She sprawled upon her back, and Karis took her by the shirt and tore open the heavy fabric as though it was gauze. She lifted a fist as though striking a hammer upon the forge. But she held a glittering needle of steel in her fist, bright and terrible in the sudden sunshine, and she drove it without hesitation into Mabin's heart.

Mabin uttered an awful cry. Blood gushed, vivid scarlet in the bright sunshine. Karis pressed her palm to Mabin's breast. Mabin clawed empty air as though to pluck the cold steel from her heart. The Paladins stood transfixed.

"Before Shaftal," breathed the man who knelt upon Zanja's back, "she's spiked her heart. Shaftal, what have we done?" He got up hastily and made as if to offer Zanja a hand, but she did not even look at him.

Mabin lay still. Karis stood up, breathing heavily, her hand painted scarlet. Mabin lifted a trembling hand to touch the blunt end of the steel spike embedded in her flesh. Karis said, "Mabin Paladin, Councilor of the Lilterwess, you live now at my tolerance. My advisors have convinced me to let you live, for the sake of the people who honor their old oaths. It is for them, and them alone, that I give you your life. See that you give me reason to continue to tolerate you."

Mabin gasped bitterly, "I know the law. You need not instruct me."

The old man who had tried to help Zanja to her feet cried out, "Lady, we didn't know! We thought it was our duty to serve the councilor! How were we to know who you were? Mabin, you can yet ask for pardon-"

"Pardon?" Mabin said, and sat up, though she clutched an agonized hand across the spike. "Shaftal will not come into the hands of a Sainnite pretender, the smoke-addicted daughter of a wh.o.r.e! I will tell the people what you are."

Karis's bloodied hand clenched into a fist. A horrified silence fell, so profound that Zanja, with her ear to the stones, could hear rocks grinding in the bottom of the nearby river. Then Karis said, "I always thought that you hated me for what I am. But if I am Shaftal, then Shaftal is what you hate. Isn't that true,Mabin Councilor? Don't you hate Shaftal, the land and the people both, because we are half Sainnite?

Don't you hate Shaftal because this land is, now, the child of violence and rape? Don't you hate the land because of its subjection and paralysis? And isn't it true that your hatred is killing the land, just as it nearly killed me?"

But Mabin cried, "For the land's sake, kill her! Can't you see what she'll do to Shaftal?" No one moved or even seemed to have heard.

A hand touched Zanja's shoulder. Norina and Emil had walked fearlessly into the midst of Mabin's people. The old man seemed to know them both, and said, nearly in tears, "Take her, take her! How were we to know? Tell her-tell the lady-tell her we are not all such fools."

He helped to haul Zanja to her feet. She could not stand on her own, but Emil braced her from behind, from foot to shoulder holding her erect, with his arms wrapped tightly around her. Norina knelt upon the stones and buckled Zanja's belt around her waist. With her head bowed she said, "I have wronged you and don't expect your forgiveness. But I will make amends." She looked up then, and Zanja saw how even humility can be an act of unbending pride. Norina read her thoughts as though they were words written upon Zanja's face, and she smiled, showing all her teeth. "You really should savor my abas.e.m.e.nt while you can, for I a.s.sure you, you will never have an opportunity like this again."

Zanja said, "One opportunity is enough. I'll savor this moment my whole life, and remind you of it incessantly."

"That seems fair." Norina rose and put her arm around Zanja's waist, and took half her weight onto her shoulder. So she and Emil walked Zanja across the river-washed stones, while the frightened, speechless Paladins let them go, and Mabin did not disgrace herself again by shouting commands that no one would have obeyed. Karis stood waiting, a woman of iron and stone and soil and everything that grows. At the last moment, Emil stepped away, and it was Norina alone who delivered Zanja into Karis's arms.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Medric would not be appeased. "I am a historian," he insisted. "Now that you need not keep these secrets any longer, it would be criminal to refuse to tell me."

Norina said, "Young man, you have appalling nerve to call a judge, a servant of the law, a criminal."

Medric grinned. "You wouldn't waste your time admonishing me if you didn't like me." He sat down beside her, and folded his ink-stained hands expectantly. "I'll trade you. You tell me the past, and I'll tell you the future."

The six of them had camped fearlessly upon the open plain, where gra.s.s and stone stretched to the horizon, flat as water and rippling in the wind. They drew k.n.o.bby, weathered rocks up to the fire for chairs, and Emil brewed tea, using J'han's supply, as he'd long since run out of his own. They had told Zanja what had happened, and what they had done. Like Karis, who scarcely had said a word even when she unwound the bandages and healed Zanja's broken bones, Zanja inhabited a place of stunned silence and could not seem to find the pathway out. But Emil sat beside her, and sometimes he lay a hand upon her shoulder, or clasped her hand in his, and slowly Zanja felt herself re-enter the world. Shethought, the future: these people will be my companions as long as we are alive. And she felt the years spread before her, like a wonderful new country.

"I don't know why I didn't recognize your strategies until the end," she said to Emil. "I should have known when I heard about the fleas that it was your kind of war."

Emil grinned. " 'Drive the enemy insane and she will defeat herself.' "

Zanja recognized the quotation from Mabin's Warfare, and laughed until Emil had to pound her on her back.

Emil said, "It was easy to do, with four elementals under my command. Ah, to think of the misery this little company could inflict. . . but no, those days are past." He sighed with false regret.

Karis had walked away on her own and had not yet returned. At sunset she needed to be alone, J'han explained. It was a clear night, and the sky was filling with stars. There was a stillness, a vastness, pressing down upon the little tribe camped here upon the heath. They'd stepped through the door and now found themselves in this open, lonely place, a handful of people in a universe of stars. From now on, each step they took would be on a path of their own forging.

Norina said to Medric, "No, I don't want to know the future. It's the not knowing that gives us heart, it seems to me. But I think I will tell you a bit of history, for Dinal's sake. And for yours, Zanja, since I must still earn your forgiveness. I witnessed very little myself: I was a child, a student, who happened to live in the House of Lilterwess, like many other students. But the night Harald G'deon died, Dinal and I sat beside Karis's bed, where she lay unconscious from the blow of power that Harald had struck her with-brutally, out of necessity, for he was breathing his last breath. By then we had discovered the bitter truth of Karis's smoke purse inside her shirt, and all the council knew, and had been arguing for hours what to do. Dinal took me to Karis's bed, and asked me to bind myself to her with an oath. After I had done this, she told me this history, and I, of course, know that it was the truth. So listen, Medric."

Medric managed to look even more expectant and alert. Norina began her tale.

Harald had been G'deon of Shaftal for thirty-two years. He had always refused to identify a successor, and, since the G'deon owes no one an explanation, no one understood why. As word of his illness spread across the land of Shaftal, even the most ardent and loyal of his followers-already distressed due to the harrying of the Sainnites-were thrown into confusion and dismay. Some asked if the G'deon had lost his mind, to have grown old without giving any thought to those who would outlive him. Others, more cynical, declared that he had failed to choose a successor out of spite, to irritate his lifelong critic and opponent, Councilor Mabin.

During those last, terrible days of the G'deon's life, Dinal kept vigil by his bedside. She neither wept nor slept, and would allow no one else to be his honor guard. When Dinal broke her vigil, as she occasionally did to bathe or seek out a mouthful of food, she saw that gloom and panic now reigned unchallenged in the House of Lilterwess. Meals went uncooked, children ran wild, scholars stood about in the unswept hallways, councilors hurried with an odd aimlessness from one room to the next.

On the seventh day, as Dinal returned to the G'deon's room to resume her watch, Councilor Mabin herself, who kept vigil in her own fashion, s.n.a.t.c.hed at Dinal's sleeve as she pa.s.sed. "Ask him what will become of Shaftal, when we have no G'deon. Ask him how we can keep the G.o.dless Sainnites at bay."Dinal eased her sleeve from Mabin's grasp. "Excuse me, Councilor."

"Ask him if he has forgotten his calling, and his people!"

"Councilor, Harald G'deon cannot answer your questions. Though his heart continues to beat, his spirit has departed. We both know that he would never have chosen to die with so much left incomplete. But death comes when it comes."

"Then will he be the last G'deon of Shaftal? This is a bitter destiny."

"His life has been bitter," Dinal said. "Why not his death?" She turned her back, and Mabin wisely let her go.

That night, Harald G'deon uttered a sigh, and Dinal sat up sharply in the chair in which she had been dozing. The healer, who read a book at the table in the corner, came softly across the room. The G'deon sighed again, and it almost seemed as if he had said Dinal's name. She took his hand in hers. "Harald, why do you suffer so? You need not remain in this world any longer. Your time is done, and we will find a way to live without you."

Shadows filled the hollows of his wasted face, but within his eyes the light of the guttering candle flickered. "Go," he said.

"Where am I to go? My place is by your side."

"Lalali."

"Lalali! What can there be of value in Lalali?"

Once again, he lay silent, with only the faint tremor of a heartbeat to let Dinal know he had not yet departed.

She kissed his hand and laid it down upon the coverlet. She stood up, bones aching with weariness, and went out into the corridor, where some of the councilors slept upon benches. In her own rooms, she made no noise as she rolled up some blankets and tossed a few things into a bag. Yet, despite her quiet, her foster daughter awakened and came to stand, sleepy and disapproving, at the bedroom door in her night shift. Norina said, "Did you intend to leave without bidding me good-bye? Where are you going?"

"Lalali."

"Lalali! Surely not alone! Let me come with you."

"The only thing that could make this journey more burdensome would be having to worry about your well-being as well as my own. You will remain in the House of Lilterwess."

There was a silence, then Norina said quietly, "I'm afraid I won't see you again."

Dinal slung her sword belt over one shoulder, her bag over the other, and kissed Norina farewell. "Know I love you." She left her standing in the darkness.

She took a loaf of bread from one of the kitchens, and, out in the yard, saddled the first horse to come at her whistle. A weary, bent, aging woman wrapped in a black cloak, she rode out of the House of Lilterwess. Hoping to avoid the plague of violence that made the main roads unsafe to travel any longer, Dinal took the mountain road from Shimasal to the coast. This isolated and windblown track took her through the tablelands, along ridges which overlooked the rich Aerin River Valley. She traveled frombefore dawn to long after nightfall. She made her bed on hard ground, under cold stars, and she lay awake, counting the years of sorrow and naming the dead. She spoke the name of Harald G'deon himself in that grieving litany. Perhaps even now he breathed his last breath, as the mother of his sons dutifully followed his last whim on this lonely road to the sea.

Long before sunrise, she rose from her cold bed. She tied her hair back to boldly reveal the three earrings of Right, Regard, and Rank, and called her horse to the saddle. She rode in darkness down the steep track from the highlands to the coast. As the sky lightened, dawn winds carried to her the scent of the sea.

The sun had just risen when she rode into Lalali. The city gates stood open, guarded only by a pretty-faced boy dressed in purple silk. He ran up, boldly clasped the heel of her boot, and gazed winsomely up into her face as he invited her to have her way with him. When he suggested what they might do, she jerked her foot away in disgust. Undiscouraged, he latched onto the empty stirrup. "Speak your secret desire, and it shall be yours. Is it a girl you'd prefer? Is it not power you seek, but rather to be overpowered?"

"Stand away, boy! I travel on the G'deon's business!"

She threatened him with her lifted foot. He stepped away from the horse, crowing with amus.e.m.e.nt. "The G'deon's business? Tell the G'deon there is only one business in Lalali!"

Dinal's horse jumped forward at a kick of the heel, and left the young man to enjoy his hilarity in private.

His laughter swooped and howled through sunrise's silence. "The boy seems half mad," Dinal muttered.

On horseback, she wandered the streets of Lalali as the sun gradually chased away autumn's chill and cast a shimmer of light across the copper-tipped towers. Sunlight glared on walls of white sandstone. It gilded three nude marble figures in the center of a fountain, engaged in a complicated s.e.xual act.

Dinal pa.s.sed a crew of blank-eyed, starved and sore-riddled street sweepers, who were so numbed by smoke that they did not even flinch when the foreman laid into them with a switch. Other than these, Dinal did not see another living soul until noon approached. Then, a few early-rising wh.o.r.es came out to sit naked in the sun. Their pierced and bejeweled nipples glittered; last night's golden paint peeled away in patches to reveal bruises, scars, scabs, and b.l.o.o.d.y wounds. Lounging in chairs dragged out into the middle of the road, they cushioned certain parts of their bodies with pillows, and watched Dinal pa.s.s with the same stunned and incurious gaze they turned upon each other. A street doctor made her rounds, dispensing poultices and headache remedies.

They smoked to dull the pain, Dinal supposed. But a wh.o.r.e under smoke was helpless to defend herself against injury. So the trap closed, and there was no escape.

Dinal's horse stopped dead in the middle of a deserted square and looked at her over his shoulder. Dinal could offer him neither explanation nor purpose for their continued wandering. It was her lot and joy to serve at the beck of the G'deon. She would have to remain in this cursed town, and await either the bidding of her heart or the long-expected word that the G'deon had finally breathed his last.

She allowed the horse to drink from one of the p.o.r.nographic fountains, then she turned him toward the eastern end of town. Here, the nearby ocean scented the air with a sweet reek of seaweed and salt. In the debris of narrow alleys, rag-dressed people huddled against moldy stone. When the sun suddenly came blazing over the edge of the rooftops, they began to awaken, in a mutter of groans and curses.

The narrow street led Dinal to a plaza, where a broken-wheeled carriage stood with the horse still in the traces, and the driver, asleep or dead, slumped to one side with the reins in his hands. A few newly risendrunks had gathered to dunk their heads in the fountain. Two shouted at each other, and seemed on the verge of blows. One vomited onto bare stone, as another looked specula-tively at the carriage. Others still lay like soldiers mowed down in a desperate rout and left behind to rot. Dinal's horse picked his way squeamishly among the fallen.

Not much liking the look of this plaza or its occupants, Dinal turned her horse toward the nearest alley.

Directly across from her, in a windowless wall scabrous with the remains of a decaying mosaic, a door opened. Out came a barefoot girl, dressed only in a night shift, with a water jug balanced upon her hip.

She was extraordinarily tall and thin. The invading sunlight pa.s.sed across her face as she stepped through the human debris. At Dinal's hail, the girl neither stepped forward nor stepped away.

Dinal held out a hand, with a silver coin in the palm. "I have lost my way. Will you take me back to the main road?"

The girl examined Dinal from toe to head, her gaze lingering longest on the telltale gold earrings: three of them, marking her high rank. "All roads lead to the main road. No one will ever believe you are lost.

Who are you?" Her body was all arms and legs; she had been growing with astonishing speed and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had started to form. And she had come into her power, and had only just begun to realize what she was. This Dinal saw, imprinted in the girl's very flesh. She was earth.

"I'm Dinal Paladin. I've come here to find you."

"Now there's a story," the girl said. Yet her body had shivered, as with yearning, before she spoke with such quick cynicism. Perhaps she had half expected someone to come and find her, thinking that surely someone, somehow, would realize that an earth witch had emerged in the back streets of Lalali.

"I was sent by the G'deon," Dinal said. "I am the mother of his children."

After a moment, the girl said, "You must speak to my master and hire my services. Do you have a kerchief or a length of cloth, something to cover your face? And let loose your hair."

Dinal untied the thong that bound her hair, so that it fell forward and covered her earrings. She took a black scarf out of her baggage, and the girl helped her to tie it so it covered her entire face, except for her eyes. "Now, stand so, holding the reins." The girl demonstrated an att.i.tude of impatience and boredom.

"You must seem eager, but do not agree to pay more than you have there in your hand."

The girl's master, a thin, hard-faced man with a grimy red ribbon tying back his greasy hair, seemed none too willing to let the girl go with Dinal, even for so little time. They d.i.c.kered until the girl reappeared in the open door, fully dressed in a plain, serviceable tunic and trousers. Dinal, who had been holding the coin between her fingers where the girl's master could see it, abruptly closed her fist and mounted her horse.

"Never mind, then. I was particularly taken with your girl's unusual appearance, but I will find someone else."

"Lady, if you knew what it costs me to keep her!" Defeated, the girl's master reached behind himself to grab the girl and shove her forward, but smacked her cheek when he got a good look at her. "What are you wearing? Will you shame me before the entire city?"

Dinal said, "Her plain clothing pleases me." She held out the coin. "Come here, girl, and take your payment."

Expressionless, the girl took the money and dutifully delivered it into her master's hand. A handprint had appeared on her cheek. "Bring her back by sunset," the man warned, as the girl mounted behind Dinal.When the girl pressed against Dinal's back, the tension in her muscles belied the calm, even indifferent expression on her face. They rode down the cluttered alley. As they turned the corner, Dinal said, "He a.s.sumed I wanted a wh.o.r.e, and I let him believe what he liked. But you must understand that you are free now, and it is your choice whether or not to come with me. I intend to take you to the House of Lilterwess, where you belong. Will you come with me, of your own will?"

The girl said, "Yes."

"What is your name?"

"Karis," she said.

The girl directed Dinal safely to the main boulevard, where masked men and women now sauntered arrogantly down the rows of wh.o.r.ehouses, surveying the exotic beauties beckoning wearily from the steps. At the city gate, a dozen boys and girls now gathered, each more beseeching and desperate than the last. Dinal rode past them, as a bell tower counted the second hour of the afternoon, and a drunken troubadour balanced his way along the top of the wall, incoherently singing.

Then they pa.s.sed through the gate, and Karis sighed, as though she had been holding her breath. Dinal never felt her turn to look back at the city, not even once.

Several days later, Harald G'deon vested Karis with the power of Shaftal, and died. It was the last night that the walls of the House of Lilterwess would remain standing.

In the twilight, Zanja spotted Karis coming toward them across the ragged plain, stumbling because her head was tilted back so she could watch the sky. Zanja stood up, unsteady from the lingering weakness of starvation. "I want to be alone with her for a while."

"See if you can get her to sleep," J'han suggested, offering a blanket. "She doesn't seem to know how to do it."

Zanja walked across the treeless heath. Karis was a tattered shadow, with fraying hair and raveled shirt.

Her hand caught Zanja by the shoulder as if starlight had blinded her, and she said in a voice as rough as a hoe's edge, "Zanja, what am I going to do?"

Zanja said, "Lie down with me and I'll tell you the stories of the stars."

Karis lay down where she was standing, and starlight filled her eyes as water fills a cup. Zanja had to fit herself around the sharp stones and p.r.i.c.kly plants that Karis had not heeded. The blanket that she drew over them smelled of smoke and mildew and the detritus of a long, hard journey; a journey far from over, perhaps never over.

Karis said, "Emil fought me for Mabin's life. And even now I wonder if it was wisdom or cowardice that I didn't simply kill her. I could have." She sounded both amazed and horrified. "Accept the burden of responsibility, Emil says, or become what Mabin imagines I am."

Zanja said, "Now you will become something else."

"Something better, or something worse?"

They lay in silence. Zanja said, "It is possible to exercise power well.""You think so? Did I exercise it well when I deceived you?"

"I suppose you thought I wasn't strong enough to let you choose to go to certain death. I admire your courage now, of course, but in the moment of decision, I would have begged you not to take the risk."

Karis said, "I never feared that you would hold me back. I did fear that if I made you part of my decision, you would choose to die with me if I died."

They had been quiet long enough for the crickets around them to start to chirp, when Zanja finally said, "Karis, thank you for this year."

"What? It's been the most lonely, miserable, forsaken year. . ."

"But even the G.o.ds must be amazed by it."

"Amazed?" Karis said in a choked voice.