---

future

How then, you say, will I know when the omens are fulfilled? When all the twisted strands of Time weave their final knot, you will know. If you do not know, then you have such a measly knack for magic that you should never have studied it in the first place.

1.

The Queen of Golds

Arcodd, Summer 1116

“Those brigga don’t fool me none. I know a pretty lass when I see one.”
The girl looked up from her bowl of stew to find the man leaning, elbows splayed and his dirty face all drunken smile, onto the table directly across from her. Around them the tavern fell abruptly silent as the customers, all men except for one old woman sucking a pint of bitter in a corner, turned to watch. Most grinned.
“What’s your name, wench?” His breath stank of bad teeth.
In the uncertain firelight the tavern room seemed to shrink to a frieze of leering faces and the pounding of her heart.
“I said, what’s your name, slut?”
He was leaning closer, red hair and beard, greasy, dabbed with food, the stinking mouth twisting into a grin as he reached for her with broad and dirty fingers. She wanted to scream but her throat had turned stone-dry and solid.
“Er, ah, well, I wouldn’t touch her, truly I wouldn’t.”
The man jerked up and swirled round to face the speaker, who had come up so quietly that no one had noticed. He was old, with a pronounced stoop, his hair whitish though touched with red in places, and he had the most amazing pair of bags she’d ever seen under anyone’s eyes, but her would-be molester shrank back from him as though he’d been a young warrior.
“Ah, now, Your Holiness, just a bit of fun.”
“Not for her—no fun at all, I’d say. She’s quite pale, you see. Er, ah, well, I’d leave if I were you.”
At that she noticed the two enormous dogs, half wolf from the look of them, that stood by the priest’s side with their lips drawn back over large and perfect fangs. When they growled, the man yelped and ran out the tavern door to the accompaniment of jeers and catcalls. The priest turned to look at the other customers with an infinite sadness in his blue eyes.
“Er, well, you’re no better. If I hadn’t come in . . . ”
The laughter stopped, and the men began to study the ground or the tables or the wall, looking; at anything but his sad and patient face. With a sigh the priest sat down, smoothing his long, gray tunic under him, the dogs settling at his feet.
“After you finish that stew, lass, you’d best come with me. You’ve picked the worst tavern in all Arcodd for your dinner.”
“So it seems, Your Holiness,” She was surprised that she could speak at all. “You have my humble and undying thanks. May I stand you a tankard?”
“Not so early in the afternoon, my thanks. I’ll have a drop of ale of an evening, but truly, these days, it doesn’t sit so well in, my stomach.” He sighed, again. “Er, well, um, what is your name?”
She debated, then decided, that lying to a priest and a rescuer was beyond her. Besides, her ruse was torn already.
“Carramaena, but call me Cam. Everyone does—did—people who know me, I mean. I’ve been, trying to pass for a lad and calling myself Gwyl, but it doesn’t seem to be working,”
“Um, well, it isn’t, truly. Gwyl? The dark one?” He smiled in a burst of surprising charm. “Doesn’t suit you. With your yellow hair and all. Now my name does suit me. Perryn, it is.”
“You don’t seem foolish in the least.”
“Ah, that’s because you don’t know me very well. You probably never will, seeing as you must be going somewhere in a great hurry if you’d ride with only a lie for company.” He paused, frowning at the far wall. “Have to do somewhat about that, you traveling alone, I mean. Are you going to eat that stew?”
“I’m not. I’m not hungry anymore, and I’ve already picked one roach out of it. Will the dogs want it?”
“Mayhap, but it’ll make them sick. Come with me.”
When he got up and headed for the door, Carra grabbed her cloak from the bench and hurried after, her head as high as she could hold it as she passed the men by the fire. Outside, drowsy in the hot spring sun, her horse stood tied to the hitching rail in front of the round tavern. A pure-bred Western Hunter, he was a pale buckskin gelding.
“It was the horse that made me go in,” Perryn said. “I wondered who’d have a horse like that, you see. You shouldn’t just leave him tied up like that in this part of the world. Um, well, he could get stolen.”
“Oh, he’ll kick the demons out of anyone but me who comes near him. I’m the only person who could ever touch him, much less ride him. That’s why he’s mine.”
“Ah. Your father give him to you?”
“My elder brother.” Try as she might to hide it, bitterness crept into her voice and tightened it down. “He’s the head of our clan now.”
“Ah. Then you are noble-bom. I, er, um, rather thought so.”
She felt her cheeks burn with a blush.
“Truly, you’re not much of a liar, Carra. Well, fetch your horse and come along. Do you like dogs?”
“I do. Why?”
“I’ve got a pair to give you at home. If they like you, and I truly do think they will, they’ll take care of you on the road.” He sighed in a profound melancholy. “I’ve got such a lot of them. Cats, too. We always had cats, my wife and I. She’s dead now, you see. Died over the winter.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“So am I. Well, I’ll be joining her soon, I hope, if Kerun wills it. He should. I really am getting on in years. No use in outstaying your welcome, is there?”
Since Carra was only sixteen, she had no idea of what to say to his melancholy and busied herself with untying her horse. He stood staring blank-eyed up the street, as if he were talking to his god in his mind, while the dogs wagged quietly beside him.
The priest’s house lay just beyond the village. He pushed open a gate in an earthen wall and led her into a muddy farmyard, where chickens scratched in front of a big thatched roundhouse. Cats and puppies lolled in every patch of shade under the pair of apple trees, under a watering trough, under a battered old wagon. With a cheerful halloo a stout, red-faced woman of about forty came out the front door.
“There you are, Da. Brought a visitor? You’re just in time for your dinner.”
“Good, and my thanks, Braema.” The priest glanced at Carra. “My youngest daughter. She’s the only . . . well, er, ah, only truly human one of the lot.”
At that Braema laughed in gut-shaking amusement. Carra dutifully smiled, suspecting some hoary family joke.
“There’s lots of sliced ham and some lovely greens, lass, so come right in. Oh, wait—your horse.” She turned in the door and bellowed. “Nedd, come out here, will you? Got a guest, and her horse needs water and some shade.”
In. a moment or so a young man slipped out of the door behind her and. stood blinking in the sun. As slender and lithe as a young cat, he was just about five feet tall, a good head shorter than Carra, with hair as coppery red as a sunset, and a pinched face dominated by two enormous green eyes. When he yawned, his intensely pink tongue curled up like a cat’s.
“Braema’s lad, my grandson,”” Perryn said, with a long sigh. “And, um, well, fairly typical of the lot. Of my offspring, I mean.”
With a duck of his head Nedd glided over and took the buckskin’s reins. Carra reached out to stop him, but the gelding lowered his head and allowed the boy to rub his ears without his usual rolling eye and threat of teeth.
“His name’s Gwerlas.”
The lad smiled, a flick of narrow lips, and led the gelding away without so much as a glance in her direction. Gwer seemed so glad to go that Carra felt a jealous stab.
“Now come in and eat.” Braema waved Carra in. “You look like you’ve ridden a long way, eh?”
“Long enough, truly. I come from Drwloc.”
“All the way down there? Ye gods! And where are you going, or may I ask?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment Carra nearly wept.
The priest and his daughter sat her down at a long plank table in the sunny kitchen, scattered with drowsy cats, and loaded her up a trencher with ham and greens and fresh-baked bread, the first real meal she’d had in days. After she stuffed herself, she found herself talking, partly because she felt she owed them an explanation, partly because it felt so good to talk to someone sympathetic.
“I’m the youngest of six, you see, three sons and three daughters, and my eldest brother’s head of the clan now, and he’s a miserly rotten beast, too. He gave Maeylla—that’s my oldest sister—a decent dowry, but it wasn’t anything for a bard to remember, I tell you, and then Raeffa got a scraped-together mingy one. And now it’s my turn, and he doesn’t want to spend on a dowry at all, so he found this fat old lord with half his teeth gone who’ll marry me out of lust and ask for naught more, and I’d rather die than marry him, so I ran away.”
“And I should think so,” Braema said with a firm nod of her head. “Do you think he’s still chasing you?”
“I don’t know, but I wager he is. I’ve made him furious, and he hates it so much when anyone crosses him, so he’s probably coming to give me the beating of my life just on the principle of the thing, I’ve got a good lead on him, though. I worked it out with a friend of mine. I went to visit her and her new husband, but I told my brother that I’d stay a fortnight, while she told her husband I’d leave after an eightnight. And in an eightnight leave I did, but I rode north, not home, and my brother wouldn’t even have suspected anything till days and days later. So as long as I keep moving, he can’t possibly catch up to me.”
“Um, well, I see.” Perryn pursed his lips and sucked a thoughtful tooth. “I know how purse-proud noble-born kin can be, truly. Mine always were.”
“Ah, I see. I was thinking of going west.”
“West?” Braema leaned forward sharply. “There’s nothing out there, lass, nothing at all.”
“I’m not so sure of that. You hear things down in Drwloc. From merchants, like.”
The woman was staring at her in such puzzlement that Carra felt her face burning with a blush.
“You could starve out there!” Braema sounded indignant. “Your fat lord would be better than that!”
“You haven’t seen him.”
When Braema opened her mouth to go on, her father silenced her with a wave of one hand.
“You’re hiding somewhat, lass. You’re carrying a child, aren’t you?”
“How did you know? I only just realized myself!”
“I can always tell. Sort of an, um, well . . . trick of mine.”
“Well, so I am.” She felt her eyes well tears. “And he—my lover, I mean—he’s, well, he’s . . . ”
“One of the Westfolk!” Braema’s voice was all breathy with shock. “And he deserted you, I suppose.”
“Naught of the sort! He said he’d come back for me before the winter rains, but he didn’t know I was . . . well, you know. And my brother doesn’t know, either, which is why he was trying to marry me off, but I didn’t dare tell him.”
“He’d have beaten you half to death, I suppose.” Braema sighed and shook her head. “Do you truly think you’ve got a chance of finding this man of yours?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. He gave me a token, a pendant.” Lightly she touched the cool metal where it hung on its chain under her shirt. “There’s a rose on it, and some elven words, and he said that any of his people would know it was his.”
“Humph, and I wonder about the truth of that, I do! Easy for the Westfolk to talk, but what they mean by it . . . ”
“That’s enough, Braema.” Perryn cut her off with a small wave of one hand. “Can’t meddle in someone else’s Wyrd, can you? If she wants to go west, west she’ll go. She seems to, er, well, know her own mind. But, um, well, I want to give you those dogs.” This to Carra. “Come out to the stable with me, will you?”
The stables were round back and a good bit away from the house. Out in front of the long wooden building Nedd was watching Gwerlas drink from a bucket.
“Your Holiness? Most people think I’m daft because I want to ride after my Daralanteriel.”
“Mayhap you are, but what choice do you have?”
“None, truly. Not unless I want to get myself beaten first and married off to Old Dung-heap second.”
The dogs turned out to be a pair of males, more than half wolf, maybe, with their long sharp faces and pricked ears, and just about a year old. One was gray and glowering, named Thunder, and the other a pale silver with a black streak down his back who answered to Lightning. When the priest introduced them, they sniffed her outstretched hand with a thoughtful wag of their tails.
“They like you,” Perryn announced. “Think they do, Nedd?”
The boy nodded, considering.
“I’m going to give them to Carra. She’s riding west, you see, and she’ll need them along to protect her.”
Nedd nodded again and turned to slip back into the stables. He didn’t walk, exactly, so much as glide along from shadow to shadow, there one minute, gone the next.
“Uh, Your Holiness, can he talk?”
“Not very well, truly. Only when he absolutely has to, and then only a word or two. But he understands everything. Um, right, that reminds me. I’ve taught this pair to work to hand signals, and I’d best show you what they know. They’ll come to their names, of course.” He squatted down and looked at the dogs, who swiveled their heads to stare into his eyes. “You belong to Carra now. Go with her. Take care of her.”
For a long, long moment they kept a silent communion, while Carra decided that contrary to all common sense, the dogs understood exactly what he meant. Nedd came whistling out of the stable. He was leading a nondescript bay gelding, laden with an old saddle, a bedroll, a woodsman’s ax, and a pair of bulging saddlebags. Perryn rose, rubbing his face with one hand.
“What’s this? You’re going too?”
Nedd nodded, glancing this way and that around the farmstead.
“You’ll have to ask Carra’s permission.”
The boy swung his head around and looked at her.
“You want to come west with me? Look, if my brother catches us, he’ll hurt you. He might even kill you.”
Nedd considered, then shrugged, turning to stare significantly at his grandfather.
“No use trying to keep someone who doesn’t want to stay, is there?” the priest said. “But you take care of the lady. She’s noble-born, you see. Don’t cause her a moment’s trouble, or Kerun will be livid with you. Understand?”
Nedd nodded a yes.
“Well and good, then. Run up to the house, will you? I’ll wager your mam is packing up a bit of that ham and bread for Carra to eat on the road.”
Nedd grinned and trotted off. Perryn turned to her with an apologetic smile.
“Hope you don’t mind him coming along. He won’t trouble you. Might even come in handy, because he likes having someone to do things for. Poor lad, it makes him feel useful, like. And he can show you how to work the dogs.”
“All right, but here, won’t his mother be furious that he’s just . . . well . . . leaving like this?”
“Oh, I doubt that. He’s like me and his uncles. We mostly come and go as we please, and there’s no use in trying to stop us.” He sighed again, deeply. “No use in it at all.”
Yet even so, they left by the back gate and circled round to hit the west-running road out of sight of the house. Carra took the lead, with the dogs padding along either just ahead or to one side of her as the whim took them, while Nedd rode a length behind like her servant, which he was now, she supposed, in his way. She only hoped that she could take care of him properly, and the dogs, too, though she suspected that they were feral enough to hunt their own food if need be. She had a handful of coins, copper ones mostly, stolen from her brother in lieu of her rightful dowry, but they weren’t going to last forever. On a sudden thought she turned in the saddle and motioned Nedd up beside her.
“You must have heard tales about the Westfolk, too. That they’re very odd but kind to strangers?”
The boy nodded, his hair glinting like metal in the strong spring sun.
“Do you think they truly are kind?”
He grinned, shrugging to show his utter ignorance, but excited nonetheless.
“I hope they are, because I don’t know how we’re going to find Dar without some help. He told me that he wanders all over with his tribe and their horses, you see, but I’m not truly sure just how big this ‘all over’ is.”
“North with the summer. South with the rains.”
He spoke so softly, so lightly, that she barely heard him.
“Did someone tell you that?”
He nodded a yes.
“Is that how the Westfolk travel? Well, it makes sense. It’s more than I’ve had to go on before. But maybe we should be riding south, then, to meet them as they come north. Or due west. But they may have already passed us up, like, if they left their winter homes early or suchlike.”
Nedd nodded, frowning.
“So let’s head north,” Carra went on. “That way we’ll either meet up with them or be in the right place to wait for them.”
For the rest of that day and on into the next one they traveled through farm country, but although they stopped to talk with the locals along the road, everyone heaped scorn on the very idea of going off to look for the Westfolk. Arcodd province is still on the very edge of the kingdom of Deverry, and in those days it was a lonely sort of place, where little pockets of settled country dotted a wilderness of grassland and mixed forests. And more wilderness was all, or so they were told, that could possibly lie to the west—except, of course, for the wandering clans of the Westfolk, who were all thieves and ate snakes and made pacts with demons and never washed and the gods only knew what else. By the third day Carra was disheartened enough to start believing them, but turning back meant her brother, a beating, and the pig-breathed Lord Scraev. At night they camped out in copses near the road, and here Nedd showed just how useful a person he was. Besides insisting on tending the horses, he always found firewood and food as well, hooking fish and snaring rabbits, grubbing around to find sweet herbs and greens to supplement the bread her coin bought them in villages.
In his silent way, he was good company, too, patient as he taught her how to command the dogs with subtle hand gestures and a few spoken words. Sleeping on the ground meant nothing to him; he would roll up in a blanket with Thunder at his back and go out while Carra was still tossing and turning, trying to sleep with a patient Lightning at her feet, Although she was used to riding for long hours at a time, either to visit her friends or to ride with her brother’s bunt, sleeping on the hard, damp ground was something new, and she began to ache like fire after a few nights of it, so badly that she began to worry about her unborn child, still a tiny knot deep within her but as real to her as Nedd and the dogs. When, then, on the fourth night they came to a village that had an inn, she was died enough to consider spending a few coins on lodging.
“And a bath,” she said to Nedd. “A proper hot bath with a bit of soap,”
He merely shrugged.
From, outside the inn, didn’t look like much: a low roundhouse, heavily thatched, in the middle of a muddy fenced, yard, but when she pushed open the gate and led her horse inside, she could smell roasting chickens. The innkeep, a stout and greasy little man, strolled out and looked her over suspiciously.
“The common room’s full,” he announced. “Ain’t got no private chambers.”
“Can we sleep in your stables?” Carra gave up her dream of a hot bath. “Up in the hayloft, say?”
“Long as you don’t go bringing no lantern up there. Don’t want no fire.”
The hayloft turned out to be long and airy and well supplied with loose hay, a better night’s lodging, she suspected, than the inn itself. After the horses were taken care of, Carra and Nedd, with the dogs trotting busily behind, headed for the tavern. In the half round of the common room, set off from the innkeep’s quarters by a wickerwork partition, were a couple of wobbly tables. At one sat a gaggle of farmers, gossiping over their ale; at the other, two men, both road-stained, both armed. Carra stopped in the shadowy curve of the wall by the door; when she snapped her fingers and pointed down, the dogs sat and Nedd fell back a step or two. In the smoky light of a smoldering fire she could see the pair fairly clearly: warriors, by the easy arrogant way they sat, but their stained linen shirts bore no blazons at the yokes or shoulder. One, blond and burly with a heavy blond mustache, looked young; the other, sitting with his back to her, was more slender, with wavy raven-dark hair. When the passing innkeep threw a couple of handfuls of small sticks onto the fire, it blazed with a flare of light, glinting on the pommel of the knives that the men wore at their belt. Three distinctive little knobs. Silver daggers, little better than criminals if indeed they were better at all, or so she’d always been told. Behind her Nedd growled like one of the dogs.
“True enough,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
But as she stepped back the burly blond saw her and raised a dented tankard her way with a grin.
“Here, lad, come on in and join us. Plenty of room at the table.” His voice sounded oddly decent for a man of his sort.
She was about to make a polite refusal when the dark-haired fellow slewed round on the bench to look her over with enormous cornflower-blue eyes. He was clean-shaven and almost girlishly handsome; in fact, she’d never seen such a good-looking man among her own people. As she thought about it, his chiseled features reminded her of the Westfolk and even, because of his coloring, of her Dar. He rose, swinging clear of the bench with some of Nedd’s catlike ease, making her a graceful bow, and the wannth of his smile made her blush.
“Lad, indeed!” His voice was a soft tenor, marked by a lilting accent that reminded her of the Westfolk as well. “Yraen, you’re growing old and blind! My lady, if you’d care to join us, I swear on what honor I have left that you’re perfectly safe.”
The dogs were thumping their tails in greeting. When she glanced at Nedd, she found him staring at the raven-haired stranger.
“He looks decent enough to me,” she whispered.
Nedd nodded with one of his eloquent shrugs, registering surprise, perhaps, to find a man like this on the edge of nowhere. Carra gestured the dogs up, and they all went over, but Nedd insisted on sitting on the floor with Thunder and Lightning. She settled herself in solitary comfort on one bench while the raven-haired fellow went round to join his friend on the other.
“My name’s Rhodry,” he said as he sat down. “And this is Yraen, for all that he’s got a nickname for a name.”
Yraen smiled in a rusty way.
“My name is Carra, and this is Nedd, who’s sort of my servant but not really, and Thunder and Lightning.”
The dogs thumped their tails; Nedd bobbed his head. The innkeep came bustling over with a big basket of warm bread for the table and a tankard of ale for her. He also brought news of roast chickens, and while he and Yraen wrangled about how many there’d be and how much they’d cost, Carra had a brief chance to study the silver daggers, though most of her attention went to Rhodry. It wasn’t just because of his good looks; she simply couldn’t puzzle out how old he was. At times he would grin and look no older than she; at others, melancholy would settle into his eyes and play on his face like a fever, and it would seem that he must be a hundred years old at the least, to have earned such sadness.
“Innkeep?” Rhodry said. “Bring some scraps for the lady’s dogs, will you?”
“I will. We butchered a sheep yesterday. Plenty of spleen and suchlike left.”
Carra gave the man a copper for his trouble. Yraen drew his dagger and began to cut the bread in rough chunks.
“And where is my lady bound for?” His voice was dark and rough, but reassuringly normal all the same.
“I . . . um, well . . . to the west, actually. To visit kin.”
Yraen grinned and raised an eyebrow, but he handed her a chunk of bread without comment. Even though Carra told herself that she was daft to trust these men, she suddenly felt safe, and for the first time in weeks. When Rhodry took some bread, she noticed that he was wearing a ring, a flat silver band graved with roses. She was startled enough to stare.
“It’s a nice bit of jewelry, isn’t it?” Rhodry said.
“It is, but forgive me if I was rude. I just happen to have some jewelry with roses on it myself. I mean, they’re very differently done, and the metal’s different, too, but it just seemed odd . . . ” She felt suddenly tongue-tied and let her voice trail away.
Rhodry passed Nedd the bread. For a few minutes they all ate in an awkward silence until Carra felt she simply had to say something.
“Where are you two going, if you don’t mind me asking, anyway?”
“Up north, Cengarn way,” Yraen said. “We’ve got a hire, you see, though he’s barricaded himself in a woodshed for the night. Doesn’t trust the innkeep, doesn’t trust us, for all that he’s hired us as guards. Calls himself a merchant, but I’ve got my doubts, I have. However he earns his keep, he’s a rotten-tempered little bastard, and I’m sick to my heart of his ways.”
“Your own temper at the moment lacks a certain sunny sweetness itself.” Rhodry was grinning. “Our Otho’s carrying gems, and a lot of them, and it’s making him wary and even nastier than he usually is, which is saying a great deal. But we took his hire because it may lead to better things. I was thinking that maybe Gwerbret Cadmar up on the border might have need of us. He’s got a rough sort of rhan to rule.”
“Is that Cadmar of Cengarn?”
“It is. I take it you’ve heard of him?”
“My . . . well, a friend of mine’s mentioned Cengarn once or twice. It’s to the west of here, isn’t it?”
“More to the north, maybe, but somewhat west. Think your kin might have ridden that way?”
“They might have.” She busied herself with brushing imaginary crumbs off her shirt.
“What did this man of yours do?” Rhodry’s voice hovered between sympathy and a certain abstract anger. “Get you with child and then leave you?”
“How did you know?” She looked up, blushing hard, feeling tears gathering.
“It’s not exactly a new story, lass.”
“But he said he’d come back.”
“They all do,” Yraen murmured to his tankard.
“But he gave me—” She hesitated, her hand half-consciously clutching at her shirt, where the pendant hung hidden, “Well, he gave me a token.”
When Rhodry held out his hand, she debated for a long moment.
“We’re not thieves, lass,” Rhodry said, and so gently that she believed him.
She reached round her neck to unclasp the chain and take the token out. It was an enormous sapphire as blue as the winter sea, set in a pendant of reddish-gold, some three inches across and ornamented with golden roses in bas relief. When they saw it, Rhodry whistled under his breath and Yraen swore aloud. Nedd scooted a little closer to look.
“Ye gods!” Yraen said. “It’s a good thing you keep this hidden. It’s worth a fortune.”
“A king’s ransom, and I mean that literally.” Rhodry was studying it as closely as he could in the uncertain light, and he muttered a few words in the language of the Westfolk before he went on. “Once this belonged to Ranadar of the High Mountain, the last true king the Westfolk ever had, and it’s been passed down through his descendants for over a thousand years. When your Dar’s kin find out he’s given it to you, lass, they’re going to beat him black and blue.”
“You know him? You must know him!”
“I do.” Rhodry handed the jewel back. “Any man who knows the Westfolk knows Daralanteriel. Did he tell you who he is?”
Busy with clasping the pendant, she shook her head no.
“As much of a Marked Prince as the Westfolk will ever have. The heir to what throne there is, which isn’t much, being as his kingdom lies in ruins in the far, far west.”
She started to laugh, a nervous giggle of sheer disbelief.
“Kingdom?” Yraen broke in. “I never heard of the Westfolk having any kingdom.”
“Of course you haven’t.” Rhodry suddenly grinned. “And that’s because you’ve never gotten to know the Westfolk or listened to what they’ve got to say. A typical Round-ear, that’s you, Yraen.”
“You’re having one of your jests on me.”
“I’m not.” But the way he was smiling made him hard to believe. “It’s the solemn truth.”
To her horror Carra found that she couldn’t stop giggling, that her giggles were rising to an hysterical laugh. The dogs whined, pressing close to her, nudging at her hands while Nedd swung his head Rhodry’s way and growled like a wolf. The silver dagger seemed to notice him for the first time.
“Nedd, his name is?” Rhodry spoke to Carra. “I don’t suppose he has an uncle or suchlike named Perryn.”
“His grandfather, actually.” At last she managed to choke her laughter down enough to answer. “A priest of Kerun.”
Rhodry sat stock-still, and in the dancing firelight it seemed he’d gone pale.
“And what’s so wrong with you?” Yraen poked him on the shoulder.
“Naught.” Rhodry turned, waving at the innkeep. “More ale, will you? A man could die of thirst in your wretched tavern.”
Not only did the man bring more ale but his wife trotted over with roast fowl and greens and more bread, a feast to Carra after her long weeks on the road, and to the silver daggers as well, judging from the way they fell upon the meal. In the lack of conversation Carra found herself studying Rhodry. His table manners were those of a courtly man, one far more gracious than any lord she’d ever seen at her brother’s table. Every now and then she caught him looking her way with an expression that she simply couldn’t puzzle out. Sometimes he seemed afraid of her, at others weary—she decided at length that in her exhaustion she was imagining things, because she could think of no reason that a battle-hardened stiver dagger would be afraid of one tired lass, and her pregnant at that. Once she’d eaten, though, her exhaustion lifted enough for her to focus at last on one of his earlier comments.
“You know Dar.” She said it so abruptly that he looked up, startled. “Where is he? Will you tell me?”
“If I knew for certain, I would, but I haven’t seen him in years, and he’s off to the north with his alar’s herds somewhere, I suppose.” Rhodry paused for a sip of ale. “Listen, lass, if you’re with child, then you’re his wife. Do you realize that? Not some deserted woman, but his wife. The Westfolk see things a good bit differently than Deverry men.”
The tears came, spilling down before she could stop them. Whining, the dogs laid their heads in her lap. Without thinking she threw her arms around Thunder and let him lick the tears away while she wept. Dimly she was aware of Yraen talking, and of the sounds of a bench being moved about. When at last she looked up, he was gone and the innkeep with him, but Rhodry still sat across from her, slouching onto one elbow and drinking his ale.
“My apologies,” she sniveled. “I’ve just been so frightened, wondering if he really would ever want to see me again.”
“Oh, he will. He’s a good lad, for all that he’s so young, and I think me you can trust him.” Rhodry grinned suddenly. “Well, I’d say he’s a cursed sight more trustworthy than I was at his age, but that, truly, wouldn’t be saying much. If naught else, Carra, his kin will take you in the moment you find them—ye gods, any alar would! You don’t truly realize it yet, do you? That child you’re carrying is as royal as any prince up in Dun Deverry. You’ve got the token to prove it, too. Don’t you worry, now. We’ll find him.”
“We?”
“We. You’ve just hired yourself a silver dagger to escort you to your new home—well, once we get Otho to Cengarn, but that’s on the way and all.” He looked away, and he seemed as old as the rocks in the mountains, as weary as the rivers themselves. “Whether Yraen’s daft enough to ride with me, I don’t know. For his sake, I hope he isn’t.”
“But I can’t pay you.”
“Oh, if I needed paying, Dar’s alar would see to it. Here, you still look half out of your mind with fear.”
“Well, it’s just all been so awful.” She sniffed hard, choking back tears. “Realizing I was pregnant, and then running away and wondering if maybe Dar had just up and left me behind like men do. And then I met Nedd’s grandfather, and truly, that was strange enough on its own, and then we just stumble in here like this, and here you are, telling me all these strange things, and I’ve never seen you before or anything. It’s so odd, finding someone who knows Dar, out of the blue like this, that I . . . ” She paused, blushing on the edge of calling him a liar.
“Odd, truly, but not some bizarre coincidence. It’s my Wyrd, Carra, and maybe yours, too, but no man can say what another’s Wyrd may be. Wyrd, and the dweomer that Wyrd brings with it—I can smell it all round us.”
“You look frightened, too.”
“I am. You’re carrying my death with you.”
Nedd, who’d been close to asleep, snapped up his head to stare. Carra tried to speak but could only stammer. Rhodry laughed, a long berserker’s howl, and pledged her with his tankard.
“I don’t hold it against you, mind. I’ve loved many a woman in my day, but none as much as I love my lady Death. I know what you’re going to ask, Carra—I’m drunk, sure enough, but not so drunk that I’m talking nonsense. Indulge me, my lady, since I’ve just pledged my life to you and all that, and let me talk awhile. I’ve lived a good bit longer than you might think, and every now and then I get to looking back, like old men will, and I can see now that I’ve never loved anyone as much as her. Once I thought I loved honor, but honor’s just another name for my lady Death, because sooner or later, as sure as sure, a man’s honor will lead him to her bed.” Abruptly he leaned onto the table. “Do you believe in sorcery, Carra? In the dweomer, and those who know its ways?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, I wouldn’t know, but you hear all those things—”
“Some of them are true. I know it, you see. I know it deep in my heart, and it’s a harsh and bitter knowing in its way.” He gave her a lopsided grin that made him look like a lad of twenty. “Do you think I’m mad?”
“Not truly, but a bit daft—I can’t deny that.”
“You’re a practical sort of lass, and you’ll need to be.” He finished the ale in his tankard, then refilled it from the flagon with an unsteady hand. “There’s only been one woman in my whole life that I’ve loved as much as I love the lady Death, but she loved the dweomer more than me. It’s enough to drive any man daft, that. Be that as it may, she told me a prophecy once. Run where you will, Rhodry, said she, but the dweomer will catch you in the end. Or somewhat like that. It was years ago now, and I don’t quite remember her exact words. But I do remember how I felt while she was speaking, that she was telling me the truth and naught more, and somehow I knew that when the time came and my Wyrd sprang upon me, I’d feel its claws sink deep, and I’d know that my lady Death was getting ready to accept me at last for the true lover I’ve been, all these long years. And while you were telling me your tale, I felt those claws bite. Soon I’ll lie with her at last, though it’s a cold and narrow bed we’ll share, my lady and me.”
Nedd was asleep in the straw with the dogs. In the hearth the fire was dying down, throwing a cloak of shadows over Rhodry’s face. With a wrench of will Carra got up and went to the hearth to put on more wood. She felt so cold at heart that she wanted the heat as much as the light. As the fire blazed up, she heard him moving behind her and turned just as he knelt in the straw at her feet.
“Will you take me into your service, my lady?”
“What? Of course I will. I mean, I don’t have a lot of choice, do I? Since you know Dar and all.”
“A very practical lass.” He grinned at her and rose, dusting off the knees of his filthy brigga as if it would make a difference. “Good. Nedd! Wake up! Escort your lady to her elegant chambers, will you? And make sure you stand a good guard tonight, because I feel trouble riding for all of us with an army at its back.”
Drunk as he was, he made her a graceful bow, then wove his way out of the tavern room. Nedd got up, signaling to the dogs to join him.
“What do you think of that silver dagger, Nedd? Do you like him?”
Nedd nodded his head yes.
“Even though he’s half-mad?”
Nedd pursed his lips and thought. Finally he shrugged the question away and went to open the door for her with a clumsy imitation of Rhodry’s bow. As she followed him out to the stables, Carra was both thinking that she’d never wanted to be a queen and wishing that she felt more like one.
Early on the morrow Yraen woke them by the simple expedient of standing under the hayloft and yelling. As they all walked back to the tavern for breakfast, he announced that he was riding north with them.
“Against my better judgment, I might add. First we take on this cursed little silversmith, and now our Rhodry starts babbling about Wyrd and dweomer and prophecies and the gods only know what else! He’s mad, if you ask me, as daft as a bard, and he drinks harder than any man I’ve ever seen, and that’s a fair bit, if you take my meaning, not that he shows his drink the way an ordinary man would, but anyway, I know blasted well I should be riding back east and finding some other hire, but when he gets to talking—” He shook his head like a baffled bear. “So I’m coming along, for all that he warned me I’ll probably die if I do. I must be as daft as he is.”
In the morning light Carra had the chance for a good look at him. He was a handsome man, Yraen, at least in the abstract, with regular features and a mane of thick golden hair to match his mustaches, but his ice-blue eyes were as cold and hard as the iron of the joke that stood him for a name. The dogs and Nedd watched him with a cold suspicion of their own.
“Have you known Rhodry long?” Carra said.
“We’ve ridden together this four years now.”
“You know, neither of you seem like the sort of men who usually turn into silver daggers.”
“I suppose you mean that well.” Yraen was scowling, but in an oddly abstract way. “Look, my lady, no offense and all that, but asking a silver dagger questions isn’t such a pleasant thing—for both sides, if you take my meaning.”
Since she did, Carra held her tongue against a rising tide of curiosity. Inside the tavern room Rhodry was sitting cross-legged on the floor under a window, shaving with a long steel razor and a bit of mirror propped against the wall.
“Be done straightaway,” Rhodry said. “Yraen, get the lady some bread and milk, will you? The innkeep’s drunk in his kitchen again, and she’s got to keep up her strength and all that.”
With a growl like a dog, however, Nedd insisted on being the one to wait upon his lady.
“I’ve been thinking,” Yraen said abruptly. “If the point of this daft adventure is finding our lady her man, why don’t we just ride straight west?”
“You’re forgetting Otho.”
“True enough, and that’s my point. I want to forget Otho. Can’t we give him his coin back?”
“We still couldn’t just ride west. The grasslands are huge, and there aren’t any roads, and we could wander out there for months till we starved to death.” Still a bit damp, Rhodry joined them at table just as Nedd and the bleary innkeep appeared with bread and bacon. “Cadmar of Cengarn buys horses from the Westfolk, and so we’re bound to find some of the People there—well, they’ll show up sooner or later, anyway. And then we can pass the message along, that Dar’s wife is waiting for him under the gwerbret’s protection.”
“Sounds too easy. You’re hiding somewhat, Rhodry.”
“I’m not. I’ve got no idea, none at all, of what might happen.”
“Then what’s all this babbling about Wyrd and dweomer?”
Rhodry shrugged, tearing bread with his long and graceful fingers.
“If I knew more, I’d tell you more.” He looked up with a sunny and inappropriate grin hovering round his mouth. “But that’s why I warned you earlier. Leave Otho if you want—leave us all. Ride east, and don’t give me or mine another thought.”
Yraen merely snarled and speared a chunk of bacon with an expensive-looking table dagger. At that point Carra heard someone swearing and cursing at the innkeep. The dogs laid back long ears and swung their heads toward the sound as the voice rose into a veritable litany of oaths, a bard’s memory chain of venom, a lexicon of filth. Rhodry jumped up and yelled.
“Hold your tongue! There’s a lady present.”
Snorting inarticulately under his breath a man came stumping into the room. He was only about five feet tall, but built as thickly and strongly as a miniature blacksmith, though his walk was stiff and slow. Since his hair and long beard were snow-white, it might have been mere age that was stiffening him, but from Rhodry’s talk of the night before Carra suspected that his heavy leather jerkin hid sewn jewels. He was also wearing a short sword at one hip and a long knife at the other.
“Don’t you yell at me, you misbegotten silver dagger,” Otho said, but levelly enough. “The day I take orders from a cursed elf is the day I curl my toes to heaven and gasp my last. I . . . ”
He saw Carra and stopped, his mouth slacking, his eyes misting with tears.
“My lady,” he whispered “Oh! My lady.”
He knelt before her and grabbed her hand to kiss it like a courtier. Carra sat stunned while Rhodry and Yraen goggled. All at once Otho blushed scarlet, jumped to his feet, and made a noisy show of blowing his nose on a bit of old rag.
“Uh, well now,” Otho snapped. “Don’t know what came over me, like, lass. My apologies. Thought you were someone else, just for a minute there. Humph. Well. Forgive me, will you? Just going outside.”
He rushed out before anyone could say a word, leaving all of them stunned and silent for a good couple of minutes. Finally Yraen sighed with an explosive puff of breath.
“All right, Rhodry lad. Dweomer it is, and Wyrd, too, for all I know about it. I’m not arguing with you anymore.”
After Rhodry settled up with the innkeep, they rode out, heading straight north on the hard-packed dirt road that would, or so the villagers promised, eventually lead them to Cengarn and Gwerbret Cadmar. The road here ran through farms, stretching pale gold with the ripening crop of winter wheat, but to the north, like a smudge of storm clouds, hung a dark line of hills and forests. All morning the line swelled, and the land rose steadily toward it, till by the time they stopped to rest the horses and eat their midday meal, they could see waves and billows of land and trees at the horizon.
“How are you faring, lass?” Otho asked as he helped her dismount. “Our Rhodry tells me you’re with child.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine. You don’t need to hover over me, you know. I’m not very far along at all.”
“If you say so. I just wish we had a woman of the People with us someone who knew about these female matters.”
“I’m doing splendidly.”
Yet, when Carra sat down in a soft patch of grass, she was surprised at how good it felt to be out of the saddle and still. She’d learned to ride at three, clinging to her brother’s pony, spent half her life riding, but now she found herself tired after a morning in the saddle. She decided that she hated being pregnant, married or not. Thunder and Lightning lopped down on either side of her with vast canine sighs. When Nedd hurried, off to fetch her water and food, Otho sat down as if on. guard.
“If I’m truly a queen now,” she said, “the dogs must be my men at arms, and Nedd my equerry. Do you want to be my high councillor, Otho? I wonder if I’ll get any serving women; maybe we should have taken some of his holiness’s cats along for that.”
Otho frowned in drought, pretending to take the game seriously.
“Well, Your Grace,” he said at last. “I’d rather be your chief craftsman, in charge of building your great hall, like.”
“Truly, the one we’ve got now is rather drafty.” She waved one arm, round at the scenery. “Let me see, who’ll be councillor. Well, it can’t be Rhodry, because he’s daft. I know—I need a sorcerer! An aged sorcerer like in the tales. Aren’t there tales like that? About marvelous dweomermasters who turn up just when you need them?”
Otho turned a little pale, She could have sworn that he was terrified, but she couldn’t imagine why. Suddenly troubled herself, she looked up at the sky.
“Do you see that bird circling up there?” She pointed to a distant black shape. “Is it a raven?”
“Looks like it. Why?”
“I’ve been seeing it all morning, that’s all. Oh, I’m just being silly. Of course there’s lots of ravens . . . ” She let her voice trail away, because Otho was staring up, shading his deep-pouched eyes with one hand, and within the welter of dirty beard his mouth was set and grim.
“What’s so wrong?” Rhodry strolled over, a chunk of cheese in his hand.
“Maybe naught,” Otho said. “But that’s one blasted big raven, isn’t it?”
Just as he spoke, the bird broke and flew, flapping with a harsh cry off to the west, just as if it knew it had been spotted. Otho tossed his head to shake the sun from his eyes.
“You a good hand with a hunting bow, silver dagger? You’re the one who used to ride with the Westfolk.”
“True spoken, and my heart yearns for a longbow now.”
Suddenly cold, Carra stood up just as Nedd and Yraen hurried over. “Was there somewhat strange about that raven?” she said.
“Maybe. You’ve got sharp eyes, lass, and I think me you’re going to need them.”
“Wow, wait.” Yraen sounded exasperated. “A bird’s a bird, big or not.”
“Unless it’s a sorcerer.” Rhodry grinned at him. “What would you say if I told you that some dweomermen can turn themselves into birds and fly?”
“I’d say that you were even dafter than I thought.”
“Then I won’t tell you. It’s still not too late for you to go back.”
“Will you hold your tongue about that?”
“Well and good, then, because you’ve been warned three times now, and that’s all that the laws and the gods can ask of me.”
That afternoon, when they rode on north, Carra kept a nervous watch for the raven, but she saw only normal birds of several kinds, flying about on some avian business. Every time she saw a raven or a crow, she would tell herself that Rhodry’s talk of shape-changers was his madness speaking at worst or some daft jest at best.
The land kept rising, and the road turned snaky, winding through the low places and crossing a couple of small streams. Just at sunset they topped a low rise and saw, some two or three miles ahead, a wild forest spreading out across hill and valley. Between them and the verge, as dark as shadows, stood a village huddling behind a staked palisade. Yraen muttered something foul under his breath.
“Don’t like the looks of that, Rhodry. That wall’s new built.”
“So it is. We’d best hurry before they shut us out for the night.”
In spite of the fortifications, the village was hospitable enough. Although Carra was expecting the farmers to stare at Otho or at least comment on his small stature, they acted as if he were nothing out of the ordinary at all. The blacksmith let them stable their horses in his shed, and a farm wife was glad to feed them for a few coppers and let them sleep in her hayloft for a couple more. Half the village crowded into her house to talk to the strangers, too, and warn them.
“Bandits on the roads,” said the blacksmith. “Never had bandits round here before. We sent a lad off to Gwerbret Cadmar to beg for help, and his grace sent word back that he was trying his best to wipe the scum out. Told us we’d better put up some kind of wall until he did.”
“Sounds like we might find a hire in Cengarn,” Rhodry said. “He might need extra men.”
“Most like.” The blacksmith paused, looking Carra over. “What are you doing on the roads, lass?”
Carra opened her mouth to blurt the truth, but Rhodry got in first.
“She rides with me,” he snarled, and quite believably. “Anything wrong with that?”
“Since I’m not her father, I don’t have a word to say about it, lad. Now let’s not have any trouble, like.”
“Save it for the bandits, Rhodry,” Yraen put in with a sigh. “How wide is the forest, anyway? Traveling from south to north, I mean.”
“Oh, let’s see.” The blacksmith rubbed his chin. “I’ve never been north, myself. But it stretches a fair ways. Then you come to some more farming country, and then forest again. Cengarn’s right up in the hills. Lot of trade comes through Cengarn.”
“Trade?” Carra said, startled. “With the Westfolk?”
“Them, too, lass.” The blacksmith gave Otho a conspiratorial wink. “I take it she’s never ridden our way before. I think the lass is in for a surprise or two.”
The hayloft turned out to be quite big enough for all of them, though Nedd insisted on piling up a barrier of hay to give Carra a bit of privacy in one curve of the wall. Before she went to this improvised bower, she asked Rhodry outright why he’d lied to the blacksmith.
“Because the truth could be dangerous, that’s why. Bandits have been known to hold important people for ransom.”
“Important . . . ”
“Carra, believe me. The Westfolk would hand over every fine horse they own to ransom Dar’s wife and heir, to say naught of that bit of jewelry you’re carrying. From now on, just pretend you ran off with me. It’s perfectly believable.”
“The vanity of the man!” Otho said. “But women do stupid things sometimes, sure enough.”
“And men are the soul of tact?” Carra snapped.
“It’s not like you really did run off with Rhodry. This man of yours couldn’t be any worse, even if he is an elf.”
Lightning picked up her mood and growled. At the sound Thunder swung his head around and bared teeth.
“My apologies,” Otho said, and quickly. “No offense meant.”
Carra decided that as men at arms went, the dogs had much to recommend them.
In the morning, when they rode out, Rhodry and Yraen held a last conference with the blacksmith, then decided to wear the mail shirts they’d been carrying in their saddlebags. Much to Carra’s surprise, Otho produced one as well. As they followed the road into the forest, Nedd put the dogs on alert with a few hand signals; their noses would provide the best warning they could have against possible ambushes. Although she tried to keep her courage up, a few hours of this dangerous riding brought Carra an acute case of nerves. Every flicker of movement in the underbrush, every ripple of wind in the trees, every distant crack of a twig or hammer of a woodpecker, made her flinch.
Rhodry and Yraen rode in silence, as alert as the dogs. When they finally came clear of the forest, just after noon, she offered up a prayer of thanks to the Goddess. Yet, paradoxically enough, it was out in the open farmlands that the reality of their danger struck her like a blow across the face. Thanks to heavy cutting by the locals, the trees ended in a welter of stumps just at the edge of a broad valley. As they jogged their horses out into the open air, the dogs growled and threw up their heads to sniff the sudden gust of burning that greeted them. When Carra looked up, she could see a lazy drift of smoke, yellowing the sky. Circling up high flew the raven. Yraen swore—he’d seen it, too. Rhodry, oddly enough, started singing, just a few lines of some looping melody in the language of the Westfolk.
“Would that I had my good yew bow to speed an arrow to your lying heart,” he translated. “So your blood could water the tree of my revenge—but that bit isn’t really to the point, being as that cursed bird hasn’t done anything to us yet. I suspect it of having plans. What do you think, Otho?”
“I think we should turn back, that’s what.”
The raven headed off west and disappeared into the bright sun beyond the smoke.
“Normally I’d agree, but there’s a farmstead burning over there.” Rhodry rose in his stirrups and squinted across the valley. “Somebody might be still alive.”
But the gods weren’t so kind as that. At a fast jog they cut across the fields, the dogs racing to keep up, and reached the farmstead to find the fire burning itself out in a smolder of smoking thatch and glowing embers. Just at the road lay the corpse of a woman, her head half cut from her shoulders, in a blackening pool of blood. She lay on her back, her arms thrown akimbo, her stomach swollen with a late pregnancy.
“Get back!” Rhodry turned in his saddle and yelled at Carra. “Get back with the dogs!”
She wheeled her horse around, but it was too late. Mixed with the smoke hung a sweet scent, much too much like burnt meat. She pulled Gwerlas up after a few lengths, dismounted as fast as she could, and vomited into the long grass. Sick, cold, and shaking, she wiped her mouth on a pull of grass and got up, staggering back to her horse, just as the two dogs reached her. Whining, they crowded close. She let her hands rest on their necks while she stared at the sky and resolutely tried to put the sight of the murdered woman out of her mind. It was impossible.
“There, there, lass.” It was Otho, and his voice was full of soft concern. “You’ll come right in a moment.”
When she tried to answer the words stuck like lumps of vomit in her throat. Finally she decided that she’d have to face what needed facing and turned to look at the distant village. She could just see Rhodry and Yraen circling round the burning, with Nedd close behind them. She realized suddenly that if there were trapped survivors, the dogs would find them. She snapped her fingers and pointed.
“Nedd. Go to Nedd.”
They bounded off.
“Oh, well,” Carra went on. “It’s still better than marrying Lord Scraev. I’ll tell you about him sometime, Otho. You’ll laugh and laugh.”
Her voice sounded so weak and shaky to her own ears that she nearly wept. Otho laid a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tears help, lass.”
“I can’t weep. I’m a queen now. Sort of, anyway. The queens in all the old tales face this sort of thing with proud sneers or maybe a supernatural calm. Like what’s-her-name, King Maryn’s wife, when her enemies were accusing her of adultery and stuff.”
Otho’s face turned pale and oddly blank.
“Haven’t you heard that old story? Bellyra, that was it, and she stared them ail down till her witness could get there and keep them from killing her.”
“Many a time and from many a bard.”
“You know, he was a smith like you, wasn’t he? I think that’s the way the tale ran. He was her jeweler or suchlike.” Carra forced a smile. “And she wasn’t killed, and so I’ll just take that as a good omen.”
“Now listen, lass, things look dark. I won’t lie to you. But for all that I love to slang him, Rhodry ap Devaberiel’s the best swordsman in this kingdom and points beyond as well, and young Yraen’s his match. We’ll get you through to Cengarn.”
“Shouldn’t we turn back?”
“Well, the raiders left plenty of tracks. Didn’t seem to see any reason why they should cover them, like, the arrogant bastards. I’d say they’re heading south right now. No use in riding after them, is there?”
“Oh, Goddess, I wish Dar were here! I . . . hold a bit. Did you say that Rhodry’s father is one of the Westfolk? I mean, with that name—”
“He couldn’t be anything but an elf, truly. That’s what I said, all right, but I’m not saying another word about it. Rhodry’s affair, not mine.”
In a few minutes the other men, came back, Rhodry and Yraen grim, shaking their heads, Nedd dead-pale and sweating, the dogs slinking, all limp tails and ears., When they reached the body of the dead woman, Rhodry sent the others on ahead, then knelt down beside it. Carra turned her back on him and took a deep gulp of air.
“Are there more people dead?” she said, to Yraen.
“There are. Not one thing we can do for the poor bastards. Three dead men, one lad of maybe fifteen. That woman we saw first. And the child she was carrying, of course.”
“That’s all? I mean, a farm this big—usually there’s a couple of families. working it.”
“I know.” Yraen, muttered something foul under his breath before he went on. “I wonder if these bandits maybe took the other women and the children with them.”
“We’re not close enough to the coast for that.” Rhodry joined them. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What?” Carra broke in. “What are you talking about?”
“Slaves for the Bardek trade. But the bandits would have to get them all the way down to the sea, avoiding the Westfolk and Deverry men alike on the way. Can’t see them bothering.”
“Well.” Yraen rubbed the side of his face with a gauntleted hand. “They might have wanted the women for—”
“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry hit him on the shoulder. “Look what I found in the dead woman’s fingers. She must have grabbed her attacker or suchlike.”
He held out a tuft of straw-colored hair, each coarse strand about a foot long.
“Looks like horse hair to me,” Yraen said.
Nedd sniffed it, then shook his head in a vigorous no.
“There weren’t any hoofprints anywhere near her, but there were boot prints, so I think I’ll side with Nedd.” Rhodry rubbed the strands between thumb and forefinger. “The fellow might have packed his hair with lime, like the High King does—the old Dawntime way, I mean. It makes your hair turn to straw like this.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’ve been close enough to the king to tell,” Yraen muttered.
Rhodry flashed a brief grin, shot through with weariness.
“Let’s get out of here.” Nedd spoke so rarely that all of them jumped and swirled round to face him. Although he was still pale, his mouth was set in a tight line, and his eyes burned with an expression that Carra could only call fierce. “Tell the gwerbret. We’ve got to.”
“So we should.” Rhodry glanced at Otho. “Looks like they headed south, anyway.”
“So I told our lady. Can’t turn back.”
“I’m on for the ride.” Carra thought of ancient queens and forced her voice steady. “I say we get to the gwerbret as fast as ever we can.”
“Done, then.” Rhodry looked up with a toss of his head. “Nedd, can you and Carra each carry one of the dogs? You can sung them over the front of your saddles, if they’ll allow it.”
Nedd nodded his head to indicate that they would.
“Good. We want to make speed.”
That night when they camped, Rhodry and Yraen set a guard with the dogs to help them. It became their pattern: rise early, tend the horses, then ride hard all day, making a late camp and a guarded one, especially once they reached the second stretch of forest, where no one slept much. The dogs were especially nervous, whining and growling, turning their heads this way and that as they rode, When they were allowed down they would trot round and round the horses and look up, every now and then, to growl or bark at the sky. Carra wondered if the raven were following them, somewhere above the sheltering trees. As they traveled steadily north, the land kept rising, and it turned rocky, too, with huge boulders pushing their way through the earth and stunting the black and twisted pines. The muddy track they were following wound and switched back and. forth through the jagged hills until Carra wondered if they’d ever reach Cengarn.
Finally, though, on the third day after they’d found the ravaged village, they reached a road made of felled trees, trimmed into logs and half-buried, side by side in the dirt. At its abrupt beginning stood a stone marker carved with a sunburst and a couple of lines of lettering. Carra was surprised to learn that Rhodry could read.
“Well, we’re not far now, twenty miles from Cadmar’s city.” He laid one finger on the carved sun. “This is his device.”
The country here was broken, tableland. On the flat the pine forest grew all tangled round with ancient underbrush, like a hedge on either side of the road, only to break suddenly and tumble down a small gulch in a spill of green to reveal huge boulders, heaped and tumbled like a giant’s toys. When the sunlight was falling in long and dusty-gold slants through the trees, the road flattened out and straightened. As they traveled along at a steady walk, Carra heard a distant noise ahead of them, went stiff with fear, then realized that it was the sound of a river, racing and tumbling over rock, As the road snaked west, at the end of a leafy tunnel they could see both the river and a blessed token that some kind of human presence lay close at hand. On either side the riverbank had been cleared of trees and underbrush; the rocks out in the water itself had been hauled around and arranged to floor a level if deep-looking ford. But while they were still in the forest’s shelter, Rhodry threw up his hand for a halt.
“What’s wrong?” Carra said. “Can’t we camp here? I’d be so glad to see the sky.”
All at once the dogs began growling and squirming so badly that neither Carra nor Nedd could keep them on the saddle. They slithered down and rushed to the head of the line, bristling and snarling on the edge of barks. At their signal Rhodry began yelling at Carra and Nedd to get back into the forest. In a swirl of confusion they did just that, but as Carra looked up reflexively at the sky, she saw the raven flap away. Whistling and yelling, Nedd got the dogs to come to him, but they kept growling. Up ahead Rhodry, Yraen, and Otho peered across the river into the forest on the other side. Nothing moved. It was dead-silent, not the chirp of a bird, not the rustle of a squirrel.
“Ill-omened places, fords,” Yraen remarked.
“So they are.” Rhodry rose in the stirrups and stared as if he were counting every distant tree, “Think there’s someone waiting on the other side?”
“The dogs think there is,” Otho put in. “I say we ride upstream.”
“Upstream?” Yraen said. “What’s upstream?”
“Naught, I suppose. So they won’t expect us to go that way.”
Rhodry laughed, a little mutter under his breath like a ferret’s chortle. Carra went ice-cold. She was going to die. She realized it all at once with a calm clarity: what waited for them across that river was death, and there was no escaping it. They couldn’t go back, they couldn’t go forward, they might as well cross over to the Otherlands and be done with it. Although she tried to tell the rest of them, when she opened her mouth she simply couldn’t speak. Not so much as a gasp came out.
“Well spoken, Otho my old friend,” Rhodry said at last. “Let’s give it a try. See those boulders up there a ways? Shelter of a sort. But we’d best dismount, I think.”
Since the trees thinned out toward the clearing’s edge they could lead their horses, single file without leaving this imperfect shelter, but they couldn’t do it without cracking branches and snapping twigs and setting the underbrush rustling. Alter some twenty yards the dogs began growling and snarling, anyway, no matter how Nedd tried to hush them.
“They know we’re here,” Rhodry said to him finally. “Don’t trouble yourself about it. But there can’t be a lot of them or they’d have rushed us already.” He pointed across the river. “Look.”
In among the trees at the far side of the clearing on the opposite bank someone or something was moving to follow them, some three or maybe four shapes, roughly man-shaped, that slipped along when they moved and stopped again when they halted.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “You and Nedd take Carra into the trees. We won’t fool them, but maybe—”
Carra never learned what he intended. Pressed beyond canine endurance, Thunder suddenly began to bark, then bounded away and raced straight for the river before Nedd could grab him. Just as he burst free of the trees something flashed and hissed in the air: an arrow. Carra flung herself on Lightning to hold him back and screamed as the arrow struck Thunder in the side. Another followed, another, catching him, throwing him to the ground—pinning him to the ground, but still alive he writhed and howled in agony. The horses began to dance and toss their heads in terror. Dead-silent as always Nedd ran.
“Don’t!” Rhodry and Yraen screamed it together.
Too late. Nedd reached the dog, flung himself down beside the dying Thunder just as another flight came hissing down, bright death catching the fading sunlight. He never screamed, merely jerked this way and that while the long shafts struck until at last he and Thunder both lay still, the dog cradled in his arms, in the middle of a spreading pool of blood. Carra felt herself sobbing and choking, but in an oddly distant way, as if she stood beside herself and watched this girl named Carra howl and retch until she could barely breathe. Just as distantly she was aware of horses neighing and men cursing and shouting, then the sound of some large animal crashing through the underbrush. All at once Otho grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand and. Lightning’s collar by the other.
“Move!” he howled. “Run, lass!”
For such a small man he was terrifyingly strong. Half dragged, half stumbling, Carra got herself and the dog into the hollow among the rocks and fell, half spraddled across the whining, growling Lightning. Otho threw himself down beside her. He was cursing a steady stream in some language she’d never heard before.
“Rhodry, Yraen?” she gasped out.
“Right here.” Rhodry hunkered down beside her. “Hush, lass. They won’t come for us here.”
Her tears stopped of their own accord, leaving her face sticky and filthy both. She wiped it best she could on her equally filthy sleeve, then looked around her. In that last panicked dash they had reached the cluster of boulders and what shelter they were going to find. The river ran too deep to cross some yards off to the north; the forest grew thick and tangled to the south; the rocks rose up and melded with a cliff to the west behind them. Ahead and east, they had a clear view of the ford, some distance away, and the dark shape sprawled in the gathering shadows that had once been Nedd and Thunder.
“They can’t get round back here without the dog letting us know.” It was Yraen, sliding down the rocks behind them. “And they won’t get a clear aim to skewer us in here, and we can see them coming if they rush us. Couldn’t have been more than ten of them, Rhodry. If they try to squirm in here, on this broken ground, we’ll drop them easy.”
“True spoken. Think we can hold off a small army? We might have to. I’ll wager they’re on their way to fetch a few friends.”
“Or one or two of them are. I’d say they left a squad behind, some archers, too, in case we take it into our heads, like, to try to cross the river. Huh. Told you there was somewhat wrong with that cursed ford, didn’t I?”
“Did I argue with you?”
By then Carra was too spent to be frightened. She leaned back against a rock and looked straight in front of her with eyes that barely saw.
”Is there any water?” she whispered.
“There’s not,” Otho said. “Nor food, either. The horses bolted.”
“Ah, I see. We’re still going to die, aren’t we?”
No one said a word.
“I only mind because of the baby, really.” She needed, suddenly, to make them understand. “It seems so unfair to the poor little thing. It never had a chance to live and now it’s going to die. I mean, when it comes to me, I might have died in childbirth anyway, and this is still better than Lord Scraev, but—”
“Hush, my lady!” The words sounded as if someone were tearing them out of Otho under torture. “Ah, ye gods! Forgive me, that ever I should let this happen to you!”
“It’s not as if you had any choice in the matter.” Carra laid a hand on his arm.
She was shocked to see tears in his eyes. He wiped them vigorously with both hands before he went on.
“As soon as it’s dark, I’m going to try creeping through the forest a ways. We can move quiet when we want to, my people. The way those horses were tearing through the brush, a saddlebag or two might have gotten itself pulled free.”
“And if there’s someone out there?” Yraen said. “Waiting for one of us to try just that?”
Otho merely shrugged. Rhodry was examining the leather pouch he carried at his belt.
“This should hold a little water.” He dumped the coins in a long jingle onto the ground. “I think I can reach the river and get back again. I hate to think of our lady going thirsty.”
“I’ll do it.” Otho snatched the pouch from him. “You need to be here. Just in case, like.”
In the gathering dusk Otho slipped off, moving silent and surefooted around the rocks. In a few moments, though, they heard him chuckle.
“My lady, come here,” he called. “I think you can squeeze through, and there’s a nice little stream, there is. Bring the dog, too.”
Sure enough, by sliding and cramming herself between two massive boulders, Carra popped out into a flatfish opening big enough for her to crouch and Otho to stand upright, where a trickle of water ran down one rock, pooled, then disappeared under an overhang in the general direction of the river. She flung herself down and drank as greedily as the dog beside her, then washed her face. Otho was looking round with a grin of triumph on his face.
“When they come for us, my lady, you can hide in here. We’ll draw them off, down toward the ford, say. Once all the shouting’s over, you’ll have a chance to make your way north to the gwerbret. Not much of a chance, but better than none. If we tie that blasted dog’s mouth shut, we can hide him, too, and you’ll have company, like, on your journey. I’ll die easier, knowing that. Think of the child, my lady. It’ll keep you strong.”
“I am. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Yet with the hope fear returned and a grief sharper than any she’d ever known. Otho, Yraen, Rhodry—all dead for her sake? As Nedd already was. Lightning whined, pushing into her lap, reaching up to lick her face and whimper over and over again. She threw her arms around his neck and would have cried, but all her tears were spent.
“Come now, lass, come now.” Otho’s voice was very soft. “I was only going home to die, anyway, and Rhodry loves death more than he ever loved life, and well, I’m sorry for Yraen, not that you’d best ever tell him that, but then, he made his choice when he took to the long road, and who can argue with Wyrd, anyway, eh? Come now, hush. We’ll take them some water and tell them what we’ve found.”
By then a gibbous moon was rising, silvering the river, picking out Nedd’s body and the gleam of arrows lying on the grass. Although Carra wished with all her heart that they could bury him and Thunder, too, it seemed too trivial to mention to men who would doubtless lie dead and unburied themselves in the morning. She sat with her back to one of the boulders and stared fixedly in the opposite direction while Otho went back and forth fetching pouches of water for the two silver daggers. All at once she realized that her body had a thing or two that needed attending to, and urgently. Ever since she’d gotten pregnant, it seemed, when she needed to relieve herself there was simply no arguing about it. She got up and slipped away, keeping to the safe shelter of the boulders and broken terrain, to find a private spot.
When she was done she walked a few steps toward the forest and stood looking into the silver-touched shadows. For miles and miles the trees stretched, hiding enemies, maybe, or maybe promising safety. She wondered how far away the rest of the bandits were, and how fast their advance scouts would reach them. They won’t attack till dawn, she thought. We’ve got that long. Out in the shadows something moved. Her heart thudded, stuck cold in her chest; her hands clenched so hard her nails dug into her palms. It seemed that a bird, a strange silvery bird with enormous wings, dropped from the sky and settled deep among the trees.
A trick of moonlight—it had to be a thrown shadow and naught more—but a branch rustled, a tree shivered. Something snapped and stamped. Carra wanted to run, knew she should run, tried to call out, but she was frozen there, ice-cold and stone-still, as something—no, someone—made its way, made his way through the trees—no, her way. A silver-haired woman, wearing men’s clothing but too graceful and slender to be a man, stepped out into the clearing. She carried a rough cloth sack in one hand, and at her belt gleamed the pommel of a silver dagger.
“I’m a friend. Where’s Rhodry?”
Carra could only raise a hand and gesture mutely toward the boulders. As she led the way back, she could hear the woman following, but she was afraid to turn round and look behind lest the woman disappear. All Rhodry’s talk of shape-changers rushed back to her mind and hovered like a bird, half-seen in moonlight.
In among the broken rocks they found the men sitting in a circle, heads together, talking in low voices about the coming battle, if one could call it that. Carra suddenly realized that she could see them clearly, could pick out the expressions on their faces as they looked up startled. Only then did she realize that the woman gave off a faint silver light, hovering round her like scent.
“Jill!” Rhodry leapt to his feet and stepped back as if in fear. “Jill. I—ye gods! Jill!”
“That’s the name my father gave me, sure enough. Come along, all of you! We’ve got to get out of here and right now.”
“But those guards, they’ve got archers . . . ” Yraen let his voice trail away.
“Who no longer matter at all.” Jill glanced Otho’s way. “Hurry! Get up!”
Lightning sprang up at the command and Otho followed more slowly, grumbling to himself.
“Good.” Jill glanced her way. “You’ve got guts, lass. You are Carramaena, aren’t you?”
“I am. But how did—”
“Someone told me. No time to explain. Let’s get out of here. I can’t deal with a whole pack of raiders, and they’re on their way. Rhodry, get up here with me. Yraen, take the rear guard with Carra. Otho, keep a hand on that dog’s collar, will you? I don’t want him bolting.”
As they picked their way through the broken rocks and headed downstream toward the ford, Jill pulled a little ahead. Carra could see her looking around, frowning every now and then and biting her lower lip as a person will when they’re trying to remember something. Daft though this exercise seemed, Carra could pay no attention, because they were walking straight toward the ford where Nedd and Thunder lay. She could hear Lightning whining and Otho’s reassuring whisper, and she clung to the sound as if to someone’s hand. When they reached the bodies, she turned her head away and stared across the river. Something was moving among the trees. Even in the poor light she—they all—could see the underbrush shaking at the approach of someone or something.
“Keep walking,” Jill snapped. “You have to trust me. Keep walking straight ahead.”
No one hesitated, everyone moved, striding forward even though Carra suspected that they were all waiting for the hiss of an arrow, flying them their deaths. They walked a few feet, and a few more, and on and on, until Carra suddenly realized that they should have been wading right into the water instead of walking on dry land. All around her trees towered. The men began to swear in a string of foul curses.
“By every god!” Yraen snarled. “How did you manage that?”
“None of your cursed affair, silver dagger,” Otho broke in. “We’re across, aren’t we? That’s all that matters, and I for one am not going to be flapping my lips at a dweomerwoman.”
Only then did Carra realize that the river lay behind them—far behind them, out of sight, in fact. All she could hear was the merest rustle and murmur of distant water flowing over rock.

“Our friends can wait in ambuscade all they like,” Jill remarked. “And poke around in the rocks as if they were hunting badgers, too, when the dawn rises, but we’d best be on our way.”
Carra turned for one last look back.
“Farewell, Nedd, and it aches my heart to lose you. I only wish I could build you a cairn.”
“Nicely spoken.” Rhodry laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “But truly, I doubt me if it matters to his soul, and the gods all know that we might be seeing him in the Otherlands soon enough.”
With Jill hissing at them to hurry, they headed into the forest, picking their way along a deer track that ran east and downstream. In the middle of the line of march Carra stumbled along, shivering and exhausted, praying to the Goddess every now and then to keep the unborn baby safe, for what seemed like hours, though when they finally stopped she realized that the moon was still riding close to zenith. There in a clearing stood all their horses, their gear still intact, even Nedd’s.
“How did you . . . ” Rhodry said.
“The Wildfolk collected them,” Jill interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “And brought them round by the other ford.”
Carra giggled, thinking she was having a jest on them.
“And how did you find us?” Rhodry went on.
“There’s no time for talk now. Listen, you’re going to have to ride as fast as these poor beasts can carry you. I can’t just take you to the city, because of the way time would run all wrong. You need to arrive straightaway, not weeks from now, you see.”
Carra didn’t see, and she was willing to wager that none of the others did, either, but oddly enough, not one question got itself asked.
“Follow the river back to the road, and then make all the speed you can,” Jill went on, “The forest peters out about ten miles north of the river, and then you come to farming country, and finally to the gwerbret’s town. I wish to all the gods that you’d been coming from the east. You’d have been safe, then—it’s settled country all the way.”
“My humble apologies, my fair sorceress.” Rhodry made her a mocking sort of bow. “But if you’d been good enough to appear and warn us that we’d be set upon by bandits, I’d have—”
“Not bandits. But there’s no time. Get to Gwerbret Cadmar. Tell him you met up with the raiders, and tell him you’re a friend of mine.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Otho broke in.
“Not exactly.” She allowed herself a brief smile. “But I’ll be there soon enough.”
Carra remembered the bird, dropping gracefully from the silver sky, and shuddered.
“My lady, you must be half-frozen,” Otho said. “Let me get your cloak.”
Once she was mounted and wrapped in the heavy wool cloth, Carra turned to say farewell to Jill only to find her already gone, slipped off into the forest, apparently, when none of them were looking. But all during that long and miserable ride down the wooden road, Carra would look up every now and then to see or think she saw a bird-shape sailing in the moonlight, high above them as if it were on guard.
The rest of the ride as well crossed over into that mental land where everything could be either real or dream. At times she drowsed, once so dangerously that Otho woke her with a shout; he grabbed the reins from her and led her horse along after that. At other tunes she felt that she’d never been so wide-awake in her life. She would see some detail of the forest around them, a spill of moonlight on a branch, say, or a carved stone slab rising out of a clearing, so plainly and precisely that the image seemed burned into her consciousness to last forever. Yet, when she would try to place that image into a context, she would realize that she’d been half-asleep again and for miles.
Toward dawn they stumbled free of the forest to the relative safety of open and cultivated land, a roll of ripening wheat over long downs, striped green with pastures where white cows with rusty-red ears were lurching to their feet in the brightening sun. A few more miles brought them to a spiral of earthwork walls enclosing a round, thatched farmhouse. Much to Yraen’s surprise, Otho—Rhodry’s coin still lay in the dirt among the boulders—spent some of his precious coin to get a hot meal for them all. The farm wife, a stout woman missing half her teeth, clucked over Carra and brought her a steaming cup of herbed water.
“To warm your innards, like. You look to me like you need to sleep, lass.”
“I do, truly, but we’ve got to get to the gwerbret. On top of everything else, I’m with child, you see.”
“Well, may the Goddess bless you!” The woman smiled, all brown stumps but good humor. “Your first, is it?”
“It is. Well, if I don’t lose the poor little thing, anyway, or die myself or something.”
“Now, now, don’t you worry. I’ve had six myself, lass, and don’t you go listening to them ever-so-fine town ladies, moaning and groaning about how much pain they felt and all that. Why, no reason for it to be so bad, say I! My first one, now, he did give me a bit of trouble, but with our last, our Myla that is, I had her in the morning and was out digging turnips that night.”
Late that day, when the horses were stumbling weary and Carra herself so tired that she felt like sobbing aloud, they wound their way past one last farm and saw the rough stone walls of Cengarn, Gwerbret Cadmar’s city, circling round to enclose three hills. Above the walls, she could see roofs and towers climbing up the slopes; at the rocky crest of the highest hill a tall stone broch rose in a flutter of gold-colored pennants. As they rode up, they found a river flowing out through a stone arch, guarded by a portcullis in the walls. Although Rhodry and Yraen had been worrying about the sort of reception they’d get, at the city gates the guards hailed them with an urgent friendliness.
“Silver daggers, are you? Is that young woman with you her ladyship Carramaena of the Westlands?”
“Well, I’m, Carramaena, sure enough.” Carra urged her horse a link forward. “How do you know—”
“Your husband’s waiting for you up in the dun, my lady. Come along, if you please. I’ll escort you there straightaway.”
Although the men dismounted to spare the horses their weight on the steep slopes, Rhodry insisted that Carra ride whether Gwerlas was tired or no, and she was too exhausted, shivering with worry about her unborn child, to argue with him. As the guard led them along, she clung to the saddle peak with both hands and barely noticed the crowds of curious townsfolk who scurried out of their way. Their route took them round and about, looping round half the town it seemed, yet always leading them higher and higher, up to the gwerbret’s dun.
Even though it was a rough sort of place at that time, Cengarn was already the strangest city in all Deverry, as much green with trees and gardens as gray with stone. At first glance the round, thatched houses, set randomly on curving streets, seemed ordinary enough, but here and there on the flanks of the steep hillsides little alleys led to huge wooden doors set right into the slopes themselves. Not only did the river, spanned by a dozen wooden bridges, wind through the valley between the hills, but right in the center of town a tiny waterfall cascaded down the steepest slope of all. Their escort pointed it out with a certain pride.
“There’s a spring up in the citadel,” he remarked. “Cursed handy thing for a siege.”
“And more than passing strange,” Rhodry said. “A spring at the top of a hill like that, I mean.”
The guard merely winked and grinned in a hint of secrets.
The dun itself was all carved stone and slate tiles, set behind a second rise of walls and gates of oak bound with iron. At the entrance to the main tower, Carra allowed Rhodry to help her dismount—in fact, she nearly fell into his arms. As she stood there, trying to collect her energy for the last little walk into the broch, she heard an elven voice yelling her name and looked up to see Dar, racing toward her with an escort of ten men of the Westfolk trailing after. In the sun his dark hair gleamed, flecked with bluish highlights like a raven’s wing. He never goes anywhere alone, was her muddled thought. I should have known he was a prince because of that.
Lightning leapt in between them and growled, tail rigid, ears flat.
“It’s all right.” Carra caught the dog’s attention and signaled him back to her side. “He’s a friend.”
Dar laughed, striding forward, throwing his arms tight around her, and she could think of nothing but him.
“Oh, my love, oh, my heart!” He was stammering and weeping and laughing in a vast confusion of feeling. “Thank the gods you’re safe. Thank the gods and the dweomer both! I’ve been such a dolt, such an imbecile! Can you ever forgive me?”
“What for?” She looked up, dazed by the flood of words, ensorcelled by warmth and safety.
“I never should have left you for a moment. I’ll never forgive myself for making you ride after me like this. I should have known your pig-faced Round-ear of a brother would try to marry you off.”
“Well, I didn’t let him. Please, Dar, I’ve got to sit down. Can’t I forgive you and all that later?”
He picked her up like a child and carried her toward the door, but she fell asleep in his arms long before he reached it.

As soon as Dar appeared in the doorway to the great hall with Carra in his arms and Lightning trotting faithfully behind, a flurry of womenfolk sprang up like a whirlwind and surrounded them, blew them away in a storm of practical chatter. Rhodry stood at the foot of the spiral staircase and watched Dar carry her up, the elven lad as surefooted as a goat on a sloped stone roof as he navigated the turns. After him went the women, the elderly serving women puffing and talking all in the same breath, the gwerbret’s lady giving calm orders.
“Silver dagger?” A page appeared at his elbow. “His grace wants to speak to you.”
“What about our horses?”
“Oh, the stable lad’s taken them already. Don’t worry. They’ll get plenty to eat and a good grooming. The gwerbret’s a truly generous man.”
To prove his point the page led them straight to the table of honor, where a serving lass brought them ale and a big basket of bread. While they were stuffing that in, a platter of cold roast pork appeared to go with it. Yraen and Otho ate steadily and fiercely, like men who wonder if they’ll ever eat as well again, but Rhodry, hungry though he was, picked at the food and sipped the ale sparingly. He was preternaturally awake, drawn as fine and sharp as a steel wire from his hunger and the danger of the night just past, and for a little while he wanted to stay that way. He slewed round on the bench and considered the circular great hall, the entire ground floor of the gwerbret’s broch. On one side, by a back door, stood enough tables for a warband of well over a hundred men; at the hearth, near the table of honor itself, were five more for guests and servitors. On the floor lay a carpet of fresh braided rushes. The walls and the enormous hearth were made of a pale tan stone, all beautifully worked and carved. Never had Rhodry seen a room with so much fine stonework, in fact: huge panels of interlacement edged the windows and were set into the walls alternately with roundels of spirals and fantastic animals, and an entire stone dragon embraced the hearth, its head resting on its paws, planted on the floor, its winged back forming the mantel, and its long tail curling down the other side.
“Nice bit of work, that,” Otho said with his mouth full.
“The dragon? It is. Did one of your people carve it?”
“No doubt.” Otho paused for a long swallow of ale. “Think our lady’s in safe hands?”
“I do. Jill told us to bring her here, didn’t she?”
“True. Huh. I suppose she knows what she’s doing.”
“Ye gods!” Yraen looked up from his steady feeding. “You suppose she knows . . . the woman’s a blasted sorcerer, isn’t she? Ye gods! Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Why should it be? The question is, is she a competent sorcerer?”
“After the way she carried us across the river, I’d say she is.”
“Well, maybe. Hum, you’ve got to realize that I’ve known her ever since she was a little lass, and it’s hard to believe that sweet little child’s up and grown into a—”
“Hold your tongues, both of you!” Rhodry broke in. “Here comes his grace.”
Even though he limped badly on a twisted right leg, Gwerbret Cadmar was an imposing man, standing well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands. His slate-gray hair and mustaches bristled; his face was weather-beaten and dark; his eyes gleamed a startling blue under heavy brows. As he sat down, he looked over Rhodry and Yraen for a moment, then turned to Otho.
“Good morrow, good sir, and welcome to my humble dun. I take it that you’re passing through on the way to your homeland.”
Yraen choked on his ale and sputtered.
“I am at that, Your Grace,” Otho said. “Bet I’ll beg your leave to spend a while in your town. I have to send letters to my kin, because I’ve been gone for many a long year now, and I’ve got no idea if I’m welcome or not.”
“A family matter, then?”
“It was, truly, and I’d prefer not to speak of it unless your grace requires me to do so.”
“Far be it from me to pry into the affairs of another man’s clan. But by all means, good sir, make yourself welcome in my town. No doubt you’ll find an inn to suit you while you wait.”
Yraen recovered himself and stared at Otho in an angry bafflement.
“Now, silver daggers,” the gwerbret went on. “I owe you thanks for bringing the lady Carramaena safely here. No doubt the prince will reward you with something a bit more useful than mere thanks.”
“Prince?” Yraen snapped. “Your Grace, you mean he really is a prince?”
“Of course he is.” Cadmar favored him with a brief smile, “And his good favor’s important to all of us here on the border, I might add. I don’t have the land to raise horses. No one does in these wretched hills. If the Westfolk didn’t come here to trade we’d all be walking to battle soon enough.”
“’One up for you, Rhodry. I’ll admit I didn’t believe you when you started talking about elven princes and suchlike.”
“Maybe it’ll teach you to listen to your betters. Your Grace, I’ve somewhat to tell you. One of the southern villages was destroyed by raiders, and we were nearly killed on the road here.”
All attention, the gwerbret leaned forward to listen as Rhodry told the tale of their ride north and the ambush by the ford. When it came to their escape, though, Rhodry hesitated, wondering how he was going to hide the dweomer in it.
“How did you get out of that little trap, silver dagger?”
“Well, Your Grace, this is the strangest bit of all, and I’ll beg your grace to believe me, because truly, if it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”
“Ah. Jill got you out of it, did she?”
It was Rhodry’s turn for the surprise. He stared open-mouthed, searching for words, while Cadmar laughed at him, a grim sort of mutter under his breath.
“She showed up here last fall, just in time to save this leg.” The gwerbret laid one hand on his twisted thigh. “The chirurgeon was going to cut it off, but our traveling herbwoman makes him stay his hand and then, by the gods! if she doesn’t go and cure the fever in the blood and set the thing in such a way as I can actually walk. Not well, truly, but it’s better than stumbling around on a wooden stump. And so needless to say, I was inclined to treat her generously. All she wanted was a little hut out in the wilderness, and I was more than glad to give her that and all the food she could eat and wood for warmth as well. She’s done many a fine thing for my folk over the winter. And of course, they all say she’s got the dweomer, and truly, I’ve seen enough now to believe it myself.”
“Well, Your Grace, I think she does, because she got us clear of the raiders and got us our horses back as well, and then she told us to come and tell you our tale. And so we have.”
Nodding a little, Cadmar leaned back in his chair and looked out over the hall. Off at their side his warband sat drinking in silence, straining to hear the story that these strangers were telling their lord.
“And did she say when she’d return to my dun?”
“She didn’t, Your Grace.”
“Imph, well.” Cadmar thought for a long moment. “Well, silver daggers, we’ll wait the day, at least. You need to sleep, and I’ve got to summon my vassals. Then we’re riding out after these bastards. Want a hire?”
“Never have I been so glad of one, Your Grace.”
“Me, too,” Yraen broke in. “I can still see that village in my mind, like, and that poor woman we found.”
“Pregnant, was she?” Cadmar turned to him.
“She was, Your Grace, and murdered.”
Cadmar winced.
“They’ve been doing that, you see. Killing the women with child. It’s almost as if . . . well, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if that’s why they’re here, to kill all the women carrying children. Every now and then one of the survivors heard things, you see. A lad who managed to hide under an overturned wagon told me he heard two of them say somewhat like: time to ride on, we’ve gotten all the breeding sows in this pen.”
Rhodry went sick cold, thinking of Carra.
“And who are they, Your Grace?” Yraen said.
“A band of marauders. Men like you and me, not Westfolk or dwarves, All the survivors have been clear as clear about that. They appeared last summer, started raiding the outlying farms. Bandits, think I, starving and desperate. We tried to track them down. That’s where I took this wound.” Reflexively he rubbed his thigh. “The bastards got away from us that time, but they didn’t come back. I thought I’d scared them off, but with the spring they showed up and worse than ever. I doubt me very much if they’re ordinary bandits. They’re too cursed clever, for one thing. And they’ve got good weapons, good armor, and they’ve been trained to fight as a unit.”
“Not bandits at all, then, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “They must have some kind of a leader. I don’t suppose any of the survivors got a look at him.”
“One or two think they might have. An enormously tall man, they say, all wrapped in a dark blue cloak with the hood well up, giving orders in an odd growl of a voice. All they saw clear like was his hands, huge hands with hair on the backs, and they swear up and down that he only had three fingers on each of them.”
Some fragment of lore pricked in Rhodry’s mind and made his blood run cold. He was too tired to remember exactly why, but he somehow knew that those missing fingers meant something, meant a great deal, and none of it good.
“You’re dropping where you sit, silver daggers,” Cadmar said with a grin. He hauled himself to his feet and motioned toward his warband. “Maen, Dwic, get over here. Find these silver daggers bunks and some clean blankets.” He turned to Otho. “Good sir, would you care for an escort into town?”
“If you could spare a lad to show me the way to an inn, Your Grace, I’d be grateful.”
Yraen stared goggle-eyed as a page appeared to play servant to the dwarf and lead him away. At the door Otho turned and honored them with a cheery wave. It was the first time Rhodry had ever seen him grin.
“Well, I never!” Yraen hissed. “By all the gods and a rat’s ass, too!”
“I told you that anyone rich enough to hire us must be some sort of a personage, didn’t I now?”
Yraen was in for one more surprise. As they were leaving the hall, they passed the table where Daralanteriel’s escort was sitting, though Dar himself seemed to be lingering with his lady upstairs. At the sight of Rhodry all of the men leapt up, yelling his name, mobbing him round, slapping him on his back, and talking as fast as they could and all in Elvish. Rhodry answered in the same; as tired as he was, he was near to tears just from hearing that musical tongue again.
“And Calonderiel,” he said at length. “How is he?”
“As mean and stubborn as ever,” one of the archers said, grinning. “If he’d known you were on your way here, he’d have ridden east with us, I’m sure.”
Rhodry started to make some jest, then saw Yraen, watching all of this with his mouth hanging open. The gwerbret’s man seemed more than a little surprised himself.
“I’d best go,” Rhodry said to the archers. “I’ll come drink with you all later.”
When Rhodry extricated himself and rejoined him, Yraen started to speak, then merely shrugged and looked heavenward, as if reproaching the gods.
“Well, come along, then,” Rhodry said. “No use in just standing here, is there? Let’s go see what our new lord’s barracks are like.”
Quite decent, as it turned out. Made of good oak and freshly whitewashed, the barracks stood on top of the stables and up against the dun wall in the usual style. The bunks were solid, the mattresses new, and Maen issued them both good quality blankets.
“The gwerbret must be a grand man to ride for,” Rhodry said. “If he’ll treat a silver dagger this well.”
“He is.” Maen, a pale slip of a lad, stood for a moment looking them over. “Well, we need every man we can get now.”
Yraen growled under his breath, but Rhodry stepped in front of him.
“Thanks for your help. We’ll just be getting some sleep.”
Maen shrugged and slouched out of the room. Yraen ostentatiously spit onto the straw-strewn floor.
“I always warned you about the long road, didn’t I?” Rhodry suddenly yawned and flopped down on the edge of his bunk to pull off his boots. “Ye gods, I just realized somewhat. Otho never paid us.”
“Little bastard! Well, we’ll have it out of his pockets or his hide. Either one’s fine with me. Rhodry, those men. The prince’s escort, I mean. Uh, they’re not human, are they.”
It was not a question.
“They’re not, truly. Do you remember years and years ago, when we first met, and we talked one night about seeing things that weren’t there?”
“And Mael the Seer’s book, and the way he was always mentioning elves. I do. It aches my heart to admit it, but I do.”
“Well, then, I don’t need to say a cursed lot more, do I now?”
Yraen merely sighed for a no and busied himself with making up his bunk. Rhodry lay down, wrapped himself in his blankets, and fell asleep before he even heard Yraen start snoring.
When he woke, the barracks were pitch-dark and empty, but Jill was sitting on the end of his bunk. Her he could see in the silver cloud clinging to her, an ever-shifting light that hinted of half-seen forms. He stifled a yelp of surprise and sat up.
“My apologies,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’d give any man a turn, seeing a woman he once loved and all that glowing like the moon. Ye gods, Jill, are you a ghost or suchlike?”
“Close to it.” She paused to smile at him. “But spirits from the Otherlands can’t set broken legs and suchlike, so you can lay your troubled heart to rest. I’m real enough. The light’s only the Wildfolk of Aethyr. I’m surprised you can’t see them. They’ve taken to following me around, and most times I don’t have the heart to shoo them away.”
“Well, I can see somewhat moving there, sure enough. It still creeps my flesh.”
Here he at last had the leisure to take a good look at her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s as usual, had gone perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, as he studied her, so that her eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak. It was as if her skin and blood and bone had all been replaced by some finer substance, some magical element halfway between glass and silver, say, or some sort of living silk.
“Have you been ill or suchlike?” Rhodry said.
“Very ill. In the islands it was, what they call the shaking fever. I’ve had it a number of times, now, and there’s no guarantee that I’m rid of it, either. They say that once it gets into your blood, it’s yours for life.”
“That aches my heart.”
“Not half as much as it aches mine.” She grinned with a flash of her old good humor. “I must look hideously old, I suppose.”
“You don’t look truly here. It’s like you’ve already left us for the Otherlands or suchlike.”
“In a way, perhaps, I have.”
“Ah. You know, you look like Nevyn used to. I mean, you’d think he was old, truly, and then he’d speak or do somewhat, and you’d know it no longer mattered in the least how old he was.”
She nodded, considering what he’d said,
“But here, where’s Yraen? And is the lass safe and well?”
“Safe, she is, and Labanria—that’s the gwerbret’s lady—tells me she’ll be back to her old self in a day or so. I was truly worried about that child she’s carrying, but the womenfolk say she’s not far enough along to lose it just from being tired and cold and suchlike. As for Yraen, he’s eating his dinner in the great hall. I came out to fetch you,”
Yawning and stretching, he found his boots and put them on.
“By the way, about Yraen,” he said. “Do you know who he really is?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“Some son of a noble house who went daft and ran off some years back, but I don’t know his real name, no.”
She laughed with a toss of her head,
“Well, then, maybe it’ll come back to you, sooner or later.”
“What? Are you telling me that I used to know him or suchlike?”
“Wel, not to say “know” him, not intimately or some such thing, You, weren’t in any position to make a friend out of him.”
“Jill, curse it all! I’m as sick, as I on be of dweomer riddles!”
“”Indeed? Then what do you want to know?”
“For a start, how did you know where I was?”
“I scried you out, of course. In the fire and water.”
Rhodry felt profoundly foolish.
“Ah, curse it! Let’s just go to the great hall. I want some ale, I do, and the darker the better.”
“What? No more answers?”
She was smiling as if she might be teasing him, daring him even, to ask her the questions that suddenly frightened him, no matter how badly he’d ached to know them before.
“Just one thing. Our Yraen? Does he have royal blood in his veins?”
“He does, at that, but he’s a long, long way from the throne, the youngest son of a youngest son, The kingdom won’t miss him. I’m glad you decided to pledge him to the silver dagger and let him follow his Wyrd.”
”I decided? Since when have I had one wretched chance at deciding anything, whether for me or some other man?”
“Well, that’s a fair complaint.” She laid a hand, as light as the touch of a bird’s wing, onto his arm. “You’ve been thrown about like a shipwrecked man at sea, haven’t you? But I think me that the land’s in sight at last. Let’s go join the others.” She stood up. “Cadmar’s having somewhat of a council of war, and I’ve told him he should include you in it. And you shouldn’t be sleeping out here in the barracks, either.”
“Why not? It’s good enough.”
“That’s not the point. I might need you to watch over Carra.”
“Oh, here! Dar’s with her and twenty fighting men as well.”
“But they haven’t seen the dweomer workings you have or lived through some of your battles, either. Rhoddo, don’t try to tell me that you haven’t realized there’s dweomer at work here.”
“Very well, then, I won’t, though I will say that I’d hoped I was wrong. Do you know what these raiders want?”
“I’ve got an idea, but I’m hoping it’s a wrong one. I’d like to think it was only gold and slaves, but I have my doubts.”
“They’re not trying to kill Carra, are they?”
Jill winced.
“Her child, actually. Someone’s threatened to, anyway.”
“Who? We should tell the gwerbret, and he can drag the culprit to justice.”
“This culprit lives where the gwerbret can’t ride, but I doubt if I can explain.”
“Ye gods, I’m sick of being treated like a simpleton!”
”My apologies, Rhoddo, but the sad truth of the thing is, I don’t understand it all myself. This being lives—well, wait, you’ve met Dallandra, and so you know a bit of it already. She has an enemy who—”
“Alshandra! Am I right? The Guardian who drove me from the grasslands.”
“The very one. She’s sworn to kill Carra.”
“Crazed, isn’t she? Alshandra, I mean. She scared the wits out of me, babbling of her daughter and saying someone was trying to steal her away.”
“Oddly enough, she was right. Carra and Dar have done just that, not that they meant to. But I don’t know if these raiders are connected with Alshandra, or just some other evil come upon the land. Until I find that out, it’s hard to know exactly what to do.”
“That makes sense. Can’t fight an enemy when you don’t know his resources and allegiances.”
“Exactly.” Jill laid her hand upon his arm. “I’m glad you’re here, I truly am. Great things are on the move. Carra’s Wyrd, your Wyrd—the Wyrd of the elven folk, too, maybe. I don’t know the all of it yet.”
“I see.” Not, of course, that he did. “Do you want to know another odd thing? That dog of Carra’s? Perryn gave him to her.”
Jill swore like a silver dagger under her breath.
“You know, that’s one of those little things that can mean a great deal, when you’re dealing with omens. So Perryn’s had a hand in this, has he?”
“Well, he sacrificed more than a dog, truly. That lad lying dead at the ford? That was his grandson. He was more than a bit simple, but it wrung my heart when he died.”
“No doubt.” Her voice turned sad. “Poor lad! Well, you’ll have your chance to avenge him on the morrow. Cadmar’s leading his men out with the dawn.”
“Good. If we strip the dun of men, will Carra be safe? Well, that’s no doubt a stupid question! Here we are, in the middle of a city.”
“Not stupid at all. That’s what I mean about your instincts, Rhoddo. True, an army couldn’t get at her here with the town gates shut, but a traitor might. I’m taking her to stay with Otho till the warband returns. Now, there she’ll be safe.” She hesitated briefly. “I don’t suppose you’d stay with her.”
“If you order me to, I will, but I want revenge, I do. For Nedd and those villagers both.”
She considered, straying to a stop in the dark ward. Ahead the broch loomed against the sky and spilled light out of its windows along with laughter and talk, a familiar scene, a familiar sound, yet with Jill there, Rhodry felt as if he’d walked through an invisible door into another world.
”Well, go with the gwerbret, then,” she said at last. “I want someone reliable to keep a watch over Dar, too. He’s bound and determined to take his men and ride with the warband, and I don’t much care to lose him, either.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye out for him. I must say I don’t mind having archers along. Come in cursed handy, they will, if we can find these swine.”
“Oh, I’ve set the Wildfolk looking for them, and I’ll be along, as well. We’ll find them. Don’t trouble your heart about that.”

About an hour before dawn, Carra was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing a pair of silk dresses that were a gift from the gwerbret’s lady, when Jill came to fetch her. Lightning thumped his tail in greeting as the older woman opened the door.
“You’re not all silver and glowy,” Carra said.
“So I’m not. That was beginning to be a bit of a nuisance, though sometimes it comes in handy, I must admit. How are you feeling?”
“Very well, actually. I’m still tired. I probably could have slept for days if her grace hadn’t woken me.”
“Most like. Carra, there’s somewhat I wanted to ask you, not that you have to answer, mind. How did you meet Dar?”
“At the horse market near my brother’s dun, well over a year ago it was now. He and his people rode in to trade, and I happened to be there with my brother. And he made this horrid jest—my brother, I mean, not Dar—he asked one of the Westfolk men if he’d take me in trade for a horse. And when my brother laughed, Dar came striding up and told him that he wouldn’t sell him the geldings he wanted. And my brother got mad as mad and swore at him, demanding to know why, like.” Carra grinned at the memory. “And Dar said that any man who’d be so cruel to his sister would probably beat his stock half to death. Which wasn’t true, mind. My brother’s a grand man round his horses. But anyway, later that day, when I was wandering round alone at the fair, Dar came up to me, and we got to talking.”
“Ah, I see.” Jill smiled briefly. “Love at first sight?”
“Oh, not at all. I was grateful to him, but he had to court me all summer before I fell in love with him. You see, Jill, he’s the first man I’ve ever met who wanted me, not my brother’s favor or some alliance. Of course, Lord Scraev was lusting after me, too, but he’s so awful, and the way his mouth smells!” She shuddered at the memory. “But even if my brother had found some decent man for my husband, he still would have asked about the dowry. I don’t think Dar even knows what a dowry is, and I doubt me if he’d care if he did.”
“I agree with you, truly. Trade you for a horse—the stinking gall! Well, now, it’s time we got on our way. Get your cloak. Otho should be waiting for us. I sent him a messenger last night.”
The great hall was filled with armed men, gobbling bread and downing a last tankard of ale while they stood or sat in quiet packs. Up at the table of honor the gwerbret and two noble lords —vassals, no doubt—were huddled together, squinting at a map by the leaping firelight. Dar detached himself from the group and came over, signaling to ten of his escort to follow. He favored Jill with a respectful bow.
“Good morning, my love,” he said to Carra. “I see you’ve got the dog with you. Good. He’ll be the best sentinel you and the dwarves can have.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Dar, you will be careful, won’t you? It’d break my heart to lose you, you know.”
He merely laughed, tossing his head, his hair as dark as Loc Drw in winter, and caught her by the shoulders to kiss her.
With Dar and his men for guards, they left the dun and hurried through the twisting streets of Cengarn. Here and there a crack of candlelight gleamed through wooden shutters, or firelight glittered in a hearth, half-seen through an open door, but mostly the town lay wrapped in its last hour of sleep before the gray dawn broke. They trotted downhill for a bit, then cut sideways through an alley between two roundhouses, panted uphill again, turned down and to the left past a little stream in a stone culvert, crossed a bridge and walked across a grassy common, soaked with dew. When Carra glanced uphill, she found the gwerbret’s dun much farther away than seemed possible and gave up trying to figure out their route. At last they came to a hillside so steep it was half a cliff. Set right into it, between two stunted little pines, stood a wooden door with big iron hinges. Otho was waiting with a candle-lantern.
“Come in, come in, my lady. It gladdens my heart to see you, and my thanks for taking our humble hospitality. Don’t you worry, Jill. No one’ll get near the lass with us to guard her.”
“I’ve no doubt of it, and my thanks to you.”
Carra gave Dar one last kiss, felt her eyes fill with tears, and clung to him, so reluctant to let him go that her heart sank with dread. All she could think was that the Goddess was giving her an omen of coming disaster.
“Please be careful, my love. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“As careful as I can be. I promise.” Gently yet firmly he pried himself free of her arms. “Here, I’ll have my own men with me, and Rhodry ap Devaberiel as well, and if somewhat happens to me in the middle of all of them, well, then, it’s my Wyrd and there’s not one blasted thing anyone can do about it.”
“I know.” She forced the tears back and made herself smile. “Then kill a lot of bandits, will you? I keep thinking about that poor woman.”
“I’ll promise you twice for that, my love. Farewell, and I’ll see you the moment we ride home.”
In the brightening dawn he strode off, his men trailing after, while she waved farewell and kept the smile on her face by sheer force of will as long as he might turn back and see. Otho cleared his throat, then blew out the candle in his lantern with a thrifty puff.
“We’d best be getting in. Town’s waking up.”
“Just so,” Jill said. “Very well, and, Carra, try not to worry. I’ll be traveling with the warband, you know.”
“I didn’t, and truly, that does gladden my heart.”
Jill strode off uphill, her tattered brown cloak swirling about her, and turned once to wave before she disappeared among the houses. Something drifted free of the cloth, a thing as pale as a moonbeam, and floated up in the rising wind. Without thinking Carra darted forward and snatched it: a silver-gray feather, about a foot long. She gaped at it while Otho muttered under his breath and Lightning whined, as if agreeing with the dwarf.
“My lady, we really must get in off this street.”
“Of course, Otho, my apologies. But this feather! It’s really true, isn’t it? She really can turn herself into a bird.”
“Well, so she can. You didn’t realize that? Humph, what are they teaching you young folk these days, anyway? Now let’s get inside where it’s safe.”
Carra tucked the feather into her kirtle, then hurried after him through the wooden door.
“Inside” turned out to be a tunnel, made of beautifully worked stone blocks, that led deep into the hill. Here and there on small ledges, about six feet from the ground, heaps of fungus in baskets gave off a bluish glow and lit their way. The air, startlingly cool, blew around them in fresh drafts. After a couple of hundred yards, they came at last to a round chamber, some fifty feet across, scattered with low tables and tiny benches round a central open hearth, where a low fire burned and a huge kettle hung from a pair of andirons and a crossbar. Automatically Carra glanced up and saw the smoke rising to a stone flue set in the ceiling, and there were a number of other vents up there, too, that seemed to be the sources of the fresh air. Three doorways in the walls opened to other tunnels leading deeper into the inn. At one of the tables, two men, a little shorter than Otho but younger, muscle-bound, and heavily armed, sat yawning and nodding over metal cups of some sort of drink.
“Everyone else is abed,” Otho said. “But I was tired enough when I finally got here yesterday to sleep the night away.”
He turned and spoke to the two men in still another language that Carra had never heard before. Both jumped up and bowed to her, then spoke in turn.
“They’re the guards for this watch, my lady. Just finishing their breakfast and all. Now, you have a seat over here by the wall. I’ll fetch you somewhat to eat.”
Next to a wooden chest, Carra found a wooden chair with a cushioned seat and a proper back, a low piece, but comfortable. With a canine sigh Lightning flopped down at her feet and laid his head on his front paws. Otho bustled at the hearth, came back with a bowl of porridge, laced with butter, and a hunk of bread, then bustled off again to fetch a tankard of milk sweetened with a little honey.
“Jill says you should be having plenty of milk, for the child, you see,” he said.
While Carra ate, Otho opened the chest beside her and pawed through it, finally bringing out a miscellaneous clutch of things—two oblong wooden trays, a sack that seemed to be filled with sand, some pointed sticks, a bone object that looked like a small comb—and arranged them on the table. The pale white river sand got itself poured into the trays; he used the comb to smooth it out as flat as parchment. With a stick he drew lines on one surface from corner to corner to divide the tray into four triangles. Then, on the outer edges, that is, the bottom of each triangle, he found the midpoint and connected those, overlaying a diamond on the triangles so that the entire surface divided itself into twelve.
“The lands of the map,” he announced. “This is how we dwarves get our omens, my lady, and if ever a man needed an omen or two, it’s me. See, each one is the true home of a metal. Number one here is iron, two copper, and so on. The fifth is gold, and that stands for a man’s art, whether it’s the working of stone or of metals, and nine is tin, for our religion, you see, because like tin the gods are cheap things more often than not.”
“Otho! What an awful thing to say!”
“Oh, you people can swear by your gods all you want, but it’s little good they do for you, for all your sacrificing and chanting and so on. But each land is the home of a metal but the last, number twelve here, right above one, so it all circles back, like. And that one is the home of salt, not a metal at all. And that land stands for all the hidden things in life, feuds and suchlike, and the dweomer.”
“This is fascinating. How do you tell fortunes with it?”
“Watch. I’ll show you.”
Otho took the second stick, held it over the second tray, then turned his head away and began to poke dots into the sand, as fast as he could. When he was done, he had sixteen lines of dots and spaces to mull over.
“Now, these are the mothers, these lines. You take the first lines of each to form the first daughter, and the second lines for the second, and so on. I won’t bother to explain all the rules. It’d take me all day, and you’d find it tedious, no doubt. But here in the land of iron, we’ll put the Head of the Dragon, just for starters.” Deftly he poked a figure into the waiting sand, two dots close together and below them three dots vertically for the dragon’s body. “And humph, I can’t resist looking ahead. Oh, splendid! The Little Luck goes in the land of salt. That gladdens my heart, because it means the omens won’t be horrible. They might not be good, mind, but they won’t be horrible.”
Carra leaned on the table to watch while he muttered to himself in a mix of several languages, brooded over the lines of dots, and one at a time poked corresponding figures in the lands of the map. When he was done he stared at the map for a long time, shaking his head.
“Well, come on, Otho, do tell me what it means.”
“Not sure. Humph. That’s the trouble with wretched nonsense like telling fortunes. When you need it the most it’s the least clear. But it looks like everything’ll work out right in the end. You see, I just sent off letters to my kin, asking if I could come home again. I got into a spot of trouble in my youth, but that was . . . well, a good long time ago, let’s just say, and I’ve got some nice little gems that should do to pay a fine or two if they want to levy one.” He paused, chewing on the ends of his mustache. “Now, it seems like they’ll take me back, but this I don’t understand.” With the stick he pointed at the third land. “Quicksilver with The Road in it. Usually means a long journey and not one you were planning to make, either. It troubles my heart, it does.”
Carra leaned forward for a better look, but The Road was a simple line of four dots and not very communicative.
“It wouldn’t just mean the journey you already made, would it? To get here, I mean. I—”
A hiss, a spitting sound like water drops on a griddle—Carra jerked her head up and saw one of the young dwarves, his sword drawn, walking slowly and ever so steadily toward the table. Otho suddenly hissed, as well, an intake of breath.
“Don’t move, my lady. Still as stone, that’s what we want.”
Wrapped in such a false calm that Lightning never barked or moved, the dwarf reached the table, slowly raised his sword, hesitated, then smacked it down blade-flat onto the planks not a foot from Carra’s elbow. Carra jerked back just as something under the blade crunched—and spurted with a trickle of pale ooze. The second guard came running and swearing; Otho hurried round the end of the table to look as the young man lifted his blade and turned the crumpled, long-legged creature over with the point. All three men muttered for a moment.
“See that brown mark on what’s left of its stomach? Looks like a stemmed cup? We call that the goblet of death.” Otho turned to her. “This particular creature’s a spider—well, it used to be, I should say. Big as your fist. Poisonous as you could want. Or not want.”
“Ych! That’s disgusting!” She looked up at the ceiling and shuddered, half expecting to see a whole nest of them ready to drop. “How common are they?”
“They’re not common, my lady. You almost never find them in civilized tunnels and suchlike. They’re shy, like most wild things. Find ’em hiding under rocks in the high mountains, if you find them at all.”
“Then how, I mean, why—” She fell silent, seeing their answer in their faces. “Someone brought it here, didn’t they?”
“They did.” Otho was staring up at the ceding. “And whoever dropped it down through one of them vents is long gone, I’ll wager. There’s another floor up there, a gallery, like, so a workman can get up and clean out the air vents. Anyone could climb up there easy. No one would ever see ’em.” He turned and snarled something in Dwarvish at one of the young men, who rushed off. “I’m sending him to get the landlord and wake this place up. If we make a big fuss about it, whoever this was won’t dare to make more mischief. Don’t you worry, my lady. Safety in numbers and all that.”
Carra let go of Lightning’s collar and sat down, feeling a little sick as she realized the truth. Someone had just tried to kill her, and she didn’t even know why.

Thanks to the support of his vassals, Gwerbret Cadmar led out close to two hundred men that morning, far too many to assemble in the ward of his dun. A long swirl of men and horses spread out through the streets of Cengarn, made their way out several different gates, then re-formed into a warband down on the plain at the base of the city’s hills. Although Rhodry and Yraen, silver daggers as they were, expected to ride at the very rear and breathe the army’s dust, one of the gwerbret’s own men sought them out and grudgingly informed them that they were to ride with his grace.
“It’s because of the sorceress, you see, She told our lord that you were the only one who could follow her directions. Cursed if I know what she meant by that.”
“No more do I,” Rhodry said. “Jill has a fine hand with a riddle, I must say, and so blasted early in the morning, too.”
Yet soon enough he found the answer. They followed the rider up to the head of the line of march, where the gwerbret and his lords were sitting on horseback and conferring in low voices. Although Cadmar acknowledged them with a smile and a nod of his head, the two lords, Matyc and Gwinardd, merely looked sour. While they waited for the gwerbret to have time to speak to them, Rhodry glanced idly around, sizing up the men in the warbands. They all had good horses, good weapons, and here and there he spotted men with the confident air of veterans. Off to one side, waiting on horseback for the gwerbret’s orders, sat Dar and his archers, each man with his unstrung longbow tucked under his right leg like a javelin and his short, curved hunting bow close at hand on his saddle peak. Rhodry waved to Dar, happened to glance at the sky, and swore aloud. Hovering above was an enormous bird with the silhouette of a hawk but, as far as he could tell by squinting into a bright morning, of a pale silvery color. It also seemed to be carrying something in its talons, a sack, perhaps, of some sort. As he watched, it circled and began to drift off toward the west. With a cold certainty he knew that Jill had mastered elven dweomer as well as the lore proper to humankind.
“Your Grace? Your pardon for this interruption, but we’re to ride west. Our guide’s just arrived.”
“Um, indeed?” Cadmar looked up automatically and saw the bird, hovering on the wind some distance off, too far for his human vision to judge its size. “What’s that? A trained falcon or suchlike?”
“Just so, Your Grace. Jill always did have a way with animals. No doubt she’s riding off somewhere with its lure. Or somewhat like that, anyway.”
“Whatever she thinks fit. Well, then, let’s ride. My lords, to the west!”
All that morning the hawk led them onward. At times she circled directly overhead, but only for brief moments, as if Jill were ensuring that she had Rhodry’s attention. Most of the time it kept so far off that only elven eyes could spot it, but always, in loops and lazy wind drifts, it moved steadily west and down, as the hills round Cengarn fell toward the high plains. Gradually the terrain opened up to rolling hills, scattered with trees at the crests and thick with underbrush in the shallow valleys between. It was good country for bandits, Rhodry thought. They could hide their camps and their loot in among the scrubby brush, keep guards posted on the open crests, and send scouts along them, too, when they wanted to make a raid. He was blasted glad, he decided, that the gwerbret and his men had dweomer on their side in this little game of hide and seek.
As they rode, he had a chance to study the two lords riding just ahead with the gwerbret. Gwinardd of Brin Coc was no more than nineteen, come to the lordship just last year, or so the dun gossip said, on the death of his father from a fever. Brown-haired and bland, he seemed neither bright nor stupid, an ordinary sort of fellow who was obviously devoted to the gwerbret. Matyc of Dun Mawrvelin was another sort entirely. There might well have been some elven blood in his clan’s veins, because his hair was a moonlight-pale blond, and his eyes a steel-gray, but he had none of that race’s openness or humor. His face, in fact, reminded Rhodry of a mask carved from wood. All day long, he rarely frowned and never smiled, merely seemed to watch and listen to everything around him from some great distance away. Even when the gwerbret spoke directly to him, he answered briefly—always polite, to be sure—merely thrifty to a fault with his words.
Once, when the lords had drifted a fair bit ahead, Rhodry had a chance at a word with Yraen.
“What do you think of Matyc?”
“Not much.”
“Keep your eye on him, will you? There’s just somewhat about him that makes me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Just how loyal he is to our grace.”
Yraen’s eyes widened with questions, but since the lords ahead had paused to let their men catch up with them, he couldn’t ask them.
There were still some four hours left in the day when the warbands reached the crest of a hill fringed with tall beeches. Rhodry saw the hawk circle round once, then dip lazily down to disappear into a scrubby stand of hazels in the valley below.
“My lord?” he called out. “Jill seems to want us to stop here. There’s water for a camp. Shall I ride on down and see if she’s there?”
“Do that, silver dagger. We’ll wait here for your signal.”
Rhodry dismounted, tossed his reins up to Yraen, then strode on downhill on foot. Sure enough, he found Jill, in human form, kneeling by the streamside and drinking out of cupped hands. Though she was barefoot, she was wearing a thin tunic in the Bardek style over a pair of brigga. An empty sack lay beside her on the ground. It seemed to him that she was as light and fragile as the linen cloth.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m not.” Shaking her hands dry she stood up. “But I’ll beg a blanket from you for tonight, truly. The falcon can’t carry much, you see.”
“No doubt.” In spite of all the years that he’d lived around dweomer, Rhodry shuddered, just at how casually she took her transformations. “Ah, well, I take it we’re following the right road and all.”
“Just so. The raiders aren’t all that far. I thought the army could camp along this stream and rest their horses, then mount a raid. They’ve got guards on watch, of course, but no doubt you could send some of Dar’s men to silence them.”
“No doubt.” Rhodry smiled briefly. “Let me bring the others down, and then we’ll have a little chat with the gwerbret.”
“Very well. Oh, and tell Cadmar to forbid any fires. I don’t want smoke giving our prey the alarm. I’ll wait until you’ve made camp, and then I’ll fetch you and his grace.”
She gave him a friendly pat on the arm and headed off downstream, disappearing into the trees and brush beyond the power of even his elven eyes to pick her out. Dweomer, he supposed. Swearing under his breath, Rhodry hurried back to the gwerbret and the waiting army.
It turned out that the raiders were camped not five miles away. When Jill reappeared, about an hour before sunset, she led Rhodry and the gwerbret downstream for a ways, to the place where the water tipped itself over the crest of the hill in a gurgle and splash to rush down into a river far below. By peering through the trees, they could see the river twisting, as gray and shiny as a silver riband in the twilight, across a grassy plain. Far to the west, a mist hung pink in the setting sun.
“There!” Rhodry said, pointing. “Smoke from campfires! Right by that big bend in the river off to the west, Your Grace.”
“Don’t tell me there’s elven blood in your veins, silver dagger!” Cadmar was shading his eyes with one hand. “I can’t see anything of the sort. Well, I’ll take your word for it.”
“I’ve scouted them out, Your Grace,” Jill said. “About fifty men, all settled in by the river, as bold as brass, in a proper camp with tents and everything. They’ve even got a couple of wagons with them. For loot, I suppose.”
Cadmar swore under his breath.
“Well, we’ll cut them down to size soon enough. What about the prisoners?”
“They seem to be tied and chained off by themselves, between the camp proper and the wagons.”
“I say we ride before dawn. Won’t be easy, riding at night, but if we fall on them with the sun, we can wipe them out like the vermin they are.”
Although Jill took the blanket and the food that Rhodry had brought her, she refused to come back to camp with them. Rhodry escorted the gwerbret back to Lord Gwinardd’s side, then went looking for Yraen. He found him with Lord Matyc, near the edge of the camp. Since his lordship was telling Yraen a long involved story about the bloodlines of some horses, Rhodry merely waited off to one side. It seemed obvious that Matyc would have preferred to cut the matter short, but Yraen kept asking such civil questions, so very much to the point, that Matyc was forced to answer. Finally, and by then the twilight had replaced the sunset, Yraen thanked his lordship in a flood of courtesies and let him make his escape. Rhodry waited while Matyc picked his way through the camp, until be was well out of earshot.
”What was all that about?” Rhodry said.
“Maybe naught, but you told me to keep an eye on him. So after I spread our bedrolls out and suchlike, I went looking for his lordship. He was just leaving camp, you see, over behind those trees there, and I would have thought he needed to make water or suchlike, except that he had his dagger out.”
“He what?”
“He was holding it in one hand, but up, like he was studying the blade. He’d turn it, too, with a flick of his wrist, like, and every time he did, it flashed, with light.”
“Ye gods! You could signal a man that way, someone who was off to the west when the sun was setting,”
“Exactly what I thought, too.” Yiaen’s smile was grim. “We couldn’t prove a thing, of course, and it could, well be that I’m dead wrong, and, it was just some nervous twitch like men will get, to fiddle with his dagger that way.”
“It could be, truly.”
“But I thought, well, if it’s nerves and naught more, he’ll feel better, won’t he now, for a bit of talk. So I kept him there, chatting about this and that till the sun went down in the mists.”
“If I were a great lord, I’d have the best sice of roast pig brought to your plate at the honor table tonight.”
“But things being what they are, let’s go have some flatbread and cheese. I’m hungry enough to eat a wolf, pelt and all.”
Later that evening Rhodry finally had a chance to speak with Dar alone. Dar may have been a prince, but he was also one of the Westfolk, and he went out to check on his horses himself rather than leaving the task to one of his men. Rhodry saw him go and followed him out to the herd, tethered down the valley.
“It’s good to see you again,” Dar spoke in Elvish. “We’ve all missed you, in the years since you left us.”
“And I’ve missed the People as well. Are things well with your father?”
“Oh, yes, very well indeed. He’s still traveling with Calonderiel’s alar, but I left it a while hack. I can’t say why. I just wanted to ride on my own for a while, I suppose, and go from alar to alar, but Cal insisted on giving me this escort.”
“Did he say why? It’s not like the People, to give someone an honor guard just as—well, just as an honor.”
In the dim starlight he could see the prince grinning.
“That’s what I thought, too. But Cal said a dweomerwoman had come to him in a dream and told him to do it, so he did.”
“Dallandra?”
“That was her name, all right.”
Rhodry shuddered like a wet dog. Great things are moving, indeed! he thought to himself. Dar looked away, a different kind of smile hovering round his mouth.
“What do you think of my Carramaena?”
“Oh, she’s lovely, and a good sensible lass.”
Dar’s grin deepened. He looked down and began scuffing the grass with the toe of his boot.
“But well, I hate to say this,” Rhodry went on. “But haven’t you let yourself and her in for grief? I mean, you’re young as the People reckon age, and you’ll live ten times her years.”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Dar looked up with a snarl. “Everyone says that, and I don’t care! We’ll have what joy we can, then, and that’s all there is to that!”
“My apologies for—”
“Oh, you’re right, I suppose. But ye gods, from the moment I saw her—she was so lovely, standing there in the market, and she needed me so badly, with that wretched brother of hers, and I just, well, I tried to talk myself out of it, but I just kept riding back to see how she fared, to see if she was well, and—” He shrugged profoundly, “And you know what, Rhodry? She’s the first grown lass I’ve ever met who was younger than me. There was just something fascinating about that.”
Rhodry swore under his breath, but not for Dar’s love affair. The young prince had spoken the truth, that out among the elves, young people were becoming the rarity. How long would it be, he wondered, before the People were gone, and forever?
“Well, you two will have a fine daughter, anyway,” Rhodry said at last.
“A daughter? How by the Dark Sun do you know?”
“Call it the second sight, lad, and let it go at that. We’d best get back.”
Some hours before dawn, the gwerbret’s captain moved through the camp, waking the men with whispers. In the fumbling dark they armed themselves and saddled their horses, then rode out while it was still too dark to move at more than a slow walk. Not more than a few hundred yards from camp, Rhodry saw Jill, standing by the side of the road and waiting for them. He pulled out of line and went over to her, with Yraen tagging behind.
“That horse can carry both of us, can’t he?” she said. “It’s not like I’m wearing mail or suchlike.’”
“Ye gods, you don’t weigh much more than a child these days, or so it seems. Are you coming with us?”
“As a guide. Let me mount, and then let’s go ride with the noble-born.”
Rhodry got down, settled her in the saddle proper, then swung up behind her. As they were catching up to the army, he reminded Yraen to watch Lord Matyc in the coming battle—if they were all going to be riding together when the charge came, it might be just possible for Yraen to keep him in sight. Jill led them downhill and across the grassy plain by a roundabout way, keeping to what cover there was.
Whether it was dweomer or only shrewd tracking, Rhodry would never know, but it seemed to him that they reached the bandit camp remarkably soon and ended up in a remarkably good position, too, on a wooded rise behind the enemy’s position just out of earshot. From there, Dar sent four of his men ahead on foot to take out the enemy guards. Just as the dawn was lightening the sky, the four returned, grinning at how easy a job they’d had. Jill swung herself down from the saddle and let Rhodry regain his place.
“Your Grace?” she whispered to the gwerbret. “May the gods ride with you. I’ll see you after the battle.”
Although she turned and jogged off back the way they’d come, Rhodry had no time to watch where she might be going. It would be impossible to keep surprise on their side for more than a few moments. When the gwerbret drew a javelin from the sheath beneath his right leg, every man of the army did the same—with a horrendous jingling of tack.
“Let’s go! Cadmar yelled.
The men kicked their horses to a trot and swept up the side of the rise just as a ragged scream of panic burst out down in the camp. The warband crested the rise like a wave and charged, screaming war cries. They could see the enemy rushing round, rolling free of blankets, grabbing for weapons. Behind the camp ran the river, cutting off retreat. Off to the left, some hundred yards away from the main camp, roped-together prisoners jumped to their feet and started cheering and sobbing out the gwerbret’s name. To the light, at about the same distance, panicked horses began to neigh and rear.
“Throw!” Cadmar yelled.
A shower of steel-tipped javelins flashed ahead of the charge and swooped down among the scurrying bandits. With a rush and whisper elven hunting arrows rained down from the side. Rhodry saw a few hits but what he was hoping for was panic, and panic was what he got. Screaming, shoving one another, the bandits milled around and grabbed at weapons. Dashing among them, wrapped in a cloak, was an impossibly tall man, waving a sword and howling orders. No one listened. The bandits broke and ran as the warband swept down upon them with drawn swords. Leaning, slashing, the riders raced through the camp, pulled up, and parted like water round a rock to turn at the riverbank and gallop back again. Here and there a few desperate men were making a stand, but most were running. Some, swords drawn and ready, were heading for the prisoners.
“Cut them off!” Rhodry howled it out, then gave his voice over to his bubbling berserk laugh.
With a squad behind him he raced at an angle toward the would-be murderers, and now he was riding to dodge anything in his way. Swords flashed to meet him; he swung down as he passed. Ahead, the little pack of bandits heard hooves and turned to make their stand. The squad hit them in full slaughter. Rhodry’s horse suddenly screamed and reared. He brought it down, rolled off as it fell to its knees, and struck up, killing the man who was swinging down at him. Somewhere Yraen was yelling at him, but Rhodry could only laugh. He grabbed another man’s shield from the ground and slashed another bandit across the knees. When the man fell, screaming, Rhodry scrambled to his feet and killed him, stabbing him through the throat,
Yraen’s words finally forced their way through to his mind. “We’ve got this lot! The leader’s trying to escape.”
Yraen was waving his sword, red and blooded, in the general direction of the wagons, which were standing behind the prisoners. With the squad following him like a captain, Rhodry raced off, dodging round the sobbing women and children, seeing his enemy’s cloak flash and flutter just ahead as he dodged through the carts and leaning wagon trees. Although there were a couple of horses tethered beyond, the leader would never reach them in time. Huge as he was, he was clumsy on the ground, so bowlegged that he was waddling more than running.
The leader swirled to face them, and as he turned, he tore off his cloak and whipped it round and round one massive forearm, an improvised shield. The men behind Rhodry howled, half a shriek, half a war cry, and even Rhodry himself hesitated for the trace of a moment, just long enough for their enemy to get his back against a wagon. This was no human being that they were facing;. By some visual trick, without the enveloping cloak he seemed even larger, well over six feet tall, perhaps even a bit over seven, his height crowned by a huge mane of hair as stiff as any Dawntime hero’s—indeed, it seemed to have been bleached out with lime in just that way, so that it rose stiff and dead-pale straight from his black eyebrows and poured up and over his back like a waterfall. His face might have been any color naturally, because blue, purple, and green tattoos covered it so thickly you couldn’t see a trace of skin. His massive hands bore red and purple tattoos like gloves. He drew back thin lips from white teeth, fanged like a wolf’s mouth, and snarled.
Rhodry started to laugh.
“Get back!” he choked out between howls of demon-mirth. “Get back and leave him to me!”
He might have been only a silver dagger, but every man behind him followed his order gladly. His opponent laughed as well, a rumble under his breath. He jumped to the wagon bed and dropped to a fighting crouch.
“Shield you got, man. But I got taller.”
“And a fair fight it is, then.”
Even though he was chortling like a mad ferret, Rhodry’s mind was icy calm, telling him that the victory in this scrap depended on the strength of his left arm. He was going to have to hold his shield up high, like one of those sunshades the fine court ladies in Dun Deverry sported, and pray it held against the other’s blows. With the shield low he feinted in, slowly it seemed to him, oh, so slowly moving cross the uneven ground, saw a glint of steel moving, swung up the shield and caught the huge blade full on the boss. The brass plate sliced like butter; the blade stuck, just for the briefest of moments, but Rhodry got a hard stab on his enemy’s upper arm. Blood spurted thick and flowed slowly, oh, so slowly, down the sleeve.
Rhodry danced back just in time as the leader sliced backhanded in a blow that would have gutted him had it landed. For a moment they panted for breath, glaring at each other; then Rhodry began sidling toward his opponent’s left. Caught as he was against the wagon protecting his back, the other was forced to turn slightly—then all at once lunged. Just in time Rhodry flung up his shield, heard the wood crack in half, and stabbed as fast and as hard as he could. Later he would realize that this stab had been his last and only chance, but as the pieces of shield fell away from the handle he knew only laughter, welling out of him like a tide of fire as he thrust with every bit of strength and skill he possessed. The enormous sword swung up over his head, hovered there, trembled down, then fell from a dying hand as his opponent grunted once and crumpled over Rhodry’s sword, buried in his guts. When Rhodry pulled it free, he realized that blind instinct had made him angle the blade. Dark heart’s blood gushed out with the steel.
As the berserk mist cleared, Rhodry staggered back, gulping for breath, sweating rivers down his back, half-dizzy, half-dazed, unsure for that moment exactly where he was or what fight he’d just won. All round him he heard cheers and shouting, managed to recognize Cadmar’s bellow as the gwerbret shoved his way through what proved to be a crowd.
“Oh, may Great Bel preserve us,” the gwerbret whispered. “What is that?”
“I wouldn’t know, Your Grace.”
For a moment, while he got his breath back, Rhodry studied his dead enemy’s face and got his second shock of the day. The tattoo designs were all elven. He’d seen many like them on horse gear and painted tents out in the Westlands: animal forms, floral vines, and even, here and there, a letter or two from the Elvish syllabary.
“Let Jill through,” Cadmar was yelling. “Ye gods, someone get our Rhodry some water,”
Jill, it turned out, was carrying a skin of just that. She handed it over, then stood for a long time staring down at the corpse. In the bright sun Rhodry was struck again by how thin her face was, all pale stretched skin and fine bone, as delicate as a bird’s wing. He gulped water down while she went on with her study of the dead man.
“I was afraid of this,” she said at last. “He’s exactly what I thought he’d be.”
“Indeed?” Cadmar said. “And would you mind telling us what that is?”
“Not at all, Your Grace.” She reached into her shirt and took out a stained and faded silk pouch, opened that, and handed over a thin bone plaque, a square about three inches on a side.
Rhodry stepped round to peer over the gwerbret’s shoulder. The plaque sported a picture, graved into the yellowed bone and stained with traces of color. Once, he supposed, the portrait had been as vivid as a flower garden, but even his utterly untrained eye perceived it as ancient, older than anything he’d ever seen, older, perhaps, than the kingdom itself. In such a skilled drawing that every hair, every fold of cloth, seemed real and tangible, the picture displayed the head and shoulders of a being much like the one that lay dead at their feet: the same mane of hair, the same ridged face and heavy jaw, but while indeed this face was tattooed, the marks were only rough lines and dots. Cadmar swore under his breath.
“Jill, where did you get this? What are these creatures?”
“I got it far south of Bardek, Your Grace, on an island where some of the Westfolk live. As for what, well, the elves call them Meradan, demons, but their own name for themselves is Gel da’Thae: the Horsekin.”
All the old stories he’d been trying to remember rose to the surface of Rhodry’s mind.
“The Hordes!”
“Just that, silver dagger.” Jill smiled, a brief twitch of her mouth, ”His grace doubtless remembers those old tales about the cities of the Westfolk, the ones destroyed back in the Dawntime by demons? Well, destroyed they were, but by real flesh and blood.” She nudged the corpse with her foot. “This flesh and blood, Your Grace. Huh, they don’t seemed to have changed a great deal, have they? They’ve learned a good bit about tattooing, that’s all. They’re still as bloodthirsty.”
Cadmar nodded, his mouth grim, and handed back the bit of bone.
“And they’ve come east,” Rhodry put in. “That bodes ill.”
“You always had a gift for understatement, didn’t you?” Jill was putting the plaque away.
“But what do they want?” Cadmar said.
“I wouldn’t know for certain, but I’ll wager it’s the same things they’ve always wanted: land, slaves, jewelry and other such trinkets.” Jill looked up at last. “Look at his hands, Your Grace. See how some of his fingers have been cut off? Their warriors do that to themselves, you see, so they’ll be fit for no craft but war.”
Cadmar shuddered.
“And how do you know all this?”
“I read it in an elven book, written by one of the survivors of the Great Burning. That’s what they call the fall of the cities. It was over a thousand years ago now, but the elves remember it, clear as clear. I wish I could have brought you this book, for your scribe to read aloud in your hall. You and your men need to know what we’re facing.”
Cadmar threw up his head like a startled stag. Rhodry laughed aloud.
“Oh, my lady Death’s in for a fine time of it now. Her dun will fill with her guests, her tables feast thousands. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Jill?”
“I am. Your Grace, I pray to every god in the sky and under the earth that I’m wrong, but in my heart I know that the worst war that ever the Westlands have seen lies ahead of us.”
“And soon?” the gwerbret said.
“It will be, Your Grace. Very soon.”
Rhodry threw back his head and howled with laughter, choking and bubbling out of his very soul. All through the shattered camp the warband fell dead-silent to listen, and not a man there felt his blood run anything but cold.

With all the prisoners and suchlike, it took the warband two full days to ride home. With Otho and a squad of dwarven axmen standing around her, Carra was waiting at the gates of Cadmar’s dun when they walked their horses up the hill. At first, in the dust and confusion, she found it impossible to tell one man from another, and her heart began pounding in dread, but Dar broke free of the pack at last and ran to her.
“Thank every god in the sky!” She flung herself into his arms. While she sniveled into his filthy shirt, he stroked her hair.
“Here, here, my love! I’m home safe again, just like I promised you.”
Otho snorted profoundly.
“Egotistical young dolt,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice. “Wasn’t you we were worried about.”
“What?” Dar let her go and turned to confront the dwarf. “What are you saying, old man?”
“I’m saying what I said, you stupid elven fop. Someone tried to kill your wife while you were running around the countryside playing warrior.”
Dar went dead-still.
“Well, but they didn’t,” Carra said. “I mean, that sounds stupid, but Otho and his men have kept me safe, really they have.”
“And for that they’ll have my undying thanks.”
She had never heard Dar speak like that, so low, so still, each word careful and distinct, and now he was trembling in rage.
“Where’s the man who tried to harm her?”
“Don’t know, Your Highness.” Otho’s manner changed abruptly. “He did it by stealth, and we couldn’t catch him.”
“When we do, I’ll kill him with my own hands.” He threw one arm around Carra’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Name your reward.”
Otho thought for a good long minute, then sighed.
“None needed, Your Highness. We were glad to serve your lady. But someday, mayhap, we’ll remember this, and call in a favor done.”
All around them men were dismounting in a welter of confusion. Pages and stableboys came running to take horses and unload gear, warriors strode by, heading for the great hall and ale. Dar’s archers gathered round like a dun wall to shut their little group off from the potentially dangerous commotion.
“Is Jill with you?” Carra said.
“The Wise One?” Dar said. “She’s not. She left us before we reached the city. There’s Rhodry, though. Look, right behind him, see that horse Yraen’s leading? We captured him from the raiders. He belonged to their leader.”
Carra looked, then caught her breath in a little gasp. Never had she seen such an enormous animal, fully eighteen hands high and broad, too, with a deep chest and huge arch of neck. A blood bay with white mane and tail, he walked solemnly, gravely, planting each big foot down as if he knew that everyone watched him. Rhodry turned his own horse over to a page, then worked his way free of the mob to join them.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
“You remembered, did you?” Otho looked sour. “Well, I owe you your hire, I suppose, though with all the trouble you got me into, that ambush at the ford and all, I don’t see why I should pay you one blasted coin.”
“Because if you’d ridden north without me and Yraen, you’d have been dead long before you reached the cursed ford.”
“That has a certain logic to it, truly. Well, I’ve got the coin back at my inn.”
“Good. Make sure you fetch it, then.”
And Carra was honestly shocked that a man like Rhodry, whom she was starting to consider as fine and noble as any man in the kingdom, would worry about a handful of coin.
That night in the great hall the gwerbret held a feast for their victory, and his lady made sure that it also served to solemnize Carra’s wedding in the human way. Before the bard sang his praise-song for the raid and the true drinking began, the gwerbret himself made a fine flowery speech and toasted the young couple with a goblet of mead. The bard performed a solemn declamation, cobbled together from other occasions, perhaps, but elegant all the same. Their arms twined round each other, Carra and Dar took turns drinking mead from a real glass goblet, traded all the way north from Bardek through Aberwyn. Although custom demanded that they smash the thing, it was far too valuable, and besides, as Carra pointed out to her new husband, she certainly wasn’t a virgin anymore anyway. With a laugh Dar agreed and handed the goblet back unharmed to the hovering seneschal.
Later, after the bardsong and the assigning of praise, after the mead and the feasting, the gwerbret called for music, and there was dancing, the circle dances of the border, half-elven, half-human, stepped out to harp and drum. For the ritual of the thing, Carra danced one with Dar, then sat down again beside the gwerbret’s wife, who caught her hand and squeezed it.
“You have my thanks, my lady,” Carra said. “For honoring me this way.”
“Well, you’re most welcome, and truly, I thought we’d best take our merriment while we can.” Labanna’s dark eyes turned haunted. “The omens are poor, and the news worse.”
Carra nodded, moving instinctively a little closer to her. Out in the center of the great hall, the music pounded on, and the dancers moved gravely, circling round and round. In her grim mood it seemed that they were weaving an immense and ancient spell rather than celebrating an event as common as a wedding. Yet, even over the music, when Carra turned toward the window she heard or thought she heard the harsh cry of a hawk, as if some huge bird drifted overhead on the rising night wind.

---

---

future

How then, you say, will I know when the omens are fulfilled? When all the twisted strands of Time weave their final knot, you will know. If you do not know, then you have such a measly knack for magic that you should never have studied it in the first place.

1.

The Queen of Golds

Arcodd, Summer 1116

“Those brigga don’t fool me none. I know a pretty lass when I see one.”
The girl looked up from her bowl of stew to find the man leaning, elbows splayed and his dirty face all drunken smile, onto the table directly across from her. Around them the tavern fell abruptly silent as the customers, all men except for one old woman sucking a pint of bitter in a corner, turned to watch. Most grinned.
“What’s your name, wench?” His breath stank of bad teeth.
In the uncertain firelight the tavern room seemed to shrink to a frieze of leering faces and the pounding of her heart.
“I said, what’s your name, slut?”
He was leaning closer, red hair and beard, greasy, dabbed with food, the stinking mouth twisting into a grin as he reached for her with broad and dirty fingers. She wanted to scream but her throat had turned stone-dry and solid.
“Er, ah, well, I wouldn’t touch her, truly I wouldn’t.”
The man jerked up and swirled round to face the speaker, who had come up so quietly that no one had noticed. He was old, with a pronounced stoop, his hair whitish though touched with red in places, and he had the most amazing pair of bags she’d ever seen under anyone’s eyes, but her would-be molester shrank back from him as though he’d been a young warrior.
“Ah, now, Your Holiness, just a bit of fun.”
“Not for her—no fun at all, I’d say. She’s quite pale, you see. Er, ah, well, I’d leave if I were you.”
At that she noticed the two enormous dogs, half wolf from the look of them, that stood by the priest’s side with their lips drawn back over large and perfect fangs. When they growled, the man yelped and ran out the tavern door to the accompaniment of jeers and catcalls. The priest turned to look at the other customers with an infinite sadness in his blue eyes.
“Er, well, you’re no better. If I hadn’t come in . . . ”
The laughter stopped, and the men began to study the ground or the tables or the wall, looking; at anything but his sad and patient face. With a sigh the priest sat down, smoothing his long, gray tunic under him, the dogs settling at his feet.
“After you finish that stew, lass, you’d best come with me. You’ve picked the worst tavern in all Arcodd for your dinner.”
“So it seems, Your Holiness,” She was surprised that she could speak at all. “You have my humble and undying thanks. May I stand you a tankard?”
“Not so early in the afternoon, my thanks. I’ll have a drop of ale of an evening, but truly, these days, it doesn’t sit so well in, my stomach.” He sighed, again. “Er, well, um, what is your name?”
She debated, then decided, that lying to a priest and a rescuer was beyond her. Besides, her ruse was torn already.
“Carramaena, but call me Cam. Everyone does—did—people who know me, I mean. I’ve been, trying to pass for a lad and calling myself Gwyl, but it doesn’t seem to be working,”
“Um, well, it isn’t, truly. Gwyl? The dark one?” He smiled in a burst of surprising charm. “Doesn’t suit you. With your yellow hair and all. Now my name does suit me. Perryn, it is.”
“You don’t seem foolish in the least.”
“Ah, that’s because you don’t know me very well. You probably never will, seeing as you must be going somewhere in a great hurry if you’d ride with only a lie for company.” He paused, frowning at the far wall. “Have to do somewhat about that, you traveling alone, I mean. Are you going to eat that stew?”
“I’m not. I’m not hungry anymore, and I’ve already picked one roach out of it. Will the dogs want it?”
“Mayhap, but it’ll make them sick. Come with me.”
When he got up and headed for the door, Carra grabbed her cloak from the bench and hurried after, her head as high as she could hold it as she passed the men by the fire. Outside, drowsy in the hot spring sun, her horse stood tied to the hitching rail in front of the round tavern. A pure-bred Western Hunter, he was a pale buckskin gelding.
“It was the horse that made me go in,” Perryn said. “I wondered who’d have a horse like that, you see. You shouldn’t just leave him tied up like that in this part of the world. Um, well, he could get stolen.”
“Oh, he’ll kick the demons out of anyone but me who comes near him. I’m the only person who could ever touch him, much less ride him. That’s why he’s mine.”
“Ah. Your father give him to you?”
“My elder brother.” Try as she might to hide it, bitterness crept into her voice and tightened it down. “He’s the head of our clan now.”
“Ah. Then you are noble-bom. I, er, um, rather thought so.”
She felt her cheeks burn with a blush.
“Truly, you’re not much of a liar, Carra. Well, fetch your horse and come along. Do you like dogs?”
“I do. Why?”
“I’ve got a pair to give you at home. If they like you, and I truly do think they will, they’ll take care of you on the road.” He sighed in a profound melancholy. “I’ve got such a lot of them. Cats, too. We always had cats, my wife and I. She’s dead now, you see. Died over the winter.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“So am I. Well, I’ll be joining her soon, I hope, if Kerun wills it. He should. I really am getting on in years. No use in outstaying your welcome, is there?”
Since Carra was only sixteen, she had no idea of what to say to his melancholy and busied herself with untying her horse. He stood staring blank-eyed up the street, as if he were talking to his god in his mind, while the dogs wagged quietly beside him.
The priest’s house lay just beyond the village. He pushed open a gate in an earthen wall and led her into a muddy farmyard, where chickens scratched in front of a big thatched roundhouse. Cats and puppies lolled in every patch of shade under the pair of apple trees, under a watering trough, under a battered old wagon. With a cheerful halloo a stout, red-faced woman of about forty came out the front door.
“There you are, Da. Brought a visitor? You’re just in time for your dinner.”
“Good, and my thanks, Braema.” The priest glanced at Carra. “My youngest daughter. She’s the only . . . well, er, ah, only truly human one of the lot.”
At that Braema laughed in gut-shaking amusement. Carra dutifully smiled, suspecting some hoary family joke.
“There’s lots of sliced ham and some lovely greens, lass, so come right in. Oh, wait—your horse.” She turned in the door and bellowed. “Nedd, come out here, will you? Got a guest, and her horse needs water and some shade.”
In. a moment or so a young man slipped out of the door behind her and. stood blinking in the sun. As slender and lithe as a young cat, he was just about five feet tall, a good head shorter than Carra, with hair as coppery red as a sunset, and a pinched face dominated by two enormous green eyes. When he yawned, his intensely pink tongue curled up like a cat’s.
“Braema’s lad, my grandson,”” Perryn said, with a long sigh. “And, um, well, fairly typical of the lot. Of my offspring, I mean.”
With a duck of his head Nedd glided over and took the buckskin’s reins. Carra reached out to stop him, but the gelding lowered his head and allowed the boy to rub his ears without his usual rolling eye and threat of teeth.
“His name’s Gwerlas.”
The lad smiled, a flick of narrow lips, and led the gelding away without so much as a glance in her direction. Gwer seemed so glad to go that Carra felt a jealous stab.
“Now come in and eat.” Braema waved Carra in. “You look like you’ve ridden a long way, eh?”
“Long enough, truly. I come from Drwloc.”
“All the way down there? Ye gods! And where are you going, or may I ask?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment Carra nearly wept.
The priest and his daughter sat her down at a long plank table in the sunny kitchen, scattered with drowsy cats, and loaded her up a trencher with ham and greens and fresh-baked bread, the first real meal she’d had in days. After she stuffed herself, she found herself talking, partly because she felt she owed them an explanation, partly because it felt so good to talk to someone sympathetic.
“I’m the youngest of six, you see, three sons and three daughters, and my eldest brother’s head of the clan now, and he’s a miserly rotten beast, too. He gave Maeylla—that’s my oldest sister—a decent dowry, but it wasn’t anything for a bard to remember, I tell you, and then Raeffa got a scraped-together mingy one. And now it’s my turn, and he doesn’t want to spend on a dowry at all, so he found this fat old lord with half his teeth gone who’ll marry me out of lust and ask for naught more, and I’d rather die than marry him, so I ran away.”
“And I should think so,” Braema said with a firm nod of her head. “Do you think he’s still chasing you?”
“I don’t know, but I wager he is. I’ve made him furious, and he hates it so much when anyone crosses him, so he’s probably coming to give me the beating of my life just on the principle of the thing, I’ve got a good lead on him, though. I worked it out with a friend of mine. I went to visit her and her new husband, but I told my brother that I’d stay a fortnight, while she told her husband I’d leave after an eightnight. And in an eightnight leave I did, but I rode north, not home, and my brother wouldn’t even have suspected anything till days and days later. So as long as I keep moving, he can’t possibly catch up to me.”
“Um, well, I see.” Perryn pursed his lips and sucked a thoughtful tooth. “I know how purse-proud noble-born kin can be, truly. Mine always were.”
“Ah, I see. I was thinking of going west.”
“West?” Braema leaned forward sharply. “There’s nothing out there, lass, nothing at all.”
“I’m not so sure of that. You hear things down in Drwloc. From merchants, like.”
The woman was staring at her in such puzzlement that Carra felt her face burning with a blush.
“You could starve out there!” Braema sounded indignant. “Your fat lord would be better than that!”
“You haven’t seen him.”
When Braema opened her mouth to go on, her father silenced her with a wave of one hand.
“You’re hiding somewhat, lass. You’re carrying a child, aren’t you?”
“How did you know? I only just realized myself!”
“I can always tell. Sort of an, um, well . . . trick of mine.”
“Well, so I am.” She felt her eyes well tears. “And he—my lover, I mean—he’s, well, he’s . . . ”
“One of the Westfolk!” Braema’s voice was all breathy with shock. “And he deserted you, I suppose.”
“Naught of the sort! He said he’d come back for me before the winter rains, but he didn’t know I was . . . well, you know. And my brother doesn’t know, either, which is why he was trying to marry me off, but I didn’t dare tell him.”
“He’d have beaten you half to death, I suppose.” Braema sighed and shook her head. “Do you truly think you’ve got a chance of finding this man of yours?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. He gave me a token, a pendant.” Lightly she touched the cool metal where it hung on its chain under her shirt. “There’s a rose on it, and some elven words, and he said that any of his people would know it was his.”
“Humph, and I wonder about the truth of that, I do! Easy for the Westfolk to talk, but what they mean by it . . . ”
“That’s enough, Braema.” Perryn cut her off with a small wave of one hand. “Can’t meddle in someone else’s Wyrd, can you? If she wants to go west, west she’ll go. She seems to, er, well, know her own mind. But, um, well, I want to give you those dogs.” This to Carra. “Come out to the stable with me, will you?”
The stables were round back and a good bit away from the house. Out in front of the long wooden building Nedd was watching Gwerlas drink from a bucket.
“Your Holiness? Most people think I’m daft because I want to ride after my Daralanteriel.”
“Mayhap you are, but what choice do you have?”
“None, truly. Not unless I want to get myself beaten first and married off to Old Dung-heap second.”
The dogs turned out to be a pair of males, more than half wolf, maybe, with their long sharp faces and pricked ears, and just about a year old. One was gray and glowering, named Thunder, and the other a pale silver with a black streak down his back who answered to Lightning. When the priest introduced them, they sniffed her outstretched hand with a thoughtful wag of their tails.
“They like you,” Perryn announced. “Think they do, Nedd?”
The boy nodded, considering.
“I’m going to give them to Carra. She’s riding west, you see, and she’ll need them along to protect her.”
Nedd nodded again and turned to slip back into the stables. He didn’t walk, exactly, so much as glide along from shadow to shadow, there one minute, gone the next.
“Uh, Your Holiness, can he talk?”
“Not very well, truly. Only when he absolutely has to, and then only a word or two. But he understands everything. Um, right, that reminds me. I’ve taught this pair to work to hand signals, and I’d best show you what they know. They’ll come to their names, of course.” He squatted down and looked at the dogs, who swiveled their heads to stare into his eyes. “You belong to Carra now. Go with her. Take care of her.”
For a long, long moment they kept a silent communion, while Carra decided that contrary to all common sense, the dogs understood exactly what he meant. Nedd came whistling out of the stable. He was leading a nondescript bay gelding, laden with an old saddle, a bedroll, a woodsman’s ax, and a pair of bulging saddlebags. Perryn rose, rubbing his face with one hand.
“What’s this? You’re going too?”
Nedd nodded, glancing this way and that around the farmstead.
“You’ll have to ask Carra’s permission.”
The boy swung his head around and looked at her.
“You want to come west with me? Look, if my brother catches us, he’ll hurt you. He might even kill you.”
Nedd considered, then shrugged, turning to stare significantly at his grandfather.
“No use trying to keep someone who doesn’t want to stay, is there?” the priest said. “But you take care of the lady. She’s noble-born, you see. Don’t cause her a moment’s trouble, or Kerun will be livid with you. Understand?”
Nedd nodded a yes.
“Well and good, then. Run up to the house, will you? I’ll wager your mam is packing up a bit of that ham and bread for Carra to eat on the road.”
Nedd grinned and trotted off. Perryn turned to her with an apologetic smile.
“Hope you don’t mind him coming along. He won’t trouble you. Might even come in handy, because he likes having someone to do things for. Poor lad, it makes him feel useful, like. And he can show you how to work the dogs.”
“All right, but here, won’t his mother be furious that he’s just . . . well . . . leaving like this?”
“Oh, I doubt that. He’s like me and his uncles. We mostly come and go as we please, and there’s no use in trying to stop us.” He sighed again, deeply. “No use in it at all.”
Yet even so, they left by the back gate and circled round to hit the west-running road out of sight of the house. Carra took the lead, with the dogs padding along either just ahead or to one side of her as the whim took them, while Nedd rode a length behind like her servant, which he was now, she supposed, in his way. She only hoped that she could take care of him properly, and the dogs, too, though she suspected that they were feral enough to hunt their own food if need be. She had a handful of coins, copper ones mostly, stolen from her brother in lieu of her rightful dowry, but they weren’t going to last forever. On a sudden thought she turned in the saddle and motioned Nedd up beside her.
“You must have heard tales about the Westfolk, too. That they’re very odd but kind to strangers?”
The boy nodded, his hair glinting like metal in the strong spring sun.
“Do you think they truly are kind?”
He grinned, shrugging to show his utter ignorance, but excited nonetheless.
“I hope they are, because I don’t know how we’re going to find Dar without some help. He told me that he wanders all over with his tribe and their horses, you see, but I’m not truly sure just how big this ‘all over’ is.”
“North with the summer. South with the rains.”
He spoke so softly, so lightly, that she barely heard him.
“Did someone tell you that?”
He nodded a yes.
“Is that how the Westfolk travel? Well, it makes sense. It’s more than I’ve had to go on before. But maybe we should be riding south, then, to meet them as they come north. Or due west. But they may have already passed us up, like, if they left their winter homes early or suchlike.”
Nedd nodded, frowning.
“So let’s head north,” Carra went on. “That way we’ll either meet up with them or be in the right place to wait for them.”
For the rest of that day and on into the next one they traveled through farm country, but although they stopped to talk with the locals along the road, everyone heaped scorn on the very idea of going off to look for the Westfolk. Arcodd province is still on the very edge of the kingdom of Deverry, and in those days it was a lonely sort of place, where little pockets of settled country dotted a wilderness of grassland and mixed forests. And more wilderness was all, or so they were told, that could possibly lie to the west—except, of course, for the wandering clans of the Westfolk, who were all thieves and ate snakes and made pacts with demons and never washed and the gods only knew what else. By the third day Carra was disheartened enough to start believing them, but turning back meant her brother, a beating, and the pig-breathed Lord Scraev. At night they camped out in copses near the road, and here Nedd showed just how useful a person he was. Besides insisting on tending the horses, he always found firewood and food as well, hooking fish and snaring rabbits, grubbing around to find sweet herbs and greens to supplement the bread her coin bought them in villages.
In his silent way, he was good company, too, patient as he taught her how to command the dogs with subtle hand gestures and a few spoken words. Sleeping on the ground meant nothing to him; he would roll up in a blanket with Thunder at his back and go out while Carra was still tossing and turning, trying to sleep with a patient Lightning at her feet, Although she was used to riding for long hours at a time, either to visit her friends or to ride with her brother’s bunt, sleeping on the hard, damp ground was something new, and she began to ache like fire after a few nights of it, so badly that she began to worry about her unborn child, still a tiny knot deep within her but as real to her as Nedd and the dogs. When, then, on the fourth night they came to a village that had an inn, she was died enough to consider spending a few coins on lodging.
“And a bath,” she said to Nedd. “A proper hot bath with a bit of soap,”
He merely shrugged.
From, outside the inn, didn’t look like much: a low roundhouse, heavily thatched, in the middle of a muddy fenced, yard, but when she pushed open the gate and led her horse inside, she could smell roasting chickens. The innkeep, a stout and greasy little man, strolled out and looked her over suspiciously.
“The common room’s full,” he announced. “Ain’t got no private chambers.”
“Can we sleep in your stables?” Carra gave up her dream of a hot bath. “Up in the hayloft, say?”
“Long as you don’t go bringing no lantern up there. Don’t want no fire.”
The hayloft turned out to be long and airy and well supplied with loose hay, a better night’s lodging, she suspected, than the inn itself. After the horses were taken care of, Carra and Nedd, with the dogs trotting busily behind, headed for the tavern. In the half round of the common room, set off from the innkeep’s quarters by a wickerwork partition, were a couple of wobbly tables. At one sat a gaggle of farmers, gossiping over their ale; at the other, two men, both road-stained, both armed. Carra stopped in the shadowy curve of the wall by the door; when she snapped her fingers and pointed down, the dogs sat and Nedd fell back a step or two. In the smoky light of a smoldering fire she could see the pair fairly clearly: warriors, by the easy arrogant way they sat, but their stained linen shirts bore no blazons at the yokes or shoulder. One, blond and burly with a heavy blond mustache, looked young; the other, sitting with his back to her, was more slender, with wavy raven-dark hair. When the passing innkeep threw a couple of handfuls of small sticks onto the fire, it blazed with a flare of light, glinting on the pommel of the knives that the men wore at their belt. Three distinctive little knobs. Silver daggers, little better than criminals if indeed they were better at all, or so she’d always been told. Behind her Nedd growled like one of the dogs.
“True enough,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
But as she stepped back the burly blond saw her and raised a dented tankard her way with a grin.
“Here, lad, come on in and join us. Plenty of room at the table.” His voice sounded oddly decent for a man of his sort.
She was about to make a polite refusal when the dark-haired fellow slewed round on the bench to look her over with enormous cornflower-blue eyes. He was clean-shaven and almost girlishly handsome; in fact, she’d never seen such a good-looking man among her own people. As she thought about it, his chiseled features reminded her of the Westfolk and even, because of his coloring, of her Dar. He rose, swinging clear of the bench with some of Nedd’s catlike ease, making her a graceful bow, and the wannth of his smile made her blush.
“Lad, indeed!” His voice was a soft tenor, marked by a lilting accent that reminded her of the Westfolk as well. “Yraen, you’re growing old and blind! My lady, if you’d care to join us, I swear on what honor I have left that you’re perfectly safe.”
The dogs were thumping their tails in greeting. When she glanced at Nedd, she found him staring at the raven-haired stranger.
“He looks decent enough to me,” she whispered.
Nedd nodded with one of his eloquent shrugs, registering surprise, perhaps, to find a man like this on the edge of nowhere. Carra gestured the dogs up, and they all went over, but Nedd insisted on sitting on the floor with Thunder and Lightning. She settled herself in solitary comfort on one bench while the raven-haired fellow went round to join his friend on the other.
“My name’s Rhodry,” he said as he sat down. “And this is Yraen, for all that he’s got a nickname for a name.”
Yraen smiled in a rusty way.
“My name is Carra, and this is Nedd, who’s sort of my servant but not really, and Thunder and Lightning.”
The dogs thumped their tails; Nedd bobbed his head. The innkeep came bustling over with a big basket of warm bread for the table and a tankard of ale for her. He also brought news of roast chickens, and while he and Yraen wrangled about how many there’d be and how much they’d cost, Carra had a brief chance to study the silver daggers, though most of her attention went to Rhodry. It wasn’t just because of his good looks; she simply couldn’t puzzle out how old he was. At times he would grin and look no older than she; at others, melancholy would settle into his eyes and play on his face like a fever, and it would seem that he must be a hundred years old at the least, to have earned such sadness.
“Innkeep?” Rhodry said. “Bring some scraps for the lady’s dogs, will you?”
“I will. We butchered a sheep yesterday. Plenty of spleen and suchlike left.”
Carra gave the man a copper for his trouble. Yraen drew his dagger and began to cut the bread in rough chunks.
“And where is my lady bound for?” His voice was dark and rough, but reassuringly normal all the same.
“I . . . um, well . . . to the west, actually. To visit kin.”
Yraen grinned and raised an eyebrow, but he handed her a chunk of bread without comment. Even though Carra told herself that she was daft to trust these men, she suddenly felt safe, and for the first time in weeks. When Rhodry took some bread, she noticed that he was wearing a ring, a flat silver band graved with roses. She was startled enough to stare.
“It’s a nice bit of jewelry, isn’t it?” Rhodry said.
“It is, but forgive me if I was rude. I just happen to have some jewelry with roses on it myself. I mean, they’re very differently done, and the metal’s different, too, but it just seemed odd . . . ” She felt suddenly tongue-tied and let her voice trail away.
Rhodry passed Nedd the bread. For a few minutes they all ate in an awkward silence until Carra felt she simply had to say something.
“Where are you two going, if you don’t mind me asking, anyway?”
“Up north, Cengarn way,” Yraen said. “We’ve got a hire, you see, though he’s barricaded himself in a woodshed for the night. Doesn’t trust the innkeep, doesn’t trust us, for all that he’s hired us as guards. Calls himself a merchant, but I’ve got my doubts, I have. However he earns his keep, he’s a rotten-tempered little bastard, and I’m sick to my heart of his ways.”
“Your own temper at the moment lacks a certain sunny sweetness itself.” Rhodry was grinning. “Our Otho’s carrying gems, and a lot of them, and it’s making him wary and even nastier than he usually is, which is saying a great deal. But we took his hire because it may lead to better things. I was thinking that maybe Gwerbret Cadmar up on the border might have need of us. He’s got a rough sort of rhan to rule.”
“Is that Cadmar of Cengarn?”
“It is. I take it you’ve heard of him?”
“My . . . well, a friend of mine’s mentioned Cengarn once or twice. It’s to the west of here, isn’t it?”
“More to the north, maybe, but somewhat west. Think your kin might have ridden that way?”
“They might have.” She busied herself with brushing imaginary crumbs off her shirt.
“What did this man of yours do?” Rhodry’s voice hovered between sympathy and a certain abstract anger. “Get you with child and then leave you?”
“How did you know?” She looked up, blushing hard, feeling tears gathering.
“It’s not exactly a new story, lass.”
“But he said he’d come back.”
“They all do,” Yraen murmured to his tankard.
“But he gave me—” She hesitated, her hand half-consciously clutching at her shirt, where the pendant hung hidden, “Well, he gave me a token.”
When Rhodry held out his hand, she debated for a long moment.
“We’re not thieves, lass,” Rhodry said, and so gently that she believed him.
She reached round her neck to unclasp the chain and take the token out. It was an enormous sapphire as blue as the winter sea, set in a pendant of reddish-gold, some three inches across and ornamented with golden roses in bas relief. When they saw it, Rhodry whistled under his breath and Yraen swore aloud. Nedd scooted a little closer to look.
“Ye gods!” Yraen said. “It’s a good thing you keep this hidden. It’s worth a fortune.”
“A king’s ransom, and I mean that literally.” Rhodry was studying it as closely as he could in the uncertain light, and he muttered a few words in the language of the Westfolk before he went on. “Once this belonged to Ranadar of the High Mountain, the last true king the Westfolk ever had, and it’s been passed down through his descendants for over a thousand years. When your Dar’s kin find out he’s given it to you, lass, they’re going to beat him black and blue.”
“You know him? You must know him!”
“I do.” Rhodry handed the jewel back. “Any man who knows the Westfolk knows Daralanteriel. Did he tell you who he is?”
Busy with clasping the pendant, she shook her head no.
“As much of a Marked Prince as the Westfolk will ever have. The heir to what throne there is, which isn’t much, being as his kingdom lies in ruins in the far, far west.”
She started to laugh, a nervous giggle of sheer disbelief.
“Kingdom?” Yraen broke in. “I never heard of the Westfolk having any kingdom.”
“Of course you haven’t.” Rhodry suddenly grinned. “And that’s because you’ve never gotten to know the Westfolk or listened to what they’ve got to say. A typical Round-ear, that’s you, Yraen.”
“You’re having one of your jests on me.”
“I’m not.” But the way he was smiling made him hard to believe. “It’s the solemn truth.”
To her horror Carra found that she couldn’t stop giggling, that her giggles were rising to an hysterical laugh. The dogs whined, pressing close to her, nudging at her hands while Nedd swung his head Rhodry’s way and growled like a wolf. The silver dagger seemed to notice him for the first time.
“Nedd, his name is?” Rhodry spoke to Carra. “I don’t suppose he has an uncle or suchlike named Perryn.”
“His grandfather, actually.” At last she managed to choke her laughter down enough to answer. “A priest of Kerun.”
Rhodry sat stock-still, and in the dancing firelight it seemed he’d gone pale.
“And what’s so wrong with you?” Yraen poked him on the shoulder.
“Naught.” Rhodry turned, waving at the innkeep. “More ale, will you? A man could die of thirst in your wretched tavern.”
Not only did the man bring more ale but his wife trotted over with roast fowl and greens and more bread, a feast to Carra after her long weeks on the road, and to the silver daggers as well, judging from the way they fell upon the meal. In the lack of conversation Carra found herself studying Rhodry. His table manners were those of a courtly man, one far more gracious than any lord she’d ever seen at her brother’s table. Every now and then she caught him looking her way with an expression that she simply couldn’t puzzle out. Sometimes he seemed afraid of her, at others weary—she decided at length that in her exhaustion she was imagining things, because she could think of no reason that a battle-hardened stiver dagger would be afraid of one tired lass, and her pregnant at that. Once she’d eaten, though, her exhaustion lifted enough for her to focus at last on one of his earlier comments.
“You know Dar.” She said it so abruptly that he looked up, startled. “Where is he? Will you tell me?”
“If I knew for certain, I would, but I haven’t seen him in years, and he’s off to the north with his alar’s herds somewhere, I suppose.” Rhodry paused for a sip of ale. “Listen, lass, if you’re with child, then you’re his wife. Do you realize that? Not some deserted woman, but his wife. The Westfolk see things a good bit differently than Deverry men.”
The tears came, spilling down before she could stop them. Whining, the dogs laid their heads in her lap. Without thinking she threw her arms around Thunder and let him lick the tears away while she wept. Dimly she was aware of Yraen talking, and of the sounds of a bench being moved about. When at last she looked up, he was gone and the innkeep with him, but Rhodry still sat across from her, slouching onto one elbow and drinking his ale.
“My apologies,” she sniveled. “I’ve just been so frightened, wondering if he really would ever want to see me again.”
“Oh, he will. He’s a good lad, for all that he’s so young, and I think me you can trust him.” Rhodry grinned suddenly. “Well, I’d say he’s a cursed sight more trustworthy than I was at his age, but that, truly, wouldn’t be saying much. If naught else, Carra, his kin will take you in the moment you find them—ye gods, any alar would! You don’t truly realize it yet, do you? That child you’re carrying is as royal as any prince up in Dun Deverry. You’ve got the token to prove it, too. Don’t you worry, now. We’ll find him.”
“We?”
“We. You’ve just hired yourself a silver dagger to escort you to your new home—well, once we get Otho to Cengarn, but that’s on the way and all.” He looked away, and he seemed as old as the rocks in the mountains, as weary as the rivers themselves. “Whether Yraen’s daft enough to ride with me, I don’t know. For his sake, I hope he isn’t.”
“But I can’t pay you.”
“Oh, if I needed paying, Dar’s alar would see to it. Here, you still look half out of your mind with fear.”
“Well, it’s just all been so awful.” She sniffed hard, choking back tears. “Realizing I was pregnant, and then running away and wondering if maybe Dar had just up and left me behind like men do. And then I met Nedd’s grandfather, and truly, that was strange enough on its own, and then we just stumble in here like this, and here you are, telling me all these strange things, and I’ve never seen you before or anything. It’s so odd, finding someone who knows Dar, out of the blue like this, that I . . . ” She paused, blushing on the edge of calling him a liar.
“Odd, truly, but not some bizarre coincidence. It’s my Wyrd, Carra, and maybe yours, too, but no man can say what another’s Wyrd may be. Wyrd, and the dweomer that Wyrd brings with it—I can smell it all round us.”
“You look frightened, too.”
“I am. You’re carrying my death with you.”
Nedd, who’d been close to asleep, snapped up his head to stare. Carra tried to speak but could only stammer. Rhodry laughed, a long berserker’s howl, and pledged her with his tankard.
“I don’t hold it against you, mind. I’ve loved many a woman in my day, but none as much as I love my lady Death. I know what you’re going to ask, Carra—I’m drunk, sure enough, but not so drunk that I’m talking nonsense. Indulge me, my lady, since I’ve just pledged my life to you and all that, and let me talk awhile. I’ve lived a good bit longer than you might think, and every now and then I get to looking back, like old men will, and I can see now that I’ve never loved anyone as much as her. Once I thought I loved honor, but honor’s just another name for my lady Death, because sooner or later, as sure as sure, a man’s honor will lead him to her bed.” Abruptly he leaned onto the table. “Do you believe in sorcery, Carra? In the dweomer, and those who know its ways?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, I wouldn’t know, but you hear all those things—”
“Some of them are true. I know it, you see. I know it deep in my heart, and it’s a harsh and bitter knowing in its way.” He gave her a lopsided grin that made him look like a lad of twenty. “Do you think I’m mad?”
“Not truly, but a bit daft—I can’t deny that.”
“You’re a practical sort of lass, and you’ll need to be.” He finished the ale in his tankard, then refilled it from the flagon with an unsteady hand. “There’s only been one woman in my whole life that I’ve loved as much as I love the lady Death, but she loved the dweomer more than me. It’s enough to drive any man daft, that. Be that as it may, she told me a prophecy once. Run where you will, Rhodry, said she, but the dweomer will catch you in the end. Or somewhat like that. It was years ago now, and I don’t quite remember her exact words. But I do remember how I felt while she was speaking, that she was telling me the truth and naught more, and somehow I knew that when the time came and my Wyrd sprang upon me, I’d feel its claws sink deep, and I’d know that my lady Death was getting ready to accept me at last for the true lover I’ve been, all these long years. And while you were telling me your tale, I felt those claws bite. Soon I’ll lie with her at last, though it’s a cold and narrow bed we’ll share, my lady and me.”
Nedd was asleep in the straw with the dogs. In the hearth the fire was dying down, throwing a cloak of shadows over Rhodry’s face. With a wrench of will Carra got up and went to the hearth to put on more wood. She felt so cold at heart that she wanted the heat as much as the light. As the fire blazed up, she heard him moving behind her and turned just as he knelt in the straw at her feet.
“Will you take me into your service, my lady?”
“What? Of course I will. I mean, I don’t have a lot of choice, do I? Since you know Dar and all.”
“A very practical lass.” He grinned at her and rose, dusting off the knees of his filthy brigga as if it would make a difference. “Good. Nedd! Wake up! Escort your lady to her elegant chambers, will you? And make sure you stand a good guard tonight, because I feel trouble riding for all of us with an army at its back.”
Drunk as he was, he made her a graceful bow, then wove his way out of the tavern room. Nedd got up, signaling to the dogs to join him.
“What do you think of that silver dagger, Nedd? Do you like him?”
Nedd nodded his head yes.
“Even though he’s half-mad?”
Nedd pursed his lips and thought. Finally he shrugged the question away and went to open the door for her with a clumsy imitation of Rhodry’s bow. As she followed him out to the stables, Carra was both thinking that she’d never wanted to be a queen and wishing that she felt more like one.
Early on the morrow Yraen woke them by the simple expedient of standing under the hayloft and yelling. As they all walked back to the tavern for breakfast, he announced that he was riding north with them.
“Against my better judgment, I might add. First we take on this cursed little silversmith, and now our Rhodry starts babbling about Wyrd and dweomer and prophecies and the gods only know what else! He’s mad, if you ask me, as daft as a bard, and he drinks harder than any man I’ve ever seen, and that’s a fair bit, if you take my meaning, not that he shows his drink the way an ordinary man would, but anyway, I know blasted well I should be riding back east and finding some other hire, but when he gets to talking—” He shook his head like a baffled bear. “So I’m coming along, for all that he warned me I’ll probably die if I do. I must be as daft as he is.”
In the morning light Carra had the chance for a good look at him. He was a handsome man, Yraen, at least in the abstract, with regular features and a mane of thick golden hair to match his mustaches, but his ice-blue eyes were as cold and hard as the iron of the joke that stood him for a name. The dogs and Nedd watched him with a cold suspicion of their own.
“Have you known Rhodry long?” Carra said.
“We’ve ridden together this four years now.”
“You know, neither of you seem like the sort of men who usually turn into silver daggers.”
“I suppose you mean that well.” Yraen was scowling, but in an oddly abstract way. “Look, my lady, no offense and all that, but asking a silver dagger questions isn’t such a pleasant thing—for both sides, if you take my meaning.”
Since she did, Carra held her tongue against a rising tide of curiosity. Inside the tavern room Rhodry was sitting cross-legged on the floor under a window, shaving with a long steel razor and a bit of mirror propped against the wall.
“Be done straightaway,” Rhodry said. “Yraen, get the lady some bread and milk, will you? The innkeep’s drunk in his kitchen again, and she’s got to keep up her strength and all that.”
With a growl like a dog, however, Nedd insisted on being the one to wait upon his lady.
“I’ve been thinking,” Yraen said abruptly. “If the point of this daft adventure is finding our lady her man, why don’t we just ride straight west?”
“You’re forgetting Otho.”
“True enough, and that’s my point. I want to forget Otho. Can’t we give him his coin back?”
“We still couldn’t just ride west. The grasslands are huge, and there aren’t any roads, and we could wander out there for months till we starved to death.” Still a bit damp, Rhodry joined them at table just as Nedd and the bleary innkeep appeared with bread and bacon. “Cadmar of Cengarn buys horses from the Westfolk, and so we’re bound to find some of the People there—well, they’ll show up sooner or later, anyway. And then we can pass the message along, that Dar’s wife is waiting for him under the gwerbret’s protection.”
“Sounds too easy. You’re hiding somewhat, Rhodry.”
“I’m not. I’ve got no idea, none at all, of what might happen.”
“Then what’s all this babbling about Wyrd and dweomer?”
Rhodry shrugged, tearing bread with his long and graceful fingers.
“If I knew more, I’d tell you more.” He looked up with a sunny and inappropriate grin hovering round his mouth. “But that’s why I warned you earlier. Leave Otho if you want—leave us all. Ride east, and don’t give me or mine another thought.”
Yraen merely snarled and speared a chunk of bacon with an expensive-looking table dagger. At that point Carra heard someone swearing and cursing at the innkeep. The dogs laid back long ears and swung their heads toward the sound as the voice rose into a veritable litany of oaths, a bard’s memory chain of venom, a lexicon of filth. Rhodry jumped up and yelled.
“Hold your tongue! There’s a lady present.”
Snorting inarticulately under his breath a man came stumping into the room. He was only about five feet tall, but built as thickly and strongly as a miniature blacksmith, though his walk was stiff and slow. Since his hair and long beard were snow-white, it might have been mere age that was stiffening him, but from Rhodry’s talk of the night before Carra suspected that his heavy leather jerkin hid sewn jewels. He was also wearing a short sword at one hip and a long knife at the other.
“Don’t you yell at me, you misbegotten silver dagger,” Otho said, but levelly enough. “The day I take orders from a cursed elf is the day I curl my toes to heaven and gasp my last. I . . . ”
He saw Carra and stopped, his mouth slacking, his eyes misting with tears.
“My lady,” he whispered “Oh! My lady.”
He knelt before her and grabbed her hand to kiss it like a courtier. Carra sat stunned while Rhodry and Yraen goggled. All at once Otho blushed scarlet, jumped to his feet, and made a noisy show of blowing his nose on a bit of old rag.
“Uh, well now,” Otho snapped. “Don’t know what came over me, like, lass. My apologies. Thought you were someone else, just for a minute there. Humph. Well. Forgive me, will you? Just going outside.”
He rushed out before anyone could say a word, leaving all of them stunned and silent for a good couple of minutes. Finally Yraen sighed with an explosive puff of breath.
“All right, Rhodry lad. Dweomer it is, and Wyrd, too, for all I know about it. I’m not arguing with you anymore.”
After Rhodry settled up with the innkeep, they rode out, heading straight north on the hard-packed dirt road that would, or so the villagers promised, eventually lead them to Cengarn and Gwerbret Cadmar. The road here ran through farms, stretching pale gold with the ripening crop of winter wheat, but to the north, like a smudge of storm clouds, hung a dark line of hills and forests. All morning the line swelled, and the land rose steadily toward it, till by the time they stopped to rest the horses and eat their midday meal, they could see waves and billows of land and trees at the horizon.
“How are you faring, lass?” Otho asked as he helped her dismount. “Our Rhodry tells me you’re with child.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine. You don’t need to hover over me, you know. I’m not very far along at all.”
“If you say so. I just wish we had a woman of the People with us someone who knew about these female matters.”
“I’m doing splendidly.”
Yet, when Carra sat down in a soft patch of grass, she was surprised at how good it felt to be out of the saddle and still. She’d learned to ride at three, clinging to her brother’s pony, spent half her life riding, but now she found herself tired after a morning in the saddle. She decided that she hated being pregnant, married or not. Thunder and Lightning lopped down on either side of her with vast canine sighs. When Nedd hurried, off to fetch her water and food, Otho sat down as if on. guard.
“If I’m truly a queen now,” she said, “the dogs must be my men at arms, and Nedd my equerry. Do you want to be my high councillor, Otho? I wonder if I’ll get any serving women; maybe we should have taken some of his holiness’s cats along for that.”
Otho frowned in drought, pretending to take the game seriously.
“Well, Your Grace,” he said at last. “I’d rather be your chief craftsman, in charge of building your great hall, like.”
“Truly, the one we’ve got now is rather drafty.” She waved one arm, round at the scenery. “Let me see, who’ll be councillor. Well, it can’t be Rhodry, because he’s daft. I know—I need a sorcerer! An aged sorcerer like in the tales. Aren’t there tales like that? About marvelous dweomermasters who turn up just when you need them?”
Otho turned a little pale, She could have sworn that he was terrified, but she couldn’t imagine why. Suddenly troubled herself, she looked up at the sky.
“Do you see that bird circling up there?” She pointed to a distant black shape. “Is it a raven?”
“Looks like it. Why?”
“I’ve been seeing it all morning, that’s all. Oh, I’m just being silly. Of course there’s lots of ravens . . . ” She let her voice trail away, because Otho was staring up, shading his deep-pouched eyes with one hand, and within the welter of dirty beard his mouth was set and grim.
“What’s so wrong?” Rhodry strolled over, a chunk of cheese in his hand.
“Maybe naught,” Otho said. “But that’s one blasted big raven, isn’t it?”
Just as he spoke, the bird broke and flew, flapping with a harsh cry off to the west, just as if it knew it had been spotted. Otho tossed his head to shake the sun from his eyes.
“You a good hand with a hunting bow, silver dagger? You’re the one who used to ride with the Westfolk.”
“True spoken, and my heart yearns for a longbow now.”
Suddenly cold, Carra stood up just as Nedd and Yraen hurried over. “Was there somewhat strange about that raven?” she said.
“Maybe. You’ve got sharp eyes, lass, and I think me you’re going to need them.”
“Wow, wait.” Yraen sounded exasperated. “A bird’s a bird, big or not.”
“Unless it’s a sorcerer.” Rhodry grinned at him. “What would you say if I told you that some dweomermen can turn themselves into birds and fly?”
“I’d say that you were even dafter than I thought.”
“Then I won’t tell you. It’s still not too late for you to go back.”
“Will you hold your tongue about that?”
“Well and good, then, because you’ve been warned three times now, and that’s all that the laws and the gods can ask of me.”
That afternoon, when they rode on north, Carra kept a nervous watch for the raven, but she saw only normal birds of several kinds, flying about on some avian business. Every time she saw a raven or a crow, she would tell herself that Rhodry’s talk of shape-changers was his madness speaking at worst or some daft jest at best.
The land kept rising, and the road turned snaky, winding through the low places and crossing a couple of small streams. Just at sunset they topped a low rise and saw, some two or three miles ahead, a wild forest spreading out across hill and valley. Between them and the verge, as dark as shadows, stood a village huddling behind a staked palisade. Yraen muttered something foul under his breath.
“Don’t like the looks of that, Rhodry. That wall’s new built.”
“So it is. We’d best hurry before they shut us out for the night.”
In spite of the fortifications, the village was hospitable enough. Although Carra was expecting the farmers to stare at Otho or at least comment on his small stature, they acted as if he were nothing out of the ordinary at all. The blacksmith let them stable their horses in his shed, and a farm wife was glad to feed them for a few coppers and let them sleep in her hayloft for a couple more. Half the village crowded into her house to talk to the strangers, too, and warn them.
“Bandits on the roads,” said the blacksmith. “Never had bandits round here before. We sent a lad off to Gwerbret Cadmar to beg for help, and his grace sent word back that he was trying his best to wipe the scum out. Told us we’d better put up some kind of wall until he did.”
“Sounds like we might find a hire in Cengarn,” Rhodry said. “He might need extra men.”
“Most like.” The blacksmith paused, looking Carra over. “What are you doing on the roads, lass?”
Carra opened her mouth to blurt the truth, but Rhodry got in first.
“She rides with me,” he snarled, and quite believably. “Anything wrong with that?”
“Since I’m not her father, I don’t have a word to say about it, lad. Now let’s not have any trouble, like.”
“Save it for the bandits, Rhodry,” Yraen put in with a sigh. “How wide is the forest, anyway? Traveling from south to north, I mean.”
“Oh, let’s see.” The blacksmith rubbed his chin. “I’ve never been north, myself. But it stretches a fair ways. Then you come to some more farming country, and then forest again. Cengarn’s right up in the hills. Lot of trade comes through Cengarn.”
“Trade?” Carra said, startled. “With the Westfolk?”
“Them, too, lass.” The blacksmith gave Otho a conspiratorial wink. “I take it she’s never ridden our way before. I think the lass is in for a surprise or two.”
The hayloft turned out to be quite big enough for all of them, though Nedd insisted on piling up a barrier of hay to give Carra a bit of privacy in one curve of the wall. Before she went to this improvised bower, she asked Rhodry outright why he’d lied to the blacksmith.
“Because the truth could be dangerous, that’s why. Bandits have been known to hold important people for ransom.”
“Important . . . ”
“Carra, believe me. The Westfolk would hand over every fine horse they own to ransom Dar’s wife and heir, to say naught of that bit of jewelry you’re carrying. From now on, just pretend you ran off with me. It’s perfectly believable.”
“The vanity of the man!” Otho said. “But women do stupid things sometimes, sure enough.”
“And men are the soul of tact?” Carra snapped.
“It’s not like you really did run off with Rhodry. This man of yours couldn’t be any worse, even if he is an elf.”
Lightning picked up her mood and growled. At the sound Thunder swung his head around and bared teeth.
“My apologies,” Otho said, and quickly. “No offense meant.”
Carra decided that as men at arms went, the dogs had much to recommend them.
In the morning, when they rode out, Rhodry and Yraen held a last conference with the blacksmith, then decided to wear the mail shirts they’d been carrying in their saddlebags. Much to Carra’s surprise, Otho produced one as well. As they followed the road into the forest, Nedd put the dogs on alert with a few hand signals; their noses would provide the best warning they could have against possible ambushes. Although she tried to keep her courage up, a few hours of this dangerous riding brought Carra an acute case of nerves. Every flicker of movement in the underbrush, every ripple of wind in the trees, every distant crack of a twig or hammer of a woodpecker, made her flinch.
Rhodry and Yraen rode in silence, as alert as the dogs. When they finally came clear of the forest, just after noon, she offered up a prayer of thanks to the Goddess. Yet, paradoxically enough, it was out in the open farmlands that the reality of their danger struck her like a blow across the face. Thanks to heavy cutting by the locals, the trees ended in a welter of stumps just at the edge of a broad valley. As they jogged their horses out into the open air, the dogs growled and threw up their heads to sniff the sudden gust of burning that greeted them. When Carra looked up, she could see a lazy drift of smoke, yellowing the sky. Circling up high flew the raven. Yraen swore—he’d seen it, too. Rhodry, oddly enough, started singing, just a few lines of some looping melody in the language of the Westfolk.
“Would that I had my good yew bow to speed an arrow to your lying heart,” he translated. “So your blood could water the tree of my revenge—but that bit isn’t really to the point, being as that cursed bird hasn’t done anything to us yet. I suspect it of having plans. What do you think, Otho?”
“I think we should turn back, that’s what.”
The raven headed off west and disappeared into the bright sun beyond the smoke.
“Normally I’d agree, but there’s a farmstead burning over there.” Rhodry rose in his stirrups and squinted across the valley. “Somebody might be still alive.”
But the gods weren’t so kind as that. At a fast jog they cut across the fields, the dogs racing to keep up, and reached the farmstead to find the fire burning itself out in a smolder of smoking thatch and glowing embers. Just at the road lay the corpse of a woman, her head half cut from her shoulders, in a blackening pool of blood. She lay on her back, her arms thrown akimbo, her stomach swollen with a late pregnancy.
“Get back!” Rhodry turned in his saddle and yelled at Carra. “Get back with the dogs!”
She wheeled her horse around, but it was too late. Mixed with the smoke hung a sweet scent, much too much like burnt meat. She pulled Gwerlas up after a few lengths, dismounted as fast as she could, and vomited into the long grass. Sick, cold, and shaking, she wiped her mouth on a pull of grass and got up, staggering back to her horse, just as the two dogs reached her. Whining, they crowded close. She let her hands rest on their necks while she stared at the sky and resolutely tried to put the sight of the murdered woman out of her mind. It was impossible.
“There, there, lass.” It was Otho, and his voice was full of soft concern. “You’ll come right in a moment.”
When she tried to answer the words stuck like lumps of vomit in her throat. Finally she decided that she’d have to face what needed facing and turned to look at the distant village. She could just see Rhodry and Yraen circling round the burning, with Nedd close behind them. She realized suddenly that if there were trapped survivors, the dogs would find them. She snapped her fingers and pointed.
“Nedd. Go to Nedd.”
They bounded off.
“Oh, well,” Carra went on. “It’s still better than marrying Lord Scraev. I’ll tell you about him sometime, Otho. You’ll laugh and laugh.”
Her voice sounded so weak and shaky to her own ears that she nearly wept. Otho laid a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tears help, lass.”
“I can’t weep. I’m a queen now. Sort of, anyway. The queens in all the old tales face this sort of thing with proud sneers or maybe a supernatural calm. Like what’s-her-name, King Maryn’s wife, when her enemies were accusing her of adultery and stuff.”
Otho’s face turned pale and oddly blank.
“Haven’t you heard that old story? Bellyra, that was it, and she stared them ail down till her witness could get there and keep them from killing her.”
“Many a time and from many a bard.”
“You know, he was a smith like you, wasn’t he? I think that’s the way the tale ran. He was her jeweler or suchlike.” Carra forced a smile. “And she wasn’t killed, and so I’ll just take that as a good omen.”
“Now listen, lass, things look dark. I won’t lie to you. But for all that I love to slang him, Rhodry ap Devaberiel’s the best swordsman in this kingdom and points beyond as well, and young Yraen’s his match. We’ll get you through to Cengarn.”
“Shouldn’t we turn back?”
“Well, the raiders left plenty of tracks. Didn’t seem to see any reason why they should cover them, like, the arrogant bastards. I’d say they’re heading south right now. No use in riding after them, is there?”
“Oh, Goddess, I wish Dar were here! I . . . hold a bit. Did you say that Rhodry’s father is one of the Westfolk? I mean, with that name—”
“He couldn’t be anything but an elf, truly. That’s what I said, all right, but I’m not saying another word about it. Rhodry’s affair, not mine.”
In a few minutes the other men, came back, Rhodry and Yraen grim, shaking their heads, Nedd dead-pale and sweating, the dogs slinking, all limp tails and ears., When they reached the body of the dead woman, Rhodry sent the others on ahead, then knelt down beside it. Carra turned her back on him and took a deep gulp of air.
“Are there more people dead?” she said, to Yraen.
“There are. Not one thing we can do for the poor bastards. Three dead men, one lad of maybe fifteen. That woman we saw first. And the child she was carrying, of course.”
“That’s all? I mean, a farm this big—usually there’s a couple of families. working it.”
“I know.” Yraen, muttered something foul under his breath before he went on. “I wonder if these bandits maybe took the other women and the children with them.”
“We’re not close enough to the coast for that.” Rhodry joined them. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What?” Carra broke in. “What are you talking about?”
“Slaves for the Bardek trade. But the bandits would have to get them all the way down to the sea, avoiding the Westfolk and Deverry men alike on the way. Can’t see them bothering.”
“Well.” Yraen rubbed the side of his face with a gauntleted hand. “They might have wanted the women for—”
“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry hit him on the shoulder. “Look what I found in the dead woman’s fingers. She must have grabbed her attacker or suchlike.”
He held out a tuft of straw-colored hair, each coarse strand about a foot long.
“Looks like horse hair to me,” Yraen said.
Nedd sniffed it, then shook his head in a vigorous no.
“There weren’t any hoofprints anywhere near her, but there were boot prints, so I think I’ll side with Nedd.” Rhodry rubbed the strands between thumb and forefinger. “The fellow might have packed his hair with lime, like the High King does—the old Dawntime way, I mean. It makes your hair turn to straw like this.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’ve been close enough to the king to tell,” Yraen muttered.
Rhodry flashed a brief grin, shot through with weariness.
“Let’s get out of here.” Nedd spoke so rarely that all of them jumped and swirled round to face him. Although he was still pale, his mouth was set in a tight line, and his eyes burned with an expression that Carra could only call fierce. “Tell the gwerbret. We’ve got to.”
“So we should.” Rhodry glanced at Otho. “Looks like they headed south, anyway.”
“So I told our lady. Can’t turn back.”
“I’m on for the ride.” Carra thought of ancient queens and forced her voice steady. “I say we get to the gwerbret as fast as ever we can.”
“Done, then.” Rhodry looked up with a toss of his head. “Nedd, can you and Carra each carry one of the dogs? You can sung them over the front of your saddles, if they’ll allow it.”
Nedd nodded his head to indicate that they would.
“Good. We want to make speed.”
That night when they camped, Rhodry and Yraen set a guard with the dogs to help them. It became their pattern: rise early, tend the horses, then ride hard all day, making a late camp and a guarded one, especially once they reached the second stretch of forest, where no one slept much. The dogs were especially nervous, whining and growling, turning their heads this way and that as they rode, When they were allowed down they would trot round and round the horses and look up, every now and then, to growl or bark at the sky. Carra wondered if the raven were following them, somewhere above the sheltering trees. As they traveled steadily north, the land kept rising, and it turned rocky, too, with huge boulders pushing their way through the earth and stunting the black and twisted pines. The muddy track they were following wound and switched back and. forth through the jagged hills until Carra wondered if they’d ever reach Cengarn.
Finally, though, on the third day after they’d found the ravaged village, they reached a road made of felled trees, trimmed into logs and half-buried, side by side in the dirt. At its abrupt beginning stood a stone marker carved with a sunburst and a couple of lines of lettering. Carra was surprised to learn that Rhodry could read.
“Well, we’re not far now, twenty miles from Cadmar’s city.” He laid one finger on the carved sun. “This is his device.”
The country here was broken, tableland. On the flat the pine forest grew all tangled round with ancient underbrush, like a hedge on either side of the road, only to break suddenly and tumble down a small gulch in a spill of green to reveal huge boulders, heaped and tumbled like a giant’s toys. When the sunlight was falling in long and dusty-gold slants through the trees, the road flattened out and straightened. As they traveled along at a steady walk, Carra heard a distant noise ahead of them, went stiff with fear, then realized that it was the sound of a river, racing and tumbling over rock, As the road snaked west, at the end of a leafy tunnel they could see both the river and a blessed token that some kind of human presence lay close at hand. On either side the riverbank had been cleared of trees and underbrush; the rocks out in the water itself had been hauled around and arranged to floor a level if deep-looking ford. But while they were still in the forest’s shelter, Rhodry threw up his hand for a halt.
“What’s wrong?” Carra said. “Can’t we camp here? I’d be so glad to see the sky.”
All at once the dogs began growling and squirming so badly that neither Carra nor Nedd could keep them on the saddle. They slithered down and rushed to the head of the line, bristling and snarling on the edge of barks. At their signal Rhodry began yelling at Carra and Nedd to get back into the forest. In a swirl of confusion they did just that, but as Carra looked up reflexively at the sky, she saw the raven flap away. Whistling and yelling, Nedd got the dogs to come to him, but they kept growling. Up ahead Rhodry, Yraen, and Otho peered across the river into the forest on the other side. Nothing moved. It was dead-silent, not the chirp of a bird, not the rustle of a squirrel.
“Ill-omened places, fords,” Yraen remarked.
“So they are.” Rhodry rose in the stirrups and stared as if he were counting every distant tree, “Think there’s someone waiting on the other side?”
“The dogs think there is,” Otho put in. “I say we ride upstream.”
“Upstream?” Yraen said. “What’s upstream?”
“Naught, I suppose. So they won’t expect us to go that way.”
Rhodry laughed, a little mutter under his breath like a ferret’s chortle. Carra went ice-cold. She was going to die. She realized it all at once with a calm clarity: what waited for them across that river was death, and there was no escaping it. They couldn’t go back, they couldn’t go forward, they might as well cross over to the Otherlands and be done with it. Although she tried to tell the rest of them, when she opened her mouth she simply couldn’t speak. Not so much as a gasp came out.
“Well spoken, Otho my old friend,” Rhodry said at last. “Let’s give it a try. See those boulders up there a ways? Shelter of a sort. But we’d best dismount, I think.”
Since the trees thinned out toward the clearing’s edge they could lead their horses, single file without leaving this imperfect shelter, but they couldn’t do it without cracking branches and snapping twigs and setting the underbrush rustling. Alter some twenty yards the dogs began growling and snarling, anyway, no matter how Nedd tried to hush them.
“They know we’re here,” Rhodry said to him finally. “Don’t trouble yourself about it. But there can’t be a lot of them or they’d have rushed us already.” He pointed across the river. “Look.”
In among the trees at the far side of the clearing on the opposite bank someone or something was moving to follow them, some three or maybe four shapes, roughly man-shaped, that slipped along when they moved and stopped again when they halted.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “You and Nedd take Carra into the trees. We won’t fool them, but maybe—”
Carra never learned what he intended. Pressed beyond canine endurance, Thunder suddenly began to bark, then bounded away and raced straight for the river before Nedd could grab him. Just as he burst free of the trees something flashed and hissed in the air: an arrow. Carra flung herself on Lightning to hold him back and screamed as the arrow struck Thunder in the side. Another followed, another, catching him, throwing him to the ground—pinning him to the ground, but still alive he writhed and howled in agony. The horses began to dance and toss their heads in terror. Dead-silent as always Nedd ran.
“Don’t!” Rhodry and Yraen screamed it together.
Too late. Nedd reached the dog, flung himself down beside the dying Thunder just as another flight came hissing down, bright death catching the fading sunlight. He never screamed, merely jerked this way and that while the long shafts struck until at last he and Thunder both lay still, the dog cradled in his arms, in the middle of a spreading pool of blood. Carra felt herself sobbing and choking, but in an oddly distant way, as if she stood beside herself and watched this girl named Carra howl and retch until she could barely breathe. Just as distantly she was aware of horses neighing and men cursing and shouting, then the sound of some large animal crashing through the underbrush. All at once Otho grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand and. Lightning’s collar by the other.
“Move!” he howled. “Run, lass!”
For such a small man he was terrifyingly strong. Half dragged, half stumbling, Carra got herself and the dog into the hollow among the rocks and fell, half spraddled across the whining, growling Lightning. Otho threw himself down beside her. He was cursing a steady stream in some language she’d never heard before.
“Rhodry, Yraen?” she gasped out.
“Right here.” Rhodry hunkered down beside her. “Hush, lass. They won’t come for us here.”
Her tears stopped of their own accord, leaving her face sticky and filthy both. She wiped it best she could on her equally filthy sleeve, then looked around her. In that last panicked dash they had reached the cluster of boulders and what shelter they were going to find. The river ran too deep to cross some yards off to the north; the forest grew thick and tangled to the south; the rocks rose up and melded with a cliff to the west behind them. Ahead and east, they had a clear view of the ford, some distance away, and the dark shape sprawled in the gathering shadows that had once been Nedd and Thunder.
“They can’t get round back here without the dog letting us know.” It was Yraen, sliding down the rocks behind them. “And they won’t get a clear aim to skewer us in here, and we can see them coming if they rush us. Couldn’t have been more than ten of them, Rhodry. If they try to squirm in here, on this broken ground, we’ll drop them easy.”
“True spoken. Think we can hold off a small army? We might have to. I’ll wager they’re on their way to fetch a few friends.”
“Or one or two of them are. I’d say they left a squad behind, some archers, too, in case we take it into our heads, like, to try to cross the river. Huh. Told you there was somewhat wrong with that cursed ford, didn’t I?”
“Did I argue with you?”
By then Carra was too spent to be frightened. She leaned back against a rock and looked straight in front of her with eyes that barely saw.
”Is there any water?” she whispered.
“There’s not,” Otho said. “Nor food, either. The horses bolted.”
“Ah, I see. We’re still going to die, aren’t we?”
No one said a word.
“I only mind because of the baby, really.” She needed, suddenly, to make them understand. “It seems so unfair to the poor little thing. It never had a chance to live and now it’s going to die. I mean, when it comes to me, I might have died in childbirth anyway, and this is still better than Lord Scraev, but—”
“Hush, my lady!” The words sounded as if someone were tearing them out of Otho under torture. “Ah, ye gods! Forgive me, that ever I should let this happen to you!”
“It’s not as if you had any choice in the matter.” Carra laid a hand on his arm.
She was shocked to see tears in his eyes. He wiped them vigorously with both hands before he went on.
“As soon as it’s dark, I’m going to try creeping through the forest a ways. We can move quiet when we want to, my people. The way those horses were tearing through the brush, a saddlebag or two might have gotten itself pulled free.”
“And if there’s someone out there?” Yraen said. “Waiting for one of us to try just that?”
Otho merely shrugged. Rhodry was examining the leather pouch he carried at his belt.
“This should hold a little water.” He dumped the coins in a long jingle onto the ground. “I think I can reach the river and get back again. I hate to think of our lady going thirsty.”
“I’ll do it.” Otho snatched the pouch from him. “You need to be here. Just in case, like.”
In the gathering dusk Otho slipped off, moving silent and surefooted around the rocks. In a few moments, though, they heard him chuckle.
“My lady, come here,” he called. “I think you can squeeze through, and there’s a nice little stream, there is. Bring the dog, too.”
Sure enough, by sliding and cramming herself between two massive boulders, Carra popped out into a flatfish opening big enough for her to crouch and Otho to stand upright, where a trickle of water ran down one rock, pooled, then disappeared under an overhang in the general direction of the river. She flung herself down and drank as greedily as the dog beside her, then washed her face. Otho was looking round with a grin of triumph on his face.
“When they come for us, my lady, you can hide in here. We’ll draw them off, down toward the ford, say. Once all the shouting’s over, you’ll have a chance to make your way north to the gwerbret. Not much of a chance, but better than none. If we tie that blasted dog’s mouth shut, we can hide him, too, and you’ll have company, like, on your journey. I’ll die easier, knowing that. Think of the child, my lady. It’ll keep you strong.”
“I am. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Yet with the hope fear returned and a grief sharper than any she’d ever known. Otho, Yraen, Rhodry—all dead for her sake? As Nedd already was. Lightning whined, pushing into her lap, reaching up to lick her face and whimper over and over again. She threw her arms around his neck and would have cried, but all her tears were spent.
“Come now, lass, come now.” Otho’s voice was very soft. “I was only going home to die, anyway, and Rhodry loves death more than he ever loved life, and well, I’m sorry for Yraen, not that you’d best ever tell him that, but then, he made his choice when he took to the long road, and who can argue with Wyrd, anyway, eh? Come now, hush. We’ll take them some water and tell them what we’ve found.”
By then a gibbous moon was rising, silvering the river, picking out Nedd’s body and the gleam of arrows lying on the grass. Although Carra wished with all her heart that they could bury him and Thunder, too, it seemed too trivial to mention to men who would doubtless lie dead and unburied themselves in the morning. She sat with her back to one of the boulders and stared fixedly in the opposite direction while Otho went back and forth fetching pouches of water for the two silver daggers. All at once she realized that her body had a thing or two that needed attending to, and urgently. Ever since she’d gotten pregnant, it seemed, when she needed to relieve herself there was simply no arguing about it. She got up and slipped away, keeping to the safe shelter of the boulders and broken terrain, to find a private spot.
When she was done she walked a few steps toward the forest and stood looking into the silver-touched shadows. For miles and miles the trees stretched, hiding enemies, maybe, or maybe promising safety. She wondered how far away the rest of the bandits were, and how fast their advance scouts would reach them. They won’t attack till dawn, she thought. We’ve got that long. Out in the shadows something moved. Her heart thudded, stuck cold in her chest; her hands clenched so hard her nails dug into her palms. It seemed that a bird, a strange silvery bird with enormous wings, dropped from the sky and settled deep among the trees.
A trick of moonlight—it had to be a thrown shadow and naught more—but a branch rustled, a tree shivered. Something snapped and stamped. Carra wanted to run, knew she should run, tried to call out, but she was frozen there, ice-cold and stone-still, as something—no, someone—made its way, made his way through the trees—no, her way. A silver-haired woman, wearing men’s clothing but too graceful and slender to be a man, stepped out into the clearing. She carried a rough cloth sack in one hand, and at her belt gleamed the pommel of a silver dagger.
“I’m a friend. Where’s Rhodry?”
Carra could only raise a hand and gesture mutely toward the boulders. As she led the way back, she could hear the woman following, but she was afraid to turn round and look behind lest the woman disappear. All Rhodry’s talk of shape-changers rushed back to her mind and hovered like a bird, half-seen in moonlight.
In among the broken rocks they found the men sitting in a circle, heads together, talking in low voices about the coming battle, if one could call it that. Carra suddenly realized that she could see them clearly, could pick out the expressions on their faces as they looked up startled. Only then did she realize that the woman gave off a faint silver light, hovering round her like scent.
“Jill!” Rhodry leapt to his feet and stepped back as if in fear. “Jill. I—ye gods! Jill!”
“That’s the name my father gave me, sure enough. Come along, all of you! We’ve got to get out of here and right now.”
“But those guards, they’ve got archers . . . ” Yraen let his voice trail away.
“Who no longer matter at all.” Jill glanced Otho’s way. “Hurry! Get up!”
Lightning sprang up at the command and Otho followed more slowly, grumbling to himself.
“Good.” Jill glanced her way. “You’ve got guts, lass. You are Carramaena, aren’t you?”
“I am. But how did—”
“Someone told me. No time to explain. Let’s get out of here. I can’t deal with a whole pack of raiders, and they’re on their way. Rhodry, get up here with me. Yraen, take the rear guard with Carra. Otho, keep a hand on that dog’s collar, will you? I don’t want him bolting.”
As they picked their way through the broken rocks and headed downstream toward the ford, Jill pulled a little ahead. Carra could see her looking around, frowning every now and then and biting her lower lip as a person will when they’re trying to remember something. Daft though this exercise seemed, Carra could pay no attention, because they were walking straight toward the ford where Nedd and Thunder lay. She could hear Lightning whining and Otho’s reassuring whisper, and she clung to the sound as if to someone’s hand. When they reached the bodies, she turned her head away and stared across the river. Something was moving among the trees. Even in the poor light she—they all—could see the underbrush shaking at the approach of someone or something.
“Keep walking,” Jill snapped. “You have to trust me. Keep walking straight ahead.”
No one hesitated, everyone moved, striding forward even though Carra suspected that they were all waiting for the hiss of an arrow, flying them their deaths. They walked a few feet, and a few more, and on and on, until Carra suddenly realized that they should have been wading right into the water instead of walking on dry land. All around her trees towered. The men began to swear in a string of foul curses.
“By every god!” Yraen snarled. “How did you manage that?”
“None of your cursed affair, silver dagger,” Otho broke in. “We’re across, aren’t we? That’s all that matters, and I for one am not going to be flapping my lips at a dweomerwoman.”
Only then did Carra realize that the river lay behind them—far behind them, out of sight, in fact. All she could hear was the merest rustle and murmur of distant water flowing over rock.
“Our friends can wait in ambuscade all they like,” Jill remarked. “And poke around in the rocks as if they were hunting badgers, too, when the dawn rises, but we’d best be on our way.”
Carra turned for one last look back.
“Farewell, Nedd, and it aches my heart to lose you. I only wish I could build you a cairn.”
“Nicely spoken.” Rhodry laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “But truly, I doubt me if it matters to his soul, and the gods all know that we might be seeing him in the Otherlands soon enough.”
With Jill hissing at them to hurry, they headed into the forest, picking their way along a deer track that ran east and downstream. In the middle of the line of march Carra stumbled along, shivering and exhausted, praying to the Goddess every now and then to keep the unborn baby safe, for what seemed like hours, though when they finally stopped she realized that the moon was still riding close to zenith. There in a clearing stood all their horses, their gear still intact, even Nedd’s.
“How did you . . . ” Rhodry said.
“The Wildfolk collected them,” Jill interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “And brought them round by the other ford.”
Carra giggled, thinking she was having a jest on them.
“And how did you find us?” Rhodry went on.
“There’s no time for talk now. Listen, you’re going to have to ride as fast as these poor beasts can carry you. I can’t just take you to the city, because of the way time would run all wrong. You need to arrive straightaway, not weeks from now, you see.”
Carra didn’t see, and she was willing to wager that none of the others did, either, but oddly enough, not one question got itself asked.
“Follow the river back to the road, and then make all the speed you can,” Jill went on, “The forest peters out about ten miles north of the river, and then you come to farming country, and finally to the gwerbret’s town. I wish to all the gods that you’d been coming from the east. You’d have been safe, then—it’s settled country all the way.”
“My humble apologies, my fair sorceress.” Rhodry made her a mocking sort of bow. “But if you’d been good enough to appear and warn us that we’d be set upon by bandits, I’d have—”
“Not bandits. But there’s no time. Get to Gwerbret Cadmar. Tell him you met up with the raiders, and tell him you’re a friend of mine.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Otho broke in.
“Not exactly.” She allowed herself a brief smile. “But I’ll be there soon enough.”
Carra remembered the bird, dropping gracefully from the silver sky, and shuddered.
“My lady, you must be half-frozen,” Otho said. “Let me get your cloak.”
Once she was mounted and wrapped in the heavy wool cloth, Carra turned to say farewell to Jill only to find her already gone, slipped off into the forest, apparently, when none of them were looking. But all during that long and miserable ride down the wooden road, Carra would look up every now and then to see or think she saw a bird-shape sailing in the moonlight, high above them as if it were on guard.
The rest of the ride as well crossed over into that mental land where everything could be either real or dream. At times she drowsed, once so dangerously that Otho woke her with a shout; he grabbed the reins from her and led her horse along after that. At other tunes she felt that she’d never been so wide-awake in her life. She would see some detail of the forest around them, a spill of moonlight on a branch, say, or a carved stone slab rising out of a clearing, so plainly and precisely that the image seemed burned into her consciousness to last forever. Yet, when she would try to place that image into a context, she would realize that she’d been half-asleep again and for miles.
Toward dawn they stumbled free of the forest to the relative safety of open and cultivated land, a roll of ripening wheat over long downs, striped green with pastures where white cows with rusty-red ears were lurching to their feet in the brightening sun. A few more miles brought them to a spiral of earthwork walls enclosing a round, thatched farmhouse. Much to Yraen’s surprise, Otho—Rhodry’s coin still lay in the dirt among the boulders—spent some of his precious coin to get a hot meal for them all. The farm wife, a stout woman missing half her teeth, clucked over Carra and brought her a steaming cup of herbed water.
“To warm your innards, like. You look to me like you need to sleep, lass.”
“I do, truly, but we’ve got to get to the gwerbret. On top of everything else, I’m with child, you see.”
“Well, may the Goddess bless you!” The woman smiled, all brown stumps but good humor. “Your first, is it?”
“It is. Well, if I don’t lose the poor little thing, anyway, or die myself or something.”
“Now, now, don’t you worry. I’ve had six myself, lass, and don’t you go listening to them ever-so-fine town ladies, moaning and groaning about how much pain they felt and all that. Why, no reason for it to be so bad, say I! My first one, now, he did give me a bit of trouble, but with our last, our Myla that is, I had her in the morning and was out digging turnips that night.”
Late that day, when the horses were stumbling weary and Carra herself so tired that she felt like sobbing aloud, they wound their way past one last farm and saw the rough stone walls of Cengarn, Gwerbret Cadmar’s city, circling round to enclose three hills. Above the walls, she could see roofs and towers climbing up the slopes; at the rocky crest of the highest hill a tall stone broch rose in a flutter of gold-colored pennants. As they rode up, they found a river flowing out through a stone arch, guarded by a portcullis in the walls. Although Rhodry and Yraen had been worrying about the sort of reception they’d get, at the city gates the guards hailed them with an urgent friendliness.
“Silver daggers, are you? Is that young woman with you her ladyship Carramaena of the Westlands?”
“Well, I’m, Carramaena, sure enough.” Carra urged her horse a link forward. “How do you know—”
“Your husband’s waiting for you up in the dun, my lady. Come along, if you please. I’ll escort you there straightaway.”
Although the men dismounted to spare the horses their weight on the steep slopes, Rhodry insisted that Carra ride whether Gwerlas was tired or no, and she was too exhausted, shivering with worry about her unborn child, to argue with him. As the guard led them along, she clung to the saddle peak with both hands and barely noticed the crowds of curious townsfolk who scurried out of their way. Their route took them round and about, looping round half the town it seemed, yet always leading them higher and higher, up to the gwerbret’s dun.
Even though it was a rough sort of place at that time, Cengarn was already the strangest city in all Deverry, as much green with trees and gardens as gray with stone. At first glance the round, thatched houses, set randomly on curving streets, seemed ordinary enough, but here and there on the flanks of the steep hillsides little alleys led to huge wooden doors set right into the slopes themselves. Not only did the river, spanned by a dozen wooden bridges, wind through the valley between the hills, but right in the center of town a tiny waterfall cascaded down the steepest slope of all. Their escort pointed it out with a certain pride.
“There’s a spring up in the citadel,” he remarked. “Cursed handy thing for a siege.”
“And more than passing strange,” Rhodry said. “A spring at the top of a hill like that, I mean.”
The guard merely winked and grinned in a hint of secrets.
The dun itself was all carved stone and slate tiles, set behind a second rise of walls and gates of oak bound with iron. At the entrance to the main tower, Carra allowed Rhodry to help her dismount—in fact, she nearly fell into his arms. As she stood there, trying to collect her energy for the last little walk into the broch, she heard an elven voice yelling her name and looked up to see Dar, racing toward her with an escort of ten men of the Westfolk trailing after. In the sun his dark hair gleamed, flecked with bluish highlights like a raven’s wing. He never goes anywhere alone, was her muddled thought. I should have known he was a prince because of that.
Lightning leapt in between them and growled, tail rigid, ears flat.
“It’s all right.” Carra caught the dog’s attention and signaled him back to her side. “He’s a friend.”
Dar laughed, striding forward, throwing his arms tight around her, and she could think of nothing but him.
“Oh, my love, oh, my heart!” He was stammering and weeping and laughing in a vast confusion of feeling. “Thank the gods you’re safe. Thank the gods and the dweomer both! I’ve been such a dolt, such an imbecile! Can you ever forgive me?”
“What for?” She looked up, dazed by the flood of words, ensorcelled by warmth and safety.
“I never should have left you for a moment. I’ll never forgive myself for making you ride after me like this. I should have known your pig-faced Round-ear of a brother would try to marry you off.”
“Well, I didn’t let him. Please, Dar, I’ve got to sit down. Can’t I forgive you and all that later?”
He picked her up like a child and carried her toward the door, but she fell asleep in his arms long before he reached it.

As soon as Dar appeared in the doorway to the great hall with Carra in his arms and Lightning trotting faithfully behind, a flurry of womenfolk sprang up like a whirlwind and surrounded them, blew them away in a storm of practical chatter. Rhodry stood at the foot of the spiral staircase and watched Dar carry her up, the elven lad as surefooted as a goat on a sloped stone roof as he navigated the turns. After him went the women, the elderly serving women puffing and talking all in the same breath, the gwerbret’s lady giving calm orders.
“Silver dagger?” A page appeared at his elbow. “His grace wants to speak to you.”
“What about our horses?”
“Oh, the stable lad’s taken them already. Don’t worry. They’ll get plenty to eat and a good grooming. The gwerbret’s a truly generous man.”
To prove his point the page led them straight to the table of honor, where a serving lass brought them ale and a big basket of bread. While they were stuffing that in, a platter of cold roast pork appeared to go with it. Yraen and Otho ate steadily and fiercely, like men who wonder if they’ll ever eat as well again, but Rhodry, hungry though he was, picked at the food and sipped the ale sparingly. He was preternaturally awake, drawn as fine and sharp as a steel wire from his hunger and the danger of the night just past, and for a little while he wanted to stay that way. He slewed round on the bench and considered the circular great hall, the entire ground floor of the gwerbret’s broch. On one side, by a back door, stood enough tables for a warband of well over a hundred men; at the hearth, near the table of honor itself, were five more for guests and servitors. On the floor lay a carpet of fresh braided rushes. The walls and the enormous hearth were made of a pale tan stone, all beautifully worked and carved. Never had Rhodry seen a room with so much fine stonework, in fact: huge panels of interlacement edged the windows and were set into the walls alternately with roundels of spirals and fantastic animals, and an entire stone dragon embraced the hearth, its head resting on its paws, planted on the floor, its winged back forming the mantel, and its long tail curling down the other side.
“Nice bit of work, that,” Otho said with his mouth full.
“The dragon? It is. Did one of your people carve it?”
“No doubt.” Otho paused for a long swallow of ale. “Think our lady’s in safe hands?”
“I do. Jill told us to bring her here, didn’t she?”
“True. Huh. I suppose she knows what she’s doing.”
“Ye gods!” Yraen looked up from his steady feeding. “You suppose she knows . . . the woman’s a blasted sorcerer, isn’t she? Ye gods! Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Why should it be? The question is, is she a competent sorcerer?”
“After the way she carried us across the river, I’d say she is.”
“Well, maybe. Hum, you’ve got to realize that I’ve known her ever since she was a little lass, and it’s hard to believe that sweet little child’s up and grown into a—”
“Hold your tongues, both of you!” Rhodry broke in. “Here comes his grace.”
Even though he limped badly on a twisted right leg, Gwerbret Cadmar was an imposing man, standing well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands. His slate-gray hair and mustaches bristled; his face was weather-beaten and dark; his eyes gleamed a startling blue under heavy brows. As he sat down, he looked over Rhodry and Yraen for a moment, then turned to Otho.
“Good morrow, good sir, and welcome to my humble dun. I take it that you’re passing through on the way to your homeland.”
Yraen choked on his ale and sputtered.
“I am at that, Your Grace,” Otho said. “Bet I’ll beg your leave to spend a while in your town. I have to send letters to my kin, because I’ve been gone for many a long year now, and I’ve got no idea if I’m welcome or not.”
“A family matter, then?”
“It was, truly, and I’d prefer not to speak of it unless your grace requires me to do so.”
“Far be it from me to pry into the affairs of another man’s clan. But by all means, good sir, make yourself welcome in my town. No doubt you’ll find an inn to suit you while you wait.”
Yraen recovered himself and stared at Otho in an angry bafflement.
“Now, silver daggers,” the gwerbret went on. “I owe you thanks for bringing the lady Carramaena safely here. No doubt the prince will reward you with something a bit more useful than mere thanks.”
“Prince?” Yraen snapped. “Your Grace, you mean he really is a prince?”
“Of course he is.” Cadmar favored him with a brief smile, “And his good favor’s important to all of us here on the border, I might add. I don’t have the land to raise horses. No one does in these wretched hills. If the Westfolk didn’t come here to trade we’d all be walking to battle soon enough.”
“’One up for you, Rhodry. I’ll admit I didn’t believe you when you started talking about elven princes and suchlike.”
“Maybe it’ll teach you to listen to your betters. Your Grace, I’ve somewhat to tell you. One of the southern villages was destroyed by raiders, and we were nearly killed on the road here.”
All attention, the gwerbret leaned forward to listen as Rhodry told the tale of their ride north and the ambush by the ford. When it came to their escape, though, Rhodry hesitated, wondering how he was going to hide the dweomer in it.
“How did you get out of that little trap, silver dagger?”
“Well, Your Grace, this is the strangest bit of all, and I’ll beg your grace to believe me, because truly, if it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”
“Ah. Jill got you out of it, did she?”
It was Rhodry’s turn for the surprise. He stared open-mouthed, searching for words, while Cadmar laughed at him, a grim sort of mutter under his breath.
“She showed up here last fall, just in time to save this leg.” The gwerbret laid one hand on his twisted thigh. “The chirurgeon was going to cut it off, but our traveling herbwoman makes him stay his hand and then, by the gods! if she doesn’t go and cure the fever in the blood and set the thing in such a way as I can actually walk. Not well, truly, but it’s better than stumbling around on a wooden stump. And so needless to say, I was inclined to treat her generously. All she wanted was a little hut out in the wilderness, and I was more than glad to give her that and all the food she could eat and wood for warmth as well. She’s done many a fine thing for my folk over the winter. And of course, they all say she’s got the dweomer, and truly, I’ve seen enough now to believe it myself.”
“Well, Your Grace, I think she does, because she got us clear of the raiders and got us our horses back as well, and then she told us to come and tell you our tale. And so we have.”
Nodding a little, Cadmar leaned back in his chair and looked out over the hall. Off at their side his warband sat drinking in silence, straining to hear the story that these strangers were telling their lord.
“And did she say when she’d return to my dun?”
“She didn’t, Your Grace.”
“Imph, well.” Cadmar thought for a long moment. “Well, silver daggers, we’ll wait the day, at least. You need to sleep, and I’ve got to summon my vassals. Then we’re riding out after these bastards. Want a hire?”
“Never have I been so glad of one, Your Grace.”
“Me, too,” Yraen broke in. “I can still see that village in my mind, like, and that poor woman we found.”
“Pregnant, was she?” Cadmar turned to him.
“She was, Your Grace, and murdered.”
Cadmar winced.
“They’ve been doing that, you see. Killing the women with child. It’s almost as if . . . well, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if that’s why they’re here, to kill all the women carrying children. Every now and then one of the survivors heard things, you see. A lad who managed to hide under an overturned wagon told me he heard two of them say somewhat like: time to ride on, we’ve gotten all the breeding sows in this pen.”
Rhodry went sick cold, thinking of Carra.
“And who are they, Your Grace?” Yraen said.
“A band of marauders. Men like you and me, not Westfolk or dwarves, All the survivors have been clear as clear about that. They appeared last summer, started raiding the outlying farms. Bandits, think I, starving and desperate. We tried to track them down. That’s where I took this wound.” Reflexively he rubbed his thigh. “The bastards got away from us that time, but they didn’t come back. I thought I’d scared them off, but with the spring they showed up and worse than ever. I doubt me very much if they’re ordinary bandits. They’re too cursed clever, for one thing. And they’ve got good weapons, good armor, and they’ve been trained to fight as a unit.”
“Not bandits at all, then, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “They must have some kind of a leader. I don’t suppose any of the survivors got a look at him.”
“One or two think they might have. An enormously tall man, they say, all wrapped in a dark blue cloak with the hood well up, giving orders in an odd growl of a voice. All they saw clear like was his hands, huge hands with hair on the backs, and they swear up and down that he only had three fingers on each of them.”
Some fragment of lore pricked in Rhodry’s mind and made his blood run cold. He was too tired to remember exactly why, but he somehow knew that those missing fingers meant something, meant a great deal, and none of it good.
“You’re dropping where you sit, silver daggers,” Cadmar said with a grin. He hauled himself to his feet and motioned toward his warband. “Maen, Dwic, get over here. Find these silver daggers bunks and some clean blankets.” He turned to Otho. “Good sir, would you care for an escort into town?”
“If you could spare a lad to show me the way to an inn, Your Grace, I’d be grateful.”
Yraen stared goggle-eyed as a page appeared to play servant to the dwarf and lead him away. At the door Otho turned and honored them with a cheery wave. It was the first time Rhodry had ever seen him grin.
“Well, I never!” Yraen hissed. “By all the gods and a rat’s ass, too!”
“I told you that anyone rich enough to hire us must be some sort of a personage, didn’t I now?”
Yraen was in for one more surprise. As they were leaving the hall, they passed the table where Daralanteriel’s escort was sitting, though Dar himself seemed to be lingering with his lady upstairs. At the sight of Rhodry all of the men leapt up, yelling his name, mobbing him round, slapping him on his back, and talking as fast as they could and all in Elvish. Rhodry answered in the same; as tired as he was, he was near to tears just from hearing that musical tongue again.
“And Calonderiel,” he said at length. “How is he?”
“As mean and stubborn as ever,” one of the archers said, grinning. “If he’d known you were on your way here, he’d have ridden east with us, I’m sure.”
Rhodry started to make some jest, then saw Yraen, watching all of this with his mouth hanging open. The gwerbret’s man seemed more than a little surprised himself.
“I’d best go,” Rhodry said to the archers. “I’ll come drink with you all later.”
When Rhodry extricated himself and rejoined him, Yraen started to speak, then merely shrugged and looked heavenward, as if reproaching the gods.
“Well, come along, then,” Rhodry said. “No use in just standing here, is there? Let’s go see what our new lord’s barracks are like.”
Quite decent, as it turned out. Made of good oak and freshly whitewashed, the barracks stood on top of the stables and up against the dun wall in the usual style. The bunks were solid, the mattresses new, and Maen issued them both good quality blankets.
“The gwerbret must be a grand man to ride for,” Rhodry said. “If he’ll treat a silver dagger this well.”
“He is.” Maen, a pale slip of a lad, stood for a moment looking them over. “Well, we need every man we can get now.”
Yraen growled under his breath, but Rhodry stepped in front of him.
“Thanks for your help. We’ll just be getting some sleep.”
Maen shrugged and slouched out of the room. Yraen ostentatiously spit onto the straw-strewn floor.
“I always warned you about the long road, didn’t I?” Rhodry suddenly yawned and flopped down on the edge of his bunk to pull off his boots. “Ye gods, I just realized somewhat. Otho never paid us.”
“Little bastard! Well, we’ll have it out of his pockets or his hide. Either one’s fine with me. Rhodry, those men. The prince’s escort, I mean. Uh, they’re not human, are they.”
It was not a question.
“They’re not, truly. Do you remember years and years ago, when we first met, and we talked one night about seeing things that weren’t there?”
“And Mael the Seer’s book, and the way he was always mentioning elves. I do. It aches my heart to admit it, but I do.”
“Well, then, I don’t need to say a cursed lot more, do I now?”
Yraen merely sighed for a no and busied himself with making up his bunk. Rhodry lay down, wrapped himself in his blankets, and fell asleep before he even heard Yraen start snoring.
When he woke, the barracks were pitch-dark and empty, but Jill was sitting on the end of his bunk. Her he could see in the silver cloud clinging to her, an ever-shifting light that hinted of half-seen forms. He stifled a yelp of surprise and sat up.
“My apologies,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’d give any man a turn, seeing a woman he once loved and all that glowing like the moon. Ye gods, Jill, are you a ghost or suchlike?”
“Close to it.” She paused to smile at him. “But spirits from the Otherlands can’t set broken legs and suchlike, so you can lay your troubled heart to rest. I’m real enough. The light’s only the Wildfolk of Aethyr. I’m surprised you can’t see them. They’ve taken to following me around, and most times I don’t have the heart to shoo them away.”
“Well, I can see somewhat moving there, sure enough. It still creeps my flesh.”
Here he at last had the leisure to take a good look at her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s as usual, had gone perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, as he studied her, so that her eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak. It was as if her skin and blood and bone had all been replaced by some finer substance, some magical element halfway between glass and silver, say, or some sort of living silk.
“Have you been ill or suchlike?” Rhodry said.
“Very ill. In the islands it was, what they call the shaking fever. I’ve had it a number of times, now, and there’s no guarantee that I’m rid of it, either. They say that once it gets into your blood, it’s yours for life.”
“That aches my heart.”
“Not half as much as it aches mine.” She grinned with a flash of her old good humor. “I must look hideously old, I suppose.”
“You don’t look truly here. It’s like you’ve already left us for the Otherlands or suchlike.”
“In a way, perhaps, I have.”
“Ah. You know, you look like Nevyn used to. I mean, you’d think he was old, truly, and then he’d speak or do somewhat, and you’d know it no longer mattered in the least how old he was.”
She nodded, considering what he’d said,
“But here, where’s Yraen? And is the lass safe and well?”
“Safe, she is, and Labanria—that’s the gwerbret’s lady—tells me she’ll be back to her old self in a day or so. I was truly worried about that child she’s carrying, but the womenfolk say she’s not far enough along to lose it just from being tired and cold and suchlike. As for Yraen, he’s eating his dinner in the great hall. I came out to fetch you,”
Yawning and stretching, he found his boots and put them on.
“By the way, about Yraen,” he said. “Do you know who he really is?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“Some son of a noble house who went daft and ran off some years back, but I don’t know his real name, no.”
She laughed with a toss of her head,
“Well, then, maybe it’ll come back to you, sooner or later.”
“What? Are you telling me that I used to know him or suchlike?”
“Wel, not to say “know” him, not intimately or some such thing, You, weren’t in any position to make a friend out of him.”
“Jill, curse it all! I’m as sick, as I on be of dweomer riddles!”
“”Indeed? Then what do you want to know?”
“For a start, how did you know where I was?”
“I scried you out, of course. In the fire and water.”
Rhodry felt profoundly foolish.
“Ah, curse it! Let’s just go to the great hall. I want some ale, I do, and the darker the better.”
“What? No more answers?”
She was smiling as if she might be teasing him, daring him even, to ask her the questions that suddenly frightened him, no matter how badly he’d ached to know them before.
“Just one thing. Our Yraen? Does he have royal blood in his veins?”
“He does, at that, but he’s a long, long way from the throne, the youngest son of a youngest son, The kingdom won’t miss him. I’m glad you decided to pledge him to the silver dagger and let him follow his Wyrd.”
”I decided? Since when have I had one wretched chance at deciding anything, whether for me or some other man?”
“Well, that’s a fair complaint.” She laid a hand, as light as the touch of a bird’s wing, onto his arm. “You’ve been thrown about like a shipwrecked man at sea, haven’t you? But I think me that the land’s in sight at last. Let’s go join the others.” She stood up. “Cadmar’s having somewhat of a council of war, and I’ve told him he should include you in it. And you shouldn’t be sleeping out here in the barracks, either.”
“Why not? It’s good enough.”
“That’s not the point. I might need you to watch over Carra.”
“Oh, here! Dar’s with her and twenty fighting men as well.”
“But they haven’t seen the dweomer workings you have or lived through some of your battles, either. Rhoddo, don’t try to tell me that you haven’t realized there’s dweomer at work here.”
“Very well, then, I won’t, though I will say that I’d hoped I was wrong. Do you know what these raiders want?”
“I’ve got an idea, but I’m hoping it’s a wrong one. I’d like to think it was only gold and slaves, but I have my doubts.”
“They’re not trying to kill Carra, are they?”
Jill winced.
“Her child, actually. Someone’s threatened to, anyway.”
“Who? We should tell the gwerbret, and he can drag the culprit to justice.”
“This culprit lives where the gwerbret can’t ride, but I doubt if I can explain.”
“Ye gods, I’m sick of being treated like a simpleton!”
”My apologies, Rhoddo, but the sad truth of the thing is, I don’t understand it all myself. This being lives—well, wait, you’ve met Dallandra, and so you know a bit of it already. She has an enemy who—”
“Alshandra! Am I right? The Guardian who drove me from the grasslands.”
“The very one. She’s sworn to kill Carra.”
“Crazed, isn’t she? Alshandra, I mean. She scared the wits out of me, babbling of her daughter and saying someone was trying to steal her away.”
“Oddly enough, she was right. Carra and Dar have done just that, not that they meant to. But I don’t know if these raiders are connected with Alshandra, or just some other evil come upon the land. Until I find that out, it’s hard to know exactly what to do.”
“That makes sense. Can’t fight an enemy when you don’t know his resources and allegiances.”
“Exactly.” Jill laid her hand upon his arm. “I’m glad you’re here, I truly am. Great things are on the move. Carra’s Wyrd, your Wyrd—the Wyrd of the elven folk, too, maybe. I don’t know the all of it yet.”
“I see.” Not, of course, that he did. “Do you want to know another odd thing? That dog of Carra’s? Perryn gave him to her.”
Jill swore like a silver dagger under her breath.
“You know, that’s one of those little things that can mean a great deal, when you’re dealing with omens. So Perryn’s had a hand in this, has he?”
“Well, he sacrificed more than a dog, truly. That lad lying dead at the ford? That was his grandson. He was more than a bit simple, but it wrung my heart when he died.”
“No doubt.” Her voice turned sad. “Poor lad! Well, you’ll have your chance to avenge him on the morrow. Cadmar’s leading his men out with the dawn.”
“Good. If we strip the dun of men, will Carra be safe? Well, that’s no doubt a stupid question! Here we are, in the middle of a city.”
“Not stupid at all. That’s what I mean about your instincts, Rhoddo. True, an army couldn’t get at her here with the town gates shut, but a traitor might. I’m taking her to stay with Otho till the warband returns. Now, there she’ll be safe.” She hesitated briefly. “I don’t suppose you’d stay with her.”
“If you order me to, I will, but I want revenge, I do. For Nedd and those villagers both.”
She considered, straying to a stop in the dark ward. Ahead the broch loomed against the sky and spilled light out of its windows along with laughter and talk, a familiar scene, a familiar sound, yet with Jill there, Rhodry felt as if he’d walked through an invisible door into another world.
”Well, go with the gwerbret, then,” she said at last. “I want someone reliable to keep a watch over Dar, too. He’s bound and determined to take his men and ride with the warband, and I don’t much care to lose him, either.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye out for him. I must say I don’t mind having archers along. Come in cursed handy, they will, if we can find these swine.”
“Oh, I’ve set the Wildfolk looking for them, and I’ll be along, as well. We’ll find them. Don’t trouble your heart about that.”

About an hour before dawn, Carra was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing a pair of silk dresses that were a gift from the gwerbret’s lady, when Jill came to fetch her. Lightning thumped his tail in greeting as the older woman opened the door.
“You’re not all silver and glowy,” Carra said.
“So I’m not. That was beginning to be a bit of a nuisance, though sometimes it comes in handy, I must admit. How are you feeling?”
“Very well, actually. I’m still tired. I probably could have slept for days if her grace hadn’t woken me.”
“Most like. Carra, there’s somewhat I wanted to ask you, not that you have to answer, mind. How did you meet Dar?”
“At the horse market near my brother’s dun, well over a year ago it was now. He and his people rode in to trade, and I happened to be there with my brother. And he made this horrid jest—my brother, I mean, not Dar—he asked one of the Westfolk men if he’d take me in trade for a horse. And when my brother laughed, Dar came striding up and told him that he wouldn’t sell him the geldings he wanted. And my brother got mad as mad and swore at him, demanding to know why, like.” Carra grinned at the memory. “And Dar said that any man who’d be so cruel to his sister would probably beat his stock half to death. Which wasn’t true, mind. My brother’s a grand man round his horses. But anyway, later that day, when I was wandering round alone at the fair, Dar came up to me, and we got to talking.”
“Ah, I see.” Jill smiled briefly. “Love at first sight?”
“Oh, not at all. I was grateful to him, but he had to court me all summer before I fell in love with him. You see, Jill, he’s the first man I’ve ever met who wanted me, not my brother’s favor or some alliance. Of course, Lord Scraev was lusting after me, too, but he’s so awful, and the way his mouth smells!” She shuddered at the memory. “But even if my brother had found some decent man for my husband, he still would have asked about the dowry. I don’t think Dar even knows what a dowry is, and I doubt me if he’d care if he did.”
“I agree with you, truly. Trade you for a horse—the stinking gall! Well, now, it’s time we got on our way. Get your cloak. Otho should be waiting for us. I sent him a messenger last night.”
The great hall was filled with armed men, gobbling bread and downing a last tankard of ale while they stood or sat in quiet packs. Up at the table of honor the gwerbret and two noble lords —vassals, no doubt—were huddled together, squinting at a map by the leaping firelight. Dar detached himself from the group and came over, signaling to ten of his escort to follow. He favored Jill with a respectful bow.
“Good morning, my love,” he said to Carra. “I see you’ve got the dog with you. Good. He’ll be the best sentinel you and the dwarves can have.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Dar, you will be careful, won’t you? It’d break my heart to lose you, you know.”
He merely laughed, tossing his head, his hair as dark as Loc Drw in winter, and caught her by the shoulders to kiss her.
With Dar and his men for guards, they left the dun and hurried through the twisting streets of Cengarn. Here and there a crack of candlelight gleamed through wooden shutters, or firelight glittered in a hearth, half-seen through an open door, but mostly the town lay wrapped in its last hour of sleep before the gray dawn broke. They trotted downhill for a bit, then cut sideways through an alley between two roundhouses, panted uphill again, turned down and to the left past a little stream in a stone culvert, crossed a bridge and walked across a grassy common, soaked with dew. When Carra glanced uphill, she found the gwerbret’s dun much farther away than seemed possible and gave up trying to figure out their route. At last they came to a hillside so steep it was half a cliff. Set right into it, between two stunted little pines, stood a wooden door with big iron hinges. Otho was waiting with a candle-lantern.
“Come in, come in, my lady. It gladdens my heart to see you, and my thanks for taking our humble hospitality. Don’t you worry, Jill. No one’ll get near the lass with us to guard her.”
“I’ve no doubt of it, and my thanks to you.”
Carra gave Dar one last kiss, felt her eyes fill with tears, and clung to him, so reluctant to let him go that her heart sank with dread. All she could think was that the Goddess was giving her an omen of coming disaster.
“Please be careful, my love. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“As careful as I can be. I promise.” Gently yet firmly he pried himself free of her arms. “Here, I’ll have my own men with me, and Rhodry ap Devaberiel as well, and if somewhat happens to me in the middle of all of them, well, then, it’s my Wyrd and there’s not one blasted thing anyone can do about it.”
“I know.” She forced the tears back and made herself smile. “Then kill a lot of bandits, will you? I keep thinking about that poor woman.”
“I’ll promise you twice for that, my love. Farewell, and I’ll see you the moment we ride home.”
In the brightening dawn he strode off, his men trailing after, while she waved farewell and kept the smile on her face by sheer force of will as long as he might turn back and see. Otho cleared his throat, then blew out the candle in his lantern with a thrifty puff.
“We’d best be getting in. Town’s waking up.”
“Just so,” Jill said. “Very well, and, Carra, try not to worry. I’ll be traveling with the warband, you know.”
“I didn’t, and truly, that does gladden my heart.”
Jill strode off uphill, her tattered brown cloak swirling about her, and turned once to wave before she disappeared among the houses. Something drifted free of the cloth, a thing as pale as a moonbeam, and floated up in the rising wind. Without thinking Carra darted forward and snatched it: a silver-gray feather, about a foot long. She gaped at it while Otho muttered under his breath and Lightning whined, as if agreeing with the dwarf.
“My lady, we really must get in off this street.”
“Of course, Otho, my apologies. But this feather! It’s really true, isn’t it? She really can turn herself into a bird.”
“Well, so she can. You didn’t realize that? Humph, what are they teaching you young folk these days, anyway? Now let’s get inside where it’s safe.”
Carra tucked the feather into her kirtle, then hurried after him through the wooden door.
“Inside” turned out to be a tunnel, made of beautifully worked stone blocks, that led deep into the hill. Here and there on small ledges, about six feet from the ground, heaps of fungus in baskets gave off a bluish glow and lit their way. The air, startlingly cool, blew around them in fresh drafts. After a couple of hundred yards, they came at last to a round chamber, some fifty feet across, scattered with low tables and tiny benches round a central open hearth, where a low fire burned and a huge kettle hung from a pair of andirons and a crossbar. Automatically Carra glanced up and saw the smoke rising to a stone flue set in the ceiling, and there were a number of other vents up there, too, that seemed to be the sources of the fresh air. Three doorways in the walls opened to other tunnels leading deeper into the inn. At one of the tables, two men, a little shorter than Otho but younger, muscle-bound, and heavily armed, sat yawning and nodding over metal cups of some sort of drink.
“Everyone else is abed,” Otho said. “But I was tired enough when I finally got here yesterday to sleep the night away.”
He turned and spoke to the two men in still another language that Carra had never heard before. Both jumped up and bowed to her, then spoke in turn.
“They’re the guards for this watch, my lady. Just finishing their breakfast and all. Now, you have a seat over here by the wall. I’ll fetch you somewhat to eat.”
Next to a wooden chest, Carra found a wooden chair with a cushioned seat and a proper back, a low piece, but comfortable. With a canine sigh Lightning flopped down at her feet and laid his head on his front paws. Otho bustled at the hearth, came back with a bowl of porridge, laced with butter, and a hunk of bread, then bustled off again to fetch a tankard of milk sweetened with a little honey.
“Jill says you should be having plenty of milk, for the child, you see,” he said.
While Carra ate, Otho opened the chest beside her and pawed through it, finally bringing out a miscellaneous clutch of things—two oblong wooden trays, a sack that seemed to be filled with sand, some pointed sticks, a bone object that looked like a small comb—and arranged them on the table. The pale white river sand got itself poured into the trays; he used the comb to smooth it out as flat as parchment. With a stick he drew lines on one surface from corner to corner to divide the tray into four triangles. Then, on the outer edges, that is, the bottom of each triangle, he found the midpoint and connected those, overlaying a diamond on the triangles so that the entire surface divided itself into twelve.
“The lands of the map,” he announced. “This is how we dwarves get our omens, my lady, and if ever a man needed an omen or two, it’s me. See, each one is the true home of a metal. Number one here is iron, two copper, and so on. The fifth is gold, and that stands for a man’s art, whether it’s the working of stone or of metals, and nine is tin, for our religion, you see, because like tin the gods are cheap things more often than not.”
“Otho! What an awful thing to say!”
“Oh, you people can swear by your gods all you want, but it’s little good they do for you, for all your sacrificing and chanting and so on. But each land is the home of a metal but the last, number twelve here, right above one, so it all circles back, like. And that one is the home of salt, not a metal at all. And that land stands for all the hidden things in life, feuds and suchlike, and the dweomer.”
“This is fascinating. How do you tell fortunes with it?”
“Watch. I’ll show you.”
Otho took the second stick, held it over the second tray, then turned his head away and began to poke dots into the sand, as fast as he could. When he was done, he had sixteen lines of dots and spaces to mull over.
“Now, these are the mothers, these lines. You take the first lines of each to form the first daughter, and the second lines for the second, and so on. I won’t bother to explain all the rules. It’d take me all day, and you’d find it tedious, no doubt. But here in the land of iron, we’ll put the Head of the Dragon, just for starters.” Deftly he poked a figure into the waiting sand, two dots close together and below them three dots vertically for the dragon’s body. “And humph, I can’t resist looking ahead. Oh, splendid! The Little Luck goes in the land of salt. That gladdens my heart, because it means the omens won’t be horrible. They might not be good, mind, but they won’t be horrible.”
Carra leaned on the table to watch while he muttered to himself in a mix of several languages, brooded over the lines of dots, and one at a time poked corresponding figures in the lands of the map. When he was done he stared at the map for a long time, shaking his head.
“Well, come on, Otho, do tell me what it means.”
“Not sure. Humph. That’s the trouble with wretched nonsense like telling fortunes. When you need it the most it’s the least clear. But it looks like everything’ll work out right in the end. You see, I just sent off letters to my kin, asking if I could come home again. I got into a spot of trouble in my youth, but that was . . . well, a good long time ago, let’s just say, and I’ve got some nice little gems that should do to pay a fine or two if they want to levy one.” He paused, chewing on the ends of his mustache. “Now, it seems like they’ll take me back, but this I don’t understand.” With the stick he pointed at the third land. “Quicksilver with The Road in it. Usually means a long journey and not one you were planning to make, either. It troubles my heart, it does.”
Carra leaned forward for a better look, but The Road was a simple line of four dots and not very communicative.
“It wouldn’t just mean the journey you already made, would it? To get here, I mean. I—”
A hiss, a spitting sound like water drops on a griddle—Carra jerked her head up and saw one of the young dwarves, his sword drawn, walking slowly and ever so steadily toward the table. Otho suddenly hissed, as well, an intake of breath.
“Don’t move, my lady. Still as stone, that’s what we want.”
Wrapped in such a false calm that Lightning never barked or moved, the dwarf reached the table, slowly raised his sword, hesitated, then smacked it down blade-flat onto the planks not a foot from Carra’s elbow. Carra jerked back just as something under the blade crunched—and spurted with a trickle of pale ooze. The second guard came running and swearing; Otho hurried round the end of the table to look as the young man lifted his blade and turned the crumpled, long-legged creature over with the point. All three men muttered for a moment.
“See that brown mark on what’s left of its stomach? Looks like a stemmed cup? We call that the goblet of death.” Otho turned to her. “This particular creature’s a spider—well, it used to be, I should say. Big as your fist. Poisonous as you could want. Or not want.”
“Ych! That’s disgusting!” She looked up at the ceiling and shuddered, half expecting to see a whole nest of them ready to drop. “How common are they?”
“They’re not common, my lady. You almost never find them in civilized tunnels and suchlike. They’re shy, like most wild things. Find ’em hiding under rocks in the high mountains, if you find them at all.”
“Then how, I mean, why—” She fell silent, seeing their answer in their faces. “Someone brought it here, didn’t they?”
“They did.” Otho was staring up at the ceding. “And whoever dropped it down through one of them vents is long gone, I’ll wager. There’s another floor up there, a gallery, like, so a workman can get up and clean out the air vents. Anyone could climb up there easy. No one would ever see ’em.” He turned and snarled something in Dwarvish at one of the young men, who rushed off. “I’m sending him to get the landlord and wake this place up. If we make a big fuss about it, whoever this was won’t dare to make more mischief. Don’t you worry, my lady. Safety in numbers and all that.”
Carra let go of Lightning’s collar and sat down, feeling a little sick as she realized the truth. Someone had just tried to kill her, and she didn’t even know why.

Thanks to the support of his vassals, Gwerbret Cadmar led out close to two hundred men that morning, far too many to assemble in the ward of his dun. A long swirl of men and horses spread out through the streets of Cengarn, made their way out several different gates, then re-formed into a warband down on the plain at the base of the city’s hills. Although Rhodry and Yraen, silver daggers as they were, expected to ride at the very rear and breathe the army’s dust, one of the gwerbret’s own men sought them out and grudgingly informed them that they were to ride with his grace.
“It’s because of the sorceress, you see, She told our lord that you were the only one who could follow her directions. Cursed if I know what she meant by that.”
“No more do I,” Rhodry said. “Jill has a fine hand with a riddle, I must say, and so blasted early in the morning, too.”
Yet soon enough he found the answer. They followed the rider up to the head of the line of march, where the gwerbret and his lords were sitting on horseback and conferring in low voices. Although Cadmar acknowledged them with a smile and a nod of his head, the two lords, Matyc and Gwinardd, merely looked sour. While they waited for the gwerbret to have time to speak to them, Rhodry glanced idly around, sizing up the men in the warbands. They all had good horses, good weapons, and here and there he spotted men with the confident air of veterans. Off to one side, waiting on horseback for the gwerbret’s orders, sat Dar and his archers, each man with his unstrung longbow tucked under his right leg like a javelin and his short, curved hunting bow close at hand on his saddle peak. Rhodry waved to Dar, happened to glance at the sky, and swore aloud. Hovering above was an enormous bird with the silhouette of a hawk but, as far as he could tell by squinting into a bright morning, of a pale silvery color. It also seemed to be carrying something in its talons, a sack, perhaps, of some sort. As he watched, it circled and began to drift off toward the west. With a cold certainty he knew that Jill had mastered elven dweomer as well as the lore proper to humankind.
“Your Grace? Your pardon for this interruption, but we’re to ride west. Our guide’s just arrived.”
“Um, indeed?” Cadmar looked up automatically and saw the bird, hovering on the wind some distance off, too far for his human vision to judge its size. “What’s that? A trained falcon or suchlike?”
“Just so, Your Grace. Jill always did have a way with animals. No doubt she’s riding off somewhere with its lure. Or somewhat like that, anyway.”
“Whatever she thinks fit. Well, then, let’s ride. My lords, to the west!”
All that morning the hawk led them onward. At times she circled directly overhead, but only for brief moments, as if Jill were ensuring that she had Rhodry’s attention. Most of the time it kept so far off that only elven eyes could spot it, but always, in loops and lazy wind drifts, it moved steadily west and down, as the hills round Cengarn fell toward the high plains. Gradually the terrain opened up to rolling hills, scattered with trees at the crests and thick with underbrush in the shallow valleys between. It was good country for bandits, Rhodry thought. They could hide their camps and their loot in among the scrubby brush, keep guards posted on the open crests, and send scouts along them, too, when they wanted to make a raid. He was blasted glad, he decided, that the gwerbret and his men had dweomer on their side in this little game of hide and seek.
As they rode, he had a chance to study the two lords riding just ahead with the gwerbret. Gwinardd of Brin Coc was no more than nineteen, come to the lordship just last year, or so the dun gossip said, on the death of his father from a fever. Brown-haired and bland, he seemed neither bright nor stupid, an ordinary sort of fellow who was obviously devoted to the gwerbret. Matyc of Dun Mawrvelin was another sort entirely. There might well have been some elven blood in his clan’s veins, because his hair was a moonlight-pale blond, and his eyes a steel-gray, but he had none of that race’s openness or humor. His face, in fact, reminded Rhodry of a mask carved from wood. All day long, he rarely frowned and never smiled, merely seemed to watch and listen to everything around him from some great distance away. Even when the gwerbret spoke directly to him, he answered briefly—always polite, to be sure—merely thrifty to a fault with his words.
Once, when the lords had drifted a fair bit ahead, Rhodry had a chance at a word with Yraen.
“What do you think of Matyc?”
“Not much.”
“Keep your eye on him, will you? There’s just somewhat about him that makes me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Just how loyal he is to our grace.”
Yraen’s eyes widened with questions, but since the lords ahead had paused to let their men catch up with them, he couldn’t ask them.
There were still some four hours left in the day when the warbands reached the crest of a hill fringed with tall beeches. Rhodry saw the hawk circle round once, then dip lazily down to disappear into a scrubby stand of hazels in the valley below.
“My lord?” he called out. “Jill seems to want us to stop here. There’s water for a camp. Shall I ride on down and see if she’s there?”
“Do that, silver dagger. We’ll wait here for your signal.”
Rhodry dismounted, tossed his reins up to Yraen, then strode on downhill on foot. Sure enough, he found Jill, in human form, kneeling by the streamside and drinking out of cupped hands. Though she was barefoot, she was wearing a thin tunic in the Bardek style over a pair of brigga. An empty sack lay beside her on the ground. It seemed to him that she was as light and fragile as the linen cloth.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m not.” Shaking her hands dry she stood up. “But I’ll beg a blanket from you for tonight, truly. The falcon can’t carry much, you see.”
“No doubt.” In spite of all the years that he’d lived around dweomer, Rhodry shuddered, just at how casually she took her transformations. “Ah, well, I take it we’re following the right road and all.”
“Just so. The raiders aren’t all that far. I thought the army could camp along this stream and rest their horses, then mount a raid. They’ve got guards on watch, of course, but no doubt you could send some of Dar’s men to silence them.”
“No doubt.” Rhodry smiled briefly. “Let me bring the others down, and then we’ll have a little chat with the gwerbret.”
“Very well. Oh, and tell Cadmar to forbid any fires. I don’t want smoke giving our prey the alarm. I’ll wait until you’ve made camp, and then I’ll fetch you and his grace.”
She gave him a friendly pat on the arm and headed off downstream, disappearing into the trees and brush beyond the power of even his elven eyes to pick her out. Dweomer, he supposed. Swearing under his breath, Rhodry hurried back to the gwerbret and the waiting army.
It turned out that the raiders were camped not five miles away. When Jill reappeared, about an hour before sunset, she led Rhodry and the gwerbret downstream for a ways, to the place where the water tipped itself over the crest of the hill in a gurgle and splash to rush down into a river far below. By peering through the trees, they could see the river twisting, as gray and shiny as a silver riband in the twilight, across a grassy plain. Far to the west, a mist hung pink in the setting sun.
“There!” Rhodry said, pointing. “Smoke from campfires! Right by that big bend in the river off to the west, Your Grace.”
“Don’t tell me there’s elven blood in your veins, silver dagger!” Cadmar was shading his eyes with one hand. “I can’t see anything of the sort. Well, I’ll take your word for it.”
“I’ve scouted them out, Your Grace,” Jill said. “About fifty men, all settled in by the river, as bold as brass, in a proper camp with tents and everything. They’ve even got a couple of wagons with them. For loot, I suppose.”
Cadmar swore under his breath.
“Well, we’ll cut them down to size soon enough. What about the prisoners?”
“They seem to be tied and chained off by themselves, between the camp proper and the wagons.”
“I say we ride before dawn. Won’t be easy, riding at night, but if we fall on them with the sun, we can wipe them out like the vermin they are.”
Although Jill took the blanket and the food that Rhodry had brought her, she refused to come back to camp with them. Rhodry escorted the gwerbret back to Lord Gwinardd’s side, then went looking for Yraen. He found him with Lord Matyc, near the edge of the camp. Since his lordship was telling Yraen a long involved story about the bloodlines of some horses, Rhodry merely waited off to one side. It seemed obvious that Matyc would have preferred to cut the matter short, but Yraen kept asking such civil questions, so very much to the point, that Matyc was forced to answer. Finally, and by then the twilight had replaced the sunset, Yraen thanked his lordship in a flood of courtesies and let him make his escape. Rhodry waited while Matyc picked his way through the camp, until be was well out of earshot.
”What was all that about?” Rhodry said.
“Maybe naught, but you told me to keep an eye on him. So after I spread our bedrolls out and suchlike, I went looking for his lordship. He was just leaving camp, you see, over behind those trees there, and I would have thought he needed to make water or suchlike, except that he had his dagger out.”
“He what?”
“He was holding it in one hand, but up, like he was studying the blade. He’d turn it, too, with a flick of his wrist, like, and every time he did, it flashed, with light.”
“Ye gods! You could signal a man that way, someone who was off to the west when the sun was setting,”
“Exactly what I thought, too.” Yiaen’s smile was grim. “We couldn’t prove a thing, of course, and it could, well be that I’m dead wrong, and, it was just some nervous twitch like men will get, to fiddle with his dagger that way.”
“It could be, truly.”
“But I thought, well, if it’s nerves and naught more, he’ll feel better, won’t he now, for a bit of talk. So I kept him there, chatting about this and that till the sun went down in the mists.”
“If I were a great lord, I’d have the best sice of roast pig brought to your plate at the honor table tonight.”
“But things being what they are, let’s go have some flatbread and cheese. I’m hungry enough to eat a wolf, pelt and all.”
Later that evening Rhodry finally had a chance to speak with Dar alone. Dar may have been a prince, but he was also one of the Westfolk, and he went out to check on his horses himself rather than leaving the task to one of his men. Rhodry saw him go and followed him out to the herd, tethered down the valley.
“It’s good to see you again,” Dar spoke in Elvish. “We’ve all missed you, in the years since you left us.”
“And I’ve missed the People as well. Are things well with your father?”
“Oh, yes, very well indeed. He’s still traveling with Calonderiel’s alar, but I left it a while hack. I can’t say why. I just wanted to ride on my own for a while, I suppose, and go from alar to alar, but Cal insisted on giving me this escort.”
“Did he say why? It’s not like the People, to give someone an honor guard just as—well, just as an honor.”
In the dim starlight he could see the prince grinning.
“That’s what I thought, too. But Cal said a dweomerwoman had come to him in a dream and told him to do it, so he did.”
“Dallandra?”
“That was her name, all right.”
Rhodry shuddered like a wet dog. Great things are moving, indeed! he thought to himself. Dar looked away, a different kind of smile hovering round his mouth.
“What do you think of my Carramaena?”
“Oh, she’s lovely, and a good sensible lass.”
Dar’s grin deepened. He looked down and began scuffing the grass with the toe of his boot.
“But well, I hate to say this,” Rhodry went on. “But haven’t you let yourself and her in for grief? I mean, you’re young as the People reckon age, and you’ll live ten times her years.”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Dar looked up with a snarl. “Everyone says that, and I don’t care! We’ll have what joy we can, then, and that’s all there is to that!”
“My apologies for—”
“Oh, you’re right, I suppose. But ye gods, from the moment I saw her—she was so lovely, standing there in the market, and she needed me so badly, with that wretched brother of hers, and I just, well, I tried to talk myself out of it, but I just kept riding back to see how she fared, to see if she was well, and—” He shrugged profoundly, “And you know what, Rhodry? She’s the first grown lass I’ve ever met who was younger than me. There was just something fascinating about that.”
Rhodry swore under his breath, but not for Dar’s love affair. The young prince had spoken the truth, that out among the elves, young people were becoming the rarity. How long would it be, he wondered, before the People were gone, and forever?
“Well, you two will have a fine daughter, anyway,” Rhodry said at last.
“A daughter? How by the Dark Sun do you know?”
“Call it the second sight, lad, and let it go at that. We’d best get back.”
Some hours before dawn, the gwerbret’s captain moved through the camp, waking the men with whispers. In the fumbling dark they armed themselves and saddled their horses, then rode out while it was still too dark to move at more than a slow walk. Not more than a few hundred yards from camp, Rhodry saw Jill, standing by the side of the road and waiting for them. He pulled out of line and went over to her, with Yraen tagging behind.
“That horse can carry both of us, can’t he?” she said. “It’s not like I’m wearing mail or suchlike.’”
“Ye gods, you don’t weigh much more than a child these days, or so it seems. Are you coming with us?”
“As a guide. Let me mount, and then let’s go ride with the noble-born.”
Rhodry got down, settled her in the saddle proper, then swung up behind her. As they were catching up to the army, he reminded Yraen to watch Lord Matyc in the coming battle—if they were all going to be riding together when the charge came, it might be just possible for Yraen to keep him in sight. Jill led them downhill and across the grassy plain by a roundabout way, keeping to what cover there was.
Whether it was dweomer or only shrewd tracking, Rhodry would never know, but it seemed to him that they reached the bandit camp remarkably soon and ended up in a remarkably good position, too, on a wooded rise behind the enemy’s position just out of earshot. From there, Dar sent four of his men ahead on foot to take out the enemy guards. Just as the dawn was lightening the sky, the four returned, grinning at how easy a job they’d had. Jill swung herself down from the saddle and let Rhodry regain his place.
“Your Grace?” she whispered to the gwerbret. “May the gods ride with you. I’ll see you after the battle.”
Although she turned and jogged off back the way they’d come, Rhodry had no time to watch where she might be going. It would be impossible to keep surprise on their side for more than a few moments. When the gwerbret drew a javelin from the sheath beneath his right leg, every man of the army did the same—with a horrendous jingling of tack.
“Let’s go! Cadmar yelled.
The men kicked their horses to a trot and swept up the side of the rise just as a ragged scream of panic burst out down in the camp. The warband crested the rise like a wave and charged, screaming war cries. They could see the enemy rushing round, rolling free of blankets, grabbing for weapons. Behind the camp ran the river, cutting off retreat. Off to the left, some hundred yards away from the main camp, roped-together prisoners jumped to their feet and started cheering and sobbing out the gwerbret’s name. To the light, at about the same distance, panicked horses began to neigh and rear.
“Throw!” Cadmar yelled.
A shower of steel-tipped javelins flashed ahead of the charge and swooped down among the scurrying bandits. With a rush and whisper elven hunting arrows rained down from the side. Rhodry saw a few hits but what he was hoping for was panic, and panic was what he got. Screaming, shoving one another, the bandits milled around and grabbed at weapons. Dashing among them, wrapped in a cloak, was an impossibly tall man, waving a sword and howling orders. No one listened. The bandits broke and ran as the warband swept down upon them with drawn swords. Leaning, slashing, the riders raced through the camp, pulled up, and parted like water round a rock to turn at the riverbank and gallop back again. Here and there a few desperate men were making a stand, but most were running. Some, swords drawn and ready, were heading for the prisoners.
“Cut them off!” Rhodry howled it out, then gave his voice over to his bubbling berserk laugh.
With a squad behind him he raced at an angle toward the would-be murderers, and now he was riding to dodge anything in his way. Swords flashed to meet him; he swung down as he passed. Ahead, the little pack of bandits heard hooves and turned to make their stand. The squad hit them in full slaughter. Rhodry’s horse suddenly screamed and reared. He brought it down, rolled off as it fell to its knees, and struck up, killing the man who was swinging down at him. Somewhere Yraen was yelling at him, but Rhodry could only laugh. He grabbed another man’s shield from the ground and slashed another bandit across the knees. When the man fell, screaming, Rhodry scrambled to his feet and killed him, stabbing him through the throat,
Yraen’s words finally forced their way through to his mind. “We’ve got this lot! The leader’s trying to escape.”
Yraen was waving his sword, red and blooded, in the general direction of the wagons, which were standing behind the prisoners. With the squad following him like a captain, Rhodry raced off, dodging round the sobbing women and children, seeing his enemy’s cloak flash and flutter just ahead as he dodged through the carts and leaning wagon trees. Although there were a couple of horses tethered beyond, the leader would never reach them in time. Huge as he was, he was clumsy on the ground, so bowlegged that he was waddling more than running.
The leader swirled to face them, and as he turned, he tore off his cloak and whipped it round and round one massive forearm, an improvised shield. The men behind Rhodry howled, half a shriek, half a war cry, and even Rhodry himself hesitated for the trace of a moment, just long enough for their enemy to get his back against a wagon. This was no human being that they were facing;. By some visual trick, without the enveloping cloak he seemed even larger, well over six feet tall, perhaps even a bit over seven, his height crowned by a huge mane of hair as stiff as any Dawntime hero’s—indeed, it seemed to have been bleached out with lime in just that way, so that it rose stiff and dead-pale straight from his black eyebrows and poured up and over his back like a waterfall. His face might have been any color naturally, because blue, purple, and green tattoos covered it so thickly you couldn’t see a trace of skin. His massive hands bore red and purple tattoos like gloves. He drew back thin lips from white teeth, fanged like a wolf’s mouth, and snarled.
Rhodry started to laugh.
“Get back!” he choked out between howls of demon-mirth. “Get back and leave him to me!”
He might have been only a silver dagger, but every man behind him followed his order gladly. His opponent laughed as well, a rumble under his breath. He jumped to the wagon bed and dropped to a fighting crouch.
“Shield you got, man. But I got taller.”
“And a fair fight it is, then.”
Even though he was chortling like a mad ferret, Rhodry’s mind was icy calm, telling him that the victory in this scrap depended on the strength of his left arm. He was going to have to hold his shield up high, like one of those sunshades the fine court ladies in Dun Deverry sported, and pray it held against the other’s blows. With the shield low he feinted in, slowly it seemed to him, oh, so slowly moving cross the uneven ground, saw a glint of steel moving, swung up the shield and caught the huge blade full on the boss. The brass plate sliced like butter; the blade stuck, just for the briefest of moments, but Rhodry got a hard stab on his enemy’s upper arm. Blood spurted thick and flowed slowly, oh, so slowly, down the sleeve.
Rhodry danced back just in time as the leader sliced backhanded in a blow that would have gutted him had it landed. For a moment they panted for breath, glaring at each other; then Rhodry began sidling toward his opponent’s left. Caught as he was against the wagon protecting his back, the other was forced to turn slightly—then all at once lunged. Just in time Rhodry flung up his shield, heard the wood crack in half, and stabbed as fast and as hard as he could. Later he would realize that this stab had been his last and only chance, but as the pieces of shield fell away from the handle he knew only laughter, welling out of him like a tide of fire as he thrust with every bit of strength and skill he possessed. The enormous sword swung up over his head, hovered there, trembled down, then fell from a dying hand as his opponent grunted once and crumpled over Rhodry’s sword, buried in his guts. When Rhodry pulled it free, he realized that blind instinct had made him angle the blade. Dark heart’s blood gushed out with the steel.
As the berserk mist cleared, Rhodry staggered back, gulping for breath, sweating rivers down his back, half-dizzy, half-dazed, unsure for that moment exactly where he was or what fight he’d just won. All round him he heard cheers and shouting, managed to recognize Cadmar’s bellow as the gwerbret shoved his way through what proved to be a crowd.
“Oh, may Great Bel preserve us,” the gwerbret whispered. “What is that?”
“I wouldn’t know, Your Grace.”
For a moment, while he got his breath back, Rhodry studied his dead enemy’s face and got his second shock of the day. The tattoo designs were all elven. He’d seen many like them on horse gear and painted tents out in the Westlands: animal forms, floral vines, and even, here and there, a letter or two from the Elvish syllabary.
“Let Jill through,” Cadmar was yelling. “Ye gods, someone get our Rhodry some water,”
Jill, it turned out, was carrying a skin of just that. She handed it over, then stood for a long time staring down at the corpse. In the bright sun Rhodry was struck again by how thin her face was, all pale stretched skin and fine bone, as delicate as a bird’s wing. He gulped water down while she went on with her study of the dead man.
“I was afraid of this,” she said at last. “He’s exactly what I thought he’d be.”
“Indeed?” Cadmar said. “And would you mind telling us what that is?”
“Not at all, Your Grace.” She reached into her shirt and took out a stained and faded silk pouch, opened that, and handed over a thin bone plaque, a square about three inches on a side.
Rhodry stepped round to peer over the gwerbret’s shoulder. The plaque sported a picture, graved into the yellowed bone and stained with traces of color. Once, he supposed, the portrait had been as vivid as a flower garden, but even his utterly untrained eye perceived it as ancient, older than anything he’d ever seen, older, perhaps, than the kingdom itself. In such a skilled drawing that every hair, every fold of cloth, seemed real and tangible, the picture displayed the head and shoulders of a being much like the one that lay dead at their feet: the same mane of hair, the same ridged face and heavy jaw, but while indeed this face was tattooed, the marks were only rough lines and dots. Cadmar swore under his breath.
“Jill, where did you get this? What are these creatures?”
“I got it far south of Bardek, Your Grace, on an island where some of the Westfolk live. As for what, well, the elves call them Meradan, demons, but their own name for themselves is Gel da’Thae: the Horsekin.”
All the old stories he’d been trying to remember rose to the surface of Rhodry’s mind.
“The Hordes!”
“Just that, silver dagger.” Jill smiled, a brief twitch of her mouth, ”His grace doubtless remembers those old tales about the cities of the Westfolk, the ones destroyed back in the Dawntime by demons? Well, destroyed they were, but by real flesh and blood.” She nudged the corpse with her foot. “This flesh and blood, Your Grace. Huh, they don’t seemed to have changed a great deal, have they? They’ve learned a good bit about tattooing, that’s all. They’re still as bloodthirsty.”
Cadmar nodded, his mouth grim, and handed back the bit of bone.
“And they’ve come east,” Rhodry put in. “That bodes ill.”
“You always had a gift for understatement, didn’t you?” Jill was putting the plaque away.
“But what do they want?” Cadmar said.
“I wouldn’t know for certain, but I’ll wager it’s the same things they’ve always wanted: land, slaves, jewelry and other such trinkets.” Jill looked up at last. “Look at his hands, Your Grace. See how some of his fingers have been cut off? Their warriors do that to themselves, you see, so they’ll be fit for no craft but war.”
Cadmar shuddered.
“And how do you know all this?”
“I read it in an elven book, written by one of the survivors of the Great Burning. That’s what they call the fall of the cities. It was over a thousand years ago now, but the elves remember it, clear as clear. I wish I could have brought you this book, for your scribe to read aloud in your hall. You and your men need to know what we’re facing.”
Cadmar threw up his head like a startled stag. Rhodry laughed aloud.
“Oh, my lady Death’s in for a fine time of it now. Her dun will fill with her guests, her tables feast thousands. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Jill?”
“I am. Your Grace, I pray to every god in the sky and under the earth that I’m wrong, but in my heart I know that the worst war that ever the Westlands have seen lies ahead of us.”
“And soon?” the gwerbret said.
“It will be, Your Grace. Very soon.”
Rhodry threw back his head and howled with laughter, choking and bubbling out of his very soul. All through the shattered camp the warband fell dead-silent to listen, and not a man there felt his blood run anything but cold.

With all the prisoners and suchlike, it took the warband two full days to ride home. With Otho and a squad of dwarven axmen standing around her, Carra was waiting at the gates of Cadmar’s dun when they walked their horses up the hill. At first, in the dust and confusion, she found it impossible to tell one man from another, and her heart began pounding in dread, but Dar broke free of the pack at last and ran to her.
“Thank every god in the sky!” She flung herself into his arms. While she sniveled into his filthy shirt, he stroked her hair.
“Here, here, my love! I’m home safe again, just like I promised you.”
Otho snorted profoundly.
“Egotistical young dolt,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice. “Wasn’t you we were worried about.”
“What?” Dar let her go and turned to confront the dwarf. “What are you saying, old man?”
“I’m saying what I said, you stupid elven fop. Someone tried to kill your wife while you were running around the countryside playing warrior.”
Dar went dead-still.
“Well, but they didn’t,” Carra said. “I mean, that sounds stupid, but Otho and his men have kept me safe, really they have.”
“And for that they’ll have my undying thanks.”
She had never heard Dar speak like that, so low, so still, each word careful and distinct, and now he was trembling in rage.
“Where’s the man who tried to harm her?”
“Don’t know, Your Highness.” Otho’s manner changed abruptly. “He did it by stealth, and we couldn’t catch him.”
“When we do, I’ll kill him with my own hands.” He threw one arm around Carra’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Name your reward.”
Otho thought for a good long minute, then sighed.
“None needed, Your Highness. We were glad to serve your lady. But someday, mayhap, we’ll remember this, and call in a favor done.”
All around them men were dismounting in a welter of confusion. Pages and stableboys came running to take horses and unload gear, warriors strode by, heading for the great hall and ale. Dar’s archers gathered round like a dun wall to shut their little group off from the potentially dangerous commotion.
“Is Jill with you?” Carra said.
“The Wise One?” Dar said. “She’s not. She left us before we reached the city. There’s Rhodry, though. Look, right behind him, see that horse Yraen’s leading? We captured him from the raiders. He belonged to their leader.”
Carra looked, then caught her breath in a little gasp. Never had she seen such an enormous animal, fully eighteen hands high and broad, too, with a deep chest and huge arch of neck. A blood bay with white mane and tail, he walked solemnly, gravely, planting each big foot down as if he knew that everyone watched him. Rhodry turned his own horse over to a page, then worked his way free of the mob to join them.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
“You remembered, did you?” Otho looked sour. “Well, I owe you your hire, I suppose, though with all the trouble you got me into, that ambush at the ford and all, I don’t see why I should pay you one blasted coin.”
“Because if you’d ridden north without me and Yraen, you’d have been dead long before you reached the cursed ford.”
“That has a certain logic to it, truly. Well, I’ve got the coin back at my inn.”
“Good. Make sure you fetch it, then.”
And Carra was honestly shocked that a man like Rhodry, whom she was starting to consider as fine and noble as any man in the kingdom, would worry about a handful of coin.
That night in the great hall the gwerbret held a feast for their victory, and his lady made sure that it also served to solemnize Carra’s wedding in the human way. Before the bard sang his praise-song for the raid and the true drinking began, the gwerbret himself made a fine flowery speech and toasted the young couple with a goblet of mead. The bard performed a solemn declamation, cobbled together from other occasions, perhaps, but elegant all the same. Their arms twined round each other, Carra and Dar took turns drinking mead from a real glass goblet, traded all the way north from Bardek through Aberwyn. Although custom demanded that they smash the thing, it was far too valuable, and besides, as Carra pointed out to her new husband, she certainly wasn’t a virgin anymore anyway. With a laugh Dar agreed and handed the goblet back unharmed to the hovering seneschal.
Later, after the bardsong and the assigning of praise, after the mead and the feasting, the gwerbret called for music, and there was dancing, the circle dances of the border, half-elven, half-human, stepped out to harp and drum. For the ritual of the thing, Carra danced one with Dar, then sat down again beside the gwerbret’s wife, who caught her hand and squeezed it.
“You have my thanks, my lady,” Carra said. “For honoring me this way.”
“Well, you’re most welcome, and truly, I thought we’d best take our merriment while we can.” Labanna’s dark eyes turned haunted. “The omens are poor, and the news worse.”
Carra nodded, moving instinctively a little closer to her. Out in the center of the great hall, the music pounded on, and the dancers moved gravely, circling round and round. In her grim mood it seemed that they were weaving an immense and ancient spell rather than celebrating an event as common as a wedding. Yet, even over the music, when Carra turned toward the window she heard or thought she heard the harsh cry of a hawk, as if some huge bird drifted overhead on the rising night wind.

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