"A snowdrop. Where's my spare bucket?"

"You're out of spare buckets," Heradion informed her. "You've been out of spare buckets. Last time you had to borrow a mug from me. My sister made me that mug. When am I getting it back?"

"What? Oh, the one with the crooked sun on it that came out green? You said you were glad to get rid of it. Anyway, I need a bucket. Or another mug, if you have one."

"I don't. What's so special about this flower? Even I know it's a snowdrop."

"Look at the leaves. The roots." Evenna spread her fingers carefully, brushing dirt from the snowdrop's bulb.

It took a moment for Asharre to see what she meant. The leaves closest to the bell-shaped blossom looked like broad blades of grass, same as the snowdrops of Asharre's childhood. Those near the base, however, were wider and striped with thick reddish veins. They resembled flattened hands, their palms stretched open to the sky. The bulb was deformed too: instead of being a smooth, papery-skinned ball, it was knobbed and ridged so that it looked like a fist plunged into the earth. Its skin was blue-black and wet with rot, peeling off the bulb like the sloughed skin of a leper. The scent of decay clung to it.

"Oh, it's a diseased snowdrop," Heradion said.

"It's not diseased." Evenna closed her hands around the bulb. Asharre was strangely relieved to have it out of sight. "It's beggar's hand. And at the same time, it's not. It's a snowdrop that turns into beggar's hand. One plant changing into another. I've never seen anything like it."

"Where did you find that?" Colison had blanched beneath his windburnt ruddiness.

"Up ahead. The rock walls come down a little. There are a few things growing in the cracks where the stones have fallen." Evenna looked at him, suddenly doubtful. "Should I not keep this?"

"No. No, it doesn't matter. Safer in your hands than where it was, I don't doubt. Where you found ita"was it a clearing? Were there rusting spears about the edge?"

Evenna shook her head. "The path didn't widen much. It's just that the walls fell a bit. I wouldn't call it a clearing. Would you like me to show you? It's not far."

"That won't be necessary." Colison cupped his hands around his mouth, calling to the wagons ahead. "Jassel! We've found beggar's hand! Spread the word!"

He let his hands fall and gave the three of them a curt nod, all efficiency once more. "Ladies. Sir. If you'll excuse me, I'd best be getting back to work. A caution: that water I had you bring? Drink that. Don't touch anything you see flowing hereabouts, and don't melt the snow. Don't let your animals crop whatever's growing. Keep them to the hay you carry, unless you feel like pulling these wagons yourselves."

With that, Colison trudged off to check the last of the wagons, leaving them bewildered.

"What was that about?" Heradion asked.

Evenna shrugged. She'd found a teakettle somewhere and was busily filling it with sand, half of which fell through her fingers as she trotted to keep up with the wagon. The snowdrop bounced on a square of sand-flecked burlap beside her. "Folklore's filled with warnings against beggar's hand. It's no more dangerous than ergot or devil's trumpet, really. Poisonous, but not magical. It looks unsightly and has an unfortunate name, so the superstitious think it marks the touch of Maol."

"His fear was more than superstition," Asharre said. "What does this plant do?"

"It causes delirium if ingested. Fevers. Some who have eaten it claimed to see demons cavorting in the air, or say they've heard imps cackling and ordering them to do mischief. The visions usually fade after a few hours. The patient stays weak for another day or two, and that's the end of it. A few people have died from eating entire bulbs, but the taste is foul enough to make that uncommon. You can't stomach that much of it accidentally." Evenna dug a hole in the sand and planted the snowdrop inside. She folded the burlap over it to protect the bulb against frost. "There we are. I'd better go see how Falcien is faring. It's my turn to take a hand at the reins."

"I don't suppose it'll be your turn soon," Heradion hinted to Asharre.

"As soon as you want to end up in the river." Asharre watched Evenna climb back onto the wagon ahead of them. "I've never seen anyone so excited about a poisonous plant."

"You collect swords. No healthier having one of those in your stomach."

Asharre snorted, and the wagon rolled on.

That night they made camp in the clearing Colison had mentioned. It might have begun as a natural broadening of the mountain path, but the Baozites had smoothed and widened it to serve their needs.

A stone parapet ran along its outer rim. Tall iron spears jutted from its merlons. Most were broken, but a few stood intact, thrusting up at the air with barbed tips untouched by rust. Whatever protected the spearheads from time did not extend to their hafts; those that were not broken had been corroded to pockmarked red needles. Age-browned skulls hung from several of the spears, their mouths filled with windblown dirt and the red drool of rust.

The clearing inside the wall was more hospitable. There was enough dirt for grass and a few small trees to take root, though the trees were leafless and the grass was brown under a lacy shawl of frost. A shallow cave in the mountainside offered shelter from the wind. At one end of the cave, a rivulet of steaming water trickled from a cut in the mountain, feeding a small pool. Whiskers of ice silvered the stone on either side of the rivulet, but the water flowed free and the pool was clear.

Asharre stuck a finger in the water. It was uncomfortably hot, near boiling where it spilled from the rock. It did not smell of sulfur, as the hot springs near Smoke River did.

Colison, like the rest of his men, had been cutting away the dry grass before letting their oxen out of harness. When he saw her by the pool, he put down his short-handled sickle and hurried over. "Don't drink that!"

Asharre wiped her hand dry on her thigh. "Why? It doesn't smell fouled. This place was made for a camp."

"It was," Colison agreed. "I've been using this clearing as long as I've been coming to Carden Vale, but this past winter a I started hearing stories. Things changed. Men told me they'd heard the mad wind whistling around Spearbridge. Sober men, men I'd trust with my life. They said it wasn't the wind that carried madness, though, but the water. Plants too. Ones like your girl found, that'd turned to beggar's hand. I had it marked for nonsense a but I brought the ferrets to be sure."

"To be sure of what?"

He grimaced. "I don't know. That I'm a fool, maybe. Everything I've heard says the water's poisoned where plants turn to beggar's hand, so I suppose we'll give it a try and find out. Laugh at me if I'm wrong."

Asharre gave him a long look, but she gathered the others. Anything that smelled of magic was best seen by the Blessed. Colison met them by the cistern with a ferret cage in his hand. He set the animal down and fished a clay bowl out of his pocket. "I ought to apologize," he said as he dipped the bowl into the steaming pool. "I told you to bring water and hay, but I didn't tell you why. It wasn't just for fear of late snows. I'd heard troubling things about the water up here. Might make me look like a fool, but I thought a better to be safe. Just in case."

He opened the ferret's cage. The animal watched them with black, beady eyes. Moving slowly, so as not to frighten it, Colison put the dish inside and latched the door.

The ferret lapped at the water, tentatively at first, but it soon forgot its fear. Its small pink tongue flicked out faster and faster. Soon all the water was gone, and the ferret was licking the dry bowl. It combed its whiskers for every last drop, then licked at its paws for more.

"What's wrong with it?" Evenna whispered.

The ferret went from licking its paws to nipping them. Its sharp little teeth soon pierced the skin. Upon tasting blood, the animal flew into a frenzy. It thrashed and snapped in its cage, biting at its flanks and tearing at its belly. Loops of intestine caught around a kicking foot; its teeth scraped against bare ribs. A hind claw caught an artery in its neck and tore through. Blood sprayed the cage in rhythmic spurts, but the bleeding did not slow its rage; as the life ran from its neck, fury seemed to fill the animal's body instead. It shrieked, a high-pitched sound that held no paina"only hunger and what Asharre could almost swear was hate.

Within moments the animal was dead. It had ripped itself into a wet, twisted rag. Ashen faced, Asharre wiped some of its blood from her boot.

Colison covered the cage with a frayed piece of burlap. The corners touching the cage floor turned a slow, ugly red.

"Suppose it's true, then," the merchant-captain said. "There's madness in the water."

"Where did you hear this?" Heradion asked.

"There was a caravan last autumn that got caught in Yelanne's Pass for a few days. Not uncommon if you set out late in the year, and not too dangerous if you're ready for it and full winter hasn't set in. You might lose a few animals, but your caravan ought to get through. Horas Short-Ear captained that crew. I knew him; he wasn't one for stupid mistakes. He had them drinking snowmelt while they waited for the weather to turn. The buckets were sitting on the fire pits, frozen full of ice plugs, when the next crew found them.

"My cousin Torvud brought his caravan through the pass a week later. The storm had cleared by then. He found Short-Ear's people dead. All of them. There were some in the wagon beds who'd strangled themselves with knotted shirts, others who'd run into the snow to embrace the cold. The animals were no better. Oxen locked their horns into each other's ribs, dogs went wild on their masters a it was a bloody mess, Torvud said. So bloody, most of those who heard about it didn't believe it. Sounded like a wild tale of the mad wind. I didn't believe it, until now, and it was my own cousin who told me."

"You called a warning when I found the snowdrop," Evenna said. "Why?"

"Tainted plants mean tainted water," Colison replied. "Might be one causes the other, might not, but I was told you'll find them side by side. Seems that's true. That grass in the clearing? Looks fine from afar, but all its roots are little fisty bulbs, same as the flower you dug up on the road. It's beggar's hand. Let an ox graze on that, you might as well cut its throat with your own hands."

"Why would any animal eat so much?" Evenna asked, puzzled. "Beggar's hand tastes terrible."

"Does it?" Colison pushed up his hat to scratch his head. "That's not what I've heard. Torvud said animals that get a taste of it go as mad as that ferret did for water. They'll eat till there's none left, and fight each other bloody for the last bite."

"Sweet as wine, sweet as sin, sweet as death," Falcien recited. Asharre raised an eyebrow at him.

"The Book of All Sins," he explained. "Ryanthe Austerlan wrote it two hundred years ago. It was his life's work: an exploration of the world's dark faiths and the known magics of each. It doesn't make for pleasant reading, and much of what Blessed Austerlan wrote is cryptic or coded to keep the knowledge from being misused, but I spent a year studying it at the Dome.

"Blessed Austerlan tells of how Maolites succumb to the Mad God's touch. Most fall into sin gradually. The first taste of his power is *sweet as wine,' intoxicating and liberating to those who've never had any power of their own. It causes a similar sickness after it passes, and it can be as addicting as wine to a vulnerable soul. The second is a reward for those who have become accustomed to doing evil in his name. *Sweet as sin to a malicious heart.' The third comes when they've served their purpose and their mortal shells are completely broken. Then it is as *sweet as death' a though what follows is unending horror for those who have given their souls to Maol."

"And that's why oxen will eat beggar's hand?" Heradion asked skeptically.

"That's why Maolites do," Falcien answered. "To them it is a sacred herb. They don't notice the bitterness, or don't care if they do. Most of the time, for most of us, the taste is unbearably foul, but when the Mad's God power is strong enough, he can make even the first taste sweet enough to addict."

"Ah. So Cousin Torvud's oxen ate beggar's hand because the Mad God's presence is so strong here that they didn't realize it tastes like warmed-over death served in an old boot."

"That's closer to what I meant," Falcien allowed with a small smile. "If there's something in the earth that turns harmless plants to his sacred herb, and something in the water that induces madness, it's clear that we must be dealing with some manifestation of Maol. No other deity is so heedlessly destructive. The bloodrage could fit Baoz, but as a rule, his reavers don't destroy themselves. Only the Mad God is that careless with the souls he's corrupted."

"Why?" Evenna asked. Her blue eyes were troubled. "Why now?"

"Something's risen in Carden Vale," Falcien suggested. "Blessed Austerlan wrote that Maol's influence can rise in only two places: in great cities, where his servants can hide among the teeming crowds, and in isolated hamlets, where they can seize the entire populace and kill those who resist too strongly. It might have begun with only one corrupted soul, but by now there are surely more. No single Blessed could draw enough power to poison an entire mountain."

"You're saying the entire town of Carden Vale has fallen under the Mad God's sway?" Heradion spluttered. "Then why, in the names of all gods living and forgotten, did the High Solaros send you here to serve your annovair?"

"He didn't know," Evenna said softly. "He couldn't have known. If Bassinos dismissed the rumors as wild stories, and no one recognized it for Maol's work until we came, how could the High Solaros have known what was needed? We're here now, though. Celestia guided us to this place for a purpose."

"That purpose was seeing the danger and going back to Cailan to tell the High Solaros. We've done the first part. We ought to get started on the second." Heradion crossed his arms. "I'm as brave as the next man, but I know my limits. I wouldn't try matching swords with Nhrin Wraithborn, and you've got no business matching spells with whoever could turn water into a that. That sort of thing calls for a company of Sun Knights. Not you. Not us."

"No." Falcien's dark eyes rested on the ferret's cage without seeming to see it. "I agree with Evenna. It's no accident that we're here. Our duty is to help the people of Carden Vale. If we leave and tell the High Solaros to send Knights of the Sun, how can we be sure that the madness won't spread farther? Maybe I'm wrong about how far it's gone; maybe it started here, and the Mad God hasn't yet taken the town. Or maybe he has, and is only waiting for the river to thaw before laying siege to Balnamoine. It takes weeks to travel each way from Cailan. We can't afford the time. We have to act now, while whatever is poisoning the mountain is not as strong as it might become, and whatever souls it hasn't tainted might still be saved."

Heradion muttered something under his breath. He looked to Asharre for help. "How about you?"

"I think," Asharre said, "you should pray."

9.

The Blessed prayed for guidance as Asharre had suggested, but it did little good. Falcien saw nothing but a wall of impenetrable black fog; Evenna's vision showed her a well of dark water in which human faces were upturned, fighting for air as the water rose higher. Both Illuminers' spells were cut short by crippling headaches that left them lying in the wagon beds, incapacitated and in agony, for a full day.

When they recovered, they agreed that it was Maol's presence that hobbled their magic. Neither had heard of such a thing occurring outside the great blight of Pafund Mal, where the Mad God's power was strongest in the world. And yet, even after that, neither of them wanted to turn back. The pull of history was too strong. They did not say it openly, but Asharre heard the awe of legends in their voices. Some of their determination to go forward was their training, and some was a true desire to help a but some of it, too, was that the Illuminers wanted to add their own names to the stories.

That evening, the three Celestians argued all through dinner about whether they should continue to Carden Vale. Asharre listened but said little. Privately she agreed with Heradion and thought it was a mistake to venture onward instead of alerting the Knights of the Sun. If Oralia had been among them, she would have said so. But the three of them had made it clear that Asharre's voice counted only for herself, and Evenna and Falcien were plainly determined to continue with or without her, so she said nothing.

If they accepted her acquiescence and let her come along, she could guard against their worst mistakes. If she protested too strongly, however, they might sneak off without her and get themselves killed. Better to stay quiet and keep her eyes open.

"I don't understand how they can be so cavalier about this," Heradion grumbled after the Blessed had retired to pray. "You saw that animal tear itself apart. That could have been any one of us. Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong. I would very much like to be wrong."

"You're wrong." Asharre returned his wounded expression with a wry look. "They're young."

"I'm young. I still know better."

"They are Blessed. Oralia was the same. She thought that whatever happened was the goddess' will, and that her faith could surmount any trial." Remembering her sister's absolute conviction made Asharre feel a little awed, but mostly tired. That faith had killed her in the end. "Of course they believe that whatever lies in Carden Vale is a test sent by their goddess. This is their annovair, their first task as full Blessed. For it to be something so profound is a an honor. In their heart of hearts, they will not believe failure is possible."

"Well, I do." Heradion scowled at a snapped bootlace as if the frayed leather was to blame for everything that had gone wrong during their journey. He yanked it out and threaded a new one into its place, jerking it harder than necessary through each loop. "What do you think?"

Asharre knotted her fingers together, feeling the calluses on both palms. "I think it is important to let them do this thing. Let us say that going to Carden Vale risks their lives. Maybe that is true, maybe not. But let us say it. So: if we stop them, we save their livesa"and negate the purpose of those lives. They have trained for this. They are Blessed for this. If they cannot serve their goddess in the way they think necessary, what is the reason for their being?"

"They're my friends. You want to let them march into madness?"

"Want to? No. But I think it is necessary. Oralia was my sister, and she made the same choice." And I would have stopped her if I could. If she had let me. But Asharre had never had the chance, and in the long silence afterward she had come to understand, however much it hurt to admit, that Oralia had made a not the right choice, perhaps, but the only one that any of Celestia's Blessed could have.

"That was Sennos Mill, wasn't it? What happened there?"

Asharre glanced at him, saw nothing but honest curiosity on his face, and turned back to the fire. "She died."

"But you think she made the right choice in going?"

"I don't know. I know she had to try." They'd been in western Calantyr, a week's ride from Aluvair, when they'd received a desperate plea from Sennos Mill. A terrible sickness had taken the villagers there: a plague that dried their skin into brittle, scaly sheets that cracked apart and fell away, leaving their bodies raw and oozing. None of the infected survived longer than a few days, and the village herb woman was helpless to cure the disease. Their only hope was a Blessed.

Asharre had argued long and hard with her sister about Sennos Mill. The village lay in the no-man's-land between Calantyr and Ang'arta. It was not formally a part of either realm a but the soldiers of the Iron Fortress were known to ride through the region, and they did not take kindly to the presence of Celestia's Blessed that close to their borders. If something went wrong in Sennos Mill, they'd have no help from Calantyr; King Uthandyr would not risk an open conflict with the ironlords over one Illuminer who'd overstepped her bounds.

But Oralia refused to listen. She had to help the people of Sennos Mill, she said; there was only a chance of harm to herself, whereas the villagers were certain to die without her prayers. Even if she knew for a fact that the Baozites would be waiting to kill her, Oralia would have gone to pray for as many villagers as she could before that happened. That was what it meant to be Blessed; she could not refuse her healing.

Asharre disagreed. Vehemently. They agreed to sleep on it, and make no decision until the morninga"but Oralia drugged her into slumber, and when the sigrir woke, she found her sister gone.

She rode after Oralia at once, but she pushed her horse too hard and it foundered, costing her three precious days. By the time she reached the village, it was too late.

Baozites had come to Sennos Mill, and they'd brought a Thorn. Her sister was defenseless. They'd slaughtered her and ridden back to Ang'arta, leaving Asharre with no enemy to take vengeance upon and no body to burn. The villagers had done that before she came.

The survivors told her that Oralia cured the plague before the Baozites fell on Sennos Mill. They wept, and thanked her, and said her sister had saved their lives. Perhaps that was true, and perhaps they only offered the words to salve her loss. Asharre would never know.

What she did knowa"and what she desperately wished she'd realized earliera"was that Oralia could no more have ignored her holy oaths than Asharre could have washed the scars from her face. And if she had accepted that, instead of trying to stand between a Blessed and her goddess, Oralia might not have drugged her. She might have been able to accompany her sister to Sennos Mill, and the tragedy might have been changed.

Maybe. Too late now; that song was sung. But in Evenna and Falcien she saw the same unswerving certainty, and this time she did not intend to repeat her mistake.

Heradion was waiting for the rest of her answer. Asharre shrugged at him and poked at the sputtering coals with a roasting stick left over from the evening's meal. The night was cold, and he did not need to hear her old griefs. "Their duty is to bring their Lady's magic where it is needed. Yours, and mine, is to protect them while they do it."

"If your hope was to reassure me," Heradion muttered, "you've failed miserably."

"Not reassure. Prepare."

"I'm not sure that does much good against Maolite madness, but I'll try." He tossed his own stick into the fire and left her.

The embers were fading. Asharre pulled her sheepskin closer, took out an oilstone, and honed her sword until it was too dark to see.

They got to Spearbridge at highsun the next day. Morning was colder than the night had been, and the wind's bite sharpened as the day drew on. The sky was the color of dirty snow, streaked with torn gray clouds. The bullocks' breath steamed and mist rolled from their shoulders as they hauled the wagons up the last turn in the road.

Then they were at the Gate of the Chasm, and Spearbridge lay before them.

The bridge measured twenty feet across and a thousand long. Stretched over a yawning rift in the mountains, it seemed thin as a wisp of spider's silk, at once barbarous and impossibly fragile. At either end the bridge was anchored by a gatehouse of black stone and rusting iron; between, it simply hung in the air.

Spearbridge was built all of twisted metal and sun-bleached skeletons, woven together like threads in an unholy tapestry. Bent swords and dented shields tangled around enough bones to fill a hundred ossuaries. Most of those bones were human, but a few were too large, too heavy, to have come even from Ingvall's children. Some of the skulls had tusks and horns and curved red teeth as long as Asharre's forearm. She saw a six-fingered claw thrust into a rib cage, its talons bigger than scimitars. Amulets and holy relics from more faiths than Asharre could name lay broken and defiled among them, all fused together as if by some great blast of fire.