Were the vineyards another casualty of the Evult's drought? Along with how many other crops and people you don't even know about?

The road curved over the next dek to head directly toward the river. An arched bridge with three spans and two heavy stone piers in midstream offered the sole access to Cheor from the west-a bridge that had been far enough downstream to survive the Evult's floods of the fall before.

The dark-brown clay road widened even more closer to the bridge, as the riverbanks narrowed and deepened and the muddy water filled the entire stresinbed. From what Anna could see, when the Faiche was full, the river would be nearly ten yards deep. The battered clay levees on both sides testified that the Falche had indeed run deep in the past and that it had not recently, not with the gaps in the banks in places.

As they rode closer to the bridge, Alvar leaned toward Anna. "I would suggest a van."

A van? Anna paused, then finally had to ask, "A van? I'm not a military person, Captain..."

"A forward guard, lady. We do not know exactly how friendly..."

"Of course.

"Just a half-score," suggested Jecks.

Alvar nodded.

"And you might have your instrument and a spell ready," added the white-haired lord, turning to Anna.

"First ten from the purple company!" called out Alvar. "Form a van!"

As the armsmen eased their mounts onto the shoulder of the road and around Anna, she twisted in the saddle and extracted the lutar: What spell could she use for defense? A variation on the repulsion spell?

She hummed the melody, mentally tying to fit the words into the tune.

A single-horse wagon groaned over the stone paving blocks of the bridge and toward the column. The driver looked up at the line of riders, and immediately drove the cart south along the crude way formed by the levee.

"He didn't like our looks," observed Alvar.

"Would you?" asked Jecks with a laugh. "With near two hundred horse?" He glanced at Jimbob. and added in a lower voice, "Most tradesmen and farmers will flee armsmen. They fear losing their goods and life. Never give them reason to fear. Remember, armsmen grow nothing and create nothing. They only allow you to hold what others grow and create. Farmers and tradesmen are the heart of a land."

Anna nodded, almost to herself, then glanced at Jimbob, who nodded at his grandsire's words, but with a nod that meant he heard the words, not necessarily their meaning.

Jecks glanced at Anna.

She shook her head and offered a faint smile.

He shrugged in return. "We say what we must."

"As often as we have to," she answered.

Alvar nodded slowly, but a vaguely puzzled expression remained on young Jimbob' s face.

As Firinelli's hoofs clicked on the stones of the bridge, Anna one-handedly readjusted her felt hat, a copy of the one she'd lost at Vult, comfortable, but scarcely stylish. She doubted she looked stylish even without the hat, not in pale green trousers and tunic, although the green leather riding boots might have offered a hint as to her station.

Station? You're worried about that? She smiled to herself.

From the height of the second arch, Anna could sense that Cheor was an old town, clearly older than Falcor. Less than fifty yards past the stone-paved approachway to the bridge, a hodgepodge of buildings began. The houses were not stone, but mainly of yellow bricks. Some were covered with stucco, once whitewashed, but now dingy and gray. The roofs were made of a dark red tile, and more than a handful of the roofs showed cracked and missing tiles.

The vanguard rode silently off the bridge and down the main thoroughfare, if a street paved with cracked stones, with weeds sprouting intermittently, and open sewers on each side of the pavement, if that const.i.tuted a main thoroughfare. The sound of the main force behind on the bridge echoed down the constricted street.

A calico cat sidled up to a damp-sided rain barrel on the right, then vanished into the adjacent alley. On the left side of the narrow street, before a shop that bore a weathered green sign with crude line drawings of a basket and a barrel, stood a dog, straining at a heavy rope tied to a post that supported a sagging porch roof. The dog continued to growl as the riders neared.

From the basketmaker-cooper's porch, a scar-faced woman glared as the column neared. Anna met the woman's eyes, and, after an instant, the woman looked away, her mouth moving, but with words inaudible to the sorceress.

Anna took a slow deep breath as she pa.s.sed the basket-maker's, and wished she hadn't. The stench reminded her of an ill-tended jakes-or certain public banos she'd encountered on her sole South American tour.

Two women beating large baskets glanced up at the clacking of hoofs, then darted down a side alley.

Farther toward the center of the town, a man with wispy white hair stared from under a tattered gray awning that sheltered three tables as they pa.s.sed and rode into the open square.

The square of Cheor held a low yellow-brick platform roughly thirty yards square. The platform was empty except for a bearded man covered with a ragged gray blanket and slumped in one corner. His mud- covered feet were bare. A rope ran from his hand to a yellow dog who lay on the bricks, his eyes on the riders.

The street around the platform was cobbled, except for a handful of irregularly s.p.a.ced potholes, each partly filled with rainwater.

On the far side of the square was another cooper's, with a man-sized barrel over the door, bound with twisted willow rather than with iron hoops. The sound of hammering echoed from the general direction of the cooper's shop. Beside the cooper's was a larger structure, bearing the crossed candles of a chandlery.

On the other side of the cooper's was another shop, or something, which had no sign.

On the short side of the square-to Anna's right and beyond the restaurant or cafe under the awning- were four buildings, each two stories high, and narrow. The windows and doors of the last building were boarded closed, and one of the second-floor shutters of the adjoining building hung at an angle, as if held only by a single hinge.

A heavyset red-haired woman peered from the window of the second building, one with a white sign bearing the image of a pair of boots. At the sight of the horses entering the square, her mouth formed an 0, soundlessly, and her head vanished.

Alvar eased his mount toward a gangly figure standing by the mounting block before the building Anna would have called a dry goods store. The red-painted shutters were drawn back to reveal an ungla.s.sed window, behind which were bolts of cloth displayed on a rack.

Anna reined up, waiting, and behind her the column slowed.

Is this a good idea? We could be sitting ducks... or whatever Her eyes flicked around the square, but she could only see what she would have expected to see- women carrying bundles, a young woman half holding the hand of a toddler, half dragging him toward the cooper's, a youth carting a plank into the cooper's.

"Which way to Lord Arkad's?" asked Alvar.

"Ah... I couldn't be saying, ser armsman." The man swallowed almost convulsively. "His holding's north somewhere, they say. Me... I never been there."

"You've never been there?" asked the captain flatly.

"No, ser. No, ser."

Anna recognized the signs. No retainer of Arkad's would reveal anything, fearing the wrath of a local lord far more than that of even armed men who would pa.s.s and might never reappear. It also meant Arkad was indeed feared, and that bothered her.

She turned in the saddle, and her fingers ran over the lutar. Then she sang.

"Tell the truth and tell us true, all we've asked of you..

The gangly man's mouth opened, then closed.

"You haven't met the regent, have you?" said Alvar with a smile. "She doesn't care much for those who'd lie to her."

'The... north... road... there, by the coppersmith's." Anna's eyes blurred, and, again, for a moment, she saw two images of the gangly man. She shook her head, trying to clear her sight. Then she ma.s.saged her forehead for a moment.

The double image faded, and Anna's eyes went back to the narrow building in the far left corner of the square, where a copper pot glittered in the early morning sun. In the instant her eyes shifted, she could sense that people were easing out of the square, or back into buildings, anywhere away from her armsmen.

Alvar gestured toward the street by the coppersmith's, and Anna flicked Farinelli's reins, trying not to frown. The truthspell-was it Darksong? Was that why she'd gotten the double image?

Even before she pa.s.sed the coppersmith's, riding behind a vanguard clearly more alert, the square had emptied. The echo of hoofs was the only sound as they rode northward and away from ffie center of the town.

Was it her imagination, or were most of the shutters of Cheor closed as they rode northward through the town? Anna glanced this way, and that, but the street was empty. Even the dogs and cats seemed to have vanished. "Guilty, they are," said Alvar. "Not a good omen."

"Not at all." agreed Jecks.

"This didn't happen when we rode through Elhi," Anna said.

"1 had nothing to fear or hide," pointed out Jecks, with a smile.

"That's true." Anna smiled back momentarily. Jecks' directness remained appealing, as did his smile.

A dek or so north of the square the houses spread more widely, with patches of ground, and gardens around each. The majority of the outlying houses were of unstuccoed yellow brick, and many had thatch or split-reed roofs.

Anna pushed back her felt hat, already getting battered. and wiped her forehead. The sun had burned away the earlier mist and ground fog, and the day, early as it was, was getting warm. She eased off her jacket and thrust it through the saddle loops, then took a deep swallow from her water bottle.

Still wearing his leather jacket, Jimbob glanced from the water bottle to Anna, clad in a pale green linen shirt and a green sleeveless tunic, and then to his grandsire.

"She is from the mist worlds, Jimbob." Jecks said quietly.

"They must be chill indeed." The redhead turned to Anna. "Are you really warm now?"

"I would be if kept the jacket on," Jimbob shivered, Anna almost smiled. Another thing that was hard to believe. On earth, it had seemed that; except in the summer in Iowa, she had been cold more often than not. In Liedwafir it was usually just the opposite.

Outside a small hut, a dark-haired woman, barefooted, hoed at the dark soil of a garden row, as if to prepare it for planting. With almost every stoke of the hoe, she struggled with a toddler tied to a rope wound around her waist. Several gray geese pecked along the crumbling yellow bricks of the wall of the old house. The woman scarcely looked up at the column of riders.

Anna understood. Mario bad been a handful at that age, and there had been times when she wouldn't have cared if a row of tanks had rumbled past the little house outside Williamsburg, if only her son had given her a moment's peace.

She shook her head. Now what wouldn't you give to have that time back? Her eyes burned for a moment Careful... . just get. it together You're the sorceress. You can do this.

As they continued northward and Cheor receded behind them, Anna studied the fields-all rich dark bottomland formed in the area between the two rivers. Had it once been, a swamp? It was flat enough.

What Papaw wouldn't have given for land like this, rather than the rocky patch around the holler.

There were low hedgerows around many of the fields, but no stands of trees, except in the distance to the east. A single horse pulled a plow guided by a stocky figure in the fields off to, the right. The farmer was nearly a mile away-more than a dek and a half, Anna corrected mentally, trying again to keep her references in Liedwahran terms.

To the left were several other figures, carrying baskets and pointed sticks. Planting? Anna wondered.

Ahead, a low yellow-brick wall stretched across the fields, forming the southern side of a rough square that looked to be almost two deks on a side. In the center of the square was a low hill whose base was encircled by a second and higher yellow-brick wall. On the crest of the hill was a sprawling, high-walled complex-also of yellow bricks.

"That's Synfal," Jecks announced. "It's been home to the lords of Cheor since before there was a Defalk."

A skeptical look crossed Jimbob's face, and Anna wanted to say something, but she bit her lip. Now wasn't the time, not in public, especially.

"Big place," offered Alvar, from where he rode slightly ahead of Anna, Jecks, and Jimbob.

"Aye. Only a rich holding could support that." As they continued toward the nearer wall, Anna looked more closely. The first wall, almost waist-high, was rough-formed, and covered in places with vines, showing a few new leaves. By full summer, it would vanish into the green of the surrounding fields, Anna suspected. There was no gate where the road met the wall, nor any sign of one. The wall just ended in a tumbled pile of bricks on each side of the road.

"Wall from the old days," explained Jecks. "From when this was part of Suhlnorra."

Anna raised her eyebrows-another part of Liedwahr's history no one had bothered to mention. "How long ago was that?"

Even Jimbob turned in the saddle as Jecks answered. "So long ago even the poets don't count the years.

Synfal" -Jecks gestured toward the keep on the hill a good two deks ahead- "was the northern march and the place where the Corian lords and the Morran lords usually met in battle." He ginned. "The Corians usually won."

"I take it your ancestors were Corian." Anna said dryly.

"How did you guess7"

"And that they were proud folks, too."

Jecks flushed.

Anna grinned.

Jecks shook his head.

Beside his grandsire, Jimbob merely looked puzzled, and Anna and Jecks let him remain that way.

As the column neared the second wall, a barrier Anna could see was at least four yards high, she reclaimed the lutar from the left saddlebag. As she tuned the instrument. her eyes went to the walled edifice ahead, a structure nearly twice the size of the keep at Falcor, if with brick walls, rather than more solid stone.

Could they just demand admittance? Jecks had said that was the right of the Lord of Defalk-and thus Anna's, especially with Jimbob beside her. But would Arkad accept that right? Or would she have to use one of her destructive spells to enforce that right?

She really didn't like the idea of tearing up the keeps and holds of lords disloyal to the Regency-or killing their armsmen-not until all the other lords perceived that such action was a necessity. The missing liedgeld was less than two seasons in arrears-not enough to create such a perception on earth.

Here, everyone a.s.sured her, it was an obligation of honor, and two seasons' default was more than dishonorable enough for Anna to act.

Even for a woman regent. She wanted to snort. Instead, she adjusted a tuning peg and turned in the saddle, leaning toward Jecks, and saying in a low voice, "You know I've hesitated to put Jimbob into trouble, and here I'm putting him forward."

The white-haired and clean-shaven Lord of Elhi shook his head, leaned back toward her. "Best he learn under your protection."

Anna still wasn't sure how much Jimbob was really learning, and how much the redheaded heir was pretending to learn. Mario had been like that, too, playing the game until he was out from under her control-or Avery's.

Her eyes went to the road ahead, and the second wall. The taller wall ended at each side of the road in a set of pillars. On each pillar were rusted iron brackets, four of them, that had once held gates. Of the gates there was no sign.

"No guards here." Alvar cleared his throat and looked toward Anna "Should we... the banner?"

''Yes." She should have thought of it herself, but she still wasn't fully accustomed to Defalk. Less than a year wasn't time enough to learn all that was necessary, whether she was a sorceress or not.

"The banner! Forward!" ordered the swarthy and wiry captain. "Forward."

Anna watched as the purple banner with the golden crossed spears and the crown, with the R beneath, bil- lowed for a moment in the light breeze, then drooped, even as the young armsman she didn't know rode to the head of the column bearing the standard.

"We should stop before we get within bow range, Lady Anna," Alvar offered.