He stood now about twelve paces from her. Backlit by the fire, she could see a thin scar high on his right cheekbone, and how the muscles flexed in his arms as he slid the knife he had held back into its sheath. There were darns and recent tears in his clothing, and on one of his boots the silvery trail of a tiny snail that still slid along there, then descended to the grass.

If a facsimile, he was a good one. He looked real.

“We don’t have to quarrel, do we?” he inquired pleasantly. “We can share provisions, perhaps. I have some bread and cheese and a little alcohol.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“My name is Zemetrios—Zemetrios of Rhoia. I was told to come here. You too, I imagine. Unless this sacred and terrible place is your home.”

The sword weighed heavy on her hand. She thrust it back into the sheath, almost startling herself. Tiredness droned in her head and up her spine.

“Very well. I accept your words.”

“Then I may share your fire?”

“If you like. It’s the oldest law of the gods, isn’t it? To welcome the stranger.”

“But how unconvinced you sound,” he said.

He waited for her to seat herself, but she waved him down first. They sat at opposite sides. Around them the night was now noiseless and, beyond the range of the light, impenetrable.

“The moon will rise in about two hours,” he said.

He set out his provisions, the cheese and loaf, the flask. Clirando had eaten, but since she had accepted the terms of hospitality, she created another of the oatcakes and handed him an apple. She waited until he had swallowed a bit of the cheese before she would try it.

She saw he noted this, but he said nothing.

She wished he was not here.

They did not speak beyond the barest civilities. After he had drunk from the flask, he offered it to her, having first wiped the lip of the vessel.

Clirando took one sip, for politeness. It was some raw spirit of Rhoia, not really to her taste.

“Since we’re two now,” he said, “perhaps we should set a watch.”

“You speak like a soldier,” she said.

“I am—I was. I’ve fought in the king’s legions. Traveled quite a distance, seen the wonders of the world. But that’s done now.”

His eyes, a clear deep blue, looked away into his past. Clirando could see he beheld something there, bleak and unforgiving.

What else? This place was for testing and penance. For punishment probably.

She wondered what he had done, then chided herself for being at all interested. He might be dangerous, that was enough to know.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll take the whole watch. I’ve already slept my fill.” The lie was practiced, ready.

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “You don’t trust me, then.”

Clirando smiled. “Of course not. Why should I? But I’ll take the watch anyway. If anything occurs, I will wake you.”

“Wake me when the moon rises,” he said. “I want to see it. The last time I saw the Seven Nights I was only eight.” He stretched out with no pretence or air of feeling vulnerable. His movements were both masculine and graceful, a pleasure for anyone to observe, she thought sourly; a pity they should be wasted on her. “I wonder how it is,” he murmured, “she can renew herself these seven times together. Scholars have written,” he added dreamily, “there’s more than one moon involved in these nights—our own, and six of her sisters she calls from other spheres….” He turned his head a little and fell, apparently, instantly into sleep.

It might be an act. But Clirando thought not. The gods knew, she had in recent months had endless opportunities to study the sleep of others.

And for a stupid instant she felt jealous of his ability to sleep so simply. To her, now, it was an alien concept.

When the moon rose he woke anyway, the way in fact Clirando herself had often done, sleeping in the open. They said, if the full moon touched your face with her white hand, you roused. In the past of course, Clirando had then gone back to sleep.

“There she is,” said the man called Zemetrios. He lay still, looking up.

Together they stared awhile at the bright disk passing over the glade, reflecting like pearl in the pool.

“The moon looks as it always does at full,” he remarked.

“What did you expect?”

“Something more—as these are the Seven Nights.” He sat up abruptly, stretching so she heard the strong muscles crack in his arms. “I’ll take the watch now, if you like.”

“No need,” she said.

“Come on, girl. You’re a trained fighter. You’d know in a split second if I was trying anything—doubtless you’d kill me.”

“Doubtless I would. But I have no difficulty in keeping the watch myself.”

He said, “You look tired to your bones.”

Clirando blinked, affronted and defensive.

“That’s for me to judge.”

“Then I’ll say no more. But at least, will you tell me your name? You have mine.”

It was true, in courtesy she owed him that. “Clirando, one of the warrior women of Amnos,” she said shortly.

“Yes, I thought you’d be from there. Your bands are highly spoken of.” He paused, looking now down into the moon-shining pool. “Clirando, in fairness, I’d like to tell you something of myself. Of what sent me here.”

“I ask to know nothing.”

“Or you’d prefer to stay ignorant of me? Well and good, but this island is no place for human secrecy or deception. Nor do I think it the best place to travel alone.”

Scornfully she said to him, her heart beating too fast, “So you’re afraid of the Isle? My regrets. But I’m no companion for you. I have my band to think of—” and broke off, aware that she had lost her band and very likely would never find them again. A wide grief swept through her and a sense of shame. She had failed her girls.

He said, “Do me the kindness then, Clirando, of letting me tell you of my crime. In the temples of the Father, anyone may go and tell his worst sins to a priest, if the burden becomes too great. And I know, in Amnos, there is also a priestess tradition among the female warriors.”

Clirando lifted her eyes from her own emotions, and looked at him levelly.

He took this as his cue. Clirando did not know if she had meant it to be one.

“I killed a man,” Zemetrios said woodenly. He began to gaze again into the pool. “Fair and square, you might say, in a duel outside my father’s house. Or my house, since my father died last year.”

Clirando watched him.

The moon lighted his face, but his eyes were shadowed, looking down at the water.

Zemetrios of Rhoia told her how the man he had slain had been his best friend. “We’d fought as comrades in the legions since both of us were seventeen. He was a fine soldier, loyal and trustworthy and clever. We were like brothers from the first. We’ve fought side by side in enough battles…been promoted to the rank of leader at the same time. I was at his wedding. A pretty girl, a sweet girl. I don’t know where she’s gone now. She ran away from him, you see. That was after he changed into another man.”

A silence.

“What do you mean?” Clirando heard her voice. It had a sound of awe. Zemetrios had caught her with his storytelling. She must be on guard.

Zemetrios said, “He turned into a drunkard. Oh, there had been times in the past—you fight hard, you take leave and drink hard. But those sessions are occasional. Then, with Yazon, they became habitual.”

Zemetrios spoke briefly, in terse sentences, of drunk brawls, meaningless and savage fights with citizens of the town that Yazon, deranged with wine, would pick. “He was a trained fighter. You see what that would mean. They hadn’t a chance. He broke their legs and arms and knocked them senseless like cold stones. I and others dragged him off, doused him in the horse trough. Sometimes we would have to chain him up like a mad dog till he sobered.”