Forsaken

TEMPLE OF TIME: Book Two FORSAKEN by Jane Toombs

© copyright July 2004, Jane Toombs Cover art by Jenny Dixon, © copyright July 2004 New Concepts Publishing 5202 Humphreys Rd. Lake Park, GA 31636 www.newconceptspublishing.com

Chapter 1

Charis, feeling as though she'd faded to a pale wraith, sat with drooped head in a meadow where colorful fliers darted above, where flowers perfumed the air and small fluffy hoppers nibbled on greenery all around her, unafraid. Even when a great flapping of wings nearby caused all the animals to flee, she ignored the sound. But then a huge winged beast landed beside her and she was forced to take notice. She supposed it was fearsome, being scaly and green, with amethyst eyes, but too dispirited to care, she didn't move. Words unfolded in her mind. I am Vorst, a draig. Blanca sent me to carry you to safety. Climb on my back. Now. Charis remembered the white ahver. Blanca had helped her, giving her the spirit of life after the man called Merl had said she didn't exist. The ahver then hid her and left, but didn't return. She gazed uncertainly at the green draig. I will not harm you.... Anything was better than this feeling of fading. Charis rose and, with some difficulty, managed to climb aboard Vorst, seating herself between his wings. When he launched himself and flew up and up, she lost what little breath she had left in wonderment. She was flying! When the draig finally circled and landed near a small dwelling, Charis regretted the trip was over. Then she saw the white ahver perched on the top of the dwelling and smiled. Blanca really had sent him. Vorst gave a little shrug, and she slid off him onto the ground. He took off immediately and she stared after him, sorry to see him go. "Well, well, what have we here?" a woman's voice asked. "'Tis not common, not common at all, for a draig to deliver a young lass to my door. Though I believe I've seen that draig before, sadly enough."

Charis turned and saw an old woman standing in the open doorway. "Who might you be, dearie?" "Charis. I'm a phantasm." The old woman shook her head. "You look real enough to old Hulda. A mite peaked, maybe." The white ahver flew down and settled on Charis' shoulder, making her feel happy. "This is Blanca. She's magic." "Well, then, what do a young woman who thinks she's a phantasm and a magic ahver want with old Hulda?" Blanca put her beak to Charis' ear. "She says she needs help teaching me how to be a young woman, and she thought of you." Hulda's gaze shifted from the Charis to the ahver and back. "Did she now? Happens I once was young, but the days pass and old comes sooner than a body expects. Come in then, dearie, and welcome. I have the notion that we may suit very well." Blanca fluttered up into a nearby tree as Charis entered the cabin. She stopped and stared around at the inside. "'Tisn't much, but 'tis home," Hulda said. "I've never been inside a home before." "Come now, dearie, you're a woman grown. You surely didn't live in the open all your life. Where were you raised as a child?" "I've always been the way I am now." As Hulda looked her up and down, a small four-footed black animal stalked over and sniffed at Charis' feet. "Does this animal live in your home?" Hulda nodded. "I see now what the ahver means. Jet is a cat and he lives here with me. Put down your fingers for him to smell." Charis did, the cat put out his tongue and licked her fingers. "Jet thinks you belong here with us and likely he's right. Come sit at the table here," Hulda pointed, "and I'll fix us some chai. Watch how 'tis done, 'cause this is a chore you must learn to do. While we drink the chai you can tell me why you call yourself a phantasm." While she watched what Hulda did, Charis tried to think how to begin. By the time the fragrant, dark and steaming liquid sat before her in a mug, she was ready. "The very first I remember I stood between Merl and Zareen. I didn't know their names then, but Blanca told me later. Zareen called me Charis and Merl said I was a phantasm. Then everything faded away and the next I remember I was in a different place with the same two people. I had no notion how I got there. This time Blanca was there, too." "Merl again said I wasn't real. I began to fade, but then Blanca flew to me and I was solid again. She told

me to run behind some bushes, then made me hide behind a tree until they left. She told me she'd come back and, when she did, she showed me the way to a meadow with a stream. Trees with food I could eat grew there. I stayed a long time until she sent the draig for me. He came and brought me here." "A strange tale, indeed. But, since you eat and drink, your body must be real enough. Old as I am, I never dealt with a phantasm before, for all that my son was a wizard. 'Tis him the draig brought to me, dying. Dying's when the body stops and decays because the spirit's gone from it." "Blanca said she gave me the spirit of life." "Then she's magic for sure and you're no longer a phantasm, whatever Merl might have said. I've met the man, and men are not always right in what they believe. But now I understand why you have so much to learn. A woman's lot is hard enough without coming to life in the midst of it with no memories to fall back on. We'll rub along well enough together, dearie. Blanca sent you to the right place. This will be your home as well as Jet's and mine." Sipping the hot chai, Charis tested the word in her mind. Home. She liked the sound of it. Whether she was real or not, she had a home.

****

In the late evening, Prince Xenon entered the corridor leading to his quarters in the palace, head bowed in grief over the death of his father, King Jerbom of Mizpa. He started when a panel opened in the wall and old Aramic motioned him inside. Xenon glanced up and down the corridor. Seeing no one else about, he ducked into the secret passageway. "You take chances," he warned as Aramic slid the panel shut. "Had anyone been about they'd have learned of this passage." Aramic, his lined face grim, waved that aside. "They wait in your room. You must not go there." Xenon stared at him. "My brothers?" "With some of those who favor your older brother Radon as king." "He has the right to take the throne. I do not." "Likely so, but bastard or not, you were the king's favorite, else he never would have passed the True King's Ring to you before he died. Prince Radon wants that ring and wants you dead. As you will certainly be if you go to your room." Xenon fiddled with the heavy ring he wore on his right hand. In the dimness of the passage, the blue stone took on a faint glow. Radon might deserve the ring as well as the throne, but their father had given it to his bastard son instead. Xenon didn't care about the throne, but the ring was his and he intended to keep it. "I managed to gather traveling clothes and a bit of food and water, but they have your sword. The best I could do was this." Aramic waved a wicked looking dagger. "There is no way you can get to your mount. Change quickly, take the knife and food and leave by the secret passage. Even then you're far from safe. Radon has set guards everywhere with orders to kill."

"He wants me dead?" "Don't be a blithering numwit. He's always hated you." When they reached the fork leading to the underground passage that tunneled under the palace walls, Aramic paused. Xenon laid a hand on the old man's shoulder. "What about you? Will you be safe after I'm gone?" "Prince Radon believes me to be well into my dotage, a misconception I've carefully fostered. He won't associate me with your disappearance." As the two men gazed at each other, Xenon's chest grew heavy. "I'll miss you, my friend." "I shall sleep better knowing you're beyond the palace walls," Aramic told him, then reached and hugged Xenon briefly. "If they do trap you, remember the Temple of Time. Dangerous as that place is, youth is for living and danger is preferable to certain death. Go now. Hurry." Leaving Aramic behind, Xenon trotted along the tunnel. With his only weapon the knife he carried in a sheath on his belt, he stood no chance against the well armed palace guards. But the Temple of Time? He grimaced. The belief in Mizpa was that those who entered that mysterious place never came back. It could be true. Last season, the Verbot Virgin who'd gone into the Temple to retrieve the stolen Starlight Crescent had been able to slip the talisman under the door to a waiting acolyte, but had not returned herself. If even the purest of the pure was doomed to remain inside, it boded ill. Pure he definitely was not. As he neared the hidden door that led to the brush-covered side of a hill overlooking the city, he tried to plan how and where to hide until he was free of Mizpa. As Aramic had warned, he could trust no one. So he was safe nowhere in the city. How about the rest of Tonapa? He shrugged. Hard to tell. He thought of his father, newly dead, and thrust away his grief. A man running for his life had no time to mourn. He eased the door open and peered out, relieved not to see any guards. The tunnel still remained a secret. Xenon crept through the bushes hiding the door and cautiously made his way down the hill. Though it might be true he'd attract less attention afoot, with no sword, he couldn't help wishing he was mounted and armed. The unremarkable clothes Aramic had given him were not his, though they were a fair fit. Only his boots were his own. He turned the stone of the ring toward his palm so only the gold band showed and stepped onto the road leading to town, hating the feel of skulking along like a thief in the night. It cannot be so, but you would make a better king than Radon, his father had whispered to him as he lay dying. Then he'd taken Xenon's hand and slipped the ring into it. Wear this in place of the crown and know you are a true king... He'd had no further chance to speak to his father. Another chance would never come. Xenon jerked to alertness as a group of mounted men rode toward him. He stepped off the road, as the common people did, and continued on. They passed him without a glance. As he neared the city, foot traffic became heavier and so did riders, but apparently he looked ordinary enough not to attract attention. Once he came into the city proper, he saw the first of the palace guards. They seemed to be paying far more attention to riders than walkers, but a guard in the next pair he passed took a long look at him. Xenon turned at the next corner and sped up, ducking into an alleyway. He ran down it, climbed a fence

and came out on another, darker street. Hearing no hue and cry behind him, he breathed easier. A man stepped from a shop doorway and blocked his path. Moonlight glinted on the blade of the knife he held. Xenon acted without thinking, using a kick-boxing move he'd learned from one of the grooms. The man fell sideways into the gutter, his knife clattering against a cobblestone. Certain he'd put the would-be attacker out of commission for the moment, Xenon ran down the street, turned another corner, then another, now on the alert for night prowlers as well as guards. As his way grew brighter, his steps grew slower, more cautious. A tall building loomed up ahead on the left. A temple. Two guards stood at the foot of the steps. If he retreated, he'd attract their attention. Brazen it out, then, and saunter past the temple. He hadn't drawn quite even with the building when he realized what it was--the Temple Of Time. Had Radon set the guards here, figuring he'd be desperate enough to risk hiding in there? Not a stinking modag chance he would. "There he is!" The cry came from behind him and he swung around. Two guards pounded toward him, one the man who'd stared at him. Four against one and he was unarmed. Gauging his only possible escape, Xenon flung himself toward the closest man guarding the Temple steps. Before the guard completely freed his sword from the scabbard, Xenon slammed a fist into his side, unprotected by mail. The guard staggered, off-balance, and Xenon raced up the steps toward the ominous black curtain that served as the door. A quick glance over his shoulder showed the other guard, sword drawn, close behind him. Only one chance, stinking modag that it was. He took a deep breath and plunged through the shimmering black curtain, not knowing what to expect. All he felt was a mild tingle. No one followed--he'd been almost positive they wouldn't dare risk the Temple of Time. He was sorry he'd been forced to. Looking around, he noted in surprise that there were no rooms, no furnishings. Instead what looked like countryside lay ahead, the sun just rising over wooded hills. Night cloaked Mizpa, but in here a new day had begun. Strange, very strange. But Aramic had warned him anything could be expected inside this Temple that was easy to enter, but well nigh impossible to leave. Knowing he needed to keep on guard, he touched the hilt of the dagger with his left hand, that being his sword hand, and turned the ring he wore on his right hand so the stone again faced outward and wouldn't interfere if he needed to use his fists. Warily, he headed for the nearest hill, wishing again he was mounted. Just over the hill he came to a broad river, water foaming as it rushed between the banks. Best to cross and get as far from the Temple entrance as possible before his half-brother Radon, the future king, sent guards in here after him. As he would, once the news got back to the palace. The guards might have to be driven in at the point of a sword, since no sane man would willingly come into this forsaken place. He smiled grimly. Forsaken. As he was. The problem with crossing the river was no bridge spanned the roiling brown waters, neither to the right nor the left. Trying to swim an unknown river as wide and turbulent as this would be folly. He glanced back, but the hill he'd climbed down hid any view of the entrance. Looking again at the river, he was just to time to see a large lizard-like head with wicked teeth sink back into the brown water--a komo. Xenon retreated to stand next to a tree. No swimming in this river under any circumstances. Magic would help him conjure up a bridge, but he didn't possess a shred. A white ahver settled onto the branch of the tree, its bright gaze fixed on him. In one of the tales his old nurse used to tell him, because it was white, this would be a magic ahver, come to save the doomed prince. Doomed he might be, but a prince he was no longer. As for the ahver, white or not, its only ability was to fly. He certainly wished he could.

The ahver took wing and flew downriver some forty paces before alighting on another tree. There it stayed, still watching him. Xenon shrugged. He had to move on, why not follow the white flier? He had nothing to lose. When he neared that tree, off it flew again, about the same distance, to yet a third tree. And then again to a fourth. After Xenon had followed the ahver along the bank to the seventh tree, the flier changed direction and soared across the river. Watching its flight, Xenon saw it flew above a series of large stones whose tops cleared the river water. Stepping stones? The spaces between them were unequal, some farther apart than he judged safe. He looked for the ahver and found it watching him from the topmost branch of a sapling on the other side. Waiting? A fragment of a tale about stepping stones drifted through his mind. Something about asking the stones' permission to cross. A sort of rhyme. He could almost hear his old nurse chanting the words and found himself murmuring them. "Stepping stones, stepping stones Hold me safe and take me home." With that, he leaped onto the first one, then across to the second. The third was farther away, but he made the jump. As he balanced there, judging the distance to the fourth, a komo's ugly, sharp-toothed head broke through the surface of the water and its slit-pupiled eyes sized him up. Xenon jumped, made the rock, but found poor purchase on its slippery surface. Regaining a precarious hold, he flung himself across to the fifth without sparing a glance for the komo. He couldn't afford distraction. The sixth had a peaked top. Beyond it he could see the seventh, the last one looked flatter. Since there'd be no way to balance on the sixth rock, he'd have to use it merely as a passing brace to make the seventh. Hitting the sixth, he tried his best to launch himself, his boots scrabbling for a hold. He dropped onto the seventh on his knees, rose quickly and leaped for the bank, landing partly in the water. As he scrambled onto dry land he heard the clash of teeth behind him and knew the komo had struck at him and missed. So much for magic rhymes working to keep you safe. On the other hand he had gotten to the other side without being dragged under and eaten by a komo. Barely. He looked up at the ahver, who flew off, angling to the left, upriver, but away from the water and toward a woods. Without even thinking about it, Xenon followed. As he neared the trees, a faint melody from somewhere among the trees drifted to him on the morning breeze. Someone in there played a reed pipe, played it very well. Xenon slowed, friend or foe? The music caught at him, tempted him to enter the woods and join the dancers. Yet the ahver flew on, skirting the trees. Follow the flier or dance to the piper's tune? Xenon chose the first, but his traitorous feet had already begun to dance, leading him closer to the trees. He heard singing, the voices high and shrill. "Come and dance a measure true Measure and pleasure meant for you Dancing, dancing all around Into the air and under the ground."

He heard the ominous last few words and tried his best to stop dancing, dancing into the woods, but he couldn't make his feet obey his will, even though he now knew he was being lured into a lillo trap, where a horde of those tiny cannibals would make him dance until he dropped from exhaustion, until he was helpless, drag him into their cave, paralyze him, then carve him up for their next meal. He couldn't even cry for help, the word sounded only in his mind. As he reached the trees, he was suddenly enveloped in a blue glow that blocked the piping, shut out the singing. He had no idea where the blue glow came from, but it freed him. He turned and ran, skirting the trees, following ahver's flight, the blue glow traveling with him for a time. When it disappeared and he could hear again, there was no music, no trace of lillo singing. "I offer thanks to whatever you are, wherever you came from to save me," he intoned as he hurried on. His sword wouldn't have helped him escape the lillo trap, but having it might make the difference between life and death in the next danger he encountered. Futile thought, since the sword that had been his grandfather's, given to him by his father, would now be housed in his half-brother's scabbard. The ahver flew out of the trees and circled his head, then flew back into the gloom under the broad-leaved koples. Xenon paused and stared into the dimness. Though he couldn't see the ahver, he noticed a trail meandering between the trees. Obviously the bird had led him to this trail. Much as he hated to venture into a dense wood without a decent weapon, he had no other plan to follow.

****

Charis and Hulda were taking down the newly dry clothes they'd washed from a rope strung between two saplings when Hulda suddenly froze with one hand reaching for a skirt hanging there. "What's the matter?" Charis cried, alarmed. She had no idea how to help Hulda and was afraid to do anything in case it might be wrong. Hulda didn't reply. Charis stared at her friend and advisor apprehensively. In the months they'd been together, Hulda had taught her so much, but nothing about this. After what seemed forever, Hulda's arm dropped to her side, she blinked and looked around. "Are you all right?" Charis asked. "Shall I help you into the cabin?" "No, dearie. 'Tis over and done with. I'm fine now." Hulda reached for the skirt again and folded it into the basket on the ground between them. "You--you alarmed me." "Should have told you about my spells. They come on me without warning and I can't move nor speak till they run themselves out." "What spells?" "When I see what I'd rather not see."

"I don't understand. Because I'm a woman, will this also happen to me, like the monthly flow?" Hulda shook her head. "Most don’t suffer from the Sight. I see ahead of time what is to come and 'tis no blessing, believe me. Worst is, I can do nothing. What is to come, is to come. Mostly trouble. And he's on his way."

Chapter 2

Xenon cared not to spend a night in the deep woods, though it very much looked as though that would be his fate. He caught an occasional glimpse of the white ahver as he followed the trail, but an ahver, magic or not, would be of no use against what may live among these trees. If the flier could speak, he'd have some notion of where he was going and what he'd find when he got there. He smiled grimly. The story of his life so far. His unwed mother died of a fever after his birth and his father, the king, had taken him to raise. He loved King Jerbom and knew he was loved in return. But it took only a few years before he realized the status he enjoyed in the palace came from the king favoring him and would die with the king. Other than his father, he had no real friend there except old Aramic, the Scribe. Xenon had trained hard as a warrior with the vague notion of becoming a mercenary when the time came to leave the palace. Yet he'd had no real plan. Just as now. He meant to survive in this alien land, even if, at the moment, he wasn't quite sure how. Above his head small animals like chitkas chittered. Now and then something unseen crashed away in the sparse underbrush as he passed by on the trail. Night would bring the predators. As it grew darker under the trees, Xenon looked for a tree with a limb low enough for him to swing up into the tree, knowing he be safer up than on the ground. He found one before the darkness grew impenetrable, climbed high enough to avoid ground predators and sat with his back against the trunk to rest. Sleep in this strange territory was risky, but he nodded off now and again. Finally he blinked awake and found himself staring into green eyes with slit pupils belonging to whatever beast shared the branch with him, obviously one that climbed trees. Too dark to be sure, but he figured it for a catamint, a vicious and unpredictable killer. The only other thing he could see in the darkness was the slight glow of the blue stone in the ring he wore. With his other hand he reached for his dagger, knowing his chances were slim. The beast made a rumbling noise, but the eyes moved no closer. A growl? But the sound didn't sound menacing. He was reminded of the kitchen cats he used to pet when he was a child. By the right hand of the Creator, was the blasted thing purring? As he waited, tensely, little by little calm settled over him, a conviction that the catamint considered him a friend, a comrade-in-arms, so to speak. It was as though, without words or any mental touch he could feel, both he and the beast knew they shared a fellowship. Without realizing it was happening, lulled by

the purring, he slipped into sleep. When Xenon woke to the light of day, there was no sign of the catamint. A dream? But, as he climbed down from the tree, he saw where large claws had gouged the bark. This land was strange indeed, when a catamint considered a human a friend. Shaking his head, he marched on, looking for a stream to quench his thirst, hoping the water might still the hunger pangs plaguing him, for he'd finished off the food he carried. At length the trees thinned and disappeared, leaving him in a meadow where he spotted the white ahver atop a small tree hung with deep purple fruit. Though he didn't recognize what the fruit was, he plucked one and bit into it. Sweet juice ran down his chin as he chewed the pulp from the large seed in the center. He ate three and would have made it more, but the ahver evidently considered him fed and flew off along the trail. Xenon followed. The sun was high in the sky when he heard singing. Stopping dead in his tracks, he listened carefully before he decided the sound bore no resemblance to a lillo trap. A single voice, female. He walked cautiously on. The trail wound round a clump of berry bushes, and on the other side of the bushes he saw the singer and heard the words she sang. "Do not ask me, wandering minstrel, do not ask to take my hand, For I fear that you will lead me to a strange and far-off land. "Do not--Oh!" Eyes as green as the catamint's stared at him from the prettiest face he'd ever seen, a face framed by hair as fair as moonlight. He smiled at her. "I'm not a minstrel, though I admit to wandering. Is there a village nearby?" "A ways off, yes." "And you live there?" "Oh, no, my home is with Hulda, in her cabin." He saw she carried a small pail and had been picking red berries from the bushes. Her gown, plain and sturdy, revealed enough of her figure to let him surmise her body must be as lovely as her face. Ravishing pretty maidens had never been his way. He only tupped willing ones. This one, though she stared openly at him, showed no sign of trying to entice him. Finally she smiled and he was charmed by her dimples. "Come and meet Hulda. She told me you were coming, but I didn't know you'd be so--so…" She sighed. "I can't find the right word." "Benighted? Travel-stained?" She shook her head. The white ahver landed on her shoulder and put its bill near her ear and he noted she seemed to be listening, though the flier made no sound. Apparently this was where the ahver had been leading him. Why? "My name is Charis and the ahver is Blanca." He nodded his head at her and at the flier. "Xenon."

"Come with me, Xenon." She held out her hand. He took it and she led him away from the trail. Her hand, small and slightly cool in his, gave him a strange feeling. Not lust, something else. He wasn't sure he liked the feeling, whatever it was. Charis was far too trusting. "I could be dangerous," he warned. "Not to me, I can tell. Not to Hulda or she'd have known. The only other in our cabin is Jet and he can sense danger leagues away. I've begun to think life would be simpler if I were a cat. He relies on instincts, plus knowledge, while I have no instincts and much to learn yet." "Life can surprise any of us." He caught her quick glance and knew she wondered at his bitter tone. "We're glad Blanca guided you safely here. Hulda says a woman can't teach another woman everything about life, some things are best learned from the right man." The right man? He was hardly that, not even close. What did Charis and Hulda, whoever she was, expect from him? If he hadn't been in such dire straits, he'd be tempted to say farewell right now. Whether Charis agreed or not, he was a benighted stranger in a strange land with only the clothes on his back. "Hulda sees things that are going to happen, but she's not a witch, even if she does have Jet," Charis said. "She doesn't like to foresee, but it happens to her anyway. She knew you were coming, but she didn't know exactly what you'd look like, except you were a prince." "No longer," he muttered. "Just Xenon." "You're only the second man I've ever met--except for Bert the wood cutter and he's old like Hulda." "You shouldn't trust men. Especially men you don't know. Like me." She glanced at him in surprise. "But I do know you--you're Xenon." Such an innocent shouldn't be permitted out alone. Charis wasn't simple-minded, but she obviously didn't know the snares the world set for pretty young women. "Is Hulda your grandmother?" he asked. Charis shook her head, causing the ahver to launch herself into the air, flying ahead of them. "I don't have any grandmothers. Blanca brought me to her so I could learn. I rode on Vorst's back. He's a green draig but he doesn't hurt people." On Tonapa, he'd call that story far-fetched. In this place, though, anything was possible. "Blanca told me to take your hand so I could lead you," she added. "I like holding your hand. Yours is big and strong and warm. As you are." If any other woman said that to him, he'd take it as an invitation, but by now he realized Charis said what was in her mind with no strings attached to the words. After all, he was big and strong and warm. "Blanca is magic, you know. I don't have any magic." He smiled at her. "That makes two of us." "Neither does Hulda, not really. Her son did, but he became a twisted wizard and it killed him. Look, there's the cabin."

The building ahead, nestled among several trees, was small. Blanca perched on top of the roof, watching them. A thin plume of smoke rose from the chimney. He noted a barn set back from the cabin and a milche grazing in the nearby meadow. When Charis opened the door, the savory scent of stew set his mouth watering. An old woman turned from the pot she was stirring and assessed him from head to toe. "His name is Xenon," Charis said before he could speak. "You can let go of his hand now," Hulda told her. Xenon made a slight bow. "Greetings, Madame Hulda. I understand I'm expected." "True, but expected and welcome are not always twins. We'll see if you deserve to be welcomed. Meanwhile, you will shelter with us and we'll feed you." Her words were hardly gracious, but he appreciated the honesty. "Thank you." "'Tis plain to see you're travel-weary. There's a washtub of water out back, with soap of my own making and a cloth for drying. Join us at the table when you finish." Xenon felt like a child again, being ordered to wash up before he ate by his old nurse who didn't believe in pampering princes by doing for them what they needed to learn to do for themselves. Once he'd done what he could to make himself presentable he went back inside the cabin. Before he reached the table, a large black cat, tail held high, stalked toward him. He paused and bent down to allow the cat to sniff his hand. "Greetings, Master Jet," he said, looking into green eyes like the catamint's except for size. Jet circled him once, then turned and leaped onto a stool where he sat and watched Xenon. "Conditionally accepted?" he asked Jet. "'Tis plain you understand cats." Hulda's voice held a faint note of approval. Xenon did justice to the meal, which ended with the red berries Charis had picked, served with cream. "I am your grateful servant, Madame," he told Hulda. Later, after the women had tidied up after the meal, Hulda sent Charis out to milk the milche and put her into the barn for the night. When the door shut behind Charis, Hulda sat in the chair next to Xenon's at the table. "Trouble sent you into the Temple of Time from Mizpa or from somewhere in Tonapa," she said. "You know about Mizpa and the Temple then." "We lived in Tonapa, near Mizpa. I followed my son into this place after he became a thief in addition to being a wizard--for all the good it did him." She sighed. "Twisted as the man who fathered him, poor lad. What do you flee from?" "You must know of King Jerbom. He died and my half-brother, who inherits the throne, wants me dead." Blunt, but so was she. "Ah, then, I expect you're the bastard. I remember the talk when the king took you into the palace to raise." Her gaze shifted to his right hand. "When once I saw King Jerbom up close, that ring was on his finger."

Xenon nodded. "As he lay dying, my father gave the True King's Ring to me. My brother wants it." "In addition to the throne. A greedy one." She frowned. "Perchance my last seeing, the one after I saw you, meant this. Still, it's a cruel fate for the men he sends for they, like you, can never leave." He nodded. "I fear that's so, but I wasn't sure what I've heard about the Temple of Time was the truth. You say no guard will leave?" "Can't. Got to eat, got to drink. Can't carry enough provisions to last. Once you eat or drink or take anything at all in this land, the Temple won’t let you go back to Tonapa." A chill ran along Xenon's spine. Though his head knew he'd never leave here, his heart hadn't accepted the truth. Until now. "So you are here to stay. 'Tis plain you were sent to me for a purpose and 'tis one I don't favor." "I don't expect you to even try to help me escape those who come in pursuit." "Good. I can do little. But that's not the purpose I mean. You were sent for Charis." He stared at her. "Impossible. A man on the run has no--" "'Tis the truth I speak. She needs to be cared for and you are the man who will." "But--" Again she cut his protest short. "I'm an old woman. I've taught her what I can about life, but she needs a man's protection. You are that man. Otherwise Blanca wouldn't have led you here. When you leave, Charis will leave with you." "I have nothing, not even a sword." "I have my son's scabbard, which you're welcome to, but he came to me at the last without his sword. Still, last season, I foresaw another from Tonapa lose a sword in a croma's cave. With one of my potions blended to poison beasts of all types, including cromas, you can recover that sword. In the morning you will go with Charis to find what I need to make this poison. And why do you claim to have nothing when you own the power of the True King's Ring you wear?" Xenon frowned. "The ring is a symbol of power, no more." Hulda eyed him levelly. "How do you know?" He stared down at the blue stone, dull at the moment, though sometimes it glowed. "To my knowledge my father never called on the ring for power, even in times of danger. He would have known if it held power and surely would have used it." "Not necessarily. I learned about hidden power from my wizard son, whose search for such power led to his death. He said hidden power waits to be evoked and chooses its owner. Chance is you may be the one, for certainly the ring has power. I am no wizard, but I can sense it." Shrugging, Xenon said, "I shan't count on being the owner of anything but a keepsake ring from my father." "Ask yourself, Prince Xenon, why the new king, your half-brother, would send men to what may be their death in the hope of retrieving what you call a keepsake?"

"Then you actually did foresee those guards." She nodded. "I saw that four will enter the temple riding hathers. A red and black hound ran with them. I cannot predict exactly when, but I realize now they come to hunt you. When the poison is brewed, then you and Charis must leave. The cave with the lost sword lies a full day's trip ahead." Troubled, Xenon left the cabin to walk in the gathering dusk. He'd suspected Radon might be vindictive enough to send guards after him, not caring that those men were doomed. The ring, if recovered, he realized as Radon must have, could be slipped under the door to a guard outside the temple much as the Verbot Virgin had done with the talisman. He suspected the red and black hound Hulda had seen was his favorite, Yerbin, one who well knew his scent so fully capable of trailing him. Charis, coming from the barn with her pail of milk, saw him leave the cabin. Hurriedly placing the covered pail in the cool earth of the root cellar, she hurried to catch up to him. Reaching Xenon, she said, "Hulda told me you will take me with you when you leave. I'm so happy." He paused to scowl at her. "Happy? By the Creator's left hand, girl, what a thing to say. It's far too risky to take you with me." "But I want to go. Hulda says you have much to teach me." He groaned. "She underestimates the danger to anyone who travels with me, much more so for a woman." "I've learned from her that women are equal with men, though their strengths be different. Chance is I can supply a strength you may lack but will need." "I can't even protect myself much less you. No, Charis." She paid him no heed. She was going, if she had to trail behind him. "Blanca will come with me and she is magic. Hulda says we may need magic." "She's right there at least. But I travel alone." Charis eyed him. He was a man and Hulda had warned men could be deceptive. "Don't think to go off secretly. I'll follow." "Anyone with me won't have a modag's chance of surviving. Forget it." "What if that's my destiny? Hulda says everyone has a destiny, even me." He snorted. "Some destiny. And what does she mean, even you?" "I--I'm different. I'm not quite right." She drooped sadly. Sighing, he gathered her into his arms and held her close to him. Her breath caught and her heart pounded as a new feeling coursed through her. One she relished, but had never before experienced. The deep throbs of his heart against her made strange thrills run along her spine. "I'll hate leaving you," he said, easing a bit away to look into her eyes. "I'd forgotten women like you existed." He lowered his head until his lips brushed against hers. She closed her eyes, hoping the moment would never end. If this wonderful sensation was part of what he could teach her, she was more determined than ever to stay with him wherever he went.

****

Xenon meant to leave in the night, to rise while the women slept, slip through the door and away. Hulda had told him the cave's location, he'd head there and do his best to recover the sword. But try as he might, he couldn't stay awake and when he finally did rouse, sunlight brightened the windows. "Charis is ready and waiting to gather what I need for the croma poison," Hulda told him. "Eat quickly and go with her, for both of you must pluck what is needed for my brew to be effective." He tamped down his annoyance at himself for sleeping soundly by admitting he'd be better off equipped with the poison brew for the cromas, so it was as well his departure had been delayed until tonight. The kiss he'd shared with Charis last evening was the sweetest one he'd ever tasted, for all it was meant to be in farewell. He hadn't counted on being with her alone today, off in the meadows and the woods collecting the list of ingredients Hulda needed. Was the old woman out of her mind sending them off together? Being alone with Charis and not touching her was almost more than he could bear. "You're special," he told her as they stepped into a grove of trees. She smiled at him. "Yes, I know. Hulda said only a very special kind of woman was suitable for a prince--and you are one." Taken aback, he frowned. "No longer am I a prince." "I don't think that matters." He eyed her askance. "Listen, Charis, you are not for me." "She said you'd say that, but that the kiss meant you liked me." Xenon groaned inwardly. She'd told the old woman about the kiss and all Hulda had done was encourage her, when she should have warned the girl to beware. "You do like me, don't you?" Her artlessness made it impossible for him to hurt her, so he nodded. After all, it was the truth. She stopped, set down the basket she carried and raised her face to his. "Then why don't you kiss me again?" To the netherworld with should-nots. He dropped his basket, wrapped his arms around her and covered her mouth with his. This time her response was more heated than last night's which tempted him into caresses. Her skin was so soft and fragrant, her lips tasted of wild honey and the press of her body against his addled his wits. Only when his need for her became so acute it was painful did he pause to realize where they were headed. Where he was headed. Innocent as she was, she didn't have any clue to what came next. Calling on every modicum of will power he possessed, he put her away from him. "Please, no," she murmured, reaching for him. "Kiss me, touch me some more." "We can't." His voice was so hoarse with desire he could hardly understand his own words. "It's not right."

She blinked, her lower lip quivering. "But it felt so right." If only she knew how much he wanted to go on touching her. "Please straighten your clothes," he begged, unable to take his gaze from her lovely bared breasts. As she obeyed, she asked, "Are you sure it isn't right?" He cleared his throat. "Sometimes it is, but not now, not between us. A man and a woman should love each other first, should be married." He couldn't believe his own words. What a hypocrite he sounded. "That is, you shouldn't allow any man to caress you like this unless he first marries you." "Why not?" "Because you're beautiful and untouched, because you deserve a man who not only loves you but can stay with you and take care of you." "Hulda says a woman also takes care of the man she loves. Besides, you and I will be together." No, they would not, but he couldn't tell her that. "We don't love each other." "We don't? I like kissing you and touching you. Don’t you like kissing me?" Creator knows it was all he could do to prevent himself from taking her right here on the ground. "Yes, I do. But that's not love." "Oh. Then what is?" Searching for words, he finally said, "I've never been in love with a woman, so I can't answer that." She smiled, her dimples enchanting. "Maybe love will just happen." He breathed a sigh of relief at getting off the hook. "We'd best find the rest of what Hulda needs and get back to the cabin." Tonight he blasted well would not sleep. The old woman might well announce that tomorrow morning was their departure date and what then? He couldn't risk Charis' life. He'd creep away like a thief in the night.

Chapter 3

At supper it occurred to him, as he took the first sip of unusually sweet chai, that the chai Hulda had served him the evening before had also been very sweet, supposedly from the addition of wild honey. He wondered now if the sweetness hadn't been to hide something else, say a sleeping potion. Because it had not been like him to sleep straight through the night when he'd programmed himself to stay awake. He pretended to sip at the mug of chai, and when he finished eating, he took the chai with him when he left the cabin to take an evening walk. He upended the mug among the trees, emptying it, before returning

to the house. Charis met him before he reached the door. She moved close to him, lifting her face to look into his eyes. A last kiss, he told himself, to warm me on my way. His lips found hers for what he meant to be a brief farewell kiss, but her sweetness seduced him into a long, lingering embrace he wanted never to end. When he finally let her go, she sighed. "I want more." So did he, but he shook his head. "That was our goodnight kiss." He reached for the door latch and entered the cabin. Since he and Charis were supposed to leave in the morning, the packs Hulda had readied for each of them sat near the door. Before he retired he told the old woman how good it was of her to provision him. "Charis has been like a daughter," she said, "but old women don't live forever and she must learn to make her way in the world--difficult without a man. I couldn't let her go with nothing, nor you either. This is a strange land we're in, but those who are determined can make their way. And perchance not only here. My son studied old parchments in the tower that rises from the island in the Lake of Doom and told me he believed the maps therein showed gates leading to lands other than this one." Xenon regarded her with interest. "Ways back to Tonapa?" She shook her head. "'Other worlds,' he called them. He found and tried to open one such gate, but lacked whatever magic it took. He didn't believe the Temple of Time really existed on Tonapa, not as man-built structures do. He felt sure some alien mage with unimaginable powers had situated it there. What we came through, he said, had to be just such a gate. He surmised the others might well also be one-way doors into other worlds. Since I cannot see what your way will be, listen while I tell you where he found that gate, for it could be your destiny." The idea fascinated Xenon, even as he wondered if such were possible. Still, her son, twisted or not, had been a wizard, so his words should be considered and Xenon listened carefully. This world was strange enough. It was beyond his imagination to conceive what other worlds beyond such gates, if they did exist, would be like. Aramic had oft suggested he should pay more heed to studies and less to weapon training. Even if he had, he doubted the books would have told of gates that opened into other worlds. "Happen you may need to find that gate," Hulda said. He shook his head, but she continued. "Trust the magic ahver."

****

Later, as he lay wakeful on his pallet, waiting to be certain the others slept, he dismissed all such fanciful thoughts and concentrated on the here and now. The girl was far better off with Hulda, old or not. His chances for survival were dim, so if Charis came with him, sooner or later she'd be alone--or worse. What the guards might do to her, once they killed him, didn't bear thinking. When the cabin was quiet, he rose and, carrying his boots, crept toward the door. He had his hand on the pack meant to be his, when he sensed he was being watched. Turning, he saw the black shadow that was Jet. Relieved it was only the cat, he eased the door open, shouldered the pack and left the cabin. Night travel afoot was not his favorite, but that couldn't be helped. At least the trail Hulda had pointed

out, one that led toward the cave, was in open country and moonlight guided his steps. When the gleam of moonlight showed a different looking patch of ground ahead, he paused to regard the patch with suspicion. A warrior learns to avoid oddities. He decided to detour off the trail around it. When the sky began to show the first faint gray of pre-dawn, Xenon noted the dark bulk of many trees up ahead. Best to wait until daylight to tackle the woods. He struck off the trail, chose a lone tree, sat down with his back to it and closed his eyes, welcoming the short rest.

****

Charis woke to darkness with Jet's cold nose in her face. Since this had never happened before, she sat up. "What?" she asked the cat. He leaped from her cot to the floor. In the thin slant of moonlight creeping through the window, she saw the cat turn to look at her, so she rose and followed him to the pallet where Xenon slept. She found the pallet rolled up and no sign of the man. "Gone?" she whispered and took Jet's soft yowl as agreement. A new emotion slivered through her, one she'd never felt before. Hulda had told her about anger--was that what made her clench her hands into fists? Xenon was meant for her, he wasn't supposed to go off and leave her. What could she do? Though unused to making a choice on her own, Charis realized she had to go after him or he'd be lost forever. She dressed quickly, quietly, but when she reached to pick up her pack by the door she heard Hulda's voice. "Good for you, dearie. You decided on your own. I know now you're ready to leave me." Hulda hugged her close for a moment, then let her go. Charis felt a pang in her chest. It hurt to leave the only home she'd ever known. "I know I didn't have a mother, but I had you." Her voice quivered. "I don't know if I'll ever come back." '"Tis true I'll miss you, but you taught me as much as I taught you. I've heard of an orphan boy in the village who needs a home. Could be he and I will suit. Off with you, dearie, and don't look back." Tears in her eyes, Charis shouldered her pack, stepped through the door into the night and, obeying Hulda, looked only ahead. Fear of the dark or of danger didn't occur to her as she set off in the pale moonlight along the trail leading to the cave. The only real fear Charis carried with her was that of fading, of losing her existence, but, intent on finding Xenon, that didn't trouble her at the moment. She smiled when she felt the welcome weight of Blanca settling onto her shoulder. The white ahver was her true friend and would bring her to Xenon. The smile faded when she remembered how he'd left without her. Didn't he want her with him? Didn't he understand they had to be together because Hulda had foreseen it and she was never wrong? Hulda had also said more than once that men weren't always right, even when they thought they were, which was some comfort, but didn't entirely banish the underlying simmer of anger. On and on she walked, caught up in this unfamiliar emotion, trying to decide what to do with her anger when she found Xenon. Even when Blanca flew off her shoulder and fluttered in the air ahead of her, she paid the ahver no attention. She took another step and suddenly the ground gave way beneath her. Sprawled on her side at the bottom of a pit dug into the ground, the breath knocked out of her, Charis

dazedly understood the ahver had been trying to warn her to stop. As she regained enough breath to sit up, something chittered in alarm beside her. Though it was too dark in this hole to see clearly, she thought she recognized the sound as one of the tree creatures Hulda had told her were chitkas. "You fell in, too?" she whispered. The chittering took on a questioning note and a furry body pressed next to her. When she touched the frightened creature she realized it was much larger than the tiny nut-eating chitkas. It snuggled closer to her and she put her arm around it. Hulda had warned her this world held many dangers to be wary of, to be afraid of, but so far none had touched her life. She couldn't believe this creature, whatever it was, intended her harm. But the something that must have dug the hole in the trail and covered it over for unwary travelers might be one of the dangers. She knew the creature with her was afraid but she wasn't. Not yet. Maybe she would learn to be later, but fear was as alien to her as anger had been until Xenon had deserted her without warning. Taking her arm away from the chitterer, Charis knelt and dug into her pack for the knife she knew Hulda had placed inside. The knife had belonged to the dead twisted wizard. Wizards used magic, a skill ordinary folk didn't have, so maybe his knife still held some of his magic. Even if not, knives killed, as Hulda had demonstrated when she'd stabbed with her own knife that ugly creature stalking one of her egg-layers. Knives killed. Killed meant dead, meant never moving again, the breath of life gone from the body. Charis shivered. Not so much at the thought of having to kill as at her own fear of fading away into nothing. Into death. A sound from above. The creature clutched at Charis with a trembling furry hand. She rose to her feet and looked up. The grayness before dawn silhouetted two dark heads gazing into the hole where she was trapped. Her impulse to call to them faded as the night breeze funneled a rank odor down to her, a smell that raised the hair on her nape, warning her these two were not friends, were the kind of danger she'd been warned against. Knife in hand, she watched and waited for what would come next, all the time wishing she was elsewhere. Was this fear? Whatever it was, she didn't like the feeling. A faint whirr, then, without warning, a rope noose dropped over her head and tightened around her neck. Half-strangled, she raised her hands and managed to saw through the rope above the noose with her knife, then clawed at the piece around her neck, loosening it. Above her, the two creatures babbled excitedly in some unfamiliar tongue. One lifted his hand. Recognizing he meant to throw something at her, she quickly shifted position. A rock grazed her shoulder.

****

Xenon woke with a start when something touched his shoulder. He reached to brush it away, only to find it gone and Blanca hovering near his face in the wan predawn light. He rose and blinked at her. "What?" She flew away from him, toward the way he'd come, only to circle back, obviously agitated when he didn't follow. Why? He tensed as he realized what must have upset Blanca--Charis in danger. His

apprehension increased when it occurred to him that Charis may well have roused and followed him. Alone. In the dark. Grabbing his pack, he set off, retracing his steps as he trotted after the ahver. He hadn't gone far when he heard a faint strange gabbling. Not just an unknown language, but one that didn't sound quite human. His hackles raised, he broke into a run. He rounded a hill and stopped abruptly, staring in the gray light at two humanoid figures hanging over a pit in the trail. Recalling the suspicious patch he'd avoided, his fear for Charis grew, certain she'd fallen into the pit dug by these jabbering creatures to trap prey. Horror gripped him. Whatever they were, they must know men used the trail. To them, humans must mean food. He jerked the dagger from his belt, wishing for his sword instead. He'd taken no more than a step toward them when one of the two creatures swiveled his head to stare at him, then jumped up and down, gabbling in alarm. The other turned to look at him and raised its voice in a long, quavering cry that Xenon knew must mean it was summoning help. Wasting no time, he flung himself toward the two at the pit. As he neared, both reached for what he saw were rough clubs. Armed with these, they turned their backs to the pit and crouched, waiting for him. No way to get close enough to use the dagger without being clouted senseless. He paused, glancing from side to side off the trail. Spotting a fallen branch under a tree, he nodded, then looked back at the pair, chose his target and flung the dagger. His victim cried out, staggered back and plunged down into the pit. Xenon immediately grabbed up the branch he'd seen. Not as useful as a honed fighting rod, but he'd make do. The remaining creature rushed at him, swinging the club. Xenon parried with the branch, then swung it back and caught the thing in the midsection. It staggered sideways, losing its grip on the club. Xenon closed in, snagged the club and struck the creature across the skull, once twice, before it dropped to the ground and lay still. In the rosy light of dawn, Xenon stared down into the pit. Charis, wild-eyed, knife in hand, her arms covered with blood, looked up at him. The creature who'd fallen into the pit lay crumpled motionless beside her. An animal about the size of a small child clung to her leg. Thanks to the Creator he'd been in time. But even as he thought this he heard gabbling coming from the small grove of trees beside the trail. More of the blasted things on the way. Seeing a vine rope at his feet he tossed one end of it to Charis. "Put it around you so I can pull you up."

****

Charis heard Xenon's words, but couldn't force herself to act on them. Only after the little animal beside her grabbed the rope and wound it around Charis' waist, chittering at her all the while, did she manage to make herself tie the end to the main part of the rope. The creature then levered itself hand over hand up the rope to the top where it jumped off. "Help me by pushing upward against the pit side with your feet while I pull," Xenon called to her. "Hurry." Hearing the ominous sounds of more of the creatures shook Charis from her daze. Though it seemed to take forever, at last Xenon pulled her over the edge of the pit onto solid ground. She scrambled to her feet, staring at the horde of hairy creatures rushing from the trees toward them. .

"Ferals," she blurted, reminded of Hulda's caution about them. She sliced through the rope around her with her knife, reached into her belt and handed Xenon his dagger that she'd retrieved from the feral that had fallen into the pit, desperately wishing she'd never learned how to be afraid. As the frightening ferals advanced, clubs in hand, the light around Charis and Xenon changed from an early morning glow to a eerie blue. When the first feral came in range of the blue glow he screamed, jerked away, turned and raced for the woods. Another did the same. Then two more. After that the entire group fled. Xenon grasped her hand and drew her with him along the trail, hurrying away from the pit, heading toward where Hulda had said the cave was. The blue glow surrounded them for a time, then disappeared as though it had never been, but the two of them continued on until they finally plunged into a dense woods. She listened to him thank the Creator for the blue glow, then said, "Hulda says the ferals hunt mostly at night." "That may be, but we're getting as far away from them as possible before we chance a rest." He glanced at her. "Are you hurt?" Charis looked at the blood on her arms and hands with amazement. "No." Only then did she remember what she'd done after the injured feral fell into the pit. She'd recognized the hilt of Xenon's dagger and, when the feral tried to move, she'd stabbed it again and again with her own knife until it lay still. Then she'd pulled Xenon's dagger free, knowing he was weaponless without it. "I killed that feral in the pit." Her voice quavered. "I don't like to kill." He slowed and put his arm over her shoulder. "No normal human enjoys killing, but when it's you or them, there's no choice." For a moment she savored being thought of as a normal human. If only she could be. "I don't like being afraid, either. But I'm no longer angry at you for leaving without me. Why did you?" Xenon sighed. "Because I didn't want you to get hurt. Instead I put you in more peril." "You avoided the pit. If I'd been with you, I wouldn't have fallen into it. We're meant to be together." He grunted. Charis suddenly realized she hadn't seen the little animal who'd been in the pit with her. "Where did the chitterer go?" she asked. "Took off like a flying arrow. I think it got away." He stopped and took a good look at her. "I hear a stream close by. Best wash off the blood. And what's that around your neck? Looks like a noose." He loosened the knot further, pulled it over her head and off. "I see you cut the rope in time to avoid being strangled. You might have been afraid, but you acted to save yourself." He smiled. "I like a fighter." She basked in his approval. The stream ran close to the trail to their left, with a narrow path to it. While Charis washed the blood from her hands and the sleeves of her tunic, Xenon cleansed both her knife and his dagger. He was handing her knife back to her when she heard a rustling in the trees above her head. Instantly fear caught at her.

Chapter 4

Dagger in hand, Xenon watched as a furry brown head poked out from among the leaves overhead. At that moment Blanca flew into the clearing by the stream and perched in the same tree, easing his tension. "I think that's my friend from the pit," Charis said, staring at the animal's face. "Hello, little one. We got away, didn't we?" More of the animal appeared as it swung down from the tree, finally coming to rest on the ground beside Charis. Though it stood on two feet and had hands, it wasn't a utan as he'd first thought when it clambered up the rope from the pit. This animal had no tail and was larger, with a stockier body and pointed ears. Charis continued to talk to the creature. "Now that I can see you clearly, you're a woodsprite, aren't you? Hulda told me about your people, but she said your kind is hardly ever seen." The woodsprite motioned toward the tree and another, slightly larger creature like it swung down to join them. This one had a ruff of fur along its back, making Xenon decide it was a male. It bowed its head first to Charis, then to Xenon before clasping the hand of the smaller one. "He's thanking us." Xenon spoke his guess aloud. "She must be his mate." He inclined his head toward the female, wondering if she could tell he was thanking her for aiding Charis in the pit. Without her help with the rope, he might not have pulled Charis out in time. Not that she was his mate, but he'd become unreasonably fond of this far-too-innocent woman. Both the woodsprites chittered at them, then the male removed a polished oval of wood from a vine cord he wore around his neck. This he presented to Xenon. The oval, Xenon saw, was incised with a strange symbol, one he didn't recognize. He received the gift solemnly. Since it had a curved piece of wood on the back he hung it on his belt. The female reached up and touched a finger to Charis' chin. He saw with approval that Charis understood to return the gesture. Both woodsprites leaped up into the tree and vanished into the leaves. Blanca then flew down and perched on Charis' shoulder. "Thank you, sweet ahver," Charis murmured. "I know you brought Xenon to rescue me." She smiled at him. "I knew you'd come." Which was more than he'd known, since he'd had no idea she'd come after him and fallen into the pit he'd avoided. "Blanca deserves all the thanks." Charis shook her head, closed the gap between them and hugged him. His arms went around her automatically and once more he noticed how perfectly she fit against him. The kiss he intended to be simple and quick changed into a long and passionate embrace.

When he finally let her go, she gazed up at him, murmuring, "I've been wishing you'd kiss me again because I like it so much." Unable to find any acceptable reply to this, since there was far more he wished to do with her besides the kiss, he said, "It's past time we set off again. Spending a night in this woods is not my choice." She nodded. "Hulda told me the same. A woods has many dangers at night." "Night travel in general is dangerous." Charis gave him a sharp look. "So I discovered." They hiked on until the sun was overhead, then stopped off the trail to eat. "With mounts we'd have reached the croma cave by now," he commented. "The sooner I recover that lost sword the better." "It belonged to Zareen, you know." He blinked. "A woman's sword?" "She was a warrior. The sword she carried was no smaller than the one Merl wore and he was a man." "What are Merl and Zareen to you?" "Between the two of them, they created a phantasm. Me." He stared at her, remembering the sweetness of her mouth and the way the curves of her body felt against his. "What are you talking about? You're no phantasm, Charis, you're a woman." "Hulda says so, too, but I know I wasn't born a baby the way men and women are. I was created just as I am now." "I don't understand all this and we haven't time to discuss what you mean. Even now the palace guards could be on my trail. I need that sword." But her words circled in his mind as they headed back to the trail and hiked on. Phantasm? That meant something not real. Impossible. She must be confused. With Blanca flying ahead of them, they finally came out from under the trees into more open country as the sun was half-way down the sky. Ahead of them lay a high rocky hill. When they drew nearer, Xenon saw the dark maw in the rock face. The cave. He and Charis stopped and both opened their packs to retrieve Hulda's poisonous brew, a sticky gelatinous mass packed in containers fragile enough to shatter if thrown against a rocky surface. "Remember," he warned, "a croma's venom is fatal. We can't let any croma near enough to strike at us with their fangs. All we have besides the poison are our knives, which are useless because we dare not come close enough to use knives." "We have our wits," Charis reminded him. He half-smiled. "So we have. Mine tell me I go first and you bring up the rear." "Mine say we should discover, if possible, what a croma eats." He frowned. "Then?"

"If the creatures it eats aren't deadly to us, it may be possible to dab some of the poison on them. Not enough to kill live ones, but enough so when the croma eats any, the poison goes into the croma as well." "That's a good idea. You're a clever one." He could hear surprise in his voice. At the palace in Tonapa, women were expected to be beautiful and obedient. It hadn't occurred to him some might also be clever, but hid such a trait. Charis hid nothing. It occurred to him Aramic would approve of her. "Hulda taught me to reason. Since all we have that can be used is the poison, I started from there." "My instructor at the palace would commend your logic. What the croma eat must live in the cave as well, since exposure to sunlight is fatal for those venomous crawlers. So we'll take a look inside and hope we find the critters before a croma finds us." Blanca led the way, flying a short way into the cave before coming back to perch on Charis' shoulder, shedding a glowing light as they penetrated deeper into the darkness. Xenon grimaced at the stench of dampness and decay as the cave floor grew slippery underfoot. "Look." Charis pointed to where a faintly luminous but colorless creature hung like a gelatinous blob on the dank and slimy cave wall. When she reached for it, the blob moved, revealing four tiny legs. "Croma food?" "What else would eat such a thing? Hoping its skin wasn't poisonous, he grabbed and seized the blob in his hand. At first he thought he'd squashed the thing, but it moved feebly when he opened his hand. Charis reached into her pack and came up with a wooden bowl. He dropped the blob into it and she squeezed a drop or two of the croma poison onto the creature. Penetrating farther into the cave, they eventually captured and treated six of the blobs. Xenon was reaching for another when he felt rather than heard an insidious humming that seemed to reach into his very bones. "A croma," Charis whispered. "Hulda said they lure prey by humming." Blanca's pale light was barely enough for them to make their way through the gloom. Up ahead, an ominous patch of intense darkness to one side warned Xenon of an opening in the wall. He tried to thrust Charis behind him, but she edged away from his hand and brushed past him to take the lead. Blast the girl. Before he could catch her, she pulled even with the patch and, flung one of the poisoned blobs toward it. The blob landed on the cave floor and immediately began to ooze away. So fast it was difficult for Xenon to be sure he'd seen it, a croma's huge flat head darted from the deeper darkness and sunk its fangs into the blob. Charis threw another, then another. As fast as she tossed them, the croma lunged. Then Charis stepped back, out of range, huddling against Xenon. The croma's mouth opened wider than its body as it sucked in all three of the blobs, swallowing them with an audible clicking sound. They waited. For long moments nothing happened, then the croma's body began writhing and twisting, forcing it out into the cave corridor were they stood. Xenon grabbed Charis and retreated, keeping a safe distance away as they watched what he realized was the croma's death dance. If a croma could be killed. Rumor had it that even if hacked to pieces the creatures could rejoin all the parts and live. He hoped Hulda's poison was truly fatal. An eternity passed before the croma lay motionless. As they warily edged past it, Blanca flew from her perch on Charis' shoulder and fluttered closer to the dark opening in the side wall. By her light, Xenon caught the gleam of metal. The sword? Had to be. With caution, he changed direction to retrieve it. Heart hammering in his chest--who knew how many cromas haunted this foul nest--he inched closer. Yes! He

bent, grasped the sword hilt and backed rapidly away, Blanca hovering over his head until he reached Charis. He thrust the sword into the leather scabbard Hulda had given him and they moved on, past the dead croma into the darkness ahead. Too easy, Xenon told himself, keeping his hand on the hilt. A warrior quickly learns anything that comes without considerable effort should be viewed with caution. "Stay alert," he warned Charis. "But you have the sword now." "Still." They plodded on until Charis suddenly muttered, "Stop!" He obeyed, noting the ahver's beak was near her ear. "What's wrong?" "Blanca senses danger." Faint, almost imperceptible humming shimmered along his bones. Was the croma still alive after all? But the humming came not from behind, but ahead. Searching the walls, he noticed a tell-tale patch of intense darkness on the left hand wall. Another lair. "I smell croma," Charis said. He couldn't, but it was well known in Tonapa that women could detect faint scents men could not. Pulling the sword free, he thrust Charis behind him, and inched ahead. The humming grew louder. More disturbing, undermining his concentration. He clenched his jaw and took another step. He caught a flicker from the corner of his eye and turned to face it sword ready. Two croma heads swung from the darkness, mouths agape, fangs dripping. He sidestepped and swung, the sword's edge biting deep into the neck of the two-headed croma. It drew away, ichor dripping. Something flashed in front of him and he started to swing at it until he realized it was a blob. "Get back!" he yelled at Charis. Instead, she lobbed the last two blobs at the croma before retreating. One head struck at her, but his sword parried the thrust and it withdrew. From the corner of his eye, he noted the other head's attention was fixed on the blobs. With Charis now behind him again, so out of range, Xenon concentrated on anticipating each lunge of the croma head and avoiding it while striking with the sword. He'd gotten in a few telling slices when, twisting sideways to avoid the fangs, he slipped on the slimy cave floor and fell. He tried to scoot away from the fanged head, but came up against the cave wall. He was staring helplessly into the croma's yellow eyes when a knife slashed into one of those eyes. The head withdrew and Xenon sprang to his feet, gripping the sword hilt. Again he parried and thrust, sensing the croma was tiring. But he wasn't prepared when the attacking head abruptly withdrew and the thick body began to writhe and twist uncontrollably. "Poison," Charis muttered from beside him. "On your knife?" he asked. "No time for that. The other head ate the poisoned blobs."

He nodded. With only one body, just one of the heads needed to take in the poison. To think he'd worried that Charis, because she was a woman, was helpless. Thank the Creator for giving him a brave and clever companion. Leaving the two-headed croma dead behind them, Blanca now flying ahead with her light, they made their way from the cave. Once out, they paused to look around. The setting sun cast reddish rays over a meadow with a stream running through it. Blanca circled them and then flew toward what was obviously a trail. They followed. "The trail may lead to a village," Xenon said. "It's best we avoid them. Even now Yerbin's nose tells the guards how to find me. Little point in having villagers spot us as well." "Yerbin?" "Hulda described seeing the hound I favored--red and black. My father didn't allow any of us to have one of our own, but we all had a favorite. Yerbin is with the guards, following my trail." "Blanca will choose a safe camp site, away from any village." Xenon had no doubt this was true as far as it went. Tonight's camp probably would be safe. But nothing could be counted on. "We'll be together at the camp," Charis said. "And from now on." He heard the happiness in her voice with dismay. "Tonight," he agreed. But then he must find a safe place for her to stay while he ran from the guards as long as he could. Now that he had a sword, he had a slim chance. At the spot where Blanca settled into a tree, one of seven in a small grove at the top of a hill, away from the trail, Xenon nodded. As good a place to camp as they were likely to find in this open country. This night may be the last before his pursuers came within range. Even if Yerbin had already led them to the cave, they wouldn't dare chance traversing the cave in the dark. A small stream ran at the base of the hill and they both felt the need to wash off the slimy effluvia from the cave. "You go first," he told Charis. She hesitated. "Hulda told me men and women bathed separately, but I would like it otherwise with us." "Someone must stand watch." Which was true enough. "Blanca could watch for us. Awake or asleep, her magic senses danger coming." Xenon shook his head. "Hulda's right. We'll bathe separately." Difficult enough that they'd be sleeping side by side. Much as he wanted her, he must take no chance of making love with her and leaving her in some strange place, perhaps with child, while he did his best to stay alive.

Chapter 5

With the white ahver on watch in a nearby tree to warn of prowling animals, Xenon decided against a fire, though he had a flint in his pack. Their food needed no heat and they could forgo hot chai for plain water. He'd survived the night before he came to Hulda's without a fire or a blanket. Now they both had blankets for warmth. When they'd eaten, Xenon said, "We need sleep." "I am tired," she admitted, retrieving her blanket from her pack. She wanted them to lie side by side, but Xenon insisted they be just beyond touching distance apart. "We need to kiss goodnight," she said. He knew if he touched her, he was lost. "No, we need sleep," he said firmly, settling himself with his back to her. Instead of dropping into the instant sleep of exhaustion, he lay awake trying to decide what to do about Charis. Folly to think she could stay with him. Not with palace guards led by the hound on his trail. He had to find her a place of safety. Her voice drifted across the small space separating them. "I know you're not asleep. Don't plan to leave without me again, because Blanca won't let that happen. Don't think to settle me elsewhere, either, for I won't permit that. I go with you. That's my foreseen destiny as well as yours. You can't change it." "Charis, my destiny well may be to be killed by Mizpa's palace guards. If you're with me, they'll…." His words trailed off as he pictured what they'd do to her before they killed her. "No. If that was true Hulda would have foreseen it." "You can't know that Hulda's foreseeing always comes true. Or that she can foresee everything that may happen." "We're meant to be together." A moment later she was crouched beside him. "If you won't kiss me goodnight, then I'll kiss you." Before he could prevent it, her soft lips covered his. With a groan, he gathered her close, his desperate need for her struggling against his better judgment. It didn't help that Charis clung to him in passionate response. Her skin smelled clean and fresh, with a faint, pleasing odor from the herbs Hulda used in the soap she made. He relished the simple scent, so much more arousing than the heavy perfumes the ladies of the court wore. Before he could stop himself he'd stripped her to the waist, unable to resist the lure of her breasts, which fit his hands as though meant for him alone. Her moans of pleasure urged him on and he tasted each sweet breast, lingering there despite the swell of need that demanded fulfillment. He wanted, he needed…. A distant howl, so faint he hardly heard it broke through his haze of desire, clearing his mind. "Yerbin," he muttered hoarsely, and set Charis away from him. She hugged herself, staring at him in the scant moonlight. Finally she said, "That's a volen, not your hound. They sing to the moon, Hulda says."

He realized she was right. "Pull on your tunic," he told her, turning his gaze from the temptation of her semi-nakedness. "Tonight we sleep." "But I liked what we were doing. Didn't you?" "Liking doesn't mean we should go on making love." "Making love? Is that what it's called? Hulda said mating." He handed her tunic to her. "Dress." "But is making love mating?" He expelled a pent-up breath, wishing he could rid himself of frustrated desire as easily. "Have you seen animals mate?" "We took Hulda's milche to a farmer's bull to mate. They joined. She will bear a calf soon." "When humans make love, that's also mating and can result in the woman having a child." "I know, Hulda told me that. But we didn't do everything she told me would happen. We didn't join." "No. And we won't. This may be the last night we can sleep through, so go back to your blanket." She obeyed. After a few moments, she said, "I'm not sure a phantasm can have a child." "You're a woman and women certainly can. Go to sleep." Resolutely he turned his back to her. He fell asleep listening for another howl that never came.

****

Charis knew Blanca would warn her if Xenon tried to leave in the night, but she no longer worried that he would. He seemed set on finding a "safe" place for her so he certainly wouldn't leave her alone in the countryside. Why couldn't he understand they belonged together? She fell asleep while trying to imagine having a child that she and Xenon would make between them. She woke in the morning before he did. As she quietly checked her pack, she thought about the four palace guards searching for Xenon. To try to kill him. Charis scowled. Not if she could prevent it. The emotion tensing her was new, not quite anger, but something just as dark. Whatever the emotion was, she hoped its darkness would help her to foil the guards. Xenon now had a sword. She had none and wouldn't know how to use a sword anyway. No magic, either. But she'd learned that, if she had to, she could kill with her knife. She hadn't liked doing it, but she could. They'd also used Hulda's poison to kill. Yes, she could do that if she had to, though it might be far more difficult to get a human to eat poisoned food. Yerbin the hound was Xenon's favorite so the hound wouldn't harm him, the hound could be spared. But not the guards. If they weren't all killed, then Xenon might die. She couldn't let that happen. Coming across a tiny stoppered bottle she didn't recognize, Charis peered at the label. Sampa juice? Hadn't that been what had killed Hulda's son, the twisted wizard? The juice had paralyzed him, but he'd lived to be brought back to Hulda to die. Charis wondered if dying slowly was something like what she

feared--fading away. In both cases, the victim would know life was ebbing without being able to stop it. She shuddered, but instead of replacing the tiny bottle in the pack, she pulled off the label and thrust the bottle into a pocket of her jacket. One of Hulda's many axioms had been not to put all your eggs in one basket. Another was never to let an enemy know what weapons you carried. Blanca flew down to her, settled on her shoulder and transmitted the need to hurry. As if he'd heard the ahver, Xenon woke. In no time at all, they were on the trail again. Soon they came to the fork and took the left one as Hulda had told them to do. "I wish Hulda had been more specific about where we're going," he said. "She said this way was our best chance." He shrugged and said nothing more until they approached a woods. Stopping, he searched their back trail. "No one in sight behind us. The trees will give us a chance to hide if they do catch up. What I find odd is that we never seem to meet others on this or any trail. Dangers, yes, but not people." "Hulda says, before he died, her wizard son told her this land is sparsely populated, with few villages and only one palace. But she also mentioned that the land shakes and quivers sometimes and then everything shifts so that what's known can become strange." The canopy of the trees shut away much of the sunlight, making the day cooler and gloomier. Blanca flew ahead for a time, then behind them. When she returned and perched on Charis' shoulder, she touched her beak to Charis' ear and transmitted. "Blanca says something follows us." Xenon whirled to look backwards. "The guards?" "No, an animal, keeping to the trees rather than the trail. Not the hound, a wild animal. She doesn't sense danger from it." He nodded. "When she does, then we'll worry." After a time, the trees began to change character, becoming taller and hung with vines. At the same time the air grew heavy and warm. Animals chattered in the branches high above, but remained hidden. Something fell with a plop behind Charis and then a missile glanced off her shoulder. She looked down, saw a yellow fruit, picked it up and took a bite. "Do you know what kind of fruit that is?" Xenon asked. She shook her head. "But if it wasn't good to eat, Blanca would warn me." Their voices triggered a rain of fruit from above. Moving off the trail to take shelter under a tree, they picked up what fruit that had remained intact and ate it. "Utans," Xenon said, pointing. Charis saw a small animal with a long tail swinging between trees on a vine. "Utans are harmless, even if they do like to pelt travelers with fruit." "Whatever their intent, we enjoyed the fruit." When they set off again, Blanca left them to fly along their back trail. She returned to her perch on Charis' shoulder some time later.

"Does she tell you how closely we're pursued?" he asked. "A hound and two men on hathers have come out of the cave and follow our trail." "Two? Hulda saw four guards. If she's right, they must have split up. I wonder why? It's to our advantage, not theirs, which makes me suspicious. A warrior learns early not to trust what seems like a gift from the enemy." "Did you learn in battle?" "Not in war, no. Darar and I--he was one of the guards, someone I grew up with--were with a small contingent sent out to capture outlaws robbing the caravans on the trade routes. The thief who headed the band came up with the stratagem of letting some of his men be seen on a nearby hill overlooking the route. Our captain sent three of us--Darar, me, and an older man--to round them up. This spilt our force in two. As we pounded after those on the hill, the rest of the outlaws were waiting ahead in ambush, and they outnumbered the three men left guarding the caravan. Darar was the first to realize we'd been tricked. We turned back, but were too late." Charis pictured the result and winced. "Were many killed?" "Many in the caravan and all the guards except the three of us who'd been diverted by that stratagem. It was a hard lesson and King Jerbom was not pleased at our stupidity." "Your father." He nodded. "What about your mother?" "She died soon after I was born." So now he had no living parents. But that seemed very different to her than never having had any. Xenon scowled and she raised questioning eyebrows. "Darar," he muttered. "That blasted brother of mine has sent my childhood friend after me. He's forced Darar to enter the Temple of Time as head of the palace guards who pursue us." "Your friend Darar is now your enemy?" "He's compelled to be. And I see his fine hand in this apparent splitting the force of four into twos. Darar would never do that without a reason, one that is sure not to be friendly to the prey. To us." Charis thought about that. After a bit, she said, "Wouldn't he remember that you two were together at the caravan disaster?" "Quite likely. But he doesn't know about Blanca, so he won't be aware I've discovered the split." He focused on the ahver. "Blanca, will we make it free of this woods before nightfall?" The avher took off, flying ahead of them along the trail. As they hiked on, Charis thought she heard a rustle in the growth next to the trail, but when she looked there was nothing to be seen. Blanca eventually returned with a negative message. The woods continued on for some distance. There'd be no leaving them by nightfall.

"We’ll have to bed down on a tree limb above the reach of ground predators," Xenon said. "We'll use the vines for climbing." "We'll be out of reach of the guards as well, should they come," she said. He shook his head. "Not yet. Not until nightfall, when they'll stop to rest. Any sooner and Yerbin, following my scent, would likely lead them to the very tree we climbed into. The palace hounds are the finest trackers in Mizpa." "What do hounds eat? Meat?" He turned to look at her. "I sense what you’re thinking, but no. We aren't going to poison Yerbin. The poor beast is just doing what he was trained for. He has no enmity towards me. If he has the chance, he'll no doubt greet me with great affection." "Unlike your friend Darar." Xenon sighed and didn't answer. When the gloom under the trees increased to near darkness, they stopped and, with his knife, Xenon cut some of the looping vines hanging from the trees. Tying them together, he flung the ropy vines over a branch too high to reach otherwise, managing to hook it over a knotty protrusion on the branch. He then tied both ends of the vines together. After tying the rope they'd brought from the ferals' pit under her armpits, he attached it to his waist, then began to climb hand over hand up the vines. As she watched, she caught her breath when the vines slipped a bit from where they were hooked over the protrusion. Xenon would say thank the Creator they held--she thanked Litha, as Hulda had taught her. By the time Xenon reached the branch, the rope he'd tied to her was taut. She tried her best the climb the vines as she'd seen him do, but he mostly had to pull her up to where he was. As she struggled onto the branch, she thought she saw a flash of something darker than the oncoming night in a neighboring tree. When she secured herself, and looked again, whatever she'd seen was gone. Below a chorus of croakings began. The night creatures were awake. They were safe above. Weren't they? If Xenon believed they were, she would, too. She settled her back against the huge tree trunk, her pack held between her knees, and pulled the blanket over her. Xenon fastened the rope still under her armpits to the protrusion to prevent an accidental fall, leaned and kissed her, one she didn't even have to ask for. He then leaped to another nearby branch and settled himself in the same fashion. "Good night," he murmured. Blanca perched on the tip of the protrusion. All was well. For the moment, anyway. Sometime later a soft rumbling woke Charis. She glanced at Blanca and saw the ahver's attention fixed on Xenon. Peering at him in the darkness, she thought she saw a darker black shadow stretched out along the branch at his feet--the source of the rumbling. Alarmed, she opened her mouth to call to him, but the ahver reached her shoulder before she could utter a sound. Had the bird actually told her what she heard was a giant cat's purr? Though that was what she was reminded of, Blanca assured her the beast wouldn't harm Xenon because of his ring. And Blanca would prevent any harm coming to her. Xenon's father's ring. Glancing at him again, she saw a bluish glow near his right hand. The True King's Ring had power, Hulda had told him. If so, Xenon didn't seem to know how to use it.

Charis didn't expect to go back to sleep, but when she next woke, the gloom had lightened, heralding morning. On the neighboring branch, Xenon was folding his blanket into his pack. There was no sign of any beast, black or otherwise. She meant to tell him what she'd seen, but before she could, he said, "Hurry. They're coming, I can feel it in my bones." They reached the forest floor quicker than they'd climbed into the tree. Xenon stowed the rope in his pack again, but not the vines. As they set a rapid pace, they ate cold rations, not much, since little was left of the food Hulda had given them. Soon, the white ahver, riding on Charis' shoulder shared alarming news. "Blanca hears the bay of the hound." Saying nothing, Xenon picked up the pace, searching the trail to either side, aware he'd soon have to make a stand, but not here where the foliage crowded so thickly along the trail. By the time they reached what was obviously a burned-over opening in the forest, he, too, could hear Yerbin's faint bay. He turned off the trail, searching for some, but not too much, cover, as well as room to maneuver with his sword. He stashed Charis behind a stand of newly grown saplings, along with both packs, after removing the rope from his. The ahver stayed with her. Xenon then deliberately tramped around the area, hoping to confuse Yerbin long enough to surprise the guards when he leaped out from his hiding place behind the huge blackened tree bole beside the trail. Making a noose loop in one end of the rope he swung it a few times to test himself. A long time since he'd thrown a reata over an animal's head. Then he hid and waited. The hound ran ahead of the hathers ridden by the guards. As he'd hoped, the criss-crossing of Xenon's tracks confused Yerbin, giving enough time for the two mounted men to catch up to where Xenon hid. He stepped out and flung the reata, the noose settling neatly over one hather's neck. He pulled it taut, wrapping the rope around the bole. The animal, struggling for air, went down on its knees, tossing off the rider. By now, though, the other rider, still mounted, sword drawn, rushed at Xenon, at a marked disadvantage on foot. The thrown rider struggled to his feet, drawing his sword. Trying to keep an eye on both of them, Xenon glanced back at the mounted man just in time to see a black streak leap from a branch on one of burned trees. The catamint! It caught the rider from the rear and the two tumbled to the ground, the rider screaming. The second guard stared from his attacked mate to Xenon. Help or kill? Facing Xenon's sword, he decided Xenon was the threat. But after parrying a few angry thrusts from the enraged Xenon, the guard suddenly turned, raced to the horse his partner had been riding, flung himself into the saddle and drove his spurs into the animal's sides. Instead of driving the hather toward the trail, he swung toward the stand of saplings. To Xenon's horror, he saw that Charis, intent on the battle, was in full view. The man leaned from the saddle, grasped her around the waist and yanked her onto his mount, face down in front of him. Before Xenon could get anywhere close, the guard, with his prisoner, reached the trail and pounded out of view.

Chapter 6

Xenon shut his mind to Charis' capture to focus on what he needed to do before he could think of going after her. There was no sign of the hound. For the moment ignoring the catamint and its prey, he slashed the noose from the hather's neck. The animal lay gasping, but still alive to be his mount when it recovered. As the hather staggered to its feet, Xenon tethered it to a sapling and turned his attention to the catamint. The guard it had attacked was clearly dead, gutted by the animal who was feasting on internal organs. Not a sight he enjoyed, but the beast deserved its prey. Without the big cat's kill of the first guard, Xenon knew he might not have survived the attack of both guards. What's more, he'd acquired a mount. Retrieving both packs from behind the row of saplings, he attached them to the saddle of the hather. To his surprise, the mount nickered at him, obviously in greeting. Looking closely at the beast, he noted the single white hand imprint on its brown rump--a left hand--and reached up to rub the hather's nose. "You're a welcome sight, Lefty," he murmured. This horse had been his regular mount before he'd bought his own steed. He'd known when he first caught sight of them that neither guard was Darar, which had been a relief. Hard to kill an old friend. Though he doubted Darar would feel the same about him. He wondered where Darar was at the moment and what he had in mind. Charis' captor had ridden up the trail, rather than back along it, which must mean something. A trap? To remain alive and free Charis, he'd best keep thinking so. But Darar couldn't have anticipated that Xenon would now be mounted and able to move quicker, so there may be a slim chance he could find and recover Charis before the trap closed around them both. Slim or even non-existent, he had to take that chance. She'd gotten into his blood in a way no woman ever had before. But he desperately needed a bit of luck. As he swung up on Lefty, the catamint, who was now dragging his prey toward the trees, stopped and looked up at him. "My eternal gratitude, comrade," he said. "I owe my life to you." He rode off, heading, as Charis' captor had, up the trail, in the same direction they'd been going before the attack. Not far along, he crossed a small creek. A red and black animal loped from the woods and made for him. "Yerbin!" The hound yelped joyously. Xenon halted the hather and dismounted to greet his favorite hound. He was dismayed to find a long, bloody slash across Yerbin's flank. Had the hound tried to protect the downed guard and gotten clawed by the catamint? That might account for Yerbin's disappearance, for the hound's fur was wet. Hounds automatically searched for a stream when they were injured. Thank the Creator, the wound didn't appear serious. Opening one of the saddlebags, Xenon extracted a pair of gloves, the property of the guard who'd ridden Lefty. He held the gloves to Yerbin's nose. "Find," he ordered, and remounted. Yerbin trotted ahead, but only occasionally sniffed the trail, as if he knew the man he'd been ordered to

find was mounted. Xenon had expected this. It was up to him to take note of where Charis' captor might have left the trail. The white ahver could help him, but there was no sign of Blanca.

****

Charis, unused to rough treatment, gasped for breath as she jounced up and down across the hather's back, growing angrier with every bounce. He had no right to carry her off like this. None at all. She didn't like to kill, but if she could reach her knife ... She knew she couldn't. All she could do was fume. Wrong. She could try to plan ahead, just as Hulda was always telling her. Sooner or later this modag of a man would stop his hather. What then? The knife? The guard, though, was a warrior bigger and stronger than she and his first thought would undoubtedly be to disarm her. Assuming he took her knife before she could stab him, what was left to use against him? She wished she knew where Blanca was. Face down across the hather's back, she couldn't see. Was the ahver following her or had it stayed with Xenon? He'd be coming to help her, but surely this miserable guard knew that as well as she did and would be waiting to ambush Xenon in some sneaky fashion. She whispered the prayer Hulda had taught her. "Litha, bright goddess who protects women, help me." Nothing happened, though a thought did come to her. Chances were her captor would tie her to a tree as bait to trap Xenon. Once he hauled her off the hather, she'd have very little time to try to foil this wicked plan. What could she do? Pocket, a voice in her mind whispered. Despite her pain and discomfort, Charis smiled. Wordlessly thanking Litha, she struggled to inch her hand over to the pocket in the pants she wore, those of Hulda's son, altered to fit her for the journey. With great effort she managed to ease the tiny bottle free and closed her hand around it. Perhaps she should thank the dead twisted wizard, as well, since it once had been his pocket. Hulda said when a person died his or her spirit flew free. Putting aside the frightening thought that she might not have a spirit, Charis gave thanks to the spirit of the twisted wizard. The jouncing slowed and, sensing more than seeing trees close around them, she realized her captor had ridden off the trail. He halted the hather, slid off and took hold of her, dragging her down onto her feet, jerking her knife from its sheath as he did so. "What do you mean to do with me?" she cried, her head reeling as she put her hands behind her, easing the stopper from the bottle. He gave her a nasty grin. "Ye'd like to know, would--" His last word gurgled off as she swiftly brought her hand around and as best she could, flung the contents of the bottle into his face and open mouth. Gagging and spitting, he let go of her with a choked curse. She fled, aware she wouldn't get far, but she needed to make him believe what she'd done was to get away from him. When he caught her among the trees, he backhanded her across the face. "Ye conniving wench, if'n I had more time ye'd be powerful sorry." He shook her hard. "What was that vile-tasting potion?" "M-medicine for my woman's complaint," she quavered, not pretending, for she was terrified.

He swore again and began dragging her with him back to where the hather waited, not caring whether she kept to her feet or not. Without wasting time, he yanked free a coil of rope hanging from a saddle bag and hauled her to a tree and, as she'd expected, tied her to the trunk. Looking straight ahead, she noticed she could see the trail through the trees--she'd be visible to Xenon. "What's going to happen?" she asked, trying to ignore the throbbing where he'd hit her. She hated being a prisoner. Had he swallowed enough sampa juice? When would it start to work? She couldn't bear it if she had to watch him kill Xenon. "The rest of us'll be here afore ye know it. He'll come for ye and we'll cut him down and take the ring. Finger with it, just to please King Radon." Charis controlled a shudder. The guards had split up to form a trap, just as Xenon figured. Now she was the bait. Her captor began to unsaddle the hather, but, before he finished, he stopped and rubbed his eyes. After a moment he turned and glared at her. "You lied, wench. Wasn't no woman's medicine. What'd ye toss at me?" He drew his knife and started for her, stumbled, but kept coming, his back to the red and black hound racing toward them off the trail. "There's Yerbin." She forced the words from a dry throat. He blinked and glanced over his shoulder. "Yerbin," he muttered. "Time they was coming." His words slurred. The knife fell from his hand and, as he bent over to retrieve it, he fell on his face. He was still struggling in vain to rise when, to her great relief, Xenon rode in on a hather. Xenon flung himself off the mount and strode to the fallen man, sword in hand. "I don't think you need bother," she said. "I gave him sampa juice." The guard gave a gargled cry when he heard this, arms waving feebly. Xenon resheathed his sword and hurried to her, cutting the ropes that bound her with his knife, then gathering her to him, one eye on the now motionless guard. "Did he hurt you?" She shook her head. "The rest are on their way, we have to hurry." Ignoring the string of muttered curses from the doomed sampa juice victim, Xenon secured the saddle on the man's hather--a mare--while Charis retrieved her knife from the paralyzed guard, looking away from his malevolent gaze. "You gave me no choice," she told him. When Xenon swung her up into the saddle, she clutched at the reins. "I've never ridden one of these." "If you rode a draig, you can manage a hather," Xenon told her as he mounted his hather. With the hound following, they rode back onto the trail. As they rounded a curve, Blanca appeared and flew off into the trees. Xenon stopped and peered after her. "Looks like an animal run in here. Best follow her since we've no notion of which way along the trail the other guards may come." The hound bounded ahead, nose to the ground, as Xenon urged Charis ahead of him. The animal run barely accommodated the hathers, even single file, and it was slow going.

"Will the other two guards be able to follow our trail?" she asked. "Not easily without Yerbin. But Darar's no quitter. They won't give up."

Chapter 7

Finally the trees began to thin and Xenon took in a breath of hope that they were getting out of the woods. Before he could let it out in a sigh of relief, Yerbin broke into a run, howling as he turned tail and raced along their back trail. Lefty snorted, ears back and then stumbled--or that's what Xenon thought until he realized the trees to either side were waving crazily. "A shaker," Charis called to him. She'd mentioned that Hulda had warned about such a thing, had said the land sometimes changed drastically during these shakings. Thank the Creator they were almost past the last of the trees, so, with luck, wouldn't be pinned under one of them. Charis' hather, ahead of him, staggered free of the trees and stopped. Lefty came up beside the mare and stopped as well. Like Charis, Xenon leaned forward, laying along his animal's neck, which he gripped while the world heaved around them. Rumbles louder than the fiercest thunder threatened to deafen him, while choking dust swirled up, forcing him to close his eyes. Somehow, though all this, his hather kept to its feet, staggering first one way, then another. He could only hope the mare Charis rode did as well. The noise and shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Xenon eased up blinking, looked to make sure Charis was all right, and saw her crumpled on the ground beside her hather, Blanca hovering over her. He slid off Lefty, hurried to her and knelt by her side. "Are you all right?" He brushed her hair back from her face. How pale she looked. He longed to gather her up into his arms but knew better. Warrior training had taught him to always assess for injuries first. "Charis?" Her eyelids fluttered and opened. "Xenon? What happened? "You fell off the mare during the shaking. Do you hurt anywhere?" She struggled to sit up and he helped her. "I'm a bit sore from riding but I think everything still works." He noticed her bruised cheek. "You hurt your face." "The guard hit me." Xenon muttered words he didn't want to say aloud in front of her. He had to keep her out of their hands, whatever the cost. "Help me back on Glenda," she said. "Glenda?"

"The hather. She's female so I named her after the good witch in a story Hulda read to me when she was teaching me my letters." As he lifted her to her feet, she said, "I'm sore from riding, but I think I--ouch!" She leaned against him, her left foot off the ground. "Ooh, my ankle hurts when I try to stand." "But not otherwise?" She shook her head. "Just aches a little." He boosted her onto Glenda. "Probably not broken, then. Best leave your boot on till we make camp. Then I'll take a look at it." She glanced around. "But--but where are we?" Xenon had been vaguely aware the terrain was different while tending to Charis. After remounting Lefty, he took a long deliberate look around, startled to see no trace of the forest they'd come through. He hadn't quite taken in what Hulda could have meant when she'd said the land rearranged itself, but now he understood it did so with a vengeance. They definitely were not where they'd been when the shaker started. "Everything's different," Charis said. "Maybe the other two guards won't be able to find us now." That made of him think of Yerbin and he searched for the hound, but there was no sign of him anywhere. Ahead a great cliff rose, with another almost as high to the left of it. A river ran between the two cliffs and their hathers stood on the near bank. This bank seemed passable as far as he could see up the ravine the river had cut between the cliffs. On the other side, the river lapped the cliff rock itself. He looked downriver and saw that the bank they were on narrowed until it became impassable. "Nowhere to go but ahead," he told Charis. Blanca, who'd circled high, flew back down between the cliffs and settled onto Charis' shoulder. He took this to mean she approved. Charis cocked her head to stare up at the top of the near cliff. "This is familiar. Only I was up there." She pointed. "It's the first I remember anything. Zareen and Merl, his voice as he created the phantasm by describing me, Zareen making the phantasm more because she saw me." "At the top," Xenon repeated. "What happened then?" She looked back at him sadly. "I don't know. I disappeared. When I came into being again I was in a different place." Blanca rubbed her beak against Charis' ear. "She says she's sorry she wasn't free yet or she would have breathed life into me then. I don't know why I reappeared when I did. Perhaps one of them said my name and I hadn't quite faded completely away yet." Xenon shook his head to banish the confusion he felt when Charis talked of phantasms. "Blanca wasn't free?" he said finally. "No, Merl had to rescue her from the black cage in the croma caves." "You say Merl described you? Described someone named Charis who wasn't you?" "Blanca doesn't believe Charis was ever a real person." Xenon had certainly held a real, live woman in his arms. One he desperately wanted to make love to. "But you're real."

Maybe she was. Real enough to get hurt, as the twinges of pain in her ankle testified. Real enough get angry, to be afraid, and to want Xenon's lovemaking. Real enough to know she could be killed and to regret having to kill to save her own life. Plunged into her musings, she didn't pay attention to where Glenda was taking her until the hather slipped, recovered herself and stopped. Then she noticed the bank had narrowed considerably and abruptly disappeared, the river water now churning against the near cliff as it already did against the far one. "Trapped in a dead end," Xenon said from behind her. "No choice but to head back, for all the good...." He broke off, listening. Charis listened, too, and heard the unmistakable baying of a hound. "Yerbin's found us." "Yes, but alone or leading Darar and his mate here?" Charis stared at him, then up at the cliffside looming above them. She shifted her gaze to the turbulent river rushing past. They were truly trapped. "Even if we did have a boat," Xenon said, "It'd take us back, not ahead. We could use your draig about now." Charis sighed. "Blanca says Vorst is in trouble so can't help us." "We'll backtrack to a wider bank and make our stand." Xenon's voice was grim. This turned out to be a difficult maneuver since the hathers refused to back up and there was little room to turn them without sliding into the river. When they finally reached a better spot, Blanca flew off Charis' shoulder and began hovering in midair, flapping her wings excitedly. Charis looked up at her and saw a vine rope snaking its way down the cliff side. "Xenon!" she cried, pointing. "Help is here." His gaze fastened on the rope, then traveled up the cliff, which bulged out just enough so the top couldn't be seen from where they were. "Friends? Or enemies?" Glenda, her ears straight ahead, gave a shrill whinny. Xenon shrugged. "She's telling us more of her kind trail us. Which means Yerbin brings Darar and friend. So it makes no difference who's sending down the rope. Modag chance that it is, we have to risk it." When the vine rope came close enough to reach, Xenon told Charis to tie it around her waist and go up first, holding to the rope and using her feet to push her upwards, just as she had in the pit. "Whoever's up there will pull, but we need to help them all we can." As he watched Charis rise up the cliff, Xenon kept an eye on the back trail. Glenda, relieved of her rider, was already heading that way and he was forced to fight Lefty to keep him from following her. He could hear Yerbin clearly now. His left hand hovered over his sword hilt. They wouldn't take him without a fight. Darar was as good a swordsman as he was, maybe better by now, since he'd kept at it, while Xenon hadn't had much chance to practice after his father took ill. The other guard, whoever he was, would be at least adequate, which meant the odds on coming out alive were close to zero. He fingered the King's True Ring, which responded by glowing blue, and shook his head. Radon wearing this ring? Never. If he found himself about to die, he'd toss the ring in the river. By the time the rope came slithering down again, he could hear the pound of the oncoming hathers'

hooves on the other side of the curve made by the river bank. He grabbed the vine, slung the noose around his waist and gave a tug. Slow as he'd get pulled up, Darar would probably skewer him in midair, still he meant to try. As he set his feet against the cliff and gripped the rope, he prepared to loosen the ring, planning to fling it into the river if he had to, only vaguely aware of the blue glow surrounding him. At that moment Darar, sword in hand, swerved around the curve on his mount, and plunged toward him. Rising in his saddle, he reached above Xenon and sliced through the rope.

Chapter 8

Seeing Darar's sword cut the vine rope, Xenon braced himself for the fall, tugging at the ring so he could give it to the river. To his dismay it wouldn't budge. Blue swirled around him, clogging his mind. Was this death? He came to awareness flat on his back, staring not into Darar's brown eyes, as expected, but Charis' blue ones as she crouched beside him. "Thanks to Litha," she murmured. He sat up groggily. "But Darar cut the rope." She blinked at him. "He couldn't have. You made it up here." Confused, Xenon staggered to his feet. Undeniably he was on top of the cliff. Some yards away, a small crowd of wood sprites stood watching, one of them winding up a long vine rope. "They're our friends," Charis said, rising, too. "Blanca says they saw us down in the chasm. You're wearing the woodsprite talisman on your belt, so they helped us." The ahver flew from a tree branch and perched on her shoulder, beak to ear. After a moment Charis nodded. "Blanca says the blue saved you." Xenon glanced at the True King's Ring, still on his right hand. The blue stone now had no glow to it at all. Was it possible...? Hulda had insisted the ring held real power. But even if the ring had saved him, he had no clue how he'd activated the power. Feeling steadier, Xenon walked to the cliff edge, but the bulge in the rock wall prevented him from seeing the river bank. Charis tugged at his arm. "The woodsprites invite us to join them." "Will you be able to walk on your ankle?" "It hardly hurts now. Blanca did some healing." If Charis could walk, joining the woodsprites seemed like a good plan. The sprites might be able to

conceal them at least long enough so they could rest for a night. By now he'd given up trying to search for a safe place to leave Charis--partly because he knew she wouldn't leave him willingly and partly because he felt the two of them had a better chance to escape certain doom than either of them alone. Add to that the realization there was nowhere she'd really be safe. Leaving this land now seemed to him the only way to stay alive, so he and Charis needed to make for the gate Hulda's son had told her about. Wherever that was, now that the land had shifted. Still, Hulda had told them the ahver could find it. A slim hope, but all he had. All they had. When the woodsprites motioned to follow them, he took Charis' hand and trailed after their furry benefactors. After a long hike along what seemed to Xenon nonexistent trails through an ever thicker growth of trees, the woodsprites stopped and conferred among themselves. Finally, one approached Xenon and lifted its arms. He didn't understand why he needed to pick it up, but he did. Another did the same with Charis, with the ahver settling on the woodsprite she carried. The rest of the rescue group filed between two trees and disappeared. "Blanca says the walls are magic," Charis told him. Before he could ask what she meant, Charis, carrying her woodsprite, stepped between the two trees and vanished. Xenon followed hurriedly with his, feeling a strange, dizzy sensation which passed in an instant, apparently from passing through an invisible magic wall. "Protection from enemies," Charis told him. As both woodsprites jumped free of their arms, Xenon understood the pair had been their passage through the wall. The two woodsprites led them in a different direction than the rescue group was taking, along a winding trail that eventually led to the largest yanga tree Xenon had ever seen. Even more remarkable, a wooden house, looking as though the tree itself had grown the building, perched high in its branches. A series of ladder-like extrusions extended from the smooth bole of the tree, leading up to the house. Gestures from the sprites made it clear they were to climb to it. Charis started up ahead of him, Blanca flying from her shoulder to perch on the roof of the dwelling. When they reached what looked to be a small deck extending from the house, a door opened and a woodsprite larger than most Xenon had seen stepped onto the deck. Taking Charis' hand, and then Xenon's, it said, "Woodsprite friends, you are welcome." Recovering from his surprise that it spoke understandably, Xenon saw the fur ruff along the back and realized this one was a male. "You speak our tongue," he said. "I am Omni, the Ama of this sanctuary. I speak as always. My touch has given you understanding." Obviously the head man. "My name is Xenon. Charis accompanies me and the ahver is Blanca. We thank your people for saving us." Omni's dark eyes shifted to the ahver. "Blanca, I feel your power," he said. His gaze searched over Xenon, fixing on the ring he wore. "I feel the power you wear on your hand." As he spoke, the stone glowed blue for a moment. Charis smiled at Omni, "No need to search for my power, for I have none." Omni's face crinkled into what must be a woodsprite smile. "Not true. You are a female and females always possess a certain power." He switched his attention to Xenon. "We pay our debts. You would

not wear our talisman had not you earned it from a woodsprite in some other sanctuary. We woodsprites are all related. I will ask only one question. Where is it you seek to travel?" "Our safety lies in another land," Xenon said, not planning the words, though they were true enough. "You seek a gate. Very well. Now you are hungry and thirsty and need to rest. Your guides below will show you to the welcome house. We will talk more later."

****

Xenon echoed Charis' sigh of relief once they'd successfully navigated their way back down the tree bole. They followed the two guides to a tree containing a house that, thankfully, wasn't so high up. "Food and drink await you inside," one of the guides said. "We leave you now." Again Charis climbed up first and eased into the house. Xenon followed, finding there was no way either of them could stand up because of the low roof. Seated on the soft mat covering the floor, though, they were comfortable. "Omni has power, too," Charis said as she picked up a red fruit and bit into it. "Just by touching us he gave us the ability to understand their chittering." Xenon nodded, aware she realized, as he did, that Omni was the most powerful woodsprite in this sanctuary and that they had no idea of how powerful. Yet he felt at ease here and decided to trust his instincts. He chose a yellow fruit with a thick peel that slipped off easily. The white pulp inside was delicious. Charis poured a pinkish liquid from a gourd-like container into wooden cups that had no handles and offered one to him. He found the tart drink refreshing. When his hunger and thirst was sated, weariness sapped him. Charis already had stretched out, eyes closed, on the soft padding, a pillow under her head. He eased down and let sleep overcome him.

****

Blanca's beak against her ear roused Charis. She listened to the ahver, then glanced over at Xenon, who still slept. What did Blanca mean it was time for her to join the females? Hearing soft singing, she eased up and, on her hands and knees, peered out past the bark curtain of the door. The sun had set and female woodsprites surrounded her tree. When they saw her, they motioned for her to come down. Since Blanca told her it was safe, Charis decided to go ahead. She was crawling backwards out the door, feeling for the ladder rungs with her feet, when Xenon woke. "Where are you going?" "With the females. Blanca says the males will soon come for you. The woodsprites are having some kind of celebration this evening they want us to be a part of, but until the dancing starts, the males and females stay apart.

Xenon frowned. "I don't like us separating." "Blanca wouldn't tell me to go if it wasn't safe." He continued to frown, but Charis, feeling a warm pull of female to female, slid out the door and climbed to the ground. She had no fear of the woodsprites at all. "I am Jeed," one of the females said. "Come with us to bathe in the women's pool." A bath would be wonderful. Charis needed no persuasion. "I wish I had fur to clothe me like you sprites do," she said. "As it is, I'll have to put my dirty clothes back on afterwards." "Maybe not," Jeed said. "Omni said he would send a ceremonial robe for you. Others will wash the clothes you now wear." Charis smiled, but secretly wondered how a robe made for a woodsprite half her size could possible fit her. The pool, deep in a grove of yanga trees was cool and refreshing. The moon rose as Charis stripped off her soiled clothes and stepped into the water, aware the sprites were staring at her nakedness. "We don't mean to be rude," Jeed said, "but we have never seen a human without clothes. We see that what makes us female, makes you female as well." "It's wonderful to be clean again," Charis told her. "I wish Xenon could bathe." "By now the males have taken him to the men's pool." "Females and males bathe separately?" Some of the sprites giggled. "Before the dancing, yes," Jeed said. "None of us here are married. Are you?" "No. Xenon and I are not married." Jeed clapped her hand-like paws. "Good. Then you will be able to dance with us tonight." Out of the pool, Charis found a green robe waiting for her and was happy to find it fit her quite well, though coming only to her knees. She tied its self-belt and sat on a fallen log while Jeed and two other sprites placed a garland of leaves and flowers onto her head, matching the ones they now wore. Then they led the way to a round grassy clearing in the woods. "What now?" she asked. "Listen." Charis heard a single wood flute begin a plaintive tune, joined one at a time by other flutes. Then the drumming started, a rhythmic beat that thrummed though her. The excited anticipation of the sprites infected her until she could hardly wait for what came next. They all joined hands and began to dance barefoot in the grass, first in a circle, then separating and weaving in and out, never leaving the grass. Concentrating on the intricacies of the dance, Charis didn't at first notice that the males had joined in, each dancing single file in a circle at the outer edge of the grass, hemming the females in. Seeing Xenon with them, wearing a robe similar to hers, made her miss a step and she quickly looked away.

The music, slow-paced at first, grew livelier, speeding the dancers. The men began to infiltrate the women dancers, weaving between them in and out. If there was a pattern, Charis couldn't find one. Not until she suddenly found herself face to face with Xenon, his hands reaching for hers. Then she danced with him, so bemused by his touch she only vaguely noticed all the males and females were pairing off. The fast-paced music slowed, growing languorous. Xenon drew her closer, their bodies touching as they matched their steps to the music. Melting inside, she pressed herself against him, feeling his arm tighten about her. The music grew slower and slower until the drumming ceased and the flutes faded into silence. Locked in Xenon's arms, she didn't move until Omni's voice rang out. "You have chosen. May the blessings of the Green Mother favor your union." Xenon released her and they both looked for Omni, but he was nowhere in sight. The other couples, hand in hand, were leaving the grassy circle. No one paid any attention to either Xenon or Charis. He took her hand and they walked slowly back to the tree house that was theirs for the time being. Some of the magic of the dancing still clung to Charis. Xenon felt himself moving in the moonlight as in a dream. Nothing was quite real, nothing but Charis' small, warm hand in his and the fragrance of the flowers in her hair. He wanted her, wanted to possess her completely, but not in the same urgent way he'd felt before. He climbed the steps to the tree house behind her, eased inside and reached for her, holding her close to him as they lay on the soft padding. For a long moment he simply held her, savoring the rightness of having her in his arms, breathing in her special woman's scent along with the flowers. He couldn't imagine ever holding any other woman in this same way. Only Charis. When desire could no longer be held in check, he covered her lips with his, tasting her wild honey sweetness, reveling in the way she responded to his kiss, parting her lips, welcoming him inside. Neither of them wore anything under the green robes and her hands touching his bare chest and belly made him catch his breath. His hands sought her soft breasts, the nipples hard and seeking under his fingers, waiting to be taken into his mouth. When he did so, she moaned, holding his head to her as she arched her back. Each touch of his hand, each caress of his lips brought the sweet sounds of her need to him. No need for words, her tiny cries and moans told him what she wanted. He pleasured her as long as he could before rising over her parted legs and sliding into the liquid heat of her. She cried out and he paused, fearing he'd hurt her, but she clutched him to her, wrapping her legs around his waist. No music accompanied their mating, a dance that shook Xenon to his core as he heard her cry of release and matched it with his own. She was his and his alone. As he was hers.

Chapter 9

After a night of love-making that surpassed anything Xenon had ever dreamed of, he woke to filtered sunlight. Next to him, Charis still slept. He smiled and was reaching over to kiss her when he heard Omni's voice. "I am pleased we were able to offer you rest. Because you came at the time of our mating dance we could also offer you the blessings of a lifetime union under the Green Mother's blessing. I wish you every happiness. Now, though, it is time for you and your mate to leave us. We cannot endanger the sanctuary." Xenon eased to the door and peered out. There was no sign of Omni. Only then did he realize that both last night and now, Omni's words came into his mind, not his ears. Lifetime union? "Those are the right words. You and your mate chose one another during the dance. Wake her, for you must get ready to leave." Xenon put the "right" words aside to ponder later, and touched Charis' shoulder. She opened her eyes, blinked at him and smiled. "We're being kicked out of paradise," he said. At the bottom of their tree they found two adults and a youngster waiting. Recognizing the male as Reeb, one of the sprites who'd escorted him to the male pool and then to the dance, Xenon greeted him. "Good morning, Jeed," Charis said to the female. "We bring you food for your journey," Jeed said. "Wook, here, will travel with you," Reeb told them. Xenon shook his head. "Too dangerous for any of you to come with us--and he's just a child." Wook looked Xenon in the eye. "I am nearly grown and very proud Omni has chosen me." "Omni's sending you with us?" "To help, if necessary, but also to learn. It is my time to travel outside the sanctuary." "When we were his age, all of us took our turn outside," Reeb said. "Omni has chosen Wook to go with you and no one disobeys Omni's command." "But armed men hunt us," Xenon said. "Omni says they are not yet close," Wook told him. "Besides, I want to go with you and learn more about humans, both enemies and friends." Xenon shrugged. "Come, then. But consider any human except the two of us an enemy." Blanca flew down from the tree and settled on Charis' shoulder. "Would she ever ride on mine?" Wook asked.

"That's up to Blanca," Charis said. "She's free to choose."

****

At the invisible wall surrounding the sanctuary, the five stopped. "You can pass through on your own," Reeb said. Xenon smiled. "So getting out is easy. It's getting in that's hard. Just the opposite of the Temple of Time." Seeing Wook's curious look, he added, "I'll tell you about the Temple while we travel." Jeed touched a finger of her pawed hand to Charis' chin and Charis returned the farewell gesture. Reeb extended his arm and clasped Xenon's wrist, so Xenon took hold of the sprite's wrist. Farewells said to the humans, both sprites hugged Wook. Xenon felt a brief feathery brush as they passed through the wall. Immediately outside it he stopped again to listen, peering around. He heard nothing but distant songs of fliers and the wind soughing through the tree leaves. "No one is near," Wook said. "This is the way we must go." Xenon allowed him to take the lead, with Charis between them while he brought up the rear. He could see no sign of a trail between the trees, but Wook threaded through them confidently. "Do you think Darar will set up another ambush?" Charis asked. "We can count on it." Wook looked over his shoulder. "We were taught ambush is where a trap is set. Who is Darar?" Xenon told him briefly. "He and the other palace guard are our enemies, then, and we must watch for a trap." "Mind you, the ambush will be clever. There's also a red and black hound with them, Yerbin that knows our scent, mine and Charis', and can track us. The hound isn't an enemy, but is a danger to us." "Yerbin will not know my scent." "True." "Yerbin will not know Blanca's scent, either, so she and I are not in danger from this hound." "As long as you're with us, you'll always be in danger." "But not directly from Yerbin, since we both can disappear into places where he cannot go." "That's right," Charis said. "Blanca can fly away and you can scoot up a tree and travel from one to another without climbing down." "Which you must promise me you'll do when danger strikes, promise me you will save yourself, no matter what." Xenon's voice was purposely harsh. He hated to think Wook might die on his learning journey.

Wook raised his right paw. "By the hand of the Green Mother, I promise you. I have never before been in danger from armed humans, to avoid being killed is a useful skill to learn." "For you, the skill will be in the quickness of your escape." They wound between the trees for some time. Though never once did Xenon detect an obvious trail, Wook's pace never faltered. The day became overcast, but about when the sun would have climbed to midpoint, the sprite stopped, cocking his head to listen, then, motioning to them to stay where they were, he crept ahead and, concealing himself in low bushes, peered through the branches. Rising, he gestured to them to come on. "A trail at last," Charis said as she stepped onto the track. "Where does it lead?" "Omni says you seek another land, reached by a strange gate. This leads toward the only such gate we know." "Have any of you gone through that gate?" Xenon asked. "Omni has told us that the gate is one way, something like your Temple Of Time, except no one can ever return. Nothing could be worse than to be without one's gen. Sometimes one of us may leave our birth sanctuary to join another gen in another sanctuary. That's sometimes difficult, but in any sanctuary one is not alone, which makes a difference." "I was alone," Charis said, "until Blanca sent the draig to bring me to Hulda's. Now I'm Xenon's mate." She turned to smile at him. "It makes me happy." He paused for a moment and seemed about to say something to her, but when he spoke it was to Wook. "Could a woodsprite go through the gate if any wanted to?" Charis's smile faded. Didn't having her for his mate make him happy? "I don't know," Wook told Xenon. "Omni says not everyone can go through the gate." "In other words it picks and chooses." Picks and chooses. Charis pondered Xenon's words. If they made it to the gate safely would he be able to go though to the other land? She though it likely. After all, he was a prince, wearing the King's True King. But what about her? Would the gate reject her as not being real? Worse, if she did get through, what would happen in that other land? She'd been brought to life in this land. Would the change to a different one make her fade completely away? As if not caring to answer that question, Blanca flew off her shoulder and ahead along the trail. Charis tried to tell herself the ahver was only scouting, but she remained troubled. The bird soon flew back, but then scouted the back trail. Trying to distract herself, she glanced to either side of the trail where the trees were changing to mostly the needled kind. If she reached and plucked a twig she'd breathe in a pleasant aromatic scent. She didn't want to disturb them, though. Trees were just big plants and Hulda had told her that plants feel a loss when their berries or leaves are gathered, so unless you're in need of what you pick, let it be. They'd hiked for some time when Charis realized she'd begun to smell the fragrance of the trees. Perhaps off trail an animal had brushed against the branches. She frowned. An animal or...?

She moved up so she was abreast of Wook. "Stop," she said softly. When he did she whispered into his ear about the smell. As she was doing this, Blanca returned and landed on her shoulder. Xenon also joined them, his gaze raking each side of the trail. Charis spoke in a low tone. "Blanca says no danger behind." Wook, who'd been sniffing the air, left the trail without a word and climbed into the tallest tree on the right side, vanishing into the needled greenery. Xenon took Charis' hand and led her under the trees on the same side of the trail far enough so they couldn't be seen from the trail, while Blanca took to the air. It seemed long to Charis before Wook swung down from a branch. "A trap? Not far away the hound you call Yerbin is tied to a tree with his jaws bound up so he can't speak. Looked to me like some old ruins there, but no place for anyone to hide." "Just the hound? No hathers? No armed guards?" Xenon asked. "I saw none." "How far?" "Ten trees in from the trail. Thirty of my paces along the trail." "Wait here," Xenon ordered. Drawing his sword, he wove between the trees until she could no longer see him. "Good," Wook murmured. "Like one of us, he goes in more than twenty trees to make a half-circle." Charis nodded, clenching her hands and praying to Litha. If anything happened to Xenon, she wouldn't care if she faded to nothing. He was her mate. For life.

****

Xenon crept as quietly as he could on the brown-needled forest duff, counting the trees until he was sure he was a good ways past where Wook had spotted Yerbin., then he swerved to begin a semi-circle around where the hound must be tied. Since Wook hadn't spotted the hathers, they must be tied somewhere on the other side of the trail. The guards, though, at least one of them must be hiding somewhere near Yerbin. Why hadn't Wook seen him? And why tie the hound to a tree, unable to make a sound? What was the reason? Say the gag was removed. Yerbin may or may not protest being tied. Probably not, since guard hounds were trained not to sound until they were on the trail or strangers approached. So was the gag to keep Yerbin from barking when they turned him loose? But when would that be? After Xenon and party passed? To what point? Xenon believed in the trap, but he couldn't see how Yerbin could be a part of it. Left to his own devices, he never would have found the tied hound and Darar couldn't know a woodsprite accompanied them now. So Yerbin must be tied to keep him in one place and quiet because, if loose and vocal, the hound might spoil the trap. But what could that trap be? The hathers had to be on the other side of the trail or Wook would have spotted them. He hadn't seen a guard, either, but Xenon's gut feeling told him someone hid near the hound. Maybe not a guard, because it made sense for both to be with the hathers. Could it be

someone Darar had recruited? Who? Why? Xenon stopped. If Wook had seen no one, where could whoever it was be hiding? Not below, unless in a covered pit. Not above, because Wook had been in the trees. Ruins. Underground crypts? The hair rose on Xenon's neck. Could something native to this land be living in such crypts? Could they have something to do with Darar's trap? He shook his head. Darar wasn't familiar enough with this land for that. But that didn't mean something wasn't living in the crypts. Wook might know. Xenon turned and made his way back to where he'd left the sprite and Charis. "Underground crypts?" Wook repeated. "What are crypts?" "Burial places." Wooks eyes widened and he clutched his paws to his chest. "Ruins," he whispered. "I saw them, but I didn't think...." "What?" After swallowing twice, Wook said, "Oules." "What are they?" "We don't like to speak of them lest they hear us." "I need to know. We all do." In a voice so low Xenon had to bend close to hear him, Wook said, "Oules feed on the dead. When no dead are left, they creep out of the tunnels they make between the graves and attack the living. They can't be killed because they aren't alive." "Like blood-takers?" "Different. Omni says blood-takers were once alive like us, then undead. Oules were never alive like us." Wook shuddered. "Is that the trap, then, the oules?" Xenon shook his head. "We don't have such creatures in the land I come from and I don't think Darar has been in this land long enough to find out about oules. Do they climb trees?" "No. They don't ever come out of the tombs unless they've eaten all the dead. In graveyards new graves are dug often. But not in an old ruin." Xenon nodded and started off again, this time with the vine rope the sprites had given him. This time he didn't stop until he saw where Yerbin was tied. After examining the entire surroundings he decided neither guard hid anywhere close by. Among the ruins he saw what looked to be worn headstones. Cautiously approaching the hound who wiggled and whined when he recognized Xenon, he untied him, keeping the rope around the hound's neck and holding to the other end, tied the vine rope to the shorter one. He removed Yerbin's gag, then quickly swung himself up onto a lower branch of the tree, climbing to a higher one as the hound barked and howled, doing his best to climb up after his friend and failing.

For long moments Yerbin carried on, making all the noise he could, but unable to run off because Xenon had hold of the rope fastened around his neck. When the hound quieted down, a few words from Xenon set him off again. Yerbin heard the click of rock sliding on rock at the same time Xenon did and whirled to face the ruins, raising his head to sniff the air. A moment later, he crouched, growling, in more of a frightened cringe than an attack mode. In the tree, Xenon caught a faint whiff of decay. Immediately he pulled on the rope, drawing the dog up the trunk of the tree until, half strangled, Yerbin rested on the lower limb. Xenon reached down, loosed the rope around the hound's neck and wrapped the gag around his muzzle again. "Sorry old friend," he whispered. Then he listened. Another slither of rock on rock, though there was nothing to be seen. A loud rustling of dead pine needles turned Xenon's attention toward the trees hiding the trail. An armed man burst into the small clearing and stopped, staring at the tree where Yerbin had been tied. "Where's that blasted hound?" he muttered. Not Darar. The other one. Drawing his sword, the guard stared around, finally shrugging. He turned, starting back toward the trail. He'd taken two steps when a pale fanged thing, slimy and ghastly, slipped silently from a hole in the ground and flung himself onto the guard's back, ripping with taloned hands at the man's neck. Blood spurted, and the guard crashed to the ground face first. The oule dipped its head and bit a chuck out of his neck. Time to retreat. Xenon dropped to the ground, pulling Yerbin down after him. He could neither afford to keep the hound because Yerbin might betray his presence, nor could he let him go, lest the hound run to Darar and be used to track him again. But since the only other alternative would be to tie him here as a meal for an oule, Xenon, using the rope as a leash, hurried into the woods with the hound at his heels.

Chapter 10

As he came in sight of the others, Xenon, suddenly realized what the trap was to have been. "Hathers!" he exclaimed, when he reached them. "By the Creator's left hand, Darar meant to bait us by leaving one or two of the hathers on the trail. Yerbin had to be tied and gagged so he wouldn't rush to us or make any noise when he sensed our approach." "So the two armed guards were concealed and waiting," Wook said. Charis nodded. "Ready to be on us like maggot-flies on milche manure, as Hulda used to say." She bent to scratch Yerbin behind the ears as he nuzzled her. As Xenon introduced the hound to Wook, he told them what had happened to the guard who'd come to

see why Yerbin was barking. "You were right about oules. Filthy beasts. But Darar is still nearby. We can't trust the trail." He focused on Wook, who had his arms around Yerbin's neck, whispering into one of the hound's droopy ears. "Does he understand you?" "All the animals in this land understand my people. Yerbin won't make any noise until I tell him he can, so he won't give us away. The trail is now useless, so we'll go by an indirect route, finding our way through the woods. Follow me." Threading through the trees after Wook, with Charis sandwiched between them, Xenon hoped the sprite knew where he was headed because he was totally lost. Yerbin kept pace with Wook. When the hound paused now and then to sniff the air and start off on a mission of his own, Wook's, "Psst!" brought Yerbin back to his side. "Some kind of woodsprite magic," Xenon told Charis. "Like the dancing." He let his mind drift back to the sanctuary, when the flutes and drums had created a shimmering dream of longing and desire. He smiled, remembering what had followed and reached a hand to Charis, drawing her back against him for a quick kiss. Touching her made him want more, but they didn't dare lose sight of Wook. Only the Creator knew when, or if, he'd be able to hold her again and make love to her as they had in the sanctuary. "May Litha grant us another night like that one," she said as he let her go. They took a rest when Wook found a clearing where fruit trees grew and they feasted on crisp red fruits with tiny seeds. "We're headed in the right direction for the gate?" Xenon asked. "Omni put a map in my mind, so I know we are, but the route we take to avoid the trail is much longer. We'll have to make a night camp when the sun leaves us. Blanca and I will sleep in a tree to avoid ground predators. Humans and hounds, though, don't fit well in trees." Xenon knew a fire would help keep predators away, but could they risk one? He'd have to watch for the smoke of other campfires. If there were other benighted travelers who lit campfires, Darar, by himself, couldn't spend the night checking out every plume of smoke, especially since they weren't near the trail.

****

When the time came to make camp, Xenon discussed the fire with Wook. Charis had wandered down to wash in a nearby stream and the hound had disappeared into the brush. "Hunting prey," Wook said. "He needs meat." "A small fire," Wook was saying when Yerbin bounded into sight carrying not one but two dead jumpers, which he brought to Xenon and laid at his feet. Xenon patted him. "Good hunter." He tossed the smaller carcass back to the hound, reserving the other to cook when the fire was built. Yerbin took his kill off to eat by himself. Woodsprites didn't eat meat, so Xenon and Charis shared the cooked jumper. Their packs had been lost with the hathers, but they'd brought a woven blanket from the sanctuary and Charis arranged it near the

fire. Wook and Blanca retreated to a tall tree a short distance from the fire, Yerbin following Wook and settling down at the foot of the tree. "I think I've lost my favorite hound to a woodsprite," Xenon said. "He can talk to Yerbin and you can't," Charis said. "But Yerbin brought you what he caught." "A true friend." Xenon smiled at her. "My turn at the stream," he said, and left her by the fire. Though the moon was near full, and clouds scudded over it from time to time deepening the darkness. Charis watched him get almost to the stream before the moon disappeared. She was about to sit on the blanket when she heard Yerbin give a strangled bark, cut off as though something had happened to him. She plucked a burning brand from the fire and started for the tree where he'd been lying, when she heard a strange noise from near the stream. Switching direction, she hurried toward where she'd last seen Xenon. At first she thought he wasn't in sight, then she saw him stumping woodenly away from her, heading not for the fire, but into the blackness. She ran after him, calling his name. He didn't stop and her temporary torch burned down so close to her fingers she had to drop it. When she finally caught up with him, she grabbed his hand. "Where are you...?" A sharp sting in her upper arm cut off her words. She turned her head to try to see what had struck her and immediately felt woozy. Something, someone--not Xenon--whispered, "Come with me." Charis did her best to clear her thoughts, but could not. Nothing mattered but to obey the voice in the darkness.

****

As he felt the danger retreating, Wook took his hand from Yerbin's head. He'd slid down from the tree at the first sound the hound made, his hand reminding the dog not to bark and to stay where he was. Feeling rather than seeing the white ahver land on his shoulder, Wook breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't alone in this, Blanca was here to help. He'd roused from beginning sleep with his senses screaming Danger! Magic! Then the hound had tried to sound a warning, which he'd partly managed to quell, because he knew it was too late. Danger had already struck their camp and the only possible way he could help was to remain hidden and hope to be overlooked. He was sure it wasn't the guard Xenon called Darar because he could still feel the dissipating tendrils of magic that spoke of wizardry. Woodsprites stayed far away from wizards and mages. Yet he'd been sent to help Xenon and Charis. He couldn't desert them. "Find Xenon and Charis," he whispered to Yerbin. The ahver put her beak to his ear. Without words she told him to send her with Yerbin, asking him to remain here, safe in a tree until they returned, because she was magic herself, and the hound had an animal mind safe from magic, while he, being a woodsprite, could be affected.

Much as he hated to remain behind, Wook saw her logic. Whatever magic had ensnared the two humans, all three of them would be needed to find a way to undo it. If he got caught up in the magic, what could Blanca and Yerbin do? While he waited in his tree, he concentrated on remembering every smidgen of advice Omni had ever uttered in case something the Ama had said might be of use. Even then the time seemed long before Blanca flew into the tree. Below, he could hear the hound panting. Easing onto his shoulder, she put her beak to his ear and he discovered the danger, as he'd suspected, came from a wizard, who'd captured both Xenon and Charis. His camp was not far, but hidden by a magic spell. Blanca, being immune to magic spells, had located the camp right away. The wizard took them captive because he'd sensed a strange new power in the land and traced it to the ring of power Xenon wore. He coveted the ring for himself. "What to do?" Wook asked. He didn't like the answer. The wizard must be overcome. "I have no power to best even a minor wizard." Her answer reminded him he could climb trees without sound. Even wizards seldom looked up when they anticipated danger might be close by. What type of weapons did his people use when attacked by enemies, weapons that could be dropped from above? Omni called them itch bombs. Made from a common plant every animal and human avoided because all its parts caused such misery, but especially the tiny seeds hidden in a fluffy pod. The woodsprites had figured out a way to encase the fluff and seeds of the plant in an envelope of other plant tissue that protected them from the seeds, but burst when dropped from a height, showering misery on those below. He needed to make one. Now. With the white ahver lighting his way, Wook searched for one of the plants. While he looked, he mentally repeated the spell that would allow him to gather the seeds without contaminating his hands, knowing each word had to be letter perfect before he went into the spell trance. Itch plant, itch plant, my hands are free You cannot give them misery. They can touch you without harm, They can't set off your itch alarm.

****

As Charis' mind cleared, she found her hands were tied in front of her and she was sitting with her back to a tree in a camp not their own, where a tall stranger past his prime tended a fire much like theirs had been. As she struggled to remember what had happened, she spotted Xenon upright by another tree, his body and legs tied to it, also his upper arms, though they were free from the elbows down. The stranger finished adding wood to the fire, glanced at her and then approached Xenon, standing well

back from him. "Give me the ring you wear," he ordered. Xenon blinked, seeming to have trouble focusing on the man. He said nothing and made no move to comply. The stranger turned his back on him, muttering, "That's the problem with fenris juice on blowgun thorns. Lasts too long." He looked again at Charis. "You. Stand up." With some effort, Charis rose, bracing her back against the tree trunk. "Go and take the ring from his hand." "I can't," she said. "No one but Xenon can remove that ring." He must have tried when Xenon was helpless, for obviously he already knew this. Though he scowled at her, he didn't repeat his demand. When he looked away, she felt for her knife, but it was gone. Unsure if her wobbly legs would obey her, she didn't risk trying to walk. "Who are you?" she asked their captor, trying to overcome the fear she felt at seeing Xenon so helpless. She had no clue how to help him. "Parnell, the Wizard, Master of Fate." "Hulda says no man born of woman is master of his fate." "She is wrong, like most humans are, pitiful, puny things that you are, with brains you fail to put to use." Anger kindled in Charis and began to simmer. "Hulda is not wrong. Nor is she pitiful or puny. What is it with you wizards? Her son was one and got twisted, so he died. Are you twisted? You must be, because no one can wear the King's True Ring if it's not given freely." "Twisted am I?" His thin smile held an edge. "We'll see." He reached for her, grabbing her by her bound wrists and pushed her in front of him over to Xenon, keeping her far enough away so Xenon's arms wouldn't be able to reach either of them. "Give her the ring you wear," he ordered. Xenon shook his head, slowly, as though it were very heavy. "Why not?" "Mine." Xenon slurred the word. "Take off the blasted ring!" Parnell roared. Xenon shook his head. Parnell pulled out a knife. "I'll cut off the finger it's on." "No, don't do that to him," Charis begged. "You can't!" "Just watch me." Xenon looked at the wizard, clenching his fists, making it clear, with his arms free, cutting off any of his fingers wouldn't be easy. Parnell glared at Xenon, muttering, "Should have done it when you were out."

"Cutting his finger off means he isn't giving you the ring freely." Charis said. "Disaster will follow." He snarled, "I'd have had the ring and been long gone if you hadn't come along. Complications, always complications." He gave her an appraising look. "Freely is it? That gives me an idea." He pulled Charis back against him. Focusing on Xenon, he waved the knife. "Keep your blasted fingers. I'll cut off her fingers, instead, one at a time, until you hand over the ring." Xenon scowled, reaching with his left hand to tug at the ring. He pulled and jerked and twisted, but it wouldn't budge, though the stone began to cast a blue glow. "You'll have to do better than that." Parnell grabbed Charis' tied wrists, pulled out her index finger and brought down the knife.

Chapter 11

As Parnell brought down the knife, aiming for Charis' index finger, the blue glow cast by the King's True Ring enveloped Charis. The knife flew out of the wizard's hand to thunk onto the ground. He cursed, his hold on her loosening as he bent to pick up the knife. She jerked free just as a hideous howling came from the trees behind the wizard. He turned to confront whatever it was. Charis fled toward the fire, staggering and stumbling, planning to grab a burning stick and attack Parnell. As she passed under the tree where she'd come to her senses, a voice whispered. "Stop! Make him come here, then run." Charis knew it must be Wook, his whisper to her unheard by the wizard because of Yerbin's howls. She couldn't see the hound, but he had to be the howler. She paused under the tree, watching Parnell. As soon as he saw her, he lunged toward her. She bit her lip, waiting until he reached for her, then twisted aside and stumbled as fast as she could toward the fire. Behind her she heard a soft plop. Parnell began to scream. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him doing a crazy kind of dance as he tore at his face and hands. Flames glinted on the blade of a knife alongside the fire. Hers. She scooped it up and hurried on her wobbly legs toward Xenon to give the knife to him. Once he cut the rope binding her wrists, she freed him from his bonds, one eye on Parnell, who was now blundering around as though blind, tearing off his clothes. Wook dropped from the other side of the tree, made a wide detour around Parnell and joined the two of them. Xenon, walking unsteadily, retrieved his sword and knife from beside the fire and then guided by Wook, they found Blanca waiting with Yerbin. The ahver flew ahead, lighting the way as they plunged into the darkness of the forest. "What's wrong with the wizard?" Charis asked. "Wook dropped something on him from that tree," Xenon told her.

"Blanca told me Yerbin and I had to find a way to rescue you, so I made Yerbin understand that when we got here he had to stay out of sight and howl. Then I made an itch bomb." Pride shone in Wook's voice. "Clever." Xenon said. "Thanks to the three of you we're free." Wook bowed his head, acknowledging the praise. "But did another besides your captor hear Yerbin's howls?" Xenon nodded. "Darar might have. We'll have to hike on instead of resting." "We can't go far. You two can barely walk straight. We need to tree up until whatever he used on you wears off. "He said it was fenris juice on blowgun thorns," Charis told Wook. "Bad, that juice. Makes you obey whoever gives it to you then knocks you out. You two won't get over its effects right away. Sleep will be a cure." "We can't rest." Xenon's voice was grim. So they went on. They hadn't covered much distance when Charis stumbled. Xenon lunged to try to catch her and they both fell. He had to help her up and from the way she leaned on him he knew she couldn't go on. The truth of it was he was scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other. "Wook is right." he told her. "Much as I hate to do it, we need to stop and sleep." "We have Blanca and Yerbin to warn of danger," Wook said. "And the King's True Ring to protect us," Charis added. After a moment Xenon nodded, reminded that the ring had already helped save them without any effort on his part. Not only that, but he suspected he'd activated its power by swearing at the ring when that blasted modag of a wizard tried to cut off Charis' finger. He'd never consciously tried to use that power. Tonight he would. Again Wook chose the tree he would sleep in and Blanca settled onto a branch of it. Yerbin curled up at the base of the tree. Wrapping the woven blanket around both Charis and himself, he eased them down a short distance from the tree, sure she'd fallen asleep before they hit the ground. He rubbed the gem on the ring and asked for its power to keep them safe through what remained of the night. For a time he thought nothing was happening, but then he realized all five of them were enveloped in a blue glow. He sighed in relief, thanked his father and the Creator and closed his eyes.

****

Charis dreamed she lay in Xenon's arms in a beautiful blue room that was somehow outdoors, even though they were enclosed. His warm strength, soothing at first, soon aroused her and she woke wanting. She cuddled closer, putting one leg over his, nestling her face in his neck and tasting his skin--slightly salty, smelling of him, a scent she'd never tire of. Feeling the male part of him hard against her leg, she reached her hand down to caress the hardness, marveling at how that part could change so quickly.

He made an inarticulate sound of pleasure and she grew bolder, finding the opening in his trews that allowed her to take hold without clothes in the way. Touching him turned the heat inside her to liquid. She no longer wanted this part of him in her hand, but inside her, where it belonged. After squirming out of her clothes, she straddled him, raising up so she could fit him into her moist warmth. As she eased down so that he filled her, she thought she'd die from the hot, tingling sensation of joining. She wriggled, breathing faster as the intensity of her pleasure rose up and up. Lost in the mating, she didn't at first realize he no longer slept until his arms held her to him. He arched his back to thrust into to her, faster and faster until she cried out with the wonder of release. Feeling him pulse inside her, she tumbled into a fresh wave of feeling she could find no words for. And then she collapsed on top of him. Turning them both onto their sides, he kissed her and she fell into sleep with his lips on hers. Lifetime union? As he cradled Charis in his arms, Omni's words came back to Xenon, making him realize how true they were. He wanted no other woman in his arms or in his life. Ever. And he wanted a lifetime with her, not merely whatever few days were left before Darar caught up with them. By the right hand of the Creator, he'd best Darar, one way or another. He stared into the blueness surrounding them, remembering how, at the last his father had given his most precious possession to the bastard son he'd loved--not the crown, but the King's True Ring. Would Radon have ordered him killed if that hadn't happened? Don't be a numwit. He's always hated you. Aramic's words. True words. If it hadn't been for his old friend Aramic, Xenon would certainly be dead and buried whether or not he wore the King's True Ring. Now his remaining alive--and quite probably Charis as well--rested on his ability to outwit Darar. Either that or win the sword fight if it came to a confrontation. Had his father given him the ring knowing of its power, though unable to evoke it? Had he hoped his bastard son would be able to use its power to stay alive? The ring had truly been a gift of life, as though even in death his father's love was still protecting him. As sleep threatened to grab him, Xenon closed his eyes, vowing that one way or another, he'd honor his father by doing just that--staying alive.

Chapter 12

At dawn, Yerbin roused Xenon by licking his face. He sat up, seeing Wook already down from the tree, nibbling on some nuts from the store in the pack he carried. Charis sat up, too, clutching the blanket to her to conceal her nakedness, and Blanca flew down to perch on her shoulder. "Blanca's been scouting," Wook said. "After a night's caap, the mounted guard, five more hathers in his pack, does not search for us, rather he follows the main trail leading toward the gate."

Xenon frowned. Even if Darar had heard of the gate, how could he know they were headed for it? "He must know you very well," Charis said. "We were much alike," Xenon said. "Darar was a bastard son of a noble so he, too, could never be the heir." As he spoke, he realized that Darar must have asked himself what he'd do if he were Xenon and, because they were so much alike, come up with the right answer. Go beyond pursuit into another land. He could have discovered the location of the nearest gate by asking. Xenon looked at Wook. "So, Darar will get there before we do." "Maybe not. Omni spoke of many hazards along the trail as one nears the gate. These may deter or delay the guard. We're not using the trail. Though our way is longer, it's safer." "Best we get moving then." "First you all move away from me so I can get dressed." Charis ordered. When they fell into single file behind Wook once again, he led them to a fruit tree where they picked breakfast to eat along the way. "Are we likely to encounter any of these hazards Omni told you about?" Xenon asked as they hiked along. "Yes, if we come to a swamp we can't detour around. Poisonous trogs frequent the swamps near the gate. They don't bite nor sting, the poison is in their skin, but if we have to slog through the water, we could come in contact with them." "Hulda told me most trogs aren't poisonous," Charis said. "There's a rimble you say if you're not sure what kind of trog it is. It'll come to me what the words to the rimble are." "If we get to a swamp where we have to wade, you'd best ride on my shoulders," Xenon told Wook. "But I don't see how trogs could harm Darar since he's riding a hather." "Hathers won't enter the water in a swamp if they sense poisonous trogs. The trail winds through this kind of a swamp at one point. So he'll be delayed going around it." Near midday they left the tall trees for boggy meadows where they had to step carefully to avoid stepping into hidden water. Charis spotted bushes with the red berries she'd picked before near Hulda's cabin and all except Yerbin feasted on the berries. But he caught, killed and ate a slow-moving beast that Wook called a mermot. Gradually the meadows gave way to swampy ground and finally to scummy water where dead and branchless trees thrust up their dark spires as though in warning. The green scum overlaying the water didn't hide the teeming life underneath as various small creatures surfaced in pursuit of a flying bug and plunged under again. Xenon took a dead stick and thrust it down into the water. Pulling it up again, he said, "Shallow, at least here." Charis grimaced. "Bad smell here. Must we wade through this? On the pond near us was a raft her son had long-ago made of logs and we used it to catch fish." Xenon liked the idea of a raft well enough, but looking around saw only one large dead-fall log whose

interior looked to be burnt. Wook trotted over to the log and examined it. "Feral boat," he said. "They burn out the inside to sit in and the log floats." "Ferals!" Charis hugged herself and gazed around worriedly. "They hunt at night," Wook said. "And they live in the woods, not in open places." Blanca flew from Charis' shoulder to perch on the burnt log. "The ahver approves of the feral boat," Xenon said. "It's an improvement over wading. But we'll need a pole." Once they dragged the log to the edge of the water, Yerbin had to be coaxed to get into the burned cavity where Charis and Wook waited with the improvised pole Wook had found. Xenon shoved the crude boat into the water until it floated, then pulled himself into it. Blanca flew overhead, then aimed herself across the swamp. With Xenon using the pole to push the log along, they threaded through the dead trees. Occasionally yellow heads with protuberant dark eyes broke through the scummy green surface to stare at the boat. "Trogs?" Charis asked. "I've never seen one before, but I think so," Wook said. She began intoning, "Trog, you don't belong up here, so stop. You belong at the bottom, not at the top. You don't hurt me, I don't hurt you Sink down, go far from my view. Sink down into your mire bed While I pass quickly overhead, I leave your swampy water, trog, To you and creatures of the bog." The heads disappeared. Xenon wasn't sure whether because Charis' rimble had been effective or because the water had grown deeper. As he poled on, the boat disturbed a flock of floating water fliers that rose in flight all around them. Unable to resist what looked to be easy prey, Yerbin lunged at the nearest and splashed into the water, rocking the log so they very nearly all fell out. As they attempted to pull the hound back into the boat, a trog's head surfaced near him and they struggled to get Yerbin back aboard before it was too late. When they at last hauled him over the side, the log tipped alarmingly, taking on some water. Then Yerbin shook himself, wetting everyone. The sun was low in the sky by the time Blanca returned. She flew ahead of the boat, changing direction slightly and Xenon followed her as best he could, finally spotting live trees in the distance, which meant

dry land. Once they neared land, Yerbin leaped overboard and splashed through the water to reach it. The rest of them waited until the log touched ground and did the same. Blanca hovered over Charis but didn't land on her shoulder. "She doesn't want to come near me because I smell so bad from that stinky water." Charis looked up at the ahver. "Find a stream," she begged. Blanca flew off and they followed her. Just before dusk they came on a stream and all except the ahver splashed in to wash themselves, clothes and all. Looking around at the trees, Charis said, " I hope ferals don't live in these woods. If that was their log boat, they might." She shivered and hugged herself. "I'm cold." Wook climbed a high tree and came back to report he couldn't see any feral tree nests around, nor any of their partly underground dens. Danger or not, they needed to get dry. "Gather wood for a fire," Xenon ordered. Later, huddled by the fire, Charis still shivered. Though Yerbin hunted down and brought back two large hoppers, once they were cooked, she ate only a few bites. "She sickens," Wook said to Xenon. "Likely from that stinking swamp water Yerbin sprayed on us. I wish we had the medicine in the packs Hulda gave us when we started out." "Where are they?" "They were tied on the saddles of the hathers we were riding when the people of your gen saved us by pulling us up the cliff. The hathers trotted back to Darar, so he has the packs now." "I know how to brew bark medicine for fevers," Wook said. "I'll hunt for the right tree." He went off with Blanca guiding him. Xenon crouched near Charis. "How do you feel?" "My head hurts and I can't get warm." He put his arms around her, drawing her close, and she snuggled against him. Despite her insistence on being cold, her body felt warmer to Xenon than his own-- obviously a fever. If anything happened to her ... Xenon let the thought go, not wanting to head in that direction. Charis was not just another pretty face. She'd proven to be a strong and resourceful woman, able to fight when she had to, one of the many traits about her that he admired. When they made love, her passion fueled his, taking him to a satisfaction he'd never before known. Yet now, as he held her, she seemed so slight and frail that it frightened him. After Wook came back with pieces of bark, he soaked them with water in his cooking bowl. With sticks he levered hot stones from the fire into the bowl to heat the brew. After it steeped and cooled, Xenon persuaded Charis to swallow some of the medicine. "Bitter," she muttered. After a time she slept. The night was anything but restful. Between keeping the fire going and checking on Charis, Xenon got

little sleep. Sometime before morning he managed to get her to swallow more of Wook's fever brew. At dawn he woke from a nightmare of being alone in a woods searching for Charis, but unable to find her. Relieved to wake and find her snuggled next to him, he pulled her closer. When she blinked up at him and smiled, his heart contracted. "I love you," he whispered. "Remember when I asked you what love was and you said you didn't know? I told you maybe we'd find out. I learned what love was and I'm glad you learned with me. Love is why we're lifetime mates." Which reminded him, their lifetime may be all too short. "We have to go on today," he said. "Wook and I will make a litter and carry you." "I dreamed Blanca flew down and made me better. Maybe she really did, because I don't feel so weak. I'll be able to walk."

****

Not long afterward they started off, Blanca flying ahead and circling back to report no sign of Darar. Charis' pace was slower than usual and by midday she had to rest. When Xenon touched her forehead her skin was hot. He dosed her with what was left of Wook's fever medicine and soon she insisted on going on. Since they had no choice, Xenon agreed. Blanca settled onto Charis shoulder and he hoped the ahver was delivering a healing spell. The sun was half-way down the sky when Yerbin became restless, whining and trying to go off in another direction. Wook could barely keep the hound under control, so finally Xenon looped a rope about Yerbin's neck and wrapped a short lead of rope around his hand. This kept the hound at his side, but Yerbin's agitation increased. Could the animal be telling them Darar was near? Xenon told Wook to climb a tree and look. When the sprite came back down he said, "The trail is off to our right. Up ahead on the trail, two hathers are tied. I see no sign of the guard. A trap?" Darar had tried the hather trap once before and it failed. Would he try it twice? Xenon shook his head. "Go up once more, Wook, and look for any sign of lameness or illness in the hathers." Wook took longer this time. "One favors his left hind leg," he reported on his return. "The other's head droops lower than is usual." Xenon decided these two hathers had problems that slowed Darar's pace and so he'd abandoned them. Since they were tied, he must plan to come back for them once he'd executed his duty--killed the man who once was his friend. "Charis needs a mount," he said. "We'll collect the hathers." Wook eyed him doubtfully, but said nothing. Charis, already slumped on the ground with the ahver still on her shoulder, didn't even raise her head. "Stay with her," Xenon told Wook, handing him Yerbin's rope.

Chapter 13

As silently as possible, Xenon crept toward the trail. Before reaching it, he halted and then continued parallel with the trail, staying in concealment among the trees. When he neared the hathers, one whinnied. He stopped and waited. After a time he stepped onto the trail, sword drawn. No challenge came. He approached the hathers with caution, quickly untied both and was leading them into the trees when he saw Blanca overhead. She flew ahead of him so he decided she'd scouted and all was well, at least for now. Back with the others, Xenon examined the lame hather, discovering a stone wedged into its hoof. As he took out his knife to remove the stone, he saw Wook, standing on a log, his hands on either side of the other hather's drooping head. "This female lost the baby she carried, along with much blood," Wook told him. "She'll soon recover her strength." Charis, who'd been resting with her back against a tree bole, looked up when she heard Wook and stared at the hather. "It's Glenda," she cried, getting up and hurrying to the hather. She stroked the animal's neck murmuring, "Poor dear, you've had a sorry time." Glenda raised her head and rested it on Charis' shoulder. "Look, Xenon, she remembers me. Is she well enough for me to ride?" He'd planned to have her ride the lame one now that he'd removed the stone, but maybe Glenda could carry Charis' light weight. Then he and Wook could ride the other, which would speed them up. "We'll give it a try."

****

By dusk they'd come to the end of the forest into open, but hilly, country. Blanca flew to find the trail, came back and settled onto Charis' shoulder. "The trail is farther from us here than it was when we were stopped in the woods," Charis reported. "Blanca didn't see the guard or the other hathers, but there are several scattered dwellings on the other side of the trail, all with barns. Darar could be hidden in one of them with his hathers in a barn." "Possible, but not typical, of Darar." Xenon assessed the land around them. "Not many trees. We'll have to camp near one for Wook and Blanca. No concealment for us." "That means no concealment for Darar, either, so he can't sneak up easily." Xenon smiled at her. "Feeling better, are you?"

She nodded. "Riding is much easier than walking." After Wook chose the tree, they dismounted, Xenon sliding down, lifting Wook off and then helping Charis. "My first ride on a hather," Wook said. "Does our animal have a name?" "He may, but I don't know what it might be." "He's the same brown color as the trell nut my people eat." "Charis named the hather she rode Glenda, why shouldn't you name the other Trell? It's got a good, solid sound." After caring for the hathers, Xenon decided against a fire since wherever Darar camped couldn't be far and no good would come of letting him spot smoke. Yerbin could keep whatever prey he caught tonight for himself. Little remained of the dried nuts and fruit they'd been given when they left the sanctuary. He and Charis would share that with Wook. Tomorrow-"We'll see the gate tomorrow," Wook said. "And Darar as well. I feel it in my bones. You must leave as soon as we sight him and take--" "Don't you dare tell Wook to bring me with him," Charis said. "My place will always be with you. We face Darar together." "The guard will not see me," Wook promised. Xenon realized the sprite hadn't promised to leave, but he let it go. He meant to best Darar, but if luck didn't favor him, Wook might be able to rescue Charis. "Sleep," Wook advised. "Blanca and I will keep watch." Later, wrapped in the blanket with Charis, Xenon kissed her goodnight and felt desire rise. He quelled it. Even though it might be for the last time, after her fever, she needed sleep, not love-making.

****

Charis dreamed she was in a strange land with Xenon, in a meadow where beautiful flowers grew. When he took her in his arms and kissed her, eager as she was to respond, she could not because she was no longer substantial enough to hug him to her. Caught in her worst fear, she felt herself fading, fading away. "Blanca!" she called in desperation, but the ahver didn't appear. No one could help her, nothing could. Just as Merl had said, she was naught but a phantasm, she had no real existence. Soon she'd no longer be. Charis woke in terror, clutching Xenon frantically. Once he roused, his response was to pull her close and kiss her, his caressing hands heating her blood. She opened to him eagerly, welcoming her need as proof she hadn't faded, after all. Their mating, she knew, was fueled by love, hers for him and his for her. He was her mate. For life.

Afterward, he still held her and she sank back into sleep reassured by the warmth and solidness of his body. She was real, she had to be--for how could a phantasm mate?

****

In the morning, Wook spent more time than usual with his hands on Yerbin's head. Xenon hoped what the sprite was able to pass on to the hound would keep Yerbin from bounding ahead of them when he sensed Darar, taking away any element of surprise they might have, if any. Darar was one and they were five, counting Blanca, so more than likely he'd surprise them. Xenon pulled his sword from the sheath and hefted it, wishing he'd had some recent practice. He thrust it back, boosted Charis onto Glenda, then slung Wook onto Trell and climbed on himself. With Yerbin in the lead, but staying close, they set off for the trail. Blanca flew ahead. She returned sooner than Xenon had expected and settled onto Charis' shoulder. "She saw him," Charis reported. "Saw Darar with four hathers not far from here. By the gate." Somehow he'd expected that Darar had learned from someone in this place about the gates. It didn't surprise him that Darar had then decided the man he was pursuing would aim for the nearest gate to try to escape to another land where there'd be no pursuit. When none of his traps had worked, Darar had headed straight for the gate. So now there'd be a confrontation. Fair enough. Tough as it would be to kill an old friend, he had no choice. "I fight Darar alone," he warned Charis. "You must not try to help me in any way." "Blanca says this is a duel of honor, so I must promise. I will, but I don't like to." Charis didn't add that the ahver also had told her two more things, secrets that frightened her. Every step Glenda took brought them closer to the dreadful moment of a sword fight between Xenon and Darar, and closer to the gate as well, Charis shuddered. As far as she was concerned, they came in sight of the gate far too soon. Even from a distance the shimmering hole ahead of them chilled her. From Hulda's description, she'd expected it to look more like a regular gate, though maybe bigger and of some rich metal. But it didn't matter. Whatever the gate looked like, this might be the end for her. Xenon halted both hathers and handed Wook across to Glenda. The sprite clung to her as he balanced on the animal's back. "Stop when you come to the next tree, so Wook can climb it," Xenon said. He then urged Trell ahead of her. Wook pointed out a small grove on the right hand side of the trail and she pulled Glenda over. "I've learned human's hug when they leave those they're fond of," he said, hugging her before he leaped into the tree. He paused to salute Blanca and then disappeared into the foliage. She blinked back tears, knowing she'd miss Wook. Shortly after this, she spotted a man stepping into the center of the trail. The nearer they came, the more dangerous he looked. Though he was no taller, no more massive than Xenon, his stance, sword in hand, was daunting, at least to her. Xenon, ahead of her, slowed and held up his hand for her to halt Glenda. Reluctantly, she did.

Xenon rode on a few more feet before stopping and sliding off Trell. He pulled the sword from its scabbard and stalked toward Darar. Yerbin started to follow, but a distant whistle she knew came from Wook changed his mind, and he padded back to sit by Glenda. With trepidation, she watched Xenon advance on foot. He stopped just over a sword's reach away and said, "So we meet again, Darar." "I did not wish such a meeting," Darar answered. "Nor did I, yet here we are." "I have no wish to kill you. Why not give me the King's True Ring?" "This ring was my father's last gift to me and the ring itself is determined to remain on my finger. Even if it were possible for me to remove the ring from my hand, I would not. To get it you will not only have to kill me, but cut off the finger it encircles." He held up his right hand. Charis' heart sank when she saw no blue glow from the ring and realized Xenon did not intend to evoke the ring's power against Darar. Remembering one of the secrets Blanca had told her, Charis also recalled she had promised not to interfere in this duel. Yet, was a prayer an interference? The ahver on her shoulder was silent. She'd have to make up her own mind. Xenon, she decided, had meant direct help, so that was what she'd promised not to do. A prayer wasn't direct help and, besides, might not be answered at all. Closing her eyes, she prayed silently. Litha, protector of women, Creator, protector of all, hear me. The King's True Ring has brought about this deadly conflict, please make the power of that ring avoid bloodshed and death here and now. Would her prayer be answered? She opened her eyes and clenched her hands together as she watched the two men step toward each other, swords at the ready. Darar lunged first. As he did so a blue glow enveloped him, freezing him in position. Xenon, who'd started to parry Darar's sword thrust, gaped at his foe, then stared down at his right hand. Charis urged Glenda into a trot, passed Trell, and the hather followed her. "The gate," she cried to Xenon. "Go through the gate." He looked at her, back at the unmoving Darar, sheathed his own sword, then caught Trell's halter and pulled himself onto the mount. From inside the blue glow, Darar spoke. "Master of the ring, as I see you are, deserves to keep it. Old friend, I am glad. My pursuit is over once you're though the gate. Take Lefty, if you wish, but leave me Yerbin." Charis watched Xenon collect Lefty from the three hathers tethered near the gate and put him on a lead behind Trell. "Stay," he ordered the hound who'd followed him. Yerbin sat. "We go through together," he told Charis. She did her best to swallow her fear. Whatever happened beyond that shimmer, she'd be with Xenon, that's what mattered. She urged Glenda next to Trell and together they and their hathers approached the gate.

When Blanca left her shoulder, Charis glanced back to see the ahver flying away and she noticed the blue glow no longer enveloped Darar. He stood with one arm up in a farewell salute as the shimmer closed around her.

Chapter 14

The prickling sensation faded. Looking back, she saw that, true to his word, Darar hadn't followed them through the gate. They were safe in this new land. Charis gazed at a grassy meadow filled with beautiful flowers and a variety of fruit trees. She heard the soft babble of a brook somewhere near. Her pleasure faded as the shadow of her dream darkened her memory. In a daze, she followed Xenon into the meadow, and like him, slid off her hather, freeing the animal to graze. After hugging her close, he took her hand, leading her to one of the trees where he picked a purple fruit for her and one for himself. Then he frowned and looked around. "Where's Blanca?" "She told me she can't leave any land where Vorst lives because their creation by Merl connected them in some way." He shrugged. "Without Blanca to tell you whether to eat it or not, we'll have to take our chances on the food we find here." He bit into the purple fruit. "Good tasting." She ate hers absently, unable to fend off the memory of that horrible dream. Was she fading? She couldn't tell. And Blanca was gone forever--no help there. Glancing at Xenon, she asked, "Do I look any different to you?" He assessed her. "Maybe a touch pale from that fever." Her fear deepened. An aftermath of the fever--or the beginning of the end? Feeling suddenly weak, she eased down to sit in the grass. He sat beside her. "If the rest of this land is as perfect as this, we've made a good choice. Hmm, you've got purple juice on your chin." He leaned over and licked her chin, then touched her lips with his tongue before kissing her. With all her heart she longed to kiss him back, to be held close, but this was too much like her dream. She was afraid to respond in case she found she couldn't because she was already fading away. He drew away. "You're right to be cautious. Just because this meadow is beautiful is no sign the entire country is safe. We'd do well to keep on our guard." After a moment he added, "I meant to fight Darar fairly. I don't understand how the ring's power activated." "I prayed for the ring to stop the fight," she admitted.

He turned and put his hands on her shoulders. "You? But you don't wear the ring. How could any prayer of yours have any influence?" "I'm your life mate." "True, but that still wouldn't influence the ring." Charis sighed. She'd have to tell him. "Before we came through the gate, Blanca told me I'm carrying your child. Our child. She says it's a girl. Because I knew I had a part of you within me, I sent a prayer to Litha and to the Creator. The ring was the start of the trouble, so I thought the ring should end it." He stared at her for so long she grew uneasy. "I know what I promised, but a prayer isn't interfering," she protested. "Forget that. Do you mean we're having a baby?" She nodded. Was he upset? Xenon pulled her close, holding her tenderly. "Thank the Creator--and Litha, if she helped--for leading me to you. When I was forced to enter the Temple Of Time, love was the last thing I expected to encounter." Charis burst into tears, sobbing helplessly. He tried to soothe her at first, then she sensed him becoming increasingly disturbed. Finally he held her away from him and gave her a little shake. "Tell me what's wrong!" Between sobs she tried to explain about the dream she'd had of a meadow like this and how she'd started to fade away to nothing, like phantasms always do. To her amazement, he smiled at her, which stopped her tears. He brushed at her wet face gently with his fingers. "My old friend at the palace once called me a numwit, which I certainly was. And so are you a numwit, my sweet Charis, for mistaking a dream for what's real. Never mind this phantasm nonsense, just ask yourself how anyone could possibly fade away when she carries life inside her, a baby who is part of another person?" His words fell joyously into her heart. In truth she was a numwit. If she hadn't been real before, with his daughter inside her there was no question about her being a woman, not a phantasm. Charis put her arms around him and pressed her lips to his. About to be caught up in their mutual passion, a rustling sound drove them to their feet. Two men on hathers rode from the trees toward them. "Saw your three mounts while we were watering ours," the man with a beard said. "Now I notice you wear a sword and you have the look of a fighting man. Are you, by chance, interested in hiring out as a mercenary?" Xenon eyed the two men and liked what he saw. "If it includes accommodation for my wife, I might be. My name is Xenon and this is my lady wife, Charis." The two men dismounted and nodded to her. "I'm Kenner and he's Frome," the bearded one replied. "Our king is generous and we have many married soldiers in our ranks, so that should be no problem.

Will you come with us and meet with King Morse? He makes all decisions." "I believe this to have been a lucky happen chance," Xenon said. "We'll follow you." As he helped Charis mount Glenda, he said, "I have the feeling this will go well and we'll find a place for ourselves in this land." "But a mercenary?" she asked. "It's what I was trained to do. And both Trell and Lefty are a skilled war mounts." He smiled ruefully. "I may have dreaded the encounter with Darar, but truth to tell, I enjoy fighting. I'll be away at times, but home with you other times. Home with you and our babe. Didn't Omni tell us ours was a lifetime union? Now the Creator has given us the chance to live it together." As they rode off behind the two soldiers, Charis felt the new land's sunshine melt away the darkness of the past. Though they were headed into the unknown, most likely they'd found a place to settle and have a home. Home. At that moment she knew what their daughter's name would be. Hulda.

The End