'If Hu'ao lives,' breathed Jasmine.

'Wait,' Thewson grumbled. 'I have sworn this to Jasmine. To find the child. It is the bride price.'

'Bride price?' Mum-lil was much offended. 'She carries your child and you talk of bride price?'

'We are needed to go north,' said Sowsie. 'You most of all, Thewson. This one is needed for nothing. Let us use him.'

Thewson merely stared at Jasmine, she returning the stare. At last, she said, 'I will think of another price, Thewson. If they can bind that one in a way that will make him find my child but not harm her, then let him go.'

Sowsie smiled, and Lain-achor seemed equally amused. They did not say why, but when they took the dog king away into the grasses for privacy, they laughed.

Daingol shook his head. 'I cannot tell you of that oath,' he said to Mum-lil. 'But it is one of which Peroval would approve.'

It was a long time before Sowsie and Lain-achor returned, striding into the firelight with laughter in their eyes still. Behind them the dog king came, in some way indefinably changed.

'This is no longer dog king,' said Sowsie. 'This is Fox, quick and sly, bright of eye, sharp of teeth, barker in the wilderness, evader of the dogs of men. The oath demands this of him.'

Him they had called the dog king was changed before them, pricking his ears, straitening his back, his eyes glittering. He laughed at them, a fox laugh.

'We have taken memory,' said Sowsie, 'and time. We have given a new life with this oath. Go then, west to the Chornagam Mountains, to the trail of this child, months old though it be, even into Lakland if you must. Bring those you find to Labat Ochor, to Tiles, and await us there.'

He barked once and was gone into the darkness, swift as an arrow's flight. Far off they heard another quick bark, and then silence.

'Would I had this magic,' said Doh-ti, 'to bind that one who called himself Lithos.'

Sowsie shuddered. 'Hush. That one could not be bound so, uno-li. That one did to his companion what Terascouros and the company did to those of Murgin. Terascouros would not have let me put the oath of Obon upon her unless she was weary unto death. That one, Lithos, would not allow bonds upon him ... it. I wish we could reach the Choir of Gerenhodh to tell them of Lithos, but it is too far, too hidden. They must learn of it for themselves.'

Jasmine's feelings were injured that night. Thewson seemed to disregard the fact of her pregnancy, said nothing of it, treated her with no new courtesy or respect. Indeed, he seemed rather more distant than usual, remote, spending most of the evening with Daingol and Lain-achor. Finally, late, she approached him as he wandered alone far from the firelight and challenged him about it. He spoke then as though to the stars, shaming her.

'When I walk in the day, I remember a time. When I wake from sleep, I remember that time. It is as though all the life which is Thewson turns upon that time and is changed.

'We stand in a dark place with shining beasts around us, a black city seeking us, nanuluzh, a new strangeness. Umarow comes from the high sky and cries. I see the strange one, wrapped in robes from the black city, Jaer, like something killed for meat, half butchered, half skinned. I smell blood like a knife on my tongue, hegr the Umarow cry metal in the sky, see black night and grey dawn far off, feel the old woman's claws in my arm.

'And I am not there. I am far off, in the night of the Lion Courts where the One Who Will Not Answer lives, where stones shine in my face and a voice speaks. It tells me I am chosen to do a thing which the god desires. It tells me I will take a wounded one to safety. Do it, says the god.

'And I am there in the place of shining stones, also here where the black city dies. In my head comes the whirr of the wings of the jewelled bird god, and the voice saying, "Think, go. For this are you saved and saved again."

'At this, I am angry. I am Thewson, son of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried (though he is buried now). I am warrior, spear carrier. God should save Thewson because I am he. Then I smell blood and am ashamed. When we walk in the forest of the sloping land while that Medlo and you, Jasmine, make stories and the sun is warm, that Jaer walks with me and thanks me for noon meat. We talk of hunting, of the spear.

'I am ashamed. I, Thewson. In my head, the bird god curses me. "Fool! Eater of Shadows! Would we choose an unworthy one to do this thing? Have pride, warrior, for only strength will do our bidding now." So, I swear I will walk forever with this burden, this Jaer, until I die from walking.

'Now, Jaer sleeps, wakens, goes away to the east. The smell of blood is gone. Jasmine curls against me in the night and there is joy. Sky gatherer falls in the Lion Courts. Old ones die. All the towns are shut tight, shut against us. I do not know what will come. It may be, wa'osu, that the gods save me for something more. I seek a crown, still, the Crown of Wisdom, for I need it. Where? Where?

'The child is this a child I may have as Thewson's child? Will the gods let this be? Will the enemy strike at the gods through this child? I am Thewson, brave, a worthy one for the gods' bidding.

'But Jasmine, little flower, I am afraid.'

They wept together in the night, and were comforted together in the night, and for a time forgot the needs of the gods in their own.

Thewson drove the group north at speed, insisting that they make a 'battle march' in each day instead of the 'wagon march' or 'man march' which he alleged had been their pace. He explained that a wagon march was such a distance as women and children might make in a day while accompanying laden wagons; a man march was what a hunter would travel, not hurrying, but striding strongly; a horse march was faster yet; and a battle march fastest of all. It meant exhaustion for Jasmine and the little people, grim-faced weariness for the others. They did not argue. What Doh-ti had told them about Lithos together with the stinking wagon trains and the endless flow of black-robed forces to the south made them eager to make haste, to find help in the north or fail; in either case to do what they might do as quickly as possible.

'We will come to Seathe in ten days, fifteen if there is much delay at the Abyss,' said Lain-achor. 'Today is the first of the month of Wings Returning, "Gomimada," as the northerners would say. We will come to Seathe by midmonth, four bundles of days or less, counting northern style.'

'And will Seathe be closed?' asked Jasmine. 'Against us? Against everyone?'

'Wa'osu,' answered Thewson. 'It may be. Vaa-nah, xoxal-nah their separation, their gathering, who can say? We will know when we come there. My voices say only, "Go quickly.'"

Jasmine and Mum-lil shared a sympathetic grimace and settled into the travelling pace once more. Jasmine's nausea had passed, but her back ached more with every day's journey.

Three days after crossing the Nils they forded the northern fork of that same river, still bearing northeast. Behind them the mounds littered the plain, small villages betrayed themselves by lines of smoke; before them stretched the grasslands and the line of fire hills beyond the Abyss. The Abyss itself they could not see, for it cut deeply into the grasslands, plunging downward with no warning into the dark depths of the earth. Rivers and streamlets emptied into the Abyss. None flowed out of it. The city of Seathe lay beyond it, connected to the southern rim by a narrow bridge built in the age of the wizards, a silver arch flung high and frozen, a spider's web of light a hundred man heights above the prairie, a height unknown above the depths of the Abyss. It was from this height that Sud-Akwith had cast his sword. It was by this height that travellers reached Seathe, or by a journey of four or five 'battle marches' around the eastern end of the Abyss through stony badlands. Twice they saw distant wagon trains going south, but they were far to the east along the River Rochagor, no threat to the travellers.

Jasmine caught Thewson watching her more than once. 'It won't kill me,' she growled at him. 'I have been pregnant before, warrior. It will only be four months along by the time we reach Seathe. Scarcely enough to notice. Not enough to interfere with travel.'

'When we get to Seathe,' he said, 'you will go with Sowsie to Gombator to Tanner. Also the little people. The others, too, to guard and protect.'

Jasmine protested that Tanner would be walled, closed and Separated as the rest of the known world, but Thewson was adamant. He spoke enigmatically of his voices and would not be moved.

'So,' thought Jasmine, 'it is not enough he goads me this way and that, but now I must be goaded this way and that by his voices as well.' She tried for the better part of a day to stay angry at him or at his gods, but he was too familiar to her and his gods too strange to maintain the pique. Since each day in the saddle was a kind of torture, she could not oppose him with as much force as she might have wished.

Daingol scouted the bridge on the tenth day, returning to tell them that a crowd of horsemen, wagons, traders, and village people were waiting to cross the Abyss. 'There is much excited talk,' he said. 'Seathe was abandoned by the Gahlians some days since Seathe and, it is said, all the northlands. The traderssay that virtually all departed to the south. Some say Orena, some Lakland, some say to the Concealment itself.'

'Where do you think they go?' asked Jasmine. 'Sowsie, where do you think?'

'To Orena,' she answered. 'It is there that the Remnant dwell the last power of the ancient time or so it is said. Of course they go to Orena.'

'Then Leona, the children, the women from the Hill '

'Are in the jaws of forever,' said Dhariat. 'If they got there timely. Elsewise, they are lost.'

No amount of bluster or persuasion could move them forward through the pack of wagons and men. There were traders in the mob who had not left their native villages in some years, and the camp surged with an unaccustomed air of freedom. It was three days before they could take their turn upon the span; then it was plod, plod, plod up the centre of the way in single file with the Abyss falling away beneath them and the horizon moving farther and farther into a blue haze of distance. The railing which had once guarded the edges of the span were broken in places, shattered and fallen away as though from some great disaster. Twice they passed gaping holes in the pave, resolutely not looking down. They were a full day upon the bridge, beginning at dawn and ending after darkness, lighting the last hours by torches.

Jasmine had peeked into the gaping holes, disregarding the warnings they had had, into vertiginous depths of blackness and rising mists. She drew her eyes away with difficulty, and focused them on her horse's neck. Mum-lil, riding with her, murmured, 'It is like looking into night, Jasmine. Except there are no stars.'

'I will not look again,' she said. 'Do you believe that the sword of Sud-Akwith was brought out of that depth?'

Mum-lil shrugged. 'If something lived there, then it might come out. If it might come out, it might bear a sword.'

'But what manner of thing might live there?'

'I would rather not think of it. No healthy thing, I am sure of that.'

They came down from the bridge as night fell to see the lights of Seathe spread a carpet of sequins before them. There was a noise in the city, a human, humming, hivish noise unlike any they had heard for years, a noise without bells or the clatter of iron wagons or the harsh chanting of black robes. Great rents were torn in the walls of the city. As they passed, more chunks of the wall fell into a cloud of dust and a sound of young voices cheering. Women leaned from high windows, naked-faced, staring at the travellers with eager curiosity, and those who walked the streets did so with the hoods of their orbansin thrown back.

'When did the Gahlians go?' Dhariat demanded of a passerby.

'The last went ten days ago. Wagons have been coming from the north; almost all went south with the wagons.'

'Almost all?' They had seen no black robes in Seathe.

The passerby patted the long knife at his side. 'All left Seathe. One way or another.'

'Rebellion,' Sowsie whispered to Lain-achor. 'The people of the city rose up against the black robes.'

'When all but a few had gone,' he replied in a sombre voice. 'When they return in thousands ... what then?'

They jostled through the crowd searching for an inn. They wanted to rest, bathe, and find food tastier than that which they had eaten for too many days. Eyes followed Thewson as he rode, towering over the others both in his own height and the height of the great horse. While Jasmine was not surprised, she grew uneasy, commenting to Dhariat, 'Who are the pale-faced men in green leather? Three times now I have seen them, always looking at Thewson, whispering.'

Daingol, hearing the question, leaned toward them to say, quietly, 'The dress is that of the northlanders. Those who dwell in the wastes beyond Tranch, which is beyond Tanner at the edge of the unknown.'

'They have a noble look,' said Jasmine.

'They are proud,' he agreed. 'And no one knows how they live, there in the cold north.'

'Come,' said Sowsie. 'It is no farther north than the Fales, and men live well enough there,'

Thewson's quick ears had caught every word of the conversation. 'To go into the north, one must find men of the north. Good. I will find one dressed in these green leathers.' He spied an inn down a side street and led them out of the crush toward its courtyard gate. They pressed within, to find more open space than they could have hoped for into which they could dismount, unload the horses, see to the hand feeding of the foal.

'Ah, Tin-tan,' murmured Jasmine. 'So long a way, and weary. Such trembling legs it has, my little one.'

'Tin-tan?' came a lazy voice from the shadows. 'Tin, tan, zara san. Do you speak the old tongues, Lady?'

They turned to confront one of the green-clad men, a long, pale face with curving locks of yellow hair, firm, level brows over eyes of dark cloudy grey. Daingol stepped, forward. 'We can count the little horse's legs, or the fingers of a hand.'

'Would you know the word for two hands, twice?'

Jasmine cocked her head at him. 'Let me remember. That is a "ris," is it not?'

'A strange word,' the stranger murmured. 'Ris. Almost, it might be the name of something else, or someone, perhaps.'

Thewson stepped forward, his brow furrowed in thought. 'A riddle, Northlander? Ris. Rhees. The name of one we know a prince, he says. Maybe that, wa'osa?'

'Maybe that.' The stranger bowed. 'Are there any among you who need guides to the north?'

Thewson stared at him, meeting the grey eyes without blinking. At last, he said, 'That may be. When morning comes, we may see.'

The stranger bowed and disappeared into the shadows. Jasmine shivered, not with horror or fear but with a sudden twitch of excitement. 'What did he mean with his riddle? Will you go with them?'

He stroked her hair absently. 'I do not know, bright flower. The gods know. When they must, they will tell me. I grow weary, sometimes, waiting for them to say this or that thing.'

'At least they do tell you, eventually.'

He shouldered his pack and hers, strode toward the inn, Doh-ti and Po-Bee lost in his shadow, Mum-lil and Hanna-lil close behind, the others gathering as the stable boy led their mounts away. 'Sometimes,' he agreed as he opened the door into a smoky common room that smelled of bacon. 'Sometimes they do.'

'Ask them,' whispered Jasmine, 'where Leona is. Ask them if she is well, if the children are well....'

He gave no sign that he heard her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

THE SOUTHERN WAY.

Day 7, Month of Thaw Day 15, Month of Wings Returning Leona led the wagons east from the Hill, heedless of noise or confusion, like one who hears alarm bells ringing. Within her the gryphon roused, hearing again the sound of Murgin, Her skin felt the black robes approaching from the north; and though the children and young women in her charge meant little to her as persons, they meant much as a sworn charge. So they fled away to the east and south, harness creaking, hooves clattering, with no regard for stealth. 'Find us the swiftest road to the Del,' she demanded of the scouts. 'One which will not break axles or splinter wheels, for we have no time for repairs. We must be across the Del today.' The others, catching haste from her as a fever, drove onward without stopping for rest, snatching bites of food as they went.

East of Murgin, the River Del swung far to the north to join the Gomilbata before turning east once more. Thus, though they had come weary miles from the river in reaching the Hill by Gerenhodh, they had to go a much smaller distance to reach the Del near its confluence. There, where it separated the vast grasslands of the cattle herders from the northern lands, the Del spread into a wide, shallow basin which the horses and wagons could cross on winter's ice. Leona drove them toward that fording relentlessly. They reached the river after dark in a night unlighted by moon or stars, with rain clouds hanging heavily over the Savus Mountains and the air breathing of storm.

'We will cross tonight,' she said to the scouts, shutting off their objections impatiently. 'By torchlight. By candlelight. By feeling our way if necessary. Tonight it will rain, and the floodwaters of the mountains will come down the Gomilbata in black torrents. You have seen it year after year. We will cross tonight.'

Cross they did, with the horses slipping on the ice, the drovers swearing, the children crying, the young women snapping at each other as they tried to keep stored food and bedding inside the wagons while they kept themselves and their charges warm and dry. Torches guided them away from patches of thin ice where dark water gurgled and bubbled. When all had crossed, Leona pressed on, not letting them stop until the last wagon had been dragged over a sheltering rise and circled into an encampment far beyond the river. Then she walked among the sullen, exhausted travellers. 'Sleep. When we wake, you will be glad we came this far tonight. Rest. In the morning you will see a sight.'

They woke to see Gerenhodh hidden behind cloud and a vast muddy lake stretching where they had come, a lake tossing wildly with angry water and into which black floods came bearing an endless foamy litter of storm. The scouts who had argued with Leona the night before had the grace to look ashamed of themselves, and there were more than a few mumbled apologies to which Leona paid no attention. Instead, her eyes searched the clouds obscuring Gerenhodh as though she would see across the miles to know what happened there. At last, sighing, she turned away and gave the order to move the train once more.

'In ordinary times,' she told the scouts, 'we would go south to Das, then to Dierno, then east to the Unnamed River, following that to its source in the World Wall Mountains. We would find food among the cities of the plain. The cities are now closed and dangerous, therefore we will scout a trail south-east through the unsettled lands until we come to the River of Hanar. Remember, this is called "the land of the cattle herders." The herds move across this grassland accompanied by men and by fighting dogs to guard the herds. It is said, "The dogs of the herders are the walls of the herds." They are huge, vicious, dangerous, those dogs. So stay away from them. Find us a level way, near water, so that we are not seen. Task enough, I should say.'

For a small part of that day the children were sufficiently tired or cowed by strangeness to be quiet. By evening the quiet had gone. By morning, Leona knew it would not return. She grew alert to the sounds of the children, to their movements and habits as she would have studied the sounds and habits of wolves or deer. Shortly she began to know them, to name them. Lithe Nilla, always followed by a train of little ones, dark and silent, able to disappear among the grasses like water. Fat Bombaroba, steady on the march as one of the harness beasts, fair hair plastered to his moist, round head, little mouth pursed as he searched the horizon. The other children made fun of Bombaroba, but they listened when he spoke. There was noisy, complaining Sharba, Tinine the comforter, two sturdy ones often in demand for rounding up the littlest, Dath and Dorme. There were hundred, like and unlike. She came to know them.

The younger Sisters were scarcely older than the oldest children, many of them cradling babes at the breast. None of them were old. All the middle-aged and older ones had stayed behind. Looking at her charges cynically, Leona thought she might as well have had a thousand children to guard and ware for. Then she caught a glimpse of one of the grey-haired scouts coming wearily back to camp after a full night in the saddle. No, she thought. Not all children. Mimo whined at her knee, and she stroked him. Werem was pretending she was a puppy again, pursuing three screaming children in a race through the tall grass, watched tolerantly by a Sister with a round, capable face. Not all children, she thought again.

She joined the scouts. 'The voices of children can be heard for great distances,' she said. 'I trust we are out of range of wary ears?'

One of the oldest shook his head. 'We could gag 'em, ma'am, and lead 'em in chains, and they'd still find ways to make a racket. Little devils. There's nothin' half day's ride ahead or to either side. We'll stay well out, though, to be sure.'

The night scouts ate and went to sleep in the creaking wagons while the day scouts took their places. The train wound slowly south and east across the endless plains, rising and falling with the swells of the prairie, the un-dulant horizon before them moving from crest to shallow crest. Spring flowers peeped through the brown grass, green at the roots where new blades thrust toward the spring sun. Tall thunderclouds sailed above them to drop burdens of rain in curtains of hazy grey.

The sisters gave up their woollens, rummaging in boxes for lightweight summer tunics and trousers. They had left their places empty in the Choir at Gerenhodh along with their ritual robes and the guidance of the Council. Still, from time to time Leona would come upon a small group of them gathered together, heads bent toward one another as they sang softly into the twilight.

'Have you knowledge of them, there?' she would ask. Always came a look of quiet sadness in return. She need not have asked, for the weight of Zales was within her like the weight of Murgin, rousing the gryphon to irritated disquiet.

On the tenth day the fat boy, Bombaraba, sought her out as she ate a solitary meal at the top of a grassy swell above the camp.

'Please, ma'am,' his anxious voice reached her in her abstraction. 'There is a funny thing, and we think you should know....'

Leona looked down at him, suddenly alerted, seeing him as she had seen no person since Fabla, long ago, and Jaer. He stood there, plump and pink, perspiring faintly across his high bulbous forehead, lank hair clinging to his scalp, lips pursed in concern. 'Please, the children are making pets of them.'

'What children, Bomba? Your mates?'

'Ma'am, no. No, the little children.' His eyes held the terrifying wisdom of which only ten years is capable. 'The little ones.'

'And what are they making pets of?'

'Things. Things I don't know the names of. Like well, like deer that fly. Like little horses, only with horns. Like different things ...'