But if I don't believe in the gods and their stories, he asked himself, then what is all this around me? What has happened to me if I haven't been god-struck like the ones in the old stories, like Iaris and Zakkas and the rest of the oracles? Like Soteros who flew up to the palace of Perin on top of Mount Xandos and saw the gods in their home?

Barrick realized that he had found, if not answers, a kind of peace with his predicament. Reasoning in the way his father would have had helped him. He looked at Gyir now and saw something fearful but not terrifying, a creature both like and unlike himself. They had spoken with their minds and hearts. He had felt the faceless Qar's angers and joys as he talked about his homeland and about the war with the humans, and had almost felt he understood him-surely that could not all have been lies. Could someone be both a bitter enemy and a friend?

Barrick felt sleep stealing over him again and let his eyes fall shut. Whether they were friends or enemies, as long as the Qar woman's en¬chantment drove Barrick on he and the Gyir the Storm Lantern must at least be allies. He had to trust in that much or he would go mad for certain.

With a last few flicks of his spur Ferras Vansen finished currying his horse, then bent to strap the spur back on. The one good thing about this cursed, soggy weather was that the beast seemed to pick up few brambles, although its tail was a knotted mess. He paused, eyeing the strange dark steed that had carried Prince Barrick away from the battle. The fairy-horse looked back at him, the eyes a single, milky gleam. The creature seemed unnaturally aware, its calm not that of indifference but of superiority. Vansen sniffed and turned away, shamed to be feeling such resentment toward a dumb brute.

"Gyir says the horse's name is Dragonfly."

Barrick's words made Vansen jump. He had not realized the prince was so close. "He told you that?"

"Of course. Just because you can't hear him doesn't mean he's not speaking."

Ferras Vansen did not doubt that the fairy-man spoke without words- he had felt a bit of it himself-but admitting it seemed the first step on a journey he did not wish to begin. "Dragonfly, then. As you wish."

"He belonged to someone named Four Sunsets-at least that's what Gyir says the name meant." Barrick frowned, trying to get things right. There were moments when, the subject of his conversation aside, he seemed like any ordinary lad of his age. "Four Sunsets was killed in the bat¬tle. The battle with… our folk." Barrick smiled tightly with relief: he had got it right.

Chilled, Vansen could not help wondering what it was he had been tempted to say instead. Does he have to struggle to remember he's not one of them? He shook his head. This was the puzzle the gods had set for him he could only pray for strength and do his best. "Well, he is a fine enough horse, 1 suppose, for what he is-which is a fairy-bred monster."

"Faster than anything we'll ever ride again," said Barrick, still boyish. "Gyir says they are raised in great fields called the Meadows of the Moon."

"Don't know how they would know of the moon or anything else in the sky," said Vansen, looking up. "And it's got worse now, the sky's so dark with smoke." Their progress had been slowed to a walk-they led their horses now more often than they rode them. Vansen had hated the eternal twilight but he longed for it now. It seemed, however, that he was fated to realize such things only after it was too late.

Skurn hopped into the road to smash a snail against a stone embedded in the mud. The raven pulled out his meal and swallowed it down, then turned his dark, shiny eye on Vansen. "Shall us ride, then, Master?" Skurn shot an uneasy look at Barrick, who was staring at the raven with his usual disdain. "If us hasn't spoken out of turn, like."

"You seem in good cheer," Vansen said, still not quite accustomed to talking with a bird

"Broke us's fast most lovesomely this morning with a dead frog what had just begun to swell…"

Vansen waved his hand to forestall the description. "Yes, but I thought you were afraid of where we were going. Why have you changed?"

Skurn bobbed his head. "Because we go away, now, not toward, Master. This new road leads us away from Northmarch and Jack Chain's lands. 'Twas all us ever wanted."

Vansen felt a little better to hear that. If it had not been for the contin¬ual dreary, ashy rain, the lightless sky, and the fact that he knew he'd be spending another day's thankless journey surrounded by madmen and monsters out of dire legend, finishing with a bed on the cold, lumpy ground and a few bitter roots to gnaw, he might have been cheerful, too.

It was almost impossible to choose Skurn's single most annoying trait, but certainly high on the pile was the fact that unless something had terri¬fied the bird into silence, he talked incessantly. Relieved by their new di¬rection, the raven yammered on throughout the day, loudly at first, then more quietly after Vansen threatened to drag him on a rope behind the

hone, naming trees and bushes and sharing other obscure bits of woodlore, and going on at great length about the wonderful tilings to eat that could be found on all sides-an urpsome subject that Vansen throttled shortly after being told how lovely it was to guzzle baby birds whole out of a nest.

"Can you not just stop?" he snarled at last. "Close your beak and just sit silently, for the Trigon's sake, and let me think."

"But us can't sit quiet, Master." Skurn squatted, holding his beak in the air in a way Vansen had learned was meant to suggest he was suffering- either that or he was fouling the saddle, one of his other charming traits. "You see, it is riding on this horse that has us so squirmsome, and when us talks not, us squirms more and the horse takes it ill. You have seen him star¬tle up, have you not?"

Vansen had. Twice today already, Skurn had done something to make the horse balk and almost throw them. Vansen couldn't blame his mount: Skurn had trouble holding on, and when he lost his balance he sank in his talons, and if he happened to be off the saddle and on the horse's neck at the time, no matter.

Skyfather Perin, I beg you to save me, Vansen prayed. Save me from everything you have given me. I doubt I am strong enough, great lord. Aloud he said, "Then tell me something more useful than how to catch and eat yon hairy spiders, for I will not be doing that even if starvation has me in its grip."

"Shall us tell tha one story, then? To make time slip more easy, eh?"

"Tell me about the one you called Crooked, or this Jack Chain you are so frightened of. What is he? And the others, Night Men and suchlike."

"Ah, no, Master, no. No talk of Jack, not so close still to his lands, nor of Night Men-too shiversome. But us can tell you a little of the one us called Crooked. Those are mighty stories, and all know them-even my folk, from nestlings to high-bough weavers. Shall us speak on that?"

"I suppose so. But not too loudly, and try to sit still. I don't want to find myself in a ditch with my horse running away into the forest."

"Well, then." Skurn nodded his head, closed his tiny eyes, rocked slowly against the saddle horn.

"Here he came," the raven began in a cracked, crooning voice that seemed half song, "tumble-dum, tumble-dum, crooked as lightning, but slow as the earth rolling over, all restless in her sleep. He limped, do you see? Though just a child then, he came through the great long war fighting at his father's side, and were struck a great blow near the end of it by the Sky Man,

so that ever after, when it healed, one pin he had longer than the other. Was even captured, then, by Stone Man and his brothers, and they took away from him summat which they shouldn't have, but still he would not tell them where his father's secret house was hid.