Behind him, Frima was slowly recovering from the shock of Saram's death. Her initial reaction had been wordless grief, which Garth had transformed into a cold, bitter hatred and a driving need for revenge with the words he had spoken to her in the market. Hatred and anger, however, had to be sustained by something outside oneself in order to dominate one's thoughts over an extended period of time. Had she stayed in Skelleth, Frima would have been reminded repeatedly of Saram's murder by the simple fact of his absence, by the empty side of her bed, by the unused or perhaps usurped baronial seat in the hall, where someone else might be giving orders, or merely by the old familiar places where she had seen him so often and the ordinary objects he had handled so frequently.

Here, though, as she clung to Garth with her arms and to Koros with her legs, riding for days on end through strange country and suffering from a vague illness that came and went, those reminders were lacking.

The sight of Saram's murderers, or any sign of their presence, would have served to sustain her craving for vengeance, but the mountains they crossed, and the plain beyond, were unmarked by any trace of Aghad or his followers. They passed small farms, stone cottages, and other human habitations, but nothing that could stir her dwindling fury. Instead, she found herself distracted by new sights and experiences.

This had begun with the burning of Dhazh. Seeing that had provided a countershock to Saram's death; it had been the first thing she thought about other than death and revenge since she had seen her husband's mutilated corpse.

Now, as she rode behind the overman across the rolling countryside of eastern Nekutta, she was able to, think clearly again, her thoughts no longer smothered beneath an unbearable load of grief and rage. For the first time, she began to consider her situation now that Saram was dead.

Was she still the Baroness of Skelleth? She had no idea. She had held the title only by virtue of being Saram's consort, but since both he and his predecessor had died with no other heirs known, that claim might be sufficient to entitle her to rule in her own name. Had the stillborn son she bore almost two years earlier lived, he would have been the new Baron, and she the dowager and probable regent-but he had not lived. Nothing of Saram lived on; he had had no brothers, no sisters, no living family at all. Even his friends had mostly perished in the sacking of Skelleth three years ago.

That thought upset her anew, that there should be nothing left of the man she had loved, and she reaffirmed her vow of vengeance.

It was not fitting, she thought, that so fine a man should die so young and with no offspring-though it occurred to her that she had not known just how old he was. Older than she, certainly. Nor could Frima be certain that he had not sired children; she had not been his first woman, she knew, though she was his only wife.

Still, he had no legitimate heir-and she had no child to ease her loneliness.

She remembered her recurring illness and wondered if she might be wrong about that, but she suppressed the thought as mere wishful thinking. She did not want to fill herself with false hopes, and her bouts of nausea were far more likely to be caused by grief, or the rigors of travel, than by pregnancy.

Perhaps she should have stayed in Skelleth and tried to learn whether Saram had children whom she might claim and raise as her own. She would never have asked so improper a question while Saram lived, of course, but it occurred to her that Garth, who had known Saram before she met him, might know something. She inquired timidly, "Garth?"

The overman did not answer, but glanced back.

"Did Saram have a lover before I met him?"

Garth shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I never saw any evidence of one." He turned his attention forward again, to the trail ahead, wondering what quirk had brought Frima to be questioning her dead husband's past at this late date. It was an almost-welcome distraction from his own gloomy, repetitious thoughts, which ran over and over again along the same deadend paths, considering ways out of his predicament that he already knew would not work.

Frima reminded herself that she was not totally alone; she had friends, or at least acquaintances, back in Skelleth, and she was sure that they would not desert her if she returned there. She had Garth, who had agreed to help her in her revenge and who still seemed to feel some obligation toward her from earlier events. She had her father and siblings, perhaps, though she could not be sure that any of them had survived. She had not thought much about them in almost three years, not even long enough to send them a message reporting her own survival and her improved estate as the Baroness of Skelleth, but surely, if they lived, they would welcome her back.

She felt suddenly guilty that she had never told them that she was still alive. They must, she realized, believe that she had died on Sai's altar long ago-unless her father or brother had been in the mob in the marketplace when Garth slew the high priest of Aghad. They would have seen her there and known she still lived, but would have no idea what had become of her after she fled the city.

Of course, if they had been present, they might well have been among the first to contract the White Death, which was invariably fatal. And if the plague had not killed them, the fires she herself had set, and the chaos that ensued, might well have caught them.

Her younger sisters would have been safe at home, she was sure-but the fires and plague and rioting might have found them even there. And if their father and brother had died, how would they have survived? Most probably they, like herself, would have wound up on a sacrificial altar somewhere-but without a strange overman to rescue them.

She was suddenly impatient to see Dыsarra again, to discover how much the stories of its destruction had exaggerated. She wanted to know whether her father, her brother, and her two sisters still lived. What remained of her father's shop? Were any of her old friends still there? Was the cult of Tema still active? She remembered the priestess Shirrayth, who had tried to teach Frima some of the mysteries of the goddess in hopes of recruiting her as an acolyte, and wondered what had become of her. She remembered the magnificent stone idol in the temple's domed chamber, which had awed and comforted her as a child, and longed to see it again. She was certain that it must still be intact; the goddess would protect her own image, Frima was sure of that.

She remembered how she had been consoled by a priest-she had never known his name-after her mother's death and how she had prayed to Tema and sensed her presence in the night sky in response. The knowledge that the goddess watched over her followers had eased Frima's mind many times when she was young, yet during her stay in Skelleth she had neglected her religion completely.

She tried to excuse herself on the grounds that Tema was a Dыsarran deity, not to be found in strange eastern lands, but she knew that for the lie it was. Tema was the goddess of night, and the night came everywhere, not just to Dыsarra.

She had not kept up her childhood faith; she had lived mostly by day, for convenience, since the people of Skelleth, unlike her own, were wholly diurnal. She had relinquished her ties to the night.

That was not right.

Had she remained steadfast, Frima thought, perhaps Tema might have warned her, or protected Saram somehow, or turned away Aghad's followers-or at the very least, eased the pain and grief.

Perhaps the goddess had watched over her family and she would find her father and siblings waiting for her in the tinker's shop, untouched by the catastrophes that had struck the city. They, surely, had remained faithful.