"Until we discovered be had been beset by bandits. He was traveling alone." Gortin shrugs. "Even in a land as ordered as Dumar, when one reaches the Sudbergs, there are places for evildoers to hide." The red-uniformed Dumaran extends a pouch. "We returned his effects to you, as his lord, since we were headed to see you."

"How convenient," Dencer responds mildly, taking the large Canvas sack and setting it upon the desk without opening it.

"It was the least we could do. We were already riding this way, and it appeared that this fellow bad been heading home." Gortin smiles blandly.

"I am curious. How did you know this ...person... was the one who visited Lord Ehara?"

Gortin bows. "I could not be precisely certain, my lord, but there were certain indications. This Slevn worn a gray cloak and trousers, and so did the unfortunate we found. His purse was gone, but he had tucked a scroll with Lord Ehara's official seal inside the lining of his cloak, and a shiny fresh-mihted gold. Lord Ebara sent the scroll with him. It was still sealed, and we didn't open it, seeing as it was addressed to you. It be in the pouch."

"The bandits did not slit or take his cloak?"

"It was covered with blood, Lord Dencer. They were hasty, from the signs."

"Tell me," says Dencer, standing erect by the desk, cranelike, but a predatory crane. 'Might anyone in Dumar know why this-what did you say his name was?-this fellow went to see Lord Ehara? Was he a trader or some such?"

Gortin shrugs. "None would know but Lord Ehara. Lord Ehara saw him alone. That is why, when we came across his body, I had thought to inform you when we arrived."

"My thanks for your... rect.i.tude, Captain." Dencer frowns. "Surely, you and your squad did not ride all the way from Dumaria merely to return the effects of an unfortunate traveler."

"No. Ser." Gortin bows again, and extends a scroll, trimmed in gilt and sealed with both red wax and a scarlet ribbon. "Lord Ehara sent us to offer his friendship. Lord Ehara understands that all must be neighbors and friends in these unsettled times."

"There is friendship, and there is friendship." Dencer observes.

Gortin turns and takes a velvet pouch from the lancer who stands behind him, then extends that. "A token of the quality and sincerity of Lord Ehara's desire to demonstrate his most earnest desire to establish friendship between his lands and yours of Stromwer."

Dencer lifts the pouch. "He makes a weighty gesture indeed." The pouch goes beside the first on the desk.

"Your lord has a way with gestures." He smiles, although the hard glitter does not leave his eyes. "After riding so far with such a generous gesture, you must join us for the evening meal. Your lancers will be fed with my armsmen.

"I would be most pleased. I understand you have a most talented consort."

"Ah yes, I do." Dencer's smile vanishes, and he looks down at the polished wooden floor. "Alas, she is indisposed, and will not be joining us. At times, I fear for her health. These times have weighed hard upon her. You know that she was held in Falcor, and she has yet to recover from the. . . effects of that. . . stay."

"Oh... I had not heard. I am so sorry Gortin offers a solicitous smile. "Lord Ehara had said that these times have indeed fallen hard upon some of Defalk"

"We do what we can, and we can but hope that the surroundings here will ensure her full recovery."

"With such a burden, Lord Dencer," says Gortin gravely, "I could not impose upon your hospitality. That would be asking far too much of your charity and goodwill."

"Nonsense, your presence and news will divert me. Surely, you would not gainsay me that in, as you put it, this time of trouble?" Dencer offers a tentative smile.

"Are you sure of that? We would not add any burden to those you already bear"

"I would be most pleased to hear of your lord and of how matters fare in Dumar these days. Most pleased." Dencer nods, and then brushes back his untidy hair.

II

THEMA.

Anna stood in the saddle for a moment, trying to stretch her legs. After just two days in the saddle, her legs ached-youth spell or no youth spell.

The fine, cold rain that had begun to sleet around her and the others in the last gla.s.s, just before midmorning- when they were nowhere close to any real shelter-didn't help her mood much, or her legs. The warm rains of the previous week had heralded spring, according to Skent and even Ytrude, but the mist that fell around her was anything but warm.

"Spring?" she said, more to herself than anyone.

"It is spring. You can see some shoots in the fields," answered Alvar, riding beside her "The roads have almost dried." His fingers stroked the leather of his reins, almost absently.

"Let's hope they stay that way. The last thing we need is more muddy roads."

"Indeed, lady." Captain Alvar nodded, then touched his black beard with his left hand.

Anna's eyes went to the Falche River, a muddy swatch of water that filled perhaps a third of the riverbed to her left. The scrub by the river's edge, and the rushes and gra.s.ses, remained. tannish brown and bent downstream- the legacy of the Evult's flood of the past harvest season. A pair of teals paddled in the backwater formed by a sandbar, apparently indifferent to the chill mist-rain.

Farinelli whuffed and tossed his head, as if to fling dampness out of his eyes. . . or something. Anna didn't pretend to know much about horses, except how to feed, saddle, and groom the big palomino gelding and to pay attention to the signals he sent. She didn't always understand them, but she'd learned that Farinelli had a reason for anything he did. Then, she supposed most horses did, unlike people, who all too often seemed to act against their own best interests, or for no reason at all.

She laughed softly to herself. Were her thoughts getting to be like those of the horsey types who seemed to prefer horses to people? Those people she'd never thought she'd understand.

Alvar looked over from his mount inquiringly.

"I'm begining to understand why some people prefer horses to people."

"Horses don't talk back unless you mistreat them," the vetetan armsman said. "For most mounts, kindness goes farther than with people." He readjusted the oiled leather poncho, and driblets of water skidded off the dark leather toward the rain-darkened clay of the road. So far, the rain hadn't been heavy enough to turn the road to mud-yet.

"How much farther to Cheor?" Jimbob rode behind Anna and, for the past few deks, beside Jecks.

Anna smiled at Jimbob's question to his grandsire. The impatience of the young with journeys hadn't changed between worlds or universes. Of her own children, Mario had been the worst, especially on the long drives from New England back to c.u.mberland to visit family, the trips that Avery had avoided whenever he could.

Now... now she was ruling a kingdom, and she couldn't even use her sorcery to see Mario or Elizabetta.

In a season, maybe? Brill bad said that he had been able to see the mist worlds-earth mostly-in his reflecting pool if he were sparing in his attempts. The sorceress shrugged her stiffening shoulders.

"Two days, mayhap three. Or four, should the rain fall harder and the roads turn to mud." Jecks' words were clipped, as though the white-haired and hazel-eyed lord's thoughts were elsewhere.

Anna respected Jecks, his honesty, his comparative open-mindedness, and his intelligence. And there was definitely chemistry between them... but there was also a huge cultural gap-and the endless problems of the country she'd ended up ruling as regent for his grandson.

Anna glanced up at the indistinct grayness. Was the rain lessening? How could she ask for it not to rain, when Defalk had suffered such dryness for so long? Especially in The case of a gentle rain.

"There might be a way station at Hygris," Jecks offered, easing his mount onto the shoulder of the road and drawing abreast of Anna. He gestured at a group of buildings emerging out of the mist and rain ahead.

"There wouldn't be any real shelter for the lancers, would there?"

"Not likely. The old inn burned three years ago."

"We'll stop for a little rest," Anna said. "But we might as well push on. There's no point in having arms- men sit in the rain and get wet so I can stay dry."

"I thought you might say that." Jecks laughed. "Just like Alasia."

"We're similar, but not exactly alike." Anna wasn't sure she wanted to be thought of as Jecks' daughter.

"For one, I'm a little older. And I'm not... She broke off the sentence with a rueful laugh. "Let's leave it at that." She didn't want to state blatantly that she had no intention of being treated as his daughter.

"No, you're not," Jecks answered with a grin. "As your actions often declare."

Alvar struggled to keep a straight face. So did Anna, almost forgetting the rain that misted around her and the column of armsmen and wagons that followed.

22.

ENCORA, RANUAK.

The two women stand at the edge of the crowd in the wind-swirled square. Behind them rises a canvas banner that flaps in the wind, proclaiming in bright blue lettering, SouthWomen; For Eternal Harmony!

"Mother warned you, Veria," says the slender brunette.

"She only said that it was unwise to distrust someone in accord with the greatest of the harmonies. This sorceress is nothing more than another power-hungry woman of the north who will turn on anyone at the first need or opportunity. She also supports a man's claim to rule Defalk. She will not even rule in her own fight. There is nothing worse than a woman serving as a stalking goat for men. Better an honest man than a deceitful woman." Veria's words are low, but intense. "Mother or Matriarch, she did not say one word against my joining the SouthWomen."

"Not in so many words, but it was a warning."

"Why are you here, Alya? To act as Mother's spy?"

"Mother didn't send me." Alya coughs twice, then continues. "I'm here because you've always heard what you wanted to hear and seen what you wanted to see."

"She has you spying on me."

Alya laughs. "She knows what you're doing. She needs no spies. She has let us choose our own way. This way is wrong, and in time, you will pay dearly for it.

"Then let me pay in my own coin. Why should you care?"

"You are my sister, and you will suffer."

"You've never cared that much before. Why now?"

"Because Mother and Father care, and when you suffer, they will suffer."

"You really believe that rubbish about the harmonies? That a power-hungry woman from the mist worlds really cares about anything we hold dear? How could you?"

"It's very simple, Veria. Very simple. Simple enough for you to see.., if you would. Let me ask you this-on the important events, has Mother ever been wrong? Have she and Father ever been wrong about what has happened?"

"They did not foresee the very sorceress they caution against opposing."

"Then see as you will." Alya shakes her head. "Do as you will. Only recall that I have tried to caution you. Those blades you will buy-if you have not already- will cut you more dearly than any of you would wish."

The noise of the crowd rises as a tall woman steps onto the platform below the banner. Alya's eyes flicker toward the speaker as the crowd subsides. When she looks back beside herself, Veria has slipped away.

23.

Anna stretched surrept.i.tiously in the saddle, then shifted her weight to ease the continual soreness in her posterior, a posterior far more slender than it had been a year earlier. Her stomach grumbled slightly, reminding her to take another of the hard biscuits from the cloth pouch tied to the front saddle ring.

The road followed the ridge west of the Falche River, and the higher tilled fields between the mad and riverbank already showed signs of green. It was barely past dawn. and the lower fields were still clothed in ground fog. The green sprouts in the higher fields, though, she could clearly see, unlike those outside of Falcor pointed out by Hanfor days earlier.

"Not too much farther to go," said Alvar.

"Do you think Arkad knows we're coming?"

"If be has seers, he could see us on the road." The captain straightened his burly frame and turned in the saddle as if to check on whether someone watched.

"But he wouldn't know where we're headed. Not yet."

"Not yet," added Jecks.

Anna peered through the morning mist toward the river, toward the buildings rising out of the white ground-fog beyond the stone bridge that arched over the Falche and into Cheor itself.

Supposedly, Synfal-Arkad's liedburg-lay farther north of Cheor on a low hill that overlooked both the Falche and the Synor Rivers. That meant crossing the river and then riding back north.

"How much farther to Cheor?" Jimbob asked from Anna's right. As it neared the river town, the road had widened enough for Anna's force to ride four abreast-if no one happened to be headed north out of Cheor.

Anna smiled again. Definitely, some things remained constant with human nature, like the impatience of the young, although Anna had to admit that Jimbob hadn't asked that question until after the second day, unlike Mario, who had asked it ten minutes after the car left the house.

Within two deks, the ridge the road had followed began to slope into bottomland, dark rich soil tilled recently and filled with green sprouts. The ground fog began to dissipate with the growing warmth of the spring sun.

Anna gestured toward the fields that seemed to stretch westward from the river for deks and deks, looking at Jecks.

"Corn and maize here-even some sorghum, about the only place in Defalk. We grow more barley.

Heartier stuff."

"Barley is better for beer," offered Alvar.

Anna hadn't seen that much beer in Defalk, and she glanced at Jecks. "Do you brew much beer at Elheld?"

"Some. More in recent years. We lost many of the old vines."