Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 10

I was soon spending most of every day with the Lady D'Sanya. We rode. We walked. We picnicked in the hills. We ran races and told silly secrets. One magical afternoon we explored one of the caves that riddled the mountains of Grithna, D'Sanya casting a light so that we could follow the path to a milky-white underground lake. A forest of stalactites and stalagmites surrounded the lake, the shapes more fantastic than any sculptor could invent.

Some days we stayed at the hospice in D'Sanya's house or in the library or in the garden, looking at books or playing draughts. We tried playing sonquey, a game of strategy played with tiles and silver bars, but D'Sanya found it boring when I would not use enchantment to manipulate the tiles. She said that playing sonquey without the added dimension of sorcery made her feel like a child allowed to use building blocks only in the horizontal plane, forbidden to stack them one upon the other.

On none of these outings did we ever return to the horrors of our past. The secrets we exchanged were innocent and childish. She adored flavored ices and had stolen them from the kitchens before her father's royal feasts so there were never enough for the guests. I abhorred eating green things and had hidden them in my pockets for the washing women to find. She got abominably seasick. I had never kissed a girl. We both preferred being outdoors—riding or walking, running, or just sitting—to any other activity.

My father smiled as I dashed in to greet him and deliver the latest packet of letters Paulo had brought from Avonar and then dashed out again before ever sitting down. He insisted that he did not feel neglected, but rather was pleased that I pursued my investigation with such vigor. Of course, I had not forgotten our purpose. We were close to an answer. I already knew more of D'Sanya than I knew of anyone save Paulo.

Paulo worried more. He accused me of infatuation, warning that my distraction would reap trouble. I told him he was just jealous because his own infatuation was going nowhere, but I did heed his warning and worked harder to keep my head. That very day D'Sanya asserted that my mysterious friend who could read horses' thoughts didn't really exist and begged again to meet him. Though tempted to agree—wanting to please her, wanting to make things honest between us—I saw how blatantly stupid was that idea. I told her he was busy, taking care of my father's business in Avonar. Not a lie. Not really.

I never allowed D'Sanya to see the scars on my hands. Most of the time I wore gloves, claiming that a childhood illness had left my hands persistently cold. She teased that it was just another aspect of my shyness. I did not argue with her, just kept my palms out of sight when gloves would not do. If she saw my scars, then, like Sefaro's daughter, she would know I had been one of the Lords. Every day it seemed more important that she never find out. Whether she loathed the Lords or served them, I would lose something I had never thought to find.

D'Sanya teased me about Sefaro's daughter, as well, saying she must be smitten with me the way she followed me around. Had I perhaps rebuffed the young lady's attentions? Professing ignorance, I changed the subject quickly.

One evening as I was hurrying to meet D'Sanya, I discovered I'd forgotten my cloak and reversed course abruptly to return to my father's apartments. I slammed right into Sefaro's daughter, grazing her shoulder against a brick wall and stepping on her foot. I started to make a comment about us needing to mark our current positions on a map, but checked my tongue when I met her gaze. Of course, she wasn't going to appreciate levity. "Sorry," I said.

"What meaning can sorry have coming from you?" Along one fine cheekbone a ragged scar shone white against her angry flush.

I crowded along the hedge as I passed so as not to touch her again.

She lurked in the shrubbery, in the cloisters, in corners and shadows, her constant presence ensuring I didn't forget the past in the pleasures of the present. Though I tried to dismiss her, I never made the nighttime journey from the hospice to Gaelie without keeping a close watch for mountains ready to fall on my head.

D'Sanya and I spent one long, rainy afternoon in the library reading a book of Dar'Nethi legends. At sunset, Na'Cyd summoned us to dinner. Afterward, D'Sanya wished to take up the story again, so I returned to the library to fetch the book. Sefaro's daughter was leafing through the pages. Seeing me, she threw it on a table as if it had scorched her fingers. "How dare you read of Vasrin and beautiful things!" she said, her cheeks a fiery scarlet. "What are you playing at?"

As usual, I had no answer.

"Before we set out for Tymnath, I have a riddle for you, my play friend." D'Sanya dragged me up from the grass beneath an ash tree where I'd lain waiting for the past hour listening to locusts buzzing in the grass, unable to concentrate on my book for my impatience to be with her. A delicate strand of sapphires set in silver dangled from her wrist, the color matching the flowing tunic she wore atop her leather riding skirt. "Forgive my dawdling, but one of my gardeners—my stone gardener—was showing Na'Cyd and me the work he's just completed. Now I want to share it with you."

"Stone gardener? That sounds like a riddle itself."

"You'll see." Waving to the ever-present onsiliar, who stood watching us from the gate, D'Sanya led me across her lawn, up the wide steps, and into her house.

"Does Na'Cyd ever do anything but watch us?" I had found the consiliar's gray eyes fixed on me four times that morning: as I arrived at the hospice, as I left my father's apartments, as I met D'Sanya in her garden, and now again, when he ought to be off about hospice business. "I'm beginning to see him lurking in my sleep."

"Pay him no mind. I believe the man considers himself my substitute father, ready to protect me from mysterious handsome fellows who constantly distract me from my work."

Beyond the sunny sitting room where we talked and played children's games lay an enclosed garden, lush and green. It included three apple trees, a small lawn, a gravel walk lined with beds of flowers, but its heart was a magical fountain where spraying water sculpted the misty shape of three swans taking flight from the pool. On my every other visit to this garden, the solid gate in the stone wall on its far side had been closed and locked. D'Sanya had told me it was a part of the house construction that remained unfinished. But on this morning the gate stood open, and the Lady motioned me to walk through, into a small courtyard. I gaped in amazement.

Before us lay almost the exact replica of the green garden behind us, but in this courtyard, every flower and tree and blade of grass was gray stone, its surface as smooth and luminous as pearls. Even the magical swans had been duplicated in stone, their rising wings as light as if filled with air.

"I've never seen stonework so delicate, so exact," I said. I ran my fingers over the rose petals. Each flower was slightly different, just as true flowers grew, and the artist had captured the fine veins in the leaves, the motley blights and blemishes of real flowers, even a rose beetle here and there. The thorns seemed real, as well, sharp enough to prick my finger when I touched them.

"You didn't guess, then!" She stood behind me, her delight warming me more than the hot sun on my back. "But then perhaps you've never seen shellstone."

"No. Never. What is it?"

She dragged me back to my feet and through an open doorway into a long, low-roofed building—a garden workshop. On one side were pots and shovels, barrows, barrels of dirt, and wooden tables on which sat trays of seedlings ready to be set out in the rich black soil of the valley. But one long table was topped with a slab of gray stone, and on it lay a variety of plants and flowers, feathers and twigs, each one partially encased in thin layers of pale gray.

"Do you understand now? Though I knew of it from childhood, I'd never seen shellstone for myself until we found a deposit in Grithna Vale. If you lay an object— anything, a natural object or a model that you've made from wood or clay or steel—on the slab and don't move it, the stone will grow around it, preserving the exact shape. Even as the stone grows thicker, the details are all retained. A fresh and lovely rose will look fresh and lovely forever."

I started to ask if she didn't miss the smell or the color, but I didn't want to spoil her pleasure. The sculptures were indeed marvelous. A natural material of this world—that explained why I'd felt no prickling or coolness to indicate enchantment.

"The gardener, who is truly a Stone Shaper, takes the individual pieces—the flowers, the stems, the trellises, the insects or other creatures—along with sculpted pieces of his own invention, and he arranges and links them together to accomplish his vision."

Once I had expressed sufficient admiration for her "gardener's" talents, we rode out for Tymnath, a sizable town with a bustling market three leagues south of Gaelic Over the past weeks we had made frequent visits to Tymnath market. With the same amusement, wonder, and delight as the children who ran barefoot through the lanes, we had picked up and put down everything we found there: jewelry and fabrics, cooking pots and music boxes, games, artworks, and magical devices of infinite variety. I had never imagined such magical things existed, invented just to entertain or amuse. We had eaten every kind of foodstuff that was offered: little pastries filled with bitter fruit, sugared leaves, savory skewered bits of meat, shellfish in butter so spicy D'Sanya turned red and drank three cups of saffria before dissolving in laughter, and wine so potent I had to sit in the middle of the lane for a quarter of an hour before I could walk straight again.

On this day several artisans had set up a display of painted silks, some already sewn into scarves and gowns, some raw lengths hung from frames taller than my head. The designs and rich dyes confused the eye, forming colors I could not name and shapes that were not imprinted on the fabric itself, but only on my mind.

As we turned to go, I glimpsed Sefaro's daughter leaning against the side of a sausage-seller's cart, watching us. Did the woman truly travel so far just to spy on us?

I took D'Sanya's arm and led her away from the central market. A woman strolling toward us with a child at each hand stopped suddenly, staring at D'Sanya, her jaw falling open.

"Ah, not yet," D'Sanya murmured. "If we could have just a little while longer to ourselves . . ."

"The Lady!" whispered the woman, trying to be polite without taking her eyes from D'Sanya's face. Bowing awkwardly and raising her hands, she elbowed her children, a pale boy and a girl wearing a pink ribbon in her hair. "Your hands, J'Kor, Ma'Denne. It's the enchanted princess." The gaping children raised their palms and bobbed their heads.

D'Sanya nodded quickly and hurried onward, propelling me through the crowded lanes of the market, turning her face toward my shoulder so people could not see her straight on.

Someone always recognized D'Sanya on our outings. Word would spread through the market-goers, and before very long a crowd would gather around her, people begging for help, for healing, for blessings, for relief from their fears. Some people only wanted to touch her, or to have her say their names, thinking some wonder would come of it. She gave everything she could, always apologizing to me with a glance before delving into their problems: listening, healing, touching, comforting.

I had worried at first that someone would be curious about me, start to ask questions I couldn't answer, and uncover my false identity. But I soon learned that no one ever looked at me if D'Sanya was nearby. When she tired, she would glance at me over their heads, and while she told her petitioners where to apply for more help or when she might return, I would stretch out my arms and make a way for her to retreat through the press.

We hurried into the quieter streets of houses and shops before the word could spread too far. "Perhaps we should just go," I said, slowing her pace. "We could ride back through Caernaille. Stop at the ponds and watch the blue herons." For some reason this day had felt sour from its beginning; I couldn't bear the thought of the reverent, babbling crowd or all the Dar'Nethi magic that would grate on my spirit like sand in my boot.

She smiled up at me and squeezed my arm. "I've never known anyone so shy as you. Behind your gentlemanlike manner you've the reflexes of a cat, the strength of a bear, and the eye of a seer. I've a guess that not ten men in all of Gondai could best you in a test of mundane combat, or even if they brought their own sorcery to bear for that matter. So it cannot be lack of confidence or fear for our safety that frets you so. Your voice neither stammers nor grates. You are ravishingly handsome and so graceful in posture it cannot be uncertainty as to your welcome . . ."

"Lady, you flatter me too much."

She spun around to face me, taking my hands and walking backward down the lane, evidently trusting me to keep her from falling into potholes or tripping over gutters and lampposts. ". . . and certainly no dullness of intellect keeps you back. Your mind is as keen and bright as an enchanted blade, and new learning brings your face to life. I've learned that when you squint in just a certain way, your mind is racing, questioning and formulating answers, all inside yourself. Yet once we're outside the hospice grounds, you never speak a word to anyone but me. I'll wager a year's breakfasts that you would never come to even so tame a place as Tymnath market if I didn't force you."

"Most likely not."

"Well," she said, taking my arm and squeezing it to her side, walking frontward again, "for today I will indulge your fancy, but in the future we shall work on your social skills. You must learn to enjoy yourself in all ways!"

We strolled through the lanes that skirted the marketplace, poking into a luthier's shop to watch the master steam and shape and join the thin slices of wood that would form the shell of a new instrument. We found a jeweler's cart, and I bought D'Sanya a jade comb she admired—a gift she allowed only because it was unlike anything she already owned. She adored jewelry, never leaving her door without three or four rings on each hand, bracelets on her wrist or arms or ankles, and something dangling from her neck. The pieces were most often pure goldwork or silver, sometimes set with gemstones, though never garish or overdone. But she wouldn't allow me to buy her more, saying she had enough.

When we came to the hostler's yard at the edge of the town to reclaim our horses, we found a furor. Twenty people or more were clustered around a small party of horsemen. From the center of the crowd came thuds, grunts, and shouts. A horse squealed and reared. Curses and epithets flew through the air, along with rumbling blasts of enchantment that unsettled my stomach.

"P'Tor, fetch the Winder!" a man shouted. A youth in bright red and green burst out of the shifting crowd and streaked past us toward the center of town, his long braid flying.

A man screamed in pain as a sharp crack split the air above the fight, a streak of darkness that might have been the absolute reversal of lightning. Many in the group drew back. And then came a low, soul-grating hiss that chilled the day, shadowing the sun as surely as a rising storm cloud.

"Sssslay us if you will." The voice that shaped the hiss into words was harsh and brutal.

"They are cowardsss like all Dar'Nethi vermin," said a second voice, "sssneaking, binding with their pitiable magics. None dares challenge us with a blade."

Zhid.

I stepped backward into the lane we'd just exited, ready to draw D'Sanya away from danger. But she shook off my hand and hurried across the trampled dirt and grass, leaving me no choice but to follow.

"What's going on here?" she called out. Her tone of command was irrefusable, as I well knew.

Men and women turned to gape at her, stepping aside as she walked into their midst. Five or six men were struggling to force a bedraggled captive to his knees. The Zhid, a thick, shaggy man with blood smeared across his face, was half standing, refusing to go down. Backs and arms strained to retain their hold on the warrior's brawny arms; boots scuffed the dirt as the Zhid shoved his captors inexorably backward. Zhid were wickedly strong and hard to kill. While one townsman held a roll of thick silver cord, two others were cutting off lengths of it to wrap around the captive's wrists and ankles.

I couldn't see the second Zhid, as he lay face down on the ground with two villagers sitting on his back, binding his limbs with more of the silver cord; dolemar , it was called, a material enchanted to prevent use of power. While a man in a blacksmith's apron tried to restrain a wild-eyed horse, two women tended to a groaning townsman with a horrific gash in his side. Dark blood soaked the hard ground beneath him.

"Come here, little maid, and tell these brutes to leave off," said the shaggy Zhid, his pale eyes settling on D'Sanya. He snarled and wrenched his shoulders as the townsmen knotted the silver cord about his left wrist and yanked his hand behind him to tie off with the other. "You've a pretty face. Won't you have pity on a ssstarving warrior?"

"Pity, yes," she said softly. "What is more pitiable than a being without a soul?"

"It's the Lady … the princess …" I couldn't see who said it first, for the words swept through the circle of Dar'Nethi like an autumn wind. Some stared. Some bowed. Some dropped to their knees. Eyes flicked from D'Sanya to the growling Zhid and back again, anticipating.

The burly Zhid scrabbled his feet back under himself and lurched upward, toppling one Dar'Nethi and smashing his captor in the face with his boot. But a wooden club in the gut felled the Zhid warrior instantly and left him in the dirt. The Dar'Nethi rolled him onto his face, jerking brutally on the cord about his wrists and wrapping it around his ankles until his back was arched like a bow.

D'Sanya flinched at the blows and the vigor of the Dar'Nethi captors. "Careful," she said. "He is sick and broken, but not irredeemable."

"I don't know, my lady," said one of the men tightening the cords. "We caught these two at Hy'Tan and J'Kari's house . . . and the two of them and their two little ones murdered. These damnable creatures were drinking J'Kari's blood! If Prince Ven'Dar had not commanded us to keep Zhid alive . . ." His voice broke.

"We'll drink yours as well before we're done," said the second Zhid, a long thin man with a tangled mop of red hair. He lay face down, arms and legs trussed as awkwardly as his fellow's. "We'll savor it. . . sssssssavor it…" The Zhid's unnerving expression of disdain issued from him like a viper's greeting.

Unlucky that I had stepped up to stand beside D'Sanya, for when a heavy boot rolled him onto his side, the red-haired Zhid's eyes fell directly on my own. His face brightened in astonishment . . . and then glee. "So it's true—"

I bellowed and pounced on the Zhid, throttling him so that he could not utter the words of honor and greeting that sat so eagerly on his tongue. I gripped his head unmoving and locked my eyes on his, forcing my thoughts into the villainous murk that was a Zhid's mind—especially this particular Zhid's mind. You will

say nothing, warrior. You will neither speak my name nor give the slightest hint that you know me. I am your master, your Lord, and my purposes are beyond your comprehension. You will obey me or I will squeeze the blood from your heart.

Even as Dar'Nethi hands tugged at my arms, trying to pull me off him, I ripped power from the Zhid's exhilaration and his fear, and I squeezed his heart with an invisible fist, feeling its pumping stutter, using his pain and the panic of his failing breath to strengthen my hold on his body and mind. Acknowledge my command or die this moment, Gensei Kovrack. You will say nothing of me. You will not look upon me. You will not think of me .

Of course, Great Lord Dieste … we hear your call. . . yes . . . yes . . . as you command . . .

My hands were shaking as they dragged me off him, hatred and murder flowing through me like a river of fire. I bit my lip and tasted the blood, and the hunger came near choking me. I required every smattering of will I possessed, every scrap of control I could summon, to take my hands from his throat and release his heart without killing him. By earth and sky and all gods, I wanted him dead—Gensei Kovrack, the red-haired Zhid general who had taken me into the desert and taught me the arts of command and torture.

The eyes of the crowd were hot on my back. An explanation. I needed an explanation. Someone might have sensed the vile enchantment I had worked. No one would guess it mine, not when Zhid were present, but my actions were very un-Dar'Nethi. "I've seen him before," I whispered. I was kneeling in the dirt, five men restraining me. "He slaughtered … so many . . . enslaved my father . . . my family … so powerful. Don't trust even dolemar bindings to hold him. I'm sorry . . . so very sorry."

"We understand." The hands that held me gradually fell away, a few squeezing my arm tight or touching my back in comradeship and sympathy.

"I'm sorry. I lost the Way." That's what a true Dar'

Nethi would say. >

Two fair hands reached out for me, offering to help me to my feet—D'Sanya's hands. "Oh, my dear friend." Her brow knit in worry, sympathy mellowing her eyes, she brushed a hand across my brow. Peace and comfort and care enfolded me . . . smothered me.

Unfortunately her gifts were designed to soothe a sorrow I did not feel. Hatred and revulsion sat heavy in my belly, and my attention remained on Kovrack, a wily and powerful Zhid. Would he obey? Would he suspect I was no longer what he believed?

"I must help here," said D'Sanya, half apologizing.

"Of course," I said. "Do what you have to do. I'll wait. I'm sorry."

As D'Sanya knelt beside the wounded townsman who lay in the profound stillness of mortal injury, the youth in bright red and green pelted across the yard toward the growing crowd. Behind him trotted an older man in purple robes, breathing hard.

I backed into the crowd, feeling an occasional pat on my back or my shoulder. Kovrack's gaze was pinned to the dirt. I did not take my eye from him.

"Stand back," said the man in purple when he came to the center of the crowd. He closed his eyes and threw out his hand as if scattering seeds on a field, and I felt the shivering power of the Word Winder's cast settling over the two Zhid. An extra binding to prevent their use of sorcery, I suspected. As had every enchantment I had sensed since crossing the Bridge, it abraded my spirit like steel on glass.

At the same time the afternoon sunlight flickered brighter, almost garish in its orange brilliance. The chattering crowd fell into awestruck silence as D'Sanya breathed into the mouth of the fallen Dar'Nethi. His chest spasmed. One limp hand moved as if to grip the earth itself, and soon his eyes flicked open and color flooded back into his pale cheeks. The two women swooped down on him again, weeping.

When D'Sanya rose and stepped away from the man, the Word Winder bowed, extending his palms. "My gracious Lady," he said. "Surely holy Vasrin has sent you to us in our need. Those of us privileged to witness your deeds are blessed."

"Good Ka'Ston," she said, returning his greeting. Then she moved to the two bound Zhid.

"We thought to send them to Feur Desolй," said one of the men who had bound the two prisoners. "At the prison, perhaps, a Healer . . ."

"Let me see what I can do." As she knelt on the hard dirt between the Zhid, D'Sanya's eyes met mine. Her expression was solemn, but I could not understand what she was trying to tell me. Then she bent over Kovrack and touched his red hair.

His head popped up. "What is this?" he said harshly, jerking his head away from her hand. "What are you doing?"

"Anything broken must be put right," said D'Sanya, laying a hand on his breast, her gold rings catching the sunlight.

"Don't touch me, witch. I am not broken. I am as the Lords of Zhev'Na made me." He spat and writhed and twisted, his boots scuffing up a cloud of dust as he tried to get away from her, even bound as he was. His attempts at sorcery—virulent, tangled bursts of pain and confusion—fell dead quickly, aborted by the power of his bindings. That he could create anything tangible, even such ephemeral wisps, while under the restraints of dolemar and a Word Winder's binding spoke a great deal about his age and power.

Several Dar'Nethi held him still as D'Sanya placed her hands on his breast and his head and closed her eyes. As her enchantment took shape, the snarling, furious Kovrack riveted his gaze on me . . . expectant. I glared at him, hoping he would remember his oath and my fist on his heart. I dared not plant a thought in his head to reinforce my command, not with D'Sanya so close. And I dared not touch power again.

"Lord, do not allow—" With a gasp and a shudder, Kovrack's eyelids dropped shut, and his body relaxed. No one seemed to notice what he'd said.

Could she do it? Restore the soul of a Zhkl as old and decadent as Kovrack, a general of the Lords' armies, steeped in their corruption for hundreds of years? And what would come next? If D'Sanya could reawaken his soul, his bond of obedience to the Lords—to me—would be broken, and he could betray me. Ironic that he was more danger to me if he was whole. What would happen if he told these people who I was? The Dar'Nethi believed I should be dead, and to use power to save myself might possibly make me into the very thing they feared.

D'Sanya's power swelled, silencing the murmuring onlookers, choking me with her overwhelming enchantment. Unable to analyze the complex threads of her working, I watched her face instead. Intense, devout, passionate. The fiery liquor in my blood began to cool, hatred and self-loathing yielding to feelings that were cleaner, better. Moments flitted past. Almost too soon, D'Sanya straightened her back. If she had failed . . .

"What place is this?" Kovrack had opened his eyes as well, fixing them first on D'Sanya, who knelt beside him, and then sweeping his gaze about the hovering crowd. Lost, confused, searching, his gaze met mine . . . and passed on to the man next to me without recognition. "Why am I bound? Good mistress, I feel so strangely ill."

"Not ill, sir. Not any more." She beckoned the Dar'Nethi. "Come, cut him loose. Care for him."

"Tell us your name!" I called out. "Who is your master?" Better to know right away. Better to be sure. Zhid were allowed only one answer to that question.

The red-haired man blinked and looked puzzled. "P'Var, Numerologist of Gladsea, I am. And though I offer service to many who need my skills, I serve no master save the lord Prince of Avonar." He looked at me and then to the others as if for confirmation.

A Dar'Nethi woman cut his bonds and helped him to sit up. She didn't remove the last windings of silver about Kovrack's wrists and ankles, however, but jumped back to the verge of the watchers. When Kovrack noted the silver cord around his wrists, he jerked his head up and surveyed the crowd again. His sallow face told me in what moment he began to suspect what he had been. Even then he did not look to me. My fists unclenched.

D'Sanya, smiling, pressed something into his palm and folded his fingers over it. "Take this token, son of D'Arnath, and let it remind you of your goodness and strength."

As he opened his palm and stared at a slip of gleaming brass threaded on a silken string, D'Sanya, her skirt red with the dust of the yard, turned to the second Zhid.

When we left them a short time later, Kovrack sat alone in the middle of the hostler's yard, his head in his hands. He had refused all help or comfort save the brass lion pendant. P'Var the Numerologist's home village was long destroyed, and his family seven hundred years dead. For all he or any of us knew, he had killed them himself. The other man was sobbing, leaning on the thick arm of the smith who had reluctantly offered him a straw pallet in his forge for the night. The relieved townspeople had withdrawn in a hurry.

D'Sanya and I rode out of Tymnath without speaking. The afternoon light sculpted the green hills around us and stretched our shadows long across the path. When we came to a split in the road, D'Sanya surprised me by choosing the longer way, the way that led to the valley called Caernaille and its ponds with their blue herons. Only after we had sat for a while, watching the herons snare the rising fish, did she speak.

"I'm so sorry it had to be that one," she said, laying her hand on my knee. "Someone who had hurt you so terribly . . . your family . . . your father. Will you tell me of it?"

I shook my head, unspeaking. Unwilling to tell her more lies.

"It's all right to be angry," she said, her fingers squeezing my flesh. "You were a child. It was all brutal and unfair. You didn't kill him today. It's all right."

No, I hadn't killed him, only done a bit of torture and brutalized his mind. She had given him back his soul. Which of us was corrupt?

* * *

One bright morning in midsummer, D'Sanya and I climbed Castanelle, the highest peak in the range that formed Grithna Vale. As the sun reached its zenith, we sat, tired and hot, on a wind-blasted slope of short grass and rock. A rock-pig whistled from a nearby boulder as D'Sanya chattered, reliving every slope and switchback of the climb. We gazed out across the sunlit world and laughed as a wedge of geese flew past below us, and we sat motionless as a flock of goats with curled horns grazed within ten paces of us.

Despite the perfection of the morning, the blustering wind turned sour and sent us down early. The rain caught us halfway down the mountain.

"Look, over there," I said, holding my sodden cloak stretched over D'Sanya's head. "It's some kind of shelter."

Rain splattered and dripped from the trees. The path was swirling mud, and we were soaked to the skin. Our teeth were chattering. Even the half-collapsed shepherd's hut looked inviting.

"At least it has part of a roof," she said.

Only the end next to the stone hearth had enough of a slumping sod roof left intact that we could stuff our drenched and shivering selves into it. I gathered a pile of wet wood; D'Sanya set it to blazing with sorcery; and we huddled together to get warm, laughing at the fickle ways of nature, which had tempted us so high only to abandon us so abjectly. While the rain poured and her flames crackled, she talked and I listened.

It was on that long afternoon, as we grew relaxed and warm in our solitary island in the midst of the storm, that I first realized I loved her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for my arms to be around her to quiet her shivering, and for her damp, fragrant hair to tickle my nose because her head was resting on my chest. All doubts and confusions were banished with her first sigh of contentment as I held her close.

"Are you awake?" she asked drowsily, without moving her head from the place I wished it to stay as long as I could persuade her to leave it.

"Approximately."

"I leave tomorrow for Maroth Vale. Will you come?"

"If you wish it." She could have asked for me to give her my eyes, and my answer would have been the same.

"How could I not wish my best friend to be with me?" She nestled closer. "But before we go, friend, there is the matter of one of your secrets that I think we must clarify."

For a moment my instincts shouted a warning. But only for a moment . . . until she turned her head just enough that it was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her.