Athyra

Athyra

Vlad Taltos, Book 6

Steven Brust

For Martin, and it’s about time.

Acknowledgments

A whole bunch of people read early stages of this book and helped repair it. They are:

Susan Allison

Emma Bull

Pamela Dean

Kara Dalkey

Fred Levy Haskell

Will Shetterly

Terri Windling

As always, I’d like to humbly thank Adrian Charles Morgan, without whose work I wouldn’t have a world that was nearly so much fun to write about.

Special thanks to Betsy Pucci and Sheri Portigal for supplying the facts on which I based certain portions of this book. If there are errors, blame me, not them, and, in any case, don’t try this stuff at home.

Prologue

Woman, girl, man, and boy sat together, like good companions, around a fire in the woods.

“Now that you’re here,” said the man, “explanations can wait until we’ve eaten.”

“Very well,” said the woman. ‘That smells very tasty.”

“Thank you,” said the man.

The boy said nothing.

The girl sniffed in disdain; the others paid no attention.

“What is it?” said the woman. “I don’t recognize—”

“A bird. Should be done, soon.”

“He killed it,” said the girl, accusingly.

“Yes?” said the woman. “Shouldn’t he have?”

“Killing is all he knows how to do.”

The man didn’t answer; he just turned the bird on the spit.

The boy said nothing.

“Can’t you do something?” said the girl.

“You mean, teach him a skill?” said the woman. No one laughed.

“We were walking through the woods,” said the girl. “Not that I wanted to be here—”

“You didn’t?” said the woman, glancing sharply at the man. He ignored them. “He forced you to accompany him?” she said.

“Well, he didn’t force me to, but I had to.”

“Hmmm.”

“And all of a sudden, I became afraid, and—”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of—well—of that place. I wanted to go a different way. But he wouldn’t.”

The woman glanced at the roasting bird, and nodded, recognizing it. ‘That’s what they do,” she said. “That’s how they find prey, and how they frighten off predators. It’s some sort of psychic ability to—”

“I don’t care,” said the girl.

“Time to eat,” said the man.

“I started arguing with him, but he ignored me. He took out his knife and threw it into these bushes—”

“Yes,” said the man. “And here it is.”

“You could,” said the woman, looking at him suddenly, “have just walked around it. They won’t attack anything our size.”

“Eat now,” said the man. “We can resume the insults later.”

The boy said nothing.

The woman said, “If you like. But I’m curious—”

The man shrugged. “I dislike things that play games with my mind,” he said. “Besides, they’re good to eat.”

The boy, whose name was Savn, had remained silent the entire time.

But that was only to be expected, under the circumstances.

Chapter One

I will not marry a dung-foot peasant,

will not marry a dung-foot peasant,

Life with him would not be pleasant.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out and do not tarry,

Step on back and do not tarry,

Tell me tell me who you’ll marry.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Savn was the first one to see him, and, come to that, the first to see the Harbingers, as well. The Harbingers behaved as Harbingers do: they went unrecognized until after the fact. When Savn saw them, his only remark was to his little sister, Polinice. He said, “Summer is almost over; the jhereg are already mating.”

“What jhereg, Savn?” she said.

“Ahead there, on top of Tern’s house.”

“Oh. I see them. Maybe they’re life-mates. Jhereg do that, you know.”

“Like Easterners,” said Savn, for no other reason than to show off his knowledge, because Polyi was now in her eighties and starting to think that maybe her brother didn’t know everything, an attitude he hadn’t yet come to terms with. Polyi didn’t answer, and Savn took a last look at the jhereg, sitting on top of the house. The female was larger and becoming dark brown as summer gave way to autumn; the male was smaller and lighter in color. Savn guessed that in the spring the male would be green or grey, while the female would simply turn a lighter brown. He watched them for a moment as they sat there waiting for something to die.

They left the roof at that moment, circled Tern’s house once, and flew off to the southeast.

Savn and Polyi, all unaware that Fate had sent an Omen circling above their heads, continued on to Tern’s house and shared a large salad with Tern’s own dressing, which somehow managed to make linseed oil tasty. Salad, along with bread and thin, salty soup, was almost the only food Tem was serving, now that the flax was being harvested, so it was just as well they liked it. It tasted rather better than the drying flax smelled, but Savn was no longer aware of the smell in any case. There was also cheese, but Tem hadn’t really mastered cheeses yet, not the way old Shoe had. Tem was still young as Housemasters go; he’d barely reached his five hundredth year.

Polyi found a place where she could watch the room, and took a glass of soft wine mixed with water, while Savn had an ale. Polyi wasn’t supposed to have wine, but Tem never told on her, and Savn certainly wouldn’t. She looked around the room, and Savn caught her eyes returning to one place a few times, so he said, “He’s too young for you, that one is.”

She didn’t blush; another indication that she was growing up. She just said, “Who asked you?”

Savn shrugged and let it go. It seemed like every girl in town was taken with Ori, which gave the lie to the notion that girls like boys who are strong. Ori was very fair, and as pretty as a girl, but what made him most attractive was that he never noticed the attention he got, making Savn think of Master Wag’s story about the norska and the wolf.

Savn looked around the house to see if Firi was there, and was both disappointed and relieved not to see her; disappointed because she was certainly the prettiest girl in town, and relieved because whenever he even thought about speaking to her he felt he had no place to put his hands.

It was only during harvest that Savn was allowed to purchase a noon meal, because he had to work from early in the morning until it was time for him to go to Master Wag, and his parents had decided that he needed and de—

served the sustenance. And because there was no good way to allow Savn to buy a lunch and deny one to his sister, who would be working at the harvest all day, they allowed her to accompany him to Tern’s house on the condition that she return at once. After they had eaten, Polyi returned home while Savn continued on to Master Wag’s. As he was walking away, he glanced up at the roof of Tern’s house, but the jhereg had not returned.

The day at Master Wag’s passed quickly and busily, with mixing herbs, receiving lessons, and keeping the Master’s place tidy. The Master, who was stoop-shouldered and balding, and had eyes like a bird of prey, told Savn, for the fourth time, the story of the Badger in the Quagmire, and how he swapped places with the Clever Chreotha. Savn thought he might be ready to tell that one himself, but he didn’t tell Master Wag this, because he might be wrong, and the Master had a way of mocking Savn for mistakes of overconfidence that left him red-faced for hours.

So he just listened, and absorbed, and washed the Master’s clothes with water drawn from the Master’s well, and cleaned out the empty ceramic pots, and helped fill them with ground or whole herbs, and looked at drawings of the lung and the heart, and stayed out of the way when a visitor came to the Master for physicking.

On the bad days, Savn found himself checking the time every half hour. On the good days, he was always surprised when the Master said, “Enough for now. Go on home.” This was one of the good days. Savn took his leave, and set off. The afternoon was still bright beneath the orange-red sky.

The next thing to happen, which was really the first for our purposes, occurred as Savn was returning home. The Master lived under the shadow of Smallcliff along the Upper Brownclay River, which was half a league from the village, and of course that was where he gave Savn lessons; he was the Master, Savn only an apprentice.

About halfway between Smallcliff and the village was a place where a couple of trails came together in front of the Curving Stone. Just past this was a flattened road leading down to Lord Smallcliff’s manor house, and it was just there that Savn saw the stranger, who was bent over, scraping at the road with some sort of tool.

The stranger looked up quickly, perhaps when he heard Savn’s footsteps, and cursed under his breath and looked up at the sky, scowling, before looking more fully at the lad. Only when the stranger straightened his back did Savn realize that he was an Easterner. They stared at each other for the space of a few heartbeats. Savn had never met an Easterner before. The Easterner was slightly smaller than Savn, but had that firm, settled look that comes with age; it was very odd. Savn didn’t know what to say. For that matter, he didn’t know if they spoke the same language.

“Good evening,” said the Easterner at last, speaking like a native, although a native of a place considerably south of Smallcliff.

Savn gave him a good evening, too, and, not knowing what to do next, waited. It was odd, looking at someone who would grow old and die while you were still young. He’s probably younger than I am right now, thought Savn, startled. The Easterner was wearing mostly green and was dressed for traveling, with a light raincape over his shoulder and a pack on the road next to him. There was a very fragile-looking sword at his hip, and in his hand was the instrument he’d been digging with—a long, straight dagger. Savn was staring at it when he noticed that one of the Easterner’s hands had only four fingers. He wondered if this was normal for them. At that moment, the stranger said, “I hadn’t expected anyone to be coming along this road.”

“Not many do,” said Savn, speaking to him as if he were human; that is, an equal. “My Master lives along this road, and Lord Smallcliff’s manor is down that one.”

The stranger nodded. His eyes and hair were dark brown, almost black, as was the thick hair that grew above his lip, and if he were human one would have said he was quite husky and very short, but this condition might, thought Savn, be normal among Easterners. He was slightly bowlegged, and he stood with his head a little forward from his shoulders, as if it hadn’t been put on quite right and was liable to fall off at any moment. Also, there was something odd about his voice that the young man couldn’t quite figure out.

Savn cleared his throat and said, “Did I, um, interrupt something?”

The other smiled, but it wasn’t clear what sort of thought or emotion might have prompted that smile. “Are you familiar with witchcraft?” he said.

“Not very.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I mean, I know that you, um, that it is practiced by—is that what you were doing?”

The stranger still wore his smile. “My name is Vlad,” he said.

“I’m Savn.”

He gave Savn a bow as to an equal. It didn’t occur to Savn until later that he ought to have been offended by this. Then the one called Vlad said, “You are the first person I’ve met in this town. What is it called?”

“Smallcliff.”

“Then there’s a small cliff nearby?”

Savn nodded. “That way,” he said, pointing back the way he’d come.

“That would make it a good name, then.”

“You are from the south?”

“Yes. Does my speech give me away?”

Savn nodded. “Where in the south?”

“Oh, a number of places.”

“Is it, um, polite to ask what your spell was intended to do? I don’t know anything about witchcraft.”

Vlad gave him a smile that was not unkind. “It’s polite,” he said, “as long as you don’t insist that I answer.”

“Oh.” He wondered if he should consider this a refusal, and decided it would be safer to do so. It was hard to know what the Easterner’s facial expressions meant, which was the first time Savn had realized how much he depended on these expressions to understand what people were saying. He said, “Are you going to be around here longr

“I don’t know. Perhaps. It depends on how it feels. I don’t usually stay anywhere very long. But while we’re on the subject, can you recommend an inn?”

Savn blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”

“A hostel?”

Savn shook his head, confused. “We’re mostly pretty friendly here—”

“A place to spend the night?”

“Oh. Tern lets rooms to travelers.”

“Good. Where?”

Savn hesitated, then said, “I’m going that way myself, if you would like to accompany me.”

Vlad hesitated in his turn, then said, “Are you certain it would be no trouble?”

“None at all. I will be passing Tern’s house in any case.”

“Excellent. Then forward, Undauntra, lest fear snag our heels.”

“What?”

“The Tower and the Tree, Act Two, Scene Four. Never mind. Lead the way.”

As they set off along the Manor Road, Vlad said, “Where did you say you are off to?”

“I’m just coming home from my day with Master Wag. I’m his apprentice.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but who is Master Wag?”

“He’s our physicker,” said Savn proudly. ‘There are only three in the whole country.”

“A good thing to have. Does he serve Baron Smallcliff, too?”

“What? Oh, no,” said Savn, shocked. It had never occurred to him that the Baron could fall ill or be injured. Although, now that Savn thought of it, it was certainly possible. He said, “His Lordship, well, I don’t know what he does, but Master Wag is ours.”

The Easterner nodded, as if this confirmed something he knew or had guessed.

“What do you do there?”

“Well, many things. Today I helped Master Wag in the preparation of a splint for Dame Sullen’s arm, and reviewed the Nine Bracings of Limbs at the same time.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“And, of course, I learn to tell stories.”

“Stories?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t understand.”

Savn frowned, then said, “Don’t all physickers tell stories?”

“Not where I’m from.”

“The south?”

“A number of places.”

“Oh. Well, you tell stories so the patient has something to keep his mind occupied while you physick him, do you see?”

“That makes sense. I’ve told a few stories myself.”

“Have you? I love stories. Perhaps you could—”

“No, I don’t think so. It was a special circumstance. Some fool kept paying me to tell him about my life; I never knew why. But the money was good. And he was able to convince me no one would hear about it.”

“Is that what you do? Tell stories?”

The Easterner laughed slightly. “Not really, no. Lately I’ve just been wandering.”

“To something, or away from something?”

Vlad shot him a quick glance. “An astute question. How old are you? No, never mind. What’s the food like at this place you’re taking me to?”

“Mostly salad this time of year. It’s the harvest, you know.”

“Oh, of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Vlad looked around as they walked. “I’m surprised,” he remarked a little later, “that this has never been cleared for farming.”

“Too wet on this side of the hill,” said Savn. “The flax needs dry soil.”

“Flax? Is that all you grow around here?”

“Almost. There’s a little maize for the stock, but it doesn’t really grow well in this soil. It’s mostly flax.”

“That accounts for it.”

They reached the top of the hill and started down. Savn said, “Accounts for what?”

“The smell.”

“Smell?”

“It must be flax oil.”

“Oh. Linseed oil. I guess I must be used to it.”

“That must have been what they served the last place I ate, too, half a day east of here.”

“That would be Whiterock. I’ve been there twice.”

Vlad nodded. “I didn’t really notice the taste in the stew, but it made the salad interesting.”

Savn thought he detected a hint of irony in the other’s tone but he wasn’t certain. “Some types of flax are used for cooking, some we use to make linen.”

“Linen?”

“Yes.”

“You cook with the same stuff you make clothes out of?”

“No, not the same. It’s different.”

“They probably made a mistake, then,” said Vlad. “That would account for the salad.”

Savn glanced back at him, but still wasn’t certain if he were joking. “It’s easy to tell the difference,” he said. “When you make the seedblocks and leave them in the coolhouse in barrels, the true, true salad flax will melt—”

“Never mind,” said Vlad. “I’m certain you can tell.”

A pair of jhereg flew from a tree and were lost in the woods before them. Savn wondered if they might be the same pair he had seen earlier.

They came to the last hill before Tern’s house. Savn said, “You never answered my question.”

“Question?”

“Are you wandering to something, or away from something?”

“It’s been so long, I’m not certain anymore.”

“Oh. May I ask you something?”

“Certainly. I might not answer.”

“If you don’t tell stories, what do you do?”

“You mean, everyone must do something?”

“Well, yes.”

“I’m not too bad a hunter.”

“Oh.”

“And I have a few pieces of gold, which I show around when I have to.”

“You just show them around?”

“That’s right.”

“What does that do?”

“Makes people want to take them away from me.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And when they try, I end up with whatever they’re carrying, which is usually enough for my humble needs.”

Savn looked at him, again trying to decide if he were joking, but the Easterner’s mouth was all but hidden beneath the black hair that grew above his lip.

Savn tore his eyes away, lest he be thought rude. “That’s it below, sir,” he said, wondering if he ought to say “sir” to an Easterner.

“Call me Vlad.”

“All right. I hope the house is to your liking.”

“I’m certain it will be fine,” he said. “Spend a few weeks in the jungles and it’s amazing how little it takes to feel like luxury. May I give you something?”

Savn frowned, taken by a sudden suspicion he couldn’t explain. “What do you mean?”

“It is the custom of my people to give a gift to the first person we meet in a new land. It is supposed to bring luck. I don’t know that I believe it, but I’ve taken to following the old customs anyway.”

“What—?”

“Here.” He reached into his pouch, found something, and held it out.

“What is it?” said Savn.

“A polished stone I picked up in my wanderings.”

Savn stared at it, torn between fear and excitement. “Is it magical?”

“It’s just a stone.”

“Oh,” said Savn. “It’s a very nice green.”

“Yes. Please keep it.”

“Well, thank you,” said Savn, still staring at it It had been polished until it gleamed. Savn wondered how one might polish a stone, and why one would bother. He took it and put it into his pocket. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Maybe you will,” said Vlad, and entered the house. Savn wished he could go in with him, just to see the look on Tern’s face when an Easterner walked through the door, but it was already dark and his family would be waiting for him, and Paener always got grumpy when he didn’t get home to eat on time.

As Savn walked home, which was more than another league, he wondered about the Easterner—what he was doing here, whence he had come, whither he would go, and whether he was telling the truth about how he lived. Savn had no trouble believing that he hunted—(although how could he find game? Easterners couldn’t be sorcerers, could they?), but the other was curious, as well as exciting. Savn found himself doubting it, and by the time he reached the twinkling light visible through the oiled window of home, he had convinced himself that the Easterner had been making it up.

At dinner that night Savn was silent and distracted, although neither Paener nor Maener noticed, being too tired to make small talk. His sister kept up a stream of chatter, and if she was aware of Savn’s failure to contribute, she didn’t say anything about it. The only time he was spoken to, when Mae asked him what he had learned that day from Master Wag, he just shrugged and muttered that he had been setting bones, after which his sister went off on another commentary about how stupid all the girls she knew were, and how annoying it was that she had to associate with them.

After dinner he helped with some of the work—the little that could be done by Paener’s feeble light-spell. There was wood to be broken up into kindling (Paener and Maener chopped the big stuff—they said Savn wasn’t old enough yet), there was clearing leftover feed from the kethna pens so scavengers wouldn’t be attracted, and there was cleaning the tools for the next day’s harvest.

When he was finished, he went out behind the small barn, sat down on one of the cutting stumps, and listened to the copperdove sing her night song from somewhere behind him. The copperdove would be leaving soon, going south until spring, taking with her the sparrow and the whiteback, the redbird and the daythief. But for the first time, Savn wondered where they went, and what it was like there. It must be too hot for them in the summer, or they’d remain there, but other than that, what was it like? Did any people live there? If so, what were they like? Was there a Savn who watched the birds and wondered what happened when they flew back north?

He had a sudden image of another Savn, a Savn naked to the waist and damp with sweat, staring back.

I could just go, he thought. Not go back inside, not stop to get anything, just walk away. Find out where the copperdove goes, and who lives there, and what they’re like. I could do it now. But he knew he wouldn’t. He’d stay here, and—

And what?

He suddenly thought of the jhereg he’d seen on Tern’s roof. The flying reptiles were scavengers, just as, in another sense, were those of the House of the Jhereg. Savn had seen many of the animals, but none of the nobles of that House. What would it be like to encounter one?

Why am I suddenly thinking about these things?

And, What is happening to me? There was a sudden vertigo, so that he almost sat down, but he was afraid to move, for the instant was as wonderful as it was terrifying. He didn’t want to breathe, yet he was keenly aware of doing so, of the air moving in and out of his lungs, and even filling his whole body, which was impossible. And in front of him was a great road with brick walls and a sky that was horribly black. The road went on forever, and he knew that up ahead somewhere were branches that could lead anywhere. And looming over them was the face of the Easterner he had just met, and somehow the Easterner was opening up some paths and closing others. His heart was filled with the joy of loss and the pain of opportunity.

With some part of his consciousness, he knew what was happening; some had called it Touching the Gods, and there were supposed to be Athyra mystics who spent their lives in this state. He had heard of such experiences from friends, but had never more than half-believed them. “It’s like you’re touching the whole world at once,” said Coral. “It’s like you can see all around yourself, and inside everything,” said someone he couldn’t remember. And it was all of these things, but that was only a small part of it.

What did it mean? Would it leave him changed? In what way? Who would he be when it was over?

And then it was over; gone as quickly as it had come. Around him the copperdove still sang, and the cricket harmonized. He took deep breaths and closed his eyes, trying to burn the experience into his memory so he’d be able to taste it again. What would Mae and Pae say? And Coral? Polyi wouldn’t believe him, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if anyone believed him. In fact, he wouldn’t tell them; he wouldn’t even tell Master Wag. This was his own, and he’d keep it that way, because he understood one thing—he could leave if he wanted to.

Although he’d never thought about it before, he understood it with every sense of his body; he had the choice of the life of a physicker in Smallcliff, or something unknown in the world outside. Which would he choose? And when?

He sat and wondered. Presently, the chill of early autumn made him shiver, and he went back inside.

Her name was Rocza, and sometimes she even answered to it.

As she flew upward, broke through the overcast, and began to breathe again, the sky turned blue—a full, livid, dancing blue, spotted with white and grey, as on the ground below were spots of other colors, and to her there was little to choose among them. The dots above were pushed about by the wind; those below by, no doubt, something much like the wind but perhaps more difficult to recognize.

She was not pushed by the wind, and neither did it carry her; rather, she slipped around it, and through it. It is said that sailors never mock the sea, yet she mocked the winds.

Her lover was calling to her from below, and it was that strange call, the call that in all the years she had never understood. It was not food, nor danger, nor mating, although it bore a similarity to all of these; it was another call entirely, a call that meant her lover wanted them to do something for the Provider. She didn’t understand what bound her lover to the Provider, but bound he was, and he seemed to want it that way. It made no sense to her.

But she responded, because he had called, and because he always responded when she called. The concept of fair play did not enter her brain, yet something very much akin whispered through her thoughts as she spun, held her breath, and sliced back through the overcast, sneering at an updraft and a swirl that she did not need. Her lover waited, and his eyes gleamed in that secret way.

She saw the Provider before she scented him, but she wasn’t aware of seeing, hearing, or smelling her lover; she simply knew where he was, and so they matched, and descended, and cupped the air together to land near the short, stubby, soft neck of the Provider, and await his wishes, to which they would give full attention and at least some consideration.

Chapter Two

I will not many a serving man,

I will not marry a serving man.

All that work I could not stand.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

The next day was Endweek, which Savn spent at home, making soap and using it up, as he wryly put it to himself, but he took a certain satisfaction in seeing that the win-dowsill and the kitchen jars sparkled in the blaze of the open stove, and the cast-iron pump over the sink gave off its dull gleam. As he cleaned, his thoughts kept returning to the experience of the night before; yet the more he thought of it, the more it slipped away from him. Something had certainly happened. Why didn’t he feel different?

He gradually realized that he did—that, as he cleaned, he kept thinking, This may be one of the last times I do this. These thoughts both excited and frightened him, until he realized that he was becoming too distracted to do a good job, whereupon he did his best to put it entirely out of his mind and just concentrate on his work.

By the time he was finished, the entire cold-cellar had new ratkill and bugkill spells on it, the newer meal in the larder had been shuffled to the back, the new preserves in their pots had been stacked beneath the old, and everything was ready for the storebought they’d be returning with in the evening. His sister worked on the hearthroom, while Mae did the outside of the house and Pae cleaned the sleeping room and the loft.

His work was done by the fourteenth hour of the morning, and everyone else’s within half an hour thereafter, so that shortly before noon they had a quick lunch of maize-bread and yellow pepper soup, after which they hitched Gleena and Ticky up to the wagon and set off for town. They always made the necessary stops in the same order, generally spiraling in toward Tern’s house where they would have the one bought meal of the week, along with ale for Mae, Pae, and, lately, Savn, and beetwater for Polyi while they listened to the farmers argue about whether the slight dry spell would mean lower yields and poorer crops, or would, in fact, tend to make the flax hardier in the long run. Those of Savn’s age would join in, listen, and occasionally make jokes calculated to make them appear clever to their elders or to those their own age of the desired sex, except for those who were apprenticed to trade, who would sit by themselves in a corner exchanging stories of what their Masters had put them through that week. Savn had his friends among this group.

The first two stops (the livery stable for the feed supplements, and the yarner for fresh bolts of linen) went as usual—they bought the feed supplements and didn’t buy any linen, although Savn fingered a yarn-dyed pattern of sharply angled red and white lines against a dark green fabric, while Mae and Pae chatted with Threader about how His Lordship was staying in his manor house near Smallcliff, and Polyi looked bored. Savn knew without asking that the fabric would be too expensive to buy, and after a while they left, Mae complimenting Threader on the linen and saying they’d maybe buy something if His Lordship left them enough of the harvest.

They skipped the ceramics shop, which they often did, though as usual they drove by; Savn wasn’t sure if it was from habit or just to wave at Pots, and he never thought to ask. By the time they pulled away from Hider’s place, where they got a piece of leather for Gleena’s girth-strap, which was wearing out, it was past the third hour after noon and they were in sight of both the dry goods store and Tern’s house.

There was a large crowd outside Tern’s.

Mae, who was driving, stopped the cart and frowned. “Should we see what it is?”

“They seem to be gathered around a cart,” said Pae.

Mae stared for a moment longer, then clicked the team closer.

“There’s Master Wag,” said Polyi, glancing at Savn as if he would be able to provide an explanation.

They got a little closer, finally stopping some twenty feet down the narrow street from the crowd and the cart. Savn and Polyi stood up and craned their necks.

“It’s a dead man,” said Savn in an awed whisper.

“He’s right,” said Pae.

“Come along,” said Mae. “We don’t need to be here.”

“But, Mae—” said Polyi.

“Hush now,” said Pae. “Your mother is right. There’s nothing we can do for the poor fellow, anyway.”

Polyi said, “Don’t you want to know—”

“We’ll hear everything later, no doubt,” said Mae. “More than we want to or need to, I’m sure. Now we need to pick up some nails.”

As they began to move, Master Wag’s eyes fell on them like a lance. “Wait a moment, Mae,” said Savn. “Master Wag—”

“I see him,” said his mother, frowning. “He wants you to go to him.” She didn’t sound happy.

Savn, for his part, felt both excited and nervous to suddenly discover himself the center of attention of everyone gathered in the street, which seemed to be nearly everyone who lived nearby.

Master Wag did not, however, leave him time to feel much of anything. His deeply lined face was even more grim than usual, and his protruding jaw was clenching at regular intervals, which Savn had learned meant that he was concentrating. The Master said, “It is time you learned how to examine the remains of a dead man. Come along.”

Savn swallowed and followed him to the horse-cart, with a roan gelding still standing patiently nearby, as if unaware that anything was wrong. On the wagon’s bed was a body, on its back as if lying down to take a rest, head toward the back. The knees were bent quite naturally, both palms were open and facing up, the head—

“I know him!” said Savn. “It’s Reins!”

Master Wag grunted as if to say, “I know that already.” Then he said, “Among the sadder duties which befall us is the necessity to determine how someone came to die. We must discover this to learn, first, if he died by some disease that could be spread to others, and second, if he was killed by some person or animal against whom we must alert the people. Now, tell me what you see.”

Before Savn could answer, however, the Master turned to the crowd and said, “Stand back, all of you! We have work to do here. Either go about your business, or stay well back. We’ll tell you what we find.”

One of the more interesting things about Master Wag was how his grating manner would instantly transform when he was in the presence of a patient. The corpse evidently did not qualify as a patient, however, and the Master scowled at those assembled around the wagon until they had all backed off several feet. Savn took a deep breath, proud that Master Wag had said, “We,” and he had to fight down the urge to rub his hands together as if it were actually he who had “work to do.” He hoped Firi was watching.

“Now, Savn,” said the Master. ‘Tell me what you see.”

“Well, I see Reins. I mean, his body.”

“You aren’t looking at him. Try again.”

Savn became conscious once more that he was being watched, and he tried to ignore the feeling, with some success. He looked carefully at the way the hands lay, palms up, and the position of the feet and legs, sticking out at funny angles. No one would lie down like that on purpose. Both knees were slightly bent, and—

“You aren’t looking at his face,” said Master Wag. Savn gulped. He hadn’t wanted to look at the face. The Master continued, “Look at the face first, always. What do you see?”

Savn made himself look. The eyes were lightly closed, and the mouth was set in a straight line. He said, “It just looks like Reins, Master.”

“And what does that tell you?”

Savn tried to think, and at last he ventured, “That he died in his sleep?”

The Master grunted. “No, but that was a better guess than many you could have made. We don’t know yet that he died in his sleep, although that is possible, but we know two important things. One is that he was not surprised by death, or else that he was so surprised he had no time to register shock, and, two, that he did not die in pain.”

“Oh. Yes, I see.”

“Good. What else?”

Savn looked again, and said, hesitantly, “There is blood by the back of his head.”

“How much?”

“Very little.”

“And how much do head wounds bleed?”

“A lot.”

“So, what can you tell?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Think! When will a head wound fail to bleed?”

“When ... oh. He was dead before he hurt his head?”

“Exactly. Very good. And do you see blood anywhere else?”

“Ummm ... no.”

“Therefore?”

“He died, then fell backward, cutting open his head on the bottom of the cart, so very little blood escaped.”

The Master grunted. “Not bad, but not quite right, either. Look at the bottom of the cart. Touch it.” Savn did so. “Well?”

“It’s wood.”

“What kind of wood?”

Savn studied it and felt stupid. “I can’t tell, Master. A fir tree of some kind.”

“Is it hard or soft?”

“Oh, it’s very soft.”

“Therefore he must have struck it quite hard in order to cut his head open, yes?”

“Oh, that’s true. But how?”

“How indeed? I have been informed that the horse came into town at a walk, with the body exactly as you see it. One explanation that would account for the facts would be if he were driving along, and he died suddenly, and, at the same time or shortly thereafter, the horse was startled, throwing the already dead body into the back, where it would fall just as you see it, and with enough force to break the skin over the skull, and perhaps the skull as well. If that were the case, what would you expect to see?”

Savn was actually beginning to enjoy this—to see it as a puzzle, rather than as the body of someone he had once known. He said, “A depression in the skull, and a matching one on the cart beneath his head.”

“He would have had to hit very hard indeed to make a depression in the wood. But, yes, there should be one on the back of his head. And what else?”

“What else?”

“Yes. Think. Picture the scene as it may have happened.”

Savn felt his eyes widen. “Oh!” He looked at the horse. “Yes,” he said. “He has run hard.”

“Excellent!” said the Master, smiling for the first time. “Now we can use our knowledge of Reins. What did he do?”

“Well, he used to be a driver, but since he left town I don’t know.”

“That is sufficient. Would Reins ever have driven a horse into a sweat?”

“Oh, no! Not unless he was desperate.”

“Correct. So either he was in some great trouble, or he was not driving the horse. You will note that this fits well with our theory that death came to him suddenly and also frightened the horse. Now, there is not enough evidence to conclude that we are correct, but it is worthwhile to make our version a tentative assumption while we look for more information.”

“I understand, Master.”

“I see that you do. Excellent. Now touch the body.”

“Touch it?”

“Yes.”

“Master ...”

“Do it!”

Savn swallowed, reached out and laid his hand lightly on the arm nearest him, then drew back. Master Wag snorted. “Touch the skin.”

He touched Reins’s hand with his forefinger, then pulled away as if burned. “It’s cold!” he said.

“Yes, bodies cool when dead. It would have been remarkable if it were not cold.”

“But then—”

“Touch it again.”

Savn did so. It was easier the second time. He said, “It is very hard.”

“Yes. This condition lasts several hours, then gradually fades away. In this heat we may say that he has been dead at least four or five hours, yet not more than half a day, unless he died from the Cold Fever, which would leave him in such a condition for much longer. If that had been the cause of death, however, his features would exhibit signs of the discomfort he felt before his death. Now, let us move him.”

“Move him? How?”

“Let’s see his back.”

“All right.” Savn found that bile rose in his throat as he took a grip on the body and turned it over.

“As we suspected,” said the Master. “There is the small bloodstain on the wood, and no depression, and you see the blood on the back of his head.”

“Yes, Master.”

“The next step is to bring him back home, where we may examine him thoroughly. We must look for marks and abrasions on his body; we must test for sorcery, we must look at the contents of his stomach, his bowels, his kidneys, and his bladder; and test for diseases and poisons; and—” He stopped, looking at Savn closely, then smiled. “Never mind,” he said. “I see that your Maener and Paener are still waiting for you. This will be sufficient for a lesson; we will give you some time to become used to the idea before it comes up again.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“Go on, go on. Tomorrow I will tell you what I learned. Or, rather, how I learned it. You will hear everything there is to hear tonight, no doubt, when you return to Tern’s house, because the gossips will be full of the news. Oh, and clean your hands carefully and fully with dirt, and then water, for you have touched death, and death calls to his own.”

This last remark was enough to bring back all the revulsion that Savn had first felt when laying hands on the corpse. He went down in the road and wiped his hands thoroughly and completely, including his forearms, and then went into Tern’s house and begged water to wash them with.

When he emerged, he made his way slowly through the crowd that still stood around the wagon, but he was no longer the object of attention. He noticed Speaker standing a little bit away, frowning, and not far away was Lova, who Savn knew was Fin’s friend, but he didn’t see Fin. He returned to his own wagon while behind him Master Wag called for someone to drive him and the body back to his home.

“What is it?” asked Polyi as he climbed up next to her, among the supplies. “I mean, I know it’s a body, but—”

“Hush,” said Maener, and shook the reins.

Savn didn’t say anything; he just watched the scene until they went around a corner and it was lost to sight. Polyi kept pestering him in spite of sharp words from Mae and Pae until they threatened to stop the wagon and thrash her, after which she went into a sulk.

“Never mind,” said Pae. “We’ll find out all about it soon enough, I’m sure, and you shouldn’t ask your brother to talk about his art.”

Polyi didn’t answer. Savn, for his part, understood her curiosity; he was wondering himself what Master Wag would discover, and it annoyed him that everyone in town would probably know before he did.

The rest of the errands took nearly four hours, during which time they learned nothing new, but were told several times that “Reins’s body come into town from Wayfield.” By the time the errands were over, Savn and Polyi were not only going mad with curiosity, but were certain they were dying of hunger as well. The cart had vanished from the street, but judging by the wagons in front and the loud voices from within, everyone for miles . in any direction had heard that Reins had been brought into town, dead, and they were all curious about it, and had accordingly come to Tern’s house to talk, listen, speculate, eat, drink, or engage in all of these at once.

The divisions were there, as always: most of the people were grouped in families, taking up the front half of the room, and beyond them were some of the apprenticed girls, and the apprenticed boys, and the old people were along the back. The only difference was that Savn had rarely, if ever, seen the place so full, even when Avin the Bard had come through. They would have found no place to sit had they not been seen at once by Haysmith, whose youngest daughter Pae had saved from wolves during the flood-year a generation ago. The two men never mentioned the incident because it would have been embarrassing to them both, but Haysmith was always looking out for Pae in order to perform small services for him. In this case, he caused a general shuffling on one of the benches, and room was made for Mae, Pae, and Polyi, where it looked as if there was no room to be found.

Savn stayed with them long enough to be included in the meal that Mae, with help from Haysmith’s powerful lungs, ordered from Tern. Pae and Haysmith were speculating on whether some new disease had shown up, which launched them into a conversation about an epidemic that had cost a neighbor a son and a daughter many years before Savn had been born. When the food arrived, Savn took his ale, salad, and bread, and slipped away.

Across the room, he found his friend Coral, who was apprenticed to Master Wicker. Coral managed to make room for one more, and Savn sat down.

“I wondered when you’d arrive,” said Coral. “Have you heard?”

“I haven’t heard what Master Wag said about how he died.”

“But you know who it was?”

“I was there while the Master was; he made it a lesson.” Savn swallowed the saliva that had suddenly built up in his mouth. “It was Reins,” he said, “who used to make deliveries from the Sharehouse.”

“Right.”

“I know he left town years ago, but I don’t know where he went.”

“He just went away somewhere. He came into some money or something.”

“Oh, did he? I hadn’t heard that.”

“Well, it doesn’t do him any good now.”

“I guess not. What killed him?”

Coral shrugged. “No one knows. There wasn’t a mark on him, they say.”

“And the Master doesn’t know, either? He was just going to look over the body when I had to go.”

“No, he came in an hour ago and spoke with Tem, said he was as confused as anyone.”

“Is he still here?” asked Savn, looking around.

“No, I guess he left right away. I didn’t see him myself; I just got here a few minutes ago.”

“Oh. Well, what about the b—what about Reins?”

“They’ve already taken him to the firepit,” said Coral.

“Oh. I never heard who found him.”

“From what I hear, no one; he was lying dead in the back of the cart, and the horse was just pulling the cart along the road all by itself, with no one driving at all.”

Savn nodded. “And it stopped here?”

“I don’t know if it stopped by itself or if Master Tem saw it coming down the road, or what.”

“I wonder how he died,” said Savn softly. “I wonder if we’ll ever know.”

“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing—I’ll give you clippings for candles that it isn’t an accident that that Easterner with a sword walks into town the day before Reins shows up dead.”

Savn stared. “Easterner?”

“What, you don’t know about him?”

In fact, the appearance of the body had driven the strange wanderer right out of Savn’s mind. He stuttered and said, “I guess I know who you mean.”

“Well, there you are, then.”

“You think the Easterner killed him?”

“I don’t know if he killed him, but my Pae said he came from the east, and that’s the same way Reins came from.”

“He came from—” Savn stopped; he was about to say that he came from the south, but he changed his mind and said, “Of course he came from the east; he’s an Easterner.”

“Still—”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Precious little,” said Coral. “Have you seen him?”

Savn hesitated, then said, “I’ve heard a few things.”

Coral frowned at him, as if he’d noticed the hesitation, then said, “They say he came on a horse.”

“A horse? I didn’t see a horse. Or hear about one.”

“That’s what I heard. Maybe he hid it.”

“Where would you hide a horse?”

“In the woods.”

“Well, but why would you hide a horse?”

“How should I know. He’s an Easterner; who knows how he thinks?”

“Well, just because he has a horse doesn’t mean he had anything to do with—”

“What about the sword?”

“That’s true, he does have a sword.”

“There, you see?”

“But if Reins was stabbed to death, Master Wag would have seen. So would I, for that matter. There wasn’t any blood at all, except a little where his head hit the bed of the wagon, and that didn’t happen until he was already dead.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Master Wag can tell.”

Coral looked doubtful.

“And there was no wound, anyway,” repeated Savn.

“Well, okay, so he didn’t kill him with the sword. Doesn’t it mean anything that he carries one?”

“Well, maybe, but if you’re traveling, you’d want to—”

“And, like I said, he did come from the east, and that’s what everyone is saying.”

“Everyone is saying that the Easterner killed him?”

“Well, do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” said Savn.

“Heh. If it is, I’ll—” Savn didn’t find out what Coral was prepared to do in case of a coincidence, because he broke off in mid-sentence, staring over Savn’s shoulder toward the door. Savn turned, and at that moment all conversation in the room abruptly stopped.

Standing in the doorway was the Easterner, apparently quite at ease, wrapped in a cloak that was as grey as death.

Chapter Three

I will not marry a loudmouth Speaker,

I will not marry a loudmouth Speaker,

He’d get haughty and I’d get meeker.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

He stared insolently back at the room, his expression impossible to read, save that it seemed to Savn that there was perhaps a smile hidden by the black hair that grew above his lip and curled down around the corners of his mouth. After giving the room one long, thorough look, he stepped fully inside and slowly came up to the counter until he was facing Tern. He spoke in a voice that was not loud, yet carried very well. He said, “Do you have anything to drink here that doesn’t taste like linseed oil?”

Tern looked at him, started to scowl, shifted nervously and glanced around the room. He cleared his throat, but didn’t speak.

“I take it that means no?” said Vlad.

Someone near Savn whispered, very softly, “They should send for His Lordship.” Savn wondered who “they” were.

Vlad leaned against the serving counter and folded his arms; Savn wondered if he were signaling a lack of hostility, or if the gesture meant something entirely different among Easterners. Vlad turned his head so that he was looking at Tern, and said, “Not far south of here is a cliff, overlooking a river. There were quite a few people at the river, bathing, swimming, washing clothes.”

Tem clenched his jaw, then said, “What about it?”

“Nothing, really,” said Vlad. “But if that’s Smallcliff, it’s pretty big.”

“Smallcliff is to the north,” said Tem. “We live below Smallcliff.”

“Well, that would explain it, then,” said Vlad. “But it is really a very pleasant view; one can see for miles. May I please have some water?”

Tem looked around at the forty or fifty people gathered in the house, and Savn wondered if he were waiting for someone to tell him what to do. At last he got a cup and poured fresh water into it from the jug below the counter.

“Thank you,” said Vlad, and took a long draught.

“What are you doing here?” said Tem.

“Drinking water. If you want to know why, it’s because everything else tastes like linseed oil.” He drank again, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Someone muttered something about, “If he doesn’t like it here ...” and someone else said something about “haughty as a lord-Tern cleared his throat and opened his mouth, shut it again, then looked once more at his guests. Vlad, apparently oblivious to all of this, said, “While I was up there, I saw a corpse being brought along the road in a wagon. They came to a large, smoking hole in the ground, and people put the body into the hole and burned it. It seemed to be some kind of ceremony.”

It seemed to Savn that everyone in the room somehow contrived to simultaneously gasp and fall silent. Tem scowled, and said, “What business is that of yours?”

“I got a good look at the body. The poor fellow looked familiar, though I’m not certain why.”

Someone, evidently one of those who had brought Reins to the firepit, muttered, “I didn’t see you there.”

Vlad turned to him, smiled, and said, “Thank you very much.”

Savn wanted to smile himself, but concealed his expres—

sion behind his hand when he saw that no one else seemed to think it was funny. Tem said, “You knew him, did you?”

“I believe so. How did he happen to become dead?” Tem leaned over the counter and said, “Maybe you could tell us.”

Vlad looked at the Housemaster long and hard, then at the guests once more, and then suddenly he laughed, and Savn let out his breath, which he had been unaware of holding.

“So that’s it,” said Vlad. “I wondered why everyone was looking at me like I’d come walking into town with the three-day fever. You think I killed the fellow, and then just sort of decided to stay here and see what everyone said about it, and then maybe bring up the subject in case anyone missed it.” He laughed again. “I don’t really mind you thinking I’d murder someone, but I am not entirely pleased with what you seem to think of my intelligence.

“But, all right, what’s the plan, my friends? Are you going to stone me to death? Beat me to death? Call your Baron to send in his soldiers?” He shook his head slowly. “What a peck of fools.”

“Now, look,” said Tem, whose face had become rather red. “No one said you did it; we’re just wondering if you know—”

“I don’t know,” the Easterner said. Then added, “Yet.”

“But you’re going to?” said Tem.

“Very likely,” he said. “I will, in any case, look into the matter.”

Tim looked puzzled, as the conversation had gone in a direction for which he couldn’t account. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “Why?”

The Easterner studied the backs of his hands. Savn looked at them, too, and decided that the missing finger was not natural, and he wondered how Vlad had lost it. “As I said,” continued Vlad, “I think I knew him. I want to at least find out why he looks so familiar. May I please have some more water?” He dug a copper piece out of a pouch at his belt, put it on the counter, then nodded to the room at large and made his way through the curtain in the back of the room, presumably to return to the chamber where he was staying.

Everyone watched him; no one spoke. The sound of his footsteps echoed unnaturally loud, and Savn fancied that he could even hear the rustle of fabric as Vlad pushed aside the door-curtain, and a scraping sound from above as a bird perched on the roof of the house.

The conversation in the room was stilted. Savn’s friends didn’t say anything at all for a while. Savn looked around the room in time to see Firi leaving with a couple of her friends, which disappointed him. He thought about getting up to talk to her, but realized that it would look like he was chasing her. An older woman who was sitting behind Savn muttered something about how the Speaker should do something. A voice that Savn recognized as belonging to old Dymon echoed Savn’s own thought that perhaps informing His Lordship that an Easterner had drunk a glass of water at Tern’s house might be considered an overreaction. This started a heated argument about who Tem should and shouldn’t let stay under his roof. The argument ended when Dymon hooted with laughter and walked out.

Savn noticed that the room was gradually emptying, and he heard several people say they were going to talk to either Speaker or Bless, neither of whom was present, and “see that something was done about this.”

He was trying to figure out what “this” was when Mae and Pae tost, coWttVed ?otyv and approached him. Mae said, “Come along, Savn, it’s time for us to be going home.”

“Is it all right if I stay here for a while? I want to keep talking to my friends.”

His parents looked at each other, and perhaps couldn’t think of how to phrase a refusal, so they grunted permission. Polyi must have received some sort of rejection from one of the boys, perhaps On, because she made no objection to being made to leave, but in fact hurried out to the wagon while Savn was still saying goodbye to his parents and being told to be certain he was home by midnight.

In less than five minutes, the room was empty except for Tern, Savn, Coral, a couple of their friends, and a few old women who practically lived at Tern’s house.

“Well,” said Coral. “Isn’t he the cheeky one?”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? The Easterner.”

“Oh. Cheeky?” said Savn.

“Did you see how he looked at us?” said Coral.

“Yeah,” said Lan, a large fellow who was soon to be officially apprenticed to Piper. “Like we were all grass and he was deciding if he ought to mow us.”

“More like we were weeds, and not worth the trouble,” said Tuk, who was Lan’s older brother and was in his tenth year as Hider’s apprentice. They were proud of the fact that both of them had “filled the bucket” and been apprenticed to trade.

“That’s what I thought,” said Coral.

“I don’t know,” said Savn. “I was just thinking, I sure wouldn’t like to walk into a place and have everybody staring at me like that. It’d scare the blood out of my skin.”

“Well, it didn’t seem to disturb him any,” said Lan.

“No,” said Savn. “It didn’t.”

Tuk said, “We shouldn’t talk about him. They say Easterners can hear anything you say about them.”

“Do you believe that?” said Savn.

“It’s what I’ve heard.”

Lan nodded. “And they can turn your food bad when they want, even after you’ve eaten it.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Why would he want to kill Reins?” said Coral.

“I don’t think he did,” said Savn.

“Why not?” said Tuk.

“Because he couldn’t have,” said Savn. “There weren’t any marks on him.”

“Maybe he’s a wizard,” said Lan.

“Easterners aren’t wizards.”

Coral frowned. “You can say what you want, I think he killed him.”

“But why would he?” said Savn.

“How should I—” Coral broke off, looking around the room. “What was that?’

“It was on the roof, I think. Birds, probably.”

“Yeah? Pretty big ones, then.”

As if by unspoken agreement they ran to the window. Coral got there first, stuck his head out, and jerked it back in again just as fast.

“What is it?” said the others.

“A jhereg,” said Coral, his eyes wide. “A big one.”

“What was it doing?” said Savn.

“Just standing on the edge of the roof looking down at me.”

“Huh?” said Savn. “Let me see.”

“Welcome.”

“Don’t let its tongue touch you,” said Tuk. “It’s poisonous.”

Savn looked out hesitantly, while Coral said, “Stand under it, but don’t let it lick you.”

“The gods!” said Savn, pulling his head in. “It is big. A female, I think. Who else wants to see?”

The others declined the honor, in spite of much urging by Savn and Coral, who, having already proven themselves, felt they wouldn’t have to again. “Huh-uh,” said Tuk. “They bite.”

“And they spit poison,” added Lan.

“They do not,” said Savn. “They bite, but they don’t spit, and they can’t hurt you just by licking you.” He was beginning to feel a bit proprietary toward them, having seen so many recently.

Meanwhile, Tern had noticed the disturbance. He came up behind them and said, “What’s going on over here?”

“A jhereg,” said Coral. “A big one.”

“A jhereg? Where?”

“On your roof,” said Savn.

“Right above the window,” said Coral.

Tern glanced out, then pulled his head back in slowly, filling the boys with equal measures of admiration and envy. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a bad omen.”

“It is?” said Coral.

Tem nodded. He seemed about to speak further, but at that moment, preceded by a heavy thumping of boots, Vlad appeared once more.

“Good evening,” he said. Savn decided that what was remarkable about his voice was that it was so normal, and it ought not to be. It should be either deep and husky to match his build, or high and fluty to match his size, yet he sounded completely human.

He sat down near where Savn and his friends had been seated and said, “I’d like a glass of wine, please.”

Tem clenched his teeth like Master Wag, then said, “What sort of wine?”

“Any color, any district, any characteristics, just so long as it is wet.”

The old women, who had been studiously ignoring the antics of Savn and his friends, arose as one and, with imperious glares first at the Easterner, then at Tem, stalked out. Vlad continued, “I like it better here with fewer people. The wine, if you please?”

Tem fetched him a cup of wine, which Vlad paid for. He drank some, then set the mug down and stared at it, turning it in a slow circle on the table. He appeared oblivious to the fact that Savn and his friends were staring at him. After a short time, Coral, followed by the others, made his way back to the table. It seemed to Savn that Coral was walking gingerly, as if afraid to disturb the Easterner. When they were all seated, Vlad looked at them with an expression that was a mockery of innocence. He said, “So tell me, gentlemen, of this land. What is it like?”

The four boys looked at each other. How could one answer such a question?

Vlad said, “I mean, do bodies always show up out of nowhere, or is this a special occasion?”

Coral twitched as if stung; Savn almost smiled but caught himself in time. Tuk and Lan muttered something inaudible; then, with a look at Coral and Savn, they got up and left. Coral hesitated, stood up, looked at Savn, started to say something, then followed his friends out the door.

Vlad shook his head. “I seem to be driving away business today. I really don’t mean to. I hope Goodman Tem isn’t unhappy with me.”

“Are you a wizard?” said Savn.

Vlad laughed. “What do you know about wizards?”

“Well, they live forever, and you can’t hurt them because they keep their souls in magic boxes without any way inside, and they can make you do things you don’t want to do, and—”

Vlad laughed again. “Well, then I’m certainly not a wizard.”

Savn started to ask what was funny; then he caught sight of Vlad’s maimed hand, and it occurred to him that a wizard wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.

After an uncomfortable silence, Savn said, “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“About ... bodies.”

“Oh. I wanted to know.”

“It was cruel.”

“Was it? In fact, I meant the question. It surprises me to walk into a place like this and find that a body has followed me in. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me curious.”

“There have been others who noticed it, too.”

“I’m not surprised. And whispers about me, no doubt.”

“Well, yes.”

“What exactly killed him?”

“No one knows.”

“Oh?”

“There was no mark on him, at any rate, and my friends told me that Master Wag was puzzled.”

“Is Master Wag good at this sort of thing?”

“Oh, yes. He could tell if he died from disease, or if someone beat him, or if someone cast a spell on him, or anything. And he just doesn’t know yet.”

“Hmmm. It’s a shame.”

Savn nodded. “Poor Reins. He was a nice man.”

“Reins?”

“That was his name.”

“An odd name.”

“It wasn’t his birth name; he was just called that because he drove.”

“Drove? A coach?”

“No, no; he made deliveries and such.”

“Really. That starts to bring something back.”

“Bring something back?”

“As I said, I think I recognize him. I wonder if I could be near ... who is lord of these lands?”

“His Lordship, the Baron.”

“Has he a name?”

“Baron Smallcliff.”

“And you don’t know his given name?”

“I’ve heard it, but I can’t think of it at the moment.”

“How about his father’s name? Or rather, the name of whoever the old Baron was?”

Savn shook his head.

Vlad said, “Does the name ‘Loraan’ sound familiar?”

“That’s it!”

Vlad chuckled softly. “That is almost amusing.”

“What is?”

“Nothing, nothing. And was Reins the man who used to make deliveries to Loraan?”

“Well, Reins drove everywhere. He made deliveries for, well, for just about everyone.”

“But did his duties take him to the Baron’s keep?”

“Well, I guess they must have.”

Vlad nodded. “I thought so.”

“Hmmm?”

“I used to know him. Only very briefly I’m afraid, but still—”

Savn shook his head. “I’ve never seen you around here before.”

“It wasn’t quite around here; it was at Loraan’s keep rather than his manor house. The keep, if I recall the land—

scape correctly, must be on the other side of the Brownclay.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And I didn’t spend much time there, either.” Vlad smiled as he said this, as if enjoying a private joke. Then he said, “Who is Baron now?”

“Who? Why, the Baron is the Baron, same as always.”

“But after the old Baron died, did his son inherit?”

“Oh. I guess so. That was before I was born.”

The Easterner’s eyes widened, which seemed to mean the same thing in an Easterner that it did in a human. “Didn’t the old Baron die just a few years ago?”

“Oh, no. He’s been there for years and years.”

“You mean Loraan is the Baron now?”

“Of course. Who else? I thought that’s what you meant.”

“My, my, my.” Vlad tapped the edge of his wine cup against the table. After a moment he said, “If he died, are you certain you’d know?”

“Huh? Of course I’d know. I mean, people see him, don’t they? Even if he doesn’t appear around here often, there’s still deliveries, and messengers, and—”

“I see. Well, this is all very interesting.”

“What is?”

“I had thought him dead some years ago.”

“He isn’t dead at all,” said Savn. “In fact, he just came to stay at his manor house, a league or so from town, near the place I first saw you.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes.”

“And that isn’t his son?”

“He isn’t married,” said Savn.

“How unfortunate for him,” said Vlad. “Have you ever actually seen him?”

“Certainly. Twice, in fact. He came through here with his retainers, in a big coach, with silver everywhere, and six horses, and a big Athyra embossed in—”

“Were either of these times recent?”

Savn started to speak, stopped, and considered. “What do you mean ‘recent’?”

Vlad laughed. “Well taken. Within, say, the last five years?”

“Oh. No.”

The Easterner took another sip of his wine, set the cup down, closed his eyes, and, after a long moment, said, “There is a high cliff over the Lower Brownclay. In fact, there is a valley that was probably cut by the river.”

“Yes, there is.”

“Are there caves, Savn?”

He blinked. “Many, all along the walls of the cliff. How did you know?”

“I knew about the valley because I saw it, earlier today, and the river. As for the caves, I didn’t know; I guessed. But now that I do know, I would venture a further guess that there is water to be found in those caves.”

“There’s water in at least one of them; I’ve heard it trickling.”

Vlad nodded. “It makes sense.”

“What makes sense, Vlad?”

“Loraan was—excuse me—is a wizard, and one who has studied necromancy. It would make sense that he lived near a place where Dark Water flows.”

“Dark Water? What is that?”

“Water that has never seen the light of day.”

“Oh. But what does that have to do with—what was his name?”

“Loraan. Baron Smallcliff. Such water is useful in the practice of necromancy. When stagnant and contained, it can be used to weaken and repel the undead, but when flowing free they can use it to prolong their life. It’s a bittersweet tapestry of life itself,” he added, in what Savn thought was an ironic tone of voice.

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind. Would it matter to you if you were to discover that your lord is undead?”

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Good. That may matter, later.”

“Vlad, I don’t understand—”

“Don’t worry about it; that isn’t the important thing.”

“You seem to be talking in riddles.”

“No, just thinking aloud. The important thing isn’t how he survived; the important thing is what he knows. Aye, what he knows, and what he’s doing about it.”

Savn struggled to make sense of this, and at last said, “What he knows about what?”

Vlad shook his head. “There are such things as coincidence, but I don’t believe one can go that far.” Savn started to say something, but Vlad raised his hand. “Think of it this way, my friend: many years ago, a man helped me to pull a nasty joke on your Baron. Now, on the very day I come walking through his fief, the man who helped me turns up mysteriously dead right in front of me. And the victim of this little prank moves to his manor house, which happens to be just outside the village I’m passing through. Would you believe that this could happen by accident?”

The implications of everything Vlad was saying were too many and far-reaching, but Savn was able to understand enough to say, “No.”

“I wouldn’t, either. And I don’t.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I’m not certain,” Vlad said. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to come this way, but I didn’t realize exactly where I was, and, in any case, I thought Loraan was ... I thought it would be safe. Speaking of safe, I guess what it means is that I’m not, very.”

Savn said, “You’re leaving, then?” He was surprised to discover how disappointed he was at the thought.

“Leaving? No. It’s probably too late for that. And besides, this fellow, Reins, helped me, and if that had anything to do with his death, that means I have matters to attend to.”

Savn struggled with this, and at last said, “What matters?”

But Vlad had fallen silent again; he stared off into space, as if taken by a sudden thought. He sat that way for nearly a minute, and from time to time his lips seemed to move. At last he grunted and nodded faintly.

Savn repeated his question. “What matters will you have to attend to?”

“Eh?” said Vlad. “Oh. Nothing important.”

Savn waited. Vlad leaned back in his chair, his eyes open but focused on the ceiling. Twice the corner of his mouth twitched as if he were smiling; once he shuddered as if something frightened him. Savn wondered what he was thinking about. He was about to ask, when Vlad’s head suddenly snapped down and he was looking directly at Savn.

“The other day, you started to ask me about witchcraft.”

“Well, yes,” said Savn. “Why—”

“How would you like to learn?”

“Learn? You mean, how to, uh-—”

“We call it casting spells, just like sorcerers do. Are you interested?”

“I’d never thought about it before.”

“Well, think about it.”

“Why would you want to teach me?”

“There are reasons.”

“I don’t know.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised at your hesitation. It would be useful to me if someone knew certain spells. It doesn’t have to be you; I just thought you’d want to. I could find someone else. Perhaps one of those young men—”

“All right.”

Vlad didn’t smile; he just nodded slightly and said, “Good.”

“When should we begin?”

“Now would be fine,” said the Easterner, and rose to his feet. “Come with me.”

She flew above and ahead of her mate, in long, wide, overlapping circles just below the overcast. He was content to follow, because her eyesight was keener.

In fact, she knew exactly what she was looking for, and could have gone directly there, but it was a fine, warm day for this late in the year, and she was in no hurry to carry out the Provider’s wishes. There was time for that; there had been no sense of urgency in the dim echo she had picked up, so why not enjoy the day?

Above her, a lazy falcon broke through the overcast, saw her, and haughtily ignored her. She didn’t mind; they had nothing to argue about until the falcon made a strike; then they could play the old game of You’re-quicker-going-down-but-I’m-faster-going-up. She’d played that game several times, and usually won. She had lost once to a cagey old goshawk, and she still carried the scar above her right wing, but it no longer bothered her.

She came into sight of a large structure of man, and her mate, who saw it at the same time, joined her, and they circled it once together. She thought that, in perhaps a few days, she’d be ready to mate again, but it was so hard to find a nest while traveling all the time.

Her mate sent her messages of impatience. She gave the psychic equivalent of a sigh and circled down to attend to business.

Chapter Four

I will not marry a magic seer,

I will not marry a magic seer.

know how to keep me here.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

Savn had thought they would be going into Vlad’s room, but instead the Easterner led them out onto the street. There was still some light, but it was gradually fading, the overcast becoming more red than orange, and accenting the scarlet highlights on the bricks of Shoe’s old house across the way. There were a few people walking past, but they seemed intent on business of their own; the excitement of a few short hours before had evaporated like a puddle of water on a dry day. And those who were out seemed, as far as Savn could tell, intent on ignoring the Easterner.

Savn wondered why he wasn’t more excited about the idea of learning Eastern magic, and came to the conclusion that it was because he didn’t really believe it would happen. Well, then, he asked himself, why not? Because, came the answer, I don’t know this Easterner, and I don’t understand why he would wish to teach me’ anything.

“Where are we going?” he said aloud.

“To a place of power.”

“What’s that?”

“A location where it is easier to stand outside and inside of yourself and the other.”

Savn tried to figure out which question to ask first. At last he said, “The other?”

“The person or thing you wish to change. Witchcraft—magic—is a way of changing things. To change you must understand, and the best way to understand is to attempt change.”

“I don’t—”

“The illusion of understanding is a product of distance and perspective. True understanding requires involvement.”

“Oh,” said Savn, putting it away for a later time to either think about or not.

They were walking slowly toward the few remaining buildings on the west side of the village; Savn consciously held back the urge to run. Now they were entirely alone, save for voices from the livery stable, where Feeder was saying, “So I told him I’d never seen a kethna with a wooden leg, and how did it happen that ...” Savn wondered who he was talking to. Soon they were walking along the Manor Road west of town. Savn said, “What makes a place of power?”

“Any number of things. Sometimes it has to do with the terrain, sometimes with things that have happened there or people who have lived there; sometimes you don’t know why it is, you just feel it.”

“So we’re going to keep walking until you feel it?” Savn discovered that he didn’t really like the idea of walking all night until they came to a place that “felt right” to the Easterner.

“Unless you know a place that is likely to be a place of power.”

“How would I know that?”

“Do you know of any place where people were sacrificed?”

Savn shuddered. “No, there isn’t anything like that.”

“Good. I’m not certain we want to face that in any event. Well, is there any powerful sorcerer who lives nearby?”

“No. Well, you said that Lord Smallcliff is.”

“Oh, yes, I did, didn’t I? But it would be difficult to reach the place where he works, which I assume to be on the other side of the river, at his keep.”

“Not at his manor?”

“Probably not. Of course, that’s only a guess; but we can hardly go to his manor either, can we?”

“I guess not. But someplace he worked would be a place of power?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Well, but what about the water he used?”

“The water? Oh, yes, the Dark Water. What about it?”

“Well, if he found water in the caves—”

“The caves? Of course, the caves! Where are they?”

“Not far. It’s about half a league to Bigcliff, and then halfway down the slip and along the path.”

“Can you find it in this light?”

“Of course.”

“Then lead the way.”

Savn at once abandoned the road in order to cut directly toward the hills above Bigcliff, finding his way by memory and feel in the growing darkness. “Be careful along here,” he said as they negotiated the slip that cut through the hill. “The gravel is loose, and if you fall you can hurt yourself.”

“Yes.”

They came to the narrow but level path toward the caves, and the going became easier. Savn said, “Remember when you told me about how you encourage bandits to attack you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you, uh, were you jesting with me?”

“Not entirely,” said Vlad. “In point of fact, I’ve only done that once or twice, so I suppose I was exaggerating a bit.”

“Oh.”

“What makes you ask?”

“I was just wondering if that was why you carry a sword.”

“I carry a sword in case someone tries to hurt me.”

“Yes, but I mean, was that the idea? Is that why you do it, so these bandits—”

“No, I carried it long before that.”

“But then why—”

“As I said, in case someone tries to hurt me.”

“Did that ever happen? I mean, before?”

“Someone trying to hurt me? Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“Sometimes I fought. Sometimes I ran.”

“Have you ever ... I mean—”

“I’m still alive; that ought to tell you something.”

“Oh. Is that how—I mean, your hand ...”

Vlad glanced down at his left hand, as if he’d forgotten he had one. “Oh, yes. If someone is swinging a sword at you, and you are unarmed, it is possible to deflect the blade with your hand by keeping your palm exactly parallel with the flat of the blade. Your timing has to be perfect. Also, you ought to remember to keep your pinkie out of the way.”

Savn winced in sympathy and decided not to ask for more details. A little later, he ventured, “Isn’t the sword annoying to carry?”

“No. In any case, I used to carry a great deal more.”

“More what?”

“More steel.”

“Why?”

“I was living in a more dangerous place.”

“Where was that?”

“Adrilankha.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Yes, indeed. I’ve lived most of my life there.”

“I’d like to see Adrilankha.”

“I hope you do.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s what you make of it. It is a thousand cities. It is a place where there are more noblemen than Teckla, it seems. It is a place of ease, luxury, and sudden violence, depending on where you are and who you are. It is a place of wishes fulfilled, and of permanent longing. It is like everywhere else, I think.”

They began climbing up toward the caves. “Did you like it there?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Some people wanted to kill me.”

Savn stopped, turned, and tried to look at Vlad’s face to see if he was joking, but it was too dark to be certain. It was, in fact, almost too dark to walk safely. Vlad stopped behind him, waiting. There was a flapping sound overhead. Savn couldn’t tell what sort of bird it was, but it sounded big. “We should get to the caves,” he said after a moment.

“Lead on.”

Savn did so. They came up the rise toward the first one, which was shallow and led nowhere interesting, so he ignored it. He said, “Have you really killed people?”

“Yes.”

“Was there really someone in Adrilankha who wanted to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“That must be scary.”

“Only if they find me.”

“Are they still looking for you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you think they’ll find you?”

“I hope not.”

“What did you do?”

“I left.”

“No, I mean, why do they want to kill you?”

“I annoyed some business associates.”

“What kind of business were you in?”

“One thing and another.”

“Oh.”

“I hear water from below.”

“The river flats. That’s where the people from Brownclay and Bigcliff go to bathe and wash clothes.”

“Ah, yes. I was there earlier; I hadn’t realized we were in the same place. This must be Bigcliff, then.”

“Yes.”

“You say you know a cave that has water in it?”

“One of the deep ones. That’s where I’m taking us.”

“Very good. It sounds like just what we’re looking for.”

“What will we do there?”

“You’ll see.”

“Okay. This is it. It goes way back, and down, and the further down you go, the wetter the walls get, and I remember once we heard water trickling below us, though we didn’t actually find it.”

“Excellent. Let’s see what it looks like.”

The immediate area filled with a soft, yellow light, displaying the weed-covered rocks. Savn said, “Was that witchcraft?”

“No, sorcery.”

“Oh. My Paener could have done that, then.”

“Yes. Let’s go in.”

The entrance to the cave was narrow and low, so that it would have been difficult to find even in the daylight if Savn had not known where it was. He pointed it out to Vlad, who bent over and caused his sorcerous light to fill the entrance. This was followed by the sounds of small animals, disturbed from their rest, who scurried off to find hiding places.

“Best not to know what they are,” said Vlad.

“I agree,” said Savn, and led the way into the cave.

At once it opened up, and in the sourceless, hazy light it appeared rather bigger than Savn remembered. He was very aware of the sound of their soft boots, and even the sound of his own breathing.

“Can you make light with witchcraft?”

“I don’t know,” said Vlad. “I’ve never tried. It’s easier to bring torches. Which way?”

“Are you sure you want to go deeper, Vlad?”

“Yes.”

“This way, then.”

The pale light moved with them, growing brighter in small spaces, then more dim as they entered larger ones.

After a while, Savn said, “Do you want to go all the way down to the water?”

“If we can. It is certain to be a place of power.”

“Why?”

“Because Lord Smallcliff used it. Even if it weren’t before, it would be when he was done. He’s like that.”

“This is as far as I’ve ever gone.”

“Bide, then.”

Savn waited, listening to the flapping of bat wings, while Vlad’s eyes narrowed, then widened slightly as he shook his head, and at last he moved his lips as if uttering an incantation. “All right,” he said at last. “It’s safe. If we climb over this ledge, crawl that way about forty feet, and drop down, we’ll fall about five feet and land on a flat surface.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s what you’ve come here to learn, isn’t it?”

“Was that witchcraft?”

“Yes and no. Without the Art, I couldn’t have done it.”

“And you’re certain—”

“Yes.”

Savn hesitated a moment, but Vlad, without waiting, went over the indicated ledge, actually a narrow slit in the rock wall which was barely large enough for them, and began creeping along it. Savn became aware that he’d been hearing the gurgling of water for some few minutes. He followed the Easterner; then, at the same place Vlad did, he hung over the edge and let go, landing easily. The sound of trickling water was louder as he landed. The yellow light grew until it faintly illuminated a large cavern, with a dark, narrow stream, perhaps four feet wide, making its leisurely way back into the hill.

“Is this the place?” said Savn, hearing his words come back to him. “Or should we go further in?”

“What do you think?” said Vlad. “I don’t know.”

“Can you feel anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Open yourself up to sensation. Do you feel power?”

Savn closed his eyes, and tried to feel something happening. There was a slight chill on his skin, and a soft whisper of wind against his ears, but that was all. “No,” he said. “But I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be feeling.”

“Let’s try it here, then. Sit down on that rock. Take my cloak and fold it up behind your head so you can lean back.”

Savn did these things. “Now what?”

“Relax.”

He tried to settle back into the unusual position, with only some success.

“Can you feel your scalp? The top of your head? No, I don’t mean touch it. Put your hands back in your lap. Now, can you feel the top of your head? Think of your scalp relaxing. Imagine each hair on your head relaxing. Your temples, your ears, your forehead, your eyes, your cheeks, your jaw. One at a time, try to relax each of these muscles. Now the back of your neck. Feel your head sink into the cloak, pretend you are falling into the wall behind you....”

Sometime later, Vlad said, “How do you feel?”

Savn realized that a great deal of time had passed, but he didn’t know how much, nor what had occurred during that time. “I feel good,” he said, surprised to discover it. “Like I’m, I don’t know, alive.”

“Good. You took to it well.”

“You mean I’m a witch now?”

“No, that was only the first step, to prepare your mind for the journey.”

“It feels great.”

“I know.”

“What do we do next?”

“Next, we get you home. It’s late.”

“Is it?” Savn reached for the time and blanched. “The gods! I had no idea—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Mae and Pae—”

“I’ll speak to them.”

“But they—” He bit off his words. He’d been about to say they wouldn’t listen to an Easterner, then realized there was no polite way to say it. In any case, Vlad would find out for himself soon enough.

The Easterner did not appear to notice. He made a sign for Savn to approach, and when he was there, he clenched his fist, screwed his face up, and Savn found himself once more in Smallcliff, on the north side of town, barely able to make out his surroundings in the faint yellow radiance that Vlad continued to produce.

“You teleported us!” he cried.

“I know you live out somewhere in this direction, and this is the only place I knew well enough to—”

“But you teleported us!”

“Well, yes. You said you were late. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, no, but I don’t know anyone who is good enough to do that.”

“It isn’t all that difficult.”

“You’re a sorcerer.”

“Well, yes, among other things.”

Savn stared at him, his eyes wide, until he realized that he was being rude. Vlad just smiled back at him, then said, “Come. I don’t know where you live, so we’re going to have to walk the rest of the way.”

Stunned, Savn set off along the deserted road. He said, “How do you teleport? I’ve heard of it—”

“It isn’t that hard; you just have to be certain you know exactly where you’re going. The tricky part is not getting sick afterwards, and for that there is witchcraft.”

“But how do you know where you’ll end up?”

“You have to remember it very well—perfectly, in fact. It’s the remembering that allows the journey to take place.”

“What if you can’t remember it that well?”

“Then you’re in trouble.”

“But—”

“Sometimes you can prepare a place to teleport to. It limits you, but it’s good if you’re in a hurry.”

“Can you teach me all this?”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Where is your house?”

“On the other side of this hill, but we should take the road around, because the flax here hasn’t been harvested yet.”

“Very well.”

Vlad seemed to have no trouble finding the road up to the house, though whether this was because Easterners had better night vision, or because of his magical powers, or for some other reason entirely, Savn didn’t know and couldn’t decide on a good way to ask, so he ended by saying nothing, and they spoke no more until they stood before the one-room house, with its single door held on with straps, and two windows covered with oiled paper. There was a pale yellow light from the lamps and the stove.

“Nice place,” said Vlad.

“Thank you,” said Savn, who had been thinking how small and plain it must look to someone who had lived in Adrilankha.

They had, evidently, been seen, because just before they reached the door it flew open so hard that Savn thought it would tear off its leather hinges, and there were Mae and Pae, silhouetted in the soft glow of the stove. They stood almost motionless, and while Savn couldn’t see the expressions on their faces, his imagination had no trouble supplying Mae’s wide-eyed anger and Pae’s annoyed confusion.

As they stepped forward, Mae said, “Who are you?” which puzzled Savn for a moment, until he realized to whom she was speaking.

“Vlad. You saw me earlier today, at Tern’s house.”

“You. What have you been doing with my son?”

“Teaching him,” said Vlad.

“Teaching him?” said Pae. “And what is it you think you’ll be teaching my boy?”

Vlad answered in a soft, gentle voice, much different than Savn had ever heard him use before. “I’ve been teaching him to hear the voices of the stones,” he said, “and to see prophecy in the movement of the clouds. To catch the wind in his hand and to bring forth gems from the dunes of the desert. To freeze air and to burn water. To live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. I’m sorry if I’ve kept him out too late. I shall be more careful in the future. No doubt I will see you again. I bid you all a good evening.”

Mae and Pae stood there against the light, watching the Easterner’s back as his grey cloak faded into the night. Then Pae said, “In all my life, I never—”

“Hush now,” said Mae. “Let’s get this one to bed.”

Savn wasn’t sure what Vlad had done, but they didn’t say a word more about the hour, or about what he’d been doing. He went over to his corner under the loft, spread his furs out, and climbed in underneath them without saying another word.

That night, he dreamed of the cave, which, upon waking, he did not find surprising. In the dream, the cave was filled with smoke, which, at least as he remembered it, kept changing color, and a jhereg kept flying out of it and speaking in Vlad’s voice, saying, “Wait here,” and, “You will feel well-rested, alert, and strong,” and other things which he didn’t remember.

The dream must have had some effect, however, for when he did wake up he felt refreshed and ready. As he prepared for the day he realized with some annoyance that he would have to spend several hours harvesting, and then several more with Master Wag, before he had the chance to find Vlad again and, he hoped, continue where they had left off.

He forgot his annoyance, however, after the morning harvest, when he arrived at the Master’s, because the Master was in one of his touchy moods, and Savn had to concentrate on not giving him an excuse for a tongue-lashing. He spent most of the day listening to an oft-repeated rant to the effect that no one dies without a reason, so Reins couldn’t have, either. Apparently Master Wag had been un—

able to find this reason, and was consequently upset with himself, Savn, Reins, and the entire world. The only time he seemed pleasant was while scratching Curry’s left arm with the thorn of the blister plant to treat his fever, and even then Savn knew he was in a foul temper, because he simply did it, without giving Savn the lecture that usually accompanied treatment.

After the fifth rant on the subject of causeless death, Savn ventured, “Could it have been sorcery?”

“Of course it could have been sorcery, idiot. But sorcery does something, and whatever it did would leave traces.”

“Oh. What about witchcraft?”

“Eh?”

“Could a witch—”

“What do you know about witchcraft?”

“Nothing,” said Savn honestly. “That’s why I don’t know if—”

“If a witch can do anything at all beyond fooling the gullible, which I doubt, then whatever he did would leave traces, too.”

“Oh.”

Master Wag started to say more, then scowled and retreated into the cellar, where he kept his herbs, splints, knives, and other supplies, and where, presumably, he kept the pieces of Rein’s skin, bone, and hair that he had preserved in order to determine what had happened. Savn felt queasy considering this.

He looked around for something to do in order to take his mind off it, but he’d already cleaned everything in sight, and memorized the Tale of the Man Who Ate Fire so well that the Master had been unable to do anything but grunt upon hearing Savn’s recitation.

He sat down next to the window, realized it was too cold, discovered that he still had at least another hour before he could go home, and put some more wood onto the fire. It crackled pleasantly. He walked around the room, looking over the Master’s collection of books, including On the Number of the Parts of the Body, Knitting of Bones, The Sorcerer’s Art and the Healing of the Self, The Remembered Tales of Calduh, and the others which the Master had consulted from time to time in healing patients or instructing Savn. One book that he had never seen the Master consult was called The Book of the Seven Wizards, a thick, leather-bound volume with the title in gold lettering on the spine. He took it down, went over by the fire, and let it fall open.

It had been written in a neat, even hand, as if the scribe, probably a Lyorn, had attempted to remove all traces of his own personality. The pages were rather thicker than the leaves of many books, and in good condition. It occurred to Savn that Master Wag probably knew a spell to preserve books, so this one could be of any age. At the top of the page, he read: “On the Nature of Secrets.”

He wondered if it were some sort of sign that it had fallen open in that spot—if, in fact, there were some sort of secret to be discovered. Probably not, he decided.

The book told him:

Be aware of power in hidden places, and be aware of that which is apparent, for secrets may lie open to view and yet be concealed. All of the Seven Wizards know of secrets, and each, in his own way, speaks of them, calls to them, and reveals them to those who search diligently and honestly.

Diligently and honestly? he thought. Well, that could be said of everything. What about thoroughly? He turned his eyes back to the book and read:

She Who Is Small finds the secrets of the present in the past; that when the past is known, it is the power of the mage to find Truth in Mystery; that thus is the latter transformed into the former.

It seemed to Savn that he knew very little of the past, and that there must be many secrets indeed that he could discover if he turned to history. He wondered how Master Wag would feel if he asked for a history book. Not today, in any case. He turned back to the book and read:

She Who Is Tall says that the secret is in the song, and opens only to one who dares to sing. It is said that when she sings, the secret is plain to all who listen, but that it is hidden again when the song is past, and few are those who are blessed to hear the echoes of Truth in the Silence that follows.

Well, he liked music well enough, and he liked singing, but there was probably some sort of mystical and powerful meaning in the passage, which he didn’t understand. He shrugged.

The next paragraph read:

She Whose Hair Is Red wraps the secret ever tighter in skeins of words, so that it vanishes as if it never were, and in these layers of words the secret emerges, shining, so that it is hidden to those who look, yet revealed to those who take joy in the unfolding patterns and sounds of words.

There was certainly some mystical and powerful significance to this, and he certainly didn’t understand it. He tried to visualize something being wrapped up in words, but all he got was an image of the black lettering from the book, removed from the page, attaching itself to some undefined thing and smothering it.

He read:

He Whose Eyes Are Green knows where the secret lies, for his eyes pierce every shadowy place; yet he no sooner finds the secret than he buries it anew. But it is said that in the burying the secret has changed, while that which was hidden walks the land ever after, waiting but for one to recognize it, and offer it refuge.

That didn’t make any sense at all. If he knew where the secrets were, why did he want to hide them? And who were these wizards, anyway?

The book went on:

He Whose Hair Is Dark laughs at secrets, for his pleasure is in the search, not the discovery—and the paths he follows in this search stem from whim, not from plan. Some say that in this way he reveals as many as another.

That almost made sense. Savn could imagine how it might be more fun to look for something than to actually find it. He wondered if there was something he was looking for, or something he should look for. The secret to Reins’s death? But he could hardly expect to find that if Master Wag couldn’t.

He continued reading:

Of the Gentle One it is said that she sets down the order and method of all things, and that, in this way, all hidden things may be found. To her, each detail is a signpost, and when each is placed in its own position, the outline of the secret will be laid bare for any who will look.

Well, that was certainly possible, thought Savn. But what do you do when you don’t know anything? There was one more passage on the page:

The Master of Rhyme still searches for the Way of the Wizards, for to him, this is the greatest Secret of all. Yet, as he searches, he lets fall Truths for all of those who come after, and in this he sees no miracle, for what is plain to one is a Secret to the next. He is often praised for this, but it is meaningless to him, for who among Men will rejoice in finding Truth that he has never thought hidden?

Savn frowned. That, too, almost made sense. It was as if you could see something, and maybe someone else couldn’t, but to you it wasn’t anything to get excited about, because it was right there all the time.

It occurred to him to wonder if there were things right in front of him that he couldn’t see. He was pondering this when Master Wag returned and said, “What are you reading?”

Savn showed him the book. The Master snorted. “There’s nothing in there you need, at least not yet. Why don’t you go home?”

Savn didn’t need to be given this suggestion twice. He put the book on the shelf, said farewell, and dashed out the door before the Master could change his mind.

He raced to Tern’s house, expecting to see Vlad either lounging outside or in the common room, but the Easterner was not in evidence. As he stood there, wondering whether he dared to ask Tem which room Vlad was in, his sister walked through the door, accompanied by two of her friends, which caused him, for reasons he couldn’t quite specify, to abandon this plan.

She came up to him at once and pulled him into a corner. “What happened to you last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were gone forever. Mae and Pae were going crazy. I finally went to bed, and when I got up this morning and asked if you’d shown up, they looked at me like they didn’t know what I was talking about and said that you were already up and out.”

“Well, I was.”

“That’s not the point, chag-brain.”

“Don’t call me chag-brain.”

“Where were you?”

“Exploring the caves.”

“At night?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“But why were you so late?”

“I lost track of time.”

She frowned at him, clearly unsatisfied with the answer, but uncertain how to find out more. “Well, then,” she said, “don’t you think Mae and Pae were acting a little strange, the way they were so worried at first, and then—”

“Oh, you know how they get. Look, I’ll talk to you later, all right? I have to go.”

“Go where? Savn, stop it. Don’t you dare go running off like that! Savn ...”

Her voice followed him out the door, but he paid no attention. The only place he could think of to find Vlad was back at the caves, so he set off for them at once. He followed the Manor road for the first mile, then cut across to the slip. As he was about to start down it, however, he saw, some distance away, a grey-clad figure standing on the cliff itself. He broke into a run, and at about the same moment he became convinced that it was indeed Vlad, the Easterner turned and waved to him, as if he’d known he was there.

When he reached him, he said nothing, only stopped to recover his breath. Vlad stood, staring out at the river flats so far below them, dotted with people bathing, washing clothes, or just talking. Savn tried to view the scene as if it were new; the river rushing in from the right, turning sharply around the Black Rocks, foaming white, then suddenly widening into the flats, brown against tan, then narrowing gradually once more as it cut down into the plains and began turning south, toward the sea, many impossible hundreds of miles away.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Savn.

“Is it?” said Vlad, without turning his head.

“Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe. Nature usually doesn’t excite me very much. I’m impressed by what man makes of his world, not what we started with.”

“Oh.” Savn considered. “I guess I’m just the opposite.”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter?”

Vlad looked at him, and something like amusement glittered for a moment in his eyes. Then he turned back to watching the river. “Yes and no,” he said. “A couple of years ago “i met a philosopher who told me mat Chose Yike me build, while those like you take more pleasure in life.”

“Aren’t there those who like both?”

“Yes. According to this lady, they become artists.”

“Oh. Do you enjoy life?”

“Me? Yes, but I’m naturally lucky.”

“Oh.” Savn thought back to what the Easterner told him the night before. “You must be, to still be alive with people trying to kill you.”

“Oh, no. That isn’t luck. I’m alive because I’m good enough to survive.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I’m lucky that, living the way I do, with people trying to kill me, I can still take pleasure in life. Not everyone can, and I think if you can’t, there isn’t much you can do about it.”

“Oh. I’ve never met a philosopher.”

“I hope you do some day; they’re always worth talking to.”

“Pae says such things are a waste of time.”

“Your Pae, I’m sorry to say, is wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because everything is worth examining, and if you don’t examine your view of the world, you are still subject to it, and you find yourself doing things that—never mind.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you? Good.” After a moment he said, as if to himself, “I learned a lot from that lady. I was sorry I had to kill her.”

Savn looked at him, but the Easterner didn’t seem to be joking. They continued watching the River Flats and said nothing more for a while.

Chapter Five

I will not marry a blessing priest,

I will not marry a blessing priest,

In his devotions I’d be least.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

They were close enough so that Savn could identify some of the people below, more by how they dressed and moved than by their features. There were a few whose names he knew, but he knew none of the people well, and for the first time he wondered why that was. Smallcliff was closer to Bigcliff than to either Whiterock or Notthereyet, but those were the places he had visited, and from a little traveling and from his work with Master Wag, he knew a few people who lived in each of those villages; but the dwellers below were strangers, even those he could identify and had spoken with.

Mae and Pae hardly ever mentioned them at all, except for an occasional reference Pae made to its being filthy to bathe in the same place that you wash your clothes. Yet when those from below came to visit Master Wag, they seemed pleasant enough, and Savn didn’t see any difference.

Odd, though, that he’d never thought about it before. Next to him, Vlad was watching them with single-minded concentration that reminded Savn of something he’d seen once, long ago, but couldn’t quite remember. He felt something akin to fear as he made the comparison, however.

“Vlad?” said Savn at last.

“Yes?”

“Those people are ... never mind.”

“They are what?”

Savn haltingly tried to tell the Easterner what he’d been thinking about them, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words, so eventually he shrugged and fell silent.

Vlad said, “Are they also vassals of Baron Smallcliff?”

“Yes. He’s also the Baron of Bigcliff.”

Vlad nodded. “What else?”

“I don’t know. I know that someone else is lord over in Whiterock, though. A Dzurlord. We hear stories about him.”

“Oh? What kind of stories?”

“Not very nice ones. You have to work his fields two days of the week, even in the bad years when it takes everything to keep your own going, and he doesn’t care how hard that makes it for you, or even if you starve, and sometimes he does things that, well, I don’t really know about because they say I’m too young to know about them, but they’re pretty awful. His tax collectors can beat you whenever they want, and you can’t do anything about it. And his soldiers will kill you if you get in their way, and when the Speaker tried to complain to the Empire they had him killed, and things like that.”

“Things like that don’t happen here?”

“Well, the tax collectors can be pretty mean sometimes, but not that bad. We’re lucky here.”

“I suppose so.”

They fell silent again. Vlad continued staring down at the River Flats. Eventually Savn said, “Vlad, if you aren’t enjoying nature, what are you doing?”

“Watching the people.”

“They’re odd,” said Savn.

“So you said. But you didn’t tell me in what way they’re odd.”

Savn opened his mouth and shut it. He didn’t want to pass on what Mae and Pae said about them, because he was sure Vlad would just think he was being small-minded. He finally said, “They talk funny.”

Vlad glanced at him. “Funny? How?”

“Well, there used to be a tribe of Serioli who lived down there. They only moved away a few hundred years ago, and until then they lived right next to the people from Bigcliff, and they’d talk all the time, and—”

“And the people from Bigcliff use Serioli words?”

“Not when they talk to us. But it’s, that, well, they put their words together different than we do.”

“Can you understand them?”

“Oh, sure. But it sounds strange.”

“Hmmm,” said Vlad.

“What are you watching them for?”

“I’m not certain. A way to do something I have to do.”

“Why do you always talk that way?”

Vlad spared him a quick glance, which Savn could not read, then said, “It comes from spending time in the company of philosophers and Athyra.”

“Oh.”

“And having secrets.”

“Oh.”

A strange feeling came over Savn, as if he and Vlad had achieved some sort of understanding—it seemed that if he asked the Easterner a question, he might get an answer. However, he realized, he wasn’t certain what, of all the things he wondered about, he ought to ask. Finally he said, “Have you really spent a great deal of time around Athyra nobles?”

“Not exactly, but I knew a Hawklord once who was very similar. And a drummer, for that matter.”

“Oh. Did you kill them, too?”

Vlad’s head snapped up; then he chuckled slightly. “No,” he said, then added, “On the other hand, it came pretty close with both of them.”

“Why were they like Athyra?”

“What do you know of the House?”

“Well, His Lordship is one.”

“Yes. That’s what brought it to mind. You see, it is a matter of the philosophical and the practical; the mystical and the mundane.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know that,” said Vlad, still staring out at the River Flats.

“Would you explain?”

“I’m not certain I can,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, then back out over the cliff. “There are many who are contemptuous of the intellectual process. But those who aren’t afraid of it sometimes discover that the further you go from the ordinary, day-to-day world, the more understanding you can achieve of it; and the r ore you understand of the world, the more you can act, nstead of being acted upon. That,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “is exactly what witchcraft is about.”

“But you said before you ought to get involved, and now you’re saying you should stand apart.”

“Got me,” said Vlad, smiling.

Savn waited for him to continue. After a moment Vlad seated himself on the cliff.

“Not stand apart in actions,” he said. “I mean, don’t be afraid to form general conclusions, to try to find the laws that operate in the actions of history, and to—”

“I don’t understand.”

Vlad sighed. “You should try not to get me started.”

“But, about the Athyra ...”

“Yes. There are two types of Athyra. Some are mystics, who attempt to explore the nature of the world by looking within themselves, and some are explorers, who look upon the world as a problem to be solved, and thus reduce other people to either distractions or pieces of a puzzle, and treat them accordingly.”

Savn considered this, and said, “The explorers sound dangerous.”

“They are. Not nearly as dangerous as the mystics, however.”

“Why is that?”

“Because explorers at least believe that others are real, if unimportant. To a mystic, that which dwells inside is the only reality.”

“I see.”

“Baron Smallcliff is a mystic.”

“Oh.”

Vlad stood abruptly, and Savn had an instant’s fear that he was going to throw himself off the cliff. Instead he took a breath and said, “He’s the worst kind of mystic. He can only see people as ...” His voice trailed off. He looked at Savn, then looked away. For a moment, Savn thought he had detected such anger hidden in the Easterner that it would make one of Speaker’s rages seem like the pouting of a child.

In an effort to distract Vlad, Savn said, “What are you?” It seemed to work, for Vlad chuckled slightly. “You mean am I a mystic or an explorer? I have been searching for the answer to that question for several years now. I haven’t found it, but I know that other people are real, and that is something.”

s<-\ guess?”

“There was a time I didn’t know that.”

Savn wasn’t certain how to respond to this, so he said nothing.

After a moment, Vlad added, “And I listen to philosophers.”

“When you don’t kill them,” said Savn.

This time the Easterner laughed. “Even when I do, I still listen to them.”

“I understand,” said Savn.

Vlad looked at him suddenly. “Yes, I think that you do.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Sorry,” said Vlad. “You are, I don’t know, better educated than most of us from the city would have thought.”

“Oh. Well, I learned my ciphers and history and everything because I filled the bucket when I was twenty, so they—”

“Filled the bucket?”

“Don’t they have that in the city?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it, at any rate.”

“Oh. Well, I hardly remember doing it. I mean, I was pretty young at the time. But they give you a bucket—”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Mae and Pae and Speaker and Bless.”

“I see. Go on.”

“They give you a bucket, and tell you to go out into the woods, and when you come back, they see what’s in the bucket and decide whether you should be trained for apprenticeship.”

“And you had filled yours?”

“Oh, that’s just a term that means they said yes. I mean, if you come back with water, then Bless will try you out as a priest, and if you come back with sticks, then, well, I don’t really know how they tell, but they decide, and when I came back they decided I should be apprenticed to Master Wag.”

“Oh. What did you come back with?”

“An injured daythief.”

“Oh. That would account for it, I suppose. Still, I can’t help wondering how much of that is chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“How often a child picks up the first thing he sees, and ends up being a cobbler when he’d be better off as a weaver.”

“That doesn’t happen,” Savn explained.

Vlad looked at him. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” said Savn, feeling vaguely annoyed.

“How do you know?”

“Because ... it just doesn’t.”

“Because that’s what you’ve always been told?”

Savn felt himself flushing, although he wasn’t certain why. “No, because that’s what the test is for.”

Vlad continued studying him. “Do you always just accept everything you’ve been told, without questioning it?”

“That’s a rude question,” said Savn without thinking about it.

Vlad seemed startled. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Some things,” said Savn, “you just know.”

Vlad frowned, and took a step away from the cliff. He clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly. “Do you?” he asked. “When you ‘just know’ something, Savn, that means it’s so locked into your head that you operate as if it were true, even when you find out it isn’t.” He knelt down so that he was facing Savn directly. “That isn’t necessarily a good idea.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re so convinced that your Baron Smallcliff is invincible and perfect that you’d stand there and let him kill you rather than raising a finger to defend yourself.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“You’re changing the subject. There are things that you know way deep down. You know they’re true, just because they have to be.”

“Do they?”

“Well, yes. I mean, how do you know that we’re really here? You just know.”

“I know some philosophers who would disagree with you,” said Vlad.

“The ones you killed?”

Vlad laughed. “Well taken,” he said. He stood and walked over to the cliff again, and stared out once more. Savn wondered what he was trying to find. “But sometimes,” continued the Easterner, “when it’s time to do something, it matters whether you know why you’re doing it.”

“What do you mean?”

Vlad frowned, which seemed to be his usual expression when he was trying to think of how to say something. “Sometimes you might get so mad that you hit someone, or so frightened you run, but you don’t really know why. Sometimes you know why you should do something, but it’s all in your head. You don’t really feel it, so you have trouble making yourself do it.”

Savn nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s like when I’ve been out late and Maener asks what I’ve been doing and I know I should tell her, but I don’t.”

“Right. It isn’t always easy to act on what’s in your head instead of what’s in your heart. And it isn’t always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when it’s okay to just follow your feelings.”

“So, how do you do it?”

Vlad shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself for the last few years, and I haven’t managed. But I can tell you that it works best when you understand why you feel a certain way, and to do that, sometimes you have to take things you know and question them. That’s one of the good things Athyra and philosophers do.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” said Savn slowly.

Vlad looked at him once more. “Yes? And?”

“Some things you just know.”

Vlad seemed about to say something, but evidently decided to let the matter drop. They fell silent, and Vlad went back to scanning the area below them.

After a while the Easterner said, “Who’s that lady wearing the green hat, talking to everyone in sight?”

“I don’t know her name, but she’s their priestess.”

“Of?”

“What do you mean, ‘of? Oh, I see. Of Trout.”

“Hmmm. No help there.”

“No help for what?”

“Never mind. Do you, also, worship Trout?”

“Worship?”

“I mean, who do you pray to?”

“Pray?”

“Who is your god?”

“Bless seems to be on good terms with Naro, the Lady Who Sleeps, so that’s who he usually asks things of.”

Vlad nodded, then pointed once more. “Who is that fellow walking down toward the water?”

“I don’t remember his name. He makes soap and sells it.”

“Where does he sell it?’

“Just there, along the river. Most of them make their own, I think, the same as we do, so he doesn’t get much business except from those who are washing clothes and didn’t bring enough.”

“There’s nowhere else he sells it?”

“No, not that I’m aware of. Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“We don’t wash at the river; we have wells.”

“You wash in your wells?”

“No, no, we—”

“I was kidding.”

“Oh. We go to the river to swim sometimes, but only upstream of them. You can’t swim in the Upper Brownclay; it’s too cold and fast.”

“Who’s that, just going beneath the scatterbush?”

“There? That’s Fird. He came in to see Master Wag once with some sort of awful rash on his hand, and Master Wag rubbed it with rose leaves and it went away.”

“What is he doing?”

“Selling fruit.”

“Fruit? You have fruit around here?”

“Fird brings it in from upriver. We don’t have very much. It’s expensive. We get mangoes, though, and ti’iks, and oranges, and—”

“Doesn’t Tern sell them?”

“He can’t afford it. Fird is the only one.”

“I’ll have to meet him.”

“He’s by the river just about every day. We could go down if you want to.”

“Not just yet. Where else does he sell this fruit?”

“Just here. And at the castle, I think.”

“Really? He serves Smallcliff?”

“No, just those who serve His Lordship.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Is it? At first that’s all he did—bring in fruits and vegetables to feed His Lordship’s staff, but then he found that if he went down to the river everyone wanted to buy something, so now, I think, he has more customers on the beach than in the servants, although I don’t know if that matters—”

“His name, you say, is Fird?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.”

Vlad watched a little longer, then grunted and turned away from the cliff.

“Are we going to the caves again?” said Savn.

“No, I was thinking of going back to Tern’s, for a glass of wine.”

“Oh.”

As they walked back along the slip, it seemed to Savn that the feeling had passed—that something which had been open within the strange man who walked next to him had shut again. Well, he thought. Now that it’s too late, 1 wonder what I should have asked him.

As they reached the top of the hill and found the road once more, he said, “Uh, Vlad?”

“Yes?”

“Did you, um, do something to Mae and Pae last night?”

Vlad frowned. “Do something? You mean, cast a spell of some sort? What makes you think so? Are they acting strange?”

“No, it’s just that I don’t understand why they weren’t angry with me for staying out so late.”

“Oh. I took responsibility for it, that’s all.”

“I see,” said Savn. He wasn’t convinced, but then, he had trouble believing that the Easterner had really put a spell on them to begin with. Because he didn’t want to leave that question hanging between them, he said, “What are your parents like?”

“They’re dead,” said Vlad.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” He thought for a moment of what it would be like to be without Mae and Pae, then decided not to dwell on the thought. He said, “Are they the ones who taught you?”

“No, my grandfather did that.”

“Is he—?”

“No, he’s still with us. Or, at any rate, he was a few years ago. He’s an old man, but witches, like sorcerers, tend to live a long time.”

They came to the widening of the road that wagons used when they had to turn around, which was located just west of where the road began its twisting way into town. The forest still rose high on either side of them.

Savn said, “Were you going to show me some more witchcraft today?”

Vlad seemed to shrug without actually moving his shoulders. “What would you like to learn?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t know. I’d like to learn to do something interesting.”

“That’s one approach.”

They walked back along the road, passing the place where Savn had first seen Vlad, and started up the gentle slope that lead to the last hill before town.

“What do you mean?” said Savn.

“The Art can be approached from several directions. One is learning to do interesting things, another is the search for knowledge, yet another, the search for understanding, or wisdom, if you prefer, although it isn’t really the same—”

“That’s what you were talking about before, isn’t it? I mean, about witchcraft, and understanding.”

“Yes.”

“But isn’t knowledge the same as understanding?”

“No.”

Savn waited for the Easterner to explain, but he didn’t. Instead he added, “And yet another way is the search for power.”

“Which way did you go?”

“Like you. I wanted to learn to do interesting things. I sort of had to.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Oh. Well, what about me?”

“You should think about which direction you want to take.”

“I know already.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

“Like I said, I want to do interesting things.”

“Hmmm.”

“Like you.”

“Why is that?”

“To impress girls.”

Vlad looked at him, and Savn had the feeling that the Easterner was, somehow, seeing him for the first time. After a moment, a smile came to Vlad’s mouth and he said softly, “Well, why not? Let’s step off the road a ways. Forests and jungles always feel right for this sort of thing.”

“What about a place of power?”

Vlad chuckled. “Unnecessary—for this stage.”

“All right. I suppose I’ll understand eventually.”

“Yes, chances are you will, but we won’t worry about that for now.”

“Here?”

“A little further, I think. I don’t want to be distracted by the sounds of horses and wagons.”

Savn followed him around thick trees, over low shrubs, and under hanging boughs until he seemed to find what he was looking for, whereupon he grunted, settled down against the wide base of a sugar maple, and said, “Get comfortable.”

“I’m comfortable,” said Savn, seating himself. Then, realizing that he wasn’t, really, adjusted himself as best he could. He began to feel excitement, but he shook his shoulders back and waited, trying to remember the relaxed state he’d been in before. Vlad looked at him carefully, smiling just a little beneath the hair that grew about his lip.

“What is it?” asked Savn.

“Nothing, nothing. What do you know of psychic communication?”

“Well, I know people who can do it, a little. And I know that sorcerers can do it.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Mel Well, no.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I, uh, I have no reason to think I can.”

“Everyone can. You just have to be shown how.”

“You mean, read minds?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like speaking without making a sound. It is possible to read minds, but that is far, far more difficult, and even then you might be caught at it.” Vlad paused, and seemed to be remembering something, to judge by the distant look in his eyes and the half-smile on his face. “Many people become annoyed if you attempt to penetrate their thoughts.”

“I would think so,” said Savn.

Vlad nodded, then reached for a chain that hung around his neck, hesitated, licked his lips, and removed it. On the end was a simple setting which held what appeared to be a piece of black rock.

“What is—?”

“Don’t ask,” said Vlad. At the same time, there was a sudden flapping sound overhead, as if two or three very large birds had been disturbed. Savn jumped, startled, but Vlad shook his head, as if to say that it was nothing to worry about.

“Remember how we relaxed before?” he said. “Well, we’re going to do it again, only this time the experience will be rather different.”

“In what way?”

“You’ll see. There will be a disorientation in time, but that is nothing to worry about.”

“All right.”

Once more he closed his eyes and allowed Vlad’s voice to lead him through each muscle in his body, letting the tension leave, letting it flow down, down, into the ground below him, until he felt the now-familiar sensation of floating, as if he were no longer part of his body—as if he stood apart from it, distant and unconcerned. Then Vlad said, “You are feeling very warm, and light—as if you are nothing but a bubble of air, and you can go anywhere. Yes. Think of yourself as an air bubble that moves where you will. You are surrounded by nothing, and you are empty.

Feel that you can move however you please. You are relaxed and confident.”

Yes, Savn agreed. I will feel that way. I choose to, and so I do. Isn’t that remarkable?

“Now,” said Vlad, “picture yourself, a bubble of nothingness, floating down through the ground, down through layers of stone, meshing with it, and, with each layer, you will fall more deeply asleep.”

Yes, I will picture that; I will do that, he thought, and it seemed as if his body were far away.

“Now very slowly, open your eyes, and look at me, but do not rise up. Look at me, and imagine that I am there with you—we are together, two bubbles of air beneath the earth. With the eyes of your body, you see me holding a small piece of fabric. Now you imagine yourself a wind, and you brush against the fabric. There, you see how it flutters? Touch it again, and again. Don’t push; will it to happen. Do you feel the texture of the cloth, smooth, slightly cold, the veins of weave distinct beneath the fingertips of your mind? Once more, a little push. Yes, that was you, you felt it.

“Now we, as two bubbles of air, will touch. Do you now hear my words, as if they were echoed, once spoken aloud, once whispered softly? One coming just ahead of the other, as if you were aware of the time it takes for the sound to pass your ears, because you are now aware of that time, and you choose to ignore it, so these sounds, both my voice, both identical, come together; they are strong, reinforcing each other. And now you hear only the whisper, and without making a sound, whisper back to me with only your thoughts—you form words, and you give them to me, as if you were placing a feather in my hand, but your mouth and tongue do not move. Tell me, in this way, that you can hear me.”

“I can hear you,” Savn said, feeling awe, but a distant, vague sort of awe, the reverse of a dream, as if it were normal and nothing special, but he knew, somewhere, that it would be remarkable when he awoke.

“And I can hear you,” said Vlad. “You will remember that feeling, of touching my mind with yours, and you will always be able to call it back.”

“Yes,” said Savn. “I will remember it.”

“Now, you begin to rise back through the ground, and with each layer, you begin to awake. You are coming back, closer and closer; you feel your limbs again, and know them as part of you, and you hear my real voice in your real ears, and with this sound, you awake, remembering everything that has happened, feeling rested, alert, and confident.”

Savn blinked, and felt as if he were opening his eyes, although they had been open. He said, “I feel ... funny. How much time has passed?”

“About half an hour.”

“Half an hour?” Savn took a moment to see if this was true, then said, “Did I really move that piece of cloth?”

“You moved it,” said Vlad.

Savn shook his head, but found no words to say.

“How do you feel?” said Vlad.

“Fine. A little tired, I guess.”

“It’ll pass. You’ll have some trouble sleeping tonight. I’d suggest a great deal of physical exertion.”

“All right. I’ll run all the way home.”

“Good idea.”

They stood up. Vlad picked up his pendant and put it around his neck again. They walked slowly back to the road and started in toward town again. Savn couldn’t find anything to say, and he was too lost in wonder and confusion to try very hard. He shook his head. Even now, he seemed more aware of the breeze against his throat, of the sharp outline of the trees against the twilit sky, and the sounds of the birds coming from all around him. They had always been there—why had he chosen not to hear mem, and why was he hearing them now?

Such were his thoughts until he realized that they were walking through the town, and, in fact, had arrived in front of Tern’s house. They stopped, and he said, “When will I see you again?”

“I’m not certain, my friend. Perhaps tomorrow.”

“All right.”

He did, indeed, run all the way home, relishing the way the air flowed through his lungs, the pounding of his feet along the road, the darkening sky, and the breeze, just getting chilly, biting at his face.

He made it on time for the evening meal, which prevented Mae and Pae from questioning him. Polyi, as usual, chattered throughout the meal, but Savn, who wasn’t really listening, caught a few pointed remarks about himself. Fortunately, Mae and Pae didn’t pick up on them.

That night, Savn fell asleep at once and while he slept, he dreamed that he stood in the street in front of Tern’s house, while Lova stood in the middle of a faceless crowd and looked at him adoringly as he made the ground open and close, and made fire fall from the sky. When he awoke, he remembered the dream, and remarked to himself, “That’s odd. I hadn’t even known I liked her.”

What now?

She flew down toward the little structure where the Provider dwelt, knowing that her mate was already there. And, even as she cupped the air to light on the roof, and was reaching with her feet for a grip on the soft wood, he took to the air once more, passing directly in front of her.

She hissed, and followed.

A soft one? Her mate was thinking about a soft one. But how to tell one from the others?

She tried to understand what her mate was asking of her. She understood something about fruit, or the smells of fruit, but when she tried to find out what sort of fruit, her mate became agitated.

At last, she understood what her mate wanted, and thought, if it must be, it must be. And at least it was flying.

Now up, out, upon the currents, treading them, through the overcast, careful not to breathe. Then up higher, higher, and, for the sheer pleasure of it, diving, falling like a stone past the cliff, to catch the air and drift, and glide.

Something like a laugh came from her thoughts, and echoed from her mate.

He found the one they were to watch, and she followed the path he indicated. Yes, that was the one. So be it. A long, dull time would follow, she thought.

She hoped she would be able to stay awake.

Chapter Six

I will not marry a cursing wizard,

I will not marry a cursing wizard,

I’d ask for snow and get a blizzard.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

After breaking his fast, Savn went outside. He looked at the stubble that covered almost every field in sight, his view interrupted only by the bins and the outbuildings. The soil looked lumpy and harsh, and somehow more brown than it had in the spring, though he had been told that was just his imagination.

It seemed such a short time ago that he had come out here and seen the little flowers everywhere, most of them blue, a few areas of pink or white. But now it looked almost like a wasteland, save for the long, narrow strip that ran next to the road, where the densely packed flax stood as high as his waist. It was here that he and his sister would be working today. Mae and Pae had already finished the chores and were out among the flax plants, working from the west, and Polyi was holding the small reaper and waiting for him.

It was a fresh, cool day, and the air felt dry and clean. It was a good day to work; he hated the early part of the harvest most, because everything seemed twice as hard when it was hot. Rain was almost as bad, but it didn’t feel like rain today, and there was no greying of the orange-red sky, so perhaps they’d continue to be lucky with the weather.

He took a couple of the long cloth bags from under the porch, shook them and turned them inside out, then nodded to his sister.

“We’re almost done,” she said.

“I know. Today, or maybe tomorrow.”

Polyi, hands on her hips and scythe leaning against her side, twisted in place a couple of times, as if to loosen muscles that were already tired. Savn rolled his shoulders and put his lyorn-skin gloves on. His hands would be hot and sweaty in half an hour, but blisters, as he well knew, would be worse. <

He said, “Let’s get to it.” They headed out to the last field.

Savn collected the plants into sacks while his sister went ahead of him with the reaper. They fell into the rhythm easily—which was important. If they didn’t, Savn would have had to pick the plants up off the ground, which was hard on his back and took much longer. But by now they knew each other, so that as Polyi swung the tool for each cut, the plant would fall neatly into Savn’s gloved hand, and then he would take a half-step backward in order to miss the back sweep. He didn’t have to watch either his hands or the plants—only his sister, to be certain that if for any reason the rhythm changed he would be able to avoid the sharp blade. He knew well what could happen if he looked away at the wrong time—he had helped Master Wag patch up three people this harvest.

It was boring drudge-work, but also easy and satisfying now that they had the system worked out, and he could hear the steady shhhick, shhhick as Mae and Pae worked from the other end. Soon—probably tomorrow, he decided, they would meet, and that would be the end of the harvest for this year. Then Mae and Pae would prepare the ground for the winter, and next year they would start all over again, and the next year, and the next, until the day Savn would begin earning money as a physicker himself, either in Smallcliff or elsewhere. Then there would be a few lean years before he could afford to send enough money back to pay for the work he could not do, but after that Mae and Pae would be able to hire someone, and after that he could begin saving, until he had so much money that he’d be able to travel, and—

When did I decide I wanted to travel? he asked himself.

Well, he wasn’t sure he did want to, come to that, but he remembered when he had begun thinking about it—it was while he was standing outside his house, and the night had seemed to speak to him of distant places. He remembered his own question of Vlad, which had seemed to impress the Easterner: are you running to something or away from something? If he, Savn, were to leave, would he be leaving his family, or searching for more? Would he be deserting his home, or would he be setting out to find adventure and fortune? Had the Easterner inspired all of these thoughts? Was the Easterner somehow responsible for the experience he’d had on that strange, wonderful evening? I don’t care what they say, I’ll bet he didn’t kill Reins.

They finished the row and began on the next, and so the morning passed. When it was nearly noon, their rhythm was broken by Pae, who whistled through his fingers to signal that Savn and Polyi were finished for the day.

As they walked back to the house, Polyi said, “Do you think they’ll finish without us?”

Savn looked back at what remained to be done and said, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”

Polyi nodded. “Me, too. Shall we go to Tern’s house today?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t wait for me yesterday, you know.”

“I didn’t? That’s right, I didn’t. I guess I was thinking about other things.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Things. Anyway, today we’ll go there.”

Savn bathed, and as he’d promised, waited for his sister, and the two of them set off for Tern’s house. They spoke little as they walked, although it seemed to Savn that a couple of times Polyi started to say or ask something, then sky, so perhaps they’d continue to be lucky with the weather.

He took a couple of the long cloth bags from under the porch, shook them and turned them inside out, then nodded to his sister.

“We’re almost done,” she said.

“I know. Today, or maybe tomorrow.”

Polyi, hands on her hips and scythe leaning against her side, twisted in place a couple of times, as if to loosen muscles that were already tired. Savn rolled his shoulders and put his lyorn-skin gloves on. His hands would be hot and sweaty in half an hour, but blisters, as he well knew, would be worse. ¦

He said, “Let’s get to it.” They headed out to the last field.

Savn collected the plants into sacks while his sister went ahead of him with the reaper. They fell into the rhythm easily—which was important. If they didn’t, Savn would have had to pick the plants up off the ground, which was hard on his back and took much longer. But by now they knew each other, so that as Polyi swung the tool for each cut, the plant would fall neatly into Savn’s gloved hand, and then he would take a half-step backward in order to miss the back sweep. He didn’t have to watch either his hands or the plants—only his sister, to be certain that if for any reason the rhythm changed he would be able to avoid the sharp blade. He knew well what could happen if he looked away at the wrong time—he had helped Master Wag patch up three people this harvest.

It was boring drudge-work, but also easy and satisfying now that they had the system worked out, and he could hear the steady shhhick, shhhick as Mae and Pae worked from the other end. Soon—probably tomorrow, he decided, they would meet, and that would be the end of the harvest for this year. Then Mae and Pae would prepare the ground for the winter, and next year they would start all over again, and the next year, and the next, until the day Savn would begin earning money as a physicker himself, either in Smallcliff or elsewhere. Then there would be a few lean years before he could afford to send enough money back to pay for the work he could not do, but after that Mae and Pae would be able to hire someone, and after that he could begin saving, until he had so much money that he’d be able to travel, and—

When did I decide I wanted to travel? he asked himself.

Well, he wasn’t sure he did want to, come to that, but he remembered when he had begun thinking about it—it was while he was standing outside his house, and the night had seemed to speak to him of distant places. He remembered his own question of Vlad, which had seemed to impress the Easterner: are you running to something or away from something? If he, Savn, were to leave, would he be leaving his family, or searching for more? Would he be deserting his home, or would he be setting out to find adventure and fortune? Had the Easterner inspired all of these thoughts? Was the Easterner somehow responsible for the experience he’d had on that strange, wonderful evening? I don’t care what they say, I’ll bet he didn’t kill Reins.

They finished the row and began on the next, and so the morning passed. When it was nearly noon, their rhythm was broken by Pae, who whistled through his fingers to signal that Savn and Polyi were finished for the day.

As they walked back to the house, Polyi said, “Do you think they’ll finish without us?”

Savn looked back at what remained to be done and said, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”

Polyi nodded. “Me, too. Shall we go to Tern’s house today?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t wait for me yesterday, you know.”

“I didn’t? That’s right, I didn’t. I guess I was thinking about other things.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Things. Anyway, today we’ll go there.”

Savn bathed, and as he’d promised, waited for his sister, and the two of them set off for Tern’s house. They spoke little as they walked, although it seemed to Savn that a couple of times Polyi started to say or ask something, then thought better of it. Eventually she started singing “Dung-Foot Peasant,” and, after a verse or two, Savn joined in, changing pronouns as appropriate. He hadn’t heard it in some time, and laughed at a few of the verses that had been added since he was his sister’s age. He also sang her a few verses that had apparently been forgotten, and he was pleased that she liked them.

When they reached Tern’s house, Vlad was not in evidence, but there was the usual noon crowd, and Savn noticed that he was receiving some odd looks from many of them. Polyi noticed it, too.

“Do you see that?” she said. “The way they look at you? They’re wondering why you’ve been spending so much time with that Easterner.”

Savn quickly looked around, but no one was looking at him just at the moment. “Are they really?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.” He shrugged. “Let them wonder, then.”

“Well, what are you doing?”

“I’m learning things.”

“Like what?”

“Like, um, like how to catch gems in the wind—no, I mean, catch water in, um—oh, never mind. I’m learning stuff.”

Polyi frowned, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say, which was perfectly all right with Savn. He quickly finished his salad, said goodbye to his sister, and headed off to Master Wag.

On the way, it occurred to him that the sharpness of sensation that he’d felt the evening before was gone. He wondered if it was something that would return as he became more adept in this strange art he had begun to study.

The Master was in better spirits today, puttering around his small house (which had seemed much larger a year before, when Savn had begun studying with him) scattering bits of history with explanations of both the general and the particular. Savn wondered if he had solved the problem of Rein’s death, but decided that, if so, the Master would speak of it in his own time, and if not, he had best not bring the subject up.

And in fact, Master Wag made no mention of it during the entire day, most of which Savn spent cleaning up the Master’s house and listening to the Master’s stories and lectures—a pastime Savn rather enjoyed, even though once Master Wag began to speak he soon lost track of his audience and went far beyond Savn’s knowledge and understanding.

He’s quite a bit like Vlad, he thought, then wondered why the notion disturbed him.

Toward the end of the day, the Master had him recite the questions, conclusions, and appropriate cures for various sorts of stomach ailments, and seemed quite pleased with Savn’s answers, although, actually, Savn left out stabbing pains in the side, and the questions that would lead to a dose of pomegranate seeds to ease an attack of kidney stones.

Master Wag was standing in front of Savn, who was seated on the stool with his back to the hearth; there was a low fire which was just on the edge of being too warm. As the Master finished his explanation, he said, “So, what have you been thinking about, Savn?”

“Master?”

“You’ve had something on your mind all day. What is it?”

Savn frowned. He hadn’t, in point of fact, realized that he had been thinking about something. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Is it our friend Reins?” the Master prompted.

“Maybe.”

“Well, it’s nothing for you to worry about, in any case. I still don’t know what he died of, but I haven’t quit looking, either.”

Savn didn’t say anything.

Master Wag stared at him with his intense gaze, as if he were looking around inside of Savn’s skull. “What is it?” he said.

“How do you know what to believe?” said Savn, who was surprised to hear himself ask the question.

Master Wag sat down opposite Savn and leaned back. “That is quite a question,” he said. “Care to tell me what it springs from?”

Savn found that, on the one hand, he couldn’t dissemble when the Master was staring at him so, but on the other hand, he wasn’t certain of the answer. At last he said, “I’ve been wondering. Some people say one thing, others say another—”

“Who’s been saying what, about what?”

“Well, my friends think that the Easterner had something to do with Reins’s death, and he says—”

“Rubbish,” said Master Wag, but in a tone that was not unkind. “Your friends know nothing, and the Easterner is not to be believed.

“On the other hand,” Wag continued, “that doesn’t answer your question. The way to tell what is true is simply to keep your eyes and ears open, and to use your head. That’s all there is to it.”

Savn nodded, although he felt as if his question hadn’t really been answered. But then, was Master Wag really the person to answer the question at all? He knew about helping people who were ill, but what need did he have to wonder about what truth was? He could ask Bless, but Bless would only tell him to trust the gods, and Speaker would tell him to trust what Speaker himself said.

But then, he wondered, what need did he, Savn, have to think about any of this, either? To this there was no answer, but it didn’t help. He discovered that he wanted very badly to talk to Vlad again, although he wondered if trusting the Easterner too much would be a mistake.

He said, “Thank you, Master. Is there anything else?”

“No, no. Run on home now. And don’t worry so much.”

“I won’t, Master.”

He stepped out into the warm autumn afternoon and immediately began running back toward town, wishing he could teleport. That would be best, he thought. All this time I spend getting from place to place, I could just be there. He wondered if he could convince Vlad to show him how that was done. Probably not, he decided. Most likely it was too difficult, in any case.

Soon enough he was there, and, almost to his surprise, he found Vlad right away, sitting in Tern’s house drinking wine and watching the door, as if he was waiting for Savn, and the smile he gave seemed to confirm this. There were three or four familiar faces as well, but no one Savn felt the need to speak to.

He sat down with the Easterner and gave him a good day, which Vlad returned, and offered to buy him a glass of ale. Savn accepted. Vlad signaled Tem, and Savn couldn’t help but notice the glance the Housemaster gave him as he set the ale down. He wondered if he should be annoyed, and concluded that he didn’t really care.

When Tem had returned to his place behind the counter, Savn said, “I’ve been thinking about our lesson all day. Can you show me some more?”

“Certainly,” said Vlad. “But are you sure you want to be seen with me so much?”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you notice the looks you’ve been getting?’

“I guess I have,” said Savn. “I noticed it earlier today, too, when I was here with my sister. But why?”

“Because you’re with me.”

“Why do they care about that?”

“Either because I’m an Easterner or because they still think I had something to do with the death of Reins.”

“Oh. But you didn’t, did you?”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” said Vlad.

Savn stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t kill him,” said Vlad. “But that doesn’t mean I had nothing to do with his death.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As I said before, I doubt it’s coincidence.”

“I wish,” said Savn slowly, “Master Wag could have learned what killed him.”

“Your Master has failed?”

Savn considered the Master’s words about not having given up, and he said, “Yes. He doesn’t know.”

“Then I do.”

Savn felt his eyes growing wide. “What?”

“I know what killed him.”

“How could you?”

“Because Master Wag failed. That is all the information I need.”

“But, well, what was it?”

“Sorcery.”

Savn shook his head. “Master Wag said that sorcery leaves traces.”

“Certainly, if used in a simple, straightforward way, such as causing the heart to stop, or inducing a hemorrhage, or in a way that leaves a visible wound.”

“But, then, what happened to him?”

“Do you know what necromancy is?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Necromancy, in its most basic form, is simply the magic of death—those particular forces that are released when a living thing passes from existence. There are those who study ways to cheat death, ways to extend or simulate life, attempting to erase the difference between life and death. And some study the soul, that which exists after the death of the body, and where it goes, which leads to the study of other worlds, of places that cannot normally be reached and those beings who live there, such as gods and demons, and the forces that operate between worlds, places where life meets unlife, where reality is whim, and Truth dances to the drum of desire, where—”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, sorry. I was rambling. The point is, a skilled necromancer would be able to simply send a soul into limbo, without doing anything that would actually kill the person.”

“And the person would just die?”

“Usually.”

“Usually? What happens the rest of the time?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter in this case, anyway. A necromancer could achieve the effect you saw in Reins.”

“What about the horse?”

“What about it?”

“Well, it bolted, as if it were afraid of something.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Animals are often very sensitive to magic. Especially the dumber beasts.” There was something odd in the way he said that, as if he were sharing a joke with himself.

Savn thought all of this over, and said, “But who—T

“Loraan, of course. I mean, Baron Smallcliff. He is a necromancer. Moreover, he is undead himself, which proves that he is a skilled necromancer, if I hadn’t known it before.”

“Undead? You want me to believe His Lordship is a vampire?”

“A vampire? Hmmm. Maybe. Do you know of any cases of mysterious death, blood drained, all that?”

“No. If something like that happened around here, I’d have heard of it.”

“So perhaps he is not a vampire. Although that proves nothing. Sethra is a vampire, but she still eats and drinks, and requires very little blood.”

“Who?”

“An old friend.”

“I think I’ve heard of her,” said Savn. “Although I can’t remember from where.”

“Doubtless just someone with the same name.”

“I suppose. But do you really know a vampire?”

“An odd one. Never mind. Still, I wonder what he is—”

“What other sorts of undead are there?”

“I’m not an expert on the subject. Perhaps dear Lord Smallcliff will let me use his library to look it up.”

“But then you could just ask him.”

“I wasn’t serious,” said Vlad.

“Oh. I can’t believe His Lordship is undead.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because, uh, I just can’t.”

“I understand,” said Vlad. “All your life there are people you just assume you can trust, yet you don’t really know them. Then, out of nowhere, someone walks up to you and asks you to believe that one of them is some kind of monster. I wouldn’t believe it either. At least, not without a lot more proof than you’ve seen.”

Savn stared at him, not certain what to say. He seemed to be talking to himself, and, once more, Savn felt the undercurrent of hatred in the Easterner’s voice.

“That’s how they do it, that’s how they get away with everything, because it’s so much easier just to go along with what you’re told than to look at—” He caught himself, as if aware that he had left his listener far behind.

For a moment he seemed to be thinking about trying to explain; then he shrugged. “Believe it or not, as you will. What I want to know is what the son of—uh, what the fellow has planned. The coincidence, as I said, is too great. He can’t just kill me the way he killed Reins, so—”

“Huh? He wants to kill you?”

“He does indeed. But I’m protected rather better than Reins was.”

“Oh. But why would he want to kill you at all?”

“He has reasons.”

Savn thought about this. “So, what is he going to do?’ he asked.

“I wish,” said Vlad, “that I had some means of figuring that out. There’s probably no point in running once things have gone this far. Besides, I owe him, for Reins.”

“You owe him? You said something about that before. What do you mean?”

Vlad shrugged. “I was mostly talking to myself. But 1 just wish I knew what he was planning.”

“Can’t witchcraft tell you?”

“It’s not very useful for seeing the future.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Maybe.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Try to find out,” said Vlad. “Ihave other ways. Sometimes they even work.”

He stared off into the distance, as if he were communing with things unseen.

Chapter Seven

I will not marry a poor musician,

I will not marry a poor musician.

He’d be playing and I’d be wishin’

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

Vlad toyed with his salad but ate little, either because he didn’t like the taste or because he was thinking of other things. Savn ate his own salad with, if no great delight, at least considerable appetite.

Savn felt Vlad watching him, which made him slightly nervous as he squeezed an expensive piece of lemon over the cheese and vegetables, put another handful of salad into his mouth, and wiped his hand on his shirt. The Easterner sighed. “I know a place,” he said, “where one could eat every day for half a year and never taste the same dish twice. Where the servers are discreet and efficient; you never noticed them, but there is always a full plate in front of you and wine in your glass. Where the room is quiet and serene and tasteful, calling the diner’s attention to the delight of the tongue. Where the appetizer is fresh, enticing and excites the senses like the first touches of love. Where the fruit is sweet and plump, or tart and crisp, and complements the cheese as the salad complements the bread—with reverence and solemn joy. Where there is a choice of wine to suit the most diverse taste, yet each has been selected with care, and tenderness. Where each meat is treated with the honor it deserves, and is allowed to unfold its own flavor in the natural juices the gods gave it, with touches of savory, ginger, or tarragon added to direct the attention of the palate to the hidden joys which are unique to that particular cut. Do you know what I am saying? A place where the mushroom and the onion dance with the wine and the peppers in sauces that fire the palate, and the sweet at the end of the meal is the encore to a symphony of the heart. Where—”

“You don’t much like the food here, do you?” said Savn.

“—there is quiet and ease, with only that conversation that flows like the wine from the bottle, easy and natural, and all else, save the sounds of dining, is the silence that food requires for—”

“There isn’t any music? I thought the best taverns had music.”

Vlad sighed and returned from his reverie. “No, there is no music. I don’t like music when I eat. Although,” he added, “I must admit that, here, music would be a welcome distraction.”

“Well, you are likely to get your wish. There will probably be someone arriving today or tomorrow. There hasn’t been a minstrel in several days, and there are usually one or two a week. Besides, harvest is almost over, and they always show up around the end of harvest.”

“Indeed?” said Vlad, sounding suddenly interested. “A minstrel? Good.”

“Why?”

“I like minstrels,” said Vlad.

“You mean you like to listen to them, or they are the sort of people you like?”

“Both, actually.”

“You’ve known minstrels, then?”

“Several.”

“I didn’t know they had them in the big cities.”

“Just about anything you can find outside the city you can find in it as well.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Vlad looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, “Although there are exceptions.”

Savn returned to his salad, while waiting for Vlad to continue. When the Easterner did not do so, Savn swallowed and said, “What are the exceptions?”

“What? Oh. Peace and quiet, for example,” said Vlad. “You don’t know how pleasant these things are unless you’ve gone most of your life without them. Do you know, when I left the city I had trouble sleeping for quite a while, just because I wasn’t used to the silence.”

“That seems odd.”

“Yes, it seems odd to me, too.”

“When did you leave?”

“Shortly after the Uprising.”

“What uprising?”

Vlad granted him another indecipherable look, this one a quick frown. He said, “There was some trouble in the city with the Easterners and the Teckla.”

“Oh,” said Savn. “Yes. I heard something about that. Didn’t some traitors kill Her Majesty’s personal guards and try to kidnap her?”

“Not exactly,” said Vlad.

“Wait a minute,” said Savn. “Were you involved in that? Is that why you had to—”

“No,” said Vlad. “I was involved, I suppose, but only in trying to stay out of the way.”

“Well, what did happen?”

Vlad shook his head. “For the most part, I don’t know. There was almost a war, and there was conscription, and there was blood, and then it was over.”

“What’s conscription?”

“When they put you in the army or the navy and send you off to fight.”

“Oh. I should like that, I think.”

Vlad gave him another quick glance, then almost smiled, and said, “I wouldn’t know, myself. I’ve never been in the army.”

“Well, but you’ve killed people. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

Vlad laughed briefly. “Good question. There are soldiers who would disagree with you. I tend to think you’re right, though. Who’s to say?”

“I used to dream about being a soldier,” said Savn.

“Did you? That seems odd. On the one hand a soldier, on the other a physicker.”

“Well, but ... I see what you mean. But when I wanted to be a soldier it was, I don’t know, different.”

“I know,” said Vlad. “When one dreams of being a soldier, one imagines killing the enemy but not seeing the enemy bleed. Or seeing friends bleed, for that matter.”

Savn nodded slowly. “I was young and—” He shrugged and smiled a little. “I thought the uniforms looked so nice.”

“And the idea,” said Vlad, “of getting away from here?”

“Maybe, though I never thought about it that way. Have you ever known a soldier?”

“I’ve known warriors,” said Vlad.

“What’s the difference?”

“Another good question. I’m not sure, but that’s how they described themselves.”

“What were they like?”

“Arrogant, but not unpleasantly so.”

“Did they frighten you?”

Vlad laughed. “At one time or another, nearly everyone I’ve ever known has frightened me.”

“Even your friends?”

“Especially my friends. But then, I’ve had some unusual friends.”

“Yes, and one of them is a vampire.”

“Indeed.”

“That would frighten me,” said Savn thoughtfully. “There’s something about the idea of someone who should be dead that—You still say His Lordship is undead?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yes.”

Savn shook his head. “I still don’t believe it.”

“I know.”

“How do you talk to someone who’s undead? I mean, isn’t it creepy?”

Vlad shrugged. “You get used to—” He stopped, his eyes straying toward the door. “Ah. You must be prescient. The minstrel, I suppose.”

Savn turned, and, indeed, a lady was just coming in the door to the smiles of Tern and the few patrons of his house. She wore a travel-worn white blouse and pants, with a green vest and a light green cloak. She carried a pack slung at her hip, and hanging at her back were a long-necked kordu and a shiny black horn—or pipe-like instrument that Savn didn’t recognize. Savn thought she was very pretty.

“An Issola,” remarked Vlad.

“Green and white,” agreed Savn. He was always excited when a minstrel arrived, but especially so when it was a noble, because they always had a wider variety of instruments and songs, and could tell stories of what happened in the courts of the highborn.

By whatever magic caused news to spread, people were beginning to drift into Tern’s house already, before the minstrel had finished speaking with Tem, presumably making arrangements for a room and meals in exchange for songs and stories, news and gossip.

Vlad said, “I’m going to have to speak with her, but that can wait.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Minstrels know things.”

“But will she speak to you?”

“Why not? Oh. Because I’m an Easterner? I suspect that won’t be a problem.”

Savn started to ask why, but changed his mind. He was, he decided, beginning to be able to anticipate when he was reaching a subject the Easterner wouldn’t want to discuss. The minstrel finished her discussion with Tem, and, with a surprisingly shy-looking smile directed at everyone present, she went back toward the chambers that Tem let out to travelers. Tem cleared his throat and said, “She’ll be back and play for us in a few minutes, after she’s refreshed herself.” This seemed to be a pleasing prospect to everyone. More and more people drifted into the house.

As they did, Savn couldn’t help but notice that many, perhaps most of them, looked at him sitting with the Easterner, then quickly looked away. He caught a glimpse of what might have been disgust in Fin’s expression, and dark-haired Lova, who was sitting next to Firi, seemed faintly puzzled. Lan and Tuk were sitting together with some of their friends, and, though Tuk only looked at the table in front of him, Lan seemed, for a moment, to be looking at Savn unpleasantly.

For the first time, he began to seriously question whether he ought to be seen with Vlad so much. Vlad looked at him with a slightly amused expression, and Savn wondered if his thoughts were being read. But Vlad said nothing, and presently the minstrel returned.

She had changed to a loose, clean, white blouse with green embroidery, and her leggings were a light, fresh green. Her hair was brown, with a subdued but unmistakable noble’s point, and her eyes, very dark, stood out sharply in contrast to her complexion and clothing. She carried both of her instruments, and set them at a table in the corner that was hastily cleared for her. Her teeth were white when she smiled.

“Greetings, my friends,” she said in a melodic, carrying voice. “My name is Sara. I play the reed-pipe and the kordu, and I sing, and I even know a few stories. If there were a drink in front of me, I might play something.”

The drink was provided quickly. She smiled her thanks and sipped from whatever she’d been given, nodded approval, and poured some of the liquid over the mouthpiece of the long black flute.

“What’s she doing?” whispered Savn.

Vlad shrugged. “It must be good for it. She wouldn’t wreck her own reed.”

“I’ve never seen one of those before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I wonder what it sounds like.”

This question was answered almost at once, when a low, rich dark sound emerged and at once spread as if to fill every corner of the room. She went up and down the scale once or twice and the instrument went both higher and lower than Savn would have guessed. Then she began to play an eerie, arhythmic tune that Savn had never heard; he settled back to enjoy the music. Vlad’s face was expressionless as he studied the minstrel.

She sat on a table, one foot resting on a chair, tapping slowly and steadily, though Savn could not find a rhythm that she might be tapping to. When the tune ended, she played another, this one more normal, and, while Savn couldn’t remember its name, it was very familiar and seemed to please Tern’s guests.

After playing the pipe for a while, she picked up the other instrument, quickly tuned it, and with an expression of sweet innocence, began singing a scandalously bawdy song called “I’ll Never Trust a Shepherd, I’ll Never Trust a Thief,” that, without ever saying anything directly, implied things about her character and pleasures that Savn found unlikely. Everyone pounded on the tables, laughed, and bought Sara more drinks.

After that, she could do no wrong, and when she began singing an old, sweet ballad about Chalara and Auiri, everyone sighed and settled back to become lost in music and sentimentality. In all, she performed for about two hours. Savn liked her singing voice; she chose good songs; and there were stories he had never heard before, as well as some that were as familiar to him as his sister’s face. Eventually Sara stood and bowed to the room at large, making it seem as if she were bowing to every man or woman present. Savn found himself whistling and slapping the table with everyone else. She said, “You are all charming and very kind. With your permission, I will have something to eat, and then, if you wish, I will play again in the evening and tell you what news I have.”

Everyone in the house did, indeed, so wish. Sara bowed again to acknowledge the compliment, and carefully set her instruments down.

For the first time since the minstrel had begun, Savn remembered the Easterner sitting next to him, and said, “Did you enjoy the music?”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes, it was fine,” said Vlad. He was looking quite fixedly at the minstrel, and his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Savn decided against asking what he was thinking about; he sipped his watered wine and looked around the room. Once more he noticed people at other tables surreptitiously glancing at him, at Vlad, or at both of them.

Savn drank slowly and let his mind drift, until, after perhaps a quarter of an hour, Vlad suddenly stood up.

“Are you leaving?” asked Savn.

“No, I wish to speak with this minstrel.”

“Oh.”

Vlad walked over to her. Savn stood up and followed.

“Good evening, my lady,” began Vlad.

The minstrel frowned at him briefly, but said, “And a good evening to you as well.”

“My name is Vlad. May I join you for a moment?” As he spoke, he seemed to show her something in his hand. Savn looked at her face in time to see her eyes widen very briefly.

Then she recovered and said, “By all means. Please sit down. It is a pleasure indeed to meet you, Vlad. Who is your friend?”

“My—” Vlad turned, and Savn realized that the Easterner hadn’t known he’d been followed. For an instant he seemed annoyed, but he only shrugged and said, “His name is Savn.”

“How do you do, Savn?”

Savn found his voice and made a courtesy. “Very well, m’lady.”

“Would you both do me the honor of sitting with me?”

They sat. Vlad said, “Please accept my compliments on your performance.”

“Thank you,” she said. And, to Savn, “You seemed to be enjoying the music a great deal.”

“Oh, I was,” said Savn, while he wondered if the Issola’s remarks contained a hint that she had noticed how little attention Vlad had actually been paying to the music. If so, Vlad gave no sign of it.

“First things first,” said Vlad. He handed her a small piece of paper, folded so that Savn couldn’t read it.

The Issola opened it up, glanced at it, put it into her pouch, and smiled. “Very well, my lord,” she said. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“My lord’? thought Savn, startled. How can an Easterner be ‘my lord’?

“I have a few questions for you. Perhaps you can answer them, perhaps not.”

“I will certainly try,” said the minstrel. “Do you know Baron Smallcliff?”

“Indeed, yes. I gave him a performance yesterday.”

“Excellent.” He paused, thinking, then glanced at Savn. “I wonder,” he said, “if you would be so good as to return to the table, Savn. I’d really rather make this private, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” lied Savn. He stood and gave the minstrel another courtesy. “It has been an honor to meet you, my lady,” he said.

“And a pleasure to meet you, Savn,” said the minstrel.

As Savn walked back to the table he felt that everyone was either staring at him or pointedly not staring at him. He glanced at his friends, and this time there was no mistake; Coral, who was speaking to the others, was at the same time directing a look of unconcealed hatred at Savn.

The feeling of being the center of hostile attention suddenly became so strong that before Savn could reach his seat, he found that he had turned and begun walking toward the door.

And by the time he reached it, he was running.

How long he ran or where he went he did not know, but at last he found that he was lying on the soft grass of a hill, staring up at the dead night sky, breathing in the smell of autumn leaves.

He tried to account for his friends’ behavior, but he couldn’t. He tried to understand his own reaction, his panicked flight, but his mind shied away from the subject.

He thought about going back to Tem’s house and asking his friends to tell him what the problem was. But what if they did? What if, as they were almost certain to do, they berated him for associating with the Easterner? What would he say?

And, for that matter, why was he spending so much time with the Easterner?

He stood up and looked around. He was west of town, not far from Master Wag’s, and quite near the road. The way home would take him past Tem’s house. He thought of taking a long way round, but chided himself for cowardice.

He climbed up to the road and turned toward town. It was late; Mae and Pae would be starting to worry about him soon. He broke into a jog. He passed Tem’s house. It was quiet, and he thought about going in, but quickly rejected the idea; he had no intention of confronting his friends tonight—not until he knew what to say to them.

His lengthening shadow, cast by the lamp from Tem’s, preceded him down the road out of the cluster of buildings he thought of as “town.” As it disappeared, he nearly ran into an indistinct shape that appeared in front of him. He stopped, and the shape resolved itself into several, he thought three or four, individual areas of darkness darker than the night around them. It took the length of two breaths for Savn to realize that they were people.

The panic that had gripped him before was suddenly back, but he resolved not to give in to it. If it was only his imagination at work, he’d look ridiculous if he ran away. And if it wasn’t, running probably wouldn’t help.

“Hi,” he said. “I can’t see who you are.”

There was the sound of soft laughter, and he knew, with stomach-dropping certainty, that his fear was not misplaced.

“Who are you?” he said, trying to think of something to say that might get him out of this.

“We’re your friends,” said a voice he recognized as Coral’s. “We’re your friends, and we want to know why you don’t introduce us to your new buddy?”

Savn found that he had some difficulty swallowing. “You want to meet him? Sure. I mean, he’s just a guy. You’d like him. Why don’t we—”

“Shut up,” said Coral, and, at the same time, someone pushed Savn.

He said, “Coral? Look—”

“Shut up,” repeated Coral.

He was pushed again, this time so hard that he fell over. His fall was cause for more laughter. He wondered who else was there. He thought uncomfortably about how big Lan was.

He thought about trying to run, then, but one of the three was bound to catch him, and it would probably make it worse if he tried to run. He stood up slowly, trying to think of something to do, and not succeeding.

Coral called him a name and waited. Savn didn’t do anything. He was sent sprawling once more, and once more he got up. He thought about charging them, but he couldn’t make himself do it; some part of him kept hoping that they’d be satisfied just to push him around a bit, although he knew the hope was vain.

Then the boy next to Coral called him another name, and Savn recognized Lan’s voice. He guessed the third to be Lan’s brother Tuk, and this was confirmed in a moment.

Savn stood and waited, feeling as if none of this could really be happening. Someone pushed him yet again; then someone else pushed him, and this continued for a dizzying time until he fell to the ground again. He wondered what would happen if he just lay there, and decided they’d probably kick him. He stood up slowly, wondering in a distant way if they could see him well enough to hit him. Then someone punched him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and doubling him over. Answers that question, he thought, beginning to feel as if he were somewhere else.

“Here, let me,” said Lan, and Savn waited.

* * *

Her mate was trying to tell her there was a problem, and she didn’t understand what he meant-. Well, she understood the part about there being a problem, but not what it was. She tried to tell her mate this, and he, in turn, got confused.

They wheeled about in the sky.

After a time, he managed to convey what he wanted, if not why he, or, rather, the Provider, wanted it done. She didn’t have any real objection, but she didn’t understand how they were to tell one of them from the others.

Her mate seemed to think that this didn’t matter, that things would work out anyway. This was somewhat puzzling, but she trusted him.

He led her through the sky, below the overcast.

On the ground, a grey wildcat prowled the night, leaving her nest briefly unattended. She called her mate’s attention to this, but he insisted that this other matter, whatever it was, should be attended to first.

They came to a place, and through the darkness, she became aware of a group of animals, much like the Provider himself, huddled together as if in a herd.

They circled, and, after a time, it began to look as if one was being singled out by the others, either to be driven off, or to be mated with, or for some other reason. Was that the one? she wondered. No, all of the others.

Very well, then. Now?

Now.

They flew down together. She felt her wings cup the air, and she was suddenly very close to one of them, his face white and ugly in front of her—

And, her mate insisted in her mind, they were not to bite. How could she not bite? How?

Very well, she would do her best for him.

She hissed and veered away, looking for another, but the others were already running away. Would her mate allow pursuit? Yes, he would allow pursuit. A little, at any rate. She set off after them.

When her mate thought they had frightened them enough, she pulled up, swirled around her lover, held her breath, and they climbed above the overcast once more, taken again by the sudden beauty of the countless stars. They danced there for a while, laughing together, then turned to where the Provider waited for them with, her mate told her, his thanks.

Just his thanks? Wasn’t there, something tasty to go along with his thanks?

Of course. Wasn’t there always?

Chapter Eight

I will not many a guzzling drinker,

I will not marry a guzzling drinker.

He’d be no lover and no thinker.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

Savn stepped into the house, shutting the chill out behind him. The fire on the hearth had died down to coals, but the stove was still giving off heat. It seemed very safe; but he didn’t feel any sense of relief. This was strange, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t felt frightened—that he hadn’t felt much of anything.

“Where have you been?” said Mae, in a dim, distracted sort of way, as if she expected a reasonable answer, and would be satisfied with almost anything.

Even while Savn was wondering what to say, he heard his own voice explaining, “A minstrel showed up at Tern’s house, so I stopped and listened to her.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Mae said. “Perhaps tomorrow, after the harvest is done, we’ll all go together. Was she good?”

“Yes, Mae,” said Savn, wondering how he was managing to answer.

“Well, go to bed now. Your sister’s already asleep, and we have a big day tomorrow.”

“I will, Mae.”

Pae listened to this mild interrogation with abstracted interest, and made no comment.

There is much that I do not understand, thought Savn, looking at Mae and Pae. Everything has changed somehow, and nothing makes sense anymore. Why don’t I care? What is happening to them? What is happening to me?

Savn found his place next to Polyi, who was already asleep. He got into his nightclothes and crawled in among the furs, warmed by the low fire in the stove. It was starting to get chilly at night. Funny he hadn’t noticed it earlier this evening. Or maybe not; he’d been occupied with—with other things.

He lay back and stared at the ceiling, his thoughts running in circles like mating tsalmoth.

Tomorrow morning would see the end of the harvest. Then would come the Festival. Then would come ... what?

He didn’t want to stay in Smallcliff anymore, but the idea of leaving was dim, impossible, unreal—as unreal as the experience outside the house, as unreal as those things he’d learned from the Easterner, as unreal as what had happened that night. He was caught between leaving and staying, but the choice was somewhere off in the distance. The idea of the morning was also dim, impossible, and unreal. And the day that was ending could not have happened. Maybe it was a dream. He’d have to tell Coral about it....

Coral ... the jhereg ... the same ones? Vlad ... What do you do when nothing makes sense? Stare at the ceiling and watch it dissolve into wavy lines, and wonder if your future is engraved therein.

Savn slept, and if he dreamed, he had no memory of it. The next thing he knew it had become morning, and with the morning came the familiar sounds of everyone stirring around and the smell of the tea that Pae, always the first one up, brewed fresh for the family every morning. Savn’s arms were stiff and sore; he had fallen asleep with them locked behind his head. He made fists and shook his arms, then stared at his hands as if they were not part of him. He remembered that Vlad had looked in the same way at his maimed hand.

Everything had an odd, ethereal feel, as if time had become disconnected. Savn stood outside the house and realized that he didn’t remember breaking his fast, yet he felt the warmth of the bread in his stomach. Later he stood behind Polyi, holding a sack, and didn’t remember getting there, nor how the sack had become so full.

Pae was in the bins, already beginning to seed and strip the plants, preparing to send them off to town, while Mae was counting and weighing the sacks in order to make the account, so Savn and Polyi were alone in the field. Occasionally Polyi would say something, and Savn would realize a little later that he had answered, but he had no memory of the conversation.

They finished the harvest, and he hardly noticed. Polyi cut the last plant, Savn put it in the half-full sack, tied it, and hauled it in to Pae. There had been no need for such caution; it hadn’t rained. But then, if they’d neglected to store everything in the bin, it probably would have. Was that really true? Was anything really true?

Savn set the sack next to the full ones. He felt Polyi standing behind him. Pae looked at the sack, and gave Savn a smile which he felt himself responding to.

“That’s it,” said Polyi.

“Well,” said Pae, standing, his knees cracking. He wiped his hands on his leggings, and said, “Fetch the bottle, then. You know where it is.”

He’s an old man, thought Savn suddenly. But that thought, too, was distant.

“Mae’s getting it already,” said Polyi. “Are we going to drink it here?” She looked around the bin, full of sacks. The smell of linseed oil seemed to hang in the air.

“Why not?” said Pae. “Well, perhaps we can step out into the air.”

It’s odd, thought Savn, that none of them think I’m acting strange. Even Polyi didn’t notice while we were working. Maybe I’m not acting strange at all. Maybe I just feel funny, and no one can tell.

Mae came in with the bottle and four of the special mugs, set on the silver tray. She unwrapped the top, pulled the wax from the bottle’s mouth, and handed it to Pae to pour. Savn was keenly aware of the faded black lettering against the green label, and found himself wondering who had written that label—Was it done where the wine was made? Who made the bottle? Did he live in a big city somewhere? Did he ever wonder who would buy the bottle, and what would go in it, and who would drink from it? For that matter, Savn thought, where does all of this flax go? That last plant we cut down, what will happen to it? Will the fiber be thrown away, or turned into linen? What will the linen be used for? Sheets? Perhaps a gown for a lady? Who will wear it? The seeds will be turned into oil blocks, and then it will be put in the coolhouse, and then packed into barrels and sent somewhere. Who will use that bit of oil? And for what? Probably it will be made into linseed meal to feed the livestock. Or maybe given to His Lordship to sell. His Lordship ... Could he really be undead?

Savn shuddered, and became aware that he was now back in the house, standing in a huddle with Mae, Pae, and Polyi, and that the ritual wine-drinking had ended, and he felt a dim sadness that he hadn’t been aware of it—he only knew he had participated from the sting on his tongue, the cool ceramic in his hand, and the faint ring of half-remembered words in his ear. He recalled the end of harvest from all the other years, and the memories blended together as tears threatened to come to his eyes, but even this sadness was far removed from where he drifted, in the center of his emotions but not part of them. “I can’t believe it’s over,” he said. “Hunh,” said Mae, who was drinking while sitting on the cushions below the loft. “It’s over for you, perhaps, but we still have to—”

“None of that, Mae,” said Savn’s father. “The hard part is over, and the children can enjoy themselves today.”

Savn wondered if they’d still be “the children” when they had survived a millennium and had children of their own. Probably. He made a note to himself, for the hun—

dredth time, not to refer to his own children that way after they reached their sixtieth year. Well, seventieth, maybe. On reflection, he had been pretty young at seventy.

After eating, for which they allowed a good, long time, and after the dishes had been cleaned, Savn and Polyi took a slow walk around what had been the garden, jumping from stone to stone and playing sticks and bricks. Polyi chatted about how sore she was, and how she hadn’t even noticed at the time, and about how it was such a shame that by the time harvest was over it was too late to swim, and did he remember the sweater she’d been working on all summer, and did he think the color was right for her. Savn said that this was the first harvest he remembered where he wasn’t sore afterwards, and attributed it to the way he’d spent most of the summer rearranging Master Wag’s house, and that he, too, would enjoy swimming, and did Polyi know a girl named Lova and what did she think of her.

It was, in all, one of the most pleasant mornings Savn had had since summer, and he felt sad that he wasn’t really there to enjoy it.

He heard Polyi suggesting that they go to Tern’s house early; she had heard that a minstrel had arrived last night. Savn heard himself agreeing. Tern’s house? Yes, there will be a minstrel. And Vlad will be there, and perhaps Coral and Tuk and Lan. Why aren’t I afraid?

Mae and Pae didn’t mind their leaving early.

What had Pae said? Something about having done well this year. Savn put the big kettle over the fire to prepare bath water for himself and Polyi, then stood in the door, looking out over the stubble of the harvested fields, and a little later he realized that he was now wearing clean clothes, and his hair smelled of soap. Polyi was saying that she was ready to go, and asking if Savn was.

He shook his head, as if he could clear it of whatever strange mood had fallen upon him, then nodded to Polyi. She looked slightly puzzled, then seemed to forget about it as they set off for town.

The morning was still bright around them, the air cool with the promise of autumn. The red, yellow, and gold of the leaves, already starting to fall, exploded all about them as they walked. Polyi sang “Dung-Foot Peasant,” and didn’t seem to notice that Savn wasn’t joining in.

They passed the place where, as near as he could guess, he had been attacked the night before by his best friends. Why aren’t I afraid?

As they came into town, Savn noticed Bless on the other side of the street, along with his apprentice, Ori. Ori was looking at them, but then he looked away and said something to Bless, who glanced at them quickly, took Ori by the shoulder, and turned him in the other direction while saying something in his ear. Why don’t I care?

Polyi had not noticed them, which seemed odd, too; Polyi, like all the other girls in town, always noticed Ori.

Maybe it’s a disease, and I’ve given it to Mae and Pae and Polyi. I could ask Master Wag. Only I won’t. Perhaps I

should ask Bless, but I don’t think he wants to talk to me.

Tern’s house was empty except for Tern and Vlad, the one behind his counter, the other at the far end of the room. The minstrel was not in sight. Savn looked at the Easterner, and found that he had begun to tremble.

“What is it, Savn?” said Polyi.

So, she’s noticing something, he thought. “Nothing. I don’t feel well.”

“Here, sit down.”

“Yes.”

Vlad was not looking at him.

He realized, and wondered why it had taken him so long, that the Easterner had, somehow, been responsible for the two jhereg who had chased Coral, Lan, and Tuk away last night. Yes. It had really happened. They were going to beat him—had actually hit him—and then there was the flapping, and the small, horrible shapes, wings dark in the darkness. It had been real. It had all been real. And, somehow, the Easterner had done it. Polyi went to fetch ale for him and watered wine for herself while Savn sat and trembled. To have such power ...

He glanced at Vlad, but the Easterner was sitting back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as if deep in thought. Savn’s intention had been to ignore Vlad; and if Vlad had even looked at him, he would have been able to do it. But it was as if Vlad, by ignoring him, was saying, “I understand that you don’t want to be seen with me, and it’s all right.” And that was something Savn would hate.

Polyi came back and set a glass down in front of him. He stood up and said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and walked over to Vlad’s table. The Easterner glanced up at him, then looked away as if he didn’t recognize him.

Savn hesitated, then sat down.

Vlad looked at him again. “Good morning,” he said. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“Harvest is done,” said Savn. “We finished early.”

“Congratulations. I suppose there will be a festival before too long.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll enjoy that, I think.”

“Yes.”

Vlad looked at him closely, his eyes narrow. “What is it?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Crap. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I feel funny.”

“Funny, how?”

“Disconnected.”

“Mram. How long have you had this feeling?”

Savn suddenly wanted to laugh, because Vlad was sounding like Master Wag. He did not laugh, however. He said, “I guess since this morning. No, last night, I suppose.”

Vlad nodded, slowly, still watching Savn’s face. “It’ll pass,” he said. “I know the feeling. Believe me, I know the feeling.”

Savn whispered, “Why did you do it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He cleared his throat. “Why did they do it?”

“Do what?” said Vlad.

Savn tried to find some indication in the Easterner’s face that he knew what Savn was talking about, but Vlad seemed to be frankly inquiring. “My friends tried to be beat me last night.”

“Oh,” said Vlad. “I’m sorry.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” said Vlad. “Fear, perhaps.”