So, the worlds could not be crossed at any point, but some places were easier of passage than others. Memory of the white lines that had intruded on her imagining of Padriag’s map, back in Andrastir with Onions, rushed back to mind, but only as memory, dim and powerless, and, she was sure, none too accurate. She had paid little attention when Padriag tried to teach her geography; had he said anything of such lines? She tried the archway at the top of the stairs, and the doorway out into the courtyard. Midnight lay over the dim stones of Colderwild; and she looked at the main keep and the wan yellow light high up in Carialla’s window. There must be places where great magic worked better than elsewhere, and who would know the local patterns better than, oh buggers, the Mistress?

As Rothesay shifted from foot to foot, weighing the risks of such a consultation, voices echoed up from a stairwell across the courtyard, from under the great house called the King’s Hall. She shrank back into the depths of an elderberry bush.

“—an imprisoned soul,” she heard Merrithorander muse aloud. “He has learned aye well how to clasp Cuernaio’s Locks.”

“Only one way out, then,” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice, an impassive voice.

“He can be useful on his way,” Dav put in curtly. Rothesay could see them now, through the tangle of leaves and incipient fruit, as they strode for the keep. Dav glanced sharply at the bush, but said nothing and made no sign; still, she was certain that he not only knew someone was hiding there, but who she was as well. She sat motionless till long after they had gone.

Midnight. Maybe not the best hour for finding the best place to pass between the worlds. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and excused herself from the consultation with Carialla for now. Slinking like a weasel, she crept off to the healing-houses, three neat little stone cottages on the very edge of the western cliff; the airy rush of Daorlas’s rapids a hundred fathoms below lulled the sick and weary into sweet sleep, and Rothesay could not smell so much as a whiff of the iron-reek of the armory far across Colderwild. Hidden well in a nest of aromatic ferns, she slept undisturbed till dawn.

“Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“You have been avoiding me.”

Rothesay hesitated, realized it was probably already too late to dissemble even if there had ever been any point in it, and murmured stupidly, “Yes, Mistress.”

“You are afraid of me.”

It was not a question. It did not need to be. But why not also announce, The sky is blue, or Water is wet, as well? “Well, yes, Mistress.” There might, just possibly, have been the faintest sardonic resonance in Rothesay’s voice, chastisement for stating the pathetically obvious.

“Look at me.”

Swallowing hard, Rothesay slowly raised her eyes from her own bare and dirty toes to Carialla’s face, without raising her head. Strange, how brown eyes could look so hard and cold.

“You avoid me. Does this lessen your fear of me?”

“Er—” Rothesay’s gaze dropped again, and in sudden panic she yanked it back up.

“It but postpones it. What becomes of a fear unfaced?”

“It, er, grows?”

“Therefore—?”

Rothesay almost laughed in surprise. “I, er, should come up more often?”

Carialla only flicked one eyebrow.

She sat deep in the same cushioned chair as before, still heavily robed in cream-colored silks, though mercifully no fire burned on her hearth this hot morning and a bit of breeze idled in through the tall windows. Whatever work had previously hung on her loom must have been finished, for another one, mostly in dark green, filled it today. The jaunty skeleton had lost his tankard and now held a garland of pale pink roses. Rothesay wondered again who he had been, but had no doubt now that he had been Runedaur, and kin by humor to Colden the severed head, besides.

Carialla upturned a tall hourglass on the little table beside her, and nodded for Rothesay to take the other chair. “You’d best be comfortable.”

Rothesay’s neck hairs prickled as she sat down gingerly, and then she gritted her teeth: the Mistress held out one of Vakiloth’s iron rings. “Oh. That.” She sighed, and opened her hand—

—Carialla, leaning forward on her knees, pulled the ring away, and watched her face so intently that Rothesay blushed, hoping she was clean enough. “What is the date?”

“Er. The seventeenth day of Dannin?”

The witch again touched the ring to Rothesay’s hand—

—“Five, taken thrice, less eight?”

“Seven.”

Again the ring—

—a flicker: the Mistress’s face, shadowed in thought, not a foot from her own—

—Carialla settled back into her cushions, and turned the iron ring slowly in her fingers. Rothesay waited to be quizzed, but this time the quiz was silent. Absent-mindedly, she remembered to breathe, and scratched at a slight prickle on her left wrist, and yelped in pain, and alarm at blood welling freely from an inch-long gash. “Hey! Hey, that wasn’t—!” Telling the Mistress of Runedaur that it was not very nice to carve up one’s unconscious guests sounded stupid before she ever voiced it, and she bit it off, but angrily, and squeezed hard to stanch the wound.

“Here.” Carialla laid aside the iron and, taking Rothesay’s reluctant hand, dabbed it with a white cloth dampened with a pungent metheglin, and bound it securely. “A small price, for so great a learning.”

“Whose learning?” Rothesay demanded indignantly.

Carialla flicked an eyebrow again. “You feel nothing in that state. Nothing at all. Moreover,” Carialla’s eyes gleamed, and her voice dropped, “you do not even bleed.” She glanced aside at the hourglass. Its upper bulb was empty. As Rothesay’s jaw dropped, the witch went on, “Nor do you breathe.”

Rothesay’s jaw stayed dropped. “How long could I go on like that?”

“I do not know. I have never seen the like, girl. But I am loath to try you further: I have already robbed you of an hour, and though you returned as readily from that hour as from a moment’s trial, I cannot conscience a longer test.”

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Rothesay shot Carialla a sharp glance at the word ‘conscience,’ as being, to Rothesay’s mind, almost an irony. If the witch noticed, she ignored it.

“You would do well to learn how much, or how little, is needed for the effect. I myself have already learned this: that to cast a spell while I hold this ring,” she rolled it from one palm to the other, “requires my uttermost effort; with the ring, and this nugget—” she held up what looked like a small, shrivelled grape, not yet a raisin, “—I can do nothing at all.”

Rothesay gazed at the metal in the Mistress’s hands till she no longer saw it, but Padriag’s hearth. The old wizard knew everything. Didn’t he? He had no iron in his house, she knew well; was that chance, or choice? Chance, she thought; surely he would have told me about it, if he had known. Slowly, as though possessed and directed by Carialla’s question rather than her own will, she put forth her hand and took the nugg—

—falling to the rug, she flung her hands down to catch herself, jarring her shoulderblades. The wrinkled little blob of iron bounced away to smirk at her from a leaf in the carpet pattern.

But, “What,” Carialla’s iciest voice poured down on the back of her neck, “is this?” She planted a slippered foot on Rothesay’s hand.

“Um—it’s my, um, hand, Mistress.”

“It’s a wrist begging to be broken.” Releasing the hand, she raised the girl back up by her chin, till their eyes were on a level. “You do not know how to fall,” she growled.

Rothesay decided not to offer the observation that falling was not a thing one learned, that it happened all on its own without any effort or skill on anyone’s part; not even as a joke.

“Go to . . . ” Carialla’s gaze wandered to the window. “Ragalda. She is here from Rose House. You have no other duties till you can fall aright: my Chain is on.”

A week later, she had worked up to dropping as much as ten feet onto turf, to the clear pleasure of her Silent instructress. Ragalda, a Geillisel in her middle twenties, only a little shorter than Rothesay and almost as willowy, wore the martial Black rather than the magical Silver, but she wore it woman-fashion, not manlike. Rothesay, imitating her, immediately found great need of skill in falling, as she kept stepping on her skirts at every unexpected move. Ragalda could run Colderwild’s obstacle courses in hers; Rothesay was envious and bruised, and her skirts were torn.

Then she was amazed to learn that Ragalda had actually been one of the Sisterhood of Sorche, before seeking the Runedaur. Why had she left? Well, the Runedaur had more to teach, for one; the Sisterhood limited its prowess to battle. And, most unlike the Order, the Sisterhood was jealous of its members, permitting no dual loyalties: one either belonged exclusively or not at all. Forced to choose, then, Ragalda had chosen the one that forced no choice.

And there was also the matter that the Sisterhood worshipped Fire, and Fire’s goddess. Among the Runedaur, Ragalda found leave to wonder what ‘worship’ really meant, and what it was worth; she had been enjoying this Moot, if ‘enjoy’ might be used of a passion so fierce and eager.

Rothesay shook her puzzled head, baffled by ‘worship,’ finding no echo of any such feeling in her own soul, and flung herself from the roof of the stables. The hair of the man she almost scalped with her dive glinted like copper in the hazy afternoon glow, and as she rolled upon the straw-padded ground, she realized with a grin that the attack—whoof! it was the ‘Serpent’ grab, by the knees, and she had been expecting ‘Lion’s Jaws’ on her neck, argh argh argh—came from Rory.

She was not too happy to see him to try to break free, however, nor surrendered till she had to spit straw to cry ‘Yield!’ Gloriously, Ragalda granted her a free hour to go and visit, and soon once again they sat atop the Tower of Stars with bread, wine and cheese.

He had indeed pulled off his Challenge, and the lady in question was even now somewhere in the hold, being entertained by Master Lee. Rothesay begged for the story.

He grimaced. “Well, you know, the Challenge was, to ‘steal’ her, right?”

“I remember that; what did they mean?”

“Did I know? I just thought it meant, grab her and run off, never gave it a thought till there I am, in Earl Stakr’s mead hall, looking like I’m Dun Brean again, right, and watching this really pretty woman hand-feed him bits of goose. Everyone’s watching her, and him, and most of ’em jealous, too. I’m trying to figure out ways to get out, once I’ve got her; tricks, like turning all the horses loose, or tying them all together, all kinds of stuff. And I think, whatever I do, it’s going to be a load of work. Stakr’ll be after me, all his men’ll be after me, for honor’s sake some of them, and some of ’em just to rob the robber. They might light beacon-fires, and then the whole countryside would be against us. Oh, and not to mention the small detail of the quean herself objecting to the project! One huge, monster load of work, all the way. Then I think, but this is Master Lee’s Challenge.” He glanced sidelong at her, and bit his cheese.

“So?”

“‘So’? ‘So’? Hey-yah! So you need to spend a lot more time with him than you did, Sugar! Master Lee worships levers. You know levers? Push a little here, move a great big thing over there?”

“Of course I know what levers are!”

“So, Master Lee’s master motto is, ‘the greatest effect with the least effort.’ Leverage. So I knew I had to think of an easier way to do this. ’Cos if I’d brute-forced it, even if I pulled it off, Master Lee’d probably disqualify it, or something.”

“Well? Out with it: what did you do?” She bounced a bun off his head for emphasis.

Rory half-grinned around his cheese. He also blushed. “Wellll—what if the lady wanted to go?”

“What if—? You seduced her?” Rothesay squeaked. Rory shrugged. “But, but the earl, and all his men, they’d still be after you. And madder than ever, I should think!”

“Yeah. I thought about that, too.”

“And?”

He squirmed. “‘And.’ Erm. Well, after, you know, after she agreed to run away with me, I, uh, had a little talk with her. About whether she’d rather have all the excitement of us being chased all the way to the Holywell, and whether Stakr’d be mad enough to burn her at the stake for forsaking him, if we were caught; or if, you know, she truly wanted to get away. Took a bit, getting her to see that those were two different things, but finally she said she wasn’t stupid, of course she’d want to get clear. Been wanting to leave for a long time anyway, it turned out; funny. So I said. . . .” His voice faded, and he stared unseeing into the stones of the wall opposite. The bit of cheese he had been rolling between his fingers as he spoke, he now mashed thoughtlessly flat.

“Said what?”

He shrugged again, almost a shudder. “I told her how to, how to, uh, well, lose Stakr’s interest. Make him think he was the one who didn’t want her anymore. Took a couple of days; meantime, I, I—” he sighed explosively and pitched the cheese-mash off the tower. “I made myself a name. Wrangled some of the big boys into picking fights with me, so I could bloody their stupid untrained noses. Stakr throws her over for this little slip of a girl and I’m such a hero everyone figures I’m bloody well entitled to her—well, one slow learner wanted to fight me for her even then, but the others laughed him out of the hall—and off we rode and here the hell we are.”

He finished in so savage a voice that she could only stare in wonder. “What, er, what’s the matter, then? You’ve got her, and now you’re stuck with her? —Is she expecting you to marry her?” she yelped.

“Huh! I’d deserve it if she did, wouldn’t I?” he snarled. “Oh, no: see, I’ve just been setting her up to get bored with me, now! Gods!” he swore, bounding to his feet. He strode to the parapet with a vehemence that gave her a moment’s horror that he was going to fling himself from it. But he rounded about, and flung his arms wide instead.

“All ye gods above and below! It’s too easy! Once you know, oh, just a cute trick or two, I mean, hell, I’m just a student, nothing like a knight, much less a buggering master—I mean, these were people!” he shouted as if she had suggested they might have been parsnips, and she could only stare in shock. “And I worked them like puppets on sticks. Demons and darkness—can you imagine what I’d do if I were good at it?” He stopped, panting as though he had been running, and though he fixed his wild glare on her, she was not certain that he saw her. “And—I can’t not do it, now,” he went on, and now he pleaded, as though she might have some power to undo his. “They don’t have the first idea why they do what they do most of the time. And I do, or some of it—so, so now, whether I meddle, or I don’t: I’m still the thrice-damned puppetmaster. Compared to them,” he amended. “I’m still the one who says how it goes, or doesn’t, or what the hell.” His head swung from side to side, his eyes groped the stones as if looking for a door, an escape. “What do I do now?” he whispered, perhaps not to her. “We shouldn’t be able to do this. What the hell do I do?”

She sat very still, not to startle him like some wild bird. Had he ever run off, like Móravn, or Kahan? She thought she understood his dismay; and yet, right now I could use a bit of a first idea why people do what they do! “Are you going to,” no tactful expression came to mind so she blundered on, “er, run away?”

He snorted, and seemed to recover something of himself. “What the hell for? I’d still know too much. Too much and not enough. They know,” he waved a brawny arm at Colderwild laid out far below. “They know this stuff.” He sighed like a sob and slumped as limp as uttermost exhaustion back down beside her. “They’re the only ones in the world who’ll even know what in hell I’m talking about.”

Rothesay put her arm across his shoulders and he leaned against her, and they sat together silent till Sothia’s bell chimed. And one with his unhappiness was her inexplicable joy. She suddenly felt that she liked him immensely. It was a long time before she thought to wonder why; still longer to learn the sweetness of the fear of power.