"You continue to say that," Rnach said crossly, "and I begin to wonder if you aren't trying to distract me with a falsehood."

"Now, Rnach, why would I do that?"

Rnach suppressed the urge to snort, settling for a stern pursing of his lips. "To finish off what your granny-in-law there left of me, no doubt. Why else?"

"Oh, for my own perverse reasons, I imagine," Bristeadh said cheerfully. "Let's see you back to the house-do you need a shoulder to lean on?"

"Decorum suggests I refrain from telling you what I think of your offer."

Bristeadh laughed and put his hand on Rnach's shoulder. "Such a polite lad. I'll consider the possibilities while you find my daughter and see how she fares."

Rnach nodded and walked with him back to the hall. He paused at the doors and looked at Aisling's father. "I'm not sure I want her to see anything tonight."

Bristeadh looked at him out of eyes that were a perfect copy of Aisling's. "I don't think she would love you any less."

Rnach shook his head. "I don't think so either, but still I would prefer that she not see what I need to do."

"Why do I have the feeling you had this same conversation with your mother about your mother?"

"My mother, if you can believe it, had this conversation with me. About me."

Bristeadh sighed deeply. "I didn't know Sarait, of course, but based on her reputation, I would say you were fortunate to have her as your dam. A remarkable woman of terrible courage."

"She was," Rnach agreed, "and still, nay. If possible."

"You don't want me out here to keep Muinear from killing you?"

"You don't have any magic, remember?"

"I was thinking my way with words might accomplish the same thing," Bristeadh said with a smile. "But let it be as you wish. I'll keep Aisling distracted tonight while you're about your dastardly business. For now, I think I'll go see if your ponies are still in the stables. That Iteach was already trying to corrupt the lovely Orail with thoughts of dragonshape and sea breezes."

Rnach didn't doubt that for a minute. He nodded to Aisling's father and watched him absently as he walked away. He put his hand on one of the golden doorhandles and studied the forest beyond the gardens that surrounded the palace and the lists beyond those. He could hear the sea, but it was definitely hidden.

A bit like the running of something he could now hear himself.

He thought of all the people he had talked to over the past several se'nnights who had mentioned the same thing. Captain Burke, whose ship had carried Aisling and him to Melksham Island, who had complained about things running through his belowdecks that weren't mice but dreams. Scrymgeour Weger, who had complained of his dreams being troubled by things running he couldn't identify. Even the king of the dwarves, who had asked Aisling to discover what was running beneath his kingdom that stretched down into the earth, far below where dwarf or man could dig.

He and Aisling had been cast into an underground river that had carried within its bounds a stream of magic. Bruadairian magic. Magic that should have been safely residing inside Bruadair's borders, not finding itself running off in directions it had never been meant to go.

He wondered if Bruadair would tell Aisling where the leak was, if leak it could be called, or what it would say to him if he asked it the same question.

Perhaps it couldn't say.

He turned that over in his mind for a bit, then shook his head. He would consider it later, when he'd taken an hour to feed himself, make sure Aisling had eaten something, then enjoy her company before her great-grandmother tried to kill him. Again.

Fifteen.

Aisling stood in the dreamspinners' hall, feeling absolutely torn in two. It was the oddest sensation, that of feeling as if she were still herself with her past hanging about her like a shroud, yet not at all herself with her future hanging in the distance in front of her like mist draped on a lovely forest she wasn't allow to enter.

And still there on the dais sat a spinning wheel.

She turned away from the sight and continued to wander about the hall itself. Supper had been announced and the guests seemed to have decamped for a dining hall she hadn't yet seen. She'd been invited as well, but she'd demurred, hoping she wasn't giving offense. She wasn't sure she was hungry. In truth, she wasn't sure of anything except she felt as though she were dreaming. Appropriate, perhaps, but unsettling nonetheless. What she wanted was to escape for a bit and look at something else, but she wasn't sure how she would manage it. Freasdail was solicitous, but seemingly very anxious that nothing happen to her. She was perfectly confident that he was hovering somewhere just out of sight where he could rush to the rescue if she stubbed her toe.

No wonder Rnach shunned the life of a pampered prince.

Well, they would come to an understanding at some point, hopefully. Perhaps when she stopped shaking from the events of the morning she wasn't quite ready to think about. She looked at the hall instead, because it was the best distraction she could invent at the moment.

It was an enormous place, full of light, built to perhaps even intimidate. She stood in the middle of it and turned around slowly, trying to number it among the places she'd seen before, but no amount of turning seemed to make that possible. It wasn't like anything she'd seen to that point.

Tor Neroche had been not so much rustic as it had been solid and immense, as if it had been fashioned from the elements of the land: trees, stone, water running endlessly. The dwarf king's palace looked as if it had simply been carved of the mountain itself. Rnach's grandfather's palace of Seanagarra was more like something out of a book of fables, impossibly beautiful, full of trees that murmured and flowers that sang and all of it wrapped up in an elven glamour that lingered on in memory long after it was left behind. She thought she might have once likened it to having walked in a dream.

Now, she knew better.

The chamber where she currently stood was enormous, but also almost not quite there, as if it had been so slathered in the echoes of dreams that it no longer found itself in reality. It wasn't where the spinning happened, or so she understood. She had been given a tour by Freasdail, who apparently took his duties very seriously. She'd seen the whole of the great hall, then been shown where the chambers for spinning lay and who inhabited them. She immediately forgot their names and what they did, but she supposed she would have ample time to become acquainted with them in the future.

Her future, as the First Dreamspinner.

She sat down finally on the top step of the dais and looked back down the path that had faded into something far less grand than it had been before. It was barely demarcated, as if it weren't quite sure if she intended to use it or not but feared not to be ready at a moment's notice should she decide to jump up and run out the front doors.

She considered it briefly, then let the thought continue on just as quickly. She wasn't going to leave, no matter how terrified she was. Her future, such as it was, lay where she was. She could only hope that future might continue to include a certain elf . . .

Who had apparently come into the hall while she had been otherwise occupied.

He was leaning against one of the pillars that held the roof up scores of feet over her head. He was doing nothing more interesting than watching her, which she supposed wasn't very interesting at all, but he seemed to be committed to the exercise so she wasn't going to argue with him.

She forgot, from time to time, who he was. She had known him such a short time in the grander scheme of things, but she felt as if she'd known him for the better part of her life. Perhaps she had become too comfortable with him, she a simple weaver and he the grandson of an elven king.

Only she wasn't a weaver any longer and perhaps the spinning she would eventually do was less than simple, but she was still who she was and he was who he was and how was it possible she could ever look at him and not see him for what he was?

She supposed he would stand there all day, smiling faintly, waiting for her to decide what she wanted to do. She took a deep breath and held out her hand toward him.

He pushed away from his pillar and walked over to her, sat down next to her, and took her hand.

"Comfortable perch," he noted.

"More comfortable than a stool at the wheel behind us, I daresay."

He smiled. "I imagine that will become familiar in time."

She wasn't sure how that would ever happen, but she appreciated his confidence. She looked at his hand wrapped around hers, then at him. "It isn't my spinning wheel. That one behind us, I mean."

"Isn't it?" he asked, looking faintly surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Freasdail told me there's another wheel in a different chamber where the true work is accomplished. That one there is just the one they set out for spinners aspiring to the position of First."

"Are there spinners who aspire to that?"

"Apparently so."

"I never would have guessed."

"Me, neither."

"What's the purpose of that wheel, then? It's a pretty thing, if I could offer an opinion." He smiled. "Though I never thought to have an opinion about a spinning wheel."

"Its purpose is to kill you if you aren't the right lad for the job," she said solemnly, then she did him the favor of patting him firmly on the back until he stopped choking. She looked up to find Freasdail standing there with a cup of something.

Rnach took it, drank, then set the cup on the floor. "Thank you, ah . . ."

"Freasdail, Your Highness. The First's steward."

Rnach smiled. "You must be pleased to have someone to look after."

Freasdail made Rnach a bow. "Very, Your Highness."

"You know," Rnach said, "if you need to go find something to eat, I think I can take care of her for a bit."

"Oh," Freasdail said, looking as if the thought hadn't occurred to him. "Oh, I couldn't. You see, we've been without a First for so long and we don't want anything to happen to the lady Aisling, seeing as how she's not only the First, but Lady Muinear's great-granddaughter, and perhaps you don't know that her mother and grandmother-"

"We know," Rnach said gravely. "But perhaps you would be amenable to discussing the details with me, perhaps after our lady has sought her rest?"

"Of course, Your Highness."

Rnach smiled. "Sustenance, my good Freasdail. You'll be of no use to her if you faint."

The man looked horribly torn, but he seemed somewhat rea.s.sured by the sight of Rnach's sword lying next to him on the pair of steps. He looked at her.

"Five minutes, my lady. I'll return posthaste."

She waved him on to his meal, supposing there was no point in trying to talk him into a longer respite. She watched him go, then looked at Rnach.

"He'll send someone else to watch over me, won't he?"

"Absolutely."

She considered. "Is this why you wanted to go hide in a garrison?"

He smiled. "Partly. I'd had a happy amount of anonymity with Soilleir, so I wasn't perhaps as desperate for it as I might have been otherwise, but I will admit the thought of living the life of a pampered elven prince did give me pause. I'll see if I can't put myself in the rotation of those guardsmen charged with looking after you. That will no doubt satisfy my desire for the lack of servants hovering at my elbow."

"Guardsmen?"

"Haven't you noticed them?"

She shook her head. "Are you sure?"

He smiled. "Two at the front door, another pair at the garden door, another very intimidating-looking lad by the pa.s.sageway leading elsewhere."

"How did you notice?"

"I checked the hall after I entered-after I almost ran into the scowling fiends by the doorway-because I thought you might prefer it if I kissed you without an audience. And after, perhaps, I washed up."

She leaned closer to him, kissed him herself, then smiled. "There. I've now shocked lads I didn't know were there. And where have you been to look so wrung out?"

"Wrung out?" he echoed, tugging at the neck of his tunic. "I can only hope I don't look as wrung out as I feel, but to answer your question, I've been entertaining your great-grandmother in the lists."

"Do we have lists?"

"Apparently so." He lifted an eyebrow briefly. "She knows where they are. And so, it would seem, do the rest of your thoroughly merciless dreamspinners. Muinear gave me a minute to catch my breath, magically speaking, then they all came at me like a d.a.m.ned pack of vultures."

"Was it terrible?"

He sighed, then shook his head slowly. "I won't say it was pleasant, but I learned many things I didn't know and was shown things I hadn't considered. So, I would say it was a success." He shook his head again. "I'm still trying to get over the fact that I was facing a tiny woman in the lists and she left me almost in tears."

"I like her."

"So do I," Rnach said.

She looked around the hall for the alleged guardsmen but saw nothing. Perhaps that was just as well. If she'd known they were there, perhaps she would have been less willing to roam freely. She supposed she would accustom herself to it in time.

Accustom herself to her life, in time.

She was, she realized, enormously grateful for the man sitting next to her. She looked at their hands together, for the sight comforted her in ways she hadn't expected, then looked at him to find he was watching her gravely.

"Still want to, ah, well . . . you know?" she asked.

"I think I need to put a you know on your finger so you don't ever have to ask that question again."

She smiled because she loved him, she was sitting in a place that was safe, and for the moment, she could put off thinking about more of her future than what the next quarter hour contained. She shifted a little, then smiled into his very green eyes.

"You're wearing a crown, you know."

He reached up, looking very surprised, and patted the top of his head. Then he looked at her with a wry smile. "The visible world doesn't think so."

"Bruadair has an interesting perspective."

He didn't move. "And how am I supposed to learn to tell the difference between dreams and reality?"

"You're asking me?" she said uncomfortably. "I haven't a clue."

"Is it a very large, impressive crown?"