But not today. The wind from the future grew colder and clearer with every step she took. She spent a few minutes in un-meditation to bind her awareness more closely to the chaos of matter and energy that most people thought of (wrongly) as reality.

As she walked into Big Rock House she saw a blond man, of average height or a little taller, paying his score.

“Your name is Kelat?” she asked.

He turned to look at her. His brown eyes were vacant, like a dreamer’s. His leather jacket was stitched together from the skin of garbucks from the plains north of the Dolich Kund. It was probably older than he was. The laces in his boots were woven from shent, probably harvested from the coast of the Sea of Stones. He was almost certainly a Vraidish barbarian, one of the horde that was gradually conquering the fragments of the old Empire of Ontil.

“I think so,” he said. “Sometimes I think I had another name. Or will have.”

The bald man behind the counter met Noreê’s eye and wiggled his ears. Around here that was like saying, Crazy . . . but what can you do?

What Noreê could and did do was hit Kelat on the left temple; then, while he was stunned, she took hold of his neck and stopped blood flow until he passed out.

When Kelat was sprawled on the beery floor of Big Rock House she said to the old man, “This Kelat is an invader. His intent here is unknown. I need to take him to A Thousand Towers so that the Graith can question him on the Witness Stone.”

“You’ll want to talk to the Arbiter of the Peace, then,” the old man said. “She can lend you a cart and horses, maybe a couple of boys to keep Kelat in line.”

“Will you go fetch her?”

“I don’t want to leave my cashbox.”

“Which house is hers, then? I’ll go myself.”

“Aren’t you the one they call Noreê?”

“They do call me that.”

“I guess my money’s safe with you. And I guess you’re welcome to as much of it as you want. You and your sister cured my grandson of a madness once. That was before you were in the Graith—when you were still among the Skein of Healing at New Moorhope.”

“Ah.” Those had been simpler days. She missed them sometimes. But she did not choose to end up like her sister, who had opened up so many doors in her mind that eventually there wasn’t much of a mind left. “I’m sorry; I don’t remember your name.”

“I think you never knew it, Vocate. It is Parell.”

“Parell.”

The old man flipped part of the counter back, bowed low before her, and strode off to fetch the Arbiter.

The Arbiter was a young woman, less than two centuries old, with improbably orange hair and black eyebrows. Noreê knew much about people and what they thought, but she did not understand why people dyed their hair. Both the attendants that the Arbiter brought with her had dyed hair as well, so maybe it had something to do with the local chapter of the Arbitrate.

They came riding in a donkey-drawn cart, and as soon as introductions were made all around, the attendants bound Kelat’s sleeping form and loaded it into the cart.

“Do you want a force to accompany you?” the Arbiter asked, as Noreê climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Only if you want someone to drive the cart back to you,” Noreê said.

“That’s not needful. Just return it to one of the Arbiters in A Thousand Towers. Or keep it, if it’s any use to you.”

Noreê nodded and was about to depart when she remembered something. “Arbiter, that man who told me of Kelat. . . .”

“Bakell. I know him.”

“I think he’s a murderer.”

“I think so, too. He probably killed his father, but we can’t prove it. He may have buried the corpse in his house, where we can’t get at it. What can you do?”

“You could buy the house. Or someone else might do it on your behalf, to allay suspicion. He seems like someone who would do almost anything for money.”

“Possibly, but then he’d just move the body and any other evidence out of the house before the sale was complete . . .”

Noreê waited for the Arbiter to complete the thought.

“. . . and then we could catch him at it!”

“It seems likely,” Noreê agreed.

“Thanks, Guardian. Ever think of joining the Arbiters?”

“Often. Goodbye.”

She had a bad feeling about the Arbiter—something would go wrong with her, or to her, in the near future. Noreê didn’t choose to know about it. She spoke to the donkey and it started up the town’s single street. Another word led the donkey to turn up a track leading to the Road.

Money she did not need and could not use. It was others who paid—sometimes with their lives—when she met them. She was sorry for it, sometimes. But she did not do these things for herself; it was for the Guarded. So she told herself, not always quite believing it, as the donkey pulled the cart onto the Road and headed south, toward A Thousand Towers.

Before she reached the city, a passing thain told her the terrible and wonderful news from up north. The Khnauronts were defeated, Thea was dead, and they spoke of Morlock Ambrosius like a king. Like a king.

Thinking of a day in Tower Ambrose more than four generations ago now, the day Morlock Ambrosius had been born, she told herself, “I did what I could.” She knew that was true. And she added, “I will do what I must.” And that was true as well.

CHAPTER TWO

Blood’s Price

Grief is love. That’s the deadly thing about it. You cannot live with grief chewing away at your insides like a cancer. The pain is too great. No one can stand it. But to kill the grief, you would have to kill your love for the one you lost. That is a survival too much like death: to be alive, without love, without caring. Even if you could do it, you would not.

It was fortunate, in a way, that Aloê had been wounded, and that some carnivorous Khnauront had fed from afar on her life. (That was what they told her had happened.) She hardly had the strength to live or grieve. She felt them, grief and the longing to live, felt them struggling within her, shadows fighting in the sandy emptiness of her heart, and it was all she could really feel. But she didn’t even feel that much. Her life was ebbing and she was grateful, in a dry, gray way.

Morlock was often there. She sometimes saw Naevros, too, and Deor, and Rynyrth. Once she asked one of them, she could not remember which, where Thea was, and while they hesitated, she remembered and turned her face to the wall.

And once she heard Morlock saying, “My life is hers. Take it all, if there is need.”

And Deor was there, too, with his broad face made for laughing, but he wasn’t laughing now as he said, “And mine. Blood has no price!”

“I won’t be a part of this!” said a third person angrily. Aloê didn’t know her. She was wearing the saffron robes of an initiate to the Skein of Healing, though. They were usually smiling, as if they knew some secret that you didn’t, but this woman was not smiling. The secret in her mind had turned unpleasant.

“Get out, then,” Rynyrth said impatiently. “We don’t need you here.”

“I cannot permit—”

“Lady, you stand on the western slopes of Thrymhaiam and I am the daughter of Oldfather Tyr syr Theorn. You do not permit me or deny me here. Go!”

The lady in yellow left and Rynyrth turned to Morlock. “Do you think it will work?” she asked him in Dwarvish.

As dry and empty as Aloê felt, she nearly laughed at that. If Morlock had made it, it would work. Whatever it was.

Morlock said, “Unclear. The pattern has been renewed, and seems to be effective. But the trigger for the spell is the desire for life. If she has lost that. . . .”

“We must try.”

“Yes.”

“Who . . . ?”

“Who do you think?” Morlock asked impatiently. “Who will die if she doesn’t live? I know you two love her also. But it’s not the same.”