Four years.

Could she have been gone so long?

The heavens could not lie because, as the blessed Daisan had written, they had no liberty to govern themselves. Subject to the Lord and Lady's immutable laws, they did what they were ordered to do and nothing else.

Four years, give or take six months. Would her daughter recognize her? Did Blessing even remember that she had a mother?

A worse thought intruded, as rot insinuates itself beneath the clean surface of a house, weakening the foundations and posts: Had San-giant thought her dead, and remarried?

,' have been gone too long.

In a year and a half at most, Mok would travel through the Unicorn and the Healer and touch the far boundary of the Healer.

When Erekes walks backward. When Bright Somorhas, walking backward, reenters the Serpent. When Jedu and Aturna enter the House of the Dragon. When Mok, retracing her steps, poises on the cusp between the Healer and the Penitent. On this same day, when the Crown of Stars crowns the heavens.

On that day, in less than eighteen months, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, the way would be open for Anne to weave a great spell to cast the Aoi land back out into the aether, to create a second cataclysm. Unless Liath intervened.

Stopping Anne came before any other consideration. Even her husband's life. Even her own happiness.

'I will not leave you again," she whispered, but Sanglant could not hear her.

At dawn, Sanglant stirred without opening his eyes or seeming aware of his surroundings. He was hot to the touch but not gray with impending death. As the promise of the sun brightened the eastern sky, limning the crags with its pale glow, the griffins sank down on the sunning stone. She knew they were awake because of the way their lively tails flicked up and down.

She rose to stretch out her limbs, but at the movement the larger griffin startled up, staring eastward past the river. The second followed her lead. Liath, too, turned.

She had only seen centaurs in her dreams, majestic creatures more wild than civilized but immensely powerful and full of magic. There were not many of them—not more than a dozen—but as they approached, she stared in amazement and only belatedly thought to free an arrow from the quiver and draw her bow.

After marking her position, they turned downriver and disappeared from view. A little later she heard the rumble of hooves and saw them clearly in the light of the new sun spreading gold across the grass. The griffins padded restlessly back and forth on the sunning stone as though eager to retreat but unwilling to desert her. How had she won their loyalty? She could not guess. Respectful of the drawn bow she held, the herd came to a halt out of range of arrow shot. They were all female; they wore no garments, only paint to decorate their torsos, and the shapely curve of their woman-bodies was impossible to miss. Two of the centaurs hauled a wagon between them, bar and tongue fashioned so that they might draw it without using their hands.

A silver-gray centaur trotted forward alone, bearing no weapon except a quiver of arrows slung across her back. It was a brave thing to do, considering the proximity of the griffins. She held no strung bow in her hands as she halted at the edge of the burned area.

She had no way to defend herself if they sprang.

Now that she was closer, Liath realized that she was not gray as much as ancient, her coat faded because of her immense age as a crone's black hair turns to silver. Green-and-gold stripes half covered the horn-colored skin of her woman's body. Her eyes bore an inhuman luminosity. There was, too, something oddly familiar about her, a tugging sense of connection, as though they had met before. One of the griffins gave a shrill cry as an owl skimmed in over the river. The centaur lifted an arm to receive the bird on a forearm sheathed in leather.

Liath lowered her bow.

'Well met," she called in Wendish, not sure if the other one could understand her language, "if you are friend to us. I am called Lia-thano in the speech of humankind. I pray you, we are in grave need of your help if you are willing to give it."

The centaur approached with stately dignity across the burned out area. Ash puffed where she placed her hooves. Once she had to sidestep to avoid a hot spot, not yet burned out.

'You are Liathano," she said. "Known as Bright One."

'How do you know me?"

'I walk within the paths marked out by the burning stone, which is the gateway between the worlds. I cannot ascend into the spheres because I cannot leave Earth, but I have seen the traces of your passage. I have glimpsed you. I know your name, because it is the same as my own."

'I have an Arethousan name," protested Liath. "How can our names be the same?"

A spark flared in the city of memory, recalling to her mind memories she had seen in the heart of the burning stone when, for an instant, she could see time, past, present, and future as a single vast landscape stretching out on all sides.

A centaur woman parts the reeds at the shore of a shallow lake. Her coat has the dense shimmer of the night sky, and her black woman's hair falls past her waist. A coarse, pale mane, the only contrast to her black coat, runs down her spine, braided with beads and the bones of mice.

"Look! she cries. "See what we wrought!"

She looses an arrow.

'Li'at'dano!" Words stuck as though caught by thorns.

Years ago, a humble frater by name of Bernard had named his daughter after an ancient centaur shaman written of in the chronicles of the Arethousans, who had witnessed and survived the Bwr attack on the Dariyan Empire. Some called her undying.

All called her powerful beyond human ken.

'

'Liathano,'" she repeated stupidly, in the softened consonants of the western tongue. It was too difficult to believe and yet it stood smack in front of her. "How can you still be alive?"

The centaur lifted her arm to release the owl, which flew away to find a resting place in the shrubs along the river's bank.

'I am not human, nor even half human, as you are. We are an other kind entirely, born out of the world before humankind walked here. That is why your people fear us, and hunt us, and war against us, all except the Kerayit tribe, whom we nurture as our daughters I am not like you, Bright One."

'No. You are not."

She was legend made flesh. It was impossible that any creature might live so long, generations upon generations, yet she knew in the core of her, the heart of fire that had once belonged to her mother that it was true.

'You made the cataclysm," Liath said.

'I do not possess the power of working and binding."

'You taught the seven who wove it."

'It is true that I encouraged those who devised and wove the great spell. None of us understood what we would unleash. I regret what I did."

'Do you regret it enough that you would be willing to stand aside and see your old enemies return to the world below? The land where the Ashioi dwell was torn from Earth.

That you know. I have set foot in the exiled land. It is returning to the place it came from.

And it should. It must. I came back to stop the Seven Sleepers. They wish to weave a second spell atop the first and cast the Ashioi back into the aether. If you intend to aid them, or hinder me, then we are enemies."

The old shaman indicated Sanglant, whose eyes had not opened. He showed no sign of consciousness; he wasn't aware the centaurs had arrived or that this conversation was taking place. "Is it not rash to provoke me when I have the means to save this man? You may be throwing away his life."

Because he lay so still, it was easy to admire the handsome lines of his face and the clean lines of his limbs. He had not lost any of his strength or beauty. He did not look as though four years had passed although perhaps there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the product of worry and strain. Those hands had stroked her once; those lips had kissed her in a most satisfactory manner, and would again, she prayed.

He was only one man. Lives would be lost no matter what happened, but a second cataclysm would affect unimaginable numbers, would wipe out entire villages and towns and, as she had seen, perhaps whole civilizations. In the heart of the burning stone she had witnessed the cataclysm as it had ripped the heart out of uncannily beautiful cities built by creatures not of humankind yet somehow like them in their clever industriousness: the goblins and the merfolk. They existed as legends, stories told about beasts not as dumb as cattle yet animals still. But maybe the stories weren't true; maybe humankind had forgotten the truth or hidden it so as to hide the shame of what it had done all unwittingly.

'I love him, but his is only one life. I would sacrifice my own life to save his, but I will not sacrifice the world. I will save as much as I can and see justice done. On this, I am determined."

A sliver of a smile cracked that aged face. It was not an expression of amusement, yet neither did it mock. "You are an arrow loosed, Bright One. I wonder if you can be turned aside." She ducked her head as a sign of respect, although not of submission. At last she closed the gap between them, and Liath had consciously to stop herself from taking a step back because of the weird aura of her presence, her very appearance, and because like any horse she loomed larger than one expected. She was big, and could crush a human skull with one good kick.

But she stretched out her hand and offered Liath an arrow from the quiver slung over her own back.

'We are not enemies, Bright One. This arrow I will give you, in addition to my aid in bringing this human to safety. There is a child held for safekeeping in my camp whom he has sired."

'My daughter?" The bow slipped from slack hands to fall to the ground, the arrow click clacking down on top of it. "Blessing? How came she to you?" All the questions she had kept fettered ever since she had first seen Sanglant broke free. "What was Sanglant doing here, hunting griffins? How did he get here? Is he alone? Exiled? How far are we from Wendar? How fares my daughter? Was she with her father all along? How came she into your care? What grievance had that man who attacked Sanglant? How can we return to the west?"

Li'at'dano chuckled. "You are still young, I see. You spill over like the floodwaters."

She bent, picked up bow and both arrows, and gave them to Liath. "Let us return to the encampment. Once there I shall answer your questions."

THE odd thing was that the healer who attended him was dressed as a woman but resembled—and smelled like—a man. He was giddy with pain, and therefore, he supposed, unable to make sense of the world properly. The sky had gone a peculiar shade of dirty white that did not resemble clouds, and it had an unfortunate tendency to sag down and billow up. The effect made bile rise into his throat, and the nasty taste of it only intensified the way pain splintered into a thousand pieces and drove deeper into flesh and bone.

Sometimes the mercy of death was preferable to living.

Yet.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

He tried to speak her name but could get no voiced breath past his lips.

'He moves," said the healer, speaking to someone unseen. "See you his finger, this twitch? Fetch the Bright One."

A shadow skimmed the curved wall of the sky, distorted by corners and angles, and abruptly he recognized his surroundings: he lay inside a tent. He sensed a smaller body lying asleep near to his, but as the flap of the tent lifted a line of light flashed, waking every point of pain.

He gasped out loud. Agony shattered his thoughts.

'Sanglant."

Her voice startled him out of the stupor of pain. This time he could speak.

'Liath? Where have you been? You abandoned us."

She was crying softly. "I was taken away by my kinfolk, but I had no wings to fly with. I could not follow them nor return to you. But now I have walked the spheres, love.

Now I've come back to you and our child."

'Ah," he said.

The light faded. He fell into darkness.

And woke.

He hurt everywhere, but the pain no longer was excruciating; it was only a terrible throbbing ache that radiated throughout his body. Air thrummed against the walls of the tent in a complex melody that rose and fell depending on the strength of the wind and minute shifts of its direction, although in general it seemed to be coming from the southeast.

He heard Liath's voice.

'I can see nothing. I have little knowledge of healing. I do not understand why she should have fallen into this stupor. What can ,' do to wake her?"

'Look more closely, Bright One." The shaman's inhuman voice stirred unexpected feelings in his breast—irritation that she had dismissed him so easily, fear for his lost daughter, determination to hunt down Bulkezu.

Bulkezu was dead.

But not by Sanglant's hand.

A strange scent tickled his nostrils, a light stinging heat that was both sweet and hot and yet not really a smell at all. It was the taste and touch of sorcery.

Liath caught in her breath in the way a woman might, prodded to ecstacy. "I see it! It's a pale thread, there. She is still linked to the daimone that suckled her, who returned to the sphere of Erekes."

'Nay, as you see, the thread is broken."

'So it is, God help us. As long as I walked the spheres, the thread between them remained unbroken. But when I crossed back into the world below… think of a man on the shore and one in a boat on the river who remain in contact by both holding onto a rope. If that rope is cut, the one on the river will be borne away by the current."

'She has drunk the milk of the aether and it has changed her. She has not grown in the fashion of a child of Earth, not if she was born only four years ago."

'She's grown so quickly."

'In body, but not in mind. Now that thread of unearthly sustenance is cut off. She lies adrift, betwixt and between this world and the one above."

'What can we do?"

'Ah. You have asked me a question I cannot answer. I have not walked the spheres, nor can any reach the ladder who are mired in Earth."

'How came my father by such knowledge, then, that he could teach me and that I could use that knowledge to climb?"

The shaman chuckled. Something about the comradely wry ness of her response aggravated Sanglant in the same way a constantly buzzing mosquito makes it difficult to sleep. The centaur had not treated him with such respect. He was not accustomed to being treated as anything lower than a king's son, a prince of the realm, and captain of a powerful army. He was not accustomed to being expected to prove himself to another's satisfaction.

'Liath!" he said, emphatically, and found he could sit up. The movement dizzied him.

Pain stabbed in his chest. He clutched the pallet he sat on and waited for the agony to quiet, as it did. He recalled the process of healing well enough. He had gone through this torment more than once. It would swell and ebb in stages until he was as good as before.

He touched his damaged throat, the voice that had never entirely healed.

Or almost as good as before.

It was still better than being dead.

'Sanglant!" Liath had braided her hair back, and her face was clean. It shone with joy.

She grasped his hands.

'A powerful spell," remarked the shaman, behind her. Her mare's body filled half the space of the tent, and she loomed ominously over the raised pallet that rested on the ground before her. A slight shape lay curled up on the pallet. It was Blessing, unhurt but utterly slack. Normally Blessing slept with her hands closed into fists, tucked up against her chin; now she lay like a corpse.

'What have you done to my daughter?" he demanded.

Liath recoiled slightly, a movement checked immediately but not so quickly that he didn't notice that her first instinct had been to pull away from his anger.

'Has she cast a spell on her?"

'Nay, love, she's done nothing."

'Then why does she lie there like a body that's had its soul torn from it?"

'I pray you, Sanglant, do not speak such ill-omened words! Blessing fell into this stupor at about the same time I fell to Earth, or so we believe. She spoke, she said that she heard me and that I was all on fire. Ai, God." The words were spoken regretfully. "She's so big. Has it really been four years?"

'Three years! Four years! I'm no cleric to keep track. To me it seemed like an eternity, falling into the pit, but perhaps you suffered less hardship separated from me than I did from you!"

She took a step back, surprised by his anger, as was he. But it just kept boiling up, and boiling up, and he couldn't stop it.

'How do you know this creature is not our enemy? She refused to help me find Blessing. Now I find Blessing here, in her clutches. How can you know that she did not injure our daughter?"

'Her people rescued Blessing from this man called Bulkezu. Blessing's own servant Anna told me the story. Anna? Anna!"

'She is gone to fetch water, Bright One," said the healer. Sanglant had not noticed her, but she sat by the entrance on a cushion, hands folded in her lap.

'Anna could have been bewitched—"

'She seemed a practical enough girl to me. Here now, love." Liath eased up beside him and set her hands on his shoulders. He knew her expressions intimately; he saw that she was concerned, even apprehensive, and—surely—treating him as if he were a flustered hound that needed to be calmed before it could be settled for the night in its kennel.

"You're not healed yet. You should lie down and rest."

'Why are you taking their side against me?"

That offended her, and she stiffened, shoulders going rigid as her chin lifted. "I take no one's side. I am as much a prisoner, or a guest, of the Horse people as you are. As our daughter is. I have little more than a year to plan a great undertaking. I will ally with whom I must in order to stop Anne from bringing down upon us a cataclysm of such terrible strength and breadth that— God Above, Sanglant! You know what I speak of!

You were at Verna. Why are you arguing with me?"

For the instant it takes to draw in a breath, a shimmering aura of flame trembled around her as though she were about to flower with wings of flame. This Liath had a terrible power. She was somehow the same woman who had vanished from Verna and yet now something else entirely, a creature not quite human and not quite the beautiful, graceful, scholarly, yet fragile woman he had married. The one he had saved from Hugh, from Henry's wrath, from life as a fugitive.

The one who had needed him.

This Liath had killed Bulkezu with a single shot and driven off a pair of griffins with a blazing ring of fire. She spoke with the ancient centaur shaman as with an equal. She stared at him now forth-rightly, her gaze a challenge.

'I don't know you," he said.

XV GRIM'S DIKE JHLJh country north of Hefenfelthe was rich and sweet, as green as any land Stronghand had ever seen, laced with fordable rivers and manifold streams, and so gentle that it placed few obstacles in the path of his army. Spring brought frequent showers, but although it rained one day out of three, they made good time and met with occasional, if stiff, resistance as they marched north on the trail of the queen. Mostly they found abandoned villages and empty byres.

'The scouts have returned!" called Tenth Son, who marched with the vanguard.

Human outriders called down the line of march and the army creaked to a halt at a stagger as word reached the ranks behind. The van had come to the top of one of those gentle, if long, slopes that allowed Stronghand to survey the line of his army where it snaked back along the ancient Dariyan road. The paved road made their passage swift, although it exposed them to attacks from the surrounding woodland.

The RockChildren marched in even ranks, five abreast, each unit bearing the standard representing their tribe. Rikin's brothers were given pride of place at the front and the rear, while Hakonin guarded the wagons with their precious siege engines, supplies, extra weapons, treasure and loot, and the ironworks that could be set up as forges in a semipermanent camp. Like rowing, pulling the wagons strengthened a warrior on those days when there wasn't any fighting to be had. The other tribes took their places in the order of march according to the honor they had earned in the last battle or skirmish a shifting dance of bragging rights that kept the soldiers eager. Even the human levies were permitted to compete, and in truth their presence made his own people fight harder. None wished to be an object of ridicule by having killed fewer of the enemy or gathered less loot than the Soft Ones.

'There they are," said Tenth Son on the seventh day out of Hefen-felthe, as the sun neared the zenith.

Stronghand moved up to the front with Hakonin's chief, Papa Otto, and the young Hessi interpreter beside him. The scouts approached at a gallop along the road. Eight had been sent out. Only five were returning.

Outriders cantered forward to meet them and soon a dozen soldiers pulled up in front of the vanguard. The five scouts dismounted. Their mounts went eagerly to the human grooms who would walk and cool down the blown horses. Only horses bred on the fjords ever really became used to the smell of the RockChildren.

One of the scouts stepped forward to give his report; the gripping beast pattern decorating his torso marked him as a Hakonin son.

'A substantial force moves northeast off to the west of us. They fly the banner of the queen's stag and one of a white boar. They'll soon cross this road. If they get ahead of us we've worse to face ahead. There are fortifications lying across our path, a line of ditches and embankments. The land narrows. There are steep wooded hills to one side and marsh to the other, but a corridor down the middle. That's where the fortifications lie."

'Are they newly built?" asked Stronghand.

'They're old."

Stronghand gestured. Word was passed down to the thirtieth rank, where Alban volunteers marched.

'You trust these turncoats?" asked the Hakonin scout. By the markings on the scout's shoulder, Stronghand identified him as First Son of a Thirteenth Litter.

'These are not turncoats, First Son. They had no coats to turn. They were slaves. Now they seek honor and position in my army because they had none before nor any chance to try."

'Yet they are soft." First Son bared his teeth to show the flash of jewels, earned in Stronghand's battles. He was sharp, and bold, and independent. Worth watching, for good or for ill.

'They may be," agreed Stronghand. "They have yet to prove themselves."

A pair of men, one young and one gray, trotted up. Both had knowledge of this country, so they claimed.

'What are you called?" asked Stronghand, because he knew that with humankind, names give power and knowing the name of another brings power to the one who names.

The older man spoke with an odd accent. "I am named Ediki. That is my true name, though my master called me Wulf in the manner of his people. I was born in the fen country. When I was a lad, the Alban lord of Weorod captured me and sold me as a slave into the great city. We're close by the manor and lands of Weorod now. This lad goes by the name Erling. His mother was my kinswoman. She was taken away even before I was, but he was born and raised in the city. From her, he knows a bit of lore."

'I will call you the name you were born with, Ediki. Tell him of the fortifications."

Ediki listened intently, nodding all the while, as First Son spoke and Yeshu translated.

"Yes, that's right where the lord of Weorod makes his home. The earthworks are called Grim's Dike and the Imps. Built in my grandmother's grandmother's time by the winter queen of Lindale, called Aelfroth. Her brothers warred against her out of the western highlands. She built earth walls to hold them back."

Erling scratched the slave brand that scarred his cheek, whether because it itched or because he was nervous, Stronghand could not tell. Unlike Ediki, he wasn't small and dark but had the height and fairness common among the tall, blond Albans. "My mam said that Grim's Dike was built by the old southerns, the iron soldiers, them who called themselves Dariyans and once ruled this land before the Albans came. She said it was built to stop the Albans who was then invading."

Ediki shrugged. "If it were, it didn't hold them back, did it? Maybe the lad's right.

Maybe I am."

'When the Albans invaded? You are not an Alban?"

'The fair ones? No. They are latecomers, those. We are the true people. This is our land from the first days. The Albans are no friends of ours." He looked up at Stronghand.

With his broad chest and burly shoulders and coal black hair, tied back with a strip of leather Ediki looked more like a bog spirit than a man, but his gaze was keen and his hands steady. If he feared the RockChildren, he knew how to hide it. "Lord, only the queen's uncle has the right to fly the sigil of the boar. If this high lord and his army reach Grim and the Imps first, we'll fight hard and ugly to get past them, I'm thinking. The lord of Weorod will have fighting men as well, to support him. If the high lord reinforces the queen—then she'll be as strong as she can be."

Stronghand nodded. "Therefore we must reach the fortifications first and set our own positions."

'There's a small force holding them already," added First Son, "This lord of Weorod the slave speaks of."

Stronghand grinned, baring his teeth in a challenge. "The slave' is a slave no more but a soldier in my army. Speed is what matters now. We'll march at double time, hit them in force front on while First Son leads his Hakonin brothers around through the forest to flank them. If he can."

First Son grinned in response, accepting the challenge.

The two Imps were smaller ramparts placed to hold the low ground between the forest, their angle and position buttressed by the tangle of streams that interlaced this country, but whatever band was holding Grim's Dike hadn't the manpower to hold these westerly ramparts as well, so it was an easy task to swarm over them and march east as the afternoon progressed.

'Will we leave men to hold the lesser dikes?" asked Tenth Brother.

Stronghand shook his head. "No. We'll see the worth of our Alban allies proved today.

Let everyone advance."

The sun lay behind them. Their shadows drew long and longer as they spread into battle order and advanced at a trot on the last great rampart. Grim's Dike was grim indeed, the ramparts cunningly positioned to stretch across grassy heath with, according to Ediki, one end thrust into thick oak and ash woods and the other dabbling its toes in lowland marsh. From the vantage afforded by their approach, however, Grim's Dike stretched out to either side far beyond what a man could see, a formidable obstacle with the great ditch gaping before them and the embankment rising high above. Ediki reckoned it at least two leagues in length. Behind it lay Weorod, where Ediki had been captured as a young man and sold into slavery in the distant city. Threads of smoke curled up from fires in that manor—hearth fires, perhaps, or forges as the Albans prepared for war.

First Son and his strike troop had already vanished into the forest as Stronghand raised his standard to signal the attack, nothing more complicated than a straightforward assault against massively inferior forces. He allowed Vitningsey to lead the charge and placed himself in the second rank. In silence they bent low and ran with the dogs loping beside them. These soldiers were limber and strong, so it was easy for them to leap down into the ditch and no difficult feat to scramble up the steep-sided embankment; they raised their shields to cover their heads as arrows and javelins rained down on them, but even such weapons as got through did little damage to their tough skin. The Albans guarding the rampart boasted bronze and stone weapons but evidently no steel, and while steel or iron could cleave the hide of one of his warriors, not much else would.

The defenders were few enough that it was hopeless in any case. He clambered up the embankment and kicked aside a bloody body as the first wave went over the top and, in silence, did their work. Only the screams of hapless men and the battering of spear and ax against shields and flesh accompanied the keening of the wind. As he reached the top, troubled by nothing more than a single arrow rolling down the slope past him, he saw both the battle unfolding and the landscape beyond. Within the haze made by the sun's slanting rays casting gold across the heath he glimpsed a distant cluster of buildings, ringed by a low stockade and surrounded by fields and pasture. Tiny figures fled the estate with nothing more than what they could carry. Below, the remaining Alban defenders, not more than three score, formed into tight groups, shields held firm as those who had survived the initial assault attempted to regroup and retreat. They were determined, but they cou^d not last long. Far behind, he heard a horn blast.

The Alban lord and his army were approaching quickly. For his plan to work, he needed control of the dike at once. First Son's force burst out of the trees and hit the Alban defenders from the rear, just as he had intended. The Alban shield wall collapsed and the dogs went to work finishing off the wounded. Around him, his army flowed over the rampart and down like floodwaters breaching an embankment. Ten hundreds, as Alain would say, in the way that the Wendish ordered men. He needed no exact count to understand that while he had a large army, he had been forced to leave a second group as large to garrison Hefenfelthe and the sur rounding countryside. Forty ships had sailed north so that he might have reinforcements massed to come in off the sea—if he could reach the sea. From the embankment he had a better view of the countryside to the northeast where the land sank into a flat marshy ground that seemed to go on forever, treeless, open, and utterly bleak. He saw no shelter for his army, no way to approach with stealth, no cover at all.

Yet out there in those trackless fens, the queen of Alba sheltered.

'My lord, we are ready." Out of breath, Ediki stopped beside him with the two-score volunteers, First Son's turncoats, the men who had once been slaves. They were tough, but the run and the climb had winded them. Were they strong enough to do what he needed?

'You know what risk you run," he said. "You know what will happen if you fail?"

'We know, my lord. We know what you have promised us. It is worth the risk. We have no love for those who ground us down." Ediki spat on the corpse that lay next to Stronghand's feet, a blond youth not so very old; his chin had been smashed in by an ax-blow, but it was the spear thrust that had disemboweled him that had killed him. "They are not even my kinfolk—these ones. They came from over the sea."

'Just as we did," said Stronghand.

'No offense meant, my lord," said Ediki as the other Albans murmured. A few of them, like Ediki, were short and stocky, with dark hair and brown eyes, but the rest had the height and pale coloring of the Albans. "But it was the Albans who drove my ancestors into the hills and the marsh in the long ago days."

'They raped my mother," Erling said suddenly in the way of a man meaning to prove himself by displaying his anger. "I'm a bastard, and a slave woman's son. You are the only man—" He hesitated as if seeing Stronghand for the first time. After so much time spent among humankind, Stronghand knew what disturbed them most about his appearance: the claws thrust out from the backs of his bony hands; the scaled copper of his flesh; his black slit eyes, the braid of coarse white hair, and the jewels that flashed when he bared his teeth. So like a man and yet not a man. Erling recovered himself and floundered onward. "—the only lord who has offered me anything but chains and the bite of his whip."

'So I am," Stronghand agreed. "And so I promised. Let the slave become the master, and the master become the slave."

Half a dozen of his soldiers hurried up from below, carrying mail and bloody tunics and open-faced helms taken off the dead men. "Put on what you can," said Stronghand,

"and take your places. We haven't much time."

His army had all crossed over the dike and arrayed themselves according to his plan, a third kneeling in staggered ranks just below the crest, a third running back to invest the palisade and manor house, and the others split onto either flank. An entire hundred crept back into the forest under First Son's command, backtracking.

He knelt beside Ediki, letting the old man conceal him with one of the rectangular Alban shields. His Alban volunteers now wore the outward garb of the men who had once defended the dike.

Two banners bobbed into view, fluttering with the sun's light streaming across them: the queen's stag and its attendant boar. No wolf's head glittered among the host, but a man rode at the forefront wearing a helm ornamented with the tusks and snout of a boar.

His army came in good order, well disciplined and confident. He estimated there were five or six hundreds of them, enough to inflict real damage if it came to a pitched fight.

They could see from the dirt churned up by the passage of the Eika army that a large force had moved across this ground ahead of them.

Erling stepped forward and waved his arms. "Make haste!" he shouted. "Brothers, move quickly! My lord, I pray you, beware! A small pack of the beasts are hiding in the forest the better to ambush you, to scare you off and make you think they've taken the dike. The rest have swung up along the dike toward the fens. We held them off, but we haven't long before they attack again."

The other Alban volunteers moved up alongside him, an easy target for arrows if the Alban host distrusted their tale. It took courage to place themselves so nakedly in the line of fire.

'Make haste!" they cried. "Make haste! We need reinforcements!"

For an instant, for a year, for the space of ten breaths, Stronghand wondered if the Alban lord with his boar's head helmet would take the bait.

Then First Son played his hand—axes and spears clattered against shields to create a host of noise rising out of the woodland. These Albans didn't yet understand that the RockChildren attacked in silence.

The lord shouted a command; his banner dipped and rose to signal the advance, and the host broke forward at a run, making haste, and their tight formation came undone as one man outpaced another, as they raced for the safety of the ramparts.

Stronghand bared his teeth. Behind, he felt as much as heard the murmur of his army tightening their grips on their weapons.

When the first of the Albans came over the top, awkward as they climbed and winded and thinking that their brothers awaited them they hadn't a chance.

In the end, after the slaughter and with the sun sliding down beneath the western horizon, they took the boar's head alive. He was a man of indeterminate years, lean, hard, and cunning by the look of him, not easy to subdue. He was too proud to curse at his fate and too clever to waste his breath begging for mercy or modesty when Stronghand's soldiers stripped him. He wore luxurious garb under his chain mail, a padded tunic chased with gold thread, the gold armbands worn by Alban lords, a pair of gold necklaces, and silver rings and bracelets, a rich haul by any measure. In his time he had survived three wounds, long since healed, but on this day only his right hand was bleeding from a stroke that had knocked his gauntlet off. His shield was almost hacked in two, but it had fared better than the four young men who had died in a last attempt to break him out of the battle and escape toward the fens.

The Alban volunteers gathered to look him over. They had the look of starving dogs waiting to feed but held back by the chains of fear— because they feared this scarred and battle-hardened nobleman who stood stripped to his shift before them, barefoot, unarmed, and entirely at their mercy. Nonetheless Stronghand could smell their fear, a perfume as rank as old meat.

'The young should not die to save the old," observed Ediki solemnly as he examined the four corpses sprawled at the foot of the noble lord.

'I am the queen's uncle, called Eadig, Earl of the middle country and Lord of Wyscan,"

said the noble to Stronghand, as if Ediki had not spoken. He took no notice of the former slaves. "What ransom will you take for me, raider? How may I ransom those of my soldiers who still live?"

Stronghand raised both hands, palms up, in a gesture he had seen used among humankind. "Your fate is not mine to judge. I have promised certain of my lords that they may enslave any man among the survivors."

Eadig's arrogant gaze skipped over the branded faces of Ediki and the others, ranged farther afield to encompass the Eika now looting the dead or settling down for the night's bivouac within the safety of the palisaded manor. "You have lords among you? I thought you were like the wild dogs who hunt in packs and devour everything they meet."

'Then you do not understand us. Yet what we are should not concern you. You have lords among your own kind, Eadig, for you were once one among them. Now, here are others. I name them for you, because you must know at whose hands you will suffer mercy, or justice. Here is Lord Ediki of Weorod—"

'Eadwulf is lord of Weorod!" cried the nobleman indignantly. "My cousin's niece married him five years past!"

'Eadwulf is dead or soon will be. It is no concern of mine. This man standing here at my right hand is Lord Ediki of Weorod. Here is his kinsman, Lord Erling of— What lands do you claim?"

Erling laughed, reckless with triumph. "South of Hefenfelthe lies Briden Manor. My mother is buried there. It lies under the authority ofLadyEalhflaed."

'Very well, Lord Erling, you are now lord of Briden Manor. As for these others—"

But as he turned toward them to discover what claims the other men would make, Eadig stepped forward with the fearless manner of a man accustomed to ruling and to being obeyed. His tone was sour and scornful and he trembled, as tense as a dog straining against a leash.

'You have no authority to steal the inheritance of those who came legally into possession of these lands!"

'Have I not?" Stronghand asked curiously. "I have the right granted me by force of arms. Can you say otherwise?"

'It goes against nature for slaves to take the place of free men and claim to rule as masters over those who are rightfully lords by law and divine favor!"

Stronghand closed with him, unsheathing his claws a handbreadth from the earl's face.

Eadig's expression changed utterly; his eyes flicked nervously to the corpses littering the ramparts and field and his nostrils flared in a pallid face, but he did not retreat.

'In truth, your objection puzzles me," said Stronghand, turning his left hand the better to display his wicked claws. "You ruled over them. Fortune's wheel turned, and now you have lost both law and divine favor. How does this go against nature? One day a wolf may flourish, hunting down the sheep, and the next he may be pinioned by the spears of the sheepherders."

'Call me a slave, but I will still be earl of the middle country."

Stronghand grinned, baring his teeth. "Erling, kneel."

Erling did so, one knee in the dirt, face lifted obediently to look upon the one who ruled him.

'I name you earl of the middle country and lord of Wyscan."

Eadig sputtered, but Stronghand brushed his chin with the tip of his claws and the man fell silent.

''E-arl?'" Erling stammered. "I never thought—a manor, my lord, but to be titled an earl—"

'I am in need of loyal men to rule, Erling. You are one of them. I consider it no easy task. I expect you to become a responsible steward of these lands. The riches of Alba are not to be squandered. There are other men who desire what you have now been given.

Serve me well and you will prosper. Serve me ill, and you will die."

'Y-yes, my lord." The young man had gone so white that his slave brand burned red against the pallor of his skin. His companions stared at him, whispering among themselves and beginning to eye each other as if wondering who might gain the greatest prize from their generous benefactor.

'Not all of you will serve me well," remarked Stronghand. "Such is the nature of humankind, I have observed. But I rule in this land, and those I have raised up I can bring down."

'Only for as long as you live." Eadig spat in Stronghand's face. "You cannot defeat the queen and her council, nor can you pray for the gods' favor."

'Let me kill him for you!" cried Erling, leaping up.

Stronghand did not mind the spittle. It was as inconsequential as rain even though he knew that to humankind it was a mortal insult. "Lord Ediki, does this nameless slave serve us better alive or dead?"

Ediki considered the question with a serious frown, as it deserved. "Living, my lord, but crippled. If he is blind, then he can no longer lead slaves in revolt or bear arms against us."

'Very well. See that his eyes are put out, Lord Erling. Best that he survive the operation. Lord Ediki, walk with me. We'll need torches."

Torches were brought. They climbed back up onto the ramparts, careful to step over the cooling bodies of the dead Alban soldiers. There were so many of them. Eadig's screams cut through the air and for an instant Stronghand smelled the sour stink of burning flesh, but he did not look back.

Two score of Eika soldiers carrying torches to light their way attended them as they walked. The smooth path that topped the rampart was divided here and there by a stockade or a jumble of branches piled up to make a barrier. In time, as the night crept on and the moon touched the zenith, they reached the northern end of the barrier. The moon's light was so strong that he could survey the landscape, all pale silver and coarse shadows. To his left, mixed forest land swept away to the south and west, but northeast the land sank and leveled off into a sheet of pewter. What he smelled off the wasteland was indescribable—sweet, heady, with the barest sting of salt.

'The fens," said Stronghand. "The queen waits for us out there."

'You'll be lost if you march the army in there without a guide," said Ediki. "Lost, and dead. Spirits live there, the souls of men who drowned."

'You lived in this land as a boy."

'So I did, but I've lost much of the lore I knew then. And the waters will have changed.

The safe paths will have shifted."

'The queen found her way to safety."

'So she did, my lord. She keeps allies and slaves, just as you do. But I know those who may still help us. I have kinfolk who do not love the Alban queen. Give me time, and I will find them."

'How much time? The longer she eludes me, the stronger she gets. You cannot remain Lord of Weorod if the queen of Alba regains what she has lost."

Ediki grinned, easy to see in the moonlight. He had strong, straight teeth for a man of his years; he hadn't lost even one, remarkable considering the many healed stripes Stronghand had seen on his back the day Ediki had joined up with his army.

'Before the moon is full again, my lord, I promise you, I will find you a guide into the fens. But the queen is powerful and her sorcerers are dangerous, as my kinfolk discovered to their sorrow back in the days when we were still free, and rulers of this country. Long ago."

Stronghand glanced toward Tenth Son, standing close enough to hear every word. His littermate shook the standard, and the bones and beads rang, clacking together.

'I do not fear the tree sorcerers, nor should you. We are strong, we who were born in the north. Your kin will rule again in this land if they are among those who serve me well and faithfully. Show me how to find the queen. That is the first task I set you and your tribe."

Ediki bowed his graying head as a sign of obedience and understanding, but he looked pensive and content. The days of traveling and fighting had not wearied him. "It is a small task compared to the years I struggled to hold my head high although I was a slave."

Moonlight shivered on the waters. The beauty of the half-seen landscape and the quiet night washed over Stronghand as if on a rising tide, enveloping him. It was so still. The countryside was a mystery to him, a trackless wasteland of water and reeds that was despite everything, a place of numinous wonder. Did the spirits of drowned men cause the waters to shine, or was that only a glamour of the moon? Lights flickered and sparked and died among the shadows, among the sedge beds and stands of reeds, each flare like a candle lit for a moment before being extinguished.

Like life, he thought. His own life would be a bright, brief flame that might split the darkness for as long as lightning kindled the heavens, but no more. Even the moon's glow could only reach so far into the ceaseless tide of years.

'What are those lights?" he asked Ediki. "They burn for an instant and then they're gone."

The lord of Weorod smiled sadly, but his expression was clean and joyful as he gazed over the landscape of his childhood.

'Those are the souls of the men we killed today. They're seeking the gateway that leads to the other side, to the land of the dead, where the meadow flowers bloom."

JhUlJtvl steered the canoe down a side channel into a labyrinth of sedge and reed.

Islets like the rounded backs of whales humped up out of the shallow waters, covered with grass or low-lying brush willow, white with flowers. Through this maze they glided, Ediki kneeling at the stern of the canoe and his nephew Elafi at the stem.

They had found Elafi ten days after the assault on Grim's Dike, and it had taken all of Ediki's persuasive powers to convince the young man that he was who he said he was. In the end, Stronghand had agreed to come alone to meet the refugees in the marsh. It was the only way Elafi would agree to guide them into the marshland.

The sun was just coming up as the crescent moon set. The last stars faded as the sky slowly brightened, and the soft breath of a dawn breeze lifting off the waters whispered through the reeds like the murmuring of the drowned.

'We're here, Uncle," said Elafi, grinning back at Ediki. "You're a little slow and sloppy, but you steer like a man who grew up in the fens."

Here proved to be nothing more interesting than a broad hummock of sedge and reeds shouldering out of the waters, but Stronghand smelled that people camped here. The canoe slid up onto a muddy shore where the reeds had been cut back; otherwise it was impossible to see that the islet was inhabited.

'There she is," said Elafi unnecessarily as a short, middle-aged woman pressed through the reeds and halted on the beach, mud squishing between her toes as she stared at them, face alight with joy 'Manda!" Ediki clambered from the boat, but in his haste the boat tipped and sloshed, and he splashed up to the woman, laughing, and she grabbed him and hugged him fiercely as she wept.

'Brother. Brother. I thought you were lost to us."

Elafi gestured to Stronghand to climb out of the canoe; together, they pulled the boat up onto the shore and stowed it where it could not be seen. There were a half dozen crude boats hidden among the reeds. He took his standard and his spear and followed the young man up to the camp where Ediki was now greeting every person from the eldest to the youngest.

This was a camp of fugitives, about a score, half of them children. The sturdiest shelter consisted of a lean-to built of sticks covered by a roof woven of reeds, their clothing was little more than grass skirts and cloaks, cunningly braided together, and they had only one cooking pot among them as well as baskets and sharpened sticks fashioned into spears or fishing forks. Yet there was plenty of food: plucked ducks and coots, skinned voles and hares, gutted perch, roach, and pickerel as well as a bounty of slippery eels, and blossoms and young leaves from the spring flowering.

A lad approached them, bearing a bronze cup.

'Will you drink, Honored One?" he asked boldly.

Stronghand regarded the cup gravely. The liquid steaming within did not smell at all appetizing. Ediki hurried back with his sister beside him.

'My kinfolk offer you guest rights," he said. "I pray you, my lord.

Drink."

He let his grin flash, knowing that they tested him. He took the cup from the youth and raised it.

'I come alone to offer an alliance to you," he said, and drank half.

The brew went down easier than he had imagined, laced with an aftertaste that puckered his tongue so sharply he almost laughed in surprise. Instead, he held out what was left.

Ediki's sister stepped forward. "I am Manda, grandmother of this clan. I give you welcome. I dreamed of you, dragon-man."

She was not lean and muscled like a warrior; she was stocky, even plump, despite the obvious hardships she and, her clan had suffered, and she had the same coarse black hair—cut short—as Ediki had although hers had less gray in it. She looked like an ordinary woman in all ways, if one only looked on the surface. But in her stance he saw authority and in the way the others deferred to her, holding back until she had spoken, he saw leadership. She was a honed spear forged in a time of trouble. She had weight, and heft, and her surety was like the sharpened edge of a killing blade.

'I have dreams," she continued, by way of explanation. "I dreamed a man was coming who wasn't a man, and he sailed in on a ship that wasn't a ship but a dragon born of wood. The goddess told me that this man who wasn't a man would bring my brother back to me, although he was lost to us long years ago. The goddess told me that I might offer him the cup held between allies." She took the bronze cup from him and drank the rest, wincing at its bite, almost grinning, as he had.

She whistled between strong teeth. The waiting boy took the cup from her and retreated, leaving her to speak with Stronghand alone. Even Ediki walked back into the clutter of the camp. Several of his kinfolk clung to him, still amazed by his existence, but no one spoke; they only watched as the negotiations began.

'What do you want, stranger?"

'I want your help to track down the queen of Alba and kill her, and to destroy the power of her tree sorcerers. When that is done, I will rule Alba and reward those who aided me."

The sun rose. Light shone on the waters. A flight of geese flew low overhead, honking so loudly that Manda waited until they had passed before she resumed speaking.

'Their power you can never destroy. Their magic is very strong. It defeated us, my people's claims to this land long ago, my clan and I not so many moons ago. The queen and her army drove us off the holy island where we have lived as caretakers back into the dawn of time. My mam was caretaker there. The right to the land and honor of the guardianship came from her mam before her and hers before her, back into oldest times.

There's enough land to grow a small crop of grain and keep a big flock of sheep and a gaggle of geese. That's all gone. You see how they drove us off."

She indicated the makeshift camp, the crude shelters, the open campfires, the ragged children. They had not escaped with much. But they did not seem hungry and desperate.

'You come with an army," she said. "Will you attack them?"

'Should I?" he asked.

'Overland? No. You will all die in the fens."

'What if we sail in from the sea?"

'It will be hard to sail to this place from the sea. It's shallow. The tree sorcerers will raise a mist to confound you."

'Our ships can sail in shallow water. The sorcerers' magic will not disturb us. But we don't know the path that will lead us from the sea to these islands."

To his surprise, she shrugged. "Even I don't know what rivers lead to the wash and how they tangle in the fens. There are some who live on the seacoast who know, but it is these clans who guided the queen to the holy island. They will not help you. They are in league with the Albans."

'Without help, our ships will get lost in the marshlands, won't they?"

She cupped her hands over her mouth and gave a "courlee" call. A second cry answered from a distance, out among the reedbeds and mires. "That's my other child, called Ki. My sister's daughter—now mine. You can't see her, and so can't the white-hairs. To hunt in the fens you need a guide."

'I need guides for my army, and I need a caretaker for the holy island."

Her smile flashed like lightning, quickly seen and quickly gone, but her expression remained solemn. "Give me back the holy claim that my clan was charged with in the long ago days, and I will help you. But if you promise me, and cheat me, then you will fare no better than the queen. I have dreams, stranger. There is power in dreams."

He nodded, acknowledging her blunt wisdom, and the naked threat in her words. "I know the worth of my allies." He drew a finger around the contours of the wooden Circle hanging at his chest as he gazed out over the fens. From deep within this labyrinth the Alban queen might strike at will against his garrisons. From this shelter within the fenlands she might hold on for months or for years, a worm in his side. Alba would not be his until she was dead, her heirs executed, and her tree sorcerers shorn of their power.

Manda licked her lips as if tasting the last of the brew. "Show your trust, stranger. Let my children guide you out into the fens. They will show you the holy island and the queen's camp, and you can judge for yourself if the fight is worth it."

A PRI reunion was not going as she had expected. Sanglant's anger was palpable, and because Liath simply had no idea how to respond, she turned around and left the tent. His hostility and Blessing's illness were too much to take in at once.

The shaman followed her outside, herding her toward the crest where they could see the landscape spread below them.

'Why do you allow this male to speak to you so disrespectfully?" she asked.

'He is my husband!"

'He is not like you," said the shaman reasonably as they strolled up the hill.

Grass pulled along Liath's thighs. The sun shone down. There was not a single scrap of cloud in the heavens. She had never seen a sky so vast, hills tumbling away on either side and the blue dome stretching away to the ends of the earth.

'No," she agreed at last. He was no scholar; he was not bookish or thoughtful, not educated, not restful, a man interested more in action than in words. A good soldier, an excellent captain, and a loyal prince. Hugh had taunted him with the title "prince of dogs," after his year as Bloodheart's captive, and there was something to the name. But she did not know what he was now. He had lived for four years without her, years which to her had seemed scarcely more than a week. "I don't know how he has changed while I walked the spheres."

'It is best to set aside a pura which has become unpredictable and dangerous."

'That isn't our custom. He needs time to recover from his wound." From his anger.

The shaman flicked back her ears. Reaching the crest, they turned to look down at the centaur encampment settled near the base of a hollow.

'How can I save my daughter?" Liath asked.

'She did not die when the thread was severed. That must give us hope that she may yet recover."

'She must eat and drink in order to live."

'It may be possible to sustain her for a time by means of sorcery."

'My father said that a cocoon changes a caterpillar to a butterfly. It's a magical binding in and of itself. Would sorcery change her?"

'I do not know. But if we cannot wake her, it may be the only way to keep her alive until we discover how to heal her."

Liath sighed.

To the east the land fell away into the valley; the distant river winked at them, light dazzling on the flowing water as it cut through the grass in giant curves. Farther east, the crags shone where the afternoon sunlight played across them, catching glints of color. To the west the sun blinded, but if she squinted she made out a countryside of hills rumpled up like the ridges in a furrowed blanket.

'Is that smoke rising?" she asked, pointing to threads of gray curling up into the sky.

The shaman had no need to narrow her eyes to see what Liath indicated. "Prince Sanglant's army camps there."

'He has an army with him? Where did he get an army? How long does it take to travel from here back to Wendar?"

'Many months of travel, I would imagine."

'He brought an army so far with him? How can that be possible? He must have suffered many losses, of men and animals both."

'I do not know. It is not a subject we discussed."

'No," said Liath, wondering what Li'at'dano had discussed with Sanglant or if she had discussed anything. "We must send word to his people that we are here. Why did he leave his army and go out into the grass alone?"

'To stalk the beast."

'The griffins?"

'Nay. The man. The killer. But griffins as well. He seeks griffin feathers and sorcerers to combat these 'Seven Sleepers' you also have spoken of. He hoped to find both here in the grasslands."

'Did he?"

'He found you, and he found me and those under my tutelage. As for the griffins—"

She gestured toward the sky where one or both of the griffins circled, never content to let Liath out of their sight. "There they are."

They walked down into the centaurs' encampment. The layout had a subtle warp to it: the largest of the round felt tents lay in the center while the rest radiated out from it in a spiral pattern. The centaurs traveled light; despite their numbers she counted only twenty tents, ten of which lay in the outermost ring like a protecting corral although it wasn't apparent that the centaurs wished to keep anyone out, or in, except wolves.

The centaurs had brought a number of their Kerayit allies with them, including the healer who attended Sanglant, and two dozen wagons, most of which were rigged to be pulled by oxen while only two were constructed to allow centaurs themselves to haul the vehicle. Most of the wagons sat along the outermost ring to provide a barrier, but one, gaudily painted and built like a tiny cottage on wheels, sat next to the centralmost tent where Blessing slept and Sanglant healed.

There were horses, too—real horses, but they were kept separate, watched over by both centaurs and their human allies. Nearby, some men sheared sheep, collecting greasy wool in huge leather pouches.

As Liath and the shaman came into camp, centaurs surveyed Liath curiously but did not approach. A few coltish centaur children followed their dams, and half a dozen colts did as well, nudging at the teats of the centaur females. All of the adult centaurs carried bows slung over their backs and a quiver full of arrows.

A trio of human women cooked mutton stew in an iron kettle slung over a campfire; another polished jesses and leather hoods for goshawks while her companion mended a cage; a pair beat wool while next to them others poured boiling water over beaten wool in preparation for making the felt with which they covered their tents and made their rugs and some of their clothing. Five men were engaged in churning milk in a skin vat; the milk bubbled. Its tart scent stung Liath's nostrils. Suddenly she realized how hungry she was.

'Come," said the shaman. "There is one more you must meet because we two will not be enough to defeat those who oppose us."

'We are allies, then? You have not said so before this."

'If we were not allies, you would not walk beside me, nor I beside you. I am not foolish enough to set myself and my people against one whom even the griffins fear. You are not like the other humans, Bright One. Your father has given you the form worn by those born into the tribe of humankind, but your heart and your soul had their birth in the heavens."

'It is true I do not stand easily in either world, here or there. It is hard to choose. I cannot have both."

'Then you have chosen." They halted in front of the painted wagon. "Here lives my apprentice. She has met her luck, so now she must remain hidden from the sight of those who are not her family or her slaves. But you, I think, exist beyond such earthly prohibitions. You and she must meet. Go in."

'I do not wish to break any prohibitions if it means harm may come to another."

Li'at'dano had a horsey way of laughing, more like a snort. "The harm comes not to Sorgatani but to the one afflicted by her power. I believe you are powerful enough to be safe."

Liath laughed. A queer sense of exhilaration filled her. "Then I pray you are right."

She felt no fear, only curiosity, as she mounted the steps that took her up to the high bed of the wagon. Before she could scratch on the door, it opened, sliding sideways along the wall, and she stepped over the threshold as she ducked inside.

She expected to feel closed in, but magic was at work here; it tingled right down to her bones. The inside of the wagon was considerably larger than the outside. There was no other way to account for the spacious chamber that greeted her astonished gaze, which resembled the interior of a round tent. The corners of the space were lost in shadow and possibly did not properly exist. Walls fluttered in the breeze, sagging gently in and out, although she could have sworn that, outside, they were constructed of wood planks.

Above, spokes supported the round felt roof, radiating out from a central pole that, set straight up, pierced a smoke hole. Definitely, absolutely, she had seen no central pole sticking out of the wagon's roof. The heavens glimpsed through the smoke hole had a gray shimmer shot through with shifting sparks, not the hard blue shine of the open sky.

On the left-hand side of the tent sat a boxed-in bed with a chest resting at its foot. A colorful felt blanket ornately decorated with bright animals—a golden phoenix, a silver griffin, a red deer—spread tautly across the mattress, tucked in on all sides. A layer of rugs and two cushions completed the furnishings, because the rest of that left side of the tent lay empty; it was uninhabited. An altar stood in front of her, beyond the center pole, containing a golden cup filled to the brim with oil with the surface lit and burning, a mirror with handle inlaid with gold and pearls, a silver handbell, and a stoppered flask.

Beside the altar table squatted a portable stove. Coals glowed within this brazier, and a bronze bucket sat on a slab of rock beside it, filled with ash, smoking slightly. A young woman crouched beside the brazier with an iron ash shovel gripped in her right hand; she stared up at Liath as one might gape at a bull that comes crashing into church in the middle of prayers. A second woman, much older, stood next to a high bench; she paused in the act of pouring a white liquid into cups. She held a beautiful double-spouted silver ewer, the necks, heads, and open mouths of camels forming the spouts.

'You are called Bright One because you shine."

Liath looked around for the source of the voice.

The third person in the room sat on a broad couch. Her figure was veiled by a gauzy net of finest translucent silk that tented the wide couch, strung up on posts set into the four corners. Next to this couch-bed stood a tall chest cunningly worked into a shelf fitted with large and small drawers, each one lovingly painted with antlered deer and arrogant rams. Beside it a beautiful saddle was set up on a wooden tree, its side skirts brushing the carpet; the silver ornaments that decorated the frame and seat winked in the smoky light.

A bridle had been thrown carelessly across the cantle.

'Drink with me." Her voice was light and airy but firm. She gestured for Liath to move forward. Liath's footsteps made no sound on carpets laid over a woven grass mat. As she approached, the other woman swept aside the gauze veil so that Liath could sit on an embroidered cushion at the opposite end of the couch.

Liath had never had trouble seeing in dim light, but the breath of sorcery hazed her vision; she could not get a clear look at the other woman's face although she sat little more than an arm's length from her. She wore a robe woven of golden silk. Her ornaments gleamed in the dim light: a tall headdress stamped with gold from which hung streamers of beads and gold lacework, and earrings curved like reed boats dangling fish from a dozen lines which brushed her shoulders. Whenever she shifted, the earrings chimed softly and the gold lace-work rustled.

The older servant, too, rang: she wore anklets and wristlets sewn with tiny bells and silver earrings that danced and sang when she moved. She carried the silver ewer over and poured them each a cup of the heady brew, stinging and sharp, from the camel's mouth. When Liath drank, it went right to her head.

'You are the one who bears the name of my teacher," said the other woman.

'In my own tongue I call myself Liathano."

The other woman tried this several times but could not produce the softer consonants, so in the end she laughed, amused at her efforts.

Liath laughed with her, warming to her lack of arrogance. "You are called Sorgatani."

'So I am. I, too, am named after one who came before me. Because she died the year I was born, her name and her soul passed into me." "Do the souls of your people not ascend to the River of Light?" "They remain on Earth. Souls endure many lives. We are born again and again into the world below. Do your people not know this truth also?"

Liath shook her head. "I have seen many things recently that have made the world above and the world below look very different to my eyes. Yet it's true my people do not believe as you do. The Lord and Lady bide in the Chamber of Light, which exists beyond the world above. It is there that our souls ascend after we die, to live in peace and harmony with God."

'That is very strange," said Sorgatani. She was silent, then broke into delighted laughter. "What do your souls do in this chamber of light? Do they dance? Do they eat?

Do they find pleasure in the bed? Do they ride and hunt?"

A churchwoman might have been offended by such a questions, but to Liath they suggested a mind with an affinity to her own.

'There is some disagreement among the church mothers on this point, actually. Some say that only our souls can exist within the Chamber of Light, that we will dissolve into the eternal bliss that is the presence of God. Others say that our bodies will be fully resurrected, that we will exist bodily in the Chamber of Light but without any taint of the darkness that gives rise to the evil inclination. The Enemy will have no foothold in the Chamber of Light."

'If your bodies are resurrected, then what do you eat? Who feeds this vast tribe?"

'God are the food on which blessedness is fed."

'Isn't God consumed, then?"

'No. God has no material substance, not like we do."

'I admit I am puzzled. Who is this enemy?"

'Darkness and corruption."

'But darkness and corruption are everywhere. They are part of Earth. How can any place exist that does not contain all that is? Does this 'enemy' cause humankind to do evil things?"

'No, not at all. We live our lives according to free will. Darkness came into the world, but it is up to us to choose that which is good, or that which is evil. If God had made it otherwise, that we could not choose evil, then we would be slaves, 'an instrument in the hand of Them who set us in motion,' to quote the blessed Daisan."

'Then who is responsible for evil?"

'Darkness rose from the depths and corrupted the four pure elements."

'Surely this is impossible. The world has always existed as it was created in the days long ago by the Great God. Darkness was part of creation, not the foundation of evil."

'Then who do you think is responsible for evil?"

'There are many spirits abroad in the world above and the world below, and some of them are mischievous or even malign. They plague us with sickness and bad luck, so we must protect ourselves against them."

'What of the evil that people do to each other?"

'Are there not answers enough for this? Greed, lust, anger, envy, fear. Do these not turn to evil when they fester in the hearts of humankind?"

Liath laughed. "I cannot argue otherwise. This drink has made my tongue loose and a little clumsy. I have not eaten for many days."

'No guest of our tribe goes hungry!"

Sorgatani clapped her hands. The younger servant brought a wooden tray and set it down in front of Liath. Three enamel bowls contained yogurt, dumplings stewed in fat, and a hot barley porridge. The two servants moved away, bells settling and stilling as they sat beside the threshold with heads bowed. Sorgatani averted her gaze while Liath ate, forcing herself not to gulp down the meal. When she had finished, the servant removed the tray.

'I ask your pardon if my questions have caused offense," said Sor-gatani. "You are my guest. We do not know each other."

'Nay, do not apologize. As the blessed Daisan wrote, 'It is an excellent thing that a person knows how to formulate questions.' "

The older servant refilled Liath's cup, and she drank, savoring the aftertaste flavored like milk of almonds. The fermented drink flooded her limbs with warmth and made the heavens, glimpsed through the smoke hole, spin slowly, as a sphere rotates around its axis. She and Sorgatani were the axis, surely, and the whole world was spinning around them, or they were spinning; it was hard to tell.

'How is it that you speak Wendish so well?"

Sorgatani downed a second cup as well. "Humans are born with luck that leads them either into ill fortune or good fortune throughout their life. We who are shamans among my people have so much power within us that we have no room for luck to be born into our body, so our luck is born into the body of another. My luck was born in the body of a woman of the Wendish tribe. Because I see her in my dreams, I understand and speak her language."

'This is a thing I have never heard of before. Is it common for the luck of a Kerayit shaman to be born into a foreigner?"

'Our luck is born where fate decrees, and where our path lies. It is my fate that my path lies west, intertwined with that of your people. I think you know her, because she speaks of you in her dreams. She is called Hanna—

'Hanna!" Liath had not seen Hanna since Werlida, when she had fled Henry's wrath with Sanglant. "Do you know where she is? Better yet, I'll search. Is there a fire I can look into?"

Sorgatani lifted a hand, and the older servant brought the silver cup over on the tray, now cleared of bowls. She set it down before Liath and retreated.

Liath passed a hand over the shimmering surface of flame, as smooth as water licked by ripples of fire. With ease, she drove a path through the flame and sought Hanna.

Only the coruscating blue-white flicker of the burning stone met her seeking gaze, as if Hanna were caught within the gateway, wandering the ancients paths woven between the stone crowns.

'How can this be?" she whispered.

Shadows danced, and faded, making her dizzy, and she found herself back in Sorgatani's tent. The oil in the cup had all burned up to reveal, in the bottom, an astonishing wheel of horses' heads, spinning like a pinwheel, one galloping after the next, until she realized that she was staring at a pattern beaten into the silver. She took her hands off the cup. The jangling of tiny bells announced the arrival of the older servant, and the cup was removed.

'She does not walk on Earth," said Liath, surprised to find she could still speak. The effort had tired her, and the question of Han-na's fate weighed on her, an impossibly heavy burden. Hanna was her northern star, the one sure stable point in a tumultuous world. "I pray she is not dead."

'She walks the crowns," said Sorgatani carelessly, as if to walk the crowns was no greater a feat than a morning's stroll down to the river.

'Who but the Seven Sleepers knows the secret of the crowns?"

'A woman, I think, whom Hanna saved from a deep pit, which you call a dungeon.

Now they walk the crowns to escape those who pursue them. She is safe."

'What woman?"

'I do not know how you call her. Your names are puzzling and difficult to pronounce."

Liath squelched her frustration. This was no time to irritate her allies. "Do you have any way of knowing for how long she is safe?"

'Only the Holy One can see both ways through time. She can see across great distances and pierce the veil of time through the heart of the burning stone. Can you not as well?"

'I can see through fire, but not into the heart of the crowns. I saw glimpses of past and future when I crossed through the burning stone, but that sight is closed to me here on Earth."

'Then what does it mean, to'see through fire'?"

'It is a gift known to those who have taken Eagle's vows in my country, to see folk and places through fire. The Eagles are messengers for the regnant. In this way they can be also the regnant's eyes and ears."

'Can you teach me this sorcery? Or is it forbidden?" Her tone dropped wistfully.

"There is so much I wish to learn, but there is much that is forbidden to me. We live under the tutelage of the Horse people. They have always been our allies and our mothers, our guardians." She shifted sideways on the couch, smoothing out a lump in the embroidered cushion she sat on, moving a little closer to Liath. "I know I am impatient.

Some days I hope that my fate leads me westward where I can see new things."

'Are you a prisoner?"

As if a muffling blanket had dropped down around them, the hiss of burning oil became the only sound. Liath could not even hear the breathing of the two servants. Of the camp outside, surely audible through the walls, she heard nothing. It was as if magic had torn them away from normal intercourse with the world and thrust them into the heart of a maze, where sight and sound altered and warped until they might stand a spear's length from their companions and yet be utterly separated from them by a wall of stone or a veil of sorcery.

'I am a prisoner of my power." Sorgatani spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone with which the steward of an estate proclaimed which cattle were marked out for the Novarian slaughter. "The Horse people are immune, as are my blood kin and the other shamans.

Those who serve me are bound to me by magic so that they do not suffer in my presence."

'Nothing has happened to me."

'You, like me, possess a soul that was passed on to you from another being. Mine came from my aunt. Yours came from a creature born of fire."

'Have you seen with your own eyes the fate suffered by ordinary humans who are brought into the presence of one of your kind?"

'Nay. This lore I had from my teacher."

'Has it been tested? If you have not seen it for yourself, how do you know it is true and not just a superstition?"

Sorgatani laughed bitterly. "What if it is true, Liat-ano? Am I to walk into a camp of strangers with no care that I may bring death down upon people I do not know? We tell stories, in our tribe, of how a Kerayit shaman destroyed an entire tribe, one who warred against us, by walking through their camp at midday. Every soul there died, and their tribe vanished from Earth and memory. I dare not risk it. I seek knowledge, not death. I am not a warrior."

'I am no warrior either, although at times I must fight. After everything I have seen, I wish it were not to a war that I have returned, for there is so much to learn and to study.

This war seems like a desert to me, a barren wasteland. But still, it must be crossed."

'You speak as if with my own heart." Sorgatani's earrings chimed as she shifted on her cushion. Her words seemed freighted with reticence, the speech of a woman shy of speaking her deepest feelings because she had never had a close companion before, only the comradeship of duty, the tutelage of one more powerful than she, and the inevitability of the isolated life that she would inherit when she carne fully into her powers.

Power frightened those who did not possess it, and well it might vvhen it resided in the flesh of an otherwise ordinary woman.

'You must be lonely," said Liath. The bitterness of the solitude she had suffered with her father as they lived as fugitives all those years was as fresh now as it had been when she had lived through it. It was impossible to trust when you were always running. It was hard to clasp hands with people soon to be left behind, never to be met again. Her years in Heart's Rest had been Da's last gift to her, and giving that precious respite to her, granting her the time to develop affectionate bonds with Hanna and Ivar, had killed him.

He had given his enemies time to catch up with him, because he wanted to make his daughter happy.

Impulsively, Liath reached out. "We are alike, you and I. We might be sisters." She grasped the other woman's dark hand.

A spark burst where their skin touched. A report like the clap of thunder deafened her as she recoiled. The servants leaped up, bells jangling, but Liath nursed her hand and, when tears stopped stinging and she had enough courage, turned it over to examine it.

Red blisters bubbled on her palm. They burned like sin.

'I pray you, forgive me!"

'Nay, you must forgive me." Sorgatani sounded near tears. She cracked an order at the servants, and the older one hurried to the chest and brought out a tiny leather bottle.

Bowing low before Liath, she produced a salve and, when Liath held out her burned hand, smoothed the sweet-smelling paste over the burned skin.

'I should have warned you not to touch me," continued Sorgatani. "I should not have let you sit so close. If I could wish one thing it would be that you do not abandon me, now that you know the truth. You see how it is."

'I see how it is," said Liath, wonderingly, lifting her gaze. The sting had dissipated the sorcerous veil that disguised the Kerayit girl's features. She could now see Sorgatani clearly—a beautiful, almond-eyed woman no older than herself, with black hair neatly confined in braids, an oval face broad at the cheekbones, and a lovely dark complexion.

"I see you. I could not see you clearly before."

Sorgatani stared back, taking her measure, and they both smiled and, in unison, glanced down. Liath blew on her palm. The cooling touch of her breath and of the salve eased the pain.

'May no person touch you? Can you never have a husband?"

'No Kerayit woman will ever have a husband. That is the law. We are the daughters of the Horse people. Just as they have no husbands, so do I and my sisters have no husband.

There was one of us who married many years ago—it was allowed because he was her luck. When he died, the luck passed into the body of her son. They are both dead now, mother and son. Such is fate."

'Do you live always alone, confined in this wagon?" Such a fate seemed so ghastly to Liath that she struggled to hide the pity in her tone. Sorgatani deserved better than pity.

'We have puras, who mate with us and bring us pleasure and give us company. You have a pura, do you not? The prince who hunted in the grass."

'He is my husband," she said, amazed that her voice emerged so evenly despite the turbulence of her thoughts. He is my beloved husband, but I scarcely know him.

'Oh! You are allowed husbands in the western lands, are you not? It is a custom common among barbarian women. If you don't want your husband anymore, then perhaps I might have him as my pura, if you are willing to trade him to me. It is true I get lonely."

What an idiot she had been to think that walking away from San-giant's anger would make the trouble go away. Over the years San-giant had, perhaps, come to believe she would never return; maybe he had mourned her loss and, then, been blindsided by her reappearance. On top of that he was horribly wounded. The servant girl, Anna, had told her of his devotion to Blessing and how he had agonized over their daughter's unnatural maturation. Anna had spoken a very little bit of their journey east, but only Li'at'dano's words had brought home to Liath what a massive undertaking it was to lead a western army so far into the wilderness. Sanglant understood the threat Anne and the others posed; he was not afraid to face them down.

'He is still my husband, although we have been apart for so long. Have you no men in your own tribe whom you desire?"

Sorgatani's shrug had an eloquent lift. "How is your hand?" she said instead. "Will it heal? Have I scarred you?"

Liath turned up her hands to expose the lighter skin of her palms. "It's gone already,"

she said, surprised to find it so. The merest sting, like the probing of a bee, and a sheeny pink flush shading the skin were all that betrayed which hand had touched Sorgatani.

'You are very powerful! I hope we can become allies."

'I hope we can become friends."

Sorgatani's smile was, like a rare flower, beautiful and precious and bright.

Hammering blows stuttered against the door. The entire structure shuddered. In a cacophony of bells, the younger servant leaped up and slid the door sideways enough to peer through. Torchlight flashed through that gap. Outside, amazingly, night had fallen although Liath had no sense of so much time elapsing while she conversed with Sorgatani.

'Bright One!" The shaman's powerful voice had the force of an avalanche. Even Sorgatani, unwittingly, trembled.

'Come quickly, Bright One! Prince Sanglant is missing. He has taken the child."

PAIN made his head throb, and he knew that pain of such intensity, touching every point in his body, did not help him think straight. But he would not remain a prisoner in the centaur camp any longer. If he had no help from his wife in making his escape, so be it. He had survived four years without her. He had managed all that time. He could manage now.

'My lord prince! You shouldn't try to stand, my lord!"

It was astonishing how much agony it cost him to stand. "My clothes, Anna."

Dressing was child's work, yet he grimaced as he pulled his wool tunic on over his under-tunic. He could not bend to bind on his leggings, so he sat on the chest and let Anna lace up his boots.

'Where is my spear?"

They had left his gear on the carpet next to his pallet, which suggested that he was not, precisely, a captive, but he ignored these distracting thoughts as he buckled his sword over his back, wincing, and threw his cloak over everything, pushed back on the left shoulder so he could draw his sword. Every time he moved, he felt a thousand daggers pricking him in each muscle; hot fire ran up his tendons. His chest ached horribly; each breath hurt.

'It's here, my lord."

'Are you strong enough to carry Blessing?" "I think so, my lord. But—" "Pick her up."

'Her Highness Liathano has not returned yet, my lord. She went out with the shaman—"

'Anna!"

She knelt beside Blessing, got her arms around the girl, and heaved her up. Blessing wasn't that much smaller than Anna but she was light, and Anna was strong and stubborn.

She draped the unconscious Blessing over her shoulders like a sack of grain. Sanglant got a good grip on the spear. The extra weight of the sword across his back seemed like the hand of a giant, pressing him down, but he refused to give in to weakness.

The healer sat placidly by the door, watching his struggles without speaking, her kohl-lined eyes intent with curiosity and her broad face as expressionless as uncarved stone.

As Sanglant reached the threshold, the healer rose.

'You are not healed," she said in her gruff voice. "Not wise to walk."

'I am returning to my army."

He stepped out into the camp, leaning on the spear to support himself, and paused there, fighting to catch his breath, as Anna negotiated the threshold with Blessing and halted beside him. Twilight had descended, but the waxing moon gave off enough light that they might walk through the night grass with a reasonable certainty that they could mark their way.

The healer followed them. She was not much taller than Anna but considerably broader through the shoulders. She held a cured sheep's bladder and a leather flask.

'Are you going to try to stop me?" asked Sanglant, feeling dangerous because his head reeled and the moon shone overly bright and the ground had a disconcerting sway to it.

'Nay, lord. I receive the duty to heal you. I follow you." "Don't try to stop me."

Stubbornness was all the strength he had, that and this coiling, burning anger that drove him. Liath had abandoned him, stolen his victories, and chatted companionably with the creature who had kidnapped his daughter and refused to help him rescue the child from Bulkezu.

Something in this train of thought didn't make sense, but he wanted to recover under the supervision of those he trusted—he did not want to be beholden to these uncanny creatures and their human companions.

He wanted allies who treated him with respect.

'They're more like slaves, if you ask me," he said to no one, or to Anna, as he hobbled through the grass toward the western ridge somewhere beyond which his army camped.

The pain of healing had drawn his nerves so fine that he distilled the thread of his army's campfires from out of the strong scents that surrounded him in the centaur encampment: boiled wool, blood, fermented milk, horse.

'Who is, my lord prince?" she asked, huffing as she walked.

Not many walked abroad through camp now it was dark and those who did made no attempt to stop him. Though he staggered frequently, he possessed sword and spear, even if he needed the spear's aid to walk. Tents loomed as obstacles but proved easy to walk around although the extra distance took its toll.

After an eternity they reached the edge of camp. He surveyed the long slope ahead and wondered how any person could reach the top.

'Will you have drink?" asked the healer solicitously, holding out the sheep's bladder.

It contained drugged wine, no doubt.

'No," he said, although he was desperately thirsty. He glanced back to survey the camp. A group of centaurs gathered a spear's throw away. They consulted together but made no move to come after him. One carried a lamp. Its light played over their torsos, illuminating the curve of their breasts, the drape of bead necklaces, a pair of coarse, auburn braids hanging over the shoulder of one and reaching to that place where woman hips flowed away into a mare's body.

That long hair reminded him of Liath, the way her braids would fall over her shoulders and sway along her backside as she walked.

Where had Liath gone? Why had she barged out after those few reasonable things he had said to her? Why hadn't she returned? No doubt she had more in common with the shaman. Liath had changed so profoundly; she was not the person he had married. It was like meeting a stranger who wears familiar clothing—or an old companion who can no longer speak a common language.

'Where are all the male centaurs?" he asked suddenly. "Don't they ride to war? Or do they wait in the wilderness and let the mares do battle for them?"

The healer waited, obviously expecting him to answer his own question. When Sanglant said nothing more, she spoke as if to a particularly slow child. "No male Horse people walk on Earth."

'They're all crippled? Dead? Gelded?"

'No males," repeated the healer helpfully. "Only horses." She gestured toward the distant herds, mostly lost to sight on the opposite side of the encampment.

Sanglant shook his head irritably. He hated when things made no sense, but it wasn't worth arguing about now. He started up the slope.

They made it to the top, one exceedingly slow step after the next, before Anna had to stop to rest, and he was grateful for the break although he dared not sit down for fear he would never get up again. She knelt and set Blessing down on the grass.

'I'll carry her," he said to Anna, who was clearly winded, breath rasping as she bent over double, clutching her sides.

Blessing had not stirred. Her eyes remained open, but she did not see anything around her. She did not react to sound or touch. All she did was breathe.

He had failed her. He hadn't protected her after all. "I can carry," said the healer.

'It would be good," whispered Anna, sides heaving. He knew he hadn't the strength, and that just made him angrier. But eventually Liath and the shaman would return to the tent, and they would come after him. He would not be hauled ignominiously back to captivity like an injured dog. "Very well."

The healer squatted, got arms under and around Blessing's slender body, and lifted her easily. Maybe it was the way her shoulders flexed under the felt jacket or the way her narrow hips fell in a line with her shoulders, or maybe it was the broad splay of her hands.

Maybe he was delirious and, like madmen, saw glimpses of truth beneath the falsehoods worn by the world. The healer was a man, but a man dressed as a woman.

Sanglant shook his head and with teeth gritted against the pain set out again. No matter.

He was hallucinating, or the Kerayit were stranger than he thought. It made no difference.

'Camp is—?" he asked, because the wind shifted and he lost the scent.

'That way." Anna rose with a hand pressed into her ribs. "I saw the smoke. I know where we're going."

Downhill was harder than up because each footfall jolted him from heel to skull. He plodded along grimly. He would reach the camp, and there he would rest, and he would not leave his daughter's side until she recovered, or she died.

Ai, God. What if she were dying?

Nay, the Lord of Mercy could not be so cruel. And yet, why not? The Lady of Justice could not be so arbitrary, and yet, why not?

He slogged on while the moon reached zenith and began to sink, occluded now and again by streaming clouds. The passage of those clouds along the heavens made him dizzy, as though he were spinning, and it made him recall that infuriating conversation he had once had with Liath years ago now, when they had sheltered at Verna.

There, too, she had dwelt easy among her sorcerous companions, who had accepted her as one of their own while treating him as an outsider. The way she had chatted with the shaman had triggered those old feelings of being an interloper, less important to her life than the weaving and binding of magic woven into her soul.

She had been shooting arrows into the sky to determine if it were Earth or the spheres which rotated. These questions she asked at first had made no sense, and yet in a corner of his mind he could hallucinate—he could visualize—the Earth as a sphere turning endlessly as the heavens rested in eternal repose around it, or perhaps it was the Earth which rested unmoving while the other spheres rotated, spheres nested inside spheres and all spinning at a different rate and speed and direction.

Was it the turning Earth that made him reel? Or exhaustion and his injuries? The wound on his chest had opened up; a sticky oozing of blood pasted his tunic to his skin, sliding and ripping as it began to dry or got wet all over again. No ordinary man could ever have walked so short a time after having his chest half ripped away, but ordinary men weren't cursed as he was.

He concentrated on setting one foot after the next, heel pressing into the ground and the foot rolling forward across the arch and onto the ball to begin the cycle again.

Amazing how this most commonplace of movements might prove so daunting, so absorbing, so difficult. Even the curl of wind on his cheek carried extraordinary significance. How far had that wind traveled? Did wind have a home or did it simply travel around and around the Earth? Perhaps it was the wind that caused the Earth to turn, or perhaps the Earth's turning caused the wind.

He was dizzy, obviously. Why else would his mind stray along such tortured and unexpected paths? The tang of smoking fires caught his attention. They were now closer to his army's camp than they were to the centaur encampment; he could separate out the disparate smells in the same way a discerning man can savor on his palate the blend of spices from a rich dish. They might actually make it.

A shadow covered the moon but slid away quickly. The healer cried out in fear and dropped to her—his?—knees clutching Blessing close against her—his—body to shield her. Anna screamed.

The silver griffin flew over them, banked awkwardly, and with wings beating hard came to rest in front of them. It lifted its massive eagle's head, turning it to one side for a better look first with one eye and then with the other. Its eyes gleamed like tiny suns. As its claws raked the ground, its tail lashed wickedly against the grass, scattering a cloud of chaff.

Anna whimpered. The healer did not move. The creature sank low on its haunches, ready to pounce. He was too weak to kill it.

As he sagged forward, scarcely able to hold himself up on the spear, all he had left were his wits.

A griffin is one part eagle, one part lion, and one part snake, so the poets said. Lions were wild beasts and snakes were vermin, but eagles like all birds of prey had long lived in a measure of harmony beside humankind as hunting birds.

He dropped the spear, unpinned his cloak, and swept it off his shoulders in one smooth motion that took all his strength. The wound in his chest tore open. Adrenaline kept him going as he swung the cloak high up and over the griffin's head and, with the beast momentarily distracted by the fluttering cloth, leaped in against its shoulder and yanked the cloak down over its head, covering its eyes. And tensed, waiting for its violent reaction.

Hooded, and thus blinded, the griffin went utterly still. "Go on," he said hoarsely.

Blood trickled down his abdomen. Sweat sheened his neck. "Go, Anna. Go to camp and bring help. Bring rope, the strongest in camp. Bring fine cord, horsehair or gut, and needles stout enough to pierce this thick cloak. Take Blessing and go. Now!"

Anna slapped the healer on the arm and took off. The poor Kerayit hesitated, torn by duty, but the griffin terrified him; having been given permission, he abandoned Sanglant and trotted after Anna with Blessing safe in his arms.

Sanglant hung there, hands gripping the cloak closed below that massive, cruel beak, and took it one breath at a time. If he could keep the griffin hooded through this breath, drawn painfully in and let out with even greater agony tearing through his chest, then he could do it through the next one, and the next, and the next. He could hang on here until help came.

Wind whispered through the grass. The stars spun overhead, or maybe it was only his own head spinning, but he kept hanging on. Although the griffin stayed still, there remained shifts and tensions in the griffin's body just as there would in a horse held tight under its rider's hands: a twitch in one shoulder, a tufted ear laid back and flicked up, a shudder of restless muscles held in check.

He talked to the griffin the way he talked to Resuelto, hoping it would become accustomed to his voice, hoping that the time would pass and give him a chance to survive. Hoping that he could think of something other than the pain that had ignited deep in his chest, so hot and violent that he feared he would pass out like a snuffed flame. But he kept his voice steady and soothing nevertheless.

'What sort of beast are you? Where do your kind come from? Why did God make you? You are a strong, handsome fellow, are you not? You remind me of my gelding Resuelto, who is as strong and beautiful as you and loyal in the bargain, a fine horse. A good companion. Are you like a horse who may respond to good treatment? Or are you so wild that you will kill me as soon as you get the chance?"

As long as he kept the cloak tight over the griffin's eyes, as long as it couldn't see, it did not fight him. The play of the moon's light across its pale hindquarters fascinated him, yet a miracle also were its folded wings and the place around its shoulders where lion's body became an eagle's head. The twinkling of the stars seemed to reflect in the iron feathers, so edged, so dangerous, so close to his hands and body but not quite touching him because he was protected by the griffin's unexpected docility.

He waited, weak but stubborn, holding on. The moon reached the western hills; soon there would not be enough light to see more than suggestions of shapes. But he had never relied mostly on eyesight. He listened to the murmur of the wind through the grass, the melodic rubbing of the griffin's feathers where the breeze ruffled them, the scrabble of tiny claws through the grass where a mouse or rabbit foraged. He heard a distant shout, hushed by another voice.

They came prudently, moving swiftly but not recklessly, with Fulk in the lead and others close behind. Torches lit the night, and the crackle and hiss of flames and the pitchy scent of their smoke made the griffin uneasy.

'Hush, now," he said, wishing he could stroke it, but if he touched the head and neck feathers, they would cut his hands, and he dared not shift enough to reach the tawny shoulder for fear of letting the cloak slip.

'My lord prince!" Fulk called to him from a safe distance.

An awed whisper, many voices murmuring at one time, rose from the troop. They did not rush forward, being well trained as well as practical, so although certainly the griffin smelled and heard and sensed their arrival they did not panic him. Not yet.

'Quietly, Captain. Come forward with the strongest thread you have, a canvas needle, and strong rope. We'll sew this cloak tightly over its head and lead it in to camp. It's kin to an eagle. No reason we can't jess it and train it."

Silence greeted his words just as they would the utterances of the insane, but Captain Fulk came forward nevertheless. His legs hissed through the grass and his footfalls clipped along steadily, a man who did not lose his nerve even in the worst situations. A man I can trust, thought Sanglant, who dared not turn to watch Fulk's approach because his hands were numb and if he shifted the griffin might realize that a single strong jerk of its head would free it from the cloak.

Fulk was accompanied by some damn fool bearing a hissing torch that made the griffin shudder down the length of its body, but the man veered off downwind, crouched, and held the torch in such a way that it illuminated the scene so that Fulk would be able to see what he was doing.

'I pray you, Captain, work quickly. Sew it tightly and jess the beast's forelegs with just enough play so it can creep. We'll use the rest of the rope as a leash."

'Yes, my lord prince."

Captain Fulk was a most excellent soldier. He did what he was told and did not flinch or cower. Sanglant edged backward just enough to allow Fulk room to duck in under the griffin's head, where he started stitching the edges of the cloak together, working efficiently and with a remarkably steady hand. From this angle Sanglant was barely able to see over the beast's shoulder to the man reckless enough to accompany Fulk with the torch.

-d,y. ", see you found your gHf-fin, my lord prince. I told them you would."

X POT:

BARTHOLOMEW assigned a burly oaf, called Stinker by the other men, to be Alain's jailer. He was big, and he did stink, and he had a nasty mouth on him, always cursing and muttering.

'You call me what the rest do and I'll bite your shitty little ears off," said Stinker as they walked through the village, heading south. He kicked one of the dead clerics to show how tough he was, but otherwise the corpses were left lying as Father Benignus ordered them to move out.

'Bet you wish you had a big cock, like I do."

Alain glanced at Bartholomew, who walked behind him, scratching his chin anxiously, but the man looked away, ashamed.

'I'm a big man, you cocksucker," added Stinker, "which is what you must have been if you rode with those pissing clerics. They're lying in their own piss and blood now, aren't they? Hate them, I do. I hate everyone."

'Why?" asked Alain.

Stinker made a move to strike him, but Sorrow growled and the big man backed off while the bandits around them snickered.

'You wanna take me?" shouted Stinker. "What about you, Red?"

With his staff, he poked a youth whose cheek and chin were stained with a huge red birthmark. "You making fun of me, Dog-ears?" He spat at the feet of a second man. "You wanna make something of it?"

'You wanna get your teeth knocked out?" snarled Dog-Ears, tugging on the lobe of his remaining ear. "We're just waiting. You say the word, Stinker."

'Shut your mouths," snapped Bartholomew. "You know what happened to the last two men what got in a fight. You know how Father Benignus don't like that. You know what he'll do."

That shut them up.

They walked south through the woodland until it was too dark to see and then wrapped themselves in their cloaks on the damp ground. A dozen men—about half the group—remained on watch, nervous and fearful. Alain allowed them to loop a rope around his wrists and tie him loosely to a tree trunk, and he leaned there, dozing, as the night passed. Mist pattered down through the branches, wetting his face. No owls hooted.

He heard no sounds of life at all, only the intermittent shush of rain. As far as he could tell, Father Benignus spent the night huddled on his horse, never once dismounting.

At dawn, as the bandits rose groaning and made ready to depart with their captured horses and the clothing, food, and gear they'd stripped from the dead clerics, Alain caught Bartholomew by the arm and whispered in his ear.

'Does the holy father always stay on his horse? How does he pee?"

'Shut up." Bartholomew yanked on the ropes. "You're not dead, but you will be if you don't keep your mouth shut."

Rage growled softly, enough to make Bartholomew start back as he eyed the huge hound, but she did not lunge. It was only a warning.

'Keep that dog off us," warned Batholomew, moving away. "Hey, you, Stinker! Get up here with your prisoner."

'Hush." Alain stroked Rage's head, and Sorrow nosed in as well, wanting attention.

Stinker kept his distance from the hounds. No one spoke as they set off. They all seemed to know where they were going.

It was a miserable slog through the hilly countryside with a drizzle filtering down through beech and oak forest. Many of the trees hadn't reached their full foliage so, with no leaves to catch the mizzle, all the deer trails were churned to mud by those who walked at the front. Now and again an unexpected puddle lying athwart the track ambushed their steps until all of them, whether barefoot or shod, had sopping wet feet.

Rain dripped from branches and misted down from the heavens until their shoulders were sodden and their hair slicked against heads and necks.

They reached their encampment about midday. From the trail Alain glimpsed no hint of any campsite but there was an increasing restlessness in the hounds, who lifted their heads to sniff the air and made several darting forays into the undergrowth before he called them sharply to heel. Just before they broke free of the forest, he caught the scent of smoke, but because the wind was blowing at their backs, it faded away and he didn't smell the camp-fires until they came right out of the forest and could see them. There wasn't much of a clearing except where trees had been cut back. One ancient and vast trunk marked where a huge old oak tree had been cut down, although the stump was now weathered and brown with age. Where the trail ended and a cluster of ragged tents and makeshift hovels spread out through the clearing, he stopped short and stared.

At the far edge of the clearing, seven rugged stone pillars erupted out of the ground like uplifted scales along the back of a dragon buried in the earth. This craggy ridgeline rose starkly above the trees, a jumbled mass of natural rock pale in color and pockmarked by openings, steps, niches, overhangs, and what looked like windows carved into the upper reaches of the little crags.

The broken line of rocks reminded him of the Dragonback Ridge on Osna Sound.

He had seen dragons falling from the sky in that last vision of Adica's world, just before he was ripped away from her. An unexpectedly sharp stab of grief pierced him and, gasping, he dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

'Hey, boy, move your sorry butt!"

A foot slammed into his hip, but the pain made barely any impression. Nor did Bartholomew's voice, sounding so distant, leagues away.

'Leave it, Stinker. Go on. I'll make sure he sticks here."

Stinker's reek moved away, subsumed in the smoke and clatter of the camp, but these distractions dissolved as Alain struggled to make sense of his grief and of the world it had left him in.

Were these really dragons, stricken by magic to become stone and fallen to earth as the great sundering ripped through the world?

.._ IVATE tLLIOTT He pressed his palms into the mud and with the hounds growling at any who came close, he bent his head, shut his eyes, and listened through his hands.

He sought blindly for some echo that might reveal the presence of a monstrous dragon petrified into stone. Was that murmur the memory of its respiration? Or was it only the wind rustling in the trees? He heard as from a distance the sound of the bandits slogging past and their sarcastic comments, directed at his kneeling form, but he thrust that distraction aside and sought farther down, deeper into the earth. Was that faint thrum the heartbeat of the Earth singing through the ley lines that bound all of world together?

These threads drew him like a clear straight path through an otherwise impassable forest, and he felt his awareness hurtling outward, away from his body. Voices called to him through the stone.

Who. Are. You? What. Have. You. Seen? Help. Us.

He could not reach them. He was not strong enough. He sought the one he needed to find if only he could call to him across the vast gulf of distance that separated them.

Stronghand.

There!

The thread splintered into light and became vision.

He skims across a world that is only water and sky, gray above and gray below, but after a moment he realizes that sedge beds and clumps of reeds break up the monotony of the expanse of dark water although he sees no break in the cloud cover above. Tufts of greenery mark islands. Birds flock everywhere, wings flashing in constant motion. The noise of their honking and shrilling and piping and whistling drowns the stealthy stroke of paddles dipped in and out of the water. He leans over the edge of the canoe to stare down into the murky waters, and sees himself.

He is Stronghand. His teeth flash as he grins; jewels wink in the reflecting waters.

Beneath the surface fish teem. He could reach right down and catch eels with his hands.

Here, in this seemingly desolate place, he has found riches.

"Keep low," says the girl. "We're close."

The chattering chorus of birds covers the sound of their approach, although in truth the canoe parts the waters with no more sound than a duck dabbles, and both of his youthful guides know the secret of paddling silently as they dip and turn the oars. The boat slides into a dense clohd of reeds, and the girl slips over the side into knee-deep water and wades ashore.

Ki looks different than her cousin, not short and dark but half a hand taller, with the blonde hair and pale blue eyes common among the Al-bans. For the hunt today, she has streaked mud through her hair.

Half hidden among the vegetation, she gestures for him to follow. He slips over the side of the dugout, careful not to jostle his standard, which lies along the keel. Elafi leans against the opposite board so the boat won't heel or slosh.

The water parts around his legs as he wades after Ki as silently as possible, although to his ears he sounds like a fish thrashing in shallow water as it seeks the safety of the depths. Mud sucks around his feet. Bent low, he kneels on the shore beside a nest made of grasses that shelters four tiny eggs within its woven bowl. Ki picks one out, casually cracks it open, and swallows the slippery mass of half-formed bird.

The girl hands him a second egg. "Take half, leave half."

None among his kind eat eggs; it is taboo.

As he hands the egg out to Elafi, in the canoe, Ki speaks again. "From here, you can see the holy island."

They creep up a low embankment, moving slowly so as not to startle birds into flight.

Buntings perch on the tops of swaying reeds, but they do not take wing, unwilling to abandon their nests to these slow crawling beasts.

The birds are right to fear us, he thinks. They have no means by which to fight back.

Ki parts the reeds and beckons. He pads up beside her and gazes across a last glittery stretch of open waters. Three islands rise from the marsh, two of them low, buttressed by earth embankments thrown up around their perimeters that serve both as dikes and as fortifications, and the third a fully natural island set high enough that the tidal wash and the spring and summer floods cannot swamp it. There are so many armed men on the islands that the land is covered with them like swarming locusts. Tents lie higgledy-piggledy on the lower islands although some training grounds have been left bare, where men practice their sword-craft. Even from this distance he can hear the slap and ring of blows struck and countered as they prepare for war. A longhouse and three attendant huts hold pride of place on one of the islands but they were clearly built long ago, not newly raised. A golden banner marked with the image of a white stag flies from the thatched roof of the longhouse.

The Alban queen is here.

T,'-T

He can smell her. Her power and the magic of her tree sorcerers has a scent as sharp as smoke.

"Look!" whispers Ki, pointing.

The low summit of the third island bristles with teeth— or so he thinks until he realizes that a stone crown rises from the hill. All of the undergrowth has been ruthlessly cut back away from the circle of stones, and men labor with ropes and levers and earth ramps to raise a fallen monolith into position.

"What goes on there?"

She shakes her head in dismay. "When our family watched over the holy place, we left it in peace. No good will come of this, I am thinking. They'll stir up the old spirits. Men have come from over the sea."

"Ones like me?"

"Nay, not like you," she says boldly. "None of you dragon-men. You would not touch the holy place, I am thinking. These are circle priests who have come from the east lands across the sea. Elafi saw there was a fight between the circle priests and the tree priests, for the queen's favor."

"How saw he this?"

"There's a place to come up close without being seen, right up inside the crown. Only our family knows about it, because we got the secret from the grandmothers."

"Can you take me?"

Ki has a pup's grin, full of sharp teeth and playful expectation. "Not till the dark of the moon. It isn't safe otherwise."

Out of the still waters a majestic heron takes flight, wings wide as it glides low over them with its head tucked back on its shoulders and its legs dangling low, brushing the reeds. Its shadow covers them briefly.

Ki murmurs a blessing or a spell and ducks her head. "It's a sign of the goddess'favor," she whispers. Perhaps.

The gods seem fickle to Stronghand, offering favor or withdrawing it according to unknown and unpredictable whims. The RockChildren have never been burdened by meddling gods. They are masters of their own destiny.

But still, only a fool casts dirt in clean water when he is thirsty. "If your goddess smiles on us, then truly we will meet with success." "What do you mean to do?"

He looks up at the gray sky. He smells a change in the weather, the wet taste of the east wind. A misting rain approaches. He can actually see the shadow of its passage over the pools and dark waters as it nears them.

"We will wait until the dark of the moon," he says. "Then you will show me this secret place inside the crown."

The girl is sharper than most of his advisers. She has never lived under the heel of a lord who holds over her the threat of life and death. That is why she is not afraid to question him. That is why she does not fear taking him out into the fens. "And then?"

Stronghand bares his teeth, a startling flash that, for an instant, takes the youth aback.

Maybe, for the first time, she understands the threat he poses. Ki's hand tightens on her knife, but she does not move at all, only stares back at him, eye for eye.

"I would like to know who these circle priests are, and what they are doing to the stone crown. Once I discover that, I will know what to do next. I have dreams, too."

Ki pinches her lips together, eyes drawn tight. "Dreams are dangerous, my lord. My mother says that dreams have killed men and brought low those who were once queens and those who wished to rule after them."

The rain front washes over them, hissing in the waters. Through the curtain of rain it is hard to see farther than a spear cast; the islands lie obscure and veiled, but he feels the presence of the stone crown as a throb deep in his bones. A shout carries over the waters.

A cheer.

A stone has been raised, and sunk in place.

"Dangerous," he agrees, "but it is more dangerous still to ignore them."

That humming whisper vanished, and Alain found himself back in the dirt with mud slipping through his fingers and his knees cold and wet. The deep awareness that lived in the core of the stone was overwhelmed by the noise of the waiting camp: the scrape of a grindstone milling grain to flour, the steady stroke of a hammer, clucking chickens and complaining goats, a shout of excitement as the newcomers met their allies. The sound of a woman's weeping.

He blinked, trying to shake off the flood of sounds and images, but he could not shake his vision.

Long ago he had dreamed of the WiseMothers, seen through Stronghand's eyes, and in those dreams they had spoken of a great weaving that bound the Earth together. They knew of the great cataclysm because it had created them. The eldest among them were impossibly old.