And with those words he seemed to remember something, or be recalled to something. His voice changed. "We had better ride. I must speak with Ducas, and then we'll have to catch up with Erlein and go on. We've a lot of ground to cover yet." He looked at Devin appraisingly. "You must be exhausted. I should have asked before: how is your leg? Can you ride?"

"I'm fine," Devin protested quickly. "Of course I can ride." Someone behind them laughed sardonically. They both turned. To discover that Erlein and the others had, in fact, returned to the pass.

"Tell me," the wizard said to Alessan, sharp mockery in his voice, "what did you expect him to say? Of course he'll tell you he can ride. He'd ride all night, half-dead, for you. So would this one", he gestured towards Naddo behind him, "on barely an hour's acquaintance. I wonder, Prince Alessan, how does it feel to have such a power over the hearts of men?"

Ducas had ridden over while Erlein was speaking. He said nothing though, and it was too dark now with the torches extinguished, to make out anyone's features clearly. One had to judge by the words, and the inflections given them.

Alessan said quietly, "I think you know my answer to that. In any case, I'm unlikely to think too highly of myself with you around to point these things out to me." He paused, then added, "Triad for-fend you would ever volunteer to ride all night in any cause but your own."

"I," said Erlein flatly, "have no choice in the matter anymore. Or have you forgotten?"

"I have not. But I've no mind to repeat that quarrel now, Erlein. Ducas and his men have just put their lives at risk to save your own. If you…”

"To save my own! I would never have been at risk if you hadn't compelled me to…”

"Erlein, enough! We have a great many things to do and I am not of a mind to debate."

In the darkness Devin saw Erlein sketch a mocking bow on horseback. "I most humbly cry your pardon," he said in an exaggerated tone. "You really must let me know when you are of a mind to debate. You'll concede it is an issue of some importance to me."

Alessan was silent for what seemed a long time. Then, mildly, he said, "I think I can guess what is behind this now. I understand. It is meeting another wizard, isn't it? With Sertino here you feel what has happened to you the more."

"Don't pretend you understand me, Alessan!" said Erlein furiously.

Still calmly, Alessan said, "Very well then, I won't. In some ways I may never understand you and how you have lived you life, I told you that the evening we met. But for now this issue is a closed one. I will be prepared to discuss it the day the Tyrants are gone from the Palm. Not before."

"You will be dead before that. We will both be dead."

"Don't touch him!" Alessan said sharply. Belatedly Devin saw the Naddo had raised his good hand to strike the wizard. More quietly the Prince added, "If we are both dead, then our spirits can wrangle in Morian's Halls, Erlein. Until then, no more. We will have a great deal to do together in the weeks to come."

Ducas coughed. "As to that," he said, "we two also had better speak. There is a fair bit I'd like to know before I go further than this night's work, much as it has pleased me."

"I know," said Alessan, turning to him in the dark. He hesitated. "Will you ride with us for a little. Only as far as the village. You and Naddo, because of his arm."

"Why there, and why because of the arm? I don't understand," Ducas said. "You should know that we are not much welcome in the village. For obvious reasons."

"I can guess. It won't matter. Not on an Ember Night. You will understand when we get there. Come. I want my good friend Erlein di Senzio to see something. And I suppose Sertino had better join us too."

"I wouldn't miss this for all the blue wine in Astibar," said the pudgy Certandan wizard. It was interesting, at another time it might even have been amusing, to note what a healthy distance he continued to keep between himself and the Prince. The words he spoke were facetious, but his tone was deadly serious.

"Come on then," said Alessan brusquely. He turned his horse past Erlein's, almost brushing against the other man, and started west out of the pass. The ones he had named began to follow. Ducas spoke a few terse commands to Arkin, too low for Devin to hear. Arkin hesitated for a moment, clearly torn, wanting to come with his leader. But then, without speaking, he turned his horse the other way. When Devin glanced back a moment later, he saw that the outlaws were rifling the Barbadians' bodies for weapons.

He turned to look over his shoulder again a few moments later but they were in open country by then, with the hills in shadow to the south and east and a grassy plain rolling north of them. The entrance to the pass could no longer even be seen. Arkin and the others would be gone from within it soon, Devin knew, leaving only the dead. Only the dead for the scavengers; one of them killed by his own sword, and another one a child.

The old man lay on his bed in the darkness of an Ember Night and the always darkness of his own affliction. Far from sleep, he listened to the wind outside and to the woman in the other room clicking her prayer beads and intoning the same litany over and over.

"Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls. Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls. Eanna love us…"

His hearing was very good. It was a compensation most of the time, but sometimes, as tonight, with the woman praying like a demented thing, it was a curse of a particularly insidious kind. She was using her old beads; he could tell the thin, quick sound even through the wall separating their chambers. He had made her a new ring of beads of rare, polished tanchwood three years ago for her naming day. Most of the time she used that ring, but not on the Ember Days. Then she went back to her old beads and she prayed aloud for most of three days and nights.

In the earliest years here he had slept those three nights in the barn with the two boys who had brought him here, so much did her unceasing litany disturb him. But he was old now, his bones creaked and ached on windy nights such as this, so he kept to his own bed under piled blankets and endured her voice as best he could.

"Eanna love us always, Adaon preserve us from all perils, Morian guard our souls and shelter us. Eanna love us…"

The Ember Days were a time of contrition and atonement, but they were also a time when one was to count and give thanks for one's gifts. He was a cynical man, for sufficient and varied reasons, but he would not have called himself unreligious, and he would not, in fact, have said he'd lived a life unblessed, despite the blindness of almost two decades. He had lived much of his life in wealth and near to power. The length of his days was a blessing, and so too was the lifelong grace of his hands with wood. Only a form of play at first, a diversion, it had become something more than that in the years since they had come here.

There was also his other gift of skill, though few people knew of that. Had it been otherwise he would never have been able to shape a quiet life in this highland village, and a quiet life was essential because he was hiding. Still.

The very fact of his survival on the long, sightless journey all those years ago was a blessing of a special kind. He was under no illusions: he would never have survived without the loyalty of his two young servants. The only ones they had allowed to stay with him. The only ones who had wanted to stay.

They weren't young nor were they servants any longer. They were farmers on land they owned with him. No longer sleeping on the front-room floor in their first small farmhouse nor out in the barn as they had in the earliest years, but in their own homes with wives beside them and children near by. Lying in darkness he offered thanks for that, as gratefully as for anything he had ever been given himself.