MY FATHER HAS TAUGHT ME TO WRITE, BUT IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND SOMETHING TO WRITE ON OR THE CHANCE TO DO IT. I WILL NOT WASTE WORDS. MY FATHER HAS DIED OF GALL ROT IN THE FESTER. HERE IS HIS ONLY MONUMENT, AND I GIVE IT WITH THE YEAR AS HE RECKONED IT.

I AM VIRGENYA DARE, AND I AM A SLAVE. I WOULD NOT EVEN KNOW THAT WORD IF MY FATHER HAD NOT TAUGHT IT TO ME. HE SAID NO ONE USES IT BECAUSE HERE, THERE IS NO OTHER CONDITION TO COMPARE OURS TO. THERE ARE THE MASTERS, AND THERE IS US, AND THERE ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE. BUT FATHER SAID THAT WHERE WE COME FROM, SOME PEOPLE WERE SLAVES AND SOME WERE NOT. I THOUGHT AT FIRST HE MEANT THAT IN THE OTHER WORLD SOME MEN WERE ALSO MASTERS, BUT THAT ISN'T WHAT HE MEANT, ALTHOUGH HE SAID THAT WAS TRUE ALSO.

I HAVE LIVED WITH THE MASTER SINCE I WAS FIVE. I DO WHAT PLEASES HIM, AND IF I DO NOT, I AM HURT, AND THAT SOMETIMES PLEASES HIM, TOO. HE CALLS ME EXHREY (I INVENT A SPELLING HERE), WHICH MEANS "DAUGHTER." THE MASTERS DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN OF THEIR OWN, BUT MY MASTER HAS HAD MANY MANNISH CHILDREN, ALTHOUGH ONLY ONE AT A TIME. I HAVE FOUND THE BONES OF MANY OF THEM.

I SLEEP ON A STONE IN HIS CHAMBER. SOMETIMES HE FORGETS TO FEED ME FOR A FEW DAYS. WHEN HE WILL BE GONE FOR A LONG TIME, HE LEAVES THE DOOR OPEN SO THE OTHER HOUSE STAFF CAN TAKE CARE OF ME. IT WAS TIMES LIKE THAT I USED TO SEE MY FATHER, FOR THEY WOULD SMUGGLE HIM TO THE OUTER COURTS. I HAVE TEACHERS, ALSO, WHO SCHOOL ME IN THE ANTICS THAT PLEASE THE MASTER. IN THE WAYS OF THE SKASLOI CHILDREN WHO ARE NO MORE. SOMETIMES I AM LEARNT OTHER THINGS.

That brought Stephen to the end of the first sheet. He lifted it and went to the next and saw that it was different. The hand was the same, but the characters weren't all Virgenyan and neither was the language.

"Like the epistle," he murmured. "A cipher."

He lifted his pen to begin the work of translating it and realized with a start that his hand had been in motion while he'd been reading. He looked to see what he had written, and when he did, crawlers went up his neck. It was in Vahiian, and the hand was an oddly angular scrawl not at all his own:

ASPAR DROPPED belly-down when he saw the greffyn. That put it out of sight, but he still could feel the burn of its yellow eyes through the trees. He glanced up at Leshya in the branches above him. She touched her eye with two fingers, then shook her head no. It hadn't seen him.

Gradually he raised his head until he was peering down the streambed.

He counted forty-three riders. Three of them were Sefry, the rest human. But that didn't end the count of the procession. He'd spied at least three greffyns: horse-size beasts with beaked heads and catlike bodies, if one discounted the scales and coarse hair that covered them. Four vaguely manlike utins loped alongside the horses, mostly on all fours, occasionally raising their spidery limbs to grasp and swing from low branches. A manticore like the one he and Leshya had killed that morning finished up the unlikely company.

Grim, Aspar wondered, is all of that really for me?

He all but held his breath until they had passed. Then he and Leshya compared their count.

"I think there may be one more greffyn or something about that size and shape," she said. "Following a few dozen kingsyards behind and deeper in the woods. Other than that, that's about the size of it."

"I wonder what they left up in the pass."

She thought about that for a moment. "The lead riders. Did you get a good look at them?"

"They were Sefry. Your lot?"

"Yes. Aitivar. But the three leading, those were all three Vaix."

"Vaix?"

"Aitivar warriors."

"Only three?"

She shook her head. "You don't understand. The Mannish are probably fighting men. But there are only twelve Vaix at any given time. They aren't ordinary warriors. They're fast, strong, very skilled, very hard to kill."

"Like that Hansan knight?"

"Hard to kill, not impossible. But they have feyswords and other arms inherited from the old times." Her mouth quirked. "My point is, Fend has a quarter of his warriors out looking for you. You should be flattered."

"Not flattered enough. He's not with them." He frowned. "How do you know Fend is their master?"

"Because I believe he drank the blood of the waurm you killed. I think he's the Blood Knight, which means the Aitivar have won."

"I'm not following you."

"Well, this isn't the time to talk about it," she said.

"No, that would've been sometime in the last four months."

"I told you-"

"Yah. When there's a chance, you're telling me. But sceat, yah, now we've got to get out of here. So, back to the question: How many do you think they have in the pass?"

"Too many," she said. "But I can't think of another way to leave."

"I can," Aspar said.

She lifted an eyebrow.

Aspar grabbed at a scraggly yellow pine as the rotten shale under his foot shifted and then snapped. He watched it turn in the air, the flat fragments almost seeming to glide on their long way down.

He felt the pine start to pull up from the roots and, with a grunt, pushed with the foot that still had purchase-and fell forward.

His target was a sapling growing up from the narrow edge below. He caught it, but it bent like a green bow, and he lost his grip and went back out into the air, turning, flailing for any purchase at all. Everything seemed to be out of reach.

Then something caught him. At first he had the impression of a giant spiderweb because it sagged as his weight went into it. He lay there for a moment, blinking, feeling the air all around him. The almost vertical slope stretched twenty kingsyards above, shattered stone and crevices filled with soil supporting a tenacious forest. Higher, the sky was simple and blue.

About four kingsyards up, Leshya's face peeked down from where she was braced in the roots of a hemlock.

"That was interesting," she said. "How I wonder what you will do next."

A quick survey showed Aspar that he'd fallen into a sort of hammock of wild grapevines. Just below, the stubborn forest gave way to a gray stone cliff. If the vines failed to support him, there was nothing between him and the jumble of fallen rock a hundred yards below. He couldn't even see the river at the bottom of the gorge, so there wasn't much hope of hitting that.

He looked back in the direction from which he'd fallen. He and Leshya had been working their way down a groove worn by water running off the plateau. Not quite as perpendicular as the rest of the precipice, it was cluttered with enough debris to offer purchase, or at least so it had seemed from above. It was starting to look more dubious now as the water track steepened. The gray stone was harder, it seemed, than the shale above.

"What can you see from there?" Leshya asked.