She knelt on one knee so that she could look him in the face.

'You really want to leave Cengarn?'

The trembling turned to a shake like palsy. He made a guttural noise deep in his throat, swallowed hard, and finally spoke.

'I want to go away.'

'I don't believe you. Is it really true, that you want to go away?'

'It is.' But his head shook in a convulsive no.

Jill whistled softly under her breath.

'You don't want to say those words you've been saying, do you?'

'I don't.' He forced the words out. 'It's needful.'

'Indeed? Interesting. Now, just stand there quiet-like for a moment. Don't move and don't speak.'

Jill opened up her dweomer sight to take a look at the boy's aura. As is the case with most children, his formed a lopsided, ever-changing cloud of energy, at moments shrivelled, at others billowing out to one side or the other. Yet spiralling round the aura ran a dark smear or line, ineptly drawn, but no doubt effective. Jill grunted in distaste, then sent a line of light from her own aura and wiped the dark away. She shut down the dweomer sight to find Jahdo watching her, his head c.o.c.ked to one side like a puzzled dog.

'Now tell me, lad, do you want to go with Rhodry and the dwarves?'

'I don't! Oh please, mayn't I stay?'

'Of course. And as soon as ever we can, we'll take you home.'

He broke into a grin, started to skip a few steps, then stopped, letting the grin fade as he stared off in thought.

'Jahdo?' Jill kept her voice very soft. 'Someone told you to ride with Rhodry. Who was it?'

'No one did tell me. I did but know that it was needful for me to keep going onward.'

'Indeed? "Onward", is it? Try answering this. Who told you to go with Meer?'

'I - I don't remember.'

'But someone told you.'

'Not exactly. I just did know it was needful. I couldn't say I didn't want to go when Meer asked.'

'And Yraen asked if you wanted to go with Rhodry?' 'He did, but it were a jest, like. I did see in his eyes that it were a jest, and yet I couldn't say no. It was needful for me to travel onward.'

Jill growled under her breath. Whoever had ensorcelled the child was a clever little scoundrel. Since he'd never given Jahdo a direct order, the boy wouldn't remember him directly, either, unless Jill could think of perfectly apt questions. Until she knew more, those lay beyond her. It was at least obvious that this amateur sorcerer lived in Cerr Cawnen, where (ahdo had started his journey. She would simply have to wait and deal with him there, providing, of course, she did manage to get the hoy home again some day.

That night Jill risked travelling in the ctheric a little further than usual. Normally she went north and west, searching in the general direction in which an attack was likely to come, but this time she headed straight west, wondering if perhaps the enemy were outfoxing her by marching from an unexpected direction.

Again, she found nothing, returning at dawn exhausted to her body and the dun. Before she went down to the great hall she rested, wondering if perhaps Alshandra had given up her mad plan of releasing her daughter's soul by killing her growing physical body. It seemed unlikely that a spirit so single-minded, so lacking in the breadth of experience and the compa.s.sion that incarnation brings, would abandon her obsession so easily. Certainly Dallandra had always considered her implacable.

Dallandra. All of a sudden Jill was wide awake, realizing just how long it had been since Dalla had gone off, promising to come right back. Yet even though she worried, she could explain her fears away. With Time's flow so uneven between the worlds, Dalla might very well have been experiencing but a few moments pa.s.sing. Jill had no way of finding her. Evandar's country was so foreign to her nature as well as so distant on the astral that Jill could never scry into it. She put the matter out of her mind, for that while at least, and went on down to breakfast with Cadmar and, of course, his lady as well as Carra and her prince.

Dar had apparently been doing some thinking of his own about their situation. He waited until the serving la.s.s set down the bread and porridge and was gone before speaking, then leaned forward to address both Jill and the gwerbret.

'Your Grace, good sorcerer, if Cengarn's going be sieged, what we need is archers, and my people can easily raise five hundred of them, all armed with good yew bows. All I have to do is send out some of my men to find Calonderiel, Banadar of the Eastern Border. Well, it's east to us, anyway. It would be your western border, of course.'

'Now that's a splendid thought,' Cadmar said. 'How long will it take to find him, though? I know that your people wander with your herds all summer long.'

'That's true, Your Grace, but in the autumn we all move south, and there's one particular winter camp where Calondericl always goes, and he always heads down that way early, so people will know where to find him if they have some dispute or suchlike for him to settle. It'll take some weeks, truly, but the task's not impossible. And then, once they find him, the company will have to ride here. It'd be two full turnings of the moon, all in all, before they could arrive.'

Cadmar glanced at Jill. She could see he was worried, caught between courtesy and grim realities.

'Well, Dar, the problem's going to be feeding them,' Jill spoke to spare the gwerbret's sense of grat.i.tude. That's why his grace sent Gwinardd back to his own lands, and why he hasn't called in all his other alliances yet. Arcodd's not a very rich place, you know. The hay for all those horses alone would be hard to come by, to say naught of the room to stable them.'

'Oh, of course.' Dar did understand, fortunately, rather than being insulted. 'I'd forgotten that. Well, Your Grace, what shall we do, then? Wait till we know the army's on its way, and then send out the messengers?'

'That would be best, Your Highness.' Cadmar sounded relieved. 'We could stand a siege better than we could provision so many men for month after month. I'm sure Jill will be able to give us a few days'

warning, eh?'

'I hope so, Your Grace,' Jill said. 'I'm trying my best to scout them out.'

'Let's just hope that they hold off till the first harvest's in, and the dun fully provisioned.' Cadmar went on. 'It's likely. They'll want to see their own winter wheat brought in, no doubt. The bards like to sing about armies living off the country and all that, but hah! it's a risky business. Never know what you'll find, or how much, and foraging takes forever, when you need to make a fast march. Besides,' and here he paused for a grin, 'if they're coming from the north and west, it's cursed few farms they'll find along their line of march, and some wretchedly spa.r.s.e provisioning. The only supplies out that way are the fat on the bears.'

Everyone dutifully laughed at the jest, but Carra and Labanna exchanged glances full of anxiety. Even though Jill agreed with the gwerbret's line of reasoning, she intended to keep up her nightly scrying.

Thinking of the scrying did, however, remind her of another grim reality.

'Dar, I do have one rather nasty thought. When our enemies arrive, they'll have dweomer workers with them - at least one, maybe more. I'd just as soon they didn't know your men were on their way.

Why-don't you send messengers now to find Calonderiel, tell him the situation, and ask him to gather his company and keep them ready? We can send other men when I see the army approaching, for the final warning, like, but this way the banadar will know our situation.'

'Good thinking,' Dar said. 'And he'll know to march anyway if he never hears any more news. What shall we tell him? We have a festival, Delanimapaladar, to mark the day when the light and the dark are an equal length. What about then?'

'Sounds a good choice.' Cadmar smiled all round, 'Jill, you've got a good head for war, I must say.'

'I've seen more than a few, Your Grace. Too many, truly, far far too many, all in all.'

'So have I.' Cadmar looked away, suddenly troubled. 'Huh. All this waiting's bad for a man, gets on his nerves. Which reminds me. I wonder why Lord Tren hasn't sent me a message about that letter I sent him? Sure enough, the priests down at the temple are putting in a claim for his brother's lands. I sent another man off to Tren with that news just yesterday, so maybe it'll jog him into some action.'

Everyone nodded, looking back and forth at one another. In her worry over Alshandra, Jill had almost forgotten that there was more than one kind of trouble brewing, this one from an all too human source.

That very morning Daralanteriel sent his pair of messengers off with letters and tokens for Calonderiel.

From her tower room Jill watched them ride out, leading a pack horse, carrying their short, curved hunting bows strung at the ready and slung over their shoulders. She would scry for them, too, off and on over the next few days, until she could be sure that they were safely out in the gra.s.slands and on their way south unharmed.

More and more she believed that some enemy was scouting the dun just as she was scouting the surrounding countryside. Although she doubted very much if another shapechanger lurked physically round Cengarn, such a sorcerer might well have been scrying by more conventional means or prowling out on the etheric plane. Every now and then, when she was travelling in the body of light, she would peer round her through the billowing blue waves of etheric energy and see hints that someone else had pa.s.sed the same way. Occasionally as well she would run across the Wildfolk, who in their true home were beautiful creatures, all geometric shapes and lines of coloured light. At times they would flock round her in an exhalation of rage, perhaps caused by an interloper in their world, at others of terror, as if that interloper had frightened them.

Besides, she and Rhodry both still had the sporadic feeling that they were being watched. Of course, many people who have no dweomer of their own suspect it everywhere and in the most normal of occurrences, a thing true in Jill's time just as now-a-days. Not only was Rhodry half-elven, however, with that race's natural sensitivity to magic, but dweomer, for evil as well as good, had touched his life many times in the past. When he said that he felt it now, she believed him.

'But you know what's strange about this, Jill?' he remarked one morning. 'I don't feel any malice when this mind or whatever you'd call it turns my way.'

'You don't? Interesting! I've felt malice in good measure, myself, and so have the Wildfolk.

Somebody's terrified them.'

'Stranger and stranger.'

'Well, I'll make a guess that we're dealing with two different dweo-merfolk, but that's only a guess.'

She hesitated, then decided that there truly was naught more to say until she had more evidence. 'What I do know is that this wound of yours is healed up nicely. I think me it's time for you and the dwarves to get on your way.'

'Are you sure I wouldn't better serve the gwerbret by staying here? If there's a war coming -'

'Soldiers the gwerbret has. You're the only man on this earth who can find that dragon and unravel Evandar's tedious little riddle.'

'And you think it's truly important that the dragon get itself found?'

'I do. I can't tell you why, but I do.'

'No hope for it, then.' He flashed her one of his lunatic grins. 'I shall do my lady's bidding and walk strange roads, climb high mountains, freeze in the snows, and deal with dwarven madmen, and all of this shall I do with cheerful heart and -'

'Will you hold your tongue? This is no time for daft jests.'

'On the contrary, my lady.' Rhodry bowed low to her. 'What better time for a daft jest than when the times themselves are mad?'

She started to snap at him, then decided he was right enough.

'Let's go out to the common room. I want to talk to Otho about provisioning this expedition. By the by, did he ever hand over the coin he owed you?'

'Of course not. It's all gone to the innkeep for my bed and board.'

'The gall! I'll speak to him about that.'

'No need. We're doubtless all about to die, anyway, gulped down for a t.i.tbit by this wyrm, so what does a handful of coppers matter, anyway? Of course, it might give the beast indigestion, if it ate my pockets with me, and so we'd have a revenge of sorts.'

'I wish you wouldn't jest like that.'

He hesitated, then turned away with a shrug.

'As my lady commands, then.'

'And the paying of that coin's important, Rhoddo. He should pay and maintain you as well.'

'At the moment I can't much worry about a handful of coin.'

'Nah nah nah, I didn't mean important to you. Important for Otho.'

Rhodry blinked at her.

'Haven't you ever wondered what got him exiled?' she went on.

'Many a time. I never thought it my place to ask.'

'Right you were, too, and if you ever tell anyone you know this, I'll be displeased.'

Rhodry shuddered, but it was only half a jest.

'He wouldn't pay a debt.' Jill ignored the gesture. 'I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but he owed a man some steep fee, and he wouldn't pay. He had it all worked out why he shouldn't pay in his own mind, like, but no one else agreed, and he had to go into exile.'

'Go into exile for a debt of coin?'

'Just so. The Mountain People take their obligations very seriously.'

'So that was it.' Rhodry winced at the memory. 'When Garin asked me not to judge them all by their kinsman, I knew I'd made some sort of botch of my courtesies. Well and good, then. Let's go torment the old man a little.'

They found Otho sitting in the common room with his kinsmen, drinking and playing at dice. At the hearth, the innkeep was adding chunks of some indefinable vegetable to the stew pot, but he stopped to listen in.

'Otho,' Jill snapped. 'You owe Rhodry and Yraen coin.'

The elderly dwarf howled and turned his face to the distant sky, perhaps asking it to witness his sufferings.

'Is this true?' Garin snapped.

Otho moaned, muttered, moaned again, but when every dwarf in the room stared at him, arms crossed over their chests, he reached for the pouch at his belt. Jill took half of what he handed over to give to Yraen.

'Will you all be going with your kinsman?' Jill said to Garin.

'I will, at least as far as Haen Mam, though Jorn here won't. If Enj won't take our clan's coin, I'll go a-hunting the wyrm instead, but a weak reed I'll be to lean upon, I tell you. I'm sure that loremasters spend years memorizing all the things I know not about dragons.'

'I'll go,' Mic broke in. 'May I, Uncle Otho? I've never been anywhere nor done anything.'

'Hah, and no doubt you'll wish you'd stayed in that blessed condition before this little walk is over,'

Otho said. 'But come along you may, if your father allows.' He glanced at Jorn and raised an eyebrow.

Think he will? My brother was always the most stubborn man on earth.'

'Until his son was born and took the t.i.tle from him,' Jorn said, grinning. 'Well, ask him. You'll have to go home first before you head out to Haen Marn. He'll probably want to set a blood price for young Mic, though, in case he never returns.'

'A blood price? The gall!'

'Otho!' Jorn and Garin spoke in chorus.

Jill left them squabbling and went back to the dun.

Yraen she found in the great hall, sitting and drinking at a table near the back door. When she gave him the coins, he grinned, a rare thing for him, and slipped them straightaway into the pouch be wore round his neck and under his shirt.

'Rhodry taught me to do that,' he remarked. 'Keep your coins out of sight, I mean. He said he learned it from you.'