"What do they look like?"

 

 

"Translucent, drifting creatures, resembling spirits. There are the Sidhe of the forests, called Arborals; they are green as grass. Umbrals will always be found in shadow, and at night can be very powerful. Pelagals are reputed to be ocean-going, but we only have rumors of a distant ocean here. Riverines live in streams and rivers. Amorphals can be a different shape each time you see them. Most of the Sidhe, however, belong to the kind called Faer - like Alyons and his coursers. The Faer resemble you and me and we can even interbreed, but they're a very different race, ages older than the current stock of humanity."

 

 

"And what is Halftown?"

 

 

"Where the Breeds live. Born of female Sidhe, sired by human males, most often."

 

 

"They won't live with humans?"

 

 

"They're a sad lot," Savarin said. "They're reputed to live forever, like the Sidhe, and like the Sidhe they have no souls. But like humans, they change - their peculiar way of aging. Humans don't accept them. Sidhe isolate them, but find them useful now and then. Many know Sidhe magic." They walked on in silence for a few minutes. "Who's to watch over you in Halftown?"

 

 

"The Crane Women," Michael said.

 

 

Savarin was impressed. "Very powerful. Ugly as sin, and they wouldn't mind my saying so. They're the oldest Breeds I've heard of. Was it Lamia who sent you to them?"

 

 

Michael nodded. "I don't go anywhere on my own. I mean, I don't have any choice."

 

 

"Maybe that's something to be thankful for. Less mistakes made that way."

 

 

"Is Lamia a Breed?"

 

 

"I don't think so. There are many stories about her, but nobody really knows what she is. I suspect she was human once, but did something the Sidhe didn't like. She was at the Isomage's house when I came here."

 

 

Beyond a rise, the road bisected the Breed settlement, which was laid out in an irregular circle. Halftown covered about ten acres, brown and dun and weathered gray buildings arranged along concentric half-circle streets, the ends of each street letting out on the main road. The land around Halftown was hummocky, as if ploughed by a giant and careless farmer, and the ground was poorly drained. Standing pools and puddles lay in the hollows and the air had a marshy green smell. A branch of the river flowed past the other side of the village, little more than a creek.

 

 

"Observe the structures," Savarin said, stopping to tie a string on his cloth shoes. "What would you say of them?"

 

 

Michael examined the buildings and then,to make sure he had missed nothing, examined them again. "They're shacks," he said. "They look like the houses in Euterpe."

 

 

Savarin straightened. "You're still not observing. See with what you already know." He pointed to the barren landscape: grassy shrub, hammocks and puddles, low bushes and scattered boulders.

 

 

"Jesus," Michael said under his breath. "They're shacks. Made of wood."

 

 

"Wood," Savarin emphasized. "See any trees?"

 

 

"No."

 

 

"That's how you tell Halftown from Euterpe. Breeds have Sidhe relatives, and that means connections with Arborals. Arborals control all the wood in the Realm. Humans are only allowed sticks and wicker and grass."

 

 

Michael felt dizzy. He still hadn't accepted that the Realm was real - yet every moment it became more and more complex.

 

 

"There aren't any trees here at all?"

 

 

"Away from the Blasted Plain, there are forests everywhere, but no wood for you and me. Very few humans leave the Pact Lands. Sidhe traders bring in goods every fortnight, in accord with the Isomage's pact, but even they face danger on the Blasted Plain."

 

 

Michael saw his first Breed as they came within a hundred feet of the outer circle of huts. The Breed was a male, slightly taller than Michael, with long, lank red-brown hair and a powerful build. He stood in the middle of the road, a staff in one hand and a bored expression on his face. He held out his staff to stop them.

 

 

"I recognize you, Teacher. I know this young fellow, too. Lamia sends word about him - but not about you."

 

 

"I come here often," Savarin said defensively.

 

 

"The coursers came last night," the Breed said. "No more humans allowed in Halftown. Except, of course." He pointed his finger at Michael.

 

 

"I think you'd better go," Michael told Savarin. "Thanks for helping me."

 

 

Savarin frowned at the breed. "Yes. I'm sure discretion is best. But I've never been barred from Halftown. I hope it's not permanent. This is where I get most of my information." He sighed, cast a sunny smile on Michael and turned around. "Learn quickly, friend. And come tell me what you've learned, if you can."

 

 

Michael accepted his outstretched hand. Savarin returned the way they had come, leaving him alone with the Breed guard.

 

 

A cool breeze rippled their hair and clothes. "So where am I supposed to go?"

 

 

"To the Crane Women. Come."

 

 

Michael followed him down the road. Through Half town, the thoroughfare was paved with brown brick and cobbles. The huts seemed cleaner though flimsier than the huts in Euterpe. Small plots around each house were filled with rows of healthy green plants; he couldn't see any flowers.

 

 

Other Breeds stared at him through windows and open doors. The men were almost as tall as the Sidhe Michael had glimpsed at the Isomage's house. The women were slender, noble-looking, though few were what Michael would have called pretty. Their faces were hard and sculptured, too much like the men's.

 

 

His escort led him out the other side of the village and away from the road, toward the creek. Across the water, perched atop a broad low mound, was a larger hut shaped like a half-deflated soccer ball, covered with sticks, dirt and thatch. Except for two round glass-paned windows and a stone chimney poking through the top, it could have been a yurt - one of the portable dwellings used by central Asian nomads. The yard around the hut was strewn with small boulders and piles of debris, sorted and categorized - a pile of pebbles here, sticks to one side, bones and animal skulls there, other mounds he couldn't identify. The smell was of ancient garbage, richer and more suggestive than dust, but not overtly offensive. Stakes marked the perimeter of the mound and scraps of fabric fluttered from them like sad decrepit banners.

 

 

"How do I get across?" Michael asked as they stopped at the water's edge. The Breed pointed out flat stones just beneath the slow-moving surface.

 

 

"They await you," he said, and began his walk back to Half town. Michael swallowed the tightness in his throat and stepped out onto the first stone. The water swirled around his shoes. He thought about falling into the water to force himself to wake up, stop dreaming, but if he hadn't been shocked out of sleep by the things that had already happened, the murky creek was unlikely to do the trick. Besides, he had no idea what lurked in the depths. He was sick of being afraid. He clutched his book tightly and stepped onto the second stone. He concentrated so hard on not falling that he failed to notice a figure standing on the opposite bank until he had crossed. He looked up with a start.

 

 

"Hello," he said quickly.

 

 

The figure was female in a bizarre sort of way. She still possessed a roundness in her elongated, leather-skinned limbs which demonstrated femininity, but her arms hung almost to her knees. Her face was oblate, wider than tall, with narrow long eyes beneath thin flat brows. She stood an inch or two shorter than Michael, slightly stooped. Her legs, clothed in ragged pants, were very long in comparison with her torso. She lifted one hand and wriggled spider-like fingers in front of her flat chest. The fingers were long and dark and tapered to thin black nails.

 

 

"Hello," he repeated. She looked him over slowly, nodding with a steady rhythm as if she were feeble. Her short-cut hair had the color and texture of goose down.

 

 

"Jan Antros," she said. "Just man-child." Her voice was a gnarly squeak with undertones of heavy wind.

 

 

Michael shook his wet feet and reached with one hand to empty his left shoe, then his right. He never took his eyes off her. The shoes squelched when he put them on again. "I'm Michael," he said, trying to be agreeable.

 

 

"You're a delicate, incredibly fragile, very frail indeed piece of tissue," came a melodious voice from the hut. Another woman with similar features leaned from one window. Her face was a puzzle of wrinkles and red and purple tattoos. "You don't look important."

 

 

Behind Michael, where she couldn't possibly have snuck up on him, a third woman stood on one spindly leg with the other tucked close to her chest. She had long dusty-red hair tied in a single braid which reached to her knees. "The Flesh Egg sends us a1 weak man-child. She expects us to process, train?"

 

 

"Are you Nare, Spart and. Coom?" Michael asked, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

 

 

"I'm Nare," said the Crane woman standing on one leg.

 

 

"Spart," said the one at the window, and

 

 

"Coom," said the downy-haired figure who had first addressed him. "Want us teach?"

 

 

"I don't know what I want," Michael said, "except to get out of here."

 

 

The Crane women chuckled, a sound like leaves skittering over rock.

 

 

"Won't hurt you," Coom said, backing off a foot. "Much." Her hair seemed alive in the breeze.

 

 

"We don't mind man-childs," said Nare at his side, circling.

 

 

"But there's one thing you must want," said Spart in her beautiful voice from the window. She spat into a nearby pile of debris.

 

 

"To survive," Nare said.

 

 

"Live in Sidhedark."

 

 

"Fight to live."

 

 

"Fight to be human."

 

 

"Understood?"

 

 

He could do nothing but nod. In the moment he turned away from the hut, Spart left the window and stood between Nare and Coom. She was the tallest of the three and had the longest, most Sidhe-like face. Tattoos formed an intricate tangle of leaves and branches and whorls wherever her skin was bare.

 

 

"You'll build a house on this mound, away from ours thirty paces," she said. "Wood will be brought to you this evening. Until you've built your own house, you don't exist."

 

 

"What'll I do now?" he asked. He had focused on Spart; he suddenly realized the other two were gone.

 

 

"Be patient." Spart's voice had much of the hypnotic quality he'd experienced while listening to Alyons and the coursers. "You can do that, can't you?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Go and sit where you want your house. Wood will come."

 

 

The Crane Woman returned to their hut, leaving him on the stretch of hard-packed dirt by the creek bank. He shifted from one foot to the other, then looked over the water to Halftown. He shaded his eyes and stared at the sky.

 

 

Not a cloud was visible. Enameled sparkling blueness stretched overhead, blending into the orange and green along the horizon. About thirty yards away from the hut, and an equal distance from the creek bank, two boulders nestled against each other, forming a natural seat about a yard wide and two and a half feet tall. Michael crossed to the boulders and sat on them, looking at the sky again. Sometimes it seemed to be made of cross-thatches of colors, hundreds of colors all adding up to blue. Yet it wasn't like a painting. It was very alive, disturbing in the way it seemed to shift, to bulge down and retreat up.

 

 

He felt drugged. Until now, alone, with no instruction but to wait, it was as if he had not seen anything clearly. Now the darity flooded down on him from the sky. The sky, by its very unreality, seemed to show how real everything was.

 

 

But this reality wasn't the same brand he had experienced on Earth. This was more vivid, more apparent and simpler.

 

 

He knelt beside the boulders and plucked a blade of grass, peeling it along its fibers, rubbing the ragged edges, smearing the beads of juice. He felt a tickle on his arm and saw a tiny ant crawling among the light, silky hairs. The ant was translucent, rainbow-hued like an opal. Until now, he hadn't thought to wonder if there were insects in Sidhedark. Not many, apparently.

 

 

What about birds, cats, dogs, cows? He'd seen horses, but. where did the milk come from?

 

 

He was tired. He leaned back on the rocks and closed his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was still and restful. Wind sighed over him.

 

 

He had slept. He sat up and rubbed elbows stiff from pressing against the rock. The sun was setting. There were no clouds yet, but unmoving bands of color hung above the horizon, pale pinks and greens at the highest and just above the sun's limb a particularly vivid stripe of orange. Michael had never seen a sunset like it.

 

 

He looked to the east. The sky there was an electric blue-gray. Stars were already appearing in the east, as sharp and bright as white-hot needle points. Instead of twinkling, they made little circling motions, as if they were distant tethered fireflies. Michael had sometimes used Whitney's Star Finder on summer nights to pick out the few constellations visible through Los Angeles' thick air. He couldn't recognize any now.

 

 

The air had cooled considerably. Orange light flickered in the windows of the Crane Women's hut. He had a notion to peer in and see what they were up to, but he rubbed the bruise on his cheek and thought better of it.

 

 

Only then did he notice that his wristwatch was gone. He grabbed for the key in his pants pocket, but it was missing as well. He still had the book.

 

 

He felt almost naked without the key. He resented the thievery; he resented everything about the way he was being treated, but there wasn't a thing he could do.

 

 

The last of the sun slipped behind distant hills, burning muddy orange through the smoky haze which he surmised lay over the Blasted Plain, beyond the boundary of the Pact Lands. Where the sun had been, a sharply defined ribbon of darkness ascended from the horizon and blended with the zenith; and then another to one side, and yet another on the opposite side, resembling the shadows of cloth streamers in a celestial wind.

 

 

Michael listened. The land all around was silent, but from the sky came a low humming, like wind stroking telephone wires. When the darkness was complete, the humming went away.

 

 

Then, starting in the east and progressing westward across the sky, the stars steadied, as if precipitating out of solution and pasting themselves against the bowl of the heavens.

 

 

There were stars in the dirt, as well. He pulled his feet up on the boulders and looked down. Things sparkled and glinted between the few blades of grass. Soon these glows faded and the land settled into night with a breezy sigh, as if all the Realm were a woman lying back on a pillow.

 

 

No, indeed, Michael thought; this is not Earth, whatever its outward resemblance.

 

 

He sat on the rocks for some time before he heard the voices. They came from the creek, but he couldn't see who was speaking; there was no light but the stars and the now-faint glow from the hut's windows. Concentrating on the source, forcing his pupils to their maximum dilation, he discerned a low-slung boat-shadow gliding down the creek, as well as a few figures standing on the prow. The boat nudged the bank and he heard footsteps coming toward him.

 

 

He stood up on the rocks. "Who's that?" he called out.

 

 

The hut door swung open. Spart stood silhouetted against the swirling, furnace-orange light. The approaching shadows passed through the shaft of light from the door and were outlined briefly. There were four, brownish-green in color - or perhaps solid green - and they were naked. Three were male, one female. They were obviously Sidhe, with the same elongated features and spectral grace, and each carried a broad, stubby log.

 

 

They surrounded Michael and at a signal, simultaneously dropped the logs from their shoulders into the dirt.

 

 

"Dura," said the female. The beauty of her voice made Michael shudder.

 

 

"Your wood, boy," the Crane Woman said from the hut door.

 

 

He turned and cried out. "What do I do with it?". But the hut door closed and the naked Sidhe walked away. The female glanced back at him with some sympathy, he thought, but she said nothing more. They were absorbed in the blackness.

 

 

He remained standing on the boulder awhile, then sat. The four logs rested on their ends, each about a foot and a half wide and a yard tall. He was no carpenter like his father; he couldn't calculate how many board-feet there were in the logs, or how much of a house he could build with them.

 

 

Not a very large one.

 

 

He leaned back and closed his eyes again.

 

 

"Whose boy are you?"

 

 

He thought he was dreaming. He wiped his nose reflexively.

 

 

"Hoy ac! Whose house?"

 

 

Michael spun around on the boulders and looked in the voice's direction. There was only a log.

 

 

"Rup antros, jan wiros," said the voice, like that of the Sidhe woman but with a fuzzy quality. "Quos maza."

 

 

"Where are you?" Michael asked softly. The night air was quite chilly now.

 

 

"All around, antros. It's true. Your words are Anglo-Saxon and Norman and mixes from the misty north and the warm south. Ah, I knew those tongues once, at their very roots. affrighted many a Goth and Frank and Jute."

 

 

"Who are you? Who?"

 

 

There was silence for a moment, then the voice, much weaker, said, "Maza sed more kay rup antros. It's strange to be broken for a human's house. Why so privileged? Still, all wood is passing; the imprint, must fade."

 

 

The voice did indeed fade. Though it was still and quiet thereafter, Michael got no sleep that night.

 

 

Chapter Six

 

 

He was almost as cold as the rocks he sat on when the dew settled around him in the early dawn. The sky turned from black to gray and mist slid over the mound and creek in glutinous layers. Narrow vapor trails four or five feet in length shot through the mist with quiet hissing noises. Michael was too chilled to care.

 

 

He twisted his stiff neck around and noticed the logs were no longer standing around the boulders. Sometime during the night, they had fallen into jumbles of neatly cut beams and boards. The bark of each log lay folded next to its partitioned innards.

 

 

Michael wasn't encouraged. Like a lizard, he waited for the sun to come up and warm his blood. He hadn't resolved anything during the night - the hours had been spent in a cold stupor - but the conviction of his inadequacy had solidified.

 

 

The sun appeared in the east, a distant red curve topping a hill beyond the main branch of the river. Without thinking, Michael uncurled his arms and legs and stood on the rock to catch the first rays of warmth. His bones cracked and his legs almost collapsed under him, but he staggered and kept his balance. His clothes were soaked with dew.

 

 

The hut was quiet and dark, likewise the village. In a few minutes, however, just when he thought he might be catching some warmth from the new day, he heard activity from the Halftown houses. Curls of smoke began to rise from their stone and mud-brick chimneys.

 

 

He heard a woman singing. At first, he was too intent on just getting warm to pay much attention, but as the voice grew near, he angled his head and saw a young Breed female fording the stream on the flat rocks, barefoot. She wore cloth pants ending at the knees and a vest laced together with string. Her hair was raven black - uncharacteristic, he thought - but her face bore the unmistakable mark of the Sidhe, long with prominent cheeks and a narrow, straight nose. She carried four buckets covered with cloth caps, two in each hand. She glanced at Michael on her way to the Crane Women's hut.

 

 

"Hoy," she greeted.

 

 

"Hello," Michael returned. She stopped before the door, which opened a crack. A long-fingered hand stretched out and took two buckets, withdrew, then emerged to take two more. The door closed and the woman reversed her course. She paused, cocked her head at Michael, then started toward him.

 

 

"Oh, God," he said under his breath. He was just warm enough to shiver and he badly needed to piss. He didn't want to talk to anyone, much less a Breed woman.

 

 

"You're human," she said, stopping about six paces from the boulders. "Yet they gave you wood."

 

 

He nodded, arms still unfolded to catch the warmth.

 

 

"You're an English speaker," she continued. "And you come from the Isomage's house. That's all they say about you in Halftown."

 

 

He nodded again. Beneath all the cold and misery was a steady current of shyness. Her voice was disarmingly beautiful. He would have to get used to Sidhe and Breed voices.

 

 

"It will be warm soon," she said, walking toward the stream. "If you have time today, come to the village and I'll give you a card for milk and cheese. Everybody needs to eat. Just ask for Eleuth."

 

 

"I will," he said, his voice cracking. When she had crossed the creek, he clambered down from the rock, walked some distance away, and knelt down to hide himself while he urinated. He felt like some animal, barely domesticated. A pet of the Breeds.

 

 

The door to the Crane Women's hut opened and Spart emerged carrying a roll of cloth. She stared at him balefully, unfurled the cloth and flapped it. An exaltation of tiny birds flew from its folds and circled the house, then headed north. Without explanation, Spart returned to the house and closed the door behind.

 

 

Massaging blood back into his legs, Michael looked doubtfully at the piles of lumber. He picked up the sheets of bark and discovered that they could be peeled into light, strong strips with a ropy toughness. He thought about how to put a hut together and shook his head. He'd need tools - nails, certainly, and a knife and saw.

 

 

Even as he speculated half-heartedly, he asked himself what the hell good it was, building a house where he didn't belong.

 

 

"You have a long way to go."

 

 

Nare stood behind him. Her eyes were large, like an owl's but mobile. Her long red-gray hair was an unbraided radiance, spreading to its widest point behind her knees. "Now that you have the grace of wood, what are you going to do with it?"

 

 

"I need tools."

 

 

"I don't think so. Are you aware what the grace of wood means?"

 

 

He thought for a moment. "Humans don't get much."

 

 

"Humans get scrap. Not even Breeds can get wood all the time. The finest wood is reserved for the Sidhe. Like as not they have ancestors in it."

 

 

"I don't understand," Michael said.

 

 

"The Sidhe are immortal, but if they die in battle or through some other faulting, the Arborals press them into tree. They dwell there awhile, then request oblivion. Arborals do then-work, and we have wood."

 

 

"I heard a voice last night."

 

 

Nare nodded. Bending over, she picked up a plank and held it out to Michael. One long forefinger pressed against the edge and a notch fell out. "Feel and press. Riddle how it all goes together. Wood was shaped into a house by the Sidhe that dwelled within. Just puzzle it. Maza."

 

 

"Today?" Michael asked.

 

 

"Today is all the time you have." Nare headed for the creek and dove in like an otter. He didn't see her come up.

 

 

For the next few hours, trying to ignore his hunger, Michael took each board and beam and pressed, poked and rubbed the surfaces until he found the removable pieces. At first he took the small pieces and tossed them aside, but thought better of it and gathered them into a small pile. - It became obvious that he could fit some of the pieces into holes in the planks, and use them to slide into notches in the beams. It reminded him of a wooden puzzle he had at home, only much more complex. When the sun was high, he had managed to assemble two planks and one beam, with no idea where to go from there. He didn't even know what shape the house would be.

 

 

Spart, the Crane Woman with tattoos all over and the melodious voice, came to him from the hut and offered a wooden bowl. Inside was cold gruel, a piece of fruit and a puddle of thin milk. He ate it without complaint. She watched, one long arm twitching now and then, and removed the bowl from his hands when he was done.

 

 

"When you have finished the house, you will go into the village and announce yourself at the market. They will allow for your food. Also, while you're here, you can carry messages for us, and otherwise make yourself useful." She glanced at the pile of wood. "If you haven't puzzled it by dawn tomorrow, it's not your wood any more."

 

 

He stared at her tattoos. She didn't seem to mind, but she bent down and tapped the wood meaningfully. He set to work again and she walked back toward the house.

 

 

"Is it safe to drink the water?" he called after her.

 

 

"I wouldn't know," she said.

 

 

By evening, with all his ingenuity he had succeeded in figuring out that the house would be square, about two yards on each side, without a roof or floor. He would apparently have to gather grass or something for the roof, and that discouraged him. He was ravenous, but no more food was brought out.

 

 

"Maybe they'll feed me when I'm done," he thought. "If."

 

 

He discovered the bark could be used for lashings. As the sun and sky went through the same twilight phenomena of the day before, Michael kicked a beam with one foot and held his hand out in front of him. "It's impossible."

 

 

But.

 

 

He knelt and picked out a square, thick beam whose use he hadn't discovered. He pressed along the grain and it fell apart in neat, almost paper-thin shingles. Then the plan seemed to come together in his mind. He assembled planks and beams, slipped tenon into mortise, lashed the wood together, and took five long, thin curved pieces to make the framework of the roof. When darkness was complete, he had almost finished putting on the shingles. He had one string of bark and two pieces of pressed-out wood left, yet the house seemed complete.

 

 

Spart stood outside when he emerged through the low door. She looked at the string in his hand and shook her head. "Pera antros," she said. "If you had built it right, you wouldn't have any pieces left over."

 

 

For a moment, he was afraid she might have him dismantle the hut and start all over again, but she pulled a bowl from behind her back and handed it to him. His meal this time was vegetable paste and a thick, doughy slice of dark bread. She squatted down next to him as he ate.

 

 

"There are many languages among the Sidhe," Spart said. "Some are very ancient, some more recent. Nearly all the Sidhe speak Cascar. It would be an advantage to learn as much Cascar as you can - and you need all the advantages you can get."

 

 

"Some speak English," Michael said.

 

 

"Most speak it because it is in your mind. In-speaking. And English was spoken in the last lands many of us inhabited on Earth, English and other tongues - Irish, Welsh, French, German. We also speak Earth languages you wouldn't be familiar with, all old, most dead. Languages come easy to the Sidhe. But no human tongue can replace Cascar."

 

 

Not being hungry made Michael bolder. "How old are you?"

 

 

"There are no years here," Spart said. "Seasons come and go at the whim of Adonna. How old are you?"

 

 

"Sixteen," Michael said.

 

 

She stood and took his empty bowl. "Tonight, in the dark, one of us will test you. You will not be able to fend us off, but how you react will shape the way we teach you. Sleep or not, as you will."

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

Inside, the house was drafty and small and the floor was no comfort, but it was better than nothing. He sat in a corner, trying not to sleep, awaiting the promised test.

 

 

There wasn't much he could do to prepare. He wondered if they would hurt him. He had never been much of a fighter; it had always taken him too long to get angry. Consequently, he had little experience with his fists.

 

 

Not having slept the night before, he couldn't keep his eyes from closing. He groaned as he realized he was falling asleep. His head fell against his knees -

 

 

And jerked up at the sound of hooves. It was still dark. Something splashed in the river. He heard a horse nicker and sneeze.

 

 

He was so tired. Being tired and alert at once gave the experience a surreal edge, as if things weren't bizarre enough already. He had to decide whether to stay in the house - and perhaps have it knocked down around his ears - or go outside.

 

 

He stood. The roof was a bare half-inch above the top of his head. All his life he had been slow to act, thoughtful, predictable. Perhaps being unpredictable would give him an advantage.

 

 

Hunkering down, he bunched his leg muscles to spring through the doorway. If he could run fast enough, perhaps he could get away.

 

 

He leaped through the door, keeping his head down, and ran headlong into someone tall and solid. He rebounded and fell back, clasping his hands to his head. A Sidhe stood over him, wearing bright silver chain mail and sporting a long, wickedly pointed pike. Michael's vision swam; he barely saw the Sidhe lower the pike and prod his sternum.

 

 

"Vera ais, sepha jan antros pek," said the Sidhe in a low voice. Michael regained his breath and looked around frantically. A few yards away, a Sidhe horse stood relaxed, pale gray blankets wrapped around its neck and withers, with a silvery saddle and no stirrups or reins. "Vas lenga spu?" The pike pressed harder, drawing blood. Michael squirmed and cried out. "Vas lenga?"

 

 

"Let me alone!" he shouted. He grabbed the pike but it seemed to have sharp edges all around and cut his fingers.

 

 

"You don't belong here," the Sidhe growled. "Do you know who I am?"

 

 

"No!"

 

 

"I am Alyons, Wickmaster of the Blasted Plain and Pact Lands. Some call me Scarbita Antros - Scourge of Men. How did you get here? Why are you living in a house of wood?"

 

 

"I was sent here," Michael said. His fear melted any anger he felt, but seemed to heighten his perceptions. Even in the dark he could see Alyons in detail: a spectral face and long, blood-red hair; huge eyes with reverse epicanthic folds; long-fingered hands gripping his pike, their nails trimmed to metallic points; boots made from the same silvery-gray material as the saddle; pearl-gray cape hanging loose around his shoulders to his calves. "Quosfera antros, to suma antros."

 

 

"The boy is in our charge."

 

 

Michael recognized Nare's acid voice. She stood to one side, between them and the Crane Women's hut, and Spart stood on the other side. Michael couldn't see Coom. Alyons made no move, but his hands applied an ounce more pressure to the pike. Michael felt it scraping bone and tried not to squirm again. "What is he doing here?" Alyons asked, eyes still on Michael, like a hunter unwilling to release his prey.

 

 

"I have told you," Nare repeated. "He is in our charge."

 

 

"He's human. You don't train humans."

 

 

There was a rapid exchange in Sidhe between Spart and the Wickmaster. Alyons' face filled with deep-set lines of hate, turning his smooth chiseled features into a mummy mask. He lifted the pike a hair's breadth. "If I kill the boy, I remove a burden, no?"

 

 

"Probably," Spart said. "But what would we do to you, in turn?"

 

 

"You're t'al antros," Alyons said contemptuously. Coom stepped from the shadows behind him.

 

 

"We are very, very old," Spart said, "and the Sidhe of the Irall come to us to ask questions. Would you like your name mentioned when we respond - horsethief?"

 

 

The lines of Alyons' face deepened, if that were possible. "It wouldn't upset me," he said. He lifted the pike a hair.

 

 

"And when Adonna's priest comes for temelos?" Spart asked.

 

 

Coom cropped a hand on Alyons' shoulder and pulled him roughly away, dragging his face down to her level. "Ours!"

 

 

"Then take him," Alyons said with great calmness. He shrugged her off and walked to his horse, seeming to glide on rather than jump. "But I will go to the Arborals and question the grace of wood."

 

 

"They brought it," Nare said.

 

 

"You are a crude and foolish fricht," Spart said.

 

 

"Ours," Coom repeated.

 

 

Alyons leaned forward and the horse seemed to turn to smoke, every curve blurring and smoothing. Then, in silence, they were gone. Michael lay on the dirt, his chest bleeding sluggishly, his hands bloody from contact with the pike. The Crane Women were gone, as well.

 

 

He got to his feet and made for the shelter of the house. Inside, he tried to keep his lungs from heaving and held his mouth with his bloody hands to stifle sobs. He wasn't sure what had just happened - whether the Crane Women had tested him, or he had actually been visited by Alyons. The Sidhe's voice still haunted his ears, rich and deadly as venom.

 

 

Even now, Michael could hardly keep awake. There was a vibrant chirping nearby, repeated several times - birds? - and that was the last thing he remembered until his arm was grabbed. "Get out of my house," he said groggily.

 

 

"Jan antros." Coom leaned over him, the light of dawn through the door outlining the side of her head. "Not eyes-full! We promise test."

 

 

He didn't think he was dreaming - dreams seemed to have no place in the Realm - but he wanted to believe he was. "Go away," he said, "please." And he was alone in the hut.

 

 

Morning came and went, and the day, and it was near evening again when he awoke, stiff and still exhausted. He felt his chest. The blood had clotted and the wound had been smeared with white paste. It was tender but didn't ache. The cuts on his hands had scabbed over.

 

 

There was a bowl of mush and fruit by the door. He ate slowly with his fingers, his head full of fog. He was past all thought. The temptation to throw it in was strong, congruent with the pain in his body and the tiredness clamped to every muscle.

 

 

When he finished eating, he rolled over and looked at the dirt floor. Idly, he drew a line in the dirt with his finger, then wrote a line of words, and another, half-purposefully, until he had scrawled a poem.

 

 

The scraping on the roof at night -

 

 

Chitin or nail or stiff, hot hair -

 

 

In dark of August, summer's heat

 

 

Constructs a limb of dust and air.

 

 

If you step out to watch the clouds,

 

 

Silent lightning will prance and grin.

 

 

While on the roof the summer waits

 

 

And if you try to go back in.

 

 

Why, Hello! The season is a spider.

 

 

Half the time, when he wrote a poem, he had no idea what it meant. The back of his head seemed disconnected from all present circumstance, as though facts and images seeped in slowly and were jumbled along the way.

 

 

But the menace was obvious. He was scared clear through, and he had no way to fight his fear. Not yet, perhaps not ever.

 

 

He stood by the door of his house and watched the sun go down, hands in his pants pocket. Nare came out of the hut and strode toward him. When they were face to face, she took his hands in hers and peered at the palms, then pulled apart his blood-stained shirt and examined his chest.

 

 

"How did I do?" Michael asked with an edge of bitterness.

 

 

"You are no good to us asleep. You were to go to the market today, get yourself a card."

 

 

"I mean, how did I do last night?"

 

 

"Terribly," she said. "He would have killed you. And later. you are a terrible warrior."

 

 

"I never wanted to be a warrior," he said incredulously.

 

 

She held out her twiggish fingers and shrugged elegantly. "The choice is to be one, or die," she said. "Your choice."

 

 

Coom and Spart crossed the stream and entered the hut.

 

 

As Nare stood motionless beside him and Michael waited nervously, the stars twirled into view. Coom and Spart emerged with eight long torches and began staking them in a circle between the house and the stream. They lighted the torches by cupping their hands behind the wick and blowing on them. Sparks and flame shot up into the night and an orange circle of light shimmered within the perimeter.

 

 

"Time is difficult to measure in the Realm," Spart said, approaching Michael and taking him by the hand. The sensation of her long, strong fingers around his own quelled any protest. She led him into the circle and motioned for Coom to join them. "You will learn our functions now," Spart said. "Coom is an expert in what the Sidhe call isray, physical combat. Nare is versed in stray, preparation of the mind. And I will teach victory, the avoidance of battle as a means to victory. Tonight, since it is the simplest and easiest of the three, you will learn from Coom the beginnings of how to survive a fight with human or Sidhe."

 

 

Coom walked around Michael slowly, with high, almost prancing steps. Nare and Spart watched from outside the circle of torches. Michael regarded Coom warily, hands at his sides, head inclined slightly. He jumped as she reached down and grabbed a leg to reposition it. "Don't fall over," she said. "Like stool. One leg to be like two." She continued her circling. "Morning, you run to Halftown, run back. Tonight, you just stand up." She shot out one arm and pushed him. He promptly fell on his butt and scrambled to his feet again. She reached out and shoved once more. He stumbled but stayed upright. She circled and shoved from another angle. He toppled forward on his face. "Like stool," she repeated. She shoved again, and again, but he remained standing.

 

 

His face was flushed and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, but he was surprised at how calm he felt. The methodic circling, shoving, went on for an hour until he kept his balance no matter what angle Coom attacked from.

 

 

The torches guttered. "Ears," Coom said. Nare and Spart extinguished the feeble flames. Clouds obscured the stars now; except for the feverish orange glow from the hut windows, there was no illumination. He couldn't see any of the Crane Women. He listened to the sound of their feet moving, trying to guess how many circled him. A hand pushed hard on his back and he went to one knee, then got up quickly.

 

 

"Ears," Coom said again. He sensed a footfall nearby and braced himself instinctively in the opposite direction. The blow came, but he kept his balance. j Another hour passed. He was groggy and his legs ached abominably. His shoulders were sore and swollen. For a time he rotated in the darkness, until he realized he couldn't hear their footfalls any more. He was alone. The Crane Women had f returned to their hut.

 

 

He felt his way to his house and collapsed in a corner. He couldn't sleep. He rubbed his arms and shoulders and contemplated past gym classes, where he had never performed enthusiastically. It wasn't a matter of being weak or gimpy; he could run well enough, and his frame was sound. Michael had just never cared that much, and the gym teachers had seldom in spired confidence in those who didn't profess to be jocks.

 

 

Inspiration wasn't the issue here. Whatever he thought, however miserable he was, tomorrow he would run until he dropped - which he was sure he would. No protests, no complaints.

 

 

After the incident with Alyons, Michael fully appreciated his position.

 

 

Obviously, things could get much worse.

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

 

"The Sidhe do not use swords," Spart told Michael. They squatted on the ground outside his house, legs crossed, facing each other.

 

 

"But Alyons has a pike-"

 

 

"That is his wick. He uses it only against humans."

 

 

Michael nodded and looked away, resigned to the ambiguities. Spart sighed and leaned toward him.

 

 

"You are supposed to wonder what Alyons does with his wick."

 

 

"Act wicked?" Michael said, trying for a smile. Spart leaned back and narrowed her eyes to even tighter slits. "Okay," he gave in. "What does he do with it?"

 

 

"The wick is his symbol of rank. It confers his power of office, of labor. It signifies that he has the strength to guard the Blasted Plain and the Pact Lands, and to uphold the pact made between Sidhe and the Isomage."

 

 

"So why did he stab me with it?"

 

 

"He hates humans, like many Sidhe."

 

 

"Do you hate humans?"

 

 

"Tal antros," she said, tapping her chest with her finger. "I am half-human."

 

 

"Why don't Sidhe use swords?"

 

 

"They have no need. A Sidhe warrior is frightening enough without. And there is honor involved. Death is final for a Sidhe; there is nothing beyond except being pressed into a tree by the Arborals. That is not even half a life. So it has been established that the Sidhe may combat each other only by means dependent on their own skill and power, by which we mean magic and strength of will."

 

 

"I'm going to learn magic?"

 

 

Spart shook her head. "No humans ever conquer Sidhe magic. You'll have to learn how to flee, how to be inconspicuous. You cannot hope to best a Sidhe in grand combat. Your only chance is that a Sidhe will consider combat with a human shameful, worth only small effort. Take advantage of that. In the rare instances where you might be called into grand combat-" She slapped her hand against the dirt. "You will simply die. Dying in the Realm is as permanent for humans as death anywhere for a Sidhe. So do not provoke a warrior."

 

 

"I don't understand-"

 

 

"You will, in time. Now you will go to Halftown, do our errands. After, you will run. There is an order of grains to be delivered here, and you will-"

 

 

"I know. Ask for food for myself."

 

 

Spart regarded him with infinite patience, blinked slowly and turned away.

 

 

Halftown was quiet, matching the somber, overcast morning. Michael tried being cordial to the Breeds, but they returned no greetings; curiosity about him seemed to have lapsed. They were like ghosts intent on some irrevocable task; only a few of the women had any obvious hint of life and joy in them.

 

 

Michael followed the curving market street, which branched from the main road near the center of Halftown. The lone market consisted of a house (in Cascar, a caersidh, pronounced roughly "ker-shi"), round like most of the others, and a covered courtyard twice the area of the house itself. The courtyard was filled with tables and shelves stacked with provisions - foods in one corner, housewares, liquors (in bottles which looked suspiciously like the ones in Brecker's cellar in Euterpe) in another, and the simple types of clothing in a third. The middle of the courtyard was the counter, and there the market manager held sway.

 

 

Spart had said his name was Lirg. He had a daughter, Eleuth, the one who had delivered milk to the Crane Women's hut. Lirg never took cash - the Sidhe abhorred money, which seemed a bit strange to Michael, considering the legends of pots of gold and such - but kept careful track of Halftown's balances. Michael gathered the economy was loosely based on fulfillment of assigned tasks and dispersal of goods according to need.

 

 

Not unlike the simpler forms of communism he had learned about in Mr. Wagner's class at school. Allotments of supplies were brought across the Blasted Plain. As Michael skirted the courtyard, three large, big-wheeled wagons, each drawn by two Sidhe horses, lumbered in from the opposite end of the market street.

 

 

The wagons were filled with food and supplies. A Sidhe driver sat on the lead wagon, tall and aloof, dressed in iridescent browns, the cut of his clothes not substantially different from that of Alyons, except he wore no armor and carried no wick. The horses were lathered as if they had been driven hard, and a peculiar golden glow lifted from the backs of the wagons like sunlit dust. The glow dissipated, leaving a sweet-bitter scent in the air. Lirg stepped down from his counter and directed the unloading of the supplies. The Sidhe driver took down his tailgates and several passersby pitched in to help. Few words were exchanged. The supplies were either carried into a covered shed in the fourth corner of the courtyard, or placed directly in the market stalls. There was no rush to inspect the goods; they differed not in the slightest from those already available, and assured only continuity, not variety.

 

 

Michael watched until the wagons had been unloaded and pulled aside, then entered the courtyard, reluctant to make himself obvious. The driver shut the tailgates and smoothed the wood with his hands, leaving trails of golden glitter on the boards. He then walked around the horses and patted each on the haunch with more precision than affection. Everything he touched was left with a sparkle.

 

 

Lirg was back at his counter when Michael approached The Breed fastened him with a steady gaze, one eye dark and the other half-shut by a scar. Lirg's hair was more brown than red, and his skin tan instead of pale. "Your needs?" he asked, leaning forward on thickly muscled arms.

 

 

"I'm here to pick up grain for the Crane Women. And to be put on your list."

 

 

"What list?" He examined Michael intensely, then nodded. "The card. I see. Food only. that is all we can spare, even for pets of the Crane Women."

 

 

"I'm not a pet," Michael said gritting his teeth. "I'm a student, and I'm doing what they tell me to do." Lirg grinned at that, and Michael blushed.

 

 

"I see. Daughter!"

 

 

Eleuth emerged from the house with four sacks of grain. She put two of them by Michael's feet and hefted the other two onto her shoulders.

 

 

"I can carry them all," Michael said.

 

 

"I've told my daughter to help you," Lirg said. That seemed to settle it. Eleuth gave Michael a look suggesting he not argue. Michael picked up his two sacks.

 

 

"Am I on your list. on the card?"

 

 

"You are," Lirg said. He turned to a Breed customer and Michael left the courtyard, Eleuth following a few steps behind.

 

 

"What are they teaching you?" Eleuth asked as they approached the creek.

 

 

"They're trying to make me stronger," Michael said.

 

 

"Why don't you just stay in Euterpe? They have their own allotment. You could do well there."

 

 

"That's not the way things worked out," he said. "I suppose I'm being trained so I can go home again. I hope that's the reason, anyway. I have to find the man who can do it."

 

 

"A Sidhe magician could send you home," Eleuth said. Her voice was extraordinary; he didn't want to look at her for fear of being unable to look away again. "I think one could, anyway. That's what Lirg says, that the priests of the ball could send humans home again if they really wanted to. There's something mysterious about that, I can't help thinking. Because, you see, the humans are still here."

 

 

Michael considered her words for a moment, then started to cross the stream. "Anyway, I have to learn how to live here."

 

 

Eleuth nodded. "If you're new, there's a lot to learn, I guess."

 

 

They set the sacks down outside the door of the Crane Women's hut.

 

 

"Where's your mother?" Michael asked. Humans didn't live in Halftown; he knew that much.

 

 

"I don't know," Eleuth said. Her face was simple and composed. "Most of us have Sidhe mothers, and our fathers are missing - or in Euterpe. We never know who they are. So I suppose I'm unusual, second generation Breed. my father a Breed, my mother human."

 

 

He knocked on the door and Span opened it. She peered at Eleuth, Michael and then the sacks and said, "Fine." She closed the door again.

 

 

"Does that mean you're free today?"

 

 

He shook his head. "I have to run to Euterpe and back." He walked to his house.

 

 

"You built that yourself?" Eleuth asked, following.

 

 

"Sort of."

 

 

"Like a Sidhe warrior. Must build his own dwelling. but very clever, really, for a human."

 

 

Michael glanced at her; Eleuth's expression was still composed and simple. She wasn't ragging him. "Thanks for the help," he said. He felt very awkward.

 

 

She looked around the mound with an expression of awe mixed with distaste, then smiled at him and said good-by. As she forded the creek, Michael watched the way her legs moved. They were long, graceful. His face flushed. She was pretty in a way; no, not just pretty (perhaps not pretty at all) - but beautiful. But then, how did he know what passed for beauty in the Realm?

 

 

An attraction to a Breed, he was sure, could be perverse and would only complicate his life more.

 

 

"Man-child!" Nare came toward him, carrying two thick sticks about seven feet long. "Run to Euterpe. Hold this over your head going and in front of you returning." She gave him a stick. He hefted it and groaned inwardly.

 

 

"Then what?"

 

 

"When you are strong enough, you learn how to use the stick." With the other stick, she lightly tapped his own just outside one hand's grip. "Or I break all your fingers. Now go."

 

 

Michael began to run. He crossed the stream without slipping and congratulated himself on his newfound coordination. Leaving wet shoeprints, he took the first hundred yards in stride, though the stick made his arms ache. Within a half mile he was still going strong. It was in the third quarter of the first mile that he was sure the stick would drag him down, and that once on the ground, he would die.

 

 

He tried to remember how to breathe when running: steadily, without letting his legs pound the air from his lungs.

 

 

His mouth was dry and his lungs began to feel as though they'd been sprayed with acid. His arms were twin upright pillars of pain, and his knees wobbled; still, he was determined to keep going. He'd show them he was good for something. He had had enough humiliation -

 

 

His toe caught a rock and he sprawled headlong in the dirt. The stick bounced end-to-end and rolled ahead of him. He picked dirt from between his teeth and felt his bruised lips and nose, trying to control his agonized gulping for air.

 

 

A half-hour later, he stood with his hands on his knees before the outskirts of Euterpe, his face beet red and his legs liquid. He dropped the stick on the ground beside him. He wasn't sure he would ever be able to lift it again. "Christ," he said. "I'm nothing but a wimp. He might as well have killed me."

 

 

It took him a couple of minutes to become aware of the small crowd standing nearby, just outside one of Euterpe's small pedestrian gates. They watched him curiously, saying nothing at first. He tried to stand upright and winced. The auburn-haired woman he had last seen at the hotel dinner stepped forward. "What are you doing back?" she asked, voice thick with anger. "Breeds not good enough for you?"

 

 

He regarded her from under his brows, breath ragged.

 

 

"They're getting me in shape," he said. He didn't want anybody to be angry - why should humans be mad at him?

 

 

"Why do you need to be in better shape?" a man asked from the back of the group.

 

 

"I don't know," Michael said. He picked up the stick, his fingers barely agreeing to close on it, and turned around to start back.

 

 

"Michael!"

 

 

Savarin came through the gate. Michael leaned on his stick, grateful for a friendly tone and an excuse to rest a bit longer. His chest now felt as if it were filled with water. He coughed and wiped his forehead.

 

 

"You're in training?" Savarin asked. Michael nodded and swallowed. "Well, that can't hurt."

 

 

"Oh, yeah?"

 

 

"They are teaching you. how to fight, perhaps, how to fight Sidhe?"

 

 

He shook his head. "They're teaching me how to run away from Sidhe."

 

 

Savarin scowled. "When can you get back here? There are people I'd like you to meet."

 

 

"I don't know. They're going to have me run more errands for them. Maybe later."

 

 

"If you can, come to the schoolhouse - it's on the other side of the street from the Yard. In the middle of town. I teach languages, things like that, besides teaching newcomers. Come see me."

 

 

Michael agreed and pointed with the stick. "I have to get back now."

 

 

"Look at that!" a high-pitched masculine voice shouted from the crowd. "They give the bastard a fortune in wood!"

 

 

"Shut up!" Savarin cried, waving his arms and advancing on the crowd. "Go home, shut up, shut up!"

 

 

Michael tried to pick up his pace again, what little he had had in the first place. Halfway, the agony began to subside and the run became easier. He had heard of second wind but had never experienced it before. His body seemed to resign itself to the situation and make the best of things.

 

 

It was late morning when he came to the creek and crossed it, then clumped to where Spart was standing on the mound. Spart took his stick and called to the other Crane Women with a sharp whistle.

 

 

Coom emerged from the hut to inspect him. She palped his legs and arms and shook her head violently, tossing her dust-gray hair. "Usgal! Nalk," she said, pointing to the stream. "You stink."

 

 

"That's not fair," he said, frowning resentfully.

 

 

"Things won't be fair again until you've bathed," Spart said. "Then follow Coom away from here and you'll keep on working."

 

 

"But I'm exhausted."

 

 

"You didn't run without stopping," she said. In the hut, Nare cackled and withdrew her face from the window.

 

 

Michael dragged his feet to the stream and removed his clothes. He was down to his underpants before any notion of modesty occured to him. He glanced back at Spart, but she was on her haunches plaiting reeds into a mat. She paid him no attention. He kept his underpants on and dipped a foot gingerly into the water.

 

 

Of course, it was freezing. He closed his eyes. They would think him an idiot or a coward if he always hesitated. He stepped back and then ran forward, plunging in feet first. The shock was considerable; when he surfaced, he could hardly breath and his teeth chattered like expert telegraphy. Still, it was better to bear the hardship than put up with more ridicule.

 

 

As he rubbed the silty, mica-flecked water over his skin, he once again noticed the pungent herbal smell. Apparently that was the nature of water in the Realm. He crawled out of the creek - which was about four feet deep in the middle - and shook his arms and legs, scattering ribbons of water across the bank. Still damp, he put on his clothes, but held the jacket by its yoke and carried it to where Spart was plaiting her reeds. I

 

 

She turned her attention away from her work to look him up and down and shook her head pityingly. "Only a fool would dive into water so cold."

 

 

Michael nodded without argument. That was their game; he could go along with them. "Thanks," he said.

 

 

And so it went for the first five days.

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

 

The Crane Women ran Michael around the level grasslands, with the stick and without it, sometimes one or two of them pacing him and giving directions. They seemed tireless. When he was near collapse from exertion, they wouldn't even be breathing hard. After a while, Michael suspected Sidhe and Breeds just didn't get tired. He asked about that once, and Nare simply smiled.

 

 

He learned the Pact Lands within the vicinity of Euterpe and Halftown quickly. There wasn't all that much to learn - grasslands, the curve of the river, one fork and an oxbow beyond the fork.

 

 

He asked about the Blasted Plain, but Spart told him that part of his education would come later. He could see the haze beyond the perimeter of the Pact Lands, and occasionally make out black spires rising through orange-brown clouds, but his radius was never more than six miles from Halftown, and the Pact Lands, he surmised, extended at least ten miles on all sides.

 

 

Sometimes, his exercises seemed ridiculous, designed to humiliate him.

 

 

"Five times you have missed the mark," Nare said, standing over him. Her shadow bisected four concentric circles drawn in the dirt ten feet from where he squatted. He had been set to tossing pebbles, trying for the central circle. After an hour he had only hit the center three times.

 

 

"I've missed more often than that," he said.

 

 

"You miss my words, too," Nare said. "You fail to understand anything we've been showing you. Five tests." Michael tried to remember the times he had been tested in any meaningful way. "Not a good sign," she went on. "Don't you see the truth behind the tests? Must we explain in words? Words are so beloved to you!"

 

 

"They're clear, at least," Michael said. "What do you want me to know? I've done everything I can to cooperate-"

 

 

"Except use your head properly!" Nare grabbed his arm and hauled him to a standing position. "This is not a bullseye. These are not pebbles. You are not training, and this is no series of useless games."

 

 

"Funny," Michael said. He regretted saying it immediately; he had vowed that whatever the pressure, he would not behave like a smartass.

 

 

"You're a crack-voiced child, and worse, jan viros. What have you learned?"

 

 

"I think. I think you're trying to teach me how to survive by thinking a certain way. But I'm not a magician."

 

 

"You are not required to be one. How would we have you think?"

 

 

"With confidence."

 

 

"Not that alone. What else?"

 

 

"I don't know!"

 

 

"If we tried to turn you into a magician, we'd be even more doltish than you. You're not special. But Sidhedark is not like Earth. You must learn how the Realm is special, how it supports and nurtures us. You cannot be told. Words spoil the knowledge. So we must torment you, boy, to make you see. The Sidhe returned language to humans thousands of years ago, but they never explained how language can destroy. That was deliberate."

 

 

"I'm trying to cooperate," Michael said sullenly.

 

 

"You cooperate so you can show us you aren't a fool." She smiled, a hideous and revealing expression which didn't reassure him at all, and probably wasn't meant to. Her teeth were cat-sharp and her gums were black as tar.

 

 

"In betlim, little combat, warriors not kill. Best," Coom said. They circled each other with the sticks held before them in broad-spaced hands. "Lober, not hurt. Win. Strategy."

 

 

Michael nodded.

 

 

"One thing very bad," Coom said. "Rilu. Anger. Never let mad control! Mad is poison in betlim. In great combat, rilu is mord. Hear?"

 

 

He nodded again. Coom touched his stick with her own. "Disarm you now."

 

 

He gripped his stick tighter, but that only made his hands hurt more when, with a whirl and a flourish, she whacked his stick straight up in the air, parallel to the ground. He caught it as it fell, wincing at the pain in his wrists.

 

 

"Good," Coom said. "Now you hear why you learn. Hear that stick is wick; you are Sidhe given power of pais where you stand. I take wick and take land from you. Stop me - maybe stop me. Hear how I move. Take control of air. Of Realm."

 

 

Then she did an amazing thing. She leaped up, braced her feet against nothingness, and sprung at him with her stick. He retreated, but not before receiving another bone-rattling blow. She hung before him a moment and landed on her feet. "Good," she said. "Stronger."

 

 

She disarmed him again, this time whacking the stick out of his reach before it came down. He walked over to pick it up and turned to see Coom standing where he had been.

 

 

"Gave up ground," she accused, looking disgusted.

 

 

"You took away my stick."

 

 

"Didn't take away most important weapon." She threw down her stick and backed up a pace. "Come at with kima."

 

 

He didn't hesitate. She reached around with one spider hand as his stick came down on the spot where she had stood, grabbed hold and slammed it to the ground.

 

 

He could feel the bones in his back pop before he let go.

 

 

"Little defeats teach potential," Coom said. "Not to waste my time, you will train with this." Spart came from the hut carrying a headless mannequin with bush-branch arms. It held a smaller stick, tied to leafy "hands" with twine. Michael groaned inside, then resigned himself to the indignity.

 

 

"Take this off thirty paces and hammer it into the ground. Then fight with it," Spart said.

 

 

He did as he was told, clutching the cloth, straw and wood mannequin and using his stick to pound it in like a stake. He assumed a stance before the mannequin, imitating Coom and feeling foolish -

 

 

And it promptly swung up its stick and knocked his to the ground. The mannequin vibrated gleefully, twisted on its stake and became limp again.

 

 

When the hair on his neck had settled, Michael retrieved his stick and resumed his stance, a little farther back. They sparred for a bit, the mannequin having at least the two disadvantages of being staked to the ground and using a shorter, flimsier stick. Michael wasn't encouraged.

 

 

He had no illusions that the fight was fair. He got his lumps.

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

 

As the pre-dawn light filtered through the plaited reed door cover Spart had given him, Michael scrawled another poem in the dirt floor.

 

 

Night's a friendly sort

 

 

Oh yes likes to throw a

 

 

Fright now and then - when

 

 

The wind hums - but after

 

 

You're dead will gladly

 

 

Share a glass of moon.

 

 

Nothing more than exercise, he thought - not worth recording even if he had the means, which he did not - no pencils or writing implements of any sort but the stick, no paper but what was in his black book. And he hardly considered his work worthy of going in the book.

 

 

The Crane Women usually arose fifteen minutes before sunrise, which gave him a short time of being alone and at leisure - time more important than sleep. He used the time to read from the book or write in the dirt, or just to savor not having anything in particular to do,

 

 

Fie heard the door to their hut creak open. He took the book, zippered it into his jacket pocket and wrapped it in the folds before hiding it in the rafters overhead.

 

 

"Man-child! Jan wiros!"

 

 

He came out of the house and saw Coom approaching, with Nare two paces behind. They looked like hunters unsure of their prey - and he was their prey. The Crane Women were masters at unnerving him. He could never predict their moods, attitudes. He should have been a nervous wreck, but he found himself adapting.

 

 

"More run," Coom said. "To Euterpe and back. With kima."

 

 

He grabbed the stick without hesitation and ran. Behind, Nare called out, "This evening is Kaeli." She said it as if some special treat were involved. Michael hefted the stick before him and crossed the creek. He did not see the watery hand which rose up, grasped at his ankle and missed.

 

 

He could make it to the town without collapsing now. He took some pride in his improvement. For the first time in his life he felt the exultation of the body in sheer activity, the meshing of breath and legs, the matched, almost pleasant ache in all his muscles.

 

 

At first, he stayed away from the outskirts housing, not wanting to bring on another confrontation. But he was curious what Savarin was up to, what the teacher had meant the last time, that there were people he wanted Michael to meet. He decided to enter Euterpe and go to the schoolhouse - and the populace be damned. He had his stick and he felt a little cocky.

 

 

He was up to the main gate when he almost bumped into the teacher. They laughed and Michael put down his stick, breathing deeply and wiping sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve.

 

 

"I thought I might catch you during your morning constitutional," Savarin said. "And warn you. Best stay out of the town for the next couple of days. Alyons has been harassing us since your arrival. The townspeople are upset. They're liable to strike out at you without being aware of what they're doing."

 

 

"I haven't hurt them," Michael said.

 

 

"No, but you've brought trouble. Things here are marginal, at best. Alyons threatens to reduce our allotment if anything else happens to upset him." - "Is that why they shouted at me the last time?"

 

 

"Yes. I still have people for you to meet, but later. And I also wanted to tell you. something's planned for tonight - the Halftown Kaeli. Have they invited you?"

 

 

"Nare mentioned it before I left. I don't even know what it is."

 

 

"It's very important. Kaeli is when the Sidhe get together to tell stories, usually about the early times. I'd like you to listen closely and pass on what you hear. I've only heard one - and that from a distance. I was hiding in tall grass. Now, with the Breed guards so tense, I don't dare. Nobody is allowed near Halftown now - - -That's what makes me think something is afoot."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"Best not to ask for trouble yet. But a grazza, perhaps. A raid by Riverines and Umbrals. Keep an eye out, and be careful."

 

 

"You want me to come back and tell you about the Kaeli?"

 

 

"Of course," Savarin said, his eyes brightening. "But a couple of days from now, when things are more settled." He looked around nervously. A few faces peered from nearby windows, and two men loitering by the gate cast glances at them. "Until then," the teacher said, gripping Michael's hand and releasing it with a wave as he made for a different gate. Michael picked up the stick, held it over his head, and began the return leg of his run.

 

 

His body took over almost immediately and he forgot Savarin, forgot the Kaeli, forgot almost everything but the sensation of distance covered.

 

 

The Breeds of Halftown marched in double file over the grassland, dressed in dark brown and gray cloaks, conversing casually in Cascar and calling to those farther forward or back in the lines. The air was still and cool; the sun touched distant hills and the ribbons of evening cascaded slowly to the hazy horizon, revealing the stars with their tiny circling motions.

 

 

Behind the lines marched the Crane Women. Michael walked abreast of Spart, wearing his jacket. (The book rested in its nook in the tiny house, as secure as he could make it.) He had washed his clothes in the creek earlier, as a concession to formality; they were still slightly damp even after drying near a fire Nare had kindled. Holes revealed his knees and the shoulder of the jacket had separated at the seam.

 

 

The Crane Women wore short black coats that emphasized the length of their legs and the shortness of their torsos. They walked with arms folded, jutting elbows making them look more then ever like birds. They seemed to carry more of an ancient reserve with regard to Kaeli than the other Breeds, and didn't talk.

 

 

Those assigned to choose the site had gone on ahead during the late afternoon. Now a bonfire blazed a few hundred feet down the path, squares of peat and dried brush-wood providing the fuel. Circling the bonfire was a perimeter of poles, each topped by a leafy green branch. When the Breeds had gathered within the circle, Lirg came forward and paced around the fire. Michael sat beside the Crane Women, crossing his legs on the grass stubble and dirt.

 

 

Lirg spoke in Cascar for a few minutes. Michael understood little of what was said; he had difficulty even picking out the meanings of individual words in the long discourse. There seemed to be many words in Cascar with the same or subtly shaded meanings, and the syntax varied as well.

 

 

Spart leaned forward from behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. "You haven't learned the tongue, have you?" she asked.

 

 

"I've only been here a couple of weeks," Michael said defensively. Nare blew out her breath. The Crane Women looked at each other, then Spart sidled forward and placed both her hands around Michael's head.

 

 

"Tonight only," she said, "You have a boon. It won't last." She removed her hands and Michael shook a buzzing out of his head. When the dizziness passed, he listened to Lirg. The Breed was still speaking Cascar but the words were limpid; Michael could understand all of them.

 

 

"Tonight," Lirg said, "We invoke the sadness of the time when we were grand, when the Sidhe marched between the stars as easily as I circle this fire." He passed around to the other side, his words piercing the crackle of the flames. "Each will share the tale, the part of his ancestor, and as conclusion, I will tell of Queen Elme and her choice."

 

 

First to pick up the thread was a tall brown-haired Breed who announced himself as Manann of the line of Till. As Manann spoke, Michael was enchanted by the way the language adapted to poetry - half-singing, half-speaking, until he could no longer tell the difference.

 

 

The Earth, home to us all, has spun A thousand polar dances since The war called Westering, won First by men, who decreed that none

 

 

Of the race called Sidhe should possess Souls beyond the border of Death. Unwitting, the Mage who made us less, Who imposed this inward emptiness,

 

 

Gave to the Sidhe life without end.

 

 

And then time came for the wheel to turn

 

 

Again. The Sidhe thus damned did send To defeat the vain and gloating men

 

 

Who had in cruel and thoughtless rage Robbed us of life beyond matter. The Sidhe bid the responsible Mage To work their own vengeance and engage

 

 

His power to transform men to beasts. Triumphant Sidhe in sweet passioned Irony watched mankind decreased. Yet in the shape of the small, the least

 

 

Of claw-foot, scruff-fur animals, None who had once been men could tell How to once more open the portals Of shadowy death; how immortals

 

 

Could reclaim the boon of a soul.

 

 

Holder of the Wick of Battle, Ysra Faer of the line of Till Confined men-beasts and all allies - Also made beast, and beast-form still - On Earth, walled-in like cattle.

 

 

"How many races were there?" Michael whispered to Spart, uncertain whether he was speaking Cascar or English. She turned her dark eyes on him and answered, "More than four. we do not know for sure, now. Much has been forgotten. Many of the animals of Earth were once exalted beings, kin of the Sidhe and humans of old."

 

 

Manann sat and another stood, a young woman with beefy arms and a face squatter than usual. "I am Esther of the line of Dravi. I take the challenge of the end-rhymed song, but I correct Manann of Till." Laughter rang through the circle. "He forgets my line's honored form, and I follow that now."

 

 

All tribes, brothers and sisters hand in hand, In glory Sidhe set out to march the stars. Through this spacing, histories multiplied As numberless as the shore's sea-ground sand. Yet in swifting time, all progress died.

 

 

All glorious rise swings back to fall, sure As the new-born Sidhe on time's cruel road Came to their doom by chance or anger's blade. Exaltation turned to slow decay, the pure And good demeaned, ideals not lived but played.

 

 

Lacking worthy goals or adversary, Star-marcher Faer in easeful ways declined. None took on the hard discipline of the Sidhe. Mere sibling strifes trained the warrior wary; Tribes found bitter freedom in their jealously.

 

 

From the line of Dravi, Wickmaster Sum Foresaw the impending doom; in darkness Deeper than ever known, against the races Of the Great Distance he warred, to come To glory, to draw in battle traces

 

 

Of pride and courage lost since war with Man. The Great Distance breeds minds unlike our own, With unfamiliar thoughts of foreign Shape. Of this war called Quandary none can Recall the tale, only the outcome, when, worn

 

 

From victory more costly than defeat, Destroying what sloth, misrule and ease Had not already, the wasted Sidhe Swung Earthward the ravaged Faerie fleet. Among their dead: Wickmaster Sum, of Dravi.

 

 

Having long since beaten humanity, The last drops from the river of Sidhe Thought Earth to be their choicest Harbor, refuge for a well-earned rest.

 

 

Esther of the line of Dravi took her seat, and Fared of the line of Wis continued.

 

 

By way of right succession, Krake Of the line of noble Wis did take The Wick. As Wickmaster of Sidhe, Krake brought us home from the endless sea

 

 

Of dark-storied, sinister space. Yet on Earth, no peace, for the race

 

 

Of resourceful, unquenchable Man Had crawled, across an age's span

 

 

Up from beast by nature's road Of Change and Pain, with Death's sharp goad. While Sidhe declined in sibling strife, Man struggled back to conscious life.

 

 

Though new-born Man was then quite young, Krake knew on human history hung The fate of his weary, worn Sidhe, Too weak for one more victory.

 

 

Nizandsa, of Serket's family, Now extinct, made this plea: "We must find the one called Mage, Imprisoned as serpent this long age.

 

 

"He has the knowledge to restore our Souls, whose lack has caused a dour Decline. Perhaps a trade of liberty Can return to us the essence of Sidhe!"

 

 

But Krake, we are told, did not agree. "In Man old or new I cannot see Any answer for our many troubles. With human help, a problem doubles!

 

 

"Power to men, releasing the Mage,

 

 

Can only resurrect the rage

 

 

Felt in their dread animal fall.

 

 

No power to Man! That would end us all."

 

 

Nizandsa's faithful lost this debate. Krake, unhappy still, filled with hate, Ordered his coursers to halt all Dissent. In Great Combat, the pall

 

 

Of disgrace again gloomed over us. Nizandsa's murder ended all trust Between the branches of the Sidhe, The third curse of a trinity.

 

 

Lirg stood now and walked around the fire again. "The new breed of men," he began, voice low and almost devoid of song, "had regained their former shape, but not their past glory. They could not keep what had made the men of old the grand enemies of the Sidhe. And the Sidhe, themselves, had long since lost what made them great." He came to the side of the fire where Michael sat between the Crane Women, and looked acrosss the Pact Lands over their heads. "I tell the story now of the family to which we all belong, the line of the mage Tonn's Bream-daughter, Elme.

 

 

Assuming the wick from father Tonn, Queen Elme defied the scorners of Man, brought Sidhe to new-found Harmony, and against the will of God-like sire, loved and married -

 

 

A distant keening sound carried over the plain, interrupting Lirg and causing the Breeds to stir for the first time in half an hour. Nare, Spart and Coom were on their feet and out of the circle before Michael could blink twice.

 

 

Clouds moved quickly across the sky. The keening faded, grew louder, and faded again as if carried on uncertain breezes. From farther away still came the sound of horns unlike any Michael had ever heard; homs that seemed to laugh and cry at once.

 

 

As one, the crowd scooped up dirt and put down the bonfire. Michael stood aside, not knowing where he fit in, deciding it was best to keep out of the way.

 

 

With the bonfire reduced to embers and smoke, seeing was difficult. A drop of rain struck his forehead, then another. Wind tugged at his jacket - or he thought it was the wind. A green veil of luminosity flashed behind the hills.

 

 

"Man-child! This way!" Spart grabbed his arm and pulled him after. "Kaeli is over for tonight. Adonna sends its hosts!"

 

 

The first burst of rain soaked Michael instantly. He followed the indistinct form of a Crane Woman across the fresh mud and bent, pummeled grass. Puddles were forming everywhere. The wind gusted and pushed him this way and that.

 

 

"Where are we going?" Michael asked. The figure didn't answer, but kept running ahead, gesturing. He fell into a hole up to his knees in water, tried to balance and slid up to his thighs. Wiping his eyes, he splashed out of the hole and yelled, "Hey! Wait up!"

 

 

The figure paused for him. It gestured again as he clambered after. Running was difficult; the rain was so thick he had to keep his hand before his mouth to keep from breathing water. Still, the figure's pace was relentless.

 

 

Sheet-lightning flared again, throwing the landscape into gray brilliance. Michael stopped. He heard something roaring very close - the river, he thought, yet the figure ahead gestured again: Follow. "Where are we?" he cried out. No answer came. He stepped forward tentatively and lost his footing. He yelled in surprise and his mouth instantly filled with rain. Choking, he skidded on scrambling feet and butt down a muddy bank, over an edge and into rain-filled space.

 

 

It took him a moment to realize he had passed from rain into flowing water. He kicked and thrashed about, trying to find the shore and grab hold of something, but currents wrapped around his feet and pulled him under. Pressed between thick powerful walls of water, he opened his eyes and felt the darkness of the night pass into blacker insensibility.

 

 

His lungs were about to burst when he was propelled from the water like a salmon clawed by a bear. He hit the mud facedown and turned his head just enough to take a breath, inhaling both air and mud tossed up by the weakening rain.

 

 

He rubbed his eyes clear. The lightning was continuous, silent and green. In the strobing glare he saw the rushing water a few feet away. Stretching from the water, trying to grasp his legs and retrieve him, were four transparent hands. He jack-knifed his legs and dug his fingers into the mud to pull himself farther up the bank.

 

 

One shoulder and an arm struck a cold, solid mass - a boulder, Michael thought. He wrapped his arms around it. and the boulder shifted. Looking up, blinking at the remaining drops of rain, he saw a man-shaped piece of night towering over him. Its outline changed and he felt steely, bone-chilling hands lift him from the bank. He tried to scream for help but a hard, cold palm clamped over his mouth, numbing his lips and jamming his tongue against his teeth.

 

 

His head was immediately wrapped in a thick cloak.

 

 

Then, feeling him roughly through the icy fabric, the shape hesitated. It pulled Michael's head into the open and he stared into a face as black as the bottom of the sea, with two star like points for eyes. Harsh breath like a freezer's charge of air prickled his nose.

 

 

"Antros! Wiros antros!"

 

 

With a cry of rage, the frigid shadow flung him aside. He rolled through space, rotating in a world of lightning and darkness, drops of water on his lips and mud in his eyes. The impact seemed to come after the mud, but everything was confused.

 

 

Michael lay on his back, certain that every bone in his body was broken. Far away, and growing fainter, the keening wavered with the wind until both were gone, and silence covered the wet, tormented land.

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

Caught in a beam of sunlight, a drop of water hung from the tip of a blade of grass, more beautiful than any diamond. Round, filled with shimmering life, the drop grew until its freedom was assured. It fell in a quivering sphere and broke over his forehead, cool and gently insistent.

 

 

Michael saw a glowing mist, golden above and blue to either side, surrounding the new droplet on the grass blade. He blinked and the mist resolved into sun half-hidden by clouds. Tall green grass rose on all sides. For a moment, he felt no need to do anything but stare. Indeed, it seemed that all his life he had been only a pair of eyes.

 

 

But soon he remembered his hands and they twitched. There was some reason he was reluctant to remember his body, and when he moved his legs the reason became clear: pain. His torso, as he lifted his head and looked down on it, was surprisingly clean. Rain had rinsed the mud from his jacket. He tried to sit up, then gritted his teeth and fell back.

 

 

Limb by limb, he took inventory until he was sure nothing was broken. Pulling back his jacket and shirt, he found a mass of welts on his side. His arms felt bruised beneath the sleeves, too - especially under his armpits, where he had been hoisted by the shadow. His teeth felt as if they were on fire. He vaguely remembered being slapped from the river, and the hands rising from the water to pull him back. the shadow with eyes like stars.

 

 

He stood, legs wobbly and vision spinning. The river was down an embankment and about fifty yards away. He must have walked the distance; there was no sign in the unbent grass that the water had flowed so high as to carry him here. Or - the shadow had flung him clear.

 

 

Had he encountered another kind of Sidhe - an Umbral?

 

 

Shading his eyes against the cloudy glare, he looked from his elevated advantage across the plain. He stood on an island of grass in the yellow-green sea of mire. For as far as he could see there was nothing but the storm-soaked plain and the distant hills. No sign of Euterpe or Halftown; no sign of anyone.

 

 

It seemed he was the only living thing besides the grass. Black curls of flood water still wandered from the low hills to the river. The river itself had returned to its channel, once more slow and sluggish.

 

 

Michael sat. River-borne, he must have come from upstream, and that was where he would return when he was strong enough.

 

 

His back prickled as if somebody watched. He turned stiffly to look in the opposite direction. Less than a hundred yards beyond the grassy knoll, the Pact Lands came to an end. He had almost been washed onto the Blasted Plain.

 

 

The air beyond the border was thick and gray-orange. The river waters were a muddy gray-blue right up to the demarcation, then flowed turgid yellow-green and sickly purple, like PUS from a long-infected wound.

 

 

The Blasted Plain itself was an expanse of black, gray and brown boulders spread across glistening, powdery umber sand. Through the murky air, he could see tall curling spires of rock like broken strands of glue left over from a badly managed patch job. The place was more than the sum of its parts; it was more living than dead, but nothing alive was visible. It was malevolent, made of things long buried, hard emotions long suppressed, mistakes covered over.

 

 

Death, despair, foulness and horror.

 

 

Michael shuddered and the shudder turned into shivers of delayed shock. He descended the knoll as quickly as his unstable legs allowed and began his march over the grassland, upriver to Euterpe and Halftown - or so he hoped - and away from the desolation of a war he could hardly imagine.

 

 

After a few minutes, he began to draw on reserves he had built up during the past weeks of training. He walked for the hour or so remaining until dark, then slept fitfully under the open night sky, and resumed at dawn. He would not die. He would not starve.

 

 

He had survived; and in that simple fact, Michael found a dismaying, pleasurable pride.

 

 

Thick swaths of fog shouldered in over the plain, driven before the sun's warmth. Michael followed the sandy river bank, crossed the shallow ox-bow where the river rippled and glittered over rocks and pebbles, and climbed another hill to get his bearings.

 

 

The roofs of Halftown were about two miles away. He broke into a run along a trail of hard, clayey sand.

 

 

In Halftown, things seemed to be carrying on as usual. There was rain and wind damage to several of the buildings, and Lirg's market courtyard had nearly been flattened, but the Breeds went about their business as if the night before had been commonplace.

 

 

The hut of the Crane Women was unscathed. Nare wove reeds into thick sitting mats, squatting between two piles of animal bones, holding a long reed in her teeth and plaiting steadily. Coom was nowhere to be seen. Spart, he discovered, was walking behind him as he approached the mound. Michael grinned at her over his shoulder.

 

 

"Worried about me?" he asked. Spart's eyes widened and she bared her black gums.

 

 

"It wasn't you they were after, nor any human," she said.

 

 

"I got that impression," Michael said. He stopped before his house and lifted one foot to scrape mud from his shoe. "What happened?"

 

 

"There was a raid on the Breeds," Spart said. She walked toward the door of the hut with jaw working as if chewing cud. She hardly seemed glad to see him.

 

 

"I took care of myself," he said.

 

 

"You were very, very lucky." She turned at the doorway. "You escaped Umbrals and Riverines. They're branches of the Sidhe who worship Adonna most fervently. Adonna needs Sidhe blood to do its work, but it cannot touch the pure Sidhe. So it comes for us. We're adequate for its needs, and few care if a Breed is lost. You were lucky, man-child, not skilled."

 

 

Michael looked between the two Crane Women, his face reddening. "I survived," he said. "God dammit, I survived! I'm not just some piece of garbage everybody kicks around! I have my rights and I. I-" But he was speechless. Spart shrugged and entered the hut. Nare cocked a glance at him, smiling around the reed in her teeth. She removed the reed and spat into the dirt.

 

 

"You survived, boy," she said. "But you did not help anybody else. Three Breeds were taken last night, including Lirg of the line of Wis."

 

 

"What will happen to them?"

 

 

"Adonna has its uses for them. We said that, boy. You don't listen."

 

 

Michael suddenly felt exhausted and discouraged. He had never lived in a place so cruel and unpredictable. The thought of continuing to struggle seemed to pull wool around his brain. He sat before his hut and held his chin in his hands. "What about Eleuth?" he asked a few moments later.

 

 

"She was not taken," Nare said. "She is only one-quarter Sidhe. Her uses would be limited."

 

 

"Do they always attack on a night of Kaeli?"

 

 

"Not always. Often enough."

 

 

"So why so you still hold them out in the open?"

 

 

"We are still of the Sidhe," Nare said. "We must keep the customs, even when it is dangerous."

 

 

Michael pondered that for a time, and decided it didn't really make sense. But he didn't want to pursue that line of questioning. "I'm going to run now," he said. Nare didn't react. He wanted to get into Euterpe and talk with Savarin, find out what happened to the humans. At least with Savarin, he could ask questions and not be ridiculed.

 

 

He started off at a gentle lope, hoping to ease the exhaustion and funk from his body. As he approached Halftown again, he slowed. Glancing behind to see if he was watched, he took the path leading through the village.

 

 

Eleuth swept debris from the courtyard as Michael approached. She glanced at him without slowing her broom.

 

 

"I heard," Michael said. "I'm sorry."

 

 

"He serves the god now," Eleuth said. Sad, her voice was even more beautiful.

 

 

"Are you going to work the market alone?"

 

 

"I'll try."

 

 

He opened his mouth, but decided he really had nothing to say. He bent down to pick up a piece of timber.

 

 

"Put it in the pile," she said, gesturing with the broom end to a neat stack of ruined boards.

 

 

"If I can help."

 

 

She regarded him with a calm, still expression, though her cheeks were wet. He had never seen a Sidhe or a Breed cry before. He filed the information away; perhaps it was because she was three-quarters human.

 

 

"I mean, anything I can do," he said awkwardly.

 

 

She shook her head and continued sweeping. As he turned to walk away, she said, "Michael."

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"I will take my rest later this day. May we visit then? I'll be better."

 

 

"Sure. I'll be back by my place at-"

 

 

"No. Away from the Crane Women."

 

 

That suited him. "I'll meet you here."

 

 

Though every muscle ached, it was the sort of pain he felt might be driven away by exercise. Once outside Halftown and on the road, he picked up his jogging pace, slowly increasing speed as ache gave way to exertion.