'My thanks.' Rhodry took a sip for politeness' sake. 'It's very good.'

'Of course. Do you think I'd be serving less than the old vintage to the man who did save my son? Ah, my eldest he is, at that, and always a wayward lad, but if a mother love not her son, then who will, I always say. Eh?'

'Indeed.'

She nodded, turning her head in a gesture that reminded him of Meer, glancing round as she remembered what it was like to see.

'We do sit deep inside the earth, Rori. Is that distressing to you?'

'Only at moments, my lady, My people are creatures of the gra.s.slands and forest, and at times, the dark here does touch my heart.'

'No doubt. It aches the heart of most men, even our men, who long to wander in the light above. Never have I seen the sun, Rori. Never did I want to. What do you think of that, eh?'

'I'm surprised, truly.'

She smiled, pleased with the effect.

'I have heard of the high world from my sons. Does that not be one of the things a son does for his mother, to tell her of the world above? But I be a woman and a mother, six times a mother, twenty-two times a grandmother, and now and already seven times a great-grandmother, and the earth I do know. I did earn my place, here in the heart of the earth, six times over. In the heart of the earth women be born, and we do rest in her heart, our mother's heart, and we do hear her tales, long tales of fire and rock, and in the end, we do die upon her breast.' She smiled again, nodding a little as if she heard distant music.

Lopa came forward with a cup of steaming water that smelled of herbs and helped the ancient dwarf take a sip.

'Ah, well brewed, my dear,' Othara said. 'Very well brewed. Does our guest need more drink?'

'I don't, but my thanks,' Rhodry said hastily. This 'old vintage' was turning out to be quite strong, and he did have the long stairs to climb back to the upper world. 'It's truly good.'

She smiled, nodded, glanced round the room with milky eyes.

'They tell me, Rori, that you do travel north, hunting an ancient wyrm among the fire mountains.'

'I do, my lady.'

'Ah, the north, the dragon north, the country of the Great Rift. We women call it the land of blood and fire, the earth's blood, that do be, that do run red and gold through all the black veins round the rift. A land of splendour in the way we women think, but the men, they do fear it, the blood of fire. Do you know, Ron, why the earth does bleed so, there in the northland?'

'I don't Will you tell me, my lady?'

'I will, for be it not a woman's work, to tell the men tales of the deep earth? We live and we listen in the deep earth, and we do hear her tales, and we pa.s.s those tales on, mother to daughter to granddaughter, so the sons may know.' She paused, motioning for another sip of herbed brew. The northland and the southland, they do be joined along the high mountains, the Roof of the World, or so the sons call it, but I tell you that it be no roof, no sheltering there, but the Great Rift.' For a long moment she rested, her mouth working. 'The northland and the southland, they do go their own ways, Rori, like a wife who grows to hate her husband and does send him back to the high city. The earth splits and tears along the high mountains, and she bleeds, she bleeds. Some fine day the tear will run so deep that it will reach the sea, and in will rush the water, cold and salt, to soothe that burning.'

Rhodry caught his breath. Othara laughed, a low mutter like gravel sliding downhill.

'Be you frightened at this thought, the earth rifting and splitting?'

'I see no shame in admitting it, my lady. I am. What of the folk who live there?'

She laughed, then coughed. Lopa slipped an arm under her, helped her sit upright, and held the cup.

Othara drank more of her medicinal, then lay back, resting before she spoke again.

'Oh, they have a few more years before they'll feel the danger, thousands upon thousands of years, Rori, a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, no doubt. The earth runs deep, but she runs slow.'

'Well and good, then.'

'The men think the earth is steady, but we women know that rock moves, floating on a sea of fire. It be our life, the earth, the deep deep earth. Did you know that the very rocks do float upon fire?'

'I didn't, my lady, and I give you a thousand thanks for the telling of it.'

She smiled and yawned. One hand plucked at the edge of the blankets, her fingers as long and thin as twigs, and as gnarled. Lopa stepped forward, alarmed, turning to Rhodry and framing a few silent words, 'leave soon.' He nodded to show that he understood, but Othara recovered herself.

'I'll give you a present, Rori, for all that you're both a man and an elf, because you've brought my son back to me.' The old woman turned her head Lopa's way. 'Open the chest in the corner. Find the lead casket and do open that. You shall find a bit of blue silk. Well, it were blue once. Unwind it and you shall find a blue stone upon a chain.'

The young woman scuttled off to do as she was bid. Out of a developing sense of what dwarven courtesy would include, Rhodry pointedly refrained from looking her way as she rooted through the ancient woman's treasures. While they waited Othara closed her eyes, and her breathing rasped so loudly that Rhodry feared she'd drifted off. When the girl returned, though, clutching a gold chain, Othara held out her hand. She took the stone from Lopa, felt it carefully, then pa.s.sed it back.

'That be the one. Give it to him.'

With a low whistle of awe, Rhodry took a chunk of lapis lazuli the size of a crabapple, fine-shaped and polished into an egg. At the narrow end the fine gold chain ran through a drilled hole lined with silver, to prevent wear, he supposed. Instinctively he closed his hand over it.

'It feels like a presence,' he burst out. 'A live thing, not a stone.'

He opened his hand and looked again: it seemed an ordinary gem, if indeed so big a piece of such a rare thing could be called ordinary. Othara smiled, a draw of blue lips.

'You feel it, do you?' she rasped. 'Good, good. Then you be fit to own it. There be great dweomer on that stone. Wear it, and I think me your enemies shall find it a great travail to scry you out.'

Rhodry slipped the chain over his head and settled the gem under his shirt.

'I don't know how to thank you enough,' he began. 'You're most generous -'

The old woman had fallen asleep, her head turned into her pillow. With a waggle of her finger and a flick of her ap.r.o.n, Lopa shooed him out of the chamber to the corridor, where Garin waited.

'Well, that was kind of you to indulge the old dear,' Garin said.

'Ye G.o.ds! "Old dear" indeed! She's one of the most powerful women I've ever met, and that includes Jill. Truly, my only regret is that Jill's not here to sit with Othara a-while and hear her lore.'

Lopa shot him a glance br.i.m.m.i.n.g with approval, but Garin seemed, really, to have heard not a word.

'Very kind,' he said again. 'Well, we'd best be getting back up. We've a lot of planning to do before we leave.'

Over the weeks that Rhodry had been gone, Jill had fallen into the habit of scrying for him several times a day. Since she knew him so well, all she had to do was focus her attention on some mottled natural thing - a fire, a bank of clouds, wind moving over trees, and suchlike - and think of him to see his whereabouts. She'd traced his way through the hills and into Lin Serr, seen the old gatehouse through his eyes as well, and stored in her memory a hundred questions to ask him about these strange places in the hope, at least, that he'd live to tell her.

It was just after Rhodry had been given his audience with Othara that Jill was sitting in her tower room, looking out the window at a summer storm piling dark on the horizon. When she thought of Rhodry she saw nothing, not the barest trace or flicker of an image, not the slightest feeling of his presence.

'Odd,' she said aloud.

On her table stood a cup of water. She picked it up, swirled the liquid round, and scried into that. Not a thing. She set it down and returned to the window, but no matter how carefully she focused her mind, she simply could not scry Rhodry out. More annoyed than frightened, she turned her thoughts to Otho instead and saw him immediately. With Mic trotting beside him, the elderly dwarf was hurrying down a corridor that shimmered with phosph.o.r.escence.

As Jill watched, he crossed the main entry cavern of the city, turned down a short tunnel, and knocked on a door. She recognized it as opening onto the room in which she'd previously scried Rhodry out, but the moment the door opened the vision vanished into a blur of grey like smoke. Even though she called upon the various elemental lords that presided over scrying, her vision simply refused to penetrate the smudge.

Muttering several truly foul oaths, Jill turned from the window and began pacing back and forth across the room. Someone had thrown a dweomer shield over Rhodry, then, but whether that someone was friend or foe, she had no way of knowing. Yet she felt no fear, sensed no danger cither, and knew that she would if Rhodry were in some mortal jeopardy. There was nothing left for her but to hope that at various times Garin or Otho would move far enough away from Rhodry for her to trace their party as they travelled.

She wandered to the window, stood looking out at the scudding clouds while she debated flying one last patrol round the dun. Scrying in the etheric double during a storm would be impossible.

'Jill?' The voice rang outside her door. 'Wise One, may I disturb you?'

'Of course, my prince. Come in.'

Daralanteriel flung the door back and strode in, one hand clutched on his sword hilt.

'What's so wrong, Your Highness?' Jill said.

The prince seemed to catch himself on the edge of some fault. He took a deep breath, letting his hand drop from the weapon.

'My apologies, but it's about that huge lout of a Round-ear.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Yraen. Every time I turn round he's right there.'

'Well, Your Highness, I asked him to stand guard -'

'Oh I know, but I've got twenty men of my own, don't I?'

'When you ride out to hunt, they ride with you.'

'I could leave some of them behind to guard my own wife, if that's what you mean.'

Jill thought she understood - his pride was wounded.

'Your Highness, never would I impugn your ability to keep Carra safe. It's just that human treachery is best spotted by human eyes. Yraen's a shrewd and suspicious man who's been in some rather ugly situations in his day. He knows the worst side of his own kind quite well.'

Dar considered, chewing on his lower lip. By elven standards he was little more than a boy, much as Carra by human ones was still in many ways a girl, and he looked it that evening, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his dark hair uncombed and tousled.

'It's because of Lord Matyc,' Jill went on. 'Consider how close he was to the gwerbret, how well entrenched here at the dun. If Rhodry hadn't spotted him, he could have worked untold harm.'

'Ah.' Dar looked up with a brief smile 'Well, that's true-spoken. Wise One, my apologies. I hate to argue with such as you, but it griped my soul, always seeing the man there. But you're right.' His voice coloured with learned contempt. 'He is a silver dagger.'

'Just so, but a decent man and a fine watch-dog withal.'

'If the Wise One says so. My thanks for hearing me out.'

'You're most welcome.'

Dar lingered, studying the floor.

'Is there somewhat else, Your Highness?'

'Oh, not truly. I was just wondering, we were all wondering, truly, if you'd seen anything yet. Enemies, I mean. The waiting's starting to stretch everyone's nerves like bowstrings.'

'I'm afraid I haven't. I a.s.sure you that you'll know as soon as I do.'

Prince or not, Dar had to be content with that. Over the next few days, whenever she walked about the dun, Jill could see the truth of his words. Servants squabbled and swore, while the men in the war-bands shoved each other and got into fist fights; Carra and the serving women seemed always on the edge of tears, while Lady Labanna was very very cheerful, except in repose, when she looked deathly ill. Once, even, late on an afternoon when everyone was hungry for their dinner, Jill rounded a shed out by the stables and saw pages brawling, screaming and punching each other while they rolled hack and forth on the filthy cobbles.

'Stop it!' Jill yelled, darting forward. 'Stop it right now, or I'll turn you all into frogs!'

The threat brought instant peace. The boys broke apart and rolled free of each other, young Lord Allonry to one side, Jahdo and Cae to the other. Although Jahdo and Cae seemed mostly bruised and filthy, Alli's nose bled and his lip was split.

"He was. .h.i.tting Cae,' Jahdo burst out. 'I was trying to make him stop.'

Cae nodded fast agreement. Alli merely snivelled.

'I see,' Jill said. 'My Lord Allonry, I should have thought you'd have tasted enough trouble over that matter of the root cellar without wanting another meal of it.'

'They all hate me because of that,' Alli whined. 'They mock me all the time and they won't let me forget the whipping I got.'

Jill fixed Cae with a sorcerous-seeming eye. He turned white and began to stammer.

'A bargain,' she said. 'Jahdo and Cae, neither of you mention the root cellar again. Alli, in return, no more mocking Jahdo for a bondsman. The first one to break the bargain - into the marsh with him!'

Never had Jill had anyone agree with her so fast as the three lads did. She sent Cae off to the cook and Alli to the chamberlain, but she took a look at Jahdo's bruises herself.

'Naught too bad,' she announced. 'But you'll need a bath before dinner.'

'I do know that, my lady, and bathe I shall, though it be likely it be in the horse-trough there, all cold as it be. I do miss the hot springs of home, I truly do.'

'No doubt. Well, with luck we'll get you back home one of these days soon.'

'Do you truly believe this thing, my lady? I daren't hope, from the wanting of it so bad.'

Jill considered the question seriously, but the only dweomer feeling she received was a small surety.

'I do believe it, fahdo, though I'll wager the way home won't be all that easy to walk. I'll do my best to make it so.'

Jahdo grinned, a lop-sided gesture what with the swelling on his right cheek.

'If you do say it, then it be so,' he p.r.o.nounced. 'Yraen do say that sorcerers, they do know what be so and what be not. He says you'll find these enemies as soon as soon.'

'Let's hope Yraen's right, then. Now go wash that muck off you.'

The boy's blind faith in her power wrung Jill's heart, because there was nothing she could do but watch and patrol, whether in the hawk form or her ctheric double. Although at moments she was tempted to hope that Alshandra had given up her mad plan, deep in her heart, deep in her very soul where all dweomer warnings spring, Jill knew that there was no hope, only waiting.

When Rhodry and the dwarves left Lin Serr, at first they had easy walking, with a pack animal to carry their gear down a proper dwarven road and farms close at hand to sell them fresh food. At every farm where they stopped, Rhodry saw only men, most of them young, some little better than boys, who lived a life as communal as any warband's. As far as he could tell, anyway, from his brief looks round, and he certainly didn't want to be caught prying, they slept in barracks and ate in communal cookhouses as well.

After three days of this comfortable travel,, they reached the edge of the plateau, where the farmland petered out among the rising hills and the white mountains towered close. Like clouds the snowy peaks seemed to float above pine forests so dark a green they seemed almost black, streaked here and there with outcrops of grey basalt. At the last farm Otho traded the mule for the privilege of cramming their packs with all the dried food and cheese they could hold.

'And it looks scant enough,' Otho remarked with a sigh. 'No doubt the G.o.ds will starve us before they throw us into the dragon's maw, just to make us suffer, like.'

'Otho old lad,' Rhodry said. 'If you'd stayed behind you'd be handing over your life's fortune in jewels to your debtors right now.'

Otho snarled and swung a weak fist in his direction.

'We may be able to snare a rabbit or two.' Garin put in, 'Gather a few wild herbs, certainly, and spear some trout along the way.'