They saw Holly to the castle gate, but didn't pa.s.s through themselves lest someone delay them. The old gardener gave them each a kiss on the cheek and made them promise to visit again before they left the city.

The youth with the cart had pulled hard and well, refusing help even on the steepest parts of the road. As Derian gave the boy the rest of his pay, he added: "And if you're looking for more work, stop out at Prancing Steed Stables and ask for Colby. Tell him Derian referred you and will testify that you're a hard worker."

The youth bobbed respectful thanks-though without a trace of groveling-and hurried down the road.

Firekeeper, Derian, and Blind Seer veered off the road short of the city and headed toward the banks of the Flin. Upstream of the city, the river's waters ran sweet and clear. The royal family owned the land and kept it open for reasons of defense, but as the castle had not been besieged since the time of Queen Zorana the Great the broad strip of river meadow had effectively become a public park.

Given the briskness of the late-autumn morning, Derian, Firekeeper, and Blind Seer had the broad strip to themselves. Market day had pa.s.sed, so even the merchants who paid a small fee to camp along the river were not about.

Blind Seer cut loose from the two humans almost as soon as they were off the road.

"Rabbits?" Derian asked.

"And maybe just too many people," Firekeeper said. "He no like the leash, even though I promise not to hold him if he want to fight."

"Good thing that the people who were staring at you on the streets didn't know that," Derian commented dryly. "Now, who first?"

"My news is easy," Firekeeper shrugged, "to tell if not to do."

"Oh?"

"They call me because they hear of the magical objects," Firekeeper replied.

"From watching the battle," she added, seeing Derian's expression of surprise, "the ravens and crows-not wolves."

Derian nodded slowly. He knew Elation. It wasn't too great a leap for him to imagine crows and ravens of similar ilk.

"And," Firekeeper continued, "they not like having those objects out and want me to steal them. They not understand how this not be easy, even with the objects not on the Isles."

"Not?" Derian said, his brain whirling at the implications of wolves and crows and ravens meeting to discuss what and what not humans should be permitted to do. He seized on something he thought he did understand. "Back up a little. The magical artifacts are not with Queen Valora on the Isles?"

"They not."

"But...""Wait and I tell."

Firekeeper told Derian what the gull had reported to the conclave of the Royal Beasts. The telling took a while, for she had to keep stopping to clarify whenever Derian's puzzled expression told her that she had skipped too much-usually some apparently minor point she took for granted because of her upbringing.

By the time she finished she had a feeling that Derian now knew-or could deduce-more about the inquisitiveness of the Royal Beasts than perhaps those creatures would think was wise.

Derian, however, ignored that aspect of her story, worried about a more immediate problem.

"d.a.m.n, Firekeeper! What you just told me fits all too well with what I've been waiting to tell you," he said.

Pacing back and forth over the stubble, Firekeeper listened as Derian told her how Elise suspected that Lady Melina was intriguing with Baron Endbrook, how Baron Endbrook had made arrangements to travel by land-and their suspicions that the pair intended to go into New Kelvin.

"Doc thought that what connected the two might be magic," Derian said. "I wondered, but now I'm sure he was right. They're going to do something with those cursed magical objects."

He kicked hard at a water-polished branch. Firekeeper had heard enough campfire tales by now to have an idea of the horrors her friend might be imagining.

"Elation go to Port Haven," Firekeeper offered in an effort to relieve Derian's worries, "to see if objects still there."

"I'll bet they're not," Derian said, driving his fist into his palm. "Baron Endbrook left Eagle's Nest several days ago-early the morning after Lady Melina's party. I was able to learn that he'd made arrangements to trade horses at post-houses along the way, so if he's willing to have a punishing ride, he could be collecting the artifacts even now."

Firekeeper frowned. "If he does, there will be a watcher to follow him, but a watcher is not a thief."

"And," Derian added, "if the watcher doesn't have anyone to relay information to, then no one will know just where Baron Endbrook has gone."

"True," Firekeeper admitted. There were shortcomings to the surveillance net set up by the Royal Beasts-largely created by the fact that it had been put together to collect information, but not to enable anyone to act on it.

"If only," Derian said, "you knew how to write and had sent Elation ahead with a note! We might have stopped him or delayed him or at least followed him!"

Firekeeper bristled, all the more defensive because she had been thinking along similar lines.

"If I do this, how I know you be of a shape of mind to believe me? Without Elise seeing what she seed..."

"Saw," Derian corrected automatically.

"Would you be so ready to believe me when I say that those things are not on Isles?"

Derian shook his head. "From you, Firekeeper, I find it easier to believe the impossible than not.""Wolves can lie," Firekeeper said, remembering what Blind Seer had told her.

"Oh, I don't doubt that," Derian said with a breeziness that Firekeeper suspected was a.s.sumed, "but you're so incredible all in yourself that I just try to see the world as you do. It's a twisted view, but it's easier than trying to stuff everything you say and do into the world as I was taught to see it."

Firekeeper didn't understand all of Derian's words, but she understood the sincerity of his tone.

"Write or no," she said, "is too late. We must wait for Elation. No use running after this man Waln and finding him gone. Maybe we tell Elise and Doc what I know and see if they think what you think."

"Sounds good," Derian replied. "Now, where do you want to stay while we wait for Elation?"

Firekeeper had been considering this matter on and off since she had left her wolf pack in the eastern foothills of the Iron Mountains.

"If Earl Kestrel is here, then his daughter Blysse should go to him," she said.

"Not a bad idea," Derian agreed. "He's used to you and Blind Seer-at least as much as anyone is."

"And," Firekeeper added, brushing at Holly's dress, which had picked up twigs and bits of bracken in its rough weave as they had walked along the Flin's bank, "I fit into his trousers."

Chapter XVII.

Elation's report, upon the falcon's return to Eagle's Nest was not encouraging.

That is, Derian thought, if we all believe that Firekeeper is actually translating.

The difficulty with that excuse was that Derian knew that the three of them-Doc, Elise, and himself-did believe. As Derian had said to Firekeeper two days earlier, it was easier to believe than not.

And that makes the three of us-four if you count Firekeeper-mad as a kitten in a catnip patch, at least as far as most of our circle of acquaintances would judge us. "A gull," Firekeeper reported, "was there when Elation come to Port Haven, but Waln had come and gone. A crow followed him, but the gull had heard nothing back from the crow."

"Which direction did he go?" Derian asked.

"North," Firekeeper replied, "on the back of a horse with his saddlebags more full."

"And that's the last any have seen of him?" Doc asked.

"The last the gull have," Firekeeper said. "Certainly the crow-unless blinded-continues to see him even now."

A certain twinkle in her dark eyes made clear she was trying to lighten the mood.

Elise rose from the chair where she had been sitting doing fancy work when they had called on her so that she could hear Elation's report firsthand. Her embroidery hoop slid to the floor unheeded, nor did she notice when Doc picked it up and set it on a delicate three-legged table."And I cannot learn anything about where Citrine might have gone," Elise said, beginning to pace. "She left Eagle's Nest with her mother two days after the family fete. Although it was generally a.s.sumed that they went to some of the family's country holdings, I've found excuse to write and the post-rider brought back my letter undelivered."

"Citrine did tell you though," Derian said, recalling Elise's report the day following the Redbriar/Shield fete, "that her mother planned to take her to the sh.o.r.e. Isn't that correct?"

" 'East to the seaside,' " Elise replied, quoting the little girl as best she could, "to stay with some friends of her mother's she didn't know."

Firekeeper growled-a distinctly b.e.s.t.i.a.l sound, not the human facsimile. Derian wasn't surprised. Citrine, along with her slightly younger cousin Kenre Trueheart, had been the first friends the wolf-woman had made at Eagle's Nest.

"Easy," he said to the wolf-woman, patting her arm. "Lady Melina won't let her daughter come to harm."

"Hah!" was Firekeeper's unbelieving retort.

Derian's feelings weren't hurt. He had to admit that he didn't believe his own rea.s.surance, but he kept that doubt to himself..

"If Ruby or Opal were here," Elise continued, pacing back and forth with a steady, restless tread, "then I would certainly be able to pry something out of one of them, but they've gone to Bright Bay."

"And Jet?"

Doc asked the question Derian had wanted to ask but hadn't dared, recalling too well Elise's former infatuation with the handsome young man.

"Jet?" Elise frowned. "I don't think he'd tell me anything and if he got suspicious he'd be certain to report to his mother."

"Do you think he knows how to contact Lady Melina?" Derian asked.

Elise spread her hands in a pretty gesture of frustration.

"I don't know, but I don't think we can take the risk that he can. Our best hope is that the crow Firekeeper mentioned will somehow get a message to someone who can contact Firekeeper."

Firekeeper nodded. "I ask a kite with broad, fast wings to go to the gull at the sh.o.r.e and then to find us here if there is news from the crow. When we leave here a raven will watch and send the kite after us."

"I'm fascinated," Doc said. "Is this usual behavior?"

Firekeeper snorted. "Not one bit! The corvid kin mock and tease the raptor kind, but for this, for fear of the sorcery coming to power, they will give up ancient rivalries for a time."

Elation squawked and ruffled her feathers in something that looked remarkably like agreement.

"North," Derian said, seizing on something solid. "The report is that Waln went north. That confirms our guesses."

"And the wagon and horses that he arranged for?" Doc asked."No confirmed report beyond a day from the city, but one of our regular drivers told me that he pa.s.sed what could have been that rig on the road heading north."

"Very well," Elise said, ticking points off her fingers rather like her father the baron organizing his archers for battle. "Let us a.s.sume then that Baron Endbrook and Lady Melina departed separately to minimize comment. Let us further a.s.sume that Baron Endbrook-who had a full day's head start, remember-went to Port Haven while Lady Melina took Citrine to these 'friends.' "

Firekeeper, who had been studying the map of Hawk Haven, now looked up with a frown. She still had trouble thinking of lines on a map as honestly representative of places.

"This 'seaside'-it means what it say? I mean, it means at the side of the sea?"

"That's right," Derian said.

"On this," Firekeeper gestured at the map, "I can cover Hawk Haven seaside with my thumbnail-it is a little place between river and river."

She pointed at the Barren to the south and the White Water to the north.

"Why would Lady Melina leave her there? Is it because it is close to the sea and this Waln come from over sea?"

"Possible," Doc said thoughtfully, "but you must remember, Firekeeper, that a good many people live in that thumbnail s.p.a.ce. None of us are precisely good friends with Lady Melina and it is quite possible that she simply wanted her daughter to have a new experience. In fact..."

Doc's face lit as if illuminated from within by a new idea.

"In fact, who is to say that Lady Melina isn't "bringing Citrine with her to New Kelvin?"

"Citrine said nothing about going there," Elise replied dubiously. "She was rather upset about this seaside trip."

"True." Doc's words tumbled over each other in his hurry to get them out: "But if Lady Melina didn't want her own going to New Kelvin to be known at large she wouldn't tell Citrine precisely where they were going. She might even lie to her so that if anyone did question Citrine about her-or her mother's-plans, the little girl wouldn't be able to give the game away."

"It does make sense," Elise said slowly, her worried expression lightening. "And it's not at all unlikely that Lady Melina would want her daughter to have a chance to see New Kelvin, given that she herself remembered her own trip there so fondly. It makes perfect sense, when you think of it that way."

She beamed at Doc.

"And I'd been so worried about Citrine!"

Doc flushed from his recently grown beard to his eyebrows.

Derian spoke up quickly lest Elise have a chance to remember that she had been treating Doc like a piece of particularly useful furniture-something you didn't abuse, but you didn't really notice either.

"Good," he said heartily. "Then we will a.s.sume Citrine is with her mother. Now, to take up Elise's reconstruction of events. After Baron Endbrook does his business in Port Haven, presumably he will join up with Lady Melina-and Citrine-at some inn. That's where they'll also meet up with the hired wagonand horses."

"Sounds reasonable," Doc said. "It even makes more sense now that Waln opted for a wagon rather than horses. Citrine's too small to make that long a ride astride a horse, and a pony would tire out."

"And be noticeable," Elise added. "A rider or two alongside a wagon could be almost anyone, but a little girl on a pony..."

"Little girl with citrine on forehead," Firekeeper added, indicating where Citrine, like all her mother's children except for Sapphire, wore a sparkling gemstone.

"Yes," Elise nodded. "Even if Citrine wore a hat or scarf, it could slip. Better have her wrapped in furs or blankets in the wagon with the luggage."

"If they don't want to be noticed going into New Kelvin," Derian added practically, "they'll pose as merchants. As you noted, Elise, this is a good time of year for trade with New Kelvin. I didn't think to check if Waln also arranged for cargo."