Janny Wurts

THAT WAY LIES

CAMELOT

HarperCollinsPublishers
HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London
W6 8JB

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers ~994

I 3 5 79 864 x

This collection copyright c Janny Wurts ~994
Page 8 constitutes a continuation of the copyright

The Author asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library

ISBN o oo 224602. 3
ISBN o oo 2-z45ci i 9 (trade pbk)

Set in kinotron Sabon by
Hewer Text Composition Services, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Acknowledgments

Given that short fiction is not my natural venue; that about every
story I ever started on my own grew rapidly into a novel or more, l'd
like to acknowledge the following editors, who asked. Because of
them, this collection exists.
    Terri Windling, Richard Pini, Bill Fawcett, Rosalind Greenberg,
Richard GillJam, Susan Schwartz; and Rachel Holmen and Marion Zimmer
Bradley.
Contents

~. WAYFINDER

2. THE ANTAGONIST

3. TALE OF THE SNOWBEAST

4. THE CRASH

5. THE FIREFALL

6. SILVERDOWN'S GOLD

?. DOUBLE BLIND

8. THE SNARE

9. DREAMSINGER'S TALE

~o. TRIPLE-CROSS

~. DREAMBRIDGE

~2. SONG'S END

~3- THE RENDERS

~4. NO QUARTER

~5- THAT WAY LIES CAMELOT

II

36

63

85

88

I08

~4c

219

~38

x55

282
The Antagonist first appeared in The Fleet 2, Counter Attack,
Ace Books, c Janny Wurts I988
Tale of the Snowbeast first appeared in The Blood of Ten
Chiefs ~, Tot Books, c Janny Wurts ~986
Silverdown's Gold first appeared in Horse Fantastic, DAW Books,
c Janny Wurts ~99~
Double Blind first appeared in The Fleet 3, Break Through,
Ace Books, c Janny Wurts 1989
Dreamsinger's Tale first appeared in Wolfsong, The Blood of Ten
Chiefs 2, Tor Books, cJanny Wurts I988
Triple-Cross first appeared in The Fleet 5, Total War, Ace Books,
cJanny Wurts 199o
Dreambridge first appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy
Magazine, issue ~9, c Janny Wurts ~993
Song's End first appeared in Winds of Change, The Blood of Ten
Chiefs 3, Tor Books, c Janny Wurts ~989
The Renders first appeared in Elsewhere, Ace Books, c Janny
Wurts ~981
No Quarter first appeared in The Fleet 6, Crisis, Ace Books,
cJanny Wurts 1991
That Way Lies Camelot first appeared in Grails, Quests, Visitations
and Other Occurrences, Unnameable Press, c Janny Wurts ~992
Dedication

To my readers -
the magicians who make all books possible
Wayfinder

Ciondo had blown out the lanterns for the night when Sabin remembered
her mistake. Lately arrived to help out on the sloop for the summer,
she had forgotten to bring in her jacket. It lay where it had been
left, draped over the upturned keel of the dory; wet by now in the
fog, and growing redolent of the mildew that would speckle its
patched, sumfaded shoulders if someone did not crawl out of warm
blankets and fetch it up from the beach.
    The wind had risen. Gusts slammed and whined across the eaves,
and moaned through the windbreak of pines that lined the cliffs.
Winter had revisited since sundown; the drafts through the chinks
held the scent of northern snow. The floorboards, too, were cold
under Sabin's bare feet. She looked out through the crack in the
shutter, dressing quickly as she did so. The sky had given her a
moon~ but a thin, ragged cloud cover sent shadows chasing in ink and
silver across the sea. The path to the harborside was steep, even
dangerous, all rocks and twined roots that could trip the unwary even
in brightest sunlight.
    Stupid, she had been, and ever a fool for letting her mind stray
in daydreams. She longed to curse in irritation as her uncle did when
his hands slipped on a net, but she dreaded to raise a disturbance.
The household was sleeping. Even her aunt who wept in her pillow each
night for the son just lost to the sea; Sabin's cousin, who was four
years older than her undersized fourteen, and whose boots she could
never grow to fill.
    ~A girl can work hard and master a boy's chores,' Uncle Ciondo
had summed up gruffly. 'But you will never be strong enough to take
the place of a man.'
    Yet the nets were heavy and the sloop was old, its scarred,
patched planking in constant need of repairs. A girl's hands were

II
better than going without, or so her mother insisted. Grudgingly,
Uncle Ciondo agreed that Aunt Kala would do better if an empty chair
no longer faced her through mealtimes. Sabin was given blankets and a
lumpy cot in the loft, and cast off sailor's clothing that smelled of
cod and oakum, poor gifts, but precious for the fact they could ill
be spared.
Her lapse over the jacket could not go unremedied.
    She fumbled and found her damp boots in the dark. Too lazy to
bother with trousers, she pulled on the man-sized fisher's smock that
hung halfway to her knees. The loose cuffs had to be rolled to free
her hands. She knotted the waist with rope to hold it from billowing
in the wind, although in the depths of the night, no one was abroad
to care if she ran outside half-clothed.
    The board floor squeaked to her step, and the outer latch clanged
down as she shut the weathered plank door. 'Sabin,' she admonished as
she hooked a heel on the door stoop and caught herself short of a
stumble, 'Don't you go tripping and banging, or someone will mistake
you for trouble and shoot you in the back for a trt)ll.'
    Except that no one in her village kept so much as a bow. The
fisherfolk had only rigging knives and cutlery for the kitchen, and
those were risky things to be throwing at trolls in the dark. Given
any metal at all, and a troll will someday do murder with it; or so
her mother used to threaten to scare out her habit of mislaying
things. Sabin sighed at her failure since her jacket was not hanging
as it should to dry on the hook by the hearth.
    Cloud cover smothered the moon. Past the garden gate, the trail
to the sea plunged deep into shadow. She stubbed her toes on corners
of slate, and cursed like a fishwife since her uncle was not there to
scold. The path switched back once, twice, in tortuous descent.
Westward it was faced by sheer rock cliffs, moss-grown, and stuffed
with old bird nests in the niches. The moon re-emerged. The pines
that clawed foothold on the lower slope moaned in the lash of the
winds, their trunks in stark silhouette against silver4ace shcets of
spent breakers as they slid in fan curves back to sea. Sabin tossed
tangled hair from her eyes. The night was wild around her. She could
feel the great waves thud and boom over the barrier reefs even
through the leather of her bootsoles.
    A night to bring boat wrecks, she knew, the sea in her blood
enough now that her ear had attuned to its moods. She hurried

I2
as the slate path leveled out and gave way at last to sand, ground of
the same black stone, and unpleasant with chill in the dark. The last
fringe of trees passed behind and she started across the crescent
beach. The moon went and came again. Out on the reefs, the high-
flying spindrift carved up by the rocks tossed like the manes of
white horses; great herds there seemed to be, galloping with arched
necks, the surf-roll becoming the thunder of churning hooves. Sabin
forgot the folly of the daydreams that had forced her out of bed. As
if someone's voice had addressed her, she stopped very still and
stared. For a second the horses seemed real. There, the red flare of
nostrils in the moon-whitened planes of wedged faces,
and now, a ringing neigh on the wind that tore past her ears.
Impossible, she insisted, and yet-
    A cloud scudded over the moon. Her wonder vanished and she chided
herself. There was nothing. Only the tide-swept sand of the beach and
herself, a scarecrow figure of a girl with mussed hair and no sense,
gawping at a span of wild waters. The village idiot knew horses did
not run in the sea. Sabin shivered and felt cold. The dory lay
beached above the tideline a brisk walk distant up the beach. She
turned that way, determined to fetch back her jacket without another
lapse into silliness.
    But before she had gone half the distance, something else caught
her eye in the surf. Not a horse, but a dark clot of rags that at
first she mistook for flotsam. Then the crest of a wave rolled it
over, and she saw a man. He was floundering to keep his face above
water, and was only a hairsbreadth from drowning.
    Fear and memory drove her. She spun and plunged into the sea.
Cousin Juard had been lost to the waves, ripped from the decks of her
uncle's boat during the fury of a storm. As the racking, retching
cougl~s of the man who struggled reached her, she wondered if Juard
had died as miserably, his body bent into spasms as the cold salt
water stung his lungs.
    Then the swirl of a comber cascaded over her boot-tops and foamed
up around her chest, and her gasping shudder killed thought. The
castaway borne along by the tide tumbled under and the weight of him
slammed her in the knees.
    She dropped, clutching at a shoulder whose shirt was all tatters,
and skin underneath that was ice. As the rough sands scoured under
her shins, she hooked his elbow, and braced against the drag of the
ebb.

13
Her head broke water. Through a plastering of hair, Sabin huffed what
she hoped was encouragement. 'This way. The beach.'
    His struggles were clumsy. She labored to raise him, distracted
by a chink of metal: iron, she saw in the flash of bared moonlight.
He was lettered in rusted chains, the skin of both wrists torn raw
from their chafing.
    'Mother of mercy,' she blasphemed. He had found his knees, an old
man, white-haired and wasted of body. His head dangled with fatigue.
She said, 'Nobody could swim pulled down by all this chain!'
    'Didn't,' he husked; he had no breath to speak. He thrashed in an
attempt to rise, and fell again as the water hit and dashed in
fountains around his chin.
    She gripped him under his flaccid arms and dragged mightily.
Despite her best effort, his head dipped under the flood. He
swallowed a mouthful, gagging on salt, while she grunted in tearful
frustration. The wave sucked back. He dragged his face free of its
deadly, clinging currents with the dregs of his failing strength. His
feet seemed fastened to the shoaling sands as if they were moored in
place.
    Belatedly suspicious, Sabin kept tugging. 'Your ankles. Are they
in irons also?'
    He made a sound between a laugh, a sob, and a cough. 'Always.'
    His floundering efforts managed to coordinate for a moment with
hers. Together they stumbled a few yards shoreward, harried on by
flooding water. Again the wave ebbed and he sank and bumped against
the sand. Panting, Sabin locked her fingers in his shirt. She held
him braced against the hungry drag of the sea, desperate, while her
heart raced drumrolls with the surf. Something was not quite right,
she thought, her stressed mind sluggish to reason. The incoming tide
carried no flotsam, not a stick or a plank that a shipwrecked man
might have used to tioat his way ashore. 'You never swam,' she
accused again, as he regained the surface and spluttered.
    Weak as he was, her sharpness stung him. He raised his chin, and
eyes that were piercingly clear met hers, lit by the uncertain
moonlight. 'I didn't.' His voice held a roughness like harpstrings
slackened out of tune. 'I begged help from the seaborne spirits that
can be called to take the shape of horses. They answered and drew

I4
uffed

acted
light.
~ raw

:nees,
ngled
all

~ed in
ed in

htily.
l. He
.~d in
. face
~iling
!they

they

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ment
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~ and
'rs in
[ the
'surf.
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i not
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as he

~hin,
~rtam
rings
;that
:lrew

me to land, but they could not see me safe. To lead one even once
from the water dooms it to mortal life ashore.'
    The interval between waves seemed drawn out, an unnatural
interruption of rhythm like a breath too long held suspended. Even
disallowing for chains his weight was too much for a girl, but it was
a spasm of recognition like fear that locked Sabin's limbs and tongue
- until those cut-crystal eyes looked down. As if released from
bewitchment, she blurted, 'Who are you?'
    She thought the wind took her words. Or that they were lost in
the grinding thunder of the sea as she scrabbled the last yards to
dry sand. But when, safe at last, he collapsed in bruised exhaustion,
he answered. q am a Wayfinder, and the son of a Wayfinder.' His
cracked tone broke to a whisper. 'And I was a slave for more time
than I care to remember.'
    He spoke nonsense, she determined, and said so. He was a madman
and no doubt a convict who had fled in the shallows to hide his
tracks from dogs. A denial she did not understand closed her eyes and
her heart against the logic that argued for him: that the road ran
high above the cliffs, and those few paths that turned shoreward were
much too steep for a captive to negotiate in chains. Had he come that
way, he should have fallen, and broken his legs or his neck. Through
teeth that chattered, Sabin wai, ted. Yet the refugee stayed silent.
She poked him in the ribs with her toe and found he had succumbed at
last to the beating the sea had given him; either he slept or had
dropped unconscious. The wind bit at wet flesh, made cruel by driven
spray. The tide rose still, and the sand where he lay would very soon
be submerged. Forced by necessity, Sabin arose. The jacke~ she had
left on the dory would have to serve the old man as a blanket until
Uncle Ciondo could be fetched from his bed.

Sabin awakened to sunlight. Afraid of her uncle's gruff scolding, she
shot straight, too fast. The blood left her head. Dizziness held her
still and blinking, and she realized: Uncle Ciondo was shouting. His
voice drifted up through the trapdoor to the ladder, though he
probably stood in the kitchen by the stove, shaking a fist as he
ranted.
    ~A condemned man, what else could he be! Or why should anyone
have chained him? Those fetters were not closed with k)cks. They were
riveted. We cannot shelter such a man, Kala.'

I5
    The castaway, Sabin remembered. She pushed herself out of bed and
tripped in her haste over the wet smock she had discarder without
hanging last night. From the clothes chest she grabbed he only spare,
and followed with the woolen britches every ilsher's wore to sea. She
left her boots. Even if they were not drenched ant salt-stiff, they
would make too much noise and draw notice.
    Masked by the murmur of her aunt's voice, declaiming, Sabi~ set
bare feet on the ladder. At the bottom, the door to Juard". room lay
cracked open, beyond the stairwell which funnelled the bellow of her
uncle's protest. 'Kala~, that's daft and you know it He could be
dangerous, a murderer. I say we send him inland the fish wagon and
leave his fate to the King's bailiff.'
    Sabin's uncle was not hard-hearted, but only a sailor, and th~
sea rewards no man for sentiment. Ciondo would care very littl~ if
the rescued man could hear the rough anger in his voice. Bu as a girl
not born to a ilsher's trade, Sabin flinched. She tiptoet down the
hall and slipped through the opened door, a ghost witt mousy, tangled
hair and a sail-cloth smock flocked at the cuff'. with the rusty
blood of gutted cod.
    The man the sea had cast up was asleep. Chains lay on hin still,
looped at wrists and ankles with spare line that tied hin spread-
eagled to the bedposts. Ciondo had taken no chances, bu had secured
the refugee with the same half hitches he might use t~ hold a
dory.against a squall. Still, the undyed wool of the blanket: hung
half kicked off as if the prisoner had thrashed in nightmares His
rags were gone. Daylight through the opened shutters exposer a
history of abuse, from the salt-galled sores left by shackles to
mapwork of dry, welted scars. He was not old after all, Sabin saw but
starved like a mongrel dog. His skin was sun-cured to tea~ and
creases, and his hair bleached lusterless white. He looked a~
weatherworn as the fishing tackle on the sloop's decks, beaten b~
years of hard use.
    Aunt Kala's voice filtered through the doorway, raised to unusua
sharpness. 'Ciondo, I'll be sending no man on to the bailiff before
he finds his wits and tells his name! Nor will any needy strange:
leave our roof hungry, the more shame to you for witless fears! A: if
anybody so starved could cause harm while bound up in meta chains!
Now be off! Go down to the beach with the rest, and leave me in peace
to stir the soup.'
A grumbling followed, and a scrape of boots on the brick. Fe~a

16
could stand up to Kala when she was angry, and since Juard's death,
none dared. She was apt to weep when distressed, and if anyone saw
her, she would throw cooking pots at them with an aim that could
flatten a pigeon.
    Cautious in the quiet after the door slammed, Sabin crept to the
window. The sun threw slanting bars of yellow through gently tossing
pines. Yet if the vicious, tearing winds had quieted, the sea
mirrored no such calm. Beyond the spit off the point, the breakers
still reared on the reefs, booming down in tall geysers of spray. The
surge rushed on untamed, through the harbor gates where the round
bottomed boats rolled at anchor, an ominous sign. Sabin bit her lip.
She squinted against the scintillant brightness of reflections and
saw wreckage scattered amid the foam: the sundered masts and planking
of ships gutted wholesale by the reefs.
    No one had shaken her awake at dawn because today the twine would
not be cast out for fish. When the wrecks littered the beach, men
plied their nets to glean a storm's harvest from the waves. Custom
barred girls and women from such labor, lest the nets bring up dead
bodies, and the sight of drowned flesh sour the luck of their sons,
born and unborn, and curse them to the horror that had befallen
cousin Juard, to be taken alive by the sea.
    The man on the bed had escaped that fate, just barely. He had
come in on a ship that was now ripped to fragments, Sabin knew for a
surety. He had not swum; not in chains. And horses did not run in the
sea. Unwilling to risk misfortune by looking too closely at the
waves, or what tossed and surfaced in the whitening tumble of foam,
Sabin spun away from the window. She shivered in the sun that fell on
her back, and shivered again as she saw that the man on the bed had
awakened. He studied her, his eyes like fine flawed crystal broken to
a razor's edge.
      'You do not trust me,' he said in his rusty whisper. He flexed
one wrist, and immediately grimaced in pain.'My uncle thinks you're a
murderer.'
    He ground out a bitter, silent laugh. 'Oh, but I am, though my
hand has never taken life.'
    She frowned, a plain-spoken girl who dreamed, but had always
hated riddles. 'What is a Wayfinder?'
    Riddles came back in answer, as he regarded the beams of the
ceiling. 'One who hears the sea. One who can read the earth. One who
can travel and never be lost.'
    'I don't understand.' She stepped back, and sat on the clothes
chest that had once held the shirt she was wearing, when it had been
Juard's, and she had spent days spinning thread for her father's
loom. Now her hands had grown horny and tough, and fine wool would
catch on the callus. But the incessant lapses of attention had not
left her; she forgot to mind sheet lines as readily as she had
faltered at spindle and wheel. She curled her knees up and clasped
her hands to bury that recognition. 'Anyone can be lost.'
    He stirred in the faintest impatience, jerked back by the cut of
his chains. 'Inland to the east, there is a road, a very dusty road
with stone markers that winds through a forest. Beyond lie farmlands,
and three villages, and lastly a trader's town. Beyond brick walls
are wide sands, called by the desert people who live there
Dei'eh'vikia.' His head tipped sideways toward Sabin. His eyes now
were darkened as gray sapphires, and he considered her as though she
should be awed.
    She was not. 'You could have spoken to someone who passed that
way,' she accused. 'Perhaps you lived there yourself.' But she knew
as she spoke that he did not. His vessel had broken on the reef, and
never sought harbor in these isles. Few ships did, for the rocks gave
hostile greeting to mariners from afar.
    He looked at her in sadness or maybe pain, as if he had offered
riches to the village half-wit who had use for no coin at all. He
kept staring until she twisted her fingers together, embarrassed as
if caught at a lie. For all his foreign accent, he had pronounced the
place name as crisply as the nomads who made the desert their home.
Townsmen and traders slurred over the vowels and called it Daaviki,
in contempt for the troublesome native speech.
    He perceived that she knew this. He saw also that stubbornness
kept her silent.
    He looked at her still, his gaze heavy-lidded, almost glazed as a
drunk's. The angle of his neck must have pulled at his shoulders and
wrists, but he shed any sign of discomfort as he said, 'Sabin,
outside this room, there is a passage covered with braided rugs. It
leads to a stairway that winds around itself twice. Downstairs, to
the right of the kitchen lies a door that leads to a springhouse.
Purple flowers grow by the path, and seven steps to the left lead to
the sea cliff where there is a little slate ledge. You like to sit
there on sunny mornings, in what you call your chair seat. But the
people who inhabited these coasts before yours used the site

18
as a shrine.' His grainy voice was almost gentle as he finished.
'They left carvings. You have seen them, when you scratched at the
moss.'
    Sabin jumped up with her mouth opened like a fish. He had been
carried into this house, unconscious. Ciondo had brought him through
the front door. Someone might have mentioned her name in his hearing,
but there was no way he could have seen the springhouse, or have
known of her fondness for that ledge. Her aunt and uncle did not
know, nor her own mother and father.
    'I am a Wayfinder,' he said simply, as if that sealed a truth
that she realized, shivering, could not be other than magic. Her need
to escape that room, and that compelling, mesmeritic gaze came out in
a rush of speech. 'I have to go, now.'
    The Wayfinder let his head fall back on the pillow. At a word
from him, she would have fled; she waited, tautly poised on one
t:oot. But he made no sound. He closed his eyes, and curiosity welled
over her fear and held her rooted. 'Still there?' he murmured after a
while.
'Maybe.' Sabin put her foot down, but quietly.
    He did not open his eyes. 'You have a piece of the gift yourself,
you know, Sabin.'
She quivered again, as much from anger. 'What gift!'
    His hands were not relaxed now, but bunched into whiteknuckled
fists. One of his sores had begun to bleed from the pressure; he was
trying her uncle's knots, and finding them dishearteningly firm. 'You
came to the beach at my call.'
    She stamped her foot, as much to drive off uneasiness. 'You
called nothing! I forgot my jacket. That was all.'
    ~No.' His hands gave up their fretting. 'You have given your
jacket as the reason. But it was my call that caused you to forget it
in the first place. When I asked the spirits for their help, you
heard also. That was the true cause of the forgetfulness that drew
you outside in the night.'
    'l've been scolded for carelessness all my life,' she protested,
'and my jacket was forgotten at twilight!'
'And so at that hour I called.' He was smiling.
    She wanted to curse him, for that. He seemed so smug. Like Juard
had been when he teased her; and that remembrance called up tears.
Sabin whirled violently toward the doorway and collided headlong with
her aunt.

19
    'Sabin! Merciful god, you've spilled the soup.' Kala raised the
wooden tray to keep it beyond reach of calamity, and her pluml~ face
dimpled into a frown. 'What are you doing here anyway? A sick man has
no need for prying girls.'
'Talk to him,' Sabin snapped back. 'He's the one who pries.' 'Awake,
is he?' Kala stiflened primly. She glanced toward the bed and stopped
cold, her chins sagging beneath her opened mouth. and the tray
forgotten in her hands. For a moment she seemed tc breathe smoke as
she inhaled rising steam from the soup bowl.
    Then she exploded. 'My fool of a husband! Rope ties! The cruelty
and the shame of it.' She stepped sideways, banged her tray down on
the clothes chest, and in a fit of total distraction, failed to
bemoan the slopped soup. 'Sabin, run out and fetch our mallet and
chisel.' She added to the stranger on the bed, 'We'll have you free
in just minutes.'
    For an instant, the Wayfinder's cut crystal eyes seemed to mirro~
all of the earth. 'Your goodman thinks l'm a murderer.'
    'My goodman is a fool who thinks in circles like a sand crab.'
Kala noticed that Sabin still lingered in the doorway. 'Girl, must
you always be idling about waiting for speech from the wind? Get
along! Hammer and chisel, and quickly.'

Kala had matters well in hand before the last fetter was struck.
'You're taking up no space that's needed,' she insisted wid:
determined steadiness. 'Juard's bed is yours, he's dead and at rest
in the sea, and if you care to lend a hand at the chores, we could
use the help, truly. Sabin belongs home with her family.'
    She ended with a strike of the mallet. As the last rivet sheared
away, and rusted metal fell open and clanged in a heap on the floor,
the Wayfinder raised his freed wrists. He rubbed at ton, skin, then
looked up at Kala, who stood over him gripping the tools with both
fists braced on broad hips. In profile, Sabin sav~ the stranger give
her aunt that same, heavy-lidded gaze that had earlier caused her the
shivers.
'He's not lost, your Juard,' the broken voice announced softly. Kala
went white. She dropped the tools with a clatter and clapped her
palms behind her back to distract bad luck, and avert the misfortune
of hearing false words. 'Do not spin me lies! Respect our loss. Ill
comes of wishing drowned men back

2O
from death, for they hear. They rise in sorrow and walk the sea bed
without rest for all of eternity.'
     The Wayfinder cocked up his eyebrows in sad self-mockery. 'I
never lie. And no such lost spirits walk the sea, nor ever have.' At
Kala's shocked stiffness, he thumped his marred fist on the mattress
in frustration. 'Your boy is not dead, only washed up on a beach, as
! was.'
    Aunt Kala turned her back, which was as near to an insult as
anyone ever got from her. The Wayfinder glared fiercely, his ice-gray
eyes lit to burning. Then his jaw hardened until the muscles jumped
and his speech scraped out of his throat. 'Your son fetched up on the
Barraken Rock, to the west. At this moment, he is gutting a fish with
a knife he chipped from a mussel shell.'
    'My son is dead!' Kala snapped back. 'Now say no more, or when
Ciondo comes back, you will go trussed in the wagon to the bailiff's.
I'll hear your word.'
    The Wayfinder sighed as though sucked down in a chasm of
weariness. 'Woman, you'll get no word from me, but neither will you
hear any, either, if that is your desire.'
    'It is.' Kala stamped out through the doorway without looking
back. 'Sabin,' she yelled from the threshold at the head of the
stairwell. 'You'll see that yon man eats his soup, and bring down the
tray when he's finished.'
    But Kala's bidding was impossible to carry out, Sabin found. On
the bed, the Wayfinder had closed his eyes and fallen deeply asleep.
    The house stayed quiet for the rest of the morning, with Kala
beating quilts with a ferocity that outlasted the dust. At noon Uncle
Ciondo returned from the beach, swathed in dripping oilskins, his
boots caked to the ankles with damp sand. The bull bellow of his
voice carried up through the second storey window where Sabin kept
vigil over the invalid. 'Kala! Where is that man?'
    The thwack of the broom against fabric faltered. 'Where else
would he be, but in bed? The shame on you, Ciondo, for leaving him
trussed like the felon he certainly isn't.' Smack! went the broom on
the quilts.
    When only the cottage door hammered closed in reply, Sabin
gripped her knees with sweaty hands. She all but cowered as her
uncle's angry tread ascended the stairs; bits of grit and shell
scattered from his boots and fell pattering against the baseboards

2I
as he hurried the length of the hall. The next instant his hulking
shoulders filled the bedroom doorway and his sailor's squint fixed on
the empty shackles that lay where they had fallen on the floor.
    'Fool woman,' he growled in reference to his wife. He raised
hands scraped raw from his labors with net and sea, and swiped salt-
drenched hair from his temples. Then he noticed Sabin. 'Out, imp.'
    Her chin jerked up to indicate the man on the bed. 'I found him.'
    'So you did.' Ciondo's grimness did not ease as he strode closer,
but he did not send her away. Sabin watched as he, too, met the
uncanny gaze of the stranger who had wakened again at the noise. The
sword-edged clarity of that stare arrested her uncle also, for he
stopped, his hands clenched at his sides. 'Do you know that all
morning we have been dragging in bits of burst ships? Not just one,
but a fleet of them.'
The Wayfinder said a touch tartly, 'Karbaschi warships.'
    'So you know them.' Ciondo sighed. 'At least you admit it.' His
annoyance stayed at odds with his gesture as he noticed his boots,
and the sand left tracked in wet clumps. Hopeful as a miscreant
mongrel, he bent and scuffed the mess beneath the bed where Kala
might not notice. He dusted his fingers, ham-pink and swollen from
salt water, on the already gritty patches of his oilskins. 'You were
a criminal? Their prisoner perhaps?'
    The Wayfinder's lip curled in a spasm of distaste. 'Worse than
that.'
    Ciondo straightened. 'You'd better tell me. Everything. Our
people fear such fleets, for where they go, they bring ruin.'
    The man propped up by the pillows seemed brown and wasted as
stormwrack cast up and dried on the beach. In a whisper napped like
spoiled velvet, he said, 'I was their Wayfinder. Kept bound in chains
to the fiagship's mast, to guide them on their raids. When 1 refused
to see the way for their murdering, or led them in circles at sea,
they made sure that I suffered. But by the grace of your kindness, no
more.'
    Uncle Ciondo's square face looked vacant with astonishment.
'You!' He took a breath. 'You? One of the in'am shealdi, the ones who
are never lost? I don't believe it.'
'Then don't.' The Wayfinder closed his eyes. His lashes were

22
dark at the roots, and bleached white at the tips from too much sun.
'Your wife named me liar also.'
    'Storm and tide! She'll fling any manner of insult at a man, if
she thinks it will help make him listen.' Ciondo shifted stance in
disgust. 'And I did not say you spoke falsehood, but only that I
can't believe you.'
    At this, the Wayfinder's eyes flicked open. Though he tensed no
muscle, Sabin felt warning charge his presence that swept the room
like cold wind. 'Is it proof you want? You shall have it. Leave me
blindfolded on any of your fishing sloops, and give me the tiller,
and I will set you an accurate course for the spit called the
Barraken Rock.'
    'A wager?' Ciondo covered his uneasiness with a cough.
Thoughtfully, he added, 'The trial would have to be at night, or the
sun on your face might guide you.'
    'Be it night, or in storm, I care very little,' the Wayfinder
challenged. 'But if I win, I'd have your promise: not a word of my
gift shall go beyond this village. Your King, if he found me, would
send me back as a bribe to plead for an exemption from tribute.
Greedy traders anywhere would sell the secret of my survival. The
Karbaschi make unforgiving masters. If they learned I still lived, a
warrior fleet would sail to collect me, and killing and looting would
follow. If your people have no riches to adorn Karbaschi honor, your
houses would burn, and your daughters know the miseries of slavery.'
    Ciondo went pale, even to the end of his nose that seasons of
winds had buffed red. He stepped back from the edge of the mattress
and sat, without care for his soggy oilskins, on the cushion by the
windowseat. 'If you are in'am shealdi, then you steered those ships
afoul of the currents. Was it you who set your Karbaschi overlords on
our reef to drown and then took your chance in the sea?'
    The Wayfinder denied nothing, but regarded his wrists as if the
weals dug by fetters could plead his testimony for him. A tight-drawn
interval followed, broken at last by the rattle of pots i~ the
kitchen; Kala had relented enough to oversee the noon meal. Her
industry spoiled the quiet, and forced the Wayfinder to raise his
burred voice to be heard.
    'Men travel the land, but they do' not hear it. They sail the
waters, yet they do not know the sea. The Karbaschi warships

23
carve paths of destruction, and the peoples they conquer grieve for
slain husbands and sons. But where the Karbaschi stay to settle, they
bring cruelties more lasting than death to the flesh. The lands they
rule will wither in time, because they are a race who take and give
nothing back. Their habit of pillage has deafened them, until they
plow up forests for fields and raise towns without asking leave. The
rituals mouthed by their priests are empty of truth, and without care
for the still, small needs of the earth.' Here, the invalid lifted
his wasted, leathery shoulders in a shrug. 'In'am sl;ealdi are
actually guardians. We nurture the spirits which the Karbaschi run
over roughshod, because they love only the desires of humanity. It is
such spirits that show me the way. If I call, they answer, though the
Karbaschi ruled my body as a man might course a hunting dog. The
guidance given to me in trust was forced to ill use, and inevitably
brought the earth sorrow. The day came when I could not endure its
pain, or my own, any longer.'
    The Wayfinder sounded wistful as he finished. 'I expected to die
in the sea. Since 1 did not, I should like very much to stay. To live
simply, and make use of my talent very little. I wish for nothing
beyond your leave to guide your village sloops back to anchorage each
night for the rest of my life.'
    Secure in the belief she was forgotten where she sat on the
clothes chest, only Sabin caught the half glance he flicked in her
direction. As if his cracked voice informed her, she knew: because of
her he begged sanctuary - because of the gift he claimed she shared;
and not least, for the sake of Juard who was dead, who bad to be
dead, else magic and spirits were real and borses ran wild in the
sea.
    If in truth such beauty existed, she would never shed the
distraction of dreams but helplessly become consumed by them until
the small inattentions that cursed her grew monstrous and took over
her life.
    Spooked by strangeness that threatened to draw her like some
hapless moth to a flame, Sabin sprang to her feet and fled. Out
through the hall she pounded, and on down the stair beyond. Kala
called out as she passed through the kitchen, to say the noon meal
was waiting. But the girl did not stop until she had left the house,
and raced at reckless speed down the cliff path to the place she
called her chair seat.
There she spent the afternoon, while the Wayfinder slept. She did
not return for supper, though Kala called from the back door to say
that their guest had arisen for the meal. By that Sabin understood
that her uncle had accepted the Wayfinder at his word; an outsider
who spoke false might stay because he was ill and had need, but he
would not be invited to table. One supposed that Kala and the
stranger had settled their hostilities by not speaking.
    At nightfall, when most folk gathered at the tavern, the
beachhead glittered with torches. Word had passed round of a wager,
and every boy with the sea in his blood turned out to ask Ciondo's
leave to man the sloop, never mind that the craft was handy and
needed little crew. The commotion as boasts were made and shouted
down, and lots were finally drawn to keep the choice fair, enabled
Sabin to sneak past and hide under the nets in the dory. Certain she
had not been seen, she peered out cautiously and saw the tight knot
of men stepping back. They left the Wayfinder standing alone with
black cloth muffling his head. He turned unerringly toward the tender
that was Ciondo's. If his steps were unsteady due to weakness, the
line he walked was straight. He crossed and found the thwart without
fumbling, and spoke so no others could hear. 'Your good aunt does not
know where we sail. I never mentioned to your uncle that I know your
cousin Juard to be alive. Before we arrive at the Barraken Rock, I
give you the burden of telling him.'
    'Aunt Kala would curse you for putting your lies in my mouth,'
Sabin accused from under damp nets, the reek of which suddenly made
her dizzy. She was trembling again, and that made her angry, for he
sensed her fear, she was certain. She could feel those pale eyes
burning even through their veiling of cloth as he said, 'But you are
not Kala. You are the child of a weaver, and your fears are not ruled
by the
sea.~
~They are when I sit in a boat!' she snapped back, more like her aunt
than herself.
    He laughed in his broken, rasping way, and because there was no
malice in him, she wanted to hit him or scream. Instead she shrank
into a tight huddle. Light and voices intruded, and the boat lifted,
jostling, to be launched. As the keel smacked the water, and blown
spray trickled through her cocoon of nets, she tasted warm salt with
the cold. Tears; she was crying. The man seemed so certain that poor,
lost Juard still breathed.

25
    Sabin felt the rampaging buck of the surf toss the dory a swell.
The alternative terrified her, that her cousin had ri~ drowned, and
that this stranger who lured the people laughir their boats to follow
his blindfolded quest was a sorcerer who c swim in iron chains. They
might rescue Juard, or else join leaving more bereaved families to
weep and to curse at the s

Sabin rubbed the stinging cheek her uncle had smacked whe found her,
and smacked again when she told what the Wayfi had said of her lost
cousin. While the wind shifted fitf slapping sails and stays in
contrary gusts, and moonlight silv the wavelets, she braced against
the windward rail, away fron men by the binnacle. Their talk grew
ever more sullen as Juard's was uneasily discussed, and shoreline and
lights shrank aster
    'Nothing lives on the Barraken Rock but fishing birds that d
seawater!' cried Tebald over the wear of patched canvas. Yo and a
friend of Juard's, his jutted chin and narrowed eyes ' wasted.
    Blind behind swathes of black rag, the Wayfinder stood se before
aggression, his thin hands draped on the tiller as if the ~a
underneath were alive.
    Darru argued further. 'Without a fresh spring, a castaway w
perish.'
    'It has rained twice in the past week,' the stranger rebu
'Oilskins can be rigged to trap water, and the seabirds are plen
enough to snare.' Ciondo's spare smock flapped off his shoul like an
ill-fitting sail, the cuffs tied back to keep from troublin. sores.
The linen bindings covering his wrists emphasized promi bones; a man
so gaunt should not have been able to stand up less command the
muscle to mind the helm. But Sabin coul~ from where she stood that
the sloop held flawless course. wake carved an arrow's track astern.
    Ciondo glowered and said nothing, but his hand strayed ~ to the
rigging knife at his belt.
'We should put about and sail back,' Tebald said.
    Darru was more adamant. 'We should let you swim b stranger, for
your lies.'
    The Wayfinder answered in the absent way of a man w thoughts are
interrupted. 'If I prove wrong, you may kill me

26
    At this came a good dead of footshifting, and one or two gestures
to ward ill luck. No one voiced the obvious, that they could kill him
only if realfortune went elsewhere and they lived to make good such a
threat.
    The night wore on and the stars turned. The wind settled to a
steady northeast, brisk and coldly clear. Moonset threw darkness on
the water, and the land invisible astern. Once, Darru repeated the
suggestion that the wager be abandoned, that the sloop seek return by
the stars. He spoke to Ciondo by the mainmast pinrail, but was
answered in gruff-voiced challenge by the Wayfinder aft at the helm.
'Would you take such a chance, just to keep Juard's doom a clear
certainty?'
    Darru spun in vicious anger, jerked back by Ciondo's braced hand.
'Don't provoke him! He is in'am shealdi, or how else does he steer
without sight? Find faith in the straight course he sails, or else
give the decency of holding your tongue until you have true cause to
doubt.'
    'Grief for your son has turned your head,' Darru muttered,
shrugging himself free. But he could not argue that lacking clear
stars or a compass, no ordinary man could keep a heading hour after
hour without mistake.
    Night waned. Sabin slept through the dawn curled against a bight
of rope. She dreamed of waves and white horses, and the rolling
thunder of troubled seas until Tebald's shout awakened her. 'The
Barraken Rock! Dead off our bow, do you see!'
    She opened her eyes to a dazzle of sunlight, and the soured smell
of seaweed beached and dried. 'Juard,' she whispered.
    No one noticed. Ciondo stood as a man frozen in place by the
foremast stay; the more volatile Darru gave back laughter and cried
to his fellow crewman, 'Where were you an hour ago when the spit rose
out of the sea?'
    'Sleeping,' Tebald confessed. His awed glance encompassed the
scarecrow figure who guided the tiller with a feather touch, and
whose eyesight was yet swathed in cloth. The mouth that showed
underneath seemed turned up in detached amusement. Tebald leaned down
and ruffled Sabin's hair as he passed, his discomfort masked by a
shrug.
    Peevish and oddly unrefreshed, she tried a kick that missed at
his ankle. 'Don't do that. I'm not a little girl anymore.' Tebald
ignored her as if she were a bothersome younger sister.

27
To Ciondo he said, 'The wager's won, I'd say. Your in'am shealdi
should take off his blindfold. It's probably making him sweat.'
    'I said so,' Ciondo admitted. With one hand fastened to the
headstay, he kept his eyes trained on the rock that jutted like a
spindle from the sea. 'Tell him again if you want.'
    But with the arcane powers of the helmsman now proven, no one
seemed anxious to speak. Sun glared like molten brass off the wet
shine of the deck, and the sheet lines creaked under their burden of
sail. The pitiless isolation of the sea seemed to amplify the wind,
and the mingled cries of seabirds that squabbled and flew above the
rock. The deeper shout that was human seemed to rend the day's peace
like a mortal blow to the heart.
    On that gale-carved, desolate spit, splashing in seawater to the
knees, a raggedy figure ran, dancing and gyrating to a paean of
reborn hope.
    'It's Juard!' Darru gasped. He glanced nervously back at the
Wayfinder, ashamed for his unkind threats. Tebald at his side held
his breath in wordless shock, and Ciondo just buried his face in his
hands and let the tears spill through his fingers.
    It was Sabin who moved to free sheet lines when the Wayfinder
threw up the helm. While Tebald and Darru roused belatedly to set the
anchor, the girl unlashed an empty bait barrel. She stood it on end
by the sternpost, climbed up, and as the Wayfinder bent his head to
receive her touch, she picked out the knots of his blindfold. The
cloth fell away. Hair bleached like bone tumbled free in the breeze,
and she confronted a face set level with hers that had been battered
into pallor by exhaustion. The eyes no longer burned, but seemed wide
and drugged as a dreamer's. She could almost plumb their depths, and
sense the echoes of the spirits whose guidance had led the sloop
without charts.
    'You could hear them yourself, were you taught,' the Wayfinder
murmured in his grainy bass. Yet before those eyes could brighten and
tempt her irrevocably to sacrifice the reality she understood, she
retreated to a braced stance behind the barrel.
    'The moment Juard can sail with his father, I'll be sent back
home. Whether or not there are horses in the sea, I shan't be getting
lost behind a loom.' Her bare feet made no sound as she whirled and
bounded off to help Ciondo, who was struggling in feverish eagerness
to launch the tender by himself.

28
The sloop was met on her return by men with streaming torches.
Juard's reappearance from the lost brought cries of joy and
disbelief. Kala was fetched from her bed for a tearful reunion with
the son miraculously restored to her. For Juard was alive; starved
thin, his hair matted in tangles so thick they could only be shorn,
and his skin marred everywhere with festering scratches that needed
immediate care. The greedy sea had been forced to give back its
plunder, and the news swept like fire through the village.
    A crowd gathered. Children in nightshirts gamboled on the
fringes, while their parents jabbered in amazement. The Wayfinder
whose feat had engineered the commotion stood aloof, his weight
braced against the stempost of a dry dory as if he needed help to
stand up. From farther back in the shadows, outside the ring of
torchlight, Sabin watched him. She listened, as he did, to the noise
and the happiness, and she alone saw him shiver and stiffen and
suddenly stride into the press with his light eyes hardened to
purpose.
    He set a hand marked as Juard's on Ciondo's arm, and said, 'No, I
forbid this,' to the fisherman who had been boasting the loudest.
'You will not be repeating this tale to any traders, nor be offering
my service to outsiders. This is my bargain for Juard's life.'
    Silence fell with the suddenness of a thunderclap. Surf and the
snap of flame remained, and a ring of stupefied faces unfamiliarly
edged with hostility. 'Which of us made any such bargain?' shouted
someone from the sidelines.
    The Wayfinder's peaked brows rose. 'Ciondo is my witness, and
here is my warning. For yourselves, you may ask of me as you will.
The guiding and ward of your fleet I shall do as I can; but let none
beyond this village ever know that I am in'am shealdi. Say nothing,
or sorrow will come of it.'
    Finished speaking, or perhaps too weary to stay standing, the
Wayfinder strode out of the pack. He left all the village muttering
and wondering as he moved in slow steps toward the path. On the chill
sands outside the torchlight, Sabin watched him vanish in the
darkness under the pines. She did not follow; nor did she feel moved
to join the villagers. The waking dream had touched her. Curiosity no
longer drove her to discuss the stranger Kala sheltered.
    'Was he a felon, to want such secrecy?' one goodwife muttered
from the sidelines.

29
    Ciondo replied in indignation, 'Does it matter?' Then good sense
prevailed over argument, and Kala scolded the gawkers roundly for
keeping poor Juard from his bed.

A month passed, and seven days. Juard recovered his health and
returned to fishing on the sloop. The Wayfinder who had brought his
recovery took a longer time to mend. Kala pressed food and comforts
on him constantly, until he complained of her coddling. Unlike
anybody else, she listened, and left him alone. His white hair began
to grow out its natural color, a golden, honey-brown, until Sabin
sitting in her chair seat on the cliffside could no longer pick him
out from the villagers who manned the sloops. She saw him seldom, and
spoke with him not at all. Winding the skeins of wool and stringing
the looms in her father's craft shop in furious concentration, she
avoided walking the beach. Since the night she forgot her jacket, she
could not bear to watch the combers. She heard them, felt them, even
indoors with her ears filled with the clack of shuttle and loom - the
thunder of what might be hooves, and the tumble of white, upfiung
spray that pounded the beaches in procession. She swept cut threads
from the floor, and helped her mother bake, and each night begged her
sleep to show her silence.
    It did not. She misplaced socks and tools, and once, let the fire
burn out. The waking world came to seem as a dream, and herself,
strangely separate, adrift. She was scolded more often for
stargazing, and seemed more than ever to care less.
    The Wayfinder laughed in the tavern at night, accepted, but with
a reverence that marked him apart. Two boats he saved from ruin when
storms caused shoaling off the reefs. Another smack was recovered
with a damaged compass after squall winds blew it astray. No one
knowingly broke the Wayfinder's faith, but his presence loomed too
large to shelter. Sabin understood this, her hands fallen idle over
wool she was meant to be spinning. She twisted the red-dyed fibers
aimlessly, knowing: there were traders who had heard of Juard's loss,
and who saw him back among the men. They asked questions. Driven by
balked curiosity, they
pressured and cajoled, and won themselves no satisfaction. The
silence itself caused talk.
Summer passed. The winds shifted and blew in cold from the

3o
northeast, and the fleet changed quarter to follow the shoals of
fish. The looms in the weaver's shop worked overtime to meet the
demand for new blankets. Sabin crawled into bed each evening too
tired to blow out the lamp; and so it chanced that she was awakened
in the depths of night by the blood-dim glow of a spent wick. This
time no forgotten jacket needed recovery from shore. The restlessness
that stirred her refused to be denied.
    She arose, dressed in haste, and let herself out of the back
door. Lights still burned in the tavern, and a few drunken voices
inside argued over ways to cure sharkskin. Sabin slipped past, down
the lane toward her uncle's cottage. Once there she did not knock;
every window was dark. Instead she went on down the cliff path. Her
shins brushed the stalks of purple flowers, dried now, and rattling
with seedheads in the change of season. Wind snatched her clothing
and snapped at the ends of her hair. A wild night, yet again, the
kind that was wont to bring wrecks. She completed the last, familiar
steps to the chair seat, dreading what she might find.
    The horizon was clearly delineated under a waning half moon.
Clouds scudded past like dirty streamers, muddling the swells pewter
and gray, and against them, like penstrokes in charcoal, an advancing
forest of black masts. Where peaceful craft would have plied sails,
this fleet cleaved against the wind, lashing up coils of foam beneath
the driving stroke of banked oars.
    War galleys, Sabin identified, though the Karbaschi to her were
just talk. The Wayfinder's secret was loose in the world, and his
overlords had returned now to claim him. Poised to run and rouse the
town, Sabin found she could not move. Her flesh became riveted by a
cry that had no sound, but ripped between the fabric of the air
itself to echo and ring through her inner mind.
    The vibration negated her scream of terrified surprise, and
filled her unasked with its essence: that of rage and sorrow and
mystery, and a wounding edge of betrayal.
    Dizzied almost to sickness, she clawed at the rocks for a
handhold to ward off a tumbling fall. The summons faded but did not
leave silence. The grind of the sea overwhelmed her ears with a
mauling crescendo of sound. Cowering down in the cleft of the chair
seat, Sabin saw the sea roll back. It sucked in white arrows of
current off the tide fiats until slate, shingle and reef were laid
bare. Fish flapped in confused crescents across settled streamers of
weed, and the scuttled, half-rotted hull of a schooner turned turtle
with

3I
a smack in the mud. Fishing boats settled on their anchor chains. and
townside, the bell in the harbormaster's house began steadill tolling
alarm.
    Faintly, from the cottage behind, Sabin heard her uncle's bellov~
of inquiry as the clangor aroused him from bed. Juard, also, woul~ be
tossing off blankets, and stumbling out with the rest.
    Sabin did not move. She, who had been born in a village ot
seafarers, and should have been, would have been, one of them. could
only stare with her joints locked immobile. She alone di~ not flee in
blind concern toward the beach path to stave off the threat to their
boats.
    Had she gone, it would not have mattered; the chair seat offerec
an untrammeled view as the horses thundered in from the sea.
    They came on in a vast, white herd, manes tossing, an> forehooves
carving up arcs of flying spray. The water swirlec under their
bellies and legs, and rushed in black torrents behinc uncountable
upflung tails. Wave after wave, they surged
plowing up weeds and fish and muddy gouts of seabottom, ant milling
the shells of galleys and sloops into shreds and splinters a~, they
passed. Spars of fishing smacks entangled with snapped
oars and the dragon-horned timbers of Karbaschi shipwrights; th~
cries of warriors and oarsmen entangled in the flood mingled wit?
shouts from the villagers who saw their fleet and that of the
raider., become smashed to kindling at a stroke. The horses swept on
in
boil of foam that boomed like a god-wielded hammer against th~ shore.
Spindrift sluiced across the cliffs. Ancient pines shivered an>
cracked at the blow, and boulders broke off and tumbled.
    Drenched to her heels by cold water, Sabin cowered down. weeping
for the beauty of a thousand salt-white steeds thai reared up and
struck at the windy sky. And with that releas~ came understanding, at
last, of what all along had been wrong: her heart held no sorrow for
the terrible, irreversible destructior that rendered her whole
village destitute.
    Lights flickered through the pines at her back, as angry men li~
torches. Shouts and curses carried on the wind, and the tolling bel~
fell silent, leaving the seethe of the seas a scouring roar across
th~ reef. Sabin pressed her knuckles to her face. The Wayfinder wa.,
going to be blamed. This ruin was his doing, every man knew, ant when
they found him, they would tear him to pieces.
Pressed into her cranny by a weight of remorse she could no~

.32
shed, Sabin saw the wild horses swirl like a vortex and turn. Back
they plunged into the sea that had spawned them, leaving churned sand
and burst wood and snarled bits of rope. Amid the roil of foam, a
lone swell arose and broke; one mare spun away and parted from her
companions.
     Sabin saw her stop with lifted head, as if she listened to
something far away. She tossed her mane, shedding spray, then raised
up one forehoof and stepped, not into water, but most irrevocably,
out onto wrack-strewn sand.
     Sabin cried out at that moment, as if some force of nature
wrenched her, spirit from flesh. Reflex overturned thought, and she
was up and running inland at a pace that left her breathless. Voices
called out to her as she reached the lane, people she knew, but she
had no answer. The torchlight in the market did not slow her, nor the
press of enraged men who gathered to seek their revenge. Scraps of
conversation touched her ears and glanced away without impression -
the in'am shealdi and his vicious, unfair bargain - Juard's life, in
exchange for the livelihood of all the village. Boats had been broken
and sunk. Folk would starve. The Wayfinder would be made to pay, made
to burn; they would pack him off in chains to rot in the dungeons of
the King's bailiff. A hangman was too good for him, someone yelled,
his words torn through with the sounds of a woman's crying.
     Sabin stumbled and kept going, past the cedar shingles of the
wool shop where her mother stood on the door stoop. 'Girl, where are
you off to, there's salvage work to be done, and soup to be fixed for
the men.'
    But the rebuke of her parent was meaningless, now, and had ú been
for quite some time. Deep darkness wrapped the hollow where the
crossroads met the town and the lane led inland through forest. Sabin
went that way, her lungs burning, and her eyes streaming tears. The
terrible truth pursued her: she did not weep for loss. The village
was nothing to her, its hold inexorably diminished since the moment
she left a jacket on the beach.
     By the stone marker on the hill above the market, the Wayfinder
waited, as she knew he would. He sat astride a mare whose coat caught
the moonlight like sea-foam, and whose eyes held the darkness and
mystery of water countless fathoms deep. She tossed her head at
Sabin's arrival, as if chiding the girl for being

33
tardy, and her mane lifted like a veil of spindrift; subsided like
falling spray.
    The Wayfinder regarded Sabin gravely, the burning in his eyes
near to scalding. 'You heard my call,' he said. 'The mare came, and
you answered also.'
$abin found speech at last. 'You knew I would.'
    He shook his head, his unbleached honey-colored hair veiling his
weatherbeaten face. 'I wasn't sure. I hoped you might. Gifts such as
yours are needed sorely.'
    The white mare stamped, impatient. She blew a salty, gusty snort.
New tears welled in tracks down Sabin's cheeks, and she reached out
trembling fingers and touched the shimmering white shoulder. It was
icy as seawater; magical and terrifying and beautiful enough to bring
madness. The words she struggled to shape came out choked. 'If the
horse cannot return, then neither will I.'
    'You are both my responsibility,' the Wayfinder admitted. 'And
will be, to the end of my days.' He extended his hand, no longer so
thin, but disfigured still with old scars. 'You must know the
Karbaschi would have burned more than boats, and slaughtered and
raped did they land.'
    Sabin felt as if she had swallowed a stone. 'You spared the whole
village, and they hate you.'
    He sighed, and the mare shifted under him, anxious to be away.
'Oh my dear, it could not be helped. What is a boat? Or a man? New
trees will grow and be fashioned into planks, and women will birth
babies that age and grow senile and die. But just as this mare can't
return to the waves, so an earth spirit that is maimed can never
heal. The Karbaschi shed more than mortal blood. I could not allow
myself to be captured, however bitter the price.'
    'You could have died,' Sabin said, her gaze transfixed by the
horse.
    And he saw it was not his exile, but the fate of the mare that
she mourned. The two of them, man and girl, were alike to the very
core.
    A shout knifed the quiet, and torches shimmered through the
trees. The mare stamped again, and was restrained by a touch as the
Wayfinder said in measured calm, 'I can still die. But you must know,
the mare should be cared for. She is not of mortal flesh. If I give
myself up, hear warning. Your talents will blossom with time. A horse
such as this will draw notice and the Karbaschi will send

34
another fleet. Their craving for conquest is insatiable as the ocean
is vast, and in'am shealdi to guide them, most rare.'
    She made no move, and her rejection seemed to shatter his
detachment. He lifted his head as the noise of the mob came closer.
The edgy, unaccountable wariness that every offered kindness had not
softened, gentled very suddenly into pity. 'In'am shealdi,' he
murmured in the grainy, musical voice that had commanded the horse
from the sea. 'This mare left the water at my call, you are right,
but her sacrifice was never made for me.'
    Sabin looked up, stricken. 'For my life?' she gasped, 'or my
gift?'
    'Both.' His eyes were not cold. Inside the serenity lent by power
lay a human being who could bleed. 'If you treasure the beauty of the
horses, heed this. We are the only ones who know their kind. Others
see no more than surf and foam. It is our protection, Sabin, that
keeps this spirit-mare alive, our call that lends her substance.'
    The torches reached the crossroad, and light flared and arrowed
between the trees.
    'There he is!' someone shouted, and the note of the mob quickened
like the baying of hounds that sight game.
    To her dream-filled ears, the pursuers uttered no words, but made
only a cacophony of vicious noise. The roll of the sea held more
meaning, and from this time forward, always would.
    Sabin grasped the Wayfinder's hand. Clinging as if to a lifeline,
she let him pull her up astride the mare. As the villagers burst into
the clearing, they lost their quarry in a half-glimpsed flash of
white. The clearing resounded to what could have been hoofbeats, or
the enduring thunder of a comber pounding the pebbles of the shore.

35
The Antagonist

Jensen stepped briskly from the orange-lit access corridor, and a
thrill touched him as the confined echo of his footfalls fell away,
lost amid the din of Point Station's docking hangar. Through the
bustle of mechanics stripped to their thinsul suits, anct the cross-
bracing of gantry arms and loading winches, he found the object of
his passion instantly. A smile of predatory satisfaction lit his
face. She was exactly as they had described her, in tones that varied
from frustration, to thwarted fury, to outright, obsessive longing:
ugly, patch-painted, and sculled, a typically hard-run small-time
merchanter. Yet the awkwardly configured spacecraft under Jensen's
eager scrutiny was nothing of the sort. His trained mind could admire
the artistry with which her weaponry and shielding had been installed
without marring her image of innocuous decrepitude. Jensen squared
his shoulders, missing ~he stiff scrape of his ensign's collar. Like
the deadly, efficient bit of machinery he viewecl, he would use
camouflage to disarm his prey. For the Marity was the love and the
pride of MacKenzie James, a skip-runner wanted on eighty-six Alliance
planets for illegal trafficking in weapons, treason, theft, and sale
of classified Fleet documents. Piracy was not a trade for the
cautious; the Fleet's autonomous diligence ensured that most skip-
runner captains paid for their wealth with imprisonment or early
death. But 'MacKenzie, James,' as the criminal files formally listed
a man whose true name was only a matter of conjecture, was no
ordinary skip-runner.
    Mostly he was too good. The captains, officials, and highly
placed admirals he had evaded, avoided, and unabashedly fooled in the
course of his career made him dangerous, a topic of wild speculation
in the barracks and the bars but one most scrupulously

36


avoided in the company of superiors. To Michael Christopher Jensen,
Jr, anyone who could engineer the skip-runner's long overdue arrest
would gain promotion, accolades, and a reputation of undeniably
proven merit. For a young man who had yet to earn 'his paint' in
battle against the Khalia, MacKenzie James was a piece to be
manipulated.
    Jensen adjusted the unfamiliar ties of the Freer over-robe he had
acquired with some difficulty for the occasion. He looked the part,
he knew, with his rangy frame and dark hair and eyes; meticulous to
the point of fussiness, he had made certain no detail was out of
character. Like many a fringe worlder, Freerlanders liked
independence a bit too well to submit to Fleet sanctions; skip-runner
captains knew them as a dependable market for illicit weaponry. They
were ornery enough, or maybe just proudly stubborn enough, that only
the reckless interfered with them in public. Still, as the young
officer strode into the chaos of the loading lanes, his palms
sweated. His plan might be soundly designed, but he was not quite
brash enough to be unafraid. Marity's master had ruined many a
promising career before an unscheduled repair stop had delayed him;
and though inconvenienced, MacKenzie James would never be caught
unprepared.
    Especially here; Point Station was a crossroads for the remote
boundary of Carsey Sector, a center for commerce and intrigue only
sporadically patrolled. Betweentimes, those goods and outbound
colonists who were of questionable legal status arrived and departed
with all the speed that over-used, outdated equipment could command.
The ratchet of the winches was loud enough to drown thought, and the
reek of heated machinery a metallic taint in the musty, recirculated
air. Jensen made his way cautiously. Ducking a trailing power cable,
and wary of stepping into the path of the squat, radio-controlled
light-loaders, he noticed the stares prompted by his black-fringed
Freer robe. He adjusted his hood, careful to carry himself with the
right degree of arrogance. His mimicry seemed effective. A dock
worker stumbled clear of his way, and behind the periphery of the
hood, someone else muttered, 'Pardon, Freerlander.'
    Jensen buried his hands in red-banded cuffs and kept his steps
light, as if he had grown up walking icy, wind-carved sands; nothing
less than perfection would deceive MacKenzie James. As Rlarity's
spidery bulk loomed closer, the time for second thoughts

37
narrowed. Now, Jensen no longer regretted that necessity had forced
him to include Ensign Shields in his plan. That she drifted just
beyond Point's gray field perimeters in the dispatch courier Fleet
Command had assigned to the pair of them now offered great
reassurance. Though technically his senior, and compelled to
collusion by a veiled threat of blackmail, she would not let him
down. The moment her courier had altered course for Point Station,
the Ensign was committed.
Jensen managed not to trip on any cables as he crossed the apron

beneath the fringe of his hood, he promised that overcoming Shields's
reluctance would be the last time he traded upon his father's
influence for his own gain. The man who arranged MacKenzie James's
arrest could write any ticket he wished and with this in mind, Jensen
studied the slots that recessed the studs of Marity's entry lock. The
young Fleet officer repressed a whistle of admiration at the evident
strength of her seals. No Freer ever uttered anything that resembled
music outside of ritual. Such attention to detail was not misplaced,
for a moment later he found himself noted by the ferret-quick gaze of
the individual who served Marity as skip-runner's mate.
    The man was typical of the type signed on by MacKenzie James.
Your~g, ~thle~ic, and gctaranreed ~o have no t/es, he turned from
wheeling a cargo capsule that had overlapping layers of customs
stamps to mark a conspicuously legal course across Alliance space.
The Freer robe drew his attention. An instant later, Jensen found his
path blocked, and his hooded features under scrutiny by a pair of
worldly eyes.
'You're here to see Mac James,' said the mate.
    He placed slight emphasis on James, the Mac more a prefix than
first name. Jensen considered this idiosyncrasy while returning a nod
of appropriate Freer restraint.
    The man smiled, suddenly older than his years. His thinsul suit
hung loosely over his frame, no doubt concealing weapons. 'Godfrey,
wherever we alight, and no matter how unexpectedly, you people seem
to find us.' But his easy manner was belied by the tension in his
stance.
    Yet skip-runners could be expected to treat strangers with
caution. Careful to pronounce the name precisely as Marity's mate
had, Jensen said, 'Then Mac James is available?'

38
sity had drifted courier offered ripdied not let r Point

apron rowed ~ming m his ~nged t and studs aistlc ever Such r he

71es.

o nl

,ms

ce.

ir


    'Mac's topside.' His appraisal abruptly complete, the mate jerked
his head for the young officer to follow, then gestured toward the
open jaws of the lock.
    Jensen took a slow breath, readjusted his Freer hood, and ducked
under Marity's forward strut. He set foot on the loading ramp, and
quashed a panicky urge to retreat. The burning ambition which held
him sleepless each night drove him forward as the mate disappeared
into shadow.
    Jensen passed the lock. Marity's interior seemed dim after the
arc lamps that illuminated Station's docks. His spacer's soles clung
lightly to metal grating, the sort that adjusted on tracks to vary
storage according to the demands of different cargoes. But as Jensen
blinked to adjust his vision, he heard the clang of an innerlock; a
cool draft infused the outer hold and by that he guessed that on the
far side of that barrier Marity's resemblance to a merchant carrier
must end. Only a craft that carried state of the art shielding and
navigational equipment would trouble to control its atmosphere while
in port.
The mate paused at the head of the corridor and called. 'Mac?'
    A grunt answered from the ship's upper level, distorted into
echoes by the empty hold.
    'Company's here asking for you.' The mate waved for Jensen to
pass him and continue alone down the access corridor. 'Ladder to the
bridge is there to the left.'
    5s~.~t)ed ro be [eft on his own, ~ensen crossed the threshold of
the innerlock with his best imitation of Freer poise. Me set co\d
hands to the [adder beyond. aintly over the mate's receding
footsteps, he heard the muted grind of light-loaders laboring outside
of Marity's hull. Then the innerlock hissed shut. Irrevocably sealed
off from Station, and isolated amid the hum of the air-circulating
system, Jensen recognized the sizzle of a laser pencil cutting
through cowling.
     ~Come to talk, or to tap-dance?' Marfry's master called gruffly
from above.
     Jensen climbed. Sweating under his Freer cowl, he emerged in the
windowless chamber of the bridge. Dead screens fronted the worn
couches of two crew stations. The controls beneath were sophisticated
and new, and somehow threatening without the array of labels and
caution signs indigenous to Fleet military vessels. Jensen repressed
a slight prickle of uneasiness. The man

39
who flew Marity knew her like a wife; his mates without exception
were pilots who could punch in and out of FTL or execute difficult
dockings in their sleep.
    'You're no Freer,' the captain's gravelly voice observed from
behind.
    Jensen whirled, fringes sighing across the top rungs of the
ladder. Bent over the far console was the skip-runner half of Fleet
command would trade their commissions to jail. Through the dazzle of
the laser-pen, Jensen made out a dirty coverall with the clips half
unfastened, knuckles disfigured with scars, and a profile equally
blunt, currently set in a frown of concentration. Shadowed from the
laser's glare by a flip-shield, eyes light as sheet metal never left
the exposed guts of Marity's instrument panel, even as Jensen shifted
a hand beneath his robe and gripped the stock of the gun hidden
beneath.
    'Care to tell why you're here?' The laser-pen moved, delicately,
and the shift in light threw MacKenzie James's scarred fingers into
high relief. With a small start, Jensen recognized old coil burns,
from working on a ship's drive while the condensers were activated.
The story was true, then, that Mac James had changed a slagged module
barehanded to make his getaway the time he had sabotaged the security
off Port.
    Mesmerized by the movement of fingers that should by rights have
been crippled, Jensen opened, 'You run guns,' and stopped. The man's
directness had rattled him and he had neglected his guise of Freer
restraint; but then, Mac James had already observed he was no Freer.
Why, then, let him in at all? Taken aback, Jensen was unable to
think, except to notice how remarkably deft the scarred hands were
with the electronics.
    'You're not here to negotiate business.' MacKenzie James joggled
a contact, applied his pen, then thumbed the switch off. The laser
snapped out, and Marity's master swung around, a hulking bear of a
man with a spare brace of contact clips dangling from the head strap
of his eye shield. He snapped up the plate, revealing a face of
boyish frankness entirely at odds with his reputation.
Jensen opened his mouth to speak, and was cut off.
    'You're Fleet, boy, don't bore me with lies.' Mac James whisked
clips and shield from his forehead and threw them with a rattle into
the disjointed segment of cowling. 'That makes you trouble, unwanted
being the least damning complaint l have against you.'

40
He leaned heavily on the back of the nearest crew chair, his manner
distinctly exasperated. 'Don't bother with the gun, I know it's
there.'
     'Then you'll surrender your person without a fuss,' said Jensen,
his confidence buoyed by the realization that the man he covered was
sweating. 'Marity has skip-run her last cargo.'
     MacKenzie James raked scarred fingers through a snarl of
uncombed hair. 'Boy, you've put me in a very bad position, and I'm
not known as a nice man.'
     'That doesn't concern me.' Jensen eased the pellet gun from his
robe, pleased that his hand was so steady. 'Your papers, Captain.
Tell me where they are.'
    MacKenzie James slung himself into the gimballed couch. Light
from the overhead fixture flashed on the worn tag he wore on the
chain at his neck. The lettering stamped in its surface was ingrained
with dirt, legible even in dim light: 'MacKenzie, James, First
Lieutenant.' That rumor also was true, Jensen reflected; or maybe
part of it, that a two-credit whore from the Cassidas had gotten
herself knocked up, then smuggled herself and her byblow into the
quarters of her officer lover. An emergency call to action came
through, and when the captain in command had discovered a civilian on
board, he had dumped her through the airlock into deep-space as an
example. Her lover had subsequently died in action. The kid, who may
or may not have been related, had been signed over to some Alliance
charity orphanage. Though given a legal name, he never called himself
by anything but the inscription on the dogtag, surname first; and
harboring no love for the military, he grew up into the most wanted
man in Fleet record.
    MacKenzie James raised tired eyes. 'Boy, if you continue with
this, all the wrong people are going to suffer.'
    Jensen gestured with the barrel of the pellet gun. 'Who? Not all
your clients are like the Freeborn, who think to beat the Khalia
single-handed. The guns you skip-run are as likely to be used by
criminals as in defense.'
    'Godfrey,' said MacKenzie James with exactly the same inflection
his mate had used earlier. 'Nobody informed me I was such an
idealist.'
    Marity shuddered slightly, as if jostled by on-loading cargo.
MacKenzie James sighed with apparent resignation and said, 'My flight
papers are in the starboard vault. Here's the key.'

4I
His coil-scarred fingers moved, very fast, and switched on the laser-
pen.
    Jensen ducked the beam in time to save his eyes. He even managed
to keep his pellet gun trained on the patch of sweaty chest exposed
by MacKenzie's gaping coverall; but the younl~ officer didn't fire,
which proved a mistake.
    Hands that by rights should have been ruined flicked a switch,
and Marity came to life with a scream of drive engines. She tore her
gantry ties, stabbed upward with her gravity accelerators wide open
and smashed through the closed hangar doors. Jensen was thrown to the
deck. He heard the wail of sheared metal as landing struts wrenched
off. Marity jerked, half-spun, and yanked free, burning outward into
deepspace and trailing a tumbling wake of debris. Horrified, Jensen
imagined Point Station thrown into wobbling chaos: alarm sirens
smothered by the inrush of vacuum, and the light-loaders' magnetic
treads plodding mechanically over the dying thrash of the workers
Marity had sacrificed to rip free.
    MacKenzie James sat immobile in his threadbare deck chair. 'This
craft is fitted with several sets of back-up engines,' he admonished.
'Point Station personnel and Carsey sector authorities know better
than to meddle with us.'
    'Bastard,' Jensen said thickly. He moved gently against the
pressure of acceleration, his pellet gun trained steadily on his
antagonist. 'Your mate was equally expendable?'
    'Evans?' MacKenzie James did not change expression as the glare
of the laser pencil snapped out. 'No Freer ever approached us without
elaborate clandestine overtures and a meeting in private. Evans
should have remembered.'
    But Jensen's equilibrium had recovered. The vibration just prior
to takeoff, surely that had been the lock cycling closed? Evans in
all probability was on board. The control panels on the bridge seemed
utterly dead; but with back-up systems, even now the mate might be
piloting from a remote station elsewhere on Marity. If Evans was at
the helm, Ensign Shields was going to have to fly her shapely ass off
to keep up. Fortunately her ability was equal to her boasts.
    Right now the primary directive was to take control before Marity
gained enough charge to sequence her FTL drive. Icily composed in the
half4ight cast by the bridge control panels, Jensen shifted the
target of his gun and squeezed the trigger.
The light-pen in MacKenzie's hand shattered. Fragments of

42
casing raked his wrist and drew blood while the expended pellet
screamed past his groin and imbedded in the stuffing of the adjacent
crew chair.
    Mac James moved, but this time Jensen was ready. Before the
captain reached cover behind the bridge cowling, the Fleet officer
had him cornered. Breathing hard, and sweating beneath his Freer
robes, he trained his weapon squarely on the skip-runner's heart.
'Roll over. Cross your wrists behind your back. One wrong move, and
you're dead.'
    MacKenzie James grunted, eased his weight off his right forearm,
and carefully extended it behind his waist. 'You're Marksman Elite?'
    'Unfortunately for you,' said Jensen, concentrating more on the
left hand of his captive than acknowledging the accolade he had
striven for, and won with such pride at an exceptionally early age.
Gun at the ready, the young officer loosened his robe and retrieved a
pair of loop nooses, the thin, cutting type Fleet marines used to
restrain everything from murderers to brawlers. He hooked the first
over James's upraised wrists and jerked tight.
    'Now raise your ankles, Captain.' James did so, and the second
noose shortly trussed his legs.
    Smiling raggedly from triumph and excitement, Jensen locked the
ends and began to search the captain's person. The man was tautly
muscled, which was unusual enough to inspire caution. Most skip-
runners were slender to the point of fragility, the result of long
hours lurking in null gravity, their ship's systems shut down to a
whisper to avoid notice. MacKenzie James also carried no side arms,
only a small knife in a sheath sewn into his boot. Jensen confiscated
this, then shoved his prisoner awkwardly onto his back.
    MacKenzie returned a cool, appraising stare that, even behind a
pellet gun, Jensen found disturbing. 'You will tell me where Evans is
piloting, clearly and quickly.'
    The captive smiled with brazen effrontery. 'By now I expect what
remains of my mate is being bundled up in a body bag.'
    'Back at Station?' Jensen resisted an urge to step close; even
bound, the captain was bulky enough to roll and knock him down. q'm
not a fool, James. If Evans died on Station with the rest of the dock
personnel, who guides this ship?'
MacKenzie's grin turned thoughtful. 'Well now, I could say with

43
reasonable certainty that Marity flies on a hardwired connection
between her accelerator banks and her coil regulator. Assuming I
don't lie, any fool knows she'll blow when the condensers overheat.'
    Jensen considered this, unpleasantly confronted by the mulish
courage that had confounded so many officers of the law before him.
The captain might be lying; but his reputation said otherwise, which
placed Jensen squarely on the prongs of dilemma.
    MacKenzie James stopped smiling. 'Don't think too long, boy.
Since you so proudly blasted my laser-pen, I'll have to rummage
around for my cutter tool to break the bridged circuit.'
    'Shut up.' Jensen needed a second to clear his mind. Somewhere on
Marity would be a kill switch to cut the drives in the event of
emergency; the other fail-safes and override systems would be
nonexistent, for skip-runner captains as a rule pushed their
machinery over margin. The complication that this ship held to no
specs, that she was a jumble of ingenuity and modifications hung
together by the cleverest criminal in the Alliance meant Jensen was
in too deep. If MacKenzie James were freed to right his bit of
sabotage, chances were he would create additional havoc in the
wiring, perhaps even contrive to regain advantage.
    'I'll take my chances,' Jensen decided. But his confidence was
forced. If Evans had made it on board, he was now in serious trouble.
    With the nooses secured without slack to a deck fitting,
MacKenzie James could not roll onto his stomach. Nothing important
lay within range of his feet. Certain as he could be that his captive
was secure, Jensen sealed the bridge behind him and descended into
Marity's service level. Away from Point Station's fields, the descent
shaft had no gravity. Already the chill of deepspace seemed to have
penetrated its shadowy depths. Jensen drifted in a faint fog of
condensation left by his breath, the ladder rungs icy beneath his
sweating hands. His feet tingled with the knowledge that at any
second a plasma weapon might sear upward and fry him like a fly on a
web. The Freer robe swirled and caught at his ankles and knees.
Jensen longed to shed the fabric, but dared not. Sewn into the sash
was the transmitter that enabled Ensign Shields to track him, and
Marity, through the deeps of space.
    Jensen reached the base of the shaft without incident. Gun at the
ready, he barely waited for his soles to grab on the decking

44
before he started forward. His danger now redoubled, for the access
corridor extended in both directions; MacKenzie's mate might easily
slip into the bridge behind him and set his captain free. The fact
that the mate had no key to release the nooses, and that the material
of which they were made was extremely difficult to cut offered only
slight reassurance. Under Mac James's spoken guidance, Evans might
take control of Marity from the bridge.
     Jensen glanced nervously over his shoulder, then rounded the
crook in the corridor near the access door which had first admitted
him. Beyond lay the hold, dark except for the blink of the indicator
that showed the life-support system which served that portion of the
ship was currently switched off. Jensen agonized for a moment in
indecision. If the outer lock was sealed, then Evans was surely on
board. No sense in crippling his judgment with worry if the man had
died back on Station; crisply Jensen punched the stud he found near
the hold's double safetied access latch.
    Arc lights flashed on, lancing uncomfortably into pupils grown
adjusted to the dark. Jensen squinted through glare off the port's
bubble window. Beyond the crosshatch of struts and decking, the lock
was securely closed. Nearby, garishly colored in the severe
illumination, lay the cargo capsule Jensen remembered from the apron
back on Station. Fear raised gooseflesh at the nape of his neck.
Whether or not MacKenzie James had triggered a remote control in the
opened pilot's panel, that capsule had not wheeled on board by
itself. Skip-runner's mate Evans had assuredly made lift-off, which
made light of any sort a liability. Jensen set his hand on the stud
to kill the arcs, and stopped, caught short by something bulky that
drifted above the grating which floored the hold.
    The thing twisted gently in null grav. Jensen made out the limp
form of a man, and realized he'd been lucky. The automatic cutoff
functions of lift had trapped Evans within the hold. Jensen glanced
swiftly at the gauges in the panel by the lock controls. Marity's
hold maintained atmosphere, but no recirculation for oxygen. As a
safeguard against stowaways and other breaches of security, cargo
areas as a rule did not allow manual access to the habitable portions
of the ship. Dependent upon rescue from within, Marity's mate was
probably hypothermic, for the cold of deepspace would swiftly
permeate the uninsulated hold.
    Jensen considered, then cold-bloodedly stabbed the light stud
off. By now a steady whine pervaded the corridor; Marity's

45
engines climbed steadily toward overload. Evans probably knew the
location of the emergency cutoffs, but it would likely take too long
to force the information out of him. Jensen quashed his last pang of
conscience.
    The gloom seemed deeper on Marity's lower deck, and the cold more
cutting. Though the breath came ragged in his throat, the young
officer clung righteously to his purpose. The mate was a skip-
runner's accomplice, a criminal no invested Fleet officer could
condone.
    Jensen ducked through a companionway. His eyes reflexively traced
the layout of cables on the far side. Guided by their convergence, he
pressed forward and ascended a small ramp, half-stumbling over the
shallowly raised treads. The transmitter sewn into his sash dug into
his waist, reminding that he bad to succeed, or leave Ensign Shields
to answer to Fleet admiralty for diverting a courier from dispatch
duty.
    The whine of stressed engines rose relentlessly, throwing off
unpleasant harmonics. Jensen covered his ears with his hands and
hurried blindly forward. The cables threaded through a conduit above
a small hatch, and, by the shielded panels, Jensen figured the drive
units lay immediately beyond. If he were forced to tear the coils out
barehanded to prevent an explosion, he wondered whether the burns
would prevent him from manipulating his gun.
    But that concern became secondary when Jensen discovered the
shielded doorway was secured with a retina lock, inoperable except to
Mac James, and maybe his mate. With no alternative left but to fetch
Evans, he returned down the access corridor toward the hold.
    But when he banged the switch once again, the arcs glared off a
vista of empty grating. The cargo capsule lay open in the harsh
light, and Evans was nowhere to be seen. With a crawling chill that
had nothing to do with sweat, Jensen spun and raced for the bridge
ladder. He'd made an idiot's misjudgment. MariO: was a skip-runner's
craft; he should never have assumed her specs would conform to those
of a common merchanter.
    The rungs themselves hampered, spaced as they were to a design
that differed from Fleet regulation. Clumsily shortening his reach,
Jensen made more noise than he intended. Above, the gruff voice of
MacKenzie ~ames called warning.

46
'Company, mate. Initiate without cross-check and take cover. I trust
your coordinates from memory.'
    Evans returned a protest, just as Jensen reached the upper level.
The shift from weightlessness to induced gravity blunted his speed,
yet still he managed to fling himself into cover behind an
electronics housing. Aware of him, Evans still did not turn, but
lingered to fine-tune something in the control panel. Noosed
helplessly to the crew chair, MacKenzie James cursed viciously.
    Driven by threat of failure, Jensen raised his gun and fired. His
pellet hammered Evans in the back of the head. Instantly dead, the
mate pitched forward into the control banks. His body quivered once,
and slipped to the deck, leaving vivid smears on the cowling.
    Jensen shivered with relief. In the icy clarity of adrenaline
rush, he noticed that MacKenzie James said nothing at all; but his
steely eyes bored with steady and unsettling intensity into the Fleet
officer who had gunned down his mate. He seemed almost to be
listening for something.
    Jensen discovered why a moment later. Marit3,'s engines died to a
whisper. There followed a peculiar hesitation in time, that blurring
transition which signalled the drop into FTL.
    Jensen knew a chill of apprehension. He had not killed swiftly
enough. Now she hurtled through deepspace toward a destination only
MacKenzie James and his dead first mate would know. Still, though the
ship was untraceable to the courier, Jensen did not lose control. The
prize, the skip-runner captain whose capture would gain him
advancement, was still at his mercy.
    Jensen dug in the pouch sewn into the Freer robe for another
round of ammo. His fingers snagged in the fabric; he swore and
wrestled them free, while from the deck, MacKenzie James broke his
silence.
    'Most Freer carry their weapons on a belt across their chests.
The pouch is for pills to kill parasites, and the clip on the seam
hangs their water skins.'
    Jensen clamped his jaw tight, methodically busy with reloading.
If Mac James chose to make conversation, he would have a purpose
other than boredom.
    'Godfrey, who's left to shoot but me?' The skip-runner never
glanced at the corpse, oozing blood an arm's length from him. Jensen
snapped a fresh round into the magazine of the gun and

47
tried to figure why Mac James might wish to distract him with
chatter. Quite dangerously, the stakes had altered. He might hold the
upper hand, but the captain was not entirely at his mercy. With
Marity's major controls stripped of function and her FTL hurtling her
toward an unknown destination, Jensen shoved back the first, creeping
stir of doubt. He could defeat the retina lock over the drive access
hatch by dragging his captive down below and manhandling him up to
the sensors. But disabling Marity's FTL condensers would do no good
if he had no inkling of her ú ~o~_rio_~o Je. use~,,~ ~d~e~,vae>
~g~pvaw~o~lfera~q16sr or screens were opaque, empty of data as the
rest of the controls. As he surveyed the opened cowling and tightly
racked maze of exposed boards, it occurred to him that Mac James
might have prepared his own diabolical sort of defense: Marity was
probably inoperable by any hand but her captain's. Jensen clenched
his hands, rage at his predicament momentarily making him dizzy. He
would come out of this on top, with the promotion he was long since
due. Freshly determined, he searched out the stop-marker coordinates
that glimmered on the navigational board.
    The fix was still within Carsey Sector, and surprisingly
familiar. That James would wish Marity to emerge only hours away from
the wreckage he had left on Point Station bespoke unsettling
confidence. Jensen hid his hands in his robe, too careful to give way
to elation as he identified the fix as Castleton's World, a lifeless
planet until recently, when Fleet Command had cut ground there for a
large-scale outpost. Two squadrons patrolled there, with a
dreadnought in synchronous orbit to maintain security for the
duration of the construction.
    Jensen turned slowly from the controls, startled to find that
MacKenzie James seemed to be sleeping. Ripped with an irrational
desire to destroy the man's nerveless peace, the Fleet officer said,
'Castleton's isn't the refuge you hoped for, not anymore.'
    MacKenzie James replied without opening his eyes. 'You're not
much in the confidence of your superiors, are you, boy? Or maybe the
news is too recent, or the planned assault on Bethesda makes Fleet
brass too busy to keep current.'
    The assault on Bethesda was supposed to be top secret. Horrified
that a common skip-runner should be party to Fleet secrets, Jensen
stiffened. He leveled the barrel of his pellet gun just as the gray
eyes of his captive flicked open. They reflected a

48
cold and bloodless amusement that made him ache to pull the trigger.
    'Khalia,' said MacKenzie James with uninflected plainness. 'The
new base on Castleton's was overrun, utterly, and stripped of all
survivors.'
    Disbelief made Jensen tremble. Even the hand which held his
weapon was not exempt. The captain had to be lying, his words a ploy
to provoke a careless reaction. Only Jensen made it a point never to
be careless.
    Mac James shrugged. 'If you aren't going to kill me out of pique,
you might want to clear the remains of my mate from the bridge.
Because unless you wish to become a slave of the Khalia, I'll need to
reconnect some circuitry without tripping over dead meat.'
    The sheer effrontery of the suggestion undid Jensen's poise. 'You
think I'm a fool?'
    Mac James stirred against the confines of his bonds. 'Yes, but
how much of one I'm waiting to find out.'
    Jensen's jaw jerked tight. He pointed his gun to the deck,
viciously flipped on the safety, then turned his back on his
prisoner. All sensor displays were lifeless; when Marity broke out of
FTL, no method remained to determine whether the ships which would
greet her were Fleet, or enemy; and hell only knew if the defensive
shields had power. Jensen felt a detestable sense of helplessness.
Mac James had him boxed; not being a hardware man, he lacked the
knowledge to hack the electronics back into working order.
    Mac James drawled lazily at his captor's back. 'The sensors and
analog screens are operational, boy, but you'll need to engage the
power switch.'
    Jensen hesitated out of principle. The control panel might
possibly be booby-trapped: Yet logic dictated that Mac James would
hardly plot murder while still under restraint, not unless he planned
to die slowly of dehydration. Alert for surprises, Jensen hunted
among the controls and flipped the appropriate switch. The analog
panel hummed to life, and snow hazed the monitor, while the sensors
gathered data. Presently, the haze subsided to black, which was
normal; no image would resolve until Marity re-entered normal space.
    Jensen tried the power switches for weaponry, without success.
The guidance computer also proved to be dead, and only the

49
watching presence of MacKenzie James prevented Jensen from hammering
the panels in frustration. The chronometer by Marity's autopilot
alone showed any indicators, the most maddening of which informed
that re-entry into sub-light at Castleton's was barely thirty minutes
off.
    Jensen paced. Careful to stay within the perimeters of Marity's
artificial gravity, he avoided the congealing runnels of Evans's
blood, and also that portion of deck included in MacKenzie's field of
view. He dared not give the skip-runner captain his liberty. Yet to
risk re-entry near a base under Khalian control without fire power or
maneuverability begged the most terrible fate. Not least, a concern
the young officer would never have admitted out loud, was the fact he
had never seen action against the enemy. Jensen had never doubted his
courage. But the possibility of closing with the enemy in a small,
converted merchanter like Marity frayed his confidence to tatters.
    The chronometer on the autopilot clicked over; seven minutes to
re-entry. Mac James once again appeared asleep. His behavior seemed
inhuman, until Jensen recalled that Marity had docked at Point
Station forty-eight hours before under emergency priorities. By the
grimy, unkempt appearance of the captain's person, he probably had
not slept while he effected repairs on his ship. Jensen himself had
not rested for nearly as long, but excitement and stress had put him
on a jag that precluded relaxation.

At a minute and a half to re-entry, MacKenzie James opened his eyes.
The corpse of his mate lay undisturbed on the deck. Jensen stood at
the analog screen, his gun clenched in anxious fingers. Beneath the
Freer robe, his left hand gripped the keys to the nooses which
secured MacKenzie James with white-knuckled indecision.
    One minute to re-entry; Mac James quietly recommended pressing
the toggle to unshutter the shield generators. Though to do so felt
like capitulation, Jensen did not cling to foolish pride. A suspicion
crossed the young officer's mind, that more of Marity's systems might
be operational than the control monitors indicated. But no time
remained to run cross-checks. The buzzer signalled phase-out of
Marity's autopilot, and the eerie instant of suspension which
heralded transition from FTL to normal space followed after. Jensen
watched the analog screens with taut anticipation.
     Castleton's appeared as a dun ball, mottled gray at the
terminator; the larger of two moons showed as a sliver to dayside,
but Jensen spared the scenery barely a glance. The sensors finished
processing data, and the screen became peppered with silvery specks;
scouts by their formation. Larger shapes nestled among them,
unquestionably cruisers, with a third one tucked away behind the mass
of Castleton's.
     'Godfrey,' Mac James observed, his neck craned awkwardly to
allow a view of the screens. 'They didn't waste time expanding their
strike force, now did they?'
'They might not be Khalia!' Jensen snapped.
     A buzzer clipped his outburst short. Lights flashed warning on
the analog panels, and one of the flecks gained a faint halo of red.
     'Well, Fleet or enemy, boy, one of them is about to fire on
us.' Mac James shrugged irritably at his bonds. 'If you like slavery,
or maybe even vivisection, just keep sitting there doing nothing.'
    Jensen raged, uncertain; Marity's sirens wailed with sudden
violence, her shields crackling under the impact of a hit.
      'Warning rocket,' Mac said tersely. 'Probably they're provoking
to see whether we want a fight. Power up the transmitter, boy.'
Jensen hesitated.
    'Do it now!' barked MacKenzie James, adamant as a Fleet rear
admiral.
    Another red halo bloomed on the analog screen. Jensen slapped the
transmitter switch. The gabble of alien speech that issued from the
speaker caused the last bit of color to drain from his face.
    'Now listen carefully, boy,' said the hell-begotten captain from
the floor. 'Do exactly as I tell you, or we'll both get our guts
ripped out.'
    'You planned this!' Jensen accused, horror sharpening the
immediacy of their peril.
'Yes, now shut the hell up and listen!' MacKenzie said.
    The patter of Khalian changed inflection, and a singsong voice in
poorly pronounced wording began a demand for the surrender of Marity
and all human personnel on board.
    Still clutching pellet gun and keys, Jensen rubbed his hands over
his blanched face.
    'You will surrender my ship to the Khalia,' MacKenzie James
instructed tersely. 'But add that you will submit only to a great

5I
captain, one who has proven his merit. That one, you will say, is the
Khalia cruiser currently in orbit over the night side of
Castleton's.'
Jensen lowered his hands, incredulity spread across his features.
Before he could draw breath to speak, Mac James cut in, 'Just do it!'
    Instead Jensen spun and stabbed each of the firing studs in
frenzied succession. Nothing happened. Marity's weapons remained
utterly unresponsive. Furious that his career should be finished
without a single rocket fired in protest, and whipped by recognition
that no option at all remained to him, Jensen crumbled at last into
panic. 'Why disable the weaponry, man? Why, if you planned this
cruise into an effing Khalian fleet?'
    'I probably wanted to commit suicide.' MacKenzie's vicious
sarcasm jarred like a slap. 'Maybe, though, I'll get slavery or
vivisection instead.'
    A shudder shook Jensen's frame as the voice on the transmitter
changed from a demand for surrender to threats. Rather than be
blasted to vapor, Jensen pressed the toggle to send. He surrendered
Marity and all on board to the Khalia in a voice he barely recognized
as his own. Only as an afterthought did he include MacKenzie James's
stipulation: that prize rights and conquest be awarded to one of
proven merit, the great captain who cruised the dark side of
Castleton's.
    The effect upon the Khalia was profound. By their belligerent and
bloodthirsty reputation, Jensen expected the enemy would converge
upon their prize without delay. Instead, the scout ships clustered
tightly to their respective cruisers; as if locked in deadly
partnership, the closer pair of warships wheeled and advanced upon
the one which even now accelerated from the shadowed side of
Castleton's.
    'They'll challenge,' MacKenzie broke in, answering Jensen's
puzzled frown. 'Khalian war leaders can't bear to defer without a
fight. That lends you a very narrow margin to get this bucket
operational. Which means my release, boy, because this is the only
break you're going to get.'
    Jensen rounded upon the captain. 'You never intended to
surrender!'
    Mac James returned a withering stare. Mollified by a knowledge of
the enemy not even Fleet intelligence could equal, Jensen

52
thumbed the safety toggle off his pellet gun. Then he took the
release key in his other hand, stooped, and unclipped the nooses from
MacKenzie James's feet. The man shifted forward to better expose his
hands; the noose was soaked with blood. Nerves, or tension, or sheer
frustration had caused the skip-runner captain to wrench at his bonds
until his wrists tore open. Jensen keyed the catches, a sick clench
in his gut causing his guard to slip. In that instant, MacKenzie's
elbow hammered upward into his face. A spin and a kick relieved
Jensen of his weapon. The young officer crumpled to his knees.
Feeling as if every knuckle in his hand were broken, he fumbled to
pull the knife he had confiscated earlier.
    Mac James reached it first, and tossed it rattling into a corner.
l)isregarding Jensen completely, he retrieved the fallen gun,
discharged the single round into the stuffed seat of a crew couch,
then hurled the weapon without ceremony down the companionway ladder.
With no break in movement he bent over the opened cowling of the
control panel and furiously began to work.
    Lights flashed to life under the captain's ministrations, casting
baleful light over his frowning features. To Jensen, who moaned
through clenched teeth at his back, he said, 'Clear Evans out of
here, boy. If I trip over him at the wrong moment, some Khalia
butcher'11 hack off your balls.'
    Jensen obeyed to buy time, lull the captain into the belief he
was cowed. Evans's corpse was already cool to the touch, his bulk
limp and awkward to lift. Hampered by his injured hand, Jensen was
forced to drag him. Blood from the dead man's shattered jaw smeared
the white deck. Dizzied with pain from his hand, Jensen choked back a
wave of nausea. He reeled into the nearest crew chair, just as Marity
roared to life. MacKenzie James crowed over the controls like an
elated child. Scarred fingers kicked in the accelerators.
    On the analog screen, the first pair of cruisers closed to do
battle, scout ships circling to one side like swarms of angry bees.
Now and again the bolt of a plasma discharge flicked through the
flashes of heavy rockets.
    'They're pounding themselves to a pulp,' Jensen observed in
amazement.
    'Better hope they do.' MacKenzie twisted a lead, then punched up
Marity's screens. 'The one who's not joining the cockfight will be on
our butt quick, before the survivor calls challenge on him.'

53
    'How do you know?' Jensen hated himself for the admiration which
colored his tone. 'Where did you learn so much about the enemy?'
    MacKenzie never glanced up from the controls. 'Evans could have
told you. Right now, I'm too busy.' He flung himself into the
adjoining pilot's chair, took the helm, and almost immediately Marity
veered.
    Still nauseous, Jensen sought stability in watching the analog
monitor. As the attitude thrusters opened wide, the pared disk of
Castleton's fell away, replaced briefly by space sprinkled with fixed
stars, and the moving points of enemy warcraft. These were eclipsed
in turn by the disk of Castleton's sun; MacKenzie flicked the
stabilizers and banged the heel of his hand down, shoving the gravity
drive into full acceleration.
    Jensen made a sound in protest as several g's of force ground his
body against the crew chair. 'Out of the frying pan,' he managed,
before discomfort forced him silent.
    MacKenzie James said nothing. His profile seemed motionless as
laser-cut quartz in the lights off the monitors as Marity picked up
speed. Fuelled by the gravitational field of Castleton's sun, she
gained velocity at a rate that was frightening. Jensen battled for
equilibrium. He was not the pilot that Shields was, but he could
recognize when safe limits were transgressed. As if his worn old
craft did not hurtle full tilt for annihilation in the fires of a
star, Mac James sat back and flexed his scarred fingers in a manner
that suggested habit. Then, as Marity's course held stable, he shoved
forward against the force of acceleration and busied himself again
with the circuitry.
    'Haven't you done enough ?' Jensen demanded, mostly to distract
himself from fear. With the Khalia behind, and the inferno of
Castleton's star raging forward, what composure he had left was
faked.
    Mac James pulled a wire from the cowling and unceremoniously
stripped it with his teeth. He twisted the bared end into a hook
which he clamped to some unseen contact below. Another panel on
Marity's control boards flickered to light; satisfaction made her
captain expansive. 'You're better endowed with luck than brains, boy.
You're not going to burn. Just maybe you'll be spared the hell of
being bait for Khalia as well.'
He added no explanation. But as the third Khalian warship

54
swung to intercept, the captain responded with hair-raising
innovation. He spun Marity into what seemed a suicidal trajectory
toward Castleton's sun. Like some terrible vulture, the Khalian
cruiser swung into position, shadowing their descent into the
inferno. If Mac James even once tried his drive brake, Marity's
occupants would be weasel meat.
     Jensen masked fright with bravado. 'You're sending yourself to
hell, by way of the inferno.'
     MacKenzie James said' nothing. The staccato buzz of an alarm
sounded, and the control board transformed to a field of warning
lights. Caught in horrified absorption by the star swelling on the
analog screen, Jensen almost forgot the Khalian warship until it
fired.
     The rocket lanced across the screens, violet against the glare
of Castleton's star.
    'My god,' Jensen said angrily. 'Do they believe in miracles, or
what? They may as well vaporize us, for all that we can stop.'
    'They think we're what we seem,' MacKenzie James said softly. 'A
merchanter caught without escort.' He paused, as if that explained
everything. A second Khalian rocket seared across the screens. In the
fitful, flickering light of its passage, the captain seemed to recall
that the man in the crumpled Freer robe who sweated in his crew chair
was not his knowledgeable mate.
    'The Khalia believe that we have chosen suicide rather than be
captured. They fire to salute our courage, for by their honor code,
our action is admirable.'
    Which fit with the accuracy of truth, Jensen reasoned. With a
crushing sense of frustration, he cursed the fact that he could not
return the information to his superiors. Surely such knowledge would
have earned him a commendation and promotion - but the closing
proximity of Castleton's sun foreclosed any chance of survival.
    MacKenzie James seemed peculiarly indifferent to the end his own
subterfuge had created. Hunched like a bear over his controls, he
grinned. 'Watch now.' But the corpse of the mate which oozed by the
companionway showed as much enthusiasm as Jensen. 'In a moment, the
Khalian ship will brake and pull off, just enough so she'll bounce
off the gravity well at a tangent.'
'So what,' Jensen shot back. The captain was crazy; they'd melt

55
just as handily by hydrogen fusion, but the man acted as if he was
ignorant of the fundamental rules of physics.
    'Now,' murmured Mac James. The Khalian cruiser shifted. His
scarred hands moved at the controls, and Marity responded with a roar
like a Chinese dragon. Jensen was tossed backward as her entire aft
quarter opened up into a fireball.
    Jensen saved himself from a bruising fall with the hand Mac James
had injured. Pain exploded like white heat. His head spun and his
vision momentarily went black.
    'We're not a merchanter,' admonished MacKenzie James from the
dark. By the time the officer's eyesight cleared, Marity had burned
into a new trajectory, a searing arc that would carry her into a
parabolic orbit just within survivable limits. This, with an antique
mess of a drive unit that ran on explosive propellants no sane
captain would have such a relic on a space-going vessel.
    'But the quick acceleration is damned handy in a pinch,' the
skiprunner captain said brightly. 'It's saved my butt more than
once.'
    Mac James stretched in his chair, flexing his fingers in a
hellish glare of warning lights and attitude meters. Jensen held his
opinion. Marity might be safe at present, but only by the grace of
surprise. Khalian raiders would be waiting once they rounded
Castleton's sun, and even Mac James's famous cunning was not equal to
combat against a cruiser.
    The skip-runner captain met Jensen's skepticism with a stinging
honesty. 'Boy, your officer's handbook doesn't list every known fact
in the universe. The systems they have are infrared, which happens to
be our salvation, because the emissions from that star out there will
blind them.'
    And it dawned on Jensen then, that both of them were going to
survive. The Khalia believed they had burned. Once eclipsed by
Castleton's star, Marity could hammer her way into escape trajectory
with her anachronistic fusion rockets, then power down. With her
gravity drives turned off, no infrared scope could distinguish her
from an asteroid. Hopelessness and lethargy vanished in a breath. The
pellet gun which Mac James had carelessly tossed down the
companionway became of paramount importance.
    Jensen measured the distance to the opened hatch with his eyes.
The expanse was wider than he liked, particularly since the Freer
robe would encumber him. Still, with Castleton's world and the threat
of the Khalia keeping MacKenzie James preoccupied, there

56
might never be a better opportunity. Jensen gathered his courage and
jumped.
    He completed no more than a step when a weight crashed into his
shoulders from behind. He fell heavily to the deck. At once the
muscled bulk of MacKenzie James bore him down. Jensen countered with
a wrestler's move that should have freed him in short order. Instead
the captain anticipated him, caught his wrist, and twisted. Jensen
cursed, forced to fall limp or scream with the pain of dislocated
joints.
    Just shy of injury, Mac James let up. 'You're trouble,' he said
bluntly. And as though he handled a vicious animal, he rolled and
jerked Jensen upright. The strength in his hands was astonishing.
Very quickly, the Fleet officer found himself noosed and helpless in
the coils of his own restraints.
    'Also, you talk too much,' MacKenzie added. He ripped away the
sash of the Freer robe, pausing as his fingers encountered the bulk
of the transmitter. A wicked flash of amusement touched his features
as he went on and twisted the material into a gag, which he tied
expertly in place. Jensen struggled but gained nothing except cuts on
the ribbon-thin metal of the noose. Shoved into the nearest crew
chair, he glared back as the captain studied him in passionless
silence. The directness of the man's gaze unnerved Jensen as nothing
had before.
    'What chance did you give Evans?' Mac James's voice held a
roughness that might have been grief, except his expression showed no
feeling at all. The captain flexed his ruined fingers, one after
another. Tortured with the certainty his fate was being weighed,
Jensen recognized more than habit in the movement; such exercise had
once restored mobility to hands crippled with coil burns. The driving
persistence of the captain's character abruptly became frightening to
contemplate.
    Jensen closed his eyes, opened them to find the captain watching
him still. The ambition that had driven the attempt at his capture
withered away to diffidence. The gag tasted of sweat and desert spice
and stale saliva, and the sick fear in Jensen's gut coiled tighter by
the minute.
    Aware his captive's composure was crumbling, MacKenzie James
jerked him to his feet and spun him around. 'Evans never did like to
kill,' he said in contempt. 'For that, you'll leave Marity alive.'

57
    But reprieve was not what MacKenzie James had in mind as he
heFted his captive through the companionway. Towed through null
gravity like baggage, Jensen had to writhe ignominiously to keep his
face from banging the bulkheads. The hiss of the lock to the cargo
hold spilled icy air over his skin. Left to drift, the young officer
could not see his captor, but an echoing flurry of footfalls and the
clang of something metallic did little but amplify his apprehension.
Then hard hands caught his legs. His view of the hold spun
horizontally, and through dizziness he glimpsed customs seals and the
opened hatch of the cargo capsule. Then MacKenzie James brutally
started cramming his body inside. Jensen exploded in panic.
    He struggled, and got a bang on the head for his effort. Mac
James shoved his shoulders down. Scarred fingers reached for the
latch.
    Jensen twisted frantically and managed to tear the gag loose.
'Wait!' he said breathlessly. Desperate now, his ambition reduced to
a fool's dream, he begged. 'I could take Evans's place for you!'
Except for the piloting, he was qualified; and he wouldn't defect,
not really. Once he gained MacKenzie's confidence he could alert
Fleet authorities.
    But his proposal met with silence. Shoved protesting into the
cargo capsule, and panicked by the prospect of confinement, Jensen
abandoned his pride. 'Damn you, I'm the son of an Alliance
Councilman! That should be worth enough to hold me for ransom.'
    No spark of greed warmed the eyes of MacKenzie James. Single-
mindedly efficient, he banged the hatch closed over his captive's
head. Jensen kicked out in disbelief and managed to skin both his
knees. The slipped gag constricted his wind. Over his ragged, frantic
breaths came the unmistakable click of latches, the inexorable
deadening of sound as the seals of the container clamped closed. He
banged again, uselessly. He might suffocate, or die of hypothermia in
Marity's unheated cargo hold; surely Mac James would see reason,
contact his father and arrange an exchange of money.
    Jensen felt the capsule bump and rise; through its shell he heard
the unmistakable hiss of a lock. He screamed in uninhibited terror,
then; but nothing prevented the sickening, tumbling fall into
weightlesshess and cold which followed. He curled up, shivering

58
in the bitter end of hope. MacKenzie James had jettisoned him,
living, into deepspace.
    The cargo capsule's seals preserved atmosphere. For awhile its
honeycomb panels would conserve body heat, but with no air supply it
was an even draw whether Jensen would die of asphyxiation, or tumble
back to fry in the fury of Castleton's star. At best, he might be
salvaged alive by a Khalian scout ship. Worst and most galling was
the fact that MacKenzie James went free.
    Jensen shouted in frustration. Unable to forget those coil-
scarred fingers flexing and curling, tirelessly beating the odds, he
longed for one chance to shoot his antagonist, even as he had Evans:
from behind, with no chance for recriminations, just death - fast and
messy and final. But anger only caused the nooses to rip painfully
into his wrists. In time, all passion, all hatred, unravelled into
despair. Jensen's tears soaked the hood of the Freer robe and curled
the dark hair at his temples. After Mac James, he reviled his
disciplinarian father, for stifling his career with the stipulation
that under no circumstances was undue favor to be granted him.
Competence became a sham. Such was the influence of fame and
politics, no board of officers dared to grant promotion without
performance of outstanding merit. One by one, Jensen had seen his
peers advance ahead of him. Balked pride and rebellion had landed him
here, trussed and sealed like flotsam in a cargo capsule. Too late,
and in bitterness, he questioned why the promise of money had failed
to motivate MacKenzie James.
    The air in the capsule quickly became stale. Jensen's thoughts
spiralled downward into a tide of black dizziness. His limbs cramped,
then grew numb; the transmitter in the Freer sash dug relentlessly
into his neck, but he was powerless to ease even this smallest
discomfort. Presently, none of that mattered. Resigned, Jensen
directed his last awareness to cursing MacKenzie James; as
consciousness began to dim, sometimes the name of his father slipped
in ...

Something banged the cargo capsule. Jostled against the side panels,
Jensen heard the whine of grappling hooks. Fear roused him from
lethargy as they clamped and secured his prison. Suffocation seemed a
kindness next to threat of Khalian cruelty; but the young officer
lacked strength to do more than shut his eyes as whatever

59
being had salvaged him popped the capsule's release catches. Clean
air rushed in around the seals, and light fell blindingly across
Jensen's face.
    'I'm surprised he left you alive,' said an acerbic voice he
recognized.
    Jensen started, drew a shuddering breath, and ducked sharply to
hide cheeks still wet from crying. 'My god, how did you know where to
find me?'
    Perfectly groomed, and correct to the last insignia on her
uniform, Ensign Shields regarded him with that whetted edge of
antagonism she had affected since the morning he had compelled her
collaboration in his scheme to capture MacKenzie James. 'Marity's
instruments weren't shielded,' she said at last. 'You're living lucky
for that.'
    Jensen tried to scrub his damp cheeks against his shoulder, and
awkwardly found he couldn't, not with his hands still bound. His
embarrassment changed poisonously to resentment. He faulted himself
bitterly for lacking the presence of mind to note the implications of
Marity's opened instrument panels. Evans had programmed the autopilot
for the FTL jump with the keyboard circuitry wide open to
surveillance; if the scout ship assigned to Shields was not one of
the fancy, new brain models, she still carried a full complement of
electronics. 'You read our destination coordinates from our tempest
signal,' Jensen murmured, shamed by memory of Mac James's amusement
as he allowed the transmitter to remain twisted into the Freer sash.
The captain had known then that his victim would be rescued. He must
have considered Jensen a fool, harmless or incompetent enough to be
no risk if he were set free.
    'Maybe not so lucky after all.' Shields shoved the cargo capsule
over, interrupting Jensen's thoughts and spilling him ignominiously
onto the courier ship's lock platform. 'You'll wish you'd died in
deep-space when our dispatches come in late. Serve you right if the
old man himself calls you onto the carpet.'
    Stung by more than humility, Jensen twisted until he gained a
view of his shipmate's eyes. 'Play things right, and we'll get a
commendation.'
    Shields stepped back. Rare anger pinched her face; Jensen had
never thought her pretty, but she had slenderness, and a certain
grace of movement that had half the guys back at base off their
feed. 'You're obsessed, Jensen. Commendation for what? You've been an
overambitious jackass and now, finally, the brass in Fleet command
will know it too.'
    Jensen made a vicious effort to sit up; but the nooses cut into
his wrists, and he gave up with a curse at the pain. 'You'll go down
with me,' he threatened. 'As my senior officer, piloting a Fleet
dispatch courier off course calls for court-martial, not a dressing
down.'
    He heard Shields's sharp intake of breath, and could not look at
her. Once he might have veiled his threats in gentler language; but
now, the cruelly injured dignity inspired by MacKenzie James impelled
him to roughness. 'Don't be a stupid bitch.' But he couldn't quite
bring himself to finish; by the whirely locked knuckles of Shields's
hands he saw he did not have to mention her brother, who was ill and
under treatment in an Alliance medical facility, a benefit of her
enrollment in the Fleet. Should she be discharged now, he would lose
his benefits. But pity came second to necessity. Ambition and his
driving desire to command a vessel that carried weapons instead of
dispatches cut with a need like agony. Coldly Jensen outlined his
alternative.

The dome at Port was packed to capacity on the day the citations were
read. Banners overhung the stage where the Fleet high command were
seated. At attention alongside Ensign Shields, Jensen surreptitiously
checked his uniform for creases. Finding none, he stood very still,
savoring the moment as the speaker at the podium recited his list of
achievements.
    '... commendation for bravery; for innovative escape tactics,
when asked at gunpoint to surrender to three Khalian warships, which
imagination_ and daring in the face of danger has resulted in the
furtherance of Fleet knowledge of enemy behavior; for performance
above and beyond the call of duty, these two young officers will be
promoted in rank, and be decorated with the Galactic Cross ...'
    Shields went very white when the Admiral laid the ribbon with the
medal over her shoulders. She shook his hand stiffly, and looked away
from the cameras when the press popped flashes to record the event.
    Jensen also stood stiffly, but for very different reasons. Warmed
by his father's proud smile, he reflected that the story they had

6i
presented to Fleet command had held as many half-truths as lies; the
tactics which had brought word of the takeover at Castleton's had
been real enough, though only Shields and he knew they had originated
with the wiliest skip-runner in Alliance space. The weight of the
Galactic Cross which hung from his neck carried no implications of
guilt; at last granted the command of a scout ship with armament,
Jensen swore he would redeem his honor. One day MacKenzie James was
going to regret the humiliation he had inflicted upon a young officer
of the Fleet. Jensen intended to rise fast and far. In time he would
retaliate, find means to bring down the antagonist who had bested
him. The honors he took credit for now were only a part of that plan.
Tale of the Snowbeast

That year, the season of white cold was worse than any elf in the
holt could remember. The storage nooks were empty of the last nuts
and dried fruit; and still the wind blew screaming through bare
branches while snow winnowed deep into drifts in the brush and the
hollows between trees. Huddled beneath the weight of a furdined
tunic, Huntress Skyfire paused and leaned on her bow.
    'Hurry up! It's well after daylight, past time we were back to
the holt.'
A soft whine answered her.
    Chilled, famished, and tired of foraging on game trails that
showed no tracks, Skyfire turned and looked back. Her companion wolf,
Woodbiter, hunched with his tail to the wind, gnawing at the ice
which crusted the fur between his pads.
    'Oh, owl pellets, again?' But Skyfire's tone reflected chagrin
rather than annoyance. She laid aside her bow, stripped off her
gloves, and knelt to help the wolf. 'You're an unbelievable nuisance,
you know that?'
Woodbiter sneezed, snow flying from his muzzle.
    'This is the second night we come back empty-handed.' Skyfire
blew on reddened hands, then worked her fingers back into chilled
gloves. Woodbiter whined again as she rose, but did not bound ahead.
Neither did he hunt up a stick to play games; instead he trotted down
the trail, his bushy tail hung low behind. Hunger was wearing even
his high spirits down. Skyfire retrieved her bow in frustration. The
tribe needed game, desperately; the Wolfriders were all too thin, and
though the cubs were spared the largest portions, lately the youngest
had grown sickly. Tonight, Skyfire decided, she would range farther
afield, for plainly the forest surrounding the holt was hunted out.

63
    A gust raked the branches, tossing snow like powder over
Skyfire's head. She tugged her leather cap over her ears, then froze,
for something had moved in the brush. Woodbiter stopped with his tail
lifted and his nose held low to the ground; by his stance Skyfire
knew he scented game, probably a predator which had left its warm den
to forage for mice in a stand of saplings. Skyfire slipped an arrow
by slow inches from her quiver. She nocked it to her bowstring and
waited, still as only an elf could be.
    The shadow moved, a forest cat half-glimpsed through blown snow.
Skyfire released a shot so sure that even another elf might envy her
skill; and by Woodbiter's eager whine knew that he scented blood. Her
arrow had flown true.
    But unlike the usual kill, her companion wolf did not rush
joyfully to share the fruits of their hunting. Woodbiter obediently
held back, for in times of intense hardship, game must be returned to
the holt for all of the tribe to share. Skyfire elbowed her way
through the saplings, grumbling a little as snow showered off the
branches and spilled down her neck. She picked up the carcass and
felt the bones press sharply through the thick fur of its coat. Half-
starved itself, the cat was a pathetic bundle of sinew; it would
scarcely fill the belly of the youngest of the cubs. Skyfire sighed
and worked her arrow free. She permitted Woodbiter to lick the blood
from the shaft. Then, as wind chased the snow into patterns under her
boots, she pushed her catch into her game bag and resumed her trek to
the holt.
    She arrived exhausted from pushing through the heavy drifts.
Breathless, chilled, and wanting nothing more than to curl up in her
hollow and sleep, she unslung her game bag. Shadows speared across
the packed snow beneath the trees that sheltered the holt; but the
tribe did not sleep, as Skyfire expected. Elves and wolves clustered
around the blond-haired form of Two-Spear, who was chief. Closest to
him were his tight cadre of friends, including Graywolf, Willowgreen,
and sour-tempered Stonethrower.
    Skyfire frowned. Why should Two-Spear call council at this hour,
if not to take advantage of her absence? The chief might be her
sibling, but to a sister who liked her hunts direct and her kills
clean, Two-Spear's motives sometimes seemed dark and murky, as a pool
that had stood too long in shadow. And his policies were dangerous.
Elves had died for his hot-headed raids upon the humans in the past,
and the chance he might even now be hatching

64
another such reckless solution for the hunger which currently beset
the tribe made Skyfire forget her weariness. Woodbiter sensed the
mood of his companion. He pressed against her hip, whining softly as
she pitched her game bag into the snow.
    A younger elf on the fringes turned at the sound. Called Sapling
for her slim build, her face lit up in welcome. 'You're late,' she
said, cheerful despite the fact that hunger had transformed her
slender grace to gauntness.
    It was unfair, thought Skyfire, that lean times should fall
hardest upon the young. She pushed the game bag with her toe, trying
to lighten her own mood. 'I'm late because of this.' Then, as
Sapling's thin face showed more hope than a single, underfed forest
cat warranted, she forced herself to add, 'Which was hardly worth the
risk.'
    Sapling paused, her hand on the strap of the game bag, and a
wordless interval passed. Dangerous though it was for an elf to fare
alone during daylight, when men were abroad and chances of capture
increased, the game in the bag was too sorely needed to be spurned.
'The other hunters made no kills at all,' Sapling pointed out.
    The admiration in her tone embarrassed; brusquely, Skyfire said,
'Is that why Two-Spear called council?'
    Sapling hefted the game bag. 'He plans to send a hunting party
deeper into the forest than elves have ever gone, to look for stag.'
    Which was wise, Skyfire reflected; except that all too frequently
Two-Spear's intentions resulted in discord and chaos. Frowning, she
pulled off her cap, freeing the red-gold hair which had earned her
name. 'I think I had better go along,' she said softly. And leaving
the game with Woodbiter and Sapling, she stepped boldly toward the
clustered members of the tribe.
    Her approach was obscured by the taller forms of the few high
ones whose blood had not mixed with the wolves, yet Two-Spear saw
her. He stopped speaking, and other heads turned to follow his
glance. 'Skyfire!' said her brother. 'We were just wondering where
you were.'
    Skyfire endured the bite of sarcasm in his tone. She looked to
Willowgreen, and received a faint shake of the head in reply; no.
Two-Spear was not in one of his rages. But at his side, the half-wild
eyes of Graywolf warned her to speak with care. 'I wish to go with
the hunting party, brother.'

65
    'You went with the hunting party last night,' Two-Spear said
acidly. He tossed back fair hair and shrugged. 'Yet again, you
returned alone. In strange territory, that habit could endanger us.'
    Skyfire bridled, but returned no malice; the carcass in her game
bag was too scrawny as a boast to prove her success on the trail.
Instead she sought a reply that might ease the rivalry that seemed
almost daily to widen the breach between herself and this brother who
was chief; above anything she did not want to provoke a challenge.
The white cold made difficulties enough without elf contending
against elf within the tribe. Still her thoughts did not move fast
enough.
    Sapling came hotly to her defense, calling from the edge of the
council. 'The Huntress brought us game! She was the only Wolfrider to
return with any meat.'
    Skyfire gritted her teeth, embarrassed afresh as hungry, eager
pairs of eyes all focused past her. Jostled as tribe-mates pushed by
to crowd around Sapling and the pathetic bundle in the game bag, she
hid her discomfort by pressing her hair back into her cap. Aware only
of Two-Spear's sharp laugh, she missed seeing Graywolf part the
drawstrings. The bloody, bone-skinny cat was held aloft, a trophy of
her prowess for all the tribe to see.
    Yet hunger robbed the mockery of insult; and even the tribe elder
who had taught her dared not mock her affinity for the hunt. When the
vote was cast, Skyfire found her name included in the party of seven
that would seek new territory to forage. That satisfied her, though
the choice of Two-Spear's henchman, Stonethrower, as leader of the
foray pleased her not at all.
    The kill was skinned, then divided among the youngest cubs.
Emulating Skyfire, Sapling tried to refuse her portion, until the
focus of her admiration sternly instructed her to eat. At last, bone-
weary, the finest huntress in the tribe since Prey-Pacer retired to
her hollow and curled deep in her furs. The only things she noticed
before she fell asleep were the dizzy lassitude of extreme hunger,
and the snarls of the wolf-pack as they fought over the forest cat's
entrails. The sound gave rise to discordant dreams, in which she
faced her brother over the honed points of the twin spears he carried
always at his side ...

66
'Get up, sister.'
    Skyfire opened her eyes as the fair head of her brother tilted
through the entrance to her hollow beneath the upper fork of the
central tree. His eyes were blue, and too bright, like sky reflected
in ice. 'You promised to hunt down the grandfather of all stags,
remember? Stonethrower is waiting for you.'
    Stung by the fact that this was the first time since she had been
a cub that her brother had succeeded in catching her asleep, Skyfire
peeled aside her sleeping furs. She reached for laces and stag fleece
to bind her legs against the cold. 'Tell Stonethrower to sharpen that
old flint knife he carries. I'll be ready before he's finished.' But
her retort fell uselessly upon emptiness; Two-Spear had already
departed.
    The worse ignominy struck when she emerged, arrows and quiver
hooked awkwardly over one arm while she struggled to lace her jerkin.
Her other hand strove and failed to contain the brindled fur of her
storm cape. She hooked a toe in the trailing hem and nearly fell out
of the great tree before she realized that sunset still stained a sky
framed by buttresses of black branches; the cleared ground beneath
was empty of all but the presence of her brother. In all likelihood,
Stonethrower was still in the arms of his lifemate.
    Hunger made it difficult for Skyfire to control her annoyance.
With forced deliberation, she sat on the nearest tree limb and began
to retie the bindings that haste had caused her to lace too tightly.
She pulled the chilly weight of the cloak over her shoulders and hung
her quiver and bow. Then, hearing Stonethrower shout from below, she
rose and grimly climbed down. By the time her feet sank into the
snowdrifts beneath, her temper had entirely dissolved. Woodbiter had
bounded up to nose at her hand, and her thoughts turned toward game,
and thrill of the coming hunt.
    The hunters gathered quickly after that. But unlike more
prosperous times, as the afterglow faded and twilight deepened over
the forest, they did not laugh or chatter. Their wolves did not whine
with eagerness, but stood steady as riders mounted. Then, Graywolf
with his unnaturally silent tread breaking the trail, seven elves
departed with hopes of finding meat for a starving tribe.
    Night deepened, and the cold bit fiercely through gloves and
furs. Fingers ached and toes grew slowly numb. Yet the elves made no
complaint. Generations of survival in the wilds had

67
made them hardy and resilient as the wolf-pack that shared their
existence. Beasts and riders traveled silently through the dark while
the wind hissed and slashed snow against their legs. The weather was
changing. Though stars gleamed like pinpricks through velvet, the air
had a bite that warned of storm.
    Skyfire did not travel at the fore, as was her wont; on foot, to
spare Woodbiter the stress of carrying her when his ribs pressed
through his coat, she hung back toward the rear of the line. These
woods were barren of game, and she preferred to contain her eagerness
until the holt lay well behind.
    Yet even starvation could not entirely curb Woodbiter's high
spirits. He cavorted like a cub through the snow drifts, snapping at
twigs to show off his strong jaws. Skyfire smiled at his antics, but
did not join his play. She dreamed instead of green leaves, and the
fat, juicy haunch of a freshly killed stag.
    Clouds rolled in before dawn, flat and leaden with the threat of
snow. In the hush that preceded the storm, Skyfire sensed movement
behind her on the trail. She paused, a shadow among the snow-draped
boles of the trees. The other elves passed on out of sight ahead.
Skyfire held her ground, and again the faintest scrape of leather on
bark reached her ears; someone followed. Not a human; the tracker
moved too skillfully to be anything but an elf. Tense, and troubled,
and wondering whether Two-Spear's madness had progressed to the point
of setting spies after his own hunting parties, Skyfire bided her
time.
    After a short wait, an elf emerged between tl~e trees, thickly
muffled in furs, and moving with the stealth of a stalker. Huntress
Skyfire did not wait to identify, but sprang at once on the
unsuspecting follower. Her victim squealed sharply in surprise. Then
momentum bore both of them down into a snowdrift. The tussle which
followed was savage and sharp, brought to an end when Skyfire pinned
the other elf's neck firmly beneath the shaft of her bow. Her cap was
knocked askew; enough snow had fallen down her collar to put fire in
her temper as she shook the hair free of her eyes to view her catch.
    A merry face with tousled dark curls grinned up from a pillow of
snow.
    'Sapling!' Skyfire raised her bow, angry now for a different
reason. Two-Spear's recklessness had provoked the humans to boldness;
often now they set snares for unwary Wolfriders. And

68
Sapling was still almost a cub, having yet to shedher child-name for
the one she would earn as an adult. 'What are you doing following the
hunters?'
     Sapling sat up, the hollows carved by famine accentuated in the
growing light. 'I wented to be with you.'
     Skyfire turned her back, arms folded, and her cap still crooked
upon her head. 'You're lucky the humans didn't catch you instead.'
She spun then, and glared at her young admirer. 'You know they caught
Thornbranch. They burned him. You're not too young to remember.'
    Sapling scuffed at snow with her toes. She seemed more
embarrassed than cowed by the reprimand. Tall, now, as her mentor,
Skyfire was forced to realize that little remained of the cub who had
once tugged at her tunic. Sapling had nearly grown up. If she had
tracked this far without drawing notice, she would not disturb the
game, and she would be safer with the hunters than on a return trek
to the holt.
    'All right.' Skyfire set her cap straight with a hard look at her
junior. 'If you dare to track your elders, then you can act like
one.'
Sapling's face lighted up. '! can stay?'
    'That's for Stonethrower to decide.' Skyfire hooked her bow over
her shoulder. 'Now, come on.'
    Dawn brightened steadily as the two elves followed the trail of
the others. Clouds lowered over the blown tops of the trees, and the
air smelled of storm. Wisely, the Wolfriders had chosen to sleep out
the day in a hollow by a frozen waterfall. By the time Skyfire and
her companion found them, an enterprising elder had broken the ice to
hunt for fish. The others had rolled in their furs, pressed close to
the wolves for warmth, except for Stonethrower.
    'You dallied, but not to hunt game this time,' he commented as
Skyfire appeared with Sapling in tow.
    Yet his sarcasm was wasted on Huntress Skyfire. Woodbiter had not
answered her call, and a swift review of the pack revealed the fact
that he was not present. Owl pellets, she thought; with Sapling now
under her care, the last thing she needed was that wolf getting into
another scrape. Feeling the cold, the hunger, and all the weariness
of the night's march, she met Stonethrower's dark glance.
'Woodbiter's not with the pack.'
The older elf shrugged. 'He ran off ahead of the others. Like you so
often will.'
    Skyfire bit back a retort. Instead, she closed her eyes and sent,
seeking that pattern of awareness that was uniquely Woodbiter's. She
found nothing. Alarmed, she put urgency into her call; and the wolf-
consciousness that answered showed a thicket of briar and hazel, shot
through with fear and the terrible, burning pain of a pinched leg.
    'Woodbiter's in trouble!' Skyfire freed her bow. She tensed like
a wild thing, ready to run and aid her wolf.
    But Stonethrower stepped squarely in her path. 'There's a storm
coming. You gave Two-Spear your word that you wouldn't be going off
alone.'
    At this, Skyfire felt a soft nudge from Sapling. Warmed suddenly
by the presence of a friend, she smiled. 'But ~won't be alone.
Sapling will come with me.'
Stonethrower narrowed his eyes, and sent, ':' ':'She doesn't belong
here. * *
    ú 'I know,':":' Skyfire returned. ':":'What are you going to do
about it?':":'
    $tonethrower considered the young elf at the Huntress's side; he
also thought upon other instructions that Two-Spear had given
concerning the sister who always found ways to evade the will of her
chief. 'I'll go with you,' he said at last.
    In other circumstances, Skyfire would surely have argued against
taking her brother's henchman along. But Woodbiter was in pain; for
that she would brook no delay. She sprang into the forest, Sapling a
shadow at her heels, even as Stonethrower moved to gather his
weapons. He had to run to catch up. Though day was fully come, the
wood seemed dim, gray with the threat of a gathering storm.
    Gusts rattled the branches like bones overhead, and the first
flakes whirled and stung the faces of the elves who hastened to
Woodbiter's aid. Soon the snow fell more thickly, the surrounding
trees veiled in white; even $tonethrower appreciated the forest
instincts for which Huntress Skyfire was renowned. She led her
companions without error through a tortuous maze of ravines. Once her
keen ears caught the chuckle of current beneath an ice-covered
stream; and only swift reflex saved Sapling from a dunking. Although
$tonethrower questioned the wisdom of

7o
continuing with the weather against them, a glance at Skyfire's face
forestailed any comment. The green of her eyes shone with a clear,
fierce anger that elves who hunted with her had seen only once
before, and that the time Woodbiter's mate had been killed by a human
hunter.
    For by now they had come far enough that the wolf's sending
became clear enough to interpret. Skyfire gripped her bow until her
knuckles whitened and said, 'He is caught in a trap, the sort that
humans set to break the legs of foxes.' She paused, and as an
afterthought added, 'We have not far to go.'
    Skyfire drew ahead, then, despite the efforts of Sapling and
Stonethrower to keep up. They followed breathlessly, twisting past
trees gray and scabbed with ice, through hollows where the wind
howled like a mad thing, and over snowdrifts spread like snares for
unwary feet. Sooner than either elf thought possible, they came upon
the Huntress, bent upon one knee in a depression
between a steep bank and the roots of a twisted tree.'Look,' she said
without turning.
    Stonethrower and Sapling crowded closer, and saw the track of a
huge beast, oval-shaped, with evidence of a pointy claw at one end.
The snow fell less thickly in the shelter of the draw; the track,
though not fresh, was plainly discernible as something not made by
chance.
    'What is it?' asked Sapling, more than a little scared. The track
was wider than four handspans, and half as long as her spear.
    Skyfire frowned, and Stonethrower knuckled his beard, a habit he
had when something distressed him. No Wolfrider had ever seen
anything like such tracks, and quick sending among them established
understanding they were troubled. A beast that size was bound to be
dangerous.
Stonethrower quietly suggested they turn back.
    Frightened herself, but driven by loyalty to Woodbiter, Skyfire
regarded him with the contempt she usually reserved for humans. 'Why
should we? Are you afraid to go on?'
    Swirling snow and the wail of wind through the draw filled a
tense interval. Then, without speaking, Skyfire whirled and continued
on. Sapling accompanied her. Left an untenable implication,
Stonethrower followed after; but under his breath he muttered that
Skyfire's belief that Two-Spear's reckless ways would eventually lead
the tribe to ruin was an unbalanced accusation at best. In the

7I
opinion of the older elf, the sister was as stubborn as the brother,
which was precisely why the two were continually at odds.
    The draw deepened, narrowing into a defile where snow fell
thinly, and then only when driven by odd eddies of wind. The prints
of the strange beast showed plainly upon the faces of the drifts.
Skyfire followed, nervous, but insistent the place of Woodbiter's
captivity lay very near at hand. The elves labored through deeper and
deeper drifts, sometimes sinking to their waists. The terrible tracks
kept pace with them, even when the cleft of the gully widened and
they found the wolf, crouched in the open and chewing at his bloody
right hind pad.
    No one rushed forward with joy. The tracks here were many, and
thickest, and plainly associated with the snare. Perhaps they were
made by monstrous, splayfooted humans, or bears with terrible
cubming. But Skyfire refused to be cowed. She scouted the area with a
thoroughness even Stonethrower respected. Then, borrowing Sapling's
spear, she advanced into the clearing and bent at the side of the
injured wolf.
    **Steady,** she sent. Woodbiter whined, but he stopped struggling
as his companion knelt at his side. Gently she scraped away the snow,
felt through wet and matted hair to assess the injuries to her
friend. The trap which held him was primitive. Green, springy sticks
of sharpened wood had clamped his leg just above the first joint,
strong enough to tear the skin and confine, but not to break bones.
Angry enough to kill, Skyfire steadied Woodbiter's leg in one strong
hand. Then, using Sapling's spear as a lever, she forced the sticks
apart.
    Woodbiter jerked free with a yelp. Trembling from his ordeal, he
leaned against Skyfire, nosing her hair and ears in appreciation. Yet
his friend did not respond with scolding for his carelessness, as she
might have done another time. Instead, leaning on Sapling's spear,
she stared at the perfect, reddened paw prints pressed into new snow
by Woodbiter's limping steps. She ran her tongue over her teeth. With
her wolf safe, now was the prudent time to start back to the stream
where the other hunters had camped. But something too deep to deny
rejected the safety of retreat.
    Stonethrower arrived at her shoulder. Though impatient to be off,
he did not intrude upon Skyfire's mood; instead he knelt beside her
and with the flint knife he had once stolen from a camp of humans,
began methodically to hack the water-hardened thongs
which bound a collection of green branches into a deadly snare for
the forest-born.
    Skyfire spoke as the last bent bough whipped straight, then
snapped between Stonethrower's thick fists. Her tone was cold as the
wind that hammered snow through the branches beyond the shelter of
the draw where they stood. 'I'm going after them.'
    Stonethrower cast away a snarl of severed thongs. 'That's folly.
You saw the tracks. Whatever creature set this snare is large, and
clever, too much for an elf.'
    Skyfire curled her lip. 'Larger, yes, but not so fierce, I think.
Only cowardly beings like humans ever set traps for animals.' 'But
Two-Spear said -' began Stonethrower, only to be cut off. 'Two-Spear
isn't here. His wolf did not lie bloody in a trap for half a night.'
Skyfire jabbed the spear into the ground hard enough that ice
scattered from the butt. 'Are you stopping me?'
    Stonethrower met her angry eyes, his hand tightened on the haft
of his flint knife. 'I should.' But he made no move to do so as
Skyfire spun away and continued down the gully. Woodbiter whined and
followed, and Sapling did likewise, too young to know any better.
    Stonethrower went along as well, out of duty to his chief, but he
regretted that decision almost immediately. The wind bit like the
hatred of the humans, and the tracks, half-obscured by blown snow,
were soon joined by a second set, and then a third; the new prints
were twice the size of the first ones.
    Skyfire stopped to test the tension of her bowstring, and Sapling
wordlessly took back her spear. Stonethrower tried to resume his
argument, then waited, as he realized that the Huntress herself was
deaf to any spoken word. Deep in communion with her wolf, she waited
while Woodbiter applied his keen nose to the frightening tracks in
the snow.
    The effort was a vain one; freezing wind had long since scoured
any scent from the trail. On nearby twigs the wolf detected faint
traces of resin, but the smell was unfamiliar to his experience, and
to the elves as well. Unable to imagine this beast as anything but
huge and dangerous, even the boldest of the four companions hesitated
while the snow whirled and stung their exposed faces.
    'We should go back,' Stonethrower repeated. 'The others should be
warned that this part of the forest is unsafe for elves.' Skyfire
stood poised, her hand less than steady on her bow. Then,
suddenly resolved, she said, 'No. Danger to us is danger to the holt.
And the snow makes good cover. I say we follow these tracks and find
out what sort of beast sets traps that snare wolves.'
    Her tone would brook no compromise. And unlike her brother, who
was chief, Skyfire was not susceptible to counter-argument, or
cajoling, or flattery. Once she made up her mind, she stuck to her
purpose like flint. Stonethrower had a scar to remind him, for when
she had been a cub, he had once scooped her off some sharp rocks in a
streambed when the current had swept her young legs out from beneath
her. He remembered how she had sulked because he had refused to let
her attempt another crossing at the same site. If anything, her
determination had grown with her years, and Woodbiter's limp made her
angry and dangerous to cross. Quite likely Huntress Skyfire herself
was fiercer than the great beast she tracked, the older elf concluded
as the others set off once more. But his attempt at humor failed as
snow chased itself in eddies down his collar, and his fingers numbed
on the flint haft of his knife.
    The gully narrowed and widened, then opened into a frozen expanse
of marsh. Wind rattled through ranks of frost-killed reeds, the
tracks now showing through a swath of crushed stalks. Here and there
a softened patch of bog had frozen the imprints intact. Woodbiter
sniffed and snarled, and favored his hurt leg. Only Skyfire and
Sapling seemed unaffected by the bleakness of the landscape, the
former warmed by her desire for redress, and the latter, by the
thrill of being away from the holt on her very first adventure.
Stonethrower endured in dour silence, and almost rammed into the
thong-laced tip of Skyfire's bow as she stopped
without warning and pointed.'Do you see that?'
    Stonethrower looked where she indicated and felt his heart miss a
beat. The snow had slowed, almost stopped, and rising above the ridge
he saw blown smudges of smoke; where there are fires, the old adage
ran, there are always humans. Worse, the fearsome tracks led off in
the same direction.
    Sapling jabbed her spear-butt ringingly into the ground. Skyfire
tested the points on her darts, each one with singular care. This
once Stonethrower did not argue when the sister of the chief
suggested they scout out the size of the camp on the ridge. Though
the site lay outside the Wolfriders' usual hunting ground, no humans

74
holt.
~ and

~ther,
nent,
:k to
him,
arlle
ung
ked
the
lrs,

ss.

~,at
fff

ft

had inhabited this portion in past memory. The fact that giant,
splayfooted ones did now might threaten the entire holt.
    Grimly, three elves and one companion wolf started forward. The
bare ice of the marsh offered little concealment, which obliged them
to go carefully. Only the wolf spoke, soft, high whines of uneasiness
at the scent of the humans on the wind. The elves moved in silence,
absorbed in their own thoughts. Skyfire squinted often at the fire-
smoke and wondered what game the humans might have caught in their
traps besides the unfortunate Woodbiter. Sapling tagged at her heels,
excited to be included, but wary and nervous. Over and over she tried
to imagine what sort of creature had walked over the snow to lead
them here. The tracks were fearsomely large, yet they crossed the
deepest drifts seemingly without miring; that humans might use
strange beasts to tend their traplines seemed dangerous and cruel to
an elf brought up to love the thrill of the live hunt.
    Stonethrower did not think of men or fearsome beasts. Instead he
considered Two-Spear, whose dark, fierce temper did not run to
temperance. He believed all humans existed to be battled, and likely
this camp would merit no exception. A message must be sent back to
the holt, and at the soonest opportunity, the older elf decided. Yet
he mentioned nothing of this as he set foot in Skyfire's boot tracks
and began his ascent of the ridge.
    The elves climbed, buffeted by gusts that were barbed with ice
driven off the flatlands below. Even the least experienced, Sapling,
blended invisibly with rocks, hummocks, and tree boles. Soon

the three lay flat on their bellies at the white puffs of their
breaths mingling with Of SIlOW.

crest of the rise, the the last, thinning veils

    The air smelled of smoke. Woodbiter growled low, almost
soundlessly, while the others gazed upon tents of laced hides, and
fires beyond counting. Noisy packs of humans trod the snow to mire in
between, more humans than the elves of Two-Spear's holt could have
imagined existed in the whole of the world of two moons. The men
carried weapons, spears, and flint axes and shields of hide-covered
wood. Their cloaks were shiny with grease, and their cheeks dark
hollows of starvation. No game roasted over the fires, but small
children huddled close to them for warmth, too starved and dispirited
to cry.
Huntress Skyfire pushed herself back from the crest and rolled

75
on her back. Her green eyes stared sightlessly at sky. 'They, too,
lack game. No doubt that's why they're on the move.' Stonethrower
offered no comment.
    But Sapling said, 'I saw no beasts among them, not one in the
entire camp.'
    Skyfire rolled onto one elbow and eyed her keenly. 'That's
true.' She smiled, more with relief than humor. 'I don't think beasts
made such tracks. Come look.'
    The two of them wormed back toward the crest, noses all but
buried in the snow. Silently, Skyfire pointed, and Sapling saw large,
wooden frames with sinew laces interwoven between. The middles had
lacings; and a moment later, when a band of human scouts entered the
camp from the east, they wore the same devices strapped to their
feet. Sapling stifled a giggle. Obviously, the heavier humans needed
such clumsy things to keep from miring in the snowdrifts,
inconvenient though they would be for walking or running with any
speed or stealth.
    'No wonder they catch no game,' she whispered to Skyfire, then
turned, only to discover the Huntress had retreated back down the
slope and was engaged in a subdued, but heated argument with
Stonethrower.
    'Two-Spear must not be told!' she whispered emphatically. 'I
agree the humans offer threat, but we cannot fight so many and hope
to survive. Better the entire holt moves to another part of the
forest than have everyone killed in a war.'
    'Now look who's talking of running!' Stonethrower glared at the
redheaded sister who was so like, and yet so different from the
brother who held his loyalty.
    Uneasy to be holding a confrontation so near an encampment of
humans, Skyfire tilted her head to one side in a way that never
failed to endear. 'At least wait until nightfall before starting back
to inform the other hunters,' she pleaded. 'Woodbiter's lame, and all
of us could use a few hours of rest.'
    Stonethrower grunted through clenched teeth, but offered no
further argument as the three descended the slope. The snowfall
thickened again as the Wolfriders crossed the marsh, icy flakes
rattling among the dead stalks of the reeds and whispering across
bare ice. Finding a sheltered place to spread sleeping furs took
longer than any of them anticipated. Weary, and weakened still more
from hunger, Skyfire and Sapling fell immediately asleep.
Neither was aware that Stonethrower sat brooding and awake. By the
time he rose and slipped soundlessly into the storm, not even
Woodbiter noticed, dreaming as he was of game, with his nose tucked
under his brush, and his injured paw curled carefully beneath.

Sundown came with snow still falling, and the light failed swiftly,
turning the forest the gray on gray of winter twilight. Skyfire
dreamed the dry crack of snapping bones as humans decimated the holt
of the Wolfriders. She jerked awake. Snow fiurried from her furs, and
she took a moment to orient. Sapling still slept, but the snap of the
bones was real enough; not handspans past her still form stretched
Woodbiter, the rich scent of blood on his muzzle.
    'Where did you get that?' demanded Skyfire, eyeing the meat
between his paws with an envy impossible to hide.
    Woodbiter blinked, a flash of triumph in his light eyes. He sent
a confused flurry of images, and through them Skyfire gathered that
he had learned the secret of the humans' traps; this kill, or at
least this portion, had been stolen from one of them.
    'You rogue!' Skyfire's merry laugh caused Sapling to stir from
her furs. 'If that's a haunch of stag, the least you can do is
share.'
    Woodbiter rose with the grace of a sated predator, a grace that
bordered upon disdain for the rag of meat he had spared for his
companions. Still smiling, Skyfire shook Sapling's shoulder and said,
'Look, we have something to eat before we must go into the cold and
dodge humans.'
    Sapling sat up and stretched. 'Where's Stonethrower?' she said,
and came swiftly alert as Skyfire's green eyes narrowed to slits. The
hollow where they camped was empty, but for the two of them and the
one wolf. Stonethrower was gone.
    'He'll be running to fetch Two-Spear, like an owl after mice.'
Skyfire slung on her bow and quiver, anger infused in her very
motions. 'That means you and I have to think very fast, and find a
way to send these humans packing out of this section of forest!'
'What about Woodbiter's catch?' demanded Sapling.
    The reply came brisk as Skyfire shook snow from her cap and
jammed it over her hair. 'We'll eat on the move. Come on!'
    The elves slipped out into the bracing twilight chill, the wolf a
shadow at their heels. They stole from tree trunk to thicket to

77
thornbrake, wary of leaving tracks for humans to find. Once they had
to duck into cover as a party of hunters passed by, returning to camp
after checking their traps. The humans walked unaware they were
watched from cover, or that the devices they wore strapped to their
feet to make going in snow less clumsy were a marvel to beings more
nimble than they.
    Skyfire chewed thoughtfully on a strip of stag meat for a long
while after the hunters had gone. Wary of her mood, and striving not
to fidget for the first time in her young life, Sapling waited while
the woodland slowly darkened. The clouds thinned and parted, leaving
the night all velvet and silver with moonlight.
    At last Skyfire stirred. 'We have no choice. We'll have to
investigate the humans' camp by ourselves.'
    At once Sapling feared the Huntress would forbid her to go
forward into danger; but Skyfire only tested the tautness of her
bowstring and looked levelly at her young companion. 'Can you move as
quietly as a wolf?'
    Sapling nodded. At Woodbiter's eager whine, she and Skyfire crept
from the thicket and tracked the humans' strange footsteps. Moving
swiftly, and in silence, the elves overtook the trappers before long;
careful to remain out of sight, they followed closely as they dared.
    Apparently the hunting had been poor, for the humans grumbled
constantly as they shuffled over the drifts on their strange
footgear. Skyfire and Sapling caught snatches of cursing between
descriptions' of traps raided by fierce wolves. In time, the first
group of hunters was joined by a second party, which reported another
snare tripped and tampered with by some woodland demon with three
fingers. Wolf-signs had been seen at that site also, and when the
first band of humans heard this, they made signs to Gotara, and
looked often over their shoulders. Without comfort, the elves noted
that curses shifted to threats. They ducked unobtrusively behind a
fallen log while their enemies drew ahead, a huddle of knotty
silhouettes against the moonlit ice of the swamp.
'What do you think they'll do?' whispered Sapling.
    Skyfire silenced her with a gesture, listening intently as the
loud-voiced leader of the humans shouted querulously to the others.
'And I say this camp is ill-favored! We must continue south at
daybreak, and seek the lands that our prophet has promised.'
Skyfire and Sapling shared a glance of alarm. The threat
presented by the humans now went from dangerous to sure disaster; for
if they moved their camp as planned, no saving grace could prevent an
encounter with Two-Spear and his war-minded comrades. Even sending
was inadequate to describe the grief which would inevitably result if
human and Wolfrider met openly in conflict.
'We have to find a way to stop them,' Sapling whispered. Skyfire said
nothing, but grimly started for the swamp. Thwart the humans'
migration they must, but no strategy could be plotted until elves had
thoroughly scouted the enemy encampment.
    The task took longer than expected, for the tents of the humans
numbered beyond counting. 'Thick as toads in a bog,' griped Sapling.
Tired, chilled, and scraped raw from crawling through briars and
brush, she shook snow from her collar, packed there in a miserable
wad since her dive into a drift to avoid a sentry. Her normally sunny
nature had soured to despair. What could a skilled Huntress and a
barely grown cub do against a band of humans big enough to overwhelm
the forest? Skyfire could not offer a single idea; even Woodbiter
walked with his tail down. In the valley below, between alleys of
dirtied, trampled snow, the fires of the humans glittered like a
multitude of fireflies during the green season.
    Skyfire leaned on her bow, her frown plain in the moonlight. 'I'm
going down there,' she said finally. 'You must wait here until I get
back.'
    Sapling offered no argument. What had begun as a merry prank, an
adventure to make her young heart thrill with excitement, had now
turned to nightmare. There seemed no end to danger and hardship
imposed by the terrible cold, that untold. numbers of humans should
travel in search of new hunting grounds. Sapling huddled into her
furs, uneasy and afraid, as the Huntress she admired above all else
checked her weapons one last time, then vanished swiftly down the
slope.

Accustomed to the clean scents of the forest, Skyfire found the human
camp rank with the smells of burnt elnbers, rancid fat, and sweat
mixed with poorly cured furs. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as
she passed the first of the tents, but forced herself to continue.
Moonlight transformed the terrain to a tapestry in

79
ducked through racks of sticks bound with thongs that supported the
long, flint-tipped spears of the humans. The design of the weapons
proved that this tribe did more than hunt; they were warriors
prepared for battle as well. Briefly, Skyfire entertained the idea of
stealing the spears; even cutting the lashings and stealing away all
the points. But the racks were too numerous to tackle b.y herself,
and too likely, the humans stored other weapons inside their tents.
Lightly as a Wolfrider could move, she could not raid on that scale
without one enemy waking in alarm.
Dispirited, Skyfire ducked into the shadow of a tent. Never in
her life had the tribe confronted such a threat; and her excursion
into the camp yielded no inspiration. With little alternative left
but to go back and attempt against hope to reason with Two-Spear, the
Huntress faced the forest once more. Bitterly disappointed, she
started off and failed to notice that her storm cloak had snagged
upon a pile of kindling. A stick pulled loose, and the whole stack
collapsed with a clatter.
In the tent, an infant human began to cry.
Skyfire froze. Barely daring to breathe, she hunkered down in
the shadows. How Two-Spear would laugh if carelessness got her
roasted by humans! Wishing the human cub would choke on its tongue,
she waited, and heard a stirring of furs behind hide walls barely a
scant finger's width from her elbow; at least one parent had wakened
to the cries of the child. If the Huntress so much as twitched an
eyelash, she could expect a pack of furious enemies on her trail. She
forced herself to stillness while a man's irritable voice threaded
through the young one's wailing. His curse was followed by a
placating murmur from his wife.
    Skyfire fingered her bow as something clumsy jostled the tent.
Then she heard footsteps, and light bloomed inside. Described
grotesquely in shadows upon hide walls, she saw the human mother bend
to cradle her wailing cub. The woman crooned and rocked it, to no
avail, while Skyfire weighed the risk of bolting for the forest under
cover of the noise.
Angry shouts from the neighboring tents spoiled that idea. Galled
by the need to stay motionless while the entire human camp came
awake, Skyfire shivered with impatience. If she was caught, she hoped
Sapling had the sense to stay hidden on the ridge.

The infant continued to wail. Even the mother grew irked by its
screams, and her voice rose in reprimand. 'Foolish child, be still!
Or your noise will waken snowbeasts from the forest, and they will
come and make a meal of your bones with long, sharp teeth.'
    The cub gasped, and sniffled, and quieted. In a frightened lisp
it said, 'Mama, no!'
    'Don't count on that, boy.' The light in the tent flickered, died
into darkness, as the woman slipped back into her furs. 'If I wake
tomorrow and find nothing left of you but blood on your blankets,
I'll know you didn't heed my warning.'
    Her threat mollified the cub to silence, and the woman's
breathing evened out as she returned to sleep.

Outside, in the shadow, Huntress Skyfire lingered, still as a ravvit
in grass. She waited, listening to the sniffles of a terrified human
cub; her mind churned with thoughts of the fear inspired by the
tracks of the humans' strange snow-feet, and the terror she sensed in
the mother's voice.
    Skyfire began to formulate an idea. By the time the little human
had snuffled himself back to sleep, that idea became a plan to save
the holt.
    Cautious this time to stay clear of the kindling, the Huntress
darted for the forest.
    She arrived breathless on the ridge, and found Sapling and
Woodbiter curled warmly in a hollow, asleep. 'So much for undying
admiration,' she murmured, and laughed as Sapling awakened, sneezing
as she inhaled a nose full of Woodbiter's tail fur.
    'Up,' said Skyfire briskly. 'We have work enough for ten, and not
much of the night left to finish it.'
Sapling sat up with a grin. 'You have a plan!'
    The Huntress tilted her head, more rueful than serious. 'I have a
ruse,' she confided. 'Now waken your imagination, for before the
humans awaken, we have to invent a nightmare.'
So began the hardest task Sapling had known in all her young

8i
life. All night long they carved wood and trimmed the skins of their
storm furs and sewed them into the shape of a great beast, which they
padded with cut branches. Woodbiter raided another trap, gaining a
set of stag horns which they set in the jaws for teeth. Skyfire
fashioned eight monster-sized imitations of a beast's clawed pads
and, in the hour before dawn, announced that her 'snowbeast' was
ready for action.
    'Strap these paws to your feet,' she instructed Sapling. Then,
saving two of the clawed appendages for her hands, she called
Woodbiter to her side and tied the last four on him, while Sapling
experimented by making fearsome trails of beast-prints in the
surrounding drifts.
    'That looks horrifying,' Skyfire observed when she finished, and
allowed one very disgruntled wolf to clamber upright. 'But now I need
you to help with the final touches.'
    The Huntress mounted the back of the wolf and placed the jaws of
the snowbeast over her head. Muffled instructions emerged between the
teeth, explaining that Sapling should place herself at Woodbiter's
tail and lace the furs around them both, to flesh out the 'body' of
the beast. After an interval of laughter, and much tangling of
elbows, the task was complete. A fearsome apparition snorted and
pawed at the snow in the hollow.
    'Now we make mischief on humans,' the voice of Skyfire proposed
from the gullet; and the snowbeast shambled off, with a wolfish whine
from its second head, to do just that.
    Once the two elves and the wolf coordinated with each other, they
found they could run fairly fast; but the clumsy contraptions on
their feet made silence impossible. Wherever the snowbeast passed, it
made a fearful rattle, and the snapping of sticks and branches, added
with the creak of its framework, carried clearly in the frosty air.
    'If there was any game in this forest, it's on the run now,'
muttered Sapling. A giggle followed, half muffled by furs.
    * *Quiet, now,* * sent Skyfire. * ':'We've arrived at the first
of the humans' traps.* * Now began the dangerous portion of their
night's work; for dawn was nigh, and the results of the snowbeast's
frolic must not be discovered too soon.

Quiet reigned in the forest until shortly past daybreak, when the
humans stirred blearily in their tents. The earliest risers crept out
to light fires, and soon thereafter an outcry arose. Two supply tents
on the camp perimeter were found ripped to shreds, and the culprit,
whose tracks were pressed deeply in the snow, seemed to be a
monstrous beast. No one had ever seen the like of such paw prints,
but old tales told of a snowbeast which haunted the winter forests
during seasons of extreme famine.
    Fathers took no chances, but ordered their wives and children and
grandfathers not to stray from the protection of the central fires.
And the hunters sent to check the traps carried war spears, as well
as knives and torches. They moved in bands of ten, for safety; but
everywhere they encountered evidence of violence. The snowbeast had
ravaged the traps, torn them to slivers, then trampled and clawed the
surrounding snow to bare earth. Trees bore deep gashes, and near one
trap the skull of a stag lay gnawed by powerful teeth, amid snow
stained scarlet with gore. The band of hunters who found that
trembled in their boots as they resumed their rounds of the trapline.
The rattle of wind in the branches made them start, hands clenched
and sweating upon the hafts of their weapons.
    For all that, none were prepared for the apparition which lurked
in the brush. Crouched like some nightmare forest cat, it fed in the
shadows of a thicket, crunching the carcass of the stag with jaws
that might have snapped a human in half at one bite.
    'Gotara!' breathed the man in the lead. His snowshoe snagged on a
twig, which cracked loudly, making him jump.
    The snowbeast raised its head, spied the intruders, and raised an
ear-splitting scream of rage. The humans saw then that the creature
had two heads, the larger one eyeless and crammed with bloody fangs,
and emitting a frightful, ululating wail. Below this, between clawed
forelimbs, a second, wolflike head snarled and slavered and snapped.
Six legs thrust powerfully beneath masses of brindled fur, gathered
to bound to the attack.
    The human in the lead screamed and cast his war spear. It struck
the beast's flank and rebounded; and the beast leapt, plowing a
shower of eddying snow.
    The hunting party screamed and ran in stark terror. Tree branches
whipped their faces. They dared not look back; the ravening snarls of
the snowbeast sounded almost upon their heels. The breath burned in
their chests, yet they did not slow

83
until they reached the border of their camp. The snarls of the
snowbeast sounded ominously through the wood as the men excitedly
jabbered their tale. Howls echoed across the marshes, hastening the
women who ran to wrap children in blankets and bundle up belongings
and tents. Fear gripped the hearts of the humans like cold fingers as
they banded together and departed, northward, where the lands were
known, and safe.
    By sunrise, no intruders remained to watch an elf back butt first
from the bowels of the dreaded snowbeast. Tired, trembly, but able to
contain herself no longer, she collapsed in a snowdrift, laughing.
    Peering through the fangs of the snowbeast mask, Huntress Skyfire
regarded her young companion with reproof. 'Is that how you're going
to greet Two-Spear, when he arrives here with his war party?'
    Sapling sat up, snow dusting her eyebrows and her merry, upturned
nose. 'At least I look like an elf. If you keep standing there in
that silly-looking mask, Graywolf will likely spear you for dinner.'
    At which point the jaws of the snowbeast clicked shut, and a
tangle of wolf, and elf, and a mess of jury-rigged storm furs swooped
and jumped Sapling in the snowdrift.

$4
The Crash

We saw it up in the sky. Then it was gone. At least Jamsey agrees
with me. He saw it, too. Ask him, he's eight, and he lives on my
street. I'm only six, but soon I'll be seven and eight comes after
that.
    Anyway, it was night, and we were sitting on the railing looking
up at the stars. The railing goes around the porch, and Mom says it
keeps people from falling off, and I told her that somebody would
have to be stupid to fall off. The porch, I mean.
    I wasn't supposed to be outside. Janice was babysitting, She's
fifteen, and she always watches TV and forgets to call me in. I was
sitting with Jamsey when Tommy began to cry. He's my brother. He's
only two.
    ! said, 'Shut up.' I know that's not nice, but ! was mad, so I
said it anyway. Tommy always cries, and then Janice remembers that we
aren't in bed yet.
    That was when we saw it. The thing, I mean. I saw it first, and
then Jamsey saw it, too. Then it was gone, and it looked sort of like
a shooting star, but it was green.
'Annie, did you see that?' Jamsey whispered.
    I nodded, and we saw it again. tt was bright green and blue, and
it was getting closer. There were lights on it. Jamsey was so excited
he was wiggling, and he never wiggles. Not even at the circus.
    The thing got really near, and we could see that it was burning.
Tommy was howling, and Janice was shouting at him to be quiet.
    The thing kept falling, and it got greener and greener, and I
said maybe it was a fairy that ran out of fairy dust and couldn't
fly, but Jamsey says there's no such thing as fairies, and he knows
cause he's eight.

85
    The green thing was so close we could hear it crackle like fire,
and it was bright as a sky rocket on fourth of July. Then, smash, it
hit the ground near the back fence, and it sizzled like when Mommy
puts hot pans in the sink.
    Tommy had stopped crying, and Janice stuck her head out the door,
and she was madder 'n Dad when a dog stole his glove once.
    'What are you doing out there?' she said. I stuck out my tongue
and pretended she wasn't there.
    She yelled at me some more, so I said, 'Wait, there's a green
thing that fell in the yard, and it's near the fence, and Jamsey and
I want to see what it is.'
'Annie! Get in here this minute. Tell Jamsey to go home.' 'I'm not
going, stupid, until I can look at the green thing.' Jamsey and I
jumped off the porch and ran so Janice couldn't catch me and make me
go to bed. She always makes me go to bed.
    Where the green thing had smashed up, there was a pile of shiny
stuff and something was moving near it. It was hard to see in the
dark. It looked like the weasel I saw in the zoo, kind of, but it had
big, big eyes. Bigger than my silver dollar and its skin was smooth
like the cloth the sofa is made of.
    And it was hurting. I knew it was hurting and I asked Jamsey and
he said he knew it too, and we both felt it was hurting, but we
didn't know why. We wanted to help it very much, but it felt to us
that we couldn't, but we wanted to anyway.
    Then Janice came up. She was mad because I had disobeyed her by
not going to bed. When she saw the weasel-thing that was hurting, she
got real scared. She told me and Jamsey to take a stick and hit it.
    We didn't want to, because it wasn't bad, and besides, it felt to
us that we had better not. Janice said that she would make me go to
bed without a drink of water if I didn't hit the thing with a stick,
and I told her I didn't care.
    Then Janice came closer, and she said she would step on it
herself. I told her that the thing didn't like her. She was making it
mad. It felt that to me, and I told her but she said I was fibbing.
    The thing felt to me to tell her to stop, and I did, but she
wouldn't. She went to step on it, and suddenly she was gone. Honest.

86
    Jamsey and I were scared. We started to run, but the weasel-thing
felt to us to stop. It wasn't mean. It wasn't feeling to us very
strong anymore, and we thought maybe it would die.
    It felt to us that it was dying because it couldn't breathe air,
and I didn't understand, but it felt to me that that was all right.
    Soon it was dead. We buried it somewhere like it wanted us to. I
can't tell where, because I promised I wouldn't. It's a secret, and I
don't want to disappear like Janice.
The Fire[all

The gauges on the instrument console lit Ataine's hand like
stagelights as she reached for the switch which locked the Quest III
probe on autopilot.
    'I'm not going to be manipulated,' she said through clenched
teeth, though the spacecraft was a single-hander, now irrevocably
severed from outside contact. The transmitter was a tangled ruin.
Ataine had sabotaged the unit herself when an angry superior had
beam-arced a recall command: the Quest's launch from Station was
unauthorized.
    'That's right, you sonuvabitch.' Ataine shoved a fist full of
uprooted circuitry at the astonished face on the screen, thereby
sparing herself the fury of the man's response. Since the visual
monitor still functioned, his balding, purpled image mimed anger by
her left elbow, but she gave it scant notice, the toggle a small
point of cold at her fingertip.
    'And I'm a damned good astrogator, thanks to your turkey of a
second lieutenant.' She tripped the switch from 'autopilot' to
'manual.'
    As though on cue, red lights crowded the screens, and a buzzer
shrilled. Ataine wished she could silence it. She certainly didn't
need fail-safe sensors to recognize threat to the Quest's frail
shell. The planet engulfed the portside screens like a hideous
bruise, and its gravity field dragged against the probe's thrust
insatiably as a nightmare lover. The smallest mistake would hurl the
Quest to a meteor's incandescent death. Ataine grinned. The
electronics didn't trust her.
    'You shouldn't either,' she said to the small, white dash which
was the aft screen's rendition of her pursuit; a late model Sabre,
Ataine guessed, with a very determined man at the controls. He

88
had used weapons, tried repeatedly to cripple her. The Quest's shell
carried scorchmarks from a leak in the deflection shields. But Ataine
made a difficult target, and the drive engines still functioned to
designer specifications.
    With damp fingers, she pressed the basket-weave frame of the
headset over her ears. Electrodes prickled her scalp, and signals
merged with neurological impulses, uniting her mind with her
spacecraft. Though direct-link control systems were still highly
experimental, Ataine absorbed the influx of electronically induced
sensations with no side effects. Other astrogators became paralyzed
with vertigo, nausea, and headaches without drugs to balance the
artificial impulses generated by the ship's system. Yet Ataine used
no drugs.
    'Anomaly,' the Station physician had said with a shrug, when he
learned how many hours Ataine had logged under manual control in the
Quest without a single request at the dispensary. Tired of an
infirmary filled with puking test pilots, he'd dismissed the subject
out of laziness.
    Ataine never corrected him, never explained that she had used the
vertigo, nausea, and headache like a drug to shadow a different kind
of pain; and when her body's natural resistance had finally,
reluctantly, acclimated to the Quest's sensory hardware, she went on
using the ship's electronics to bury her own humanity. Her passion
was obsessively simple: when she flew, she was spared the emotion
which prisoned her thoughts like a shroud.
    Now, impulses from the Quest's sensors ruled her thoughts,
blanketing awareness of her woman's body and the tormented memories
it contained. Her existence became that of the ship, hurtling through
space at speeds impossible for flesh alone to achieve. But this time
the joy of release was marred. Attuned to the ship itself, she felt
the drag of the orange gas-giant like a fish hook in her guts,
tearing. Pictured by electronic circuits, the planet's monstrous mass
eclipsed her left hand vision, perilously close. Never intended for
such stresses, the Quest's light, high-impact shell came equipped for
reconnaissance of asteroids. Government mining operations had no
interest in gas-giants. The craft resonated under abuse enough to
make her designers weep to a man.
    Ataine's mouth twitched in amusement. She'd made off with an
exceptionally sophisticated chunk of technology. The brass at Station
would roast in hell sooner than pardon her. But she had

89
no intention of returning, which meant shedding the man in the Sabre
as soon as possible. And for that, the bloated orange planet would
become her ally.
    Ataine tightened her grip on the control yoke, bent the Quest's
course closer to the planet. Alarm bells screamed. But linked as she
was to the anguished increase in resonance in the Quest's shell, she
needed no warning.
    'Come on, baby.' Her voice shook, though she'd spent hours of
computer time over the equations. Delicately, she inched the lever
forward, increased thrust. The hull shivered in protest. Her tiny
cockpit glittered with lights like an arcade. Ataine licked sweat
from her lips as her spacecraft plunged toward the gas-giant's
surface. Though impulsive by nature, she had rehearsed her escape
through seven weeks of misery. She hadn't miscalculated. She couldn't
have. Too much lay at stake.
    Ataine steepened the pitch of the Quest's trajectory once more.
The hull shuddered, trembled under her like an overextended race
horse. She nudged the lever again, fractionally, and checked the aft
sensor. Everything, wholly everything depended upon the man who
chased being reckless enough to follow. He would know she had reached
the absolute limit of the Quest's capabilities. Certain of his
victory, he might follow and descend inside her arc, awaiting the
moment when hull failure would leave her at the mercy of gravity. She
looked back.
    A fleck of light hovered off her tail vane, solitary as a star.
The Sabre still pursued.
    'Foolish,' said Ataine, and laughed aloud. She had him. Though he
didn't know it yet, rescue was not part of her plan. She took a
bearing on his position. The computer matched vectors, and the
results made her laugh again, triumphantly. Trusting the higher
tolerances of the Sabre's hull, he too had steepened his dive, and
used the pull of the giant planet to increase speed. His thrusters
flamed as he corrected course.
    'Clockwork,' said Ataine, and her hand quivered feverishly on the
controls. Why did you have to behave so damned predictably?
    Anxiously, she waited. At length, the Sabre dropped below, flashy
as a child's model against the muddled surface of the planet. The
moment had arrived. Ataine whipped the Quest into a banking curve,
increased thrust, and kicked in the repulsion field designed to

9c
protect the spacecraft from collision with rogue asteroids. Like a
small, fiat rock pitched spinning across the calm water, the Quest
would skip free of the gas-giant's field. But the heavier Sabre,
belted by the force of her field, would sink like a stone.
    Ataine ripped off the headset, punched the craft into autopilot,
and ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. She had murdered a
man. She'd planned to. A voice inside her head calmly affirmed her
action as right; the man must die, for justice, that others might
survive. She sat, and shook, and after a long minute, realized that
someone was speaking, outside, and it was the man she had sent to his
death. Separate from the main transmitter, the emergency
distress monitors could never be shut off.'I won't listen,' she
whispered.
    But the voice called her name, and the inflection was
wrenchingly, horribly familiar.
    'No!' Ataine banged her palms against the console. A new glow
from the screen tinged her knuckles blue, and with an ugly shock, she
saw the emergency code signal had also invaded the video portion of
the transmitter. She wished, desperately, she'd smashed it with the
rest. Dorren's face confronted her.
    'Ataine, you were wrong about me.' He spoke calmly, as though he
sat safe in Station's lounge. But the look on his pale, tense
features cut her like steel.
    Anger claimed Ataine, vengeful and hot as desert wind. Naturally,
the Commander would have sent Dorren after her. Who better? All of
Station believed she had a weakness for him.
    As though he'd read her mind, Dorren gestured impatiently. 'I
came myself. The Commander had nothing to do with this.'
    Grimly, Ataine wrenched off the access panel. So he'd
volunteered. Not even Second Lieutenant Dorren Carlton would get her
to return to Station.
'Ataine, will you listen?'
    But the desperate, imploring note in his voice rang dissonant in
her ears. She found the wire she sought, and pinched it viciously
from its contact. The screen went blank. And bitter tears flooded her
eyes. Hunched in the Quest's cockpit, with her elbows crammed
miserably against the arms of the pilot's seat, Ataine found that she
couldn't let him die. Anyone but Dorren ... anyone ... her luck was
rotten. Hours of emotional anesthesia in the Quest's fancy
astrogational systems had enabled

91
her to live without him. But no escape existed which could negate
responsibility for his death.
    'Coward,' she sobbed, and jammed herself back into the headset.
Tears dripped off her chin as she banked the Quest around, this time
without equations, calculations; this time with nothing but her wits
and the knowledge that if she saved him, others less deserving would
die.
    'I hate you,' she said, as she once had to his face, but the
words changed nothing.
    The controls shuddered under her fingers, as though protesting
betrayal. And the gas-giant swelled in the starboard screens mocking
the futility of every month spent in preparation, wasted effort, now,
because of Dorren. Wracked by serf4oathing she fought to steady the
Quest against the planet's cruel pull, tried not to think, and lost,
as she always did, to memory...

'Don't frown so hard,' said a quiet male voice at her elbow. 'Didn't
you play Jacks and Aces as a child?'
    Startled, Ataine glanced up from the instrument simulator's
console to discover a young man of medium height leaning on the
armrest beside her. A grin softened the lines of decisively set
features, and the wheeze of the overhead ventilator ruffled perfectly
trimmed brown hair. The eyes were direct, and very blue.
    'Were you deprived?' His grin faded into puzzled inquiry. 'I
thought every kid played Jacks and Aces. I'm Dorren, assigned to
coach you, and if you hated cards, you're going to make a difficult
job for me.'
    'I played,' said Ataine. As he crouched beside her seat, she
buried a moment of vulnerability by starting stonily at the screen.
He's nobody special, she told herself firmly. But the instinctive
platitude was useless. Theirs was a rapport so perfectly balanced
that nothing she had experienced since was the same.
    Using whimsical analogies drawn from card games, Second
Lieutenant Carlton taught her to handle the sensitive instrumentation
of Station's ore probes faster than any trainee had done in the past.
Long after the others had shut down their systems for lunch, she and
Dorren had lingered in the trainer, mixing instruction, anecdotes,
and tasteless jokes with unparalleled enthusiasm. Time stopped.
Neither of them noticed. Finally, the

92
disgruntled technician in charge asked them, please, to leave. He had
a date.
    Ataine slapped the power switch off, smiled at Dorren. 'Are you
busy? We could have a date, too.'
    Instantly, his expression lost its vitality. She swallowed. It
never occurred to her he might already be mated.
'Not today.' He sounded stricken. 'Another time.'
    Ataine shrugged. She guessed he was avoiding her. Yet as he left,
she experienced a distinct uneasiness, as though something unnatural
had occurred. Her disappointment must have leaked into her
expression, because the technician paused in his haste to see the
doors locked.
    'Dorren's not mated,' he said, his face sympathetic. 'He simply
prefers to be alone.'
    Ataine blinked, icily sobered. 'Then keep him away from me,' she
said, because too often in the past she had been attracted to the
independent sort of man who 'simply needed no one.' Another was a
heartache she'd avoid.
    But Station was as small as a closet; inevitably Dorren's
superior heard about their supreme compatibility as a team. They were
assigned together.

The morning of her first survey mission, Ataine stood under the
ribbed belly of the Prospector she and Dorren were to fly. Landing
beacons beyond the airlock ports spilled hellish reflections through
the launch tube, increasing her uneasiness. Dorren was late. Ataine
waited, buffeted by drafts as the escort teams who would accompany
them sealed hatches and fired up systems prior to ignition.
    Dorren appeared, finally, in the service passage, still fastening
his gloves. His face bore a deep scowl, and as he approached, Ataine
saw his chest heave in short, hard jerks. His evident temper
smothered her greeting unspoken.
    Dorren seemed oblivious. He glanced at the helmet which dangled
stupidly from her fingers. 'Put that on. I don't want to look at
you.'
    Stung past restraint, Ataine looked squarely into his face. 'I
didn't ask for this. Why take your frustrations out on me?' The hurt
she tried uselessly to hide made him check abruptly. He

93
in return took her breath away. The scowl so~tertecl.
    'I'm sorry.' He sighed, knuckles locked and white over the seal
ring of his own helmet. 'We're stuck for tofiay. I'l~ speak to the
Commander when we get back.'
     Prompteft by intuition, hta'~ne sa'~, "~ ou a\rea~ cY~. lie
te~use~ to change the roster, didn't he?'

though he fully acknowledged her presence only that moment. 'He'll
change his mind. Now, get in.'
     Disgusted by his unpleasantness, Ataine obeyed. Without protest,
she found her way into the co-pilot's seat, and scooped her auburn
hair into the helmet. She left the face-plate down. Secure within its
shelter, she assumed control over her half of the cockpit, and
promptly forgot the man who readied systems for launch at her side.
The demands of flying brooked no distraction. Ataine settled into
routine, absorbed by the gauges on the console before her.
     The mike in her helmet crackled. 'All set?' Dorren's voice was
neutral.
     Ataine signaled affirmatively and released the magnetic field
which anchored the craft to Station's flight deck. Dorren snapped
 a switch, and the air lock irised open.'Lift,' he said softly.
     As one, their hands closed over the controls. The Prospector
shuddered. Thrusters flamed, and the launch tube shot past,
 replaced by darkness pinpricked with stars.'Bank left.'
     Ataine responded, startled by an unexpected thrill. She'd flown
most of her life, but even the sportiest dual-handers had never
responded as cleanly as the common, work-battered Prospector did that
day. As the Sabre escort launched from Station to trail like beads
behind, she found she barely had to adjust for trim; they flew
without need to compensate. Dorren's touch on the controls
complemented her own with a perfection akin to ecstasy.
     Her helmet mike clicked. 'Enchantress,' said Dorren. He laughed,
exuberantly. 'My stomach just sank into my boots. Too much peaches
and cream. Who taught you to fly?'
     'Chromosomes. And a father who named his children after
spacecraft.' Ataine grinned, enthralled by his fussy, precise sense

94
of timing. Transformed by laughter, her bad temper vanished as though
his rudeness had never existed. And the Prospector flamed through
space like a star class yacht.
    This can't last, Ataine thought. An indicator flared yellow,
warning the approach to the asteroid field they were assigned to
survey. Dorren would certainly brake to quarter speed, fresh as she
was from orientation training. Skilled astrogator she might be, but
at ore prospecting she was a novice. The first obstacle loomed on the
screens, dead ahead. Instinctively, Ataine reached for the portside
throttle, to cut back for the turn, just as Dorren began a bank to
the left. He toyed with the trim, unnecessarily, and said, 'You knew
which direction I would go.'
    'Yes.' Ataine paused to wonder how she'd known, and gave up. The
move seemed natural at the time.
    'Don't reduce speed.' Dorren leaned over the controls, suddenly
impulsive. 'I don't know why, either, but there's something between
us I can't leave unexplored. Do you mind if we simply let rip... ?'
    Ataine returned a pleased smile. 'The Commander will scorch our
shorts off, when we get back to Station.'
    'I/c we get back to Station.' Dorren fingered the lieutenant's
stripes on his cuff. 'Those rocks out there won't be half so
forgiving if I'm wrong.'
    Ataine laughed. 'We'll get back to Station, and maybe wish we
hadn't.' She kicked in the thrusters, her movement precisely co-
ordinated with his.
    The Prospector leapt ahead, cut a tortuous, blistering course
through the tumble of debris. Very quickly they discovered they
shared something preciously rare. As a team, they were
subconsciously, if not telepathically, attuned.
    Glued to her controls, Ataine knew a companionship untainted by
any human doubt. She and Dorren Carlton thought alike, acted alike,
and the mixture was addictively heady. An asteroid skated onto the
screens. She banked right, certain Dorren would balance for the slop
in the vanes. Between us there are no limits, she realized, none at
all.
    The communicator buzzed. Dorren sighed, throttled back, and
punched the 'receive' toggle. The speaker shrilled to life. 'Are you
two nuts? Hot-shot any

95
more, and you'll make hamburg of your escort. You've outdistanced us,
to understate, and if you get sighted by anti-nationals, serve you
both right.'
     Dorren shrugged. 'Flame the anti-nationals. We haven't seen any
in months, and they'd have to catch us, first.'
    The Sabre captain sighed into his mike. 'Right. Wait up, will
you?' ,
    They passed the remainder of the assignment with more decorum.
But upon their return to Station, even their disgruntled escort
boasted over the territory they had covered.
    'Two claims, and a twelve beacon mark-off,' said the $abre's
captain in admiration as Dorren stepped through the Prospector's
chipped hatch. 'You and that greenie did a helluva day's work.'
    Ataine followed the second lieutenant out, tired but content. She
slipped off her helmet, and smiled, freed hair tumbling in slow
motion over her shoulders in the flight deck's low gravity. Yet as
she met Dorren's eyes, she watched his pleasure die, pinched
deliberately from a face still flushed from happiness.
      She felt as though he'd struck her. Warily interpreting his
mood,
she said, 'You're going to insist on re-assignment.'Dorren frowned.
'Especially after this.'
'Why?' Her outburst escaped before she thought to quell it.
    But Dorren strode off without reply, leaving her desolate with
uncertainty.
'What's with him?' said the puzzled captain at her shoulder.
    Ataine shook her head angrily. 'Blast if I know.' She left
abruptly for her quarters and hoped for a better partner next shift.

But three weeks brought no change in the roster. Inured to Dorren's
uncertain temperament, Ataine avoided conversation. By barring her
heart against feeling, she learned to anticipate his mercurial shifts
of mood, and respond only during those moments when the rigors of
their profession drove him to reciprocate the gift they possessed
between them.
    When things went well, his supply of banter seemed endless.
'Don't bring home any strays,' he said as she hauled out the tools to
take a core sample. Dorren usually handled the task. But lately
Ataine had grown restless waiting for him in the cockpit.
'You're kidding. No anti-national hardware has turned up for

96
utdis-
ma~s~

seen

up~

~co-

:ort

months.' Ataine clipped the tool satchel to her shoulder harness and
looked up, startled to find him watching with the same concern she'd
shown each time he 'walked' an asteroid. 'I'11 be fine. Safe as
sugarcake.'
    'But clumsy.' Dorren grinned as she stumbled into the air lock,
unaccustomed to the awkward bulk of the tools. 'Be careful. And watch
that outside hatch. It's defective.'
    'Grandmother.' Ataine dogged the inside seals and kicked the
depressurization switch. The lock slid open, and she rolled clear,
weightless as a swimmer, the asteroid a convoluted coral head in the
beam of the Prospector's floodlamps. Air-hose and tether unreeled
behind as she drifted downward. The magnetic soles of her boots
touched first, and clung.
'Iron here,' she reported. 'Are we out of claim buoys?'
    Dorren's reply crackled over her suit mike, strangely distant.
'Set your charge. I'll check.'
    She collected her sample without incident. Odd, she thought; the
anti-national fanatics seemed to have given up sabotage. So far, the
risk pay she collected each week had proved a waste of government
funds. Not that she was sorry. Presently, Dorren's voice answered her
request for a buoy.
    'Cupboard's bare,' he said lightly. 'I've sent a Sabre back to
Station for more. Why not wait inside until it arrives?'
    'Fine. I'm on my way up.' Ataine kicked off for the Prospector's
hatch. She caught the boarding rail without difficulty. But as she
swung herself through, the tool satchel bumped the seal ring of the
air lock. Vibration under her fingers warned her; by freak mischance
the mechanism had engaged and started to shut.
    Instinctively, Ataine pushed clear. Halfway through, she noticed
her air-hose and tether had hooked on the boarding rail outside. The
lines jerked taut before she could react. Caught in zero g without a
handhold, recoil spun her back between the seals. The lock trundled
inexorably closed. Gear teeth ingested air-hose and tether, trapping
her with the disengage switch beyond reach. In panic, Ataine saw she
was going to be crushed.
    That moment, the lights went out. Ataine yelled, overcome by
terror. Unwilling to watch, she stared past the black shoulder of the
asteroid, as though fixed and changeless stars beyond could negate
the certainty of death. But the hatch had stopped.
Quivering and sweating inside her suit, Ataine realized Dorren

97
must have acted. He'd hit the breakers, killing all power on the ship
to prevent the hatch from closing. But with her tether jammed in the
gears, and her air supply cut off, she was not out of danger. She
tried to stay calm.
    'Dorren, suit up.' A yank on the lines confirmed the gravity of
her predicament. 'I need... oh, damn...' Because with the ship's
systems down, he couldn't hear her. At any moment, believing her
clear, he might restore power. Don't close the switch, she thought
desperately. Dorren, don't.
    She dragged herself around, clawed at the tether. Stuck.
Dizziness hauled at her balance. She groped in the tool satchel for
something sharp to cut the lines. Her lungs burned. She couldn't hold
her breath much longer. Her frantic fingers closed over the steel
casing of a core bit.
    Condensation blurred her face-plate as she began to hack at the
tether line. A vast, sucking roar filled her ears. I'm not going to
make it, she thought, and chopped harder. Light swam across her
vision, which seemed ludicrous, wrong. Suffocation went with
darkness. The bit drifted out of her grasp. She reached for it,
drunkenly, and someone's fingers closed over her wrist.
    Dorren's helmet bumped against hers. 'Hang on.' A knife flashed
in the search beam clipped to his belt, and she floated free. 'Don't
quit now, d'you hear? I'm going to push you through the supply lock.'
    Cramps in her chest prevented answer. She felt his arms enfold
her, as her vision swam out of focus. Her next clear sensation was
the click of her helmet seal breaking, and new air rushing into
wracked lungs. Dorren knelt on the loading stage with her cradled
against his shoulder.
    'You knew,' Ataine said thickly, between gasps, and almost passed
out again as his lips covered hers in a kiss which bared his soul.
She abandoned restraint, trusting the intuitive rapport which had
miraculously saved her life. Peace overwhelmed her, as though she'd
lived in the cold since birth, and only that instant learned warmth.
'Dorren, I love you,' she said when he set her free.
    He disengaged his embrace. Silently, and with an expression of
naked regret, he left abruptly for the bridge. The retreat went
against his nature. She'd been too close not to see. Yet whatever
compulsion drove him to destroy what was good between them

98
stung her into raw fury. She shouted, 'Why can't you just let the
inevitable happen ?'
    The companionway slammed and loosed a flurry of echoes in the
chamber's barren confines. Ataine scraped damp hair off her forehead
and rolled to her feet. She felt wretched. But physical discomfort
became trivial beside the crushing ache of loss brought on by
Dorren's withdrawal. Disconsolate, she followed him to the cockpit.
    He sat hunched over the controls, helmet off, and chin rested on
closed fists. The glow from the screens outlined features set rigidly
as a mask.
    'Does my presence sicken you? Or threaten your damned male
pride?' Ataine was unable to hide the bitterness in her voice.
    He responded without moving. 'You're a wonderful person, Ataine.
Sensible, intelligent, and gifted beyond belief, not to mention
attractive.' The dismissal sounded rehearsed. 'But I don't want a
woman in my life.' He shrugged irritably. 'Even you. I'm sorry. One
day perhaps you'll understand.'
    Before she could reply, he punched the transmitter into 'send'
and spoke crisply into the mike. 'Prospector IV to Sabre escort, has
Captain Jern left Station with the claim buoys?'
    The speaker crackled overhead. 'He's on his way. Did you just
have a power outage?'
    'Trouble with the lock,' Dorren glanced back to Ataine. 'Get your
helmet on. I'll have to clear those messed gears and then set that
buoy. Jern can help me. You can easily be spared, and no doubt you'd
be more comfortable after a rest back at Station.'
    Ataine pitched herself into her chair, fighting tears. 'I'm
staying. I don't trust that glitched lock, and Jern can't help you
like I can if it malfunctions again.'
    Which was all true, but Dorren's lack of argument made the
remainder of the shift pass like arctic winter, unbearably lonely and
bleak. By the time the Prospector docked at Station, Ataine's nerves
were drawn to snapping point.
    Her quarters seemed a prison. And the company of others only
emphasized her matchless compatibility with Dorren. Isolated by her
loss, she sought refuge in the cockpit of the Prospector, and with
every shred of compassion she possessed, tried to understand what
might motivate Dorren to reject her.
He found her there still, an hour before the next day's shift.

99
She didn't ask how he'd known where to look, didn't need to see to
know whose hands rested gently on her shoulders. She stared stonily
at the shadowed banks of controls, unwilling to meet his eyes.
    'It's hopeless.' Unwanted moisture prickled her eyelids. 'The
whole flaming situation is utterly, wretchedly hopeless.'
    Dorren reached over and caught the tear which escaped down her
cheek. 'I know,' he said simply. And he did. But nothing changed
between them. 'I asked for another team mate. This time the Commander
granted my request.'
    The statement ruined Ataine's composure. Blistered to outrage by
his coolness, she slammed her fists into the console. 'Are you
heartless?' Her voice rose to a shout. 'Do you think that changes
anything?' She spun to face him, and flinched from a mirror
reflection of her own distress.
    Angry words died unspoken. Ataine rose and left the cockpit,
ravaged by emotions too deep for expression. Oblivious to the stares
of the teams who reported for shift, she fled down the service
passage, into the lift, and burst headlong through Station's most
unapproachable door without even a knock.
    She ignored the secretary who tried to block her path to the
desk. 'I want to sign for test flight duty in the Quest.'
    Caught with his mouth full of coffee, the Commander swallowed
hastily. He excused the secretary with a gesture and frowned. 'Didn't
you know? The prototype gave her crewmen a debilitating case of the
dizzies. Though the medics have an antidote in mind, they said
yesterday they'd need a week.'
    'That doesn't matter.' Ataine stood, and blinked. After the gloom
of the flight deck, the office lighting ached her eyes. 'I want to
fly alone.'
    The Commander didn't ask why. Instead he regarded her with a
mixture of sympathy and distaste. 'Very well. If you last, the design
boys will be delighted.'
    Revolted by his patronizing tone of voice, Ataine smiled with
outright malice. 'Then they can buy me roses.'

Flight became her release.
     When she reported for shift after the third straight month,

IO0
Station's chief engineer met her with startled admiration. 'You got
guts, I'll grant you that.'
Ataine fussed with the seal of her suit. 'Why?'
    The engineer gestured toward the spidery framework of the Quest's
launch cradle. 'No weaponry. Last shift, we lost an entire drilling
team to a mine.'
    'What? Another?' Ataine paused, stunned, and thoughtfully snapped
her collar stud. 'But no one's seen any anti-national hardware for
months!'
The engineer shrugged. 'Want out?'
    'No.' Ataine quickened her step. She swung herself over the
Quest's sleek vanes, into the cockpit, while the engineer launched
into a companionable description of the Challenger series, which
extended the Quest's capabilities to a crew of two, and a gun
station.
    Ataine nodded vaguely. Anxious to get away, she dogged the hatch
closed. Once under the headset, love, death, and emotional tumult
would all cease to trouble her...
    Shortly, conjoined with electronic circuitry, she piloted the
Quest through the asteroid field she had surveyed last shift. The
area had been clean then, and anti-nationals would hardly trouble an
unmanned claim.
    Sensors granted her vision in all directions. Entranced by the
random dance of rocks whose motions would outlast the ages, Ataine
killed the engines and switched off her running lights. Hours, she
drifted, aimless as flotsam amid the dusty tumble of debris. Second
Lieutenant Dorren Carlton ceased to matter. Attuned to radio
frequencies through the Quest's systems, the soft, repetitive beep of
a nearby claim buoy remained the only human intrusion upon her
solitude, until the moment her sensors picked up a metallic flash of
reflection.
    Anti-nationals, Ataine guessed. She was unafraid. Without lights,
she was too small to be noticed. Ruled by the nerveless logic of the
Quest's electronics, Ataine settled back in her darkened cockpit and
stepped up magnification.
    The red and white checked sphere of the claim buoy jumped out of
the darkness, spotlighted by a Prospector's search lamps. Odd, Ataine
thought. Why would a team resurvey an area already covered? She
frowned, and looked closer. Registration numbers marked the craft as
one of Station's own, but the crewman who

IOI
'walked' the claim carried no core charges. Clipped to his harness,
like a hideous, tentacled parasite, was a string of contact mines.
    Small wonder no one had seen any anti-national activity. Ataine's
hands tightened against the control panel. Somebody had sold out. The
traps were being set by Station personnel.

'Dorren.' Sickened by her discovery, Ataine cornered the second
lieutenant alone in the access lift. 'Dorren, they're killing people
out there.' And she told him what she'd seen, because he was the only
one on Station whose integrity she trusted.
    He whirled so abruptly she bruised her spine against the
handrail. The concern in his eyes caught her totally unprepared. 'I
didn't hear that,' he said curtly.
    The shock of her surprise set distance between them, shattered
the instinctive rapport. He laughed, deliberately widening the
breach, and the lamp overhead lit a face she barely recognized.
    Ataine gestured in disbelief. 'You're in league with them.' Her
heart turned sick at the thought, yet it fit. No doubt he'd pushed
her away out of fear of discovery.
    'I'm not,' said Dorren. The lift slowed. He stabbed a button,
kept it moving. 'But I'm smart enough to keep quiet. Stir up trouble,
and the survey teams will be next. We'll all be dead, not just the
drillers.'
    Her expression must have betrayed rebellious thoughts, because
the lines around his mouth deepened. 'Don't be a fool. Let it be. Or
I'll tell the Commander about you myself.'
    'Son of a bitch!' said Ataine, scarred by his betrayal. 'I hate
you.' But she knew, even then, how shallowly she lied. The vehemence
of his reaction told its own story: deny her though he would, he
could not endure having her life endangered.
    Shaken, Ataine caught the rail as the lift bumped to a stop. She
watched Dorren step out, numbed by upwelling fear. Already it was too
late to heed his warning. Because the one thing she had kept quiet
was the fact she had recorded the activities of the Prospector's
treasonous crew on the Quest's emergency log tapes. With deadened
fingers, she punched the butto~ for the next level. The log was a
security system, accessible only to higher authorities; if the
corruption at Station extended even to the Commander, she was in
trouble.

I02
    Ataine shut her eyes, clammily sweating inside her suit. She had
no option. She'd have to steal the spacecraft...

The gas-giant's equatorial band swelled, a livid smear across the
forward sensors. Tensely, Ataine nursed the controls. Stresses
multiplied in the Quest's tiny hull, translated across the electronic
linkage as pressure against her body. The sensation increased
continually, until even her bones seemed to ache. Ahead, a streamer
of flame marked where the Sabre's thrusters battered uselessly
against gravity. Ataine adjusted course to intercept. Sweat dripped
with the tears on her cheeks as the Quest's nose tipped into a deeper
arc. The screens pulsed with an unbroken row of danger lights.
    Suddenly something snapped. Half her vision dissolved into an
electrical crackle. Ataine gasped, choked by fear, until she realized
she'd sustained no injury. Only the Quest's starboard sensors had
failed. Concerned she might lose the remainder and tumble blindly,
she re-oriented the craft's docking gyros to track the Sabre's
position. A siren wailed, confirming how little margin for error
remained.
    Ataine teased more speed from the thrusters. An alarming
vibration rattled the deck under her feet. She tried to ignore it.
Intent upon her goal, she located the Sabre, now grown to a speck
against the planet's bloated mass. A bank of screens flickered under
her elbow. The headset recorded the event with a crisp snap. Ataine
flinched, swore, and faced the facts; the systems might soon pack up
entirely. With closed eyes, she focused total concentration into
faltering circuitry and drove the Quest into the final plunge which
would match her course with the Sabre.
    Immediately she wished she hadn't. Resonance collapsed the aft
vane like foil. Ataine cried out, punched through the link by
physical pain. The Quest bucked under her, threatening to spin.
Ataine wrestled with the controls. Through the electrostatic snow
which laced the image from her functional sensor, she noticed
something odd about the Sabre's structure ... but the image quickly
became unreliably fuzzy. Ataine dismissed the distraction. Dorren's
survival, as well as her own, depended upon critical timing.
Ataine adjusted the headset, every reflex pitched for the instant

Io3
when her fall would carry her abreast of the Sabre. She touched the
drive system, relieved to find it still responded normally. As the
Sabre's bulk grew larger, she ducked the Quest into a roll and
presented her aft thrusters toward her former adversary. Then her
vision darkened, eclipsed by the Sabre's greater mass. Now!
    Ataine slammed the drive systems wide open and a rush like surf
battered her ears. Her stomach turned, pulled horribly by the force
of defied gravity as the Quest swept into a wide hyperbolic curve.
The deck quaked. Something metallic rattled loose and clattered
across the cockpit. Ataine squeezed her eyes closed and maintained
full power.
    Let that be enough, she thought fervently. And somehow, against
all logic, she knew; the kick from her thrusters had loaned the Sabre
angular momentum enough to tear free of the planer's killer hold.
Dorren steered a course similar to her own, but in the opposite
direction.
    'Let that be enough,' Ataine repeated aloud. Her voice shook. The
Quest's direct-link systems had been punished to the edge of failure.
If Dorren gave chase, she'd be finished.
    Suddenly a buzzer shrilled. Ataine opened her eyes to a star
burst of alarm lights. Then sharp pains in her chest bent her double.
Aware that malfunction of the Quest must be the cause, she blinked
back tears of agony and studied the indicators. The Quest's main fuel
line had ruptured.
    Ataine yanked the headset off. The pain faded instantly. Stressed
and tired, she leaned on the console, swore, and killed all power in
the drive systems. The move was necessary to prevent explosion, but
afterwards she felt as though she'd cut her own throat. She was
helpless. Her instruments showed she still had enough momentum to
escape the gas-giant's gravity field. Yet without thrust, she had no
control over drift. Helpless.
    Despair enveloped her. She cursed her early, impetuous
destruction of the transmitter. The distress beam-arc still
functioned, if she reconnected the hotwire, yet emergency codes were
unselectively monitored. Ataine buried her face in her hands. Rescue
would come, but from Station, and subsequent examination of the
Quest's logs would expose her intentions to the anti-national faction
she had left base to destroy.
    I can drift, Ataine thought; drift until the Quest's oxygen
canisters could no longer recycle air. She reviewed the gauges.

~o4
Her speed was considerable. If she could last forty-eight hours
before hooking up the distress 'arc', her signal might be received by
an outbound transport. Law would compel pick-up, and if the crew was
loyal to government, she might yet escape with the Quest's log
intact.
    Shaking, Ataine straightened in her seat. The odds were like
light years, inconceivably long. But no other alternative remained.
Resigned to her fate, she dredged her memory for the timetable, and
hoped bad luck would roost elsewhere.
    Her wish proved futile. She'd barely converted the chronometer
reading back to Station time before an uncanny sensation of company
invaded her cockpit. The presence was familiar.
    'Dorren? Never had his mental touch been clearer. Ataine banged
her fist against the console and shouted angrily, as though he could
hear. 'Don't pick me up. Please, Dorren, grant me that much.'
But his contact only intensified. 'I'm coming for you.'
    'No!' Ataine felt her throat constrict. 'You owe me, remember?'
If she hadn't spared him, the Quest would not be crippled.
    I'm coming. Unarguably final, the response seemed graven in
stone.
    Outraged by his ruthlessness, Ataine laced stiff fingers through
her hair and tried desperately not to weep. Tell them I'm dead! But
she knew he was beyond listening to her pleas. He would come for her,
and short of suicide, she had nothing left to prevent him...

The bump as the Sabre's docking collar made contact jostled Ataine
where she sat hunched over dead banks of controls. She reached
listlessly for her helmet. Anger had ebbed, leaving resentment no
sentiment could thaw, and numbed by the immediacy of defeat, she
sought nothing but the chance to hurt the man who had stolen her
inner trust, and betrayed her.
    She sat, helmet clutched in cold fingers, as seals meshed with
the Quest's hatch and locked her craft in tow. A signal from Dorren's
console opened the lock. Pressure equalized, rippling the hair
against her neck.
    'Damn you,' she said succinctly, aware her suit mike would now
transmit to Dorren's cockpit. A wave of consciousness probed her
barriers in response. Passionless as ice, she rejected him.

~o5
    A soft, shuddering sigh arose from her helmet, followed by
Dorren's voice, thinly and inadequately amplified. 'My dear lady,
this time we're in the same boat. Will you let me explain?'
    Driven to viciousness, Ataine said, 'Don't try. Just take me back
and collect your commendation from the Commander.'
    'Ataine.' His breath caught. 'Ataine.' And the quaver in his tone
spilled chills down her back. Something was wrong.
    Ataine rose and pushed off for the hatch, unable to stop her
reaction. Hatred withered as, incapable of denying the link, she
stopped fighting. Dorren was ill, and in trouble, and afraid for her
life.
    Too bewildered to analyze, she caught the seal ring and passed
through into an air lock no Sabre ever built could possess.
    Ataine paused, arrested by shock. 'They sent you after me in the
Challenger!'
'No.' Dorren's voice sounded queerly strangled. 'I stole it.'
    He was wrestling nausea, Ataine realized, because he'd forgotten,
or had no time, to take drugs against the effects of the direct-link
system. He hadn't lied. Puzzled, she left her helmet weightlessly
adrift and headed for the cockpit.
    The companionway door opened into gloom punctured by the glow of
instruments. Dorren shivered in the pilot's seat, drenched in
sweat. Ataine fought off an overpowering urge to go to his side.
'Why?' she said quietly. The word carried multiple meanings. Dorren
shuddered, faintly amused even through his discomfort. 'Because if
I'd let you close to me, I'd have lost my cover. Government sent me
to Station to acquire proof of an anti-national defection bigbet up.
They suspect the man responsible for security screening of officers.
But you bolted before I had finished, and the Challenger was the only
craft left unguarded at Station.' He pressed wet hands against his
forehead. His final lines emerged muffled. 'There's an armed squadron
of Sabres on my tail. Had I not stood between you, they'd have
scorched the. Quest out of space. Now, fly us out of here. I'm going
to be sick.'
    Ataine left the companionway. Bruised by the details left unsaid,
she swung herself into the co-pilot's seat. Dotten had wrecked
another trust to save her, left anti-nationals free to murder back at
Station. She reached stiffly for the headset, wounded by the
integrity he had sacrificed because he could not tolerate her death.
His self-disgust left her hollow.

~o6
At her side, Dorren stumbled to his feet. His hand touched her
shoulder, but the contact was dead. 'I'11 jettison the Quest.' He
moved to leave.
But Ataine caught his wrist and looked up into drawn features.
'Salvage the log canister, first.' And she told him why.
'You filmed them?' Dorren stared incredulously. 'Blazes, woman,
I should have g essed. And slowly, his expression changed to
                              U            '
chagrin. 'Could you forgive me? I think my superiors are going to
want you in the co-pilot's seat. This time, I think I won't a    '
rgue.

~o7
Silverdown's Gold

Trionn the scullion could never pause anywhere for more than a minute
without attracting a heap of cats. It did not matter whether his
clothes reeked of the midden on those days when he raked out the
garbage, or if he was simply sitting, huddled against the wind,
awaiting his turn at the privy. The cats always found him. They
settled, arranged comfortably in his lap, or stretched across his
feet in sprawls like dropped knitting. All too often they betrayed
him by leading those very people to him that he fervently wished to
avoid.
    That was how he came to be lying prone in high grass on an
afternoon when he should have been helping to butcher a pig.
    The blood and the smell of the slaughter pen made him sick; the
cook knew as much, and cursed him for a puling ninny. There had been
too many pigs killed for the table since the new Lord had inherited
the rule of Silverdown; as if a feast must grace the tables each
night until every pasture was emptied. The squalling as helpless
animals were dragged out for the knife made Trionn sweat and turn
pale. The heave of his stomach always followed, until lately, no meat
sat well in his gut. Discomfort held him prone, though he knew
today's victim was by now far beyond feeling; the tripes would be
boiled and the last ham set up in the smokehouse. Pots left over from
the rendering waited in the scullery for washing, stuck with grease,
and crusty with charred rings of gravy. He would earn another beating
for his shirking.
    Trionn did not care. With one cat curled between his
shoulderblades, two more nestled against his flank, and the white
female who was heavy with kittens flopped over the backs of his
knees, he sucked at a grass stem and stroked the ears of the tom who
gnawed at his thumb. He was safe enough here, where the cook

I08
would never venture, in the neglected field that was the demesne of
the blue dun stud.
The stallion that was a killer, that hated everything alive. Mad
creature that he was, the horse disdained to step on cats. Trionn
basked, protected, under a warmth of beasts and autumn sunlight. No
one would look for anyone here, far less the most
 tongue-tied of Silverdown's kitchen staff.'There he is!' someone
shouted.
     Trionn started in alarm. The cat on his back was dislodged onto
the turf where, with arched spine and crooked tail, it glared at him
in feline displeasure. Had apprehension not held Trionn rooted, he
might have laughed at its injured dignity. But the voice that had
raised the outcry was the new Lord's own, and for any man of highborn
stature to go beating the fields for a scullion bespoke worse than a
cook's irritation.
    Trionn levered himself up on one elbow and peered over the grass
tips. He dared not spring to his feet, whatever the Lord's
displeasure; did he rise, the cats might leave, and the vicious dun
would take note that a man had invaded his turf. His ears would
flatten, and his nostrils flare warning, just before he thundered
into a charge.
    Fear of the stud saved Trionn an embarrassment, since the Lord
intended a different errand altogether. He was leaning on the fence
in his velvets. Combed blond hair tousled in the wind as he conferred
with a balding companion, less finely dressed, a leathery appearance
to him that bespoke hard living. Both men watched the horse, which
spied them and bowed up his neck. He blew a snort in challenge, his
nostrils a flash of scarlet linings against the seal black of his
muzzle. Then he flagged his tangled tail, struck once at the air, and
galloped.
    Trionn flattened himself against ground that shook to the impact
of hooves. His peril promptly compounded as the stud's rampage upset
the cats, who bounded away through the grass. Caught in the open, he
risked getting trampled to a pulp. The sick fear inside him no longer
for the pig, he crawled on his belly toward the fence. He escaped
under the bottom rail, just barely, but his troubles did not end
outside the pasture. Silverdown had never been kept like a manor,
until now, when even the weeds that flowered in the hedgerows were
unwelcome. The new Lord had ranted and waved his whip and found fault
until servants set

IO9
to with sickle and scythe. Trionn cowered down in the razed-back
scrub that edged the meadow, and prayed the two men were given no
cause to glance aside. Did they so much as turn his way, they could
not help but catch him skulking.
    Escape was impossible. Trionn dared not risk the noise of
movement, even to cover his ears. Despite the spirited charge of the
stud, neither could he help but overhear every word that passed
between Lord and crony.
    'Will you look at his stride!' the bald man exclaimed in boyish
excitement. 'He can cover ground, for a marvel.'
    The stud reached the fence, dropped his hind-quarters underneath
himself with a grace that could stop the breath, and whirled in
pirouette. Trotting now in taut-muscled extension, he resumed his
patrol against invaders. His neck was high set, and curved like a
bow, capped with a mane whipped to elflocks that no groom dared to
unravel. The last one to try had suffered a broken wrist. Trionn had
been assigned the clearing of the supper boards at the time the late
kord, who had been young and a cripple, had gently made disposition.
    'Cordiar was never bred to be gentled, but to ride to the fields
of war.' The Lord raised shaky hands and worried at the shawl that
covered frail shoulders. His flesh was pale with ill health, the skin
nearly transparent against the blankets piled in layers over his lap;
his smile seemed the grimace of a death's head. 'My father might have
mastered him, had the fighting not sent him to the grave. Leave the
horse to his field. Nail the gate closed and let him live as his
nature allows. He is wild and filled with hate, but beautiful. He
will run free, as I cannot, and give me simple pleasure by watching
him.'
    And so the dun stallion had matured, handled by no man, left to
gallop and kick up his heels as he pleased for the two years before
Silverdown's master had succumbed to his wasting disease. Unmarried
at the hour of his death, leaving not one bastard as issue, his
inheritance had fallen to a cousin who was also young, but thick-set
and muscled, and vigorous.
    'You were right to have me come,' the bald man was saying to the
new master. 'Everyone brags on the virtues of their horses, but this
one - he's more than magnificent.'
    'A treasure,' the Lord allowed with an offhand cuff at his cloak.
Grass chaff ripped up by the stud had clung and sullied

II0
his velvet, and he fussed until the last damp stems had whirled away
on the wind. Eyes narrowed against lowering sunlight, he watched the
stallion reach the corner and whirl. 'A good thing, too. Silverdown's
treasury is empty.'
    Surrounded by a wealth of bearing fields, the bald man raised
eyebrows in disbelief.
    'Oh, yes,' the Lord affirmed with a bitten-off snap of contempt.
'Spent out to pay the King's levies, until war took the old man's
life. The cripple who survived him had too soft a heart. Left the
tenants their harvests, and ran the household on profits from the
orchards. Apples and pears!' The Lord gave a laugh not meant to be
pleasant. 'What a fool's game! The manor house might not leak,
through a miracle, but the tenants are sullen and spoiled. They'll
have to be taught better manners, if I'm to win Tanemar's daughter.
This stallion is all of Silverdown's gold, can we break him. If his
bloodline is any judge, his get should look as fine. As a gift he
will be unmatched. Duke Tanemar will take notice of my suit, and the
hand of his daughter will be mine.'
    The bald man stroked his chin, while Trionn cowered. 'Large
plans,' he mused, the direction of his gaze never shifting. In the
pasture, unaware his wildness was at risk, or that he was being
discussed as an item for barter, the stallion kicked up his heels.
Hooves sliced across wind with a force that whistled the air. 'He's
fast enough for a fact, and made well as any man must envy. I'll
start on his breaking tomorrow, right enough, but tonight, we'll
settle on a fee.'
    The Lord banged the fence with such force that the planking
rebounded with a rattle. The stallion flung up in a rear at the
noise, his shadow scything across his admirers. Hooves struck out in
a dancer's grace that masked blows as murderous as assassin's
cudgels. 'No fee,' came back the clipped answer. 'As I told you, the
treasury's empty. Break the great brute so he can be caught and
stabled. Then send in three of your broodmares. There's fee enough.
While my war captain rides the beast fit so he can be shown off under
saddle, the foals will be yours to increase the dun's reputation.'
    The horsebreaker slapped thighs clad in worn and dusty leather.
'I break other people's stock,' he declaimed. 'I don't keep any for
myself.' As the Lord beside him left the fence, the horsebreaker
remained riveted by the stud, who pranced and stamped in tight

III
circles. The longing on even that man's jaded face was fresh and
bright and transparent as at last he turned to catch up. 'Still,
we'll see. Would you consider a split? Payment in silver, and one
foal?'
    The Lord snatched his cuff from the clutch of a briar the mowers
had missed. His mouth turned down. 'Certainly not. Duke Tanemar's
enough man to please, for setting such store by a daughter who's
nobody's beauty. It's the foals or nothing, for you. Press too hard,
and I'll send for a gypsy.'
    'What, and see your treasure stolen the moment it's tamed enough
to halter?' The voices of the two men dwindled, amiably contentious
as they hammered out terms for their bargain. Trionn sat up in the
brush, feeling whitely shaken. He wished all the cats had not left.
In balled up, tongue-tied frustration, he watched the stallion storm
out one last gust of air, then settle his head down to graze.
    A sadness near to pain ached in his chest at the thought that
such a beast should ever be trapped or taken.
    Distressed beyond concern for the slaughtered pig, Trionn saw the
sun gone, and the sky turned silver at twilight before he trudged
back to resume his neglected chores. The first thing he noticed as he
approached the haphazard cluster of frame buildings that made up
Silverdown's manor was that lights burned in nearly every window.
Reflections of a hundred flames danced in the boggy, sediment-choked
ditch that fronted the tumbledown breastworks. Trionn might have a
clumsy tongue, but he was exceptionally quick at balancing. He
crossed the ditch by footing across a slime-caked log, last remains
of the decrepit palisade. He reached what the servants called the
yard, a narrow, irregular court whose cobbles were furred in moss; or
had been. A fresh, dirt-colored scar sliced one corner, where a
drudge labored by torchlight to scrape the paving bare.
    More of the new Lord's fussiness, Trionn concluded. Stones could
not grow clothes of moss, and wax lights and tallow dips could be
burned without care, as the animals were slaughtered for the table;
as a great dun stallion could be torn from his freedom and used as a
bribe to court a girl. Wrapped in unhappiness, Trionn failed to
notice the cat that had found him already. It trotted up and
shouldered between his shins, joined at a run by two more.

II2
    The alley past the stables bustled with activity. Horseboys
jogged between stalls with buckets and grain to tend a half dozen
strange mounts. Notes spilled in haphazard arpeggios from the gallery
window as a minstrel tuned up to entertain. A woman laughed and a
hound howled, while guards who normally would have argued over dice
stood up straight and silent at their posts. Their weapons had never
been less than sharp, and they had stayed alert enough to challenge
intruders; yet their past rows had enlivened their duty watch, ending
always in companionable laughter. The change in Silverdown's rule had
seen new uniforms with badges at the shoulder. Trailing streamers
adorned each man's polearm, as if they were bedecked for a
tournament.
    But the occasion was no holiday. The servants had little cause to
celebrate. All of Silverdown had been swept into change, until Trionn
no longer felt at home. He hurried between a drudge with a basket of
soiled linens, and the fowler, who carried the cranky old goshawk
hooded, and muttered that his dearie should be mewed up and asleep to
keep her health.
    Trionn threaded a practiced path through the turmoil, until the
orange tabby streaked across a patch of torchlight to join his
impromptu escort. The cat's arrival drew the eye of the cook, en
route from root cellar to bakehouse to chastise the Lord's page for
dawdling.
    'You! Trionn! Where've you been all afternoon, and the pots all
stacked up for washing? You're a wastrel, boy, and due for whipping.
Get inside and back to work, or it's the Lord's own war captain'11 be
the one who stripes your back.'
    Trionn ducked his towhead between his shoulders and ran. The cats
obligingly followed. Clumsy all of a sudden, he tripped over the door
stoop and crashed into a servant with a basket.
    'Boy! There's good bread you've close to spilled and wasted, and
the new Lord with a hall full of guests to feed! Say you're sorry
now!'
    Trionn bobbed his head. He did not answer, though he was capable;
speech did not always tie his tongue up in knots. His silence had
long since branded him half-wit, and shy to the point of cold sweats,
Trionn did not argue the misconception. Let Silverdown's staff think
him stupid. The sting of their scorn was less than his dread of using
words to correct them. He talked to the cats well enough when he
wished, and had held very halting
conversations with the old Lord, before his illness had brought
physicians who would bar the master's door rather than admit a
scullion presumed to be a simpleton.
    With the cats, now four, trailing on his heels, Trionn left the
bread girl to her curses. He zigzagged past the spits into the pantry
to avoid the butcher's notice, lest his absence at the slaughter pen
cause contention.
For all his care, he was spotted.
    'The pigs take the knife better when you're there, Trionn,' the
butcher reproached gruffly. 'You want them not to suffer. Well, if
they're held still, the cut is fast and clean.'
    But it was not at all the matter of the pig's dying; had Trionn
been asked his own wish, he would have let the animals stay alive.
His oversensitivity was no simple affectation. Where others in
Silverdown's service might lament upon the waste, and curse the
Lord's lavish feasting that saw a surfeit of scraps thrown to the
hounds, Trionn woke up each night in cold sweats, apologizing in
half-smothered whispers to the dead beasts needlessly sacrificed.
    Today's pig would haunt his dreams no less for the fact he had
not bloodied his own hands.
    Left at last to his duties, Trionn hauled water to the washtub
and started to work the dirtied pots. Cats curled around his feet,
knotted together in contentment, while the speculative gossip of the
servants came and went through the rattle of plates and crockery.
    Enith, as always, was most outspoken. She did not sigh over her
new romance with the war captain, but turned sharp-tongued invective
against the master. 'Chased the linen maid as if she wasn't married,
and never mind the tart he worships in his next breath is this
highborn daughter of a duke.'
      'She may well be Silverdown's next Lady,' interrupted the page.
'You should be careful what you say of her.'His comment was ignored.
    'She's small, and no beauty, it's said. All dark hair and wide
eyes, and hips too narrow to bear a child.' This from the cook, who
had a brood of eight, and his wife once again near term.
    'Never mind looks,' the butcher ventured his opinion. 'It's the
lass's dowry that's at issue. She'll bring three chests of gold to
her bridegroom, and if we're to have candles for the dark nights this
winter, better all of us pray Silverdown wins her.'

II4
    Trionn reached for another pot, and a gob of wet sand for
scouring. Behind him, watched by the lazy eyes of his cats, the
Lord's steward hurried in, looking harried. 'Another five bottles of
the red wine, and quickly, before there's trouble.'
    'Man's brought his horsebreaker to table,' the cook grumbled.
'Those kind always drink.' He wiped greasy hands on his sleeves.
'Enith, take down the lantern and go for more red!'
    'Been to the cellar twice already tonight,' she howled back.
'More big spiders than bottles left, that's certain.'
    'No help for that.' Still mournful, the cook added, 'Do you
suppose the horsebreaker's here to handle that murdering dun stud? If
so, he'll want the wine. It's the last drink he'll have before he's
dead.'
    The pageboy took umbrage at this. 'Khaim's better than that. I
once saw him break the neck of a colt who tossed him. Hit it a blow
that knocked it sideways, and it couldn't stand up afterward.'
    'No man's that strong,' the cook objected over the creak of the
hearth chain as he dragged a kettle off the fire.
    'Horse had to be a weak, spindly thing, maybe,' ventured the
butcher.
The page insisted not.
    Trionn let his scouring sand sink to the bottom of the wash
water, sickened all over again. Though he strove over the noise and
the chat to picture the stallion at his fiat, free run across the
meadow, instead he was poisoned by visions: of blood in the grass and
the air split by a scream that might have been a woman's. Except that
a horse in agony will make the same shrill sound. Trionn doubled over
and shivered.
    A hard hand cuffed him back upright. 'Get back to washing, boy,'
snapped the cook. 'There's barely a clean pot in the rack yet.'
    Half dizzied, Trionn groped for a ladle. His hand stopped still
in midair. He could not touch the gravy that seemed suddenly the same
color and sheen as congealed blood, nor could he look at the wash
water clinging to his skin, so much did it shine like salt tears. The
cook saw his stupefied pallor, and cuffed him all the harder.
    'Oh, no, lazy boy. Though you're sick clean down to your
boottops, you'll stay and scour, until all this stack of washing is
done and dry.'

II5
    Trionn nodded dully. Midnight came. The lanterns and candles all
burned down, leaving darkness cut only by the struggling wick of a
tallow dip. Alone in the cavernous kitchen, he finished his appointed
chores. When he stumbled out at last to find his cot, the mists had
hidden even the moon.

Banners snapped, and dust blew. The new Lord had invited two friends
and all of his companions at arms to watch the dun stallion's
breaking. Once again Trionn had shirked his part in the slaughter
pen, since a calf roast was to finish the occasion. Hidden in the
crowd of Silverdown's servants, he stood in cap and apron, only one
cat by his shins; the commotion had driven all but the boldest and
most determined tom away.
    The stallion on whom all this interest centered galloped the far
fence line, ears tripping backward and forward, and nostrils
distended in deep-chested snorts of alarm. Trionn could not watch
him. He could not be as the others, and admire the glossy silver
coat, nor the high, black tail that cracked like a flag in the wake
of his thundering run. Trionn could not bear the sight of the
creature's eye, rolling white, nor could he forget the dreams that
had repeatedly broken his sleep: of blood in the grass, and the
stallion's ringing neigh of distress.
    And yet, unlike the dragging of animals to the butchef's knife,
here, he could not be absent. Tormented by a sickness of fear that
ate at his spirit from within, he could not run, but only stare down
at the worn-through leather of his boot toes, his shoulders as
hunched as though he expected a beating; as if he carried upon them a
burden that could bend and break, as finally and carelessly as grass
stems were trampled under the feet of today's thrill seekers.
    The scullion knew when the horsebreaker climbed the fence by the
scream of the dun stallion's challenge; second and without importance
came realization that the onlookers had ceased conversation, even the
cordwainer's apprentice, who was said to jabber in his sleep. The
slap of a rope shaken out of its coil reached Trionn's ears, eerily
and evilly distinct over the drumroll of the stallion's charge. The
scullion bit his lip. He felt through his feet the shake of the
ground, and his sensitized nerves seemed
to shudder at the step of the man who paced the greensward, eyes
narrowed and line poised to toss.
    The stallion came on like thunder, like storm. The crowd sucked
in a taut breath. The horsebreaker poised with slightly bent knees,
admiring, though his life stood endangered. He was confident when the
dun snapped up short from his run and towered into a rear. The man's
hand on the rope did not tremble as black forelegs raked out to
strike. He tossed his loop then, supremely, recklessly sure that his
lifetime of skill would not fail him.
The throw missed.
    Too fast for the eye to follow, the loop collapsed in a whipping
slide off the stallion's knee as his head snaked down, and he
whirled.
    Not off his guard, nor yet shaken, the horsebreaker shouted and
snapped the rope. This horse, like a thousand others, would be bound
to shy from any movement, half-seen where equine vision was obscured
by the length of his muzzle. Stallions could be predicted. Their
forehooves came down, then their head, with ears pricked to assess
the threat to their footing; the shy ones would often whirl and run.
    The dun stud twisted instead. He landed, still spinning, his ears
pinned fiat. The horsebreaker shouted to drive him back to a gallop,
his hands swiftly reeling in rope. But the stud had done with
running. His silver-blue quarters bunched, and one hoof flashed back
in deadly perfect accuracy to hammer the man where he stood.
    Bright blood flecked the green grass. The horsebreaker lay
unmoving, while a woman screamed, and men on all sides started
shouting, most jostling back from the fence, but others pressing
forward. The stud danced a half pirouette, some swore, in celebration
of his unholy victory. The grooms and the stable hands disagreed; the
horse was a killer, but not so driven by rage that he ever once
stopped thinking. The blue dun was far too crafty to mire his
pasterns in a corpse or a tangle of rope.
    Solitary, unmoved to any human commiseration, Trionn crouched
with his hands laced over his face. He alone had not exclaimed in
shocked sympathy as the Lord's men reached beneath the lower rails,
and dragged the horsebreaker's body beyond reach

II7
of further mauling. The victim was wounded beS*ond solace, if not
immediately dead, and the tears of Silverdown's scullion were shed
only and completely for the horse.
    His terror-inspired visions did not leave him. There was blood on
the grass, but a man's, and the beast's, for a surety, must follow.

The talk in the kitchens after sundown encompassed nothing else.
Trionn scrubbed his pots in his corner, and took no solace from the
cats, who were thicker than usual about his feet. They might not have
speech, but as he did, they could sense when trouble was afoot.
    Enith was shrill in her complaints, as she tapped chilled butter
from the molds. 'What if the Lord sends his captain to do the
killing? Waste of a fine piece of manhood, did that happen, and our
champion took a kick like that horsebreaker.'
    'Won't,' grunted the butcher, who recalled just short of a
mistake that the cook would run him out for spitting in contempt on
the floorboards. 'The captain's a bastard for pride. He'd scarce soil
his sword on a job better suited for my flensing knife. Though, mark,
if I'm asked to cut that devil creature's throat, I won't, unless
he's tied down.'
    'Who's to tie him,' Enith snipped back. 'No man but my captain
has the courage.'
    'Your captain?' muttered a stable hand, in to grab dinner between
seeing the guests' horses harnessed. 'Man's owned by nobody, least of
all any one lass. He tumbles anything in skirts, every chance he
gets.'
    His muttering tangled with the voice of the cook, who offered,
'T'were mine to say, I'd use poison. Why take chances, when a bit of
tainted feed dumped over the fence could do the job just as well?'
    The Lord's page overheard, as he entered with an emptied platter.
'The horse won't be killed,' he called clearly. 'He's much too
valuable for that.' Heads turned, all wearing hostile expressions,
except Trionn's; he stared fixedly at his hands, immersed to the
wrists in grease-scummed water, while the cats butted heads against
his ankles.
'The Lord has already decided,' announced the page in crisp
arrogance. 'He's sent for a gypsy horse-caller. It's broken for
saddle he wants that stud, not dead.'
    The cook slammed his cleaver upon the cutting board. 'Magic,' he
said in contempt. 'Where's the coin to pay for such? Gypsies with the
caller's gift come dear.' His thick, sure hands did their task slowly
as he heaped steaming meat on the platter the Lord's page held ready.
    'It's the girl he wants to impress.' Enith sniffed. 'Silverdown
will be beggared ere his Lordship wins her.'
    'That's not your trouble,' the Lord's page sniped back, out of
sorts because he was no longer entrusted to wait upon his master's
table. With Duke Tanemar's daughter expected to accompany her father
when the stallion was presented as a gift, the Lord had borrowed a
page of higher station, and presumably more refined manners, from his
brother's household in Tanley. Appointed to serve the lower hall
until a gypsy could be found to tame the stud, the displaced page
made his resentment felt at every opportunity. Only Enith was exempt,
since the boy yet held out hope he might win her favours from the
captain; to any who would listen, he bragged that soon it might be he
who tumbled her in the hayloft over the barn.
    Crouched over the washtub until his hands shriveled and his
cuticles chapped and split from the unending mess of dirtied kettles,
Trionn reflected sourly that he lost nothing from his disinclination
to speak. What were words after all, but winds that blew here and
there to no purpose? The cats had better sense, to express their
contentment through purring. They yowled only for misery, and met
daily disaffection in dignified, unblinking silence.
    The slaughtering continued the next afternoon, yet Trionn was
excused. The master commanded, and for fear of his Lordly
displeasure, every servant not required for other duties set to work
in the sun, pulling out briars by hand. Trionn was given the noisome
task of raking dirty rushes from the hall. The wooden boards
underneath were to be sanded and cleaned. Enith, between frequent
sniffs, claimed carpets were sure to follow. When the last
wheelbarrow filled with beetle-infested straw was carted out, Trionn
set to with sand bucket and rags. As cats scattered back from the
spatter of his scrubbing, he reflected that Enith was spiteful. The
rushes had been spread at the behest of a lazy house servant, and
only after sickness had confined Silverdown's doomed

II9
cripple to his bedchamber. l'he floors be[ore then, back to the old
Lord's rule, had been shiningly kept oiled.
     Trionn was still at his work, mopping up sand in the shadows of
a back corner, when the gypsy horse-caller arrived. She proved to be
a woman, to the surprise of all; tiny, raven-haired, and wearing a
patched mantle of greens and browns that might have been pilfered
from a minstrel. The tassels at the hem were worn to a ragged motley
of threads, and though her hair was braided and clean, her skin was
the ocher of mud baked dry in the sun.
     Trionn recognized her gift when the cats at his heels fled her
presence. Silent as shadow, they stalked off in stiff-backed
irritation. The scullion watched their retreat. A chill brushed his
skin; as if he, too, sensed the power over beasts that this gypsy
sorceress could command, and his spirit raised hackles in protest.
The hounds did not run. Fickle creatures that they were, bred over
generations to subservience, they converged in a pack of wagging
tails, tongues lolling in canine enthusiasm. They reacted as if the
strange woman in her dusty, faded finery had been the mistress they
had obeyed since their whelping; as indeed she could be, if she
chose. No dumb beasts, and few men, were proof against a gypsy
caller's craft. But unlike humans and cats, dogs set small value on
independence. Like whores, they flocked in unabashed eagerness around
the woman's boots, begging and whining to be dominated.
    Trionn threw down his r~si. oblivious to the fuss _as _servants
and guests, and at last the Lord himself took loud-voiced notice of
the intruder. The scullion unseen in his corner did not follow the
woman's words as she announced herself, but heard only the silvery
timber of her voice. The pitch set up echoes inside him that no
amount of clamor could still. He saw courtiers eagerly joining the
circle of dogs, who were now belly down and begging. Yet Trionn's
senses gave back false sight. In place of hounds and gentlefolk, his
mind could not throw off the vision of the silver-dun stud with his
grand neck bowed in submission.
    Sudden tears stung Trionn's eyes. His stomach heaved. The blood
on the grass had not been the horse's; better by far that it had
been. The Lord who had died a cripple had insisted many times that
death held the keys to final freedom.

Moonlight washed over the meadow. It limned soft silver over the

I20
stallion who grazed content in tall grass. Trionn sat outside the
fence, his lap encumbered by sleeping cats. His hand caressed the
bone handle of the butcher's flensing knife, stolen after dark from
the closet. Over and over, Trionn stroked the blade's edge, checking
its razor keenness. He turned the weighty steel in his hands, and
remembered the kick of a pig held pinned in his arms as it died. He
licked dry lips, and sighed as he tested the resolve he had made in
desperation, and found himself wanting. He lacked any kind of brash
courage. The fate of the horsebreaker did not haunt him, nor fear for
his own life and limbs. He simply knew. When the dun stallion bent
his knees and laid down to rest, Trionn had no will to creep through
the fence and cut the creature's throat to forestall its misery.
Whatever freedom death might offer could not compensate for the pound
of wild hooves, or the ripple and play of muscles burnished like
shining silk under sunlight. The stallion would live to be broken,
for Trionn did not have in him the requisite hardness for murder.
    He sat in the calm of the night, surrounded by cats and the chirp
of crickets, and miserably wished he were bold enough to run away.
Yet far as a lifetime of travel, though he crossed the rocks of the
mountains beyond the sands, the memories and the visions would follow
him, locked inescapably in his mind. The gypsy caller's powers would
sting him, no matter where, and he would ache for the stallion's lost
spirit. kike the cling of the cats, the persistence of his dreams
could not be shed.
    The deepest and worst of his misery was that he could not even
turn the steel upon himself. The pain did not deter him, nor the
dying, but the strange, insistent surety that the cats would be left
bereft. Wise as the creatures could be, they would not understand why
he should desert them for the sake of one horse's lost liberty.

The butcher recovered the purloined knife after Enith, returning from
her nightly tryst in the hayloft, caught Trionn in the yard by the
kitchens. Particular to a fault when it came to his cutlery, the
butcher's shouted obscenities progressed to extra work as punishment.
Trionn was assigned the task of sharpening every tool left dull in
the course of shearing Silverdown's weeds and grass. Left wary after
the slaughtering that Trionn was practiced at

12I
haring off, the butcher took no chances. He locked the scullion in
the tool shed with a half-filled bucket and a whetstone. The cats
could find no way in, however hopefully they sniffed and circled. In
time they were compelled to settle in disgruntled bundles on the door
stoop.
    Inside, the shed was suffocatingly hot. Hedged by darkness
inadequately beaten back by a bark spill soaked in resin, Trionn set
to with the whetstone. He braced the bucket between his knees, and
worked the marred edge of a sickle, his mind consumed by awareness of
the cats' balked desires. He was powerless to ease their unhappiness.
    The butcher jammed a wedge under the sill outside. Until he chose
to return, or someone else happened by to fetch a tool, Trionn's
imprisonment was complete. The likelihood nobody would visit the shed
before the spill burned out did not matter. Silverdown's servants had
left for the meadow, the reason for their gathering a distress that
already fretted the scullion raw. He dipped the stone and resumed
honing, relentless in his determination. He would not think upon what
must inevitably happen when the gypsy raised her powers to subdue the
stud.
And yet the moment touched him, all the same.
    The tones of the gypsy witch's call clamored through him like the
struck chime of a bell. The whetstone slipped from Trionn's fingers
and splashed into the bucket. Droplets warm as blood trickled down
his shins. He did not feel their wetness. Nor did he notice as the
spill flickered out, leaving him kneeling in darkness. His eyes were
vision-bound to a sunlit meadow, and the form of the slate dun stud
shaking back his mane, his ears snapped forward to listen.
    The gypsy sorceress repeated her call, lower now, almost
wheedling.
    Trionn felt the resonance of her tone play through the marrow of
his bones. He remained oblivious to the ribbon of true blood that
laced his wrist, from the knuckle laid open on the sickle.
    His eyesight remained locked as his mind: on the horse, who
twitched glossy skin, as if to drive off flies. But it was no insect
that stung him. From her perch half on, half over the fence, the
gypsy crooned out a binding. The stud's ears flattened and he
stamped, where once he would have thundered into a run with his teeth
bared in fury.

I22
    The call came again, compelling. As if whipped, the stallion
started. He edged one step forward, then two, while in the soundless
isolation of the shed, Trionn winced. Sweat rinsed his cheeks and his
nails gouged his palms as his fingers clenched to fists in the throes
of unasked for empathy.
    Now the gypsy began a sing-song rhythm that raised the hair at
Trionn's neck. He shivered and jerked in concert with the stud as
need swelled into compulsion. The horse lowered his proud crest. His
hooves raised no dust as he advanced. To Trionn, the gypsy's magic
squeezed and confined, as if the leaping flame of a bonfire were
compressed down into one spark. His breath jerked in gasps from his
chest.
    'No,' he whispered. 'No.' He closed eyes that had long since
stopped seeing. 'No!'
    Yet his physical cry could not alter the spell. The stallion
moved inexorably onward. He had crossed half the distance to the
fence, and the woman, tasting victory, climbed down with her hand
outstretched.
    The murmurs of the servants, and the Lord's triumphant laugh rang
brittle as breaking ice against the deeper vibration of the summoning
that continued to draw its victim in.
One touch from the witch would seal the stallion's submission.

Trionn understood this in a gut ache of inside of him snapped.
    He bit his lip, knees clasped, as his same wrenching sickness he
felt at the

intuition, and something

body spasmed with the slaughtering of the pigs.

Only this time, the cramping and the agony were a thousand times more
severe. He fought to breathe, fought to think, while the sweat
mingled unnoticed with his blood and pattered on the dusty floor.
    The stallion was a half-stride away from defeat. His lowered
muzzle brushed the grass tips. His eyes were dull, unfocused, and his
tail, as lackluster as any gelding's.
    Trionn knew a spearing agony that threatened to rip away his
reason. He clamped his hands over his sweat-slicked face and forced a
half-strangled breath. 'No.'
    Before his heart could burst, before the great dun could nuzzle
the woman's outstretched brown fingers, he imagined the horse as he
had been, a creature of terrible beauty that no man in his right mind
dared touch.

123
Trionn pictured the stallion with his head upflung, and his eyes
rolling white rings in hatred.
    There followed a moment of torment, as if the inner fiber of his
being was seared by a whirlwind and torn apart. He had no voice to
cry out, and no thought beyond a pinpoint awareness that centered on
the slate-blue stud.
    For a second he seemed to be that horse, his senses overwhelmed
by the scent of summer grass, and a second, sourer odor left by a
trespassing human. Trionn saw through the stallion's eyes the vista
of the fence, and the crowd that lined the rails in maddening noise.
He felt the unleashed tension that whipped through the horse as the
gypsy's near-finished binding snapped like so much spun thread.
    Ever mindful of the horse's speed and power, the woman was faster
than her predecessor. She dropped and rolled, even as the stallion
screamed in rage. He reared. His shadow raked over the onlookers,
driving them back in a panic as his forehooves slashed through air.
The woman was no longer there, but already through the fence in a
whirl of motley robes. The stallion spun, and from his hind legs
launched himself into a gallop. A bolt of silver fury, he ran. His
mane flew, and his tail whipped behind like the curl and twist of a
war banner.
    The shouts of the irate Lord of Silverdown seemed insignificant
before the racing tattoo of hooves.
    In the tool shed, Trionn woke to himself, sobbing beyond all
control. The finger unwittingly sliced on the sickle was stinging in
the salt of his sweat. He splashed water from the bucket over the
cut, and found his limbs heavy with weariness. His lungs hurt, as if
he had been racing on foot alongside the galloping horse. The fact he
had not been seemed unreal. Still weeping, he lay back against the
rolled burlap used to save seedlings from the last blighting touch of
spring frost. His soaked hair plastered to his forehead, he fell into
a dreamless oblivion nearer to unconsciousness than sleep.

The day waned. Trionn wakened to a slap. He gasped, started upright,
and, dazzled by the glare of low sunlight, saw the butcher standing
over him.
'Lazy lout!' the man was shouting. 'All day you were in here,

I24
and nothing to show for your time. I should have guessed you'd pass
the hours sleeping if you could!'
    Trionn propped himself up on one arm. He blinked, rubbed his
aching cheek, and glanced around to locate the cats, who should have
stolen their chance to bolt inside the instant the door was cracked
open.
No cats were in evidence.
    For the first time in his life that he could think of, his feline
friends were not there. The stone stoop was empty of their presence,
and the butcher was still howling nonsense.
    If Trionn was grudging with his speech, he was equally adept at
not listening. He rubbed his arms to ease the chill that swept his
skin. If the cats had left due to the butcher's ranting, the
troubling fact remained: none of them lurked in the shadows behind
the seed sacks, or crouched with flattened ears beneath the shovels.
    Above anything else, Trionn dreaded to know what awaited when he
ventured out of the shed.
    'I should be throwing cold water at your head, boy, to snap you
out of your stupor!' The butcher raised the handle of the bucket,
prepared to act on his threat, when a second voice cut him off.
    'There you are, Trionn!' hollered the cook, his fat bulk damming
the small band of light that made its way through the doorway. 'Been
following cats into crannies all afternoon, and it's here you've been
skulking all along!' Oblivious to the butcher's prior grievance, the
cook barged past and grabbed his errant scullion by the wrist. 'Get
moving, you lunk. There's a stack of pots need scrubbing, and his
Lordship in a temper since that cheating snip of a gypsy disappeared
and can't be found.'
    Distracted from his ire over scythe blades, the butcher thumped
down his bucket. 'lt's true, then? The woman was a charlatan?'
    'The fact she ran off makes you think so.' The cook jerked Trionn
after as he plowed a path toward the door. 'The Lord's set his riders
to find her. When she's caught, I'd guess there'll be a hanging.'
    'And the horse?' Turned thoughtful, the butcher fished his
whetstone from the water, and reached for an unsharpened sickle.
'What's to become of the stallion?'
    'Dogmeat,' the cook affirmed, his head cocked over Trionn's
shoulders. 'The captain at arms was told to down the rogue with an
arrow, next time the kennelman needs a carcass.' Then,

~25
bothered back to priorities by his scullion's dragging feet, the cook
turned his invective upon Trionn. 'You heat sick, boy? Pick yourself
up and walk, else I'll pack your bones for the knackerman along with
that devil of a stallion's.'
    Engrossed in miseries far removed from the cook's irritation,
Trionn stumbled through the wicket gate into the courtyard. No cats
came flying to greet him. Not even the mackerel striped tabby sunning
herself on the wall. Dread left him the appearance of listlessness.
He responded mechanically to the cook's yanks and prods, not wanting
to test what change might have touched him while he had been locked
in a tool shed, and a gypsy had signally failed in the taming of a
man-killing stallion.
    The entry to the scullery loomed ahead. On the stoop lolled two
white-muzzled hounds, skinny and scarred, but not too old or too
proud to disdain begging for scraps. Enith leaned against the
doorlintel, sampling a slice of sausage, while the hounds tipped
their heads at her and rolled their moist brown eyes.Trionn
stiffened, half-wild with trepidation.
    'Are you daft, boy?' exploded the cook. He gave an abusive yank.
The scullion gripped in his meaty fist stumbled forward with a
breathless cry.
    The dogs immediately stiffened and turned their heads. They saw
Trionn. Enith and her sausage were forgotten as they shuffled into a
lope, tails wagging, and eagerness in their cloudy old eyes.
    Trionn flung back from their rush, appalled to a burst of speech.
'No,' he croaked, 'not this,' as the dogs rushed to him and leapt for
joy around his knees. They whined and nosed at his fingers, as if
greeting a long-sought friend.
    'What's happening?' yelped the cook, put out afresh by confusion.
He threw off the scullion and the dogs, hands raised in nervous
trepidation. 'Always before it was cats.' His tone held a bite of
accusation as he added, 'Or have the Lord's bitches gone crazy?'
    Enith shifted a lump of sausage into the back of her cheek.
Around chewing, she said, 'Looks uncanny to me, as if that gypsy
witched the dogs instead of the stallion.' Then she fixed hard eyes
on Trionn. 'You never said you could talk.'
    'Oh, he can,' supplied the cook. 'He just hates to. When he was
little, his parents beat him for stubbornness. Didn't do any

I26
living good.' He raised a booted foot and kicked the nearest dog,
which yelped and bounded back, to shelter behind Trionn's knees. The
scullion flinched from its touch, hunched and unaware as the
discussion continued around him.
    'Enough foolishness now, Trionn,' berated the cook. 'The pots
aren't getting any cleaner while you stand out here acting foolish.'
    'If he fakes being dumb, maybe he's not so stupid,' Enith
suggested, while the cook pushed the scullion reluctantly toward the
kitchen doorway. She stepped disdainfully aside to let them
past, adding, 'Are you stupid?'He gave no answer.
    When the dogs sought to barge through on Trionn's heels, both she
and the cook howled in chorus. Ousting the dogs required all their
attention, and until the door to the kitchen was secured, neither one
noticed that Trionn had not retired to his corner to silently,
doggedly, scrub pots.
    'He slipped out the side way,' snitched the Lord's page, idle at
the table chewing sausage. He gave a hopeful smile toward Enith, who
responded with a flounce, cut short as the cook had a fit.
    'I'11 have the both of you washing pots!' he roared in fistwaving
fury.
    The page snickered, as if the threat was a joke. An instant
later, he found himself installed at Trionn's washtub, cursing the
stink of tankards and plates left awash in skins of rancid grease.

Well beyond earshot of the fracas in the kitchen, Trionn ran as a man
might when driven by whips. Wherever he went, the cats in their turn
fled his presence. Uncannily choosy by habit, they recognized
precisely what the gypsy caller's gift had wakened in him. A horse
had been wrested from her spell by his bidding, and of humans with
such powers they were chary. Trionn knew pain beyond words. The
dependable warmth of the cats' companionship was lost to him, reft
away by an afternoon's longing that in ignorance, he had never known
to fear.
    In his passionate wish to keep the stallion wild, he had never
guessed that desire by itself could afflict him. He raged to admit
what the cats knew, and the dogs by their mindless fawning: that the
caller's talents had been somehow thrown awry by

I27
his meddling. The taint of her mystery had touched him. He did not
know if the fluke could be reversed. Though his lungs ached and his
muscles burned, he pressed on in useless exertion. For the inevitable
outcome had not altered. The kennelman was promised a carcass, and
the huntsman's arrow must fly. However far Silverdown's scullion
drove his body, the vision pursued and harrowed him. Still, he saw
blood in the grass, the scream of the stallion's dying an echo that
resounded through his mind.
    Dusk found him crouched on the rise above the meadow, his
forehead cradled on crossed wrists. He had decided to break down the
gate, a desperate act that would ultimately not solve anything.
Loose, the dun stallion was a liability. He would steal mares from
all but the sturdiest paddocks, and kill any fool who interfered. In
the end, he would be chased down. The archer's shot would take him,
but in the open, as he ran in all his pride and splendor.
    If Silverdown's scullion escaped the fury of the horse he
resolved to set loose, what should befall him at the Lord's hand for
presuming such interference defied imagination. In his misery over
the desertion of the cats, Trionn did not care. His fretting over the
stallion's fate had long since destroyed his peace; the pain of
spirit he already suffered could hardly be made any worse. All that
remained was to endure until the darkest hour before moonrise.
    The birds quieted, and the crickets began their chorus. Above the
small sounds of the night, Trionn heard the bell that summoned the
field hands to supper. Past the bog he saw the glimmer of candles
wastefully alight in the Lord's hall. The feast went on regardless,
the gypsy's failure with the stallion no impediment to the pleasure
of those highborn guests still in residence. Yet the thriftlessness
of Silverdown's Lord was of little concern to Trionn. Now that he had
firmed his course of action, the stillness as the stars brightened
lent him a measure of peace. The Lord's riders were fanned out across
the countryside in search of the vanished gypsy; patrols on the
estate would be light, and widely spaced.
    The gloom deepened. The breeze carried snatches of Enith's
laughter. The Lord's page could be heard shouting curses at the cook,
while in the gatehouse, the captain berated a dozing sentry. The
cobbled yard between lay empty, most of the household settled inside
at their supper. Trionn chose his moment. Sweat chilled on his body
as he rose and crept downhill through mown

~28
grass toward the stallion's pasture. From a pile of cut brush left by
the laborers who cleared the fields, he selected a stout branch of
oak. He stripped off the bark and twigs, then hastened on toward the
gate, nailed shut ever since the forgotten proclamation that the
stallion might live undisturbed.
    No one stopped him; no rider emerged to cry challenge. Trionn
moved in fixed purpose, too numb to acknowledge his trepidation. The
gate loomed ahead, a barred silhouette against a starlit expanse of
open grass. He shot his branch home between the heavy planks and the
post, snatched a quick breath, and threw his shoulder into prying.
    The nails were well rusted. The ones nearest the oak branch
groaned and loosened, while the others stubbornly stuck fast. Dry,
weathered wood resisted the strain with a crack. The stallion could
not help but be drawn by the noise. Horses were curious by nature,
Trionn knew; he desperately shoved all the harder, digging his toes
into dew-drenched grass to keep his stance from slipping. At best he
had a space of seconds before the stud cried challenge. His neigh
would draw the Lord's riders. Did they catch the scullion at his
meddling, they would kill him, cut him down without trial as a horse
thief.
    Never mind that the stud was a rogue, and the only one wronged
might be the kennelman. Luck might sour for him, since as a runaway,
the dun was as likely to be slain on some other noble's demesne, with
the carcass claimed as spoils in compensation. The kennelman would
beat any scullion till he bled, when he learned who had cheated him
of fare for his hounds.
    Trionn jammed his hip into the prybar until sweat stung his eyes
like tears. 'Go,' he grunted to the groaning, giving nails. 'Go!'
    The rusted steel proved oblivious to pleading; heavy oak might
split, but resisted breakage. Trionn thumped his fist on the gate in
frustration, then set his branch to the base of the panel and hurled
himself into fresh effort.
    He shoved, his sinews straining in agony. The lower boards gave
way in a shower of jagged splinters. Trionn shifted his prybar, any
moment anticipating the rapid-fire pounding of hooves, followed up by
the bone-cracking punishment of an angry stallion's teeth. He was
taking far too long. Every second his struggle lasted wound his
nerves to the edge of snapping. Dizzy before he realized he was
inadvertently holding his breath, Trionn jerked, dragging the next

~29
nails from the post with a force fueled by terror. He needed a rest
but dared not pause as he confronted the final plank.
    Something bumped his shoulder. Startled, Trionn emitted a yelp
that silenced the crickets. His pry branch dropped, thudding into the
ground. The stud shied back on his haunches with a snort.
Horse and boy regarded one another, each one poised to run. Trionn
licked his lips. Panic held him rooted before the gapped boards of
the gate. His thoughts raced with his heartbeat. Should he bend to
retrieve his branch, the stud wonJd strike and kill him; turn and
f~ee, and he risked a ripping bite that would cripple him for life.
Should he escape with the gate just half broken, his resolve would
end in bleak failure.
    The dun stud stamped in the starlight. His ears flicked and he
shook his neck, his mane spattered like ink down his crest. He
snorted again and took a tentative, interested step forward.
    Trionn watched, paralyzed, as the horse shoved the loose boards
with his head.
    'Dear God,' the scullion mouthed, astonished. Then his
startlement faded as he noticed the horse's manner held no fury. A
charged, unnatural shudder left him trembling to the soles of his
feet.
    The stallion shouldered his neck between the gap and shuffled the
sleeve of Trionn's shirt. He lipped the cloth, and snorted again,
messily wet in his inquisitiveness.
    'Dear God,' Trionn repeated, this time in a choked off whisper.
His every assumption had been wrong. After all, he had not bidden the
stud to assert his own savage nature; not a bit. In his colossal,
scullion's ignorance, he had done worse, in fact overturned the gypsy
woman's spell with a binding entirely his own.
    The dun stallion that had been a killer now answered only to him.
    Blindly Trionn bent, groping through dew-drenched grass for the
branch he had dropped in his terror. Shaken to cold sweats, he
loosened the final boards of the gate, while the stallion lipped at
his hair, and blew gusty breaths in his ear. The huge creature eyed
him through tangled strands of forelock as the last few nails gave
way. Trionn yanked down the battered boards. 'Go!' he urged, his face
averted, that he need not be tormented by the absolute trust the
powerful stallion placed in him. 'Get out of here!'
The stud obliged by standing still.

~3o
'They'll kill you!' He waved his hands. 'Run!'
A bony head banged his elbow.
    'Oh, be off,' Trionn cried. He stumbled back in a flummoxed fit
of frustration. Never in his ugliest nightmare had he thought to
guard against an assault by the mad stallion's friendliness.
    Unfazed by human foibles, the horse followed, his nostrils
widened in a companionable snuffle that stopped just short of a
nicker. As briskly as the boy whose unwitting call had touched him
could back away, the stallion strode after, unhurried, but
unshakeable in equine determination. Trionn belatedly understood that
short of outright shouting, or a blow to the nose with a stick,
nothing would drive the stud from him. The noise of his outcry would
certainly bring investigation from the riders; and any blow he might
strike would now be an unthinkable betrayal. The horse was no longer
wild, nor tamed to any touch but Trionn's own. His dilemma over the
stallion was compounded.
    Bonded as he was to the horse, it was inconceivable to leave him
loose to be hunted and butchered for dogmeat.
    Trionn sat in the meadowgrass, glaring morosely at his boots.
They were worn at the toes, unsuited for the miles of wear he was now
going to have to require of them. The already tired leather would rot
off his feet by wintertime, and where could he steal or beg enough
coin to pay for the stallion's upkeep? Such worries were moot if he
failed to hide such a distinctive and costly animal from discovery by
the Lord's patrols.
    The rising moon already glimmered through the trees. No time
remained to restore the gate and formulate a reasonable escape.
Shoved again by a warm nose, then tickled about the ears by the
inquisitive stallion's lips, Trionn cursed. The horse raised his head
as if puzzled.
    'Well, I don't know what to do,' Trionn said aloud, more words
than he had used in one breath for ~che better part of a month.
    In the end, he settled for walking. The great dun paced at his
heels with no more shame than a dog might show, adoring a master who
had kicked him.
    'You were wild,' Trionn accused bitterly. 'You liked it that way,
remember?'
The horse only snorted, wetting the back of his neck.
    The path beyond Silverdown's back thickets stretched away through
an expanse of tenant farmland. It was dusty, left rutted
from the passage of the costermonger's carts that would rattle to the
market before dawn. Now, when the field-hands were sleeping, and most
nobles sipped wine in the comfort of candle lit halls, the way was
empty, a silvered ribbon twisting away toward lands that Trionn had
never dreamed of seeing. He was hungry, tired, and lost outside his
corner in the kitchen where the pots and the washtub waited. He
brooded as he walked, while the stallion grazed the verges, then
trotted between mouthfuls of snatched grass to keep up.
    At intervals he would nudge Trionn, or playfully nip at the boy's
sleeves. To turn around, even once, was to acknowledge the creature's
magnificence. The full impact of what had gone wrong at the moment of
the gypsy witch's call left an ache of inconsolable frustration.
    'I'm the last person you should trust to look after your fate,'
Trionn cried, exasperated.
    He crossed a plank bridge, the boom of the stallion's hooves at
his back a disturbance that shattered the stillness.
    A rustle from behind the span, and a half-seen, fitful movement,
caused the stallion to shy back. He arched his neck, ears flattened,
then feinted with bared teeth toward what he saw as a threat.
Startled silly, Trionn gaped as what looked like a bundle of rags
extricated itself from the undergrowth.
    The moonlight revealed a small woman, her manner decidedly vexed.
'By my mother's blood! It was you who turned my call!' The fury on
her oval face was justified. 'Why in hell's name did you do it, boy?
My reputation's thoroughly ruined.'
    The stallion screamed and struck. Quicker than he by a
hairsbreadth, the gypsy hopped the rails of the bridge, still
carping. 'Call him off, idiot. Before we're noticed, and find
ourselves cut down for stealing.'
Mistrustful of words, Trionn gave a shrug, palms up.
     The woman snapped back an obscenity in the gypsy language of the
hills. 'You've got uncommonly strong talent, for a boy who doesn't
have the faintest idea what he's doing.' Her acid commentary cut off
as she ducked beneath the bridge to avoid the enraged stallion's
strike. As teeth lunged for her wrist, she dropped out of reach and
landed mid-stream with a splash.
'Lay your hand on him,' she instructed, annoyed as if she had

132
just turned her ankle on a stone. 'The horse will feel your touch,
and sense through you that I mean no harm.'
    Trionn feared to approach the whirling mass of equine nerve and
muscle that could, and had, killed men outright. But the clatter as
the horse rampaged across the bi:idge span demanded immediate
reaction. He steeled his nerve, reached out, and was startled yet
again as the stallion anticipated his movement, and seemed at one
with his intent. The creature settled back on all fours, curved his
neck, and lipped at Trionn's fingers.
    From the far side of the bridge, bedraggled and wringing wet, the
gypsy woman shouldered out of the briars on the river bank. She
regarded the mismatched tableau presented by the awkward, diffident
boy and a stallion bred to carry princes. Her eyes turned absorbed
and thoughtful, while the moonlight glinted off the water that
dripped from her rags like a fall of thrown diamonds.
    'You're exceptionally gifted with animals,' she mused. 'I expect
you also know how to ride?'
    Trionn cast her a look of mortified affront, and the stallion
snorted warning in concert.
    The gypsy witch shook her head, and busied herself wringing muddy
water from her skirts. She sighed at last and straightened. Trionn
received a long look that chilled his flesh, and set his knees to
trembling.
    A gypsy horse-caller's spells could be used on more than a beast;
her voice when she finally spoke held a whetted edge of threat. 'If
you never dreamed of owning this horse, of riding him, why in the
name of the mysteries did you wrest him from my control?'
    Trionn swallowed. There would be no running away from her; he
must force his throat to loosen, and his tongue to shape coherent
speech. 'I didn't,' he blurted clumsily. 'I wanted the stallion to
stay wild.' And unbidden, the tears started, born of shame, that he,
and the last person living to crave dominion, had been the one to
spoil the stallion's fiery independence.
    'My mother's blood!' the gypsy swore in a voice that cracked into
laughter. 'You've a gift to outmatch mine, and you thought to stay a
simple scullion? I suppose the cats jumped into your cradle since the
moment of your birth, and nobody knew what that meant?'
    Trionn nodded. He swallowed again, painfully. 'I hate myself. For
breaking the stallion's spirit.'

I33
    The gypsy gave another breathless laugh. 'You didn't. Not at
all.' Her brusquehess was intended to reassure, but caused Trionn a
start of alarm. Dropping handfuls of wet hems, she sat down in the
dust by the roadside, and rested her pointed chin in delicate, almost
elfin hands. 'Boy, listen to me carefully. You did not harm that
horse. What you did was bond with him. He is now your best friend,
and more. He is twinned to your thoughts. I will teach you what that
means, but for now you must understand. You called, and he answered
entirely of his own will. His wildness was won over by your depth of
compassion, and that was no mean feat. Believe me in this, for I
know. I also touched that horse, and the distrust in his heart was
buried deep. You bested my skills through no mistake. That stud was
listening for your voice to command him from the moment he was first
foaled.'
    'But I don't understand how that happened!' Trionn cried in
rising unhappiness. 'And I felt your call! It was painful!'
    The gypsy shouted back, 'Hurtful to you, boy, because it was not
pitched for your spirit!' Her manner suddenly gentled. 'I know you're
confused. But what counts this minute, is that the Lord of Silverdown
will not pardon either of us if we're caught. He will find his rogue
stallion gone, and believe that I accomplished the task I was bidden
to. The dun's attack upon me in the meadow will be taken for a
witch's trick, arranged to cover my escape. You must understand what
you've caused, boy. I'll be blamed for the stud you called, and be
hunted and hanged as a horse thief.'
    She did not exaggerate. Too well Trionn recalled the
horsebreaker's warning to Silverdown's Lord, that were he to summon a
gypsy, the stallion he desired to break would be stolen the first
night after gentling. Awkwardly the scullion locked his fingers in
the warmth of the horse's mane. 'What's to be done? I know nothing at
all beyond pot washing.'
    The gypsy caller sighed. 'I'11 become accomplice to a horse
thief, after all.' She shrugged, rose, and gave another of her
silvery laughs. 'The hangman might as well find me guilty. Still, my
skills should be enough to turn the Lord's riders awry. With luck, I
can hide all three of us. But I have a condition to set.' She
regarded the scullion and his unlikely companion, a horse so nobly
proportioned, that men might try murder to possess him.
    Trionn looked warily back, never before conscious of how tiny she
was, and how determined. Even clad in drenched rags, she had

134
the poised tension of a wild thing, or an owl in the moment before
flight. For the first time he could recall, words came easily in the
presence of another human being. 'What do you ask?'
    'That you learn to ride, because we're going to need to travel
faster and farther than either of us can go on foot.' At Trionn's
scowl, she bore unmercifully on. 'And you must swear to stay with me
until such time as you can marshal the talent you were born to.'
'That's two things,' Trionn pointed out.
At his shoulder the stallion stamped.
    The gypsy woman caught his eyes and compelled him to hold her
gaze. 'Is it yes?'
    And the boy who was destined to be other than Silverdown's
scullion bit his lip. Haltingly he gave his oath. When he finished,
he added vehemently. 'I am not a horse thief!'
    To which the gypsy witch laughed as she hurried him on down the
road. 'As you wish, boy, but face fact. That's what your gifts make
you best at.'

The stallion's disappearance was years in the past, and forgotten by
all but a few when the stranger arrived at Silverdown. He came to the
gates just past dusk, clad in a dark dusty cloak. To the watchman who
called him challenge, he gave no name. He insisted, quietly firm,
that he had business with $ilverdown's Lord.
    'Lady,' corrected the guardsman, his chin out-thrust over the
pole of his halberd. 'Have you no news of the folk you've traveled to
visit? The Lord's been dead these five years, and his wife and one
son survive him.'
    The stranger bowed in apology. He did not appear to be a brigand.
Nor could he be mistaken for a beggar out to win a meal. He waited in
the twilight with his head cocked, as if the palisade and stone gate
keep were a surprise he had not expected. The buttons on his cloak
were silver. He journeyed on foot by choice: at his shoulder stood a
magnificent silver-dun stallion, bridleless, halterless, saddleless.
Muscled and shining like high-gloss silver, the creature had the fire
of a warhorse, but with significant difference. He followed the man
without restraint, apparently of his own free will. Dark, equine eyes
regarded the gatekeeper, who studied the horse-master in turn with
searching

I35
distrust. Yet the man carried no war gear. He was, in point of fact,
unarmed.
    'Let me speak with the Lady, then,' the stranger insisted. The
timber of his voice was persuasive, if not impossible to deny. 'I
will take but a minute of her time, and need not ask lodging for the
night.'
    Much against his orders and inclination, the guard grudgingly
opened the gate. The stranger strode inside. Without any visible
signal, the horse flanked him stride for stride.
    The pair reached the courtyard, where a tabby cat leapt up from
cleaning itself. One glance at the stranger, and it fled with
flattened ears and streaming tail. The stable boy who came to tend
the horse was waved back.
    'He will stand,' insisted the man in the same voice that had
placated the gate guard.
    The stallion remained at liberty in the courtyard, obedient to
the letter of command while his master pursued his business inside
the keep. Beyond the occasional switch of his black tail, the
creature might have been a statue. He raised no hoof, but laid back
warning ears at the stable boys who ventured too close in admiration,
and the old, half-blind master at arms whispered behind his scarred
hand that despite the silver buttons on his cloak, the visitor must
have a taint of gypsy blood. 'At least, that stallion shows a witch's
touch for a surety.'
    'But he had light hair,' objected Enith, grown blowsy through the
years since she had claimed distinction as the captain's latest
conquest. 'The man didn't look to me like any gypsy!'
    Still regarding the horse, as if he were pricked by a memory just
beyond grasp of his awareness, the armsmaster gestured in contempt.
'You would see as much or as little as that man allowed, for such is
the nature of his sorcery.'
    The discussion heated into argument, as darkness deepened over a
yard left sadly gloomy by the utter absence of torchlight.
    Upstairs in the hall, before trestles more scarred than he
remembered, the stranger paused in the flickering firelight that
spilled across the floor before the hearth. On boards scraped bare of
wax or polish, he bowed in respect to the Lady. The dimness, or maybe
his economy of movement made him seem at one with the shadows as he
lifted a pouch from the crook of his elbow. This he placed with a
clink on the table beside the embroidery she had

I36
abandoned since the last daylight had fled. He did not comment on the
dearth of candles as he said, 'This belongs to you.'
    The Lady's silk-dark eyebrows arched up. 'I beg your pardon, sir?
My Lord left debts, not debtors, or none that he mentioned at his
death.'
    'This one he must have forgotten,' the strange man corrected most
gently. 'Let me offer my condolences on your husband's passing,
though we were never friends. His heir is the proper recipient. The
coin in that purse is Silverdown's gold.'
    'Might I know what service was rendered to require such generous
payment?' Piqued to curiosity, the Lady leaned forward enough that
the firelight touched her. She locked trembling hands in her lap,
though the gesture failed to conceal the calluses that marred her
fine skin. Silverdown had fallen on hard times and yet, even as her
straits were exposed to the eyes of her visitor, she did not snatch
up the pouch. As if need did not demand that she count the money
inside, though the fringes of her shawl were dark with tarnish, and
her dress had been embroidered at the bodice to hide its past history
as a cast off. Poor as Silverdown's Lady might be, her bearing never
deserted her.
She carried herself regally as a queen.
    Her presence was forceful enough that the stranger stood as if
tongue-tied, betraying awkwardness before highborn grace. Or perhaps
his diffidence stemmed from reluctance to reveal an unpleasantness
between himself and the late Lord, whom very few folk had cause to
love. In a musical softness that somehow did not convey the
impression of grudging character, he said, 'Mark the entry in your
ledger as stud fees, and back payment for the purchase of a horse.'
    'I don't understand,' said the Lady. 'My Lord never stood any
stallions.'
    Something about her smallness stirred recognition, or maybe her
careworn, homely face made him ask, 'Are you the Earl of Tanemar's
daughter?'
    Startled to an intake of breath, she admitted, 'I am.' Since her
father had fallen out of favor with the King, not many cared to
mention his name with kindness.
    'Then,' said the stranger in sweet courtesy, 'ask his grace the
Duke of the blue-dun stud he was promised as a gift when your late
Lord aspired to become your bridegroom.'

I37
     The Lady glanced aside too quickly. 'I can't,' she admitted
after a difficult pause. 'My father has been imprisoned. The fine to
secure his freedom is more than my brother or I have in our powers to
pay.'
     But politics and the feuding of the highborn lay outside this
stranger's concern. His silence grew prolonged. When the Lady at last
sought to prompt him, she discovered the chamber left empty. Her
elusive visitor had departed. Only the pouch on the table remained as
proof of his presence.
     The coins inside were heavy gold, and the full count of them, a
miracle. When the Silverdown's ancient steward checked on his
mistress hours later, he found the Lady silently weeping. A shining
spill of coins lay in her lap, and in sparkling piles around her
feet.
    Months later, Silverdown's Lady did the stranger's bidding for
more reason than to ease her curiosity. She did not inquire of her
father, for the Duke became irritable at reminder that Silverdown's
gold had bought his reprieve from the King. The tale was recounted by
the butcher, of a man-killing stallion that had been stolen on the
same night as a scullion, mistakenly called dumb, and a half-wit, had
disappeared without trace from the estate.
    'He was a shirker, a sneak, and a liar, too,' the butcher
vehemently summed up.
The Lady frowned. 'I thought you said he could not speak?' 'Well, not
entirely,' the butcher allowed. He stroked his unshaven chin. 'Trionn
never talked to anybody, a queer enough habit to have. He wasn't the
sort to care about repayment of a debt. He stole my best blade, you
know, the same day he took off with the stallion.'
    The Lady tucked a fallen strand of hair underneath the edge of
her hood. 'You got the knife back?' she asked outright.
    The butcher shrugged, then nodded. 'One of the servants caught
him crossing the open yard. He never said what he'd intended to do
with it,' this last, on a note of self-defense.
    Silverdown's Lady gave back no reproach beyond a sigh. 'From the
look on your face, l'd expect that nobody ever asked him.' She
reflected a moment on the gold, the value of which added up to a
surprising fortune. The man who had repaid the coin, and then gone
his way after scarcely a dozen words, had left wealth enough

138
to buy out the estate and its lands, twice over; the irony of that
raised a mystery. As if the fortune itself had been the pittance, and
the principle behind, the tie to conscience. 'If I were to guess,'
the Lady ventured, 'I should say that none of you knew the boy.'
    The butchef's only answer was a mutter that may have masked
contempt.
    Alone in the cut of the wind through the yard, the Lady huddled
into her cloak. Fiercely, and for the rest of her days, she regretted
her well-bred restraint. Too late she wished she had asked the
strange visitor to stay, or at least to take a light supper. He may
not have been comfortable telling about himself, but perhaps she
might have learned more about the horse that had restored her to
fortune and future.

I39
Double Blind

The encounter happened entirely without warning, in the thick of
battle at Dead Star 3I. As if by design, the Fleet's most junior
lieutenant sat drumming his fingers at the controls of a state-of-
the-art Fleet scoutship. Light from the monitors silvered his
aristocratic profile, which expressed bitterness, frustration, and
longing. The scout craft Shearborn was commissioned as a chaser,
handily styled for concealment. She carried just two plasma cannon.
Hit and run, or follow and hide, had been her designer's intentions;
'mop-up following engagement' read the bottom line in her battle
orders. Last month, even yesterday, Commander Jensen had burned for a
small part in the Alhance offensive at Dead Star 3I. Today, while
others were earning advancement and citations of valor for crippling
the new Khalian dreadnoughts, he ached for action.
    The firing studs so near his tapping fingers were dandy, except
there were never going to be enough of them to satisfy the ambition
that smoldered beneath the lieutenant's faultlessly correct Fleet
bearing.
    Across the cockpit, Harris slouched in the untidy gray of his
pilot's coverails. The wing patch at his shoulder crumpled under his
fingers as he scratched himself, paused, then whistled as if at a
woman. 'What the hell?' His eyes widened, bright with the reflected
flashes of battle off the analog screens.
    Jensen spoke frostfly from his crew chair. 'Have you something to
report?'
    The pilot raised his eyebrows at the reprimand. His most insolent
grin followed, as he banged a key for redefinition, then added in
lilting admiration, 'What the blazes is a tub-engined private hauler
doing blasting ass across a battle?'

I4O
k
;t

    Narrow-eyed and intense, Jensen regarded the offending speck on
the screens, hedged now by flashes of plasma fire as she sliced
through warring factions of Khalian and Fleet dreadnoughts. Overhead,
the monitor on citizen's frequency blared a curse and a startled
challenge; the tone of the officer who hailed the offending
merchanter matched that of Harris, exactly.
    As the civilian vessel continued to hurtle across the lines, a
prickle of intuition touched Jensen. His gut went cold and his
fingers clenched. 'That's nobody's merchanter.'
    He keyed his board for more data. At once the craft's
configuration flashed in design graph on his screen, ugly and
ungainly as a toy assembled by a kid from unassuming bits of junk.
Recognition struck Jensen like a blow to the vitals. He knew that
craft, would remember her anywhere, from any angle, even to his dying
moment. What could the Marity be doing carving a line across a Fleet
offensive? It meant nothing but the worst sort of trouble; her
captain happened to be the craftiest skip-runner in the Alliance.
    Harris stared, captivated at the analog screens. 'Bugger, that
pilot's got the gift. Will you look at that evasion?'
    Jensen needed no proof of the Marity's maneuverability. He had
personally experienced MacKenzie James's corkscrew style at the helm.
Recall left the young officer sweating, not out of nerves but in
memory of the aftermath, and a degrading depth of humility a proud
man would kill to erase. Jensen reacted this time without thought.
'Follow him.'
    Harris looked up from the screens. Blank with incomprehension, he
said, 'What? Are you brain-shocked? That guy's Weasel steaks in the
making, mate. He's ducked into the Khalian lines.'
    'I saw.' Jensen turned his chair away. 'I ordered a chase on that
hauler. Section seven, bylaw four sixty two point zero, punishment
for insubordination -'
    'Court-martial, followed by death without appeal at conviction. I
know.' Harris flipped off his pilot's beret and scratched his red-
thatched scalp. The hair sprung in snarls beneath his fingers.
Challenge lit his eyes, which were blue, and about as innocent as a
thief's. 'Your faith in my ability is a compliment, mate. What I'd
kiss fish to guess, is what excuse you've got ready for old by-the-
book and his-grandpa's-an-admiral Meier. Because if your joyride
doesn't get us slagged by Weasels, the commodore's surely
going to sling your ass on a plate. Remember section seven, bylaw
four sixty five point one, punishment for disregard of standing
battle orders and leaving assigned position?'
    Jensen said nothing. He sat straight in his chair, his hair was
like combed ebony, and his fingernails trimmed short like a model's.
Harris pressed switches and sequenced the Shearborn's condenser coils
into recharge for FTL. Then Jensen fussed with the adjustment of his
chair belts, as Harris shrugged, punched up the gravity drive, and
wrenched their little chaser out of Station.
    Immediate protest issued from the ship-to-ship com speaker
mounted above the controls.
    'Commodore Meier, howling for both your balls,' surmised Harris.
His fingers hesitated ever so slightly above the flight board.
    'Just carry on!' Jensen tripped a switch, and the angry voice of
their superior became buried in background noise as the power banks
gunned maximum thrust into the engines.
    Harris grinned in that cocksure manner indigenous to pilots.
Skill of his caliber was too scarce to waste; when the boom came
down, he could count on some measure of immunity.
    Against the wrath of irate brass, Junior Grade Lieutenant Michael
Christopher Jensen, Jr, had only the far-reaching influence of his
politician father; if, that was, Jensen senior chose to bend his
public stance of calling no favors for his son. Harris preferred to
believe that paternal sentiment would prevail as he spun the chaser
in a neat turn and opened throttle.
    The lieutenant in command knew otherwise. Heart pounding, Jensen
expected that hell would freeze before his family would bail him out
of trouble. It had been his father's imperiousness about carving his
fortune on his own that had tangled his fate with that of the skip-
runner captain in the first place. The Shearborn's pursuit simply
resumed unfinished business.
    Vigorous protest arose right on schedule. Commodore Abe Meier's
voice barked angrily on emergency interrupt. 'I'11 have your
officer's bars, boy, and a mark for desertion on your record that
even God can't erase.'
    Slammed back into his crew chair by inertia, Jensen laced his
fingers to stop their shaking. No threat could make him reconsider;
by now, their course was committed. Harris's cocky grin was gone,
dissolved into a frown of sweaty concentration.

I42
'Snarking game of live pool,' the pilot murmured, and intently
slapped a control.
    The Shearborn veered, narrowly missing the expanding nebu1osity
of a plasma burst vessel. Debris pattered against the hull, and
something clanged against the port gun housing. Then they were past
and screaming a tortuous course through the flank of the Fleet
offensive.
    Jensen barely noted the glittering bursts of fire on the analog
screens. Harris's wizardry at the helm escaped him utterly. He saw
only the white streak that was the Marity, twisting now with the
immunity of a miracle through the thick of the Khalian fleet. Dead
Star lay beyond, a disk sharp as a compass cut through a backdrop of
scattered stars. As if that dark body were a magnet, MacKenzie James
steered his craft for the core.
    'Crazy,' Harris muttered over the scream of the gravity drive.
'Slag his coils for sure, if he doesn't slow down to shed heat.'
    Jensen sweated with his uniform fastened to the chin. The course
Mac James had chosen was too predictable not to be deliberate. The
lieutenant reaffirmed his intent to capture the space pirate. No
price was too great to see the Marity's captain brought to justice.
'Don't lose him, Harris.'
    The pilot half spun from the controls. 'I won't melt down an
engine for anybody's pleasure, sir. Not to capture the devil
himself.'
    Jensen knew Marity's master was the devil incarnate. His shout
for Harris to continue was cut off by the rising wail of the
proximity alarm.
    The pilot shrugged, stabbed the switch to raise the chaser's
shields. The alarms went silent. Seated like a stone image and half-
lighted by the angry yellow glitter of the monitors, he continued his
silence, clearly challenging his superior to pull rank.
    Jensen refused argument. Ruled by the need to evade the fire of
Fleet and foe alike, Harris could not abandon their new course all at
once; and a slight change on the analog screens offered a telling
reason why the Shearborn should continue.
    Absorbed with planning an evasive maneuver, Harris took longer to
notice that the Marity appeared to be braking. If the skip-runner
captain who flew her intended to slip pursuit, deceleration cost him
the chance. Past Dead Star and the forefront of the battle lines, the
Fleet chaser would be on him like a wasp.

I43
Mac James never made stupid misjudgments.
    Convinced that he witnessed the power lag as the Marity charged
her coils for FTL, Jensen grinned with a candor normally kept hidden.
The Shearborn was newly commissioned; fitted with gadgetry hot off
the design boards, she was capable of following her targets through
FTL. 'Harris, close in tight. We're going to trace the Marity's ion
trail.'
    'Just a snarking minute!' The pilot shot a glare at his superior.
Giving a skip-runner chase across a battle line was a lark he could
boast of to buddies, a daredevil affirmation of skills that might
bring the customary slap on the wrist for high jinks that tradition
accorded a gifted pilot. Deserting the scene of a battle was another
thing, a speed-class ticket to court-martial and a firing squad. Left
grouchy by the risks just taken, Harris ended with a gesture that
brooked no argument. 'Forget it, sonny.'
    Jensen's amusement vanished. His obsidian eyes never left the
analog screen, where a tiny fleck of light winked into being. It
blinked once, then steadied onto a vector that bent gently and
matched course with the Shearborn. The lieutenant keyed for
additional data and almost laughed outright in satisfaction. 'We've
picked up a stalker mine,' he announced. Even his recalcitrant pilot
must now bow to expediency; the only effective evasion was to transit
to FTL before the missile closed.
    Harris scanned the readout without alarm. 'Stalker mine's a
damned lousy reason to go AWOL, sir, when we carry the coded disarm
frequency.'
    'For Fleet any offensive,' Jensen responded. He sounded smug.
'This one's manufactured by the Freeborn. Check your screen, pilot,
only do it fast. If you hesitate, Marity escapes, and we get
convicted posthumously.'
    Harris shot a withering glare, fingers flying over the controls.
'What's Freeborn hardware doing crapping up this sector, anyway? It
might just get us killed.'
    Jensen answered with a confidence born of ruthless networking.
'Fleet intelligence scoped a Freeborn plot to slam the Khalian rear
wave. But the codes for rebel stalkers weren't part of the package.'
    Harris cursed. Jensen's explanation made no sense whatever; since
secession from the Alliance, the Freeborn were hostile to the Fleet.
But dispute of the fine points made a fool's errand. The

I44
damnable fact remained: a stalker mine of enemy manufacture had
locked onto the Shearborn as a target. Either Harris abetted Jensen's
craziness and punched into FTL, or two million credits' worth of
chaser got cremated. The reasonable alternative was to commit
desertion in pursuit of a recognized criminal, except that the pilot
would need to fly a course like macram~ to make transit before the
stalker took the Shearborn out.
    Harris tripped the controls with an attitude of reckless abandon.
Spun hard against her limits, his spacecraft flexed and groaned under
the stresses of centrifugal force. As a grade-one test pilot, Harris
had survived a lot of mistakes; he had a sixth sense for gauging
tolerances. The chaser might protest, might develop a stress shear or
two, but her tail pins would stay tight as she twisted and spun to
gain distance from the less maneuverable mine. Harris caressed the
machinery, wooing the electronics as he would a lady; the wail of the
alarms and the digital display showing the stalker's course of
intercept made him itch, as if the hot breath of the hardware fanned
the back of his neck.
    Jensen followed only the skip-runner ship that drifted like a
lopsided jewel at the rim of Dead Star's disk. Apparently nerveless,
he cared for nothing beyond the moment when Marity's image flashed
and vanished from the analog screens.
    By then Shearborn was barely inside the requisite radius for an
ion trail fix, with the stalker closing fast.
    A green sequence of numbers flooded the navigational screen.
Harris waited a panicky moment for resolution of a course readout.
When the figure stabilized, he hammered the lever down and blew a
kiss in sheer relief. Never in life had he been happier to suffer the
queer hesitation in continuity that marked the transit to FTL. He
blinked, elated that no explosion had erased his existence. The next
instant, triumph died, quenched by the realities of the moment.
Harris unclipped his seat restraints and rounded angrily on his
superior.
    'Snarking hell, Jensen. You damned near got us roasted. You knew
Freeborn stalkers were loose out there! For that I'd like to push
your face in. I wonder if you understand how close we came to being
ionized?'
    Jensen swung his crew chair from the screens. His dark eyes
showed not the slightest trace of regret. 'Try to remember how
close,' he said. 'If you lose Marity on me, that stalker

I45
mine will be the only excuse we have to offer at our defense
briefing.'
    'And may you shrivel in front of the ladies for that,' snapped
Harris. He wanted a drink, and a chance to take a leak in real
gravity. What began as a lark had turned seriously sour; until the
sensors signaled Marity's transit from FTL, nothing remained but to
wait and brood, because certainly no sane man was going to fathom the
intentions of Lieutenant Jensen.

The transit lasted days. Harris slept, or banged about in the
chaser's tiny galley unearthing the beer he had stashed where he
swore no Fleet inspector would check, never mind that access to his
cache took most of his off-watch time. He needed his comforts. A man
couldn't get booze in detention; to Harris's thinking that was
precisely where Shearborn's hare-brained officers would be headed.
      'Autolog won't lie for us,' he carped when the lieutenant in
command crossed paths with him at meal time.Jensen refused to debate.
    Harris parked the heels of his boots on the table and cradled his
mug, which untruthfully read c o F F E ~, between his knees. But even
a barbarity of this magnitude provoked no reaction. Nettled by the
lieutenant's secretive silence, the pilot added, 'A leap this long
could send us clear to Halpern's.' Which was about as far from
Khalian raid sites as a ship could go, and stay within charted
Alliance space. 'You better think up a very fancy alibi.'
    Jensen sat down opposite, drank his orange juice in chilly
stillness. His uniform looked as if he had just stepped off parade.
No stubble shadowed his chin. Just when had he taken time to groom?
Harris wondered. Since the jump to FTL, the man had done little else
but pace before the analog's blank screen, brooding over the
unguessable motives of Marity's skip-runner captain.

Despite such fanatical vigilance, the tracking alarm caught
Shearborn's crew of two napping. Harris shambled from his bunk,
stretching like a bear and complaining of a hangover. As always, he
slept in his uniform. Jensen had not. He bolted without ceremony
from his berth, clad in fleur-de-lis pajamas that looked like they
had been starched with his uniforms.
    'You guessed right,' he announced when Harris reached the bridge.
'Marity broke light speed in Halpern's Sector.' He flicked irritably
at his uncombed hair and killed the FTL drives. The Shearborn
abruptly ended transit, underwent that unnerving blurring of edges
that heralded return to analog navigation.
    Harris winced as his hangover flared in sympathy. Once reality
stabilized, he laid his cheek against the cowling of the companionway
and muttered something concerning martyrs and zealously sober
commanders.
    Jensen ignored the comment, fingers drumming impatience while the
sensors assimilated data and the screens flashed to life.
    Visual display revealed the dim red disk of a dwarf star, a
strangling haze of interstellar dust, and no immediate reason for
Marity's choice of destination. Jensen chewed his lip. 'Why should a
planetless star in Halpern's interest MacKenzie James?'
    Harris pitched himself into the pilot's chair, his coverails
halfway unfastened. He studied the readouts, then shot his companion
a look of surprise. 'That's Cassix's star.' The lieutenant continued
to look blank, which proved to a certainty that his source network
had not included scientists. Harris explained. 'Any test pilot knows.
That's the site of Fleet's classified orbital R&D lab the deep-space
flight-and-weapons division, where the fancy new gadgetry gets
prototyped. Security like a church vault, though. A skip-runner
shouldn't be able to get close.'
    But along with gunrunning, MacKenzie James's speciality was
trafficking military secrets; he'd stolen records from Fleet Base
once and gotten away clean. Uncomfortably, Jensen considered
implications. The skip-runner was a dangerously subtle man. If the
Shearborn's crew caught him attempting a raid upon the Cassix base,
they would instantly become heroes.
    Jensen thought quickly. 'Where's Marity? Have we still got a fix
on her?'
    Harris raised his brows with dry sarcasm. 'You haven't looked
through the tail port?'
    Jensen did so, and colored as if caught in a gaffe. The Marity
drifted off the Shearborn's stern, so close that the scurfs of every
careless docking could be counted in her paint. To the last worn
strut, the craft looked her part; that of a privately

I47
owned, hard-run cargo carrier that had suffered and survived a
succession of mediocre pilots. Scratches to the contrary, the man at
the Marity's helm had to be Harris's equal or better to have achieved
her present position with such delicacy. The chaser's most sensitive
motion detectors had tripped no alarm.
    'Serves you right for leaving FTL without taking precautions,'
muttered Harris. 'That merchanter's inside our shield perimeter. If
Mac James is inside, he's certainly laughing his tail off.'
    Yet Jensen surmised that the truth was very different. MacKenzie
James had a smile like crystallized antifreeze; his eyes could be
unnervingly direct, but no man in Fleet uniform had ever known the
skip-runner captain to laugh.
    When the Shearborn's lieutenant offered neither comment nor
orders, Harris's annoyance shifted to suspicion. 'Why should a
criminal of Mac James's reputation lure us out here in the first
place? I say you've played right into this skip-runner's hands. Or
did you maybe agree to collaborate with him beforehand?'
    Jensen spun from the analog screen, furious. Whatever rejoinder
he intended never left his lips. That instant the communications
speaker crackled crisply to life.
    'Godfrey, but you boys like to bicker,' drawled a voice. The
accent was vague and untraceable, trademark of any operation
engineered by MacKenzie James. Harris swore in astonishment, that any
skip-runner alive should brazenly commandeer a monitored Fleet corn
band. Across the compartment, Lieutenant Jensen went threateningly
still and cold.
    Incisive as always, the skip-runner captain resumed. 'If your
pilot can fly covert, and if between you the initiative can be
gathered to eavesdrop on local transmissions, you'll discover a
terrorist action in progress. The director of research on Cassix is
being coerced into breach of Alliance security. Now it happens that
the Shearborn is the only armed vessel on patrol in this system.
You'd better prepare to intervene, because your course log can't be
erased, and your careers will both be stewed if you can't justify
your precipitous withdrawal at Dead Star.'
    Harris slammed a fist into his crew chair and wished he could
kick flesh. 'Well, happy snarking holiday! Just who in hell does that
arrogant sonuvabitch think to impress?'
    But MacKenzie James returned no rejoinder. The Marity vanished,
dissolved from continuum into FTL, leaving the Shearborn

148
drifting unprepared. The instruments which flagged ion trails were
not yet reset; neither Fleet officer had thought that a necessity,
since every current theory assured them that the departure of the
skip-runner's craft should not have happened solo. Within such close
proximity, Shearborn should have been swept along as the coil fields
collapsed. Yet Marity went FTL without a flicker of protest from the
instruments.
    'We've lost him.' Harris lifted his opened hands, his light eyes
bright with disbelief. 'That rumor must be true, then. The bastard
buys technology from outside.'
'Maybe something an Indie found,' Harris speculated.
    But the whys and hows of Marity's systems were suddenly the least
of the issue. Hunched in the command chair with a frown of obsessed
concentration, Lieutenant Jensen rose to the challenge. Cassix
Station lay on the far side of the dwarf sun from their current
position. If a raid were in progress, and if skip-running instigators
had jammed communication by translink, they would be forced to
coordinate their operation through local transmission. Temporarily
they would be blind to more sophisticated sensory data, which meant
everything scoped by deflection imagery. The Shearborn was shadowed
by Cassix's star. She would not yet be noticed; but to stay that way
and eavesdrop on the terrorists, she would have to launch a probe to
relay signals from the dwarf's far side. Crisply, Jensen listed
orders.
    His pilot responded with indignant disbelief. 'You aren't going
to believe that criminal!'
    'I never knew him to lie.' Jensen gestured with extreme
irritation. 'Carry on.'
    Harris fastened the front of his uniform with uncharacteristic
care, then entered the codes for navigation access. 'Well, the
society releases on the news bulletins don't cite that guy for
humanitarian idealism. If I wore the stripes on your jacket, I'd be
wondering what's in this for MacKenzie James.'
    But that was the uncomfortable question Jensen dared not ask. He
had sworn to escape his father's shadow by outwitting and bringing to
justice the most-wanted criminal ever to work Alliance space. For
that he would have to beat the skip-runner at his own game, and the
necessary first step was to play along. Jensen said, 'I want
surveillance on that station, and quickly. Secure trajectory data and
sequence ignition for launch of a relay probe.'

149
    Harris could be strikingly inefficient when pressed against his
will. But driven now by pique, and a morbid desire to humor Jensen
until the young officer screwed himself through the folly of his own
arrogance, the pilot donned his headset and applied himself to the
navigation console.
    The probe launched with a minimum of kick. No trail showed on the
monitors. Satisfied only momentarily, Jensen hastened off the bridge
to don his uniform before his coveted data started to arrive.
    Harris bided the interval by plucking loose threads from the cuff
of his coverails. Upon Jensen's return, he had fallen asleep in his
headset, his large hands loose in his lap, and his mouth open with
snoring.
    The Shearborn's officer in command spared no attention for
annoyance. Tracking monitors showed the relay probe carving a wide
parabola around Cassix star. The moment the light flashed green on
the signal board, Jensen reached without ceremony and stripped the
headset from his pilot. Harris woke with his customary hair-trigger
reflexes and banged his head on the bulkhead as he rocketed out of
his chair.
'Damn you,' he growled at Jensen.
    Finding his fanatical commander absorbed by the new transmission,
Harris stalked off to the galley.
    He came back after an interval, munching a dessert bar. Jensen
had already assembled details enough to confirm MacKenzie James's
assessment. Harris stopped chewing as his senior recited the facts.
    Trouble had found opening because the fleet which normally
patrolled Cassix had been pared down to one ship, in support of the
offensive at Dead Star. That cruiser had fallen to skip-runners who
by long-range design had kidnapped the director of research's two
infant daughters from an earlier raid on a passenger vessel.
    'A straight-forward case,' Jensen reported, 'except for their
bent for terrorism. The bastards killed the director's wife to prove
themselves capable. The two little girls they hold hostage will be
spared, provided the staff at Cassix surrenders a working prototype
of the new laser weapons system.'
    Harris stood for a moment, crumbs from his snack falling
unnoticed down his chin. For once his blue eyes were direct. 'Who
hired the talent for this? Indies? Junk freighters

I50
equipped with that scale of armament could make for a very ugly
mess.'
    'Indies, or rebels, or some independent faction who buys through
skip-runners, does it matter?' Jensen yanked off the headset, then
reflexively smoothed his hair. 'I want data on that station, as
quickly as you can manage.'
    Harris sank mechanically in his crew chair. He shoved his last
bite of cookie in his mouth by reflex, while the headset between his
hands repeated in precise and ugly detail just what would happen to
the director's little daughters if the terms of their kidnappers were
not met. He swallowed with difficulty, for his mouth had gone dry. 'I
can't,' he said finally. 'The specs on Cassix Station are one hundred
percent classified.'
    'But you flew test runs there,' Jensen argued. Mac James had
offered him a challenge he intended to win; and as a Fleet officer
his duty was explicitly clear. 'Reconstruct what you can from memory.
The skip-runners intend to exchange the children for the weapons
system by cargo cable at 2ooo hours, which leaves us very little
margin to prepare.'
    Harris looked up sharply. 'Cargo cable? We have a chance, then.
Security might be recovered, but only if we write off the lives of
two kids.'
    'Just carry on!' Jensen added no promises. Ruthless as his choice
seemed, in this case Harris knew the young officer was not playing
for heroics. If the weapons system currently in development at Cassix
fell into Indie hands, far more than two little girls would suffer.
    The Shearborn prepared for intervention. Jensen activated the
cloaking devices and ran checks on shields and weapons. Harris
applied himself to navigation and mapped a course calculated to
conceal their approach behind the mass of Cassix's star until the
last possible moment. Neither man spoke. Harris held single-mindedly
to duty for reasons of conscience; Jensen's penchant for advancement
promised that his record in a crisis must be impeccable.
    Presently, the Shearborn hurtled on a meticulously arranged
course around Cassix's star. At the precise instant she crossed into
scanner range, Harris kicked the attitude thrusters, killed her
drives, and made a face as the snack in his stomach danced flip-flops
to the pull of inertia. Tumbling with the random majesty

151
of an uncaptured asteroid, the scout craft he piloted went dead to
observation.
    'Nice work,' said Jensen. Awkwardly stiff in his command chair,
he smiled. Their timing was perfect, a clean thirty minutes before
the scheduled exchange between skip-runners and station. As the
scopes resolved data, the lieutenant leaned anxiously forward. He
expected the spider-armed sprawl of an orbital station, gravity
powered, and glittering with the lights of habitation.
    What he saw was deep-space darkness, scattered with distant
stars.
    His blank-faced dismay raised laughter from Harris. 'Well, what
do you want for a security installation? Billboard lights and a
docking beacon?'
    Jensen shut his eyes, opened them, and tried not to blush at his
foolishness. Like the chaser he commanded, Cassix Station would be
surfaced in camouflage. The complex would be dark except for lighted
pinpricks that simulated stars. Her deep-space side would be painted
in reflective, and unless a ship chanced to cross her orbital plane
and catch her in occultation with her parent star, she would be
invisible to passing traffic.
    Jensen bridled rising annoyance. He dared not use the Shearborn's
fancy surveillance equipment. Without knowing how sophisticated his
adversary's gear might be, he must assume that deflection beam
interference would warn an already wary skip-runner that his
activities had drawn Fleet notice. There were other ways to locate an
orbiting body. The simplest involved time-sequence imaging, then a
comparison of star fields to determine which objects were artificial
by drift; except time was the one most glaring commodity this blitz
operation lacked.
    'There,' Harris said suddenly, startlingly loud in the silence.
'I've got a fix on the target.'
    His experienced eyes had spotted the skip-runner craft. A fiat
flash of reflection confirmed his sighting, as a shiny surface on her
hull caught reflection from the dwarf star. Jensen turned up the
resolution enhancer on the analog screen. Though his pilot patiently
informed him that the hardware would not perform under $hearborn's
erratically violent motion, the lieutenant continued searching until
his eyes burned.
    Hope of coherent conversation seemed nonexistent; Harris shrugged
and made a show of initiating a star-field comparison
search. Lights flickered on the control panels as computer circuitry
normally reserved for navigation diverted to speed his results. The
pilot laced blunt hands in his lap. Wearing the cynical expression he
practiced for women who pressed him for marriage, he stretched back
in his crew chair, adjusted his headset, and wished he could watch a
porn tape. Sex was a better sweat than listening to the terse
exchange between a desperate parent and an equally nervous skip-
runner who doubtlessly wondered whether any Indie contract was worth
taking risks of this magnitude.
    Suddenly Harris shot upright, the mockery gone from his face.
'Sir, your plan won't work.'
    Jensen held his focus on the analog screens, where, faint against
the deep of space, a spider-filament of cable arced out, then ever so
gradually drew taut.
    'They're sending the babies down, linked to a timed explosive,'
Harris continued vehemently.
    This time Jensen answered, very bleak. 'Linked? How? To the
carrier capsule, or the cable itself?'
    Harris listened. 'Cable,' he replied after a moment. 'The
detonation code will be kept by the skip-runner. Which means the scum
will skip system, leaving station personnel fifty-five seconds to
reel that
capsule in and cut those kids free before the charge goes off.'
Jensen became very still.
    Harris showed a rare mix of deference and regret. 'l'm afraid
we're shut down, sir. Best we can do is record data that might help
an undercover agent round them up.'
    'Which will be impossible to manage, not before the Indies have
replicated that laser design.' All nerves and anger, Jensen flexed
the fingers of his right hand. 'I'll shoot out the cable link between
the explosive and that capsule, first.'
    Harris grinned, sarcasm restored. 'Boy, we're in problems up to
our nuts already. Brass won't award a winning ticket for blowing two
babies to bits. You'd have to be marksman elite to maybe hit that
cable at all, far less the connecting link between a carry capsule
and an explosive charge.'
    Jensen returned a nasty smile, then drew a chain from his collar.
He dangled before his pilot's insolent gaze a medallion of skill that
not one man in ten thousand held the privilege to wear.'Shit,' said
Harris. 'How was I to guess?'
'You couldn't,' Jensen shot back. He was the youngest, by nearly

153
a decade, ever to obtain the premier marksman's rating, but this once
pride did not prompt his temper. The mission chronometer by his elbow
advanced another fraction. A margin of minutes remained if the
Shearborn was to foil the kidnappers.
    The problems ahead were formidable, as Harris was quick to point
out. 'You can't hit that small a target without an attitude
adjustment. Shearborn's still tumbling, remember?' The pilot slashed
a finger beneath his chin in graphic pantomime. 'We break cover, and
the little girls die. We're shot down the second we fire our gravity
drives.'
    Jensen made contingency for that. 'We wait,' he said, an
intensity about him that Harris had never seen. 'After station
personnel cable the plans up to the terrorists, the kids start down
in the capsule. We stabilize our attitude then. Surprise will be in
our favor. I shoot out the linkup. The kids and the charge are in
freefall but recoiling away from the break in the line. Station
personnel will reel the babies in, bet on that. And with an enabled
charge drifting back toward its point of origin, the skip-runners
will have their hands full cutting loose that trailing cable. That
gives maybe ten seconds for us to blast their ugly presence out of
space.'
    'Clever.' Harris scratched his chest in that thoughtful manner
his drinking cronies would have recognized for a warning. 'But your
range is extreme. You haven't allowed for drift, or for the proximity
of Cassix's star. Gravity will pull your shot off target.'
    Jensen reached out, gently smoothed the wing insignia on his
pilot's coverails. 'That's where your part comes. You'll plot my
aiming point. If my shot were treated as an exercise in drive
ballistics, you and that computer would have no trouble getting it
right.'
    Harris felt sweat spring beneath his collar. The accuracy
required would likely be past the limits of the technology. Though
the more brilliant pilots did such things in the course of test-
flight emergencies, this was another matter. A man had no business
risking the lives of two little girls to instinct, the reflexive
style of hunch which routinely carried a badly drawn design through
without mishap. Harris had no grounds - but his wilder nature was
piqued. Here was a daredevil stunt like no other; if he pulled it
off, there would be accolades.

154
    Harris set steady hands to the keyboard. 'Give me the specs on
your pellet rifle, and may the god of foolish ventures smile on us
both.'
    Jensen grinned for the first time since the start of the
operation. Whatever queer challenge MacKenzie James had handed the
crew of the Fleet chaser Shearborn, one of his skip-running brethren
was about to get hammered out of space.

The inner lining of the pressure suit wicked away the sweat from
Jensen's skin. Doused alternately in shadow, then the burnished,
bloody glare of Cassix's star, he belted himself into the service
niche by the forward air lock. The state-of-the-art gauss rifle
cradled on his arm hindered his movements very little. The Shearborn
tumbled dizzily underneath him. Yet in null gravity, as long as
Jensen did not fix on the scenery, the radical attitude of the hull
did not disorient him. Any nerves and tension he suffered stemmed
from the unrevealed motives of MacKenzie James. That point
preoccupied the lieutenant to the exclusion of all else. The children
and the laser prototypes Jensen currently jeopardized his career to
save had become prizes in a ritualized duel of wits.
    Jensen checked the time. The suit chronometer read 2012. By now,
the crate with the laser prototype lay in skip-runner hands. During
the ascent, the speed of the cable's drive motor had been measured
and recorded into Harris's flight computer. The lieutenant braced his
rifle ... and waited.
    In the darkness beyond Cassix, the lift motor hummed and
reversed. Cable turned through frictionless gears, and a capsule
bearing two children and an attached packet of condensed explosive
began the kilometer-long transit toward the waiting arms of the
father. Harris finalized his calculations.
    The chronometer read 2026. A buzzer trilled in Jensen's helmet,
and the pilot's voice read off coordinates.
    Precisely on signal, the Shearborn's gravity drives kicked over.
Centrifugal force slammed the lieutenant against his belt restraints;
stars spun like a pinwheel around him as the Shearborn's attitude
corrected with vicious and vengeful precision, compliments of pilot
Harris in sharpest form.
The scout craft stabilized.
The parting kick of inertia was punishingly severe. Jensen's

I55
helmet struck the hull with a clang that made his ears ring. His head
spun sickeningly and he cursed. If his vertigo did not stabilize
fast, he would be unable to orient and take aim. Obstinacy born of
exhaustive practice allowed him to slot the rifle stock into the
connector which linked to the suit's visual display. At a second
signal, he switched on the targeting scope.
    On the Shearborn's bridge, the monitors would be screaming, one
red alleyway of warning lights as the skip-runner ship trained
weapons on the chaser which dared an intervention. Both ships had
their screens down. On Cassix Station, speakers blared as personnel
shouted in dismay ... too late. The integrity of the exchange they
had promised the skip-runner was disrupted now past mending. No last-
minute plea would convince a ruthless band of criminals that this
rescue had not been betrayal. A father wept while a skip-runner's
mate with shaking hands stabbed the detonation codes into a keypad.
All men waited - one of them grim and another in tearful anguish. In
under sixty seconds the silvery capsule on the cargo cable would
explode in a coruscation of light.
    Jensen raised his gauss rifle in the absolute silence of vacuum.
With a clear head he locked the targeting scope onto coordinates,
then cool-handedly squeezed the trigger.
    The rifle kicked. Very far off, tiny to insignificance, a
pinpoint of light crawled along a fragile thread of cable. The pellet
which raced to intercept sped unhindered through vacuum, its course
bent gently by the pull of a red dwarf star.
    Sweating freely now, Jensen counted seconds - five, six - the
marking tone sounded a final time. The lieutenant gripped hard to the
combing. The reflective markers on the cable glistened like dewdrops
poised on spider silk. By now, the magnetized pellet should have cut
through. Jensen felt an ache in his chest. Along with the possibility
of defeat, he realized at some point that he had stopped breathing.
    Then the cable parted. Jensen shouted in relief as the tiny fleck
that was the children's capsule drifted in a graceful arc against the
stars.
    A flash answered almost immediately, as the skip-runner ship
fired gravity engines. The technician in her hold abandoned his
keypad. Cursing and furious, he wrestled into a pressure suit,
desperate to free the locking clamp that secured the trailing cable
that now

156
rebounded treacherously under recoil. Jensen's marksmanship had
brought havoc, for now the fully enabled plasma charge drifted
straight for the kidnapper's cargo bay.
'Now, Harris, now,' shouted Jensen.
    His helmet went black. Reflex shielding protected his vision as
Harris manned the weaponry, and both of the Shearborn's cannons
opened fire.
    The helmet's shielding stayed opaque for a long and maddening
interval. Jensen fidgeted like a child, cursed like a dock worker.
His visor cleared finally to reveal a spreading, glowing curtain of
debris that had once been a skip-runner ship. The moment warmed like
vintage wine. Jensen smiled. He stroked his rifle like the thigh of a
naked woman and said softly, very softly, 'Up yours, MacKenzie
James.'

Jensen tugged the sleeve of his dress whites from the grasp of yet
another congratulatory technician. The lieutenant had received a
hero's welcome the moment the Shearborn touched the dock. Every
member of Cassix Station personnel had come forward. They had shaken
his hand, thanked him, and insisted upon an impromptu reception to
meet the key administrators.
    'Just coincidence we happened into this sector at all,' Jensen
said in answer to the technicJan's question, the same question he had
repeatedly fielded over a three-hour supply of coffee and cakes. 'The
Shearborn was in pursuit of another suspect. Yes, that one got away,
but his escape turned out to be fortunate. No Fleet scout would have
entered this system if that chase hadn't gone sour. Yes, it was risky
to shoot out that cable, but the children were unharmed. Now, if
you'll excuse me? I've a promise to keep.' He hefted the gilt-papered
bottle he had cadged for his pilot. An unwilling victim of
regulations, Harris had been forced to remain on duty aboard the
scout.
    The technician smiled and shook hands again. 'You're a brave
young man, sir, and a pride to the Fleet. You've saved the Alliance
more than you know by keeping those weapon prototypes from the
Indies.'
    Jensen smiled back, raised the bottle apologetically, then dodged
another wave of admirers. Any other time the lieutenant would have
reveled in public adulation; but not here, not now. A most telling

I57
question remained unanswered, one detail left loose to rasp his
nerves. MacKenzie James was nobody's humanitarian. A criminal of his
caliber was unlikely to act out of piu~ for a father's little girls.
Jensen dared not consider the incident finished until he was back at
his post on the Shearborn and out of the Cassix system altogether.
The fact that Harris could not share the celebration became his only
excuse to slip away.

The docking hangar was very dark. After the brightly lit access
corridors, Jensen found it difficult to adjust. Strange, he thought,
that the overhead floods should be switched off. On the heels of a
major crisis, he would assume a conscientious staff would take extra
precautions.
    But when Jensen queried the guard on duty, negligence proved not
to be at issue.
    'Damned skip-runner blasted the communications turret.' The
security man gestured in resignation. 'Lights in here run off the
same solar banks, and we'll need more than one shift on deep-space
maintenance for repairs.'
    Though the explanation seemed reasonable, Jensen's nervousness
increased. He crossed the echoing expanse of hangar with swift steps
and hurried up the Shearborn's ramp.
    Instinct caused him to hesitate just inside the entry. He sensed
something amiss, perhaps from the conspicuous fact that Harris was
not at his usual post in the galley with a row of empty beers for
company. Jensen paused midstride, almost in the corridor to the
bridge. That moment, a shadow moved just at the edge of vision.
    Jensen ducked. The blow that should have felled him glanced
instead off his ribs.
    It knocked the breath from his lungs nonetheless. The bottle spun
from his hand and smashed in a spray of glass and spirits. Jensen
bent double, whooping for air that tasted sickly of whiskey. He
snatched by reflex for his side arm. But the shadow moved ahead of
him.
    It proved to be a man, a large man who already dodged the shot he
knew would follow. A Fleet officer accomplished enough to earn
marksman elite could be expected to handle his gun as if it were an
extension of his living flesh.
    Jensen's shot crashed into the bridge-side bulkhead. Padding
exploded into fluff where the intruder's head had been but a fraction
of an instant before. Cursing, the lieutenant shoved another round
into the breech. He hastened forward, skidding over the puddle of
alcohol and glass. The cold portion of his mind wondered why the
intruder had fled. A second blow, better placed, might have killed
him in that instant before surprise kicked into adrenaline surge.
    Jensen whipped around the innerlock, slammed shoulder first into
a stowage locker. He trained his pistol squarely upon his quarry,
only to flinch the shot wide. His curse of white hot anger blended
with the clang as the pellet hammered harmlessly into high impact
plastic.
    Over the heated end of his gun barrel, Jensen beheld the limp
form of Harris, gripped like a shield in a pair of coilscarred hands.
The name left his lips, unbidden. 'Mac James!'
    'Godfrey,' came the muffled reply. 'Tired of the party early, did
you?'
    The face, with its icy gray eyes, stayed hidden. Jensen was given
no target for his murderous marksmanship, which was a feat. Mac James
outweighed his unconscious hostage by a good sixty pounds. As to how
the skip-runner had stowed away, Jensen recalled with sinking
recrimination that the Marity had passed close enough to plant a
boarder on the Shearborn's hull. The stowaway's life-support of
necessity would have been limited to the capacity of his suit pack,
which meant that Mac James had gambled his life on the lieutenant's
subsequent behavior. Had the $1;earborn's crew backed down, returned
through FTL to Dead Star, the skip-runner would have been fried in
the coil field. Instead, the heroics which had preserved the
station's integrity and the lives of two children had earned the
Shearborn a warm invitation, without security screening, into a
classified research installation. With a dawning stab of outrage,
Jensen understood. He had been nothing more than a pawn. His triumph
over the terrorists had provided the linchpin of a plot for MacKenzie
James.
    'I could kill Harris to see you dead,' Jensen said thickly.
Certainly he was ruthless enough, MacKenzie James should recall.
But with insight that bordered the uncanny, the skip-runner

I59
sensed why the lieutenant dared not fire to kill. 'First you'll want
to know just what mischief I've set loose while you were celebrating,
boy.'
    Jensen's fingers whitened on the grip of his pellet gun. His
thoughts darted like a rat in a maze but found no opening to exploit.
He had visited the control bridge on the Marity. Her captain's
ability to manipulate hardware was real enough to frighten; and if
Harris had slugged down drugs with his beer, the Sbearborn's systems
had been open to sabotage for something close to three hours. Any
havoc was possible.
    Mac James's laconic observation interrupted the lieutenant's
thoughts. 'Now, I see you have two choices. Murder your pilot to get
me, and you've got a Fleet investigation on your case. You can bet
they won't send a lightweight to chew your ass. Not if you kill
without witnesses and a suspect like me turns up dead
on your chaser, smack in the middle of a classified installation.'
'That won't save you,' Jensen said quickly.
    'Maybe not.' Harris's head lolled to one side as Mac James
shifted his grip. 'But a review of Sbearborn's flight log will
uncover a coded file, accessed through stolen passkeys. The data list
includes plans for every project Cassix Station personnel have going
on the drawing boards. Fleet court-martial will nail you on theft of
military secrets, without appeal. You need me alive, boy. Unless you
know enough to go into that system and monkey that file out of
existence without leaving tracks.'
    Jensen felt shaky down to his shoes. He lacked the expertise to
clear the encoded locks on the Sbearborn's software, much less to
alter records on the other side. His helplessness galled doubly. In
the event of a trial, the very ignorance that ensured his innocence
would be impossible to prove.
    'You're much too quiet, boy.' Mac James shifted his weight with
sharpening impatience. 'Why do you think I've been so busy?'
    Rocked by a stab of hatred, Jensen perceived more. 'You sent that
other skip-runner in, pitted me against him specifically to gain
entrance to Cassix Station without leaving traces. The Indie contract
on the kidnappers was only a cover.'
    A strained silence followed, broken gruffly by Mac James's reply.
'A man lives according to his nature, you for pride and advancement,
and Captain Gorlaff for his bets. That one buried his future
permanently because he neglected to watch his odds. You

I6O
can, too, boy. Or you can lift off Cassix and rendezvous with the
Marity, where I can transfer that incriminating file without leaving
traces in the system. I'll return Harris in a cargo crate. When he
recovers from his hangover, he can fly you back to Commodore Abraham
Meier for the commendation and promotion you both so richly deserve.'
    Jensen steadied his grip on the gun. His hand trembled, and his
face twitched. A single shot would restore his inner pride but
shatter his public career forever. Swept by rage, and by a desire
like pain to see the skip-runner captain who had manipulated him end
up cold and bloody and dead, Jensen shut his eyes. Cornered without
recourse, he made his choice.

Commodore Meier stepped forward on the dais, and stiffly cleared his
throat. 'Each man lives according to his nature,' he said in official
summary. The medals in his hand flashed brightly in the lights of the
vid cameras. 'May others draw inspiration from the bravery and
initiative cited here.'
    Jensen held very still as the precious medallion was affixed to
the sash on his chest. Like MacKenzie James, he never gambled; there
had been no allowance for doubt. A Fleet officer with a future might
pursue a skip-runner to the death. The duel of wits would continue.
Reveling in his promotion and his honors, the newest Lieutenant
Commander in the Fleet promised himself victory at the next pass.

I6I
The Snare

Inspired by the painting 'The Wizard'
by Don Maitz

The opening move was deadly because of its extreme simplicity.
Iveldane caused one of the candles in the Wizard's private study to
flicker out. There was no draft; the casement was tightly closed and
latched against any intrusion of the starry night without. The Wizard
raised no arcane defense. Mellowed, perhaps, by wine and smoke from
his hookah, the enchanter, whose stare had once shattered mountains,
and whose spoken word leashed earthquakes and stilled the raging seas
of hurricanes, suspected no threat from a single, darkened candle. He
glanced up, even as a mortal might, annoyed at the sudden invasion of
shadow across the drifting trough of his lap.
    Spindled with smoke, the spark-tipped wick glowed red as the eye
of a demon, pinning the Wizard's gaze. Before he shaped a Command of
Rekindling, Iveldane's snare transfixed his unguarded mind like a
spearshaft, and held it.
    Wind tore like laughter through the chamber. Flung headlong from
its ensorcelled current of air, the Wizard's goblet shattered in a
spray of glass and wine. Iron candlesticks toppled, scattering the
carpet with necklaces of flame. The spellbook crackled, a tumbling
wheel of pages, as stone walls wavered and danced in destruction's
wild light. Bound, the Great Wizard of Trevior sat with blinded eyes,
unaware of all but the voice of his antagonist.
    'Long have I awaited this moment, Master!' Deep in his cave of
ice and rock, Iveldane smiled. The winds of his summoning screamed in
echo of his taunt, and fanned the white mustache

163
and tailored robes of his enemy into profane disarray. Hapless as a
doll in the hands of a cruel child, the Master of Trevior was unable
to protest.
    Iveldane's smile broadened. 'Does my return from the prison you
fashioned for me surprise you?'
    He loosed his grip, slightly, allowing the Wizard enough will to
reply. But the silence was disturbed only by the crisp speech of
flames, and the Wizard did not imprint the inanimate with any
message. Through the heat of his triumph, Iveldane sensed frost. It
made him laugh.
    Still, the Wizard said nothing. Iveldane borrowed current from
the stars and banished the study with all its ruined comforts. For
half an age, he had planned this. Spells spiralled and wove through
his slim fingers. His dark brow shone damp with sweat. Presently, the
Master of Trevior stood before him, bound in glassy chains of
wizardry and ice.
'Do you fear me, Master?' The tone was mocking.
    The Wizard's black eyes met blue ones without expression. 'I fear
only a past misjudgment.' His words were calm as the sea's depths.
    Iveldane felt his heart twist, but hatred did not shake his
control. 'And was a thousand years of agony confined in a volcano's
fiery core a misjudgment?' Iveldane stared at his enemy, weighted
with the bitterness and suffering of days past.
The Wizard bore his stony gaze, patient. 'Was it?'
      Iveldane's expression soured, and echoes of his laughter
bounced
off pillared shafts of icicles. 'You'll answer, before I have done.'
The Wizard bowed his head.
    Iveldane's confidence wavered. An icy draft tumbled across the
chamber momentarily raising gooseflesh on his braceleted arms. The
ornaments hid scars left by fetters of fire, and that nod had been
the same gesture which condemned him to torment ten centuries past.
But this time, nothing happened.
    He taunts me, Iveldane thought. Rage clamped his gut like iron.
He called upon the earth, and dirt rose from the floor like a gaunt
old hound, circling the Wizard's feet.
    'I will seal you, living, into your grave, even as you did to
me.' Iveldane's whisper carried clearly over the grind of soil and
stones. The Wizard made no reply, though that freedom had been left
him. Once, with a word, he would have smoothed the earth

I64
to rest. Iveldane waited, then wondered why he did not. 'I don't
understand,' he said.
The Wizard looked up. 'You never understood.'
    Iveldane unleashed his anger. Dust rose in screaming fists of
maelstrom. When it settled, the Wizard was buried wholly beneath a
barrow of earth. Iveldane sat, with his chin on his fist, and waited
for the Wizard to tumble the barriers that imprisoned him from the
light. Yet he did not.
    'You were once my Master, and my friend.' Iveldane stared at the
mound of rubble, and memory surged over him like the tide . . .

He saw himself as a boy again, frightened of the night and soaked by
driving rain. The door against which he huddled, shivering, suddenly
opened, spilling him awkwardly across a marble floor at the feet of
the Master of Trevior.
'Why have you come here?' said the Wizard.
    Iveldane looked up, and it seemed those dark eyes saw only the
water which dripped from black hair onto the ragged cloth of his
shirt. 'My Lord, I wish to learn.'
    The Wizard's veined hand tightened on the door panel as he pushed
it shut. 'Do you think I will beat you any less than the smith you
ran away from?'
    Iveldane flinched. Yet his reply was bold. 'My Lord, you are the
World's Master. Should you beat me, then surely I will have earned
it.'
    The Wizard looked abruptly away, and a small shiver seemed to
grip his thin frame. 'Remember this. The lesson of wisdom can be
painful. And only one can be Master.' Flat as dark obsidian,
his eyes returned to the boy. 'Do you understand?''Oh, yes, my Lord.'
    The Wizard extended a strong warm hand, and helped the boy to his
feet. 'Then let us start with dry clothes and warm soup.'

You never understood. The words mocked, sharp as needles. Iveldane
stared at the rubble which covered the Wizard who had uttered them,
and felt the hair on his nape stir. He tried to laugh, but it felt
wrong. 'Never once did you beat me.'
The earth was still.

I65
    'Instead you betrayed me. Are you listening?' The anguished words
shattered into echoes against the glassy rungs of ice. When no answer
came, Iveldane looked once more into the past...

'I have taught you all I know.' Cloaked in the golden glow of
candles, the Wizard stood with a shadowed face. 'The time has come
for you to leave me.'
    Iveldane raised eyes pale as frost. His hair glanced in the light
like a raven's wing. 'You are the World's Master. There is no place I
can go where I will not walk in your shadow.'
    The Wizard spoke with sorrow. 'Some things cannot be taught. If
you have loved me, go, and learn contentment.'
    'That is a poor return for the years and the knowledge you have
given me, Master.' Iveldane knelt on the patterned carpet,
unashamed. 'Let me stay and serve at your side.''Service is not your
fate.'
    Iveldane looked up, and saw an old man with tears on his face.
His own heart turned in anguished response. '! beg you, let me stay.'
    Salt-drops fell like sparks in the candlelight. The Wizard cried
out, once, in protest, before steadying his control. Then he raised
his Mastery, and sure hands carved the air like ice. 'There is only
one reward I can offer for such loyalty.'
    The room crumbled out of solidity with a sigh. Iveldane felt
himself lifted as though weightless. His sight blurred into
blindness. All bodily sensation fell away, until his spirit seemed to
stream across eternity like blown smoke. Held fast by shackles of
wind, Iveldane made no attempt to resist. If the World's Master saw
fit to imprison him, no skill he possessed would avail.
    Air was a gentle jailer. Iveldane knew neither pain nor want, and
his thoughts were his own, for the Wizard left him alone. He tests my
love, Iveldane thought. Certain in his loyalty, he waited one
thousand years with flawless patience. Yet the Wizard never came.
    'Have you forgotten me?' Snatched by tireless currents of wind,
Iveldane's appeal went unregarded. Doubts assailed him. He fought
them, when they grew too strong. His beleaguered mind imagined the
world swept by flood, famine, and earthquake.
'Disaster would keep my Master from me,' Iveldane reasoned

166
aloud, and he wept. 'Free me, Lord. Gladly would I lend my strength
to yours.'
    But if the winds carried the words to their Master's ear, he did
not respond. Perhaps he, too, is prisoner, Iveldane realized. Desire
for freedom arose within him like a wave. Tireless as the tides, it
battered his patience until he could no longer endure.
    Iveldane struck at his bonds. He struggled until his muscles
burned with exhaustion, and the sweat of exertion chilled on his
skin. The wind's whisper mocked his efforts. To silence it, he raised
glittering webs of enchantment, and discharged them as blazing white
wheels of fire. The wind swallowed his energies, scatheless. It would
heed but a single master's word, and that one, the Wizard of Trevior.
But confinement had robbed Iveldane of reason. He fought, until
weariness claimed him, then wo~e and fought again. Yet against his
prison of air, all efforts were. vain. Centuries passed. His passion
cooled to listless despair.
    Sucked clean of emotion, Iveldane lay passive. The wind gradually
claimed the hollow place his thoughts had abandoned. Its sibilant
voice filled his battered mind until sight and sound were forgotten,
and former experience became shadowy and insubstantial as a dream.
Iveldane merged with the wind, became the wind, and so inherited its
secrets.
    Years went by before that knowledge held meaning. Startled to
tears, one day, by realization he held the key to his own freedom,
lveldane spoke with a tongue long unaccustomed tt) words. His bonds
dissolved. The air turned around him. His feet struck ground and he
stumbled, unprepared for his own weight, and landed on his knees in
sand.
    For one unbelieving moment, he knelt, blind with weeping,
nostrils filled with the salt breeze off the sea and the sour scent
of marsh grass. The earth was whole, untroubled by the nightmares his
captive mind had imagined. Relieved, Iveldane raised his eyes to the
sunlight, and saw the Wizard waiting for him on a rock-strewn rise a
short distance away. The breezes toyed with blue and gold robes,
rippling the sleeves like banners.
    Iveldane rose, aflame with the joy of reunion. 'My Lord, I am
your servant, still.' Naked and polished to slenderness by lt)ng
years as the wind's captive, Iveldane crossed the sandspit.
    The Wizard watched his approach with black, fathomless eyes, no
welcome at all on his face. 'l never doubted your love.'

I67

     Iveldane checked, wrenched by sudden confusion. Elation drained
from his heart, leaving terrible emptiness. 'Then, my Lord, why did
you banish me?'
The Wizard stared at the breakers, silent.
    Iveldane bent and scooped a palm full of pebbles from the soil at
his feet. Their roughness scoured at his skin, as one by one, he cast
them tumbling, into the teeth of the surf. 'Did you take the idea
from Maegrel?' Unwanted bitterness threaded his tone. 'He did the
same with his apprentice, apparently for sport.'
    'True enough.' The Wizard watched the last stone's flight, the
brief splash of impact drowned in the rush of incoming tide. 'Can you
name Maegrel's apprentice?'
    Iveldane's hands hung at his sides, empty. Wind teased his black
hair back from features stippled with sweat. 'Does it matter?'
    'Perhaps. He still lives.' The Wizard's gaze never left the sea.
    'You told me he killed his master.' Iveldane's words were edged
with self-doubt. But he did not add, as I suddenly long to kill mine.
The Wizard fixed unfathomable eyes on his face. q know.' Chilled,
shaking, Iveldane shouted back. 'But I never wanted to challenge you!
I was content with what you taught me. Did you think I would ask
anything more?'
    Still as stone, the Wizard said, 'Do you recall the warning I
spoke when first you came to me?'
'Only one can be Master.' Iveldane shook his head, puzzled. The
Wizard glanced down at his hands and spoke a word. Flecked with chips
of mica, a small pebble appeared in his palms. A quick, hard gesture
sent the stone spinning in a high arc. Iveldane's eyes followed its
plunge toward green, foamlaced waves.
'So be it,' said the Wizard.
    The stone struck with a splash. Water closed over Iveldane's
head. Aware too late of the trap, he screamed protest. But shadowy
depths had already claimed him, and the sea's chill embraced his
flesh, unyielding. Iveldane's heart ached like an old wound. For
uncounted years, salt-tears mingled with salt water...

i68
Iveldane shivered free of memory's grasp. He stared at the mound he
had raised, as though his eyes could read the Wizard's thoughts
written on the earth itself.
    'If you had been on the shore the day I won free of the sea, I
would have left you,' he said to the still air. 'Instead, I learned
hatred. You taught me, when I reached dry soil, and you bade the
earth imprison me in turn. Tell me, how does it feel?'
    Iveldane smiled, accustomed now to silence. 'But it was the fire
which came after that made me desire your death...'

For fire had been a cruel warden. Iveldane had needed every secret he
had gleaned from earth, sea, and air for bare survival, and even that
knowledge was not enough to ease his agony. Of all elements, flesh
was least tolerant of fire, and the volcano in which the Master of
Trevior had chained him was far hotter than any flame. Iveldane's
screams had shaken the roots of the mountain. Desire for vengeance
alone bound him to life. Ten centuries, he endured unimaginable
torment, all for hope of the chance to trap the World's Master at his
mercy.
    But his strength had run out. Cursing, he had lost his battle,
and flame had consumed him, utterly. Yet he did not perish. Possessed
by the volcano's molten core, its lessons had scarred his soul. He
emerged with mastery of fire, and an unquenchable passion to inflict
punishment on the Wizard who had consigned him to torment ...

Restless in his triumph, Iveldane released his binding spell. Soil
slithered back, exposing the Wizard's torso. The Master's face was
streaked with dirt. Grit had brought tears to his eyes.
    'What a sorry sight you are.' Iveldane rose and leaned close. 'I
haven't the patience to waste centuries for your secrets.'
    The Wizard stirred dusty shoulders. 'Between us there are no
secrets. I was Maegrel's apprentice.'
    'You!' Iveldane stared, and the ice cave rang again with his
laughter. On impulse, he seized the Wizard's arms and, with cruel
force, jerked them free of the earth. The Wizard blanched in pain.
Yet he did not resist as Iveldane twisted his wrists and bared scars
twin to the ones the bracelets covered.

I69
'This, for loyalty?' Iveldane released his enemy and stepped back.
    'No.' The Wizard's voice caught. He paused to cough up dust.
'Maegrel thought me ambitious.'
    'You returned and killed him.' Iveldane waited, still as a
serpent.
    'To my sorrow.' The Wizard spoke without bitterness. 'It was not
necessary.'
    Iveldane smiled with poisonous delight. 'Do you plead with me for
your life? I'm amused.' Suddenly his expression darkened like a
stormfront, and a sharp word left his lips. Fire rose, crackling from
the torn earth. The Wizard screamed, even as his apprentice had
screamed when the lava had seared his flesh. 'Master, one day you
will plead with me for death.'
    Iveldane turned his back on the Wizard's suffering and retired
from the ice cave to more comfortable quarters above ground. The
setting of the snare had taxed him, and though the Wizard's demise
rang sweet in his ears, he wanted rest. Settling himself on a silken
bed, he slept ...

... and dreamed. Cold with horror, he saw the earth stripped of life.
Trees cast shadows gaunt as skeletons over sere ground. Lake basins
shimmered under mirage, dust-dry, and webbed with fissures. The air
was poisoned by the stench of death. Pierced to the soul with
unnameable pain, Iveldane opened his mouth to cry out. No sound came.
    He fell upon the ground, dug his hands to the wrists in ruined
soil. Great, hoarse gasps ripped his throat as he shaped the commands
which would call air, water, earth, and fire to his will. Emotionally
flayed by the earth's torment, he stared as the sky wheeled above
him, yet no response came. No living force answered; even the oceans
were dry.
    Crushed by despair, Iveldane wept. The soil drank his tears.
Night fell, garish with stars, and a three-quarter moon rose,
grinning like a skull. Iveldane covered his face with his fingers.
The earth's wounds pained him as the fires never had. Wracked by
inconsolable loss, Iveldane screamed at the empty sky.
    'Who has done this?' The shout lost itself without echo. Rage
flared in his gut. 'Who has done this?'

I7O
    lveldane flinched at the sound of that familiar, hated voice.
Slowly he rose to his feet.
    Sure and unmarked in blue and gold, the Master of Trevior stood
at his shoulder. 'I have caused the death of the earth. Dare you
return and avenge it?'
    Iveldane stared into eyes as reasonless as a snake's. His shaking
hands reached to throttle the pale, soft throat of his enemy. But the
Master's form shimmered and vanished.

Iveldane woke weeping. Anger shook him like a stormwind. He flung the
coverlet from him with violence enough to tear it. Back, he went, to
the ice cave, possessed by fury no pity could contain. Icicles
flashed, prismatic in the flickering light, until his shadow quenched
them. Captive still, the Wizard of Trevior writhed in his chains,
tormented by a crown of fire. Iveldane banished the flames with a
glance.
    Coarse against sudden silence, the sound of his breathing mingled
with its own echoes. '! am going to destroy you. Do you hear me?'
    The singed head stirred. The Wizard looked up, his cheeks
crystalline, awash with tears. 'I hear.' His voice was serene, even
joyful.
    The incongruity struck Iveldane like a blow. The great anger in
his soul faltered and, dizzied suddenly, he staggered back. 'Filth!
Earth-murderer! As World's Master, how can you weep for joy?'
    'That title is no longer mine.' The Wizard raised eyes that were
clear of deception. 'You, as my successor, at last have delivered me
from that responsibility, and the power with it.'
    Iveldane drew a harsh, sobbing breath, and saw it was so. Water,
air, fire, and earth had each impressed him with their secrets, and
the dream had shown him how deeply ingrained was the instinct to
protect all that lay under his charge. Like a blind man given sight,
Iveldane reached out with his mind, and saw the earth whole in the
moonlight.
    'Did you think I would punish you for nothing?' The Wizard spoke
with such trepidation, Iveldane laughed and made haste to release
him.
Dreamsinger's Tale

The spring grass grew long and lush in the glade, and a brook where
peepers shrilled in annual courtship ran close by. There, Huntress
Skyfire flung herself down, panting and hot after a long run through
the forest. She drank and splashed cold water through her hair, then
shed her bow and her spear and her sweaty, winter-musty furs and
rolled onto her back. Mother moon peeped like a needle of bone
through the leaves. Skyfire regarded its thin crescent and sighed,
not quite content. Something was missing, lacking, not right. Hard as
she ran, fast as she could shoot an arrow into fleeing prey, she
could not quite catch up with whatever it was.
    Her wolf-friend, Woodbiter, arrived at the clearing. Old now, and
surly where he had once been full of antics, he had leaves sticking
in his coat. With his ears canted back, he crouched in the grass,
panting also. The breeze that wafted through his fur carried the
scent of something dead.
    **Rolled in a scent patch. Again,** Skyfire sent. She wrinkled
her nose in distaste.
    Woodbiter regarded her with unwinking yellow eyes. **Go hunting
now.** The wolf's image held the savory taste of hot blood, the
thrill and the kick of prey as his jaws closed and snapped the spine.
    '**No.** Skyfire rolled onto her elbows, irritable as a she-wolf
past her heat. **No.** She was hungry, but hunger was not what drove
her. She would go hunting, but not now, not tonight.
    Woodbiter endured his elf-friend's gaze for the span of a
heartbeat, then whined, rolled, and showed the pale fur of his throat
to appease her aggressive mood. **Hunt alone,** he sent.

172
When the Huntress neither answered nor forbade him, he sprang up and
slunk off into the forest.
    Skyfire hammered her fist into soft spring soil and flopped with
her chin on her elbows. The not right feeling persisted. Though she
tried, she could find no name for it. This was no anticipation of
danger, like the moment when the prong-horn's charge caught a spear-
thrower off guard. Neither was it a feeling of threat, like the packs
of human hunters who sometimes wandered too near the holt. Skyfire
twisted two grass stems between her fingers. Decidedly, this was not
even the faintly giddy feeling one got after eating too many
dreamberries. She frowned at the brook, and watched the moon's broken
reflection frown back. She could not say why she was here, lying idle
in new grass when her belly growled with hunger. Well after
nightfall, the tribe would be wondering why their chieftess did not
appear to lead the hunt. Yet Skyfire made no effort to rise. She
would not take up her spear. Some instinct as deep as earth urged her
to linger.
    She plucked a grass blade and chewed the stem, only to spit it
out because it tasted sour. In the stream the shape of the moon
rippled on as if nothing was wrong. The peepers shrilled in a forest
that seemed touched by strange, waiting silence; not the quiet of
approaching predators, but a sort of stillness that caused the hair
to prickle. In that moment, with discontent sharp as a thorn in her
side, Skyfire first heard the singing.
    The melody touched her first, high and sweet and filled with the
vitality of growing things. Skyfire tilted her head, tense and
listening. She sniffed the air, but smelled no taint of humans.
Belatedly she noticed that this song held none of the grunts which
passed for language among the five-fingers. Perhaps in sound, perhaps
in sending, this singer used no words at all, only notes laid out in
brightness and light. Each lilted phrase filled Skyfire with a pure
and innocent joy. Without quite knowing she had moved, she found
herself on her feet. The song drew her as nothing in memory had ever
done before.
    Only the sternest habits of survival made her remember the spear,
bow, and quiver lying in the grass. She paused to gather them up,
though the delay made her ache. The sweaty fur garment she had shed
no longer seemed important, so she abandoned it. Clad only in thin
leather tunic and cross-laced boots, Skyfire slipped into the dark of
the forest.

I73
    As only an elf or a wolf could move, she followed the elusive
song through thicket and draw. Yet the singer eluded her. Between the
black boles of oaks, over ferny hummocks and marshy hollows, he
walked and left no marks. Neither branch nor briar nor deadfall
seemed to slow him. Huntress Skyfire shook her bright hair in
annoyance. She was considered a fine tracker, lacking only the nose
of a wolf to unravel the most difficult trails. She hurried, silent
and adept and forest-cunning, and determined as never before; but
somehow, the uncanny song caused her native grace to abandon her.
Scratched on twigs, scraped on thorns, she felt clumsy as a five-
finger, and as foolish. Yet to stop or even slow down was to lose the
music that even now filtered through a copse of saplings. The melody
ran flawless as stream water, describing delight that bordered the
edges of pain. Skyfire ran. Breathless, she twisted around tree
branches and half tripped on roots and vines. Still the singer evaded
her. His melody drew relentlessly farther ahead, until at length it
became no more than the memory of beauty, the fading essence of
dream.
    Skyfire cursed and stumbled to her knees in moss. Tired,
confused, and even hotter than before, she rubbed at scratches on her
spear arm. The discontent which had troubled her earlier intensified,
became a disappointment near to sickness. She jabbed at soft earth
with her spear-butt. The silence, the terrible absence of song, left
her aching in a way that knew no remedy.
    Around her, night had begun to fail. Gray light shone between
branches and new leaves, and birds awakened singing. Soon humans
might be abroad, dangerous to any elf who foolishly stayed in the
open. For once Skyfire did not care. Crossly she threw herself prone,
her chin cupped in her fists. She did not move as the world grew
golden with dawn, nor when the sun speared slanting through the
boughs, striping her shoulders with warmth. Furious at her own folly,
yet helpless to free herself of yearning, she lay and frowned until
her head ached and her thoughts spun with hunger. The music pulled at
her still. The memory did not fade before the now awareness of her
wolf-sense; notes spilled and echoed in her mind until she wanted to
weep, bereft.
    Woodbiter found her at midday. The wolf had fared well on his
hunt and his belly was gorged. He had dragged his kill

I74
beneath a fallen log, then urinated upon the place to mark it; the
cache was not far, and still fresh. Yet meat would not assuage the
emptiness left by the singer. Skyfire refused her wolf-friend's
offer.
    The animal sensed her discontent. He licked her eyelids in
commiseration, and finally curled in the shade to sleep.
    Skyfire left him there. Irritable and alone, she arose and
retraced her trail from the night before. The path of her run was
clear, a swath of torn leaves and twigs freshly snapped. Many times
she had stepped carelessly on soft soil and left the imprint of her
booted foot. Although she searched and sniffed, she found nothing of
the singer. His melody haunted her. Once when she might have stopped
to spear fish, his memory stung her haplessly onward.
    In time, the daystar lowered and the birds flew to roost.
Exhausted, and hopelessly in thrall to the singer's dream, Skyfire
stumbled and fell. She caught herself short of a bang on the head;
and there, between her hands, found the impression of a bare foot.
The track had four toes, clearly made by an elf. Yet Skyfire knew at
once that none of her own tribe had trodden here. Precisely between
the hollow of toes and heel, there bloomed a flower entirely out of
phase with the season.
    Astonishment overwhelmed Skyfire, and her breath caught. For no
reason she could name, she knelt by the blossom and wept. Then, as if
the release of emotion had snapped the dream's hold on her mind, she
acknowledged the sending from the holt which had sought her for some
hours. Most oddly, it was Twigleaf, the youngest cub in the tribe,
whose call reached her first. Skyfire returned reassurance of her
well-being. Then, with weariness similar to the feeling of waking
from dreams of escaped prey, she rose and returned to lead the hunt.

For an eight-of-days, the chieftess ran with the pack as always. The
rough way of the Wolfriders and the song of their mounts as they
howled before the hunt stirred her, made her heart lift and the blood
race through her veins. Only now the challenge of survival seemed
somehow less keen. The lilt of the song stirred

I75
within her at odd moments, like an echo never entirely lost. And as
was her habit in the old days of Two-Spear's strife, Skyfire wandered
often. Perhaps not by chance, she found her way back to the clearing.
There, yet again, she waited for something she could not name.
    This time clouds shadowed her vigil. Rainfall slicked her hair on
her shoulders and dripped coldly down her back and groin. She shook
herself like a wolf, licking irritably at the runoff. Long hours she
listened between the patter of droplets over leaves, but no song
reached her save the shrilling of peepers in the damp and the
puddles. Shivering, saddened, but never quite miserable enough to
leave, Skyfire finally dozed.
    The song returned in her dreams. Notes tripped and spilled
between thorn brakes where no rain fell, and the forest lay dappled
with sun like high summer. In dream, Skyfire leaped up and pursued.
The song flowed like sending, and images swept through her sleeping
mind. Though the singer used no words, his music spoke of other
times, of taller, fairer elves than those who ran with the wolves.
They wore beautiful, many-colored clothing. Beyond them Skyfire
beheld strange dwellings, then stars sprinkled uncountably across
blackness deeper than night. She saw suns that blistered her eyes,
and moons silvery as the trinkets that humans cut from mussel shells.
And yet there was sorrow beneath the beauty of this song. Woven
through the strangeness and wonder of the images lay a memory of
cold, like death. In the dream, Skyfire started. The stars and the
moons abruptly vanished, and dark against the silver-ice light of new
dawn, she beheld the singer.
    He stood before her, clad in grey. A wolf of the same hue lolled
at his side. The eyes of wolf and rider were eerily alike, deep and
light as mist. But the elf-singer's hair was black, hanging tangled
and unkempt down his back.
    Convinced she had awakened, Skyfire surged to her feet, all grace
and speed and anger. Nobody, wolf or elf, ever sneaked up on her like
that, far less a stranger in territory hunted by her tribe and pack.
    Yet even as she raised her spear and called challenge, the singer
and wolf both vanished. Skyfire checked. The dream dissolved around
her and she woke in reality, to chilly rain and daylight. Her breath
came painfully to her chest. On the

I76
ground, where in the dream the singer's feet had trodden, the grass
grew sere and dry as autumn. A single oak leaf lay caught between the
stems, not the new soft green of spring, but coloured red as blood.
    Skyfire gasped. She brushed the dried grass with her hands and
shivered. This singer of dreams was surely part throwback. The magic
of the old ones ran deep in him.

The storm had split into broken clouds, and the leaves dripped
sullenly by the time Skyfire returned to the holt. Most of the tribe
lay in tree hollows, sleeping, but a few of the young ones tussled
like wolf cubs in the shade. One just barely an adult watched over
their play, her hands weaving baskets out of rush.
    'Been stalking black-neck deer?' Sapling taunted. Her fingers
stilled on her handiwork as she tossed back pale hair. 'Or maybe
something bigger than a deer stalked you? Looks like you spent the
night holed up in a thicket.'
Skyfire bent and snatched a rush. 'Close.'
    'Barren hunt?' asked Sapling, quick enough to grab back her
stolen green. Such teasing had been part of her life since she was a
cub.
    The chieftess shook her head, but the ravvit she had caught and
eaten on her way home had not left her sated. The dreams and the
singer were driving her to distraction. Even her wolf noticed her
ribs, as if she was gaunt from the season of white cold. As Skyfire
reached the tree which held her sleeping hollow, she sensed the
concern of Pine, who sometimes lay with her after the hunt. She never
confided in him, but the fact that she was troubled had been noticed.
Yet Pine's embrace offered no comfort. Chilled and confused as
Skyfire was, she did not wish the warmth of a lovemate. A strange elf
walked the forest, one who belonged to no pack, and who owned depths
not seen in cubs born for many generations. He was Wolfrider, surely
enough, but different in ways not easily understood. Skyfire sensed
trouble. If she told the rest of the tribe of the song-dreams and
their maker, the wolf in them might precipitate an outcome that could
not be controlled. Though pack ways and pack actions served well in
matters of survival, Skyfire struggled to balance instinct against

I77
a drive that ran deeper than curiosity. She realized she must track
down and confront this singer without help from the other Wolfriders.
    The limbs which led to her hollow were smoothed with many
climbings. Skyfire pulled herself upward out of habit, her mind
preoccupied with unfamiliar concepts. Against her nature, she must
plan, for the tribe must not suffer for her pursuit of the singer.
She must lead the hunt through the night, and then in the gray hours
before daybreak, slip away.
    The hollow in the tree was dim and invitingly cool, but Skyfire
did not sleep. Curled in her furs, her bright hair wound damply over
her shoulders, she wondered how an elf could track a shadow. For the
singer was shadow, a figure spun of dreams. In the depths of his
gray-silver eyes she could easily become lost.

The mild weather of spring quickly gave way before the darker foliage
and the stronger sun of summer. Like most elves, Skyfire abandoned
use of' her sleeping hollow altogether, preferring to curl up like a
wolf in the dappled shade of a thicket, her body against cool earth.
But while the winds stilled, and prey grew fat and plentiful, and the
Wolfriders became sleek with easy hunting, their chieftess grew lean
with muscle. After the nightly kill, she ran, until she could
traverse the dense forest in silence at speed. She learned not to
thrash through briars, but to twist and duck and dodge through the
narrowest of openings without slackening stride. She practiced
leaping over streams, from rock to fallen log, to banks treacherous
with moss. Her feet became very sure; for the first time, Woodbiter
had trouble keeping up.
    *'~Gray-muzzle,** she teased once, as the two of them lay panting
in companionship in a forest glade. She licked the corner of his lips
in the manner of one wolf showing affection for another.
    Woodbiter's eye rolled and met hers. **Killed deer,** he sent in
wolfish reproach. Except for rank, distinctions were never made
between members of the wolf-pack once a cub reached adulthood. A wolf
either hunted successfully and held his own, or else failed to
survive.

I78
    Skyfire slammed playfully into her wolf-friend's shoulder and
tussled, rolling over and over upon the ground. As elves, her tribe
handled life with little difference. Hardship made no allowance for
individuals who were not strong. Such was the way of the wild. But as
Skyfire wrestled with her wolf in the midsummer heat, she thought
upon the singer's dreams. For the first time, she wondered whether
Timmain's sacrifice, which first mingled the blood of wolves and
elves, might have been made in the hope of something more.

That night the hunt went well. Early on, Spearhand brought down a
large buck. Then Skimmer and his wolf, Brighttail, flushed a herd of
prong-horns. The Wolfriders leaped eagerly in pursuit. By the time
the two moons lifted toward the zenith, there was feasting. Skyfire
did not gorge on the meat with the others, but ate sparingly and
wrapped a second portion to carry with her. Then, leaving her spear
in Sapling's care, she tightened the strap of her quiver and settled
her bow over her shoulder.
    ':'::'Going?~":~ sent Woodbiter. He licked his bloody muzzle and
raised expectant eyes.
    Skyfire returned the image of the clearing by the brook. By that
the wolf understood she would spend another night running, or perhaps
simply sitting by water staring at nothing. He chose to remain with
his kill.
    Huntress Skyfire twisted her red hair into a braid. Aware that
she prepared to embark upon another night of wandering, her tribe-
mates did not ask why. Neither did they try to go along, as once
before they might have. Skyfire did not explain her leaving. If a
wolf-chief wanted solitude, he drove off his subordinates with
snarls, not affection. Skyfire could be as fierce in defense of her
wishes. No elf in the tribe cared to provoke her wrath as Two-Spear
had, on the day she had challenged him for leadership.
    Yet the more distance Skyfire set between herself and the members
of her tribe, the more determination deserted her. She paused, leaned
against a tree, and rested her cheek against rough bark. She had
heard no singing for many eights-of-days. All her practice at running
and her nights of vigil had led her no closer to the strange elf than
the time when the peepers called. Soon the

I79
forest would change. Frost and cold winds would strip the green from
the leaves. The season of white cold would follow and the struggle
for survival would force an end to her search. Recalling the marvels
in the singer's dream, Skyfire clenched her teeth in frustration.
Somehow she knew that if she failed, the lost feeling inside her
would never be answered.
    Accordingly, she tucked her bow more comfortably across her
shoulders and began to jog. Tonight she paid no attention to
landmarks, but traveled without purpose or direction. She might
encounter humans, or even one of the clearings where they set snares
for game, but this once caution deserted her. The singer's long
silence drove her, aching, to recklessness.
    Sky fire ran. The familiar paths, the known trees, the territory
hunted by the wolf-pack, all fell behind. Breathless, weary, the
chieftess would not rest. Deer started out of her path, and night
creatures looked up from their hunting. Still she ran, while stars
blinked endlessly between the leaves overhead. The earth jarred over
and over against the soles of her feet, and her bowstring rasped
blisters on her shoulder. Still the chieftess ran.
    Her breath came in wrenching gasps. She did not stop. Not until
her legs failed her and she tumbled headlong into old leaves. The
musty smell filled her nostrils, and skeletons of veined stems caught
in her hair. Skyfire rolled miserably onto her back. Her frustration
skirted the edges of despair, but she was too spent even to curse.
    She could do nothing at all but lie still and listen to silence
until her ears stung under the weight of it.
    In time her heart stopped hammering and her breathing slowed.
Something stirred in her mind and she heard a faint drift of melody.
Skyfire shut her eyes, uncertain whether her imagination might be
tricking her as had happened so many times before.
    But the singing grew stronger. The melody turned and interwove
like a waterfall, intricate beyond understanding. Skyfire rose up on
her elbows. Longing woke within her. Feeling tears burn behind her
eyelids, she pushed at last to her feet. She did not feel the protest
of her tired body as, once more, she started to run. The singer's
dream enfolded her senses, drew her irresistibly like a moth toward
flame.
    Skyfire no longer saw trees, or the night-dark vista of forest.
She ran through a waking dream of wide, open plains under cloudless

I80
forest would change. Frost and cold winds would strip the green from
the leaves. The season of white cold would follow and the struggle
for survival would force an end to her search. Recalling the marvels
in the singer's dream, Skyfire clenched her teeth in frustration.
Somehow she knew that if she failed, the lost feeling inside her
would never be answered.
    Accordingly, she tucked her bow more comfortably across her
shoulders and began to jog. Tonight she paid no attention to
landmarks, but traveled without purpose or direction. She might
encounter humans, or even one of the clearings where they set snares
for game, but this once caution deserted her. The singer's long
silence drove her, aching, to recklessness.
    Skyfire ran. The familiar paths, the known trees, the territory
hunted by the wolf-pack, all fell behind. Breathless, weary, the
chieftess would not rest. Deer started out of her path, and night
creatures looked up from their hunting. Still she ran, while stars
blinked endlessly between the leaves overhead. The earth jarred over
and over against the soles of her feet, and her bowstring rasped
blisters on her shoulder. Still the chieftess ran.
    Her breath came in wrenching gasps. She did not stop. Not until
her legs failed her and she tumbled headlong into old leaves. The
musty smell filled her nostrils, and skeletons of veined stems caught
in her hair. Skyfire rolled miserably onto her back. Her frustration
skirted the edges of despair, but she was too spent even to curse.
    She could do nothing at all but lie still and listen to silence
until her ears stung under the weight of it.
    In time her heart stopped hammering and her breathing slowed.
Something stirred in her mind and she heard a faint drift of melody.
Skyfire shut her eyes, uncertain whether her imagination might be
tricking her as had happened so many times before.
    But the singing grew stronger. The melody turned and interwove
like a waterfall, intricate beyond understanding. Skyfire rose up on
her elbows. Longing woke within her. Feeling tears burn behind her
eyelids, she pushed at last to her feet. She did not feel the protest
of her tired body as, once more, she started to run. The singer's
dream enfolded her senses, drew her irresistibly like a moth toward
flame.
    Skyfire no longer saw trees, or the night-dark vista of forest.
She ran through a waking dream of wide, open plains under cloudless

I80
sky. The stars seemed close enough to touch, and the wind held a bite
of cold that burned her throat as she breathed. Scents of many
descriptions filled her nostrils, intoxicating in their detail.
Skyfire sniffed deeply. She realized that she ran with the senses of
a wolf, even as Timmain had done generations in the past. Yet though
her limbs might seem clothed in fur and her body that of a beast,
still her mind was not entirely animal. The compassion, the
gentleness, and the sorrow of her ancestors reverberated through her
being. As she raced on four pads over the plain, she shared echoes of
Timmain's thoughts.
    Then the singer's melody changed. The dream of sharing wolfshape
faded and turned deep and sad and lost. The cold deepened. Snow fell,
a whirling maelstrom of flakes that smothered the memory of summer or
stars. Frost cut cruelly into flesh no longer clothed in the
protective pelt of the wolf. Skyfire cried out, painfully rubbing
fingers that were thinner, longer, and more delicate than those she
had been born with. She experienced the past suffering of the first
ones, and the crippling confusion of minds accustomed only to
contemplation. Terror ripped into nerves she never knew she
possessed.
    She cried out, stumbled, and fell waking into the icy reality of
a snowdrift. Cold shocked her back into memory of self; around her,
the singer's melody sang of despair that approached madness.
    Skyfire rolled until the end of her bow no longer hampered her
legs. She shook icy flakes from her lashes and hair, and stood
upright with a shiver. The music seemed very near, and it pulled at
her heart without surcease. Around her the trees drooped under a
hardened burden of ice. Summer stars shone faintly through the cold.
Skyfire blinked. Unquestioning as a wolf, she shook off the muddle
left by the chill and pressed forward. The snow deepened. Before long
she labored through drifts that rose to her chest. But her efforts
brought progress. The melody grew stronger as she went; the spell of
the singer wove inescapably through her being. Whether she risked
death, she would not stop now.
    The way grew more difficult. The snow acquired a hardened, glassy
crust of ice that cut at her fingers and toes. Skyfire was not
dressed for such weather. Her flesh gradually went numb. She shivered
uncontrollably, and longed for the stoic presence of Woodbiter at her
side. Still, harsh as her own straits seemed,
nothing prepared her as she scrabbled over the final rise in the snow
and beheld the singer at last.
    He sat with his head bowed over crossed arms, bare feet buried to
the ankles in the pelt of his gray wolf. Black hair hid his face,
trailed in unkempt tangles over shoulders clad thinly as Skyfire's.
He did not shiver, though his fingers seemed frozen and bloodless as
quartz. His song surrounded him with magic. Thick as mist, the spells
he sang brought cold deep enough to crack stone, and grief enough to
make the trees weep.
    Skyfire besJr~red as J~f struck by a blow. Then, before she quite
realized she had reacted, she was running, sliding, flailing down the
steep drift, to tumble breathless at his side.
    The gray wolf looked up and growled, its eyes all silver-bright
and wary. For once as brash as her brother, Skyfire dared its wrath.
She recovered her footing and addressed its uncanny companion.
    ':';:'Who are you?** Though she had not planned, her words came
out as sending.
    The singer looked up. Eyes identical to those of the wolf met
hers, and it seemed for a breath that the earth stopped turning.
    Then his song changed, flowed without break into sending. The
melody itself framed answer, describing him as Outcast, wild as the
bachelor wolf who runs with no ties to a pack. Skyfire, listening,
heard a melancholy that made her spirit ring with echoes. The song
described more than an elf with silver eyes, more than a hunter who
roved alone. The chieftess of the Wolfriders heard silence more deep
than sky, wind more free than storms, a spirit more solitary than the
terrible moment of death. She knew then that she had been gifted with
this elf's soulname, and in the depths
of his silver-ice eyes she saw her own self reflected back at her. *
'"' Kyr.* '~
    There, in an unseasonal enchanted snow, Huntress Skyfire became
Recognized by an elf who was a stranger, and who conformed to no law
and no pack. More terrifying still, the melody this outsider sang
held all of the exhilaration, and all of the pain, and all of the
twisted madness that the magic of the high ones became heir to on the
world of two moons.
    Even through the compulsion of Recognition, Skyfire sensed
danger. The spell the song wove was not gentle, but filled full
measure with remembered tragedy from the past. The effect was

182
compelling enough to wound, and both she and the one fate chose for
her mating were entangled in its threads. One of them must free the
other, and of the two, the singer was most lost in his dream.
Recognition offered no choice in the matter. Skyfire reached out to
the singer, but never completed her touch. The gray wows warning
became a snarl of rage and his muzzle lifted over bared teeth.
    The despair of the singer's spell only hampered. In desperation,
Skyfire sent to the beast, her image all strength without threat. The
wolf did not respond as a pack member would. Mad as his outsider
master, he rose and advanced on stiffened legs. Skyfire sensed the
tautening of muscles beneath the silver-gray pelt. The wolf was
preparing to rush her, and she carried no spear to defend.
    Only her bow remained to her, hung uselessly across her
shoulders; if she made the slightest move to free it, the stranger
wolf would charge. Skyfire knew better than to attempt to flee. The
spell slowed her reflexes and the snow would mire her. The wolf would
sense her disadvantage. That would inevitably provoke an attack, and
she had no desire to die with fangs sunk into her neck from behind.
    She glanced to the singer, but no help awaited her there. Snow
fiurried over his dark hair, and his eyes were mirrors of grief. Song
and sorrow had overwhelmed his senses; his magic ran out of control.
    The wolf growled again. It shifted onto its haunches. Aware she
was out of options, Skyfire snatched for her bow. The string barely
cleared her shoulder as the great beast sprang. He was larger than
Woodbiter, and young. Skyfire raised the frail wood, tried uselessly
to stave off his rush. Fangs closed over the shaft and splinters
flew. Then the chieftess was borne down beneath hard-muscled weight
and gray fur.
    She ducked to protect her throat. Battered into snow, she rolled.
The terrible iaws clacked over her head. The wolf pressed for another
snap. Skyfire twisted and managed to jab a knee into the animal's
ribs. The wolf snarled in rage and tried again. Once more she dodged
its teeth. Her quiver banged into her thigh, spilling stone-pointed
arrows treacherously over the ground. If she rolled in an attempt to
throw the wolf off, she risked becoming impaled. Yet she had little
chance if she hesitated. The wolf caught her braid in its teeth and
worried, slamming her head from side to

I83
side. She punched at its eyes, missed, and caught a glancing slash
from a fang.
    The wolf scented blood and attacked with renewed fury. In danger
of severe mauling, Skyfire braced against its chest and sent,
**Submission-fear-fury-submission.** She hammered the beast's mind
with her self-awareness, the irrefutable knowledge of her right to
lead. She had challenged for dominance, and won. This stranger wolf
must back down before her, or else kill, or be killed in turn. Such
was the way of the wolves.
    Skyfire gritted her teeth, the scent of her own blood strong in
her nostrils. She knew no fear, only determination; this the wolf
sensed. Its great heart faltered. Skyfire sensed its instant of
unsureness. She twisted, used a wrestling trick and threw the heavier
animal down. At once she went for its throat. Her nails caught its
flesh and twisted, hard. The breath rasped in its throat. It lived
now only by her sufferance. Her green eyes stared into ones of
silver-gray, elf and wolf both equally savage and fierce.
    Then the wolf went limp. Its lips stayed turned back, but it
arched its neck to farther expose its throat. Skyfire gave the animal
an extra shake to enforce her moment of victory. Then she backed off.
    The air felt very cold. Grazed, disheveled, and bleeding from her
slashed wrist, the chieftess licked at her hurt. She watched the gray
wolf warily, but it rose with its tail down and settled on the far
side of the singer. Only then did Skyfire realize that the terrible
song had stilled. She looked around to find the black-haired elf
senseless in the snows his magic had spun. But the dreams of the past
which inspired him had dissipated. His awareness was dark as the
night.
    Skyfire shrugged her torn tunic back into place. Stiffly she
regained her feet and went to him. His eyes were open and empty as
clouds. Outcast he had named himself; but to Skyfire he was
Dreamsinger, and would remain so, though he had no pack to name him.
Slowly the chieftess knelt at his side. She cautiously extended a
hand, and this time the gray wolf did not challenge. Her fingers
bridged a gap of empty, wintry air, and touched.
    His flesh was very cold. Skyfire sent thoughts of urgency into
his mind, and could not reach him. His magic had carried him
perilously far. He would return on his own, perhaps, but unless

I84
he wakened soon he might freeze. The possibility filled Huntress
Skyfire with a new and uncomfortable dilemma.
    The way of the wolf-pack urged her to leave. Survivors did not
burden their resources; to be encumbered by the helpless was to
invite a pointless death. Yet the dream of the singer had poisoned
the familiar, pushed Skyfire's awareness beyond the limits of
experience. Though taxed by the rigors of her night4ong run, and
shaped by the same wild laws which had arbitrated her dispute with
the wolf, the chieftess hesitated. Skyfire found herself incapable of
leaving the Dreamsinger to die.
    Surely Recognition might cause such madness. Partially reassured,
the chieftess caught the stranger beneath the shoulders. The gray
wolf whined, but did not interfere as she half lifted, half dragged
him over the heavy drifts. The Dreamsinger was slight, perhaps the
same build as Sapling. Yet the Huntress was tired, and the snow
hampered her steps. Leaving her arrows and broken bow, she labored
over the ice with her burden until her feet stumbled beneath her. Her
strength was long-since spent. Somehow she continued. In time the
magic of despair fell behind. The stars overhead lay pale in the glow
of dawn, and green ferns and moss cushioned her steps.
    Skyfire lowered the Dreamsinger in a clearing and flung herself
down by his side. Whether or not there were humans, she could go no
farther. She curled on the ground beside the strange elf and slept.
After pacing with uneasiness the gray wolf curled on the opposite
side of elf-friend and buried its muzzle beneath its brush.

Huntress Skyfire awakened to song. Sunlight dappled her shoulders and
eased the ache of her cut wrist; yet even summer's warmth seemed thin
beside the joy in Dreamsinger's melody. The chieftess stirred, and
found eyes of unearthly silver intently watching her. The black-
haired elf seemed poised, as if for flight; only the ties of
Recognition prevented.
    Speech itself seemed an intrusion, a sour note against a
magnificence of song that no living being might dare to spoil. ':'
':'Come,* ':' Skyfire sent. She raised her arms toward him.
    The outsider elf hesitated. Outcast, the song defined him, and a
thread of sadness slowed the cadence.

I85
    'No.' Skyfire smiled, for the moment as sure as bedrock.
'Dreamsinger.' Though the ways of the pack and the vision of dream
might war inside her, the call of Recognition obscured them.
    For a moment the fey elf clid not move. All his years of
wandering cast a current of doubt between them. Skyfire smiled,
uncaring; and the pull of longing overwhelmed. The Dreamsinger
answered the name he had been given and gathered Skyfire into his
embrace. His song swelled around her. For an instant she knew the
wild joy of Timmain running with her wolf-mate; then the pound of
blood in her veins overturned the dream. The notes of the spell
shifted afresh, transformed the clearing to a place of new spring
grass that was softly perfect for mating. Skyfire had known the
exertion and thrill of the hunt. She had killed for food and for
survival, and lived the fierce way of the wolf-pack. She had howled
in moonlight, and chipped winter ice for drinking, and gnawed upon
bones when her stomach was hollow with hunger. The life of the pack
contained all there was to know of death and survival. But in
Dreamsinger's arms the Wolfrider chieftess learned gentleness, and
that one thing overturned all else.
    Dreamsinger traced her many scars with light fingers. His song
spoke now of healing, and places where elves need not kill. Skyfire
heard, ancl ached with the terror of the unknown. This dream which
lacked the howl and the hunt tore away the familiar, left her adrift
without bearings. The Dreamsinger sang of the past, lost forever, or
of a life impossibly far into the future. Skyfire caught her fey mate
close, for his body was warm and listening caused pain. Yet little
comfort came to her. He was the song, and his strangeness brought
conflict beyond bearing. The pull of Recognition would not let her
leave, not let her run and join Woodbiter, and find refuge in the
pack. She could not go; in time she no longer wanted to. The
Dreamsinger's strange magic touched her spirit and wove irrevocable
change.
    After the mating he caught up her fiery hair and gloried in the
colour, which promised both sunset and dawn. As he braided the
shining length of it, Skyfire looked up past his head and watched a
tree burst spontaneously into blossom. The scent made her languid and
content, until the Dreamsinger's spell changed key, as, inevitably,
it must. He belonged to no pack. As Outcast, he must leave her, or
risk the leadership she had won from Two-Spear at

I86
such cost. Dreamsinger's music encompassed the brightness and sorrow
of that. Released from the drive of Recognition, and caught in
contention between ways, Skyfire pulled free of his arms, unable to
speak.
    The aftermath of their joining was bittersweet. The Dreamsinger
pulled on his ragged clothing with his back turned. Before the
afternoon was spent, his grey wolf arose and slipped away with him
into the forest.

Evening fell, and the moon rose. Skyfire sat amid drifts of falling
petals. Woodbiter crouched at her feet, insistently proud of finding
her; she had strayed very far from known territory. The old wolf's
sides heaved as he panted, yet occasionally, in concern, he would
turn his muzzle and lick at the cut on his chieftess's arm.
    Skyfire scratched absently at his ears. She was hungry but had no
inclination to hunt. The woodland silence oppressed her, filled her
with a strange, numb emptiness that the way of the wolf could never
fulfill. She would bear a cub to the Dreamsinger; such was the fruit
of Recognition. But his song and his dream might leave her with more
than offspring, if she was bold enough to risk leading the tribe into
change.
    For by the way of the wolf, Dreamsinger was Outcast. The magic of
the high ones ran to madness within him. Rightly the earlier
generations had driven him out, for compassion and dreams of peace
had no place in pack life. Yet Skyfire had shared his visions. She
had experienced the hopes of Timmain, and through them she understood
that her ancestress had mated for more than the toughness and
savagery of the wolf. The ancestress had wished to pass on hardiness
and forest cunning, yet retain the bright dreams of the first ones.
All of this had been lost over time. Skyfire's tribe lived only the
way of the pack, and not an elf among them questioned why.
    The chieftess rose restlessly to her feet. She drew on her boots,
and blossoms fell like snow from her shoulders. She considered the
cub she would bear from this mating. It might inherit its father's
fey madness. By pack law, it also might suffer and be driven away
into solitude. Skyfire flicked her braid back in frustration. By then
she herself might not remember the song and the dream, for the
wolfsong eroded the memory. This minute she

187
perceived very clearly. If the tribe continued as it had, they would
have nothing to offer their cubs bht hardship and hunger and the
changeable luck of the hunt. Something precious stood to be lost,
perhaps without chance of recovery.
    Dreamsinger himself held the answer. He wandered the forest ir~
exile, hunting what he could forage, and driven relentlessly by gifts
that had potential to l~ill him. Yet he had not died. His madness had
harmed no others. Skyfire might bring him into the holt, and ensure
the continuance of the dreams his songs inspired. But to do so defied
pack law. For that the Wolfriders would challenge her, force her to
fight and fight again until all had submitted to her will. Her
chieftainship might be lost. She might be defeated by another, and
earn death or even exile without hope of reprieve. The thought of
sharing Two-Spear's cruel fate filled her with distress. Woodbiter
sensed, and whined softly by her knee.
    Skyfire stroked the wolf's head, but not to offer reassurance.
':":'Find Dreamsinger,** she sent.
    The wolf hesitated. Sharply impatient, the chieftess drove him
forward. She had learned a thing worth fighting for, wdrth even the
risk of total loss. Elves might hunt with wolves, and share the
hardships of survival. But Dreamsinger had showed her another way,
neither elf nor wolf, but a glimpse of Timmain's wise vision. Skyfire
chose change. She slipped through the thickets like the wild creature
she was, her ears listening keenly for distant strains of a song she
still could not distinguish between the sending of an elf, or true
sound.

I88
Triple-Cross

Lieutenant Jensen paced, spun in a tight circle, then hammered an
angry fist on the chart table. Loose marker pins scattered from the
blow, falling like micro-shot through furniture tight-knit as a
battle formation. 'Damn the man, what godforsaken plot could send him
back to Guildstar?'
    'Information, maybe,' suggested Harris, who lounged with closed
eyes on the wall bunk, his pilot's coverall in its usual neglected
state of crumple. Quarters on Sail were far too cramped for displays
of violent frustration; by now resigned to having sleep disrupted by
his senior's obsession with the obscure motivations of a criminal,
Harris chose not to fight the inevitable. 'You can bet Mac James
isn't making the run for any merchant's sake.'
    The model of a Fleet officer in a faultlessly fitted duty
coverall, Jensen swore. Black-haired and classically handsome, he
leaned on his knuckles and glared at his holo map of Alliance space,
which hogged whatever paltry space their quarters had to offer. The
display was crisscrossed with threads and speared with markers in
three colors: blue for those sites the skip-runner MacKenzie James
was rumored to have visited; yellow for a confirmed sighting, and red
for any station or planet or interstellar vessel that had fallen prey
to his penchant for piracy. Mac James being the most wanted criminal
on Fleet record, the map was peppered red from end to end.
    'Or else the source you bribed is selling you a line of crap,'
Harris added.
    Jensen swore again. He smoothed back bangs razor-trimmed in the
latest military fashion. 'My informant isn't wrong. I pay another
rebel to cross-check her.'
Harris knuckled the orange stubble that roughened his jaw. He

I89
failed to open his eyes, or speak; but his kilence on the subject
spok, volumes.
    'The two are not in cahoots,' Jensen defended, hotly enough t(
send another pair of markers bouncing across the narrow aisle o
decking. They fetched against the corrugated plastic of the showe
stall, where the lieutenant irritably retrieved them. 'My peopl,
don't even know each other, and since when does a Freer business with
a Caldlander without one sticking a knife in th, other?'
    Now Harris did sit up, incredulity etched across lines left b,
laughter and self4ndulgence. 'Damn, boy. You've been had. I knov
you're rich, and that you've dumped all of Daddy's allowance int~
tracking skip-runners, but didn't anyone tell you? Freerlander never
sell out on a comrade. Mac James has been named in thei honor song
since the day he jammed that surveillance station ore Freermoon and
knocked it out of orbit.'
    Jensen returned an arch look. 'This Freerlander is the one whos,
ancestral burial grounds got slagged under nine tons of radioactiv,
junk, direct result of that foray.'
    Harris flopped backward. 'OK,' he agreed in defeat. Jensen' back-
up informant wouldn't be lying for gain, but hell-bent o~ bloody
revenge. Harris wasted no energy wondering who els, besides rebels
his aristocratic senior had courted for access t( Mac James's
secrets. He shrugged one shoulder and said, 'So you damnable pirate
has business on Guildstar? So what?'
    Jensen's brown eyes narrowed. Because it made no sense, thought,
slipping into one of those sudden, uncommunicativ, silences that
claimed him when he contemplated the skip-runne captain whose
activities preoccupied him wholly since the Khalia~ wars wound down.
Combat action was reduced to a minor fev far-flung outposts, and the
present best chance for glory promotion remained the capture of
MacKenzie James. And James who was never careless, never forthright,
and never in his lift involved in honest trade, should have been
anathema in a systen as straitlaced as Guildstar. Half the merchants
on the council ther, had suffered losses due to Mac's operations; his
ship, the Marity should in theory have been blown to bits the instant
she applied fo a docking bay.
    Webbing creaked as Harris shoved to his feet. His pilot's reflexe
spared him from stepping unshod on spilled tacks, but the near mis:

I9O
sent him muttering toward the galley cubicle for coffee, or beer, or
the chocolate bars he ate after difficult flights that unjustly never
fleshed out his middle; even his tailored dress uniform hung on him
like a mechanic's coverall.
    Jensen's lips thinned in distaste. Harris's sloppiness was
tolerable only because he could fly the shorts off just about all of
his peers. And if Harris resented his assignment on Sail, a three-man
scoutship commanded by a lieutenant whose father had stonewalled all
reasonable opportunity for advancement, the pilot was too
lackadaisical to care. Jensen despised such lack of ambition, but
kept his contempt to himself. Without Harris, Sail had no prayer of
intercepting the Marity. Longingly, Jensen reached out and fingered
the single green pin in the display. How would his pilot respond, he
wondered, if he knew that Daddy's allowance had gone toward the
spreading of false information? Would Harris file for transfer if he
understood that the green pin marked a trap most painstakingly laid
to entice the Marity's master, precisely so that Sail could effect a
capture?
    But the Marity, damn her wayward, disingenuous traitor of a
captain, appeared not to be buying; instead she was making a third
run to Guildstar, decorously scheduled as the merchanter she
assuredly wasn't.
    Jensen loosened a clenched fist and retrieved a marker, a blue
one; with determined steadiness he imbedded the pin by the existing
pair over Guildstar, then muttered, 'It makes no sense.'
    Though Harris could overhear from the galley, Jensen felt no
embarrassment. While other officers jockeyed for leave to visit wives
and families, the lieutenant curried favor with Intelligence. He was
first among the lower ranks to hear that the Khalia had been armed
and financed by the Syndicate; the shock just beginning to filter
down from above was that war was far from over. The heated issue now
was location of the Syndicate's worlds. Weasel sources held no clue,
spies in the most sensitive positions drew blanks, and the brass was
reduced to screening hearsay in a vain search for coordinates. Jensen
viewed the dilemma with an eye for opportunity. His passion to trap
MacKenzie James took on increased importance: a skip-runner who
trafficked in state secrets and whose record held multiple charges of
treason would be acquainted with the Alliance's enemies. The
Syndicate should be numbered among his customers. If James did not
know their home

ii
system, he would have a contact, or a base of operations that would
open a direct lead. To capture him, to claim the hero's honor for
uncovering the turf of the enemy, Jensen was prepared to stake his
name and career.
    Lieutenant Michael Christopher Jensen, Jr, tapped the blue pin
into the holo map, then considered another red one with a speculative
frown. Mac James had pilfered plans for prototype weapons the Fleet
had in classified research; the designs had not turned up in Indy
hands, as everyone first supposed; where had
James sol~d his booty that time? Whet'e?The blue pin mocked, by
Guildstar.
    'None of this makes sense, damn you to Weasel castration!' Jensen
exploded, as though the arch criminal he hunted could hear his curse
across space.
    In the galley cubicle, surrounded by crumpled cups and a fashion
magazine left by the ensign, Harris lifted doubtful eyebrows under a
crown of red-gold hair. 'Obsessed,' he muttered to himself, and the
coffee just ordered from the dispenser sat cooling while he rummaged
under the mission's accumulation of debris after his illicit cache of
beer.

In a dusty rebel settlement far beyond Sail's patrol, a bar had been
erected from slabs of modular siding filched from derelict stations
and an abandoned colonial settlement. The corners did not match, and
the sand took advantage. The floors were terminally gritty. In a side
room, walled off by a fringed curtain, a Freerlander raised her cowl
to veil a vicious smile. Her narrowed, desert-weathered eyes caught
topaz light from a candle flame as she shifted gaze to the man who
sat in the shadows. 'The young officer was told outright, Captain.
Guildstar, the time, the date. Everything short of your corn codes,
but the word is he hangs back, still.'
    A dry chuckle answered from the darkness. Pale eyes flicked up
and glinted, while on the wine-sticky tabletop, a pair of hands
scarred by coil burns flexed and straightened and flexed with an ease
that, by the nature of such injuries, never should have been
possible. Over the noise of the spacers' bar beyond the doorway, a
voice equally grainy and grim observed, 'Then the boy is not quite
the brash fool he once was. No point in renewing the lease to that
ruerchanter when this run's finished. I'll recall Marity when

I92
she makes port at Guildstar. Let out word that my next move will be
those private sector interests on Chalice.'
    A chair squeaked as the Freerlander sat straighter, and a sigh
issued from the hawk-nosed man wearing Caldlander harness who lounged
opposite. After a black glance at the Freer, the Caldlander said,
'But I understood the take on Chalice was worthy of a raid? Is it not
risky to be baiting an Alliance scoutship on site at a real operation
?'
    'Well, Godfrey,' drawled the man with the scarred hands. 'If
that's what it takes to get me access to a documented Fleet vessel,
there's the ticket to the party. My mate Gibsen'd find the heat more
welcome than bus driving guild cargoes, there's certainty.'
    The Caldlander made a disparaging sound through his nose; the
Freer readjusted her cowl.
    Both were cultural signs of displeasure, ignored by the
skiprunner captain who stretched and rose, still in shadow. He half
turned, scooped up a rattling collection of weapons belts and hiked
them over his shoulder. Then he exposed blunt teeth in an expression
that Freer and Cald both knew better than to mistake for a smile.
    'Gentleman,' said MacKenzie James in his boyishly amiable
fashion. 'Lady. If one of you kills the other after I leave, take my
point, I'll gut the survivor like a fish.'
    No sound answered but a whore's raucous laugh beyond the doorway.
    'Good,' Mac James concluded. Still slinging the weapons he had,
after all, never promised to return, he spun and ducked out, a large-
framed bear of a man with a tread that incongruously made no sound.
The door curtain slapped shut after him and left two enemies face-to-
face over a wildly guttering candle.
    'Damn his arrogance,' swore the Caldlander. His fist slapped
irritably against the hip that now held neither knife, nor sheath,
nor pistol.
    The Freer expressed her frustration through silence and a twitch
of steel-nailed fingers. She found she had something to say after
all. 'If it were only his arrogance, neither of us would have come
here, nor agreed to run errands to benefit some snot-nosed boy
lieutenant.'
    The Caldlander stiffened fractionally. His eyes showed wide rings
of white. 'You suspect the information on Chalice is a setup?'

I93
The face under the cowl yielded nothing. 'The question is, does
MacKenzie James?'
    The enemies parted then, each wrapped in their own breed of
silence. Days later, when Freer and captain were both beyond contact,
it occurred to the Caldlander that Mac James's formidable cleverness
might have fallen short. This once he might have overlooked the
significance of a past action that had slagged a Freer ancestral
memorial.

Sail emerged from the queer, deep silence of FTL on a routine run to
deliver dispatches to Carsey Sector base. The capsule was relayed,
another received to replace it, and in the six-sided capsule that
served as cockpit, Harris snoozed in his headset, bored. Behind him,
in the command alcove reserved for Lieutenant Jensen, Sail's third
crew member slouched in the process of painting her nails. Sarah
Ashley del Kaplin, called Kappie by her deckmates, was short, whip-
thin, and full-lipped. She had inviting, dusky skin and a deep voice,
and she had taken assignment on Sail knowing that the lieutenant was
handsome, but an iceberg, and that Harris was a bum who pinched. The
pinches she fielded with equanimity, until they got too personal to
ignore. Harris received a bruise he swore happened in a shower that
was gravity stabilized, and the iceberg lieutenant was left to his
romance with the machinations of MacKenzie James.
    'Why's his nibs not out here reading off new orders?' Kaplin
mused, turning her wrist to admire her nails, which this round were
metallic lavender.
    'Huh,' muttered Harris. One elbow on the astrogation unit, he
scratched his chest through his unsealed collar, then added, 'The
lieutenant will return to duty when he's finished housekeeping his
map tacks.'
    A shout emerged from crew quarters, followed by what sounded like
a war whoop. Harris shoved out of his slouch, and Kaplin swiveled
around, her almond eyes wide with astonishment. 'Did I hear that?
Could this mean we've been assigned leave for the next tour?'
    Harris grunted again. 'Small chance. Jensen spends leave doing
volunteer scut work for the recon boys.' Kaplin's groan was
interrupted by Jensen's explosive appearance

194
at the companionway. His rangy frame filled up the narrow opening;
lit by the overhead panel, his face was flushed and his eyes
overbright with excitement.
    'He's done it!' the lieutenant shouted, waving a recent message
corn. 'He's finally taken the bait.'
    The 'he' needed no definition; nothing short of obsession with
MacKenzie James could cause Jensen to overlook the crew member who
usurped his command chair, the nail polish a calculated affront to
his dignity.
    From the pilot's station, Harris drawled, 'Let me guess. We're
going to go AWOL, maybe pay an unscheduled visit to Chalice? At least
I presume all those messages coming and going between us and the
private sector were not over an affair.'
    Kaplin watched this exchange, her nail brush forgotten in her
hand. 'If our boy is even capable of an affair,' she muttered sotto
voce.
    Jensen failed to take umbrage as he crossed the cockpit in a
stride. Risking an undecorous crease in his trousers, he leaned on
the instrument panel cowling. This drew a frown from Harris,
disregarded as the lieutenant plunged on. 'No. We go under regs, by
the book. Sail's a scout and recon owes me a favor. Once we've placed
these dispatches, I can get us an assignment to do a discretionary
patrol sweep. Since the mines on Chalice are the juiciest operation
the military has going with private business, they'd naturally need
to be checked.'
    Harris raked his fingers through a rooster comb of red hair, then
replaced his beret with its frayed Fleet insignia. 'That'd work.'
Only Kaplin insisted on particulars. 'What's at Chalice for us?'
Jensen let her sarcasm pass. 'Everything. I've been months setting it
up. We're going to capture MacKenzie James and through him trace the
home worlds of the Syndicate.'
    Kaplin raised pencil-thin eyebrows. 'Oh? And what's in Chalice
for MacKenzie?'
    Smug now, Jensen smiled. 'A trap. My trap. James thinks he's
going to heist core crystals, ones engineered with the technology
used to interface those fancy brainship modules with their hardware.
But once in, he'll find out the booty was bait. Sail might not have
all the latest tracking gadgets, but she's strong on gunnery. We're
going to stand down the Marity.'
The nail brush by now was thoroughly dry. Tossing it aside in

I95
exasperation, Kaplin flipped back ash-brown hair. 'You're crazy.
You'll get us all court-martialed.'
    'Or decorated,' Harris interjected. 'That's what happened last
time.'
    That moment Jensen noticed the gaudy, nonregulation nail lacquer.
'Ensign Kaplin,' he rapped out. 'One more breach of protocol on this
bridge, and I'll have you confined to quarters.' His voice did not
change inflection as he resumed with orders for his pilot. 'Harris,
charge the coils and prepare for FTL. I want our dispatches delivered
as if they were hot, and Sail on flight course for Chalice.'

In fact the logistics took days to work out. On fire with impatience
lest they miss their timing at Chalice, Jensen paced through $ail's
tiny corridors. He ran through his plan to trap Marity over and over
again. Since the scoutship's living quarters consisted of two
bunkrooms, a galley cubby, and the bridge, his crewmates grew sick of
hearing it. Harris escaped by closeting himself in astrogation to
watch his library of porn tapes. Kaplin got bugged enough to argue.
    Her fingers tapped the mess counter as she voiced her list of
objections. 'First, you took a helluva risk assuming those recon boys
you brown-nosed could wrangle us an assignment.'
    'Irrelevant point,' Jensen snapped. 'We've got our papers and the
assignment, both on target.'
    Kaplin shot a glance at the soup he would not eat because of
nerves, and her next nail snicked against the counter. 'Second, the
explosive you had that dock worker rig in case your plans went awry
could misfire.'
    Jensen gestured his exasperation. 'Not if you know, as the rest
of Chalice personnel does, that the box with the self-destruct is a
dummy. The crystals inside are fakes, a decoy for MacKenzie James.'
    'Oh ?' Kaplin's eyebrows arched. 'You told everybody about your
plot? Even the janitors? Hell, man, if you left things that
wide~open, your skip-runner's deaf not to know it. His intelligence
network's better than Fleet's, if he's got connections with the
Syndicate. So who's fooling who on this mission?'
    'Mac's best style is recklessness,' Jensen countered. 'And he
wants those interface crystals very badly.'

196
    Kaplin threw up her hands, almost banging the dish locker in her
irritation. 'You're telling me nothing but insanity! Our success
depends on MacKenzie James being quantum leaps dumber than you are.'
    Now Jensen grew heated in turn. 'If you can devise a better plan,
I'd sure be interested to hear it!'
    The lilac-colored nails drummed an agitated solo on the
countertop. 'I can't,' Kaplin said finally. 'But God, we'll be lucky
if our asses stay whole through this one.'

The queer, intangible stagger that human time sense underwent through
the shift from FTL came to an end, but confusion lingered. On re-
entry to analog space, Sail seemed to hesitate and bounce, as if she
were a plane engaged in a turbulent landing. Then something moving
and metallic impacted her high-density hull with an awful, ear-
stinging clang.
    'Jesus!' screamed Harris from the pilot's seat. 'We've dumped
slap into a war zone!' He spun the spacecraft, tossing Kaplin and
Jensen hard into their couch stations.
    The lieutenant strained against the pull of vertigo and managed
to punch up an image on the screens. Instantly his eyes were seared
by the glare of an expanding plasma explosion. Sail had not entered a
war zone; instead, the station logged as her destination had been
detonated to a cloud of gases and debris. Harris responded,
reflexively kicked Sail's grav drives into reverse with a scream of
attitude thrusters. Small fragments rattled against the hull. The
gravity drives accelerated into the red, and buzzers sounded warning.
    Jensen stared at the blowing burst of destruction that Harris
labored feverishly to evade. What could possibly have gone wrong? he
wondered, and his shoulders tensed in anticipation of Kaplin's
acerbic, 'I told you so, you arrogant, stupid fool.'
    But Kaplin said nothing, only sat with her face in her hands,
caution lights from the recon unit a glare of yellow against her
knuckles.
    'Je-sus,' Harris repeated, the Eirish accent of his childhood
breaking through the more cultured tones he had acquired in air-
tactics academy. A gifted sixth sense and instinct enabled him to
quiet the drive engines; Sail described a smooth course just beyond
the event horizon left by the explosion. 'What now?'

197
     Nobody spoke. None of the three in Sail's cockpit cared to
contemplate what might have been had their scout probe broken through
FToe just half an instant sooner. Jensen looked at his hands, found
them clenched whitely on the arms of his crew chair. Since
he could not change the fuckup, he forced his brain to work. And the
obvious stared him in the face.
     'Kappie,' he said sharply. 'Engage sensors, sweep the vicinity
for the presence of other warcraft.'
     'What?' Overdue, the ensign's reproach was cutting. 'Have you
gone nuts? You set a live charge on Chalice station, and now you're
after the culprit who blew it?'
     Lieutenant Jensen repeated his command, his voice back under
control. 'The charge I had rigged was a contained net explosive. If
anybody set it off, even accidentally, it might have burned one
sector. Not the whole station. We're seeing the afterimage of a
plasma bolt. Now, make your sweep. Our lives depend on it,
because the enemy who manned the weapon is still out there.' 'Could
be renegade Khalians,' offered Harris.
     Nobody had time to suggest otherwise. An alarm cut across the
cramped cockpit, one that signaled an inbound distress call.
     Kaplin locked in on the signal. 'A survivor,' she called crisply.
'He's in freefall with no life-support beyond a service suit.' She
listed distance and vector, then added figures for Harris to
calculate drift factor. The human bit of flotsam moved with the
debris from the station, no less a victim of the blast. 'He's got a
maintenance coding,' Kaplin finished. 'Probably a repair man who was
caught outside when the charge hit.'
     'Set course for intercept,' Jensen ordered. 'By regs, we're bound
to pick the fellow up, and maybe he can tell us what happened.'
     A pilot other than Harris might have protested; laying course
through a high-speed, tumbling mass of debris was hardly the safest
of undertakings. But Harris leaned over his console, a half-crazed
grin on his face. As he began the maneuver, he relished telling
Kaplin that she'd better not unbelt to fetch a Dramamine. The vector
changes were going to be fast, and violent, and if she was going to
be sick from inertia, better that than wind up splattered against a
bulkhead.
     The interval that followed became a hellish parody of a carnival
ride. Harris alone found the gyrations enjoyable. He leaned over
Sail's console with his nose thrust forward like a jockey, every

I98
sense trained on the attitude displays, and his hands almost wooing
the controls. The spacecraft responded to his measure, rolling,
twisting, and sometimes outright wrenching a clear path through
pinwheeling debris. Harris pressed Sail to the edge of her specs and
reveled in every moment. His voice as he announced that the survivor
was now close enough to grapple aboard sounded near as he came to
elation.
    Lieutenant Jensen issued orders through his vertigo. As Kaplin
set hands to her couch belt, he told her to stay on station. 'Keep
the scanners manned. If we're not the only craft out here, 1 want to
know it fast.' Then, as if $ail's cockpit were too small to contain
his restlessness, he strode out to manage the loading lock and
grapplers on his own.
    In keeping with most scout craft, $ail's utility levels were a
warren of bare, corrugated corridors as poorly lighted as a mine
shaft, and unequipped with simulated gravity. Experienced enough to
disdain magnetic soles, Jensen made his way aft through the service
hatch, hand over hand on the side rails. Although he had logged more
space hours, Kaplin was more agile than he. She could zip through
null grav like a monkey, never the least bit disoriented. Jensen's
jaw muscles tightened. A lowly female ensign should not make him feel
threatened; but thanks to the almighty wishes of his politician
father, others as inexperienced had earned their promotions ahead of
him. Kaplin might easily do the same, despite the fact she was apt to
act flighty on duty, and her record held a collection of demerits.
    The frustration of being continually passed over caught up with
Jensen at odd moments. Intent on the injustices of his career, he
drifted over the open-grate decking to the space bay, flipped open
the grappler's controls, and slipped on the headset inside. He
clicked the display visor down, powered up the unit, and initiated
recovery procedure as if the drifting speck on the grid represented
no castaway, but an enemy target in a weapon scope. Since Jensen held
a citation for marksman elite, the mote of human flotsam was
recovered in commendably short order. Jensen tossed the headset into
its rack. Poised before the trapezoidal entry to the lock chamber, he
engaged the space bay controls, then waited, his hand on the bulkhead
to pick up the jarring vibration that signaled closure of the outer
lock. His ears measured the hiss of changing air pressure as
atmosphere flooded the chamber. Only greenhorns and

I99
fools trusted to idiot lights on the monitor panel. Electronics were
never infallible, and there were prettier ways to die than voiding an
unsuited body into vacuum.
    The pressure stabilized within the bay. Jensen flipped off the
manual safety and unsealed sliding doors through the innerlock.
Inside the steel-walled chamber, the figure he had recovered drifted
limply in null grav, clad in the bulky, ribbed fabric of a deep-space
mechanic's suit. The elbows showed wear, the knees were grease-
stained, and the tool satchels were scuffed with use. The hands in
their fluorescently striped gloves did not rise to undo the helmet,
and a second later, Jensen saw why. The face shield was drenched from
the inside, with an opaque film of fresh blood.
    Nausea kicked the pit of his stomach. He had not expected a
survivor who was injured, or maybe dead. Hindsight made his
assumption seem silly. The emergency tracer signal emitted by the
suit did not necessarily trigger manually. The backpacks and tool
satchel compartments were typical of a repairman's, and such gear
often had a proximity fail-safe: if the worker wearing the rig
accidentally came adrift from a workstation, the alarm would set off
automatically. Jensen swallowed back sickness. He had seen death
before, had once blown a man's brains out point-blank from behind.
Now, duty demanded that he ascertain whether this suit contained a
corpse, or a medical emergency.
    Queasiness reduced to irritation, Jensen pushed off into the lock
chamber. He bumped against the drifting figure, clumsily captured it
in an embrace, and managed to hook onto the handrail before he
caromed off the far wall. With one elbow crooked to maintain
position, he wrestled the suited body upright, then flipped the
clasps on the helmet.
    As he lifted the face shield, the figure moved against him. A
space-gloved hand gripped his waist from behind, and a hard object
jabbed his side.
    Probably just a tool appendage, Jensen rationalized, his pulse
quickening. But the face behind the blood-streaked shield dispelled
his last vestige of delusion. The lieutenant looked down into slate-
colored eyes and an expression that held only ruthlessness.
    'Godfrey, you boys are predictable,' said the voice of MacKenzie
James. The cheek in shadow beneath the face shield showed a smear of
new blood, but the hold that gripped Jensen, and the arm that shoved
what surely was a firearm against the lieutenant's

200
side, were not those of a wounded man. MacKenzie James was bearishly
strong, with reflexes not to be trifled with. Jensen had cause to
remember.
    Shocked by the skip-runner's presence and enraged to have lost
the upper hand to a castaway, the lieutenant fought to stay calm. 'I
presume you deep-spaced the man who owned the suit you're wearing.'
    The query prompted an insouciant smile. 'Cut the crap,' said
James, his voice multiplied by echoes off of the lock bay walls. 'If
you've got any scruples about killing, they're faked.' He shook back
mussed brown hair and nudged the gun barrel in the ribs of his
victim. 'Unfasten my suit clips.'
    Jensen saw no option but compliance; if James decided to shed the
bulky suit, a way might arise to seize advantage while his enemy was
encumbered by the sleeves. Convinced that the pirate had tripped the
charge in the bogus crate of brain crystals, and that an accomplice
on Marity had seen the explosion and opened retaliatory fire on
Chalice, Jensen talked in an attempt to distract his enemy's
thinking.
    'You'll never get away with a hijacking. $ail's courses are
automatically logged, and she runs under check-in protocols. All
transmissions are coded and routinely traced.'MacKenzie James said
nothing.
    'Give yourself up, man.' Jensen set hands to the last shoulder
clip. 'If our schedule is disrupted a millisecond, we're presumed to
be boarded by enemies. We're tagged and targeted for armed search,
with orders to be slagged on sight.'
    The clip unlatched with a click. James raised insolent brows.
'Let go,' he instructed. As Jensen hesitated, James swung his body
and wrenched the officer's fingers. Painfully freed, Jensen felt
himself spun around, his right wrist looped neatly in a tool tether.
    The lieutenant struggled, tried to jab an elbow in his enemy's
face. The move was both anticipated and countered; after years spent
in freefall standing ambush, Mac James had mastered null gray to a
fine point. He did little but shift one hip. The result provoked a
spin as he and his captive drifted in tandem from the rail. Jensen's
fast movement added vector that hammered him sideways into the wall.
James was protected by his suit; Jensen, caught on the inside, got
the breath crushed from his lungs, and a bruise on the temple that
nearly stunned him. Weakly he clawed

201
for the lock. If he could reach the control, he might signal and warn
the bridge.
    The tool tie on his wrist jerked him short and rebound slammed
him backward into James. Jensen tried to fight. A punch that
ineffectively dented suit padding was all he could manage before a
kick in the groin killed his resistance. Amid the chaos of motion
provoked by his shoves and thrusts, the tool tie looped his other
wrist. Mac James controlled his random tumble. He shucked the suit,
revealing blunt features and a pair of nondescript coverails soaked
like camouflage with bloodstains. Plainly the suit's original owner
had died from exposure to vacuum. Left queasy by pain, and by the
coppery sharpness of the droplets drifting in freefall that
unavoidably got inhaled with each breath, Jensen cursed.
    The gun barrel was no longer pointed at his face. James's hand on
the grip was relaxed, even negligent as he loosened the neck of his
coverall; this action was an effrontery by itself since Jensen was
not fully helpless. His feet were left free to kick; but to do so in
null grav without use of his arms was asking for a nasty crack on the
head. Mac James understood that Jensen was experienced enough to know
this. The skip-runner relied on that wholly, an arrogance his captive
found infuriating.
    Jensen cursed again. He despised the notion that a criminal could
so easily guess his mind. He decided any effort was worth the
inevitable concussion, but on the point of action, James caught the
tool tie and jerked it like a leash.
    Snapped in line like a disobedient puppy, Jensen wrestled with
shoulders and forearms, half gagged by the taste-smell of blood. His
struggles skinned the flesh of his wrists, no more; Mac James towed
him expertly through the inner lock. Crimsoned, coil-scarred fingers
tapped across the control panel. The skip-runner was no stranger to
Fleet vessels, Jensen observed in bleak rage. The lock hissed shut,
fail-safe seals engaged.
    'You lost your ship, at least,' Jensen managed through clenched
teeth as he was dragged past the service access to condenser and
drive-engine compartments. 'I hope she was blown to a million bits as
a result of your late misjudgment.'
    Mac James half turned. A glimpse of his snub-nosed profile showed
a sardonically lifted brow. 'Misjudgment? Godfrey, boy. I'm exactly
where I planned to be, which is more than you can say for yourself.'

202
    Jensen returned an epithet, clipped short as he twisted to stop a
nose dive; Mac James towed him through the access hatch into the
upper level of the ship, and gravity slammed his shoulders into the
deck grid. The breath left his lungs and his feet drifted stupidly in
the gravityless well of the service corridor.
    'Up,' said Mackenzie James. The pellet pistol was back in his
hand and fixed in nerveless steadiness on the vitals of his captive.
'Move, now!'
    An impatience colored the skip-runner's tone that only a fool
would question. Jensen rolled, pulled his knees beneath his body,
then flinched as his captor clapped a hand to his shoulder. He was
ruthlessly hauled upright, spun, and marched ahead. The tool tie
tautened, stressed his arm sockets without mercy, while the pistol
nuzzled the base of his skull.
    'Now,' said James in his ear from behind. 'We're going to the
bridge. At the companionway, you will stop and instruct your pilot to
set course for Van Mere's station in Arinat.'
    Jensen automatically began to protest. A shake from Mac James
caught him short.
    The captain qualified. 'Your current orders permit you to act on
discretion. And discretion, if you wish to stay alive, says Sail
engages FTL for Arinat.'
    Aside from the weapon at his neck, curiosity urged Jensen ahead.
That James knew the fine print on his orders was a cold and
disquieting puzzle. 'Why Arinat? And what's at Van Mere's except a
trading colony for a remote agricultural outpost?'
    'Quite a bit,' James said uninformatively. Then, as if stating
everyday business, he added, 'The Marity didn't blow to bits along
with Chalice. She's spaceworthy, and awaiting rendezvous, and will go
under your escort through the security zone checkpoint to Arinat.'
    At which point Jensen knew searing rage. He had played blindly
into an ambush. Months of intricate planning had led him to this: not
as the hunter, but the trapped prey, forced to play puppet for the
skip-runner Mackenzie James.
'Carry on, Lieutenant,' the gruff voice instructed in his ear.
    Jensen did so purely out of hatred. He swore he would find a way
to turn the tables, to bring this pirate to a justice long deserved.
    Skip-runner and captive reached the galley nook; beyond lay the
companionway to the bridge. The hand that poised the gun

203
at Jensen's neck tightened ever so slightly. Since Mac James was
never a man to act by half measures, Jensen squared his shoulders. He
stepped up to the companionway, faced through toward the cockpit, and
crisply called out orders.
    'Ensign Kaplin, discontinue your search pattern. Harris, I want
this ship on a new course for Arinat. Plot FTL coordinates for the
security zone checkpoint, and from there to Van Mere's station.'
    Harris shot out of his habitual slouch. He turned his head,
stared at his superior officer with an insolence peculiar to pilots,
and said, 'You want what?'
    The pistol nosed harder against Jensen's neck. He swallowed
stiffly. 'Harris. You're insubordinate.'
    'When isn't he,' Kaplin commented with her usual flat-toned
sarcasm. She shut down systems for travel and spun her station chair,
in time to see Harris narrow his eyes.
    'No,' the pilot said, quite softly. 'We've done too many
assignments together for me to buy on this one. I'll set course for
Arinat on one condition, sir. Step in here and show me both of your
hands.'
    Jensen had no chance to warn, no chance to act, just one instant
of crystallized fear as Mac James shovecl him asicle. The pellet
pistol went off, a compressed explosion of sound. Jensen staggered
off balance, heard Kaplin's scream, and knew: Mac James had gunned
down his pilot, even as he, on a past mission, had killed the
Marity's mate. In his own way, but for different reasons, Jensen
shared such ruthlessness. He was not shocked, but only whitely angry,
when he recovered his footing and saw the fallen figure sprawled in
the helm chair. The pilot's beret had tumbled off, and the fiery
thatch of hair dripped blood. The long, lean fingers that had
performed feats of magic at the controls were not relaxed, but
twitching in an agitation of death throes. Mac James's pellet had
taken Harris through the forehead. He'd probably died between
thoughts.
    A muffled sound across the cockpit reminded Jensen of his other,
surviving crew member. Sarah del Kaplin looked sheet white; yet the
makeup like garish paint over her pallor masked an unexpected depth
of character. Scared to the edge of panic, she hadn't lost it enough
to stand up.
    Which was well, for the murdering skip-runner shoved onto 5ail's
bridge and snapped his next orders to the ensign. 'Lady, your
training included flight rating, and you'd better know the

204
material, because you're going to push that body off the helm and fly
this vessel to Arinat and Van Mere's?
    Kaplin turned a shade paler. She lifted wide eyes to her senior
officer; and prodded by the gun in twitchy hands at his back, Jensen
said, 'Kappie. Just do it.'
    She returned a jerky nod, rose, and struggled with Harris's
cooling corpse, her hands with their extravagant nail polish shaking
and shaking, but able enough nonetheless. She sat in Harris's
spattered chair and engaged instruments to plot the skip-runner's
course.
    MacKenzie James followed the figures that flashed on her board.
The criminal knew his astrogation, solidly; that he watched over
Kaplin's shoulder told more clearly than words that there were stakes
to this foray. A hum pervaded Sail's hull, followed by deeper
vibrations. The coil condensers began their charge cycle in
preparation for FTL, and as if the change in the ship's drive
galvanized Jensen's thinking, it dawned that Marity had blown Chalice
station deliberately, her purpose to hide Mac James's tracks.
    'You've stolen the brain crystal interfaces,' Jensen accused, his
voice muffled by his own epaulette as Mac James shoved his face down
and to the side, and manhandled him sideways into the hanging locker
reserved for officers' dress coats.
    James responded with a grin that had no humor behind it. 'You
helped make it convenient.' He pushed down, ramming his captive into
the dusty closet. 'Chalice security was busily watching your box of
rigged bait. Really, boy, I'm surprised. A man would expect you to
learn not to keep on meddling beyond your depth.'
    Jensen winced as his elbow caught on the door hinge. Jammed on a
nerve, he gasped, sweated, and vainly thrashed for purchase in an
area too constricted for bodily movement. 'Damn you,' he grunted,
before the fine silk of his officer's scarf was forcibly crammed in
his mouth. James used a length of shock webbing to tie the gag in
place, then shoved the door closed.
    Jensen crouched in fetal position, his wrists lashed bloodlessly
tight behind his back. Pressure against his cheek flattened his nose
against his knees, and the toes of Harris's battle boots ground
relentless dents in his buttocks. Unable to move, unable to speak, he
still could hear. The dry tones of MacKenzie James instructed Kaplin
to adjust her course; she'd missed a decimal point. The result, as
James phrased it, would get Sail an unscheduled refit,

205
since Van Mere's star had an asteroid belt that could skin the
shields off a battle cruiser.
    Jensen squirmed and managed to cramp his left thigh. He could not
stretch to relieve the discomfort, but only sweat with the pain. The
closet quickly became stifling, and somewhere between nausea and
frustrated tears, he missed the shift to FTL. He knew the transition
had happened when the cramp eased off, and he realized the vibrations
from the condensers had subsided back to a whisper.
    A light tread crossed the cockpit; not Kaplin's, Jensen
determined. She tended to slap her heels down, result of a flirty,
provocative hip-sway she habitually used to distract. Most men were
not immune, but James would prove the exception. Jensen knew the
skip-runner to be formidably focused in his actions. The steps
paused, and the couch by the com station creaked.
    'You'll tell me Sail's security code schedule,' James suggested
in his gravelly bass.
    Silence. Jensen squeezed his eyes shut and moaned. Kappie, he
thought desperately, you'll go the way of Harris. He tensely awaited
the shot.
    'Godfrey, girl,' said James. He sounded strangely tired. 'Don't
shake so hard. I only shoot on sight when somebody's fixing to kill
me. Your pilot kept a gun in the pocket next to his jock strap, or
didn't you know that?' A pause. 'No, I see not. His whores shared the
secret, and for a pitiful bit of change, they talked.'
    In the closet, Jensen drew a shuddering, sweat-stinking breath.
He had not known Harris packed a pistol, never mind under that
ridiculously baggy coverall. Jensen's worst nightmare had never
allowed that James might run a network that extended so deep, into
the back streets of who knew how many worlds. The haunts of pilots on
leave were notoriously varied, and scattered as stars to scope out.
That this criminal's interest had focused so intently on Sail's crew
was a most unsettling discovery.
     'The codes,' reminded MacKenzie James, his voice gone strangely
steely. Above the subliminal hum of FTL, the cockpit beyond the
closet seemed gripped in waiting stillness.
     Kaplin gasped as if hit. 'I can't tell you,' she lied. 'I don't
know them!' Her bravery held an edge of hysteria.
     Jensen braced for a shot that never came. The chair by the corn
console creaked again as Mac James shifted his weight.

206
'Dearie,' he said in a tone of deceptive gentleness. 'I'm running out
of time. That means you talk, or I embarrass the brass higher up.'
    In the closet, Jensen frowned; and Kaplin's tremulous silence
became underscored by James's quick tread, then the tap of fingers
over the keys on what had to be the command alcove console.
    'What are you doing?' Kaplin asked in a blend of fear and
suspicion.
    'Canceling our course coordinates,' MacKenzie James replied.
'We're going to stay in the Chalice system until a battle cruiser
comes to investigate.'
    'You'll get us all blown to hell,' said Kaplin with the acid bite
she used to admonish her senior lieutenant.
    'Very likely you're right.' James left the command chair, and by
the squeals of outrage that followed, Jensen judged that the skip-
runner tied Del Kaplin to the pilot's station with his usual ruthless
style.
    There followed a wait, in which the skip-runner fixed himself
coffee. In the protocols manual under the console, he found Sail's
security code schedule and ascertained the time for her next check-
in. Then, with a style more flamboyant than Harris's, he spun the
scout craft on a trajectory that blended with the expanding debris
from the explosion.
    Nauseated by vertigo, and jammed in the suffocating closet,
Jensen felt a horrible, hollow lurch in his abdomen as the artificial
gravity was switched off. More controls clicked in the cockpit as the
skip-runner adjusted Sail for total shutdown, making her invisible to
all but a tight-focus scan.
    An hour passed, then two. $ail's call-in was due in thirty
minutes. Jensen sat, ears straining, to hear how MacKenzie James
planned to handle the Fleet cruiser that was sure to arrive at any
moment.
    Kaplin must have been left facing the screens, because when the
battle cruiser arrived, she spoke with tense satisfaction. 'That's
the New Morning. She's a flagship with an admiral aboard, and an
escort fleet of six.'
    'Eight,' James corrected. 'Chalice got off a distress torp.' He
did not sound upset, but crossed to the corn console and rapidly
began punching keys.
    'You're going to beg amnesty?' Kaplin said, just missing her
usual sarcasm. 'No. Personal phone call,' James qualified. 'To your
senior,

~o7
Admiral Nortin.' A burst of static hissed across the screen, followed
by the chime that signaled a clear transmission. James spoke crisply.
'Ah, Admiral, I seem to have disturbed you in the shower?'
    Jensen tried to picture his crusty senior officer in a towel or a
bathrobe. Imagination failed. Nortin was always, and ever would be,
square-shouldered, tight4ipped, and well-groomed, with a daunting row
of medals on his chest.
    In tones slightly rusty from surprise, the admiral answered, 'Get
to the point.'
    'Indeed.' James paused for what had to be a nasty smile. 'I wish
to know the security codes for the scout-class vessel Sail.'
    'She's on reconnaissance assignment.' The admiral recovered fast;
already his words had recovered their customary bite. 'Why Sail?'
Then the admiral's voice became softly menacing. 'You on her?'
    James made no verbal reply; instead, his fingers tripped lightly
over the console. A moment later, Jensen heard the click of the drive
in the log tape reader.
    The admiral's voice came back jagged. 'Where did you get that
film clip?'
    'From an extortionist who wanted something much too big for his
resources. He got killed instead. His tape collection, unfortunately,
survived him. Now, I want Sail's codes, and quickly, or the fact you
took pay to hang back from engagement at Elgettin will be broadcast
to the satellite feeds.'
    'It was never so simple as that.' The admiral sounded suddenly
very aged.
    'It never is, sir.' A false note of sympathy colored Mac James's
platitude. He was, after all, committing blackmail. Jensen raged at
the indignity forced on the admiral, as, over com, he heard the old
man calling information from security.
    Sail's codes came through promptly after that, and Jensen
despaired as he confirmed the accuracy of each sequence. MacKenzie
James had done his legwork with the efficiency that trademarked his
career. He humbled large men and small with the same evenhanded
ruthlessness. For his pains, the skip-runner captain had gained
himself a scout-class vessel with open search orders. He could travel
the breadth of Alliance space, or any of a half-dozen security zones,
and not be questioned; the Marity could accompany openly,
masquerading under military escort.

208
    The effrontery of the piracy cut Jensen like a razor. He did not
mourn for Harris. He felt only passing sympathy for his admiral's
private shame; but for his own whipped pride and the certain ruin of
his career, his hatred burned murderously bitter. Fury did not allow
for limits. Crushed and cramped into a hole not fit for a dog, Jensen
twisted his shoulders sideways and strained against the tool ties. He
forced numb and bloodless fingers to open and close and grope for the
nearest object to hand, which happened to be Harris's scuffed, old
battle boots.
    Two places the Eirish pilot wore those shoes without fail: on
deck during combat, and off on leave, where his hobbies had been
whoring and brawling. The toes were reinforced with steel caps, and
Jensen sawed his bonds feverishly against the metal in the futile
hope of fraying through high tensile mesh.
    Activity continued on the bridge. MacKenzie James reset the
autopilot, then, in a masterful orchestration of instruments,
crosswired the grav-drive regulators and the life-support emergency
generators to charge the coils in a split-second burst of power.
Sail's banks reached peak capacity and transferred into FTL in one
screaming instant of vertigo. New Morning's instrumentation would
have seen the surge, but not in time to evaluate whatever had caused
the burst. To keep ends neat, they'd chart the anomaly as an unstable
bit of debris from Chalice's fusion reactor.
    Assured that Sail was safely away, James confined Kaplin to the
stores locker behind the galley. Jensen missed the light-footed tread
that returned to the cockpit, but not the change back to analog
space, and the voice that activated the corn and summoned the Marity
to take station to Sail's rear.
    Mac James relayed instructions to his mate. 'I'11 escort you
through the checkpoint at the security zone, as planned. Once in
Arinat system, we'll separate. Sail will execute patrol patterns
while you transfer the goods and take payment. We'll rendezvous
afterward off Arinat nine, darkside of the satellite called Kestra.
That's the only blind spot in the Syndicate's sensor network, and
it's a damned narrow one. Misplace a vector, and we're vapor, so be
careful.'
    As the skip-runner closed contact and restored Sail's altered
circuitry to reprogram his original course, Jensen paused in his
attempt to free his hands. Furiously he combined facts, those he knew
with others he'd heard. His final conclusion was chilling.

2o9                               ~~~
For MacKenzie James inferred that the agricultural colony beneath Van
Mere's was a covert Syndicate outpost, undiscovered by the Alliance
and, indeed, unlikely to be, since Arinat system lay within the
Molpen security zone that ships could not enter without passing a
military checkpoint. The added inconvenience should have discouraged
spies; but in a backhandedly clever sort of way, the compromised
location made sense.
    Who knew, and who had ever thought to look for sophisticated
technology underneath three continents of crops? The secret was
viciously guarded, since James had risked acquisition of Sail to have
her in system for his transaction. If the Syndicate faction behind
Van Mere's valued their skip-runner contacts lightly enough to blow
them out of space after goods transfer, the wisdom of Sail's presence
made sense. On patrol, her sensors would detect explosions or plasma
charges. She would be duty bound to report such abnormalities and
file for investigation. The spies on Van Mere's would wish to avoid
such attention in the interest of preserving their anonymity.
Stations that traded with agricultural outposts rarely acted with
aggression, and that profile provided essential cover.
    MacKenzie James had indestructible luck because he unerringly
planned for contingencies. As Jensen resumed sawing at his
restraints, he had to admire the man's genius. Mac's operations had
the feel of a grand dance, precisely timed, and disarmingly
masqueraded as coincidence.
    That Sail should be commandeered for treason was no sane ending
to contemplate. The lieutenant leaned back in the cubicle, flexed his
wrists, and groped at his bonds with his fingertips. The webbing was
not the least bit frayed, and a tug to test the knots showed his
efforts had only chafed skin.
    A man who hated less might have quit. Jensen rammed his shoulders
against the wall and relentlessly sawed all the harder. He persisted
though his muscles cramped into screaming knots of agony. He cut and
cut and cut the tool tie across the toe cap of Harris's boot through
the hours of passage to Arinat. His hands went numb, and then his
wrists and elbows. He kept cutting. Sail completed her transit,
kicked out of FTL, and the web of the tool tie he'd been tearing at
showed the faintest trace of a nap. He rested, listening as James
refined course and opened contact in an unfamiliar language with his
Syndicate contact on Van Mere's.

210
    Orders were relayed, and Marity assumed position for the sale of
her stolen technology. Core interface crystals took years to
manufacture, and there were many, many bodies left crippled from the
war that waited, bathed in nutrients, in the hope of future service
in a brainship. Since crystals were unique, and the idiosyncracies of
each required a precise match with the consciousness of the
individual they would be paired with, today's loss meant the death of
hope for someone who valiantly clung to life in total helplessness.
Jensen ran swollen, aching fingertips over the light fuzz on the tool
tie. He acknowledged the sorry fact that he could never rip free in
time to matter.
    In the cockpit, MacKenzie James logged in Sail's codes and
established routine patrol at Arinat's. He set up a closed band
connection with his mate on the Marity, and the core crystals came
closer to changing hands.
    Prisoned in the closet, Jensen shut his eyes. He reviewed every
memory of Harris. There had to be a reason, besides steel toe caps,
why the pilot insisted on a particular pair of boots whenever he flew
into combat.
    'Never catch me being lab rat for a Weasel,' he had once confided
over beer; Harris, whose whores had known he wore a pistol in a hip
strap over his undershorts. Jensen reasoned furiously. The combat
boots had metal-capped toes, but no ankle laces. It followed that
Harris might have chosen the style to carry a knife in his boot
cuffs.
    Jensen strained to raise his arms, hampered as his elbows jammed
against the back wall and the door panel. He lacked the space to flex
and reach the boot tops only inches away from his wrists. He grunted,
forced blood-starved muscles to contract. Using wall and door to
wedge his shoulders, he raised himself inch by torturous inch and
scrunched backward. He sat on the insteps of Harris's boots; while in
the cockpit, MacKenzie James monitored the exchange of the crystals
with a coolness that rankled the nerves.
    Jensen groped, caught the left boot cuff between his knuckles. He
pinched, kneaded, and crumpled the tired old leather, while his
joints tingled horribly in complaint. He found nothing. Close to
tears of frustration, he twisted at his bonds, forced his shoulders
into an angle that all but flayed his back, and managed to hook the
right boot. He found what he sought, not a knife, but a razor-thin
strip of metal sewn between the seams above the ankle.

2II
    It took him a pain-ridden hour to work the implement free. By
then utterly exhausted, he had to rest, his hands numbed lumps of
meat, and his wrists scraped down to raw gristle. In the cabin,
MacKenzie James wrapped up his transaction and gently set Sail on an
outward spiral toward Kestra.
    Jensen cut himself twice before he got the razor positioned
against his bonds. He nicked the weave of the tool tie over and over,
his hold precariously slippery with his own blood. The stubborn
webbing gave way. Shivering, wretched with discomfort and relief, he
wormed his arms into his lap and cradled his hands to his chest. He
had to pause through an agonizing interval of time, until Mac James
chose to leave the cockpit. Jensen dragged off his gag. He used the
spoiled silk to wrap his gashed fingers, then, uncontrollably
shivering in a cold sweat, he stole his moment to act.
    The lieutenant tripped the catch to the closet and spilled
unceremoniously onto the deck. His legs refused to obey him, and his
manual dexterity was shot. Aware that he had only moments, he half
dragged, half rolled his body across the cockpit to the weapons
locker. More seconds were lost as he blotted blood from his hand so
the security sensor could read his palm print. The lock clicked open.
Not trusting his aim with a kill weapon, Jensen chose a riot pistol
armed with stun charges. Then, scuttling crabwise, he positioned
himself against the companionway bulkhead just as Mac James stepped
in through the access corridor.
    The skip-runner saw the opened closet and instantaneously jerked
out his pistol. Formidably fast, he spun sideways, almost into cover
as he punched the switch to shut the access hatch.
    Jensen's charge nipped through the fast-closing panel and
hammered the skip-runner in the shoulder. Nerves and muscles went
dead and the pellet gun clanged to the deck. The barrel wedged in the
hatch track. The door jammed, leaving a sliver of a gap; enough for
Jensen to squeeze off another round.
    Luck favored him. The charge caught Mac James as he leaned to
kick free the jammed pistol. He grunted what might have been a word,
then crumpled and sagged to the deck.
    Jensen could not resist a crow of triumph. He might not have the
Marity, might have lost the precious interface crystals to the enemy,
but he had MacKenzie James. And along with the most wanted skip-
runner in Alliance space, he could deliver the first definitive

212
proof of a spy connection with the Syndicate. The wreckage of his
plans at Chalice had not ended in failure.
    The sweetness of victory and the sure promise of promotion made
his recent humiliation worthwhile. Gripping the stun pistol in his
swollen, lacerated hands, Jensen pushed to his feet. He had details
to arrange, a criminal to secure, and no choice but presume that the
spies on Van Mere's monitored military corn channels. He'd need to
withdraw from Arinat system as if nothing untoward had happened, and
initiate FTL before he dared call for an escort. Marity was still at
large. The mate left on board would know James had encountered
problems when rendezvous failed behind Kestra. Yet unless MacKenzie's
man wished to broadcast Fleet connections and face reprisal from Van
Mere's, he'd be powerless to pursue until too late.
    Jubilant, drunk on his own triumph, Jensen cleared the
companionway door. He gave the stunned body of his captive a
vengeful, self-satisfied kick, then squeezed past to free Kaplin from
the supply cubby. She could damn well reset their course log, since
her infernally manicured fingers were probably not mangled to
incapacity. As he stumbled on nerve-deadened feet, Jensen
acknowledged that he desperately needed to use the head. He
considered his ruined uniform, and wondered, between planning,
whether his efforts to escape the hanging locker might have
bloodstained his best battle jacket.

Well after the code check at ~7oo, Ensign Kaplin drifted crosslegged
in the dimly lit corridor by the space lock. Unimpressed by Jensen's
bubbling elation, and unconcerned that her hair needed fixing, she
sullenly chipped enamel off a broken thumbnail. Her thoughts centered
darkly around the admiral whose record was impeccable, but whose past
was anything but. Her future in the Fleet would become deadlocked as
a result of the tape she had witnessed. The lieutenant was a fool if
he thought the captive held trussed in the lock bay was going to
sweeten an admiral whose private shame had been leaked to the crew of
a minor class scout. As Kaplin saw things, MacKenzie James might
never see trial; more likely he'd die of an accident, or someone
would pull strings to set him free. He hadn't gotten where he was
without connections in high places. His record of success was too
brilliant.

213
    Kaplin jabbed at her fingernail, plowing up a flake of purple
lacquer. Jensen was an idealistic idiot, and Admiral Nortin a
desperately cornered man; no need to guess who'd survive when the
dirt inevitably hit the fan.
    A discreet tap at the lock door disrupted the ensign's brooding.
She started and looked up, saw the haggard face of MacKenzie James
drifting by the small oval window. His hands were bound; he'd managed
the knock by catching the pen from the bulletin alcove between his
teeth and rapping the end against the glass.
    'Damn,' Kaplin muttered under her breath as her grip slipped and
mangled a cuticle. She sucked at the scratch, pushed off from the
floor grate, and, still cross-legged, peered through the glass. 'What
do you want?'
    Other than a leak, she mused inwardly. If the stun drugs had just
worn off, that's what most people wanted.
    Mac James ejected the pen from his teeth. 'Talk,' he said, his
succinctness blurred by echoes. He bunched his shoulders against the
webbing Jensen had contrived to confine him. The result would have
tethered a bull elephant, Kaplin felt, but hell, she was only the
ensign. She unfolded elegant legs, set her shoulder against the lock,
and lightly braced on the door frame. 'Should I listen?'
    James managed a grin. His forehead had somehow gotten cut during
transfer from the bridge to the lock bay, and a bruise darkened the
stubble on his jaw. 'You might want to.' He tossed back tangled hair
and added, 'I'd hate like hell to be left at the mercy
of an admiral whose secrets were compromised.' Kaplin pursed her
lips. 'You're quick.' James's grin vanished. 'Always.'
     The ensign considered her torn thumbnail, then elegantly
unfolded her body and tapped the controls to her left. The lock
unsealed, and a rush of cold air from the barren metal bay raised
chills under her coverall. She shivered. 'Speak fast. I'm not sure I
should be listening.'
     'Be sure,' said James. 'I can get you reassigned. To another
division, under another admiral, with a few less demerits on your
record.'
     Kaplin regarded him carefully. Trussed hand and foot, his
massive shoulders twisted back, James did not seem discomforted. His
expression was much too confident. He watched, his eyes steely and
level; as she noticed the scar over his right carotid artery, and as
she lingeringly weighed the rusty stains that remained of a Chalice
mechanic that patched his threadbare flightsuit. He was a man who had
seen death from many angles. The possibility the next might be his
own failed to move him.
    'You'd have to free me, get me back to rendezvous at Kestra,' he
finished in a voice that was dry with disinterest.
    A pirate should have owned more passion, Kaplin felt. The list of
criminal charges did not seem to fit with the man. She thought
deeper, while those gray eyes followed; her hand tapped involuntary
tattoos on the railing. MacKenzie James, skip-runner, should have
gunned the other crew down with Harris. His hold over the admiral was
all he truly needed to commandeer Sail without questions.
    As her oval chin rose obstinately, Mac James seemed to follow her
reasoning. 'I didn't kill Jensen because I need him. His obsession is
a tool, invaluable because it's genuine. A man's hatred is always
more reliable than the best of laid plans.'
    Kaplin narrowed her eyes. 'Who are you,' she demanded. 'You'll
tell the truth, or we don't talk.'
    Now Mac James studied her. He no longer seemed boyish, or
hardened, but only unnervingly perceptive. 'I take orders from
Special Services,' he said, his face like weather-stripped granite.
'And my criminal record is genuine. I could be tried and convicted on
all counts, and no pardon would come through to save me. I am
legitimately skip-runner, traitor, and extortionist, and because of
that, I have served as the Alliance's contact to disclose the motives
of the Khalia and, now, the Syndicate behind them.' A strange thread
of weariness crept into the prisoner's voice. He tried, but did not
entirely hide a ghost of underlying emotion. 'Sometimes it takes a
bad apple to know one. And through Sail's surviving officers, the
Fleet is free to deal with what Van Mere's is actively covering.
Marity is not involved, my cover is kept intact, and the Syndicate's
best outpost is exposed to counterespionage before anyone inside
knows they're compromised.~
    He was not pleading, Kaplin decided. He was appealing to her
loyalty on a higher level; loyalty to humanity above her oath to
serve the Fleet. She considered what he had not said, the threats he
had not outlined: that Marity was yet at large, that Sail was still a
long and lonely distance from the nearest battle cruiser or station,
and that the Special Services branch of
Intelligence often stooped to ugly tactics to free its operations
from interference.
    Fractionally, James shook his head. 'Gibsen won't pursue. He's
under my orders, and he won't break. Not to spare me from
arraignment. The Syndicate outpost was always our target, whether I
am sacrificed or not.'
    Kaplin chewed her lip. 'Damn you,' she whispered into the echoing
chill of the lock. 'What about the interface cores? And the outright
murder of Chalice station?'
    Now James lowered his lashes. His inscrutable expression cracked
into a grimace of wounding compassion. 'The cores we traded were
genuine. The thirty pieces of silver, as it were, to confirm the
presence of the enemy. And Chalice personnel, curse their bravery,
defended their post with their lives.'
    Kaplin drew a shuddering breath. She bunched her hand and slammed
the closure button; and the lock hissed shut, leaving the skip-runner
and his haunted bit of conscience to the solitary chill of the space
bay.
    'Oh, damn you,' Kaplin muttered. 'Damn you to deepest hell.' She
needed a coffee, she decided; and every other habit that was ordinary
to quiet a vicious inner turmoil. For the favor that MacKenzie James
requested for the higher good of the Alliance was nothing short of
mutiny. As she left her post and propelled herself through null grav
toward the galley, she reflected that Jensen was going to dismember
her.

Lieutenant Jensen snapped awake to the realization that Sail's
vibrations had changed. She was no longer traveling FTL, but powered
by her more obtrusive grav drives. The lieutenant glanced at his
chronometer, his worst fear confirmed. Sail had deviated from his
chosen course and orders. He leapt from his bunk, jammed his legs
into the nearest set of coverails - Harris's by the smell of beer and
sweat - and raced full tilt for the bridge.
    He found the pilot's chair deserted. The course readout on the
autopilot confirmed trouble well enough: Sail was currently under
gentle acceleration out of the Arinat system. Directly astern, like a
thing cursed, lay the cratered lump of rock some forgotten mapper had
named Kestra.
Jensen was too enraged to swear.
He spun, plunged through the companionway hatch, and hurried with all
speed through the service corridors.
    He reached the lock to the space bay. A furious survey showed
Kaplin drifting cross-legged in the chamber, twisting and twisting
the shock webbing that once had confined MacKenzie James. She had
been weeping. The mechanic's deep-space suit was gone, of course,
along with the skip-running criminal who had killed its owner for
hijack.
    'My God, Kappie, why did you let him go?' Jensen's voice was a
scream of unmitigated anger.
    The ensign looked up, startled to fear. 'Sir! He's Special
Services, and on our side.'
    Jensen heard, and a greater rage crashed through him. His
handsome face twisted. 'Damn you, girl. He's the biggest con artist
in the universe. You were had, and he was lying. You're nothing but
his pawn, and a traitor.' There would be an inquiry over Harris's
death, Jensen's frantic mind understood. A trial would follow, and
under investigation and cross-examination, the flimsy plot arranged
at Chalice would surface and ruin his reputation.
    I-he lieutenant ceased thinking. He reacted on the reflex of a
cornered animal, and hammered the green, then the yellow, then the
orange button on the console. The lock door hissed shut, cutting off
Kaplin's panicked scream. Warning lights flashed, but the hooter that
signaled a deep-space jettison never sounded. Kaplin had disconnected
the alarm to release MacKenzie James for his rendezvous.
    For that reason, her pleas could be heard very clearly. 'Jensen!
Listen to me! You're MacKenzie's best pawn, and he knows it!' She
launched away from the wall, hammered her model's hands against the
innerlock. 'We could stop James, both of us could stop him! Blow his
cover with Special Services, and he's lost his righteous reason to
keep skip-running. You didn't see his face, but I know. The remorse
would put him over the edge.'
    Jensen's lips stayed fixed in an icy half smile. Deaf to pity,
mindful of nothing beyond the ambition that was his life, he ground
his palm hard on the red jettison button. The outerlock doors cycled
open. Atmosphere vented outward, along with the corpse of the ensign
who had dared to turn triumph into failure.

2~7
Admiral Nortin's office on New Morning was sumptuously large, but
bare to the point of sterility. On the hard metal bench by the
doorway, Jensen sat in his dress uniform. He kept his eyes straight
ahead, resisted the urge to search the impeccable white of his jacket
for bloodstains the cleaners had soaked out. He waited, rigidly
correct, while the admiral's pearl-white fingers paged front to back,
through his report.
    The words matched the circumstances closely enough: Sail had
happened across a raid on Chalice station and picked up the trail of
a skip-runner who had stolen core intelligence crystals. The
lieutenant in command had given chase, followed the space pirate
MacKenzie James to Arinat, Van Mere's station. The log spool on the
admiral's desk held proof positive of a Syndicate spy post, in the
form of a recorded transaction between James and a covert network on
Van Mere's. Sail had maintained a standard patrol pattern, then
pursued as the Marity made her getaway. Battle had resulted. Sail's
bridge had sustained severe damage, her pilot and her ensign dead in
the course of duty. Jensen, sole survivor, had nursed his command
back to base.
    The admiral finished reading. He raised bleak eyes to the
impeccably dressed lieutenant before his desk. He did not point out
the unmentionable, that the log spool might hold proof of a Syndicate
spy post, but events differed drastically from the report. Neither
Jensen nor the admiral wished the particulars of that tape examined
for documentation. Jensen staked his future on the surety that Nortin
held the power to misplace, or alter, or erase, the flight logs and
checkpoint records of Sail's passage between Chalice and Arinat.
Jensen balanced everything on an extortionist's secret imbedded
within proof of his own crimes. Only the admiral's guilt
could spare him from certain court-martial and a firing squad. A
minute passed like eternity.
    The admiral's cragged face showed no expression when at last he
drew breath for conclusion. 'Young man,' he said sourly. 'For
outstanding service, and for your discovery of a Syndicate spy base,
you'll report for commendation, decoration, and promotion. Then
you'll be transferred into Admiral Duane's division, and I trust
we'll never need to set eyes on each other again.'

218
Dreambridge

The axe fell and blood ran, not from living flesh but over treebark,
to spatter across frosted ground. The unnatural warmth raised steam
against the bite of wintry air, each drop a stark splash of scarlet
against leaves left curled and frail by the season that prevailed in
the earthly lands across the veil.
    Far off in the borderlands, in a cottage under forest eaves never
blighted by cold or steel, Kirelle awakened shivering in tangled
bedclothes.
    The dream, she knew, had been no nightmare to be shrugged off and
forgotten upon waking. The bleeding tree would be real, though the
mortal whose hand had wielded killing steel would bide unaware of his
damage. In earthly lands no sign would show that this axe-wounded
tree was something more than the mature offshoot of an acorn.
      Kirelle sat up, wishing the soft scents of apple blossoms and
pressed herbs could ease her gut-deep uneasiness.A snowy owl sat
perched on her windowsill.
    The instant it saw her take notice, it flew, ghost-silent on
spread wings. Mild air stirred through the space it left vacant,
rustling the bundled herbs strung in rows from the rafters. The
phials of potions and simples above Meara's work-table loomed in dim
ranks on their shelves; useless, all, Kirelle despaired. If the
trappings of an herbalist's lore held no remedy for an axe-stung
tree, the deeper mysteries of the art could be called on for other
than succor; this she feared as she crossed in trepidation to the
window. Bird and dream would not have arrived by coincidence. Owls
could read the future, and owls alone could cross at will from the
borderlands that bridged like a ribbon between the fey realms and
mortal earth.
Kirelle reached the sill, touched by wry thought of Meara, who

2~9
had laughed when first asked why their cottage must lie in the
thickest heart of the forest, an inconvenient distance from the
village. 'There's a part of our trade, girl, that has naught to do
with sick babes and dry cattle. Sure as rain falls, you'll learn
wonders.'
    Wishing the wise woman was not away to Eastling to attend a
birthing, Kirelle saw a rider on a silver-gray horse awaiting below
in the dooryard. Old and straight-backed, and elegantly mantied, his
skin was dark as turned earth, the beard that bristled from under his
hood a glint of pale silver by moonlight. Both hands were gloved in
black. The air all around him seemed alive with owls, weaving like
silent shuttlecocks through the warp and weft of the breeze.
    The Wizard of the Forest, and none other, had come here to ask
for some favor.
    Oh, trouble had come, of the direst measure, Kirelle understood
as she hastened to her wardrobe to dress. Little mysteries that
othertimes would have evoked her delight failed to lift her
foreboding, not the teasing play of the airsprite that whirled a mild
tempest of apple petals through the casement, nor the wakeful mocking
bird that sang in the melodic tones of a lark. Kirelle hastily pulled
on the patched hose and shirt that briar snags should have sent to
the rag bin. Too fast for neatness, she brushed and braided her
waist-length dark hair, then threw on her cloak, its thread spun by
fey from the fibers of midsummer flowers. Lighter than down, warmer
than wool, the fabric shimmered like twilight from palest blue to
deep violet.
     From her pantry, Kirelle snatched up her satchel and a seed cake
sweetened with honey. She was no fey, to go without sustenance until
touched by a whim for gay feasting. Neither was she entirely human,
since the day she had been snatched as a changeling from parents she
could not remember.
     The Wizard of the Forest had once been human also, before he had
been guardian of the border realm. His knowledge of the mysteries ran
so deep only rock itself was any wiser. If he held any name beyond
his title, it had been forgotten, or else, like the most ancient
trees, through long silence words had lost all power to rule him.
     Uneasy for the dream that had drawn his presence to her
dooryard, Kirelle pushed closed the cottage door. The latch dropped
with a clear chink of brass, and the silver-gray horse raised its
head. Bells on its trappings trilled an answering chime as the Wizard
reined around to face her.

220
    His study felt distinct as a physical touch. Despite the mild
lines that etched his features, the merciless strengths of his powers
were too fierce to mask in serenity.
    Overcome by the presence of portents too large for her skills to
encompass, Kirelle gave way to impatience. 'Why should you send such
a dream?' she burst out. 'Bleeding trees bespeak evil deeds, and no
herbal of mine can heal such, nor ease the wrath of the fey when they
learn that mortal steel has cut heartwood.'
    Motionless, the Wizard regarded her. His horse champed softly at
the bit. Harness bells clinked in single notes, and the stars
themselves regaled his presence in a thousand points of bright light.
'You are most quick to say what you cannot do.' Like his bells, his
voice was rich in overtones, and his searching gaze never wavered.
    Unsettled and out of her depth, Kirelle wished the wise woman who
taught her might stand here in her stead.
    'If Meara's aid was needed, I should be in Eastling, to fetch
her,' the Wizard added gravely. 'And I had no part in any sending.
Instead, I followed the dream's path, and that, of itself, led to
you. The Eld Tree that holds the last link with mortal earth lies
threatened. Can you know this and still refuse help?'
    Sorry for her haste, and never more aware of her inexperience,
Kirelle could not ignore the implications. When fey magic had knitted
the borderlands that divided the otherworld realms from mortal earth,
thin places were left in the fabric, some said for hope that mankind
might someday outgrow their heedless ways, and that misunderstandings
between races might be eased. Others claimed the fey still cherished
mortal lands for their plangent and transient beauty. Whichever tale
held truth, a chosen few Trees from the Eldforests were left bound to
earth's soil as anchorpoints, and on such sites the veil could be
crossed in the months of solstice and equinox. While mortal kind grew
ever more estranged from the mysteries, such crossings were made less
and less, and finally rarely at all.
    Few could say when the fey had last ridden the wild hunt at
midsummer. Except for the isolated foray to snatch a few changelings
for mischief, the borderlands bridge through the veil lay all but
forgotten. Only one Tree yet remained tied to earth, sorrowfully aged
by the turn of time and seasons. If it died, the last link would be
gone; fey mysteries would be lost to earth forever.

22I
    'You do see,' the Wizard said gently. 'A mortal with an axe has
violated the last Tree, and the fey, when they hear, will cry
vengeance. If blood-price is not met, their wrath might leave the
worlds forever sundered.'
    Kirelle regarded the clearing that held her cottage, then the
orchard, bejeweled with dew in the still, brief hour before dawn. She
watched the windsprite dance amid shedding blossoms, and relived her
irritation at the burrow the gnome had dug in his hope of stealing
apples when they ripened. The chance that the powers that quickened
these things might come to be unraveled tore at her heart like pain.
    'How has this happened?' she asked the Wizard. 'What disarmed the
guardspells that should hide the last Tree from the eyes of any
blunderer bearing steel?'
    'Ah, wise lady, the answers I have are too few. There was not one
man, but three, and the owl I sent to turn their footsteps was shot
down while in flight.' The Wizard bent his head, grief in his eyes
like hot sparks. 'My brave messenger lies dead, murdered with as
little thought as the axe-blow that cleft the Eld Tree.'
    Kirelle could have wept then, for certainty. 'My task is to go
across and turn these mortals from their reaving?'
    His hands crossed over his saddlebow, the Wizard regarded the
silent flight of the companion owls still left to him. 'The choice
must be yours. My birds see the future, and they led to you. Since
the Tree's cry for help chose you also, the mysteries themselves have
their reason. But more than these borderlands lies at risk. If you
cross, I intend to pass with you.'
    No need to belabor the dangers, that to step through the veil was
to risk a cold exile: perhaps aging, surely death, if mishap occurred
on the other side. Once the fey learned of the harm to one of their
own, their anger would demand retribution. Blood-price would be asked
that one of three mortals must pay, or the borderlands themselves
could be forfeit.
    'We must go. Time is short, and the crossing is most easily made
at the site of the Eld Tree itself.' The Wizard wheeled his horse,
expectant that Kirelle must follow.
    'I haven't said I'd go at all,' she whispered. But reluctance
could not unmake dire portents. Kirelle trailed along under the glide
of the owls, pierced through with sadness and dread. The avaricious,
sneaking little pranks of the gnomes in retrospect seemed joyfully

222
endearing. Nothing she owned would have been too precious to
give, to ensure safe return to her orchards.
Dank under shadow and the slow drip of dew, the paths that had
led Kirelle to share in the wood's lore and wisdom tonight neither
welcomed nor befriended. Breezes muttered through the branches to a
tireless sibilance of leaves that whispered of driving men mad. In
the past, when the worlds were still joined, to stray uninvited into
an Eldforest was death, and sometimes worse. These trees were roused
and aware, and although they had known no touch of cold steel since
the veil had been raised to protect them, they remembered older
times, and thoughtless humans. Outside the borderlands, an Eld Tree
had been maimed by an axe. Although Kitelie had never trodden those
lands ruled by time, or done aught but rejoice with growing wood, the
forest in its anger, in the thick, stately flow of its sap, did not
care.
Oppressed by unsainly hostility, Kirelle tightened grip on her
satchel. Her voice shook as she crooned soft notes to reassure the
trees of her harmless intentions. The Wizard chanted strictures of
his own, mightier by far than any song of hers. But melody and litany
availed nothing. Black boughs dipped low and laced the way like
knotwork. Chill leaves pressed down like a shroud.
The gray horse snorted uneasy alarm and sidled as, gently, the
Wizard addressed the trees. 'Your rage is misplaced. Would you
hinder ones who go to help?'The forest paid no heed.
The rustle of boughs held no reply, and a brooding moment
passed. Kirelle endured the scratching touch of twigs and the
prisoning, chill kiss of leaves.
From somewhere near at hand an owl called; the Wizard's voice
answered, steady and soft. To Kirelle, he added, 'The forest has
denied us free passage, and further persuasion will not sway it.
Without the Tree's bridging powers, I can do nothing but raise raw
force and send on one of us alone.' He looked at Kirelle, clear-eyed
and awaiting her decision; if she went on, she must brave the earthly
world and three reaving mortals by herself.
But to stay behind was to remain here, trapped by the rage of
the forest until the threat to the Eld Tree was righted. Fail in that
task, Kirelle knew, and no path she could tread would be safe. The
clearing that held Meara's orchards would be barred from human use.
Without the small daily gifts that bought blessing, the apple

                                 223
~~)
trees would be choked out, root and branch, and the cottage torn
asunder stone from stone.
    In such things, the balance that ruled the borderlands was
unforgiving. Gifts of life and sustenance were never to be taken for
granted.
    'I will have to place trust in the Tree's dream,' she finally
said. 'Let me be the one to go.'
    The Wizard bent in his saddle and offered three flakes of slate
smoothed by the waves on the lake shore. 'These talismans carry a
dreamspell that can be tuned by your healer's gift. Set one in the
hand of each mortal as he sleeps, and let the beliefs in his heart
shape his fate. Once you've crossed, ! cannot help. The Eld Tree must
show your way back. My white owl will attend as your guide.'
    The appointed bird banked in a whispered curve and called,
mournfully dusky and wild. Beyond that, the wood's hostile stillness
remained unbroken. Not the ratchet of crickets nor wind in the leaves
wished her well as the Wizard raised uncanny spells to bridge the
veil, that twisting, intricate web of energies that divided earthly
lands from the otherworldly realm of the mysteries.

Alan lay wakeful in the chill of a blustery winter night. It wasn't
that his sleeping bag was too thin; he'd bought a good one, suited
for subzero temperatures, when he'd thought he'd be hiking in the
Rockies. As much as the cold was apt to bother him, his palms were
sweating hot.
    Raw nerves kept him jumpy and wakeful. Not good at lying,
especially to himself, he could not deny that his years in the
service had wrecked his appreciation for the wilderness. Not a truth
he liked to admit; still less to the two others with him: Bill, all
macho bluster, and Rafe, who acted the suave city sophisticate, but
who'd die before letting anybody see he couldn't beat a jock at his
own game.
    Why was it, Alan thought bitterly, that male pride too often held
nonconformity as a weakness?
    He reached out for the hundredth time in an hour and checked the
rifle gripped in his hand. Deer season - what a laugh. He found no
joy in hunting animals, hunting anything, in sad fact, not since his
time in the service. Then, killing had meant plain survival, until
the mind grew sick on its own fear, and a man

224
could grow to live for the unholy thrill of an enemy's blood on the
ground.
    Another man dead meant staying alive. Except those who came home
found that life had somehow rearranged itself, and nothing of past
importance had retained real meaning anymore.
    Alan stroked icy steel and shivered like a baby. The safety on
his weapon wasn't set. Recollection left him sweating, of being
ripped out of sleep by flares and gunfire, and of the buddy who'd
died because of a shot he couldn't return fast enough. The wind
lashed at the trees, and a scratchy patter of leaves tumbled past.
Alan tensed, halfway to a crouch with his rifle up, before he could
stop himself and rationalize: this was the States, and rustling
leaves here were just that, not an enemy stalking to kill.
    God, he shouldn't be here. Never mind he felt obliged to mediate,
to keep Bill and Rafe from destroying each other in a rivalry neither
one would let wither. Twenty years since discharge, and, no use
pretending, there were moments when his nerves were still peeled raw.
Alan berated himself for not having sense enough to shrug off outworn
high-school loyalties. He should've let two friends that time had
changed and distanced thrash out their competitive egos on their own.
    The wind blew, mournfully soft. The dressed-out carcass of Bill's
trophy spun creaking from the rope that lashed it up. The owl that
Rare had winged just to even up the score would be bleeding somewhere
in the brush, if it wasn't just as wastefully dead. Strung out with
nerves, Alan couldn't bring himself to close his eyes, not without
somebody on watch. To turn his mind from past horrors, he thought
about Bill's indefatigable boast that he shot his trophies for the
freezer. Everybody knew his wife felt sick at the thought of a dead
deer.
    Alan shifted, discovered himself checking his gun again, and
cursed himself for a fool. Who cared whether or not he could face
himself if Rafe and Bill were left alone to drive each other too
hard? Both men were married; Bill had a daughter. The wives should
have taken over the chore of being the influence that tempered.
Sweating more, and hurting tense, Alan took a breath of frost-sharp
air that turned in his fickle mind to the smells of steaming hot
jungle, and sharp-edged anxieties of enemies that lurked in dank
tunnels. He stared up at oak leaves to moor his slipping sanity, and
to shove unwanted survival patterns into a past that refused to stay
quiet.

225
    Sometime after checking his gun for the two-hundredth time, he
dozed and fell into fitful dreams.

The first step beyond the veil raised the sharp crackle of dry
leaves, cause enough for Kirelle to stiffen in alarm when she had
known nothing underfoot but lush moss. Then the air, equally strange,
edged with frost and suffused with the underlying scents of rot and
decay. This was the other side, where the wrong word or the
mishandled chance encounter could doom the unwary traveller to
lifelong exile and death.
    Kirelle paused, aware of the pull of the moon in her blood, of
the wheeling swing of strange stars, and the slow, insistent aging
that ruled all aspects of earthly life.
    Curiosity filled her, too. She had been born here, taken across
the veil as a changeling unknowable years in the past. Never before
had Kirelle felt moved to wonder whether her human parents had
grieved when the glamor left by the fey wore off, and they discovered
an unbreathing bundle of twigs left in place of their stolen child.
    A moment later, listening uneasily Kirelle noticed the wood's
appalling silence. Wind alone dared raise voice in this place. No
crickets called, nor any night-singing bird. The missing, subliminal
thread of harmony her art should have sensed from growing wood raised
panic, until she realized: stripped branches and hard-edged,
unsoftened moonlight were proper, here. This world went dormant for
winter, its smaller creatures frost-killed or departed until the
renewal of spring.
    The only vibrant life within reach of Kirelle's senses seemed to
be the Wizard's white owl, that carved impatient circles as it waited
for her to regain wits and purpose. Kirelle touched a sapling to
borrow from its rooted firmness the assurance to brace her failing
nerves. But her contact revealed something worse than dormancy; the
young beech felt sluggish and dull under her hands, stupidly
reft of its power of being and retarded from self-awareness. Horror
and pity sent her reeling a step back.
    These earthly trees were mute, brutishly groping through soil and
sunlight without the gift of wakening. No one had walked this wood
for many years who understood how to nurture the spirit nature of
wild trees.

226
    Kirelle bit her lip, tasting tears. The anger of the fey would
bring justice for the neglect and contempt that had befallen these
sorry forests. But if the dissolution of the borderlands and the
final separation of the mysteries was a punishment such
thoughtlessness deserved, her own fate and the Wizard's freedom were
now as deeply entangled.
    Grown urgent at her delay, the white owl banked broad wings and
flew. Kirelle stumbled to follow. The ache in her assumed the
proportions of despair, that the threatening presence of three
reavers permitted her no interval to rouse these trees to aware-

ness.

Against the mute void that heartlessness had allowed this wood to
become, the true-song of the Eld Tree rang in solitary splendor
against the far distant chime of the stars. Long before the white owl
swooped to alight on the mighty oak's branches, Kirelle could sense
its power. Although leaves, trunk, and branches embraced the earthly
world, the taproots of this Tree bridged the veil and sank deep into
borderlands soil.
    Yet reunion with the familiar brought no sense of rejoicing. The
Tree's muddied anger all but stopped Kirelle's breath. Sour wind
tugged her cloak hem and stirred the hair that twigs had raked loose
from her braid as her healer's gifts picked past raw rage to bare the
thread of stark pain underlying. A moment later, as the late rising
moon sliced torn clouds, she saw the gleam of the axe left struck in
striated bark.
    Even from several paces off, the steel raised an ache in her
bones. Fully as hurtful was the blood reek of the stag, thanklessly
killed, then gutted and lashed to a branch by a rope that creaked
in,the wind. Other unidentifiable odors dizzied Kirelle's senses as
she made herself close the last steps.
    And there they were, three forms sprawled out on bare ground and
wrapped in bright-colored bedding that to Kirelle's eye looked light
and fine-woven as silk. They smelled of woodsmoke and damp leaves and
the animal tang of dried sweat. No aura of savagery warned which had
cut the Eld Tree, or which had slain the Wizard's owl. Asleep, the
men looked innocent and ordinary, in their way as dumbly vulnerable
as this world's unloved trees. Kirelle saw nothing she recognized as
a weapon beyond the axe,

227
though other steel things whose use she could not fathom riddied the
site of their camp.
    Touched by a strange surge of pity, Kirelle shivered. The axe
blade in any earthly tree would have roused no uncanny
reverberations. But with the Wizard left trapped by the Eldforest's
ire, her healer's preference for mercy must not lead her to risk that
the fey's cry for vengeance be balked from finding expiation. The
talisman stones must be set, and their dreams be given rein to
unravel three minds into nightmare.
    The nearer man slept in a sprawl, one powerful arm clenched over
his chest, and his legs entangled in his bedding. He breathed in the
rhythm of untroubled rest and never stirred as Kirelle reached out
with shaking fingers and tucked the first stone in his palm. Softly,
silently, she engaged the powers of her art to sound his intents and
make a weaving of his vulnerabilities.

Bill Farlane leveled his rifle. Equipped with the finest telescopic
sight, he aligned the crosshairs on the buck. The moment came back in
perfect clarity, from the clean bite of the wind to the winter-thin
patch of sunlight that danced on the deer's dun pelt.
    He held his breath to steady his aim, squeezed off the round like
a caress - then felt the triumph in his gut freeze to horror as the
deer dissolved, replaced before his eyes by his daughter's pink and
blue parka.
    No.t - his thought too late. Already the report of the rifle spat
its flat crack through the wood. Crows exploded into raucous,
indignant flight. Pink acrylic showed a blossoming stain of red, and
a pitiful three-year-old body crashed headlong into sun-dappled leaf
mold.
    'Nice shot!' Rafe said, his personal brand of sarcasm making even
praise feel like insult.
Bill straightened, mouth opened to cry Sallie's name.
    But to his utter terror, his heartdeep cry of grief emerged as
banal conversation. 'It was a nice shot, darned if it wasn't.'
Those words, he thought wildly, they'd been said over a deer. But no
buck lay in the clearing. Only Sallie, dreadfully bloody and still.
The rifle still warm in his hand had shot her cold, and like some
ugly, played-over script, Alan's voice was repeating, 'Well, fine.
You've bagged your trophy. For the love of mike, go

228
in quickly. Make sure the shot was clean and use your knife if it
wasn't.'
    Bill screamed in impotent silence: That's my daughter. Yet the
words stayed mired in his head. His shoulders set for a satisfied
swagger, he ejected the spent shell and laid his rifle against a
tree. Locked into actions that denied his raw grief, reft of all
power to stop himself, he saw that willpower and muscle, all of his
prideful strength and competence were going to do him no good. He was
going to rise, going to walk, going to kneel down by his little dead
daughter, and dress out her body as he should have done the killed
meat of a deer.
    While Rare said something ordinary and Alan gave a meaningless
reply, Bill felt himself rise from his stalking crouch and heft his
new knife in his hand. The first step toward Sallie's body tore him
to inward shreds; he knew, oh god oh god, he knew that the feel of
soft, white skin, the drum-leather punch as the blade sliced through
flesh, the steaming blood as the abdominal cavity opened, was going
to sear him from sanity... God, oh God, Sallie, NO!

The huge man curled into a ball, tearing pitifully at his bedding. He
sucked breath after gasping breath while his stubbled face twisted in
anguish.
    Kirelle fought back tears and guilt, aware as never before that
her healer's instinct to mend in this place might tempt her to
irrevocable folly. These were reavers, whose actions threatened ruin
to the borderlands. Their misguided feelings could not be permitted
to matter. Kirelle fished the second stone from her satchel and
approached the next man, the one with the gentle face who lay with
his cheek neatly cradled on one elbow. By appearance, he seemed the
most harmless of the three, with his fine, pale hair, and the glint
of a linked gold bracelet circling one elegant wrist.

Feeling the sting acutely - that Bill had bagged a deer be should
have seen first - Rafe lounged in bed and telired the frustrated
moment when the owl had chanced to fly past. His reflex reaction had
made up for the lapse, as he'd ripped off that snap shot on impulse.

229
    He shut his eyes, revelling in the satisfaction he'd felt as the
bird tumbled out of mid-flight.
    The snooze alarm's buzz erased Rafe's faint smile. Lord, he
should have had his tail in and out of the shower ten minutes ago.
    Worried over the financial summary he was expected to present,
that was in order as far as notes went but needed fleshing out before
the meeting, Rafe slugged aside designer bedclothes and stopped in
shocked surprise. His hands were smeared with fresh blood. On the
sheets by his pillow lay an owl's feather, broken and wrung and
blotched scarlet.
    Four-letter words were inadequate. His first thought, that he'd
be late for the board meeting, was belatedly followed by the
incongruity of the gory feather. He hesitated, unwilling to come to
grips with the weirdness, that a dead owl could enact some spooky
sort of vengeance.
The concept was just too bizarre.
    Unwilling to lend credence to hallucinations, Rafe plunged
bullishly on toward the bathroom.
    But his hands as he turned on the shower were still maddeningly,
scarletly drenched. The fancy's irrational persistence left him
ticked enough to plunge into the spray while the water was still icy
cold. Through subsequent shivers and gooseflesh, he refused to note
the color of the water that swirled down the drain. Blast if he'd be
sorry he'd shot some worthless owl.
    He killed the water, snapped a bath sheet over his shoulders,
shaved, then made a paranoid inspection of his knuckles. There had to
be a cut he hadn't noticed.
    Nothing. He dug out a clean shirt and dismissed the distraction
as he hurried through the motions of dressing.
    The blood appeared again as he snatched up his briefcase.
Frantic, he dropped the expensive leather handle before the stains
soaked in. The case hit the hardwood floor with an echoing bang and
fell over as he dashed to the kitchen for a dish-cloth. His thoughts
on his presentation all scattered, he dabbed ineffectively at the
blotches left on his briefcase. Predictably, they didn't come out.
He'd have to spend the bucks to buy another one.
    A harried glance at his Rolex showed he was now irretrievably
late. The report was going to have to be presented in its current,
raw state, no credit to his months of hard work. Annoyed

230
by life's unfairness, Rafe snatched his overcoat from the closet and
ran.
    He got no farther than his apartment door before his fingers
became drenched in blood again. An explosive curse ripped from him.
This time, he'd managed to spatter his shirtcuff into the bargain.
Back in the bathroom, hands under the running water: this has to be a
nightmare, he thought. Raggedly nervous, he reached to straighten his
tie, then recalled his wet fingers and jerked short. The last fool
straw in this messed-up morning was to look as if he'd dribbled
breakfast down his front. With a sour laugh at himself, he grabbed
briefcase and overcoat, rushed out of the apartment and sprinted into
the parking lot. He unlocked his BMW, breathless and feeling pig
stupid, and hopeful the fresh air might steady him.
Probably stress and anxiety had caused his mind to play tricks. But
when he jabbed the car keys into the ignition, the fresh blood was
back again. Damning, slippery fingerprints smeared on everything he
touched. Choking back sobs of frustration, he saw another mangled
owl's feather float down and settle on the dashboard.
    At that moment Rare fully understood: he was not going to handle
his meeting; he was in fact going to lose his job. The money and
prestige and quick thinking upon which he had secured his success
were not going to save him. An owl shot down for a moment's stung
pride had marked him, and the crime was going to blight his life
forever...

Kirelle sat back on her heels, saddened by what she had learned. The
two rearers she had dreamspelled were just thoughtless, prideful
braggarts, ignorant rather than evil. A stag and an owl had died to
no purpose, and for that, she must see two mortals driven from the
wood with incentive not to return. The last of the three, by default,
must have been the one to cut the Eld Tree. He must be left bound in
sleep to even the balance when the fey arrived to demand blood-price.
    Bent with the stone cupped in her hands, Kirelle composed herself
to discharge that last unpleasant duty. Beside her, the blond man
with the costly bracelet moaned in the deep throes of nightmare, and
the third rearer snapped out of sleep.

231
    Silent, he was, and blinding quick. His explosive surge threw off
blankets to bare the moon-caught gleam of hard steel. Breathing fast,
his grip on his weapon bone-white, he swung to take out the intruder.
    The near proximity of cold metal had already stung Kirelle to
inadvertent recoil. Her braid tumbled down across her shoulder, a
slash of dark against the fey-woven shimmer of her cloak.
    The reaver sucked in a breath half-strangled with surprise and
managed, just barely, to curb his reflex to kill. 'A girl!' He
shifted onto one elbow, stiff with unfriendly suspicion. His weapon
continued to threaten as he snapped off an emphatic question.
    His accent was unmusical and clipped, the words too rushed for
understanding. Kirelle shook her head, while his attentiveness
dissected every inch of her. She saw his moment of reassessment: that
she was a woman, if small and otherworldly, and not some briar-
scraped child dressed in tatterdemalion rags. His eyes stayed mad
nonetheless, empty as smoke over water. If Kirelle had expected him
to be ugly, he was not. Reaver he might be, and patently vicious, but
he was neatly made. In body and feature he had as deadly a grace as
one of the fair folk themselves.
    Kirelle stared at him, undone by fear and unsure what to do next.
Beside her the blond companion ensnared in spelled dreams started
hoarsely and raggedly to sob.
    The man yanked back in a flinch at the sound, and Kirelle
snatched the chance to try retreat.
    His left hand shot out and caught hers, and painful strength
caged the half-enspelled stone between their shared grip.
    Kirelle cried out, aware of the danger, but utterly unable to
tear free; and so it passed that the dreamsnare unfurled and meshed
with two minds and two hearts.
    For a second, all senses upended. The mortal man beheld himself
through borderland eyes in a spinning rush that made him gasp. The
slaughter of a deer and an owl became re-rendered as pittance before
his own most thoughtless axe-blow, so innocently motivated, a plain
measure of safeguard to stow edged steel so that nobody should
blunder into an unsheathed tool after dark. Torn headlong from mortal
heedlessness, Alan saw blood well from heartwood. He felt its pain
shake the silence of winter night to disharmony, then knew the deep,
subliminal thunder of an Eldforest's awakening to
ad
~d
~n

d

rage. Full knowledge of his deed wrung from him tears of abject
despair.
    At the same moment, Kirelle, helplessly torn from her roots, felt
herself seared by the murderous war that had plundered the joy from a
lifetime, horrors that had tortured and killed, an unconscionable
destruction of land and life that had left this survivor half-
unstrung in time of peace. The ways of mortal earth had nigh broken
Alan's spirit, Kirelle saw. Least-likely reaver of the three, it was
he whose blood would be called to right the balance to placate the
wrath of the fey. The irony cut, as her healer's perception further
revealed that the hurt in him cried out for reprieve: that after
years of misery, his heart had raised its answer: the desperate
strength of his need had unbound the arcane defenses. The Eld Tree of
itself had shed secrecy, to invite this man across the veil.
    'You,' she gasped, as the firestorm of images thinned and finally
released her. 'It was you who invoked the great mystery.'
Alan freed her hand, head bent and shaking. 'I didn't know.'
    'That's not entirely true.' Kirelle sighed. 'Your heart led you
better than you realized.'
    Reminded that moment of the gun still clenched in his hand, Alan
snapped on the safety and cast it aside in distaste. His gaze, light
as smoke, flicked across her. Then he got up. Still terrible in
grace, he strode away from his sleeping companions to draw the
offending axe his blow had left wedged in Eld oak. He ran light hands
over scarred wood until his longing burst out into words. 'Show me
the way to cross the veil. Your borderlands are more beautiful than
dreams, and what life I lead here has no meaning.'
    'You can't know what you're asking!' Kirelle said, moved to
desolation by his plight. 'Your steel has harmed the last Eld Tree on
earth. Across the veil, the blood of your deed will draw the forest's
wrath and mark you out for fey vengeance.'
    He stood, resolute in the calm of his conviction. 'Then let me
answer there for my ignorance.'
    His words fell with an uncomfortable, sharpened clarity upon a
night that abruptly seemed changed. The deep shadows went suddenly,
painfully harsh-edged, and the moonlight seemed alive with vibration.
    'Veil magic,' Kirelle gasped, her dread overridden by a
piercingly musical voice. 'Debt must be answered for, here and now!'

233
    Overhead, the Wizard's white owl raised wings and exploded into
flight as Kirelle whirled, the mortal man along with her.
    Around the trunk of the Eld Tree stepped a rangy, graceful figure
magnificently clad in green and gold. A black lacquer bow adorned
with river pearl crossed his shoulder. Beneath hair the glossy dark
of a raven's wing, his eyes shone a lucent silver gray. No crackle of
sound betrayed his step as he crossed the carpet of dead leaves. The
sightly beauty of him made the earthly air seem to burn and shimmer
with his presence.
    The mortal man by Kirelle's side gasped aloud, his deadly fast
reflexes turned stupid and still by the uncanny arrival of the fey.
    Kirelle had never owned courage; old Meara often had chided that
unsettled nerves made her tart. Before the fey could raise voice to
claim blood-price, she found herself crying useless protest. 'Your
kind had abandoned these woods. Who is to blame if spells of guard
set so long in the past have thinned to the point where one man's
need could wake the mysteries? Alan's act was without malice. His
desire was only to protect.'
    The fey regarded Kirelle in all of his bright, cold arrogance.
'Price must be paid, nonetheless. Steel has cut an Eld Tree, and
blood must atone for blood. It is true enough the guardspells have
weakened; thus ! am sent here, to unmake the last link in the veil.'
    'Why claim the one man whose heart could touch an Eld Tree?'
Kirelle begged, piercingly torn for a failure that could not save the
Wizard's borderlands, nor spare one innocent life. Her gesture
encompassed the two men asleep on the ground. 'There are other mortal
reavers whose interests are the more callous.'
    'Two lives for one?' The fey raised his brows, perhaps prepared
to strike a bargain, until Alan reached out and caught Kirelle's
wrist, his fingers coldly unsteady.'Wait. I forbid this.'
    Years and reason and counseling had never satisfied his guilt,
that chance had granted him survival when others more worthy had
died. Blundering through life without faith or clear purpose, this
time he could not walk away. To the fey, he insisted, 'If it's true
and I've offended, I will give what is asked.'
    'No,' Kirelle whispered. 'You will yield up nothing. Your death
will not win reprieve, nor will it save the last link. The mysteries
will be cut away from your earth, and our borderlands will perish
along with them.'

z34
    The fey regarded her, narrow-eyed. 'What does any of that matter?
Earthly folk care nothing for Eld ways. The mysteries, to them, are
just tales, and true magic a beauty forgotten.'
    Which was, perhaps, the real reason why the veil's guardspells
had slackened, Kirelle thought. The mysteries themselves might have
reached out to a mortal to thwart further shrinking of their
boundaries. She knew now, beyond doubt, why she had been the one
chosen to receive the Eld Tree's dream. 'Your complaints could be
changed,' she said quickly. 'These woods are not dead, nor unfeeling,
but only numbly asleep.'
    'You would stay, then, and waken them?' The fey laughed, his
mirth a sword-sting of mockery.
    Kirelle swallowed. One word, one act, and she would be trapped
for a lifetime. She glanced at the mortal beside her, felt once again
the unquiet pain that tormented him, the creative potential this
world's works had taken and twisted and ruined. 'Let this one go,'
she begged, knowing the border}ands could ease him. At last, her own
will was certain. 'I will stay. This wood will have me as guardian,
and the old mysteries will be quickened anew to nurture and guard the
Eld Tree.'
    'A life for a life,' the fey agreed, unsmiling in acknowledgment
of the pact. 'Your mortal shall have his reprieve. He may cross back
with me to the borderlands if you remain here in his place.'

Dawn threw gray fog over the campsite when Bill awakened from his
dream. Gasping and sweating as if he'd been running for his life, he
glanced up, saw branches half blurred in dawn mist, then loosed a
sharp, breathless laugh. Nightmares, he thought, overwhelmed by a
wash of relief; only nightmares. For a second, on waking, he'd
actually believed he'd shot down and gutted his own daughter.
    The vision remained acidly vivid. Bill pushed onto one elbow to
reaffirm that the trophy he'd dressed was a buck.
    The shock hit like a slug in the gut: for there was no deer, only
Sallie, hanging by one ankle [roma bloodstained length o[ rope.
Behind her, clad in a cloak that looked cut from no earthly sort of
cloth, a tiny woman stood with the wind blowing through her dark
hair.
    Reproach in her eyes as biting as frost, she spoke before grief
could unhinge him. 'Go. Take your trophy, and upon

235
your heart's blood, may you never kill again for your van~ty.'
    Weeping with fear, shaking and weak at the knees, Bill scrambled
out of his sleeping bag. 'I can't do this,' he gasped. But the
woman's eyes gave him no quarter. More frightened of her than of
losing his last hold on sanity, he rummaged underneath his jacket,
found the knife he'd stripped off the night before. Half blind with
tears of remorse, he reached up and cut his daughter down. Sobbing
deep in his throat, he wrapped her slack body in his sleeping bag,
then clumsily smoothed her blonde hair.
    His hand brushed fur, cold gray fur, then the unyielding tines of
an antler. In his arms, cradled against his bare chest, lay the
blood-rank carcass of a buck.
    Bill looked up, too shocked to be angry, but the woman who had
threatened him was gone. Unsettled by feelings that every move he
made was being watched, he spilled the wretched carcass upon the
ground, packed up his gear, and fled without a backward thought for
his forsaken companions.

Left alone at the campsite, Rafe roused to a spill of winter sunlight
and the rustle of foraging birds. No apartment, no office, no report
due, he understood in a flood of rising spirits. He thrust his arms
from his sleeping bag to stretch ... and froze, half crippled by
chills.
    His hands were running with red blood. He started up in panic,
then all but retched as he blundered across the stiff, feathered
corpse of an owl that someone had left dumped on his chest.
His scream tore apart the forest silence.
    The small woman who watched him went unnoticed until he ran out
of breath. She stood over him, uncanny and bitterly accusing. 'You
will go,' she said clearly. 'Kill no more for your ego, and the death
of the owl will be forgiven.'
    'Who are you?' gasped Rafe. But he didn't want an answer, not
really. He just needed out of here, as fast as he could throw on
clothes and jacket.
    Afraid for his sanity and survival, he abandoned his expensive
gear and fancy rifle where they lay. Without pause to look for Bill
or Alan, he raced headlong to his car. Sweaty, panting, and shaky,

236
he waited until he had the engine running before he dared to check
whether the blood was gone from his hands.

Under the Eld Tree, in a morning wood emptied of reavers, Kirelle
regarded rank after rank of sunlit, sleeping trees. Amid a litter of
meaningless camping gear, she sensed the soil beneath her feet and
listened to winds that had long ago forgotten speech. She found no
regret in her heart, but a strange, eager joy for the task that lay
ahead of her.
    Rapt as she was, intent upon the needs of the forest she had
adopted for her own, she did not hear the silent beat of wings. The
owls that flew widdershins around the Eld Tree went unnoticed as they
flocked and finally settled to roost in the branches over her head.
    The first she knew of the Wizard's presence was the merry chime
of brass bells. She spun, surprised, as he reined his gray horse to a
stop and regarded the oddments of gear the rearers had abandoned when
they fled.
    A smile carved his face. 'Did you think to bring back the
mysteries to mortal earth on your own?'
Kirelle laughed. 'I didn't think at all, but only chose as I must.'
She moved to the Wizard's side, pleased that they would waken the
wood together, and knowing that borderlands magic would one day come
to bridge the veil and restore the lost link between worlds.
    'Alan is with Meara, and safe,' said the Wizard. 'Anyone lacking
a healer's compassion could have left him unjustly condemned as a
reaver.' The secretive smile behind his silver beard turned ruefully
reminiscent. 'You may not have known, but my guardianship began with
an inadvertent slight to an Eld Tree. When our labor is complete, and
the wild hunt returns to ride these earthly fields, I much doubt your
exile will be permanent.'

237
Song's End

The wolf's jaws snapped shut with a sound like the crack of new ice.
Deadly teeth slashed nothing but empty air, and the beast's
frustration could be felt, hot as the spurt of fresh blood. On damp
earth barely one stride distant, Huntress Skyfire rolled and evaded
the edge of the stone knife which stabbed down to kill her.
Breathless, sweating, bleeding from three previous challenges, she
scrambled into a crouch and leapt while her opponent recoiled from
his lunge.
    On the sidelines the wolf whined. Its lips lifted into a snarl,
and its haunches bunched, quivering. But this combat was a thing
between elves. The pack was forbidden to intervene.
    Skyfire struck her attacker solidly in the chest. He
overbalanced, and both of them rolled with the throw. The knife
grated against dirt. Skyfire took a knee in the ribs; air left her
lungs with a grunt. The scent of her opponent filled her nostrils as
she gasped a fresh breath. His odor carried a tang of fear. This,
because she had bested two stronger challengers before him; those
defeated had not lingered to watch her fight again. Both had
retreated to the wolf lairs to lick wounds and nurse resentment.
    Skyfire caught the new challenger's knife-hand and bore him down
in swift and merciless attack. Fright made him dangerous, even
desperate. The chieftess clung grimly as the Wolfrider thrashed
beneath her. Anger lent her tenacity to match his fear. She barely
felt the blows as he kicked and punched to win free. She twisted the
wrist in her grip, felt the sinews tighten. Bone grated beneath the
pressure of her hand. While pain distracted her opponent, she kicked
away the knife, and sought his throat.
    Abruptly the Wolfrider went limp under her hands, chin lifted in
submission. Skyfire released his wrist and neck. Wearily she

238
gathered herself to rise, to turn, to face the next of the challenges
that had inevitably followed her return with the Dreamsinger to the
holt.
    Only that morning, she had shouted to the first dissenters who
crowded round. 'He is an elf, and a Wolfrider, and by the Way, I say
that he stays in this tribe by right!' Now, in her exhaustion, the
words seemed still to ring in her ears.
    At some point during the second fight the Dreamsinger had faded
into the forest. With him had gone the scent of dreamberry blossoms,
and soft south winds of spring. His leaving changed nothing. Wolfsong
gripped the tribe like lust, and the open outbreak of rivalties had
upset order within the pack. Skyfire barely noticed Rellah's hostile
glare. These fights made distasteful work, since the challenges
themselves were an indulgence of wolfish instincts. That Skyfire did
battle to temper those same instincts mattered little. Bites and
wrenched joints and knife wounds demanded exhaustive concentration
and energy drain, and Rellah had none of Willowgreen's natural gift.
Still, with the healer gone away with Two-Spear's exiles, only Rellah
remained to fill that responsibility. She carried on with a learned
knowledge of herbs and bandaging, and an uncompromising sense of
duty, ancient as she was.
    * *Dreamsinger,** Rellah sent, * *is spell-blind, mad. Not worth
this bloodshed, desist.**
    Skyfire refused the reprimand. Scuffed, stinging, sticky with the
blood of conflict, she shook back tangled hair and snarled.
    Rellah failed to flinch; and that lack of reaction by its very
incongruity raised Skyfire's hackles. Prompted by distrust, she spun,
her snarl changed to a growl of rage. The sudden movement spared her.
She took the knife thrown by treachery from behind in the shoulder
instead of the heart, where it was intended.
    'Murder!' screamed Rellah. 'A curse upon Timmain for mingling the
seed of the beast in our children.'
    But Rellah's outburst reflected only ignorance, and anger at
things she could never understand. Skyfire gripped her shoulder, hot
blood dripping through her fingers, eyes narrowed with a rage only
Two-Spear might have equaled. This assault had not arisen from the
blood of the wolf; pack hierarchy was a discipline ritualized to
minimize deaths. Stealth, subterfuge, attacks calculated to catch the
victim disadvantaged were subleties reserved only for the taking of
prey.

239
    Ready now to kill out of hand, to discipline in the manner of the
pack, the Wolfriders on the sidelines crowded around the offender.
They caught his hands and feet, splayed him helpless upon the ground
that, wolfiike, they might rend him limb from limb.
    First in their longing to tear out his throat was Huntress
Skyfire; yet she did not. She shivered and overran instinct and
kicked the nearest of the scufflers, who happened to be Skimmer, with
her boot. 'Stop! Let him go.' When others were slow to listen, she
jerked the knife from her flesh, then dove in and hammered them all
with her fists, her elbows, her knees, and sent the offenders rolling
away in surprise. Dizzy now, and caked with clinging dust, she glared
around the circle of her follow. 'No elf must die.'
    She remained upright until the knife-thrower had shambled to his
feet and fled ashamed from the circle. Then the dizziness took her,
and she staggered...

ú.. and awoke, sweating in noonday heat, to scratch at a scar that
seemed endlessly to itch, and to wonder just why this dream should
return to trouble her. The tree hollow was stifling. Skyfire brushed
damp hair from her eyes. She rolled for a breath of fresh air, and as
her hand brushed empty space, realized. The Dreamsinger had left her.
In the dance of moons since the fights had ended, this was not like
him.
    A chill roughened her skin, a premonition of something amiss. By
reflex, Skyfire reached out with her mind for her mate.
    His sending cut her awareness, sharp as a knife's edge with
danger. One with his mind, she felt a blow strike his shoulder, then
a sensation of falling, falling; and then pain, sudden and shattering
and violent. She recoiled in shock, and slammed hard against the tree
wall. Her mind rang with the Dreamsinger's sending, and the last,
whispered syllable of her soulname.
'Kyr!' Her own scream snapped the link. 'Dreamsinger!'
    She scrambled in a rush from her nook. Down the tree limb she
slid, without bothering to reach for handholds. Bank scraped her
skin. When she reached the main trunk, she leapt outward.
    And re-experienced the rush of the Dreamsinger's fall for an
instant of shared memory.
    Then she struck ground. Rolling, banging into roots and the
detritus of last year's leaves, she reached out to recapture the
link.

~4o
She received not the smallest spark from the Dreamsinger. Where once
the air itself sang in echo of his magic, emptiness remained. The
song, the life, the vitality, all had ceased in a terrible, smashing
fall from the heights.
    Skyfire fought her way to her feet. He was dead; she knew this
beyond doubt. The wolf-pack sensed the kill through her distress.
They gathered already, restless to dispose of the remains. Such was
the Way, and not a thing Skyfire would forbid. Her mate was beyond
help. Reason more dire than sentiment caused Skyfire to spring into
action. With the weight of the Dreamsinger's cub heavy within her
belly, she broke and ran from the clearing.
    Only Sapling saw her go. But though Skimmer was soundly sleeping,
and Pine was busy with a lover, and Owl absorbed by another of his
enigmatic weavings, Skyfire's emotions cut through with an urgency
that would not be denied. One by one the Wolfriders arose from their
hollows, or abandoned the thread of their activities. In silence they
gathered to follow their chieftess; of them all, only Rellah was
obliged to ask where to look.

The ravine lay in the direction of sun-goes-up from the holt. Trees
did not grow near the rim; only the toughest lichens could garner a
foothold upon the jagged, flint-black rock that stabbed like teeth
through the soil. Below, the stream carved a course like knotted
thread, frayed at intervals into waterfalls that threw drifting
curtains of mist. The sound of water tumbling and frothing over stone
had fascinated the Dreamsinger. Many an afternoon he had lingered
above the ravine, perched on an outcrop with his feet dangling.
    Now Rellah stood on that same formation, her hide skirt pinched
in nervous fingers, and her skin roughened by the moist chill that
eddied off the falls far beneath.
    'The Dreamsinger's song is ended,' she said. Unlike the
Wolfriders gathered at the site, she avoided looking at the shadowy
forms which darted like ghosts along the streambed. Years had done
little to accustom her to the ways of the wolves. The fact that the
mangled rag of flesh and bone that had once been a living elf was now
only meat to sustain the pack revolted her. Curiosity alone brought
her to the scene of death. The attraction for many of the others was
similar. But Skyfire was
not among the few who clustered with Sapling out of concern.
    Apart from friends and Wolfriders, the chieftess knelt on the
earth at the forest's edge. With a diligence that brooked no
interruption, she examined the ground for sign, and found none. Now,
more than ever, she missed the companionship of Woodbiter, who had
hunted his last ravvit soon after the coming of the green season.
Without the guidance of her wolf-friend, Skyfire could not unravel
scents too faint for her nose. That such clues existed only fueled
her frustration. Here she could smell the rancid leather track of a
sandal, and there, clinging to ferns, the musky hint of sweat; just
enough to know that an elf other than Dreamsinger had recently
trodden this path. But the subtleties escaped her. Precisely which
elf Skyfire had no way to determine.
    Absorbed by the problem, the chieftess did not look up as the
rest of the Wolfriders began to disburse. Sapling slapped her
shoulder in sympathy, and Pine offered condolences. She acknowledged
both with a nod, but made no move to return to the holt. Rellah's
insistence that companionship might ease her grief was ignored.
    'He was mad,' the older female said in her infuriating, superior
way. 'His presence caused dissent, and if he chose to end his life,
the whole tribe is better for it.'
    Skyfire arose then, so suddenly the taller elf started. Pale with
anger, the chieftess said, 'Kyr did not choose to die.'
    Rellah recoiled a step. The Huntress's wrath was a palpable
force, dangerous as the wolf crouched to spring. The first elf dared
not argue, but retreated quickly, breaking into a clumsy run just
beyond view in the forest.
    Skyfire heard her departure as a noisy crashing of sticks, an
inept intrusion that rankled upon nerves already overtaxed. Lips
drawn back into a snarl that was all wolf, the chieftess returned to
her task. She quartered the ground in relentlessly widening circles
until twilight stole away the light.
    Summer night fell, loud with the voices of crickets. The water
crashed down its course, misting the air, and dew beaded the rocks
over the precipice where the Dreamsinger had fallen. Huntress Skyfire
straightened, aching in ways that had nothing to do with the fact she
had spent hours on her knees. She perched in the niche her dead mate
had left vacant, eyes closed in misery. No longer would the trees
wear blossoms out of season, or brambles blaze

z42
with the colors of autumn during spring. The Dreamsinger was 'gone,
his magic reduced to a memory. Only one legacy remained: the cub in
Skyfire's womb quickened and steadily grew toward its birthing. As
much for that unborn life as for her own grief, the Huntress could
not let the father's death rest. The tragedy that had overtaken the
Dreamsinger might one day happen to his offspring; as surely as she
breathed air she knew that another elf had dealt the blow that
precipitated the fatality. The act was a poison, a danger hidden as a
snake among the tribe; a Wolfrider's mindset was trusting by nature.
The Way of the wolves had no analog for murder.
    Skyfire kicked irritably at the moss-caked stone of the ravine.
To search out Dreamsinger's killer posed almost insurmountable
problems. The sending she had shared in the instant before
annihilation had shown no face; just the roughness of the hand that
pushed, and the terrible plunge, and the pain. A wolf might unravel
the scents, but by now the trail was cold. The tribe had crossed and
recrossed the paths to the ravine, and $kyfire's own search had
further obscured the evidence. Even without these complications, no
other rider's wolf-friend could be trusted to investigate in her
behalf. Paek members who bonded to an elf owed their first loyalty
elsewhere. Should her request fall on a tribesmate who was involved,
or in sympathy with the killer's cause, she would learn nothing but
lies. Dreamsinger's madness had been feared, distrusted, and at the
last resentfully tolerated because she had fought and bested every
Wolfrider who had dared to challenge his presence. But dissidents
remained, too timid or too crafty to fight. Of the many who had
licked wounds in defeat, some might whisper for retribution. Factions
lingered yet from the days of Two-Spear's chieftainship; Skyfire
sensed them at the hunts like tangles in the continuity of the pack.
Though most Wolfriders were not capable of intrigue, any one of them
might be led by conspiracy.
    Half lost in his song and the visions woven by magic, the
Dreamsinger had never thought to take precautions. For that, Skyfire
blamed herself. From the head of the ravine she listened to the howl
carried out in her mate's memory. She did not return to participate.
Alone on the height that had killed, she listened, straining to
determine which voices were missing, and which sounded uncertain.

243
    Her suspicions knotted uselessly into confusion. The howl for the
Dreamsinger ended quickly. His brief stay with the tribe had largely
been misunderstood. Skyfire alone had been able to temper his
madness, and see beyond to the shape of Timmain's dream. Only she had
seen promise of a future where the gentleness of elvish heritage
might coexist with the hardy cunning of the wolf. Yet now, with one
who murdered magic at large among the tribe, that future and that
dream lay threatened.
    Night deepened. The two moons lifted over the trees; light
through the leaves dappled the forest floor, and touched the rocks at
the precipice with a glint like dagger steel. The larger of the moons
led the dance, silvering the spume which veiled the head of the
gorge. The place where the Dreamsinger had fallen lay lost in black
shadow. Brooding, sad, and uncertain what to do, his grieving mate
shook back her bright hair.
    'Which of us wished you dead?' she asked the empty air, the faces
of the moons, the soft sigh of the wind. Only crickets answered.
Their song of summer's plenty held nothing to console an empty heart.
Restless with loss and frustration, the chieftess cursed.
    At the sound, something at the forest's edge started back.
Alarmed, Skyfire ducked low in the niche. Carelessness made her
cross. She had been as trusting as her mate to linger here, and
certainly as foolish. Now the rushing water at her back held threat
enough to raise the hair at her nape. She carried the Dreamsinger's
cub. If she could sense its gift of magic as it grew, so might
others; so might the killer who had destroyed its father. A push from
the same hands might send her to share his death. Memory of that
plunge and the agony of its aftermath returned with a force like
premonition. Sky fire shivered.
    Cautiously she hugged the stone. A leap to safer ground might
provoke a retreat; already this elf had proved his lack of courage.
Yet she chose a more dangerous course. If she could tempt an attack,
make her situation seem more precarious than it actually was, she
might emerge after a scuffle with Dreamsinger's killer held captive.
    But time passed, and the tunes of the crickets continued
undisturbed. Skyfire listened until her ears ached. The forest night
revealed nothing. At last forced to conclude that the movement had
been an illusion born of grief, she raised her head and looked.
The angle of the moons had changed, plunged the trees in deep

~44
shadow. Yet the dark beneath the branches was not empty; there shone
a pair of silver eyes, eerily identical to the Dreamsinger's.
    Skyfire gasped. At the sound, the eyes flashed and turned, lost
in the forest's dark. Shaking now, and fighting tears, Sky fire
scrambled up from the precipice. She rested her cheek on cold rock.
Her mate had not turned spirit to haunt her; she had seen only his
gray wolf, who shared the color and intensity of his eyes. While the
rest of the pack retired to sleep off gorged bellies, this one
restless beast sought a master who would never hunt again.
    Deprived of Woodbiter's company, and robbed forever of the
Dreamsinger's mad passion, Skyfire longed to reach out to the wolf,
to sink both hands to the wrists in his luxurious silver pelt. She
wanted to weep in his warmth, and then to run, fast and strong, into
the heat of the hunt.
    'Song,' she called, though she knew the wolf would not come.
Wolves who lost elf-friends did not bond to another tribe member; so
said Owl, who sometimes, after dreamberries, remembered such things.
    The appeal of Huntress Skyfire to her Dreamsinger's wolf brought
only a flash of white brush as he turned and retreated into the
trees. For a moment, she almost let him go.
    Reason why she must not snapped her mood of brooding heartache.
Skyfire started up from the rocks. Her brow furrowed with a
determination the rest of her tribe knew better than to cross. Song
was more than a wolf who had lost a master. He was the key to the
identity of Dreamsinger's killer. For that one name, Skyfire was
willing to undertake any difficulty, no matter how impossible.
    Huntress Skyfire raced into the forest. The wolf fled ahead of
her. Running hard, she glimpsed his form as a flash of silver through
the glades where the moons' light struck through. She heard him as a
rustle of leaves, the scrape of claws on stone, and the soft,
disturbed breath of air as he sniffed his back trail for pursuit.
Song was fleet, young, and clever enough as a hunter to have survived
through the Dreamsinger's exile. Yet he was not a maverick by nature;
he had challenged for position, and won acceptance in the pack that
ran with the Wolfriders. Skyfire had fought him once, in the course
of helping his master. She had gained the victory, but Song's
submission had not cowed his spirit. His trust would be troublesome
to earn, and time was of the essence. The Huntress understood enough
of wolves to know that she must

245
win Song over at once; otherwise loneliness would drive him to
identify irrevocably with the pack.

The two moons lowered with the coming of dawn. Shadows turned vague
and gray under the trees, and in that uncertain light, obstacles
became difficult even for a keen-sighted elf to discern. A wolf, with
better sense of smell, had less disadvantage. Song unavoidably drew
ahead. Grimly Skyfire held to his trail. Exhaustion blurred her
purpose; threat to her unborn cub merged with grief for her
Dreamsinger. As she drove each tired foot into the next stride, the
silver wolf who darted like a wraith out of reach came to symbolize
the mate she had lost. If she could only catch up with the beast, if
she could once touch its fur, something of the compassion she had
learned through love might be recovered.
    But Skyfire's persistent desperation won no ground. Song's intent
to escape became all the more frantic. He did not understand the
Huntress's motives; his strongest memory of her had been a fight,
after which he had been forced to yield to her will. The wolf had let
her run at her Dreamsinger's side out of submission, not goodwill.
Now, with the master gone, Skyfire's pursuit keyed nothing but a
primal instinct to flee. Years spent with an exile lent the wolf
cunning: he was not habit-bound to any territory. Where a pack-raised
beast would keep to familiar trails, his run a wide loop around a
chosen area of forest, Song ran straight cross-country. He might not
anticipate every twist in the terrain, or fallen log, or stone
outcrop. He might be slowed by unexpected roots, or avoidance of a
thicket too dense and tangled for running. Yet the Huntress who
followed was equally disoriented; the safety of the cub she carried
made her uneasy in strange country, where men might prowl, and
unknown terrain lead her into danger. Eventually her two legs must
tire, and then Song could slip like a shadow into the wood to seek
out his own kind.
    Still, Skyfire had spent most of the summer season hunting
without any wolf-friend to bear her weight. Spring's crop of cubs had
already been weaned when Woodbiter died, and those that were inclined
to partner an elf had already bonded. Aware her predicament must
extend through the next turn of seasons, the chieftess had hardened
to compensate. She did not quit, but continued, stumbling and pushing
through the brush, until long

246
ú after dawn. The sun blazed high overhead when at last she threw
herself, panting, in a glade.
     Song was footsore as well. His belly was empty of game, and his
sinews too spent to hunt. Tail drooping, nose low, he sniffed out a
small cave beneath an outcrop. There, he curled up and slept to
recover his strength.

Although Skyfire was too weary to run, stubbornness would not let her
quit. She tracked Song's footprints through last year's leaves, a
briar thicket, and over the moist bed of a stream shrunken down to a
trickle by summer. The heat of midday wore upon her energy, and
hunger nagged her belly. Soon, for the sake of the cub she carried,
she must stop for food and rest; but not yet. The impressions of
Song's pad,; told of a stride no longer fluid. The wolf was tired
also, and not so urgent in his flight. Presently Skyfire observed
that his path began to meander, as he searched for a lair to take
cover.
    She paused then to wipe sweat from her face. If she found the
wolf before he woke, she had a chance.
    The cleft was situated beneath an outcrop of moss-caked stone.
Spring water pooled nearby, protected by a stand of trees. Song's
marks were plain in the mud by the bank. The darkness between the
rocks held the warm scent of his fur. Certain the wolf had laired
there, Skyfire retreated from the area with the care of a seasoned
predator. She left no unnecessary scent, and made not a whisper of
noise. Song must not awaken and discover her presence too soon.
    The Huntress knelt at the spring and drank her fill, then wove a
snare for small game. She retreated after that to wait. The sun on
her back made her drowsy, yet she battled the lure of sleep; if she
succumbed, and Song left while she rested, she would lose him. He had
run too far through the night, well beyond the territory of the pack
that ran with the tribe. This part of the forest was hunted by wolves
unfamiliar with elves. Song would be forced to fight for a place
among them, or move on as a loner who spurned others. His memory of
the Dreamsinger's companionship would fade quickly, and Skyfire knew
that success must depend on prompt action.
    A ravvit jumped squealing into the snare. Huntress Skyfire
started out of a drowse, shaken by the fact that sleep had taken her
unaware. Quickly she studied the light. The sun's rays slanted just
slightly lower; her attention had lapsed only minutes. Stretching

247
stiffened muscles, the Chieftess arose and drew her dagger. She
killed the ravvit with one deft thrust, but resisted the instinct to
gorge. With the blood of fresh game on her hands, she set out to
share meat with Song.
    Her approach to the grotto was cautious as before, but the slight
increase in moisture as the day waned made the scent carry. Blood-
smell aroused the sleeping predator from his dreams of chase and the
hunt. Skyfire heard the click of claws on rock as the great wolf
bounded to his feet. She felt the gust of his breath as he sampled
the air, then greeted her presence with a low growl of warning.
    The Huntress froze instantly, ravvit flesh dripping between her
fingers. She made no further move, but waited at the entrance to the
cleft for Song to consider her gift.
    The wolf made no effort to advance. Skyfire accepted his
ambivalence in stride; she had expected no less. Wolves were
distrustful by nature, and interactions between members of a pack
were rigidly dictated by rank. She had bested Song, and by tradition,
he could fill his belly only after she had gorged ~and lost interest.
To share food without regard for hierarchy upset the order Song
understood; and things not understood were to be feared.
    Skyfire sensed the wows uneasiness. She held firm, even as his
hackles rose, and a snarl furrowed his muzzle. Shining gray against
the dimmer gray shadow of his head, the eyes of the wolf never left
her.
    *':'Song.* * Skyfire put sending in the word. She offered
reassurance in place of uneasiness, warmth in place of cold, food
against the pain of hunger. She promised joy, and life, and the heady
thrill of the hunt in full summer.
    Song's snarl intensified. He remembered the past fight. That had
ended with his throat bared to her mercy. His instinct was
submission, but the close rock walls confined him, cut off his escape
if this Huntress pressed her proven superiority against him. The
ravvit promised nothing. The smell of its blood only drove the wolf
to frustration, for he was hungry, yet dared not feed. Enraged by
conflicting instincts, Song crouched on the hair-trigger edge of a
spring.
    'Song,' Skyfire whispered. She shifted her weight slightly to
ease a cramped leg; and that small movement tripped the balance.

248
    Song lunged. Wild with fear, crazed to escape, he leapt for the
elf in the entryway.
    Skyfire could have dodged aside, let the wolf brush past to win
freedom. But the name of the Dreamsinger's killer was a threat more
dire than mauling. Her tribesmates must not run with a murderer
unknown in their midst.
    Tired, and slowed by hunger, Skyfire met Song's rush with braced
feet. His weight slammed her, hips and shoulder, and his jaws snapped
closed on her wrist. The pain was terrible. His teeth ripped down
into muscle, and grated with bruising force against bone. Skyfire
yelled, in part to distract him, but also to vent the shock and the
agony of a wound that wrung her mind with faintness. Just enough
awareness remained for her to hammer a fist at the wolf's gray eyes,
Dreamsinger's eyes, shining now with the lust to tear and kill.
    Song released her before the blow fell. He would not risk his
sight; nor could he entirely forget his former defeat at the hands of
this same elf. He had attacked, but she had neither given way nor
succumbed to fear; either reaction would have invited further
aggression. Yet since the elf met challenge with a savage intent to
fight, Song backed down. Snarling, he lowered his brush and retreated
to the farthest cranny of the lair.
    Skyfire knelt, her shoulder pressed weakly to cold stone. The
ravvit lay where it had fallen in the dirt between her knees. She
cradled her injured forearm in her hand, wrung dizzy by the odors of
fresh-killed meat and new blood. Somehow, through pain, she clung to
her purpose. She must not leave the grotto, must not permit Song an
opening to leave. The safety of her unborn cub depended on her
steadiness now.
    Teeth clenched, Skyfire worked off her tunic. She wrapped her
wrist to slow the bleeding. She knew from past mishaps and remembered
scoldings from Rellah: slashes were the least of her worries. More
serious were the narrow purple punctures which cut deep, but did not
drain. Without herbs to draw out the poison, these were sure to
fester, slow her with sickness and fever until she lost her strength
and died.
Dreamsinger's fall from the cliff had been a much cleaner end.
Skyfire squeezed her eyes closed. Such thoughts had no place, except
to obscure one fear behind another far more dire. She had but one
purpose: to win the murderer's name from Song before

:49
her tribe's future came to grief. Cautiously the chieftess shoved to
her feet. Her shoulder scraped the rough stone, but she needed the
support to rise, to stand straight as if she still had spirit to call
challenge. Let Song once gain the impression that she could not
fight, and the contest of wills was lost. At the slightest hint of
helplessness, the wolf would attack and press for victory.
    With a low growl of warning, Skyfire carefully, so very
carefully, stepped back. She waited then, though dizziness skewed her
balance. Song did not react. Skyfire clung to the stone. She thought
ot' tile 15reamsihger'k mus~k:, now (orever sni~'ed; t~fie anger
tsfiat; went with that memory helped to support her through another
step, then still more slowly, another. Song watched, but offered no
aggression.
    Beyond the mouth of the grotto, the sun shone red in the
treetops. The heat had eased, but Skyfire sweated in discomfort. Left
no other alternative, she knelt at the entrance to Song's lair and
trailed her injured forearm in the spring.
    The icy water eased the ache and cleared her head enough for her
to notice the emptiness in her belly. The meat dropped in the lair
was lost. As twilight fell gray over the forest, she heard the sharp
crunch of bones in the jaws of the wolf who had bitten her. Song had
grown bold enough to appease his hunger on the ravvit. Skyfire
wondered how long before he became restless, or desperate, or thirsty
to the point where he challenged once again for his freedom.
    Darkness brought stars and heavy dew. The sultry heat of day gave
way to light breezes; frogs croaked in chorus with the crickets.
Skyfire lay and listened to the night woods, her wrist soaking in the
spring. Pain would not let her sleep. Light-headed with exhaustion,
she reviewed each member of the tribe in her mind. Most were friends;
all but the very oldest were forest-cunning, wise, and dependable in
the hunt. All had shared through lean times, and bickered over trivia
when there was plenty. True enough, there were factions, brittle
tensions left over from Two-Spear's time. But the turn of the seasons
had dimmed the old distrusts. Skyfire had taken pains never to show
favor; always in council she had listened to any rider who spoke out.
The fights over Dreamsinger's presence had caused the only open
dispute since her chieftainship began.
    Skyfire curled her fingers in the current, and winced. The pain
of the bite had not lessened. The swelling had increased to the

250
~ved
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call
not
t of

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point where she could not effectively grip her knife or spear. Even
the simple snare she had woven that morning lay beyond her dexterity.
The Huntress rested her sweating forehead against the earth. Help and
the holt were beyond call. Yet even the threat of starvation could
not turn Skyfire from her quest. That the hopes she had discovered
through Recognition should be left at risk to a murderer offered hurt
far worse than any wound. Song alone held the answer; only the wolf
could reveal which friend, which Wolfrider, which elf under her trust
still harbored enough hatred to deceive.
    New day dawned humid and close. Birds flitted from the treetops
to drink at the spring, but Skyfire could only follow their flight
with her eyes. Song was awake and pacing. Fretful herself, Skyfire
tried and failed to find a more comfortable position. Her arm had
swollen to the point where only the icy water in the pool offered any
relief. Her pain could be tolerated as long as she kept the wound
submerged.
    By noon, the sun fell full on the rocks. Song lay panting in the
shadows, eyes fixed ceaselessly on the elf who kept him penned.
Skyfire dipped water from the spring in a fold of her leather tunic.
She offered to share with the wolf, but Song declined with a growl;
irritable, restless, he arose and paced his prison.
    Skyfire sweated with her back against the boulders. Reflections
off the water hurt her eyes, and the wind which gusted through the
treetops rushed unpleasantly against ears that rang with fever.
Sickness only increased her determination. Periodically Skyfire
checked the lair. Sometimes she saw the Dreamsinger's silver eyes,
watching in silence from the grotto. Other times she saw
only a silver-pelted wolf, vicious and surly with frustration. 'Who
killed you?' she raged in delirium.
    The wolf flinched away from the sudden croak of her words; the
Dreamsinger refused to give answer.
    Skyfire tossed fitfully. She dreamed in the throes of fever that
fish with the teeth of predators came to gnaw at her hand. She awoke,
screaming with pain, and faced the fearful certainty that her arm had
festered from the bite. Rellah was going to be angry; except that
Rellah and her bags of smelly herbs were too far distant to help. The
thought somehow seemed funny, that the sour old female might wind up
scolding bones. Skyfire laughed outright, while thunder growled, and
a late afternoon storm showered rain on her head.

25~
    Lightning flashed, throwing white-edged reflections into the
lair. The Dreamsinger's eyes followed her, shining gray in the
shadows. 'You're dead,' Skyfire muttered, mad with torment and fever.
'I will die, your cub will die, and an elf who kills other elves will
shelter like a snake in the pack.'
    Her ravings were absorbed by forest stillness. Twilight darkened
around dripping trees. Skyfire lay on her back in the mud, talking to
stars that shone through sooty drifts of cloud. They did not bring
her Sapling, as she asked; neither did they intercede to prevent the
dream that racked her over and over: a staggering step into air, and
a fall that ended in blood and pain on the rocky bank of a stream.
    Night deepened, and another sort of darkness blanketed Skyfire's
thoughts, until even suffering lay beyond feeling.

She awakened, ice-cold, and shivering uncontrollably. Night had gone
gray with new dawn, and the wind carried promise of heavy rain.
Skyfire opened her eyes. Weakly she attempted to sit up.
    Hard hands shoved her back, crashed her bruisingly onto stone.
The impact shot pain from her injury clear down her arm to her
shoulder. Shock knocked the breath from her lungs. Through a sucking
tide of darkness, she saw a face, and tangled hair, and a raggedy,
leather-clad elf. His features were familiar. Through dizziness,
Skyfire strove to remember.
    'Stonethrower?' she murmured; and vertigo fell sharply away
before memory. This elf was an outsider, an exile, not among the
faces of friends who shared the howls at the holt. Fear followed,
thick enough to choke: Stonethrower had gone off with Two-Spear, his
parting words an oath of undying vengeance for the plight which had
befallen his chief at Skyfire's hands.
    'You!' said Skyfire, recognizing through touch the memory of a
sending that had ended in a fatal fall. 'It was you who pushed my
mate from the ledge!'
    Stonethrower did not speak. But the flash of the stone knife he
raised above her body offered answer enough. He had returned only to
kill her.
Skyfire rolled clumsily aside.
    'Whelp of a starved she-wolf!' Stonethrower jerked her back. 'You
won't escape. You've strayed too far for sending to reach

252
the others. They'll have no warning from you when I return and kill
them, one by one, until there is no tribe left.'
    Strong and cruel and crazy, Stonethrower caught her hair, twisted
her head to bare her neck to his knife.
    Skyfire thrashed. Her reactions were muddled from fever, and
sickness left her too weak to evade the blow. Still, she fought.
Aside from threat to her tribe, her death would take the life of the
cub within her belly, and the legacy of old magic bequeathed by the
Dreamsinger might perish unborn. Frustration, grief, and an
overwhelming sense of terror shaped a cry to a mate who was
beyond all answer.* * K YR ! * *
    Skyfire's sending framed the Dreamsinger's essence, just as
Stonethrower struck downward.
    A leaping streak of silver flew between. Song launched from the
cave mouth with a growl of animal rage. He recognized the smell of
his master's murderer, and Skyfire's sending rang over and over with
echoes of the Dreamsinger's presence. Song's sense of loyalty
blurred. He leapt for the hated attacker, bristling with a rending
lust to kill.
    Stonethrower sensed only movement; then the great wolPs charge
overtook him. Committed to his thrust at the chieftess, he barely
turned his head when the silver male's weight knocked him down. Jaws
found his exposed throat and closed over gristle and windpipe with
force enough to crush. Stonethrower dropped the knife. He never heard
the splash as his weapon sank in the spring. His heels battered
uselessly into stone as the wolf's jaws tightened and worried him,
shaking elf flesh until the last scent of life was extinguished.
    In time, Song tired of the corpse. He dropped it a short distance
off in the forest, shook his pelt straight, and returned to lap at
the spring. Once his thirst was satisfied, he raised his dripping
muzzle and sniffed the dawn air for game sign. A moan from behind
made him turn.
    The she-elf lay where she had fallen. The hand outflung from her
body smelled overpoweringly of hurt. The wolf whined. A presence was
missing from his side. Restless now, Song trotted a few steps back
and forth. The scent in his nostrils meant trouble; the hunter who
should partner him lay wounded. Drawn by the mystery of pack
instinct, the silver creature stepped close,

253
crouched down, and began to lick the still fingers of the elfhand.
    He still worked at the task past sunrise, when Wolfriders burst
from the trees.
    'She's here!' called Skimmer to the others. Rising wind and
clouds heavy with rain served only to increase his concern. 'Our
chieftess is hurt. Sapling, run and fetch Rellah.'
    Song poised, ready on an instant to run, to abandon the tie so
tenuously forged in the night. But a familiar pack surrotmded him,
and the habit of companionship was strong. As the Wolfriders hurried
to succor their chieftess, Song raised his head. Holding ground at
his elf-friend's shoulder, he growled challenge to any who might dare
to interfere.

254
The Renders

Stars flecked the sky when Jaiddon reached the headland that
sheltered the town of Fisherman's Cove from the sea. Every turn in
the deserted road showed the Pattern which secured all Shape on the
Isle of Circadie against the Void. Delicate as knotted gilt thread in
the failing light, its interlocking tracery of force was visible in
the veins of the leaves, the curve of the hills, even the dry sand of
the shoreline which stood against the tireless rush of the sea.
    Beyond the headland lay a scene of devastation. As though smashed
by a fallen sky, the town lay splintered in ruins. The sight struck
the breath from Jaiddon's lungs. Not even the boats in the harbor had
been spared. The beach glittered with the silvery, crescent corpses
of a skip-jack's dismembered hold. Smooth sand lay sundered by a
ragged gap that passed clean through the shore. Ocean swells rolled
through the breach, unimpeded by shallows or shoreline, and on the
other side, the land where people had once raised homes lay twisted
beyond memory of patterned Shape.
    .laiddon could count the bodies. Trained since childhood, he
could see the snarled remains of the patterns that held their spirits
in life.
    Air sobbed into his throat. Renders had undone an entire town as
though its existence was no more solid than morning mist. Jaiddon
hardly felt the path beneath his feet as he stumbled over the dunes.
The Renders had gone on into the hills. Their trail would not be hard
to fol~w, marked as it was with wreckage.
    Anger and hatred gripped Jaiddon in the shadow of that levelled
town. Would all of Circadie be undone, as Fisherman's Cove, until her
tortured rings lost power and slumped into the sea? Jaiddon bunched
the hands whose promise had set him against the Renders into fists.
Perhaps if he released the solidity of the ground where the

255
cursed beings stood, he could drop them into the deep. Certainly,
that had never been tried. The Masters, all, were bound by oath to
preserve the Pattern.
    Jaiddon showed his teeth in an expression not quite a smile. He
might wear a Master's Colors, but he had sworn no such oath.
    Over and over, he was impressed by Circadie's vulnerability
until, half blinded by tears of frustration, he was sorry he had not
refused the Master's request.
    He still found it difficult to believe the bedridden cripple he
had faced that afternoon was the Master Shaper of Circadie. The
Master whom Jaiddon had always known was a tall, ruddy man,
blackhaired and full of humor. His hands had been strong and capable,
nothing like the warped, skeletal claws Jaiddon had seen trembling on
the coverlet. And the face! Jaiddon flinched with horror at the
memory of features deformed beyond all recognition.
    Yet the eyes in the deep, crumpled sockets had opened. They were
still yellow, not yet devoid of the life that once shaped the cycles
of Circadie with such enviable confidence.
    'I am blind, Jaiddon, though within, I can still Shape your
memory,' the Master said. The light eyes closed. The ruined face
smoothed as an image of a white-robed, barefoot novice with sparely
muscled bones and hair the color of brass formed behind seamed lids.
'Jaiddon, there are Renders in the land.'
    The Master's words drove a sharp spike of fear through Jaiddon's
thoughts. Few could stand against the power of Renders, outsiders
whose disbelief could unravel Shape like a tear in knitted wool. Not
even the Pattern of Solidity, foundation of all Circadie, was secure
against the destruction such a mind could unleash. Blind and deaf to
all but Reality, two of them had once blundered through an entire
forest without perceiving the fragile power that held its existence
against the Void. Everything they touched was destroyed, reduced in a
moment to the flotsam from which it had been created.
    'The Renders number three,' the Master Shaper said, snapping
Jaiddon's paralyzed shock. 'They are shipwreck victims, dazed and
delirious with thirst. Megallie thinks they are mad. Certainly, they
are strong, stronger than any Render who has ever challenged the
Solidity of Circadie. We are desperate, Jaiddon. That is why you have
been summoned.'
    'But my Lord!' Jaiddon stared with fresh horror. 'I barely passed
my apprenticeship a fortnight ago!'

256
A nightmarish parody of a smile touched the Master's withered lips.
Jaiddon felt his heart twist in response.
    'Years and experience have proven useless against these
Renders.' The Master Shaper spoke with difficulty. 'Varna,
Loremistress of the Pattern, lies dead. Myself, they have broken. I
can no longer Shape even a child's toy. Circadie is dying. I place
her last hope in your hands.'
    Tears spilled sudden and hot down Jaiddon's cheeks. He was glad
they could not be seen by the man in the bed. 'What can I do that you
could not?'
    The Master was silent for a long while. 'I do not know,' he said
at last. 'You are young. Your training is incomplete. But you are
talented beyond all that have gone before, so is it inscribed in the
Pattern of your hands. It is my hope, all of Circadie's hope, that
you, with your untried, unchannelled power, might find means your
forebears missed by the wayside. I realize I am probably asking your
death. Yet, I ask. Will you face the Renders, and challenge their
Reality with Shape?'
    Jaiddon stood like a statue. Sunlight spilled through the window
and branded a square of warmth in the sweat that chilled his back. He
was afraid. Once as a child he'd had a cut that would not stop
bleeding. It had been Shaped to health, but the man, the Master whose
hands had wrought against the Void, lay dying of a Render's touch.
Jaiddon swallowed again, and spoke.
    'My Lord, the Renders will have me anyway. I may as well meet the
Void in their path.'
    But the blue tunic and white shirt of Mastery given him after his
audience did nothing to ease his self-doubt. For all his alleged
talent, Jaiddon could not even read his own lifepath. His peers had
laughed often over that.

Black as oblivion, the Renders' path ran northward. Jaiddon could
sense its presence without sight by the utter lack of resonance
beneath his feet. Here and there, his step struck solidity, and he
recognized the harmonics that answered. They were Megallie's. Newly
appointed Loremistress in Varna's stead, she had been mending,
perhaps after seeing the Master Shaper comfortable.
    Her work had been cursory, her touch, unerring. Gazing downward
through the darkness beneath his soles, Jaiddon saw where

257
a Grand Axis of the Pattern was laid bare. Megallie had fused it,
perfectly. He could not repeat her work. Years of training lay ahead
before he dared attune to a major ring, far less forge one complete.
    Jaiddon cursed. His earlier plan was no better than a foolish
dream. Having seen the original Pattern of Solidity after which all
others were formed, he knew himself incapable of breaking even its
simplest curve.
    Jaiddon moved on. Anger drained away and left a rocky bed of
despair.

The Renders lay in a hollow beneath a tangle of scrub thorn, asleep.
Jaiddon came upon them so suddenly he nearly fell into the ditch
their unbelief had torn through the fabric of the ground. There were
three, as the Master had said, opaque bodies dark as blight against
the Patterned perfection of grasses fired like crystal by starlight.
Even passive, the Renders' Reality radiated threat like a breath of
cold.
    Jaiddon shivered and fought revulsion. His ancestors had once
been formed of substance, as these Renders were, but generations of
Shaping had transformed them gradually away from Reality. Cast upon
the sea as exiles, they had delved among the mysteries of the mind
and the illusory laws of sorcery, and in their fusion, developed the
art of Shaping. Circadie was raised above the waves through
generations of effort. Ring upon ring of power, joined and
interlaced, held its soil dry above the tide. From that framework,
the Shapers of Circadie forced tiny allotments of wood, metal, and
stone to serve the needs of many.
    The Pattern and the Shape that was Jaiddon would not be visible
to the Renders when they wakened, just as the grass, the trees, and
the soil did not exist through their senses.
    Jaiddon groped through despair for an action, any action, that
might halt the Renders' terrible course. He knew from memory each
passage from the ballads that described past encounters with their
kind. But such facts were useless. The Master Shaper had charged him
to abandon precedents. Jaiddon pressed damp palms to his temples. If
Circadie and the people who inhabited it could be made visible to the
Renders, their disbelief might weaken, diminishing their ruinous
effect upon the Pattern.

258
    The simple act of enforcing the shape that surrounded them would
not suffice. That had been attempted already without success. Jaiddon
decided instead to inscribe the Pattern directly upon the minds of
the Renders. Surely even Reality's logic could acknowledge and accept
the laws of solidity and allow Circadie existence.
    Jaiddon took a last breath, unmindful of the thornbranch that
hooked his sleeve. Substance never yielded its Reality easily, and a
Render was a living entity, self-aware, and defended against
intrusion. Prepared for struggle, Jaiddon closed his eyes and reached
out for the thoughts of the Render who lay nearest. Had his training
been complete, he would have known the Pattern of Solidity
represented the framework of madness to the mind he sought to Shape,
but he had barely won his novitiate, and in ignorance, he touched.
    Contact opened a blind abyss of unreason. Jaiddon broke into
sweat, strove to hold firm against a Reality whose nature commanded
Shape to go molten and flow formless into the Void. It seemed as
though his Pattern of existence would be crushed to powder beneath
the weight of the Render's mind. As the first tremor of dissolution
crept through the fibers of his body, Jaiddon cried out. So this was
what happened to the Master! Panic thundered through the gaps in his
being, twisting reason into a hard knot of terror. Jaiddon tore free.
    He was drenched, shaking, and the echo of his scream seemed
reflected in the quivering stars. Shocked by the enormity of failure,
Jaiddon did not pause to review the nature of what he opposed.
Instead, he flung himself recklessly into a second attempt. This
time, he shaped fear into a bastion of support.
    The Render flinched beneath his touch. He stirred and moaned
softly as Jaiddon began to inscribe the primary axis of the Pattern
behind his thoughts. As the secondary axis was begun, his protest
became louder. Jaiddon tasted sweat on his lips. If he slipped, he
would die. With remorseless determination, he bent the will that
opposed him and fused the first of the seven rings of power.
    The Render shot bolt upright and yelled. His companions roused at
once, and the force of their waking thoughts threw Jaiddon from his
feet.
    'Sweet Jesus, Alaric, what ails you?' said one of the Renders
sharply.

259
Alaric shook his head and shivered. 'I dreamed. Mary Mother, I
dreamed I saw grass and trees, land.'
    'Ye're mad, man,' his companion said. 'There's nothin' here but
ocean, and this silly boat afloat on it.' He thumped his hand.
Circadie shuddered in recoil. Bushes, soil, and a nearby boulder
frayed like overstressed fabric, and vanished.
    Jaiddon dragged himself to his knees, numbed beyond thought by
the heaving dark that bloomed at the Renders' touch. He had failed.
Though the effort left him weakened, he had to move clear of the
Render's blundering presence and think of something else. Slowly, he
rose.
    The motion caused Alaric to whirl, eyes widened in panic. The
incomplete Pattern within his mind allowed him partial sight of the
Shape surrounding him, and he yelled hoarsely. 'Almighty God, there's
a ghost!'
    'Alaric, ye fool! Ye'11 have yerself overboard!' A companion
jerked him back by the shoulder, then fixed a flat gaze upon the spot
where Jaiddon stood. 'No ghost there, man. Nothin' but sharks 'n'
salt water.'
    Unbelief struck Circadie like a stormwave. Shape shattered to
fragments before it, land and the life it harbored flung piecemeal
into the yawning dark of the Void. Jaiddon cried out as the ground
under his feet came unbound. Every skill he possessed fought to hold
his being complete against a rushing tide of ruin. Loose pebbles and
soil slipped like lost hopes through his fingers as he tumbled
between debris toward the restless ocean beneath.
    His fall was broken by unyielding blue light; a bar of the
Pattern itself laid bare. Deformed like wax touched by flame, it had
not yet parted beneath the stress of the Renders' unbelief. Jaiddon
groped for handholds in the riven earth, dragged himself upright.
Dizzied and confused, he forgot caution, and the moment his head
appeared above ground level, Alaric screamed again.
    The other Renders restrained him with difficulty. "Tis the
devil's work, surely,' said one. 'A clear case of possession.'
    Jaiddon dragged himself clear of the ruinous gap. The word devil
meant nothing to him, and with uncomprehending eyes, he watched the
Render who had spoken kneel over Alaric.
    'Christ deliver us,' he said. 'I never thought I'd perform an
exorcism for a soul in an open boat.' More strange words, and the
chant that followed was in an

260
unfamiliar language, as well. But its effect upon the Pattern was
instant annihilation.
    Half a hill exploded soundlessly into oblivion. Jaiddon screamed.
The Void rose to engulf him. He felt light, insubstantial as ash. The
breeze off the sea blew through the rifts as the Render's strange
ritual unbound the force that held him complete. Trapped in a rushing
vortex of wind and dark, Jaiddon suddenly longed to see the disbelief
that was destroying him take Shape. Shape could be opposed, and on
the heels of thought came insight.
    He had always been ridiculed as a dreamer, unable to master his
own imagery. What if he broke precedent, abandoned control and
coupled the result with his lifelong training as Shaper? Jaiddon
cursed and laughed. Poised on the edge of dissolution, he threw his
wild imagination free rein. It seized upon the darkness that gnawed
him and clothed it with pictures. Though they reflected unrelenting
nightmare, Jaiddon patterned them and gave them Shape.
    Circadie flowed and changed at his bidding. Plant, soil, and twig
mirrored the fabric of his images. Fast as thought could unreel,
Jaiddon found himself in an alien place of red haze. The ground
turned to ash beneath his feet, littered with the Shaped symbols of
the Renders' disbelief, among them every desire, hope, and motivation
that founded it.
    Jaiddon stepped carefully between the glancing sparkle of gem
stones, jewelled goblets, and the dirt-gray bones which were his
reshaping of the Renders' dead senses. He had no understanding for
much of what he patterned, nor was he given time to seek it. Jaiddon
waited to see which form would seek his death.
    They came as demons, three of them, savage and thoughtless as the
unbelieving minds they represented. Starved, naked, and crowned by
bleached shocks of hair, they moved through the shadowed haze of
imagery, eyes sultry as candleflame, and forked tongues tasting the
air. Jaiddon knew immediate fear at the sight of them. But their
Shape was comprehensible. It could be opposed.
    Bending, Jaiddon scooped up a fistful of ash and placed his will
upon it. Form broke and ran fluid at his touch as he repatterned
Shape to match desire. Controlled, that which seconds ago had been
ash assumed the outline of a longsword. Jaiddon tested the balance,
then grimly inflected the pattern of tempered steel.
    The weapon in his hand warmed. Its rough surface acquired the
glassy bluish sheen of the forge. Jaiddon shivered with impatience.

26I
The change would take too long. The demons had sensed his presence,
and with a hiss like a water kettle, two of them charged. The
patterning was not yet complete, but Jaiddon had no choice. He raised
his blade to meet them.
    The demon that rushed at his throat was impaled. It screamed and
wrenched. The half-finished sword snapped off near the hilt. Jaiddon
fended the second one away with his forearm. Teeth and nails tore
like knives through cloth, then flesh.
    Jaiddon bashed himself clear with his knee and thrust the demon
back with the jagged remnant of his blade. It sidestepped and spat.
Jaiddon turned with it. The fallen one writhed underfoot,
treacherously close. Nearby, the third crouched, watching with a
baleful yellow eye.
    'Render!' Jaiddon forced the word around the terror that gripped
his tongue.
    Nimbly avoiding the steel, the demon attacked, slashed, and
twisted clear ofJaiddon's riposte. Thin furrows opened in Jaiddon's
arm as it struck. Blood soaked through shredded silk shirt. Fear made
the breath rattle in his throat. Circling, feinting, he survived two
more rushes. Sweat stung his eyes. The demon was still unmarked. The
third crouched, still, to one side. Jaiddon knew he was finished when
it chose to fight.
    Raising his free hand, Jaiddon shaped in glowing lines that
portion of the Pattern that sealed its final Solidity. The demon
hissed in fury and sprang for Jaiddon. Patterning broke with an
aching flare of light. The creature bore him down. Hot breath scalded
his skin. Fangs mashed his shoulder, and the demon's nails gashed at
his side and back. Jaiddon battered unsuccessfully with his hands.
Dizziness whirled his head. All would be lost in a matter of seconds.
Aware of nothing but the final darkness that closed over thick as
water to drown him, Jaiddon threw himself into a last, desperate
attempt to Shape.

He wakened, choking. Water and blood had soaked his hair and
clothing. Callused hands shook him.
    'Death, 'e looks like the sharks been at 'im,' said a voice from
above.
    Jaiddon opened his eyes, blinked. He lay in a boat. Two strangers
stood over him with faces bearded, gaunt, and peeling from

262
overexposure to the sun. He struggled, craned his neck, and tried to
see over the gunwale.
    'Easy, lad,' said the man. His fingers tightened on Jaiddon's
shoulders, making dizziness flood back. 'Ye come near to drownin'.
Best stay still a bit an' catch yer breath.'
    Jaiddon closed his eyes and wrestled despair. He had fallen into
the hands of the Renders. Why was he not dead? Where was Circadie?
    'Let me be,' he said softly as soon as he could speak. The hands
fell away.
    Jaiddon sat up, gripping the boat with bloody fingers. His body
burned like fire, it was cut in so many places. When he stared
outward, a triple image assaulted his eyes. If he looked with a
Shaper's perception, the hills of Circadie appeared, churned and
distorted where the Renders' thoughts had warped its form. The
Pattern of Solidity glowed through, serene and blue where it remained
whole, black and gapped where the Renders had broken through. On top,
pale and insubstantial as a ghost's drawing, moved the heaving,
restless shoulders of ocean swells that stretched in endless ranks to
the far horizon.
    Jaiddon fell back, suddenly weak. In his last moment of
awareness, he had sought to Shape himself a form beyond the Void. He
should have died. Instead, his dying act had transformed him close
enough to Reality that the Renders could perceive him. When the sun
rose, his flesh would cast shadow, as did all Substance.
    Jaiddon dared a look at the Renders. Two stared at him with eyes
that bore the haggard stamp of hardship. The third lay grotesquely
sprawled and still in the stern. Jaiddon recognized the Render he had
inflected with a fragment of the Pattern. Remembering, also, the
demon that had fallen beneath his sword, Jaiddon drew a painful
breath and spoke.
'What happened to Alaric?'
The Renders started. One of them blanched with fright.
    'Dead,' said the larger of the two. ' 'E woke up raving an' died.
It was madness that done for him, but how did ye know his name?'
    The other Render started forward and shouted. the knew because
Satan sent him! Didn't he appear at the moment of Alaric's
exorcism?' He pointed an accusing finger at Jaiddon. 'You come from
Hell, your purpose to tempt us from faith. God will punish us for
bringing you aboard.'

263
    The large Render spat. 'The devil, Chaplain? Do ye smell
brimstone?' Laughter followed, but it was forced.
    Jaiddon raised himself onto the seat in the bow. Dizzy, sick, and
weak as he was, it was evident the Renders distrusted his Reality.
They might kill him, in their misunderstanding. Jaiddon thought
quickly. Though he knew nothing of Hell, the devil, or exorcism, they
were obviously powerful images to the Renders. Perhaps even these
might be Shaped to advantage.
      'I did not come from Hell.' His voice startled both men. 'I
would
help, but if you have no faith, I am powerless.''Christ have mercy,'
said the Chaplain.
    Jaiddon ignored him. 'You suffer greatly from hunger and
thirst.' Both men stared, speechless. Jaiddon plunged ahead and hoped
their confusion would last long enough to weaken their disbelief.
'Fetch me a container. 1 will provide you with food and drink. Then
give me your oarshaft, and I will Shape you a sail to carry wind,
that you may return to the land you desire.'
    The larger Render laughed. 'Would ye make miracles, lad?' He
rummaged among the floorboards, and after a moment, extended a
wineskin. 'Ye've got my faith, what there is of it.'
    'Fill it with seawater.' Jaiddon's eye fell on the Chaplain. 'Do
you have faith?'
    The Chaplain swallowed and crossed himself uneasily. 'I pray four
times daily.'
    'Pray, then.' Jaiddon accepted the dripping wineskin. Its rough
leather stung his torn flesh unpleasantly, but that did not deter
him. Every kitchen drudge in Circadie knew how to pattern the salt
from the water they drew to wash their pots. This was the simplest
form of Shaping, and it took Jaiddon the space of seconds. He copied
the Chaplain's motion over the wineskin for effect, and offered it to
the Renders. 'Drink. If you have faith, you will be refreshed.'
    The larger Render pulled the stopper, peeling features stiffly
expressionless. He raised the wineskin to his lips, filled his mouth,
then swallowed greedily. When his thirst was eased, he knelt before
Jaiddon in awestruck silence while the Chaplain, also, drank his fill
....

The tale is still told, in dockside taverns, of how a chaplain and a
deckhand survived the wreck of the ship Saint Helena by saving a

264
holy man from the teeth of a shark. In turn, he rewarded them,
changing seawater into cheese, bread, and wine by miracle. There were
witnesses who observed the two tacking into the harbor, their sail
the bare shaft of an oar. The holy man was not with them. He was said
to have left the boat by walking on the face of the sea.
    Somewhere, over the horizon on the isle of Circadie, Jaiddon's
ballad is still sung. It tells of a young novice who took a Master's
Colors to defend the Pattern of Solidity from Renders, and how he
accomplished his purpose and returned, bleeding and weary, the only
Shaper since the Founders to cast a shadow.

265
No Quarter

The laser hit burned through the Kildare's shields and vaporized the
aft attitude jets in an instantaneous burst of explosion. The
ejection of debris and gaseous propellant created recoil that the
damaged system failed to counter.
    On the bridge, in the act of rising to visit the head, Commander
Jensen was spun sideways into the corn console. The impact left more
than a bruise. Over the stabbing pain of cracked ribs, and through
the high-pitched, excited curse from the pilot on helm duty, the
officer assigned charge of the Kildare strove against a mind-whirling
onrush of vertigo to muster the necessary attitude of command.
    'Damages?' he gasped on an intake of air that was all he could
manage, being winded.
    Across a narrow aisle banked on either side with instrumentation,
the ensign still strapped in his seat recovered from surprise. 'Aft
attitude thruster's gone, sir, portside. Also the rear screen sensor.
Burnt clear out. Hull's intact, but we'll need the engineer's report
to know if it's stable.'
    That explained the horrible dizziness: inertia, not pain. The
Kildare tumbled from the hit, her guidance units unable to compensate
with one quarter of the system blown out. Left gray and disoriented
from his own hurts, Jensen fought the buck of the deck and crashed
back into his command chair. 'Find out if she's stable,' he rapped
out in reference to the hull. Then he glanced across the gloom of the
V-shaped control bridge toward the silhouette of his still-swearing
pilot. 'Get this hulk back under control, fast.'
    The pilot, the fair-haired son of somebody's father in the
Admiralty, was nowhere near as good as the rating sewn onto

266
the starched sleeve of his coverall. Neat to the point of fussiness
he might be, but his hands were slow, and his touch, far from
unerring. Trembling, he fumbled the controls.
    Whiplashed by a second round of inertial force all the more
aggravating for being unnecessary, Jensen shut his eyes in
forbearance. The last pilot he'd been assigned had been a sloppy son
of a bitch when it came to appearance; but he could by God fly.
Kildare rolled, bucketed, lurched, and finally wobbled out of her
tumble.
    By then the young ensign had recovered his curiosity enough to
voice the obvious. 'Damn, Commander, who would be firing on us out
here?'
    Jensen ignored the question until after he had queried his one
competent bridge officer, a wary middle-aged woman named Beckett
who'd been born without the instincts of motherhood. 'Gun crews
intact, sir, and your engineer gives the drive systems a tentative
okay,' she answered in her husky baritone. The sandy hair pulled back
from her forehead emphasized bushy eyebrows, and square, oversize
front teeth. If homely appearance had stifled her social life,
Beckett poured her frustration into her work. She'd already confirmed
the engineer's next check. 'Dak's testing the coil regulator for
signal overload, but adds it's an outside possibility.'
    The laser hit must have grazed them, Jensen determined, and
concluded further that if their shields had been breached, the attack
weapon was more powerful than any small vessel should pack. Still,
reassured that the main drive systems of his vessel apparently
remained intact, Commander Jensen stared across an undecorated
expanse of grate flooring to the junior ensign who had questioned
inopportunely; a boy so fresh from his Academy training that he still
wore his hat on the bridge; hunched in earnest over his board, the
kid had a clear, pudgy complexion that ran to ache, and ears that
stuck out from under spikes of silvery fair hair. He was currently
gazing, rapt, at the image of drifting fragments on the main analog
screen.
    'I thought I asked you to check on the status of our hull?'
Jensen snapped, pained by more than his ribs. He resisted an impulse
to blot sweat from his brow, then silently pondered the self-same
issue. His ship was a converted yacht, a rich man's toy hastily
revamped for Fleet service in the face of threat from the Syndicate.
She was armed more for scout duty than defense; and with her untried
crew and recently promoted senior officer, Admiral Duane had
stationed

267
her as far from any probable site of action as possible. Why had the
Kildare been fired upon? And by whom, when they were just a patrol
sent out for observation, in case the battle that currently centered
around Target proved to be a feint?
'Beckett,' Jensen said belatedly, 'initiate a scan.'
    The communications officer nodded her leathery face, eyes
underlit by the scatter of lights on her board. She did not belabor
the point that she had done so, long since, but the blown aft sensors
left her blind to near half of the analog grid.

On the bridge of the Marity, by appearance a hard-run merchanter, and
by trade a skip-runner ship, a bearish, blunt-featured man scratched
at the mat of chest hair through the opened neck of his coverall. The
flight deck of his vessel was too cramped with instrumentation for a
man of his size to stretch. This did not seem to trouble him as he
turned deceptively lazy eyes to the mate who worked the console
beside him. 'They found us yet?'
    Slender, elegant as an antique rapier, Marity's mate, Gibsen,
turned his head with a half-raised brow. Framed by a vista of illegal
electronics and signal lights of alien design, he said, 'No. And
their pilot's a kid who can't fly.'
    In the half gloom of Marity's flight deck, MacKenzie James didn't
speak. On the graying side of thirty-five and muscled like a wild
beast, he made no move. But the corner of his mouth that lifted
toward a smirk said 'incompetent' more plainly than words. His
scarred hands stopped their scratching, and his gravelly, basso voice
phrased orders with a sparseness that hinted at exasperation. 'Forget
subtlety. Show them.'
    As if blowing the hell out of the ass end of any Fleet ship
hadn't been questionably unsubtle, Gibsen set tapered fingers to the
controls and tweaked.
The Marity changed position.

Which meant Beckett, bent yet over a console set for a fine-screen
search, suddenly got an eyeful of side vanes and struts where a
second ago her instruments had shown emptiness. The impossible
happened. She got flapped, screeched a startled oath, and jerked back
before she thought to step down the magnification. 'Dammit

268
to hell with a hangover!' she repeated, sounding more like her gender
than she ever had. 'We're being messed after by a goddamn
ruerchanter.'
    'What!' Jensen half sprang from his command chair, then sank back
with a grunt of pain. Plagued by echoes of his own startlement
reflected back at him by bare, metallic bulkheads, he went suddenly
cold to the core. The only 'merchanter' he could imagine near the
site of a major battle against the Syndicate would be the Marity,
command of the skip-runner and criminal MacKenzie James. 'Get me a
registry number,' Jensen snapped through stabbing discomfort. 'Or
lacking that, scan for specs.'
    Beckett read back the requested information in her usual sexless
voice.
    'Marity,' Jensen confirmed. And his manner held an edge that his
crew had never known.

On the dimly lit bridge of the Marity, the mate Gibsen raised baleful
hazel eyes to his captain. 'Mac, they aren't minded to be sportsmen,
this morning. The portside plasma turret is rotating our way.'
    'Beats hell out of being overlooked,' Mac James said laconically.
'Now give 'em something to chase.'
    Gibsen's narrow features lit in a grin, red-tinged by the lights
of his console. 'Lead them on by the nose, you mean.' His delight did
not fade through the split-second interval as he played his controls
with a touch his Fleet counterpart aboard Kildare would have sworn on
his scrotum was wizardry.

Beckett patently refused the belief that the Marity was anything
other than a hard-used private hauler; she argued loudly up to the
point when her screens displayed a maneuver that should by Marity's
aged specs have destroyed the integrity of her hull. Caught
midsentence in denial, the corn officer paused, closed her heavy jaw,
then recited the formula that outlined the effects of inertia upon
the Marity's supposed limitations. 'Bits,' she finished heatedly. 'We
should be looking at flying bits of wreckage.'
    Cracked ribs prevented Jensen from rounding on her in a fury. As
a result, his instructions to his pilot came out with unintentional
control. 'Tail her. And set our coils charging for transit to FTL.

269
If Marity's going to jump, we jump with her, or blow our coil
condensers trying.'
    'Bloody hells, Commander, whatever for!' interjected Beckett.
'We've an assigned post, and despite the provocation, I see no reason
to abandon our position.'
    Jensen moved a foot and swiveled his chair toward her. He glared
the length of the bare, functional bridge compartment. 'Are you
questioning my direct order?' he demanded with a rage that burned
entirely inward; his face stayed deadpan, and his eyes, unflinchingly
level.
    Beckett's rough complexion reddened. 'I question unreasonable
judgment.' Nonplussed, her huge hand flicked the switch that assured
her words would be monitored and incorporated into the ship's
official course log.
    The fresh-faced ensign beyond her followed the exchange with an
interest that could damn, if the issue ever came to court-martial.
    Frostily stiff, Jensen said to his pilot, 'Carry on, Sarchev.
Follow the Marity.'
     Later, when the craft of MacKenzie James initiated FTL, the
Kildare followed suit.

'Hooked,' murmured Gibsen when the queer hesitation in human time-
sense passed, and the darkness of FTL settled like a hood over both
of the Marity's analog screens. 'Your boy commander's taken the
bait.'
    On the adjacent chair, which had a tendency to leak its stuffing
out of several haphazardly stitched rips, Mac James turned his blunt-
featured face. Red-lit by the array of the Marity's instruments, he
showed the smile of a sated predator. He flexed his coil-scarred
fingers with the method of old habit and murmured, 'After the tangle
we made of Jensen's plot at Chalice station, did you ever think that
he wouldn't?'
    Gibsen lounged back in his crew chair, his long-lashed eyes
deeply thoughtful. He did not say what he felt, that the more you
messed with a man's obsessions, the more dangerous he was likely to
become. The corollary required no emphasis: Jensen's hatred of
MacKenzie James was no longer rooted in sanity.

270
On the control bridge of Kildare, Communications Officer Beckett
whacked a ham fist against her thigh. 'You're crazy, and a goddamned
danger to all of us.'
    Jensen regarded her outburst with no other reaction beyond a
blink. 'Question my authority one more time, and I'll see you
stripped of your rank.'
    His total absence of passion was all that made Beckett back down.
Surrounded by taut stillness that gripped the two other crew members
present, she looked down and fiddled a few adjustments on her board.
The next instant the chime that signaled departure from FTL sounded
across silence.
    'Short hop,' murmured Kildare's pilot, and the next instant
everybody on the flight deck had their hands full.
    The engineer called in to report a power failure in the main
drive. 'Coil leakage,' he said tersely. 'No way of predicting the
stress crack that caused it. But FTL's a closed option until the
system's been drained and patched.'
    Even as Jensen drew a pained breath to express his annoyance,
Beckett delivered worse news: their precipitous flight after Marity
had landed them all but on top of the leading edge of a war fleet.
'Identify,' Jensen snapped back.
    The greenie ensign did so, in tones surprisingly steady.
'Syndicate, sir. On a projected course toward Khalia.' He would have
added the pertinent facts, concerning numbers of dreadnoughts and
formation, but Jensen's next order prevented it.'Where's Marity?'
    'Sir?' Now the ensign's voice did quaver. Naively inexperienced,
and fearful of questioning a senior officer, he added, 'We should
inform Fleet Command, sir. The skip-runner's presence is secondary to
the defense of Khalia.'
    'Mac James's presence indicates involvement with the enemy,'
Jensen replied with a patience he did not feel. 'Now find me Marity,
fast, because in case you've forgotten your notes, draining the coils
means we'll be without shields. We're a sitting duck right now for a
trigger-happy skip-runner, and that's our first concern.'
    Almost in defiance, Beckett stabbed at her board. The analog
screen flashed in response and gave back an image of scuffed paint
and rust-flaked vanes, and the faded letters of a registry code that
the years had weathered unintelligible. 'She's off our bow,' Beckett
added sardonically. 'Close enough to be in bed with, and right

27I
where we have no weapon to bear, and where our attitude control
systems are too perfectly crippled to maneuver. That's not luck. I'd
say this was a prearranged trap.'
    She did not belabor the point that Kildare was well within range
to be detected by the approaching fleet. Despite the fact that she
was a conversion from the private sector, Kildare's weaponry specs
readily identified her as a Fleet vessel. In seconds rather than
minutes the Kildare and her crew of seven would be nothing better
than a target.
    The particulars of that dilemma had scarcely registered when a
voice horned in through the security net that should have kept
Kildare's com bands shielded from outside interference.
    'Commander, I'd say your survival options are limited to one,'
came an intrusive drawl that made the skin on Jensen's arms roughen
to gooseflesh. He knew the inflection, would recognize that grainy
timbre anywhere for the voice of MacKenzie James. 'Unless you'd
rather get slagged by a plasma charge,' the skiprunner captain
continued, 'I'd advise that you surrender your vessel unconditionally
to me.'
    Jensen's jaw muscles knotted. The moment held clarity like a
snapshot, preserved in time by preternatural awareness of the bridge
compartment, with its gray drab walls flecked with lights thrown off
by the controls, and set in that dance of shadow and reflection, the
faces of his officers, all staring. The pilot wore a stupid
expression of surprise; the set of Beckett's outsized jaw showed
cynicism; but of them all the greenie ensign was worst, with his
wide-eyed, choked-back fear that implied utmost faith in his
commander's ability to produce a miracle.
    Feeling the stabbing ache of his ribs and a gut-deep hatred that
made him shake, Jensen licked white lips. When he did not
immediately speak, the voice of MacKenzie James elaborated. 'Boy,
you'd better decide fast.'
    'Damn you,' Jensen cracked back, though with no channel open Mac
James could not hear.
    Beckett said nothing. The ensign looked near to panic, as his awe
of his superior officer became shattered before his eyes. Only
Kildare's pilot managed the wits to speak. 'The skip-runner could be
bluffing. He's got no protection, either, and the whole Syndicate
fleet is bearing down.'
Which was not only naive, but stupid, Jensen raged inwardly.
MacKenzie James never backed himself into corners, except by clearest
design. This skip-runner had sold Fleet secrets to goddamn Syndicate
spies, and since he was uncannily reliable when it came to
trafficking classified material out of the Alliance, the enemy
dreadnoughts bearing down on Khalia were unlikely to advertise their
presence merely to take out a contact likely to be useful against the
Fleet. Nor would they blink at a prize ship stolen from an adversary.
Wise to the ways of the skip-runner and determined to stay alive to
best him, Jensen gave the only answer that left him any opening.
    'I surrender the Kildare and all her crew to the master of
Marity, without condition.' Through the heat of his own humiliation,
Jensen was aware of his ensign trying desperately not to cry, and a
glare of vitriolic contempt from Communications Officer Beckerr.

Mac James's pilot had the hands of a monkey when it came to
dismantling a control board. His narrow, sensitive fingers could
reach and unhitch and disconnect circuitry behind narrow, cramped
panels that by rights should have invited curses. Gibsen whistled,
oblivious.
    The sound set Jensen's teeth on edge, as did the quiet,
deliberate voice of Mac James as he commandeered a communications
console as yet unmolested by Gibsen's tinkering. It did not matter to
Kildare's former commander that the skip-runner, of his own volition,
was following through with the duty first urged by the baby-faced
ensign now bound and gagged in the back bay of the flight deck. That
the message torp bearing word of the Syndicate fleet's vector toward
Khalia was fired away under Commander Jensen's own codes did not
matter; that Admiral Duane would receive the communication in time to
give Fleet forces the edge in
the coming battle to preserve the Khalian planets did not matter.
Jensen's mind centered on one thought.
    MacKenzie James was a criminal. He did not act out of heroism,
but only callous self-interest. If he wanted Khalia defended, that
could only be because the two-faced Weasels who'd surrendered made a
healthy, lucrative market for traffic in illicit weapons. Gunrunning
being second only to state and military secrets on the list of Mac
James's transgressions, Marity would be involved to her top vanes.
Jensen stared at the stubble of hair that furred

273
the crown of the skip-runner captain's head, just visible over the
com station. Hatred and rage had both given way to a patience
unforgiving as stone.
    Tied to his own command chair, unmoved by Beckett's grunts of
discomfort from the corner where she lay bound alongside Kildare's
ensign and pilot, Jensen waited in motionless tension like a snake
coiled before prey.
Gibsen muttered a query from behind an opened cowling. 'Gun turrets
next,' Mac James said in drawllessly succinct reply. 'We'll want the
coil regulator and the magneto banks, but leave life-support
intact.' The salt-and-pepper crown of hair disappeared briefly as Mac
James leaned forward to toggle a switch. His next instructions to his
mate were buried under a drift of garble from
the corn, most likely cross-chat on a Syndicate command channel.
Jensen ground his teeth.
    Gibsen straightened with his hands full of circuit boards; and
the foreign speech paused in an inflection that framed a question.
MacKenzie James answered in the same lingo, and the response that
came back was mixed with laughter.
    There followed an infuriating interval while Gibsen and his skip-
runner captain stripped the Kildare with sure, no-nonsense
efficiency. Jensen found the pain of cracked ribs less intrusive than
the pain of humiliation. He sat, strapped helpless on his own flight
deck, un. able to face away from the analog screen somebody had
carelessly left operational - the screen that showed the passage of
the Syndicate fleet bound to attack the planet Khalia, dreadnoughts
and their fighters arrayed in formation like some grand, silent
procession.
    A few of the behemoths winked their running lights in salute of
the Marity and her latest act of sabotage against the Fleet.
    Blackly murderous, Jensen chafed at the lashing on his wrists. He
considered a thousand ways to kill the skip-runner captain MacKenzie
James, all of them lingeringly bloody.
    The Syndicate fleet departed, leaving the black of space on the
analog screen. Hours passed. Jensen's hands were numb. His full
bladder became a torment. His wrists stung and his shoulders ached,
and his ears had long since stopped hearing the thump and bump, and
the hiss of flushed air from the lock belowdecks as the Kildare's
heavier components were off-loaded to the hold on board Marity. The
tap of footsteps coming and going ceased,

274
replaced by one incongruously light tread recognizable as that of
MacKenzie James.
    At the entry to the bridge he paused, and called instructions to
his mate and pilot. 'Go back to Marity and power up the coils.
Syndicate's about reached Khalia by now, and when they find Duane
there to give a hot welcome, I want to be gone from this system.'
Gibsen said something that rang with cheerful sarcasm.
    Then MacKenzie James strode across the metal floor plates,
rounded the central bulkhead that divided the rear half of the bridge
into two compartments, and ended by looking down at the commander
still strapped to the central crew chair. He studied Jensen with an
intensity that unnerved. For once, Mac's coil-scarred hands were
still. A faded, much creased coverall covered his muscled shoulders,
the cuffs unhooked and turned back where they'd bound at sinewed
wrists through the hours of hanging in the wreckage waiting to spring
the trap. Although the only one of Kildare's original crew without a
gag, Jensen waited for the skip-runner to speak first.
    'Boy, the message torp giving the Syndicate war fleet's vector to
Khalia went out under your codes. For that, your brass might overlook
the fact that you were careless enough to get your ship boarded and
stripped. If you've got the guts and the glibness to lay your story
right.'
    Jensen regarded the captain he reviled with every fiber of his
being. His career standing did not trouble him. That concern would
arise later. Now, only one question burned to be answered. Staring
into an expression like chipped granite, Jensen asked, 'Why should
you send that message torp? You're not a man who does favors on
principle.'
    Mac James gave back a rogue's grin that harbored little humor.
'Who else could have done the job and been ignored through the
passage of the entire Syndicate attack fleet?'Unsatisfied, Jensen
said nothing.
    ]'he coil-scarred fingers flexed, one by one in succession with
the familiarity of long-established habit. Mac James qualified on a
note of dubious sincerity, 'Say I didn't want Khalia scragged.'
    'Did it have to do with your market for illicit weapons?' Jensen
demanded, burningly fierce.
The most-wanted skip-runner captain in space awarded his

275
adversary a half shrug of dismissal. 'You have one outstanding asset,
boy. Your thinking is simplistically accurate.'
    Since the comment was the last that Jensen might have
anticipated, he was left without ready reioinder.
    Untouchable, untraceable, and infuriatingly confident, MacKenzie
James turned on his heel. He stepped off the stripped bridge of the
Kildare and departed through the lock for his transfer back to
Marity. Moments later the same accursed analog screen showed the
skip-runner ship's departure.
    Yet the last word came over the corn channel the captain had
deliberately left open.
    'You have no propulsion system, no firepower, and no
communication or navigational equipment left aboard,' observed the
blunt tones of Mac James. 'However, in the aft console where message
torps are stored, you'll find one Gibsen left behind. That should be
sufficient to see you rescued, when the fight winds down over
Khalia.' A m'oment later the skip-runner captain added an
afterthought: 'Oh, yes, and your engineer, is it Officer Dax? He's
locked in the emergency escape capsule. You'll want to let him out.
Apparently he pissed off my mate some, and the air supply in the
capsule was left off...'

It was Cael, one of the laser crew, who worked out of his bonds
first. Lanky, sallow, and looking as if he'd worn the same coverall
for a week, he arrived on the bridge in an excited gush of talk.
'Can't find Dax,' he said breathlessly as he cut Jensen's hands free.
'Damned skip-runner must've abducted him, or killed him, or
something, because he's not in any of the compartments. Jesus, you
should see what's happened down there. Ship's got no guts left, I
swear. Stripped down to her coils, which leak, and are useless
anyway.'
    'Cael,' said Jensen, standing stiffly due to discomfort and an
icy vista of fury. 'Kindly be silent and cut your fellow officers
free.'
    The next thing Cael chose to cut was Beckett's gag, which from
Jensen's point of view was a mistake. She never did keep her mouth
shut.
    'You won't get away with this, Commander,' she said, between
hawking sour spittle from her throat. 'That message torp to Fleet
won't bring you farts for a citation, because I'm going to see you
burn. You surrendered a Fleet vessel to a goddamned skip-runner,

276
saw her stripped to her pins without a fight, and now you think to
profit by it? Guess again.'
    Slapped awake from his obsessive desire to see MacKenzie James
dead and rotting, Jensen simply stared at her. He did not notice the
looks given him by the ensign, nor the baffled curiosity of the
gunman who paused in his ministrations to the pilot. In a tone of
velvet quiet, the commander said, 'Carry on with your duties. I'm
going down to free Dax.'
    Jensen strode coolly from Kildare's bridge. From the moment he
rounded the bulkhead, his crew burst into excited talk, but he did
not hear. Sprinting full tilt for the access hatch to the lower
level, he thought only upon how to save his career. Beckett was an
unanticipated problem. Damn her for having no ambition whatsoever.
Damn her for being a stickler for protocol. Old for her post, she'd
probably never been promoted because the officers she'd served under
hated her.
    But deep down, Jensen knew that Beckett was only a fraction ~f
the problem. Even if the other five members of the crew went along
with a falsified story, how long before that greenie ensign or that
all-thumbs pilot talked over their beer?
Involved in furious thought, Jensen hurried on.
    Around the bend, past the gutted remains of the drive
compartment, Jensen nearly collided with the other member of his gun
crew. 'Rogers,' he said, trying not to wince at the stab of pain from
his cracked ribs. 'The rest of the crew are on the bridge. Join them
and wait for my return.'
    'Aye, sir,' said Rogers, his corpulent, ruddy features showing no
curiosity at all. Cael often said he only came alive under his
headset, with a live target in front of him.
    Just then, Jensen was grateful for one crewman who was content
with a stolid outlook. He ducked down a side corridor that narrowed
into a tube. The light panels were out, lending a gray, echoing
ghostliness to a downward plunge into dark. Kildare's conversion had
been too hasty for aesthetics; her gratings were blessedly bare.
Jensen found the access panel by feel and tapped out the security
code. A panel hissed open. Striped black and yellow, and glinting
with reflective tape, the last remaining message torp rested
untouched in its cradle, exactly as MacKenzie James had said.
Jensen lifted it out, grunting at the pain as cracked ribs protested

277
the exertion. He hefted the capsule to his sound side, but found the
effort a waste. The strain on the muscles called on to hold his body
erect against the off-balancing weight hurt him just as much.
    Breathing with all the tenderness he could manage and hating the
fact his eyes watered from the effort, Jensen inched his way back
down the access tube. He'd have to cross the main bay, which was
probably unlighted, and that was the moment he'd be vulnerable if any
of his crew chanced to stray from the flight deck.
    The lights proved to be on, which was infinitely worse; Jensen
felt exposed as he crossed the open expanse. His hands shook, and his
fingers left sweaty prints on the reflective strips of the message
torp. He pressed on, toward the shadowed alcove with its reflective
emergency emblem.

The escape ejection.capsule's lock cracked open with a faint hiss and
an escape of stale air. Grt~nting despite his best effort as he
ducked, Jensen pushed his way inside, the message torp tucked across
his knees. He elbowed the plate that would light the interior, and
saw what looked like a bundle of rags in one corner. The seeping red
stains in the cloth belied that assessment.
    Jensen set down the torp, shifted, and light from the overhead
flooded over his shoulder to reveal the engineer, Dak, bound, gagged,
and rolled up in a shivering ball. The knuckles visible through the
strapping on his hands and wrists were grazed, and he had a gash on
one knee, an elbow, and the curve of one ache-dotted cheek. His eyes,
which were blue and bugged out, swiveled in surprise at the sight of
his commander. He moaned something that had the ring of obscenity
into his gag and thrashed determinedly at his bonds.
    Preternaturally aware of the access hatch gapped open at his
back, Jensen whispered urgently for silence.
    'Hostiles are still aboard,' he lied as he stooped over the
battered engineer. He began with the wrist bonds and whispered into
the ear that poked over the edge of the gag. 'We're in very deep
trouble.'
    Dak flexed his freed hands and gave Jensen a wide-eyed look of
sarcasm. His first words, as his gag came loose, were 'No kidding.'
    Jensen let some of the anger he felt toward MacKenzie James leak
into his voice. 'Crew's all dead. Without quarter.'

278
    That shut Dak up, fast. Sealed in the escape capsule, he'd had no
clue as to what had befallen. He stared in shocked horror as his
senior officer continued.
    'They spared me so they could pump me for security codes and
information,' Jensen fabricated. He paused, made a show of staring at
his hands, which were abraded and raw from his constant twisting at
the ties that lashed him to the crew chair. 'I talked some, mostly as
a ploy. The skip-runners thought I was scared and didn't view me as a
threat. They tied me less carefully than they might have, and I
managed to work free.' Now Jensen raised his eyes and stared
ingenuously at his engineer. 'We need to blow the ship,' he confided.
'Take out those skip-runners before they have a chance to use my
codes against the Fleet, or to make off with Kildare as a prize.'
    'They were going to leave me to suffocate!' Dak burst out in a
fury.                                                -
    Nervelessly, Jensen played along. 'No doubt.' He allowed a moment
for the unpleasantness of that concept to register, then gently
prodded for what he wanted. 'I need you, Dak. We're stripped of all
energy sources but that cracked coil unit, and somehow we need to
destroy Kildare.'
    Dak's face grew thoughtful, almost boyish as he considered the
problem. 'Shouldn't be too difficult,' he surmised, his knobby
fingers tapping his agitation. 'The crack's making the unit unstable
anyway. All we need to do is play a current through it. Should create
a critical imbalance on short order.' He ruminated for a moment,
chewing his lip. 'Trouble is, once I start the sequence, there won't
be any faibsafe. Kildare will explode, and nothing we do could stop
the process.'
    'You'd rather die at the hands of the skip-runners?' Jensen said
brutally.
    Dak shrugged. 'Rather not die at all, truth to tell. But I guess
this is our best chance.'
    Jensen settled back with a show of relief that was not entirely
feigned. q'11 see you commended in my report, for courageous duty to
the Fleet.'
    For a moment Dak looked wistful. 'My room would appreciate that.
If we ever get through this alive.'
    Jensen nodded. As his back settled against the console of the
escape capsule, he made a point of wincing over his cracked

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ribs. 'I've brought a message torp,' he said thinly. 'When you get
back from sabotaging the coils, we'll launch the capsule without
engines. If we're lucky, drift will carry us clear before the skip-
runner notices. When we know we're away, the torp will call in a
rescue.'
    At the crucial moment Dak's childish face looked uncertain. 'I
hate to go out,' he allowed. He dabbed at the gash on his knee and
made a face. 'That damned skip-runner's mate fights dirty.'
    Cloaked in the icy air of command, Jensen held back a sigh. 'I
won't remind you of the need to keep out of sight.'
    'I don't ever wake up their husbands,' Dak admonished dryly. 'Be
sure of it, I'll be damned quiet.' He folded his awkward assortment
of limbs, slipped past, and sauntered off into the main bay with his
lips curled in a nervous grimace.
    Left alone in the stuffy confines of the capsule, Jensen readied
the panel for takeoff. Mic James had left all the systems
operational, which was well, for he had no intention of leaving the
Kildare by drift. He'd go under power, and fast as he could manage,
and he'd watch his command blow from space. That his crew were to die
without quarter caused his hands to shake only slightly.
    He'd weighed his options and decided without regret. The ghosts
of a greenie ensign, and that dried-up bitch Beckett, a gun crew, and
an incompetent pilot would not haunt him half so much as a career
despoiled by court-martial.
     That Dak had to be duped was a pity. The kid was a gifted
engineer ....

In a cubicle office of Special Services, a thin man with a dry
complexion thumbed through the report. The lines that described
Jensen's story were straightforward enough - that Kildare had been
commandeered by the skip-runner MacKenzie James, her crew murdered
without quarter, and only her commander kept alive, for purposes of
interrogation. With his vessel taken in tow to rendezvous with the
Syndicate fleet, Commander Jensen had contrived escape, fired off the
warning message torp to Admiral Duane's fleet, then arranged to
scuttle Kildare. He had been rescued from his escape capsule, forty-
eight hours after the battle off Khalia, in battered condition with
several cracked ribs.
Cloth rustled as a short man seated in the corner shifted

280
his weight. 'The boy's lying outright. Mac James never kills
unnecessarily.'
    The thin man's silence offered agreement. He thumbed the corner
of the report for a moment before shuffling the pages straight.
    The short man felt moved to clarify. 'The security codes on the
warning torp were Jensen's, but Mac James's personal cipher was
appended. I say he's still alive, and that Commander Jensen destroyed
his ship to hide evidence detrimental to himself.'
    The thin man stirred at last. 'MacKenzie James is undoubtedly
still alive. But the promotion to captain that's coming to Jensen
cannot be stopped without blowing Mac's cover. With the Syndicate
families being the threat that they are, l'm reluctant to call down a
public hero. The people need the morale boost. And Mac's far too
valuable a contact to waste just to bring a murderer to trial.' 'Let
it pass, then?' the short man concluded.
    'No.' The word held the hardness of nails. 'Give Jensen a fi'le
in our records. He might prove useful someday.'

28~
That Way Lies Camelot

The May sunlight that fell through the window was serene enough to
trigger a violence of resentment and hurt. Lynn Allen hurled a
sodder~, crumb-gritty sponge in the sink and ran her fingers through
hair that fell thick to her shoulders, in neglected need of a cut.
Childless, stil~ single at thirty-three, she held little enough in
common with a younger sister whose pretty, homey kitchen reflected
family cheer at every turn. And what could anybody say to comfort a
sibling who was divorced, a mother of three, with her eldest just
barely twelve and lying in a coma, not expected to last out the day?
Words failed. Despair raged in like flood tide.
    Wretched with the helplessness that overran them all over Sandy's
terminal illness, Lynn blinked and roused and wiped damp palms on her
jeans. She tried to regroup, to recover a grip on the immediate,
while at the end of the gravel drive outside, a school
bus slowed to a grind of gears; stopped to a squeal of brakes. The
front door banged.
    'Damn it!' Raw with exasperation, Lynn repeated the same check
she'd completed five minutes earlier. There'd been no forgotten books
or sweaters in the breakfast nook then; she hadn't overlooked a
misplaced brown bag lunch. No dab hand with kids, she'd thought she'd
done miracles to get her nephews out the door on time for school
without their incessant bickering firing her temper.
    In typically eight-year-old smugness, Tony hollered bad news from
the hallway. 'Dog pen's empty, Aunt Lynn! Grail's run off again.'
    And the front door, left open, wafted air strongly scented with
bursting pre-summer greenery. The patter of the boy's running

282
sneakers diminished down the porch stair as he raced headlong toward
the waiting bus.
    'Damned stupid flea-bag of a mutt!' Lynn clenched her fists,
feeling sloppy and out of synch in clothes more suited for weekend
picnics. The dog's timing couldn't be worse; and worse, couldn't be
helped. He would have to be rounded up before he finished dining from
the neighbor's upset trash cans, and nosed out more original mischief
that would incite some busybody's complaint to the county dog
catchers. Ragged already from grief and exhaustion, Ann was shortly
going to be coping with the funeral of a son. Given hassles with the
insurance company over hospital expenses worth more than her house,
the last thing she needed would be another fine for an unleashed pet.
    The dog was Sandy's, after all. Obligation to a child, who could
not be spared by all the torments of modern medicine, would invoke
motherly sentiment by the bucket. The scrofulous yellow hound, with
its torn ear and its ridiculous shambling gait, would be redeemed. An
ounce of common sense suggested the creature should be better off
abandoned to be humanely destroyed.
    Through the window, washed in early, blinding brightness, Lynn
saw Tony's neon jacket disappear inside the doorway of the bus.
Brian, just ten, had boarded already. One problem less, with the boys
off her hands; which left the damnfool dog. Lynn moved mechanically
to the closet and snatched the first jacket to hand, an anorak that
was baggy and grease-stained enough to have belonged to Annie's ex.
She grimaced and pulled the thing on. It felt worse than her face,
which any other day would have been tastefully made up for her work
as design manager for a New York advertising firm.
    But her job, as well as the tacked together appointments she
called a social life, had been wrenched to a halt by Sandy's relapse.
The event had impelled her to acts of insanity: to cash in her unused
vacation time and leave the office in a hair-pulling rush.
    Her boss's shouting troubled her yet. 'There might not be any job
here for you, whenever the hell you get back!'
    And her reply, as filled with female bitchiness as any chauvinist
could wish, to find fault for firing her later: 'My nephew is ill,
and l'm driving to New Hampshire to help my sister. If you've got a
problem with that, then take my resignation in writing, sideways,
down the first orifice you can reach.'

283
    She'd slammed the office door upon a thunderstruck, stupefied
silence; and although she'd stayed absent for a month and sent no
word, nobody from the firm so much as phoned.
    Presently on her knees in the silvery pile of Annie's living room
carpet, Lynn smothered a halfway hysterical laugh. Just now the
convolutions of high-pressure employment seemed a picnic, beside the
daily management of young boys, and keeping tabs on one alley-bred
mutt. She scrounged under the coffee table, careful not to upset the
empty pizza box with its cache of stale crumbs, and stretched to
rescue her sneakers. These had somehow been kicked so far underneath
the sofa they were wedged against the back strut. Grunting other
inexpressible frustrations in epithets over the dog, she sauntered
across waxed wooden floors and expensive orientals to the doorway,
still open and decorated with a wreath that had Easter eggs wired in
withered sprigs of hemlock.
    The decoration had stayed up, forgotten, in the crush of concerns
that followed Sandy's sudden onset of infections and the ugly,
inescapable diagnosis that every agonizing scientific remedy had
bought little more time, and no cure.
    Lynn crossed the white and green painted New England porch,
squinted through light that hurt, and dissected the muddle of shade
cast by a privet hedge whose wild growth reflected the absence of a
husband. Though the fence wasn't torn, and the wire gate on its
sagging hinges was still wrapped shut with chain, the dog's pen stood
deserted. The infamous Grail had departed on another of his happy
gallivants.
    She sighed. Grail. What a stupid name for an ungainly mutt that
loped like a roll of discarded shag carpet, propped askew on four
legs. A creature nobody would have wanted, in right mind or not; but
as a shambling stray towed home on a length of twine that showed
signs of its salvage from the gutter, he had not been easily refused.
Not when his plight had been championed by Sandy, who had sneaked
outside unseen, still shaky and pale from the effects of his
chemotherapy treatments. The huge eyes and gaunt face of leukemia in
remission had overturned practicality, which would have been fine if
the idiot dog had been content to enjoy his good fortune.
    But the mongrel was friendly and brainless, and possessed by a
penchant for wandering. He chewed through ropes, dug under wire
fences, then progressed to other escape methods as unfathomable

284
in their art as Houdini's. It had been grandfather Thomas who had
called the creature Grail; the name stuck because of his young
owner's obsession for Arthurian legend, and for the hours the whole
family spent in Godforsaken searches that seemed as regular and
futile as crusades.
    'Do us all a service and charge in front of a delivery truck,'
Lynn grumbled to the creature's absent spirit. She kicked a stone and
hiked after its savage ricochet down the drive. Over the grit and
sparkle of gravel left mounded by the melt of last season's
snowdrifts, she rounded the hedge toward the neighbor's yard.
    Charlie Mitchell still wore his bathrobe, sash and hem flapping
as he ill-temperedly chased down a bread wrapper caught by the wind.
The trash can stood righted amid a chewed litter of The Colonel's
colored packaging. Obviously Grail had feasted and departed. Poised
to beat a quick retreat, Lynn moved too late.
    White hair askew and pajama cuffs grayed from the dew, Charlie
pounced on the plastic. He gave a crow of triumph, swiveled around,
and realized in embarrassment that his antics had been observed.
Flustered by his unaccustomed burst of exercise, he called in carping
irritation, 'Damned dog lit off for the woods an hour ago! Get wise
and buy him a chain, can't you? It's illegal to shoot dogs out of
hand in this state. Or by God, I'd have loaded my shotgun and blown
the mutt to the devil.'
    Lynn choked back excuses that a chain had failed already. Grail's
brainless skull was narrow like a snake's, and collars slid off him
like so many layers of shed skin. The chain, hacked off a foot from
its swivel clip, now fastened an equally useless gate. She produced a
polite apology for her sister's sake, and returned in resignation
toward the house.
    Inside, cut off from the gusty freshness of bursting azaleas and
tulips, the rooms were sun-washed and silent. The waxed antiques and
stylish hardwoods seemed too warm with life, their expensive comforts
disjointed by a wider setting of tragedy. Lynn gritted her teeth
unconsciously as she passed by Sandy's room, with its counterpane
bedspread and clutterless floors, all too painfully neat. Unlike
Tony, who slept like a hot dog in a bun, Sandy tended to rip his
bedclothes off wholesale and leave them tousled in heaps. Photos of
medieval castles lined the walls, as well as an old poster, lovingly
framed, from a stage production of Camelot. The books and toy knights
were not scattered across the rugs, nor arrayed for

285
a charge against Saxons. They sat ranked in rows on the shelf, helms
and ribboned trappings dulled by a layer of soft dust. As if Sandy's
boisterous presence had been subdued, reduced already to a shadow
that diminished the vibrance of his memory. Lynn pressed a hand to
her mouth and hurried the length of the hallway, her track
automatically bending to avoid the clutter of the younger boys' toys.
    But the desk in the corner of the master bedroom offered no haven
at all.
    Lynn sat, elbows crackling in stacks of envelopes that showed not
a curlicue of Annie's idle doodles. The mail lay as it had come,
unopened, or else torn apart in fierce bursts, contents rifled for
information. Nor~h sky through the casement blued the oblong,
windowed cellophane; the return addresses of medical labs and
oncologists, printed starkly in thermographed typefaces only
preferred anymore by doctors, lawyers, and funeral homes.
    Off to one side, bent-cornered and half buried, lay the unsent
application for the charity that granted the wishes of terminally ill
children. Only the blanks that related to Sandy's condition were
filled out; the doctors' signatures meticulously collected in heavy-
handed, near illegible scrawls. The last sentences, in defiant
schoolboy printing, requested a visit to the Round Table of King
Arthur. After that, untilled lines stretched in rows. The memory
still cut, of the aftermath, with Ann driven to the edge. 'My God,
Lynn. Sandy's old enough to know that a trip to the past is
impossible!'
    At this desk, in this chair, Ann had sat white-faced over the
pens and the papers gathered up from the kitchen table. She wept in
despairing exasperation that the one wish her boy chose to long for
was beyond human resource to fulfill.
    Later, around the rubber-soled tread of busy nurses and the
unending interruptions of hospital routine, they tried to coax Sandy
to reconsider. Donated funds could send kids to Disney World, let
them play with circus clowns, allow them to meet famous rock stars,
or tour the set of a movie. But sending a boy back to King Arthur's
court was just not a practical aspiration.
    Too thin, too pale, his scrawny hand clenched on the wrist that
had bruised red and purple from too close acquaintance with needles,
Sandy stayed adamant. He would see Camelot, or go nowhere at all.
Lynn swore and blinked back tears. It wasn't as if they couldn't

286
have sent the kid to a Renaissance fair, or a summertime re-creation
staged by the Society for Creative Anachronism. Yet Sandy scorned the
idea of a staged joust. He wanted real chivalry, and swords that drew
blood, as if the savage bright danger of a legendary past could
negate the horrors he endured through his illness.
    'You know,' he confided to his mother, 'men got hurt in Arthur's
time, and suffered wounds, and it was for a cause. Knights died for
other people, Morn. I hurt, and I'll die too, but nobody will be
better or get saved.'
    A boy's view: more than just desire, that leapt reason's
restraint and became dreaming obsession. The tissue of tears and
salvation for him; agony to the family he'd leave behind. Ann had
pulled a tissue from her purse, blown her nose, and put the subiect
behind as best she could. She gave Sandy a hug and insisted it
probably didn't matter anyway, as grants to bring joy to terminally
ill children usually were awarded to cystic fibrosis cases. Leukemia,
these days, was considered the less devastating disease.Not Sandy's
aggressive form, this was true.
    Battered by platitudes that even the child could sense were
meaningless, Sandy never complained. Colorless as the pillows he lay
on, his features made over into an eerie, premature old age by the
hair loss caused by his treatments, he had comforted his mother by
pretending most diligently to forget.
    Now, stung to useless fury by this fortitude, Lynn plowed aside
the paper clutter that mapped a child's last month of life. She
grabbed the phone and jabbed numbers fiercely.
    The line rang once. Ann answered. She sounded beat to her socks.
Lynn made a failed attempt to sound cheerful. 'Still there?'
    A wrung out sigh came back. 'Still there. At least he still shows
breathing and a heartbeat.' A pause, as Annie roused enough to take
worried notice of the time. 'Did Brian miss the bus?'
    Lynn blinked faster, and felt tears trace hot lines down her
cheeks. She could not, so easily, brush away the vision in her mind,
of Sandy lying lost in a sea of adult-sized sheets, his wasted form
diminished by the monitors and the tubes, overhanging his bed like
modern-time carrion vultures awaiting his moment of death. 'Brian and
Tony are at school, and fine. I called because Grail's got out.'
    An interval of shared exasperation. 'That dog. He's probably
picking the chicken bones out of Charlie Mitchell's trash. You'd

287
think the old coot would spend a few bucks and buy cans with lids
that fit. The ones he hangs onto are a lunch invitation to coons and
every other passing animal.'
    'Grail ate the trash already. Now he's run off to the woods.' The
unspoken question dangled - should Lynn abandon the mutt and drive to
the hospital, or embark on a cross-country bushwhack?
    'You'd better find him, I suppose.' In the background, over the
faintly heard tones of a nurse and a doctor conversing, Ann said,
'Just a minute.' A muffled roar as her hand smothered the receiver.
She came back, tiredly resigned. 'There's little enough to do here,
anyway.'
    'Hang on,' said Lynn. 'I'11 join you soon as I can.' She dropped
the receiver in its cradle, swearing like a sailor, because at that
moment she hated life. She ached from sad certainty that Ann wanted
her off to find the dog because even now she held out for a miracle.
Outraged motherhood would not accept that Sandy's final hour must
happen soon. He would not wake up, recover, and come home; but as
long as life still lingered, it was unthinkable to Ann not to have a
dog waiting, to bark and lick Sandy's hands in greeting.
    'Damn, damn, damn,' said Lynn, her eyes now dry to her fury, and
her insides clenched in misery. 'There ought to be a law against
mothers outliving their children.'
    But there was no law, beyond the one outside the window, in
cycles eternally unaffected. Nature wove all of spring's fabric of
rebirth, in the flight of nesting barn swallows, and in the sunlight
falling immutably gold over maples crowned with unfolded leaves.
    Lynn shoved up from the desk, returned to the kitchen, and dug
through the clutter of children's drawings and coupons for the spare
ring of keys. She locked up a house made cozy for living, but that
echoed empty as a tomb. She slammed the door, set the dead bolt, and
crossed the back yard to the woods in a blaze of targetless anger.
For Ann, and for Sandy's memory, she'd find the blasted dog. Grail
was the sort who tore up great grouts of earth with his hind feet
just after he defecated. Assuredly no tracker, Lynn nonetheless could
not miss the divots chopped out of the grass and raked in showers
across the patio as evidence of Grail's blithe passage. A smeared
print or two remained in the mud by the swing-set; these pointed
unerringly into the shade, and should have been

288
companioned by the sneaker treads of a young boy, were it Saturday,
and Sandy not mortally ill.
    Lynn crossed the dried weeds that edged the sandbox. Dandelions
pushed yellow heads through the stalks of last year's burdock. The
woods lay beyond, and through them, well trodden by young boys, was
the path that led to the fort they had built out of sticks. The
birches threw out new leaves, pale lit in sunlight as doubloons. The
path was strewn with the drying wings of fallen maple seeds, and
snarled mats of rotted twigs. If a dog had passed, nose to ground on
the scent of a possum or hot after the tails of running squirrels, no
sign remained. The path dipped toward the stream, the soft, moss-
grown banks speared by unfurling shoots of skunk cabbage, and ranked
on drier soil, the half-spread umbrellas of May apples. Across the
narrow current lay the fort. Lynn paused. Naturally the water was
high at this season, last summer's stepping stones washed out or
submerged.
    A fallen log offered the only crossing and an exercise in balance
not attempted since childhood. Hesitation over a patch of wet bark
cost her a slip. Lynn splashed knee-deep in a sink-hole. One leg of
her jeans, one sock, and one expensive designer sneaker became as
icily sodden as her mood.
    Hating Grail with fresh energy, she sat, and skinned the rest of
the way across on her fanny. The far bank was reached without mishap
beyond a torn pocket and sadly tattered dignity.
    Longingly she mused upon clothing that was pastel and fluffy. The
smell of the oil-stained anorak made her feel off, and if the staff
in the office were to see her, their worship of her unflappable
grooming would suffer a shock beyond salvage. Well, they could all
perish of missed deadlines, Lynn thought venomously, and she smiled
as she arose and dusted off particles of bark.
    Winter had not been kind to the lean-to that comprised the boys'
fort. Snow load had caved in the roof. One wall sagged inward, and
the wooden shield on which Sandy had sketched his make-believe coat
of arms rested on the ground, weathered bare of poster paint. The
unicorn lay dulled to shabby gray. A rusty can contained water, black
leaves, and assorted bent nails. Beyond a snarl of moldered string
and a burst cushion, a trash bin still held whittled sticks,
imaginatively fleshed out as lances. Sad pennons decked the ends, cut
from old pillow slips that dampness had freckled with mildew.

289
Nowhere, anywhere, was there sign or sound of Grail.
    Lynn sighed and sat down on a boulder. She listened to the
chuckle of the stream, wiggled toes that squelched in the wet
sneaker, and finally undid the laces. Her hands got chilled as she
wrung out her cuff and her sock. The gravel and mud ingrained in the
knit she could do little about; too depressed for annoyance, she
hoped the stores still carried laces to coordinate with last year's
fashion colors. She shoved her wet calf to warm in a patch of
sunlight, and cupped her chin in her palms.
    A catbird in its plain gray squalled outrage from a maple. Lynn
watched its discontent, abstracted.
    How foolish to feel sloppy in jeans and no makeup on a weekday.
Now adorned in mud, bits of bark, and dead leaves, her own problems
seemed dwindled to insignificance. The man she'd hoped would become
serious, who'd never phoned through to Ann's to inquire; the silly
stresses abandoned at the office; her boss's tantrum at her leaving;
all these seemed reduced, re-framed in the triteness of a sitcom.
    By contrast, Ann's efforts at handling the pending loss of her
boy seemed unapproachable; as pitiless and futile as a modern-day
search to define the true Chalice of Christ. Everywhere one turned
lay Sandy's memory; and where recollection had not trodden, new
things cut the heart no less fiercely. The awareness never ceased,
that this sight, or that fresh experience, could have stirred the boy
to delight.
    For two years, he'd had so little, between the doctors and the
treatments, and the jail-like isolation necessary to shelter him from
infection.
    Lynn slapped her wet pants leg. Days like this, under spring
sunshine with the hope ripped out from under all of them, she felt
like suing Almighty God, that He would allow a little boy to be born,
solely to suffer anguish and die. New age philosophies and spiritual
metaphors simply ceased to have meaning, when Sandy had sat straight
with pencil clenched in hand, demanding impossible wishes.
    His own way of asking, perhaps, for something the healthy
otherwise took for granted. A fit of rebellion, that life, for him,
was as unreachable a dream as a quest in historical legend.
    That moment, the rusty, deep-throated bay that was Grail's split
the woodland stillness. Jolted to recovery of her purpose, Lynn

290
jammed on her shoe and stood up. The sound came again, from upstream.
She jogged, her wet sneaker squishing, and hoped the mutt hadn't
flushed a deer. Grail might run dead crooked, his hind legs flailing
crabwise a foot offset from his forepaws, but he could go on tireless
for miles. As the damp sock wadded up on her heel and began instantly
to chafe a new blister, Lynn determined she was not going to chase
that dog one step further than her breath lasted.
That promise she broke in sixty seconds.
    In the ten minutes it took to track Grail down, she raked one arm
on a briar, and ruined her other sneaker in a slithering step across
a
pit of black mud between swamp hummocks.The sight of Grail gave no
cheer.
    He was wet, had been rolling in something nameless and noisome,
and his coat was screwed into wiry ringlets like an Airedale's. His
butt was raised, burr-coated tail waving like a whip, and his snout
was jammed to the eyeballs in the cleft of a half-rotted stump.
Lynn flagged back to a walk. 'Grail!'
    The dog yiped, inhaled mold, and loosed a forceful sneeze into
the stump. The beat of his tail increased tempo; beyond that, her
summons was ignored.
    Lynn walked up beside him. 'Grail,' she snapped. 'Unwedge your
face and come here.'
    Moist brown eyes rolled in her direction. Grail gave another
muffled bark.
    'I damned well don't want to share in your hunt for snails!' Lynn
reached out, twined two fists in the dank ruff, and pulled.
    Grail's hide rolled like bread dough, gave and peeled back until
his bones seemed suspended in a bladder. She dragged him stiff-legged
out of the cleft, and wondered belatedly whether he had a skunk or a
muskrat held cornered and angry inside.
    That possibility shortened her temper. Manhandling the dog like
an alligator wrestler, Lynn hauled back from the stump.
    ~Bless my buttons and whiskers!' piped a voice over Grail's
frustrated whining. From the inside of the stump, somebody waspishly
continued, 'It's long enough you took then, silly dog, to heed the
plain voice of reason.'
    Grail yapped. Lynn started, and all but lost grip on his hair as
the animal scrabbled frantically forward. Jerked off balance, her

29~
~7:

uncut bangs caught in her eyelashes, Lynn glimpsed the absolute
impossible: a little brown man about three inches high stepped
smartly out of the tree stump.
    He had red cheeks, and chestnut whiskers that unfurled like
frost-burned moss over a green waistcoat buttoned with brass. He wore
leather boots, tan leggings, and a rakish cap topped with a jay's
feather. At sight of Lynn, he shrieked in high-pitched anger.
    She had no chance to stay startled. Grail tore out of her hands
in a snarling bound, and as the man skipped backward in agile panic,
rammed his muzzle back into the cleft with staccato, hair-raising
yaps.
    Knocked to her knees by the fracas, Lynn sat heavily on her rump.
'Jesus Christmas!' She wasn't in the habit of having hallucinations;
particularly ones of muskrats looking like little brown men who wore
green waistcoats and talked. Where paired-off folk made decisions by
compromise and committee, she had learned, living alone, to call her
shots as they came.
    She scrambled up out of the leaves and hit Grail in a shoulder
tackle. He bucked, he heaved, he whined in piteous protest. After a
lot of scratching and flying sticks, she managed to drag him aside.
She then placed her face where the dog's had been, and, ignoring
Grail's muddy nose as it poked at her neck and ear, looked into the
dim cranny with its rings of old fungus and spider webs.
    She almost caught a stick in the eye, one with a brass shod tip,
brandished by the furious little man. She yelled at the scrape on her
cheek. He stumbled back with raised eyebrows, cursing in a language
she'd never heard.
    Certainly he was real enough to draw blood. Lynn dabbed at her
face, while the man stepped back. Apologetic, he tucked his stick
under one jacketed arm and spoke. 'Ah, miss, so it's you.' His skin
was seamed like a walnut shell, and his eyes upon her might have been
merry had he not been bristling with indignation. 'It's a wish you'll
be wanting, I presume. Though far likely it is I'd rather treat for
my freedom with the dog.'
    'That can be arranged.' Sourly, Lynn licked a bloody fingertip,
and swore.
    Pressed and heaving at her shoulder, Grail sensed her shift in
attitude. He rammed in for another go at the stump, while the little
man hopped and shrieked.
'Wait! Wait! Lady, I misspoke myself, I did truly. Pull off

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that dog, do please. For your own Christian conscience, let me go.'
    Damp, dirty, and possessed by a sense of unreality that yielded
an irritation equal to her captive's, Lynn said, 'Why should I?'
    The little man folded his arms. He puffed out his cheeks, looking
at once diffident and crafty. He shuffled his boots, whacked his
stick against the walls of his wooden prison, and finally faced her.
'Well,' he conceded. 'There is the wee matter of a wish. You do have
me caught, not so fairly, mind! But it's trapped I would be, I
suppose, if you slipped your hold on that hound.'
    'And so 1 get a wish?' Lynn suppressed a rise of hysterical
laughter. The strain, the surprise, the total weirdness of what was
taking place smashed her off balance in a rush. 'I need no wishes
granted,' she said tartly, and finished, defiantly flippant, with the
thought uppermost in her mind. 'It's Sandy's wish needs the
attention.'
    'Ah!' The brown man sighed. He sidled, leaned a shoulder against
the stump wall and frowned with a bushy furrow of brows. 'A sick boy,
it is, who begs a visit to Arthur's Round Table?' He gave a cranky
shrug in reply to Lynn's astounded stare, and his anger swiftly
melted to sad compassion. 'You do know, miss, that yon one is soon to
die.'
    The grief hit hard and too fast, that even a supernatural figment
in the form of a finger-sized man could know and be helpless before
incurable disease. Lynn choked back sudden tears.
    The man strove quickly to console her. 'Ah, miss, it's not so
very hopeless as all that. Just hard. You ken how it is in this
creation. Every living creature must choose its time and its place.
Such is the maker's grand way. Your boy, now, Sandy. If he's to have
what he desires, somebody's going to have to convince him to change
his mind.' The stick moved and slapped boot leather in reproof.
'Somebody being me, no doubt. That's hard work, just for a wish. Hard
work.' He pinned her again with dark, restless eyes, his annoyance
grown piquant as she opened her mouth, perhaps to ridicule; surely,
foolishly to question. Humans did that, would in fact spit on good
fortune when, like Grail, it bounded its way through their front
door.
    'Be still, now,' snapped the man. 'Let me think! It's my freedom
I'm wanting, and yon's a muckle hard course you've set me if I'm
going to fix a way to win it!'

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    With that, the little fellow deflated, plumped himself down, and
set his elbows on his knees a~d his chin in cupped palms, to ponder
the gravity of his dilemma.
    The boisterous Grail had against all his nature grown still, and
Lynn seized the moment to take stock. She unlocked her hand from the
dog's neck, reawakened to discomforts both mental and physical. One
pant leg was icily soaked. She had sticks and leaves in her hair, an
astonishing departure. But these upsets paled to insignificance
before the fact that she could exchange conversation and bargain with
a creature that by rights belonged in the province of fairy tales.
    After the briefest cogitation, she concluded that her nerves were
too worn from the strain of dealing with Sandy's illness. That was
enough to wrestle without battling further with a situation that
confounded logic. Either the creature in the stump was a pixie or a
leprechaun, or something else of that ilk; or else she was
irrevocably crazy.
The truth in the verdict was unlikely to help Sandy, either way. The
next instant the matter resolved itself. With no warning, and a
blinding quick movement, the little man shot to his feet and bolted
for the opening in the stump.
    Illusions didn't bid for escape. Lynn ducked to block off the
cleft, and collided shoulder to shoulder with Grail's snarling lunge
to achieve the same end.
    The combined effect startled the little man back with his hands
palm out in supplication. 'Mercy! It's crushed by your blundering
about, you'll have me. And unfairly, too I might add, since I've
figured a chance for the boy to have what he's wishing.'Grail whined
doubtfully and rolled his eyes.
    Unwilling to credit the mutt with intelligence, but touched by
the self-same distrust, Lynn glared down at the little man. In
vindication for bruised dignity and a growing sense of the
ridiculous, she was determined to extract satisfaction, even if the
next moment she woke up, rumpled in her bedclothes, to discover the
whole event a silly dream. 'You tried to get away,' she accused.
    The brown man sulked. 'What if I did?' He crammed chubby hands in
the pockets of his waistcoat and started with agitation to pace. 'I'm
caught still, and trying desperate hard to remedy that unfortunate
mistake!'
Grail snarled, as if the creature might be lying. In a blend of

294
acerbity and sarcasm that was her way of fending off what could not
in conscience be taken seriously, Lynn sighed. 'You don't look to me
like a man keeping his half of a bargain.'
    The little fellow winced, then looked affronted. His roving
carried him over a blackened acorn cap and across the musty confines
of the stump. Removed from Grail's muzzle enough to feel secure, he
stopped and folded his arms, booted foot tapping. 'Is it so? And what
are you thinking? That meddling with a boy's dying, not to mention
playing hob with a time frame that passes through legend, is easy?
Wishes, which you human sorts almost never bother asking, are
grueling business!'
    Sore from stooping, Lynn eased her knees by leaning a
companionable arm across Grail's rawboned shoulder-blade. Noisome wet
fur was no substitute for upholstery, but the touch of an ordinary
animal had become a necessary comfort. She looked a great deal less
disgruntled now than her captive, which brought the shrewdness of her
management background to the immediate fore. If she was going to play
the fool and talk extortion with a fey being inside a rotted stump,
Sandy may as well have a crack at the benefits. 'Then, to go free,
you'll have to show me some results.'
    The tiny man sidled; a sly grin tipped up one corner of his
mouth, and he stroked at his wiry fall of whiskers. 'It is hard work
I'll be going off to then, lady. To fix your boy's wish, truth to
tell. For that you'll be having to let me out.' He stepped in brash
confidence toward the daylight that shone through the cleft.
    Lynn's outraged, 'What?' tangled with Grail's sudden snarl. The
pelted muscle under her shoulder surged as the dog rammed headfirst
and growling into the opening in the stump. A scuffle ensued. For a
moment, the animal's bulk obscured sight of what transpired within.
    Then Grail's tail whipped straight. His buttocks heaved and he
backed up. Clenched in between rows of bared teeth, the little man
swung from his waistcoat, his arms waving, his terrified shouts thin
as a bird's cries over the growls of the dog. The stick whipped the
air to and fro, shining like a little brass pin, and about as
uselessly effective.
    Lynn spared a moment for sympathy, mostly for the fact that the
little fellow was probably perishing of dog breath. Discounting his
clothes, the rest of him was unmarked, however much his shrieks
suggested otherwise.

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    'Put me down!' he screeched. 'Oh, lady, for pity, I can't be
fixing wishes as a dog's snack. Surely it's wise enough you are, and
merciful also, to be seeing that!'
Lynn set her jaw and said nothing.
    Grail sat, lips peeled back and trembling above his victim. The
little man kicked in agitation. 'You need me to make arrangements,
don't you? Well, true it is I can't do that sick with beast stink and
prisoned inside a stump!'
    'How do I know your word is good?' Touched to acerbity, Lynn sat
down to set her head level with Grail's. She fingered the damp cuff
of her jeans. 'Really, if you're going to be trusted, I should go
along as observer, to be certain the terms of Sandy's wish are fully
met.'
    The man's arms fell to his sides with a faint slap. His whiskers
drooped. He hung like a mouse from Grail's jaws, a forlorn morsel
with a fat belly that strained at his rows of brass buttons. 'I'm not
lying. Spit on my luck if I am.'
    Grail's brown eyes held level with Lynn's, imploring canine
prudence, and oddly, knowingly, infused with a wisdom no dog she'd
ever known had possessed. A queer chill shot through her. In a dark,
unbreached corner of her mind, conviction grew, that the dog's
purpose was and always had been to find such a tiny man, and take him
captive.
But of course in cold logic, that was ridiculous.
    Pressed unbearably against the realities of a child's terminal
disease, and faced by unspeakable suffering and now the bitter ending
of Sandy's life, Lynn found reason a poor arbiter. Hope and
superstition this moment seemed infinitely more kindly. Grave,
supremely detached from the ongoing cruelties at the hospital, she
sighed. To the tiny man she said, 'That's not good enough.'
    'Bother and fiddlesticks!' cried the man. Jostled by movement of
the jaws that prisoned him, he rolled widened eyes in trepidation.
    Grail looked befuddled, as if his nasal passages had sprouted an
itch from too heady a scent of the supernatural. The little man
observed this, growing alarmed. He evidently understood that in
canines, heavy sneezes often ended with an unkindly whap of muzzle
and teeth against the ground. 'I'll show you the results in a
dream!' he hollered in sharpened anxiety. 'lt's not so simple, you'll
appreciate, with a wish involving more than one party, and one of
them with scarcely an hour left to live. You're wasting time!'

296
    '! think not.' Punched inside by reminder of Sandy's condition,
and sorry for Ann, waiting alone and unsupported for an ending her
heart could not encompass, Lynn held hard to the last fragment of
detachment still left to her. 'That's not good enough. Dreams can be
manipulated, I must assume, or the dog who holds your coattails would
be satisfied. Grail hasn't seen fit to let you go.'
    'You'd have me set the Sight on you!' howled the man. Dangling,
he managed to look irked as he folded his arms across his chest.
'Well that's another wish!'
Lynn glowered levelly back. 'That's no wish, but proper surety.' 'Ah,
it's hard, hard in the heart, that humans can be, you female sorts
most of all.' The man waved a miniature fist. 'An unchancy business
it is, always, dealing with modern-day mortals.' He unlimbered a
wrist to wag a finger, cuff buttons flashing like pin heads. 'You
folk muddle about wide awake, most times, with your dreams the most
living part of you. Did you know as much, you'd fare better.' When
this diatribe left Lynn without comment, the brown man fixed her with
a glare that made her tingle. 'Well, it's not my part to adjust your
mortal ills and your muckle mistaken thinking! Very well, miss. As
you wish. If you're the blundering sort who sets no stock by dreams,
it's the Sight you'll get, to witness my part in the bargain. But
sorrow you'll find, and weeping too, when you long to be quit of the
gift afterwards!
    This was delivered in vindication, not warning, for the little
man raised his hand and flicked his fingers, as if to splat water in
Lynn's face.
    She saw no physical projectile. But something struck her forehead
just below the hairline. A golden bloom rinsed her eyesight, a
painless dazzle that flared and faded, and left her senses
momentarily encapsulated. As if a bubble had been spun around her
consciousness, she felt as if physically suspended.
    She raised her head, gasped; the wood she knew was altogether
gone. No skunk cabbage grew; no May apples. The ground was a living
carpet of shining myrtle. She breathed a chillier, more fragrant air;
the trees all about were old oaks, huge towering crowns shafted with
midday sunlight. The ground fell away, toward a clearing floored in
ivy and moss, and sheltered by water-channeled outcrops.
Little men that lurked in stumps were one thing. This, a

297
forest setting more appropriate to a page of medieval romantic
illustration, was too much.
Lynn opened her mouth to cry out.
    'Be quiet, fool woman!' The little man rapped her fingers with
his stick, which caused her a violent start. 'Wake him up, and you'll
spoil Sandy's wish!'
    Muddled, unable to re-orient herself, Lynn whispered, 'Wake who
up?'
    Apparently the little man and the mongrel dog had made their
peace, for in course of a wild search, she located him, seated in his
spit-dampened waistcoat, astride Grail's thick ruff. The brass-tipped
stick now pointed toward something a ways off in the undergrowth.
    Lynn peered through twining runners of ivy, and saw what looked
like bits of basket woven out of sticks. Closer scrutiny revealed a
young man, black-haired and high-browed, and barely past his boyhood.
He appeared to be asleep. A cheek as innocent and clear-complexioned
as a peach rested on uncallused knuckles. His limbs were well made,
though delicately muscled, and over his simple tunic he wore what
looked to be shoulder pads and breast
plate all woven out of willow fronds and twigs.'My God,' breathed
Lynn.
      The little man bristled. 'Not God!' He went on to snap in an
undertone, 'Just the magic you've demanded of me, and no more.' Lynn
could not quite stifle awe. 'Who is he?'
    'Your Sandy will know.' The little man clapped his palms together
in a silent explosion of fey power.
    Lynn's hair bristled. A jolt hammered through her that rocked her
awareness to its root. She blinked, shaken by its passage, and then
stopped, slammed cold still, by the sight of Sandy standing barefoot
in his hospital gown. He stepped forward and paused, eye to eye with
the creature on Grail's back.
    The tubes, the needles, the paraphernalia of medical science that
inadequately sought to prolong his life had all gone. Bruises
remained, under his eyes and on his arms and in the hollow of his
shoulder; the stitchery left by weeks upon weeks of IV needles. He
still looked sick and thin, all knobby white limbs and a neck that
rose frail as a stem. His eyes shone sunken and huge, haunted yet by
the shadows of his suffering.
'Sandy!' gasped Lynn.

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But he did not look at her. The little brown man addressed him and
his ears seemed sealed to other words.
    'You'll be knowing who that is, lying there?' The stick twitched
toward the sleeper, and a hand miraculously tiny twined in a fall of
chestnut whiskers.
    Languid as if sleepwalking, Sandy turned his head. He regarded
the young man in his bed of ivy and moss, and a yearning transformed
his face with life. Incandescent in delight, he almost laughed.
'Perceval!'
    'You'll be knowing the legend, then,' prompted the fey man who
had brought both together, the sleeping young man and a dying boy's
spirit, to a woodland Lynn could not place in any ecosystem known to
modern earth.
    'Of course I know.' Sandy's excitement broke through his
weakness, made his thin voice ring with derisive joy. 'Perceval was
son to a rebel king, thrown down by King Arthur's justice. He was
raised in isolation by his mother in a far off tower. She hoped he
would become a priest, and escape the fate of his father, to die in
battle. But when from a distance Perceval saw some knights riding, he
was struck by the sun on their armor. He asked what sort of creatures
they were, for their beauty left him in awe. His mother, afraid he
would leave her to take up fighting and bloodshed, told him he had
seen angels.'
    'And so lost him,' the little man picked up, as Sandy's
enraptured recitation trailed off. 'For young Perceval replied that
there was no more worthy quest than to follow God's angels to
heaven.' The little man cracked a smile filled with crafty sharp
teeth and inclined his head toward the sleeper. 'Well, so you're
seeing,' he confided to Sandy. 'Yon lies Perceval, who set off
wearing armor he wove out of sticks, that he could be as like unto
the saintly hosts as possible until his reunion with them should be
fulfilled.'
    Sandy knotted bony hands together. He gazed in admiration at the
young man, whom he knew would go on from this clearing, to win his
place at Arthur's Round Table and be one of the chosen few who would
glimpse the Holy Grail. Drinking in details for sheer delight, Sandy
stared: at the fine, shiny dark hair, unblemished in health; at the
unstained innocence of the face. He looked at the hands, palms soft
and unmarked; at muscles too delicate to have done much more than
hold books.

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    The hero worship in his look became marred by dawning doubt.
'He's a wimp.'
The little man said nothing.
    Sandy's study encompassed the wrists that lay lax in the moss,
unmarred by even a briar scrape. Troubled sorely, he swung around and
glared in accusation at the little man. 'You lied. That can't be
Perceval. He doesn't at all look like the sort who would go for hard
rides and bloody fighting.'
    And Lynn, understanding a thing, held her breath, while the
little brown man answered him reasonably.
    'You're part right, my boy. But I never lie. That's Perceval,
there, and you've spoken the heart of the problem, his and yours. For
within the next hour, your two fates must resolve. You will be
greeting God's angels, and he will wake up to discover his "angels"
are earthly clay in the form of tough-mannered, battle-trained
knights.'
    'Oh!' Sandy stepped back, his soul laid bare by longing. ~If only
we could change places!'
      'Said is done!' cried the little man, and he clapped his hands
with
a crack that shattered the stillness.Sandy vanished.
    Birds started up from the trees, and the young man in his armor
of sticks sat up, a look of raw startlement on his face. He raised
his arms, stared at his palms as if flesh, bone and nerve were
appendages that belonged to a stranger. Then he looked wildly about
until his gaze found and locked on the little man. 'You've done it!'
And he smiled as though all the world had been reborn between his two
hands.
    'So I have.' The little man laughed and pointed westward through
the forest. 'Th~t way lies Camelot, young Perceval. Fare you well, on
all your quests, until the last, until the day you sight the Grail.'

Lynn came back to herself, with Grail's tongue dragging and dragging
across her cheek. She sat in soggy leaf mould, one shoulder braced
against a stump whose cleft was now empty.
    She shivered once, violently; in distaste she pushed off the dog.
For once, Grail gave over his affections with deference to the person
being mauled. He backed off, sat, and looked at her. His
tail whacked up a storm of forest detritus. His expression looked
inordinately pleased.
    Lynn shivered again. Chilled by uncanny experience, and also by
her soaked shoe and pants cuff, she looked about, as if expecting
the woods to be somehow momentously different.They were not.
    May sunlight slashed the trunks of the birch trees like knife
cuts limned in gold; the catbird's mate sang at her nesting, and two
squirrels ran scolding in a territorial squabble through the bursting
leafy crowns overhead.
    It did not seem a day for miniature men and bright wishes.
Neither did it seem any more appropriate a time for a twelve-year-old
boy to lie dying.
    Lynn cursed. Whatever had befallen her, be it illness,
hallucination, or stark raving madness, she had an obligation, now
that Grail was found. She must hurry on to the hospital to lend her
support to Ann.
    That moment, ridiculously, she recalled she'd neglected to bring
a leash. Grail seemed to need none, creature of obscure
contradictions that he was. For the first time in his miserable life,
he came when called. Apparently content for once to follow, he
frisked at Lynn's heels all the way back to the house. More
surprising, he stepped meekly into his pen at her bidding; and once
there, lay down, nose on tail, to fall asleep. He looked like an old
string mop, stiff-curled as if dried in ocher paint.
    Lynn left him. Inside the house, her intent bent exclusively on
the logistics entailed in joining Ann quickly at the hospital. Shoes,
one muddy, one damp; dirty jeans, oil-stained anorak; all flew off
her into a heap. She wanted a shower, but settled with splashing cold
water on her face. Too pressed to fuss over details, she snatched
khaki slacks, a silk blouse, and a tailored jacket from the closet.
She had dress for success down to reflex, and her thoughts she held
firmly to practicality, until the first cog slipped in her regimen.
    She realized she'd left the shoes that went best with the jacket
in the city. Her desperate self-control fled.
    Frowning, frantic not to think, and still barefoot, she dug her
makeup case out of the bathroom and parked in front of the mirror.
Trivia refused its role; would not keep her preoccupied.

3Ol
She froze through a moment of silent struggle; to focus on anything
and everything onerously ordinary, that she not be overset to
disturbance over what had or had not occurred out in the wood.
    Tiny men, and brown thoughts; she was as much in denial of
Sandy's straits as webbed about in the peculiar insanity Grail had
lured her to tread. Dangerous ground. Better to debate her choice of
lipstick.
    She rummaged through her cosmetics and selected a shade of cover-
up to conceal the nick on her cheek. Then she glanced up at the
mirror. And stopped dead.
    Where her own features should have looked out at her, she saw
instead a different view. Ann, seated in her untidy cardigan with her
back bowed and her face in her hands, beside a bed in a hospital
room.
    'No!' Lynn shoved her knuckles against her mouth in denial, even
as memory of the little man's protest mocked her. If you're the
blundering sort who sets no stock by dreams, it's the Sight you'll
get, to witness my part in the bargain. But sorrow you'll find, and
weeping too, when you long to be quit of the gift afterwards!
    The ache in her died to a whisper. 'No.' But the deathbed view of
her nephew bound her senses, as vitally real as if she were present
at her sister's shoulder.
    No recrimination, no fear, no sense of disorientation or
disbelief could tear her attention from the body, supine under white
sheets. The pastel hospital gown betrayed by its lack of wrinkles how
far removed from life and movement lay the consciousness that
delineated Sa~ndy.
    Lynn choked a breath through her tightened throat, then stopped,
even breathing suspended.
    For the motionless boy on the bed sighed slightly and opened his
eyes.
    They shone, blue and enormous in the subdued, artificial lighting
of the hospital. Dark as marks in charcoal, his brows sketched a
puzzled frown. Too weak and emaciated to do more, he regarded the
sterile white walls, the plastic pitchers, the raised side rails, and
the IV line dangling at his shoulder as if he had never in his life
known such sights.
He looked as if witness to marvels.

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    Lynn caught her breath in a gasp. She knew like a blow, that this
was not Sandy, looking out through the eyes of his face. She stood,
frozen and trapped before the vision of a perfect stranger residing
in Sandy's failing flesh.
    The boy noticed Ann at that moment. Perhaps he heard her stifled
weeping, or was drawn by her forlorn posture as she convulsed in
silenced grief. He raised the hand not burdened with needles, dragged
limp fingers across the sheet, and gave her a brushing touch.
Ann started up as if shot. 'Sandy?'
    He blinked as she caught his wrist. 'My God, my God,' she cried
in wonder and jagged-edged joy.
    He looked at her. The familiarity of the gesture tore at Lynn's
heart for the fact that he had no cowlicks left to tumble brown hair
across his eyes.
    Because of that, she and Ann both saw: the boy's hollowed
features were lit from within by a burning, unearthly rapture.
'Lady,' he whispered in an accent that sounded gallant and antique.
'You must not weep for me. It is promised. I go on to God's glory, to
meet His most beautiful angels.'
    The fingers in Ann's chilled hand tightened one last time, and
the spirit, lightly held, left the flesh.

Lynn came back to herself, gripping the sink too tightly. Wild-eyed,
her own face stared back from the mirror. The pinprick cut showed
livid against her pallor, and her chest ached as, in tears, she
recovered herself with a cry.
      A strange, exalted exhilaration possessed her, snapped at once
by sharp grief at the jangling intrusion of the telephone.She
stumbled out to reach the hallway extension.
    'Lynn?' said Ann's voice as she answered. 'It's over. He's gone,
just this minute.' She paused for a wondering breath. 'You wouldn't
think it, but it happened beautifully. He woke up to tell me...'
    Words failed her, and Lynn couldn't bear it. 'He's gone to meet
the angels.'
    Startled, still drifty with shock, Ann came back in surprise.
'Lynnie, how could you know?'
Lynn crouched, weak-kneed, and steadied herself on an elbow

303
that ground with real pain against the baseboard. 'Never mind she
answered. 'It doesn't matter.'
    But it did; the uncanny proofs remained with her. Into ol, age,
the fey man's gift of Sight never left her; and Grail neve wandered
again.