Inza didn't wait to be asked again for her reasons. "You've been gone," the girl said before her mother had even sat down opposite her. "You haven't had to listen to the awful things he's been saying. He rants night and day-about you, Mother, and the others. Even me. The things he says are terrible, obscene!"

"He is ill," Magda said simply. "Where is your compassion?"

Inza lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The others were ready to kill him for what he said. What I did was compassionate compared to what they had planned."

"The others will have to answer to me, as well, one by one. First, child, I have your fate to decide."

Inza bristled at the word "child." Her mother caught the indignant flare in her eyes and corrected herself.

"You're right," Magda sighed, "you haven't been that for a long time."

"For which you should be thanking me," replied Inza. "We have no captain in this caravan. You wouldn't think of sharing that much of your power with any man. I'm left to be your second."

She was warming to the topic now, her passion fanned by her mother's silence. "The others know that you've trained me to use Gard, shown me the secrets of the shadow play. So when you and that- that mutt disappear for a week on some secret journey, they trust me to keep the troupe together. That is all I did."

"What you did was monstrous." Magda shook her head. "There was a time not so long ago when Bratu would have done anything for you. Don't try to deny it. The camp's not so big that anyone could miss the way he trailed after you."

Inza shot to her feet. "More reason for me to hate the old letch," she snapped. "We'd be smart to rig up a cage for him and show him off at Veidrava as a lesson for any other lying sod who takes after little girls,"

"Enough," Magda said coldly. "The Wanderers will never display their own as sideshow freaks."

Inza gawked in amazement. "Was calling the Beast down upon Bratu not a show for Soth's benefit, a demonstration of our loyalty to him? At least the giorgios at the mine would pay for such a spectacle."

"If you think Soth offers us an empty hand, go to the Widow's Bridge and count the corpses of our enemies. We need him, Daughter. Do not forget that."

"I will not forget that you value a dead man's opinion of you more than you value your own people."

The slap caught Inza completely by surprise. No tears rose in her eyes, only a writhing, curling fury. The girl grabbed for the dagger in her boot. The blade had just cleared her boot top when Sabak's jaws locked onto her hand. His warning growl sent tremors all the way up to her shoulder.

"Let her go," Magda said, seizing the hound by the scruff of his neck. But Sabak held tight until Inza dropped the weapon into the dirt.

The dagger's thin blade reflected the firelight like a mirror. The radiance was almost blinding. Even the leather-wrapped handle seemed to glow.

"I don't remember giving you this," Magda said.

"Not everything I own came from you."

Ignoring her daughter's peevish reply, the rau-nie reached down for the dagger. She drew her hand back quickly when she nicked her finger on the blade's point. "Ai, that's sharp. Where did you get it?"

"A trade," Inza said sullenly. "A very good trade." Eyeing Sabak, she warily slipped the weapon back into the sheath she'd sewn into her boot. "In some things you taught me very well, Mother."

Inza turned her back on Magda and disappeared into the woods. She hadn't been dismissed, but the raunie knew it would be pointless to force the issue. At best, she might make her daughter acknowledge her power. At worst, she would be left shouting after the disobedient girl while the rest of the troupe listened from within their vardos.

Exhaustion settled over her like a shroud, and Magda sank back down before the fire. Sabak slipped his head under her arm. After a moment, he nudged it up a little.

"So," Magda said as she stroked his head, "even you make demands of me this evening, eh?" His tail thumped agreeably.

The raunie stoked the fire and sank into deep thought. She had no idea what she was going to do about Inza. The girl was impetuous, hot tempered, and willful. Very much like her mother at that age, Magda recalled ruefully.

But there was a viciousness in the girl that Magda could not comprehend. It was as if she'd taken in all the destructiveness of the storm that shook Gundarak on the night she was born. The unearthly tempest had followed hard upon Duke Gundar's death. Some said it was the land itself mourning his demise. If so, it was all the grieving Gundar would get; his subjects marked the occasion with more festive displays of emotion. Perhaps that storm had damaged the newborn's soul somehow.

Magda ran a hand through her hair and winced as she brushed against a raw patch of scalp. The wounds she'd received at the bridge had been slow in healing. Her hiss of pain made Sabak glance up at her, canine worry in his eyes.

"Don't mind me, boy," she soothed, scrubbing him behind one ear. "My mood will brighten with the sunrise."

Her smile drifted away, and she gazed into the fire. It had been some time since she had tried to use her powers of precognition. Up until the day Soth rose from his throne, events had been unfolding as they should, in ways she could predict even without resorting to foresight. Things were different now. She could scarcely imagine what the morning would bring, let alone the coming months. The incidents at the bridge still preyed heavily upon her mind, but more unsettling still were the secrets she had uncovered on her journey.

One part of Malocchio's rant had been correct- forces more ancient, more relentless than the lord of Invidia were stalking Soth. Magda had seen their faces. Soth would, too, before long. But what horrors would that long-delayed reunion unleash upon the Wanderers, upon all of Sithicus?

Magda focused on the fire. She tried to open her mind to the future, looking for its pattern in the flames. Flashes of white and red, curls of black smoke, filled her vision. They expanded into roses that burst into bloom, then withered. None held the field for long. Each overpowered another, only to be overwhelmed itself a moment later.

The raunie tried to turn her sight to the tribe's future. As she did, the fire roared up and filled the night with crimson light. Gone were the roses, drowned in a red sea-a sea of blood.

Magda pulled back sharply, forcing herself from the trance. At her side, Sabak growled softly. Magda thought the hound had sensed her discomfort at the vision's grim theme until she realized his attention was focused on something lurking by the vardos.

Magda turned to the semicircle of barrel-topped wagons. Shadows swayed over the brightly painted side of her vardo. They warped into unbelievable shapes, slithered and flowed down along the spoked wheels and onto the ground. Magda rubbed her eyes. Shadows played across the other wagons, too, but they were faint, fleeting things compared to the dark silhouettes creeping across hers. Nothing lay between the fire and her wagon to cast such weird shapes there.

Magda was on her feet the instant that thought was complete, a moment before the telltale saline reek reached her. "Salt shadows!" she screamed.

At the cry of recognition, the shadows retreated a little. For all that they were deadly, they were cowardly things more used to ambush than battle.

Muffled shouts sounded from inside the vardos, and Magda's warning was echoed and re-echoed. "'Ware," the others hollered. "Shadows! Shadows!" The Wanderers burst from their homes, armed with whatever weapons were at hand. The mundane swords and knives would do no good against the animate darkness, but the Vistani hoped that they might distract the things long enough for their raunie to deal with them.