Ransel gestured with the sweetmeat tin, his mouth too busy for talking.

"I corrupt you," she interpreted, "with forbidden luxuries. That is no gift."

"Mmm," he said. "Good thing your grim moods always pa.s.s, for they are very tiresome. I love you out of self-interest, as you know full well. Even though you whisper not a word to me of all you see and know, people still think that I am privy to your secrets, which gives me an excuse to act self-important. Not only that," he continued, while she uttered a snort of laughter, "but since you are a presciant, you can save me from my own idiocy, if you care enough to do it."

"So long as I'm beside you."

"Well, your lengthy absences are a drawback. But when matters go badly, you surely are the one I want guarding my back. Whoever's with you will survive just as you will. Won't your prescience send you running home when I most need you here? If it does, I swear I'll do whatever you command, for I'd rather be alive and humble than dead and proud."

Zanja closed her eyes and pretended to doze in the sunshine. She felt so tired after her summer with the Sainnites that she wondered whether an entire winter's rest would revive her. But she had not slept well since her homecoming, which was one of many things she could not tell Ransel, lest she do him a worse disservice than she did by smuggling in comfits for him. Only the elders of the people were judged mature and experienced enough that they could safely know of the world beyond the mountains without being changed or corrupted by the knowledge.

"Why do you sigh?" Ransel asked.

"I suppose I do have talent," Zanja said. "But it never seems talent enough."

Ransel nodded, and said sententiously, "The na'Tarweins are never satisfied."

Chapter Three.

Much that Zanja admired about the Shaftali people began to disappear. She saw hospitality replaced by suspicion, and open-handedness replaced by closed fists. When once strangers had been happy to sit down with her and talk about their lives, she now could not enter a tavern unless she was willing to sit in solitude with a circle of silence surrounding her. Meanwhile, in the Asha Valley, her people looked after their croplands and hunted in the forest, herded their goats and spun the goat's wool. Children respected and learned from their elders. Katrim visited other scattered peoples that inhabited the mountains, and returned with gifts of beautiful pottery, beaverskin robes, and delicate sh.e.l.ls. The katrim patrolled and watched over their territory, and no danger appeared. Zanja, who year after year was reminded anew of the Sainnites' brutality, did not become complacent. But in the Asha Valley, the peaceful, timeless effort of her people's lives remained undisturbed and unchanged. Perhaps it was true that ignorance would protect the Ashawala'i against corruption.

Fifteen years had pa.s.sed since the fall of the House of Lilterwess, when one summer Zanja began to hearof trouble in the Midlands, where in the region of Rees a particularly brutal Sainnite commander was devastating the countryside in a largely successful effort to decimate the Paladins who opposed him.

Working her way southward to find out as much as she could, Zanja was accosted in nearly every region by wrought-up Paladins. Finally, four days' journey from the border of Rees, she found herself surrounded by one-time farmers, whose hardening to Sainnite violence had left them incapable of recognizing the subtle fact that not all strangers are enemies.

They confiscated her dagger, her horses and pack animals, her money, and all her gear and trade goods, and told her she should be grateful to be escaping with her life. It was useless and dangerous to argue with them, so she did as she was told, walking away down the road in the opposite direction from the one she wished to go. But as soon as she knew she was no longer observed, she returned back through the woods. She was able to travel quickly across country, running most of the time, keeping the road in sight until she had caught up with her stolen horses and their gleeful escort. She followed, careful to keep anger from overriding common sense, and watched from a distance as the Paladins finally divided her belongings and separated, each going in a separate direction.

It seemed clear that they were not bringing her horses and belongings to their company commander.

Zanja returned to the original watchpost by the side of the road, and spent an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth, within hearing of the garrulous farmers, who kept themselves awake with storytelling. At dawn, a lone foot traveler approached through the woods to take their report and bring them fresh bread to eat. When the lone traveler left, she led Zanja to a remote, apparently abandoned farmhouse. Zanja had only to walk up to the door and knock.

"I seek the commander of Damar Company," she said politely to the startled Paladin who opened the door. "I am Zanja na'Tarwein, the Speaker for the Ashawala'i."

She heard the distinct voice of the woman she had followed these two days, exclaiming, "Name of Shaftal! I kept thinking someone was following me, but I thought it would be impossible . . ."

So many of the Paladin commanders had been killed during and shortly after the Fall that a great number of people had been promoted beyond their abilities or talent. Fortunately, when she was allowed to enter, the commander of Damar Company eyed her with a certain intelligence, at least. "You are a long way from the Ashawala'i," he said.

"I try to learn what I can about the dangers that might threaten my people. When I heard about the troubles in Rees, I came down to see what was happening."

The commander said skeptically, "Rees is no place for dilettantes this year."

"I am a soldier like you." Zanja folded her scarred hands before her, though she doubted he could see them in the dim light. "But the people of your command took my weapon-not here, but on the road to Rees. And they took my horses, my money, and my trade goods."

The woman exclaimed, "They never mentioned-"

The commander hushed her. "Fighting the Sainnites is expensive, I regret to say, and Damar is a poor region."

"So the Paladins of Damar have become thieves?"

The commander gestured impatiently. "We are at war," he said, as though that excused every immoral act. "But I will see to it that your horses and belongings are recovered."He did not say that he would punish the wrongdoers, but Zanja had no choice but to be satisfied for now.

So, because there was no help for it, she became the guest of Damar Company while waiting for her belongings to be recovered. At least she was able to use the time to her advantage, for the commander sent her with an escort into Rees.

In Rees, she saw a village that had been burned to the ground because one of the households had sheltered a Paladin. She heard about entire families slaughtered because one member served in Rees Company. She saw pale, hopeless veterans with legs and arms amputated. She finally met some of the survivors of Rees Company: harried, half-mad fighters who hurried her out of their camp because they feared that the Sainnite commander would exercise her near-supernatural ability to find them wherever they sheltered. Zanja and her companion gave the poor souls all the food they had, for the Rees farmers were so terrorized that they dared not feed their own soldiers any more, and the few surviving Paladins were starving.

Zanja returned to Damar much sobered, to find that most of her goods and horses had been recovered, and that the rest, the commander a.s.sured her, would arrive soon. Soon after her return, a messenger arrived, and the commander summoned Zanja. "Can you read?"

"I can read the alphabet, but not glyphs."

He showed her a note, much begrimed with long travel, that included a description of her and her gear, and requested that if she were spotted anywhere, she be directed to return home at once.

Never before had Zanja, or the Speaker before her, been summoned home like this. She left her goods and pack animals in the care of some honest farmers and hurried homeward by the most flexible and least noticeable means of travel, her own two feet. She was a hardened traveler, but even though she ran whenever the way was reasonably flat, the journey seemed interminable. It was nearly mid-summer when she saw before her the sky-piercing peaks of stark gray stone where Winter set by next year's supply of snow.

Katrim watched all the pa.s.ses from the high vantage of nearly invisible shelters of stone and mud, and for many years now the easy paths had been left choked with stone as barriers against invasion. She followed a narrow, precarious way that paralleled the river down the mountainside, gradually losing alt.i.tude, until trees came crowding up the canyons once again. At a bend of the river, the valley opened up and the village of Zanja's people came into sight. Ransel was hurrying up the path to meet her.

"How long has it been since you saw the Asha Valley in summer?" he asked. "More than half your life, I think."

It was indeed quite odd to see the trees in leaf, the fields of corn and squash being hoed, the goats grazing in the flood plain, and the children swimming in the river. She had almost forgotten what a fine place this valley was in summertime.

"Well, Alastad na'Parsa is dead," Ransel added.

She gazed at him, baffled. For seventy years, Alastad had guaranteed the success of the Ashawala'i crops, given health to the newborns, advised the elders, predicted the weather, suggested the best times to gather nuts or hunt deer, and eased the dying into death. The Ashawala'i had been fortunate to have an earth witch of such talent for so many years, and it was certainly a matter of concern that he was dead, and that no earth clan had yet produced another so gifted. "But that is no reason to fetch me-"

Ransel had become one of the finest katra dancers in the village, and had the scars to show for it. He had a fresh cut on his arm, sloppily bandaged and leaking blood. "I know that something untoward hashappened," he said. "Some katrim and hunters are in disgrace. The elders need your advice. That's all anyone will say."

They walked together across the valley and into the village. Busy, preoccupied people shouldered their way down narrow pathways between the close-built clan lodges. Summer's warmth had brought forth the village's miasma. Outside its limits, the most noticeable smell had been that of the latrines. Now, the changing scents marked the delineations of the village's many industries: from the stink of the dye vats to the piercing smells of the tanner's yard. The smell of burnt fat and roasted corn distinguished the na'Parsa lodge, where a funeral feast must have recently been served.

They reached the lodge of the na'Tarweins, upon whose walls each of the nine bird G.o.ds were painted with equal skill and prominence, so that none would feel slighted. Painted elemental flames writhed around the doorway, where a loosely-woven summer rug kept out the flies. Ransel told her that the na'Tarwem elders wished to see her alone, so she bid him farewell and promised to find him in the summer camp, after sunset.

Zanja stepped into the lodge and dropped to one knee. The mother of the na'Tarwein clan, a hazy shape in the dim light of the lodge, rose up from her stool and stepped forward to accept her greeting. As Zanja's eyes adjusted to the shadows, she identified three other clan elders, each seated upon a low stool, with an attendant child cross-legged at their feet. Still kneeling, she greeted each of the elders in turn, and only then stood up to be clasped in the clan mother's arms and accept her offer of tea.

One of the children hastened to pour a cup of tea from the pot upon the hearth. The precious porcelain cup fit perfectly into the palm of Zanja's hand, and felt light and smooth as a leaf from a tree. She sat down upon the floor at a gesture from the clan mother, and slurped politely from her cup.

The clan mother said, "With the death of Alastad, I fear we may lose the prosperity of the people."

Zanja replied, "Surely an earth child will soon take Alastad na'Parsa's place."

The elders shook her heads and murmured with regret, as the clan mother said, "Earth witches are rare.

Hard times lie ahead, I fear."

"When last I saw Alastad, he seemed in good health."

Zanja drank her tea while one of the elders recounted the tale of how the aged earth witch had been suddenly stricken with a strange paralysis, and how the herbalists' frantic efforts to revive him had failed.

Zanja became impatient for the end of this overly complicated tale, but restrained herself from rudely interrupting her elders. She was finally able to say, "I am glad you sent for me, Mother."

"I would never have called you home for one person's death, even one so important as this. It is not as if your presence could bring Alastad back to life."

Zanja set her empty cup upon the floor before her. A child hurried forward to collect it and carry it carefully to safety. "What else has happened?"

The clan mother rose to her feet once again. "Come with me."

She led the way between the hanging rugs that divided the public s.p.a.ce of the lodge from its cavernous living and work s.p.a.ce, currently occupied only by a young woman with a belly like an empty bag, whose newborn infant slept in a basket beside her. In summer, the people stayed out of doors as much as possible. They would see enough of these walls during the long and bitter winter.

At the far end of the lodge, another curtained doorway gave entry to the sickroom. There twona'Tarwein katrim stood rigid guard over a man sprawled upon the floor. The guards, their gazes evading hers, gestured welcome to a fellow katrim, but clearly were to discomforted to speak. Their att.i.tudes, as much as anything, alerted Zanja to the shamefulness of the situation, though what she saw was deeply puzzling: her clan brother, Tarin, a hunter of some renown, apparently ill, but wearing a goat harness by which he was tethered to the wall. She squatted down to shake him gently by the shoulder.

His drooping eyelids opened, but he looked at her blankly, idiotically, his black irises hazed with a dull film.

Zanja felt a sickness descend on her. She said, "Tarin, stand up."

He did as she said, clumsily but promptly. He obediently complied with her demands that he make a variety of moves and gestures, and then he remained standing until she told him to lie down again.

Now she noticed the sour, moldy scent that sometimes lingered in the alleyways and dark doorways of Shaftal. She said, more to convince herself than to confirm what the clan mother already knew, "This man is addicted to smoke."

The clan mother did not reply. Zanja stood up, feeling the sickness not just in her belly, but throughout her body, even to her fingertips. "How did this happen?" she cried.

"Tarin met a Shaftali wanderer out in the forest, some three or four days' journey to the south," said the clan mother in a voice like rawhide. "Though he and the stranger could not speak each others' language, they became friends, he says. They smoked many pipes together. Tarin began bringing gifts for the man, and when that did not seem to be enough, he introduced others to the smoke."

"How many in all?"

"Seven people, from three clans. But he is the only one who used the drug so much that now he cannot live without it."

"And the man in the woods?"

"We cannot find him. Is it true that Tarin will die without the drug?"

"So I have heard."

"Then he will soon pay a high price for his foolishness, for his supply has almost been depleted. I have daily looked for your arrival, hoping you would return before he died."

Zanja followed the clan mother out of the closed room, back to the common s.p.a.ce where fifty or more people could comfortably take shelter. They stood together in the hot room. Flies buzzed in the corners, and the infant made sucking sounds in his sleep.

The clan mother said, "In all these years that you have warned the elders about the dangers that threatened us, no one heeded you. Now we have sent for you. Think hard on what you wish us to hear."

"I will consider," Zanja said, but her thoughts were in turmoil.

The na'Tarwein sighed. "These are uneasy times. Would that we had a single seer! But our only seer is you, and what you see is not the future, but the present."

In the old days, the Speaker would have gone directly to the G'deon to complain of this intolerable encroachment on the Ashawala'i, and the problem would have been dealt with. Now Zanja said in frustration, "Smoke is a Sainnite drug. Was the man in the woods a Sainnite? Or was he just a tradertrying to lay his hands on Ashawala'i woolens?"

"We do not know."

"Then I must talk to all of those who smoked this visitor's pipe. Their description of him will let me know if he was a Sainnite."

"But you have had a hard journey, and now you are angry and worried. Tonight you must think and rest, so that tomorrow you can address the problem with serenity and clarity."

"Yes, Mother." Though Zanja's body was rigid with rage, she was pleased to see that not a trace of anger found its way into her voice. She took her leave, and went out in search of her friends.

The summer village, which by day looked like nothing more than a collection of pots and fire pits, at night scattered the flood plain with cook fires and cranky children. Zanja sat late beside the katrims fire, while they regaled her with warrior's tales of the past season. To listen patiently eventually strained her courtesy. The concerns of these, her fellow katrim, seemed trivial to her, just as hers would seem fanciful to them. Surely, she thought ungraciously, she was like a captured hawk, forced to listen to the tales of mice until it drove her mad. At last she lay down where she had been seated upon the much trampled gra.s.s, and shared Ransel's blanket, as they had done since childhood. She slept badly.

In dead of night, Zanja awakened to a silence so profound that she could hear a night breeze hunting through the cornfields in the flood plain. What would it take, she wondered, to silence the normal din of the river banks: the shouting frogs, the screams of the accuser bugs, who carried on all night long until dawn light finally stilled their glee? A cold terror took her, and she shook Ransel violently until he sat up, protesting. "G.o.ds' names, Zanja, a fine dream I was having."

"Shut up and listen."

In a moment, Ransel muttered, "Who tramples through the frog lands, eh? And at an hour when ghosts go wandering? This is a mighty strange silence."

Zanja had already put on her boots, and went around the katrim's circle, awakening all she could while Ransel tied his boot straps. The katrim were less than pleased with her for disturbing their sleep, but ceased their grumbling when she said sharply, "The people may be in danger." A precious fool she'd look like later, if her panic was caused by nothing but a froggish whimsy.

"Let's go see what's on the frogs' minds," said Ransel.

The two of them ran full tilt across the crowded plain. They tread on embers, trampled fragile pottery, and tripped over peaceful sleepers, who uttered cries of fear that turned to shouts of outrage in their wake. Babies marked their pa.s.sage with startled wails. Zanja could see Ransel's teeth in the darkness.

Perhaps he was amused, or perhaps this was no grin, but a grimace, as he considered his lifetime of experience with Zanja's whims-which rarely, if ever, turned out to be mistakes.

Let me be mistaken now, she thought, or prayed, to whatever G.o.d might be paying attention. Let this disturbance we've created be on my head. Let me be a laughingstock. Just let me be wrong.

They left the summer village and ran through cultivated fields, along a track of pounded dirt with ditches on both sides to channel the rainwater. Corn ta.s.seled to the left, and to the right lay mounded squash plants, their buds ready to twist open with the dawn. Crickets sang in the cropland, but ahead lay silence.Zanja and Ransel slowed to a walk and cautiously approached the edge of the long downslope, at the bottom of which journeyed the river.

It was called the Asha River both within and without the borders. Its cobbled banks kept trees from thriving at its edges, and so Zanja could see its glimmering water, which was cold with melting snow even at mid-summer, and the horde of soldiers that waded through it. They dragged their equipment and armor behind them on little rafts, and those that had completed the crossing drew on their boots and buckled their cuira.s.ses in haste and silence. Even the war horses, which must have crossed first, as their riders were already mounted and standing guard, uttered no sound, and stood still except for the nervous twitching of their bobbed tails.

"Oh, my brother," Zanja breathed, and groped for Ransel's hand.

His fingers clenched hers. "Is it Sainnites?"

"Yes, it is." She pulled him back from the edge of the slope. They stood for just a moment, staring at each other in the darkness. Zanja thought there might be as many as fifty war horses, which meant a full battalion, with twenty heavily armed foot soldiers for every horse. They outnumbered the katrim by ten to one, and the katrim's daggers would be no match for the Sainnites' armor and weaponry.

Zanja said, "The people must flee for their lives."

"Then we'll need to defend the northern trail, so they can climb the cliffs into the forest."

"You go back and shout the alarm. You have the voice for it. Take half the katrim to defend the trail, and send half to me, so we can delay the Sainnites to give our people time to escape."

For a moment, Zanja thought Ransel would actually waste precious time in argument. But then he bared his teeth in a bitter, mocking grin. "My commander speaks and I obey."

"Honor to you, Ransel na'Tarwein." She forced herself to release his hand.

"Honor to you, Zanja na'Tarwein." He gestured a brisk, graceful salute, and dashed into the darkness.

She watched until she could not distinguish him from the shadows. I will never see him again, she thought. For a dreadful moment, she could not bear it. She almost called after him. The two of them would flee . . . and live in shame forever after. She took a breath and turned to face the enemy.

The soldiers below efficiently and silently crossed the river. Fifty war horses she counted, and three hundred or more foot soldiers. The Ashawala'i numbered some 1,500 souls, but only a hundred of them carried weapons. The katrim were fine fighters, and fought with each other incessantly: neat, graceful, courteous encounters that rarely drew blood. To the Sainnites they would seem like children who merely played at war.