"What"s the alternative? Let the world drift to destruction because we"re too ashamed to call for help?"

"Keep the balance," said Mari firmly. "As we always have. We cannot ever let ourselves become dependent upon outsiders." Her glance slid over Fawn. "Not us."

A little silence fell, and Dag finally said, "I"ll take swamps."

Her nod was a bit too satisfied, and Dag wondered if he"d just made a mistake. He added after a moment, "But if you let us take along a few horse boys from the stables here to watch the mounts, we won"t have to leave a patroller with the horse lines while we slog."

Mari frowned, but said at last, reluctantly, "All right. Makes sense for the day-trips, anyway.

You"ll start tomorrow."

Fawn"s brown eyes widened in mild alarm, and Dag realized the source of Mari"s m.u.f.fled triumph. "Wait," he said. "Who will look after Miss Bluefield while I"m gone?"

"I can. She won"t be alone. We have four other injured recovering here, and Chato and I will be in and out."

"I"m sure I"ll be fine, Dag," Fawn offered, although a faint doubt colored her voice.

"But can you keep her from trying to overdo?" Dag said gruffly. "What if she starts bleeding again? Or gets chilled and throws a fever?"

Even Fawn"s brow wrinkled at that last one. Her lips moved on a voiceless protest, But it's But it's midsummer midsummer.

"Then I"ll be better fit to deal with that than you would," said Mari, watching him.

Watching him flail, he suspected glumly. He drew back from making more of a show of himself than he already had. He"d had his groundsense closed down tight since they"d hit the outskirts of Gla.s.sforge yesterday, but Mari clearly didn"t need to read his ground to draw her own shrewd conclusions, even without the way Fawn glowed like a rock-oil lamp in his presence.

He rolled up his chart and handed it to Mari. "You can have that to tack on the wall downstairs, and we can mark it off as we go. For whatever amus.e.m.e.nt it will provide folks. If you hint there could be a bow-down when we reach the end, it might go more briskly."

She nodded affably and withdrew, and Dag put Fawn to work helping him restack the contents of the trunk in rather better order than he"d found it.

As she brought him an armload of stained and tattered logbooks, she asked, "That"s twice now you"ve talked about planting farmers planting farmers. What do you mean?"

He sat back on his heels, surprised. "Don"t you know where your family comes from?"

"Sure I do. It"s written down in the family book that goes with the farm accounts. My great-great-great-grandfather"-she paused to check the generations on her fingers, and nodded- "came north to the river ridge from Lumpton with his brother almost two hundred years ago to clear land. A few years later, Great-great-great got married and crossed the western river branch to start our place. Bluefields have been there ever since. That"s why the nearest village is named West Blue."

"And where were they before Lumpton Market?"

She hesitated. "I"m not sure. Except that it was just Lumpton back then, because Lumpton Crossroads and Upper Lumpton weren"t around yet."

"Six hundred years ago," said Dag, "this whole region from the Dead Lake to nearly the southern seacoast was all unpeopled wilderness. Some Lakewalkers from this hinterland went down to the coasts, east and south, where there were some enclaves of folks-your ancestors-surviving. They persuaded several groups to come up here and carve out homes for themselves. The idea was that this area, south of a certain line, had been cleared enough of malices to be safe again. Which proved to be not quite the case, although it was still much better than it had once been. Promises were exchanged... fortunately, my people still remember what they were. There were two more main plantations, one east at Tripoint and one west around Farmer"s Flats, besides the one south of the Grace at Silver Shoals that most folks around here eventually came from. The homesteaders" descendants have been slowly spreading out ever since.

"There were two notions about this scheme among the Lakewalkers-still are, in fact. One faction figured that the more eyes we had looking for malice outbreaks, the better. The other figured we were just setting out malice food. I"ve seen malices develop in both peopled and unpeopled places, and I don"t see much to choose between the horrors, so I don"t get too excited about that argument anymore."

"So Lakewalker"s were here before farmers," said Fawn slowly.

"Yes."

"What was here before Lakewalkers?"

"What, you know nothing?"

"You don"t have to sound so shocked," she said, obviously stung, and he made a gesture of apology. "I know plenty, I just don"t know what"s true and what"s tall tales and bedtime stories. Once upon a time, there was supposed to have been a chain of lakes, not just the big dead one. With a league of seven beautiful cities around them, commanded by great sorcerer-lords, and a sorcerer king, and princesses and bold warriors and sailors and captains and who knows what all. With tall towers and beautiful gardens and jeweled singing birds and magical animals and holy whatnot, and the G.o.ds" blessings flowing like the fountains, and G.o.ds popping in and out of people"s lives in a way that I would find downright unnerving, I"m pretty sure. Oh, and ships on the lakes with silver sails. I think maybe they were plain white cloth sails, and just looked silver in the moonlight, because it stands to reason that much metal would capsize a boat. What I know know is the tall tale is where they say some of the cities were five miles across, which is impossible." is the tall tale is where they say some of the cities were five miles across, which is impossible."

"Actually"-Dag cleared his throat-"that part I know to be true. The ruins of Ogachi Strand are only a few miles out from sh.o.r.e. When I was a young patroller up that way, some friends and I took an outrigger to look at them. On a clear, quiet day you can see down to the tops of stone wreckage along the old sh.o.r.eline, in places. Ogachi really was five miles across, and more. These were the people who built the straight roads, after all. Which were thousands of miles long, some of them, before they got so broken up."

Fawn stood up and dusted her skirt, and sat on the edge of his bed, her face tight with thought. "So-where"d they all go? Those builders."

"Most died. A remnant survived. Their descendants are still here."

"Where?"

"Here. In this room. You and me."

She stared at him in real surprise, then looked down at her hands in doubt. "Me?"

"Lakewalker tales say..." He paused, sorting and suppressing. "That Lakewalkers are descended from some of those sorcerer-lords who got away from the wreck of everything.

And farmers are descended from ordinary folks on the far edges of the hinterlands, who somehow survived the original malice wars, the first great one, and the two that came after, that killed the lakes and left the Western Levels." Also dubbed the Dead Levels, by those who"d skirted them, and Dag could understand why.

"There was more than one war? I never heard that," she said.

He nodded. "In a sense. Or maybe there"s always only been one. The question you didn"t ask is, where do the malices come from?"

"Out of the ground. They always have. Only"-she hesitated, then went on in a rush-"I suppose you"re going to say, not always, and tell me how they got into the ground in the first place, right?"

"I"m actually a little vague on that myself. What we do know is that all malices are descendants of the first great one. Except not descended like we are, with marriage and birth and the pa.s.sing of generations. More like some monstrous insect that laid ten thousand eggs that hatch up out of the ground at intervals."

"I saw that thing," said Fawn lowly. "I don"t know what it was, but it sure wasn"t a bug."

He shrugged. "It"s just a way of trying to think about them. I"ve seen a few dozen of them in my life, so far. I could as well say the first was like a mirror that shattered into ten thousand splinters to make ten thousand little mirrors. Malices aren"t material at all, in their inner nature. They just pull matter in from around them to make themselves a house, a sh.e.l.l. They seem to feed on ground itself, really."

"How did it shatter?"

"It lost the first war. They say."

"Did the G.o.ds help?"

Dag snorted. "Lakewalker legends say the G.o.ds abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its sp.a.w.n. If you believe in G.o.ds."

"Do you?"

"I believe they are not here, yes. It"s a faith of sorts."

"Huh." She rolled up the last maps and tied their strings before handing them to him. He settled them in place and closed the trunk.

He sat with his hand on the latch a moment. "Whatever their part really was," he said finally, "I don"t think it was just the sorcerer-lords who built all those towers and laid those roads and sailed those ships. Your ancestors did, too."

She blinked at this, but what she was thinking, he could not guess.

"And the lords didn"t come from nowhere, or elsewhere, either," Dag continued tenaciously.

"One line of thought says there was just one people, once, and that the sorcerers rose out of them. Except that then they bred up for their skills and senses, and then used their magic to make themselves more magical, and lordly, and powerful, and so grew away from their kin.

Which may have been the first mistake."

She tilted her head, and her lips parted as if to speak, but at that point a pair of footsteps echoed from the hall. Razi stuck his head through the doorframe.

"Ah, Dag, there you are. You should smell this." He thrust out a small gla.s.s bottle and pulled off the leather stopper plugging its neck. "Dirla found this medicine shop up in town that sells the stuff."

Dirla smiled proudly over his shoulder.

"What is it?" asked Fawn, leaning in and sniffing as the patroller waved the bottle past her.

"Oh, pretty! It smells like chamomile and clover flowers."

"Scented oil," he answered. "They have seven or eight kinds."

"What do you use it for?" Fawn asked innocently.

Dag mentally consigned his comrade to the middle of the Dead Levels. "Sore muscles," he said repressively.

"Well, I suppose you could," said Razi thoughtfully.

"Scented back rubs," breathed Dirla in a warm voice. "Mm, nice idea."

"How useful useful of you two to stop by," Dag overrode this before it could grow more interesting still, either to himself, who didn"t hanker after a repeat of the discomforts of his ride from the of you two to stop by," Dag overrode this before it could grow more interesting still, either to himself, who didn"t hanker after a repeat of the discomforts of his ride from the Horsefords", or to Fawn, who would undoubtedly ask more questions ask more questions. "Happens I need this trunk taken back downstairs to the storeroom." He stood up and pointed. "Lug."

They grumbled, if lightheartedly, and lugged.

Dag closed the door behind them, shooed Fawn to her own room, and followed. Wondering if he dared ask just where that shop was located, and if it might be on the way to the harnessmaker"s.

Walking the patterns in the marshes west of Gla.s.sforge took six days.

Dag chose the closest section first, and so was able to bring the patrol back to the hotel"s comforts that night, and to check on Fawn.

After an increasingly worried search of the premises, he found her sh.e.l.ling peas in the kitchen and making friends with the cooks and scullions. With some relief, he gave over his vision of her as distressed and lonely among condescending Lakewalker strangers although not his fear of her imprudently overtaxing her strength.

For the next section he chose the most distant, of necessity a three-day outing, to get it out of the way. Dag met the complaints of the younger patrollers with a few choice tales of swamp sweeps norm of Farmer"s Flats in late winter, icily gruesome enough to silence all but the most determined grumblers. The patrol was able to leave most of their gear with the horses, but the need for skin protection meant that boots, shirts, and trousers took the brunt of the muck and mire. When they draggled back to Gla.s.sforge late the following night, they were greeted by the attendants of the hotel"s pleasant bathhouse, conveniently sited with its own well between the stable and the main building, with a marked lack of joy; the laundresses were growing downright surly at the sight of them. This time Dag found Fawn waiting up for him, filling the time and her hands by helping to mend hotel linens and coaxing stories from a pair of seamstresses.

He returned the next night to exchange tales with her over a late supper. He held her fascinated with his account of a roughly circular and distinctively flat stretch of marsh some six miles across that he was certain was a former patch of blight, recovering and again supporting life-most of it noxious, not to mention ravenous, but without question thriving.

He thought the slaying of that malice must have predated the arrival of farmer settlers in this region by well over a century. She entertained him in turn with a long, involved account of her day"s adventures in the town. Sa.s.sa the Horseford brother-in-law, now home again, had stopped by and made good on his promise to show her his gla.s.sworks. They had capped the tour with a visit to his brother"s papermaking shop, and for extras, the back premises of the ink maker"s next door.

"There are more kinds of work to do here than I ever dreamed," she confided in a tone of thoughtful speculation.

She had also, clearly, overdone; when he escorted her to her door, she was drooping and yawning so hard she could scarcely say good night. He spent a little time persuading her ground against an incipient cold, then checked the healing flesh beneath the ugly malice scabs for necrosis or infection and made her promise to rest on the morrow.

The next day"s pattern walk was truncated for Dag in the early afternoon when one patroller managed to trade up from mere muck and leeches to a willow root tangle, water over his head, and a nest of cottonmouths. Leaving the patrol to Utau, Dag rode back to town supporting the very sick and shaken man in front of him. Dag was not, happily, called upon to do anything unadvised and perilous with their grounds on the way, though he was grimly aware Utau had urged the escort upon him against just that chance. But the snakebit man survived not only the ride, but also being dipped briskly in the bathhouse, dried, and carried up and slung into bed. By that time, Chato and Mari had been found, allowing Dag to turn the responsibility for further remedies over to them.

Some news Mari imparted sent Dag in search of Fawn even before a visit to the bathhouse on his own behalf. The sound of Fawn"s voice raised in, what else, a question, tugged his ear as he was pa.s.sing down the end stairs, and he about-faced into the second-floor corridor. A door stood open-Saun"s-and he paused outside it as Saun"s voice returned: "My first first impression of him was as one of those grumpy old fellows who never talks except to criticize you. You know the sort?" impression of him was as one of those grumpy old fellows who never talks except to criticize you. You know the sort?"

"Oh, yes."

"He rode or walked in the back and never spoke much. The light began to dawn for me when Mari set him at the cap-that"s the patroller in the end or edge position of a grid with no one beyond. We don"t spread out to the limits of our vision, d"you see, but to the limits of our groundsenses. If you and the patrollers to your sides can just sense each other, you know you aren"t missing any malice sign between you. Mari sent him out a mile mile. That"s more than double the best range of my groundsense."

Fawn made an encouraging noise.

Saun, suitably rewarded, continued, "Then I got to noticing that whenever Mari wanted something done out of the ordinary way, she"d send him. Or that it was his idea. He didn"t tell tales often, but when he did, they were from all over, I mean everywhere. I"d start to add up all the people and places in my head, and think, How How? I"d thought he had no humor, but finally figured out it was just maddening-dry. He didn"t seem like much at first, but he sure acc.u.mulated. And you?"

"Different than yours, I"ll say. He just arrived arrived. All at once. Very... definitely there. I feel like I"ve been unpacking him ever since and am nowhere near the bottom yet."

"Huh. He"s like that on patrol, in a way."

"Is he good?"

"It"s like he"s more there than anyone... no, that"s not right. It"s like he"s so nowhere-else. If you see?"

"Mm, maybe. How old is he really? I"ve had trouble figuring that out-"

Suppressed ground or no, someone was bound to notice the swamp reek wafting from the hall on the humid summer air pretty soon. Dag unquirked his lips, knocked on the doorframe, and stepped inside.

Saun lay abed wearing, above, only his bandages; the rest, however clothed, was covered by a sheet. Fawn, in her blue dress, sat leaning back in a chair with her bare feet up on the bed edge, catching, presumably with her wriggling toes, whatever faint breeze might carry from the window. For once, her hands were empty, but Saun"s brown hair showed signs of being recently combed and rebraided into two neat, workmanlike plaits.

Dag was greeted with broad smiles on two faces equally fresh with youth and pale with recent injury. Both hurt near-fatally on his watch-now, there was a thought to cringe from- but their expressions showed only trust and affection. He tried to muster a twinge of generational jealousy, but their beauty just made him want to weep. Not good. Six days on patrol with nary a malice sign shouldn"t leave him this tired and strange.

"How de", Spark. Lookin" for you. h.e.l.lo, Saun. How"re the ribs?"

"Better." Saun sat up eagerly, his flinch belying his words. "They have me walking up and down the hall now. Fawn here"s been keeping me company."

"Good!" said Dag genially. "And what have you two found to talk about?"

Saun looked embarra.s.sed. "Oh, this and that."

Fawn returned more nimbly, "Why were you looking for me?"

"I have something to show you. In the stable, so find your shoes."

"All right," she said agreeably, and rose.

Her bare feet thumped away up the hallway, and he called after her, "Slow down!" He did not consider himself a wit, but this fetched her usual floating laugh. In her natural state, did she ever travel at any pace other than a scamper?

He studied Saun, wondering if any warning-off might be in order here. That the broad-shouldered youth was attractive to women, he"d had occasion to note, if never before with concern. But in Saun"s current bashed state, he was no menace to curious farmer girls, Dag decided. And cautions might draw counterquestions Dag was ill equipped to answer, such as, What business is it of yours What business is it of yours? He settled on a friendly wave farewell and started to withdraw into the hall again.

"Oh, Dag?" called Saun. "Old patroller?" He grinned from his propping pillows.

"Yes?" Blight it, when had the boy picked up on that catchphrase? Saun must have paid closer attention to Dag"s occasional mutters than he would have guessed.

"No need for the fishy glower. All your pet Spark wants to hear are Dag tales." He settled back with a snicker, no, a sn.i.g.g.e.r.