Llian sat there for ages, staring at the tramped-down snow through the cage of his fingers. Karan had abandoned him, cast him aside and he didn't have the faintest idea why. He wanted to flee but was too sick and sore. He wanted to die.

It was noon and the inn was serving lunch when Karan and Shand came downstairs again. Llian was sitting beside the fire, an untouched bowl in front of him. There was a huge bruise on the side of his head. His hair looked as if a rat had died in it. His skin was a sickly yellow color and his cheeks were burning, fever red. His eyes were red too, glassy, but his hands were blue.

"Shand!" Llian said coolly. "You're back!" Karan would not meet his eye. She had been crying. "It's good to see you, Shand. I need to talk to you." Then he caught Karan's eye on him and scowled. "I've such a headache, and I can't seem to remember why."

He rubbed the bruised side of his head, then winced. His fingers came away with a smear of fresh blood on them. He stared at the stains, looking confused. "I must have fallen down the stairs. I can't remember anything."

"Oh, Llian, what are we going to do with you?" Karan said. He looked sick and sad, and a little foolish, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She disappeared through the door, almost running.

Shand stayed behind, plying Llian with wine and talking merrily about past times. Llian could not comprehend what had happened, for he had no memories of the night. One day he had been going along merrily, the next he was treated like a criminal.

He was not fooled by Shand's pretense at friendliness. Karan was hopeless at hiding her feelings. Something had gone terribly wrong, and it had something to do with the wild dreams of last night, but he did not know what.

That night, after Shand went to bed, Llian caught Karan in the corridor.

"Karan, please tell me what the matter is." He took her cold hands. "I've always trusted you."

Karan's hands lay limply in his. She was in agony. If she told Llian, Shand would betray him. She pulled away.

He put out his arms to her. "Please!"

She just stood there. A tear leaked from each eye and ran down her cheek. "Don't, Llian," she whispered. "Don't do this to me. I can't bear it." Then she fled.

Llian was devastated. It was all over. Everything they had made together was broken. What was he to do?

And that night, and for many nights after, in his worst moments he wondered if he might not have betrayed them to Rulke after all, and not even known it.

Karan lay in her cold bed and could not sleep. Why? she kept thinking. Why had Llian done this? Or had he done it at all? She couldn't tell. Once she would have relied on her own judgment but Shand had broken that defense. Why did I say yes to Shand? He's wrong, I know he is.

Please come to me, Llian, she thought a hundred times that night. Come into my bed. Don't say anything, just hold me in your arms and make everything like it used to be. I'll break my word. We'll run away into the mountains where no one can find us.

Then, when dawn was breaking and she still had not slept a wink: Why didn't you come? If only you had come we could have worked this out.

But Llian did not dare. The rejection had broken him. He could not face the thought of it happening again.

HOMECOMING.

Two days later they left Tullin, heading east toward the pass and Bannador. The sun came out the day they departed, turning the snows to mud and slush. That made the trip harder but they were seasoned travelers now and the week's journey was uneventful, like most of the past months. The last day was the hardest, a slog through mud that was sometimes calf-deep. A slow silent trip, each preoccupied with their own troubles.

Llian had fallen behind. Shand came up beside Karan. It was his first chance to talk to her for days.

"Tell me about the dreams," said Shand. "When did they begin?"

"In Flude!" she said.

"Have there been any more since Tullin?"

She did not feel like talking. She felt betrayed by Shand. The friendship between them had been fatally undermined. She forced herself to be polite.

"I haven't!"

"And Llian?"

"He never speaks about them, but he often has them."

They came down into what were called the Hills of Bannador, though they would have been mountains anywhere else. It was a land of steep ridges and deep gullies, barren after yet another dry year-a land dotted with little hamlets and isolated steadings each with its meager flocks of sheep or goats. They met no one that day, for the track followed the stony, waterless ridges.

After a day heading southeast they crossed into granite country: rounded rocky hills covered in straggly pines and broad valleys where there were crops and larger towns. From this point they saw signs of war everywhere-burnt fields and forests, broken bridges, ruined houses and, not far from Gothryme, a village reduced to ashes. The last building had been a stable, for the fire-scarred skeletons of half a dozen horses still lay among the rubble.

On they trudged. The anticipation became a hard lump in Karan's chest, a tingle in her stomach. Even the terrible problem of Llian sank into the background before the prospect of being home again.

They reached the Ryme, the river that flowed through her land, watered the fields around the town of Tolryme and passed out of the valley east toward the sea. Karan pulled her hat down as they entered her town. She did not want to meet anyone, or explain anything, before she got home.

Tolryme was a poor but pretty place, an overgrown village really-a couple of hundred cottages, a handful of merchants, a market square, a library and a temple, all built in pink granite and gray-green slate. It was in sad shape: many of the cottages were reduced to blackened walls. The bridge across the Ryme was broken, the central arch a scatter of stones in the river. That did not matter at this time of year but it would in the spring, when the snow melted in the mountains and turned the Ryme into a torrent.

They forded the river and followed a winding track between high hedges. Through gaps in the hedges they saw trampled crops and the bones of slaughtered stock, long since picked clean.

Gothryme Manor was set in the upper part of a broad valley. The ridges that ran down on either side were grasscovered, their slopes broken with boulders and copses of small trees. They climbed the hill. The chimneys of Gothryme appeared. Home at last! Karan choked back tears. Nearly five hundred days had passed since she'd left with Maigraith for Fiz Gorgo, thinking to be away just two months. How young, foolish and afraid she'd been back then. So what had changed?

Karan felt self-conscious taking Llian and Shand home, seeing every deficiency, shabbiness and rusticity through their eyes. What would Shand, who had traveled the world and seen all of its splendor, who had once been wealthy and powerful, think of her home? What did Llian perceive with his all-seeing chronicler's vision? Would he one day mock Gothryme in some rustic tale, an idle yarn spun in some barroom bawdy session?

Gothryme was small, just a battered keep of pink granite, with younger buildings of the same material extending in two wings from the rear. The keep was more or less oval in shape, and squat, only three storeys. It had a simple conical roof of green slate, a bare flagpole and a brass weathervane in the shape of a flying goose, though it had once been struck by lightning and the long goose neck hung limp.

The wings had originally been two-storeyed, roofed in slate, with small windows on the outside. Sometime later, long verandas had been added on the inside, and the open end enclosed with a low wall to which lean-to trellises had been attached and covered in vines. The kitchen gardens were further up the hill, on the sunny northern side. It all had a rustic, home-made look, but the gardens beside the front door were neat and the gravel path freshly raked.

Behind the garden was an orchard then a steep slope of grass, brown with boulders and huge outcrops of granite. Half a league further on, a broken cliff wall of pink granite blocked the way to the mountains. A narrow path wound its way up the cliff to the uninhabited uplands, rocky ridges and deep wet valleys, and her magnificent but useless Forest of Gothryme.

As they approached Karan saw that the stonework of the keep was battered at the front and most of one wing had been burnt to a stone shell. The other wing was also damaged, while some of the surrounding walls had been reduced to rubble.

"It might have been worse," she said, though she was shocked at the destruction, and more so at the state of the town below. If this was mild damage, how must the rest of Bannador have suffered? Winter's boot was on the threshold. After years of drought there were no reserves left. There would be famine before spring.

Despite their quiet approach the news had come before them and a small group waited on the front steps. They included Mavid the cook, small and pale with brown flour all over her apron, Nutan and Mara, leathery gnomes who had been gardeners since before she'd been born, Old Mid the handyman and master brewer, as round as the barrels in his cellar, two cook's helpers, one carrying a mop and the other a scrubbing brush, and Galgi the weaver, tall, longlimbed and twiggy-fingered, to say nothing of half a dozen children including mischievous Benie, the cook's boy.

"Karan, Karan!" Benie screamed, dancing around in a circle.

At the head of the group stood Rachis, her steward, looking at least ten years older than when she'd farewelled him last year. Even then he'd been an old man, and looked it. Now he was gaunt, his cheeks sunken and his hair just a few sparse white threads. Rachis shuffled forward, looking beaten down, but his smile was genuine.

"Karan-lar," he said, putting out his long arms. "This is the answer to a prayer. How long have we waited and longed for you to come. Welcome home."

Karan dropped her pack and ran up the steps. "Rachis, I'm sorry! I should have been here."

She flung her arms around him. He towered above her but was so very thin. His embrace reminded her of her childhood. After the death of her father, and then her mother, he had been the only one to treat her kindly.

"So I've said more than once. It has been a sore trial for us, this last year. But having heard your part in this, it would have been the worse had you been here. The Ghashad came through quite a few times, asking after you. But for all that they treated us better than Yggur's Second Army did, or his First! Come inside."

"Where is everyone?" she asked. "They are not-"

"We were more fortunate than our neighbors-no one from Gothryme was killed. A miracle! Everyone else has gone hunting or a-gleaning, for we have little left to eat and nothing for the winter. Some also went down to the town to help rebuild."

She went around the rest of the group, Benie last of all. Karan shook his grubby hand. "I missed you, Benie. What say we go for a walk after tea? You can show me the garden and the animals. Tell me, have you been teasing old Kar lately?"

Kar was an old black swan, a fixture on the pond for many a year. Benie burst into tears. "Kar's dead! Those rotten soldiers ate her!"

That was what war meant to him and he was inconsolable. She hugged him, shedding a tear of her own.

The weathered doors of Gothryme stood open. They were made of planks thick as Karan's fists, reinforced with iron bands inside and outside, and studded with iron bolts. One door was dented and splintered.

Karan introduced Llian, who was polite but unusually reserved, and Shand, who knew Rachis of course. They went inside, into a round hall some thirty paces across with a curved stair of stone running up the far wall. The flagstones were scattered here and there with threadbare rag rugs. On either end of the hall was a fireplace large enough to roast an ox, but neither fire was lit and the hall was icy.

Karan stood there in silence. "What happened to the carpets and tapestries?"

"Stolen by the soldiers," said Rachis dismally. "Also the candlesticks, the silver, most of your mother's jewelry, and everything else they could carry away. We haven't enough wood to heat the hall. Come into the kitchen."

She followed Rachis out into the northern wing. The kitchen, larders and pantries had not been damaged though there was little in them. One wall was taken up by a huge iron stove of eccentric design, her father's work. A few pots simmered on top. The opposite wall had a pair of fireplaces with roasting spits, and cauldrons hanging from a bar over a meager fire. The stove was warm though, and they all stood round it while Mavid made tea.

They drank it standing up, so anxious was Karan to reckon up the damage. It was considerable. Rachis went through the list while they walked around. "The damage to the northern wing is fairly superficial, but most of the southern will have to be rebuilt."

They passed out into the gardens, which were also in sad shape. Llian gazed around him. "I hadn't realized you were so rich!"

Karan's estate, which had come down to her from her mother's side, comprised the upper part of the valley and the ridges on either side. Most was steep, with scrubby woodland and poor, stony soils good only for sheep and goats. Only a small strip near the river was arable.

In addition she held title to the Forest of Gothryme, an ancient upland wood that extended along the eastern side of the Great Mountains, as well as various waterfalls, streams and a small lake. This forest was almost virgin: magnificent and old, with good hunting and fishing, but inaccessible except by a precarious stair up the granite cliffs, in consequence of which it added almost nothing to her living.

She was also heir to the folly of Carcharon, which was higher still, beyond the forest and up the dangerous path that led eventually to Shazmak. Carcharon had been built five hundred years ago by her mad ancestor Basunez, at a place which had some kind of cosmic significance to him, if to no other. But Carcharon was utterly worthless and had been abandoned after his death.

"Rich, ha!" snorted Karan. "It feeds us, but there's not much left over to sell, or to buy what we can't grow or make. Gothryme was in debt before I left. Even in the good times, before the drought began, our wealth was counted in silver, not gold." As she walked around, and the toll of the damage mounted, her heart sank further and further. It could never be made good.

"Is that all?" she asked as she and Rachis finished going through the stock books. "What is the state of our accounts?"

Rachis hesitated. To be the bearer of such bad tidings, to confess his failure, was like cutting out his heart. "Grim," he said, hauling out a huge ledger and turning the pages one by one from the very beginning, a good thirty years ago.

Karan watched the years go by with agonizing slowness. Finally he grunted, smoothed down the last page and pointed to the balance with one finger.

"That's all?" she said in a whisper. "One hundred and five silver tars? That won't last a month if we have to buy food." The estate, even if spring was bountiful, would earn no more until mid-summer.

"The war!" Rachis said heavily. "What with fines, taxes, confiscations and the bribes I had to pay to stop the soldiers from looting everything, you are lucky to have anything left at all. Had not your friend Maigraith come at the head of an army we would be living in tents. And since his return, Yggur has taxed us into the ground. See, I have itemized every expense. And I have to say that we are better off than most." He listed a dozen families who had nothing left but the land they camped on.

Karan closed the ledger with a snap. "When do his tax collectors come back?"

"The spring equinox," said Rachis.

"And the assessment?"

"Five hundred and forty tars," he replied mournfully.

Karan went white. "We need more than that to restock, let alone rebuild. Thank you, Rachis."

He nodded and went out, walking very slowly. Karan remained where she was, her head sunk on the ledger.

Shand found her there an hour later. He rested his hand on her shoulder and Karan looked up with a start. She pulled away, still angry with him.

"Worse than you thought?"

"Much worse. We are practically ruined now. We will be, when Yggur's tax collector comes back in the spring. I will have to go to the graspers. What will their rate of usury be, after all this ruin? They can ask what they like."

"Hundreds of percent, I should say. Have you nothing that you can sell?"

"Precious little. Most things of any value are already gone. Whatever I can spare will fetch almost nothing, since thousands of other families are selling the same stuff, while whatever I need will cost its weight in silver. And I still owe you and Llian, and Malien, for all the costs of a year's travel."

"For my part, that is forgotten," said Shand. "I can afford it."

"We had this conversation once before," said Karan sharply. Being beholden to him was even worse now. "I pay my debts." How? she thought. How can I ever repay you or anyone?

"Well, who knows what spring will bring?" he said cheerfully. Since leaving Tullin he had behaved as if there was nothing between them. "Come, put your long face away until the morrow. They are preparing a celebration for your homecoming. Don't spoil it. They have had hard times too. The head of the house must smile and set an example, whatever her own feelings."

"I know what spring will bring!" said Karan. "My fortunes have turned. But you're right. Despair in my own home is more palatable than the same thing on the road. No one will work harder to restore Gothryme again."

There was a banquet that night, the best that Gothryme could muster, though that was little. The want and the quality were disguised by plentiful wild herbs and garlic and mustard, and there was wine enough, and dancing and singing, and the kind of high spirits that come with the passing of the storm but before the drudgery of cleaning up begins. After that Llian even did a telling. It was far from being one of his best, but it was the best that the people of Gothryme had ever heard, and they even forgave him his morose looks.

This was where Karan belonged, though it had taken her long enough to realize it. Shand had never seen her so at home with people; so happy to be the center of attention; so authoritative.

It was well after midnight. The party was over, everyone gone to their beds. Karan wearily climbed the stairs to her own room, which was on the top floor of the keep. It had a damp-stained timber ceiling and a wooden floor with cracks between the boards. The walls were undecorated, the hangings all stolen, but long narrow windows in the curving walls looked east, south and west, so it seemed light and spacious. Her bed, a huge square box, had been freshly made, and there was a vase of fragrant winter violets by the head.

She'd imagined her bed for a year. Mostly she'd imagined Llian sharing it, but he'd stayed downstairs in one of the guest rooms. She stripped off her clothes, tossed them into the basket, had a quick wash in freezing water and crept between the sheets, into the hollow at the center of the old mattress.

An hour later, numb with cold and unable to sleep, she got up again. Her mind refused to turn off. Karan emptied out her pack, putting her traveling gear away. When that was done, her hair brushed, the covers smoothed down, her restless fingers came across the blackened silver chain Llian had given her in Katazza. A reminder of happier times. It was the most precious thing she owned.

She took the chain off and let it fall into a pool in her palm, repeating the action over and over. Poor tarnished thing. Silver showed here and there. She rubbed it with a dirty shirt, not successfully, so threw on a robe and padded downstairs to the scullery. Hunting out some silver-cleaning fluid, now redundant since all the silver was gone, she scrubbed away at the chain.

After an hour or so it was almost as good as new, save for tarnish between the braids of silver that she could not get out, even with a brush. Karan held the chain up to the light. It was a beautiful piece of work, a lovely old thing, and as she'd thought, the weave was exactly the same pattern as the Great Tower that she had climbed in Katazza. She supposed Kandor had made it as a reminder of that marvelous structure, though why he'd hidden the chain so carefully was a mystery. There had been thousands of items in Katazza of far greater value.

There were some scratchings on the clasp, still filled with dirt and tarnish. She worked over them with a brush, then cleaned out the grooves with a needle. It was engraved writing, she realized. The letters were revealed one by one. F I A C H R A. Not a name that meant anything to her. She searched for other markings and eventually found a beautifully engraved sigil or glyph, the maker's hallmark. It was rather worn, clearly older than the name. She must ask Llian about them sometime. If Llian ever spoke to her again.

They had reached Gothryme just in time, for in the night the wind came up, howling from the south, a blizzard that dropped a knee-deep cover of snow by morning, and a lot more during the day, though the calendar only said autumn. The season had turned a month earlier than last year.

It snowed for two days, then the sun melted it all away again. No one was fooled-it was warning of a cruel winter on the way, and famine in Bannador. If winter came in earnest in the next few weeks they would very probably starve, for most of their grain and stock had been stolen or sent to the relief of the lowlands a long time ago. That generosity began to seem foolish now. Supply wagons could move down there during the winter, but up here they would be snowed in for months, travel only possible on foot. They could freeze too, with much of the manor uninhabitable and their stocks of firewood destroyed.

They also worried about the Ghashad, though none had come through the valley in months. Karan learned that Yggur had a garrison only a day's march away, at Tuldis. She did not find that comforting.