Lute of Thorns
                         Prologue
            1014, Age of Arcadia, Early Spring
    "Greetings, my Lord Elshar."
    Elshar Deathwield, the Lord of Deathwield Klaina, 
turned his head and lifted his eyebrows. It was rare that 
any of the healers approached him; they seemed to feel 
instinctively that what he did, in protection and defense 
of their people, was separate or even opposed to what they 
did, healing and treating wounds and diseases. "My lady- 
Shirranan," he said, his memory supplying the name after a 
moment. "Is there something that you wished to speak to me 
about?"
    Shirranan hesitated, licking her lips, blinking now 
and then as if she thought that delaying would make 
speaking to her lord easier. Elshar waited patiently, his 
own green eyes fixed on her blue-gold ones.
    "Yes," she said at last.
    Elshar arched his eyebrows once more in invitation, 
but Shirranan said nothing for a long moment more. Elshar 
tamed his own impatience. He was used to having people 
speak to him at once, and then run away, either to carry 
out his orders or because they felt as if they were 
wasting his time by staying too close. He could afford to 
wait while one healer gathered her courage.
    "It is a message from the Lady Darlindra, my lord," 
she said at last. "She- told me to tell you that she is 
making progress on the Prophecy of Veneret, and that she 
thinks now that she knows that it will take place, and 
where."
    Elshar smiled in delight. The Prophecy of Veneret had 
puzzled them for three thousand years, and the death of 
the prophetess almost immediately after she had spoken of 
the strange images that comprised it hadn't helped. 
    And with the announcement, on the heels of the 
delight, came understanding. Shirranan was nervous because 
of the old stories that the secret of a prophecy could 
only be shared between the seers and the Lord or Lady of 
the Klaina. She thought he would kill her now.
    Elshar laughed aloud, and the healer flinched. "You 
have nothing to fear," he told her, laying a hand on her 
arm, and feeling her start at the unexpected touch. "The 
Lady Darlindra sought you out only in her excitement. She 
needed someone to carry the message, and you were closest, 
I would guess."
    Shirranan smiled a little, though her eyes still held 
his tensely. "Yes, my lord, I was walking past the Library 
door."
    "You will not be punished for knowing this."
    The healer relaxed with a sigh. "Does my lord want an 
escort to the Library?" she asked.
    Elshar snorted. "Hardly. I know that you had a 
casualty with a broken leg brought in this morning, and I 
know as well that you are the best at making sure that 
broken bones heal properly. I would not keep you from that 
important duty."
    Shirranan stared at him for a moment. "I- thank you 
for noticing, my lord," she said at last. Elshar bit his 
lip to conceal his smile. He had ruled Deathwield for over 
thirty-two hundred years, and sometimes his people still 
weren't used to his speaking to them as if they mattered, 
of knowing more about them than a Lord of the Klaina- or, 
for that matter, a Deathwield noble- was supposed to know. 
"I had not heard of any casualty, though," she added, 
daring to keep up the conversation.
    Elshar smiled a little, impressed at her courage. "My 
lord Carlian."
    "Oh? He fell from his deathtrotter?"
    "No." Elshar shrugged. "He tried to kill me. I'm 
afraid that I struck a hard blow before seeing that he 
couldn't have been serious."
    Shirranan's dark face was pale again, but she did 
manage to say, "Not serious, my lord?"
    "He would have planned it better than he did, were he 
serious." Elshar winked at the shaken woman. "If you will 
tend to your duties, my Lady Shirranan, I will tend to 
mine." He turned and made his way up the long main hall of 
the ka'cheer towards the Library; it was the direction he 
had been going in any case.
    He heard Shirranan swallow behind him, and then she 
went to go about her duty.
----------------------------------------------------------
    Elshar pushed the door to the Library open slowly, 
knowing what would happen.
    It happened. 
    The lazy swirls of power darting in the air, the light 
that glowed about the books and scrolls on the shelves, 
even the faint auras where the prophetesses were 
meditating and deep into it- they all darted towards him. 
Elshar held up one black-skinned hand, accepting the magic 
that circled him, rubbing against him with the warmth and 
silkiness of the sides of great cats. He smiled a little 
when the prophetesses went on meditating. This was the 
reception that he would have preferred from the magic, but 
it never cooperated.
    "My lord!"
    Elshar turned his head. Darlindra darted towards him, 
then remembered herself a few feet away. She bowed her 
head and clapped one fist over her heart in the salute of 
a noble. "My lord," she said, more softly, but with her 
dark green eyes glowing. The pools of dark liquid in her 
cheeks, which all churni bore, were whirling faster than 
normal, casting glints of light into the room- and Elshar 
didn't think they were wheeling with anger or frustration, 
as was normally the case. "I am so glad that Shirranan 
found you."
    "You would do well to remember whom you are sending, 
in the future."
    The prophetess looked blank for a moment. Then she 
blushed. "Understood, my lord."
    "She did no harm," Elshar went on in a slightly 
rebuking tone, "but she had harm done to her. She feared 
that she might be executed for knowing the message."
    Darlindra frowned faintly. Elshar wasn't sure if she 
really didn't know what he was talking about- some of the 
seers spent so long shut in the Library that they forgot 
what normal life outside its doors was like- or if she 
didn't understand why frightening the healer was something 
she should endeavor not to do.
    "But she is dead," said Darlindra at last.
    "No."
    Darlindra flashed him a disapproving look. "My lord, 
if you understood-"
    "I understand that you were so excited about a 
prophecy that you seized the first messenger you saw, and 
didn't care if we could spare her or not," said Elshar, 
holding her gaze. "My lady, do not do so again, and not 
only for the sake of the prophecy."
    Darlindra's blush this time made her cheeks flame. She 
ducked her head and mumbled something that Elshar took for 
an apology.
    "Now," said Elshar, when he felt a sufficient amount 
of time had passed for her to be chastised, "tell me what 
you have found."
    Darlindra nodded, her eyes still lowered, and then 
turned and led him into the shelves where the written 
series of images, scraps of poetry, and snatches of songs 
that formed the Prophecies were kept. Elshar shook his 
head as he passed a section of shelves containing about 
two dozen books. These were the hardest ones, the ones 
that might or might not come true, the ones they couldn't 
make any definite statements about because they truly did 
not know what the foretellings referred to.
    On the other hand...
    Until this morning, he would have said that the 
Prophecy of Veneret would rest among them until the end of 
time. Very few seers even tried to understand it any more, 
and said that it was probably wrong anyway.
    But Darlindra was pulling out a fresh book now, and 
showing Elshar the list of images she had made from the 
Prophecy, as well as the explanation scribbled beside the 
first three.
    Elshar started to bend his head over them, then jerked 
back with a startled oath. "This is not the order they go 
in," he said, turning to look at Darlindra.
    Darlindra smiled, her hands clasped before her; it was 
a futile attempt to look demure, what with her eyes 
dancing and her cheek-pools still whirling, and the pools 
in her hands beginning to join in the merry dance. "This 
is the order they are supposed to be in, my lord," she 
said with quiet confidence, holding his gaze. "The image 
of the fair-haired man is later in the prophecy, no matter 
that the Lady Veneret put it first."
    Elshar nodded slowly, and then bent over the first 
image. Veneret had spoken of it as "a terrible creature, 
half black boar, half white fox, running through a wood, 
bleeding high in its side." Previous commentators, 
including himself, had given up in disgust at that one. It 
seemed to have nothing to do with anything, and there were 
no half-boars, half-foxes in existence.
    It appeared that Darlindra had taken a slightly 
different course. Elshar could just make out her notes, 
written at a high-speed scrawl:
    ...doesn't have to exist; doesn't exist, but that 
doesn't mean anything. Some prophecies affect the world 
(cf. Diversa, Farlonath) with such powerful magic that 
certain conditions come into being that would not exist 
otherwise. Why not creatures? And boars and foxes both 
common in Forbge.
    Elshar pulled back, his eyes wide. "And you think that 
the Forbge Forest is the answer?"
    "Yes, my lord," said Darlindra.
    "Why?"
    "Read the second image, my lord."
    Elshar bent to the image, which Veneret's text listed 
as "an evening-blue lake, ringed with trees bearing 
summer-green leaves."
    The note read: blue, black (bark of trees, gained from 
other trees in the same vision), and green. Blue- blue 
eyes? Daydark? Daydark. By the same token, green leaves 
means green eyes means Deathwield. Black bark means black 
skin, or death Elwen. The Lady Oiolani is a Daydark, death 
Elwen woman serving the Lord Elshar, lord of the 
Deathwield Klaina. The Lady Oiolani is currently close to 
the Forbge.
    Elshar exhaled in admiration. "Are you sure of these 
meanings?"
    "Quite certain, my lord."
    Elshar was nodding even before she answered the 
question, though. He had tried Veneret in odd hours before 
her death, and she had mentioned black bark obsessively. 
When someone had asked her what it meant, in an unguarded 
moment, she had answered absently, "Black skin." And 
everyone knew that a prophetess, when she wasn't thinking 
about the prophecy at all, could sometimes give answers 
that could not be gained from intensive study.
    "She means churni, my lord," said Darlindra 
strenuously, not really breaking but adding to his train 
of thought. "Death Elwens. And that means that blue and 
green in the same prophecy have to have a meaning that 
they have to all of us. Blue eyes, green eyes. Daydark and 
Deathwield nobility. And even the positioning of the trees 
in the vision is correct. A blue lake, like a blue eye. 
Black bark surrounding it, like black skin. And green 
leaves at the edges. She serves you behind serving Arcadia 
and our people."
    Elshar gazed at the prophecy through half-shut eyes, 
trying not to let his own excitement run away with him, 
trying not to let his own conviction that Darlindra was 
right get the better of him.
    "But you don't think that the time of this prophecy 
could already have passed?" he asked.
    Darlindra snorted. "My lord, the Lady Oiolani has 
barely held her position for nine hundred years. And a 
boar-fox would have been unusual enough, I think, to have 
been reported to the Council."
    Elshar nodded. The curalli, or shadowed Elwens, of the 
Forbge Forest were arrogant, taking help from the Council 
of Arcadia when they wanted it and refusing it the rest of 
the time, but they would have reported something so 
unnatural to the Council. They were very protective of 
their Forest, and continually concerned that the magic the 
Council used might somehow affect its wildlife.
    "I will speak with the Lady Oiolani," he said at last. 
"But what must she do with the boar-fox when she finds 
it?"
    "Wound it, I believe," said Darlindra, coming forward 
to gesture at Veneret's original description. "And then 
follow it."
    Elshar smiled. "Well done. I will speak with her," he 
repeated. But he couldn't quite keep the last of his 
concerns to himself. "And you really think that the time 
of this prophecy has not passed?"
    Darlindra took a deep breath. "My lord, I am of the 
school that thinks no prophecy will be snapped unless it 
is meant to be. The Forces of Death gave us this gift. 
They would not let us interpret a prophecy, I believe, 
unless it has not passed, and then not unless we could do 
something about it."
    Elshar nodded. "And the final goal of this prophecy?" 
That was anything that had been argued endlessly about in 
the Prophecy of Veneret, as the prophecy contained no 
pictures of battles or other cataclysmic events. No one 
quite knew what it foretold.
    "I will have that for you as soon as I can assemble 
the images in order," said Darlindra. "But I truly do 
believe that the boar-fox is the first one. It is the only 
event, of the ones listed, that might come to the ears of 
a churni in time to do something about it."
    Elshar nodded and touched her shoulder. "You will 
receive a reward for this, my lady."
    Darlindra smiled at him. "My name in the books as the 
one who snapped the Prophecy of Veneret will be my reward, 
my lord."
    Yes, Elshar thought as he walked from the Library, it 
probably would be. He leaned against the smooth, black, 
death force wall outside the Library and reached out with 
his mind across the miles.
    Contact came almost at once.
    ^Greetings, my Lady Oiolani. I have news.^




                        Chapter 1
                       The Boar-Fox
            1014, Age of Arcadia, High Summer
    "Debente curaod arlo." (There must be light to cast a 
shadow).
    -The Lady, Eleriad Deerfriend, Councilmaster of Rowan 
during the High Ages.

    "Remember what I told you."
    Lononi rolled his eyes and kept his impatient sigh in 
check. Rolling his eyes would just have to substitute for 
now. His mother never seemed to notice gestures, or else 
just took them as beneath her, but sighs, or sounds of any 
kind, would attract notice.
    "I will, Mother," he said instead.
    Sinasta Bloodmover stood back and looked over her son 
with a critical eye. Lononi shifted from side to side, not 
knowing what she could possibly have to be critical about. 
He had gone into the Forest a hundred- a thousand- times 
before. What was it about this time that had attracted her 
attention?
    Had he done something different? Chemil had warned him 
against that, of course, but that didn't mean that he had 
to watch for it all the time. Chemil was more than a 
little overcautious.
    "Remember," said Sinasta at last, when she had 
apparently finished looking him over from head to boots 
for what Lononi fervently hoped would be the last time, 
"you have seen only three centuries. I have seen over four 
millennia. If I tell you to be careful of something, I 
mean it."
    "Yes, Mother."
    Sinasta frowned again. "Repeat that. Your vowels 
slurred."
    Lononi sighed and repeated it. Slurring one's vowels 
was something his mother did not tolerate. Though they 
lived over four thousand miles to the north of Rowan, the 
city his mother had been born in, she insisted they stay 
as close as possible to the complicated vowels of Aril, 
the tongue spoken in the city.
    "Correct," said his mother at last. "And do remember 
to stay away from the things I told you to stay away 
from." She looked at him one more time, nodded, and then 
turned back to checking on the nazaz sprouts without 
another word or glance at him.
    That went well for Lononi, who only walked demurely 
across the small part of their fields lying fallow this 
year until he was in the shelter of the trees. Then he 
leaped ahead, hit a dead log, rolled off it, and flung 
himself around a tree.
    At last!
    He had thought that he would never get away.
    "My mother is right," the young land Elwen muttered as 
he stomped through the Forest, deliberately making noise. 
Chemil was just as likely to kill him before she saw him, 
if he didn't make it. "I have only seen three hundred 
years. And that should be young enough not to have to pay 
attention to the formal rules, shouldn't it?" he appealed 
to the branches above him. They swayed, and a blue-jay 
answered him with a sharp call, but no other reply came. 
Undaunted, Lononi continued talking to himself, also 
deliberately slurring his vowels. "She tells me I'm still 
a child, and then she's disappointed when I act like one. 
I don't understand it. I don't-"
    "No one can understand your mother save herself," said 
a voice in a different language than the one he was using 
from just ahead of him.
    Lononi jerked up his head, then shook it. It was too 
late to try and pretend that she hadn't caught him by 
surprise. "Caught me, Chemil," he admitted, switching to 
the tongue that his friend had used. "I never hear you 
coming."
    "I know that." Chemil stepped out from behind the tree 
ahead of him, crouching beside its roots and watching him 
with eyes narrowed against the sunlight that poured 
through the leaves in this fairly open part of the forest. 
"But you would have a better chance of it if you didn't 
make all that noise, both with your boots and with your 
mouth."
    Lononi didn't point out that she was the one who had 
told him to make the noise. She wouldn't want to hear it, 
and she already had a knife out. "Fighting first today?" 
he asked.
    "No."
    Lononi nodded. Chemil was probably only his friend by 
his definition, and not hers. She always insisted that he 
give her her lesson in Aril first, and then she would show 
him more tricks of the fighting style that most curalli 
used but land Elwens didn't usually learn.
    "Al£cani, ryon," he said now, bowing to her and 
holding out hand, palm up, towards her.
    Chemil started to reply, then frowned. "That doesn't 
make sense," she accused, still using Melli, the shadowed 
Elwen language.
    "What doesn't?" asked Lononi.
    "The second word."
    Lononi frowned. "Ryon means lady. You know that. It 
was one of the first things I taught you." Chemil, back 
when she thought Aril was simple and she could simply 
waltz into the city and be accepted, had insisted that he 
teach her all the titles first.
    "It means wreath."
    Lononi smiled. He had just spoken the word "wreath" 
for her a few days ago. "Ah, but they are different, you 
see. Ryon is lady; raion is wreath. The second sound has 
consonantal value in the first word, but not in the 
second. It's a little longer, too."
    "They're the same damn sound."
    Lononi sighed and shook his head. At times he 
despaired of ever helping Chemil make the transition to 
Aril, at least the way she wanted to speak it. He easily 
could have taught her any number of lesser versions, but 
she wanted to learn the High Tongue as it was spoken in 
the city, the same language his mother had taught him from 
birth. This was one of the snares that they constantly 
tumbled into. Melli had only nine vowels, and Aril had 
twenty-six.
    "No," he said patiently. "I've told you. Listen." He 
spoke the words again, carefully stressing the different 
length in the first one. "You see?"
    "No."
    Lononi shook his head and sighed once more. Chemil 
narrowed her eyes. Unlike his mother, she did notice when 
someone was casting aspersions on her character, whether 
through gesture or sound.
    "What does that mean?"
    "What does what mean?"
    "That- sound."
    Lononi hid a grin and replied with a grave voice. If 
he worked this right, he could still get his fighting 
lesson today. "That's an Aril vowel too, my lady." He 
puckered his lips and blew air again, keeping his golden 
eyes gravely on her deep blue ones, so that he wouldn't 
start laughing. "It means 'stupid curalli.'"
    The knife Chemil had been holding was in the air 
before he finished. Lononi twisted to the side, laughing 
aloud now.
    "Chemil-"
    But she was rushing him, her eyes fixed on his face 
and the muscles under her dark silver skin rippling like 
rocks in oil. He had learned to recognize deadly intent, 
and besides, he could feel her emotions beating about her 
like fire and acid. He took a step back and drew the sword 
he wore at his side.
    Chemil didn't even come within reach of the blade; 
curalli policy was to avoid closing if at all possible. 
She spun on one heel instead, her dark hair flying around 
her, and tossed what seemed an endless stream of knives at 
him.
    Lononi had time for one quick curse, and then he began 
batting away the blades. He got most of them, but two came 
through. One merely scratched the skin on his left arm, 
but the other razed a deeper line of blood on his left 
knee. Pain struck up his leg.
    And the blades kept coming.
    Lononi narrowed his eyes. Anger built in him, turning 
to rage in mere seconds. He held out one hand before his 
face and concentrated, ignoring the knives that were now 
trying for his chest and face. The rage continued 
building, seeming slow to him, but infinitely faster than 
Chemil could toss her knives.
    Then it burst out of his fingers as lightning, hitting 
Chemil and knocking her to the ground.
    Lononi batted away the last daggers and stood still, 
breathing quietly. He wanted to make sure that Chemil was 
still alive, and still able to move and speak, for that 
matter, but if he approached her in this mood, he might 
lose control of his blood-hatred.
    His kind were supposed to hate hers; his mother 
followed the easy rush of hatred enthusiastically. It 
always made Lononi want to ask her why she had chosen the 
Forbge as her land in the first place, where she was 
surrounded by several million shadowed Elwens, but he had 
never quite dared to bring up the subject. He had managed 
to tame it.
    Or so he thought.
    When he used his emotional magic, it always threatened 
to get out of control.
    "Lononi?"
    He looked up, glad that Chemil was alive. She was 
propping herself up on one elbow, and looking at him with 
a wry smile. Her muscles still shuddered occasionally from 
the bolt, but otherwise it did not seem to have done her 
much harm.
    "Yes?" he asked, when he realized that she was really 
asking him to respond.
    "Remind me to stab you in the back the next time I 
want to kill you," said Chemil, standing up and going to 
retrieve her daggers. One leg weakened, and she fell. 
Lononi looked politely to the side, pretending not to have 
seen, and Chemil's voice went on as normal; if she was 
pausing to spit dirt, it didn't sound like it. "You're too 
hard to take from the front."
    It was the highest compliment she could give him, and 
Lononi found himself relaxing, smiling. This was the 
closest they had ever come to actually slaying each other, 
though they had felt the same emotions before. "Thank you, 
my lady."
    Chemil retrieved her last blade and stretched her arms 
above her head. "You don't have to call me by title, 
Lononi," she said. "No more language lessons for today. I 
want to show you something else."
    Lononi arched his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
    "Something else," said Chemil insistently, and walked 
towards the tree from behind which she had come, not 
looking back. "Following me, or not?"
    Lononi chewed on his lip a moment. She had never 
invited him further into the Forest, telling him that it 
was gurath curallimat, curalli territory. He didn't even 
know where she lived, if it was in a house or a tree or 
one of the villages.
    "I'll follow," he said quietly.
    Chemil smiled at him, brushed aside a trailing branch, 
and vanished into the shadows, exercising the magic of her 
people. Lononi followed the scent of black roses.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "Worth coming this far to see, wasn't it?" Chemil's 
voice was only a breath in his ear.
    Lononi could only nod, too choked up to speak. Of 
course, let her think that he was keeping silent because 
he didn't want to disturb the creature in front of them; 
she would only laugh at him for an emotional munth if she 
knew of his tears.
    As he watched, the stag lowered his head to crop 
again. He was feeding in the sunlight close to a small 
river, where the marshy ground was apparently too unstable 
to let the trees get a roothold, and so the sunlight fell 
free onto an unusually luxuriant meadow. His coat shone 
thick and sable, and his antlers were a crown of branching 
silver, highly unusual.
    Lononi watched for a few moments longer, aware of a 
similar stillness in Chemil. Then her hands planted 
themselves on his back and shoulders, one high, one low, 
and she gave him a shove.
    Lononi went sprawling out into the middle of the 
meadow. The stag snorted and jerked his head up, staring 
at the land Elwen.
    Lononi stared back, cursing Chemil in his mind. Now, 
no doubt, the stag would run off, and it would be another 
hundred years, if ever, before he saw another one like it-
    But, instead, the stag lowered its antlers and came 
charging towards him without warning.
    Lononi uttered a yelp of surprise and flipped himself 
backwards, out of the immediate path of the tines. The 
stag stamped past him, unable to halt his momentum, and 
then turned and thundered back.
    Lononi was on his feet by this time, and he shouted to 
Chemil as he watched the stag's hooves, "Do you think this 
is funny?"
    He just heard her merry voice above the rushing 
hooves. "He's an aradu, as I'm sure you've figured out. I 
just wanted to see how you would do against him."
    Yes, of course she did.
    Lononi didn't even consider drawing his sword. It 
would be useless against the aradu, and would only enrage 
him further, if that was possible. He likewise discounted 
reaching for the beast's mind. The aradu wore the form of 
a stag, but he wasn't really a deer. He would shake off 
the intrusion and would slam shut his mind after that, 
rendering a perhaps important last-ditch weapon impossible 
to grasp.
    Lononi danced aside from another charge, and then 
smiled as the solution came to him. It was perfect not 
only because it would allow him to avoid the aradu, but 
because it would humiliate Chemil, showing more grace than 
she had ever displayed.
    He waited patiently until the stag was in line again, 
and then, as the antlers came for him, stood his ground.
    Chemil's laughter faded. Again came her voice, fainter 
than before; the aradu was snorting now, as well as 
kicking the ground violently with his hooves. "Lononi, get 
out of the way!"
    The young land Elwen shook his head. His eyes locked 
on the stag's deep dark ones.
    "Lononi!" Chemil called again, and he knew that she 
would probably come running out to rescue him at any 
moment. The aradu would calm when he saw her. Like all the 
things from between the stars that came to rest in the 
Forbge Forest- like the Forest itself- his kind loved the 
curalli.
    But Lononi didn't want her to rescue him.
    The aradu got there before she could, luckily, and 
Lononi flipped, hurling himself over the lowered antlers 
and onto the dark back.
    It was harder than he had thought to get a grip on the 
thing, thick and shaggy black fur that surged around him 
notwithstanding. He wound up digging his fingers into the 
stag's flesh itself and hanging on.
    A loud trumpet broke from the aradu's throat. He shook 
his antlers and twisted to the side, trying to kick Lononi 
off as a horse would.
    Lononi clung.
    He thought he could hear Chemil calling his name, 
faintly, but he didn't respond. He wasn't sure that she 
would hear him, and besides, the breath had been knocked 
out of him when he landed. It was all he could do to make 
little gasps and hope they would force the air into his 
lungs, past the blockage that seemed to have taken up 
residence there.
    The aradu lowered his head and began a run to the far 
end of the meadow, then. Lononi straightened up and 
glanced over his shoulder, wondering what he would see 
this time.
    A tree.
    The thing probably meant to scrape him off on the 
bark, or perhaps jerk to a halt and hurl him into the 
trunk. Lononi dug his fingers in more fiercely and then 
waited until they were a few feet from the tree and he 
could feel the aradu slowing, a barely perceptible flexing 
of the great muscles. It would be a stop and a flinging 
him into the tree, after all.
    Lononi let time wear on, counting his heartbeats. When 
he thought that the aradu was about three heartbeats from 
stopping, he opened his mouth and sank his teeth into the 
thick black fur.
    It filled his mouth with a foul, oily taste, nothing 
like venison, and he thought about spitting it out. But he 
sank his teeth deeper instead, past the fur and finally 
into enough flesh to hurt.
    The aradu roared. Lononi had never heard any sound 
like that come out of a thing's throat before. He roared 
and whirled and stamped and did his best to shake Lononi 
off, kicking and sunfishing and bucking.
    Lononi managed to haul himself upright at last, 
releasing the hold of his teeth only long enough to grab 
onto the antlers. He yanked the stag's head back and found 
himself staring into the dark eyes.
    "Are you going to set me down gently?"
    The aradu flung his head in answer, nearly pulling 
Lononi off with the toss of his horns.
    "All right, then."
    Lononi kept a grip on the antlers with one hand while 
reaching down and drawing his boot knife with the other. 
It wasn't an easy gesture, with the back he was on tossing 
and plunging about like that, but then, Chemil had put him 
into some situations in the past that were even worse.
    He got the knife free and stabbed it down into the 
bite he had made, widening the wound.
    The aradu roared again.
    "Now?"
    The proud thing lowered his head and ran straight at 
the tree again. Lononi stabbed once more, but this time 
guessed that nothing so simple as a stop was planned. The 
aradu probably planned to forsake the stag form, which it 
wore only for convenience, and become a mist, while he 
went on to hit the tree.
    Hoping that he had guessed right, Lononi rose to his 
feet, locking one boot in the bite to give himself 
purchase. He prayed the stag wouldn't toss his head back 
now, but it seemed that the aradu was totally focused on 
the run and not about to look back or even move his head 
from its lowered position.
    Lononi leaped.
    He hit another tree, or at least the low-reaching 
branch of one, and caught it, swinging around completely 
to crash into the trunk. The sting on his arm and in his 
knee told him that his wounds from his fight with Chemil 
had reopened. He ignored them, though, and turned to see 
what had become of the aradu.
    He saw only flashes of black and silver light and 
mist. The thing had disintegrated, and he would have been 
left to smash against the tree, if he had stayed on the 
stag's back.
    Lononi shook his head and dropped to the ground. 
Turning away from the spectacle of the fading beast at 
last, he saw Chemil halfway across the field, one hand 
pressed to her mouth.
    "Will you please not do that again?" he said 
plaintively.
    "I've never seen anyone do that," muttered Chemil, 
ignoring the question. "To force an aradu from the form it 
had chosen!" Her eyes came back to his, bright as any 
young land Elwen's in the midst of a game. "Will you teach 
me how you did that?" she begged.
    Lononi blew out a breath of disgust. He enjoyed 
Chemil's company, truly he did, but some of the time, she 
was too curalli for him. She didn't care that he had 
almost been trampled to death; all she saw was the glory 
of it. Death itself was nothing to her.
    "Not today," he said. "Besides, I think Finatha will 
be looking for me." He retrieved his boot knife and wiped 
it on the grass, despite the fact that it didn't have 
blood but some other clear, sticky fluid coating the 
blade. That might not corrode the blade as blood would if 
he left it on there, but he was unwilling to take the 
chance.
    "They don't 'look' for you," said Chemil, with a 
disapproving snort. "They don't even really want you 
there. You know that. Why do you go back?"
    Lononi shrugged. "I suppose I feel as if I owe them 
something."
    "Your contempt," said Chemil. "That's all. What else 
could there be?"
    "I've been showing them better farming techniques," 
said Lononi, ignoring her. "They seem to approve of those, 
and there's a few other gifts they'll accept."
    "They're humans," said Chemil, folding her arms and 
giving him a disapproving look. "Really, my lord, what 
else could they do but accept whatever you choose to give 
them, whether that is a gift or a well-deserved slap in 
the face? They can't fight back."
    Lononi sighed. When she started calling him by title, 
it was time to leave her. "I'll see you in a few days, 
Chemil." He turned to walk into the forest. Though he had 
never come this way before, respecting the boundaries of 
the gurath curallimat, he knew the village of Finatha 
wasn't far from the meadow. Looking up at the sun, he 
oriented himself in a moment, and went to cross the river.
    "Why a few days?"
    "I have to spend some time with my mother, to keep her 
from getting suspicious," Lononi called over his shoulder. 
He didn't want to look at her right now. The way he felt, 
he would probably end up fighting her once again, and he 
wasn't sure that he would stop with a lightning bolt this 
time. No matter how often he tried to remind himself that 
she was curalli, and that that meant certain things- just 
as being human or being land Elwen meant certain things- 
she could pass certain bounds, annoy him on certain 
points, with frightening ease.
    "Tomorrow, then."
    That did make him turn around, ready to give an 
exasperated answer, but she had already faded into the 
bushes where they had come from. Lononi checked a curse of 
frustration and waded the river. Swift and shallow, it 
foamed around his knees and chattered as it flowed towards 
the Acrad, the greatest river of the Tableland.
    "It's not fair," Lononi told the water. "No matter 
what I do, she wins. She doesn't get killingly angry after 
a fight, even if she's angry enough to start one. And when 
she almost kills me, all she really wants to learn is 
fighting techniques."
    The water sang and hastened away, offering no help. It 
was probably, Lononi considered gloomily, his own fault 
for having a shadowed Elwen friend.
----------------------------------------------------------
    He blamed himself, later, for not having realized that 
something was wrong at once. If he hadn't been so busy 
lamenting his own problems, walking along with his head 
bowed while he pondered his miserable lot in life...
    He would have realized that something was wrong.
    As it was, Lononi walked among the outer houses of 
Finatha convinced that everything was still all right. He 
called out the name of the nearest householder in Tema, 
the language that most of the humans spoke. "Mistress 
Rilla?"
    Nothing.
    Lononi halted, but when he sniffed the air, nothing 
came to him but the usual smells of food that should be 
there. He knocked on the door of the small house, 
assembled haphazardly of stone and clay- the curalli would 
permit no timber cut for houses- and then opened the door 
when no one answered.
    Then he saw, and staggered back with one hand clapped 
over his mouth, eyes wide and sick.
    Somehow the smell of cooked, or cooking, food had 
masked the smell of blood. Rilla, the human woman who ran 
the household, lay sprawled on the floor of the main room 
that served as kitchen and living area, staring up at him 
with vacant eyes. One huge hole ripped in her flank, with 
gore dripping from it in vast puddles, showed how she had 
died.
    Lononi swallowed again and again, in an effort not to 
be sick. He had seen death before, but rarely so 
violently, and certainly none that had been around for so 
long, long enough to attract buzzing flies and a small 
carnavra that flew out the window at his approach. Elwen 
bodies burned when they died, and that meant that they 
were out of sight quickly.
    He realized that he had brought up the barriers that 
kept him from feeling emotions here almost without 
thinking; the humans, having no magic themselves and no 
conception of its use, would push in on him with their 
uncontrolled feelings otherwise. Hesitantly, hoping that 
it would help, he lowered them.
    He was on his knees in a moment, vomiting, caught up 
in the impressions and passions in the room before he had 
time to think.
    Panic.
    Fear.
    Terror.
    The squeal as something charged, the feeling of 
ripping tusks exploding into her side, the pain pain pain, 
and then the crushing twist as a hoof crashed into her 
face.
    A brief struggle, and then another twist, and the pain 
soared past what she could tolerate and darkness swept in.
    Lononi came back to himself with his hands planted on 
the floor, his head bowed, his chest heaving frantically 
as he tried to suck in enough air to live. He found 
himself putting a hand on his flank, even though he knew, 
logically, that it wasn't his own side that had been 
ripped up. Feeling skin and flesh still in their proper 
places relieved him beyond measure.
    On the other hand, it did nothing to quell his soaring 
grief.
    He came to Rilla's side and reached out to close her 
eyes, gently. A fly settled on her eyeball, and Lononi 
found himself calling fire from his fingers and burning it 
without a second thought.
    Then he rose and moved further into the house.
    Rilla's daughter, Mia, lay on her side in the next 
room, the bedroom, as empty as the small hollowed-out 
acorns she liked to play with. The thing that had killed 
her had torn out her intestines through her belly and 
stamped on them, so that Lononi slipped in blood and guts 
as he tried to get to her side. He went to one knee, and 
the smell of blood made his stomach heave. There was not 
enough left in his belly to bring up, though, and so he 
stood again after a moment and scooped up Mia's body.
    He kept up his emotional barriers this time, just out 
of self-defense. His mother's warning that he had seen 
only three centuries suddenly rang painfully true. He 
hadn't yet learned to completely control his magic. He 
might go insane if he allowed himself to feel what had 
been done to her.
    But...
    Rilla's son, Theron, was missing.
    Lononi laid Mia gently on the bed, and peered out the 
window that looked onto the Forest, hoping against hope 
that the boy might have climbed out that way and escaped 
the thing.
    He had done the one, but not the other. When Lononi's 
eyes managed to sort out the almost shapeless mass of 
flesh on the ground near the beginning of the woods, he 
had to close his eyes and fight both his stomach and his 
heart again.
    But at least he had some protection.
    Rising to join his grief was another emotion, very 
nearly as strong.
    Rage.
    He stepped over Mia's body, trying not to remember the 
way she would stare at him for up to ten minutes and then 
laugh, trying to make his diamond-shaped Elwen eyes turn 
into human ones, or the way she would hit him on the knee 
and then run away, daring him to chase her. He could run 
faster than any human, of course, and so he would scoop 
her up after a few paces, breathless with laughter, 
squealing and squirming...
    Enough.
    Lononi stepped out of the room, past Rilla's body, and 
made his way to the next house, this one belonging to a 
childless couple, Ruven and Anorcha.
    The same, though Ruven had been decapitated rather 
than gored.
    And so it was for the other seven houses in the 
village. The same thing had torn through all of them, 
killing even the three armed men of Finatha, Malver and 
his sons Ias and Yubro.
    Damn it.
    Damn the thing that had done this to whatever star- 
hell awaited murderers.
    Of course, Lononi thought, such damnation wouldn't do 
much good if the beast that had done this was alive to 
escape it. He would have to make sure that it came about, 
and he would have to do it himself.
    He circled coldly around the outside of the village, 
tracking the beast. He picked up tracks that he didn't 
understand in a pile of crushed old leaves not far from 
Rilla's house and then entered the Forest.
    He felt almost nothing, but rage, and the desire to 
kill, and a faint curiosity. Was this how Chemil felt, or 
was forced to feel, almost all the time?
----------------------------------------------------------
    A snort from ahead of him was the only warning he had.
    Lononi sprang to his feet as the strange thing emerged 
from the bush, crashing in a full charge straight towards 
him. The wind shifted just then, and he understood how it 
could have kept its strong, musky scent concealed from him 
for this long.
    But...
    As it came towards him, Lononi stood his ground, sword 
drawn. He saw the lowered head, the black, bristly head of 
a boar, the tusks curving up and wickedly to the sides, 
and the white hind half of the body, which had made the 
tracks that he didn't understood.
    The boar crashed into the sword and drove the blade 
into its shoulder. It kept on coming, though, sending 
Lononi flying to the ground.
    He might, he considered as he rolled to the side 
trying to regain his footing, have underestimated the 
strength of the creature.
    The boar snorted and turned to face him. Another 
charge, and it swept its head viciously to the side, 
trying to catch him in the side with a tusk.
    Lononi felt the very tip hook into his side, and then 
he called on his rage and flung fire into the pig's face 
from two feet away.
    It squealed, and suddenly the tusk was gone. Lononi 
came back to his side, bleeding from arm and knee- the 
reopened wounds- and side now. He kept his eyes on the 
boar, though, and for the first time saw that the back 
half of its body was that of a white fox.
    That couldn't be right. That wasn't natural. Such 
things didn't exist.
    But, existing or not, it was stamping towards him once 
more, the bristles on its face still smoking slightly, and 
he had to face it.
    Lononi closed his eyes and flexed his hands a few 
times. Then he opened his eyes and caught the boar's gaze.
    A beam of gray light flashed into the air. If it had 
caught the thing, it would have turned it into stone- at 
least, Lononi thought it would have. But the boar-fox 
skipped aside and then turned and rushed into the forest.
    Lononi snarled silently, and only then realized that 
he was shaking. He sank to one knee on the ground, panting 
and once again on the verge of dry heaving. "What the hell 
is wrong with me?" he muttered.
    Of course, he knew.
    He was tired, he hadn't eaten since early this 
morning, he was wounded, and he had suffered paroxysms of 
grief from Finatha that couldn't so easily be shaken off, 
rage or no rage. He needed rest. He would have to leave 
the chase of the boar-fox-
    A memory, this time of Theron, came back to him. The 
boy watched wide-eyed as Lononi strung a crudely carved 
wooden frame with woven and stripped tanglevine, turning 
it into a harp. He had been learning to pluck the strings 
in simple patterns, and even sing a few land Elwen songs. 
His voice wavered yet, but was simple and pure and clear. 
He could probably support himself as a singer when he was 
older.
    And now he would never grow older. Now he would never 
see the southern part of the Forest, as he had talked 
about, or the desert that lay to the north, beyond the 
looming Athalustera Mountains.
    Lononi found himself on his feet again before he 
realized what he was doing, tracking the boar-fox as much 
by scent and drops of blood as the crushed trail of grass 
it left this time.
    Lononi followed the track down a ridge, and into a 
thickly wooded dell. Great fursani, their leaves turning 
golden with a far-too-early reminder of autumn, grew on 
the sides of the sunken bowl and overhung it with trailing 
branches. Trying to move through it at eye level was like 
moving through a sea of leaves. Of course, crouching 
wasn't much better.
    And it was while he was crouched, moving forward 
carefully and sniffing for the boar-fox at every step, 
that the thing struck.
    He heard a brief thump, so close that he couldn't tell 
what it was, and then a snout crashed into his head and a 
tusk ripped into the side of his face.
    Confused, and suddenly with pain exploding inside his 
head, Lononi did the only thing he could think of. He 
reached out, grasped either side of the head butting his, 
and set his hands aflame.
    The fire turned the darkness of the leaf-cave into 
thorny brightness within moments. The boar-fox cried 
hoarsely, the flame gleaming in reflections in its little 
black eyes, and tried to back away. Lononi clamped his 
hands down, but he didn't have the strength to hold the 
boar-fox when it didn't want to be held. It danced away, 
and Lononi slumped to the ground, exhausted almost beyond 
measure. Magic took a lot out of him, drawing as it did on 
the reserves of his own emotions and spirit. He would need 
rest, at the least, and probably quiet and food, to 
recover.
    But the boar-fox wasn't about to let him have those 
things. It came in again, veering when he thrust his 
flaming hand towards it, but trampling over Lononi's feet. 
Lononi spat a curse and rolled over, feeling a twinge from 
his ankle. Whether it was broken or merely sprained, he 
didn't know, but he didn't think that he would be able to 
get to his feet.
    And, from the sound of the swift rush as the boar-fox 
turned and came back again, it wasn't eager to run away. 
Presumably the score would be settled here, the vengeance 
taken, or not, in the little dell.
    Lononi held his hands up in front of him, closed his 
eyes, and fought to accustom his eyes to the darkness 
beyond the lids. The boar-fox snorted and halted a few 
feet away, stamping, as if it didn't want to come any 
closer to the fire than it had to.
    Well, of course not. He had hurt it with his magic 
twice before.
    He snapped his fingers, and then, when he was sure he 
had the boar-fox's attention, he put out the flame.
    There came a snort of confusion.
    Lononi knew he had a moment at best before the thing 
would react, charging forward to spear him alive. And it 
wasn't that dark, not with the constantly changing 
patterns of light that rippled through the leaves- no 
darker, say, than a starry night. The boar-fox would 
recover quickly.
    But before it did, Lononi limped forward, tracking it 
by scent, and brought his sword down with his left hand 
and his dagger with his right.
    There came a terrible scream, mingling with the wet 
sound that flesh completely enveloping a blade always 
makes. Lononi felt the sword dragged from his hand as the 
boar-fox backed away from him, and could hear the tip 
dragging on the ground. It was all the way through the 
evil thing, then.
    Good.
    He still had his dagger, and he flipped it in one hand 
and tossed it. It missed the mark, from the sounds, but 
that was all right. It hadn't been anything more than a 
distraction. He heard the boar-fox rush towards the right, 
towards the sound of the dropped weapon.
    Lononi rolled to the side, taking as much of his 
weight as he could off his sprained ankle; it wouldn't 
bear much, and he was surprised that it had carried him 
for this long. He came up and waited for the thing to come 
charging back at him, summoning up the last reserves of 
strength as he did so. He could feel his eyes drooping, 
and he grimly recited all the fates that could befall a 
too-tired mage to himself: life-long coma, terminal 
sickness, his spirit being ripped free from his body, the 
magic taking control of him, death. 
    But then he remembered the light in Ruven's eyes when 
he had showed the old man a way of speaking to the crops 
that would convince them to listen, even though the human 
didn't have any earth magic, and convince them to grow a 
little better. The man had been so delighted, so consumed 
by the thought that he could gain enough to feed himself 
and his sick wife without as much labor...
    Lononi nearly ruined everything with a scream of rage 
then. But he held himself still, biting his lip until 
blood ran, and struck out with both hands at the same time 
as the boar-fox charged him.
    Since he was kneeling, the tusks were on a level with 
his heart, his lungs, and a number of other vital organs, 
if the boar-fox twisted its head just slightly. But Lononi 
ignored that, ignored the danger he was in as the wicked 
tusks sliced the upper skin of his chest.
    He called on his magic.
    His body burst into flame, the fire dancing over his 
skin but not hurting him.
    The boar-fox screamed and tried to back away. Lononi 
wrapped his arms around it and was dragged with it, his 
sprained ankle scraping painfully along the leafy floor. 
Now, he did scream, and didn't care who heard.
    The flames grew higher as he cried out again, this 
time in rage, and poured all his fury, all his passion, 
into the fire. His mother had told him, before, of land 
Elwens becoming so consumed by fury that they would burn 
themselves to death, just in order to get at an enemy. It 
had never made sense to Lononi; he couldn't think of 
anything he wanted more than life.
    Now, he had something he wanted more. 
    Vengeance.
    The tusks came in again, and though he twisted, they 
caught him this time, and not just for a little slash, 
either. They ripped a gaping hole in the flesh of his 
shoulder, and he cried out again.
    But the boar-fox continued to burn.
    Lononi thought that he felt its struggles weakening, 
and he dragged himself forward, clinging with arms, with 
legs, with the insides of his bones, it seemed, desperate 
that it not get away.
    The fire flared brighter, and hotter, and still he 
poured himself into it, his spirit draining dangerously, 
his mind beginning to flicker with strange images, his 
body feeling the strain. He didn't care. He wanted the 
thing dead.
    Dead.
    He cried out yet again, but this time because it 
seemed that a powerful blow had been struck through him, 
rather than by him, as if his will had gathered itself 
like a coiled spring and snapped out. He felt a rush of 
heat and power that he didn't really understand, and felt 
the form under his hands shudder with an equally strong 
jolt. Then it went limp.
    Lononi lifted his hands.
    Nothing happened.
    He opened his eyes at last, and had to turn away to 
dry heave again at the sight of the corpse, smoked and 
burned, with ripples of black flesh running across the 
place where the boar half joined the fox half. He had 
never killed with such brutality before; indeed, looking 
on the first thing he had ever really wished dead, it 
seemed that he had never killed at all.
    He found himself wanting to be out of the same dell as 
the thing, and crawled towards the far side, dragging his 
ankle, clawing his hands and elbows into the dirt to pull 
himself forward.
    He made it halfway up the curved side of the bowl 
before sleep took him.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "Lononi."
    He stirred, and then the thick, coma-like sleep that 
gripped him pulled him back down again, hands grasping him 
and dragging him-
    "Lononi!"
    His eyes snapped open, less, he thought, because of 
the cry of his name than because of the sharp slap that 
had caught him across the face. "What- who?"
    Chemil's face came into sight above him, grim and 
quiet. "What happened?" she asked.
    "Back- there." Lononi waved towards where he had left 
the corpse of the boar-fox, then dropped his head to his 
arms again. The drowsiness he could fight off, but his 
sheer weakness made him almost unable to lift his head.
    Chemil left him; Lononi found himself listening, but 
he still could not detect the sounds of her tread into the 
leaves, even with concentration. Then he had to fight 
swirling blackness, and had no time to try and listen to 
her coming back.
    "You won," said Chemil an undiscernible amount of time 
later, bending over him once more. Her voice was softer 
than it usually was, and she pulled him to his feet with 
due consideration for his wounds. When he cried out as his 
weight fell on his ankle, she slid her shoulder beneath 
his, holding him up. She was shorter than he by a good 
five inches, but, like most curalli, both heavier and 
stronger. "There- stand. Hop, if you must, but I think I 
can take most of your weight so that you can almost walk 
normally. Lean on me for the parts that you absolutely 
can't negotiate. That's it."
    Talking softly all the while, she got him out of the 
dell and back most of the way he had come, leading him 
towards Finatha. When he realized the way they were going, 
Lononi shuddered. Even from this far away, he could feel 
the stink of death that hung over the place.
    "No," he murmured, trying to shrug himself free from 
her grip.
    Chemil held him more tightly, studying his face for a 
moment. "Why not?"
    "The- boar-fox killed them all. All dead." Lononi felt 
a new sting in his eyes as he spoke, and tears coursed 
down his face, to join the soot and sleep and blood and 
vomit. "All dead," he whispered, and choked on a rush of 
bile. If he had just come a little earlier, if he hadn't 
been fighting with the aradu, maybe he could have saved 
them.
    There was a little silence. Then Chemil said, "You 
killed that thing to avenge them?"
    "Yes."
    Chemil nodded; he could just barely see the movement. 
"All right. Then come with me. You'll have to rest with me 
for tonight."
    "My mother-"
    "Will just have to find out about me," said Chemil 
firmly, turning him deeper into the Forest, to the east. 
"There's no way that I can carry you all the way back 
there, or support you for that matter."
    Lononi nodded himself. He found that he couldn't even 
picture the stern disapproval his mother was sure to 
offer. For tonight, there were other, more important 
things.
    Like sleep. And rest. And drowsing. And making sure 
that he didn't die.
----------------------------------------------------------
    Chemil woke him at last from a walking dream with a 
soft, "We're here."
    Lononi would ordinarily have been curious, but now he 
could barely keep his eyes open. He waited passively as 
she arranged things, probably leaves, with a rustling 
sound. Then there came a ripping noise, and she put 
something in his hand.
    "Eat this."
    Lononi took a bite. It was meat, probably venison, 
uncooked, as most of the curalli who lived in the Forest 
ate it. He didn't object. The first bite sent hunger 
coursing through his veins like blood, and when he 
finished it Chemil silently handed him more. He thought 
she was binding healingbloom about his wounds, coating the 
leaves with the silver sap and sticking them on the cuts, 
but he couldn't see. He could hardly even feel the 
delicate movements of her hands.
    At last, she led him over to the far side of her cave 
or house or whatever it was- he couldn't say, save that he 
had a definite feeling of a roof arching over his head- 
and said gently, "Sleep now."
    Lononi fell face forward into the leaves, sagging into 
sleep almost at once. He thought he heard her murmur 
something as he did so, a quick phrase in her own tongue, 
but he didn't catch it.


                       Intercession
    ^My lord Elshar.^
    Elshar dragged his eyes open and stared at his 
ceiling, a dalmya perfectly timed to the night sky above. 
It was near midnight, and he had fallen asleep only an 
hour ago, after trying his best to convince the guards who 
normally attended him that the Lord Carlian couldn't 
possibly have seen serious about the assassination 
attempt. They didn't see things quite the same way, and 
now he was probably going to face execution. Damn it. Not 
enough noble children were born as it was, and now they 
were going to lose another-
    ^My lord!^
    With a start, Elshar returned to the person trying to 
speak to him telepathically. ^Who- my Lady Oiolani!^ He 
smiled in spite of himself and the sleepiness walking up 
and down his brain. Having just an hour of sleep was 
almost worse than none at all. ^Was there something you 
wished to say?^
    ^Yes,^ said the Council of Arcadia representative for 
the churni briskly. ^I wanted to tell you that the boar- 
fox has been seen.^
    Elshar felt his mind fill against his will with chalky 
white and pale blue, the colors of incredulity. ^The 
prophecy is coming true this quickly?^ he asked. 
^Already?^
    ^Yes, my lord. And I believe I know what the ultimate 
goal of it is.^
    Elshar shook his head, waking himself up fully. If he 
had been alert in the first place, he scolded himself, he 
would have heard the excitement in the Lady Oiolani's 
voice, just barely repressed. ^How can that be, my lady? 
The seers-^
    ^Are not, I think, looking for the right thing. They 
have their own world, and it does not often touch on the 
larger one.^
    Elshar narrowed his eyes. ^What do you mean?^ Again, 
he had his hopes, but he was not going to blurt them out, 
any more than Oiolani would her excitement, or the cause 
for it. That wasn't good manners.
    ^I believe that this might represent a chance- no more 
than that, mind you- for us to emerge at last from our 
charred hiding place.^
    Elshar closed his eyes. The words presented a tempting 
picture to him, so sweet that he found he almost would 
rather not see it. ^My lady, if you truly think-^
    ^I truly do.^
    Elshar said nothing for a moment, his mind racing. 
Oiolani waited, silent and patient, though at times he 
caught a flicker of color from her mind in response to the 
hues in his.
    The death Elwens had been content to exist in 
isolation for Ages, and then for some reason the rest of 
the world had taken notice. First the humans, and then the 
life Elwens, and then the Council of Arcadia itself, had 
tried to commit genocide on them. They claimed, each time, 
that the death Elwens put the rest of the population of 
Arcadia at risk, but Elshar knew what really drove them: 
fear, fear of a people who could cause death with a gaze 
or a touch, fear of a people whose nobles could resurrect 
the dead.
    Sending Oiolani to the Council, claiming a place in 
the larger world for the first time, was a way to tell the 
other races that they could no longer simply ignore or 
discard the churni as they wished. It meant giving up some 
privileges and other things that the death Elwens had 
always taken for granted, but if it meant the continued 
survival of his people, for which Elshar considered 
himself personally responsible, he was willing to do it.
    Now...
    Now, Oiolani was telling him that there might be a 
chance for the death Elwens to escape the Falchian Plains, 
their home, and claim a place elsewhere. Some of the minor 
nobles could become great Klainai, perhaps. If nothing 
else, they wouldn't be so easy a target for any future 
enemy who wished to kill them.
    ^Where?^ he asked at last.
    ^The Forbge Forest.^
    Elshar blinked. ^Truly? Would the curalli not fight 
such an intrusion?^
    A mental snort; Oiolani was good at conveying sounds, 
as if she stood in the same room with the person she spoke 
to. ^Of course they would. They consider the Forest their 
territory, and would not listen to even the simplest 
requests for lumber or mineral rights. But there is 
support in the Council against the curalli. It is a 
current I have ignored until now; it seemed to have 
nothing to do with our people.^
    Elshar could hear the unspoken coda: if the Forest did 
have something to offer them, then there would be those 
willing to see death Elwens move in, if only to take some 
land from the shadowed Elwens.
    ^And whom do you know who might support you in this?^ 
he asked, with the same calm, sly tone in his voice.
    ^Jaren Melodium, of course.^ Oiolani chuckled, and 
Elshar echoed her. The snow Elwen representative hated the 
curalli on principle; his homeland, the Frigid Waste, 
contained even more of the shadowed Elwens than the Forest 
did, and the curalli and the atagarni were constantly at 
war. ^I can think of no other names right away. But, on 
the other hand, once I let it be known that I am 
interested, I think that there are many more who would 
mention it to me. I have been seen as neutral so far. That 
will change tomorrow.^
    ^What is the main interest in the Forest?^
    ^Silver,^ said Oiolani without hesitation. ^The 
curalli never use it; I don't understand why. Some 
prohibition that has to do with how often land Elwens use 
it, I think. Meanwhile, some of the Council members are 
looking for silver mines that can be used to break the 
stranglehold that Lord Herran has on the metal in the 
Athalustera Mountains.^
    She spoke carefully, and Elshar understood. Herran, 
the Councilmaster of the land Elwen city of Rowan to the 
south, was an ally of his. It wasn't so long ago that 
Herran had made the Council dance to his tune, using his 
slowly gained control of the silver mines to make them ban 
slavery everywhere in Arcadia. The Council wouldn't forget 
that, nor how much power Rowan had, so that prodding the 
city would be like waking a sleeping dragon.
    Elshar thought for a moment, fingers tapping. Of 
course, if the Council had some silver, they might do 
their best to reestablish slavery-
    But probably not.
    ^It is a risk worth taking,^ he said at last, opening 
his eyes and staring into the distance as if Oiolani were 
in front of him and could meet his intense gaze. He 
thought she felt it anyway. ^I do not think that it will 
come to that, to having to force a choice on the matter. 
If it does- well, I told him long ago that I would do 
whatever it takes to promote the survival and welfare of 
my people, and he knows that. He would do the same thing 
if Rowan's welfare were at stake. Let it be known, my 
lady, that you are no longer neutral.^
    Oiolani chuckled softly. ^That will make some of them 
happy and some of them angry, of course.^
    ^What about the curalli representative from the 
Forbge?^
    ^They don't have one.^
    Elshar felt his eyebrows rising in spite of himself. 
^What do you mean?^
    ^Just what I said,^ said Oiolani, her voice mock-grave 
now, hardly hiding the playfulness that lurked beneath the 
surface. ^They think that they can hide in their Forest 
and watch the world pass them by.^
    ^And the other curalli representatives?^
    ^Some of them have a land Elwen in the Council 
speaking for them, if you will believe that. The woman 
from the Frigid Waste doesn't pay any attention to anyone 
but her own people. And the others are all too weak to be 
worth paying attention to. They might protest, but they 
will be left behind.^
    Elshar nodded, smiling. It was a shame, sometimes, how 
some people were left behind by the changes in the world, 
but if that was what it took to get his people a place 
outside the Falchian Plains-
    ^Do it, my lady.^
    ^Understood, my lord.^
    Oiolani broke the link. Elshar lay back on his bed, 
shaking his hair from side to side, and chuckled aloud a 
few moments later.
    "Thank you, Forces of Death," he murmured. "That I 
should be alive to see such a prophecy come to pass, and 
that it fulfills a dream of mine, is something that I 
never thought to ask for."




                        Chapter 2
                       Disturbances
    "Going through life with a calm and undisturbed mind 
might well be possible. But why would you want to?"
    -Attributed to Anadrel Cytheriao, Starseeker and 
Ladysinger, briefly Councilmaster of Palm in the Elfworld 
War.

    Lononi opened his eyes.
    The grief was waiting, and hit him in the back of the 
head. He made a little choking sound, and bit the palm of 
his hand to stifle the sobs that wanted to echo up. He 
would have bitten his lip, but a long and painful crack 
across it told him that it wouldn't tolerate the abuse.
    Chemil was by his side in a moment, smoothing his hair 
back from his forehead and murmuring something too low to 
make out. Then she held out a strong-smelling cup to him, 
nodding at the liquid inside when he gave her a doubtful 
look.
    Lononi sipped it.
    Strangely, the grief receded at once, and he felt as 
though he could speak without sobbing. He took a deep 
breath, sucking in the strange fumes that rose from the 
cup, and noticed that his tears had stopped. He sipped 
again, and felt strong enough to look up at Chemil with a 
small, wry smile.
    "What is this?"
    "Suensoor," said Chemil, sitting back on her heels and 
smiling at him. It came to Lononi's mind that he had never 
seen her smile so much, or at least so freely, so easily, 
and so naturally. Of course she would smile many times a 
day, but usually mockingly or sardonically or for some 
reason that didn't seem funny at all to him.
    Lononi blinked. "Sorrow-calmer? That doesn't exist."
    "It does," said Chemil tolerantly, where ordinarily 
she would have snapped that he was an idiot. "You're 
drinking it."
    Lononi shrugged his shoulders and sipped again. It had 
a faint, oily taste as it slid down his throat, not unlike 
the taste of the aradu's fur.
    "What has happened?"
    Chemil sighed. "I alerted some curalli from Sarabiyn-"
    "From what?"
    "The nearest village," said Chemil, as casually as if 
she wasn't revealing something she had kept secret for 
years. Lononi had known there was a village of curalli not 
far from his own home, but never what it was called or how 
to find it. "They burned the humans' bodies." She looked 
away for a moment. "I'm sorry, Lononi. They searched, but 
there was no one left alive. And you know our laws against 
burial."
    Lononi nodded. No curalli would bury a body anywhere 
in the Forest, for fear that poisons would get into the 
water. "Why would you ask them to do that?" he asked. "I 
thought you hated humans."
    Chemil stared at him for so long that he wondered if 
he had spilled some of the drink on himself. He saw no 
surreptitious way to check, though, and so he held her 
gaze, feeling himself flush more and more deeply as the 
moments bore past.
    Then Chemil shook her head. "I didn't do it for their 
sake," she said. "And you are a fool if you think I did."
    "Then whose sake did you do it for?" Lononi didn't 
think she would have done it for his. They were friends, 
but by his definition, not hers.
    "I'll leave you to wonder about that," said Chemil, 
rising to her feet and stretching. "In the meantime, I 
have to fetch your mother and bring her here."
    "What? Chemil-"
    "Did you think that I was going to drag you all the 
way through the forest to see her?" asked the curalli, 
glancing at him over her shoulder. "No, Lononi. I refuse 
to bear your weight for all those miles."
    "I don't want you to have to show her where your home 
is." Lononi glanced quickly around as he spoke. He did 
seem to be in a cave, though not one that was very far 
under the earth, to judge from the tree-roots that twined 
freely about the roof and walls.
    "Neither do I," said Chemil. "But I can't carry you 
that far, and you can't walk as yet."
    "We haven't tested it."
    Chemil folded her arms. "Rise to your feet, then, if 
you really think that you can."
    Lononi glared at her and set his ankle on the ground, 
testing lightly. It twinged, but, as he told himself, that 
meant nothing. He put a hand on the wall of the cave and 
started to haul himself up.
    The moment his full weight rested on the foot, it 
crumbled beneath him, and threw him back to the floor. He 
swore in both pain and embarrassment as his head connected 
briefly with the wall.
    When he looked up again, Chemil was gone, evidently 
thinking that the cave wall had made her point for her.
    Lononi rubbed his head and sat up slowly, glancing at 
the corners of the cave in an effort to discover something 
out of the ordinary, something that would set this apart 
from the house that he lived in with his mother. But other 
than that the beds were made of leaves, he really saw 
nothing that was different. In one corner was a firepit 
made of stones ringed about a natural hollow in the floor, 
and positioned beneath a vent cut in the sod. In another 
corner, Chemil had covered the natural shelves of the cave 
with some kind of skin, making them into crude chairs.
    Lononi frowned and sipped from his cup. Of course, 
that it wasn't very different from their own house wasn't 
going to impress his mother.
    She would see only curalli, he knew, and nothing more. 
Of course, he hoped he was wrong, but...
    He didn't think he was.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "You have my son in a place like this?"
    That afternoon, when Chemil brought his mother back to 
the cave, Lononi knew he wasn't. 
    He opened his eyes and watched in resignation as 
Sinasta stepped inside, her hands planted on her hips, her 
nose lifted until it almost brushed the ceiling. At least, 
that was the impression he got. Even when she saw him and 
her face softened with concern, she didn't lose the scorn 
that made hard lines around her mouth and eyes.
    "Lononi," she said softly. "Why did you allow her to 
bring you to a place like this? Did you really think that 
it was better than dying in the woods?"
    Lononi cut in hastily. Chemil was fingering her only 
visible knife and eying his mother's back. "Mother, 
please, don't be angry. She saved my life. I think I would 
have died if she hadn't awakened me when she did, and she 
let me stay here, and sleep off the effects of so much 
magic, and eat."
    "What were you doing to use that much magic in the 
first place? Fighting off her kind?"
    Chemil cleared her throat. It was a tiny sound, and it 
didn't make his mother turn around, but Lononi knew it for 
one of Chemil's most profound danger signals.
    "There was a village of- of humans, Mother, that I 
visited." Lononi found that he couldn't look his mother in 
the eye. He had deceived her. Of course, it had been with 
the best of intentions, as she wouldn't have let him go on 
visiting Finatha if she knew, but... "I found them 
slaughtered. I tracked and killed the creature that did 
it, but it took almost all my magic."
    "How could you?"
    Lononi flinched, sure that she was about to launch 
into a tirade about his visiting the village.
    "How could you almost get yourself killed for the sake 
of humans?"
    "They were his friends."
    Lononi looked up in surprise as Chemil stepped into 
the argument. Her hands were clasped in front of her, but 
she looked anything but demure. She held a knife between 
the fingers of her left hand, and her right, Lononi knew, 
wasn't far from another blade. Her eyes shone with dark 
fire as she stared at his mother.
    "They were his friends. He killed to avenge them. Or 
do land Elwens no longer think that is noble?"
    Sinasta sniffed. "I don't understand you. You don't 
speak a civilized tongue, do you?"
    Chemil's eyes narrowed further. "As a matter of fact, 
yes," she said in Aril. "Your son has been teaching me."
    And now Sinasta was looking at him as if she thought 
that he had killed his own father. Lononi sighed and put a 
hand over his eyes, knowing what was coming next.
    "The High Tongue is a sacred treasure of our people, 
my son," said Sinasta in a fragile voice. "How could you 
even think of sharing it with others? What could she have 
said to convince you that that was a good idea?"
    "She wanted to learn Aril," said Lononi quietly, 
holding his mother's gaze. "She said that she wanted to go 
to Rowan, and-"
    "And you believed her?"
    Lononi blinked, not sure what his mother meant. "Of 
course. My ears heard no hint of a lie." No Elwen, he 
knew, could lie to another Elwen; the deceiver's words 
would always buzz in the ears of the other. He knew it 
wasn't different between curalli and land Elwens. Why 
should his mother think it was?
    "Curalli are masters at dancing around the truth," 
said his mother, giving Chemil another long, hate-filled 
stare. "She probably was planning to toy with you as long 
as she could, and then kill and eat you when she had the 
chance."
    Lononi groaned silently.
    "Are you accusing me of cannibalism?" asked Chemil, in 
a voice that was too bright, too innocent.
    It was a killing insult among the Forest curalli, for 
all that some of those who lived in the city did eat the 
flesh of their own kind. But Sinasta didn't know that, or 
didn't care. She turned with a fat smile on her lips. 
"Why, as a matter of fact-"
    "Stop."
    Sinasta turned, glancing at him, when Lononi spoke the 
word. Chemil, of course, didn't take her eyes off her 
enemy, but she lifted a hand and tilted it to the side, 
indicating that she was at least willing to listen.
    "What do you mean?" asked his mother.
    "You're both acting like children." Lononi raised 
himself as much as he could, aware that he didn't look 
very authoritative lying on his back, or side, in the 
leaves. When he was sitting with his legs tucked beneath 
him, he frowned at Chemil. "My mother could die because 
she doesn't know your customs," he said in Melli, and 
ignored his mother's loud gasp. "You gave me room to make 
mistakes when you first met me. Will you grant her the 
same freedom?"
    "You wanted to learn," said Chemil. "I could see in 
you the seeds of one who might learn to see past the 
hatred of his blood." She poked Sinasta in the back with 
the knife she held. Lononi saw his mother's face go stiff, 
but she was bright enough not to reach for her sword. "She 
will never learn that."
    Lononi sighed. "Then I ask, because you are my 
friend-" he was gambling here, he knew, but he couldn't 
think of any other way out "-that you grant her sanctuary, 
as a loved one of mine."
    Chemil looked at him with lowered eyelids. "You would 
have the room to claim that if you were a curalli, of 
course," she said slowly. "I am not sure that I should 
grant you the same privilege."
    Lononi felt his lips twitch, in spite of everything. 
"You call yourself my friend. Listen to the language I am 
speaking to you in. Do you hear any mistakes? Any 
distortions? Any mockery?"
    "No." Chemil looked at him with wide blue eyes now, 
rather than narrowed. Lononi could feel her anger ebbing, 
and was glad for that, but he wasn't sure what emotion was 
seeping in to replace it. It didn't feel exactly like 
anything he had ever felt before. "No, but I don't really 
know what that means."
    "Decide." Lononi sniffed the air and reached out with 
his emotional senses while she was deciding. The emotion 
she felt had a hint of curiosity, a tang of wariness, and 
something of excitement. But underneath it all lay 
something else, something bigger. She might be 
deliberately keeping it hidden, of course, and that would 
explain why he couldn't tell what it was. Over the years 
of their friendship, Chemil had grown adept at disguising 
her feelings.
    At one point in Chemil's deliberations, his mother 
said sharply, in Aril, "If you really think that I will 
let her decide my fate-"
    Chemil poked her with the knife, and Lononi shook his 
head. "She can understand some of what you say, Mother, 
just as you can understand some of what she says. Leave it 
alone."
    "I cannot speak her foul tongue-"
    "You should keep your face, or your emotions, more 
under control when you listen to it, then," snapped 
Lononi, out of patience. "Both of them gave you away."
    His mother subsided, but gave him a long stare as she 
did it. Lononi ignored her. He was trying to save her 
life. She could think what she wanted about that, but 
criticism would have to wait until after they were out of 
the cave.
    If only because he couldn't tell what Chemil might do 
in her present strange mood, he thought, keeping his eyes 
on the curalli woman's blue ones. She might laugh at his 
mother's protests; she might decide that any insult to him 
was an insult to her as well, since she was his friend, 
and stab his mother.
    He would then be compelled to try and kill her.
    No, he thought, he would much rather try to ignore the 
complications.
    "I have decided," said Chemil at last, in her very 
best Aril. She stepped back and bowed to his mother, who 
stared at her in silence, every muscle straining back to 
avoid touching the shadowed Elwen. "Your mother has 
freedom to move, room to make mistakes- as long as you 
yourself will admit to her the nature of our friendship, 
and stop hiding it as if it were a guilty secret."
    Lononi blinked. Chemil's eyes blazed with a familiar 
emotion now- anger.
    "Chemil- I never knew it bothered-" he started in 
Melli.
    "Of course it did," she said in Aril. "But that is 
past now. Tell your mother." She nodded at Sinasta, but 
never took her gaze from his face.
    A bit flustered, Lononi glanced at Sinasta. She 
sneered, her lips pulling back from her teeth as if she 
were a wolf leaping to the attack. "Tell me, my son. I 
suppose that you have been lovers with this woman from the 
day you were born?"
    "No," said Lononi quietly. "But friends with her for 
over a century, yes."
    "How did it come about?"
    Lononi glanced to the side, but Chemil was looking up 
at the roof of the cave and tapping her knife against her 
teeth. She would be no help. "I fell into a trap her 
people had set for- something else. She found me. She told 
me initially that she would help me out if I would attack 
her afterwards. With the blood-hatred roaring in my veins, 
I did. She defeated me easily, laughed, and then vanished. 
After that, whenever I walked in the Forest, she would 
come back and taunt me, or fight me and defeat me again. 
Over time, we made a bargain that I would teach her Aril 
if she would teach me to fight."
    "I taught you to fight," said his mother, her voice 
thick and creaking, like a tall tree under strain. "I 
don't know why you think you needed to find another 
teacher."
    Lononi bit his lip harshly. Chemil met his eyes. "Tell 
her what you said to me, or else I will tell her myself," 
she said.
    Lononi nodded. "The skills you taught me will stand me 
in good stead, Mother, if I ever go to Rowan, or if I 
sword-dance," he said carefully. "But in a true fight, any 
curalli would kill me."
    "Not now, necessarily," Chemil interrupted 
consideringly. "But when he first started, a child of 
seven could have killed him. A child of nine could have 
slit his throat while he was still looking around for the 
source of the odd noise."
    Sinasta said nothing. Lononi could feel the slow roil 
of her emotions, though, and knew that they would have to 
leave the cave as soon as possible. He hurried on through 
the rest of the story. "So I've been teaching her the High 
Tongue. It was the only thing I had to offer in exchange. 
And she's been teaching me to fight. I'm, ah, much better 
now."
    "And what else has she taught you?" asked Sinasta.
    "We're not lovers," said Lononi, narrowing his eyes, 
feeling his own rage begin to rise.
    "No need to disclaim that quite so vehemently," said 
Chemil with a murmur that barely made her lips move. Her 
eyes were full of amusement.
    "I did not mean that," said Sinasta, and her words 
buzzed in her son's ears. Before he could call her on it, 
she had gone on. "I meant- what has been teaching you 
about honor and loyalty? I suppose that she has taught you 
the fallacy of 'curalli's honor?'"
    Lononi felt his face heat. Chemil's face was full of 
curiosity. "What's that?" she asked him.
    "You don't want-"
    "Oh, I think I do want to know," said Chemil, looking 
at his mother and smiling a little. "She seems to be 
concerned about it, and if you are going to be our point 
of common concern, then I think I should know everything 
she's worried about."
    Lononi sighed. "Curalli's honor means- not honor at 
all. Pretensions, and lies, and dirty actions in a fight. 
It's a joke in Rowan."
    "I see."
    Lononi studied her. Chemil stood still, tossing the 
knife in her hand, but otherwise not reacting. Indeed, 
from the slight, gentle smile on her face, and the light 
in her eyes, she might have been able to feel him if he 
didn't know her.
    He did know her, and he swallowed.
    "You didn't answer me," said Sinasta.
    Lononi sighed and locked gazes with his mother. Her 
eyes were as brilliant a gold as his own, but he knew they 
saw different things. "She's been teaching me the ways of 
her people," he said carefully. "Nothing more than that. 
Not curalli's honor in the way you mean it."
    "But she has taught you to fight deceptively, and to 
lie to me." Sinasta shook her head. "Why did you feel it 
necessary to lie to me?"
    "You wouldn't have permitted us to see each other, if 
you'd known." Lononi gave the obvious answer.
    "And did it occur to you," said Sinasta, "that I might 
have had good reasons for preventing the contact?"
    Lononi sighed. "What were they?"
    "Your father disappeared in the Forest."
    "You don't know that he was killed by curalli, 
Mother." Lononi thought almost anything was likely, in 
fact, but a curalli. From what he could remember of his 
father, Arden Leafdancer had known how to fight. He 
wouldn't have been defeated by one of Chemil's people, not 
without a great battle that would have left traces.
    But some of the aradop that lived in the forest... 
yes, they could have taken him.
    "He vanished in the Forest," said Sinasta stubbornly. 
"My husband, who always promised that he would come back 
to me. From beyond death, he said, he would come back to 
me. The curalli must have killed him, killed him utterly, 
to prevent him from keeping that promise."
    Chemil was smiling again. Lononi tore his eyes from 
his mother and shook his head at her. She raised her 
eyebrows mockingly, but dropped the smile and said, "There 
are many other things in the Forest that could have done 
such a thing."
    Sinasta turned on her. "But none of them with as good 
a reason," she spat, her face twisting with blood-hatred. 
"And now I find out that my son lied to me, and went 
behind my back to consort with his father's murderers."
    "What reason would we have for killing him?" asked 
Chemil, spreading her hands.
    "He was land Elwen."
    "So is your son, and we did not kill him," said 
Chemil. "Of course, it would depend what kind of land 
Elwen your husband was, but we would not slay him out of 
hand without looking at his heart."
    "What does that mean?" asked Lononi. 
    Chemil winked at him. "Hush. I'm trying to talk to 
your mother." She turned back to Sinasta, the picture of 
common sense. "There are some munthi who can learn better, 
and some who can't," she said. "Lononi is one who can. I 
don't think you can, but I might be wrong. And if your 
husband was one who could have understood us, then we 
wouldn't kill him."
    "He hated all things shadowed Elwen," said Sinasta, 
her head lifted proudly. "He would never have agreed to 
any kind of bargain to live, as my son did." She flicked 
Lononi a glance like a whip, and let some of her own 
emotions roll over at the same time. He found himself 
flinching and bowing his head.
    "Then we probably did kill him," said Chemil 
tranquilly. "But it was a long time ago, wasn't it? Over 
two hundred and ninety years? Your son is practical. He 
has chosen to live in the Forest, the world, as it is. You 
chose to ignore us. You haven't actively tried to harm the 
Forest, so we ignored you. But if you try to burn our 
trees, or seek us out and chop us down like some silly 
land Elwen out of legend, then of course we will hunt you 
down and slay you."
    Sinasta's hand was on the hilt of her sword now. "You 
probably helped kill him," she breathed. "Corruptor of my 
son, did you slay a land Elwen named Arden Leafdancer?"
    Chemil started to shake her head, then paused. "Did 
you say Arden?"
    Lononi felt sick. He buried his head in his hands, 
almost wishing that he could wake up in the dell next to 
the boar-fox and know that it had all been a nightmare 
produced by his wounds.
    No, shake that. He would prefer to wake up in his bed 
yesterday morning, and know that the deaths of the people 
of Finatha had been a horrible dream, as well. The 
suensoor was starting to wear off.
    "Arden, yes," said his mother, her voice little more 
than a growl.
    Chemil sighed. "I'm afraid that I don't know anyone by 
that name."
    "Murderer!" Lononi could hear her clawing to get her 
sword free from its sheath.
    Chemil laughed. "I never knew anyone by that name, and 
here we haven't seen land Elwens save you and your son for 
Ages. I was joking."
    "I will kill you." His mother spoke in the flat voice 
that she used when she meant something beyond all doubt. 
The whistle of steel through the air followed, and then 
came Chemil's high laughter as she dodged aside.
    "Chemil! Don't kill her!" Lononi cried out, looking 
up.
    "I won't," said Chemil, hopping back from another 
blow. "For your sake. But I think that I will teach her a 
small lesson in humility." She did a flip, came down close 
to his mother, and slapped her across the face, lightly, 
though hard enough to leave a handprint that quickly 
turned silver.
    Sinasta roared, and then called fire. It filled the 
cave quite suddenly, appearing to roll from all four walls 
and the entrance at once.
    Chemil laughed, and leaned back, arms folded across 
her chest as if she could afford to absorb the magic and 
go on living.
    Lononi cursed under his breath and used what little 
strength he thought he could summon to weave a shield in 
front of her. The fire hit it and hovered for a moment 
before fading. Sinasta turned an incredulous gaze on him.
    Lononi ignored her for the moment, more occupied with 
shouting at Chemil. "What the hell did you think that you 
were doing?"
    "I knew you would do that," said Chemil contentedly, 
and then jumped again, turning a neat somersault in midair 
in order to cast knives at his mother. Sinasta swatted 
them aside with a grace that Lononi would not have 
believed of her, but she was kept too busy to do anything 
in the way of calling magic.
    By the time she had spun around and found her enemy 
again, Chemil had a small pouch in her right hand and a 
blade in her left.