Isak shrugged. 'I should probably get into the habit one of these days, now that I'm important.'

'Still, it's not something I'd expect from you,' the marshal said softly, careful to keep his voice low so no one could overhear them. The soldiers were handpicked, men of the Palace Guard and completely trustworthy, but this was too astonishing a secret to entrust to anyone else.

'Nor from him,' Isak reminded him with a smile. 'Stop fretting like an old woman; Tila can do that perfectly well for the two of you.'

'Then what is this about?' Carel said, puzzled.

Isak sighed. 'It's nothing important, I just want to enjoy this view for a few minutes and clear my head. He's been finding his memories, the ones locked away in the Crystal Skulls. While part of him had been with me since I was born, there's much that has been missing for millennia, and it's not all cheering. The defeated have fewer happy memories.' As he spoke, his fingers went automatically to the glassy shape now fused onto his cuirass. Having felt the vast power they con¬tained, he'd been reluctant to test the ancient artefacts but, strangely, their presence was still comforting.

'What sort of memories?'

'Battles, the death of his son, sometimes just senseless fragments, like my dreams, and sometimes things that explain much.'

'Such as?' Carel encouraged softly.

'You remember the day when this all began?'

'Aracnan?'

Anger smouldered in Isak's gut until he smothered it. 'Aracnan. He killed Velere, Aryn Bwr's son and heir. I felt Aryn Bwr's hatred, which is why I wouldn't go with him – and I guess that was why Aracnan didn't come any closer; he didn't know what he was dealing with. When he reached out with his senses, I wasn't just the frightened young boy he expected.'

'And if you meet him again?' Vesna, with Tila on his arm, joined Isak and Carel, both looking anxiously at the white-eye. The religious charms that were fastened to yellow ribbons and plaited into Tila's long hair tinkled gently in the breeze.

Isak scowled. 'I don't have an answer to that.' He looked back the way they'd come, almost as if he expected Aracnan to appear, but the trail was clear. Beehunters skimmed the ground, their crooked green wings spread stiffly as they snapped at prey he couldn't see. The slen¬der birds would have been a good sign if he'd been truly worried about pursuit; they wouldn't hunt if there were men lying hidden in the

grass. 'If I meet Aracnan again I don't what he'll do,' he admitted.

'But what will you do? Will you be able to control – him – before he lashes out like he did at the High Priest of Larat?' Tda asked.

'That was different, 1 wasn't prepared for him then,' Isak said. 'Now I know exactly what danger he poses. You'll all have to just trust me that Aryn Bwr's simply not strong enough to take over now. At the Ivy Rings he had his only chance – and he failed. Prepared, I'm too Itrong for him – and I'm still getting stronger.'

'Still?'

Isak smiled. 'Perhaps not physically, but I've found there are other filings that count – Gods, Carel, can you believe that it was less than a year ago I was driving your wagon and complaining that I'd never even be allowed to join the Palace Guard?' He laughed.

They reached the shrine and Isak ran his fingers over the waist-high cairn. Someone had taken great care fitting the stones together to make it concave rather than conical. It curved around an offering bowl fixed firmly into the structure so half of it was sticking out. The howl itself was made of rough clay, plain and unfinished, but its con¬tents showed someone valued the shrine. A carved bone comb, a worn but serviceable knife and two small copper coins; they meant nothing In Isak but they were significant enough for whatever shepherd had left them in the first place. Above the howl was a rounded shard of slate on which had been scratched Vrest's horns symbol.

'Aye,' confirmed the veteran with a grim face, 'less than a year since I joked that the Gods might have a plan for you. Careless words in this life.'

The silver-haired man stepped away from the shrine, hawked up noisily and spat onto the dusty ground. That act earned an admonish¬ing look from Tda, at which Carel hung his head and, after a moment of looking sheepish, he reached into his money-pouch to find a coin for the offering bowl. Tila's reproach vanished into the glittering smile that Carel had never been able to resist. She beamed at the man as though the veteran guardsman was a five-year-old just learning right from wrong. Carel knelt in front of the shrine and said a short, silent prayer to accompany his offering. As the man bowed his head, Isak felt a touch of breeze skitter down his neck like cool breath. He turned instinctively, but there was nothing there, only the certainty in his mind that the local God of this place was close at hand.

Isak reached out with his senses as gently as he could and to his surprise saw a blurred shadowy shape, like a hawk, circling slowly above the shrine. With a start he realised how frightened the spirit was; strange, he'd expected it to keep as far from him as possible. He placed a hand on the shrine and felt a shudder run through the spirit above it. Suddenly it all made sense: the local God hadn't moved away because it couldn't bear to allow him between it and the shrine. The shrine was all it had.

'It's not been consecrated,' Isak muttered.

'Eh?' Carel said. 'The shrine? What about the symbol of Vrest, then?'

'I assume the shepherd who built this doesn't know much about religion. He probably built it to give thanks for finding a lost lamb or something like that, so it made sense to put the symbol there. He didn't realise a priest still needed to consecrate it.'

'I will make a note of it, and we'll inform the nearest border village Unmen,' Vesna said.

'Don't bother,' Isak replied. 'It's over the border, and it won't remain peaceful in Tor Milist for long. There are too many mercenaries – any priest daring to come this way will need an armed escort, and that escort would either be the local suzerain's hurscals – and then we'll be accused of taking part in the conflict – or soldiers wearing neither crest nor colours, and they'd risk attack by anyone who sees them.'

Vesna stared at him before a smile spread over his face. 'Gods on high, perhaps we'll make a lord of you yet!'

Isak gave a snort and grabbed Carel by the scruff of his neck to haul him upright again. 'Perhaps you will at that – and to think all I ever wanted was to join the Palace Guard. You people should leam to pay more attention when you're handing out jobs!'

The comment provoked a burst of laughter from his companions. 'II you'll forgive the observation, my Lord,' Vesna said, his grin widen-Ing, 'you've still not passed the trials. Now I'm willing to admit you've dune a few things on the battlefield some might call noteworthy, but that doesn't mean you can just walk into the Ghosts.'

Isak gave a hiss of mock exasperation and thumped the count on the shoulder in response.

'I can't see Kerin agreeing to it,' Carel agreed, 'but I'm not going to be one to complain about unearned honours; I still don't quite believe I'm now Marshal Carelfolden, and you're still just some snotty-nosed chiId I took pity on a few times. Sweet Nartis, it must be more than thirteen summers since I found you snivelling in that wood, knees and eIbows all scratched up – feels like last month. What'd they done to you again?'

The four of them began to walk back to the horses. Mihn stood With Mistress Daran, Tila's chaperone, holding the reins.

'They led me out to the river,' Isak replied in a small voice, his smile fading somewhat, 'then they pushed me down the bank and left me lost out there.'

'Ah yes, nasty little buggers some of them were. Still, children don't know better and their parents didn't give 'em any reason to think what they were doing was wrong. We got them back though, didn't we? Carel chortled.