Micum sighed. "I don't imagine she likes to be reminded. And there's been no one since?»

"No one to speak of."

Micum had a good idea what that meant. Sometimes the body's needs overrode the heart's pain. Sometimes it was a way to heal.

The road finally grew drier as it wended up into the foothills. By early afternoon of the third day, Beka could see out over the tops of the trees behind them to the lowlands they'd traversed the day be-

fore. Somewhere beyond the southern horizon lay the Osiat coastline and the long isthmus that connected the peninsular country of Skala to her mainland territories. The rest of Urgazhi Turma were probably cooling their heels at Ardinlee by now.

"You're sure we'll reach them today?" she asked her father, riding beside her.

"The way you've driven us, we should get there before supper-time." He pointed out a notch in the hills a few miles ahead. "There's a village up there. Their cabin lies up a track just beyond."

"I hope they don't mind a crowd."

The sun was a few hours from the western horizon when they reached the little hamlet nestled in the cup of a valley. Sheep and cattle grazed the hillsides, and she could hear dogs barking in the distance.

"This is the place," said Micum, leading the way into town.

Villagers gawked at them as they rode into the muddy square. There were no temples or inns here, just a little shrine to the Four, festooned with faded offerings.

Just beyond the last cottage an enormous dead oak spread leafless branches against the sky. A trail wound up into the woods behind it. Following it for half a mile or so, they came out in a high meadow. A stream ran through it, and on the far side stood a small log house. A wolfskin was stretched to dry on one wall, and a spiky row of antlers of varying shapes and sizes decorated the roofline. In the kitchen garden near the door, a few speckled hens scratched among the dead leaves. A little way off, a byre sagged next to a corral. Half a dozen horses grazed there, and Beka recognized Alec's favorite mare, Patch, and two Aurenen horses. The chestnut stallion, Windrunner, had been her parents' gift to Alec during his first stay at Watermead. The black mare, Cynril, Seregil had raised from a colt.

"This is it?" she asked, surprised. It was peaceful. Rustic. Not at all the sort of place she associated with Seregil.

Micum grinned. "This is it."

The sound of an ax came from somewhere beyond the byre. Rising in the stirrups, she called out, "Hello at the house!"

The ax fell abruptly silent. An instant later Alec loped out from behind the byre, his fair, unkempt hair flying around his shoulders.

Rough living had left him as shaggy and gaunt as he'd been the first time they'd met. Gone was the citified finery he'd adopted in

Rhiminee; his tunic was as patched and stained as any stable boy's. He'd be nineteen in a few months' time, she realized with surprise. Half 'faie and beardless, he looked younger to those who didn't know him, and would for years. Seregil, who must be sixty now, had looked like a man of twenty for as long as she remembered.

"I believe he's glad to see us," her father noted.

"He better be!" Dismounting, Beka met Alec in a rough hug. He felt as thin as he looked, but there was hard muscle under the homespun.

"Yslanti bek kir!" he exclaimed happily. "Kratis nolieus i 'mrai? "

"You speak better Aurenfaie now than I do, Almost-Brother," she laughed. "I didn't understand a word of that after the greeting."

Alec stepped back, grinning at her. "Sorry. We've spoken almost nothing else all winter."

The beaten look he'd had back in Plenimar was gone; looking into those dark blue eyes, she read the signs of something her father had hinted at in his letter. She'd asked Alec once if he was in love with Seregil, and he'd been shocked by such a notion. It seemed the boy had finally figured things out. Somewhere in the back of her mind a tiny twinge of regret stirred, and she squelched it mercilessly.

Releasing her, Alec clasped hands with Micum, then cast a questioning look at the uniformed riders. "What's all this?"

"I have a message for Seregil," she told him.

"Must be quite a message!"

It is, she thought. One he's been waiting for since before I was born. "That's going to take some explaining. Where is he?"

"Hunting up on the ridge. He should be back by sunset."

"We'd better go find him. Time's running short."

Alec gave her a thoughtful look but didn't press. "I'll get my horse."

Mounted bareback on Patch, he led them up to the high ground above the meadow.

Beka found herself studying him again as they rode. "Even with your 'faie blood, I thought you'd be more changed," she said at last. "Do I look much different to you?"

"Yes," he replied with a hint of the same sadness she'd sensed in her father when they'd met at Two Gulls.

"What have you two been doing since I saw you last?"

Alec shrugged. "Wandered for a while. I thought we'd head for the war, offer our services to the queen, but for a long time he just wanted to get as far from Skala as possible. We found work along the way, singing, spying—" He tipped her a rakish wink. "Thieving a bit when things got thin. We ran into some trouble last summer and ended up back here."

"Will you ever go back to Rhiminee?" she asked, then wished she hadn't.

"I'd go," he said, and she caught a glimpse of that haunted look as he looked away. "But Seregil won't even talk about it. He still has nightmares about the Cockerel. So do I, but his are worse."

Beka hadn't witnessed the slaughter of the old innkeeper and her family, but she'd heard enough to turn her stomach. Beka had known Thryis since she was a child herself, playing barefoot in the garden with the granddaughter, Cilia. Cilia's father had taught her how to carve whistles from spring hazel branches.

These innocents had been among the first victims the night Duke Mardus and his men attacked the Oreska House. The attack at the Cockerel had been unnecessary, a vindictive blow struck by Mardus's necromancer, Vargul Ashnazai. He'd killed the family, captured Alec, and left the cruelly mutilated bodies for Seregil to find. In his grief, Seregil had set the place ablaze as a funeral pyre.

At the top of the ridge Alec reined in and whistled shrilly through his teeth. An answering call came from off to their left, and they followed it to a pond.

"It reminds me of the one below Watermead," she said.

"It does, doesn't it?" said Alec, smiling again. "We even have otters."

None of them saw Seregil until he stood up and waved. He'd been sitting on a log near the water's edge and his drab tunic and trousers blended with the colors around him.

"Micum? And Beka!" Feathers fluttered in all directions as he strode over to them, still clutching the wild goose he'd been plucking.

He was thin and weathered, too, but every bit as handsome as Beka remembered—perhaps more so, now that she saw him through a woman's eyes instead of a girl's. Though slender and not overly tall, he carried himself with a swordsman's grace that lent unconscious stature. His fine-featured Aurenfaie face was sun-browned, his large grey eyes warm with the humor she'd known from childhood. For the first time, however, it struck her how old those eyes looked in such a young face.

"Hello, Uncle!" she said, plucking a bit of down from his long brown hair.

He brushed more feathers from his clothes. "You picked a good time to come visiting. There've been geese on the pond and I finally managed to hit one."

"With an arrow or a rock?" Micum demanded with a laugh. Master swordsman that he was, Seregil had never been much of a hand with a bow.

Seregil gave him a crooked smirk. "An arrow, thank you very much. Alec's been paying me back for all the training I've put him through. I'm almost as good with a bow as he is with a lock pick."