"She had not," Doroga confirmed. "Hashat did. And after our wedding night, I spent the next seven days sleeping on the ground outside her tent to apologize."

Amara laughed. "I can't imagine you doing that."

"I was very young," Doroga said. "And I very much wanted her to be happy with me again." He glanced over his shoulder. "Just as Bernard wants you to be happy with him."

Amara shook her head. "It isn't anything like that."

"Yes. Because Bernard does not know he ate the wrong soup."

She sighed. "No. Because we aren't married."

Doroga snorted. "You are mates."

"No, not like that."

"You have mated," he said, patient as if he spoke to a small child. "Which makes you mates."

Amara's cheeks flamed. "We... did. We have. But we aren't."

Doroga looked back at her, his expression scrunched into a skeptical frown. "You people make everything too complicated. Tell him he ate the wrong soup and have done."

"It's nothing Bernard has done."

"You ate the soup?" Doroga asked.

"No," Amara said, exasperated. "There was no soup. Doroga, Bernard and I... we can't be together."

"Oh," Doroga said. He shook his head in a mystified gesture and briefly put his hand over his eyes, mimicking a blindfold. "I see."

"I have obligations to Gaius," Amara said. "So does he."

"This Gaius," Doroga said. "To me he seemed smart."

"Yes."

"Then he should know that no chieftain can command the heart." Doroga nodded. "He gets in the way of that, he will learn that love will be love, and he can do nothing but kill everyone or stand aside. You should learn that, too."

"Learn what?" Amara said.

Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. "Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way."

"You're saying it would kill my heart to turn away from Bernard?" Amara asked.

"Your heart. His too." Doroga rolled a shoulder in a shrug. "You get to choose."

"Broken hearts heal in time," Amara said.

Something washed over Doroga's features, making them look heavier, more sad. He lifted a hand to one of his braids, where he had braided his pale hair together with plaits of fine reddish tresses Amara had a.s.sumed were dyed. "Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't." He turned to face her, and said, "Amara, you got something not everyone finds. Those who lose it would gladly die to have it again. Do not cast it away lightly."

Amara rode in silence, swaying in the rhythm of the gargant's long, slow steps.

It was difficult to consider Doroga's words. No one had ever spoken to her of love in that way before. She had believed in it, of course. Her own mother and father had been very much in love, or so it had seemed to her as a small child. But since she had been taken in by the Cursors, love had been something that existed as a means to an end. Or as the lead player in a sad story about loss and duty. The only love a Cursor could allow herself to feel was for lord and Realm. Amara had known this since before she completed her training. What's more, she had believed it.

But in the past two years, things had changed. She had changed. Bernard had become, not so much important to her as he was natural to her whole being. He was as much a part of her thoughts as breath, food, and sleep. At once present and not present, conspicuous with his absence and filling her with a sense of completion when he was there.

For a man so strong, he was gentle. When his hands, his arms, his mouth were on her, he moved as if afraid she might shatter if held too tightly. Their nights together had been, and remained a blaze of pa.s.sion, for he was a wickedly patient lover who took delight in her responses to him. But more than that, in the quiet hours after he would hold her, both of them weary, content, sleepy. She would lie in his arms and feel no worry, or sadness, or anxiety. She only felt beautiful. And desired. And safe.

Safe. She had to make a sharp effort to keep tears from her eyes. She knew well how little safety truly existed in the world. She knew how much danger threatened the Realm; how a single mistake had the potential to bring it down. She could not allow emotions to cloud her judgment.

No matter how much she might want them to.

She was a Cursor. Sworn va.s.sal of the Crown, a servant of the Realm of Alera, entrusted with its direst secrets, guarding against its most insidious foes. Her duty called for many sacrifices so that others could be safe and free. She had long ago given up the notion of a life of safety. Her duty called her to give up such luxuries as love as well.

Didn't it?

"I will consider your words," she told Doroga quietly.

"Good," he responded.

"But now is not the time for such things," Amara said. Already, her emotions were distracting her. She needed to know more about the dangers they currently faced, and for the moment Doroga was their sole source of information. "We have a more immediate problem."

"We do," Doroga agreed. "The ancient enemy. The Abomination before The One."

Amara looked from the Marat chieftain up to the sun and back, frowning. "Before the One. You mean, before the sun?"

Doroga looked at her blankly.

"The sun," Amara explained, adding a gesture. "That is what you mean by the One, yes?"

"No," Doroga said, laughter in his tone. "The sun is not The One. You do not understand."

"Then tell me," Amara said, exasperated.

"Why?" Doroga asked. The question was a simple one, but there was a weight behind the word that made Amara hesitate and think before answering.

"Because I want to understand you," she said. "I want to know more about you and your people. What makes you what you are. What we share and what we do not."

Doroga pursed his lips. Then he nodded once, to himself, and turned around completely, facing Amara, and crossing his legs. He folded his hands in his lap, then after a moment, began to speak to her in a tone that reminded her of several of her better teachers at the Academy.

"The One is all things. He is the sun, yes. And the sunlight on the trees. And the earth, and the sky. He is the rain in the spring, the ice of winter. He is the fire, the stars at night. He is the thunder and the clouds, the wind and the sea. He is the stag, the wolf, the fox, the gargant." Doroga put a broad hand on his chest. "He is me." Then he reached out and touched Amara's forehead with a finger. "And he is you."

"But I've seen your folk refer to The One, and indicated the sun by gesture."

Doroga waved a hand. "Are you Gaius?"

"Of course not," Amara said.

"But you are his sworn servant, yes? His messenger? His hand? And at times you command in his name?"

"Yes," Amara said.

"So it is with The One," Doroga replied. "From the sun comes all life, just as from The One. The sun is not The One. But it is how we give him our respect."

Amara shook her head. "I've never heard that of your people."

Doroga nodded. "Few Alerans have. The One is all that is, all that was, all that will be. The worlds, the heavens-all a part of The One. Each of us, a part of The One. Each of us with a purpose and a responsibility."

"What purpose?" she asked.

Doroga smiled. "The gargant to dig. The wolf to hunt. The stag to run. The eagle to fly. We are all made to be for a purpose, Aleran."

Amara arched an eyebrow. "And what is yours?"

"Like all my people," Doroga said. "To learn." He leaned a hand down to rest on the steadily pacing gargant's back, almost unconsciously. "Each of us feels a call to other pieces of The One. We grow nearer to them. Begin to feel what they feel, and know what they know. Walker thinks all of this rusty metal your folk wear stinks, Aleran. But he smells winter apples in the wagons and thinks he should get a barrel. He is glad the spring is coming quickly, because he is tired of hay. He wants to dig down to find the roots of some young trees for his lunch, but he knows that it is important to me that we keep walking. So he walks."

Amara blinked slowly. "You know this about your gargant?"

"We are both a part of The One, and both stronger and wiser for it," Doroga said. He smiled. "And Walker is not mine. We are companions."

The gargant let out a rumbling call and shook its tusks, making the saddle-mat lurch back and forth. Doroga burst out into rumbling laughter.

"What did he say?" Amara asked, somewhat awed.

"Not so much say," Doroga said. "But... he makes me know how he feels. Walker thinks we are companions only until he gets too hungry. And then I can either give him more food or stand clear of those apples."

Amara found herself smiling. "And the other tribes. They are..."

"Bonded," Doroga provided.

"Bonded with their own totems?"

"Horse with horse, Wolf with wolf, Herdbane with herdbane, yes," he confirmed. "And many others. It is how our people learn. Not just the wisdom of the mind." He put a fist on his chest. "But the wisdom of the heart. They are equally important. Each of them part of The One."

Amara shook her head. The beliefs of the barbarians were a great deal more complex than she would have believed possible. And if Doroga was telling the literal truth about the Marat bond with their beasts, it meant that they might be a great deal stronger than the Alerans had previously believed.

Hashat, for example, the chieftain of the Horse Clan, wore the cloak pins of three Royal Guardsman on her saber belt. Amara had a.s.sumed they had been looted from the field after the first day of First Calderon, but now she was not so sure. If the Marat woman, then a young warrior, had challenged the Princeps's personal guardsman on horseback, her bond with her animal may have given her a decisive advantage, even over Aleran metalcrafting. At Second Calderon, Doroga's gargant had smashed through walls built to withstand the pressures of battle of all kinds, from the great mauls of earthcrafter-borne strength to furycrafted blasts of fire and gale winds.

"Doroga," she said, "why have your people not made war on Alera more often?"

Doroga shrugged. "No reason to do it," he said. "We fight one another often. It is a test The One has given us, to see where the greatest strengths lie. And we have differences of thought and mind, just as your own folk do. But we do not fight until one side is dead. Once the strength is shown, the fight is over."

"But you killed Atsurak at the battle two years ago," Amara said.

Doroga's expression darkened with what looked like sadness. "Atsurak had become too savage. Too steeped in blood. He had betrayed his own purpose before The One. He had stopped learning and began to forget who and what he was. His father died at the Field of Fools-what my tribe call First Calderon-and he grew to manhood l.u.s.ting for vengeance. He led many others with him in his madness. And he and his followers killed an entire tribe of my people." Doroga tugged at the braid again and shook his head. "As he grew, I had hoped he would learn to forget his hate. He did not. For a time, I feared I would hate him for what he did to me. But now it is over and done. I am not proud of what I did to Atsurak. But I could do nothing else and still serve The One."

"He killed your mate," Amara said quietly.

Doroga closed his eyes and nodded. "She hated spending winters with my tribe, in our southlands, in the dunes by the sea. Too much sleeping, she said. That year, she stayed with her own folk."

Amara shook her head. "I do not want to disrespect your beliefs. But I must ask you something."

Doroga nodded.

"Why do you fight to destroy the ancient enemy if we are all a part of The One? Aren't they as much a part of it as your people? Or mine?"

Doroga was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "The One created us all to be free. To learn. To find common cause with others and to grow stronger and wiser. But the ancient enemy perverts that union of strengths. With the enemy, there is no choice, no freedom. They take. They force a joining of all things, until nothing else remains."

Amara shivered. "You mean, joined with them the way you are with your totems?"

Doroga's face twisted in revulsion-and, Amara saw with a sense of unease, the first fear she had ever seen on the Marat's face. Deeper. Sharper.

"To join the enemy is to cease to be. A living death. I will speak no more of it."

"Very well," Amara said. "Thank you."

Doroga nodded and turned around to face forward.

She untied the saddle rope and dropped it over the gargant's flank, preparing to climb down it, when a call went down the column to halt. She looked up to see Bernard sitting his nervous horse with one hand lifted.

One of the scouts appeared on the road, his horse running at top speed toward the column. As the rider closed on Bernard and slowed, Bernard gave the man a curt gesture, and the two of them cantered side by side down the length of the column, until they were not far from Doroga's gargant.

"All right," Bernard said, gesturing from the scout to Amara and Doroga. "Let's hear it."

"Aricholt, sir," the man said, panting. "I was just there."

Amara saw Bernard's jaw clench. "What has happened?"

"It's empty, sir," the scout replied. "Just... empty. No one is there. There are no fires. No livestock."

"A battle?" Amara asked.

The scout shook his head. "No, lady. Nothing broken, and no blood. It's as if they all just walked away."

Bernard frowned at that and looked up at Amara. It didn't show on his face, but she could see the worry behind his eyes. It matched the worry and the fear she was feeling herself. Missing? An entire steadholt? There were more than a hundred men, women, and children who called Aricholt their home.

"It is too late to save them," Doroga rumbled. "This is how it begins."

Chapter 16

"I don't understand this," Isana said. "He's an academ. He's at the Academy. It isn't all that enormous. What do you mean that you can't find my nephew?"