"Oh," Gerin said. "Put that way, no." He too took a while groping for words before he went on, "Lady, enough women are willing that forcing one who's not has always struck me as more trouble than it's worth. But folk who have wits and can use them are precious as the tin that hardens copper to bronze. I judge you may be one of that sort. If you are, by Dyaus, I'll use you."

"Fair and more than fair," she said, then seemed to surprise herself with a yawn. "Perhaps I shall sleep more, after all. My heart is easier than I thought it could be."

"I'm glad of that," Gerin said as she wrapped herself in his blanket again. She seemed to have forgotten the creatures still issuing from the cave under Biton's temple. He remembered, but forbore to remind her. Let her rest easy while she could.

* * *

The free peasant village whose men had hunted Gerin and Van through the night on their way to Ikos was a sorry place when they and Selatre rode up to it at midmorning the next day. Half the houses had fallen down in the earthquake; several bodies lay sprawled and stiff on the grass, awaiting burial.

"If they'd built stronger, they'd have come through better," Van said, unwilling to waste much sympathy on folk who would have robbed and maybe murdered him.

"Maybe so," Gerin said, "but maybe not, too. Stronger houses might still have fallen—look at Biton's temple. And if they did, they'd have crushed whoever was inside them. This way, a lot of people probably managed to crawl out of the wreckage."

"Mm, something to that, maybe," Van admitted. "All the same, I won't be sorry to see this place behind me." He started to urge the horses up from a walk to a trot.

"No, wait," Gerin said, which made the outlander grunt in surprise and send him a disbelieving look. He explained: "The lady there has but the one linen dress, which is all very well for prophesying in but not what you'd want to wear day in and day out. I was thinking we might stop and buy another here, something of sturdy wool that would do until we got back to Castle Fox."

"Ah. There's sense to you after all. There usually is, but this time I wondered." Van reined in.

Several of the villagers were in the fields; earthquake or no, tragedies or no, the endless routine of tillage had to go on. The women and children and few men who stayed by the houses swarmed toward the travelers' wagon. "Noble sirs, spare us such aid in our misfortunes as you can give," a woman cried. Others said the same thing in different words.

The Fox stared down his nose at them. "By Dyaus, you're better disposed to us now than you were when you came after us in the night to take our armor and swords."

"And mace," Van added, hefting the viciously spiked weapon in question. If the peasants had any thoughts of trying to attack now, the blood-red reflections of the sun off those bronze spikes did a good job of dissuading them.

The older man who'd sold the travelers a hen spoke for his people: "Lords, we all have to live as best we can, so I shan't go grizzling out I'm-sorries, though I expect you wish the five hells would take us. But would you see us cast down like this?"

"You don't have it as bad as some," Gerin said: "The temple at Ikos crashed in ruins yesterday." The peasants wailed, some in genuine horror and distress, others, Gerin judged, in fear that, with the temple ruined, no one would ever again use the road from the Elabon Way to Ikos. That was, he thought, a good guess. He went on, "In aid of which, I present to you the lady Selatre, who was till yesterday the Sibyl at Ikos, and whom we rescued from the wreckage of the place."

The villagers gasped and exclaimed all over again. The Fox got down from the wagon to let Selatre descend without—the gods forfend!—touching him; Van shifted on the seat to make her way out easy. The peasants stared at her and muttered among themselves. At last one of them called to her, "Lady, though the temple be fallen, why did you not stay and wait for its repair?"

Selatre cast down her eyes and did not answer. Gerin looked for some gentle way to break the news of the eruption of the monsters from the caves below the fane. While he was looking, Van, who minced few words, said, "If she'd stayed, she'd have been eaten. The same is liable to happen to the lot of you in the next few days, so you'd better listen to what we have to say."

He and Gerin, as was their way, took turns telling the tale of what had happened back at Ikos. When they were through, the fellow from whom they'd bought the chicken, who seemed to be a village spokesman, said, "If you didn't have the Sibyl with you, I'd reckon you were makin' up the tale to pay us back with a fright for wanting to lift the bronze off you."

"And since the lady is here, what do you believe?" Gerin demanded in no small exasperation. "You'll find out soon enough whether we lie, I can tell you that. You've made a point of getting arms and armor, however you do it. When those creatures come, you'll need them. Don't leave them sitting wherever you've got them hidden; wear the mail, and take the spears and swords out into the fields with you."

"Take bows, too," Van said. "These monsters aren't what you'd call clever, from the little we saw of 'em. They don't know arrows. Every one you kill from long range is one you won't have to fight up close. I'd say they're stronger and faster than people, and they have nasty teeth."

The details the Fox and Van gave were enough to begin to convince the villagers they weren't just trying to frighten them. "Maybe we'll do as you say," the old man said after looking over his comrades.

"Do whatever you bloody well please," Gerin said. "If you don't care about your necks, don't expect me to do your worrying for you. All I'd like to do before I get out of here is buy a proper wool dress for the lady. I'll pay silver for it, too, though the gods alone know why I'm dealing justly with folk who aimed to deal unjustly with me."

When he said "silver," three or four women ran into their houses—those that still stood—and brought out dresses. None of them seemed to the Fox to stand out from the others; he turned to Selatre. She felt of them and examined the stitching with the air of a woman who had done plenty of her own spinning and weaving and sewing. Gerin remembered she had been a peasant before she was Sibyl: she knew of such things.

"This one," she said at last.

The woman who'd produced it tried to set a price more or less equal to its weight in silver. Gerin, who parted with precious metal reluctantly at best, let out a loud, scornful laugh. "We don't have to buy here," he reminded her. "Other villages must have seamstresses who've not been stricken mad." After that, she quickly got more reasonable; he ended up buying the dress with only a slight wince.

"Have you also a pair of drawers you might sell?" Selatre asked.

The woman shook her head. "Don't wear 'em but in winter, to help keep my backside warm." Selatre shrugged; likely it had been the same where she grew up, too.

"Do you want to put the dress on here, where you'll have more in the way of privacy?" Gerin asked her.

"I'd not thought of that," she said. "Thank you for doing it for me." She ducked into one of the peasant huts, soon returning wearing the wool dress and with the linen one under her arm. Some of the aura of the Sibyl's cave left her with the change of clothes; she seemed more intimately a part of the world around her, not so much a waif cast adrift by circumstance. Maybe she felt that, too; she sighed as she stepped around Gerin to stow the linen dress in the wagon. "It's as if I'm putting away part of my past."

"The gods willing, you have long years left ahead of you," Gerin answered. He meant it as no more than a polite commonplace, but it set him wondering. With monsters not only loose on the world but emerging from the ruins of Biton's temple, who could judge the will of the gods?