 
Alien Faith

Book One of the Alien Something Trilogy

By

Mary Margaret Branning
Copyright 2015 Mary Margaret Branning

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.
Big Fat Thank You page:

My Sincerest Gratitude belongs to:

Generous readers Sean Kane and Tracey Zuliani, and to Nina Davies' Autocrit, without whom this book would have been even more of a tragic mess.

Mark Precious for his unfailing kindness.

Graphic Artist Toshi Simon of Allegra Print, Sign, and Design in the White Mountains of Arizona, for putting the disparate pieces of the cover art into this pleasing combination.

Andrea Danti for his digital illustration of neurons, via fotolia.com.

Magann for the iris, via fotolia.com.

Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute for Yellowtail Font via 1001fonts.com.

Denis Masharov for Tenor Sans Font via 1001fonts.com.

Maureen Cutajar for expert formatting and kind instructions.

My Mother, who has floated my boat since the car accident. If it wasn't for your support, I never would have gotten this done.

My Father, for his kind, thoughtful, intelligent example. I greatly miss his quiet qualities.
Chapters

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIV

XX
I am as water wearing at the stoniest of hearts and minds.  
Nartan
I

"I'm telling you, you can't do this!" Paige whispered loudly.

"I can!" Richard whispered loudly back.

"How can you ride your brind if he's dead?"

"I'm not riding him. I'm lying behind him."

"Do you think you're going to fight ten sentries on your belly? You can't. You'll die. I said you couldn't get into the castle, Richard. You never protect your back!"

"I do!"

"You don't."

"Doesn't matter. It's just a game."

"How come it's just a game when you lose but real life when I do?"

"Because..."

"Because why?"

Leigh crawled over to their position and interrupted the argument. He pointed to a large, long-legged creature in the middle of the clearing. This one's hide was covered in reddish-brown hair, which shone with good health. The animal seemed to be dozing, but the alert ears on the large head revealed his concentration on whatever was happening under the mound that covered Uncle's garrad. The beast regarded this domicile through heavily-lashed eyes. A thick pad for the rider conformed to his back.

"There're no ropes on that brind to guide him," He observed, bringing them both back to reality. Derek also snuck up from behind them. They crouched at the edge of the forest, but the visitor's mount had not sensed them yet. Uncle had taught them these skills.

"A rider can't have much control of a naked brind unless it's been well trained," Richard murmured.

"Leg pressures, no doubt," Derek added thoughtfully.

"Voice commands, too," Richard offered.

"Do you think he's one of Uncle Vagn's?" Leigh asked.

"Yes. Who else raises the best brind on the planet?" Paige bragged. The four children were involved in raising and training the offspring before they were sent to their new homes.

"Let's sneak around the house so we can move up without him sensing us," Paige suggested.

Breathing was difficult in the dry air, but the children were all fit. They made their way through the forest in an arc to the other side of the large pastured mound covering Uncle's garrad.

"Let's cross one at a time and listen at that vent," Leigh suggested.

Derek eased himself out of the woods. He bent low, and in a few moments, squatted beside the structure, which was disguised by a charred and hollowed out luculian trunk. Richard did the same. Leigh and Paige followed.

From inside Uncle Vagn's garrad they heard two voices: one was their Uncle's, and the new one seemed vaguely familiar. Uncle's guest was speaking Traveler and it sounded like his original tongue. The children had learned the space people's language in formal lessons delivered by Vagn, but had never listened to a native speaker. Ducar's speech was strict and exact, not nuanced like the more narative Enistian of their planet, Enistan.

"Since I brought the children to you, Vagn, many things have happened. Hilaire has died and her son Kent is in control of Marden Cavehold. He set up a Council of Six, and we've decided the time is right for our revolution."

Uncle snorted, and spoke the stranger's language in his usual quiet manner, but with evident scorn. "Revolution!" How will you revolt? With whom? The army of your Cavehold is miniscule compared to the Castle Vest."

The four winced at the hushed baritone voice rumbling up through the vent. A tense silence clung to the air. They tried to quiet their breathing, which seemed much too loud. Grass rustled around them. A sudden shrill animal call sent their hearts pounding wildly, exploding in their chests. They tensed.

The guest replied, still speaking in Traveler.

"Hilaire, and now Kent, have been ingenious strategists. We placed among the ranks of those who deliver the Roosian press some of our best infiltrators. They insert our own pamphlets into the newsprints. We've repeated this tactic often, and have rarely been intercepted. Word of mouth continues to spread. Many people of the same mind have joined us. We believe almost half of the residents of the Kingdom are sympathetic with us, if not outright believers in our cause."

"Almost half? You believe? This is not enough. How do you propose to succeed?"

"We've trained our people in fighting techniques. Our brind are so well conditioned they are combatants themselves. We have intrepid secret agents infiltrating the ranks of the Vest who have not as yet been discovered. The rumor is that most of them, and many Roosians, too, will fight on our side when the takeover begins."

"Ducar, I've been hard on you, but you seem to have prepared well. Alas, all in vain. Do you think the forbidden technology has been forgotten or destroyed in ignorance? They are tyrants, not imbeciles. They keep weapons in their arsenals capable of destroying your army long before you near the Kingdom."

"No, they don't. After Kent took over Cavehold, some of the guards of the arsenal appreciated our goals. They came over to us, bringing the blueprints of machinery. The stored weapons were removed from the arsenals and taken in secrecy to Marden Cavehold. When our warriors move near, the enemy will find boxes full of rocks. Vagn, we have not been sitting idle for the past eleven years since I last came to you. You underestimate us, as they do, and that is good, but now is the time for us to take back what is ours and replace the Heirs to the Four Thrones of Kingdom Roos."

Ducar paused.

Uncle was thoughtful and impressed, despite his bluster.

"Call in the children, Vagn," Ducar requested.

"No need, Ducar, they're already here." Vagn looked at the convex ceiling and sighed, smiling.

The four glanced at each other in surprise. He always knew where they were, despite how hard they tried to block his probing mind! They sprinted over the mound to the entrance, falling about as they stumbled into the room. Richard, last in, closed the door behind them. The coolness of the interior welcomed them.

With all assembled, they sat around the large table with their Uncle Vagn and the familiar-seeming visiter, who asked them to call him 'Ducar'. Vagn folded together his scarred, big-knuckled hands, rested them on the polished wood before him, and looked at each of them in turn. He addressed them in Traveler, in deference to his guest's preference.

"Most likely you don't remember your life before you came to live with me in this garrad. You were very young, and I had caused you to forget," he spoke quietly, yet his voice rumbled in his chest. "Eleven cycles ago, this man, Ducarmahamet, brought you to me for protection after some of the vilest persons in history took over the governments and murdered the Royalty of Antiarok, Kaspar, Hassant, and Jamal: the four cities of Kingdom Roos."

"Let's go back even further," Ducar continued for him. "Four Royal Families, one from each city, ruled the Kingdom. Their complacency was such that the rumors of drode raising an army and gaining popularity seemed incredible, until eleven years ago when these usurpers took actual control. Even then, most of the Kingdom's subjects didn't realize what had happened, because the despots enslaved the Families and for a while kept them in the forefront to use as figureheads. The villains used threats and abused the Family members to keep them under control. Ruling through them, these criminals enriched their own lives and imposed their thoughts and ways. The people recognized things were changing dramatically, though they could only grumble. They still trusted their rulers, ignorant of the menaces who manipulated them."

Vagn had discussed with the children the malevolent Traveler concepts of slavery, abuse, usurpation, manipulation, personal enrichment, menace, and greed, as well as the system of time the visitor used. The Traveler word, "year", had been adapted to describe their world's full complement of eight seasons, known in their language as a cycle. What was called a "day" in the alien language was known to the children as a 'passing'. This referred to the orbit of the first star, Sorn-telain.

The seasons were dictated by the two angry brother suns. Sorn-telain was the first and consistent one, which was always the same distance away. The second star, Sorn-servar, spent most of its time either moving away from or toward Enistan and telain. Servar created havoc on the planet when at its nearest and farthest orbits. To protect their race from the resultant deadly conditions, Enistians had developed a manner of behavior and thought. They called this traditional philosophy The Nartan Way. Vagn and the children were adherents.

"Traveler mechanical devices were popular novelties and useful tools before this takeover. Drode made, sought, and traded them, but when the usurpers took power, they dictated to the citizens through the press that they must believe technology to be baneful. All machines created with Traveler science were gathered up and taken to be destroyed.

"When the usurpers had collected from the populace all of the weapons brought and manufactured by the space people, they believed they would be able to control the population. They had the Kingdom's rulers pronounce them leaders in a grand ceremony, and forced the Families into the background. Not long after this event, the Royals were murdered.

We mourned in fear. We knew better than to challenge these despots, who had the spacer weapons.

"The usurpers had also seized and quarantined the city presses. Most news printed and distributed thereafter confused the citizens and contradicted common knowledge and custom. Many became disoriented and society suffered.

"The few brave enough to openly dissent disappeared suddenly and mysteriously. We learned to keep our own council or face punishment.

"The tutorial and apprentice systems were perverted to fit the ideals of the villains. Much of The Nartan Way was disdained. The usurpers, who, along with their followers, came to be known as usupians, ceased to practice Nartan altogether, or observed only a diluted version. Disillusioned students, whose parents secretly sought to preserve The Way, left their teachers, who had been forced to teach as the usurpers dictated, or be replaced. Tutors who pretended to learn the new system, and those who truly adopted the different ways, continued teaching. The naïve educators and students wondered why their traditional work and thoughts brought only snubs and disfavor.

"Few recognized these disruptions as a conscious plan to change society by the drode who had, in their early years, been deranged by the arrival and knowledge of the space travelers. The old system quickly collapsed, except in the memories and secret teachings of those loyal to the Royal Families.

"The illegitimate leaders became fat and rich by their duplicity, while the people grew thin and poor and further despised by the usurpers for their steadfastness to The Way, which the criminals considered weak and naive.

"Courts formed in the Traveler fashion. New, strict laws clashed with the old, which were replaced. Those of traditional values who continued to practice Nartan and who discovered themselves in court found they were not allowed to voice their appeals. At first, the Families were called in to decide, but, backed by the despots, the cases often ended in the accused being robbed of everything. Judges, chosen from amongst the usurpers, robbed and imprisoned the victims, and the condemned disappeared.

"Those who persisted in indiscreetly following The Nartan Way were touted in the criminals' news releases as traitors and secretive enemies of all. They had 'broken the law'.

"Because of these different laws and courts, and the changed manner of teaching—both supported by the remade news and backed by the traitors and their weapons—the dissenters became silent, withheld their objections, and learned to live as they were told. The new system prevailed.

"Those of us who were paying attention soon realized that the despots planned to use the weapons to suppress future uprisings, and were also collecting the machinery to further impoverish us by making us work harder to do the things the machines had done. This made feeding everyone even more difficult and time consuming, which increased the criminals' power over the population. They continued to utilize the presses to dictate change. Well organized, this takeover happened quickly.

"Some individuals, however, understood what was happening. Hilaire was one. At the end of the year following the usurper uprising, she gathered these 'dissidents' together and they founded a home in the Marden Mountains. She'd rediscovered, as a young and adventurous girl, an ancient but forgotten underground passage which opened into many caverns of all sizes. She called it Marden Cavehold and situated the dissenters there. I was one of those first few who left the usurpers' kingdom and went with Hilaire.

"She unfortunately died nearly four years after the founding of the hold. Her son, Kent, took over the leadership. Since then, many more have joined us, especially in recent years."

Paige interrupted politely in Traveler. "How can you return the rightful Heirs if these criminals murdered the Families?"

Ducar looked at Vagn, who smiled only slightly and lowered his eyes to stare at his gnarled old hands.

"Of all our accomplishments, this is the most remarkable," Ducar said. "Four of the smallest, easiest to conceal children of the Royal Families were taken away from the Kingdom by Hilaire's compatriots just before the murders. The Kings and Queens, also called the Keepers of The Nartan Way, suspected their end neared, and they sought to save their youngest offspring from the usurpers' murderous intent. Because the Marden Cavehold accepted dissenters every day, fear of infiltration grew, so the children were placed with a caretaker of exceptional skills. He was known to be able to develop in those babies their innate but immature knowledge and skill in the use of The Way. We, the Caveholders of Marden Mountain, were convinced of a murderous attack on the Royal Family members, and this turned out to be correct."

"Where are they now?" Leigh asked, suspecting the answer.

Ducar paused and again looked at Vagn.

"Sitting here at this table with two old men!" Uncle chuckled and clapped his hands. "You are now at the age where it is time for you to learn to do the things we older drode do. Soon you'll travel to the Cavehold with Ducar. This is what I've been training you for all these years."

While the children sat and tried to absorb all this novel information, Uncle Vagn stood up and walk back to the far wall where an ancient chest sat. Its surface shone like a dark mirror, so well polished, that sometimes it seemed transparent. When one squinted just so, as they all had many times, the bottom edge of the colorful woven decorative wall hanging behind could nearly be seen through it. The children had long ago been chastened never to touch this chest.

Uncle threw open the lid. He stared into the box. They all remained quiet and waited.

The interior began to glow; the light seemed to come from a vast depth far away. A warmth and peacefulness tickled the bodies within the room. When the illumination became bright enough to make a black silhouette of his figure, Vagn reached in and brought out a large bundle. He placed it on the floor and closed the treasury.

The atmosphere, which had permeated the air around them, disappeared as in a cave when the glow from every globe is snuffed at the same time—a favorite game of little children.

Vagn put the package on the table. The others were surprised to see a plain, coarse, grayish-brown cloth, an ordinary enough material. There was nothing special about it, but as he unwrapped the parcel, the suspense grew. Vagn looked into their eyes, entertaining and entrancing them. The children giggled and elbowed each other. With teasing slowness, he revealed the goodies within.

On the cloth lay several items. The most notable was a compact sword, longer and thicker than the childrens' daggers. It rested in a dark, handsome sheath, and only the hard, solid hilt was visible. It had no marks and was meticulously polished. Tied to the weapon's home was a small drawstring bag about the size of Uncle's large fist. Close by was a rolled parchment, yellowed and smooth. Near the roll lay a crystal phial contained an amber colored liquid. A long chain extended from the filigreed metal surround. Next to this was an ordinary looking, though plump, drawstring cloth sack.

"I know I taught you to not believe in Reechen, and only suspect." Vagn spoke in Traveler but used the Enistian word for miracles. "I told you this to keep you out of mischief, for much of this house holds objects of Reechen. These," he swept his hand over the items on the cloth, "which I am about to give you, are some of those things. First, though, I must impart to you a warning.

"With these special tools comes a measure of potency, the knowledge that you are different from all else. If the user of such abilities lets vanity grow strong enough to overrule reason, power will ruin, and may even destroy the wielder.

"A long time ago, one student, who had earned a little Reechen, unwisely let his pride and greed command him. This novice thauma fell prey to his own hunt for greater power. Unfortunately, he was not the only one to suffer. Many creatures of his time—miraculous animals, and also objects—were unwillingly caught in the web of his conceit. This youth's unwise actions led to the disappearance of most thaumatic beings and tools, for they concealed themselves for protection by transforming into things indistinguishable to drode eyes from ordinary objects. Only scholars and thaumas who had enough training and knowledge endured. We then began to collect and protect these items and creatures which we alone could distinguish as miraculous.

"I was there the day that student took his life because of the grief he'd begun to experience as he came to recognize the damage he'd done. I found him too late to save him from himself. His bones lie far beneath the forest now, and miracles today seem only to exist in myths.

"His weakness is a grievous thing which nonetheless serves as a valuable lesson."

Vagn turned his attention to the table and picked up one of the items.

"To Leigh goes rondElan and its sheath." He handed the sword to Leigh. "This is a very special tool." He motioned to Leigh, who drew out the weapon.

The blade was not made of metal and appeared as clear as the water in a calm lake, the bottom of which was not covered with pebbles or silt, but held an infinite glow. No light was cast outside the blade, rather, the illumination seemed to reflect off the inner walls and rush back into itself. The reflection within became crystal black at its edges, and its center seethed the red, orange, and yellow of hot coals.

"This was forged by remarkable thaumatic smiths, myths now for all save those like myself who remember them. They weaved Reechen into any substance they chose: the seeds to insure strong plants, the fields to provide mountainous harvests, the legs and lungs of brind for swiftness and stamina, and tools such as rondElan. This sword is said to possess Infinite Life, has endured many masters and served all well, outlasting them as it will you. Despite its age, the blade and handle show no chips or scratches. Move your fingers, and blurs disappear. It is unblemished, and said to be unblemishable. See the glow inside? Does it seem to live? It does. rondElan does not display marks or defects because the material is regenerating itself at a speed which our eyes can't follow, our minds won't comprehend. You are twice blessed, Leigh, since in this small drawstring bag is a tensile mail of the same remarkable matter. Keep them close, for they will serve you all your living days, but remember, they might fit equally well the hands and body of a stranger.

"Next is this parchment for Richard. In the ancient language, this paper is called "shorshn". Because of a thaumatic imposition, everything written and drawn here impregnates the minds of those who view it. This persuasion may be political, moral, humorous, or satirical, you decide. Whatever you place here will strongly motivate. You must remember this: one badly drawn line, one misaligned statement, can sway an entire population in a direction which could be disastrous. Do not write on the paper until you experience an overwhelming compulsion to so, and even then, use the material with care, wisdom, and decisive thoughtfulness."

Vagn nodded at Richard gravely, but with a touch of humor. He seemed to relish his role.

Uncle picked up the plain drawstring bag and carried it over to Paige. He dumped it on the table in front of her, loosened the strings, and sifted his fingertips through the silvery substance within. While he did this his mien focused, and he became a trifle saddened. After carefully brushing the powder off his hands and back into the bag, he cinched the ties and spoke again.

"As I have said, I taught you to disbelieve Reechen, and kept it away from you. But in this you must, you will believe, because this item has the power to change our world forever. Among other miracles this object can perform, and those are for you to discover, the contents can give you the ability to release objects of Reechen from their obscured forms and put right some of that which was altered so long ago. This is named Caller of Lost Miracles. I created it myself," he bragged uncharacteristically.

"Dip your hands in the powder, and concentrate as a nearby object draws your attention. Then, when you touch this thing, you'll perceive a miracle, and in the split second of this vision, you'll know it. You must decide whether to release the captive from its prison. If so, place both hands on it, focus on your perception, and watch the miracle transform into its rightful state. The object or creature will then be in your debt until you no longer desire its services, and you free it.

"You four must not to let these gifts become well known. This would be unwise and imprudent. Some may meet you who are not adverse to killing you and stealing them from you for their own uses.

"And for Derek," Vagn turned toward him. He grasped the amber phial.

"Interesting, no?"

"Yes, very," Derek replied emphatically. "What does this do?"

"Ah, restless Derek. This will comfort you in times of distress, allow you to ease the pain of others, and give you the words to remind those who have forgotten their duty. Put the chain around your neck and always wear it close. The nearer this is to you, the better it can understand you. When away from you, Ilen won't be able to hear or feel your distress, and will be confused as to how to serve you. At such time, anyone could pick it up, and then it would minister to them. Lucky for you, this is ugly. No one should want it. To use Ilen, you need only to hold the phial between your palms and think about what troubles you. Ilen can ease those thoughts and give you the compassion to soothe others, or the words to change their minds to benefit."

Derek frowned and Vagn laughed.

"Not what you expected, eh, Derek? Well, how would you like a new dagger?"

Vagn produced one from inside his robe. "Not miraculous, but definitely useful."

Derek grinned hugely, and bowed to Vagn as he received his gifts.

Vagn's good humor slipped a bit then, and sorrow passed within his eyes for a moment before he recovered. He hoped none of them witnessed this, but Paige did, though she kept quiet. The boys were busy with their gifts. She wondered why her cheerful Uncle should be sad.
II

Paige woke before the first and consistant star, Sorn-telain, had risen, and rejoiced for doing so. The peaceful morning would give her quiet time to think. She rolled out of bed, wrapped and knotted her belt about her tunic, and secured her gift to it. She put on a light coat of appropriate weight for the early morn and the season, and in the gloaming, she slipped from Uncle's garrad into the shadows. The brightening sky, the crisp air, the scents and silky silhouettes of forested wilderness surrounded and soaked through her.

She felt like lemut on the prowl, sensitive and alert. Walking the packed dirt path, her imagined, clawed paws measuring the steps to the drying house. At the thick, slanted, luculian door, Paige checked for observers all around her, and then pulled it open with the help of concealed pulleys. She proceeded down the stairs under the earthen mound into the depths of the cave. A handful of a smoked vegetable called "mank" silenced her yammering stomach.

Outside, she looked about again. Brind dozed in the pasture, and Paige went to them. As she walked into the meadow, they came to her and pushed their warm, inquisitive noses at her. They were no strangers to her silent visitations.

The animals were beautiful. One, Paige's own, was lean and dark, and would carry Paige away from here soon.

Making her way through the crush of warm bodies, bathed by their hot exhalations, Paige crossed the wide pasture. Creatures twittered all around her, and as she passed, those nearest became silent.

Paige began to seep into the reflective mood she'd been looking for since Uncle Vagn's and Ducar's, revelations. Here in the quiet of the late season forest, calm came easily to her.

Paige's childhood with Vagn and the boys had been a pleasure, an experience where her entire job consisted of learning, and putting her lessons to practice, in their simple life. Now she realized change was coming. She remembered having had this realization once before, long ago, when she was a younger and much less complicated drode, but this day she recognized and knew that the anxiety meant imminent and massive disruption.

The pasture sloped uphill and became covered in grey and green chirrish. These various vegetations burned off during the fiery season of kir, which was on the way. Growth had already slowed almost to a halt. Soon the plants would stop their growing completely and begin to wilt and dry. Once each cycle, when the second and erratic star, Sorn-servar, neared its closest orbit to the planet, the vegetation ignited.

Climbing the slope, Paige wondered about the time she had been smuggled out of the Kingdom in hurried silence. The flashing scenes had disappeared from her memory when she had started her life with Vagn, but emotions engendered during those frightening days now came rushing into her conscience. All the confusion, gravity, and fear of those scary moments returned in a roar, almost as potent as they had been when she was three cycles old.

The muscles in her shoulders and the back of her neck bunched with emotional tension. Her chest tightened and tears flooded her lower eyelids. She wiped them away.

At the crest of the hill was the large clump of boulders to which she made her way. A circle of pasture surrounded them, and then the land sloped down into the chirrish from which she had emerged.

The sky colored above as Sorn-telain touched the horizon from below, and streaks of blues, purples, pinks, and whites appeared in the brightening ceiling above.

From behind the rocks came the sound of tearing grass. Startled footfalls carried a huge, curious, and alert creature forward. Its light hide shone silvery in the gloaming.

This brind was Vagn's mount. The animal, a fine one, had sired many progeny. Vagn had always sent the young offspring elsewhere ever since Paige could remember. Now she realized, as she recalled Ducar's ride, that Vagn must have been supplying Marden Cavehold with them.

Much fell into place in Paige's mind.

The stud clawed the ground as if to interrupt her thoughts. She moved around him, and with a wave, she sent him crashing down the hill. His mock fury was beautiful; he snorted and his feet flashed.

Paige began the short, steep hike to the top of the boulders which rose above her head. The sack on her hip hindered her climb, but soon she sat on the cluster viewing the dawning scenery all around her.

She untied the drawstring bag from her belt and examined her gift. The dull cloth was infused with luculian sap for protection from the weather. Still skeptical of Reechen, though intuitively knowing full well that Uncle Vagn's stories were true, she opened the bag and dipped her hands into the silk-like contents, careful not to spill even one grain.

Her fingers tingled, and energy trickled through her. The tingling traveled quickly to her scalp and then disappeared as if escaping from her head by rushing into the lavender sky.

As this transpired, Paige felt herself drawn to another area of the boulder, where a crevice cut a deep path through it. Paige edged her way there and sat. She stared at an ugly, little, white-flowered, perennial weed. It perched in a crack on the side of the rock, and grew in a patch of humus collected in a small depression. Reaching down, she caressed a twisted leaf. Immediately, she perceived in her mind a minute creature dressed in green gossamer robes. The pale, pleading, tiny face stared up into hers.

Paige jerked away, shocked, remembering the vivid bedtime stories she had been told of the little chettanees which lived in an expanse of liquid called "sea"', keeping stables of water-loving creatures and planting tiny gardens in the "seaweed"'. When happened upon, the beasts magically became things she had never seen, called "sandstars" and "seashells", and turned into driftwood or any other natural thing for disguise. She recalled the tales of thaumatic land dwellers, who, at being discovered, became small fallen twigs, rocks, and even flowers like this one. Myths revealed that when tricked into exposing themselves, they were bound by their personal code to tell the future.

Paige looked around and felt silly. She wondered if this was all a joke, but only scholars of Reechen could create a game such as this.

Was Uncle Vagn a thamaturge, one of the miracle-makers who were now thought to be extinct?

Paige realized she believed in the stories brought by the stranger, and supported by the words of her 'Uncle', who apparently was not that. She sensed change coming, and she worried. Should she remain as she was, ignorant of the outside world, or move through the imminent changes with as little resistance as she could manage? It would be safer to stagnate, and easier.

Paige looked at the weed for a long moment. As she reached down and held the miniature petals between her fingertips, she saw again the pleading face and knew the tiny creature was trapped against its will. The skin of her finger pads flamed with invisible energy and her whole self tingled in reaction as the image gave way to reality.

Paige sat back. The sensation left her body, but her fingers continued to buzz where the powder still clung to them. Below her on the rock the little being bowed low in a humble gesture.

The creature spoke in the subtle, ancient language of Rokeen.

"Oh, Mighty and Generous Thauma," it praised in a high and dramatic peep. "You've released me from a prison from which I had given up hope of escape!"

Startled by the tiny voice, Paige examined the creature. It appeared to be studying her, too.

"I'm not a thauma," Paige denied in mellifluous Rokeen, one of the three languages she understood and spoke.

Its mien turned suspicious.

"Not thauma? Student, perhaps? You have the look of a scholar." It examined Paige in a sly manner. "Did you, perchance, receive The Caller as payment of a debt from a miracle-worker?"

"No," Paige replied, "this was given to me as a gift, by my... Uncle."

"Given? As a gift? Am I to understand that 'Uncle' has collected enough thaumats that he can give them away?"

The small being paced in an agitated way. Paige chose to play ignorant.

"I don't know."

"He must be a powerful thauma," it said, emoting a little less aggression, but still wary.

"Why?" Paige asked.

"Now, only wonder-workers can recognize objects of Reechen, and comprehend their truth. Another would mistakenly see a sack full of useless dust, and might even abandon the contents to use the bag for other purposes."

The first angry brother, Sorn-telain, breached the horizon now, adding its light to the sky and silhouetting the growth behind the little creature.

"Many of us have been lost in careless ways," the tiny being explained while pacing with its minute hands clasped behind its back. Glancing at the trampled grass where the brind had been, it pointed. "Take the stud, for example. Some day he might decide a small weed on a rock seems tasty. I am lucky you came along when you did. Perhaps I owe you for my life, as well as my freedom."

It gazed at Paige, awaiting her reply.

Paige thought, the brind might have overlooked the puny weed, or someone else could have come around to free the tiny being if I had not.

"No, I don't think that's accurate," Paige said to the nymph. "You speak too gravely."

Hunger pangs clenched her stomach. The mank was already gone. Paige stirred to leave, but the little creature spoke again.

"He was beautiful, no?" It asked in its high, soft voice.

"Yes." Paige settled back down on the rock.

"Did you notice the intelligence in his eyes?"

"Yes," Paige repeated.

"He is descended from a great brind who lived before all were banished. Do you know this story?"

"I've heard of the change," Paige murmured, not sure what was being asked.

"Well, before that time, a certain special dam with her mate produced lovely offspring. The stud, having possessed no Reechen, gave his mortality to his children. When the transformation occurred, the lineage was not changed into something else. The descendants did, however, possess some of the Reechen of their mother. Those qualities passed down the generations, and they became hidden, with no special skills like hers to stimulate them. Reechen lies recessive in all of her descendants. I think you'll soon find companionship in one of these."

"I have a mount named Caresnik," Paige said.

"Her name is Moonflight," the little thing went on as if Paige wasn't speaking, "and she'll save your life, not unlike how you saved mine."

Save my life from what? Paige thought, but asked, "Who would give a brind a Traveler name?"

"Why not? Names depend on the namer."

Catching the rattled look on Paige's face, the nymph queried, "May I tell you anything else?"

"No, I've had enough," she replied quickly, rudely. "Uh, I think I'll be going now. You can go also."

She thought she sounded foolish, but Paige had no idea how to dismiss the being.

"Are you sure?" The impish voice floated up to her.

"Sure of what?" Paige sighed with vast impatience. Apparently it had a will of its own.

This was too much, too soon.

"That you are through with me. You seem unsure of this journey." The creature paused long enough to gage her reaction. "Is there something you want to know? Which encounters, warriors, rebels, or partners await? How they will think of you? What they'll do?"

Paige started, and glanced around. The little nymph had somehow absorbed from her the fears and questions she was experiencing regarding her future, and knew more than it had been told. Did the powder work both ways?

"Yes! Good! I can tell you some will accept you as their friend, others as an authority, and a few as an enemy. However, many shall decide you are a natural leader. This is the role for you."

Paige exhaled. She was surprised at her relief. That wasn't so scary. But the last two sentences didn't seem particularly revelatory. That could be told to anybody!

"I suppose," the nymph said, having noticed her reaction, "you have come to believe in Reechen?"

Paige laughed. "Yes, I think so!"

The sky was brightening and she decided to leave, but as Paige started to move off the boulders, the tiny thing called her back once again.

"Please," it asked, doing an agitated little dance, "a favor? On the other side of these rocks there are more of us...?"

Paige waved the creature into silence. She climbed down the clump of boulders and walked around them. The little being scampered over the top as she circled. Lower, on the far side, three tiny flowers clung bravely to the rock face. The nymph watched as the other miniature creatures emerged at Paige's touch.

As they rejoiced, Paige walked back into the forest.

"I SAW THAT!"

Paige jumped. Derek stood in front of her, pointing an accusing finger.

"You used your gift!"

"Yes!" She pushed him off the path and continued downhill.

"Wait just one breath," he trotted up beside her. "What'd it tell you?"

"What do you mean?"

"C'mon. Everybody knows about chettanees!"

"They do?"

"Sure!"

"Everybody?"

"Don't deny. I watched you talk to it."

"You're a snoop."

"Yep. What did it say?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon, Paige."

"I am going to get a brind."

"You have one now."

"A different one."

"So?"

"I don't know, that's what she said."

"There's got to be more to it."

"Nope."

"Phht!" Derek sneered. "Uncle sent me. Break fast is ready."

"Good, I'm starving."

Paige ran. She loved to, and she could run until the morning air chilled her lungs and forced her to stop. This season, however, was warm, and running a pleasure. The two raced all the way to their meadow-covered home.

After the meal, which had been prepared by Vagn in quiet competence, the four dressed for travel. They packed needed items, clothed their mounts with pads and strap harnesses, and fastened their packs to the straps. They and Ducar started their journey.

Vagn had made his sad but hopeful good-byes to the children during the evening before, while a travel weary Ducar slept. He waved and went into his garrad, sat, and expanded his essence in order to follow them making their way through the woods. He remained like this for a long while.

Her belly full, Paige enjoyed her smooth, relaxed ride atop Caresnik; she grew irritated when Leigh spoke. "What are we to do at the Marden Cavehold?" he had asked. She, in vain, hoped their travels would be spent in relative silence, so she could prepare herself mentally for whatever lay ahead, but his question warranted a discussion.

"You'll learn to rule a people, and run a government," Ducar answered vaguely.

Leigh glanced at his brothers and sister.

"We haven't learned about governments and ruling," he said. "Are we going to have to sit and listen to instructors, as Vagn says they do in the cities?"

"No. Your teacher will be practical experience. You'll do chores for the administrators of food production, cavehold maintenance, and other managements, including myself in the War House. You already know more about these things than you realize. Vagn is knowledgeable in the ways of government and defense. And, you'll practice your fighting skills."

"War House! Now that's where I want to be!" Derek cut in. He spit petlah juice as he let the root loosen his tongue and unbind his emotions. "I'd like the chance to learn to use my daggers better. And do the warriors practice any open-hand fighting techniques? I enjoy a good scrap now and then." The four children all smiled and nodded. "Relieves tension, you know. And I'd like to work with a war mount. I've been watching you. I can't tell how you're guiding your brind. It has few clothes!" He jiggled his mount's guideropes.

Paige wished they would wait and see, but she knew they were as nervous as she. They handled their anxiety differently, and were chewing the root, petlah, too. Then she noticed that Ducar had also been imbibing the tuber. As a fatherly grin spread across his face for the impish youths, she began to experience compassion for the man who, it felt to her probing essence, had been forced by circumstances into a way of being not natural to him. He didn't seem to be pursuing his own chosen path, but was performing some duty. She sensed the tension of conflict within him.

She, like her brothers, had the exquisite empathy which was innate, further educated into, and exploited by her kind, the natives of the planet Enistan, or Enistians, as they named themselves. The influence of the Travelers had diluted the training and altered dramatically the empathic connections all Enistians had enjoyed since the development of The Nartan Way. The more one became exposed to Traveler mentality, and the less traditional education one experienced, the greater the disciplines changed and the mental cordage unwound.

Even in the children's short lives, these bonds had been eroded to the degree that now engaging anyone beyond a certain close proximity was accomplished only with difficulty. Emotionally communicating with those in other regions of the planet had become nearly impossible.

Many had not been able to adjust successfully to these strange and anxiety producing disruptions. Now, the most Traveler-influenced and Traveler-accepting of Enistians had no understanding of the deep empathies, or any comprehension of the loss of them at all! This had resulted in conflict among the people, and had led to divisions and war such as the ones they traveled toward now.

Even if the four Heirs regained the Thrones, they knew there might always be these problems because of the Traveler influence, and what should they do about it? Perhaps as they confronted the future, those answers would come.

Paige's contemplated these perceptions, and she shared them with her brothers at the speed of thought. The daunting perceptions made them well aware that their childhood was ending.

"Our brind are trained," Ducar was explaining while lovingly stroking his mount, "from the day they are born, in comprehension." He emphasized that word. The children bathed in the feeling of empathy with each other. They and Vagn were the ones who had done the basic training with the young brind before they sent the beasts away, and knew the truth of it. "They are watched during their youth within the herd by the Master Trainer,... " Vagn, Paige thought to the boys. And us, they thought back to her. "... taught by him to respect and enjoy drode..." strangely, he now interjected the Enistian word for 'people' though he still spoke Traveler, "...and to demand exceptional treatment for their loyalty. At Cavehold, they receive further education—get accustomed to living underground, and are worked in tight crowds to become used to drode and to other brind in close quarters. They learn to move around one another in close proximity without causing damage to themselves or to their riders, and to be confident about obstacles and their abilities to navigate them.

"They're identified by personality and empathic factors, and each is paired with a warrior whose temperament and empathies compliment them. From then on, it's a matter of letting them work together and bond, and of educating them in the tactics of war.

"Both soldiers' and mounts' technical and sympathetic capabilities must be honed to ensure their survival. At the end of this training period, ideally, they become inseparable, and indomitable, although, in reality, many warriors are not empathic these days, and the brind are limited by them."

"Are we going to train for long?" Leigh asked.

"For you four, we started working several war-mounts a few cycles ago, with experienced riders who were partially incompatible with them. They have been trained for you, and we believe each of you and one of the twelve brind will be able to choose one another. You'll bond with them. Enough are available that you should be able to find bonds from among them—if we did not mistake our choices. Then it'll be time to learn the art of brind-mounted warfare."

"Why would they empathize with us if they haven't with anyone before? All they know is how not to," Richard asked thoughtfully.

"The trainers we chose to work with those brind were chosen because they have compatible personalities but incompatible empathies with the mounts. We picked the animals for you, so we believe the connections will be made. Vagn helped us when he sent them to us, as he identified which of them might potentially bond with each of you."

"Sounds kind of like love at first sight," Derek snickered.

"Well, it's up to you whether the relationship remains based on infatuation, or grows to real devotion. You must help them progress to this level, as we dared not, since they can be bound only to you, for they will be your companions and livelihoods."

Paige started at the word "companions", but Ducar talked on, and the effect slipped away.

He eased his mount out in front of the group, and as they traveled, the brind stepped in a controlled but eager fashion, signaling its readiness. Ducar demonstrated, using touch and vocal command, to cause the animal to dip and leap and fight in the air. The creature evaded, parried, and attacked, just as the sword at the end of an arm. To a specific order, sort of a grunt and a click, the beast reared and sent his shoulder plowing into an imaginary enemy. He halted, and Ducar tapped his ribs with his heel and muttered. The beast hunched a bit and kicked through a fantasy enemy's chest with its large rear feet. The display was impressive.

The prancing brind came back to the group, winded only by his excited state. His muscles bulged from his effort. He quieted while Ducar told them that once in combat, the animals needed little guidance and acted as warriors themselves, enabling their riders to do the same. Paige looked again and Ducar's beast seemed much as any other well-conditioned athlete in excellent health. She wondered if Ducar knew or suspected his bond's special background, which she had learned from the nymph. She perceived the bond between Ducar and his mount, and realized that although he talked and thought Traveler, he had some Nartan sensitivity in him.

"Tell us about Marden Cavehold, Ducar," Paige asked.

"Cavehold is marvelous, you'll soon see," he said. "The people are united in one cause, and Kent is a skilled leader. Hilaire had been ill for a while when he took over the management of all the Houses of Cavehold before her death. He cared for her himself. She went out of her head often in the end, but he always managed to be available for her. Her last season passed as peacefully as he was able to manage for her. Through all this he even made changes, like the printed propaganda, and he brought many new drode to Cavehold from the cities. He is an accomplished man."

The warrior paused a moment in thought. His face pinched briefly, and Paige felt his conflict. Her brothers touched her mind. They had endured his emotions, too.

"I've caught myself Kotune, the winged brind, and I fly into battle with you, Paige!" Richard shouted, to break the tension.

"Oh no, not now," Paige groaned.

"The rules state, when challenged, drode must play or die!" Derek jeered the traditional affront.

And so they played the imagination game to take their mind off the stifling dry heat, until darkness began to fall over them. Ducar stopped to make camp and care for his mount.

Later, when he rested with them, the children learned of the Caveholder's diet.

Ducar sat in front of the small fire unwrapping a brick of a compressed, dark green substance. He flaked and consumed it. The four didn't accept his offer to try some. Instead, Richard and Derek went out into the forest with their snares and shortly returned with two mature clune, the night-browsing, burrowing lagomorph of sweet, succulent meat. They roasted and shared them, and invited Ducar to join them. He took a small bite but insisted his meal had filled him, and he was not accustomed to the grease of beast anymore. The children enjoyed their supper though, as they were used to having clune stew or roast with Vagn at least every several passings.

The next passing went without incident, too, as well as the third, fourth... and tenth. They all began to smell like journeyers, and each day they found themselves back in the boring sameness of travel. When they reached Cavehold, they didn't even realize it.

Ducar had instructed them to unclothe their mounts, hide the clothing in a stand of shrubs, and leave their brind naked in a sun-dappled pasture.

They walked some ways up to a rocky cliff overhung by trailing vines and weeds, where Ducar pulled on a strand of hanging vegetation. The ground shook. They heard the muted sound of stone gears grinding below them. The four explained that Vagn had used a few mechanical items, or they might have turned and run from the terrible noisy place and never returned. As it was, they recognized the sounds of mechanics, though they couldn't quite imagine the particular large mechanism involved here.

In front of them, the hand-honed, but natural looking rock wall grated back, revealing a space with a low ceiling and no walls, or walls so far off to the sides they were lost in the dim illumination of the opening. A pit sunk away where the floor should have been. Far beneath them they heard water running swiftly. A rickety looking rope-and-plank bridge extended from a thin ledge of stable rock below them into the darkness.

Ducar stepped in and moved to the left. As he took a globe from its socket, his touch made it illuminate. The light revealed a stairway carved in the vertical rock into which the entrance had been built. The stairs curled away and ended on the ledge beneath the narrow one they were standing on.

The descent had no railings and was only wide enough for one to pass. They hugged the rock, descending in a line behind Ducar. Once below, he showed them the gears and the balances, which, when disturbed by the pulling of the vine, had caused the hidden entrance to open. He reset the balance by use of levers and pulleys and the door grated closed. Finished with the tour, Ducar led them to the bridge. He touched another globe.

He told them to stay where they were while he replaced the first orb upstairs. When he returned, he stepped onto the first plank. The rope and wood creaked dryly, and as the wave of motion extended throughout its length, moans and screeches echoed. Ducar continued forward, touching globes attached to the expanse at intervals, illuminating the way as he walked. After some time, each of the light sources behind went out, starting with the initial one. One by one, the children slowly tested and braved the passage.

The eeriness of being out on the slender expanse, devoid of any sensation other than their own and that of the bridge, which creaked and swayed beneath, behind, and ahead, enveloped their senses. As she listened to the river far below eating its way through rock and time, Paige tried to make her self small and quiet, and sensed the boys doing the same. They touched one anothers' minds. The combination of all their feelings made them much more confident, and they kept each other calm.

She brought up the rear, following the four silhouettes in the glimmering circles of light through the otherwise complete darkness.
III

The boards continued beneath their feet as they progressed on their monotonous journey. The river echoed up to them. The creaking and groaning of wood, ropes, and their own walking motions repeated endlessly, making time seem to echo itself.

Suddenly, Ducar fell, and the light nearest him flared and failed. Behind him, Leigh shouted a warning and disappeared. Richard, Derek, and Paige froze. The bridge did not fall away underneath them. Silence. Then laughter and scuffing noises preceded light piercing the darkness. Leigh and Ducar sat on a rock ledge, a step up from the last plank.

"Oh, my heart!" Ducar exclaimed. "I forgot about the riser."

Leigh tried to stifle his laughter. Ducar raised himself up off the stones while gently cuffing Leigh on the head. Picking up the globe, he placed it in a cup.

"The east entrance would have been easier," he told them, "but this one is the farthest away from the Cities, the most discrete, and by far the safest."

As soon as they all had something solid beneath their feet, Ducar led them to a dead end opposite the bridge and pushed on a barely visible protruding rock. A portion of the vertical wall scraped open.

The five walked through and into a less arid cavern, which seemed darker, if this were even possible. The area felt and sounded huge. A globe from inside the cavedoor illuminated only a tiny circle around them, forcing them to stick close together. Ducar plucked the smooth sphere out of its cup, which seemed to cause the stone entry to close, and walked without hesitation the entire cave-length to a slim doorhole at its far wall. They passed through. The next cavern seemed smaller and they detected, by the slight flow of air, several tunnels branching away.

"You know where you're going, don't you?" Richard asked. Ducar shot him a somewhat menacing glance, perhaps an illusion created by the light under his face.

Something sounding like a small herd scurried by, making a lot of noise outside the area of dim illumination. The four drew their daggers and swiftly put their backs together, rotating with the pinpricks of light which moved with the sound.

Ducar murmured in earnest. "Those are children playing," he said, explaining, "my son plays here." He glanced toward the receding noises. They relaxed and slipped the weapons into concealed sheaths. "This used to be part of the occupied Cavehold, but now these caverns are empty. We moved to the southern sections long ago because they proved to suit our needs better, and they're closer to the cities. Therefore, however, we have to be more careful not to be detected. This is an ancient place which has been so well used that through the ages it's developed to the size of several Rooses, though we had forgotten all about it. Although there are rooms for anything anyone ever thought of using them for, we utilize only a small portion.

"Our young play in these caverns and learn about the past. If they look hard enough at the details, the caves will tell them stories of those who resided here and the ways they lived their lives. I explored this when I was a boy, with Hilaire, but not too many young ones bother with history these days. Few understand how to enjoy the past."

"Your son does, does he?" Paige stated more than asked.

"Of course he does; I raised him." Ducar replied with pride. "I don't want him to be as all these others, plodding their way through life, always doing what they're told and believing it. I would like him to explore and think for himself."

He stopped talking, and his usual expression slipped into place. As it did, Paige realized he used this one primarily, and only infrequently did his unguarded emotions emerge.

They had sheathed their daggers, but still their tension remained somewhat elevated. The little group followed their leader through so many passages and caverns that the four lost their sense of direction. The pace dissipated their anxiety, though. They reached Cavehold civilization in a time equivalent to a quarter passing.

They approached an area which emitted moisture into the air. A strange, pungent odor accompanied the humidity. Unfortunately, the ventilation system circulated slightly slower than the smell emanated. This place was brightly lit by reflected light, directed in from abovecave.

"This is where we process our food," Ducar said as he led them into the huge, smelly cavern. More drode labored here than the children had seen in their collective lifetimes.They were moving between the rows of tables and turning the green vegetation spread on them so the plants would dry evenly in the enormous underground processing room.

"That's food?" Derek sneered. "I'm not eating that."

Ducar glared at him.

"You will and you'll learn to like it. We call this kull. Once it's mostly dried, it's taken there," he pointed, "chopped, and pressed into bricks."

"And then?" Richard asked.

"We eat it."

After a silence, Paige queried, "What is it?"

Ducar threw Paige a look. "You'll have to get used to it. Kull is nutritious and excellent for travel. We cultivate the plants in an underground lake near the surface where light can be directed in, and believe me, this is far more nutritionally consistent than the food you've been eating. Besides, we're close to Roos. We can't hunt too much or farm without being discovered by the Vest, but we also raise what seasonal fresh produce we are able to on the banks of a lake abovecave. These have to look natural to avoid detection by Roosian scouts, so the plants are encouraged to seed and spread naturally, though we're able to harvest considerable yield."

Leigh fingered the stuff. "You've given up a lot for your cause."

"This sustains us in small quantities. The bricks are lightweight, which is important abovecave, beyond aid and support. The flakes can be made into meals with fresh foods and sauces, and it stores well if kept dry."

"What happens when it gets wet?"

"It spoils, and it smells..." he finally admitted, "...worse. You can't get it near your face. Some wildlife seems to like moist kull, but the Vest scouts know its odor. Best to keep it dry, otherwise you'll go hungry and the scent will betray you."

Leaving the processing room behind, the children followed Ducar into a long hallway where their passage was lit by similar types of globes as had clung to the walls and the bridge, but these were spaced farther apart and stayed lit. Ducar noticed the four glaring into the black holes occurring between the arcs of light.

"Be careful, you'll strain your eyes," he chided them. "Yes, there are guards. They stand in niches cut into the wall. Behind this passage, on both sides, are hallways through which the first guard ran to Kent with news of your arrival. The brind and gear are being collected and brought down tunnels without rope bridges. Those are much longer. This is a more direct way to get to where you'll be learning how to live in this Cavehold."

"Kent already knows we're here?"

He nodded. "Just about now."

At the end of the tunnel, another stone door opened in near silence at Ducar's touch.

"This design is more recent," he explained the noiselessness.

They went through an obvious guard station and into a housing section. Large holes were carved into the walls of the hallways, which displayed living areas ranging from simple and casual to lavish and elegant. Doorways led from these public front rooms to private spaces further back.

After an extensive march, Ducar stopped short at an opening, announced himself, and proceded through the entrance.

They walked into a spacious and comfortable lounging room containing sparse but adequate furnishings and a social grouping centered in front of a rear wall. A male drode of medium age sat on bright, overstuffed cushions. Long colorful pads hung behind the man, and above these were carved oval openings in the rock, indicating a playhouse. Paige imagined children swarming the passage in their play. Derek and Richard became interested in the playhouse at once. Leigh and Paige managed to maintain their polite manners and respectful reserve.

The drode grasped Ducar's hand in Traveler fashion and they exchanged familiar greetings. After Ducar introduced him as "Don Doman", the man shook hands with all of them. These were the childrens' first handshakes. The man's graying hair and narrow face framed seeringly intelligent eyes. The children stared into them and touched his mind with theirs, but received nothing in return. He didn't seem to notice their questing. They backed out of his conscience politely, even so.

A woman entered the room with a large platter. The male Doman called her his "wife", and she told them to call her "Mavi".

"The Domans were gracious enough to invite you to eat and refresh yourselves in their home. They will teach you about living in Cavehold before you get your own quarters."

Paige heard the separated 'family name' and the emphasis on their 'graciousness'. These were two truly Traveler adoptions. Enistians used only one appellation. Because drode were not terribly fecund, all pretty much knew everyone else by sight in any local area. To empaths, each mind's distinct pattern was easily recognized. Occassionally, someone attached the designation of their city, town, or rural region to their given name, to be extra clear, because this described what types of skills they specialized in and which arts they favored. For instance, Uncle had introduced Ducar as Ducarmahamet, and Mahamet was a town well known for athletic drodes who were also practical. They made especially good guardians and guides in the wild, and these days, warriors. Usually, among strangers, relationships and familial affiliations were described, as in the greeting ritual when new families or villagers met.

Also, graciousness and generosity were performed without fail, as dictated by The Nartan Way; water, food, shelter, and companionship were offered whenever appropriate. These necessities were not commented on, much less demanded. For that matter, drode never withheld, but gave freely, because failure to do so in the harsh climes of Enistan ensured death. Drode would be considered murderous by all others if he or she caused or allowed this.

The strange Traveler behaviors and expectations were alien to Enistian followers of The Way. Traveler words and concepts such as "expect" and "owe" hadn't even existed on Enistan, but in this Cavehold, these normally automatic traits were commented on, expected, and verbally appreciated. The Traveler influence seemed strong in Marden Cavehold.

The Domans, Ducar, and the children all sat around the oval table on the colorful cushions and shared a meal. They ate from the plate with fingers, chipping shards and flakes from the forest green brick, which released a slight odor. Multiple bowls contained sauces for dipping, adding variety to the underlying sameness. A small amount of parboiled vegetables were also present.

The kull tasted completely strange and new. The four, who were hungry, found themselves enjoying the novel experience. At first the bricks didn't seem to be sufficient, but as the squarish lump was broken apart, it became clear there would be plenty for all of them. The meal was filling and pleasant enough.

The adults taught them the Traveler words "please" and "thank you", as well as other phrases, and explained their appropriate usage.

After he finished his portion, Ducar stood up and excused himself, saying he would return for them shortly. He left.

Derek was full; he always ate the fastest. He asked to be allowed to explore the private sections of their home. "I am interested to see how Caveholders live," he said. As usual, he was bold and curious. Of course the Domans agreed, since the four children were here to learn about Cavehold living.

Don rose to "go back to work", but as he finished speaking, a grunt, a squeal, and scraping noises emitted from the wall behind. Everyone grew silent, and after a pause, the noise came again. Paige looked around. She caught Leigh's and Richard's eyes. Richard stood up and walked around the wall to determine the source of the noise.

"Who's in the playhouse?" Mavi asked, her brows arching inquiringly.

"Derek." Richard came back around the wall into the living space.

"Well, he's too big for it, Don," the pragmatic wife addressed her husband.

"We'll have to get him out," Don sighed. They all trooped back into the private area. The wall here was similar to the front, with holes and passages cut in, with Derek's behind sticking out of one. He had gotten himself wedged in.

"He's well stuck." Don wiped his hands on his pant legs and grabbed Derek's ankles. "I'm going to drag you out. This will hurt. You'll scrape the walls a bit."

Many squeals and grunts later, Derek fell out of the hole sporting bleeding elbows and a huge grin.

"Okay?" Don asked.

"Yes," Derek replied. He grinned even wider. "What an excellent playhouse!"

Don laughed, but his laugh was polite, his mind already back on his "work".

"Does he always do things like that?" Mavi asked.

"Yes," her guests replied in unison.

"Well, I must go. I took time to meet you. Mavi will show you how to navigate around the rest of the house," Don said. "I work in the pressroom. I'm sure I'll see you again when you get the grand tour."

The children practiced their new farewell phrases as he left.

"Come this way, I have a hot bath waiting for you," Mavi sung as she dragged Derek away.

Paige contemplated the emphasis Don had placed on his taking time from "work" to meet them. No true Enistian could have been so rude. Almost nothing was more important than treating guests well, and hospitality would not have been presented as an imposition. The superficiality of these encounters bothered her.

The Traveler manner of being was annoyingly brief, divisive, and inconsiderate. The language seemed strange and excessively verbal. Also, they didn't seem to use their empathy here at all! She must adjust for the time being, but if they were indeed the Heirs to the Thrones, Paige would do her utmost to return The Way to the Kingdom.

Surely some of the Roosians were Nartan. Traveler influence couldn't be this thick in the Realm, could it?

Paige touched the others' minds and learned that the boys agreed. They had also noticed the strange ways and were annoyed by them. But they all agreed to go along and learn how to live in Cavehold, while awaiting what the future would bring them. Increasing knowledge was a foremost dictate of The Nartan Way.

As Ducar walked the hallways, the slight indigestion which always attacked him when he was going to Kent's office made itself known. This hallway was illuminated more brightly than most others, and at the end was an intricate and abstractly carved and ancient luculian door. Behind this entrance sat the drode who had helped divert Ducar's life onto its current path.

These are trying times, thought Ducar, and one must do what circumstances require. He often repeated this to himself.

The Warmaster knocked once, opened and walked through the door. He was instantly impressed by the calm of the man at the desk. This was not Kent's usual mien.

Kent sat smoking a fat Traveler-style cigar, studied Ducar, and thought about how everyone else waited until he had told them to come in, but not Ducar. Kent watched the warrior sit in a chair, withdraw a hand-rolled cig and a match from a pocket, and light it. He leaned forward and drew one of the bowls on Kent's desk toward himself.

Ducar smoked in defense against Kent's cigar smoke. Normally, smoking was a little too Traveler for Ducar's taste. It was not originally permitted in Cavehold because everyone shared the underground air. Kent had changed that.

Not for the better, Ducar thought.

This warrior had been a favorite of Hilaire's, a childhood friend, but Kent questioned Ducar's loyalty to him. Once in a while, he pondered whether Ducar was trying, with his behavior, to suggest that his respect for Kent was not quite sincere.

"Well?" he asked through a visage he imagined was comradely.

"They know of war," Ducar answered, flicking ash at the receptacle.

"How?" Kent sucked at his cigar, rolled the smoke around in his mouth, and blew it out in a thin stream. He reached out and pulled a different bowl toward himself.

"They play the game..."

"The game is nothing," Kent dismissed.

Ducar thought, as he often did, about the extent to which this only son of Hilaire lacked depth and tact.

"That knowledge is useful," Ducar said. "The game teaches strategy and tactics, as you well know, and nimble thinking. Your mother made sure you knew it. I played with you when you were a boy, remember?"

"My mother taught me many things, and yes, I remember." Kent sighed. "I wonder if you still resent me for winning so often?

"I corrected you for cheating."

"Winning is the goal."

"Rules exist for good reason."

"Rules impede success."

"Rules prevent tyranny."

"A strong offense is not tyranny, Ducar. This is a worn out old argument. Do you fear the children?" Kent abruptly changed the subject.

"Fear? What an odd question. No." Ducar drew deeply on the cig again, letting the old, familiar contention go. He had never been able to reason with the child, now man. "You?"

"I don't trust that thauma, Vagn. No telling what he taught them. Nartan, I suppose." Hilaire had been wise to keep some of her activities secret from her son, who had not embraced The Way in the least. "We can't trust them, but we must use them, as they legitimize our goal. They're the knife in the fight. You understand," Kent stated. He rolled the fat cherry against the bottom of the receptacle. "Don't you?"

"Of course," Ducar barked in a hard voice, though he was unable to think of those children as knives. They were not hardened adults. Yet he didn't misjudge them, as he was familiar with the power of Nartan and the logical, tactical, and strategic lessons of the game. Kent would do well not to trust them, because he was brilliant, but ruthless, and ruthlessness was a blasphemy to The Way. The goal of taking back Roos and replacing the four young Royals on the Thrones was ambitious and exceptional, and though those words also described Kent, he was only so in Traveler ways—the selfish ones.

Things seemed in danger of going badly, but Ducar wanted the Kingdom back under Royal rule, and the Heirs in the seats of power. Ducar had already determined to do his best to make sure this goal was achieved and nothing went wrong, in spite of Kent.

Ducar glanced up, suddenly afraid his uncontained musings had betrayed him. Then he smiled because he knew Kent was as unable to feel his emotions as the children were. Enistians who followed The Nartan Way could. His own mother had been able to.

Kent saw the genuine smile and egotistically misread it.

"Ducar, I enjoy our little jousts. You're a good man. Mother was right to trust you." Kent stood and walked around the desk. Ducar rose also and waited. "Come," he slung his arm across Ducar's shoulders. "Have a drink with me before you fetch them. I'll tell them all about our glorious revolution!"

Richard, Leigh, Paige, and Derek were clean and refreshed. The 'hot bath' Mavi had referred to meant the warm water flowing and pooling in the rearmost depths of the cavern. It bubbled from one wall into the bathing room and slipped out through another. They learned that long ago, when such arts were practiced, the water had been diverted from the deep, hot places far below up to private reservoirs, used, and returned. Every residence in Cavehold had its bathing pool. Additionally, an effective ventilation network in the walls and ceilings moved air between the caves and the planet's surface. From abovecave it was fresher and drier, smelling of the forest and the weather, replacing the moist and cloistered cave air. This controlled humidity and temperature.

The four had been supplied with scrubs, cloths for drying, and clean clothes. Their new pants were of a dense, woven, green cloth, obviously dyed in the ink of kull. The shirts were pullovers of a finer material, the same color, having long sleeves and round, tied necklines. The boots, unlike their old ones, ended at the ankle and were called shoes. The new clothes were not luculian sap impregnated and so would not be usefull on the surface. The children made sure to collect and keep the gear they had arrived in.

Waiting in the comfortable forward room, Paige realized that even though her stomach had growled in demand before the meal, she was not hungry at all now, but felt energized.

Ducar appeared at the outer doorway, thanked Mavi, and took them away. After a straight walk through the halls and a few turns they came to an area busy with drode. The hallway was well-lighted and people crossed between the doorways. At the end of this hall, an ancient, carved, luculian door beckoned them, and they made their way forward.

As they entered, Paige, Leigh, Derek, and Richard glanced around while absorbing the impressions in this room. It was the usual rounded underground space they were used to, and the dark, carved luculian furniture was pure Enistan, but the drode in here did not seem to belong.

Unease entered the children. At first doubting that the strange man was the source of their alarm, they tuned into the wrongness they felt, and continued to assemble clues.

They found no need to examine Kent for long to become confused. He portrayed himself a mixture of indigenous Enistan and Traveler, and in Uncle's garrad, Ducar's description of Kent's desire for the necessary changes had seemed to be Enistian goals. But his dress, demeanor, and the tobacco he favored proved that description false. His words and thoughts were wholly Traveler.

Their understanding had been that Enistians don't easily adopt Traveler mannerisms unless they have first lost or abandoned much of The Nartan Way. Since Kent's thoughts, language, and behavior were essentially Traveler, and he seemed to have misplaced his empathy, their suspicious minds had alarmed them. Now they realized that he was, in fact, the origin of their unease.

Of course, Kent was as biologically Enistian as the children. The two races had been unable to produce live offspring, and the original space travelers had died off long ago, leaving the pollution of their thoughts and behaviors to fester in some minds and disturb the orderliness of Enistian society.

The mental images of Don and Mavi Doman flashed in Paige's mind. Her impressions flowed, and her recent experiences engaged her processes.

Don and Mavi were mates, she had understood this, though they seemed, to her, almost as strangers to each other. Their old feelings, worn and stretched by time and familiarity, they believed to be the real strength of union, however, this was only a shallow illusion of bonding as Paige understood it. Paige's connection to her brothers and Vagn ran deep. Ignorant of true bond, the couple did their daily "work", thought and conversed in the shallowest of ways, learned little, and expanded their consciousness not at all. Their empathic pulse was as weak as a muscle no longer controlled by the brain.

Kent was like them.

These strange perceptions occurred to Paige though she had never encountered such drode, and her anxiety mounted. Now this Kent, of equivalent make, would be their guide in this experience. Oh, no.

Paige touched the minds of her brothers and found similar feelings there. They queried each other as to whether they should communicate in this manner, within, lest they reveal themselves, but decided the threat of revelation was weak. These Traveler spawn did not experience one another emotionally as the empathic Enistians did. However, some empaths nearby might report their thoughts to Kent, although this was a true perversion of The Nartan Way. It was hard to believe any Enistian might betray another in this manner. The four, in this alien territory; could not fathom how the others would behave, and so became protective of themselves and each other.

All these revelations flowed quickly between them.

An element of subtle, but palpable, fear underlay the ignorance here. Was every inhabitant of Cavehold infected with, but unaware of this? Did they accept chronic anxiety as part and parcel of their lives?

Fear was destructive and pervasive, and the children guarded themselves against the paralyzing emotion. In the near future they would find it sneaking in while they were preoccupied with other thoughts, and it would twist their reactions.

Many times while in Cavehold the four would find themselves sharing their perceptions and traveling back into the memories of passings when they had been most comfortable, protected, and free, in the wilderness around Vagn's house and in his care. They remembered those feelings in order to combat the creep of fear.

Now, for the first time, they sent their essences out and joined with Vagn for his support. They detected him, in his garrad, calm and settled, and he made them feel well again. He admonished them to help one another, and, with gentleness, he left their minds.

Being an empath had its advantages when those around you did not practice The Nartan Way. Support was never far away from an able and ranging mind.

Coming back from these musings into the reality of the moment, they explored their feelings about Ducar. They had come to think he did not fit this place, although, here he lived. As skilled as he seemed he did not have to be hiding in this hold, so it had been his choice. They decided he desired the goal of returning the Heirs to the Thrones, and wanted to be a part of the restoration. Ducar, a different thinker, did not seem to believe without reservation in Kent's interpretations, but he was not a practioner of Nartan or an empath. He could not know the truth, and so Ducar was trapped by sentiment while lacking accurate knowledge.

To the children, his was a novel reaction, and they explored this revelation in each others' minds.

Many disruptions were exhibited here, such as thought processes they'd never encountered. Also, empty spaces resided where bond should exist. Much remained unknown to them.

Their examinaton pulled away from Ducar and moved to Kent again. They were awash with questions now. All these impressions had passed among them in a brief moment of time as they took the seats being offered to them. Their resulting conclusions, unperceived by Kent and Ducar, disturbed them.

Enistians rarely found themselves alone in their own minds, unless they chose to be. They did not need to protect their thoughts and feelings from detection by others. Vagn and the children had experienced no fear of betrayal by each other, as existed here in Cavehold. The minimization and even absence of empathic emotional intertwining, the phenomena Enistians termed bonding, seemed to result in the loneliness and wariness which resided in Traveler minds.

Their guardedness increased the more they understood Cavehold and Caveholders, and they intensely perceived the need to protect themselves. Thus Caveholder paranoia infected them.

Ducar remained standing behind them, close to the door. He always seemed to be near an exit, and must experience, too, the desire to safeguard himself.

Kent had stood as they entered, and sat again when they took their seats.

Ducar introduced them. Kent spoke.

"After my mother died, may her spirit rest in peace, I increased our efforts to recruit from Roos through the press and word of mouth. We have compatriots within the cities, and a few who travel between Cavehold and the Kingdom, carrying my decisions to where they're implemented. I've been at this desk for seven years, and in that time, many Roosians have come over to our side. City people then sought, and still seek, to join us. The weapons have been acquired, and some of the Vest have been turned."

When he said "Vest", the children all glanced at Ducar, who explained. "The Vest are the guardians of Castle Roos, and they're called this because they wear hard chest and back plates to protect themselves from projectiles. The plates are made from the Travelers' crashed spaceship material."

Kent continued. "Our numbers are strong enough now to take back Kingdom Roos and replace you, the Heirs, to the Thrones.

"Don't fret! I understand. You're young and you've not spent your lives as leaders, or in the company of rulers, but you know more than you realize! Vagn was specifically chosen to be your guardian and teacher and he instilled in you the necessary components for future authority. My managers and I are, of course, here to help you. We'll teach you your roles and guide you in the ways of leadership. You'll not be left alone to falter in inexperience, no! I will mentor you."

And there it was. The minds of the four children came to the conclusion at the same time. This man could not be trusted. He had revealed his desire and intent to rule through them.

He did not perceive their thoughts but droned on.

"Kir is almost upon us, so we'll spend the season of fire in Cavehold finalizing preparations for our revolution, and you'll use your time to bond with your brind and work with the masters of the fighting arts and management. I'm sure you have already learned much, but now there are our ways to comprehend, our systems and your place in them. You'll learn to follow the orders of superiors, to command inferiors, and to become members of fighting and managerial units. There are no individuals in Cavehold, only one large body moving toward the ultimate goal. When you are the Rulers of Roos," under my mentorship of course, he thought, and they perceived, "then you can be more individualistic. Here, you'll experience teamwork, and therefore any decisions you make shall reflect the needs of the people, and not just your own."

The conversation continued and the children engaged with each other, sharing their feelings, while answering Kent's questions and listening to his statements.

The plan seemed sound at first hearing, but the ideas of teams, rank, superiors, inferiors, and individuality were strictly Traveler inventions, concepts without even names in the two languages of Enistan because they did not exist. Empaths responded only to the most skillful individual or group in each unique set of circumstances, and understood that this superior knowledge might come from any follower of Nartan. Their empathic abilities enabled Enistians to identify leaders instantly, mentally. Drode most knowledgeable and experienced in the needed skill became the leader or leaders until the situation evolved and another, or others, revealed more applicable understanding of the nature of the problem. Then the leadership changed. Drode who had the skills needed engaged, while the remainder shifted into roles of support or went on with what they had been doing before. This occurred automatically.

Falseness underlay Kent's explanation. This did not escape them, though they were unable as yet to guess its origin.

Yes, Vagn had taught them many things, much more than this Traveler-thinker would ever comprehend.

Kent stood, and so they did as well. He walked around the ancient, carved, luculian desk, made in the same period as the door and created by the same craftsman as well. These true masterpieces seemed out of place in the modern setting of Cavehold, and this struck the children as yet another sign of disturbance.

Most Enistians were not partial to making facial expressions, since they communicated their feelings directly into the mind, but were aware of and occassionally used them. They noticed that Kent wore a grin which matched the cunning expression in his eyes, not a look they were familiar with. This seemed most disturbing to them.

They wondered if they were reading him correctly. Honesty was not the emotion they saw on his face. Kent had secrets, and he lusted for power. Could detecting malfeasance be this easy? They had no experience of deceit, greed, or anticipation of personal enrichment, only an academic understanding, thanks to Vagn.

They querried amongst themselves and decided that instead of escaping and going back to Vagn, which is what they all desperately wanted to do, they must continue to observe and interpret the oddness of this Cavehold experience, and of these Cavehold people.

Unfelt by them, Vagn had touched their innermost minds and directed them to this decision, knowing their well-honed instincts directed them to get out and away from the disturbances they perceived. Vagn knew the lessons would be painful, but they did indeed need to gain the experiences coming to them in Cavehold, and beyond, to increase their competence. Even so, he sorely mourned the imminent loss of their sweet ignorance.

If only the Travelers had not infected and degraded their society, then the necessity for the Heirs to endure the following gauntlet would not exist. But these were hard days, the most difficult ever, and the four youths needed to learn what had diseased Enistian culture in order to guide Enistan back toward sanity. The Nartan Way must be re-instilled in drode, to save as many as possible during that future time when the angry brothers Sorn finally tore the world apart.

Vagn understood what was necessary to create the future agreed upon, and he knew these children were the tools who would bring about the change required by the elders. Few of those had survived the transition of their deaths. The ones who did made the decision to save as many as possible when the planet, and all its creatures, ceased to exist. Yet Leigh, Derek, Paige, and Richard, so young, pure, and vulnerable, would have to become hardened in the crucible of drode against drode, in order to accomplish the goal. How ghastly the present had become.

The decision had been difficult, but it had been necessary. The children's innocence must be sacrificed for the reclamation of The Nartan Way. Those who had passed beyond and remained insolute desired this outcome. They manipulated for success despite the randomness dictating unpredictability. They were determined to provide emotional sustenance to the children when needed, and would nudge them in the directions they must go. The future of the elders' choosing would be attained, not extinction should they neglect to interfere. They anticipated immense pain during the next era, with these young four bearing the brunt of it.

Vagn went within to communicate with the other elders.

Paige, Leigh, Richard, and Derek concentrated on the tour. They were not shown many offices close to Kent's, and no one was introduced to them. Down the hall, however, he led them into a noisy room where the printers labored. Kent hailed the male Doman.

"Don will show you the inner workings of our propaganda effort. This is the heart of our recruitment and the means we use to disseminate our ideas. Though many don't read, enough do, and drode do indeed talk."

Kent motioned to Ducar, and the two went back toward Kent's office for private consultation. As the two walked away, Kent contemplated that he didn't received the eager responses he imagined he would from the Heirs. He believed they would be excited to become the new Rulers of Roos. Maybe they disliked the idea of being mentored, and their arrogance was swollen enough for them to think they could rule without the benefit of his management. Well, they were sorely mistaken. He would advise and, in fact, be in legitimate control of the Kingdom as the children's ward.

He had offered them Kingships and had received for his generosity polite indifference. He granted them their youth. They had much to learn and do before Roos could be recaptured. He was sure they understood this, but still... he puzzled. His expection of profound gratitude hadn't matured. They remained curiously silent.

Something was wrong.
IV

Finally, the tour ended. As they went to their new quarters, they again shared their various thoughts. Leigh reflected on the meeting with Kent, who had asked them to explain their game. Leigh told him it was an ancient entertainment which came down from the time when warfare occurred on Enistan, before the universal adoption of The Nartan Way. Warriors had played it as youths, and parents still taught it to their children as a means of teaching logical thinking, decision making, tactics, and strategy. Although war was contraindicated by The Way, Enistians realized how easily conflict could come back to the planet. Presciently, they had suspected that different beings on other planets might not understand Nartan, and could be warlike in their demeanor, so the game and its attendant knowledge had been retained. The children had not discussed with Kent their understanding of the effect of the Travelers' crash-landing on Enistan; they knew how the alien thought processes diluted traditional training and practice. They did not share their recently gained comprehension of how these disturbances had caused the disruption of Enistian societal structure, which now threatened the future of Nartan from within.

They were shown to their quarters, consisting of several rearward bedrooms, a bathingroom, and a common forward area like the Doman's. The large front room opened to a main hall through a doorway carved in the hallway wall. Their meals were to be taken in an immense cavern with the other warriors, Ducar informed them, and they were to be kept on a schedule.

Once they settled in, they abandoned the open lounge and congregated in one of the bedrooms for privacy to discuss their unease.

"Maybe we should go back to Uncle's," Derek suggested.

Paige reached out toward home with her mind, and found... no one!

"What do you feel?" she asked, confused.

"Nothing," Richard replied after a pause, asking, "Where is he?"

None of them knew.

"But the household! The brind! He couldn't just pick up and leave," expressed Derek.

"He's not responding to us, though," Richard stated.

"I didn't think he'd abandon us!" Leigh whispered.

"He wouldn't abandon us," Paige barked.

"When has he ever not been there for us?"

"Only now."

"What does it mean?"

Silence.

"We've always trusted him."

"So we'll continue to trust him. He's decided not to be available to us. We must learn to accept this and function without him."

"Traveler words. Been speaking Traveler since we got to this Cavehold," Richard sneered.

"This place is eating into us already," Leigh complained. "I'm homesick."

"We should get out of here," Derek repeated his sentiment.

"Would they let us leave if we tried?" Richard asked. He looked at Derek. Derek turned to Paige.

"Wait," Leigh said. "Calm. Vagn sent us here. Didn't we all feel the same in Kent's office; that we must stay and learn?"

"We sensed a similar thing, but that's not a sensation we normally would've had. We'd have wanted to get away from the confusion and the source of it."

"The Way tells us to trust our feelings, not to ignore them, and not to remain in the presence of aggravation. But we decided to stay."

"Was that Vagn's message to us?"

"Who else? We have to stay."

They all realized intuitively that this was exactly as Vagn desired, and immediately changed their minds.

"Great. But it would help us if we knew what Roosians truly think and not just the things we've been told," Leigh stated in a fine example of Nartan logic.

Derek grinned mischievously. These were his specialties: getting in and out without being noticed, and encouraging people to talk to him. Derek, master of stealth and friendliness, said, "Let's find out. I need some food and sleep first, and isn't Ducar taking us to the Warring Hall tomorrow?"

"Yes, and every day after. When are you going to have the time to go to Roos, Derek?"

"I don't know how long it will take to learn which direction Roos is in and walk there, and hang around a few public houses hearing their stories. I'll have to arrange a fight here and run away afterwards. You can tell Ducar I sometimes go off on my own, but I always return."

"Is this kir yet? This may have to wait for tan season."

Paige yawned and the boys followed suit.

"Whose room is this?" Richard started to stretch out on the bed.

"Mine." Paige called it. "Get out."

Ducar collected them at the beginning of the next passing and led them through the confusing maze of tunnels toward the Warring Hall. The four would take lessons there as Kent had prescribed.

Suddenly, in front of them, at a wide place in the tunnel where other hallways joined and created an intersection, a commotion noisily broke out. They sensed the agitation and rage of one drode, and the fear and apprehension of many others. The children and Ducar ran to the assembling spectators and plowed through. Leigh reached the male cave dweller first. The man stabbed wildly with a sharply honed blade at all of the Caveholders who were unfortunately pressed up against him by the thickening crowd. Several drode were already down, dead or dying in pools of blood. Others desperately tried to get out of the way of the arcing dagger.

"What's happening?" Paige directed at Ducar's ear. She stared at his face as Leigh dutifully entered the circle and engaged the wild drode.

"It's the sickness," Ducar replied. She waited. He scanned her expression for comprehension and found none. "Some go mad under these tons of rock and soil."

The attacker had not charged Leigh, who stood still with his hands outstretched and spoke in low tones, forcing the drode to listen.

"Mad?" Paige asked, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

This did not make sense. Enistians lived underground during the two opposite seasons of re and kir. The weather made the world's surface a fiery hell during kir season and a frozen death during re. During the intervening seasons, drode grew food and were able to survive abovecave. The cycle had been so forever, although elder drode said the fire and ice times had grown longer, and the transitions between had become shorter and less pleasant than they used to be. However, madness born of being cloistered underground had never occurred.

The dagger wielder briefly paused in his thrashing to watch Leigh withdraw rondElan. The 'mad' drode charged him. Leigh deflected the sharp oncoming weapon. He tripped his opponent, who went down on his face and chest. His cloth jerkin parted and skin grated off as the attacker slid into the crowd. Those drode panicked and dispersed around him, and as he rose, in the barren circle, the only two members changed position warily.

Paige's attention, like all the crowds', had been drawn to Leigh's gift. The black edged beauty glowed yellow at its center.

Mad drode saw, too. He circled, beginnning to love and need the sword. His desire filled Paige's mind with its perversity. She shook his emotions off and sent her strength to Leigh. She experienced Richard and Derek do the same. Another benefit of being an empath was the ability to help the ones you love from different positions where you could observe what they might miss.

Derek passed the dagger wielder and worked his way to the other side of the circle. Ducar and Paige separated. Ducar went in the same direction as Derek, while Richard followed Paige. They all stopped when they had made a square around Leigh.

Leigh grabbed the berserker and they scuffled in a clinch, each grasping the other's forearm. In the scuffle, Leigh lost his grip on his new, unfamiliar weapon. It went flying into the stone wall with some force. It hit at such an angle that the blade shattered.

A mournful cry arose from the spectators. Mad drode stood mortified, immediately limp, staring at the destroyed weapon. Then he shrieked in rage, and wept in sorrow. He collapsed onto the smooth rock floor.

Someone from the crowd dared to retrieve the shattered pieces for its user. He swept the pommel, hilt, and blade shards together with a cloth, and as he did so, the sword rebound.

"The weapon heals itself," he spoke in awe.

His eyes and mouth gaping, he handed it back to Leigh.

The berserker again focused on the black blade, which now glowed a dark, deep orange in its depths. In his insanity, the mad drode thought about possessing it.

Derek sprang forward and kicked the dagger from the mesmerized man's hand. A scream like never before heard in Cavehold, a mixture of hatred and defeat, ejaculated from the berserker, and he grabbed Derek with both hands and threw him with amazing force at Leigh.

Derek did not have time to curl, but somehow managed to aim himself at Leigh's feet. As Leigh jumped over him, Derek sprawled on the ground and struggled to stop his momentum. Derek's leg slammed into Leigh's shin and Leigh fell, arms outstretched and sword at length. The condemned man threw himself onto rondElan and was skewered.

The berserker stared directly at Paige, and she was stunned at the look of triumph on his face as he died. His desire for the weapon had been sated.

The crowd began checking the fallen for signs of life and tending to the wounded.

Ducar, who had moved to be next to Paige again, said, "This is what happens. All too often."

Leigh ritualistically cleaned his sword with a borrowed cloth and sheathed it. He rejoined them, his head bowed. This, his first kill, was something no respectful practitioner of The Way could enjoy. He reflected on Uncle's words of wisdom.

Self defense and the defense of others is acceptable in The Nartan Way. Assault and murder are prohibited absolutely.

Leigh's act constituted neither crime, but why would drode berserk and cause this inevitability? Why was this not prevented? This individual should have been enveloped in and cushioned by the loving care of the rest. How had this society allowed madness to exist and escalate to this extent?

Truly, empathy was absent here.

They walked to the Warring Hall without speaking, their minds touching, thinking about the irony of following a path of destruction with the goal of restoring the old ways of peace and harmony. They had to stop for a moment when Leigh became sick, as if trying to purge his self of this new intimate understanding of death. Paige and the others were hard pressed not to join him.

His face was sweaty and pale as he rejoined them on their journey toward knowledge of real destruction, not the imaginary obliteration portrayed in their fantasy game.

They entered the Warring Hall. When they stopped at the first group, Ducar turned Derek over to a lean, dark-haired woman whose eyes held a similar mischievous trickery in them as did Derek's. A dagger hung at her hip. They moved on, leaving Derek behind. Ducar left Leigh with a swordmaster and Richard to a bowmaster. Ducar gave Paige to a beefy woman named Dahlrahkemriarj. Finding her excelled in her specialty—the blunt instruments including staffs, batons, clubs and maces—and possessed a good sense of humor and easy manner, Paige readily accepted Dahlrah's instruction.

Ducar had placed all four children in the arts in which they excelled and preferred, but needed further practice in. He had questioned Vagn about their skills. Throughout the day he dropped by each of their classes and inspected them as he oversaw the entire Warring Hall, though he left the instructing to his instructors.

Finally, Dahlrah allowed her students to stop punishing their muscles. By then, Paige thought the rest was almost too late. The baton seemed welded into her grip; she had to peel her fingers off and straighten them against her thighs. Ooh, her joints hurt so good!

Paige contemplated how much she liked Dahlrah as she made her way back to her quarters. Once there she peeled off her sweaty garments and eased into the perpetual hot pool and soaked. She heard Leigh, Richard, and Derek come in and fall on their beds. When she had finished with her bath, she waked them so they could clean themselves. They stank.

Soon after Paige's next class began, a fight broke out involving Derek. A duel developed between Derek and a classmate who desperately tried to impale him. Of course he failed, for Derek was the most nimble drode born yet. Derek feinted, blocked, and dodged, never drawing his dagger from its sheath. The student continued thrusting in vain until sweat dripped off him, and tears as well. When he stopped, winded, Derek did too, and smiled.

The exercise pleased and stimulated Derek, but the boy fell to the ground and cried in frustration. The instructor stalked over to Derek, her eyes flashing anger and distrust.

"How dare you tease my best student?" She snarled at Derek. Her tone arrested the motion of everyone within hearing, and Derek's expression froze.

"You pitted me against him," he exclaimed in honest confusion, although he knew he had pushed the student too hard. "You wanted to see me in action, didn't you?"

A snarl came again from those pale lips, and Paige noticed the tension in the instructor's dagger arm. Derek did as well, and realized she had taken his besting of her student as a personal affront. He took advantage of the situation, backed away, and became lost in the crowd of instructors and pupils. He walked out of the Hall and disappeared.

The instructor shook her head. For a few moments she gazed in the direction her new charge had gone. Then she gathered her students and gave them a different routine to practice.

Derek would never cruelly humiliate another, regardless of the other's skill or lack thereof. Derek was a good student, as well as a teacher himself. Vagn had taught each child the art he thought suited him and her best, and then had the children teach one another. But now Derek had a job to do, and he had created the fiction which allowed him to do it. After he came back, he would make everything all right.

The air outside was dry and hot, the sky white, and the second sorn, Sorn-servar, orbited closer to the planet than when the four had first entered Cavehold. The heat would continue to increase. Time remained of the essence. Derek needed to get to Roos and return to Cavehold with the information they desired before deadly kir arrived.

Back in the Warring Hall, Ducar strode up and motioned to Derek's instructor, pulling her aside.

"You disgraced yourself!" he said to her in a quiet tone which nonetheless reached Paige's ears. Paige projected the words and her impressions into Richard's and Leigh's minds, since they practiced farther away.

A small change overcame the trainer's attitude. She stood rebuffed, yet resentful. Ducar efficiently educated her.

"This pupil is proud beyond his skills," Ducar said, pointing at the student who had wiped his tears away and grinned at his teacher's rebuke of Derek. "Is this what you're teaching? He can't sit and cry in real combat. He must learn the skills to prevail or he will die."

She seemed to grapple with something. Again she looked in the direction of Derek's departure.

"I know your ambitions well," Ducar continued. "Rest assured a Council seat can't be yours if you fail to teach respect and competence to these charges because you won't learn them yourself."

Her resentment was evident as she bowed to the Warmaster and he released her to resume instruction. As he listened she gave a rote lesson to her group about humility and skill versus pride and arrogance. She knew the words even though she did not practice the sentiment herself. Paige would not trust her.

Derek did not make it far out of Cavehold. The air outside was too hot. The smells of the smoke of igniting chirrish and the peculiar curing of luculian sap had not yet arrived, though even the largest streams had dried up.

The heat penetrated Cavehold through the vents, but was balanced by the cold underground air and the chilly rock. The vent mechanics kept the place livable, so the children had not realized how advanced the season had become.

Derek retreated into the hold.

Next passing, Paige awoke early, as usual. The domes on the walls were still dark, signifying the sleeping term. They would lighten until they could not be ignored, as the morning sky did when the time for waking approached, then adjust to normal luminescence. She dressed. Passing Derek's chamber, she saw he had returned and was sleeping. Richard and Leigh slept as well. She waited for the light.

The beginning of kir had commenced. They could only wait for the next season called tan, during which the winds would blow in the rain. The smell of charcoal and smoke would then give way to the scents of water, wet soil, and the budding chirrish which flourished during wonderful doshan. Then nar brought winds, clouds, and cold, giving way to deadly re as the planet's surface froze. These constituted the seasons of half the year on the planet Enistan.

Throughout the long wait, the children practiced warfare in the War Hall. They met, bonded, and drilled with their magnificent brind, and often reached out to Vagn, who remained unavailable to them. Soon his absence became normal, and they surmised intuitively that this perceived normalcy was the reason he didn't respond.

The weather cycled above but their routines did not waver.

One passing, much later in kir, Paige awoke as usual before the stimulation of the dome's glow. She did not wait for the light. She exited their assigned cave and scanned around with her mind, looking for a particular essence. She found it and walked in that direction.

All large caves contain skern. They are the self-designated Keepers of Cultural Knowledge, an ancient creature older than drode, who live solitary lives in the deeper caverns and delight in keeping historical records. The relationship between the two species only involved recordkeeping. No one knew much about where these sentients lived, the lengths of their lives, or how they reproduced. Whether they gave birth, lived in families, laid eggs, or were parthenogenetic remained a mystery. They only appeared individually, never in pairs or groups. Skern had dark blue-green skin, backward bending knees, and inquisitive, deep-set eyes.

Paige found this one deep in the underbelly of Cavehold, in the dry, vast library. The book-keeper recognized her from her previous search. Each mind has its own flavor, so to speak, and is instantly recognizable by empathic species. It slurped to her a welcome, as skern do, and did its strange backward-knee-bending walk ahead of her to the section she wanted.

It led her between the tall, packed aisles smelling of dry, ancient shorshn, into another room, then pulled aside a tapestry and continued through a narrow slit in the wall. Down a spiraled staircase carved into the rock they went, stepping into a secluded cavern which she surmised held the Very Important Papers, tucked away and disguised as it was. The alien pointed with its blue-green finger to a padded, square, stone pedestal rising from the floor. A larger one protruded next to the seat, the top chiseled at an angle to hold materials. She sat as the Keeper located a collection of relatively newer looking parchment. The librarian placed the book before her on the slanted dais and opened it. As she read, the skern gently entered and manipulated her brain's connections, adding emotion and intention to her reading—the original emotions and intentions of the writer. The creature turned the pages for her.

Through the rest of her sleeping term and by the time she should have been done with her lessons in the Warring Hall, Paige read the whole diary. Her attendant found some petlah in its purse and cut her a small piece, cutting one for itself also. They chewed while it entered her mind once again and told her a story of days gone by; Paige's attention was its payment for having allowed her to view the ancient document. Skern had always been fond of sharing. At the end of the tale, not relatable by spoken word, though she retained a pleasant memory, it reset her internal chemistry with skernsong.

These days, few drode allowed skern to enter their minds and change the patterns of hormones and synaptic connections to create the unique emotional experience. Once a common practice and a way of learning, today they were barely utilized. Paige had found her time with the empathic, sentient creature entirely enjoyable on many different levels, and what she had learned had been profound.

She returned to the main halls of Cavehold, savoring her delightful experience, and proceded to the cafeteria. Leigh was there. They shared company and a meal of flaky kull with a variety of sauces. The bricks had become normal to them.

Leigh and Paige walked back to the apartment, both mindful of their sore muscles. Leigh had gone to his lesson earlier and so was not as stiff as Paige; she had sat for far too long. The cold seep from the rocks did tend to get into the bones. He chastised her for missing her lesson, saying her absence would be noted, and they had better not attract any more attention to themselves. Their extra curricular activities could not be explained satisfactorily to Caveholders.

The planet surface eventually stopped burning and the season of tan brought the promise of relief. When the climate cooled enough for drode, Derek strapped a water bag to his back and began his trip to Roos. He left in the eve after Sorn-telain passed beyond the horizon.
V

The following eve, Paige and Leigh entered their cavern apartment and discovered a despair coming from Richard's room. They went to him. Richard sat on his bed, clutching his role of thaumatic parchment. His face was pale and he seemed to be in pain. They entered his mind, strengthening him from within. He recovered somewhat, but his misery infected them. His gift was the reason for his wretchedness.

Leigh and Paige sat beside him and peeled his fingers from around the paper. His hand left a sweaty mark. Leigh unrolled the parchment carefully and glanced at Paige. Richard's head hung, but he took a breath and straightened up somewhat. As the two gazed upon his drawing, they, too, began to sweat. The oppression Richard continued trying to shake off enveloped them.

The picture he had so deftly drawn depicted the scene of Leigh fighting the berserker soon after they first arrived in Cavehold. Illustrated Leigh stood in the center of the circle of spectators with the mad drode draped over his sword. Richard had captured the look, with perfect intensity, which had so startled Paige. Picture Leigh looked as though, when the whole thing ended, he would be sick, and the memories brought all three to the brink of sickness once again.

They shook it off. Trembling, they examined the drawing more closely. Drawn Leigh's mortification gripped them. Actual Leigh pulled back both mentally and physically beside them. A look of utter dismay was captured on picture Leigh's face that Paige hadn't been aware of at the time.

Two other things were most noticeable. The people in the crowd had either faces full of fear, or deadened visages. Some literally turned away from the scene, as though eager to get on with their normal chores. They displayed no other expressions, but it seemed as if few of the observers who witnessed the action had not, at least metaphorically, turned their backs. The only drode beside the four children who had fully observed was Ducar.

The picture reeked of ignorance, fear, and death. These were as palpable as foul odors. For Richard, Leigh, and Paige this was an assault. The Nartan Way had been instilled into them by Vagn, and The Way did not allow one to turn from fact, however grotesque. Reality was to be grasped greedily, with all of the senses, no matter how difficult. Every other response was disallowed. Deception, love, hate, misunderstanding, and truth must be faced with equal reception, and could not be shied away from or ignored. These Caveholders had turned away from reality. Richard and his parchment provided the true view of Cavehold.

He had also added to what Paige had learned under the care of the skern.

They separated from each other mentally in order to seek their own emotional control, and spoke Enistian aloud.

"I don't like the things we're learning here," Leigh sighed.

"Me, neither," Paige agreed.

"I'm better now," Richard said to them, "though this kind of knowledge should be forbidden."

"No, that's not true. We must accept it, or we'll also be fooled," Paige chided.

"I know, but this hurts."

Poor Richard. He had drawn the picture on the miraculous parchment when he had been all alone, which had been a terrific strain.

"Richard," Leigh counseled," you should have reached out for us."

"I was overwhelmed. I didn't want you to feel this."

"Don't do that again. Share with us. We have to support each other. You could have been permanently damaged."

"Maybe I already am."

"No. This will make us better."

"If we understand these things, we can help others to resist." Suddenly pride and immense joy filled the three.

Uncle! They called out at once with their minds. He did not reply, but his message had been received; they had reached the correct conclusion.

For the next ten passings Richard, Leigh, and Paige behaved mannerly, though they answered no questions regarding Derek. They attended their classes and waited for him. When they returned from their studies on the eve of the eleventh passing, they found Derek dozing on his bed. His skin, brown and dry, smelled of luculian sap, and he had lost a lot of weight.

They all piled on top of him, and when they let him struggle free, asked him what he had found out.

"All right. What will you trade for my knowledge, hmm?" Derek queried, eyebrows raised.

"You'll get a punch in the nose if you don't talk!" Richard teased.

"Speak, or I'll feed you to my new skern acquaintance," Paige ordered.

"You found one?" Derek asked. "Why, I haven't been skerned in... well... ever."

"I have. I'll tell you what I learned, but you go first."

"Deal."

Then Derek imitated a drunken villager and relayed the conversation verbatim, in Enistian.

"Why do you want to know about the usurpers, young Nartan? They left. We took back the Kingdom two cycles ago."

"I thought there were many drode in the caves around here waiting to regain Roos."

"They're an annoyance, but not for long. They try to influence us, and they only attract the dissenters who enjoyed usurpian rule. We don't want those anyway."

The children pondered quietly for a moment.

"I don't understand," Leigh said.

"It sounds like he doesn't regard Caveholders seriously," Richard said.

"They don't. The Roosian drode are just going about their lives. They're aware of usurpians, but think they are only disillusioned followers of usurper folly, readers of the silly pamphlets in the papers. The usurpers were kicked out of the Kingdom. The dissenters are encouraged to leave. I understood that the temporary Keepers of Castle Roos believe some Royal Family members were smuggled out of Roos. They wait for them... us... to return."

"We're on the wrong side," Leigh sighed.

Richard held his hands up in front of him. "Wait. I'm still confused. Are you saying the Caveholders are usurpian? I thought Caveholders were the dissenters to the usurpers and want to take Roos back from them."

"So we've been told." Paige said. "Wait until you hear what I learned from the skern."

"Does this have something to do with my drawing?" Richard went into his room and returned with the parchment, which he handed to Derek, who unrolled the picture. His eyes opened wide, but he did not become sick. The others supported him in his mind. Derek said, "This is making more and more sense."

"So what did you find out at the library, Paige," Leigh asked.

"Well, the librarian led me through the last diary of Hilaire. She was quite a sick woman. Ducar told us Kent took care of her, but what he was actually doing was keeping people away from her. She feared Kent sympathized with the usurpers and would undo all she had striven for. She suspected Kent was poisoning her. Apparently Kent has always been a bad boy."

"Well, Richard's picture, Derek's description of Roos, and Hilaire's diary are telling us the same thing," Leigh said. "The Caveholders are being fooled by the usurpians in their midst, and Kent is usurpian. He wants the Kingdom, and he'll use us to get it. He'll use the Caveholders as well, because they think they're returning us to the throne, but they're really giving the power to him.

"We should go to the Castle and find the Keepers to warn them," Richard said.

"It's still too hot abovecave and the walk is long," Derek argued. "I'm in no condition to do it again so soon."

Paige sighed.

"Uncle wants us to stay for some reason, do we agree on this?" Leigh asked.

Richard, Paige, and Derek nodded.

"But he can't know what's going on," Paige said.

"Are you certain?"

"Why would he send us here?"

"To learn."

"What? Deception?"

"He showed us The Way; he couldn't teach us deceit. The game taught us warfare, but there's no declared war right now. Isn't treachery something we need to comprehend if we're going to be rulers?"

"Possibly. Certainly we needed to learn this so we could alert the Kingdom."

"That may be."

"Seems likely. This knowledge has been useful already."

A soft bell sounded, notifying the children of someone entering their forward room. They went out and found Ducar waiting for them.

"Kent wishes council with you," he said, observing their fitness and pale, plump skin. All except Derek, who had obviously been up on the surface for days. He was quite dark and dry. Ten passings were just enough for a fit runner to get to Roos and back. What had he done during the extra day?

This reminded Ducar that everyone would need to start going abovecave regularly to harden their cave-softened skin.

"Why? What's happened?" Paige asked.

Ducar scowled.

"We've lost contact with the cities. The scouts sent to investigate were ambushed. Only one returned and now she's dead as well. Few of our contacts in the Kingdom can be located. Those who've been found pretend not to know us."

They followed Ducar through the halls to Kent's office door. Ducar opened it and led them in. They sat in the chairs in front of Kent's desk. From his seat on the other side, Kent stared at Derek, and spoke to them in gruff tones.

"We've tried to regain contact with our proxies in Roos but something seems to have happened. Before this event, I'd considered the possibility of double agents. I found few indicators, and I couldn't discern who the traitors might be." His anger made his voice grate in his throat. "Therefore I must in the future proceed more carefully. You four are of course not above suspicion since we have no knowledge of where Derek was for eleven passings."

Kent struggled with his anger.

The children kept quiet.

"I believe you may be able to illuminate the situation for me," he growled.

"If you think we had something to do with the attack on the agents you're mistaken," Leigh stated truthfully.

"What was Derek doing all the time he was missing?" Kent asked.

"He went out for a few days," Paige said. "He does that."

"It's not a good enough explanation."

"The air was too hot. Anyway, we've never been separated for long. I was lonely, so I came back."

Leigh, Richard, and Paige nodded.

"You were bored so you left, then you got lonely and returned." Kent glared at Derek with open hostility. "I've been told those who follow The Nartan Way are not prone to lying, though I don't believe it. The timing... the attacks began while Derek was away, but my agents had already been identified by the apparent double-dealers who now can't be found or are pretending not to recognize us. There was coordination and planning in the assaults, so your culpability, if any, can't be ascertained. However, you'll be under guard in the future.

"I must presume they know our position. We'll have to mobilize."

"You would put guards on the Heirs to the Thrones of Kingdom Roos?" Leigh challenged.

"I already have," Kent rejoined. "They're waiting outside the door."

Kent could not tell by their demeanor if they were communicating with each other, but he watched them closely. He had underestimated them.

They touched one another's minds. They would not be escaping to warn Roos any time soon.

Kent's face looked like a stiff, angry mask. He stood and placed his palms on the polished surface of the desk, leaning toward them.

"You've learned that we relieved the armories of weapons, but we were unable to disarm the Vest who carry guns on their persons."

He opened his desk and withdrew a small, awkward looking machine.

The odd thing was a 'gun'. They had not practiced with these in Cavehold.

"The Travelers brought them and the knowledge of their manufacture to Enistan, but because the people here had banished warfare, Enistians persuaded the Travelers to turn over their largest weapons to the empaths who secured them in the bowels of the Castle. The two peoples exchanged ideas and traded goods, including hand-held armaments like this one, but eventually these were turned over as well. They stayed locked away until we liberated them. There are just a few, not enough for every drode. We didn't master the means of making them; the empaths probably destroyed those machines. Only key Caveholders will use guns to pick off the Vest. Most of the fighting can be done with conventional weapons, which you'll carry, but your guards have these and they are very well practiced with them.

"We'll be leaving Cavehold soon. Forget any ideas of escape. You'll be shot for any attempt. If you survive the assault on Castle Roos, you'll be returned to the Thrones. I suggest you behave yourselves. Rewards will be reaped. We'll attack and take the Kingdom now."

Ducar took them back to their quarters under guard, and the guards stood in the hallway as they retreated to the rearmost rooms to talk privately with him.

"Kent's come to distrust you. I wish you hadn't done what you did, Derek. No one has a good explanation for your absence and the timing couldn't have been worse."

"I went to Roos, Ducar," Derek freely admitted.

"Why?"

"To hear the truth."

"Which is?"

"Kent is trying to use us to legitimize his takeover," Leigh said.

"Yes?" Ducar's skepticism was evident, but also his curiosity.

"The Roosians took the Kingdom back from the usurpers two cycles ago," Derek informed him.

"You're not making sense."

"Listen Ducar," Leigh commanded, "a lot of the people in Cavehold are like you, and believed in Hilaire and her vision of a restored Kingdom under the Heirs, but Kent doesn't want that. He wants Roos for himself. The usurpians are here, pretending to be rebels and hiding among you Caveholders, waiting for Roos to be liberated for them. Kent has joined them. He's one of them. They've continued with Hilaire's propaganda to deceive all of you. They need the believers as manpower, an army, and they want to use us as figureheads to rule from behind, exactly as they did with our parents."

"Until they find they must kill us, because we won't go along with this deceit."

"How can you know this?"

There was too much information to share in words. Richard gestured for Ducar to sit down before showing him the drawing. Then the children asked Ducar for permission to enter his mind, which he gave. Carefully and quickly, Derek explained his trip and Paige shared her adventure in the library.

This intrusion proved overwhelming for Ducar. He lost consciousness and slumped to the floor.

The children picked him up and laid him on the bed. They sprinkled him with water and slapped his face. They worried about the guards getting curious and walking in on them.

Ducar regained awareness and moaned.

"I've been a fool," he groaned.

"You couldn't have known," Richard consoled him.

"He killed his own mother."

"She suspected he was poisoning her." Paige cautioned. "We don't have proof."

"The usurpers are in Cavehold?"

"Yes, fooling everyone," Derek confirmed.

"So somehow the usurpians in Roos understood they were massing here in secret. Coded messages in the fliers?" Ducar wondered aloud.

The children shrugged.

Ducar reasoned it out. "The people of Roos know the usurpian spawn have gone away, so there's no reason for anyone but dissenters to leave the cities for Cavehold anymore. The deceivers continued the propaganda against themselves in the city to build an army with which to retake Roos under false pretenses, somehow also speaking to the dissenters and telling them to come here. Kent wants to join them in power, with you on the Thrones to legitimize the takeover."

"We are most likely a show for the believers," Leigh nodded. "These criminals need the Caveholders to contest the Roosian Vest, since there aren't enough usurpians to sack the Castle. You're only bodies really. Many Vest, Caveholders, and Roosians will die. Once in the Kingdom, the traitors will enter and keep Castle Roos by force; it's easy to defend. Perhaps they'll have to use us. Maybe they'll execute us and become as deadly an occupation as before. They're counting on a bloodbath so there'll be fewer people to control, convince, or fight against afterward. This time, they'll not be routed out."

"So much deceit within deceit. How long have you known?"

"Since just after Derek got back. We wanted to warn Roos."

"But now you're under guard."

"Yes."

"I've already briefed your instructors. They'll be your Captains and will direct you in the coming battles. We'll be leaving soon. Perhaps we can arrange some way for you to get away. I'll talk to..."

"No," the children spoke together.

"We don't want you to speak to any drode," said Paige.

"There's no reason for you or anyone else to be implicated in what Kent will perceive as our duplicitousnous, and we trust no one," Leigh continued.

"Ducar, you're not an empath. There's no one you can confide in, even though you think there is," Derek warned.

"We can't tell the difference between the Caveholders who are the traitors and those who believe they're taking the Kingdom back, because we won't risk the usurpians finding out we've detected their deception." Richard sighed.

Ducar was rendered speechless. The four urged him to appear as normal as possible and to continue with the preparations for war.

Thereafter the guards stuck to the children like chookis, the tiny creatures that burrow under skin, apply hooks, and feast on blood.

Their escape thwarted, Roos was not warned.
VI

Striding down the hall through the crush of agitated warriors, Paige locked herself into her luculian sap-shellacked vest. This item, designed to deflect blades and arrows, protected her from blows, but could not stop a bullet. Each of the Caveholders who would storm Roos wore one. The young and old, and their caretakers, remained in Cavehold to await the signal that they might trek to the captured cities of the Kingdom to join their families and share in the celebration.

Paige came into the huge Warring Hall filled with brind and serious soldiers. No one yelled orders, everyone understood and performed their duties well. This behavior was impressive. The noise was enormous though. The animals moved about, their tough feet striking rock. Weapons clanged. Multiple murmured conversations amplified.

Paige strode to her unit and located her bond, Moonflight, among the select group of warbrind. The animal had been standing still, gazing around, awaiting Paige. When they saw each other, it seemed as if they were old and dear friends, almost lovers. Paige touched Moonflight's mind and found no words in there, only perceptions and emotions: images, sounds, tastes, odors, and tactile feelings.

Moonflight, the animal the nymph had predicted would be hers, was sleek and light gray, with long black eyelashes, ears, ruff, and tail. Her legs ended in three hooved, hard toes. Wide set intelligent eyes stopped their roving and focused on Paige. The nostrils in her narrow muzzle quivered and the protective hairs undulated, picking up scents and keeping out dust.

Paige stood at Moonflight's head and surveyed the bustling crowd. Brind and warriors near them seemed to sense their stillness and the frantic hurriedness ebbed away to efficient calm.

The fighters in the enormous hall settled. Grouped within their formations, they appeared ready to march, fight, and kill. All were miraculously silent for an instant.

One male warrior somewhere in the center of the crush of bodies began to sing. The song was not old, but one of the Travelers, the words changed to fulfill domestic needs. Others joined in and soon all sung. The sound swelled and reverberated off the cavewalls, and pounded into flesh and sinew, blood and nerve.

The singing ended, and the singers became warriors again.

Somewhere in the front, Ducar turned his mount and led them all down the wide hall. The release of drode and brind sweat and their exhalations condensed on the walls and ceiling of the cave and began to drip. As they marched down a long, wide tunnel, the humidity gave way to a startling dryness which sucked at their vitality and dried skin, eyes, nostrils, and throats. The cavern ended and opened up into the hardly beathable air of beginning-of-tan-season ashland. A slight, hot breeze blew, preferable to the stifling humidity inside. The wind picked up the ash, though, and drode covered their mouths and noses, and those of their brind, with cloths made for this purpose. The wind did not gust, which meant no rainfall, but soon enough storms would come, making the dryness abovecave similar to the humidity of the cavern they had just left.

The relief drode felt at surviving yet another firestorm of kir was shared by all, but that did not make the aftermath easy to live with.

They were wearing the luculian sap-infused clothing made to protect their skin from the harsh weather. The cloth was dyed the green of kull. As they exited, they spread out and dismounted. The mass moved outward into the burned out forest, cut the tree roots, and slickered their faces, necks, hands, and their mounts' exposed fleshy parts with the fresh sap. The brind had thick skin and haired hides, but the skin around their eyes, noses, ears, and eliminative areas all benefitted from the sap's protection. The sorns would pass many times before they reached the Kingdom, so this was done in a relaxed fashion. They reformed their units when the slickering was complete. This routine was repeated every quarter passing.

When they were all reassembled, Ducar said nothing, he simply dropped his arm and led them toward Kingdom Roos.

Paige once tried to leave her unit and go to Leigh, but a guard still paced her. He placed himself right in her path and glared at her.

At nightfall they stopped, ate the greenstuff cold as no fires were allowed, and drank thirstily from the water stores the heavy brind pulled. They slickered, rubbed down, and tethered their animals, and finally bedded down.

Before Sorn-telain appeared, they rose, ate kull, watered, slickered, and rode again. During this passing Derek nudged Paige's mind and they spoke silently, inwardly. Unlike all the empaths who had lived before them, these four children heard each other's actual, distinct words in their minds. This phenomenom had occurred as a spontaneous accident several cycles ago.

I have to tell you Paige, I had a nightmare; a prophetic one. Derek relayed a grim emotion.

Show me.

Derek's rememberance was eerie and surreal. He conveyed to her the feelings he had experienced while dreaming. In it, he and Paige were alone, walking side by side in a purple-blue fog, and strangely, Derek watched himself quiver beside Paige. The vapor seeped through him and distorted his image. Lavender steam sprouted from his head and traveled down his whole length. It left him, and them he stood like a black ash statue until he blew away in a swirling sort of wind. Paige, alone, just kept walking along.

Through their mental connection, the shaking of his body registered in Paige and she experienced him release a shuddering breath.

Horrible, was Paige's reaction.

Do you understand it?

No. I hope it's only your fears annoying you. We must be careful. We can't panic and hesitate or be paralyzed into inaction by our fear. This might get us killed. I'm afraid of being trapped in this situation, and my mind curdles knowing we're fighting on the wrong side. Have you shown Leigh and Richard your dream?

No. I will.

The two sorns were still almost the same size in the sky now, but Sorn-servar minutely shrank every passing. Drode had observed that the second brother sorn, servar, had been getting angrier as the years passed, and was receding farther from telain each cycle during the cold season.

Enistians had always thought Enistan and Sorn-telain were fixed in place, and that in time Sorn-servar would get loose and fly away, the loss stabilizing the climate. When the space Travelers crash-landed on Enistan, they told of how this world revolved around Sorn-telain, and both the planet and its primary sun circled Sorn-servar. They taught that the sorns' and worlds' relationships were unstable, and either they said or drode surmised that the planet was in danger of tearing apart.

The old drode often spoke about how severe the opposite seasons of re and kir had become, much fiercer than when they were young, and that every year the weather seemed to get worse.

Thus knowledge and belief had been challenged. The aliens disturbed the stable society which had perservered in peace before their arrival. Other disturbances were brought by them as well. Drode began to neglect the ancient wisdom and think in strange, new manners. Some absorbed the Traveler language and ways of perception and reasoning.

This had been the beginning of what eventually became the usurpian rebellion.

Kingdom Roos ruled the entire planet. A group of Traveler-thinking drode –the usurpers, determined to create a new society, not condemned, as they saw it, to rely on the ignorance of the past.

The coming battle was simply one more in the fight between those who believed a different order should rise in the land, and drode who wanted to retain the old ways.

Even though some thought untrue the story of the children being whisked from the Castle and hidden in the wilderness, many believed. Their belief had, of late, been vindicated.

Under the combined white hot radiance of the tempestuous brothers sorn, the warriors traveled. They slept in the bright gloam after Sorn-telain disappeared under the horizon, while Sorn-servar still lightened the celestial ceiling. The army didn't travel as fast as a lone runner.

Twelve passings' later, in the eve, Ducar called them all to halt. The sky appeared not quite as bright as it had been when they'd started out, as the distance between Enistan and Sorn-servar slowly increased. It seemed to take forever for the army to stop and settle down.

Paige was in a gloomy mood. Her unit was close to Ducar, in the front of the columns, so she occasionally caught sight of him. The boys were located farther back. Ducar surprised her, though, by coming and telling her to follow him.

They crawled to the edge of the charred forest and lay on their bellies atop a small ashen hill. Covered behind blackened trunks, disguised by long, dark, shadows, the two looked across a sloping, sorn-burned field. A slight breeze blew ash into the cloths covering their faces, and into their long eyelashes. Their exposed skin was streaked with grime and sweat, their hair stringy and matted.

The march through the seasonally destroyed forest had been difficult, but this had not affected Paige's emotions as much as the sight from their position did now.

"There it is," Ducar said unhappily in a gruff whisper. "The Kingdom of Roos."

She saw the blackened fields. The enormous semicircle curving away from them contained the smooth, undulating, sunburned croplands which functioned to feed the inhabitants. They were dotted by occasional domes of scorched soil, denoting the farmers' garrads. Past those, within the half circle of agricultural lands, were the four cities, built underground and visible as rounded foothills. Between these and the giant black wall protecting the Castle lay the parkland used by the city inhabitants during festivals and other outings which had symbolized the harmonious Kingdom. Behind the protective edifice, the ancient and beautiful, shining, ebony Castle Roos decorated the view.

Paige touched the minds of her brothers and let them explore her feelings as she described the sight to them.

The huge, antique Castle was of unknown age, and cut from the cliff of rock behind it. Curving around in front of this Kingdom's Heart was the towering, slick, black, impenetrable cliffwall called Eirunici.

The walls gathered the fiery energy from the dual suns and the flames of kir and thus powered the Royal Home and the cities. During the opposite season of re, when the planet froze so that it was death to be on the surface, the fortress wall and Palace behind released stored heat and energy to the people living within, and into the cavehomes of the city.

The sight was heart-warming and terribly lonely looking all at the same time. The four children thought about the upcoming storming Kent was forcing them to take part in. Those generous walls would witness their digression. Their hearts shriveled with shame and misery.

She found herself nearly alone. Ducar had gone, and the boys had left her to her thoughts, but her guard crouched several of his lengths behind.

Someone was crawling toward her, the trained movement quiet and easy through the crackling, charred debris.

"I heard you coming," Paige said to Dahlrah. For a moment, they listened to the company behind them stamping the black charcoal into powder.

Dahlrah had become a good friend to Paige, as well as teacher. Paige gently touched her mind and felt their similarity of thought.

"You're thinking about it too much, Paige."

"Oh?"

Somewhat loudly so Paige's keeper overheard, she said, "After we gain Roos, you can use your brain. In fact, we expect you to. But for now, you are a soldier. Others think for you. This is as Kent desires."

"What he wants is of no interest to me," Paige mumbled.

"Be careful, Paige," Dahlrah had lowered her voice as she casually glanced at the guard. "You know of Kent's Council?"

"Yes."

"I sit on it, as does Don, and Ducar, and a few more you haven't met. Ducar and I have talked. We believe Don is usurpian. He and Kent are two of the major architects of this disaster."

"We told Ducar to keep his mouth shut."

"Ducar knows I am as he is, conflicted and confused. We've always wondered, and not understood."

"Still..."

"Don't be angry with Ducar. He's invaluable. His mother was Nartan, did you know? He's not trained, as you are, but he gets the feelings, he understands things without knowing why. I'm for the most part Traveler-minded, and though I hate the usurpians, I know that not every Traveler was devious and power mad. Several weren't. My ancesters adopted two, nursed their injuries, and taught them to live here.

"The greedy Travelers were exasperated by us for what they saw as our weaknesses. I have experienced the crazy Traveler ideology, which grew from the shock of the introduction of the space people's knowledge, and has corrupted The Nartan Way.

"Ducar and I are with you. I thought you should be told, and when we all get through this, together perhaps we'll defeat Kent and his infernal usurpian Traveler spawn."

"Something will be done, Dahlrah, and I'll welcome your allegiance if you can assure me that this isn't a deceitful trick."

"I can do nothing; only win your trust in time. I understand your caution. I'll not disappoint you, Sha'an."

Paige turned to reject the royal nickname, but Dahlrah was already scrambling away. Paige backed down the small embankment as well and rejoined her group.

As she slept that night, Paige remembered the lands of Roos, though not scorched as now in the wake of kir. She pictured them green and alive during one of the two growing seasons, lush with life and inhabited by pleasant people, as they had been in her early youth, when she made her escorted escape from imminent tyranny.

Suddenly, Paige found herself inside the cliff wall which stood so imposingly behind Castle Roos, suffocating in the rock tonnage above and all around her.

Her body jerked and she awoke from the nightmare. She lay in her bedroll and stilled her quickened breathing.

She heard the turning of wheels and the crunching clops of hard feet. The first brother, Sorn-telain, was getting ready to breach the horizon soon. The second sorn, the bright but fading Sorn-servar, would not be up until telain moved nearly a quarter of the way across the sky. Paige had been told, when Sorn-telain appeared again at the beginning of the next passing, war would commence. She had one passing to prepare herself.

Followed by her ever present guard, Paige went back to the place Ducar had taken her before. Her minder seemed curious as well. She witnessed soldiers struggling to get the heavy brind to move the catapults and wagon loads of munitions over the farmland toward the undulating mounds of the four cities. She watched them approach the emptied domeland. Most drode must have left, probably by underground passages opening into the Castle, since no resistance had been mounted. Late in the passing, as the big, tired animals stumbled over the last leg of their journey, Paige felt three other pairs of eyes watching in the wretched pre-catastrophe silence. The boys were restless, too.

The agony of knowing what lay ahead and not to be able to stop the slaughter ate at her. Paige understood she would be tormented by the coming events for the rest of her life.

Their handlers untethered the exhausted brind from their loads and wagons and led them all the way back to be hobbled behind the columns, while the catapults were readied in the midst of the cities before the parkland. In the relatively flat areas, the warriors steadied the massive weapons and used the garrads as cover. Paige gazed across the fields, past the mounds, and beyond the parklands to Eirunici, the huge seeming void of shining black forward wall which protected the Castle. Into this edifice was built a pair of enormous, carved, luculian gates. Atop Eirunici the Vest watched and waited.

Paige had not been thinking consciously about it, but she found the fingers of one hand inside her drawstring bag. The magic powder instantly focused and cleared her mind.

The Vest, realizing they had severely miscalculated the determination, strength and numbers of their foe, stood behind protective crenelations, surveying the activity of the army that wanted to punish and crush them. The Vest knew they would most likely be extinguished at the hands of the lunatics who had abandoned tradition. They had stayed to die, and they understood this. It was their duty to fight and meet their end for the Kingdom and The Nartan Way.

Shock gripped Paige as their knowledge and determination invaded her. She shook the powder from her hand.

Why was this happening? No one had died in war on Enistan since the ancient adoption of The Way.

The usurpers, those traitors and their heinous Traveler thoughts and ways, had caused this. They and the drode who followed them, the usurpians, had lied, deceived, and manipulated in order to steal the power to tell others how to live, and to enrich themselves at the expense of all.

Paige could not let what she sensed cripple her. She had to survive this moment in her life to later fight this corruption. She would not allow herself to feel any more. Making sure the powder was gone from her skin, she contemplated the knowledge of their deaths which the Vest had shown her. She wanted to scream, to tell the Caveholders what was about to unfold, to make them refuse to commit this crime, but she knew she would be silenced. She didn't have enough time to convince the fighters that Kent was a liar, usurpians were among them, and they had all been fooled. Who would listen to her while she told them they had been duped? No one. She could not run away, nor speak the truth, but only go along, and hopefully emerge on the other side with the ability to fight the usurpian infection. At least she would be in the Castle then, surrounded by the boys, Ducar, Dahlrah, and those Caveholders whom they might influence, should they survived the slaughter.

Hatred of Kent and his collaborators blossomed in Paige. Hate was not a familiar emotion for her. The new feelings erupted, and she reached out to her brothers for their support. They cushioned her mind with their love. They took her anxieties and novel knowledge into themselves and grew shocked as well. But they were able, the four of them, to control and redirect the emotions by agreeing to create a coalition against this lunacy on the other side of this unstoppable bloodbath. They clung to and digested the thought, incorporating it into their being. They would destroy the usurpians once and for all.

This feeling generated a power in them.

The boys gently touched Ducar's mind. Paige queried Dahlrah's. With their permission, they enveloped the warriors in a diluted version of this revelation. They did not overwhelm them as they had done to Ducar during their first attempt to share; they tempered their projections, and the children accepted the fighters' fervent agreement.

Few slept through the night. The second sorn was dimming, receding from Enistan, and the nighttime sky was becoming minutely less luminous each passing. The transitional cooling season was just beginning and the ancient anxieties germinated, compounding restlessness.

Sane Enistians should now be plowing and planting the foods which had evolved to grow rapidly in the arid, dry season called tan, mature in doshan rain, and fruit in the cold of nar.

The harvest provided nutrition to them throughout re, and the produce was harvested before the freezing sent them all underground. After this, while the planet heated with the coming of shre, they would plant different seedlings which rooted in chilled soil, grew throughout warming kricten, and fruited in the burning heat of early and mid season cen, before kir. They would gather this second harvest, and this food would sustain them underground during the burning.

Such was the viscious climate on Enistan; fire, cooling, ice, and heating.

Their current activities were indeed the result of the planning of lunactics.

The catapults hurled fuel and flame onto the enormous gates of Eirunici. The booming sound echoed all around the army who waited behind the machines in safety.

The chemists' concoction spread and did what even the fiery sorns of kir could not. Luculian, the fire resistant tree trunk wood from which the entrance was made, burned. It took six full passings of telain for the tough material to burn through. Even so, the rams had their work cut out for them, as the gate of Eirunici did not give up its Castle easily.

The four embraced one another in their minds, though they did not come close physically because the guards would not let them leave their units. They waited, and kept each other sane.

The volley of rams slammed the blackened wood into splinters, chips, and powder until, finally, one massive gate screamed as if in agony when the crack ran up its full length. Almost all of the shielded ram drivers had lost their lives to the Vest who stood on top of the black wall and rained arrows and bullets down on the attackers during those final days as the gate held. But when a huge strip of the door fell in, the invading army rushed through the hole, and death came to the Vest in the beautiful open air courtyard of Castle Roos.
VII

By the time Paige and Moonflight breached the fallen gate with their unit, they were riding over the bodies of friend and foe alike. Many had preceded them. The children's units had been kept behind the others for their protection. Progress was slow though fights still raged around them.

Paige urged Moonflight over the black powder and chips, over softly thudding bodies. Moonflight tried to avoid most of the dead and wounded, but so many sprawled on the flagstones.

When they reached the fissure in the gate, Moonflight caught the edge of a plank with her big foot and stumbled.

Phing!

A soldier behind her fell from his mount and thumped on the ground. The bullet which had missed Paige had lodged in his head. Pushing Moonflight forward, she looked into the face of the Vest who'd fired, his gaze now trained on her brow. They stared at each other. Paige sensed him ready to shoot again as she tried to make a mental connection with him to stop him. His body jerked as a bullet entered him under the arm, where the hard breast and back plates were joined with cloth straps and chainmail. Bad luck, if the limb had been lower, it would have caught the projectile instead. He fell.

They surged forward again. Moonflight stepped lightly, skittering over pieces of the fallen door, prancing around combatants in the courtyard. Warriors spread out, covering the huge area, and battled for their lives. Paige fought as well, swinging her mace. Its contacts with flesh and bone repeatedly jarred her entire body. She continued to be surprised that no harm befell her or her mount and wondered when that harm would come. She kept those feelings at the forefront of her consciousness while refusing to think of the damage she was doing to others.

Paige glimpsed Dahlrah once amongst the brawlers, sweating and swearing and breaking bones with her mace. After what seemed like forever, she saw Derek, Leigh, and Richard on foot, running through the melee toward the Castle. Leaning, she turned Moonflight with leg pressure, sending her there as well. In a springing, slipping, sliding run, the brind carried her up the giant stone stairway to and past a pair of impressively carved luculian doors. Someone must have opened them; they hadn't been burned or rammed.

Charging up the steps, somehow evading the bullets from guns surely trained on her, and arrows that kept missing the mark, Moonflight carried Paige into the hall of the great Castle. Every Vest here lay dead. Paige and Moonflight paused.

Moonflight responded to Paige's slightest pressures by leg, hand, and shift of body and mind as though they were one. Their bond was uncanny, even by Nartan standards.

Listening carefully, ignoring the clattering din outside, Paige eventually heard Kent's voice bellowing from ahead and above. Moonflight waited with tension straining every muscle, and then moved as Paige asked. Paige had considered dismounting but was afraid to leave Moonflight where she might get shot.

At her urging, Moonflight clattered up another wide black stairway and through the halls, slipping around corners until they reached the doorway of the room from which the angry voice emanated. Several soldiers stood about in the wide hall.

Paige dismounted and peered inside. Two women, one hard looking and one quite frightened, and a large, worried man knelt sweating on the high polish of the luculian floor. A square, ancient rug and the beautifully carved furniture had been shoved aside. They were in chains.

"Where did they go?" Kent raged.

Three bound, two missing, they must be be temporary Keepers of the Kingdom, the place-holders for the absent rulers. Paige queried a warrior close to her in the hall, "The others?"

"Escaped," he replied quietly. "We caught these three though."

"This is not good enough!" Kent roared, and whirled to face the warrior who'd responded to her question. Spittle flew. Kent looked quite mad.

"You're supposed to be specialists. I sent you in here to do simple, specific jobs; capture the Keepers and open the Castle doors. Two little things to do, and you fucked them up!"

A Traveler term, Paige thought incongruously.

Ducar and Richard appeared in the hallway. As Kent paced, he glanced out into the hall.

"Glad you made it," he snarled. They doubted his sincerity and stared back at him, fascinated by his demeanor. He turned and walked over to the big drode and slapped him violently on the ear. "Where are Lyda and Fraen?" Kent growled. The man said nothing; frustrated tears streamed from his eyes.

Richard and Paige touched minds, and then gently caressed the crying man's, giving him their strength and resolve. He let them help dissipate his pain, but he did not dare to look at them.

We should stop this, Paige thought to Richard.

How? Anyway, revealing ourselves now would be dangerous for us. We're not in a position to speak our true feelings yet.

As the torture continued, they stayed in the victim's mind and took much of his anguish, relieving him somewhat. Kent was some sort of a gentleman, for he left the women alone and let his fury out on the man.

Paige, leading Moonflight, Richard, and Ducar, turned to leave, and they met Derek and Leigh down the hall.

"You don't want to go in there," Ducar warned. A scream punctuated his words as the thick door slammed. Paige and Richard reached into Leigh's and Derek's minds, and joined them in their efforts to relieve the man of his torment. This was much easier with all of them working together, but Leigh had to withdraw after some few moments. In pain himself, he cradled his right arm with his left.

Four guards came out of the room and said they were ordered to escort the children to their quarters within the Castle. Their original minders had gotten lost in the fighting, but Kent hadn't let this slip by his attention.

Both Richard and Paige noticed that Leigh was in bad shape. His brow glistened and his face had paled. His forearm, though wrapped, bled profusely. Derek supported him when he faltered.

"Our brother needs help," Derek challenged the guards.

"He'll receive medical attention," the guard replied, "in his quarters. You're to remain in yours. On orders from Kent," he directed that last at Derek, as if Derek should care what Kent had ordered. He didn't, but they all obeyed. Now was not the time to increase the heat of the situation.

The four were marched along and separated into individual chambers—bedroom suites. They remained linked in each other's minds and to the tortured man until he fell unconsciousness while Kent rained blows down on him in the simple effort to vent his own frustrations.

Looking out of the window of her assigned and guarded quarters, Paige witnessed the cleanup of the courtyard, and wondered how all the city people and the two leaders had escaped. She pondered that only a sufficient, but not significant defense had been left behind. The others had disappeared. The three Keepers in Kent's control had not gotten out in time, nor had they given up the escape route. Paige, Richard, and Derek, though imprisoned in these chambers, continued to reach out empathetically and help the prisoners withstand the questioning and torture.

Rumors of this treatment of the captives passed through the invading population like kir fire in chirrish. The four listened remotely when they could enter an unsuspecting and unblocked mind. They conferred amongst themselves. They reached out with their minds and found others who were appalled by Kent's actions, and made each of these drodes' revulsion a tiny bit stronger in order to influence their kinsmen against Kent. None of them were hardened to or had been prepared for the horrors they were experiencing.

Ducar came to Paige's quarters some time before Sorn-telain started its next passing. Backlighted by the receding gloaming of the setting Sorn-servar, Ducar sat on the padded window seat.

"I've been manipulated and disdained by Kent since he was young," he admitted. "I'm disgusted by his behaviors. I'll help you stop him and these horrid usurpians and get you back on the Thrones, as has been my intention this whole time."

His conviction was palpable. The four had recently influenced his, and many other drodes', feelings. They had thought he hadn't known. They justified their manipulation of these minds because of the extraordinary circumstances.

Except under the extreme situation of torture, entering another's mind was forbidden without permission. One was permitted to reach out and touch, to request an audience, but would not remain if denied. Skilled, but immoral practitioners might stay by force, which was why these rules were taught and followed. No drode wanted this to happen to him or her. Usually, they would only share their own feelings, not manipulate the ones already existing in the minds they visited. But these were unusual times.

None of them had slept. Paige studied Ducar's features. The way he looked now differed from previous days. His face was full of the fatigue of battle, and from the acknowledgement of years of denial. Mostly, his mind was disturbed by harsh new knowledge.

"We must all speak together, Ducar," Paige told him.

"Yes, I'll get the boys. Tell Richard and Derek to disable their guards and drag them into their rooms. I'll take care of Leigh's." Ducar stood. Wearily, he exited.

Paige touched the boys' minds and told them the plan. They all waited. When they heard, through their light link to him, Ducar think, I'm in front of Leigh's door now, Paige and the boys knocked on their doors and got their guards to open them. It had only taken a little manipulation of the guards' minds to get them to relax enough to step into the rooms as they opened the doors, causing them to walk chins first into the accelerating heels of the Heirs' palms. Ducar knocked out Leigh's minder and dumped him in that room.

They all came to Paige's chamber. Richard and Derek dragged Paige's unconscious guard aside, left him on the floor, and entered. Ducar, supporting Leigh, closed the door.

Leigh was very weak. A surgeon had come to see him, stopped the bleeding, and professionally wrapped the wounds. Ducar helped him over to a chair.

"How hurt are you, Leigh?" Paige asked him.

"Bad. I may lose this arm. I'll learn to wield rondElan with my left." He smiled weakly.

They shared his grief and sorrow and mourned with him.

Paige backed a step away, shook her head, and blurted bluntly, "We've committed grievous crimes. We've abused our power and Nartan by causing the termination of life. We had no choice, as prisoners and dupes, but now we all fully comprehend the duplicity. We have some decisions to make."

"We've already begun to influence the minds of those who question Kent's behavior," Richard said to Ducar.

'I know. I can sense you in my mind. It is so easy for you."

"No, it's not," Derek denied. "We can only push in the direction of the thoughts and emotions you're already having. We're limited to those already experiencing strong feelings that something's wrong."

"We can't influence drode who side with Kent, like our guards, who don't doubt, or those who don't understand what's happening and so are going along," Leigh added.

"Still, it's something," Ducar insisted.

"The parchment can help," Richard said. "I've already made a few sketches. If I make small drawings and they pass from hand to hand, doubt will be sown among the ignorant."

"Yes, but large pictures displayed publicly may be best. They'll allow us to influence more, and faster," Leigh finished weakly.

They all peered questioningly at him.

"I'm alright. Just tired. I'll rest and be taken care of, and get strong again. They won't let me die now, they still have plans for us. In the meantime, I can touch minds while I'm recovering and Richard makes his pictures."

"Dahlrah made it through the battle uninjured. She and I will speak..." Ducar began.

"No," sighed Leigh. He slumped a bit more.

"No speaking," Derek barked, supporting Leigh.

"Not yet, Ducar. Someone may overhear and betray us," Richard counseled.

"We can't allow the usurpians to find out we oppose them until we've turned the majority of Caveholders against Kent," said Paige, "or the Caveholders will fight us."

Ducar frowned. "I'll play this part a little longer, then."

"We all must."

"What about the Roosians who escaped, and the Keepers Fraen and Lyda?" Derek asked. "They could be numerous allies. The cities were full when I was here, but we saw that only a few of the Vest remained behind as we crashed through the gates."

"Slaughtered now for the most part," Leigh sighed quietly.

"They gave their lives so the others could escape," Ducar said.

"It's obvious that's the situation," Richard agreed.

"I feel strongly that we should find and align with them," Paige announced.

"Are you volunteering, Paige?" Leigh muttered.

"Seems so," Paige responded.

"Derek, what'll you do?" Richard asked.

"I'll enjoy returning the Roosians to a Kingdom united under the Royal Families. I want to go with Paige and seek them out," Derek decided.

"It'll be a pleasure to crush usurpian ideals and take back our birthright," Richard's brows crashed together.

"How did they escape?" Paige asked practically.

"I know," Ducar said. "Passages in the rear cliff wall lead to the forest above. Dahlrah is exploring them."

"Are we decided? I'd like to leave now, while there's still confusion."

"Agreed," said Derek.

"Fair well," Richard kissed Paige's cheek. He clasped Derek's forearm and they hugged.

As she leaned down to Leigh, he gripped her hand and brushed his lips across her cheek. He touched her mind weakly as they pressed their foreheads together.

"I'll send Dahlrah to get you and lead you to the passages," Ducar told Derek.

Richard helped Leigh stand up. He would take his brother back to his chambers.

Derek and Ducar dragged the guard outside the door and propped him up against the stone wall. They did the same with the other three. Paige embedded into all four unconscious minds the idea that they had fallen asleep.

"I'll meet you above, Derek," Paige called to him as she grabbed her pack and exited the room with Ducar.

"Do you have some kull with you?" Ducar asked quietly while walking her like a prisoner through the halls.

"Plenty. I stocked up before the battle."

"The wind will come soon, and the rain after. Are you carrying sufficient water until then?"

"Not enough."

Ducar took several bags from soldiers as they passed, and loaded Paige down with them. They had nothing to say to the Warmaster about this.

Paige laughed carefully, trying to keep her grim expression in place, and whispered. "It must be good to be Master."

"Oh, you have no idea. Except for the few who seem to have decided to think of Kent as their master, they'll not speak of it. The traitors make their allegiance known, in subtle ways."

"I'm glad you're on our side, Ducar. Stay healthy while we're gone and take care of Leigh and Richard."

"I'll do that and I wish you and Derek success. I'm greedy to have you four on the Thrones."

Ducar ducked through a doorway behind Paige and motioned to a soldier she recognized as one of Ducar's closest aids. In the hallway where they couldn't be overheard, Ducar told the drode to send Dahlrah to the Heir's chambers. He said no more, as Derek would fill her in when she arrived, and the aid did not need to know.

He took her out of the well used areas and back into the dingy, rough-hewn corridors in the rear of the Castle. The passages grew dark and dank, phosphorescent mold began to appear, and the floors became slick. They skated along, managing to stay upright, because enough of the slime had been scraped off the rock by the passage of many feet.

They shared the weight of the water bags. Sighted by the reflective goo and the single globe that Ducar carried, they followed the level tunnel out of Castle Roos and into the rearmost rock of the cliff wall the palace had been cut from. The corridor narrowed, graded upward, and began to switch back on itself.

After a long while, the escape route turned sharply into a close, steeper tunnel. They clawed their way up, wedging themselves in throughout the hard climb. Though many others had scraped the walls clear of most of the slime, this going was a dangerous and difficult exercise.

Finally, before their energy desserted them completely, she and Ducar, grunting and blowing hard, pulled themselves into a wider, more horizontal passage. They rested, exhausted, their muscles stiffening in the cold. Wedged against a slick wall, Paige looked up. Above was a rung from which a short, thick hank hung; the end had been cut with a knife. The rope should have been available to help them up.

"Don't...replace that...Duc..."

"No," he wheezed.

They continued up another switchbacked grade until at last the tunnel's termination appeared ahead of them, illuminated by both sorns' light. They rushed forward, eager to quit the corridor, but took care to examine the exit and its surrounds. Then they walked out.

The air outside was dry and hot and hit them like a wall. Behind them, a ledge of black, shiny rock stretched away from them toward the back of the Castle proper. Before them, the forest began, thick with blackened luculian trunks and no other cover. A slight breeze stirred the remaining ash, which had collected in protected places. Moonflight stood gazing at them. Other life was not visible.

"Another, flatter tunnel comes up in a long spiral from the stables. It's wider, and longer, too. The brindmaster made excellent time with her," Ducar said.

"I'm worried about the fighters who might have guessed, or know of, or suspect this, Ducar."

"Don't underestimate the loyalty and professionalism of my soldiers."

"You mentioned some are loyal to Kent as well."

"A few. The majority to me first, though. All the soldiers have duties in other sections, mostly in and around the Courtyard. I've not assigned anyone to the rear sections yet. A Caveholder might say something, but none have progressed to these areas of the Castle.

"Derek will be here soon. I'll go back down. It won't do for me to be unavailable for too long. Questions not asked don't have to be answered. Ride safely and fair well, Paige."

Ducar stared at her, his mind already on other things.

"We'll meet again, Ducar, when times are better," Paige said.

The Warmaster nodded and slipped away. In the quiet she heard his steps retreating back down the cold tunnel. She shivered at the remembrance of the chill that bled from the deep rocks.

The forest sloped away from the black rock as far away as she could see. She turned around to view the magnificent carved spires of Castle Roos, the parkland and the city mounds, the agricultural fields and the grasslands beyond, up to the foothills of the Marden Mountains. The Ehn Forest on those hills from which they had emerged to assault the Castle was stark with blackened trunks, all waiting for the rain to cause an explosion of chirrish growth. She ached for the falling water and the tender shoots. The coming season would be good until the chill started in.

Round and round the seasons, she thought. Round and round the sorns.

Her mind wandered to the old nursery rhyme, which had more lines, but she grew tired in the dry heat, and was unable to remember them. About her the remaining charcoal debris had been trod into fine black powder by the escaping Roosians. The breeze did little to cool her.

The air was still a bit too warm to be upon the surface. Sane drode should be inside tending seedlings and repairing, sharpening, and oiling cutters for the coming plowing. Planters would wait for the first rains to soak the ground before trying to cut in. Working the baked hardpack was impossible before. If the initial storm was long, they would chop the soil while rain fell, a hard task, but a necessary one, and a most important job. Lives depended on getting the seedlings in as soon as possible.

Cutters, seeders, tenders and pickers were revered drode in Enistian society, equal to waterflow and ventilator mechanics. Water and air transportation, heating, and cooling systems had been maintained for eons by these latter, well-regarded technicians.

Paige led Moonflight down a foot path cut into a deep ravine which she found not far from the cave mouth. One bank shaded the bottom, though no water ran yet. A somewhat stronger breeze blew through the cleft, funneled by the banks. They towered above, cut over the eons by seasonal floods. These ravines channeled the massive downpourings of rainwater, which occasionally broke out to create huge lakes. The land, parched after kir, would flood in the hard rains at the end of tan and the beginning of doshan. The water had been channeled long ago to pool above the aquifers.

On this physically dangerous planet, drode who survived did so because of their physical toughness, mental acuity, and emotional control. Empathy had developed necessarily for communication over impassable distances and impossible weather. The Nartan Way was a method of survival in almost unlivable conditions.

Paige sat and dozed. She dreamed of the Vest who stayed behind to give their lives while others fled. All died: she killed some of them. She shouldn't have, they should still be alive, but they were the enemy at the time. They had been tasked with stopping the invaders; her. She had been forced into that situation.

At the time, she had managed, after the first horrible shocks, to ignore the crunching of bones and squelching of flesh, the agonized screams and horrible moans, to do what she must. But now, as she experienced the twilight between sleep and waking, the sounds, the smells, and the feeling of splattering blood and pieces of drode hitting her own flesh, because of her actions, were amplified. She shivered and sweat. She awoke, and reasoned with herself to mitigate the horror. This helped, somewhat.

The sensibility of The Nartan Way, a path of nonviolence, was founded in the fact that when no violence exhibits in society, none can be put in the position by another of chosing to resort to force. The drode who studied the tradition chose not to violate others, or behave in ways that provoked. When others controlled the choices, drode ended up in situations they never would have otherwise. This was another excellent example of why The Way must return to the Kingdom.

The Travelers had brought their alien thoughts to Enistan and perverted this philosophical law. Their ways had affected even those who practiced a strict version of Nartan, like Paige, Leigh, Richard, Derek, and Vagn. The children's current experiences punctuated the importance of their traditional wisdom. If they ever regained the Thrones, The Way would be encouraged and the ignorant enveloped. This was the only choice, for the good of all, for survival. Enistan, a violent planet, took many lives; they could not kill one another and remain a viable species. This reasoning was only sensible. The careless and destructive Traveler thoughts and behaviors should be left behind in the dark memories of regretted history as a lesson and a warning.

A faint rustling brought Paige to full awareness in time to watch Derek bounding down the path into the ravine. Moonflight chuckled at him.

"Scare ya?" He grinned at her while rubbing the brind's nose.

"Yes," Paige said to his delight. She had risen to her feet.

"Well, Leigh and Richard have each other, you have me."

"Lucky me!" Paige glanced up. "Did you come up the tunnel from the stables?"

"Of course, with him," Derek nodded at Chaldiron, who stood above them. "I'm not interested in running after you."

"Get you fit."

"I'm getting fit without that kind of nonsense. I don't know about you, but I'm glad to be out here and not in the Castle, even if it is too hot." Derek wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"I agree. I feel bad leaving them to deal with that mess, though, and Leigh injured."

"He'll be fine. You know Leigh. He's a tough drode."

"Aren't we all?" This was more of a statement than a question. None of their prospects were going to be easy.
VIII

"Which way should we go, Paige? The tracks lead in every direction up here."

Paige thought that the powder in the Caller might help separate the various essences and direct her to the trail of a Keeper, so she reached down to the sack tied above her hip.

It wasn't there!

"The Caller's gone!"

"What? How?"

Paige remembered she had checked for the bag as she and Ducar discussed her supplies in the Castle.

"I had it inside."

Derek inspected the ground about the ravine, up the path, and toward the cavemouth she had emerged from.

"It's not down here," Paige called from below.

"Not up here, Paige," Derek replied from above.

For a moment they puzzled. Then Derek said, "You were asleep when I came up. Did you feel someone steal it?"

"I don't think I was sleeping that deeply."

"You were, Paige. I threw a rock near you and you didn't wake. Made plenty of noise, clattering around."

"The bag could be in the tunnel. The climb was more difficult than the stable one."

"Are we going to search it? We shouldn't take the time. Eventually Kent will realize we're gone and demand the soldiers find us. Ducar must comply to conceal his duplicity and they'll discover the tunnels."

"Let me think. Maybe I can cast around for it."

"Do so then."

Paige closed her eyes and put her hands over them to cancel out the brightness. She listened to the rustling about her and shut out the noise. She stretched out her self and searched for the Caller's essence. She sensed the lingering essences of the many drode who'd passed above. The hot breeze in the gap chapped her skin. She shut the wind, heat, and chapping out and waited in the relative dark. She expanded until the remnant essence of the passing of the Caller made itself known to her. Vagn's gift had traveled down the deep furrow, though the thief had blocked his trail from her. She experienced again hot air and removed her hands from her face.

"Derek, you were right. Someone stole it, but the thief's essence is obscured from me."

They both knew what that meant. The drode who took her gift was skilled enough to block Paige's perception.

"Come down here," Paige called to Derek, "the trail's going down the ravine."

"You up first, Paige, and slicker yourself," Derek counseled wisely.

Paige and Moonflight both climbed up the path and then scouted the forest with Derek. They found several luculian trunks that looked the most vigorous and heavy with sap. Derek dug into the dry hard ground with his utility dagger and cut a root, releasing the thick fluid which oozed into his hand. He slickered his and Chaldiron's exposed portions as Paige did the same for herself and her brind nearby. This took some time but the sap flowed quickly, shortening their delay.

Derek let Chaldiron take the lead down into the gap. Moonflight and Paige followed. When they were all down in the ravine they rested. The dry air drained their energy, but the viscous fluid made an effective barrier to the heat and chapping effect without inhibiting their perspiration or the breezes which cooled them. Luculian sap was an ancient remedy.

Slowly they traversed the rift. The day grew warmer as the sorns traveled above. Their view seemed interesting at first until it became bleak with sameness. The shiny black rock was unusual in the region, and this was why the Castle had been carved from it. The water had worn the ravine's ridges to smoothness. The banks varied in height but the edges rose above their heads at all times. They welcomed the shade from the one bank. Tangled roots, hardened by exposure, crept out of the rock and down to the bed to await the rush of seasonal water.

"I can't find any way to climb out of this cleft from down here," Derek said after some time.

"The sides are too steep," Paige agreed.

"The only place to get back up is by the cave mouths."

"The essence of the bag is still in the ravine."

They stopped talking and continued their difficult trek.

The gusts strengthened and pushed at their backs, encouraging them to speed up dangerously, and they slowed their progress in response. They wondered alike if this was a rain wind or only the fissure concentrating the regular breeze within its banks.

The sorns were invisible to them from their position, but from the shadows they knew the stars' positions indicated the rainy season was not quite upon them. The first rains usually came in the latter part of tan, and the middle was just beginning, but drode could never really be sure anymore.

The sky darkened as the clouds swept in, and the initial splatterings began, though they were barely touched. The air cooled little. The drops that managed to reach the rocks exposed in their gully evaporated immediately. Then the sprinkle dried up.

"That was disappointing," Paige said.

"Yes. I'm overheating. Let's have a rest here."

The ravine had bottomed out in a wide area with flat boulders perfect for sitting. They pulled the pads and packages off the brind, sat on the cushions, and settled with their backs against the packs. Though the cloth retained their heat, the ravine wall was hotter, even in the shade. They drank deeply and sucked on kull.

"I can't believe I've gotten used to this," Derek mumbled.

"Remember in the forest before we got to Cavehold? How nasty the stuff seemed to us then?"

"Tastes wonderful now."

"Something must be wrong with us."

They both laughed.

"It is filling isn't it?" Derek said as he repacked the green brick.

"Boring though, without the sauces and veg."

Derek sucked from a waterbag and passed it to Paige. "We'll have to ration this."

"Oh well. I got a little round in Cavehold, anyway."

"Me too, but I'm sweating the water out now."

"Won't be long 'til we look like we used to; fit, lean and tough."

"We'll be more comfortable out here then."

They spread their textiles out on the smooth rock and lay down to rest, and fell fast asleep.

Sorn-telain set but the sky was still bright. Until Sorn-servar receded farther from Enistan and Sorn-telain, there would be no true darkness or coolness.

They slept until late eve, and then Paige awoke. Her nap had helped, but Derek was soundly asleep. Gently, she touched his foot with her own. After several nudges, he started to regain consciousness, though he was groggy and incoherent for a few moments.

"Come on, brother, the air is a little cooler. Let's get going and take advantage. I think we should put a lot of land between us and the Castle, in case they follow."

"They won't. They don't care," he mumbled.

What an odd thing to say, Paige thought to herself. Why had he changed his mind? Paige was bothered a moment by this reversal, so unlike Derek.

"They need us," she reminded him. "They want us to legitimize them. You know that."

Derek groaned as he sat up. "Leigh and Richard are already working on the Caveholders. The controversy they're stoking'll take up Kent's time and mind. The usurpians'll try to regain control, that'll occupy them." He replied more reasonably this time.

"The atmosphere is going to get ugly in the Castle."

"The uglier it gets, the quicker drode will begin to doubt, and the more minds our brothers can change. It won't take too long after Richard's pictures are displayed."

"The parchment was an insightful gift." Paige stared at Derek's phial, which had fallen outside his tunic. It was threaded with smoke colored trails.

"Derek," she said with slight alarm.

He noticed her gazing at him. He palmed his gift in his hand and looked, but must have chosen not to use its help to ease her mind. Or was it malfunctioning?

"Huh," he grunted and tucked the swirling mess back under his shirt as he stood up.

"Oh! I'm already sore," he grunted.

Paige rose awkwardly. "Me, too. We have to get into better condition."

They continued down the ravine.

"Well, no choice. We'll be alright in a few passings."

"A few passings. I wonder how long this escapade is going to take. What are we doing again?"

Derek laughed. "Come on Paige. Let's catch up to that thief and get him to tell us where the Roosians and the Keepers are gathering."

"We're sure they are going to meet, right?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"You bet I would. I'd be planning to take back Roos. I'm wondering why they didn't stay and fight us off."

"A Nartan decision, I imagine. Least harm. And that was a pretty big army we came in with. Kent fooled a lot of drode."

"Nartan, Derek? All of them, do you think?"

"To differing degrees. Their education has suffered, but Paige, I enjoyed the familiarity of being among them. The usurpian influence has diluted the culture; still, I didn't want to go back to Cavehold. You'll love them if we ever get them all collected and returned to Roos."

"That's terrific, Derek, because I've been wondering what to do about the Traveler influence once we're ruling Roos. Ooh, that's a strange thing to say."

"I know. I'm not comfortale with this situation, either. I'm no Sha'an."

"We are, though."

"Don't you think they must have made a mistake somehow?'

Paige laughed. "Yes, and I hope they did. Anyway, if all the Roosians follow The Way, or are at least familiar with some version, it'll be easier to isolate the usurpians and their bizarre Traveler minds."

"It's their actions I hate."

"Thoughts beget behavior," Paige quoted the old wisdom.

"Well, we understand that lesson now."

"We've had quite an education."

This made them think of their great teacher, Vagn.

I miss him, Derek thought. They were both growing too hot to speak. Also, the dry air was chapping their mouths; they decided to keep them closed.

They reached out to Vagn, but again, as so many times before, he didn't answer. They stopped talking and thinking and concentrated on walking down the dim ravine. Sorn-servar's illumination kept the sky quite bright, though the ravine's banks threw shadows on them.

On another part of the planet where dawn was occuring, drode on the leading edge of Sorn-telain's light were waking up. Derek and Paige poached a little of each of the wakers' energy, technically a violation, to strengthen them on their trek. While they did so, they shared something of their quest, minds linked, and the story spread. That would help the future Sha'ans in their chore of uniting the planet's population once they were in control.

Finally though, not long after Sorn-servar set, fatigue defeated them. They bedded down. Sleep had not been a top priority for many passings, and they were unable to avoid it any longer.

Before the rising of Sorn-telain, the rain fell with surprising strength. For the earliness of the season, the storm was heavy, but it didn't last long. The falling water actually wet the rock in the ravine and caused a thin stream to flow down the deepest part of the crevice. It ruined Derek's and Paige's sleep.

They continued, leading their mounts down the fissure. Cautiously all twelve feet made their way down the slippery bed with care. Compared to the acrid air in the forest above, the climate in the streambed was cooler, and even seemed chill in the limited shade of its own berm. Still, the heat and the moisture caused their clothing to stick to their skin and they perspired freely. The breeze had stopped. The spring rose above their ankles and occasionally to mid-calf, and varied in width from a hand to an arm span. They stayed out of the stream by walking on the drier and flat, but treacherous, banks, and waited for a break in the rock berm.

They eventually came upon a problem.

The two stood on the edge of a small waterfall where the berms had closed in and created a narrow passage, gazing down at the miniature rapids twisting away ahead of them.

"Sure that thief passed this way?" Derek asked, not relishing navigating this obstacle.

At his mention, Paige's head turned to the left of its own volition, and looking up, she said, "He climbed up from here to the top." She pointed. "He used these strong roots to scale the ravine berm. He's alone, and he has no mount." She explored the passing essence of her gift and the now familiar thief's one as well, the little that she could make out. He was inconsistent about masking his passage. He must be wearing out.

"We'll never get the brind up there," Derek said.

They examined the falls, the wet rocks, and stream below them.

"We could go back," he suggested wistfully.

"It's too far. Anyway, he'd be foolish to leave the ravine's edge; water's too hard to come by. He can't carry much on foot, it's heavy. He'll need to walk alongside the ravine and climb back down where he can to get water when he needs it. If we stay in this cleft until we find a way to get Moonflight and Chaldiron out, he'll probably have passed by wherever we emerge."

They studied their bonds. The brind examined them.

"I know they'll try to if we insist," Derek said.

'Yes. Let's keep our supplies dry, at least." They untied and removed the packs and the animals' clothing. Travelers and warriors alike often clothed their mounts to ease the ride, to deflect the sunlights' heat, and to create something to tie equipment to.

"Wet lodgings tonight," Derek teased.

Derek climbed down to the bottom of the small waterfall using the sturdy roots in the berm. The air seemed more humid to him down there because the falls released mist. Paige threw him their packs, which he caught, then the brinds' clothes, and he put to it all the side where the bottleneck opened up a bit.

Paige touched Chaldiron's mind and imagined him following her away from the drop, which he did. She imagined him staying there while she went forward to Moonflight.

The fall was about as tall as the brind. The athletic animals should be able to leap down easily, and hopefully without injury. The end of the jump was the problem as footing would be slick on the smooth, wet rocks below. Paige engaged Moonflight's mind. She imagined herself as if she were the brind, jumping down the fall and alighting gently, then shaking her head at her success and walking to the side to get out of Chaldiron's way. Moonflight responded to her gentle commands by studying the fall. She gave Paige's mind one last touch for any further instructions, breathed out in a gust, sucked in a breath, and jumped.

Moonflight planted her forefeet on the slick rocks with a loud crash, and as her weight descended behind, she slipped. Down the riverbed she went, legs flailing. Derek tried to stay out of her way. He scurried up the roots as she slid past, bellowing, but as he climbed back down into the cleft, he, too, slipped, and fell down on one knee. Paige heard the hard knock of it through the water. Derek grabbed his leg and sat down in agony as Moonflight struggled for purchase and stood her bruised body up. Moonflight shook her head and stamped her feet, as if reassuring herself she was on sure footing again. Derek wailed and contorted in pain.

Paige waited. Finally, Derek hauled himself up and tried putting weight on the leg.

"Are you broken?"

He shook his head. "Never stand below a leaping brind," he gasped.

"That's good advice," Paige agreed.

Derek climbed the trailers and hung off the bank while Chaldiron made a better job of his jump and stayed on his feet, probably warned by the destruction before, though he skied a bit. Paige used the roots to help her climb down to their level.

By midpassing, most of the water had evaporated, and both drode and brind were bruised, scabbed, sweaty, stinky, and exhausted. The riverbed had widened and flattened, and the forest floor was just above their heads now. Although the ravine went on without a break in its berm, they found another area of raised, flat, dry boulders, and stopped to rest. After the first sorn passed its midpoint, rain fell again, causing them more misery. They stayed on the level stones and ate kull under the protection of a sap impregnated cloth. They dozed badly because of the humidity and the noisy rainfall on the rocks and tarp.

The rain stopped before dusk. By then Paige had tired of fitful napping and found that Derek was as uncomfortable as she. They ate a sparse meal, loaded the packs, and tied them to the brind's trappings. They travelled all eve and morn, and though they rested frequently, they did not stop for long.

Three quarters into the next passing, the wind picked up and pushed in more clouds, which cut down on the sornlight. Water fell down hard on them again. As they walked, the glassy black rock was being replaced by the normal reddish soil. This ground, though packed and hardbaked, eroded more quickly. The grit in the bed of the crevice provided welcome traction.

Finally, they found an animal trail worn into the berm, and climbed up to the meadow above. The luculian trunks were far away, so they used the sap the brindkeepers had packed in the brind's cloth bags. Similar to the waterbags, these were smaller and heavier. The plain was much hotter and drier than the ravine, and there were no trunks to give even incomplete shading from the rays of the sorns. They covered their heads with sap treated cloths for added protection, and continued on.

"Now what?" Derek asked. They had reached the edge of the plain and he and Paige sat in the linear shade of a huge old trunk. This was the beginning of another forest. The rains encouraged chirrish growth, but it would be a while before the woods grew lush and shady. The current lack of vegetation meant the going remained easy, not made practically impassable by shrubs growing from the soil. The brind stood nose to rump in the line of shade from one of the large trunks nearby. Sorn-telain neared the evening horizon, and Sorn-servar was up above the morning horizon, its light getting weaker by the passing. The days and gloamings had begun to change in duration and pattern because of the uneven paths of the sorns.

"I sense he was in this meadow before us," Paige said. "He's making good time. The terrain's relatively level." They both looked around at the vista, which stretched away from them, rolling, but primarily flat. In the direction from which they had come, they still had a view of the black rock giving way to red soil. In the direction they were going, along the ravine, the blackened trunks stretched into the distance. "I can track him easily by the Caller's essence."

"His footprints'll remain in the dried mud, at least until the next rain washes them away," Derek pointed.

As they packed and settled their utilities on the brind, Sorn-telain reached the white horizon, and the sky above turned lavender and purple. The breeze cooled minutely, though in the other direction, server had risen to the quarter point. Its weakening, but still potent heat somewhat negated the effect of the cooling.

Derek's phial slid out of his jerkin and Paige stared again at the sooty black steaks in the amber liquid. She puzzled over what this meant. He said he didn't know.

They traveled in the dimmer light. Since sorn-servar was receding from the planet and the first sorn, the gloaming was becoming incrementally darker and cooler, although it was not dark or cool enough yet for comfort. The air was still almost unbearably hot, and now, the rain increased the humidity.

The world's inhabitants were hardened to the harsh seasons of their planet. This did not make being exposed to the weather enjoyable. Few days were pleasant on the surface, and this is why drode dwelled in the excellent caves instead. However, when one had a job to do, then one endured the elements. This made them appreciate their caverns that much more.

They walked through the gloaming, pursuing the illusive criminal who had stolen Paige's gift. Vagn had given the Caller to her and she would have it back. Also, the thief had to be one of the Roosians who'd escaped. Paige and Derek theorized that the Roosians and the temporary Keepers would meet somewhere to decide how to regain the Castle. The two planned to be at that meeting. They, the remaining Keepers, the city and Castle inhabitants, and those Caveholders whom Richard and Leigh managed to turn away from Kent, should join forces to defeat the usurpians. Kingdom Roos would then be united under Nartan again.

Long after Sorn-telain set, and as Sorn-servar began to gain the horizon, Derek and Paige stopped to eat and sleep. After they had bedded down, Derek mumbled to Paige, "Does the bag mean so much to you?"

Paige started a bit at the flat sound of his voice and the odd question.

"You know it does," she answered, rolling over to stare at him. His gift hid under his clothing. "Doesn't your present mean anything to you?"

She could not see the expression in his eyes. He pulled the phial out from under his shirt and regarded it.

His voice had returned to normal when he spoke. "This doesn't seem very useful, and you can watch my emotions change. It's too revealing. I try to tuck the thing under and it keeps coming out for the entire world's view. Why should everyone know what mood I'm in?"

"You don't always share your feelings. Anyway, I'm not everyone, brother, and no one else is out here. Even when we meet someone, they won't understand the significance."

"True," Derek agreed. He tucked the phial back under his shirt.

Derek curled up and fell asleep, his breath coming deep, long, and slow.

Paige, however, lay awake for some time.

In the morn, during the relative dark before Sorn-telain arose, Derek was awakened from his slumber by the taste of sweet smog in his nostrils. He sat up, confused, and sniffed, but the air now tasted like normal wet ash and burned luculian. He cut some petlah from the hunk he always carried and chewed it to heighten his senses. Strangely, he thought he sensed a miraculous essence as the smell of tasty smoke came to him again. The wind whipped up, bringing a spattering rain, and quickly the sensation and the odor dissipated. Or had the scent been in the air at all? Was this just a dream he had remembered, which had intensified as he chewed petlah?

Spitting out the spent fibers and placing a rock above to hide them from any searchers that might follow, he fell into a forgetful slumber. By dawn he had forgotten having awakened.

Tension infested the muscles of Paige's neck and shoulders. She rose and stretched. Her entire body ached from the hard paths they had trudged and the unforgiving beds. She tapped Derek, and they spent the required time eating, eliminating, slickering, and clothing their mounts. Then they set off again.

Only half a passing later, she found herself utterly spent. The weather on the plain, harsher and more arid than in the ravine, dried moisture up faster. Moonflight had been edgy and hard to manage. Ears flicking, eyes roving, she turned her head and looked, one eyed, at Paige, whose gentle reassurances somehow did not. At telain's end, stumbling with exhaustion, the brind begged her bond for rest.

Paige's tension tripled in one instant. As a ray of Sorn-servar through the trunks illuminated it, Derek's phial became noticeable. His amber gift from Vagn was threaded with grey black deceit. A sickening essence washed over her, and Derek caught her eye. He stopped Chaldiron and she halted Moonflight. Warily, Paige sat and watched his face twist into a wicked grimace, but then he regained composure.

"Let's rest and talk," Paige said.

"Why? What did you see, Paige?"

He seemed to be aware that something was wrong with him, and that she had noticed. She sensed he fought a possession; this was not Derek she dealt with, but another thing which had taken control of him.

Derek's eyes narrowed. His face grew livid. To Paige's very great surprise, Derek leaped from Chaldiron's pad and crashed into her, knocking them both to the hard packed soil. She twisted out of his grasp and tried to scramble away.

"Brother!" she pleaded.

Driven by the miraculous possession, and yet held back by his remaining free will, Derek grappled with Paige and with himself.

The arid wind whipped and howled as fiercely as their battle. Fat raindrops fell. Paige felt Derek lose to the spell and witnessed his phial turn from darkly threaded amber to pure black deceit. She struggled for release from his grip on her and gained a free hand. By reflex she grasped her dagger.

She was in shock, acting purely by instinct. She could not comprehend what was happening. Derek grabbed her arm, pinching her chords as he tried to stop her thrust. He slammed against her. They stumbled, tripping over each others' feet. Then his lips peeled apart as he barred his teeth like a mad animal, and he fell.

Paige steadied herself and stared at her empty knife hand. Horrified, she watched Derek rake at his lower back until her weapon dropped into the dirt. Dark colors twisted in his phial as he convulsed. He crawled on his belly, dragging himself toward her, his hands clawing the dirt. Madness and pain shifted in his eyes. Dust whirled around them, and the wind screamed like laughter and malevolent, conjuring howls.

Paige panicked and ran to Moonflight. She grabbed the scared brind and scrambled onto her back, sending the terrified beast away at a hard run. The animal raced blindly.

Derek lost consciousness to the sound of frightened, eratic footfalls rapidly receding. He became conscious some time later, face down in the mud. The wind whipped above and pushed a tiny wave of muddy water into his left nostril. Without moving he blew out, clearing the path of his breath. His entire back spasmed, stiffening him, clenching his torso, and making it hard to breathe. He was terribly injured. The body had known, and now the brain did, too.

Derek was a forgiving drode. He forgave Paige instantly, yet he felt bitter because he feared she'd crippled him.

Better to blame the cause. A malthauma was a practitioner ignorant or disdainful of Nartan rules of behavior which kept the powerful from victimizing the weak. This one would be a wielder of immense prowess.

Derek reasoned thus as he struggled to focus, but again lost consciousness.

The stench returned. The horrific odor was of corpses charred beyond moisture, organ or bone, and well past reason, though used by an unrepentant force. Mindlessly the Cintercorpse clumped around him; large and small drode, brind and krod, which were smaller animals—an entire village it seemed.

Horrifying.

Derek drowned in the essence of the malthauma all about him, moving the charcoal legs, holding the char into recognizable forms, causing the dead to do its bidding. They leaned toward him, over him. Their stink overpowered him. He retched. Their ashen arms encircled him. He cried out in fear. They picked him up; they raised him and placed him on the blackened back of a once noble brind. He drooled, because no vomit would come, and the stink permeated him, becoming part of him. He was empty and wretched, and unable to move. Waves of agony enveloped him as he hung in the embrace of the horrid stench.

As they sped from that place, Paige's reason returned to her. She could not leave Derek alone, injured like that. Paige gained control of herself and her mount by begging Moonflight to slow their breakneck speed.

After the long, lathering run, Paige imagined turning around. The powerful Moonflight responded by digging her wide feet in and executing a smooth turn. They were back in control of themselves. Paige knew she needed to go and help Derek, but the possession had been so malevolent, perverse, sudden, and shocking, the idea of riding toward it almost refused to stay in her mind. She still wanted to run away screaming.

If Derek had been consumed, would he accept her help now, only to kill her when the chance came?

Who wielded such power so horribly?

As Moonflight made her way back to the place where Paige had fought with her brother, their anxiety increased. Rain fell again and heavy drops splattered on them. The dust they had kicked up during their escape was dampened down. The scent of wet soil arose. Paige kept her eyes to the ground, watching the water soften the ridges of the gouges Moonflight had made. Rider and brind became soaked, and their vision blurred by rain and tears.

Paige halted Moonflight and sat tensely on the straining back, taming her own unease, staring through a thick cluster of burned trunks which blocked her view. Moonflight stepped sideways as asked. The brind ranged her mind forward to look for Derek, and Chaldiron, too. The spot came into sight—and it lay empty! Startled, Paige and Moonflight rushed over and they whirled, looking. Derek was nowhere to be seen.
IX

Were they in the wrong place? Staring harder at the wet soil Paige recognized the furrows she and Derek had scraped into the dirt during their fight. The rain smoothed the ridges, making mud puddles.

Paige yelled, "Derek!"

He did not answer.

Derek!

Nothing.

A strong wind whipped up. Chunks of wet, charred debris blew across the ground. Lightening shattered the sky. The colors around them changed.

Had this most recent horror lasted only moments? It had seemed an eon.

Moonflight reared and screamed, almost unseating her bond. The brind flared her nostrils and thrust her head forward. Anxious feet begged to leave, but she waited for permission. Paige scanned the ground below her and spotted what had frightened Moonflight. Blood, thick and clotted, pooled in the dirt. A charred, bloody, coal chip had blown onto Moonflight's foot and stuck there. She stomped off the offending bit and quivered, waiting. The sensitive animal reminded Paige of the love they had shared for Derek, and of the damage she had just caused him. Their grief blossomed.

Paige had inflicted grievous injuries upon her brother. Somehow he had gone, leaving his trail and his essence to be obscured by the weather. Or someone, some thing, had taken him.

Paige's heart tore in two. She had left him in the grip of wickedness. Her inexperience had betrayed her. Tears mixed with the rainwater on her face. The rain pelted down and the wind beat them.

Paige and Moonflight traveled automatically through the twilight, the partial shadows, and the liquid air into the next passing. Eventually, the muggy heat defeated them and they both collapsed. Moonflight lay down, mindless that she was still clothed and carried package. Paige did not eat. Exhausted, they slept in restless fits. Memories, scents, and sounds disturbed them. A relative chill awakened them after little sleep, well into the gloaming of fading Sorn-servar.

Paige cast her essence about, trying to find Derek, but she found no trace. Too quickly her mind shut the thought of him out—a protective mechanism? The pain and and loneliness were great, and she felt empty.

Unknown to her, while she slept, someone had subtly put the suggestion to her that she continue the journey she had been on and worry about Derek later. Paige had no choice but to obey the masterful, undetected command.

While Paige and Derek fought, the criminal was not far away. Chaldiron charged by him in terror. He clicked with his tongue, attracting the brind's attention. This one had clothing and therefore was not wild, but one bred and trained by drode, so that the beast responded even through its fear. The animal slowed and he followed. Finally the creature wore itself out and stopped, blowing hard.

The thief walked forward making slow movements, talking softly. The brind, muscular and strong, had packs tied to the strapping. He was anxious to get into those packages. Hunger and thirst gnawed at him, but he moved without haste and made his voice calm to soothe the large, anxious creature. Then, he had a new ride and the supplies as well.

Chaldiron displayed his nervousness by lipping the mud while the drode rummaged through the contents of a pack. The criminal found the kull, and decided the vegetation had been some kind of nourishment, but the rain drops made the dark green mass odiferous. He shielded the mess with his hand and ate anyway, and when the brind nosed the brick, drode shared. The food, not too repulsive to the starving man, was filling, and soon they were both ready to go.

The thief climbed up on his new mount and they made their way toward the distant mountain range. Now he'd give the owner of the thaumatic bag a chase, though he didn't want to lose her. This formidable stalker might become a valuable ally. He wanted to lead her to his destination, and then, surrounded by others for protection, speak to her, if she would let him.

Paige focused on the Caller. She recalled how, when Derek and Paige had ascended to the plain, they had realized how close to the thief they had come. Though struggling hard and using much energy, they had since made little progress in catching up to him.

Far behind, through the charred stumps, she could still see the huge flow of shiny black rock from which the Castle was carved. Ahead, the sandy red soil stretched on and on in the direction the sorns always disappeared. Just to the south of sornset, the land began to rise up into the foothills of a mountain range.

Paige still detected the essence of the Caller, though in drips and drabs only because the wind and rain dissipated the trail. But she was strong and receptive, and it wasn't very far away.

Having something to obsess about was a good thing.

Paige was almost able to form a picture of the criminal in her mind. She had an intense sense of her quarry's maleness. She directed all her energies into tracking him.

The thief pushed the brind forcefully. He experienced the intensity of the drode who followed him, but he was clever, and decided to lead her over the mountains to the coastal city where he might have assistance in containing her. Were she a soldier following on ursurpian business, having other drode around when they confronted one another could help to subdue her actions. If she was, however, someone else, as he suspected, she would have information he wanted. Her possession of the Caller suggested she was more than a simple soldier.

She might be full Nartan, a thauma. Though he knew something of Nartan, his education had been brief. She presented an interesting mystery to him, but was also a threat.

The weather remained abhorrent. Rain obscured his vision and mud vexed the brind. The drode who chased him faltered, he sensed her difficulties. She had a kind of connection to the powder in the bag and therefore to him. He suffered her weakening, and yet she had been so strong to begin with, the weakness affected her little. He knew she burned with loss. He maintained a few skills, but the skill in his pursuer seemed pure and intense—far beyond his own.

He had not witnessed the incident which had disturbed her. Because of his connection to her through the Caller, and his ignorance of how to control the feelings assaulting him, he had been traumatized during a period of time when he suspected something bad was occurring. Then the brind had charged past. He felt that the one following was now alone. What had happened to the other he did not know, though he sensed the foul essence of desecrated flesh. He refused to speculate.

He knew she was exhausted but would persist. He just had to stay in front of her until he reached the city and the protection of numbers of others.

The bag he carried drew her on still and gave her some kind of strength. They had a difficult way ahead. The near future promised much pain, and the weather would grow increasingly cold and violent as they ascended the mountain range standing between this plain and his destination. The anxiety every drode experienced because of approaching re, and the intimate and hereditary knowledge of death from exposure, was, in and of itself, draining.

The four stumbled on all night without rest.

Sorn-servar burst over the horizon, its bright rays adding to setting Sorn-telain's failing ones, sapping some more moisture from the air.

That sweet, smoky wall of stench again enveloped Paige, diffusing into her, attacking her senses, and throwing her into a complete panic. Moonflight screamed and jumped straight up in fright, nearly dislodging her.

Charred figures broke from the trunks and encircled the pair. Their stench and the sight of the burned, once living bodies evoked all of Paige's loathing and fear. Moonflight trembled and shook; her feet would not stay still. The black corpses, faceless and handless, rode bald, earless mounts. Smaller charcoal animals ran around on stumpy, blackened legs. They were surrounded.

Paige decided on their only escape, and using all the power she possessed, sent Moonflight charging at the circle. The nearest figures reached out toward them and Moonflight screamed and went out of control. Paige's mind and the brind's own fear kept them moving as dust and chunks flew. They plowed through the creatures like a bullet from a Traveler gun. No bones or teeth scored them. The hot, thaumatic fire had turned living flesh into stalking ash, the essence of which saturated them at impact. Moonflight erupted into a flat out run. Never had they moved so fast. The faceless beings chased them, stumping along on charred limbs with the speed of flesh-and-blood mounts as the distant miracle-maker held them together and forced them on.

Away in the forest, the thief had stopped to rest, and he screamed in reaction to his follower's plight. His connection to her was so intimate, he experienced her terrified urge to flee as his own, and sped afoot behind his panicked mount, forcing his lungs to fuel his leaden legs.

This time, Moonflight would not be managed, and she flew out of control onto a clearing above a cliff. The red sand turned to stone; the animal did not slow. The sound of the brind's jarring footfalls silenced, but Paige's racing mind cleared too late. The rock ceased to lie underneath them and they fell in a terrifying arc. Expecting death and hoping for less, Paige relaxed before they smacked the lake's surface below them, churning under the force of a waterfall.

The thief, through the connection the thaumatic sack maintained with its owner, was overwhelmed by his pursuer and her brind's terror. He screamed. When they plunged over the cliff, unseen by and far away from him, he tripped on an exposed luculian root and fell, hitting his head hard on another. A spray of powder spilled from the bag and dusted his wound, stopping the gush of blood, but causing dreams of unconscionable terror to flow and stiffen him into immobility. The brind ran ahead, soon wore out, and slowed, then stopped. He made his way back to the thief.

Chaldiron would not seek Derek because he sensed the possessor controlled him now.

Paige woke from her black sleep into barely illuminated darkness. Plagued by a loud, pounding noise, her head throbbed in response. She allowed her vision to adjust as she explored a distant pain in her skull that was not her own. She blocked out the thief's ranging and raging mind. Then she saw above her a tight grey belly, and more clearly the surrounding muscular black legs, ending in sturdy feet covered with thick nails. She was unable to move, but she was comfortable enough, and in a safe place. Moonflight had taken care of her by hauling her into this space. Pain surged, and she closed her eyelids again and moaned.

Something warm touched her forehead. Hot breath blew into her face and she opened her eyes to see the nostrils and the oddly foreshortened head of her brind. Her back pressed against hard, cold rock and, without movement, she came to understand that she was in a cave behind the fall. The water misted her thoughtlessly.

The thief lay in the muggy hot rain of a miserable daytime storm. The drops washed his face clean of powder and blood, and awakened him from his dreadful sleep. He tried to move, but found this quite impossible, and he worried about the knock he'd received. Many raindrops depressed the muck around him. He watched the mud rebound after each plop. The brind stood nearby; he smelled the wet animal hide and heard the packs and straps creaking. Consciousness fell away.

Paige awoke once more, sick and weary. Her stomach tried to relieve itself, but clenched uselessly. She was empty. Her body was cold, stiff, and famished, and her flesh shrieked when she moved.

She and Moonflight were still in the cave. The darkness was cool and moist. One of the sorns passed outside above thin clouds.

Moonflight daintily scraped growth off the rock walls, trying not to chip her big teeth. Paige stood and wobbled over to her mount. She found the packing still tied to Moonflight. She loosened the straps and let the gear drop. She dug into one pack for kull, smelled the soaked vegetation before she touched it, and daringly brought the mess out. Moonflight snorted, walked to the other side of the cave, and pressed against the stone in the effort to avoid the hideous odor. Paige threw the stinking mass into the falls and the water took it away.

Her limbs, bruised and ungainly, jerked as she walked. After dragging Moonflight's clothes off, she heaved her body onto the brind's naked back. She lay, absorbing the animal's heat, until she could move somewhat more freely. Then she repacked everything and tied the strapping and bundles onto Moonflight again. Paige took her bond's leads and led her to the vertical water door. The erosion had made a deep pool beneath.

She and Moonflight jumped, for this was the only way out available to them. The force of the fall shoved them under, and Paige struggled to free herself from the tumult.

Moonflight's hard foot struck her side. Breathless and fearful, Paige used the brind's body by launching off her meaty shoulder and pushing toward the light. She broke through the surface and sucked air into her starved lungs.

The thief pulled his face up out of the mud and coughed long and loud. Sorn-telain once again shone bright overhead, letting him know he'd been in this place almost a full passing. The sorn had baked the skin of his neck and the side of his face. Chaldiron stood nearby watching his new rider.

He rose stiffly. His head spun. He propped himself against the sturdy animal and walked beside him. He didn't get far before thirst and heat overtook him. He untied one of the water bags, and dug into the pack tied to the brind, finding some more of the green bricks.

He was sniffing their vegetable odor when his butt hit the ground. His skull throbbed, but sitting was good. The pounding subsided a bit. He flaked the brick and ate, again sharing the meal with the brind. The food did not make them sluggish or sleepy, and it filled their bellies, though they consumed only a small amount.

He knelt and cut a thick, healthy root, took the ooze, and slickered his exposed skin, and then his mount's. The soothing sap blocked the burning heat and cooled his skin. His parched lips smoothed and the cracks hurt less, but the damage was done. He had spent too much time unslickered. The fever would come, but he could not rest. He mounted the brind and pushed on at a brisk clip.

The season of doshan fell fitfully on Enistan now as evidenced by the rain and the water running in the ravines and their tributaries. The weather would only get wetter and colder. The baked soils were unable to absorb the voluminous and frequent rainfalls quickly enough. The rivers rose with the runoff. This season was vexing, more so than the last, although the thief's inability to take shelter because of the pursuit might have created this perception. Fear and dread of the weather gripped his heart; soon the cold would come.

Paige realized that by saving herself, she'd pushed Moonflight further under, but her fears dissipated when she heard the noisy nose break water and suck wind behind her. The air rushed into the brind like a bellows.

She twisted her hands into Moonflight's ropes and then urged her toward shore. Moonflight was as sore as Paige, but understood their dilemma and swam, pulling Paige across and down the river with the current.

Soaked, Paige thought only of dryness, food and rest. They reached the shoals downstream of the falls and waded onto the shore. She sought out the root called roshnar which grew interspersed with the reeds. The vegetable had been cooked and preserved in the soil by the fires of Kir. She dug them up greedily and washed off the mud. She and Moonflight filled themselves with the pulpy, somewhat fibrous root tuber.

Paige woke and found she had been sleeping next to the coals of a campfire. For a moment she panicked and looked for the enemy, because she didn't remember building the fire. Her clothes had dried and shrunk around her. She watched Moonflight pulling at the soft new blades surrounding her, brought to the surface by the heat and rain. The vegetation had started coming out of the ground. Soon, chirrish would surround them and disguise the desolation of the planet so recently made naked by planet-wide firestorms.

Black ash had washed upon the shores in piles. The mindless corpses had followed them over the cliff. The soil steamed around them, encasing Paige's body in sweat and condensation. No hint of the malevolent essence lingered near them. Whatever drove the bodies had found something else to occupy it.

Paige again located a good luculian root and took the time to apply a thick layer of sap on herself and her mount against potential dehydration and the chaps. Struggling to suppress her emotional and physical fatigue and pain, Paige narrowed her shattered focus to one thing—regaining her gift. She laboriously cast her mind about in the search for the essence of its passing. She and Moonflight walked beside the river while she scanned all directions around her.

The urge to cave and hoard foodstuffs for the coming cold season pushed at her, yet she was unable to comply. She wasn't sure of her location or where shelter was in the unknown region.

She led Moonflight beside the flowing river. She must retrieve the Caller. How long they could hold out before having to retreat underground she did not know, but even that would not be enough if supplies had not been laid up. Many caves on the planet were stocked and waited for occupation, though some were so long disused, the food had decayed beyond edibility. It was mortally foolish to not have shelter ready and waiting, but Paige was no where near home.

She felt empty and bereft. She thought about Derek. The memories, so painful, were of their fight and his injury, and also her fear and failure to stay by him, and protect him from whatever possessed him. The essence had been powerful, overwhelming them both with sudden violence. She had failed her brother and herself.

Despair planted a seed in her mind.

The animal stepped cautiously, walking with his head down and his nostrils wide open. The thief glanced about, trying to see what the brind sensed. A round ditch appeared before them and turned into a dark hole. Large steps carved into the rock sunk down beneath them.

He looked at the vista. The flatlands stretched behind them, and the cliff before, and the drode-hewn stairs descended at their feet. He knew she stalked him somewhere below, he had dizzyingly sensed her plunge. He decided, nudged his mount over to the staircase, and dismounted. He sent the creature down first and followed, listening for the sounds of interception below, and heard none.

The cave at the end of the stairs was cool and dry. A ledge seemed like a bed to the disoriented drode. The thief exited the cavern door and looked around, seeing nothing but landscape. He turned back to look at the entrance, which was disguised by rock. He entered again and lay down, and slept dreamlessly, uncaring of the cold hardness of the stone beneath him.

When he woke, a chilled sweat encased his body. He had been groaning in his sleep and awakened himself; the brind was stomping nervously. He achingly sat up and found the packs and the green bricks.

They ate from the slightly moist mass and drank. The bags didn't hold much water anymore. With caution, he peered out of the cave and looked for danger. Seeing none, he preceded his mount out. They made their way to the river where they both drank deeply, and he filled the waterbags and repacked.

Dizzy now, sweat dripped from his brow. His body ached, yet he would have to continue on. He went to the luculian trunks and cut a root, slickered them both, and struggled to mount. The animal seemed fit and healthy but the thief was not. He pointed his mount toward where the sorns would be setting, urged the beast forward, and hung on.

Sorn-telain neared the evening horizon, casting the landscape in the cool purple evening hues so welcomed by weary travelers. She would eat and rest, but had little desire to spend precious moments on these necessities.

Paige and Moonflight skirted a nasty field full of spiny seeds. Sometimes the burrs caught, and Paige's finger meat bloodied as she picking the things from her own and Moonflight's hides. Paige lifted her hand to stroke the relieved animal and left bloody streaks. The brind flinched and her skin twitched spasmodically. Her nostrils flared. Paige spoke gently to her and used some water from a bag to wash off the blood.

A slab of rock stood incongruously in front of the cliff wall. Caves were often disguised, but in such a manner that a knowledgeable traveler would recognize a potential resting place. She approached, leading Moonflight. Behind the stone protrusion, a dark slit emitted the undeniable essence of the thief.

A pebble rolled under her foot, and Paige unfortunately placed her bloodied hand on the hot rock wall to steady herself. She extracted her seared palm as soon as she regained her footing, ignoring the pain. If he sheltered inside, he was now aware of her. She stood beside the doorway and listened to the wind sucking at the distant exit above. She stepped into the cave and moved to the side so she would not be silhouetted by the light of the entrance. Her eyes adjusted. No one was home.

His essence was strong, and there was something else, his scent. She spent some time touching and sniffing where he had been, absorbing what remained of his and Chaldiron's passing. He had been here recently, and he was sornsick.

Good, she thought, heat stroke will weaken him.

She exited, leading Moonflight to the luculian trunks, and cut a root very near to the one which he had used. She slickered both herself and Moonflight, mounted, and pushed Moonflight toward the purpling horizon at an urgent, but prudent pace. She did not want to come upon him suddenly. If she could, she would take the bag back while he fought the fever, then find out who he was, and what he thought he was doing.
X

Long did Derek dream of that stench; he dream ate it, he dream drank it, he felt consumed by and metamorphosed into it. The odor changed into the delicious smell of a well roasted meat, a succulent sustenance.

He awoke retching, horrified at the connection his mind had made between the corpses and dinner.

He was unable to move.

From a reclined position, he dizzily viewed his new reality and attempted to regain control. How had he arrived in this cool white room, in this bed with clean, pale sheets, with a gentle breeze blowing gauzy curtains toward him? Where was this place?

A furious hot burning funneled his attention to his lower back and left glute. The pain was everywhere, but this was the source. Flames of agony licked up his spine, radiating into his chest and head. His legs were leaden. His hands buzzed.

They tingled! He felt his fingers. Spasms shot along his torso, up from his waist. This was good. Did his feet feel heavy, or was he only imagining this?

Resigning himself to stillness, he mourned his losses. Derek regarded the white ceiling, concentrating on focusing his eyes. He spent some time following the progress of an insect crawling upside down—watching him? The billowing curtains attracted his gaze. The light from outside seemed bright, the air temperate and fragrant. He breathed in the smell of cultivated gardens; floral scents, vegetation, and moist, conditioned soil. From outside, he heard the sounds of small animals playing and arguing, seemingly unafraid, since silence usually portended threat. He reasoned that he must be in a place of wealth, for who else could afford to cultivate flowers? Only those who had plenty to eat and drink, and no anxiety about a lack of shelter would. So this was an organized hold, old, and well managed. He was in secure hands, being taken care of.

He could do little to help himself, and worrying would only make his situation worse. He left the fear behind. What a relief! His imminent future was beyond his control. Continuing to fight, even in his mind, would do him no good, especially since he must now use the majority of his reserves to heal.

He came back into himself. Softness pressed against his shoulder blades.

Move, he ordered his feet, but they didn't. Clench, he told his hands, and he heard the rustle of fingers brushing the smooth white cloth cloaking his broken body. The difficulty of simply recovering their movement overwhelmed him.

Bedridden. A crushing sorrow engulfed him and he sobbed. He cried out. He screamed. Spasms shot up his back again, clamping his lungs shut, and he thought, he hoped, shooting down his legs. Nausea, dizziness and the heaves came, causing more agony and stopping his rage. He retched until he was no longer able to breathe, then he concentrated very hard on forcing his diaphragm to bring in air, to fill his torso, and push the breath out. The spasms continued, this vicious cycle teaching him through its violence that strong emotion and movement would not be tolerated.

A thick scent touched his nostrils. His attention was diverted as the cramps receded. Derek looked up at a gnarled old drode staring down at him kindly. The twisted man held something. He spoke in Rokeen, the ancient language. He said, "You are safe."

You are safe. You are safe, echoed in Derek's mind. The pain receded some more. A calmness came, and hunger. Derek opened his eyes again and the wrinkled one sat beside him now with a steaming cup.

"You're hungry," he stated, causing Derek to recognize an aching in the pit of his stomach. "Drink." He eased a hand behind Derek's head and held it up, pressing the mug of rich broth to Derek's lips with his deformed hands.

Drinking left Derek exhausted. The drode told him, "I'm Rein, your caretaker."

"You speak the old language," Derek managed to croak out.

"You spoke Rokeen in your fever," Rein replied. Then he rose and left. Derek fell asleep.

Derek ate and slept for many passings, always in pain, sometimes more and other times less. He awoke in fresh clean sheets, his skin dry and fragrant despite the nightmare sweats which plagued him.

The breeze that played with the curtains cooled, passing after passing, until his caretaker closed the shutters. Then Derek had nothing to lay his eyes on during brief bouts of consciousness, so he exercised his arms and talked to the old drode.

Rein still spoke Rokeen in low tones to his patient, and Derek responded in kind. Once he had asked Rein why he used the ancient speech instead of the more modern Enistian, and Rein had answered, "I like to keep my thoughts private." Derek inferred Rokeen was not the common tongue in this place. Therefore, Enistian was, or Traveler.

Rein told him little of his situation, only that he was a guest of a wealthy drode. One day when he came into Derek's room he seemed agitated, and muttered, "She's at it again."

"Who's at what again, Rein?" Derek asked.

Rein stared at Derek through narrowed eyes and then became thoughtful.

"You know the old language, the traditional ways. I think you are trustworthy. I've cared for you this long season, otherwise you would have died. Remember this." He hesitated. "Re will be upon us soon. You'll stay here and continue to heal, and I'll help you learn to move again. You won't be like before, but you'll not be helpless, either."

Derek was overwhelmed by gratitude. An urgent desire to express this gratefulness arose in him. Maybe the Traveler ways were not quite as impoverished as they seemed. This was a startling thought, quickly suppressed, but he expressed his thankfulness The Nartan Way, by projecting his emotions into Rein's mind.

Rein paused and wondered. How much should he reveal? Could he trust this damaged child who knew the ancient language and practiced The Way? But he had expressed gratefulness, and this was not Nartan, though the means of his expression was. Rein had questioned Derek during his delirium and had learned. He also vaguely sensed, in the depths of his mind, the young drode's emotings. A practitioner would not betray him as others had, he decided.

"Your host is the malthauma who crippled you, and you cannot flee. You must pretend to be grateful and receive what hospitality you can from her. Perhaps by shre you'll be well enough to escape and go back to your people, or we may be able to get a message to them. Will they come for you?"

"Yes," Derek muttered, in shock. A powerful malthauma who denied The Way was incomprehensible, and yet, the Cintercorpse and his possession were proof. She had turned him against his own sister and Paige had been forced to wound him to escape.

Paige! He cried out in his mind. He called again. Paige!

She did not answer. Was he too weak? Had she been injured or passed on?

"Her name is Madella," Rein said. Derek's attention snapped back into the room, onto Rein's countenance. Rein watched him, but showed no sign of having heard him call out from within. Did these drode not use their empathies so?

"Whose name?" Derek gasped. His anxiety had made his limbs throb and jerk in spasm. His thoughts reeled. Rein held a tincture to Derek's lips and then began to rub the cramps out of Derek's legs. Derek felt the pressure on his shriveling muscles. At last.

"The malthauma. Your hostess. Her name is Madella."

"Madella."

"You must defer to her, and pretend ignorance; you don't know she is the one who attacked you. It's the safest way. She's always right; you can't disagree with her. Don't express an opinion unsupportive of hers. And under no circumstances, no matter what she says or does, will you imply or state she's wrong, mistaken, or ignorant. This is the most important thing, do not call her stupid."

"Why would I?"

"Because she is."

"So, what'll happen if I do suggest she may be wrong?"

"She will burn you for that."

Rein shuddered. He seemed to shrink. He placed one hand over his eyes.

It was then Derek realized the gnarling was the tightened, ridged, shiny skin of a victim. Rein's entire body was deformed and scarred by fire.

Derek almost retched. The drode was, in fact, not old, but only about thrice Derek's age. He looked hundreds of cycles beyond that.

"Rein," Derek gasped, "What is going on here? Who has let her gain such power without the Nartan teachings?"

"Who can stop her?" Rein sighed. "She won't learn The Way. She doesn't understand why it's important because she can't comprehend the reasoning. She believes she's right and so she's impossible to teach. I tried." Rein looked down at the damage covering his body. "I'm a walking example. This is why she keeps me around. Everyone pities and avoids me, even my son."

"Oh Rein, I'm so sorry. Come with me when I leave here."

"Whenever that is, I'll be honored to go with you. But tell me, who are you?"

Derek stared into the tearing eyes. The scarred, puckered lids shone around them. His prudence halted his answer.

Rein had not escaped despite the abhorrent treatment. What kept him here? Did the damaged man spy for her? That made sense. Had she put him in this position to gain Derek's trust, to get him to answer Rein's seemingly innocent questions? Derek thought Rein must be a good drode, but one who had been tortured might turn on his own better judgment and do as his abuser demanded to forestall further torture. So the imagination game had taught him, though he had not understood the reason for those types of lessons in his innocent youth.

No, Derek would not reveal the whole truth. The Way dictated that he could not put himself in jeopardy with such creatures as these. Nartan did not suffer fools.

"I'm far away from home," Derek sighed. "Your mistress possessed me, and set me against my sister, who defended herself, and so...," Derek looked down at his body.

"Why would Madella want you?" Rein pressed. "Why you?"

"You tell me, Rein. I don't know her."

Rein sighed. "I haven't any knowledge of this. Her mind works in ways I can no longer understand. But I assure you reason exists, a plan, twisted as it may be, and you're involved. She takes what she wants. She uses, and then uses again. For her, these manipulations are a game, it pleases her to trick and manipulate, abuse and gain, to twist and trap. I'm the biggest fool of all; you'll be her tool as well. You're trapped here, are you not? She has in mind to manipulate you for her benefit, to your detriment, and have you understand she has done this, and to hurt you again. Her torture is not only physical. Mental torment gladdens her. It engorges her sense of power to be able to do this to others. She believes this makes her smarter than you and me. In some manner, she's correct."

"It's not smart to be wicked. She's foolish and stupid. I understand the point you made earlier. Quite the paradox."

Rein smiled his crooked smile. "Yes, isn't it?" He stopped smiling. "This is why I can't teach her. In order for her to learn, she must realize what a wicked and stupid fool she has been. She forbids this of herself. Instead, she seeks to make fools of others. Then she is the smarter drode, she thinks."

Derek looked at his legs. He made many of the muscles flex and contract. He had been exercising them with Rein's help. The right was more responsive than the left and the aches were deeper on that side, but he was still unable to swing them off the bed. He would not walk normally again.

He looked at the window, now shuttered. The cold seeped in from outside; frigid, dreaded fingers reached toward him, straining to grip his body. The primal dread bloomed in his memories.

Rein followed his gaze. "We'll move belowground soon," he reassured. "The ice season is upon us. Re and," he glanced at Derek's legs, "these infirmities will keep you here and under her control, as she desires. Do not blame your sister."

"Why do you stay, Rein?" Derek asked quietly. He must learn how far he could trust this drode.

"My daughter. A wonderful girl. She's the last one who still loves me, but she's the angry malthauma's dependant as well. Don't make the mistake of thinking her youth and beauty protect her from abuse; they only make her the perfect stone upon which the woman sharpens the blade of her wickedness. The girl can't leave. Children need their parents, so I stay, although the time is coming when she will also turn against her fool of a father. Already she begins to despise my weaknesses. I had hoped she would go away with me, but Madella is skilled at confusing her and so she cannot follow her heart. The woman twists her against herself and me. I can't help much because I, too, despise my weaknesses, though I'm still here. I won't run away while my daughter may need me."

"I'm sorry, Rein," Derek said.

"Yes, but we continue on. I don't enjoy telling you this; Madella is anxious for her new guest's company. I tried to put her off and told her you are in no way able. She invited you to dinner anyway. She sent this.

Rein went to the door, opened it, and exited. He returned with a chair built—on a frame of wheels!

Derek laughed. "No!"

"Yes. You must attend."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. Son." This is what he had been calling Derek all along. "Who shall I announce you as, at dinner?"

Derek pondered. Giving his true appelation would be too dangerous for him.

"I am Falon," Derek replied. It was a common Enistian name. Nothing could be inferred by it.

"Falon," Rein said. "Rest, Falon, I'll return later and we'll make you presentable."

That eve, Rein came and helped Derek bathe, dry, and dress in what Derek guessed passed for dinner clothes in this place. There was time for Derek to rest, so Rein put him back into bed.

The pain had diminished somewhat, but the spasms seemed to have increased in his right leg, and the numbness in his left. He had stretched and released the tight spasms in his back, and his arms had grown stronger and fully functional. Already muscles in the numb limb shrank from disuse. The right atrophied as well, though not as much.

The cramping on the agitated side was fierce, sometimes rolling Derek over from his back to his side as he slept. Rein had spent most of his time trying to teach the limb to relax, and had been somewhat successful.

In the privacy of his thoughts, Derek mourned the loss of his physicality. Every day he reached out to Paige from his mind, and worried because she did not answer. He called out to Vagn at night, and a calm strength flooded him, lulling him to sleep. Regardless, he was almost utterly alone for the first time. Even Rein's constant caretaking wasn't a substitute for Derek's beloved siblings.

Rein entered the chamber. He wheeled the funny, functional chair device to the bedside and helped Derek up and in. Once seated, Derek found he could move himself along by pushing on the wheels.

Ah, some slight sense of freedom burgeoned in him. He would be able to explore his surroundings now.

Rein walked beside as Derek wheeled down the hall, and whispered wisdom to him.

"Don't forget, do not contradict her, regardless of how ridiculous she seems. Don't call her stupid, or imply that she doesn't understand what she's talking about, or is wrong, even when she is. Especially then. She despises Nartan, so pretend to be anything but. And don't trust her son, Tran. He's not your friend, though he may pose as one. Remember, he reports directly to her. He's afraid of her; she beat him and used the threat of violence toward him in his youth, so he'll always do as she says. He thinks as she determines, and is who she wants him to be, which is especially prudent of him considering her abilities and cruelty."

Rein sighed. "I've never learned to twist myself up the way he does. He's so much like her, and I think you need to find a way to be similar, to stand her for very long.

"I haven't the stomach for trickery and the constant deceptions. They'll try to fool you into believing they're right and you should join with them in their wicked doings. Always Madella searches for validation from others with as much zeal as she burns her enemies."

Rein paused to open a gorgeously carved, tall, slender pair of luculian doors. The room, garish and obscenely opulent, stretched before them. Every difficult-to-procure commodity had been used within; decorations of precious minerals, cushions of the finest dyes, and most complicated weaves and embroidery, a gigantic luculian table, and many masterfully carved chairs. The multiple, hidden light sources kept the space bright, and the decor sparkled.

Only three drode graced the enormous table in the huge hall. A fire danced in a recess behind the man and older woman who sat next to each other, facing him. The younger female sat to their right, at his left, on the narrow end.

Derek wheeled himself to a place where the chairs had been cleared away for him, to the young woman's right. Directly across from him, Tran was seated, and to Tran's left, their mother, the malthauma, Madella.

Rein had not entered. The doors closed behind Derek. The sound made his loneliness increase.

All three pairs of eyes settled upon him, and he sensed himself being sized up. Nartan welcome did not exist here.

He decided to begin with thanks, because no Nartan would expect an expression of gratitude, but he suspected she might.

"Generous hostess, may I thank you for this hospitality? The food is bountiful, your home warm and inviting, and the servants ever vigilant to my needs. I cannot express to you how hurt I was, and I am comforted in your care. Rein is caring and kind..."

A noise blasted out of Tran's nose and he glanced sideways at his mother. He had been sipping from a gorgeous crystal chalice. He coughed and cleared his throat.

"Please, enough. It's my pleasure," Madella murmured, and Derek thought she seemed genuinely pleased by his compliments. "We've been told you're called Falon, is this correct? What a common name for such an uncommon boy. Have some wine."

Derek experienced the impression that there would never be enough flattery to sate Madella. Apparently they were all to feign ignorance of the circumstances of his arrival here, and pretend to learn about each other. Derek had no idea what Madella might know about him, but couldn't believe her knowledge was extensive. No one outside his small family truly knew Derek.

Madella glanced at Tran, who poured some of the greenish juice into another beautiful chalice, which he set before Derek.

Derek sipped the liquid, as harsh and garish as the room.

"Excellent," he lied.

"We make it in this hold, from frit grown on the grounds," Madella paused as if waiting for more compliments.

Derek would thank Rein for his warnings. He didn't like much about this enemy, everything in this cavehold seemed belligerently opposed Nartan. Most enemies at least presented themselves as respectable in some ways, but nothing of Madella or Tran was so by Nartan standards. If you don't express it, you won't receive it, went a Nartan saying regarding respect.

The opulence, the desire for compliments, the absence of customary unspoken, welcoming reassurance, these gave Derek a feeling which clothed his heart in frost. His challenge, while he remained here, would be to perform for all his worth in order to stay alive, and escape as soon as possible.

At first he sequestered his thoughts in his mind away from them, but as the night wore on, he found they had no sensation of them anyway.

A strange thing revealed itself. Madella substituted her imaginings for perception, as if she suspected she had missed something, and so filled in the missing parts. She had full confidence in her interpretations, though, and acted upon them. The evening became strange beyond telling.

"I smelled the garden before the windows were closed to the cold. The scents were delicious," Derek flattered truthfully.

His host had not introduced herself, Tran, or the young woman. He did not know how to address them.

"Are they very different from your experiences?" she clumsily pried at him for information.

"Yes," Derek had to suppress a shudder as the sudden scent of ash remembered itself in his nostrils. He had come from the forest most recently, a thing filled with frightening horror.

Tran poured himself more wine and his mother held out her glass. Madella watched him pour for her.

"Thank you, dear," she said. "Daehl," she addressed her daughter for the first time, "please take your elbows off the table and behave like a lady."

The young woman did as told, and kept silent. She sensibly took many small sips of water to avoid conversation.

"Falon, I sense you're no ordinary drode. Tell us about yourself," Madella pried again.

"Plain enough," Derek began his lies. He worked his obvious fitness into his lie.

"I come from a smithing family, and, of course, we farm." Derek had some little skill with the metalic arts, but he decided not to go into much detail. He would be here all season and didn't want to have to remember too many lies in order not to contradict himself. "I had delivered some work to far neighbors and was returning when... something... attacked me." He did not have to fake the shudder.

"We've been told, dear boy. They're called, what are they, Tran, cinter-something?"

"Cintercorpse, Mother," Tran stared at Derek.

"Ah, yes. Cintercorpse." Mother smiled at son. Then Madella's gaze slid over to her daughter.

"Daehl", she commanded, "use the napkin, not your clothes."

Daehl glanced up with brows furrowed. "I am, Mother."

A scornful noise came from Madella's lips, and the son and she caught each other's eyes. Cunning and guile leaked through their expressions.

Daehl had been using her napkin. What was this nonsense, Derek wondered?

The four diners had been picking from fruit platters placed among them. Their attendants came and removed the dishes and replaced them with herbed bread, meats, and vegetables. Succulent odors perfumed the air. Derek had not been eating like this.

As the servants piled their plates high for them, Tran calmly sat back in his chair and observed their guest. This appraisal Derek perceived as a disconcerting threat. In his incapacitated state, this reaction was to be expected, but if Rein had not warned him, would he have felt threatened? He studied Tran and decided the drode had designed this countenance in order to appear relaxed and friendly, but the expression on Tran's face was calculated, not natural, and therefore, unfriendly.

Though he salivated, Derek waited for his host to begin eating. Madella picked up a small loaf of bread in one hand and her fork in the other.

"Eat, Falon, don't stand on ceremony. We are familiar here."

She preferred to be deferred to, though, so her professed familiarity was a lie. He realized she did not touch his mind for verification and expansion of his statements, and to gage his reaction to hers. She could not, in fact, nor could Tran. Were these drode defective in this way, or withholding to fool him? He dared not touch their minds to determine the truth or falsity of his suspicions; he feared they would sense his questing, and Rein had stated that she hated Nartan. He worried about revealing his true self.

Derek began to eat. He became obsessed with ingesting the food, which was delicious, in contrast to the sour green wine.

"Tran, this is excellent," Madella praised her son. "Your recipe?"

"Yes, Mother," Tran smiled. "I'm glad you like it."

"Mm-hmm," she replied through a mouthful, nodding. She stared at her daughter and swallowed.

"Daehl! Slow down! We have a guest. Don't eat in your regular slovenly manner."

Derek started, and he was the one who slowed down because he sensed that, although the comment had been directed to Daehl, it was meant for him. Daehl was a perfectly polite diner. She looked at her mother with hurt and angry eyes. "I am not slovenly," she said flatly.

Tran and Madella again exchanged looks. Madella sighed.

"So, Falon, what news have you of Roos?" Tran asked pleasantly enough.

On full alert now, Derek determined dinner had gone wrong somehow. He was having a hard time following the dynamics. Some agenda, or agendas, were at work here, unknown to him, and this reinforced in him the need for secrecy about his identity. What would they do if they found out they had a Son of Roos in their possession?

"The drode of Roos buy many things from my family. We do a decent trade with them. The Castle, too, buys from us. They're good custom."

"Yes, but have you heard?" Tran leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. His mother did not correct him or even seem to notice.

Tran rested his fingertips together under his chin and stared at Derek over them.

"Heard?" Derek affected curiosity.

"Roos was overrun, dear boy," Madella broke in, "by cave-something... what are they called, Tran?"

"Caveholders, Mother. Caveholders took Roos."

"Took Roos? What do you mean?" Derek feigned surprise.

"I mean took it by force," Tran replied in a sharp tone, holding Derek's eyes with his own.

"Who are these Caveholders that they use force?" Derek asked.

"Drode who lived in the Marden Mountains. Do you know of them?" Madella queried slyly. She was no good at hiding her suspicions.

"I don't. Do they need smithyworks?"

Madella paused, then chuckled and glanced at Tran, who sat back and picked up his fork.

"I'm sure they do. We've traded with them," Madella said, revealing her knowledge, though she had pretended not to know the name they were called. She did not seem to realize her slip.

Such complicated and suspicious drodes are this mother and son, Derek thought to himself. He asked, "How are they to deal with?"

"Oh, fine, but since you've been trading with Roos, perhaps you won't want to trade with the Caveholders?" Madella pried again.

"Business is business. If they make the products we need, and we have goods they desire, I don't foresee any problems. I would prefer to be able to trade with my old customers as well as new ones. Do you know where the citifolk went?"

"Scattered, I imagine. Perhaps the Cintercorpse killed them."

A sudden blast of heat seared his bowels. Had she burned the Roosians as they had escaped Kent's purge of the Castle, or made her corpses chase them down? She admitted knowing the Caveholders. Did Kent ask her to watch the back door and mop up the escapees? But no, Derek had not smelled that peculiar odor as he exited the cliff wall, and as far as he knew, Kent had no knowledge of the rear exit.

"They're fair," Tran said, and a moment passed before Derek understood he was talking of trade with Caveholders, "unlike the city dwellers."

"What do you know of the Royal Families, Falon?" Madella asked.

"They're dead." Derek tried to sound factual and unconcerned. He turned the conversation back to the other subject. "Tran, were the Roosians unfair with you?"

"Let's us say they didn't seem glad to trade with us."

Derek could understand why.

"I'm afraid Tran takes this personally. Rumors tell they sided with the Cavehholders and will be re-throned," Madella stated.

Clearly several conversations going on now.

"I'm sorry?"

"Try to keep up dear boy; you are almost as dim as Daehl." She paused and scowled for a moment. Daehl did not even look up from her meal. "The Royal Heirs, of course."

"Good for them, but I thought they were all dead."

"As did we," Madella said. She glanced at Tran, who was refilling his glass. He refilled hers, too.

Derek was now thoroughly confused.

"Daehl, please!" Madella suddenly barked.

"What now?"

"The noises you make. Can't you consume your meal with your mouth closed?"

"My lips stay together when I eat!"

"Stop shouting!" Madella shouted.

"You first!" Daehl yelled.

"Young lady, I am sick and tired of your insolence."

Madella growled in a new tone. Derek sat still, as did Tran. Daehl stared at her mother, who glared back. Daehl hadn't issued a sound while she had been eating. Madella was engineering a scene.

"Mother, I am sick and tired of your insolence, too," Daehl said with quiet anger. She threw her napkin on the table and as she stood, the chair fell back. The noise of the wood hitting the floor stunned all four of them.

"Pick that up," Madella hissed in a low and ominous voice.

Daehl bent to raise the seat upright, then turned to leave.

"We'll talk about your attitude later, Daehl. You've embarrassed yourself in front of our guest."

Daehl walked out of the hall.

"I'm sorry, Falon." Madella picked up a cloth and wiped her lips. "She has such a temper. We try to help, but, well, everything we say makes her angry! She's just like her father."

"She tends to explode," Tran explained.

Daehl's reaction hadn't seemed so sudden to Derek, only the result of ongoing torment.

"Not like Tran, here," Madella nodded at her son.

"Mother," Tran smiled back.

Derek shuddered, and tried to pretend he was yawning. He covered his mouth with his hand.

"I'm sure you're tired. Tran, help Falon get to the doors, and find Rein," she ordered.

Tran began to rise, but he wasn't eager.

"There isn't any need, Tran." Derek didn't want assistance from Tran, and wanted him no closer. "I must learn to manage this chair better. Thank you so much for it, Madella, and for the lovely dinner. Tran, your recipes are delicious. This has been quite a pleasant evening," he lied, and he managed a wide and clumsy turn away from the table. He wheeled himself to the exit, and as he neared, Rein opened it for him.

After the door closed, Madella turned toward her son. They were being served dessert.

"I could swear this boy and the girl he was traveling with..."

"I, too Mother. The messenger described them as the Heirs."

"This Falon exhibits no special skills. He's a smithy, not Nartan."

"Unless he is lying to us, or another couple was in the woods?"

"Apparently there was. I know the stink of Nartan. This child is not a practitioner. We took the wrong one."

"Were the Nartans nearby, and did the stupid Cintercorpse make a mistake?"

"I suppose," Madella sighed.

One of the drode who were clearing off the table dropped a plate, which clattered on the floor, and rolled around and around on its edges. The servants reacted with complete stillness.

Madella flicked her fingers at the clumsy servant. Flame sprouted and consumed her. At first she screamed but Madella's arm jerked, closing the throat, and silencing the horrible utterance. The burning was slow and the smell of roast meat and fat accompanied the writhing. Madella and Tran watched in silence. Tran showed no expression. Madella's lip curled up in disgust.

"Dinner theatre, Mother?" Tran finally murmured.

"Remove it," Madella demanded, and the servants removed the smoking body of their friend and family member in silence as the cleaning buckets and rags were brought forth.
XI

"How did dinner go?"

"I'm not sure. I'm confused," Derek answered.

"Still alive and," Rein looked him over, "unscorched. Daehl ran out. Was Madella picking her over again?"

"Like a scavenger."

The gnarled man sighed.

"Daehl didn't do any of the things her mother accused her of."

"I know. She's a good girl."

"Why doesn't the woman realize this?"

"She does. She hates it. Daehl's goodness makes her mother's wickedness all the more apparent."

"So the abuse is intentional?"

"Oh, yes. Madella likes to bate her into anger, and holds her loss of control against her. Tran and Madella will attempt to convince you to judge Daehl the way they do. They try to make her look bad so they don't seem as terrible in comparison. Don't be fooled. "

"Yes, they explained to me that Daehl displays sudden anger."

"They used to say the same about me, too. I took their abuse and took it until I'd lose my temper, and then they'd pick on me for my anger. They don't acknowledge their culpability and they never, ever, change their tactics."

"Why should they when they work so well for them?"

"And against us."

They entered Derek's quarters and Rein let Derek wheel into the smallroom to relieve himself.

"It's nice to be able to take care of this by myself," Derek called out.

"You haven't had much privacy of late. With the new wheels you can explore the hold on your own."

"Daehl s brave to stand up to her mother," Derek said.

"She's a lot like her father." Rein smiled.

Derek struggled to turn the chair around and resorted to backing out. He pushed over to the bed where Rein helped him lift himself and arranged the sheets.

"Why doesn't he stick up for her?"

"He did."

"What happened?"

"One day Madella got tired of him."

"And..."

"And she burned me."

Leigh and Richard strolled in a relaxed manner around the perimeter of the upper courtyard again. The view of the parkland, the city, the fields, and the Marden Mountains beyond was magnificent.

"I perceive a lesson in this, Richard," Leigh murmured aloud.

"What?" Richard asked, equally as quiet.

"After we take back the Kingdom, we should make certain the usurpers aren't allowed to talk to each other. They're sure to plan just as we are."

"Or we must be careful to always thwart their designs."

Both boys smiled.

Leigh massaged his stump. Everything below the elbow had been removed.

"How's the arm, Leigh?"

"What arm? No, I'm fine, Richard. Just a little achy in the cold."

Their eternal guards stood at the entrance to the Castle, under the eaves. Twice a week the boys were allowed to pace the courtyard, located high up near their separate quarters, into which they had been imprisoned. They each had two guards, all silent and watchful, armed with the handguns and protected by the superior vests taken from the dead. They did not try to listen, though Leigh and Richard did not speak while they were being escorted. Only in the open did the two quietly make their plans.

"How're the drawings coming, Richard?"

"Well. Besides the drawing I made in Cavehold, I drew the tortures we witnessed. I can barely stand to look; the picture's powerful and accurately shows the acts, but also our abhorrence. The parchment makes them much more than simple pictures. The images project the emotions we experienced as we witnessed the activities."

"Good that the materials are in your hands, then."

"One picture portrays the time Kent told us we were to be under guard, in his office in Cavehold, remember? That's no way to treat the Heirs, it seems to say, and asks, what motivates this? Our confusion comes through. Also I drew Paige's trip to the library to read Hilaire's diary. The revelations seem amplified by the skern's manipulations, even on the parchment. I wish you could experience them, Leigh. The feelings they evoke are complex and hard to describe. I'm working on a portrait of Derek's trip to Roos now."

"They're a series then?"

"Yes. A history. The first will be Ducar retrieving us at Vagn's. I haven't drawn that one yet. The second is our arrival at Cavehold. They'll likely convey our ignorance. The rest show key points at which we experience complications: your fight, Derek's revelations, Kent's imprisonment of us, the battle and its wasteful injustice, the Roosians escape, and our decisions. I'll attempt to create a picture of what I imagine the Kindgom should be like when we sit on the Thrones."

"It sounds perfect, Richard."

"I just draw, Leigh. Feelings come through my gift so clearly, even those I didn't realize I had, and yours, Derek's, and Paige's. It's a skillful miracle, and powerful, and a little scary."

"I think the parchment reveals intentions. You intend to provoke reactions against the bad things we experienced. We are the witness and you, the interpreter. Have you shown anyone the drawings?"

"No, but I thought I would try them out on Ducar. His reaction should tell me if they're true."

"Gently, we've already disturbed him too much. Is he keeping you informed?"

"Yes, he visits occassionally. He and Dahlrah are busy identifying those of usurper ideology so they can be taken quickly and quietly when the time comes. There aren't many usurpian leaders. The majority are dupes."

"Like us, and most of the Caveholders."

"Trapped."

"Not for long."

They gazed down at the cities. The invaders had moved into the various homes dug into the ground and visible as regular mounds. They reoccupied the garrads they had abandoned in joining Kent, and those belonging to others as well. Some issues would arise as the Roosians returned, but if the boys were skillful enough, welcome should overcome strife.

Richard responded verbally to these mental musings. "Once the pictures are shared, sympathies will change and unities grow. They were all duped. The returning families will forgive them and throw grand reunions."

"The integration may not be seemless."

"Wait until you view the drawings. It'll be more seamless than you can now imagine."

"Hmm. Speaking of returning families, have you been able to find Paige and Derek?"

"No. Something's wrong. I hope they're either injured or ill and not dead."

"If they'd died, the loss would ache like..." Leigh looked down and rubbed the shrinking muscles of his upper arm again "...an amputation."

"Oh, Leigh."

Leigh shook himself. "You're right, Richard. Something is wrong."

They continued to circle the courtyard under the watchful gaze of their guards. The air had warmed somewhat from the intense chill, causing a light snow to dust the flagstones, and their heads and shoulders.

"I've been to the Traveler library, Leigh."

"The what?"

"The Castle archives have a storage area where terran artifacts are kept. A soldier found them and Ducar took me to see. Their transport vessel is there, some parts of it, I mean. Crypts and personal effects, too. I brought a few books back to the chamber. My Traveler is insufficient for a thorough understanding, but one of them seems to enumerate their laws, one is myths and maybe history and moral teachings, and another appears to list and describe disorders of the mind. They're called the Universal Fundamental Penal Codes, The Holy Bible, and the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual XXVIII."

"They have disorders of the mind. Imagine that." Leigh scoffed.

Richard barked out a laugh.

"What are you going to do with these things, Richard?"

"I have them in a locked cupboard. I don't think we need any more Traveler influence on our world, do you?"

"No, we don't. Keep them out of view. Terran, what does this mean?"

"A name they called themselves. Their planet was "Earth", or "terra", which I think also means soil. They named themselves "earthmen", "astronauts", "spacers", "deputies", and "terrans"."

They were speaking Traveler now, since these words didn't translate into Enistian or Rokeen.

"The language we call Traveler is "Galactic Standard" to them. The planet's drode spoke other languages as well, many in fact, and eventually they migrated to more than one planet. From what I can tell, they don't project and share their feelings. They certainly don't hear speech in one another's brains."

"No empathy? They developed many languages because they couldn't feel each other, planetwide, in their hearts and minds?"

"That's seems to be the situation."

"So. Their inability is what they infected us with," Leigh reasoned.

"I came to that conclusion, too." They were silent for many paces, wondering at this revelation.

"Leigh, have you noticed when you're searching for Paige and Derek, the dark mind out there, similar to Kent's, but even more capable?"

"Yes. Powerful, and not at all trained in The Nartan Way. Also, she isn't able to detect my essence probing her."

"No, she doesn't sense me either," Richard agreed, "which is to our advantage. The usurpians are similar, but some still retain enough of their Nartan heritage to feel and block mental intrusions. The extent of their ability seems to depend on the depth of their training, probably by a parent, and their philosophical background. The more they think as Travelers, the less empathic they are. Those who think like Enistians are empathic to varying degrees. Being educated in Nartan sharpens their empathy. The dark one's mind is the most Traveler and the least exposed to The Way I have ever touched."

"The ultimate enemy. Has it occurred to you that Nartan can monitor Traveler spawn remotely, without being discovered doing so," Leigh reasoned.

"Yes. It's a weakness we can exploit. Hopefully, drode who think like Enistians, and those well trained, will turn easily to our leadership when we reveal these truths. Until we release the drawings and judge the responses, though, we can't know for sure."

"When we make the differences obvious, bitterness and prejudice will erupt from both sides."

"I've been thinking about how to address that inevitable reaction." Richard paused in thought. "The Way doesn't allow for bigotry, but drode will be drode. Didn't we agree we wanted to strengthen Nartan teachings?"

"I would impose them if I could. The Traveler pollution has grievously harmed us."

"Imposition isn't allowed," Richard chastised Leigh. "You know The Nartan Way must be embraced willingly. The heritage isn't entirely diluted, our history can be retold and this current trial examined. Drode's desire for moral certainty, the end to violence and enmity, and the return to peace and prosperity—like it was before the Travelers crash landed here—is strong, and we'll strengthen those desires even more. Possibly even override the anger and hurt this way."

"Perhaps..." Leigh frowned and became quiet.

"What?"

"Nartan directs us to explore our environs, to learn everything we're able, and to integrate our experiences into our behavior and thoughts. Traveler is part of our environment, whether we like it or not. The appropriate action is to study and explore the various ways the alien influence diluted ours and created problems, and what our response should be, according to the teachings. Who knows, maybe we'll learn something valuable from these books you found, even if only how to keep this from happening again."

"I don't think I'm qualified," Richard admitted. "We should turn the Traveler artifacts over to someone, or others, who are perfectly grounded in the philosophy, so it won't harm them. Let them advise us on how to introduce the new teachings to Enistians."

"Vagn, maybe?"

"Can we count on Vagn anymore? I suspect he wants us to procede on our own."

"We'll find someone, and the problem will resolve."

"Anyway, his gift to me helps us to portray these lessons. This is the first step."

"We have the parchment, and you, Richard, the Artist."

"We've become the Keepers of The Nartan Way, Leigh. Don't you think that our childhood, alone in the forest with Vagn, and Vagn's teachings, led us to this very moment? The return of the Heirs to the Thrones will reintroduce The Way to the Kingdom."

"What a cunning old drode. I still wonder where he went and why he doesn't touch our minds anymore."

"He played his role, Leigh. We can proceed without him."

"I don't want to."

"I miss him, too."

As they passed them this time, the guards strode forward and reached out. One each flanked Richard's sides and grabbed his arms above the middle joints, putting pressure on his cords. To Leigh they did the same, though the guard at Leigh's right side pinched his neck, since he had learned the nerves in the end of Leigh's amputation were impossible to find, and anyway, they had been numbed. These two pairs of guards were overly impressed with themselves and liked to manhandle the Heirs, unlike the other minders. Several rotated the duty of oppressing the young Heirs. Richard and Leigh once again meekly endured the uncomfortable march to their separate quarters, where they were imprisoned.

Leigh sat on the edge of the soft bed in what was a comfortably appointed chamber, unconsciously rubbing his stump. He thought about his missing part, as he often did.

The surgeons had done a fine job. The stub didn't hurt because it had been numbed, though the atrophying muscles further up tended to spasm.

Advanced medical care was one beneficial introduction the Travelers made to Enistan. They brought a few good things, but these did not outweigh the bad mentality infecting the populace. Though they had not genetically intermingled, the survivors had learned Enistian while drode embraced Traveler, or rather, 'Galactic Standard'. The disparate philosophies had met, fought, and spawned offspring. Kent, the usurpians, and the dark mind Leigh and Richard perceived somewhere out there on their world were the worst results.

Leigh leaned forward and rested his chest on his legs to stretch his back. His arms hung down. Suddenly, he was simultaneously in Richard's room looking at Richard's drawings, while Richard stared through Leigh's eyes at Leigh's boots. Instant aches bloomed in both heads.

This is new, Leigh commented into Richard's mind. I can see exactly what you are seeing, as well as my own feet.

I'm looking at your boots, Leigh. It's disorienting.

The pictures are good, Richard. Powerful.

It's the parchment.

It's the Artist.

Okay, you've convinced me. I'm a genius. This new skill is making me ache. Get out of my eyes and I'll leave yours, huh?

So both Leigh and Richard extracted themselves from the novel pathways which had allowed them to see what each other saw, as well as their own views.

This had happened as spontaneously, as when they had learned to speak into one another's minds. Now, as then, they would have to practice to gain control of this new ability, and for their brains to become accustomed to it.

Remember when we were younger and Vagn first taught us to recognize each others' feelings, and decipher them from our own? How tired it made us? We were so little.

Yes, I do! We took a long time to learn to differentiate ours from one anothers' and separate and recognize which emotion belonged to whom. The first time we spoke into each others' minds, I was so confused. We taught Derek, and Derek showed Paige, Richard thought to Leigh.

No, you misremember. Derek and you did it first, and then you two showed both of us, Leigh said.

Is that right? I don't even remember now.

Leigh! Richard! It was Derek!

Derek! Richard and Leigh began to shout together joyously, though silently.

Where are you? Richard shouted into Derek's mind.

What's happened to you? Leigh yelled also.

Stop shouting! Derek replied.

Sorry.

Sorry, Derek.

We're so glad you're here with us. What's happened to you? Richard repeated Leigh's question.

I'm trapped in a malthauma's garrad.

We've sensed a dark mind, Derek, Leigh thought.

You have no idea how dark this mind is. Derek's emotions flowed, making them anxious and frightened.

How were you trapped? Can we help?

Too long a story. Are you able to come and get me?

No, Derek, we're still prisoners here, Leigh responded, filled with regret.

For how much longer?

There's no telling. Considering your predicament, I'd better work faster, thought Richard while picking up his implements.

How long can you hold out? Leigh wondered.

As long as it takes.

Where's Paige, Derek? Richard asked.

She's not with you? She's not with me!

We don't have her!

I can't reach her!

She won't answer! Leigh and Richard cried.

Derek took a few seconds to calm down, and then he spoke sensibly. She can't be dead. We'd know.

Yes, we would, but she must be in some trouble. Richard worried.

This is horrifying. I can't stand it. Derek, we'll work as fast as we can to get loose and come to free you, Leigh thought with special urging for Richard, as if Richard needed that.

I'm managing all right. It took a while to understand, but this malthauma and her son, Tran, can't sense me or my emotions, Derek explained.

Like Kent, Richard said.

And the usurpians, Leigh agreed.

First I became injured, and recovery took my entire mind. When I could think about it, I grew afraid they would read my intentions, but since they can't sense us in their minds, we can speak freely. If I don't answer you it'll be because I'm in her presence, or that of the son's, and I'll be feigning buffoonery for disguise. The deception requires effort. I've made up a complete fiction for myself.

That's smart.

It takes concentration.

We understand. How were you hurt?

So Derek allowed Richard and Leigh admittance to his memories: the stench and terror, the fight with Paige, the bit he remembered of the terrifying passage to the household of the malthauma, his recovery with Rein, and lastly, the dismal dinner. When the visions ceased, they all found themselves crying.

Oh, Derek, thought Leigh, I'm crippled too.

Derek, while we're in contact with you, let me show you my drawings. We're now connected by sight. Help me, Leigh.

When they were young and clumsy, Vagn had reached into their brains and manipulated those pathways which allowed them to share one another's feelings. He taught them to detect the differences in an individual's thought patterns for identification, and he also taught them how to shut each other out whenever they wanted to. Much later, Richard and Derek spontaneously learned to speak into each others' minds, and they shared the capability with Leigh, Paige, and Vagn in the same manner. Now Leigh and Richard reached into Derek's mind and manipulated new pathways in him. Derek was amazed to view the pictures Richard looked at. They also shared their headache with him.

Beautiful! They're sure to work. When did this remote viewing thing start?

Just now. This is our latest skill.

It's useful. I'll show you Madella and Tran the next time I'm with them so you'll be able to visually identify our new enemy.

So many enemies, Leigh muttered mentally. Kent, the usurpians, Madella, Tran. Will it ever end?

When we're together again, I expect, and can feel and speak and see as one. Drodes! Derek exclaimed. What a headache!

Us, too. Keep reaching out for Paige, Derek. I'm going to work on these pictures. The quicker they're displayed, and we engage with the viewers regarding their reactions, the sooner we'll have you back, thought Richard, and he gently shut his brothers out.

Richard began to stroke in bold earnest, with a deliberate sense of purpose, across the pages of the parchment.

Derek, when you're in trouble, let us help you, Leigh thought.

I will if I can. I enjoyed sharing with you two again.

Take care, Derek.

Stay well, Leigh.

They reluctantly shut their minds to each other and were then alone with their own thoughts.

Two sornrises later, Richard had finished his series of drawings. He sent word through his guard that he desired an audience with Ducar.

Later in the morning, when he entered the luxurious chamber that was Richard's prison, the boy-man was standing with sheaves of parchment in his arms, and Ducar immediately realized what Richard wanted. He also briefly pondered the thought that his opinion of Richard had evolved. Perhaps this was due to his own developing comprehension, or maybe it was a result of the Heir's recently gained experience.

The Warmaster viewed the drawings, and sat for a good long time staring at nothing.

"Well, I know what they've done for me," he said, "but we need to test them on someone else." He stood up.

Ducar knew the young men's current guardians were completely loyal to Kent, or at least to Kent's false story, and were ignorant of the ruse the Heirs had discovered. He had the guards come in and shut the door. This was an unusual procedure, but Ducar was their superior, so they obeyed and did not question.

To increase the impact, Richard had Ducar hold the drawings and show them to his soldiers. Ducar and Richard learned that this was simply not necessary; strong was drode reaction to the miraculous parchment, and the scenes so masterfully depicted thereon. One by one, Ducar revealed each picture to the guards' curious eyes. Their demeanors changed from competent soldiers to questioning men. They began to feel foolish and became angry by the end of the presentation. The pictures told the story of how they had been duped, who had fooled them, and why. Immediately Ducar had them swear an oath of fealty to Richard and Leigh, and to no others, and conveyed to them the importance of pretending nothing had changed.

"Pretend," he commanded the soldiers, "as Kent pretended to you, for those who wish to fool us always fall for their own tricks, as long as we don't make them suspicious by changing our behavior. Kent thinks he's smarter than all of us. He'll never suspect we've taken the initiative."

He told the men Dahlrah had also sworn her allegiance to the Heirs, which was technically untrue, but practical nonetheless, and said that she could speak for Ducar when necessary. Ducar had made Dahlrahkemriarj his second-in-command. A surreptitious rebellion was forming in support of the Heirs, and in defiance of Kent and the usurpers. The stunned guards were then ordered back to their posts outside the chamber doors.

"We're on our way to success," Ducar said to Richard. "Sha'an, are you pleased?"

"Ducar, please, call me Richard like you always have."

"No more. You are Sha'an," the word was a nickname for Kings and Queens which literally meant 'Conscience' in Rokeen. "You, Leigh, Derek, and Paige are my Sha'ans now, for the time being, only in private, though in public as well after these pictures are shown."

Ducar gathered the rolled parchments, bowed low to his Sha'an, and left.

Such is the nature of armies that it took only four passings of the sorns to surrepticiously march every soldier past the drawings, and thus all of their minds were changed. Even though they mourned and were angered over their own foolishness and against those who had fooled them, each warrior carried on as before. The Caveholders who had taken up residence in the cities were also shown the pictures, and then they, too, changed.
XII

Within the Communal Conscience, in the realm they had carved out for themselves and some others of their kind, Vagn and Kwyan shared their feelings and thoughts.

How fabulous it will be after they pass on into our realm! Kwyan mused.

They'll be much more capable than we were when we died. They'll live long on Enistan still, and develop increased skills to bring to this Realm. They'll do better than we did, Vagn replied.

After you showed them how to feel one another's feelings, they quickly learned to speak into minds, and taught you! And now they observe through each other's eyes! They're brighter than we ever were. Kwyan admitted.

They're still so young. They have time to learn more.

I'm a bit jealous of them!

I can tell! But as you know, they increase us, too, Vagn admonished unnecessarily.

Kwyan agreed. Yes, I suspected they would when I made you resurrect that deceased wizard's body—before the overthrow was just a smidgen of a twinkle of a piece of a thought in usurper minds—and wait for Ducar to bring the survivors to you in the forest.

You would take credit, you manipulative thing.

Of course! You should too. We saved them, Vagn, you and me.

And helped them to become... what?

Better than us, is what!

Teachers' dreams, or nightmares, though they are Nartan and understand the rules of power, unlike some, and are least likely to abuse.

The dark minds perceive only the physical world. Their ability is nonexistent, their training absent. The Traveler mentality has been so destructive and pervasive...

Yet necessary for our evolution. This challenge to be overcome...

...that those infected cannot perceive what is to come, and to prepare, as we did and continue to do.

...has made us better, more capable. This new ability! Already I begin to see through the eyes of others previously unknown to us, on different planets, in different times, with other lives and challenges.

But we're not finished here, Vagn. The children must be together. Once reunited, they'll be able to show Enistians the way to our Realm.

Why do we still block Paige from the others, Kwyan? I'm so heartbroken for her, and we're endangering her.

She must retrieve the Caller. She cannot be tempted to turn back to help her brothers. Miracles have to return to Enistan in tandem with this revival of empathies, because the synergism will increase their effects exponentially. Do you not sense the connection? The more miracles they're able to perform, the better thaumas they'll be, causing the minds of Enistians to become receptive of possibilities they never before considered. They can develop these further capabilities and bring them to this Realm. They'll evolve, and when they die and pass over to us, the Realm of Conscience shall be better for their being here, increased by them.

Of course. You're too wise. Your foresight is unparalleled. Oh! Except by me!

I did make you available to train them from childhood. How you rebelled about that!

Yes! Yes! Yes! You're magnificent! Vagn teased. Now go explore the visions of the alien peoples whose eyes we seem to be able to look through now; it's amazing how quickly a new ability manifests. Otherwise, help me to manage the children. They must defeat that hag Madella and her beast of a son Tran, and gain control of Kingdom Roos, or none of our manipulations shall matter.

They'll do it! We'll succeed! And they're no longer children, Vagn; they are Sha'ans!

They are, and always will be, children to me. I love them so very much.

Yes, son, I know the feeling.
XIII

Paige still followed the thief's trail. She had bundled her head and body in layers of tightly woven, luculian sap-impregnated cloth several passings ago. They hiked up a mountain within a long range. Doshan had turned to nar. In the distance, thick clouds covered the pinacle. The frozen season of re was closing in.

Moonflight amused herself by playing with her own clouding breath as Paige led her. Frost lay on the ground around them, and ice in the shady, wet areas protected from the sornlight by luculian trunks and rocks. Halfway between themselves and a serious snow storm threatening the upper portion of the peak, the thief and Chaldiron struggled. They, too, were tired, but also determined to set the pace.

Paige removed her cloak, draping it across the brind, and squatted beside a luculian stump. She dug away the frost and hard soil, cut the root, and laboriously slickered them both. Immediately the sap halted the chill and drying air. She replaced the cloak around her, remounted, and adjusted it so the material tented and retained some of the brind's heat along with her own.

Paige didn't rush Moonflight. They climbed at the animal's pace. Her powerful, muscled hindquarters pushed off the rocky mountain soil. Occasionally she slipped on an icy patch, a turned rock, or some scree. They had both become hard and fit during the harsh passings of this chase, but were hungry and wearing down. They maintained a steady pace with little thought, conserving energy as best as they were able. Paige always stayed in either visual range or essense contact with her quarry.

Paige stalked one passing behind him. The mountain here was bare but for rocky outcroppings, sandy rockfalls, and luculian stumps where the roots managed to get a roothold. When she lost sight of him, she tracked his essence, judged his pace, and determined his direction by detecting his, the Caller's, and Chaldiron's essences in the terrain around her. He had early on learned the value of blocking her from entering his mind, but he had trouble maintaining the masking of what, to her, was a tangible trail; he hadn't the ability to mask evidence of the bag's or Chaldiron's presence. This skill escaped him.

Through the next two passings they hiked up into an area where luculian didn't grow. The fierce storm hit then, and the wind swirled around them, sapping their warmth and moisture, chapping lips, faces, ears, hands. As they traveled higher through the rocky, frigid region, the snow began to fall in steady, thick swirls, turning everything white.

The gusting wind diffused the essences. Paige suspected his plan was to put some distance between them using this elevation's weather, but this would backfire if exposure killed both drode. At any rate, he'd chosen the best pass to the coast, though the risk of traveling this season was enormous.

Paige took a little time to bleed some roots. She refilled two empty bags with luculian sap for slickering and topped the others off. She also filled the water sacks with snow and secured them close to Moonflight's clothing under the cloak to melt it.

As they wandered through and around obstacles, Paige reached out with her feelings and continued to pick out the essences of the thief's passing. Because of wind flurries, her searching was a hit-and-miss approach, inaccurate and discouraging. At regular, but infrequent intervals, she pulled two roshnar from her cloak's inner pockets and shared the mealy root with Moonflight. The vegetation wouldn't spoil as long as the air remained this cold, and her body heat warmed them enough to keep the food edible. The root gave them quick energy which lasted a while, but the nature of the pulpy vegetable made their bellies uncomfortable. Roshnar also did not provide adequate nutrition either, and the gnawing need for nutrients was ever present. Even if they ate her entire store of the root, their needs still would not have been met, so Paige parsed them out stingily.

Again, Paige dismounted and hiked, thinking this should be more comfortable for both of them, except they wouldn't benefit from the combined heat under the cloak.

For the first time, her empathy stumbled. Lost in the still, white world, with none of the essences to follow, and no visual sighting, she lost the thief's trail for the longest while. She walked on, scanning for his thoughts and emotions, or physical sign of his direction, and for Chaldiron or the bag's essences.

All appeared white and bright. The reflected light scalded her eyes, and she closed them, and became lost in the darkness of her mind, except for the red glow coming through her lids. The crimson luminescence urged her to look again at the monotone landscape. They were far up the mountainside now.

Anxiety welled in her. She had almost never been alone, so she concentrated on Moonflight. The brind snickered and rubbed her warm, moist nose against the side of her bond's face, smearing sap; she sensed her bond's confusion. Paige wrapped the ropes tightly about her wrist and stumbled along. She sunk in the powder up to her knees. The struggle to stay upright and continue forward didn't stop the panic from gaining a foothold inside her.

She resisted. It's only snow and the sky, she repeated to herself, just snow and sky. The planet is underneath, and the sorns pass overhead, like always.

Straining to discern something, anything, loom out of the whiteness to guide her, she struggled on, fighting primitive impulses. Your feet are on the soil, you are moving forward. The thief and the Caller are up ahead, and you want to get Chaldiron back for Derek, don't you? No, she thought after a pause, don't ask questions. Think decisively. You will retrieve Chaldiron for Derek.

Paige directed Moonflight to go ahead of her and cut a path through the snow. The brind expressed pleasure at being able to help the weaker animal.

The storm howled and the wind sucked at them. The light had dimmed, signifying first dusk. Riding Moonflight again, their heat mingled and gathered under her cloak. Paige's desire to dig in with her bond and wait in a warm, white womb for the storm to pass nagged at her and increased her unease until, for a moment, the wind calmed and the flurries settled and she saw the thief standing a short way ahead of them.

They had caught up with him. He must have slowed.

Did he want her on his trail? Had he waited for her to catch him, or was he staying in front to lead her—where? Why? These thoughts careened unbidden. Of course he would not let her into his mind to find out, though she probed.

He and Derek's brind walked on the ledge atop a sheer drop, barely visible in the reflected light. The crevice sheered down abruptly to his and Chaldiron's right side, plunging into darkness. The steep edge fell away beside Paige and Moonflight, too, barely a stride away! As the wind pushed a sheef of powder off the cliff top above them, dusting them with wet coldness, she dismounted with care between the sheer rock wall on their left and Moonflight. Gluing her focus to the spot where he'd been, she came upon it slowly, making sure with her boots and eyes that she didn't near the precipice. Moonflight followed cautiously, sliding her hard toes along the stone, under the powder. Paige walked to where she estimated she'd seen him, and stood there as he had. His essence was strong in the cold rock beneath her, in the fallen snow, and the chill air all around her.

She paused motionless, studying, waiting, until the thief's form appeared somewhat to her left. She realized she was standing on the edge of the drop which had turned in his direction. She followed, hugging the vertical stone, being careful of the ice, and fighting the wind now chuffing about, and between her and the cliff wall. It seemed to want her to find out how long the fall would be. It pushed and sucked at her body. Dear, steady Moonflight walked behind Paige, blocking some of the gusts, and kept the ropes taught between herself and her bond.

The ledge widened gradually, spanning the ridges of a pass until they took their leave of the cleft and entered a high valley. Had the thief saved her from falling off the trail by making her aware of the danger? Had he wanted her to follow him, or was he Nartan enough, and therefore unable, to allow her to plunge to her death were he able to stop that without endangering himself? What she had experienced of his thoughts before he'd begun blocking her did not seem fully Nartan. Mature, disciplined, and, for the most part, untrained, were the feelings she had gotten from his mind early on. Still, enough care existed in him to make him worry about her safety and her life.

Hunger, fatigue, confusion, and pain took their deep toll on the pairbond. Paige consoled herself that these affected their quarry as well. She continued to track him; he had somehow gotten farther ahead of her again. He had shown a familiarity with this trail. Her awareness seemed dulled, and she made her way as automatically as possible, given the circumstances, trying to conserve strength. Either he had learned how to confuse her mind, or she was giving up to grief and exhaustion, perhaps both. She expended a little precious energy to block him from her, but this changed nothing, and she stopped expanding her self.

A sharp, budding tension in her belly drew her up. There he stood again, watching, from not far away. What game was this? She took a few more steps toward him and stopped. He didn't move. His mouth and face stretched as he shouted, but she heard no sound. Moonflight had balked and held Paige back by tension. Paige shook off her bond's anxiety and pulled on the ropes, stepping ahead anyway.

Moonflight rushed forward suddently and knocked her down. The beast skidded, thrashing, and tried to stop. The ice that had cracked beneath the thief's feet, warning him, gave way under the brind, and her heavy body crashed through. Tiny bergs bobbed in the frigid water above her submerged bulk. No sound of the little waves lapping the edges of the crack reached Paige's straining ears, because the wind roared loudly around her.

As she was being pulled toward the icy liquid, Paige unwound the lines from her hand, and saw them slip away. Before and below her Moonflight thrashed, already almost dead. She hooked her fore feet over the ice edge, cracking it, again and again. Paige had to back up, though she cried encouragement to her bond, and joined Moonflight's efforts within the brind's terrified mind, trying to strengthen her.

Paige glanced up. He was watching. Calm fell over her. She looked at the brind. Momentum had dragged her bond further under the hard ice, but Moonflight fought on, though feebly, still trying to break through, to reach solid ground. After only moments of a seeming eternity, Paige watched helplessly as Moonflight's last breath bubbled up to be trapped under the frozen layer until the thaw of shre.

Paige scanned the area again, but did not spot the thief. She stared back down into the hole Moonflight's body had made when it crashed through. She was stunned. Had he tried to warn her, or had he led them here for this purpose, to slow her down? She lost her ability to concentrate. Reason escaped her.

Memories rushed into Paige, overwhelming her. Her acute sorrow took her back to the time she lost her parents. She remembered. They'd stayed behind while she was taken away by strangers. She'd been confused and too young to comprehend what was happening.

She recalled that first escape, in terror and the absence of familial empathy, to the gentle, knowing Vagn. She visualized his teachings as if experiencing them again. Time was nothing. He had always guided her toward the end of retaking Roos, without her knowledge or consent. He had sent her on this journey, and then abandoned her.

Other thoughts, of Kent, made her furious; she had been ill used and betrayed.

She remembered the Vest who'd stayed on and died so their loved ones, friends, leaders, and the thief she now chased, could flee. She had killed and maimed some of them. The feelings, the odors, and the images of her arcing mace smashing in to tender flesh and bone, not strong enough to resist, haunted her.

She had done nothing to stop Kent's war, could do nothing until the Caveholders began to doubt, until the realization of Kent's ill use of them took hold. Before then, she and her brothers risked putting themselves in danger by revealing their lack of belief.

She'd run from that fight, and had caused Derek's violation. Her hand had injured him. Then she'd abandoned him as well. Was he now dead, like Moonflight, who had suffocated in the icy water, her life's energy sucked from her by the cold as Derek's might have been by possession?

Paige screamed violently. She fell onto her knees and writhed with the agony of these memories. Her parents, Vagn, brave Derek and loyal Moonflight—all lost. First, Kent's betrayal, and now this stranger leading her on this endless chase—for what? This was too much, too soon, and she was young and inexperienced. Everything had gone wrong. She had failed and run away.

She leaned further over the opening. As it filled with snowflakes and ice chunks, she imagined going under toward Moonflight, to be found by a stranger at thaw. Dying would only take a few moments. She didn't believe she contained the resolve her bond had had to live, and no one was available to help her strengthen that determination.

Before she was able to think again, she had crawled down the bank. The ice and snow crowded in. The portal to oblivion was almost covered. She slid closer.

The wind picked up a flurry of powder and deposited the mass over the hole, and Paige's mind cleared. She jerked her whole body around and left behind the hateful area in three powerful leaps. Then, her anger blossomed.

The snow falling on the grave had been a sign; an interference. Suddenly, all became clear. The sorrow must be endured. There was no easy way out. She would maintain her life to set things right. These had to be done: retrieving the Caller, interrogating the thief, finding Derek and the Roosians, returning to Castle Roos to encourage Caveholders to embrace the correct path, and demolishing the usurpian plague once and for all.

Home no longer seemed quite as far away.

Stronger than she had been for many passings, nourished somehow by anger, Paige tracked her quarry over the range. Every so often, when the wind died down, he was visible scurrying ahead of her. He followed Chaldiron, who plowed a path before him. She was close enough to follow the track they made in the snow before it filled in, and this sped her progress. She pressed them hard.

She didn't need to look anymore; she felt his passing as if the day was clear and still. Her perception had become as strong as it was long ago in the forest, when she played with her brothers and their strength mingled with her own, before all this confusion and grief muddied her clarity. Were they with her now, she wondered? No, not them, but a warming resolve filled her, and she did not let the absence of the boys sorrow her any longer.

Paige dropped the excess articles that weighed her down, put her chin to her chest, cloaked her entire head and body, set her mind on him, and worked her legs like pistons.

She exploited her roiling emotion. She sensed him struggle, the weakening as he hit hard going and the strengthening as he found easier passage. Because of her perception, she knew what to expect, and matched her energy output to the task, controlling and harnessing when necessary, bursting out where possible, instead of floundering as he did. She plowed evenly through, experiencing him, drawing strength from him, weakening him. He had determination and resolve as well, but his skills did not match hers. They crested the pass and began to travel down the mountain. Then he expanded back to her, helping her understand his need to stay ahead; he needed her to follow him but not to catch him. He was incapable of explaining why to her, as her brothers would have done. His training and experience were inadequate.

She could not think how his needs might change her mind.

Something began to pull from behind, a substance similar to an essence. During some moments she had to physically watch the thief as the energy swept upon her like a fever before falling back to become a nagging presence. The pursuing thing wanted her to stop. She couldn't. She wouldn't. It followed but was not ominous, only persistent. It traveled with purpose and seemed familiar.

He dodged an area. No reason for this avoidance occurred to her. Her mind clouded. She plowed right through and fell into a ditch filled with snow which rose above her. He had confused her this time. He was learning.

She struggled to climb out but only managed to push powder aside and widen the hole her body made. She swirled around, throwing her hands into the cold crystals, trying to locate the ground she'd fallen from. She did not find this where she'd expected it to be.

Paige threw her head back and looked up. The sky above was white. She was trapped in an invisible bowl. The edge from which she had fallen could be in any direction. She couldn't locate it.

The thief took advantage of her dilemma and gained distance by pushing Chaldiron hard. The brind had no choice but to obey his new master, though he sent his frustration back into the thief's mind...

... who in turn used this to enhanced Paige's anxiety. She grew afraid. She struggled, making the hole wider and whiter. Her exit was gone. The ditch continued on forever.

Paige stopped struggling, realizing she had lost control of herself. She calmed her wild mind and pushed the abusing drode out. She went over the incidents just before she had fallen into the trap. The ledge had to be somewhere near, but she had obscured her own trail. Paige remembered seeing the thief throw his arm out in an odd manner as he passed the area, before she had.

He had created a thaumatic trap! What a useful trick to know, Paige thought incongruously.

But he had wanted her to follow him, saved her from the cliff edge, and seemed to have tried to save her from the cracked ice. He must have put her in this hole because she was getting too close. He had slowed her down. He was becoming afraid of her angry strength.

She didn't perceive his intentions. The pull from behind distracted her, and he took advantage.

The strong insistence still followed. It did not seem malevolent, but she distrusted her confused perceptions now. Should she focus on the presence and bring it to her? Perhaps the source of the energy might be of help to her. Maybe it meant to kill her, but she would die soon in the snow-filled hole anyway. The cold wet could seep through the inner layers of her sap-infused clothes; the treated cloth wouldn't be impervious forever.

Paige struggled to send her failing essence beyond the perimeter of the trap. She couldn't see anything but snow. She felt only cold. The crystals near her melted in the heat energy she exuded; ice caked her boots. Sweat trickled down her skin, tickling her annoyingly. Above, the wind threw big, wet snowflakes around in the wide, white sky. She stilled her agitated movements while the flurries danced, and concentrated. The cold crept into her cloak and stole her heat away. The pain had made her want to move, but her stiff muscles seized, and she fell. Death had begun to pick at her mind again.

On her hands and knees, Paige wasn't aware of the condensation occurring above her. The flakes came together slowly until a form—the swirls of snow moving as molecules inside a body—became visible. The result stamped its foot and bellowed.

Paige looked up, stunned, at the sharp image of the brind. Moonflight towered overhead like an ice goddess. Walking daintily on air, she stepped down into the abyss. Paige wrapped her arms around the thick neck, and the icy Moonflight dragged her out of the trap and onto the snow-laden land.

Once she was safe, the form swirled into a funnel which rose high into the air, higher, and shuddered, then struck like a lightening bolt straight to the ground. The pointed end hit, and in a brilliant flash, the entirety condensed. A small white orb now lay next to Paige's hand.

This was a powerful thing. Strength radiated from it toward Paige like heat from Kir fire, and yet the object was cool in the snow. It seemed to wait, lying temporarily impotent after its furious seizure.

The globe began to sink. Quickly, Paige grabbed it, pulled aside some layers of clothing, and dropped it into an inner pocket near her skin. The thing wasn't even cold. Though hard looking and substantial, in her hand, it had seemed no denser than a bit of fluff. It burrowed itself deep into her protective clothing.

Paige once again grasped the thaumat, which tried to fill her with strength. This permeated her fatigue, her pain, and her sorrow.

She was freezing and ill. With little food to eat, and only cold snow to drink, her body had leached itself for energy to sustain the grueling pace. She had barely contained her grief. The burst of anger which propelled her briefly had cost her a great deal, as had the trap. She stood for a long time, gripping the strange thing. She began to heat up, the pain to recede, and her stamina increased as Moonflight's essence entered into and filled her.

She reached with her feelings down the mountainside to the presence of a warm, moist, and vigorous city. On the down slope below the storm she sensed the thief—eating berries! She could taste them! Her mouth watered. Her desire bloomed.

Paige gripped the orb tightly and struggled through the weather and down the difficut terrain to where the bushes grew. The fruit hung still on their dry twigs, in a slightly warmer area below the trunk line. She ate all the dehydrated nourishment she found, finished the last of the roshnar, and rested in a sheltered place. The orb seemed determined to keep her conscious until some of her energy was restored.

The air was warmer at this elevation, though not warm enough, and the snow had stopped falling. The snowcover here was not deep, and had hardened into a thick crust. Paige walked, for the most part, elevated by it, the ice crunching underfoot. She didn't have to plow through. Her body and mind became quicker and she pushed on, obsessed, but finally calmed, and determined to reach shelter before she gave out or a storm reached these lower elevations. Above the clouds Sorn-servar appeared far fainter and farther away than when she'd started up the range. The ancient desire to go belowground gripped her.

The chill never left her bones, and her skin had chapped, even through the slicker. Sorn-telain provided dim light and heat, so the air was less warming this season than when the star traveled more in concert with its angry brother, servar. Still Paige gripped the orb, relying on its strength to move her. Although needing its help, her need also reminded her how ill, scared, and exposed she had become. Ancient fears tortured her mind, and rational thought threatened to again fade into mere memory.

No longer capable of tracking the thief, she could only stumble forward, using up most of the object's remaining miraculous energy. Her vision blackened. The pain in her joints and muscles overtook the orb's help. She stayed afoot, though her other faculties failed. Once in a while she focused enough to pay attention to where she went, and even to project ahead to make sure she headed toward the city, but this cost her. She lurched forward. On rare occassions, berries grew in her path, and she stopped to chew their leathery goodness.

She found herself face down in slush. She did not know the length of time she had been down, her boots propped up on a root behind her. She had tripped. She pulled her body along the ground. She must not get caught aboveground when re arrived. Every action required her full attention, but her concentration weakened. Her thoughts seemed spurious and disjointed. She rested against a large root which hunched out of the frozen soil, dragged out her dagger, cut, and slickered with thorough slowness, having no idea how long she took to accomplish this mundane chore. Then she forced herself to her feet, noticing her dehydrated body had become stiff and hard.

One more good run, she thought, and I'll be near enough the city that someone should find me.

She fantasized about catching the thief. She was too weak to subdue him when she found him, but he must be weakened as well. She hoped he planned to stay in the city to recover. She would do the same, and snag him before he left. He still had her gift, though little idea of its importance, and she wanted answers. Who was he? Why had he stolen her property and led her on this bizarre chase? How was he going to repay her what he had cost her? Because he would pay, she determined. Nartan be damned, just this once.

She must not give up, not while she still lived. The Moonflight orb had sustained her until she had wrought it dry. She no longer felt its miraculous essence, but she would not disappoint Moonflight. It had been such a generous gift; her bond had given her all that was left of her self which remained at the moment she died.

Paige was so close to the city drodes that their thinking made background noise in her mind.

She stumbled along, keeping the surrealistic looking skyline in sight. The sea crashed against the shore's rocks beyond.

Her head ached. Her legs screamed. Tears streamed across her face, cooled, and flowed into her numbed ears. The air whipped in and out of her lungs. Burning. Aching.

Snow had not fallen here yet, because it was too cold. Her muscles and ligature stretched and contracted tighter and tenser as they cried out to her for relief in their language of agony. Sorn-telain passed above. In her euphoria of pain, she could not see.

Suddenly her head snapped up, her eyes focused, and she stumbled to a stop. A dark figure stood in front of her. The soil was lightly powdered in white patches around him, and the powder fell on his hair and shoulders as well. She had reached the lower, warmer elevations, and so had the edge of the storm. She had lost her cloak unknowingly.

Lean and tall, his skin weathered and darkened by sornlight, he wore the monks' traditional brown, luculian sap-infused clothing and cloth boots. He carried a roll of parchment protected by the same kind of material. His hand around the bundle was large and thickly veined. A pair of lemut sat in silence behind him, gazing at her, signifying him Nevanut. The secretive hermits had been fierce warriors long ago. His conscience probed deep and painfully into hers.

How strong and determined you are, Paigekaspar, that you can run through many passings and never rest, he thought to her in the flowing tones of Rokeen, the ancient tongue.

How does he know me? Paige wondered.

The blackness came in at the edges of her vision. Though dehydrated, sweat rained down her body from the heat of her illness. The ground hit her hard, and the darkness closed in, and she knew nothing more.
XIV

During the last quarter of doshan, Derek had been taken to different quarters underground. The entire household had packed up and moved. Hot underground streams moistened and warmed the atmosphere in the ancient caverns. Experts had carefully ventilated the caves. A cold, dry breeze from above came in sparingly and frequently to mix with the moist, warm climate. A constant, comfortable humidity and temperature was maintained, just as in Cavehold, and Vagn's garrad, in all domiciles in fact, large and small on the planet.

Rein had told him that during the hottest days, the vents stopped most of the inclement weather from coming into the underground living spaces, while venting moisture directly out to the surface. The cool rocks kept the areas livable during then. When the temperature dropped too low outside, and the air became extremely dry, some of the humidity was held inside. This system was almost as old as Enistian culture.

As Derek finished his soup in his now underground quarters, Rein knocked and entered. He walked to the wheeled chair and moved it away from the wall.

"I'd like to take you somewhere, Falon," he said.

Derek pulled himself to the edge of the bed with his arms, which had become stronger. He had learned to balance precariously on his barely manageable legs, with the help of some seasoned luculian wood canes he had carved, but when he tried to walk without them, the limbs tended to collapse under him. He dragged his body into the wheelchair, and attached the sticks across the back of it. He could pull them out like swords from scabbards when he wanted to leave the chair.

Rein opened the door and stood aside as Derek rolled the wheels using his hands. He waited in the hall as Rein picked up the bowl and spoon and shut the door. Rein turned to the left, handing a servant the utensils, and then led Derek down the slight grade.

Wherever Rein was taking him, it was deeper in the caverns than the residential areas, warmer, and more moist. The slope they travelled on curled gradually downward. Ahead of them, sticky moisture emanated, and an eerie glow grew. They turned a rock corner and beheld a cavern filled with the strangly emitted light of growing things. The rocks had been sculptured long ago, and atop them lived multiple varieties of lichens and mosses, and Derek knew not what. The effect was magical.

Green did not appear as the prevalent color; many others, like browns, oranges, yellows, reds, lavenders, and blues were more dominant. A small creek trickled among the rocks, and a footpath clear of vegetation meandered through. Every so often, the walkway crossed the stream by a low bridge. White, glowing slugs communed on the ceilings, and the mosses and lichens had built communities up the walls and across the sculptured rockscapes. All of the vegetation glowed, but each community had its own unique color spectrum, and tiny things moved around in them.

The wheeled chair fit the wide pathway which had been designed for strolling pairs of drode. The first cavern was only one of many, and Rein and Derek took their time exploring, passing couples and individuals, and those who tended bridge repairs or misted the plants with liquid. The mist must contain food, because sufficient moisture hung in the air here, so there was no need to add more. Though the microclimate cloyed and a layer of perspiration sprouted all over Derek's body, he hardly noticed. The beauty mesmerized him.

"This is what I do for fun," Rein said.

"You created this?" Derek asked in awe.

"Yes, I did, with Daehl, and even Tran still comes down once in a while. Probably to get away from his mother. She doesn't like the wetness much."

"A respite, then," Derek said.

Rein teased an animal off a moss covered boulder. It had six spindly long legs and rounded body parts, and sported many colors, though it blended well into the plants it had been on. The creature rested on Rein's palm and jiggled with Rein's breathing and minimal movement, then walked up his arm and stood on his shoulder for a moment before jumping off and floating back to its mosses.

Derek peered at a lichen covered rock beside him from which sprouted brilliant red spores on long, thin stalks. Small green worms wiggled around in it, and minute flying creatures hovered slightly above.

"Detritus eaters and primary pollinators," Rein said. "Very important." Derek was enchanted by the tiny flowers growing among the plants, and how different the detail was from the overall effect. The entire ecosystem was designed to display the various shades of the vegetation, their sporing reproductive structures, and their luminescence and attendant wildlife. Larger flora and fauna clung to the moss and lichen covered walls. Derek became spellbound and he forgot about Rein, who chose not to remain with him as he wheeled his way slowly through the caverns, one after another. The trickling stream accompanied him, pooling here and tumbling there. The path continued, occasionally branching off and connecting back, and opened up in circles, ovals, and freeform spaces furnished with carved luculian benches and tables. The various flowering mosses and lichens were planted artfully, drawing the eye with splashes of color, texture, and luminosities which drew the viewer onward to yet another design, seemingly without end.

Derek wheeled past a slim gardener who was bent over and displaying a fine looking bottom. As he rolled by, she spoke to him.

"Falon! Daddy's brought you to his garden. What do you think?"

"Oh! Daehl. This is wonderful," Derek replied, suddenly uncomfortably realizing he dripped sweat. Then she wiped her face with her bare arm and he realized she was in the same condition.

"It's good for the skin, you know. The air in the abovecaves is so dehydrating."

Derek stared at her.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"Not a thing," he said quietly.

She walked to an open area and sat on a dark bench. He followed her, propelled by his wheels, and thought he would like to follow her for the rest of his life. For a while they rested together in silence and looked around.

"I'm sorry about dinner," she began.

Derek cut her off. "Don't be."

She glanced at him. She was young, and her skin smooth and plump. The wet tendrils of her dark hair stuck to her forehead and neck. Drops of water rolled regularly down her face. Her eyes appeared darker in this place.

"Your mother and brother pick on you too much," Derek said.

She smiled. "You noticed."

"How could I not?"

"That's the way they are."

"Hostile."

She started and looked away. Again they both became still and lost themselves in the beauty Rein had created.

"This is Rein, isn't it?" Derek asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's calm and creative, and loving, and understands detail but thinks comprehensively all at the same time, don't you agree?"

"I think he wanted to get away from Mother in a place totally opposite of her."

"Restful."

"Tranquil."

"Sweaty?" Derek plucked at his shirt, unaware of the manner in which the moist material outlined his chest and shoulders. His muscles had grown large and defined.

Daehl laughed. "I love this climate. I spend a lot of time here."

"Then, I will too," Derek watched her face.

She started again, and her eyes flick briefly to his legs.

"I'm crippled," he said.

"I can see that."

"Not all the way, though."

"Oh."

A slight cool breeze touched them, making pimpleflesh, as the vents cycled air.

She turned to him and looked him straight in the eye. "Can you get me out of here?"

He paused. Of course he could, but he thought it unwise to tell her the truth regarding himself. She might spit out the knowledge to stun and hurt Madella, and afterwards, her mother would find a way to use him for her own enrichment, as Rein had warned him about.

"Why do you want to leave all of this?" Derek asked, looking around.

"I don't. I need to get away from her and Tran."

"I understand. Even bad people have children."

Startled once more, she stared at him.

"Did you think I wasn't aware?" he asked.

"You didn't seem to be. Anyway, none dare call her that."

"Well, no one wants to end up like those villagers who brought me here."

They shuddered and noticed each other's reaction, and both smiled briefly.

"Isn't she gruesome?" Daehl seemed to be asking for confirmation of her suspicions.

"Yes, Daehl, she is. The way she behaves isn't normal. Her efforts at trying to make you appear to be the bad one doesn't mean you are. The fact that she spends so much time and energy attacking you is suspicious. She envies you."

"Why?"

"You're beautiful, you're young, and, most annoyingly, you're good. You're everything she isn't. She's jealous. You won't let her twist you into a replica of her. She needs to validate her behavior by trying to cause you to act as she does, or at least comply with her demands. Failing that, she believes she must make it seem to others that you're the bad one, not her. You're her greatest failure, her own daughter."

"I refuse to be anything like her. I want to be the opposite of her," Daehl heatedly said.

"You are," Derek quickly replied.

"She makes me so mad."

"She hurts and angers you on purpose in order to show others how awful you are. If she's successful in provoking a bad reaction from you, perhaps she can convince them she's correct, and get them to help her pressure you into resembling her more. She'll feel better about herself, then. You're different than her, which you know, and she can't stand it. If you're right, and she doesn't agree with you, this makes her wrong. Madella absolutely cannot allow that."

"Yes. You're saying I shouldn't let her make me mad, get me to act angrily. She's already convinced some of the others I'm the bad one. Nothing I say can change them. Believe me, I've tried. She picks on me until I lose my temper and she uses this to turn them against me. Sometimes I think they're pretending to go along with her because they're afraid of her. I can only take so much. I guess they can only take so much, too."

"You're right, Daehl. I do believe you, but this isn't a matter of belief. I saw her nastiness, and I thought you took her abuse well. You showed excellent self-control. The problem is, she has more experience than you, and she'll never, ever, quit. Being the aggressor is always easiest. It's harder to be the victim, especially when you're right but no one will acknowledge this. You'd do better trying to push a luculian trunk over with your bare hands, which you know is impossible."

Daehl let out a long sigh and said, "You're the only drode who's ever understood." Shyly, they both immersed themselves in the calming effect of the garden.

"Children can't make bad parents good, can they?" she asked.

"No. Rein isn't so awful though, is he?"

"He's weak. He doesn't protect me."

"He tried. When you've been injured as badly as he, well, you stop putting yourself in harm's way, which is what she wanted, and why she hurt him so. Now she can work on you without his interference, because he's afraid to confront her further."

"She's beaten him."

"She very nearly killed him. He's strong. He survived, but he won't put himself in danger again. It would kill him."

Her face went blank and she didn't move. She stared at nothing.

"The truth is painful to hear," Derek said. "Truthfullness makes the lies obvious, ridiculous even, except they're so damaging. Lying is unnecessary, but people like Madella and Tran can't understand. They want, and they'll say and do whatever they think will get their desires filled for them. Truths seem false to them and falsehoods true. Let's call it circular madness."

Daehl nodded. "Her lies aren't obvious. She does speak the truth, too, in the same tone. I guess she can't tell the difference, or maybe she doesn't want me or anyone else to be able to. I can't always tell whether she's being truthful or lying. It's not at all obvious to me."

Derek moved his hand to brush against hers. "Whatever she believes, she wants you to as well. She also desires you to believe some of the things she doesn't, because this will make you easier to manipulate. You're right; she needs to sound like she's telling the truth, whether she is or not, to convince you and others. She can't let you hear the difference, because when you realize she's lied to you, you're hurt and you lash back. Madella refuses to recognize herself as manipulative, she thinks her desires justify whatever she says, and if one comment doesn't work, she tries another. You can't trust her, ever, because she experiences triumph every time she fools you, and is angry and vindictive when you don't respond the way she's directing you to. She thinks you're attacking her by not going along. She tells others you're bad, stupid, or whatever her criticism is. Your mother does all this to control you; her behavior is about securing your obedience, and nothing else. To force you to obey her, she'll pervert the opinions of others and get them to help her manipulate you. She must make you seem wrong for her to appear to be right, and she'll do anything to trick you and them into believing this."

"Circular madness," Daehl repeated Derek's phrase. "Her rights and wrongs aren't always the real ones. I'm the fool she loves to abuse. Can't she be the parent and me the child? My mother doesn't teach me to be the best person I can, encourage me to get along with others, or support me in the world. She sabotages me instead. I always need to be alert to foil her trickery and try to force her to behave. Why must I be the adult?"

"Because she can't."

"Bad people have children, too," Daehl repeated another of Derek's phrases. He was making a lot of sense, and she wasn't used to that.

"It doesn't mean you're bad, Daehl. You've been abused by the person who should be parenting you, who's given you a terrible example instead. You're confused."

"Are parents supposed to be teaching us The Way?"

"I think so."

"She hates it."

"In that case, Nartan must be good," he said, smiling.

She giggled.

"Can you teach me?"

"Yes, but not here. You can't change your behavior or thoughts and speech now. Madella will suspect me. I'm the only new one who could have caused this. Rein warned me before dinner not to speak against her."

"He protected you, you mean."

"Yes."

"Are you who you claim to be?"

Derek froze for a moment. "Can I trust you?" he asked.

"Maybe not. You're right. I say things in anger to hurt her, to let her know I think she's wrong, which she hates. Does this mean I'm as bad as her, because hurting her feels good to me?"

"Yes. She's happy if the things she says make you unhappy, and when you do the same thing, this makes you much like her. This is understandable though. We learn through example."

"So I shouldn't speak angrily to her. But why is it all right for her to, and I can't?"

"It's not acceptable for either of you. You're not going to stop her from her hurting you whether you return the favor or not. Don't change now though, she'll suspect. Behave like you normally do, and don't mention the things we talk about, because you'll reveal that someone is giving you fresh, new information, which can only be me. "

"Sometimes it stops her. It's the one thing that does, or slows her down, or makes her think and change her tactics. Mostly it pisses her off and she thinks up another trick to play on me."

"What's 'it'?"

"My anger. Sometimes she stops nagging and bullying me for a while after I hurt her."

"When you're angry, she points this out to others, and says you're bad, though."

"Yes. I can't win, no matter what. I don't even need to. I only want to be normal. She isn't, so I'm not."

"This is a perverse relationship."

"You understand."

"At least you're smart enough to think and talk about it."

"Not really. You made me."

"I made you?"

"Well, you know."

"I allowed you. I encouraged you."

Once again she brought those beautiful brown eyes to bear on his.

"That's right. I've never been able to express these things before."

"Remember my warnings. I'm testing you. If you fail she'll come after me, and I may barely manage to get myself out. I might be forced to leave you behind."

Derek started to wheel away. He sensed her thinking rapidly behind him.

He didn't know her at all. Had he revealed too much of himself? Why had he? He liked her a lot. Could he trust his feelings for her? Would she betray him? He wanted to touch her mind, to find out, but she might become frightened.

He turned back toward her. "Will you walk me to my chamber so I don't get lost?"

She smiled and stood.

They walked slowly through the caverns, passing a few drode. One of those people was Tran. He sat at an arrangement of chairs and tables, and rose when they came near.

"Falon. Father has shown you his pride and joy. What do you think?"

"This garden is fantastic."

Tran gazed around him, at his sister, and back at Derek. "Yes."

"Your father's talented."

"At some things."

Tran began to walk with Derek and Daehl since Derek had not stopped, and neither had she.

"Re is not my favorite season," he said after a short time.

"No ones', I imagine," Derek agreed.

"We both have some talent with plants. Daehl supervises the seed planting and sprout tending during tan and shre."

Derek turned his head and smiled up at Daehl. "Do you? I didn't know that."

Her smile was tight at the corners. She wasn't pleased at having to spend time with her brother. "Yes," she said. "In doshan and krictan the seedlings go in the ground abovecave and Tran takes over managing their care."

"I wondered how you fed all these people. So, you serve the drode who serve you."

"The work's not easy, but it keeps us busy," Tran said. He either ignored, or didn't understand the meaning of Derek's comment about serving. If Tran had been able to think of himself as a servant, it would have helped him to empathize with them. Apparently, that was not to be.

They had left the glowing caverns and gone on their way up the long, slightly inclined hallway to the living quarters. Derek's sweat began to dry on him in the drier air, leaving his skin cold and sticky.

No one seemed to have anything else to say. When Derek started fatiguing, Tran stepped behind and helped by pushing the chair. He was polite and inoffensive, which was incongruous. Did he behave differently around his mother than when she was not present? Was he only ruthless when something was to be gained?

They neared the kitchens, and all three arrested at the sight of Madella speaking to a cook. He glanced at the trio, and Madella turned her glare on them. She faced the servant again, said a few more words, and waved him off. She walked toward the three.

Derek experienced the siblings' miens alter the moment she glanced their way. Their defenses went up and their faces became masklike. So Tran did change around his mother, but Derek suspected he also would behave and act with her when he could profit by it. He was interested in pleasing Madella, unlike his sister.

"Children. Falon, how are you today?" She smiled down at Derek.

"Well, thank you," Derek replied.

"I found him in the gardens," Tran said. Daehl did not speak.

"No greeting for your mother, Daehl?" Madella raised her eyebrows and clucked scornfully at Daehl.

"Hello, Mother," Daehl sighed.

"So gloomy. You should smile more often. You're pretty when you do. You were smiling a moment ago."

Daehl became unresponsive.

Smile about what, Derek and Daehl thought simultaneously. Daehl glanced at Derek. She had heard him in her mind, as Derek had her, spontaneously, without training. This was unusual.

Madella noticed and misinterpreted their looks. Of course she would have to crush her daughter's happiness, but perhaps this Falon might be a good addition to the family. He would have to be tested for suitability. Time enough for both.

"Falon, do you know that Daehl plants the seeds during tan? Perhaps she'll show you how to help her when the moment comes. Yes, that is something you can do. After all, I'm feeding you," she said with a smile.

"Planting would be my pleasure," Derek replied.

"She's quite talented, and she knows it, too."

"I'm good at it, Mother."

"And such modesty."

"I'm not bragging, and why should I be modest anyway? Without me, vegetables and food for drode and the small animals would be less plentiful."

"Oh, someone could manage. No one is indispensable," Madella's smile slipped a bit and her tone dropped a pitch, warningly. Daehl had challenged her outright.

Derek didn't have to worry about Daehl at all. She was her mother's daughter.

Madella addressed Derek. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Where are you going now, Falon?" she asked.

"Back to the room."

"You have nothing to do?"

"Mother, he's an invalid," Daehl sighed exasperatedly.

"Yes, well, he just spent I don't know how long enjoying my... garden." She thought daughter, and Derek heard. "We all work around here. You eat, don't you, Falon?"

"I do."

"Sleep in my house?"

"Yes."

"Drink my water and wine?"

"Gratefully."

"Then you must do something for me in exchange."

"I agree."

"Well, there isn't anything for him to do right now, Mother."

"He can help in the kitchen. In fact, Graus!" she barked, pans clanged, and the servant she had been speaking to hustled from the cavern off the long hall. "Find something for Falon to do, will you?"

Graus moved to help Derek, but Derek wheeled himself toward Graus. The cook led him through the large, utilitarian kitchen to a cavern which turned out to be a storage area. As he'd rolled away, Derek listened to Madella quip, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall, daughter."

"There's nothing wrong with being proud of my work, Mother," Daehl answered reasonably.

"You know what pride goes before," Madella said sharply. This time Daehl wisely didn't answer.

Derek thought about their terrible relationship as he wheeled behind Graus to the storeroom.

Arguing with her mother did Daehl no good. Madella must have the last word, and she would get meaner and less reasonable as the argument continued. Daehl was safer to quit while Madella was ahead, and let Madella end every conversation on her triumphant, though often wrong, note. The daughter was thus conditioned to defer by silence, against her own better judgment.

But if Daehl didn't confront the woman, no one would. Daehl's distractions served an important function within this household, keeping Madella's wickedness from continuing unabated.

Madella's wisdom seemed today to consist mainly of Traveler sayings twisted into insults launched at her daughter. Imaginary things crawled on Derek's skin. He suppressed a shudder.

Tran and Daehl went off with their mother, and Derek hoped Daehl could escape from her presence soon. Tran, given the opportunity, would, of course, defer to Madella against Daehl. What a family, Derek thought.

Graus set up a cutting board on a makeshift table before Derek. Placing a box of root vegetables beside him, he cut one the way he wanted, handed Derek a utensil, and went away. Graus was a drode of few words.

Derek chopped until his arm grew sore. He switched the knife to the other hand. At that point he wondered what had become of his own daggers. He had forgotten about them all this time. He reached for the phial but didn't find it. Where were his possessions? He had been too injured and busy recuperating to notice.

When he had chopped through the entire box, another drode came along with a different type of vegetable, gave him a demonstration, and left. Not a chatty bunch, the kitchen staff.

The children had eaten mostly wild foods at Vagn's, and in Cavehold, the green bricks and some vegetables with sauces, but this cultivated vegetation was strange and exotic to him. Derek's opinion of Daehl and Tran, and even Madella, who seemed to manage the whole mess, improved somewhat. Too bad the mother and son had to be so mean and ugly inside. Their hold was well run.

Derek commenced chopping the leafy greens. He thought about how much he was preparing and wondered at the size of Madella's household. Apparently she fed the servants, so her children must grow large amounts of food. This impressed him. Most Enistian families were small, because resources were scarce. Somehow this family had learned to support a lot of people, a whole village worth of drode. This was similar to how he had understood the four cities had supported themselves and Castle Roos in the days of his parents. He had listened to storytellers reminisce when he escaped Marden Cavehold and went to Roos.

"Ah, here you are," Rein stood in the door. He walked over and took the knife from Derek's hand. "I'm not sure you're well enough for this. How do you feel?"

"My hands and wrists are pretty sore," Derek admitted. "Arms, too."

"Madella," Rein swore softly as he massaged one, then the other hand. "You've cramped up. Don't you know when to stop?"

"I enjoyed being helpful."

"Did you? Well, you can always do more another day. I imagine you're getting pretty bored with that room."

Rein wheeled Derek around and pushed him to the storage cave exit. He located Graus in the kitchen and told him, "I'm taking young Derek back to rest."

Graus nodded and bent forward in a small bow, and the others bowed as the head cook moved to go get the food Derek had chopped.

Rein pushed Derek out into the long hall and turned upslope.

"Did you like my garden, Falon?" he asked.

"Rein, I can hardly find the words. It's beautiful."

"Thank you."

"I spent some time with Daehl."

"Oh? And how did that go?"

"Very well."

"Was she polite?"

"Of course. She's lovely."

"I don't know anymore. Her mother torments her until she loses control of herself."

"Your son seemed mannerly, too."

"Oh, he is. Even when he's being insulting. He joined you?"

"He did, as we left. They raise all the food for this household?"

"Yes. They were good students. I can't do the work anymore. Then you came upon Madella and she gave you to Graus?"

"I'm afraid so, though I don't mind. She's right. I need to start doing something. I like to contribute."

"All in good time, Falon. Don't push too hard; you'll hurt yourself. I understand. I've been in the same situation before. I wonder if you'll be able to hold anything in your hands tomorrow?"

"We'll see. I hope so. I liked the repetitive, mindless work. It gave me a chance to exercise my small muscle control, and to think, too."

"And you thought about what?"

"Getting well. Going home."

They reached Derek's room and shut themselves in, away from hearing ears.

"Have you contacted your people yet?"

"How would I do that?"

"I know you can do it within, Nartan."

"I have, yes," Derek admitted.

"Do they miss you?"

"They do, and I miss them, too."

Rein sighed.

"What?"

"I've been wondering if you would stay. You couldn't possibly want to, but you're a fresh addition to this tired, angry place."

"I don't belong in this hold, and I have duties elsewhere. I thought you wanted to leave with me?"

"Daehl."

"She wants to go, too."

"Truly?"

"She asked me to get her out of here."

A lopsided grin split the scarred face. "That's my girl!"

"So you'll both come with me when I leave. Won't you miss your garden?"

"Oh, yes, plenty, though I'd kill to get away from Madella."

This was a bold statement.

We may have to, Derek thought to his brothers, who had been listening and observing through him.

Leigh and Richard agreed.
XV

She awoke in a dim room lit by firelight. The ventilation system wicked furiously, creating a wind which reminded her of the one that had pushed her and Derek down the ravine.

Derek?

Nothing.

Weak and nauseated, her muscles were tight and they protested her feeble movements. It was difficult to move, even hard to breath, and hot. Her body was too warm. A pile of cloth nearly crushed her.

Paige moved her arms painfully across her chest, and in one movement, pushed all the blankets off. Rolling onto her side, she lay panting. The cold breeze attacked the sweat on her skin, even under the thin layer of clothing she wore. They were pajamas.

The wind came from abovecave, and had the ache of nar season in it. The glow of the fire was coming from another room; its orange light reflected, flickering on the stone surrounding the oblong doorway between the rooms.

Something smelled awful.

Looking around her, Paige recognized a garrad lit by domes. The chamber was simple and comfortable, excavated in the usual dome-shape. Empty dishes and debris littered a tray on the low square stone uprising—traditionally named a santon, sometimes now called a mesa. Beside her were a soup bowl, some bread crumbs, and a mug. Several other santons punctuated the space; the bed was the largest one.

Murmuring voices reached her ears from the next room. The sound of slippers on the cold stone floor, muffled when the wearers walked on a rug, passed through the doorway between the rooms and quieted again on the carpet in the space in which she lay.

"Ah, you're awake," said a drode quietly in strangely accented Enistian. He was middle-aged, and small, with skinny legs and well muscled shoulders, arms, and forearms. His skin was weathered and his hair, black. His eyebrows grew thick and bushy.

He padded in, followed by a mature female drode, who was wide and flat and had light brown hair. Her face was plain, and she seemed kind. The male removed the dish tray from the small santon, handing them to the woman behind him.

"I am Shuchee," he gestured, "and this is my bond, Klorna."

Klorna stepped forward and nodded.

Paige tried to speak but her throat rasped dryly.

"Oh," said Klorna, "I'll get you more water."

As his mate left, carrying away the dishes, Shuchee informed her, "You're in my garrad. The monk, Jorissartori, brought you to us. His instructions are that you're to rest and eat and recover for several passings, until another one comes to take you to Nevanutka. That cavehold is not far from here."

Paige nodded, but she had a hard time focusing on his long speech.

He leaned over and petted her forehead.

"Can you move? I'll help you walk a bit, to get your blood circulating."

She could only stand with his assistance, and he propelled her patiently around the chamber. Her entire body screamed in agony. Klorna returned with water more soup, and bread. Shuchee helped her sit back on the bed's edge, and sat next to her. Klorna, seated on the small santon, held the cup to her lips. She choked and sputtered on the first few sips, and then drank greedily. She had no thoughts but food and drink for a while, as Klorna spooned the soup into her, and Shuchee held small bits of bread up to her mouth.

When she woke again, she had no memory of lying down. Fewer blankets covered her. Flames burned on in another room, still reflecting off the walls. She felt some warm moisture from belowcave, so she did not understand why they had a fire going. This was unusual. It didn't smell as if they were cooking food. The acrid odor still permeated the garrad, even though the ventilation worked hard. She was curious what the scent could be, but dinner waited on the santon. She managed to move the blankets, sit up, and devour the meal.

The next time she woke, Klorna stood above her, and helped her walk around again and do other necessary things.

Klorna's clothes and hair smelled like the strange odor. The scent was unpleasant, but Klorna was a patient and helpful drode. Paige ate another meal, and Klorna waited until she was sure that Paige was able to manage on her own. She petted Paige's forehead, bowed, and left.

This time, as she awoke, Paige rolled and fretted. Her body ached and needed to move. Alone in the room, she forced herself to sit up. Her muscles cramped; she breathed heavily and tried not to scream. When the pain subsided, she ate the meal they had left for her. The fire still burned and reflected flickeringly. This was the source of the pungent odor.

Paige pushed herself to her feet and stood, wobbling. Each footstep was a miracle of concentration. She made it to the doorway and leaned, looking into the next chamber. Her legs shook uncontrollably.

A lone drode sat by the fire, the bright glow playing on his features. The breeze moved his short hair as if he were abovecave in the wind.

The walk had seemed long. She returned to her bed and slept again.

Now able to circle the room and pause, she stood for a while. She had practiced this for a few wakings, always eating and drinking everything they brought.

She felt much stronger, though her hands still shook and her reflexes didn't work quite properly. She not only paced but stretched and squatted as well, her heart pounding in her chest and in her throat. Muscles and lungs burned with the exertion.

So much better now almost normal, though still stiff, Paige walked into the next room where the lone drode sat. As she neared, he loaded a pointed stick with petlah root and placed it above the flames. She stopped, stunned. This action was prohibited by those who had first developed The Nartan Way because of its debilitating effect on the body and mind. He pulled a different stick from the fire and pushed the roasted roots into a basket with another utensil. After they cooled a bit, he took them one at a time and cut them into chunks of equal size. As he did this, he noticed Paige standing away from him, watching. He turned his head back to his chore.

"Come on over." He spoke the strange dialect, which was more Traveler sounding than what she was used to. He dropped the cut portions into another basket, licked the juice from his fingers, picked up his cutting board, and let the liquid dribble from it into his mouth.

"Share the fire with me," he said after he had rolled the juices around with his tongue and swallowed.

She hesitated.

"Come on," he urged. "You're about to fall over, and there's plenty of room here. Nar is rude; we may as well be comfortable."

She walked over, stiff from standing in the same position for so long, and managed to sit on a cushion on the stone floor beside, but behind him, somewhat away from the hot fire. She cleared her throat.

"I've never thought of nar as rude, only inevitable."

"Well, that's true," he agreed. With a knife, he cut a slice as thin as a flake from a roasted bit of root, and held it up to her.

"Here. You look like you could use a little help."

Paige stared. "No. Thank you."

"Thank you?" he sneered. "You've spent time with Travelers."

"Isn't your accent Traveler? You sound more Traveler than Nartan."

"I'm neither, or both. And what accent? Well, they're good custom. Some are, anyway."

"Custom?"

"For roasted petlah. Of course, Nartan don't use it, but Travelers do. It fits their lifestyle."

"Lifestyle?"

He glanced at her.

"You know; the way they choose to live. Drode who prefer Traveler over Nartan enjoy the root roasted. Cooking the root goes well with the Traveler lifestyle, don't you see? A harsher experience for a rougher mind."

"I understand what you're saying. I just didn't realize this was going on."

"It bothers you," he stated, loading more of the raw root onto the hardened luculian sticks.

"Yes.' She made movements to push herself up off the cushion, and she stiffened as he grabbed her arm. Not looking at him, she sent her resistance washing over him. He responded by releasing her, and his eyes followed as she walked to the doorway. She passed through and went directly back to bed. At least he seemed receptive.

More calesthenics upon rising, and then she leaned on the doorjam and nodded at the same drode at work. He continued his chore, glancing at her a few times, drinking the juices often, and chewing a small bit of the forbidden, roasted petlah. He sat still when he did this as the poison diffused into his tissues. He neatened some of the pointed sticks beside him, stood, and looked at her again.

He came toward her, trying to carefully walk around the fire, concentrating on appearing unaffected. He lost balance as his foot tangled in a cushion. He barked an embarrassed laugh, and glanced at her, a sheepish expression on his face.

She stared at him in fascination. He was deeply inebriated. She neither moved nor spoke. He steadied himself and walked forward. Bolstering his courage, he braced one hand on the wall beside her.

"Would you help me put these roots on those sticks?" He pointed at the bundle on the floor.

She studied him and he waited, slightly swaying. She moved her eyes to the mounds. The chore would help her exercise the small muscles in her arms and hands. While she returned with him to his seat at the fire, he studiously avoided the spot where he had tripped. He did manage to pick up the cushion he had upset, with a little wobbling, and patted it back into place, gesturing for her to sit. He sat and went through the whole process, showing her how to put the petlah on the sticks, cook them, push them into the basket, and cut them. Apparently he had forgotten what he'd asked her to do. Eventually, he said, "I'm almost out of skewers to roast. You can make some of those now."

She considered again. After a few moments, she overcame her resistance and filled every stick with root pieces. They made a large pile. She put them in the correct basket, points down, stood up, and re-entered her chamber.

She slid into bed, but didn't sleep until just before the next passing began. She pondered what it meant to have drode roasting petlah against the sanctions of the old ones. At least Kent's followers kept some of the ancient traditions. She never thought her culture could degenerate more than that one, until this revelation.

Upon waking, Paige sustained herself with the food Klorna brought. She exercised and fell asleep again.

Paige, much stronger now than when she first awoke in this cavehold, passed quietly through the doorway. The same drode was doing the routine chore. He must take breaks while she slept. Was he there to watch her? She walked toward him, picked up the empty sticks and basket, and took a place by the fire. He nodded to her.

After she had finished the task, she gave him the product.

"Are you comfortable doing this now?" He asked her.

"No."

"I mean, can you do the cooking and stuff? I want to go do something and I wondered if I could leave you in charge? What do you think?"

Paige nodded and she moved over to take his place. Curious, bored, and listless, she had agreed. She was stuck here anyway until the monk came to lead her away.

He left.

Besides slicing the root, he had been pouring the drippings into vessels from the cutting board, where she also poured it. After a while, when he still had not returned, and she finished a lot of chopping and was waiting for the other bits to cook, she sipped a little of the juice. She stuck her finger in and let a drop fall onto her tongue. The taste was awful, coating her mouth with an unpleasant residue. Her tissues began to throb as the blood flow quickened through them. Her throat grew hot and she wondered if it was inflamed. She decided not to try again and poured the rest of the liquid in to the vessel. Moving away from the scalding heat of the flames, the harsh bite of the chill breeze annoyed her. The small drop had enhanced her senses, but to the point of raw nervousness, which was not pleasant or enhancing. She waited several more moments for him, then determined not to continue this industry any further. When the other skewers finished roasting she stacked them and left the chore and went to bed. Her thoughts became reflective.

Consumption of this form of the root, unlike raw petlah, made her pensive and restless. After a brief period of incitefullness, her mind fogged and her facilities muddled. Her muscles began to ache and tick. The way she felt now was counterproductive to her purpose. She couldn't sleep, she had no desire to exercise, and the next meal was still some time away. Raw petlah, she realized, had the same effect, only in a much subtler manner. She went to her one remaining pack, retrieved all of her supply, and threw the roots onto the coals. No more for her; she hadn't time for that luxury. Life was precious and precarious, and she had too much to do to waste it in root dreams.

Sleep came to her finally, and she dreamed the first and last fantasies the forbidden roasted vegetable would ever bring to her.

In the near darkness, the domes out and the blaze down to coals, she awoke to loud voices.

"Why did you leave the fire?" drode growled.

"I had something to do. I put the girl in charge!" another drode replied. She recognized his voice.

"You don't ever abandon the chore, Alait, until someone comes to relieve you, one who's relieved you before!" The first voice boomed.

"I left that dumb kid watching it. She walked away!"

"No, you did, Alait. You left. What about her anyway? Who is she? Do you think she's safe to show our business to?"

"Shuchee, she's in your household! Your guest! Sleeping in the next room! She didn't do anything wrong..."

"She could have, and then I would have had to hold you accountable. You know what that means. Don't ever leave this fire again, unless Sohn or Trae relieve you."

"That's money," Shuchee's slippers left in the other direction. "And your keep."

Money? Paige wondered. She dressed and walked out. Alait stood, looking dejected. He ignored her, yet he exuded resentment. She almost let him convince her that she had wronged him, but she turned aside the feelings he tried to impose and went back to exercise.

After she awakened, eliminated, exercised, and ate, she entered the next chamber. The blaze had been restoked, and Alait sat there again, working.

"I need you to watch this and cook the roots," he told her immediately.

He stood aside and waited. He used his meager essence convincingly, and she allowed him to draw her to the fire. He was a bit angry, and, as always, tense. Also, another thing was happening which she could not quite fathom.

He set her up in his place.

"You can't leave this time. Don't go wandering off. This all has to be done tonight and I have something to do. This is income you know. Lots of money. And your keep. You have to start helping around here, now that you're well enough."

Was he really going to disobey Shuchee? After that argument? He must be imbibing a lot.

His eyes flickered up and down her body, then he walked away.

Again she did his chore, but she did not drink the juice.

Later, after Paige discovered she was not as well as she had thought, he returned. He did not comment on her pale queasiness, though he inspected her work suspiciously.

"It's good to have someone take over for me so I can do other things."

Paige did not reply, but was suddenly very tired. Alait seemed reticent to resume his work. She stood up slowly. He watched her rise and said, "You're not leaving, are you? Couldn't you stay until domelight? I'd like to enjoy the root, but I can't if you leave because I'm responsible here. I need your help."

Liar. She had seen him "enjoy the root" before as he worked.

She gazed at him passively. "Don't you ever stop?"

"What?"

"Enjoying roasted petlah?"

"Why?"

"I am ill and still recovering," she stated, and she walked away.

"Bitch," he sneered.

How strange, Paige thought. This drode seemed so different from those she'd known. Was it the forbidden food, or the cultural disturbance? Both? After all, she would have to come up with solutions to these problems when she took her Throne.

Paige emerged from sleep once again, and Alait sat with two members of the clan whom she hadn't met. The air being vented in was more chilling than before, so she joined the three at the fire.

"Oh, there you are." He looked at the others. "I wanted to introduce you to our new member. I don't remember her name. This is Sohn," he pointed to the smaller one, "and this is Trae. Say hello to each other."

"Greetings," Sohn said. Shorter than Trae, but taller than Alait, his features were round, and his face, limbs and torso stout, though not heavy. He seemed relaxed and pleasant.

"I'm Paige."

"Paige. How good to meet you. You are one of our clan now? Are you the woman the Nevanut brought in?" Trae was attractive as well as polite. They both smelled like they'd been abovecave recently.

"No, I haven't joined you. Joris left me here, and I understand I'll be leaving with another monk soon."

Alait seemed to change the subject. "That old woman came again to visit Shuchee. I think they have something going."

"Nah..." Trae began. Alait cut him off.

"Yes! She comes here pretty often now and they talk all eve. Not that I listen, but I do most of the root tending," he said with an odd mixture of pride and resentment, "I know when she comes and goes."

"No," Sohn began, "they discuss the Cintercorpse. The creatures stalked her while she was abovecave. She just barely got away, with Shuchee's help. She was near this garrad at the time."

Paige felt sudden nausea arise.

"There aren't any Cintercorpse. They're a myth," Alait said scornfully.

"No, they're not," Trae supplied.

"Yeah, they are. I don't want to listen to any more nonsense about burned bodies hunting people." Alait shuddered, revealing that perhaps he did know the truth, but the knowledge was too hard for him.

Sohn glanced at Trae.

Alait rearranged his utensils with shaking hands. The thought had disturbed him. Probably the roasted root gave him vivid nightmares, another reason Paige had agreed with the old prohibition. Sohn and Trae murmured good-byes to Paige and left.

Alait fueled the fire.

"Can you believe them? Cintercorpse. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? Well, where fools are, profit is. Money's the goal, we only have to know how to take advantage of these things, right?"

He didn't seem to expect an answer. For someone who continually guarded against scorn, he sure used it a lot himself. Paige found she was embarrassed for him.

"What's money?" she asked.

Alait stopped still. He seemed incredulous, but he looked at her face, realized she was being serious, and explained.

"Ah! You're one of those kids whose parents taught you that Nartan stuff. That won't get you anywhere. It's like this: I cut and roast the petlah, and go to town to sell the pieces for money."

He reached into his pocket and brought out a cloth drawstring bag. He drew out more wrapping from inside, and pulled off the wrappings to reveal twine strung with flattened, fired, glass circles. The pieces were a riot of color. The string went through the holes at their centers. He draped this around his neck.

"In town, I can buy whatever I want. Look, these red ones here get me the highest priced things, next the dark pink ones..." and he explained the value of the individual beads. "I trade them for anything I please. Of course, the vendors always want to haggle the price."

Now this was exactly the kind of notion the Travelers had brought which disrupted the traditional society. Drode did not use money, but supplied whatever was needed simply because it was.

Trading was engaged in. Desired things were haggled for, however, if someone had something to spare that another needed, but did not have enought to trade for, the commodity was given freely, or for less in trade than was desired. Drode were not greedy like Alait seemed to be. Of course, no one impoverished themselves to help another; others would always step in. The only exceptions were in matters of life or death. Then, no trading was allowed. Aid must be free.

Exchanging the beads for products and produce seemed like an unnecessary additional step. She wondered why the Travelers thought this important. Did they hoard the beads, and imagine themselves better than others, like Alait? Buy everything all the time to set themselves apart?

Greed was a Traveler value. The strand was pretty, but Paige did not think the beads were more important than, say, a good meal on an empty stomach, a warm cloak when the wind blew, or the feeling of being able to share something with someone that they didn't have, but needed or wanted. She must discuss this perversion with her brothers.

Alait wove the chain through the holes of every piece he had liberated during his explanation, re-clasped it, and put the whole mess back in the protective cloth. He put the bundle into the drawstring bag. "I have more money than those two," he said. "They're fools. They do that Nartan nonsense, too. They rarely trade with beads except with those who insist."

"So, where do you come from?" he asked her. She pointed.

"Okay," he sighed. He looked directly into her eyes. She stared at him. A question rose in her brows. He leaned toward her to touch his lips to hers.

She backed away. She had no interest in him.

"Okay." He sighed again and went back to his chore.

She sat near the fire with her new overcoat draped around her shoulders. So, a whole nearby town used money instead of behaving in the traditonal manner. This saddened Paige.

New boots and a coat were in the chamber. Shuchee and Klorna had given them to her for the upcoming trek. The coat fell to her knees when she stood, and the new footwear had proven to be cozy warm. Thankfully, Shuchee and Klorna had not asked her for money in trade. She didn't have any. They had supplied her with what she had needed because they had it. Otherwise, she would have been very cold, and risked damage to her health, even death. This was as it must be. Nartan were not allowed to let another suffer were they able to do something about it.

Alait finished chopping all the roots he had pushed off the skewers. She felt sure he would have demanded something in return for any help he might have provided another, probably more of the stupid beads.

"Is there room enough for two in that thing?" he asked.

"No," she replied.

"It's not nice to act that way," he scorned, as if addressing a child. He reached for her and she held the material closed.

He muttered something and walked in the directon he had gone many times before.

Happily, Paige did the chores without the surly Alait to harass her. She was strong and restless, and more than ready to leave.

Later, Sohn sat down next to her.

"Sohn! I was so busy with my fantasy, I didn't sense you coming," Paige nodded to him, and then took in his unhappy expression.

"You aren't fantasizing about Alait, are you?"

"No. Why would I?"

Sohn smiled, and Paige realized that he cared, and had worried. So very Nartan of him! He helped her with the chore. "He's not a good drode. He drinks too much juice and chews a lot, as well. The root has... affected him."

"I've noticed," Paige agreed. "He's selfish, and self-centered. Do you know he tried to kiss me?"

"Did you give him any encour... "

"No."

"Huh. Yeah, that's Alait. Always trying to take, never making a personnel connection."

"I imagine he can't."

"You're right. We can't connect with him, either. The capability just doesn't exist in him."

They sat without talking and tended the roots for a while.

She heard Alait and someone with lighter steps approaching. The couple passed the far chamber doorway and Alait made sure, with what Paige thought was supposed to be a surreptitious glance, that she saw them. He acted beyond caring when he found both Sohn and Paige gazing passively at him. The pair continued on their way into another chamber where they proceeded to make an exceptional amount of noise.

"I think he's trying to teach you a lesson," Sohn whispered, barely concealing his mirth.

Paige laughed out loud.

"How can he imagine I'd be jealous of anything he does? I couldn't want him any less."

"He can't make the connection with you to find out. Poor Alait. He's all alone in this world."

This made Paige a little sad.

Alait did not return the rest of the night.

After the next passing, just as she was about to join Alait at his task again, Shuchee arrived.

"Another of the monks from Nevanut wishes to meet you, Paige," he said. "Will you come?"

"Of course," she answered, happy for something different to do.

While walking with Shuchee, she touched his mind for permission to enter, and received no response. She entered and gauged him. She justified this because she needed to protect herself in unknown surroundings, with strangers. He seemed unaware of her perusal, or he wasn't bothered. In any case, he didn't block her. Either way, he made no mention of it. She liked him even though he worked in a bad business. She left this thought with him.

Shortly, he broached a tender subject in a somewhat embarrassed manner.

"Will you excuse my intrusion?" he began.

Paige nodded encouragement.

"Alait is extremely conceited, so much that he can't think beyond his personal desires. He is neither good friend, nor I imagine, can he be an acceptible mate. At least, he never stays with anyone long."

"I appreciate your concern, but I have no interest in Alait."

"I considered as much, but I wanted to be certain. I'd hate to see you waste yourself on him."

"If you are now worried, why was I put in a chamber next to his work area?"

"Someone always must tend the fire and the roasting. I thought this the best way to be certain you weren't left alone and you recovered all right. I didn't imagine he would recruit you to do his chores. I should have guessed, though. I apologize for my oversight."

Paige nodded.

They walked through many caverns until they entered an area Paige decided must be Shuchee's and Klorna's personal space. On some blue cushions sat an old, lean, wrinkled, and vital looking drode. "Paige!" Her voice rang like a bell and reminded Paige of the little nymph on the rock. The object in Paige's pocket pulsed crazily.

The odd woman grinned constantly during the short time they sat together. Paige never let go of the orb, which filled her with understanding of the knowledge, strength, and cunning of Ruda, the monk.

After shortened trivialities, Ruda said, "I understand you've been ill. Joris, the Nevanut who brought you here, came to me and told me of you. I'll tell you, you impressed him. Shuchee and I have agreed it would be quite advantageous," she didn't say for whom, "if you'd accompany me to Nevanutka to complete you recovery in our care. Should you consent, we must leave soon, as the big snows are coming to these elevations."

Paige's thoughts strayed to the orb. She wondered whether they would notice the thaumat throbbing beneath her clothes. It liked Ruda very much.

"I'd like to request the use of you for one more passing, however, to recoup my losses over your care. Since you have, after all, been helping Alait, and more work is getting done than usual, I should take advantage. I'm only a small businessman," Shuchee said in a business-like decision. "After next passing, you may leave with Ruda to Nevanutka, if this is your desire."

Although it sounded similar to a choice, Paige sensed the stong sentiment that she had been expensive to him, and he wished her to go, so she agreed without too much judgement of him. Ruda was interesting, and Paige curious about her, and, she admitted to herself, she was excited to experience Nevanutka. Paige nodded at Ruda.

"Nevanutka is directly toward the sea from here." She pointed. "The route is difficult, though even in your weakened state you'll find it passable.

"The cavehold lies in a steep valley between imposing rock rises and is impossible to detect from the direction we'll be coming, so I'll guide you." She retreated past the doorway. "When Sorn-telain visits us twice, then," she dismissed herself in flowing Rokeen, and disappeared through yet more caverns.

"Beautiful woman," Shuchee commented. Paige thought about how ugly the Traveler words sounded after the sensual Rokeen tones. "Quite intelligent. It's snowing, again, and the wind is picking up. The coat and boots will keep you warm and dry, but re is nearly upon us."

He walked with her almost all the way back to the roasting chamber, until she understood the direction to go in, and then he left to attend other business. Instead of staying with Alait at the fire, Paige went into her room, stretched, and, exercising to stay warm, enjoyed the softly pulsing orb which still reacted to the "beautiful woman".

Time to go, Ruda waited. Klorna and Shuchee had brought a small meal to the chamber and they had eaten with her.

Paige had left her pack and overcoat near Alait. When the couple had gone and she walked to the fire, Alait, still roasting the roots, now sat on her new coat. She walked quickly toward the flames to escape the breeze, which had become even colder.

"Why are you so childish, Alait?" she challenged him. "You perceive everything in an exaggerated and hurtfilled manner. You could benefit from our heritage if you weren't such a bigot."

"Bigot! My folks didn't teach me the old way, but that doesn't make me prejudiced. I don't want to be as you are, acting like you're so much better than me."

"Maybe, were you to understand, you'd think differently. Anyway, you're treated according to how you behave."

"This from a child," he snorted.

"If I'm so young, why did you try to kiss me?"

His eyes roamed her body. He sneered, "Not a little child."

"Childishness has nothing to do with age, and you'd do well to keep your lips away from anyone who hasn't encouraged you to kiss them. Please give me my coat."

He mumbled something, but didn't move. He stopped looking at her.

She reached for the shoulder of the overcoat and pulled. He stayed put; in fact, he pushed her away. Paige shoved him onto the floor, took her coat, and held it behind her. Alait stood up and petulantly kicked the vessel, drenching Paige in the foul liquid. Her wet clothes now made the breeze even more painful. She struck Alait on the point of his chin with the heel of her palm and watched as he passed out and fell. She did not rush to catch his head, as it landed on a cushion. She returned to the chamber and stripped, washed off the stench, and dressed in her only spare set of clothes. She dropped the wet ones on the floor as she could not carry them into the freezing weather. Donning her coat and pack, she left to meet Ruda in Shuchee's and Klorna's private caverns.

On her way, she met Sohn and Trae.

"Paige!" Trae began. "We heard you'd be leaving us, so we came to say goodbye."

"Ruda's taking me to Nevanutka."

"Ah, I wish I could go, too. She's a fascinating old monk," Sohn said. "But nar is ending, so you'd better hurry. Are you up to the journey?"

"Yes, I'll make it. I'm much stronger now. I'm experienced traveling in weather, and Ruda will show me the best way there."

"Good-bye, then, Paige," said Sohn. "You know where to find us. Don't be a stranger."

Paige found herself liking that Traveler saying, and both Sohn and Trae.

"Wait. Here, I have some nuts and dried clune left over from our trip. Take them."

Trae handed over the package, which Paige put in her pack.

"Good-bye then, friends. I'll remember you." Paige said.

She met Ruda and they quit the garrad. Paige had already thanked and made her goodbyes to her hosts while they had shared their last meal together.

The wind blew cruelly, and the hardy doshan berry bushes had reabsorbed into the deep soil. The end of nar fell upon them. Howling gusts battered them as Paige tried to keep up with the steady pace Ruda set. The chill did not penetrate her luculian treated clothing. They had slickered their hands, faces, ears, necks, and the line of skin exposed by the parting of their hair. The coat had a hood, and Ruda was swathed in layers leaving only her eyes visible through a narrow slit.

The tough route soon taught Paige that she was not as prepared as she thought she would be. In little time she realized she was trying to talk herself out of the trip. She struggled. Luculian trunks grew close in this wild area, encroaching on the path. Often, she nibbled from her supply of dried foods, and took small sips from a water bag. Concentrating on evening her breathing as well as the terrain and gusting wind allowed her to, she settled into the work. Ruda made a mental connection with her and maintained it, strengthening her. The old woman was unusually strong in both mind and body. For a few moments they talked to each other in their minds, and Paige discovered monks could do this, too! They compared their experiences with the Cintercorpse, and Ruda told her she visited Shuchee often because she was trying to talk him into another line of work, and into abandoning roasting the roots.

The storm came upon them thick and fierce. Paige had no more energy for thought. The placement of her feet, the adjustment of her body weight to the varying terrain, and her eyes and mind on the path alert to danger, did not keep her from slipping off some loose gravel scree hidden beneath the snow. She lost much energy to regaining her balance, and swore about the slightly twisted ankle. Unwilling to take her boots off and wrap the joint, she laced them tighter and kept hiking.

She was surprised when they came out on top of a large, round, rock-rimmed depression, within which, Ruda told her, Nevanutka lay buried. They paused.

Quite a pile of snow covered the valley floor. Following her tireless guide, Paige made her way around the rim until she stood in front of the ingress to the cavehold, invisibly blended into the surrounding wilderness. Thankfully, Ruda knew where it was. Paige would have missed the entrance.

She followed Ruda into the cavehold called Nevanutka.
XVI

The usurpians were in the process of organizing into the leadership of the Kingdom. They had moved into the Palace and assigned themselves two guards each.

The resistance organized as well. Ducar and Dahlrah planned. Dahlrah had chosen her commanders, and her orders descended to the warriors who guarded the traitors to be ready at the sound of the horns...

... which bellowed in the main courtyard at half-passing. Quickly and quietly, those guards subdued their charges and brought them to a secured hall in a deep part of Castle Roos, where no windows or usurpian sympathizers greeted them.

This happened with such rapidity that the captives at first thought perhaps some external threat to the Castle had caused their forced flight. Had the Roosians who had fled returned to try a siege? The usurpians cooperated with their guardians. The well-trained warriors carried on as normal and allowed not one comment, posture, or look to betray their change in allegiance. The deceivers were decieved.

Gathered in the deep hall, surrounded by soldiers, the group tried to get answers, but no guard spoke. One, or maybe two of the guarded saw Ducar, Dahlrah, Leigh, and Richard enter, flanked by warriers in the Rulers' colors—the old ones of the Families. Whispers spread. The usurpians stared at those uniforms, comprehending slowly at first, and then with mounting fear and increasing panic, what had been done to them. Shouting began, but the yelling prisoners felt pressure about them, and in their heads, as Richard and Leigh manipulated their brains and silenced their mouths.

The Heirs stilled the usurpian rebellion within the drodes' own minds. The deceivers began to acknowledge the wonder of the Heirs' now obvious capabilities. Since their abilities lacked, they had believed the stories to be myths. They, who used and abused, found themselves the focus of the two Royals. The prisoners were allowed to experience fear and wonderment at these revelations.

The traitors had never been so silent. Since attaining the Castle they had shouted orders as their confidence and arrogance swelled. Now they stood, cowed. It was a delicious moment for their captors. The soldiers, their commanders, and the Sha'ans savored it like the feasts they remembered from their youths; the planetwide festivals no one had enjoyed for far too long.

The silence and stillness grew until even the shuffling and clinking ceased. Then Richard and Leigh stepped forward.

Leigh stated their situation concisely. "Every one of you has committed aggressions against this Kingdom, its Keepers, the Royals, and its drodes. Your freedom is forever forfeit."

A few squawks, cries, and rustlings ensued, but the soldiers bristled and the usurpians stilled themselves.

Richard continued. "A portion of Marden Cavehold has been secured to protect you from those who are now aware of the malevolence you've practiced. You'll live out your days in exile there. You'll not be allowed to socialize with any drode outside that Cavehold, or the guards. Your families will remain in Roos and they'll be reunited with their relatives."

Richard and Leigh now had such confidence in the effects of the drawings, they knew the family members would quickly and easily reintegrate into the Kingdom's society. They were certain the betrayers could, as well, but retribution and punishment featured strongly in drode minds. Neither was prohibited by Nartan, though the contemplation of the pitfall of becoming like your enemies was encouraged. Leigh and Richard decided the prisoners had held onto their perverted ideals for too long, and through so many changes, that the threat from them remained serious enough to justify preventing them their freedom.

The captives stood astonished and numbed. Just a short time ago they had been in control, and now they were only useless bodies. No one would listen to them, or allow them to subject others to usurpian lies again. None cared to help them. They could lie to each other, but would never interact with another free drode. They understood this as intimately as they knew their own greedy, deceitful hearts. Their aggression ceased, and was replaced with self pity and sorrow.

The Heirs and their entourage withdrew, and the soldiers stood the prisoners before the drawings, one by one. Horror showed on their faces, then panic, grief, shame, and finally, for some, madness. None knew if their reactions resulted from the final realization of their crimes, or because of the ultimate comprehension that the opportunity to control others had surpassed their reach. No empath touched their minds to find out. As the Travelers used to say, 'the jig was up'. The guardians marched the usurpians to Marden Cavehold and secured them inside with all the kull they could produce for themselves and a little of every supply they could possibly need during their lives. They would have to ration. Soldiers surrounded and sealed the exits and located their positions before the vents, then left the betrayers to their entertainments, to live or die by their own efforts. Never would they be abovecave again.

The guards would rotate and stand before those blocked doorways and vent openings for the length of the expected lifetime of the youngest usurper, save for re and kir, and then their orders would be rescinded. At that time, Marden Cavehold would be sealed and the fate of the usurpers left unknown.

Justice was served.

The drawings were removed and hung in the foyer of the Castle. All Caveholders who lived now in the cities and farms and even outlivers in the region were encouraged to come to Castle Roos and view them. Word spread, and lines became permanent fixtures in the courtyard and beyond Eirunici.

Richard and Leigh looked out upon them daily. Drode endured the growing cold and the thickening snow to look at those drawings. Many came again, bringing their families and neighbors, even strangers, to marvel at the miraculous works. They threaded past the destroyed gate, the remaining charred parts of which were being taken away while newly hewn luculian was hauled to just outside the walls. It was sawn to fit, and hinges, handles, and new machines for opening and closing the fresh gates were forged and built.

Carvers waited patiently, but with barely concealed anticipation, for they had to wait until Derek and Paige returned. They had no idea what those Heirs looked like, although a striking resemblance to past Sha'ans and their spouses and offspring became evident in the new Sha'ans. Leigh did not resemble his parents, but one of his murdered sisters, and was an identical match to his great-grandmother on his father's side. Richard was similar in appearance to his mother, though a touch of his father appeared, too, especially in his stance and posture.

The elders spoke in wonder in the shops and taverns and households. The legends were true! The children had been saved and they lived Nartan, as their line had. They possessed miraculous artifacts, and won't it be good to have peace and prosperity back again? No one doubted this inevitability, even though the Heirs' lack of traditional Rokeen names had been discussed. Drode had determined that this was a minor deviation from tradition. They praised the unknown saviors of these Heirs.

Ducar requested of Richard and Leigh that they never reveal his involvement, because this would destroy his efficacy as Warmaster, and he was a humble and private man.

Soon re began and the weather turned too vicious. They moved the drawings inside the Castle proper. Still, the hardiest of drode had to be driven off, gently but firmly, to their households by soldiers. Everyone shut their dwellings up tight and retreated underground, and Castle Roos closed and stood black and silent throughout the frozen season, protecting the precious flesh within.

Drode spent the time remembering, discussing, waiting, and planning for shre, the season that followed the freeze of re. They awaited the return to the Kingdom of messengers' and former dwellers as well: long lost family members, previous neighbors, and friends.

Soon enough, crops must be seeded and nurtured, planted abovecave during mid-shre, and tended through kricten until cen made them fruit and seed. Then harvest could begin. Families could reunite, and the two adventuring Sha'ans would return to join Richard and Leigh in governance.

Duties, tutoring, and celebration would be as they had been before the usurpers almost destroyed that perfectly good society with their greed and corruption. The peace, which had existed since the reign of Kwyan, Gael, Dessap, and Sanar, who had ended warfare and strife by developing what had become The Nartan Way, would return.

Truth and understanding had the tendency to sweep immediately, once perceived, through this population, while falsity had tended to corrupted slowly, but corrupt it had. All the more reason to train the young in The Nartan Way, drode reasoned. They spent re remembering, and began once again to remind one another how to reach out and touch each others' minds, and to share emotions with those whom they had long been separated from. They realized belatedly that the physical messengers were not needed. The projected shared feelings were enough. Their family members, former neighbors, and relatives, scattered about the region, sequestered with drode previously strangers, or in caves all alone, experienced the call of the Caveholders now in Roos, and eagerly anticipated returning to the Kingdom.

Most of the entire planetary population sensed the change coming from Roos. Almost everyone began to share their emotions again.

Madella, of course, remained unaffected. Derek had trouble containing himself. He tried to remain numb and appear dumb, but this became nearly impossible. His deceptive skills were sorely tested. Deception was not normal for him; he was unskilled at it. He necessarily suppressed his joy and blocked the probing goodwill which tried to enter his mind. Fortunately, he often worked alone in the kitchen, while listening to the former Caveholders and their scattered friends and relatives explore and exercise their abilities. He practiced and perfected his unaffected expression.

When Daehl began to start the seeds, she taught him how to keep them moist, but not too wet in their cradles. He learned from the mechanics, and watched as they manipulated the vents and small dams to maintain the temperature and moisture just so. Still, he occasionally found his face split in a smile that he tried not to allow others to see, but Rein and Daehl did. They mistook his expression for pleasure at the relationship budding between Daehl and him, and were pleased. Even Tran's mood lightened and he spoke of beautiful dreams.

Madella, aware of the changes in those around her, did not seem to experience them herself. More opportunities presented themselves for her quashing, though, and she took advantage as only she could. Daehl was often her primary target, as usual. Daehl almost collapsed from the conflicts of the joyous feelings bombarding her from outside, her pleasurable time spent with Derek, the necessity of hiding her emotions from her mother; and her mother's gleeful meanness.

The happier Daehl became, the more determined was Madella to crush her happiness. Madella neglected to apply her favorite sayings to herself, such as the oft quoted, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." In fact, the joyful feelings all around seemed to have had the effect of making Madella meaner. For Madella, the joy of others resulted in hostile and clever attacks from her.

For Paige, the city of Nevanutka presented to her a world of intense sensation, disguised as an underground living, space filled with master sculptures. Filigreed luculian allowed views of cavernous expanses, all fantastic. Complicated stone carvings and friezes arrested Paige's attention for long periods, and her mind filled with the monk's whispery thoughts. She did not bother to block them out because they were such comforting presences. In this ancient and spacious cavehold, every surface was a work of art.

The Nevanut, Jorisartori, had brought her to this wonderland where drode feelings welcomed, calmed, and healed. The inhabitants' minds sparkled with energy and contentment. Paige regained her health quickly and spent the rest of re exploring Nevanutka.

Throughout, lemut lounged and paced while their bonds studied. When the monks socialized, the animals played with each other nearby. This ferocious sort of play took some time getting used to. One learned to stay out of their way. The semi-sentient beasts added their wordless impressions to their drodes' thoughts. A strong sense of community existed among these who had lived together in this harmony for so long. They welcomed her without reservation, and Paige began to live like part of the larger whole, a sensation she had forgotten during her single-minded pursuit of the Caller and the thief.

An enormous piece of art loomed before her now, all of luculian and different qualities of stone, expertly matched and mated and carved into a work of pure abstraction. Paige found everything she desired in that one massive sculpture, and spent many passings contemplating before it. The monks encouraged her to do so, and though she did not know it, this artwork was considered a healing work. And heal it did. Her mind went over her experiences, and she contemplated the things she had done and said, and what she should have, to come to better conclusions, until she had rearranged her mind's decision making processes.

Although she had been thoughtful before, this exercise corrected some thoughtlessness she had not understood was in her; she realized that her quickness of examination and likewise rapid rejection of alternatives had not served her well. Instead, she learned to deliberately contemplate the variety available to her. At first glance she often had not understood the virtue of her unfavored options, thus her decisions were sometimes faulty. When she took care to slow down and study every one thoroughly, and probe the future each might provide, she found her final choice different than the frantic, rapid choices which had so far directed her actions. For instance, had she not panicked and run away when her shocked and crazed mind insisted, she could have tended Derek's wound, and she might not have lost him. But she had let her anxiety-produced decision cause her to abandon him.

Only the imprisonment of re kept her from completing what she thought of as her mission; retrieving the Caller, finding Derek, and returning with him to the Castle and Leigh's and Richard's company. She did not even have to find the Roosians anymore, since the former Caveholders were now in rapport with them. She could experience them contacting, sharing, and rejoicing when she sent her essence out among them. She no longer desired to punish the thief. Well, not throughly anyway, just a little.

She still did not wonder why getting Vagn's gift back from the criminal was more important to her than regaining Derek, much less guess how this could even make sense to her. Nartan insisted she put the welfare of drode above the importance of material goods, miraculous or not.

Unknown to her, Vagn and Kwyan were adjusting her mind, for they understood Paige must retrieve the Caller. Although Derek had been grievously injured and lived in a dangerous condition, Vagn guarded over him and over Leigh and Richard as well. He overrode Paige's natural desire to go to her brothers. He even suppressed their desires to contact one another within their minds, and blocked their attempts, so that what must be done would. The elders had chosen which future they wanted, among all the possibilities, and were directing these talented young drode toward accomplishing this goal for them.

Occassionally, while Vagn was busy with another endeavor, Paige, Leigh, Richard, and Derek managed to sneak around his blocks without knowing they were doing so, and talk to each other. This first happened as she contemplated the interesting work of art in a receptive psychological and emotional state.

Derek wrestled himself from sleep, and Paige knew she had gotten through.

Don't worry, Paige, he mumbled in his thoughts. Still foggy and unaware that he was not dreaming, but that she was actually in his mind with him, he thought, I won't hold it against you.

Derek, where are you? I've missed you!

He awakened instantly.

Sister! It's so good to hear you! I was injured, and now I'm trapped in the household of a horrific malthauma. You'd be shocked if you met her, Paige. She has no training and very mean abilities, and her mouth! Her tongue is so sharp! Insults are all she has to offer! And she's the one who creates the Cintercorpse.

I must get you out of there!

Then Leigh, who had also been alerted by Paige's ranging mind, chimed in.

Paige, we're free. We've defeated Kent and the usurpians. We'll retrieve Derek when the world has thawed enough. He only needs to keep out of the way of her charring hand until we do so.

And Richard shook the dullness of sleep from his mind as well.

PAIGE! About time. Where are you?

Oh, brothers, I am in the most wonderful underground you could ever imagine. Nevanutka!

I've heard of Nevanutka, but I thought it was a myth, Leigh said.

No, it's a cloistered monestary, and the artwork is magnificent. I must bring you here someday soon.

You can take us there now, Paige, Richard informed her.

Richard took and shook her mind much like the skern had, manipulating the chemicals and creating new connections, and then her brothers stared at the sculpture with her through her eyes.

They felt her fatigue increase proportionately.

Oh, sorry, Richard thought. I forgot. We're all used to this by now.

Never mind! Don't go! Keep looking at this artifact with me.

So they contemplated the piece and experienced the same reaction as Paige had, tailored to their own histories, personalities, and choices. It made them more mature for the experience; such was the power of the piece. After they'd each told of their adventures during their time apart, they took their leave of one another, which made them all feel somewhat bereft.

Paige went to the chambers the monks had given to her to sleep off her fatigue and raging headache.

Just before she slept, she realized another reason why too many drode had so easily forsaken Nartan. Learning is difficult!
XVII

Paige walked down some stairs set between two impossibly long and tall verticals of sculptured luculian. These thin walls were attached to the ceiling far above, and the carvings made them a screen of delicate forest scenes. Through the wooden leaves, branches, and legs of animals, she peeked into the rooms all around her. The steps themselves were carved and she stared into the deeps beneath. She walked down these stairs a considerable length, only a small portion of the whole, viewing other structures, monks, and lemut above and below her. These floors led to even more caves. It was almost like being on the bridge in Cavehold, but this staircase was much sturdier, and she, too, was different now.

Turn there, Joris impressed the feeling of doing just that into her mind.

The monks spoke into each other's minds, as well as sending feelings, just as the children had learned to do. Paige had kept this ability to herself all the time she had been able to do it, as had her brothers, and she was surprised to find that the monks managed to learn the skill from them anyway. The four had indeed been the originators of this ability.

After a long walk she came to a door which had been carved and pierced just as the walls and steps were. Beyond, a platform of solid luculian planks was suspended. The staircase turned and continued down to her left.

She pushed the wood barrier open and walked on a narrow floor until it widened into the large plank surface extending all around her. Far ahead, Nortfshon sat alone on a cushion. He waited patiently as she approached. Nortfshon was the oldest of the residents, and when necessary, the de facto and perceived leader.

She let in his warm, welcoming thoughts as she sat before him, as a disciple would have. She couldn't stop herself from caressing the shining floorboards. They appeared covered by a thin layer of water because they were so perfectly polished and smooth. On either side of her legs, she saw the wood grain in the boards, but as she looked away, the floor seemed like a mirage, a smooth and reflecting expanse. It was a beautiful and mysterious construction.

"Yes, the old crafters still amaze me too," the ancient monk said.

He gazed peaceably at her and smiled. She hadn't expected speech from him, and he enjoyed her surprise.

"Will you walk with me?" He asked.

"Gladly."

Nortfshon was more agile than it seemed he could be, given his age. He led her at a quick pace across the magnificent ancient floor to a bridge of rock. The expanse of marbled stone had short walls that came up to a comfortable hand height, and then every body length or so, a thick, square column extended upward to the high ceiling. The bridge, columns, and ceiling were all of the same stone, hewn long ago into this suspended passage. It radiated the cold of deep rock. Far below them, Nevanut and lemut rustled in their comings and goings. Paige looked back and saw that the miraculous suspended wooden floor had been the only large structure on this level in the enormous cavern.

Behind, she beheld the carved luculian staircase she had been walking on twisting away in a variety of directions to many different levels in the distance.

"These caverns are ancient and beautiful," Nortfshon agreed with her thoughts. "Our fore-elders fashioned them to their liking."

Here the rock bridge branched into three separate, identical bridges. Nortfshon guided Paige onto the middle one and they walked on and on.

"Within Nevanutka, one should walk and let one's mind range about during every moment. All around are treasures of the old ones which enhance the mind's abilities. We Nevanut have preserved The Nartan Way in its purest form."

"This will be helpful," Paige said quietly.

"Sha'an, we rarely leave here. There is no need, but we can still help. We are aware of what goes on in the world. We interact, but remain in place.

"Jorisartori was on a special mission, to join a particular meeting, when he intercepted you. He followed the paths with which to intercept you."

Paige was truly startled. No one here had called her Sha'an, had even implied they knew her true identity. She had been accepted as a drode who had needed their help, and was now surprised to learn that Joris had set out to find her. And a good thing he had, too.

"We kept our knowledge of you from you while you healed to prevent distraction, and how quickly you grew well!"

The bridge ended at another doorway, this one placed in the middle of a square stone wall that seemed to hang from the cavern ceiling far above. The portal was carved into this, and beyond, a stone floor extended out of sight. Ledges had been cut into the rock walls on either side that reached up almost beyond view. This was a gigantic staircase filled with objects impressed with wisdom. Some items were more ancient than Paige had ever seen before. These shelves stretched away from them to a magnificent length. Nortfshon and Paige walked half of this distance.

It may have taken a quarter passing, two passings, or an entire season, Paige could not tell. Her perception had altered. At their destination, a replica of the Cavehold skern sat in the middle. Near the creature was a round stone block, into which were impressed the thoughts of Cordisiriandra, First Nevanut, the founder of Nevanutka. He had infused his wisdom into the rock with his mind, and the teachings rang out in a soft cacophony of noise experienced only in the brain.

"The beginning is recorded here. We expect Richard and Derek and Leigh to visit us when they are able."

Nortfshon spoke quietly to enable Paige to both listen to his words and experience the impressions.

"We have specific teachings I wish you to immerse your mind in. You have learned much about yourself from your meditations in front of the Nevanut Monument, but more is available to you. You must never stop learning, though it is tiring."

He smiled at her startled look.

She should have known. She had opened herself to their thoughts, and in the process, they had discovered hers.

"Skern will focus you," the ancient drode said as he walked away. "Good learning, Paige."

The creature took hold of Paige's mind and shook it, clearing it. Then he placed her within the projected thoughts, which had seemed cacophonous since all the feelings ranged at once. He focused her onto one train of Cordisiriandra's musings, and left her there.

The season of shre finally commenced. The air was chill and some of the soil still frozen. Snow fell, but the storms were no longer deadly in the low and middle lands.

Paige stood abovecave and projected her self toward that city near the shores of the ocean which she had perceived so long ago from the snowy mountain. Joris waited quietly beside her. The pair of lemut rolled together in a fierce embrace behind him, their coats picking up the muddy snow.

"I have something for you," he said.

He handed her a parchment, which she accepted and unrolled. It was the city news paper. The Cynthan Times, was aligned neatly at the top of the single large sheet. The Travelers had brought the printed word to Enistan, and Enistians had spent some time figuring out how to write their own language. News papers had been embraced in most cities.

So, the city by the sea was called Cynth. Paige thought she had heard the name before.

"Are you the messenger or something, Joris? You seem to be the one who goes out."

"Yes. Well, I'm the youngest at the moment." Joris was practical and short on words.

The big page of parchment included an inset of the works of local writers. A certain block of crisp symbols seemed to jump out at her. Joris had caused a translating effect in her mind. He understood the marks. Paige could read a bit, but she had never been the best student when written words were involved. They said:

Men of the Forest sit

reassured and Odors gesture

to warm chambers where

liquid clear and silver

from heavy glass flows.

He of your anguish

greets,

meets.

Do you follow Fate?

Fate. A Traveler word meaning inevitable, predetermined, and destined. The author's musings taunted her.

"Joris, does this make any sense to you?"

"Sounds like a meeting hub to me," he commented casually.

"What do you know about hubs?" She laughed.

Joris just smiled and handed over Paige's pack.

"Time for you to go."

"Aren't you coming with me?"

"I'll walk toward the city with you, but I have things to do elsewhere."

They bent to cut the luculian root and slickered their exposed skin. Joris wrapped up in his cloak and Paige buttoned her overcoat around her. The pair shouldered their packs and ventured forth, leaving Nevanutka behind.

The grey-clouded sky hung above, and the snow depth varied but seldom reached the knee. The luculian sap-permeated cloth boots she wore kept her feet dry and warm. Having chucked the old ones, she had made herself three fresh pair while underground, two of which she had rolled tightly. They took little space in her pack, adding hardly any weight. She had repeatedly soaked the new footwear in diluted luculian sap, wiping off the excess, and letting them dry between applications—twelve times for good security. These boots wouldn't let the cold or the wet in as long as they maintained their structural integrity, and she had sewn them well.

Snow melted into slush in some patches, making puddles that would freeze when the sorns dipped below the horizon. The shre air was warmer than the freezing breath of re, but still not comfortable. The cold attacked her sap covered face. She pulled her new coat's hood around her mouth and nose, leaving only her eyes exposed. Her humid exhalations lingered, trapped inside the material, heating the viscous fluid on her skin which kept most of the chill at bay. She walked at a steady pace through the dark, hard, luculian trunks.

They climbed down a narrow cut between the steep hills surrounding Nevanutka. The water that had frozen in its paths down the jagged hillsides was now beginning to melt. The climb was difficult; the terrain provided protection to the entrance of the monks' sanctuary. At the bottom of the cut, the wind tore at them as if suddenly awakened by their daring steps. Ahead, the hills graded downward to the depression along the sides of which Cynth perched. Beyond, the choppy sea called Veechee dwarfed the city and went on and on to the horizon. Paige had smelled but rarely seen the ocean on her way here. The water was a single moving thing made of deep, dark colors, with froth that whipped up on top. It covered an enormous area.

The city itself was constructed of luculian and stone and built into large sloping hillsides. Under them had been dug the shelter caves. Beyond, through several eroded cuts in the cliff before Veechee, she could see small sections of a dark, pebbly beach.

Never had Paige been this close to such a huge expanse of liquid, but she had listened to stories and explanations of oceans in her childhood. The closer she went, the more enchanted she became. The water had a peculiar scent and increased the humidity all around. At dusk, fog rolled in and over the coast, and at dawn, receded back to the sea and disappeared.

Sorn-servar, far away from the planet now, was just beginning to tighten its orbit on its returned. During recent passings, Sorn-telain usually burned through the uppermost cloud layer. Neither sorn, during this season, had much effect on the mist in the eves, when the air cooled the fog began the charming roll up the beach and into the city.

They walked for seven passings. Cynth was farther away than it appeared, due to rises and dips in the land. As they traveled, the chill air about them seemed to warm incrementally. Even slickered, their sensitive skin detected the slight increases in temperature. This triggered the ancient seasonal joy, bolstered by millennia of such seasons, to swell in their hearts.

They neared Cynth early in the eighth passing. The misty fog still hung in the air. The open gate was made of luculian, the protective walls and streets of rock, and the city buildings on each side of the main street, of both.

Paige grew nervous as they neared. This place seemed so different from everything she had known. Drode already filled the road and markets, and the meeting places began to bustle with life.

Joris touched her arm.

"I must leave you here, and travel into sornsrise."

"Joris," Paige turned to face him and grasped both his arms. "I can't thank you enough. You saved my life and introduced me to a wonderful sanctuary. I look forward to meeting you again."

"And I you. Good journey, Paige."

Joris turned and hiked away between the blackened trunks while Paige watched. The mud-covered lemut raced ahead of him.

The tiniest bits of green shoots were starting to push through the ground at this elevation. Her good mood bubbled at the sight. It had seemed a lifetime since she had seen new growing plants.

Telain warmed her skin despite the few remaining droplets of the fog, which was quickly receding.

She walked passed the gateposts and was immediately caught up in the busyness of the city. Bundled drode ferried about cave-nurtured sprouts and a multitude of crafts, artworks, and useful things. Small animals traveled with them, carried in cages, in hands, and on shoulders. They were livestock and pets. Merchants set up stalls in the marketplace courtyard inside the gate, and early buyers picked over the best goods. Cheerful people greeted her and nodded and beckoned, offering their products and wares. Children stared and smiled, and ran away laughing and yelling. Heat made the rock-paved ground steam, and outdoor fire pits were tended to increase comfort because the chill still lingered, though the weak sorns tried their best.

Paige found a spot out of the flow of drode and unbuttoned the front of her new coat to let out some of her own heat. She recalled Joris' translation of the printed marks.

Men of the Forest sit reassured and odors gesture. Joris had said the description resembled a meeting hub. Paige had never been in a place like that, but she understood the concept.

She stood in front of a little café, and the proprietor gestured her to come inside. She walked through the door, stooping under the low stone lintel.

"Hello, beautiful!" The owner shouted. "Will you have a hot drink to chase away the chill?"

He bustled over and encircled her with a beefy arm, hustling her to a small table near the fire pit. He wiped his hands on a towel tied around his waist. "We have fona, daff, glot, and dankle, and, if you're hungry..."

"Fona sounds lovely, thank you," Paige stopped his litany. She sat on the stool before the table. Thankfully, Nortfshon had put a few tiny, uncut gems in her pocket before she left him.

"Of course a lovely thing such as yourself would enjoy some fona. A wholesome brew."

He lingered too long, staring and smiling at her like an obtuse fool, which served only to raise her hackles. This was probably not the effect he had in mind. Paige turned her face away to look out the windows. After the long appraisal the shopkeeper hustled behind the counter, measured her drink into a pot, and heated the liquid over an open flame. She heard him pouring it into a cup and garnishing it.

More drode entered the marketplace, and the road was really starting to bustle now. The noise of the vendors' and their customers' haggling rose. The city sounded harsh and startling compared to the nature she had just journeyed through, and the monks' cavehold.

The shopkeeper brought the drink over and placed the mug before her on the well worn table, and then sat next to her.

"Delicious, thank you," she said after a sip of the hot brew. The sweet fona warmed her mouth, throat, and chest as she swallowed.

"I haven't seen you around before. Come to town from outside?"

"Yes."

"Have business here?"

"I'm looking for a friend." She decided to try and pull some information out of him, since he seemed to be trying to get something out of her, and therefore might be forthcoming. "Perhaps you can help me. He's a bit of a trickster. He sent me a puzzle and I'm supposed to find him by it." She recited the poem to him.

"Him, huh?" The shopkeeper sat back, and then leaned close as if in conspiracy with her. He bathed her in his foul breath and lecherous gaze, and his hair looked like he had just gotten out of bed after a bad night. Paige wondered why this drode imagined she could be interested in him. Wishful thinking?

Someone else had entered the serving area from a rear room. Paige craned her neck around to see, making a pretzel of herself trying not to get any closer to the shopkeeper.

The new entry must be his bond. The woman had a pinched look on her face. "It's a tavern," she answered Paige tightly. "Up two alleys on the left." She flicked a towel at her drode. "Get up and do something about this pile of trash you made here. Are you done prepping for the day?"

"Nearly, almost," said the man. He smiled at his mate while heaving his heavy, unfit body off of the stool. He nearly upended the table. He walked around to her and gave her a peck on the cheek as he passed. She took this as her due. The sour look on her face didn't soften.

When he was safely behind the counter she walked over and leaned near Paige as if cleaning the moist spots where he had rested his sweaty forearms. She said, "I won't have you in here tempting my husband, you slit. Finish, pay, and leave."

This shocked Paige, though only for a moment. Before the shopkeeper straightened up, she replied, with a bit of a growl thrown in for good measure, "You may think he's the finest drode around, but I wouldn't have your husband if you paid me to take him."

Now it was the shopkeeper's turn to be shocked. She had not expected an answer like that. She barked a sudden laugh, smiled, turned, walked back behind the counter, and disappeared into the rear room. The husband came forward again after he assured himself she had left.

"She would never find out were you to show me a little kindness," he said as his eyes skimmed Paige's body. "She believes everything I say."

How did these drode stay in business, acting like this, Paige wondered.

"You don't understand your wife at all. She warned me off. I told her that you may be her champion, but to me you're annoying, dirty, stinky, and mannerless, and I wouldn't have you if she paid me to take you. Why do you think she smiled?"

Now it was his turn to be shocked.

Paige tossed back the rest of her fona, dropped a tiny jewel into a dent on the tabletop, and left the dismal café while her former admirer still struggled to come up with a retort.

Fools, she thought frostily. Nartan forbade bond betrayal for good reason!

Paige hoped the whole city was not full of notorious drode. Would she be forced to wade through problem after difficulty? She headed up the main street, found the second alley on the left, and turned up the narrow way. Dirty water trickled down the depression in the center. Children and their pets ran along on either side. Doors, flush with both walls, led to housing. Everything here seemed closed up—tight and still. Ahead, a beckoning luculian placard hung from the stone above one of the ubiquitous entrances.

The sign was intricately carved. On the plaque, three drode sat together at a table, but they each looked as if they contemplated their own thoughts, separate from one another. The ancient carving was masterfully done, old and exquisite.

The people represented were a contradicting combination: a Logger, a Forester, and a Wooddrode.

Loggers, leftover paranoids from the days before universal adoption of The Nartan Way, dealt in their trade only with trusted individuals, supplying seasoned logs to cutters and carvers, at odds with Wooddrode and Foresters.

Wooddrode, solitary nomads rarely seen, retrieved and cared for the cadavers of drode they encountered caught out and frozen in re ice. They came to caveholds when they had a body to deliver for possible identification, reunification with its grateful family, and placement in the cool burial caves. Other times they came to trade some animal meat or wild herbs for something made in town.

Foresters also wandered, caring for luculian. They comprehended its problems and managed the forests. They inhabited a network of individual caveholds, full of treatment for wood, root, and leaf diseases, all over the world. They alone knew of these holds.

Each of these was an iconoclastic loner, important to the planet ecology, but they were almost never seen in the same place at the same time. They were the type of drode who didn't seek the company of others.

Men of the Forest...

Intriquing. Paige thought the original meaning of the artwork had probably been forgotten over time.

Heat, and the odors of food, alcohol, last season's dry chirrish smoke, perfume, and bodies entwined and filled her senses as she stood inside the door she had closed behind her.

Odours gesture...

Light streamed through thick, diamond shaped glass panes, the first windows Paige had ever seen. These were set in the length of wall which lined the alley. Servers moved between a surprisingly large volume of guests, bearing trays laden with steaming delights. This public house was obviously a well regarded gathering place.

...to warm chambers...

She walked further in and met merry greetings noisily made by the entire population of the tavern, many lifting their mugs of various brews to her. They clanked them against their neighbors' and drank deeply. A server nodded to her and to an open spot at one of the long tables. She took off her overcoat, after grasping the orb and popping it into an inner pocket of her clothing, before hanging the coat on one of the many hooks which were filled with a variety of weatherwear on the long wall to her left. She worked her way to the seat and began to enjoy herself in the infectious atmosphere. She couldn't help it. If she stayed long enough, she thought, this place would become a welcome habit.

The carving out front made sense now. All type of drode ate and drank and socialized in merry companionship here.

Loud voices at the bar caught her attention. Paige turned to view a pleasantly drunk drode being boisterously managed by his equally inebriated companions.

The drinkmaster drew a clear, flat liquid into a sturdy mug. He filled it three-fifths full and stopped. He took a thick, cut glass pitcher and dribbled a slow silvery stream into the center of the poured drink, creating an artistic effect; the second material curled and splattered inside the first, forming pools and streams of itself in a mesmerizing manner.

The drunk eased this concoction down, squinting as he encountered the shiny grey substance. A drop of it fell from his lips before he ran his forearm over them.

...where liquid clear and silver from heavy glass flows.

A long mirror on the side wall reflected her own visage, and the reflection of an unfamiliar one caught her attention, too. Once she focused on him, though, she realized he consciously projected a familiar essence. Like the fire, his emotions seemed designed to warm her. Turning her gaze away from the mirror, Paige viewed him sitting alone at a small table in the darkest, deepest part of the room, drinking one of those drinks. The thief.

Beside him, resting on the scarred wood, in plain view, sat the Caller.

She glared. He stared back, and gestured to the seat beside him.

He of your anguish greets, meets.

For a second she recalled the skeezy shopkeeper, but shook the memory off. This was a different type of man. She knew this drode from his essence and their long journey together.

Before confronting the thief, Paige decided to reach out to Richard and Leigh, far away in Castle Roos.

Paige, well come.

Richard, I'm about to confront the fool who stole my gift. I may need to show him the drawings.

Paige, I'm not comfortable manipulating his mind that way. We've only recently discovered this ability, and I don't think we should share.

No, you're right. Stay with me anyway, and help me. I'm afraid.

Of course.

I'm here, too. Leigh interjected as he entered her mind.

Do you follow Fate? Paige remembered the last line of the poem.

For a moment, as she stood and made her way over to the table at which he sat, a rage rose in her. They had not had a long journey together, as she had told herself. She was being fatally generous. They were combatants. Though he had saved her life, he also had endangered her. However, her rage was not Nartan, and Richard and Leigh helped her to push back against it. She forced her anger down and by the time she sat next to him, she had controlled herself.

He looked much like Joris. Leigh encouraged her to remember he was not Joris, and that she must not let her experiences with Joris and the Nevanut influence her feelings about this drode. Cautiously, she palmed the bag, relieved to discover its contents barely diminished. She tied the Caller to her belt.

"I thought I'd lost you," the thief spoke Enistian quietly in a throaty baritone. "I'm lucky my poem drew you here."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Fraen. It's nice to finally meet you. What shall I call you?

"This is mine. You stole it."

"To get you to follow me."

"Why?"

"Weren't you brought up from the Palace to track the Roosians?"

"Yes."

"Well, I diverted you from them."

Paige paused. Richard probed Fraen's mind deeply and told her that Fraen did not know who she was or why she had wanted to follow the refugees from the Castle. For all he knew, she was usurpian.

"The other Roosians aren't here," Paige flatly stated.

"As you say," Fraen said pointedly.

"Did you try to kill me in your trap?"

"No. I'm not a killer, I only tried to slow you down. I didn't want to meet you until drode surrounded me, for my safety. I can tell you're thauma, and I can't match your skills. I'm able to perform a few tricks, but I'm more of a planner."

His words seemed to match his behavior, as he had seemed to want her to follow him, and had tried to keep her from danger—from the edge of the precipice, and the cracked ice. The edgeless hole he had made might have killed her though, if not for Moonflight. He was right; he wasn't much of a thauma.

"A planner? That was your role in Roos?"

"We ran the Kingdom."

This startled the three listeners.

"So, you are one of the Keepers?"

"Yes." The thief smiled and eyed the bag. "That's Reechen."

Paige didn't reply.

"Not many know of Reechen," he said. "Again, who are you?"

"I wanted to track the drode who escaped, but not for the reasons you imagine. You've misunderstood."

"The misunderstanding is yours. We kicked you and your usurpian brethren out of the Kingdom to retain it for the Heirs. We'll retake Roos."

"We who?"

"The Keepers and the city folk."

"If that's true, I'll help you."

The thief looked surprised and abruptly sat back in his chair.

"What trickery is this?"

"None. The deceit was the usurpers'. I'm not usurpian."

He leaned toward her.

"You came with the invading force from Marden Cavehold, and up through the tunnels from the Castle to track us. You're not one of us, so you're one of them."

"A prisoner of Kent's."

"So!" he sneered, clearly not convinced. "And you expect me to believe you've escaped and want to patronize us?"

"No. You'll join us."

The thief furrowed his brows, expressing his confusion.

"Ducar brought you up the cliff," he tried to reason. "Ducar is Kent's WarMaster. You were with Ducar, therefore, also with Kent."

"Ducar was with Kent, but we discovered Kent planned to rule the Kingdom himself with his usurpian collaborators. You're familiar with his propaganda. Understand, Kent and the betrayers fooled the Marden Caveholders into believing you Keepers were the traitors, and the Caveholders had a duty to take Roos back from you for the Heirs. Kent retrieved and used the children to support his lies. The Caveholders thought they would be taking Roos from the usurpers for the Royals. They didn't realize the usurpians lived among them. You shouldn't hold their foolishness against them. The Heirs don't."

"He found the Heirs. You expect me to believe this?"

"Yes, and they have retaken the Castle and invite all Roosians to return, and you must embrace drode who were fooled and misused by Kent and the other deceivers."

"You want me to go with you to Roos, and get word to the others that they should come as well, as long as they welcome their traitorous family members and neighbors?"

"It's been taken care of. You've felt it. I only want you to return too. You have valuable knowledge about running the Kingdom. The Heirs will need you."

"How do I know that you aren't just rounding us up so you can slaughter us and be assured your victory, usurpian?"

Paige sighed. He had expressed a legitimate fear.

"I'm Paigekaspar," she said quietly.

He barked a laugh. "And I'm a Thauma of Great Reknown."

"You're not. I'm familiar with a Thauma of Great Reknown, and he wouldn't question that I'm telling the truth."

"Because he'd divine your true emotions." Fraen's voice dripped unpleasant sarcasm.

"No," Paige teased open the Caller and rubbed her fingertips in the silky talc. She would put an end to this nasty verbal sparring. "He'd feel it. May I enter your mind?"

"If you think you can," he scoffed.

She grasped his wrist and ground the powder into his skin. It wasn't quite Nartan to use this method to further empower connection to the emotions passing between them without his consent, but she wanted to convince him irrevocably and quickly. This conversation had become tedious.

He stiffened while the visions and her feelings, from the day Ducar showed up at Vagn's, until she and her brothers realized Kent's deception, became his own. She let go of him.

She had learned he was Fraensartori, Joris' brother.

That should do it, Paige, Leigh said.

Fraen fought to control his breathing, and sweat glistened on him. He appeared fragile.

Paige speared him with her stare, not quite finished.

"You resist with words of disdain but I am true. If you want confirmation, talk to Joris, the monk, within your mind. He'll hear you."

Fraen did, silently, and his younger sibling shared his emotional comprehension of the young woman.

You should get a room and let him sleep this experience off, Leigh suggested.

Thank you, brothers. I think I can take it from here.

Yes, he's pretty well convinced now, but find us if you need us.

I will.

Paige told Fraen to wait, and went to the bar to talk to a server. She found out about rooms-for-let upstairs and paid for a night, and for Fraen's drinks and supper, with the monk's tiny jewels. This used up most of the rest of them.

She retrieved her coat and returned to him. He had recovered somewhat. He wiped his face with his sleeve.

"Sha'an." He whispered when she sat next to him.

"Call me Paige. Drode can overhear. We'll never be allowed to leave if anyone discovers who I am, and I have to find my brother."

"Find him?"

"It's a long story. I'll fill you in after you get some rest."

She took his arm and helped him to his feet, and they made for the stairs by the end of the mirrored wall, to the whoops and cheers of the patrons who thought...well.
XVIII

Derek worked in the kitchen as a prep cook for most of re, until Daehl came looking for him and took him to the seeding caves. Five lengthy caverns lay side by side, separated by rock walls with many arched doorways. Sornlight had been directed in, just as in the kull processing rooms. Twenty long grooves had been carved in each mildly sloping floor, extending the lengths of them. Minders kept these spaces well heated, and lighted mainly by diffuse mirrors which relayed and directed light in from abovecave.

Daehl led Derek to a huge storage cavern filled with smoldering kitchen waste compost. The piles of decayed vegetation were slightly moist. The stench here seemed to enter his pores, although a breeze told him an extensive and complicated ventilation system wicked out excessive warmth. The ventilated air was perfect for composting, creating a miserable climate for drode. Large piles of the red sandy soil were also piled here.

"The extra heat and the humidity sterilize our planting mediums, but excess moisture would cause disease to develop, so we vent aggressively here," Daehl explained. "The mounds are turned every day to enable the innerds to get to the outside to dry and cool, and the dryer, cooler outsides become hot and more moist on the inside of the pile. This turning helps to kill pathogens and weeds, and prevents diseases from developing.

"We're going to be mixing the soil and the compost one-to-one, Falon. I don't want you to strain yourself, so only help, or pretend to, if you prefer, when the work becomes too much for you. Mother doesn't usually come in here, but I wouldn't count on history. Each cart we fill with the medium will be taken to the seeding nursery and packed into the troughs, you know, the grooves in the floor. After this, we gently flood the floors of the caverns and let them drain. After the humidity stabilizes, we plant the seeds. We'll have plenty of drode working on this, don't worry."

In fact, help arrived as Daehl was describing the process to Derek. Drode began to mix the red soil with the composted vegetation, and to fill carts with the result.

Derek had learned to move about with crutches. This was not a walk as he had done before, but he used the sticks to get upright and balance on his withered limbs. He balanced, moved the crutches forward, dragged his limbs, and so on, applying this difficult and tiring form of locomotion only for short distances. He wheeled his chair to a wall between doors and left it there out of the way. Crutching over to one of the hills of compost, he lowered himself down to the floor, arranged his legs, and began the chore of pushing small amounts over to Daehl with a simple board attached to a pole at right angles. Next to the soil pile, Daehl mixed the mediums, and two drode shoveled this into a cart. When full, one drode wheeled this mix away while the other replaced the wagon with an empty one.

Derek gazed through the numerous arched doorways. People in the nursery packed the mixture into the long grooves. Each quarter passing, the drodes switched around, and each took up a different job in order to work other muscles, though Daehl worked beside Derek the entire time. Because he was unable to do every job, they spent the days only mixing, and packing the troughs.

Rest times occurred with frequency. They ate small meals brought by the kitchen staff, drank copious amounts of cool water from stone barrels, and sweated. By the culmination of the six long days of constant work, and six painful nights of dreadful sleep, all drode were stringy and their muscles hard.

Rein long worked on Derek in the eves after his labors to get the cramps to release. Although Derek suffered exhaustion and agony every day, by the end of the seed planting he was much stronger, and he regained the coordination in his arms and torso which he had feared was lost forever. The work was an excellent way to return his vitality and confidence, as well, and, of course, he would not have let Daehl down.

They worked well as a team.

After six passings, most drode left the compost hall to fulfill their other obligations.

From the observation niche, Derek, Daehl, and the lead irrigation mechanic, Naul, watched as the mechanics let a few finger's depth of water creep onto the seeding room floor. The liquid filled the troughs in slow motion and soaked the mixture. Since the depressions had been cut deeply into the rock, the grade so slight as to not even be observable, and the planting medium packed tightly into the furrows below the level of the floor, the liquid flowed in without pulling the soil out. The nursery was slightly graded away from where the irrigant entered, but it would be a few passings before the slowly moving water reached the end of the caverns, soaking all of the mixture in the many troughs, and for the excess to drain out. Drode took advantage of the time to rest weary muscles before the seed planting began.

Daehl and Derek meandered back to their respective quarters as they had done for six eves, their exhaustion palpable. The chore was an extensive one in which most drode of the cavehold who had been able to leave their tasks without disrupting the necessary workings of the household had participated. Even Tran worked, but not Madella. Rein also did not do this job because he was unable to dissipate that kind of heat through his scarred hide. He had to be careful in his own garden as well, Derek learned. Mostly he directed others to do the work under his creative eye.

Derek bathed, ate, and slept, and when the domes glowed next dawn, he rose on sore arms, toileted, and dressed. He secured his crutches in their sheaths and wheeled himself out of his chamber into the hallway where he met up with Rein. They went together to the kitchen cavern to fill their small plates and eat with many other drode. The meals were dreadful: dried rehydrated veg, boiled grains, and beans were served with sprouted grain loafs. The food was sound enough, but had become so boring Derek surprised himself by longing for kull and dipping sauces. The eves they'd spent with Ducar in the arid woods roasting clune haunted him. He did not complain because this was always the way during the re-shre and kir-tan transitions, when fresh produce ran low. At least there was some food to eat! Derek was grateful for this, and for the hard work which strengthened his neck, shoulders, back, arms, wrists, and hands. He had been so miserable about his inabilities, but now began to understand how much he could still contribute, even without sound legs.

His mind grew stronger every day as well. At the end of each passing, as the domes winked out, he talked to Leigh, Richard and Paige within their minds. Their distance from one another exercised their capabilities. They practiced the new ability of seeing out of the eyes of their siblings during moments when other duties did not engage them. Endurance supplanted their fatigue. They became aware that they and the monks were the only drode on the world who spoke words into each others' minds. The four alone could see through one anothers' eyes. They puzzled about this, and continued keeping it to themselves for now. They suspected its revelation could be used as a uniting force later on.

As shre warmed the planet, Paige and Fraen left Cynth and made their way among chirrish, which had begun to bud out, toward Madella's household, guided by Derek's connection to her.

The citifolk of Roos, too, planted their seeds, and tended them in underground nurseries. Leigh and Richard managed the Castle and the cities. One new door of the huge luculian gate of Eirunici had been carved with the visages of the two Heirs and hung. The young Sha'ans attended the ceremony and hosted the following party in Castle Roos. The revelry lasted several days, though drode did not neglect the city nurseries.

Leigh met his true love during this time, and he knew it the minute he saw her. They all did. Narah was Leigh's intellectual match, which was no small feat. Narah was the daughter of the male Keeper who had been tortured. She sought out the Heirs to thank them personally for their support of her father during his awful experience. Leigh and Narah felt an intense and immediate attracton to one another.

Paige and Derek lived double lives these passings as they enjoyed the party through Richard's and Leigh's eyes and emotions.

Fraen and Paige struggled through the cold forest of blackened trunks, wet soil, loose rocks, and small, energetic, green, sprouting chirrish.

Derek helped plant seeds and continued the work of monitoring the seedbed moisture, humidity, and availabilty of light with Daehl and the mechanics. The sprouts emerged and he felt proud of the result of all his hard labor. Daehl was correct, it was not wrong, but appropriate, to take pride in your work.

When shre gave way to kricten season, travel would be possible for Derek, and he and Paige eagerly anticipated joining Leigh and Richard on the Thrones of Roos.

Waiting was a staple of Enistian life, for the seasons to change, the fires to die, the ice to melt, the seedlings to mature, the fruit, veg, beans, and grains to ripen, the harvest to be secured indoors, babies to be born, children to grow, and elders to pass on. Not for the first time, the new Sha'ans of Roos experienced the frustration of waiting.

In Marden Cavehold, Kent and Don led the small group of imprisoned usurpians into the ventilation shafts. Their determination to have their way had been regained since they had been separated from the former Caveholders, who had rejected them. They would escape. Strong currents rushed through the large tunnels. Raw, cold air chapped their skin, cracked their lips, and dried their stinging eyes. They pressed on until they neared a main ventilation shaft that led to the surface.

They'd brought the necessary tools, and thought getting out should be easy. The soldier they suspected posted above would be trouble, but the system was large enough to let the four drode squeeze into the shaft, climb the ladders, and overwhelm the guard or guards. At least, they were eager to try, or to die trying. Most, they thought, would get free, and then start amassing followers again, maybe with a new line of reasoning, as the old one seemed, well, exposed.

As they neared the steeply slanted vent their skin began to prickle, perhaps, the itch of anticipation. They walked on. Their nerves started to tick and their muscles to spasm. They groaned, bent, and clenched their jaws, but the fools continued forward. Their arms commenced to flail about; they hit each other and the walls, bruising and scraping themselves. Their legs jerked out from under them. They fell, and still they tried to crawl on. They had dropped the ladders, and were unable to pick them up. Their hands would not obey. They were unable to talk, or even whisper. Mutely, they scuttled on, still desiring to accomplish their goal.

Under the vent now, they went into convulsions. As if one being, a single thought simultaneously entered each mind: miracle. The ventilation shaft to the surface was a miraculous one which would not allow them to use it as an exit. This also kept animals out. The miracle worked both ways.

They rolled and kicked and scraped their way back to the ladders and beyond where finally they rested in shock. They could not leave through the vents, nor the sealed doors. Dropping into the underground river would be suicide. No exit remained for their use.

Leigh and Richard had followed Kent's, Don's, and the other imprisoned drode's progress in their minds, and laughed, though being pleased by their enemies' confoundedness was wrong. It felt good to be in control, and to thwart usurpian will and their way of malevolence. Cruel pleasure was to be found in foiling their pathetic exploits, and the young men had to enjoy it.

"Rein, where are my things?" Derek remembered to ask.

"What things?" Rein pressed his knuckles into a knot in a muscle in Derek's back.

"Owwww-ow-ow-ow-ow!"

"Sorry. Have to."

Derek inhaled voluminously and tried to breath regularly.

"The phial I carried around my neck," Derek gasped, squeezing his shoulderblades together behind him, "and the daggers."

"Madella has them."

"I need them."

"Oh, I can't give them back. She won't let me have them."

"Where are they?"

"Locked up in a box in her chambers. She showed me and asked me did I recognized them."

"Will she notice when you take them?"

"Falon, think about what you're asking me to do."

"Rein, I must have them. I won't leave without them."

"If I request them for you, she'll refuse simply because you want them. It pleases her to be in control and to deny."

"Don't ask."

"I don't have a key. She may carry it on her."

"Are you not bonded?"

"We were. Why?"

"When she bathes, take it, get my things, and return it."

"We are not that close anymore. I have other chambers."

"Still..."

"I'll give this some thought, but she'll eventually notice they're gone. She'll reason I took them. How else can she punish me? She'll kill me."

"I have a sister who is on the way here, through the forest. You and Daehl are going with me."

"I'm losing my nerve about that."

"What? Now?"

"Yes, because she won't let me go, even though she hates me. She's possessive. Also she can send Cintercorpse out into the woods to catch or kill us. I can't put Daehl in harm's way."

"It'll be alright, Rein, my brothers and sister will help."

"Are you more powerful than she?"

"We are Nartan."

"I know her power. I don't fully comprehend yours. How can I believe you'll prevail?"

"I understand. I feel bad for you. Afterwards, you'll be happy with us."

"As you say."

"When are we moving to the household abovecave, Rein?"

"Soon. Some things have already gone."

"Perhaps I can take back my possessions during the move, since you'll not retrieve them for me," Derek teased. He stopped when he saw Rein's expression. "I'm sorry, Rein. I do understand your dilemma. I'll get them back myself, somehow."

Rein would not jeopardize his daughter, but Derek had no such qualms. They had reached maturity and were considered adults now. No longer expected to act like children, but somewhat lacking in experience, they could still benefit from adult guidance.

Derek loved Daehl, and he could feel that she was beginning to love him. Daehl, as old as he, did not have his background. Though uneducated in The Nartan Way, exposure to him, his sister, and his brothers could correct that. She had the potential, capacity, and will to become his full partner, but he must get her away from her mother first. Daehl would have to help.

He found her in a seeding hall, of course. She walked down a row. The fleshy green stems had risen out of the soil, followed by the split seeds, and the first leaf pairs were unfolding. They had planted them only two passings ago!

"I didn't realize they would emerge so quickly," Derek said, wheeling along beside her.

"Oh, yes." She stopped and took his hand to hold. "They have to grow fast in order to fruit before kir, and also we control the heat and moisture to hurry them along."

"You are good, you know." He pulled her into his lap and brushed her cheek with his lips.

"Yes, and how lovely to hear you say so." She turned until hers touched his and kissed him fully. Drode in the cavern politely pretended not to notice.

"Daehl," Derek asked, "will you bond with me?"

"Of course."

"What if I were Sha'an?"

"Even more so," she laughed. "You can be my Sha'an, and I yours."

Joy filled Derek's breast, but he selfishly did not reach out for his siblings and share. Instead he kept his feelings all to himself, though his happiness nearly broke him wide open.

"When we are bound, we will be equal partners, not like your parents."

"Aren't we now?"

"Not exactly."

"Falon?" She looked questioningly at him.

He changed the subject.

"I need my possessions, Daehl. Madella stole them. I'm asking you to get them for me, but I want you to realize getting them will put you in danger. I'm not your mother. You can say no to me. I won't try to trick or force you into retrieving them for me, or punish you if you don't."

"I know you, Falon. I understand you. What things do you need?"

"My daggers, and a phial on a chain."

"Where are they?"

"Rein knows, but he can't help."

Derek hoped to see father and daughter working together. If not, Rein's responses would tell Derek exactly how far Rein could be counted on. He was not going to judge Rein harshly, though he must comprehend with precision what could break Rein in favor of inaction or even toward Madella.

That eve, when Naul relieved Daehl of her managerial duties, she went to find her father. She found him in his chambers and closed the door behind her. She looked in his bath chamber for her mother, just in case, though she suspected her mother's and father's bond had broken irreparably.

"Daddy, I need help."

"Oh?"

"Falon wants me to get his phial and daggers from Mother for him."

Rein frowned. "It's too dangerous. He shouldn't have asked you to put your life in danger."

"We are bonding, father, and besides, he offered to take us both away with him when he leaves. We must help."

"I like Falon, too, but we aren't familiar with him. He might be lying."

"I don't think he is."

"Your feelings have always been true, though you're young and impressionable, and he is Nartan."

"Yes, Father, he is."

"Nartan command capabilities we don't understand. How can we tell if he's only using us to achieve his desires? Perhaps he'll go without us."

"You sound like Mother."

"What will she do to us after Falon uses you to get his things and leaves us?"

"He won't leave us."

"Daughter."

"Father, our relationship stands on this moment."

"As you say."

"He's Nartan! Trust him!"

"Yes, I believe he is."

"So you'll help me?"

"No, Daehl, I won't, and helping him is too dangerous for you. When Madella finds out she'll..." He spread his arms and gestured to himself with his crippled hands. "I forbid you," he said, knowing full well she would act in defiance of him. He could only hope for success, and for Falon to be true to her. "I know nothing of this conversation, and I'll deny it to her should she suspect or find out that we talked of this."

She was angry, but she closed the door gently, no longer a child. Daehl walked the household until she located her mother. She did not let Madella see her, and hurried back to the chambers. She had a strong sense of urgency; she had to get this done before things were said and the deed revealed. She couldn't rely on her father.

Only Madella used the main door to the expansive cavesuite, but Daehl knew of the service entrance. She navigated the rear hall, rehearsing her story. She would borrow one of her mother's pretty scarves for a meal with Falon, a special dinner she should prepare herself. This seemed feasible. The bond growing between her and Falon had been noted by the household, and Madella had many beautiful shawls, while she had only a well-used few. Daehl had not had much desire to decorate herself, until now.

Since her mother was elsewhere, none of the servants were about, as the daily chores had been done. Daehl met no one and came to the rear entry. Her mother's personal maids cleaned up after her in the morning and brought her whatever she needed in the eves, using this back way. Mother did not secure her doors because she felt so safe in her own hold. No personal servant, husband, or child would dare offend her, and no others knew of the rear entrance. Daehl pushed the narrow service entrance open and walked through.

The space was a small foyer, the servant's staging area, beyond which were her mother's private rooms. Daehl's heart began beating strongly in her chest and perspiration beaded her skin. She tried to slow her breathing, and wiped the sweat away. How would she explain her nervousness if she was caught? She was so frightened she was unable to control her shaking. She had never done anything this bold against her mother before. The consequences could be dire.

She did a thorough search, careful to replace everything as it was before she disturbed it. She found several keys in a drawer in the lounge, and took them into her mother's bedroom chamber. Searching it as well, Daehl soon realizing Falon's daggers and phial were not sitting idly around, or tossed casually on top of some clothing. Several intricately carved luculian boxes that Mother kept her decorations in caught her eye. They had ornate metal locks on them. She tried the keys on each lock until she had opened and looked in all. Of course the items were in the last box she searched. She gathered them up and hid them under her clothing, and remembered to choose a soft, billowy scarf in a shade of new green sprouts which she hoped Falon would like.

Daehl did not trust her father to give them to Falon, in fact, he might put them back, or even hand them over to Mother to gain some favor, as if she had any to be curried. Mother was not the type to credit him for loyalty, more the kind to congratulate herself on her domination of him and still be mean, perhaps even a little nastier than usual. It would please her to do nothing at all in return, and to humiliate Daehl publicly for her duplicity and her foolishness in trusting him.

Her father was a puzzle to her and Daehl did not know how to think about him any more. Though she loved him, she could not fathom what the assault had done to his mind.

There had always been strife and contention with Mother. She was impossible to get along with because she was so selfish and hostile. Tran sided with her; he wanted to be on the winning side, and none of them would win against her. He was afraid. Father had held out until he had been burned, and then he sort of disappeared, although physically he was still here. Daehl had been alone and lonely until Falon arrived. Falon was on her side against Mother, and he was Nartan. He had a sister, he said, and brothers, too. They obviously cared for him. She wanted them to care about her also, and to get her out of this nightmare life. She had a skill to offer his family, and he loved her, and she him.

She did not have confidence in either of her parents, she acknowledged to herself. Their twisted relationship had made trust impossible. She thought perhaps she would discuss all this with Falon after dinner tonight. She deposited his possessions in her own chamber, found a servant, and told her to go and ask Falon to eat with her this eve, and later to fetch him and bring him to the small family dining cavern. This cave was no longer used for meals, as Madella liked the great hall, but it would make an intimate place for Daehl and Falon.

She went to the kitchen, nodded at Graus, and had him ladle two small portions of the soup he was simmering into a little pot. The private stores were just as depleted as the others by now, but at least there were grain loaves and clune jerky to chew on, and seeds and nuts, and some dried sweet fruit for desert. She made her choices and had two helpers bring everything to the cavern with a little flame to put under the soup pot to keep it warm.

The servants were almost smiling as they bustled around setting the table with the best utensils. She dismissed them, retrieved his things, and sat down to await him.

Before long she heard the wheeled chair, and then it stopped. The doorway darkened and the servant fussed as Falon rose to stand, and crutched in. He grinned at her.

She smiled back. He looked fit, and he smelled good too. His strong shoulders stretched his shirt, and the cords and veins stood out on his forearms. He had taken the time to put on fresh clothes and brush his beautiful hair.

The servant pulled out the chair for him as he eased himself into the seat. Daehl dismissed her.

He didn't even look at the food, though the rationing had gotten strict, and he must be hungry. He kept looking at her, smiling.

She was doing it, too.

Pretty soon they laughed.

Daehl was strangely thrilled to serve him herself. They made their way through the soup, drank the wine, and picked at the dried items. The good thing about these foods was that it took a long time to eat them.

Eventually, she said quietly, "I have your things."

"Oh? Any trouble?" he asked in the same low key.

"Not yet, but Father didn't want to help."

"Do you blame him?"

"Yes."

"Daehl," he chastised her.

"I know. I just wish someone would stand up to her, besides me."

"You're the only one who gets away with it."

"Why is that?"

"She loves you."

"Love is not enough."

"No, courtesy is necessary, too, and I respect you."

"I like it that you're courteous and respectful to me."

"I'll stand against her with you, Daehl. Paige is on her way now, with a friend, to take me home. Are you coming with me?"

"Yes."

"I'm sure we'll fight with Madella about you leaving."

Fear stuck Daehl, but she forced the emotion and the stricken expression away, angry that she had let him see it.

"Your sister's Nartan, too?"

"Yes, and my brothers."

"They'll help?"

"Of course."

He seemed confident. Her brother never helped her with anything.

"How?"

"The Nartan Way."

"I'm not sure what that is exactly."

"I know." Derek paused to consider this revelation. "The first rule in Nartan which you'll teach yourself not to violate is this: you will not lose your temper and say hurtful things to others. After you've trained yourself to resist this impulse, everything else is easy. You've identified the boundary, made this moral decision, and practiced keeping the rule. Once you master this, and in your case mastery may take many seasons, then not assaulting others, stealing, having sex with another's mate, abusing children, killing another, and the rest of the prohibitions, will be easy. To stop committing the first simple violation involves the same process as learning to deny yourself the complicated ones. The reason we learn not to hurt others is because it's not enjoyable when drode abuse us, our family members, those we're familiar with, or even strangers. We don't want anyone to experience what we don't like. Pain to them is painful to us.

"Morality is simple logic; Nartan is the organization of this reasoning. We seek to decrease, not increase, the discord in our society, in order to reduce our own experience of pain."

"So, I can learn this."

"Absolutely. I'll help. We'll have fun."

"Nartan doesn't sound like something to be afraid of, or to hate. Mother is a fool."

"Yes. You're not, though. You'll comprehend the lessons once you become familiar with the mental process. We need to protect our feelings and the emotions of those we love, and like, and even strangers. Also, the people we hate, which is the hardest.

"Think about how you feel when your mother is verbally attacking you. You feel mean, and you yell at her to hurt her back and make her stop. She's taught you her perverted ways by example and through abuse.

"You'll be much better than her. Daehl, I've never met anyone as horrible as Madella, and I've had the unfortunate experience of being close to some very bad people. You've learned from the worst; now learn from the best, from us.

"We're not perfect, we make mistakes, but at least we understand the difference. Nartan makes this clear."

"I never thought of her as attacking me," Daehl replied.

"Verbal abuse is an attack against you," continued Derek, "which causes the pulse to race. Adrenaline surges. You sweat and your thoughts spin in confusion. You prepare to fight, and want to run away. These are all signs telling you that you're in a bad situation. Recognize this. These feelings are unacceptable. Circumstances must change, not by fighting or fleeing, but by managing your thinking. It's difficult to do. I know you'll be able to, though, with practice.

"You can speak reasonably and truthfully to an abuser, and walk away, and talk to the attacker later when she's less upset. You must not lash out.

"This is the second rule: we never strike a person simply because we don't like what they're saying. If you punch someone but they didn't hit you first, then you're assaulting them, which is unacceptable.

"The third is: when you're physically attacked, or fear you're going to be, it's acceptable to defend yourself. If a violator tries to strike you, block. Hopefully, they'll quit. Should the fool try again, you're allowed to stop them: a hard slap on the temple, or a light chop to the throat would stop most assaulters. If they don't cease and become enraged and attack you, let them run into your fist with their solar plexus. A tap on the chin can make them pass out. A hard enough chop down through the trapezius muscle may break their collar bone. Breaking a joint takes only a few pounds of pressure, if you do it right. A sharp punch can collapse an esophagus. The key is, you should use just that force which stops their attack, and no more.

"Assault occurs when you strike someone but they haven't struck you, or the other way around. The one who hits first is committing the crime.

"Self defense is using force to stop an attacker from assaulting you. You're allowed to defend yourself. It's also acceptable to put up a defense against anyone who threatens you, to keep them from hitting you. You don't even need to wait for the person to strike you. If you fear they will, and they're making motions like talking angrily, moving in close to you, tensing up, getting in position, raising a fist, or appearing ready to kick you, then you can stop them by striking them before they actually hit you. Just be sure when using force that you cause your assailant enough pain to get her to quit. Only, bruising her might make her mad, then, she's really going to try to hurt you. It takes skill to judge this, but it's less tricky when you at least have the concept in your mind. In the end, if you must kill a person to keep them from killing you, you're justified. Also, you have to be able to describe what happened in sequence to the rest of us, so we can judge whether you committed self defense or assault.

"Violence feels bad. It's a horrible shame when it happens. But Nartan won't let us allow anyone to violate us, just as The Way doesn't condone our violent behavior.

"And you are allowed, encouraged in fact, to help others, too. If they don't possess the knowledge, skill, or strength to stop an attack, and you do, you can step in. My brother Leigh had to kill a man to keep him from harming others. We were all sick about the death for many passings, but the attacker wouldn't quit. Actually, the drode killed himself by not managing his own actions."

"So I should stop my mother."

"No, Daehl. You can't. Madella is a special case. She exhibits a lack of conscience, and hasn't any shame or regret. She can't experience empathy for other living creatures. She disdains morality. You need help, and we'll be there for you."

Daehl marveled that anyone would want to assist her.

"It won't be pleasant," Derek warned.

"For her or for us?"

"Yes," he smiled sadly.

"It's time for her to get what she gives, and I've come to the conclusion that I can't live like this anymore," Daehl said. "I would rather die."

"You won't, not if I can help it, though I want you to understand you might be shocked by what we may be forced to do to stop her. Most likely it will be ugly."

"Good."

"And then you'll come away with me?"

"I can hardly wait."

"You are certain?"

"Positive. Where are we going?"

"To the Kingdom."

"Roos?"

"Yes."

Now Daehl thought she had the truth of him. She dared to suspect all along.

"How many brothers have you?"

"Two."

"One sister? There are four of you?"

"Yes."

"Where do you live?"

"In the Castle."

"No!"

He smiled widely. He had sensed she suspected.

"Falon, what's your real name?"

"Derek."

"Of Hassant?"

He nodded.

"And your sister's called?"

Paige of Kaspar."

"Your brothers?"

"Richardantiarok and Leighjamal."

"You're lying." She set her wine glass down tempestuously.

"Do you sense that I am?"

"No, but Father said you might tell lies to manipulate me into getting you what you want."

"That's possible, yes, but Daehl, I'm not. Madella is that way and Rein might have been, just to deal with her, possibly even before. We don't know what attracted them to each other. Maybe they were similar, or not, but someone had to win that battle. This is why in Nartan, manipulation and deception are disallowed. So is greed. We despise these things."

She had calmed down somewhat, though was still unconvinced.

"I find it hard to trust," she said.

"I know."

'But I'm trustworthy."

"As much as you can be, with your background."

Daehl paused to think, her eyes downcast.

"I'm realizing this," she admitted.

"It's hard."

"I like you a lot..."

"I love you," he said.

She glanced at him.

"I want you," he murmered.

She looked away.

"Forever," he whispered.

She sighed.

"Take a while to decide whether or not you feel the same. In time you'll make a decision about my trustworthiness."

"You said you're a smithy."

"Yes, I did. I'm not, though. Should I have told Madella I am Sha'an, and Nartan? I'm here alone and impaired. Crippled. I can't defend myself against her."

"You didn't say you were Nartan. You hid that. Were you ashamed?"

"No. I couldn't tell Madella the truth because of what she would do to me. Rein knew, and he advised me not to. I'm a prisoner here, Daehl. She had me assaulted me. What should I have done? I lied to save my life. Nartan can lie in circumstances such as these. We cannot foolishly put ourselves in jeopardy."

"Mother abused you?"

"She did this to me, out in the forest. She sent her Cintercorpse to attack my sister and me."

Daehl was stunned. She had not known. She straightened up. "I understand now. We'll confront her together and then I'm done with this household."

She looked at him and said, "Forever."
XIX

Derek wheeled, and Daehl walked beside him, slowly making their way toward Derek's chambers. The eve was late and most of the servants had retired. They held hands and didn't speak. Understanding between them had grown, but also apprehension. Derek wasn't exactly certain what to do about Madella.

Daehl, though always the target of her mother's meanness, had remained somewhat removed from her real wickedness. Daehl was barely aware of the Cintercorpse, and Derek's revelation had shocked her. She knew her father had been burned in a fight with her mother, but she was unsure of how the tragedy had occured. She imagined the burning had been some kind of accident during an argument.

Derek told her that Madella had the Cintercorpse attack him, which meant the animated corpses were her creation.

Did this mean Mother burned Father? What horrible knowledge, to comprehend that she could do that to him, had, in fact, assaulted him that way, and all those others. Daehl tried to understand, but couldn't, and had had no idea that Madella would attack any of them. Not like that anyway. Tran must know. Maybe Mother's violence was why Tran always sided with her. Obviously Father would never get in her way again.

Perhaps the only thing which had saved Daehl from the woman's wrath all this time had been her ignorance.

Now Daehl grew angry, and not just a little bit afraid. She needed to get away, but she also wanted to hurt Madella, to make her experience pain, regret, remorse—something. Anything. Well, Daehl understood that her mother wasn't normal. Somehow Madella had gotten her feelings twisted around. This was the source of the strife in the family.

She also knew Mother would not change. She had all the authority, power, and heinous ability, and Madella never took anything Daehl said seriously. She thought Daehl was the one who needed to be brought around.

Tran could not be trusted. He was out for gain: the household, power, authority. He wanted control of everything when their parents passed on, and he was aware Madella would be the one to choose to whom the hold descended. He had made his choice.

"You two. Come in here now." Both Derek and Daehl started.

Madella stood in the doorway of the great hall where Derek had first met her. Her brows knitted together and her tone was angry and imperious.

"Get. In. Here." She grabbed Daehl by the hair and pulled her in, breaking Daehl's handhold with Derek.

Derek glared at Madella, daring her to do the same to him. He wheeled passed her and rejoined hands with Daehl, who quaked with anger and fear.

"I didn't realize who stole from me until I saw my scarf around your neck, Daehl. How dare you?" Madella was reaching back and moving forward to deliver a blow to Daehl.

Derek heaved with his strong arms while grabbing one stick, stood, and rolled the wheeled chair in front of Daehl. He leaned into and caught Madella by the arm before she was able to remove the chair from between her and Daehl. Madella gaped at his affrontery, speed, and strength.

"Daehl has consented to bond with me, and you will not assault her ever again," Derek warned. He stared at Madella and waited for her reaction. None came, so he let her arm go. He sat down and pushed himself back to Daehl's side.

To Daehl, his defense of her seemed like a miracle. To make Derek proud of her, she fought her fear. If her mother killed Derek today, she would have to kill her daughter as well.

Tran and Rein entered through the narrow doors behind Madella, shutting them.

"I've brought him, Mother," Tran muttered. Madella whirled.

"Rein, what have you to do with this? I'm sure you're involved somehow."

"With what, Madella?" Rein asked warily.

"Your daughter broke into my chambers and gave this fool his possessions back."

"I didn't break in. I went to borrow a scarf. Why did you take his possessions anyway?" Daehl asked heatedly.

"Why were scrounging in my locked boxes, you little thief?"

"I was looking for a brooch to pin the scarf! I gave him his things because THEY'RE HIS THINGS," Daehl yelled, partially out of fear, mostly in anger, "and I'm no liar. Why do you never resist the temptation to humiliate me?"

Madella stepped back and attempted to regain some control. Derek sensed Madella believed she was being lied to, and they had conspired against her. She wanted to trick them into revealing their conspiracy, but thus far, anger had not worked. She changed her tactics. She exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. As usual, she attacked Daehl.

"Daehl, you're so sensitive," Madella said calmly, a little grin on her lips, and a wicked gleam in her eye. "You must try to grow a thicker skin."

"You just accused me of being a thief and a liar!" Daehl spat.

"He has a chain about his neck. The phial is beneath his shirt. The outline is there. Where are the daggers?"

One was in Derek's boot sheath, and another was making a dent in his buttock through his chair's thin pad.

"That's not your business, Madella," he said in a serious tone.

"Not my business? You're a guest in my home. And what is this nonsense about Daehl being yours? Honesty, Falon, you've witnessed the way she treats her own mother. Is this the type of mate you value? You'll be better off leaving without her, and this you'll be doing soon. You're not welcome any longer."

"I'll be going with him, Mother."

"No, you will not."

"He sides with me. You can't turn him away from me, Mother, or me from him."

"Falon, if you're not with us, you're against us. I'm offering you the chance to leave unscathed."

"Who's us, Madella, don't you mean you?" Derek asked. He carefully modulated his tone.

"Of course!" she glanced at Tran, and at Rein. "You've spent too much time with Rein. Perhaps Rein thinks he can avenge himself through you. I insist you look at him and reconsider."

"Is that a threat? Are you actually threatening your helpless, crippled guest?" Derek smiled.

"Helpless, my ass," Madella sneered.

"Please, Mother, control yourself for once!" Daehl pleaded.

"Now, now, daughter. Temper, temper." Madella chided in a controlled voice. The wicked grin returned to again curve her lips.

Derek couldn't tell whether she imagined she was handling this situation well, or if the smile was a bit of theatre employed to make them think so.

Derek went within and reached out toward his siblings. He experienced his resolve being strengthened.

Try not to insult her, Derek, Paige thought to him. She'll upset herself enough if you simply keep disagreeing with her.

We're with you, Derek, Leigh and Richard joined in.

"Madella, my sister is coming to get me, and I'm taking Daehl and Rein."

"The hell you are."

"What do you mean? You just told me I'll be leaving soon. Now I'm agreeing with you, and you're telling me I'm not?" He did not give her time to answer, but continued on in a conversational manner. "You treat your daughter like an enemy, and have turned your son into a sycophant. You've killed many, and caused grievous bodily harm to your bond, and countless more. You let Rein live, and continue to hurt him and as an example to others. You crippled me, and I'll never forgive you, nor will any Enistian. Daehl is not only stronger than you, to oppose you under these circumstances, but better than you as well."

"What do you mean, you nothing little shit? She does everything she can to thwart me at every turn. This is not a respectable way for her to behave toward her Mother!"

"No, it's how she would treat a criminal to avoid being sucked in to her criminality. You may have brought her into this world, but you haven't been a real parent to her."

"I am her mother, and you are an interfering bastard."

"Oh, I'm no bastard. I'm a son of Nartan, a Hassant, and a Sha'an to boot." Since the Traveler phrases were so thick on the ground, Derek threw one down as well.

"Ah," Madella breathed out a sigh and relaxed. "As Kent told us. Your sister is coming, you said?" She glanced at Tran, who had been silent during the exchange.

"She is," Derek confirmed, as he realized Kent had been involved in his crippling, which made perfect sense.

"Well, then you're not leaving. Kent wanted me to capture you two, did you guess?"

"I didn't, but I know now. Kent has been imprisoned by my brothers, an Antiarok and a Jamal, the Sha'ans of Roos."

"Bullshit," Madella ejaculated. Because she was a liar, her most basic response was to believe she was being lied to. She did not know why Kent had asked her to capture the two youths, but, at the very least, she would be damned if she deferred to this boy with his interfering ways.

"Mother..." Tran interrupted meekly.

"Not now, son."

Tran stepped back away from Madella. He calculated. This drode of Roos was contesting Mother, and the sister would be here soon. His mother's way was to deny the truth when it didn't fit in with her plans, especially where Nartan was involved. She had none of the empathy of Nartan, so she denied it existed, but Tran suspected Nartan had mental connections and miraculous secrets. It was possible the Hassantran's siblings were here now in this room, in the drode's mind, though Tran had no way to know. Unlike his mother, he did not dismiss Nartan. He did not contain the power to perpetuate falsehoods and burn anyone who sought to disagree. After all was said and done, he was his mother's son, and he wanted to be on the winning side. He glanced at Daehl from behind Madella's back.

Daehl's attention was focused on Madella.

"Mother, I love him," she said angrily. Tears streamed. She feared her mother would burn her lover to death, leaving her alone in the company of her wickedness again.

"You don't! You can't know what love is yet," Madella sneered.

"I do. You're the one who doesn't," Daehl retorted.

Madella had not been set on like this since she had reached adulthood and had fully realized her unusual gift. The blatant attack caused her to experience trouble controlling her mounting fury.

Realizing that Daehl had made herself a target of her unreasoning mother, both Derek and Rein grasped her and shoved her behind them. Though uncertain whether Madella could ignite her behind them if she wanted to, they were certain she would be able to burn right through them to get at her. They feared as much, anyway, but Daehl might be able to run away as they died, or attack and kill her mother while the malthauma was preoccupied with killing them. Once Daehl made her move, perhaps Tran would help.

Madella stood silently, refusing to lose this contest of wills. She looked for Tran, and noticed that he had backed away. How could she win? For winning was, as ever, her only goal, whatever it took. However, she had little stomach for burning her family anymore. No, she would rather control them, humiliate them. This delighted her the most.

"Daehl, please," she said in a dismissive tone, as if this were all nonsense. "Don't let this happen to us. I've taken good care of you. You have everything you need. Tran," she glanced back, "come forward. We do well together here, the three of us, don't we?"

Tran did not do as she commanded.

"What about Father?" Daehl asked.

Madella huffed. "What about him?"

"You burned him!"

Madella grimaced. She had tried to keep Daehl ignorant, and hadn't realized she no longer was. How satisfying it had been to finally shut the old moron up, but this was having its consequences.

"That's in the past," she dismissed.

"No it isn't. Look at him; your reminder to us all."

In a gentle voice, Rein said, "Daehl, enough, now." He took her head in his gnarled hands, unable to feel her silky hair, and drew her over to him.

"Yes, stop this, Daehl. Honestly. Are we done with this fascinating little interlude?"

Derek, Paige spoke into his thoughts, use Ilen.

Derek sought the phial beneath his tunic and wrapped his big fist around it. Ilen's strong, warm glow, and its words, filled him.

"You haven't won, Madella," Derek calmly asserted.

"Oh, yes I have." Madella turned to leave.

Push, all three of his siblings yelled into his mind.

"Madella, how can you possibly believe it's acceptable for you to treat us like puppets and act as if there's no price you should pay?" Derek's voice still sounded like he was having a pleasant conversation with a friend.

Paige, Leigh, Richard, protect us from her, he pleaded to them.

We will, Derek. If you continue to be reasonable and speak truthfully about her, she'll lose her temper. We must defeat her. She can't be allowed to continue burning drode as she pleases.

"How dare you talk to me like that," Madella said angrily, though she stood still. This attack was a novelty to her. She was curious and a little bit impressed, but as always, most interested in keeping control.

Derek knew her temper could flash out without notice.

"I dare, because you are malthauma, and you must be stopped."

"Yes, I am. And who's going to stop me? You, smithy?"

"I told you, I'm a son of Roos. I'm Derekhassant."

"Bullshit."

"Truth."

"Mother..." Tran injected, coming forward.

"Son, will you just stand there and be quiet?" Madella exasperatedly ejaculated.

"Yes, Mother," Tran said, and he backed away again. He caught Derek's eye.

Tran has finally had enough of her, Derek. Leigh had seen Tran's quick glance through Derek's eyes.

Should she win, Tran will be hers, Richard warned.

If she loses, do we really want him? Paige queried.

What choice, unless he attacks me, Derek thought.

Work on Madella, Derek, we'll increase her unease.

While Paige, Richard, and Leigh entered Madella's unsuspecting mind and increased her agitation, Derek continued to contest her with the words influenced by Ilen.

In the forest, Paige stood straight and still, staring at nothing, so intense was her concentration.

"Paige?" Fraen asked. She didn't respond. "Paige!" He yelled into her face as he gripped her shoulders.

Unconsciously, Paige repeated to him what Madella had said to Tran: "Son, will you just stand there and be quiet?"

Paige didn't sound like herself, but Fraen thought it might be prudent to do as she asked. He sat down on a rock and waited.

Within the Castle, Leigh and Richard had been having a meal and a meeting with Ducar and Dahlrah. The warriors stared at the Sha'ans.

"What is happening?" Dahlrah asked. Neither Sha'an responded.

"Leigh? Richard? Are you alright?" Ducar demanded.

"Leigh?" Dahlrah reached across the table and grasped Leigh's hand. "Richard?"

Leigh's lips parted. "We're inside her mind, Derek, we won't let her burn anyone. We'll contain her anger. Push her."

Dahlrah and Ducar looked at each other. Richard and Leigh were with Derek and something serious was happening.

"I'm taking Daehl and Rein with me. You and Tran are welcomed to stay in this household, but you will be contained here by miracles and guards."

Madella barked out a laugh. "You're delusional."

"No, you are mad. You've abused too many for too long. In fact, Tran and your servants are welcome to come with us. We'll provide you with food, but you'll not be allowed to leave, or to burn anyone ever again."

"And how will you accomplish this?"

"Madella, you're not taking this seriously. Are you so stupid you can't see when you're beaten?"

The tension in the bodies all around him increased exponentially.

"You cannot beat me, you dirty, crippled, lying beggar." Madella's smile vacated her face. The insult and the pressure of others' minds in her head affected her, though she did not understand.

"I'm a cripple because of you. Did you think you could abuse a Sha'an and get away with it, and imagine yourself more powerful than the sons and daughters of Nartan?"

"You aren't Royalty and there are no Nartan here," Madella denied. Her face was beginning to show the strain.

"We're in your head," Derek decided the moment to irrevocably offend her had arrived. "You can't keep us out. How ridiculous you are that you believe you can behave like this to no consequence. You're sick and wicked. You've preyed on and destroyed this family—entire villages! What a massive fool you've been to believe they're the problem and you're not! Only a mental deficient would think she's always right and everyone else is wrong! Anything belonging in the mud under a rock wouldn't be this stupid! You mean, hatefilled bitch, you will never hurt anyone ever again!"

"Oh, you are so finished," Madella moaned as she pulled her arm back. Her hand contorted into a claw and struck out.

The four Sha'ans clamped down on her mind and twisted her intent, and Derek was not the one who burst into flames.

Tran, Rein, and Daehl were knocked to the floor as Madella flashed bright yellow and orange, and crisped into black char. Her assault was so hot and angry; the charcoal itself imploded into dust and the particles sparkled away. Madella was gone.

Derek wheeled himself over to Daehl, dragged her unresisting form onto his lap, and cradled her. Rein and Tran stared at the place where Madella had stood. Only a few dust motes, sparkling in the candlelight, remained.
XX

Fraen and Paige arrived, and a long while passed before Derek managed to console Paige over the state of his legs.

Rein decided to stay in the cavehold of the former malthauma, to manage it, and watch over Tran.

The servants built a saddle for Chaldiron, including a chairback for Derek which he could be tied to. This looked something like a moving throne. Derek, Daehl, Paige, and Fraen made Roos in good time.

Of course, the Official Royal Bonding of Derek and Daehl was held as soon as possible. The pair, clothed in flowing robes and silver headdresses, rode their brind through the cities, presenting their potential union for the approval of all Roosians. Drode gathered and followed, and the whole procession halted in the parklands. No dissent was felt; each Enistian shared their consent in the minds of every other. This feeling of indescribable joy was the intoxicating way they began their lives together. The following celebration among those present in the Kingdom was a party the likes of which had not been seen since the childrens' parents' formal joinings. Those unable to travel to Roos experienced the jubilation through the projected emotions of those present.

The carvers finished the luculian gate with the likenesses of Paige and Derek and hung it on Eirunici next to the giant door with the carvings of Richard and Leigh.

One ceremony blended into the next, culminating with the seating of the Sha'ans on their Thrones.

The minute their royal backsides touched those seats, they filled with every emotion available, and shared their happiness with each drode on the world, who projected it back and around, and it was many passings before the inhabitants of the rocky little planet resumed some sense of normalcy. By this time, all drode had remembered and strengthened their abilities to feel each other's emotions, and to project their feelings into one another.

And then the Sha'ans taught them how to speak into each others' minds, and their joy blossomed anew.

The seeing-out-of-each-others'-eyes thing the four kept to themselves, however. They retained the thought that this might be too confusing at this time, and more useful at some point in the future. Anyway, sometimes it's best for drode to evolve in their own ways, just as the Sha'ans had during their anonymous childhoods.

Soon after these events, Leigh became aware of a beautiful drode who shortly became the love of his life. She was called Narah. After a full round of seasons, he and Narah decided to be officially bound. They performed the ceremony and attained the consent of all of Enistan. A rollicking party ensued.

The next year, Fraen and Paige were united in their Royal Bonding Ceremony. The pageant was again performed, and the Roosians gave their unanimous consent. Another grand celebration captured the enthusiasm of all inhabitants.

Richard was long in finding a mate because he spent too much time in study. He did though, one fine day, in the Castle courtyard during a public art exhibit. She won Best Overall Illustration Depicting Weather on a Landscape, and he handed her the award. After several seasons, allowing sufficient time to get to know and love each other deeply, they agreed to endure the bonding rutual.

Richard and Minan proved to be the most fecund of the lot, producing five children and fourteen grandchildren. All the Sha'ans had offspring, and lived long, full lives to advanced ages.

When the time came for them to pass on into the Realm of Conscience, they joyously reunited with Vagn, and met his mother, Kwyan.

And that is when the real adventures began.

END
