the sun was finally oozing into the horizon to the west, seeming to spread along the grasses rather than vanish behind them. At last, Storm thought dismally. They’d passed beyond the rain flattened area and back into the long grass and Sandahl was grazing as they moved, but that had been the only good thing to happen all day.

The water was nearly gone, and he had no idea where he would encounter more. All he could do was continue the course of the day, plodding along beneath the ten thousand kilo saddle in the general direction of the misty blue peaks to the south.

He’d long ago put a pebble in his mouth to fool it into thinking some moisture remained in his body. It had worked for awhile, but his body was catching on. He didn’t reach for the canteen.

Sandahl was limping more broadly now, weary enough to begin losing interest in the grain-heavy grasses that brushed his belly. He plodded along behind the man, head down, tail limp. There were flies aplenty now, although they were kept from the burns for the most part by the thick layer of salve caking his rump.

The mountains were as far off as ever they’d been. The pitiful few stad he’d managed beneath his burden were hardly measurable compared to the whole. He’d be weeks getting out of the grass at this pace, always assuming he lived out the next few days. And found water somehow.

They’d trained him to survive under ludicrous conditions over the years, and he’d been forced to prove the training more often than he’d have liked. He’d made his way through jungles so thick he’d never seen the ground, and deserts so barren he’d had to dig up snakes to steal their life’s juices. He’d clawed his way through frozen landscapes and submerged himself in water until he’d thought his arms and legs would simply dissolve. But something about this place was different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something.

Okay, he shook his head woozily, quit screwing around. Aloud, he said to no one in particular; “this can’t be that hard. I must know this.”

Without stopping his torturous shamble, he looked up and squinted against the setting sun, sweeping his gaze around as far as he could twist a neck grown stiff with muscle cramp. Think, he told himself. What are the signs of water? Birds, bees, trees, certain flowers. Not that any of these signs would help if there was simply no water around. Much as the training officers had always touted knowledge as the preeminent weapon of battle, he knew that it wasn’t an all powerful magic wand. Sometimes there just wasn’t any water around to find, no matter how good you were at finding it.

“What about you,” he asked the horse without turning his head. “You smell any water?”

Sandahl raised his head unsteadily, flaring his nostrils wide in a quest for the slightest scent. His negative snort was distinctly lacking in its customary moistness.

Camp was dark and dry, accomplished by the simple expedient of dropping the saddle and collapsing to the grass. Sandahl merely stopped moving forward, standing splay-legged and dispirited.

Laying on the cold grass, teeth clenched against the throbbing tortures that were his arm and shoulder, unable to muster the energy to curse the weight he’d been carrying for sixteen hours, Storm stared at the stars blanketing the cloudless sky.

There’d be no fire unless he wanted to spend an hour or so denuding the nearby prairie and twisting clumps of grass into makeshift sticks that would burn through in less time than it took to gather them.

"Yggdrasil, old world tree,” he called softly. “Bayel. Oldest one of all. I could sure use some rain about now.”

But the world tree wouldn’t hear, he knew. There were no roots this far out into the prairie. He contemplated attempting contact with the little birds. He felt he could if he tried, far away as they were. But he wasn’t sure how the contact operated. If, like his magic, it left traces that could be followed to him or them.

He didn’t feel much like confronting any more dragons just now, thankyouverymuch.

The waning, lesser moon was slow in rising, clawing its way into the sky well towards morning, barely decreasing the gloom enough to notice. The greater hadn’t even put in an appearance.

The pinging of Storm’s muscles had ceased, but the ache remained– a dull thud that started at the small of his back and oozed up his spine to nest at the base of his neck. He didn’t sleep much.

Cold had descended upon the plain and had, without a fire to thwart it, insinuated itself into his muscles and limbs, feeding hungrily on the meager warmth he had managed to hoard thus far. The shivering fought the cold, but not well enough, and further weakened his overextended body.

Dawn was pearling the eastern sky when the horse’s head jerked upright, ears rotating forward as he peered into the gloom. Without moving more than a few millimeters, Storm followed the animal’s regard out into the darkness, cycling his eye to light gathering. Nothing, nothing, nothing— there! Out at the edge of his vision, a dark shape slunk along the ground, quartering to get downwind.

The man watched the form creep slowly closer, resolving itself into the grey shape of a largish coyote. From its movements, it was trying to figure out what it had found. He knew from the little birds and the traders that he didn’t smell quite like a man as they knew men, and perhaps the coyote’s curiosity had overcome its caution.

The coyote was close enough now to see clearly, its eyes moving from man to horse and back. It could probably smell the burn, even through the salve. It moved further around the invisible circle drawn by the limit of a normal man’s vision, taking in both figures with a practiced eye. Apparently satisfied, it began to ease back into the gloom.

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The man took a chance. He yipped, struggling to get the correct timbre into the sound. The coyote froze and raised its head up and back, ears pricked.

“That’s right,” Storm muttered softly aloud. “I speak wolf, and I don’t smell like a were.”

The coyote was still watching him intently, waiting. Here was where it got silly. Wolf was spoken with the entire body, including the tail, one of which he did not own. He lolled his tongue out to the side, glad that only the horse and coyote were there to see, and tilted his head, dipping it and arching his back slightly. Water, the stance said.

The coyote stood quickly, dipping and raising its head as it took two quick steps backward. Strange-no trust, the move said. A quick yip that ended in an aborted howl: not wolf.

Storm squared his shoulders, stretching his neck and leaning forward. If he could have managed a tail, he’d have arched it high: dominant. He repeated the water stance.

The coyote was confused, but the man/not man, wolf/not wolf held it with his dominant pose. Water, he repeated, and the coyote glanced quickly northeastward before regarding him again.

From silly, it now got tricky. He knew that, unlike the weres, the coyote wouldn’t really understand functions of distance or time. He maintained his stance and took a quick half-step forward, pricking his ears and hoping the coyote could see the movement. Show me.

The coyote yawned and looked away. No.

Storm reinforced the dominant pose and repeated the demand: show me.

Hungry, the coyote yipped. Hunt. The last included the whine that signified imperative.

Storm slowly eased his hand into the saddlebag he’d been laying his head on, withdrawing a large chunk of jerked meat. He tossed the meat onto the grass between them and repeated; show me.

The coyote’s nose was working rapidly, and he licked his chops, whining low in his throat. He was frightened at the strangeness of the situation, but the meat smell was overpowering his will, beckoning to his empty stomach. He crept half a step forward before he could stop himself.

Storm saw the movement and let his jaws gape, his tongue loll, snapping out two rapid half-barks. More he told the coyote.

Now? The coyote’s suddenly alert stance asked.

Water, he repeated.

Stillness descended on the scene while the coyote considered the pleas of its growling stomach and the blandishments of the jerked meat. Then it trotted forward to snap up the meat in a single gulp, veering northeast and trotting off.

“Shit!” Storm cursed as he struggled to his feet, groaning as the saddle’s weight hit the end of his half-numb arm. He let out a warbling howl that told the coyote to wait as he stumbled off in its wake, Sandahl following unsteadily.

* * *

“Yes, child?” Belius spoke without turning from his task.

“He shouldn’t be alone,” Swallow told the old wizard’s back.

“He’s not alone,” Belius assured the distraught sylvan, not bothering to ask of whom she spoke. “Koli is with him.”

“No,” Swallow shook her head, the tinkling of the tiny ceramic bells she’d woven into her hair telling Belius of the action.

“No?” Now Belius did turn to regard her.

Again the tousled mane shook, tiny bells chiming. “Thrush would not tell you, but when we joined with him, he and the runner were alone.”

Belius stroked his beard, his eyes going shiny and vague. “Could you tell what had separated them?”

A shrug and a flip of heavy tresses. “Only that they were not together. He was very focused, was Brae, fashioning the spear, and hadn’t thought for anything else.”

Belius began to rise, but fell back groaning. His legs were asleep again. He left off stroking his beard to rub some of the life back into them, regarding Swallow Courting from beneath bushy brows. “Yes, the spear,” he muttered. “You never did tell me the whole of that, did you?”

Swallow shrugged again. “I don’t know the whole of it, Belius.” she told him. "One moment we were asleep and the next we were part of it. He didn’t so much call as summon, and by the time we were awake enough to realize what was happening, there was naught but the spear and the falling blackness.

"There was no tracery that I could see —nothing that resembled a spell at all— just the spear of Brae’s will, and that horrible black wall.” A quaver entered her voice, and she began to shake, face going pale.

“Girl!” the old wizard snapped.

“Huh?” she blinked, coming back to the now.

Belius’ legs were on fire, and he still didn’t trust them, so instead of standing, he leaned back, wincing as his club-like appendages straightened. “It’s over,” he told her. “You said so yourself. Try not to dwell overmuch upon it.”

He motioned Swallow to the edge of his pallet, which was the only furniture to share the room with his bench and rude table. “The Tairn is alive, yes?” he queried when she’d settled herself.

Swallow nodded without hesitation.

“You can feel him then?”

Another nod. “Always. Well, most always.”

“Good, good. How much can you tell of his surroundings from this feeling?” he inquired, still intrigued by the connection the three shared.

She seemed startled by the question. “Nothing,” she exclaimed. “What did you think it was, Belius, a far-seeing weird? It was only in this other place that we could see at all, and that was more of the wizard’s sight than actual seeing. And it only lasted for a few moments.

"We cannot normally see through his eyes, nor he through ours. We feel one another is all.” She paused, contemplating, hands going to the hollow of her breasts. “He is a warmth, a reassurance. If he is greatly frightened, or enraged, it changes somewhat, but I cannot always tell one emotion from another. Thrush can tell, and might well be able to explain it better than I, for her link is deeper than mine.”

This was news to the wizard, and he filed it away in the back of his mind. “What do you feel now?” he asked.

She concentrated, holding both hands to her breast. When she looked up, her face was troubled. “Weariness,” she said. “And pain.”

Belius nodded gently. “Weariness is good, Swallow. If a tenth of what you’ve been telling me is true, he has every right to be weary. Pain? Well, after what you’ve all been through, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t any pain. The important thing is that you don’t feel fear, or nothing.”

“Nothing?”

You can feel him go to the...what did you call it...the cold place? When he leaves and you don’t feel him at all?”

She brightened. "No... yes... I mean, I can feel him, so he’s not in the cold place. That means he’s safe?”

Now it was Belius who shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it’s likely that he’s merely journeying or resting, rather than battling fell monsters and dark magicks.”

Swallow’s face lit up momentarily, but didn’t stay bright. “But he’s still alone, and he shouldn’t be.”

“Could he not have rejoined the trader?”

She paused, concentrating. “I cannot tell. Is that what you think must have happened?”

Belius pondered lying to her, but decided against it. In spite of her flighty-seeming demeanor, Swallow Courting wasn’t the least little bit stupid. “I have no way of knowing,” he admitted. “On the other hand, neither do you.”

Mollified only slightly, she turned to leave him to his work.

“Swallow?” he held her halfway through the door.

“Hmmm?” she regarded him over her shoulder.

“Can you call him?” the old man wanted to know. “Communicate, I mean, if you concentrated?”

“He’s very far away,” she told him. “I don’t think I could. Perhaps with Thrush’s help.... We’ve discussed it, but we’re afraid the link would alert any watchers who might be searching for him.”

“Do you think it would be so overt?”

She frowned more deeply. “Dare we take the risk?”