For Sylvia Kelso,

syntax wrangler and

Ista partisan first class

CHAPTER ONE

ISTA LEANED FORWARD BETWEEN THE CRENELLATIONS ATOP THE gate tower, the stone gritty beneath her pale hands, and watched in numb exhaustion as the final mourning party cleared the castle gate below. Their horses' hooves scraped on the old cobblestones, and their good-byes echoed in the portal's vaulting. Her earnest brother, the provincar of Baocia, and his family and retinue were last of the many to leave, two full weeks after the divines had completed the funeral rites and ceremonies of the interment.

Dy Baocia was still talking soberly to the castle warder, Ser dy Ferrej, who walked at his stirrup, grave face upturned, listening to the stream, no doubt, of final instructions. Faithful dy Ferrej, who had served the late Dowager Provincara for all the last two decades of her long residence here in Valenda. The keys of the castle and keep glinted from the belt at his stout waist. Her mother's keys, which Ista had collected and held, then turned over to her older brother along with all the other papers and inventories and instructions that a great lady's death entailed. And that he had handed back for permanent safekeeping not to his sister, but to good, old, honest dy Ferrej. Keys to lock out all danger . . . and, if necessary, Ista in.

It's only habit, you know. I'm not mad anymore, really.

It wasn't as though she wanted her mother's keys, nor her mother's life that went with them. She scarcely knew what she wanted. She knew what she feared—to be locked up in some dark, narrow place by people who loved her. An enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his back; love would never falter. Her fingers rubbed restlessly on the stone.

Dy Baocia's cavalcade filed off down the hill through the town and was soon lost from her view among the crowded red-tiled roofs. Dy Ferrej, turning back, walked wearily in through the gate and out of sight.

The chill spring wind lifted a strand of Ista's dun hair and blew it across her face, catching on her lip; she grimaced and tucked it back into the careful braiding wreathing her head. Its tightness pinched her scalp.

The weather had warmed these last two weeks, too late to ease an old woman bound to her bed by injury and illness. If her mother had not been so old, the broken bones would have healed more swiftly, and the inflammation of the lungs might not have anchored itself so deeply in her chest. If she had not been so fragile, perhaps the fall from the horse would not have broken her bones in the first place. If she had not been so fiercely willful, perhaps she would not have been on that horse at all at her age . . . Ista looked down to find her fingers bleeding, and hid them hastily in her skirt.

In the funeral ceremonies, the gods had signed that the old lady's soul had been taken up by the Mother of Summer, as was expected and proper. Even the gods would not dare violate her views on protocol. Ista imagined the old Provincara ordering heaven, and smiled a little grimly.

And so I am alone at last.

Ista considered the empty spaces of that solitude, its fearful cost. Husband, father, son, and mother had all filed down to the grave ahead of her in their turn. Her daughter was claimed by the royacy of Chalion in as tight an embrace as any grave, and as little likely to return from her high place, five gods willing, as the others from their low ones.

Surely I am done. The duties that had defined her, all accomplished. Once, she had been her parents' daughter. Then great, unlucky Ias's wife. Her children's mother. At the last, her mother's keeper. Well, I am none of these things now.

Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life? When they have all fallen into dust and rubble?

Well, she was still Lord dy Lutez's murderer. The last of that little, secret company left alive, now. That she had made of herself, and that she remained.

She leaned between the crenellations again, the stone abrading the lavender sleeves of her court mourning dress, catching at its silk threads. Her eye followed the road in the morning light, starting from the stones below and flowing downhill, through the town, past the river . . . and where? All roads were one road, they said. A great net across the land, parting and rejoining. All roads ran two ways. They said. I want a road that does not come back.

A frightened gasp behind her jerked her head around. One of her lady attendants stood on the battlement with her hand to her lips, eyes wide, breathing heavily from her climb. She smiled with false cheer "My lady. I've been seeking you everywhere. Do ... do come away from that edge, now ..."

Ista's lips curled in irony. "Content you. I do not yearn to meet the gods face-to-face this day." Or on any other. Never again. "The gods and I are not on speaking terms."

She suffered the woman to take her arm and stroll with her as if casually along the battlement toward the inner stairs, careful, Ista noted, to take the outside place, between Ista and the drop. Content you, woman. I do not desire the stones.

I desire the road.

The realization startled, almost shocked her. It was a new thought. A new thought, me? All her old thoughts seemed as thin and ragged as a piece of knitting made and ripped out and made and ripped out again until all the threads were frayed, growing ever more worn, but never larger. But how could she gain the road? Roads were made for young men, not middle-aged women. The poor orphan boy packed his sack and started off down the road to seek his heart's hope ... a thousand tales began that way. She was not poor, she was not a boy, and her heart was surely as stripped of all hope as life and death could render it. I am an orphan now, though. Is that not enough to qualify me?

They turned the corner of the battlement, making toward the round tower containing the narrow, winding staircase that gave onto the inner garden. Ista cast one last glance out across the scraggly shrubs and stunted trees that crept up to the curtain wall of the castle. Up the path from the shallow ravine, a servant towed a donkey loaded with firewood, heading for the postern gate.

In her late mother's flower garden, Ista slowed, resisting her attendant's urgent hand upon her arm, and mulishly took to a bench in the still-bare rose arbor. "I am weary," she announced. "I would rest here for a time. You may fetch me tea."

She could watch her lady attendant turning over the risks in her mind, regarding her high charge untrustingly. Ista frowned coldly. The woman dropped a curtsey. "Yes, my lady. I'll tell one of the maids. And I'll be right back."

I expect you will. Ista waited only till the woman had rounded the corner of the keep before she sprang to her feet and ran for the postern gate.

The guard was just letting the servant and his donkey through. Ista, head high, sailed out past them without turning round. Pretending not to hear the guard's uncertain, "My lady . . .?" she walked briskly down the steepening path. Her trailing skirts and billowing black velvet vest-cloak snagged on weeds and brambles as she passed, like clutching hands trying to hold her back. Once out of sight among the first trees, her steps quickened to something close to a run. She had used to run down this path to the river, when she was a girl. Before she was anybody's anything.

She was no girl now, she had to concede. She was winded and trembling by the time the river's gleam shone through the vegetation. She turned and strode along the bank. The path still held its remembered course to the old footbridge, across the water, and up again to one of the main roads winding around the hill to—or from—the town of Valenda.

The road was muddy and pocked with hoof prints; perhaps her brother's party had just passed on its way to his provincial seat of Taryoon. He had spent much of the past two weeks attempting to persuade her to accompany him there, promising her rooms and attendants in his palace, under his benign and protective eye, as though she had not rooms and attendants and prying eyes enough here. She turned in the opposite direction.

Court mourning and silk slippers were no garb for a country road. Her skirts swished around her legs as though she were trying to wade through high water. The mud sucked at her light shoes. The sun, climbing the sky, heated her velvet-clad back, and she broke into an unladylike sweat. She walked on, feeling increasingly uncomfortable and foolish. This was madness. This was just the sort of thing that got women locked up in towers with lack-witted attendants, and hadn't she had enough of that for one lifetime? She hadn't a change of clothes, a plan, any money, not so much as a copper vaida. She touched the jewels around her neck. There's money. Yes, too much value—what country-town moneylender could match for them? They were not a resource; they were merely a target, bait for bandits.

The rumble of a cart drew her eyes upward from picking her way along the puddles. A farmer drove a stout cob, hauling a load of ripe manure for spreading on his fields. He turned his head to stare dumfounded at the apparition of her on his road. She returned him a regal nod—after all, what other kind could she offer? She nearly laughed out loud, but choked back the unseemly noise and walked on. Not looking back. Not daring to.

She walked for over an hour before her tiring legs, dragging the weight of her dress, stumbled at last to a halt. She was close to weeping from the frustration of it all. This isn't working. I don't know how to do this. I never had a chance to learn, and now I am too old.

Horses again, galloping, and a shout. It flashed across her mind that among the other things she had failed to provision herself with was a weapon, even so much as a belt knife, to defend herself from assault. She pictured herself matched against a swordsman, any swordsman, with any weapon she could possibly pick up and swing, and snorted. It made a short scene, hardly likely to be worth the bother.

She glanced back over her shoulder and sighed. Ser dy Ferrej and a groom pounded down the road in her wake, the mud splashing from their horses' hooves. She was not, she thought, quite fool enough or mad enough to wish for bandits instead. Maybe that was the trouble; maybe she just wasn't crazed enough. True derangement stopped at no boundaries. Mad enough to wish for what she was not mad enough to grasp—now there was a singularly useless lunacy.

Guilt twinged in her heart at the sight of dy Ferrej's red, terrified, perspiring face as he drew up by her side. "Royina!" he cried. "My lady, what are you doing out here?" He almost tumbled from his saddle, to grasp her hands and stare into her face.

"I grew weary of the sorrows of the castle. I decided to take a walk in the spring sunshine to solace myself."

"My lady, you have come over five miles! This road is quite unfit for you—"

Yes, and I am quite unfit for it.

"No attendants, no guards—five gods, consider your station and your safety! Consider my gray hairs! You have stood them on end with this start."

"I do apologize to your gray hairs," said Ista, with a little real contrition. "They do not deserve the toil of me, nor does the remainder of you either, good dy Ferrej. I just. . . wanted to take a walk."

"Tell me next time, and I will arrange—"

"By myself."

"You are the dowager royina of all Chalion," stated dy Ferrej firmly. "You are Royina Iselle's own mother, for the five gods' sake. You cannot go skipping off down the road like a country wench."

Ista sighed at the thought of being a skipping country wench, and not tragic Ista anymore. Though she did not doubt country wenches had their tragedies, too, and much less poetic sympathy for them than did royinas. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing with him in the middle of the road. He made the groom give up his horse, and she acquiesced to being loaded aboard it. The skirts of this dress were not split for riding, and they bunched uncomfortably around her legs as she felt for the stirrups. Ista frowned again as the groom took the reins from her and made to lead her mount.

Dy Ferrej leaned across his saddle bow to grasp her hand, in consolation for the tears standing in her eyes. "I know," he murmured kindly. "Your lady mother's death is a great loss for us all."

I finished weeping for her weeks ago, dy Ferrej. She had sworn once to neither weep nor pray ever again, but she had forsworn herself on both oaths in those last dreadful days in the sickroom. After that, neither weeping nor praying had seemed to have any point. She decided not to trouble the castle warder's mind with the explanation that she wept now for herself, and not in sorrow but in a sort of rage. Let him take her as a little unhinged by bereavement; bereavement passed.

Dy Ferrej, quite as tired out as she by the past weeks of grief and guests, did not trouble her with further conversation, and the groom did not dare. She sat her plodding horse and let the road roll up again beneath her like a carpet being put away, denied its use. What was her use now? She chewed her lip and stared between her horse's bobbing ears.

After a time, its ears flickered. She followed its snorting glance to see another cavalcade approaching down a connecting road, some dozen or two riders on horses and mules. Dy Ferrej rose in his stirrups and squinted, but then eased back in his saddle at the sight of the four outriders clad in the blue tunics and gray cloaks of soldier-brothers of the Daughter's Order, whose mandate encompassed the safe conveyance of pilgrims on the road. As the party rode closer, it could be seen that its members included both men and women, all decked out in the colors of their chosen gods, or as close as their wardrobes could manage, and that they wore colored ribbons on their sleeves in token of their holy destinations.

The two parties reached the joining of the roads simultaneously, and dy Ferrej exchanged reassuring nods with the soldier-brothers, stolid conscientious fellows like himself. The pilgrims stared in speculation at Ista in her fine somber clothes. A stout, red-faced older woman—she's not any older than I am, surely—offered Ista a cheery smile. After an uncertain moment, Ista's lips curved up in response, and she returned her nod. Dy Ferrej had placed his horse between the pilgrims and Ista, but his shielding purpose was defeated when the stout woman reined her horse back and kneed it into a trot to come up around him.

"The gods give you a good day, lady," the woman puffed. Her fat piebald horse was overburdened with stuffed saddlebags and yet more bags tied to them with twine and bouncing as precariously as its rider. It dropped back to a walk, and she caught her breath and straightened her straw hat. She wore Mother's greens in somewhat mismatched dark hues proper to a widow, but the braided ribbons circling her sleeve marched down in a full rank of five: blue wound with white, green with yellow, red with orange, black with gray, and white twined with cream.

After a moment's hesitation, Ista nodded again. "And you."

"We are pilgrims from around Baocia," the woman announced invitingly. "Traveling to the shrine of the miraculous death of Chancellor dy Jironal, in Taryoon. Well, except for the good Ser dy Brauda over there." She nodded toward an older man in subdued browns wearing a red-and-orange favor marking allegiance to the Son of Autumn. A more brightly togged young man rode by his side, who leaned forward to frown quellingly around him at the green-clad woman. "He's taking his boy, over there—isn't he a pretty lad, now, eh?"

The boy recoiled and stared straight ahead, growing flushed as if to harmonize with the ribbons on his sleeve; his father was not successful in suppressing a smile.

"—up to Cardegoss to be invested in the Son's Order, like his papa before him, to be sure. The ceremony is to be performed by the holy general, the Royse-Consort Bergon himself! I'd so like to see him. They say he's a handsome fellow. That Ibran seashore he comes from is supposed to be good for growing fine young men. I shall have to find some reason to pray in Cardegoss myself, and give my old eyes that treat."

"Indeed," said Ista neutrally at this anticipatory, but on the whole accurate, description of her son-in-law.

"I am Caria of Palma. I was wife of a saddler there, most lately. Widow, now. And you, good lady? Is this surly fellow your husband, then?"

The castle warder, listening with obvious disapproval to such familiarity, made to pull his horse back and fend off the tiresome woman, but Ista held up her hand. "Peace, dy Ferrej." He raised his brows, but shrugged and held his tongue.

Ista continued to the pilgrim, "I am a widow of ... Valenda."

"Ah, indeed? Why, and so am I," the woman returned brightly. "My first man was of there. Though I've buried three husbands altogether." She announced this as though it were an achievement. "Oh, not all together, of course. One at a time." She cocked her head in curiosity at Ista's high mourning colors. "Did you just bury yours, then, lady? Pity. No wonder you look so sad and pale. Well, dear, it's a hard time, especially with the first, you know. At the beginning you want to die—I know I did—but that's just fear talking. Things will come about again, don't you worry."

Ista smiled briefly and shook her head in faint disagreement, but was not moved to correct the woman's misapprehension. Dy Ferrej was clearly itching to depress the creature's forwardness by announcing Ista's rank and station, and by implication his own, and perhaps driving her off, but Ista realized with a little wonder that she found Caria amusing. The widow's burble did not displease her, and she didn't want her to stop.

There was, apparently, no danger of that. Caria of Palma pointed out her fellow pilgrims, favoring Ista with a rambling account of their stations, origins, and holy goals; and if they rode sufficiently far out of earshot, with opinions of their manners and morals thrown in gratis. Besides the amused veteran dedicat of the Son of Autumn and his blushing boy, the party included four men from a weavers' fraternity who went to pray to the Father of Winter for a favorable outcome of a lawsuit; a man wearing the ribbons of the Mother of Summer, who prayed for the safety of a daughter nearing childbirth; and a woman whose sleeve sported the blue and white of the Daughter of Spring, who prayed for a husband for her daughter. A thin woman in finely cut green robes of an acolyte of the Mother's Order, with a maid and two servants of her own, turned out to be neither midwife nor physician, but a comptroller. A wine merchant rode to give thanks and redeem his pledge to the Father for his safe return with his caravan, almost lost the previous winter in the snowy mountain passes to Ibra.

The pilgrims within hearing, who had evidently been riding with Caria for some days now, rolled their eyes variously as she talked on, and on. An exception was an obese young man in the white garb, grimed from the road, of a divine of the Bastard. He rode along quietly with a book open atop the curve of his belly, his muddy white mule's reins slack, and glanced up only when he came to turn a page, blinking nearsightedly and smiling muzzily.

The Widow Caria peered at the sun, which had topped the sky. "I can hardly wait to get to Valenda. There is a famous inn where we are to eat that specializes in the most delicious roast suckling pigs." She smacked her lips in anticipation.

"There is such an inn in Valenda, yes," said Ista. She had never eaten there, she realized, not in all her years of residence.

The Mother's comptroller, who had been one of the widow's more pained involuntary listeners, pursed her mouth in disapproval. "I shall take no meat," she announced. "I made a vow that no gross flesh would cross my lips upon this journey."

Caria leaned over and muttered to Ista, "If she'd made a vow to swallow her pride, instead of her salads, it would have been more to the point for a pilgrimage, I'm thinking." She sat up again, grinning; the Mother's comptroller sniffed and pretended not to have heard.

The merchant with the Father's gray-and-black ribbons on his sleeve remarked as if to the air, "I'm sure the gods have no use for pointless chatter. We should be using our time better—discussing high-minded things to prepare our minds for prayer, not our bellies for dinner."

Caria leered at him, "Aye, or lower parts for better things still? And you ride with the Father's favor on your sleeve, too! For shame."

The merchant stiffened. "That is not the aspect of the god to which I intend—or need—to pray, I assure you, madam!"

The divine of the Bastard glanced up from his book and murmured peaceably, "The gods rule all parts of us, from top to toe. There is a god for everyone, and every part."

"Your god has notably low tastes," observed the merchant, still stung.

"None who open their hearts to any one of the Holy Family shall be excluded. Not even the priggish." The divine bowed over his belly at the merchant.

Caria gave a cheerful crack of laughter; the merchant snorted indignation, but desisted. The divine returned to his book.

Caria whispered to Ista, "I like that fat fellow, I do. Doesn't say much, but when he speaks, it's to the point. Bookish men usually have no patience with me, and I surely don't understand them. But that one does have lovely manners. Though I do think a man should get him a wife, and children, and do the work that pays for them, and not go haring off after the gods. Now, I have to admit, my dear second husband didn't—work, that is—but then, he drank. Drank himself to death eventually, to the relief of all who knew him, five gods rest his spirit." She signed herself, touching forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, spreading her hand wide over her plump breast. She pursed her lips, raised her chin and her voice, and called curiously, "But now I think on it, you've never told us what you go to pray for, Learned."

The divine placed his finger on his page and glanced up. "No, I don't think I have," he said vaguely.

The merchant said, "All you called folk pray to meet your god, don't you?"

"I have often prayed for the goddess to touch my heart," said the Mother's comptroller. "It is my highest spiritual goal to see Her face-to-face. Indeed, I often think I have felt Her, from time to time."

Anyone who desires to see the gods face-to-face is a great fool, thought Ista. Although that was not an impediment, in her experience.

"You don't have to pray to do that," said the divine. "You just have to die. It's not hard." He rubbed his second chin. "In fact, it's unavoidable."

"To be god-touched in life," corrected the comptroller coolly. "That is the great blessing we all long for."

No, it's not. If you saw the Mother's face right now, woman, you would drop weeping in the mud of this road and not get up for days. Ista became aware that the divine was squinting at her in arrested curiosity.

Was he one of the god-touched? Ista possessed some practice at spotting them. The reverse also held true, unfortunately. Or perhaps that calf like stare was just shortsightedness. Discomforted, she frowned back at him.

He blinked apologetically and said to her, "In fact, I travel on business for my order. A dedicat in my charge came by chance across a little stray demon possessed by a ferret. I take it to Taryoon for the archdivine to return to the god with proper ceremony."

He twisted around to his capacious saddlebags and rummaged therein, trading the book for a small wicker cage. A lithe gray shape turned within it.

"Ah-ha! So that's what you've been hiding in there!" Caria rode closer, wrinkling her nose. "It looks like any other ferret to me." The creature stood up against the side of the cage and twitched its whiskers at her.

The fat divine turned in his saddle and held up the cage to Ista's view. The animal, circling, froze in her frown; for just a moment, its beady eyes glittered back with something other than animal intelligence. Ista regarded it dispassionately. The ferret lowered its head and backed away until it could retreat no farther. The divine gave Ista a curious sidelong look.

"Are you sure the poor thing isn't just sick?" said Caria doubtfully.

"What do you think, lady?" the divine asked Ista.

You know very well it has a real demon. Why do you ask me? "Why— I think the good archdivine will certainly know what it is and what to do with it."

The divine smiled faintly at this guarded reply. "Indeed, it is not much of a demon." He tucked the cage away again. "I wouldn't name it more than a mere elemental, small and unformed. It hasn't been long in the world, I'd guess, and so is little likely to tempt men to sorcery."

It did not tempt Ista, certainly, but she understood his need to be discreet. Acquiring a demon made one a sorcerer much as acquiring a horse made one a rider, but whether skilled or poor was a more open question. Like a horse, a demon could run away with its master. Unlike a horse, there was no dismounting. To a soul's peril; hence the Temple's concern.

Caria made to speak again, but the path to the castle split off at that point, and dy Ferrej reined his horse aside. The widow of Palma converted whatever she'd been about to say to a cheery farewell wave, and dy Ferrej escorted Ista firmly off the road.

He glanced back over his shoulder as they started down the bank into the trees. "Vulgar woman. I'll wager she has not a pious thought in her head! She uses her pilgrimage only to shield her holiday-making from the disapproval of her relatives and get herself a cheap armed escort on the road."

"I believe you are entirely right, dy Ferrej." Ista glanced back over her shoulder at the party of pilgrims advancing down the main road. The Widow Caria was now coaxing the divine of the Bastard to sing hymns with her, though the one she was suggesting more resembled a drinking song.

"She had not one man of her own family to support her," dy Ferrej continued indignantly. "I suppose she can't help the lack of a husband, but you'd think she could scare up a brother or son or at least a nephew. I'm sorry you had to be exposed to that, Royina."

A not entirely harmonious but thoroughly good-natured duet rose behind them, fading with distance.

"I'm not," said Ista. A slow smile curved her lips. I'm not.

CHAPTER TWO

ISTA SAT IN HER MOTHER'S ROSE ARBOR, TWISTING A FINE HAND-kerchief in her fingers. Her lady attendant sat near her, poking at a piece of embroidery with a needle as narrow as, though rather sharper than, her mind. Ista had paced the garden round and round in the cool morning air till the woman, her voice rising, had begged her to stop. She paused now in her sewing to stare at Ista's hands, and Ista, irritably, set the tortured scrap of linen aside. Beneath her skirts, safely hidden, one silk-slippered foot took up a nervous—no, furious—drumming. A gardener bustled about, watering the flowers in the tubs placed around all the doorways for the Daughter's Season, just as he had done for years under the direction of the old Provincara. Ista wondered how long it would be before those drilled habits died away—or would they continue forever, as if the old lady's meticulous ghost still oversaw each task? But no, her soul had truly been taken up, and out of the world of men; there were no new ghosts in the castle, or Ista would have felt them. All the sundered spirits left here were ancient and tired and fading, a mere chill in the walls at night.

She breathed out through pursed lips, flexing both curtained feet. She had waited several days to spring to her castle warder the proposal that she go on pilgrimage this season, in hopes that he would have forgotten the Widow Caria. A pilgrimage in humility, with only a small company; few attendants, simple gear, no royal train a hundred riders long, as he seemed instantly to think would be the minimum required. Dy Ferrej had thrown up a dozen annoyingly practical objections, and wondered at her sudden piety. He'd dismissed Ista's hint that she sought penance for her sins, being under the impression that she could have committed none to speak of under his good guard. Which was, she had to admit, certainly the case for such gross sins of the flesh as he imagined; dy Ferrej was not a theologically subtle man. As Ista's arguments had grown more intense, dy Ferrej had grown more stolid and cautious, till Ista had to bite back a frantic urge to scream at the man. The more fiercely she pleaded, the worse she made her case sound in his ears, she was sure. A galling paradox.

A page trotted across the garden, favoring Ista with a most peculiar bow in passing, a sort of bending in mid-bounce. He disappeared into the keep. A few minutes later dy Ferrej appeared with the page at his heels, and trod gravely back across the garden. The castle keys, mark of his ward ship, jingled at his belt.

"Where away, dy Ferrej?" Ista called idly. She forced her feet to stillness.

He paused and gave her a bow, suitable to her rank and his dignity and girth, and made the page do his over correctly as well. "I am told some riders from Cardegoss have arrived, Royina." He hesitated briefly. "Your argument that I, by my oath to you and yours, owed you obedience as well as protection has been much on my mind."

Ah-ha, so that one had struck home. Good. Ista smiled slightly.

He smiled slightly back, the openly relieved expression on his features edged with triumph. "As my pleas did not seem to move you, I wrote to court to ask those to whom you will listen to add their voices, and their more august authority, to my own. Old dy Ferrej indeed has no right to thwart you, save for whatever forbearance he may be owed—no, that you may bestow upon him in charity—for his years of service—"

Ista's lips thinned at his words. I cry a foul.

"But Royina Iselle and Royse Bergon are your liege lords now, as well as having concern for your safety as their mother, and I believe Chancellor dy Cazaril is a man whose opinion you do somewhat regard. If I'm not mistaken, some calming advice arrives with these messengers." He nodded in satisfaction and moved off.

Ista clenched her teeth. She declined to call down curses on Iselle, Bergon, or Cazaril. Or, in truth, on Old dy Ferrej, as he was pleased to style himself—a disputant's ploy, he was scarcely more than a decade older than Ista. But the tension in her body seemed almost to constrict her breathing. She half believed that in their urgency to guard her from old madness, her earnest protectors would drive her mad anew.

The clack of horses' hooves, voices, and the calls of grooms floated around the curve of the keep. Abruptly, Ista rose and paced after dy Ferrej. Her lady attendant disentangled herself from her embroidery, scrambled to her feet, and pattered after her, making little protesting noises through sheer habit, Ista decided.

In the cobbled entry court, two riders in the garb of the Daughter's Order were dismounting under dy Ferrej's benevolent and welcoming eye. They were certainly not local men from the temple at Valenda— nothing about their clothing or gear was mismatched, crude, or rustic. From their polished boots up through neat blue trousers and tunics, clean embroidered white wool vest cloaks, and the gray hooded cloaks of their order, their clothing shouted of Cardegoss tailoring. Weapons and their housings were clean and meticulously cared for, the bright-work polished and the leather oil rubbed—but not new. One officer-dedicat was a little above middle height, light and wiry. The shorter fellow was deeply muscled, and the heavy broadsword that hung from his baldric was clearly no courtier's toy.

As dy Ferrej finished speaking a welcome and directing the servants, Ista stepped up beside him. She narrowed her eyes. "Gentlemen. Do I not know you?"

Smiling, they handed off their reins to the cluster of castle grooms and swept her courtly bows. "Royina," the taller murmured. "A pleasure to see you again." Not giving her a chance to be discomfited with shaky memory, he added, "Ferda dy Gura; my brother Foix."

"Ah, yes. You are those young men who rode with Chancellor dy Cazaril on his great Ibran mission, three years ago. I met you at Bergon's investiture. The chancellor and Royse Bergon praised you highly."

"Kind of 'em," murmured the stout one, Foix.

"Honored to serve you, lady." The elder dy Gura came to a species of attention before her, and recited, "Chancellor dy Cazaril presents us to you with his compliments, to escort you upon your journey, Royina. He begs you will regard us as your right hand. Hands." Ferda faltered and extemporized, "Or right and left hand, as the case may be."

His brother raised an impenitent eyebrow at him, and murmured, "But which is which?"

Dy Ferrej's satisfied look gave way to a startled one. "The chancellor approves this, this . . . venture?"

Ista wondered what less flattering word he had just swallowed.

Ferda and Foix looked at each other. Foix shrugged and turned to dig in his saddlebag. "M'lord dy Cazaril gave me this note to give into your hand, lady." With a cheerful flourish, he presented a paper folded with both a large red chancellery seal and dy Cazaril's personal stamp, a crow perched on the letters CAZ pressed in blue wax.

Ista took it with thanks, and considerable mystification. Dy Ferrej craned his neck as she broke it open on the spot, scattering wax on the cobbles. She turned a little away from him to read it.

It was brief, and written in a fine chancellery script, addressing her with all her full formal titles; the heading was longer than the body of the letter. It read: I give you these two good brothers, Ferda and Foix dy Gura, to attend you as captains and companions upon your road, wherever it may take you. I trust they may serve you as well as they have served me. Five gods speed you on your journey. Your most humble and obedient, and a semicircle with trailing scrawl, dy Cazaril's signature.

In the same vile handwriting—dy Cazaril's fingers had more strength than delicacy, Ista recalled—was written a postscript: Iselle and Bergon send a purse, in memory of the jewels pawned for another jaunt, that bought a country. I have entrusted it to Foix. Do not be alarmed by his humor, he is much less simple than he looks.

Slowly, Ista's lips curled up. "I think that is very clear."

She handed off the letter to the hovering dy Ferrej. His face fell as his eyes sped down the lines. His lips made an O, but were too well trained, perhaps, to complete the expletive. Ista credited the old Provincara for that.

Dy Ferrej looked up at the brothers. "But—the royina cannot take to the roads with only two outriders, no matter how excellent."

"Certainly not, sir." Ferda gave him a little bow. "We brought our full troop. I left them down in town to batten upon the temple's larder, except for the two men I dispatched to another task. They should return tomorrow, to complete our numbers."

"Other task?" said dy Ferrej.

"Marshal dy Palliar seized our going this way to add a chore. He sent up a fine Roknari stallion that we captured in the Gotorget campaign last fall, to cover the mares at our order's breeding farm at Palma." Ferda's face grew animated. "Oh, I wish you'd had a chance to see him, Royina! He bounds from the earth and trots on air—the most glorious silver coat—silk merchants would swoon in envy. Hooves that ring like cymbals when they strike the ground, tail like a banner flying, mane like a maiden's hair, a marvel of nature—"

His brother cleared his throat.

"Er," concluded Ferda, "a very fine horse, withal."

"I suppose," dy Ferrej said, staring into the middle distance with the chancellor's note still in his hand, "we could write to your brother dy Baocia in Taryoon for a detachment of his provincial cavalry, in addition. And ladies of his household, to wait upon you in full panoply. Your good sister-in-law, perhaps—or some of your nieces may be old enough . . . ladies of his court, and your own attendants, of course, and all the necessary maids and grooms. And we must send down to the temple for a suitable spiritual conductor. No, better—we should write to Cardegoss and ask Archdivine Mendenal to recommend a divine of high scholarship."

"That would take another ten days," said Ista in alarm. At least. Her thrill at dy Ferrej's forced reversal sank in dismay. If he had his way, so far from escaping, she would be constrained to crawl over the countryside trailed by a veritable army. "I wish no such delay. The weather and the roads are much improved now," she threw in a little desperately. "I would prefer to take advantage of the clear skies."

"Well, well, we can discuss that," he said, glancing up at the fair blue day as if allowing her the point, safely minor. "I'll speak with your ladies and write to your brother." His mouth turned down in thought. "Iselle and Bergon plainly mean some message by that purse. Perhaps, Royina, they intend for you to pray for a grandson on your pilgrimage? That would indeed be a great blessing to the royacy of Chalion, and a very befitting purpose for your prayers." The idea clearly held more charm for him than it did for her, as he'd been enormously pleased recently by the birth of his own first grandson. But since it was the first positive remark he'd yet made about her . . . venture, she forbore to wrest it from him.

The dy Gura brothers and their horses were led off to the hospitality of the castle and its stables, respectively, and dy Ferrej hurried about his self-imposed tasks. Ista's woman promptly began gabbling about all the problems of selecting clothing for such an arduous journey, for all the world as if Ista proposed an expedition across the mountains to Darthaca or beyond, instead of a pious amble around Baocia. Ista considered pleading a headache to make her stop her chatter, concluded it would ill serve her purposes, and set her teeth to endure.

*     *     *

THE WOMAN WAS STILL PRATTLING AND WORRYING BY LATE afternoon. Trailed by three maids, she dodged about Ista's rooms in the old keep, sorting and resorting piles of gowns, robes, cloaks, and shoes, trading off the need for colors appropriate for Ista's high mourning with preparation for every likely or unlikely contingency. Ista sat in a window seat overlooking the entry court, letting the endless words flow over her like a drip from a gutter spout. Her headache was now quite real, she decided.

A clatter and bustle at the castle gate announced, unusually, another visitor. Ista sat up and peered through the casement. A tall bay horse clopped in through the archway; its rider wore the castle-and-leopard tabard of the chancellery of Chalion over more faded clothing. The rider swung down, bouncing on—oh, her toes; the courier was a fresh-faced young woman with her hair in a black braid down her back. She pulled a bundle from behind her saddle and unrolled it with a snap to reveal a skirt. With decidedly perfunctory modesty, she hitched up her tunic and wrapped the garment around her trousers at her slim waist, shaking out the hem around her booted ankles with a cheerful swing of her hips.

De Ferrej appeared below; the girl unsealed her chancellery pouch and held it upside down to drop out a single letter. Dy Ferrej read the direction and tore it open then and there, by which Ista deduced it was a personal missive from his beloved daughter Lady Betriz, attendant upon the Royina Iselle at court. Perhaps it contained news of his grandson, for his face softened. Was it time yet for first teeth? If so, Ista would hear of the infant's achievement in due course. She had to smile a little.

The girl stretched, restored her pouch, checked her horse's legs and hooves, and turned the animal over to the castle groom with some string of instructions. Ista became conscious of her own lady-in-waiting peering over her shoulder.

Ista said impulsively, "I would speak to that courier girl. Fetch her to me."

"My lady, she had only the one letter."

"Well, then, I'll have to hear the news of court from her lips."

Her woman snorted. "Such a rude girl is not likely to be in the confidence of the court ladies at Cardegoss."

"Nonetheless, fetch her."

It might have been the sharp tone of voice; in any case, the woman moved off.

At length, a firm tread and an aroma of horses and leather announced the girl's arrival in Ista's sitting room, even before her woman's dubious, "My lady, here is the courier as you asked." Ista swung round in the casement seat and stared up, waving her woman out; she departed with a disapproving frown.

The girl stared back with slightly daunted curiosity. She managed an awkward bob, halfway between a bow and a curtsey. "Royina. How may I serve you?"

Ista scarcely knew. "What's your name, girl?"

"Liss, my lady." After a moment of rather empty silence she offered, "Short for Annaliss."

"Where do you come from?"

"Today? I picked up my dispatch case at the station in—"

"No—altogether."

"Oh. Um. My father had a little estate near the town of Teneret, in the province of Labra. He raised horses for the Brother's Order, and sheep for the wool market. Still does, as far as I know."

A man of substance; she was not escaping some dire poverty, then. "How did you become a courier?"

"I had not thought about it, till one day my sister and I came to town to deliver some horses to the temple, and I saw a girl gallop in riding courier for the Daughter's Order." She smiled as if in some happy memory. "I was on fire from that moment."

Perhaps it was the confidence of her calling, or of her youth and strength; the girl, while very polite, was by no means tongue-tied in the royina's presence, Ista noted with relief. "Aren't you afraid, out there alone on the roads?"

She tossed her head, making her braid swing. "I outride all danger. So far, anyway."

Ista could believe it. The girl was taller than Ista, but still shorter and slighter than the average man, even the wiry fellows favored for couriers. She would sit her horse lightly. "Or ... or uncomfortable? You must ride in heat, cold, all weather ..."

"I don't melt in the rain. And the riding keeps me warm in the snow. If I have to, I can sleep wrapped in my cloak on the ground under a tree. Or up it, if the place seems chancy. It's true the courier station bunks are warmer and less bumpy." Her eyes crinkled with humor. "Slightly."

Ista sighed in faint awe of such boundless energy. "How long have you been riding for the chancellery?"

"Three years, now. Since I was fifteen."

What had Ista been doing at age fifteen? Training to be a great lord's wife, she supposed. When Roya Ias's eye had fallen on her, at about the age this girl was now, the schooling had seemed to succeed beyond her family's wildest dreams—till the dream had melted into the long nightmare of Ias's great curse. Now broken, thank the gods and Lord dy Cazaril; now broken these three years gone. The choking fog of it had lifted from her mind that day. The dullness of her life, the stalemate of her soul since then was just long habit.

"How came your family to let you leave home so young?"

The girl's flickering amusement warmed her face like the sun through green leaves. "I believe I forgot to ask, come to think on it."

"And the dispatcher allowed you to sign on without your father's word?"

"I believe he forgot to ask, too, being in great need of riders just then. It's amazing how the rules change in a pinch. But with four other daughters to dower, I didn't expect my father and brothers to run down the road to drag me back."

"You went that very day?" asked Ista, startled.

The white grin widened—she had healthy teeth, too, Ista noted. "Of course. I figured if I had to go home and spin one more skein of yarn, I'd scream and fall down in a fit. Besides, my mother never liked my yarn anyway. She said it was too lumpy."

Ista could sympathize with that statement. A reluctant answering smile lifted her lips. "My daughter is a great rider."

"So all Chalion has heard, my lady." Liss's eyes brightened. "From Valenda to Taryoon in one night, and dodging enemy troops the while—I've never had such an adventure. Nor won such a prize at the end of it."

"Let us hope the wings of war will not brush Valenda so close again. Where do you go next?"

Liss shrugged. "Who knows? I'll ride back to my station to await the next pouch my dispatcher hands to me, and go where it takes me. Swiftly if Ser dy Ferrej writes some reply, or slowly to spare my horse if he does not."

"He will not write tonight.. .." Ista scarcely wanted to let her go, but the girl looked disheveled and dirty from the road. Surely she would wish to wash and take refreshment. "Attend on me again, Liss of Labra. The castle takes dinner in an hour or so. Wait upon me there and dine at my table."

The girl's dark brows rose in brief surprise. She bow-curtseyed again. "At your command, Royina."

*     *     *

THE OLD PROVINCARAS HIGH TABLE WAS SET EXACTLY AS IT HAD been a thousand—ten thousand—times before, on days when no festival brought relief from the monotony. Granted it was comfortable, in the small dining chamber of the newest building within the castle walls, with fireplace and glazed windows. The same small company, too: Lady dy Hueltar, who was Ista's mother's aging relative and longtime companion; Ista; her principal lady attendants; solemn dy Ferrej. By tacit agreement, the old Provincara's chair still stood empty. Ista had not moved to claim the central seat, and perhaps in some misplaced notion of her grief, none had urged her to.

Dy Ferrej arrived, escorting Ferda and Foix, both looking very courtly. And young. The courier girl entered in their wake and made polite bows. She had faced Royina Ista bravely enough alone, but the atmosphere of staid age here was enough to melt the sinews of strong soldiers. She took her seat stiffly and sat as if trying to make herself smaller, though she eyed the two brothers with interest. The aroma of horses was much fainter now, although Lady dy Hueltar wrinkled her nose. But one more place setting—not the old Provincara's—still stood empty across from Ista.

"Do we expect a guest?" Ista inquired of dy Ferrej. One of the elderly people's elderly friends, perhaps; Ista dared not hope for anything more exotic.

Dy Ferrej cleared his throat and nodded at old Lady dy Hueltar.

Her seamed face smiled. "I asked the Temple of Valenda to send us a suitable divine to be your spiritual conductor upon your pilgrimage, Royina. If we are not to send to Cardegoss for a court-trained scholar, I thought we might request Learned Tovia, of the Mother's Order. She may be a lesser theologian, but she is a most excellent physician, and knows you of old. Such a relief to have someone familiar, should we be taken with any female complaints upon the road, or ... or if your old troubles should flare up. And none could possibly be more proper to your sex and status."

A relief to whom? Divine Tovia had been a bosom friend to the old Provincara and to Lady dy Hueltar; Ista could quite imagine the trio enjoying a gentle jaunt in the spring sunshine together. Five gods, had Lady dy Hueltar assumed she would be going along also? Ista suppressed an unworthy desire to scream, just like Liss in fear of being cocooned in her endless skeins of wool.

"I knew you would be pleased," Lady dy Hueltar murmured on. "I thought you might wish to begin discussing your holy itinerary with her over dinner." She frowned. "It's not like her to be late."

Her frown vanished, as a servant entered and said, "The divine is here, my lady."

"Oh, good. Show her in at once."

The servant opened his mouth as if to speak, but then bowed and retreated.

The door swung wide again. A puffing figure of totally unexpected familiarity entered, and stopped, stranded upon a wall of stares. It was the fat young divine of the Bastard that Ista had met upon the road those two weeks or so ago. His white robes were only somewhat cleaner now, being free of loose detritus, but mottled with permanent faint stains about the hem and front.

His beginning smile grew uncertain. "Good evening, gentle ladies and my lords. I was told to attend here upon a certain Lady dy Hueltar. Something about a divine being wanted for a pilgrimage . . . ?"

Lady dy Hueltar recovered her voice. "I am she. But I had understood the temple was sending the Mother's physician, Divine Tovia. Who are you?"

That had almost come out Who are you? Ista felt, but for Lady dy Hueltar's grip on good address.

"Oh . . ." He bobbed a bow. "Learned Chivar dy Cabon, at your service."

He claimed a name of some rank, at least. He eyed Ista and Ser dy Ferrej; the recognition, Ista thought, ran two ways, as did the surprise.

"Where is Learned Tovia?" asked Lady dy Hueltar blankly.

"I believe she has ridden out upon a medical call of some special difficulty, at some distance from Valenda." His smile grew less certain still.

"Welcome. Learned dy Cabon," said Ista pointedly.

Dy Ferrej woke to his duties. "Indeed. I'm the castle warder, dy Ferrej; this is the Dowager Royina Ista ..."

Dy Cabon's eyes narrowed, and he stared sharply at Ista. "Are you, now ..." he breathed.

Dy Ferrej, ignoring or not hearing this, introduced the dy Gura brothers and the other ladies in order of rank, and lastly, and a bit reluctantly, "Liss, a chancellery courier."

Dy Cabon bowed to all with indiscriminate good cheer.

"This is all wrong—there must be some mistake, Learned dy Cabon," Lady dy Hueltar went on, with a beseeching sideways glance at Ista. "It is the dowager royina herself who proposes to undertake a pilgrimage this season, in petition of the gods for a grandson. You are not—this is not—we do not know—is a divine of the Bastard's Order, and a man at that, quite the most appropriate, um, person, um ..." She trailed off in mute appeal for someone, anyone, to extract her from this quagmire.

Somewhere inside, Ista was beginning to smile.

She said smoothly, "Mistake or no, I feel certain that our dinner is ready to be served. Will you please grace our table this evening with your scholarship, Learned, and lead us in the meal's invocation to the gods?"

He brightened vastly. "I should be most honored, Royina."

Smiling and blinking, he seated himself in the chair Ista indicated and looked hopeful as the servant passed among them with the basin of lavender-scented water for washing hands. He blessed the impending meal in unexceptionable terms and a good voice; whatever he was, he was no country rustic. He tucked into the courses presented with an enthusiasm that would have warmed the Provincara's cook's heart, could he have witnessed it, discouraged as he was by his long thrall to -elderly, indifferent appetites. Foix kept pace with him with no apparent effort.

"Are you of those Cabons related to the present Holy General dy Yarrin of the Daughter's Order?" Lady dy Hueltar inquired politely.

"I believe I am some sort of third or fourth cousin to him, lady," the divine replied after swallowing his bite. "My father was Ser Odlin dy Cabon."

Both dy Gura brothers stirred with interest.

"Oh," said Ista in surprise. "I believe I met him, years ago, at court in Cardegoss." Our Fat Cabon, as he was jovially dubbed by the roya; but he'd died as bravely as any thinner gentleman of the roya's service at the disastrous battle of Dalus. She added after a moment, "You have the look of him."

The divine ducked his head in apparent pleasure. "I am not sorry for it."

Some impulse of mischief prompted Ista to ask, because it was certain no one else present would, "And are you also a son of Lady dy Cabon?"

The divine's eye glinted in response over a forkful of roast. "Alas, no. But my father took some joy in me nonetheless, and settled a dower upon me at the Temple when I came of the age for schooling. For which I—eventually—came to thank him very much. My calling did not come upon me as a lightning bolt, to be sure, but slowly, as a tree grows." Dy Cabon's round face and divine's robes made him look older than he was, Ista decided. He could not be above thirty, perhaps much less.

For the first time in a long while, the conversation turned not on various people's illnesses, aches, pains, and digestive failures, but widened to the whole of Chalion-Ibra. The dy Gura brothers had considerable witness to report of last year's successful campaign by the Marshal dy Palliar to retake the mountain fortress of Gotorget, commanding the border of the hostile Roknari princedoms to the north,

and young Royse-Consort Bergon's seasoning attendance there upon the field of battle.

Ferda said, "Foix here took a bad knock from a Roknari war hammer during the final assault on the fortress, and was much abed this winter—a mess of broken ribs, with inflammation of the lungs to follow. Chancellor dy Cazaril took him up as a clerk while his bones finished knitting. Our cousin dy Palliar thought a little light riding would help him regain his condition."

A faint blush colored Foix's broad face, and he ducked his head. Liss's gaze at him sharpened a trifle, though whether imagining him with sword or with pen in hand Ista could not tell.

Lady dy Hueltar did not fail to register her usual criticism of Royina Iselle for riding to the north to be near her husband and these stirring events, even though—or perhaps that was, because—she had been brought safely to bed of a girl thereafter.

"I do not think," said Ista dryly, "that Iselle staying slugabed in Cardegoss would have resulted in a boy, however."

Lady dy Hueltar mumbled something; Ista was reminded of her own mother's sharp critique when she had borne Iselle to Ias, those long years ago. As if anything she might have done would have made it come out any differently. As if, when it had come out differently in her second confinement, it was any better ... her brow wrinkled in old pain. She looked up to intersect dy Cabon's sharp glance.

The divine swiftly turned the subject to lighter matters. Dy Ferrej had the pleasure of trotting out an old tale or two for a new audience, which Ista could not begrudge him. Dy Cabon told a warm joke, albeit milder than many Ista had heard over the roya's table; the courier girl laughed aloud, caught a frown from Lady dy Hueltar, and held a hand over her mouth.

"Please don't stop," said Ista to her. "No one has laughed like that in this household for weeks. Months." Years.

What might her pilgrimage be like if, instead of dragging a lot of tired guardians out on a road that suited their old bones so ill, she could travel with people who laughed Young people, not brought low by old sin and loss? People who bounced People to whom, dare she think it, she was an elder to be respected and not a failed child to be corrected? At your command, Royina, not, Now, Lady Ista, you know you can't. . .

She said abruptly, "Learned dy Cabon, I thank the Temple for taking thought for me, and I shall be pleased to have your spiritual guidance upon my journey."

"You honor me, Royina." Dy Cabon, sitting, bowed as deeply as he could over his belly. "When do we leave?"

"Tomorrow," said Ista.

A chorus of objection rose around the table: lists of persons and support not assembled, ladies-in-waiting, their maids, their grooms, of clothing, gear, of transport animals, of dy Baocia's small army not yet arrived.

She almost added weakly, Or as soon as all can be arranged, but then stiffened her resolve. Her eye fell on Liss, chewing and listening with detached fascination.

"You are all correct," Ista raised her voice to override the babble, which died in relief. She went on, "I do not have youth, or energy, or courage, or knowledge of how to make my way upon the road. So I shall commandeer some. I shall take the courier, Liss, to be my lady-in-waiting and my groom in one. And none more. That shall save three dozen mules right there."

Liss nearly spat out the bite she was chewing.

"But she's only a courier!" gasped Lady dy Hueltar.

"I assure you Chancellor dy Cazaril will not begrudge her to me. Couriers hold themselves ready to ride wherever they are ordered. What say you, Liss?"

Liss, eyes wide, finished gulping, and managed, "I think I'd make a better groom than waiting lady, Royina, but I will try my best for you."

"Good. None could ask more."

"You are the dowager royina!" dy Ferrej almost wailed. "You cannot go out on the roads with so little ceremony!"

"I plan a pilgrimage in humility, dy Ferrej, not a march in pride. Still . . . suppose I were not a royina? Suppose I were some simple widow of good family. What servants, what reasonable precautions would I take then?"

"Travel incognito?" Learned dy Cabon caught the idea instantly, while the rest were still gobbling in misdirected resistance. "That would certainly remove many distractions from your spiritual study, Royina. I suppose . . . such a woman would simply ask the Temple to provide her with escort in the usual way, and they would fill the request from the riders available."

"Fine. That has been done for me already. Ferda, can your men ride tomorrow?"

The cacophony of protest was overridden by dy Gura's simple, "Certainly. As you command, Royina."

The shocked silence that followed was decidedly baffled. And even, possibly, a little thoughtful, if that was not too much to hope.

Ista sat back, a smile turning her lips.

"I must take thought for a name," she said at length. "Neither dy Chalion nor dy Baocia will do, unsimple as they are." Dy Hueltar? Ista shuddered. No. She ran down a mental list of other minor relatives of the provincars of Baocia. "Dy Ajelo would do." The Ajelo family had scarcely crossed her view, and never once provided a lady-in-waiting to assist in Ista's . .. keeping. She bore them no ill will. "I shall still be Ista, I think. It's not so uncommon a name as to be remarked."

The divine cleared his throat. "We need to confer a little tonight, then. I do not know what route you desire of me. A pilgrimage should have both a spiritual plan and, in necessary support of it, a material one."

And hers had neither. And if she did not assert one, one would surely be foisted upon her. She said cautiously, "How have you led the pious before, Learned?"

"Well, that depends much upon the purposes of the pious."

"I have some maps in my saddlebags that might supply some inspiration. I'll fetch them, if you like," Ferda offered.

"Yes," said the divine gratefully. "That would be most helpful."

Ferda hurried out of the chamber. Outside, the day drew toward sunset, and the servants moved quietly about the room, lighting the wall sconces. Foix leaned his elbows comfortably on the table, smiled amiably at Liss, and found room for another slice of honey-nut cake while they waited for his brother's return.

Ferda strode back into the dining chamber in a very few minutes, his hands full of folded papers. "Here . . . no, here is Baocia, and the provinces to the west as far as Ibra." He spread a stained and travel worn paper out on the table between the divine and Ista. Dy Ferrej peered anxiously over dy Cabon's shoulder.

The divine frowned at the map for a few minutes, then cleared his throat and looked across at Ista. "We are taught that the route of a pilgrimage should serve its spiritual goal. Which may be simple or manifold, but which will partake of at least one of five aims: service, supplication, gratitude, divination, and atonement."

Atonement. Apology to the gods. Dy Lutez, she could not help thinking. The chill memory of that dark hour still clouded her heart, on this bright evening. Yet who owed Whom the apology for that disaster? We were all in it together, the gods and dy Lutez and Ias and I. And if abasing herself on the altar of the gods was the cure for that old wound, she had eaten dirt enough already for a dozen dy Lutezes. Yet the scar still bled, in the deep dark, if pressed.

"I once saw a man pray for mules," Foix remarked agreeably.

Dy Cabon blinked. After a moment he asked, "Did he get any?"

"Yes, excellent ones."

"The gods' ways are . . . mysterious, sometimes," murmured dy Cabon, apparently digesting this. "Ahem. Yours—Royina—is a pilgrimage of supplication, for a grandson as I understand it. Is it not?" He paused invitingly.

It is not. But dy Ferrej and Lady dy Hueltar both made noises of assent, and Ista let it pass.

Dy Cabon ran his finger over the intricately drawn chart, thick with place names, seamed with little rivers, and decorated with rather more trees than actually stood on Baocia's high plains. He pointed out this or that shrine devoted to the Mother or the Father within striking distance of Valenda, describing the merits of each. Ista forced herself to look at the map.

To the far south, beyond the map's margins, lay Cardegoss, and the great castle and fortress of the Zangre of evil memory. No. To the east lay Taryoon. No. West and north, then. She trailed her finger across the map toward the spine of the Bastard's Teeth, the high range that marked the long north-south border of Ibra, so recently united with Chalion in her daughter's marriage bed. North along the mountains' edge, some easy road. "This way."

Dy Cabon's brow wrinkled as he squinted at the map. "I'm not just sure what..."

"About a day's ride west of Palma is a town where the Daughter's Order has a modest hostel, rather pleasant," remarked Ferda. "We've stayed there before."

Dy Cabon licked his lips. "Hm. I know of an inn near Palma that we might reach before nightfall, if we do not tarry on the road. It has a most excellent table. Oh, and a sacred well, very old. A minor holy place, but as Sera Ista dy Ajelo desires a pilgrimage in humility, perhaps a small start will serve her best. And the great shrines tend to be crowded, this time of year."

"Then by all means, Learned, let us avoid the crowds and seek humility, and pray at this well. Or table, as the case may be." Ista's lips twitched.

"I see no need to weigh out prayer by the grain, as though it were dubious coin," replied dy Cabon cheerily, encouraged by her fleeting smile. "Let us do both, and return abundance for abundance." The divine's thick fingers made calipers of themselves and stepped from Valenda to Palma to the spot Ferda had tapped. He hesitated, then his hand turned once more. "A day's ride from there, if we arise early enough, is Casilchas. Sleepy little place, but my order has a school there. Some of my old teachers are still there. And it has a fine library, considering the small size of the place, for many teaching divines who have died have left it their books. I grant a seminary of the Bastard is not exactly . . . exactly apropos to the purpose of this pilgrimage, but I confess I should like to consult the library."

Ista wondered, a little dryly, if the school also had a particularly fine cook. She rested her chin upon her hand and studied the fat young man across from her. Whatever had possessed the Temple of Valenda to send him up to her, anyway? His half-aristocratic ancestry? Hardly. Yet experienced pilgrimage conductors usually had their charges' spiritual battle plans all drawn out in advance. There were doubtless books of devotional instruction on the topic. Perhaps that was what dy Cabon wanted from the library, a manual that would tell him how to go on. Perhaps he had slept through a few too many of those holy lectures, in Casilchas.

"Good," said Ista. "The Daughter's hospitality for the next two nights, the Bastard's thereafter." That would put her at least three full days' ride from Valenda. A good start.

Dy Cabon looked extremely relieved. "Excellent, Royina."

Foix was mulling over the maps; he'd pulled out one of all Chalion, necessarily less detailed than the one dy Cabon studied. His finger traced the route from Cardegoss north to Gotorget. The fortress guarded the end of a chain of rough, if not especially high, mountains that ran partway along the border between Chalion and the Roknari princedom of Borasnen. Foix's brows knotted. Ista wondered what memories of pain the name of that fortress evoked in him.

"You'll want to avoid that region, I think," said dy Ferrej, watching Foix's hand pause at Gotorget.

"Indeed, my lord. I believe we should steer clear of all north-central Chalion. It is still very unsettled from last year's campaign, and Royina Iselle and Royse Bergon are already starting to assemble forces there for the fall."

Dy Ferrej's brows climbed with interest. "Do they think to strike for Visping already?"

Foix shrugged, letting his finger slide up to the north coast and the port city named. "I'm not sure if Visping can be taken in a single campaign, but it were good if it could. Cut the Five Princedoms in two, gain a seaport for Chalion that the Ibran fleet might find refuge in ..."

Dy Cabon leaned over the table, his belly pressing its edge, and peered. "The princedom of Jokona, to the west, would be next after Borasnen, then. Or would we strike toward Brajar? Or both at once?"

"Two fronts would be foolish, and Brajar is an uncertain ally. Jokona's new prince is young and untried. First pinch Jokona between Chalion and Ibra—pinch it off. Then turn to the northeast." Foix's eyes narrowed, and his pleasant mouth firmed, contemplating this strategy.

"Will you join the campaign in the fall, Foix?" Ista asked politely.

He nodded. "Where the Marshal dy Palliar goes, the dy Gura brothers will surely follow. As a master of horse, Ferda will likely be pressed into assembling cavalry mounts by midsummer. And, lest I miss him and start to pine, he'll find some hot, dirty job for me. Never any lack of those."

Ferda snickered. Foix's returning grin at his brother seemed entirely without resentment.

Ista thought Foix's analysis sound, and had no doubt how he'd come by it. Marshal dy Palliar and Royse Bergon and Royina Iselle were none of them fools, and Chancellor dy Cazaril had a deep wit indeed, and not much love for the Roknari coastal lords who had once sold him to slavery on the galleys. Visping was a prize worth playing for.

"We shall steer west, and away from the excitement, then," she said. Dy Ferrej nodded approval.

"Very good, Royina," said dy Cabon. His sigh was only a little wistful, as he refolded Ferda's maps and handed them back. Did he fear his father's martial fate, or envy it? There was no telling.

The party broke off shortly thereafter. The planning and complicated itinerary-listing and complaints from Ista's women went on and on. They would never stop arguing, Ista decided; but she could. She would. You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them. When her lamenting ladies at last blew out the candles and left her to her rest, her smile crept back.

CHAPTER THREE

ISTA SPENT THE EARLY MORNING SORTING THROUGH HER wardrobe with Liss, searching for clothing fit for the road and not merely a royina. Much that was old lingered in Ista's cupboards and chests, but little that was plain. Any ornate or delicate gown that made Liss wrinkle her nose in doubt went instantly into the discard pile. Ista did manage to assemble a riding costume of leggings, split skirt, tunic, and vest-cloak that showed not a scrap of Mother's green. Finally, they ruthlessly raided the wardrobes of Ista's ladies and maids, to the latter’s' scandal. This resulted at the last in a neat pile of garments—practical, plain, washable, and, above all, few.

Liss was clearly happier to be sent off to the stables to select the most suitable riding horse and baggage mule. One baggage mule. By midday Ista's feverish single-mindedness resulted in both women dressed for the road, the horses saddled, and the mule packed. The dy Gura brothers found them standing in the cobbled courtyard when they rode through the castle gate heading ten mounted men in the garb of the Daughter's Order, dy Cabon following on his white mule.

The grooms held the royina's horse and ushered her to the mounting block. Liss leapt up lightly on her tall bay with no such assistance. In the spring of her life Ista had ridden much; hunted all day and danced till the moon went down, at the roya's glittering court when she'd first come there. She, too, had been too long abed in this castle of age and grievous memory. A little light duty to regain condition was just what was wanted.

Learned dy Cabon clambered from his mule long enough to stand up on the mounting block and intone a mercifully brief prayer and blessing upon the enterprise. Ista bowed her head, but did not mouth the responses. I want nothing of the gods. I've had their gifts before.

Fourteen people and eighteen animals just to get her on the road. What about those pilgrims who somehow managed this with no more than a staff and a sack?

Lady dy Hueltar and all of Ista's ladies and maids trooped down to the courtyard, not to wish her farewell, it transpired, but to weep pointedly at her in one last, decidedly counterproductive, bid to make her change her mind. In the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, Lady dy Hueltar wailed, "Oh, she's not serious—stop her, for the Mother's sake, dy Ferrej!" Gritting her teeth, Ista let their cries bounce off her back like arrows glancing from chain mail. Dy Cabon's white mule led out the archway and down the road at a gentle amble, but even so the voices fell behind at last. The soft spring wind stirred Ista's hair. She did not look back.

*     *     *

THEY REACHED THE INN AT PALMA BY SUNSET, BARELY. IT HAD BEEN A very long time, Ista reflected as she was helped down from her horse, since she had spent a whole day in the saddle, hunting or traveling. Liss, plainly bored with the pilgrimage's placid pace, jumped down off her animal as though she'd spent the afternoon lounging on a couch. Foix had apparently worked through whatever stiffness lingered from his injuries earlier in the brothers' journey. Even dy Cabon didn't waddle as though he hurt. When the divine offered her his arm, Ista took it gratefully.

Dy Cabon had sent one of the men riding ahead to bespeak beds and a meal for the party, fortunately as it turned out, for the inn was small. Another party, of tinkers, was being turned away as they arrived. The place had once been a narrow fortified farmhouse, now made more sprawling with an added wing. The dy Gura brothers and the divine were given one chamber to share, Ista and Liss another, and the rest of the guardsmen were assigned pallets in the stable loft, although the mild night made this no discomfort.

The innkeeper and his wife had set up two tables near the sacred spring, in a little grove behind the building, and hung lanterns lavishly in the trees. The thick moss and ferns, the bluebells and the bloodroots with their starry white blooms, the interlaced boughs, and the gentle gurgle of the water running over the smooth stones made a more lovely dining chamber, Ista thought, than she had sat in for many a year. They all washed their hands in spring water brought in a copper basin and blessed by the divine, and needing no other perfume. The innkeeper's wife was famous for her larder-keeping. A pair of servants kept busy lugging out heavy trays and jugs: good bread and cheese, roast ducks, mutton, sausages, dried fruit, new herbs and spring greens, eggs, dark olives and olive oil from the north, apple nut tarts, new ale and cider—simple fare, but very wholesome. Dy Cabon made flattering inroads upon these offerings, and even Ista's appetite, numbed for months, bestirred itself. When she finally undressed and lay down beside Liss in the clean little bed in the chamber under the eaves, she fell asleep so quickly she barely remembered it next morning.

*     *     *

RISING AGAIN, AS THE EARLY LIGHT FELL THROUGH THE HALF-OPEN casement window, proved briefly awkward. Through sheer ingrained habit, Ista stood still for a time and waited to be dressed, like a doll, till she realized her new maidservant would require instruction. At that point it became easier to sort out and draw on her garments herself, though she did ask for help with some of the fastenings. They snagged for a moment upon the problem of Ista's hair.

"I don't know how to dress ladies' hair," Liss confessed when Ista handed her the brush and sat on a low bench. She stared doubtfully at Ista's thick dun mane, hanging to her waist. Ista had, perhaps ill-advisedly, picked out her former attendant's careful, tight, elaborate braiding before bed. The hair's own curl had reasserted itself during the night, and it was now beginning to snarl, and perhaps growl and snap.

"You do your own, presumably. What do you do with it?"

"Well, I put it in a braid."

"What else?"

"I put it in two braids."

Ista thought a moment. "Do you do the horses?"

"Oh, yes, my lady. Snail braids, and dressed with ribbons, and fringe knots with beads for the Mother's Day, and for the Son's Day the fountain knots along the crest, with feathers worked in, and—"

"For today, put it in one braid."

Liss breathed relief. "Yes, my lady." Her hands were quick and clever; much quicker than Ista's former attendants. The results, well, they suited modest Sera dy Ajelo becomingly enough.

The whole party met in the grove for dawn prayers, for this the first full day of Ista's pilgrimage. Dawn by courtesy, anyway—the sun had been up for some hours before the inn's guests. The innkeeper, his wife, and all their children and the servants were also turned out for the ceremony, as the visit of a divine of notable scholarship was evidently a rare event. Besides which, Ista thought more cynically, there was the possibility that were he flatteringly enough received, the divine might recommend other pilgrims to this decidedly minor holy attraction.

As this wellspring was sacred to the Daughter, dy Cabon stood on the bank of the rivulet in the sun-dappled shade and commenced with a short springtime prayer from a small book of occasional devotions he carried in his saddlebag. Exactly why this well was sacred to the Lady of Spring was a little unclear. Ista found the innkeeper's assertion that it was the true secret location of the miracle of the virgin and the water jar a trifle unconvincing, as she knew of at least three other sites in Chalion alone that claimed that legend. But the beauty of the place was surely excuse enough for its holy reputation.

Dy Cabon, his stained robes seeming almost white in this pure light, pocketed his book and cleared his throat for the morning lesson. Since the tables behind them stood set and waiting for breakfast to be served when prayers were done, Ista was confident that the sermon would be succinct.

"As this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, I shall go back to the tale of beginnings we all learned in our childhoods." The divine closed his eyes briefly, as if marshaling memory. "Here is the story as Ordol writes it in his Letters to the Young Royse dy Brajar."

His eyes opened again, and his voice took up a storyteller's rhythm. "The world was first and the world was flame, fluid and fearsome. As the flame cooled, matter formed and gained vast strength and endurance, a great globe with fire at its heart. From the fire at the heart of the world slowly grew the World-Soul.

"But the eye cannot see itself, not even the Eye of the World-Soul. So the World-Soul split in two, that it might so perceive itself; and so the Father and the Mother came into being. And with that sweet perception, for the first time, love became possible in the heart of the World-Soul. Love was the first of the fruits that the realm of the spirit gifted back to the realm of matter that was its fountain and foundation. But not the last, for song was next, then speech." Dy Cabon, speaking, grinned briefly and drew another long breath.

"And the Father and the Mother between them began to order the world, that existence might not be instantly consumed again by fire and chaos and roiling destruction. In their first love for each other they bore the Daughter and the Son, and divided the seasons of the world among them, each with its special and particular beauty, each to its own lordship and stewardship. And in the harmony and security of this new composition, the matter of the world grew in boldness and complexity. And from its strivings to create beauty, plants and animals and men arose, for love had come into the fiery heart of the world, and matter sought to return gifts of spirit to the realm of spirit, as lovers exchange tokens."

Satisfaction flickered across dy Cabon's suety features, and he swayed a trifle with his cadences as he became absorbed by his tale. Ista suspected they were getting to his favorite part.

"But the fire at the heart of the world also held forces of destruction that could not be denied. And from this chaos rose the demons, who broke out and invaded the world and preyed upon the fragile new souls growing there as a mountain wolf preys upon the lambs of the valleys. It was the Season of Great Sorcerers. The order of the world was disrupted, and winter and spring and summer and fall upended one into another. Drought and flood, ice and fires threatened the lives of men, and of all the marvelous plants and artful creatures that matter, infected by love, had offered on the altar of the World-Soul.

"Then one day a powerful demon lord, wise and wicked by the consumption of many souls of men, came upon a man living alone in a tiny hermitage in a wood. Like a cat who thinks to toy with her prey, he accepted the beggar's hospitality and waited his chance to leap from the worn-out body he presently possessed to the fresh new one. For the man, though clad in rags, was beautiful: his glance was like a sword thrust and his breath, perfume.

"But the demon lord was confounded when he accepted a little earthen bowl of wine, and drank it in one gulp, and prepared to pounce; for the saint had divided his own soul, and poured it out into the wine, and given it to the demon of his own free will. And so for the first time, a demon gained a soul, and all the beautiful and bitter gifts of a soul.

"The demon lord fell to the floor of the woodland cell and howled with all the astonished woe of a child being born, for he was born in that moment, into the world of both matter and spirit. And taking the hermit's body that was his free gift, and not stolen nor begrudged, he fled through the woods in terror back to his terrible sorcerer's palace, and hid.

"For many months he cowered there, trapped in the horror of his self, but slowly the great-souled saint began to teach him the beauties of virtue. The saint was a devotee of the Mother, and called down Her grace to heal the demon of his sin, for with the gift of free will had come the possibility of sin, and the burning shame of it, which tormented the demon as nothing had ever done before. And between the lash of his sin and the lessons of the saint, the demon's soul began to grow in probity and power. As a great sorcerer-paladin, with the Mother's favor fluttering upon his mailed sleeve, he began to move in the world of matter, and fight the baleful soulless demons on the gods' behalf in the places where They could not reach.

"The great-souled demon became the Mother's champion and captain, and She loved him without limit for his soul's incandescent splendor. And so began the great battle to clear the world of demons run rampant and restore the order of the seasons.

"The other demons feared him, and attempted to combine against him, but could not, for such cooperation was beyond their nature; still their onslaught was terrible, and the great-souled demon, beloved of the Mother, was slain on the final battlefield.

"And so was born the last god, the Bastard, love child of the goddess and the great-souled demon. Some say He was born on the eve of the last battle, fruit of a union upon Her great couch, some say the grieving Mother gathered up the great-souled demon's shattered dear remains from the stricken field and mixed them with Her blood, and so made the Bastard by Her great art. However so, their Son, of all the gods, was given agency over both spirit and matter, for He inherited as servants the demons that His father's great sacrifice had conquered and enslaved and so swept out of the world.

"What is certainly a lie," dy Cabon continued in a suddenly more prosaic, not to mention irate, tone of voice, "is the Quadrene heresy that the great-souled demon took the Mother by force and so engendered the Bastard upon Her against Her great will. A scurrilous and senseless and blasphemous lie . . ." Ista wasn't sure if he was still paraphrasing Ordol, or if that was his own gloss. He cleared his throat and finished more formally, "Here ends the tale and tally of the advent of the five gods."

Ista had heard various versions of the tally of the gods what seemed several hundred times since childhood, but she had to admit, dy Cabon's delivery of the old story had the eloquence and sincerity to make it seem almost new again. Granted, most versions did not give the complex story of the Bastard more space than the rest of the Holy Family put together, but people had to be allowed their favorites. Despite herself, she was moved.

Dy Cabon returned to ritual and called down the fivefold benison, asking of each god the proper gifts, leading the respondents in praise in return. Of the Daughter, growth and learning and love; of the Mother, children, health, and healing; of the Son, good comradeship, hunting, and harvest; of the Father, children, justice, and an easy death in its due time.

"And the Bastard grant us . . ."—dy Cabon's voice, fallen into the soothing singsong of ceremony, stumbled for the first time, slowing— "in our direst need, the smallest gifts; the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding." He blinked, looking startled.

Ista's chin snapped up; for an instant, her spine seemed to freeze. No. No. There is nothing here, nothing here, nothing here. Nothing, do you hear me? She forced her breath out slowly.

It was not the usual wording. Most prayers asked to be spared the fifth god's attention, the master of all disasters out of season as He was. The divine hastily signed himself, touching forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, hand spread wide upon his chest above his broad paunch, and signed again in the air to call down blessing upon all assembled there. The company, released, stirred and stretched, some breaking into low-voiced talk, some strolling away to their day's tasks. Dy Cabon came toward Ista, rubbing his hands and smiling anxiously.

"Thank you, Learned," Ista said, "for that good beginning."

He bowed in relief at her approval. "My very great pleasure, my lady." He brightened still further as the inn's servants hurried to bring out what promised to be a very hearty breakfast. Ista, a little shamed by the excellence of his effort to have purloined the divine with false pretenses of a sham pilgrimage, was heartened by the reflection that dy Cabon was clearly enjoying his work.

*     *     *

THE COUNTRY WEST OF PALMA WAS FLAT AND BARREN, WITH ONLY A few trees clustering in the watercourses that broke up the long dull vistas. Grazing, not crop farming, was the main work of the thinly scattered old fortified farmsteads along the seldom-used road. Boys and dogs tended sheep and cattle, all dozing together in the distant patches of shade. The warming afternoon seemed to hold a long silence that invited sleep, not traveling, but given their late start, Ista's party pushed on through the soft and somnolent air.

When the road widened for a time, Ista found herself riding with dy Cabon's fine sturdy mule on one side and Liss's rangy bay on the other.

As an antidote to dy Cabon's infectious yawns, Ista inquired of him, "Tell me, Learned, whatever happened to that little demon you were carrying when first we met?"

Liss, who'd been riding along with her feet out of the stirrups and her reins slack, turned her head to listen.

"Oh, all went well. I gave it up to the archdivine of Taryoon, and we oversaw its disposition. It is safely out of the world now. I was actually returning to my home from there when I spent the night in Valenda, and, well." A jerk of his head at the string of riders trailing them indicated his unexpected new duty with the royina.

"A demon? You had a demon?" said Liss in a tone of wonder.

"Not I," corrected the divine fastidiously. "It was trapped in a ferret. Fortunately, not a difficult animal to control. Compared to a wolf or a bull." He grimaced. "Or a man, seeking to plunder the demon's powers."

Her face screwed up. "How do you send a demon out of the world?"

Dy Cabon sighed. "Give it to someone who's going."

She frowned at her horse's ears for a moment, then gave up the riddle. "What?"

"If the demon is not grown too strong, the simplest way to return it to the gods is to give it into the keeping of a soul who is going to the gods. Who is dying," he added to her blank look.

"Oh," she said. Another pause. "So . . . you slew the ferret?"

"It is, alas, not quite so easy as that. A free demon whose mount is dying simply jumps to another. You see, an elemental escaped into the world of matter cannot exist without a being of matter to lend it intelligence and strength, for by its nature it cannot create such order for itself. It can only steal. In the beginning it is mindless, formless, as innocently destructive as a wild animal, at least until it learns more complicated sins from men. It is constrained in turn by the power of the creature or person upon whom it battens. A dislodged demon will always seek to leap to the strongest soul in its vicinity, creature to larger creature, animal to man, man to greater man, for it becomes what it... eats, in a sense." Dy Cabon drew breath and seemed to look into some well of memory. "But when a divine of long experience is finally dying in his or her order's house, the demon can be forced to jump to them. If the demon is weak enough, and the divine strong of heart and mind even in the last extremity, well, the matter solves itself." He cleared his throat. "Persons great-souled and grown detached from the world, and longing for their god. For a demon can tempt a weaker person to sorcery with promises to extend life."

"Rare strength," said Ista after a moment. Had he just come from such an extraordinary deathbed scene? It seemed so. She did not wonder at his air of daunted humility.

Dy Cabon gave a wry shrug of acknowledgment. "Yes. I don't know if I will ever . . . Fortunately, stray demons are rare. Except that..."

"Except what?" Liss prodded, when no more of this rarified theological discourse seemed to be forthcoming.

Dy Cabon's lips twisted. "The archdivine was most disturbed. Mine was the third such fugitive that has been captured this year in Baocia alone."

"How many do you usually catch?" asked Liss.

"Not one a year in all of Chalion, or so it has been for many years. The last great outbreak was in Roya Fonsa's day."

Ias's father; Iselle's grandfather, dead these fifty years.

Ista considered dy Cabon's words. "What if the demon is not weak enough?"

Dy Cabon said, "Ah. Indeed." He was silent for a moment, staring at his mule's limp ears, hanging out to either side of its head like oars. "That is why my order gives much thought and effort to removing them when they are still small."

The road narrowed then, curving down to a small stone bridge over a greenish stream, and dy Cabon gave Ista a polite salute and pushed his mule ahead.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT DAY'S RIDING BEGAN EARLY AND RAN LONG, BUT slowly the barrens of Baocia fell away behind them. The country grew more rolling, better watered, and better wooded, running up toward the mountains just visible on the western horizon. It was still a bony land at heart.

The town wall of Casilchas hugged a rocky outcrop above a stream running clear and chill with spring runoff from the distant heights. Gray and ochre stone, rough or dressed, formed both walls and buildings, here and there enlivened with plaster dyed pink or pale green, or with painted wooden doors or shutters, rich red or blue or green in the angled light of the late-spring afternoon. One might drink this light like wine and grow intoxicated on color, Ista thought, as their horses clopped down the narrow streets.

The town's temple fronted a small plaza paved with irregular slabs of granite fitted together like a puzzle. Opposite it, in what had the look of some local aristocrat's old mansion bequeathed to the order, Ista's party found the Bastard's seminary.

A smaller hatch in the ironbound slab-planked double doors opened at dy Cabon's pounding, and the porter came out. He met the divine's first greetings with discouraging headshaking. Dy Cabon disappeared inside for a few minutes. Then both doors swung wide, and grooms and dedicats scurried to assist the party with horses and baggage. Ista's horse was led within. Three stories of ornate wooden balconies rose above a cobbled courtyard. A white-gowned acolyte hurried up with a mounting block. A senior divine bowed and offered humble welcome. It was Sera dy Ajelo's name he spoke, but Ista had no illusions; it was Ista dy Chalion to whom he scraped. Dy Cabon might have been less discreet than she wished, but there was no doubt it won them better rooms, eager servants, and the best care for their tired mounts.

Wash water was brought almost on their heels to the room where Ista and Liss were guided. No rooms at the seminary were large, Ista suspected, but theirs had space for a bed, a truckle bed, and a table and chairs, with a balcony overlooking the town wall and the stream behind this main building. Meals for both women were brought soon thereafter on trays, with hastily arranged pots of blue and white flowers for the season as well.

After supper Ista took her handmaiden, with Ferda and Foix for escort, and strolled around the town in the fading light. The two officer-dedicats made a handsome pair, in their blue tunics and gray cloaks, swords carried with circumspection, not swagger; and not a few Casilchas maidens'—and matrons'—heads turned as they passed. Liss's stride and height nearly matched that of the dy Gura brothers, a display of youth and health to make silks and jewels look like tawdry toys. Ista felt herself as splendidly attended as ever she had been at the roya's court.

The temple was of the standard plan, if of small scale: four domed lobes, one for each member of the Holy Family, around an open court where the holy fire burned on its central hearth, with the Bastard's Tower freestanding behind His Mother's court. The walls were built of the native gray stone, though the roof arches were finely carved wood, with a small riot of brightly painted demons, saints, holy animals, and plants appropriate to each god cavorting along the beams. For lack of any better entertainment, they all attended the evening services there.

Ista was weary of the gods, but she had to admit, the singing was a pleasure; the seminary contributed a white-robed and enthusiastic choir. The pious effect was only slightly spoiled by the choir leader peeking periodically at Ista for her reaction. Ista sighed inwardly and made sure to smile and nod, to assuage the woman's anxiety.

Three days of riding had tired both people and animals; tomorrow both would rest here. A little elusive ease seemed to have crept in to Ista's spirit—whether its source was sunlight, exercise, cheerful young company, or distance from Valenda, she hardly knew, but she was grateful for it. She slid her body under the feather quilt, finding the narrow bed more luxurious than many more ornate but less comfortable ones in royal castles, and fell asleep before Liss stopped rolling over in her truckle.

*     *     *

ISTA DREAMED, AND KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING.

She crossed a paved castle courtyard in a late-spring or early-summer noon. A stone-arched walk ran around the court's edge, the fine alabaster pillars carved with a tracery of vines and flowers in the Roknari style. The sun shone down high and hot; the shadows were black accent marks at her feet. She climbed—no, floated—up the stone stairs at the end, leading up over the arched walk to a wooden gallery, and along it. At the far end, a room: she passed softly into it without opening the carved door, which seemed to part and close around her skin like water.

The room was dim and cool, but a grid of light fell through the shutters onto the woven rugs, making the muted colors briefly blaze. In the room, a bed; on the bed, a form. Ista drifted closer, like a ghost.

The form was a man, asleep or dead, but very pale and still. His long, lean body was dressed in an undyed linen robe, folded across his chest and bound at the waist with a linen belt. On his left breast, a patch of dark red blood seeped through the cloth.

Despite the wiry length of his frame the bones of his face were almost delicate: brow wide, jaw fine, chin somewhat pointed. His skin was unmarred by scar or blemish, but faint lines pressed across the forehead, framed the lips, fanned from the eyes. His dark, straight hair was brushed back from his forehead, the hairline high, receding; it flowed down over the pillow to his shoulders like a river of night, rippling with tiny gleams of moonlight from the silver threads. His brows were arched, winging; nose straight; lips parted.

Ista's ghostly hands unbound the belt, folded back the linen robe. The hair trailing down his chest was sparse, until it thickened at his crotch. The bird that nested there was fine and fair, and Ista smiled. But the wound beneath his left breast gaped like a small, dark mouth. As she watched, blood began to well from it.

She pressed her hands over the dark slit to staunch the flow, but the red liquid oozed up between her white fingers, a sudden flood, washing across his chest, spreading in a scarlet tide across the sheets. His eyes flew open, he saw her, and he gasped.

Ista woke, shot up, pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her cry. She expected to taste blood, hot and sticky, and was almost shocked not to. Her body was drenched in sweat. Her heart was hammering, and she was panting as though she had been running.

The room was dark and cool, but moonlight filtered through the shutter slats. On her truckle, Liss muttered and turned over.

It had been one of those dreams. The real ones. There was no mistaking them.

Ista clutched her hair, opened her mouth in a rictus, screamed silently. Breathed, "Curse You. Whichever one of You this is. Curse You, one and five. Get out of my head. Get out of my head!"

Liss made a little cat sound and mumbled sleepily, "Lady? You all right?" She sat up on her elbow, blinking.

Ista swallowed for control and cleared her tight throat. "Just an odd dream. Go back to sleep, Liss."

Liss grunted agreeably and rolled back over.

Ista lay back, clutching her feather coverlet to her despite her sweat-dampened body.

Was it starting again?

No. No. I won't have it. She gasped and gulped, and barely kept from breaking into sobs. In a few minutes, her breathing steadied.

Who had that man been? It was no one she had ever seen in her life, she was certain. She would know him instantly if she ever saw him again, though; the fine shape of his face felt burned into her mind like a brand. And . . . and the rest of him. Was he enemy? Friend? Warning? Chalionese, Ibran, Roknari? Highborn or low? What did the sinister red tide of blood mean? No good thing, of that she was quite certain.

Whatever You want from me, I can't do it. I've proved that before. Go away. Go away.

She lay trembling for a long time; the moonlight had turned to gray predawn mist before she fell asleep again.

*     *     *

ISTA WAS AWAKENED NOT BY LISS SLIPPING OUT, BUT BY LISS SLIPPING back in. She was embarrassed to discover her handmaiden had let her sleep through morning prayers, rudeness both as a pilgrim, however false, and as a real guest.

"You looked so tired," Liss excused herself when Ista chided her. "You did not seem to sleep well last night."

Indeed. Ista had to admit, she was glad for the extra rest. A breakfast was brought to her on a tray by a bowing acolyte, also not usual for a pilgrim so laggard as to miss the morning's start.

After dressing and having her hair done up in a slightly more elaborate braid than usual—not looking too much like a horse, she hoped—she walked with Liss about the old mansion. They fetched up in the now-sunny court. Sitting on a bench by the wall, they watched the denizens of the school hurry past on their tasks, students and teachers and servants. Another thing Ista liked about Liss, she decided, was that the girl didn't chatter. She conversed pleasantly enough when spoken to; the remainder of the time she fell without resentment into a restful silence.

Ista felt a cool breath on her neck from the wall she leaned against: one of this place's ghosts. It wove around her like a cat seeking a lap, and she almost raised her hand to shoo it away, but then the impression faded. Some sad spirit, not taken up by the gods, or refusing them, or lost somehow. New ghosts kept the form they'd had in life, for a while, often violent, harsh, outraged, but in time they all came to this faded, shapeless, slow oblivion. For such an old building, the ghosts here seemed few and tranquil. Fortresses—like the Zangre—were usually the worst. Ista was resigned to her lingering sensitivity, as long as no such wasted souls took form before her inner eye. Seeing such a spirit would mean some god breathed too near, that her second sight was leaking back—and all that went with it.

Ista considered the courtyard in her dream. It was no place she'd ever been before, of that she was sure. She was equally convinced it was a real place. To avoid it ... to certainly avoid it, all she had to do was crawl back to the castle at Valenda and stay there till her body rotted around her.

No. I will not go back.

The thought made her restless, and she rose and prowled the school, Liss dutifully at her heels. Many acolytes or divines, passing her on the balcony walks or in the corridors, bowed and smiled, by which she concluded dy Cabon's indiscretion had now been widely shared. Pretending to be Sera dy Ajelo was well enough; having half a hundred total strangers assiduously pretend along with her felt oddly irritating.

They looked into a succession of small rooms crammed with books, packed in shelves and piled on tables: dy Cabon's desired library. To Ista's surprise, Foix dy Gura was curled up in a window seat with his nose in a volume. He looked up, blinked, rose, and made a little courtesy. "Lady. Liss."

"I did not know you read theology, Foix."

"Oh, I read anything. But it's not all theology. There are hundreds of other things, some very odd. They never throw anything away here. There's a whole locked room where they keep the books on sorcery and demons, and, um, the lewd books. Chained."

Ista raised her brows. "That they may not be opened?"

Foix's grin flashed. "That they may not be carried off, I think." He held out the book in his hand. "There are more verse romances like this. I could find you one."

Liss, staring around in wonder at what might have been more books in one place than she'd ever seen in her life, looked hopeful. Ista shook her head. "Later, perhaps."

Dy Cabon poked his head through the door and said, "Ah. Lady. Good. I've been seeking you." He heaved his bulk within. Ista hadn't seen him since they'd arrived, she realized, not even at the evening services. He looked fatigued, gray and puffy under the eyes. Had he been up late in some forced study? "I request—beg—some private audience with you, if I may."

Liss looked up from where she'd been peering over Foix's shoulder. "Should I leave you, Royina?"

"No. The correct thing for a lady-in-waiting to do, should her mistress wish private speech with some gentleman not of her immediate family, is to place herself out of earshot, but within sight or call."

"Ah." Liss nodded understanding. Ista would never have to repeat the instruction. Liss might be untutored, but five gods, what a joy it was to finally have an attendant with all her wits about her.

"I could read to her, in this chamber or the next," Foix immediately volunteered.

"Um . . ." Dy Cabon gestured to a table and chairs visible through an archway in the next room. Ista nodded and passed in before him. Foix and Liss settled back into the cozy window seat.

More discussion of their holy itinerary was due, she suspected, and tedious letters to be written thereafter apprising dy Ferrej of their planned route. Dy Cabon held her chair, then edged around the table to seat himself. She could hear Foix's voice begin to murmur in the next chamber, too softly to make out the words from here, but in the cadences of some strong, striding narrative stanzas.

The divine tented his hands on the table before him, stared at them for a moment, then looked her in the face. In a level tone he asked, "Lady, why are you really on this pilgrimage?"

Ista's brows rose at this utterly blunt beginning. She decided to return straight speech for straight speech; it was rare enough in a royina's hearing and ought to be encouraged "To escape my keepers. And myself."

"You have not and had not, then, any real intention to pray for a grandson?"

Ista grimaced. "Not for all the gods in Chalion would I insult Iselle or my new granddaughter Isara so. I still remember how I was chided and shamed for bearing a daughter to Ias, these nineteen years ago. The selfsame brilliant girl who is now the brightest hope the royacy of Chalion has had in four generations!" She controlled her fierce tone, which clearly had taken dy Cabon aback. "Should a grandson come, in due time, I shall of course be very pleased. But I will not beg the gods for any favor."

He took this in, nodded slowly. "Yes. I had come to suspect something of a sort."

"It is, I grant, a trifle impious to use a pilgrimage so, and abuse the good guards the Daughter's Order lends me. Though I'm quite sure I'm not the first to make holiday at the gods' expense. My purse shall more than compensate the Temple."

"That does not concern me." Dy Cabon waved away these pecuniary considerations. "Lady. I have read. I have talked to my superiors. I have taken thought. I have—well, never mind that now." He drew a breath. "Are you aware, Royina—do you realize—I have found reason to think, you see, that you may be extraordinarily spiritually gifted." His gaze upon her face was deeply searching.

Found reason where? What garbled, secret tales had the man heard? Ista sat back; did not, quite, recoil. "I am afraid that is not so."

"I believe you underestimate yourself. Seriously underestimate yourself. This sort of thing is, I admit, rare in a woman of your rank, but I have come to realize you are a very unusual woman. But I believe that, with prayer, guidance, meditation, and instruction, you might reach a pitch of spiritual sensitivity, of fulfilled calling, that, well, that most of us who wear our god's colors only dream about and long for. These are not gifts to be lightly cast aside."

Not lightly, indeed. With great violence. How in five gods' names had he come by this sudden delusion? Dy Cabon's eager face, she realized, was afire with the look of a man seized by a grand idea. Was he picturing himself as her proud spiritual mentor? He would not be turned from his conviction that he was called to aid her to some life of holy service by any vague excuses on her part. He would not be stopped by anything less than the whole truth. Her stomach sank. No.

Yes. It was not, after all, as though she had not made full confession before, to another god-gripped man. Perhaps these things grew easier with practice.

"You are mistaken. Understand, Learned. I have walked down that road already, to its bitterest end. Once, I was a saint."

It was his turn to recoil, in astonishment. He gulped. "You were a vessel of the gods?" His face bunched up with consternation. "That explains . . . something. No, it doesn't." He grasped his hair, briefly, but let it go unravaged. "Royina, I do not understand. How came you to be god-touched? When was this miracle?"

"Long, long ago." She sighed. "Formerly, this story was a state secret. A state crime. I suppose it is no longer. Whether it will in time become rumor or legend or dead and buried, I know not. In any case, it is not to be shared, not even with your superiors. Or, if you seem to have cause to do so, take your instruction first from the Chancellor dy Cazaril. He knows all the truth of it."

"They say he is very wise," said dy Cabon, wide-eyed now.

"For once, they say right." She paused, marshaling her thoughts, her memories, her words. "How old were you when Roya Ias's great courtier, Lord Arvol dy Lutez, was executed for treason?"

Dy Lutez. Ias's boyhood companion, brother in arms, greatest servant throughout his darkly troubled thirty-five-year reign. Powerful, intelligent, brave, rich, handsome, courteous . . . there seemed no end to the gifts that the gods—and the roya—had piled upon the glorious Lord dy Lutez. Ista had been eighteen when she'd married Ias. Ias and his right arm dy Lutez had reached their fifties. Dy Lutez had arranged the marriage, the aging roya's second, for already there were worries about Ias's sole surviving son and heir, Orico.

"Why, I was a young child." He hesitated, cleared his throat. "Though I heard it talked about, later in my life. The rumor was ..." He stopped abruptly.

"The rumor you heard was that dy Lutez had seduced me and died for it at my royal husband's hands, yes?" she supplied coolly.

"Urn, yes, lady. Was it—it wasn't—"

"No. It was not true."

He breathed covert relief.

Her lips twisted. "It was not me he loved in that way, but Ias. Dy Lutez should have been a lay dedicat of your order, I think, instead of holy general of the Son's."

In addition to bastards, the occasional artist, and other jetsam of the world, the Bastard's Order was the refuge of those to whom it was not given to conform to the fruitful relations between men and women overseen by the great Four, but to seek their own sex. At this distance in time, space, and sin it was almost amusing to watch dy Cabon's face as he unraveled her polite description.

"That must have been . . . rather difficult for you, as a young bride."

"Then, yes," she admitted. "Now . . ." She held out her hand and opened it, as if letting sand pass through her fingers. "It is beside the point. Far more difficult was my discovery that since the calamitous death of Ias's father, Roya Fonsa, a great and strange curse had been laid upon the royal house of Chalion. And that I had brought my children into it, unknowing. Not told, not warned."

Dy Cabon's lips made an O.

"I had prophetic dreams. Nightmares. For a time, I thought I was going mad." For a time, Ias and dy Lutez had left her in that terror, alone, uncomforted. It had seemed then, and still seemed now, a greater betrayal than any trivial sweaty graspings under the sheets could ever be. "I prayed and prayed to the gods. And my prayers were answered, dy Cabon. I spoke to the Mother face-to-face, as close as I am to you now." She shivered still in memory of that overwhelming incandescence.

"A great blessing," he breathed in awe.

She shook her head. "A great woe. Upon the instruction of the gods, as given to me, we—dy Lutez, and Ias, and I—planned a perilous ritual to break the curse, to send it back to the gods from whom it had once been spilled. But we—I, in my anxiety and fear, made a mistake, a great and willful mistake, and dy Lutez died in the midst of it as a direct result. Sorcery, miracle, call it what you will, the ritual failed, the gods withdrew from me ... Ias in his panic put the treason rumor about, to account for the death. That bright star of his court, his best beloved, murdered, buried—then defamed, which was all but to be murdered again, for dy Lutez had loved his high honor better than his life."

Dy Cabon's brow wrinkled. "But. . . was not this posthumous slander of Lord dy Lutez by your husband equally a slander of you, lady?"

Ista faltered at this unconsidered view. "Ias knew the truth. What other opinion mattered? That the world should think me, falsely, an adulteress, seemed far less hideous than that it should know me truly a murderess. But Ias died of grief thereafter, deserting me, leaving me to wail in the ashes of the disaster, mind-fogged and accursed still."

"How old were you?" asked dy Cabon.

"Nineteen when it began. Twenty-two when it ended." She frowned. When had that begun to seem so ...

"You were very young for so great a burden," he offered, voicing almost her own thought.

Her lips thinned in denial. "Officers like Ferda and Foix are sent to fight and die at no greater age. I was older then than Iselle is now, who bears the whole of the royacy of Chalion upon her slim shoulders, not just the woman's half."

"But not alone. She has great courtiers, and Royse-Consort Bergon."

"Ias had dy Lutez."

"Whom did you have, lady?"

Ista fell silent. She could not remember. Had she truly been so alone? She shook her head, drew breath. "Another generation brought another man, humbler and greater than dy Lutez, of deeper mind, more equal to the task. The curse was broken, but not by me. Yet not before my son Teidez died of it as well—of the curse, of my failure to lift it when he was a child, of betrayal by and of those who should have protected and guided him. Three years ago, by the labor and sacrifice of others, I was released from my long bondage. Into the silence of my life in Valenda. Unbearable silence. I am not old—"

Dy Cabon waved his plump hands in protest. "Indeed, no, my lady! You are quite lovely still!"

She made a sharp gesture, cutting off his misconstrual. "My mother was forty when I was born, her last child. I am forty now, in this ill-made spring of her death. One-half my life lies behind me, and half of that stolen from me by Fonsa's great curse. One-half lies before. Shall it hold only a long, slow decay?"

"Surely not, lady!"

She shrugged. "I have made this confession twice now. Perhaps some third occasion will release me."

"The gods ... the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."

Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."

His "Oh" was very small. But, earnest faithful creature, he had to try again. "But to turn away so—dare I say it, Royina—you betray your gifts!"

She leaned forward, lowered her voice to a husky growl. "No, Learned. You daren't."

He sat back and was very quiet for several moments after that. At length, his face screwed up again. "Then what of your pilgrimage, Royina?"

She grimaced, waved a hand. "Pick a route to the best-laid tables, if you wish. Let us go anywhere, so long as it does not return to Valenda." So long as it does not return to Ista dy Chalion.

"You must go home eventually."

"I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again. That escape is blocked. I must go on living. And living. And living ..." She cut off her rising tones. "The world is ashes and the gods are a horror. Tell me, Learned, what other place is there for me to go?"

He shook his head, eyes very wide. Now she'd terrorized him, and she was sorry for it. She patted his hand contritely. "In truth, these few days of travel have brought me more ease than the past three years of idling. My flight from Valenda may have begun as a spasm, as a drowning man strikes upward to the air, but I do believe I start to breathe, Learned. This pilgrimage may be a medicine despite me."

"I ... I ... Five gods grant it may be so, lady." He signed himself. She could tell by the way his hand hesitated at each holy point that it was not, this time, a gesture of mere ritual.

She was almost tempted to tell him about her dream. But no, it would just excite him all over again. The poor young man had surely had enough for one day. His jowls were quite pale.

"I will take, um, more thought," he assured her, and scraped his chair back from the table. His bow to her, as he rose, was not that of conductor to charge, nor of courtier to patron. He gave her the deep obeisance of piety to a living saint.

Her hand shot out, grabbed his hand halfway through its gesture of boundless respect. "No. Not now. Not then. Not ever again."

He swallowed, shakily converted his farewell to a nervous bob, and fled.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY LINGERED TWO MORE DAYS IN CASILCHAS, WAITING OUT A slow spring rain, wrapped in a hospitality that Ista found increasingly uncomfortable. She was invited to meals in the seminary's refectory not of scholarly austerity, but near banquets in her near honor, with senior divines and local notables of the town discreetly jostling for a place at her table. They still addressed her as Sera dy Ajelo, but she was forced to trade the new ease of her incognito for her old constrained court manners, learned in too stern a school, it seemed, ever to be forgotten. She was gracious; she was attentive to her hosts; she complimented and smiled and gritted her teeth and sent Foix to inform the elusive dy Cabon that he must finish his inquiries, whatever they were, immediately. It was time to travel on.

The days that followed were much better, a pleasant ramble through the blooming countryside from one minor shrine to another, nearly the escape Ista had hoped for from her pilgrimage. Moving steadily northwest, they passed out of Baocia into the neighboring province of Tolnoxo. Long hours in the saddle were interspersed with invigorating tramps about places of historical or theological interest— wells, ruins, groves, shrines, famous graves, commanding heights, formerly embattled fords. The young men of the party searched the military sites for arrowheads, sword shards, and bones, and argued over whether the blotches upon them were, or were not, heroic bloodstains. Dy Cabon had acquired another book for his saddlebag's library, of the history and legends of the region, from which he read improving paragraphs as opportunities presented. Despite the odd succession of humble inns and holy hostels, quite unlike anything she had ever experienced as a royina or even as the youngest daughter of a provincar, Ista slept better than she had in her own bed for ... as long as she could remember. The disturbing dream did not return, to her secret relief.

Dy Cabon's first few morning sermons after Casilchas showed the results of his hasty researches, being plainly cribbed from some volume of model lessons. But the next few days brought more daring and original material, heroic tales of Chalionese and Ibran saints and god-touched martyrs in the service of their chosen deities. The divine made contorted connections between each day's tale and the sites they were to view, but Ista was not deceived. His stories of the famous miracles that men and women had performed as vessels of the gods' powers made Ferda's and Foix's and even Liss's eyes shine with a spirit of emulation, but Ista found the divine's message, on all its several levels, entirely resistible. He watched her anxiously for her responses; she thanked him coolly. He bowed and bit back disappointment, but also, fortunately, the temptation to reopen the subject more directly.

A break in dy Cabon's oblique campaign occurred as they wound through the foothills of the western ranges and arrived at the town of Vinyasca, just in time for the mid-spring festival. This feast day fell at the apogee of the season, exactly midway between the Daughter's Day and the Mother's. In Vinyasca, it was also tied to the renewal of the trade caravans over the snowy passes from Ibra, bringing new wine and oil, dried fruit and fish, and a hundred other delicacies of that milder land, as well as exotic fare from even farther shores.

A fairground had been set up outside the town walls, between the rocky river and a pine grove. Mouthwatering smoke rose up from roasting pits behind tents displaying handicrafts and produce of the area's maidens, who competed for honors in the goddess's name. Liss shrugged at the tent of embroidery, sewing, and wool work; dy Cabon and Foix returned disappointed from a reconnoiter of the tent of foodstuffs to report that it did not offer morsels to any but the judges.

Food might be the focus, but youthful energy could not be denied. For all that it was a young women's festival, young men vied for their gazes in a dozen contests of skill and daring. Ista's guard, kindling at the challenges, begged for their commander's indulgence and dispersed to try their luck, although Ferda meticulously apportioned pairs in turn to be at her call at all times. Ferda's sternness eroded abruptly when he discovered the horse races. Having no one else's leave to beg, he sought Ista's, and she hid a smile and sent him off to ready his mount.

"My courier horse," said Liss in a voice of longing, "could make all these country nags look like the plow horses they undoubtedly are."

"I'm afraid the women's race was earlier," said Ista. She'd seen the winner led past, horse and girl festooned with blue-and-white garlands, surrounded by cheerful relatives.

"That was for the young maidens," said Liss, her voice tinged with scorn. "There are some older women getting ready for the longer one—I saw them."

"Are you sure they were not just grooms, or relatives, or owners?"

"No, for they were tying colors on their sleeves. And they had the look of riders."

As Liss did, indeed. She was doing her best to keep her face dignified, but she was rising on her toes.

"Well," said Ista, amused, "if Foix at least will undertake not to abandon me—"

Foix, smiling, favored her with a loyal bow.

"Oh, thank you, my lady!" cried Liss, and was gone as though racing afoot, back to the inn's stable where they had stowed their mounts.

Ista strolled about the makeshift grounds on Foix's arm, taking care to observe any contests in which her own men competed. A contest to gallop with a javelin picking off small rings set up on posts was won by one of her guard; a match that involved leaping from a horse to grapple a young steer to the ground was won by the steer. All brought back their prizes for their officer Foix to hold, and therefore Ista to notice; she felt half courtly, half maternal, and commiserated the dusty, limping steer-wrestler with as many words as she spared to congratulate the luckier contestants.

She had accepted her guard troop at first as an unavoidable encumbrance, and ignored them. But over the days of her journey she had learned names, faces, life stories—most very short. They had begun to look less like blank-faced soldiers, responsible for her, and more like overgrown children. She did not care for this oppressive shift in her perceptions. She did not want to be responsible for them. I had no luck with sons. Yet loyalty must run two ways, or else become betrayal in the egg.

As the contenders assembled for the horse race, Foix found Ista a spot on the slope overlooking the road, above most of the rest of the eager crowd. In a gallant's gesture he spread his vest-cloak, carried over his arm in the warmth of the bright afternoon, on the ground for Ista to settle upon. They had a fine view of the start and finish point, which was a large stump by the roadside. The course ran down the valley road for about two miles, circled a stand of oak trees crowning a mound, and returned by the same route.

Some twenty or so horses and their riders milled about in the wide space on the road. Ferda dy Gura, on his shining black beast, was shortening his stirrups and studying the others when Liss trotted up on her leggy bay. He turned to stare at her in surprise, but no delight. He apparently said something sharp, for Liss's face fell. She looked up in a moment and returned a rather bitten-out remark. Ferda leaned toward her and said something else, longer. She jerked her horse away, flushing; the angry color faded in a moment, to be replaced by a thoughtful frown, then a tight smile.

"Now, what was that all about?" Ista wondered aloud.

Foix, sitting at her feet, smirked. "I believe my brother was seeking to display his prowess to Liss, not to compete with hers. I fear he did not handle his surprise well." He settled back on one elbow with an air of enjoyable interest that did not seem entirely due to the colorful excitement of the upcoming race.

"So why aren't you down there?" she asked him. "Do your ribs still trouble you?"

"No, lady. But I'm no great rider." His eyes narrowed with amusement. "I'll choose my ground, when I do, with more wit." He was not, Ista suspected, referring to contests in a rural festival.

Under the direction of a pair of shouting organizers, the riders arranged themselves in an uneven, jostling line across the road. Vinyasca's town divine, a blue-and-white sash wrapped around his waist, stood on the stump and intoned a short blessing to dedicate the race to the goddess, then held up a blue kerchief. His hand dropped. With yells from both riders and onlookers, the horses plunged off.

At first, the horses clashed for position in a heart-stopping melee— one rider fell—but by the time the leaders were partway to the turning point, the line was spreading out. Liss's bay and Ferda's black both ran near the front of the pack. Ista squinted anxiously into the distance, lips parted, breath coming faster. When the racers appeared again around the mound of oaks, the two shared a clear and widening lead. Ista's party all broke into cheers.

Halfway back along the road from the trees, Liss threw a glance over her shoulder at Ferda and his laboring black, then leaned forward low over her horse's neck. The rangy bay seemed to rise and float over the ground, and the gap between them widened rapidly.

Even Ista found herself cheering then: "Yes! Go! Ha!"

Liss was two dozen horse lengths ahead as she neared the stump. But then, suddenly, she sat bolt upright. Her horse's stride abruptly shortened; in a few more yards the bay was nearly bouncing in place.

Ferda's foam-flecked black flashed past, and Liss eased her reins and let her mount canter demurely after him. Her animal looked as though it was ready to run another race just like this one, and Ista was reminded that a typical courier leg was fifteen or so miles. The cries of the onlookers took on a decidedly bewildered tone. The rest of the field pelted past the finish point, and the crowd swirled down onto the road.

Foix, one arm wrapped around his knees as he rocked, held his hand over his mouth and choked back sputtering noises.

Ferda was standing in his stirrups, astonished and red with exertion and fury. He was nevertheless feted as the winner by the dubious locals, who shot many looks over their shoulders at Liss. Liss put her nose in the air and walked her horse past him toward the town and the waiting stables. Ferda looked as though he wanted to fling his blue-and-white garland on the ground in front of her in a rage, but couldn't so insult the goddess or his hosts.

"If this is a courtship," said Ista to Foix, "might you not advise your brother on his, ah, method?"

"Not for all the world," said Foix, who had gained control of his breathing again. Little squeaks still leaked out now and then. "Nor would he thank me if I did. Now, mind you, my lady, I would throw myself between my brother and a Roknari crossbow quarrel without hesitation. In fact, I have. But there must be limits to fraternal self-sacrifice, I think."

Ista smiled dryly. "Is that the way of it? I see."

Foix shrugged. "Well, who knows? Time must tell."

"Indeed." It reminded Ista quite of old court politics, in miniature. She must advise Liss against creating untoward dissension in her little troop, whether by accident or design. Foix . . . she wasn't sure Foix needed anyone's advice.

Foix scrambled to his feet, eyes alight. "I must go congratulate my brother on his victory. It's not a moment to be missed." He turned to help her up from the ground with a panache that would not have been out of place in Cardegoss.

Later in the afternoon, when Liss had returned to Ista's side, Foix found a wood chopping contest. He tackled this humble but vigorous exercise with his shirt off, before the ladies' eyes. He bore no serious scars on his muscular torso, though his flesh was slightly mottled still, Ista noted. She suspected his broadsword swing would be as handsome as his work with an ax. But he was either not quite as recovered from his injuries as he'd claimed, or interestingly subtle, for he came in a cheerful second. He clapped the winner on the shoulder, bought the man a congratulatory flagon of ale, and departed whistling.

*     *     *

ISTA HAD NO OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK ALONE WITH HER HANDMAIDEN till mid-evening. They withdrew after supper to the balcony of her inn room, a choice chamber overlooking the town square. In the paved space below, a feast had given way to music and dancing, illuminated by hundreds of beautiful pierced metal lanterns scattered around the square and hung from the trees in front of the temple, shedding a lacy light. It was not excessively rowdy yet, for the young women were well chaperoned by their families. Later in the evening, when the maidens had all gone in, Ista expected more serious drinking to commence.

Ista settled in a chair brought out for her; Liss leaned on the wooden rail and watched the dancers wistfully.

"So," said Ista after a time, "what had you and Ferda to say to each other that so inflamed you both, before your race?"

"Oh." Liss grimaced, turning half around. "Stupid things. He said it was unfair for me to enter because my courier horse was too fine and fit for this country competition. As though his horse was not the finest Cardegoss could yield! And then he said it was not a proper contest for a woman—with half a dozen other women there! A race in the name of the goddess! The men in it only rode on their women's behalf—he entered in your honor."

"A trifle inconsistent, I grant you," murmured Ista.

"He was odious. Well! I showed him."

"Mm, but you also showed him half right. Your horse did clearly overmatch the humble beasts of Vinyasca."

"So did his. If I should not have entered for that reason, neither should he."

Ista smiled in silence, and Liss, after a moment, turned once more to watch the dancers. In the country dances here, men and women danced sometimes apart, in hand-clasped circles, and sometimes together, in complicated patterns sung out above the music by a caller. Most were rather vigorous, with a swirling of skirts and petticoats and rhythmic foot stamping.

Ista tried to decide if this flurry between her two principal attendants was a problem, or its opposite. In truth, she did not even know if her handmaiden, so hastily snatched up into her service, was a maiden. The riding girls of the courier cadre presumably took care not to become pregnant, lest they lose their livelihood, but that did not necessarily mean they were sexually abstinent, or innocent, or ignorant. Quite the reverse, since innocence based in ignorance was unfit to protect itself.

In Ias's court, Ista could not help having learned some things about how men and women—or other combinations of participants—could pleasure each other without risking the consequences of children. Ista didn't know how many of these secrets the riding girls passed around in their dormitories, nor how much they were taught by the women who supervised them, themselves former couriers looking out for their charges. In any case, as a farm girl involved in breeding animals, Liss was doubtless better informed of the basics than Ista had been at a like age. But emotions were as like to wreak havoc in a tightly confined court as physicalities.

Ista was also unsure if either dy Gura brother intended honorable courtship, or merely seduction. The social gap between landless minor aristocrat and landed yeoman's child might tend to the latter, but it was not impossibly wide for the former. Especially given a dowry, though that seemed a dubious hope in Liss's case.

But a very little time in Liss's insouciant company had certainly brought both brothers to attention, and no wonder. The girl was beautiful and bright, the young men were healthy and vigorous ... in all, Ista saw good reason not to rush to repair the breach, lest she replace one problem with a much less tractable one.

Still, she probed: "So what do you think of the dy Guras?"

"Ferda was all right at first, but lately he's grown priggish."

"He feels his responsibilities keenly, I think."

Liss shrugged. "Foix, well, Foix is all right, I suppose."

Would Foix be crushed to hear this tepid judgment? Perhaps not. Ista ventured a hint. "I trust no men of my guard have made offensive advances to you. In order to testify to her lady's honor, a handmaiden must herself be above reproach."

"No, they all seem to take their oaths to the goddess most seriously." She sniffed. "Or else Ferda selected them for like-minded priggishness." A merry smile brought a dimple to the side of her mouth. "The good divine, now, he wasted no time. He propositioned me that first night in Palma."

Ista blinked in surprise. "Ah," she said cautiously. "One must remember that not everyone in the Bastard's Order is of that, urn, preference." She considered how to phrase her next question. "You need not endure affront, regardless of any man's rank or calling. In fact, as my dependent, you should not. It is quite proper to complain to me if there is such a problem."

Liss tossed her head. "I suppose I ought to have been insulted, but he managed to be quite charming about it, really. He took his rejection in good part and went off to try the chambermaid."

"I received no complaints!"

Liss snickered. "I don't think she had any. When they came out of her room later, she was giggling It made me wonder what I'd missed."

Ista tried to set a good stern example by not laughing, and failed. "Oh, dear."

Liss grinned back and returned to gazing enviously at the dancers. After a time, Ista couldn't bear it anymore, and gave her leave to join the party. Liss looked delighted with the unexpected treat, and startled Ista a trifle by popping directly over the balcony to hang one-handed and drop onto the pavement. She scampered off.

It felt odd to be alone. Ista drew a few slightly rude, if not unamiable, calls from passing men in the street, which she didn't know how to handle and therefore ignored. The men trod off more rudely and less amiably Liss had exchanged such banter earlier, with easy cheer, and sent their drunken admirers on their way chuckling. This is not my world. Yet she had ruled it once, supposedly, from a clouded distance in Cardegoss.

Ferda dy Gura emerged onto the neighboring balcony, found Ista by herself, glared a would-be serenader into slinking away, and chided her, albeit in the politest terms, for dispensing with her attendant. He vanished again, only to exit the inn below—by the doorway—and plunge into the crowd to retrieve Liss. When they came in sight again, they both had their fists clenched. Whatever hot exchange they were having, however, they muffled before they came back within Ista's hearing.

Ista led the way to bed. The festival continued noisily for some hours, but did not keep her awake.

*     *     *

DEEP IN THE NIGHT. SHE OPENED HER DREAMING EYES TO FIND herself in the mysterious castle courtyard again. This time the scene was dark—this very night? What seemed the same waning moon that was passing over Vinyasca gave a sickly, inadequate light. But the shadows were not impenetrable, for a strange glow hung in the air, like a rope made of white fire. It ran across the court and up the stairs, disappearing through the same heavy door at the end of the gallery. Ista's dream-self scarcely dared to touch it, though it drew her eyes. She followed it again, up the stairs, along the boards. Through the door.

The bedchamber was darker than the courtyard, shutters closed, moonless, but illuminated still; the rope of fire seemed to be rising up from the heart of the man stretched on the bed. The pale flames flickered all along his body as though he burned, coiling from his chest, flowing away . . . and then Ista wondered if she was looking at a rope, or a conduit. And where that conduit emptied out. She glanced back along the floating line of light and was moved to grasp it, let it tow her along to its destination as a cable might pull a drowning woman from the water.

Her dream-hand reached, gripped; the line broke, shattering under her fingers, spattering away in bright ripples.

The man on the bed woke, panted, started half-up. Saw her. Stretched out a burning hand.

"You!" he gasped. "Lady! Help me, in the god's name—"

Which god? Ista could not help thinking, in a sort of tilted hysteria. She dared not grasp that terrifying fiery hand, for all that it reached for her. "Who are you?"

His wide eyes devoured the sight of her. "She speaks!" His voice cracked. "My lady, I pray, don't go—"

Her eyes snapped open in the dimness of the little inn chamber in Vinyasca.

Nearly the only sound was Liss's slow, regular breathing on her pallet across the room. The festival dance had evidently ended, the last drunken revelers departed for home, or at least passed out in doorways along the route.

Silently, Ista swung her feet out of bed and padded to the locked shutters to the balcony. She eased up the latch and slipped out. The only lights were a pair of wall lanterns, burning low, flanking the closed doors of the temple across the plaza. She gazed up into the night sky at the waning moon. She knew it for the same moon as in her vision. The place, the man, were as real as she, wherever they were. So did the strange man dream this night of Ista, as Ista dreamed of him? What did his dark straining eyes see that made him reach out so desperately, and was he as bewildered by her as she was by him?

His voice had been rich in timbre, though scraped thin with pain or fear or exhaustion. But he had spoken in the Ibran tongue shared by Ibra and Chalion and Brajar, not in Roknari or Darthacan—albeit with a north Chalionese accent tinged by Roknari cadences.

I cannot help you. Whoever you are, I cannot help. Pray to your god, if you want rescue. Though I do not recommend it.

She fled the moonlight, locked the shutter, huddled back into her bed as soundlessly as she could, careful not to wake Liss. She pulled her feather pillow over her head. It blocked all vision except the very one she did not want to see, burning in her mind's eye. When she woke again on the morrow, all the events of the previous day would seem a more faded dream than this. She clenched her hands in her sheets and waited for the light.

*     *     *

AS LISS WAS BRAIDING ISTA'S HAIR, SOON AFTER DAWN THE NEXT morning, there came a knock on their chamber door, and Foix dy Gura's voice: "My lady? Liss?"

Liss went to the door and opened it onto the gallery that ran around the inn's interior well court. Foix, fully dressed for the road, gave her a nod, adding a little bow to Ista, who came up behind Liss's shoulder.

"Good morning, my lady. Learned dy Cabon sends his abject apologies, but he cannot lead prayers this morning. He is fallen very ill."

"Oh, no," said Ista. "Is it serious? Should we send someone to the temple to ask for a physician?" Vinyasca was much smaller than Valenda; was the Mother's Order here large enough to support a physician of good learning?

Foix rubbed his lips, which kept trying to quirk up in a smile. "Ah, I think not quite yet, my lady. It may just be something he ate yesterday. Or, er . . . wine-sickness."

"He was not drunk when I last saw him," said Ista doubtfully.

"Mm, that was earlier. Later, he went off with a party from the local temple, and, well, they brought him back quite late. Not that one can diagnose with certainty through a closed door, but his groans and noises sounded quite like wine-sickness to me. Horribly familiar, brought back memories. Mercifully blurred memories, but still."

Liss smothered a laugh.

Ista gave her a quelling frown, and said, "Very well. Tell your men to stand down and leave their horses to their hay. We shall attend the morning service at the temple instead, and decide whether to take to the road again . . . later. There is no hurry, after all."

"Very good, my lady." Foix gave her a nod and a little salute, and turned away.

Early services filled an hour, although it seemed to Ista that they were curtailed, and not well attended; the local divine was rather pale and wan himself. Afterward, she and Liss and Foix idled about the quiet town. The festival tents were being taken down and folded away. They walked along the river over the racecourse, and Foix encouraged Liss to give a blow-by-blow account of her ride, details of horses and riders that Ista had scarcely registered. Liss explained that her remarkable burst of speed, late in the race, was partly illusory; it had merely been that the other horses were starting to flag at that stage. Ista was pleased to note that her five-mile walk did not exhaust her as it had that day when she'd fled the castle in Valenda, and she didn't think it was wholly due to wearing more suitable clothing and shoes.

Learned dy Cabon emerged from his room around noon, his face the color of dough. Ista took one look at him, canceled the day's travel plans, and sent him back to bed. He crept away mumbling pitifully grateful thanks. She was relieved to see he was not feverish. Foix's diagnosis of wine-sickness seemed sound, confirmed when the divine slunk out again, shamefaced, in the evening and took a supper of toast and tea, turning down with loathing an offer of watered wine.

*     *     *

BY THE NEXT MORNING DY CABON SEEMED FULLY RECOVERED, although his sunrise sermon again reverted to a model from his book. Ista's party took to the road while the air was yet cool, fording the rocky river and climbing the hill road out of Vinyasca, heading north.

The country they rode through, on the dry side of the mountains, was sparsely wooded: stands of pine and evergreen oak with scrub between, gray rocks poking up through the yellow weeds. The soil was far too poor for much farming, except in patches and terrace gardens grubbed out and hand-tended, and the thinly populated area around Vinyasca soon gave way to utter wilderness. The road led up and down, one little valley looking much like the next. Sometimes old bridges or culverts, not in the best repair, crossed the streams tumbling down from the distant heights on their leftward side, but more often their horses and mules had to pick their way across boulder-studded fords. They stopped in the early afternoon to picnic by such a stream; the water was this land's one rich gift, clear and pure and cold.

The evening's goal was a reputed holy site tucked high in the hills, the village birthplace of a saintly woman healer, devotee of the Mother, whose miracles had all taken place far from here. Or else, Ista reflected as she rode along, they would have been far more obscure. The scampering golden rock gophers that popped up and chittered inhospitably as they passed would not have written them down and passed them around to attract foreign travelers in after-generations. After the visit, their route would descend to the easier roads in the Chalionese plains. And swing south again toward Baocia and home?

She did not want to go back. Yet how long could she go on like this, trailing these young men around the countryside on random roads? They would be wanted soon for harsher services, as the lords of Chalion prepared for the autumn campaign in the north. Well, then, let us all dodge our duties a little longer. The weather was mild, the season was right; the warm afternoon breathed a scent of mountain thyme and sage. The smell of blood and sweat and iron would overtake them all soon enough.

The track widened, curving around a wooded slope and then descending. Ferda and dy Cabon rode ahead, followed by one of the young guards and Foix. Liss rode close behind Ista, and the rest trailed after.

Ista felt it first as a wave of emotion: hot, confused menace; pain and desperation; a terrible shortness of breath. A moment later, her horse planted all four feet and came to an abrupt, trembling halt. Its head came up sharply, and it snorted.

From the shadows of the trees, the bear charged. Its head was lowered, its great shoulder crest stood up, its bronze fur rippled like water in the slanting afternoon light. It moved incredibly fast for such a bulky, low-slung creature, and its snarl split the air like a saw.

Every horse and mule in the party tried to wheel and bolt. The young guard ahead of Ista, Pejar, swung left as his panicked mount shied right, and they parted company. Ista didn't see him hit the ground, for her own horse reared then, squealing. Too late, she tried to shorten her reins, grab mane. Her saddle pommel hit her hard in the stomach, her saddle jerked away from under her, and then the ground came up in a whirl, knocking her wind half out. Dizzied, she rolled to her feet, missing her lunge for a flapping rein.

Horses were galloping away in all directions, their furious riders sawing at their reins in an effort to regain control. Pejar's horse, its saddle empty, was far down the track already, Ista's horse bucking and kicking in its wake. The young man, flat on the ground, was staring up in terror as the drooling bear loomed over him. Was the animal mad, to so attack? Ordinarily these mountain bears were elusive, shy; and this was no mother defending cubs, but a large male.

It's not a bear. Or—not only a bear. Gasping, fascinated, Ista Staggered nearer. Despite the initial impression of terrifying energy, it wasn't a well bear, either. Its fur, now that she saw it more closely, was mangy, falling out in patches, and despite its large frame, its flesh was thin. Its legs trembled. It stared up at Ista as if as fascinated by her as she was by it.

It seemed to her as though its essential bear-ness was almost eaten away, from the inside out. The eyes that stared back at her had a red intelligence that owed nothing to any animal mind. It has caught a demon. And the demon has nearly devoured it.

And now the rider seeks another mount.

"How dare you," Ista grated. Not even a humble bear deserved this. You don't belong here, demon. Go back to your accursed master. Their gazes locked; she stepped closer; the bear stepped back from the white-faced boy. Another step. Another. The bear-demon lowered its head almost to the ground, its eyes wide and white-ringed, snuffling, backing away in fear.

"Royina, I come!" With a grunting cry, Foix appeared from the corner of Ista's vision, vest-cloak billowing, swinging his broadsword in a mighty arc. His lips were drawn back, strong teeth clenched with the effort of his strike.

"No, Foix!" Ista screamed, too late.

The heavy blade took the bear's head in one blow, and went on to bury itself in the soil beneath. Blood burst briefly from the creature's neck, and the head rolled away over the ground. One front paw spasmed; the big furry body dropped in a heap.

Ista seemed to see the demon with every sense but her eyes, a palpable force, a blood tinged fire, a smell like hot metal. It roared toward her, then, suddenly, scrambled back in a sort of bestial terror. It hesitated a desperate moment between Foix and the boy on the ground. Then it flowed into Foix.

Foix's eyes widened. "What?" he said, in a weirdly conversational tone. Then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.

CHAPTER SIX

LISS WAS THE FIRST TO GET CONTROL OF HER MOUNT AND gallop back; she swung down off her bay, breathless with confusion and alarm. The groaning Pejar pushed himself up to a sitting position and boggled at the beheaded bear. His brow wrinkled in bewilderment at the sight of Foix lying on the ground beside the carcass, which still leaked hot blood. "Sir . . . ?"

The fall from her horse had shaken Ista's stomach, but it was the concussion from the demon's passage that reverberated in her bones. Her mind felt unnaturally distanced from her body. She pulled off her vest-cloak, folded it, and knelt to try to drag Foix's heavy body around and pillow his head.

Liss said, "Lady, wait—was he stunned when his horse threw him? There may be broken bones ..."

"Did his horse throw him? I didn't see." That would explain why he had been first to reach the bear, certainly. "No, he was not hurt then. He slew the beast." More's the pity.

"He slid right over the crupper onto his, um. Backside. I suppose there were no bones to break there." Liss wrapped one rein around her arm to hold her snorting, backing horse, and knelt to help, poking her head up for an impressed glance at the evidence of carcass, sword, and distant head. "Five gods, what a blow." She stared down at Foix. His face was the color of porridge. "What's the matter with him?"

Ferda rode up next, took one look, and vaulted from his horse not even bothering to keep a rein. "Foix! Royina, what has happened?" He knelt to run his hands over his brother's body, searching for the injury, obviously expecting to see bloody damage from some massive clawed swipe. His brows knotted as he found none. He started to try to turn Foix over. Dy Cabon labored up, minus his mule, gasping for breath.

Ista grasped Ferda's arm. "No, your brother was not struck."

"He chopped off the bear's head. Then he just . . . fell over," confirmed Pejar.

"Was the beast mad, to attack like that?" panted dy Cabon. He bent over his belly to brace his hands on his knees and stare around as well.

"Not mad," said Ista in a flat voice. "Demon-ridden."

Dy Cabon's eyes widened, searching her face. "Are you sure, Royina?"

"Entirely sure. I ... felt it." It felt me.

Ferda rocked back on his heels, looking dumfounded.

"Where did it . . ." Dy Cabon's voice trailed off as he surveyed the shaken guard, Ista upright and in apparent possession of her wits. Foix lying as though bludgeoned. "It didn't go into him, did it?"

"Yes." Ista moistened her lips. "It was backing off. I tried to stop him, but all he saw was a mad bear, I think, seeming to menace me."

Dy Cabon's lips repeated the word, Seeming? His gaze upon her sharpened.

Dy Cabon's manifest belief finally convinced the stunned Ferda. His face nearly crumpled in tears. "Learned, what will happen to Foix?"

"That depends"—dy Cabon swallowed—"much on the nature of the demon in question."

"It was bearish," reported Ista, still in that same flat voice. "It may have consumed other creatures before the bear, but it could not have ingested the nature or intelligence of a man yet. It had no speech." But now it possesses a very banquet of words and wits. How quickly would it start its feast?

"That will change," muttered dy Cabon, echoing Ista's own thought. He took a deep breath. "Nothing will happen instantly," he asserted more loudly. Ista did not quite like the too-hearty tone of that. "Foix can resist. If he chooses. An inexperienced demon needs time to grow, to learn."

To dig in, Ista's thought supplied. To tap a soul's strength, to prepare for siege. Did it follow that an experienced demon, fat with many souls of men, could conquer in a breath?

"Still, we should give it as little time as possible to ... as little time as possible. A temple at one of the provincial seats will have the means, the scholars to deal with this. We must take him at once to the arch-divine of Taryoon—no. That would take a week." He stared out over the hills toward the distant plains. "The provincial temple at Maradi is closer. Ferda, where are your maps? We must find the speediest route."

The other guardsmen were riding up, having captured the loose horses and mules. One towed Ferda's mount. Ferda rose to search his saddlebags, but turned back quickly as Foix stirred and groaned.

Foix's eyes opened. He stared up at the sky and the ring of faces hovering anxiously over him, and his brows drew down in a wince. "Oh," he muttered.

Ferda knelt by his head, his hands opening and closing helplessly. "How do you feel?" he ventured at last.

Foix blinked. "I feel very strange." He made a clumsy gesture with one hand—it looked like a paw, swiping—and tried to roll over and stand up. He ended up on all fours instead. It took him two more tries to gain his feet. Dy Cabon held one arm and Ferda the other as he blinked again and moved his jaw back and forth a few times. He reached his hand toward his mouth, missed, and tried again. His fingers probed as if reassuring himself he felt a jaw and not a muzzle. "What happened?"

For a long moment, no one dared to answer. He looked around at their horror-stricken stares with increasing dismay.

Dy Cabon finally said, "We think you have contracted a demon. It was riding the bear when it attacked."

"The bear was dying," said Ista. Even in her own ears, her voice sounded oddly detached. "I tried to warn you."

"It's not true, is it?" Ferda asked. Begged. "This cannot be."

Foix's face went still, inward; his eyes were fixed, unseeing for half a dozen breaths. "Oh," he said again. "Yes. It is ... is that what. . ."

"What?" Dy Cabon tried to make his voice gentle, but it came out edged with anxiety.

"There is something ... in my head. Frightened. All in a knot. As though trying to hide in a cave."

"Hm."

It was becoming apparent that Foix was not about to turn into a bear, demon, or anything else much but a bewildered young man just yet. The seniors of the party, supporting Foix, all went a short distance away and sat on the ground to consult the maps. A couple of the guardsmen discussed the carcass in low voices and decided its diseased skin was not worth the peeling, though they collected the teeth and claws for souvenirs, then hauled it away off the road.

Ferda sorted out his map of the region and smoothed it over a wide, flat stone. His finger traced a line. "I believe our most efficient route to Maradi is to stay on this very track for another thirty miles or so, to this village. Then turn and descend almost due east."

Dy Cabon glanced up toward the sun, already fallen behind the wall of mountains to their west, though the sky still glowed deep blue. "We'll not make it there before this night falls."

Ista dared to touch the map with one white finger. "If we continue only a little, we'll come to that crossroad up to the old saint's village that we intended to visit. We've already bespoken food and fodder and beds there. And we could start again early." And there would be strong walls between them and any more bears. Although not between them and the demon—a reflection she resolved to keep to herself.

Ferda frowned. "Six extra miles each way. More, if we mistake the track again." Just such a deceptive fork in the road had cost them an hour, earlier in the day. "Half a day's travel lost. We carry enough food and fodder for one night—we can restock where we turn east." He hesitated, and said more cautiously, "That is, if you are willing to endure the discomforts of a night in camp, Royina. The weather looks to continue fair, at least."

Ista fell silent. She misliked the scheme, but misliked still more the hint that she would put her comfort above her loyal officer's clear need. Split the party, send the speediest riders on ahead with Foix? She misliked that idea as well. "I... have no preference."

"How do you feel about riding?" Ferda asked his brother.

Foix was sitting with his brow furrowed and an inward look, like a man with a stomachache. "Huh? Oh. No worse than usual. My rump hurts, but that has nothing to do with . . . with the other thing." He was quiet a moment longer, then added, "Except indirectly."

Ferda said in a voice of military decision, "Let us push on as far and fast as we can tonight, then."

A murmur of agreement ran around the little council squatting by the stone. Ista pressed her lips closed.

They put Foix back up on his nervous horse—it took two men to hold the beast, and it sidled and snorted at first, but then settled as they set out again. Dy Cabon and Ferda rode close to Foix on either side. Protectively. Too late.

Ista stared at their backs as they continued down the road, such as it was. Her sense of the demon's presence, briefly so searing, was muted again. Was it occluded by matter, or perhaps deliberately hiding itself within its new fleshly lair? Or was it her deficiency? She had suppressed her sensitivity for so long, extending it again was like stretching a withered muscle. It hurt.

Lord dy Cazaril claimed that the world of the spirit and the world of matter existed side by side, like two sides of a coin, or a wall; the gods were not far away in some other space, but in this very one, continuously, just around some strange corner of perception. A presence as pervasive and invisible as sunlight on skin, as though one stood naked and blindfolded in an unimaginable noon.

Demons as well, though they were more like thieves putting a hand through a window. What occupied Foix's space, now? If both brothers came up behind her, would she know which was which without looking?

She closed her eyes, to test her perceptions. The creak of her saddle, the plodding of the other mounts, the faint crack as a hoof struck a stone; the smell of her horse, of her sweat, of the cool breath of pines . . . nothing more, now.

And then she wondered what the demon saw when it looked at Ista.

*     *     *

THEY MADE CAMP BY ANOTHER CLEAR STREAM WHEN THERE WAS barely enough light left to find firewood. The men gathered plenty; Ista suspected she was not the only one worried about wildlife. They also built her and Liss a little bower, of sorts, with logs and branches, floored with a hay of hastily cut yellow grasses. It did not look especially bear-proof to her.

Foix rejected being treated as an invalid and insisted on gathering wood as well. Ista watched him discreetly, and so, she noticed, did dy Cabon. Foix heaved over one good-sized log only to find it rotten, crawling with grubs. He stared down at his find with a very odd look on his face.

"Learned," he said quietly.

"Yes, Foix?"

"Will I turn into a bear? Or into a madman who thinks he's a bear?"

"No. Neither," said dy Cabon firmly. Though whether truly, Ista suspected even he did not know. "That will wear off."

Dy Cabon spoke to reassure, but did not seem to partake of the comfort himself. Because if the demon became less bear like, it could only be because it was growing more Foix-like?

"Good," sighed Foix. His face screwed up. "Because those look delicious." He kicked the log back over again with rather more force than was necessary and went to look for a drier deadfall.

Dy Cabon lingered by Ista. "Lady . . ."

Five gods, his plaintive tone of voice was just like Foix's, a moment ago. She barely turned her soothing Yes, dy Cabon? into a sharper, "What?" lest he take her for mocking him.

"About your dreams. The god-touched ones you had, so long ago."

Not long ago enough. "What about them?"

"Well. . . how do you know when dreams are real? How do you tell good prophecy from, say, bad fish?"

"There is nothing good about prophecy. All I can tell you is, they are unmistakable. As if more real than memory, not less." Her voice went harsh in sudden suspicion. "Why do you ask?"

He tapped his fingers nervously against the side of one broad hip. "I thought you might instruct me."

"What, the conductor conducted?" She tried to turn this off lightly, though her stomach chilled. "The Temple would disapprove."

"I think not so, lady. What apprentice would not seek advice from a master, if he could? If he found himself with a commission far beyond his skills?"

Her eyes narrowed. Five gods—and never had the oath seemed more apropos—what dreams had come to him? Did a lean man lie in a sleep like death, on a bed in a dark chamber . . . she would not even hint of that secret vision. "What dreams have you been having?"

"I dreamed of you."

"Well, so. People do dream of those they know."

"Yes, but this was before. Once, before I ever saw you that first day out riding on the road near Valenda."

"Perhaps . . . were you ever in Cardegoss as a child, or elsewhere, when Ias and I made a progress? Your father, or someone, might have put you on his shoulder to see the roya's procession."

He shook his head. "Was Ser dy Ferrej with you then? Did you wear lilac and black, ride a horse led by a groom down a country road? Were you forty, sad and pale? I think not, Royina." He looked away briefly. "The ferret's demon knew you, too. What did it see that I did not?"

"I have no idea. Did you ask it before you dispatched it?"

He grimaced and shook his head. "I did not know enough to ask. Then. The next dreams came later, more strongly."

"What dreams, Learned?" It was almost a whisper.

"I dreamed of that dinner in the castle in Valenda. Of us, out on the road, with almost this company. Sometimes Liss and Ferda and Foix were there, sometimes others." He looked down, looked up, confessed: "The temple in Valenda never sent me to be your conductor. They only sent me up to convey Learned Tovia's apologies, and to say that she would call on you as soon as she returned. I stole your pilgrimage, Royina. I thought the god was telling me to."

She opened her mouth, to do no more than breathe out. She made her voice very neutral, letting her hands grasp the sapling she leaned against, behind her back, to still their trembling. "Say on."

"I prayed. I drew us to Casilchas so that I might consult my superiors. You . . . spoke to me. The dreams ceased. My superiors suggested I bestir myself to really be your spiritual conductor, since I had gone so far already, and lady, I have tried."

She opened a hand to assuage his concern, though she was not sure he could see it in the failing light. So, his peculiar convictions about her spiritual gifts, back in Casilchas, had come from a more direct source than old gossip. Through the sparse trees, the firelight was starting up from two pits dug in the sandy stream bank, in cheery defiance of the gathering night. The fires looked . . . small, at the feet of these great hills. The Bastard's Teeth, the range was called, for in the high passes they bit travelers.

"But then the dreams started up again, a few nights past. New ones. Or a new one, three times. A road, much like this. Country much like this." His white sleeve waved in the shadows. "I am overtaken by a column of men, Roknari soldiers, Quadrene heretics. They pull me from my mule. They—" He stopped abruptly.

"Not all prophetic dreams come true. Or come true as first seen," said Ista cautiously. His distress was very real, it seemed to her, and very deep.

"No, they could not be." He grew almost eager. "For they slew me in a different cruel way each night." His voice slowed in doubt. "They always started with the thumbs, though."

And she and Liss had laughed at his wine-sickness . . . drowning dreams, was he? That didn't work. She'd tried it herself, long ago in Ias's court. "You should have told me this! Much earlier!"

"There cannot be Roknari here, now. They would have to cross two provinces to reach this place. The whole country would be aroused." His voice seemed to be trying to push back the darkness with reason. "That dream must belong to some other, later future."

You cannot push back the darkness with reason. You have to use fire. Where had that thought come from? "Or no future. Some dreams are but warnings. Heed them, and their menace empties out."

His voice went very small, in the darkness. "I fear I have failed the gods, and this is to be my punishment."

"No," said Ista coldly. "The gods are more ruthless than that. If they use you up in their works, they have no more interest in you than a painter in a crusted and broken brush, to be cast aside and replaced." She hesitated. "If they still lash and drive you, you may be sure it means they still want something from you. Something they haven't got yet."

"Oh," he said, no louder.

She gripped the tree. She wanted to pace. Could they get off this road? It was farther back to Vinyasca, now, than it was to go forward. Could they strike down this streambed to the plains? She imagined waterfalls, thorn tangles, sudden rock faces over which it was impossible either to ride or lead their mounts. They would think her mad to insist upon such a wild course. She shivered.

"You are right about the Roknari, though," she said. "Single spies, or small groups in disguise, might penetrate this far south unseen. But nothing strong enough to overcome our well-armed company, in any case. Even Foix is not out of the muster."

"True," he allowed.

Ista bit her lip, looking around to be quite sure the young man had gone out of earshot back to the camp. "What about Foix, Learned? For a moment, I saw—it was as if I saw the bear's spirit. It was more riddled and decayed than its body, writhing in an agony of putrefaction. Will Foix . . . ?"

"His danger is real, but not imminent." Dy Cabon's voice firmed on this surer ground, and his white-clad bulk straightened. "What he has gained by accident, some sinful or shortsighted or desperate men actually seek by design. To capture a demon, and feed it slowly on themselves in exchange for its aid—so men turn sorcerers. For a time. Quite a long time, some of them, if they are clever or careful."

"Who ends up in charge, then?"

He cleared his throat. "Almost always the demon. Eventually. But with this young elemental, Foix would be master at first, if he made the attempt. I do not mean to discuss this with him, or plant the suggestion, and I beg you will be careful, too, Royina. The more . . . intertwined they become, the harder they will be to separate."

He added lowly, "But where are they coming from? What rip in hell is leaking them back into the world in such sudden numbers? My order is called to be guardians upon that march, as surely as troops of the Son's or the Daughter's Orders ride out in the sun armed with swords and shields against more material evil. The fifth god's servants walk singly in the darkness, armed with our wits." He heaved a disconsolate sigh. "I could wish for a better weapon, just now."

"Sleep will sharpen all our wits, we must hope," said Ista. "Perhaps the morning will bring some better counsel."

"I pray it may be so, Royina."

He walked her back through the brush to her bower. Ista forbore to wish him pleasant dreams. Or any dreams at all.

*     *     *

THE ANXIOUS FERDA ROUSED EVERYONE AT DAWN EXCEPT HIS brother. Only when breakfast was ready to be served did he squat beside that bedroll and carefully touch the heavy sleeping form upon the shoulder. Liss, passing by Ista lugging a saddle, paused and watched this worried tenderness, and her lips pinched with distress.

They wasted little time eating, breaking camp, and taking again to the stony, winding track. The irregular hills discouraged speed, but Ferda led at a steady pace that ate the miles nonetheless. The morning and the road slowly fell behind them.

The company was largely silent, pushing along lost in who-knew-what sober reflections. Ista could not decide which development she liked least, Foix's acquisition or dy Cabon's dreams. Foix's bear-demon might be mischance, if chance it was. Dy Cabon's dreams were plain warnings, perhaps deceptive to heed, but perilous to ignore.

The concatenation of the uncanny beginning to swirl about Ista set her neck hairs standing and her teeth on edge. She felt a disturbing sense of having stepped into a pattern not yet perceived. Yes. We turn for home at Maradi.

Her silent decision brought no relief; the tension remained, like a cable strained to snapping. Like the breathless pressure that had shot her out the postern gate and down the road in court mourning and silk slippers, that morning in Valenda. I must move. I cannot be still.

Where? Why!

The hill country here was even drier than farther south, though the streams still ran full from the spring melt, above. The gnarled pines grew smaller and more scattered, and long bony washes almost devoid of vegetation became more frequent. When they topped a rise, dy Cabon glanced back over their track. He pulled his mule up abruptly. "What's that?"

Ista twisted in her saddle. Just coming over the distant crest of the descending ridge behind them was a rider—no, riders.

Foix called, "Ferda? You have the better eyes."

Ferda wheeled his horse and squinted in the bright light; the sun was growing hotter, climbing toward noon. "Men on horses." His expression grew grim. "Armed—I see chain mail—spears. Their armor is in the Roknari style ... Bastard's dem—five gods! Those are the tabards of the princedom of Jokona. I can see the white birds on the green even from here."

They still looked like green blurs to Ista, though she squinted, too. She said uneasily, "What are they doing here, in this peaceful land? Are they merchant's guards, leading a caravan? Emissaries?"

Ferda stood in his stirrups, craned his neck. "Soldiers. All soldiers." He glanced around at his little company and touched his sword hilt. "Well, so are we."

"Ah . . . Ferda?" said Foix after a moment. "They're still coming."

Ista could see his lips move as he kept count. Rank on rank, riding two or three abreast, the interlopers poured over the lip of the hill. Ista's own count had passed thirty when dy Cabon, whose face had gone the color of lard, signed himself and looked across at her. He had to cough before he could form words. They seemed to catch on his dry lips. "Royina? I do not think we want to meet these men."

"I am certain of it, Learned." Her heart was starting to pound.

The column's leaders had seen them, too. Men pointed and yelled.

Ferda dropped his arm and shouted back over his company, "Ride on!"

He led the way down the track at a brisk canter. The baggage mules resisted being towed at this speed, and slowed the men who had them in charge. Dy Cabon's more willing mule did better at first, but it grunted with each stride at the jouncing weight it bore. So did dy Cabon. When they reached the top of the next rise, half a mile on, they could see that the Jokonan column had dispatched a squad of a double dozen riders out ahead, galloping with the clear intent of overtaking Ista's party.

Now it was a race, and they were not fitted for it. The baggage mules might be abandoned, but what of the divine's beast? Its nostrils were round and red, its white hair was already starting to lather at its neck and shoulder and between its hind legs, and despite dy Cabon's kicks and shouts it kept breaking from a canter into a bone-jarring fast trot. It shook dy Cabon like a pudding; his face went from scarlet to pale green and back again. He looked close to vomiting from the exertion and terror.

If this was the raiding column it appeared—and how in five gods' names had it appeared from the south of them, so unheralded?—Ista might cry ransom for herself and the Daughter's men. But a divine of the fifth god would be treated as heretic and defiled—they would indeed start by cutting off dy Cabon's thumbs. And then his tongue, and then his genitals. After that, depending on their time and ingenuity, whatever ghastly death the Quadrene soldiers could devise, or urge each other on to—hanging, impalement, something even worse. Three nights he'd dreamed of this, dy Cabon had said, each different. Ista wondered what death could possibly be more grotesque than impalement.

The country offered poor cover. The trees were small, and even if any overhung the road, she wasn't sure they could boost the wheezing divine up one. His white robes, dirty as they were, would shine like a beacon through the leaves. They'd show up for half a mile through the scrub, as would his mule. But then they topped another rise, temporarily out of sight of their pursuers, and at the bottom of this wash . . .

She lashed her horse forward beside Ferda's, and shouted, "The divine—he must not be taken!"

He looked back over his company and signed agreement. "Exchange horses?" he cried doubtfully.

"Not good enough," she shouted back. She pointed ahead. "Hide him in the culvert!"

She slowed her horse, letting the others pass her, till dy Cabon's mule labored up. Foix and Liss reined back with her.

"Dy Cabon!" she cried. "Did you ever dream about being pulled out of a culvert?"

"No, lady!" he quavered back between jounces.

"Hide you in that one, then, till they all pass over you." Foix—Foix was in hideous danger if taken, too, if the Quadrenes should learn of his demon affliction. They might well take him for a sorcerer and burn him alive. "Did you dream of Foix with you?"

"No!"

"Foix! Can you stay with him—help him? Keep both your heads down and don't come out, no matter what!"

Foix glanced down the track at the cover she pointed to and seemed to understand the plan at once. "Aye, Royina!"

They scraped to a halt over the culvert. The streamlet here did not fill it full, though it would be a cramped, wet, uncomfortable crouch, especially for dy Cabon's quivering bulk. Foix swung down, threw his reins to Pejar, and caught the gasping divine as he half fell from his animal. "Wrap this around you, hide those white robes." Foix tossed his gray cloak around dy Cabon, hustling him off the road. Another guard began grimly towing dy Cabon's mule; relieved of its great burden, it broke again into a canter. A canter wasn't going to be enough, Ista thought.

"Look after each other!" she cried in desperation. The pair was already scrambling into the low mouth of the culvert, and she could not tell if they heard her or not.

They started forward once again. There was another here who must not be taken by the rough soldiery, she thought. "Liss!" she called. The girl rode nearer. Ista's horse was dark with sweat, blowing; Liss's tall bay still cantered easily.

"Ride ahead—"

"Royina, I won't leave you—"

"Fool girl, listen! Ride ahead and carry warning to anyone you pass, Jokonan raiders are coming. Raise the countryside! Get help and send it back!"

Understanding dawned in her face. "Aye, Royina!"

"Ride like the wind! Don't look back!"

Liss, face set, saluted her and bent over her horse's neck. Its stride lengthened. The three or four galloping miles they'd covered so far were clearly but a warm-up for it. In moments, the bay outpaced every horse in the party and started to draw ahead.

Yes, fly, girl. You don't even have to outride the Jokonans, as long as you can outride us . . .

As they topped the next rise, where the road swung out around a bulge in the hill, Ista looked back. There was no sign whatever of the divine or Foix. The first Jokonan riders were galloping across the culvert without pausing or looking down, intent on their quarry ahead. The tightness in Ista's chest eased a little, even as she gasped for breath.

At last, her whirling brain began to take thought for herself. If captured, should she maintain her incognito? What worth would a minor female cousin of the rich provincar of Baocia seem to them? Would Sera dy Ajelo's status be enough to buy safety for her men as well as her? But the dowager royina of Chalion, Royina Iselle's own mother, was far too exciting a prize to let fall into the grubby hands of a pack of Jokonan soldier-bandits. She glanced around at her grimly intent outriders. I don't want these loyal young men to die for me. I don't want any man to die for me, ever again.

Ferda galloped up beside her horse, pointed back. "Royina, we must cut loose the mules!"

She nodded understanding, gulped for breath. Her legs ached from gripping the heaving sides of her mount. "Dy Cabon's saddlebags— they must be got rid of—hidden—all his books and papers will reveal him, they might go back and search! And mine as well, I have letters in my own name—"

His lips drew back in a grimace of understanding; he stood in his stirrups and fell behind. She turned in her saddle and scrabbled at the rawhide ties holding her bags behind her cantle. Happily, Liss had tied them intelligently; the strong knots came loose at Ista's pull.

Ferda again galloped up beside her; now he had the divine's heavy pair of bags over his pommel. She glanced back. The loosed baggage mules and dy Cabon's white beast were falling behind, stumbling to a halt, wandering gratefully from the road.

They were approaching a bridge over a strong freshet. Ferda held out his arm in demand, and she swung her bags over to him. He reared his horse atop the bridge and violently heaved first one set of bags, then the other, over the crumbling stone balustrade to the downstream side. The bags floated away, bumping on the rocks, sinking slowly out of sight. Ista briefly regretted the divine's books, and their purses of money—but not their damning correspondence and other signs of identity.

This prudence cost them still more of the implacably closing space between them and the Jokonan leaders. Ista put her weight in her stirrups and concentrated on urging her flagging horse up the next rise. Perhaps turning aside to capture the baggage mules would slow their pursuers. Some of them. The enemy had plenty of men to spare, it seemed. She had glimpsed the beginnings of their column; she had yet to glimpse its end.

What they were seemed plain enough. Both sides had played these evil games of raid and reprisal across the borders here for generations, the boundaries that the Chalionese Quintarians were slowly pushing back to the north. In the disputed regions, men grew up expecting to raid for a living as though it were some job of work. Sometimes the game was played by elaborate rules of etiquette, with businesslike arrangements for ransoms mixed with bizarre contests of honor. Sometimes there were no rules, and it was no game, and honor dissolved in sweaty, screaming, bloody horrors.

How desperate were their pursuers? They seemed to have dropped from the very sky. They were a province and a half away from the borders of Jokona, hustling down an obscure hill road. Fresh troops, circling to attack some target, or worn ones, running for home? If they wore the prince's tabards, they at least were not a spontaneous gang of semi-bandit younger sons and ruffians out for what they could grab, but men of greater discipline bent on some larger mission. Presumably.

Atop the next rise, her horse stumbling, Ista again gained a long view of the road ahead. Liss's rangy bay was well out in the distance, still galloping.

Ista's heart caught. Plunging down the scrubby hillside toward Liss pelted another dozen Jokonan riders. A scouting screen of cavalry, sent before the main force, clearly. Ista's eye tried to guess angles, distances, speeds. The Jokonans descended as if to pluck Liss from the road as a hawk snatches a squirrel from a tree branch. Liss had not seen them yet, could not possibly hear Ista if she screamed out a warning. Ferda rose in his stirrups, a look of helpless horror on his face; he whipped his mount, but could beat no more speed out of the strained animal.

Closer, closer the raiders drew—Liss looked aside at last, saw them. Surely even her great-hearted horse must be reaching the lim95

its of its endurance . . . She flashed past the leaders. A crossbow glinted, a quarrel sped through the air. Ferda yelled in anguish, but the shot, loosed at too great a range and from the back of a heaving horse, went wide.

The patrol reached the road. Their officer gesticulated. A pair of riders split off and rode in pursuit of Liss. The rest wheeled around and bunched to a halt across the road. Waiting.

Ferda cursed, looked back, looked forward, teeth gritting; he threw back his cloak and touched his sword hilt. He cast a worried look aside at Ista, obviously trying to think how to screen her if his dwindling company attempted to burst through the new blockade. Ista followed his glance back. More and more riders were pouring over the ridge behind them, seemingly without end.

Once blood was drawn, events would spin rapidly out of control. Death would cry for death.

"Ferda!" Ista screamed. It came out a croak. "There is no way. We must halt, surrender on terms!"

"No, Royina!" His face bunched in agony. "By my oath and honor, no! We will die to defend you!"

"You will better defend me alive with your wits and self-control, Ferda!" Except they'd left the best wits and self-control in the party back along the road in a culvert. She drew a long breath, pinned a moral fear vaster than her physical terror by its neck to the ground, pushed the words past her lips. "By my command! We must halt!"

Ferda clenched his jaw, but really, it was hardly a decision anymore. The main body of Jokonans was almost on their heels, squeezing them up against the line across the road. Ista could see half a dozen crossbows raised among the waiting riders, from steadier platforms this time.

Ferda flung up his hand. "We halt!" The spent horses of his company stumbled to a ragged stop. Men threw back cloaks, reached for weapons. "Do not draw!" Ferda roared.

Some cried aloud in dismay and protest. Some were red-faced with tears of frustration and hot strain. But they obeyed. They knew how the game was played, too, as well as Ista. And knew as well as she how it was violated.

The Jokonans, swords out and spears and bows at the ready, crowded up on both sides of them and slowly closed in.