The story was making her feel cold again. She realized her hood had fallen back and her hair was getting soaked.

"Before his own door stood the Moonlord in shimmering armor of ivory and electrmn, pale hair blowing, with his great sword Silverbeam in his hand."

Just before she reached the top of the rise she saw the shape once more, a movement of darkness a score of paces ahead. Afraid to see it too closely, fearful that it was some predatory beast moving just ahead of her and that the sight of it would freeze her throat, she raised her scratchy voice even louder.

" 'Go away from my door, Cousin, " speaks Khors. " 'You ride unasked in the Moon's Land, on the sovereign road of Everfrost.You have no rights here. This is not vasty Xandos, citadel of the gods.

" 'I have the right of a father, " bellows Perin, 'and you have stolen that right from me when you stole my daughter! Set her here before me, then never cross into my lands again, and I will let you live. »

At the top of the rise Briony could make out only a deer track or old streambed at the base of the hill on the far side, a snaking line of reddish mud. It was nothing like a road, but at least it was a direction and she would not be pulling berry brambles from her feet at each step. She made her way down toward it with cautious speed, aware for the first time in some hours that if she stumbled or slipped and broke her leg she would certainly die here. When she reached the stripe of rust-colored mud she raised her voice again in a note of ragged triumph, a hymn to her new¬found path.

When you are this badly beaten, she thought distractedly, climbing over a huge, damp trunk, terrified that it might start rolling downward while she was on it-when you are this badly beaten, you must take any victory you can find.

"No one orders me on my own lands," Khors cries, "and least of all a braggart like you, Lord Storm-Cloud, heavy with thunder like a tempest that blows and blows but does nothing more. She belongs to me now. The dove is mine.

"Thief! Liar!" shouts Perin. "Now you shall learn for yourself whether this storm is all wind, like the stables of Strivos,full of his godlike stallions of the blowing gale, or whether it brings lightning, too!"

She readied the bottom of the hill at last, muddy and panting until, her lungs ached in her chest, but she had a clear track for walking now and slit-wanted to go as far as she could before the light failed.

And then what? a silent voice asked her-her own voice, the sensible part she thought she had lost somewhere on the road outside the forest. 'Then what? You cannot even make afire, and in any case the wood is all wet. Will you sit on a damp rock all night and try to keep the wolves at bay with your knife? And the next night? And the next…?

No. Quiet! What else can I do? Go forward. Go forward. She raised her voice again, just as Allfather Perin raised high his weapon against his daughter's kidnapper. Run, wolves! Run, all you enemies!

"And with that he lifts his mighty hammer Oak Tree and rides at Khors and the world shakes at the sounds of his golden car, the very mountains swaying to the drumbeat of his horses' hooves.

"Khors is fearful, but rides out himself on his white horse, brandishing Sil-verbeam his potent blade, swinging the great net his father Sveros had given him, in which once the old god had captured the stars of the sky."

When the two meet it is as the shock of a thunderclap, so that all gods in both armies, who would have rushed at each other, must instead fight to keep their feet beneath them. Indeed, some HkeYarnos of the Snows are thrown to the ground; Strivos is one, and as he lies there he is almost destroyed by Azinor of the Onyenai, always swift to strike and eager to slay his father's enemies.

"Back and forth across the great icy field upon which stands Everfrost the gods give battle, the light unto the dark, Perin and his brothers against Khors and the spawn of Old Mother Night, and ever hangs the balance on the cast of a spear, the flight of an arrow, the thrust of a sword, even the blink of a blood-spattered eye.

"White-Handed Uvis is wounded by a blow of Kernios' great spear, but Birin, Lord of the Evening Mist, meets his doom when the arrows of the Onyenai pierce his throat. The car of courageous Volios is thrown down by the bullish strength of Zmeos the homed one, and the war-god is trapped beneath it, his bones broken, his voice crying out to his uncles for vengeance. Even the

guuil river liimt'trail is thrown from its banks by the force of their fighting, and flows- brokenly in many directions.»

She was following the deer track now. It was wider than it had looked, as though not deer but herds of cattle had made it, just as they had scraped the wide drover's roads across the valleys and hills of Southmarch from the farmlands into the city's markets. The relative ease of passage lifted her heart, although the rain was still falling and her face and hands were still numb. If there were wolves near her, then her proclaiming of the Lay of Bverfrost was keeping them well at bay.

"In the forest, virgin Zoria is lost in the snow," Briony bellowed, but the wet trees swallowed most of the echoes, "the Almond Princess pulled away from the aiding hand of Zosim by the wrath of Old Winter, so that she cannot see her fingers before her eyes, and can hear only the shriek of the snowy winds. Only a short distance away her family fights and dies for her honor, and everywhere else the screams of gods overtop even the storm.

"Lost, her eyes shut against the wailing winds, her face bloodied by sleet, she stumbles. Lost, she wanders in howling darkness, and does not know that on the other side of the darkly sheltering, confounding wood, all is war, all is death, as her cousins murder her cousins and the endless snows cover all…"

Briony fell silent, not because she had forgotten the words, the touching words that described how Zoria began her long wandering even as the Great War of the Gods blazed in earnest, but because something was defi¬nitely moving on the path ahead of her. The late afternoon light was be¬ginning to weaken, but she could think of nothing but that shape just at the edge of sight, something dark that walked upright.

She smothered her first impulse to shout to the figure for help. After all, who would live in such a place? A kind woodsman, who would take her to his cottage and give her soup, like something in the stories of her childhood? More likely it was some half-savage madman who would rav¬age her or worse. She drew the longer of her knives and held it in her hand. The shape was moving away from her, so perhaps whoever or what¬ever it was hadn't heard her. But how could that be possible? She had been shouting loud enough to knock the leaves off the trees. Perhaps he was deaf.

A deaf madman. The prospects only get better and better, she thought sourly, Briony did not quite notice it, but something of her old self had conic* back to her as she stumbled through the trees crying old lines of poetry.

She walked a little faster, ignoring the ache in her legs, and she called out no more of Zoria's tale. Gregor's famous words may have kept her going but the time for them was over, at least for a while.

Another few hundred paces and she caught sight of the shape again, and this time could see it a little more clearly: it was manlike, walking on two legs, but seemed strangely bent, humped on its back beyond even the de¬formities of age, and she felt a thrill of superstitious fear run along her spine. What was it? Some half-human thing, part man, part animal? As the darkness came on would it tilt forward and run on all fours?

Despite her terror, she knew she must have food and shelter soon, even at risk that she was chasing some forest demon. She hurried on, moving as quickly and quietly as she could, trying to get a better look at whatever walked the path ahead of her.