Mara walked quietly behind him, in the surprisingly gentle custody of a big rough peasant whom Captain Duir called Oron. Duir himself escorted Sturm, his company cautious and firm but not harsh.

"What are they saying, Captain?" Sturm asked on more than one occasion, but Duir did not reply. His sharp eyes remained fixed on the village hall ahead of them, where a bonfire burned in the midst of the square. As they approached the blaze, two of the guards led Acorn and Luin off through the crowd toward the village stables. Sturm watched them for as far as he could see in the darkness and deceptive light. Wherever the stable lay, the smithy would be nearby.

"Keep your eyes ahead of you," Captain Duir ordered. "What're ya gawkin' after, anyway?"

"The smithy," Sturm answered, turning to the square ahead of him, where the bonfire danced and roared. "I've business with your Weyland."

"A confident lad, y'are," the captain observed, "that your business with us will be over soon."

"And confident are your people," Sturm replied, "whose thin children throw ripe fruit at visitors. Where does your village get apples in March, Captain Duir?"

The guardsman's hand tightened on his wrist.

"You'll be taking all things up with herself, I'd reckon," he replied.

"That would be the druidess?" Sturm asked.

But Captain Duir did not reply. With a gesture that could have been polite or mocking, he led Sturm and Mara across the square to the bonfire, where a wicker throne sat empty, surrounded by a dozen guards.

Sturm had grown used to the shape and feel of a storybook rural village, having spent a good part of his life on the outskirts of Solace, a place obscure in that time, though famous scarcely a decade later. When Jack Derry spoke of Dun Ringhill, Sturm had looked forward to a cozy little hamlet, the houses fashioned neatly of wood or wattle and daub, each roof freshly thatched and each fence tidy and in good repair.

But Lemish was unkempt, and its people completely unabashed by rough living quarters. The houses were large and circular, built of planks and wickerwork, their roofs of heavy, sodden thatch. Smoke trailed through a large hole in the middle of each roof, so Sturm guessed that the houses were warmed by a crude central fire.

It was to be expected, Sturm thought. He had heard that the Lemish people still lived in the Age of Darkness, the homes of their most powerful rulers scarcely hovels by Solamnic standards.

But what he had not expected was the square-the blossom and the green of it. In the midst of a drab and forbidding village, the houses on the square were sprouting, leaves and vines burgeoning from their walls as though the planks were still alive, still sending forth shoots and branches.

There, in the midst of a man-made forest, Sturm and Mara awaited the Druidess Ragnell.

She stepped from beneath a canopy of leaves, three beautiful girls strewing her pathway with lavender and lilac. The old woman was bent practically double, her face wrinkled and dark like the shell of a walnut and her white hair tangled and thin. Sturm thought of the sea effigies, the spindly, life-sized dolls made of mud and wood that dotted the coasts of Kothas and Mithas, put there to create the illusion from afar that the coastlines were garrisoned and watched.

The old woman wobbled to the wicker throne and, assisted by the young girls, seated herself with a long, expressive sigh. As quickly and silently as birds, the girls hastened away, their olive skin lost in the forest and dwindling torchlight, until at a great distance, Sturm could barely see their white robes flitting among the trees like wraiths.

"What d'you bring me, Captain Duir?" the druidess asked, drawing Sturm's attention suddenly and swiftly back to the square and the light and the hideous old creature perched on the wicker throne.

"A Solamnic, Lady Ragnell," the captain announced. "A Solamnic and his companion, an elf."

"The Kagonesti are welcome among us," Ragnell announced. "Give the girl the freedom of the village."

Guardsman Oron stepped politely, even shyly, away from Mara. The elf maiden stood in the midst of the militia and milling, begging children, uncertain what to do or where to go. Questioningly, she looked at Sturm, who mouthed the simple word "Go!" Almost reluctantly, she pushed through the crowd to the edge of the firelight and the edge of village square, where she stood for a moment, then backed into the shadows.

Left alone to face the druidess, Sturm turned uneasily toward the wicker throne. What lay ahead of him was uncertain now, made cloudier still by the strange stories he had heard of the druids in these parts. Sturm hated uncertainty, and he steeled himself for whatever surprises the ancient woman had in mind.

Druidism was only a rumor to most Solamnic Knights. Existing at the pale outskirts of the other religions, it seemed purposefully to go against them all, so that druids were called "pagans" and "heretics" by the Solamnic clergy. In some parts of Ansalon, they were said to worship trees; others practiced a strange and changeable magic, one that waxed and waned with the seasons rather than the mages' moons. There were darker things the lad had heard, but standing by the village bonfire, he pushed those frightening stories to the back of his mind.

He blinked nervously at the ugly old woman-hooknosed, a livid scar snaking down her right cheek. Only the gods knew where she had earned that badge of honor, and perhaps even they didn't know the customs of druids in Lemish.

This Lady Ragnell, wrinkled and scarred, was apparently the chief druidess, whatever that meant. The village folk and the guardsmen treated her with reverence and respect, much as the Knights would treat a noblewoman, but they also listened to her opinions and followed her decrees. Now Sturm had no choice but to listen. The old woman leaned forward on the throne, her black eyes aglitter.

"Solamnics are trespassers in these parts, lad. Or didn't you know?"

"I am bound on a journey to the woods beyond you," Sturm declared in his best knightly manner. He strode forward and squared his shoulders, for the first time aware of the weeds and mud from the river fight. He wished he had the authority, the confidence of a Lord Alfred or Gunthar. His voice, new to challenge and proclamation, seemed frail and cracking in the midst of this rustic assembly.

Ragnell shrugged and folded her hands almost daintily in her lap. For a brief moment, more fleeting than a rising tongue of flame, Sturm imagined how she must have looked when she was young. She must have been striking then; perhaps she had even been beautiful. But a century had passed, and slowly she had receded into the wood around her, becoming gnarled and arboreal.

"Y'are bound nowhere, boy," she replied. There was no unkindness in her voice, no menace. "Y'are bound nowhere but here, until we figure on… your unriddling. Until that time, there's a place for you in the roundhouse, in a room we've prepared for your visit."

"Perhaps there is better welcome for me," Sturm suggested, "at the house of Jack Derry."

The druidess blinked. "When Jack Derry left here," she replied, "the path brushed over with leaves and snow behind him. There's not a huntsman in Lemish could track him where he went, and none in my employ would want to."

Sturm swallowed uncomfortably, averting his stare from the angular face of the druidess.

"Years have passed," she maintained. "No longer do I know of Jack Derry."

Traitor! Sturm thought angrily, his face flushed and heated. He opened his mouth, but he could find no words.

"But I know your Order," Ragnell continued, "and I know history. And neither makes you a good introduction. Our country is still no friend of yours, our people no friend of the Order."