The Hob's Bargain

ONE

Changes are frightening, I thought, even when they're changes for the better. From the doorway my cottage I looked across the yard and garden to the barn where my husband was harnessing our chestnut workhorse. My husband. Our workhorse. I tasted the thought in my mind and smiled. Frightening, yes, but exciting and wonderful, too.

The barn wasn't far from the house, but the distance was great enough that I couldn't see the lacings on the harness or the faint, pale lines near my husband's eyes where the sun didn't reach his skin when he smiled. But I could see the horse cock an ear back, listening to Daryn's soft, slow voice. I could see the wheat-gold of Daryn's hair, newly cut in honor of our wedding.

We'd been married all of a night, and though we'd been betrothed this past harvest, I still couldn't quite believe it. I'd never expected to wed at all. The morning was still chilly this early in spring. I drew my shawl more tightly around my shoulders, hugging the warmth closer.

Daryn tied the traces to the croup strap high on the horse's rump so they wouldn't drag the ground all the way to the high field where he'd meet his brother and my father to continue the plowing they'd already begun. The muscles of his back flexed under the wool shirt he wore as he pulled himself to the chestnut's back in one smooth motion.

"Daryn…" I called tentatively.

He saw me in the doorway and grinned. I smiled back with relief. When he'd left the house, I'd been busy cleaning up after breakfast, pretending I fixed morning meals every day when it had always been my mother's task. Near to thirty years old, and I still couldn't make toasted bread without scorching it.

Cleaning had given me a reason for my red cheeks other than the embarrassment that had first caught my tongue when I awoke in bed with him this morning and worsened dismally with the advent of the blackened bread. I'd expected him to be grumpy, as my father always was. I should have known him better than that: Daryn didn't hold grudges.

He spun the horse on its haunches, a trick he'd taught it during the last year's long winter months while I'd watched from my parents' house. If I half-closed my eyes, I could almost see a warrior on his mount preparing for battle rather than a landsman off to work. With a snort, the horse galloped to the small porch where I stood, his heavy feet thundering on the ground like the great horses from Gram's tales of ancient heroes.

Daryn was handsome enough to be a hero, perhaps some lost prince or noble. A clever twinkle seldom left his eye, and good humor colored most of his expressions—attributes all proper heroes should have. The muscles he'd earned tilling the fields were no less impressive than those of a soldier, and probably better than any prince would earn seated upon a throne.

Truth was, he was prettier than I, and the better part of a decade younger. His age had worried me when Father brought him home last fall. I should have remembered how shrewd my father was. Only an idiot could have found fault with Daryn, and I hope I've never been that—or at least not very often.

"Aren, my lass?" Daryn asked after a moment. I realized he'd stopped in front of me some time ago, and I'd been staring at him without speaking.

I started to say something light and funny, something to let him know it was shyness, not moodiness, that I felt, but the words stopped in my throat. A familiar chill settled into my stomach. Not now, I thought desperately. I reached out to his normalcy and warmth, gripping the cloth of his pant leg, and hoped for the feeling to pass. When I closed my eyes against dizziness, I saw…

… a winter lily, scarlet flower drooping and edged with brown, bobbing as something dripped on it.

As an explanation of the dread feeling that choked me, it was a complete failure. Most of my visions were like that. Later, after whatever event the sight had warned of took place, I could nod my head to myself and say, "Oh, that's what it meant." Not very useful.

If I had to be stricken with magic, I would rather have had something like Gram's talent for healing, or my brother's knack for finding things—especially because the consequences of having magic were so deadly. My brother had died for his when I was thirteen.

He'd been in town with Father, trading fresh milk for leather to mend a harness, when Lord Moresh's bloodmage saw him and spoke my brother's death sentence. Quilliar had been fifteen, and he'd had a day to choose whether he would apprentice to the bloodmage or refuse and be put to death.

If he'd chosen to become a bloodmage, he'd have learned to kill and torture for power. After a while he'd have begun to go insane, as all the mages did in the end—some immediately, some after years of a gradual decline into madness.

He'd picked death, but not one delivered by the bloodmage. The bloodmages would have used his death, his dead body, to power their magics. So my brother walked into the middle of a snowstorm and found a place where his body would be safely hidden for three days: enough time to ensure the bloodmage had no power from him.

I couldn't tell Daryn I had the sight, though I'd had all winter to do it. Caution learned so harshly would not drop from me after a few months of exchanged confidences and growing love. After a night of being man and wife, I would have trusted him with my life, but I couldn't risk losing the growing softness in his eyes when he looked at me.

Looking into his eyes, I couldn't tell him what I'd seen.

"Aren?" he asked, concerned. "Is something wrong?"

"No. No, just be careful." I released his leg and stepped back. I hugged myself as if it would help keep my mouth from telling him everything. I wrestled with my conscience, finally deciding that if whatever happened was catastrophic, I would tell him about the sight—punishment for being too selfish to tell him now.

He grinned at me, not seeing the seriousness of my warning. "I'll keep my feet out from under the plowshares and be back at dusk after a dangerous day of plowing fields with your father and Caulem."

The warmth in his eyes kept his speech from being patronizing. He took my words as an expression of concern, perhaps the implied apology for my moodiness this morning that I'd meant to give him when I'd called him over.

Well, my foreseeing was not exact, predicting small harms as well as great. Perhaps someone would twist an ankle today or cut themselves on a sharp rock. Maybe it would rain. I hoped it would rain.

I set the worry to the back of my mind and kissed him when he leaned down. "See that you do," I said.

When I patted his cheek with a motherly hand, he grinned suddenly. He gave me a warm look and turned his head to bite my forefinger gently. I ducked a bit, not wanting him to see the heat in my eyes. He wrapped his hand around a strand of my hair and tugged me close again. This time his kiss left me too breathless to talk, sending the dark warning from my heart as if it had never been.

The horse shifted, pulling us apart.

"Don't fret so much, Aren," he said, and his voice soothed me as it did any of the other beasts he used it on. "You and I'll do very well."

He kissed me again and set the gelding up the path to the field before I recovered enough to speak. He knew I watched him, because he pulled the big horse into a controlled rear just before he rode out of sight. The harness was more hindrance than help in riding, but Daryn sat the horse easily. He blew me a kiss, then horse and rider plunged forward and were lost in the trees.

I shut the door of the cottage and looked about. Daryn had built the little house himself, and each joint of wood and brush of whitewash showed the care he'd taken. There was a loft for our bed, and the kitchen was set in its own nook. I'd helped to sand the wooden floor (along with everyone else in both our families), and I'd woven the small green rug that covered the trapdoor of the cellar which would keep our food cool during the summer. There wasn't much furniture. Daryn promised that when next winter came, he'd build more. Possessively, I ran my hand over the wooden back of my grandmother's loveseat.

Everyone in the village knew there was a strain of magic running in my father's family. That hadn't stopped my sister's wedding. There weren't so many folk around that a taint to the blood kept people from forming alliances, not when it was properly buried a generation or so back. My brother's death brought shame to the forefront; there were no families who would have me after that.

If anyone had found out I was mageborn, they'd have killed me. By the One God's sacred commands, mages are an evil to be eliminated, and since Lord Moresh's great-grandfather's conversion, everyone in Fallbrook followed the teachings of the One God. Death to mages was more popular than some of the other edicts.

I still had nightmares about the old woman who was pressed to death by her family when I was five or six. They'd used a barn door and piled it with stones until she was crushed beneath the weight. I wasn't there when it happened, but the stones still stood. When I passed them, I always tried not to see the remains of the barn door underneath the heaped mound of rock.

Like my brother, I'd still prefer such a death over what a mage would do to me—which was just as well, for I wouldn't be given the choice of apprenticeship. All bloodmages were men.

I stayed away from town when Lord Moresh and his bloodmage were in residence. Fortunately, Fallbrook was neither his only nor his most important holding, so he was seldom here. This year there'd been a war someplace and he hadn't come at all.

I'd expected Quilliar's death to leave me an old maid no matter how hard I tried to appear mundane, but fourteen years had been enough time for memories to fade. My father needed someone to take over the land he held. My sister Ani's husband, Poul, had as much land as he could work. So Father traveled north to Beresford, which was even smaller than our own Fallbrook, and found Daryn and his younger brother Caulem, tenth and eleventh sons of a farmer with only a small plot to divide among his children. So Caulem and Daryn came to my father's house last fall to help with the harvest.

Neither old memories, the pall of the sight, nor the equally dismal embarrassment of burning the toast this morning could rob me of my happiness for very long. The past was gone: Quilliar's death was unchangeable. When I went to the fields at midday with food for the men, I'd warn my father to be careful. Though Ma tried to pretend I didn't have the sight. Father would give proper weight to it. Tomorrow I would do better with the toast.

I looked around the cottage for something to do until lunchtime, but there really wasn't anything. We hadn't been living there long enough to get much dirty. My earlier fit of cleaning had taken care of our few morning dishes.

I pulled out the quilt I was making for my sister's baby. After years of barrenness, Ani was preparing for the birth of her first child in late summer. As fast as I sewed, I might get it done by the child's twelfth year. Even so, the rhythm of sewing was familiar and relaxing.

At midday I folded the blanket and set it aside with a smile and a pat. I was not the best seamstress, but this blanket was going very well. Ma said it was the simplest pattern she knew, and even I couldn't ruin it. Stretching the stiffness of a morning's stitchery out of my shoulders, I started for the cellar to prepare a meal.

I slid the rug aside with my shoe and tugged the trapdoor open. A haunch of salt pork awaited me on one of the shelves. Sliced onto some of Ma's bread, it would make a good meal.

I'd already taken a step down the ladder when I heard a commotion outside.

Hooves thundered, and a male voice shouted something I couldn't quite make out. Horses at this time of year were bad news. Good news could wait until planting was over. I started toward the door.

"Check the barn," rumbled someone. I didn't know his voice, and his accent was odd. "See if they have any horses."

I'd just been ready to call out a welcome, but that stopped me. Bandits, I thought. We hadn't had robbers for a long time. Even though the King's Highway passed through Fallbrook, we were isolated on the outskirts of civilization.

The sound of boots on the porch shook me from the stillness of shock. I pulled the rug across the outside of the trapdoor and held it in place with one hand as I climbed down the ladder. I let the door close almost completely before releasing the rug and pulling my fingers out. I hoped it would conceal the door from a cursory search; it had no lock or bar to keep anyone out.

I heard a crash that might have been the cottage door opening. Daisy, our milk cow, lowed in alarm from the barn. I hunched in the corner of the small cellar behind a barrel of flour. Boots thudded dully on the floor above me. I couldn't tell how many people there were, but certainly more than one.

I remembered the big butcher's knife sitting beside the ham, and I scurried out of my hiding place to get it. I wished Quilliar had shown me how to fight with a knife when I'd asked him, but he'd been growing increasingly conscious of the differences between boys and girls. He told me to ask Father, knowing it would be useless.

Wood splintered above me, and I ducked, certain they'd smashed through the floor—it sounded like someone had thrown our bed from the loft. The floorboards were new and tight. I couldn't see through them to assess the damage the thieves were doing, but they couldn't see me either.

I heard them laughing, and I scuttled back behind the barrel. I hoped they wouldn't think it odd there was no meat in the house, or they might start looking for it. Maybe they wouldn't notice the hollow sound of their boots on the floor.

Who'd have thought the sight had tried to warn me of danger? It never had before. I hunched down against the earth floor, and something more than cold began to seep in my bones.

Magic. I knew what it had to be, thought I'd never felt it before. The ground began to glow dimly, sullen red with small bits of gold here and there. As I watched, the bits of gold began to grow bigger and the red duller.

I worried for a moment that the raiders would see it, or that they'd caused it somehow, but the force of the emanation soon drove all thoughts of raiders from my head.

My body vibrated from contact with the earth. Power wrenched through me, making it hard to breathe. Did the bloodmages feel this way as they stood over their victims? By all rights I should have been terrified, but the sweet taste of magic prevented fear from touching me.

Red was woven over the gold in layers like a giant woven cloth, holding the gold back.

I stared at it, and suddenly knew what it was I saw.

Magic hadn't always been wrestled from pain and death. Once, so long ago the memory of it had disappeared except for Gram's tales told in secret on dark winter nights, one mageborn child to another, magic had been a joyous thing summoned from the earth. But jealous bloodmages had bound it until no one could use the wildling's power.

Beneath the red blanket, gold magic called to me, singing tenderly in my soul. Something snapped, and one thread of red came unbound. Then another.

Layer by layer the bands of red were being torn away, and the power of it lifted me off the ground. I hovered a fingerspan off the earth as one by one the angry red cords gave way. When the crimson ties broke, I could feel the corrupted touch of bloodmagic pull in places I'd never felt before—like a hair caught deep in my throat. It didn't hurt, but I could feel it all the same. The blood cords pulled me by their ties to the land of my birth, until I saw…

… a tower, dark with the force of the mage within. He called the magic tied to the land. I felt the strength of him like the heat of the smithy forge. Madness lurked in the heart of his call, adding its strength to his purpose.

Then the vision was gone. With it went the last of the binding spells of the bloodmages. I felt them go—as any mageborn native to this land would have. For a moment the floor glowed brilliantly gold, then the light traveled up the walls as if driven by demons, fading, leaving me sitting, exalted, on the ground, alone in the dark cellar.

My eyes told me the magic was gone, but where I touched the ground, my body still tingled with its sweet warmth. I felt clean, though I'd never known I was dirty. I put my fingers against the dirt of the cellar floor and knew the bloodmage's hold on the magic of the land was gone.

A loud shout drew my attention to the raiders above me: I'd forgotten about them. Without the protection of the magic, fear returned apace. For a moment, I thought they'd seen the light as well, and waited for them to storm the cellar to investigate.

My heart pounded, my breath came in quick pants, but they were only righting over some piece of loot. Gram's silver mirror, probably.

Let them fight about it. Let them just go. The longer they were here, the better the chance they would find me. They'd been here for a long time now: they should be getting nervous. The men might be coming down from the field.

An immense pot in the cellar fell to the floor with a crash. The sound quieted the men who stood above.

"There's something below us—look for a door outside. These kinds of places usually have a cellar. There could be valuables in it."

I jumped to my feet and ran to the far side of the cellar.

It was dark, but the dirt floor was clear of things that could catch my feet. There was a violent boom from above. They'd knocked over the big shelves near the fireplace.

Without actually seeing it fall, I caught the big soap-making cauldron as it slipped from the peg Daryn had worried was too small for it. I'd have to remember to tell him he had been right. Men liked that—at least Ma said they did. The weight of the cauldron made me stagger, and the handle flipped down and bruised my thumb where it rested over the edge of the pot—but I managed to hold it and my knife without making any noise.

I set the cauldron carefully on the ground. As long as nothing else fell, I was safer now. The shelves had fallen across the trapdoor. There was nothing the raiders could do to the house that we couldn't repair. Nothing they could take we couldn't live without.

I could safely marvel at my vision of the pot falling. I'd never had one so clear, never had one I could use to prevent a disaster. It must be because of the unbinding.

I would tell Daryn about the sight tonight, I decided. Not to punish myself, but because I could tell him how it had saved me. If magic was unbound again, maybe I could use my bit of magic to help us, help the village—as Gram had done. I was still smiling when yet another vision took me.

Daryn held the horses in place while Father helped Daryn's younger brother, Caulem, attach the harness to the plow Lord Moresh had given the village two years ago. Father was patient, letting Caulem fumble with the unfamiliar double harness. Beresford had only the older style, single-horse plows.

Something caught Daryn's attention, and he held his hand to shade his eyes as he stared into the rising sun. His body tightened to alertness, and he said something urgently to my father.

Father dropped the leather strap into the dirt and stepped forward to Daryn's side.

After no more than a look, Father grabbed Caulem's shoulders and shouted something at him, throwing the boy onto the horse that hadn't yet been hitched to the plow. He shoved the reins into the boy's hands. Caulem shouted something back, protest written in the stiffness of his jaw. Father took his hat and slapped the horse, sending it running down the path to my parents' house.

The track was wide and the horse knew every rock and rut, sprinting full-out for home. The bandit waiting in the tree at the edge of the field had a finger missing from one hand, but it didn't affect the flight of the arrow that took Caulem in the throat.

The man leaped from the tree and tried to catch the horse, but it had been thoroughly spooked by the run and the scent of blood. It was a working horse, strong enough to pull the raider dangling by its reins as if he weighed no more than a twist of straw. The man held on until he lost his footing and the horse's iron-shod hoof caught him in the leg, throwing him to the ground.

Unhindered, the animal raced on. The message that the bandits had come covered its back in a red blanket of Caulem's blood.

The vision shifted abruptly.

My father was facedown in the dirt, an ax buried in his back. Daryn stood over him, work-hardened muscles lending strength to the blows he dealt with Caulem's walking staff. The men he fought appeared only as vague blurs and flashes of weaponry. Blood ran down Daryn's face and neck until it disappeared in a larger stain of red spreading from his shoulder.

The staff he held broke, and he threw it aside, taking a step forward to protect my father. Metal gleamed, and a sword sliced into his neck.

A winter lily grew out of the unbroken ground, browning with the weight of time. A drop of Daryn's blood fell on the faded, scarlet petals.

The vision left me, and I sat where I was, stiff with shock. It was too late for me to do anything. From the position of the sun in my vision, I knew Daryn had died before I'd hidden in the cellar, running from his killers. The shock held me for a moment before the warm rush of rage followed it.

My hand tightened on the butcher's knife, and I ran for the ladder. I climbed up three rungs and pressed my back against the trapdoor, but it wouldn't move. I stepped up another rung and straightened my knees, forcing my shoulder against the door and pushing, but the shelving atop it was too heavy for me to move. I hammered it with my fists, screaming with fury at the barrier that prevented me from attacking the raiders.

At last, knuckles bloody, I stumbled off the ladder and sat on the ground—numb in body and soul. The raiders were gone. If they'd been in the house, they'd have heard me and opened the door.

I dropped the knife in the dirt and stood up again. A rough table against the wall contained a few tools in need of sharpening. One of them was a saw.

I fumbled in the darkness. My hands didn't feel quite right after hitting the door. I found the saw and set to cutting my way out. It took a long time to cut the cross braces of the door with the dull blade angled over my head. Once the braces were gone, I pulled the door into sections that fell from the opening and dropped below me.

With the door out of the way, I slid through the shelves and climbed out into daylight. Bits of broken crockery were everywhere, intermixed with chunks of wood and scraps of torn cloth from Ani's quilt.

In the barn a few chickens, still spooked by the noise of the raiders, scattered away from me. Daisy the cow lay dead in the straw. They'd hacked off one hind quarter and taken it with them, leaving the rest to rot. I looked away from the cloudy film that covered her warm, brown eyes.

Louralou, our riding pony, was gone from her stall, along with every bit of leather harness in the tack room. The piglet was gone as well. They'd left the sacks of grain.

Out of habit, I took out a fair measure of corn and scattered it for the chickens. There was a saddle blanket lying in the walkway where someone had thrown it. I stared at it for a moment.

I ought to cover their faces, I thought. The crows will come. The thought of Daryn's eyes eaten by the birds made me violently ill, and I vomited in the straw.

I rinsed my mouth in the bucket hanging in Louralou's stall, then picked up the blanket. I beat it clean against one of the stall walls, and set off to cover my husband's face.

The wind was warm, carrying with it the sweet perfume of spring flowers. Only the torn-up soil of the trail showed that this afternoon was different from any other.

I knew I wasn't thinking clearly. I should have been worried about meeting the raiders again. But it was a distant thought, and I ignored it.

Even so, when I heard men's voices and the creak of a wagon, I stopped, then found a hiding place deep under the bows of an old spruce tree, ignoring the sharp prickles of the needles through my woolen gown. For a moment, I had a strange feeling there were two of me: one here and now, kneeling in my favorite dress, and the other…

… wearing a stained tunic and a pair of men's trousers with a crossbow clutched tightly in my hand.

I wiped at my eyes with the rough saddle blanket and bit my lip until the pain drove the vision away.

As the sound of the wagon's squeaking drew closer, I recognized Talon the smith's smooth tenor as he shouted something over the rattle of the wagon. It was the villagers, then.

I eased out of the shelter of the spruce. It was much easier to go out than it had been to go in against the growth of needles. Dirt from the cellar stained my gown along with flour from the crock that usually sat on the shelves by the fireplace; the hem was covered with cow's blood. Pieces of spruce hung from my hair, brushing against my cheek.

When they came over the hill, I knew they'd been to the field before me. Knew it because the wagon was carrying something covered by a blanket.

I stopped where I was, unwilling to go any closer. Albrin, who lived closest to my parents, was there on his favorite mare. The wagon was his, drawn by his oxen. Next to him rode Kith, his son, who'd served under Lord Moresh as one of his personal guards until he lost his left arm. Kith had been my brother's best friend.

Three of the four other men also lived nearby; only Talon actually lived in the village. He must have been at Albrin's shoeing horses. Except for Kith, who still had his sword from his time of service, they were armed with scythes and long knives. There was a broken staff on top of the blanket that covered the contents of the wagon.

They slowed when they saw me. I couldn't tell what they thought because my gaze kept slipping past their faces and settling on the covered load in the wagon. My throat was dry and rasped uncomfortably as I spoke.

"They've gone on. The raiders."

"Lass," said Talon, though he was no older than I was. "Aren." The sorrow on his broad face made him look like the hound that lived on Albrin's front porch. "Your father…"

I glanced at the wagon, noticed something dark dripping from the back of it, and hastily looked back at Talon.

"Dead," I said. "From the prints outside my home, one of them is riding my husband's gelding. His shoes are new," I said.

I didn't remember looking at the ground when I walked out of the house. But I remembered the prints. Quilliars and Kith had taught me to track when we were children. I glanced at Kith, but, as usual since his return last fall, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Talon looked a little disturbed at my change of subject. He spoke slowly. "Caulem must have been coming for help, but they'd posted someone on the main trail to your da's. His horse ran into Albrin's yard covered from ribs to croup in blood. Kith rang the alarm bell and we all headed out. We left some men at your ma's, and the rest of us followed the horse's trail."

I licked my lips nervously, wishing my thoughts weren't so clear. Father had just bought that horse from Albrin, but the track it had followed should have taken it past my parents' house before it ran to Albrin's yard. My parents had an alarm bell in the yard, too. Ma should have been out ringing the bell before the horse made it as far as Albrin's—if she'd been alive to ring it.

The raiders hadn't taken grain sacks from the barn because they already had enough grain, stolen from my parents.

"Ma?" I said softly, as if my quietness would change the answer I knew they would give me.

Talon looked around for help, but no one else took up the story. "They started at Widow Mavrenen's," he said as softly as I had, the way he spoke to fidgeting young horses. "Killed her and that old dog of hers. Took everything that wasn't nailed down. They hit your folks' place next. Mistress Ani was there and your ma. We figure they must have put up quite a fight from the looks of things."

He swallowed and looked uncomfortable. "Poul, he was with us, too. We left him and his da there to take care of things, but we were afraid, from the direction the raiders were taking, that they might decide to hit you up here before they left off."

I nodded dully. Ma, Ani, and her unborn child were dead, too.

"There's no one farther out than us," I said, telling them nothing they didn't already know. My voice was slurring, but I didn't care enough to correct it. "The old place up on the hill has been vacant since old man Lovik died of lung fever last winter. They didn't take much more from our place—just the pony, really. And Gram's silver mirror." I hadn't looked for it, but it must be gone, too.

"How is it that you escaped?" asked Kith suspiciously.

His harsh tones pulled my attention to him. I'd grown up with Kith, fished with him when we were children, danced—and flirted—with him before he'd been called to war. When he'd come back to us, he'd come back with a loss that was more than his arm…

"Time for you to go home, can't fight with one arm. Too bad, really, you'd become quite a soldier…"

I swallowed, forcing Lord Moresh's voice away, knowing that they were all watching me. I'd never had visions like this before, as if all I had to do was think of something and the sight grabbed it for me.

"It was stupid," I said, finally. I knew another time I'd have been angry and hurt at his suspicion. "I was starting down the stairs to the cellar to get some salt pork for… for Daryn's lunch when I heard them outside. So I hid down in the cellar with a rug over the trapdoor. I waited until it was quiet before I came out."

I walked past them then, to the wagon. I think Albrin asked me something, but I couldn't focus on it. I lifted up the quilt—it wasn't one of Ma's, she never used flowers in her patterns.

I stared at the bodies lying in the wagon. Death had marked them so they didn't look like the people I had loved. Someone had closed their eyes, but I tucked the horse blanket over Daryn's head anyway, climbing on the wheel to get close enough to do it. Then I covered them back over with the flowered quilt.

"I think I have some information that the village elders need to hear," I said, stepping down from the wagon.

"About the raiders?" asked Kith. "From what you said, you didn't even see them."

"Mmm?" I looked up at him. If I'd told Daryn about my vision, he might still be alive. I'd promised to tell him about my sight if something bad happened. An atonement I couldn't make now except by proxy, with the village elders standing in Daryn's stead.

I even had a good reason to do it, to take my punishment. Magic was loose in the mountains again. I could feel the pulse of it under my feet. I didn't know exactly how it happened, or why. But Gram's stories had always ended…

The old woman smiled at the children who were bundled in quilts on either side of her.

"But someday," she said, "someday, the magic will return. And with it will come the white beast, the sprites, and the giants. The gremlins, the trolls, and all that is fey."

"But Gram," piped the boy, "won't they be angry?"

If Quilliar had been right, Fallbrook needed to be warned.

I spoke quickly, hoping no one had noticed my lapse. "The quickest way to the village is back to our—to my home and down by way of the path next to Soul's Creek to the river."

"What do you want to talk to the elders about?" pursued Kith doggedly.

"I have the sight," I said.

There, it was said, never to be taken back. I could not have more effectively set myself apart from the villagers if I had slit my own throat. I couldn't bring myself to care. I would tell the elders, and pay the price they demanded.

The numbness that had protected me since I climbed out of the cellar was fading, being replaced by pain so great it made me want to scream. No one left of my family. No warm husband to huddle beside when I awoke to a crisp, spring morning—never again.

I had done my screaming in the cellar. I turned back down the trail toward—well, it didn't seem like home anymore. It had been that for—I glanced unobtrusively at the sun—only a little more than a day. The numbness settled back down again, like a soft quilt protecting me from the cold.

"What did she say?" asked one of the men I didn't know very well. I thought his name was Ruprick.

"She's in shock," said Albrin shortly. "She doesn't know what she's saying."

Kith's yellow gelding passed me and moved to block my path. Kith sheathed his sword and held out his hand. There was nothing in his face, but when I took his hand, he swung me up behind him, much as he had done in those long-ago days when I'd been his best friend's little pest of a sister.

His horse, Torch, danced a little, throwing me forward and giving me an excuse to press my forehead against Kith's back. If I cried, I could trust him not to tell. Though he'd become wary, behaving as if we all were strangers to him, he wasn't a stranger to me. I knew he could be counted on to keep secrets.

The group was slowed by the oxen, and Kith ventured ahead now and then, sometimes leaving the trail entirely. I could tell he was looking for signs of the raiders, though their trail had turned west just past the croft, away from the village. I hadn't seen any sign of them after that. Since Kith remained silent, I assumed he hadn't either.

Even insulated by my sorrow, I could sense the wild magic that had been gathering since I'd first felt it. The power caused me to sweat as if this were high summer rather than spring. The air was growing heavy with it. I felt as if I were breathing underwater—but no one else seemed to be affected by it. The animals knew, though. Even the imperturbable oxen started to act restless. The horses danced and skittered like untried two-year-olds.

Torch stopped abruptly, bracing himself. His hips dropped underneath me as he clamped his tail tightly against his legs. The oxen bawled and stopped as well, dropping to the ground despite the discomfort of the yoke.

"Raiders?" asked Albrin.

"I don't know, sir," replied Kith. "I wouldn't think they'd bother old Torch, not after the campaigns he's—"

The earth bucked and heaved beneath us. Kith's gelding let out soft little murmurs of distress, his dun coat darkened with the sweat of fear. After a moment the animal's noises were hidden by the roar of the earth's anger. The sound was indescribable. An immense tree dropped not an arm's length from us, but I didn't hear anything when it hit because of the earth's incredible roar.

The shaking slowed. The magic that had consumed me eased, and I could breathe again. A rumble drew my attention to the southern peaks of the mountains surrounding our valley. Silvertooth Mountain slid downward, almost gently. The noise of it was quieter than the earthquake, distant—until it fell across the pass with a thunderous crash, blocking the King's Highway. The earth shook again.

The second time wasn't as bad, but it seemed to go on longer. Albrin's horse had been dumped on her side as the earth buckled beneath her, but during the lesser shaking the mare regained her feet. When the second quake stopped, I could feel only the barest hint of magic.

Except for Hob's Mountain, Silvertooth had been the tallest peak surrounding the valley. Now it looked as if someone had kicked it into Old Fortress, which was itself leaning aside. As we watched, dust rose from the fall, gradually obscuring the new landmark from view.

"This is a day of ill omens," said Talon soberly, his hands steadier than his voice as he reassured the oxen.

I couldn't see Kith's face, but Albrin looked as if he'd just seen the end of the world. The oxen heaved themselves to their feet. The resultant jostling of the wagon knocked the blanket aside, and I stared into Caulem's dead eyes. My world had ended before the earthquake.

The smith spoke softly to the oxen, and they threw their weight behind their harnesses. The wagon passed us, and Torch sidestepped closer. Kith leaned over, the reins in his teeth, and pulled the blanket back into place.

We followed the trail by Soul's Creek until after it forded the creek and turned to parallel the river. For the first few minutes of travel, the view of the river was blocked by thickets of willow. When the willow thinned out, it wasn't the animals that called a halt this time.

"By the gods," whispered Albrin hoarsely, forgetting we had been worshiping the One God for the last few generations.

Where the river had formerly run, there was nothing but the deep channel it had cut. Soul's Creek emptied into the rocky riverbed, and flowed where it would. Fish flapped weakly in the muddy river bottom, their gills fluttering uselessly in the open air.

"It will come back," I said involuntarily. For a moment the sight was more real than the shifting horse underneath me. "By tomorrow night it will flow with mud, and next week the water will rush freely."

Albrin gave me an odd look with a hint of coldness in his eyes. "What do you know of this, Aren?"

I gripped the back of Kith's shirt tightly and shook my head. "I need to talk to the elders," I whispered. "Can we hurry?"

Before we reached the narrow bridge over Canyon Creek, the sky had darkened ominously. Great clouds traveled south to north, though the more usual direction was west to east. A fine powder drifted down like dry snowflakes.

"Ash," I said.

"From a fire?" asked Albrin, who'd been riding nearby since we'd seen the empty riverbed.

"No," I answered, shivering a little. "Bodies."

After that Albrin dropped away from us. The space between Kith and me and the rest of the group became noticeable. I understood how they felt; if I could have gotten away from me, I would have, too.

The women and children of the village were standing in clusters along the edge of the river when we came into Fallbrook—as they might well have been. But the river had been gone for a while by then, so they were ready to be distracted by the contents of the wagon.

Albrin told them about the raiders, and sympathetic murmurs seemed to surround me. Someone tugged me off the horse, but I clung to Kith's stirrup tenaciously.

"The elders," I said.

Albrin, who'd just dismounted, nodded, and said grimly. "Go with them. It will be a while before we can call them together. Planting must go on."

So I allowed myself to be hustle-bustled into the warm inner sanctuary of the inn's kitchen by Melly, the innkeeper's wife. Everyone called her that, though the innkeeper had little to do with the inn. He spent his days tending his turnips, carrots, and aristocratic pigs whose pedigrees were longer than Lord Moresh's.

The inn had three sleeping rooms for infrequent travelers and several dining and drinking rooms that were in use much more often. Food and drink were paid for mostly by barter, though Lord Moresh and his armsmen paid in hard currency. My father said Melly made little more than she spent, but it kept her happy.

Melly lived up to her legendary charity by settling me in front of a vast bowl of her husband's turnips.

"Here, child, keep busy with these if you like—or leave them. But your gram always said busy hands are life's great healers." Then she shooed everyone else out of the room, closing the door behind her as she left.

I took out the first turnip and concentrated on skinning the whole thing without breaking the peel. Apples were easy, but turnips required real skill. Melly's knife was sharp, and it slid easily over the turnips. It required all of my attention and no thought, so it worked very well to take my mind off of what had happened—and what I feared was going to happen.

TWO

It was evening before the elders met. Earthquakes, raiders, ill omens notwithstanding, this was planting season, and a farmer worked in the fields from daybreak to twilight.

They planted the lord's fields first; then the villagers could attend to their own lands. This high in the mountains the seasons were too short for dawdling. The elders divided the land, which was held in common by the village, among families for farming. After the lord's tithe, the harvest of each field belonged to the man who farmed it.

The land rights passed from father to son. If a man had no sons, he adopted, or passed them to his daughter's husband. Father's land would go back to the village. The elders might wait a season for me to remarry, but the village could not afford to let cropland lie needlessly fallow. Next spring the elders would give it to a new holder or split it among those who held land already. With the lord's tithe on the harvest and half the land fallow each year to keep it healthy, the village was sometimes hard put to feed itself through the long winter months. There was no emergency so great it could call the men from the planting.

My knife slipped, and the turnip skin, which was half-peeled, broke in two. I sucked on my right thumb where I'd nicked it as I examined the turnip to make sure I hadn't bled on it. My knuckles ached where I'd beaten them against the trapdoor, and my left thumb was bruised from the cauldron handle. My right thumb had been uninjured until I'd assaulted it with the knife.

I went on with my thoughts, distracting myself from what happened this morning even if it meant thinking about what I had to do tonight.

The elders could have met, despite planting. There were a number of elders who weren't farmers. Albrin bred and trained horses and dogs. Cantier, the oldest, still went out with the young men to fish, though his wife often nagged at him to retire. I didn't know how old he really was, but his eldest son was older than my father. Tolleck, the new village priest, was an elder by virtue of the office—though he helped in the fields, too, sometimes. Merewich, the headman who presided over all of them, had been a shepherd until his joints became too twisted for the work.

For some things they would have been enough, but Albrin must have decided the earthquake, the disappearance of the river, and the blocked pass to Auberg, the village's major market, would require the whole council.

Sitting in the kitchen, I wondered what I would say to them. What if the magic I'd felt had only been the garnering earthquake? As time passed, the experience I'd had in the cellar became more and more dreamlike. But there were the visions. Visions such as I had never had before, coming one on top of the other.

My knife shook until I had to stop cutting for fear of doing more damage to my already abused thumb. I swallowed hard and sought the numbness that had protected me so far—but it was dissolving like morning mist.

Whether I addressed the council or not, I had already condemned myself as a mage. Kith wouldn't say anything, but there had been other people who heard my confession. The only way any good would come of my death would be if I could convince them of what I knew to be true.

Magic flowed though these mountains now as it had long ago. The wildlings who had lived when magic was bound were long gone. But I knew in my bones that Fallbrook's valley wasn't safe anymore. Not that it mattered to Daryn or my parents. Not that it mattered to me much, either—but I had a penance to make.

Melly bustled in and took the knife from me. "Sorry, my dear, but it's dark now and the council will be convening."

"I don't hear anyone," I said.

It was true. There should have been the sounds of heavy tables scraping across the inn's public room, where councils were held. The inn walls weren't so thick as to hide voices, and the inn sounded empty.

Melly stepped behind me, took my hair out of its braids, and began to brush it. "They've decided to hold the council out in the inn yard. You were out there when it happened, so I suppose you know old Silvertooth is blocking the highway to Auberg. The farmers are all going to be here to see what the council suggests about marketing the excess crops, and the fishermen will be there, too. Several of the village houses fell when the earthquake hit, and any number more will need work. Thank the One God the inn survived with little damage—though I'll have to have the innkeeper look at the window in the back bedroom. Add the raiders, and everyone in the village will be in attendance. The public room isn't large enough to house half of them."

She rounded the front of me, took a wet cloth from a bowl, and scrubbed my face. "There, now. You still look like a woman who's lost her family, but now no one will be staring at you to see if they can see tear tracks. No one's business how you mourn, but your own."

I looked at Melly, but I saw Albrin's man talking to a group of villagers.

Unnatural, the way she stood there, talking to us as if her menfolk weren't stretched out in the wagon beside us.

"Aren?" Melly said.

I nodded my head, focusing on her face, which was closer to my own than I remembered it being.

"Stand up, now."

I did. She walked around me, hands on hips.

"We'll leave the dress as it is," she decided with a nod. "No harm reminding them what you've been through. The hair made you look wild, but with it braided again and tidy, you look about fifteen."

I felt a hundred and fifteen. She patted my shoulder lightly, and led me to the door.

"Best if you go out on your own," she said. "So they know it's your own idea."

Melly was right, the inn yard was crowded. My desire to address this mob was less than nothing. If Kith hadn't appeared just then to take my elbow, I think I would have walked right back to the safety of the kitchen.

The crowd parted to let us through, more frightened by Kith than moved by courtesy. With his cold eyes and hard face, he seemed more a dangerous stranger than a boy born and bred in Fallbrook. Well enough. I was frightened, too—though not of Kith.

The elders were still shuffling back and forth around the table when Kith set me on the far end of the bench; I would be heard first. The man who'd been sitting there scooted farther down without objection. Not even the woman who lost her place at the other end of the bench complained.

Kith stood to my left, resting one foot on the end of the bench. He folded his right arm across his chest, gripped his opposite shoulder, and closed his eyes. I wished I was calm enough to do that.

When I glanced at the elders' bench, I saw that Koret watched me thoughtfully. He was a big man with a bushy beard that I could remember being black as tar, though it was mostly iron gray now. Rumor had it that he had been a pirate until he was captured and enslaved by one of the southern kings. He escaped and turned up in Fallbrook, looking for work. He married the daughter of the man who hired him, becoming a farmer: a part of the community. He was a soft-spoken man with a gentle manner. The only sign of his past was the scars that encircled his wrists. Scars that might have come from slave manacles. Or not.

When the elders had sorted themselves out, and the people who could not fit on the bench had been lined up in some sort of order, Merewich took the acorn that lay in the center of the table and therefore spoke first.

"I sent Talon to see what damage the earthquake did to the houses. Talon, how did you find the village?"

"Good, sir," answered the smith from somewhere behind me. "Only a few of the houses in town took very much damage, and most of those were larger, two-story buildings. The worst I saw will take only a few days' work to mend."

"Good," said Merewich. "I trust the people in the outlying areas know to come to me with the damage they took. After the planting, I'll organize work crews to repair the worst of it."

He set the acorn down and Koret took it up. "Most of us saw the mountain fall. I trust that someone has ridden out to see if the King's Highway, by some miracle, is still clear?"

"I did," answered Wandel Silver-Tongue, stepping out of the crowd. He ran his harp-calloused fingers over his face tiredly. "As soon as it fell. You'd have to see it to believe it. Not even one of the king's sorcerers will have an easy time clearing it."

"Anyone know if Wedding Pass is clear?" asked Koret after Wandel sat down.

There was a silence, then Albrin, at the far end of the table, stood. "I'll check in the morning. If not, there is a secondary pass over The Groom. Even if the highway is clear through Wedding Pass, though, there is nothing to the north except Beresford. The King's Highway ends there, and the only way from Beresford to Auberg is through here. Wedding Pass isn't going to help us get goods to market. With Silvertooth blocking the road, Auberg is a twelve-day journey over the next best path. I know of a few trails that are quicker, but they're nothing you want to take a wagon over."

He sat down, and Koret set the acorn back on the table as the elders exchanged grim looks. Twelve days rather than two was fearfully long, especially with raiders in the valley. I didn't doubt that everyone in the village knew about the raiders by now.

I stood up, waiting to be recognized. Cantier took up the acorn and nodded at me sourly. "Might as well hear all the bad news at once. Tell us what you can about the brigands, Aren."

I bowed my head and took a deep breath. I'd had all the time I needed to think while I worked in Melly's kitchen.

"Today my parents, my sister, her unborn child, and my husband were killed." It sounded stark, and my throat froze with the truth that I spoke. I had to swallow hard to continue. "Without them I have no close blood relatives still living."

I had to stop. If I cried now, it would ruin my credibility because they'd attribute anything I said to grief or hysteria. Several of the elders relaxed, probably thinking I was going to petition for help. Unlike falling mountains, helping their own was well within their experience.

"My grandmother, Father's mother, died last spring. She spent her life working as a healer, doing it better than most." I looked at them. "I know you've heard stories about her—that she relied on more than her knowledge of herbs and splints to heal you. It was true. My grandmother was as fey as my brother—who died rather than become what the lord's bloodmage had decreed."

Albrin blanched, and several other elders stiffened to alert—this was not usual talk for so public a place. Koret rubbed his beard thoughtfully, and old Merewich just nodded. It was hard to shock Merewich.

"So am I," I said starkly.

Before I could say more, Cantier set the acorn back on the table with a snap. Koret, foreign-raised, snatched it up before the fisherman had quite let go.

"I expect you did not ask to meet with us here to be burned at the stake or pressed. Go on, child."

Tension and terror had held me for so long that I had gotten used to it. Licking dry lips, I said, "Gram said many of us no longer remember much about how and why this land was settled, and no one wants to know anything about magic."

Casually, Kith stretched; when he settled, his shoulder rested against mine. I concentrated on that touch and Koret's impassive face, ignoring the reactions of anyone else.

"Long and long ago, a king inherited a land full of too many people. To the west were the lands of the Black Duke; to the south was the sea; to the north was bitter cold; and to the east were wild lands. In the wild lands lived the magic creatures: trolls, goblins, dragons, and ghouls—things not conducive to human habitation. Wildlings." I relaxed a little as I settled into the familiar cadence of Gram's story.

"So this king called upon his mages, and they set spells upon the magic of the last of the wild lands. Here. The king's mages bound the magic of this land as well as they could, and after them successive generations of wizards tied the threads of magic so tightly that, at last, there were no more wild lands in the world at all, no more wildlings—for they cannot live without magic. This binding allowed human mages no access to the magic either, but they had another way of gaining power."

"Bloodmagic," said Koret needlessly.

I nodded. "Those of us who choose not to use that path have little power. And what they—we—have, we hide. Bloodmages are rightly feared—" I looked up, and as I spoke the next words, I met the eyes of each elder in turn—"and any mage can decide to take that path. You have no guarantees that I won't: none other than my word."

I paused, staring at Kith's boot. "Gram's talent was healing, but mine is the sight. This morning I could tell something bad was going to happen—but I thought it would be something… well, something like a storm or a twisted ankle. So I didn't say anything to Daryn when he left for the fields."

I paused, then said rawly, "He is now dead because of it. I won't make that mistake again.

"While I hid from the raiders, I saw"—I added emphasis so that no one there could have any doubt how I got my information—"the raiders kill Daryn, my father, and Caulem. Then I saw something else. A bloodmage tore the bindings of the land away, and one of the aftereffects of his spell was the earthquake that toppled Silvertooth."

I expected to feel relief once I'd told them my story—or, if not relief, then fear of my impending death. But I didn't feel anything.

Cantier held out his hand and, after an assessing look, Koret dropped the acorn into his hand.

"Can you prove you are what you say you are, girl?"

I looked at him stupidly for a moment—why would anyone claim to be a seer if they weren't? When it was apparent that he was serious, I shrugged. "The sight comes when it wills. What do you want me to look for?"

He frowned, looking grumpier than usual. Finally he pulled up his sleeve, displaying a jagged scar. "How did I come by this?"

I stared at the scar for a bit, then closed my eyes and pictured it in my mind, but nothing came. At last I looked up, opened my mouth, and—visions came, if not precisely the ones I had sought.

Lord Moresh argued with another nobleman. There was no sound, but the smell of blood and death was overwhelming. Moresh gestured toward something lying beyond sight. The other man nodded and turned away as an arrow slid into Moresh's eye.

Glimpses of battlefields full of men one moment and ashes the next. Faces of people flashed by so fast that I could only know that they were strangers to me.

Sound came at last: screams and prayers of the dying—

My face hurt suddenly, and I saw Kith, his upright hand a few inches from my face. But the screams in my head continued unabated. I pushed my face close to his and said, "The wildlings will return."

"Is she all right?" asked Cantier, kneeling on my other side and taking my shoulders in his hands. I realized I was sitting on the ground.

Kith raised his eyebrows and said, "How the…" He drew in a breath. "I don't know. I just don't know."

A man in strange livery pulled his gold-embroidered, purple cloak around himself, striking a heroic pose as he stood before his men. Something… something happened between one moment and the next. Where he had been was a skeleton in his uniform, standing in front of a skeleton army. Nothing moved but the purple cloak flapping gently in the wind. Then the skull of a horse, bitted and. bridled, slid off the narrow bones that held it in place.

It dangled momentarily, held up by the reins. But the finger bones that held the reins fell apart. They all came apart then, the whole lot of them, one after the other. An army of bones in uniforms lying on afield of yellow flowers; bones that shifted to ashes and blew away in the spring wind.

I closed my eyes against the angry voices, one shouting over the top of another so none was heard. At last Koret's bellow rang over the rest, shouting them down until they were silent.

"Killing the mageborn is barbaric," said Tolleck the priest in his smooth baritone. "The One God does not demand it—he condemns the bloodmages and those who call upon their power from death. But a man… or woman cannot help how they were born. To condemn them for it is wrong."

"Brother Gifford did not agree with you," called someone from the crowd. "He had more experience as a priest than you."

"Brother Gifford is not here now," thundered Tolleck in a voice I'd never heard from him. It almost made me look, but I was afraid I'd see something else. There was power in his voice, and it subdued the crowd.

Calm and forceful, the priest continued. "It is not for you to condemn someone who has committed no crime."

I saw the priest's face, proving that I didn't need open eyes to see. The thought of living with these constant visions for any length of time made me wish Tolleck would be quiet and let them hang me.

"Drink this, Pest," said Kith, putting a glass against my chattering teeth.

I swallowed, tasting apples and poppy juice.

"She needs rest. My home's just around the corner, and that lot won't bother me." It was Cantier's voice, rough and unmistakable.

I woke up abruptly, startled by the strange surroundings—though when I gave myself a moment to really look around, I realized I was lying on a makeshift pallet in the main room of Cantier's house, which smelled faintly of fish. It was dark but for the banked embers in the fireplace. From the loft overhead came the soft sounds of sleeping bodies. I wondered how he'd talked his wife into allowing me here.

By the darkness and. by the silence of the streets, it was sometime past midnight. I was still wearing my dress, but it took me a moment to find my boots. As quietly as I could, I let myself out the door and into the street.

The home I sought was my parents' house rather than my own. I needed to cling to something familiar, somewhere safe. The house was dark and empty when I got there. I had nothing to light my way into the interior, so I fumbled my way into the main room.

Ma's bride chest was highlighted in the faint wisp of moonlight leaking through the broken oilskin of the main window. Someone had taken an axe to it, leaving its contents scattered on the floor. I wondered if it was the same man who destroyed the furniture in my home, or if the raiders specialized in hacking helpless furniture to bits.

There was blood on the floor, and I lost the humor I'd been trying to summon. I turned away. A blanket lay in a rumpled heap in the corner of the room. I snatched it up and wrapped myself in it, though I didn't believe anything could make me warm again. I sat in the corner where the blanket had been and stared into the night.

I stayed at the house until late morning, gathering what I could use from the things the raiders had left. There wasn't much. The house had been stripped of food, weapons, and anything anyone could use to pack things in: sacks, baggage, backpacks, even bedsheets. I don't know how the blanket I'd used came to be overlooked.

I found an assortment of Caulem's clothing. Father's' clothes were gone. I folded my brother-by-marriage's shirts and pants carefully and left them beside the remains of his cot. Perhaps his parents would want them.

My hands stopped as I folded the last pair of pants. I was tall for a woman, though skinny. Caulem had been a growing boy, almost as tall as he would have been as a man, but thinner. Caulem's pants would fit me.

I stood and stripped my clothing as quickly as I could, exchanging it for boy's trousers and a loose-fitting shirt. I had to tighten the drawstrings around my ankles and waist, and fold back the sleeves. The shirt, which had come to Caulem's hips, hit me just above the knee. I belted it to keep it out of my way. His boots were too big, but mine would work.

The boy's clothes made me different from the silly woman who believed in happy-forever endings. The woman who'd killed her husband because she'd tried too hard to be like everyone else.

It occurred to me that I was more than a little crazy. If the priest could have seen me running to my cottage and slipping through the shelves into the cellar, he might not have been so quick to defend me.

Over several days, the dark enclosure of the cellar became my shelter against the world. I left the main floor as it was, covered with the scattered remnants of my life. Like some half-mad animal I cowered in the dark of the earth, leaving its embrace only at night.

I couldn't run from the visions, for they came to me no matter how hard I tried to hold them away. They came with sound more often than not, and sometimes smells as well. I watched as the villagers buried my family in the plot behind my father's house and scattered fragrant petals on the disturbed ground over their graves. All from the closed darkness of the cellar.

I knew what the world outside my cellar was doing, whether I wanted to or not.

Like me, the village buried itself away from the truth of its isolation. The planting season was so much work, they were soon lulled into complacency. The raiders were quiet. The houses that could be repaired, were, and new houses were started to replace the one or two dwellings that were beyond fixing. There were a few more earth tremors, but they were weak and easily ignored.

Perhaps, opined the townswomen as they washed their clothes at midweek, the bandits had left altogether. Perhaps they'd wandered on to Beresford and kept going. Didn't Albrin's man, Lomas, report that Wedding Pass was clear, though he hadn't followed it all the way through to Beresford? Wasn't it sad about Hobard's daughter, Aren? Doubtless she was just maddened by the grief of losing so much so quickly, but what a thing to claim! She was lucky that the old priest had died; he would have had her burned for that—and some of the women whispered that the new man was too soft.

No one came from Beresford—but then the Beresforders, like the Fallbrook farmers, were in the middle of spring planting, and they were even farther north and higher in the mountains than we were. Except for Wandel Silver-Tongue, we seldom had anyone come through in the spring, even with the road to Auberg open. Melly usually left only the tavern open until after planting, for Wandel stayed in the manor house when he came. Lord Moresh was particularly fond of him and allowed Wandel free access to his library.

Six days after Silvertooth fell, Wandel had an argument with the steward (and didn't everyone at some time or another, for a more disagreeable man I've never known) and rode out for Wedding Pass.

He sang as he rode, mostly about nasty things that happen to stewards who have no understanding of music and harpers. He used both hands on his harp. His white mare followed the cobbles of the King's Highway. As they neared The Bride and Groom, Wandel put his harp away.

The steep sides of The Bride rose to his left, casting her shadow over the road, and The Groom rose almost a third again as tall, though not half as steep, on the minstrel's right.

Up on the side of The Groom, the scar of the original road wound steeply to Beresford. The King's Highway was much more gradual because the king's bloodmages could clear through the thick thorn bushes that grew between the mountains as ax and scythe never could. I'd heard the farmers swear the stuff could grow a finger-span in a day and take root where only moss would thrive; but even after centuries, not a single sprig pushed up between the stones of the King's Highway.

Wandel looked at the path lying before him and began humming a soft tune. It was one of his favorite songs, having to do with a man whose house lay in the path of the road. He'd been so stubborn and tricky the mages had finally gone around his house. To this day, Wandel swore, there was a valley where the road traced a neat half-circle around a bare spot of ground where a hut might once have stood.

Goes to show you, the harper liked to point out, that a person could be more stubborn than the worst curse of nature.

Wandel was on the last small incline when he stopped the mare. He slipped off his horse and walked to the side of the road. One of the paving stones was kicked out of place, leaving a deep hole and several loosened stones around where it had been.

"Lass," he said to his mare, "in all my years of riding the Highway, I've never seen a cobble out of place before. "

He remounted slowly, and watched the ground as he traveled; but there was nothing more amiss with the road. Not even when it disappeared under the still waters of a lake that occupied the valley where Beresford had been.

"Another rockfall," he said softly to himself or the mare. "Half the mountains in this region are cliff-sided, with boulders falling every spring. I thought Silvertooth might not have been the only one to fall. At any rate, something dammed the river and flooded the valley, which is why the water level in the river has fallen so drastically."

The lake in the valley was deep—only the drooping tops of trees broke the surface where Beresford should have been. The water was mucky with rotting vegetation and worse.

Tight-mouthed, Wandel turned his mare and rode back the way he'd come. By the time he rode into the yard of the inn, he was dusty and looked tired. The innkeeper's boy gave the harper a curious look as he took the Lass, but was too well trained to ask the questions on the tip of his tongue.

There was no one in the public room when Wandel entered. He set his harp and his travel bag down in an inconspicuous corner and ventured into the kitchen, where Melly was cleaning some pots.

"Mistress Melly?"

She turned and wiped her wet hands on her apron as she hurried forward. "Why, Master Wandel, I thought you'd be in Beresford by now."

"So I would," he said without his customary good humor, "if there were a Beresford to be at. Lord Moresh's steward and I had a falling out. Would you be so kind as to give me a room in your inn?"

"Of course, of course, but it'll take me an hour to air it out. What do you mean about Beresford?"

"The whole valley's flooded, mistress."

Her face whitened, but she nodded and led him out to the main room, by tucking her arm under his and ushering him to a bench near the fire. She brought him a tankard of dark ale and, in his hearing, sent her boy to fetch Merewich and then see to the airing of a chamber.

When the old man came, he sat down across from Wandel and braced a hand under his chin. "So, harper. Tell me about Beresford."

Wandel shrugged. "The earthquake must have dammed the river and flooded the valley. There doesn't seem to be a Beresford anymore."

"Did you see any sign of the people?"

The harper shook his head. "No, but I think they'd have had enough time to get out. A valley that size would take a while to fill. Since they haven't shown up here, I guess they headed out to Auberg by some goat trail. It's impossible to tell for certain, since the King's Highway to Auberg is blocked."

"Ah." Merewich nodded and took a sip of the harper's ale. "There's an old trail over Hob's Mountain to Auberg. Kith knows it. I showed it to him myself when he was a lad and his father sent him to help with the sheep. He's not busy with farming, like most of the other men." He paused, not mentioning Kith's missing arm—the reason Kith wasn't helping with the plowing. "It would do him good to take the trip."

"Hob's Mountain?" said Wandel.

Merewich nodded. "No thornbush there. Only mountain in these parts that doesn't have it. There's a shorter trail between Cam and Harvest—they're the mountains just south and west of Silvertooth, but you can't take a horse through it."

"You think Kith would take me to Auberg?" Wandel's tone was reflective. "I'm not so certain."

Merewich sighed and shook his head. "Wandel, the folk here who aren't related to someone in Beresford are married to someone who is. Kith will take you over and bring us back news—regardless of what lies between you. Perhaps someone there will know what has happened to the Beresforders. All we ask is that you agree to come back next year and tell us what's happening."

I'd never known that there was something between Kith and Wandel. I would have spent more time wondering what it was, but the vision would no more let me waste time fretting over it than it would give me time to mourn for Beresford.

"You think there is something in the tale the girl told, then, that the earthquake was just a minor part of what has happened? " Wandel took his tankard back and drank deeply.

"Hmm." Merewich rubbed his hand on the table. "I know her grandmother was a witch. She saved my oldest boy. He'd fallen and hit his head on a rock. Four years old and the joy of my life. I took him to her, but I knew it was too late—there was a soft place on his temple that shouldn't have been there. She looked at him, then she looked at me. Without saying a word, she took him and set him on her dining table. She laid her hands on that soft spot and closed her eyes. When she took her hands away, his skull was whole again. Forty-two years ago, and you're the first soul I ever told that to. I'd thank you not to repeat it."

He drank from Wandel's tankard again. "Do I believe her to be mageborn? Yes. Do I think she believes what she says is true? Yes." He looked the harper in the eye. "Her grandmother showed me that mageblood doesn't make a person evil."

Wandel pursed his lips. "Today I saw a cobble knocked askew on the King's Highway."

"Eh?" said Merewich softly. "I'll tell Albrin we'll be borrowing Kith for a few days."

A day or two after this conversation I awoke stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard earth and stared into the darkness around me. Over the past few days, either I'd grown used to magic or the magic had faded, but I couldn't feel it humming in my bones anymore. The dirt in the cellar was just dirt, cool and dry. Best of all, no visions clouded my mind.

I hadn't changed clothes since I'd put on Caulem's tunic and trousers, and it struck me that he'd never have let them get this dirty. The cellar stank of sweat and sloth.

I bowed my head and bit my lip, wondering what Daryn would think if he could see me huddled in the corner of the basement. And I could almost see Gram, shaking her finger at me.

"You just get up now, Missy, and clean yourself. Then you start planning what you can do to help these people. For the fear and ignorance of a few, you will not let the rest suffer. They will need you soon, and you will be there for them, as I was and my father before me."

I couldn't be certain if it was my imagination or the sight, but Gram's words hit home. Cantier had carried me to rest in his house though he had no love of the bloodmages. Kith had been there for me when I needed him… as had the priest, for that matter, and I barely knew him—he'd been in the village less than a season.

"With this gift," I said, quoting Gram's favorite lecture out loud in a voice harsh with disuse, "comes great responsibility. We are caretakers. The bloodmages have forgotten that in their search for greater power. They don't care that they are destroying themselves and those around them by what they do. Death magic is evil, and no good can come of it."

"Responsibility," I grumped, but I got to my feet just the same. Without the incapacitating visions I lacked an excuse to cower in the darkness any longer.

I found a change of clothes (more of Caulem's), an old blanket partially torn up for rags and a bar of sweet-smelling soap before leaving the house.

Daylight almost blinded me; I had to stand on the porch a moment before I could see. There were still a few chickens scratching in the dirt in front of the barn. Seeing the barn reminded me of the dead cow that had been rotting in there for the better part of a week. Somehow I was going to have to get her out.

Soul's Creek was icy cold, and I removed only my boots before stepping in. I scrubbed my face and hands first, while I still had the nerve, then set about washing clothes as quickly as I could. My hair took longer, but at last the dark strands were shiny and free of dirt and oil.

When I was clean and dry, I began tidying the cottage, setting right what I could and sorting through the rest. Some things were so damaged I broke them up for firewood. Others I set aside for repairs. When I finished, I got a bucket from the cellar and headed for the creek again to get water to wash the dirt off the floors.

Whether it was some fading of the long bottled-up magic, or merely the effect of working instead of sitting in the dark trying not to think of anything, I hadn't had a vision all day. It was enough to make me almost cheerful.

The afternoon sun was warm and the air was heavy with the scent of growing things. In the few days I'd spent in self-imposed exile, the world had bloomed. Yellowbells nodded in the gentle breeze where Ma and I had planted them around the house. Wildflowers were scattered shyly along the path to the barn and in the grass of the field where—Daryn's big sorrel gelding grazed.

He must have gotten free and come home.

I set down my bucket and walked past the barn to the field beyond. Daryn had left the gate open the morning he left. I closed it behind me as I stepped into the pasture, more out of habit than anything else. The sound of the hinges caught the horse's attention and he faced me, pricking his ears for a moment before trotting briskly to me, whickering.

He stopped a few feet away and snorted, tossing his head once before shoving it into my midsection and rubbing it against me. Since he was still wearing the remains of his working headstall, the rubbing hurt. I slapped him lightly on the neck.

"See here, sir," I said catching the shanks of the bit. "Stop that, Ducky." Daryn had originally called the horse Fire Hawk, or some such romantic name, but Caulem called him Duck instead, and that was the name which stuck.

I stripped the bridle off—from the looks of it, it hadn't been off since the raiders had stolen him. Sweat darkened his coat under the leather and there were several places where the hair had rubbed away, leaving small bare patches of pink skin. The reins, once long enough to drive him with, were a little shorter than my arms.

"Someone tied you by the reins, eh? Not too smart."

I continued to mutter soft nonsense to him as I opened his mouth to see if he'd hurt himself when he broke free. He put up with it for a moment, then stretched his nose in the air and forced me to release him. He forgave me for the indignity as soon as my hands were off his nose, and pushed his head forward to be scratched some more. Someone had pulled his shoes, perhaps to make it harder to track him.

"Well," I said, "I was wondering how I was going to get that cow out of the barn—now I just need something to use as a harness. Maybe Kith will loan me something."

The practical words didn't hide the tears, but I wiped them away briskly. Stupid to cry over a horse's return, but for some reason I didn't feel nearly as alone as I had this morning.

I left him in the pasture, set the bridle aside for mending, and continued with my chores. The cow could wait until tomorrow. I whistled a little tune as I scrubbed the cottage, but it echoed and made the house more empty, so I stopped. I'd done my weeping in the darkness of the cellar, and in Duck's mane; time to be done with it.

When the house was clean, I caught the five remaining chickens and put them in the coop, where they would be protected from predators. While I was measuring grain for the fowl, I heard the sound of hooves on hard-packed earth.

My heart leaped to my throat, but it was only one horse. It wasn't likely that a raider would ride out alone, at least I hoped not. Still, I stayed in the slight protection of the barn until Kith's red hair came into sight around the bend in the road.

He rode at a brisk trot, his back straight from years of military experience and Albrin's teaching—I rode that way myself. Torch, his yellow dun, was hammerheaded and thin-necked, but his strong legs were straight and heavy-boned. There was a spring to his step that would never let him be ugly while he was moving. He was big for a riding horse, though still a couple of handspans shorter than Duck.

There was no hesitation in Kith's movement as he swung off Torch and turned to face me, but I thought I glimpsed uncertainty in his eyes before he hid it behind the wall that kept him separate from others.

For an instant I saw a much younger Kith running at top speed with Quilliar tearing after him, wild glee lighting both of their faces. It hurt me afresh that the free-spirited boy I'd grown up with had turned into this reserved, dour stranger.

I smiled politely at him, glad he hadn't come the day before and caught me wallowing in self-pity or writhing madly under the effects of the sight. With the first humor I'd felt for a long time, I gave him the formality his demeanor asked for. "Greetings and well-seeming, Kith."

He gave me a suspicious glance, and I remembered his support when I stood before the elders. Softening my teasing with more warmth, I said, "What brings you here?"

His jaw clenched, causing his pale skin to flush under his cheekbones. "Beresford valley is flooded."

All humor left me, and I stepped forward to grip his arm—I had friends and kin there, too. "I know, I saw."

Kith nodded, as though it was something he expected, but then Moresh's bloodmage traveled with the army, so perhaps he was used to magic. "The harper rode up Wedding Pass yesterday; he says the whole valley is underwater. Nobody from Beresford has come this way, so we think they must have left for Auberg when they realized that the water was going to cover the village." He looked at me, and I shook my head. I hadn't seen the Beresforders, hadn't tried to see them.

He continued after a brief hesitation. "Wandel and I are going on the old trail over Hob's Mountain to see if any villagers made it out."

I kept my hand on his arm, knowing there must have been a reason he'd come to see me before they went.

"Aren?" He looked away from my gaze. "Would you see if you can tell what happened to Danci? If she's all right?"

"Danci?" I repeated. She was a widow living in Beresford who had begun a campaign of courting Kith that must have been rather more successful than anyone had suspected, if it had caused Kith to come to me.

"Do you know what happened to her?" he asked. "If she's not in Auberg, I'd like to have some idea of where she's gone."

I gave him a wry smile. "I can try, but you saw what happened when I tried to see Cantier's scar—all I got was faces of dead men, most of whom I didn't even know. I've been having visions like mad ever since Silvertooth fell, but I don't have any control over them."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't remember? You grabbed Cantier and told him his dog had done it when it was hurt and afraid." He gave me a small smile. "Then you patted him on the cheek and said something to the effect that people and dogs had a lot in common. You were pretty frightening, Pest. If it hadn't been for the priest… It was a good day for you when Old Gifford died and Tolleck came to the village."

I nodded. "I remember the priest. Well enough. If I can find her for you, I will. Come into the house so I can sit down."

I did not want to do this. No visions all day—well, only that little one about Kith and Quilliar. But Danci had been—was—my friend, too.

Kith led his horse to a patch of grass and ground-tied him before following me into the cottage. I waited for him to shut the door, then took a seat on a stool set against a wall. As it was the only seat of any kind left in the house, Kith was forced to stand. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and let Danci's face form in my mind. If it had worked with Cantier, it might work for Danci.

Honey-brown hair, I thought, with a touch of curl. Gray eyes that glittered with fun and a stubborn jaw. Clear skin and a nose slightly too long for her face. Even as I cataloged Danci's features, her image faded into another face.

Predatory eyes, cinnamon-colored and slitted like a cat's, were startling, but his features were human. Merriment and laughter touched his face, which was a gray darker than night's shadow. His eyes met mine, and his brow lifted in mild inquiry. I was uneasily certain that he saw me, that perhaps the vision was as much his as it was mine. For an instant I glimpsed loneliness that matched mine, and I wondered what he had lost.

"Hob?" said Kith's voice in my ear. "You mean Hob's Mountain?"

I blinked stupidly at him for a moment, oddly startled by the color of his skin. "I don't know. Do I?"

"All you said was 'Hob.'"

Still half-caught in my vision, I shook my head, unable to answer him because I didn't remember saying anything. "You said you're going to Auberg by the old trail over the Hob?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind if I went with you? Duck's back, so I wouldn't need to borrow a horse." I started to get up, but a wave of dizziness caught me halfway up.

"Did you see something?" He pulled me to my feet and steadied me a moment.

I nodded. "Nothing to do with Danci. I have no idea what it means, but I think that I might find out on the trip over." It was something to do besides sit here and contend with memories and visions. Maybe, if I kept busy, the visions would go away. Even this one I'd had about the wildling with red-brown eyes wasn't as consuming as the ones I'd had earlier.

Kith nodded once, and stepped outside. "Fine, then. I'm meeting the harper at the inn just before dawn. Pack food to last at least four days."

I followed him to his horse. It took him a few moments to gather his reins, and I thought about how frustrating he must find it to have only one arm.

"If you take the ends of the reins in your teeth you could collect them faster and more evenly," I observed.

He smiled at me, surprising me with a glimpse of his old self. "I do, if no one is watching." Reins properly tightened, he stepped into the saddle.

"Kith?" I asked abruptly.

"Hmm?" His horse shifted its weight impatiently.

"Would you teach me how to use a knife? I can use a bow—Father taught me. But that wouldn't do me any good in close quarters. I've got one of Daryn's knives in the house." It was in the cellar, waiting for sharpening. I could do that tonight.

"Fighting?" He looked thoughtful. "I suppose I ought to, with you living out here alone." He wasn't stupid enough to tell me that I ought to move into town—the villagers might be more dangerous to me than the raiders.

"Fine. Bring your knife with you when you come, and we'll start tomorrow."

"Right."

"Aren?" he said.

"Yes?"

"Are you sure you want to bring Duck? No offense, but he's not really a riding horse. That trail is really rough, even dangerous in some places. I could borrow one of Father's mounts for you."

"Could you?" I said doubtfully, remembering Albrin's reaction on the long ride to the village. My memories must have been accurate, because Kith flushed.

"Never mind," I said. "Give him some time. Duck and I will do just fine. Remember, I've been over the trail before—with you, as I recall."

He looked blank for a moment, then grinned. "And wasn't your father fit to be tied about it, too? I'd forgotten that. Quill and I hiked up the Hob to spend our first night alone, feeling all grown-up and daring. Got to the place we were going to camp, and there was his skinny baby sister. Never did tell us how you got there ahead of us."

I laughed. "I was afraid to. I knew Quill would tell Father, and I'd never step out of the house again. I climbed the cliffs straight up rather than taking the route you did. It cut miles from the trip, but about halfway up, I wasn't sure I was going to make it."

He shook his head, and shifted his weight so Torch started back up the trail. "Always did have a fool's courage, I'll say that for you. See you in the morning."

"See you," I said, watching him ride away. With the suddenness of spring, the wind chose that moment to turn cool, sending a chill down my spine—a chill that somehow reminded me of dark skin and cinnamon eyes.

THREE

The streets were empty in the predawn hours. Duck's unshod hooves hit the dirt road quietly.

A few dogs barked as I rode past their houses, but I didn't see any people until we neared the inn.

Merewich stood with Albrin. Even from a distance I could tell they were arguing fiercely, though in tones so hushed I didn't even catch the echoes of their voices. Beside them, isolated by the stone-grim expression on his face, Kith stood looking out at the darkened streets, absently rubbing his hand against the side of Torch's face. The gelding was the first to notice our approach.

Alerted by his horse's fixed attention, Kith said something to the other two men. By the time I rode into the inn's cobbled courtyard, both Merewich and Kith's father had subsided into silence.

Kith nodded in greeting. "Wandel is saddling his horse, then we'll leave."

I gave him a half-smile, but my attention was on Albrin, who turned his head aside as if he could not see me. I swallowed uncomfortably. Albrin had taught me how to ride and where the best strawberries grew in the spring.

Merewich patted my knee, talking as if Albrin couldn't hear him. "Give him time. I've talked with the priest, and he believes—as do I—that we haven't seen the worst of this. Brother Tolleck is something of a scriptural scholar. He says there'll be dark days ahead, and I find myself agreeing with him. Something rather worse than a few raiders. Mind that you keep your eyes open."

I nodded my head, turning away from Albrin to meet the old man's eyes. "I will."

Wandel came from the stable with his sweet-faced, creamy-white mare, and stepped into the saddle. He moved like a man several decades younger than he was—almost like Kith. I frowned, wondering why a harper moved like a soldier.

"My dear," he exclaimed, seeing Duck's bridle for the first time, "what are you using for a bridle? It looks like it's made of knotted rags."

I grinned at him, though the expression felt odd after so long. "It is—but it's a hackamore, no bit. Raiders took every scrap of leather in the barn. This was the best I was able to come up with. It's not as if Duck needs much more than a reminder now and again."

Duck stretched his nose toward the little mare. She let him in range, but then her small ears flattened and her eyes rolled wickedly as she snapped her teeth at him. Hurt and indignant, Duck pulled his muzzle out of harm's reach.

"The Lass doesn't like other horses," commented Wandel needlessly.

"Or children," said Merewich.

"Or dogs," added Kith with a faint smile.

"Or women," agreed the harper, who wasn't above using his horse's peculiarities as fodder for song—or, I could see, to defuse tension. "I had the prettiest little wife once…"

"Come on," said Kith. "If we don't start now, he'll be here telling stories until the sun goes down."

Wandel shook his head and handed his mare off to Albrin. "Aren can't ride bareback the whole way. Let me find a saddle for her to use in the stable."

He came out with a saddle, blanket, and saddlebags. While I saddled Duck, he mounted his gray mare. I divided my bundle evenly between the two saddlebags he'd brought out. I walked Duck out before checking the cinch. It was a little loose, so I tightened it before mounting. I took my time, refusing to give in to the awkward silence that hung over the courtyard by hurrying.

"Wandel, old friend," said Merewich, finally breaking the silence.

The harper smiled, and gripped the elder's hand firmly. "Until next season, then." He turned to Kith's father. "Albrin."

Albrin shook his hand, but when he turned to his son, Kith rode out without speaking.

We used the town bridge to cross onto the lord's side of the river. The lord's fields were already tipped with green as the earliest of the crops sprouted, having been planted several weeks before the village's.

It took several miles for the horses to find a comfortable pace for traveling together. Kith's horse was used to traveling with large groups, but the harper's mare liked to choose her own pace. Then there was Duck. He had a ground-eating, syncopated walk that was too fast for either of the smaller horses: his alternative was the gait he used when plowing, which was too slow. Only when the animals decided that they had to travel together did things calm down.

There were serfs in the farther fields. The manor and lands were smallish for a lord's house, or so I'd been told. Lord Moresh had several much larger elsewhere. I didn't know how many serfs he had to work the land because they seldom came to the village and were discouraged from conversing with the freemen, but I supposed them to be fewer than fifty.

A work party of six men was clearing the irrigation ditches of winter's debris. None of them looked up, though I rode less than a long stride from several of them.

Farther on, a woman piled the burnable rubbish on a small donkey cart. She might have ignored our passage as well, if Wandel's mare hadn't decided to take exception to the beast.

Snorting and dancing, she skittered halfway across the road—startling the poor donkey rather badly. The woman dropped her bundle of dry sticks and ran to the donkey's head. Briefly her eyes met mine.

Wandel controlled his mount, then swept a flourishing bow. "My apologies, lady. My mare is overset by having such a large audience for her antics." The Lass snorted and shook her head, mouthing her bit impatiently.

Head bowed, the woman nodded, clearly waiting for us to move on so she could get back to her task. I noticed that her hands were shaking—in fear of Wandel? I looked at the minstrel, but, clad in his usual bright-colored foppery, he appeared no more dangerous to me than a hound pup.

I rode on, thinking about what I'd lost and what that woman would never have. I stored the sight of the other's lifeless eyes and trembling hands in my memory, to be brought out should the temptation to feel sorry for myself return. At least I'd had a family to lose—and I wasn't prey for any man who happened by.

By midmorning we reached the end of the cultivated fields. Choosing a deer trail with seeming randomness, Kith led us into the dense, thorn-infested woods beyond. I hadn't been out this way since I was a child without the chores of adulthood. The trails tended to change a bit from year to year, but I didn't think this was the one I'd taken on the way to the Hob.

Kith, though, didn't hesitate. He'd obviously been riding up here lately, because he hadn't known the paths this well when Lord Moresh recruited him.

I frowned past Wandel at Kith's back. He was tense, like a hound on the trail. He was always looking to one side of the trail or the other, and I could swear he was testing the air for scent now and then. Torch seemed to be infected with the same restless urgency as his rider. He paced forward with his head up, nostrils flared, prancing ever so slightly.

Well, the forest felt different to me, too. As if there were something watching us. But the thornbushes made spying difficult. If anyone was crashing through the thick brush, we'd have heard them. Maybe it was an aftereffect of the magic's release that made me so unnerved. More likely it was watching Kith act like someone was watching us.

"Anything wrong, Kith?" I asked. "You're acting like a mouse in a fox's den."

"Nothing," he said. "But I feel…" He looked back at me. "If I say this, people are going to think I'm as weird as you."

I batted my eyelashes at him. "I'm not weird, I'm evil—the One God declares it so. Just ask Poul's mother."

He rolled his eyes, then turned his head so he could watch where he was going. "I feel like the forest is alive."

I thought about it a moment, and decided I felt the same way. Not that I'd say so. People might think I was weird.

"Me, too," admitted Wandel. "But forests always bother me. I can't see if there's anyone else around. Too easy for someone to set up ambushes."

"There's no one here," replied Kith shortly. "I'd smell them if there were."

Smell them? The trail narrowed, and I turned my attention to riding.

For the first time, I regretted not accepting Kith's offer of a riding horse. Trails that work for roe deer aren't built for a seventeen-hand draft horse—let alone for one with a rider on top. Finally, frustrated, I kicked my feet free from the stirrups and lay flat on his back, trusting him to follow the others without much fuss.

When Wandel pulled up suddenly, Duck got too close to the the Lass. She let fly with her heels, but Duck had gotten used to her tactics and pushed forward so she couldn't get room to put much force behind her kick. Infuriated, she spun on her hind legs, disregarding her rider and the dense flora, teeth flashing as she tried to bite poor Duck.

I grabbed the rolls on the front of the saddle and held on despite the branches that gripped and tore at me while Duck backed rapidly away from the charging she-demon.

Wandel leaned forward and sang softly to the mare. I didn't catch the words, but I happened to be sliding off in the right direction to get the full effect of the switch from enraged nightmare to child's docile mount. The surprise sent me slithering all the way to the ground.

The Lass stood still, eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Wandel sang a lullaby to her; only the speed of her breathing remained of the wild-eyed beast of a moment ago. The rare sound of Kith's laughter brought an answering grin to my face.

Wandel finished the chorus and patted his mare's white neck.

"I know," he said. "Oddest thing I've ever seen, too. Most of the Lass's antics are just flash and spit—I think she enjoys the attention."

The mare swiveled an ear toward the harper and cocked her hip, resting on three legs as if she were dozing—but the eye I could see was wickedly bright.

I found a place in the trail relatively clear of brush and remounted. "Why did you stop in the first place?"

"That," said the harper, pointing through the trees.

"The hob court," said Kith.

I maneuvered Duck until I could see the old stone foundation through the dense growth. Somewhere we must have joined up with the trail that I used to take, because the view was a familiar one.

The stones might have been the remains of some ancient farmer's storehouse, but by some trick of fancy or weather wear, they looked as if they were the remnants of a tiny castle, complete with curtain wall and battlements.

"Gram called it the sprite's court," I said, "but I suppose we'll never know. Grandpa trapped the high country in the winter; he said you could find unusual remains all over these parts—reminders of the wildlings who used to live here. He said he found a whole city once, nestled in a narrow ravine; but when he lost sight of it looking for a way down, he was never able to find it again." I wondered if it really was a sprite's castle.

"Your Grandpa liked to tell stories," said Kith repressively before starting off again.

I grinned at Wandel. "Yep, and about half of them were hog hooey. But deciding which ones were which was half the fun." More soberly, I said, "Lord Moresh's brother disappeared on Faran's Ridge. They hunted for him for weeks, but never found so much as a scrap of cloth."

The harper nodded. "There are many such tales here in the mountains. Too many to be dismissed as complete fiction." He set the Lass on the trail at a trot to catch Kith, and I brought up the rear.

The ground began to slope gently upward and the woods cleared a bit. The thornbush disappeared from the mix of underbrush. Overhanging branches no longer reached clear across the trail, so I could sit up, a position that I found much more comfortable.

Wandel brought his harp out. In keeping with the mood Kith had set earlier, he played a few tunes about the wild creatures who had held these mountains so long ago. I joined in with the ones I knew, ignoring Kith's exaggerated winces when I lost the pitch. Ever gracious, Wandel ignored my mistakes.

He switched at last to a tale of King Faran, the wizard-king who conceived of the highway. The ridge that formed the southwestern border of the valley was named after him because he was said to have won a battle there, though there was no real proof of it.

He had been, according to Gram and to Wandel's song, handsome and charismatic. He'd spent a long time as a warrior before taking up the additional robes of magery. Faran ruled wisely and well until the madness that inevitably twists bloodmages caught him—or so the stories said. I don't know how a bloodmage could be a good king, mad or not. The tower he'd thrown himself from was still standing (or so I'd heard).

I hadn't heard the story Wandel played, but it had a catchy tune and merry verses. Kith unbent enough to join in. He added a few verses himself, most of which were of the kind I'd have expected a soldier to know.

As we came out of the trees to the drier, grassy slopes of the foothill below the Hob, Kith stopped singing abruptly. Urging Duck beside the others, I saw what had brought on his silence.

Halfway up the foothill, below the first cliffs, was a boulder twice the size of my croft. It hadn't been there long. Looking up, I could see the raw places on the mountainside where it had broken loose and bounced. A shattered oak lay in aftermath of its passing, leaves still green with spring's promise.

I whistled. "I'd have hated to be here when it fell."

The sight of the boulder, a reminder that our world had come crashing down around our ears, cast a pall over our party. At least it dampened Wander's mood, and without his steady cheer, Kith's grim nervousness infected us all.

We were silent as we climbed the gentle rise to the Hob. The mountain was the tallest of those surrounding Fallbrook, but we didn't need to go over the peak. The trail to Auberg twisted and turned over the mountain's shoulder, working its way along the only negotiable path through the cliffs. The route itself was about the same length as the one the King's Highway followed, though it looked shorter on a map. Maps, even good ones, didn't take into account the amount of a trail's climbing and descending.

The first part of the path was easy, just as I remembered it. The trail followed the bottom edge of the cliffs in a gentle rise that traversed the side of the mountain in the opposite direction from Auberg. The only alternative was to go straight up the cliffs. I smiled and followed the others.

It was several hours before the cliff gave way to a steep slope dotted with evergreens. The trail twisted back and forth among the trees until we reached the base of an enormous, steep, skree slope.

It looked as if a giant had taken a bucket of sand and poured it down the side of the mountain. The slope stretched from the very peak of the mountain to the bottom, now far below us. The trail narrowed to a goat's path that traversed the skree at a very steep angle. We'd be going up.

Wandel swore, looked at me, and flushed.

"That's why no one in their right mind would take a wagon through here," I said. "There's a lot of grazing up there." I nodded toward the top of the trail. "The shepherds bring their flocks up this during the height of summer to save the fields in the valley—and they lose a few sheep here every year. I haven't ever been all the way through to Auberg, but I've been told this is the worst of it—though there are some other rough spots."

Kith had already started up the slope ahead of us. It was obvious from the way his horse slipped and scrambled that the path didn't offer much better footing than the looser rock on either side. It was steep, too.

Wandel started his horse across. I waited until he was well on his way before setting Duck to it. On a trail like this, I wanted room to maneuver. Ideally I'd have waited until Wandel was at the top, but Duck was already starting to fret at being left behind. When we crossed, I wanted his mind on his footing, not on catching up the horses ahead of him.

Before we were a tenth of the way up, Duck was coated in sweat and gray dust. I could feel the subtle trembling of his overworked muscles as he hauled me slowly up the mountainside. I sat as still as I could, and crouched over his big shoulders to let the gelding find his own pace.

If the trail hadn't been so narrow, it might have been better to dismount. On my own, I probably would have done so. But since Kith had tackled it mounted, the rest of us manly warriors had to do the same. I smiled sourly to myself. I would have expected childhood competitions to die out with adulthood—but there was no way I was going to dismount if Kith was riding.

Wandel was about halfway to the far side when the Lass lost her footing where the trail crossed the smooth face of a large piece of unbroken shale. The little mare jumped and scrambled frantically but couldn't stop her downward slide even after reaching the end of the slick rock face and hitting the rougher surface of loose rock that made up most of the trail.

I stopped Duck foursquare in the trail. I had few seconds to worry before the Lass's rump hit Duck's chest with considerable force. My stout gelding grunted and rocked back on his haunches, but his weight and his shoeless, big feet gave him better traction than the mare had. He slid backward a pace or two before we all stopped.

"Bless you for bringing that horse," gasped Wandel, patting the Lass, who was blowing hard. "I thought that was going to be it. If he were any lighter, we'd have all been tumbling down to the bottom."

I was busy watching a rock the mare's feet had knocked loose finally hit the valley bottom. Duck shuffled back another step, then took advantage of my inattention to snatch a few strands of grass that poked out among the rocks, proof that horses have no imagination.

I shook my head in reply to Wandel's comment. "Nah, that would have been too easy. Surely all the tales that you've told will win you a more glorious and painful fate."

He laughed. "I'll keep that in mind while we try this again."

Kith was waiting for us at the top by the time Wandel urged the Lass forward. This time, I held Duck back until the Lass was on the far side of the rock sheet before letting him follow. When I reached the small meadow at the top, the others were already loosening their cinches. I dismounted and followed suit, slipping the bit so Duck could graze while he rested.

"The place I want to camp is about a league from here," said Kith. "That will give us an early night, but there aren't very many good places to camp past there. We'll make it to town by late afternoon anyway."

"Right," I agreed, not feeling all that fresh myself. Sitting in the dark for a week wasn't the best preparation for a trek through the mountains. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, I looked around and tried to match what I saw with my last journey here.

"Hmm," I said, "this isn't too far from where we camped that time, is it?" I didn't wait for Kith's reply.

"Weren't there some runes or something on some rocks down there?"

"Runes?" inquired the harper.

"Mmm. Want to take a look while the horses rest?"

"I'll stay with the horses," Kith volunteered.

There was something in his voice that caused me to look sharply at him, but the expression on his face was simply reserved.

"I'd like to see them," replied Wandel, though he groaned as he stood up from the knee-high boulder he'd been sitting on.

"Walking will help keep you from stiffening up," I said, trying both to sound wise and not to look as stiff as I felt.

The harper raised his eyebrows with hauteur that would have done Lord Moresh proud. "My child," he intoned, "when you have traveled as many miles as I, you will understand that nothing—nothing—keeps you from stiffening up."

"If you don't come back by sunset, I'll come looking for you," Kith offered, watching as I searched for the right place to set off back down the mountain. He might have been amused, but it was hard to tell.

The path I chose wasn't the same one the three of us had taken almost twenty years ago. As I recalled, we'd been trying to find a way down that would allow us to avoid the skree slope (that the boys had already been across once). We'd run into thorn thickets at the very base of the mountain and had had to climb all the way back to our starting point, but scrambling around had led us to…

"There," I said pointing to a large, reddish rock balanced against another, both easily taller than three men standing one atop another.

I had led us too far down, so we had to scramble back up to the site.

"Here," I said, panting. "On the underside, where the weather couldn't wash them away."

They weren't as impressive as I'd remembered them. Merely worn black lines on stone, almost pictures but not quite. Wandel didn't seem to mind.

He scrambled close to the faint marks and crouched on his heels with an ease that gave lie to the stiffness he'd been complaining about. He frowned a moment, then opened his purse and unwrapped a bit of char. With a delicate touch he added a mark here and there, sometimes merely darkening what was already there, but once he added a whole series of the little symbols.

"Can you read it?" I asked in unfeigned awe. I could read a little, thanks to Gram—but that was the king's tongue. Only noblemen knew how to write anything else, noblemen and scholars.

The harper nodded. "A bit. I think. Some of the runes are different." He pointed at one. "I've never seen anything like that. And here, see, this didn't have this tail—but it makes sense if I change it so."

"So what does it say? Do you know who wrote it? How old it is?"

"Well," he said dryly, "it's older than the last time you saw this. Any scholar could have written this. It's an ancestor of Manishe—a common tongue among scholars, though it hasn't been in everyday use for four hundred years or so."

He said "four hundred years" as if it were a few days. Harpers were strange that way.

"The mercenary patois has its roots here." He tapped the rock with the hand that still held the char, leaving a dark blotch on the stone. "But of course they have altered it almost beyond recognition—simplifying it to three or four hundred code words that even the stupidest man can command in a short period of time with the proper instruction. That way it doesn't matter what country a man comes from."

He paused, happily surveying the black marks. "But this, this is very old. Legend says that mankind stole writing from another race—the dwarves. There's some of their work in the museum at the king's castle of state. A goblet, three plates, and a sword. The sword has runes on it, one of which looks just like this." He pointed to a faded mark, one that looked to me just like the one next to it—or the one above it, for that matter.

"That's a mark we don't have in our Manishe, though it's supposed to be read as if it were two other glyphs combined. Now a scholar who wanted you to think this was a message written by dwarves would probably write something that looked like this, but—" he said intensely,"—but how many scholars do you think would have climbed down the backside of this infernal mountain to do that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Right. That's how many of them I think came here, too."

His enthusiasm was infectious—I had obviously happened upon a hobby of his.

"So you think it was written by dwarves?" I asked. The dwarfs had died out a long time ago, victims of plague, war, or the same thing that had killed the rest of the wildlings.

"Perhaps, but we weren't the only ones to steal dwarf runes. This says…" He continued speaking in a language that was harsh and nasal.

Hidden from their sight, the hob winced, flattening his ears against his head. His spells allowed him to interpret what they were saying, but he knew the language the musician was butchering. Manlings had little enough appreciation of beauty in their souls, but this was extreme. Never had he heard such an accent, though he supposed after—how long had he been asleep?—things could have changed.

The girl, the one he'd seen in that brief seeking vision yesterday, spoke again. "What, exactly, does that mean?"

The older man smiled, his face lit with the joy all scholars share in new discoveries. Some things had not changed. "It says, 'Be welcomed here, fair travelers of good heart: benevolent souls have always been welcome on the mountains of the hob.'"

Close enough, thought the hob.

"Hob's Mountain," she said touching the stone.

The hob drew in his breath at the magic that pulsed wildly around the girl. Didn't they teach their younglings better than that? Such a signature would attract all sorts of nasties.

I touched the rock. It was old, so old that only bits and pieces came to me.

A dark-skinned hand, twisted with hoary years, held a brush that he carefully dipped in a clay pot of dark ink… a sense of mischief, for hiding the message would allow them to torment the wicked without warning them off.

Foul weather, I thought—or maybe it was that long ago artist—mud and rust and broken swords. I looked at Wandel, but he was still examining the rock. I don't think he would have noticed if I had fallen on my back and foamed at the mouth.

"Unless they were known by another name," he said, "I've only heard of hobs in two contexts. The first one is the name of this mountain. When I first came here… oh, thirty years ago now, I thought it was named for a man, like Faran's Ridge. The headman before Merewich, Ivn, said not. Said that the mountain was supposed to belong to a hob. No one in Fallbrook, Auberg, or Beresford knew exactly what a hob was, except that it was a wildling and relatively benevolent, and it owned this mountain, or belonged to it. The other is in an old song that I heard far south of here—I'll sing it for you after we make camp."

The hob sat in the shadows and watched them leave. Loneliness and fear ate at him, a loner by choice who had prided himself on his daring and courage.

The last, he thought. I am the last one left. The thought left ashes of sorrow in his mouth, and he lowered his head and wept for his people, who had only a mountain to remember them.

When we finally got back to where the horses waited, Kith had them ready to go. He led the Lass to Wandel.

"Mount and ride," he said, biting off the words.

It was hard to tell if he was still twitchy from the same unease that had gripped him earlier, or if there was something else worrying him. I hurried to Duck and, after a quick check to see if Kith had tightened the cinch (he had), I mounted, falling back into my usual place behind Wandel.

The area was relatively level, one of the shoulders of the mountain, almost a hanging valley except that the far side fell rather than rising in a peak. Kith led us into the grassy land at a brisk trot. Despite the rest, the horses were too tired to move quickly for long. As soon as we were on open ground, he slowed his horse and waved us forward.

I could see a slight tic by his eye. Torch was collected and ready to sprint, though Kith was holding the reins loosely.

"Sorry," he said. "I thought I saw something up above us. Might have been an animal… but it didn't smell right."

"Didn't smell right," I said neutrally.

"If you're on the trail for very long, you learn to use your nose as well as your ears and eyes," replied Kith a shade too easily.

I happened to glance at Wandel at just that moment. He looked sad.

"Better to be safe than sorry," the harper said after a moment. "With the magic free, things could change, no knowing how quickly. Old Merewich and our lass here"—I assumed from the context that he was talking about me and not his horse—"sound pretty certain that it will be sooner rather than later."

Kith met the harper's eyes and said, "Yes, well, I've learned to trust… my instincts."

I saw something pass between the two men that left Kith cold-eyed and stone-faced while the sorrow on the harper's face remained unchanged. I wondered what it was that I had missed. There would be time to extract it from them after we set up camp.

Kith fussed around for a while before he let us dismount at the place he'd originally planned on, a flat, rockless stretch of ground not far from a stream but a little farther from the wooded area. I couldn't tell if it was the place where we'd camped the time we'd come here. If it wasn't, it was very similar.

He'd reluctantly decided it was better to keep an eye out than to try to find cover where we'd not be seen. Muttering something about being so leery that his mother's womb wouldn't feel safe to him for a day or so, he stomped into the trees to find wood for a fire.

We hadn't brought tents, but Wandel and I laid down oiled cloth before we put out the bedrolls, and each of us had another piece to lay on top of ourselves if the rain held by the gathering afternoon clouds fell.

Having laid out my own bedroll, I took Kith's off Torch's back. War-trained he might be, but he knew me well enough not to object to my fiddling—I'd helped train him. I patted his hip as I left.

Now, I thought, try it first while you have Wandel alone. If Kith decided not to talk about something, it was almost impossible to get it out of him. The harper, on the other hand, liked to talk. "Why does Kith's woodsmanship cause you to exchange sorrowful glances?"

He looked up from digging the fire pit and waggled his eyebrows at me. "Ask Kith. It's his story, not mine. I'd not last long as a bard if I were to tell other people's secrets to anyone who thought to ask, now would I?"

"Ha," I said. "You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story."

"Tell her," said Kith flatly.

I started, not having heard him come back. He dropped a large pile of wood an arm's length from the fire pit and unfolded one of the smaller oilskins with a snap. He tucked it carefully around the pile.

He was all I had left of my brother… of my family, really, though we were not blood kin (at least not close kin). I wouldn't have hurt him for the world. This had all started as mere curiosity. As I looked at Kith, I realized that this was not a little secret, and Kith was already hurt by it.

I turned back to Wandel. "Tell me."

"After we finish camp," he said.

I took the dirt Wandel removed from the fire pit and mounded it in a circle around the pit, a further barrier against the flames spreading to the surrounding grass.

Wandel stacked the grass-sod he'd cut and set it near the pile of wood. When we left in the morning, we'd shovel the dirt back in the hole and cover it with the sod—after a season the place would look as if we'd never been there. Kith unsaddled the horses, hobbled them, and let them free to graze.

I washed the dirt from my hands at the stream. By the time I returned, the men were seated at the edge of the fire pit. Wandel struck flint to steel a few times, setting the small pile of tinder alight. Then he fanned and fed the growing flames. When at last the fire blazed merrily, the harper took up his harp and sat cross-legged on the end of his blankets.

He fingered the strings lightly, then set the harp aside, politely waiting for his audience to settle itself. I sat rather gingerly at the end of my bedroll. Duck was too wide in the barrel to be an easy mount. Once Kith, too, was sitting on his bed for the night, the harper began.

"Lord Moresh inherited his bloodmage from his uncle, his mother's brother. Moresh's uncle was the king's high marshal before the king had him beheaded for unnamed crimes. He stood off the whole of the king's army at a crofter's hut with nothing but fifteen bodyguards—bodyguards that his bloodmage had created for him. They all died there, along with fourscore of the king's men. If he could have, the king would have killed the bloodmage as well, but without a specified charge against the marshal he could not nullify his will. Jealousy is not a charge that can be lodged in the court, so the bloodmage went to Moresh"—Wandel looked at Kith—"where he continued to make warriors for Moresh's use."

"Never too many, you understand, because the king limited the number he allowed Moresh, not wanting Moresh to gain too much power. The berserkers are scouts and Moresh's personal guard. One of the old marshal's men told me they can track like a hound and hear a bee sneeze in the next room. They fight as the old legends say berserkers did, not bleeding from their wounds until after the battle is over. Those who are maimed or sorely wounded are killed." He looked at Kith. "Since Moresh can have only a few of them, he wants them whole."

Kith laughed without amusement. "Moresh owed my father a life." He looked at me. "Remember, it was my father who found our lord's heir when the boy got lost in the fog. So he sent me home last fall. Before the war turned so bloody, Moresh planned on being here for spring planting. Three months, he said, a fair payment for his son."

He turned his gaze to the darkening sky. "It's not as if I can run: Nahag has his mark on me. One of us ran once. Silly fool fell in love."

Nahag wasn't Moresh's bloodmage's real name, though I couldn't recall what it was offhand. A nahag was a night demon who consumed children while they slept. It said a lot about the mage that he'd been given such a nickname.

Kith turned to me with eyes lit with self-mockery and a message. "Nahag got to play with him, brought him out for our enlightenment every evening for two weeks. The bloodmage is as old as my father, and he's been a mage since his parents abandoned him to the mage guild when he was a child—whoever he was once, the madness has taken him now. The runner died—I think, I hope—at the end of the first week, but it was a little hard to tell. I didn't know until then that bloodmages eat their victims. Lord Moresh knew I wouldn't run when they came for me."

For the first time I felt something about Lord Moresh's death other than the vague fear of a sheep whose shepherd is lost—satisfaction. Such a man should be dead.

I could feel my lips peel back from my teeth. "If," I said softly, in a gentle voice, "he were not dead, I'd curse him that his kith and kin would know him not for the ague that would twist his bones. I would curse him that pain would make of him something neither human nor animal. I'd see to it that he lived forever knowing nothing, neither darkness nor light, for the agony of his transgressions."

Wandel looked at me as if he'd never seen me before.

Kith gave a rusty chuckle. "That took me back. I haven't heard that curse since the last time your brother and I raided your grandmother's garden. Scared us silly." He pulled up a blade of grass and played with it in his hand.

"Anyway, now you know." Kith stopped playing with the grass and met my eyes again. "And if we find Danci, you can tell her why I'm not a suitable candidate for a husband and father."

So that's why he told me. My eyebrows shot up. "Why? Because a bloodmage, who is now dead, was searching for you?"

"Because I'm dangerous enough to need him to do so."

"Dangerous to whom?" I sputtered. "No one at the village seems to be suffering from your presence."

He shook his head, the stubborn mule. "It doesn't matter. Just tell her what the harper and I told you."

FOUR

Crouched in the gathering shadows, the hob held very still as he watched over the party. He'd always avoided the traditional task of following well-meaning folk whenever he could—his talents and interests lay in tormenting the wicked. But here he was. No wine to sour, or horses to loose, just the soft sounds of the humans' voices to drive away the loneliness. He hunkered down further and let the warmth of their camp wash over him.

Kith jumped to his feet, startling me. "Come on, then," he said. "We've got some time now. Why don't you get your knife, and I'll see what I can teach you."

Grateful for a chance to put the last few revelations behind me, I took Daryn's knife from my borrowed saddlebags and scurried back to present it nervously to Kith. I'd spent a good bit of time yesterday sharpening it, but Kith was particular about things like that.

He took it and turned it over in his hand. "Good thing it's got an edge on it. I'm not much of a hand at sharpening things anymore." He grinned at me unexpectedly. "Father's been putting the edge on my stuff, but it's not like doing it yourself."

I smiled back. "I'd guess not."

"Right." He gave me back my knife and watched how I held it. His frown made me shift my grip several times, but the disapproving expression didn't change.

"The first thing to remember is that the knife is sharp," he said.

I rolled my eyes. "And I haven't been butchering pigs and cattle since I was old enough to crawl."

He smiled, and, drawing his own knife, he continued talking. "It can cut you as easily as it will cut your opponent: keep it away from your fingers. The second thing to remember is that you can do a lot of damage with it by just holding it in your hand and punching."

He closed his hand into a fist and demonstrated with an imaginary opponent. He moved with swift efficiency, and his imaginary foe's instant death was obvious.

"For now, forget you even have a knife," he advised. "It will take care of itself—at least until you have more experience. You're at a disadvantage because you're a woman. A man will back off from another man with a knife, but he'll not do the same for a woman." He watched me try to imitate his move several times. I couldn't tell if I'd done anything right or not. Probably not.

"Put that away for now," he said, in sudden decision. "We'll practice with something else."

When I got back from storing the knife, Kith was waiting with three sticks a little longer than his forearm. They were green wood, and very nearly equal in diameter.

He motioned for me to follow him to a flat area a little way from camp, then handed me two of the sticks and tucked the third under his arm.

He adjusted my grip, then took up his own stick with a clever little toss. "The sticks will teach you the moves without either of us chancing a cut. The additional benefit is that the sticks are a decent weapon in their own right. Around here, there are always sticks of some sort."

Then he proceeded to teach me how to fight—at least that's what he said he was doing. I thought he was beating me with his stick. Shows what I know.

By the time he said "Enough," I was so tired that I stumbled while walking back to the fire. I knew if I just sat down, I was going to have some really stiff muscles in the morning. Maybe if I walked it out, they'd only be very stiff.

"I'll get some more firewood," I said, turning away from the fire. "What we have won't last the night."

"Best do that, I think," Kith said. "Wandel and I'll see about dinner."

"I thought the woman should do the cooking," said Wandel, teasing but still half-serious. He hadn't eaten what I could cook over an open fire.

"We'll cook," replied Kith, who had.

As soon as I was out of sight, I stopped to tie my boots. I could hear them talking… about me. A well brought-up person would have left.

"She startled me when she spoke to your elders," commented Wandel. "I've never seen her as a forceful sort of person. She's always in the back of the room, never speaking unless someone asks her something."

"Not talking when the men talk," agreed Kith. Was that sarcasm I heard in his voice? "Like a good little village woman." Yes, it was sarcasm.

"I've seen your village women. Most of them don't act like that." Wandel half-laughed, no doubt picturing Melly or the smith's wife.

"Hmm," grunted Kith. "Let's say her father's idea of a good village woman. Or her mother's. I'd guess it goes back to when Quilliar died—her brother."

"When you killed him," said Wandel. It surprised me that he knew that; he hadn't been in the village then.

"He was my best friend," replied Kith obliquely.

"I wondered about that." The harper grunted, and I pictured him tossing a chunk of wood into the fire. "From what I know of Moresh's berserkers, I wouldn't have thought you could act against orders."

"Neither did Nahag, or else I'd have been executed in Quill's place."

"So you think Aren's been trying to hide what she is so she doesn't get singled out by the bloodmage or the villagers?"

Yes, I thought, it had been hide or die.

"Hide from herself most of all, I think. It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself."

Yes, you'd know about that, wouldn't you, Kith? I thought.

His voice changed a bit, becoming almost playful. "I do know that every time I saw her playing the grateful, submissive wife to that arrogant pup she married—"

Arrogant? I tried the word on Daryn. It didn't fit.

"I wanted to shake her. I kept waiting for her to wake up and put him in his place the way she always did Quill and me when we ganged up on her."

Perhaps it was Kith's voice that told me. It was just a shade louder than it needed to be. Perhaps it was the "arrogant"—Kith had liked Daryn as well as the next man. Kith knew I was listening.

"Daryn was just nicer than you two were," I said.

"If you'd waited on us hand and foot, we'd have been nicer, too," called Kith without pause. I heard Wandel's snort of surprise.

I laughed and set off, pushing the moment of self-examination behind me. When I'd traveled a bit, I stripped off my clothes and washed off the trail sweat in the shallow water of the stream. I used my tunic to wipe off, then dressed again. I pulled the tunic over my shirt, disregarding the dampness. It would dry before I got back to camp.

I walked for a while without collecting any wood. The way back would be soon enough—no sense carrying it any farther than I had to. The late afternoon had the peculiar yellow tint that happens only in the spring when the afternoon clouds gather threateningly in the sky. The shadows were deep, but where the light touched down, the colors were dazzling.

For the first time since Daryn died, I felt at peace. I knew Moresh wouldn't be back to kill Kith. Time would heal him. With aid from Auberg, the raiders would be driven away.

I stopped in a small clearing and decided that if I went any farther, Kith and Wandel were likely to come looking for me. I turned around and stopped abruptly. Standing on a downed tree, only a horse length from me, was a… well, a creature.

I felt no fear, only a surprised kind of delight. If he had been standing on the ground, he would have come up to my shoulder. The wildling was a fragile-seeming thing, his feyness blending into the odd light as if he, not I, really belonged to this world. His arms and legs were slender, almost spindly. The bones of his ribs and shoulders were clearly visible, though his belly was round.

He had the proportions of a child, his head too large for his small body. His skin was the warm brown of stained oak. If there were claws on the ends of his fingers, those fingers were long and slender like those of a great lady.

He wore only a pair of roughly made hide shoes and a loincloth. His pale, ash-gray hair was braided in complex patterns with colorful beads woven here and there.

His eyes were large, even in the oversized, inhumanly round face. Wide gray irises gave a strange beauty to something that might have been grotesque. His mouth balanced his eyes, being wider than any I'd seen on a human face. As I watched, a smile lit his eyes and touched the corner of his mouth.

"Hob?" I asked softly, half raising my hand to him.

His smiled widened, exposing the sharp, interlocking teeth of a predator. Before the significance of that registered, he launched himself at me. His arms closed with viselike strength on my shoulders as his head darted for my throat.

Somehow I managed to get the arm I'd been lifting between his face and my neck. His jaws locked on my arm with vicious force. I heard the crack of bone, shock momentarily protecting me from the pain. I noticed that the corners of his mouth were still tilted up in a smile.

He smelled of musty leaves and damp earth. I tried to dislodge him, but for all his lack of size he was much stronger than I was. I'd left my knife back at camp, and there were no sticks within reach.

He wrenched his head, twisting my forearm to an impossible angle. I remember hearing a loud ringing in my ears—then nothing.

They told me later it was Wandel who found me. Kith had come across the creature's spoor and was tracking it when he heard the harper's shrill whistles. By the time I woke up, my head was propped on Wandel's leg and he was mopping my face with a wet cloth. I was quiet for a moment, more out of sheer surprise than anything else. I hadn't expected to wake up at all.

When a cold drop of water hit my ear, I batted at Wandel with my unhurt arm and struggled to sit up. Upright, I was lightheaded and dizzy.

"Who'd you meet out here, Aren?" called Kith from somewhere a fair distance to my right.

I opened my eyes, but it was nearing dark and my vision kept trying to black out, so it took me a while to find Kith. He was kneeling beside something a short distance away. After a moment I decided it was a dead body.

"Don't know," I croaked, closing my eyes again. "What's it look like?"

"This looks like some malformed human child with teeth like a shark," he replied. "But you met something else, too. No way you could break its neck like this. Whatever did this is stronger than I am—came near to ripping the head off while he was about it."

"Whoever it was, they bandaged her arm," added Wandel.

I'd been trying to ignore my arm. I had a clear memory of bone showing through flesh. I looked down and saw that someone had wrapped it with strips of my tunic. It still looked like an arm ought to, and I didn't think it should. It also hurt.

Kith swore softly. I raised my eyes from my arm and watched him pace back and forth, stopping here and there to examine the ground. My vision was better, but I was still dizzy.

"Look at the bruises. He snapped that thing's neck with one hand," Kith muttered. "Then he used a stick to pry its jaw open. He tossed it from here"—he stood, as far as I could tell, where the creature had attacked me—"to there." He pointed to where the body lay, some distance away. "Now it's not huge, but it weighs a good seventy or eighty pounds, and I don't know a man alive who could toss it that far—not even a magicked one like me." He said some more, but I started seeing black again and only caught something about soft-soled boots.

"A Beresforder?" guessed Wandel. "Some of those mountain folk are big enough to take a bear and toss it into the next valley. But then why didn't he stay to meet us?"

"Not a Beresforder," refuted Kith. "I don't think a human could do this. Certainly no one I know from Beresford." He went on mumbling to himself about wildlings, but I was paying more attention to my arm than to what he said.

After a moment Kith stopped speaking and knelt beside me. "How badly are you hurt?"

"I don't know," I replied, breathing through my nose like a winded horse. "I'm afraid to look."

"So someone killed that thing and dressed Aren's wounds," said Wandel, sounding fascinated—but then it wasn't his arm he was talking about. "I wonder who he was and why he didn't stay."

Kith shook his head. "I think we ought to get back to camp. Where there is one of those things, there might be more. If you'll help me get her over my shoulder, I'll carry her, and you can collect the wood we'll need on the way back."

"It'll be easier if I carry…" began Wandel. I had my eyes closed again, and I didn't get them open fast enough to see what caused him to stop talking.

"I can walk," I offered, squinting up at Kith.

Maybe the look that Wandel had gotten was similar to the one I received. It shut me up, too.

With considerable help from Wandel, I managed to get to my feet. Kith shoved his left shoulder into my midriff and heaved me up. The sudden change in position put me out faster than a candle in water.

When I awoke, a familiar tunic was bouncing around under my face.

"I can walk," I said groggily.

"No," Kith replied firmly. "From the amount of blood you left behind, I'm surprised you awoke before morning. If I set you down and you pass out, it'll be twice the work to get you back up. We're not far from camp, Pest. Just keep quiet 'til we get there."

Of the rest of the trip back I have a hazy memory of watching the back of Kith's calves gray in and out of my shaky vision. I really only recovered consciousness when the steady jolt of Kith's shoulder in my stomach stopped, and I started to slip off.

He muttered a word I'd never heard him use before and made an attempt to forestall my fall. I ended up on my blankets beside the small fire pit. My arm throbbed, my rump ached where it had landed on a rock, my head hurt; but overall, I decided, I would survive.

He left me and fumbled a bit through my saddlebags until he came up with my extra sweater, which he dropped over my head. The additional warmth was welcome—with the sun down, it was a lot colder. The warm tunic I'd worn into the woods was less warm when it was missing the bottom third of its length.

"Kith…" I began, feeling much better right side up, but he stopped me with a gesture.

"Rest a bit, Pest. We need to wait for Wandel, and I need to catch my breath." He settled down beside me and handed me a small flask. "Take a drink of this."

I don't know what I expected—some sort of alcohol, I suppose, even though I knew Kith didn't drink strong spirits. What I sipped wasn't alcohol, but some kind of herb-laden apple cider. That and the stew they'd concocted for dinner had me feeling almost myself by the time Wandel made it back to camp with his load of firewood.

The men ate and I half-dozed by the fire. I should have gotten up and washed my bowl, but it was too much effort. When he was done eating, Kith took my bowl with him to the stream. Maybe I'd have to make sure I was wounded every time I traveled. It sure got me out of a lot of work.

When Kith returned, he sat cross-legged next to me, on the other side of the fire from Wandel. "Now tell me what happened."

I sighed. "You already know most of it. I looked up, and there he was, the creature you found dead. I was so busy wondering what he was, that his attack took me completely by surprise." I thought a moment. There was something odd about the fascination I'd felt for him, but it was too hard to describe, so I let it go. "He was aiming for my throat, but I got my hand in front. He bit it and shook his head like a dog killing a rat, and that's all I remember."

"You don't remember anything about the…" Kith's voice trailed off for a moment. "About whatever it was that killed that thing?"

I shook my head. "I don't even know how badly I'm hurt. I could have sworn it nearly tore my—well, at least it did a lot more damage than it looks like." I snatched Kith's knife from his boot sheath and slid it under the strips of cloth that wrapped my arm.

It was a mess. On either side was a deep slice that ran the length of my forearm, but the splinters of bone weren't there. It hurt when I closed my hand and started bleeding sluggishly—all right, it hurt more when I closed my hand, but that was all.

I'd butchered enough animals to know there was a lot more odd about my arm than the fact I knew the bones had been broken. For one thing, there should have been more blood. There were arteries close to the surface that should have been severed with cuts that deep. Without a pressure bandage, blood should be pouring out.

"When it bit down," I said distinctly, as much to convince myself as anyone else, "it broke my arm; I heard the bones go. When it twisted its head, my arm bent here." I didn't quite touch the wound just below my elbow.

Kith held my arm still and examined it. When he was through, he shook his head. "I can't tell that the bone's ever been broken—and right here it should have cut through an artery"—he ran his fingers over one of the cuts—"and again here. I'd say he can work magic I've never seen a bloodmage do."

"Not that they would feel inspired to help anyone," I said. Kith smiled at me tiredly.

Wandel opened a pouch on his belt and took out a tin before rounding the fire to my side. He took the bandaging I'd cut off and spread a layer of salve from the container on part of it.

"Put this back around your arm," he said, fitting the bandage back around the wound.

With my assistance, he tore another strip from my poor tunic and used it to hold the bandaging in place. "From all appearances, your wounds have already been cleaned—so there's no use putting you through it again tonight. I have some brandy in my bags, and I'll clean it again in the morning. Bite wounds are always difficult to get to heal if you don't keep them clean."

When he was finished with me, I stretched out on my blanket, staring up into the night sky. "Wandel," I asked, "do you think that thing that rescued me was a hob? Like the runes we found?"

Wandel took up his harp and plucked a string delicately. "I don't know. I told you, I only know a song about them." He began to play a sprightly tune on his harp, one of the kind that's difficult not to hum along with. By the third verse I was singing with the chorus. Kith didn't join in.

The gist of the song was that there was a rich farmer who owed his success to the hob living in his barn. The farmer, due to his wealth, found himself a wife from a well-to-do town family. They lived happily enough until the hob surprised her in the barn. They disliked each other on sight; she tried to rid the barn of the hob, and the hob tried to rid the farmer of his wife. The wife was clever, but the hob was more clever still: everything she tried to do to him, he turned back on her. At last the farmer stepped in, kept the hob, and got rid of his wife. With the help of the hob he found a farm-bred wife who put out milk and bread every night for the fey folk, and they all lived happily ever after.

The most interesting feature of the song, as far as I was concerned, was the detailed description of the hob: a little man with skin like old oak, eyes blue as the sky, and a head too big for its body. It sounded like my attacker, but…

"So," said Wandel, finishing the last chord with a flourish, "the creature who attacked you could have been a hob."

"No," I said, suddenly remembering something. "I named the wildling that, just before it attacked me. Then after… someone—I remembered the dark gray skin and red eyes of my vision yesterday and a tone of dry disgust—"someone said, "That's not a hob, Lady."

My arm was stiff and sore the next morning. When Wandel offered to saddle Duck as well as Torch and the Lass, I let him do it and helped Kith pack camp—or at least watched while Kith did all the work, offering unsolicited advice until he threatened to toss his shovelful of dirt on me rather than the fire pit.

By the time Wandel had tied the small shovel behind Torch's saddle, I was starting to feel better. Mounting was awkward, and Kith gave me a sympathetic glance.

"Well, at least it doesn't hurt you when you do this," I groused as I found my stirrups.

"Yours will pass," he replied softly.

"You're not going to make me feel guilty when I feel so bad, are you?" I whined.

He laughed. "Let's go."

After the first few miles, my arm subsided to a dull ache that I could ignore. I noticed Kith wasn't nearly as nervous today, and I wondered if the thing that had attacked me had been following us. With it gone, there would be nothing to set off his magicked senses. Maybe, I thought, but it was more likely that the day had relaxed him as much as it had me. It was hard to worry about wildlings with sharp teeth with the sun shining on your back.

It was warmer today than yesterday, and the scents of the early spring wildflowers were almost erotic in their fullness. The horses were feeling it, too; the Lass had managed to bite poor old Duck twice. He, for his part, seemed to take a masochistic interest in her. He kept trying to sneak closer to her when I wasn't paying attention. If he hadn't been a gelding, I would have thought he was courting the mare. Even Torch, the old campaigner, was dancing a bit more than usual.

It was late afternoon when we started down the slopes of the Hob into the valley where Auberg lay, about the same time that we'd made camp yesterday. From our vantage point, the town didn't look nearly as large as I remembered it—but it had been several years since I'd been there. As we started down the side of the mountain, I saw the bones of a winter-killed wolf stretched under the green foliage of a wild lilac. The climate was warmer here than it was in Fallbrook, and the lilacs were in full bloom.

The pastureland crept up the sides of the foothills of the Hob, and soon we were traveling along a shepherds' track between the rock walls that fenced the pastures. Generations of farmers had combed the rocks from the land and used them for fences and buildings, leaving behind land well-fenced and less rocky. Land that once had been poor had become, over centuries of management, rich and fertile.

The grass in the pastures here were already three times as long as the grasses in Fallbrook's fields. Even the pastures that had been recently grazed were longer than…

Torch halted, giving the Lass time to aim a nip at his rump—though even she wasn't so bold as to actually bite him.

"What's wrong?" asked Wandel before I could.

"You tell me," answered Kith, his gaze drifting around the valley spread below us.

I followed his gaze, looking for something—but there was nothing to be seen.

"Faran's breath!" I swore, standing in my stirrups for a better view. There was nothing to be seen.

"Where are the cattle?" asked Wandel. "These are cattle fields, you can see where they've grazed—but they're all gone."

"No sheep either," added Kith softly. "Nor any people. We should be able to see the men in the fields and the people going in and out of town. Look down by that little croft. There's laundry hung to dry and half of it swept loose from the pins."

I knew the others were thinking raiders. It was possible the group harassing Fallbrook was part of a larger raiding party or even an enemy army—but a feeling that chilled me down to the bone told me the answer was worse than an army. A feeling and the memory of a vision of men dissolving into ash didn't allow for so mundane an answer.

The quick glimpse I'd had of the wolf bones became more sinister. I didn't say anything, though, merely sent Duck after the other two horses as they headed down the trail to Auberg. What could I have said?

We passed the croft with the hanging laundry first. There were a few chickens in the yard: small and scrawny, half-grown chicks. The men rode past the trail to the house but, on impulse, I turned in. Kith and Wandel stopped to wait for me.

The grass was knee-deep, so it wasn't until something crunched under Duck's feet that I realized there were bones scattered here and there throughout the yard. I dismounted and kicked some of them out from under the grass.

They were clean as if someone had boiled the flesh from them—chicken mostly, though some of them might have been goose. Nearer the clothesline I saw the bones of a dog. A basket sat nearby, half full of washing.

I led Duck around the fluttering clothes. A brightly striped kerchief was still wrapped around the skull of the woman who had been hanging laundry.

Not raiders, I thought. There was no sign the woman had met an untimely end by ax or knife. It might have been a plague that killed her. There were some that swept through towns, killing entire populations. Most of those were mageborn, but some of the natural diseases could do it, too.

If this were a plague, we shouldn't go into town. If this were plague, it couldn't have happened very long ago. The bones were yellowish, almost greasy looking, with dark spots on the long bones of her arm. Newly stripped bones that had lain there for no more than a month.

I'd seen an army turned to bone, then ash: it hadn't been a plague. But what madman would have loosed such a spell here? Auberg was no threat to anyone.

I sat beside the skeleton and touched her wrist gently. The bones were dry against my fingers. I wondered what the unknown mage who'd stripped the land of magic bindings had done with the power he'd acquired. Duck touched the top of my head with his nose, worried about my unaccustomed place at his feet.

I closed my eyes and tried to see what had happened to the woman. I tried to put aside all of my speculations. For a long time, nothing came to me. Visions all the time when I didn't want them, but they were harder to call on purpose. My right leg started to go to sleep.

I heard hoofbeats approaching. Kith and Wandel must have gotten tired of waiting. I opened my eyes and turned to look…

A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram—calls for health and well-being.

The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight.

It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.

"I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord," he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.

Someone made an answer, inaudible—but the effect on the mage was electrifying. "I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?" He listened, then replied even more softly. "A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?"

Madness lit his face briefly, then he closed his eyes, rubbing one of the black runes with his left hand. When his eyes opened, there was something sane dwelling there, but his left hand still moved on the runes, which glittered with an eerie yellow light.

In the manner of a man overtired by work, he repeated himself, but the dangerous edge to his voice was gone. "What have you offered him?"

This time I could hear the other man. "I sent your son to him with a sealed message which he has read several hours since. I told him the boy was his to do with as he pleased—like you, he is a bloodmage. What strength would he get from a mage as powerful as your son? But perhaps the boy was able to defeat him as you never have? The rituals you go through take so much time—perhaps you can do something about him before your son dies? Perhaps the war is not so hopeless after all?"

The bloodmage closed his eyes again and moved his right hand, the left one still tracing the runes on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, he appeared calm and his left hand dropped to his side—but there was nothing sane about him. "You are correct. There is something I can do to defeat him—I discovered it a month ago. Who could have told you? Ah, no matter. All the reason I had for not doing it is dead with my son. For your part in this you shall not die here."

The mage spread his hands and closed his eyes again. An aura surrounded him, growing gradually, making first him, then the room, and last the tower glow red with the power he called to him. It took a long time to gather and barely an instant to send on its way, taking with it the mage himself.

My vision fell away from the tower and the king who sat there alone. I traveled some great distance outside the city before so much as a blade of grass survived the bloodmage's wrath. Far from the city, empty battlefields were covered with bits and pieces of metal scattered here and there across fields of yellow flowers where butterflies danced…

The butterflies were rather abruptly obscured by Wandel's mustached face. I blinked at the harper stupidly for a bit while I slowly realized that Kith was standing beside me. My arm ached. When I looked down, fresh blood spotted the bandages.

"I'm fine," I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.

"What did you see?" asked Kith.

I stood up stiffly, then swung my uninjured arm to indicate the dress-clad bones. "She was killed by the same thing that killed all the cattle in the fields—I'll wager we could find their bones under all that grass. It killed everything here larger than these chickens. The king's bloodmage pulled the bindings from the land to destroy everything he could reach. And he reached as far as Auberg."

Alarm flooded Wandel's expression. "Why would he do that? The nearest fighting is close to thirty leagues from Auberg."

"He set the spell from the capital—at least I think that's where they were," I said. "I don't think anything closer to the king's castle than Fallbrook survived."

Kith whistled sharply, and Torch trotted over from his grazing. The one-armed warrior swung gracefully to his saddle, collecting his reins by using his hand and his teeth. "Let's see what remains of Auberg. We'll go home with a report, and then perhaps we can send a party from here back to Beresford over some of the old trails if the raiders give us time."

The streets of Auberg were silent, but I hadn't expected them to be otherwise. We rode around piles of cloth and bone lying here and there on the streets. At the well in the center of town, Wandel pulled his mare to a halt. He'd been uncharacteristically silent since I'd told them what I'd seen.

"This will get us nowhere. If Aren's right, and I have seen nothing to disprove it, no one who was here when the spell hit has survived. Since we're looking for refugees from Beresford who might have come here, we ought to try and find somewhere they'd gather. The innkeeper of the Pale Grouse was from Beresford, so I suggest we check there."

Kith nodded and turned Torch to the left. I had never stayed at either of Auberg's two inns, real inns with six or eight rooms for travelers. Auberg was at the northernmost point of the river that was navigable and had several trading fairs throughout the year. Father took—used to take—the surplus harvest to the fall market, and got more for it than if he'd sold it at the market in Fallbrook. But when we came, Father usually found a family who would take us in for a few measures of grain. I didn't even know where the Pale Grouse was. Kith and Wandel seemed to, though. After a short ride we came upon an inn. The bird painted on the sign might have been a grouse twenty years ago.

When I saw the horses in the paddock in front of the inn, I turned to say something to Kith, but held my tongue when I saw that he searched for a specific animal. Danci's horse was sired by the same stallion that had sired Torch, and shared their father's yellow coat. There were no duns in the small enclosure.

As we rode into the yard, several men came out of the inn and looked at us suspiciously. Their faces held the same despair that had begun growing in my heart since we rode down off the Hob.

"Who are you?" asked the smallest of the four men who blocked the way into the inn.

"We're from Fallbrook, looking for refugees out of Beresford," replied Kith slowly. "And you are?"

"Folks call me Ice. Don't know you," replied the man, narrowing his ice-blue eyes. "Been some strange goings-on here. Heard things walking the streets at night. Most of them things my grandfather used to tell us about when my grandmother wasn't around to stop him. How do we know you are who you say you are, and not some haunt looking for a way in?"

I hadn't expected to meet with such suspicion. I didn't know any of the faces I saw, and I knew any number of people from Beresford. I glanced at Wandel, and he shook his head—he didn't know any of them either. Kith, though, narrowed his eyes and nodded his head slowly.

"I see your point. I'm Albrin's son, Kith, and in the field there's a bay gelding I trained eleven summers gone for a man named Falkin from Beresford. If he's here, he'll vouch for me." He nodded toward Wandel. "This is Wandel Silver-Tongue. If there's some of you mountain folk who spend time in town in the late spring, they'll recognize him."

Ah, I thought, that's why I don't know any of them. There were several clans of trappers living in the mountains above Beresford. They were loners for the most part, staying to themselves except when they traded fur and meat for other goods in town. Obviously they'd been in a better position to survive the flooding than the townsfolk had been.

"And the woman?"

I answered for myself. "I was married to Daryn of Beresford less than a fortnight ago. He died at the hands of raiders the same day the mountains fell." I patted my horse's neck. "He left me Duck, here, and an obligation to his home village."

A tall, thin man with haunted eyes shook his head. "Be careful, brother mine, the wraith that knocked on my window last night bore the face of a man I knew. If my window weren't on the third floor with nothing for a man to climb up, I might have let him in."

"Ah, stuff and nonsense, Manta. If Kith died, he'd be a demon full-grown, and not some pathetic haunt reduced to aping the living!" scolded a voice I knew full well.

Danci pushed past the men as if they were cattle, though she didn't reach the shoulders of the smallest of them. "It's no use hiding that smile, Kith, I know you're glad to see me—and it's about time you got here."

If Kith smiled, I missed it. I swung off Duck's back, but before I could find somewhere to put him, one of the young men on the porch took the reins from me.

"I'll loose him with the others," he said, softly enough that he didn't interrupt any of the questions going on around us.

I caught his arm and shook my head. "No," I said before I knew I was going to. I projected my voice over the general conversations. "We have to leave before nightfall." A deepening dread was growing upon me, as it had the day Daryn had died.

Kith turned toward me. I shook my head again, ignoring the others. "I don't know why, but it's important."

It had something to do with the defeat clinging to the faces of all of the people in the inn yard, even Danci; the weariness that left the children creeping slowly out the inn door instead of running to see the strangers. Even the wariness of the men seemed to be unnatural. Then, again, I was still spooked from the vision of the king's bloodmage—and maybe from yesterday's attack.

Wandel grinned reassuringly. "We've learned to listen to Aren's hunches. If you don't have a pressing reason for staying, I would urge you to come with us to Fallbrook—though that might be jumping out of the pot into the pit. Fallbrook's been invaded by a band of raiders."

"If we're outside at night, the haunts will get us like they did Leheigh the first night we were here," said the man Danci had called Manta.

"My brother's right," agreed Ice, who seemed to be the leader. "At least something killed Leheigh, and what it left behind didn't look like the work of anything I've ever seen before. It's going to take more than a woman's hunch to make me travel at night."

Kith pursed his lips thoughtfully, but when he spoke, his voice was dangerously soft. "I'm going. If you're wise, you will come, too. Aren's got the sight, and she knows things that we cannot."

"Tier, go get Chatim and Falkin," commanded Danci briskly. "I'm going with Kith. Anyone who wants to come with us, can." No one argued with her. Not that I was surprised; I'd never been able to argue with her.

The young man who held Duck's reins gave them back to me and ran to do Danci's bidding.

Danci turned back to Kith. "They left to check out the other inn and to pick some vegetables. It may take a little while to find them. We've run low on supplies."

"Have you raided the houses for food?" Kith pointedly addressed Danci rather than the men.

"No one wanted to," she replied, a little sheepishly.

Kith nodded once. "Then the three of us"—he indicated Wandel, himself, and me—"will scavenge food for the ride back from the houses nearby while you pack."

Wandel looked at the disgruntled faces of the Beresforders and shook his head. "You two go scavenge—I think I'm needed here. I'll tell them why we're so quick to take Aren's suggestions."

I took the left-hand side of the road, leaving Duck ground-tied next to Torch and the Lass in front of the inn.

If it had been anyone else who suggested exploring the houses, I would have danced naked in the winter snow before I stepped foot inside any of the buildings in Auberg. But it had been Kith, and anything he could do, I could do—especially when the alternative was to watch all the Beresforders' faces while Wandel explained what kind of freak I was. Besides, after Manta objected to a woman going through the houses of the dead, I was left with no choice at all.

The first house wasn't bad. I located the larder immediately, just off the kitchen. I found a tablecloth and loaded it with what food would travel—cheese and unleavened bread mostly. After tying the bundle, I set it on the street in front of the house, where I could pick it up on the way back to the inn.

The next house was smaller than the first, made of stones set one on top of the other with no need of mortar to hold it together. As I stepped over the threshold, I came face to skull with the master of the hearth.

Except for the woman on the farm, I'd tried not to look at the heaps of bones we'd passed in Auberg. I hadn't let them be people, only piles of rubbish. But, even dead, this man wouldn't let me do that.

He must have been resting in front of the fire, for his remains were still settled in a chair before the blackened grating. His trousers were patched neatly, though without the ornamentation a woman would have given them. His shirt was made of fine cotton cloth and showed no such wear.

He'd been a big man, a hand or so larger than Daryn.

I couldn't repress the feeling that he watched me as I walked past him to the room beyond.

His larder was small, but stocked with the sorts of food a traveler would need: rice cakes, sweet oatcakes, and salted, dried beef. I took all I could carry in a tablecloth I'd brought from the first house. And all the time I stacked the food, I had the twitchy feeling that someone was observing me. Just before I tied the bundle together, I took an oatcake and a piece of the beef and set it aside.

I walked into the front room and set the bits of food I'd kept out on the floor before the dead man in the chair. Remembering what the Beresforders had said about the unrestful dead and stories learned at Gram's knee, I knelt before him as if he were a king on a throne.

"Good sir," I said, in as formal a manner as I could muster, "I take this food to ensure the safety of others, not for personal gain. Accept this offering as my good faith and hear my prayer for your rest. Be at peace."

If there had been someone with me, I wouldn't have done it, but it made me feel better. Coming to my feet, I brushed against something hanging on the stone wall. It fell to the floor with a clatter and a thunk.

A glance showed it to be a crossbow, oiled so dark it was black. I picked it up and took the quiver of arrows that hung next to the space where it had been. Then I nodded respectfully to the man who had owned them, and began to leave.

A chill touched my shoulder, stopping me where I was. I turned back to the skeleton who brooded in his chair, staring not, I saw finally, at the door but at the wall where the crossbow had hung. I, too, looked again. A black leather bag rested on the same peg the crossbow had hung on. I'd left it there. Now, after a careful look at the resting warrior, I lifted it down, too. Inside was an odd metal contraption, the same color as the crossbow—tarnished silver, I thought.

"For the crossbow?" I asked.

It almost surprised me that there was no answer. I took the bag with me. When I set the bag of food outside the door, I kept the crossbow and slung the quiver into its proper place across my shoulders. The leather bag I attached to my belt.

My last experience made me wary as I opened the door to the next house. Nothing greeted me but the faint scent of lemon verbena.

The first room was so prosaic it seemed to disallow a world in which a warrior could guard his domain after death. Ruffled curtains framed the windows covered only by a screen of creamy linen to keep out insects and dirt.

The next room was a bedroom, and I walked quickly through it. There were two doorways on the side of the room. I opened the first and walked into another bedroom, much smaller than the first. A cradle creaked back and forth as the breeze swept through the window where the protective screen had been torn loose.

Almost involuntarily, I stepped farther into the room and looked at the tiny bones lying clothed in a soft gown embroidered with yellow and orange flowers. A rose-colored quilt had been tucked lovingly around the baby. I tightened my hand around the crossbow until it hurt, but the pain didn't help.

A soft lullaby filled my head. The breeze died, but the cradle still rocked. I watched as a mother sang her babe to sleep. The dead woman looked up at me and smiled—a simple, uncomplicated smile—and raised a finger to her lips, protecting the sleep of a child who would never awaken.

I walked out of the house and shut the door gently behind me with a hand that shook. It hadn't felt like a vision.

Sweat gathered on the small of my back. I knew I should have gone on and searched for the larder, but it was beyond me. Perhaps Kith could have done it, but not even the power of old taunts was going to make me go into another house.

Kith came out of a house on the other side of the narrow lane, and looked at me. Something in my face must have shown how I felt, because he crossed the street and frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"Well," I answered, smiling grimly, "at least we know we don't have to search for babies left unattended. The one in there was only a few days old, and the spell took it as surely as it took larger creatures." I decided not to mention the ghost.

Kith closed his eyes briefly and nodded. "I have enough food for the journey if there aren't many more people than it appears. What you have should fill in the gaps." He gave me a look that told me what he had found hadn't been much better, then he chose to change the subject. Soldiers were probably good at avoiding unbearable things. "I see you found a crossbow."

I gave it to him, and he looked it over closely before returning it. "Steel bow," he said. "They're expensive. My own is a composite, easier to draw but less range. Most of the weapons like this belong to noblemen—Moresh has one. I wouldn't have thought a town this size would have a weapon of such quality. It's too bad we can't use it."

"What do you mean?"

He set the bow on the ground, holding onto the stock first, then bracing it against his shoulder. He ran a finger down the stock and showed me two black metal pegs, one on each side.

"This was meant for a goatsfoot. You'll not be able to draw it by hand."

"A what?" I asked, trying to picture how a goat's foot would help to draw a bow.

"Goatsfoot," he repeated. "It's a device that you hook under the string and over the pins." He fingered the pegs he'd shown me. They didn't look like pins to me. "Then you pull it back. The extra leverage allows you to draw the bow."

I opened the leather bag and pulled out the contraption it held. "Is this one?"

He took it from me. "That makes this bow a lot more useful." Kneeling, he pressed the toe of his boot to the bow, holding it steady as he showed me how the goats-foot cocked the bow.

The back of my neck crawled suddenly, and I glanced behind me. But the houses all stood empty.

The sun was low in the sky when we finally set out from Auberg. It had taken longer than I'd expected to collect the two men who were out. Then the Beresforders had a bunch of livestock—cattle, sheep, pigs, mules, and a few horses (including Danci's dun)—in a larger paddock behind the inn. At least Wandel had worked the magic of his charm on the Beresforders: there wasn't a grumble among them at the hurry. And everyone except Danci avoided me as if I had the pox.

Once we set out on the road, the animals gave us little trouble, seeming almost as relieved as I to leave Auberg's shadows behind them. By the time we reached the lower slopes of the Hob, the children began to play and laugh.

Danci deposited her youngest in Kith's lap without asking and rode her horse to me.

"I hadn't realized what it was doing to us, staying there among the dead," she said.

I watched Kith struggle to hold the squirming toddler in front of him and guide Torch at the same time. But, interestingly enough, he didn't try to give the boy back.

"It would be enough to give anyone the creeps," I agreed with a smile.

I'd noticed the lift in my own spirits when we rode out of the valley. Comparing the rascal who held Torch's reins while Kith held him with the mopey, whiny child at the inn, I thought it was more than just the silent town that held us in thrall.

"Gram always said death magic leaves its mark on the land."

"Death magic?" asked Danci softly.

I nodded. "I don't think Auberg is a healthy place to be."

The hob heard them before he saw them. Refugees, he thought, watching the ragtag bunch climb out of the shadow-shrouded valley. Looking past them, he wondered what had caused the fog of ill that grew thicker as it stretched away from the mountain. Bits and pieces still clung stubbornly to the party riding onto his mountain.

He was exhilarated from the chase he'd given the pack of grims—they wouldn't be coming back to his mountain anytime soon. He rather regretted that; truth be told, they made great sport. He wished there were another pack around—he was in the mood to play.

The big horse the woman called Aren rode saw him and whickered a greeting, though the one-armed man's dun gelding, who saw him as well, chose to ignore him. Aren looked hollow-eyed and tired.

As suddenly as that, he decided to give her something to think about that might take the shadows from her eyes. He skittered down the tree and wandered among the riders. The knowledge that either Aren or the warrior—both touched by magic—might detect him added to the fun.

Just yesterday he wouldn't have been able to hide himself from any of them in the bright light of day, but the mountain was waking up from its long sleep.

The hob rubbed the red gelding's chest and slapped him lightly on the haunch as he passed, sending him bouncing forward a few steps. Half-fey herself, the minstrel's white mare cast a merry glance and snorted at him. He grinned back. Mischief that mare was, much like himself.

Toward the back of the party, an aging herd dog limped soberly at the side of an old man on a mule. The old man kept up a constant reassuring murmur that belied the worry on his face. Worry he should, for the hob could see the shadow that clung to the dog's tail and hindquarters. The dark of the valley beyond had used the animal's age and infirmities to attach itself like a burr.

The hob stooped and ruffled the dog's fur, washing it free of shadow—and managed to clear a bit of the age-related problems as well. The dog whined his appreciation and rolled in the hob's embrace, licking his face with frantic gratitude. Dogs were like that.

"Here, now, Cary, what's up with you?" The man stopped his mule.

At the sound of his master's voice the dog threw himself out of the hob's care and leaped up to lick at the mounted man's hands before taking off to run a frantic circle around the entire group—for ail the world as if he'd not been a trained cattle dog for a decade. The hob laughed, and one of the two spotted milk cows answered him.

Grinning, the hob turned to see the one-armed one approach him as surely as if he could sec him. The child who rode in front of the grim warrior saw the hob quite clearly, of course. The babe clapped his hands and caroled encouragements so clearly that the hob's smile widened in answer. Here was a child after his own heart. He did a couple of back flips for his audience of one, then turned his attention to the soldier.

This close he could see the workings of the bloodmage the harper had spoken of yesterday while the hob spied upon them—though he couldn't tell how deeply the damage went. Whatever had been done to the man made him aware that the hob was there. The taint of the bloodmage made the hob more wary than he might otherwise have been. He'd never feared humans, but the bloodmages had taught him a bitter lesson in caution.

The one-armed man set the child with gentle firmness in the arms of a nearby rider. One of the cows, deciding this halt might last a while, began grazing. The bloodmage's warrior approached warily, drawing his iron sword—as if even cold iron could hurt a son of the mountain here.

Experimentally, the hob crouched, and the dun's ears followed his descent—a moment later the soldier's attention focused downward.

If a child of five or six hadn't begun to cry—soft, tired sounds of a soul pushed beyond enduring—the hob might have gotten caught up in the fun. Wariness only added spice to the play. But these were good folk, entitled to the mountain's protection. He darted silently to the sobbing girl, who was riding by herself on a pony led by a man who might have been her father.

The shadow upon her wasn't strong enough to do her harm; likely it would leave as soon as she'd spent a night on the mountain. Still, it was easy enough to banish it.

He couldn't resist a last dash through the middle of the group, tugging gently on the dun's tail as he swept by. If the war-bred gelding's feet were quicker than most—well, then he had only to dodge a little quicker yet. Aren's big horse stretched his nose out for a pat before he left.

"What in Faran's name is going on?" exclaimed one of the old men, the worry in his voice finding its echo in the shivers that crept up my spine. "I've never seen animals act like that."

Kith watched his horse's ears a moment, then sheathed his sword and said thoughtfully, "It must have been a wildling of some kind. It didn't smell of bloodmagic, but no natural creature runs about invisible. I don't think it did any harm."

The old herdsman had dismounted from his mule and was nabbing his dog, to the dog's great delight. After Kith spoke, he nodded. "The opposite, I would think. I haven't seen Cary look so well since he caught cold last winter. I was worried I'd have to put him down before we reached Fallbrook—now look at him."

To demonstrate, he threw his arm out and gave three sharp whistles. The black and white dog took off at a dead run, aiming for a pig that had taken advantage of the stop to ease away from the rest and root at the base of an old ash tree. The dog drove the protesting pig back with the bunch.

I watched, and felt something I'd taken from Auberg—fear, perhaps, but more atavistic than that—lose its fell grip on my shoulders. Melodramatic, but that's what it felt like.

"Shall we go on?" asked Ice. "Or do you think we should go back to Auberg?"

The old herdsman coughed and spat, then said, "Onward. Wish whatever it was had given me a bit of what he gave that old dog." He glanced around at the rest of us. "I'd almost forgotten it, but my great-aunt was from Fallbrook. When I was just a tadpole, she used to tell me stories of this mountain. Said that if you left a bit of food out for the wild folk, they'd keep the creepy-crawlies away."

He shrugged and started his mule in the direction we'd been headed. One by one the others followed him.

As he passed me, he doffed his cap. "It's good to remember there is magic that heals as well as the wraiths and whatnot we've been fighting for the past few days."

He meant me. When I smiled at him, he smiled back.

After the rest had gone on, Kith rode to my side. "It's still here," he said.

I nodded, watching Duck stare at an oak tree not too far from where we stood. "Do you think we should we be worried?"

Kith shrugged. "If it healed that dog, it stands to reason that it could have hurt any of us equally well. I suspect we're safe enough."

"But we'll leave some food out for it tonight," I said, thinking about the bit of meat and bread I'd left at the house in Auberg.

He squinted at the shadows under the oak. "I suspect we will."