Read The Running Girl (Kaunovalta, Book I) Page 3

  Chapter 2 ♦ Running

  Cloaked in shadow, wincing as the night air stung the wound in her side, Hax soared above the gardens and flew back up to the high windows of Lily House. She located her own suite by the simple expedient of drifting silently along the broad third-floor balconies until she saw her saddlebags draped over a curule chair. The window was already open to the night breeze, and she was inside an instant later, securing it behind her.

  No hue or cry seemed to have been raised during her brief absence. That won’t last, she thought grimly. Sooner or later, her aunt’s hand-maidens would arrive to light her to bed, and the panic would be up.

  Moving swiftly, she gathered her meagre belongings and stuffed them tightly into her pack, ignoring cosmetics, perfumes, lace and sundry frippery in favour of the serviceable woollens and leathers that were her customary garb. Careless of the exquisite fabric and careful stitching, she tore off her aunt’s dress and rid herself of the tight, chafing undergarments. She slipped into her own smallclothes, donned her arming coat, unpacked her armour and buckled it on. As always, she was comforted immeasurably by the snug weight of the hardened leather.

  In the midst of all this, she noticed that her father’s letter had fallen to the floor. Hurriedly, she bent to retrieve it, stowing it back in the concealed pocket in her scrip. As an afterthought, she added the goblet that she had found in the garden.

  Finally, she reached between the feather-stuffed mattresses of her bed and retrieved her bow and her sword, sheathing the latter, and stringing the former.

  She took a final glance around, ensuring that she had left nothing useful behind. She considered leaving an explanatory note; but the increasing profusion of lights and noise outside her window suggested that she had already dallied too long. She did not consider, even for a moment, descending to the stables to saddle Torris. Even if she had had that kind of time, the Palace gates would be shut up tighter than an oyster until dawn. It was the skies, or nothing.

  She stepped to the balcony. Her charms of invisibility and flight had worn thin, so she renewed them, and added a third: “Vuolas perääntyminen.” Instead of the gull’s desultory flight, she would move with the alacrity of the hawk.

  Focussing her thoughts, she soared into the night sky. The wind, colder now, whistled past her ears. She had reason for haste; her enchantments were of limited duration, and as a result of the evening’s festivities, she was close to exhausting her powers. She was still bleeding, too; and tired, mortally tired. She needed to find a safe place to rest.

  Higher, higher, until the night air bit through her fluttering cloak, and Astrapratum lay glittering beneath her, a sparkling jewel in a mundane setting.

  Where to go? she wondered bleakly. Far to the west – hundreds of long, weary leagues – lay the Insea and the great Empire of Ekhan. Even if she had known anyone there, that land’s recent predilection for persecuting her kind, and its close alliance with the Filigree Throne, meant that it offered no refuge. And she could not fly for days over sea. She could not even fly for hours.

  South and home? she thought hopefully. The Voice within her rejected the idea immediately. They would expect her to flee to her father. She had no hope of reaching Eldisle before the Queen’s diviners could locate her, and the Guardsmen catch up with her. Nor would it be fair to Kaltas to draw the Queen’s ire down upon him for her idiocy.

  North, then? Should she seek out Landioryn, deliver her father’s missive, and plead for clemency? She pondered that option for an instant, then rejected it as well. However unintentionally, she had nearly slain Landioryn’s mate; it would be foolhardy to expect him to forgive her. And something deep within her heart made her cautious; not the Voice, but some other presentiment, that warned her against fleeing to the mountains of Convallis. Landioryn might be in the north at the moment; but so were Eldarcanum, and the Priscossium, and the grim duchess. Both her father and Sylloallen had long ago counselled her against venturing anywhere near that shadowed vale.

  East. That was it. The coast, and ships; north of them, the Great Wastelands, where there was aid and succour for none; and further still, Mirabilis, where no elf would ever dare to tread. She could think of no good reason to go east, and many reasons to eschew that road.

  That, therefore, was the answer.

  She consulted the stars overhead, then banked carefully and turned her face towards the mountains where the sun had set some hours earlier, pushing herself to the uttermost limits of speed. When the enchantments began to falter, she renewed them. She did so again, and again, until she was miles beyond the city walls, and her power was utterly spent. She passed a restless, fitful night on the ground, wrapped in a thin blanket beneath a bower of twisted spruce branches, waking at ever bird-call and rustle of leaves.

  When the Lantern rose to a dim, foggy dawn, Hax set out on foot.

  Two days later, the sunrise saw her, footsore and fatigued, climbing the low hills bounding the Eastridge. She had moved fast, making good time, avoiding the roads, and blessing Syllo for drilling her with forced marches, and Lallakentan for continuing the practice. She was tired, but nowhere near the limits of her strength. Hax was in the prime of youth, at the peak of conditioning, and well-trained. She could run for a long while yet.

  It became easier rather than harder; she was beginning to relax. She hadn’t sensed any attempts to descry her whereabouts, but she knew that she lacked the proficiency to do so by arcane means. Anyone looking for her would be far more skilled than she. Her nerves, thus, remained frayed and on edge; she kept expecting to be surprised at any instant by a turma of High Guardsmen, leaping the flux to apprehend her with the aid of the Queen’s diviners and the magi of the College.

  But nothing happened. She even managed to avoid her countrymen – the travellers, merchants, farmers and others that she might have expected to meet. Her only companions were the birds and beasts of the forest, the trees, and the periodic mid-summer rain. And the Lantern. And, at night, the Lamps.

  She stayed off the high road, too, as she approached the sheer, glimmering walls of Astraputeus, guardian of the Eastridge Pass. The lofty city could not be avoided or bypassed; it lay in the throat of a mountain vale, blocking – quite intentionally – the only easy access to the coastal plains beyond the range. And so, as she had done at Starmeadow, Hax rendered herself invisible, and flew over the city as rapidly as she could. It took almost all of her power to renew her incantations long enough to traverse the high pass. She was gasping with exhaustion and chilled to the bone by the brisk mountain winds by the time she alighted in the scraggly greenery at the peak of the pine-capped saddle.

  In the grim desolation of the alpine forests, she made camp. She slept for a night, a day, and another night in order to regain her strength before starting down the long river valley that led to the coastal town of Advenaportus.

  The weeks that followed were a nightmare of nervous exhaustion. Hax had no skill at disguise or dissembling. The first time she saw, tacked to the door of a tavern near the docks in Advenaportus, a poster featuring her name and likeness accusing her of sorcery, murderer and treason, she found herself trembling in rage and despair. Fortunately, the image on the poster – taken, obviously, from the depiction her father had provided to Lily House – showed her in better and more prosperous days. Weeks of hard travelling had erased the high-born maiden, leaving behind a ragged vagabond. The road and forest had stained her cloak and her clothing, and sleeping out of doors had left her mass of ebon curls greasy, tangled, and laden with fragments of twig and leaf.

  Her stench completed the picture. Although it made her skin crawl to do so, she had resisted washing in order to take advantage of the well-known fastidiousness of the nobility. Her caution was borne out when she was accosted in the street by a pair of High Guardsmen, who shoved a tattered copy of the circular under her nose and asked her whether she had seen “the traitor, Orkarel Hax.”


  Fortunately, she had been upwind of them. She had grunted, “No,” making sure to exhale sharply in their direction. The duo, noses wrinkled in disgust, had left her alone.

  She still had money, and it was enough to purchase passage in a trading caravel bound for Sanalin, capital of the far eastern kingdom of Zare. She took the precaution of first exchanging her own currency for Zaran crowns, using a seedy-looking dock-side money-lender, and taking a heavy loss on the transaction in order to avoid pegging herself as a Homelander. She needn’t have bothered; the purser had eyed her filthy condition with disgust, taking her money without any further interest.

  Hax boarded the ship uneasily. Its low decks, narrow companionways, tight bulkheads and cramped quarters brought her fear of confined spaces to the fore. She struggled briefly with herself before she was able to choke her panic back. In the end, she installed herself in a dank corner of the ‘tween-deck spaces, jammed in between lashed bundles of some herb or other, and waited nervously for the ship to leave port.

  It did so the following day. Hax quickly discovered that she had no love for sea travel. The ship, though it hugged the coast, was Ekhani, a round-bottomed thing with a lively motion even in calm littoral waters. Its sole advantage was that it offered progress without any effort on her part; she was badly in need of rest, and the cramped quarters notwithstanding, revelled in the sensation of an easy voyage. And once she could eat, she discovered that the food, while plain, was filling, and superior to what she had enjoyed – or, more often, not enjoyed – during her flight from the capital to the coast.

  The ship docked twice in Mirabilis – once in the city of Vestkappelle, and a second time in the grim, silent capital of Asheilagr. Hax did not go ashore; she cowered in the hold, keeping her hood up, shivering at the hourly ringing of the cathedral bells, and listening intently for any untoward activity on deck.

  Her nervous caution was understandable. The purser had warned his elven passengers that the followers of the White Hand, who had governed the colony since its founding after the battle of Duncala, still retained their ages-old enmity for the elves. Even in the trading enclaves, supposedly protected by treaty, ‘incidents’ still occurred. The Holy Circle – the council of dour-faced, black-hearted priests that ruled Mirabilis – routinely ‘deplored’ such incidents, of course, even paying compensation from time to time, especially when the victims were well-connected members of the Third House. But that did little to aid those who perished beneath the leather, on the iron, or in the flames.

  Hax felt that she had already tempted fate enough for one lifetime. Years ago, Kalestayne had given her a taste of what it had once meant to be an elf – especially a mage – in the clutches of the Hand. It had not been pleasant, and she had sworn to herself to avoid Mirabilis and its terrible, blood-thirsty governors for as long as she could. Being sought by the High Guard, the College and the Queen was sufficient excitement for her taste.

  She stayed aboard, tucked away out of sight.

  After Asheilagr, the ship left Mirabilan waters, and Hax breathed a sigh of relief. She began spending more time on deck. The pilot took a long reach southwards, rounding the reefs that marked the southernmost extremity of the Wastes, standing far out from the coast, and passing within sight of a variety of uninhabited islands that lay well to the south of Erutrei’s shores. Hax was delighted when the ship was intercepted by a school of porpoises that followed them for several hours. She had swum with the clever creatures in the Sunlit Seas that lapped at the shore of Joyous Light, and wished that she could do so again, if only to help scrub the accumulated filth of travel from her hide.

  After the islands, whose names she never learned, the ship stood north-eastwards again, back towards the coast. The crew helpfully pointed out the Red River Barony, but the ship did not make port there. After that, the low, rolling hills and broad fields of western Zare dominated the northern horizon. Twelve days after leaving Advenaportus, they docked in Vejborg.

  Although she had paid for passage to Sanalin, Zare’s far-distant capital, Hax decided to confound potential pursuers by taking to the land again. Her nervous caution reasserted itself, and rather than walk down the gangplank in the full light of day, she waited until nightfall, then – invisible once more – launched herself into the lowering sky.

  She spent an uncomfortable night crouching in the lee of a barn in some nameless hamlet a mile north of the city walls, struggling without success to keep the persistent rain off with her cloak.

  In the morning, bedraggled and stinking worse than ever, she paid too much for a horse that she purchased from a family of drovers. Riding bareback, she struck out along the Nordvej, the trade road that followed the great river known as the Stjerneflåde as it meandered deep into the mountains that formed the northern boundary of Zare.

  The drovers’ horse was a wretched, spavined thing that merited the name only by virtue of having four hooves and an annoying, sickly whinny. It was undernourished and sway-backed, and its pronounced spine cut into her at the most inconvenient place possible.

  After enduring three days of torture, Hax finally gave up, stripped off her threadbare garments, and waded into an icy mountain stream in an attempt to numb the pain. It didn’t help her bruises, her chafing, or her dignity much, but at least she managed to get somewhat clean.

  A week later, in a riverside town called Ballohek, she had a hot meal and a bath – her first in more than a month. Dipping into her purse, she bought a decent saddle and a better horse to put it on. The stableman gave her a young and energetic mare, taking her cart-nag in trade. Hax, suspecting that it would soon be either glue or stew, did not bother to bid the miserable beast farewell.

  That night, she slept in a bed. The linens – old and worn, but clean – beckoned like a long-absent lover. But before putting her head to the pillow, she did what she had to do; what she had needed so desperately to do, ever since that terrible night in the Palace gardens.

  Composing herself, she disrobed and sat cross-legged on the bed. Her small chamois packet of needles and her precious vial of indigo ink were spread on a clean towel.

  She was certain of only three of the interlopers, but uncertain of the fourth. Gritting her teeth, she selected three bare spots on her freshly-scrubbed hide – one on her left thigh, a second in the crook of her left elbow, and a third immediately below her right breast – and began the exacting, agonizing task of atoning for the lives that she had taken.

  By the time she was finished, three new, bloody tattoos – indigo half-moons – adorned her pale flesh. The bed sheets were speckled with hundreds of tiny scarlet flecks. She put her needles away and slept deeply and long.

  The following morning, she rode out of town in better spirits than she had known in weeks. She had no plan, no destination in mind.

  She was listening to the Voice.

  ♦

  The change in pace was welcome. A month had passed since the events in the Palace garden, and although she remained wary, Hax was no longer terrified that her pursuers, whomever they might be, would appear suddenly, and accost her without warning. She could not imagine the diviners of the College being unable to locate her, so she could only conclude that – for whatever reason – either they had found her, and were not following; or they had not tried to find her at all.

  She could not imagine why the Queen would be content with either course of action. Frustrated at her fruitless attempts to rationalize the patently irrational, she soon gave up speculating, and began to enjoy the rugged charm of her surroundings.

  Unlike the vast majority of her kin, Hax had never attended the College as an apprentice, nor any of the lesser scholae scattered throughout the cities and larger towns of Elvehelm. Not that she hadn’t wanted to. Like all children of the Third House – especially the noble-born scions of the Duodeci – she had, while still only a prepubescent girl of sixty, undergone the customary testing to determine whether she possesse
d the necessary aptitude for wielding the flux. The trials were usually brief, impersonal and objective; but in her case, the test had been administered by Kalestayne, the Lord Wizard oathed to her father’s house, an ancient friend of the family. He had been just as astonished as Hax had been, and just as disappointed, when she failed the tests.

  Like all elves, Hax had been exposed to casters and shapers since her birth. Magic was the birthright of the children of Hara, the legacy bequeathed to them by the sacrifice of Miros, long before Bræa’s betrayal and the first rising of the Lantern, and later cemented by Hara’s wise and benevolent overlordship. All elves were expected to learn to wield the flux, at least to some degree. Well-born elf children – even those whose station or predilections destined them for some other path in life – invariably attended either the College or one of the schools, at least for long enough to gain a minimal proficiency in the Art. Those who were especially gifted remained longer, studying the deeper mysteries. The most skilled among them eventually graduated as wizards, those whose power and knowledge sustained the realm, protected it from its foes, and guided its leaders.

  Her mother had been one of those. Almost since Hax had mouthed her first words, her mother had spoken to her of little else. Alrykkian had studied in many places – at one of the lesser scholae in Astrapratum, and later, at the Ludus Astralis, the great College of Stars itself. Supremely gifted, she had, by the time she took Hax’s father as lifemate, become an accomplished mage.

  Rykki had always assumed – often quite vocally – that Hax would follow in her footsteps. Her other daughter, Hax’s older sister Jianscæn, had done so, at least partially; her own skills had emerged early, and she had blossomed under Alrykkian’s teachings. Disdaining the College, Jianni had turned to poetry, music and song, becoming, instead of a wizard, a talented and much sought-after skald. She was now the toast of Sinulatus, a glorious sea-front city on the south-eastern coast of the Homeland, not too far from Eldisle. Hax hadn’t seen her in years.

  Skilled, and famous. Mother would’ve been proud, the elf-girl thought bitterly.

  The only person who hadn’t seemed disappointed by Hax’s failure to pass the tests had been her father. When she’d returned from Kalestayne’s library – a devastated stripling of a girl, stony-faced with rage, desperately trying to keep her lip from quivering – she’d had a hero’s struggle to retain her composure. Her effort had succeeded all the way to the door of her father’s study, where she had finally collapsed in a fit of weeping.

  By the time the Duke had managed to calm her down and she was able to think again, Hax had realized what he had known all along: that all of her stress and sorrow had less to do with the prospect of failure, than with having to confess her shame to her brilliant, accomplished and famous mother.

  Riding along the Nordvej now, six decades later, Hax smiled wryly at how clearly that afternoon stood out in her memory.

  ♦

  A half-hour, a glass of wine and two sodden handkerchiefs had sufficed to steady her nerves. Her father, always a good judge of moods, had remained mostly silent throughout the storm of weeping, allowing her to pour out her fears and regrets, comforting her with his presence instead of with words. Once she had calmed down, though – as was his wont – he faced the problem squarely, asking her what, now that the Collegium was denied her, she planned to do.

  Ally, at sixty still a girl barely on the cusp of womanhood, had never considered any path other than the one that had been described to her in glowing terms by her beloved but often daunting mother. “I don’t know,” she had confessed helplessly.

  Her father had simply nodded. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  So had followed her first encounter with the man who was to become her mentor. Sylloallen Avarras, one of her father’s retainers, was a rough-looking but exceptionally soft-spoken fellow, younger than her father, but still close to four times Ally’s age, a seasoned, professional-looking warrior. His garb – simple, well-worn, and clean – was undistinguished, similar to what any commoner might wear. His mailshirt, however, was not; and Ally could see the long, slightly-curved hilt of an enormous sword protruding over his right shoulder. Unlike her father’s elaborately-coiffed mane, Sylloallen had gathered his ebon locks into a top-knot secured by a woven ring of silver.

  His eyes were the strangest thing about him – a pale, piercing blue, like the sky after a rain. It was a weird departure from the vibrant emerald irises common to the scions of the Third House, and hinted at some irregularity in his descent. Ally found them both odd, and oddly compelling.

  The warrior couldn’t help but notice her staring at them, and smiled. She blushed furiously and looked at her feet.

  At her father’s request, Sylloallen told her his tale over another glass of Eldisle’s finest, explaining how he’d come into the Duke’s service. Like her, Sylloallen had been born on Eldisle, although not in a palace; not by a long stretch. His home was an ancient treetown called Spreading Wonders, nestled into a cove on the southern coast of the island, about a day’s walk west of Joyous Light. Ally knew it well; she had seen it often while riding, and had even purchased exquisite bits of jewellery crafted from the amber that washed up on its shores.

  He had been schooled at home by traditional parents, raised under the strictures of the Codex Diorcan, emphasizing diligence, frugality, humility, honesty and valour. Ally nodded approvingly; her father had raised her the same way.

  His career had begun in earnest when, for some reason or other, he’d caught the Duke’s eye during an inspection tour, and had been invited to come back to the palace in Joyous Light as a page.

  “Good thing, too,” Sylloallen had explained, smiling. “Didn’t have a flicker of the flux about me. Not then, at any rate. Never would’ve made it in the mages’ school. Luckily for me, my mother considered his Grace’s service to be a better deal than eel-fishing or tending goats.” He threw his master a grin when he said this; Kaltas had merely shaken his head wryly.

  So had followed ten years of scouring pots, cleaning pigeon coops and learning arms before the grubby stripling was made a squire. He then served as messenger, equerry, and eventually knight-errant, winning his spurs right at his majority, a century or so earlier. That was when his life had changed.

  “I must’ve caught Somebody’s eye,” Sylloallen had told her soberly, “because at my vigil, the Protector called me.” Larranel’s clergy had immediately intervened, and instead of merely a knight, the new esquire was consecrated as one of the Luxmyrmidae of Larranel Sylvanus – a holy warrior, sworn to the service of the Protector of the Homelands.

  “Don’t know who was happier to hear about my consecration,” he’d smiled wryly. “My mother, Lady Alrykkian, or the Duke himself. I was just glad that it meant no more pots.” He’d taken a long draught of wine, adding, “I’ve served Kaltas of Eldisle ever since.”

  “And now,” her father had interrupted, “he’s going to serve me again. Allymyn, my dear, meet your new master.”

  Ally had been too surprised to say anything. Her father waited a moment for a reaction, muttering “Hmm” when none came.

  Turning to Sylloallen, he’d said “So, teacher. Where do you want to begin?”

  Sylloallen had unslung his enormous sword. Ally saw that it was an aulensis, the great court sword of the High Elves, patterned after the black blade that Tior Magnus had forged for his brother Dior, War Chief of Harad, during the Age of Wisdom, thousands of years in the past. I might not know magic, she’d thought bitterly, but at least I know history. Kalestayne had seen to that.

  The thing was slender-bladed but enormous, at least as long as she was tall. The warrior had hefted the scabbarded blade thoughtfully for a moment. Then he’d tossed it casually at Ally.

  Stunned, she’d sprung from her chair, clutching at the weapon, more to prevent it from hitting her in the face than for any other reason. Not surprisingly, she fum
bled and dropped it. It fell to the floor with a clatter. Her father had merely raised an eyebrow.

  “I think,” Sylloallen had said, looking her over clinically, “that we’ll start with some push-ups.”

  And so had begun Ally’s apprenticeship as a sword-thegn. The first months were a gruelling experience; she was still young, decades away from her majority, and it was not customary to begin training elven youths in the martial arts until they had at least seen their first century. Worse, her sheltered childhood, as the daughter of a nobleman and a scion of the Duodeci, had spared her not only the physical labour that was expected of the common folk, but also the physical development that came with it. Simply put, she was weak; she lacked both the muscular strength and the endurance that a commoner of her age would have already enjoyed.

  That was where Sylloallen decided to begin.

  He’d wasted no time. They’d left her father’s study together, and he’d led her, at a brisk pace, into the castle’s sand-strewn courtyard.

  When she’d offered him his sword, he’d simply shaken his head, saying, “It’s yours now. And don’t ever let me catch you without it.”

  Recalling that moment, years later, Ally was proud that he had never done so. From the moment he’d given the thing into her hands, to the day that he’d left the palace, never to be seen again, he’d never caught her unarmed. For all of her other omissions, errors and failures, for all the innumerable disappointments she’d inflicted on her mother, her father, and Sylloallen, she’d never once fallen down in executing the first command he’d given her.

  It was something.

  In the courtyard, she’d expected him to turn for the stables; instead, he’d turned towards the barbican and the castle’s great gate. He paused for a moment, looking her carefully up and down, then said, “Let’s go,” setting off towards the portcullis at an easy run.

  Ally had stared after him in disbelief. In addition to carrying the heavy sword, she was still garbed as she had been for her examination that morning: in a floor-length gown of satin and heavy brocade, with a moderate train, and numerous costly combs, pins and veils supporting her elaborate coiffure. Could he really expect her to run in such dress?

  He could, and did. Sylloallen had paused by the gatehouse, turning and beckoning to her impatiently before vanishing into the long, shadowy tunnel. A moment later, she’d heard his boot heels thundering on the drawbridge.

  He’s serious, she’d thought, amazed and horrified. Her heart, already blasted by her failure before Kalestayne, had sunk even further.

  For a moment – just one – she had considered letting him go and returning to her chambers. There were other things she could do; other paths in life. She had glanced down at the heavy sword in her hands and thought about dropping it in the dirt.

  Go ahead.

  Ally had looked around. The voice had rung clearly in her head, and she’d half-expected to see someone standing behind her. But she was alone; the other residents of the castle, noble and common alike, were going about their business, politely ignoring their lord’s younger daughter and the immense weapon she held in her slender fingers.

  Drop it, the Voice had counselled. Go back inside.

  She wanted to. It seemed like the sensible course. It was certainly the easier one.

  And what then? she’d asked herself.

  Whatever other highborn ladies do, the mysterious Voice had replied instantly. Dance. Sing. Read poetry. Ride in the countryside.

  Do needlepoint, it had continued, ringing hollowly, snidely in her ears. Gossip. Take some highborn imbecile to mate. Be his cushion, bear his brats.

  Betray him with his friends. Raise children to bear more brats, do needlepoint, gossip, and betray their own mates in turn.

  The voice grew ever louder, more hollow. Pick flowers. Grow old. Die. And be forgotten.

  She had begun to hear a roaring in her ears, like thunder or the distant surf, and realized that it was a scream of frustration building in her chest. Is that all there is for me? she raged.

  All, the voice concurred. Unless…

  Unless what? she’d demanded frantically.

  Unless you choose a different path.

  “Sylloallen’s path,” she muttered under her breath. You’re saying that I should follow him?

  I am saying, the voice replied, fading beneath the roaring murmur of her discontent, that the Holy Mother’s gift to you is more than life.

  It is choice.

  This choice, the deep, penetrating Voice said firmly, is yours. Yours alone.

  She’d listened a moment more, blinking in astonishment. But the Voice – she’d already begun to think of it in those terms – did not return.

  Hefting the sword, Ally had glanced up at the castle battlements, to the wide, glazed windows that concealed her parents’ apartments. She could not be sure that her father was watching, but she would have bet that he was.

  Two paths, she thought. Which way?

  A moment later, she was thundering breathlessly across the drawbridge, the heavy sword cradled awkwardly in her arms, shouting for Sylloallen.

  ♦

  Hax was awoken by the screaming of her mare – a desperate, high-pitched whinny that was suddenly choked off, trailing away into feeble thrashings amid the underbrush.

  Her immediate, panicked reaction – They’ve found me! – vanished almost at once. Whatever the High Guard might do to her, they wouldn’t harm her horse.

  Galvanized, she rolled out of her makeshift bed, clearing the mattress of evergreen branches that she had laid on the ground, and kicking off her blankets. Her hand found the hilt of her sword right where she had left it, and she came to her feet in a clumsy but adequately stable fighting stance, blinking to clear the rheum from her eyes.

  She was surrounded.

  A dozen hunched, grey-skinned creatures – man-like, but horribly misshapen and feral – snarled and slavered in a tight cordon around her. Beyond them, limned in moonlight, she could see others tearing at the feebly-twitching remains of her horse.

  The stench was incredible, an amalgam of fear and rot that clutched at her throat, making her feel as though she were drowning in bile. She was surprised that the smell alone hadn’t roused her.

  Snarling, spittle flying from filth-encrusted fangs, they rushed her.

  She struck the head from the first one to reach her, but two more leapt onto her back, driving her to her knees. Claws dug deep into her shoulder, tearing easily through her flimsy chemise. She gasped at the sudden, stabbing pain, recalling too late that her armour was lying uselessly under a nearby tree.

  Still on her knees, she spun in place, managing to throw one of her assailants off, and pinned it to the ground with an awkward thrust. Mortally wounded but entirely ignorant of that fact, the thing hissed and spat at her, its eyes blazing like pinpricks of hellfire, a reek of death and corruption rising from its gaping maw.

  The other still clung to her like a limpet, sinking its fangs, over and over again, into the soft flesh near her neck. The pain was horrific, and Hax shrieked now. Her screams seemed to embolden the rest of the mob, and they edged close to the struggling duo, eager to share in their comrade’s kill.

  Hax realized dimly that she was losing. The agony in her neck was unbearable; the horror clinging to her back had got an arm around her throat and was remorselessly tightening its grasp. Its touch was even worse than pain; it was cold, cold beyond winter’s night, a deep, draining cold that clawed at her being, gnawing at the spirit within her even as the thing’s fangs and claws raked at her flesh. She had no idea what the creature was, but she knew that it was killing her.

  Any of her more complicated incantations were beyond her ability at that moment. Keeping one hand on the hilt of her sword, she grasped the thing’s cold, slimy wrist, and gasped, “Vahinko kuollut!”

  Smoke burst from the flesh where Hax had touched it. The thing snarled in surprise.
/>
  And it loosened its grip.

  With the last of her failing strength, Hax flung the thing to the ground, swept her sword in a vast overhand arc, and split the creature’s skull down to its breastbone.

  She yanked the gleaming steel lath out of the thing’s shuddering corpse and breathed deep. Air like liquid fire scorched her injured throat. Gritting her teeth against the flaring agony in her neck and shoulder, and desperately conscious of the blood running freely down her breast and back, she shouted a challenge, flourishing her blade.

  The enemy seemed hesitant now, circling her like a maddened wolf pack, glancing from her sword to the hollow of her throat, then over to the blood-stained bushes where their pack-mates were making free with the remains of her stallion. Good enough, she thought grimly.

  Shrieking a challenge, she feinted a lunge at the largest single group of the creatures; then, clenching her will, she shouted, “Lennähtää mina!”…

  …and soared into the freezing, wind-swept sky. Droplets of blood from her torn flesh spattered down like scarlet rain.

  The cacophony was terrific. The grey-skinned creatures capered and pranced as though possessed, clustering beneath her and screaming their rage and hunger into the night sky.

  Perhaps they are possessed, she thought grimly. Well, I can rectify that. Transferring her sword to her left hand, she took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and, making a short series of arcane gestures, muttered, “Palokerä!”

  A shimmering glint of power leapt from her fingers, plummeting to earth like a tiny, glowing meteorite. It landed in the midst of the slavering crowd and blossomed into a terrible ball of fire.

  The slap of the detonation was accompanied by a hungry roar. Flames burst outwards, engulfing her assailants and billowing into a red-orange cloud that illuminated the night sky. The hungry crackle of the fire was instantly overwhelmed by the desperate shrieks of the fanged horde. More than half of their number fell, smoking and twitching feebly, to the forest floor; the remainder, trailing flames and shedding gobbets of burnt flesh, bolted for the trees. Their screaming flight sparked panic amid their uninjured fellows, who were still clustered around her horse’s partially-consumed carcass; then these, too, broke, and fled bawling into the night.

  A moment later they were gone, their deranged howls fading into the forest. Hax sighed with relief…and then gasped in agony as her exhilaration fled too, and the pain in her neck and shoulder flooded back, nearly blinding her.

  She had to bind her wounds.

  Her original fireblast had ignited the trees around her campsite. Once her attackers had vanished, Hax swooped in, landing awkwardly, half-blinded by pain. As she had expected, her blankets had been incinerated; but fortunately, her armour and saddlebags, and for that matter her scabbard, all being of oiled leather, were only lightly singed. Her bow and quiver, leaning against a tree a short distance away (That’s never going to happen again, she cursed to herself), had, miraculously, escaped unharmed.

  Without much hope, she stumbled across the clearing to the small copse where her horse had been hobbled. It was, as she had expected, dead. And worse than dead; its flesh was torn and half-consumed, its entrails spread across the forest floor like a vast, gruesome carpet. Flies, made sluggish by the evening’s chill, had already begun to gather.

  A white-hot anger boiled up within her breast. Then she retched, and the pain of doing so brought her back to herself. She touched a hand to her blouse; it came away bloody, and she was overcome by a sudden light-headedness. Bindings, she thought drunkenly.

  Leaving her dead horse, she returned to her campsite. The fires she had ignited were, to her considerable relief, dying out; it had rained recently, and the woods were still damp. At least she did not have to fear a wildfire.

  She rummaged through her scorched saddlebags and extracted her last remaining linen chemise. None too clean, she thought morosely. It would have to do.

  She had no wine with which to sponge her wounds. She rinsed them liberally with her waterskin, hoping that doing so would flush the filth of fang and claw from the terrible gashes; then tore her spare shirt into strips.

  She paused, remembering Sylloallen’s lessons, and glanced around. No, she thought, eyes a-squint, looking from tree to tree…no, no…yes.

  With her fingernails, she scraped clusters of dry, hair-like moss from the bark of a towering oak. The worst of the wounds were in her neck and shoulder. Gritting her teeth against the searing pain, she pressed moss into the torn flesh. She covered this makeshift poultice with a pad of folded rags, and bound the whole mess in place with strips of linen. It was a difficult, awkward business; she ended up holding the cloth with her teeth while tightening the knots with her left hand.

  The last of the fires was out by the time she was done. She regarded her torn, blood-soaked shirt for only a moment before discarding it; it was too gory even to be useful for bandages. Shuddering, she shrugged bare-skinned into her sweat-dampened arming coat; then clenched her jaw again as she carefully donned her armour. Its weight rested uncomfortably on her bandaged wounds, but she reasoned that, the discomfort notwithstanding, it might help to hold the poultices in place.

  As she donned the rest of her clothing and kit, she discovered a score of smaller gashes and cuts all over her torso and legs. Damned things must’ve had fangs everywhere, she grimaced. Given the filth and stench of her assailants, the chance of her wounds not festering was vanishingly small.

  I’m going to need a healer, she realized glumly.

  “And a new horse,” she added, a moment later. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded panicked and febrile.

  There were other matters to take care of first. Repacking her saddlebags, she was relieved to find them considerably lighter without her two blankets. She could keep warm by walking. Knotting her quiver and bow to her baldric, she slipped it over her left shoulder, avoiding the injured right, then lay her saddlebags atop that. The weight was not too great for a forced march, but it was awkward, and she was going to have difficulty moving both swiftly and silently. She briefly considered taking her saddle along as well – after all, she had only just paid for the damned thing – but decided that she didn’t need the extra weight. And in any case, it was useless without a horse to put it on.

  Speed was more important. The rest of the horrid things, after all, were still out there. And this was farming country.

  Resolving to ignore the throbbing agony of her wounds, Hax set her jaw and left her campsite behind, following the blood-speckled trail of her attackers through the starlit forest.

  ♦

  By the time she caught up with her quarry, a day and a night had passed, and Hax was exhausted. Her wounds were inflamed, painful to the touch, and she was certain that they were becoming infected. Her water skin was empty again. She had paused to refresh herself at streams that she crossed, but had been forced on each occasion to range a short distance upriver, so as not to drink water contaminated by the passage of her attackers’ foul feet. Each such foray cost her precious time. Her enemy was moving so swiftly and tirelessly that she had begun to suspect that they were more than what she had assumed them to be – more than mere feral hominids. The icy lassitude that had come over her when she had been grappled by them had hinted as much. Revenants, she supposed; although whether they had risen spontaneously, or had been made, she could not guess.

  Whatever their origin, the things refused to halt, even for rest. So much for taking them asleep and unawares, she thought grimly.

  She did not pause for food. Between her exertions and her wounds, she felt feverish and nauseated. More than once she considered abandoning her saddlebags in order to quicken her pace, but each time she rejected the notion. She had no idea how far she would have to go, and was unsure that she would be able find her way back to her kit. Her skills as a woodsman might be sufficient to pursue a ravening band of monsters through late summer underbrush, but she ha
d no illusions about her capacity for more refined tracking. For all the vaunted wood-lore of the Elves, Hax was principally a creature of cities and civilization, and she knew it.

  Even with autumn coming on, dusk came early in the Bjerglands. Hax had begun to despair of catching her quarry up before nightfall and had resigned herself to another cold, painful night in the forest, when, to her relief and alarm, she heard a rising cacophony of shouts, snarls and screams break out a short distance ahead.

  Protector bless me! she thought, a thin note of exultation breaking through the haze of sweat and pain. At last.

  The clamour increased, and she thought she could hear the song-note of bowstrings. There was definitely light ahead – the flickering flame of an open fire.

  She had been prepared for this possibility since morning. Dropping her saddlebags, she unslung her bow, nocked an arrow, and dashed the last few paces forward, dancing nimbly between the young pines, trying to ignore the cramping pain in her neck and shoulder.

  She broke through the trees, then paused, astonished. She was…I’m back at the high road, she thought angrily. Those wretched things led me on a great, sweeping loop through the hills and swamps.

  She surveyed the situation. The firelight was blinding, but she was able to make out some details: a few small, weather-beaten buildings, thatched roofs fallen in; a rail-fenced paddock; a wagon; tethered horses.

  Travellers, she thought instantly. She could see no more than four of them, bayed, with their backs to a bonfire.

  Her quarry stood between her and the farmstead, nicely silhouetted against the fire. There were more than a dozen of the things, snarling, circling. One of the travellers stepped forward, aiming a crushing blow at one of the creatures with a heavy club; another, armed with a light bow, loosed arrow after arrow into their ranks, with limited effect. A third, hooded and standing some distance behind his colleagues, seemed to be gesturing…

  Another mage. Hax smiled. We may have a chance after all. Bending her elbows to bring her bow nearer her face, she put her lips to the polished steel blades of the arrowhead resting loosely against her fingertip, and whispered, “Vahinko kuollut!” Then she stepped forward into the circle of firelight, raised her bow, drew the fletchings to the angle of her jaw...

  ...and a short, slender figure leaned out from behind the wagon, and shot Hax in the leg.

  The agony was intense, excruciating. The elf-girl yelled in surprise as much as in pain. Her own shot went wild, the enchanted arrow sailing off harmlessly into the night.

  She glanced down. The other archer’s shaft was buried in the outer muscles of her right thigh, away from the great blood vessels. No ill fortune without some good, as Sylloallen might have said. She gritted her teeth and tried putting her weight on it, found that she could stand without too much pain.

  Then remembered that her assailant probably had more…

  She looked up. Sure enough, the tiny archer was nocking another arrow. “Amicus est!” Hax screamed. “I’m on your side, damn it!” she added for good measure, screeching like a harpy in the travelling tongue.

  The shock in the diminutive archer’s eyes was gratifying if a little overdue. The bow sagged, and the elf-girl sighed in relief.

  Her respite did not last long. To Hax’s dismay, fully half of the slavering monstrosities that had been circling the travellers turned at her shout, lust and hunger glinting in their eyes. Hells, she thought, nocking another arrow.

  They charged.

  Not much time. Her hands were trembling, and she did her best to command them to be steady, trying to visualize the archery lists that lay between the inner and outer wards of her father’s castle. She struggled to recall Sylloallen’s soothing, confident tones. It helped, a little; she let fly, reached over her shoulder for another arrow, nocked it, drew it smoothly, and did so again. The two missiles smacked into the chest of the first of the galloping beasts, a hand-span apart, causing it to fold at the midsection and collapse in a disjointed heap.

  She did the same to another, catching this one in the arm instead of the chest. It checked but did not drop. Dimly, she heard shouting and the roar of distant flames, and saw another of the creatures charging her stumble and fall.

  Too close for archery. She gestured swiftly, shouting “Kärventää raasku!” Scarlet lances of fire blasted from her fingertips, searing pale flesh and blasting crumbling bone into ash. Another of the creatures dropped to the rain-dampened leaves, afire and shrieking.

  Discarding her bow, she reached over her shoulder, drew her sword, and readied herself. An instant later, the last two creatures slammed into her like catapult boulders.

  Razor claws clotted with blood and rotting flesh tore at her eyes; charnel fangs snapped at her throat and vitals. Backpedalling swiftly, she hacked downwards, and saw a vast, bloodless gash open like a dry canyon in the breast of one of her opponents. It fell, thrashing and screaming. The other raked at her, its claws tearing ribbons of flesh from her arm. One of its knees brushed the arrow embedded in her thigh, and she screamed at the redoubled agony. Continuing the smooth motion, she brought her blade around in a whistling arc…

  …the creature stiffened, an arrowhead sprouting from its forehead like a third eye…

  …and hacked its head from its shoulders.

  Her leg finally gave out. With a grunt of pain, Hax fell to her knees, readying her sword as best she could, and looking around for targets.

  There were no more. The battle appeared to be over, and she released her pent-up breath in a great, shuddering sigh. Flicking the gore from her blade, she laid it carefully on the earth and bent to inspect her wounds.

  The gashes across her upper arm were bloody but shallow. Probing gingerly at her makeshift dressings, she found that she had managed in her exertions to re-open several of the wounds she had sustained the previous day. But the bleeding (and the effusion of bloody pus, she noted with disgust) was minor, and seemed to be under control.

  The arrow in her thigh was the worst. She touched it gingerly, and hissed when a glassy bolt of agony shot through her groin, into her spine, and up her back.

  She heard a furtive step. Hax glanced up. The bow-wielding warrior was standing a few paces away, cloaked and hooded, his posture tense. He had an arrow nocked but not drawn. Though she could not see his face, she could tell from his posture and pace that he was a man. Probably a Zaran, she thought, gritting her teeth. He was short and muscular, like the locals she had seen.

  When he saw her pale, high-browed visage, he stiffened slightly. Then he straightened up and replaced the arrow in his quiver.

  “Licito succurso est?” the fellow asked, his accent odd but understandable. He was trying to ask whether it was permitted to offer assistance.

  Hax smiled sourly at the stilted phrasing. A man; a son of Esu. “Your friends have done enough already,” she replied in travelling tongue. She had intended it as a rebuke, and was annoyed when the fellow simply looked relieved, if little embarrassed.

  “My apologies,” he replied, in the same language, grinning wryly and nodding at the arrow in her leg. “Poor payment for your aid in battle.” He slung his bow over his shoulder and dropped to one knee. He touched his fist to his lips and then raised it to her, palm open. “I am Breygon of Æryn. Can I be of assistance?”

  “In ossus est,” she grated, indicating the arrow and lapsing unconsciously back into her mother’s tongue. “Is there a leech among you?”

  The fellow shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he replied, sounding even more embarrassed. “Nor anyone who knows much about the healing arts. Excuse me,” he added, climbing to his feet again. Cupping his hands near his mouth, he shouted, “Qaramyn!”

  One of the figures engaged in ensuring their fallen foes were all dead glanced up. It was the tall, hooded caster she had earlier descried. He waved peremptorily, then gestured at a pile of fallen corpses; they burst into bright
orange flame. A greasy pillar of smoke mounted into the night sky.

  The fellow nodded contentedly, then left his gruesome task and strode towards them. Hax could see that he was another human, somewhat taller than Breygon, although much more lightly built. “Aye?” he asked. His voice was high-pitched and smoother than it should have been, given the events of the evening.

  “We’ve got a wounded…ah, visitor,” Breygon explained, indicating Hax.

  The caster swept back his hood, revealing a face that was typically human – and to Hax’s eyes, very young. The fellow was pale and slender to the point of emaciation, with deep, serious eyes of unrelieved black, and a shock of unruly raven hair above a high forehead. He knelt next to her and looked her over carefully, his eyes widening. Then, to her astonishment, he nodded deeply. “Welcome to Zare, lady.”

  “Thank you, I suppose,” she replied uncertainly.

  The caster glanced up at the archer. “Third House,” he said pointedly.

  “I know,” Breygon replied shortly, crossing his arms.

  Qaramyn turned back to Hax, holding up his hands, palms open and facing her. “May I examine your wound, lady?” he asked, his voice solemn.

  “Of course,” she replied, taken aback by his unexpected deference, but oddly comforted by it. She was a little nonplussed; she hadn’t expected to be identified so readily this far out in the hinterland.

  The caster laid a gentle hand on her leg, fingers spread around the arrow-shaft. Hax noticed, entirely irrelevantly, how long and slender his digits were. He grasped the nock, rotating it gently, stopping the moment she hissed in pain.

  “In ossus est,” he said, shaking his head.

  “That’s what I said,” Hax grated. Apparently he was one of those humans who thought that speaking the elven tongue made them appear learned.

  The caster glanced at her momentarily before looking up at Breygon again. “Does Gwen use barbed arrows?”

  The archer shook his head. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Find her and ask, would you? I’d like to know before I start pulling.” Breygon nodded and strode quickly away

  Qaramyn looked up from his work, grinning mischievously. “Better move that sword out of the way,” he chuckled.

  He glanced at the weapon, lying cold, gore-speckled and deadly on the grass, then raised his eyes to hers again. His smile was gone. “That’s a mighty blade, lady,” he said softly. The black eyes searched hers. “You’re a long way from home.”

  This human is young, Hax thought, but he’s no fool. Tread cautiously. “I’m travelling north. Those things came upon me in camp, last night, not far from Ballohek, and killed my horse.” She nodded towards the trees, where her saddlebags lay, concealed by the darkness. “I managed to drive them off.”

  “And then you followed them? Ten leagues, at night, through the forest, on foot? And wounded, to boot?” the caster asked, shooting a glance at her blood-stained dressings. “That’s quite a feat.”

  Hax shrugged. “I didn’t want them coming upon other travellers. Most are less capable of defending themselves than I.”

  Qaramyn nodded. “Like us.” He resumed probing her wound. “Commendable,” he murmured. “Stupid, but commendable.”

  Hax was speechless for a moment. Then she smiled tightly. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been called ‘stupid’ by a human before.”

  The caster shrugged. “Stupid is as stupid does, my lady. You were alone, badly fatigued, and bleeding. Outnumbered, too. Had you come upon those things alone in your present state, you would almost certainly have perished.”

  “You reached that conclusion quickly enough,” Hax observed coldly.

  “Men don’t live as long as Elves, lady,” he replied, probing gently at the entry-point in her thigh while she gritted her teeth, as much at his arrogant presumption as at the pain of her wounds. “We don’t have time for elaborate courtesy and placatory euphemisms. The Holy Mother gave us a limited span, and we have to make the most of it. I prefer to get to the point.”

  He tapped a finger on the arrow’s nock, grinning wickedly. “If you know what I mean.”

  Hax hissed at the pain, and grasped her leg tightly. “I’m not sure I like you,” she said softly, her eyes glittering.

  Qaramyn chuckled. “Don’t judge so hastily.” Sitting back on his haunches, he began searching through the many pouches and bags that depended from his girdle, and the belts draped over his shoulders. A small pile of glass phials, cloth bags and miscellaneous what-not gradually accumulated on the ground before him. “I might be the best comrade you’ll ever have.”

  “How so?” Hax grated.

  “Well,” the fellow replied evenly, fiddling with his materials, “if I decide to be your friend, I’ll never lie to you. I’ll burn the world to its roots to defend you. And, if you’re nice to me,” he leaned closer, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, “I might even share spells with you.”

  “ ‘Commendable’,” Hax replied, her voice dripping with irony. “I wonder, how many such friends do you have?”

  The caster glanced upwards, humming lightly to himself as if engaged in complex calculations. “One, now.” He grinned happily at her.

  His manner was so outrageous that Hax forgot her anger and laughed. “Very well,” she replied. “Burning the world can wait. For now, I’ll settle for you taking this arrow out of my leg.”

  Qaramyn nodded. “I will, once our good sergeant digs Gwen out of whatever hole she’s hiding in to avoid having to face you. I don’t want to start yanking until I know whether I’m going to do more damage taking the thing out than she did putting it in.”

  “ ‘Sergeant’?” Hax asked, cocking an eyebrow. They didn’t look like soldiers.

  “A poor choice of words,” the wizard shrugged. “Ductor, perhaps. Leader and guide. We’re a patrol of the Æryngard. The ‘Watch’, as the locals call it. It’s the Duke’s constabulary. Breygon is our chief, for the nonce.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone much interested in taking orders,” she observed.

  Qaramyn shrugged. “I needed to get out of the scriptorum for a while. The Watch provided an opportunity and a salary. As for Breygon…” He glanced over at the bowman, who was standing next to the wagon, in conference with the club-wielder, and a wiry-looking man she hadn’t noticed before.

  “What about him?” she asked, finding her gaze drawn to the man.

  “He’s a sensible enough fellow,” the wizard shrugged. “But a lodestone for trouble. I thought that life might be more interesting in his company than at school. Tonight’s events validated that hypothesis, I’m sad to say.”

  Hax nodded. Restlessness was a sensation that she understood. She tried to focus her attention away from the pain. “This Gwen,” she mused, staring into the flickering firelight. “The one who shot me. She’s Halpinya, yes?”

  “Yes,” the caster answered absently. “And a gentle soul, too, so she’s probably overcome with remorse at having nicked you.” He was probing around the arrow shaft with his fingers. “I’m going to have to cut your breeks.”

  Hax shrugged. “Go ahead. My wardrobe hasn’t fared at all well these past few days. Another tear won’t matter.”

  Qaramyn produced a short, bone-handled knife. Working swiftly, he cut a long slit in her trouser-leg above and below the embedded arrow. “How did you know?” he asked.

  “What? That she’s a Halfling?” Hax asked.

  Qaramyn nodded.

  “Apart from her size?” Hax shrugged. “Short arrow.”

  “Could’ve been a gnome,” the caster countered, eyeing her with evident interest. “What made you guess ‘Halfling’?”

  Hax thought about that for a moment. “The fletchings, I suppose,” she replied. “Too colourful. Gnomes are more…er, practical, I guess.”

  Qaramyn nodded. “Never thought of that.” Opening one of th
e small glass phials, he sprinkled a dark red powder around the arrow wound. Hax felt a brief, intense burning sensation, followed by a delicious numbness.

  “Meliusculus est?” the caster asked.

  “Ingens,” she replied, her voice filled with relief. She glanced at the phial. “What was that?”

  Qaramyn pursed his lips, glancing at her ears before answering. “Best I not say, lady. No disrespect, of course, but your folk are known for harbouring some rather…ahh…illiberal attitudes, towards certain of the alchemical arts.”

  Hax frowned. “I’m not a child. We invented herbalism, you know,” she said, somewhat stiffly.

  “This isn’t a herb,” he replied drily, tucking the phial away in his scrip.

  “What?” A note of alarm crept into her voice. “What did you put on me?” she demanded.

  The caster made a placatory gesture. “Relax, lady,” he said soothingly. “It’s entirely natural. And it helped with the pain, didn’t it?” he added, smiling darkly.

  “I suppose,” she admitted. Although, she reflected, there were a great many ‘natural’ things that she would not have wanted rubbed into an open wound.

  “Good.” He sat next to her. “You’ll appreciate it all the more when I make with the brandy.”

  “You’re not going to cauterize it?” she asked, surprised.

  Qaramyn’s eyebrows went up. “Are you that fond of pain?” he asked.

  “Not especially, no,” she replied. “But that’s the standard treatment for an arrow wound when there’re no healers about.” She bent her knee slightly, wincing at the expectation of agony, and relaxed again when none came.

  “Not where I come from,” he snorted. “Better a good wash, inside and out, first with boiled water, and then with brandy. Then we’ll bind it up in boiled rags soaked in more brandy.” He nodded at her shoulder. “Once the rest are done piling corpses, I’m going to fix you right up. Alric, too; he took a nasty swipe back there.” He snorted again, half to himself. “Howall’s going to put up a fight when I try to pry his cache of rot-gut away,” he mused, tugging absently at his pointed chin. “Maybe I’ll have Joraz do it. He has quick hands.

  “In the meantime,” he continued blithely, “let’s try to keep your mind off of your miseries.” Reaching into his pack, he extracted a heavy, leather-bound book, rune-covered, and embossed with dragon rising in flames. “We can talk about spells while we wait for Gwen to turn up.”

  She recognized the sigils of Miros instantly. “You’re a wizard,” she said with a sigh.

  “Qaramyn Lux, at your service,” the caster replied, bowing from the waist. His gangly stature made it an almost comical gesture. “A recent graduate of the Gandrskole in Æryn.” He shrugged self-deprecatingly. “It’s not the College of Stars, of course, but…”

  He trailed off, seeing the guarded look on her face. “Yes?” he asked, eyebrows raised inquisitively.

  “I’m not. A mage of the book, I mean. A wizard,” Hax replied. She watched him carefully to gauge his reaction. Not all Zarans had rejected the teachings of the Hand…

  Qaramyn’s eyes widened. “Ah! Well!” He seemed to be trying to cover his surprise, and to decide what to say next. “Hmm. Not an Ekhani warcaster, obviously. That would make you an inborn caster, yes? A sorceress?”

  She said nothing. There was a long pause while they stared at each other. Finally, Hax broke the silence. “You don’t often find yourself at a loss for words, do you?”

  That provoked a self-deprecating laugh. “Well struck,” Qaramyn replied, chuckling. “No, I do not. But in all seriousness, lady,” he continued, lowering his voice, “you might be wise to pretend to be one of my kind. A studied mage. Those who draw their power from within rather than without may be well-regarded in your Homelands…”

  “You might be surprised,” Hax muttered darkly.

  “…but among the common people, here and elsewhere, they are looked upon with suspicion. Even fear.” He paused for a moment, then added, “The prejudices of the White Hand have not lost all of their former appeal, especially among the lower orders. And we are not all that far from Mirabilis.”

  “How well I know it,” she murmured. Nodding her thanks for his advice, she said, “I intend to keep my powers a secret, insofar as is possible.” Glancing down at her garb, she added ruefully, “And besides, I’ll be more likely to pass as an out-of-work mercenary than an itinerant wizard.”

  “You know best, of course,” Qaramyn agreed. “Still, you must forgive my disappointment.”

  “Disappointment? At what?” Hax asked, confused.

  “At my luck,” he replied with a roguish grin. “I finally meet an elf of the Third House, and she turns out to be the only one in all Erutrei who hasn’t been to the College.” He clasped his hands around his knees. “What shall we talk about, then?”

  Hax frowned; the man had poked a particularly sore spot in her psyche. All the same, she found that she had a hard time taking his insults seriously. His manner was simply too self-deprecatingly jocular. “I’d like to talk about that powder you put on my leg,” she said, trying for sternness, but failing by a wide margin.

  “Excellent,” Qaramyn replied, smiling broadly. His teeth, she noticed, were neither terribly white nor terribly even. “I’d be delighted. And after that, perhaps we can discuss what a daughter of the Duodeci –” he nodded at her sword, lying cold and blood-soaked in the grass “– is doing butchering ghouls in the forests of northern Zare.”

  There was an awkward silence. After a few moments, Hax shifted her seat uncomfortably. “I’m not sure I like you very much, Qaramyn Lux,” she said again.

  The wizard nodded sagely. “Well, you’re in the right troupe, then.”

  ♦

  Hax found the rest of the group somewhat less complicated. Qaramyn handled the introductions, interspersing his intelligent but clumsy attempts at leech-craft with a running flow of wry, sarcastic commentary. His propensity for unwonted eloquence, she quickly decided, was one of his least endearing traits.

  The club-wielding warrior – a shy, taciturn fellow about the same height as Qaramyn, although considerably heavier – was called ‘Alric’. He had three long, jagged, partially-healed scars running down one cheek, one barely missing his left eye. “Alric Wolvesbane,” Qaramyn chuckled, gently teasing the arrowhead out of her leg while she gritted her teeth and hissed at the pain that penetrated the numbing powder he had applied. “A recent appellation.”

  “‘Wolvesfeast’, to my friends,” the warrior said weakly.

  Happily, the arrow had not been barbed, and it had only been the work of a moment to worry the point free from Hax’s thighbone. Qaramyn inspected the bent tip of the arrowhead, then turned and handed it to its owner, saying “Ruined, I’m afraid.”

  The diminutive archer – the aforementioned Gwen – was introduced to Hax as ‘Gwendolyne of Æryn.’ This worthy was, as Hax had guessed, one of the Halpinya, about as tall standing as the elf-girl was while seated on the ground. Gwen was somewhat more slender than the norm for her race, and rather younger than Hax would’ve expected (few Halflings, she knew, left home before reaching their majority). The woman – girl, she amended mentally – might have been pretty, had her eyes not been reddened by weeping, and her rosebud lips drawn down in a moue of anguished remorse.

  Taking the arrow from her comrade in trembling hands, she exclaimed, “I’m so, so, sorry!” for what must have been the eighth time.

  Hax waved her apologies away. “I’ve had worse,” she said stoically, “and recently, too. I’m just grateful you aimed low.”

  Gwen grimaced, and tears filled her eyes again. Evidently the image of her striking the elf in a more vulnerable spot was too much to bear. “Oh,” she moaned, “I’m so, SO –”

  “Enough,” Breygon murmured. “She knows. It was battle. Accidents happen.” He squatted easily on his haunches beside the w
retched Halfling.

  “You’re in my light,” Qaramyn snapped waspishly. “We don’t all have your eyes.”

  That caused Hax to glance back up at the hooded bowman. “Eyes?” she asked sharply.

  The fellow sighed. Reaching up, he swept his hood back, revealing a guarded visage, a heavy shock of black hair…and pointed ears. “Breygon Sylvanus,” he said with a nod, “of Æryn. And Elvehelm, obviously. On my mother’s side.” His rough voice dripped with a complex admixture of bitterness and self-contempt.

  Hax was too surprised to notice. Upon hearing the low tone of his voice and the manner in which he had mangled the elven tongue, she had assumed him to be human, albeit an unusually short one. Searching his features, she noted the peculiar amalgam of physical traits that marked the half-breeds: high cheekbones in an otherwise broad face; violet orbs in round eye-sockets; eyebrows that sloped upwards, but that were dark and thick; ears which, while pointed, were neither as pronounced nor as graceful as her own; and a form that was at once lithe, compact, and far more muscular than any true elf might have boasted.

  Then she kicked herself mentally. Breygon! What human mother would give her child such a name?

  When her eyes focussed again, he was grinning sardonically at her. “And you are?” he prompted gently.

  She was forgetting her manners. “A…Orkarel Hax,” she said after a brief stumble. “Of Sinucernus. On the south coast,” she added, entirely unnecessarily.

  “An unusual name,” the wizard murmured, plying his lavage bulb and boiled linens, “for an unusually well-armed herring fisherman.”

  Hax glared at the wizard coldly, but he did not look up from his work.

  “Welcome to Zare, Orkarel Hax,” Breygon replied, ignoring his comrade. “Whither bound?”

  “I was heading north,” she replied. “I…excuse me,” she continued, changing the topic suddenly. “Where in Elvehelm?”

  “Eh?”

  “Your mother,” Hax replied, eyeing Breygon closely. He looked oddly familiar. It could not have been him personally; Hax had never before met one of the verruca…One of the half-breeds, she corrected mentally, taking care to avoid the vulgar epithet.

  The bowman shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” he replied evenly. “She left the Homelands decades before I was born, and never returned thereafter. For reasons which, I presume, are obvious to you,” he added neutrally.

  While she bristled at his insinuations, Hax could not take umbrage at them. The half-elf’s sort were – had always been – unwelcome in the Homelands. Half-breeds were only barely tolerated in the outlying realms, like her father’s duchy of Eldisle; had this archer dared to present himself at the gates of the Palace at Starmeadow, he would have been turned away. And there was a better-than-even chance that his life would have been forfeit.

  “I understand,” Hax said, as evenly as she could manage. She sensed that words of explanation would be rebuffed, and decided not to offer any. Instead, clearing her throat, she continued, “To answer your question, I am northward bound. For Ellohyin, at present, and points beyond, if time and the weather permit.”

  The archer regarded her evenly for a moment, then nodded slowly. “We are only going as far as Bornhavn. You are welcome to join us. You can take ship there for Ellohyin, or if you prefer, buy a new horse.”

  “Wait for Ellohyin,” Qaramyn advised, interrupting. “Bornhavn’s little more than a hamlet. You’ll have better luck with horseflesh in a bigger city.” He looked her up and down. “You should be able to obtain warmer clothing there as well.” He nodded towards her light jerkin and leggings. “The habiliments of your homelands are ill-suited to winter in the mountains.”

  “I’m hoping not to winter here,” she replied, wondering how he had divined her intentions.

  “Whatever you say.” With a sharp tug, he tightened the knot of the cloth strips he had secured about her thigh; Hax grunted at the sudden stab of pain. “Try putting some weight on that.”

  Breygon extended a hand. Hax hesitated only a moment, then took it, and pulled herself to her feet. As his physique suggested, the half-elf was surprisingly strong. The instant she was upright, she released her grip and stepped away from him.

  The half-elf’s only response was a thin smile, as if he had anticipated her reaction. To cover her momentary consternation, she bent to check the wizard’s doctoring.

  Qaramyn’s dressing seemed secure enough. Hax gingerly lowered her weight onto her injured leg, and found that the pain was minimal. “Nicely done,” she murmured to the wizard, who nodded and began repacking his collection of rags and whatnot.

  “We’re not finished yet,” he warned, jerking a thumb at a flagon of thrice-distilled wine that Alric had managed to wrestle away from one of their travelling companions.

  Hax nodded. She glanced briefly around, catching Gwen with her eye.

  “Y-yes?” the nervous Halfling asked, looking uncomfortable.

  The Elf-girl fumbled in one of the pockets of her vest, produced a silver shilling, and flicked it wordlessly towards the tiny archer, who caught it reflexively.

  “What’s that for?” Gwen asked, puzzled.

  “Custom,” Hax said without a hint of irony. “Where I come from, it’s bad luck not to pay for a weapon.”

  Gwen’s face crumpled into tears again. “Oh,” she wailed, “I’m so, so sorry…”

  Breygon, his face stony, put a comforting arm around the diminutive woman’s shoulders. He was staring at Hax with distinct disapproval.

  Qaramyn, however, was braying with laughter. “I like this one!” he chortled nastily. “Can we keep her?”

  The remainder of the night passed swiftly. Breygon – who, it transpired, was an experienced woodsman, having spent part of his youth squiring the wealthier members of Æryn’s upper crust around the forests and preserves of the duchy – kept watch, while the rest of the troupe passed around the last remaining flask of brandy before nodding off. Pillar Howell, a ship’s pilot whom the group was escorting to Bornhavn, was apparently the bottle’s owner, and he grumbled bitterly at each swig, until a baleful look from Alric – accentuated by his fang-scarred cheeks – shut him up.

  Hax declined when the flagon came her way; the bandages on her neck and shoulders, which Qaramyn had laboriously replaced, were soaked with the potent stuff, and she was already lightheaded from the fumes.

  She was also, perhaps understandably, still terrified of what she had done the last time she had been deep in her cups. Wrapped in borrowed blankets, she slept fitfully, waking with a start to unfamiliar noises half a dozen times, and each time dropping off again when she recalled that she was in unfamiliar lands, and surrounded by unfamiliar persons.

  At home, the restless sea had always helped her to sleep. She was grateful for the thundering whisper-song of the great river that lay to the east, just within bowshot. She was still pondering sleepily the miseries of farming the difficult, stony land, when exhaustion overtook her at last, and she fell asleep.

  ♦

  Ally’s first day under Sylloallen’s tutelage was a study in misery. She had run, stumbling and tripping in her gown and slippers, out of the barbican and across the drawbridge, shouting for the warrior to wait. An incredulous crowd of commoners, lining up to enter the palace for some purpose or other (a wedding, she thought irrelevantly, judging by the state and style of their clothing), swiftly made way for her as she jogged awkwardly past. She tried to find a comfortable way to carry Sylloallen’s immense blade, but was unable to do so. So she simply cradled it in her arms.

  Sylloallen was waiting for her on the opposite side of the great square that fronted the palace. He nodded slightly when he saw her, as if confirming an earlier estimate. Without speaking, he turned and continued running easily down the high street towards the harbour.

  Ally followed. In moments, her breath was coming in gasps, and her feet had begun to ache abominably. The shoes, she thought. Sh
e halted for a moment, kicking them off. She briefly considered picking them up and carrying them, but she already had more than she could manage in the sword, and she sensed that her new mentor was probably not going to offer to carry the costly but impractical things for her. Shrugging, she toed them into the gutter, and continued running in her stocking feet.

  A few moments later, the thin stockings had worn through, and she was running barefoot.

  The high street stretched more than a mile from the palace gates to the harbour. It was downhill all the way, past shops, inns, eateries, taverns, and every manner of hearth and home. By the time they reached the docks, her arms were aching with the effort of carrying the sword, her feet were throbbing from pounding on the cobblestones, her hips and ribs were chafed by the fashionably snug bodice and stays of her gown, and she was panting like a blown horse.

  She saw her new teacher turn and regard her carefully, and prayed that Sylloallen would slow and allow her to catch her breath. She nearly wept when he turned to the right and continued without pause, running easily along the long line of docks.

  After the docks came the waterfront warehouses, and then a long, unbroken row of fishermen’s huts…and finally the Silverstrand. This was a narrow beach a mile or so long, broken only by a wide river, the Sallekyn – a broad, slow flood that wound lazily through the plains far to the north before emptying into warmer seas here in the south. Beyond the river lay the Dræywood, a royal preserve. Ally knew the route well, having ridden it many times. It had never seemed so long.

  As she passed the huts, her pace began to slow; she was developing a painful stitch in her side, and was panting harshly in an attempt to relieve it.

  Sylloallen had made a good estimate of her stamina, and had evidently been keeping an eye on her over his shoulder. Seeing her stumble, he slowed his pace. At the edge of the beach, he stopped and waited for her to catch him up.

  A minute later, she did, stumbling to a halt next to him. She thought briefly about collapsing to the sand, but her pride refused to let her do so. After she caught her breath, she asked, “Can we…walk back…to the…palace?” Even the effort of speaking made her start coughing.

  “ ‘Back’?” Sylloallen asked, smiling. “There’s no going back, child. There is only forward.”

  “I can’t…run any…anymore,” she gasped. Exhaustion brought tears to her eyes.

  The older elf looked her over carefully. “Yes, you can,” he replied after a moment. “And you will. But for now,” he said, “We’ll walk.” He set off along the beach. Over his shoulder, he added, “I see you lost the shoes. That’s good. You’ll run better without them.”

  A moment later, Ally hefted the sword, and followed.

  Her respite was brief; Sylloallen allowed her only a few minutes of a brisk, marching stride before breaking into a run again. Ally aped him. She quickly discovered that running barefoot on dry sand was a nightmare.

  Glancing at her tutor, she saw that he was running close to the breaking surf, where the beach was soaked regularly by the waves. She tried this herself, and was gratified to discover that her narrow feet did not sink as far, and that the wet sand offered her surer footing.

  An endless time later, they reached the bank of the Sallekyn. Ally was spent; she fell to her knees in the soft, loamy sand that formed a broad point where river met sea. The grains between her fingers were coarse and cold. Her breath rasped in and out of her throat, and her hair, having come completely undone in the course of her struggles, hung down around her face and shoulders in tattered streamers. She’d lost her combs and pins somewhere along the route.

  Sylloallen gave her a full five minutes, watching dispassionately as her breathing came slowly under control. “You’ve never run before, have you?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  He smiled – not with sympathy, she thought, but at least with understanding. “It will come to you, in time,” he said. Nodding at the river, he asked, “Can you swim, at least?”

  Still staring at the sand, Ally nodded weakly.

  “Good,” he replied. “Let’s go.”

  She looked up, mute protest in her eyes.

  “Problem?”

  “I can’t…swim in this,” she panted, indicating her dress.

  “No, probably not,” he agreed. “I couldn’t, either.”

  She smiled slightly at the image his statement evoke. Her smile vanished at his next words.

  “What are you going to do about it?” He asked expressionlessly. “When you figure it out, I’ll see you on the other side.” Turning, he stepped into the river, forging ahead until the water was at his waist, before calling back, “Watch the current mid-stream; if you’re not careful, it’ll take you out to sea.”

  Before her eyes, he ducked under the swirling water, reappeared, and struck out for the opposite shore.

  Ally stared after him, appalled. She was so tired.

  She glanced over her shoulder, up the gentle slope of the city, past the hundreds of red- and yellow-tiled roofs, to where the palace stood at the crest of the low hill. What would her father’s face look like, if she were to appear before him, clothed in failure once again? He won’t chastise me, she thought. He won’t say anything.

  That would be the worst response of all, she sighed.

  She glanced around to ensure that she was not being watched, then began undoing the innumerable buttons at her bodice.

  Moments later, she stood at the river’s edge, shivering in her shift, clutching Sylloallen’s monstrous sword to her breast. She’d removed the laces from her corset, discarding it on top of her gown, and tying them to the weapon as a makeshift baldric. This she slung over one shoulder. The thin cords cut uncomfortably into her neck, but she couldn’t think of any way to pad them.

  Ally tried the water with a toe, relaxing slightly as she did so. The water was as warm as she remembered it. Gazing across the broad river, she gritted her teeth, then waded into the flood.

  Fortunately, Sylloallen had waited near the mid-point of the watercourse, treading water easily despite his mail and riding boots. When Ally’s tired muscles cramped and her head went under, he dove down and yanked her back to the surface, supporting her while she sputtered and coughed.

  When she had recovered her breath, he shoved her gently in the direction of the opposite bank, and she struck out for it, gamely but slowly.

  The heavy sword felt like an anchor around her neck. Sylloallen had to intervene twice more before her feet finally touched bottom again.

  The far bank of the river was unlike that on the city side. Instead of sand, it consisted of a long reach of bottom mud, silt washed down from the fields above the city. The tide was out, exposing a long, low, stretch of black, clinging mire. They struggled through a hundred of paces of this until they reached the low brush at the river’s edge, emerging from the sludge wearing a thick coat of filth, like a pair of half-drowned sewer rats.

  Even Sylloallen was beginning to look tired at this point; Ally simply collapsed onto the forest floor, breathing shallowly. The warrior sat next to her, watching her closely for signs of distress.

  Moments later, he gave her shoulder a rough shake. Ally started awake, moaning. “Light’s eastering,” Sylloallen said, climbing to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “Go?” she groaned. Her breath was still coming in gasps. “Go where?”

  “Into the forest.”

  She blinked. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

  “Yes. We’ll need to find shelter.”

  Ally’s eyes watered; she was so exhausted that she hardly had the strength to weep. “There’s shelter…back at the palace,” she panted.

  “So there is,” he agreed, twisting his head from side to side and easing his shoulders, as if limbering up for more exercise. “Do you want to go back?”

  Ally turned and looked at the river, fast and grey, now, in the dimmin
g light. It looked like it was a league across. “I can’t go back,” she whispered.

  Sylloallen nodded. “Do you want to stay here?”

  “No,” she shivered.

  “Well, that only leaves forward,” he said calmly. “Up you get.”

  Forward, Ally thought weakly. Very well. Forward it is.

  She loosed her makeshift sling and used the sword as a crutch to push herself to her feet. Her legs were quivering with the strain of simply standing, but she managed to stay erect.

  Sylloallen regarded her closely for a moment, then nodded. “Good. Follow me.” He turned and set off into the forest at a swift walk.

  Her head spinning with exhaustion, Ally followed.

  ♦

  Recollections of her years under Sylloallen’s tutelage flitted through her mind with the fuzzy-edged recall common to dreams. She awoke to a burning flare of pain in her neck and thigh, and stiff cramps in her back and legs that made her think the first night she had spent with her mentor in the Dræywood. The recollections stung a little; she still missed the serious, pleasant warrior. Especially at night.

  The hard-packed soil alongside the Nordvej made for a poor mattress. Opening her eyes, she lay still for a moment, carrying out a mental inventory of her condition. Apart from the sudden spike of pain and some lingering cramps, her wounded leg ached only a little. Her shoulder, though, where the flesh had been gnawed and clawed to the bone, stung abominably.

  She smelled wood smoke. She sat up and saw that the half-elven woodsman, Breygon, was squatting on his haunches near the fire, which he had built up with a new infusion of fallen branches and bits of broken fence rail. His face was grey with fatigue. She watched him stretch his neck and shoulders, working out a night’s worth of kinks, then run his fingers through his hair in a futile attempt to shake out the knots and tangles.

  Sylloallen had always told her, “We see more clearly in a single glance than in an hour’s long study.” She regarded the half-elf’s profile in the firelight, adding up what she knew about him. She already knew, for example, that he was a skilled archer, at least as skilled as she. The arrow that had transfixed her enemy’s skull the night before was proof enough of that; had it been off by only a finger’s breadth, it would have gone through her own head. Either the fellow was indifferent to friendly casualties, or his confidence stemmed from genuine ability. She thought it was probably the latter.

  He would be a dangerous swordsman too, she thought critically, eyeing his shoulders and forearms; stronger than a pure-blood, but just as quick. Maybe even quicker. The sword and dagger at his belt looked as though they had seen heavy use. She tried to estimate his age, and gave up after only a moment; having never encountered a half-breed, she had no standard of comparison. Breygon looked no older than Qaramyn, nor more weather-beaten than Alric; but his elf blood meant that he was almost certainly had several decades on either of them. For all she knew, he could be older than both of them put together. She just couldn’t tell.

  Hax wondered if there was a diplomatic way to ask him his age. She couldn’t think of one. So much for the value of the single glance, she thought wryly.

  She tossed her blanket off, yawning loudly to alert him to her presence.

  The archer looked up, caught her eye, and nodded. “Salvete, era,” he said quietly.

  “Salve, ductor,” she replied, returning his nod. “Sopima otiosus?”

  “Immo,” he said shortly. “I’m sorry, do you mind if we speak the common tongue?”

  “Not at all,” she replied in the same language. His reticence piqued her curiosity, but it would have been rude to press the point. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked instead.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he answered. Then he grinned tiredly. “I’m sorry. That’s one of Ben’s sayings.” In response to her questioning glance, he added, “The fellow who recruited us.”

  “Where is he?”

  Breygon shrugged. “Off on another task. Babysitting a pair of teamsters and an ale-soaked sailor must have been beneath his dignity.”

  He seemed moody, even gloomy. Hax decided to try a different tack. “You’ve some skill with a bow,” she said tentatively.

  “As do you,” he replied. “You had a good teacher, yes?”

  She nodded. “The best. A luxmyrmidon of the Protector. One of my father’s retainers. An old friend of the family.” She found herself drifting in the melancholia of recollection, and squashed the blossoming sentiment brutally.

  “Do you pray to him?” Breygon asked, still staring at the fire.

  Hax blinked. Then she realized that he was talking about Larranel Sylvanus, the forest god, rather than her former mentor. “The Protector, you mean?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “From time to time,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “And to Hara. And Miros.” She paused for a moment, wondering how far she should go in explaining this last, odd devotion. “Although probably not as often as I should. Do you not also do so?”

  “I do,” he replied distantly, “although I’ve yet to receive a reply.”

  “The Powers speak to us in their own good time,” she said, somewhat more primly than she had intended.

  “And that is how I speak to them,” he muttered, half to himself.

  The silence between them lengthened. Looking around, Hax noticed a growing light in the west – the merest hint of rose against the star-flecked ebon velvet of night. “Dawn’s coming,” she remarked absently.

  “It always does.”

  Despite the serenity that always accompanied waking, Hax was growing exasperated. “You’re not very fond of conversation, are you?” she asked, more waspishly than she had intended.

  The briefest flicker of embarrassment flashed across the half-elf’s face. “I’ve spent a lot of time alone,” he replied obliquely.

  “The woodsman’s curse,” she said. It was half a question.

  “The woodsman’s blessing,” he corrected. Still sitting easily on his haunches, Breygon gestured at the surrounding countryside. “The rocks, the rivers, the trees…they are good companions. They keep their counsel. They make no demands. They give without asking recompense – food, shelter, warmth, even guidance, if you know how to read the great book of the world. And they offer the most welcome gift of all: silence.” He poked the fire again with his stick. “If you let the silence enter you, if you cease prattling and let the emptiness fill you, then their words can be heard. And in their words are all the ancient tales of Anuru.”

  Breygon glanced idly up at Hax, and the intensity of his gaze caused her heart to thud ominously in her breast. “Be patient, lady. Heed the whispers of the woodlands,” he said quietly. “When you learn to listen with your heart as well as your ears, then you will need no other companion.”

  Hax regarded the ranger with kind of startled wonder, as though she had come upon a gemstone sparkling in a castle midden. He caught her eye, then turned back to the fire, snorting his disgust at his own volubility, and poking angrily at the embers.

  “You remind me of someone,” she said softly.

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.” She paused, then continued. “I’d not thought to receive a lecture on love of the lustrum from a…from one of your…your background,” she finished lamely.

  Breygon stiffened, and Hax realized instantly that she had made a dreadful mistake.

  “Semiferus,” he said bitterly.

  “I did not say that,” she protested.

  “You didn’t have to.” He stood and tossed aside the charred stick with which he had been stirring the fire. “Your pardon, domina.” He bowed, a sardonic, self-mocking grin twisting the corners of his mouth into a rictus. “I must be about my duties.”

  As he stomped away, Hax cursed herself under her breath.

  “He can be a little sensitive about his parentage,” a high voice said quietly.

&nbs
p; Hax pivoted and saw Qaramyn lying nearby, tucked beneath a half-dozen homespun blankets. His eyes glinted redly in the firelight. “You were listening,” she said unnecessarily.

  “I’m always listening,” he replied with a wide, ironic smile.

  She nodded. “What is your counsel, then?”

  “Concerning our dear leader?” Hax nodded. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On your intentions.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “My ‘intentions’?”

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked patiently.

  Hax thought about that. “He’s quick to take offence from his mother’s kind,” she said carefully. “But I would like to learn more about his background, without giving offence in the process.”

  “His father was a human; his mother, an exile from your homeland. Is that not enough?” the wizard asked. “More, he won’t willingly tell you.”

  Hax gave a half-hearted nod. “I’d still like to learn more about his mother. Especially whether she was one of the Duodeci.”

  “Why?”

  The Elf-girl had no answer to that. Finally, she said, “Because he is one of us.”

  “No,” the wizard corrected her firmly, “he isn’t.”

  Hax raised her eyebrows. “That’s for the Elves to decide, is it not?”

  “It is,” the wizard answered, sitting up and fixing her with his gaze. “And the Elves have decided.” Tossing his blankets aside, he sat facing her, punctuating his remarks with stabs of his ink-stained fingers. “They decided when they shunned his mother, and she went into exile; and when she could not return to her homelands when, years later, she bore a half-blood child.

  “They decided when they began treating his ilk like outlanders, like Elves who had been polluted, instead of fellow Children of Bræa who had been exalted. And,” he hissed, “they decided during Xiardath’s day, when they put the first half-breed’s head atop the Palace gates at Astrapratum.”

  “Xiardath’s been dead for eons,” Hax muttered. “And as for the other...that edict hasn’t been enforced in years,” she muttered, unable to meet his gaze.

  “Thirty-one years, to be exact. Not in my lifetime, true,” the wizard agreed harshly. “But well within yours. An eye-blink in the lives of your folk.” He nodded at the forest-edge where Breygon had disappeared into the wood line. “And of his.”

  “It wouldn’t happen today!” she protested. The ground was hard, the blanket confining; she threw it aside and stood, ignoring the sharp twinge from her leg. “It could not!”

  “Maybe not in Eldisle,” the wizard replied, watching her closely.

  “Never in Eldisle!” she replied hotly. “My father would never countenance…he would…” her voice trailed off. She stared at him, frowning suddenly.

  “What would your father never countenance?” the wizard smiled.

  Hax sighed. “Damn you,” she whispered. “How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “Your accent,” he replied, lowering his voice to match hers. “Your blade, or the hilt at least. And your surname.”

  “ ‘Hax’ gave me away, did it?” she whispered, shaking her head in wonder.

  Qaramyn rolled his eyes. “Kaltas Aiyellohax is well-known, lady, not only in the homelands, but throughout the wider world as well. I won’t presume to tell you your business, but I would suggest that if you intend to continue travelling incognito, you ought to choose a nomen virago that does not bring his Grace the Duke of Eldisle immediately to mind.”

  She rubbed her face with one hand, sighing. “I didn’t think of that,” she admitted.

  “There is only one family in all of Elvehelm that bears your name,” he replied softly, shrugging. “The ranks of Duodeci are small, and the noble Houses too well known. All of them. Even outside the elf-realm, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to hide.

  “I’d conceal that sword, too,” he added, nodding at the blade that lay next to her bedroll. “Or at least, find something to cover the escutcheon. To those who know anything about heraldic devices, you might as well be wearing your father’s livery.”

  “I’ll do that,” she replied, fatigue creeping into her words. She sat unmoving on her blankets, feeling like an imbecile. “You’re very perceptive, Qaramyn Lux. For a guardsman.”

  The wizard gave her a long, measuring glance. “You’ve been honest with me, even if I had to trick the truth out of you. I owe you the same courtesy, I suppose.”

  “You’re more than mere guardsmen,” Hax guessed.

  “We’re more than mere guardsmen,” the wizard grinned, nodding.

  “What, then?”

  “Fraterni Draconi,” Qaramyn said. “If you’ll pardon the mispronunciation.”

  Hax started. Surely, she thought, stunned, he could not mean…

  The wizard’s eyes widened at her obvious turmoil. “Is there something amiss, lady?”

  “I…no, not really,” Hax stammered. “It’s just…It’s an unusual term.”

  “You are not familiar with it?”

  She shook her head. “Not…not in the way you mean it. Obviously.”

  Qaramyn raised an eyebrow, as if he was considering asking her what else he might have meant. Instead, he said, “We are members of an order, spread throughout the Kindred races, dedicated to battling evil.” He grinned again. “Put as baldly as that, it sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? Children, playing at knights-errant.”

  “Not at all,” she replied solemnly. “If that is your quest, then I wish there were more of you. But why ‘draconi’, may I ask?”

  “Because we work for dragons,” the wizard replied, winking at her.

  Hax laughed out loud. “You work for…” Her eyes widened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Qaramyn nodded. “Deadly serious. A dragon recruited us only a few months ago. An argent dragon, in fact. In human form.”

  “ ‘An argent dragon’,” Hax repeated, sounding incredulous. Her lip twitched. “If he was in human form, how do you know he was a dragon? And what was his name?”

  “Her name,” the wizard replied, sounding slightly nettled by her doubt. “It was a female. I’m afraid her identity was a confidence, though.

  “As for the rest, I’ll assume you’re being facetious. It’s impossible to stand in the presence of one of the great wyrms and not know it.

  “When they walk in mortal guise,” he added pensively, his gaze growing distant, “they are more than us. The heart senses it, if the eyes do not. Even if it is a young one, such as our contact was. Is.”

  “I see.” Hax remained doubtful, but decided that it was unwise to press the point. Regardless of whether he was mad or telling the whole truth, there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing the fellow. “Any more advice?” she asked.

  “About dragons?” Qaramyn snorted. “Or concealing your identity? Or perhaps about unscrewing our inscrutable sergeant?”

  “How about where I should go next,” she said. She had heard enough dragon nonsense, and was tired of hearing about the mercurial half-elf. For the time being, at least.

  The wizard paused for a moment, reflecting. “On that point,” he said at last, “I’d suggest you get out of Zare. This kingdom trades heavily with your Homeland. Too many know your language, and to know your language is to know your father’s name.”

  Hax nodded. “I had had the same thought. What’s the fastest way out?” Maybe, she reflected gloomily, I should have stayed aboard ship.

  “North,” he replied at once. “You’ll avoid the coastal cities, where most of your compatriots tend to gather. If you’re running – and I assume you are –” he glanced at her for corroboration, but she remained expressionless, saying nothing.

  He shrugged. “Head north, beyond Ellohyin, to Bitterberg and the Whitestone Pass. You’ve got a month or so to get over it before the first snow flies.

  “In Dunholm
, you can head east to the sea, and thence to Oststrand, or the eastern isles, or even Jarla.” He paused, then added, smirking, “That is, if you’ve a hankering for honey wine, smoked fish, fornication and recreational murder. Otherwise, I’d suggest you turn west at the Greatwater, and make for the Deeprealm.”

  “The dwarves?” she replied, shocked. “Are you serious?”

  “Entirely,” the wizard answered soberly. “The northmen might respect you and leave you alone after you’d incinerated a few would-be suitors. But the folk of the Deeprealm will treat you well. And…” he paused, looking troubled.

  “And what?”

  “Well,” he continued hesitantly, “if you think someone might be hunting you, you’ll be safer by far in their caverns than anywhere else in Anuru. It’s said that the Deeprealm is warded so that none can leap the flux, either into or out of it.”

  Hax snorted derisively. “That’s a myth.”

  “Is it?” Qaramyn shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried.” With a crooked grin, he added, “I wouldn’t underestimate the dwarven wizards. They’re few and far between, but they’ve had a long time to arrange things to their liking. I wouldn’t want to end up lodged in a mountainside if the myths were right and I was wrong.”

  “That’s a good point,” Hax agreed, shivering slightly. She had no love of small spaces, and the thought of being entombed in solid rock made her courage evaporate, and turned her bowels to water.

  “So,” she said after a long moment. “The dwarves, you think?”

  “If you don’t tell me your decision,” Qaramyn replied, looking thoughtful, “then I can’t betray you if I am put to the question. But if it were I,” he continued, “then that is where I would go. The inevitable pain notwithstanding.”

  “Pain?” Hax asked sharply. “What pain?”

  Qaramyn brushed the top of his tousled hair with one long-fingered hand and grinned. “Tall wizards,” he replied ruefully, “and low tunnels. An unpleasant combination.”

  ♦

  After breaking fast, the group packed their gear and resumed their voyage. The meal itself was simple, but a welcome change from the salt meat and hard biscuit that she had been struggling with since leaving Vejborg. It also gave Hax the opportunity to meet the remainder of Breygon’s turma. Pillar Howell, the pilot, favoured her with a wink and a leer when introduced; the two common soldiers, whose names she immediately forgot, simply bowed awkwardly, as though meeting royalty. Like as not they’d never seen one of the Third House before.

  What a treat for them, she mused sourly.

  The last member of the group was the oddly-dressed fellow that she had seen the previous evening. This worthy, although definitely human (and, with his dark hair and eyes, obviously of Zaran extraction) was only slightly taller than Breygon himself, and just as wiry. Hax’s eye was caught by his peculiar garb – a loose tunic and pantaloons – and by the fact that he bore no weapons. Although she had not seen him fighting, he had clearly been engaged in the battle, as he bore a number of recent claw-marks. Qaramyn introduced him as “Joraz”, without anything more in the way of explanation. Hax nodded, and received a nod in return, but no other greeting. While the man’s demeanour seemed to discourage conversation, she found his placid serenity reassuring, and so was glad to discover that he would be accompanying her as a passenger in the wagon.

  She, Joraz and Howell (who spent the day’s travel tucked into one corner of the wagon, snoring loudly) proved to be the fortunate ones. Shortly after they rode out under a lowering, leaden sky, a light drizzle began falling. A stiff northeast wind turned this into an unpleasant, biting spray that sought out every nook and gap in the riders’ cloaks. The two soldiers driving the wagon were hard-pressed to keep the horses’ heads pointed into the blast, the senior of the two quickly shouting himself hoarse by cursing the recalcitrant beasts.

  Hax stayed relatively dry. In order to protect its cargo – a variegated load of cloth-wrapped bales of arrows and crossbow bolts, and several hundred-weight of preserved meat and fish – the wagon was covered with an oil-cloth tarpaulin. Hax and Joraz gratefully took refuge under this, escaping the worst of the weather. This had its disadvantages too, of course; the jerking movement of the cart over the ruts of the road, in combination with the pervasive odour of oiled metal and smoked fish, quickly turned her stomach.

  Her companion was no help; whenever she stole a glance at him, she saw that his demeanour was as calm as ever. If the jerking motion and the stench were affecting him, it didn’t show.

  At length, she found that she had to speak, if only to keep her mind off of her rebellious stomach. “You’re part of the Watch as well,” she said. It was more a statement than a question.

  The man nodded, but said nothing else.

  “And the Fraterni?” she asked.

  He nodded again.

  “What do you do?” she asked after a moment.

  Joraz smiled. “Well, I cook,” he replied thoughtfully.

  Hax shook her head. “I meant ‘do you fight’?”

  “I fight,” he confirmed. Indicating the scars festooning his right cheek and the backs of his fists, he added, “Not as well as I’d like, of course.”

  “But you’re not armed,” she protested.

  “Not true,” he disagreed, sounding amused. “I have a sling.” He tapped a leather pouch that hung at his belt.

  Understanding suddenly washed over her. “Animproeliator,” she said suddenly.

  “Ordo non percipius,” he replied in the same language.

  “Ah,” she smiled. “So you speak elvii, too.” He nodded. “It means ‘warrior of the spirit’.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Joraz replied. He shrugged. “It’s as good a term as any.”

  “Whom do you worship?” she asked.

  “It’s not that kind of ‘spirit’,” he said, shaking his head. “My brothers and I…my former brothers, I mean,” he corrected, a distant look in his eyes, “we follow…followed…the teachings of our master, Tyrellus. We sought purification in combat, and peace through our never-ending quest for the strength and tranquillity that are given to those who find the Inner Eye.”

  Hax eyed the fellow cautiously. “I’m not familiar with your…er, order,” she said, stumbling over her words. “There are weaponless warriors in my Homeland, but they all follow one of the Powers, or their Servants or Avatars. Feynillor, usually, or Istravenya. Sometimes Hara himself.”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Joraz nodded. “Our way is similar, save that we seek the divine within us.”

  Hax was about to say something, then caught herself, coughing to mask her discomfiture.

  Joraz smiled gently. “You don’t approve,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s not my place to approve or disapprove,” she replied quickly. “I…I mean, we, my people…we believe that all have the right to choose their own path in life.” The words came out adequately enough, but she did not meet his eyes.

  The warrior chuckled. “Even heretics, like me?” he chided gently.

  Hax nodded, smiling crookedly. “Even heretics,” she agreed.

  Joraz smiled back. He stretched until his joints cracked. “Sorry,” he apologized. “It’s not a comfortable method of travel. I’d almost rather be running.”

  “Not I,” Hax murmured, flexing her wounded leg to relieve its stiffness.

  Silence dropped over them for a time, punctuated only by the swaying of the cart and the rattle of the harness.

  Finally, Hax’s curiosity got the better of her. “So you believe in nothing?” she asked a little more abruptly than she had intended.

  “Oh, no,” the fellow replied. His serene smile belied any irritation at her insistent probing. “No, that’s not so at all. The Powers are as real as this board I’m sitting on. I simply choose not to follow any of the many and varied paths they prescribe.”

  “Then what pa
th do you follow?”

  “My own,” he replied easily. “The rules that my master set for us all, and those that I set for myself. Discipline and perseverance. Rectitude. Order, in all things.” He smiled again. His easy manner was infectious, and Hax found herself smiling in turn. “Such laws as are necessary to secure the wellbeing of the helpless. And my own conscience,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Of course.”

  “Of course,” she echoed, somewhat perplexed at this odd litany.

  “And you?”

  Hax was taken aback. “What about me?”

  Joraz smiled. “How do you judge right conduct?”

  She thought about that for a moment, sensing that he was asking a serious question rather than merely being flippant. He was probably never flippant. “I obey the injunctions of the Powers,” she replied slowly. “Or, at least I try to.”

  He nodded. “And you’ve met them? These ‘powers’ whose injunctions you struggle to obey?”

  “Of course not,” she answered testily.

  “Then how do you know you are on the right path?”

  “We have priests, just as your folk do,” she retorted. “They speak with the Powers, interpret their will, transmit their teachings to the rest of us. And,” she continued, warming to her subject, “there are the old tales, the legends. The writings – the Tarinas Valtakirjas, the book that was brought to us by Kalmanwartan and the Argent Three, and ended the Eon of Darkness.” Something hard was digging into her back, and she shifted to avoid it.

  Joraz nodded. “I know of it,” he replied soothingly. “I’ve even read parts of it. But you see my point, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Hax said, her voice brittle.

  “You still follow rules,” the warrior answered. “But they’re rules devised by someone else, and passed to you by someone else. They can be changed by someone else.” He spread his hands. “So long as you obey another’s rules, you serve their goals, rather than your own.” He chuckled softly. “In a way, seeing as how they brought you the great book, you serve the whims of dragons.”

  “That’s nonsense,” she snapped. A human, she thought angrily, purporting to teach an elf about freedom!

  Is it? the Voice asked her suddenly. And given what you really are, how can you say that you also do not obey the ‘whims of dragons’?

  “It’s not nonsense, it’s life,” he responded. “Which itself is nonsense incarnate. It’s the defining question that all thinking beings must face: what drives your conduct? Is it necessity? Desire? Avarice? Hunger for power? Lust? A craving to do good or evil? Your own conscience? Or the conscience of another?”

  Rainwater was pooling in a hanging section of the wagon’s cover. He reached up and tapped the oilcloth. A rush of water cascaded over the side. “Are you guided by the voice of your own soul?” he continued, pointing at his own breast. “Or by something outside the walls of the self?” He waved at the wagon cover.

  Still somewhat offended, Hax shut her mouth and considered the man’s words. He has a point, she thought. How many times have I wondered what path to take? How often has the answer come from within – from the Voice – and how often has that answer conflicted with what others would have had me do?

  Joraz was still watching her steadily. “It’s a good question,” she acknowledged grudgingly. “The answer is, ‘I don’t know’.”

  He nodded happily. “Very good. Understanding that we don’t know what drives us is the beginning of the long, long path to wisdom.”

  She frowned, a little frustrated by his composure. “I want to find out.”

  Her sudden disgruntled vehemence made him chuckle. “That,” he replied, “is the first step on the path.”

  His self-mocking laughter caused her ill-humour to evaporate, and Hax found herself smiling as well. They rode in companionable silence for a few minutes. The pattering of the rain on the canvas overhead was loud and soothing. Hax found that their conversation had taken her mind off her rebellious stomach.

  After a while, as though there had been no break in their discourse, Hax said, “Can you tell me how much time this ‘path to wisdom’ is likely to take?”

  Joraz burst out laughing. “My dear lady!” he chortled. “What makes you think I’m any further along it than you?”

  ♦

  The rain continued through the night, making for a miserable evening and poor sleeping conditions. It did not help that the Nordvej continued to follow the high ridge above the river, exposed to the biting northeast wind. Hax could feel autumn in that stiff breeze, and was astonished at how swiftly it appeared to be coming on. On her father’s estates, the grain and grapes would only just be beginning to ripen, and harvest time would still be a month off. Yet here, in the rolling, rocky foothills far to the north, the leaves were already beginning to turn.

  She had a cold and uncomfortable night, but at least it was by her choice. They had stopped early, taking advantage of the little shelter offered by a copse of oaks that still retained their leaves. Someone, long ago, had built a stone dolmen at the roadside. Possibly an ancient shrine, it was worn and weather-beaten, and covered with centuries of lichen. Whatever its original purpose may have been, some helpful soul had left an enormous stack of fallen deadwood beneath the overhanging rock ledge, and this was still dry.

  Qaramyn and Alric, working swiftly, rigged an oilcloth shelter in the wagon’s lee. This protected them from the worst of the weather. The cheery fire that the wizard ignited with a word and a gesture did the rest.

  For the sleepers, anyway. Qaramyn had announced his preference for the pre-dawn watch shift, so Breygon, as usual, had taken the first watch. Hax, determined to do her part, volunteered to stay up with him. His only reply had been his infuriating shrug.

  Thus had begun one of the most trying nights of her long life. Eschewing the dry comfort of their makeshift tent, Breygon had wrapped himself in his cloak and settled into a tailor’s seat beneath a vast, spreading evergreen. Hax had taken this as a challenge and had joined him.

  Although large for the Bjerglands, the tree was tiny in comparison to the mighty pines and redwoods of Eldisle, and the trunk was barely large enough to shelter them both from the chill rain. They ended up shoulder to shoulder, and Hax found herself grateful for even the negligible warmth that leaked through the half-elf’s rough, sodden cloak.

  “No bow?” she asked as they settled themselves for the watch.

  Breygon glanced at her. His eyes were dark, nearly purple in the deep, gloomy night. “The rain’s worsening,” he replied in a whisper. “We won’t see anyone, or anything, far enough off for archery to matter.”

  She glanced around. Hax noted that he’d chosen a good spot; they could see not only their campsite, but much of the road as well; and with the fire screened behind the wagon, there was no dazzling glare to interfere with their vision.

  She adjusted her seat, shifting suddenly when a bolt of pain shot up her injured leg. “You don’t seem enamoured of your new profession,” she said, staring into dripping, leaf-shrouded trees.

  “I’m not overly fond of taking orders,” he replied moodily. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Or of giving them.”

  Hax glanced over at him. “That’s a problem in any army.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “If I get tired of it, I can always resign.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “There’s no term of service, then? Among the Fraterni Draconi?”

  Breygon shot her an annoyed glance before relaxing into a sour frown. “Qaramyn told you.”

  She nodded.

  “He enjoys the sound of his own voice a little too much,” the ranger growled.

  “That’s a fact,” she agreed fervently. “But ‘Truth harms only those with ill in their hearts’,” she replied primly. It had been one of her mother’s sayings.

  “A nice, trite, Third House aphorism,” he muttered,
“as out of place in the real world as any who would utter it.”

  “It’s true, though,” she asked, ignoring his biting sarcasm. “Isn’t it? About your troupe, and the dragons?”

  “True enough.”

  “What are you doing for them?” she asked, curious.

  “Looking for someone,” the half-elf said succinctly.

  “Who?”

  “A wizard.” He sighed. “One of the masters at the College of Waves in Vejborg, who went missing some weeks ago a short way north of here. The elders of our order believe that he was looking for something. Something dangerous. They want to know whether he found it.”

  Hax’s eyebrows rose. “What was he looking for?” she asked, interested despite herself.

  “I cannot tell you that.”

  “Secrets,” she murmured. That was fair. She carried a few herself.

  “No,” he replied. There was a hint of anger in his voice. “I cannot tell you what he was looking for, because our…counsellor, I suppose is the term…she did not see fit to tell me.”

  “Ah.” She cast about for something – anything – else to say. “And this annoys you.”

  He shot her a withering glance. “What do you think?”

  She shrugged.

  A moment later, she continued. “And if you tire of serving the wyrms, and wish to leave your order – what then?”

  He smiled thinly. “I can run fast, if need be.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “As fast as dragons fly?”

  “Probably not. But I’m also very good at hiding,” he said sardonically.

  Hax snorted in amusement. “So you do have a sense of humour after all.”

  Breygon shrugged non-committally. “We’ll hear any interlopers long before we see them tonight. If we keep our ears open, and our mouths shut.”

  Hax bristled slightly at this rebuke. She stole a sidelong glance at the half-elf and saw that he was staring fixedly at the road, eyes flickering back and forth along its length every few seconds. She was about to snap back at him, and then stopped herself. It would be just about what he would expect from a spoiled noblewoman, would it not?

  Instead of answering back, she held her peace. She drew her cloak more tightly about her shoulders and settled in, like the seasoned campaigner she was.

  Looking back on that night in later days, Hax was surprised to recall how much she learned. True to his character, Breygon spoke not a single word. Sitting motionless, he seemed to almost blend into the wood of the great trunk against which they leaned. The illusion was so complete that, at one point, Hax dozed off, and when she started awake an instant later, she thought she was alone. She patted the ground next to her…but instead of touching damp earth, she found herself grasping her comrade’s boot. Breygon had eyed her in amusement, a slight, mocking smirk touching his lips, before returning to scanning the roadway.

  Hax was too embarrassed to essay an apology. Instead, she tried to emulate her companion. Stretching her perceptions, she listened past the rain, past the howling snap of the wind, past the creaking of the branches of the vast fir towering above them, casting her senses into the forest.

  Whether it was some trick of the night, some phantom of the Bjerglands, it worked. The basso rush of the river; the creaking of lesser trees; the rustle of broody birds in rain-drenched nests; the sly skittering of squirrels and chipmunks; all this and more came to her, caught by her heightened awareness. Beyond the smoke of their fire, she smelt clean loam, damp lichen and moss, the putrid exhalation of swamp waters, and the clean breath of the trees.

  And the river. Always, in the background, the river. It was as much a part of the Bjerglands as the sea had been back home in Joyous Light.

  Hax closed her eyes, and all the sounds and smells of the night woods became clearer and sharper still, filling her, all but drowning her. She had felt like this at home, among the rolling fields and trees of Eldisle; but this forest was different. Heavier, more insistent, more primal. These hills and woods were just as old as the forests of the Homelands – but they had never known the gentle guidance and guardianship of the elvii. These lands were wilder, more untamed, than any she had ever known. In her exalted state, she could feel the difference rising up from the earth beneath her, soaking into her bones like a warning.

  She heard a furtive step, and started. Reflexively, her hand sought the hilt of her sword, but was stopped.

  Her eyes flew open. Breygon had caught her wrist. As she drew a breath to protest, he released her hand, put a cautionary finger to her lips, and breathed, “Cervus.”

  A deer. Hax nodded, forcing herself to relax.

  The half-elf climbed noiselessly to his feet. Putting his finger to his own lips, he hissed, “Persideo,” and glided silently into the rain.

  She waited. In her companion’s absence, Hax found that her heightened sense of the forest remained with her; if anything, it had become more acute. She strained her ears for the slightest sound, but heard nothing beyond what she had already noted – the roar of the river, and the insistent rattle of the rain on the ever-softening surface of the road. That’ll slow us tomorrow, she thought gloomily.

  Two hands of minutes later, she heard a step, followed by another. She was surprised to realize that she could recognize Breygon’s footfalls, although they sounded heavier and less certain than usual.

  The reason quickly became clear. A hunched, shadowy shape emerged from the rain. As it approached, Hax could see that it was the half-elf, walking slowly and softly with a small buck draped across his shoulders. He strode heavily to the tree where she sat, and laid the carcass gently on the damp pine needles.

  She could see that the kill had already been cleaned. “Fast work,” she whispered.

  He shrugged. Of course. “We needed breakfast,” he replied. “But I didn’t want a pile of offal lying around our camp all night.” He pulled a few fistfuls of earth mixed with pine needles from the ground, and rubbed them between his hands to scour away the deer’s blood.

  Hax glanced over at the carcass. Apart from the gaping gash in its belly where its entrails had been removed, she could see no wounds other than to its throat, which had been expertly slit. She glanced over at Breygon, who was scrubbing silently at a bloodstain on his cloak. “You –” she began, but decided to hold her tongue.

  The half-elf looked up at her inquiringly. She had been about to say, You snuck up on a deer? but thought better of it. She decided not to give him an excuse for more mocking self-deprecation, and so merely shook her head. He turned back to his work.

  After that they sat together in silence. Hax found that the blood-scent rising from the butchered deer carcass blocked out most of the other smells of the woodlands. It was a powerful, intoxicating odour, charged with possibilities. She found herself glancing sidelong at her companion every now and again. When she became aware that she was doing it, she made a conscious effort to pay attention to her duties.

  An hour later the rain stopped. The wind swiftly pushed the few remaining tatters of cloud away, revealing the Lamps standing high in the sky – Chuadan and Lodan, gold and silver, casting a shimmering pall over the verdant, shadowed land, the former eternally pursuing the latter, as they had since ancient times. The soft light lent an eldritch sparkle to everything it touched. Hax found herself glancing at her companion again, and thought that he looked younger, that his features seemed somehow softer when limned by moonlight.

  Breygon noticed her stare and glanced back at her, eyebrows raised as if to ask the reason for her scrutiny. She looked away swiftly. He snorted, and whispered, “Time to turn in.” Climbing stiffly to his feet, he tip-toed over to the wagon, bent, and roused Gwen and Alric for the next watch. Both required several nudges before crawling out of their blankets, donning their cloaks, and taking up station beneath the fir tree. Hax noticed that the Halfling woman gave her a wide berth as they exchanged places.

  Hax doffed her
rain-dampened cloak and hood and crawled gratefully into her bedroll, studiously ignoring the half-elf as he did the same. A few moments later, she could hear him breathing evenly; a few moments after, he was snoring.

  She frowned to herself, and lay awake long into the night, listening to the river and the wind. They were soothing; like the sea, and yet so much unlike it. She was, as Qaramyn had said, a long way from home.

  Eventually, she fell asleep.

  ♦

  Night-time in the Dræywood was vastly different from night-time in the palace. There, Ally would have dined, bathed, spent some time brushing her hair (or having it brushed by one of her mother’s attendants), and then passed a few pleasant hours reading, either in her father’s great, dome-ceilinged library, lit by dozens of enchanted orblights; or in her own bed, tucked between crisp sheets, the room illuminated by the fireplace and the cheery flickering of candles.

  Instead, the darkness found her tucked into a foetal ball atop a bed of dry pine needles, shivering uncontrollably in her damp, mud-caked shift, and starting every time a branch poked her through the thin cotton.

  It was dark, as dark as night in the forest could get. Bræadan had set an hour before, and neither Lodan nor Chuadan had risen as yet. And she was already cold.

  A few feet away, Sylloallen sat cross-legged on the forest floor, watching her through lidded eyes, and gnawing absently on a birch twig. After a time, he said quietly, “All right?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. An hour’s rest had restored her spirit, if not her strength. She was still exhausted, but she had recovered enough to be angry about this idiocy her father had foisted upon her. After all, she reflected, needlepoint and dancing weren’t as bad as all that, were they?

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “What’s the…” she repeated, incredulous. “I’m f-f-freezing!” It was true; though the night was certainly not overly chill by normal standards, she was hardly dressed for it, and was shaking like a leaf.

  “Hmm,” he murmured around his twig. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Me?” she asked. “W-w-why don’t you m-m-make a fire?”

  “I’m not the one that’s cold,” he answered, so reasonably that she felt like stabbing him with his own sword.

  Still shivering, she moved into a sitting position, her arms wrapped about her knees. “I’ve never m-m-made a fire,” she said sullenly.

  “I didn’t think you had.” He nodded at the sword that lay next to her. “There’s plenty of fallen wood about, and a piece of flint and a striking-steel in the frog of the scabbard,” he said. “See what you can manage.” He climbed to his feet. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Try to have some coals ready by then.”

  “Wait!” Ally started to her feet. Then she shrieked, and fell to her knees again as the muscles in her right thigh knotted into an agonized fist.

  Sylloallen was at her side in an instant. Ally was thrashing on the ground, clutching at her leg. The warrior slapped her hands aside and kneaded the tightly-locked muscles with strong fingers.

  She gasped for breath through clenched teeth, then sighed a moment later as the muscles unclenched. “What was that?” she moaned, tears standing in her eyes.

  “Cramp,” he answered briefly. “You don’t take a lot of exercise, do you?”

  Ally’s eyes began to tear. “Until this morning,” she said, a note of anger in her voice, “I was going to be a m-m-mage. I spent the last twenty years s-s-studying history, ph-philosophy, not…not…” she waved her hands about indignantly. “Not ‘running’.”

  “Yes, and it shows,” he replied clinically. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” Standing once more, he said, “Back in an hour. Have the fire ready.” And with that, he moved off into the twilit forest at an easy lope.

  By the time Sylloallen returned, one of the moons had risen, and Ally had failed yet again. She had cleared an area of the forest floor and had managed to accumulate a respectable pile of dry, fallen branches, but she had not yet achieved flame. Nodding wryly to himself, the warrior deposited a small armload near the woodpile and squatted beside the shivering girl.

  Watching her struggle, he said finally, “You can’t light twigs with flint.”

  “So I g-g-gather,” she muttered. Glancing up at his infuriatingly calm visage, she said, “Do you h-h-have any suggestions?” He could see that her teeth were chattering. He could even hear it.

  “You need tinder,” he replied. “Old leaves, bark. Moss works best, if it’s dry. Or you can make small shavings of wood.” He did not offer to help.

  Ally ground her teeth. She spent the next quarter-hour looking for the things he had described, without success. Finally, without asking permission, she sat cross-legged near her chosen fire-bed, pulled his sword toward her, inched the blade carefully out of the scabbard, and began making slivers by drawing a broken bit of branch across it. After several tries (and one shallow cut on a finger, the result of a moment’s inattention), she managed to produce a respectable pile of narrow shavings.

  To her delight, these took fire readily when she plied her flint and steel. She promptly piled twigs atop the smouldering bits, smothered them, and was forced to begin again.

  An hour after he’d returned from his hunt, the second moon had risen, and a merry fire was burning in the glade. “Good,” he said, helping her add wood carefully until they had a roaring blaze going.

  Once the initial roar of flames had died down, he showed her his finds. Most of what he had brought back were mushrooms. Ally’s face fell; she’d been hoping for a rabbit or some other such game. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at an especially dubious-looking object.

  “Maplewort,” he said, holding a handful of small, wrinkled fungi up to the light. “Hard as stones, but roast them in the coals, and they soften nicely after an hour or so.” He also produced a handful of tubers, like twisted, scraggly potatoes.

  “It’s not much,” he explained as they gnawed measly fare. “Too early in the season for a lot of the things we’d normally find here.”

  “There are fish in the river,” she replied hopefully.

  “That’s true,” Sylloallen agreed. “Tomorrow you can try your hand at catching some.”

  Altogether, they made a thoroughly unsatisfying feast. Ally didn’t complain; she had been hungry enough to gnaw on a branch. If only I knew which branches to gnaw on, she thought wryly to herself.

  The fungi were salty, stinging her cracked lips. “Did you find any water?” she asked, after choking them down.

  Sylloallen shook his head. “We’ll have to look for a spring in the morning.”

  “There’s the river,” she proposed.

  He shook his head. “Water’s running fast right now. Too silty.”

  The moons were low in the sky again when they threw the last of their wood on the fire. “We’ll need some sleep,” he said finally. “You’ve got a decision to make.”

  “W-w-what’s that?” Ally asked, staring fixed at the fire. She had her arms wrapped around her body, and was still shivering.

  “Well,” he replied, sounding strangely uncertain for the first time, “you’ll be a lot warmer, and sleep better, if we share body heat. But I’ll understand if you prefer not to.”

  For the first time today, Ally smiled. Her new mentor’s unease on this one subject was somehow comforting. “I’m still f-f-freezing,” she said.

  “All right.”

  As they bedded down on a thick next of torn-off pine boughs, Ally found herself chucking despite the chill.

  “Something funny?” Sylloallen asked

  “No offence, praeceptor,” she murmured, “but I prefer blankets. You’re bony. And you stink.”

  “I do indeed,” he replied. She could hear the smile in his voice. “And so do you, my dear. Now shut up.”

  For the remainder of the night, they slept facing the fire,
Ally wrapped tightly in her teacher’s arms.

  ♦

  “What do you know of the road north of Bornhavn?” Hax asked.

  It was the following morning, and they were riding. Qaramyn had offered the elf-girl his horse, explaining that he wanted to study, and suggesting that she might prefer to sit a saddle instead of bouncing about in the wagon like a sack of dried peas for another day. She had accepted his offer gratefully. The wizard had taken a seat on the wagon’s bench, exiling the junior soldier to the wagon-bed with a baleful glance.

  “Only what the map shows,” the half-elf replied, shrugging. It seemed to be his preferred mode of expression, and Hax was beginning to find it enormously exasperating.

  Then, much to her surprise, as if regretting the paucity of his response, he added “I’m out of my range.” He nodded at the mountains that lay far off in the distance, to the north and to the east, across the wide river valley. “I’ve never travelled the Bjerglands before.”

  “Surely you’ve met plenty who have,” she said dubiously.

  “It’s not the same thing.” He sounded distant, almost morose. “You can’t know a country until you’ve walked it yourself.”

  Didn’t Syllo say that once? the Voice asked, sounding both snide and curious. She ignored it.

  Hax waited for Breygon to expand on his observation, but he said nothing. She rolled her eyes. She’d never met anyone as reticent as the half-elf. Even Joraz, taciturn to a fault, had begun to jest with her after their philosophical discussion in the wagon bed.

  At least the weather was cooperating. The autumn rains had vanished, and the sky was cloudless, an azure vault stretching from horizon to horizon like an unblemished canvas. The Lantern blazed overhead, warming them without diminishing the bite of the north wind, which cut down out of the far-distant mountains like a scythe. Hax was amazed at how far she could see in the chill, crystalline air; the jagged peaks of the Dragonspine range, still more than a hundred miles off, shone whitely, the morning light reflecting back from slopes that were already blanketed with snow.

  That sent a chill down her spine. She had to get through the passes before they, too, felt winter’s touch. I need to move faster than this, she thought determinedly. If there were indeed someone following her – and she could not conceive otherwise – then she did not want to be caught in Zaran lands. The king in Sanalin was too closely allied with the Third House. A fugitive from Starmeadow would find neither help nor refuge here.

  Hax shook herself. The sunlight was warm and soothing; it was not a day for pessimism or gloom. “It’s not like home,” she said, more to pass the time than in any expectation of a reply, “but it’s beautiful nonetheless.”

  “I’ve never seen the Homelands,” the half-elf replied. He spoke slowly, as though he were choosing his words deliberately. “But I understand the difference.” Nodding at the dense blanket of forest on their left, and the deep river valley to the right, he continued, “This land has never known the elves. It was settled by the sons of Esu, and only a little more than a thousand years or so ago. The Yonar-ri came much later to these shores than they did to Ekhan, but they established the great cities along the south coast in precisely the same way. That was long after the end of the Darkness.” He fell silent.

  Hax was astonished at his sudden volubility. “Go on,” she said gently, hoping to draw the fellow out a little more. For some reason, she was drawn to him.

  He’s a great deal like Sylloallen, isn’t he? the Voice said quietly.

  That’s nonsense, Hax thought. The two are nothing alike.

  Aren’t they?

  “What else is there?” Breygon said, shrugging. “The Yonar-ri came first as plunderers, and then as conquerors. They found the remnants of the ancient Esudi tribes, their own forebears, and bred with them. The children of the invaders became woodcutters, fisherman, farmers. Their descendents pushed northwards, into the Bjerglands. They found swamp and stone instead of farmland, but they also found iron, copper and tin. So they followed the upland rivers.

  “Ellohyin started that way. Then Bitterberg. It all began with metal and the mines. Then lumber, hides, brandsteen. Rare woods. Even some gemstones.”

  He snorted derisively. “Fortunes were made, castles and temples built. Shops to support the castles. Labourers to man the shops. Farms to feed the labourers.” He gestured at the water flowing to their right. “The same story, all over Zare. The people followed the rivers. They stayed out of the woodlands, save to take what they needed.

  “In the Homelands,” he continued without looking at her, “you domesticate the forests. Here, they are still wild. That’s the difference.”

  “You prefer it here,” she said, more as an accusation than a question.

  He shrugged again. “As I said, I’ve never seen the Homelands. I’ve no basis for comparison.”

  “But nonetheless, you disapprove,” she said heatedly. “I’m not deaf, semiferus. I can hear it in your voice. You judge what you have never seen.”

  Stung by her epithet, the half-elf turned to glare at her. “I judge you by your attitude, domina, not just by your deeds,” he replied, his voice taut as his bowstring. “You are brave, to be sure. But you are presumptuous, too; insufficiently humble before the wider world. I find it foolish. And distasteful.

  “Worst of all, though, is your impious arrogance.”

  “Arrogance?” she snapped. “How dare – ”

  “You change things,” he continued, interrupting her as though she had not spoken. “Certain, assured, unswerving in the conviction that you know better. That it is your right to reshape the living world to your liking.” There was an outraged tremulousness underlying his words. “This tree to grow just so. These flowers here, not there. The lairs, the nesting places. The courses of rivers. The ancient falls of stone, all bent to your liking. As though you were the masters of the world, instead of just a part of it.”

  “Are we not?” Hax shot back. “Are not the Homelands ours by right? Have we not defended them for eons, against all the forces of darkness and shadow? Have we not spilled our blood to earn the right to call such dearly-bought ground our own?” She was quivering with rage. Presumption? Arrogance? Who was this…this worm, to question…

  Breygon replied in the same tone, albeit in a lower voice. “Did your lands not suffer, too? And whence came that suffering, lady? From the shadow? Or from your own hands?

  “Who was it who first turned blade against brother? Tior’s son betrayed his sire, and bathed all your lands in gore. And his grandson did the same, turning to Bardan Eyðar in his lust for power, slaying his own mate, and taking a fiend into his bed. And when his hell-spawned daughter rose in fire and fury, she spilled blood enough to drown all the forests of the world.”

  The half-elf hawked and spat. “And at the end of all things, mighty Yarchian, whom all call ‘the Renewer’ – he summoned the trees, and the spirits of wood and wold, and even the stones themselves to stand at his side at the Gloaming. And all mourn the elves, and the wyrms, and sometimes even the men, who fell at Oldarran. Who mourned the passing of the spirits, heya, and the forest-folk? Who mourned the burning of the trees?

  “Speak not to me of the love that the Third House bears for the woodlands, lady. The fields, the flowers, the beasts, the trees – they are pawns to you. Like all the rest of us. Like all living things.” He fell silent.

  Hax was boiling with ill-suppressed rage, her hands white-knuckled on her mount’s reins.

  Breygon glanced at her, grinning sourly. “Amazing,” he murmured, his voice dripping with irony. “Have I finally managed to offend you?”

  “Yes,” she breathed through clenched teeth. “And if you say one more word against my house or my people, I will blow you out of your saddle, down the hill, and into the river.”

  “Bene,” the half-elf laughed, slapping a gloved hand down on his saddle horn.
“At last! Now we can speak as equals.”

  Hax turned to glare at him. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “You’ve been dancing around it since we met,” he replied. “I’m a half-breed. It is who and what I am. I accept it. But you – you can’t. You’re bound into knots by your upbringing, incapable of seeing me as human or as elf. It’s been amusing watching you try to figure out what I am, and how, therefore, to speak to me.” He laughed again.

  He’s actually laughing, Hax thought wonderingly. The fact that it was at her, rather than with her, bothered her not at all. His features softened in mirth; he looked like a boy. She felt the beginning of a smile creep aboard her visage.

  “Your clumsy politeness, lady,” he continued more seriously, “is nothing more than condescension. It offended me. So I decided to offend you back. Until you came to see me as an equal. Instead of as…oh, I don’t know. Some sort of curiosity.”

  “You are that,” she muttered under her breath. Out loud, she said, “If I offended you, I’m…”

  “Reticeo,” he snapped rudely. “You’ve just doffed your blinders, lady. Why don them again?”

  “Don’t test me,” she growled. “I meant what I said about the river.”

  “I know you did,” Breygon replied with a frank stare. “It was the first thing you’ve said to me in two days that was unfettered by your overly studious politeness. So I’ll do you the courtesy of being honest in return.” Leaning towards her in his saddle, he lowered his voice. “If I can sneak up on a deer in the night, and have it dressed before it knows it’s dead, what do you suppose your chances are of getting a spell off before I can put you on your back, trussed like a goose and wondering whether I’m going to rip you open like that buck? Eh?” He winked mirthlessly. “Care to try your luck, Domina?”

  Hax blinked, shivering slightly as the image flashed across her mind. She did her best to swallow her anger, but did not trust herself to speak. They rode together in silence; but the wall of tension between them screamed more loudly than words.

  After several miles of this, she could stand it not longer. Turning to Breygon, she said in a rush, “We need to clear the air. I’m not accustomed to quarrelling openly with…well, with anyone.”

  “ ‘Quarrelling’?” her companion scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Where I come from, it’s not even considered a discussion unless knives are drawn.”

  “Enough jesting,” she said angrily. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Stop looking for hidden meanings,” he advised. “There are no courtiers or diplomats in the wilderland. Yes, I insulted you just now. Accept it. It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t lay down my life for you, right now, if need be.”

  Hax was astonished at how easily he said it. She knew he was telling the truth. “That’s…you surprise me,” she said uncertainly. “You give your loyalty very easily.”

  “Only to your eyes,” the half-elf snorted, shaking his head. “You’re making the same mistake again. Before, you thought I was a human. Now you’re thinking of me as an elf. I’m neither.

  “In Astrapratum,” he went on morosely, “and especially among the Duodeci, life is all about appearances. Careful manoeuvring and innuendo. False faces, false politeness. Worth measured by ostentation, status by proximity to the throne, credibility by how long it’s been since you last betrayed someone. Easy comradeship, easy virtue, and an easy knife in the back when it serves someone’s interests. My mother told me all of this, before…” he paused. “She told me what it was like.”

  He shook his head, a cynical smile playing about his lips. “You’ll get none of that from me, lady.”

  “ ‘Too noble for nobility’,” she murmured, staring off into the distance. It was what her father had once called Sylloallen.

  Breygon turned his frank, disturbing gaze on her. “If you learn nothing else from our time together, I’d suggest you learn this: courtesy, often as not, is a façade masking betrayal. And not all outrage is feigned.”

  “Mine certainly wasn’t,” she muttered, nettled by his directness, and uncomfortable at being appraised so bluntly by those violet eyes. But his words about the Court cut her deeply. She had seen it herself. And had it not been her own unfeigned outrage that had led her to use forbidden magic against her aunt?

  “Nor was mine,” he replied. “Save the coquettery for the high court, Orkarel Hax. This is the real world. There’s little time for games. Those of us who exist here do so by choice. We say what we mean, and we live by our word.” He smiled humourlessly. “And sometimes, we die by it.”

  He’s an awful lot like Sylloallen, isn’t he? the Voice chuckled.

  Hax thought about that at some length as they rode on in a thick, febrile silence.

  ♦

  The party reached Bornhavn that afternoon. It was little more than a hamlet – what Sylloallen would have called ‘a wide place in the road’ – but Hax was happy to see it nonetheless. The wind had been picking up all morning, bringing low, iron-grey clouds down from the mountains. She didn’t think that it was cold enough to snow, but she had no interest in finding out until she had had a chance to purchase warmer clothing.

  And she had been growing increasingly uncomfortable in Breygon’s company. She felt as if the half-elf were looking through her, rather than at her; as if he knew her better than she knew herself. She regarded the impending parting with a curious mixture of anticipation and relief.

  The ridgeline along which they had been riding for the past two days had petered out some time that morning. The Nordvej, following the rise and fall of the land, had plunged down into the river valley, until they were riding only a stone’s throw from the water. The valley itself had narrowed somewhat, and the river, still immense, was constrained between two banks that were only a long bowshot apart. As a result, the water was leaping more frantically. Hax suspected that the recent rains had swollen it well beyond its normal capacity. At one point, a pair of heavily-laden barges went rushing downstream, tiny figures scrambling about their decks, using poles and sails to slow rather than speed their passage. She shivered slightly at the sight; there was something profoundly unnaturally in riding a bucking, twisting mass of timber down a mountain river. Especially, she reflected, shivering, with a hold full of new-smelted iron ingots. She was happy to leave such pastimes to the sons of Esu.

  Bornhavn, when they finally hove in sight of the village, appeared to be made up largely of farms, clustered along the road and tumbling down the slope of the long hill leading from road to river. The soil must have been more fertile here; Hax saw that the scraggly pines of the uplands had given way to grassy fields dotted with apple trees and broad-leafed chestnuts. She was initially perplexed at what appeared to be shifting clumps of white moving across the fields like earth-bound clouds, until closer inspection revealed these to be herds of sheep grazing placidly among the tree-trunks. She did not note any cattle or horses, a fact that caused her some consternation, as she urgently needed to replace her own slaughtered mount if she were to continue her trek into the mountains.

  That thought led naturally to thoughts of Torris. She missed the warhorse terribly, and wondered what had happened to her old friend. Was he still quartered at the Palace in Astrapratum? Had her father retrieved him? Or had her aunt taken her thirst for vengeance out upon the only available target?

  Hax shook her head to clear it of such gloomy thoughts, and tried to concentrate on the scenery surrounding her.

  The town proper lay at the lowest point of land, where the road dipped down until it was nearly level with the river. Hax was surprised to see that the Nordvej had been cobbled where it traversed the town. Indeed, the ‘wide place’ was a stone-paved square surrounded by larger, half-timbered buildings, mostly shops and houses. A few more substantial buildings – a palatial mansion, an inn, and something that, according to her nose, might have been a brewery – lay just off the square.
Another cobbled street led downhill towards the river, where a stone watch-tower stood next to a wharf that projected into the river like a tongue of granite. At the end of the stone pier, a two-masted carrack lay, silent and sullen, tugging gently against its mooring ropes.

  At the sight of this vessel, the pilot, Howall, showed the first signs of animation in nearly two days. “That’ll be Swiftkeel,” he muttered unhappily from his perch in the rear of the wagon. “Maybe a jar or two, before we report in?” he added hopefully.

  “Maybe we’ll see you aboard, and you can talk about it with your new captain,” Qaramyn said, glaring menacingly at the man.

  “Qaramyn, see to that, if you will,” Breygon said, turning in his saddle. “Alric, see if you can find a smithy.” The warrior nodded.

  “There’s an inn,” Gwen piped up, pointing at one of the larger buildings. This one was adorned with a roughly-carved sign depicting an apple, a cup and a pillow, all under the legend ‘Bellik’.

  Breygon nodded. “Try to get us a decent price, would you?” The Halfling nodded, spurring her pony towards the building.

  “And you, Sergeant?” Qaramyn asked, his tone sarcastically chipper. “Whither bound?”

  “The tower,” the half-elf replied. “I’m going to visit the guard captain. Once you’ve delivered Howall, bring the garrison stores along. We’ll get the wagon off our charge.” The wizard nodded acknowledgement.

  Breygon turned to Hax. “This is where we part company, lady,” he said neutrally.

  Hax nodded. “I plan to stay the night, and carry on northwards in the morning.” She glanced around the square. “I need to find a horse,” she added, her voice dubious.

  “I’d wish you luck,” he said, glancing around, “but it doesn’t look promising.” He held out a gloved hand. “If ever you need anything, call on me first. If there’s aught I can do to aid you, I will.”

  Hax nodded. “You may do the same.” She took his proffered hand and held it briefly, warrior to warrior. “I’ll be staying at the inn tonight, and leaving on the morrow, assuming I can find another horse.” She slipped off the wizard’s horse and handed him the reins.

  The half-elf took them and nodded. “Until this evening, then.”

  She strode over to the wagon. Qaramyn reached into the bed among the stores and extracted her saddlebags. As he passed them down to her, he leaned close, and whispered, “Don’t lose yourself in your alias, lady. When the time comes, remember who and what you are. It will save you.” He nodded at Breygon. “And him.”

  Hax stared back at the man, perplexed. Her patience with his occult maunderings finally collapsed. “What in all the hells are you talking about?” she snapped.

  The wizard simply winked. “Occursus non fors inter Elvii,” he whispered, bowing elaborately. “Something tells me that I will see you again.”

  Hax simply nodded, taken aback. Qaramyn winked at her, snapping the reins. The wagon lurched forward, down the cross-street, towards the pier and the watchtower.

  Breygon raised a hand in farewell, turning his horse to follow. She waved briefly in return.

  Occursus non fors inter Elvii, she thought, as she watched the group depart. It was an old adage. There are no chance meetings among Elves.

  What, she wondered, was that supposed to mean?

  ♦

  Hax spent the rest of the afternoon prowling about the town, trying to reconstitute her lost or damaged equipment. She had no difficulty purchasing several blankets and some useful trinkets – a tinderbox, a new waterskin – and she was able to acquire a number of new shirts to replace those that she had lost in action or used as bandages. To guard against any similar eventuality, she also bought a few small poultices from an apothecary, cleverly made; boiled rags soaked in raw spirit, and sealed in waxed paper. These set her back quite a few shillings, but after the problems she’d experienced making her own dressings, she judged them worth the extra expense.

  Her greatest success, however, lay in finding clothing suitable to the unpleasant weather that came with autumn in the Bjerglands. Hax had taken a room at ‘Bellik’s Rest’, the town’s only inn, dropping her bow, quiver and saddlebags on the narrow cot provided, locking the door, and pocketing the small bronze key with a sense of relief. The innkeeper’s assistant, when asked where decent clothing might be found, directed Hax to a small hut near the north edge of town. When she tapped deferentially at the door, it was opened by a wizened old gentleman, who’d wheezed politely upon seeing her face. He was no taller than she, and only a little heavier, and looked to be close to her own age – which, for a human, meant that he had already vastly exceeded the span normally allotted by the Mother.

  She found his excitement at her appearance a little unnerving – at least, until a chance movement caused his wispy, snow-white hair to blow back, revealing ears that bore the merest hint of a point. Elf blood, she realized. Not much…but enough to lengthen his days upon the earth. And enough to give him a sense of kinship, even with a scion of the Third House. She wondered whence it came; whether he was the result of a noble’s dalliance in ages past, or the distant descendent of a half-blood.

  Or even one of the Hiarsk. She examined his hair closely; but it was so completely white that she couldn’t tell whether it had once borne the flaming scarlet trademark of her semi-noble cousins.

  He had introduced himself as ‘Pardo’, which told her nothing at all. But he’d seemed so anxious to please her that she had readily acquiesced when he offered to show her his wares.

  She was glad that she did. Old he might have been, but Pardo still retained much of what must once have been a master’s skill with awl and needle. He was a leatherworker, and an accomplished one; examples of his craft festooned his tiny hut, and lay stacked here and there, cluttering a worktable that had probably seen a century’s hard service.

  In short order he had produced several pair of serviceable trousers, a long jacket (that had obviously been made for a stripling human girl, but that fit her well enough), and a hooded cloak of light, supple oiled leather dyed a deep wine-red. The trousers, cut to a human woman’s fit, were of course too long, and far too broad across the fundament; and so, while she tried the remainder of the garments (standing behind a hanging blanket that the old fellow had hastily tacked to one of the ceiling beams), Pardo sat atop a short stool, plying needle and thread at a speed that would have done credit to a far younger man. Throughout his labour, he kept up a rattling stream of prose, interspersing it with jokes that made her smile, and questions that she was hard-pressed to deflect.

  When at last he was done, he bundled her purchases into the cloak. She proffered him her purse, and was appalled when he refused payment. When she insisted, he pushed the brilliant gold away, saying awkwardly “Libet regina Elvii.” A pleasure for the elven princess.

  What could she say to that? Hax nodded as regally as she could manage, then kissed the fellow’s forehead, causing him to blush and sputter like an addled schoolboy. She left him beaming happily before his hearth, closing the door behind her.

  Outside, she glanced up and down the road; and, seeing no one, stooped and laid a dozen Zaran crowns in a neat pile on his threshold. Then she hurried back towards the inn at the centre of town.

  As she re-entered Bornhavn from the north, she noticed a small path leading westwards, into the forest and away from the river. Two things caught her eye; a bright, white dome; and a dark, slender figure emerging from the trail, partially obscured by the twilight. This individual seemed to be walking towards her; and, unwilling to have a stranger following close behind, Hax stopped and waited for the person to catch her up.

  It turned out to be a woman; Hax could tell as much, even though the figure was hooded and cloaked like herself. Human females were less delicately proportioned than elves, and the differences tended to show more readily through clothing.

  Hax spoke first, while the woman was still a few paces
away. “A good evening to you, mistress.”

  “And to you, lady,” the woman replied. Her voice was an octave below Hax’s, which was not surprising seeing as how human towered over elf by nearly a full head. “You are new-come to Bornhavn, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hax replied noncommittally. There was something in the other’s demeanour that caused the hair to rise on the back of her neck. She switched her bundle of clothes to her left arm in order to leave her right free.

  The human noticed the gesture, flicked her eyes to the elaborate hilt projecting above Hax’s right shoulder, and stopped where she was. Moving slowly, she raised her hands and pushed back her hood. “No need for nerves, daughter of Hara,” she said softly. “I am unarmed. At the moment.”

  Hax pursed her lips speculatively. By human standards, the woman was severely attractive, with high, narrow cheekbones, an arched brow, and hair as long and black as her own. A lot coarser, though, she thought cattily. But there was still something…

  Hax nodded politely. “I thank you for your greeting. Are you a resident?” she asked.

  “More than that,” the woman answered. She pulled aside her cloak. Hax saw that she was clad in a long surplice, belted at the waist, and overlain with a tabard bearing…

  …Hara save me, Hax thought, panic rising in her breast. The woman’s tabard bore a raven perched atop an anvil. “Your pardon, priestess,” she said, nodding again. Thinking rapidly, she added, “May the Allfather’s grace be ever with you.”

  The woman smiled; a little coldly, Hax thought. But there was no ice in her voice when she replied, “And also with you. My name is Viloriannis,” she added. “And you are…?”

  Belatedly remembering Qaramyn’s advice, Hax replied, “Annalyszian.” Racking her brains, she added, “of Two Rivers.”

  Nodding towards the town, the priestess said, “You are staying at Bellik’s, I presume?” With a wave, she indicated that they should continue.

  There was no point in denying it. “I am,” the elf-girl replied. “I didn’t think there were any other options.” They began walking together.

  “None but the hostel at the Allfather’s Hall,” the priestess replied. She gave Hax a calculating glance. “And, excuse my presumption, but you don’t look like a pilgrim.”

  Hax said nothing to this. The woman continued remorselessly. “You came in with that group earlier today, yes?”

  “If you mean the party of the Æryngard,” Hax said carefully, “yes, I did.” The priestess seemed to expect more, so she added, “My mare died on the road, three days to the south. They were kind enough to allow me to ride with them, rather than walk the rest of the way.” She forced a smile. “I’m in the market for a new horse, if you know anyone who might be willing to part with one.”

  “You’ll find none in town,” the woman answered, frowning. “Horses are for the wealthy, and these are poor folk. Even File, the trader, rarely rides; and his fat fingers flow with silver.”

  Hax ground her teeth. Sanctimonious religious fanatics! she thought angrily. Where did they think the money came from to build their fancy temples? “I’m sure I’ll manage,” she replied placidly.

  As they reached the town square, the priestess asked, “Do you know where I might find the leader of the watch-men whose company you shared?”

  Hax shrugged. “Doubtless they’ll be staying at the Inn as well,” she answered carefully. “Although when we parted, their sergeant was going down to the river to seek the guard captain’s counsel.”

  The woman snorted. “Good luck to him, then,” she said derisively. “He’ll find no wisdom there.”

  There was nothing Hax could say to that. Clutching her bundle, she nodded at the nearby inn, half-bowed, and said, “Dinner calls. And bed. I’ll bid you good night, priestess, if I may.”

  “Certainly, Annalyszian,” the woman said archly, “of Two Rivers. Sleep you soundly and long, and may the Allfather watch over you.” She made the sign of the fist before her breast.

  Hax felt a chill crawl up her spine. She nodded as dispassionately as she could, and walked swiftly away, doing her best to look as though she were merely sauntering.

  As Hax pushed open the Inn’s wide front door, she saw that Viloriannis was still standing in the square, eyeing her speculatively. The elf-girl shivered again, and not with the evening’s breezes.

  ♦

  Supper in Bornhavn was a humble but filling affair. Halagor Bellik, the proprietor of the inn, was a retired guardsman, and believed fervently in the restorative powers of potatoes, ale and gravy. The meat was not to her taste; spring and the lambs were long gone, and Hax was not fond of mutton no matter how much garlic was used to mask its woolly flavour. She made do with bread and vegetables. There was no wine to be had; but apples grew in profusion, and the first of the autumn cider had already been pressed. This was one of the tiny town’s better products, and Hax found herself draining cup after cup of the delicious, effervescent stuff. If nothing else, it took her mind off of her nerve-wracking encounter with the priestess.

  By the time she pushed her plate away, she was conscious of a persistent ringing in her ears. She wondered briefly if she had overindulged, then realized that the noise was coming from a corner of Bellik’s great room, where one of the locals, a gray-haired Zaran, was tuning a stringed instrument that she recognized as a mandora. It had a deeper, mellower tone than the lutes and gitterns of the Homeland – a distant, almost haunting timbre.

  Once the musician was done fiddling with the keys, he launched into a slow, rhythmic air that she had never heard before. Hax listened closely. Her mother had tried without much success to make a musician of her, and her tutelage had included both plucked and bowed instruments. Hax had dreaded the lessons, in part because her instructor had been a halfling virtuoso who, in addition to numerous other unsavoury traits, had been quite mad. Fortunately his eccentricities had not managed to entirely eradicate her love for music. And the time she’d spent beating out rhythms and learning fingerings at least had the virtue of teaching her what to listen for.

  The tune the fellow was plucking out was almost mournful, and ridiculously simple to boot. Hax was about to turn back to her cider in disappointment when the old player suddenly drew a second melody from the strings, weaving it into and around the first. That caught her interest; the complexity of the dual motifs made it sound as though he had a least two extra fingers. She found herself nodding easily in time to the music.

  When the fellow glanced idly over the crowd and saw that she was listening closely, he gave her a mischievous smile. An instant later, a familiar tune emanated from his instrument, and Hax felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. It was the principal theme of Ave Sedes Tiora, the closest thing that the Third House had to a royal anthem.

  Was that an accident? she wondered, suddenly tense. Or did he…

  “Any luck finding a horse?”

  Hax started, nearly spilling her drink. She spun swiftly on her stool, then relaxed slightly when she saw that the speaker was Joraz.

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  The Tyrellian slid onto a stool next to her, motioning to one of the harried-looking girls scuttling to and fro with arms loaded down with platters and mugs. Turning to Hax, he said easily, “Well, there’s always the river. Ships go as far north as Ellohyin, Bitterberg even, or so we were told. That might be faster than riding.”

  Hax frowned. “I don’t much like the idea of waiting around dockside for a ship to show up by chance.”

  The monk nodded. “Better to keep running,” he said expressionlessly.

  “Yes. Better to…” her voice trailed off. She shot him an alarmed glance.

  Joraz held up a hand. “I’m not one to pry,” he said quietly, “but you seem a decent sort, and you helped us out of a tight spot. If there’s anything we can do to help you, we will.”

  Hax pursed her lips. “Is tha
t your word,” she asked wryly, “or your sergeant’s?”

  “Our sergeant’s,” he grinned. “Who do you think figured out you were on the run?”

  She smiled narrowly. “And you’re here to find out what I’m running from. Is that it?”

  “No,” the monk replied. “I’m here for dinner.”

  Hax laughed self-consciously. “Where are the others, then?”

  “Well, the wizard’s upstairs with his nose jammed in a book, as usual,” Joraz said. “Excuse me.” He turned, tapped one of the serving girls on the arm, and gave her some quick, muttered instructions. When she had gone, he turned back to Hax. “Alric’s still off at the smithy. Breygon said he wanted to take a quick turn ‘round the town, and so did Gwen. Although I imagine for different reasons,” he added drily.

  “Your Gwen’s a pickpocket,” Hax snorted. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Certainly,” Joraz nodded. “But she has a good heart. I’d liefer have her at my side than some intolerant, meddling priest.”

  “I don’t know,” the elf-girl muttered darkly. “Priests come in handy when you’ve got an arrow stuck in your leg.”

  Joraz laughed in sympathy. “How are your wounds?” he asked.

  “Mending,” she replied curtly. Changing the subject, she said, “So, what’s next for you lot? Onwards to Ellohyin, or back to Æryn?”

  “Neither, for now,” the monk answered soberly. “When we dropped Howall off at his ship this afternoon, we found out why they needed a new pilot. It seems the previous one disappeared. The ship’s captain wants us to look for him.”

  “I shouldn’t think that’d be much of a mystery,” Hax shrugged. “Poor fellow probably fell overboard.”

  Joraz shook his head. “According to his shipmates, he went missing somewhere between the Allfather’s temple and Bellik’s cider kegs.” He nodded at the long wooden board behind which the innkeeper stood, swiftly sponging out mugs.

  Hax shrugged again. “Small town. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

  “One hopes.”

  They listened in silence to the musician for a few moments. At length, Joraz nodded approvingly. “He’s good, isn’t he?”

  “Very good,” Hax agreed. She grinned, overtaken by a sudden burst of whimsy. “Do you dance?”

  “You’re serious?” The monk’s eyebrows shot up. She nodded. “No, not really,” he admitted. “But I can usually manage to avoid falling over my own feet.”

  He rose and extended her a hand. “Shall we, my lady?”

  Hax laughed and took it. “Thank you, my lord!”

  Joraz tugged her easily to her feet. “Best you lead, I think,” he added in a loud whisper.

  Together they stepped into the small open space between the rough trestle tables. The musician was still playing a slow, melancholy air. Hax, who had trained in the gentle arts under her mother’s discerning eye, could think of any number of measures that would accord with the beat and tempo of the skald’s tune. Out of consideration for her partner, she selected a simple one, remembering at the last moment to shift the position of her hands and feet to those of the gentleman lead.

  It proved much easier than she had expected. The monk had obviously never seen the dance she had chosen, much less danced it himself, but he had good poise, posture and balance, and was quick on his feet. He watched her with careful concentration, doing his best to anticipate her steps and twirls, and did a creditable job. At the third repetition, he surprised her by taking the lead himself. Hax laughed and allowed him to do so, settling into the distaff pattern with an ease born of long familiarity.

  When the song ended, the pair were flushed and laughing. Hax actually felt slightly winded; evidently she was out of shape. They were greeted by a thunder of applause from the patrons of the establishment, to which Joraz responded by stepping back and allowing Hax to keep the floor. She laughed at that, too, punching him lightly in the shoulder as punishment for abandoning her.

  A winsome plinking indicated that the musician was adjusting the tuning of his instrument once more. Hax turned and threw the fellow a happy salute; he nodded gravely in return. Then he set his plectrum to the strings once more, and began a new air – one even slower and more sombre than before, but infinitely more complex, evoking a longing melancholy that caught Hax entirely off guard.

  If she had been surprised before, she was dumbstruck now. She knew the tune at once; knew it well, in fact. Every elf of the Third House knew it. It was the Lugeo Fineleorus – the Lament of Fineleor. It had been written eons past to commemorate the death of the great general who had led the armies of the Third House to disaster against the hordes of Bardan, during the battles that had ended the Age of Wisdom and ushered in the Darkness. When the elves had been routed, Fineleor had remained behind in a narrow pass with none but his mate at his side, to atone for his failure with blood. Together, they had purchased his soldiers’ escape with their lives.

  After the battle, Yarchian, the High King, had granted Fineleor the posthumous surname ‘Orkarel’, meaning ‘courage unto death’. It was the same moniker that Hax’s mother had given her. She had used it as her nomen virago ever since she had passed without the walls seven years earlier, putting aside her maid-name, Allymyn.

  Does he know who I am? she wondered, terrified. Was it simply another coincidence? Or was the old fellow merely trying to honour a visitor from the elf-realm?

  Confused and nervous, she turned back to Joraz, intending to quit the floor and return to her room. Instead of the monk’s broad, open face, she met Breygon’s solemn visage and calm, violet gaze.

  “Tandem saltatamus?” the ranger asked quietly.

  Hax froze, eyes wide. Glancing from side to side, she saw that the inn’s patrons were paying them close regard. A sudden departure would probably garner more attention than if she simply stayed.

  Breygon’s eyebrows drew together. “Lady?”

  Hax nodded swiftly. “Do you know the measures?” she whispered urgently.

  “Measures?” he replied, nonplussed. “No. The tune is familiar, but…”

  “Take my hands!” she commanded.

  Blinking in surprise, the ranger did so. Hax seized them and thrust them into the correct opening positions, shoulder and hip, and palm-to-palm.

  “What are you…”

  “Follow me!” she hissed. “And for Hara’s love, do our people proud!”

  The half-elf’s face darkened slightly, and he looked as though he was about to offer some retort. Hax did not give him the opportunity. Pivoting deftly on the balls of her feet, she drew him into the difficult opening paces of the Lugeo.

  Breygon had a choice. He could launch into an angry tirade…or he could swallow his pride and try to follow the elf-girl’s shifting steps. He chose the latter, stuffing his anger into a tiny corner of his consciousness, then applying the rest of it in a desperate attempt to follow her twirling feet and shifting hands.

  It was like trying to walk a roof-peak or a tightrope. While he knew the melody well enough, he did not know the paces. These were complex, deliberate and tightly measured. The Lugeo was an ancient dance, and it quickly became obvious that Hax knew it in her bones. Breygon had to pay close heed simply to keep up.

  Gritting his teeth, he focussed his attention on the girl’s midriff, reasoning that dancing must be like fencing, if only in the sense that any change of direction would be signalled there first. It was also, he reflected after a moment or two, a not entirely unpleasant place to rest his eyes.

  Breygon was aware of the elves’ passion for dance, and he also knew whence came their mastery of the art – from long life, and centuries spent in practice. He did not share their enthusiasm, in large part because he did not, and would not, have time for such frivolities. And yet, even as he struggled to follow the girl’s movements, he realized that there was something compelling in it – something insidious, addictive even.


  After a few moments, he warmed to the challenge; after all, there were worse things in life than dancing with a pretty girl, however insufferably arrogant she might be. If nothing else, the effort demanded poise, attention, grace and skill. And strength. And flexibility. And wind, too.

  He began to see it as an athletic contest. Taking it in that spirit, he threw himself into his work, matching Hax pace for pace and figure for figure. His native vigour and agility served him well, and he was gratified when he thought he saw a flicker of surprise in the girl’s eyes when he executed a particularly difficult measure without stumbling.

  Hax saw his intent grimace, and snorted with laughter. She had been going easy on him. There were many versions of the Lugeo; it was almost an art form in itself, and the elves of the Third House learned it from an early age. Hax had been following the measures prescribed for children. When she saw that the ranger was keeping up with her, she shifted into the patterns that adults were expected to perform.

  A moment later, the ranger’s smile had disappeared and he was sweating heavily. He managed to stay on his feet, but there was a look of panic in his eyes. Hax grinned back, and was rewarded with a silent grimace of concentration.

  He had spirit; she had to give him that. As the skald moved into the final measures of the piece, Hax deliberately scaled back the intensity of her forms, moving back into the children’s’ patterns again. She noted the immediate relief in the half-elf’s eyes, and tried not to smile. Instead, she broke the pattern, taking his hands and drawing him into an uncharacteristically close embrace.

  She could feel his heart hammering through his tunic, and smiled nastily to herself. Evidently she wasn’t all that badly out of form after all.

  The music trailed off mournfully – it was a lament – and the duo executed the final, simple steps in tandem, to scattered applause.

  Hax smiled happily at her partner. “That was very well done. For a first attempt.”

  Breygon released her hands and stepped back, panting. “If I had an ounce of strength left, I’d strangle you right now,” he said crossly, rolling his neck in an attempt to work some of the stiffness out of his shoulders.

  “Cramp?” Hax teased. Her own neck and shoulders were screaming obscenities at her; she would probably find blood seeping from her half-healed wounds. But she would be eternally damned before she showed weakness to the half-elf.

  “It’s not how I usually relax after a week’s hard riding,” Breygon replied sourly.

  “You should try it more often,” she teased gently. “You’ve potential.”

  “Oh?”

  Hax couldn’t suppress a grin. “Certainly. With a century or so of practice...”

  The half-elf grinned sourly. The musician began a new air, which Breygon recognized as a folk tune of the Bjerglands. To forestall any possibility of more dancing, he jerked his head toward the table. She followed obediently, smiling triumphantly to herself. They seated themselves opposite Joraz.

  “Very impressive,” the monk commented. “You’re more poised and graceful than I would have thought possible.”

  “She’s had good teachers,” the ranger grunted, “and a century or so to practice.”

  “Actually, I was talking about you,” Joraz chuckled.

  Breygon shot his colleague an annoyed glance from beneath a thunderous brow. Hax laughed out loud at the half-elf’s obvious discomfiture.

  With a nod, the monk stood. “I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late, children.”

  Breygon snorted.

  “Fare you well,” Hax said, touching the monk lightly on the arm. “And thank you for the dance.”

  “It was my distinct pleasure,” Joraz replied, bowing.

  After he had gone, she turned her eye on Breygon. “Was that your doing?” she asked sharply.

  “What?” he replied, taken aback at her sudden vehemence.

  “That song. The Lugeo. Did you tell the skald to play it?”

  “Is that what it’s called?” the ranger asked. “No. I simply asked the fellow if he knew anything from the Homelands. I thought it might…oh, I don’t know. Please you.” He reddened slightly.

  Hax took a deep, calming breath. There was no lie in the half-elf’s words, but she was still uneasy. She could not ‘see’ him – could not read his intentions, his heart, in a single glance, as she normally could with one of her kind. And Syllo had taught her not to believe in coincidences. “Do you not know its name?” she asked intently.

  “No.” Breygon shook his head. “I know the tune, though. My mother used to hum it, usually while doing chores. I asked her about it once, and she told me that it was an old song from the northern reaches of the elven realm. A sad song. I whistled the tune for the skald, and he knew it from the off.

  “Why?” he asked, curious now. “What is it called?”

  “Lugeo Fineleorus,” she said briefly. She glanced away, staring at the musician again. He seemed lost in his music.

  “Ah,” Breygon said, nodding in sudden understanding. “And you thought I – or he – had picked it, because of your name.”

  Hax nodded.

  The ranger shook his head, chuckling. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “I doubt anyone in this town has the slightest idea who Fineleor Orkarel was.”

  “You obviously know,” she shot back.

  Breygon gave her a hard glance. “I had a somewhat different upbringing than the average Zaran,” he grated.

  Hax sighed. It always came back to that, didn’t it? “Perhaps someday you can tell me about it,” she said gently.

  “Perhaps,” he replied distantly. His tone said, Not bloody likely.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re infuriating, do you know that?”

  “Oh?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  She scowled, angered by the return of his bitter self-contempt. She continued in the elven tongue, her tone soft but insistent. “Yesterday you accused me of not being able to decide whether you were a son of Hara or Esu. How could I, when you have not yourself decided?”

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, his face colouring.

  “You’ve spent your life between two worlds,” she said angrily. “Do you even know what your name really is?”

  Breygon blinked, taken aback. “What?” he said uncertainly.

  “ ‘Breygon’ is a human vulgarity. A pathetic corruption of Bræagond. It means ‘Glory of Bræa’,” Hax snapped. “It’s an ancient name among our people. One of the oldest. A moniker of pride, a celebration of the divine origin of our House. And you reject it!”

  “The Third House rejects me!” he hissed back, furious. “It deems my kind accursed, worthy only of exile or execution!”

  “Then prove them wrong!” she cried. “Accept what you are! Acknowledge your blood, your name, and live up to them!”

  Breygon glanced narrowly at the other denizens of the taproom. No one seemed to understand what was being said, but the volume and tone had been noticed.

  His nervous glance chilled Hax’s ardour. She reached across the table and took his hand. “Dolor hic tibi proderit olim,” she said softly, speaking their shared tongue.

  Breygon frowned sourly. “Ceorlinus, I suppose?”

  She nodded. “It means ‘Someday, even this pain…’”

  “ ‘…will be useful to you’. My accent may be poor, but I understand the language well enough. And the idea.”

  “It’s an important idea,” she insisted. “We can let our pain poison us, even overwhelm us. Or we can embrace it, and turn it into power. The choice is ours.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Yours.”

  “The lady is a philosopher, too. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He pulled his hand back, forcing a grim, lop-sided smile. “So, lady philosopher. Are you staying here? Or moving on?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be leaving in the morning, heading north,” she said quietly.
>
  “Without a horse?”

  “I have legs.”

  “You certainly proved that a moment ago,” he snorted. Standing, he gave her a polite nod. “Then I’ll wish you good journey now, Orkarel Hax, in case I don’t see you before you depart.”

  “It’s ‘Ally’, actually,” she said, rising as well.

  He cocked his head, his sardonic, self-mocking smile softening into something a little less bitter. “Ally.” There was an odd look in his eyes. “I’m honoured to have met you.”

  She bowed lightly. “And I you. Vita longa.”

  “How singularly inappropriate,” he murmured, “coming from one of your House. But there’s no need for final farewells. We’ll meet again, you and I.”

  “Ah, I’m a philosopher, so you must be a seer?” she said, chuckling.

  “Not at all. I just don’t believe in coincidences.” He glanced down at her, his violet eyes darkly intense. “There are no chance meetings…”

  “…between elves. I know. Qaramyn said the same thing.” She smiled, and for the first time, Breygon saw the girl that lurked behind the woman’s visage. “I’ll look for you on the road, then.”

  “As will I,” he replied with a slight bow. “Via leniter, lady.”

  Hax summoned enough of her hard-learned courtesy to nod politely. “And you also, Glory of Bræa.”

  ♦

  Once back in her room, Hax locked the door and spent a moment pacing back and forth, wracking her brains over where she was going to find a horse. She was distracted; by the memory of the warmth of the half-elf’s hands in hers, the exhilaration that had come with treading the measures of the Lugeo in his arms, and the trip-hammer pounding of his heart against her breast.

  Then she forgot all of that, and wondered nervously what the presence of a priestess of the Allfather in such a small town might mean.

  This latter worry stuck in her mind. Clearly there was a temple here; Joraz had mentioned it. Was that what the dome had been?

  And she knew of our arrival, Hax thought nervously. She wanted to talk to Breygon. The candle on the night-table flickered intermittently as she passed.

  What, she wondered, would the half-elf tell the priestess about her? Even if he respected her confidence, as she thought he might, what else might the priestess guess?

  Hax’s worry was entirely natural. The atrocities committed by the theocracy of the Hand had ended, more or less, some threescore years earlier, and were fading in the minds of men. The elves, though, had longer memories. For the inhabitants of the Homelands, hardly an eye-blink had passed since the Hierarchy had been purged from Ekhan, its last remnants defeated at Duncala by the elves, the common men of the Empire, and the rebel Knights united by their contempt for the corrupt rule of the priests. Many families of the Third House had lost loved ones to the persecutions of the Hand. And although the priests of the Allfather had not instigated the imprisonments, tortures, and murders carried out under the mandate of the theocracy (indeed, some had aided the Elves, even helping them escape to lands uncontrolled by the Hand), many of the Allfather’s flock had participated in the pogroms with noteworthy enthusiasm.

  And, unlike the Church of the Hand, Esu’s servants had never been punished for their collusion with murderers and magicides. They were stronger and more numerous today than they had ever been. As the humans were, everywhere.

  I need to decide, Hax thought nervously. And quickly, too.

  While she debated, she stripped off her vest and tunic, and crawled out of her filthy, sweat-soaked undergarments. These latter items she discarded in a heap on the floor; they were unsalvageable, and she had purchased more than enough replacement articles.

  She would have vastly preferred a bath, or even a quick swim in an icy mountain river. But time was working against her now. She had to be content with a wooden wash-basin and a pitcher of tepid water. At least there’s soap, she thought, working the rough, gritty glob up into a stinging, foamy mess, and sponging gingerly at her skin, working around the rapidly-healing wounds.

  There was no hope of washing her hair; that would have to wait. She twisted the grubby mass into a long rope down the middle of her back, securing it with leather thongs. Then, cleansed if not actually clean, she donned her new clothing.

  She sighed contentedly as she fastened the last of the buttons and buckles. A bath and a change of clothing. Better salve for the soul than prayer, she thought happily.

  That sentiment reminded her of the priestess again, and her newfound contentment disintegrated. I have to get out of here, she thought, worms of panic once again nibbling at the corners of her mind. Not tomorrow; tonight.

  Now.

  But how? She had been jesting with Breygon; she could not afford the time it would take to walk.

  The ship? No, she recalled. It’s going downstream, to the river forts and beyond. To Vejborg. Retracing her steps would be too dangerous. And she could not disappear on the river.

  The woods? No. Swampland for miles. Dense forest, cliffs and valleys, rivers. And then the mountains. And winter coming on.

  She had no choice. It was the road, and the road only went north. Qaramyn had been right. Which meant that she had to move fast.

  Which meant that she needed a horse.

  But there are no horses in town! she screamed to herself.

  Of course there are, the Voice said softly, echoing through the empty halls of her mind.

  Hax looked blankly at the cracked plaster wall. Then she smiled. Of course there were.

  It would have to be later, after dark. Which meant that there was plenty of time for something else that she had to do. She reached into her saddlebags and removed her small packet of chamois-wrapped needles. Opening it, she extracted her vial of precious indigo ink.

  After her lonely fight in the forest and the battle alongside Breygon and his troupe at the abandoned farmstead, Hax had considered adding to her collection of tattoos. She’d immediately rejected the notion. The marks, after all, were in some fashion a form of penance for the lives she took. Save for the two pair of crescents marking her face, above and below her left eye, the tattoos were visible symbols of her remorse. But she felt no compunction whatsoever at destroying the foul, unnatural creatures that had slain her mount and attacked her…friends? Is that what they were? she wondered.

  In any event, what she had done was in no wise a crime against the Mother; it had been pure service, a mercy to the earth. The destruction of such abominations required no penance.

  But there was another reason to commemorate meeting the half-elf and his comrades. It wasn’t a conscious decision on her part, nor was it something that she did at the urging of the Voice. Not this time. It was an act more instinctive, more primal, that seemed to spring from some deep well of need within her soul.

  She went to work, smiling softly, wincing only a little as she applied the needle to a bare patch on her right thigh, enjoying the focus, the concentration, as always. Oddly, instead of the twinge of expiation that she customarily experienced, this time she felt a slight quiver of pleasure as she laboured at her craft.

  When she was finished, she blotted the blood carefully away, and checked her work as she always did. Two perfect half-moons, nested closely together, as always. One for me, she thought, her heart hammering; and one for…

  She looked closer. Her needle must have slipped; a thin, almost invisible indigo line seemed to join the two curving shapes, the back of one to the belly of the other. She tried to rub it away, but it was there to stay.

  She cursed softly. It was a foolish, embarrassing mishap, her first ever. She wondered what it meant, if indeed it meant anything other than a shaky hand. In any case, she would have to live with it.

  As she repacked her kit, she thought about taking her leave of Breygon and the rest, and about what she had said to him. Was it true, she wondered? Would they meet again?

&nb
sp; Best to simply ride out of their lives, she thought.

  She did not want to leave it at that. Fortunately, her precious dye could serve different purposes. Drawing her dagger, she trimmed the tattered quill that lay alongside her fine needles, moistened the tip with her tongue, dipped it carefully into the deep blue ink, drew a scrap of parchment towards her, and began to write.

  When she was done, she tucked pen and ink away. She folded the parchment into a small square, and thought again about her resolution. Biting her lip, she tugged her mother’s battered silver ring from her finger and, before she could change her mind, dropped it into the paper pocket she had created.

  She sealed the envelope with beeswax from the candle. That ought to make my damnable aunt happy, she thought angrily.

  Half an hour later, just as the Lamps were rising, Hax was riding swiftly out of town, northbound on the Nordvej, heading for Ganesford, and Dolin’s Pit, and Ellohyin, far upriver; and then Bitterberg, and the mountains, and beyond. She had looped strips of torn cloth through the bridle and girth-strap buckles of her mount’s tack to keep them from jingling as the horse – a spirited, midnight mare – trotted along the night-brown strip of the high road.

  She’d left the letter with the innkeeper, with instructions to deliver it to the half-elf the next day.

  Hax hoped that Breygon would forgive her for stealing his horse.

  ♦♦♦