Sturm settled thee elf maiden after a few minutes, plying her with apologies and admitting that, yes, he was the most foolish boy on the continent and that to find a greater fool one would have to venture among the goblins in Throt. That apparently satisfied her for the moment. She sighed and nodded, then looked about her in dismay, as though the clearing in which she had lived for two months awaiting the convergence of the moons had suddenly become a real nest of spiders.

"I can't stay here," she announced and ducked into the cabin. Sturm stood outside, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying to appear useful. Off among the larick bushes, there was a slight movement, a shift in the underbrush, but when he turned to inspect it, whatever was moving and shifting had vanished.

"Spiders," he muttered. "I'll wager everything turns to spiders, the girl and myself as well."

But she emerged most unspiderlike a moment later, her belongings bundled in a packet of cloth and vine and cobweb almost twice her size and slung across her shoulders like something unwieldy and wounded.

"Well, you'll be taking us home, then," she asserted, her knees buckling beneath the weight of the bundle. Sturm reached out to help her, but she waved him away with a stagger.

"Never you mind. I'll set this upon the horse," she ordered with a nod toward Luin, who stood cautiously at the edge of the clearing, still skittish from the commotion with the spider.

"B-But you can't, m'lady. You simply can't," Sturm protested. "She's thrown a shoe and I can't burden her."

In dismay, the elf girl dropped her bundle.

"You mean we shall have to travel to Silvanost on foot?"

Sturm swallowed hard. Though his bearings were none too good, he knew the larger geographies of the continent. Silvanost was five hundred miles away if it was a stone's throw, and such a journey seemed impossibly long and arduous.

"But I am bound only for the Southern Darkwoods," he protested.

She shook her head. "No longer. Now we are bound for Silvanost, to throw myself on the mercies of Master Calotte."

Sturm frowned in puzzlement.

"The enchanter," she explained dryly. "As you may recall, boy, my true love is still a spider."

They stood and stared at one another.

"I'm… I'm sorry, m'lady," Sturm muttered. "And more sorry still, in that my path lies only to the Southern Darkwoods. The far reaches of Silvanost are, I fear, beyond my… my resources. I have not the time. I may even be followed."

He coughed and cleared his throat.

"Nonsense," she said, her voice cold and flat. "Silvanost could be across the world, and you would still have to take me there. So your honor tells you. What is it your people say? 'Est Sularus oth Mithas'?"

Sturm nodded reluctantly. " 'My honor is my life.' But how did you know-"

She laughed bitterly. "That you were of the Order? When it comes to the sword, nobody is as heedless as a Solamnic youngling. You may go to your Darkwoods and do what you will, but I shall be with you. And afterward, you will take me to Silvanost. It is that simple. You are bound by your silly Oath and Measure."

'Tis a test! Sturm thought, with a rising fear. The elf maiden glared at him, angrily but innocently. After all, if Lord Wilderness can play so readily with the seasons and their changes, why would he not have allies-outlandish folk among the elves and the gods know what other folk-who would do his bidding readily?

Doesn't this creature also play a flute?

And how would an elf know of the Solamnic Oath, which the Measure interprets in the light of helping the weak and the helpless?

He glanced balefully at the girl, whose stare had not wavered. She seemed anything but weak and helpless.

And yet Vertumnus would know, would hold me to the Oath and my honor, would test me further…

He shook his head. After all, what did Lord Wilderness know or care of honor? It was ridiculous to think such entangled thoughts, to see a green design behind this accident.

"I'm sorry," Sturm began.

And his shoulder exploded in a ragged, knifing pain, next to which all of the other pains had been a slight twinge, a tingle.

This is dying, he thought again, falling to his knees in front of the elf maiden, this is my delay, my cowardice, my dishonor… And he thought nothing more.

The elf maiden rousted him none too gently, shaking him until he wakened.

Blearily Sturm looked up at the girl and remembered it all: the fight with the spider, the girl's outrage, her story and plea, his refusal…

And the pain that had followed, lancing and riveting and white-hot in his damaged shoulder.

"Very well," he muttered, his mouth dry and his throat prickling. "To Silvanost it is. But after the Southern Darkwoods, mind you!"

Before the girl could reply, Sturm was on his feet, and with a swift, athletic turn, he had hoisted her bundled belongings onto his back.

The pain in his shoulder had vanished, mysteriously and entirely. He wasn't surprised. The hand of Vertumnus had touched everything about this wooded encounter, this evening of battle and music and promises and moonlight.

Sturm grunted uncomfortably at the weight of the bundle. All of a sudden, his burden was five times as heavy, the road five times as long. He thought of Silvanost, there in the midst of the evergreen grove. He thought of the long trek over the Khalkist Mountains, through the Doom Range to Sanction along the Nerakan border, then down into Blode and south to the great forest. A passage through bandits and ogres, he had heard. Sturm almost hoped that Vertumnus would slay him on the first day of spring.

Mara was her name, and the story she told was pure Kagonesti, full of magic and forbidden love and doom. "It started four years ago," she explained, framing her answer to Sturm's question as the two of them emerged from the evergreen copse. It was early morning, and the sun peeking over the eastern horizon was their guidepost.

Sturm shifted the weight of the baggage on his back. Though it was barely sunrise, he was already weary, having wandered the groves all night, burdened by the gods knew what belongings. Mara followed him, leading Luin by the reins, and once or twice in the near distance, he had heard the unsettling sound of the spider, clambering from branch to branch.

"Four years ago?" he asked idly. Fatigue warred with politeness. It was hard to attend to another story.

"Down in Silvanost," Mara continued, "where the High Elves rule, with their fairness and hazel eyes. Cyren was of the Calamons, scion to the noblest of families, while I was but a handmaiden to his cousin."

"I see," Sturm said. He wasn't sure he did see.

"Obstacles right from the start. The course that never runs straight," Mara explained.

She paused, as though remembering. Sturm heard birds rising from the junipers behind him, rousted by the approach of something-no doubt the scion in question.

"We first saw each other," Mara continued, "at the Great Festival of Peace commemorating the signing of the Sword-sheath Scroll. It happens every year, the festival, and every year it seems altogether new. The forest fills with lights beyond imagining, and torches lit in Qualinost and Ergoth mingle amid the trees."

Mara sighed. "It's a glorious evening. As you might imagine, the females of the House Royal, daughters and servants all, are kept from the sight of the lads because… well, because it might make someone untoward!'