Briony sank to a crouch. For the moment, she could see nothing but the reeds that surrounded her, the windblown stalks rubbing and whispering. She coughed and spat. The gobbet was tinged with red. It was pointless even to think about Syan-she would never survive a journey across the moors and mountains to reach it.

Unless I go west… she thought slowly, and squinted toward what looked an endless smear of dark forest on the muddy western horizon. That, she knew, must be the northernmost tip of the Whitewood. If she managed to cross through it alive, she would reach Firstford on the far side, the largest city in Silverside. There was a famous temple at Firstford that fed poor peo¬ple from all over the March Kingdoms, and even provided beds for the sick.

"Silverside" began sounding over and over in her thoughts as soothing as the word "heaven."

But as the dull morning wore away and she still sat exhausted beside the bridge and the muddy, gurgling Elusine, she still could not make a decision. Singing about Silverside to herself was all well and good, but she was even more likely to die in the trees trying to get there than out on the open wrack of the Weeping Moors. The Whitewood was the second greatest for¬est in all of Eion, and in its depths lived wolves and bears and perhaps even some of the stranger creatures out of legend. After all, if the fairy folk could come down out of the misty north to invade the March Kingdoms, it stood to reason that goblins and ghouls could still be found in the depths of the Whitewood, just as the stories all told. No, it would be better to stay away from the almost certain death of either marsh or forest, to turn back instead

and continue to haunt the fringes of Marrinswalk villages like a lost child. Better to stay where she was and pray for a miracle than to plunge into the forest and certain doom. Yes, she decided wearily, that made more sense, She would turn back.

It was very strange, then, that as the sun slipped down the sky toward evening Briony found herself wandering through the dense trees of the Whitewood, with the road and the bridge lost somewhere behind her and no real memory of how she had come there.

There's sky above me. There-a little. Between the branches. That is sky, isn't, it? It's still day, I can see, so there must be sky somewhere.

She lurched a few more steps toward a place where the trees seemed far¬ther apart, where the branches would not pull at her. Already her cloak was in tatters.

Food. So hungry. What will I…?

Something had caught at the boyish trousers she wore. Brambles. She pulled herself free, only vaguely noticing new scratches on hands already crisscrossed with bloody little lines. Thank all the gods the cold was mak¬ing her fingers numb! She wept to realize she had forgotten again which direction she had set herself to walk.

"Cloudy-eyed, line-handed," she named herself, mangling the famous story-and not entirely on purpose. She tried to laugh but could only make a ragged hooting noise. Barrick would think that was funny, she de¬cided. He hated learning those stories.

But it was about her, that story. Well, no, not about her, but about Zoria, and hadn't that Matty Wringtight fellow, that poet, said that she was Zoria? A virgin princess? Wrongly stolen from her fathers house?

But I ran away. It was the house that was stolen.

It didn't matter. She had always felt deeply about Zoria, the daughter of Perin. When she had been a little girl the tales of Perin and Siveda and Erivor and the others had interested her, but it was the tale of Zoria the merciful, Zoria the pure, brave shield-maiden, that had inspired her. Al¬though she knew many of the old tales and romances, it was only the poems about Zoria she had learned by heart. She recited the line out loud-haltingly at first, then with more strength. It gave her a rhythm to push through the brambles, a marching cadence to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"… Clear-eyed, lion-hearted, her mind turned toward the day when her honor will again he proclaimed, the Lady of the Doves walks out into the night, toward the fires of her family."

Briony had little strength, and the words came out as scarcely more than a croaking murmur, but it was a pleasure to hear any voice, even if it was her own, so she said it again.

"… Clear-eyed, lion-hearted, her mind turned toward the day when her honor will again he proclaimed, the Lady of the Doves walks out into the night, toward the fires of her family."

She had to stop for a moment while a coughing fit shook her. The next part of the tale was something about walking and singing. That seemed ap¬propriate: she was walking right now, and she supposed she was singing, too, after a fashion. Branches slapped at her, wet leaves against her face like angry kisses, making it hard to think, but at last she came up with the next lines:

"Walking, she sings, and singing, Perin's virgin daughter is truly free, despite her terrible wound and unstanched blood."

Briony felt better with something to think about, and it fit her mood of self-pity to think of how Zoria too had suffered. Merciful goddess, she prayed, think of me and help me through these days of sorrow. In Gregor of Syan's famous romance, the ice and snow had seemed to fill the world. Briony could still think clearly enough to be grateful that there was no snow here under the trees, but it was still cold enough to make her shiver. The pattering rain was coming down harder now, drizzling heavily through open spaces in the cover. These little waterfalls became another obstacle to be avoided as she trudged on, along with the worst of the brambles and the fallen trees.

Somebody came to help Zoria, she remembered-one of the other gods. Wouldn't that be fine, to be saved by a god! Except that god hadn't really saved her, had he…?

"Zosim the Helper, grandson of old Kernios the Earth Master, hears Perin's daughter's tripping footfalls and offers to show her the way, but the night's

shadows arc long and confusing even for the grandchild of the Lortl of Owls, and the dark magic of Everfrost delays them.

"Thus the Moon King's fate is marked and sealed by the mysteries of his own great house…"

Whatever that meant. Her voice trailed off.

A shadow seemed to jump from behind one tree to another at the top of the rise. Briony stopped, heart beating fast. She squinted but could make out nothing among the paper-white birches except the columns of weak sunlight between the trunks, each one shot through with falling rain so thai they looked like pillars of smoky glass and diamonds.

Could it be a wolf? She touched the hilt of the long Yisti knife sheathed in her belt. She knew she might be able to fight one wolf, perhaps even kill it if she was lucky-but they hunted in packs, didn't they? For a moment she was overwhelmed by a dark vision of herself surrounded by wolves in a wet, lonely forest as darkness came on. She began to cry.

"Most beasts of forest and field are more afraid of you than you are of them," her father had once told her, and she tried hard to believe it now. "They are right to fear us, of course-we men are more likely to be their death than the other way around,"

"That's me!" she said aloud, as harshly as she could. "Your death!" Noth¬ing moved, no sound except the rain broke the silence after her words had echoed away. Briony coughed again and shook her head, leaned in toward the slope and started to clamber up again, scratching her hands as she grabbed for roots and vines when the way was steep.

"When morning's sun rises…"

she sang out, loud enough for the wolves to hear, trying to make her voice steady enough to scare them away,

"…All father Perin rides with the gods of his house behind him, the light¬nings in his hands and his eye full of fury. The shining towers of Evefrost loom above the icy earth, burning with a pallid gleam like twilight, like bone, and a moat of killing ice surrounds it."