Black Jaguar And Silver Lightning

                         Prologue

Shark In The Water

    When he first sensed the blue-black stone drifting in 
the water in front of him, he thought little or nothing of 
it. The ocean often created and then destroyed things, 
objects or creatures, with a single thought. She could do 
anything She wanted in Her realm, and creating a blue- 
black stone wouldn't be the strangest thing he had ever 
seen.
    But then he realized that the blue-black stone exuded 
a strong feeling, one that he knew well, one that She 
wouldn't ordinarily permit in Her boundaries. This was a 
realm of ocean, neither Light nor Dark. Those concepts 
belonged to land and air and the creatures that lived on 
the traitor rock or flew in the air, not those who lived 
in the ever-changing water.
    But he was of the Dark.
    And so was this stone.
    The great white shark slowed a little as he drew 
abreast of the stone, though he didn't stop swimming, of 
course; that would have been a death sentence for one of 
his kind. He turned flat black eyes, rich with 
intelligence and life, on the stone, and studied it.
    It was almost the color of the water, and difficult to 
see at first. But he could see the sharply pointed facets 
after a while, the carving work that was too finely done 
even to be the work of humans.
    The Nightstone.
    A shiver traveled through him when he realized that, 
but he knew it had to be right. The stone shed the smell 
of old blood, though not the actual blood itself. And it 
made vibrations in the water like a wounded fish. It had 
been trying to draw a shark to it, and had he not fed 
recently, he would have come up in a feeding frenzy, not 
even realizing what the stone was until he was almost upon 
it.
    What to do with it?
    And what was the Nightstone doing in the ocean?
    He realized almost at once, when the water all around 
him pressed inward and he felt an almost overwhelming 
intimation of Her presence, that it didn't matter. The 
ocean wanted the stone out of the water. And since he was 
the one who had found it, his was the responsibility of 
getting rid of it.
    The shark turned his head from side to side, judging 
the distance to the nearest land; he knew that tossing the 
stone into the air, the way a dolphin would have, would 
only work for a short while. He sank into his 
consciousness of the web that bound all things in the 
ocean together, and knew from the presence of seabirds 
dipping over the water that there was a shore not far from 
here, the shore of a small and lush islet that had no 
humans on it at the moment.
    Good. He wasn't sure why, but he knew it would be an 
evil thing if a human was to come across the stone before 
the stone was ready to have them come across it.
    Wondering if the ocean was really commanding him, or 
if it was the stone, the great white took the stone in his 
jaws and swam off. When he judged that he was coming to 
the islet, he slowed briefly and thrust his head above the 
surface of the water, to see what lay ahead.
    Good. He could see, blinking in the dazzle that wafted 
down from above, the shore of the isle not far from him. 
He dived back into the water with a flip of his tail and 
sculled closer, using his fins to steer himself until he 
was so close he risked beaching.
    Then he reared out of the water again and tossed the 
stone as high and as hard as he could.
    The stone landed with a bounce on the beach, and then 
the tendril of a long vine curled over it and imprisoned 
it. The shark watched in wonder. He hadn't thought that 
the Nightstone could command plants to fight for it.
    But it could, and now his task was done.
    He dived back into the water and swam out to sea 
again. He was thinking idly of swimming down to see what 
was causing the sensations of blood and thrashing a short 
distance to the left when he heard a call for help in the 
silent language of the shark-kin, traveling in rippling 
waves through the water.
    He turned in its direction at once, swinging his tail 
around behind him in proper position and bringing his fins 
down. Thus aligned, he traveled through the water like one 
of the arrows the humans were so fond of loosing at sharks 
from the decks of ships, not that it ever did any good 
when the sharks were determined to sink the ship.
    He saw the source of the call for help almost at once. 
It came from ahead of him, where two sharks plunged around 
and around, pursued by three times their number of 
dolphins. Normally, two sharks against dolphins would have 
an easy time of it, but the dolphins were all working 
together, and actually fighting, as they hadn't done so 
far in their war against his people.
    The great white opened his jaws and savaged the tail 
of one of the dolphins nearest him with a huge bite. Blood 
filled the water, and the dolphin screamed in mortal 
anguish and shot to the surface. 
    The great white swallowed the piece he had bitten off 
with equanimity, despite his full stomach. No need to 
waste food, after all.
    The other two sharks, a tiger and a thresher, gained 
their senses and courage back at the smell of the blood in 
the water, and charged the dolphins. Their neat ring broke 
in seconds, and they fled, squealing like the dying one 
even though the sharks hadn't bitten anything off them.
    Yet, thought the great white, and turned in pursuit.
    Behind him, the tiger and the thresher tore at the 
blood and the wounded dolphin and each other with equal, 
starving ferocity.




                        Chapter 1
                          Esimpa
    "My lord?"
    Esimpa sighed and glanced up from the book he was 
trying to read. It was the fourth time in the last hour 
that he had been interrupted. I should be used to it by 
now, he thought wistfully, but if I could only be left 
alone, I'm sure I could find...
    He shut the book and walked to the window from which 
the call had come. Someone stood on the walkway just 
outside, staring up at the window next to his. For a 
moment, Esimpa hoped that she was just talking to someone 
else, but he knew that no one else with a title like the 
one she had spoken lived in this building.
    Besides, he knew her. It pained him to have to admit 
that he knew her, but he did know her.
    "Yes, Baija?" he asked, leaning out his window and 
letting her see him.
    Baija started and turned. Like him, she was Great 
Wooder, with sleek black skin, long curly black hair, and 
large dark hair. She was slightly taller than he was, 
though, with more human blood. She stared up at him 
appealingly. "My lord, do you have a moment to leave your 
study and come with me to the Great Circle? There are once 
more ranters denouncing the sanctity of our folk. If you 
could speak in our defense-"
    "Light damn it!"
    Baija cowered for a moment, then said, "If that's the 
way you feel, my lord, I am sorry to have disturbed you." 
She turned and began to walk back down the swaying 
walkway.
    "No, Baija, wait a moment, damn it-"
    She turned back as he threw on a tunic- he quite often 
worked without one in his own apartments, as the air on 
the Summer Isle was so warm- and gathered his shoulder- 
length hair into a knot. He hated having to wear it that 
way, but events on the Summer Isle of late had proven that 
it was safer for a Great Wooder to blend into the general 
population if at all possible.
    "You will come?" she breathed.
    "Of course. They're trying to isolate us, trying to 
make us targets." Esimpa tugged at the tunic, making sure 
that it fell without a wrinkle to the beginning of his 
trousers. "I can't allow that. I'm just as much Great 
Wooder as you are. Let's go."
    "I'm ever so grateful, my lord-"
    Esimpa closed his ears to her grateful chatter. He was 
doing what he had to do, what his duties and his race 
required him to do, and no more.
    He shouldn't have to do it. If the world was sane, he 
wouldn't have to.
----------------------------------------------------------
    By the time they reached the Great Circle, Esimpa was 
panting. Not as young as I was, he thought. He had seen 
thirty-six years, and was small even for a Great Wooder, 
standing less than four feet tall. That meant he would 
start feeling the effects of age sooner than would the 
taller ones.
    Baija nodded him in the direction of the ranter who 
was currently denouncing the Great Wooders. "There he is, 
my lord."
    The Council of Ten member nodded to her briefly and 
walked towards the steps of the Great Temple, where the 
madman was holding forth. It didn't appear to be anything 
different, now that he was listening to it as he 
approached. Just the usual.
    "The Great Wooders are creatures of the Dark. Banish 
them from the Summer Isle. Send them back to the darkness 
they came from!" The madman's fist rose and shook in front 
of him. "You know that they will kill us all in our beds 
if we give them the chance. Witness the color of their 
hair, their skin, their eyes! The Dark has laid its hand 
upon them and marked its servants. Why cannot we see that, 
we supposedly sensible servants of the Light?"
    "Maybe because not all of you are blind," said Esimpa, 
halting in front of the steps and staring up at him.
    The madman, a Rovla, a tall man with blond hair and 
blue eyes, hardly looked at him. "They are of the Dark, 
and the Dark destroyed my village!" he said, almost in a 
chant. "Why do we permit them to exist among us? Why do we 
not destroy them?"
    Esimpa sighed. Some time ago, a tsunami had struck the 
western coast of Arion, and the surviving Rovli, among the 
largest proportions of the unhomed and drowned, had been 
mad ever since for action of some kind against the Dark. 
They couldn't find the one who had actually raised the 
wave, so they struck out at anything else that moved. It 
was understandable, but silly at the same time, and Esimpa 
resented the time it took away from his studies.
    Why should he, though? He had been searching for a way 
to prove that his people were of the Light, some logical 
or legal explanation why they were. It was only more of 
what he was doing here: defending his people's status in a 
Light that became less sane by the day.
    Suddenly not resenting his presence here quite as 
much, he looked up at the man. "They permit us for a 
number of good reasons," he said calmly. "Will you permit 
me to come up there and explain them to you?"
    The man gaped at him, then drew back. "You think that 
I will share my steps with-"
    Esimpa leaped up lightly beside him. The man cried out 
and stepped back. "Blasphemy!" he cried, leveling a finger 
at Esimpa. "He leaps upon the stairs to the temple of the 
Lord of the Light."
    His audience was starting to look more uncomfortable 
than interested for the first time. They all knew that 
even the Keepers and the Council of Ten, when they had 
arrested Esimpa and tried to arrest his people a little 
while ago, had stood Esimpa on the dais without saying it 
was blasphemy.
    Esimpa turned and met every eye in the crowd. He 
sensed a few flinches among them, a few eyes turned away, 
a few heads lowered so that they wouldn't have to look up 
at him, and nodded. This one wasn't that dangerous. He 
could take care of this one without trouble.
    It was the day that he couldn't take care of it that 
would worry him.
    "My lord," he said to the Rovla beside him, bowing 
low, though the Light knew that he didn't deserve even 
that title, "you say that the Dark destroyed your home 
village."
    "It did!"
    "How do you know that it wasn't just the ocean and not 
the Dark?"
    The Rovla flailed at that one for a moment, staring at 
him with wide eyes and mouth. Esimpa waited patiently, his 
eyebrows lifted. The man couldn't come up with an answer, 
and that was good.
    At last, the human did say, "Only the Dark would have 
done something like that. The wave destroyed all the 
houses, all the people save me- I was out hunting 
shellfish- in my village. Who would do something like that 
but the Dark?"
    "A good argument," said Esimpa, though it wasn't 
really. But the man wasn't Lleyna, and wouldn't know that 
Esimpa was lying. "But you have forgotten one thing."
    "What is that?"
    "Sometimes things like this just happen. Without any 
explanation, without any hope, without any natural or 
normal or nice reason. Trees fall in my Great Wood and 
kill the people walking past them. Avalanches and 
rockslides happen in the Northwall Mountains and bury the 
living alive. Sandstorms whirl across the High Desert and 
scrape all there to dust. Windstorms strike the Faldani on 
their Plains and blow everything away. And immense rains 
in the Summerlands flood their jungles and dash everything 
in their path away in the space of a breath. I am sorry, 
my lord, but sometimes such things simply happen. If we 
called every natural occurrence part of the Dark, we 
wouldn't stay sane for very long. We would be trying to 
fight the Dark at every turn, and not succeeding. The 
world is more powerful than we are, and there are some 
things in it that are not of the Dark or the Light."
    "Lleyn said everything was either of the Light or the 
Dark."
    "Everything that lives," said Esimpa, gently stressing 
the contrast. "You have lost much that lived, my lord, and 
I am sorry. It is tempting to blame the Dark when your 
people are destroyed by a wave. But we have no proof that 
the Dark raised the wave. And you have no proof that we 
are of the Dark. I'm sorry."
    The man stared at him helplessly. He had gone in a few 
minutes from ranter to a lost little boy, Esimpa thought, 
with a certain amount of pity. "But I thought it had been 
proven that the Dark had something to do with that wave," 
he said at last, his voice trailing off as Esimpa shook 
his head, gently but firmly.
    "No, my lord." It was only suspected that the wave had 
been caused by the Dark even at the highest level of the 
Lleyni and the Council of Ten, and not admitted openly at 
least because no one wanted to believe that the Dark was 
that powerful. 
    "Then- I was wrong."
    The man turned and trailed off. Esimpa exhaled a sigh 
of relief, and turned to the people who had been 
listening. "All the entertainment is done now," he said, 
his voice adopting the lofty tones he was often compelled 
to use when dealing with someone who only respected power. 
Which was most of the people in Areva, he thought 
sometimes. "You may go home."
    "You didn't prove that your people weren't of the 
Dark," said one woman who looked slightly brighter than 
the rest. She had to have been, to have noticed that 
Esimpa hadn't actually approached the topic of how his 
people weren't of the Dark.
    "Of course I didn't," said Esimpa, taking a different 
tack this time. "But it has been proven for me. Anyone 
could see that my Lord Marseyt-"
    His voice cut off as the woman threw a handful of 
garbage at him. He dodged most of it, but a fruit rind, 
rotting and disgusting by now, left a long streak on his 
face. As he rubbed at it, the woman spat. "That for your 
Lord Marseyt," she said, her voice the low rumble of a 
thunderstorm. "He did nothing but force the Keepers and 
the Council of Ten to accept you, and your people. It was 
nothing but brute power."
    Esimpa looked up, smiling tightly. "The Lord decided 
for him. Or did you forget that?"
    The woman glared at him, but then turned and walked 
away. Most of the people who had been listening to the 
Rovla rant followed her. Esimpa nodded slowly. Mostly, 
what she had said was true. Marseyt, an enormously 
powerful Lleyna, had noticed the persecution of the Great 
Wooders, decided he didn't like it, and used his power to 
make the Council and the Keepers, the rulers of the 
Lleyni, free those of Esimpa's people they had imprisoned. 
But then, he had been judged by the Lord of Light himself, 
in a contest between him and a Keeper, to be the one with 
the favor of the Light.
    Esimpa wished every day that the Lord Marseyt had not 
had to leave the Summer Isle to arrest Reyn 
Mountainshield, the traitor Lord of Alsona who had started 
slaughtering Great Wooders by the hundred. They could have 
used a friend just here and now.
    He climbed off the dais, still wiping at his cheek, 
and Baija fell into step beside him. "You still have some 
garbage-" she said, gesturing at her cheek.
    "Thank you." Esimpa wiped it off and sighed. "That 
went better than I thought it would."
    "But not as well as it could have, right?"
    Esimpa darted a glance at her. "True," he said, a 
little surprised. Baija, the last time he had taken the 
trouble to get to know her, had been more than a little 
giddy, though she was more or less his own age. It 
appeared that she had grown up a bit since the last time 
he had looked. 
    And she proved it in the next moment. "My lord, do you 
think our people will have heard of this by now?"
    Esimpa smiled slightly. "That is why I am on my way to 
the Quarter, Baija, to reassure them."
    "Oh." She blushed, hardly noticeable beneath her dark 
skin save to another Great Wooder. "That was a silly 
question to ask then, wasn't it?"
    "No, Baija. It shows that you've been paying 
attention. And that could be important."
    "How?"
    She was gazing at him, really paying attention. Esimpa 
thought about it for a moment, then nodded abruptly. He 
thought he could trust her to be quiet and careful with 
any secrets, and if it turned out that he couldn't, he 
could stop before he told her too much.
    "We're fighting a war," he began.
    "I know, my lord." Baija's eyes sparkled with all the 
fervency someone sworn to the Light could wish. "The Dark 
is rising, and-"
    "Not that war," said Esimpa hastily. Some of his 
people, just as members of every other race in Arion, 
could go on and on for hours about the iniquity of the 
Dark and the righteousness of the Light. He enjoyed those 
lectures himself in the right mood, but not right now. 
"I'm talking about the war that we, as Great Wooders, are 
fighting just to stay alive. Ours is probably the most 
precarious position in Arion. We can't really trust the 
Light or the Dark."
    "What, my lord? Not trust the Light?"
    Some of the giddiness left, Esimpa judged, studying 
her out of the corner of his eye as they made a right and 
turned onto the Street of the Weavers. Just one more 
right, and they would be in the Quarter. He hoped there 
wasn't enough giddiness left to matter, or crowd her 
judgment. "No, my lady. We can still trust the Light, to 
some extent. But those who claim to speak for the Light- 
ah, those we cannot trust."
    "Why not?"
    "They are the ones trying to kill us." Esimpa wasn't 
sure that he could put it much more succinctly than that, 
and certainly wasn't going to try.
    Baija gaped at him for a moment more, then shook her 
head. "They can't be," she said firmly. "They're 
controlled by the Dark-"
    "No, my lady, they are very much of the Light. They 
follow the Great Laws, they preach against the Dark, and 
they hate the Dark." Esimpa smiled sadly. "Doesn't that 
sound like being of the Light to you?"
    "That's not being of the Light."
    Ah. Progress. "What do you think being of the Light 
means, then?"
    "Having a good heart?"
    Even though she phrased it as a question and glanced 
out of the corner of her eye at him, Esimpa nodded 
enthusiastically. "Yes, that is right," he said. "That is 
exactly what being of the Light means. And some of those 
who claim to be of the Light, though they aren't being 
controlled by the Dark, may not have good hearts in them, 
either."
    "Then they are of the Dark."
    With a sigh, Esimpa gave up. Why try to change her 
opinions in one afternoon? It had taken him years to 
realize that neither Light nor Dark could be monolithic, 
and that the world wouldn't make sense if they were. "All 
right," he agreed. "Then we are in danger from the Dark. 
We have to fight our own private war against it, even as 
we join the larger war to keep the Light from being 
consumed. We may be consumed if we leave the fight too 
long."
    "I see."
    And she really did, Esimpa thought. He could see the 
thoughtful look in her eyes that meant she was considering 
his words rationally, not just swallowing them without 
thinking about what they meant. 
    After a moment, she said, "We can't really hope for 
outside hope in our war, can we?"
    "No. The Light will be either too busy fighting 
against the Dark or distrusting us." Esimpa picked up a 
curl of his dark hair and tugged on it. "We can't stop 
being what we are- small, and dark, and possessed of a 
homeland and heritage that frightens them. We just have to 
try to survive."
    "There's a way that we can stop being small and dark, 
I've heard," said Baija, perking up.
    "What?" Esimpa stared at her intently. If his people 
had taken to disguising themselves, he had another problem 
on his hands. That would frighten the wavering members of 
the Council of Ten and the Keepers even more, and a 
proclamation barring all Great Wooders from leaving the 
Quarter couldn't be far away.
    "His shop isn't far from here."
    Esimpa looked up as he saw Baija's face relax, and 
sighed and relaxed himself. It was pleasant here in the 
Quarter, where he didn't have to feel too small or too 
dark, where he could be with his own people and nod 
familiarly at everyone he saw pass, whether or not he knew 
him. They were bonded by the heritage they shared, if 
nothing else.
    The Quarter dropped abruptly away from the soaring 
buildings typical of Areva and included buildings of only 
two or three stories, often built of- or grown from- trees 
instead of stone. It was a fire hazard, but it was what 
his people loved, and Esimpa had argued successfully again 
and again for their right to go on building and making 
homes of wood. It shouldn't take too long for the issue to 
rise again in Council, though, and he wasn't looking 
forward to the fight he had to wage.
    He realized his face and his thoughts were souring, 
and made a deliberate effort to forget what he was 
thinking about. At the moment, he was far more interested 
in watching the faces of the people around him, gauging 
the dominant mood of the Great Wooders who still dwelt on 
the Summer Isle.
    Most of them looked as they always did, calm and quiet 
and happy. They spoke to each other with every accent of 
Arianda possible, from the archaic speech that had sunk 
into itself and stayed much the same deep inside the 
Forest, to the clanholder-sounding speech of those who had 
lived in Dombrona or Alsona. They wore all manner of 
costumes as well- bright Rovla cloth, sober clanholder 
costuming, or the woody-colored clothes that living in the 
Great Wood taught one to wear. They laughed and cried and 
chattered and argued, and Esimpa found himself content 
with what he saw and heard. They still seemed happy, as 
far as he knew.
    Then he laid pleasure aside in his mind and turned 
once more to business. "You said that there was someone 
claiming he could make Great Wooders taller and lighter of 
skin?" he asked Baija.
    She looked a little askance at his sharp tone, perhaps 
because she had seen the calm expression on his face and 
hadn't expected him to take up the subject quite this way. 
"Yes," she said. "I can show you his shop, if you want to 
see it."
    "I do want to, very much."
    Staring at him a little, she shrugged and led him 
deeper into the Quarter, past a row of shops that, from 
the smell of them, were bakeries and restaurants and 
stands with fruit grown fresh on the Summer Isle. With the 
approach of summer and the deepening of the fair weather 
that had been on the Isle since early spring, the fruit 
smells were particularly tempting.
    Esimpa finally paused and gave in to temptation, 
making Baija wait while he purchased strawberries. He bit 
into them, chewing his way past the small seeds, closing 
his eyes in bliss as the juice slid down his throat. He 
hadn't had strawberries for some time, and they were worth 
the drake he had paid for them.
    Two of the strawberries vanished abruptly from his 
hands, and he opened his eyes. Baija was smiling at him 
innocently, stuffing one berry in her mouth and keeping 
one aside to eat for later.
    Esimpa mock-growled at her, though in truth he was 
pleased she felt comfortable enough with him to pull such 
a small theft. He chased her around the next corner of the 
street, and she laughed at him and shoved him, so that 
most of the berries fell towards the ground.
    Esimpa caught them with practiced skill- he had been a 
juggler before they decided that he was worth something 
and started educating him back in his home village- and 
popped them all in his mouth at once. Red juice running 
down his chin, he didn't look at all like the fearsome, 
distant presence he knew they would think of him as, given 
the chance. 
    And that was the idea.
    It shamed him a little, to be playing politics with 
the way he ate berries, but some things didn't stop and 
wait for him just because he decided to go into the 
Quarter and relax for a little while. The world, and what 
his people thought of him in that world, was one of them.
    With Baija giggling as she led him, and people all 
around nodding to them and smiling at the juice on his 
face, Esimpa walked regally down the middle of the Arazi 
Street and then ducked into the small shop that Baija 
showed him just where the Arazi met the Renne.
    The shop was small and dark inside, so dark that 
Esimpa had to pause for a moment, his eyes fighting for 
time to adjust. He heard shuffles and scramblings while 
that was happening, and began to suspect that the man who 
ran this place kept things so dark for a purpose.
    "Ah, my esteemed lord! Come in, come in."
    Esimpa had a moment to judge that that was overblown 
courtesy, not recognition, and then he could see again.
    The man in front of him was Great Wooder, but taller 
than most of them, his human blood more pronounced. He had 
bright blue eyes, even, and his dark brown hair was 
straighter than it was curly. Esimpa distrusted him on 
side. 
    Not very diplomatic, he told himself, when it was 
appearance only that got his people distrusted in other 
parts of the city. But his people had responded even to 
persecution by only flaunting their appearance, making 
themselves look more Great Wooder than ever, and taking 
pride in what they were. That this man didn't look very 
Great Wooder at all, perhaps as a result of his own arts, 
made Esimpa suspicious.
    "Please, my lord, come in, come in."
    He was also very talkative, and Esimpa smiled tightly, 
then followed his gesture to a small chair set in one 
corner of the shop.
    The shop itself might have been a shop in almost any 
other part of the city than the Great Wooder Quarter, and 
that made Esimpa even more suspicious. The walls were not 
stone, but their wooden nature wasn't emphasized with 
polishing and burnishing as it would have been in any 
other shop that Esimpa had ever been in among his own 
people. The dark brown color instead of the red highlights 
in the wood had been allowed to rule, and Esimpa could 
almost see the darkness creeping in and lingering in the 
corners where the shiner lamps and Light-fires that lit 
the shop didn't reach.
    "What can I do for you, my lord? You desire to be 
taller, perhaps? Paler of skin? Both at once? Alonas can 
arrange that for you. Alonas can do anything in the way of 
disguising your true nature that you desire."
    Esimpa turned, his temper flaring. He had been 
planning to wait, go slow, see what happened, and reveal 
himself only if the man didn't recognize him right away, 
but Alonas didn't give him the time to gain the calm that 
would have taken. "Do you know who I am?" he asked 
tightly.
    Alonas stared at him for a moment, then shook his 
head. "No."
    "My name is Esimpa." His blue eyes went wide at that. 
He did understand, after all. Esimpa gave him a tight 
smile. "I think you know what I have come for," he added, 
"and it doesn't have to do with disguising my true nature 
at all."
    "You will arrest me?"
    "I would like to, yes."
    Alonas was already smirking, as though he had already 
reached the conclusion that Esimpa didn't want him to 
reach. His next words proved he had. "But you can't 
actually do anything to me," he said, mock-innocently. 
"What I'm doing isn't illegal."
    "Yet."
    Alonas laughed in his face. "You can't push through a 
law in time to save yourselves," he said. "You can't do 
anything now. The power of the Great Wooders on the Isle 
is limited, and in time shall be even more limited. You 
can't do anything but protest and complain- or blend in." 
He nodded to a counter crowded with implements of bone and 
wood that Esimpa didn't even want to look at. "Will you 
let me change you?"
    "No."
    Alonas laughed again. "So you came here merely to 
question me?"
    "Yes."
    "I don't have to answer any questions that I don't 
want to," said Alonas, with a toss of his head. "I might 
be inspired to cooperate if you were a little less 
offensive, but I choose not to."
    "I will not bribe you, if that is what you want."
    Alonas tried, but couldn't quite conceal the flash of 
disappointment that crossed his face. "I don't believe 
that you would speak of such a thing to me," he said 
instead, his face wrinkling in another mock-innocent 
expression. "I am only an honest businessman, doing 
something the Council of Ten has not forbidden, nor the 
Keepers. Why do you think that I should fear you? Why do 
you want to stop me?"
    "You are encouraging our people to give up what makes 
them Great Wooder," said Esimpa, clenching his fists in 
front of him and wishing that a member of the Council of 
Ten could give in to such undignified impulse as the one 
that told him to strike out right now and reduce Alonas's 
pretensions to dust with a fist. "That is very offensive 
to me."
    "They are doing what they must to survive," said 
Alonas, with another toss of his head. "I take their money 
in exchange for letting them look what they want to look 
like. That is all."
    "You can't really change someone's height or skin 
color."
    "Oh, yes I can."
    "How?" Esimpa darted a glance at the instruments 
sitting on the counter, and sniffed when he recognized 
brushes and picks. "You can't truly put on a cosmetic that 
will soften a Great Wooder's coloring."
    "I didn't say that I used cosmetics."
    Esimpa turned his head back, eyes narrowing. "Then 
what do you use?"
    "Magic."
    Esimpa laughed in his face. "No Lleyna can do 
something like that."
    "I never said that I was." Alonas grinned at him, his 
teeth flashing white in his dark face. In that, at least, 
he looked like what he was supposed to be. "I am using 
magic come from another place."
    "Where?"
    "I would have to trust you much more than I do before 
I would be willing to tell you that."
    "If you don't tell me, then I will have no choice but 
to conclude that your magic is of the Dark and come in 
with the full force of the Great Laws and the Lleyni 
behind me," said Esimpa in mock regret.
    "Oh, how you do threaten," murmured Alonas, and Esimpa 
experienced a brief flash of intense frustration. Did 
nothing he said have an impact on the man? "You don't 
really think the Council or the Keepers would want to help 
you, do you?"
    "Why not?" 
    "They approve of me, and of those like me who correct 
the mistakes that birth made." Alonas lifted a hand to 
still the tirade that Esimpa could feel burning on his 
lips. "Listen to me for a moment, before you respond. They 
don't want to kill all the Great Wooders, not really. It 
would take a lot of time and effort, and it has already 
inspired resistance among their own. They want to 
eliminate you, yes, but they would be much happier if you 
could simply blend into the population."
    "Not everyone would," said Esimpa. "You could 
stimulate the already high paranoia that many of them have 
about us."
    "But the Council of Ten and the Keepers would be 
happy," said Alonas calmly, his eyes on the Great Wooder 
lord. "And they're the ones you really need to worry 
about, not the others."
    "The mob-"
    "Will not do anything without the Council's 
permission. Who do you think really controls the city? Not 
the mob, I will assure you of that. The Council and the 
Keepers have them under control and use them as 
necessary."
    "I don't believe this," said Esimpa flatly, turning to 
the door. "I will report you-"
    "Go ahead. When you come back, there will be no sign 
that I was ever here."
    Esimpa turned back to him. "You cannot simply move it, 
and obsessed Lleyni are among the best searchers in the 
world. They will find the evidence needed to convict you, 
and they will find you."
    "I can use my magic to alter the appearance of Great 
Wooders, my lord. Didn't it occur to you that I could 
simply use it to alter my own appearance, and then no one 
would ever find me?"
    Esimpa spluttered, not really knowing what else to do. 
"Our city has changed sadly," he came up with at last, 
"when criminals stand before those determined to arrest 
them and confess to their crimes."
    "A confession is not the same thing as doing the act, 
my lord. And there is no law against this. I know the 
Great Laws very well. There is nothing in there about 
changing someone's appearance with magic."
    "There is about using magic when you are not a 
Lleyna."
    "Then your people are under attack as well," said 
Alonas, with a shrug. "You use magic to protect your 
villages in the Great Wood. I wouldn't mention that part, 
or you could bring up things that you really don't want 
brought up at the moment."
    "You're not Great Wooder, are you?"
    "No, as a matter of fact, I'm not."
    Esimpa ignored Baija's noisy gasp from behind him, 
instead holding the- the man's eyes. Esimpa was fairly 
sure that he was male, at least. "What are you, then? A 
creature of the Dark?"
    Alonas sighed and rolled his eyes. "You consider the 
Lleyni and those so obsessed they can't think beyond the 
duality of Dark and Light your enemies, I know, my Lord 
Esimpa. You don't think that I could be anything but of 
the Dark, do you?"
    "I think that you could be of the Light, working 
against my people-"
    "You have no idea," said Alonas flatly, and not as if 
he was taunting Esimpa about his lack of knowledge. 
Indeed, he seemed almost angered by it. "You have no idea 
of what really exists in the world, and you never will 
until you look up from your own plate and at the things 
that are there."
    "How dare you-"
    "Go on, my lord. Leave. There is nothing else for you 
here. I don't think that you want to know, not just yet, 
what I really am."
    Esimpa glared, but there was no reason to stay. He 
would have to go back and report this to the Keepers and 
the Council, no matter what Alonas said about vanishing. 
He certainly couldn't stay around, watch, and hope to stop 
the vanishing act that Alonas was likely to pull. He just 
didn't have the power to stop it by himself.
    "Are you coming, Baija?" he asked, stepping out of the 
shop and looking back at her.
    "I'm sorry, my lord."
    There was a new note in her voice, and Esimpa stared 
at her as she lifted her head and faced him with a steady 
gaze. The hint of giddiness that he thought he had seen in 
her gaze was gone. She didn't look like a little girl at 
all now, and he realized that he might have just made a 
very bad mistake.
    Baija indeed wasn't giddy anymore. And someone had 
found that out before he had, and enlisted her aid.
    "You too, Baija?" he asked. He wasn't sure why he did. 
It was perfectly obvious.
    Baija nodded, her eyes a little sad, but showing no 
trace of shame. "I hope that someday you'll understand 
why, my lord," she said kindly.
    "I never will. How could you turn your back on your 
own people like this?"
    "We don't have the ability to choose some things, my 
lord. I couldn't choose to be Great Wooder or to be not 
born Great Wooder. But I can choose my loyalties, and I 
will not let the color of my skin dictate those- or the 
Light, or the Dark, or you. I'm sorry," she repeated, 
while he stared at her.
    Esimpa turned and walked almost blindly home, 
wondering what the hell he was going to do.
----------------------------------------------------------
    He was still wondering that when he returned home, but 
his mind was rather quickly turned away from the subject 
by the note that lay shoved under his door when he opened 
it.
    He looked about suspiciously. Nothing overt met his 
head, and yet he was almost sure that someone had been 
here while he was gone, and not just close enough to shove 
the note under the door.
    He couldn't see anything that confirmed his 
suspicions, though, and at last all he could do was shut 
the door and lean over to pick up the note. 
    It had two simple words scribbled on it, words that 
didn't change no matter how he moved the note, nor how he 
held it up to the light.
    The Archives.
    What the hell did that mean? he wondered, sitting down 
on the couch and picking up the book that he had been 
looking at earlier in an attempt to prove that his people 
were part of the Light, by taking some piece of Light-lore 
and applying it to the situation. He had gotten this book 
from those Archives, but the note could have meant 
anything. It could have been from the archivists, telling 
him that he had had the book he had borrowed from them 
long enough.
    You know it isn't, he snarled at himself.
    He shifted again, and then yelped. Something had 
struck him in the buttock, of all places. He stood up and 
turned to look down.
    A small blade lay there, shining in the sunlight 
striking through the window with the gleam of forbidden 
metal. Esimpa reached down and picked it up, turning it 
slowly.
    It had blood on it, his own, but underneath that, 
dried blood as well.
    With a sigh, he wrapped the blade up in a small piece 
of cotton and prepared himself for a journey to the 
Archives.




                        Chapter 2
                         Jasmine
    "Do not yield to the evil that comes upon us! 
Remember, evil cannot triumph in our hearts and minds 
unless we let it!"
    Jasmine rolled her eyes and glanced away from the 
Lleyna. This wasn't the first one she had seen in Atarna, 
the small city they were moving into now, but he was the 
loudest. If she could just ignore him, hopefully she 
wouldn't hear that much of his ridiculous speech.
    Olim, walking beside her, was not quite as calm as she 
was. "Do you think that we should approach him and explain 
that we're not the Dark?" he muttered to her.
    "What's the point?" Jasmine tossed her head. Her hair 
hung down to the middle of her back, a long black braid, 
and so it made a particularly remarkable gesture out of 
the simple toss. Olim had to duck to keep the braid from 
hitting him in the face. "He'll only start again in a 
moment. We have to show them that we're not of the Dark 
with our actions, Olim. Words doesn't do it, not for 
Lleyni."
    Olim nodded and then slipped away from her, to talk to 
one of a small group of men standing on the corner and 
watching them go by. They stared at him apprehensively for 
a moment, then relaxed. Jasmine watched them a little 
sadly, knowing they would have run or flung themselves to 
the ground in deep bows if she had approached them.
    And that made her angry. Why did the people of the 
Summerlands have to do things this way, anyway? Where had 
they gotten the idea that men were the servants and the 
women ladies?
    She was reacting with pure emotion, she knew that. 
Logically, she knew that the custom had come from 
inheritance laws; it was easier to trace the descent of a 
child through the mother, and that had flowed naturally 
into assuming that women were superior to men and had more 
privileges. But now that she had set herself to fight the 
concept, she didn't care about the logical basis of it. It 
was still wrong.
    She smiled fondly at Olim's back, knowing exactly 
where that concept had come from, and then turned back to 
the people following her.
    Most of them were Summerlanders, her own people, most 
six feet tall at the shoulder, most with coppery skin, 
dark hair, and blue-green or amber eyes. But some of them 
were cats- jaguars, leopards, lions, tigers, panthers, and 
others, loping along and glancing at the buildings of 
Atarna as if estimating how easy it would be to climb into 
them and drag the children inside out.
    "Don't do that," she said to the black jaguar whom she 
often walked beside, dropping back to walk beside her now.
    The queen tilted back her head and gave her an 
innocent, green-eyed gaze.
    Jasmine held out her hand to the jaguar. One finger 
bore a ring of dark green stone, with a jaguar's head on 
it, flawlessly carved. The carving had been done by the 
hand of no mortal. "Don't make me remind you of this to 
get my way."
    The jaguar lowered her head and snarled acquiescence, 
lipping at the ring for a moment, then turned and sprang 
ahead. Jasmine watched her go. Sometimes, keeping control 
over the cats was more trouble than it was worth.
    But she had to be stern. The Shadow was not the Light 
nor the Dark. They had to make the people of Atarna see 
that, so that they would know they had a choice. And 
killing everyone in sight- or killing any Summerlander, 
for that matter- wouldn't make their task any easier.
    "My lady?"
    Jasmine started and turned. Olim had led the three men 
up to her, and was bowing to her with a question in his 
eyes. She nodded back, and then looked at the three men 
with a welcoming expression.
    "Have you heard of us?"
    "Yes, my lady-"
    "Don't."
    The two who hadn't as yet spoken exchanged gazes, and 
then the spokesman looked back at them as if to see if 
either of them had any advice on how to proceed. When they 
just shrugged at him, he turned back to Jasmine. "My lady, 
please, tell us how you prefer to be addressed, and we 
will call you-"
    "I prefer no title."
    The men gaped at her. Well, well they might. They 
thought they could only call her by title; no man was even 
permitted to use the word "woman" in most of the 
Summerlands, only "lady." Jasmine smiled back at them, 
enjoying disconcerting them.
    "I don't know your names," she said, "but I hope to 
learn them, so that I can address you by them. As for my 
name, it is Jasmine, and this is Olim, my Partner, as I am 
sure he has already told you."
    Three pairs of eyes turned to look at Olim, who looked 
a little harassed and proud of himself at the same time. 
"Yes," he said, "I am her Partner. This is Jasmine of the 
Alora Line, and she has chosen a Partner. Not a lover, not 
a husband. A Partner."
    "Olim had as much to do with it as I did," said 
Jasmine to the three men. She could feel their growing 
confusion at being spoken to like equals, and hoped they 
wouldn't bolt before she finished her speech. "It was a 
compromise, at first. I wanted him, and the only way I 
could have him was to treat him like an equal. But then I 
dressed as a man for a day and saw what it was like. It's 
amazing, what you endure, and that most of you are still 
sane at the end of it. I'm the leader of the Shadow, and 
if you want to come with us and learn what that means, you 
are more than welcome."
    They were still looking at her as if not entirely 
certain they were awake. Then one of them, one of the men 
who hadn't spoken before, actually said it. "Are you a 
dream, Jasmine?" he asked her, eyes wide, mouth hanging 
slightly open. "My name is Irio, and I could have sworn 
that such things as you have been saying to us- such a 
person as you are- was not possible."
    "Well, Irio, don't believe everything someone tells 
you. But you can at least come with us and see what the 
Shadow's like, can't you?"
    He nodded eagerly. His comrades did the same thing and 
introduced themselves as Conrim and Urua.
    Jasmine smiled at them, in relief as well as 
happiness. The Shadow, she thought, had its first converts 
in Atarna.
    This might just be easier than she had thought.
----------------------------------------------------------
    Three hours later, she no longer believed that.
    No one would give them shelter. No one would even 
agree to give them shelter when Jasmine told them that the 
cats mostly hunted in the jungles at night and only needed 
access to the top floor of the building where they stayed. 
The Lleyni crowded the corners, preaching. And women came 
out and approached Jasmine like angry cats themselves, 
stalking with their backs bristling and their opinions 
around them like a cloud of musk.
    "How dare you?" one very tall woman with muddy amber 
eyes screamed into Jasmine's face. "How dare you preach 
something like this and confuse the minds of men who are 
already confused enough, poor dears?"
    "I don't know what you mean-"
    "Men are born with confusion in their minds, confusion 
in their hearts." The woman set her hands on her hips and 
glared at Jasmine. "You know that. The poor dears think 
they're supposed to do one thing, and then we have to tell 
them to do something else. They think they're supposed to 
run about and attack and kill, and we have to teach them 
the principles of the Light and that their instincts are 
only traps the Dark's laid for them. Now you come with 
this Dark of yours-"
    "Shadow."
    "Shadows are a part of darkness."
    Jasmine perked up a little. "If you want to have an 
argument about symbols, then I can oblige you." Olim had 
worked everything out very carefully, and had told her 
what to say in any argument like this that she might get 
into.
    "I don't want to have an argument about anything with 
you," the woman snapped at her. "Light knows what you 
would say to me, how you would try to corrupt me. I just 
want you to listen to me-"
    "I refuse to, not without being able to say something 
to."
    "How dare you!"
    Jasmine grew irritated at that point and pulled rank. 
"My lady, I am quite capable of telling you what to do. My 
name is Jasmine, of the Alora Line, and that should oblige 
you to common courtesy if nothing else."
    She hated having to do that, but it made the woman 
stare at her and then retreat muttering. They had to give 
her some credit, then, admit that her opinions carried 
some weight. And, too often, it was only pulling rank that 
let her have a chance to speak of the Shadow and what it 
could mean.
    This time, it took that trick to draw a somewhat 
orderly crowd to listen to her, and even then the crowd 
was mostly women. Sighing, Jasmine nonetheless gamely 
begun.
    "My ladies, my lords-"
    The second title caused a shocked hiss. That northern 
title was not in very much use in the Summerlands. The 
feminine version was much more common.
    "How dare you!" someone cried.
    "I dare," said Jasmine, "because what I have to say 
matters."
    At least the woman who had spoken couldn't dispute 
that, and she did pull back- muttering to herself, but she 
pulled back.
    "My ladies, my lords," said Jasmine, not allowing time 
for another shocked pause this time, "I think that there 
are some things that, as Summerlanders, we can all agree 
upon them. Our common heritage is one of them. The 
absolute silliness of the war between Light and Dark is 
another of them."
    "How dare you?"
    Jasmine leaned forward, her eyes focusing on the woman 
in the front row who continued to shout these things out. 
That showed more courage than she was used to seeing, 
coming out into the open like that to speak. "My lady, 
can't you think of something more original to say? This is 
likely to go on quite a while, and I fear for the content 
of our discussion if you can only think of the one phrase 
to respond with."
    Some of the men chuckled, then stopped when the women 
looked at them. The woman, in a dress that bared her right 
breast- a dress she really shouldn't be wearing, in 
Jasmine's opinion- flushed hotly, and glared at her feet 
as if they were the ones responsible for her 
embarrassment, instead of her tongue and teeth.
    "Now." Jasmine turned to look back at the rest of the 
crowd. "As I was saying. The war between the Light and 
Dark is the preoccupation of the north. But we are not 
northerners- are not, never will be, never have been. We 
have other concerns."
    "Such as what?" asked the truculent woman in the front 
row.
    Jasmine lifted her hands high and applauded. The woman 
stared at her without understanding, at least until 
Jasmine said, "My lady, I am impressed. You came up with 
something original to say."
    The woman flushed. Jasmine smiled sweetly at her and 
continued speaking.
    "We have freedom to concern us," she said. "For too 
long- ever since Lleyn conquered the Summerlands, really- 
we have been enslaved to the north. We have thought that 
what was done in the Summer Isle, the Plains, the 
Northwall Mountains, the coasts where the Rovli live, the 
Great Wood, mattered to us."
    "It does!" yelled a woman- someone else than the woman 
Jasmine had twice stung, for a miracle.
    "It does," Jasmine agreed, "but only so that we are 
not caught up in the madness. Do you know what it means, 
this war? They are killing darklings in the north. They 
paraded 'criminals' through the streets of Summerport, as 
if we knew for certain that they were criminals and not 
just people the Lleyni didn't like."
    "How dare-"
    This time, Jasmine didn't even let that explanation 
get all the way through itself. "We have no proof," she 
said loudly, "that the cages they wheeled through 
Summerport had anyone but people the Lleyni didn't like in 
them. There was no trial. There was no announcement of the 
charges. They simply wheeled the cages through the city, 
screaming about the need for Light."
    "Light is a very powerful need, my lady. That you have 
never figured that out perhaps indicates that you have 
little of it in your blood."
    Jasmine turned her head, thinking at first that a man 
had spoken. The Lleyni were almost the only men in any 
city who could conceive of speaking up against a woman. 
But, though she was deep-voiced, the woman gazing 
defiantly up at her was a woman, not a man.
    A woman in the golden cloak of the Lleyni, the Light- 
worshipers, the Lleyn-worshipers.
    "I have little of it in my blood," Jasmine agreed. "I 
have the Shadow running there instead."
    "Shadow?"
    "The child of Light and Dark," Jasmine replied. 
"Freedom. Rationality. Sanity, in a world that is turning 
to war, the ultimate expression of madness. The Shadow 
defends itself, my lady, and does not abhor violence as 
the Light does. On the other hand, it does not carry war 
as the Dark does. It is a refuge for anyone who wants to 
be rational." She paused. "I know better than to hope that 
you will be among them."
    "Anything against the Light is of the Dark!" the woman 
hissed, the words accompanied by spittle flying from her 
lips.
    Jasmine sighed. "One of those." She glanced over her 
shoulder. "Olim, do you want to take this one? You're 
better at this than I am."
    "Certainly, Jasmine."
    Everyone gasped to see a man stepping up to speak, a 
man who called his lady by her name, no less. He smiled at 
them and turned his gaze to the Lleyna, who looked mad 
enough to spit without benefit of words now.
    "My lady," he said, with exquisite courtesy, not the 
less exquisite for being patently false, "you have to 
understand. There are some things that are neither Light 
nor Dark. The Shadow is one of those. We just are. We are 
trying to make it clear that we will defend ourselves if 
attacked, but we will not make war for the sake of making 
war. We are trying to make it clear that man and woman are 
brother and sister, not slave and mistress, nor master and 
servant. We are trying to make it clear that we are free, 
and that anyone who wants freedom is welcome to join us. 
The greatest crime of both Light and Dark is to divide the 
world in two, to tell everyone that she must choose one 
camp or the other. That is not true." He smiled. "We will 
prove that, if you will listen-"
    The Lleyna had had enough. Without a pause, she called 
a bolt of Light and flung it at Olim.
    Olim stepped aside, and then the roar of a tiger 
echoed around the street where they stood in answer to the 
Lleyna's challenge.
    The tiger who usually accompanied and defended Olim 
bounded up beside him, a fleeting picture of light and 
shadow, snarling at the flinching Lleyna woman. He looked 
from side to side, as if daring anyone to speak up to him, 
and sat down when no one did. His paws folded in front of 
him, and a satisfied, sleepy look came into his golden 
eyes.
    Olim stepped back up, his hand resting on the tiger's 
head, his smile less than pleasant as he gazed out at the 
people in front of him. "Now," he said pleasantly, "I 
think that you will agree I have a valid point."
    Everyone, even the Lleyna woman, nodded, their eyes on 
the tiger.
    "Now, as I was saying..."
    He went on, but Jasmine felt a gentle sadness sweep 
over her. He wasn't really making a point, not so that 
they would listen. They were listening to the tiger, the 
threat that trickled from its eyes and its jaws and its 
heavy talons.
    They had lost already, before the conflict had even 
properly begun. They had lost the moment they began having 
to use violence.
    The Lleyna had attacked Olim, after all, the less 
excitable part of her tried to point out. Why wasn't she 
angrier about that, if she had to be angry about 
something?
    Jasmine bit her lip and shook her head. She couldn't 
change the feeling that they had failed, somehow, even if 
it didn't appear that way.
----------------------------------------------------------
    In the end, the major inn in Atarna put them up for 
the night. The Summerlanders who had decided to follow 
Jasmine and Olim took up most of the top floor, leaving 
Jasmine and Olim with just one room to themselves. 
    The cats were already out, hunting. 
    Jasmine stood at the window, looking out over the 
city, and trying, again, in her mind, to think of some way 
that they could have done things differently. If they 
hadn't called on the tiger just when they did, if the 
people of Atarna hadn't spent the rest of Olim's speech 
more terrified of the cats than attentive to the words of 
the speech...
    A soft hand on her shoulder made her start, and then 
turn to look at Olim from beneath shining locks of hair 
come loose from the braid.
    "You look weary," he said quietly. "Come to bed, and 
let me tend you."
    Jasmine smiled. "Are you sure that you're quite all 
right yourself?" The offer that accompanied those words, 
at least in most of the Lines, wasn't one that Olim, her 
proud and independent Partner, often made.
    "I'm sure that I want to do this." Olim took her hand 
and drew her to the bed. "I think I made a mistake today, 
and I want to make it up to you."
    Jasmine sat up as he tried to push her down on the 
bed. "Olim, I don't think-"
    "Good. Don't for once." His hands were soft upon her, 
soft and gentle and warm and soothing, easing her back on 
the bed and stroking her hair and her skin until she felt 
that there was no division between the one and the other. 
"Just relax, and let me tend you."
    "There's really no need for that, Olim-"
    "Why don't you let me decide what there is and is not 
a need for, for once?" he murmured in her ear, and all she 
could do was nod.
    He eased her to the bed once more, then began to 
massage her shoulders. Jasmine closed her eyes and arched 
under his touch. He had been properly trained, as most 
Summerlander men were, and for all that he didn't use 
these skills often, he knew them well.
    "I can't believe that some woman didn't take you 
before I did," she murmured drowsily into the pillow, 
"disobedience and all."
    Olim laughed, his voice slow and sweet. "Do you think 
I would have allowed them to take me?"
    "Mmmmm." Jasmine arched her back again, then collapsed 
back as his hands moved down her sides, seeming to spread 
relaxation where they moved. "I suppose not."
    Olim murmured to her, nonsense words that he saved for 
occasions like this, words that she could almost 
understand but not quite. She went with it, letting her 
head roll back, her hair cover the pillow, her eyes laze 
open and shut again as she simultaneously drifted closer 
to and then farther away from awareness beneath his 
ministrations.
    When he had massaged every bit of her skin so fiercely 
that it felt as if it had all melted, Olim began to remove 
her clothing. Jasmine wasn't much help at that point, her 
limbs flopping when she tried to help him remove her skirt 
and tunic.
    Olim laughed when she gave him a slurred apology. "You 
have nothing to apologize for," he whispered to her. "I 
love you, and you're beautiful."
    "You're pleasant for saying so," she responded in an 
even more slurred voice, and he laughed into her ear and 
massaged the muscles that had tensed briefly back into 
their butter state.
    When she was completely naked, he moistened a cloth in 
the jug of water that most inns kept as courtesy for their 
customers and began to wash the sweat and the dirt of a 
long day's march from her skin. She woke up a little at 
that, but not much. The water had been standing in the hot 
air all day- hotter still as the summer drew on and the 
dry season grew more advance- and was tepid, neither hot 
enough nor cold enough to really wake her.
    "Mmmmmm," was the most she could manage.
    Olim laughed in her ear again. "Just relax, my lady," 
he murmured. "Just relax, and let me take you where you 
want to go."
    He bathed her until she was sure the bed was soaked, 
then climbed on top of her and began licking his way down 
her back, tracing the path that the cloth had taken just a 
few moments before. In no time he had her in the strange 
state between arousal and sleep that she had only ever 
experienced with her husbands when they were feeling 
generous and she was truly tense enough to need this kind 
of ministration.
    But Olim cared enough about her to give it to her, to 
not care if she could give him anything in return tonight. 
She really did love him, and the emotion she had named 
love before now seemed clumsy and flimsy in comparison.
    Gently, he moved down her body and drank between her 
legs like a kitten. In moments, she was sweating again, 
but he washed that away and went on. She cried out, once, 
a soft little whimper.
    He hushed her with a kiss and then with more gentle 
licks, and when she did go flying, it was as gentle and 
sweet as it was always supposed to be.
    "I feel decadent," she said when he finally stopped, 
barely able to form the words. 
    Olim chuckled and licked at her again, as if liking 
the taste of the tepid water. "You look that way," he 
said. "But we're fighting a war, or we're going to be 
fighting one, sooner or later. I think you're owed all the 
decadent moments you can get."
    "Do you think it will come to that?" asked Jasmine, 
her muscles trying to tense. They were talking about war, 
after all, the one thing she didn't want the Summerlands 
involved in. But all that came out of her was a little 
moan as one of her muscles started to tighten and then 
collapsed into liquid again.
    "I do," said Olim, his voice grave but his hands 
soothing as they performed miracles on her spine. "I don't 
think that we'll necessarily be in the middle of it, but I 
do think war will come of this." He leaned over and kissed 
her behind her ear. "At least you have made sure that it 
will be a three-sided war and not just a two-sided that 
divides the world."
    "With help."
    He gave an indulgent chuckle, as if she was speaking a 
fantasy of hers rather than the truth. "Go to sleep," he 
whispered.
    "Olim-"
    "What?"
    "I don't want you to think that I don't appreciate 
you." Her words were so slurred by now that she could 
hardly tell whether or not they approximated what she 
wanted to say.
    Olim laughed at that. "My lady, considering the way 
you are spread out on the bed right now, I would never 
think that."
    "No, I mean-"
    "Shhhhh. I know what you mean. And I am willing to 
take credit for what I have done, in its place. Not 
tonight." He kissed her shoulder. "It's all you, Jasmine. 
All you."
    She drifted off to sleep then.
    When she woke, the screaming had already started.




                        Chapter 3
                         Darstan
    "Darstan?"
    Darstan stopped and sighed. His sigh warned the bird 
drinking at the pool, and it flew up and away, leaving him 
no chance to command the water in the pool to rise up and 
strangle it.
    For that reason, he was a little irritable when he 
turned around, or so he told himself. In reality, he was 
frightened of the person speaking to him, and he knew it. 
He was just trying to conceal it.
    Strange how the knowledge of that wasn't enough to 
embarrass him or make him stop.
    "Yes?" he asked without enthusiasm, staring down at 
the small girl who stared back up at him. So solemn, so 
unnatural, for a child. Her big dark eyes seemed to take 
up most of her face, and the dark hair that her mother 
kept cut to the middle of her back made her face look like 
a floating vision in the middle of all that darkness.
    "Darstan."
    His neck prickled- and this time it was definitely at 
the sound of Nella's voice, not from the interruption. 
"Yes?" he asked warily.
    "I really need to speak with you."
    Darstan took a deep breath and nodded. He could do 
this. He could. He would be objective and calm and listen 
to what she said, instead of dismissing it out of hand.
    "I foresee greatness for you."
    Darstan glanced away from her, into the pool where the 
bird had been drinking. The sight of the calm reflection 
in that- the blue sky, the mountains all around, the stone 
and bushes and roots and so on that made up the mountains- 
relaxed him. He turned back with a small nod.
    "Go on."
    The young Dark-seer did, staring at him all the while, 
as if she could command him with her eyes. "You're a Lord 
of the Dark, aren't you?"
    Darstan's neck prickled again, and he swallowed. "Yes, 
Nella," he said, his voice heavy and reluctant. "But 
please don't tell your mother. She's uneasy enough here. I 
don't want her to have something else to be nervous 
about."
    "As you say," said Nella, again with that solemnity so 
unnatural in a child. "But I think she's going to guess, 
sooner or later."
    "Why?" Darstan reviewed, quickly, in his mind, the 
things that he had done since Harna, her little family, 
and the two Rovli who had escorted them, Siogal and 
Renert, had arrived. He didn't think that he had been 
obvious about his secret.
    "She knows sooner or later what I'm thinking," said 
Nella. "I often prophesize in my sleep, and she hears 
then. If I talk about a Lord of the Dark here, sooner or 
later she will guess."
    Darstan cursed under his breath.
    For a moment, the unnatural look faded from Nella's 
dark eyes, and she looked up, just as interested as any 
other child would be. "What's that mean?"
    Darstan shook his head. "When you're older."
    The gleam was gone from her face at once, and she 
looked solemn again. "I think I'm old enough now to hear 
anything you say."
    Darstan shivered and looked away. "You were saying 
something about this supposed greatness of mine?" he 
ground out.
    "A moment ago, you didn't want to talk about that."
    "I changed my mind."
    She studied him, then shrugged and went on. "As you 
say. I foresee that you will be great, that you will have 
a following of your own just as the Lady Arana has 
Drakeshold."
    "I don't want it."
    "What?"
    "I don't want a following."
    "It doesn't matter," said Nella, with calm compassion, 
or something that looked like it; he wasn't sure which. 
"You're going to have one."
    "I really don't want one." Darstan knew that he was 
sounding like a child himself, but he didn't care. There 
was no one with less leadership ability than he had. Why 
couldn't they see that?
    "You're going to have one," Nella repeated. 
    Darstan let out a breath that turned itself into a 
laugh. He wasn't entirely sure if it was going to be a 
laugh or a sob at first, but a laugh was what it turned 
into, so he went with it.
    "Why are you laughing?"
    For only the second time in this conversation, she 
sounded like a normal child, and Darstan seized the 
chance. "I'm laughing because I don't think it will come 
to pass," he said, with a lofty expression.
    "Why not?"
    "I'm not ever going to make anything out of being a 
Lord of the Dark," said Darstan, stretching his hands and 
arms out, wriggling his fingers. The waters in the pool 
rippled with the movement. He blinked, staring at them, 
then glanced back at Nella. "You did that," he accused 
her.
    "No, you did," said Nella, shaking her head. "I see 
into the future and the past. You affect water. That's 
your power."
    Darstan cursed under his breath again and turned away. 
"I won't affect it again as I did in the past," he 
promised, direly. "You can put that into your prophecies 
if you want. It's a sure thing."
    "Why are you so uneasy around me?"
    Darstan turned on her, snarling. The water in the pool 
bubbled and boiled, and only with an effort did he bring 
his usual calm back. "I thought, until you arrived," he 
said, "that it wouldn't matter that I raised that wave. I 
thought I wouldn't have to do it again, wouldn't have to 
call on this- power that I have. And all you've done since 
you arrived is tell me that the time will come when I call 
on it again."
    "Was it so terrible, what you did, Darstan?"
    "Of course it was! I destroyed hundreds of villages, 
thousands of lives-"
    "And the Morningsworn would have destroyed your friend 
if you hadn't done something," said Nella softly, her eyes 
on him. "They would have burned her alive. Would you have 
wanted that to happen?"
    "Of course not! But-"
    "You did the only thing you could, Darstan. You did it 
to stop the Morningsworn. You couldn't know what would 
happen."
    "But I should have guessed." Darstan realized that 
tears glittered on his lashes, and he blinked them away 
fiercely.
    "Maybe," said Nella, her face still and bright. "Maybe 
you should have. But you didn't, and the wave struck, and 
you're still alive. You haven't died under the guilt so 
far that I see. Why can't you put it aside and accept that 
you're a Lord of the Dark?"
    "Because-" he started to shout, and then stopped as 
the sight of her solemn eyes pierced him. "Because," he 
ground out, "I would prefer not to have to do that again. 
And you seem to be telling me that I will, that I have to 
acknowledge that I'm a Lord of the Dark. I thought I could 
lay it aside, until you came."
    "You made the whole ocean rise up and strike the 
western coast," said Nella, with a note of awe in her 
voice. "Why would you want to lay something like that 
aside?"
    "I didn't make the ocean- it's more complicated than 
that. She-" Darstan broke off with a shake of his head. 
"Never mind. All you need to know is that it's more 
complicated than that."
    "Explain it to me."
    "No!"
    "You need to explain it to someone, Darstan. I think 
you'll go mad if you don't."
    "Maybe, but that's my decision." Darstan turned back 
to the pool. "Now, if you will, I have some hunting to 
finish. Rianlen is hungry."
    "That's Arana's duty."
    Darstan turned back to her, something he had just been 
swearing in his head he wouldn't do, with a narrow-eyed 
gaze. "What the hell do you mean?"
    "It's her duty to feed the little darkdrake and 
protect Drakeshold," said Nella, her eyes shining up into 
hers. "Why do you feel as if it's yours? You have a 
different duty, and you know it."
    "I live in Drakeshold. The least I can do is help 
provide for Rianlen."
    "But Arana doesn't do nearly as much as you do."
    "That's her privilege. She's Lady of Drakeshold 
besides. She has other things to do."
    "Darstan, you have another duty waiting for you. 
You're a Lord of the Dark-"
    "Go away."
    A heavy sigh. Then the unnatural six-year-old turned 
and trudged away.
    Darstan shut his eyes when she was gone. He had to 
learn to think about this, to accept it. He really had 
killed all those people, and because he had managed to put 
aside the guilt, even live with it, didn't mean that he 
shouldn't think about it.
    It still didn't seem real to him, though, and that was 
part of the problem. He knew that all those people had 
died when the tsunami had smashed into their homes, but he 
hadn't seen it happen. He couldn't say for sure that it 
had unless he saw it.
    He would have to go out seeking some evidence. He 
would have to walk out from Drakeshold.
    But first, he had to hunt food for Rianlen.
    He opened his eyes and went back to being still.
----------------------------------------------------------
    Darstan strode out from Drakeshold with long, swinging 
strides, glad when the dark, scaled rock that Arana had 
created roughened under his feet and turned back to normal 
stone. He had brought in the bird to Drakeshold, and Arana 
had promptly gotten into an argument with him; he still 
couldn't tell what about.
    It was good to be away for a while.
    He broke into an easy lope, smiling a little as he 
heard the stream that flowed into a little gorge not far 
away babbling to and about him. He answered by sinking 
himself briefly into the water and letting himself become 
a drop, at the same time changing nothing and adding a 
whole new, deft touch. When he pulled himself back out, 
the water babbled and sang again, doing its best to lure 
him back.
    He did turn aside from his route, a little, to kneel 
beside the water and scoop up a handful, taking a quick 
drink. It tasted like stone and mud, but at the moment 
that was quite all right.
    "Take care," he told the stream, and began loping 
again, ignoring its attempts to sing him back, and then 
its equally musical skulking.
    He took a deep breath when he reached a fairly level 
plain that went on some distance, and then began to run. 
The wind blurred the world around him and stung tears from 
his eyes. With every step he took on the stone, he could 
feel the water, flowing through or under it, sometimes 
feet down, and he responded with bursts of joy and 
communion that caused the water to dance briefly before 
resuming its usual movement or stillness.
    In some ways, what he was comforted him. 
    He reached the end of the plain and halted for a 
moment, looking around carefully. He had once met a group 
of Rovla refugees in this place, and tried to help them 
build up their village to make up in some ways for the 
destruction to the first one that he had caused. They had 
found out that he was of the Dark, though, and hated him 
for it in the end. He had killed their Lleyna by 
dehydrating him, in a killing that still haunted him.
    He saw no one, and relaxed a little more, crossing two 
small valleys before he found what he was looking for.
    This was a place that had been lush, once, before the 
wave had swept across it and transformed it forever. The 
grass still hadn't caught back on in any real growth, and 
the valley was littered with broken trees. The stream that 
ran tamely down its middle was back to normal size now, 
but that couldn't restore what the wave had destroyed.
    Darstan winced and turned his back. It didn't assuage 
his guilt after all.
    It wasn't supposed to, snapped his mind. It was 
supposed to make it more real, to make it clear what you 
have done, and to strip you of the temptation to ever use 
that power again, no matter what circumstances may arise.
    Even the probable death of your friends?
    He winced. The Morningsworn's desire to burn Arana 
alive had been the cause of his raising the wave in the 
first place, and he had used the dehydration trick again, 
on brightdrakes that had attacked Drakeshold. Why couldn't 
he ever stay away from this dark magic?
    He gazed stubbornly at the shattered trees and torn 
earth until the temptation to turn away was too much. He 
had just begun the spin, though, when he saw something 
move.
    He took a deep breath and arched his neck, seeking 
some sign that life was returning to the valley. That 
would assuage the guilt, a little.
    A head came into sight.
    A blond head, like his own. Almost certainly a Rovla 
head; few clanholders had blond hair.
    Darstan hissed and ducked back, hiding behind the 
stone as best he could. As the woman came into sight, he 
winced more and more.
    She looked about with wary, bruised eyes, as shy as a 
young deer. Her cloak was tattered and looked chewed at 
the ends, but it was golden, and he knew what that meant.
    She was Lleyna.
    Then her eyes fell on the rock where he was hiding, 
and she strode towards it at a sharp pace that made him 
wince and crouch down smaller, as if he could really hide 
from her. There was still a chance that she would pass him 
by, that her future-seeing talent was telling her to come 
over her for another reason that had nothing to do with 
him.
    Ha.
    She halted in front of the boulder and knocked on it 
as if she thought it would prove to be a door of some 
kind. "My lord?" she asked.
    Darstan winced at the title. Still, it would be 
impolite to keep on hiding.
    "Yes?" he asked, rising to his feet and facing her. He 
was taller than she was only because he was standing a 
little farther up the slope.
    Her lips curved in an odd smile. He wasn't sure what 
it meant, but at least she didn't appear to hate him on 
sight, even if she did know what he was. That was good 
enough. "My name is Darstan," he said, holding out his 
hand to her.
    She started to take it, then blinked. Darstan grimaced 
to himself. His eyes must have just changed color again. 
He had seamood eyes, and they did whatever the Dragondeath 
Ocean was doing at the moment in the way of color. It made 
people nervous, and sometimes resulted in open hatred.
    But the Lleyna, after blinking stolidly, reaching for 
his hand again. They touched palms, in a way that let him 
know she was from farther north than where he had grown 
up, and then she said, "Darstan?"
    He nodded.
    "Waveraiser?"
    "Light!" muttered Darstan, before he could stop 
himself.
    Her lips curved in that odd smile again, and she gazed 
at him, measuringly. Her eyes were a deep, clear green 
that would have let her make her fortune as a dancer if 
she hadn't had any Lleyna talents. "We are fortunate," she 
said. "My dreams told me that you would come here today, 
but they said it was a chance. And yet here you are. And 
here we are."
    "You want to kill me?"
    "No."
    Darstan frowned in bafflement. "Then I can't 
comprehend why you are glad to see me, especially if you 
know what I have done."
    Instead of answering him, the Lleyna turned and 
whistled. The stones rattled, and seven other people came 
straggling up the slope, followed by another seven.
    "Your villagers?" Darstan asked the Lleyna.
    "What is left of them."
    He winced again. The Lleyna set her hands on her hips 
and studied him. "You aren't what I thought you would be," 
she remarked. "I thought you would be some grand master, 
denouncing us with thunder and lightning for even seeking 
you out."
    "I don't know what you want with me yet. I can hardly 
denounce you for seeking me out."
    Her eyes widened, as if he had revealed something with 
his words that he didn't think he had. "You are sorry for 
it, aren't you?"
    "Every day. Probably not as sorry as I should be, but 
still-"
    "That will do." For the first time, the Lleyna 
appeared to be upset. She glanced back at the people she 
led, then at him. "My name is Persina. These are the 
people of the village of Sandbar."
    Darstan nodded to them. They just stood there, gazing 
back at him with a kind of openness in their eyes that 
wasn't really hostility and certainly wasn't friendliness. 
He couldn't tell what they did feel, just as he couldn't 
tell from Persina's smile what she meant to do or say.
    "Why did you seek me out?" he asked at last.
    "Two reasons." Persina held up her thumb and 
forefinger, then folded the forefinger sharply down. 
"First, you have shelter we can use."
    "Drakeshold," said Darstan, before he thought about 
it.
    Persina smiled that strange smile again. "Not a 
brightdrake hold, I trust?"
    "No."
    "So long as it is shelter, we do not care," she 
declared, and all her people nodded at once. "None of us 
do. We just want to rest. Will your hold-"
    "Lady," Darstan supplied as she paused, then damned 
himself for an idiot. The more he told them, the more they 
could tell someone else.
    But they didn't seem inclined to go off and tell 
someone else. Persina nodded. "Will your hold Lady permit 
us there?"
    "So long as you promise not to curse the Dark or try 
to destroy her darkdrakes, I think so."
    Someone in the group behind Persina murmured 
fearfully. She made a calming gesture without even looking 
at them, without taking her eyes from Darstan. "We can 
promise that," she said. "And what about you?"
    "What about me?"
    "Our second reason." Her thumb folded down. "The real 
reason we came seeking you, and not just your hold or your 
lady."
    "What is that?"
    "We want to serve you."
    Darstan gaped at them. "Why would you want to serve 
the one who destroyed your homes?"
    "You wouldn't understand, I expect," she said, with a 
smile in her voice that was almost happy. "It has to do 
with vengeance, though."
    Darstan eyed her. 
    "My dreams told me that you would hate that more than 
anything else," explained Persina. "To have a group of the 
refugees whose homes you destroyed come and serve you."
    "You have a twisted mind."
    Persina laughed as if he had just given her a 
compliment. "I do, at that," she said, in a self- 
congratulatory tone. "Now, my lord, will you help us? Or 
will you let us stand there, while you go on to destroy 
something else?"
    Darstan winced.
    "This is going to be fun."
    Without a word- he didn't really know what he could 
say- Darstan turned and led them to Drakeshold.




                        Chapter 4
                           Reyn
    There had to be some way to deal with him.
    Think about this logically, Reyn. He isn't of the 
Light, so approach him in the ways that you would approach 
someone of the Dark. What would he like?
    Reyn scowled. He knew exactly what the bastard wanted, 
that was the problem.
    It would have to be a compromise, then.
    Now, that had possibilities.
    Smiling to himself, Reyn stood and went in search of 
Marseyt a-Areva.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "Marseyt!"
    The bastard turned around, his green eyes wide and 
innocent-looking. Reyn wondered for a moment if he had 
surprised Marseyt during a moment when he was coming back 
to the Light, and then told himself not to be an idiot. 
Marseyt would never return to the Light. It was fooling 
himself and worse than fooling himself to tell himself 
things like that.
    I suppose, Reyn thought complacently, it's just the 
Light in me, willing to look out for everyone, trying to 
see some good in the worst of them.
    "What do you want, Reyn?" asked the other Lleyna, 
trotting towards him. The golden cloak he had taken to 
wearing all the time since his first few days in Alsona 
fluttered behind him. Farther behind him, his lady, Nyata, 
was catching the ball that he had tossed to her, and 
coming closer, her dark eyes narrowed.
    Reyn tried to avoid her gaze. She was the one who 
really made him nervous, and so it was essential that he 
not look at her. "I wondered," he said, "if you would like 
to come with me for a private discussion."
    "Of course." Marseyt smiled, looking almost as if he 
wasn't of the Dark. Reyn reminded himself again not to 
think that way. It was insanely dangerous, especially with 
someone trained in the game of Areva intrigue the way that 
Marseyt was. He could look gentle and cheerful while 
planning to feed his foe to a darkdrake, Reyn was quite 
certain.
    "Then come with me. I would prefer to talk in my 
tent."
    Marseyt's smile slipped. "No, my lord."
    Reyn blinked. "What?" Even given Marseyt's penchant 
for defying him- the a-Areva lord had come to arrest him, 
so some defiance was only natural- this was blunt. Marseyt 
had been trained better in courtesy than that.
    "I have had a dream," said Marseyt, his eyes steady on 
Reyn's, "that told me not to go alone into your tent with 
you."
    Reyn concealed his surprise as best he could. He had 
contemplated killing Marseyt last night, fleetingly. He 
was stunned that Marseyt's gift would have caught a threat 
that unformed, that quick.
    Marseyt was looking at him with narrowed eyes. Reyn 
forced himself to bring his mind back under control. "Then 
where would you suggest?" he asked, turning the power over 
to Marseyt. Marseyt was a fool if he thought that that 
meant Reyn had given up, of course. But Reyn was getting 
better at this game over the past few days, and he knew 
all the little tricks; it was just a mater of polishing up 
skills he hadn't used in two years.
    Maybe one of them would work.
    "Here is fine."
    "Anyone could hear us," Reyn protested.
    "And anyone can see what you do." Marseyt folded his 
arms. "My lord, forgive me, but I do not trust you. And I 
would prefer to have witnesses."
    "I wouldn't have let you go off on your own, anyway."
    Marseyt turned with a fond smile to Nyata. Reyn 
gritted his teeth and fought to keep from showing just how 
unfond of Nyata he was.
    "I know you wouldn't," said Marseyt to his lady, and 
then turned back to Reyn. "Do you think that you can find 
a place for us that will suit both our needs? I need to 
speak to my lady on a pertinent matter."
    Reyn clenched his teeth and bowed. They were probably 
only going to steal kisses like two children. "Yes, of 
course, my lord," he said, with a false smile, and then 
turned away.
    Behind him, he heard Nyata see something in soft 
tones, and Marseyt laugh. He had no proof that either the 
words or the laugh were aimed at him, but of course he had 
his suspicions.
    And of course suspicions were as good as proof with 
these two.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "My lord?"
    Reyn could hear the uncertainty in Marseyt's voice. He 
kept his back turned for just a moment, to add to it, and 
then slowly turned around.
    Marseyt stood, one arm around Nyata's shoulders and 
his smile slowly fading, in the entrance of the tiny dell 
that Reyn had found. It had natural stone walls that 
started out low and then swooped up to enclose them from 
sight from either side, and even mostly from above. The 
dusky half-twilight that filled the little dell on account 
of that was still bright enough to let Reyn see that 
Marseyt's eyes were as uncertain as his smile.
    "Sit down."
    Marseyt smiled at him. Reyn hated that smile. It was 
the infinitely superior a-Areva smile. 
    They took pride in being descended from both Light and 
Dark, as if that was something to be proud of, Reyn fumed 
as he watched Marseyt seat himself and then spread out his 
cloak so that his lady could sit behind him. Nyata sat 
with her legs folded on the cloak, and began rubbing 
Marseyt's shoulders.
    Reyn hated the feeling that promptly gave him- as if 
Marseyt was one of the Keepers giving an audience and he 
had stumbled in and was now condemned to stand stuttering 
in front of him.
    Reyn sat down with a movement he knew lacked grace. 
Nyata smiled at him. Marseyt smiled at him. Reyn forced a 
smile in return across his face, and finally got down to 
what he really wanted to say to them.
    "My lord, my lady," he said, "I think that you can see 
my difficulty."
    "Not really," said Marseyt, inclining his head. "I 
have a terrible time seeing difficulties other than my own 
in this situation."
    Ah. Reyn cheered up at once. His instinct was right. 
Marseyt did want to compromise, instead of fight a pitched 
battle to the finish.
    "I am sensitive to your troubles as well as my own," 
said Reyn, inclining his head. "You must realize that your 
coming out of nowhere to tell me that I must obey you is 
really quite inconvenient."
    "And for me." Marseyt splayed his hands across his 
lap. "I don't want to fight you, my Lord Lleyna. I want to 
arrest you and take you back to the Summer Isle without 
distressing you or your people."
    "You are polite."
    "Is that a compliment?"
    "Of course!" exclaimed Reyn, stung into it before he 
realized what Marseyt was probably doing. "Why wouldn't it 
be?"
    Marseyt exchanged a glance with Nyata, one of his 
eyebrows raised.