'What sort of beast are you? Where do your kind come from? Why did God make you? You are a strong, handsome fellow, are you not? You remind me of my gelding Resuelto, who is as strong and beautiful as you and loyal in the bargain, a fine horse. A good companion. Are you like a horse who may respond to good treatment? Or are you so wild that you will kill me as soon as you get the chance?"

As long as he kept the cloak tight over the griffin's eyes, as long as it couldn't see, it did not fight him. The play of the moon's light across its pale hindquarters fascinated him, yet a miracle also were its folded wings and the place around its shoulders where lion's body became an eagle's head. The twinkling of the stars seemed to reflect in the iron feathers, so edged, so dangerous, so close to his hands and body but not quite touching him because he was protected by the griffin's unexpected docility.

He waited, weak but stubborn, holding on. The moon reached the western hills; soon there would not be enough light to see more than suggestions of shapes. But he had never relied mostly on eyesight. He listened to the murmur of the wind through the grass, the melodic rubbing of the griffin's feathers where the breeze ruffled them, the scrabble of tiny claws through the grass where a mouse or rabbit foraged. He heard a distant shout, hushed by another voice.

They came prudently, moving swiftly but not recklessly, with Fulk in the lead and others close behind. Torches lit the night, and the crackle and hiss of flames and the pitchy scent of their smoke made the griffin uneasy.

'Hush, now," he said, wishing he could stroke it, but if he touched the head and neck feathers, they would cut his hands, and he dared not shift enough to reach the tawny shoulder for fear of letting the cloak slip.

'My lord prince!" Fulk called to him from a safe distance.

An awed whisper, many voices murmuring at one time, rose from the troop. They did not rush forward, being well trained as well as practical, so although certainly the griffin smelled and heard and sensed their arrival they did not panic him. Not yet.

'Quietly, Captain. Come forward with the strongest thread you have, a canvas needle, and strong rope. We'll sew this cloak tightly over its head and lead it in to camp. It's kin to an eagle. No reason we can't jess it and train it."

Silence greeted his words just as they would the utterances of the insane, but Captain Fulk came forward nevertheless. His legs hissed through the grass and his footfalls clipped along steadily, a man who did not lose his nerve even in the worst situations. A man I can trust, thought Sanglant, who dared not turn to watch Fulk's approach because his hands were numb and if he shifted the griffin might realize that a single strong jerk of its head would free it from the cloak.

Fulk was accompanied by some damn fool bearing a hissing torch that made the griffin shudder down the length of its body, but the man veered off downwind, crouched, and held the torch in such a way that it illuminated the scene so that Fulk would be able to see what he was doing.

'I pray you, Captain, work quickly. Sew it tightly and jess the beast's forelegs with just enough play so it can creep. We'll use the rest of the rope as a leash."

'Yes, my lord prince."

Captain Fulk was a most excellent soldier. He did what he was told and did not flinch or cower. Sanglant edged backward just enough to allow Fulk room to duck in under the griffin's head, where he started stitching the edges of the cloak together, working efficiently and with a remarkably steady hand. From this angle Sanglant was barely able to see over the beast's shoulder to the man reckless enough to accompany Fulk with the torch.

-d,y. ", see you found your gHf-fin, my lord prince. I told them you would."

X POT:.

BARTHOLOMEW assigned a burly oaf, called Stinker by the other men, to be Alain's jailer. He was big, and he did stink, and he had a nasty mouth on him, always cursing and muttering.

'You call me what the rest do and I'll bite your shitty little ears off," said Stinker as they walked through the village, heading south. He kicked one of the dead clerics to show how tough he was, but otherwise the corpses were left lying as Father Benignus ordered them to move out.

'Bet you wish you had a big cock, like I do."

Alain glanced at Bartholomew, who walked behind him, scratching his chin anxiously, but the man looked away, ashamed.

'I'm a big man, you cocksucker," added Stinker, "which is what you must have been if you rode with those pissing clerics. They're lying in their own piss and blood now, aren't they? Hate them, I do. I hate everyone."

'Why?" asked Alain.

Stinker made a move to strike him, but Sorrow growled and the big man backed off while the bandits around them snickered.

'You wanna take me?" shouted Stinker. "What about you, Red?"

With his staff, he poked a youth whose cheek and chin were stained with a huge red birthmark. "You making fun of me, Dog-ears?" He spat at the feet of a second man. "You wanna make something of it?"

'You wanna get your teeth knocked out?" snarled Dog-Ears, tugging on the lobe of his remaining ear. "We're just waiting. You say the word, Stinker."

'Shut your mouths," snapped Bartholomew. "You know what happened to the last two men what got in a fight. You know how Father Benignus don't like that. You know what he'll do."

That shut them up.

They walked south through the woodland until it was too dark to see and then wrapped themselves in their cloaks on the damp ground. A dozen men-about half the group-remained on watch, nervous and fearful. Alain allowed them to loop a rope around his wrists and tie him loosely to a tree trunk, and he leaned there, dozing, as the night passed. Mist pattered down through the branches, wetting his face. No owls hooted. He heard no sounds of life at all, only the intermittent shush of rain. As far as he could tell, Father Benignus spent the night huddled on his horse, never once dismounting.

At dawn, as the bandits rose groaning and made ready to depart with their captured horses and the clothing, food, and gear they'd stripped from the dead clerics, Alain caught Bartholomew by the arm and whispered in his ear.

'Does the holy father always stay on his horse? How does he pee?"

'Shut up." Bartholomew yanked on the ropes. "You're not dead, but you will be if you don't keep your mouth shut."

Rage growled softly, enough to make Bartholomew start back as he eyed the huge hound, but she did not lunge. It was only a warning.

'Keep that dog off us," warned Batholomew, moving away. "Hey, you, Stinker! Get up here with your prisoner."

'Hush." Alain stroked Rage's head, and Sorrow nosed in as well, wanting attention.

Stinker kept his distance from the hounds. No one spoke as they set off. They all seemed to know where they were going.

It was a miserable slog through the hilly countryside with a drizzle filtering down through beech and oak forest. Many of the trees hadn't reached their full foliage so, with no leaves to catch the mizzle, all the deer trails were churned to mud by those who walked at the front. Now and again an unexpected puddle lying athwart the track ambushed their steps until all of them, whether barefoot or shod, had sopping wet feet. Rain dripped from branches and misted down from the heavens until their shoulders were sodden and their hair slicked against heads and necks.

They reached their encampment about midday. From the trail Alain glimpsed no hint of any campsite but there was an increasing restlessness in the hounds, who lifted their heads to sniff the air and made several darting forays into the undergrowth before he called them sharply to heel. Just before they broke free of the forest, he caught the scent of smoke, but because the wind was blowing at their backs, it faded away and he didn't smell the camp-fires until they came right out of the forest and could see them. There wasn't much of a clearing except where trees had been cut back. One ancient and vast trunk marked where a huge old oak tree had been cut down, although the stump was now weathered and brown with age. Where the trail ended and a cluster of ragged tents and makeshift hovels spread out through the clearing, he stopped short and stared.

At the far edge of the clearing, seven rugged stone pillars erupted out of the ground like uplifted scales along the back of a dragon buried in the earth. This craggy ridgeline rose starkly above the trees, a jumbled mass of natural rock pale in color and pockmarked by openings, steps, niches, overhangs, and what looked like windows carved into the upper reaches of the little crags.

The broken line of rocks reminded him of the Dragonback Ridge on Osna Sound.

He had seen dragons falling from the sky in that last vision of Adica's world, just before he was ripped away from her. An unexpectedly sharp stab of grief pierced him and, gasping, he dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

'Hey, boy, move your sorry butt!"

A foot slammed into his hip, but the pain made barely any impression. Nor did Bartholomew's voice, sounding so distant, leagues away.

'Leave it, Stinker. Go on. I'll make sure he sticks here."

Stinker's reek moved away, subsumed in the smoke and clatter of the camp, but these distractions dissolved as Alain struggled to make sense of his grief and of the world it had left him in.

Were these really dragons, stricken by magic to become stone and fallen to earth as the great sundering ripped through the world?

.._ IVATE tLLIOTT He pressed his palms into the mud and with the hounds growling at any who came close, he bent his head, shut his eyes, and listened through his hands.

He sought blindly for some echo that might reveal the presence of a monstrous dragon petrified into stone. Was that murmur the memory of its respiration? Or was it only the wind rustling in the trees? He heard as from a distance the sound of the bandits slogging past and their sarcastic comments, directed at his kneeling form, but he thrust that distraction aside and sought farther down, deeper into the earth. Was that faint thrum the heartbeat of the Earth singing through the ley lines that bound all of world together? These threads drew him like a clear straight path through an otherwise impassable forest, and he felt his awareness hurtling outward, away from his body. Voices called to him through the stone.

Who. Are. You? What. Have. You. Seen? Help. Us.

He could not reach them. He was not strong enough. He sought the one he needed to find if only he could call to him across the vast gulf of distance that separated them.

Stronghand.

There!

The thread splintered into light and became vision.

He skims across a world that is only water and sky, gray above and gray below, but after a moment he realizes that sedge beds and clumps of reeds break up the monotony of the expanse of dark water although he sees no break in the cloud cover above. Tufts of greenery mark islands. Birds flock everywhere, wings flashing in constant motion. The noise of their honking and shrilling and piping and whistling drowns the stealthy stroke of paddles dipped in and out of the water. He leans over the edge of the canoe to stare down into the murky waters, and sees himself.

He is Stronghand. His teeth flash as he grins; jewels wink in the reflecting waters. Beneath the surface fish teem. He could reach right down and catch eels with his hands. Here, in this seemingly desolate place, he has found riches.

"Keep low," says the girl. "We're close."

The chattering chorus of birds covers the sound of their approach, although in truth the canoe parts the waters with no more sound than a duck dabbles, and both of his youthful guides know the secret of paddling silently as they dip and turn the oars. The boat slides into a dense clohd of reeds, and the girl slips over the side into knee-deep water and wades ashore.

Ki looks different than her cousin, not short and dark but half a hand taller, with the blonde hair and pale blue eyes common among the Al-bans. For the hunt today, she has streaked mud through her hair.

Half hidden among the vegetation, she gestures for him to follow. He slips over the side of the dugout, careful not to jostle his standard, which lies along the keel. Elafi leans against the opposite board so the boat won't heel or slosh.

The water parts around his legs as he wades after Ki as silently as possible, although to his ears he sounds like a fish thrashing in shallow water as it seeks the safety of the depths. Mud sucks around his feet. Bent low, he kneels on the shore beside a nest made of grasses that shelters four tiny eggs within its woven bowl. Ki picks one out, casually cracks it open, and swallows the slippery mass of half-formed bird.

The girl hands him a second egg. "Take half, leave half."

None among his kind eat eggs; it is taboo.

As he hands the egg out to Elafi, in the canoe, Ki speaks again. "From here, you can see the holy island."

They creep up a low embankment, moving slowly so as not to startle birds into flight. Buntings perch on the tops of swaying reeds, but they do not take wing, unwilling to abandon their nests to these slow crawling beasts.

The birds are right to fear us, he thinks. They have no means by which to fight back.

Ki parts the reeds and beckons. He pads up beside her and gazes across a last glittery stretch of open waters. Three islands rise from the marsh, two of them low, buttressed by earth embankments thrown up around their perimeters that serve both as dikes and as fortifications, and the third a fully natural island set high enough that the tidal wash and the spring and summer floods cannot swamp it. There are so many armed men on the islands that the land is covered with them like swarming locusts. Tents lie higgledy-piggledy on the lower islands although some training grounds have been left bare, where men practice their sword-craft. Even from this distance he can hear the slap and ring of blows struck and countered as they prepare for war. A longhouse and three attendant huts hold pride of place on one of the islands but they were clearly built long ago, not newly raised. A golden banner marked with the image of a white stag flies from the thatched roof of the longhouse.

The Alban queen is here.

T,'-T.

He can smell her. Her power and the magic of her tree sorcerers has a scent as sharp as smoke.

"Look!" whispers Ki, pointing.

The low summit of the third island bristles with teeth-or so he thinks until he realizes that a stone crown rises from the hill. All of the undergrowth has been ruthlessly cut back away from the circle of stones, and men labor with ropes and levers and earth ramps to raise a fallen monolith into position.

"What goes on there?"

She shakes her head in dismay. "When our family watched over the holy place, we left it in peace. No good will come of this, I am thinking. They'll stir up the old spirits. Men have come from over the sea."

"Ones like me?"

"Nay, not like you," she says boldly. "None of you dragon-men. You would not touch the holy place, I am thinking. These are circle priests who have come from the east lands across the sea. Elafi saw there was a fight between the circle priests and the tree priests, for the queen's favor."

"How saw he this?"

"There's a place to come up close without being seen, right up inside the crown. Only our family knows about it, because we got the secret from the grandmothers."

"Can you take me?"

Ki has a pup's grin, full of sharp teeth and playful expectation. "Not till the dark of the moon. It isn't safe otherwise."

Out of the still waters a majestic heron takes flight, wings wide as it glides low over them with its head tucked back on its shoulders and its legs dangling low, brushing the reeds. Its shadow covers them briefly.

Ki murmurs a blessing or a spell and ducks her head. "It's a sign of the goddess'favor," she whispers. Perhaps.

The gods seem fickle to Stronghand, offering favor or withdrawing it according to unknown and unpredictable whims. The RockChildren have never been burdened by meddling gods. They are masters of their own destiny.

But still, only a fool casts dirt in clean water when he is thirsty. "If your goddess smiles on us, then truly we will meet with success." "What do you mean to do?"

He looks up at the gray sky. He smells a change in the weather, the wet taste of the east wind. A misting rain approaches. He can actually see the shadow of its passage over the pools and dark waters as it nears them.

"We will wait until the dark of the moon," he says. "Then you will show me this secret place inside the crown."

The girl is sharper than most of his advisers. She has never lived under the heel of a lord who holds over her the threat of life and death. That is why she is not afraid to question him. That is why she does not fear taking him out into the fens. "And then?"

Stronghand bares his teeth, a startling flash that, for an instant, takes the youth aback. Maybe, for the first time, she understands the threat he poses. Ki's hand tightens on her knife, but she does not move at all, only stares back at him, eye for eye.

"I would like to know who these circle priests are, and what they are doing to the stone crown. Once I discover that, I will know what to do next. I have dreams, too."

Ki pinches her lips together, eyes drawn tight. "Dreams are dangerous, my lord. My mother says that dreams have killed men and brought low those who were once queens and those who wished to rule after them."

The rain front washes over them, hissing in the waters. Through the curtain of rain it is hard to see farther than a spear cast; the islands lie obscure and veiled, but he feels the presence of the stone crown as a throb deep in his bones. A shout carries over the waters. A cheer.

A stone has been raised, and sunk in place.

"Dangerous," he agrees, "but it is more dangerous still to ignore them."

That humming whisper vanished, and Alain found himself back in the dirt with mud slipping through his fingers and his knees cold and wet. The deep awareness that lived in the core of the stone was overwhelmed by the noise of the waiting camp: the scrape of a grindstone milling grain to flour, the steady stroke of a hammer, clucking chickens and complaining goats, a shout of excitement as the newcomers met their allies. The sound of a woman's weeping.

He blinked, trying to shake off the flood of sounds and images, but he could not shake his vision.

Long ago he had dreamed of the WiseMothers, seen through Stronghand's eyes, and in those dreams they had spoken of a great weaving that bound the Earth together. They knew of the great cataclysm because it had created them. The eldest among them were impossibly old.

Sorrow and Rage whined, licking his face, as he sat back on his -r,'u. heels. The WiseMothers, in their slow and patient way, also sought to mitigate the furious storm that was coming. The stone crowns were the key. If he could reach Stronghand and the WiseMothers, then maybe, for once, he could act. His knowledge might aid them. Adica's death would not have been in vain if by having witnessed he could save others. A horse halted beside him. "Are you praying?" asked Father Benignus. He shook mud off his hands before wiping them on his leggings. "We should all pray, Father," he said, rising. "A storm is coming." The veil that concealed the man's face shuddered as Benignus shifted his seat in the way an exhausted man fears sliding off into the mire. Yet he did not dismount. He lifted a gloved hand and indicated that Alain should follow him.

Bartholomew had waited at Alain's side all this time, and he trudged alongside, keeping an arm's length from the hounds.

Alain surveyed the camp. Including the new arrivals, perhaps three score souls sheltered here, although fully a third of them did not bide here of their own free will. They were the ones whose feet were bound so tightly with rope, as a horse is hobbled, that they could only shuffle as they went along on their errands carrying water, milking goats, and grinding grain. All of these captives were women, and there were no children in camp except for some infants bundled against their mothers' hips and three filthy toddlers sitting on their naked backsides in the mud and squalling like stuck pigs. Stinker, passing the children, swore loudly, slapped one hard, grabbed a second and shook it, and then for good measure slapped the young woman who came running to quiet their terrified shrieks. "Bitch! These screeching brats can be sold as easily as their sisters and brothers if you sluts can't keep their mouths shut!"

The rope on Alain's wrists had been little more than a show of docility. He shook it free now and ran over to place himself between the cringing woman and the stinking, scarred man, who looked eager to crack her across the face a second time. Maybe he was just waiting for an excuse.

'What manner of creature are you," Alain demanded, "who is such a coward that he must show his strength by bullying those so much weaker than he is?"

Heads turned. Dog-Ears guffawed outright and was kicked by his companion, Red. Bartholomew said a few words too softly for Alain to make out. The captive women around the camp went as still as if they'd been touched by a guivre's eye, and although none of them looked toward him he was immediately and intensely aware that they all knew exactly what was going on.