It took only a moment to recognize her: dark complexion, large dark eyes, thin curved nose and narrow mouth. And poised. At Macurdy's last visit, seventeen years earlier, she'd been Arbel's twelve-year-old apprentice. She was of average height, not tall as she'd promised to be, and wiry now instead of gangly. To a degree, her aura resembled Arbel's. Arbel's marked him as someone whose interest was in learning; healing provided a focus. Her central interest was in healing; earning provided a means. Both were patient and tolerant, she more than Arbel, Macurdy suspected. But her tolerance, like Arbel's, was underlain with firmness.

An interesting pair, he thought. She'd be twenty-nine, and Arbel near seventy. Maybe they knew an herb that kept him frisky.

"You're Kerin," Macurdy said, answering Arbel's question. "His assistant now, I suppose."

"And his wife," she answered. "He insisted you are one of the unaging. Obviously he was right. But you haven't gone untouched by life."

She reads auras too, he decided. "Untouched?" he said. "Beaten up by it, from time to time. No worse than lots of others, though."

No worse than lots of others. Having said it, he realized its truth, and wondered if she'd led him to it.

Macurdy spent several weeks at Wolf Springs. It was Arbel who dealt with the cases brought to his home. Kerin rode the rounds of the district, making house calls. Usually she was home for supper, but sometimes it was later. The cooking was done by the slave who'd met Macurdy at the door.

Arbel chuckled, talking about it. People expected prompt service when they brought the patient in, and expected it from the old master himself. With house calls they were less demanding. "Kerin has great gifts of insight and intuition," he said. "It's rare these days that I can do more for them than she can, and there are cases she handles better than I. But prejudice is hard to argue with."

He was interested in Macurdy's stories of healing in World War II, and invited him to sit in on his sessions. Macurdy accepted gladly. They would add to his own skills.

But his mornings he spent in physical activity. After an early breakfast, he'd saddle a horse to ride the country lanes and forest trails. His old war horse, Hog, was still alive and sound, though twenty-eight years old, and no longer much for running. Hog had belonged to Macurdy all those years, but been Arbel's to use. For some years, Arbel had used the big gelding on his rounds of the district. Then Kerin had taken over that duty, and Hog carried her. Now Arbel traded for him, became Hog's actual owner, in return for a splendid eight-year-old named Warrior.

In a fey mood, Macurdy renamed his new horse Piglet, though it was nearly as large as Hog. It was easy to laugh now, as if passage through the gate had finished healing the trauma of Mary's death, though the scar would remain.

He rode about swordless. Instead, in a saddle sheath, he carried a woodsman's ax, and on his belt, the heavy knife Arbel had given him so long ago. He'd stop awhile in a river woods, and practice throwing both knife and ax at sycamores, silver maples, gums and cottonwoods, renewing skills that had served him well in Yuulith. And in Oregon had led to his marriage.

For more vigorous exercise, he cut and split firewood for Arbel. And practiced with the Wolf Springs militia-two evenings a week with the youth class, and on Six-Day afternoons with the veterans. He would, he supposed, need his old warrior skills, which had rusted considerably. Fortunately they derusted quickly, for every eye was on him, and it seemed important that his reputation continue strong.

Meanwhile the redbud trees bloomed, then the dogwoods and basswoods. The elms and others burst buds, sheening the forest with thin and delicate green.

They were busy days, improving his healing and fighting skills, cutting wood, savoring the progress of spring… but all were secondary to reunion with Vulkan. Vulkan would know where to take him, or send him, and what to do next.

For the feeling had grown in Macurdy that he had a reason to be in Yuulith beyond making a new life for himself, with a woman who did not age.

At the end of the fourth week, he was visited by a strange dream. In it he found himself wearing an SS uniform. But not in Bavaria. This was on a coast, somewhere in Hithmearc, and he was visiting a shipyard with Crown Prince Kurqosz. One minute the ships were square-rigged-barks. A moment later they'd be LCMs-World War II landing craft. Kurqosz told him he was going to take an army across the Ocean Sea in them, to conquer a land called Vismearc. Which worried Macurdy, for it seemed to him that Vismearc was America.

Knowing the Voitusotar, Macurdy wondered how any of them could make it across the ocean alive. Kurqosz answered that he was taking an army of monsters across. "Monsters?" Macurdy asked. Then he remembered his dreams during the war, of huge monsters trampling GIs on the beach, and flailing them with anchor chains.

Now Kurqosz was accompanied by a human woman. Macurdy asked why. The crown prince laughed. "I like their fuller curves," he said, "and their submissiveness. And when they are fertile with us, their boy children are rakutur. Very useful, the rakutur." Then the woman was Varia. She winked at him, and as if it was a signal, Macurdy woke up.

That morning at breakfast, he told Arbel he was leaving before lunch. That he'd dreamt it was time to go. Arbel examined Macurdy's aura. "Yes," he said, "I see it is."

Well before midmorning, Macurdy had his saddlebags and bedroll on Piglet. Along with the war gear he'd left with Arbel seventeen years earlier: helmet, saber, and a light-weight, dwarf-made byrnie, all still shimmering with Kittul Kendersson's protective spells.

Swinging into the saddle, he gave Arbel a good-bye salute, then rode off down the dirt track that in Wolf Springs constituted the main street. Quickly he was out in the countryside, headed for Oztown, the capital.

11 Zassfel

It was early dusk when Macurdy arrived at Oztown. By standards west of the Great Muddy River, Oztown was populous, with three or four thousand people. But it was rural nonetheless, with corn patches, chickens, cows, pigs, horses… Macurdy had a mile to ride down its principal "street" to reach the chief's residence.

Riding past a tavern, Macurdy thought he recognized a large man about to go inside. Though if he was right, the man had changed a lot. Guiding Piglet to the hitching rail, Macurdy dismounted and secured the reins. Then he cast a light concealment spell over the animal-enough to make him easily ignored-and went in.

The place reeked of pine torches. He looked the room over. The man he wanted was bellied up to the bar, and Macurdy walked over to stand beside him. "Hello, Zassfel," he said quietly.

The face that turned to him was fleshy, florid, and considerably scarred. For just a moment the eyes squinted suspiciously at Macurdy, then widened in recognition. "You!"

"Me. What are you drinking?"

It took a moment for Zassfel to answer. "Whiskey. What else?"

At that moment, the barkeeper set a glass of it in front of Zassfel. "Five coppers," he said.

"On me," Macurdy told him, "and I'll have one." He dug into a pocket and came up with a silver teklota. The barkeeper peered at it, then went to his scale and weighed it, returning with a smaller silver coin and several coppers.

Zassfel's look reverted to suspicion, underlain by hostility. "What are you buying me whiskey for?" he growled. "I'm no friend of yours."