Figures: there just beyond stood another. And another, and another, as her awareness, expanding explosively, revealed a fair two dozen of them surrounding her. She was trapped. The peeries had found her at last—in Andrastir, of all places. No wonder Padriag told her to avoid the city!

Stricken, quite certain that Arngas the great swordsman had no tricks against a knee-high adversary, she dragged her gaze back down to the nearest one. Patiently it still held out the onions.

Onions?

Strawberries, or apples (had it been the season): these were potent fairy lures with which to ply a hapless mortal’s fatal trust. Onions, on the other hand, even wild ones, lacked greatly for seductive appeal.

Maybe that was the idea.

Slowly she slid back down to a squat, and considered the onion-bearer.

It looked something like a black weasel going two-legged. Its head was over-large, then, with a kittenish flattened snout, and a much deeper skull, and from cheek to jaw it was quite hairless and its black skin gleamed. But its eyes were big, round as marbles, and as green as her own. Strings of beads glimmered in its fur, or its furry garments; beads of pearl and amber, she thought. And beads as fine as mustard-seeds weighed its long catlike whiskers into deep, slowly bobbing crescents.

Movement in her periphery slammed her spine against the trunk again. Some of the others ventured nearer, with gifts, or bribes, held forth: a bundle of greens, a cluster of day lilies, a wild carrot, an armload of—yes—strawberries.

“” said the onion-bearer. He sounded astonished.

“” mused the one with the strawberries.

“” came from another.

“” wondered Onions.

“” Carrot pointed out.

Rothesay understood them much as she understood horses, pigs, squirrels and the like, except with words, words she had never heard before, words on soft voices rather like human boys.’ “” she yelped—and slapped both hands to her mouth, for the syllable that burst out was not the Sferan one she expected.

“” said Strawberry. “”

“” And she rolled her tongue, as if the unexpected speech could be tasted.

The silence that replied reminded her greatly of how she herself, just last fall, had answered a neighbor-child’s boast of three whole years.

“”

Again a polite silence.

“” she demanded.

That produced amusement. “” said Carrot.

Onions held out his other hand. “” He spoke firmly but gently, as to a straying infant.

Rothesay snapped back to her feet and stared down at the unyielding ground. “” They seemed surprised that she needed to state the obvious; where else? “” though she thought, would I get back?

Strawberry tipped her head. “”

Rothesay struggled with the odd term, which meant so much more than placing one foot after another; ‘travel’ might have served, or even ‘fly,’ except that it had the commonness of ‘walk’ even as it meant something magical.

“” a whisper rustled from peeries well off to her right, and the whole crew vanished, faded into the twilight. Rothesay barely had presence of mind to hide, too. She slipped silently up into a crack in the old oak, but almost fell out when she heard, entirely in her head, the voice of Strawberry saying encouragingly,

Through a split in the oak’s old hide, she saw Sorchone appear in her glade. He moved all but silently himself, and paused now, and looked about.

“You’re better than I thought,” he said aloud, and the Sferan tongue sounded strangely alien to her. He spoke quietly, to himself; he plainly did not expect her to hear. Then he slipped out of her view, but she stayed where she was, for now.

Onions poked his head into the crack near hers. “” he said. “”

“” she said quickly, having no idea what he meant, but determined not to try anything that she did not know how to undo. If ‘farther’ meant ‘into the peerie-realm,’ she would like to work out how to go ‘nearer’ first. And before that, just what the creature was talking about at all. She had climbed into an oak—what of it?

“” said Carrot. “”

She climbed back out and sat again at the foot of the tree. The peeries laid their gifts on leaves at her feet, but she did not yet touch them. A suspicion tickled at the back of her mind and she looked at the creatures heavily. “”

“” said Onions, rather surprised. “”

“”

Onions bowed. “”

He did not seem to mean hazards like outlaws or wild dogs; she had a clear image from him of the city itself, roads and homes and shops and humans all together, as a fantastic vampire that might suck the very soul from the unwary. She frowned, perplexed.

“” Onions went on.

I knew this was coming, didn’t I? she thought. “” she said brightly. “”

He waved an impatient little hand. “” he derided them, much as Marennin had. “”

Rothesay struggled with his meaning. The word conjured up images: a mountain’s peak; a heart, pulsing unseen in a creature’s breast; the moveless axle of a turning wheel; the pole star; a bonfire; a horizon seen from a height. “”

“”

She looked up sharply at that. His little face set grimly.

Carrot spoke up, a bare whisper. “”

Rothesay turned to stare hard at him. “”

“”

“”

He shrugged. “”

Rothesay thrust shaking fingers deep into her hair. “”

Carrot, Strawberry, and several of the others made dismissive noises. “”

This word again weighed so much more than a mere Sferan, or Geillan, equivalent. They were earth-creatures, peeries; Rothesay thought she would probably never grasp the depths of the word, but it clearly had a limited breadth. Only Onions seemed pensive, as though a less parochial spirit struggled in him.

“” she told them.

“”

“” She glowered at them. “” she burst out, so harshly that several of them jumped.

“” Strawberry pointed out, mildly amused.

“”

“” Strawberry puzzled. “”

“” She reached for a word for ‘chance,’ and found nothing.

“” said Onions.

A tiny flame of hope lit up in Rothesay. “” she ventured.

“” Onions observed.

“” said Carrot.

She shivered. “”

“” Strawberry agreed. “”

“” Rothesay bounded to her feet again, and smacked her head in self-reproach. “” And, Do I get much stupider? she demanded of herself. Why didn’t I see that before?

She had a stew of impressions from them then: and they vanished again, even as she recognized Sorchone in their thought.

She made no effort to hide, half-annoyed with the intrusion, still frightened by the reminder of Marennin’s task, though it seemed more hopeful now. “” she roared at him when he came around the tree. Again it was not the Sferan word, but he did not seem to notice.

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He strained to see her in the darkness. “You had been here,” he observed; “I chanced your return.”

The syllables, even the character of his voice, sounded now stranger than the peeries had at first hearing. He himself looked queer, maybe more solid or more opaque than he—should?

According to what code? What was she thinking? What was he? What was she?

Panicked, she seized two fistfuls of his tunic. “What am I?” she shrieked at him.

Sorchone had lived long under the Order’s wing. Perceiving a crisis of soul, he made no resistance, but tried for the unexpected: “Runedaur,” he replied gently.

How does one properly torment oneself with unanswerable questions, if other people have answers? Moreover, it was an answer she did not want. She thrust him away, abruptly irritated instead of frightened, nor yet more sane for that. “I want to go home!”

“Colderwild?”

“No! I don’t know. I have no home, there is no home!”

“Of course there is.”

“Where?” she demanded hotly, knowing he bluffed.

“Ah, well, you cannot get there tonight. Will you but trust me on this for now, and shall we return to the hall?”

She glared. “You came to take me back?”

“No.” He did not know what burdened her, but he knew that he did not know, and knew better than to add another straw. He could hardly tell her, now, what had brought him after her; not in full, not in all the forms he had been blithely imagining. He settled for part. “But I like you. I came looking for your company only for my own pleasure.”

He struck near the gold. The terror of being utterly unique and alone, familyless, faded from her in the warmth of his affability, and he began to look, and sound, familiar again. She glanced down at the fairy offerings. It might be rude not to accept them, now (“We are kin”), but she could not bring herself to touch them; she felt as though she had just had some terribly narrow escape, and though that was not from the peeries, still she found no appetite for their gifts. Not now.

Still, “I like it out here,” she objected.

“It is a lovely night.”

She sat down abruptly, facing the faint glow of Rhostial away off under the moon. The rising night wind tossed the trees, but if it tossed the waves, not even Rothesay could make them out.

Sorchone eased down beside her. To his surprise, she leaned against him; to his amused frustration, the action was only friendly. He tried a touch on the hair over her temple and asked, as if idly, “Where did home use to be?”

She told him a little of Padriag’s hall; turned away from him as she was, she did not see his eyebrows rise in recognition. And she spoke of Harrowater, her sisters and Alrulf. “But that wasn’t home, either, you know; it was just—where I lived. Mother and I came from Daria.”

“‘Rothesay’ is no Sferan name,” he agreed, his only sign that he had heard it before.

“I was four, and we came over on a great ship with green and white sails, and many boxes packed up with clothes and cushions and, oh, just everything: it was a very great fuss. But one day everyone was stiff, and angry, and silent, and men had swords drawn, and they readied the little white after-boat and put some things in it, baskets and such, and then Mother and me, and lowered us down to the water; and then we just drifted away.” After a moment, she turned to look at him, as if he might have an answer. “I don’t understand why they did that. We had blankets and food—but only a cobweb chance of ever reaching land. If they’d wanted to murder us—” It was the first time she had ever voiced the thought that sometimes shaped her nightmares, but she covered it quickly. “Well, why didn’t they just pitch us over the side?”

Sorchone turned his head slowly. “Why, indeed. . . . That ship foundered; only its broken prow was ever recovered: did you know?” She shook her head. “Rumor had it that the Lady Cherusay’s enemies chose that voyage to destroy her—” he stroked her temple again at her shiver, “and when the ship itself was lost, that she took them down with her.”

“But we weren’t even there.”

“Someone else would appear to have had other plans.”

She turned away again. What had his name been, that mailed knight? He had been at the front of the men with their blades drawn, and his too, and watched them be swung down to the boat without a word from his mouth; but there had been death in his eyes.

“That vessel meant to bring you here, to Andrastir,” Sorchone remarked.

“Mother was going to hire the Runedaur.”

“I wonder how.”

Rothesay stiffened, and shifted uncomfortably. “Carialla knows,” she growled.

“I should not wonder. But so do you.”

“What?” she demanded, rounding on him, but he only chuckled, and ran a fingertip smoothly down her arm.

“Babe, learn that thought and flesh are not two things but one. Did I not have you in my arms, I should never have seen it in this mirk, but I felt it: a strange dread you have of a favorite old tavern-riddle.”

“What’s strange about it? Anyone who thinks I know, thinks I know where it is, too, and doesn’t that make me a jolly prize!”

“Mmm. There is that.” He chuckled again. “But am I not an odd one to fear, there? If you know, and I extort it from you: how long would Carialla permit my entrails to remain where I am fond of them to be?”

That wrung a small laugh from her as well. “She is the most horrible woman—!”

“She is a very powerful woman. Be glad she is a friend.”

“A ‘friend’ as long as I—” She stopped, remembering her earlier thoughts. “She didn’t want me to come down to the battle, you know.”

“Surely no one did. You are so very new, after all.”

She turned to stare at his dim face. “But she wouldn’t forbid me. I maybe know something she desperately wants, and she let me go anyway.” She expected Sorchone to offer an explanation. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to make a point. “Why?”

He was a long time in replying, staring out to sea for a while himself, or deep into the invisible trees. At last, very slowly, he suggested, “Because there is something else that she wants even more?”

“Such as—?”

He shrugged. “I could but hazard a guess. And one that you should find incredible, I fancy. Tell me, someday, when you find it out.”

Exasperated, she snorted, and turned to the Gulf once more. Sorchone studied the faint illumination of the curve of her cheek, and with a long, slow exhalation, stilled his soul, that it might be rippled by the tremors of hers.

There was confusion: typical in a novice; he recalled his own in sympathetic amusement. And she was certainly on edge about something, maybe several somethings, but fortunately he did not seem to be one of them. He had offended her on first meeting and she had not yet forgiven him that, but she was not holding it against him.

He wondered what it was, exactly, that she wanted in courtship; he found her hard to read. That of course was why he had come out after her: Skill is a demanding mistress who grants her devotees only brief triumphs but forever pushes them to still greater challenges.

Her thoughts shifted; she was about to speak—

“Why did you want to be Runedaur?” she asked, still watching the distant water.

“Did I want to be Runedaur?”

She turned then. “Oh! Then you also came here—” she bit off ‘against your will’ because, in honesty, she was not in this against hers, but only for lack of any other idea what to do with herself. But the heir of Ristover must have had many choices, even if he scorned some of them now. “—Er, though you didn’t want to?”

“No, I came indeed of my desire. I apologize: your question assumed that desire, and I, alas, have an old student’s graceless habit of attacking assumptions like street thugs. Carvallyn na Muir.”

“What?”

“Carvallyn—why I did want to be Runedaur. He came often to Ristover’s interminable High Councils, which I attended unwilling from the time I was old enough not to spit my pablum at the ministers. He spoke so seldom, yet so clearly. . . .” He trailed off, memory-wrapped, and absently stroked her shoulder. “Had all the councillors been Runedaur, all business had been concluded in a quarter-hour, including formalities, and the lot of us could have knocked off and gone fishing.” He sighed. “I had to learn that. How I lusted to learn that!”

She liked this well; he required no special Runedaur art to see that. Sorchone rose to extemporaneous poetry then in celebrating the adamantine Runedaur intellect—as uncommon a seduction as an ardent young man ever wove, but never was it said of Runedaur that they clove to the customary to the scorn of what worked.

Training to the sword, he said, honed thought like a blade itself: in such a debate, one dare not stray from the topic, nor trust flashy technique to blind an opponent to the emptiness of one’s arguments.

“But, however it clarify one’s own mind,” he sighed, “it does not follow that a duel of wits is won like a duel of swords, for in the former, victory surely goes to the unarmed fool rather than the master perfected.”

“Whaat?”

“Oh, but wit is both weapon and weakness—insofar as we consider rhetorical victory a ‘win.’ Alas, one who lacks the wit to wage a meaningful war also, by that same deficit, lacks the means to perceive that he has lost! How often have I seen men spurn the hardest proof—with so masterful a rebuttal as, ‘Oh, rubbish’—and cling to a folly? How often have I been commanded to Council?”

She giggled. “Er, but not, I take it, at a Runedaur council?”

“Sweet love, a Runedaur council is like nothing you have ever witnessed. But you may see one this very summer: Dav has called the Order to Colderwild, come this next month of Dannin.” He tipped his head so that his fine black hair fell across his face. “Will you attend?”

“Well, of course, if I may; I mean, of course,” she amended, as she recalled that she probably need ask no permission. “I live there, after all; I suppose it’ll be hard to avoid, actually.” The planning needed for such a hosting began to stir in her thought, and stirred a rush of excitement: what fun, to arrange such hospitality, with never a fear about the cost!

“You will be Runedaur, then?”

She missed the note of caution in his voice. The Order taught her acolytes power, real power that made trifles of Rothesay’s fantastic strength and borrowed sword-skill; if she would not be at their mercy, it seemed she must be one of them. And, she swore silently, ultimately that would be on her terms. “Yes.”

Stillness, Shoni, he bade himself.—This can be done to serve all ends; there is always a way to meet all ends. And, with deliberate clumsiness, he drew out his training knife and lunged at her.

She shrieked and leaped away, too hard; tried to recover, too vigorously; and forgetting to curl, belly-flopped onto the ground. Sorchone sprang after and pulled a pratfall of his own to give her time to escape. Hearing her laugh as she found her feet again, he offered up a prayer of thanks to Ullenna, Lady of Love, and Her attendant, the little jester Conaill. A bit of folly, to lighten the heart; a bit of sport, to warm the blood; and—?

Rothesay bolted past the oak, back to the broken manor-house and darted in. She scrambled up a big old apple tree, listened to hear Sorchone follow her in, then shinnied out over the wall and dropped. Sorchone doubled back out, she fled around to the far side, dived in through the remains of a window, and Onions hissed, “”

Without hesitation, she leaped into the apple tree—

Vastness. Color, roiling and turning with no place for light or shadow. Down, yes, and up; but no weight, no sense of ground beneath her feet. And no feet. Rothesay flailed, or thought she did, or at any rate meant to, but there seemed to be nothing to flail, unless it were her panic itself.

No sound came, though bodiless intensity screamed.

She was not alone. This—space—was full, alive with presences. A hundred responses overlapped, like leaves of a book, forming an almost solid reply:

<(an image of Sorchone, saying)Thought/flesh; flesh/thought>

‘What asks’: she seized on that. I’m asking, she thought. I. Me. Rothesay. She ran a few memories through her mind, beads on a string, worry beads, touchstones of herself: Padriag’s rough brown hem; Persli’s wit; thinking Arngas’s sword had been a tin counterfeit; Kahan the hawk-man; her darkhaired doll, with real hair and bright black eyes—

Familiarity flooded her, a familiar fright.

Tiny—how tiny she had been, a mere infant, and sometimes she fell, down through the bottom of her cradle, a long fall into this very emptiness full of presences, and the silent voices, like those of Onions and Carrot and Strawberry, and yet different.

Strawberry sniffed contemptuously.

Rothesay retorted, peeved. No, they had not meant to; she struggled to recall. Possibly they had even tried to soothe, but frightened she had been, and waked the whole nursery with her shrieks till even her grandmother came. And Grandmother made for her a guardian doll, to stand watch and keep her safe in the nursery, an unsleeping doll: “See,” said Grandmother, pointing out the doll’s shining black eyes, high-polished lodestone, “they will always watch and keep the Otherworld Gate tight shut.”

observed Onions. He seemed exasperated.

It had; there had been no more such falls—till now. And now, warded with a name for this, Rothesay relaxed, a bit, and tried to look around her, if “look” it could be called.