Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

She always professed herself pleased, or least not too terribly disappointed. Then she always went away as she had come, leaving the child in her father’s care.

But those days would not go on forever. When Merris reached her fourteenth birthday, the Lady would come as before, but this time she would take the child whom she had bought for so noble a price.

Merris ran up the stair at a pace that would have given her tutors palpitations. She meant to have her hair up and her skirts down and her breathing back to normal by the time she reached the schoolroom, but while she could, she gave way to the restless energy that had been tormenting her all day.

One month from today was her fourteenth birthday. Everyone knew what that meant. Her life in this Keep was nearly over. It was time, finally, for her to fulfill the bargain her parents had made.

She had been preparing for it since before she was born. She was not afraid, but her mother’s words had never left her.

She was going into a house of strangers. No matter how many tutors she had had, or how much instruction she was given in manners, deportment, and the conduct befitting a Lady of Darkwall, she had never visited the Keep she was to rule. She knew every nook and cranny, but only in books.

Her tutors never said anything but good of Darkwall. Still, servants talked, and Merris had sharp ears. She only caught fragments, whispers of fear, rumors that had no real substance—but they were enough to keep her on her guard.

Halfway up the stair, she stopped short. It was time to make herself decorous for Master Thellen and Mistress Patrizia, but that was not what brought her to so abrupt a halt. While she stood frozen, the bell rang at the gate.

Preparations for her birthday celebration were already underway. People had been coming and going for days. This morning alone, the bell had rung half a dozen times to let in trains of provisions, companies of workmen, and a succession of messengers bearing replies to the Lord’s invitation.

This felt different. It felt . . . bright.

She did not know what she meant by that, but she had to see. Even if her tutors set her a punishment, she reckoned it worth the cost. She turned and ran back down the stair.

There was always a commotion in the courtyard these days, but when Merris came out into it, there was a circle of unexpected quiet near the outer gate. Brightness filled it, shot through with the tinkle of bells.

She blinked hard. The blur of light resolved into a pair of white horses with bells on their bitless bridles, and a pair of men dressed in the same striking color. By that she knew that the horses were not horses, and the men were men, but not exactly ordinary.

Everyone knew about Heralds. Books and stories were full of them.

Merris had never seen one. Forgotten Keep was small and out of the way, and her father involved himself only rarely with affairs of the royal court far away in Haven. Except for the occasional Bard wandering through to sing his songs, Forgotten Keep was as forgotten as its name.

Now not one Herald had appeared in the Keep, but two. She found that her mouth was hanging open. She shut it with a snap.

Everyone else seemed as taken aback as she was. Just as it dawned on Merris that someone ought to at least offer the Heralds a greeting, one of them swayed and sagged against the other.

The dazzle of what they were vanished abruptly. The one who had fainted was old, she realized, and the one who held him up was young. Inside their shining Whites, they were human—and the old one did not look well at all.

She ran forward without even stopping to think, calling to people who stood around with their mouths open. “Rolf! Gerent! Take the Companions to the stable. Remember they’re not horses, no matter what they look like. Danil—find the Healer. Move!”

People moved. Merris planted herself on the other side of the old Herald and took part of his weight, thinking distantly that one of the servants should do this. But she wanted to do something, however unsuitable, and that seemed like the most useful thing.

She met the young Herald’s brown eyes over the bowed white head. They were deeply worried. There was nothing she could do to soothe that worry, but she could say, “Come with me.”

The Herald nodded. He looked fairly done in himself, but he could walk. Between them, he and Merris carried the old Herald into the Keep and up to one of the guest rooms.

The bed was freshly made and the room was aired. The shutters were open to the late spring sunlight. Merris and the young Herald laid the old one carefully on the bed.

His breathing was rapid and shallow. His skin was clammy and his lips were blue. Merris opened her mouth to ask what had happened to him, but the young Herald staggered and sat down abruptly on the stool beside the bed.

The water jar was empty, but there was wine in the cupboard. Merris poured a few sips into one of the cups and made the Herald drink it. He choked and spluttered, but a little color came back into his cheeks.

“Good,” said Merris, reclaiming the cup. “We don’t need you passing out, too.”

He drew himself up. Apart from the glamour of the Whites, he looked perfectly ordinary: not too tall, not too short, well built and sturdy, with a pleasant, blunt-featured face and curly brown hair. There was nothing noble or heroic about that face, and she doubted he was highborn. He looked like half the villagers around Forgotten Keep.

“I’m Herald-Intern Coryn,” he said, “and this is Herald Isak.” His accent bore out her suspicions. It had a hint of a drawl in it, a countryman’s twang. “And you are . . . ?”

“Merris,” she said.

“Thank you, Merris,” he said. “We’ve lost our way, I think. Are we very far from the road to Nottaway?”

“It’s a day or two west of here,” she said.

He sighed, then sagged. She jumped toward him, but he had not fainted. It was relief, that was all.

He might have spoken or she might have asked questions, but the Healer arrived just then. She took in the scene with an all too sharp eye, shooed Merris out, and took both Heralds in hand.

Merris would have argued, but she had tutors waiting—and an extra hour’s worth of exercises in correct etiquette at banquets for being so drastically late. The exercises were deadly dull, but there was no getting out of them. There was a bargain, as she never failed to remember. This was her part of it.

It was two wildly frustrating days before Merris could escape the stranglehold of duty and discipline. The Heralds were still in the Keep—she was able to determine that much.

The old one, Isak, was very ill. Something to do with his heart, she gathered. The Healer was doing her best. The young Herald never left his elder’s side except for a daily visit to the Companions.

All this, Merris learned from obliging servants. Even with the flurry around her birthday, Heralds were a great excitement.

Merris’ tutors seemed determined to keep her from ever going near them again. Mistress Patrizia insisted that she be fitted for a trunkful of entirely new and to her mind completely unnecessary gowns, which took untold hours. When she was not strangling in folds of silk and brocade, Master Thellen had her memorizing endless lists of names and dates and places from one of his beloved and deadly dull chronicles, none of which had anything perceptible to do with either Darkwall or Forgotten Keep.

She came terribly close to asking him questions she should never even think about asking. “Is it true the last Lady but three used to take a monthly bath in infants’ blood? Are there really creatures of darkness in the caves below the Keep? Why has there always been a Lady but never a Lord, and how is it that she never marries but always adopts an heir?” Not to mention, “Why did she choose me? There are four Keeps between hers and ours, all of which have surplus daughters. What do I have that those ladies don’t?”

But she kept her questions bottled up inside as she always had, because her mother had told her to trust her instincts, and instinct told her not to speak of such things. On the surface it was all ordinary, dull, dry facts and ancient history, and so many gowns she would need an entire train of pack mules to carry them all.

Late the second day, as Merris dressed for dinner, Mistress Patrizia entered without knocking as she always did, and dismissed the maid. Merris looked at her in what she hoped was innocent surprise. “Mistress! What a pleasure to see you at this hour. Will you be joining us for dinner?”

“That would not be proper,” Mistress Patrizia said. She was a tall, thin, forbidding person at the best of times. Tonight she was ramrod-stiff. “I have a gift for you from our Lady.”

Merris’ brows went up. Such gifts were not uncommon, but usually it was a messenger from Darkwall who delivered them. As far as she knew, no such messenger had come.

As if in answer to her unspoken question, Mistress Patrizia said, “I have kept this at our Lady’s behest. It is a small thing, but she values it. She would be most pleased if you would wear it.”

She raised her hands. There was a small wooden box in them, such as jewels were kept in.

Merris took it slowly and opened it with fingers that for some reason wanted to tremble. She had had gifts like this before, but only on birthdays.

It was a pendant on a silver chain, a drop of dark amber in a spiral of silver. It felt warm in her hand and strangely alive, and the flecks in it seemed almost to move, swirling slowly around one another inside their prison of waxy stone.

It was a beautiful thing, but strange. The other gifts had been much more mundane: a book, a gown, a tutor. This made Merris’ skin prickle.

She made herself smile and be as polite as she had been trained to be, speaking words of thanks that she was not at all sure she meant. Mistress Patrizia watched her with peculiar fixity. She was supposed to wear the thing, that was clear.

She let Mistress Patrizia fasten the chain around her neck, trying hard not to shudder when the stone touched her skin. She resolved to get rid of it as soon as she was out of sight.

She had a moment of breathless fear that Mistress Patrizia would decide to go to dinner after all, but she was much too proper a servant. Merris stopped in the passageway to the dining hall, fumbling with the clasp. Her hands were shaking and the clasp was stiff. It would not come off.

She almost gave up and let it be, but her peculiar revulsion was growing stronger rather than weaker. She gritted her teeth and pulled hard. The chain broke. She thrust the stone into the pocket of her sleeve, where a lady might keep small and discreetly useful items.

Amber was as light almost as air, but this weighed her down out of all proportion to its size. Merris stopped thinking and acted. She turned aside to the garderobe and let the thing fall out of her sleeve into the odorous darkness. If and when she was asked, she could answer honestly that she had lost the pendant.

She took a deep breath, barely even gagging on the effluvium of the privy, and went to dinner with a lighter heart.

After dinner, at last, Merris had an hour to herself. Her maids were still at their own dinner, and her tutors were wherever they disappeared to when their duty to their Lady was done. She shed her voluminous skirts in favor of much more practical ones. With no one to stop her, she ventured out of her rooms.

It was a bright night, warm and moonlit. The garden her mother had made, that her father had kept up in Beatrice’s memory, was in full and fragrant bloom. Merris went on past it to the stables.

Companions had somewhat different needs than horses, according to the stories, but Forgotten Keep’s stables seemed to suit them well enough. Their stall doors were open so that they could come and go, and they were well bedded in clean straw, with full mangers and fresh water drawn from the Keep’s deep clear well.

The younger Herald was perched on a stool between the two stalls, cleaning bridles. They were ordinary bridles, belonging to the Keep’s horses; not the lovely, bitless ones ornamented with silver bells that she had seen on the Companions. Merris squatted beside him and reached for one of the many scraps of leather that he had spread around him, and started working soap into it with her fingers.

He stared at her as if he did not know what to make of her. A long white head came between them, followed by a massive white body.

Companions were not nearly as ethereal in person as they were in legend. They were broad-boned, heavy-set creatures with substantial heads . . . and silver hooves and clear blue eyes and manes and tails like white silk. Merris looked up at that deceptively horselike face and sighed.

“Selena says,” said the Herald, “that no, our life is not for you—but what you have ahead of you is just as remarkable.”

“I know that,” Merris said—a little sadly, because even in Forgotten Keep, a girl could dream of being Chosen. She reached up. The Companion lowered a soft nose into her palm and blew warm breath on it.

“She also says,” the Herald said, “that you don’t have much time. Whatever you do, don’t wear the pendant.”

Merris felt her eyes go round. There were all too many questions she could ask, but most of them were too foolish to bother with. She said, “Tell her I dropped it down the garderobe.”

“Things of that nature have a way of not staying dropped.”

Merris wondered if that was the Herald speaking, or the Companion speaking through him. Not that it mattered particularly. “What are you really here for?” she asked.

She peered around the Companion’s head. The Herald lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Isak took sick on the road. Your Keep was the closest place that was likely to have a Healer.”

He was telling the truth, as far as it went. Merris could tell. Still, she said, “I don’t believe in accidents.”

“Neither do I,” the Herald said. “Is it true what they say? You’re heir to Darkwall?”

She nodded.

He frowned. “You’re nothing like what I would expect.”

“What, pretentious? Full of myself? Too far above it all to sit in a stable aisle, cleaning bridles?”

He laughed, then flushed. “Well, that. And . . . well. Darkwall.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”

“No,” said Merris. “Tell me what you mean.”

His head shook again. The Companion pawed, then butted him, knocking him off his stool. He lay in the aisle and glared. “I can’t say that!”

The Companion shook its—her—mane and snorted wetly, not quite into his face.

He shoved her head aside and scrambled to his feet, still glaring. “Selena says,” he said, biting off the words, “that I should say, ‘You don’t look like something that would rule Darkwall. You’re too, well, clean.’ ”

“And that means?”

“I’m not even sure what it means,” he said angrily, but his anger did not seem to be directed at Merris. “It’s rumors, that’s all. Stories and a few poorly rhymed ballads. Darkwall isn’t just called that because it’s built on a black cliff. It has a bad reputation.”

“Why?” Merris demanded. “What do you know?”

“If the heir to Darkwall doesn’t know it,” he said, “maybe there’s nothing to know.”

She wanted to pick him up and shake him, but he was standing up and she was sitting on the floor, and he was a fair bit bigger than she was. She let her glare do it for her. “Suppose there’s something I haven’t been told, and a reason why. Tell me.”

“I told you, it’s just rumors. That the Lady is a socreress. That she keeps herself young with the blood of children, and rules a domain of magical creatures as well as humans.”

“I’ve heard those rumors,” Merris said. “I’ve also met the Lady. She’s not particularly young, and she’s been aging as she should.”

“Do you like her?”

That was a most peculiar question. It was also peculiarly perceptive. Merris answered it honestly. “No. No, I don’t. I don’t like any of the tutors she’s sent either. They’re all so cold. All duty, no humanity.”

“That’s not like you at all,” he said. Then he flushed again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—well, I did. But I shouldn’t have. I have serious deficiencies in tact and diplomacy.”

He sounded as if he was quoting someone—probably one of his teachers. Merris reflected that unlike her tutors, he was very likable indeed. She was thinking she could trust him.

Thoughts she had not been daring to think, and realizations she had not wanted to come to, were coming together in Merris’ head. She pulled herself up, staggering on knees that were suddenly weak.

The Companion’s shoulder was there, offering support. Over the broad back and arched neck, she met the Herald’s eyes.

“I’m nothing like the place I’m supposed to take charge of,” she said. “So tell me, why did she choose me? Why not someone who fits her better?”

Coryn shook his head. He did not know. Or—did not want to?

The Companion’s neck bent around. The blue eye was very keen. It saw everything she wanted it to see, and everything else, too.

“There are no accidents,” Merris said. “Please tell me you didn’t half-kill a Herald just to provide an excuse.”

The white head shook from side to side. Some things, the Companion seemed to be saying, were beyond even her powers—even if she had wanted any such thing.

“I have to go,” Merris said. She was running away, of course, but it was all too much. She needed to be alone.

She did not pause to see if Coryn tried to stop her. The Companion did not, and that was what mattered.

Merris lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her maids snored in ragged harmony. The moon was setting. Its light reminded her of the shimmer of a Companion’s coat.

One reason why Darkwall’s Lady might have gone so far afield in search of an heir was because the farther from her Keep she went, the less likely it would be that people would have heard the stories. The Keeps kept to themselves. When they made alliances, they did so circumspectly. People in this country were not given to idle gossip.

Maybe Darkwall fostered that. If sorcery existed, and if the Lady practiced it, what better way to protect herself than by creating a buffer all around her of domains that asked no questions and shared no tales? Even Heralds seldom came here, as if something kept them from noticing this country existed.

Merris drew into a knot. Her stomach felt sick. This was the wildest speculation, based on practically nothing at all. She was afraid, that was all, because in less than a month she would have to leave everything she had ever known. She was inventing stories and imagining horrors.

But the pit of her stomach did not believe that. Deep down, where her instincts were, she believed the stories.

Then why did the Lady want her? What did Merris have that Darkwall could use?

Youth, of course. Fertility, maybe. Maybe her innocence was meant to lighten a dark place and make a cold heart warm again.

Somehow Merris found it hard to believe that. What did sorcery want with innocence?

Blood of children.

Merris sat up so fast her head spun. The moon was almost down. Its last glimmer caught the box on her bedside table: a small wooden box, very plain, such as jewels were stored in.

She had not put it there.

One of the servants must have found it and, ever helpful, put it where she could see it. It was only a box, simply made and fit for use. It must be empty. She had dropped its contents down the garderobe.

Something was in it. Something that made her skin creep.

She got up suddenly, picked up the box in a fold of her nightgown and flung it out the window. It was a profoundly childish and possibly dangerous thing to do, but she did not care. Let the garden keep it. She did not want it anywhere near her.

In the morning the heir of Darkwall announced that she would retreat for a while to the shrine of Astera. She had a great task ahead of her, and considerable responsibility. She felt a need to invoke the Goddess’ guidance.

“I’ll be back before my birthday,” she promised her father.

Lord Bertrand was quite old now and growing frail, but his mind was as clear as ever. He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Of course you need a little time to reflect. These are great changes which you face, and you are young.”

He did not make her promise to honor the bargain. That would have insulted them both. He met her eyes and nodded, understanding more than maybe she herself did.

With his blessing on her head, she left within the hour. One of her maids rode with her, and a pair of guards. She was gone before either of her tutors could have missed her.

It was not terribly far to the shrine—half a day’s easy ride in late-spring sunlight—and the road was well maintained if not much traveled. Merris found her fears receding as she left the bulk of the Keep behind. In their place was a growing conviction. This was the right thing to do.

Tonight the moon was almost full, riding high over the guesthouse of the shrine. Astera’s priestesses had finished their night office some time before. The purity of their voices still shivered in Merris’ skin.

Merris’ maid Gerda was a sound sleeper. Merris had chosen her for it. The guards had not been allowed within the walls of the shrine; they had had to camp outside in a place reserved for their kind. It overlooked the main road but not, she had taken care to observe, a track that wound away through the woods.

She had to go on foot—there was no discreet way to liberate her horse from the stable. She regretted that, but some things could not be helped. Dressed in the plainest clothes and the most sensible shoes she had been able to find, with a small pack and a full water bottle, she slipped out into the moonlight.

Her heart was beating faster than her brisk pace might have called for, and her hands were cold. She had put fear aside, but that did not mean she was calm. No one in the world knew what she was doing. This was a very dangerous thing to do—but she had to do it. There was no choice.

Past the first turn in the track, out of sight of the shrine, the moonlight grew suddenly, blindingly bright. Merris stopped, shading her eyes against the dazzle.

It faded as suddenly as it had swelled, distilling into a white horse-body and the dark shape of a rider. Merris looked at them in a kind of despair. “I’m not trying to run out on the bargain,” she said.

“It looks as if you’re running toward it,” said Coryn.

He was not wearing Whites. His Companion’s gear was dark and plain—an ordinary saddle and a leather halter with reins buckled to the side rings. The Herald must have raided the tack room in the Keep.

There was still no mistaking what his mount was, but Merris had to give him credit for trying. “I won’t let you take me back,” she said. “This is something I have to do.”

“I know,” Coryn said. “Selena knows, too. We won’t stop you—but we won’t let you go alone either.”

Merris was ashamed to admit how deep her relief was. It made her voice sharper and her words more cutting. “What, you can’t wait out your Internship before you get yourself killed in the line of duty?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Coryn said. “Maybe you’re not. Either way, you should have someone at your back.”

“Why? Have you Gifts that can help? Can you transport me there instantly? Read the Lady’s mind? Blast the Keep into rubble?”

His cheeks were bright red. “I’m nothing either special or spectacular as Heralds go, and the gods know I’m not highborn. But I am a Herald. The King’s authority rides with me. If this bargain is unholy or unsanctioned, there are things I can do to put a stop to it.”

“Yes,” she said nastily. “You can die for being too stupidly brave to stay away.”

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Maybe so. And maybe my death will count for something. We’re going with you.”

She hissed in frustration. If she pushed past, he only had to follow. He had a mount and she had none. He could gallop ahead and be there hours before her.

She stared him down until he stepped aside. When she went on down the road, so did he, with his Companion clopping behind like a common horse.

She wished they would go away—but she was glad they were there. If nothing else, and if they survived, they were witnesses. They could tell the world what Darkwall’s Lady was.

It was strange to be walking roads that Merris had only known on maps, and to see the country come alive around her. For a while she walked, then she rode because the Companion insisted—saying through the Herald that she was flagging and the day was not getting any younger, and she had to have some strength left when she came to her destination. On that broad back she rode through a wilderness of trees, over stony streams and across sudden outcroppings of rock and scree.

She had chosen Astera’s shrine because it was closer to Darkwall than Forbidden Keep, but it was still a long way. They were most of three days on the road, in rain and sun, camping by moonlight and starlight. Coryn had a useful Gift after all: he could start a fire out of anything, though when she challenged him to do it with a cup of rainwater, he responded with a flat stare. He had a sense of humor, but it had limits.

Late on the third day after Merris slipped out of the shrine, they came around a curve in the road—which by then was little more than a goat track—and looked down on a valley she had never seen before in her life. And yet she knew it as if she had grown up there.

Its walls were steep and wooded. A river ran through the bottom, deep and wide enough for traders’ boats. Villages clustered along it. High above it on a black rock sat the Keep, crouching like a raven over a rich store of carrion.

Merris had expected to find the valley sinister. She could apply that word to the Keep, but the rest was beautiful. The fields cut from the woods and the hillsides were rich with ripening crops. Vineyards clung to the slopes higher up, thickly clustered with grapes.

Darkwall wine was famous hereabouts. It was a dark vintage, strong and sweet. It was wonderful in winter, heated with spices, or diluted and chilled with spring water in the summer.

The memory was so vivid that Merris could taste it. She swallowed and made her eyes lift past the vineyards to the Keep.

It was black, built of the same stone as the rock it stood on. A round tower stood at each corner. The flag that flew from it was black, with the blood-red outline of a raven flying on it.

The Companion moved without her riders’ asking, picking her way down the steep track. On the road she had found a mud-wallow, then a patch of brown dust to roll in until she was covered from ears to tail. She was still white, but she had managed to dull the brilliance of her coat.

It was a long way down to the river. The track brought them into the village at the foot of the crag, in among a cluster of houses. Fishing nets hung on walls, and boats were drawn up in alleyways and along the riverbank.

There were people out and about. They looked much like the villagers of Forgotten Keep, or like Coryn for that matter. The strangers attracted glances, mildly curious but neither greatly interested nor hostile. There must be enough trade on the river, and enough traders coming through, that unfamiliar faces were not unheard of.

Merris had meant to find either an inn where questions could be answered in travelers’ tales, or a temple where the priests might be welcoming to strangers. But there was no inn. One or two places looked like taverns, but they had a peculiarly deserted look. And there was no temple.

Every village that Merris knew had a temple, if not two or more. There was none here. “So where do travelers rest?” she wondered aloud. “And where does anyone worship?”

“On their boats, I suppose,” Coryn said, “or they go elsewhere.” He frowned. “It is odd. Maybe there’s a market town downstream?”

“I don’t know of any,” said Merris. “This is the chief town that answers to the Keep. Look, there’s the marketplace.” She pointed with her chin to an open space visible down the alley.

“Except there’s no market,” Coryn pointed out.

“It’s not market day, then,” Merris said, but her voice lacked conviction. “I could swear the books talk about the market. And there should be an inn—the Raven’s Nest.”

“I gather we’re not encouraged to spend the night here,” Coryn said.

He touched his heels to Selena’s sides. She went forward obligingly, playing the role of ordinary horse with perceptible relish. Merris thought she overdid the floppy ears and plodding step, but these fishermen were unlikely to know the difference.

Their lack of curiosity was beginning to bother her. No inn, no market, no temple—did traders really stop here? Or did they unload their cargo and get out as fast as they could? There were no other horses in the streets, not even a donkey, and no dogs or cats. Selena was the only fourfooted creature that Merris could see.

“No birds either,” Coryn said under his breath. “Does the air feel dead to you?”

Merris started to ask him what he meant, but she changed her mind. She suspected she knew.

The sun was bright and the breeze was warm, with a smell of water and fish and baking bread, all very pleasant. And yet it felt hollow—false. As if it were a painted backdrop, concealing . . . what? A fane of monsters?

She almost laughed. Her imagination was running away with her. There were fish in the river: she saw one leap well out toward the middle, a silver flash. And yes, there were birds. Black wings circled overhead: a pair of ravens, flying high above the Keep.

She had to get up there. If there was nowhere to stay in town, travelers must be expected to stay in the Keep. She slipped down off the Companion’s back, too quick for Coryn to stop her.

In a town with narrow alleys and people coming and going at inconvenient intervals, a man on a horse, or a creature like one, was at a distinct disadvantage. Merris gambled that the Herald would not leave his Companion. It seemed she was right.

Her back felt cold without Coryn and Selena to watch it. She clamped down the urge to run back to them. This was too dangerous to share with anyone else.

She was beginning to think she had miscalculated. There was nothing to put her finger on, but what she felt here was the wrong kind of wrongness. People were too quiet—too complaisant.

There were no children. No young adults, either. Everyone was older than she was—but not very much older. There were no old people, either. No white heads or wrinkled faces. Everyone seemed to be between the ages of twenty and fifty.

Young people could be in school, except there was no temple for them to be educated in. Old people should be sunning themselves in doorways or manning stalls in the market.

She hesitated at the bottom of the ascent to the Keep. It was supposed to be hers, but it felt completely alien.

Coryn was gaining on her. The Companion was faster than Merris had thought, and more agile at sidestepping people and obstacles. Merris bit her lip and started up the slope.

Part of the way was straight ascent, and part was a series of steps carved in the rock. There were no guards at the gate above, but Merris did not make the mistake of thinking it was not watched. What at first she took for carved ravens perched on the summit of the arch moved suddenly.

One spread its wings. The other let out a single sharp caw.

It seemed she had rung the bell. With clammy hands and thudding heart, she passed through the open gate.

The Keep was deserted. The passages were empty and the rooms untenanted. Cobwebs barred windows and flung sticky barriers across doorways.

Merris searched from dungeon to tower with growing desperation. The only inhabitants were ravens roosting on the battlements. From the thickness of dust in the rooms, no human being had lived there for years.

She dropped in a heap on the top of the tower. The wind blew cool on her sweating face, even while the sun shone strong enough to burn. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Coryn squatted on his haunches next to her. She squinted, but he seemed real. He was out of breath, as if he had been running to catch her.

“How can it be empty?” she asked him. “There is a Lady, or someone who claims to be. She visits me every year. She sends my father gold and soldiers. I’ve had nurses and tutors. They’ve taught me all about this place, the staff, the servants, and who or what belongs in every room. How can it be deserted?”

“The Lady must have another residence,” Coryn said. “A manor, maybe.”

“Then why don’t I know about it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Then he went still, as if straining to hear something faint and far away.

“After the sun goes down,” he said, “Selena says, look below.”

Merris frowned. “What? What does she mean?”

“Look below, she says. That’s all.”

“There are dungeons below,” said Merris. “Caves, really. Part of the river flows through them.”

“Then that’s where we’ll look,” he said. “We can rest while the daylight lasts. There’s no food here and I don’t trust the water, but I brought provisions.”

He held up the rucksack he had brought from Forgotten Keep. It was bulging. “Bread from the bakery in town,” he said, “and the water we brought from the spring at last night’s camp, and a few odds and ends. We’ll be comfortable while we wait.”

Merris was not hungry, but she was thirsty. She sipped from one of the water bottles while Coryn ate half a still-warm, crusty loaf with cheese melted inside.

It smelled so good that Merris was tempted after all. She managed a few bites. They helped more than she would have expected. She felt stronger.

When they had both had enough to eat and drink, Coryn said, “I saw beds below. Maybe we should get some proper rest.”

Merris shook her head. “I need the sun,” she said. “You go, if you’re too tired.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll stay with you.”

“But your Companion—”

“She’s down below,” he said. “She’ll be safe.”

“As long as it’s daylight,” Merris said, and shivered. He looked as pale as she felt.

They propped themselves against the parapet, side by side but not touching. Merris tilted her head back and let the sun bathe her face. Her eyelids drooped shut.

“Merris.”

She started awake. Coryn was bending over her. In the confusion of sudden waking, she wondered why he had been bathing in blood.

Before horror could consume her, she realized that it was not blood; it was sunset light. Coryn was his honest self, with rumpled hair and travel-stained clothes.

He was much more awake than she was. “I’ve been exploring. I found torches,” he said.

She nodded. There were no words in her. She took one of the torches, leaving him with the other two.

The sun was sinking fast. She did not need Coryn’s encouragement to follow him out of the open air into the dusty stillness of the Keep.

The shadows were thick there. Once or twice as they worked their way down from the tower, Merris thought she saw someone, or something, flitting around a corner. It must be a trick of the light.

No matter how often she told herself she had a right to be here, she felt more like an invader the farther down she went. She would have loved to run out the gate and away and never come back, but neither she nor Coryn paused there. They kept on going toward the entrance her maps had shown her, down below the gate in an empty and echoing hall.

Coryn lit the torches in that hall, laying a finger and a hard stare on each until it burst into flame. The light put the dark to flight but made the shadows somehow stronger. In its flicker, they seemed more like living shapes than ever.

Merris had to lead, since she knew the way. Coryn walked close behind her. He was a solid presence compared to the shadows that crowded thicker as they descended the narrow stair.

There was a cold smell in that place, like old stone and deep water. The air that breathed upward made the small hairs stand up on Merris’ body.

She desperately wanted to stop, turn, run back into the last of the daylight. Every part of her that was wise or prudent was shouting at her to do exactly that. But she had come to find out the truth. She had to know. She could not seal the bargain without some knowledge of what she was agreeing to.

And if it killed her?

Then it did. She had been bound to this since before she was born.

It was a long way down. Her legs were aching and her breath was coming hard, well before she came to the end of the stair. Her torch lit nothing but a tunnel carved out of the black rock, and steps descending below her.

They must be at least as far down as the river by now, if not even farther. She was stopping more often, and it was taking longer for her legs to stop shaking before she could go on.

Coryn had not said a word in all that descent. She kept looking back, terrified that he had vanished, or perhaps worse, that his spirit had been taken away and there was nothing left to follow her but an empty shell. Each time, he met her stare with one just as tired and almost as wild.

Just when she was about to give up, the steps ended. She almost fell down, but Coryn caught her and pulled her back onto her feet. He was breathing hard himself. Even in the ruddy torchlight his face was pallid.

He rummaged in the pack he was still carrying and pulled out a water bottle. She drank gratefully, then handed it to him so that he could drink, too.

They were still in a tunnel. The cold, damp smell was stronger. The only way to go was forward, unless they wanted to climb all the way back the way they had come.

Merris strained to remember the maps she had studied. Her memory was good, but the darkness muffled it. She should be at the level of the underground river, or just above it, but she was not sure which. The tunnel branched—at least, she thought it did. One way wound through a succession of caves to a blind end. The other led to the river.

First she had to get to the branch. Then she had to remember which direction to take. She raised her torch, though her arm was as tired as the rest of her, and pressed on.

Right, she thought. No, left.

The tunnel branched as she had thought. But which way? The wrong one would lose them both in the bowels of the earth.

She closed her eyes. In the dark behind her eyelids, she tried to picture the map. It had been in a book that Master Thellen gave her to study, tucked away in the back with the dry notes and the endless rambling appendices. She could feel the book in her hands, the worn leather cover and the crumbling pages.

There it was. She almost lost it, she was so glad to have found it. She struggled to keep it steady, then to focus on the part that she needed.

Right. She should turn right. She almost turned left out of sheer doubt and panic, but she gritted her teeth and followed her first inclination. The cold smell was stronger in that direction, or so she told herself. It must be the smell of the underground river.

The passage widened some distance past the turn. Coryn moved up beside her. Her hand reached out and clasped his. His fingers were as clammy as hers, but they warmed with the contact. Hand in hand like children, they went on into the dark.

The tunnel did not divide again, which gave Merris hope that it was the right way. It twisted and turned like some vast worm’s trail, sometimes doubling back on itself. Their torches began to burn low.

Merris was beyond exhaustion. One more turn, one more doubling—just one more. Then she would worry about the one after that.

She walked straight into a wall that should not have been there. Only slowly did she realize it was a door. She pushed. It gave, swinging outward.

There was the hall she remembered from the map, and there was the dark, oily slide of the river running through it. If the tunnel had been a worm’s track, this had the look and feel of a dragon’s lair.

All the stone in the Keep and the tunnels had been black, but this hall was golden red: the same color as the stone that Mistress Patrizia had given Merris. Curtains and streamers of waxy stone streamed down the sides and pooled in columns on the floor. It almost looked like flesh—even to the veins that ran through it.

It was calling to Merris. Even the little time that she had worn the stone had been enough. It had marked her—bound her. And, she realized in a kind of despair, it had brought her here.

Coryn’s fingers tightened on Merris’. His breath hissed.

Merris willed him not to speak. There was something in the center of the hall. It looked like a depression in the floor, a long, shallow oval, with a statue standing over it.

The statue moved. Like the crows on the arch of Darkwall Keep’s gate, it was alive. Slowly, in the fading torchlight, it took shape as a tall, narrow figure in a dark cloak.

The hood slipped back. Darkwall’s Lady looked directly at Merris. She was the same as Merris remembered: gaunt, aging, not beautiful, though her features had a certain stark elegance. Her graying hair was loose, falling on her shoulders.

She smiled. “Welcome, my child,” she said. Her voice echoed in the cavern, reverberating from wall to wall and back again, over and over.

Merris gasped and clapped her hands to her ears. Coryn had fallen flat.

“Your eagerness is charming,” the Lady said. The echoes were fainter now, fading away. Merris dared to lower her hands from her ears.

The Lady spoke again, this time without echoes at all. “Come here.”

Merris found she could not resist. She left Coryn lying and walked slowly across the hall. It must be her imagination that the Lady’s cloak was made of dark scales, and the bottom of it wound away in a long tail. It was her shadow, that was all.

The torch was guttering badly now. Both of Coryn’s had gone out when he fell. That must be why the river looked as if it ran not with water but with blood, and the basin in front of the Lady brimmed over with glistening darkred liquid.

“There’s no one in the keep,” Merris said. “All your gold and soldiers—where did they come from?”

“I do have a manor,” said the Lady, “and loyal men in my villages.”

It sounded like an answer, but it did not feel like one. When Merris tried to back away, she found she could not move.

The Lady came toward her. She could swear she heard the rustle of scales. The Lady’s gait was eerily smooth—but ladies were trained to walk so, gliding in their long skirts. She could not be slithering over that too-smooth floor like a great snake.

Her hand brushed Merris’ cheek. It was warm and dry. “So young,” she said. “And growing quite lovely. We have not always been blessed with beauty. Your bravery is impressive, though some might call it foolishness. Is that your young man yonder? Or a loyal servant?”

“A friend,” Merris said thickly. “It’s just a friend.”

The Lady’s smile was as patronizing as any adult’s in the face of a child’s silliness. “Just a friend. Yes. We may keep him, if he pleases us. Every Lady needs a friend.”

Merris bit her tongue. There was no way she was going to tell the Lady what Coryn really was. She had been very, very foolish—just how foolish, she was only beginning to understand. If she lived through this, she would never again sneer at a character in a story for doing something so demonstrably stupid that the veriest idiot would know better.

And no, she was not going to blame Coryn’s Companion for getting her into this. She had done it herself, with or without anyone else’s advice.

The Lady’s hands came to rest on her shoulders. They applied no pressure, but they held Merris rooted. Her eyes were black, glittering in the waning light. “So lovely,” she said. “So young. Blood so sweet with innocence—and just a tang of arrogance. You highborn are so sure that the world is yours to own.”

“And you’re not highborn?”

The Lady blinked. Had it startled her that Merris could still speak? But then she laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “I am much, much older than your Lords and princes.”

Merris fought to get away. She could not move at all. The Lady’s nostrils flared, as if Merris’ anger and frustration and her swelling terror had an intoxicating scent.

“So sweet,” the Lady said, almost a purr. “So strong. I did well when I chose you. Young blood is precious, but young blood that is strong—that serves me very well indeed.”

“I’ll never serve you,” Merris said through gritted teeth.

“No,” said the Lady, “but your blood and body will. It was most enterprising of you to come early. Convenient, too. Pomp and circumstance have their amusements, but the crowds can be distracting—and there are so many questions. I’ll take you now, then, with many thanks.”

Her grip tightened. Her smile had grown wide—unnaturally so. Her face was changing, stretching. It had a strange look.

A snake, Merris thought, getting ready to swallow its prey. Except, why swallow her own heir? What—

A snake also shed its skin. Suppose it put on another one. Younger, prettier, stronger—able to feign the appearance of humanity, and thereby to avoid suspicion while it fed on its people.

The Lady did not want Merris. She wanted Merris’ body. And Merris had walked straight into her lair.

She must have been doing this for years—centuries. Life after life, body after body. But . . .

“Where are the children?” Merris asked. “The old people, I could see why they would go to feed you, but if there aren’t any children, where is the next generation?”

The Lady stopped. Her face was almost but not quite stretched out of recognition. She could still talk, though the words sounded odd. “I was hungry. Had to feed—keep the body alive. The cattle will breed more. Soon. Now the new body is here.”

Merris fought with every scrap of will she had, but she was bound fast. The Lady was not human any more; she was all mouth and supple, scaled body. She rose above Merris, maw gaping wide.

The world exploded in white fire. Someone was shouting—screaming words that made no sense at all.

The spell on Merris let go. She dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. A white wall reared above her. Silver hooves struck, battering the great worm.

It burst like a bladder. Black blood sprayed. The stink of it turned Merris’ stomach inside out. Everything that had ever died or rotted was in that stench, and every festering sickness.

Selena trampled it into the cave’s floor. Her teeth were bared and her ears flat to her skull. Coryn clung to her back, making no effort to stop her, though she went on long after there was nothing more than a wet smear on the waxy stone.

The Companion stood still. Her light had dwindled to a moonlit glow. Her ears were still slanted back and her nostrils were wrinkled in disgust, but her fury was gone.

She blew out her breath in a sudden and explosive snort. Coryn jumped so hard he almost fell off. Merris found herself on her feet, arms wrapped around Selena’s neck, holding on for dear life.

A tiny part of her gibbered that she could be killed, too. She was the Lady’s heir, after all.

But Selena was calming down even more, relaxing little by little. Her neck bent around, but only to nuzzle Merris’ hair. She sighed into it; if she had been human, Merris thought she would have sagged in relief.

“We got here in time,” Coryn said for his Companion. “Dear gods, that was close!”

“Did you know?” Merris asked. “What she was?”

“We suspected,” Coryn said. He had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “Selena is sorry she let you be bait. She’s also sorry she took so long to get here. She had to wait for the change, to catch the thing at its weakest point, when it was completely focused on you. But still . . . that was close.”

Merris thrust herself away from the Companion. The flash of temper warmed her, which was a good thing—she had been cold to the bone. “I did not let anyone do anything. Any stupidity I committed, I did entirely on my own.”

:And bravery, too.:

That was not a voice, precisely. It was a woman’s, or at least female. Blue eyes glowed in it.

The Companion’s approval washed over Merris. It was a gift. Merris decided, after due consideration, to accept it.

By the day before Merris’ birthday, Herald Isak was well enough to sit in the garden and enjoy his Companion’s company. It was a beautiful day, not too warm for the time of year, and the roses were in full bloom.

There was still going to be a celebration, though Darkwall’s Lady would not be attending it. People from Forgotten Keep were in Darkwall, helping its people to recover from their spell-born confusion and the grief and rage that came with it. Merris had come back from there the day before, because she needed to see her father and her childhood home again—and because Coryn’s Companion had told her she should.

Selena was there, too, with Coryn. The Companion had allowed Merris to braid roses in her mane. Coryn seemed to think she looked silly, but she was pleased with herself. Selena was more than a little vain.

Herald Isak smiled at them. “It was good of you to come back,” he said to Merris.

“I couldn’t refuse a Companion’s summons,” she said, “and I wanted to be here.”

He nodded. “You’ve done well. Darkwall will prosper now, I think.”

“I hope so,” she said. Something about his smile made her add, “It’s true, isn’t it? You didn’t come here by accident. You were sent to deal with Darkwall.”

“We were exploring the region,” he admitted, “and we meant to investigate certain rumors that we had heard. We weren’t quite expecting matters to turn out as they did. We were thinking more on the lines of saving an innocent from a terrible fate, then making what order we could.”

“And so you did,” she said. “I’m grateful.”

“We’re grateful to you for proving yourself so well fit for the office.”

“Am I?” she asked. “I’m hardly more than a child. Now that . . . thing . . . is gone, someone else can take the Keep. Someone older. Wiser. Better fit to rule.”

“But,” said Isak, “you were raised and trained for it. It was meant to be a ruse, an elaborate lie, but it was well done. We’ve already sent our recommendation to the King, and we’re sure he’ll approve it. You are the Lady of Darkwall.”

Merris supposed she should raise more of a fuss, but the truth was, she agreed with him. It scared her—and well it should. Darkwall had a long way to go before it felt like home. But with her father’s help and maybe some assistance from the King as well, she could turn that poor broken valley into the prosperous domain it had pretended to be.

“And, of course,” Isak continued through the babble of her thoughts, “now the spell is broken and these lands are open to us again, Heralds will come here more often. In fact, his majesty wonders if Darkwall would be amenable to the presence of one of his own for a while, to help as needed and guide when he can.”

“I’m sure Darkwall would be pleased to accept such a gift,” Merris said. Her words were cool, but her heart was beating hard. “You’ll be coming to Darkwall, then? Are you well enough to travel?”

“I will be,” Isak said, “but I’m not the one the King has in mind.” His smile slanted toward Coryn. “There is one whose Internship is just about complete, who is ready for a posting. His Majesty wonders if, since he and his Companion have served Darkwall so well already, whether—”

It was the height of impoliteness to interrupt, and a gentleperson never let out a whoop, but Merris was guilty of the one and Coryn of the other. “Yes!” she said through his eruption. “Yes, we would be pleased.”

She glared at him. He scowled back. Then they grinned. Selena pushed between them, snorting and shaking rose petals from her mane. Let them never forget, her every move said, to whom the credit really belonged.

“Never!” they said together—then broke out laughing.

It was going to be a very interesting association.

Not only that, thought Merris. Partnership, too. And above all, and perhaps most best of all, friendship.

NAUGHT BUT DUTY

by Michael Z. Williamson

Michael Z. Williamson is variously, an immigrant from the UK and Canada, a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, a bladesmith, and a science fiction, fantasy, military fiction, technical author and political satirist. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife Gail, whom he helped graduate Army Basic Training at age thirty-six, their children Morrigan and Eric, and various cats that will assist in taking over the world any day now. He can be found online at

www.MichaelZWilliamson.com

and

www.SharpPointyThings.com

THE aftermath of a battle was always confusing and ugly. Arden rode through the fractured pockets of suffering, surveying everything with trained eyes. His concern was practical, casualties and effect; there was little pleasure in this aspect.

Pleasure came from a well-planned and executed attack, a lightning raid against a larger force that inflicted casualties while keeping his own troops whole, a good maneuver around the flank of a worthy foe, or a feint that misdirected an enemy so the Toughs cracked his shield wall or line of battle.

The burning huts, the moaning, writhing bodies and the indignities and rape weren’t pleasurable to any but the crass, the coward, or the pervert. A common soldier could be forgiven a few hours’ brutality in the aftermath, his partner’s blood still splashed on his tunic. But pain inflicted against helpless civilians as a punitive measure was the mark of a scared weakling.

Crass, coward, pervert, scared weakling. Those words well described the Toughs’ current employer, Lord Miklamar. Jobs had been few and far between, and it had been necessary to move farther south to find employ. But the quality of the ruler varied greatly, and Arden had little time to sound out prospects. His concern had been for good and reliable pay with enough action to keep his troops interested, not enough to wipe out them or his reputation. Here in Acabarrin, the petty lords paid well enough, and the action was steady. But with the King dead, the squabbling princes and heirs, vassal-lords and slavering, powermad seekers were carving the corpse of the Kingdom to nothing. He’d known nothing of Miklamar’s reputation when he accepted the contract. He despised the man now that he did.

Arden’s reputation, and that of the Toughs, was still safe. Barring an occasional looted trinket and scavenged arms and armor, his soldiers had left the village alone, and were drawn back up in formation awaiting his orders. The colors of a household unit they had not, but discipline, pride, and the poise of professionals they did.

Arden grimaced a bare fraction of an inch; watching six of Miklamar’s troops stretch a young woman, girl really, out on the ground. She screamed as they tore at her silken clothes. No mere peasant, she, but more likely the daughter of the chief or mayor, whatever he would be called around this land. Arden watched, acting as witness. Little he could do, other than remember the event. Nearby, others hacked a young man to pieces for the crime of having dared protect his house with a pruning hook.

Fire and blood tinged the air, turning the fresh breeze sickly sweet and metallic. Such a sunset was an ill omen for others. Arden turned his mount and headed out from the village, back past the lines of the allied force.

Ahead was the mounted figure he’d have to deal with, no matter how much it disgusted him. Shakis, the regional deputy to Miklamar, and the mind behind this battle. If “battle” could be applied to a bloody, one-sided slaughter and the present butchery.

He nodded in salute as he drew up. It was respect for the rank of the man who had bought his services, and nothing more. The gesture was not returned, which was as he expected.

“Lord Shakis, I see no point in brutalizing such peasants as these. It hardly seems worth the effort.” It was a hint, and far more diplomatic than he wanted to phrase it. “There are other enemies we could seek.”

Shakis gazed at him. The sneering contempt he had for the “mercenary” was concealed, but cut through to the surface anyway, flickering firelight from a blazing roof making it an even uglier caricature.

“It serves many purposes. The peasants will spread the word, that resistance brings only woe. It improves the take and the pay for my men. And it allows them some release, to take vengeance on enemy scum. It ensures they will have the right mindset for next time.”

My men, Arden thought. Only male soldiers here. Arden would say my troops, because one in twenty was a woman. That had been part of the contract negotiations, too, as had swearing fealty to their employer’s god. Arden had conceded on a temporary allegiance to their god, whose name he’d already forgotten, but had demanded his women warriors be kept. He would have canceled the bargain otherwise. All his soldiers were worthy, and he wouldn’t allow any suggestion otherwise.

The right mindset, he thought. That of the bully and the coward and the robber. His own sneering contempt was locked down deep. It was not something he would share. No successful mercenary did.

“After the evening’s Triumph, will there be another movement?” he asked evenly.

Shakis missed the sarcasm, or ignored it, and said, “There will. Two more towns along this front require attention. Each will be a harder fight. Are your men up to it?”

“My troops are,” he agreed. “If you are done with us for now, my troops and I will encamp for the night, about a mile south. We are in need of rest and to care for our gear and horses.”

“As you wish, though the revelry will last all night.” Shakis chuckled and licked his lips slightly. The man was handsome enough physically, but his demeanor would strike fear into any civilian wench unlucky enough to meet him.

Arden wished he’d known of that ahead of time.

“Rest, and care of our gear and horses,” he repeated. “We have our own revels planned.” With ale they’d brought and hired wenches who were part of the entourage. Women who didn’t require a fight and wouldn’t slice your throat if you passed out. Ale that wasn’t poisoned at the last minute, or badly brewed and rotten. Though the vengeance and poison were part of Shakis’ calculations, most certainly, so that he could exact a price in response. Unprofessional. A professional took pride in his work, but didn’t needlessly create more.

Another day, another battle. The town of Kiri. Arden scarcely remembered which were which anymore. It was easy to remember the towns where tough, honorable battles were fought. Likewise the ones where they’d rescued an employer’s forces. The little villages, however, were never memorable, which made him uncomfortable. They were people, too.

The price of honor, he thought. The stock in trade of a mercenary company was its competence and reliability. The ragged bands of sword fodder never amounted to much, nor earned much. Only the best units did.

Which made those best the equal of any state or nation’s army in quality and outlook. Which offended said “official” armies and earned sneers. Sneers the Toughs and the few outfits like them knew were part jealousy and part ignorance. And once you knew you were morally above the people you worked for . . .

It was rough work, and a conscience was both necessary and a hindrance. The Toughs owed allegiance to each other only. They protected each other at work, and in the taverns and camps afterward. They thought not too hard about their opponents of the moment, who would shortly be defeated or dead as part of a cold deal and a week’s pay and food.

So Arden, as Kenchen before him, Ryala before Kenchen, and Thoral who’d founded the Toughs tried for only the best contracts. Supporting a proud state at its border or chasing bandits were the choicest tasks. Caravan escort was boring but honorable, as was guard duty at a border town or trading center. But there were few such jobs, and between starvation and ethics was a gray line.

Once again the Toughs cracked the defenses of the town that stood in the way of Miklamar’s plan for expansion or peace or world conquest or whatever his motivation was. Were Arden a strategic planner for a nation, he’d find that information and use it. As a mercenary commander, he stuck to the closer, more local concerns of food, support, and pay. Thinking too much made working for such people harder.

Once again, the rape, pillage, arson, and looting began, the cowardly local troops reflecting the manner of their leader, as was always the case.

Arden wheeled his mount away from the spectacle, assured his own wounded and dead was being cared for by their sergeants, rode through the healthy ranks, and nodded in salute. He always recognized his troops for doing well.

Shakis was waiting at the rear, as always. “Arden, you have done well again, for mercenaries,” he said as Arden entered his tent.

Such a greeting. “Well for mercenaries.” As if sword wounds felt different to the vanquished, depending on the colors worn by the soldier thrusting it home.

“I thank you,” he said.

“The campaign proceeds. We will keep your men another month, as we asked.”

“As long as they are paid, they will remain loyal to the contract,” he hinted.

Shakis barely scowled and with a nod one of his lackeys dropped a sack of coin in front of Arden. Arden took the time to count it. Those two acts summed up the relationship perfectly. Arden didn’t trust his employer, and the man was fervent enough in his religion to imagine that people should want to risk their lives for it.

Not for the first time, Arden pitied the towns falling to this excuse for a man.

Then it was out to ride patrol. Everyone took turns at the duties of camp and skirmish, even the squadron leaders and Arden himself. No good commander could understand the working soldiers without sharing in the menial tasks. Occasionally, he exercised his privilege not to, but it was good practice and good inspiration, so he dealt with the muck and tedium and did it most of the time.

He met up with Balyat and two newer riders. Balyat and he were the scouts for the ride, the others backup and messengers if needed, and would gain experience in the skill.

Patrol gave him the chance to explore the area consciously, and to get a feel for it inside. It allowed part of his mind to relax and tour the terrain—rolling hills and copses of trees with small, growing streams. It let him ponder the job they had contracted.

The work was “good” in a sense. It was honest fighting at their end, the pay decent, and they had the benefits of a real army nearby. All the mercenaries were in the pay of one lord, meaning they weren’t killing other professionals. Of course, they were killing innocent people and leaving the survivors to suffer at the hands of that lord.

Fausan, Mirdu, Askauk, Shelin . . . tiny hamlets, nothing but farmers and hunters with a few basic crafters. Why it was necessary to fight them was beyond Arden. He would have simply bypassed them, taken control of a large city, say, Maujujir, and let the traders spread the word that there was a new ruler. The peasants never cared, as long as the taxes weren’t extreme and they were left to their lives.

Of course, that required a leader with self-confidence and who was secure in his power. Miklamar was not, and therefore wasteful. He’d been pacifying a very small province for years, proving to be a petty lord in every meaning of the word.

Riders ahead! The message came from a small part of Arden’s brain that never slept. He didn’t react at once, but let his mind go over what he’d seen.

Caravan, small. Not uncommon around an engagement area. It was foolish and inadvisable to fight, though both groups would report the presence of the other. To clash four on two wagons and a carriage would mean certain death for at least one rider, possibly all. Nor was Arden, as a hired sword, expected to fight outside of his contract. The train was not a massive provisioning effort, so it was not a threat to the war.

Still, a challenge and meeting were necessary, to determine the intent of the others, and their origin. Arden reined back and slowed slightly, watching to see that the others did. They were ahead to the left, crossing obliquely. One of their numbers took the lead, presumably the troop commander.

Shortly, the groups were drawn up facing each other, a safe twenty feet apart; too far for an immediate strike, too close for a charge.

“Arden, High Rider of the Toughs,” he introduced himself. “Patrolling my unit’s line.”

“Count Namhar, of the Anasauk Confederacy, escorting a Lord,” the other leader agreed. He wore striking blue-and-black colors, and had a slim lance with a small pennant. His horse was armored with light hardened leather and a few small plates that were more a status symbol than protection. Of the four others with him, two shared his colors and two were in a similar blue, black, and gray, marking them as belonging to some side branch of the family.

“You are mercenaries. For whom do you ride?” Namhar asked.

“We are on contract to Miklamar, through his deputy Shakis.” Arden wouldn’t lie anyway, and the truth was best. Dissemblance could be seen as a sign of espionage.

One of the others, quite young, snapped, “You are the butchers of Kiri!” He reined his horse and clutched reactively at his sword. His partner extended a hand and caught him.

“Steady,” the youth was told.

“Chal had friends in Kiri. He is still in mourning,” Namhar said.

“I understand,” Arden replied. “No threat offered, I take no offense.”

“You’re still a butchering scum!” the young man yelled.

“In Kiri,” Arden said. “All we did was crack the defenses.”

“You lie! I saw the desecrated corpses! The torn . . .” For a moment Chal was incoherent with rage.

“Shakis’ men,” Arden said. “We broke the line, as we were paid to, and he took what he calls ‘retribution’ on peasants too poor and weak to resist.” Thereby showing the sum of his courage.

For a moment, there was silence. Emotion swirled in the air, all of them negative.

At once, Namhar dismounted. Arden nodded and did likewise. His two junior troops stepped down, leaving Balyat mounted, tall, bearlike, and imposing, but wise enough to be a good lookout. One of Namhar’s men stayed astride his beast, too.

The soldiers faced each other on the ground, the tension lessened. A mounted man was much taller and more imposing, a greater threat. With the horses held and the men afoot, it would be harder to start trouble.

The shouts had brought the other travelers out. The teamsters dropped from their wagons and the passengers in the carriage hurried over. The young man’s outrage was contagious, and in moments the shouts of, “Butcher!” and “Violator!” were ringing.

Arden and his troops stood calmly and firmly, though the younger of the two trembled. Balyat sat solidly on his horse and refused to move. Namhar waved his arms and got control. The others acquiesced to his voice and presence, and the trouble downgraded to hard breaths and angry looks.

“I had a cousin in Kiri,” Chal said.

Balyat spoke, his voice deep and sonorous. “My thoughts are with you,” he said. “We fight only armed men. Shakis slaughtered the peasants. He left none if he could help it. He thought to show the kind of man he was.”

“And you let him?” Chal said, glancing between the two mercenaries.

Arden said, “The Toughs are hired to bear the brunt against the peasants. Against larger forces, we are skirmishers and outriders. If you know of our name, we fight as we are ordered, but the pillage and rapine are not the work of my soldiers. I would not hire on to such, nor is it worthy of my troops.”

Namhar nodded, recognizing the words as being the strongest condemnation the mercenary would utter.

“How can you fight for such animals? Is money so precious?” The man asking was a well-dressed merchant turned statesman. An honorable man, but not one to grasp the mercenary viewpoint.

Arden said nothing. He looked around evenly, finding only one pair of eyes showing understanding. Namhar nodded imperceptibly, but in empathy. He alone knew the conflict Arden faced, and why he could not unbind his contract. He wondered now, though, if Miklamar or Shakis were trying to ruin the Toughs’ reputation, to tie them here for lesser wages. Probably not. That would be subtle, and subtlety wasn’t something he’d seen much evidence of.

“It is the employment we have, until released, perhaps at month’s end.”

“Release now! There are worthier employers around.” The merchant tugged at a purse to emphasize the point.

“That is not possible,” Arden replied with a shake of his head. “We have troubled you enough. Good travel to you. I must resume my patrol. I will report this encounter with my other notes, after I return and care for my horse.”

“Bastard!” Chal growled.

“Quiet, Chal,” Namhar snapped. “High Rider, we thank you for the courtesy.”

Arden nodded as he swung up into the saddle. It would be as easy to report the incident at once, but there was no threat here, and he had no orders to do so. He wasn’t about to offer a grace before eating without pay or orders.

“If you do find your contract at an end soon, I can offer the pay of my lord for good skirmishers.”

“I will remember that, Namhar,” Arden replied. “Offers of support are always welcome.”

Shakis appeared outraged when the message was relayed hours later.

“You spoke to what amounts to an enemy patrol, and not only didn’t stop them; you report it to me after a leisurely dinner!”

“They were merely a lord’s retinue. Surely you wouldn’t wish me to attack possible allies?”

“Allies? There are no allies! Lord Miklamar will be the undisputed ruler, as is his right!”

“Then you need to deal with such things, not have me be your envoy, yes?” Arden asked with a cruel smile.

It took a moment for the petty underling to grasp the verbal spar. “Watch your tongue, mercenary,” Shakis rasped.

Shaking his head, he continued, “There has been more rebellion along the border. Lessons must be taught. I expect this entire village put to sword.” He pointed at a map, and to the south. “Manjeuk. Only another day’s march.”

A lesson of slaughtered peasants. Yes, Arden thought. That would surely teach other peasants not to try to live their lives. If he were planning, he would kill the village militia, then wait with baleful eye for the rest to flee. It was harsh, but it was war. It wasn’t as dangerous, tactically foolish or obscenely cruel as wanton butchery.

He reflected that Shakis was acting professionally by his own vulgar standards. He wasn’t sparing the town for looting, burning, and rapine.

Though not every occupant would be dead after the attack. Those left would be subject to the most vile humiliations this twisted troll could devise, he was sure.

“Wouldn’t it be more efficient to simply kill the armed men and drive off the rest? Why waste good steel on starving, rag-clothed peasants?”

It was a reasonable question. So he thought.

“Rider Arden,” Shakis said, caressing a jeweled dagger before him, with a blade that would turn on canvas, never mind leather or iron, “the plans are made here. You and your mercenaries,” that with a sniff, “are merely one small part of many in an engagement planned many hundreds of leauges away. All we ask, all we are paying for, is your men to swing their swords where we tell them to, and to not think too much.”

That decided Arden. He knew what course to take.

“As you command,” he said with a nod, and turned to his own camp. That order he would give. That exact order.

Before dusk, his troops were ready, aligned, and poised for inspection. The ranks were dead straight, the product of proud, expert riders. He felt a ripple of excitement. His troops, those of the unassailable repute. There was Ty’kara, the Shin’a’in woman, tall and quick and almost as strong as some men. Bukli, skilled at sending signals with flags, hands, or fires, and almost as handy with a sword. Balyat, tall and broad and powerful as an ox, with a cool, mature head. His troops, the best one could pay for.

His troops, under pay of a cretin.

Duty.

He turned through each rank, examining each raised arm, sword, or spear, to see that they fit his orders. All were clean, well cared for, and ready. All his troops quivered in eagerness and a little fear. The brave could admit fear. Fear was part of being human. Only the coward and the fool denied fear.

Every soldier, every weapon, fit and ready as he had demanded. And now to follow the orders of the cretin.

He passed behind the last rank, then turned between two troops. They flinched not a bit, nor did their horses shy, as he urged his mount, Fury, to a fair gallop.

Then he was through the front rank, and behind him came the snorts of horses and the “Yaaah!” of riders. Thunder rose from the ground, thunder that he commanded, thunder that shattered armies.

Far ahead, brave and fearful peasants in sorry, untrained formation prepared to die for their homes. They trembled in fear, armed with hooks and forks and an occasional spear. A handful with bows was arrayed in the rear. He respected them far more than the scum he worked for this night. But he did work for them.

Duty.

And he would see that duty done.

Perhaps five hundred yards, and the flickering lights of torches melded with a blood red sunset to set the mood for the work ahead. Manjeuk was the name of a quiet town in a forest meadow. Tonight, however, it was a dark-tinged collection of rude huts with little prettiness.

A hundred yards, and he could see faces, grubby and fearful and shifting in grimaces. That was just enough time to brace shield and lower sword.. . . .

He hit the defensive line and burst through the front rank. These poor peasants were no match in any fashion for professional soldiers. He chopped down and connected with a skull, feeling the crack through his arm. He let the impact swing his arm back, then brought it into a thrust that knocked another man from his feet. He brought the tip up as he swung his shield out on the other side. Two men sprawled, one of them nudged by Fury’s left forehoof.

Then he was through. That dismal line of men with inadequate stakes and pits had been the defense. They’d lasted not five seconds.

Urging Fury to a charge, he cleared the deadly, empty space ahead. Four good gallops did it, and no arrow came close. Few arrows came anywhere.

Then he was inside the town. A crone with a pitchfork thrust at him, and he dodged, slashing at her chest. She went down. Behind her was a cowering girl of perhaps twelve, who had dropped her stick and was whimpering. A slight poke was sufficient for her. A boy of fifteen or so wouldn’t succumb to a single blow, and had to be hit three times. Stupid of him not to stay down once hit, but that wasn’t Arden’s concern. He reined back, turned, and galloped on.

An old man in a doorway didn’t have time to raise his ancient, rust-caked sword. Two younger men drew out a rope. Arden cursed and ducked, snatching at it and twisting. The shock pulled them to the ground. Behind him, Ty’kara whacked one, dogged over and twisted, jabbed the other and recovered.

Then they were through the town and done. Few casualties, but no loot or anything positive to show for it. He sniffed in disgust as he waved his arm for the Toughs to form up.

Duty done.

Now to encamp again. They circled wide around the now flaming town. What was left was Shakis’ concern. And Arden found that most amusing.

The camp was as it had been, patrols far out, pickets at the outskirts, the wounded and support armed and still a threat to intruders, even if not the heavy combatants the “regulars” were. Only half the Toughs were involved in any given battle. The rest, including recruits and their sergeants, supported them.

The regimental fire was huge, the heat palpable many feet away. Farther out, squadrons and smaller elements had their own blazes, then there were those for the watch. Toughs’ Camp was a ring of fire, ever brighter toward the center, where Arden sat with his troop leaders.

Arden took a healthy slug of his ale. It was a good, rich brew that quenched and refreshed him. The bread had been baked that morning, with a chewy crust and nutty flavor. The cheese was dry, crumbly, and sharp. He dug in with gusto. Once Mirke had finished roasting that yearling stag, he would enjoy the flavor of it, the flavor that was already wafting through his nose and taking form.

Regardless of their orders, it had been a good night’s work, and he was proud of it. Pride and prowess in duty. It was the only really valuable thing he had. He cherished it. A faint warmth and tingle from the ale made it sweet.

Then Shakis, that damned foppish envoy, arrived, his horse clattering with ridiculous flashy accouterments. Arden wasn’t surprised, and knew exactly what his complaint was to be before the worm opened his mouth.

“High Rider Arden! Lord Miklamar is most displeased with your performance, if it can be called that, in Manjeuk!”

“We did as we were ordered,” he replied, stonefaced. “As we swore to.”

“You were ordered to put the village to the sword and spear!”

“And so we did,” he replied. He refused to get upset with the likes of this. It would not be honorable. Emotion he reserved for those worthy, who might be allied or enemy, but whom he would count as men. This was not a man.

“I expected you would take your swords out of your scabbards before striking with them! And use the sharp ends of your spears!”

“Then perhaps you should have so specified in your orders,” Arden said, smiling faintly. Behind him were snickers. No doubt everyone in Manjeuk had been confused to have the fiercest riders of the south gallop through, swatting and poking them with scabbarded swords. No doubt they were all bruised and broken from it. But none had been stabbed or cut. The orders had not specified that. And had specified the mercenaries were not to think too hard.

“Because of your cowardice,” Shakis said, and Balyat and Ty’kara growled with flinty gazes. Arden laid out a palm to hold them. It was all he needed to command them, despite the mortal insult. “Because of your cowardice, our men took near twenty deaths.”

“I lost a man, too,” Arden replied. “Bukli, my best messenger.”

“You have my pity, sell-sword,” Shakis replied. He was reaching a frothing level within, Arden could see. “No matter. The town was taken, and now our men show them what it means to lose.” The expression on his face was a combination of excitement and lust that was simply obscene.

It would have been better, Arden realized, to have killed the poor bastards quickly. He’d done them no favors as it was.

The grumbling around him rose to a barely audible level as Shakis rode out. Arden’s troops were no happier than he.

For a week the Toughs were kept in camp as other units fought. It was an insult, and a further waste of resources. Arden concealed his contempt, but his troops were not so reticent. They’d fought for harsh men before, and torture and agony were not unfamiliar sights to any of them, but any professional soldier had his limits. The Toughs were barely tolerating Miklamar’s strategy and the toady who relayed his wishes.

Something had to be done.

After nine days, Arden was called to a strategy meeting. He’d been shunned from the planning sessions even though he was merely an observer. That banishment couldn’t help his survival or plans, and his inclusion now, being “ordered to present” himself was yet another slap. He had expected it, of course. He’d hoped his disgusted protest in the last battle would have led to the contract being let, but either Miklamar or Shakis was too stupid or petty for that. They wasted pay to keep the Toughs doing nothing.

Arden arrived and was ignored. Movements were planned, orders given, messengers and commanders sent. Silence reigned around Arden, with no word or acknowledgment given him by anyone. Commanders of units he’d fought alongside, and who mutually respected him, gave him only a glance and then studiously avoided further interaction. For two hours, Arden sat in cold drafts at the wall of the tent, watching the flickering lamp flames in meditation. He refused to get angry, for that was what Shakis wanted.

When orders came at last, while Shakis loudly chewed a pork shank at his table, spitting and getting grease on his maps, they were insultingly direct.

“Arden, you have a chance before you to redeem yourself. This afternoon, we destroy the last vestiges of the old Kingdom in this district. You will strike in the van, and attack the village. That means, with your weapons in hand, with the sharp ends, fight as hard as you can. I will countenance no clever ploys this time, or I will have your men and yourself used for target practice by my archer regiment. You will fight any who oppose you, you will lay waste as your reputation demands, and once we are done, you will be sent on your way, since you are reluctant to help the rise of a strong empire. But I hold you to your contract yet.”

“Yes, Shakis. I will do as you command.”

There being no point in further discussion, Arden dismissed himself. Shakis was aware of his departure, but made no sign of noticing.

The orders created a conflict of moral outrage in Arden. He couldn’t obey an order to slaughter innocents. It was unprofessional, cowardly, and unmilitary. Nor could he break his sworn oath and contract.

As he always did when troubled, he rode patrol. His thoughts drifted, and distance from Shakis made him feel cleaner. He’d had disputes with employers before, even if this scraped the hoof for lowness. He rode ahead of the three troops with him, just so he could feel more alone.

It was a cool night, slightly misty, and fires could be seen behind the town, of a small force preparing to support the town once attacked. Miklamar’s only good strategy was to use his larger army to spread the threat of his neighbors. Though that might be accidental rather than strategic planning.

Count Namhar showed far better sense, with his force high in the defense, prepared to rush in on a force bogged down even briefly in the town below. He knew he couldn’t save the village, so he’d use it as an anvil to hammer Shakis’ force against. He’d do far more damage that way, including to the Toughs.

Arden wondered if he could arrange to be where the counterattack would happen, so as to have an honorable fight against a decent enemy.

Something crept up through his mind and coalesced into a thought.

Yes. He just might be able to do that. It would take courage, risk his life, and save his oath. That made it worth doing.

He wheeled Fury about and galloped back to camp, leaving the other three soldiers to catch up while they wondered what their commander was doing.

Count Namhar watched the unfolding battle from a hilltop. Part of him craved to be down below with his brave men, doing what could be done to restrain a horror. A horror that not only outnumbered them, but had hired crack mercenaries.

He was thankful that the leadership used both mercenaries and indigenous forces poorly.

His presence on the hill was for tactical advantage. He had a small device from the mages that could potentially change the course of a battle, if used well.

The tube was a magic Eye. Its rippling patterns, almost oily, resolved to crystal clarity when stared through. He could see events far across the field and send swift messengers to maneuver his forces.

The Eye only let him see things larger. It couldn’t see things beyond obstacles, but did enhance anything within line of sight. And the mercenaries were just within that line.

It took only a moment’s glance to cause him to grin. A surge ran through him, of respect for a mercenary who embodied every virtue a soldier should have. There was loyalty, and then there was honor. Above those was courage, and it took tremendous courage to do what Arden’s troop was doing now.

Somewhere, they must have been ordered to attack the village. And that’s what they were doing. Arden was a genius, and brave beyond words to offer such a tactic. Exploiting it would cost lives. But the tactic was suicidally foolish, and Namhar could exploit that at once. He could wipe out the Toughs to the last troop. Though to do so would be a shame.

Then the true nature of it hit him.

“Send Rorsy’s force down to take them,” he ordered the nearest of his aides.

“At once. At the charge, or dismounted?”

“No, take them alive,” Namhar said. This had to be done just right. A man with a sword was still dangerous, and if he knew Arden as he felt he did, the man wouldn’t simply surrender.

“My Lord? I am confused,” his aide said.

“I will explain, but quickly. We have little time.”

And indeed, there was a risk. If Arden was what he seemed, it could be handled rather quietly. But the flash of steel could turn it into the bloodbath it had looked to be from the beginning.

“Attack the town,” Shakis had ordered. “Town” had two meanings; either the population and resources of the small settlement, or the physical structure of it. It was that way Arden had chosen to obey the order, and his troops had agreed, with hesitation and fear, but in support of their commander and in rebellion against the detestable creature who’d hired them and debased them. Their honor was their coin in trade. They would fight as hard to protect it as to earn it.

Arden kept his face impassive and hacked again, the daubed withes of the wall powdering under his onslaught. Yards away, Balyat crushed small beams with swings of his ax. The Toughs were arrayed along a front perhaps two hundred yards wide, surrounding the rude buildings and smashing them. To the south, Shakis’ other forces were slaughtering the helpless. Arden had killed one dweller who’d faced him with a staff. The others had run. Some had seen the mercenaries senselessly beating buildings and taken the opportunity to run away, or to the battle farther south. One didn’t question an enemy’s error.

Behind Arden, there were men approaching, in colors that made them allies of Lord Namhar. Each swing of his head let him see their approach. They were moving to flank him and were unarmed.

So they were civilians, not a threat, he told himself, clarifying the strategy in his mind. He was playing games with his orders, and the risk was great. He probably wouldn’t die at this point, though both revenge and charges of atrocity could lead that way. He might destroy a company that had a decades-long reputation for honest fighting. If this worked, he would indeed have employ, and stories told for generations. But the chance for death or disgrace as an oathbreaker hung on the other side of the balance.

But some lords were beneath any contempt. Duty bound him to a contract. Only honor could make him respect a man.

The two burly “civilians” closed on him, and he pointedly ignored them. They were dressed in battle leather and well scarred. Professionals themselves. They had orders, and perhaps they understood those orders. If they didn’t raise weapons, he was under no compunction to fight them under any oath he or the Toughs had ever sworn. “We fight only armed men.” But if they did, he would perforce respond in kind. All his troops had their orders, all would obey . . . but a panicky moment could lead to a close-quarters bloodbath with horrific results for all.

All three of them knew how it must play out, and the scene would replay across the front. Arden could not decline to engage, could not offer to surrender to unarmed men. If asked, he’d have to refuse.

As he drew back for another blow, one of the two lunged at him. He spun, shifted, and made to take a swing. His trained reflexes prepared to strike a blow that would cleave a man.

Then the ground shifted and he tumbled, cracking his head against his helmet as he crashed. His sword arms flew above his head, and bashing fists broke his grip. He kicked, snapping his right foot in a blow that elicited a pained grunt. The fists rained down on his chest, driving the breath from him.

“Mercenary, you are disarmed! Will you now surrender to Lord Namhar’s courtesy?”

“I will,” he said.

There was no dishonor in surrender once unable to fight, and he’d followed his orders exactly. His employer—former employer—had been the lowest filth imaginable. To be captured thusly should make him feel proud. It didn’t.

Surrender. The Toughs didn’t surrender. A wrenching pain that wasn’t physical tore at him. Certainly, the fight had been honorable, but it was a defeat in the employ of a weakling. That cost dearly in reputation, in pride, in selfrespect. Not to mention the hundreds of townsfolk who had been killed.

“I am to offer you employ with Lord Namhar, at Guild scale and with a bonus of one fifth. Or else you may have free passage to our northern border.”

He heard the words, but there was no pleasure in him. He’d won this battle for his honor by losing the battle in the field. Even though he’d planned it that way, it was dizzying, shocking.

Slowly, he rose to his feet. One of the two had rushed to join a group of fellows beating Balyat to the ground. The bulky warrior needed six of them to restrain him before he finally acceded. Arden couldn’t help but grin. It restored some small breath of life to the unit that even disarmed they fought so hard.

His remaining escort was panting for breath and bleeding from nose and lip. Arden had acquitted himself well enough, though he would have a hard time convincing himself.

“I am Captain Onri,” his captor said. “If you will give your word of honor to be peaceable, I will escort you to Count Namhar.”

“My word you have, Captain,” Arden said, feeling a slight rise from the depths his soul had sunk to. He walked away from the village, smiling. He had lived through his oath to a coward. He had lost by his oath to a good man.

LANDSCAPE OF THE IMAGINATION

by Mercedes Lackey

Mercedes Lackey is a full-time writer and has published numerous novels, including the best-selling Heralds of Valdemar series. She is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator.

TARMA’S stomach growled, and she tried to appease it with a long drink of water.

It wasn’t fooled, and growled again.

The problem with being a low-level mercenary pair without an impressive reputation was that sometimes you wound up at the end of a job in a place where your talents weren’t needed. And when that place was as law-plagued as this one . . .

They’d escorted a very nice old lady to the timid niece who was going to take care of her in her old age. An exceptionally low-paying job, but one that Kethry’s sword Need had insisted that they take. Appropriately, as it had turned out, since the poor old woman evidently bore a striking resemblance to a very wealthy old woman in the same town, and kidnappers had decided erroneously that they were one and the same.

Still, it hadn’t done much to fatten their purses; it had led them here, the Duchy of Silverthorn, possibly the most law-abiding part of the world that Tarma had ever seen, and no one wanted them. Worse, everything was horribly expensive because of the taxes on everything that paid the salaries of the lawkeepers and constables. Worse still, there were more than enough lawkeepers and constables keeping a jaundiced eye on strangers that when their money ran out and they had to leave their inn, it was obvious that it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to acquire food for themselves by underhanded means without getting caught.

So the only way to handle the situation was to saddle up and move out, ignoring hunger pangs for the two or three days it was going to take them to get out of the Duchy. Normally it would only take a day at most, but—

But traffic was held by law to a snail’s pace here. And constables enforced that as well.

The only members of the party that were happy were the warsteeds and Warrl. The ’steeds, because not only was grazing the road-verge permitted, it was encouraged. So they were getting enough to content them. And Warrl, because he was resorting to the usual food-source of wolves and things that looked like wolves in the summer.

Mice and rats.

And that, too, was encouraged. Once constables saw him pouncing and gulping in the ditches, they were perfectly happy to leave him alone.

:You really ought to try these,: Warrl said happily in Tarma’s head. :They’re quite delicious. Fat, tender. I don’t know why they have a rodent problem here, but I am certainly pleased that they do.:

Tarma’s stomach growled again, suggesting that at this point, fricassee of rat was sounding good.

But Tarma’s brain went into revolt. No matter that she had eaten worse things. This was not something her mind wanted to contemplate, surrounded as they were by civilization. There should be meat pies, stew, bread and cheese, her mind insisted. Pease porridge, bread, and onions at least. It was not going to put up with the idea of eating mice.

You’ve eaten voles, she reminded it.

Those were clean wilderness creatures, her mind said primly. Mice are not. You don’t know where they’ve been.

Well, her mind had a point. And if they couldn’t afford to eat, they most certainly could not afford to get sick.

:They taste just fine to me,: Warrl said gleefully, as he pounced, tossed, and gulped. Their current pace—stalled, actually, while they waited for a big hay-laden cart to negotiate a difficult turn—was so slow that Warrl was having no trouble in hunting for such small prey.

Urg, said her mind, and she resolutely turned her thoughts away from the idea. Properly speaking, Warrl should have been Kethry’s familiar, not hers. Kethry was the sorceress. Kethry was the one who had cast the spell to summon a familiar. But Warrl was his own kyree and he had decided that Kethry, who already was bound to the spell-sword Need that gave her fighting powers equal to just about any swordswoman Tarma had ever seen, did not need a familiar. But Tarma evidently did.

So the two of them were bound to exceedingly useful but occasionally vexing partners. Kethry to a sword that forced her to come to the aid of any female in jeopardy, and Tarma to a calf-sized wolfish-looking beast with a penchant for sarcasm, a weakness for Bards, and a distinct and unique sense of humor.

Usually at his mind-mate’s expense.

The hay-wain was still stalled in front of them. Now the driver was arguing with a constable. Her stomach growled. She resisted the urge to ride along the verge; the last time she’d done that, the constable had threatened to fine them. The only reason he hadn’t was because Kethry turned out their purses, proving they had nothing, and pointed out that if they were jailed, they would be housed and fed at the expense of the Duchy.

Mind, that was beginning to look attractive—

Except that the warsteeds and everything they owned would be confiscated and sold.

No. Not a good option.

Tarma was all in favor of laws, but this place was ridiculous.

Kethry couldn’t even earn some money by performing minor sorceries, because she wasn’t licensed as a magician in this Duchy. Which license, of course, cost money.

Kethry was looking around with impatience. The other side of the road—reserved for traffic going the other direction—was absolutely clear.

Well, of course it was. The hay wagon was blocking it. “Is there any reason why we have to go in this direction?” she asked Tarma.

“Well, no, but—” Tarma didn’t get to finish that statement. Kethry nudged Hellsbane with her heels, turned the warsteed’s head, and set off down the clear and open side of the road.

:It’s all the same to me,: Warrl said philosophically. :There are just as many mice in that ditch.:

Tarma had no idea where they were, and she didn’t much want to stop long enough to find out. As long as they got out of the Duchy, that was all she cared about.

:We’re heading for the Pelagirs,: Warrl remarked philosophically.

Oh, bloody hell— “Keth. Warrl says we’re—”

“Headed for the Pelagirs, yes I know.” The Pelagir Hills were as chaotic and magic-infested as the Duchy of Silverthorn was law-abiding. “That’s probably the reason why these people are so law-obsessed. It’s their way of dealing with the insanity on their doorstep.” Kethry, who was usually far more cautious about venturing into the Pelagirs than Tarma was, seemed entirely cavalier about this idea.

“But why—”

Kethry turned in her saddle and looked back at her partner. “Because if I’d had to look for another candlemark at the back of that hay-wagon I was going to kill someone. Because they longer we stay in this place, the more likely we are to do something that gets us thrown in jail. Because my stomach is growling. And because I’m getting a faint twinge from Need that is sending my head in this direction.”

Oh, bloody hell— “Oh, no. Oh, hell, no. Not this time,” Tarma protested. “The last time is what got us stuck out here in the first place!”

“So we’re due for a change of luck,” Kethry replied, with no hint of irony. “She owes us one. Maybe she’s responding to our hunger pangs by finding us a good client.”

“Maybe you’re living in a dream world,” Tarma growled under her breath. “Not that it matters all that much. We still have to get out of here, and whoever this is, if they have food, we’ll already be ahead of where we were.”

In answer, Kethry nudged the gray flanks of the warsteed again, moving her into a slightly faster pace. Tarma knew that sign by now; the magical pull on Kethry was getting stronger.

They rode over the top of a hill and found themselves staring down a long flat slope that went on for leagues, until abruptly, as if at an invisible line that marked a place where sanity ended. The landscape changed abruptly, from the rolling, manicured fields to steep, rock-crowned hills, whose tops rose above a forest of trees so tortured and twisted it looked as if some sadistic giant had been wrenching their limbs about.

“In the Pelagirs, then,” Tarma sighed, “Oh, hold back my surprise.”

They were stopped at the border by guards who were immensely suspicious of anyone who wanted to go into the Pelagirs, and from the look of the fortified wall they were going to have to pass under, the Duchy put a lot of time and effort trying to keep things from the Pelagirs out.

After dealing with their questions for the better part of a candlemark, Tarma finally lost patience. She glared at the guards, and silently summoned Warrl, who rose up from where he had been hidden in the grass of the ditch

He moved in to stand by her side as the guards became very still. Tarma looked their officer in the eyes.

“We just want to go home,” she said tonelessly.

Within moments they were looking back at the closed gate from the Pelagirs side of the wall.

“You know, they’re never going to let us back in there,” Kethry remarked in a conversational tone.

“I can live with that,” Tarma replied. “At least there are enough normal animals in here that we can hunt.”

Her stomach growled agreement.

At least Kethry didn’t take off across country, following the sometimes-elusive trace that her sword would give her. She allowed Hellsbane to trot sensibly along what passed for a road here, which was a faint track among the trees. Tarma kept a sharp eye out for game, but just as importantly, so did Warrl. Warrl, with his keen nose and sharper eyesight, should be able to pick out what was safe for them to eat.

But the forest was deserted. She would have said, “strangely deserted,” but these were the Pelagirs, and nothing much was strange there.

Ever.

Her stomach growled.

“Mushrooms?” she suggested to Kethry. “Watercress?”

Kethry shook her head. “I wouldn’t try it,” she advised. “Very bad idea. You can have no idea what’s been changed in the blasted things. Maybe they wouldn’t be poisonous, but do you really want to find yourself in the middle of hallucinations or intoxicated to the point you can’t stand up?”

Well, no.

Silent forest with the silence interrupted only by the faroff drip of water and the dull thudding of the warsteeds’ hooves on the turf.

And, of course, by the growling of Tarma’s stomach.

:I believe, mind-mate, I have found Kethry’s goal,: came the familiar voice in Tarma’s mind, at the same time that Kethry said, “By the feel of things, my target is—”

They rode up over a rise.

“—there,” Kethry finished.

It certainly looked that way. In the valley below, in what looked like a temporary camp, was a woman. A particularly ageless-looking woman with a relatively unlined face despite a coiled mass of silver hair fastened in place with pins, a little plump, but otherwise in very good physical shape. There was no way of telling what she was from her costume, a well-made set of brown riding leathers with a split skirt rather than breeches or trews. There were three horses with her, all with saddles. There were two ominous mounds of earth off to the side of the camp.

She looked up and spotted them at the top of the ridge line, and regarded them thoughtfully.

Tarma knew what she would see: sitting on a matched pair of ugly gray horses, big-boned and big-headed, were two women. The one in the buff-colored traveling robes (also with a split skirt) or a sorceress of the White Winds school, had a pretty, soft face, a mass of amber-colored hair pulled back into a tail—and the end of a sword sticking up over her right shoulder. The other, in the all-black leather and armor of a Shin’a’in Swordsworn, had the hawklike features, black hair, prominent nose, and golden-tanned skin typical of her race. Her hair had not yet grown out, and only brushed the tops of her shoulders; it was held in place by a leather headband to keep it out of her eyes. A sword hilt also protruded over her right shoulder, there was a quiver hanging from her left hip, a bow in a bow sheath at the saddle, and probably far more knives than the woman even dreamed possible both hidden and openly sheathed on Tarma’s person. Beside Tarma was Warrl, a kyree, a creature who came from this part of the world. About the size of a young calf, with a wolfish head, but a body more like that of one of the big, speedster hunting cats of the Dhorisha Plains, Warrl was a small army in and of himself.

Whatever was wrong, the woman did not appear to be in immediate danger. That was probably why Need hadn’t been prodding Kethry with the goad of pain into speeding down the road at a breakneck speed.

She also wasn’t intimidated by them. Which was interesting. Although there were not many female bandits, such things weren’t unknown. Which implied that, whoever or whatever she was, the woman thought she could handle herself against two armed people and a large and dangerous beast.

They looked down; she looked up. Finally, she spoke.

“So,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re for hire?”’

They rode down the slope slowly. Tarma was all for saying “Yes!” then and there, but Kethry, for once, was more cautious. “What happened here?” she asked.

The woman sighed. “I’m on my way to keep an appointment with a—colleague. I had two temporary fighters with me. While I was off taking the horses to water them, I left them here to set up camp, and something attacked them, I heard the commotion, but by the time I got back here, it was too late.”

Tarma did not bother to ask “what,” because clearly if the woman had known, she would have told them.

“Signs?” she asked instead.

“Something large with a lot of teeth and claws,” she replied. “Magic; the aura was all over the place. And it didn’t want to face me, so magic probably was its one vulnerability.” She glanced away from them, up the road leading deeper into the Pelagirs. “I’ve been here before. That condition isn’t going to hold for long.”

Sensible, too. Once again, Tarma almost said. “we’re available” when Keth forestalled her.

“Conditions of employment?” she asked coolly.

Well, that was a change. Need’s prodding must be nothing but a little nag in the back of her head. The woman started to answer when Tarma’s stomach announced to the universe just how hungry she was.

The woman looked startled, then laughed.

“First condition is that I feed you,” she said, with a shrewd smile. “I’d much rather negotiate with the sleepy and satisfied than the lean and hungry,”

It was trail food: dried beef, bread you could drive a nail with.

Tarma didn’t care. At this point she would readily have broken teeth into order to get something to her stomach. Her stomach wasn’t objecting either. Negotiations and meal concluded about the same time; the woman drove a hard, hard bargain. Nothing up front; fee to be paid only at the conclusion of the journey.

On the other hand, what did they have to spend coin on out here? And finally they got their employer’s name. Nanca Jente. Sorceress who claimed no particular affiliation.

“How do you feel about riding in the dark?” Nanca asked, as they shook hands on the bargain. “Full moon tonight, and I’ve lost most a lot of time here.”

The two exchanged glances. “I’ve got no objections,” Tarma said, “But I’m not the one that makes the decision on whether or not to move in the dark.” And she cast a significant look at Hellsbane and Ironheart.

Nanca followed her look, and raised one silver eyebrow. “All right,” she said. “If your horses refuse to move, we stop.”

And as it happened, the moon rose large and bright, and though the warsteeds slowed their pace to an ambling walk, they were able to see well enough that they didn’t actually object to moving through the night. At least until the moon began to descend. And at that point, both mares snorted and made their objections to going on in pitch dark known.

For her part Tarma was nodding off in the saddle, and though Nanca groused and grumbled, she didn’t do so for long. The “camp” that they made was sketchy at best; they only unpacked their bedrolls, arranged the horses around them, and crawled into the blankets in the dark

They were on their way again at dawn. Tarma got the impression of a certain amount of urgency, as if their employer had a deadline she had to meet. So she pushed the warsteeds a little more than she might otherwise have done, and with three mounts to switch off, Nanca was well able to keep up.

And so it was that they reached their goal on the second day, just as the sun began to set. Which was about at the point where Tarma gave serious thought to walking on their deal.

Because their goal was a Gate.

“You didn’t say anything about a Gate,” Kethry said, as the three of them stared down into the little valley. The thing was alive and active, too; the pillars on either side shimmered with energy, and the strange blackness that was the hallmark of any active Gate pulled and tugged on the eyes in a way calculated to make whoever was looking at it feel sick.

“You didn’t either,” their employer pointed out. “Is it an issue?”

“You don’t know where those things come out,” Tarma objected, with a glance at her partner.

“Ah, but I do,” Nanca replied, with the faintest of smiles. “It comes out in the place where I am supposed to meet my colleague.”

Of course it did. “And then what?” Tarma demanded.

“Then you continue to do what I contracted to you for. You guard me and fight off anything physical that comes to attack me and I deal with anything of a magical nature, until we reach my colleague, and once we are there, I pay you and he provides the exit point, which will drop you through another Gate relatively near the Dhorisha Plains.” Nanca shrugged. “After that, where you go is your business.”

That was another thing. Granted, Kethry was probably not the magician that Nanca was—but why forbid her to work magic at all?

Unless it was because the nature of what lay on the other side of that Gate was of such a strange nature that Nanca didn’t want a sorceress unfamiliar with it meddling with it.. . . .

Tarma and Kethry exchanged another glance. And finally Tarma fingered the mind-bond that held her to Warrl.

What do you think? she left lying on the surface of her thoughts.

:I think that I sense deception in her, but no harm. Whatever is going on here, she intends nothing unfortunate for us, nor does she foresee anything unfortunate.:

Hmm . . .

Nanca dug into her saddlebags and passed over journey bread to both of them. Tarma gnawed on it while she thought, looking and not-looking at the Gate. In the end, it was her full stomach that decided her. Nanca was certainly right about that part.

“Let’s go.”

Now it was Nanca who hesitated a moment, but before she could say anything, Tarma was already drawing her sword and parrying-dagger, and looping Ironheart’s reins through the pommel hold on the saddle. She felt Ironheart shift under her into full alertness, ready to answer to leg and weight-shift signals rather than rein. She heard the sound of Need clearing her sheath and knew that Kethry was doing the same.

She turned her attention to their employer. “Shin’a’in proverb,” she said. “It is better to prepare for an ambush and look foolish than not and look dead.”

Nanca smiled broadly, and gestured. “In that case, after you.”

Warrl went through first. Gates were probably Tarma’s least favorite way to travel, and thus far she had only had to endure two. This was the third and, as usual, it was horrible. There was a sense of dislocation with the world, the bottom dropping out of everything, a freezing cold that wasn’t really cold, blackness like the inside of the head, and a myriad of other sensations, all awful, that passed too quickly to be identified.

Then they were on the other side. There was an ambush.

Warrl had already gone after them; the ambushers must not have counted on anything that wasn’t human because he already had control of the group locked down. With a harsh Shin’a’in war-cry, Tarma waded in.

And it had to be the strangest bunch she had ever fought.

Somebody’s retainers, because they were identically dressed. Buff trews, red surcoats, chainmail. Three archers, already down, and a dozen swordsmen.

But what was strange was the way they fought.

Exactly alike.

Every one of them had the same four-move fighting pattern. Overhand slash, shield block, underhand thrust, parry. Absolutely the same and in the same order. Once she realized that, Tarma had them down in no time.

And realized the second thing. No blood.

“Automata,” said Kethry. “Constructs.” And she looked directly at Nanca.

Nanca nodded. “These are the simplest. There will be more. I was about to warn you there might be an ambush, but you were already preparing for one, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Now Tarma looked out at the land on the other side of the Gate, and found it no different than the part of the Pelagirs they had just passed through. Wooded hills. Plenty of places for more ambushes. The one difference was the nice, clear road that cut through the woods.

She looked at it and sighed. “I suppose we have to stick to the road?”

Nanca nodded. “It would be a very, very bad idea to get off the road,” she said. “The landscape itself is not predictable once you get off the road. And at the same time, it’s too predictable.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tarma asked, frowning.

“That features can appear and vanish at random, sometimes,” Nanca told her. “But worse than that, landmarks . . . repeat. So that you can’t tell where you are.”

“Landmarks repeat.” Tarma got a bewildering vision of identical trees, identical rock formations, repeating over and over again like decorative tiles and suddenly—

“Bloody hell.” She blinked, and looked straight at Nanca as all of the pieces came together. “This is a game. And your colleague is really your opponent. And this—” she waved her hand at the landscape, “—is a giant playing board.”

“Ha!” Rather than being offended, Nanca seemed delighted. “By the gods, you are smart ones!”

“And you can’t tell us because that would violate the rules,” Kethry said slowly.

Nanca nodded.

“But us figuring it out for ourselves is fine.” Rather than feeling offended, Tarma was actually delighted. “Has anyone done this before?”

“I’ve never brought fellow players in here before,” Nanca said, her eyes now very bright with interest. “Only the two constructs I’m allowed as helpers. But there was nothing in the rules that said I could not bring fellow players in, and when my constructs met an untimely end before I could enter the game-space—I thought maybe I would try putting out a gentle magical probe for help.” She raised her eyebrow. “My friend and I invented this to keep each other sharp, but I must tell you that I would not have permitted either of you to come to serious harm. Practice is one thing, Being hurt—we both have ways to bring the game to an end. Still.” She pursed her lips. “This game is timed, and we are already late. And it does get a great deal tougher, the closer we get to our goal.”

Tarma felt a wide grin spreading over her face. “Let’s see if we can win this thing, shall we?”

Now that they knew what to expect, Tarma concentrated on understanding the logic laws by which the constructed opponents they met operated. She sent Warrl out ahead, knowing that whatever he found was all they would have to worry about for the moment. And one of the first laws she determined was that there was a set distance at which the constructs “noticed” them.

They sat their horses just outside that predetermined distance and watched the constructed ambush party stand there like so many mannequins, while Tarma assessed them, and worked up a strategy. “The usual, I think,” she said finally. “You sweep in from the left flank, Kethry. I’ll come in from the right. Warrl circles around and comes in from behind—”

“Ah!” Nanca nodded before Tarma could add the last. “And I keep their attention from the front, because I have better ability to strike from a distance. I’d never tried that before, but then, my constructs were never bright enough to operate with a lot of reliable independence.”

“Heh. That’s encouraging, then,” Tarma said, with a grin. “Let’s see if this works.”

“Be prepared to retreat if you have to,” Nanca urged. “There’s no shame in that.”

Kethry sighed and grimaced. “You just told a Shin’a’in Swordsworn that there is no shame in retreat. This is a trifle like telling the village drunk that there is no shame in putting the wine bottle down and walking away from the tavern.”

Nanca laughed as Tarma made a face of her own. “I’m not that bad,” she protested. Then added, “Am I?”

Kethry’s silence and significant stare were answer enough. Tarma flushed. “Let’s just do this, shall we?” was all she managed to say.

It would not be fair to say that they cut across the landscape like a team of experienced mowers across a hayfield. Nanca had been correct; the closer they got to their goal, the more difficult and numerous the foes became. And the closer to their goal, the more magician-constructs also appeared, designed specifically to neutralize or at least occupy Nanca herself.

This were the most clever and the closest to actual intelligence and Tarma was very glad that she and Kethry were not the ones directly facing the things. They were not coming out of this unscathed, that much was certain, too. At the end of each battle, they were at the very least completely exhausted. And the injuries they got were quite real. Yes, Nanca could and did heal them almost immediately, but they did hurt, and they did incapacitate.

But Tarma, at least, was finding something exhilarating about this. It was like having the perfect training scenario. You didn’t learn anything in fighting by not getting hurt, after all.

And the closer they got to the “endgame” as Nanca called it, the more cheerful she became. “If we can pull this off as a draw,” she said finally, “I will be happy. Quite, quite happy, actually. Coming into this handicapped—”

“I am not settling for a draw.” Tarma had opened her mouth to declare something of the sort, but Kethry, to her astonishment, beat her to it.

“Eh?” the Swordsworn said, looking curiously at her partner, who was at the moment looking rather the worst for wear, with her robes more than a bit cut up, her hair straggling out of its tail, and the beginnings of a black eye that was just one of the many sets of bruises they had both collected. Bruises, after all, were not incapacitating, and Nanca’s reserves of healing energies were limited.

“I am not settling for a draw. I think we can win this one. But I’d like to suggest a strategy change myself.” Kethry settled an unsheathed Need across her lap. “Am I right in thinking we are going to encounter your opponent in this endgame?”

Nanca nodded. “Absolutely. And rather than relying on the constructs going through their patterned moves, he’ll be directing some of them personally.

“That’s what I thought.” Kethry looked over at her partner. We’ve been taking out the weakest of the constructs first, then concentrating the fighting of all three of us on the strongest. This time I think we should ignore all that. Instead, we all converge on this mage-friend of Nanca’s and take him out. Once he’s down, the game is over. Right?”

“Right!” Nanca pounded a fist into her cupped hand with delight. “And that is the last thing he is going to expect, because we’ve been doing the opposite of that until now. The essence of what is going to work is that we can’t be predicted!”

“Is there any way you can give us an overview of the battle site?” Kethry asked.

“I don’t—” Nanca began, and then—her eyes fell on Warrl. And she began to grin.

Mind-mate, Warrl said, with alarm, backing up a pace, I am not at all certain I like where this is going—

I knew I would not like where this was going, Warrl complained bitterly, as he hovered in place, four paws dangling limply in midair. If the gods had intended us to fly, they would have made us gryphons.

“Hush up and practice.” Tarma admonished him. “Just do what Nanca told you to do; run as if you were running on the ground.”

It’s undignified. He protested, ears laid back flat, but obeyed.

Finally even Nanca was satisfied with what he was doing. “You’re no Tayledras bondbird, but you’ll do,” she said with satisfaction. “Now just make sure Jendran doesn’t see you, and you’ll be fine.”

I’m doomed, Warrl said bitterly. I’m a calf-sized flying predator. How is he not going to see me?

But he galloped clumsily up into the sky anyway.

Tarma closed her eyes and concentrated on what Warrl was showing her. The layout of the troops. The disposition of the “special” constructs that their opponent would be operating himself. And most importantly, the whereabouts of Jendran himself—

Ack! bleated Warrl, as suddenly crossbow bolts from three separate units came hurtling toward him.

And Warrl came hurtling back at top speed, now displaying a great deal more agility than he had going out.

Or at least, agility in the air. He landed like a sack of wet sand, three crossbow bolts sticking out of his improvised battle-armor.

And he glared at Tarma.

If you ever ask me to do that again, he said savagely, I will bite you. I will remove a very large piece of your flesh. And forever after you will be known as “Tarma the Half-A—”

“They know we’re coming,” Tarma said hastily. “The advantage of surprise is over. Let’s move, people.”

The victory feast was very real. It was held outside the game-world, in no small part because what was inside the game-world was not entirely real. Jendran had a small, but comfortable Keep literally on the threshold of the Gate terminus, complete with several servants and a really good cook, none of them constructs.

“Brilliant!” he kept saying with delight. “I don’t know when I’ve had a better game! But, of course, now we’re going to have to agree to ban all other players from the field except the two of us, or agree to incorporate an even number on both sides.”

Jendran was a small, wiry fellow in person, not at all formidable. But Tarma had immense respect for his ability to think on his feet and strategically deal with the unexpected. They had won, but it had been a very near thing, and only the last-minute appearance of Warrl, who body-slammed the mage from the rear, knocking him off his feet, had given them the victory as quickly as they had it.

Warrl was inordinately proud of that fact. Tarma was more than inclined to let him bask.

“I just want you to keep us in mind at some point in the future,” she said, polishing off a second slice of apple tart. “Being able to practice large-scale strategy like this—”

“It will be a while before we can manage something that is not so predictable,” Nanca put in. “But—well, I, for one, would value your input. And that of any other fighter you feel you can trust.”

The discussion went on long into the night hours, and in the morning, fully resupplied and with their fee jingling in the pouches, they rode off towards Kata’shin’a’in and hopefully, some work.

But their did remain one small question in Tarma’s mind.

Did you really mean what you said about biting me if I ever made you fly again? she thought hard at Warrl.

The kyree did not look back over his shoulder, but she got the distinct impression of a glower.

:You are feeling, precisely, how lucky?: was his only response.

And on reflection she could only come to one conclusion.

Not that lucky.

NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

available from DAW Books:

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW’S FLIGHT

ARROW’S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC’S PAWN

MAGIC’S PROMISE

MAGIC’S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE’S HONOR

EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

Written with LARRY DIXON:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN’S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

And don’t miss:

The VALDEMAR COMPANION

Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little