gasped. “Not going to tell you one rotten thing.”
Rhodry saw no reason to admit that he’d sworn a vow to leave him alive. He grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him forward, and slammed into the stone again.
“Where is she? If you tell me, you live.”
“I don’t know, by the gods!”
Rhodry was about to hit him in the stomach a second time when he heard noises behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the white-faced baker, flanked by the blacksmith carrying an iron bar and two other men with threshing flails at the ready.
“Now what’s all this, silver dagger? You can’t ride in and just murder someone.”
“I’m not going to murder anyone. This whoreson piss-pot little bastard stole my wife away, and now he won’t tell me where she is.”
The four villagers considered, glancing at one another and at the sword at Rhodry’s side. Even though the four of them would have had more than a good chance against one man, no matter how skilled with a sword, it seemed they were the prudent sort.
“Ah well,” the blacksmith said. “Then it’s no affair of ours, if he’s been meddling with your woman.”
“Just get him out of my house,” the baker moaned.
“Gladly. Rats don’t belong in a granary.”
Rhodry twisted Perryn’s right arm behind his back and shoved him out of the bakery. When his victim struggled, Rhodry swung him sideways and knocked him against the wall of the next house so hard that he screamed.
“Where’s Jill?”
“I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
Rhodry hit him in the stomach so hard he vomited, falling to his knees. When he was done, Rhodry hauled him up, twisted his arm again, and then marched him round the bakery to a big stone shed. He threw him face forward against the wall, peeled him off and turned him round, then shoved him back again. By then Perryn could barely stand up.
“For the last time, where is she?”
Gasping, Perryn wiped feebly at the blood pouring from his nose and from a cut over his eye. Rhodry unbuckled his sword belt and let it drop.
“Come on, coward! Draw on me, if you dare.”
Perryn merely gasped and sniveled. Rhodry’s stomach tightened in sheer contempt.
“You base-born little half-gelded swine!”
Rhodry jumped him, grabbed him with one hand, and began hitting him as hard as he could with the other. The pleasure of beating Perryn filled his entire mind, just as when a sheet of flame races through the forest and sweeps everything before it. Suddenly he remembered the holy vow he’d sworn to Benoic. He let Perryn go and leaned him back against the wall. Fortunately, the lord was still breathing. He looked at Rhodry for a moment with glazed eyes, one of which was already swelling shut, tried to speak, gasped, then crumpled, sliding slowly down the wall to the ground. Rhodry gave him one last kick and turned to find the four villagers, standing as solemnly as judges, and three small boys, wide-eyed with excitement. Nearby was the gray gnome, clapping its hands and grinning while it did a little victory dance. Rhodry retrieved his sword belt and buckled it on while he caught his breath.
“There. I didn’t murder him, did I now?”
They all shook their heads in agreement.
“I thought silver daggers didn’t have wives,” said one of the boys.
“I did. Let me tell you somewhat. If ever you find another silver dagger with a wife, then you keep your blasted little paws off her.”
The lads looked at Perryn, then nodded again. When Rhodry walked toward them, they all parted to give him plenty of room and fell in behind him like an honor guard while he fetched his horse. He mounted and rode out, heading northwest to return to the river. His hands were bloody, bruised, and aching, but he’d never enjoyed a pain more in his life. As soon as he was out of sight of the village, the gnome appeared on his saddle peak.
“That was a splendid bit of fun, wasn’t it, little brother?”
With an evil grin the gnome nodded a yes.
“Now, am I going the right way? Is Jill heading for the river?”
Again, it nodded yes.
“Is she going to Cerrmor?”
It waggled its hands and shrugged its shoulders to show that it didn’t truly know. It occurred to Rhodry that place names would mean nothing at all to the Wildfolk.
“Well, if she’s on the river, I’ll catch her up, sure enough. My thanks, little brother. You’d best get back to Jill and keep an eye on her.”

Out of compassion on the one hand and a sense of having seen justice done on the other, the blacksmith and the baker picked Perryn up and carried him into the baker’s cow shed, where they laid him down on a heap of straw. Perryn could barely see them out of his swollen eyes. His chest ached so badly that he was sure Rhodry had broken a couple of his ribs and his lower lip was split and bleeding. The baker’s wife brought out a bowl of water, gave him a drink, then washed his face for him.
“Didn’t like the look of that silver dagger, I didn’t. Here, did you really take his wife?”
Perryn mumbled out a sound, that passed for “I did.”
“Huh. I don’t see why any lass would take you over him, but then, lasses is flighty sometimes. Ah well, you can stay here for a day or two, lad, if you’ll give me a couple of coppers for horse feed.”
Perryn nodded a yes, then fainted.

Irritated to the point of rage, Nevyn sat in his chamber and glared at Salamander’s image as it danced over the glowing coals in the charcoal brazier. The gerthddyn seemed honestly bewildered.
“But I couldn’t leave Jill with that lout—”
“Of course not, you, dolt! That isn’t the point. The point is this Perryn himself. You’ve left behind a gravely ill man—”
“Who repeatedly raped my brother’s woman.”
“I know that, and I’m furious about it, but what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s deathly ill.”
“If he dies, what loss will it be?”
“Hold your tongue, you chattering elf!”
Salamander’s image shrank back and turned pale. Nevyn took a breath and controlled himself.
“Now listen, Ebañy. If Perryn continues on this way, he’s going to pour out his life force until there’s precious little left. Then he’ll get some illness—most likely a consumption of the lungs—and die, just as you’ve guessed. But in the meantime, he’ll also be harming other women because he can’t help himself. He’s like a man with a plague, spreading foul humors and contagion over the countryside even though he doesn’t wish another soul harm. Now do you see?”
“I do at that, and my apologies.” Salamander did look sincerely chastened. “But what could I have done? Ensorceled him? Roped him like one of his horses and dragged him along with us? Jill can’t bear the sight of him, and in her state—”
“Well, true enough. Let me think . . . the nearest dweomerworker is Liddyn of Cantrae. He can possibly find our Perryn and corral him. Truly, your first concern has to be Jill. Form a link with her aura and then—slowly, mind you—draw off some of that excess magnetism. The process should take some days, because you’ll have to absorb it yourself. Or, here, expend it. Do some of your wretched little tricks with it. It might amuse her.”
“I doubt me if any show of dweomer will do more than terrify her now.”
“Maybe so. Ah ye gods! What a nasty mess you’ve dropped in our laps!”
“So they have. Here, one more strange thing about Perryn. When I first saw him, I opened up my sight and looked into his soul. I was thinking perhaps that he was some man linked to Jill by his Wyrd or suchlike.”
“Was he?”
“I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t read his soul.” All at once Salamander looked rueful. “Truly, I must have let my rage, wrath, and righteousness override my reason. I kept seeing him as some of half-human monster, not as a man at all.”
“Valandario’s been telling you and I have been telling you that dweomer demands that a man keep his feelings under control. Do see now what we mean? Ye gods!”
“You have my true and humble apologies, O master. Here, since I’ve seen Perryn, I can scry him out whenever you or Liddyn need my aid.”
“And doubtless we will. He’s got to be caught.”
“True enough. I wasn’t thinking. It was just seeing our Jill so . . . well, so broken and so shamed. It ached my heart.”
“It aches mine, too.” Nevyn realized then that part of his anger at Salamander was only a spillover from his rage at what had happened. “I only wish I could come join you. If you’re riding south, maybe I will. It depends on how things go here.”
“Where are you, by the by?”
Nevyn managed a laugh.
“My turn for the apologies. I’m in the gwerbret’s dun in Aberwyn.”
“Ye gods! I’m surprised Rhys will let you cross his threshold.”
“Oh, he bears me no particular ill will. Lady Lovyan asked me to come with her and pretend to be a legal councillor. She’s going to try one last time to get Rhys to recall Rhodry.”
“No doubt the hells will melt first.”
“No doubt. On the other hand, Rhys loves Aberwyn, and he might do what’s best for her in the end.”
When Salamander looked profoundly skeptical, Nevyn sighed in agreement. Being stubborn was a crucial part of a noble-born man’s honor, and Rhys, like all Maelwaedds, would never betray his.
After finishing his talk with Salamander, Nevyn went to the open window and leaned on the sill to look out. From his chamber high up in the broch, he could see the gardens, a long reach of lawn lit with a hundred tiny oil lamps, where the ladies of the court were having an evening entertainment. Minstrels played, and the noble-born danced among the flickering lights. He could hear them laughing, half out of breath, as they circled round, stamping and slapping their feet in time to the harps and wooden flutes. Ah, my poor Jill, he thought, will you ever be as happy as they again?
His anger came close to choking him, a cold fury with Perryn, with Rhys, stubborn men who insisted on having what they wanted no matter what the cost to anyone else. Rhys was the worse, he decided, because his refusal to recall his brother could plunge Eldidd into open war. And then all those noble lords below would ride in a circling dance of death, this entertainment long forgotten. He pulled the shutters closed so hard that they banged like thunder in the chamber and turned away to pace back and forth. Finally he shook the mood away and turned to the brazier again. When he thought of Rhodry the image appeared in an instant. He was standing, his back to the wall, in a crowded tavern and watching a dice game while he sipped from a tankard. At times, when Rhodry was in a particular melancholy mood, Nevyn could reach his mind and send him thoughts, but tonight he was preoccupied and oddly enough, not at all unhappy. At times he smiled to himself as if remembering a triumph. Most odd, Nevyn thought. Why isn’t he brooding over Jill?
When someone knocked on his door, he canceled the vision. Lady Lovyan came in, her plaid cloak caught at the shoulder with a ring brooch set with rubies winking in the candlelight.
“Have you had enough of the dancing, my lady?”
“More than enough, but I came to see you for another reason. A speeded courier just rode in from Dun Deverry.” She handed him a piece of parchment, tightly rolled from its long sojourn inside a message tube. “This is supposedly for my eyes alone, but I doubt if Blaen would mind you reading it.”
After the long ritual salutations, the letter itself was brief: “I am in Dun Deverry in attendance upon the king. He tells me only that he’s most interested in talking with a certain silver dagger known to you. Would the dragon roar if our liege usurped one of his privileges? By the by, Lord Talidd seems to have found a friend in Savyl of Camynwaen. Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl.”
“Humph,” Nevyn snorted. “Blaen isn’t much of a man at subterfuge.”
“Rhys would have understood that message in an instant if he’d read it.” Lovyan took the letter back and dropped it into the glowing charcoal. The smell of burning leather drifted into the room, and Nevyn hurried to open the shutters. “The news about Savyl of Camynwaen’s troubling. I do not like the idea of Talidd’s finding another gwerbret to plead his case with our liege.”
“No more do I. Ye gods, this is all getting vexed!”
“Do you think Rhys would rebel if the king overrode his decree of exile?”
“Not on his own, but he might be persuaded by men who think they have a chance at the rhan if he died childless.”
“Just so. They’d try to push him into it, anyway. On the other hand, if the king does intervene, then Rhys could stop my nagging tongue without losing any face.”
“True enough. He could bluster about the decree all he wanted in front of the other lords but accept it privately.”
“So I hope. Well, we don’t even know if the king truly plans to recall Rhodry.” She looked at the twisted sheet of parchment ash in the brazier, then picked up the poker and knocked it into dust. “Let us hope that Blaen sends us more news soon.”

Rhodry had no trouble buying passage on a barge that was making the run down to Lughcarn. His horse shared the stern with the barge mules that would pull the boat upriver again; he had a place to sleep in the bow with the four crewmen, who spoke to him as little as possible. The rest of the barge’s hundred feet were laden with rough-shaped iron ingots from the smelters of Ladotyn up in the high mountains. Although the barge rode low in the water, the river current was smooth and steady, and for three days they glided south, while Rhodry amused himself by watching the countryside go by. Once the hills were behind them, the grassy meadows and rich grain fields of Gwaentaer province spread out, green and gold in the late summer sun, flat and seemingly endless.
On the fourth day they crossed the border into Deverry proper, though Rhodry didn’t see much change in the countryside to mark it, Toward noon, the bargemaster told him that they’d make Lughcarn that night.
“It’s the end of our run, silver dagger, but I’ll wager you can find another barge going down into Dun Deverry.”
“Splendid. This is a cursed sight faster than riding, and I’ve got to reach Cerrmor as soon as ever I can.
The bargemaster scratched his beard thoughtfully.
“Don’t know much about the river traffic south, out of the king’s city, but I’ll wager there’s some.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, whether there is or not, you’ll be only about a week’s ride from Cerrmor then.”
By late afternoon, Rhodry saw the first sign that they were coming close to the city. At first he thought he was seeing clouds on the southern horizon, but the steersman enlightened him. A dark pall of smoke hung in the air, smoke from the charcoal ovens, smoke from the charcoal itself as it fed the forges to turn rough iron into Lughcarn steel. By the time they turned into the docks just outside the walled city, his linen shirt was flecked with soot. The docks themselves and the warehouses just beyond were grimy gray. As he rode through the gate in the soot-blackened city walls, Rhodry was thinking that he’d be very glad to leave Lughcarn behind.
Yet it was a rich city under the soot. As he searched for a tavern poor enough to take in a silver dagger, Rhodry passed fine houses, some of them as tall as a poor lord’s broch, with carved plaques over the doors proclaiming the name of one great merchant clan or another. There were temples all over the city, too, some to obscure gods usually relegated to a tiny shrine in the corner of a temple of Bel, some, like the great temple of Bel itself, as large as duns, with gardens and outbuildings of their own. Until he finally found the poor section of town, down by the river on the southern bank, he saw very few beggars, and even among the wooden huts of the longshoremen and charcoal burners he saw almost no one in rags and not a child who looked in danger of starving.
He found a shabby tavern whose owner agreed to let him sleep in the hayloft of the stable out back for a couple of coppers. After he stabled his horse, he went back in and got the best dinner the place offered—mutton stew lensed with grease and served with stale bread to sop up the gravy. He took it to a table where he could keep his back to the wall and looked over the other patrons while he ate. Most of them looked like honest workingmen, gathered there to have a tankard while they chewed over the local gossip, but one of them might have been a traveler like himself, a tall fellow with straight dark hair and skin colored like a walnut shell that bespoke some Bardek blood in his veins. Once or twice, Rhodry caught the fellow looking at him curiously, and when he’d finished eating, the fellow strolled over to him with a tankard in his hand.
“Have you come from the north, silver dagger?”
“I have at that. Why?”
“That’s the way I’m heading. I was wondering what the roads are like up in Gwaentaer.”
Now, that I can’t tell you, because I came down on a barge.”
“A good way to travel when you’re coming downriver, but not so good going up. Well, my thanks, anyway.” Yet he lingered for a moment, as if wondering about something, then finally sat down. “You know, a silver dagger did me a favor once, a while back, and I wouldn’t mind returning it to a fellow member of his band.” He dropped his voice to a murmur. “You look like you hail from Eldidd.”
“I do.”
“You wouldn’t be Rhodry of Aberwyn, would you?”
“I am. Here, where did you hear my name?”
“Oh, it’s all over the south. That’s what I mean about returning a favor. Let me give you a tip, like. It seems that every misbegotten gwerbret has riders out looking for you. I’d head west if I were you.”
“What? By the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what are they looking for me for?”
The fellow leaned closer.
“There’s been a charge laid against you by a Tieryn Aegwyc up in Cerrgonney. He claims you took his brother’s head in battle.”
Instantly, Rhodry understood—or thought he did. No doubt Graemyn had put the blame on him in order to reach a settlement in the peace treaty. After all, who would believe a silver dagger’s word against that of a lord?
“Ye gods! I did no such thing!”
“It’s of no matter to me. But like I say, you’d best be careful which way you ride.”
“You have my thanks from the bottom of my heart.”
All that evening, Rhodry kept one eye on the tavern door. If that charge stood up in a gwerbretal court, he would be beheaded as the holy laws demanded. Fortunately, his years on the long road had taught him many a thing about avoiding trouble. He could no longer ride the barges south, not when they could be called to the bank at any point by the king’s guard and searched. He would have to slip south on back roads and, of course, lie about his name. Cerrmor itself was big enough so that he’d be able to stay unknown for at least a day or two. Once he found Jill, he’d have a witness on his side. Besides, he reminded himself, Nevyn’s there too. Even a gwerbret would listen when the old man spoke.
In the morning, he rode out the east gate to plant a false trail. Much later, when it was too late, he realized that Tieryn Benoic would never have been party to such a falsehood.

“Someone worked you over good and proper, lad,” said Gwel the leech. “Who was it?”
“Oh, er, ah, well,” Perryn mumbled. “A silver dagger.”
“Indeed? Well, it’s a foolish man who earns a silver dagger’s wrath.”
“I . . . er . . . know that now.”
In the polished mirror hanging on the wall of the leech’s shop, Perryn could see his face, still blue, green, and swollen. “You should have had this broken tooth out long before this,” Gwel said.
“True-spoken, but I couldn’t ride until a couple of days ago. He broke some of my ribs, too.”
“I see. Well, you give silver daggers a wide berth after this.”
“You have my sworn word on that.”
Having the tooth pulled was more painful than having it broken, since it took much longer, and the only painkilller the leech could offer him was a goblet of strong mead. It was some hours before Perryn could leave the leech’s shop and stagger back to his inn on the outskirts of Leryn. He flopped down on the bed in his chamber and stared miserably at the ceiling while his mind circled endlessly round and round like a donkey tied to a mill wheel: what was he going to do? The thought of returning to Cerrgonney to face his uncle’s scorn made him feel physically sick to his stomach. And there was Jill. It seemed as the days went by that he loved her more than ever, that he’d never appreciated what he had until he’d lost it. Thinking that most men were no different about those they loved was no consolation. If only he could talk to her, beg her to let him explain, tell her how much he loved her—he was sure she would listen, if only he could get her alone, if only he could get her away from that fellow with the terrifying stare and the even more terrifying dweomer. If only. He didn’t even know which way they’d gone.
Or could he find her? In his muddled state, half mad with pain and the aftermath of the leech’s mead, he found himself thinking of her as his heart’s true home, and with the thought came the pull, the sharp tug at his mind that had always shown him the way to other homes. Slowly, minding his aching jaw, he sat up on the bed and went very still. Truly, he could feel it: south. She’d gone south. He wept, but this time in rising hope, that he could track her down, follow her along until he had a chance alone with her, and somehow—oh, by great Kerun himself—steal her back again.

“Now this is passing strange,” Salamander announced. “Rhodry’s still heading south, but by the ears of Epona’s steed, why is he taking every rotten cow path and village lane instead of riding on the king’s good roads?”
Jill turned to look at him. They were sitting on the bow of a river barge, and Salamander was using the foaming, sun-flecked waters as a focus for scrying. Since she still was seeing with power, the water seemed like solid, carved silver, but she could remind herself now that what she was seeing was only illusionary. She refused to believe that she was seeing a hidden reality no matter how often Salamander insisted on it.
“Does he seem to be looking for a hire?”
“Not in the least, and I’ve been watching him for two days now. It seems that he knows where he’s going, but he’s being cursed careful on the way.” With an irritable toss of his head, he looked away from the river. “Well, I’ll spy out the esteemed brother again later. How are you feeling this morn?”
“A lot better. At least things are holding still most of the time.”
“Good. Then my unpracticed cure is actually working.”
“You have my heartfelt thanks, truly.”
For a while she idly watched the southern horizon, where Lughcarn’s smoke hung like a tiny cloud. She wished that she could simply forget about Perryn, that Salamander had some magic that would wipe her mind clean of his memory, but she knew that the shame she felt would nag at her for years. She felt as unclean as a priestess who’d broken her vows and was somehow to blame, too, for her abduction. If she’d only told Rhodry, or called to Nevyn earlier, or—the “If only’s” ran on and on.
“From the hiraedd in your eyes,” Salamander said abruptly, “I think me you’re brooding again.”
“Oh, how can I not brood? It’s all well and good to chase after Rhodry, but I imagine he’ll only curse me to my face when we find him.”
“Why? You were no more at fault than one of the horses Perryn stole.”
She merely shook, her head to keep tears away.
“Now, here, Jill, my turtledove. Your mind’s back, you can think again. Let me tell you somewhat. I’ve been thinking about our horse-stealing lord, and I’ve talked with Nevyn, too. There’s somewhat cursed peculiar about that lad. He has what you might call a wound of the soul, the way he pours out his life at will.”
“But I’m the one who fell right into his wretched arms. Ah, ye gods, I never dreamt that I was as weak-willed as some slut of a tavern lass.”
Salamander growled under his breath.
“Haven’t you listened to one blasted word I said? It’s not a weak will. You were ensorceled, dweomer-bound and dweomer-muddled. Once his life force swept over you, you had no will of your own, only his will. All his lust ran to you like water through a ditch.”
For a moment she wanted to vomit as she remembered how it felt to have him smile at her in his particular way.
“Why do you call it a wound?” she said.
“Because it’s going to kill him, sooner or later.”
“Good. I only wish I could be there to watch.”
“And no one expects you to feel differently, my delicate little lass. But can’t you see, Jill? You’re as blameless as if he’d tied you down and raped you by force.”
“Ah ye gods, and that’s what I hate most. I felt so beastly helpless!”
“You were helpless.”
“Oh, true enough. It’s a cursed hard thing to admit.”
“Boils need lancing, on the other hand.”
When she threw a fake punch his way, he smiled.
“Truly, you’re coming back to your old self. But don’t you see the curious thing? Given that Perryn has no true dweomer, then where by all the hells does this power come from? What gave him the wound?”
“As much as I hate to talk about the worm-rotted bastard, I’ll admit the question’s of some interest.”
“Of great interest, especially to Nevyn. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no answer.”
“Well, if anyone can find it, it’s Nevyn.”
“Precisely. Especially once he gets his hands on him.”
“Is he planning on hunting Perryn down?”
“Not truly. I’ve been waiting to tell you this until you were stronger, but I think you can bear it now. Perryn’s been following us.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Salamander caught her hand and held it between both of his.
“You’re in no danger now, none at all.”
“Not now, maybe, but what about when we’re out on the roads again, following Rhodry?”
“By then Perryn will be on his way to Eldidd under armed guard. Here, there’s a dweomerman at court named Lord Madoc. Have Perryn arrested as soon as he enters the city, then send him to Nevyn. From what you told me, that rambling scribe in our lordling’s saddlebags is more than enough reason for the king’s wardens to take him under arrest.”
“So we’re going to Dun Deverry?”
“We are. And we may not have to leave it, either. Do you know Rhodry’s cousin Blaen of Cwm Peel?”
“I do.”
“The good gwerbret’s at court at the moment. Nevyn wants us to speak with him. It seems that the king’s sent out the word that he wants to see Rhodry. Apparently the various gwerbrets are keeping watch for him, and when they find him, they’ll send him straight to Dun Deverry.”
“The king? What—”
“I don’t know, but I think me we can guess. The king knows Rhys won’t be getting any more heirs for Aberwyn.”
“Recall.”
“Just that. So soon enough, Jill, you’ll be having a splendid wedding.”
“Oh, will I now? You sound like a village idiot. Think! They’re never going to let the heir to the most important rhan in Eldidd marry a silver dagger’s bastard. The best I could hope for is being his wretched mistress again, living in his court and hating his wife. Well, if he even wants me anymore. What do you think this is, one of your tales?”
“I have the distinct and revolting feeling that I was thinking just that. Jill, please, forgive me.”
She merely shrugged and watched the farmland gliding by. A herd of white cattle with rusty-red ears were drinking from the river, watched over by a lad and two dogs.
“Do you forgive me?” he said at last.
“I do, and my apologies, too. I’m all to pieces still.”
“So you are. After you’ve baited our trap for Perryn, you could just ride away without seeing Rhodry, if you wanted.”
“Never. Maybe he’ll curse me to my face, but I want to tell him that I always loved him.”
Salamander started to speak, but she covered her face with her hands and wept.

The king’s palace in Dun Deverry was enormous, six broch towers joined by a sprawling complex of half-brochs, surrounded by outbuildings, and protected by a double ring of curtain walls. As an honored guest, Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl, had a luxurious suite high up in one of the outer towers, so that he had a good view of the gardens that lay between the pair of walls. In his reception hamber were four chairs with cushions of purple Bardek velvet well as a table and a hearth of its own. Although Blaen cared little for such luxuries as things in themselves, he appreciated them as marks of the king’s favor. Besides, his wife, Canyffa, was accompanying him on this trip, and he liked to see her surrounded by comfort. A tall woman with dark hair and doelike brown eyes, Canyffa was as calm as he was excitable. Although their marriage had been of the usual arranged sort, Blaen privately considered that he’d been exceptionally lucky in his wife. At moments, he could even admit to her that he loved her.
This particular morning Canyffa had been called to wait upon the queen in Her Majesty’s private chamber—a signal honor, but one that had come her way before. Blaen perched on the window-sill in their bedchamber and watched as she dressed with special care. After one of her serving women laid out several dresses on the bed, she sent the lass away and studied the choices, finally picking a modest one of dove-gray Bardek silk, a color that showed off the reds and whites of her husband’s clan’s plaid to advantage.
“I think Gwerbret Savyl’s wife is going to be attending the queen this morning as well,” she remarked. “I assume that my lord would like me to keep my ears open.”
“Your lord would like naught better, truly. What’s the wife like, anyway?”
Canyffa considered before answering.
“A weasel, but a lovely one. I gather that they’re well suited.”
“In weaselhood, perhaps. No one would call Savyl lovely. Cursed if I know why he’s sticking his oar in this particular stream! Camynwaen’s a long way from Belglaedd. What use can Talidd possibly be to him?”
“I believe they’ve got blood kin in common, but still, the point’s well taken, my lord. I shall see if I can cultivate the lovely Lady Braeffa.” She paused for a quick smile. “But if I’m going to sacrifice myself this way, I shall expect a handsome present from our Rhodry when he’s recalled.”
“Some of the finest Bardek silver, no doubt. I’ll make sure he honors you properly. Well—if we can get him recalled, anyway.”
While Canyffa was off with the queen, Blaen had a guest of his own, a powerful man who was worth another sort of cultivation.
He had his page fetch a silver flagon of mead and two glass goblets, then sent the lad away. The gwerbret filled the glasses with his own hands and gave one to his guest, who took an appreciative sip. The recently ennobled Lord Madoc, third equerry to the king, was a slender man of about forty, with neatly trimmed blond hair barely touched with gray, and humorous blue eyes. He was also, or so it was said. Nevyn’s nephew. Indeed? Blaen thought to himself. But I’ll wager he’s another sorcerer, nephew or not. Since he’d been a successful horse breeder in Cantrae province before his recent court appointment, Madoc certainly did his job well, and he had a plain yet decent sort of manners that allowed him to fit into the court as smoothly as any minor lord—if not more so. Yet, every now and then, there was something about the way he looked or smiled that implied that the power and pomp of the court failed to impress him.
“My thanks for the invitation to visit you. Your Grace,” Madoc said. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Simple hospitality, in a way. I know your uncle well.”
“Of course. I had a letter from him recently. He’s quite well.”
“Splendid. Is he still in Eldidd?”
“He is, Your Grace. Lovyan, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, has taken him into her service.”
I’ll just wager, Blaen thought to himself. More like he’s taken her into his, whether she knows it or not.
“That’s good news,” he said aloud. “Our Nevyn’s getting a bit old to travel the roads with a mule.”
“His health’s a marvel, isn’t it, Your Grace? But then my mother is still alive and sharp as a sword, and her past seventy.”
“Let’s hope the gods grant that you inherit their stamina, then.” Blaen gave him a friendly grin. “Lovyan’s kin to me, of course, my mother’s sister.”
“So I’d heard, Your Grace, but then, there’s been quite a bit of talk of late of your cousin Rhodry.”
“No doubt. Trying to keep a secret at court is generally a waste of time. The gossip started buzzing, I’ll wager, the moment our liege summoned me here.”
“A bit sooner than that, truly.” Madoc shook his head in mock sadness. ”The first rumors, Your Grace, were that the king might summon you.”
“I’ll wager you, know, then, that our liege is looking for my scapegrace cousin.”
“I do, at that, and the gossip is that the king means to override his sentence of exile.”
“Well, I can’t really tell you if that’s true or not. I haven’t been worn to any secrets, mind—our liege hasn’t told me, that’s all. I’ll guess that he’s not sure yet.”
“Most like, Your Grace. Overriding a gwerbret’s decree is naught to be done lightly.”
“Just so.” Blaen paused for a long swallow of mead. “But curse it all, the king can’t do one thing or the other until Rhodry’s been found.”
“Still no news, Your Grace?”
“Not a shred. By every god and his wife, what’s wrong with those packs of idiots that the gwerbrets call riders? The kingdom’s big, sure enough, but they should have found one silver dagger by now.”
“So you’d think, Your Grace.” For the briefest of moments, Madoc looked troubled. “I truly thought they would have tracked him down quite quickly.”
“So did I.” Here was the crux, and Blaen paused briefly. “In fact, I was wondering if perhaps you’d help with the hunt.”
“Me, Your Grace? Well, I’d certainly do anything that my duties here allow, but I’m not sure what I could do.”
“I’m not truly sure either, but I suspect a man known as Nevyn’s nephew might see things hidden from others.”
Madoc blinked twice, then smiled.
“Ah, Your Grace. You know about the old man’s dweomer, then.”
“I do. He went out of his way to let me know, last summer, it was. He seemed to find it strangely easy to see things a long way away.”
“So he can, Your Grace. Let me be blunt. If I could scry Rhodry out, I would, but I’ve never seen him in the flesh, and so I can’t.”
Blaen had a gulp of mead to hide his surprise. He’d been expecting a lot of fencing before Madoc admitted the truth, but here the man had just spat it out.
“I see,” Blaen said at last. “Pity.”
“It is. I may be able to get you news some other way. His Grace is right. Things are growing worrisome. Rhodry really should have been found by now.”
“Just so. Do you know what my worst fear is? That some of the men whose clans stand to inherit Aberwyn when Rhys dies may have taken steps to have the legitimate heir removed.”
“Ye gods! Would they stoop so low?”
“Aberwyn is one of the richest rhans in the kingdom, and it’s going to grow richer. Just a year ago the king gave the city a more liberal charter. One of the terms was that Aberwyn would have a share in the royal monopoly on trade with Bardek.”
Madoc nodded, a grim little smile twisting his mouth.
“His Grace’s point is well taken. Well and good, then. If His Grace will excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
Blaen was expecting Madoc to leave the chamber, but instead he went to the window and looked up at the sky, where white clouds billowed and tore on the edge of a summer storm. He stood there while Blaen downed two more goblets of mead and wondered what the man was doing; finally he turned back, looking troubled.
“Rhodry’s almost to Drauddbry, and he seems to be traveling south. He’s bought himself a second horse to make speed. It would appear that he’s heading for Cerrmor.”
“I wonder what they want in Cerrmor.”
“They, Your Grace?”
“Well, isn’t Jill with him?”
“My apologies, Your Grace. I forgot you wouldn’t know. He and Jill were separated by an unfortunate turn of events. She’s following along after him with a friend, a gerthddyn who gallantly offered to escort her. The last I heard, they were coming to Dun Deverry to beg your aid.”
“Which they’ll have, of course.” Blaen considered for a moment. “Have you ever met my cousin or his woman?”
“I’ve not, Your Grace.”
“They match each other like a pair of fine boots. If Rhodry’s going to inherit Aberwyn, I’d rather see Jill beside him than the noble-born sheep his mother would pick for him.”
“But isn’t she common-born?”
“She is, but details like that have been arranged away before. I’ll have to think on it.”
Several hours later, it occurred to Blaen that he implicitly believed what Madoc had told him. I’ve seen dweomer before, he reminded himself, but still he shuddered. What had Madoc been reading in the cloudy sky?

Thanks to the rain, the bargemen had hung canvas across the bow of the barge, an imperfect shelter but better than none at all. Jill wrapped her cloak around her tightly and watched Salamander staring at the foaming water rushing by. Every now and then his mouth would frame a silent word or two. By then, her sight was nearly back to normal. The water was merely water; Salamander no longer changed color to reflect what he was feeling. There was only a certain vividness to colors, a certain urgency to patterns of line and shape, to remind her of the splendors she had seen when she’d been bathed in forbidden power. With a grudging self-mockery, she had to admit that in a way she was sorry to lose that dangerous beauty. Finally Salamander turned to her to whisper.
“I’ve just been talking with Lord Madoc. He wanted to know where I’d last scried Rhodry out so he could tell Blaen. Not that it’ll do much good, truly. A speeded courier still couldn’t catch up with him.”
“True enough, but the courier could tell the gwerbret in Cerrmor to watch out for him.”
“If he stays in Cerrmor.”
Jill raised her hands in a gesture of frustration. She was wishing that she hadn’t taught Rhodry the ways of the long road so well. For days now he’d slipped through the net of riders looking for him like a fox through a hedgerow.
“Well, we’ll be in Dun Deverry tomorrow,” Salamander said. “And we can talk with Blaen directly.”
“Good. You know, in spite of everything, I’m really looking forward to seeing the king’s city. I’ve wandered over this kingdom since I was eight years old, but I’ve never been there. There aren’t any hires for silver daggers in the king’s own lands.”
All at once the gray gnome popped into being, not a foot away from her. When she held out her hands to it, it hesitated, screwing up its face at her.
“Oh, here, little one! What have I done to make you so angry with me?”
It held out for only a moment longer, then threw itself into her. She hugged it tight.
“I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me. I’ve missed you.”
Smiling, it reached up to pat her cheek.
“We’ll be back with Rhodry soon, with any luck. Have you visited d him? Is he well?”
It nodded yes to both questions, snuggling against her like a cat.
“I wish I knew where he was going.”
The gnome looked up and pointed at her.
“He’s following me?”
Again it nodded yes, but so indifferently that she wasn’t sure if it had truly understood. Salamander had been watching all of this closely.
“Interesting and twice interesting,” he pronounced. “But I wonder what it means.”

Although the leech advised Perryn to stay in Leryn for at least five days to recover from the beating, he left town as soon as he could possibly ride. Once he’d tuned his mind to Jill, her presence ached him like another wound, drawing him after her. Yet his longing was tempered with fear, of the strange fellow with the moonbeam pale hair who had taken her away. As he thought things over, he wondered if he had somehow dreamt that terrifying scene where he’d seen clouds of colored light and glowing swords. Every time he tried to convince himself that he’d been dreaming, he came up against the inescapable fact that Jill was gone. He simply refused to admit that she ever would have left him of her own free will; there had to be another man involved, and him a powerful one. Although most people in the kingdom dismissed tales of dweomer, Perryn had always instinctively believed they were true, that indeed there was a thing called dweomer and that with it men could work marvels. Now, to his very cold comfort, he’d been proven right. His one consolation in all this was that if he didn’t have Jill, neither did Rhodry.
Three days’ ride brought him to Gaddmyr, a large, prosperous town behind a double ring of stone walls. Although he would have preferred to avoid the town entirely, he was too low on provisions. Normally he hated being in towns, packed in with a lot of smelly, sweaty people, bound up in their petty human concerns like pigs in a sty, but that night he found it a certain comfort to sit in the tavern room of a shabby inn with human beings around him to distract him from his constant, aching longing for Jill. Out in the forest, he would have missed her constantly; there, he could drink down strong ale and try to forget her. When the tavernman came by to ask him if he’d be spending the night, on impulse he said that he would.
“But, er, ah, I don’t truly want to share a chamber with someone. Could I, oh, ah, sleep out in the hayloft?”
“No reason why not. Plenty of room out there.”
Perryn got himself another tankard of ale and found a seat in an out-of-the-way corner. Although he was planning on simply drinking himself so blind that he’d be unable to think, the tavern lass hanged his mind. She was a round-faced little thing, with dark hair and knowing dark eyes, and a smile that promised a few nteresting hours if not much more. Perryn decided that she was a much better way to distract himself from thoughts of Jill than a hangover would be. He chatted with her for a few minutes, asked her name, which was Alaidda, and found, as he’d expected, that she was utterly cold to him. When she turned to go, he gave her one of his smiles. Although he’d never understood what he was doing the smile worked as it always did. Alaidda stared at him, her lips half parted, her eyes stunned as she lingered beside him. When he smiled again, she cast a nervous glance at the tavernman, then came much closer.
“And is the innkeep going to mind if you talk a bit with a customer?”
“Oh, he won’t, as long as it’s just talk.”
“What are you, then? His daughter?”
“Hah! Far from it.”
“Indeed?” Perryn paused for another longing smile. “So—part of your hire is keeping his bed warm.”
Alaidda blushed, but she moved closer still, until her full breasts were brushing his arm. He smiled yet again and was rewarded by seeing her eyes go all dreamy as she smiled in return. When Perryn saw that the tavernman was engrossed in conversation with a pair of merchants, he risked laying his hand on her cheek.
“He doesn’t look like much of a man to me. A lass like you could use a little better company of a night. I’m sleeping out in the hayloft, you see. Out of . . . er, well . . . out of the way. I could go out there right now.”
“I could follow in a bit, but I can’t stay long.” She giggled in an drunken way. “But then, it won’t take long.”
With another giggle, Alaidda hurried away to the kitchen. Perryn lingered long enough to finish his ale and allay the tavernman’s suspicions, then slipped out to the hayloft. Since the lass had something to hide, he didn’t take a candle lantern. He found his gear in his horse’s stall, hauled it up the ladder, and stumbled around in the dark until he got the blankets laid out and off. As he sat waiting in the mounded hay, he began to wonder why he was even bothering with this seduction. No woman would ever match his Jill. The thought of her brought him close to tears, but in a few minutes he was distracted by the sound of Alaidda climbing the ladder. He went to meet her and kissed her before she got any thoughts of changing her mind.
“Oh ye gods!” She sounded honestly troubled. “I hardly know what’s wrong with me, running after you like this.”
“Naught’s wrong. Come lie down with me, and I’ll show you why you did.”
Meekly she let him take her to his blankets. At first she was shy in his arms, but with every kiss he gave her, he could feel not only a growing sexual tension, but a power, a strange dark feeling that rose from deep within and flooded him until it was almost more demanding than the sexual force. As the power grew, she responded to it, whimpering in his arms at every caress. Finally she caught his hand.
“I don’t have time to take my dress off. Just pull it up, and now. Please?”
As soon as they were finished, she gave him one last kiss and a sincere confession that she wished she could stay all night, then hurried back to her jealous man. By then, Perryn was so exhausted that he was glad she was gone. He fell onto his blankets and stared up into a strange light-shot darkness that revolved slowly around him. When he tried to close his eyes, the feeling of motion persisted, so strong that he wanted to vomit; he opened his eyes in a hurry. He could feel cold sweat running down his back and chest, and his trembling lips felt bloodless and cold. Although he wanted to get up and go ask for help in the tavern, he knew that he could never climb down the ladder without breaking his neck. He could only lie there, gripping the straw under him, and pray that he wasn’t dying.
Panic hit him like waves slapping a pier in a storm. He found himself remembering the dweomerman who’d taken Jill away, the fellow taunting him, then adding one last insult: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses, or it’ll kill you. At the time, Perryn had assumed the fellow meant that some outraged husband would murder him or suchlike, but now he realized the truth. Something was wrong, very gravely wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. Did the dweomerman know? Would he help if he did? Not likely from the hate-filled things the fellow had thrown into his face. In a confused babble, his thoughts went round and round until at last he slept, tumbling into a darkness without dreams.

About two hours before noon on the morrow, Jill finally got her first view of Dun Deverry when the barge tied up at the riverside piers about a half mile to the north. For a long while she stared at the massive walls that curved around the city, rising high above them on its seven hills. Even from their distance she could just pick out the roofs of the king’s palace. Floating high above the towers and snapping in the wind were tiny flecks of yellow that had to be the cloth-of-gold banners of the Wyvern throne.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Salamander said. “Let’s get those horses unloaded and get on our way. Just wait until you see the gates.”
The gates were easily twelve feet high and twenty broad, and they were carved all over with panels of key patterns set round with bands of interlace. The iron banding was stamped as well with rows of interwoven spirals and rosettes. Since the walls were a good twenty feet thick, they walked through a sort of a tunnel and found yet another set of gates at the other end, just as elaborately decorated as the first. Beyond them was a wide public space, planted with oak trees around a central fountain, where a marble wyvern rose from the spray. From this park the narrow streets unwound, spiraling through the houses and up the hills, or twisting down through shops and taverns toward the lake to the west. Everywhere Jill looked she saw people hurrying about on some business or another, or here and there the splendidly dressed riders of the king’s own guard.
Salamander led her to the inn he had in mind, a three-story broch rising in the midst of a grassy garden. She looked at the roof, covered with fine slate, and noticed that the windows glinted with glass.
“We can’t stay here! It’ll cost a fortune!”
“Jill, my miserly turtledove.” The gerthddyn shook his head in mock sadness. “If so, I shall earn a fortune in the tavern room to pay for it. I cannot stand cheap inns. They stink, and the mattresses are crawling with bugs. If I wanted to sleep on a floor, I would have been born a hound.”
“Well, but there’s plenty of decent inns that cost less.”
“Why cavil over a few silvers? Besides, someone is meeting us here.”
As they led their horses up to the gates, a burly young man strolled out. He glanced with some appreciation at Salamander’s beautifully woven cloak and gold-trimmed horse gear, then bowed.
“Is this silver dagger with you, sir?”
“He is. My bodyguard. Have you a chamber on the second floor?”
“We do. I’ll just call the lad to tend to your horses, sir.”
“Splendid. The first things we shall want are baths.”
But they had to postpone this by now necessary luxury for some time. When Jill followed Salamander into the tavern room, which had Bardek carpets on the floor and silver sconces on the walls, she saw a tall man in the plaid brigga of the noble-born pacing back and forth near the hearth. The sight of him wrung her heart, because Blaen looked so much like her Rhodry.
“That’s Gwerbret Blaen!” she said.
“Of course. He’s the one who’s meeting us here.”
“He doesn’t know about . . . well, about Perryn, does he?”
“Of course not! Don’t you think I have any respect for your honor? Leave that part of this to me.”
As they walked over, Blaen saw them and strode to meet them. Although Salamander made him a courtly bow, he barely returned it, instead catching Jill’s hand and giving it a hard squeeze.
“It gladdens my heart to see you, Jill, though it’d gladden it more if Rhodry were with you.” He looked around and found the tavernman staring gape-mouthed at the sight of the gwerbret greeting a silver dagger as an old friend, “Innkeep! Send up a flagon of your best mead to their chambers! And a plate of cold meats, too.”
The chambers justified Jill’s worst fears about expense. Not only were they carpeted, but all the furniture was beautifully polished wood, as heavily carved with interlace as anything in a lord’s dun. The flagon and the plate, both silver, arrived promptly. Blaen handed the servant lass coins worth twice what the refreshments, cost and dismissed her peremptorily.
“Now,” said the gwerbret, pouring himself a gobletful. “Lord Madoc’s told me, gerthddyn, that, you know how to do more things than spin tales, so you can speak freely. Do you know where Rhodry is?’”
“Almost to Cerrmor. In fact . . . ” He paused to glance out the window to check, the sun. “I’d say he’s in Cerrmor at the moment, But why is he there? That, alas, I cannot say, Your Grace.”
“No more can anyone, apparently, curse them all.” Blaen glanced at Jill. “Pour yourself some mead, silver dagger. You’ve had quite a journey. By the way, Jill, how did Rhodry come to leave you behind?”
“Ah, Your Grace, that’s a strange tale indeed.” Salamander broke in smoothly. “Rhodry was on a hire in Cerrgonney, you see.”
“I’d heard somewhat about Benoic and his unlovely kin.”
“Well and good, then. Well, Rhodry had left Jill at the dun of a certain Lord Nedd, the man he rode for, but he never came back for her. Fortunately I came along—I’d been looking for her for reasons of my own, you see. I scried Rhodry out and found him riding south. I refuse to believe that he simply deserted her.”
“No more do I.” Blaen pledged her with his goblet. “Don’t think that for a moment, lass.”
Jill forced out a brave smile.
“So, after much thought, brooding, and ratiocination, I arrived at the conclusion that someone, for reasons most recondite and unknown, was luring Rhodry south. We have a hint or two that he was told that Jill had left him and was coming after her. Be that as it may, he’s been acting like a hunted man all the way south from Lughcarn, while before that he traveled openly. Either somewhat happened to him in Lughcarn, or someone told him a falsehood of some sort.”
“That would stand to reason, truly.” Blaen sighed and drank heavily. “I’ll wager this has somewhat to do with the situation in Aberwyn. You know Rhodry has enemies, don’t you?”
“We do, Your Grace, Has the king made a decision as yet about a recall?”
Jill turned away and busied herself with pouring a goblet of mead. She wished that she could simply drink herself into forgetting that Rhodry was being taken away from her.
“Jill,” Blaen said. “You look heartsick.”
“Why shouldn’t I be, Your Grace? I’m losing my man. Do you think they’ll let Rhodry marry a woman like me?”
“I see no reason why not, once I’ve done ennobling you. I’m settling land in your name over in Cwm Pecl. The gods all know that there’s plenty to spare in my province.”
Your Grace!” Jill could barely speak. “You’re far too generous! How can I—”
“Hush. Listen, Jill, Rhodry’s no weak younger son any longer. Once we get him recalled, he’ll be Aberwyn’s only heir, and that means he’ll be the gwerbret when his black-hearted brother dies. He’ll be in a position to demand the wife he wants, no matter what his mother or the rest of the noble-born think of it.”
Salamander laughed.
“And there you are, my turtledove—an ending exactly like one of my tales.”
“So it seems.”
Jill smiled, because they both wanted her to be pleased, but she felt the dweomer cold down her back. When Blaen launched into a monologue on Eldidd politics, she wandered away to the window and looked down on the garden below. Salamander had told Blaen a pretty tale, sure enough; she could see how it would protect her. If Rhodry wanted nothing more to do with her, everyone would assume that he’d merely tired of her and left, as men so often did to their women. And if he forgave her . . . the thought staggered her, that she, of all lowly commoners, might someday be the wife of a great gwerbret. For a moment she was terrified, thinking of the responsibilities, the power that could be hers. Lovyan would teach me she thought, if Rhodry even wants me anymore, that is.
But as the thought came to her, so did another . . . or not precisely a thought, a feeling, rather, a sudden urgency. Rhodry was in danger. She knew it with complete clarity, that he was in the worst danger of his life and that in this moment of danger he was thinking only of her. She shut her eyes and thought back to him, tried desperately to reach him, to warn, him. Images flickered in her mind, as hazy as those seen when a person is first falling asleep, ever-changing glimpses: Rhodry on a narrow street, Rhodry ducking down an alley when some of the city wardens strolled by. Although the images flickered, the feeling of danger grew until she could barely breathe. He was talking with, someone—he was asking about Nevyn, asking about her—they were lying, saying that she was in Cerrmor, giving him friendly directions—
“Rhodry, don’t go!”
She heard a crash, looked around dazed and realized, that she’d dropped the goblet she was holding. Blaen and Salamander had whirled round, to look at her. She had screamed her warning aloud.
“What by the gods?” Blaen said.
“Rhodry’s in Cerrmor. He’s in danger. I know he is. I saw—I felt it. I tried to warn him.” She tossed back her head and sobbed because she knew that the warning had never reached him. “We’ve got to get to Cerrmor. We’ve got to leave now.”
Blaen set down his goblet and hurried over to pat her shoulder awkwardly as she wept, as if he thought her mind turned weak and childish by grief, but Salamander was taking her warning in dead seriousness. Through her tears she saw him snap his fingers over the charcoal brazier in the corner, then stare intently into the lambent flames. She forced the tears back and wiped her face on her sleeve.
“Ah ye gods!” There was panic in his voice. “I can’t find him! Jill, I can’t scry him out!”
The chamber seemed to swell around her, and the light grew painfully bright. The silver flagon on the table threw off sparks like a fire.
“Call to Nevyn,” she said.
Then Blaen grabbed her and half led, half shoved her into a chair. She slumped back and watched Salamander, bending over the brazier. His tunic seemed to ripple around him as if he stood in a breeze. She was afraid to look at the intricate carpets.
“Jill, do you need a chirurgeon?” Blaen said.
“I don’t, my thanks. It’s just the fear.” She forced herself to raise her head and look him in the face. “Your Grace, don’t you see what this means? Remember Alastyr? If Salamander can’t scry Rhodry out, someone’s hiding him—with dweomer.”

As it danced over the flames, Salamander’s image looked close to tears. Nevyn himself felt a weary sort of rage, cursing himself because he should have seen this danger coming. Had the Lords of Light sent some omen that he’d overlooked? He quite simply didn’t know.
“I can’t find him either,” Nevyn thought.
“Is he dead, then?”
“He can’t be, because Jill would know if he were. When you consider how much she saw of his danger, I think we can trust that she’d feel his death. How soon can you get to Cerrmor?”
“We should arrive tomorrow.”
“Ye gods! What are you going to do, turn into birds and fly?”
“Naught of the sort, truly.” Salamander managed a faint smile. “The king has placed one of the royal riverboats at Blaen’s disposal. We’ll leave soon, and not only will the current be running our way, but we’ll have a crew of rowers. The Belaver runs cursed fast from here to Drauddbry, I’m told.”
“Splendid. Is Blaen going with you?”
“He’s not. The intrigue at court would gripe your very soul, and he doesn’t dare leave. We have letters from him, though, for the gwerbret in Cerrmor. Are you going to join us there?”
“I’ll leave at once. I never dreamt they would go as far as this. Can’t you see what must have happened? Rhodry’s rivals must have hired one of the Bardek blood guilds to dispose of him.”
Salamander’s image, floating above the fire, looked intensely puzzled.
“How would petty lords from Eldidd even know those guilds exist?”
“Well, some merchant or other must have told them, or . . .  I see what you mean. It sounds very farfetched once I say it aloud.”
“Then what’s happened?’
“What indeed? Be very careful until I reach Cerrmor. Ye gods, I’ll have to take a ship! I can’t leave until I’ve spoken with Lovyan, of course, but I can start packing. Her Grace is out hunting with the gwerbret at the moment.”

Down on the Eldidd coast, it was a bright sunny day, although the wind that whipped the silver-and-blue banners of Aberwyn was chilly and the shadows that lay in the great ward of the gwerbret’s dun were positively cold. As she stood beside her horse, Lady Lovyan glanced doubtfully at the sky.
“It might be a bit windy to fly the falcons.”
“Oh, let’s try our luck, Mother,” Rhys said.
He spoke with such forced cheer that she knew this hunting party was merely an excuse to speak with her alone.
“By all means, then. We’ll have a good ride if naught else.”
They mounted and rode out of the dun into the streets of Aberwyn. Behind them came the falconers, with the hooded birds on their wrists, and four men from Rhys’s warband as an escort As they wound their way through the curving streets, the common folk bowed to their overlord, who acknowledged the gesture with an upraised hand. Occasionally—and quite spontaneously—boys and young men cheered him. For all his stubbornness, Rhys was a good ruler, scrupulously fair in his judgments over everyone but his younger brother, and his townsfolk appreciated him for it.
When they left the city, they turned north on the river road that followed the Gwyn, sparkling and full from the summer’s heavy rains. Among the willows and hazels that grew along the water, Lovyan saw a tree or two that were turning yellow.
“It seems that autumn’s coming quite fast this year,” she remarked.
“It does. Well, we’ve had a wretchedly cold summer.” Rhys turned in his saddle to make sure that his men were following at a respectfully far distance behind, then turned her way. “Here, Mother, I’ve got somewhat to ask you. It’s about little Rhodda.”
“Indeed?”
“I was thinking that I might formally adopt the child and legitimize her.”
Lovyan was caught with nothing to say. Rhys gave her an ironic smile that must have cost him dear.
“It’s time I faced the harsh truth of things. I’ll never give Aberwyn an heir.”
“The gwerbretrhyn can’t pass down in the female line.”
“Of course not, but she’ll marry someday, won’t she? Have a husband, maybe a son or two. At least they’ll have some Maelwaedd blood in them.”
“If the Council of Electors accepted her husband as your successor, anyway.”
“There’s precedent for it, hundreds of years of precedent.” He tossed his head in anger. “Besides, at least it’ll give my vassals pause. Ye gods, don’t you think it aches my heart? I know cursed well that every tieryn in Eldidd is already scheming and politicking to get my lands for their son when I die.”
“True-spoken, alas. But you know, my sweet, there’s a much easier solution—”
“I will not recall Rhodry.”
His mouth settled into the tight line she knew so well.
“As His Grace decides, of course, but how can you adopt the child without her father’s permission?”
“Rhodry’s an outlaw. Under the laws she has no father.”
“Very well, then. I’ll think the matter over, since His Grace persists in being as stubborn as a wild boar.”
He merely shrugged the insult away and went back to watching the road in front of him. Lovyan wondered why she even bothered to hint, scheme, and badger to get her youngest son home. Rhys simply couldn’t bear to let Rhodry inherit, she thought. Now, if Rhodry would only get a son on that Jill of his, but there she is, poor lamb, riding all over with him and sleeping out in the rain on the ground, and the Goddess only knows what else. Doubtless her womanly humors are utterly disrupted and—
Suddenly Rhys’s horse went mad. Lovyan could think of it no other way as the black neighed and bucked, then reared, striking out with its forehooves as if at an enemy. Rhys flew forward, caught himself on its neck, then slipped sideways as it bucked again. Although he was a splendid rider, the horse was rearing and pitching in utter panic, and he’d been taken off-guard. She heard his men shouting, heard other hoofbeats, but Rhys’s black twisted, bucked, then slipped and went down, throwing Rhys hard and falling on top of him. She heard a woman screaming, then realized that the voice was hers.
Suddenly the escort was all around her. One man grabbed the bridle of her frightened palfrey and led her away; the others dismounted and rushed to their lord’s side. Back under control, Lovyan gestured at the man holding her horse.
“Ride back to the dun! Bring Nevyn and a cart!”
“My lady.” He made her a half-bow from, the saddle, then galloped off.
Lovyan dismounted and hurried over just as the horse struggled to its feet, its off-fore dangling and broken. One of the riders blocked her way.
“My lady, you’d best not look.”
“Don’t speak nonsense! I’ve tended my share of wounds in my day.”
She shoved him aside and knelt down beside Rhys. He lay so still that at first she thought him dead, but when she touched his cheek, his eyes fluttered open, His face twisted in agony as he tried to speak.
“Whist, whist, little one. Well have Nevyn here soon.”
He nodded, then stared up at the sky, his mouth working in pain. Blood ran down his face from a slash over his eye; she could see that his left leg was broken, probably in several places. Yet she knew that the worst damage might have been done internally where no chirurgeon could heal, not even Nevyn. She could only pray to the Goddess until at last the old man rode up at the gallop, with a wagon rumbling after. Nevyn swung himself down from his horse and ran over.
“Does he live?”
“Barely.”
Lovyan got out of the way and stood with the escort by the side of the road as Nevyn went to work, straightening the leg and roughly splinting it. As he ran his long graceful hands over Rhys’s body, she saw him shaking his head and swearing under his breath, and her heart turned cold. At last Nevyn called the carter to help him lift the injured gwerbret into the wagon. By then, Rhys had mercifully fainted. Lovyan got in with him and cradled his bloody head in her lap. Nevyn watched, his ice-blue eyes unreadable.
“I want the cold truth,” Lovyan said. “Will he die?”
“Well, my lady, I simply don’t know. His Grace is a truly strong man, and he’ll fight for his life, but it’s very grave. A weaker man would be dead already.”
To jostle the injured man as little as possible, they rode slowly back to Aberwyn. Over and over, Lovyan saw the accident in her mind. Why did the horse panic? There wasn’t so much as a mouse running across the road. It had happened like dweomer. Suddenly she went cold all over and called out to Nevyn, who was riding a little behind. He urged his horse up to ride beside the cart.
“Nevyn, this accident was a most peculiar one.”
“The man you sent to fetch me said as much, my lady. May I suggest that we discuss it privately?”
“Of course.” She felt her fear like a hand at her throat. The old man apparently agreed with her sudden insight.
Rhys’s wife, Madronna, met them at the gates. A willowy blond woman, she was pretty in a vacuous sort of way, but now her childlike face was composed by an iron will. Lovyan had to admire her daughter-in-law, who was sincerely fond of her husband.
“His chamber’s prepared,” Madronna said. “How bad is—”
“Bad, truly, but not the end. We’ll nurse him through this between us.”
While the men carried Rhys to the chamber, Lovyan went to her suite, took off her blood-soaked dress, and washed thoroughly. She put on a clean dress, a somber one of gray linen, then looked at herself in a mirror. The face that looked back seemed to have aged years since the morning. She was painfully aware of the deep wrinkles slashed across her cheeks and the numb, half-dead look of her eyes.
“Ah, Goddess, am I to bury another son?’
She laid the mirror down and turned away, knowing that she would do just that, for all Nevyn’s skill with his herbs. Yet she could not cry. She found herself remembering the day her second son was brought home to her, her gentle Aedry, just sixteen that summer, brought home wrapped in a blanket and tied over his horse, killed riding with his father in a war. She stood in the ward and watched while they cut the ropes and brought him down, and she never allowed herself one tear, because she knew the warband was watching, and if she cried at all, she would start screaming like a madwoman. She felt the same now. No matter how furious Rhys made her, he was still her firstborn son.
With a toss of her head, she left the chamber and went down to the great hall. Over on the riders’ side, the men were drinking steadily and saying little, even the ten men of her own that she’d brought as escort. As she walked past, she motioned to her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor. He hurried over to the honor table and knelt at her side.
“Will he live, my lady?”
“I can only hope so, Captain. I need to send a speeded courier to Dun Deverry. The king has to be informed of this. Pick the man you think best and get him ready to go.”
“Done, my lady, but it had best be one of Rhys’s men.”
“For the formality, I suppose you’re right, but I can’t command them.”
“But, my lady, you’re the regent here now.”
“Oh by the gods, so I am! It’s all happened so fast that I can barely think.”
“It would take anyone that way, my lady.” He hesitated, honestly sympathetic, but bound by considerations of rank. Finally he spoke again. “Your Grace, you know that I’ve had my differences with the gwerbret in the past, but it aches my heart to see your grief.”
“My thanks.”
When he looked up, she suddenly remembered Rhodry, and what Rhys’s death might mean. The battle-grim warrior kneeling beside her loved Rhodry like a son, and she knew that Cullyn was as torn as she was. If Rhys died—even if he merely lay ill for months—the king would have the perfect reason to recall his brother, and Rhys would be unable to say a word in protest. She wanted Rhodry home with all her heart, but to have it take this?
“Ah gods.” Her voice sounded like a moan, even to her, and she forced herself to stay in control of her rising tears. “Captain, fetch me a scribe and the captain of Rhys’s warband. We’ve got to get that message to Dun Deverry as soon as ever we can.”

For hours Nevyn worked on the injured gwerbret, but even as he set the broken leg and stitched the bad cut over the eye, he felt his hope receding. Sooner rather than later, Rhys would die. The fall had damaged one of his lungs—Nevyn could hear that by putting his ear to the gwerbret’s chest—but how badly he couldn’t know. The one good sign was that Rhys was not spitting up blood, which would mean that the lung had been punctured by a splinter from one of his many broken ribs. In time, it might heal, though he doubted it. What was worse was the damage to his kidneys. By opening up his second sight Nevyn could see the gwerbret’s aura, and in it the centers of the various vortices of etheric force that correspond to the major organs of the body. Although such a diagnosis was rough, he could tell that something was severely wrong internally, centered on the kidneys. Just how severe, again, he couldn’t say. He knew that time would make it all horribly clear.
Finally he’d done what he could do. Propped up on pillows, Rhys lay gasping for every breath he drew on the enormous bed, with its blue-and-silver hangings, worked all over with the dragon symbol of the rhan. His raven-dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and when he opened his eyes, they were cloudy.
“Will I live?”
“That depends on you to a large degree, Your Grace. Are you going to fight to live?”
Rhys smiled, as if saying that the question was superfluous, then fainted. With a sigh, Nevyn went to the chamber door to let in his wife, who had patiently waited all the long hours. She gave him a tremulous smile, then ran to her husband’s side.
“If he looks the least bit worse, send a page for me immediately, my lady. I’m going down to the great hall to eat.”
“I will, good herbman. My thanks.”
Nevyn came into a somber hall. The warbands ate silently; the servants moved among them without saying a word. Alone at the head of the honor table, Lovyan was picking at a bit of roast fowl, eating a bite, then laying her table dagger down and staring into space. He sat down at her right hand.
“You should try to eat, Your Grace.”
“Of course, but everything tastes like dirt from the stable yard. I’ve sent a messenger off to Dun Gwerbyn to fetch my serving women. I rather feel the need of them.”
“Just so. As regent you’ll have much serious business to attend to.”
A servant came with a trencher of fowl and cabbage, as well as a tankard of ale. Hoping he wouldn’t offend Lovyan, Nevyn set to. He was hungry after his hard afternoon’s work. She choked down a bit of bread like a dutiful child.
“I also sent a speeded courier to Dun Deverry,” she remarked. “He’ll go by ship to Cerrmor, then ride from there.”
“Good, but truly, I think I’ll send a message of my own. The king needs to know of this before . . . as soon as possible, and my messages travel faster than horses.”
“No doubt.” She shuddered like a wet dog. “Tell me the truth, my friend. When you slipped and said “before,” you meant before Rhys dies, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I did. My apologies. It may take weeks, but . . . ”
She nodded, staring at her trencher, then suddenly pushed it away. Although she seemed on the verge of tears, she tossed her head and sat up straight looking at him steadily.
“Let’s lie to his poor little wife,” she said. “Let her have a bit of hope. It’s hard to be widowed, when you’ve only been a wife for a year.”
“So it is, and I agree. Besides, the gods may intervene and let him live. I’ve seen one or two cases where I’d given up hope, only to have the patient recover.”
“Well and good then.” Yet her weary voice implied that such a hope was one that she would deny herself. “And what of that accident? There wasn’t even a fly buzzing round his horse.”
“So I thought, from what your messenger told me.” He hesitated, wondering how much to say. “I’m not truly sure what happened, but I’ve made a few guesses. I suppose that poor beast was put out of its misery?”
“It was. The riders told me that it would have been in agony the whole way back to the dun, so they slit its throat and gave the meat to a nearby farmer.”’
“Well, I doubt if it could have told me much, anyway.”
“Here, can you speak with animals?”
“Not in the least, my lady, I assure you. But I might have done a thing or two and judged its reactions. Well, as I say, doubtless naught would have come of it, anyway. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Most animals have what men call the second sight—that is, they can see the Wildfolk and a few kinds of apparitions. It’s possible that the horse was frightened by malicious Wildfolk or by some sort of vision.”
“A vision? A ghost or suchlike?”
“Or suchlike. There’s never been a report of a ghost or banshee along the river road before, and they’re generally tied to one place.”
“I’ve never heard reports of any other sort of vision along that road either.”
“Just so. I think we can conclude that the vision or the Wildfolk or whatever it was was deliberately sent there.”
“Sent?” Her face went very pale.
“Just that, my lady. I’ll wager that someone used dweomer to try and murder your son. When I find out who he is, then I swear to you, he’ll rue the day he was born.”
“My thanks.” Although she spoke in a whisper, she was calm, the cold, bitter calm of a warrior surveying the field. “You told me that there was evil dweomer working behind Lord Corbyn when he rebelled. I never thought to see a blood feud worked by dweomer, but that’s what this must be, isn’t it? First they try to kill Rhodry, and now they’ve succeeded with Rhys. For some reason they hate the Maelwaedd clan.”
“Ye gods, you’re right enough! And Rhodry is . . . ” He caught himself barely in time. There was no need to burden her with the truth at this particular moment. “Out somewhere on the roads. Well, doubtless the king’s men will find him soon. The gods all know that they have more reason than ever to look for him.”
Lovyan nodded, staring blindly down at her plate. Nevyn got up and went to the fire. He had to tell Salamander immediately that he could no longer come to Cerrmor. He would have to do his best to keep Rhys alive until the king made up his mind to recall Rhodry and instate him as Aberwyn’s heir. He had another piece of information to pass along, too, the grim truth that Lovyan had seen, that the matter had gone far beyond the politicking of Eldidd lords. The dark dweomer was waging war on the Maelwaedd clan.

The king was having his hair bleached. In the midst of his private chamber, Lallyn the Second, high king of all Deverry and Eldidd, sat on a low bench carved with grappling wyverns while the royal barber draped towels around his liege’s shoulders. As an honor to his high rank, Blaen was allowed to kneel at the king’s side and hold the silver tray of implements. Ever since Madoc had come to him with the news, he’d been trying to have a private work with Lallyn, but in all the pomp that surrounded the king, private words were difficult to get. Even though the king sincerely wanted to hear what he had to say, this was the first chance they’d found all evening.
Carefully the barber began packing the king’s wet hair with lime from a wooden bowl. Soon Lallyn would look like one of the great heroes of the Dawntime, with a lion’s mane of stiff, swept-back hair to add further to his six feet of height, Such a hairstyle was a royal prerogative, and, as the king remarked, a royal nuisance, too.
“Blasted lucky, aren’t you, Blaen? Look on our sufferings and be glad you were born a gwerbret’s son.”
“Glad I am, my liege.”
The barber wrapped two steaming-wet towels around the king’s head and fastened them with a circlet of fine gold. “My liege, it will be some few minutes.”
“It’s always more than just a few. You may leave us.”
Bowing, walking backward, the barber retreated to the corridor. Blaen sincerely hoped that the king was going to believe his strange tale.
“Now, Blaen, what’s this urgent news?”
“Well, my liege, do you remember Lord Madoc?”
“The sorcerer’s nephew? Of course.”
“Here! You know that Nevyn’s a sorcerer, my liege?”
Lallyn grinned at him while he adjusted a slipping towel.
“I do, at that. There’s quite a tradition, passed down from king to marked prince, about sorcerers named Nevyn. The name’s something of an honorific, or so my father told me, handed on like the kingship. In times of great need, one Nevyn or another will come to aid the king. I always thought it a peculiar tale and wondered why my father would tell me such a lie—until those gems were stolen, and lo and behold, a Nevyn appeared to return them to me. I prayed to my father in the Otherlands and made my apologies quite promptly, I tell you.”
“I see. Well, then, I trust my liege will believe me when I tell him that Madoc has dweomer, too.”
“Ah, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I’m glad enough to know, but is this what you had to tell me?”
“Not at all, my liege. I’ve learned that dweomermen have ways of sending messages with their thoughts. Madoc came to me earlier with urgent news from Nevyn. He begged me to tell you, because he knew it would be difficult for a man of his rank to gain a private audience with the king, and this has to be kept private for as long as possible. Soon the whole court will know, because a speeded courier’s on the way from Aberwyn, but Nevyn wanted Your Highness to get the news first.”
“I see. And what is this grave matter?”
“Rhys of Aberwyn had a bad fall in a hunting accident today, my liege. They doubt if he’ll live long—an eightnight, perhaps; at the most, a month.”
The king stared at him for a moment, then swore in a way more fitting for a common-born rider than royalty.
“I agree, my liege. You can see why I thought it best that my liege heard this news straightaway.”
“Just so.” The king gingerly settled a slipping towel while he thought things over. “And I’m most grateful to you for it. Eldidd politics are always dangerous.”
“So they are. No doubt my liege needs no reminding that the line of succession in Aberwyn will break as soon as Rhys dies.”
“No doubt. I’m also quite aware how much your exiled cousin means to you, Your Grace. Rest assured that the matter is under my consideration.”
Blaen felt the formal tone of voice like a slap across the face. He was being reminded that no matter how often they hunted or drank together, no matter how easily Lallyn would jest with him when the mood took him, the king was as far above him as he was above the common folk.
“My humble thanks, my liege. Your consideration is all that I’d ever ask for in this matter.”
The king nodded with a glance away.
“Tell the barber that he can come back, will you? I want these towels off and now. I have some serious thinking to do.”
In spite of the king’s return to a more familiar tone, Blaen knew that he’d been dismissed. As he rose and bowed, he was wondering just what Talidd of Belglaedd and his allies had been telling their leige.

“I know Blaen will take good care of him, but I hate to leave Sunrise behind,” Jill said.
“Oh, come now, my turtledove.” Salamander was busy tying shut his saddlebags. “Every lad in the royal stables will be fussing over him, and with luck, we won’t be gone long.”
“I doubt me if we’re going to have that kind of luck.”
He paused, turning to look at her. They were in the inn chamber with their packed gear strewn around them.
“Well? Do you think—”
“I don’t.” He sighed elaborately. “I was merely trying to console.”
There was a brief knocking at the door, and Blaen strode in without waiting for an invitation. With him were two serving lads who immediately began gathering up the gear.
“The galley’s ready,” Blaen announced. “I’ll accompany you down to the docks.”
“His Grace is most kind.” Salamander made him a bow. “And our liege the king as well.”
“Indeed? I’ve found out—or, I should say, my lady found out—exactly why Savyl of Camynwaen is taking a hand in this affair. His younger brother has a slight claim to Aberwyn.”
“Truly?” Jill said. “I never heard Lady Lovyan mention him.”
“Well, it’s not truly the sort of thing my aunt would dwell upon. You see, Rhodry’s father had two bastard daughters with a mistress of his. Savyl’s brother married one of them.”
“Two daughters?” Salamander broke in. “Well, fancy that! Or . . . here, of course. You mean Gwerbret Tingyr.”
“And who else would I be meaning?”
Jill gave Salamander a subtle sidewise kick.
“No one, Your Grace.” Salamander covered smoothly. “I’d merely forgotten the gwerbret’s name.”
“Ah. Well, it’s hard to keep all the noble bloodlines up in mind, truly. Here.” Blaen tossed Salamander an embroidered cloth pouch. “Use this wisely.”
Whistling under his breath, Salamander hefted the pouch and made it jingle.
“From the weight and the sound, Your Grace, there must be a cursed lot of gold in here.”
“As much as I could raise. I intend to get it back from my scapegrace cousin once he’s Aberwyn, mind.”
Although he spoke casually, Jill could hear the tension in his voice, a wondering, perhaps, if he were bankrupting himself to little end. Once again she was overwhelmed by the sheer weight or ruling, the smothering web of obligations and intrigues that overlaid even something as fine as Blaen’s and Rhodry’s love for each other. Salamander made the gwerbret an exaggerated bow.
“We shall do our best to protect His Grace’s investment.” Then he flicked his long fingers and made the pouch disappear, seemingly into nothingness.
By then it was just sunset, and long shadows filled the curving streets. When they reached the wooden wharves to the south of the city, the sky had turned a velvet blue-gray with twilight. Over the grassy riverbanks bold swallows swooped and twisted. Riding low in the water some little way from the masses of barges and skiffs was the royal galley, about forty feet long and sleek as a ferret. There were red shields painted with the royal gold wyvern at every oarlock, and the men who lounged at the oars were wearing white shirts embroidered with the wyvern badge and long lines of interlace.
“The king’s elite?” Salamander raised an eyebrow.
“The same,” Blaen said. “I can’t tell you, though, if our liege is doing this for Rhodry’s sake or mine.”
“Surely the king doesn’t want to see Eldidd at war?” Salamander said. “Because if Rhodry doesn’t return, war is what we’ll have. Each clan will be accusing the others of murdering the rightful heir and claiming the rhan for themselves.”
“I’m sure our liege knows that as well as you do.” Yet Blaen sounded oddly stiff, a bit frightened, perhaps. “I’m not privy to all his thoughts, gerthddyn.”
At the sight of Blaen, the galley’s captain hopped to the pier and hurried over with a bow. While the servants loaded the gear aboard, Jill turned away and watched the smooth-flowing river. Desperately she tried to scry Rhodry out, but her untrained mind could show her nothing. All at once she felt another fear and involuntarily yelped aloud.
What is it?” Salamander said.
“Perryn. He’s close by. I know it.”
She spun around, half expecting to see him in the crowd behind them, but there was no one there but curious passersby and a few longshoremen. Yet up in the velvet sky it seemed to her that she saw a long tendril of mist, reaching down toward her. Salamander saw it, too. When he threw up one hand and muttered a few words, the tendril vanished.
“He’s in town, all right. Madoc will be taking care of that, Jill. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Still, can’t we get on that wretched boat and get out of here?”
“This very minute. There’s the captain signaling us aboard.”

Perryn paused just inside the south gate of the city. Just a moment ago he’d felt Jill’s nearness; now the trail had suddenly gone cold. His dapple gray stamped impatiently and tossed its head. When they’d ridden into the vast city earlier that afternoon, the gray had nearly panicked. It had taken all of Perryn’s horse empathy to calm it, and even so, it was still restless.
“Here, you! Are you going in or out? It’s time to close the gates.”
Perryn turned to see two city guards hurrying toward him, one of them carrying a torch. The cavernous gateway was already quite dark.
“Oh, er, ah, well . . . in, I think.”
“Then don’t just think—move, man!”
As Perryn obediently began to lead his horses toward the inner gate, the guard carrying the torch raised it high to shine the light full on his face.
“Your name wouldn’t be Lord Perryn of Alobry, would it, now?”
“It is at that. Why?”
The torch bearer whistled sharply, three loud notes. The other guard grabbed Perryn’s shoulder with his left hand and slammed his fist hard into his stomach, so quickly that Perryn had no time to dodge. He doubled over, retching, as two more guards ran up and grabbed his horses’ reins from his helpless fingers.
“Good work! You’ve got the weasel Lord Madoc wanted, right enough.”
“Talks like a simpleton, his lordship told me, and he must be one, too, to answer to his name like that.”
Although the world still danced around him, Perryn forced himself to raise his head and look in time to see a guard rummaging through his saddlebags. With a bark of triumph, he held up the rambling scribe. When Perryn made a feeble grab at it, another guard slapped him across the face.
“None of that, horse thief. The only thing this scribe’s going to write for you now is your death writ.”
They disarmed him, bound his hands behind him, then pushed him along through the streets. Those few people still out at night stopped to stare and jeer when the guards announced that he was horse thief. At one point they met a slender young man, wearing the plaid brigga of the noble-born, who was followed by a page with a torch.
“A horse thief, is he?” the young lord said. “When will you be hanging him?”
“Don’t know, my lord. We’ve got to have the trial first.”
“True enough. Well, no doubt I’ll hear of it. My mistress is quite keen on hangings, you see.” He gave the guard a conspiratorial wink. “She finds them quite . . . well, shall we say exciting? And so I take her to every single one.”
At last they reached the guard station at the foot of the royal hill and turned Perryn over to the men there, though the man who’d first recognized him stayed to escort him into the royal compound itself. By then Perryn had recovered enough from the blows to feel the terror: they were going to hang him. There was no use lying to the king’s officers; the rambling scribe would hang him on its own. Although at one point he did have a sentimental pang that he’d never see Jill again, at the root he was too terrified to care much about that one way or another. What counted was that he was going to die. No matter how hard he tried to pull himself together and face his death like a warrior, he kept trembling and sweating. When his guards noticed, they laughed.
“You should have thought about this rope when you were putting one on another man’s horses, you cowardly little bastard.”
“There must be a bit of fun to being hanged, lad. Why, a man gets hard, then spews all over himself when the noose jerks.”
They kept up the jests the entire time that they were dragging him through the warren of sheds and outbuildings that surrounded the king’s many-towered broch complex. In the flickering torchlight Perryn was completely disoriented. By the time that they shoved him into a tiny cell in a long stone building, he had no idea of which way north lay, much less of the layout of the palace grounds.
The cell was about eight feet on a side, with fairly clean straw on the floor and a leather bucket, swarming with flies, in one corner. In the door was a small barred opening that let in a bit of light from the corridor. Perryn stood next to it and tried to hear what the guards were saying, but they moved down along the corridor and out of earshot. He heard: “Of course Lord Madoc’s interested in horse thieves; he’s an equerry, isn’t he?” before they were gone. All at once his legs went weak. He slumped down into the straw before he fell and covered his face with his hands. Somehow or other, he’d offended one of the powerful royal servitors. He was doomed.
Perryn had no idea of how long he’d sat there before the door opened. A guard handed him a trencher with half a loaf of bread and a couple of slices of cold meat on it.
“Pity that we had to take your dagger away, lad.” His smile was not pleasant, “Just use your teeth like a wolf, eh? In the morning one of the undercouncillors will be along to see you.”
“What for?”
“To tell you about your rights, of course. Here, they caught you red-handed, but you’ll still get a trial, and you’ve got the right to have your kin by your side. Just tell the fellow, and he’ll get a herald to them.”
“I don’t want them to know. Ah ye gods, I’d rather die slowly in pieces than look my uncle in the eye over this.”
“Pity you didn’t think of that before, eh? Well, I’m sure it can all be arranged. If you don’t want your kin here, no need to waste the herald’s time.”
The warder handed in a tankard of ale, then locked the door. Perryn heard him whistling as he walked away.
Although, the food and drink were unexpectedly decent, Perryn ate only to pass the time. The thought of Benoic and Nedd learning of his shame had taken his appetite away. Sooner or later they would, too, no matter whether they were there to watch him hang or not. He thought of the warder’s words, that he might have thought of all this before, and wept a few tears for the truth of it.
“But I didn’t really steal them. They followed me, didn’t they?’
“Only in a manner of speaking.”
He yelped and leapt to his feet, scattering the bread into the straw. There was a man standing on the other side of the door, a pleasant-looking fellow with blond hair and blue eyes. The sheer bulk of the elaborate embroidery on his shirt proclaimed him a member of the king’s household.
“I’m, Lord Madoc. Guards, bring him. out.”
“Are you going to hang me right now?”
“Naught of the sort. I want a few words with you, lad.”
They bound his hands, then marched him along to the wardroom, a long, narrow chamber with an oppressively low ceiling. Down one wall was a row of sconces, and lit torches; down the other, a narrow table spread with the tools of the torturer’s trade.
“I’ll confess,” Perryn bleated. “You don’t have to do anything to me.”
“Splendid, but I wasn’t planning on having you tortured. I want look at you. Guards, tie him to the wall; then you can get back to your dinners.”
“My thanks, Your Lordship.” The guard captain made him a bow. “Do you have any idea of when he’ll go to trial?”
“Oh, he won’t be tried here. Our liege is remanding him to Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn. This little idiot raped the daughter of one of the gwerbret’s highly regarded subjects, and under Eldidd law her father has the right to cut him to pieces.”
Perryn’s knees buckled. If he hadn’t been tied to an iron ring attached to the wall, he would have fallen.
“Huh,” the captain snorted. “A fine figure of a noble lord he is, raping women and stealing horses!”
Once the guards were gone, Madoc turned to Perryn and considered him with eyes so cold and distant that Perryn began to sweat again.
“Do you know who Jill’s father is, lad?”
“I don’t, my lord.”
“Cullyn of Cerrmor, that’s who.”
Perryn yelped, a strangled little sob.
“Just so. They’ll give him a sword and shield, hand you a dagger to defend yourself, then turn him loose on you. Think you’ll win the ritual combat?”
Perryn shook his head no.
“I doubt me, as well. And even if you had all the gold in the world to offer as compensation, Cullyn wouldn’t take it instead of your blood. So, are you going to face him, or are you going to do as I say instead?”
“Anything, my lord. I’ll do anything. Please, I never raped her, I truly didn’t. I thought she loved me, I truly did.”
“I know, and your stupidity is the one thing that’s saving you now. If I untie you, will you give me your word of honor that you won’t try to escape?”
“Gladly. I doubt me if I could run, my lord, the way I feel.”
“No doubt.” He stepped back and considered him in a strange way, his eyes moving as if he were looking all around Perryn rather than at him. “Truly, you’re halfway to being dead, aren’t you?”
The lord’s words seemed true enough. As soon as he was untied, Perryn staggered and would have fallen if it weren’t for Madoc’s support. The equerry half led, half hauled him down the room to a low bench by a hearth, where some tinder and small sticks were laid ready for a fire. Madoc laid on a pair of logs, then snapped his fingers. Fire sprang out and danced along the wood. Perryn screamed. He clapped his hands over his mouth to force a second scream back, then swiveled around, crouching, to stare up at Madoc in terror.
“Well, you looked chilled, lad. Thought we’d have a bit of a blaze. Now, you young dolt, do you see what you’ve gotten yourself tangled up in? From now on, you’re going to do exactly what I say, or . . . ”
“I will. Anything at all, my lord. I swear to you on the honor of the Wolf clan and the gods of my people.”
“Good. Remember that during your trip to Eldidd.”
“I’m going there? You said you wouldn’t . . . ”
“I said I wouldn’t let Cullyn get hold of you. There’s another man there who very much wants a chat with you. My uncle.”

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