The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 22



The little band of travelers walked with their faces turned upward to the rain, the gentle rain, blood-warm, that falls at summer’s end. Already, the rocks and banks had turned green, as the moss sprang to life. In a few days, the grass would sprout again, the burnt-off blaggorn would send tufts and shoots up from its knotted roots.

They camped on a hillside below the mountains, in a little grove of lanara trees. Most of the forest lay to the north and west of them, but they could see one tongue of it stretching out toward them, the tall-trunked graywood trees, gaunt and bare.

“I am in no hurry now,” said Andiene. “We will not travel that way.” She knelt by the little pile of kindling that Syresh had collected. Though she did not make a sign, nor speak a word, the dry twigs flashed into flame.

Kallan studied the faces of his comrades, Lenane and Syresh. Amazement and awe, written clear. They would never learn, he thought, but then he turned and followed Ilbran’s gaze, not fixed on Andiene, but on his daughter.

Kare’s face was set in intensity. Her eyes had not turned from that witchfire, burning honestly now. She took a step forward, staggering as if she might fall. Ilbran sprang to where she stood, to kneel beside her and speak gently to her. She turned to him, called back to the world by his touch, and tried to smile. He took her by the hand and led her away.

Kallan watched them that evening, as they ate their first cooked meal in four months. Kare seemed dazed and quiet. Ilbran watched her with love and fear. We cannot understand these magic ones. It would be like one who is deaf and blind, trying to understand the looks and words that are exchanged all around him.

He rose and gathered windfallen branches. Though the cliff sheltered the fire, it did not completely shelter the people who gathered around it. They huddled close, shivering, though the steam rose from their wet clothes. “We forget so soon,” he said, as he held his hands out to the warmth. No one was listening. They were still summer-drunk.

Lenane and Syresh spoke in undertones, their heads bent close together. He thought that they would come to more than looks and words, soon. Blood runs hotter when summer is done.

The rain fell heavier. The river would fill and wash over its banks, but they were camped safely above its floodplain. Andiene left the fire and walked out into the rain, not caring, it seemed, if it soaked her to her skin. She stood and looked north. The raindrops drove against her face.

Kallan watched her. Bright and beautiful and unknowable. To the north, the mountains guarded the land of her birth. He walked to her side, and tried to speak lightly. “Lady, it is not healthy to wash your clothes while you’re still wearing them.”

“And your armor will rust,” she retorted. “There must be some cave we can find, to shelter for the night.” Then she laughed joyfully. “Oh! When I was little, this was what I wanted to do, to stand in the summer-ending rain. This is the first time, the first time ever!”

The rain ran down her face, and dripped from the point of her chin. Her hair lay sleek to her head like the pelt of some sea-beast. Kallan spoke cautiously. “Where were you these last eight years, that you could not do as you pleased?”

She spoke quietly, precisely, a challenge and warning in her gray eyes. “Where I was, there were no summers and no winters, no rain nor any change of season.”

Kallan took a long breath. He tried to speak coldly, as though he were not amazed. “My lady, I have followed you, and you have seen what I am. If you have any will to trust me, now is the time to tell me of your plans.” He glanced at her. Her face was calm. For the moment, at least, she had not rejected him. “You spoke to Taules Reji of an army. Do you have one?”

“None but dreams and shadows,” she said, and there was mockery in her voice but no mistrust.

“Do you trust me with your plans?”

“Yes … but let us find some shelter from this rain!”

He followed her along the cliff, till they found a place where the overhanging rocks protected them. There she told him of all that she had planned. She may have been glad to boast.

Kallan listened as gravely as though the commander of a great army were outlining strategy—where to set one squad of archers, another of swordsmen, the old fighters here, the young ones in the middle where they cannot break and run.

As he listened, his excitement grew. Here was a plan, truly, to give a handful of fighters the power to rout the greatest army that any king could bring. But when she had finished, he shook his head.

“I know the plain south of the city, where you would meet the soldiers that he commands. You do not have enough to oppose them. I know, it will be terror that wins the day, not swords, but you need swords to make the terror. Shadows will not do it. You will be facing wise ones as well as fools; we must not give them time to think.”

“I had another plan, one where swords would not be needed,” she said, “but I do not have the strength alone.”

Kallan knew her meaning. “I tell you, Ilbran will not let you use his daughter. He fears for her, both mind and body.”

She seemed unconvinced, wearing a knowing and amused look on her face. It disturbed him. “Go back to your first plan,” he said. “I can return and gather men, a good two dozen warriors to follow you.”

She did not try to conceal her amazement. No greater joy than to explain to her. “I worked as much as any man could, in summer,” he said. “I told stories of glory and glamour, and I watched to see who was stirred by them.

“A few were sons of men I knew; some had traitor fathers and had lived their lives in mistrust. Some were like Syresh, with their heads full of noble notions. He is proud to be your liegeman.”

Andiene nodded and smiled. Kallan went on, speaking eagerly. “In a few days, I can gather a group around me that you can trust, and lead them north again to where you wait. My life, if any of them are traitorous.”

For all his confident words, he knew that his task would be more risky than he had made it seem. Before he departed the next morning, he drew sketches and battle plans for her, in case he did not return; he made drawings of the plains south of the city, the foreordained battlefield for an army marching from the south. “Wait for me a week, and then travel slowly,” he said.

It was strange to walk back through the dead land he had traveled so few days before. The greening had covered burnt land and dry land alike. The lanara groves were white with big-petaled barren flowers, and he passed groups of gatherers going out from the city to harvest them. The rain was warm and did not trouble him greatly, but in evening time, when he tried to light a fire, he longed for Andiene, who could call up flames without one word.

He passed through the gates of the city without challenge. The fear that Andiene had raised lay around him too. Still, he moved cautiously, and kept his back to the walls. He was alone now, no sorceress to protect him, and Nahil would be glad to reward any who had him killed. But spies are not bold so far from home; he did not think that he was in much danger. His greatest fear was that he might recruit the eager ones, Nahil’s spies, or those of another king.

Kallan worked carefully. Much can be learned from words, and silences, the tiny motions of eyes and hands. Voice and breath alike betray men, whether they speak or are silent. Soon, he had assembled a group of nobleman’s sons and commoners, warriors all of them, men with no wives and children to be held hostage, ones that he could trust.

In a few days he led them north again. There were no signs that anyone had followed them out of the city. They traveled swiftly and easily, made one camp, and joined the others before evening of the second day.

Andiene had waited where the mountain road began. Her little band was gathered around their campfire, an early meal. She had set no guard on watch, but this was not the outlaw land, yet; that lay higher in the mountains. Still, it was not wise.

Looking up with a smile of pleasure, she saw Kallan first. Then her eyes widened, as she looked past him to see the others, a full twice-twelve of recruits straggling along the path. “I did not know you were such a good persuader, Lord Kallan.”

“It was a noble cause, my lady,” he said, and he named off their names. “Eliad, and Mareslin. Sireles and Lanson and Tammil, all archers. Mikel fair and Mikel brown we must call them till they win better names for themselves. Karrir who was captain of the guard in Alliseja, the cold land to the north … ”

He spoke casually, using his voice to calm them, speaking as though this meeting were an ordinary one, for he saw the look on his recruits’ faces, white-eyed, most of them, like a horse that is ready to bolt. They had heard the tales, even wilder than the truth, that ran through the city.

His offhand manner eased the strain, but he thought a separate campfire seemed best, for his men were still nervous and wary. Although they had vowed to follow a sorceress, they had not understood what they were doing.

So he set them to work, gathering wood and grinding blaggorn meal for their supper, cleaning and mending their armor and gear though it was bright and new-made. He set them to any tasks he could think of, to occupy their hands and minds. And when he went from group to group and talked, he shied away from any mention of magic.

Late into the night, he heard the soft lute-sounds from the other campfire. As though Lenane had read his mind, she did not sing songs of sorcery, but songs of love and war and glory.

At last he closed his eyes, to sleep well and wake joyfully. The rains had stopped. Traveling would be easy, and all the air was sweet with the smell of new life. The men that he had brought were arrayed near their campfire, most of them sleeping soundly after the long march. He went in search of his companions. The other campfire had died down to embers, and no one was near it, a wiser plan, if this were a dangerous land, but he guessed that some of them had other reasons.

The path ran along the side of the hill. He left it and climbed up over the rocks, seeking the crest of the ridge, though there would be nothing to see but stacks of mountains rising higher and higher to the east. He meant to climb as high as he could and look back over the land of his birth, the land he would see perhaps for the last time.

The stunted mountain blaggorn was green along its stems. In a few weeks, its pollen would be blowing through the air. He saw a white robe and dark hair showing against the mossy rocks. Kare had snuggled herself into the crevice, and slept with utter concentration, as though it were the hardest work that one could do.

She had run to greet him the night before, then had turned shy, facing the strangers, and had gone back to hide her face in her father’s side. Though he knew nothing of children, she seemed to be growing well, bright and confident and merry.

Kallan climbed on, making his own path between the tall rocks. Soon this land would not be so safe. When aftersummer had burned itself out, the serpents and vipers would crawl out of their dens, but now there was no danger in the hills. It was a joyful morning. When he returned to the camp, he would speak to Andiene in private, and hear her praise him. He had done good work for her.

When Kallan thought to the future and saw Nahil in terror, defeated, dethroned, he took no pleasure from the vision, but his purpose was to serve Andiene. He had chosen, and what she wanted, he would do.

He climbed higher, seeking the true path that would guide them through the mountains. When he rounded a pile of boulders, and came upon the two of them, he was amused, thinking that he had found the nest of Lenane and Syresh—an agreeable thought, the nobleman matched with the minstrel thief, as he had prophesied.

But as he started to noiselessly retreat, he glanced again. Pale hair and darker hair side by side, but the pale was a cap of true-silver, next to a rough-cropped shock of fair curls … Andiene and Ilbran, half-covered by a cloak, his arms around her, both of them sleeping a deeper sleep than anyone would wisely lie in, even on these quiet hills, where there were no great hunters of animals or men.

Kallan stepped backward silently. They did not wake. So she had been so eager, like any animal hot to mate when summer is done. She had chosen a fisherman’s son, a lout who held a sword as if it were a club, and did not have enough to wit to ward with a shield and still remember that he held a sword. One who boasted that he cared nothing for kingcraft and politics, proud in his ignorance.

The hills were newly green; the silent summer was over. The locusts sawed their tuneless songs, and the birds courted in the air. Here and there, the grasskits danced in the little clearings to try to win their mates.

Kallan walked in chill loneliness. Anger was useless. A queen could mate where she chose. The city people would welcome a fisherman as readily as a nobleman, and a hundred times more readily than one such as Kallan was. So he fought with himself and convinced himself, but the taste in his mouth was bitter, when he went down to the camp again. He remembered words that he had spoken. Nothing so pitiful as a jealous man with no rights in the matter. Nothing indeed.

No wisdom would keep his anger from rising, when he saw Andiene return to camp wearing a crown twisted of silver bittery. He saw her look at Ilbran and smile. In the midst of friends and strangers was no room for privacy, but she would touch his wrist for a moment, lean against him as though by accident, meet his eyes for a moment’s exchange of messages. Ilbran watched her constantly, with a look that was loving and possessive. The two of them kept no secrets, though they might think they did.

Kallan went back to his own recruits, and set them to ordering their camp. Though they seemed less afraid, after their night’s sleep, they still huddled together, watchful and untrusting. Reason enough, he said to himself, to stay with them and try to reassure them. No need to speak to the others. There was nothing to be said.

In the weeks that followed, they walked far along the sweet-smelling mountainside. They had to pick and choose their way, aiming for the road that would take them through the low passes.

“Look!” Eliad said, and pointed far up the slope. They straggled out along a narrow path cut in the side of the mountain, great boulders above them, and sheer cliff below them.

Kallan glanced upward. “Albanet.” Wonder filled his voice, though there was little to be seen, only two blurs of white traversing the rocks above them.

“Not horses?”

“No. Larger than a horse, and less beautiful. But wiser, as wise as the grizanes, some say. By the ones who led us to this land! Wiser than any man, and yet willing to serve … some of us … ”

“Have you ever tried to win one?” asked Eliad. He was a young man, not many years past his second naming. He had never gone far past the gates of his city.

“Yes,” Kallan said. “Their riders seem the same as us, no reason why they would be chosen.” He wished he had not answered. His companions, Ilbran and Kare, Syresh and Lenane, all the men he had brought from Oreja, had heard the conversation and stood looking up also. The albanet did not turn their heads to see the ones far below who watched them.

A silence, a sudden waiting silence filled the air with emptiness. Ahead of them, Andiene stood motionless, listening, where the path bent in a huge bow of stacked and splintered rock.

She called, “Come!” and beckoned for them to run forward. “Hurry!” They obeyed, slowly at first, then urged on by a compulsion that Kallan alone recognized. She stood on the very cliff’s edge and let them push past her. “Go on!” she cried. Ilbran obeyed her, the last one, and she was left alone on the long path.

And then, she turned and backed away from where she stood, her arms held out in front of her like one who shows his empty hands in a sign of peace. The air was expectant. There was danger enough, of an earthly kind, simply in walking backwards on the narrow trail.

She did not once glance down, or behind her at the path. Her head did not move; her hands did not tremble; she moved as though there was some enemy before her that she must fix and hold motionless. She backed away, until she stood by Kallan and Ilbran, an hundred paces from the cliff corner where they had stood when she first called warning. Then her hands fell.

The cliffside fell in that same motion, a roar more terrible than a sea storm, a cloud of dust more blinding than any summer storm. It slid slowly, so slowly that Ilbran could not understand how such a massive weight could hang on the edge of nothingness. It gathered weight and power and speed as it fell. Ilbran knelt and held his daughter close to him, and prayed. He stared at the raw wound on the mountainside, long after the last clatter of rocks had died away.

Then Andiene laughed, a sharp sound to break the dust-choked silence.

“Whoever travels these hills will have some clever climbing to do, even if he wears a gray cloak!” She turned. “Kare, I thank you.”

Ilbran let loose his grip on his daughter’s shoulders. She looked up at Andiene. “Did I … ” she began, then crumpled forward.

Ilbran was slower than he should have been, his eyes on Andiene. It was Kallan who lunged and caught at her on the very edge of the cliff, and dragged her back over the edge.

Some things happen too suddenly. Ilbran looked at his daughter, and at the drop, stepless and sheer down to the green treetops far below. “I owe you life once again,” he began, speaking to Kallan, then stopped, cut off by the unexplainable mockery in the other man’s eyes.

He turned to Andiene then. “You thanked her for what?” he asked, and his voice was filled with the pain of betrayal.

“She helped me,” Andiene said. “I did not ask her. I could not stop her. In any war, you take what aid is offered to you.”

Ilbran gathered his child into his arms. “Shall we go on?”

Kare lay lightly in his arms, as he carried her for many days. In the brief and burning days of aftersummer, they took shelter again among the rocks. The heat is less fierce in the mountains. They did not suffer much. Kare lay quietly and did not wake. Ilbran watched her in fear and dread.

Andiene looked backward often, as they traveled the mountain trails, but did not speak of what had happened. Though the new recruits from Oreja learned to be more easy in her presence, they still stood in awe of her. Kallan stayed with them, training them, matching them against himself and each other, teaching them to fear him, and to rejoice in the rare praise he gave them. At last they came to the end of the mountains, where the road turned and went west. Their path lay open to the city.

Ilbran stared down at the valleys of green blaggorn, lined and circled with thornfruit hedges, a green and growing land.

This was the edge of his own land, the land where he was born. Mareja, the kingdom of the sea. The sun was low in the west, blinding him, but he imagined he saw the sparkle of waves at the very edge of his vision.

Kare woke that evening, opening dark amazed eyes to stare at the reborn world. Ilbran wept, but later that night, he sang, while Lenane played on the lute she had taken from the palace.

She began with the songs of love; those he could sing most joyfully. Even the sad songs pleased him, perfect in their sadness. He sang the Lament of Tare, of love won and love lost.

The grain is mure, is rotten ripe,

The silver sand has run away.

I won my love but for a day,

Yet I shall never mourn.

Lenane played the ending, the melody echoing, dying away, the strings speaking as movingly as a human voice. Then she laughed and turned to songs of magic, songs of war and heroism; they stuck in Ilbran’s throat.

But Tarilis, a tall swordsman, one of Kallan’s crew, took up the song when Ilbran stopped, and the others joined lustily. “Look at us,” Syresh cried. “A little band, so fair and free—a little band of brave ones.”

Andiene smiled to herself and juggled with stones, sending them spinning in fiery circles as she had done once in a king’s palace, careless of the fears of the ones who watched her. Ilbran could judge her mood from that. No memories troubled her. She had taken the child’s game for her own. But then he caught the look of strain on Kare’s face, and spoke sharply. “No!”

Andiene let the stones fall, quenching their witchfire in the cool earth. “I am sorry.”

Kare looked from one to the other in puzzlement. Andiene saw it, and there was a look of grief on her face for a moment, before she turned suddenly away. Her pack lay where she had unslung it. She opened it and pulled out the collar of lacework that she had knotted through the long summer. “Kare, this is for you. No, wash your hands before you touch it. You can wear it on your robe at your second naming.”

Kare ran to the stream, briskly scrubbed her hands with sand, and ran back to take the gift. She held it for a long time, before she folded it and wrapped it in her clean tunic, in the pack she carried.

“Why did you choose this time to give her such a royal gift?” Ilbran asked Andiene later, as they climbed up the slope to find privacy among the cool and tumbled stones.

“I do not know. I was ashamed. I have been thoughtless. Your reprimand, she thought it was meant for her. I wanted to do something that would please her.”

They had reached their destination, a great scattering of stones. Close to a city or village, it would be a place of the dead, but in the quiet mountains, it was put to no such use. The stones were cushioned with thick moss, sweet-smelling when it was touched, like the spices of the south. After a while, Ilbran spoke again of his heart’s desire.

“You could let your plan go, and come with me, traveling north or south, to some land where the king’s men would not know you. Enough silver-haired women live in the north, so I have heard, that you would be lost like a speck of dust in a summer storm. All this time that we have traveled together, you have lived without power and luxury, and found pleasure in simple things. And all you have seen is the hardness of life, forced traveling, traveling wounded, or in foul weather. Truly, it is not always like that. We could find great joy.”

She let him have his say, every word of it, till he had run out of unaccustomed eloquence. Then she gave her answer. “No.”

The word fell into the silence like a stone. The silence stretched on, until she hurried into speech again, more heated, more eager to convince.

“You ought to be with me; you have your own people to avenge. I have my revenge, my kingdom to win, and I tell you, I can sense Nahil’s fear. The smell of it has filled this land and spills over the borders. The thought of me has harried him till he would never let me escape. You cannot run between two duelists and try to separate them, once battle is joined.”

Ilbran reached out and stroked her silver hair, gleaming in the starlight. He had not expected another answer, but still he was grieved. “What is your battle plan? We are still few, even with Kallan’s men. Nahil can send a thousand to meet you on the open plain.”

Andiene laughed. “That is what I intend. That he will send his thousand, all that he can command, and see them scattered to the ends of the earth, so his city lies defenseless and he has no place to hide!”

Then she spoke more gently, and told Ilbran all her plan, as she had told it to Kallan, speaking proudly and confidently.

Ilbran caught his breath in horror. “You cannot mean it. How many will die? These are your own people.”

“Not many will die, and only those that serve the usurper.”

“Ones will die that did not serve willingly. I might be among them, if my life had not been driven astray from its course, when I found you.”

For the first time, he had reminded her of the debt she owed him. It angered her.

“I might have lived without your aid,” she said, and her voice was hard. “I had another one to guard me and to guide me. But I will be bound this much by the debt of gratitude. Show me a gentler path to my kingdom, and I will take it.”

Ilbran shook his head helplessly. “I can think of none. But what of my child? Where is her place in your plans? Does she join in the slaughter?”

“No! You brought this about. I had another plan, a gentle one. With Kare to help me, I could have wrought so that none died but one—you know which one.”

“Have you forgotten already what happens when she joins with you? I thought she would die.”

“It was the same with me,” Andiene said confidently. “She has not been trained. I can teach her to bear her power.”

“You will not!” Ilbran exclaimed. “I want her to forget her past, what she has done. I want you to teach her nothing.”

Andiene’s voice sharpened, though they spoke in whispers so the sound would not carry to the camp below.

“Even her mother taught her good things, the herb-lore that she used to heal you.”

That blow struck near the heart. Ilbran had to force himself to speak calmly. “You do not know what you are saying. Her mother broke the Law, delved deep in the earth to bury the men she destroyed. She taught her child and filled her with knowledge in the same way that the butcher fattens a calf for the slaughter.”

Even in the dim light, he could see the color leave her face. “No! I did not realize … Very well then, you are her father. She can stand apart from the battle. Lenane will have no part of it either. You can be with them if you wish.”

Ilbran saw himself waiting in safety like another girl-child, while she went into battle. It was an unbearable picture. “I will fight for you, not hide coward-like and ashamed!” he exclaimed.

Andiene gave a little laugh, and spoke more gently. Harsh words had been said, but none that could not be forgotten. And on that autumn night, they found it easy to forgive.

But the battle plan ran through Ilbran’s mind—to use magic and fear to destroy the greatest army that a king could muster. When he slept, he dreamed of it. He walked through a wide valley, abloom with rusty flowers. Dead men lay in it, too many to carry to their rightful resting places.

Though it was a dream-country, it had bright colors, the texture and scent of reality about it. From across the fields came Ilbran’s comrades. Kallan’s eyes were bright with pride as he surveyed the morning’s work. Syresh was more pale and grim, but full of pride also. The others, the newcomers, straggled after them, Sireles, Eliad, Mikel brown, and all the others. Though blood marked their skin and clothes, they lived, all of them. They lived and were strong. Their laughter shook the far-off mountains. Only Andiene and Ilbran joined hands and wept, as he cast aside his bloody sword.

At last they rose, and walked up the hill, silent in victory, to where Lenane and Kare waited for them. But Lenane came to them sobbing, and Ilbran’s heart grew chill as death. Kare lay on the crest of the hill, between the dragon’s paws.

Dead beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even from a distance, that was dream-clear. Ilbran ran to her. Dead and diminished she lay, next to that gray-scaled massiveness. A scrap of nothingness, as fragile as the empty robes of the grizane.

Then he woke.

When he rose from Andiene’s side, she turned and flung out her arm, but did not wake. Fragments of Lenane’s songs drifted through his mind.

My love, you sleep too sound.



She breathed softly and easily. Her head was turned so he could not see her face. Will you not waken and turn to me?

No, he could not bear it, and it would not change his mind or turn him one hairbreadth from his purpose. No farewells. Has she ever before been betrayed by one she loves?



He stooped and drew the cloak up to cover her. Will you not waken and turn to me?



The stars were bright. He walked softly down the hill, and quartered the slope till he found where his child lay asleep. He knelt to touch her warm cheek, listen to her breathing, a comforting sound.

His mind was clearer than it had ever been. A wise man will know when he is granted a prophetic dream. Kare, for all her gentleness, had grown willful. When Andiene worked magic, then she would join. He could not stop her. Andiene could not or would not stop her.

And what would come of it? Every time, she had lain balanced on the knife-edge of death. This time, the balance would tip too far.

The stars gave enough light for traveling. He carried his child at first, and when she woke, he led her. They traveled slowly, for he still bore the mark of the grievers. When Kare questioned him, he answered her sharply, which silenced her, unused to harsh words.

Sometime after sunrise, he turned to look behind him, and saw the flash of light from undulled metal. He shaded his eyes against the sun. A silver head and metal shirt meant only one man, and so Ilbran told his child to walk on ahead, and waited for Kallan to overtake him.

They faced each other in silence, wary as they had been at their first meeting.

“Where are you going?”

“Anywhere. Am I a slave to be hunted down?”

“Not good enough,” Kallan said, staring at him in bewildered anger. “I could bring you back alive or dead.”

“Kill me before my child? I thought you killed the children first?”

The other man’s face hardened even more. “A coward’s taunt. If you believed what you say, you would not dare to say it. Are you mad?”

“Not mad, but sane at last.”

“Then take your hand off your sword hilt, and explain.”

Ilbran glanced down and laughed shortly. “I did not realize. Little good would it do me.” He struggled to find words to explain. “I dreamed again. If I had not trusted my dreams, I would be dead now, with a lindel tree setting its roots into my rotten flesh.”

“What did you dream, that made you run from us like a coward thief?”

Ilbran spoke, paring the bright and bloody vision down to cold words.

Kallan listened gravely. “So you have had two prophetic dreams. Perhaps you will have a third someday.”

“I pray I never do.”

“The forest may have left its mark on you. Living in such a place can warp men in strange ways.”

Ilbran shuddered.

“What need was there to flee from us?” Kallan asked. “When it comes time for battle, you can stay a good day’s journey behind and guard your daughter. We would not count it cowardice. Who could deny that you would be little enough use in a battle?”

“Can I guard her forever? With every gesture and breath of magic, Kare strains to join it. Though I could shield her from one battle, there would be other times, other wars. Andiene loves her power. She plays with it as Lenane plays her lute. I want no part of it, no part of any of it! Has she told you what she plans?” Kallan nodded.

“My child’s mother was one of that same sort, black and rotten with witchcraft.”

“Unsay that, or this day may come to swordwork yet!” Ilbran had never seen Kallan so angry before. “Your wife’s life was lived in a circle of blasphemy. She rooted the forest trees from their proper places and planted them to feed on her own flesh and blood. What has Andiene ever done but fight for her rights? Tell me!”

“What right do kings have to own us?”

“The city answers to them. Their race was chosen from the beginning.”

“I have had enough dealings with witches and sorcerers to last me to the end of time.”

“And may you have many more,” Kallan said, as he looked significantly at Kare, far ahead of them, unable to hear what they said. “Will you deny her her heritage?”

“It is an inheritance that may destroy her.” Ilbran spoke desperately, fighting to convince himself.

“If I had what you have gained, I would not throw it away so easily.”

Ilbran spoke angrily. “How can you judge? You have no children, unless you left one among the forest folk. None that you will ever know.”

Then he regretted his words. This was one who had fought by his side, had saved his life, and his daughter’s life, had done his best to guard them all.

A king’s man, wary and wise, an old fighter. That had been his thought, when he had first seen him.

He is a king’s man still. He will be loyal to Andiene. Useless to blame men for what they are. He said more softly, “I would rather take a knife and cut my heart out of my chest, than leave her, but a man is given only one chance to cheat fate. This is mine, my only one.”

Kallan looked at him long and hard, and nodded at last. “Your first allegiance is to your own, your flesh and blood.”

Ilbran gazed north and west. The city was hidden now, in these lowlands. “I knew I would never come again to the gates of Mareja.”

“There are other lands,” Kallan said. “Look.” He knelt to draw in the soft earth. “I know the roads to the north. This is the map.”

“I thank you. Take care of her,” Ilbran said, though the words almost choked him.

“I mean to.”

“I am not made for dealing with sorceresses, but I loved her.”

“I know. I will try to explain.” Both of them knew how useless that would be. Little to say at farewells. Kare had drifted back to stand at Ilbran’s side.

“I only regret I never had a chance to save your life,” he said, trying to smile.

Kallan looked at them both, as sober as the lord watching the prisoner he has condemned. “That debt was paid, twice over. You can thank your child for that.”

Ilbran nodded. “Good enough. Come, Kare.”

“Guard your back in a strange land,” the kingsman said. He reached out and rumpled Kare’s hair, and then stepped back.

“May your footsteps lead you to a safe shelter,” Ilbran said.

Kallan’s eyes filled with that same cruel self-mockery that Ilbran had seen before. “More likely I’ll come to my just reward. But I will take a gentle message back to your lady.”

“I am glad of that.” No more to be said. Ilbran took his daughter by the hand and turned to follow the winding paths to the north.