Harper of Glory Forerunning
                         Prologue
             489, Age of Ascent, Early Summer
    ^Are you ready?^
    Herran Turnlong turned his head and nodded calmly at 
the woman who crouched beside him. ^As ready as anyone 
ever will be to face death.^
    Chemilli Glint smiled, and her dark indigo eyes shone. 
Her hair, as golden as his own, stirred as she rose to her 
knees, straining to see through the thick leaves.
    ^Shhh,^ Herran cautioned her as the leaves rustled.
    ^I know,^ she telepathed back at him, her smile 
flashing to take the sting out of the thoughts. ^Talk to 
the others, if you're so worried.^
    Herran laughed at her silently, and sought out the 
others where they crouched in their places above the 
trail, sending his words in short, scattered, pulsing 
bursts that would resemble thoughts, and not be nearly so 
identifiable as the smooth streams that normal telepathy 
produced. ^Keesa, are you ready?^
    ^Yes.^ He could feel the quiet strength of the woman 
who responded even in that thought, and the readiness of 
Viana, Chemilli's cousin, beside her.
    ^Good.^ Then he went seeking Rai, contact with the 
man's mind baffling him a little as always. It did not 
seem possible that anyone could be so cool, so calm, away 
from the city and the laws that forbade the expression of 
emotion within its walls. Herran sometimes thought Rai 
would have been this way if the Laws had never been made. 
Still, it was better than touching the mind of Amara, whom 
he understood not at all. ^Are you ready?^
    ^Yes, my lord.^
    Herran nodded, and then sighed as the moment came to 
make the final contact before the battle. Before he could 
do so, however, Chemilli's hand gripped his arm. He looked 
over to see her eyes wide with a mixture of panic and 
excitement, and he looked down through the bushes into the 
trail that led along the foot of the embankment, about 
twenty feet beneath them.
    There were the curalli already, shadowed Elwens 
trotting in neat formation, fourteen of them- twice as 
many as the patrol. Herran sucked in his breath through 
his teeth and thought for a moment.
    Chemilli caught the doubt in his mind and flashed him 
a sweet smile. ^We can take them,^ she said, so confident 
that she used a telepathic stream instead of the jerking 
bursts to convey her thought. Herran thought he saw the 
last curalli in line turn her head a little and listen 
hard, as though she had heard something physical.
    ^Perhaps we can,^ he said, using the scattered form of 
his message as much to emphasize the words as to hide it 
from the curalli's notice. ^But I would prefer not to take 
any chances.^
    Chemilli nodded and lifted a hand in understanding, 
then looked down at the trail again. The shadowed Elwens 
had halted and were almost all looking upward now, their 
silver-skinned faces wary or wearing the faintest traces 
of smiles. Their dark hair tumbled down their shoulders or 
clung close to their heads; their dark or dark-bright eyes 
flashed between the branches above them or scanned the 
bank itself to either side. They showed as much variety as 
individual land Elwens.
    But Herran could not care about that at the moment. He 
had to make contact with Irrall. The importance of 
Chemilli's warning could not be ignored. If she was 
getting impatient to move, he would be dancing in place, 
snorting like a restless horse, his eyes full of fire and 
fuss.
    ^Irrall? Report.^
    This time he let his telepathy flow. Chemilli looked 
at him with a curious smile, her eyebrows lifted. Herran 
smiled in turn and focused his eyes on the curalli, 
feeling the blood-hatred begin to burn within him as the 
time of battle with these traditional enemies of his 
people came nearer and nearer. He wanted to tempt fate 
now, to challenge them. It did not really matter what they 
did.
    They would not cross Rowan's borders. If he died, they 
would not cross Rowan's borders.
    Irrall answered at last, his voice reluctant, his 
words brief, the mental world thick with the colors of 
blood-hatred. ^Yes? What is it?^
    Herran jerked his head up and stared in the direction 
of the lone man, who was hidden down the trail a short 
distance. ^Keep your mind on the work, Irrall,^ he said 
after a long moment. ^You have seen, have heard, what can 
happen when you don't.^ He sent this thought as a simple 
stream- it was too important not to- and saw the shadowed 
Elwens stir uneasily.
    There was a long, tight moment, and then Irrall's, 
^Yes, I am ready.^ But some of the hatred in his mental 
voice now bore the bright golden tinge that meant it was 
directed towards a land Elwen.
    At the moment, Herran could do nothing but close his 
eyes and sigh. This had happened before, and the score 
would have to be settled later. For now, all that would 
matter was Irrall keeping his eyes and his mind on the 
work, which ought to be easy enough considering how much 
he hated curalli. ^Then move.^
    Irrall rather deliberately rattled the bushes as he 
jumped onto the path. The curalli started back, and one of 
them flung a knife. The land Elwen avoided it without 
seeming to see it, his dark eyes fixed on this dark 
people.
    He was part curalli, Herran thought, watching him, and 
that was what made his hatred so intense. It had to be. Of 
course, trying to get Irrall to talk about his family had 
pretty much the same uselessness as trying to get a silver 
unicorn to surrender would.
    Or trying to understand the orders of the Council of 
Rowan, Herran thought wryly. Less than five centuries ago, 
they had fought the humans beside the curalli, and now 
when raided human villages called on Rowan for help 
against the shadowed Elwens, they received it.
    Herran dealt with it by thinking of the whole thing as 
a violation of Rowanian borders, and leaving it at that.
    Irrall spread his hands, and Herran started. He had 
wandered so far into the reverie that he had missed the 
sharp-voiced question one of the shadowed Elwens had 
asked. And he thought Irrall wasn't paying enough 
attention, he chided himself. Mistakes like that would not 
only cost him his life, but others'. He crouched, and was 
still, and listened.
    "I want to join you," Irrall said.
    One of the curalli in the front laughed. "Why would 
you want to do that?" he asked, eyes flashing and hand 
toying with a dagger. "Anyone can see the paleskin blood 
in you is stronger than the shadowed. Go back to the 
light, light-souled."
    There were laughs and cruder insults from the Elwens 
gathered behind the leader. Herran smiled a little, 
though, as he saw the two standing hindmost fall, felled 
by arrows springing from cover on opposite sides of the 
trail.
    The arrowheads had been honed so sharp that the 
victims did not immediately feel the cut, and their steel 
was also coated with shoolin poison. Any feeling of the 
cut was too late. They fell without a sound.
    So did two more before the soft thump of falling 
bodies, barely audible over Irrall's pleading words, 
attracted attention. The leader whirled, and saw the last 
arrow fall. Not in time to save the woman it struck, of 
course, but enough time to track the angle back to Rai's 
and Amara's hiding place. He lifted one hand to point, and 
two of the living rushed over and flung themselves against 
the bank, beginning to climb. Curalli could climb like 
nothing else alive.
    Herran flung himself into motion from a completely 
unexpected direction, sliding down the bank on his back 
with Chemilli right behind him. As he spun and twisted 
down, he flung knives that had likewise been coated with 
shoolin poison. Not all of them hit the mark, but enough 
so that by the time he reached the bottom, there were only 
seven left alive.
    Herran smiled as he regained his feet and drew his 
sword. He liked even odds.
    The leader called in the high, honey, poisoned Melli 
tongue of his people, too swiftly for Herran to follow. 
Then he opened his mouth. 
    So did two of the others.
    Herran steeled himself, hoping that Amara could handle 
that many. That had always been the one unpredictable part 
of this plan. They would never know how many of the 
curalli would try to sing their dark, enchanting siren 
song and entrap the land Elwens who faced them.
    He could hear Chemilli fixing earplugs to her ears, 
but knew that she would not be fast enough to hand him a 
pair. And earplugs were not always proof against the siren 
song, anyway, more was the pity.
    Then one of the two climbing down the bank let out a 
short, sharp scream. It was so unexpected that Herran 
found himself wincing, and the other two preparing to sing 
turned to look. The leader did not turn, keeping his eyes 
grimly fixed on Herran.
    The curalli on the bank dropped to his knees, panting 
and fighting, for a moment. Then he rose to his feet, and 
drew his sword.
    The companion standing beside him caught on more 
quickly than curalli usually did to land Elwen mental 
warfare, and she tried to stab him in the back.
    He caught her instead with a quick thrust that went 
between her breasts and out through her back, using a 
speed that made Herran catch his breath. Amara had gone 
deeply into this one's mind, deeply enough to add her own 
strength and reflexes to his own. He hoped that she had 
gone in lightly enough so that she would not be with him 
when he died.
    Always before she had come out. But this time...
    His attention was stolen back as one of the curalli in 
front of him began to sing. He felt the song cut at him, 
freezing his muscles, forcing him to stand still in dreamy 
contemplation of the beauty all about him, so that his 
throat could be easily slit.
    Chemilli bounded past him and slew the singer with a 
cut through the throat. The earplugs were working this 
time.
    The other two still standing there, unengaged, began 
to flee. Keesa and Viana slid down from above, firing wild 
arrows from reckless bows. They killed them, both almost 
at once, but sent a few more shafts plunging down to be 
sure.
    The other singer was engaged with Amara's mind- 
controlled slave.
    That left the leader.
    He knew it even as Herran did, and his dark eyes fixed 
on the land Elwen's pyrite ones in hatred. For a moment, 
something like loss flickered there too, but then it was 
gone, buried beneath the dark fire that was burying the 
curalli as well, consuming and engulfing him. He pulled a 
knife from his belt, elegantly, lazily, and then gestured 
to Herran, as though wanting him to follow or inviting him 
to single combat.
    Herran stepped forward, and the man flung the knife, 
hitting him on the inside of the arm. The motion had been 
almost too fast to follow.
    The shadowed Elwen spun away into the trees then, and 
Herran bounded after him at once, running past where the 
bank ended and into the deep forest that lay all along the 
border between Rowan and the curalli town of Shadows.
    He heard one person, then another, running after him, 
but he paid it no mind at all. His rage rose in him, the 
great rage of the land Elwen kind, slower to kindle in him 
than many others but relentless once roused. Behind the 
pressure of the silver haze at the edges of his vision, 
the cries of the others faded to nothingness.
    Then he saw the shadowed Elwen just ahead of him, 
standing, smiling, arms folded, one hand holding another 
knife.
    Waiting for Herran to come close so that he could 
finish him.
    But there was something curalli tended to forget, 
especially the shadowed Elwens like this one, who looked 
as young as Herran himself was, or at least not much 
older. Land Elwens might have the Laws now, but not all 
land Elwens obeyed them with the same devotion when there 
was no one else to see them doing it.
    Especially when one's life was at stake.
    Herran stopped a short distance away, holding his 
enemy's eyes. The man smiled and smiled. He did not really 
care if he lived or died now, as long as he took his enemy 
with him. That was the curalli way. They told themselves 
it was noble.
    Herran thought it ridiculous. But then, he could 
almost see the sense of it now, under the pressure of his 
rage.
    He did not come near the curalli, instead spreading 
his hands and concentrating. This was a skill he seldom 
practiced now, but it had been honed again and again in 
the War of Acceptance with the humans. He ought to be able 
to do it still.
    The curalli's confident smile faltered, as if he had 
remembered something.
    Herran gave him no time to think on it. He had the 
trick now.
    Magic is emotion.
    Emotion is magic.
    His rage transformed, and went snarling out of him in 
a cloudy burst of acid. The curalli caught it full across 
the face, and went down with a cry of startlement that 
quickly became a scream of agony. The plants and trees, 
suffering likewise, bore the pain in far more silent 
dignity.
    Herran could be merciful. He died quickly.
    He was still standing there, gazing at his kill, when 
the others came up. They gave him one glance and a little 
room.
    "We have fulfilled our duty," he said, through a 
throat that felt scraped raw. "Let us return to Rowan."
    As he turned away, he caught Irrall's eye and nodded. 
The other land Elwen nodded back, eyes dark.




                        Chapter 1
                Waiting For The Challenge
    "Waiting is perhaps the longest and most tiresome part 
of any war."
    -From Bmer Hosilin's Tumblao Corra, or Book of War.

    Herran lifted an arm to shield his eyes from the gleam 
of the sun on the distant silver buildings, smiling a 
little at the rapt look on Chemilli's face. She had been 
born in the city, lived all her life within it, but-
    "You always act as if you're seeing it for the first 
time," he teased her.
    "In a way, I am," she answered quietly, without 
moving, her eyes fastened to the largest buildings, the 
gleam of silver trees and animals in which nearly a 
million of Herran's people lived.
    Noting the look in her eyes, Herran inclined his head 
and moved away to the others. All of them had insisted on 
returning to Rowan as soon as possible the moment he had 
announced they could, and he had had no time to make sure 
that they were not more wounded than they appeared.
    "Find anything new?" he asked Keesa Firehair. She had 
taken a slight cut on her arm from the swinging branch of 
a nyrecho.
    Keesa looked up and shook her head. Her face resembled 
a hawk's, long and fierce, with the emotions that she was 
never completely successful in taming seeming to flash 
forth through her golden eyes and even her red hair. "They 
didn't touch Viana or me," she said. "I would be more 
worried about Amara."
    Herran drew breath and nodded. "I'll speak to her. Did 
it seem bad?"
    Keesa snorted and bent to apply a little more 
healingbloom to the cut on her arm. There would be poison 
in the cut, Herran knew. It was only dangerous if it was 
not properly treated. "I couldn't really tell. Can anyone 
ever tell with her? I'm just glad that you have the job of 
patrol leader and have to talk to her."
    "Maybe I'll tell Lord Shennalor that I want to rest 
for a little while, and then you can have it."
    "Maybe I'll ask Lord Shennalor for some lessons and 
then see how long I can keep you alive."
    Herran laughed and moved on, stopping to speak briefly 
with Viana and confirm that she was all right. The young 
woman nodded her head. Her dusky eyes, so like her 
cousin's, were fixed on Chemilli, and she moved towards 
her as soon as possible.
    Herran let her go, though he was beginning to think 
that he would have to speak with her. A kind of shadow had 
lain over her for months now, and she had privately asked 
Herran not to assign her to pair work with Chemilli 
anymore. And yet, she took every opportunity to speak with 
her, no matter how uncommunicative her cousin was. 
Herran's respect for her privacy was slowly yielding to 
his worry, both for her and for the patrol.
    He shook his head and moved on. He would still rather 
speak with Viana, delicate as the balance between 
friendship and excessive concern would be, than Amara.
    And there she was. Herran stood still for a long 
moment, gathering his courage, and then walked forward and 
stood before her.
    Rai Leaflaughter, to whom she spoke, looked up and 
nodded. His long white hair flowed past his shoulders, 
almost to the middle of his back, and he was picking twigs 
and leaves out of it as he listened to Amara. The delicate 
gestures with which he accomplished the complicated task 
of grooming himself were in direct contrast to his cold 
red eyes. 
    "Herran," he said, partially in greeting and partially 
to alert Amara.
    She turned.
    Herran braced himself for the shock that ran through 
him when her dark eyes, flecked with white stars, met his. 
She gave the impression of having seen far more years than 
the rest of her appearance indicated. As always. Her face, 
perfectly cold, perfectly smooth, turned inward and 
withdrawn, gave nothing away. As always. She sat there, 
giving him all the attention that he could ask for as a 
patrol leader speaking to a member of his patrol, but with 
something missing.
    As always.
    "Yes?" she prompted, when a moment had passed and 
neither of them had said anything. 
    Her voice was too musical, Herran thought as he 
answered. That must be part of it. "I thought I would ask 
if you had experienced any problems in pulling out of the 
curalli's mind in time."
    Amara shook her head. "Your concern is kind. Thank you 
for asking."
    Herran nodded, and made his retreat, after only a 
glance at Rai to ask the same question. They were not 
words that anyone else would not have used, he told 
himself for the seven thousandth time in five hundred 
years. He could not understand why she so unnerved him.
    That only meant that she unnerved him even more, of 
course.
    He shook his head, this time mostly at himself, and 
turned away to study Irrall, who stood off by himself, 
arms folded, staring at the city as if he hated it. Cold 
dark eyes, cold face with a touch of silver, cold stance 
that turned hot with anger as Herran approached.
    "Why have you come?"
    "I wanted to make certain that you were all right," 
said Herran, ignoring the temptation of the rage that 
hovered on the edges of his vision. He had shown too much 
emotion already. That was probably the charge that Irrall 
would use against him. "Were you wounded?"
    The dark eyes held him. Deep and blazing rage that was 
not land Elwen; it was too cold, too dark, the light in it 
the light of the black stars gleaming off a frozen river. 
Purely curalli. Herran fought the rising tide of the 
blood-hatred that would take him out of himself and make 
him hack Irrall limb from limb if necessary, to make him 
stop staring at him that way.
    "How could I be wounded?" Irrall asked at last, his 
voice as sharp with bitterness and hatred as his gaze. 
"You allowed me no opportunity to fight them."
    "You rush into battle like a Killsworn," said Herran 
quietly. "Making no attempt to defend yourself. Last time, 
you nearly died."
    "I know that," Irrall said, not in a shout, but in 
that kind of repressed shout that is more frightening than 
the loudest scream. "Stop reciting useless facts that I 
already know." His eyes found Herran's, gleaming, shining 
with the passion that he despised so effectively within 
the city's walls. "Stop it," he whispered.
    "I will not," Herran said. "You know them, but you do 
not acknowledge them, or know what they mean. You nearly 
died. I do not want to lose any member of my patrol to 
such stupidity."
    "Any member of your patrol," Irrall whispered, but he 
turned away. "You do not say- any friend."
    "Had I done so, you would have derided me for claiming 
it." Herran now had to quell impatience. He had no 
tolerance for this kind of stupidity, but unless he wanted 
the duel to start before Irrall issued a formal challenge 
and cleared the matter with Lord Shennalor, then he would 
have to tolerate it. "Listen to me. I have the answer to 
my question, and I will go now. But if you endanger the 
patrol through any more foolishness of the kind that you 
pulled at Hyall's Hill, then I will ask to have you 
removed from the patrol circuit."
    The cold face was soft for the first time he had ever 
seen it, soft with hatred. "You will repay the debt you 
owe me."
    "I will."
    Herran turned his back on the crossbreed and stepped 
away, to find everyone else watching him, even Chemilli 
and Viana, who appeared from their flushed faces and hands 
frozen in wide gestures to have been caught in an argument 
of their own. He shook his head a little, to let them know 
that Irrall was not a danger, and walked to the bluff to 
look down at the city again.
    Stars, she was beautiful. Rowan, lady of the Corallen 
Valley, lady of the land Elwens in a way that not even 
their Goddess Suulta, the Lady of Calm, could not be. All 
Free Ones, even if they did not worship Suulta, knew 
Rowan, and had their hearts poised to seek it at the 
slightest chance, as a lodestone will seek the north by 
natural inclination.
    Herran took calm and peace from the sight of the 
strong silver buildings that nothing had ever destroyed 
and nothing ever would. Even when silver unicorns had 
walked its streets, it had endured, and land Elwens had 
returned to claim their home after a million years of 
Empire. The humans had besieged Rowan for two years, but 
never entered. The city had lost thousands of her citizens 
in the War of Acceptance, and the greatest Councilmaster 
in living memory when the Lady Eleriad Deerfriend died in 
the Battle of Esshellen. Still, she went on.
    "What god are you worshiping when you look like that?" 
Chemilli asked with what sounded like wonder as she joined 
him.
    "None and every," Herran answered, turning to her with 
a smile. "The hearts of land Elwens. Everything that is of 
our people. And yet that cannot be really worshiped, can 
it?"
    "I think it can."
    Herran started. He had meant the answer half as a 
joke, knowing that he could never really put what he felt 
into words. But she had taken it seriously, and was 
studying him with the same rapt attention she had so 
lately given the city.
    "Really?" he asked after a moment, awkwardly. This was 
a side of Chemilli he had never seen, or had left alone 
before this, a side that she had never given any sign of 
wanting to share with him. She always showed him the 
fierce battle-maiden who alternated between war and 
laughter, her ideals visible only in her intense 
dedication to the city and to certain principles of 
fighting that she considered honorable.
    "Yes."
    "I see," he said then, not knowing what else to say.
    Chemilli drew a breath and smiled suddenly. "But we 
can speak of such things later, my lord," she said, 
pointing downward. "I think that we have been given 
entrance to the city, now."
    Herran turned to follow her pointing finger with his 
gaze obediently, but couldn't help wondering how much the 
ending of the conversation had been due to Viana coming to 
stand behind them, her purple eyes burning as she listened 
silently, intently.
    Flying towards them came a bronklo, one of the great 
winged lizards ridden by some Free Ones in order to help 
defend the city. It was an ugly thing up close, with the 
long jaws and dull scales of a crocodile, but beautiful in 
flight. It came and hovered off the edge of the bluff just 
before them, the rider holding his lance tightly as he 
surveyed them.
    Herran stood patiently under the scrutiny. Several 
patrols had been broken by the curalli and then sent back 
to spy, or curalli had disguised themselves with illusion 
and tried to enter. The checking was routine, as the rider 
and bronklo read him together in some way that he did not 
really understand.
    The rider turned away then, and nodded to him. They 
had read everyone in the patrol at the same time, or 
simply plucked the information from his mind. The patrol 
leaders were granted a measure of trust in that. They were 
assumed to know their own patrols, and to bring them in 
undamaged, if they themselves passed the silent test of 
the guards.
    Herran motioned to the others, thinking as he did so 
that the trust might be misplaced in him. He would not 
know if someone or something else came to dwell behind 
Amara's eyes.
    Rai would, though. It was widely accepted among the 
patrol members and in Rowan that the two were in love, and 
Herran expected an announcement after every mission that 
they were leaving the patrol circuit to start a betrothal, 
and eventually a family.
    It had not come this time, though. Herran thought as 
he watched the pair walk down the hill ahead of him. He 
was glad. Though he might not understand them, he 
appreciated their competence, and accounted them friends. 
It would not have been the same without them, after over 
four centuries of working together.
    Irrall followed Rai and Amara, staring at Herran with 
hostility all the while. Herran merely shook his head and 
waited for the other man to pass him before walking down 
the hill with Keesa. Chemilli and Viana followed, resuming 
their argument in more subdued voices.
    Keesa spoke the moment they reached the floor of the 
valley and began to thread their way through the ranks of 
shining golden crops, dodging the mages who worked 
constantly to renew the land, that it might be used again 
and again. "There is something I think you should know, my 
lord."
    Herran stared at her, alerted as much by the title as 
by the tone. She met his eyes, face and gaze grave, and 
then averted her eyes again as a mage scurried by. They 
were approaching Rowan, where the Laws said that no 
feeling might be openly expressed, and the calm that she 
never did well must claim her again.
    Herran kept his own voice smooth and without 
inflection as the mage knelt beside them, laid her hands 
on the earth, and closed her eyes. Her white robe 
glittered in the sunlight, almost as blinding as the 
silver city, but he found it easier to look at than 
Keesa's face. "What is it? Is something wrong with 
Chemilli?"
    For a moment, humor was in her voice. But it was all 
right; they were past the mage. "You would think about her 
first, of course."
    Herran smiled and inclined his head. "You know why."
    "Yes." The smile faded from her voice. "Does she?"
    Herran sighed. "You know that she does not." He 
smoothed his face briefly as Irrall looked back over his 
shoulder, and then let it fall into place again when the 
other man turned around, unsatisfied, yet unable to blame 
him. "I thought it would be best if I waited. And besides, 
I am sure that she has guessed by now. We have worked 
together often enough that-"
    "Herran, that's not the point!" Only the presence of 
watching eyes from the walls as they drew nearer and 
nearer to the city kept her from shaking her hair back, 
glaring at him, and launching into a diatribe, Herran was 
sure. "That's what's wrong, the reason that you command a 
patrol but you're never going to rise any higher. You 
think you know what other people would think and do and 
want without ever asking them."
    "Yes, I do do that," Herran agreed. "Can you say that 
it is not justified in this situation?"
    There was a long moment of silence, of memory of 
something that she knew even better than he did. And then 
she sighed and said, "No."
    "Well, then."
    She laughed, a low sound that could be mistaken for a 
sneeze. "Keep your caution and your counsel, then. But I 
think that someday she will want to know."
    "When she does, when she asks, then I will tell her. 
But Chemilli wasn't to be the subject of our conversation. 
What did you want to talk to me about?"
    "Not so much a speech as a- warning. Have you seen any 
of these about?"
    For a brief moment, her hand flashed into view from 
behind the curtain of her long red hair, holding something 
that looked like a twisted circle of silver wire. No, not 
merely a circle, a sphere. The wires that built up the 
sphere around the initial ring were made of a paler metal, 
and so he could not really see them with a casual glance 
at them.
    "No."
    He was about to ask what it was, but at that moment 
they arrived at the gate, and Keesa concealed the sphere 
again in whatever place she had taken it from.
    There were perhaps fifteen guards on duty; the number 
tended to change every day, both to keep the guards alert 
and to suit the Commander's whim. One of them leaped down 
and came towards them, stepping easily over the lowered 
wings of the city's great gate, which was constructed of a 
metal that was not gold but looked like it, and shaped as 
a swan. He stopped several steps away, his eyes moving 
from one face to another before settling on Herran's face 
as the one most likely to be the leader's.
    "Name and report."
    Herran studied the other man carefully as he replied. 
He knew he had seen him before, but beyond that he did not 
recognize him. Green hair, cold silver eyes showing no 
more emotion than the metal of the buildings behind him, a 
smooth face without the lines of exposure to wind and sun 
that Herran's face already possessed. This was one like 
Rai, it seemed, who had been born to fit the new city of 
the Laws.
    "Herran Turnlong. Sent to destroy the curalli raiding 
the human towns of Esteban, Werlana, and Ybrian. Seven 
raiding parties destroyed, and warnings issued to Shadows 
and the curalli villages in the area."
    "Understood. How many kills?"
    That was the one gap in the Laws, Herran thought, that 
all of them like this man had. The Laws could not tame the 
stronger emotions- love, hatred, bloodlust. "Two hundred 
and nine."
    "Well done. The justice master will wish to see you, 
of course."
    "Of course. The entire patrol, or only myself?"
    "Only yourself. Pass." The man turned and stepped back 
over the swan's wings again, then swiftly leaped to the 
top of the silver wall to watch for any more travelers, 
his silver eyes as still as if all life had gone out of 
them.
    Herran at last identified the man as they passed into 
the city. Edelwith Goatleap, the son of Terin, the 
grandson of Dorren. His family-
    And then his thoughts were swept away by a sudden 
surge of pure happiness as he heard the familiar sounds of 
his city and really realized that he was back in Rowan. He 
closed his eyes and tilted his head back to savor the rich 
mixture of scents, sounds, and emotional currents that 
made Rowan what she was.
    He thought he saw Chemilli doing the same thing before 
he closed his eyes.
    Food, first of all and foremost. All the farmers of 
the surrounding lands came into Rowan to trade their 
crops, and the main markets were not far from the Gate. 
Earlyfruit, though that was spoiling this late in the year 
and filling the air with a kind of sickly sweet scent that 
probably meant it would be used only as food for the pigs. 
Magically grown fruit, out of season and so costing a 
little more than it would at harvest time. Cooked meats 
that the vendors offered for a cheaper price here than 
many of the buyers could get anywhere else. Freshly baked 
bread. Wines that the connoisseurs carefully tasted and 
nodded over before buying. The burnt sugar smell of magic 
from the booths where the carefully supervised mages made 
trinkets for those who wanted them.
    Cries of vendors shouting their wares. The rumble of 
wheels and the click of hooves. The quick, sweet chatter 
of land Elwen voices, the words liquid and sliding, 
silvery, a miracle to him after hearing the dark voices of 
curalli lowered in secret discussion for so long. The 
clash of swords from the Guards' compound as they passed 
it. The sounds of breathing and beating hearts that 
sensitive Elwen ears could hear, but which largely blended 
into one low hum, so many were there about him.
    And the emotions, both light and dark flaring around 
him like guttering lamps, sometimes blazing before their 
owners swiftly controlled them again.
    "Herran."
    With a little start, Herran realized that Keesa had 
been trying to get his attention for some time. He opened 
his eyes and shook his head with a little smile. "Do 
forgive me; I drift off like that without meaning to. What 
were you saying?"
    He noticed that Keesa was the only one left beside 
him; the others had scattered. Well, after all, he thought 
after a moment of shock and disappointment, they had been 
out of the city for over a month. It was only natural that 
they would want to see family and friends, tell them about 
their grand adventures.
    Or the injustice they had suffered at the hands of 
Herran Turnlong, in Irrall's case.
    "I wanted to speak with you about this," said Keesa, 
displaying the ball of wire again. "I was hoping that you 
might know something about them. I have been seeing them 
cast before the doors of houses; I have found them in dark 
back streets. Everyone I speak to either admits ignorance 
of them or is determined not to talk about them."
    Herran shook his head. "I would speak to you about 
them if I knew anything, Keesa, but I must admit to being 
of the first category that you mentioned." The regret in 
his voice caused a nearby woman to stop arranging the 
apples on the wooden top of her stall and regard him with 
a face that was not the less suspicious for being so 
placid. He changed his voice a little, made it seem 
blander and quieter, as if he did not really care about 
the small, strange object that rested in Keesa's hand. "I 
have never seen one before this."
    "Very well." Keesa sighed and tucked the ball away. 
"Actually, I was wrong when I said that I had learned 
nothing about them. One woman wearing one quite openly on 
her person said that I should be careful, and start 
wearing one of the spheres myself if I wanted to be 
spared."
    "From what?"
    "That was what I wanted to ask her. She disappeared 
into the crowd before I could." Keesa shivered a little. 
"I've never seen anything quite like her smile."
    The apple-seller had continued to watch them, as if 
not believing their emotionless pretense. Herran gripped 
Keesa's arm and guided her a little distance away from the 
woman. "May I have the ball, to take to the justice 
master? I promise that you won't get in trouble for this," 
he added, when Keesa's face darkened, and her hand froze 
in her motion towards the ball.
    "He- will know where to find me, in any case," she 
said with some difficulty, as she pressed the ball into 
his hands.
    "He's not that terrifying, Keesa."
    "You're a patrol leader, Herran. He doesn't have any 
reason to hurt you."
    "He doesn't have any reason to hurt you, either," 
Herran began, but she was gone into the crowd like the 
woman she had described. The patrol leader shook his head 
and turned away, rolling the ball between his hands for a 
moment before he began to fear that he shouldn't, and made 
to slip it into a pouch.
    A gloved hand caught it, and a voice rich with 
mockery, and deep and bright with utter unconcern for the 
Laws, said, "Would you mind telling me where you got 
this?"
    Herran sighed as he turned to look up at the cowled 
figure of the justice master. Recognizing him- not by his 
face, but by his lack of it- the apple-seller turned away 
hastily. She was not about to report a breach of the Laws 
to someone who embodied the common concept of justice in 
Rowan.
    "From Keesa Firehair," he said. "Where she picked it 
up I don't know."
    "I can find it." The justice master tossed the ball 
from hand to hand for a moment, like a child playing, and 
then did something to hide it. "That is not what matters, 
however. What matters is that you destroyed over two 
hundred curalli."
    Herran did not ask how he knew, or why he had wanted 
to speak to Herran if he knew. There were some things one 
did not ask the justice master. "Yes."
    The voice turned slow, thoughtful. "And the mission 
before that, over three hundred."
    "Yes," Herran said again, not knowing where this was 
leading. He knew that most of the other patrol leaders had 
a record as good or better. What mattered was not some 
idiotic competition for kills, but the service a patrol 
leader did in the service of Rowan. He could not begin to 
understand why the numbers would interest the justice 
master, other than as a way of making sure that no one had 
developed a false sympathy for the curalli and killed 
suspiciously few.
    "Come with me."
    The justice master turned with a snap of his cloak and 
walked off, the heavy folds of cloth drifting behind him. 
Herran followed at once, well-aware that those in the 
street were staring at him. One glance from the justice 
master, though, and their looks of fear and wonder, 
expressed so openly in flagrant violation of the Laws, 
flickered and disappeared.
    Herran did come up with one possible explanation as he 
followed the justice master down a street that was quieter 
than some of the others but silver-paved like all of them, 
meaning the echoes of their boots filled his ears and the 
gleaming sun off the metal made him shield his eyes. 
Perhaps Irrall had declared his challenge already, and the 
justice master had come to bring him to the appointed 
meeting place. It was not the sort of thing he needed to 
do, but it was one that he might. He delighted in doing 
things for himself, by himself, on a whim that might not 
seem even sane to an ordinary man-
    "Not an ordinary one, no."
    Herran calmed his thoughts. The justice master was a 
trained psychic assaulter, just as Amara was. He could not 
hope that his thoughts would not be read. He could only 
hope that the man would do it with courtesy, and not use 
the evidence of his own mind against him in a trial.
    If that was where he was being taken.
    But it did not appear so. They bent back through 
streets they had already walked, and the great, bear- 
shaped Prison appeared ahead. The bear reared on its hind 
legs, paws outstretched and grasping at the air, mouth 
open to show the great, gleaming fang-teeth.
    No trial, then. Prisoners known to be guilty, 
prisoners who had received trials but refused to confess, 
were brought here for the justice master to practice his 
art upon them. Herran did not think his guilt already 
confirmed. He sighed and let himself walk a little more 
freely because of his relief.
    "The Laws were never meant for our people," said the 
justice master, without looking over his shoulder. "Not 
when we can read each others' emotions so easily. Any 
violation of the Laws can be made and then reported 
without our even noticing."
    Herran said nothing. The justice master might make 
such statements because he believed them, or they might be 
meant as traps, to take and confine the enemy who was so 
unwary as to agree with them. With this man, there was 
never any telling.
    The man laughed and looked at him, and Herran sensed 
the approval that radiated from that invisible face, 
though of course he could not see the expression. "I do 
appreciate leaders who are cautious, and take care to see 
that nothing festers in the depths of their minds, where 
it might grow to take on horrid form."
    Herran knew, then, what he was being brought here for. 
He nodded in simple agreement with the statement and said 
nothing as they walked through the great gates to the 
accompaniment of hastily swept salutes by the guards.
    The lawn surrounding the Prison was a pleasant place, 
though nothing like the elaborate gardens that surrounded 
the Council building. There were no paths of crushed 
stone, no weeping willows, no hidden pools. Simply grass, 
sweeping green and glowing up to the hind paws of the 
Bear.
    The justice master made his way across it without a 
pause, and into the door between the bear's hind paws. 
Herran followed him.
    He stepped into a dark, cool hall that nonetheless 
seemed hot. It took him a moment to realize that this came 
from the currents of emotion in the air. Intense pain 
always appeared to be heat to his magical senses for some 
reason. 
    A distant scream exploded to his right. Herran winced 
and turned away, experiencing a familiar sensation of 
disorientation. He stood on a precipice, with a wave 
crashing down on him; he was going to fall-
    But he did not. The moment passed, and his faith in 
Rowan overwhelmed his disgust that she should contain such 
things. It was for the light and not the darkness that he 
loved her, and as long as he acknowledged the darkness and 
hated it, then he was doing his duty to his own heart. 
    "Come."
    Herran looked up as the justice master pulled away 
from a torturer who wanted to ask him something, and began 
to climb the stairs. The torturer stared enviously after 
Herran as he followed, but he had only spoken with the 
justice master at all because he had paused, courteously, 
to let Herran have some time to recover from the assault 
of the emotions.
    They mounted the long, spiraling stair for only a 
short distance, it seemed, before they came to the landing 
that spread out in the bear's belly, where several 
staircases joined, fusing into an awkward platform. The 
justice master stepped into the exact center of it. Herran 
joined him at once, even before a commanding glance could 
sweep out from those hidden eyes.
    The man nodded very slightly, or at least his hood 
did, and then he lifted his hands and said something that 
the patrol leader could not hear in a low, pleasant voice.
    Mad blue light flickered all around them for a moment, 
and then caught them up. Herran knew that this was merely 
the effect of the transportation wards; he had even ridden 
them before. But he could still not stop himself from 
trembling and breaking out into a cold sweat, and he knew 
the expression of fear and shock on his face must have 
been clearly visible.
    "That's enough," said the justice master, walking over 
to the desk that stood in the center of the oddly sloping 
room. "I make the laws in this room, and I don't want you 
to be terrified out of your wits for fear that you've 
broken one of them." He sat down behind the desk and flung 
back his hood.
    Lord Shennalor's face came into view. Herran knelt at 
once, his composure restored by the needed formality. He 
was never sure why he was unable to think of Lord 
Shennalor by his name when he met him outside the Prison, 
but the fact was that he could not. In here, Lord 
Shennalor- Quirrin Shennalor- was master torturer of 
Rowan, meaning that he was master of all the forces of 
justice in Rowan, inside the law and out, save the guards 
alone. Out there, he was the justice master, an Elwen with 
a love for and dedication to Rowan greater than anyone 
else's, checking to make sure that everything in his city 
was as it was supposed to be.
    "Herran Turnlong." Lord Shennalor's voice was warm, 
smooth, quiet, without excess emotion. He masked his own 
feelings with little effort, almost as little as he found 
them out. He turned back and forth, gazing at Herran like 
a bird, the light from the high windows catching in his 
dark red, almost brown, hair and silver eyes. "I watched 
you destroy that last curalli party not two hours ago."
    "Yes, my lord." So calm before the moment, as he ever 
had been. All the fear faded when he went into battle, as 
well. Herran wondered with a slight smile if he was simply 
the exact opposite of what the Laws demanded, finding 
passion in everyday life but not at the height of fighting 
for his life, when even the Laws excused expressions of 
emotion. 
    "I was impressed. But then I saw a strange thing." 
Quirrin leaned forward and put his elbows on the edge of 
the desk, his voice so suddenly warm and soft with 
compassion that Herran dared to think of him by his first 
name. "Tell me, Herran, what that thing was and what it 
meant."
    Herran risked a glance into his eyes, and Quirrin 
deliberately released his hold on his emotions enough that 
Herran could see that he was interested in Herran's 
answer, and wanted the explanation he was asking for. This 
was not a trap.
    Herran risked following his instinct, and answering as 
it seemed Quirrin wanted him to. "You saw the falling 
apart of my patrol, my lord, the hidden conflicts within 
it. I think this happened because battle bonds us, but 
otherwise we do no trust each other."
    Quirrin leaned back, smiling, pleased. Or so it 
seemed. His emotions had retreated behind the mask again, 
and Herran could not read him. "That was exactly what I 
saw, and that is a good reply. But why did such a thing 
happen? You have fought together for nearly five hundred 
years. The bonds should either have been forged by now, or 
proved too hard to forge. In that last case, you would 
have drifted apart from each other." The silver eyes, 
alive and glowing like Rowan seen from a distance, 
fastened on Herran's face, demanding an answer.
    "Our loyalties to each other have ever been strong," 
said Herran quietly, respectfully, neither taking his eyes 
from Quirrin's not bending his other knee to touch the 
floor. "But our dedication to Rowan is even stronger. And 
I will freely confess that something has entered the group 
lately that I do not understand, something that threatens 
to split us into factions."
    "A pretty answer, but one anyone could have given," 
Quirrin said, leaning forward, his eyes narrowing. Herran 
still could not read anger in him, however, could not tell 
whether or not this was a pretense. "Why have you made no 
effort to find out what this thing is?"
    Herran lifted his shoulders and spread his hands in a 
shrug. "The truth is, my lord, I prefer to let the members 
of my patrol have their own privacy. I have been thinking 
that I should speak to them about it, but I would prefer 
to let them come to me and speak when they wish to speak, 
if they ever do."
    "It cannot be, Herran. Your patrol is ripping itself 
apart. Hidden secrets, hidden hatreds and loves-" Quirrin 
shook his head. "It may already be too late to save the 
patrol."
    Herran swallowed back the emotions that threatened to 
overwhelm him, used all the training in the Laws he had 
ever ignored but still remembered to calm himself, and 
listened.
    "I would not want to lose such a fine patrol," Quirrin 
went on, ignoring Herran's start at this characterization 
of the patrol's record. "Yet I would fear more to lose a 
group of fine young Elwens who might be of more use if 
pulled off the patrol circuit and used elsewhere." He 
flicked his eyes towards Herran. "Where would you 
recommend that I put them if I do such a thing?"
    Herran was quiet and still for a long moment. Any 
agreement might be interpreted by Quirrin as his saying 
that he didn't think the patrol was working, either, and 
should be pulled apart. But if he said nothing, or worse, 
if he protested-
    "Well?"
    "Amara is a psychic assaulter," Herran said at last. 
"If you really must pull us apart, then she would do well 
as a teacher of that discipline, or with another patrol."
    Quirrin moved his hand in a negating gesture, his eyes 
still fastened to Herran's. "No. Not that. I am talking 
about removing her from the patrol circuit altogether. If 
I decide to do it, then all of them will need a rest, and 
the last thing I mean to assign them to will be another 
patrol."
    "The guards, then. Any place that might require her to 
face danger directly." Herran was painfully aware that he 
was making these decisions for his patrol, and, in Amara's 
case, with little understanding.
    But wasn't that what a leader had to do in any case? 
Make decisions? And it was not as if this were battle, 
where they stood a good chance of being killed if his 
decisions were not the right ones.
    "And the others?"
    "Rai Leaflaughter will want to go with Amara, wherever 
she goes. Chemilli Glint might prefer to accompany her 
cousin, Viana, to a career in the guards, city or Council. 
Keesa Firehair might well want to pursue a career in the 
Council, or at least work near them; she still lacks four 
hundred years of the age necessary to become a Chosen." He 
hesitated, then plunged on. "And I do not really know what  
Irrall will want to do."
    Quirrin already knew that he did not really understand 
Irrall, if he had scryed the battle.
    "And yourself?" There was a small smile playing around 
Quirrin's lips, a smile that was almost ironical.
    Herran shrugged. He had never really thought about it 
before, but the answer had been obvious, there, no less 
present for his refusal to spend waking moments on it. "I 
would help my father and grandmother in tending our own 
orchards and gardens, and perhaps become a guard in the 
Temple of Suulta if my father wished it."
    Quirrin nodded, and leaned back in the chair, his 
fingers working together, his eyes as distant as if the 
Councilmaster had come into the room and he had begun to 
obey the Laws. Herran waited for the verdict, his hands 
trembling a little and his heart slowly increasing its 
pace no matter how he tried to tame it.
    "Well," Quirrin said at last, "you do have a good 
record. I would hate to destroy so fine a patrol without 
giving you a chance to heal the wounds. And that is what I 
will give you." He raised a hand when Herran opened his 
mouth to thank him. "If there is no change when you go out 
for the next circuit, then you will bear the consequences 
of this. Alone."
    It was actually the best thing he could have said. 
Herran knew now that none of the others would suffer for 
his stupidity, if stupidity it was. He nodded, whispered 
his thanks, and then knelt there while the master torturer 
stared into the distance for a short time, at last 
remembering him and dismissing him.
    His mind churned as he climbed down the front of the 
Bear to the lawn, and yet he was calm. The problems he had 
seen were real, but he had the time he would need to heal 
them. He would have a dance, ten days, before they made 
their next circuit. He would speak to every one of the 
others within those ten days, and heal the hidden breaches 
between them. 
    He would redeem it no matter what he had to do.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "Herran."
    Herran paused to let his eyes adjust to the light of 
the fire that always burned no matter what the season and 
filled the room with soft shadows, and smiled at his 
grandmother. Anadrel Cytheriao had risen from her chair at 
his entrance, and now came towards him with her hands held 
out. He took them and kissed their backs as was the custom 
in the city she had come from, then drew her into a tight 
embrace.
    "Tati," he whispered, giving her the affectionate name 
that meant "grandmother" in Primal. "It is good to be 
home." He held her for a long moment before he broke away, 
to smile into the silver eyes so unlike his own. So frail 
and shadowed those eyes were, still full of grief at the 
loss of her husband Haasinon in the War of Acceptance, and 
yet so bright and strong.
    "Good to see that you have returned in one piece," 
Anadrel murmured, putting out a hand to touch the bones of 
his face gently. "Or did you run into trouble, and take it 
in a place where it will not show to a lady's eyes?" she 
added with a mixture of concern and humor.
    Herran shook his head and kissed the backs of her 
hands again. The skin there retained a slightly darker 
sheen than his own, still burned by the southern sun, 
though she had come to Rowan over four thousand years ago. 
"And you, tati? How have you been?"
    "You can guess, ianaga," she said, naming him in 
Primal her grandson. It was something she did so rarely 
that he guessed the news, in a fashion, before she told 
him. "Your father claims that the Goddess has granted him 
a vision of your mother."
    Herran sighed. "It is possible, isn't it?" he asked. 
"The Goddess sometimes tries to heal our grief in such a 
manner. That She may have done Her best to heal Costan 
that way-"
    "If that were possible, She would have done it long 
ago," Anadrel answered quietly, with the authority that 
had quelled his father's grief for a few centuries after 
his mother's death. It was only lately that the authority 
had begun to fray, Herran thought as he took her arm and 
moved her gently back to the chair where she had been 
sitting. She nodded to him and sank down gracefully, 
staring into the fire. "You know as well as I do that he 
became Her priest hoping to see such a vision. For no 
other reason does he serve Her. And She does not reward 
such things."
    "How dare you speak of the Goddess in such a way!"
    Anadrel rose to her feet and turned to face Costan as 
if she had never needed Herran's help to sit, her face 
taut and haughty. "If you had been listening, Costan," she 
said viciously to her son, "if you ever listened to 
anything, you would hear that I spoke of the Goddess as 
admirable. It is your intentions that I do not find so 
pleasing."
    "When you speak of Her-"
    Herran sighed and advanced a step, knowing that Costan 
had not seen him. "Father," he said quietly, when the 
shimmering silver eyes fastened on him. "Please."
    Costan stared for a moment more; then he turned away, 
waving a hand and murmuring something that Herran could 
mistake for "Welcome home," if he listened charitably.
    "Thank you, Father," Herran said, and moved to join 
him, with an apologetic glance at Anadrel. She nodded and 
sank back into the chair, closing her eyes. Her fingers 
tapped the arms of her chair restlessly a few times, and 
then were still. Her breathing slowed, deepened, and she 
was gone, in a trance as deep and real as any his father 
had ever undergone.
    Herran shook his head. Privately, he feared that his 
grandmother's attempt to recapture her lost powers of a 
magic that she would not even describe to him were as 
fruitless an endeavor as his father's hunt for his mother 
in the spirit realm, as false a mask for her grief. But 
she was not inclined to listen to him; she had never been 
inclined to listen to anyone but Haasinon, and him only 
barely. He kept his opinions to himself, and only asked 
politely about it on occasion, as he did about his 
father's work in the Temple.
    As he did now.
    "The Goddess responds?" he asked his father, who had 
retreated to the window of the wide sitting room and was 
gazing out upon the sweep of fields and fruit trees that 
could be seen from it as if it were vitally important that 
he memorize every detail.
    "Yes." His father did not pull his eyes from the view 
to look at Herran, and his voice was flat, without its 
usual religious fervor on the subject. "She gives us 
everything that we could ever desire; She is the 
inspiration for the Laws. She is the fount of all goodness 
and light."
    Herran frowned and dared to touch his father's arm in 
concern. "Is something wrong?" he asked hesitantly, when 
Costan looked at him.
    "No," Costan said quietly. "Nothing." The sunlight 
shimmered in the white hair that he and his mother shared 
as he looked back out the window at the estates. 
"Nothing..." he repeated, his voice slowly trailing off, 
his eyes widening as if he meditated upon the Goddess or 
fixed his mind on another subject equally cloudy and 
distant.
    Herran moved away from him, concerned and yet unable 
to do anything. If Costan's faith in the Goddess, the one 
tie he had to sanity since the death of his wife in the 
same battle that had claimed his father, faltered, then 
the consequences might be terrible. But how could Herran 
speak with him about it when he did not wish to talk about 
it, as long as he could pretend to himself that nothing 
was wrong?
    And especially when Herran was not all that devout 
himself?
    Herran retreated to his own room, set slightly off the 
main room and down one of the rolling corridors that 
formed the twisted spiral of the Turnlong dwelling, to 
rest a little and reflect on what he must do. The room, 
comfortable and quiet and familiar from his earliest 
childhood, surrounded him and shut him off from the world, 
and he treasured the sensation as he wandered about the 
room, fingering the books, scores of music, paintings, and 
silver knickknacks set on fine wooden tables that his 
father had made for him in better days.
    If only he could overcome the conviction that it was 
better to watch someone else go to ruin rather than 
interfere when one's help was not needed. Such a thing was 
Elwen, and yet he was uneasy with it, convinced in some 
part of himself that it was wrong. But he believed it, and 
he could not change it.
    Abruptly, he realized two things at once: he still 
wore his patrol boots, which pinched his feet and stank of 
something he had stepped in crossing the Corallen Valley 
to the Gate; and his fingers held one of the spheres of 
silver and paler metal that Keesa had shown him.
    Frowning, Herran held it up before his eyes, turning 
it this way and that. It revealed no secret message to 
him, no clue to reveal how it had gotten there. He sniffed 
it, but there was no scent of magic. Mortal agency had 
placed it there on the table, then.
    But why? And who?
    He sat down on the bed, and pulled off the boots, 
setting them in a corner of his room. Then he tossed the 
ball back and forth from hand to hand, enjoying the 
sensation of the pain leaving his feet in shimmering waves 
and seeming to travel into the earth. When he thought he 
could stand it, he folded his feet beneath him and lay 
back on the bed, still tossing the sphere from hand to 
hand.
    It did nothing. It did not seem to have a purpose. No 
matter how he touched or tapped the wires, they did not 
unfold and pierce him. The silver ring rang sweetly when 
he tapped it, with no sound to indicate that it was more 
or less valuable than it looked. He gave up at last and 
set the sphere on the table beside the bed.
    He let himself sleep for a little while, dark and 
dreamless, controlled rest that he pulled himself out of 
as soon as the smell of the boots became too much, and 
then carried the boots outside.
    The gleaming lawns and the trees, laden with clusters 
of fruit changing colors like the leaves in autumn, tossed 
in the wind. Herran smiled and walked among the trees for 
a short time, his head uplifted, his eyes closed as he 
listened to the song of the leaves rubbing against each 
other and smelled the fruit bobbing.
    Inevitably, of course, the smell reminded him too much 
of the forest on the border between Rowan and Shadows, and 
he awakened himself and moved briskly between the trees 
and beyond them, to where a small pool fed by one of 
Rowan's numerous underground springs lay.
    One of the tenants, a young boy, knelt there when he 
arrived, scrubbing a tunic that was too large to belong to 
him with only a shadow of the grace that would be his when 
he had seen more years. Twice he almost fell into the 
pool. Herran watched him in amusement from the shadow of 
the nearest tree, and went to help him out of the water 
when he did fall in, the third time.
    "Thank you," he gasped as he struggled out of the 
water, clutching the tunic with one hand and Herran's arm 
with the other. "I didn't think the water was that cold." 
He shivered and looked at the pool with a mixture of 
irritation and longing. He wanted to climb in, with the 
day so hot, but he feared the first touch of the coolness 
on his skin.
    Herran shrugged as he knelt at the pool's edge himself 
and searched for a stone with which to knock the worst of 
the mess from the boots. It seemed that he had stepped 
into one of the fresh piles of manure that they often 
spread in the fields to aid the natural waste that the 
bronklos shed, and it did not want to come loose, having 
crusted and dried. "It comes from underground. What would 
you think?"
    "I- didn't really think about it," the boy said, his 
teeth chattering as a delayed attack of the shivers hit 
him. He wrapped his arms around himself for a moment, and 
then remembered and raised his body temperature, smiling a 
little sheepishly at Herran as if to excuse the magic. "I 
suppose I should have."
    Herran shook his head, and went back to his scrubbing, 
adding enough water to get the manure off without ruining 
the hard leather of the boots. The boy watched in silence 
for a few long minutes, and then decided that he should 
introduce himself.
    "I'm Gistajamalena," he said, putting out one hand. 
Herran clasped it and nodded, giving his own name.
    "You're the Lord Turnlong?" Gistajamalena gaped at 
him. "You look too young." He bit his lip then, and looked 
down at the grass. "I didn't mean any disrespect, my Lord 
Turnlong-"
    "I know," said Herran, a little impatiently. It seared 
him when people thought him a lord because of something 
his great-grandfather, or someone even further back, had 
done. He wanted to be recognized on his own merits, not 
those of his blood, however heroic his ancestors might 
have been. "I didn't mean any disrespect, either. I didn't 
recognize you, after all, or ask for your name, but I 
should have."
    "But you don't owe me anything," Gistajamalena said, 
his eyes puzzled, almost wary, as he watched Herran knock 
the clods loose.
    "Neither do you owe me anything."
    "We rent the land from you."
    Herran shook his head. "The land is yours. So is the 
food that you cultivate, any animals you can raise on it, 
and any treasures that you might find. We have your help 
in harvesting our own food as well, and that is more than 
enough."
    The young man stared at him with fascinated attention, 
and then said, "I didn't know that. That wasn't the way 
they explained it to me."
    "Who?" Herran asked, concentrating on a stubborn clod 
clinging to the sole of the boot. How could he possibly 
have walked through this without noticing it? Too engaged 
in his conversation with Keesa, most likely, and then too 
nervous about meeting with the justice master to notice 
the smell.
    "I don't know their names. They said it was very 
important that I not know them." There was the sound of a 
thrill in the boy's voice. "But they gave me this, and 
said they would like to talk to me again."
    Herran turned his head to see what the boy was 
holding- though that proved unnecessary; Gistajamalena was 
almost shoving it into his face. When he did see it, he 
tensed and stared.
    A silver ring, with tangles of pale metal wire 
twisting out of it and back into it. This one was slightly 
more intricate than the one Herran had left in his room. 
He had no idea what that meant, if anything.
    Even though he did not think the spheres weapons, even 
though Gistajamalena obviously wanted him to take it, he 
did not touch it. "Did they tell you what they wanted you 
to do with it?" he asked as calmly as he could, again 
calling upon his training in the Laws.
    Gistajamalena shook his head and tucked his treasure 
into his pocket again, seeming slightly disappointed that 
the Lord Turnlong was not more interested in it. But he 
brightened almost at once, and did his best to look 
mysterious. "They said it was important, and special, and 
that I was a good student. They wanted to speak with me 
again."
    "Do you remember what they looked like?"
    "I couldn't see their faces," said the boy, his bright 
blue eyes sparkling with something that danced between 
mischief and awe. "They were cloaked and hooded. But there 
were five of them, and except for my not knowing their 
names, they told me everything else."
    "What everything else?"
    "That the Laws are evil, and that the prominence of 
the great families has endured too long, and must come to 
an end if any true greatness is to be achieved," 
Gistajamalena said, with the quick and prompt recall of a 
student who does not know what any of the words he has 
spoken really mean. "They said that we rented the land 
from you, and that we shouldn't have to do that. They said 
that curalli were being mistreated." He hesitated, then, 
and a shadow darkened his face. Even so young, he was 
still Elwen, and it was obvious how much the words he had 
to speak next hurt him. "They said that you and your 
father use curalli as- slaves- on your northern farms," he 
said, peering up at Herran almost timidly. His voice sank 
on the dreaded word. "You don't, do you?" he asked in a 
pleading tone.
    Herran shook his head, though it was more of an 
automatic reaction than a firm denial. Shock danced in 
him. Such accusations were- ridiculous. 
    And even if the accusers believed that they had some 
right to make these claims, then why did they make them 
from the shadows, rather than out in the open light of 
day, where anyone could hear them? There were numerous 
Rowanian laws for such things: dueling procedures for 
revenging insults, means of hiring psychic assaulters who 
could read the truth in the thoughts of the accused-
    And means, as well, for punishing the insult offered 
by the accusers if their claims did not turn out to be 
true.
    Feeling anger begin to boil in him, Herran stood with 
a swift, sharp movement and pulled the boots on. They were 
mostly free of the manure, and that would have to do. The 
more he thought of someone accusing the Turnlongs without 
having the courage to face him directly and look into his 
eyes, the angrier he got, and the Laws be damned. He would 
go to the justice master again this very night, not only 
to answer the challenge that Irrall would be sure to make 
at midnight, but also to claim the right to challenge 
anyone who came forward and said this.
    "What are you going to do?" Gistajamalena, who had 
been watching him with a mixture of fascination and fear, 
whispered suddenly.
    Herran glanced at him, and saw the boy shrink back a 
little. He smiled and did his best to calm his temper. No 
need to frighten children in the streets, and be accused 
of breaking the Laws before he ever reached Lord 
Shennalor. "I'm sorry," he said, dropping into a kneeling 
position again before the boy. "But my family's honor has 
been threatened, and I must seek out and challenge the 
offender before he can do something about it."
    "I- you don't keep slaves, do you, after all?"
    "No."
    "Then I don't understand why you're so upset," said 
Gistajamalena, in the hesitant voice of a child who is not 
sure his observations matter, or that they will be 
listened to if they do. "My mother said that you weren't 
like that."
    "Like what?"
    "Obsessed with honor, and your family, and-" The boy 
paused, then shrugged and said, "She said everyone in your 
family was mad except for you. And you looked mad just 
now."
    Herran closed his eyes for a moment. Obeying the Laws 
had never been his forte, but this! He would have to hope 
that Irrall's challenge would come at midnight, or later, 
though midnight was the traditional time for such things. 
He would need that long to calm the rage that stormed 
through him, and threatened to explode at any moment in 
flames or lightning or acid.
    "I am sorry," he said quietly. "Perhaps-" He looked 
down at the boy, and wondered if he would understand. But 
whether he understood or not, it seemed that the cowards 
who had told him these lies were using children to spread 
their falsehoods. Perhaps he could counteract that, a 
little, by giving one of them some truth. Even if he did 
not understand it, he might repeat it to someone who 
would, as he had with the lessons the cloaked figures had 
given him.
    And besides, Herran liked the boy, and thought he 
deserved to know the truth.
    "I do not consider myself obsessed with honor," he 
said. "But there is something happening here that could 
threaten not only my family but me, later, if I do not 
quell it in the beginning. So, I move to challenge those 
who would challenge me. It is cowardly to speak from the 
shadows, when we might speak from the sunlight."
    "That-" The boy's mouth was open in wonder. "That's 
just what they said you would say," he whispered, after a 
long moment.
    "What?" Herran stared at the boy, a chill of fear 
moving through the middle of his hot anger.
    Gistajamalena nodded earnestly, his dark hair flopping 
about his shoulders. It badly needed to be cut, but Herran 
supposed that the boy was not yet allowed a knife sharp 
enough for the task. "They said that you would say they 
spoke from the shadows. That you would insist on 
challenging them. They said that they expected you to do 
it, and that they welcomed the challenge, when you made 
it."
    Herran had to look away to keep the expression on his 
face from the boy. What in the name of the stars could he 
say to that? How was he supposed to look?
    He had no enemies save Irrall, who would disdain 
contacting him in this way, if only because it would look 
too curalli and start the rumors of his mixed blood yet 
again. He had no one, he thought, who knew him so well.
    Save his father and grandmother, of course, who would 
have no need to play these kinds of games, and would 
likely disdain them as much as Irrall did in any case. 
Herran shook his head, bewildered.
    "Herran."
    Herran swung back at once. The boy's voice had 
changed, become stilted and almost familiar. The 
expression on his face was blank, eerily still, without a 
stir of any kind of emotion. The urgency in the 
psychically controlled child's voice made all the stranger 
a contrast, therefore.
    Herran laid a hand on the hilt of his sword, but it 
was an empty gesture. He could not attack the child even 
if Gistajamalena should be made to attack him. "Yes?" he 
asked as calmly as he could.
    "This is a warning. I do not belong to the side that 
would seduce you. But you must choose a side now, and they 
will not let you believe that you have a choice. Be sure 
that you know what the choices are, and that you make it 
rather than be forced into it."
    "Why are you warning me like this?" Herran's voice 
crackled with disgust. He stared hard at the boy's face, 
as if by doing so he could knock the mind of the psychic 
assaulter connected to him loose.
    "Because I account you a friend, and I do not want to 
see you forced into a corner."
    And then she was gone.
    Herran let out a slow breath, knowing who it had been, 
of course.
    Amara.
    Gistajamalena shook his head and seemed to come back 
to himself. "What happened?" he whispered, and then stared 
up into Herran's face with sudden sharp loathing- not for 
the older Elwen, but for what had been done to him. "I 
know!" he said. "I was-"
    "I know," Herran said in turn, patting the boy's 
shoulder firmly. "It won't leave any lasting effects. I'm  
sorry that you had to go through it."
    "Thank you," Gistajamalena said in a subdued voice, 
but his heart wasn't in it. In moments, he excused himself 
and trotted away across the open lawn, clutching the 
dripping tunic, his head bowed.
    Herran stared after him, but the boy's fate was only 
one of the worries suddenly tangled in the net of his 
spinning mind.
    He still did not know what the silver spheres meant, 
or what the decision he needed to make would be, or what 
was tearing the patrol apart, but he had gained the 
strange idea that they were all connected.
    For what it was worth.
----------------------------------------------------------
    And the link was Amara, whom he understood not at all, 
who would have no real reason to warn him. He did not 
trust her. There had to be something more than friendship 
behind the warning.
    "Herran? You've hardly touched your food. Is something 
wrong?"
    Herran raised his eyes to his grandmother's face. They 
were alone already, Costan having said something about 
praying to the Goddess. Anadrel gazed at him across her 
own mostly empty plate of meat, bread, and fruit, and 
Costan's nearly full one, her silver eyes bright but her 
voice hesitant.
    Herran looked down at his own plate. It looked more 
like his father's than he had thought it would. "Yes," he 
said quietly. "Strange things have been happening. And I 
can't really find a way to understand them, because I do 
not understand the person who binds them all together."
    Anadrel stared at him for a long moment, her eyes 
narrowed, and then said, "That's not all that's bothering 
you. Is it?"
    "No." Herran looked up at her and held her gaze. 
"Tati, what do you seek when you sit before the fire? Do 
you think you will find your magic again, or are you 
looking for Grandfather?"
    Anadrel let out her breath in a hiss. "Herran," she 
said. "I would thank you not to speak about that, either 
alone with me or in front of your father-"
    "You asked."
    "There is something else wrong," Anadrel said in the 
manner of the healer she had once been and sometimes was 
still, ignoring the unpleasant remark. "What?"
    Herran shook his head. "What is not wrong? These 
strange wire spheres appearing everywhere. My patrol 
ripping itself apart over something that divides them 
bitterly, but which they will not speak to me about. The 
justice master thinking that it may be time to split up my 
patrol. Your obsession, Father's obsession, a mysterious 
warning from the mouth of a child who seems to have spoken 
with me only to warn me-"
    "I should like to see one of these wire spheres. I 
have seen your father carrying one at times, but never for 
long enough that I might get a good look at it. Do you 
have one?"
    Herran jerked his head up. "Then you know what they 
mean?"
    "I did not say that. But I should like to see it."
    Sighing, Herran stood and went into his bedroom. He 
heard Anadrel mutter something behind him, and he turned 
to see her staring into the fire across the room, her eyes 
wide and blank and her fingers tapping their unsettling 
rhythm on the arm of the chair.
    He turned his back again and went into the room.
    A few minutes of searching convinced him that the wire 
sphere was not in his bedroom any longer. Cursing and 
muttering under his breath, he stepped through the door.
    "It's not here any more, tati-"
    He stopped. Her head sagged on her chest, and he could 
hear no sound of her breathing.
    "Grandmother!" He rushed to her at once, kneeling 
beside her chair, his curses changed to prayers. He would 
give up anything and everything simply to see her breathe 
again. "Grandmother, answer me, please!"
    She did not move. Her heart was not pounding.
    Frantic now, Herran pulled her back and tried to 
breathe air into her lungs. They released it into his face 
again in a fetid gush, as if he were trying to give breath 
back to a dead thing.
    "No," he whispered, stepping back and staring at the 
body. His mind worked and flipped, trying to decide what 
to do. Go for a healer? Try his own untrained and 
technically illegal magic?
    There came a great whoosh, and then suddenly Anadrel 
was breathing again, as if the breath he had tried to give 
her had gone into her lungs after all. She coughed 
rackingly and touched her sharp face; all at once she 
looked all her seven thousand years. "What happened?" she 
said, when she had her breath back from Herran's sudden 
and ferocious hug.
    "I don't know," he said, stepping back, partially to 
let her breathe and partially to block the sight of the 
fire from her with his body. He thought that she might 
have fallen too deeply into the trance, but he knew that 
she would reject the suggestion at once with a tirade of 
fierce pride.
    "Well, it won't happen again, so you can stop looking 
at me like that." But Anadrel's face was pale, and she 
avoided his eyes.
    Herran patiently pursued it. "What were you thinking 
of just before the darkness came?"
    "I can't remember."
    Herran's eyes widened. His ears had buzzed with her 
lie. It was the first time he could remember that she had 
lied to him. Even the deaths of his grandfather and mother 
she had told him with a tight and tearless face, her 
emotion held in check, thrown towards the human foe before 
she began to grieve.
    "Tati."
    Anadrel lowered her head and looked away from him, the 
part of her face that he could see the picture of misery. 
"Please, Herran," she whispered. "I do not wish to speak 
of this now, and perhaps I will not wish to ever speak of 
it."
    Herran sighed and stepped back. When he did try to 
figure out what was wrong with someone else, to learn the 
problems he or she faced, it always ended like this. "I am 
sorry, tati. What-"
    He stopped, because Anadrel had begun to sing. It was 
eerie, both because her face was blank and she did not 
seem to know she was singing, and because though she had a 
fine voice, his grandmother was embarrassed at her lack of 
composing skill and had set her harp aside long years 
before he was born.
    And eerie because he had never heard this song before.

    "In a country drowned by the sea,
     Where the seafolk sing all that will be,
     I make musics clear, songs of cheer,
     And wonder why they went away from me.

    "In a country drowned by the sand,
     Where the wind sings to the lonely land,
     I makes musics of old glories, faded stories,
     And wonder what will bring them to my hand.

    "The songs flutter just beyond my reach,
     Beneath the sand, on sandy beach.
     They sing and play the livelong day,
     And will not learn what I have to teach."

    Anadrel paused, her face twisted as she stared, sweat 
gleaming on the cheeks and near her eyes. For a moment, 
Herran thought she was finished, and he started to move 
forward, thinking to calm her.
    But she began to sing again, and the song was bright 
and terrible to hear.

    "In a country raised on high,
     Where mountains chant grim tales to the sky,
     I makes musics of prayers for the frosty airs,
     And wonder if I will see her, by and by.

    "In a country drowned by trees,
     Where the leaves clash like soft green seas,
     I make musics of living for gift-giving,
     And wonder what will bring me content, hearts-ease.

    "She laughs just beyond my dreams,
     A fragile dancer by my music's streams.
     All love in a day may vanish away,
     And leave not even the tiniest of gleams."

    The song ended, but Anadrel repeated the last two 
lines again, weeping now, the flames catching and setting 
fire to her tears.
    "Tati-"
    For a long moment, she stared at him as if she had 
forgotten who he was, eyes mad and wild, teeth bared, 
mouth giving sobs that seemed oddly unconnected to her 
tears. Then she stood and ran into her bedroom.
    When she reached it, she stood in the doorway for a 
moment, and then turned and faced him. She had regained 
her dignity; her hand wiped the tears away as if they had 
never been there. But the expression on her face was even 
more heartbreaking than the one she had worn in the first 
months after Haasinon's death, and Herran turned his gaze 
away, feeling the wave of pain that emanated from her.
    Hot, this wave. Hotter than that coming from a torture 
victim. Herran ached for her and wondered what he could 
possibly do to mend the wound it seemed he'd torn open, 
both at once.
    "I simply wish to be left alone for a little while," 
his grandmother said in a soft voice with steel and 
something else beneath it. "You will see to that, won't 
you, Herran?"
    He nodded.
    "Keep your father from coming in after me?"
    He nodded again.
    "Thank you, ianaga. I am proud that you bear my 
blood."
    On the heels of the last word came the sound of the 
door closing softly.
    Herran stared at the fire, then moved closer to it, 
holding out his hands to the blaze. But it did not matter. 
He still shivered violently, and could not calm that 
shuddering, nor the wild beating of his heart.
    Rationally, he knew that Anadrel's sickness, or 
trance, or whatever it had been, had nothing to do with 
the silent struggle that seemed to infect not only the 
patrol but everyone he knew. Still, both at once 
frightened him. He feared that he would not be able to 
deal with it, that something would happen to keep him from 
healing everyone.
    He sighed, and sat down to await Quirrin's summons.




                        Chapter 2
                     Singing Darkness
    "When a summons comes for one, it is always wise to 
answer it. Unless it is a summons to death, of course, or 
a duel."
    -Attributed to Denya, Lord of Daydark.

    Herran looked up at the cool gleam of the Bear in the 
darkness, and noticed that the stars stood at almost 
midnight. It seemed that Irrall had not waited that long 
to issue his challenge after all. He meant for them to 
fight at that time.
    The two guards on either side of him stirred. He had 
asked that he might have a moment to look up at the 
Prison, and traditionally every request of the challenged 
was to be answered, as he might not live to see the 
morning, but they were getting impatient.
    Just before one of them would have spoken, urging that 
they move on, Herran found the sight he wanted to see. A 
gleam of light from the bear's muzzle, glaring through the 
windows that were its eyes as if defying the dark. That 
was the light in the master torturer's office, and it 
meant that Quirrin was there, and that this was a real 
duel, not some mockery that Irrall was trying to conduct 
without his noticing.
    "Good," he said, and smiled. One of the guards glanced 
at him curiously, but said nothing.
    They moved through the gates without trouble, largely 
because the glorlai, great cougar-like and telepathic cats 
who worked with the guards, had run ahead to warn the men 
at the gate. They saluted respectfully as Herran passed 
them, in fact.
    Along with requests, the traditions demanded that the 
challenged be granted honor.
    Herran moved without thought or sound across the lawn 
and towards the Prison, keeping his mind fixed in distant 
and dream-like contemplation of the night's beauty. Clouds 
shielded the moons, but not all of the stars, and the 
silver light turned the clouds to silver as well. A 
scattering of wealth across the sky, they looked, like 
fleecy stars themselves.
    A good omen, of course. It had to be. But for whom? 
The black stars that Herran could not see surely shone 
this night as well, and Irrall might have taken them as a 
sign of his victory.
    Stars, for all Herran knew, the silver ones might be 
for him as well.
    He laughed.
    The same guard who had glanced at him before looked at 
him again, and as swiftly looked away. Herran smiled. He 
had lost his earlier anger, and now found himself filled 
with a mixture of eagerness and impatience. His eyes 
burned, his step constantly quickened almost enough to 
take him from between his guards, and his hand never 
strayed far from the hilt of his sword.
    Perhaps that did look like anger, come to think of it.
    Herran was not thinking of it. Stars reigned in his 
mind; the Goddess reigned there, as his father proclaimed 
She always should. He might die. He might not.
    What mattered was that he should swing his sword, and 
did he die, it would not be in some craven and 
dishonorable manner.
    He came at last, after a long time of walking up and 
down stairs and through tunnels- it was not simple to get 
anywhere in the Prison, due to the necessity of delaying 
any prisoner who might escape- to the master torturer's 
office. Soft voices came from inside that stopped at once 
when one of his guards knocked on the door.
    "Come in," said Quirrin's voice a moment later, the 
same smooth and warm one that Herran remembered from this 
afternoon. He stepped forward and opened the door before 
the guard could.
    The room was warmly lighted by lamps, brighter than it 
had been this morning with the sun pouring through the 
windows. Quirrin stood behind his desk, hands clasped 
behind his back. The casual pose did not make him look 
less intimidating. He wore the extremely formal clothes of 
the master torturer, silver so as not to show the blood, 
with the red-and-yellow badge of the whip and chain 
fastened to his tunic. At his side hung a whip with 
twenty-one tails, the number of the branches of the rowan 
tree, the numbers of members on the Council of Rowan. He 
looked solemn, but he caught Herran's eye and winked.
    "Herran."
    Herran turned, his eyebrows lifted a little at the 
unexpectedly courteous greeting. Irrall stood in the far 
corner, clad formally in black and silver. Silver gloves 
encased his hands, even, and a pendant of a dragon wound 
about a rowan tree hung at his throat. He had brought the 
full regalia that the oldest customs demanded, customs so 
old that they had had duelists wearing the dragon and the 
rowan tree long before those became the symbols of the 
Council of Rowan.
    "Irrall," he responded, inclining his head politely.
    Irrall smiled, and his voice continued, patient and 
friendly. His coldly glowing eyes, showing a fever equal 
to Herran's in its own way, belied his tone. "I am glad to 
see you still alive. I would have thought you might have 
committed suicide."
    "Why would I?"
    Irrall changed the subject. "You might have put on 
more formal dress." The patrol leader still wore tunic and 
leggings stained from travel through the forest.
    "I might have."
    Irrall put his eyebrows up as well, and smiled without 
humor. "Brave words, my friend, but we shall see your 
death in those clothes, and would that not be shaming for 
such a proud lord as yourself?"
    "Is that the charge brought against me?" Herran asked 
calmly, glancing at Quirrin. "Arrogance?"
    "No." The master torturer spoke without inflection, 
and his eyes shifted from one young man to the other as if 
merely appraising them like jewels, as if he did not care 
who won the contest. That was the way it should be, Herran 
thought, obscurely comforted. All was proceeding just as 
it should. "The charge-"
    "I will tell him," Irrall interrupted.
    Quirrin shot him a glance cold as a curalli's heart. 
"I will finish speaking," he said, when the crossbreed had 
seemed to shrink into himself. "Irrall claims that you 
insulted him this morning in battle, and he has the right 
to claim recompense through the Arbleronwa."
    Herran nodded. The Arbleronwa was the dueling contest 
that had to be fought; its name meant "irrefutable." If he 
did not take up the sword, Irrall would simply kill him 
where he stood.
    Luckily for both his own honor and Irrall's, he 
carried his sword mainly for reasons such as this. He 
loved fighting things he could understand, rather than on 
the many times incomprehensible orders of the Council or 
the justice master.
    "Also," Quirrin continued, "he claims that you broke 
the Laws of Rowan by using emotional magic against a 
curalli, killing him with acid. He claims that he saw this 
with his own eyes." His cool silver gaze measured Herran 
for a long moment, and then he said, "Do you wish to deny 
this claim?"
    Herran shook his head. "No."
    "And you know what it means?" Quirrin lifted his 
eyebrows. "That even if you win the duel, then I have the 
right to claim what debt I will from you, whether that be 
punishment or service?"
    "I do."
    "Then there only remains the anointing, and then we 
may begin." Quirrin stepped back, looking from one of them 
to the other.
    Irrall's sword flashed out and towards Herran with a 
quickness that dismissed his doubts about the man's 
shadowed Elwen blood right then and there. He tried to 
dodge, but the point scraped his shoulder. He stopped as 
he felt the blood begin to flow, and nodded. Irrall had 
won the right of the anointing.
    Excited, Irrall struck again, this time at Herran's 
left arm. Herran suffered a gash before he could step 
backwards and draw his own weapon.
    Irrall tried a third time- and then went sprawling to 
the ground, shrieking, as the master torturer's whip 
tangled his ankles and pulled them out from under him.