"Her name is Purity, not Sleth Woman," River corrected. "And we have no idea what the creature is, much less who it belongs to."

Talen heaved a sigh. At least there was that. Then something struck him. "If I couldn't keep a secret yesterday, what has changed so I can keep it today?"

"Nothing," said River. "A Seeker would ransack your mind as easily as you would a cupboard. But, as I said, we are leaving. In time you will learn the skill."

"Leaving? But what about Da?"

River looked down. "We are bound by an oath," she said. "Da-" Her voice faltered. She closed her eyes and regained control of her emotions. When she opened them they were wet with tears. "Ke has been set to watch him. Once he's a.s.sessed the situation, he will meet us at the refuge where I'm taking you. We'll see what we can do at that time. But you need to prepare yourself because Da might not be coming back."

Prunes was roused by a sharp dig into his ribs.

"It seems we have ourselves a situation," said Gid.

Gid had already wakened him twice. Once to inform him that he'd told a pack of Fir-Noy they already had the place under observation. Another time to watch the spectacle of two boys in a wagon pull into the yard. If this was another false alarm, Prunes was going to throw the man off the side of the mountain. And he didn't care about blowing their cover.

Prunes sat up. He was wrapped in his soldier's sleeping sash. "This had better be good."

"Oh, it's the tart's delight. They've been busy as bees down there all night. In and out, lamps burning. And someone interesting just went into the barn, but he'll be back out."

"Who?"

"That girl who told the Bailiff she was from Koramtown. And there's also a boy with her that can't find his way unless she leads him about by the arm."

"A blind boy?"

"Aye."

Prunes blinked the sleep out of his eyes. The moon was not large, but it was big enough to see shapes. The door to the house stood wide open, light spilling out into the yard. Someone exited the old sod house and walked toward the wagon in the yard, holding a lamp in front. That had to be the older sister. She made her way around the buildings and entered the house. That's when two figures stepped from behind the barn, walking boldly as you please.

One was a girl. And the other, the smaller one, was a boy she led by the hand. Even from here Talen could see the boy was blind.

Prunes was wide awake now.

"Busy as bees," said Gid. "And preparing, in haste it seems, to depart."

Their duty was to watch, but if they left now, it was likely they'd lead a hunt back to a deserted farmstead.

"I say we don't take any chances," said Gid and held up his knife. "We take them one-by-one."

"This isn't an extermination. The lords will want someone to question."

"We'll do our best," said Gid. "But if things begin to sour, I'm not going to hesitate. Besides, all we need to do is kill one of them as an example and the rest will comply."

"And who will that be?"

"Who else? The blind one."

Gid was perhaps too eager, but he made sense. These youth might look like babes; however, a callow youth, given the right opportunity, could kill a man just as easily as a veteran of many battles. In fact, they might need to kill more than the little one. But that didn't matter. They only needed to keep one alive for the Questioners.

Prunes nodded agreement.

"You and I, friend," said Gid, "are going to be rich."

"Not if we don't get you downwind," said Prunes. He motioned for Gid to lead, and the two began to pick their way quietly downhill.

31.

A Broken Wing HUNGER STOOD AT the edge of the wood. The scent of the burning boy lay in the hollows and ravines here as thick as a fog. He looked over a bend in a river. Beyond it lay a farmstead. That's where the boy would be, waiting liking a fat chicken in his coop.

He began to descend the bank to the water when a woman came out of the house carrying a lamp. He glimpsed her face for a moment in the light as she walked across the yard to the well. The gait of her walk, the angle of her shoulders-it pulled a memory into his mind.

He knew her. He was sure of it . . .

Moments pa.s.sed.

She drew water then returned to the house. Hunger stood in the shadows still as a heron stalking frogs.

Then the name slide into his mind as softly as dew: River.

Yes, that was her name. And with that name a number of strong memories rose in his mind. He followed them, and every one of them ended with this: she'd held his hand once, and he had been unable to speak. Not because he found her so lovely. No, it was not his desire for her that had stolen his words; it was grat.i.tude. He remembered one spring evening in a bower, blindfolded, waiting for River who had worked so hard to make the match, waiting in the moonlight with the lilacs in bloom, their fine scent perfuming the night. Waiting to hear the feet on the path, the rustling of skirts, and then River taking his hand and putting Rosemary's warm, strong hand in it. River removed the blindfold so he could see Rosemary standing there before him, holding the flowered crown that meant she'd accepted his offer of marriage, looking at him with those laughing, moon-sparkled eyes.

Rosemary, the carpenter's daughter, the face of the woman he'd remembered after eating the man who had been humming as he washed himself. The man who was called Larther. And now Hunger had a name to hang that sorrow upon. He stood motionless, contemplating the horror he'd become.

The water ran below him; three deer came to drink and left.

And then he realized that River was the one he needed. Her brother, the burning son, was nothing. He wasn't even part of the Order yet. But River, she was skilled at all sorts of weavings. She would know the workings of the collar. She would fix it. And he would bind the Mother. Bind her and destroy her.

River had been a beauty to him, then a friend, and finally a sister. She would not run away; she would see though his rough form. He was sure of it. River would help him.

He took a step toward the water, and something moved downwind of the house.

He peered closer. Two men crept along in the gra.s.s, their helmets and knives shining in the moonlight.

Whatever their intent, they would flush River like untrained dogs flush quail from the brush. Except once River ran, you did not catch her.

Those two would have to go. Silently, but they would have to go. Hunger waited to see if there were more of them, and when he saw they came alone, he descended the riverbank and quietly entered the dark waters.

Prunes stood in the shadow of a tree. Across the yard, Gid peered between the cracks of a shutter on that side of the house just to make sure there were only five of them. Prunes scratched his neck, and when he looked back at Gid something monstrous and dark had risen, it seemed, from the very earth.

It was bigger than a man. Hairy in patches. No, not hair. Gra.s.s. Then Prunes recognized it from the stories of the creature at Whitecliff.

"Gid!" he shouted.

Gid turned, but it was too late.

The dark shape engulfed him, leaving only the silhouette of Gid's lower half was visible in the moonlight. He struggled, cried out, and then the thing shook him out like a wife shakes a rug and cast Gid's broken body aside in a heap.

Prunes was rooted to the spot in horror. That thing had killed Gid like he was a fly.

The creature raised its head and chuffed like a horse. Then it turned and looked straight at Prunes across the yard.

He'd fought in a number of battles, nearly lost his life a dozen times. But nothing had ever put fear into him like the gaze of that rough monster.

By all that was holy . . .

His bladder released. He dropped his knife, backed up in horror, then ran.

Sugar stood in the barn filling a barrel with barley and oats for the horse. They had a long ride ahead and the animal would need rich food. Legs stood by her side.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

Sugar hadn't heard a thing. She was too busy thinking about what had just happened with Talen, what River had said, and what was happening now back at the house.

River sat at the table back in the house with Talen, making him open and close the doors in his being, whatever that meant, over and over again. For the last hour all River had done was sit there, holding Talen's hand at the table, telling him to open and close, again and again, telling him that she had to be sure he could hold himself to himself.

In her mind, Sugar knew it was a great evil they practiced at the table. But in her heart she could not help but want to learn it as well, for when River had told her what her mother was, it had come, not as a shock, but a loss. A lost opportunity with Mother, whom she knew was not wicked.

"The story is never what you first hear," Mother had always said. And she'd always held to that belief in her dealings. When Sugar was a little girl and had been accused of stealing a village boy's carved, cherry-wood horse, her mother had believed her denials. Later that same day, when Sugar finally confessed and showed her mother the horse, her mother had not sent her away. She'd taken her in her arms and stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and said, "It's a brave thing to admit to a lie. Foolish to lie in the first place. But brave to put the lie out in the sun for everyone to see." She'd hugged her tight. "Your bravery is as fine as peas and fatty beef," Mother had said. "Fat peas and fatty beef." And from that time forward, "fat peas and fatty beef" had been their saying.

How many times had Mother seen through her mistakes to what was praiseworthy? Even when Da was teaching her to fight, she believed Sugar would find a find young man in Koramtown and raise splendid children. The two of them had talked about what they'd do together with Sugar's future children, all the wonderful places she and Mother had visited with Legs in tow. The crabbing bay, their waterfall in the woods, the patch of wild blueberries by the b.u.t.tes. And Mother would come stay with her in Koramtown and join in the knitting hours and teach Sugar's daughter how to knit just as she'd taught Sugar.

So much lost, and for the first time since they left, Sugar could feel the emotion rising in her.

"There's that sound again," said Legs.

Sugar emerged out of her reverie. "What did you say?"

"I think a man's outside," said Legs.

The hairs on the back of Sugar's neck stood up, and she doused the lamp. She stood in the dark for a moment listening, then hunched at a knot hole in the side of the barn that gave a view of the yard. She put her eye to the hole and saw nothing at first. Then something large moved by the house.

She didn't have her night vision yet, and thought, unaccountably, that it was the mule. But then the body of a man fell to the ground, and a dark shadow walked out from the side of the house and into the moonlight.

She got a good look at the shadow. A ma.s.sive thing. Then it looked right at her, as if it could see her eye at the knot hole. Fear ran up her spine, and she drew back, grabbing Leg's hand, and pulled him down. Surely it had seen her light earlier and heard her talking. It would know they were in the barn. Yet, she didn't dare run, for then it would surely mark them.

Outside the barn, someone ran across the hard dirt of the yard. A moment later that thing followed, coming straight towards the barn.

They needed to hide, to burrow in the hay, but the creature was coming too fast. The door stood wide open to the moonlit yard, and Sugar could do nothing but watch as a misshapen thing, huge and s.h.a.ggy, walked into view.

A scream rose inside her. She cried out. She could not help herself, and the beast glanced her way.

But it did not stop. It walked past the door, then began to run. In moments its footfalls receded from the barn.

Sugar could not move. Her heart beat in her throat. She could barely breathe.

"Those heavier footsteps, what were they?" asked Legs.

Sugar did not reply.

Legs said, "It was the thing that carried Mother away, wasn't it?"

Sugar looked at him. How could he have known that? "I don't know." And yet, what else could it be?

"I held the charm today, down in the cellar," said Legs. "Do you think the creature has come to help us?"

"No," said Sugar. Not that thing. The wisterwives created beauty. That was from some other source. Whatever it was, River could offer more protection than this barn ever would. "We need to get to the house."

"I saw Mother. I held the charm in my hand and saw her."

"What?"

"I saw Mother."

"With the charm?"

"Yes," Legs said.

"But I thought you said you didn't trust the charm."

"River said it was a gift."

He was right; she had indeed said that. "Mother's alive?"

"She was calling. Telling me to watch and be ready."

"This is all too confusing," she said. "River claims the creature is not part of this Order she and Mother belong to. It's a wicked thing."

Legs said, "You're convinced it's not Mother's?"

"I don't know what to think. And we don't have time now to ferret it all out. We'll discuss it later with River." She took him by the hand, stood, and quietly walked to the barn door and peered out into the night. Then, with all the courage she could muster, she tightened her grip on Leg's hand and dashed across the yard. When they burst into the dimly lit house, both Talen and River looked up at them.

"It's here," said Sugar. "The creature from Whitecliff."

Both looked at her in silence.