Here Begins the Adventure of Kerovan, Sometime Lord-Heir in Ulmsdale of High Hallack.

I was one born accursed in two ways. Firstly, my father was Ulric, Lord of Ulmsdale in the north. And of his stock there were told dire tales. My grandfather, Ulm the Horn-Handed, he who led his people into this northside dale and chartered the sea-rovers who founded Ulmsport, had looted one of the places of the Old Ones, taking the treasure sealed within. All men knew that this was no ordinary treasure, for it glowed in the dark. And after that looting not only Ulm, but all those who had been with him on that fearsome venture, were visited by a painful sickness of body from which most of them died.

When I was born, my father was already in middle years. He had taken two ladies before my mother and had of them children. But the children had been either born dead or had quitted this world in their early years, sickly creatures one and all. He had sworn, however, to get him a true heir, and so he set aside his second lady in favor of my mother when it seemed as if he would get no son of her.

My mother’s lineage also laid me under a curse. She was the Lady Tephana, daughter to Portal of Paltendale, which lies farther to the northwest. There are those who even now make off-warding signs at dalesmen from those parts, saying that, when our folk moved thither to settle, there were still Old Ones, seeming like ourselves; and that our people - the Borderers - entered into a blood-mixing with these, the offspring therefrom being not altogether human.

Be that as it may, my father was desperate for an heir. And Tephana, lately widowed, had borne already a goodly child who was now in his second year - Hlymer. My father was willing to forego dowry, to close his ears to any rumor of mixed blood, and to welcome the lady with full honor. By all accounts I have heard, she was willing, even unto risking the curse laid on my father’s family by their treasure theft.

My birthing came too early and under strange circumstances, for my mother was on her way to Gunnora’s shrine to give offerings for a son and a safe delivery. When she was yet a day’s journey away, her pains came on her very swiftly. There was no hall, not even a landsman’s dwelling near enough, and a mighty storm was brewing. Thus her women and guards took her for shelter into a place they would have normally shunned, one of those strange and awesome remains of the Old Ones, the people of uncanny power who held the dales in the dim past before the first of our blood wandered up from the south.

This building was in good repair, as is often true of the constructions left by that unknown race. For the Old Ones seem to have used spells to bind stones together in such a way that even time cannot devour them, and thus some buildings look as if they were abandoned only yesterday. What purpose this one might have served none could guess. But there were carvings of men and women, or those who had such seeming, on the inner walls.

My mother’s travail was hard, and her ladies feared that they might not save her. After I was born they half-wished that they bad failed to, for asking to look upon the babe, she saw me full and gave a great cry, losing her senses and near her wits. She wandered in some mind maze for several weeks thereafter.

I was not as other children. My feet were not with toes, like unto human kind; rather they were small hoofs, split, covered with horn such as make up the nails upon fingers. In my face my eyebrows slanted above eyes that were the color of butter amber, the like of which are not seen in a human countenance. Thus, all gazing upon me knew that, though I seemed far stronger of wind and limb than my unfortunate half-brothers and sisters before me, in me the curse had taken another turning. I did not sicken and die, but thrived and grew.

But my mother would not look upon me, saying I was a demon changeling, implanted in her womb by some evil spell. When those about her brought me nigh, she became so disordered in her wits that they feared her state would be permanent. Soon she declared she had no true child but Hlymer - and later my sister Lisana, born a year after me, a fair little maid with no flaw. In her my mother took much pleasure.

As for me, I was not housed at Ulmsdale Keep, but sent out at nurse to one of the foresters. However, though my mother had so disowned me, my father was moved, not by any affection - for that I was never shown by those closest to me in blood - but rather by his pride of family, to see that my upbringing was equal to my birth. He gave me the name of Kerovan, which was that of a noted warrior of our House, and he saw that I was tutored in arms as became a youngling of station and shield, sending to me one Jago, a keepless man of good birth who had served my Lord as Master of Menie until he was disabled by a bad fall in the mountains.

Jago was a master of the arts of war, not only with the lesser skills that can be battered into any youngling with a strong body and keen eyes, but also those more subtle matters that deal with the ordering of bodies of men great and small. Crippled and tied to a way of living that was only a half-life for a once-active man, he set his brain to labor as he had once ordered his body. Always he searched for new lore of battle, and sometimes at night I would watch him with a strip of smoothed bark before him, patiently setting out in his labored and crooked script facts concerning the breaking of sieges, the ordering of assaults, and the like, droning on to me the while, emphasizing this point or that by a fierce dig into the bark with the knife he used for a pen.

Jago was far more widely traveled than most dalesmen, who perhaps in a whole lifetime know little beyond four or five dales outside their own birthplace. He had been overseas in his first youth, traveling with the Sulcar Traders, those dangerous sea-rovers, to such half-fabled lands as Karsten, Alizon, and Estcarp - though of the latter nation he said little, appearing uneasy when I besought him to tell of his travels in detail. All he would say was that it was a land where witch spells and ensorcellment were as common as corn in a field, and that all the women were witches and held themselves better and apart from men, so that it was a place where one kept one’s eyes to oneself and walked very quietly and mum-tongued.

There was this which makes me remember Jago well and with gratitude. In his eyes I was apparently like any other youngling, and not a young monster. So when I was with him I could forget my differences from my fellows and rest content. Thus Jago taught me the arts of war - or rather such as a dale heir should know. For in those days we did not know the meaning of real war, giving that name to our petty skirmishing between rival lords or against the Waste outlaws. And of those we saw many in the long winters when starvation and ill weather drove them against us to plunder our granaries and try to take our warm halls and garths. War wore a far grimmer face in later years, and men got full bellies of it. It was no longer a kind of game which was played by rules, as one moves pieces back and forth across a board on a winter’s eve.

But if Jago was my sword tutor, the Wiseman Riwal showed me there were other paths of life in the world. It had always been held that only a woman could learn the ways of healing and perform the spells my people draw upon in their time of need in body and spirit. Thus Riwal was as strange to his fellows as I. He had a great thirst for knowledge, which was in him as a longing for bread might be in a starving man. At times he would go roving, not only in the forest country, but beyond, into the Waste itself. When he returned he would be burdened by a pack like any peddler who carried his own stock in trade.

Being kin to the Head Forester, he had taken without formal leave one of the cots nearby. This he made snug and tight by the work of his own hands, setting above its door a mask carved of stone, not in the likeness of our people. Men looked askance at Riwal, yes - but let any animal ail, or even a man keep his bed in sickness that could not be named - then he was summoned.

About his cot grew all manner of herbs, some of those long-known to every housewife in the dales. But others were brought from afar with masses of soil bundled up about their roots, and he set them out with care. Everything grew for Riwal, and the farmer who had a wish for the best of crops would go cap in hand at sowing tune and ask the Wiseman to overlook his land and give advice.

Not only did he bring green life, but he also drew that which wings over our heads or pads on four feet. Birds and animals that were hurt or ailing came to him of their own wills. Or else he would carry them to his place gently and tend them until they were able once more to fend for themselves.

This was enough to set any man apart from his fellows. But it was also well known that Riwal went to the places of the Old Ones, that he tried to search out those secrets our blood had never known. And for that, men did fear him. Yet it was that which drew me to him first.

I was as keen-eared as any child who knows that others talk about him behind their hands. And I had heard the garbled stories of my birth, of that curse which lay upon the blood of Ulm, together with the hint that neither was my mother’s house free of the taint of strange mixture. The proof of both was perhaps in my flesh and bone. I had only to look in the mirror of Jago’s polished shield to see it for myself.

I went to Riwal, boldly perhaps in outward seeming, but with an inward chill that, young as I was, I fought to master. He was on his knees setting out some plants which had long, thin leaves sharply cut, like the heads of boar spears. He did not look up as I came to him, but rather spoke as if I had already spent the morning in his company.

“Dragon’s Tongue, the Wisewomen call this.” He had a soft voice with a small tremor, not quite a stammer. “It is said to seek out the putrid matter in unhealing wounds, even as a tongue might lick such hurts clean. We shall see, we shall see. But it is not to speak of plants that you stand here, Kerovan, is it, now?”

“It is not. Men say you know of the Old Ones.”

He sat back on his heels to look me eye to eye.

“But not much. We can look and finger, search and study, but of their powers - those we cannot net or trap. One can only hope to brush up a crumb here and there, to speculate, to go on everseeking. They had vast knowledge - of building, of creating, of living - beyond our ken. We do not even know why they were near-gone from High Hallack when the first of our ancestors arrived. We did not push them out - no, already their keeps and temples, their Places of Power were emptied. Here and there, yes, a few lingered. And they may still be found in the Waste and beyond the Waste in that land we have not entered. But the most - they were gone, perhaps long before men, as we know them, arrived. Still - to seek what may still lie here - it is enough to fill a lifetime and yet not find a tenth of a tenth of it!”

In his sunbrowned face his eyes were alight with that same spark I had seen in Jago’s when he spoke of a trick of sword-flay or a clever ambush. Now Riwal studied me in turn.

“What seek you of the Old Ones?” he asked.

“Knowledge,” I answered. “Knowledge of why I am as I am - not man - yet neither - “ I hesitated, for my pride would not let me voice what I had heard in whispers.

Riwal nodded. “Knowledge is what every man should seek, and knowledge of himself most of all. But such knowledge I cannot give you. Come.”

He arose and started toward his dwelling with his swinging, woodsman’s stride. Without further question I followed after. So I came into Riwal’s treasure house.

I could only stand just within the door and stare at what lay about me, for never before had I seen such a crowding of things, each enough to catch the eye and demand closer attention. For in baskets and nests were wild animals, watching me with bright and wary eyes, yet seeming, in this place, to feel such safety that they did not hide in fear. There were shelves in plenty on the walls. And each length of roughly hewn, hardly smoothed board was crammed with a burden of clay pots, bundles of herbs and roots, and bits and fragments that could only have come from the places of the Old Ones.

There was a bed, and two stools were so crowded upon the hearth that they sat nearly in the fire. The rest of the dwelling was more suited for storage than for living. In the middle of the room Riwal stood with his fists planted upon his hips, his head turning from side to side as if he tried to sight some special thing among the wealth of objects.

I sniffed the air. There was a mingling of many odors. The aromatic scent of herbs warred with the musky smell of animals and the suggestion of cooking from a pot still hanging on the boil-chain in the fireplace. Yet it was not in any way an unclean or disgusting smell.

“You seek the Old Ones - look you here, then!” Riwal gestured to one shelf among the many.

I skirted two baskets with furry inhabitants and came closer to see what he would show me. There I found set-out fragments, one or two being whole, of small figures or masks - bits which in some instances Riwal had fitted together to form broken but recognizable figures.

Whether these indeed represented various beings among the Old Ones, or whether they had had life only in the imagination of their creators, no one might know. But that they had beauty, even when they tended toward the grotesque, I could see for myself.

There was a winged figure of a woman, alas lacking a head; and a man of humanoid proportions, save that from the forehead curled two curved horns. Yet the face below was noble, serene, as if he were a great lord by right of his spirit. There was a figure with webbed feet and hands, plainly meant to suggest a water dweller; and a small one of another woman, or at least a female, with long hair covering most of her body like a cloak. These Riwal had managed to restore in part. The rest were fragments: a head, crowned but noseless, the eyes empty pits; a delicate hand that bore an intricate ring of metal on both thumb and forefinger, those rings seemingly a part now of the hand, whose substance was not stone but a material I did not know.

I did not touch; I merely stood and looked. And in me was born a longing to know more of these people. I could understand the never-ending hunger that kept Riwal searching, his patient attempts to restore the broken bits he found that he might see, guess, but perhaps never know.

So Riwal also became my teacher. I went with him to those places shunned by others, to search, to speculate; always hoping that some find might be a key that would open to us the doors of the past, or at least give us a small glimpse into it.

My father made visits to me month by month, and when I was in my tenth year, he spoke to me with authority. It was plain he was in some uneasiness of spirit when he did so. But I was not amazed that he was so open with me, for always he had treated me, not as a child, but as one who had good understanding. Now he was very sober, impressing me that this was of import.

“You are the only living son of my body,” he began, almost as if he found it difficult to choose the words he must use. “By all the right of custom you shall sit in the High Seat at Ulmskeep after me.” He paused then, so long I ventured to break into his musing, which I knew covered a troubled mind.

“There are those who see it differently.” I did not make that a question, for I knew it to be a statement of fact.

He frowned. “Who has been saying so to you?”

“None. This I have guessed for myself.”

His frown grew. “You have guessed the truth. I took Hlymer under my protection, as was fitting when his mother became Lady in Ulm. He has no right to be shield-raised to the High Seat at my death. That is for you. But they press me now to hand-fast Lisana with Rogear, who is cousin-kin to you.”

I was quick enough to understand what he would tell me and yet loath to hear it. But I did not hesitate to bring it into the open myself.

“Thus Rogear might claim Ulmsdale by wife-right.”

My father’s hand went to his sword hilt and clenched there. He rose to his feet and strode back and forth, setting his feet heavily on the earth as if he needed some firm stance against attack.

“It is against custom, but they assault my ears with it day upon day, until I am well-nigh deafened beneath my own roof!”

I knew, with bitterness, that his “they” must be mainly that mother who would not call me son. But of that I did not speak.

He continued. “Therefore I make a marriage for you, Kerovan, an heir’s marriage so that all men can see that I do not intend any such offense against you, but give you all right of blood and clan. This tenth day Nolon rides to Ithkrypt, carrying the proxy axe for your wedding. They tell me that the maid Joisan is a likely lass, lacking two years of your age, which is fitting. Safe-married, you cannot be set aside - though your bride will not come to you until perhaps the Year of the Fire Troll.”

I counted in my mind - eight years then. I was well content. For marriage had no meaning for me then, save that my father deemed it of such importance. I wondered, but somehow I did not dare at that moment to ask, whether he would tell this Joisan, or her kinsmen who were arranging our match, what manner of lord she would meet on her true bride-day that I was what I was. Inside I shrank, even in thought, from that meeting. But to a boy of my years that fatal day seemed very far away, and perhaps something might happen to make sure it would never occur.

I did not see Nolon set forth to play my role in axe marriage, for he rode out of Ulmkeep where I did not go. It was only two months later that my father came to me looking less unhappy, to tell me that Nolon had returned, and that I was indeed safely wed to a maid I had never seen, and probably would not see for at least eight more years.

I did not, thereafter, think much of the fact that I had a lady, being well-occupied with my studies and even more with the quests on which I went with Riwal. Though I was under the guardianship of Jago, he made no protest when I spent time with Riwal. Between those two came to be an odd companionship, in spite of their being so dissimilar in thought and deed.

As the years passed, that stiffness which had come from my tutor’s old hurt grew worse, and he found it difficult to face me in open contest with sword or axe. But with the crossbow he was still a skilled marksman. And his reading of maps, his discussion of this or that battle plan, continued. Though I saw little use then for such matters in my own life, I paid him dutiful attention, and that was to be my salvation later.

But Riwal did not appear to age at all, and as long stride still carried him far distances without thing. I learned early to match his energy. And, while my knowledge of plants was never as great as his, yet I found a kinship with birds and animals. I ceased to hunt for sport. And I took pleasure in the fact that his wild ones did not fear me. Best of all, however, were our visits to the places of the Old Ones. Riwal prospected further and further over the borders of the Waste, seeking ever to find something intact from the ancient days. His greatest hope, as he confided in me, was to discover some book roll or rune record.

When I suggested that the reading of such could well be beyond his skill, for surely the Old Ones had not our tongue, he nodded in agreement. Still I felt he opposed that thought, sure that if he did find such, the Power itself would aid him to understand it.

It was in the Year of the Spitting Toad that I had been wed. As I came closer to manhood, the thought of that distant lady began now and then to trouble me oddly. There were two lads near my years in the foresters’ hold, but from the first they had not been playmates, or later companions. Not only did rank separate us, but they had made me aware, from the beginning of my consciousness of the world about me, that my non-human appearance cut me off from easy friendships. I had given my friendship to only two men - Jago, old enough to be my father, and Riwal, who could have been an older brother (and how I sometimes wished that was the truth!).

But those forester lads went now to the autumn fair with lass-ribbons tied to the upper latches of their jerkins, whispering and laughing about the adventures those led them to. This brought to me the first strong foreboding that when it did at last come tune to claim the Lady Joisan in person, she might find me as ill a sight as had my mother. What would happen when my wife came to Ulmsdale and I must go to bide with her? If she turned from me in open loathing?

Nightmares began to haunt my sleep, and Riwal at last spoke to me with the bluntness he could use upon occasion. When he demanded what ill thought rode me, I told him the truth, hoping against hope that he would speedily assure me that I saw monsters where there were only shadows, and that I had nothing to fear - though my good sense and experience argued on the side of disaster.

But he did not give me that reassurance. Instead he was silent for a space, looking down at his hands, which had been busied fitting together some of his image fragments, but now rested quiet on the table.

“There has ever been truth between us, Kerovan,” he said at last “To me who knows you well - above all others would I choose to walk in your company. But how can I promise you that this will turn to happiness? I can only wish you peace and - “ he hesitated. “Once I walked a path that I thought might end in hand-fasting and I was happy for a little. But while you bear your differences to others openly, I bear mine within. Still, there they be. And the one with whom I would have shared Cup and Flame - she saw those differences, and they made her uneasy.”

“But you were not already wed,” I ventured, when he fell silent.

“No, I was not. And I had something else.”

“That being?” I was quick to ask.

“This!” he spread out his hands in a gesture to encompass all that was about him under that roof.

“Then I shall have this also,” I said. Marry I had, for the sake of custom and my father’s peace of mind. What I had seen and heard of marriages among the dale lords did not set happiness high. Heirs and lords married to increase their holdings by a maid’s dowry, to get a new heir for the line. If inclination and liking came afterward, that was happiness, but it certainly did not always follow so.

“Perhaps you can,” Riwal nodded. “There is something I have long thought on. Perhaps this is the time to do it.”

“Follow the Road!” I was on my feet, as eager as if he meant to set out upon that beckoning mystery this very moment For a mystery it was, and beckon it did.

We had come across it on our last venture into the Waste, a road of such building as put any dale’s effort to shame, making our roads seem like rough tracks fit only for beasts. The end of the road we had chanced upon was just that, a sharp chopping-off of that carefully laid pavement, with nothing about the end to explain the why-for. The mystery began nearly on our doorstep, for that end point was less than a half day’s journey from Riwal’s cot. The road ran on back into the Waste, wide, straight, only a little cloaked here and there by the drift of windborne soil. To find its other end was a project we had indeed long held in mind. The suggestion that we set out on this journey quite pushed from my mind the thought of Joisan. She was just a name anyway, and any meeting between us was still years ahead, while the following of the road was here and now!

I was answerable to none but Jago for my actions. And this was the time of year when he made his annual trip to Ulmskeep, where he kept festival with old comrades-in-arms and reported to my father. Thus I was free to follow my own wishes, which in this case meant the road.

Here Begins the Adventure of Joisan. Maid of Ithkrypt in Ithdale of High Halilack.

I, Joisan of Ithkrypt, was wed at harvest time in the Year of the Spitting Toad. By rights that was not considered a year for new beginnings; but my uncle, Lord Cyart, had the stars read three times by Dame Lorlias of Norstead Abbey (she who was so learned in such matters that men and women traveled weary leagues to consult her), and her report was that my wedding was written as a thing needful to my own fortune. Not that I was aware of much more than the stir the question caused, for I was thereupon the center of long and tiring ceremonies that brought me close to tears for the very tiredness they laid upon me.

When one has no more than eight years, it is hard to judge what occupies most the thoughts and plans of those in the adult world. I can remember my wedding now mostly as a bright picture in which I had a part I could not understand.

I remember wearing a tabard stiff with gold-thread stitchery that caught up a pattern of fresh-water pearls (for which the streams of Ithdale are rightly famous). But I was more occupied at the time with keeping to Dame Math’s stern warning that I must not spot or wrinkle my finery; that I must be prudent at the feast table lest I spill and so mar the handiwork of long and patient hours. The robe beneath was blue, which did not please me over-much as it is a color I do not fancy, liking better the dark, rich shades such as hue the autumn leaves. But blue is for a maiden bride, so it was mine to wear.

My new lord was not present to drink the Life Cup and light the House Candle with me hand to hand. In his place stood a man (seeming ancient to me, for his close-cropped beard was frost-rimmed with silver), as stern as my uncle in his look. His hand, I remember, bore a scar across the knuckles that had left a raised banding of flesh of which I was acutely aware as he clasped my fingers in the ceremony. And in the other hand he held a massive war axe that signified my true lord who was about to twine my destiny with his-though that lord was at least a half-dozen years or more away from being able to raise that axe.

“Lord Kerovan and Lady Joisan!” the guests shouted our names together, the men unsheathing their knives of ceremony so that the torchlight flashed upon the blades, vowing to uphold the truth of this marriage in the future, by virtue of those same blades, if need be. My head had begun to ache with the noise, and my excitement at being allowed to attend a real feast was fast ebbing.

The elderly Lord Nolon, who stood proxy at the wedding, shared a plate with me politely throughout the feast But, though he asked me with ceremony before making a choice from all offered platters, I was in too much awe of him to say “no” to what I liked not, and his choices were mainly of that nature. So I nibbled at what my taste rebelled against and longed for it to come to an end.

It did, much later, when the women with great merriment laid me, wearing only my fine night shift, in the great, curtained bed. And the men, headed by my uncle, brought in that awesome axe and bedded it beside me as if it were indeed my lord. That was my wedding, though afterward it did not seem too strange, just one of those things difficult for a child to understand, something to be dismissed to the back of one’s mind.

Only that axe, which was my partner in place of a flesh-and-blood bridegroom, was a stark prophecy of what was to come - not only to me but to all the country that was my home: High Hallack of the many dales.

After the departure of Lord Nolon, life soon returned to what I had always known, for by custom I would continue to dwell under my birthroof until I was of a suitable age for my lord to claim me.

There were some small changes. On high feast days I sat at the left hand of my uncle and was addressed ceremoniously by my new title of Lady of Ulmsdale. My feast-day tabard also no longer bore only one House symbol, but two, being divided in the center vertically with a ribbon of gold. To the left, the leaping Gryphon of Ulmsdale was worked in beads that glittered like gems. On the right was the familiar Broken Sword of Harb, that mighty warrior who had founded our line in High Hallack and given all his kin fame thereafter when he had defeated the dread Demon of Irr Waste with a broken blade.

On my name-day, or as near to that as travel conditions permitted, would come some gift sent by my Lord Kerovan, together with proper greetings. But Kerovan himself was never real to me.

Also, since my uncle’s lady was dead, he looked to his sister Dame Math for the chatelaine’s duties in Ithkrypt. She took over the ordering of my days, to secret sighs and stifled rebellion on my part. This and this and this must be learned, that I be a credit to my upbringing when I indeed went to order my lord’s household. And those tasks, which grew with my years, induced in me sometimes a desire never to hear of Ulmsdale or its heir; a longing in all my being to be unwed and free. But from Dame Math and her sense of duty I had no escape.

I could not remember my uncle’s lady at all. For some reason, though he lacked an heir, he made no move through the years to wed again. Perhaps, I sometimes thought even he dared not think of lessening in any part Dame Math’s authority. That she was an able chatelaine, bringing peace and comfort to all she had dominion over, could not be denied. She kept those about her in quiet, sobriety and good order.

In her long-ago youth (it was almost impossible to think of Dame Math as ever being a maid!) she had been axe-wed in the same fashion as I to a lord of the south. But before he could claim her, the news came that he had died of a wasting fever. Whether she thereafter regretted her loss, no one ever knew. After the interval of mourning she retired to the House of Dames at Norstead, an establishment much-revered for the learning and piety of its ladies. But the death of her brother’s lady had occurred before she took vows of perpetual residence, and she had returned to the mistress’s role at Ithkrypt. She wore ever the sober robe of Dame, and twice a year journeyed to Norsdale for a period of retreat. As I grew older, she took me with her.

My uncle’s heir was still undecided, since he had made no binding declaration. He had a younger sister also - one Islaugha, who had married and had both son and daughter. But since that son was heir to his father’s holding, he was provided for.

I was the daughter of his younger half-brother, but not being male, I could not inherit save by direct decree. My dowry was such to attract a husband, and my uncle, should he wish, had also the right - no, even duty, to name that husband heir, but only when he declared it so would it be binding.

I think Dame Math would have liked to see me in the House of Dames, had the marriage with Kerovan not been made. And it is the truth that I did find my visits there pleasant. I was born with an inquiring mind and somehow attracted the notice of Past-Abbess Malwinna. She was very old, but very, very wise. Having talked with me several times, she directed that I be given the right to study in the library of the House. The stories of the past which had always enchanted me were as nothing to the rolls of chronicles and travels, dale histories, and the like, that were on the shelves and in the storage boxes in that room.

But what held me most were the references to the Old Ones, those who had ruled this land before the first of the dalesmen came north. I knew well that such accounts as I found were not only fragmentary, but perhaps also distorted, for the larger numbers of the Old Ones had already withdrawn before our forefathers arrived. Those our ancestors had contact with were lesser beings, or perhaps only shadows, left as one would discard a threadbare cloak.

Some were evil as we judged evil, in that they were enemies to humankind - like the demon Harb had slain. There were still places that were filled with dark enchantment, so that any venturing unwisely into such could be enwebbed. Other such beings could grant prayers and gifts. Such was Gunnora - the Harvest Mother - to whom all women were loyal, and whose mysteries were as great in their way as the Worship of the Cleansing Flame to which the House of Dames was dedicated. I myself wore an amulet of Gunnora - her sheath of wheat entwined with ripened fruit.

Yet others seemed neither good nor ill, being removed from the standards of humankind. At times they manifested themselves capriciously, delivering good to one, evil to another, as if they weighed men on some scales of their own and thereafter dealt with them as they saw fit.

It was chancy to deal with any of the Old Ones save Gunnora. The accounts I found at Norstead were full of instances where humans had awakened from long slumber powers that never should have been disturbed. At times I would seek out Abbess Malwinna in her small garden and ask questions, to which she gave answers if she could. If she could not, she admitted her ignorance frankly. It was on my last such meeting with her that I found her sitting with a bowl upon her knee.

The bowl was of green stone, wrought so finely that the shadow of her fingers about it showed through the substance. It had no ornamentation but its beauty of line, and it was very beautiful indeed. Within was enough wine to cover the bottom and come a bit up the sides.

I knew it was wine, for the heady smell reached me. The warmth of her fingers about it was releasing the scent of the grape. She turned it slowly around and around, so the liquid washed back and forth, but she did not watch it. Instead she looked at me so searchingly that I felt discomfort, as if I had been found wanting in some necessary quality. I searched my conscience hurriedly for any fault I might recently have shown.

“It is long,” she said, “since I have tried this, Joisan. But this morning I awoke with the need for doing so, and for you. In my youth I had the gift of farseeing - for gift it is, though some shrink from it. They are afraid of that which they cannot touch, see, taste, hear, or otherwise clearly perceive. It is a gift that cannot be controlled. Few who have it can summon it at will; they must wait until the time it draws them to action. But if you are willing, this day I can use it for you - for how much or how well, that I cannot tell.”

I was excited, for of farseeing I had heard. The Wise-women could use it - or some of them could. But, as the Past-Abbess said, it was not a talent that could be sharpened for use and then put ready to hand like a man’s sword or a woman’s needle - it must be seized upon when it came, and there was no use in trying to control it. However, with my excitement there was also a tiny chill of fear. It was one thing to read, to listen to, stories of the Power. It was, I understood now, another to see it in action, and for one’s own self. Yet at that moment I do not think even panic would have kept me from saying “yes” to her offer.

“Kneel before me, Joisan. Take this bowl within your two hands and hold it level and steady.”

I did as she bade, cupping my palms, one on either side of the bowl, holding it as one might hold a firebranch that might be ignited at any moment. Then she leaned forward and touched the fingers of her right hand to my forehead.

“Look upon the wine; think of it as a picture - a picture - “ Oddly enough her voice sounded farther and farther away. As I looked down into the bowl, I was no longer seeing only  dark liquid. It was rather as if I hung suspended in the air above a wide, borderless expanse of darkness, a giant mirror with none of the brilliance a true mirror possesses.

There came a misting, a change on that surface. Tendrils of the mist became shadow forms. I saw a round ball that glinted and, entombed in that, a form familiar to me - that of a gryphon gleaming white.

At first the ball was very large, near filling the whole of the mirror. Then it shrank swiftly, and I saw it was fastened to a chain. The chain swung from a hand, so that the ball revolved. The gryphon in it sometimes faced me, sometimes faced away. But there grew in me the knowledge that this ball was of great importance.

It was very small now, for the hand that dangled it was also shrinking. The arm to which it was attached, and then the body belonging to the arm, appeared. Now a man stood there. His face was turned from me, hidden. He wore war mail, the hood drawn up about his throat. There was a battle sword girded to him, and over bis shoulder I saw the arch of a crossbow. But he wore no House tabard, nothing to identify him, only that swinging ball. Then he left, tramping away as if he had been summoned elsewhere. The mirror was dark and empty; nor did any more shadows gather there.

Malwinna’s hand fell from my forehead. As I raised my eyes to blink and blink again, I saw a woeful pallor on her face. So I quickly set aside the bowl and dared to take her hands within mine, striving to help her.

She smiled weakly. “It draws the strength - the more when one has little strength left. But it was laid on me to do this thing. Tell me, my daughter, what did you learn?”

“You did not see it, then?” I was surprised.

“No. It was not a farseeing for me, that I knew. It was yours only.”

I told her what I had seen: the gryphon englobed and a man in battle dress holding it. And I ended, “The gryphon is the badge of the House of Ulm. Did I then see the Lord Kerovan to whom I am wed?”

“That may be so,” she agreed. “But it is in my mind that the gryphon is that which is of the greatest importance to your future. If such ever comes to your hand, my daughter, do you guard it well. For it is also to be believed that this is a thing of the Old Ones and a focus of some power they once knew. Now, call Dame Alousan, for I have need of one of her strengthening cordials. But speak not of what we have done here this morning, for farseeing is a private thing and not to be talked of lightly.”

I said naught to any of the Dames, nor to Math. And the Past-Abbess allowed them to believe that she was merely a little wearied, so they fussed about her, for she was greatly loved. No one paid any attention to me. I had taken the bowl with me into the guesting room and put it on the table there.

Though I continued to look into it now and again I saw nothing but the wine; no dark mirror, no shadows moving. Yet in my mind was so vivid a picture of that I could have painted it, had I any skill in limning, in every small detail. And I speculated as to what it might mean. The gryphon so enclosed had differences from the one that appeared as Ulm’s badge. A gryphon by rights had the wings and forepart of an eagle: its front legs end in a bird of prey’s strong talons. But the rear, the tail, the hind paws are those of a lion, one of the beasts known to the south alone. On its bird’s head a lion’s ears stand upright.

In the ancient learning the gryphon symbolizes gold: the warmth and majesty of the sun. Ofttimes in legends it is the guardian of hidden treasure.

Thus the gryphon is mainly pictured in red and gold, which are sun colors. Yet the one enclosed in the globe was the white of ice - a white gryphon.

Shortly after that farseeing, Dame Math and I returned home to Ithkrypt. But we did not remain there long. For in this Year of the Crowned Swan I had reached the age of fourteen, and Dame Math was already preparing my bride clothes and the furnishings I would take with me when Kerovan would send for me, as was the custom, in the next year or two.

So we went on to Trevamper, that town set at the meeting of highway and river where all merchants in the north show their wares upon occasion. Even the Sulcarmen, who are sea-rovers and seldom come far from wind and wave, travel to Trevamper. For there is the ulterior trade. And by chance we met there also my Aunt Islaugha, her son Toross, and her daughter Ynglida.

She came to pay a call on Dame Math, but I felt it was one of duty only and there was little liking between these sisters. However the Lady Islaugha presented a smiling face and spoke us fair, congratulating me on the fine marriage that had united me to the House of Ulm.

Yngilda pushed closer to me when our elders had turned their attention back to their own concerns, and I thought she stared rudely. She was a stout girl, bundled in rich clothing down which her braids rippled, their ends bound in ribbons hung with little silver bells meant to chime sweetly as she moved. Such a conceit did not suit her broad, flattish face, with its too-small mouth always pursed a little as if she chewed upon a spicy secret she debated over sharing.

“You have seen the likeness of your lord?” she asked almost abruptly.

I stirred uneasily under the probing of her eyes. I knew her then for unfriend, though why she should be so when we hardly knew each other, I could not guess.

“No.” As always when such uneasiness with others was in me, I was wary. But the truth is better than any evasion which may later trip one up. And for the first time I wondered a little at a matter I had never considered before. Why had Kerovan not caused to be sent a likeness of himself? That such was done in axe marriages I knew.

“A pity.” Her gaze seemed to have some manner of triumph in it now. “Look you here - this is my promised lord, Elvan of Rishdale.” She brought out of her belt pocket an oblong of wood with a face painted on it. “He sent it with his bride gift two years ago.”

The painted face was that of a man of middle years, no boy. And it was not a pleasant countenance to my thinking, but perhaps the limner had either not been skillful or had some reason not to flatter this Elvan. That Yngilda was proud of it was plain.

“He would seem a man of authority.” I did the best I could in way of praise. My disliking for the pictured face grew stronger the longer I regarded it.

She took that, as I had hoped, as a compliment to her promised lord.

“Rishdale is an upper dale. They are wool people, and the trade is rich. Already my lord has sent me this, and this - “ She patted an amber necklace which lay above her tabard and thrust her hand out to me that I might look upon a massive thumb ring of a serpent with eyes that were flecks of red gem-fire.

“The serpent is his House badge. This is his own ring, sent for a welcome gift. I go to him next harvest tune.”

“I wish you happy,” I answered.

Her pale tongue swept out over her lower lip. Again she was in two minds over some speech to make. At last she brought herself to it, bending her head even closer, while I had all I could do not to withdraw at her approach, for her close company did not please me.

“I would I could say the same to you, kinswoman.”

I knew I should not encourage her now, yet something made me ask, “And why not, kinswoman?”

“We are not so far from Ulmsdale as you. We have heard - much.” And she strove to give such a dire accent to that last word that she did indeed make an impression on me. For all my prudence and distrust, I could not now deny her this confidence.

“Much of what, kinswoman?” My tone made a challenge of that, one she was quick to note and that pleased her, I am sure.

“Of the curse, kinswoman. Did they not tell you that the Heir of Ulmsdale lies under a double cursing? Why, his own mother has refused to look upon his face since his birth hour. Have they not told you that?” she repeated with open relish. “Alack, that I should spoil your dreaming about a brave young lord. He is a monster thing, they say, sent to live apart because all men shrink from - “

“Yngilda!” That saying of her name was as sharp as a whip crack, and under it she flinched as if indeed some lash had bitten into her body. Dame Math stood over us, and it was plain in her face she had heard those words.

So open was her wrath that at that moment I knew Yngilda had indeed spoken the truth, or at least come so close to it as to shake my guardian. Only the truth could have aroused her ire so greatly.

She said no more, only eyed Yngilda menacingly until the girl edged back, her full cheeks blanching a little in her fright. She gave a kind of squeak and scrambled away. But I sat where I was and met Dame Math eye to eye. Within me the cold grew, setting me to shivering.

Cursed - a monster whom even his mother could not bear to look upon! By the Heart of Gunnora, what had they done to me, to give me in marriage to that? I could have screamed my terror aloud, but I did not. For in that much I kept my control. I only said slowly, forcing my voice to be level, determined to know the full of it here and now, “By the oath of the Flame you serve, Lady, tell me now the truth. Are her words that truth? Am I wed to one who is not like other men?” For I could not bring myself to say “monster.”

I think up until that moment Dame Math might have covered with fair words. But now she sat beside me, her face grave, as the flush of anger faded.

“You are no longer a child, Joisan. Yes, I will give you what truth I know. It is true that Kerovan dwells apart from his kin, but he is not a monster. There is a curse laid on those of the House of Ulm, and his mother comes from the up-dales, from a family rumored to have inter-wed with Old Ones. Thus he has such blood within him. But he is not monstrous - of this Lord Cyart made sure before he would consent to the marriage.”

“Yet he dwells apart from his kin. Is it true that his mother will not look upon him?” The cold within me was such now I could hardly control myself.

Still she was frank with me. “That is true because of the manner of his birthing, and she is a fool!” Then she told me an unusual tale of how the Lord of Ulm had taken wives and had no living heir because of the curse. How he wed a third time with a widow, and how she had been taken on the road before her time with birth pains and had borne her son within the walls of one of the Old Ones’ buildings. And of how thereafter she had turned her face from him because she was so filled with fear that the babe was of the Old Ones’ sending. But he was sound and no monster. His father swore to that by the Great Oath for which there can be no breaking.

Because she told it all so plainly, I believed her and was less shaken.

Then Dame Math added, “Joisan, be glad that you take a young lord. Yngilda, for all her prating, goes to one already wed once, a man old enough to be her father, and one who will have little patience with any youthful follies. She will find him far less indulgent to her whims and laziness than her mother, and she will perhaps rue the day she left her own keep for his.

“Kerovan by all accounts is one you will well company with - for he is learned in rune scrolls as well as in swordplay, which so occupies the minds and bodies of most men. He has a liking for searching out old things, such as you have also. Yes, you have much to think right in your wedding, and little to see of shadows. You are a maid of good mind and not easily shaken. Do not let the envious words of this foolish wench overset your reason. I swear, if you wish it, by the Flame - and you well know the meaning of such an oath for me - that I would not stand by without protest and see you wed to any monster!”

Knowing Dame Math, that reassurance was indeed all I needed. Yet during the days that followed I did think again and again of the strange upbringing Kerovan must have had. That a mother had turned her face from her child was hard to believe. Still, giving birth in a place of the Old Ones might have poisoned her mind against the cause of her pain and fear as she lay therein. And I knew well from my reading at the Abbey that many such places had malignant atmospheres that worked subtly upon mankind. She could well have fallen prey to such influences during her hours of labor.

For the rest of our stay in town my aunt and her daughter did not come near us. Perhaps Dame Math had made plain her views on what Yngilda had told me. I was well content not to see her full face, her pursed mouth, and her probing eyes again.

To most dalesmen the Waste is a fearsome place. Outlawed men were driven to refuge there, perhaps coming to regard it in tune as they had their native dales. And there are hunters, wild as any outlaws in their own fashion, ranging it to bring back packloads of strange furs as well as lumps of pure metal congealed into odd shapes: not native ores, but substances that had been worked and then reduced to broken pieces.

Such lumps of metal were greatly prized, though smiths had to rework them with care. Swords and mail made from this metal were stronger, more resistant to weathering. On the other hand, sometimes it had fearsome properties, exploding in vast conflagrations to consume all nearby - as if some power had struck it. A metal-smith both yearned to use it for the promise of fine craftsmanship and feared that each piece he brought to the forge might be one of the cursed bits.

Those who found such metal and traded in it were notoriously close-mouthed about the source. Riwal believed that they mined, not the earth, but places of the Old Ones wherein some ancient and unbelievably horrible conflict, had fused metal into these lumps. He had attempted to win the confidence of one Hagon, a trader, who had twice passed through our forest territory. But Hagon refused to talk.

So it was not only the broken-off road that beckoned us. There were other secrets to be uncovered. And I found this venture well to my liking.

We reached the broken-off end of the road by mid-morning and stood studying it before we set foot on its earth-drifted surface. It was indeed a puzzle, for that break was as clean-cut as if some giant swordsman had brought down his blade to sever the masonry. Yet, if some such action had occurred, where was the rest? For beyond the break there was not even a trace of old rubble to suggest it had ever run beyond this point. And why would any road come to such a purposeless ending? It may be true that the purposes of the Old Ones were not the same as those of men, and we cannot judge their actions by ours.

“How long ago since men walked here, Riwal?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Who knows? If it were men who did so. But if the road ends thus, the beginning may be of more interest.”

We were riding the small, desert-bred horses used by Waste rovers, tough beasts with an inherited ability to go far on a minimum of drink and forage. And we led a third horse with our supplies in a pack. We went clothed as metal traders, so that any spying upon us could believe we were of the Waste ourselves. We traveled alert to sign and sound, for only he who is ever-watchful can hope to best the traps and dangers of such a land.

The Waste is not pure desert, though much is arid land with a scant covering of small, wind-beaten shrubs and sun-dried grass in ragged clumps. At times, dark copses of trees grow so thick they huddle trunk to trunk. And outcrops of stone stand like pillars.

Some of these had been worked, if not by man, then by creatures who used stone for monuments. But the pillars had been so scoured by years of winds that only traces of the working remained. Here a wall could be seen for a bit; there a pair of columns suggested a past building of some pride.

We passed such a place soon after we took to the road, but there was not enough left to explore. In the open there was silence, for this was a windless day. The clop-clop of our mounts’ feet on the pavement seemed to echo, making far too loud a sound, so that I found myself looking from side to side, and now and then over my shoulder. The feeling grew stronger that we were being watched - by outlaws?

In spite of myself I found my hand straying ever in the direction of the sword hilt, ready to defend against attack. Yet when I glanced at Riwal, I saw him riding easy, though he also watched right and left.

“I feel” - I urged my mount closer to his - “that we are watched.” Perhaps I humbled my pride to admit that, yet this was more his land than mine, and I relied on him.

“It is ever so - in the Waste,” he returned.

“Outlaws?” My fingers closed about the hilt now.

“Perhaps. But more likely other things.” His eyes did not quite meet mine, and I sensed he was at a loss to explain. Perhaps he, too, feared to display some weakness before me, a younger and less-tried venturer.

“It is the truth then that the Old Ones left guardians?”

“What man among us knows?” He countered my question with another. “This much is so: when one ventures into their ways, there is often this feeling of being watched. Yet it has never been with me more than just watching. If they left guardians, as you say, those are now too old and tired to do more than watch.”

I found that hardly reassuring. And still I continued to watch - though nothing stirred out in that flat land across which the road hammered a straight and level path.

At nooning we drew to the side of the pavement, ate and drank, and gave our horses to drink also from the water skins we carried. There was no sun, and the sky over us was gray; still I could see no clouds gathering to threaten storm. But Riwal sniffed the air, his head up to the sky.

“We must seek shelter,” he said, and there was urgency in his voice.

“I see no storm clouds.”

“Storms come unheralded and swiftly in the Waste. There - “He had been surveying the countryside around, and now he pointed ahead to where there was a pile beside the road, perhaps another cluster of time-eroded rum.

We pushed on, to discover that sight-distance was deceptive in this place. There was a haze that seemed to rise from the ground so that things appeared closer than they were. But at length we reached the spot he had appointed. And none too soon, for the sky was no longer the gray of a gloomy day, but had darkened now into twilight come hours too soon.

Chance had brought us to shelter. Though the ruins at the outset of the road had been so formless as to only suggest they had once had purpose, this ancient building was in better preservation. There was actually part of a room or hall among the jumble of stone blocks with a portion of roof over it. And into that we crowded both ourselves and our animals.

Now the wind blew, whirling up the grit, hurling it in marching columns to fill eyes, mouths, nostrils. We had to fight to gain the last few strides to cover. Once inside, when we turned to look out, it was to see a curtain of dust.

That did not last long. Overhead sounded the rumble of thunder as if an army with a siege train marched. And the lash of lightning followed with force enough to suggest it had struck not too far away. Then came rain - quickly beating down the dust, yet not clearing any path for our vision; rather providing a second curtain, this time of moisture, not grit.

Water ran in a stream across the pitted floor, so we crowded back into the farthest corner of the ruin. The horses whinnied and snuffled, rolling their eyes, as if they found this fury of nature frightening. But to me this gave an illusion of shelter, though I flinched when the lightning struck again. Such fury deafened us. We were reduced to the point of simple endurance and we kept hold of the reins, lest our mounts break out into the storm. As they began to quiet, no longer tossing their heads or stamping, I relaxed a little.

The dark was close to that of true night, and we had no torch. So crowded were we that Riwal’s shoulder rubbed mine whenever he moved even slightly, yet the rain was so tumultuous we could not have heard each other without shouting, which we did not do.

What had been the original purpose of the ruin? Built so beside the road, could it have been an inn? Or was it a guard post for some patrol? Or even a temple? As Riwal had said, who knew the purposes of the Old Ones.

With one hand I explored the wall. The surface of the stone was smooth, not pitted as the more exposed portions were. My fingers could detect no seam or joining, yet those blocks had been set together somehow. Suddenly -

Men sleep and dream. But I will swear any oath I did not sleep. And if I dreamed, then it was unlike any dream I had ever known.

I looked out upon the road, and there were those moving along it. Yet when I tried to see them through what appeared to be a mist, I could not. They remained but shapes, approximating men. Could they be men?

Though I could not see them clearly, their emotion flowed to me. They were all moving in one direction, and this was a retreat. There was a vast and overwhelming feeling of - no, it was not defeat, not as if some enemy had pressed them into this withdrawal, but rather that circumstances were against them. They seemed to long for what they left behind, with the longing of those torn from deep rooting.

Now I knew that they were not all alike or of one kind. Some as they passed gave to me their sense of regret, or loss, as clearly as if they had shouted it aloud in words I could understand. But others were less able to communicate in this fashion, though their emotions were none the less deep.

The main press of that strange and ghostly company was past. Now there was only a handful of stragglers, or of those who found it the hardest to leave. Did I or did I not hear the sound of weeping through the rain? If they did not weep in fact they wept in thought, and their sorrow tore at me so I could not look at them any longer, but covered my eyes with my hands and felt on my dusty cheeks tears of my own to match theirs. “Kerovan!”

The shadow people were gone. And so was the force of the storm. Riwal’s hand was heavy on my shoulder, as if he shook me awake from sleep.

“Kerovan!” There was a sharp demand in his voice, and I blinked at what I could see of him in the dusk. “What is the matter?”

“You - you were crying out. What happened to you?” I told him of the shadow people withdrawing in their sorrow.

“Perhaps you have the sight,” he said gravely when I had done. “For that might well have happened when the Old Ones left this land. Have you ever tried farseeing or tested a talent for the Power?”

“Not I!” I was determined that I would not be cut off from my fellows by a second burden. Different I might be in body because of the curse laid on me before my birth, but I needed not add to that difference by striving to follow those paths trod by Wisewomen and a few men such as Riwal. And he did not urge me, after my quick denial. Such a way must be followed by one wholly willing; not by one led into it by another. It has its disciplines that are in some ways more severe than any warrior training, and its own laws.

After the storm the day lightened again, and we were able to set out at a brisk pace. The water still settled in pools and hollows, and we refilled our smaller water bag, letting the horses drink their fill before we moved on.

I wondered, when we rode that way, if I would have the sensation of the company of those I had seen in the vision or dream. But that was not so. And shortly I forgot the intensity of the emotion that I had shared with them. For that I was thankful.

The road, which had run so straight, made a wide curve heading toward the north and the greater unknown of the Waste. Now ahead we caught sight of heights making a dark blue line across the sky of evening, as if we headed for a mountain chain.

Here also the land was more hospitable. There were trees where before had been mostly shrubs and stretches of grassland. We came to where the road arched in a bridge over a stream of some size. And it was beside that running water that we camped for the night. In fact Riwal settled us, not on the bank of the stream, but on a bar which thrust out into it. The water was high from the storm, and there was flotsam carried with it, piled around the rocks edging that bar.

I eyed his choice with some disfavor. To my mind he had deliberately selected a site which would give us little room and which appeared dangerous from the sweep of water. He must have read my expression for he said, “This is chancy land, Kerovan. It is best to take the common precautions when within it - some uncommon ones too.”

“Common precautions?”

He gestured at the stream. “Running water. That which is ill-disposed to us, if it he of the Power and not human, cannot cross running water. If we camp so, we have only one front to defend.”

So reasoned, it was common sense. Thus I pushed rocks and pulled loose drift to clear a space between for us and the horses. Nor did Riwal deny us a fire made from the driest of the drift. The river was falling, but the current was still swift. It held life also, for I saw a dark shape of a length to suggest that the fish of this country were of a huge size, though I was teased by the disturbing suggestion that that shadow beneath the surface did not altogether resemble any fish I knew. I decided that in the Waste it was better not to probe too deeply into the unknown.

We set a watch, as we would in enemy country. At first, during my tour of duty, I was so uneasily alert that I found myself peopling each shadow with an intruder, until I took my fancies in hand and forced control over them.

Though the day had been sunless, we did not lack a moon. Its rays were particularly strong, making the landscape all black and silver-silver in the open, black in the shadows. There was life out there, for once I heard the drum of hoofs, and our horses nickered and tugged at their tethers, as if some of their wild kin had pounded by. Once I heard a distant, mournful cry, like the howl of a hunting wolf. And something very large with wings planed noiselessly over our camp as if to inspect us. Yet none of these were frightening in themselves, for all men know that there are wild horses in the Waste, and wolves run through the dales as well. And there are winged night-hunters everywhere.

No, it was not those sounds that disturbed me. It was what I did not hear. For I was as certain as if I could see it that out there in the black and silver land lurked something, or someone, who watched and listened with the same intensity that I did. And whether it was of good or ill I could not guess.

Sun and morning banished such fancies. The land was open, empty, in the daylight. We crossed the hump of the bridge and headed on, while before us the mountains grew sharper to the sight.

By nooning we were in the foothills, which were ridges sharper than our dales, more like knife slashes in soil and rock. No longer was the road straight. It narrowed to a way along which two of us might still ride abreast, but no wider, and it twisted and curved, ran up and down, as if its makers had followed always the easiest route through this maze of heights. Here, too, the Old Ones had left their mark. Carved on the walls of rock were faces, some grotesque, some human-seeming and benign, and often bands of runes that Riwal busied himself to copy.

Though no one could read the script of the Old Ones, Riwal had hopes that someday he would be able to do so. We had dawdled so while he copied the runes that noon found us in a narrow vale where we took our rest under the chin of a vast face that protruded strongly from the parent cliff of which it had been carved.

I had studied it as we came up, finding in it something vaguely familiar, though what that was I could not say.

Oddly enough, though we were here surrounded by the work of those who had vanished, I felt free of that watching, as if whatever had been here once was long gone and had left no trace. And my spirits rose as they had not since the storm caught us.

“Why all these carvings?” I wondered. “The farther we go, the more they are clustered on the walls.”

Riwal swallowed a mouthful of travel bread in order to answer. “Perhaps we now approach some place of importance; a shrine, even a city. I have gathered and sifted the stories of traders for years, yet I know of none who have come this way, into the foothills of the mountains.”

That he was excited I could see, and I knew that he anticipated some discovery that would be far greater than any he had made during his years of wandering in the Waste. He did not linger over his food, nor did I, for his enthusiasm grew to be mine also. We did not pause beneath that giant chin for long, but rode on.

The road continued to weave through the foothills, and the carvings grew more complex. There were no more heads or faces. Now runes ran in complex patterns of lines and circles. Riwal reined in before one.

“The Great Star!” His awe was plain to see.

Surveying the complexity of that design, I could at last make out a basic five-point star. But the star was overlaid with a wealth of other curves and bits, so it took careful examination to make it out at all.

“The Great Star?” I asked.

Riwal had dismounted and gone to the rock face in which that pattern was so deeply chiseled, running his fingers along the lines as far up as he could reach, as if he wished to assure himself by touch that what his eyes reported was true.

“It is a way, that much we know, of calling upon one of the highest of the Powers,” he said, “though all save the design has been lost to us. Never before have I seen it in so complex a setting. I must make a drawing of this!”

Straightway he brought out his horn of ink, tight-capped for journeying; his pen; and a fresh piece of parchment on which he began to copy the design. So lost was he in the task that I grew restless. At last I felt I could no longer just sit and watch his slow stroke upon stroke as he studied each part of the design to set it down.

“I shall ride on a little,” I told him. He grunted some answer, intent upon his labors.

Ride on I did, and the road took a last turning - to the end!

Before me a flat rock face bore no sign of any gateway or door. The pavement ended flush with that cliff. I stared in disbelief at such an abrupt and seemingly meaningless finish to our quest. A road that began nowhere and ended thus - ? What had led to its making? What could its purpose have been?

I dismounted and went to run my fingertips along the surface of the cliff. It was real, solid rock-the road ran to it and ended. I swung first to one side and then to the other, beyond the boundaries of the pavement, seeking some continuation, some reason. There were two pillars standing, one on either hand, as if they guarded some portal. But the portal did not exist!

I advanced to lay hand upon the left pillar, and, as I did so, at its foot I caught a glimpse of something. It was a faint glimmer, near-buried in the gravel. Straightway I was on my knees, using first my fingers and then the point of my knife, to loosen my find from a crack in which it had been half-buried.

The gleaming object I held cupped in my hand was a strange find. It was a ball, a small globe of crystal, a substance one might have thought would have been shattered among these harsh rocks long since. Yet it did not even bear a scratch upon its smooth surface.

Within it was a tiny image, so well-wrought as to be the masterpiece of some gem-cutter’s art - the image of a gryphon, the beast that was my own House symbol. The creature had been posed with one eagle-clawed foot raised, its beak open as if it were about to utter some word of wisdom to which it bade me listen. Set in the globe directly above its head was a twisted loop of gold, as if it had once been so linked to a chain for wearing.

As I stood with it cupped in my hand, the glimmer of light that had led me to its discovery grew stronger. And I will swear that the crystal itself became warm, but only with such warmth as was pleasing.

I held it on the palm of my hand, level with my eyes, that I might study the gryphon closely. Now I could see that there were small flecks of crimson in the head to mark the eyes. And those flecks sparkled, even though there was no outer light to reflect within them, almost as if they had life of their own.

Long had I been familiar with all the broken bits on Riwal’s shelves, but never before had such a thing been found intact - save for the broken loop at the top, and that, I saw, could be easily repaired. Perhaps I should offer it to Riwal. And yet as I felt its warmth against my flesh, saw the gryphon’s stance of wisdom and warning within, I had the belief that this was meant for me alone and that its finding was not by mere chance but by the workings of some purpose beyond my knowledge. If it were true that my mother’s House had inter-mated with Old Ones, then it could well be that some small portion of such blood in my own veins made me find the crystal globe familiar and pleasant.

I took it back to Riwal. When he saw it, there was vast amazement on his face.

“A treasure - and truly yours,” he said slowly, as if he wished what he said were not so.

“I found it - but we share equally.” I made myself be fair.

He shook his head. “Not this. Is it mere chance that brings a gryphon to one who wears that badge already?” Reaching forth, he touched the left breast of the jerkin above my mail, on which was discreetly set the small gryphon head I always wore. He would not even take the globe into his hand, though he bent his head to study it closely.

“This is a thing of Power,” he said at last. “Do you not feel the life in it?”

That I did. The warmth and well-being that spread from it was a fact I could not deny.

“It will have many uses.” His voice was low, and I saw that his eyes were now closed, so he was not viewing it at all. “It shall bind when the need is for binding; it shall open a door where there is want of a key; it shall be your fate, to lead you into strange places.”

Though he had never said he could farsee, in that moment I knew that he was gripped by a compelling force which enabled him to envision the future uses of the thing I had found. I wrapped it within a scrap of his parchment and stowed it against my flesh within my mail for the greatest safety that I could give it.

About the bare cliff Riwal was as puzzled as I. All the signs suggested a portal of some importance, yet there was no portal. And we had, in the end, to be content with what we had discovered and to begin the trek back from the Waste.

Never during that journey did Riwal ask to see the gryphon again, nor did I bring it forth. Yet there was no moment during the return that I was not aware of what I carried. And the two nights that we lay encamped on the return road, I had strange dreams, of which I could remember very little save that they left an urgency upon me to return to the only home I had ever known, because before me lay a task of importance.

Joisan:

Though I had little liking for Yngilda, I found her brother Toross unlike her. In the autumn of that year, soon after we returned to Ithkrypt, he came riding over the hills with a small escort, their swords all scabbarded with peace-strings, ready to take part in the fall hunt that would fill our winter larder after the kills were salted down.

Differing from his sister in body as well as in mind, he was a slender, well-set youth, his hair more red than the usual bronze of a dalesman. He possessed a quick wit and a gift of song that he used to advantage in the hall at night.

I heard Dame Math say to one of her women that that one, meaning Toross, could well carry a water horn through life to collect the tears of maids sighing after him. Yet he did nothing to provoke such admiration; never courted their notice, being as ready in riding and practice of arms as any of the men, and well-accepted by them.

But to me he was a friend such as I had not found before. He taught me the words of many songs and how to finger his own knee-harp. Now and then he would bring me a branch of brilliant leaves clipped at their autumn splendor, or some like trifle to delight the eye.

Not that he had much tune for such pleasures, for this was a bustling time when there was much to be done for the ordering of supplies against the coming of cold days. We stewed some fruits and set them in jars with parchment tied firmly over the mouths; dried other such; brought forth heavy cloth-nig and inspected it for the need of repairs.

More and more of this Dame Math left to my ordering, as she said that now I was so nigh in years to becoming the lady of my lord’s household I must have the experience of such ways. I made mistakes, but I also learned much, because I had no mind to be shamed before strangers in another keep. And I felt more than a little pride when my uncle would notice with approval some dish of my contriving. He had a sweet tooth, and rose and violet sugars spun artfully into flowers were to him an amusing conceit with which to end a meal, and one of my greater triumphs.

Though I busied myself so by day, and even a little by lamplight in the evening when we dealt with the clothing, yet I could not altogether thrust out of mind some of the thoughts Yngilda had left with me. Thus I did something in secret that otherwise only a much younger maid would have thought on.

There was a well to the west in the dale that had a story about it - that if one went there when the full moon was reflected on its water surface and cast in a pin, then luck would follow. Thus, not quite believing, yet still drawn by some small hope that perhaps there was luck to be gained by this device, I stole away at moonrise (which was no small task in itself) and cut across the newly harvested fields to the well.

The night was chill, and I pulled high the hood of my cloak. Then I stood looking down at the silvered reflections in the water and I held out my pin, ready to drop it into the disk mirrored there. However, before I released it, the reflection appeared to shiver and change into something else. For a long moment I was sure that what I had seen there had been far different from the moon, more like a crystal ball. I must have dropped the pin without being aware, for suddenly there was a troubling of the water, and the vision, if vision it had been, was gone.

I was so startled that I forgot the small spell-rhyme I should have spoken at that moment. So my luck-bringing was for naught, and I laughed at my own action as I turned and ran from the well.

That there is ensorcellment and spell-laying in the world we all know. There are the Wisewomen who are learned in such, as well as others, such as the Past-Abbess, who have control over powers most men do not understand. One can evoke some of these powers if one has the gift and the training, but I had neither. Perhaps it is better not to dabble in such matters, Only - why at that moment had I seen again (if I had in truth seen it) that englobed gryphon?

Gryphon - beneath the folds of my cloak my fingers sought and found the outlines of that beast as it was stitched upon my tabard. It was the symbol of the House of Ulm, to which I was now bound by solemn oath. What was he like, my thoughts spun on, this unseen, unknown lord of mine? Why had he never sent to me such a likeness of himself as Yngilda carried? Monster - Yngilda had no reason to speak spiteful lies, there must lie some core of truth in what she had said to me. There was one way.

Gifts came yearly from Ulmsdale on my name-day. Suppose that when they were brought this year, I sought out the leader of the party bringing them, asked of him a boon to be carried to bis lord: that we exchange our likenesses. I had my own picture, limned by uncle’s scribe, who had such a talent. Yes, that was what I would do!

It seemed to me in that moment that perhaps the well had answered me by putting that thought into my head. So I sped, content, back to the hall, pleased that none there had marked my absence.

Now I set to work upon a project of my own. That was making a suitable case for the picture drawn on parchment. As deftly as I could, I mounted it on a piece of polished wood.

For it I then worked a small bag, the fore-part embroidered with the gryphon, the back with the broken sword. I hoped my lord could understand my subtle meaning: that I was dutifully looking forward to Ulmsdale; that Ithkrypt was my past, not my future. This I did in secret and in stolen moments of time, for I had no mind to let others know my plan. But I had no tune to hide it one late afternoon when Toross came upon me without warning.

The mounted picture lay before me in the open, as I had been using it to measure. When he saw it he said sharply, “There is one here, kinswoman, who sees you well as you are. Whose hand limned this?”

“Archan, my uncle’s scribe.”

“And for whom have you had it limned?”

Again there was that sharp note in his voice, as if he had a right to demand such an answer from me. I was more than a little surprised, and also displeased, that he would use such a tone, where before he had been all courtesy and soft speeches.

“It is to be a surprise for my Lord Kerovan. Soon he will send my name-day gifts. This I shall return to him.” I disliked having to spread my plan before him, yet his question had been too direct to evade.

“Your lord!” He turned his face a little from me. “One forgets these ties exist, Joisan. Do you ever think what it will mean to go among strangers, to a lord you have never seen?” Again that roughness in his speech, which I could not understand. I did not think it kind of him to seize so upon a hidden fear this way and drag it out before my eyes.

I put aside my needle, took up the picture and the unfinished case, and wrapped them in the cloth wherein I kept them, without answering him. I had no intention of saying “yes” or “no” to that question which he had no right to ask. “Joisan - there is the right of bride - refusal!” The words burst from him as he stood there with his head still averted. His hands were laced upon his sword belt, and I saw his fingers tighten and press.

‘To so dishonor his House and mine?” I returned. “Do you deem me such a nothing? What a poor opinion you carry of me, kinsman! What have I done to make you believe I would openly shame any man?”

“Man!” He swung around to face me now. There was a tautness to his mouth, an expression about his eyes I had never seen before. “Do you not know what they say of the heir of Ulmsdale? Man - what was your uncle thinking of when he agreed to such a match? Joisan, no one can hold a maid to such a bargain when she has been betrayed within its bonds! Be wise for yourself and think of refusal - now!”

I arose. In me anger grew warm. But it is in my nature that when I am most in ire I am also the most placid seeming outwardly. For which, perhaps, I should thank fortune, for many times has it given me good armor.

“Kinsman, you forget yourself. Such speech is unseemly, and I know shame that you could think me so poor a thing as to listen to it. You had better learn to guard your tongue.” So saying I left him, not heeding his quick attempt to keep me there.

Then I climbed to my own small chamber and there stood by the northward window, gazing out into the dusk. I was shivering, but not with the cold; rather with that fear I thought I had overcome in the weeks since Yngilda had planted it in my mind.

Yngilda’s spite, and now this strange outburst from Toross, who, I had not believed, could have said such a thing to me! The right of bride - refusal, yes, that existed. But the few times it had been invoked in the past had led to death feuds between the Houses so involved. Monster - Yngilda had said that. And now Toross - repeating the word “man” as if it could not be applied to my lord! Yet my uncle would not wish to use me ill, and surely he had considered very well the marriage proposal when it had first been made to him. I had also Dame Math’s solemn oath.

I longed all at once for the garden of the Past-Abbess Malwinna. To her alone could I speak on this matter. Dame Math’s stand I already knew: that my lord was a victim of misfortune. This I could believe more readily than that he was in any way not a man. For after sworn oaths between my uncle and his father, such a thing could not be. And I heartened myself by such sensible council, pinning additional hope on my plan to send Kerovan the picture.

But thereafter I avoided Toross as much as I could, though he made special attempts several times to have private conversation with me. I could claim duties enough to keep me aloof, and claim them I speedily did. Then there came a day when he had private conversation with my uncle, and before the day’s end he and his men rode out of Ithkrypt. Dame Math was summoned to my uncle, and thereafter Archan came to bring me also.

My uncle was scowling as I had seen him do at times when he was crossed in some matter. And that scowl was turned blackly on me as I entered.

“What is this boil of trouble you have started, wench?” His voice was only slightly below a roar, aimed at me when I was scarcely within the doorway. “Are you so light of word that you - “

Dame Math arose from her chair. Her face was as anger-cast as his, but she looked at him, not me.

“We shall have Joisan’s word before you speak so!” Her lower tone cut across his. “Joisan, this day Toross came to your uncle and spoke of bride-refusal - “

It was my turn to interrupt; my anger also heated by such an accusation from my uncle, before he had asked my position in the matter.

“So did he speak to me also. I told him I would not listen; nor am I an oath-breaker! Or do you, who know me well, also believe that?”

Dame Math nodded. “It is as I thought. Has Joisan lived under your eyes for all these years without your knowing her for what she is? What said Toross to you, Joisan?”

“He seemed to think evil concerning my Lord Kerovan, and that I should use bride-refusal not to go to him. I told him what I thought of his shameful words and left him, nor would I have any private speech with him thereafter.”

“Bride-refusal!” My uncle brought his fist down on the table with the thump of a war drum. “Is that youngling mad? To start a blood feud, not only with Ulmsdale, but half the north who would stand beside Ulric in such a matter! Why does he urge this?”

There was frost in Dame Math’s eyes, a certain quirk to her lips which suggested that she was not altogether displeased at his asking that

“I can think of two reasons, brother. One stemming from his own hot blood. The other placed in his mind by - “

“Enough! There is no need to list what may or may not have moved Toross to this folly. Now listen, girl,” he swung on me again. “Ulric took oath that his heir was fit to be the lord of any woman. That his wife was disordered in her wits when the lad was born, that all men know. She so took such a dislike to the child she named him monster, which he is not. Also Ulric spoke with me privately upon a matter which has much to do with this, and which I tell you now, but you shall keep mum-mouthed about it hereafter - remember that, girl!”

“I shall so.” I gave him my promise when he paused as if expecting that assurance from me.

“Well enough. Then listen - there is always something behind such wild tales when you hear them, so learn in the future to winnow the true from the false.

“The Lady Tephana, who is your lord’s mother (and a fine mother she has been to him!), had an elder son Hlymer, by her first marriage. Since he got no lands from his father, she brought him with her to Ulmsdale. In addition she has had a daughter - Lisana - who is but one year younger than your lord.

“This daughter she has seen betrothed to one of her own House. And the daughter she dotes upon with all the affection to equal her distaste for Kerovan. Thus Ulric of Ulmsdale has reason to believe that within his own household lie seeds of trouble for his heir - for Hlymer makes common cause with Lisana’s betrothed, and they see a lord to come who is not Kerovan. Ulric can make no move against them, for he has no proof. But because he would not see his son despoiled when he could no longer protect him, he wished some strong tie for Kerovan, to unite him with a House that would support him when the time comes that he needs shields raised for him.

“Since no man can sit in the high seat of a keep who is not sound of body and mind, how better create doubt in possible supporters for a threatened heir than by bending rumor to one’s use, spreading tales of ‘monsters’ and the like? You have seen what happens when such tales come into the hearing of those who do not guess what may lie behind their telling. Toross came to me with such a story - he is filled with it. Since I am sworn not to reveal, save to the parties most deeply concerned, any of Ulric’s fears for the future, I bade Toross ride forth if he could not hold his tongue. But that you might have listened to him - “

I shook my head. “It was he who came to me with it. But I had already heard such a tale in greater detail from his sister in Trevamper.”

“So Math told me.” The flush had faded from my uncle’s face. Now I knew he was slightly ashamed of the way he had greeted me, not that he would ever say so. But such things had always been understood between us.

“You see, girl,” he continued, “how far this story has spread. I do not think Ulric is altogether wise in not better ordering his household. But each man is lord in his own keep and needs must face his own shadows there. But know this - your wedded lord is such a man as you will be proud to hand - fast when the time comes - as it will soon now. Take no heed of these rumors, knowing their source and purpose.”

“For which knowing I give thanks,” I replied.

When Dame Math and I left his company together, she drew me apart into her own chamber and looked at me searchingly, as if by that steady gaze alone she could hunt out every unspoken thought within my mind.

“How chanced Toross to speak to you on this matter? He must have had some reason - one does not so easily break custom. You are a wedded lady, Joisan, not an unspoken - for maid who allows her eyes to stray this way or that.”

So I told her of my plan. To my surprise she did not object nor seem to think what I was doing was beneath the dignity of my station. Instead she nodded briskly.

“What you do is fitting, Joisan. Perhaps we should have arranged such an exchange ourselves long ago. That would have broken such rumors. Had you had a picture of Kerovan in your belt-purse when Yngilda spoke to you, it would have answered well. So Toross was angered at what you did? It was past time when that youth should have returned to those who sent him to make trouble!” She was angry again, but not with me. Only what moved her now she did not explain.

So I finished the picture case, and Dame Math approved its making as an excellent example of my best needlecraft. Making all ready, I laid it away in my coffer against the arrival of the party from Ulmsdale.

They were several days late, and the party itself was different from the earlier ones, for the armsmen were older, and several of them bore old, healed wounds which would keep them from active field service. Their leader was crooked of back and walked with a lurch and a dip.

Besides a casket that he delivered with ceremony to me, he bore a message tube sealed with Ulric’s symbol for my uncle and was straightway taken into private conversation with him, as if this were a matter of great import. I wondered if my summons to Ulmsdale had come at last. But the nature of the bearer was such that I could not accept that. My lord would have come himself as was right, and with a retinue to do me honor through those lands we must cross to his home.

Within the casket was a necklet of northern amber and gold beads, with a girdle to match. Truly a gift to show me prized. Yet I wished it had been just such a picture as I had ready to return to him. I knew that Dame Math would make opportunity to let me speak alone with this Jago who commanded the Ulmsdale force, that I might entrust him with my gift. But it appeared he had so much to say to my uncle there was little time for that, for he did not come out of the inner chamber until the hour for the evening meal.

I was glad he was seated beside me, for it gave me a chance to say that I would see him privately, that I had something to entrust to him. But he had a speech in return.

“Lady, you have had Ulmsdale’s gift, but I have another for you from the hand of Lord Kerovan himself which he said to give to you privately - “

Within me I knew then a rise of excitement, for I could conceive of nothing save that we had been of one mind, and what Jago had for me was also a picture.

But it was not so. When Dame Math saw that we came together in a nook between the high seat and the wall, what he laid in my eager hand was not a flat packet, but a small, round one. Quickly I pulled away covering of soft wool to find that I held a crystal globe and within it a gryphon - even as I had seen it at the House of Dames! I nearly dropped it For to have something of the Power touch into one’s life so was a thing to hold in awe and fear. Set in its surface just above the gryphon’s head was a ring of gold, and there was strung a chain so one could wear it as a pendant.

“A wondrous thing!” Somehow I found my tongue and hoped that I had not betrayed my first fear. For to no one could I explain the momentary panic I had felt. The more I studied it now, the clearer became its beauty, and I thought that it was truly a treasure, finer than any that had ever been sent to me in any casket of ceremony.

“Yes. My lord begs you accept of this, and perhaps wear it sometimes, that you may know his concern for you.” That sounded like some set speech which he had memorized. And I decided swiftly to ask no questions of this man. Perhaps he was not too close to my lord after all.

‘Tell my lord I take great joy in his gift.” I found the formal words easier than I would have done a moment earlier. “It shall abide with me night and day that I may look upon it, not only for my pleasure in its beauty, but also because of his concern for me. In return,” I hurriedly brought forth my own gift, “do you place this in my lord’s hand. Ask of him, if he wills, to send its like to me when he may.”

“Be sure that your wish is my command, Lady.” Jago slipped it into his belt-purse. Before he could say more, if there was more to be said between us, there came one of my uncle’s men to summon him again to that inner room, and I did not see him further that night.

Nor did we have more than formal speech together during the two remaining days that he was at Ithkrypt. I gave him ceremonious farewell when he rode forth, but by then all within the keep knew of the news that had come with the men from Ulmsdale.

By birth and inclination dalesmen are not sea-rovers. We have ports for trading set up along the coast, and there are villages of fisherfolk to be found there. But deep-sea ships do not sail under the flag of any dales lord. And those who trade from overseas, such as the Sulcarmen, are not of our blood and kin.

News from overseas is long old before it reaches us. But we had heard many times that the eastern lands, were locked in a struggle for power between nation and nation. Now and then there was mention of a country, a city, or even some warlord or leader whose deeds reached us in such garbled form they were already well on the way to becoming a tale more fancy than fact.

Of late, however, there had been new ships nosing along our shores. The Sulcarmen had suffered some grievous defeat of their own two years since in the eastern waters. And so we had not the usual number of their traders coming for our woolen cloth, our wonder-metal from the Waste, our freshwater pearls. But these others had put in to haggle, driving hard bargains, and they seemed over-interested in our land.

Often when they had discharged a cargo, before taking on another, they would lie in harbor, and their crews would ride north and south as if exploring.

Our thoughts of war never encompassed more than the feuds between dale and dale, which could be dark and bloody at times, but which seldom involved more than a few score of men on either side. We had no king or overlord, which was our pride, but also in a manner our weakness, as was to be proven to us. Sometimes several lords would combine their forces to make a counter-raid on Waste outlaws or the like. But such alliances were always temporary. And, while there were several lords of greater following than others (mainly because they held richer and more populous dales), none could send out any rallying call all others would come to.

This must have been clear to those who spied and went - that we were feeble opponents, easy to overrun. However, they misread the temper of the dales, for a dalesman will fight fiercely for his freedom. And a dalesman’s loyalty to his lord, who is like the head of his own family, is seldom shaken.

Since Ulmsport lay at the mouth of that dale, it had recently been visited by two ships of these newcomers. They called themselves men of Alizon and spoke arrogantly of the size and might of their overseas land. One of their men had been injured inland. His companion from the ship had been killed. The wounded man had been nursed by a Wisewoman. By her craft she could tell true from false. And, while he wandered in a fever, talking much, she listened. Later, after the coming of his comrades to bear him away, she had gone to Lord Ulric. He had listened carefully, knowing that she knew of what she spoke.

Lord Ulric was prudent and wise enough to see that there was that to it which might come to overshadow our whole land, as it did. Speedily he sent accounts of what had been learned to all the neighboring dales, as well as to Ithkrypt.

It seemed from the babbling of the wounded man that he was indeed a spy, the scout of an army soon to be landed on us. We realized that those of Alizon had decided that our rule was so feeble and weak in its nature they could overrun us at their pleasure, and this they moved to do.

Thus was the beginning of the great shadow on our world. But I nursed the crystal ball in my hand, uninterested in Alizon and its spies, sure that somehow the Lord Kerovan would do as I willed, and I would look upon the picture of a man who was no monster.

Kerovan:

To my great surprise I discovered Jago had returned before Riwal and I came out of the Waste. His anger with me was such that, had I been younger, I think he would have cut a switch from the nearest willow and used it for my discipline. I saw that that anger was fed, not wholly from my supposedly ill-advised foray into the dubious territory, but also from something he had learned at Ulmskeep. Having spoken his mind hotly, he ordered me to listen, with such serious mien that I lost the defiance his berating had aroused.

On two occasions in the past I had been to Ulmskeep, both times when my mother was away visiting her kin. So it, and the lower part of the dale, was not unknown to me. Also on those times when my father had come to me, he had taken patience to make me aware of the spread of our lands, the needs of our people, those things that it was necessary for me to know when the day came for me to take his place.

But the news Jago brought I had not heard before. For the first time I learned of the invaders (though they were not termed so then, being outwardly visitors on leave from their ships at Ulmsport).

With what contempt they regarded us we quickly learned, for we are far from stupid - at least in that way. Dalesmen may insist too much upon their freedom, having a strong disliking for combining forces, save in tune of immediate and pressing need. But we can sniff danger like wild things when it treads our land.

They had first come nosing into our ports, up river mouths, a year or so earlier. Then they had been very wary, circumspect, playing the roles of traders. Since the stuffs they had to offer in return for our native wool, metal, and pearls were new and caught the eye, they found a welcome. But they kept much to themselves, though they came ashore in twos and threes, never alone. Once ashore they did not linger in port, but journeyed inland on the pretext of seeking trade.

As strangers they were suspect, especially in those districts lying near the Waste, even though it was known that their origin was overseas. Men met them courteously and with guest right, but as they looked and listened, asked a question here, another there with discretion, so did others watch and listen. Soon my father, gathering reports, could see a pattern in their journeying which was not that of traders, but rather, to his mind, the action of scouts within new territory.

He sent privately to our near neighbors: Uppsdale, Fyndale (which they had visited under the pretext of the great fair held there), Flathingdale, and even to Vastdale, which also had its port of Jorby. With all these lords he was on good terms, for we had no feuds to separate us. And the lords were ready to listen and then set their own people to watching also.

What grew out of all this was the now-strong belief that my father had judged the situation rightly, and these overseas strangers were prowling our country for some purpose of their own, one meaning no good to the dales. It was soon to be decided whether or not the lords would make common cause and forbid new landings to any ship from Alizon.

However, to get the lords to make common cause on any matter was a task to which only a man with infinite patience might set himself. No lord would openly admit that he accepted the will of another. We had no leader who could draw the lords under one banner or to one mind in action. And this was to be our bane.   

Now there were to assemble at Ulmskeep five of the northern lords to exchange their views upon the idea. They needed some excuse for such a gathering, however, for it must be a festival of a kind to keep people talking in such a way that the strangers might hear a false excuse. My father had found a cause in the first arming of his heir, bringing me now into the company of my peers as was only natural at my age.

So far I followed Jago. But at his flat statement that I was to be the apparent center for this gathering, I was startled. For so long had I accepted my lot apart from the keep and from the company of my kin, that this way of life seemed the only proper one to me.  

“But - “ I began in protest.

Jago drummed with fingertips upon the table. “No, he is right, Lord Ulric is. Too long have you been put aside from what is rightly yours. He needs must do this, not only to give cover to his speech with the lords, but for your own sake. He has learned the folly of the course he has followed these past years.”

“The folly of - ?” I was astounded that Jago spoke so of my father, since he was so stoutly a liegeman of Ulric’s as to think of him with the awe one approached an Old One.

“Yes, I say it - folly!” The word exploded a second time from his lips, as might a bolt from a crossbow. “There are those in his own household who would change matters.” He hesitated, and I knew without words what he hinted at: that my mother favored my sister and her betrothed for the succession in Ulmsdale. I had never closed my ears to any rumor brought to the foresters’ settlement, deeming I must know the worst.

“Look at you!” Jago was angry once more. “You are no monster! Yet the story spreads that Lord Ulric needs must keep you pent here in chains, so ill-looking a thing, so mind-damaged, that you are less than a man, even an animal!”

His heat struck a spark from me. So this was what was whispered of me in my own keep!

“You must show yourself as you are; be claimed before those whose borders march with Ulmsdale as the proper heir. Then none may rise to misname you later. This Lord Ulric now knows - for he has heard some whispering, even challenged those whisperers to their faces. And one or two were bold enough to tell him what they had heard.”

I got up from the table which stood between us and went to Jago’s great war-shield where it hung upon the wall. He spent long hours keeping it well-burnished so that it was like a mirror, even though the shape distorted my reflection.

“As long as I keep on my boots,” I said then, “perhaps I will pass as humankind.”

Those boots were cunningly made, being carefully shaped so my cloven hoofs appeared normal feet. When I went shod, no man might be aware of the truth. The boots had been devised by Jago himself and made from special leather my father sent.

Jago nodded. “Yes, you will go, and you will keep your boots on, youngling, so you can prove to every whisperer in the dales that your father sired a true heir, well able to take lord’s oath. With weapons you are as good, perhaps even better, than those who are keep armsmen. And your wit is keen enough to make you careful.”

Which was more praise than he had ever given me in our years together.

Thus mailed and armed (and most well-booted) I rode with Jago out of the exile which had been laid upon me and came at last to take up life in my father’s keep. I did so with inner misgivings, having, as Jago pointed out, some store of wit, and well-surprising that I was far from welcome by some members of that household. I had little chance to speak again with Riwal before I went - though I longed for him to offer to go with me, knowing at the same time that he never would. In our last meeting he looked at me in such a way that I felt he could somehow see into my mind and know all my uncertainties and fears.

“You have a long road to ride, Kerovan,” he said.

“Only two days,” I corrected him. “We but go to Ulmskeep.”

Riwal shook his head. “You go farther, gryphon bearer, and into danger. Death stalks at your shoulder. You shall give, and, in giving, you shall get. The giving and the getting will be stained with blood and fire - “

I realized then that he was farseeing, and I longed to cover my ears, for it seemed to me that his very words would draw down upon me the grim future he saw.

“Death stalks at the heels of every man born,” I summoned my courage to make answer. “If you can farsee, tell me what shield I can raise to defend myself.”

“How can I?” he returned. “All future is fan-shaped, spreading out in many roads from this moment. If you make one choice, there is that road to follow; if you make another yet a second path, a third, a fourth - But no man can outstride or outfight the given pattern in the end. Yours lies before you. Walk with a forester’s caution, Kerovan. And know this - you have that deep within you, if you learn to use it, that shall be greater than any shield or sword wrought by the most cunning of smiths.”

“Tell me - “ I began.

“No!” he half-turned from me. “So much may I say, but no more. I cannot farsee your choices, and no word of mine must influence you in their making. Go with the Peace.” Then he raised his hand, and, between us in the air, he traced a sign. I half-started back, for his moving finger left a faint glimmering which was gone almost as quickly as I marked it. And I realized then that in some of his seeking Riwal must have been successful, for his sign was of the Power.

“Until we meet again then, comrade.” I spoke friend-farewell.

He did not face me squarely, but stood, his hand still a little raised to me. I know now that he understood this was our last meeting and perhaps regretted it. But I was not cursed with that sight which can hurt far more than it shields. What man wishes to see into the future in truth when there are so many ills lying there in wait for us?

As we traveled to Ulmskeep, Jago talked steadily, and that this was of purpose, I shortly understood. He so made known to me the members of my father’s household, giving each his character as he himself saw it, with unspoken shadings which allowed me to perceive that this one might be well-disposed, that one not. I think he saw me as a child fated to make some error that would bring about disaster and was doing what he could to give me some manner of protection against any outspoken folly.’

My elder half-brother, who had come to Ulmskeep as a very young child, had, when he reached the age suitable for instruction in arms, been sent to our mother’s kin. But within the past year he had returned, riding comrade-in-arms to our kinsman Rogear who was my sister’s betrothed. I could well guess that he was to me an unfriend and with him I must be wary.

My mother had her followers among others at the keep, and Jago, with what delicacy he could summon, named those to me, giving short descriptions of each and of the positions they held. On the other hand my father’s forces were in the greater number, and among those were the major officers - the Master of Armsmen, the marshal, and others.

It was a divided household, and such are full of pitfalls. Yet on the surface all seemed smooth. I listened carefully, asking some questions. Perhaps these explanations were Jago’s idea; perhaps my father had suggested that I be so cautioned before I came to face friend and unfriend, that I might tell one from the other.

We rode into the keep at sunset, Jago having blown a signal with his approach horn so that we found the door guard drawn up to do us honor. I had marked the residence banners of Uppsdale and Flathingdale below our gryphon on the tower, and knew that two of those my father had summoned were already here. Thus, from the beginning, I would be under the eyes of the curious as well as those of the covertly hostile.

I must play my role well, seemingly unaware of any crosscurrent; bear myself modestly as became a candidate for arms, yet be far from a fool. Was I able to do this? I did not know.

The guards clanged swords together as we dismounted. My father, wearing a loose robe of ceremony over his jerkin and breeches, came forth from the deep shadow of the main portal to the hall. I fell to one knee, holding out my sword by the point that he could lay fingers lightly on its hilt in acknowledgment.

Then he drew me to my feet in a half-embrace, and, with his hand still on my arm, brought me out of the open into the main hall where a feasting board had already been set up, and serving men and maids were busied spreading it across with strips of fair linen and setting out the plates and drinking horns.

There were two other men of early middle age, robes of ceremony about their shoulders. My father made me known to Lord Savron of Uppsdale and Wintof of Flathingdale. That they regarded me keenly I was well aware. But I was strengthened in my role by the knowledge that I made, in my mail and leather over-jerkin, no different appearance than their own sons might display. At this moment no man might raise the cry of monster. They accepted my proper deference as if this were an ordinary meeting and I had been absent from Ulmskeep for perhaps only an hour or two, not for all my life.

Since I was still considered but a boy and, by custom, of little importance, I was able speedily to withdraw from the company of my elders and go to that section of the barracks where the unmarried men of the household were quartered. In deference to my heirship, I was given a small room to myself - a very bare room in which there was a bed, narrow and hard, two stools, and a small table, far less comfortable than my room in the foresters’ holding.

A serving lad brought in my saddle bags. I noted that he watched me with open curiosity when he thought I did not mark him, lingering to suggest that be bring me hot water for washing. When I agreed, I thought that he was determined to make the most of his chance to view the “monster” at close quarters and perhaps report his discoveries to his fellows.

I had laid aside my jerkin and mail by the time he returned, standing in my padded undercoat, sorting through my clothing for my best tabard with its gryphon symbol. He sidled in with a ewer from which steam arose, watching me as he placed it and a basin on the table, and twitched off a towel he had borne over one shoulder to lay beside it.

“If you need service, Lord Kerovan - “

I smoothed out the tabard. Now I deliberately unhooked my undercoat, letting it slide from my body, which was thus bared to the waist. Let him see I was not misshapen. As Jago said, if I clung to my boots, no man could miscall me.

“You may look me out a shirt - “ I gestured toward my bags and then saw he was staring at me. What had he expected? Some horribly twisted body? I glanced down and saw what had become so much a part of me I had forgotten I still wore it - . Lifting its chain over my head, I laid it on the table as I washed and saw him eyeing it. Well enough, let him believe that I wore a talisman. Men did so. And one in the form of the symbol of my House was proper.

He found the shut and held it for me as I redonned the gryphon. And he hooked my tabard, handed me my belt with its knife-of-pride before he left, doubtless with much to tell his fellows. But when he had gone, I drew the gryphon from hiding and held it in my hand.

As usual when I held it so, it had a gentle warmth. With that warmth came a sensation of peace and comfort, as if this thing, fashioned long before my first ancestor had ridden into the south dales, had waited all these centuries just to lie in my hand.

So far all had gone as it should. But before me still lay that ordeal from which my thoughts had shied since first I had known that I must come to Ulmsdale, the meeting with my mother. What could I say to her, or she to me? There lay between us that which no one could hope to bridge - not after all these years.

I stood there, cupping close the crystal ball and thinking of what I might do or say at a moment which could be put off no longer. Suddenly it was as if someone spoke aloud - yet it was only in my mind. I might have looked through a newly unshuttered window so that a landscape hitherto-hidden lay before me.

The scene was shadowed, and I knew it was not mine to ever walk that way, just as there could be no true meeting between us which would leave us more than strangers. Yet I felt no sense of loss, only as if a burden had been lifted from me, to leave me free. We had no ties; therefore I owed her no more than she willed me to. I would meet her as I would any lady of rank, paying her the deference of courtesy, asking nothing in return. In my hand the globe was warm and glowing. But a sound at the door made me slip that into hiding before I turned to face who stood there.

I am only slightly over middle height, being slender-boned and spare-fleshed. This youth was tall enough that I must raise my eyes to meet his. He was thick of neck and shoulder, wide of jaw. His hair was a mat of sandy curls so tight he must battle to lay it smooth with any comb. He had a half-grin on his thick lips. I had seen such an expression before among the armsmen when a barracks bully set about heckling some simpleton to impress his standing upon his fellows.

His tabard of state was wrought with fine needlework and stretched tightly over the barrel of his chest. And now he was running his fingers up and down its stiff fronting as if striving to draw attention to it.

Big as he was, he did not altogether fill the doorway, for there was a smaller and slighter figure beside him. I was for an instant startled. The oval of that face was like enough to mine to stamp us kinsmen, just as his darker hair was also mine. His expression was bland, nearly characterless, but I guessed that behind it lurked a sharp wit of the two I would deem him the more dangerous.

From the first I knew these for the enemy. Jago’s descriptions fitted well. The giant was closer-kin to me than the other, for he was my half-brother Hlymer, while his companion was my sister’s betrothed, my cousin Rogear.

“Greetings, kinsmen.” I spoke first.

Hlymer did not lose his grin; it grew a little wider. “He is not furred or clawed, at least not as can be seen. I wonder in what manner his monster marking lies, Rogear.” He spoke as if I were a thing and not able to hear or sense his meaning. But if he meant to arouse some sign of anger he could play upon, he was a fool. I had taken his measure early.

Whether he would have carried on along that theme if left alone I was not to know, because Rogear then answered, not Hlymer’s comment, but my greeting, and courteously in kind, as if he never meant to do otherwise.

“And to you greeting, kinsman.”

Hlymer had a high voice that some big men own and a slight hesitancy of speech. But Rogear’s tone was warm and winning. Had I not known him to be what he was, I might have been deceived into believing that he had indeed sought me out to make me welcome.

They played my escort to the great hall. I did not know whether to count it as a relief or not when I saw that there were no chairs placed for ladies, that this meal at least was clearly intended only for the men. Undoubtedly my mother had chosen to keep to her own apartments. Since all knew the situation, none would comment on it.

I saw my father glance sharply at me now and then from his High Seat. My own place was down-table, between Hlymer and Rogear (though whether they had purposefully devised that or not, I did not know). If my father was not satisfied, there was little he could do without attracting unwelcome attention.

My companions’ tricks began early. Hlymer urged me to empty my wine horn, implying that any moderation on my part marked me in that company. Rogear’s smooth flow of talk was clearly designed to point up the fact that I was raw from some farmyard, without manners or wit. That neither accomplished their purposes must have galled. Hlymer grew sullen, scowling, muttering under his breath words I did not choose to hear. But Rogear showed no ill nature at the spoiling of whatever purpose he had in mind when we sat down.

In the end Hlymer was caught in his own trap - if he considered it a trap - and grew muddle-headed with drink, loud in his comments, until some of those around turned on him. They were young kinsmen of the visiting lords and, I think, frank in their desire for no trouble.

So began my life under my father’s roof. Luckily I did not have to spend much time within the range of Hlymer and Rogear. My father used the fact of my introduction and comfirmation as his heir to keep me much with him, making me known to his neighbors, having me tutored in those details of the ceremony that occurred on the third day of the gathering.

I swore kin-oath before a formidable assemblage of dale lords, accepted my father’s gift-sword, and so passed in an hour from the status of untried and unconsidered youth to that of man and my father’s second in command. As such I was then admitted to the council concerning the men from Alizon.

Though all were agreed that there seemed to be some menace behind the coming of these men from overseas, there was sharp division as to how the situation was to be handled. In the end the conference broke, as such so often did in the dales, with no plan of action drawing us together after all.

Because of my new status in the household, I rode part way down the dale with the lord of Uppsdale to give him road-speed. On my way back my career as Heir of Ulmsdale was nearly finished before it had rightfully begun.

In courtesy to our guest, my sword was in peace-strings, and I had gone unmailed. But in the moment of danger I was warned. For there flashed into my mind such a sudden sensation of danger that I did not wait to loose the cords from my sword. Instead I plucked free my knife, at the same time throwing myself forward, so that the harsh hair of my mount’s mane rasped my cheek and chin. There was the sharp crack of a bolt’s passing, a burn across my shoulder - by so little I escaped death.

I knew the tricks the foresters used in savage infighting when the outlaws came raiding. So I threw my knife, to be answered with a choked cry from that man who had arisen between the rocks to sight on me a second time. Now I brought my sword around, charging a second man who had emerged, steel in hand. One of the battle-trained mount’s hoofs crushed down, and the man was gone, screaming as he rolled across the ground.

We had made an important capture, we discovered, for though these two wore the dress of drifting laborers who make their way from dale to dale at harvest time, they were indeed the very invaders we had been discussing at such weary length. One was dead; the other badly injured. My father called the Wisewoman of the dale and had her attend him, and, light-headed with fever, he talked.

The purpose of their attack on me we did not learn. But there was much else of useful knowledge, and the threat lying over us grew darker. My father had me in with Jago and his trusted officers. Now he spoke his mind.

“I do not pretend to farseeing, but any man with wit in his head can understand that there is purpose and planning behind this. If we do not look ahead, we may - “ He hesitated. “I do not know. New dangers mean new ways of dealing with them. We have always clung to the ways of our fathers - but will those serve us now? It may be that the day will soon come when we need friends to hold shields with us. I would draw to us now all assurances of those as we can.

“Therefore” - he smoothed out on the table around which we sat the map of the dalesside - “here is Uppsdale and the rest. To them we have already made clear what may come. Now let us warn the south - there we may first call upon Ithkrypt.”

Ithkrypt and the lady Joisan. For long periods of time I had put her out of mind. Had the day now arrived when my father would order ours to be a marriage in fact? We had both reached an age when such were common.

I thought of my mother and the sister who had kept themselves stubbornly immured in their own apartments since I had come to Ulmskeep. Suddenly I knew that I would not have my Lady Joisan join them there as she would do if she came now. How could she help but be swayed by their attitude toward me? No, she must come willingly to me - or not at all!

But how could I make sure that she did so?

As that sudden warning of danger had saved my life, so again came an answer as clear and sharp as if spoken aloud.

Thus after my father had cautioned Jago as to what to say to Lord Cyart when he delivered the name-day gift to my lady, I spoke privately with my old tutor. I could not say why I had to do this; I did not want to; yet it was laid upon me as heavily as-a geas-is put upon some hero who cannot thereafter turn aside from it. I gave him, that he might put it in Lady Joisan’s own hand. Perhaps it was my true bride-price. I would not know until that moment when we did indeed at long last stand face to face.

Joisan:

One difference did the news brought to my uncle from Ulmsdale make in my own plans for the future. It was decided that I would not be going there to join my lord this season as had been heretofore thought, but I must wait upon a more settled time. For if spies had been sent into Ulmsdale with such boldness, the enemies’ forethrust might soon be delivered. My uncle sent such a message with Jago. There came no protest from Lord Ulric or Lord Kerovan in return, so he deemed they agreed. Thereafter he sat sober-faced, talking with his armsmen and with messengers he sent in turn to Trevamper and those dales where he had kinship or old friendship.

It was a time of spreading uneasiness. We harvested more closely that year than any time I could remember, plundering all the wild berries from the field bushes, taking nuts from the woods trees, laying up what manner of stores we could. It was as if some foreshadowing of the starving years to come already lay across the land.

And in the next summer my uncle ordered the planting increased, with more fields cleared and sown. The weather was as uncertain as the threatening future, for there were a number of storms of great severity. Twice the roads were washed out, and we were isolated until men could rebuild them.

We had only ragged scraps of news when some lord’s messenger found his way to us. No more spies had come into Ulmsport From the south there were rumors of strange ships that did not anchor openly in any dale port, but patroled the coast. Then these were seen no more for a space, and we took a little comfort in that.

It appeared that my uncle feared the worst, for he sent his marshal to Trevamper, to return with two loads of the strange metal from the Waste and a smith who straightway set about fashioning arms and repairing the old. Much to my astonishment, my uncle had him take my measurements and prepare for me a coat of mail. When Dame Math protested, he stared at her moodily, for his good humor was long since fled.

“Peace, sister. I would give the same to you, save that I know you would not wear it. But listen well, both of you. I believe that we face darker days than we have ever known. If word comes that these invaders come in force, we may find ourselves beaten from dale to dale. Thus-”

Dame Math had drawn a deep breath then, her indignation fading, another emotion on her face, an expression I could not read.

“Cyart-have-have you had then-?” She did not finish, but her apprehension was such that fear uncoiled within me.

“Have I dreamed? Yes, Math-oncer.

“Spirit of Flame shelter us!” Her hands went to the set of silver hoops slung together at her girdle. She turned them swiftly in her fingers, her lips shaping those formal prayers that were the support of those in the House of Dames.

“As it was promised” - he looked at her - “so have I dreamed-once.”

‘Twice more then to come.” Her coifed head came up, her lips firm. “It is a pity that the Warning does not measure time.”

“We are lucky, or perhaps cursed, to have it at all,” he returned. “Is it better to know there is blackness ahead and so live in foreshadow? Or be ignorant and meet it unwarned? Of the two I choose the warning. We can hold Ithkrypt if they come by river or over the hill ways-perhaps.” He shrugged. “You must be prepared at the worst to ride - not to the coast or southward - but to Norsdale, or even the Waste.”

“Yet no one has yet come save spies.”

“They will, Math. Have no doubt of that. They will come!”

When we were back in our own quarters I dared to ask a question. “What is this dream of which my lord speaks?”

She was standing by the window, gazing out in that blind way one does when one regards thoughts and not what lies beyond. At my words she turned her head.

“Dream - ?” For a moment I thought she was not going to answer. Then she came away from the window, her fingers busy with her prayer hoops as if she drew comfort from them.

“It is our warning.” Obviously she spoke reluctantly. ‘To those vowed to the Flame such things are - ah, well, I cannot gainsay that it happens, and it is not of our doing. A generation ago Lord Randor, our father, took under his protection a Wisewoman who had been accused of dealing with the Old Ones. She was a quiet woman who lived alone, seeking out none. But she had a gift of tending animals, and her sheep were the finest in the dale. There were those who envied her. And as my lord has said concerning ugly stories, malice can be spread by tongue and lip alone.

“After the way of her calling she went alone into the wild places seeking herbs and strange knowledge. But if she knew much others did not, she made no parade of it, or used it to the hurt of any. Only the poisoned talk turned the dale against her. They arose one night to take her flock and drive her forth.

“Lord Randor had been in Trevamper, and they thought him still there, or they would not have dared. As they set torch to her roof place, he and his men came riding. He used his own whip on those who meant her harm; set her under his shield for all men to see.

“She said then that she could not stay, for her peace, so broken, could not be reclaimed. But she asked to see our mother, who was heavy with child. And she laid her hands upon the Lady Alys’ full belly, saying that she would have ease in the birthing - which was thankful hearing, for the lady had had one ill birth and a child dead of it, to her great sorrow.

“Then the Wisewoman said also that it would be a son, and he would have a gift. In times of great danger he would farsee by the means of dreaming. That with two such dreams he could take measures and escape whatever fate they foretold, but the third time would be ill.

“She went then from Ithkrypt and from the dale, and no man saw her go. But what she foretold came true, for our mother was safely delivered within a month of your uncle, the Lord Cyart. And your uncle did dream. The last time he dreamed, it was of the death of his lady, which happened when he was in the south and unable to come to her, though he killed a horse trying. So - if he dreams - we can believe.”

Thus I learned to wear mail because my uncle dreamed, And he taught me also how to use a light sword that had been his as a boy. Though I was not too apt a pupil with that, I proved myself apt with the bow and won the title of marks-man. In days to come I was to thank my uncle for such skills many times over - when it was too late for him to know that he had truly given me life by his forethought.     

So passed the Year of the Moss Wife, which should have seen me with my Lord Kerovan in Ulmsdale. Sometimes I took into my hands and held it, thinking of my lord and wondering what manner of man he was. In spite of all my hopes, no messenger riding between Ulmsdale and Ithkrypt brought me the picture that I desired. At first that angered me a little; then I made excuses, thinking that perhaps they had no one in Ulmsdale with the art of limning out a face, for such talent is not widely given. And in the present chancy times he could not seek afar for something of such small importance.

Though we had stores in plenty, we used them sparingly that winter, scanting even on the Yule feast as had never been done in the past, for my uncle was ever on guard. He had his own scouts riding the frontiers of our dale and awaited all messengers impatiently.

The Month of the Ice Dragon passed, and that of the Snow Bird in the new year was well begun when the news we had awaited came from the lips of a man who had battled through drifts to come to us, so stiff with cold he had to be lifted from a horse that thereafter fell and did not rise again.

Southward was war. The invasion had begun, and it was of such a sort as to startle even those lords who had tried to foresee and prepare. These devils from overseas did not fight with sword and bow after the manner of the dales. They brought ashore from their ships great piles of metal in which men hid, as if in monsters’ bellies. And these manmade monsters crawled ahead, shooting flames in great sweeps from their noses.

Men died in those flames or were crushed under the lumbering weight of the monsters. When the dalesmen retreated into their keeps, the monsters bore inward with their weight against the walls, bringing them down. Such a way of war was unknown, and flesh and blood could not stand against it.

Now that it was too late, the rallying call went forth. Those who lingered in their keeps to be eaten up one by one were the thick-headed and foolish ones. Others gathered into an army under the leadership of four of the southern lords. They had already cut off three of the monsters, which needed certain supplies to keep them running, and destroyed them. But our people had lost the coastline. So the invaders were pouring in more and more men, though their creeping monsters, happily, appeared not so numerous.

The summons came to the northern dales for men to build up a force to contain the invaders, to harass them and restrain them from picking off each dale in turn as one picks ripe plums from a tree.

Hard on the heels of that messenger came the first of the refugees, ones who had blood-claim on us. A party of armsmen escorted a litter and two women who rode, guided through the pass by one of my uncle’s scouts - the Lady Islaugha, Yngilda, and, in the litter, delirious with the fever of a wound, Toross, all now landless and homeless, with naught but what they could carry on their persons.

Yngilda, wed and widowed within two years, stared at me almost witlessly, and had to be led by the hand to the fire, have a cup placed in her fingers, and ordered firmly to drink. She did not seem to know where she was or what had happened to her, save that she was engulfed by an unending nightmare. Nor could we thereafter over get any coherent story from her as to how she had managed to escape her husband’s keep, which was one of those the monsters had battered down.

Somehow,” led by one of her lord’s archers, she had made her way to the dale’s camp and there met the Lady Islaugha, come to tend her son, who had been hurt in one of the attacks against the monsters.

Cut off from any safety in the south, they had turned for shelter to us. Dame Math speedily took over the nursing of Toross, while his mother never left him day or night if she could help.

My uncle was plainly caught between two demands - that of the army battering the invaders and his inborn wish to protect his own, which was the dalesman’s heritage. But, because he had from the first argued that combination against the foe was our only hope, he chose the army.

He marshaled what forces he could without totally stripping the dale, leaving a small but well-trained troop to the command of Marshal Dagale. There was a thaw at the beginning of the Month of the Hawk and, taking advantage of that, he left.

I watched him alone from the gatetower (for Dame Math had been summoned to Toross, who had taken a turn for the worse), just as I had stood in the courtyard minutes earlier pouring the spiced journey drink from the war ewer into the horns of the men to wish them fair fortune. That ewer I still held. It was cunningly wrought in the form of a mounted warrior, the liquid pouring through the mouth of his horse. There was a slight drip from it into the snow. Red it was, like blood. Seeing it, I shivered and quickly smeared over the spot so that I might not see what could be a dark omen.

We kept Ithkrypt ever-prepared, not knowing - for no messengers came now - how went the war, only believing that it might come to us without warning. I wondered if my uncle had dreamed again, and what dire fortellings those dreams had brought him. That we might never know.

There was one more heavy snow, closing the pass, which gave us an illusion of safety while it lasted. But spring came early that year. And with the second thaw a messenger from my uncle arrived, mainly concerned with the necessity for keeping the dale as much a fortress as we could. He said little of what the army in the south had done, and his messenger had only gloom to spread. There were no real battles. Our men had to turn to the tactics of Waste outlaws, making quick raids on enemy supply lines and camps, to do all the damage they could.

He had one bit of news: that Lord Ulric of Ulmsdale had sent a party south under the command of Lord Kerovan, but he himself had been ill. It was now thought that Lord Kerovan might return to take control at Ulmsdale if the invading army forced a landing at Ulmsport as they had at Jorby and other points along the coast.

That night, when I was free of the many duties that now were mine, I took up, as I had not for a long time. I thought on him who had sent it to me. Where did he lie this night? Under the stars with his sword to hand, not knowing when the battle-horn might blow to arms? I wished him well with all my heart, though I knew so little of him.

There was warmth against my palm, and the globe glowed in the dusky room. It did not in that moment seem strange to me; rather it was comforting, easing for a moment my burdens.

The globe was no longer clear. I could not see the gryphon. Rather there was a swirling mist within it, forming shadows - shadows that were struggling men. One was ringed about, and they bore in upon him. I cried out at the sight, though none of it was clear. And I was afraid that this talisman from my lord had now shown me his death. I would have torn the chain from my neck and thrown the thing away; yet that I could not do. The globe cleared, and the gryphon watched me with its red eyes. Surely my imagination alone had worked that.

“There you are!” Yngilda’s voice accused me. “Toross is very uneasy. They wish you to come.”

She watched me, I thought, jealously. Since she had come from behind the curtain of shock that had hidden her on her arrival, she was once again Yngilda of Trevamper. Sometimes I needed all my control not to allow my tongue sharpness in return when she spoke so, as if she were mistress here and I a lazy serving maid.

Toross mended slowly. His fever had yielded to Dame Math’s knowledge, but it left him very weak. We had discovered that sometimes I was able to coax him to eat or to keep him quiet when the need arose. For his sake I was willing to serve so. Yet lately I had come to dislike the way his hand clung to mine when I sat beside him and the strange way he looked at me and smiled, as if he had some claim on me that no one could deny.

This night I was impatient at such a summons, though I obeyed it, for I was still shaken by what I had seen, or imagined I had seen, in the globe. I willed myself not to believe that this had been a true farseeing. Though with men at desperate war, and my lord with them, I could well accept he was so struck down. At that moment I wished that I did have the farsight, or else that we had a Wisewoman with such skill But Dame Math did not countenance the uses of that power.

That party of kinsmen had been only the first of the refugees to find their way hither. If my uncle had farseen that we might have to open our doors and supplies to such, he had not mentioned it. I wondered, marking each morn as I measured out the food for the day (which had become one of my more serious duties since Dame Math had the overseeing of the sick and wounded) whether we could eat even sparingly until harvest, if this continued.

For the most part the newcomers were lands-people, women and children, with a sprinkling of old or wounded men, few of them able to help us man any defense that might be needed. I had spoken with Dame Math and the marshal only the evening before, the three of us deciding that as soon as the weather lightened sufficiently, they would be sent on to the west, where there were dales untouched by war, even to the House of Dames at Norstead. We dared not keep the burden of useless hands here.

Now as I came into the chamber where Toross lay, I was trying to occupy my mind with plans for such an exodus, rather than allow myself to think of the shadows in the globe. About that I could do nothing. I must consider what I could do.

He was braced up by pillows, and it seemed to me that he looked better than he had since they brought him here. If this was so, why had they sent for me? Such a question was actually on my lips when the Lady Islaugha arose from a stool by the bed and moved away, he holding out his hand in welcome to me.

She did not glance in my direction, but took up a tray, and with a hasty murmur left the room.

“Joisan, come here where I may truly look upon you!” His voice was stronger also. “There are shadows beneath your eyes; you drive yourself too hard, dear heart!”

I had come to the stool, but I did not sit. Instead I studied his face closely. It was thin and white, with lines set by suffering. But there was reason in his eyes, not the cloudiness of a fevered mind. And that uneasiness I had felt with him filled me.

“We all have duties in plenty here, Toross. I do no more or less than my share.”

I spoke shortly, not knowing whether to comment on his using an endearment he had no right to give to me who was a wedded wife.

“Soon it will all be over,” he said. “In Norstead the war and its ugliness cannot touch you - “

“Norstead? What mean you, Toross? Those who go to Norstead are the refugees. We cannot keep them here, our supplies will not allow it. But our own people do not go. Perhaps you will ride with them - “

As soon as I said that, I felt again a slight lightening of burden. Life in Ithkrypt would be easier without these kinsfolk ever at my side.

“But you shall go also.” He said that as calmly as if there could be no question. “A maid has no place in a keep as good as besieged - “

Dame Math - surely she had not planned so behind my back? No, I knew her better. Then I lost that touch of panic - Toross had not the least authority over me. At my uncle’s orders, or at Kerovan’s, would I leave, but for no other.

“You forget, I am not a maid. My lord knows I am at Ithkrypt. He will come for me here. So I stay until that hour.”

Toross’ face flushed. “Joisan, do you not see? Why do you cling loyally to that one? He has not claimed you within the marriage term; that is already two months gone, is that not so? You can now give bride-refusal without any breaking of oaths. If he wanted you, would he not have come before this?”

“Through the ranks of the enemy, no doubt?” I countered. “Lord Kerovan leads bis father’s armsmen in the south. This is no time to say that the days of agreement be strictly kept. Nor do I break bond unless my lord himself says he does not want me!” Perhaps that was not quite so, for I had as much pride as any woman. But I wished Toross to understand, not to put into blunt words what could not be unsaid. If he went farther, it would end all friendship between us, and I had liked him.

“You are free if you wish it,” he repeated stubbornly. “And if you are truthful, Joisan, you know that this is your wish. Surely that I - what I feel for you and have since first I saw you is plain. And you feel the same, if you will allow yourself to - “

“Untrue, Toross. What I tell you now is as strong as if I took Flame Oath - as I shall if you need that to make you understand. I am Lord Kerovan’s wife and so I will remain as long as we live and he does not deny it. As a wife it is honor-breaking and unfitting that I listen to such words as you have just said. I cannot come to you again!”

I turned and ran, though I heard him stir and give a gasp of pain, then cry out my name. I did not look back, but came into the great hall. There was the Lady Islaugha ladling broth from a pot into a bowl, and I went to her swiftly.

“Your son needs you,” I told her. “Do not ask me to go to him again.”

She looked up at me, and I could see in her face that she knew what had happened and that she hated me furiously because I had turned from him. To her he was her heart’s core, to which all must be allowed and given.

“You fool!” she spat at me.

“Not such a fool as I would be if I listened.” That much of a retort I allowed myself, and then stood aside as, with the slopping bowl still in her hands, she hurried towards Toross’ room.

I remained by the fire, stretching out my chilled hands to it. Was I a fool? What had I of Lord Kerovan to keep with me? A bauble of crystal - after eight years of marriage which was no marriage. Yet for me there had been no choice, and I did not regret what I had just done.

Kerovan:

It seemed that I could hardly remember a time when there had not been war, so quickly does a man become used to a state of constant alarm, peril, and hardship. When the news of the invasion came, my father made ready to march southward at the summons of those most beset. But before he could ride, he thought better of it for two reasons. He still believed that Ulmsport was now one of the goals of the enemy fleet, and he was not well. He had taken a rheum that did not leave him, and was subject to bouts of fever and chills that were not for an armsman in the field.

Thus it was that I led those who marched under the gryphon banner when we went to the aid of our kinsmen. Jago pled to ride with me, but his old hurt was not such as would allow it, and I went with Marshal Yrugo.

My half-brother and Rogear had returned to the dale of my mother’s kin, as their true allegiance was to the lord there. I was not sorry to see them ride before I left. While there had never been an open break, nor had Hlymer, after the first few days of my coming to Ulmsdale, sought to provoke me, yet I remained uneasy in their company, knowing they were no friends.

In fact I had lain but little in Ulmskeep in those days; rather moving about the dale, staying in Ulmsport, collecting information for my father while he was confined to his bed. And in this I served two purposes: not only to act as his eyes and ears, but to learn more of this land and its people where, if fortune favored, I would some day govern.

At first I was met by covert hostility, even a degree of fear, and I knew Jago’s warnings had deep roots; the rumors of my strangeness had been used to cause a stir. But those who saw me during my casting up and down the dale, who reported to me, or took my orders, soon were as relaxed in my presence as they would be with any marshal or master. Jago told me after a space that those who had been in such contact now cried down any mutterings, saying that anyone with two eyes in his head could see I was no different in any manner from the next lord’s heir.

My half-brother had already done some disservice to any cause he might have wished to foster by his own defects of character. I had marked him as a bully on our first meeting, and that he was. To his mind no one of lesser rank had any wit or feelings and could be safely used as a man uses a tool. No, not quite, for the expert workman has a respect for a good tool and treats it carefully.

On the other hand Hlymer was able with weapons, and, for all his bulk, he was an expert swordsman with great endurance. He had a long reach, which put him to advantage over a slighter opponent such as myself. And I do not think in those days I would have cared to meet him in a duel.

He had a certain following within the household whom he relished parading before me now and then. I never went out of my way to attach any man to me, keeping to the circumspect role that I had taken when warned by Jago. Having been reared to find my company mainly in myself, I knew none of those small openings for friendship that could have led to companionship. I was not feared; nor was I loved. Always I was one apart.

I sometimes wondered during those days what my life might have been had not the invasion come. Jago, returning from his mission to Ithkrypt, had sought me out privately and put in my hand an embroidered case less than the length of my palm, made to contain a picture. He told me that my lady begged such of me in return.

Giving him my thanks, I waited until he was gone before I slipped the wooden-backed portrait out into the light and studied the face. I do not know what I expected - save I had hoped, perhaps oddly, that Joisan was no great beauty. A fair face might make her the more unhappy to come to such a one as I was after being flattered and courted. There are certain types of beauty that attract men even against their wills.

What I looked upon now was the countenance of a girl, unmarked as yet, I thought, by any great sorrow or emotion, It was a thin face, with the eyes over-large in it. And those eyes were a shade that was neither green nor blue, but a mixture of both, unless he who had limned that picture had erred.

I believed that he did not, for I think he had not flattered her. She must be here as she was in life. No, she was no beauty, yet the face was one I remembered, even when I did not look upon it. Her hair, like my own, was darker than usual, for the dalesmen tend to be fair and ruddy. It was the brown of certain leaves in autumn, a brown with a red under-note.

Her face was wider at the brow than the chin, coming to a point there, and she had not been painted smiling, but looking outward with sober interest.

So this was Joisan. I think that holding her portrait so and looking upon it made me realize in truth and sharply, for the first time, that here was one to whom my life was bound and from whom I could not escape. Still that seemed an odd way to regard this thin, unsmiling girl - as if in some manner she threatened to curb my freedom. The thought made me a little ashamed, so I hurriedly slipped the picture back into its case and thrust it into my belt-pouch to get it both out of sight and out of mind.

Jago had told me she wished one in return. Her desire was natural. But even if I desired - which somehow I did not - to honor her request, there was no way of doing so. I knew no one in the dale who had the talent for limning. And somehow I did not want to ask any questions to discover such a one. So to my lady’s first asked boon I made no reply. And in the passing days, each with a new burden of learning or peril, I forgot it - because I wanted to, perhaps.

But the picture remained in my pouch. Now and then I would look upon its casing, even start to slide out the picture, yet I never did. It was as if such looking might lead me to action I would later regret.

By all custom Joisan herself should have come to me before the end of the year. But custom was set aside by the rumors of war. And the next season found me fighting in the south.

Fighting - no, I could not claim to so much! My forester training made me no hero of battles, but rather one of those who skulked and sniffed about the enemy’s line of march, picking up scraps of information to be fed back to our own war camp.

The early disasters, when keep after keep along the coast had fallen to the metal monsters of Alizon, had at last battered us into the need of making a firm alliance among ourselves. That came very late. In the first place, the enemy, showing an ability to farsee and outguess us that was almost as superior to ours as their weapons were, had removed through murder several of the great southern lords who had personal popularity enough to serve as rallying points for our soldiers.

There were three remaining who were lucky or cautious enough to have escaped that weeding out. They formed a council of some authority. Thus we were able to present a more united front and we stopped suffering defeat after defeat, but used the country as another weapon, following the way of battle of Waste outlaws who believe in quick strikes and retreats without losing too many of their men.

The Year of the Fire Troll had seen the actual beginning of the invasion. We were well into the Year of the Leopard before we had our first small successes. Yet about those we dared not be proud. We had lost so much more than any gain, save slamming the invaders back into the sea again, would mean. The whole of the southern coast was theirs, and into three ports poured ever-fresh masses of men. It would seem, though, that their supply of such fearsome weapons as they had used in the first assaults - those metal monsters - was limited. Otherwise we could not have withstood them as long as we did, or made our retreat north and west any more than the disorganized scramble of a terrified rabble.

We took prisoners, and from some of those learned that the weapons we had come to fear the most were not truly of Alizon at all, but had been supplied by another people now engaged in war on the eastern continent where Alizon lay. And the reason for the invasion here was to prepare the way in time for these mightier strangers.

The men of Alizon, for all their arrogance, seemed fearful of these others whose weapons they had early used, and they threatened us with some terrible vengeance when the strangers had finished their own present struggle and turned their full attention on us.

But our lords decided that a fear in the future might be forgotten now. It was our duty to defend the dales with all we had, and hope we could indeed drive the invaders back into the waves. Privately I think none of us in those days was sure that we were not living in the last hours of our kind. Still no one spoke of surrender. For their usage of captives was such that death seemed more friendly.

I had returned from one of my scouts when I found a messenger from the battle leader of this portion of the country - Lord Imgry - awaiting me with an urgent summons. Bone-weary and hungry, I took a fresh mount and grabbed a round of dried-out journey bread, without even a lick of cheese to soften it, to gnaw on while I rode.

The messenger informed me that a warning of import had been flashed overland by the torch-and-shield method, and at its coming he had been sent to fetch me.

At least our system of placing men in the heights to use a torch against the bright reflection of a shield to signal had in part speeded up the alerts across country. But how I could be involved in such a message I could not guess. At that moment I was so achingly tired my wits were also sluggish.

Of the lords who comprised our war council, Lord Imgry was the least approachable. He was ever aloof. Still his planning was subtle and clever, and to him we owed most of our small successes. His appearance mirrored what seemed to be his inner nature. His face wore a cold expression. I do not think I ever saw him smile. He used men as tools, but did not waste them, and his care for his followers (as long as they served his purposes) was known. He saw there was food for their bellies and shelter if possible, and he shared any hardships in the field. Yet he had no close tie with anyone in his camp, nor, I believed, with any of the other lords either.

Imgry was respected, feared, and followed willingly by many. That he was ever loved I could not believe.

Now, as I came into his camp, a little dizzy from lack of sleep, long hours of riding, and too little food, I tried not to stagger as I dismounted. It was a point of honor to face Imgry with the same impassive front as he himself always presented under the most harrowing conditions.

He was not as old perhaps as my father, but he was a man one could never conceive of as having been truly young. From his cradle he must have been scheming and planning, if not for his own advancement (which I suspected), then for the advancement of some situation about him. There was a fire in the landsman’s rude cottage where he had his headquarters, and he stood before it, gazing into the flames as if there lay some scroll for his absorbed reading.

The men of his menie were camped outside. Only his arms-man sat on a low stool polishing a battle helm with a dirty rag. A pot hung on its chain over the flames, and from it came a scent to bring juices into my mouth, though in other days I might have thought such a stew poor enough fare.

He turned his head as I shut the door behind me, to regard me with that sharp, measuring look that was one of his principal weapons against his own kind. Tired and worn as I was, I stiffened my will and went to meet him firmly.

“Kerovan of Ulmsdale.” He did not make a question of that, rather a statement

I raised my gloved hand in half-salute as I would to any of the lords commanding.

“Herewith.”

“You are late.”

“I was on scout I rode from camp at your message,” I returned levelly.

“So. And how went your scout?”

As tersely as I could, I told him what my handful of men and I had seen.

“So they advance along the Calder, do they? Yes, the rivers make them roads. But it is of Ulmsdale that I would speak. So far they have only landed in the south. But now Jorby has fallen - “

I tried to remember where Jorby might lie. But I was so tired it was hard to form any map picture in my mind. Jorby was port for Vastdale.

“Vastdale?” I asked.

Lord Imgry shrugged. “If it has not yet fallen it cannot hold out. But with Jorby in their hands they can edge farther north. And Ulmsport is only beyond the Cape of Black Winds. If they can strike in there and land a large enough force, they will come down from the north and crack us like a marax shell in a cook’s chopper!”

This was enough to push aside the heavy burden of my fatigue. The force I had brought south with me was a small one, but every man in it had been a grievous loss to Ulmsdale. And since then there had been five deaths among our number, and three so sorely wounded they could not raise weapons now, if ever. If the enemy invaded at Ulmsport, I knew that my father and his people would not retreat, but neither could they hope to hold for long against the odds those of Alizon would throw against them. It would mean the ruinous end of all I had known.

As he spoke, Lord Imgry took a bowl from the table, scooping into it with a long-handled ladle some of the simmering stew. He put the steaming bowl back on the table and made a gesture.

“Eat. You look as if you would be the better for it.”

There was little grace about” that invitation, but I did not need much urging. His armsman rose and pushed his stool over for me. On that I collapsed rather than sat, reaching for the bowl, too hot yet to dip into, but, having shed my riding gloves, I warmed my chilled hands by cupping them about its sides.

“I have had no news out of Ulmsdale for - “ How long had it been? One day in my mind slid into another. It seemed that I had always been tired, hungry, cold, under the shadow of fear - and this had gone on forever.

“It would be wise for you to ride north.” Imgry had gone back to the fire, not turning his head toward me as he spoke. “We cannot spare you any force of men, not more than one armsman - “

It rasped my pride that he would deem me fearful of traveling without an escort. I thought that my services as scout must have proved that I could manage such a ride without detaching any force save myself from his company.

“I can go alone,” I said shortly. And began sipping at the stew, drinking it from the bowl since there was no spoon offered me. It was heartening and I relished it.

He made no protest. “Well enough. You should ride with the morn. I shall send a messenger to your men, and you can remain here.”

I spent the rest of the night wrapped in my cloak on the floor of the house. And I did indeed ride with the first light, two journey cakes in a travel pouch, and a fresh mount that Lord Imgry’s armsman brought to me. His lord did not bid me farewell, nor did he leave me good-speed wishes.

The way north could not be straight, and not always could I follow any road if I would make speed, taking mainly sheep tracks and old cattle paths. There were times when I dismounted and led my horse, working a way along steep dale walls.

I carried a fire touch with me and could have had a fire to warm and brighten the nights I sheltered in some shepherd’s hut, but I did not. For this was wild country, and we had already heard rumors that the wolves of the Waste were raiding inland, finding rich pickings in the dales where the fighting men had gone. For my mail and weapons, my mount, I would be target enough to draw such.

Mainly I spent the nights in dales, at keeps where I was kept talking late by the leaders of pitiful garrisons to supply the latest news, or in inns where the villagers were not so

openly demanding but none the less eager to hear. On the fifth day, well after nooning, I saw the Giant’s Fist, that beacon crag of my own homedale. There were clouds overhead, and the wind was chill. I thought it well to speed my pace. The rough traveling was wearing on my horse, and I had been trying to favor him. But if I dropped down to the trader’s road, I would lose time now, so I kept to the pasture trails.

Not that that saved me. They must have had their watchers in the crags ready for me to walk into a trap. And walk into it I did, leading my plodding horse, just at the boundaries of Ulmsdale.

There was no warning given me as there had been that other time when death had lain in ambush. So I went to what might have been slaughter with the helplessness of a sheep at butchering time.

The land here was made for such a deed, as I had to come along a narrow path on the edge of a drop. My horse threw up its head and nickered. But the alert was too late. A crashing blow between my shoulders made me loose the reins and totter forward. Then, for a moment of pure horror, I was falling out and down.

Darkness about me - dark and pain that ebbed and flowed with every breath I drew. I could not think, only feel. Yet some instinct or need to survive set me scrabbling feebly with my hands. And that urge worked also in my darkened mind, so that even though I could not think coherently, I was dimly aware that I was lying face-down, my head and shoulders lower than the rest of me, jammed in among bushes.

I believe that my fall must have ended in a slide and that those bushes saved my life by halting my progress down to the rocks at the foot of the drop. If my attackers were watching me from above, they must have thought I had fallen to my death, or they certainly would have made a way down to finish me with a handy rock.

Of such facts I was not then aware, only of my pain of body and a dim need to better my position. I was crawling before I was conscious of what I must do. And my struggles led to another slide and more dark.

The second time I recovered my senses it was because of water, ice cold with the chill of a hill spring as it washed against my cheek. Sputtering, choking, I jerked up my head, trying to roll away from that flood. A moment later I was head-down once more, lapping at the water, its coldness adding to my shivering chili, but still clearing my head, ordering my thoughts.

How long I had lain in my first fall I did not know, but it was dark now, and that dusk was not a figment of my weakened brain I was sure. The moon was rising, unusually bright and clear. I pulled myself up to a sitting position.

It had not been Waste outlaws who had attacked me, or they would have come to plunder my mail and weapons and so finished me off. The thought awoke a horror in me. Had Lord Imgry’s suggestion already come to a terrible conclusion here? Had the invaders moved in to occupy Ulmsdale, and had one of their scout parties met me?

Yet that attack had so much of an ambush about it, had been delivered in so stealthy a fashion, that I could not believe it had been launched by the enemies I had faced in the south. No, there was something too secret in it.

I began to explore my body for hurts and thought I was lucky that no bones seemed to be broken. That I was badly bruised and had a lump on my head was the worst. Perhaps my mail and the bushes in which I had landed had protected me from worse injury. But I was shaking from shock and chill, and found when I tried to drag myself to my feet I could not stand, but had to drop down again, clutching at a rocky spur to steady myself.

There was no sign of my horse. Had it been taken by those who had thrown me over? Where were they now? The thought that they might be searching for me made me fumble to draw sword and lay it, bare-bladed, across my knee. I was not too far from the keep. If I could get to my feet and get on I would reach the first of the pasture fields. But every movement racked me so with pain that my breath hissed between my teeth, and I had to bite down upon my lower lip until I tasted my own blood before I could steady myself.

I had been much-favored by fortune in escaping with my life. But I was in no manner able to defend myself now. Therefore, until I got back a measure of strength, I had to move slowly and with all caution.

What I heard were the usual night sounds-birds, animals, such as were nocturnal in their lives. There was no wind, and the night seemed to me abnormally still, as if waiting. Waiting for what - or whom?

Now and then I shifted position, each time testing my muscles and limbs. At last I was able to struggle to my feet and keep that position, in spite of the fact that the ground heaved under me. The quiet, except for the continued murmur of the water, continued. Surely no one could come near without revealing himself.

I essayed a step or two, planting my boots firmly on the rocking ground, looking ahead for hand-holds to keep me upright. Then I saw a wall, the moon making its stones brightly silver. Toward this I headed and then along it, pausing ever to listen.

Soon I reached a section without cover, and there I went to my hands and knees, creeping along the stones, still alert to all around me.

Some distance away sheep grazed, and that peaceful sight was reassuring. Had there been raiders in the dale, certainly this field would have been swept bare. Or were those real sheep? The wintertime tales of the landsmen came to mind, of phantom sheep and cattle coming to join the real. And of how on certain nights or misty mornings, no herder could get the same count twice of his flock. If that were the case, then he could not, above all, return them to the fold; for to pen the real and the phantom together was to give the phantom power over the real.

I pushed aside such fancies and concentrated on the labor at hand: to win the end of the field and the wall. And then to head for the keep.

When I did reach the end of the wall I could look directly at the keep where it stood on its spur base jutting out over the road to Ulmsport. In the moonlight it was clear and bright, light enough to let me see the lord’s standard on its tower pole.

That did not seem to be as it should. And then, as if to make all plain, there came a light wind from the east, lifting the edge of what hung on the pole, pulling out to display the standard widely if only for a long moment-but enough to let me see.

I do not know whether I uttered any sound or not. But within me there was a cry. For only one reason would a lord’s banner ever hang at night, tattered, in such ragged strips. And that was to signify death!

Ulmsdale’s banner slashed, which meant that my father was -

I caught at the wall against the weakness that strove to bring me to my knees.

Ulric of Ulmsdale was dead. Knowing that, I could guess, or thought I could, why there had been an ambush set up in the hills. They must have been expecting me. Though if my father’s death had been sent as a message, it had missed me on the way. Those who wanted to prevent my arrival must have had men at every southern entrance to the dale to make sure of me.

To proceed now might well be to walk into dire danger which I was not yet prepared to face. I must make sure of my path before I ventured along it.

Joisan:

Though I had willed Toross and his kinswomen to be out of Ithkrypt, their going was not so easily accomplished, for Toross still kept to his bed. Nor could I suggest that he be taken away by litter. But I did avoid his chamber. That I had garnered the ill will of Islaugha and Yngilda went without saying. Luckily there were duties enough to keep me out of their way.

In riding skirt, with a packet of cheese and bread for my nooning, I rode with an armsman in the morning, inspecting the fields; visiting our outposts in the hills. I wore mail now and that sword my uncle had given me, and none raised their voices to say such a guise did not become me, for these were times when each turned hand to what must be done.

A sickness had come upon us without warning, bringing fever and chills and deep, racking coughs. By some favor of the Flame I escaped the worst of this, and so into my hands came more and more authority. For Dame Math was one of the early stricken. And, while she also left her bed among the first, she was plainly weakened, though she attended to her duties with little care for herself.

Marshal Dagale was also among the sick, and during those days his men turned to me for orders. We manned the lookout posts as best we might and tried also to get in the crops. It was a hard season, for there was much to be done and few on their feet for the doing of it. Days and nights were lost to me in a general sea of weariness from which there was no rest

All who could labor, did. Even the little children dropped seeds into the waiting furrows left by plows their mothers guided. But we could only do so much, planting less than the year before. By midsummer day, instead of celebrating by a feast, I rather selected those who must leave us for Norsdale and saw them off, mainly afoot, for we could not spare mounts.

Toross did not go with them. His hurt had mended now enough so he could get about, and I hoped he would have the courtesy to leave. But he did not. Rather he fell into companionship with Dagale, acting as his second in command when the Marshal once again took up his duties.

I was never happy during those weeks. Though Toross did not seek me out, yet I felt his eyes ever upon me, his will like an invisible cord striving to draw me as he wished. I could only hope that my will to resist was as strong. I liked Toross for himself, as I had from our first meeting. In those days he had had a gaiety of temper that was in contrast to the somber life I had always known. He was gentle and considerate and talked amusingly. His face was comely, and he knew well how to make himself agreeable in company. I had seen the eyes of the maids in the household follow him and had also felt his charm.

His wound had sobered him somewhat. Still he lightened our hearts in those days, and I did not deny that he had much to give. But his quiet confidence that I would go to him, yield -that I could not understand.

I know that dalesmen look upon women as possessions, perhaps to be wooed and indulged for a season, and then, once won, to be a part of the household like hawk, hound, or horse. We are bartered by our kin for our dowry rights, for alliances between dales. And in such matters we have no voice to oppose what we may fear or hate.

For a woman to set herself up in opposition to any alliance made for her is to suggest she may have some commerce with a dark power. And if accused of that she can be in dire danger, even from those to whom she has the closest blood ties. But this does not make it an easy portion to swallow.

My way had been relatively easy in such matters - until now. First, Dame Math was a woman of presence and spirit, one of the Dames who had the respect of men and a place of her own in the dales. Her brother had made her the head of his household and deferred to her, taking her counsel in many matters.

Being discreet, she had worked within the frame of custom, not in open opposition to it. She had seen to it that I learned much that was forbidden or deemed unnecessary for most maids. I could read and write, having been tutored at the House of Dames. And I had not been set to small tasks elsewhere when she and Lord Cyart conferred about important matters, but had been encouraged to listen. Dame Math sometimes thereafter quizzed me as to the decision I might have made on this matter or that, always impressing on me that such knowledge was needful for a lady of a keep.

My uncle had taken obedience to his decrees as his right, but in addition he had often explained the reason for them, not given orders only, though he had a hasty temper and could be sharp. But as I grew older, he asked my will in small matters, and allowed me to have it.

I knew that there was speculation among the dalesmen concerning me. I had heritage from my father, but not in land, as he was second son and half-brother to Cyart Cyart could, by custom, name me heir, even though I was a girl, but the choice could also fall on Toross because of his sex.

Until the southland had been overrun, Toross had been heir in the direct line to his father’s dale. Now he was as lacking in lordship as any second or third son. And his continued assumption that I would come to him was, a small nagging doubt told me, perhaps not because he was moon-struck with my person (for I had no such vanity) but that he might so have a double claim upon Cyart as heir-to-be.

Perhaps I did him wrong in that, but that this thought moved in Islaugha I am sure. It made her try to veil her dislike of me and strive rather to throw us together and foster a closer relationship. I began to feel much as a hare coursed by two hounds during those summer days, and clung closer and closer to duties I could use as a screen.

The leaving of the first refugee party at midsummer was a relief, though not as great a one as I had hoped for. I had an additional worry concerning Dame Math. Though she kept to her tasks, I was well aware that she tired very easily; that beneath her coif her face grew thinner, her skin more transparent She often kept her hands clasped tight about her prayer hoops now, and, in spite of that tight grip, her fingers shook in a way she could not control.

I spent all the time I could with her, between us a question that neither of us, I believe, wanted to ask or answer. But she talked more than she had in all the years before, as if she had a very short time left in which to impart to me so much. The lore of healing and herbs I already knew a little, since that had been a part of her lessons since my childhood. Besides that she spoke of other things, some of it strange hearing, and so I learned much of what perhaps was seldom shared between one generation and the next.

That we lived in a haunted land we all knew, for a person need only turn head from one side to another to sight some remnant of the Old Ones. There were old dangers that could be stirred into life by the unwary - that, too, all knew. Children were warned against straying-venturing into places where there was an odd stillness, more like waiting than abandonment.

I was drawn into the edge of a secret that was not of my seeking, nor of Dame Math’s save that duty, by which she ordered her life, urged it on her. The Flame to which the Dames gave homage was not of the Power as the Old Ones knew it And at most times those who professed the Flame shunned what lay in the hills, invoking their own source of Power against the alien one. But it seemed that even one of the House of Dames could be driven in times of stress to seek aid elsewhere.

She came to me carry one morning, her poor face even more worn and haggard as she stood plucking nervously at her prayer hoops, gazing over my head at the wall as if she did not want to meet my eyes.

“Joisan, all is not well with Cyart - “

“You have had a message?” I wondered why I had not heard the way horn. In those days such were always used between friend and friend on the approach to any keep.

“None by word of mouth, or in runes,” she answered slowly. “I have it here.” She allowed the hoops to dangle from her belt-chain and lifted her thin fingers to smooth the band across her forehead.

“A dream?” Did Math share that strange heritage?

“Not as clear as a dream. But I know ill has come to him, somewhere, somehow. I would go to the moon-well - “

“It is not night, and neither is it the time of the full moon,” I reminded her.

“But water from that well can be used - Joisan, this I must do. But - but I do not think I can go alone - that far - “

She swayed and put her hand to the wall to steady herself. I hurried to her, and her weight came against me so I had trouble guiding her to a stool.

“I must go - I must!” Her voice rose, and there was in it an undercurrent of alarm that frightened me. When one who has always been rock-firm becomes unstable, it is as if the very walls are about to topple.

“You shall. Can you ride?”

There were beads of moisture showing on her upper lip. Looking at her straightly in that moment I saw that Dame Math had become an old woman. As if overnight all the weight of years had crushed down upon her, which was as frightening as her unsteadiness.

Some of her former determination stiffened her shoulders, brought her head upright again.

“I must. Get me one of the ponies, Joisan.” Leaning on me heavily, she came out into the courtyard, and I sent a stable boy running for a pony: those placid, ambling beasts we kept mainly for the carrying of supplies. By the time he returned, Dame Math was as one who has sipped a reviving cordial. She mounted without too much difficulty, and I led the pony across the fields to that very well where I had once slipped in the nighttime to ask a question of my own.

If any marked our going, they left us alone. The hour was early enough so that I think most were still at their morning food. As I tramped beside the pony, I felt the punch of hunger at my own middle.

“Cyart - “ Dame Math’s voice was hardly above a whisper, yet it was as if she called and hoped to have an answer to her calling. I had never thought much about the tie between those two, but the ring of that name, uttered in her voice, told me much at that hour. For all their outward matter-of-fact dealing with each other there was deep feeling too.

We came to the well. When I had been there at night before, I had not seen clearly those traces by which others had often times sought out a sign of the Power that was said to be there. There were well-worn stones rimming in the well, and beyond those, bushes. To the bushes things were tied. Some were merely scraps of ribbon, color lost through the action of wind and weather. Others were crudely fashioned of straw or twig-manikins or stick horses, sheep - all twirling and bobbling within sight of the water, perhaps set there to signify the desire of the petitioners.

I helped Dame Math from the pony’s back, guiding her forward a step or two until she pulled free from my aid and walked as might one who needed no help. With her goal in sight, a semblance of strength flowed back into her.

From a deep skirt pocket she brought forth a bowl no larger than could be fitted into the hollow of her hand. It was of silver, well-burnished. And I remembered that silver was supposed to be the favorite metal of the Old Ones, just as opals, pearls, jade, and amber were their jewels.

She gestured me to stand beside her and pointed to a plant that grew at the lip of the well itself. It had wide leaves of dark green veined with white, and I did not remember ever seeing its like before.

“Take a leaf,” she told me, “and with it dip to fill this bowl.”

The leaf, pinched, gave forth a pleasant aroma, and it seemed to twist almost of its own will into a cup, so I might spoon water into the bowl. The water in the well was very high, its surface only a little” below the level of its stone rim. Three times did I dip and pour before she said, “Enough!”

She held the bowl between her hands and raised it, blowing gently on the liquid within so it was riffled by her breath.

“It is not water of the Ninth Wave, which is the best of all for this purpose, but it will do.”

She ceased to puff, and the water was smooth. Over it she gave me one of those compelling looks that had always brought my obedience.

“Think of Cyart! Hold him as a picture in your mind.”

I tried to draw a mind picture of my uncle as last I had looked upon him, when he had drunk the stirrup cup of my pouring before riding south. I was surprised that the months between had dulled my memory so quickly, because I found it hard to recall him with any clarity. Yet I had known him all my life long.

“There is that about you” - Dame Math looked at me narrowly - “which gainsays this. What do you have on you, Joisan, which obstructs the Power?”

What did I have about me? My hand went to my bosom where lay in hiding. Reluctantly, urged to this by the stern eyes of Dame Math, I brought forth the globe.

“Hang it over there!”

Such was her authority that I obeyed her, looping the chain near one of those straw people lashed to a branch. She watched and then turned her gaze again to the bowl.

“Think of Cyart!” she demanded once again.

Now it was as if a door opened and I could see him, clear in every detail.

“Brother!” I heard Dame Math cry out. Then there were no more words, only a desolate sound. She stared down into the small bowl, her face very bleak and old.

“So be it.” She took one step and then another, turned over the bowl and let the water splash back into the well. “So be it!”

Harsh, startlingly clear, a sound tore the morning air, the alarm gong from the keep tower! That which we had feared for so long had come upon us-the enemy was in sight!

The pony whinnied and jerked at its tether, so I reached for the reins. As I struggled to control the frightened animal, the gong continued to beat. Its heavy ring sounded in echoes from the hills like the thunder of a rising storm. I saw Dame Math hold out the bowl as if offering it to some unseen presence, allowing it to drop into the well. Then she came to me. The need for action was like youth poured into her frail body. Yet her face was one knowing hope no longer, looking forward into a night without end.

“Cyart has dreamed his final dream,” she said, as she mounted the sweating pony. Of him she did not speak again; perhaps because she could not. For a moment or two I wondered what she had seen in the bowl. Then the alarm shook everything from my mind save the fact that we must discover what was happening at the keep.

The news was ill indeed, and Dagale broke it to us as to marshaled his men for what all knew could be no defense, only a desperate attempt to buy time for the rest of us. The invaders were coming upriver, the easiest road to us from the coast. They had boats, our scouts reported, that were not sailed or oared, but still moved steadily against the current, And we of Ithkrypt had little time.

We had long ago decided that to remain in the keep and to be battered out of it was deadly folly. It was better for those who could not fight to take to the hills and struggle westward So we had even rehearsed such retreats.

At the first boom of the gong, the herdsmen had been on the move, and the women and children also, riding ponies or tramping away with their bundles, heading west. I went swiftly to my chamber, pulled on with haste my mail coat and my sword, and took up my heavy cloak and the saddle bags in which I had packed what I could. Yngilda was gone, garments thrown on the floor, her portion of our chamber looking as if it had already been plundered.

I sped down the hall to the short stairs and up to Dame Math’s room. She sat there in her high-backed chair, resting across her knees something I had never seen in her hands before, a staff, or wand. It was ivory white, and along its surface were carven runes.

“Dame - your cloak - your bag - “ I looked about me for those that we were to have ever-ready. But her chamber was as it had always been; there was no sign she meant to quit it. “We must be off!” I hoped she was not so weak she could not rise and go. I could aid her, to be sure, but I had not the strength to carry her forth.

She shook her head very slowly. Now I saw her breath came in gasps, as if she could not draw enough air into her laboring lungs.

“Go - “ A whispering voice came with visible effort from her. “Go-at-once-Joisan!”

“I cannot leave you here. Dagale will fight to cover our going. But he will not hold the keep. You know what has been decided.”

“I know - and - “ She raised the wand. “For long I have followed the Flame and put aside all that I once knew. But when hope is gone and the heart also, then may one fight as best one can. I do now what I must do, and in the doing perhaps I may avenge Cyart and those who rode with him.” As she spoke, her voice grew stronger word by word, and she straightened in her chair, though she made no effort to rise from it.

“We must go!” I put my hand on her shoulder. Under my touch she was firm and hard, and I knew that, unwilling, I could not force her from her seat.

“You must go, Joisan. For you are young, and there may still be a future before you. Leave me. This is the last command I shall lay upon you. Leave me to my own reckoning with those who will come-at their peril!”

She dosed her eyes, and her lips moved to shape words I could not hear, as if she prayed. But she did not turn her prayer hoops, only kept tight hold on the wand. That moved as if it had the power to do so of itself. Its point dropped to the floor and there scratched back and forth busily as if sketching runes, yet it left no marks one could see.

I knew that her will was such she could not now be stirred. Nor did she look up to bid me any farewell when I spoke one to her. It was as if she had withdrawn into some far place and she had forgotten my existence.

Loath to go, I lingered in the doorway, wondering if I could summon men and have her carried out by force, sure she was not now responsible in word or deed. Perhaps she read my thought in my hesitancy, for her eyes opened wide once again, and in her loose grip the wand turned, pointed to me as a spear might be aimed.

‘Tool - in this hour I die - I have read it. Leave me pride of House, girl, and let me do what I can to make the enemy sorry he ever came to Ithkrypt. A blood-debt he already owes me, and that I shall claim! It will not be a bad ending for one of the House of the Broken Sword. See you do as well when your own time is upon you, Joisan.”

The wand twirled as it pointed to me. And I went, nor could I do otherwise, for this was like a geas laid upon me. A will and power greater than my own controlled me utterly.

“Joisan!” The gong no longer beat from the watchtower, so I heard that call of my name. “Joisan, where are you?”

I stumbled down the steps and saw Toross standing there, his war hood laced in place, only a portion of his face visible. “What are you waiting for?” His voice was angry and he strode forward, seized me by the shoulder and dragged me toward the door. “You must mount and ride - as if the night friends themselves were upon us - as well they may be!”

“Dame Math - she will not come - “ He glanced at the stair and then at me, shaking his head. “Then she must stay! We have no time. Already Dagale is at arms on the river bank. They -they are like a river in flood themselves! And they have weapons that can slay at a greater distance than any bolt or arrow can fly. Come - “

He pulled me over the doorsill of the great hall and into the open. There was a horse there, a second by the gate. He half-threw me into the saddle. “Ride!”

“And you?”

“To the river, where else? We shall fall back when we get the shield signal that our people are in the upper pass. Even as we planned.”

He slapped my mount upon the flank so that the nervous beast made a great bound forward and I gave all my attention to bringing it once more under control.

I could hear far-off shouting, together with other sounds that crackled, unlike any weapon I could imagine. By the time I had my horse again under control, I could see that Toross was riding in the opposite direction toward the river. I was tempted to head after him, only there I would have been far more of a hindrance than a help. To encourage those who fled, to keep them going, was my part of the battle. Once in the rougher ground of the heights, we would split apart into smaller bands, each under the guide of some herder or forester and so, hopefully, win our way westward to whatever manner of safety would be found in High Hallack now.

But before I came to the point where the trail I followed left the dale bottom a stab of memory caught me. The crystal            gryphon-I had left it snared on the bush beside the well! And I had to have it. I swung my mount’s head around, sending Yarn across a field of ripe grain, not caring now that he trampled the crop. There was the darker ring of trees marking the well-site. I could pick up the gryphon, angle in a different direction, and lose very little time.

Taking heed of nothing but the trees around the well and what I had to find there, I rode for it and slid from the saddle almost before the horse came to a full halt. But I had enough good sense to throw my reins over a bush.

I pushed through the screen of growth, setting jogging and waving many of those tokens netted there. The gryphon - yes! A moment later it was in my hand, safe again. How could I ever have been so foolish as to let it go from me? I could not slip the chain over my mail coif and hood, but I loosened the fastening at my throat long enough to thrust my treasure well within.

Still tugging at the lacings to make them fast, I started for my horse. There was a loud nicker, but I was too full of relief at finding the gryphon to pay the heed I should have to that. So I walked straight into danger as heedlessly as the dim witted.

They must have seen me ride up and set their trap in a short time, favored by the fact that I was so intent upon the bauble that had brought me here. As I reached for the reins of my horse, they rose about me with a skill suggesting this was not the first time they had played such a game. Out of nowhere spun a loop that fell neatly over my shoulders and was jerked expertly tight, pinning my arms fast. I was captive, through my own folly, to those of Alizon.

Kerovan:

So my father was dead, and I had been left for dead. Who now ruled in Ulmskeep? Jago - my mind fastened on the only friend I might now find within those walls ahead. During the months I had spent here as my father’s deputy, I had acceptance but no following to which I might look now for backing. But I must somehow learn what had happened.

I drew into a screen of brush at the fence corner. The night wind was chill, and I shivered, being unable to stop that trembling of my body any effort produced. The keep would be closed at this hour except for -

Now I could think more clearly. Perhaps the shock of seeing the tattered banner had cleared my head. There was the Escape Way -

I do not know what brought our forefathers up from the south. They left no records, only a curious silence concerning the reason for their migration. But the fortifications they built here, their way of life, hinted that they had lived in a state of peril. For the petty warrings they engaged in here after their coming could never have been so severe as to necessitate the precautions they used.

They did not have to fight against the Old Ones for the dales. Why then the keeps - one strong one built in each dale - with those secret exit points known only to each lord and his direct heir? As if each need look forward to some time of special danger when such a bolt-hole would be in need.

Therefore, Ulmskeep had an entrance open to me, my father having shown it to me secretly late one night I had a way into the heart of what might now be enemy territory and, if I were to learn anything, that I must take. There was this also - I licked my lips tasting blood, a sorry drink for me - there was this: perhaps the last place they would search for me would be within that grim building with its tattered, drooping banner.

I took my bearings from the keep and began to move with more surety now that I had a goal in mind, though I did not relinquish any of my care not to be seen. It was some distance I must go, working my way carefully from wall to wall, from one bit of cover to the next. There were lights in the keep windows and in those of the village. One by one those winked out as I kept on at a snail’s pace, for I had schooled myself to patience, knowing that haste might betray me.

A barking dog at a farmhouse, well up-slope, kept me frozen with a pounding heart until a man shouted angrily and the brute was still. So it took me some time to reach the place I hunted.

Ulmsdale was freer of those relics of the Old Ones than most of the northern dales. In fact it was only here, in the shadow of the Giant’s Fist, that there were signs any had found their way into this valley before the coming of my own race. And the monument to the past was not an impressive one - merely a platform leveled among the stones of these heights, for what purpose no man might say.

The only remarkable thing about this smoothed stretch of stone was that deep-carven in it was that creature from which the first lord of Ulmsdale had taken his symbol - a gryphon. Even in this uncertain light the lines of the creature’s body were clear enough to give me the bearings I needed.

So guided, I scrambled up the slope a little farther, my bruised, stiff body protesting every action, until I found that place in the wall of the valley where care had been taken generations ago to set stones about a cunningly concealed break.

I edged past those into a dark pocket. Until that moment I had not realized the difficulties of this path without a light. Drawing my sword, I used it to sound out walls and footing, trying to remember as clearly as I could what lay before me now.

All too soon the sword met empty space, and I had found my destination. I sheathed my blade and crouched to feel about with my bare hands. Yes, this was the lip of the vent down which I must go. I considered the descent. In the first place the boots fashioned to hide my feet were built only for ordinary service. I distrusted them when I had to use toe holds in the dark. In fact I was not even sure my hoofed feet would serve there, but at least they would be better free. So I wrested off my boots and fastened them to my belt.

The substance of my hoofs was not affected by the chill of the stone, seeming not to have the sensitivity of flesh, and somehow with my feet free I felt secure enough to swing over and test beneath me for footholds. I need not have worried; my hoofs settled well into each and, heartened, I began the descent. I could not recall how deep I must go. In fact when my father had brought me hither we had not climbed this; he had only shown it to me from below.

Thus I went down into the dark, and the space seemed to be endless. It was not. A reaching hoof touched solid surface, and very cautiously I placed the other hoof beside it. Now - a light -

Fumbling in my pouch, I brought out my strike-light, keeping it ready in one hand while I felt along the wall with the other. My fingers caught at a knob of wood. I snapped the light, and the torch flared, dazzling me with sudden illumination.

Not stopping to put on my boots, for I relished more and more the freedom of my hoofs, hitherto so cramped by concealment, I started along a downward-sloping way which would bring me under the dale-floor to the keep. It was a long way and, I think, more than half of it was a natural fault, perhaps the bed of some stream diverted by nature or man. The roof was low, and in several places I went to hands and knees to pass.

But here I did not have to fear discovery, and I made the fastest pace I could over the sand and gravel. The slope went sharply downward for a space; then it leveled out, and I knew that I was now in the valley. The keep could not be too far ahead.

My torch shone on a break in the wall of the passage, crude steps going up at a steep angle - though the passage kept on - into a sea-cave of which my father had told me. I thus had two ways of escape.

I began to climb, knowing this stair was a long one. It went up not only through the crag on which the keep was built, but within the wall of that to my father’s own chamber. Halfway up I paused and rubbed out the torch on the wall. Now I needed both hands for the holds here, and there were peepholes along the way where light might betray me.

The first of these was in the barracks. A cresset burned low against the far wall, leaving the room much-shadowed. There were some men asleep here, but only a handful.

I climbed again and looked now into the great hall from a position somewhere behind my father’s high seat. There was a fire on the hearth which was never allowed to go out. A serving-man nodded on a bench near it and two hounds were curled up there - nothing else. This was normal enough at this hour.

The end of the passage was before me, and I could no longer put off reaching it - though I dreaded what might lie ahead.

Men freely use the word “love” to cover both light emotions, such as affection and liking, and viler ones such as lust, or strong attachments that last through life. I had never been one to use it at all - for my life in youth had been devoid of much emotion - fear, awe, respect were more real to me than “love.” I did not “love” my father. In the days that I had spent with him after he had given me public acknowledgment, I respected him and was loyally attached to his service.

Yet there always stood between us the manner of my upbringing; that I had been hidden away. Though he had come to see me during those years, had brought me small gifts such as boys delight in, had provided well for me, yet I had always sensed in him an uneasiness when we were together. I could not tell if that came from his reaction to my deformity, or whether he reproached himself for his treatment of me and yet could not bring himself to defy my mother’s feelings to name me openly son. I knew only, from very early years, that our relationship was not akin to that of other fathers and sons. And for a long time I thought that the fault was mine, so I was ashamed and guilty in his presence.

Thus we built a wall stone by stone, each adding to it, and we could not break it down. Which was a great loss, I know, for Ulric of Ulmsdale was such a man as I could have “loved,” had that emotion ever been allowed to grow in me. Now as I went to his chamber through the dark of this hidden way, I felt a sense of loss such as had never emptied me before. As if I had once stood at the door of a room filled with all the good things of this world and yet had been prevented from entering in.

My hand was on the latch of the panel that opened inward, concealed by the back of the huge, curtained bed. I inched this open, listening. Almost I swung it shut again, for I heard voices and saw the gleam of lamplight. But I remembered that so well - concealed was this way, that unless I crawled around the bed to boldly confront the speakers, they would not know of my presence. And certainly this was a chance to learn exactly what might be going on. Thus I squeezed through the door and edged around the head of the bed, the stiff, embroidered folds of the curtains providing excellent cover, until I found a slit to let me see as well as hear.

There were four in the room, two using for a seat the long chest against the wall; one on a stool; and the last in the high-backed chair in which my father had sat when I bid him farewell.

Hlymer and Rogear. On the stool a girl I caught my breath, for her face - leaving out those points of difference that were due to her sex - could have been my own! And on the chair - I had no doubt that for the first time in my life I was looking upon the Lady Tephana.

She wore the ashen gray robes of a widow, but she had thrown back the concealing veil, though the folds of it still covered her hair. Her face was so youthful she could have been her daughter’s elder sister by only a year or two. There was nothing in her features of Hlymer. By her cast of countenance I was indeed her son.

I felt no emotion, only curiosity, as I looked at her. Since I had reached the age of understanding, I had been aware that for all purposes of living, I was motherless, and I had accepted that fact. She had not even kin-tie to me as I watched her now.

She was speaking swiftly. Her hands, long-fingered, and with a beauty that drew the eyes, flashed in and out in quick gestures as she spoke. But what I saw and resented, was that on her thumb was the gleam of my father’s signet, which only the ruler in Ulmsdale had the right to wear and which should have weighted my own forefinger at this moment.

“They are fools! And because they are fools, should we be also? When the news comes that Kerovan has been killed in the south, then Lisana will be heir, and her lord” - she nodded to Rogear - “will command here in her name. I tell you that these invaders offer good terms. They need Ulmsport, but they do not want to fight for it. A fight will gain nothing for us, for we cannot hold long against what they can land. Who gains by death and destruction? The terms are generous; we save this valley by such bargaining - “

“Willingly will I be Lisana’s lord and Ulmsdale’s,” Rogear answered, as she paused for breath. “As to the rest - “ He shook his head. “That is another matter. It is easy to make a bargain. To keep it does not always suit the one in power. We can open gates but not dose them again thereafter. They know just how weak we are.”

“Weak? Are we? Say you that, Rogear?” Lady Tephana gazed at him directly. “Foolish boy, do you then discount the inherited might of our kin? I do not believe that these invaders have met their like before.”

He was still smiling, that small, secret smile which had always led me to think that he carried within him some belief in himself that far outreached what others saw in him. It was as if he could draw upon some secret weapon as devastating in its way as those the invaders had earlier sent against us.

“So, my dear lady, you think to invoke those? But take second thoughts or even third upon that subject. What may answer comes at its own whim and may not easily be controlled if it takes its own road. We are kinsmen, but we are not truly of the blood.”

I saw her face flush, and she pointed her finger at him. “Do you dare to speak so to me, Rogear!” Her voice rose higher.

“I am not your late lord, my dear lady.” If she threatened him with that gesture, he did not show it. “His line was already cursed, remember, thus making him easily malleable to anything pertaining to them. I have the same counter-measures bred in me that you have. I cannot be so easily shaped and ordered. Though even your lord escaped you in the end, did he not? He named his body-heir in spite of your spells and potions - “

Her face changed in a subtle way that made me suddenly queasy, as if something had sickened my inner spirit. There was evil in this room. I could smell it; see it sweep in to fill that vessel waiting to hold it - that form of woman I refused to believe had ever given me life.

“What did you deal with, my dear lady, in that shrine when you bore my so-detested cousin, I wonder?” Rogear continued, still smiling, though Hlymer drew away along the bench as if he expected his mother to loose some blast in which he did not want to be caught. “What bargain did you make - or was it made before my cousin’s birth? Did you cast a spell to bring Ulmsdale’s lord to your bed as your husband? For you have had long dealings with them, and not with those on the White Path either. No, do not try that on me. Do you think I ever come here unprotected?”

Her pointing finger had been drawing swift lines. Just as Riwal, when he bade me farewell, had gestured in the air, and as I had seen thereafter a fault gleam of light marking the symbol he had traced in blessing, so did her finger leave behind a marking, or pattern. The marking was smoky-dark. Still it could be seen in the subdued light of the chamber, as if its darkness had the evil, black quality.

Rogear’s hand was up before his face. He held it palm-out, and all those hand lines that we bear from birth and that are said by the Wisewomen to foretell our futures stood out on his flesh as if they had been traced in red. Behind that hand he still smiled faintly.

I heard a short, bitten-off cry from the Lady Tephana, and her hand dropped back into her lap. On her thumb the ring looked dull, as if its honest fire had been eaten out by what she had done moments earlier. I longed to free it from her flesh.

“Yes,” Rogear continued, “you are not the only one, my dear lady, to go seeking strong allies in hidden places. It is born into us to have a taste for such matters. Now, having made sure that we are equally matched, let us return to the matter at hand. Your amiable son - “ He paused and nodded slightly at Hlymer, though Hlymer looked anything but amiable. He sat hunched-over, darting glances first at his mother and then at Rogear, as if he feared one and had begun to hate the other.

“Since your amiable son has rid us of the other barrier standing in the way of possession of Ulmsdale, we must indeed make our plans. But I do not altogether agree that we should deal with the invaders.”

“And why not?” she demanded. “Do you fear them? You, who have that” - she nodded to bis hand - “to stand to your defense?”

“No, I do not fear them personally. But neither do I intend to give tamely into their hands any advantage. I believe, my dear lady, that you can indeed summon thunder from the hills to counteract any treachery that they might plan. But that which can be so summoned will not take note of selective destruction, and I do not propose to lose Ulmsdale in defending it”

“You will lose it anyway then.” For the first time Lisana broke silence. “Also, dear Rogear” - there was little liking in her voice as she named him so - “we are not yet hand-fasted. Are you not a little beforehand in naming yourself lord here?”

She spoke coolly, and regarded him straight-eyed, measuringly, as if they were not betrothed but, rather, opponents at a gamingboard.

‘True spoken, my sweeting,” he agreed amiably. Had I been Lisana I would not have found that amiability pleasing, though. “Do you intend to be lord as well as lady here?”

“I intend not to be any piece in your gaming, Rogear,” she returned swiftly, and there was no sign of uneasiness in her. He stared at her as one who studied some new and perhaps unaccountable thing. I thought I saw his eyes narrow a fraction. And then he looked not to her but to her mother.

“Congratulations, my dear lady. So you have made sure of your power this way also.”

“Naturally. Did you expect any less?” She laughed. Then he echoed that laughter.

“Indeed not, my dear lady. Ah, what a happy household we shall be. I can see many amusing evenings before us, trying this spell and that, testing each other’s defenses.”

“There will be no evenings at all,” growled Hlymer, “unless we unite upon what is to be done to hold Ulmsdale. And I see little chance of that where the great lords have failed. Ulmsport is open - they need only to bring up a goodly force and land. The keep can hold out for a day, mayhap two - but - “ He shrugged. “You have heard all the tales; we shall end like the rest.”

“I wonder.” Rogear had lost that shadow-smile. He glanced from Lady Tephana to Lisana and back again. “What if they cannot land? Wind and wave, wind and wave - “

Lady Tephana was intent, regarding him in the same searching way he had earlier looked upon Lisana. “That takes the Power.”

“Which you have in part, and my sweeting” - he nodded to the girl - “has in part, and to which I can add. Wind and wave have this advantage also. It will seem a natural catastrophe and one they will not fault us for. We shall be blameless. Follow in part your suggestion, my dear lady, but do not treat, only seem to treat. Then wind and wave-”

She moistened her lips with tongue tip. “It is a mighty summoning.”

“Perhaps one beyond your powers?”

“Not so!” She was quick to answer. “But it will take the three of us truly united to do such a thing, and we must have life force to draw upon.”

He shrugged. “It is a pity that we cleared the path so well of your lord’s devoted followers. Hate can feed such a force, and we could have used their hatred. That grumbler Jago, for example.”

“He drew steel on me!” Hlymer shrilled. “As if a broken man could touch me!”

“A broken man, no,” Rogear agreed. “Had he been the man he once was - well, I do not know, brother-to-be. At any rate there are others to lend us life force. If we decide - “

Lisana had lost her cool withdrawal. I saw her eyes shine with an avid hunger.

“We will!” she cried out. “Oh, we will!” For the first time Rogear showed a faint shadow of uneasiness, and he spoke to the Lady Tephana rather than to her daughter.

“Best curb your witchling, my dear lady. Some rush where prudence walks with double care.”

Lisana was on her feet so suddenly, her stool spun away as her skirts caught it.

“Do not lesson me, Rogear! Look to your own Power, if you have as much as you claim!”

“We shall all look to our Power,” Lady Tephana replied. “But such a plan takes preparation, and that we must turn to now.” She arose, and Hlymer went quickly to her side, offering his arm in clumsy courtesy. It was almost, I thought, as if he would rather be in her company than Rogear’s. Lisana followed, and Rogear was left alone.

My hand went to my sword hilt. What I had heard here filled me with horror, though it explained much. That these were working with Dark Power was plain, and they were not fresh come to such dealings either. That they - or at least the Lady Tephana (for never again in my mind did I think of her as my mother) - were old in such work, they had admitted. If my father had been ensorcelled, as Rogear had hinted, that explained much, and I could now forgive him all. The wall was broken - too late for me to tell him so.

What they would enter upon now was some great summoning of the Power. Perhaps it could save Ulmsdale - for their own purposes. But dared I set my own love of country against them? If they aroused some of the ancient forces of this brooding land against the enemy successfully, then, even though I hated them, still I must count them allies at this moment. So I watched Rogear go out from that chamber, and I did not challenge him.

There was one thought only in my mind. I had no idea what might be the consequences of the act they spoke of. In spite of the signs set on me at birth, I had none of the talent those three appeared to possess. There was only one in this land now from whom I could seek enlightenment, to learn whether I must let them do this to keep the dale free, or else turn what I could set against them to ensure that they fail. Which was the greater danger - the summoning of the Power or allowing the invaders foothold here? I could not judge, but perhaps Riwal, with his learning in those matters, might. There was nothing in my father’s keep now but a trap, and the sooner I was out of it the better, not only for my own safety, but perhaps for the future safety of the dale itself. However, as I went, I cherished in my mind those words concerning Jago. That Hlymer had forced him to a fight I did not doubt. And someday he would account to me for that.

By the time I reached the gryphon-marked stone on the hillside, the night was far-advanced. Weariness added to the pain of bruises and of my aching head, yet I was driven by time. The sooner I reached Riwal the better. To do so on foot would be a lengthy journey, and hunger gnawed at me.

How I might have fared had I not met the trader, I do not know. But as I skulked along the dale rim, I came upon one of those traces, not really a road, but in the summer seasons were used by hunters and traders - especially those bound for the Waste.

I had taken to cover when I heard the clip-clop of hoofs on the stone outcrop that comprised part of the trail, since I was fairly sure that, even if he who came were not an enemy, he might report me where it would do the least good. Only when I saw the manner of man who rode one rough-coated pony and led another, was I a little easier.

He did not pass, but halted directly opposite the thicket wherein I had taken cover and raised a peeled branch he carried in his hand. Not quite a staff, nor yet a whip, for it was too thick for that.

“Lord Kerovan - “ He did not raise his voice. In fact he spoke in a low tone, yet the words carried clearly to where I lay.

He wore the leather and rough wool of a poor traveler. Now he pushed back his hood as if in revealing himself fully he would make himself known to me. Yet I did not recall seeing his face before.

Unlike most of the traders he was clean-jawed, his skin showing little beard-marking. And his features had a slightly strange cast, not quite those of a dalesman. His hair was clipped short and stood out from his skull very thickly, more like the fur of an animal pelt than any hair I had ever seen. Also it was brindled in color, neither gray nor brown nor black, but a mixture of those colors.

“Lord Kerovan!” He repeated my name and this time he beckoned with his wand.

I could not resist that gesture. Whether I would or no, I had to go to him, rising to my feet and pushing through the bushes that I might show myself to one who might be a deadly enemy.

Joisan:

Captive to Alizon! All those tales of dark horror that the refugees told made me expect to be surrounded by demons as I was jerked farther into the open by the rope that bound my arms to my body. Still, these were only men, save that there was that in their faces which made my mouth go dry with fear. A quick death can be faced, but there are other things... They spoke among themselves, laughing, and their tongue was strange. He who seemed leader among them came to me and pulled at the still-loose neck-thongs of my mail, bringing off my hood so my hair, loosened by his roughness, spilled out across my shoulders. He stroked that, and I longed for a dagger in my hand. But they were careful to make fast their noose, and I had no chance.

Thus they brought me back to Ithkrypt, or nearly there. Before we entered the courtyard where the enemy clustered, there was a flash of light from the tower, followed by a thunderous sound. Then, my head ringing from the fearful noise, near-shaken to the ground, I saw such a thing as I would not have believed. Ithkrypt’s walls began to sway; great gaps appeared between the blocks of which they were built. And the walls toppled outward, catching and crushing many of the enemy, while a choking dust arose.

I heard screams and cries through that cloud, and I tried to run. But fortune was against me, for the end of the rope bound me kept me helplessly anchored. Had this been the work of those monsters the invaders landed? I was sure not, for they would not so have killed their own men.

Dame Math! But how had she done this? I was dumb - by the evidence of such Power as I believed only one the Old Ones could conjure; the Old Ones or some Wise - who had had dealings with the forbidden. Wise-an-Dame-such were opposed. But before she had surrendered her will to the Flame and the Sisterhood that paid it homage, what else had Math been? At any rate the blood-price had taken here was worthy of our House, as she had promised. In spite of my own fear I rejoiced that this was so. Valiant had our men always been. My own father had fallen facing five Waste outlaws, taking four of them with him. And now these from overseas would know that our women could fight also!

But this was my only chance to get away. I tugged against the rope. The murk of the dust was clearing, enough to show what held me prisoner. He who had led me here lay with the rope about his own waist, and he was face-down, a broken hunk of stone between his shoulders.   

I thought him dead, and that made me more frenzied in my attempt to free myself. For to be bound to a dead man was the last horror. Yet the cord held, and I was as well-tethered as a horse at an inn door.

So they found me when they came reeling out of the rubble of Ithkrypt and pounding up from the river. Of our men there were no signs, save for three bodies we had passed on our way here. I could only believe that Dagale’s force had paid for our escape time with their lives. Only for a short space were the enemy so disorganized. I regretted bitterly that we could not have taken advantage of that; wreaked more damage among them while they wen shocked by what happened. Now I did not doubt that any prisoners they might take would pay for this unexpected slaughter. Such fear rode me as to freeze my body, half-stupify my mind.

Dame Math had had the best of it. She had gone to her death, yes, but in a fitting manner. It was plain I would not be allowed such an ending, though they did not strike, down when they came upon me still bound to my captor stead they slashed through the rope and dragged me them out of the ruin of Ithkrypt down to the river there was a group of officers.

One among them had the speech of the dales, though to mouthed words gutturally. I was still so deafened by that terrible blast that I could hardly hear him. When I did not reply to his questions, he slapped my face viciously, one side and then the other.  

Tears of pain spilled from my eyes and I knew these should see them. I summoned what small pride me and tried to face them squarely and with my head became a daughter of my House.

“What-was-there?” He thrust his face close to mine, Ms breath was foul. He had a brush of beard on his chin, and his cheeks above that were splotched with red, his nose veined and swollen. His eyes were keen and cruel, and he was not, I was sure, a stupid man.

There was no need to conceal what I thought I knew, perhaps more reason to say it, since even these invaders must know that High Hallack held many secrets, most of them not to be plumbed by humankind.

“The Power,” I said.

I think he read in my face that I spoke a truth I believed. One of his companions asked a question in that other tongue, and he made answer, though he did not look from me to the questioner. A moment later came his second demand.

“Where is the witch?”

Again I told him the truth. Though we did not use that term, I understood his meaning.

“She was within.”

“Well enough.” Now he did turn away and make his report to the others, and they spoke for some time among themselves.

I felt very weak and tired and wished I could drop to the ground. My head hurt still, as if the assault of sound upon my ears had injured something far inside my skull, and the despair of my captivity was a leaden cloak about me. Yet I held as well as I could to my resolve to keep my pride.

He faced me again, this time looking me up and down searchingly. In his beard his thick lips grinned in some ways like those men who had first taken me.

“You are no farm wench, not with mail on your back. I am thinking we have caught us a prize. But more of that later.”

So I was allowed a respite, for at his orders I was left on the river bank, where their boats clustered and men were still leaping ashore. To my eyes they seemed as many as the stalks of grain in the fields, and there was no end to them. How could our small force have hoped to halt them even for an instant, any more than a single pebble might halt the flow of a spring flood.

There I also saw what had happened to our men. Some had fallen in battle. Those were the lucky ones. For the rest - no, I shall try to hold the doors of memory against what happened to them. I believed now the invaders were not humans but demons.

I think they took pains for me to see all this in order to break me. But in that they judged me wrong, for it stiffened rather than bent me to any will of theirs. It is not how a man dies, but how he bears that final act that has meaning. And the same is true for a woman of the dales. In me grew a coldness like the steel from the Waste, twice-forged and stronger than any other thing in our world. I swore that Dame Math was right, and I must contrive to make my own passing count against the enemy.

But it seemed they now forgot me. I was still bound, and they made the rope fast to one of the boat-chains. Men came and looked at me from time to time as if I were a prisoned beast. Their hands were on my hair and my face, and they jabbered at me in their own tongue, doubtless warning of much I would certainly rue. But none did more than that. It was coming night, and they had set up a line of campfires and were driving in sheep and cattle, slaughtering some of them.

A mounted party had gone down-dale in pursuit of our people. I besought the Flame that those fleeing had won the rugged land where their guides could lead them by routes only dalesmen knew.

Once I saw a small party return, heard women screaming for a while, and knew that some of our people had been run down. I tried to close my ears, shut off thought. This was that place of Outer Darkness come to earth, that place to which evil crawls and from which it issues forth again-and to that evil there is no end.

I tried to plan my own ending before they could turn to me for amusement. The river-could I hurl myself into the waters there? If I could edge along the chain to which my rope had been tied, surely there was a chance.

Toross - dully I wondered what had become of him. I had not seen his body with those others. Perhaps he had escaped at the last. If so, I could still find a small, unfrozen part in me that wished him well. Oddly at that thought his face was vivid in my mind, as sharp as if he stood before my eyes. Within my mail and under my jerkin something was warm.

The gryphon. That unlucky bauble which had doomed me to this state. The gryphon was growing ever warmer, almost like a brand laid to my skin. From it flooded not only that heat, but something else, a strength, a belief in myself against all the evidence that reason provided for my outer eye and ear. It was like some calm voice assuring me that there was a way out, and that my delivery was at hand, though I knew this could not be.

Fear became a small, far-off thing, easy to put aside. My sight was more acute, my hearing keener. My hearing - !

Even through the clamor of the camp I detected that sound. There was something coming-down-river!

How I knew this, I could not have told. But I knew I must be ready. Perhaps I was only dazed by fatigue, by my fear and despair. Yet I was as certain of this rescue as I was that I still lived and breathed.

“Joisan!” A thread of whisper, but to my alerted ears so near a shout, I feared all the camp might hear it.

I was afraid to answer aloud, but I turned my head a fraction in the direction from which they had come, hoping the gesture would signal my recognition.

“Edge - this - way - “ The words came from the river. “If - you - can - “

Tortuous and slow were my efforts to obey. I kept watch on all about me, my back to where that voice whispered, lest I somehow betray this hope. Now I felt wet hands reach up to mine, the swing of a knife against the rope. That fell away, my stiffened hands were caught and held; my rescuer was half in the water. “Slip over!” he ordered.

I wore mail and the dragging skirt. I could not hope to swim so burdened. Yet it would be better to meet death cleanly. Now I waited as a party of the invaders tramped along the path. They did not glance in my direction. Then I rolled over and down into the water, felt hands catch and drag me even as I gulped air and went under.

We were in the grip of the current where the stream ran the swiftest, and my struggles would not surface me for long. I choked and thought this was the end. Still that other fought for me, with what poor aid I could give. We came against a rock where he clung and held my head above the flood.

His face was close to mine, and it was no surprise to see that Toross held me so.

“Let me go. You have given me clean death, kinsman. For that I thank you - “

“I give you life!” he replied, and there was stark determination in his face. “Hold you here, Joisan!” He set my hands to the rock and I held. He crawled and pulled himself up into the air, and then by main force, for I had little strength left, dragged me up beside him. By fortune we had come across the river into rough pastureland, downstream from the ruins of Ithkrypt, and between us and the western hills was now the full invader force. Toross was shivering, and I saw he had stripped to his linen undershirt, his mail gone. There was a raw slash across his cheek where blood welled.

“Up!” He caught my arm, pulling at me. My long skirt, so water-soaked, was like a trap about my legs, and the mail was a deadweight upon me. But I stumbled forward, unable to believe that we had actually achieved this much and that the alarm for my escape had not yet sounded.

Thus we reached some rocks and fell, rather than dropped, behind them. I fumbled with the lacings of my mail, wanting to be rid of that, but Toross caught my hands.

“No, you may need that yet. We are far from out of the dragon’s jaws.”

Of that I needed no reminding. I had no weapon, and, as far as I could see, Toross carried none except the knife. Perhaps he had found a sword too weighty for that swim. We were reduced to that single blade and perhaps stones snatched from the ground if we were cornered.

“We must take the hills.” In the growing dark he gestured up-slope. “And try to work our way around those butchers to join our people. But we had better wait for full dark.”

Something in me urged action, to get as far from those fires, the noise across the river, as we could. Yet what he said made sense. To draw upon one’s patience was a new ordeal, I now discovered.

“How - how did you come alive from the river battle?” I asked.

He touched that slash on his face, which had now clotted again, giving him a bloody mask to wear. “I took this in the last charge. It stunned me enough to make them think me dead. When I realized that I must be dead to escape, I played that part. Then I got away - but I saw them bring you from Ithkrypt. What happened there, Joisan? Why did they turn their destruction against their own men?”

“That was not done by the invaders; it was Dame Math. She used the Power.”

For a moment he was silent and then he demanded, “But how can such a thing be? She was a Dame - a Dame of Norstead Abbey.”

“It seemed that before she swore to the Flame she had other knowledge. It was her choice to call upon that in the end. Do you not think we can move now, Toross?” I was shivering in my wet clothing, trying hard to control the shaking of my body. Though it was late summer, this eve brought with it the foretaste of autumn.

“They will be waiting.” He was on his knees, peering back to the river.

“The enemy - have they already climbed so high in the dale?” It appeared our small gift of fortune was fast-dwindling. “No - Angarl, Rudo.” Toross named the armsmen who had come with him out of the south. “My mother sent them back, and they were to press me into going into the hills. Had I not seen you in the hands of our enemies, the Hounds of Alizon, I might have yielded to them.”

That we were not alone, if we could reach his men, gave me a spark of comfort, though both men were old, sour and dour. Rudo was one-eyed, and Angarl had lost a hand many years before.

So we began a stealthy withdrawal. I could not honestly understand why we were not sighted, though we took to all the cover the rough ground afforded. That there had come no outcry on my escape was also a mystery. I had expected them early on my trail - unless they believed I had perished in the river.

We found a narrow track winding upward, and Toross pushed the pace here. I would not admit that I found the going increasingly difficult, but strained my energy to the utmost to keep up. That he had laid me under debt to him weighed on me also. I was grateful, as anyone would be grateful for their life given back to them. Yet that Toross was the giver could cause future difficulties. But there was no reason to look forward to those - what mattered now was that we continued to claw our way through the dark.

Though I had lived in the dale all my life, I had only a general idea of where we might be heading. We needed to get west, but to do so and pass any enemy patrol, we must first head south. My wet boots became a torture to my feet. Twice I stopped and wrung out my skirt as best I could. Now it was plastered to my legs, chafing my skin.

Toross headed on and up with confidence, as if he knew exactly where he was bound, and I could only follow and trust in him.

We struck another track, faint, but at least easier footing than the way we had climbed, and this angled west. If the enemy had not combed this high, then we were heading around them. Once we heard more screams out of the night from the opposite bank of the river. Again I tried to close my ears to what I could in no way help. Toross did not falter in stride as those sounds reached us, but padded on. If they moved him to anger I did not know it. We did not talk as we went, saving all our breath for our exertions.

In spite of every effort, we could not move silently. There were scrapes of footfall on rock, the crack of a branch underfoot, the swish of our passing through brush. And after each of those small betrayals we froze to wait and listen.

Still our fortune held. The moon was rising - a full moon like a great lantern in the sky. It could show us the pitfalls before us, but it could also display us to a hunter. Toross halted. Now he caught my arm and drew me close to whisper in my ear. “We must cross the river at the traders’ ford. It is the only way to reach the hill-paths.”

He was right, of course, but to me that was our death blow. There was no way we could cross that well-known ford without being sighted. Even if by some miracle we could get across - why, then we had a long distance through open fields to traverse.

“We cannot try the ford; they will see us.”

“Have you a better plan then, Joisan?”

“None save that we keep west on this side of the river. It is all sheep pasturage and steep hillsides where they cannot ride us down without warning.”