Wisdom of the Fox

II

Gerin paced between the benches in the great hall, making Rihwin and Van and Drago move out of the way. "One of those three must have snatched him," he said: "Diviciacus or Tassilo or Otes. I can't believe Duren would go wandering off where we couldn't find him, not of his own accord."

"If you're right, Captain, we've eaten up a lot of the day looking around here," Van said.

"I know," Gerin answered unhappily. "I'll go out and send others in chariots as well, even so; if Dyaus and the other gods are kind, one of us will catch up with our-guests." He spat the last word. Guest-friendship was sacred; those who violated it could expect a long, unhappy time in the afterlife. Unfortunately, though, fear of that didn't paralyze all rogues.

"Who'd want to steal a little boy?" Drago the Bear growled. His big hands moved in the air as if closing round a neck.

Gerin's more agile wits had already started pursuing that one. " Diviciacus might, to give Adiatunnus a hold on me," he said. "I don't think Adiatunnus would have ordered it-who could guess ahead of time if the chance would come up?-but I don't think he'd turn down a gift like that if it fell into his lap."

"Duren might give him a hold for now, but he'd get nothing but grief from you later," Van said.

"Aye, but since I turned him down for a joint move on Aragis, he's liable to think he'd get only grief from me anyhow," the Fox answered, thinking, He's liable to be right, too. Aloud, he went on, "Speaking of Aragis, Otes the jeweler came from his lands. And Aragis might not turn down a hold on me, either."

"You're right there, too," Drago said, making more choking motions.

"You're leaving out Tassilo," Van said.

"I know." Gerin kicked aside a dog-gnawed bone. "I can't think of any reason he'd want to harm me."

"I can," Rihwin the Fox said.

"Can you indeed?" Gerin said, surprised. "What is it?"

Rihwin coughed; his smoothly handsome face went a couple of shades pinker than usual. "You'll recall, lord, that when last you made the acquaintance of this Tassilo, I was in the process of, ah, disqualifying myself from marrying the fair Elise. I hadn't tasted wine in too long, you understand."

"Disgracing yourself is more like it," Van said, blunt as usual. Gloriously drunk, Rihwin had stood on his head on a table at Ricolf the Red's and kicked his legs in the air… while wearing a southern-style toga and no drawers.

He coughed again. "Perhaps your word is more accurate, friend Van, though not calculated to make me feel better about the incident or myself. Be that as it may, I resume: Elise having found you no more to her taste, lord Gerin, than her father did me, she might possibly have engaged the services of this minstrel to rape away the boy for her to raise."

Gerin bit down on that like a man whose teeth closed on a worm in an apple. Ever since Elise left him, he'd done his best not to think about her; whenever he did, it hurt. He had no idea where in the northlands she was, whether she was still with the horse doctor with whom she'd gone away, or even whether she still lived. But what Rihwin said made enough sense that he had to ask himself those questions now.

Slowly, he answered, "Aye, you're right, worse luck; that could be so." He plucked at his beard as he weighed odds. "I still think the Trokmoi are likeliest to have stolen Duren, so Van and I will go southwest after them. Which way did Tassilo fare?"

"West, toward the holding of Schild Stoutstaff, or that's where he told the gate crew he was heading," Drago answered.

Gerin grunted. If Tassilo had Duren with him, he might well have lied about his chosen direction. Or he might not have. Schild had been the leading vassal to Wolfar of the Axe. He wasn't a deadly foe to Gerin, as Wolfar had been, but he was no great friend, either. Though he'd acknowledged the Fox his suzerain after Gerin killed Wolfar, he forgot that whenever convenient. He might shelter Tassilo, or at least grant him safe passage.

"All right, Rihwin," Gerin said. "You ride west to Schild's border, and past it if his guards give you leave. If they don't-" He paused for effect. "Tell them they, and their overlord, will have cause to regret it."

Rihwin nodded. "As you say."

"Now, Otes," Gerin said.

Again, Drago answered: "He said he was heading east along the Emperor's Highway, to see if Hagop son of Hovan had tinker's work for him. He didn't think he'd sell Hagop much in the way of jewelry: ' skinflint' was the word he used, I think."

"For Hagop, it's a good one," Gerin said judiciously. "All right, you go after him, then."

"I'll do that, lord," Drago said, and strode out of the great hall. Gerin was as sure as if his eyes could follow that Drago was heading for the stables to hitch his team to his chariot, and that he' d ride out after Otes the minute the job was done. To Drago, the world was a simple place. His liege lord had given him an order, so he would follow it. Gerin sometimes wished he couldn't see all the complications in the world around him, either.

Van said, "You'll want me to ride with you, eh, Captain? We'll need a driver as well, if we're to take on Diviciacus and his friends on even terms."

"You're right on both counts," Gerin said. He thought about adding another chariot and three-man team of warriors, too, but decided against it. Van was worth a couple of ordinary men in a fight, and the Fox did not denigrate his own skill with his hands. And Raffo Redblade, who'd been driving for them for years, hadn't earned his ekename by running from fights. The Fox added, "And we'll send Widin Simrin's son south to ask what Aragis knows. Van, find him-he'll be in the courtyard somewhere-and get him moving, too."

The decision made, Gerin took his armor down from the wall and put it on: bronze greaves first, then leather cuirass faced with scales of bronze, and last of all a plain pot of a helmet. None of it was polished; none of it looked the least bit fancy-the Fox left that to Van. But his own gear was sound. It did what he wanted it to do: it kept edged and pointed metal from splitting his flesh. As far as he was concerned, nothing else mattered.

He slung his quiver over his shoulder, took down his bow, and then grabbed his shield. That was a yard-wide disk of leather and wood, with bronze edging to keep swordstrokes from chewing it up.

Most Elabonian warriors had gear much like the Fox's. Some men went in for gold or silver ornamentation, but he wanted nothing of the sort: curlicues and inlays could catch and hold a point, while rich armor made a man a special target on the battlefield.

With his outlandish armor, Van of the Strong Arm was always a target on the battlefield, but no one yet had been able to strip his crested helm and two-piece corselet from him. Along with his spear, he carried a sword, a mace, and several daggers. He was also a fine archer, but did not use the bow in combat, affecting to despise slaying foes from afar as unmanly.

"Foolishness," Gerin said, as he had many times before. "As long as you're alive and the other fellow isn't, nothing else matters. You get no points for style, not in war you don't."

Van brandished his spear. "Captain, that's never been a problem." His grin showed only a couple of broken teeth, more evidence (as if more were needed) he was more dangerous with weapons in hand than anyone he'd run up against.

Practical as usual, Gerin went into the kitchens and filled a leather sack with twice-baked bread that would keep indefinitely (and that needed someone with good teeth to eat it) and strips of smoked mutton even tougher than the bread. If he had to fight from the chariot, the sack would go over the side. If he didn't, he and Van and Raffo could travel for a few days without worrying about supplies.

Gerin shouldered the bag and carried it out to the stables. Raffo, a gangling young man with pimples along the margin of his beard, looked up from hitching the horses to either side of the chariot shaft. "Be good to get out on the road, lord Gerin," he said, getting the animals into the double yoke and securing them to the shaft with straps that ran around the front of their necks.

"It would be better if we were going out for a different reason," Gerin said heavily. Raffo's face fell; he'd forgotten that. The Fox had given up on expecting tact from his men. They were, he sometimes thought with something approaching despair, only a couple of steps more civilized than the Trokmoi. Improving that was a matter for generations, not just years; even keeping them from falling back into barbarism often seemed none too easy.

He stowed his shield on the brackets mounted on the inside of the car. It made the side wall higher. Van walked into the stables then. His place in the chariot was on the right side. He set his shield into its stowage place, too, and grunted approvingly when he saw the sack of supplies.

"That's good," he said. "Now we'll just need to buy a fowl from the peasants if we camp out in the open, or bleed out our prey if we go hunting: have to give the ghosts something, after all."

"Aye." Gerin's voice was abstracted. "The chase won't be easy. Diviciacus and his friends have half a day's start on us, and more than one road they can choose to go back to Adiatunnus-and we don't even know they have my boy." He wanted to scream in rage and fear. Instead, he grew more quiet and withdrawn than ever; he was not one to show worry on the outside.

"Only one way to find out," Van said.

"True, true." Gerin turned to Raffo. "Are you done harnessing the beasts?" By way of answer, the young driver vaulted into the car. The Fox clapped him on the back. "Good. Let's travel."

The six-spoked wheels began to spin. The bronze tires on those wheels rattled and clattered as they bounced over pebbles. Gerin felt every tiny thing the wheels went over, too. Had he not needed the most speed he could get, and had he not thought he might have to fight to get Duren back, he would have taken a wagon instead. But the chariot it had to be.

"A day of standing in this car and we'll wobble on solid ground like sailors coming off a ship long at sea," he said. The chariot rumbled out through the gateway, over the drawbridge, and away from Fox Keep.

"Speak to me not of sailing," said Van, who had done his share of it. "You're not likely to get seasick in the car here, and that's a fact-a fact you can thank the gods for, too. I've puked up my guts a time or three, and I've no wish to do it again."

"South and west," Raffo said musingly. "Which road would they have taken, lord Gerin? Would they have fared south down the Elabon Way and then gone straight west toward Adiatunnus' castle? Or do you think they went along the lesser roads that run straighter between here and there?"

The Fox rubbed his chin as he considered. At last he said, "If they're going down the Elabon Way, Widin will come on them, for he's taking that road toward Aragis' holding."

"He'd be one against three," Van pointed out.

Gerin grimaced. "I know. But he wouldn't be foolish enough to attack them. If they have Duren, and he finds out about it, he'll get word back to the keep. We can plan what to do next-go to war with Adiatunnus, I expect."

"I didn't think you wanted to do that yet, lord Gerin," Raffo said.

"I don't," Gerin answered, "but I will. But if we go the same way Widin has, we narrow the search more than I want. I aim to throw my net as wide as I can, hoping to catch something in one strand of the mesh."

"Aye, makes sense to me," Van said, which eased the Fox's mind somewhat: his burly friend had a keen eye for tactics, though Gerin reckoned himself more adept in planning for years ahead.

Raffo steered the team down a way that headed toward Adiatunnus' lands. Within a couple of minutes, the clearing where Gerin's serfs scratched their living from the soil disappeared behind the chariot. Forest closed in on either side of the road, which, but for the ruts from wagons and chariots, might have been a game track. Branches reached out and tried to slap the Fox in the face.

He held up an arm to turn them aside. Whenever he went down a back road like this one, he was struck by how lightly civilization rested on the northlands. The stink of the castle midden, and the bigger one in the peasant village, were out of his nostrils now; the woods smelled green and growing, as if man with his stinks had never come this way. In the virgin pines and elms, robins sang sweetly, chickadees twittered, and jays cried their harsh, metallic calls. A red squirrel flirted its tail as it clambered up a tree trunk.

But Gerin knew better than to idealize the forest, as some Sithonian poets (most of whom had never set foot outside the City of Elabon) were wont to do. Wolves ranged through the woods; in hungry winters they'd go after flocks or the herders who tended them. Longtooths would take men as they would any other prey, winter or summer. And the aurochs, the great wild ox of the forest, was nothing to take lightly-a few years before, Gerin had almost died under the horns and trampling hooves of a rogue bull.

He motioned for Raffo to stop the chariot. With a puzzled look, the driver obeyed. But for the bird calls and the soft purling of a stream somewhere off out of sight, silence closed down like a cloak. To the Fox, who was comfortable with only himself for company, it felt pleasant and restful.

Van, though, quickly started to fidget. He pulled a baked-clay flute from a pouch on his belt and began playing a tune whose notes ran in no pattern familiar to Elabonian music. "That's better," he said. "Too bloody quiet here."

Gerin swallowed a sigh and tapped Raffo on the shoulder. "Let's get going again. I'd sooner listen to jingling harness than to Van's tweedles."

"Aye, lord Gerin. Now that you mention it, so would I." Raffo flicked the reins. The horses snorted resentfully-they'd started cropping the grass that grew between the ruts-and trotted down the road.

At the next village, Gerin asked the serfs if they'd seen the chariot full of Trokmoi come past. They all shook their heads, as if they'd not only not seen such a thing but never heard of it, either.

The Fox scowled. "We're too far north or too far south, and Dyaus only knows which: that or they've gone down the Elabon Way as Raffo feared." He pounded his fist on the chariot rail in frustration.

"Too far north'd be my guess," Van said. "The track we were on curved, I think, till it ran nearer west than southwest."

"I didn't note that myself, but you're most often right about such things," Gerin said. "Raffo, the next road we come on that heads south, you take it till it crosses one leading in the direction we really want to go." Or until it peters out, he thought: not all paths connected to others.

The peasants watched as their overlord rode out of the village. Though still on land he ruled directly rather than through one of his vassal barons, he seldom came here save when collecting what was due him each fall. He wondered what the serfs thought of this unexpected appearance. Most likely, they were relieved he hadn't demanded anything of them.

Shadows lengthened as the chariot rattled and rumbled through woods that seemed to grow ever thicker. "I wonder if this road ever does join up with anything else," Van said.

"If it doesn't pretty bloody soon, we're going to have to turn back and head for that last village to buy a couple of chickens," Gerin said. "I don't want to have to count on just fire to keep the ghosts away."

Raffo pointed with his free hand. "Looks like more light up ahead, lord Gerin. Might be only a meadow, mind you, but it might be fields, too, and fields mean another village."

It was fields; Gerin felt like cheering. No sooner had the chariot emerged from the woods than the quitting horn called the peasants in from their labor. The Fox looked around. "Yes, I know this placePinabel Odd-Eyes is headman here. I'm used to coming here from the west, though, not out of the north."

Pinabel's left eye was blue, his right brown. Brown and blue both widened when Gerin rolled into the center of the village. Pinabel bowed very low. "L-lord prince, what brings you here?" he stammered.

The nervousness he showed made Gerin wonder what sort of cheating he was doing, but he'd have to worry about that later. "My son's been kidnapped," he announced baldly. Pinabel and the other serfs who heard exclaimed in dismay; family ties mattered to them, not least because those were almost all too many of them had. He went on, "I think three Trokmoi who visited Fox Keep yesterday may have taken him."

That brought more murmurs from the peasants. They were even more afraid of the Trokmoi than of night ghosts, and with reason: the ghosts could be propitiated, but the woodsrunners ravaged as they pleased. But when Gerin asked if Pinabel and the others in the village had seen the chariot Diviciacus and his comrades were riding, they all denied it.

He believed them, much as he wished he thought they were lying. Pinabel said, "They might have gone through by way of the next road south. It's very great, I hear, though I have never traveled far enough to see it."

"Maybe." Gerin didn't have the heart to tell the headman that next road was just another muddy track. Like most serfs, Pinabel had never traveled more than a few hours' walk from where he was born.

"Will you stay with us till morning, lord prince?" Pinabel asked. "Night comes soon." He gestured to the east, where Elleb, only a day before full, had already risen. Math hung halfway up the sky, while Nothos, almost at first quarter, showed near enough where south lay. And in the west, the sun was near the horizon. When it set, the ghosts would come out.

But Gerin shook his head. "I want to push on as long as I mayevery moment may prove precious. Sell me two chickens, if you would, so I can give the ghosts blood when they come."

"Aye, lord prince." Pinabel hurried away. He returned a couple of minutes later with a pair of hens, their legs tied with strips of rawhide. Gerin gave him a quarter of a silverpiece for them: probably more than they were worth, but the smallest bit of money he had in the pouch at his belt. Pinabel Odd-Eyes bowed himself almost double.

As the chariot bounced away, Raffo observed, "Most lords would have said, 'Give me two chickens' there."

That hadn't occurred to Gerin. He said, "Those birds aren't remotely part of the dues Pinabel's village owes on its land. I have no right just to take them from him."

"Neither does any other Elabonian lord with his serfs, if I understand your ways aright," Van said. "The thing of it is, most wouldn't let that stop 'em."

"You're probably right," Gerin said with a sigh. "But the way I see it, I owe my peasants fair dealing, just as they do with me. If I don't give it, how can I expect to get it in return?"

"Often enough you won't get it in return, no matter what sort of dealing you give," Van said.

"You're right." The Fox sighed again. "But when I don't, I'm not soft on that, either." Gerin was scrupulously fair. Anyone who thought him weak on that account soon regretted it.

"If I don't stop now, lord Gerin, we'll not have time to make ready to meet the ghosts," Raffo said, pointing to the western skyline. The sun, red as hot copper, had to be just on the point of setting.

Gerin thought about pushing on for another furlong or two, but regretfully decided Raffo was right. At his nod, the driver reined in. Gerin jumped down and gouged out a trench in the soft dirt by the side of the road. That did the edge of his dagger no good, but it was the only digging tool he had. Van handed him the trussed fowls. He cut off their heads, one after the other-the knife was still sharp enough for that-and let their blood spill into the trench.

None too soon: he still held the second hen over the hole when the ghosts came. They were, as ever, indistinct; the eye would not, could not, grasp their shape. They buzzed round the blood like carrion flies, soaking up vitality from it. Because he'd given them the gift, they were not fierce and angry and terrifying as they would have been otherwise, but tried to give him good advice in return.

He could not understand them. He had never been able to, save on the werenight, when his brother's shade managed to deliver a message of truly oracular obscurity-though he'd been able to use it later to destroy Balamung just when the opposite result looked far more likely.

Van bent over a firebow, twirling a stick with a rawhide lace to start a blaze for the evening. He shook his head like a man bedeviled by gnats. "I wish they'd quit yowling in my mind," he grumbled, but then he grunted in satisfaction. "Here we go, Raffo-feed me tinder, a bit at a time. You know how."

"Aye." Raffo had been crumbling dry leaves. He poked some into the hole where the stick from the firebow spun. Van breathed gently on the sparks he'd started, hoping to fan them rather than blowing them out. "You have it!" Raffo said, and gave him more tinder to feed the new little flames. With the fire well and truly started, he passed Van larger twigs to load on. Soon the thick chunk of branch on which the outlander had used the firebow would also catch.

"I wish it were that easy all the time," Van said. "Gut those birds, Fox, and pluck 'em, so we can get ourselves outside them. They' re better fare than what we brought with us."

"You're right there." The plucking job Gerin gave the hens was quick and decidedly imperfect. He didn't care; he was hungry. He picked out the birds' hearts, livers, and gizzards from the offal to roast them over the fire, then threw the rest of the guts into the trench with the blood.

He, Raffo, and Van drew stems of grass for the night watches. Few bandits dared the ghosts to travel by night, but Gerin was not the sort to take unnecessary chances-the necessary ones were quite bad enough. And the beasts of the forest, being without souls themselves, took no notice of the night spirits. They usually did not attack travelers encamped in the woods, but you never could tell.

Van drew the short stem, and chose the first watch. Gerin and Raffo drew again. This time Raffo won, and picked the watch that led to dawn. "Since I get to have my sleep broken up, I may as well take what I can get of it," Gerin said, and wrapped himself in a blanket-as much to keep off the bugs as for warmth, for the night was mild.

Van shook him awake with the cheerful insouciance of a man who'd already done his share of a job. "Nothing much doing, Captain," he said while Gerin tried to break free of the fog that shrouded his wits. Van took off the helm, corselet, and greaves he'd worn through his watch, cocooned himself in his blanket, and was snoring by the time the Fox began to think himself awake.

Gerin put on his own helmet and sword, but did not bother with his cuirass. He paced back and forth, not willing to sit down until he was sure he wouldn't doze off. The fire had died into embers. He fed it twigs and then branches and brought it back to briskly crackling life. That drove away some of the ghosts flittering near, and reduced their murmur in his mind.

By the time he'd taken care of that, he felt more confident he could stay awake. He walked to the edge of the circle of firelight and sat down with his back to the flames. His night vision, almost ruined when he'd stoked them, slowly returned.

The moons had wheeled a good way through the sky. Nothos was nearing the western skyline, Math well west of south-when her golden gibbous disk sank below the horizon, it would be time for the Fox to rouse Raffo. Elleb, looking like a bright new bronze coin, neared the meridian.

Here and there in the forest, birches mingled with ash and oak and pine. By the light of the moons and the nightfire, their pale trunks seemed almost to gleam against the darker background.

Gerin wished his ears could grow more sensitive to the dark the way his eyes did. Off in the distance, a barn owl hooted. The Trokmoi thought the souls of dead warriors inhabited the pallid night birds. The Fox had his doubts about that, but he'd never tried a sorcerous experiment to find out one way or the other. He spent a while trying to figure out how such an experiment might be run, and what he could do if he found the Trokmoi were wrong. Making the arrogant woodsrunners doubt themselves in any way was likely to be worthwhile.

"You know," he said to himself in a low voice, "the midwatch isn't so bad after all. I don't get enough time of my own, with no one havering at me to do this or decide that right this moment." In smallor sometimes not so small-doses, he relished solitude.

Perhaps three parts of his four-hour watch had gone by when a coughing roar not far away roused him from contemplation, or rather jerked him out of it by the scruff of the neck. No one could ignore a longtooth's hunting cry; a man's blood knew it meant danger. One of the horses let out a frightened snort. The Fox found his left hand on the hilt of his sword without conscious memory of how it had got there-not that a sword would stop one of the great hunting cats if it chose to hunt him.

The longtooth, to his vast relief, came no closer to the campsite. "Well," he muttered, "I'm not sleepy now." He felt as if he'd had ice water splashed over him. When a nightjar swooped down to grab one of the moths fluttering around the fire, he almost jumped out of his skin.

He woke Raffo as soon as Math set. The driver looked toward the west, saw the moon was down, and nodded in approval. "No one ever said you weren't one for right dealing, lord," he said blurrily around a yawn.

Gerin wrapped himself in his blanket once more. He kept an eye on Raffo to make sure the younger man wouldn't go back to sleep as he almost had. Raffo, though, took watch-standing seriously, and paced about as the Fox had. Gerin feared he himself would have trouble dozing off again but, in spite of his worries, quickly drifted away.

The rising sun made him rise, too. His eyes came open just as the ghosts vanished for the day. He got to his feet, feeling elderly. Van was still snoring. Gerin roused him cautiously; the outlander's first waking act-especially when he was disturbed-was usually to grab for a weapon.

This time, though, he seemed to remember where he was, and came to himself without violence. He headed for the forest, saying, "Either I go off behind a bush or I burst where I stand."

"I watered the grass on watch, so I don't have that worry," Gerin said, buckling on his right greave. Raffo harnessed the horses.

The chicken bones and guts were already beginning to stink. The travelers moved upwind before they gnawed on bread and smoked meat. " Are we ready?" Raffo asked, looking around the little camp to make sure nothing had been forgotten. Gerin looked, too; if they had left something behind, he would have blamed himself.

They climbed into the chariot, Raffo driving, Gerin behind him on the left, Van on the right. Raffo flicked the reins. The horses started forward. When they came to a stream, Raffo let the animals have a brief drink. Gerin scooped up some water in the palm of his hand, too, and freshened what he carried in the waterskin at his belt.

At the next road that ran west, Raffo swung the chariot onto it. A little village lay not far from the crossroads. The appearance of their lord so early in the day was a prodigy for the peasants. When he asked if they'd seen Diviciacus and his comrades the day before, one of the men nodded. "Aye, just before noon it were," he said. A couple of other people nodded.

The Fox scowled; he was on the right track, aye, but no closer to the Trokmoi than when he'd set out. If they were traveling hard, maybe they had a reason. "Did they have a boy with them?" he asked, and then amplified that: "My son, I mean."

The serfs looked at one another. "Didn't see no boy, lord," answered the fellow who'd spoken before.

That wasn't what Gerin wanted to hear. Had the Trokmoi cut Duren's throat as if he were some sacrifice to the night ghosts, then dumped the corpse by the side of the road? Horrid dread filled him: his father, his brother-now his son, too? If that was so, he vowed he'd not rest till every red-mustached robber south of the Niffet was dead or routed back to the northern woods. Even as he made it, he knew the vow to be impossible of fulfillment. He spoke it in his mind, all the same; it would give his life a target.

"Take everything you can from the horses," he told Raffo, his voice harsh. "Now we have to catch them before they win back to Adiatunnus' lands."

"Aye, lord Gerin." But Raffo sounded doubtful. "They have a long lead, though. Gaining enough ground won't be easy, the more so as we may have to keep casting about for the road they took."

"I know that," Gerin growled. "But I'll have answers from them if I have to wring out each word with hot pincers."

Van thumped him on the shoulder. "Easy, Captain, easy. We don't even know they ever had the lad, mind you."

"But they must have-" Gerin stopped, shook his head. Assuming something was so because you thought it had to be was one of the flaws in logic that made the savants in the City of Elabon laugh. He took a deep breath and said, "You're right. We don't know they had him."

He wondered if he ever would, or could, know. Had Diviciacus and his crew killed Duren and tossed his body into the woods, scavengers would make short work of it (he knew too well that his son had only a little meat on his bones). When he'd charged out after the Trokmoi, he'd figured he or Drago or Rihwin or Widin would catch up with Duren' s kidnappers, rescue the boy, and return in triumph to Castle Fox. Now he realized he'd been making assumptions there, too. Uncertainty, in a way, felt even worse than being sure of Duren's death would have. How long could he go on wondering without going mad?

Then he thought that, after a while, he wouldn't be uncertain any more. He'd have to reckon Duren dead if he wanted to keep on living himself.

"Push them," he said to Raffo. This time, the driver did not answer back. He flicked the whip over the horses' backs. They leaned into the harness, pushed their pace up to a fast trot.

The chariot rolled through another peasant village and then drove by the small keep of Notker the Bald, one of Gerin's vassal barons. " Aye, lord Gerin," Notker called from the palisade, "they came by here yesterday, sometime past noon, but they showed shield of truce, just as they had on the way to your castle, so I thought no more about it."

"Did they have Duren with them?" Gerin asked. Two sets of serfs had already answered no to that, but the Fox put the question again anyhow. Maybe, he thought with what he knew to be irrationality, a noble would have noticed something the serfs had not.

But Notker shook his head. "Your son, lord?" he said. "No, I saw him not. What then? Is it war between the woodsrunners and us despite the truce sign?"

"By the gods, I wish I knew." Gerin tapped Raffo on the shoulder to drive on before Notker asked any more questions he couldn't answer.

Toward the middle of the afternoon they passed the boundary stone that had marked the border between Gerin's holdings and those of his southwestern neighbor, Capuel the Flying Frog. No one had seen Capuel since the werenight; Gerin sometimes wondered if his ekename had been a clue to a were strain in his family and he'd turned toad when all the moons rose full together. More likely, though, the Trokmoi had slain him.

The boundary stone lay on its side these days, ruining the charms for peace and prosperity that had been carved into it. Whether that was cause or effect Gerin did not know, but Capuel's former holding knew no peace these days. None of his vassals had been able to take any kind of grip on the land. The Fox held some of it himself, Trokmoi had overrun a couple of keeps, and the rest was given over to banditry.

The first peasant village the chariot passed was only a ruin, some of the houses burned, the rest falling to pieces from lack of care. Some grain grew untended in weed-choked fields, but before another generation passed no sign would be left that man had ever lived here.

"Captain, we may need to stop to hunt toward sunset, and I don't mean for the Trokmoi," Van said. "Who's going to sell us a chicken in country like this?"

Gerin didn't answer. He knew Van was right but didn't want to admit it, even to himself. Stopping to slay an animal with whose blood to propitiate the ghosts would make him lose time on Diviciacus, not gain it.

The next village was still inhabited, but that did the travelers no good. Only a handful of people remained in what had been a fairsized hamlet. When one of them spotted an approaching chariot, he let out a yell full of fear and desperation. Everyone-men, women, children-fled from fields and houses into the nearby woods.

"Wait!" Gerin shouted. "I just want to ask you a couple of questions." No one paid him any attention.

He looked helplessly to Van. The outlander said, "You ask me, Captain, these poor buggers have got themselves trampled too often lately to take chances when somebody who looks like a warrior comes by."

"No doubt you're right," the Fox answered, sighing. "Doesn't say much for the state the northlands are in, does it?"

"Your serfs don't run from you, lord Gerin," Raffo said.

"That's so," Gerin said, "but there's more to the northlands than my holdings-and if I took in these lands, I'd do it by war, so the peasants here wouldn't get the chance to learn I treat them decently. They'd just go on running when they saw me coming."

Raffo didn't answer. Unless he should be involved in fighting to gain control of land beyond Gerin's holding, it was too remote to matter to him. That made him typical, not otherwise, which saddened Gerin: he tried to think in larger terms.

Van said, "You're not the only baron-excuse me, Captain: princethe serfs don't flee. What Aragis does to the ones who run that he catches makes all the others think three times before they try it."

"He's a hard man," Gerin agreed. "Harder than need be, I think. But it may be that hard times require a hard man. Who can tell for certain?"

"Do you know what your trouble is, Captain?" Van said.

"No, but I daresay you're going to tell me," the Fox answered, raising that eyebrow of his. Every so often, Van found a flaw in him, rarely the same one twice. The infuriating thing was that more often than not he had a point.

"Your trouble, Captain, is that you're so busy trying to understand the other fellow's point of view that you don't give enough heed to your own."

Gerin clutched his chest and lurched in the chariot, as if pierced by an arrow. Van's chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. That was a hit, though, and the Fox knew it. He said, "Understanding the other fellow has its uses, too. Sometimes he may even be right."

"And what does that have to do with the price of tin?" Van said. " All you really need worry about is that he does what you have in mind."

"Are you sure you're not really a Trokme after all?" Gerin asked mildly. That earned him the glare he'd expected.

The chariot rattled past a burned-out keep. Perched atop one of the charred logs sat a fat bustard. Van tapped Raffo on the shoulder, pointed. The driver pulled back on the reins; the horses stopped and began to graze. Van reached for Gerin's bow. "I saw the bird-will you let me do the hunting?" he asked.

"Go ahead," the Fox answered. Van might think slaying men with the bow an effete way to fight, but he was a fine archer nonetheless.

The outlander strung the bow. Gerin handed him an arrow. He dropped down from the chariot and slid toward the bustard, light on his feet as a stalking longtooth. The bustard grubbed under its wing for mites. Van got to within twenty paces before he stood still, nocked the shaft, drew the bow, and let fly.

The arrow hit the bustard just below where it had been scratching. It let out a startled squawk and tried to fly, but tumbled off its log into the ditch that had not served to protect the palisade. Van scrambled in after it. When he came out again, he carried the bird by the feet and wore an enormous grin.

"Well shot," Gerin said, pleased the hunt had been so successfuland so brief. "Blood for the ghosts and supper for us."

"The very thing I was thinking," Van said.

Before long, sunset forced the travelers to a halt. Gerin and Van got out of the chariot and, one with sword, the other with spear, moved cautiously through the woods on either side of the road until Gerin came upon a small clearing screened off by trees. He hurried back to the dirt track, whistled to let Van know he'd found what he was after.

"You've got a place to keep us away from prying eyes, do you?" the outlander said, slipping out from between a couple of oaks. Despite his bulk, he moved so quietly that Gerin had not heard him till he spoke.

"Indeed I do. In my own lands, I wasn't much worried about making a fire out where anyone could see it. Here, though, it might draw serfs on the run, bandits-who knows what? Why take the chance?" The Fox turned to Raffo. "Unharness the horses. We can lead them back to the clearing, too; the way's not badly overgrown."

"Aye, lord Gerin." Raffo freed the animals from the central shaft; he and the Fox led them away to tether them in the clearing.

Van joined them a few minutes later. "I dragged the chariot off the road and into the bushes," he said. "It won't be so easy to see now."

"Good." Gerin nodded. "And if one of the horses goes lame, now we know we can hitch you to the shaft in its stead. Maybe we'll let the horse ride in your place in the car."

"I thank you, Captain," Van said gravely. "Always good to see how you look out for the welfare of them that serve you, so it is."

Suspecting he'd come off worse in that exchange, Gerin dug a trench to hold the blood from the bustard Van had killed earlier in the afternoon. When the bird had bled out, he frowned. "I hope that will be enough," he said. "We'd better build the fire bigger than we would have otherwise, or we'll have dreadful dreams all through the night."

After the sun went down, the ghosts did buzz gratefully around the offering the travelers had given them, but they rose from it faster than the Fox would have liked to see, as if they were men getting up from the table still hungry. They also braved the light and heat of the fire to gain more vital essence from the cut-up chunks of bird Gerin, Van, and Raffo were roasting.

The Fox drew first watch. After he woke Raffo for the middle stint, he fell asleep almost at once. His dreams were dreadful: monsters rampaging over the northlands, with men in desperate and what looked like losing struggle to drive them back. At first, in one of those almost-conscious moments dreams sometimes have, he thought he was harking back to the werenight. But he soon realized that was not so; these monsters seemed more appalling than mere wild beasts armed with the remnants of human wit that still clung to them.

When Van shook him awake at sunrise, he rose with such alacrity that the outlander gave him a curious look and said, "You're not apt to be so cheerful of a morning."

"Bad dreams," Gerin muttered, sliding a foot into a sandal.

"Aye, I had 'em, too." Van shook his head. "All manner of horrid creatures running loose-the gods grant I had a sour stomach or some such, to make me see such phantoms in my sleep."

The Fox paused with the sandal strap still unfastened. "That sounds like the same dream I had," he said slowly.

"And I," Raffo agreed. "I wouldn't have minded spending more time on watch and less in my blanket, and how often do you hear me say something like that?"

They hashed it out over breakfast, each recounting what he remembered of his dreams. As best Gerin could tell, they were all the same. "I don't like that," he said. "The omen is anything but good." His fingers shaped a sign to turn aside ill luck. The sign worked well enough for small misfortunes. Whatever misfortune lay ahead, he feared it would not be small-with Duren missing, it was already large. He offered the sign as a man without food in his house will offer a neighbor a stoup of water: not much, but the best he can do.

Van said, "If it is an omen, we won't be able to escape it, whatever it may prove to mean. One way or another, we'll get through." He seized his spear, made a sudden, savage thrust, as if to dispose of any troublesome foretellings.

The Fox wished he could match his friend's confidence. Van had never found anything, even the werenight, he couldn't overcome with brawn and bravery. Gerin trusted his own power less far. He said, " Let's get on the road."

They passed another couple of mostly deserted villages that day, and a wrecked keep. And, about noon, the Fox saw on a distant hill a building that wasn't quite a keep but was far stronger and more elaborate than anything a serf would need. Raffo saw it, too, and scowled blackly. "If that's not a bandits' nest, you can call me a Shanda nomad."

"That's what it is, all right, and right out in the open, too." Gerin spat into the dirt of the road to show what he thought of it. " Everything's going to the five hells when bandits set themselves up like barons."

"Who do you think the first barons were?" Van said. "Bandits who got rich, most likely. That's how it was a lot of places, anyhow."

"Insulting my ancestors, are you?" Gerin said. "I'd be angrier if I didn't know you were probably right. Even so, one fine day we're going to come down here and burn these bandits out before they get the chance to turn into barons."

"We're getting close to the lands Adiatunnus holds," Raffo said. " He's liable not to like that."

"Aye, he might have in mind to use these buggers, whoever they are, as a buffer between him and me," Gerin agreed. "That he has it in mind, though, doesn't mean it will happen so."

The sun had slid more than halfway down toward the west when the chariot clattered up to a new border stone standing by the side of the road. The boulder was carved not with Elabonian designs or letters, but rather with the fylfots and spirals the Trokmoi favored. In the roadway itself stood a couple of red-mustached northerners, one with a spear, the other with a sword. The one with the spear called in lilting Elabonian, "Who might you be, coming to the lands of the great chief, Adiatunnus his own self?"

"I might be anyone. I am Gerin the Fox," Gerin answered. "Did Adiatunnus' liegeman Diviciacus pass this way?"

"He did that." The border guard gave Gerin a look more curious than hostile. "And I'm after thinking it's fair strange, Fox, for you to be after him so. Have you changed your mind, now, over the matter anent which Diviciacus was sent forth for to talk with you?"

"I have not," Gerin answered at once, which made both Trokmoi scowl. "But neither am I at feud with Adiatunnus, nor with any of his. Does peace hold between us, or not?" He reached for the bronze-headed axe in its rest on the side wall of the chariot. Van hefted his own spear, not in a hostile way but thoughtfully, as if to find out how heavy it was.

It certainly made the Trokmoi thoughtful. The man who had spoken before said, "Sure and you've no need to be fighting us, now. For all Diviciacus ranted and carried on about what a black-hearted spalpeen you were, Fox-these are his words, mind, and none o' my own-he said not a whisper of faring forth to fight."

"As I told him I had no quarrel with Adiatunnus," Gerin agreed. " But tell me this-when Diviciacus rode through here, did he have with him in the chariot a boy of four summers? Not to put too fine a point on it, did he have my son? Before you answer, think on this: if you lie, we shall be at feud, and to the death."

The two northerners looked at each other. This time, the one who had the sword replied: "Fox, by Esus, Taranis, and Teutates I swear he did not." That was the strongest oath the Trokmoi used, and one they did not swear lightly. The fellow went on, "If we aimed to go to war with you, we'd up and do it. Stealing a child, now?" He spat. "Bad cess to any man who's after trying such a filthy thing."

"Aye," the other warrior said. "Did one of ours do such to you, Fox, we'd hand him back nicely tied and all, for you to do with him as you thought best. You could make him last days so, and wish every moment he'd never been born. I've two lads and a girl of my own, and I'd use the same way any ogre of a man who so much as ruffled a hair on their heads without my leave."

His anger and sincerity were unmistakable. Maybe Adiatunnus had set him and his friend here just because they lied so well, but Gerin couldn't do anything about that, not without an army at his back. He said, "I shall believe you, but remember what I said if you've not spoken truth."

"Och, but we have, so we've nought to fear," the fellow with the sword said. "I hope you find the bairn safe, Fox."

His friend nodded, adding, "Since you're apt to be spending the night in the open, would you want to buy a hen from us, now?"

"You probably stole it," Gerin said without rancor. "That's what all you Trokmoi south of the Niffet are-just a bunch of damned chicken thieves."

"Indeed and we're not," the northerner with a spear answered indignantly. "We came south because you Elabonians are after having so many things better and better than chickens to steal."

Since that was nothing but the truth, Gerin could not even argue with it. He tapped Raffo on the shoulder. His driver slewed the chariot in the narrow roadway and started east, back toward Castle Fox. "Sensible," Van said. "This set of woodsrunners seemed friendly enough, but we'll want to put some distance between them and us all the same. One of their higher-ups is liable to decide we're worth hunting through the night."

"My thought exactly," Gerin agreed. "Raffo, go by back roads while the day lasts, so long as they lead north or east. If we stay on the main track, I think we're asking for trouble."

"Aye, lord Gerin," Raffo said, and then, after a moment, "I'm sorry we didn't find your son."

Gerin sighed. "So am I. I have to pray that Rihwin or Drago or Widin had better luck than we did." He tried not to think about what might be happening to Duren. Too many of the pictures his imagination came up with were black ones.

"We were so sure the Trokmoi had run off with him, too," Van said. Another man might have put that, You were so sure- Like any proper friend, the outlander shared responsibility as well as credit.

"We'll know more when we get back to the castle," the Fox said, wondering how he'd keep from going mad till then.

Rihwin the Fox spread his hands. "Lord Gerin, Schild Stoutstaff's border guards declined to give me leave to pass into their overlord's land. For whatever it may be worth, they say Tassilo did enter that holding, but that they saw no sign of any small boy with him."

"For whatever it may be worth," Gerin repeated. "If he had Duren trussed up in the back of the wagon, it may be worth nothing at all. Or, on the other hand-" He gave up, shaking his head in frustration and dismay. He'd hoped he'd find answers at Fox Keep, not just more questions, but questions seemed in better supply. Turning to Widin Simrin's son, he asked, "Any luck with you?"

Widin was a young man, but wore his beard long and forked, an antique style. He shook his head. "The same as Rihwin, lord prince. Aragis' borderers say they'd not seen Rihwin-nor Tassilo nor Otes, either-but would not give me leave to enter their lord's land."

Drago the Bear said, "As for Otes son of Engelers, lord Gerin, far as I can tell he's just vanished off the face of the earth. No trace of him eastwards, that's certain."

"Well, what happened to him?" Gerin growled. But he knew that could have a multitude of answers, too. The jeweler might have run into bandits, he might have been taken ill and laid up at some little peasant village which Drago had gone right past, or he might have decided not to fare east after all. No way to be certain, especially now that Drago the Bear had decided to give up the trail and return to Fox Keep. Gerin might have wished for more diligence from him, but he' d done what he was told, which was about what he was good for.

As if uneasily aware his overlord was dissatisfied with him, Drago tried to change the subject: "Lord Gerin, you shouldn't let Schild get by with the insolence he shows you these days. He bent the knee and set his hands in yours after you slew Wolfar, but you'd never know it by the way he acts. He has his nerve, he does, keeping your vassals off his land when he's properly a vassal his own self."

"In law, you're right," Gerin said. "Trouble is, we haven't much law north of the High Kirs. So long as he hasn't warred on me or attacked my lands when I was busy elsewhere, I've always had more important things to do than forcing him to heel."

"But when it's your son, lord prince?" Widin asked softly.

Gerin sighed. "Aye, now it's my son-not that Tassilo seems to have had him. I'll send Schild a courier with a letter: his border guards won't hold back a courier under my orders to take the message to their lord."

"They'd better not, anyhow," Drago said. "'Twould be against all polite usage." Down in the heart of the Empire, Gerin thought, Drago would have made a perfect man of law: he lived in a world where precedent bulked more real and larger than reality. That often served him well-it saved him the trouble of thinking, which was not his strength, anyhow. But when he had to confront something new and unusual, he might as well have been unarmed.

Rihwin the Fox said, "I hope the mere sending of a letter will not offend Schild's, ah, delicate sensibilities."

"You mean, will he get angry because my courier can read and he can't?" Gerin asked. Rihwin nodded. Gerin said, "It shouldn't be a problem. Schild may not have much in the way of learning, but he doesn't hate people who do-unlike some I could name." Some who are my vassals, he thought.

"If you did want to make him worry about you, Captain, you could use one of those serfs you've taught their letters," Van said.

"Makes me worry, too," Drago muttered, just loud enough to let Gerin hear.

"No, I try not to let word of that leak out of the holding," Gerin said. "The time's not ripe, not yet."

"Still don't know why you started that crazy business anyhow, lord," Widin said.

"Why? Because there's too much ignorance running around loose in the northlands, that's why," Gerin said. Widin and Drago both stared at him in incomprehension. Van shook his massive head; he'd known what the Fox was up to for years, and hadn't complained about it, but that didn't mean he approved.

Even Rihwin, who was himself not only literate but possessed of a formal education better than Gerin's, seemed dubious. "One of the things of which the serfs remain cheerfully ignorant is their own miserable lot," he remarked. "Let them learn to think, to reason, and they will surely wonder at the justice of an order which keeps them in their huts and the barons who rule them in grand keeps like this one."

"They wonder at that anyhow," Gerin said. "The northlands have never been free from peasant revolts, and that's only grown worse since the Trokmoi came over the Niffet. But my serfs, among them the ones I've taught, have stayed loyal where those of other lords rose."

"Belike that's so-for now," Van said. "But often, too, it works out that a man who's too hungry and worn to rise up will go on working where even a pack mule would drop dead. Give that same man a bit of hope, now, and a full belly, and then try to crack the whip on him.. . well, you'd better have a good place to hide, is all I have to tell you."

Gerin clicked his tongue between his teeth. That had some truth to it; his own reading of history said as much. But he answered, "I have to take the chance. If I don't, this whole land will slide back into barbarism in two generations' time, and the only way you'll be able to tell Elabonians from Trokmoi will be by black mustachios in place of red."

"I'm not ignorant," Drago said indignantly. "Hearing I am all the bloody time wears thin, lord Gerin. I know how to war and raise horses and keep order in my own holding. What else do I need?"

"Suppose there's a drought and you need magic done to get some rain?" Gerin asked.

"I hire a mage, of course."

"Where do you suppose the mage learned his art? If he's any good, at the Sorcerers' Collegium down in the City of Elabon. But northlands mages can't do that any more-we're cut off, remember. If we want to have another set of mages come along to replace the ones who die, we' ll just have to find some way to train them ourselves. That means reading and writing, too, you know."

Drago scowled. "You don't argue fair, Fox."

"There I must disagree," Rihwin said. "Lord Gerin's arguments strike me as logical enough-and logic also seems to me to be a civilized appurtenance worth preserving. The question is whether the risks inherent in seeking to make civilized men of serfs outweigh the benefits to be gained from that course if successful."

Gerin abruptly sickened of the dispute. "A murrain on it," he growled. "The only thing that truly matters now is who has Duren and what they're doing to him. I said the same thing before we all set out searching, but I hoped we'd know something when we came back to Fox Keep. Instead, here we are sitting along this same cursed table five days later, and just as ignorant as the moment we set out."

Rihwin gave him a sidelong glance. "Where chariots rumbling down roadways and men beating bushes fail, sorcery might serve. I speak purely in the abstract, you understand, my own abilities along those lines having been raped away by the angry god, but the possibility deserves mention."

"It would deserve more mention if I were more of a wizard." Gerin sighed. "Oh, aye, you have the right of it, and I'll try, but I've essayed such magics before, and never yet found what I was looking for. And by the time we can find a proper mage and bring him here, the trail will have grown cold."

"Attempting a spell while convinced it will fail is the surest way to guarantee such failure," Rihwin said.

"I know that, too, but I find optimism hard to come by when I see no good reason for it." The Fox wished he could cast aside his gloom. As Rihwin had said, he would have been a better wizard-though never a good one, he thought-without it. But it was as much a part of him as the scar over his left eye.

Just then, Fand came into the great hall. She pointed to Rihwin and Widin and Drago. "I know they had no luck," she said. "Are you after finding your lost boy, and him so small and all?"

"No," Gerin said, and the one word pressed the weight of defeat and despair more heavily onto his shoulders.

"Och, the black shame of it, to be snatching children," Fand said. She meant it, Gerin judged, but hers was a nature that held the troubles of others in mind for only a little while before returning to her own concerns: "And fair lonely I was, too, with both my men off on a sleeveless errand. Still and all, though, they might have brought something back with them to make amends for being gone so long." She looked hopefully from Gerin to Van.

The outlander answered first: "Maybe I should bring my hand across your greedy backside. Does that seem fair, when you think on what we were about?"

When Van spoke in that rumbling tone of warning, as if he were an earthquake about to happen, sensible men walked soft. But Fand was nothing if not spirited herself. She shouted, "Greedy, is it, to be asking a simple question of you? Often enough there's a question you ask of me, aye, and with the understanding my answer had better be yes, too, or I'd be sorry for it. And you call me greedy? A pox take you!"

"If a pox did take me, where would I likely get it?" Van retorted.

"You've been staying with me too long," Gerin murmured. "That's the sort of crack I'm apt to make."

Fand didn't hear him. She let her wrath fall on Van: "You? Who knows where you'd be likely to come by the pox? You think I don't know you'll cover anything with a slit, like a billy goat in the springtime? I've more to fear from your wanderings than you from mine. Go on, now, tell me I'm a liar."

Van turned the color of the embers smoldering on the hearth. " That's the way of a man," he sputtered. Drago, Rihwin, and Widin nodded. So did Gerin, though he was less inclined to make a tomcat of himself.

"Och, I know that." Fand tossed her head in fine disdain. "But since it is, why blame me for what'd be the fault of your own self?"

Gerin worked so hard to choke down laughter that he had a coughing fit. Van wasn't the only one who'd spent a lot of time with him. No toga-wearing Sithonian sophist could have done a neater, more logical job of punching holes in the outlander's gibe than Fand just had.

Van looked his way. "Will you not come to my aid?" he asked plaintively, as if alone on the field and beset by a host.

"I think our lady here was greedy, too, but as for the rest, you got yourself into it, and you can get yourself out." Gerin rose and headed for the stairs. "As for me, I'm going to see what sort of search spells I can use to try to find my son."

Bass and alto shouts, like angry kettledrum and horn, followed him up to his library. He knew of no greater hoard of books anywhere in the northlands, yet he also knew how inadequate the collection was. There were hundreds of grimoires, for instance, but he owned fewer than ten. With them he had Lekapenos' epics, a few codices of history, a couple on natural philosophy, a treatise on horsemanship, another on war, a school set of Sithonian plays (many of them crumbs from Lekapenos' banquet)-and that was all. So much knowledge stored away in volumes he would never see, let alone own… thinking of his own ignorance saddened him.

He went through the grimoires one after another, looking for a spell that would let him see either who had taken Duren or where his son was now. He found a fair number of them, but had to dismiss most out of hand. Some were beyond his limited abilities as a mage. Some required ingredients he could not hope to obtain: dried sea-cow flipper from the Greater Inner Sea, for instance.

And too many needed wine. Even if it hadn't been unavailable, he would have been afraid to use it. The last thing he wanted was to attract the angry notice of Mavrix.

"I wonder if ale would do?" he muttered, running a finger down the closely written column of a cantrip that looked promising except for prescribing a silver bowl full of wine as the scrying medium.

A sentence near the end of the spell leaped out at him: Whereas the aspect of Baivers god of barley is dull, sodden, and soporific, whilst that of Mavrix lord of the sweet grape (to whom the cry of Evoii! rings out) sparkles with wit and intelligence, the ill-advised operator who seeks to substitute ale for wine will surely have cause to regret his stupidity.

"It was only an idea," the Fox said, as if talking things over with the author of the grimoire. That author was a Sithonian; though the Fox's copy was an Elabonian translation, he'd already found several scornful references to the westerners who had conquered and then been all but conquered by the more anciently civilized land, and equally short shrift given to other Elabonian gods.

Gerin plucked at his beard as he thought. Substituting butter for olive oil had worked out well enough. No matter what this snooty Sithonian said, using ale in place of wine could also succeed. And he was and always had been on good terms with Baivers. He picked up the grimoire, saying, "I'll try it."

He had a silver bowl; it had been at Fox Keep since his grandfather's day. He'd been thinking about melting it down along with the rest of the odd bits of silver in the keep and starting his own coinage. Now he was glad he'd never got round to doing that. And ale, of course, was easy to come by.

He took the bowl and a pitcher of the strongest brew in his cellar out to the shack where he essayed his magics. Before he began the conjuration, he took a while studying the text of the spell, making sure he could slip in Baivers' name and standard epithets for those of Mavrix. He nodded to himself: that ought to work. He didn't think he'd need to modify any of the mystical passes that accompanied the charm.

"I bless thee, Baivers, god of clear sight, and call upon thee: lift the darkness of night," he intoned, and poured the silver bowl half full of golden ale. He smiled a little when he thought of that; mixing gold and silver, even symbolically, ought to make the spell work better.

As often happened, the sound of his chanting drew Rihwin, who stood in the doorway to see what he was up to. Gerin nodded to him and set a finger to his lips to enjoin silence. Rihwin nodded back; he knew a man working magic did not need and sometimes could not tolerate distraction.

Again, the wizard who had written the grimoire made the operator perform the more difficult passes with his left hand. Again, Gerin gratefully accepted that, because it made the spell easier for him. Soon, he thought, the ale would turn clear as crystal and he would be rewarded with a glimpse of Duren's face, or at least of his surroundings.

He caught himself yawning in the middle of the spell. What's wrong? he thought. He couldn't say it aloud; he was in the middle of the chant. As if from very far away, he watched his sorcerous passes grow languid, listened to his voice turn fuzzy…

"Lord prince! Lord Gerin!"

With a great effort, the Fox opened his eyes. Anxious faces crowding close blocked light from the smoking torches that lit the great hall. Gerin's eyebrows came down and together-last he remembered, he hadn't been in the great hall, and torchlighting was hours away.

"What happened?" he croaked. He discovered he was lying in the rushes on the floor. When he tried to sit up, he felt as if he'd forgotten how to use half his muscles.

Among the faces peering down at him was Rihwin's. "Would that you could tell us, lord Gerin," the southerner answered. "You fell asleep, or perhaps your spirit left your body-however you would have it-in the middle of the spell you were using. We've tried from that time to this to rouse you, but to no avail till now."

"Aye, that's the way of it," Drago agreed. "We didn't know what in the five hells to do next-stick your foot in the fire, maybe."

"I'm glad it didn't come to that," Gerin said. From Rihwin, the suggestion might have been a joke. Drago, though, had neither the wit nor the temperament for jokes. When he said something, he meant it.

That odd, unstrung feeling was fading. Gerin managed to get to his feet. Van, ever practical, gave him a jack of ale. "It's not enchanted, Captain, but it's pretty good," he said.

Gerin gulped down half the jack before he choked and spluttered. " That's it," he said. "That's what went wrong. This time, the chap who wrote the grimoire was smarter than I am. He warned that Baivers' influence on the spell was soporific, and that's just what he meant."

"The Elabonian pantheon is so dismayingly stodgy," Rihwin said. Like many of his educated countrymen, he preferred the Sithonian gods to those native to Elabon.

But Van said, "Honh! Remember how much joy you had of Mavrix." Rihwin flinched but was honest enough with himself to nod, acknowledging the justice of the hit.

"Never mind any of that," Gerin said; his wits were beginning to work more clearly again, and his body to seem as if it might be fully answerable to him after all. "I've learned something from this escapade, which may in the long run make it worthwhile."

"What's that?" Van asked, a beat ahead of the rest.

"That whatever magic I can do isn't going to let me find my son. And find him I will." Gerin counted stubbornness a virtue. If you kept hitting at a problem, sooner or later it was likely to fall down. He went on, "Using ale for wine in the spell might have knocked me out, but, by Dyaus, there are eyes that never sleep."

"Not by Dyaus," Drago said. "By Biton, you mean, or do I mistake you?"

"No, you have the right of it," Gerin said. "I'll fare forth to the Sibyl at Ikos. Her verse will tell me what I need to know." He hesitated, then added, "If I can understand it, of course."