The Hidden Stars Part 2

They landed on a grey day of sleet and snow, near the town of Povey in Hythe. Of two minds about taking his companions into town with him, eireamhoine chose, in the end, to lead them to a little sheltered woodland about a mile from the nearest houses. There he left Luenil rocking the baby to sleep and singing one of her incomprehensible nonsense songs.

He remained wary of using any magic, but people knew him all up and down this coast, from Weye in the north to Rheithun in the south, and his greatest fear was that someone might recognize him and speak of it later. So he wove a little spell of illusion, a harmless s.h.i.+beath, to disguise his face and his purple robe. Then he went into Povey.

Situated near the mouth of the placid river Brae, Povey is a town of bridges and rowboats, of little whitewashed shops and houses, where the blue smoke of hearthfires hovers over steep-pointed roofs of slate or thatch. Pelicans and herons fish in the river; ducks and skrinks and other small fowl paddle in the shallows. Great clattering flocks of skua-gulls wheel overhead, and all the narrow cobblestone streets smell of fish-wherever one goes in the town there is the smell of fish. On this day, eireamhoine pa.s.sed open stalls selling oysters and roasted chestnuts and tiny flaky pies stuffed with crabmeat or mushrooms, all smoking hot. The town had a wholesome feel. No servants of the enemy lurked there to sense his magic, eireamhoine felt certain of that, and he began to wish he had brought Luenil and the little Princess Guenloie with him.

Moving quickly past the houses, the inns, and the market stalls, he headed toward the south side of town, where most of the shops and stables congregated. There, he bought horses, and supplies, and a mule to carry what the horses could not, and for himself a pair of leather breeches and a rich woolen tunic lined with otter skins. In this new dress, he felt confident no one would recognize him for a wizard of Leal, once he left the coast and the towns where he was known.

Then, on an impulse, just before leaving the last of the shops, he bought a handful of lavender hair ribbons for Luenil. She was, he thought, much too young, and far too pretty, to wear such deep, unrelieved mourning. He returned to the wood to find nursemaid and infant sleeping peacefully, curled up on a pile of dry autumn leaves.

They rode east, through Hythe, heading for the Cadmin Aernan, the high range of mountains that divides the coastal realms of Mere, Hythe, and Weye from the interior. They pa.s.sed through easy, rolling country, through tiny villages and lonely farmsteads. A thin blanket of snow lay gently on the land. The baby traveled in a wicker basket, lashed to the back of the mule, while Luenil rode a pretty grey mare, and eireamhoine a bay gelding. Their pace was slow; those who might follow in pursuit would be looking for signs of a wizard traveling in haste, at great speed, not for a man and a woman riding peacefully through the countryside. As they continued inland, the roads grew worse and were often nonexistent; rivers were too icy-cold to be forded; again and again they were forced to turn aside and find some other way.

In his tunic and cross-gartered trousers, eireamhoine thought he might easily be mistaken for a prosperous farmer or ordinary merchant. He wore his long hair braided back in a fishtail plait, and (because he had always gone smooth-shaven before) allowed a rough dark stubble to grow along his jawline, hoping a beard would disguise his face.

Luenil, as he soon discovered, had lived her entire life in the islands. Up until now, she told him, one brief voyage to Leal and twice to Nimh.e.l.li had been the extent of her travels. She was accustomed to the sea-its vast size, its many moods-but here on the edge of the great continent she seemed overwhelmed by the immensity, the extent of the land.

"And you tell me," she said, "that it goes on like this for thousands of miles, with forests and mountains and cities-and people! I never imagined the world was so populous. There must be as many as there are fish in the sea."

"No," said eireamhoine, suppressing a smile. "This land is vast, but the sea is still greater. n.o.body knows how far it continues."

She would not, as yet, wear the lavender hair ribbons, but her mood was lighter; she never spoke with the same bitterness he had heard in her voice before. And she was interested in everything she saw: a flock of blackbirds in the bare white branches of a birch, a herd of spotted deer grazing in a snowy wood.

"When my son died," she said to eireamhoine one day, "I thought that I would soon die, too. And I was glad to think so. But now-" Her voice faded away, the sentence unfinished.

"The young are resilient," said the wizard.

For a moment, her eyebrows came together in a frown, as though she resented the implication. But then Luenil laughed, her clear bright laugh. "I must seem little older than this infant to you!"

She looked around her, with wonder in her eyes. "After all, I am only seventeen," she said softly. "And my heart is mending."

But one day, at the back of his mind, eireamhoine felt a nudge of fear.

They had stopped early, when the weather turned bitter, with snow and las.h.i.+ng winds, and taken shelter in a barn, which the farmer was willing they should do in return for a few small coins.

An entire month had pa.s.sed since they left Thaerie, and the moon waxed full again. eireamhoine could sense it, brooding and malignant behind the overcast; he could feel a series of tiny quakes and jolts pa.s.s through the earth. And somehow, sitting beside the small crackling fire of sticks he had built in the middle of the packed-earth floor, the wizard found himself telling Luenil something of his long life and of the world that he remembered, the world that was gone.

"I was born," he said, "only a few years before the Change. As now, there was always the threat of war. And I have a dim memory of the full moon, high and cold and distant as we never see her now. The moon was always so, from phase to phase: remote, benign. No one dreaded her influence. It was our fellow men we doubted."

He picked up a bit of straw from the floor, held it between his thumb and forefinger, before feeding it to the fire. But his mind was elsewhere, remembering the great kingdom that was-Alluinn of the Bright Towers. As a provincial youth from Thaerie, visiting the mighty seat of Empire in the train of the wizard prince to whom he had recently been apprenticed, how she had dazzled him, with her palaces, her pageantry, her ancientry and pride! Every hour he could spare from his studies, he spent wandering the streets, marveling at the statues, the gardens, the tall, fortified houses. Each morning, he woke with the same thought, the same little thrill of delight: I am here at the very heart of the world. But that idyll was to prove as brief as it was precious. A great company of warriors and wizards marched out through the gates of the capital, going to do battle with the legions of the Otowan Sorcerer-King far to the south. Vast armies met and clashed; while ordinary men fought, wizards and mages engaged in a cataclysmic battle. The wizards were victorious, and Otoi was reduced to ashes. But the death of a thousand magicians sent a shock through the entire world of matter, changing the path of the moon, the courses of rivers, the face of the land and the sea. A great wave of destruction pa.s.sed over Alluinn. Even now, much more than a century later, eireamhoine could still remember it vividly. The beautiful old cities leveled: the great temples and houses; libraries, universities, schools of magic, astronomy, and healing; inns, shops, s.h.i.+pyards, and playhouses, all gone in an instant. And the white towers falling, falling, as great kings and princes; courtiers, heralds, pages, cooks, grooms, seamstresses, and gardeners; hawks, horses, greyhounds, and all-all went down to dust.

He came back to a realization of where he was and who was with him, with a start. Luenil sat nursing the baby, humming a tune under her breath. A blast of wind rattled the walls of the barn, and the cattle and horses stirred uneasily in their narrow stalls. He saw that the fire was burning low, reached out for another handful of sticks to replenish it- And it was then that he felt the first twinge of apprehension. He scolded himself, silently, for speaking of things that were best left unmentioned-but still, he discounted the warning, believed it was only the return of his own natural caution, which had somehow slipped away during the uneventful journey.

Yet the fear was with him all through the night, and the next day. As they packed up to leave in the morning, as he helped Luenil to mount and swung up into the saddle, he experienced a rising sense of panic, most uncharacteristic, and a desire to urge the gelding into a canter that was almost overwhelming.

He began to suspect that his mind had been touched from the outside, that a trap had been prepared, and they had only to give in to the fear in order for it to close on them. If we run, he told himself, it will be easier to spot us.

A new day dawned, the clouds parted, and eireamhoine was able to point out the gaunt snowy peaks of the Cadmin Aernan marching along the horizon, sharp and distinct against a blue winter sky. Yet he knew that the distances were deceptive; the mountains were still a long way off.

He felt a constant pressure on his mind. We are moving too slow, too slow, he thought, in a near panic. Taking it too easy for the sake of the girl, the infant, the horses. And that was true: some days they had not traveled at all because of the weather, and some days for an hour or two only.

But at last the weather relented, and they made good progress. A faint breeze came fresh and sweet down from the north, and the fields sparkled in the mild light of a winter day. The horses plodded on through the powdery snow, moving between milestones of weathered granite that marked what remained of an ancient road. It was possible to make out the tumbled shapes of the foothills, rising ridge upon ridge, smoke-blue and smoke-grey, until they met the great needle-sharp pillars and spires, precipices, stacks, chimneys, and towers of the snowy mountains. Yet still the voice in his head said, Hurry-hurry!

They stopped in the afternoon, to rest the horses, and to allow Luenil to feed the baby. eireamhoine built a fire, to warm some wine and cook some food. He had only just begun to eat when he felt a p.r.i.c.kling all down his spine, and knew it for a true warning. He sprang to his feet, kicked out the fire, and scanned the land, the sky, in all directions.

Then he spotted them: far across the snowy landscape, a blur of red and brown and grey-horses, and men in scarlet cloaks riding them, still distant but closing rapidly.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the infant out of Luenil's arms. "Furiadhin! Six of them, I think."

eireamhoine saw her eyes dilate, the blood drain out of her face as the name shocked through her. "They will kill Guenloie."

"They will try," he answered, with a hard look, slipping the baby into the basket, and quickly and deftly fastening the straps over her blankets to keep her securely in place. "But first they must catch us!"

Luenil had already mounted, and the wizard flung himself into the saddle atop the bay. Then they were off: the mare and the mule running flat out, but eireamhoine was obliged to hold the gelding back, just a little, to keep from outdistancing the young woman and the child.

It was, he reflected as they went hurtling down the road, in some ways a relief to run at last, to know the danger, even if that danger consisted of Ouriana's most feared servants. Yet he shuddered at the memory of cold, inhuman faces, and of a pain past bearing, pain unremitting.

Behind him he cast an illusion: a long line of trees in full leaf, a phantom forest of oak, ash, and hawthorn, separating those who fled from those who followed. It would not deceive the Furiadhin, but it would confuse the horses and serve as a blind between him and the men while eireamhoine urged the bay to a faster pace, briefly surging ahead of his companions, to lead them off in a new direction, cross-country: north this time, parallel to the mountains. Then he drew down a storm from the peaks to cover their tracks.

As he dropped back to keep an eye on the others, the clouds he had summoned came streaming on the wind like dark flags over head, and flurries of snow fell all around him.

They rode until their mounts were stumbling with exhaustion. Looking back over his shoulder, the way they had come, eireamhoine could see no signs of pursuit. They were in the foothills, where a little stream came clattering down from the heights. Though they had run a straight course all afternoon, heading north, true north the whole time, they had reached a place where the mountain range veered toward the sea. The storm clouds broke, and the sky overhead was a dull gold, shading to grey over the Cadmin Aernan, to crimson in the west.

Because it seemed safe, as much as for pity of the horses and the mule, he finally called a halt by a thin line of trees, evergreens and hollies and cowan, straggling along beside the stream. He climbed wearily down from the saddle, then forced his legs to move, to take a few steps, his aching arms to reach out and a.s.sist Luenil as she dismounted. The hand that she put in his was icy-cold, and trembling; her eyes were glazed with fear and fatigue. But she made a valiant attempt at a smile as she dropped to the ground and stood on unsteady legs.

The baby began to fuss and whimper in her nest of blankets. She had been quiet all the time they were running, perhaps sensing their danger, perhaps lulled to sleep by the rocking gait of the mule.

"Feed her; then take something for yourself," said the wizard. "I will do what I can for these poor beasts."

While he made himself busy, he continued to talk, more to himself than to the girl. "King Reodan's diversion has gained us this much: there were only six of them, not the full twelve. It seems that Ouriana holds something back to defend the island. And-thank the Fates!-Camhoinhann wasn't with those we saw."

"But how can you tell?" asked Luenil, behind him. She sounded tired and ill, her voice hoa.r.s.e and faintly querulous. "They all looked the same to me."

"That is how I can tell. It would be impossible to mistake Camhoinhann, even at a distance. There is that about him-a power, a brilliance-that makes him stand out among the others like a giant among pygmies."

Later on, while they rested, all huddled together, wizard, nursemaid, and baby, under the trees and out of the wind, eireamhoine said to Luenil: "We should be safe for the night. They don't see in the dark any better than we do; neither can their horses run any longer than ours can. But if we can only reach the mountains! I know them well: all the high roads and pa.s.ses, which ones will be open this time of year. We'll have the advantage there. Unless- "Unless Guirion should chance to be with them," he finished under his breath. "For of all her servants, he knows that country the best."

5.

They made their way slowly through the rumpled foothills, by way of hidden paths and narrow, shadowed ravines, and a week later they began the arduous climb up the rugged wooded slopes of the Cadmin Aernan. Deep winter had gained an iron-grip on all the land, and the air had an edge as keen as a knife. The mule trudged along with her head down, and the horses' breath rose in great silvery white clouds.

As they left the dark fir-woods and ascended the bare windy flanks of the mountains, the wind blew increasingly colder, under a sky the color of burnished pewter. Luenil felt fear catch at her heart, not for herself, but for the little Guenloie.

"What does it matter whether those creatures following us catch up to us or not, if she freezes to death first?" she asked eireamhoine, her teeth rattling in her head. Frost glittered on her woolen cloak, silver against black, and there was frost in the wizard's beard.

"She will not freeze; I won't let her." Reaching out to touch the infant, eireamhoine fed a little of the heat from his own body into hers. It was such a small, intimate spell, he did not think it would be detected.

This is how you do it, he said, speaking mind to mind. This is how you stay alive. And he felt that tiny spark of power within her flare up in response. He knew the child was too young, her mind too unformed, to understand him; she still lived by instinct only, like a little animal. But he hoped that instinct would teach her to seek the warmth-to draw it out of him, Luenil, the horses, the earth and the sky, wherever she might find it-as instinct prompted her to turn toward food and comfort at her nurse's breast.

Climbing from the boulder-strewn middle slopes to the high pa.s.ses, sheer precipices, and arid bony shoulders of the mountains, it became harder and harder to breathe, the air was so thin and bitterly cold. eireamhoine's ears turned red and tingling inside his hooded cloak; ice crystals formed on his eyelashes. Winds shrilled and moaned between the great steeples and chimneys of stone, and the track often rose so steep and dangerous it became necessary to dismount and lead the horses, wading through thick powdery snow or slipping and sliding where the rocks were bare and icy.

There were glaciers, slow-moving leviathans of rock and snow, carving out gullies and valleys with their patient millennia-long advance. eireamhoine heard Luenil catch her breath, saw her face grow strained with shock as she spied a vast shape caged in the ice: a magnificent golden griffon, suspended as it seemed in the midst of some terrifying action, with wings outstretched and beak wide-open, caught like a bubble in gla.s.s or a fly in amber. Farther on, they pa.s.sed other tremendous figures prisoned in the glacier: a stone giant, a winged serpent, a manticore captured in midpounce.

"You need not fear them," said eireamhoine. "Most of them are dead; the rest have been sleeping for a thousand years. As they didn't wake when the mountains danced, they're not likely to wake for our pa.s.sing."

At night, he and Luenil slept as close to the fire as they dared, with the baby between them, in whatever cave or sheltered hollow they had set up camp. Even so, the wizard, his teeth chattering, spent many long hours s.h.i.+vering under his blankets, unwilling to draw more than his share of the heat. Whenever he woke, he could hear Luenil's restless movements a few feet away, her sobbing breaths, and knew she was just as sleepless and miserable as he was.

Fool, he said to himself, striding along in the weak daylight with the snow crunching beneath his feet. Idiot. I accused Reodan of suicidal folly, but have my own decisions been any better? The child might have been safe on Thaerie, at least until spring. He began to wonder: how many disastrous choices had he made along the way? There was no knowing, there was never a way to know. The best he could do was carry on and try to make the best of the decisions and the mistakes he had made so far. This much he did know: with the Furiadhin following somewhere behind, it would be folly to turn back.

"Do what you can," that is what his teachers used to tell him. "Do as conscience and experience dictate, and leave the outcome in the hands of the Fates." A wizard-most of all a seer-could go mad, could drive himself unreasoning mad, asking himself too many questions. Or he could flounder forever, paralyzed and impotent, in a swamp of possibilities, of half-perceived outcomes and alternatives, and never accomplish anything at all.

Become a vessel for the Light and allow it to work through you, that was another thing his teachers had taught him, what he told his own apprentices and journeymen. Give yourself wholly up to the Light, without reservation, without trying to make bargains with the Incomprehensible. But also: the Fates help those who help themselves, they have little patience and less charity with cowards and weaklings. It was important to do something, to struggle on, no matter how hopeless things might appear.

One day, as he toiled up an ice-slicked trail, eireamhoine again felt that p.r.i.c.kle of warning. He glanced back and saw a flash of red on the snowy slope below.

The Furiadhin were ascending rapidly, striding along and leading their horses. Scarlet robes and crimson cloaks fluttered, white hair whipped in the wind. eireamhoine recognized Guirion moving a little ahead of the others: Guirion, who knew these mountains almost as intimately as he did.

Perhaps Ouriana's servants had never been far behind, perhaps they had only waited to show themselves, choosing the time and the place carefully: there on a trail so slippery and treacherous it was impossible to mount up and flee. And the way that the path switched back and forth across the face of the mountain, there was no use running, anyway. However great the distance between the two parties on foot or ahorse, the distance as the spell flies would continue to narrow.

"We will stop here and make a stand," said eireamhoine to Luenil. "We have no choice. I must try and fight them."

"Fight them?" said the girl, turning to face him, wild-eyed and incredulous, forcing the words out between cracked lips. The wind caught up her protest and tore it to shreds, forcing her to raise her voice almost to a shriek. "What chance have you against six of Ouriana's warrior-priests? Are they not powerful? Are they not terrible?"

"Nevertheless," he answered grimly, "against six I have some small chance of prevailing, however desperate. Against one-and that one Camhoinhann-our case might be hopeless, but by chance or good fortune he's not here." As he spoke, eireamhoine loosened the straps that held the infant in place. Removing her from the basket, he thrust her into Luenil's arms. "Stay just behind me, whatever happens. I'll do all I can to protect you."

The wizard forced himself to stand still and silent, his thoughts and senses turning inward. Now that the time for action had come, the time for second-guessing himself had pa.s.sed, he felt a surge of confidence. This was how it was to be a wizard: not the endless weighing and measuring, but a way of experiencing the world and acting within it. He searched his mind for ancient names; for runes and charms; for spells of power and might; for patterns, symbols, riddles, and strictures; for all the knowledge of the eight great elemental forces he had been acquiring from his first lessons as a youth through all the long years of his maturity.

Then he began to gather those forces to him. Drawing energies up out of the soil, the rocks, the hidden veins of metal and the secret springs and rivers under the snow-covered mountains, he reached deeper and deeper still, groping in the dark, dredging up every vestige of power that he could. He knew that the battle before him would be a terrible one.

Meanwhile, the six Furiadhin proceeded inexorably up the icy trail. They were not so much hideous as grotesque, unnatural, these Priests of the Incarnated Devouring Moon; the dark magics they practiced, the debased rites they performed in Ouriana's name, had withered them and changed them, until they were no longer human.

Their faces were stern, bloodless, framed by fine, flowing hair the color of moonlight. Their eyes glinted silver, gold, or bronze, without white or pupil, giving to their faces the flat, expressionless gaze of beasts or statues.

One gripped the reins with a hand covered in silvery fish scales. Another had a pair of ragged and leathery wings sprouting from his shoulders and trailing behind him, pale and leprous. A third had a face of singular beauty but for the mouth: a thin, lipless slit that opened on sharp, fanged teeth as deadly as knives. So each of Ouriana's priests, as well as the strangeness he shared with the others, had his own particular and unique deformity, and so they had come by the name by which they were known: the Furiadhin, the furies, the Mutated Ones.

But all the time his enemies were approaching, the wizard prepared for battle. Out of a small hidden pocket inside the breast of his tunic, eireamhoine drew something he had carried with him, secretly, all the way from Thaerie: Nimenoe's ring. He had intended to pa.s.s it on to the little princess, an inheritance from her mother, when she had wisdom and strength enough to use it: for there was no one, now, on Thaerie or Leal, capable of commanding its full powers.

The history of Nimenoe's ring was clouded, there were many different tales of its origin and how it had become an heirloom of the Pendawer house. It was made of a substance much like ivory, polished to a milky sheen-the knucklebone of a giant, according to most accounts, an elemental creature with power over earth, wind, and storm; a Shapechanger who often took the form of a great wingless and fireless dragon, a horrific and hungry cold-wyrm-an ancient and evil thing that ring, until the Fates took it and blessed it, in years long past when they still walked among men, setting five runes into the band as a sign of their hallowing.

First came the runes duenin and guwelan, protection and healing. Then came theroghal and desedh, transformation and making. The last rune was the dark rune whose name the wizards never spoke aloud, though they carried the knowledge of its name always in their hearts. For to use any smallest part of that power, even at greatest need, might be presumption, while to misuse it was anathema, abomination.

In the days when Nimenoe wore the ring, she had employed it most often for warding and healing. eireamhoine was no healer, but he had performed many marvels in his time, and he hoped to accomplish even more through the power of the ring. But on the fifth rune, the dark rune, he was determined not to call.

As he slipped the wide band onto his smallest finger, the world seemed to change around him. He could see the energies he had summoned, glowing in jewel-bright colors: a pure, bright, living green; a deep and thunderous purple; a hungry red that consumed and devoured; a rich blue, constantly mutating, like the changing colors of the sea.

With the power of duenin he drew a fiery circle of protection around Luenil and Guenloie; while eireamhoine lived, no evil thing would cross that boundary, no spell would touch them.

Then, calling on theroghal and desedh, he took the s.h.i.+mmering rainbow energies and began to mold them, crafting them into weapons: spears and arrows tipped with fire; swords of light and daggers of pure living flame; maces and hammers with the weight of stones and the crus.h.i.+ng power of mountains; bolts of raw energy that sizzled like lightning and roared like thunder.

One after another, he made them, and cast them at his enemies. But the Furiadhin were powerful, too. They threw up invisible barriers, exploded his weapons in the air, and not one missile hit its mark.

Then eireamhoine took the swift-rus.h.i.+ng force of a river in full flood, and he made it into a wall of sound and fury to batter his enemies. He drew geysers of boiling water up out of the depths of the earth. Snow melted and steam rose in thick clouds, obscuring the sun. He wove illusions which he animated with his own life and substance: a cloud of stinging insects to torment his foes; a flock of great raptors to dive at them and tear them with beaks and talons; a vast army of rats and mice and creeping vermin that swept down the mountain like a flood.

So the battle continued for hours. The sun dipped toward the western horizon, and night gathered on the eastern slopes of the mountains. eireamhoine inflicted great pain on the Furiadhin, he blinded them, confused them, lashed them to fury-but he could not break them, he could not destroy them.

And he realized that he was growing weary, that his powers waned. Even were it otherwise, he knew he must eventually pay a price for this profligate use of forces and energies; the violence, the turmoil, had created stresses, oppositions, antipathies. He knew, too, that his enemies had all this time held something in reserve; they had only defended themselves, they had yet to attack him. They waited for his powers to fail, then they would strike, strike hard, without mercy or ruth. For a moment, he considered the power of the fifth rune, but his heart quailed at the thought of using it.

So he made a final effort, and called up the winds, out of the north, east, south, and west. It is no small thing to summon the winds, for they are willful, capricious, and impatient of control, particularly for a wizard who feels the strength draining out of him like blood from a wound. But the image of the dark rune was still in his thoughts, and that hardened his resolve.

He called out a lledrion, an elemental spell, to the winds: And powerful and wild and lawless as they were, they came at his command. Winds out of the desert, dry and burning; winds from the sea, laden with salt; rough inclement winds, filled with rain, snow, and sleet; turbulent winds; winds that came roaring and rioting-monsoons, cyclones, and hurricanes.

He took them and fas.h.i.+oned them into a weapon greater and more terrible than any he had shaped before, and he sent them, raging and railing and shrieking, straight at the Furiadhin.

But Guirion raised his hand, and cried out in his turn: There was a mighty clash of wills; intention met resistance, and resistance met a relentless opposition. The destinies of all hung in the balance.

And in that moment, nature herself, thrown out of equilibrium by the tumults of the battle, responded with a convulsion, a violent upheaval of her own. Thunder crashed, the mountains reverberated, and a mighty avalanche came roaring down from the heights.

Horses screamed, the priests turned to flee; eireamhoine had only enough time to wrest the infant from her nurse's arms, to shout an unintelligible word in Luenil's ear, before the great wave of snow and ice and earth and stones came sweeping down. It caught them all, it crushed them, tumbled them, stifled them, buried them in chaos. Bones broke; eyes and ears and mouths filled with snow; spirits went shrieking off into the night.

Then there was only a long white silence.

BOOK TWO.

(NINETEEN YEARS LATER).

1.

The air reeked of blood and smoke and heated iron. Sinderian made her way slowly but deliberately across the courtyard, through the confusion of men and warhorses, wading ankle deep in the dirt, snow, straw, and horse urine they had churned into mud. As tall as any of the men, she moved easily and fearlessly among them. This turmoil was nothing new.

In a long, low hut built of stacked flint, she could hear the smiths at work: beating dents out of plate armor, mending helms and s.h.i.+elds, repairing broken links of mail, as they always did after a battle. Sometimes, the incessant clang, clang, clang of hammer against metal, of metal against anvil, was almost too much to bear.

Meanwhile, more men kept pouring in through the gate: some riding, some walking, some carried in by their comrades-slung across a saddle, or on an improvised litter. They were returning from a skirmish to the east. Everyone said that Cailltin and his men had been victorious, and Sinderian supposed that it was true, though by the number of the dead and wounded she knew they could not afford many such victories.

Wherever she went, faces turned her way. Recognizing her for a healer by the grey woolen tabard she wore over her long, homespun gown, many cried out, begging her a.s.sistance, for themselves, for their friends. Wherever she could, Sinderian stopped to help: setting a bone or weaving a charm to stop the flow of blood. Traveling from battlefield to battlefield these last five years, she rarely had a chance to work a real healing.