An Armory of Swords

Stealth and the Lady

Sage Walker

The boy wore a traveler’s cloak and carried a staff. In the dark tent, Tegan held up a small shuttered lantern and looked closely at his face.

He carried the stone. She read the signs of it in the faint trace of gray under his pale skin, in the subtle dysphoria that showed in the fine tremor of his hands.

The boy blinked at the riches in the tent, a chest of carved oak gleaming with the shine brought by pots of beeswax and hours of labor, satins and furs piled on the cot where Tegan would sleep. And he would not lift his eyes to her, Tegan the Courtesan, who held the Duke Osyr in the palm of her hand, and the duchy as well, in all but name.

“You have brought me something,” Tegan said.

“Uh. Uh…” He gripped his staff with white-knuckled fingers. It seemed to be the only thing that kept him from falling to his knees before her.

“You’ve done well. You could hand it to me, I think.”

He fumbled inside the folds of his cloak and produced a grubby leather pouch tied with a thong.

“Thank you.” Tegan took the pouch in her cupped palm. She smiled, feeling the nascent power of it even through the leather, and teased the lacings apart to look inside. The pouch held a small, heavy object, a misshapen black lump, black as the rotted fuels of the Old World, at its heart a sparkling bit of greenish glass. The wizard Greenapple had not lied to her. This was a demonsoul.

The thing throbbed in her hand. She must inform the demon who it was that held her without calling the demon forth. Tegan was no wizard. All she could do was to say what Greenapple had told her to say, and hope.

Tegan held the stone close to her lips. Would that she had years to learn a wizard’s art before she held a demon in her hand, but there was no time! Would that the boy were not at risk, but she did not have the knowledge to shield him if the demon appeared.

“Ninidh,” she whispered. “I am Tegan, who holds your soul in my hand. Know this, Ninidh, but do not wake.”

A tiny warmth escaped the stone. Tegan waited for possession, for the unleashing of a demon’s powers. She felt a slight shift in the weight of the world, as if a power had turned in its sleep, the demon responding to her name.

Then, thank Ardneh, the stone was only a stone, inert in her palm.

Her fear disappeared in fierce joy. She held a demonsoul in her hand! This stone held Ninidh, who was ever enamoured of gems.

Tegan wrapped the stone in gold foil to mask its power, and dropped it in a little pocket stitched into her bodice.

The boy tried not to watch, but he did; he stared at her hand touching the warm creamy skin between her breasts. Tegan could see dreams rise in his eyes, dreams that he had never dreamed before. She hoped that someday he’d find a woman to make them true.

“You’ll feel better in just a little while. Here.” Tegan opened the oak chest and picked up a moneybelt, weighty with gold.

“Put this on. It’s for your master.”

The boy held the moneybelt in his hands, all of Tegan’s wealth, though she would risk much to not to have that fact known.

“Do it now. This much gold might tempt the loyalty even of my servants.”

Obedient, he started to lift his robe, then stopped.

“I won’t look,” Tegan said.

He got the straps tied round his waist, but he stood swaying on his feet, exhausted and dazed, sickened by his long journey and the restless miasma of the stone.

“Your master will give you a share of it when you’re safely home. He’s promised me that.” She picked up a small purse, coppers and silver, and put it into his hand. “This is for you. I would have you comfortable on your journey.” He looked like he was going to faint. Tegan took the boy’s arm and led him out of the tent.

“Give him mulled wine,” she said to the guard. “And find a cot where he can rest. When he’s strong enough, he’ll leave.”

Tegan hurried through the maze of tents. She saw something move in the shadows, one of the guards, perhaps. No matter. She entered the tent where Osyr and his advisors had gathered for the evening meal.

Osyr and his coterie sipped porter and cracked walnuts. They plotted tomorrow’s battles while they digested tonight’s cold dinner. No cookfires had been lighted, lest an Idris scout see them.

“Tegan!” Osyr said. “Join us!”

She bowed to him and edged her way past the men crowded along the trestle table.

Osyr sat slump-shouldered, his colors of bronze and black yellowing his sallow skin. He held an opal in his fingers, an Idris opal, gleaming like a pearl but full of hidden colors. They were beautiful stones, Idris opals, filled with mystery. Osyr owned one, and craved them all.

The air around Osyr was thick with tension. He had planned, interminably, the conquest of Idris, but the day had never been right, the weather, the omens. Only the news that the Idris Duke would leave his stronghold had brought him out to battle. Tegan smoothed her expression into a mask of tender concern and sat at her place on Osyr’s left.

Osyr’s right side was flanked, as always, by Seagus, his weaponsmaster, red of beard and slow to anger. Seagus, who drilled Tegan in swordplay and kept her strength up and her reflexes tuned to a fine pitch. Seagus, whose bed she shared at times, for his guilty pleasure and her own sanity, lest she kill Osyr too soon.

“Beautiful, is it not?” Osyr held the gem between his thumb and forefinger, displaying it to his advisors. “Such power is wasted on Idris.”

A border skirmish had cost Osyr’s father his life, struck down by the man who held Idris now. The old duke had left the boy Osyr alive to rule his father’s duchy, thinking it of little value to anyone. Osyr still smarted at his charity. In his way of thinking, death would almost have been a better outcome, at least a more honorable one.

“Idris will be conquered.” Old Blacknail spoke in prophetic, wizardly tones.

“You’re sure the duke will journey out tomorrow?” Osyr asked.

“Idris is taking a shipment of opals to Wellfleet,” Blacknail said. His thumbnail was not really black, nor was his real name Blacknail. His wore a black robe, always, and it was embroidered with white symbols that were too often stained with splattered potions. “Idris is going himself, to make sure these gems reach the proper ship. He will be disguised as a pilgrim to the White Temple, and lightly guarded, only a few strong men with him. But he has arranged that the hills along his route will be thick with armed men.”

“We can cut through them. Then the duke falls.” Osyr leaned forward and clasped his hands together as if to squeeze a throat. “Idris is ours!”

Dorn, the beastmaster, seemed as relaxed as if he sat in the hall at Osyr. “This much is he hated,” Dorn said. “Not for years has the Lord Idris”-the ferretsnake draped around Dorn’s shoulders snarled at the name and showed a mouthful of needle teeth-“shown his face beyond the boundaries of his lands. Even the beasts find him vile.” Osyr’s beastmaster stroked at the ferretsnake’s soft white fur to soothe it.

“We’ll send out our knights in small groups to drive the Idris soldiers to the road,” Seagus said. “Then we take them.”

“We are agreed,” the Duke Osyr said, and it was the royal we he used, a voice of authority.

“Ay,” his advisors said, for once in unison. The formal response boomed out and the shadows in the low tent seemed suddenly ghosted with battles and glories past. Tegan felt the stirrings of battle lust in herself, a foolish thing for any woman to feel.

“I still say we should take the castle,” Seagus said.

“Ah, but with the mine in our hands, then the money, the lifeblood of Idris dries up. We have no need of that drafty castle, that heap of stone. It will empty itself in a year. Is that not so, my wisdom?” Osyr’s fingers sought for Tegan’s wrist. He stroked it in a way that he thought was sensual, his cold, sweaty fingertips tracing damp lines across her skin.

“Just so, my Lord,” Tegan murmured. Osyr would be aroused tonight. He would want to escape his fears and his greedy anticipation of the treasures he might gain, and hide from them in the deep heedlessness of coupling. She would tire him if she could, accept his embraces with grace. She cautioned herself, as always, not to let her distaste show to him, ever. Never, never in these seven years, had she ever let him think he gave her less than joy.

“The castle holds the high pass that leads to the mine. From the castle, the duke’s men can come at the mine again and again. I still think at least a sortie against it-”

“No.” Osyr stopped Seagus with a sharp word. “We kill Idris. He has no heir, no one to step into his place, and his men will have some confusion about that. We announce that the lands are now held by Osyr, and we offer better pay than Idris gave. The soldiers will come to us. I have said all I have to say on this, Seagus.”

Osyr stood, and perforce the others did, from courtesy.

“Ready the troops, gentlemen. We ride at dawn. Come, Tegan.”

Duke Osyr led his courtesan out into the night.

The camp was restless with the energy of men thinking of battle and trying to rest. The riding-beasts stamped in their corral. Tegan pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair and shivered. It seemed to her that the noise and the energy of the camp would send an alarm that would carry all the way to Idris.

And if it did? No matter. Osyr was committed now, win or lose.

Osyr fiddled with the ties on the flap of his tent.

“Seagus is right about the castle.”

A woman spoke in a low voice, nearby and unexpected. Osyr jumped and his hand fumbled for the dagger at his belt.

She stepped out of the shadows, a shadowed figure, brown skinned and clad in gray leather, and with a bow slung across her back. “But you don’t have enough men to breach its gates. Put your knife away, Osyr. You sent for me.”

Tegan pulled the folds of her hood across her face. She knew this woman. Noya’s voice, her easy walk, had not changed, but she spoke with authority now, with presence. Oh, Noya! Envy fought with anger and Tegan pushed them both aside. If Noya would send the Gray Archers to help Osyr, then all would be well.

“You come late,” Osyr said. He turned back to the tent and got the door unfastened. He motioned Noya inside, but she shook her head.

“You asked for our help. A change in the rule of Idris means nothing to us, as long as the mine is not closed. You don’t plan to seal it, I think.”

“No,” Osyr said.

“We won’t join you,” Noya said. Her narrowed eyes swept over Tegan.

Then she was gone.

Tegan followed Osyr into his tent.

“You’re pale,” Osyr said.

“It must be the salt meat we had for dinner. I didn’t know you had sent for the Gray Archers,” Tegan said.

“I hoped to hire them as allies,” Osyr said. “She didn’t even stay long enough to see what I would have offered in pay.”

Coins could not buy the services of these women. Osyr would never understand. Tegan turned away from Osyr lest he see the grief in her face. Almost she would have put aside her pride and sought out Noya, but no one would find the archer unless she chose to be found.

“Come to bed, my Lord,” Tegan said.

She accepted Osyr’s nervous caresses. After their coupling, she lay next to him and stroked his thinning, colorless hair. His evil was only the weakness of greed. Almost, she pitied him.

He might die tomorrow. She might die. She wondered if Noya would watch the battle, if her archers would scout it to see who fell, who triumphed. Did Idane still live? Was Noya now in command?

Stop it, Tegan told herself. Don’t think about her, or wonder about the health of the Lady Idane.

The demonsoul lay safe in the bodice of the gown that she had tossed, as if carelessly, beside the cot. It held the power to call Ninidh from her exile. If Ninidh could be bound to the mine, then the cursed stones would stay in their poisoned earth, for no miner, however crazed, would dare a demon’s wrath.

The stone would call Ninidh, but would she stay confined?

Greenapple had hedged when she asked him. Ninidh was a particularly virulent demon, he’d said. Any one of the Twelve Swords could command a demon. A child of the Emperor had power over demons. A mortal? Well, given enough protective magic-

Tegan was no Emperor’s child, and she had no Sword. But she would risk her life on the hope that Ninidh loved gems beyond all else, and would stay near them.

Hopes, Tegan had those, even though the risks were great. She hoped that the Idris guard she had bribed had told the right stories to the children in the mine. If he had, then Ardneh willing, they would flee when the time came. The crofters had made shelters for them, places in stables and haystacks.

“When you see the lady in red, run! Run away, scatter, run for your very lives!”

If the guard had not betrayed her, then the children had been taught she was a witch. That fear might break through the fear they had of their guards.

Terror sometimes worked where love could not. The wizard’s messenger boy had been so terrified. I have never seen a more frightened face, Tegan thought. Well, once. But that was so long ago.

There had been a time, not long ago as this tired and tattered world knows time, when dawn’s cool air sighed clean mysteries across a young girl’s shoulders, when every spiderweb was jeweled with dew.

Just so, the oak tree, the little clearing. It was walled with wildrose and crowded with summer’s blackberries, ripe as garnets. The mist fleeing the sun hid a dancing faun, a faun in spotted goatskin breeches grown of his own hide. The distant sound was his syrinx, the song of an innocent goatboy piping out his lewd joy at the first morning he had ever known, for a faun wakes with no memory, and has no guilt.

Or so Meraud said, who was as wise a woman as lived in Small Aldwyn. Meraud told stories of princesses in high towers all dressed in silk and jewels, of kingdoms lost with the loss of a bauble, or duchies gained with a kiss. Perhaps, behind the screen of leaves, a prince waited, or a young god as beautiful as polished marble who had searched all over this ancient land for an innocent girl to help renew the world.

But a bird stopped singing. It flew from the branch and out of the mist, a plain brown bird, and the blackberry Tegan reached for was guarded by a thorn that poked her in the fat of her thumb. The blackberry was not ripe, the mist and the light had lied to her.

She remembered, years later, the prick of the thorn, the taste of the sour berry she threw away. She remembered that on that morning of mornings she had been cold, her feet were wet, and the light had lied. How else to explain what she had seen that morning?

Beside Tegan in the tent, Osyr snored gently. He would sleep until dawn, sleep restless if she left him. Tegan slipped away from him and went to her tent. She needed rest, not memories, memories that Noya had stirred up, memories from a time that Tegan had pushed into the back of her mind. Damn Noya, anyway. Tegan thumped at her pillow and remembered a distant time, a scent of crushed, tender leaves.

In that long-ago clearing, a man crashed backward through the roses, landed on his shoulders, rolled to his feet and turned to face his pursuer.

By then, Tegan was in the absolute center of the blackberry patch, crouched in the smallest heap she could make of herself.

The man held a sword and carried a shield. The sword’s point made tiny circles in the air.

Tegan peered out from between blackberry branches. The swordsman concentrated his attention on the wildrose and the pathway he’d just torn through it.

“Give over, Lennor. You didn’t kill the old man; you won’t kill me. Go home.”

It was a woman’s voice, highpitched and hard-breathing, a woman hidden from Tegan by blackberries and wildrose.

“Duke Osyr is an evil man, but his son is weak, and that’s worse. It is not time for the old man to die. The Red Temple would have paid you for his death in the coin of sorrow, silver bits and pennies garnered from restless husbands and from wives dreaming of wealth.”

The man advanced toward the voice, struck at the wildrose, retreated.

“You tire? Give over, then. Would you die to steal from gamblers like your father, who came to the tables hoping to regain the losses of a bad season, a failed crop? Go home. Your father has a pair of fine colts this year, and you are a trainer of riding-beasts by nature, not a mercenary.”

The boy-a boy, not a man, and thin except for his hands and forearms, he would be good with riding-beasts, yes. His red livery did not fit him. He shook his head, staring at an empty wall of wildrose. Wild-eyed, his eyes squinted at a dull red glare as if a furnace of Hell blazed in the shadows. His hair fell across his face and Tegan winced, for he was helpless at that moment, blinded. He tossed his forelock aside and blinked away sweat or tears. The circles his sword made in the air were from fatigue, not skill.

He tensed, showing his intent before he moved, and raised his sword. He brought it down with all his strength.

It flew from his hand and spun through the air at the counterblow of an unseen blade. He tripped, reaching for empty air where his lost sword was not, and sprawled on his back with his head not far from Tegan’s hiding place. He panted like a winded riding-beast.

As motionless as flies in amber, the boy, Tegan, the clearing.

She stepped into the light. Tegan knew her. She was Diana, the huntress with a bow slung over her shoulders, the guardian of wild things. How could she be here? The gods had faded in these late days; withdrawn to the far corners of the world; Diana of the wild forests and Athena of the gray owls had gone away into the far lands where there was no time.

She could not be here. She wore red, or snowy white, a chiton that foamed around her bare arms as she came forward, or she wore silver armor that reflected red from the boy’s cheek, the blackberries. Something in her hand left a space in the air, a space where falling stars streaked across the night, a space of utter silence. Her face was terrible and beautiful.

Tegan loved her, worshiped her, could not have turned her eyes away if she died for it. Tegan wanted the power she saw, the majesty. She felt a terrible strength rise in her, a strength lent by the goddess herself, a feeling that she could do anything, go anywhere, be whatever she chose to be.

“Go,” the goddess said.

The boy fled, scrambling through the wildrose.

The goddess sighed. “Poor fool,” she whispered. She sheathed the Sword. It had a plain, beautiful blade marked with patterns in its dark and glossy metal, or the patterns were Tegan’s eyes playing tricks and they not there at all. The Sword’s plain hilt was marked with the white outline of a human eye.

There had never been a goddess. There was only a woman, not tall, in gray linen breeks and a tunic. She had a shirt tied round her waist by the sleeves. The woman reached down and picked up the boy’s discarded sword. She was not beautiful, but she had hair the color of ripe wheat, heavy hair bound in a knot at the back of her neck.

And in bending, she caught sight of Tegan, huddled in her thicket.

Now she’ll kill me, Tegan thought. And she thought, mother spins better linen than she wears; the weave is rough.

“Oh, bother,” the woman said. She stood up and pointed a finger at Tegan. “You. Come out of there.”

Tegan did, pushing away blackberry canes and catching the hem of her skirt behind her. She jerked it free.

“What did you see?” the woman asked.

“Darkness. Light. A boy overmatched.”

The woman frowned. “He wasn’t overmatched. He tired me, and I used a weapon that sent his own fears to threaten him. I shouldn’t have used it, but I didn’t want to kill him. You have a good eye for swordplay, though.” She examined the boy’s discarded sword, running her eyes and fingers along its length. Tegan felt dismissed, ignored.

“A goddess,” Tegan whispered.

“Oh, bother!” The woman held the boy’s sword and swung it twice, testing its heft, and seemed to decide to keep it. She untied the shirt from her waist and wrapped the sword in it. “Look, kid. The Red Temple may send guards to find out why Lennor doesn’t show up. Your story is, nothing happened. You picked some berries, that’s all. You didn’t see anything, hear me?”

She was a plain woman, not a goddess, but around her the morning light crackled with power.

“That’s a Sword! It’s real!”

“It’s a weapon,” the woman said. “Only that.”

“I’ll help you. I’ll come with you. Please.”

She had heard of women like this, women warriors who fought with swords and bows, who traveled in small bands and went wherever they chose to go, through the wild lands, into the towns, free as birds. They earned their bread by the sword, some said. The emperor paid them, others said, paid them to play tricks. No, to avenge the wronged. Both. Their leader carried one of the Swords? How wonderful.

The woman looked at Tegan with appraisal and Tegan wished a hole would open in the ground and swallow her, mousy hair, scratched knuckles, nails bitten to the quick, a nothing girl with freckles. She was too big all over, big nose, big hips, legs like a riding-beast’s and feet that were meant for workboots, perhaps, but never for slippers. Tegan hid one foot under the other one, both of them bare.

“You’re a widow’s child?”

Tegan nodded.

“Good at your letters.” The woman was not the goddess, but her eyes pierced Tegan like knives. Hazel eyes, cat eyes. “Skilled at needlework, strong. A dreamer. A dreamer who wants the wide world, and beautiful lovers, and silks to wear, and glory. You want to be a great lady, loved for your honor, your generosity. But you have a dark side, a part of you that wants too much.”

How did she know? Tegan swallowed back tears and bowed her head.

“You must choose your life yourself. Remember that.”

The woman’s eyes dismissed her. She turned away, and Tegan could not bear it, to be left behind, to have seen wonder and never to see it again. She reached out, to hold the hem of the woman’s tunic, to beg her.

The woman’s hand moved to unsheathe the Sword she carried. The clearing filled with the sound of beating wings, with the face of a harpy, with terror.

“Pick your berries,” a voice said. “You will not remember what you have seen.”

Tegan dressed in red for the battle, a divided skirt rather than the breeches she favored, but the children would look for a lady in red, and breeks on women might confuse them. She fastened her sword at her hip and covered it with a dun cloak, for she had riding to do, and best she were dull of color for it.

And she took a little pendant from its jewelcase, a tiny silver arrow on a chain. She had not touched it since-

That’s over, Tegan told herself. I wear it now on a whim, without anger. But on this morning of all mornings, I will trust my whims, my intuitions. It’s a bauble my hand has reached for, and perhaps my hand knows more than I am willing to know. So be it.

Tegan fastened the pendant around her neck and hurried out into the bright morning.

Osyr’s mount danced with the nervousness his master transmitted. Osyr on a riding-beast was a near-disaster at best, his thin legs never meant to control a mount, his hands too jerky on the reins. The beast he rode was of necessity thick of lip, but stolid enough to follow Seagus.

“You are dressed to ride, Tegan?” Osyr asked.

“I would see you triumph,” Tegan said.

In the fields outside camp, Osyr’s troops mustered in good order, a hundred men mounted, two hundred more on foot, armed with pikes and spears. Their riding-beasts breathed clouds of excitement into the chill air of early spring. The day was threatening to dawn bright, and Blacknail muttered weather-spells as urgently as he could from his perch on a dumpy load-beast.

“Keep safe. When this is done, you must choose a proper princess for me,” Osyr said.

“Just so,” Tegan said, thinking, never, my Lord, would I saddle any woman born of woman with such a burden. Tegan mounted her riding-beast and fell into place beside Dorn, the lanky beastmaster carrying his pet ferretsnake, as usual. He squinted at a nearby sycamore, where a mated pair of great owls waited to scout out the land. The owls had been coerced out of day-sleep this morning. They would be unhappy about it, and offer their complaints to Dorn with each message they brought him.

Always, there were plans within plans. If Idris died today, then his lands would have at least a new master. That accomplished, Tegan hoped for so much more. That Osyr might die, too, well, that might happen or it might not.

The bigger hope was to free the children, and for that, the mine would have to be not just closed, but destroyed. The greed the gems caused could be closed away, but unless the stones that lurked in its depths could be hidden forever, Tegan could buy only a few years of peace from its evil. Someone else would crave them.

The opals were laid in narrow strips of clean earth between bands of poisons from the Old World. Matana had learned that, and told the Duke Idris so, before the sight of one of the gems had ensorceled him.

“It is possible to bring them out,” Matana said, “without killing the miners directly. But only a child, a small child, can get into the passages between the poisons. Even then, the children would sicken and die if they were kept for more than a third of a year at such work. The price of these stones is too great, my Lord Idris.”

He had agreed, and sought out dwarves to investigate the mine. The dwarves, being fellows of good sense, had refused to work the place.

“The humors are evil,” they had told him, and left.

But gems began to appear in the markets, polychrome opals with enchantment in their depths. The Lord Idris had paid his crofters well for the use of their children, and returned them, pale but seeming well, at the end of a year. The crofters, by and large, had taken their money and moved from Idris. They went into the towns, or to different lands. The duke brought other families to his farms, and other children to the mines. They sickened and died in time, but of different things, wasting sicknesses, weak blood. It had been a decade of years before the White Temple related the cases one to the other.

But the duke persisted, and there were always some who didn’t believe the stories, but did believe that the Duke Idris paid well. Memory was a slippery thing, easily pushed aside with coin and dreams of coin. Forgetting was so easy.

Tegan would not have heeded the stories, save that her niece, Lyse’s child, had died in a collapsed tunnel. It was after that that Lyse, grieving, had heard of other deaths, and told Tegan of them, and that Tegan had learned what really killed the children of Idris. She learned then to bless the hatred that gave her courage, the hatred that had begun with an order to forget, an order she had disobeyed.

The memory of it flooded through her, a memory that Noya had wakened.

Tegan stood alone in the little clearing walled with wildrose, guarded by the old oak, filled with blackberries ripe as garnets, where a bird sang sleepy half-songs in a drowsy mid-morning. She settled her basket on her hip and reached for a blackberry, ripe and juicy. It stained her fingers with the color of garnets and blood.

I will remember, she told herself. Remember… what?

Had she heard someone whistle up a riding-beast, the creak of leather as someone mounted?

I will remember, she thought later, her basket full, the sun hot on her neck, and old Rollo’s spotted kid munching blackberry canes beside her. Funny, Tegan thought. Silly little boy goat, for a minute this morning I thought I saw a faun, with spots like yours.

The great owl spiraled down toward the line of riding-beasts. Dorn pulled his mount out of formation and galloped toward the tree where the owl waited. Tegan followed the beastmaster.

“Hungry,” the owl said.

“What news?” Dorn asked. “Earn your mouse.” He dangled one by its tail. The ferretsnake darted for it. Dorn batted at the snake and it settled back around Dorn’s neck. “What travels on the road, owl?”

“White,” the owl said.

“Idris rides, then. I think,” Dorn said.

“Mean owls,” the great owl said.

“Idris has sent out his owls?”

The owl turned his head half around. Maybe that meant yes.

Idris was warned, then.

“Small mouse,” the owl said.

“You’ll have a bucket of mice when we’re done,” Dorn said. “I promise.”

“If you live,” the owl said. He stretched out his beak and took the mouse.

Tegan wheeled her mount and galloped for Seagus, for the head of the column. Behind her, she heard the cry go up, “Forewarned! Forewarned! Close ranks!”

I will take Idris, Tegan thought. I will kill him myself, if I can.

She crested a little hill. On the road below, a procession all in white, twenty or more mounted men, rode single-file. She spied Idris in the center of the column. So innocent he looks, this old man, Tegan thought, but as the Osyr riders appeared, the old man found a sword and bared it, spitting curses through his few remaining teeth. Tegan heard Seagus yelling beside her before his mount pulled ahead of hers. She spurred her beast forward, her sword raised. The world had filled with mounted men in the Idris colors of green and gray.

Seagus parried the duke’s blow and skewered the old man. The Idris Duke’s riding-beast stumbled and the corpse went flying. Osyr, close behind Tegan, reined up sharply. Tegan cut at a ‘pilgrim’ beside her. His chainmail glittered beneath his loose white robe. The bright sun suddenly ducked behind a cloud, Blacknail’s spells successful at last, or the clouds simply a whim of weather. Tegan fought through the clot of pilgrim soldiers and raced up the road. She glanced back and saw Osyr, off his mount, kneeling beside the duke’s body. He clutched a sack in his hand, lifted it aloft, and remounted.

Well, let him have those stones for his own. If this day went well, they were the last the world would ever see.

Seagus caught up with her, and behind him, she heard the thunder of riding-beasts, a century of Osyr knights who howled like banshees.

At the outskirts of the charging formation, she could see gray and green riders cut toward Osyr’s ranks, and be cut down. There, at the pass, Castle Idris loomed, but Tegan and her army sped past it, almost out of range of the archers on the ramparts. Seagus raised an arm as if to shield her from the arrows. Some clattered against mail, some struck at the ranks. None of Osyr’s men fell, but a few of their mounts now sported flesh wounds.

To the mine, Tegan thought. To the mine, and to hell with what’s behind us.

She found she was laughing, but it sounded more like a shriek. Her riding-beast stretched her neck and ran flat out, as battle-maddened as her mistress. Between Tegan’s breasts, the foil-wrapped stone nestled safe. She bent forward into the wind. Her tiny silver arrow swung free on its chain, as sharp as the day she had found it.

Tegan’s mother plied a hoe around the sweetgourds, and wisewoman Meraud had come to help her, for a share of the gourds when the frost came and turned them gold. Chop, talk, chop, gossip, it made the work go not faster, but with less boredom.

The heavy basket weighed against her hip. Tegan was proud of her labors, enough to make a tart with just a touch of hoarded honey, hot enough to burn and cooled with sweet milk poured over, and plenty of berries left to put in the crock for a winter’s wine. Tegan was hungry.

“I said, you may have some of those stringbeans, take them, lest she come back at night and empty the field, or so I feared, but she smiled and gave me a coin for them.” Tegan’s mother whacked at a weed and it flew through the air, its roots white.

“The warrior woman? I am not surprised, Edda,” Meraud said. “She is a lady, after all.”

“That one? Brown as an elk’s hide, no lady would let her skin brown like that. Tegan, where is your hat?”

“I forgot it,” Tegan said.

“The Lady Idane,” Meraud said. “The Lady Idane herself has paid you a visit, and you thought she would steal your beans.”

“Is that her name? Do you know her?” Mother asked.

“So, we had words last night, and she listened to my tale, and she went out to the highroad this morning, I think.”

I am already gone from here, Tegan thought. These two are already part of my past. I will miss them.

“Which way did she go?” Tegan asked. The words flew out with urgency, with pleading.

Her mother looked up. “Tegan? Is something wrong?” Edda straightened slowly. Meraud had said she had rough spots on her bones, and had given her simples for the pain.

“I’m fine, Mother. Meraud, which way did she go?”

“Where she had business, I expect,” Mother said. “Business far from here; it’s nothing of ours what those women do.”

Tegan promised herself she would come back, someday. Whenever she could, yes, and bring gifts.

Meraud planted her hoe and leaned on it as if it were a crutch. She looked at Tegan, at the berries. “You met her.”

“I would follow her.”

“So,” Meraud said. “So.”

Tegan would remember her mother’s face as long as she lived, the love, the grief.

“I must, Mother. You know I don’t fit here, I don’t belong, Lyse, you’ll have Lyse, and grandchildren soon. I’ll never be as good a wife as Lyse is, or skilled with herbs like Meraud, or-” Or happy to stay in this village, where nothing changes, ever, not now that I have seen a goddess in her power.

“Or beautiful? Or loved? Oh, child.”

“Many go to them,” Meraud said. “Most come home.”

“I will not,” Tegan said.

“Take the berries to the porch,” Mother said. “They will get hot here in the sun.”

“I will go, Mother.” Not to the porch. Far away. Far away from here.

Mother struck a vicious blow at a tiny weed, as if Tegan had not spoken at all. The hoe made a grating sound, metal on metal. “What’s this, now? Something to break my hoe?” She knelt, quick enough in spite of the pain in her bones. Her fingers grubbed in the earth.

“Don’t, Mother.” Tegan put the basket down and knelt beside her. “Let me help you.”

Coins. Not a hoard of gold, no, worn thin coppers and coins of silver.

“Well,” Mother said. “Well.” Her gnarled fingers cupped earth and metal.

Meraud rocked back and forth, braced by her hoe. She hissed at the sight of the coins and drew away from the tiny black arrow Tegan held like a needle. Tegan scratched at it with her close-bitten thumbnail. It was silver.

“It’s for you,” Meraud said. “For you, Tegan.”

They seemed so far away, these two goodwomen with their beans and their long, busy days.

“A sign,” Mother said. “Go if you must. I would not keep you here against your will.” There were tears in her eyes.

Meraud beckoned, and Tegan came to the old woman’s side.

“West,” Meraud whispered. “The Lady Idane has gone west. But comfort your mother before you leave. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Tegan said. “I will try.”

But she left in the night, left with good-byes unsaid, anxious for the journey.

The entrance to the mine was well-guarded. Tegan led the Osyr knights into a rain of javelins. Above the mouth of the cave, she spied a rank of men with crossbows. She pointed to them, screaming warning.

Seagus left her side, calling up twenty men who veered from the charge, speeding toward a side path that led up past the cave’s mouth.

Bolts from above chattered on armor. Two of Tegan’s men fell. Her riding-beast dodged aside, but Tegan urged her forward again. The beast seemed as enraged as the woman felt. There had been fear. Now there was only rage, rage at the sight of that low tunnel faced with sagging timbers, that black mouth into hell. The entrance was barred by an iron grate, a cruel doorway to let foul air out, to keep the miners in.

Tegan’s sword seemed to strike of its own will. She slashed at an outstretched arm, cut down at an unprotected shoulder, heard a sigh as the man beside her gutted an Idris spearman.

Her protector went down, felled by a bolt. Tegan heard Seagus bellowing above her, and the hissing of the bolts began to slacken.

“Bring up the ram!” Tegan yelled.

An aisle formed behind her, centered on the grate. Twenty Osyr men hauled up a huge oaken log mounted on straps.

“Not at the center! The timbers! Hit the timbers!”

The new-cut log crashed into old wood. The grate fell.

Tegan dismounted and slapped at the flank of her riding-beast. The war-trained beast reared, twisting to bring her steel-clad hooves down on an Idris man. The tip of his falling sword cut a long gash through the cloak on Tegan’s back. Tegan tore at its fastenings and threw it aside.

She turned at the ruined grate and saw, below her on the mountain’s dark flank, a melee of green and gray fighting Osyr’s bronze and black, a knot of Osyr men surrounding their duke and his banner.

Tegan ducked under the sagging timbers, into the mine itself. She held her bloody sword like a beacon.

The woman had left the tiny silver arrow, how else could it have got in Edda’s field? She had buried it for Tegan to find. But the little weed had grown in undisturbed earth. It could have been an old thing, a bauble tossed away centuries before.

No, Tegan told herself. She called me. She left a sign.

All through that journey, west, she clutched at her talisman, polished bright and tied round her neck with a length of green ribbon. The coins were gone, save for four thin coppers. Cold and tired, Tegan stumbled along a stream that came down from the high pass in the western mountains.

At dusk. She had some plan to make a fire, to curl up beside it, to try to remember why she was here and not at home. She was making too much noise, clumsy-footed and hungry. She feared, or expected, dark men and danger in the high places, for Meraud had told tales of such things, but there had been no danger that she had been able to spy out, and no men at all except for fat inn-keepers who had told her she reminded them of their daughters.

She slipped on a mossy rock, unseen in the dark, and sat down, splat, in the middle of the stream.

“Shit!”

Tegan hauled herself out of the water, sobbing like a wetnosed baby, and over her sobs, she heard a giggle.

A girl. Giggling.

Then silence.

“Come out where I can see you, damn it!” Tegan yelled.

Nothing.

A single twig snapped, uphill from the stream, yes. Behind-that rock. Tegan pulled off her shoes, wet and useless anyway, and stalked the noise. A girl, giggling, in the high mountains, unafraid, must be one of them, one of the Gray Archers, the women who wore trousers and kept flocks of stunted griffins as flying steeds-although that tale might be only a wishful tale told to children, for no one had seen a griffin in living memory.

Not behind the rock. Tegan sank into its shadow and waited. If the elusive girl wasn’t one of the warriors, she was at least a girl, and she must know where food was, and shelter.

Click, a pebble disturbed.

Tegan moved toward the sound, back toward the water. A fish splashed, once, upstream.

There, beyond that stand of quiverleaf saplings. There was a glow from a small fire, above it the silhouette of an archer poised on a high cliff, her arrow nocked. Under the shadow of the cliff, the silent welling of a deep sourcespring reflected early stars. Women sat around the fire, dark shapes, unconcerned. One of them wore her heavy hair in a knot at the back of her neck. Tegan walked flat-footed to the circle of firelight. She pulled her ribbon over her neck, with its four copper coins tied in a twist of cloth and the tiny silver arrow all gleaming, and laid them at the feet of the Lady Idane.

“It’s all I have to give you,” she said.

“Oh, bother,” the Lady Idane said. “Someone get her some food, would you?”

Fear me, Tegan thought. Fear me, little ones. Fear is all I have to give you now.

In her red skirts, holding her dripping sword, Tegan entered the stench of urine and poison, a low space roofed with and floored with earth. Rows of cots stretched into the shadows. This was where her niece had slept, chained to her cot at night, freed only to be crushed in the earth.

If the pale squat man who was this room’s last guard meant to beg mercy, he moved too late. Tegan sliced a two-handed blow at his neck as he stepped forward. He fell, a mountain of pale flesh. In the shadows, Tegan saw the gleam of terrified eyes. The children had fled into the tunnels.

“The witch!” a child screamed.

“The Lady in Red. She’ll hurt us!”

“Run!” Tegan yelled. “Ardneh, help them! Run, I say!”

She stepped aside from the opened grate. As they ran past her, scrambling around the fallen guard, Tegan saw a welter of thin legs, of flailing arms. The children were as covered with earth as grubs. Some of them screamed. Most were silent.

They boiled out of the mine in a rush. One limped, and might have been left behind. Tegan grabbed the little boy and thrust him into the arms of a larger urchin.

Were they gone? Were all of them gone? Against the roar of the battle outside, she strained to hear any whimper, any scuffling sound at all. She searched in the low tunnels where they had hidden, her eyes wide to try to see in the dark. There was nothing, no one.

Ahead of her, a smoky lamp guttered and went out. The air reeked with malice, not a true scent, a trace of heaviness, of old evil. Between her breasts, the foil-wrapped stone gave off a dull, nauseating heat. Tegan clutched it tight in her left hand. She must call Ninidh here. If the demon devoured her, would the Lady Idane hear that Tegan had battled here, and lost? Would she be happy, knowing that Noya had been the better choice to train as her successor?

Noya was the best, the brightest, the girl who had gone out to lead Tegan into camp. Tiny Noya, so fast, whose quick attacks darted through Tegan’s guard. Caedrun, who coached the girls at swordplay, matched them often in those hot hours of drilling, slow Tegan, fast Noya, the reward for the exercises a jug of cool water in the shade, so precious.

Always, Noya, the winner, drank first.

Sometimes there were four, or six, women summering in the high country, sometimes there were twenty. Waking, Tegan learned to count bedrolls, to look for new faces, and later, to see who had slipped away in the night, off on some errand that might last days or longer-two of the women round the fire that first night were gone by morning, and still gone in autumn.

There were no griffins here.

There was no Sword. Tegan had not seen it again, the Lady Idane’s blade serviceable and plain, as ordinary as her unremarkable riding-beast grazing in the alpine meadows.

There were, sometimes, women with babies slung on their backs who walked into camp and stayed a day or two, laughing in the deep shade and yelping in the cold water of the stream where Tegan had fallen. Others came to other streams; they moved camp five times that summer. Some of the women wore long skirts or brocade, and those seemed never to have carried swords at all, but came to sit beside the Lady Idane in the long afternoons, to speak to her in quiet, rambling phrases, or to listen. All of them wore tiny silver arrows around their necks, a match to the one Tegan had found in the earth and given to the lady.

The women talked of voyages, of the proper churning of butter, of the wiles that would hold a man, or send him away. Tegan listened, soaked up what she heard as if she were a dry sponge returned to water.

They came from everywhere, these women, seldom taking up the sword but keeping their skills honed in summer camps or winter caves, a network of women that spanned the kingdoms. And when they did bring out their bows or their blades, at necessity, they fought well.

The Lady Idane pulled them to her like a lodestone pulls iron. She said little, but when she spoke it seemed she had distilled a rambling bucketful of talk into a few drops of strong brandy. Quiet, calm, she seemed uninvolved in the activities around her, distanced from them. But when she said a word here, put her muscle to a task there, questions got answered, things fell into place as if even stones and trees hastened to do her bidding. Tegan watched her, fascinated, envious.

Sometimes she felt the lady’s eyes on her, her measuring, skeptical evaluation. What did she measure? What did she want?

Tegan grew shy around the lady. She hung back from the others, she said little. She watched and listened.

The world, seen from these high mountains, seemed laid out like a board game. Men, duchies, kingdoms, all were pieces to be moved if only the hand that moved them was skillful enough for the task. Swords were one move in the games these women played, but they were only used when other moves were blocked.

“There’s too much to learn,” Tegan whispered one night, sore from a drubbing Noya had given her. Tegan’s head swam with the Lady Idane’s explanation of the true cost of a bumper crop of barley. As the Lady Idane had it, a loaf of bread in Small Aldwyn would be dear in two years, when those who had sold their grain too cheap planted other crops, unless certain merchants in the foggy cities to the north could be persuaded to pay a fair price for this year’s barley. It made a sort of sense, but only if Tegan held the pieces in her mind in a certain way. Good crops can cause famine?

“Nobody can learn everything,” Noya said. “You want too much.”

“The lady said that the first time I met her. She was right.”

“She likes you, Tegan.” Noya yawned and pulled her blankets up over her nose.

“She’s never pleased with anything I do.”

“That’s how I know she likes you,” Noya said. She smiled, tucked in her bedroll like a brunette caterpillar, and blinked up at the stars. “Get some rest, Tegan. All of this thinking is making you skinny.”

Skinny? Tegan pulled her arm out from under her blanket and looked at it. It wasn’t skinny, it was slender. Well.

In two breaths, Noya was asleep.

Tegan backed out of the tunnel. What needed doing now needed doing at the mouth of the cave. When she opened the foil and released the demon’s soul, her life would hang on a thread of slimmest chance. She had no armor against the demon Ninidh, against any demon.

At least she could stand in sight of daylight for this task.

Beyond the fallen grate, a cold spring drizzle wetted the fighters. The men of Idris fought better than Osyr had planned. Green and gray mingled with bronze and black, and over it all lay the screams of riding-beasts and men, the stink of fresh blood. Bodies lay trampled in the mud, but Tegan saw no children. They would have fled the battleground, and if the gods were kind, they had scattered.

Her arm ached with the demon’s longing. Now, before Osyr’s battle was won or lost. Now.

Tegan held the foil-wrapped stone close to her lips. “Ninidh?” she whispered. “Ninidh, do you hear me?”

Noya came to sit beside the Lady Idane when the silver quiverleaves were going gold on the high slopes, Noya sent out in skirts for provisions but was back in her breeks now, and happier for it.

“What news from the pass, Noya?” the Lady Idane asked.

Noya settled close to her feet of her lady, snuggling in like a puppy, and the lady stroked her hair. She has never stroked mine, Tegan thought. She finds more fault with me than with anyone here. Tegan looked down to hide the envy that might show on her face, and resolutely picked through the beans that would be tonight’s dinner, discarding the odd pebble or twig here and there.

“Men are leaving the lands of the Lord Idris, for his wizard has found a mine there and they say that strange humors rise from the ore. Others are traveling there to work the mines, having heard that the pay is good.”

The Lady Idane nodded, and Tegan knew that Matana, who had a gift for alchemy, would not be in camp by morning, but on her way to test the ores for safety or for useful essences.

“In far Salton-on-Fen,” Noya said, “they say a Nereid lives near a spring, and has enchanted it so that all who come there tell her secret things.”

“Nereid? Hmph. Meredith is setting herself up as a Nereid, is she? A flashy one, for news to travel here this fast. Well, that’s an old name for us, and not so far off,” the Lady Idane said. “True, we need water and stay close to it, but any creature does. Water stays low to the ground and goes around what it can’t go over. It follows whatever course it must take, but it wears away the strongest stone, in time.”

“It works by stealth, then,” Tegan said.

“Yes, stealth,” the Lady Idane asked, her eyes not on Tegan, but on a pattern of light and shadow cast by the branches overhead. “Stealth, deception, the skill to turn aside a blow and direct it elsewhere, the ability to let an enemy see what she fears most, and fight herself rather than you.”

The lady carried the Sword of Stealth, one of the twelve, Sightblinder, its story told one night by the fire, Matana singing of all the half-remembered Swords of legend.

Hidden or no, the Lady Idane carried it, wielded it at times. Tegan closed the knowledge in herself, the questions. How did you come by this? For what purpose do you carry it?

Tegan felt the lady’s attention focused on her. She felt as exposed as a bug turned up from under a stone. Noya had gone off on some task, had slipped away without a sound. Her absence left an intimacy between them, Tegan and the lady.

“Ask yourself. What did the boy in the clearing really see?”

The lanky boy had stared at a green wall, and seen-

Reflected in a haze of red, crimson livery, the brotherhood he had not yet chosen. He had seen himself a Red Temple guard, drug-crazed and desperate for the next coin, terrified that the man beside him might be more crazed than himself, that his “brothers” would turn on him and cut him down.

When I fight against Noya, I see-grace like a darting swallow flying at sunset, speed I will never have. I see my faults, not hers.

“He saw his own faults, my Lady.”

Idane smiled and stayed silent for a time.

“The seasons change so quickly. It’s almost time for some of us to move back into the lowlands for the winter,” the Lady Idane said.

Some of us. Not all of us. A few girls came to the summer camps every year, fewer remained for a winter’s training. So Tegan had learned. Noya would stay, certainly, and Havoise and little Jibben. But would she be with them when they went to the winter caves and learned letters and lacework, and things of leechcraft that a visitor from the White Temple taught?

Tegan’s fingers found a pebble, rough in the smooth beans. She tossed it toward the stream, got up and walked away, feeling the Lady Idane’s measuring gaze on her back.

Outside the mine, Osyr’s banner wavered, dipped, and fell. A shout went up and the banner rose again. Tegan caught sight of Seagus, his red beard red with blood. He threw Osyr’s banner to one of his men and roared with triumph.

Release the demon now, if ever she were to be released. She felt power gathering, drawn to the beacon in her hand.

“Come forth, Ninidh,” Tegan whispered.

The demonstone grew hot. It burned against Tegan’s palm like a coal. She struggled to hold it and opened her hand. A puff of smoke rose from her singed flesh.

The smoke drifted upward. Tegan could not take her eyes from it, from the swirling forces that circled the confines of the cave. They drifted on currents of desire and release, and centered themselves in the fetid air.

Transparent as blown crystal, a woman’s form took shape in the mouth of the tunnel. It floated above the filthy floor of the cave, and laughed a laugh like shattered ice.

Ninidh. It was Ninidh. The demon spun like a whirlwind. She darted into one of the tunnels. Tegan heard her cooing at what she found there. Ninidh returned, her ghostly hands filled with raw gems in all the colors of moonlight.

The demon glided toward the shattered grate, and freedom.

“Stay!” Tegan shouted.

A demon’s voice laughed and a demon’s wild joy filled the cave.

Stay? With all the wide world before me, and all these gems in my hands? Almost, mortal, I would let you live, for the joy you have given me when you unlocked my powers.

Tegan gripped the demonstone in her fist. It had grown cold as ice.

That bauble? The demon danced around Tegan like a whirlwind. I’m not in it now! You have freed me!

Tegan slashed at the transparent form with her sword, a foolish weapon against a demon. The sword would not serve her for this.

What would?

Tegan had sought strength in skills of seduction garnered from the Red Temple. She knew the way power moved among the world’s divided kingdoms. She knew how to use the weaknesses of men or women as needs be. Nothing she had learned could help her leash this demon, this evil wraith that Tegan had hoped to bind against a greater evil.

Blow after countered blow, the sword growing heavy as lead, the heat of the autumn sun on her shoulders, and old Caedrun’s voice grating in her ears, “Strength! Strength and speed, Tegan, make the sword light in your mind and you will find it easier to wield.” Until Tegan wanted to cry, and would not, because the Lady Idane had come to the edge of the clearing and was watching, seeming not to watch.

Had the lady sighed, shaking her head in frustration? Tegan couldn’t really see anything in the shade but the brown on brown of autumn leaves. There had been frost at the edge of her blanket this morning.

In a match against Noya, thinking, this is useless. I will never best her, I will never fit in here, with these women of grace and laughter who are always at ease, always accepted, ever the gentle word comes to their lips and at times I can’t speak at all.

Noya will stay and I will go back to the beanfields. I will carry my sister’s baby on my hip, not a sword.

A man in gray stood beside the Lady Idane. The two of them turned away.

There was only the clearing, the heat, Noya bringing her sword once more toward Tegan’s guard in this last match, this final time, this last time for losing.

I outreach her, Tegan thought. I always did. She is fast, but there is a pattern that she follows. If I move here, turn her on her own path, then, then-

A calm came upon her, the world slowed down for her to use, for the lady had turned away and there was only Tegan, centered in a still place born of despair and loss where nothing mattered except the blade’s edge, the pattern of its reaching.

See, how slow this is, the back of Noya’s knee exposed, the dark sureness welling up within me, a touch there. So! So slowly, I turn as she trips, my sword a part of my arm, weightless, a hawk stooping from this far and distant sky where I’m alone-

Noya lay on her back, the point of Tegan’s sword at her throat.

Well. Well, Tegan thought.

Noya rolled away, laughing at the expression on Tegan’s face.

Tegan was only human, no emperor’s child. She held no magic except a demonsoul stone, and no enchanted sword. She could never win against a demon. She kept her back to the outside world, trying to create a barrier of mortal flesh between Ninidh and freedom. Her grip on the sword began to loosen. She fought to hold it, useless though it seemed to be.

Ninidh, laughing, held a king’s ransom of opals in her hands. What weakness in that, that a mortal could use?

Tegan reached for a calm place that she had once found, a still place born of despair where nothing mattered except the blade’s edge, the pattern of its reaching-

Tegan struck at the demon’s hands. Her sword could not cut demonflesh, but it struck the gems. Raw opals scattered across the cave.

The invisible substance that was Ninidh shrieked in outrage. The demon sank toward the floor. Her insubstantial fingers plucked at the tossed gems. The stones drew themselves into little heaps as Ninidh tried to pick them up again. Tegan let herself feel the smallest bit of hope.

“Well fought,” old Caedrun said. “Well fought.”

Noya, on her feet again and still smiling, handed over the water jug.

It was so good, so wet, Tegan’s thirst had been like a fire in her throat. She drank, and drank again, and handed the jug to Noya. Far to the west, thunderheads were growing, black at their bases and moving quickly.

“Tegan! Come here, please.” The Lady Idane called. “Caedrun, see to the packing, if you would, and Noya. We will be leaving sooner than I expected.”

Tegan rushed to keep up with her, the lady speeding along a path through the crackling leaves, this once careless of their noise. The man in gray-had he been real? Tegan felt eyes on her, appraising eyes, but when she looked, she saw bare branches, bright evergreens waiting for snow. No man anywhere.

The lady carried a wrapped bundle on her back. It contained, Tegan knew, the Sword.

They reached the sourcespring. The stream that welled from it led down toward the pass, the road back into the lowlands.

Beside it, crouched, an impossible beast lapped at the water with its long tongue, its bronze wings furled tightly on the length of its huge back. The beast backed away from the spring and growled. The lady shoved at it with her shoulder and scratched a spot behind its ears.

“This is Tegan,” she told the beast. “Take her scent. Tegan, come closer.”

Reek of giant cat, hot breath, the beast reached out its long neck and sniffed at Tegan’s hand. Its rough tongue flicked lightly along the skin of her wrist, taking a delicate taste.

“Stand still,” the lady cautioned.

Tegan stood still. It had never occurred to her to move. She was almost too awed to be frightened.

The Lady Idane mounted the griffin and settled the weight of the Sword over her shoulders.

“This is not to be your life. You will leave us now.”

The protests that rose in Tegan’s throat died at the look on Idane’s face.

“Here.” Idane tossed a small sack tied with a familiar green ribbon. Tegan caught it. It was heavy.

“You won’t understand, not for a long, long time. Nothing I can say will-Oh, bother! Go quickly. We are hunted.”

The Lady Idane touched her heels to the beast’s side. The griffin stretched its wings and rose toward the western pass, toward the gathering storm.

Rejected, cast aside, named unworthy. Tegan had hated the Lady Idane with deep hatred, and tried to mask it in disdain. Who did she think she was, this uncaring woman, but a surrogate mother to a bunch of foolish women who lived in tents? They were fools, fools who saw themselves as knights-errant for the weak. Feh. Their schemes and manipulations seemed to do so little in the world.

Tegan despised them. They were petty, and cruel, to cast her aside.

I’ll show you! Tegan thought. She clenched her fist at the sky and choked back tears. I’ll show you!

Wealth and power, and satins, and kingdoms to do her bidding, that was what Tegan had decided would be hers, in that moment when the griffin vanished forever. How were they gained in this world? How did a woman gain them? Not by eating beans and wearing rough linen in a mountain camp.

She went to the Red Temple at Wellfleet. She listened to the random bragging of her clients. She kept the coins that were her due, and avoided the gaming tables. She spent some of them on lessons in swordplay, telling herself it was only to keep her body hard and tight, for she sought clients who liked hard, tight bodies, and found them.

The deceptions that the world called beauty, she learned those, too, cosmetic arts, gestures, the uses of a low and murmuring voice. Even among the wrecked souls of the Red Temple, there were skills to be gained.

If the women of Small Aldwyn, her mother, her sister, knew how she had gained her wealth in those visits she made them, they pretended not to know. Then Lyse’s husband vanished, Lyse’s child with him. Lyse’s grief had led Tegan in a search for knowledge of the lands around Idris-and she found Osyr, a fitting tool to use against Idris.

Osyr now used, now dead.

As she would be, soon, and for naught.

In the mine, Ninidh’s presence seemed stronger, as if each stone she gathered from the floor added to her substance. Laughter filled the cave and echoed back from the tunnels.

Did you think to hold me? the demon asked. Oh, foolish mortal.

Tegan struck again at the gems, scattering them to the far corners of the cave.

The demon’s breath washed across Tegan, a wave of ice, of terror. Cold sweat drenched Tegan’s face.

Ninidh would be loosed to do as she would, and her theft of whatever gems she wanted would only make the ones yet to be found more valuable. Another duke would hold power in Idris, in Osyr, and the mine would be restocked with little ones. Ninidh would like that, an ever renewed source of innocent souls to chew up and spit out.

The demon’s malice leached away the last of Tegan’s strength. She fell to her knees, weakness bringing her down as if she were made of melting wax. Darkness rose from within her, darkness that filled the cave and left her helpless, paralyzed. Her sword slipped from her hand. Her breath sighed out and she knew that her muscles would not move to draw in another.

Was this how dying felt? Where were the bright memories, the peace that the priests of Ardneh promised? Where?

The cave filled with a space where falling stars streaked across the night, a space of utter silence in which Ninidh’s shriek of immortal terror tore at the hills themselves.

Ninidh shrank away from a sword wielded by a goddess in silver armor that reflected the red of Tegan’s dress, or it was a chiton she wore, gauzy draperies spun of unearthly silk.

Ninidh retreated, her substance torn by the invisible path of the terrible blade. Tegan got to her knees, released from the demon’s attention by the onslaught of the Sword of Stealth.

“Tegan! Get out!” the goddess cried.

Idane struck with the Sword, a blow that divided one Ninidh into many and flung her divided selves to the ground where her treasures lay-a Ninidh shown as she truly was, a creature made of wisps of greed, of puerile pleasure in baubles and sparkles and groveling incarnations of persistent, immortal vanity, a vanity that reflected only its own image and spiraled inward, forever. Ninidh screamed at what she saw, a thousand tiny Ninidhs reflected in a thousand tiny mirrors, Ninidhs that clung to the opals on the filthy floor, to grains of faceted sand, to dust. Ninidhs the size of gnats burrowed into the earth, sifting it like flour.

Tegan stood, wobbly on her feet. She took a position by the lady’s side, guarding her as best she could. The two of them backed toward outside air, toward the useless iron grate.

“Bury her, Idane!” Tegan yelled.

“She buries herself!” Idane shouted. “Look!”

The floor of the cave shifted, its stones loosened by a demon’s greed. Sand and pebbles, then stones, fell from the walls. One of the timbers at the entrance cracked and sagged.

“I have her soul!” Tegan shouted.

“Bury it with her, then!” Idane ducked through the narrowed space at the mouth of the cave and pulled Tegan with her. “Throw it, Tegan!”

Tegan tossed the ugly soulstone into the dirt, into the rainbow colors of the opals that lay scattered on the churning earth.

Idane’s Sword scribed out a circle around the mouth of the cave. “You are bound here, Ninidh,” Idane cried. “Sleep well.”

From the soiled earth, a multitude of tiny shrieks rose. A rumbling began deep in the tunnels. Its soil loosened by restless demons, the cave fell in on itself, on vanity and greed, on gems buried forever and forever guarded by a presence that forced the two women back, back, toward a battle won.

Side by side, Tegan and the Lady Idane fought free of the dust cloud that rose from the cave’s buried mouth. Weaponless, for her sword was buried in the mountain, Tegan looked for danger, but the battle had moved down the mountainside and seemed to be over. The afternoon’s gray light showed changes in Idane. Her hair had gone gray, and she seemed shorter. Or was it only that Tegan had thought her to be taller than she was?

“Noya said you would not help us,” Tegan said.

“We didn’t come to Osyr.” The Lady’s deeply lined face was pale with exhaustion. “We came to you.”

Idane took a step forward. Her hands trembled on the hilt of the Sword she carried.

“Hold this for me, Tegan. It is so heavy.” Idane held out the hilt of the Sword and Tegan took it in her hand.

“Sheathe it,” Idane said.

The great Sword’s invisible blade lighted the lady’s face, a face that Tegan saw clearly, a face she thought she had known and had never really seen until this moment. Idane was old, and kind, and her face held compassion and love, and pity. Why does she pity me? Tegan wondered.

Tegan, obedient, lifted the blade and sheathed Sightblinder, the Sword of Stealth, whose power showed its enemies what they truly feared. Or truly loved.

The Lady Idane straightened her shoulders and walked away from the sealed mine. Tegan followed her, bearing the heavy burden of the lady’s Sword.

Halfway down the slope, Seagus and his men surrounded the Osyr banner, bronze and black victorious against green and gray. The ferretsnake had wrapped its long body under Dorn’s collar to keep out of the wet. It flicked its tongue at the women as they approached. The fighters stood helpless now, bewildered by the churning in the earth. Spring rain pattered in the sudden silence.

It seemed the men would stand in the rain forever. Had they lost their wits? Tegan stepped forward so they could see her.

“Seagus!” she called.

He looked up at her, all the battle lust drained now from his honest, homely face, replaced by fatigue and wonder. The Lady Idane stood aside.

“You have gained a duchy today! Hold it safe!”

The tired men around him raised a cheer, and seeming to find strength in it, raised another.

He left them and climbed the slope to where she stood.

“You’ll be with me?” he asked.

Would she? No. Not as a consort to Seagus, although she wished him well. The lands in Osyr and Idris were good farming lands, and the foothills of the mountains fine pasturage. Given no gems to twist his soul, and good farmers, Seagus would be a careful guardian of what he held.

“Sometimes,” Tegan said. Yes, sometimes, I’ll come to you and laugh, and we’ll make love. We’ll comfort each other again, as we have before. But you’ll need a wife in time, a dutiful wife, and children. I’m not for that.

The wiry, gray-haired woman had taken shelter beneath the branches of a new-leafed tree. Tegan watched her, afraid Idane would slip away. The lady was almost invisible, gray in the world’s gray rain. “We’ll talk about this, Seagus. Soon. Your men are waiting. Go to them.”

He hesitated.

“You’re the duke. Be a good one. Your men are tired and wet, and hungry.”

Seagus blinked as if he’d just been awakened. He turned and looked at his new charges. “Dorn! Set out guards!” he shouted. “Blacknail, do something about this damned rain! All of you! Get the wounded to shelter!”

He walked down the mountainside toward his men, his future. In these brief moments, he had gained a lordly set to his shoulders.

Tegan went to the Lady Idane.

“Your Sword. Take it,” Tegan said.

The woman folded her arms one in the other.

“Of all those who came to me, you alone could bear it in my stead,” Idane said.

“You sent me away!”

“Yes. But the Sword is yours. I will not take it up again.”

Idane had sent Tegan away, hurt and angry. Because of that anger, an untrained girl had learned the uses of loyalty, of power, of weapons of steel and of weapons that had no physical being but were useful in skilled hands. Of patience, of misdirected purpose. Of stealth, even if used to force someone to become what she, on her own, would not.

“Did Noya watch me buy the stone?” Tegan asked.

“Yes. She did not understand how you planned to use it.”

Neither did I, Tegan thought.

“It was a clever ruse, scattering the gems,” Idane said.

A clever ruse that had almost failed. Tegan had not been wise, or devious. She had only been desperate. Had she hoped the lady would come to her, and bring the Sword?

Yes. Tegan had hidden her hope even from herself. She had taken a foolish risk, but she had won.

Was she a fit successor to the woman she had seen in the cave, a woman of deadly wisdom, who fought even demons? She saw the answer in the Lady Idane’s tired, compassionate face.

Tegan raised the sheathed Sword to her forehead in salute to her mentor.

“Oh, bother,” the Lady Idane said. The fatigue of battle seemed to have left her. She looked as brisk as a spring wind. “It’s not going to be all fun, you know. You have a bit to learn about wizardry, for starts. I thought for a minute there that you didn’t know what you were about.”

Infuriating woman! Was she smiling?

“You’ll learn,” Idane said. “I did.”

Idane stepped to a thicket and reached inside it with a fast swoop of her arms. She brought out a little girl, earth-stained, terrified, who clung to Idane and whimpered. Idane crooned to her.

Beyond the Lady Idane and the child she held, half-hidden in spring leaves, a griffin whuffed in impatience. Close by the creature’s side, a man in gray waited with his instructions.