Copyright © 1996 by Katya Reimann

Tamsanne's cottage was hidden in the ruins of an ancient forested-over ring castle. She seldom had visitors. This was not at all surprising, given the cottage's isolation and its proximity to the Great River Rush—and to the Changing Lands, the mysterious domain beyond the river border to the south.        The Changing Lands were wild and lawless, dominated by an ungoverned magic that had brought its trees to waking life, a magic that trapped its animals—and any human foolish enough to cross its borders—in lifelong servitude. The border river was little safer, floating vast rafts of darkly scented mauve and white lilies—a dangerous, swift-acting opiate that could leave a boat without its crew awake to steer it. Most everyone who walked by the river had seen the strange dryads that danced beneath the trees on the far bank on the gods' holy nights. The dryads were the souls and spirit forces of bonded men and animals. There was no doubt that the Changing Lands were poison to anything human.
       Tamsanne was one of a very few who had chosen to settle in Arleon Forest—and one of the fewer still who had formed a true tie to the land there. She had been careful to ensure that both her nieces understood from an early age that the warnings of the entrapments and sorceries spawned by the Changing Lands were no fantasy. She rejected as nonsense, however, the notion that the forests on the Tielmaran side of the river were similarly unstable. "They say I've condemned the pair of you to dryads' lives, raising you among these trees, but life here is a choice. The land won't take you—unless you ask it to, and you've earned the privilege of its acceptance."
       "Here in Arleon Forest, the goddesses' imprint is particularly strong. Witches who pray to the Great Twins for magic, women like myself, prosper in settling here. Here, where their magic is most potent, the goddesses are generous with it."
       Gaultry sometimes wondered that her aunt thought things were so simple. The Great Twins were indeed generous in sharing their strength with Tamsanne: Gaultry's aunt was a powerful healer and herbs woman, strong and elemental enough that she could call seed to vital, sprouting life, or send a full-grown oak crashing to the forest floor. But that was Tamsanne. The broad scope of forest magic never seemed to come so easily to anyone else—not least of all to her own nieces.
       Gaultry's rescuer guided his mare among the trees at a deceptively smooth canter. His tight grip on her shoulders belied the smoothness of the ride, as did the branches that slashed by their faces, alarmingly close and fast. The outcome of her earlier race would have been different if Reido's men had been equally competent at running a horse through thick brush.
       "You were expecting me to be younger, weren't you?" Gaultry asked as her rescuer slowed the mare to a bone-jarring trot.
       "I was expecting you to be a child." The dark soldier shifted on the saddle, brushing lightly against her back. "How much further to your aunt's?"
       "We'll reach her outposts soon. You'll see. The forest is greener there. Tamsanne is famous for the early flowers in her garden." She drew a little away—not that there was much room to do so in the crowded saddle. "How is it that you've heard of me and not of Tamsanne?"
       "I wouldn't have known of you but for your father. How should I know of your aunt?"
       "By asking in Paddleways—or in any village in Arleon Forest, on your way to find me."
       "For the past two days, I've let Reido and his men lead me to you. I came up behind them after they had made inquiries after you in High Hill."
       "I see," said Gaultry, though she didn't see at all. High Hill was far to the north, almost at the edge of Arleon Forest. Why would anyone have come so far to threaten her? "But my father sending you to protect me with a geas—I don't understand that. Father died at the New Year, and here it is, almost Prince's Night and the first of May. The magic he laid on you seems very strong. How did it let you wait almost five months before coming after me?"
       "It didn't," he answered curtly. "You saw the transference. That was all he gave me. I didn't even know your name. Your father lumbered me with the images, and the compulsion to protect you. He was dead before he could tell me who you were. Having so many unanswered questions—it was like I had a wasp trapped in my skull: an angry wasp. Your father hadn't considered that I had other business to attend before I could find the time to discover who you were—let alone where I could find you."
       "What my father did had very little to do with what I wanted either," said Gaultry, smarting at his tone.
       "So I would have guessed, from what he did give me. Have you always been so angry with him?" He asked the question lightly, but she hear in his tone that he was remembering the dominant image her father had given him—herself as an angry young girl, furious and disappointed with her father all at once—and that he found it hard to respect her for it.
       "That's none of your business," she told him. "As if you could have any idea who was at fault for my behavior." Ahead, one of her aunt's black boundary markers hove into view. "That's Tamsanne's first post. I'll be safe now. Let me down. I'll make my way from here." She tugged blindly at the mare's reins, not caring when she made the horse startle and threaten to spill her riders. She simply wanted to be down, to be away from him. If her father had laid a geas on him, it was no fault of hers! She had asked her father for nothing since that day long past. Nothing. Least of all for his protection.
       "Don't be silly," he said, his voice rough and angry. "That knee can't take your weight, and if I have to watch you hobble for sure it will be the straw that breaks me." His arms tightened around her, forcibly preventing her from jumping off the saddle. His heart hammered against his ribs, hard enough that she could feel it. She stilled for a moment, baffled by the force of his distress. Then, suddenly, she understood. It was the geas magic: pressing him, pounding on his senses, demanding he attend her needs. Even changes in her voice affected him.
       Small wonder that the dark soldier was so furious!
       It made no sense that her father had managed to cast a geas so strong. She hadn't seen her father in more than five years—not since the horrible day Thomas Blas had come to Tamsanne's and told them all that he had been knighted, that Gaultry and Mervion, forest-raised as they were, would no longer be welcome in his house. Worst of all had been the news that he would not come to Arleon Forest to share the end-of-summer month with them, not ever again.
       "It's not the knee that's so bad," she said, trying to compose herself, to put past betrayals from her mind. "Though it does hurt. But you have upset me—you coming here with this geas has upset me. I don't know what my father was thinking, forcing such a pledge on you."
       "Judging by what that bastard and his men were about to do back there in the hollow, I suppose we have to call it premonition." He pulled the reins out of her fingers, and gently pressed his hand against the back of her neck, as if trying to ground the geas-magic to her pulse.
       Or guilt, she thought to herself. It could be called guilt. Court-life, running after the hounds in the Prince's hunt—that had been Thomas Blas's death. He should never have abandoned his daughters to join that life.
       After a moment, the geas-magic calmed. The soldier took his hand away from her neck, and clucked to the mare, urging her back into a walk. "Since the New Year, your image has been plaguing me. I thought had an idea what you were going to be like—you're not what I expected."
       "You were expecting an angry child," Gaultry said, sullen. "That's what I was when my father last saw me. It doesn't mean that it's what I still am." Her father's death had come as a great shock, not least because of her recollections of their last meeting, and what she saw as the ironic circumstances of his death. Thomas Blas had been killed in a needless hunting accident while wintering at the Prince's court. "Why did Father choose you for the geas? Were you friends?"
       "Friends?" he frowned. "I was there when he died."
       "His death was an accident? That's the news that came to us." It was too easy to picture the stupidity of her father's death: the old man still thrusting himself to the fore, into the thick of the danger, trying even as death reached for him to win his overlord's eye and praise. An accident during the Prince of Tielmark's New Year's Day hunt. So commonplace, yet so unnecessary. At the south border, in the midst of a hard winter, they had not heard the news until nearly a month after the event.
       "It was an accident." He stopped the horse, suddenly abrupt, and shifted her around in the saddle. "Why question that?"
       "He was my father," Gaultry said, softly, "and you've just admitted you witnessed his death. I loved him, even if he abandoned me when he went to join the Prince's court. Of course I want to know what happened in his final moments."
       His face had gone pale beneath his soldier's tan. "I see I owe you a more proper introduction," he said. "You—it's not right that I should treat you as a guileless child. It's no true protection to you to shield you from the truth." The light in his eyes—he twisted her in the saddle so she faced him—it showed pained revelation. "I'm punishing you for your father's presumptions—but perhaps he presumed much of you as well."
       He turned her hand palm up, and made the goddesses' spiral-sign over it. "By the Great Twins' grace, I swear to you by my life that my name is Martin Stalker. A powerful geas has been laid on me to protect you. I hereby submit to the gods and acknowledge the charge Thomas Blas's covenant has set for me." He crossed his right hand over his heart, and stared into her eyes, as if searching for a new truth to replace the initial impress that her father had set upon him.
       To formally acknowledge a geas was to start to limit its terms. But something was wrong here. Gaultry knew something was wrong even as she felt the geas-magic in him quicken, lighting his winter grey eyes to sparking silver, pulling the breath deep into his chest, tightening the grip of his thighs against her own in the saddle. Her father had never intended that the geas should protect only her. Her father had impressed her rescuer's mind with images of Gaultry and her sister both. He hadn't intended the geas to protect Gaultry alone. And yet here was Martin Stalker, the protector her dying father had chosen for them both, formally accepting the geas as if it applied only to her, molding the spell with his acceptance, changing it—
       "Wait!" she called, trying to stall the magic as it surged and bent itself to a new pattern. "Stop! I know why the geas has been so unnatural, so strong! It's a mistake!"
       She reached for his hand, trying to stop the transformation, but it was too late. Her rescuer had chosen the wrong moment—and the wrong place—to invoke his acceptance. As the silver geas-magic in his eyes brightened, a second, vernal green power crackled to life, surrounding the horse with its riders in a flashing cloud of cold fire. Gaultry swore, and jerked round, trying to spot the source of the green magic—her aunt's signature—as it meshed with the silver geas-magic, assessing, groping like a tendril of spectral vine.
       Then it recoiled. Her rescuer jolted in the saddle, forced violently back against the crupper. The mare shied and whinnied, newly startled. A fresh lash of green fire whipped out across them both. Martin, cursing, was slammed over the back of the saddle and off over the horse's rump.
       Gaultry, alone in the saddle, lurched sideways and fought for balance. There was an awkward moment when she thought she would keep her seat; then the horse bucked, and she was in the air.
       She cried out, trying to writhe in mid-air so she would escape landing on her bad knee.
       She landed on top of Martin. The big soldier twisted himself almost under his own horse's legs to cushion her fall. Barely pausing to draw breath, he shunted her off onto the turf and reached for his sword, which, along with his cloak and quiver, had come free of his shoulders.
       "It's all right." She caught at his jacket as he struggled to free his weapon from the folds of the heavy cloak. "It's not for us. The geas triggered it. Tamsanne doesn't like unexpected visitors, especially visitors who come with magic. She's arranged things so she doesn't get any. Look—" Gaultry pointed to the bole of a tree they had just passed. There was a hex symbol carved into the hoary bark, half-hidden by tangled grass. As they watched, it trembled faintly, the cut marks realigning themselves. "She knows we're coming now. That's all."
       "Your aunt is a witch." A statement, not a question, but a statement of a fact that was new to him. He was on his feet, scowling, as frightening as he'd been at that first moment when she'd seen him, when he'd tested the geas by aiming his arrow at her heart.
       "And what do you think I am?" she snapped back, furious that even though she knew he had the geas on him, she still found herself intimidated. "So what do you want me to tell you? That I think you're a fool to be traveling in this forest without the knowledge of it?"
       "Fool enough to risk my neck offering you help." He turned to calm his mare—and perhaps himself too.
       Gaultry sat on the soft turf, waiting to be helped up. They were in Tamsanne's grounds proper now. The leaves were greener, the ground softer. A sweet wind seemed to stir the trees. The attack by Reido's men seemed very far away. She wondered why Martin was so upset—this was something other than his geas-induced sensitivity to her feelings.
       "Weren't you watching when I spelled the blood on my leg?" He would not have noticed when she cast the witch's bane on Reido's vitals. But the color-changing of her blood had been so obviously a spell, and he'd cleaned her wound with his own hands. "Didn't you think anything was odd when you mopped green blood off me?"
       "There are a number of things I should have better considered in coming here to meet you," said Martin, giving her an odd look. "Who is this aunt of yours? What's her blood?"
       "Tamsanne?" Gaultry grinned. "She wouldn't praise you for asking a question like that. She thinks deeds, not blood, make a person important."
       "Let's go," Martin said, suddenly abrupt. "Anything I might need to say will be better said off the trail." He bent to pick up his sword, and dragged the scabbard clear of the cloak.
       Gaultry, who had reached out her hand to him, expecting to be helped up, gasped and drew back.
       The worn leather of the scabbard had gone clear as glass, and the mighty sword that lay beneath the battered casing could be clearly seen. Some element of Tamsanne's hex revealed magic. Six runes of power winked out along its blade, embossed into the metal like evil, shifting eyes.
       For such power, the blade itself would have to have been forged in magic fire.
       "What are you doing here?" Gaultry asked, newly bewildered. No common soldier would carry such a weapon. "How could my father have had the power to compel you?"
       "Allegrios Rex! This shouldn't be happening," he said angrily, rubbing furiously at the scabbard with his hands, as though he could dispel the magic by dint of sheer physical force. "This shouldn't be happening."
       There was something comedic in the intensity of his efforts. As if Tamsanne's magic could be rubbed off so easily! But the comedy hardly undercut the seriousness of what her father had done. The power Martin Stalker carried in that blade—his own will would have to be strong indeed, to enable him to control it. Yet her father had imposed a geas on him, a geas of such potency that the dark soldier had been forced to the far end of Tielmark to find her.
       She looked the man over, carefully searching for more clues to his character and strength, as he fussed with his weapon. The oak-leaf brooch at his collar was also lighted with eldritch-fire, as well as the feathers of two of the arrows that protruded from his quiver. The brooch had the Twin-Goddesses' double-spiral on it—probably a protection piece.
       "Tamsanne's had fifty odd years to get things in order here, you know."
       "I didn't. Fifty years." He abandoned his attempt to clean his weapon and slung the scabbard bad-temperedly back over his shoulders, fingers busy with the straps. "She's old to be your aunt."
       "Great-aunt, actually." Gaultry let him heave her up into the saddle, wondering if she should warn him about the geas now, tell him her guess that he had misunderstood about herself and her sister from the beginning; that he himself had helped shape it wrongly from the day it had been cast on him, investing it with more power and intensity than even her father had intended. Somehow the moment didn't seem right. Probably Tamsanne would be able to explain it better—that Martin had taken a geas meant to protect two sisters, and molded it into potent protection for just one.
       No, now was not the time to confuse him. Tamsanne's hex had shaken him. Instead of returning to the saddle, he walked warily by his mare's side as they crossed the last rise towards the cottage grounds. His air was vigilant, his movements swift and light, his eyes alert and restless, searching for every detail. Spotting another tree hex before Gaultry had remembered it was there, he led the horse around behind it.
       "What's that one do? Put a halo over my head?"
       What would Tamsanne make of him?
       They soon came to the first remnant of the old ring castle's walls, mellow silvery stone with once finely dressed edges, now largely crumbled. Martin gave Gaultry an inquiring look. "More surprises. I thought you said your aunt lived in a cottage."
       "She does. We have to go through the ruins to reach it. You'll see."
       "This is one of the old Bissanty border castles, isn't it?"
       "What's left of it."
       The ancient masonry was tangled over with climbing honeysuckle and roses. The path rambled between fallen piers of stone, an occasional carved block with weather-worn figures peeping out from under the greenery. It was a pleasant haven, even without the flowers in full bloom. Martin's mare nickered with pleasure at the fresh plant smells. They rounded the ruinous shell of the most complete of the remaining towers. It was a bare twenty feet high, with almost half of the round entirely crumbled.
       Gaultry looked anxiously at her visitor, wondering what he made of it. It was here that she and Mervion had played at knights and ladies when they were children, before the last of the inner stairs had fallen, and it was one of her favorite spots. To an outsider's eye the riot of unseasonable blossoms might contrast uncomfortably with the stark darks and delicate spring greens of the pine plateau forest.
       They turned onto the last corridor—a narrow stone passageway now grassy underfoot and open to the sky—toward the remains of the great hall. On the walls here wisteria was growing in unnatural profusion, its stems coiled into looping signs and symbols, entwined thickly into itself and almost strangled by its own burgeoning life. Its pale flowers had blood-colored centers, like tiny red pupils. The blossoms seemed to turn and follow them as they went past.
       "I wouldn't want to be in here if your aunt decided that she didn't want company," Martin said, watching the wisteria watch them.
       "She likes it to be pretty," Gaultry said. "But she wants it to be useful too." Going past the big loop of vines that had once garroted an intruder, Gaultry made Martin quicken the horse's pace. That had been a night intrusion. The man had advanced with his knife in his hand. Helping Tamsanne free his engorged purple body the next morning had not been pleasant.
       It wasn't a story she cared to repeat to Martin.
       After the shadows and cover of the forest, the broken rectangle of the great hall was a startling expanse of open turf. Tamsanne's half-dozen ewes, who kept the grass cropped short, grazed lazily in one corner. At the west end, the cottage had been built into the old piece of wall that contained what had once been the hall's main fireplace—now incorporated into the cottage to serve as its kitchen hearth. The cottage itself was modest: a snug building with low eaves, a thatched roof, and narrow windows.
       The very snugness of the cottage emphasized the wild view over the old hall's foundations to the south. There the broken masonry of the wall overlooked a wide oxbow of the great border river. Standing on the grassy sward that had once been the floor of the great hall, they had a panoramic view of the broad blue river, and, across it, of the Changing Lands.
       On the Tielmaran bank, there was little to see: a rocky expanse of hill, studded with stunted trees, dropped sharply to the mass of reeds at the water's edge. The great bow of the river seemed normal enough. The water was a glossier, more purple blue than was natural, but that was all. Across the water, however . . .
       Across the water the land sparkled with fantastic color. The tops of the trees shivered and tossed. The foliage was ever-changing colors, shifting swiftly from the palest spring green through to the darkest, muddiest forest black. Among the bright branches, silver lights seemed to glisten and twinkle. Occasionally there would be a pause, as in a conversation; then the motion would start and build again.
       It was a lovely but profoundly intimidating sight.
       Martin looked up at Gaultry, shock evident on his face.
       "It does stay on its own side of the river," Gaultry assured him, shifting awkwardly in the saddle, a little embarrassed by the intensity of his expression. "You get used to it."
       He smiled, what suddenly seemed like the first true smile he had given her. "It's beautiful."
       Gaultry could not help but feel pleased. Most of Tamsanne's infrequent visitors were more cowed than appreciative. "It's like that day and night," she said, a little shy. "Tamsanne says the trees are awake there, asleep here. Sometimes you see the dryads—the captured souls—dancing beneath the branches. That's a little sad—though I don't think they look too unhappy."
       "I wouldn't guess that you would." He smiled again, this time a facile smile that didn't reach his eyes. Gaultry, puzzled by his mood-changes and tongue-tied as always when trying to talk seriously with people who were teasing her, looked away, wishing she hadn't mentioned the dryads.
       "What have you been up to, Gaultry?" Her aunt bustled towards them out of the cottage, saving Gaultry from having to fumble a response.
       Tamsanne had a linen towel over one shoulder, on which she was wiping her hands. She was a short and slightly built woman, with a deeply wrinkled face and out-sized hands which had been thickened by time and work. Bellows, the black dog who was her familiar spirit, followed at her heels. Tamsanne had been busy with some cookery, as the smoke from the cottage's chimney attested, and they'd interrupted her.
       Or so she would have it appear.
       "Where's your basket?" she asked Gaultry. "Who is this?" She gave Martin a jaundiced look, taking in the worn gear, fine horse, and the glint of her own magic on his weapons.
       "Martin Stalker, ma'am." Martin answered for himself. "Your niece has hurt her knee. Some men attacked her in the woods—"
       "And you rescued her." Tamsanne finished his sentence for him. "Very convenient." She fluttered the towel at the big soldier, feigning an old woman's gestures. Gaultry smothered a grin. She didn't think her aunt was fooling Martin, and couldn't help but wonder that she even tried. Tamsanne had sharp black eyes, their intensity undiminished by age, and few people could stand up to one of her looks. Linen towel and frail body aside, it was easy, looking into those sharp eyes, to credit Tamsanne as a woman of power. "Not, of course, that we're ungrateful to you for saving her."
       "Of course," Martin said. His face was all politeness and courtesy, masking his deeper thoughts.
       Tamsanne gave him another hard look. "Well, I can see it's a near thing that she's in one piece. Come down from that animal, Gaultry. I'll take you inside and fix you up. And you—" She turned on Martin. "Follow Bellows here and he'll show you where to stable your animal. Presuming that you're staying the night."
       Bellows, at Martin's knee, stuck his snout in the man's hand and sighed. He was a large, somewhat elderly dog with a resigned expression—long used to Tamsanne's preemptive outbursts.
       Martin bent and gave him a light pat. "Generous of you, ma'am. I don't see myself making it back to Paddleways tonight."
       "Nor tomorrow either if you'll be wanting a spell laid before you go." Tamsanne could be frighteningly prescient—or ruthlessly sly. Gaultry guessed she'd been spying on them since they'd first entered her grounds near the tree hex. "But I think we'll be waiting for your other news before we help you with that one."
       Martin gave Tamsanne his own sharp look.
       "So I'm right?" Tamsanne said. "Follow Bellows, then, and put up your horse."
       "I'll stay," he said. "Perhaps you can answer some questions for me."
       "Perhaps," Tamsanne answered, making no promises. She bent and slapped Bellows on the rump to get him moving.
       Gaultry stared at Martin's back as he led the mare away. Outside of her father's geas, he hadn't suggested there were other reasons for his trip to Arleon Forest.
       "Come get yourself cleaned up." Tamsanne took her firmly by the elbow. "And don't be looking so startled. It's perfectly obvious that something besides the geas has brought him all the way out here to the border. If he held the geas off four months, he wouldn't be here now if he didn't have another reason bringing him."
       "You were listening!" Gaultry hissed. "Why didn't you send Bellows to meet us?"
       "To what purpose?" Tamsanne helped her hobble towards the cottage. "You got here fast enough without my interference."
       "You let him trigger the hex with the geas!" Gaultry accused her. "You let him change the geas! You could have stopped him!"
       "Stop babbling, Gaultry. You have no idea what you're talking about. As if I had the power to stop him."
       Inside the cottage, out of Martin's sight, Tamsanne was gentler. She sat her niece in the padded chair in the nook of the massive stone fireplace—today's cooking fire took up only a small part of the great stone slab—and bustled about the room collecting herbs to dress her wounded knee. "Green blood!" Tamsanne let herself smile as she opened Martin's bandages. "That's a new one for you. Did it frighten them?"
       Gaultry said she thought it might have done.
       Now that she was in a safe place and able to relax, the young huntress was beginning to feel the full force of her injury. Having the wound probed and cleaned was exquisitely painful. Martin, in his haste to get her moved, had left some dirt in the wound. Gaultry distracted herself from Tamsanne's ministrations by describing how Reido had forced his fingers into the gash on her knee after he'd pinned her.
       Tamsanne, who had not seen that part of Gaultry's afternoon, frowned. "It's deep, my careless child. What that hunter did made it worse. The kneecap is damaged."
       She had been grinding a healer's paste in her small mortar, intending to salve the cut. Now, sighing, she looked to the door. Martin was not yet in sight.
       "You can't spend the next fortnight walking around with a stiff knee. I have to fix it now. Stay still."
       She made the sign of the Twin-Goddesses, a circle traced with her right hand's fingers on her left palm, and touched her fingers to Gaultry's skin. As fresh pain seared her flesh, Gaultry cried out, taken by surprise.
       "We'll keep appearances up for the company," Tamsanne slapped a handful of herbal paste onto Gaultry's knee and strapped it up with a fresh bandage—but not before Gaultry had seen that the skin was smooth, not even a scar to show for her scrape. "Now, let's get you something to eat."
       By the time Martin knocked at the cottage door, Gaultry was ensconced by the fire with a plate of stew on her lap, her leg elevated on a short stool. She waved as he entered, wondering how much pain Tamsanne expected her to pretend she was feeling.
       "Come in, come in, close the door." Tamsanne ladled some stew onto a plate. "Have some supper with Gaultry—by the fire, if you will."
       "Thank you." The tall soldier piled his saddlebags and weapons against the wall near the fire and settled himself into what was ordinarily Gaultry's chair, stretching his legs to meet the heat. He'd washed. Bellows had shown him the rain barrel and he'd cleaned the remains of the afternoon's gore from his hands.
       "Have you been admiring our view?" Tamsanne handed him a plate of stew, and their company spoon—metal with a cluster of leaves on the handle.
       "It's awe inspiring. Though why you put yourself so close to the border I don't quite comprehend."
       "Don't you?" Tamsanne flashed him a severe look. "The answer is plain enough to my eyes. Drawing strength from the earth itself for fifty years is as good a way as any to build strength."
       "Fifty years?" Martin said, taking his first mouthful of stew. "An entire cycle of the Great Twins' calendar."
       Tamsanne shot him an unfriendly look. "That's right," she said.
       The soldier tapped his spoon against his plate, lost in thought. "I didn't come here knowing that your niece was born to witch's blood," he said. "Or that she was kin to a witch tuned to Tielmark's Prince's cycles." He reached back to where he'd leaned his sword against the wall with the rest of his things, and touched the scabbard. The leather looked almost normal now, but the outlines of the six power runes could still be seen, glowing faintly green through the thin leather. "Fifty years is a long time to power-build. Six fifties is as long as Tielmark has been a principality free of Bissanty." He drew his hand away from the sword and took another mouthful of stew.
       "That's so," Tamsanne said shortly. "And our Prince's marriage on Prince's Night this year will close another cycle."
       Gaultry was astonished to see her aunt smile, if a little grimly, and move the pot of stew where the tall soldier could take more if he wanted it.
       Setting down the ladle, the old woman seated herself away from the fire, half in shadows, and took a handful of her skirts, twisting the cloth in her hands. "Why don't you tell us why you have come here?"
       Martin stared around the cottage at the dried herbs, the heavily carved beams, the strange oddments of Tamsanne's craft, seemingly considering his answer. He looked at Tamsanne, sitting poised between shadow and light, something intangibly aggressive in her pose. Lastly, he looked at Gaultry where she sat, her bright hair shining in the firelight, her down-turned face slightly flushed as she stared at her bandaged knee.
       When he finally spoke, it was to ask his own question. "Mistress Tamsanne, do both of your nieces follow your craft?"
       Gaultry snapped her head up, startled. Earlier this afternoon he hadn't mentioned—or indeed even seemed to know about—Mervion.
       "What would you imagine?" Tamsanne said dryly. "Both girls grew to womanhood under this roof."
       "What about Mervion?" Gaultry asked. "Mervion is at Blas Lodge. What do you want with her?" Blas Lodge was her half-brother's—formerly her father's—hunting lodge.
       "She's neither at your brother's house, nor is she safe," Martin said.
       "Where is she?"
       "She's in Princeport, held prisoner at the Prince's court."
       "Princeport?" Gaultry stuttered. "However did she find her way there?" Princeport, on Tielmark's coast, was a week's journey north from Blas Lodge—an even greater journey if one counted finding a reason to do business in the Prince's capital.
       "Tell us," Tamsanne said, suddenly intent. "Gaultry, be quiet and let Martin speak."
       "You've heard that Prince Benet is to be married this year on Prince's Night?"
       "In three weeks' time," Tamsanne replied. "And not before time, I'd say. All Tielmark knows."
       "We heard the wedding announcement on the heels of the news of my father's death," said Gaultry. "It was important enough that a second rider came south through the snow with it." More important than the news of a local knight's death. The mood in Paddleways village had swiftly turned from mourning to celebration when the announcement of the Prince's marriage plans was made known. Gaultry, still struggling with her reaction to her father's death, had not known whether to feel grateful or dismayed to see the response to his demise superseded by joy at the Prince's announcement.
       Martin nodded. "Nobody knows who the new Princess will be—"
       "Nobody's supposed to know." Gaultry interrupted, her memories making her voice gruff. "Tielmark is closing the Great Twins' cycle this year. The Prince isn't supposed to announce his choice until he presents her to the gods on Prince's Night."
       "That's the tradition," Tamsanne added dryly. "Outside of the fact that Benet has held the throne for seven years now, and it's high time he was married."
       Gaultry smiled at their guest, struggling to regain her composure. "Aunt Tamsanne will never admit that Tielmark's cycles are important, all evidence from the Great Twins to the contrary."
       "Not so!" Tamsanne retorted. "I've seen enough life that I won't deny any such thing. Tielmark's greatest Prince, after Clarin-Founder, was Briern-bold. Briern married on the centenary, and ruled for almost a full cycle after, so the Goddesses must have been pleased by his marriage." It had been Prince Briern who had inflicted a shattering defeat against the Bissanty armies, destroying forever Bissanty pretensions to retake Tielmaran lands by force.
       "What about the Princess Corinne?" Martin asked, a curious edge in his voice. "She was married on Tielmark's two hundred fiftieth. Every planting her reign saw through to harvest was plentiful and rich."
       "Exactly," Gaultry nodded. "Aunt Tamsanne's just being difficult. She knows our Princes owe it to the Great Twins to sanctify their marriages to the goddesses' cycle."
       Tamsanne, eyes intent on the hearth-fire's flames, shrugged. "Tielmark has been blessed with some strong leaders," she said. "Starting a new fifty year cycle with a princely marriage has never hurt us."
       "Not yet," Martin said softly. "And this in the face of the ever-present plotting by our former imperial sovereign to crush our independence."
       "The Bissanties can plot all they like," Gaultry snorted. "They're too weak to carry a real campaign against us."
       "That's true," Tamsanne said. "And a fighting man like you must know it."
       "I've fought my share of summer campaigns against the Lanai," Martin admitted. "I don't guess Bissanty troops will ever follow them across our borders." Since Briern's day, the Bissanty had limited their attacks against Tielmark to sporadic campaigns against the Lanai, the tribal nation who lived high in the rugged mountains on Tielmark's westernmost border. The Lanai's summer fields lay in the alpine valleys near the Bissanty borders, and were vulnerable to Bissanty attack. In years when the Bissanty felt strong, they would send their soldiers to burn the Lanai fields, driving the tribes down into Tielmark in search of sustenance. "But Bissanty offers Tielmark threats other than physical invasion."
       "Princess Corinne banished the last Bissanty provocateurs when she came into power after her wedding," Gaultry said. "Which is the main reason she's listed among Tielmark's greatest leaders."
       "Did she?" Martin asked. "Then how is it that Tielmark has a half-Bissanty Chancellor now?"
       Gaultry wasn't sure how to answer. She glanced at her aunt, but Tamsanne's attention was fixed deep in the hearth-flames. "Tielmark's Chancellor," she said slowly, "must be approved by the ducal council before taking office. We don't get all the news here at the border, and we hear even less out here in the woods, but my understanding is that Chancellor Heiratikus's Tielmaran connections far outweigh the burden of his foreign blood. His mother was Melaney Sevenage, one of the seven witches who helped old Princess Corinne consolidate power after her marriage—What's funny?"
       Tamsanne had snorted, but she wouldn't answer when her niece pressed her.
       "In any case, what has this got to do with Mervion?" Gaultry turned back to the dark soldier.
       "Chancellor Heiratikus has taken complete control over the arrangements for the Prince's wedding. Publicly, this might seem innocuous enough. But privately, a great evil has started to move through the Prince's court. Heiratikus had the Prince sign warrants of arrest for three young women, one for each moon of this new year. The first two of these women are dead. The third woman is Mervion Blas."
       He paused. Silence filled the room. At length, a piece of wood, burning in the fire, dropped down in the grate: the small noise broke the moment.
       "Are you suggesting that Benet, through his Chancellor, plans treason against Tielmark's gods?" Tamsanne said, her voice sharp as the crackling of fire. "That's treason in itself."
       "I'm no traitor," Martin said proudly, his face filling with a pulse of anger, black and strong. "Above my liege lord, Prince Benet is my master, before the gods' eyes. But the Prince is no longer master of himself. If his Chancellor is not stopped, there will be more deaths, more madness.
       "If you have proof—" Tamsanne began.
       "Proof!" Martin exploded, throwing down his plate. "What proof could I hope to carry out here into these hinterlands that might convince you? Sorcery has taken our Prince; Chancellor Heiratikus's black sorcery. The process of our law has already been corrupted. The Duchess of Melaudiere, my own liege lord, tried to intervene to save the women the Chancellor seized. By law, she owns access to her sovereign. But the Chancellor barred her from even a public meeting where she might have argued her case.
       "Louisette D'Arbey, the second to die, was like a daughter to Melaudiere. The Duchess, fighting back with her own magic, broke through a shield of sorcery and managed to see her once before her death. Louisette was raving mad, a broken shell. But even in her madness, a spell was left behind to guard her tongue, lest the least clue of the sorcerous trials she had endured at the Chancellor's hands should come to light.
       "The day after the Duchess gleaned that vision, Louisette's broken body was discovered on Prince's Path, the terrace beneath the battlements of the Chancellor's winter offices. She died slowly: her death agony was so great it broke the gag-spell on her speech. She gibbered to the man who found her that Heiratikus intended to make all Tielmark his slave; that, son to father, Heiratikus had pledged to return Tielmark to the enslavement of his father's land."
       "It is a strong trust indeed that values a madwoman's ranting over the pledges of loyalty made by the Prince's closest advisor," Tamsanne said.
       "Louisette wasn't mad until the Chancellor broke her! To toy like that with a woman's life and soul is the highest treason!" Martin was out of his chair, fury raising his voice. "Tielmark revolted against Bissanty rule three hundred years past to free itself from just such arbitrary abuses of power. To this day, the Bissanty Emperor sanctifies his every edict in his subjects' blood; cruel offerings and depravities are his due. That's not the law our Prince is pledged to uphold here in Tielmark!"
       The old woman drew back into herself before the barrage of Martin's words and angry gestures, wrinkles deepening, her very flesh shrinking into itself along her bones. Gaultry, seeing her aunt's change, put aside the empty plate she'd clutched throughout the debate, and edged into the fireplace nook.
       "Martin—" she said warningly. His indignation was so great he didn't notice.
       "My life, my blood, are pledged to protect my Prince, just as the Prince's life and blood are pledged to protect Tielmark. I don't sit quiet and safe in a deep forest, ignoring rising threats to my homeland! If you doubt my motives in coming to you—"
       He advanced a step too near. Tamsanne tired of his bluster. She made a small, impatient gesture with one hand.
       The big soldier was back in his chair, the palms of his hands locked to his knees. There was no tingle to betray the working of magic, no hint of force or violence—but there Martin was, back in his seat.
       It was to his credit that he did not try to fight the spell, and more to his credit that he recovered his composure instead of continuing to lose it. "I'm wrong to raise my voice to you." He had regained control of his voice. "This is no time for me to vent my temper. But Louisette—she didn't deserve what happened. Neither did Elsbet Laconte, the other woman.
       "My strength is here today to protect your kin. By the geas that has been laid on me, believe that."
       Tamsanne stood in front of him, her eyes watchful. Her reedy twig of a body had shrunk down even smaller, tighter, and the wrinkles of her skin had deepened, becoming almost bark-like. "So you say," she said, her voice taut with the power she'd gathered into herself. "It is lucky for you that I'm familiar with Melaudiere's reputation for loyalty. Laconte, D'Arbey. Those are courtiers' names. How was it that Mervion came to be tangled in the same web as this pair of court-bred girls?"
       Martin flexed his fingers, testing whether or not he could free his spell-locked hands from his knees. "We didn't know."
       "Didn't know? And you do now?"
       The soldier's hard grey eyes met the old woman's squarely. "Mervion Blas's fate must have been written in her blood. If she was born to the blood of witches, that must be the connection. I wish I had known of it before I traveled to you. Court-knowledge was that Mervion's mother was Anne of Chesney."
       "Thomas's second wife," Tamsanne said. "Anne had no magic to speak of."
       "Your niece was brought to court secretly. At first no one knew who she was—not even her name.
       "The first woman was put to the trial at the year's first full moon, just at the end of winter month. Louisette killed herself soon after the second moon. Mervion was brought to court two days before the third. It only slowly became clear that the Chancellor was following a pattern." Martin met Tamsanne's eyes, cool and level. "Certain matters of coincidence at the New Year no longer seemed a matter of chance."
       "Such as a geas that had been so inconveniently laid upon you?" Tamsanne suggested.
       He nodded reluctantly. "At the New Year, no one understood the significance of Thomas Blas's death. An angry child, the guilt of having broken faith—the geas seemed so personal, a petty distraction from matters of state. It wasn't very clear from the impress what Blas intended."
       Tamsanne made the goddesses' sign and touched her hand to Martin's cheek, ignoring his attempts to pull away. The casting was clean and quick: a short vining of power that dissipated as swiftly as it had been called. "I see," she said. "The surface of your geas is ragged with three sorcerers' marks. Perhaps you would have done better seeking to fulfill it, rather than trying to dispel it. Particularly when now that fate has brought you here to fulfill it in any case."
       There was little honor in trying to escape a geas, however involuntarily taken on, however inconvenient. A geas was less a magic burden than a pledge approved by the gods, one person to another. Trying to break a geas was like asking the gods to admit they'd made a mistake in approving it. Gaultry guessed from Martin's sullen expression that this was exactly what he must have done.
       "When Thomas Blas died he was bound in spells more numerous than those that had burst Louisette D'Arbey's sanity and garbled her tongue—spells that had the Chancellor's signature all over them." Martin said. "His death put the Chancellor in an uncomfortable position—Heiratikus had only the most feeble of explanations as to why the fine old serviceman of a remote ducal court should have died with so many sorcerous bonds on him. It was only the irrefutably accidental nature of Thomas Blas's death that saved Heiratikus from being questioned in the ducal Star Court."
       "We heard only that Thomas died during the confusion of a winter hunt," Tamsanne said. "Was his death so demonstrably accidental?"
       "It was accidental," Martin said shortly. "I was out that day myself. I saw the old man's death with my own eyes."
       "And received his dying geas."
       "In January, no one understood the significance of Blas trying to protect a young girl from obscure dangers. Indeed, no one at court even knew that Blas had a daughter—or daughters."
       Gaultry was not surprised. After earning his knight's spurs, her father had cut all ties with his earlier life and indiscretions. Born an ostler, he'd turned soldier and served in the Duke of Arleon's guard for upwards of twenty years, rising slowly through the ranks. When Thomas had turned forty, Arleon had granted him the living at Blas Lodge, a mellow old hunting house at the edge of the forest, north of Paddleways.
       It was there that he had met his first wife, Severine. A wild forest-witch with no court connections, Severine had been an unsuitable match for a man who should have consolidated his social advancement through a marriage into the hedge-gentry, and, indeed, the marriage had proved ill-fated. Severine had died less than a year later, as she birthed their daughters. Thomas's second marriage, contracted bare months after Severine's death, had been a more conventional arrangement with the daughter of one of the Duke of Arleon's knights. Gilles, Thomas's son by his second wife, was less than a year and a half younger than the daughters of his first marriage.
       Following his remarriage, Thomas Blas had fully entrusted Mervion and Gaultry to Tamsanne's care. They'd shared one month with their father at the end of every summer, until they reached their woman's year, at fourteen. That was the year the Duke of Arleon had made him a knight and Thomas had told Tamsanne that he couldn't have the girls to Blas Lodge again.
       Gaultry's face went hot, thinking back to that dreadful morning—the memory of which her father had given Martin, prime among all his memories of his daughters. That day, she had tried to demand an explanation from her father, desperate to know why he was shutting them out of his life. He had refused to answer. She closed her eyes, seeing again the image her father had retained of her. So angry. So wild. Every mannerless word she had said must have been more proof to him that his woods-raised daughters had no place in his new life as a titled gentleman.
       "So it was only when you found out that the Chancellor's new prisoner was Mervion Blas, Thomas's daughter, that you realized you had to follow the geas and find his other daughter?" Tamsanne asked. "You haven't met Mervion yourself, that's clear."
       "Why do you say that?"
       "Gaultry and Mervion are twins," Tamsanne said. "I think you've blinded yourself to that fact long enough."
       "Twins? The impress Thomas Blas laid on me showed only one girl—"
       "Two girls. One face. Didn't you wonder at the geas's strength? Coming from a dying man—a dying man who was not a practitioner of magic—didn't you and those who sent you here wonder at its power?"
       "Twins?"
       "We're not so alike now," Gaultry said. "But as children—"
       "Put bluntly, you've taken a geas intended for the protection of two daughters and compressed it into a vow of protection centered on one only. Small wonder that it sits so heavily on you!"
       "Aunt Tamsanne—" Gaultry began, distressed.
       "Be quiet, Gaultry. This young man speaks too loosely of vows and blood. Bring me the Rhasan cards. I find want to ask the gods a question. Or two."
       Gaultry scrambled to her feet, increasingly worried. The Rhasan cards were part of her aunt's most powerful, and most carefully used, magic, a magic that dated back past the first Prince of Tielmark's rule, back past even the rule of the Bissanty Empire, to the days when wandering tribes had moved freely through all the lands that bordered the Great Sea. Tamsanne's deck was very old, and had been in her maternal line for generations.
       The deck was stored in a bone coffer in Tamsanne's private cabinet. The cabinet had four shelves, each carved of a different wood. The Rhasan deck coffer always sat on the top shelf, the shelf that was built of a blood-red piece of oak. It was wood that had washed across the Great Rush from the Changing Lands, Tamsanne said. Gaultry hastily retrieved the deck of cards, still in its coffer, and carried it, unopened, to her aunt. Drawing up a short stool, Tamsanne sat down opposite their guest.
       "I'm going to show you some cards," the old woman told him, carefully opening the coffer and drawing forth the cards. "Because I can't decide if you are a rogue or a fool. The geas on you suggests that my nieces' father, together with the Great Twins, thought you the appropriate protector of my nieces. You have already twisted the geas so that you are bonded to protect only one niece. Despite what you will find to be the unpleasantness of this casting, I need to see how your futures lie together. Make yourself ready."
       Martin twisted in the chair. "This isn't necessary," he said. "I'll swear on all the Great Twelve if you like—"
       "Stand behind him, Gaultry," Tamsanne said.
       Gaultry did as she was told, her heart thumping. Tamsanne meant to have her share Martin's card. That act in itself could strengthen the geas-bond.
       Tamsanne opened her hands, showing the splayed cards, and solemnly shuffled the deck.
       The cards were not exceptional in themselves. Martin shuddered with relief, as though he had expected something more impressive. Crudely printed with black and red ink, the brittle rectangles of paper were hardly a sight to inspire awe. They looked like something carters would play with after an evening's drinking.
       Tamsanne turned the top card over.
       "Martin Stalker," she said.
       It was the Black Wolf. For one moment the card was a pale yellow rectangle, the wolf a coarse woodcut drawing: big teeth, ears and paws, a long stave grasped between toothy jaws—then, like a cresting wave, the image swamped Martin and Gaultry both. The cottage disappeared. Gaultry flinched, and found herself trapped in a vision-world of flat yellow edges, pierced by cold blacks. Martin was the massive black wolf that stood before her, dull blond glints in his fur, an expression of haunted despair in the long, slanted eyes. As she watched, the wolf snarled, dropped the stave, and seized his own tail, saber teeth mercilessly gnawing the flesh to the bone, self-annihilating and wild. The young huntress recoiled, and threw up an arm, as if to protect herself.
       Tamsanne replaced the card at the bottom of the deck, and the yellow landscape was gone.
       Martin was bolt-upright in his chair, his face deathly white. He covered his eyes with his hands—seeming not to realize that Tamsanne had released the spell that held him in his seat.
       "So we see you have not come to harm Gaultry—which we already knew.
       "Now here is Gaultry, because it is fair that you should know her soul as she now knows yours.
       "Gaultry Blas," she said, invoking her niece's name.
       Another card. Gaultry had girded herself for the Huntress—the goddess Elianté's card. The only other time Gaultry had seen Tamsanne read cards from the Rhasan deck, the old woman had pulled cards for both her nieces—the same troubled year that Thomas had abandoned them, for once and for all, to her care. Gaultry had come up as the Huntress Elianté, Mervion as the Lady-Queen Emiera. That had seemed right to them both, as young twins who worshiped the Great Twins.
       But instead it was an unfamiliar card. A flower. An exotic flower, printed on blue paper. Gaultry puzzled through the archaic script at the card's bottom: the Orchid.
       The image unfurled and seized her. Martin's card had burst across her in plain colors: yellow, black, and red. But with this card, her own, the vision-world exploded upon her like a flaming firework. The flower was not a grown orchid: it was a seed. She was the seed. A seed slipped secretly into the hollow of a black oak's roots; a seed planted and nurtured in the heart of the forest, rooting, settling, sending up a single pale stalk. A first leaf unfurled, then a second, and then a single gorgeous bud dimpled and puckered into shape. A blush of purple darkened the pale green. The lip of the blossom creased gently, slit open: the golden anthers within quivered, straining to reach the light—
       The card was back at the bottom of the deck and the image was gone. Tamsanne was trembling, her fingers awkward, her body more like an old woman's than Gaultry had ever seen. Something in Gaultry's card had shaken her so badly that she almost dropped the deck.
       "And here," Tamsanne said, her voice brittle with worry, "is the one who is set against you."
       Martin and Gaultry cringed. But this time, the stiff rectangle of paper remained just that. A card. The Holy Bird. The card of the mother goddess, Llara. Patroness of the Bissanty Empire, in days long past Tielmark's highest god. Clean white bird with a black outline on clean white card.
       Tamsanne looked into their surprised faces and barked a short, unhappy laugh. The cards were back in the coffer, the coffer was shut. "Did you truly think to see your enemy?
       "Put the cards away, Gaultry. I've seen beyond enough for one night."
       "Tell us what you saw," Martin said to Tamsanne. "Did you see what we saw, or more?" Tamsanne, rising stiffly to return to her seat in the half-shadows, paused.
       "You, Martin Stalker, came here hoping for freedom from a geas—and to discover why Mervion Blas survived a test where others failed. If you have found more here than you expected it is not for me to tell you why. Today I pulled a dangerous card for Gaultry—or perhaps for all of us here in Tielmark. I also pulled a dangerous card for you.
       "You're a strong man, Martin Stalker. It would be well for you to relearn the role of protector. Whatever the secrets be that turned you from protector to self-devourer—they are safe, if you can call them that, in your own heart. What more would you ask of me?"
       "Give me your blessing to bring Gaultry back with me to Melaudiere," Martin said. "If she is Mervion's twin, the Duchess may be able to scry her, and determine what the Chancellor intends."
       "She'd be safer remaining here."
       "If Mervion is in danger, I won't hide here like a coward," Gaultry broke in hotly. "I'll do what needs to be done to help her."
       "I didn't say I'd discourage you," Tamsanne said, extending her gnarled hands to the fire as though she felt a sudden chill. "Not that throwing yourself into unnecessary danger is the same as helping Mervion. Nevertheless, visiting Melaudiere under Martin's protection could be the wisest course of action. Gabrielle of Melaudiere—" Tamsanne shot Martin an ambiguous look that might have had a little mischief in it, "Gabrielle of Melaudiere has had fifty years to build her reputation as a seer and enchantress. Martin may be correct in saying she may be able to see the role the Chancellor has writ for her in his plots."
       "Then I'll go," Gaultry said.
       "Quickly decided," Tamsanne said dampeningly. "I'm sure Mervion would be happy to know she has such a ready champion. Doesn't it concern you, not knowing how Mervion was delivered from your brother's house into this Bissanty Chancellor's power?" Tamsanne turned to Martin. "Indeed, how was it that Mervion came into the Chancellor's power?"
       "One of the Chancellor's underlings brought her to Princeport."
       "Alone?"
       "Anisia Blas, her marriage-sister was with her." He paused. A half-angry look flitted across his face, as though he resented having to make any explanation. "It was through Anisia Blas that the duchess came to know that Mervion had survived the Chancellor's testing."
       Gaultry had met her young marriage-sister only once. Gaultry and Mervion had gone to Blas Lodge after the news of their father's death had reached them, and attended the grim winter burial. By then Gilles and his young wife had already been in possession of her father's holdings. Anisia was gentle but, to Gaultry's mind, a slightly silly girl, too young to be married, too young to be playing chatelaine to a substantial rural household. It was annoying to Gaultry to have to acknowledge that such feelings were colored by envy. When Anisia, with Gilles backing her, had invited her newfound marriage-sisters to join her household, Mervion had been disappointingly eager to accept. "They'll need my help," she had told Gaultry, trying to allay her younger twin's jealousy. "And you won't need me at Tamsanne's until the midsummer harvest."
       Anisia, all unwittingly, had fed Mervion's growing hunger for new sights and challenges, a hunger that life at Tamsanne's could not satisfy. For that, Gaultry had found it hard to like the girl.
       "Where is Anisia now?" Gaultry asked.
       Martin shrugged. "Still in Princeport, for all I know. Unless the Duchess has managed to free her."
       "Gaultry must not go to Princeport," Tamsanne said firmly. "Princeport would be too risky. Bringing the twins together where the Chancellor might bind them in his power—it's too dangerous, particularly given that we don't know what is at stake."
       "At stake?" Martin said. "Tielmark's freedom from Bissanty is the stake, and the gods' support of our Prince. We can't survive as a free nation without the Great Twins' support."
       Tamsanne stood, looking deep into the embers of the cooking fire, as though the dying flames could give her an answer. "Melaudiere may be able to say why Gaultry pulled the Orchid card."
       "Why do you think I pulled it, Aunt Tamsanne? Does it mean the Huntress has turned her face from me?"
       "I don't know what it means. I only know it portends a great threat to Tielmark. Whatever pledges—" Tamsanne looked sharply at Martin, "any of us have made to our Prince or our gods."