Archive of Our Own ^beta

I

Any strong wind during the first, fair days of autumn scattered the offspring of King Mathom of An like a handful of fallen leaves.  Each year, after dutiful seasons spent attending on Mathom as he dealt with the fractious lords of the Three Portions, some blue and blustering morning arrived when the three of them would stare speechlessly at each other over breakfast at the high table and then rise to go their own ways before they quarreled for no better reason than the lingering habit of recent weeks.

On one such day, Rood of An chose, as he often did, to ride out through the third of the seven gates in the walls between the seven white towers of Anuin.  Beneath him, below the green slope sweeping down from Mathom's house, traders in Mathom's city stored away goods like squirrels hiding acorns against the winter squalls to come.  Brightly-sailed ships rocked on waves stirred in the harbor by the wind, awaiting cargo for voyages to Caerweddin, Hlurle, and the farther ports of the High One's kingdoms.  Rood sat studying a ship he knew was destined for Caithnard and its college until the gusting wind stung his eyes and he blinked.

He turned his horse away from the harbor and followed the coast road to the first vale that slashed inland through the sea cliffs.  As he rode the narrow path angling down toward the stream flowing far below, wind-stirred leaves of ancient, twisted oaks dappled him with shadows.  Back in the woods that covered the slopes of the vale, away from his route, he could hear the snuffle of pigs herded beneath the trees to fatten on fresh mast.  Rood also sought his sustenance on Raban's lands today.  After the recent sudden clamors and tense silences of his father's household, he needed restful company.

The path Rood descended crossed another road that tracked the stream draining the vale, and he turned to ride inland.  As he neared Raban's sprawling fieldstone house half-hidden by trees, he passed a cart loaded with barrels being driven toward the harvest of galls that was the true fortune of these lands.  Like most minor households of high degree, Raban's herders tended droves of swine; the Three Portions were famous for notable pigs.  But Raban's oak galls were what brought them trade.

Hand-plucked from the oldest oaks and boiled in iron caldrons, the galls produced an ink that spread across parchment with a jet-black certainty much coveted by scribes and scholars.  Rood himself had copied formal documents with Raban ink under the watchful supervision of his tutors.  It was an ink well suited to aging deeds and ancient enigmas.

He passed another cart, and a familiar voice cried out, "Rood!"

Rood reined back his horse in time to watch Dar Raban leap from the high seat, where he had perched next to the driver, as if he had nothing at all to fear from metal-hooped wheels or stray rocks in the road.  In this case, he was right.  Even so, Rood stared down at him with a lifted brow as the cart rumbled on its way.

Dar looked back up at Rood, his pale brown eyes speculative.  Hair the color of acorns had flopped forward over his broad forehead.  He shoved it back with one large hand before saying, "With that expression on your face, the resemblance to your father is remarkable."

Having left Anuin too quickly to be afflicted with attendants, Rood was free to roll his eyes upward.  "The old crow, with his mind like a morass and his mouth like a barred gate."

"Oh, I see.  That's why you're here during harvest.  You're prickly as a gall, feeling the need to squawk and peck.  Unless you truly meant your father has taken feathers again, the better to survey his kingdom from these winds?"  The tone of Dar's question might have been mistaken for tactful, if not for his knowing grin.

"He has not.  He's too busy with a cattle dispute and with the latest fool who intends to win a crown from the wraith in Peven's tower.  Or to win death.  Guess which outcome is more likely?"

"No riddle there, and no wonder you're out among the trees of Raban instead of gracing the great halls of Anuin."  Dar pointed with a thumb over his shoulder.  "I have to check Ock's grove.  It's always the last to be picked.  Take me, I'll finish my work, and we'll both enjoy a harvest supper when we're done."  Wisely, he didn't add that the massive calm of the oaks was a sovereign remedy for ragged tempers.

Since remedy was what Rood had sought, he hauled up Dar and then directed his mount back past the crossroads and on by woods noisy with the cheerful shouts of harvesters and the rattle of galls into buckets.  With Dar's guidance, Rood rode to where the vale widened before rising to meet the inland plains.  They left the road just before oaks yielded to farmlands, and Rood's horse picked his way across the fallen leaves and twigs of former years, far back into the grove.

Rood tied his horse to a stake driven into the ground well away from any temptation by acorns before hiking with Dar to the nearest, massive trunk.  He watched, still brooding, as Dar rested both hands against the great oak for a while before sketching a thick circle across its bark with a red grease-stick that he had taken from his belt pouch.  Dar was tall enough these days to make his mark above the level where wandering boars might scrape their bristled sides against the trunk, smearing his signal to the harvesters.  Finished, he moved to another tree with Rood still in train and then, after scribing a circle again, to another.

Above them, foliage and branches rustled and creaked in the stray flurries of wind from the sea that had found their ways down into the vale.  The autumn air smelled of brine and leaf-mold along with a faint tang of smoke.  Sunlight sifted through the shifting leaves, and the stream murmured to itself, hidden from view by the trees.  In the far distance, a flock of crows rose raucously from some unseen field, their caws echoing faintly back from the wooded slopes.

After a long interval of watching Dar at his labor, Rood asked, his voice now mild, "What do you hear when you touch the trees?"

"I could say they tell me if the wasps have departed and the galls are ready for harvest." Dar paused after his words, his broad fingertips still spread across bark, his plain features distant and thoughtful. Then he said, "Or I could ask you, who was Ock of Raban?"

It was a familiar riddle.  "Ock of Raban was a poor lord of An who paused one afternoon to share his scant bread and cheese with the witch Madir.  When they lingered afterward on his spread-out cloak beneath the eldest of his oaks, she told him what the leaves above had to say of his lands and his fortunes.  Being the man he was, Ock told her in turn that wise and cunning council was a high road to riches, but the wonder of a tree that talked surpassed mere gold and silver.  Madir spoke no more to him of leaves that day, but two winters later brought him a child freshly weaned, one who grew up in his household knowing the words of Ock's trees and the ways of Ock's groves."

"My many-times great grandfather." Dar walked toward another oak, dry leaves rustling and crunching underfoot.

"The riddle's stricture is that not all knowledge can be shared by speaking.  But I didn't come here to riddle-game with you."

"If you had, you'd win; you always do.  Why are you here?"

"Mathom still won't explain why he swore his great vow to grant my sister's hand to the first man who can out-riddle Peven's ghost, even though she's coming to adulthood, and the challengers are gathering like carrion birds.  Duac finally lost his temper yesterday; I thought he'd shout the roof-beams down.  Raederle says she's weighing the life of a pig-keeper, and anyone who wants her can seek her amidst Hel's sows.  Meanwhile, Mother has announced her defeat and retired to her weaving.  She's turned to that tapestry of a thorny hedge she only works on when she's feeling peevish."

Dar grinned at the red circle he had drawn across another trunk.  "What about Rood?"

"I don't know.  Raederle's riddle may not be mine, but I still hate not knowing."

"You never did like ignorance.  It was the despair of our teachers, the way you lifted your head whenever they didn't have a ready answer and gave them that arrogant stare before you turned your attention to us like a knife needing stones to hone a sharp edge."

"Some sharpening stones you were.  Mathom spent an entire spring searching out the three of you to be schooled with me.  He never did say why, of course."

"I wouldn't know."  Dar turned away from his latest tree, moved on.  "I only cared that he freed me for a while from scrubbing caldrons and practicing swordplay.  Why else, other than at the King of An's subtle whim, would the offspring of a long-dead Strag trader by a lesser daughter of Raban be set to copying The Lore of Places, bisecting triangles, and answering riddles?"

"And now you're back among the acorns.  Was that what you wanted when you were in Anuin?"

"It's not a bad life, serving the groves.  Given my blood and gift, where else would I be?"

"Where else would you want to be?"

After a pause, Dar grimaced.  "More questions for questions.  There's a route where we won't find anything new."  Rood quirked a brow before he nodded.  Looking dogged, Dar continued, "A trade.  I'll tell you about my would-be elsewhere if you'll tell me the same."

"Does a wise prince make a fast bargain with a trader's son?  Never mind.  Don't answer that.  Speak to me of elsewheres instead."

"All right.  Anywhere but here.  I love the groves, High One knows, but I'm tired of being nothing more than this generation's living stricture of Ock's riddle.  The galls on this tree aren't quite ready for harvest."  He slashed red across the old oak's trunk. "I want to see something other than Anuin, the vale, and oak trees.  You?"

Rood was quiet for a few heartbeats, considering.  "I'm not sure.  Caithnard."

"That's a sure destination for an unsure answer."

"If you want surety, dirty more cauldrons.  They'll surely need scrubbing.  Mine's an honest response to confusion."  Rood picked up a windfall branch from the ground and jabbed air with it, searching for words.  "I don't know who I am.  Mathom is frighteningly himself, Duac is Mathom's willing, sensible shadow, Cyone is all-admired, Raederle is already more than any man deserves, and I am...spare."

"You do look a little thinner than usual," Dar said, and danced out of the way of Rood's irritated swipe.

Unruffled by his missed swing, Rood said, "I want to know what I should be doing."

"Doing?  You already serve as Mathom's emissary.  I've heard you're well thought of, when you're not feeling sharp-tongued.  Hel's teeth, Rood—"

"I don't mean Father's errands.  Chores are easy to find.  No, I want to know what I should be doing.  Duac is land-heir and spends all of his time either upholding Mathom or growling at him.  Raederle has been entangled by her enigma since before she was born, a riddle first posed when she was still a dream in my father's crow-dark eyes.  I seem to be the only one who doesn't know what's meant for me.  Perhaps, if I learn enough answers among the Riddle-Masters, I can find an answer for myself."

Dar seemed to struggle with something for a moment before he retorted, voice rough, "Then go.  What holds you here?  You're the second smartest man in An, and there's no disgrace in attending the college at Caithnard.  You could bring back some bright-colored robe of mastery you'd won and confound the lords of Three Portions with it.  More than you do already, I mean."

"I don't know.  Father wouldn't share his opinion when I hinted at the idea, not that he ever does.  And I'd leave Duac stuck with all the lords.  Even given his patience, he badly wants to strike down Raith of Hel any time he spends more than half a day with him, which demonstrates Duac's good taste.  Then there's Raederle."

"Raederle?"

"Every month she gains more height.  And more beauty."

"She does?"  At Rood's sardonic look, Dar raised a placating hand, smiled ruefully, and said, "She does.  Still, given Mathom's vow, I wouldn't think she'd need a second brother to club off suitors."

"There's the limit of what you know, trader's son.  Difficulties increase value.  And suitors like to believe that there's a chance they could get something for free."

"Men court her attentions whether they can win her hand or not?  Already, at her age?  I'd wager she's livid."

"She stranded Duac and me amidst the illusions of Madir's wood this summer because he was unwise enough to mention that Aval Gwin was a decent sort who was trying to catch her eye."  

"We spent years swapping wax slates back and forth with Aval beneath the glares of tutors.  He was a decent sort.  So was Ohn of Hel, for all that he has to defer to that uncle of his."

"These days, Aval could come to her with the High One's own letter of introduction brought to him by the High One's own harpist, and I think she'd grant him nothing but a shove into the fish pond."

"Aval or the harpist?"  Dar considered, forehead wrinkled, before answering his own question.  "Maybe both, knowing how she was when she was younger.  You have formidable kin.  But at least your household is livelier than Raban."

Rood stared at him bleakly.  "Mark your oak trees, do."

"Now, there's an idea."  Dar went on to the next tree and spread out his large fingers on the trunk, tanned skin pressed against grey-brown wood.  After he had drawn his mark and chose to speak again, he talked of nothing more personal than what the plants and animals hinted about the forthcoming winter's weather and the fine points of brewing ink.

That night, Rood lingered late at the first of Raban's two harvest suppers, held by custom before the final galls were picked from Ock's grove.  He joined three different circles of dancers, tried a fast step with the fairer of Dar's female cousins, and then took lead in a leaping dance with Dar himself, borrowed staves clashing in the firelight to the noise of wailing pipes.

Slightly winded and oddly restless, he turned his attention to the feast.  The rough trestle tables creaked beneath roasted boar stuffed with onion and leeks, stewed skerrits, hot bread with honey, fresh-brewed ale, and even a newly breeched cask of Herun wine.  The wine proved memorable of its kind.  Wen Raban, Dar's uncle and lord of the vale, insisted on sending Rood home with three riders to make sure he didn't sag off his horse in one direction or the other before he passed back through the third gate of Anuin.

By the next morning, fog had rolled in from the harbor.  Rood ate his breakfast with slow mistrust, grateful for the comfort of the fire in the hearth and the absence of wind to stir up smoke from its fuel.  Duac took the seat across from him at the high table, accepted some bread and cheese from an attendant, and eyed Rood warily, obviously wondering if Rood's bleary gaze portended a renewal of skirmishing.

Rood looked up at Duac from the piece of bread he'd been tearing into smaller pieces, and said abruptly, "You know traders."

Duac raised pale and quizzical brows above his sea-colored eyes.  "So do you."

"Yes, but they like you enough to grant you a favor."

"Is this about another book?  I thought you'd already spent—"

"No, not that.  I need to learn what there is to know about a trader's house, one rejoicing in the name of Strag, rather than a book.  Although this house may supply the needs of scribes, buying and selling parchment and vellum, styluses, pen knives, and goods of that sort."

"That should narrow the field to a mere score or so of traders, scattered across all of the High One's kingdoms.  I don't suppose you'll tell me why you're interested in these Strags?"

"No reason worth your worry."  Rood made an airy gesture with the carven cup of well-watered wine he had decided his stomach might tolerate.  "I only want to write them a brief letter reminding them of a stored cargo they might have forgotten."

"Now you're about a steward's business?  You and your mysteries." Duac shook his head.  "All right, then.  But one day I want a full explanation."

"One day, you'll have it."

"I'll also need your company this afternoon.  Raith of Hel is coming to share his wisdom about that cattle raid into Aum."

Rood shuddered.  "No wonder the traders like you.  You drive a hard bargain."

"Tell the whole hall, do."  Duac got up, still holding his bread and cheese.  "He'll be here sometime after noon.  Do you think the red-rimmed eyes will be gone by then?"

"If not, I can claim I wept with the joy of his arrival."

Duac almost succeeded in suppressing his snort of laughter.

In the renewed outbreak of wrangling during the following days, Rood had no time to brood over what he'd decided once Duac passed on news of the affluent and adventurous Strags of Kraal.  Instead, filled with sharp purpose by another day of smooth, effusive speeches from Hel that might as well have been rants, he reached for a sheet of common parchment, sharpened a quill, and wrote his missive.  Some odd sense of fitness led him to open his precious horn inkwell of Raban ink for the task.  In the light of the candles, the letters gleamed like cabochons of jet before they dried.

He sent his missive with the last trade-ship fleeing north for Kraal like a sea-gull seeking shelter inland before the winter storms.  By spring, when the lords brought back their quarrels to council, he had almost forgotten his meddling until the morning when Raederle accosted him in the library.

"Brother, I have come to deliver to you a letter of importance," she announced with stiff formality.  Over the winter, she had not only reached womanhood but also the age where loftiness was at its most enjoyable.  Knowing Raederle, this particular pleasure would quickly pale, but even so.

Without looking away from the copy of The Chronicle of the Princes he had open on the reading desk before him, Rood said, "Thank you, my lady sister.  You grace me with this fair and gentle courtesy."

"Oh, Rood." Raederle shifted restlessly. "Don't be difficult. I could have left this in your chambers."

"Why didn't you?"

"Now I wonder.  Maybe because I thought you might be interested?  Dar Raban caught me on my way out to Mother's garden.  I asked if he wanted me to find you, but he said he was in a hurry and only had time to leave this along with a message."  At the abrupt lift of Rood's head, she added, "He didn't want to miss his ship."

Rood snatched the letter from her hand and used his thumb to break the blob of beeswax tinted malt-brown.  He undid the tight folds to read:

Rood—

I'm off to Kraal, but I guess you knew that would happen.  I tried to think of all I wanted to write before I wasted ink, but some of it seemed pointless and some seemed undue.  In the end, all that seemed needed was my thanks.  Oh, and a reminder that you should have considered the stricture about Lec of Herun.

Dar

"You never taught me that riddle," Raederle said, craning to see the letter's contents.

"Don't read over my shoulder.  The riddle itself is not very interesting, but the stricture is that you shouldn't be surprised to reap barley when barley is what you sowed.  What was Dar's message?"

For a long few moments, Raederle gazed down at the wax slate Rood had been using for his notes without answering.  But her amber eyes, when she finally lifted them to him, were as determined as her words were swift.  They poured from her like a breaker surging up a beach of shingle.  "When are you going to ask Father if you can go study at Caithnard?  Dar told me that was what you wanted.  And why didn't you confide in Duac?  You know he'll help; did you need me to ask him for you?  It's not that Mother will mind.  She says you've grown awfully restless this past winter."

Closing his eyes, Rood pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

That autumn, for no particular reason he could explain, he packed away Dar's letter with the books and papers that he brought with him to Caithnard.

In the years that followed, the Riddle-Masters' college proved to be all he had expected wrapped around nothing he would have predicted.  As swiftly as he won his robes of rank, Prince Morgon of Hed won them swifter still.  Morgon also won Rood's unwilling devotion; it was provoking, favoring someone so sublimely unaware.  When Morgon left Caithnard to rule Hed, Rood might have believed he was glad if not for the waste.  He set himself to mastering riddles with renewed determination, meaning to challenge Peven and redeem Raederle from Mathom's promise.  Even Cyone's death only strengthened Rood's resolve.

Then Morgon returned, carrying Peven's crown in his rustic, brilliant hands, and Rood – who should have remembered the perils of birthright – almost pushed him out the great doors of oak on a quest to seek answers about his heritage and gifts.  After Morgon disappeared on his way to the High One's Hall, Rood decided to leave Caithnard, to find Morgon and to redeem Rood's error.

It seemed all of a piece that Mathom would fly off on Rood's quest, leaving Rood behind to return home and help Duac deal with the quarreling lords of the Three Portions.  When Raederle stole the ship meant to transport Rood for her own quest, taking his books and belonging along with her, he almost lacked the will to be furious.  He felt himself shoved toward the edges of some greater story, still the spare after all his urgent years of striving and study.

One dank evening on the trail home, after a long, gray day of riding in a misting rain, Rood found himself recalling Dar's letter with a sharp pang of loss and wondering what he had sown to reap this crop.

II

During the angry and confused months after his return from Caithnard, Rood realized he should have taken Dar's advice and brought back the Red of Apprenticeship with him to Anuin.  Forging the feuding household warriors of the Three Portions into an army was like herding together the half-feral pigs that Hel loved so well.  Duac and Rood had employed coaxing, persuasion, debating, demanding, and enforcement at sword's point, each in turn.  But, even after Mathom returned on crow's wings from his fruitless search for the High One, the lords still balked.  Perhaps flapping the fabric of Rood's crimson robe at them might have spooked some of the more obstinate into moving in the right direction.

Or perhaps not:  Rood was used to choking down his thwarted hopes these days.  The Star-Bearer – no, Morgon – had vanished yet again after an enigmatic battle in Lungold, the ancient city of wizards.  Raederle was still following after Morgon with her red hair flying loose and strange powers rising behind her eyes.  Warriors who shifted shape like the shadowed creatures in Rood's ever more frequent nightmares harried the ragged remnants of what had once been an army back and forth across Ymris.  And the high houses of An, Aum, and Hel were spending their time arguing about whose ghostly ancestor had stampeded whose cattle into trampling down whose half a field of cabbages, not to mention that broken spade.  Rood had every reason to be drinking.

"Do you want another cup?" Aval Gwin asked.  His sandy brows were raised in something between inquiry and assessment, but his blue eyes were as kind as usual.

"What sort of a question is that?" Ohn of Hel protested.  He sat on a stool wedged into the corner behind their battered table, where his great bulk made him resemble Liam of Aum's prized trophy bear.  "It's daylight yet.  The piper hasn't played even once.  Everyone's drinking.  There are still ages of time for sipping wine and eating stew to sop up the excess."

Rood might have agreed with these arguments if he hadn't suspected that Ohn only wanted him to seize an increasingly rare chance to relax.  "Half a glass watered full to the brim," he said, and Aval shrugged before beginning his journey through the crowd toward the bar.  Responsibility was making Rood think thrice before he drank, a transformation he had observed in himself with mordant amusement.

They were supposed to be carousing down here in The Full-Blown Sail, hard by the docks of Anuin.  The small tavern was packed to its smoke-darkened beams with customers, so crowded that even the serving maids couldn't keep pace.  At least the company was pretending that Rood was just another patron come for the drinking and the famed piper soon to play.  Rood, for his part, was pretending he was more interested in wine than whatever news he could garner about Morgon and Raederle in a trader's tavern.

Not that he was hearing much.  Even in this throng, they'd been left alone at their rough-hewn table, and the traders around them clung to talk about weather and goods in a way more alarming than fifty embroidered tales about shape-changers would have been.  Rood had learned nothing that other traders had not already carried into Mathom's house along with their merchandise.  Aside from the warmth that the great fire provided against the raw winds of late autumn, and the garnet red Herun wine being sold for a fair price at the bar, this trip had been wasted.  Rood would just have to hope that both the piper and the fish stew were as fine as reputed.

The front door opened, letting in the thickening light of sunset on a chill eve with the solstice fast approaching.  Rood glanced up with hard-learned caution.  The tavern smells were suddenly swamped by the mingled scents of seaweed, fish guts, and tarred rope, even as the fire flared up in the hearth from a gust of wind off the water.  Then the heavy wooden door scraped back across worn flagstones and shut with the clank of the latch falling.

This new patron wore jewels on each large hand.  There was a brace of battered packs slung over his shoulder and a sword scabbard of faded russet leather belted at his waist.  The hood of his fur-lined cloak was pulled up against the chill; Rood tensed.  He didn't relax until the man tugged back the hood, revealing unremarkable features graced by weary, pale-brown eyes.  When he saw the eyes, Rood tensed again.

Aval was the first to speak.  "Dar!"

The tired eyes lit up with pleasure, and Dar craned his head toward the bar.  "Aval?"  He had traded near-shout for near-shout across the heads of the other customers.

"Yes, and as close as your cap is to your breeches.  We're sitting over in the far corner by the hearth.  What do you want to drink?"

"Ale, always."  Dar turned toward their table.  Rood could tell, even with all the crowd between them, the moment when he was seen.  Something deep within him took sudden wing; the mingled words of the customers seemed to flow together into a roar like a grove tossed by a storm before separating into voices again.  Then Dar squared his shoulders and moved through the crowd as if they were the rapids ahead and he were the boat on a river.  Rood hooded his eyes, watching Dar approach, wondering at his own reaction.

Ohn rose up from his stool and reached out to slap Dar on the back.  "Look at you, man!  Here I thought your hide was well enough tanned before you took to trading."  He grabbed Dar's hand and squeezed it hard, then held it high and widened hazel eyes in mock amazement at the amber ring.  "Isn't that some flash and fire?"  Letting go, he turned to Rood and said, "I'll help Aval fetch the drinks."  With the deftness strangers never expected, he slipped free from his corner and slid into the crowd.

Dar shook his head, smiled, and sat on the rough bench across from Rood, setting down his leather packs on the floor beside him.  Then they stared mutely at each other until Dar said, "I suspect those drinks will arrive slower than I'd otherwise predict, even in a tavern this busy and this close to the docks."

"I suspect you're right."

They fell silent again.  Dar seemed as battered as a young tree after a winter storm, his skin darkened and weather-worn, and his jaw line marred by a scar that hadn't had time to fade.  His pale eyes were still as calm as the leaf-speckled ponds of Raban's vale.  But something both awestruck and wary now lingered far back in their depths.  

Rood wondered what Dar saw.  Abruptly, he said, "I started to write you a letter after I told them I was leaving Caithnard, but instead I went and sat on a beach."

"No matter.  Princes are watched.  I heard about your final departure for An on a horse rather than a ship, and that without your books."

"I lost your last letter, too.  Where have you been?  How long will you be in Anuin?"  Rood took a deep breath and breathed, "Have you heard anything of Raederle?"

Dar had leaned in close to listen.  He straightened and said, "She seeks Morgon of Hed once more.  The Star-Bearer.  I heard she was taking council with the wolf-king up north although that news was old when I heard it in Caithnard."  His forefinger twitched on the scarred table-top, as if he wanted to write something with a splotch of spilled wine, before he stilled.

"Thank you."  Rood closed his eyes, opened them again.  "I know the gales are coming to plague shipmasters soon.  When you leave, will you carry letters north for me?"

"I'm staying."

Rood felt his face go slack with surprise and then still.  "You're staying."

"I've come back to An for good and all."  Still looking down, Dar told the battered table top, "I meant to return after hearing of the rout on Wind Plain.  Given that disaster, anyone could see what lies ahead for the Three Portions.  But I was finishing up business for my cousins in Lungold, and was swept into the fighting there."  He looked up.  "Rood—"

That was when Aval and Ohn returned with the drinks.  Rood lifted his head, blinked at them, and found he had said, before he considered, "Dar's staying."

They glanced at each other.  Rood had known them long enough, even without the shadowed intimations that haunted him these days, to tell the look that passed between them was one of satisfaction.  With a thump, Ohn set down three clay cups and a dented tankard before growling, "Now, there's news worth a drink."  Aval settled for beaming around the table.

The piper was excellent, and the stew was as savory and as rich as reputed, thick with whitefish, watercress, chopped leeks, and oysters.  Rood stretched out his last cup of wine as long as he could and kept his peace.

He let the others trade stories over the crowd's noise during the intervals when the piper hid his flushed cheeks behind a foaming tankard.  Listening, Rood picked with his thumbnail at a gash in the wood of the tabletop.   Dar seemed to be altering his accounts of his recent adventures, refining what must have been terror and struggle into jesting and color.  Rood found he wanted to hear the tales unchanged.

At last Dar placed both hands palm down on the table.  "Well.  I need to seek lodging.  It's already too late for a horse and the vale this night."  He pushed himself up.

Aval looked at Ohn, Ohn at Aval.  They both looked at Dar, displaying two different styles of incredulity.  Aval said, his words tolerant, "I don't imagine you'll need an inn," and Ohn added a dry, "You could stay with me, but I'd wager Rood has other plans."

"Don't be simple," Rood told Dar.  The words came out harsh as the caw of a crow, and he realized how ruffled he sounded.  "Come up the hill."  Drawing a deep breath, he forced a smile that was likely crooked.  "If only for the news you carry, you'd find welcome there.  But you have a firmer grip on hospitality than that.  Stay as long as you like.  For that matter, if Raban still has nothing better for you to do than check galls, you might as well spend your days as one of my riders.  Neither of these two has handwriting worth the ink they spill when they have to take notes in the field."

"Oh, ah," Dar said, his face blank.  He sat again and picked up his tankard to swirl around the last ale it held.  "That's true enough."  Then he drank, hiding his expression.

Ohn snorted.  "Following hard on the heels of those encouraging words, I have a request.  May we two be excused?  I promised to introduce Aval to one of my sweeter friends here in town."

Flicking two fingers at him, Rood said, "Yes, go.  You already know we'll be inspecting Aum's new levy in the morning."

Aval leaned forward and said softly to Dar, "My heart rejoiced, seeing you again," before both he and Ohn rose to nod formally to Rood.  Then they worked their way, a last time, through the crowd.

With the two of them gone, it was suddenly obvious that Rood was occupying a bubble of solitude floating coolly amidst the warm and lively crowding of the tavern.  He asked Dar, "Would you mind our leaving?"

"No.  Just as well; I'm tired."  Dar stood once more and picked up his packs.

When Rood rose, the crowd parted even before he stepped away from his table.  It was past time to depart.

Outside, the sun had set and only a thin band of deep blue was left on the western horizon to evoke the day.  The moon had yet to rise, but a man with a lantern and a ladder was lighting the lamps that now hung, by Mathom's command, below the eves of every large building.  Tonight, their yellow glows seemed like the bonfires of a troop making camp in hostile country.

A last few sea-gulls rode the darkening wind, crying out as if against the coming of the night.  Passers-by hastened to their houses or inns, hurried along by a chill wind that blew in over the inky waters of the harbor.  Behind them, waves boomed and roared against the sea cliffs and the stones of the ancient seawalls.

Rood and Dar walked the cobblestones without speaking for a while.  After a time, Dar asked, "Should you be traveling without guards?"

They had turned to hike up Water Street toward Mathom's house before Rood said, "What could guards do against shape-changers except die?  And that sword you carry seems to have shed as much blood as their weapons have."

"For all the good it did me."  Dar stopped.  "Rood, I met Raederle.  Briefly, in Lungold, before she left again in search of Morgon."

Rood was glad his hand was steady when he reached out to squeeze Dar's shoulder and say, "Your tale can wait.  Mathom and Duac will also want to hear."

The lamp-lighter hadn't passed this way yet; Dar's face was a pale shape in the dark.  "I'm not sure I want to tell this story twice.  I suppose I'll have to.  But at least let me tell you first."

"As you say."  Something deep and shadowed in Rood, a part of him that had first stirred beneath his sister's gaze while the dead of the Three Portions quarreled around them, seemed to ruffle before stilling again.  Behind them, he heard the faint thump of a ladder being propped against plastered stone as the lamplighter started his work on this street.  Rood studied the white trace of the road ahead of them, winding back and forth across the slope as it rose.  Even in the thickening gloom, he could see the faint movements that were people traveling between Mathom's house and Mathom's city, late though the time might be.  "Let's find a place more private than this."

Still following some inner prompting, Rood led Dar through the fifth gate of Anuin and up into the tower that was, until this last year, the favorite of his mother.  As the stairs spiraled upward, they had to pass Cyone's solar, left empty and echoing at night since her death.  But the pang caused by the bulky shadow of her covered loom was more like the ache of an old bruise rather than the pain of a fresh and bleeding wound.  And guards no longer watched from the top of this tower. It was as solitary a setting as they would find in a crowded household.

Dar circled the crown of the tower restlessly, slowly pacing along the broad ledge, feeling his way among shadows.  Somehow, Rood knew what he sought.  He took Dar's arm and walked him close to the edge on one side.  "The groves are over there.  In daytime, you can make out the vale breaking inland from the sea.  Now you can only trace the coast, hear the waves."

"I feel as if I can hear the trees calling even over the sounds of the waters."  Dar sighed.  "After Lungold, I'm not surprised."

"Sit.  There's no sense in your trying to tell a tale and being interrupted by some gust of wind pushing you over to horrify the servants when you hit the paving stones below.  I'd never hear the end of the matter, and some of the more nervous sorts start at shadows for hours when they've been upset."

"I'd be horrified too, if only briefly."  Shifting away from the edge, Dar moved to where he had put down his packs and sat, using them for a backrest.

Rood folded his legs and sank down next to Dar, at ease in the posture in which he had studied scores of riddles at Caithnard.  "So?  Tell me."

For a heartbeat or two, Dar seemed uncertain.  Then he said, "Some things seem the same in every skirmish, even the strangest.  That salt-and-metal smell of fear and blood, for one.  Never mind.

"I was in Lungold with a group of my fellows by the walls when the shape-changers came.  I don't know what the others saw.  To my eyes, they were all I had learned of the sea:  shining, ever-changing, relentless as tides, merciless as waves, so beautiful they split your heart in two.  They cut through us in the way we'd harvest fodder to feed our packhorses, doing simple work to serve some greater need.  But as they swept by, one paused and turned to me.

"His sword was crafted from the bone of a human thigh.  My own sword couldn't parry his slash. With all my will, I barely tapped his blade, shifting it to trace my jaw instead of my throat.  I still remember how the touch of it seared like brine.  He made a sound of this sort—" Dar clicked his tongue "—as if he was faintly annoyed, the way I would be if I picked a green leaf instead of a gall.  Then his sword rose again."  Dar fell silent.

After a time, Rood prompted him.  "Did one of the wizards save you?"

"I don't know.  I think— I'd lurched at his stroke, reached behind me with my open hand.  I touched the ancient wall, touched the root of an oak that had worked its way through stone and mortar.  I could feel how long it had grown, how slowly it had striven, how patient it was in its power.  It seemed so very quiet."  Rood saw Dar bow his head.  "He...lost interest.  Those spindrift eyes dimmed as if a fog was rolling on shore.  He lowered his sword and turned away, intent on some other prey.  And I stood there as he vanished.  I just stood there, silent and bleeding, as the city burned and the Star-Bearer was harried like a rabbit from the ruins of Lungold."

Rood drew in a sharp breath as his mind's eye envisioned the scene Dar had described.

Dar whispered, "But that's not important.  Except to me."

"If that isn't, what is?"

"Two days later, while I was trying to salvage some ingots, I looked up to find Raederle standing before me."  He lifted his face, his expression obscured by darkness but his posture paying witness to his wonder.  "She truly has grown beautiful, but it's more the breath of her spirit, like an exhalation of fire—"

"I know.  What did she say?"

Dar chuckled, the laugh ragged but real.  "Well.  For one thing, she wanted to know why I was in Lungold, chasing after gold, rather than back here, chasing after you."

"I can take care of myself," Rood said, the words stiff even in his own ears.

"Odd:  that's what Raederle claimed about herself.  When I told her I already intended to return to Anuin, she gave me something to bring along."

"Letters?"  Rood stirred, almost rising to his feet in his eagerness.  Then he stilled, head cocked, before settling again.

"Yes, those.  But also books.  Two of them.  They were a gift for you, she said, and not from her."

"But who— Morgon?"

"I don't think so.  Again, I don't know."  Dar made a frustrated noise.  "Was she always so cryptic, and I merely didn't notice?"

"I think that must have been our father coming out in her at last.  Something in Mathom's blood seems to lure us toward seeking shadows and providing provocation."

"Poor you."  Dar let out a sigh that seemed to come up from his toes.  "Hel's teeth, I really am tired."

"Can you find your own way back down to my chambers?  I need to consider your news for a while."

"If I learned anything in these years of trading, I learned to retrace a route.  I'll leave the books on your writing desk.  I'm sure one of your retainers will find me a place to sleep."

"Yes.  My thanks."  Dar got to his feet, and wearily hoisted up his packs one last time.  Still abrupt, Rood said, "I'm glad you're back."

"I'm glad I'm back, too," Dar replied, and left the roof without another word.

Rood remained behind, legs still crossed, gazing toward where the moon was rising at last over the shoreline.  He waited until the sound of Dar's steps had faded down the stone stairwell.  Then he asked without turning, his tone sardonic, "And what did you think of all that?"

"I'm another who's glad he returned."  Mathom of An stepped out of darkness and moved to stand by Rood.

"For Dar's sake or for the sake of the news he brings?"

"Both.  And neither."

"Ah, the clarity I've come to expect."  Rood studied the moon, swollen and strange, dyed orange by its rising and dappled with shadows.  "Have I told you that I'm beginning to sense in what waters you fish when you catch your enigmas?  And here I always thought I wanted to know the answer to that particular riddle."  He felt his lips twist up into something too bitter to be entirely a smile.  "It's come to the point where I can barely bring myself to shout at you any more.  I miss that, the shouting.  It was so much easier than dawning comprehension."

He heard Mathom stir, heard him still again before he spoke.  "I suppose you want Dar Raban enrolled in my guard, just like the other two."

"Under my command, yes.  As I'm sure you saw would happen, all those years ago."

"Better to say, I had hopes.  Your schoolmates have grown into valuable men."

"Compared to the lords of this realm?  My three are more precious than jewels.  I wouldn't trade a one of them for Peven's crown."

"Such a bargain would be safe enough, with Peven's crown sunk somewhere beneath the swells between Caithnard and Anuin."

"And Morgon pursued by the ones who cast it down into those depths."  Rood pulled up his knees tight to his chest and rested his face against them.  "There isn't much time left for ignorance, is there?"

There was a short silence.  Mathom's voice was chilly but gentle when he said, "If you believe that's the case, perhaps you'd best see to your books."

When Rood looked up, he was gone.  A single crow flew, black and silent, across the moon.  Rood shivered, wondering what it would be like to be alone in the chill sky with nothing but black feathers and bitter secrets.  Sometimes he dreaded the blood they shared, the likeness Rood bore on his features, the shape taking wing in his dreams.

The wind off the water seemed too cold to bear any longer.  Rood descended from the tower and retreated to his quarters.  A low conversation with a passing attendant informed him that Dar was safely stowed in a truckle-bed, sleeping.  In his own bedchamber, Rood's body servant was gone to his well-earned rest, but a beeswax candle had been left burning both for illumination and to sweeten the air.

Rood went to his writing desk and picked up the books sitting there.  The plain leather of their covers felt supple beneath his fingers, but they had that indefinable sense of age he had learned to recognize in the libraries of Anuin and Caithnard.  When he walked over to the tall candlestick and examined them in the glow of its light, the dull cabochons set into their corners suddenly gleamed blood red and bone yellow.  Rood tucked one book under his arm and touched a locked clasp on the other, expecting its pages to be shut tight against him.  To his surprise, the clasp yielded to his probing, as did its twin.

He opened the cover.  He recognized the writing within.  A brief perusal was enough to persuade him that what he held was a book whose pages had been written in the hand of the wizard Yrth.

III

"Is Dar out talking to the trees again?" Aval asked.

"Either that, or he's watering one.  'Your pardon, gentle oak, but would you mind if I just unlaced and—'" Ohn ducked the leather riding glove Aval tossed in his direction.

"It's only that he had compiled and annotated the notes about Rood's judgment for Map Hwillion, and I wanted to include them in the courier's pouch going back to Anuin."

"Search his writing desk.  Or do you need me to do it for you?"

"If I let you do something like that for me, I might as well have done it myself," Aval retorted.  Then, "Who was Ymar of the Marches?" he and Ohn chorused together.

"Did I ever leave Caithnard?" Rood asked without looking up from Yrth's book.  "I thought I had, but I suppose that was all an evil dream.  What tavern shall we drink at tonight?"

"Who's drinking?" Dar asked, as he pulled aside the tent flap and entered.  "No, never mind.  Aval, did you find those notes about Map Hwillion's well?  I left them on your pallet."

With a "Hah!" Aval dived for his blankets.

Ohn grinned. "Aval wondered if you were talking to the trees again.  More oaks?"

"The ancient oaks of Gwen, to be exact.  Members of their clan have short-stemmed leaves and as many as four acorns on a stalk.  They are rich of mast and beloved of doves.  I'll spare you the intricate lore about their bark."

Ohn shook his head.  "After these past seasons, I'll never be able to view a cord of firewood quite the same way again."  He turned to Aval, who was now rumpled but triumphantly clutching a roll of parchment and a folding slate.  "Are you ready to speak with the courier?  He's one of  Cadvan's  men, and if you keep them out of the saddle long enough, those horses of theirs—"  He held open the flap for Aval, who had scooped up a bulging leather pouch to carry along with the slate and the parchment.  Then he followed Aval outside, still enumerating the unpleasant equine habits of Cadvan.

Rood looked up toward the flap, rolled his eyes in a way he supposed was fond, and asked Dar, "Anything?"

"They would like more rain.  Oh, and the land beneath us is wary and watching, if you somehow hadn't realized that while riding half of Hel and all of Aum.  Of course, you might have been distracted by having to adjudge all the reasons various lords are proffering for not having attended spring council to discuss the great levy.  And a great load of nonsense those are."  He sat down next to Rood and tapped the cover of Yrth's second book sitting closed by Rood's knee.  "I'm still not sure why I want to know so much about the nature of trees and the links between leaves and letters."

"Better trees than birds," Rood told him, closing Yrth's book on his finger.  "Did you know that if a wren calls to you from the east, you'll soon hear tidings from a poet?"

"As long as it's not another of Map Hwillion's laments.  'Conceal it not/she was my heart's love/even though I should love all others besides...'  So mannerly to sing that to you about your own sister while you were trying to eat."

"The mutton was improved by distraction.  Any distraction.  It's a relief to be camped away from young lords who could feast us this eve."

After a snort of appreciation, Dar said, "I suppose I should be glad there's a sensible way for us to split this studying, even if we do seem to be learning about nothing but trees and birds."

"And the secrets of language, and the enigmas of prophecy.  Because all I ever wanted was to be even more like my father than everyone has always said that I am."

Dar studied him, eyes considering.  "You do grow more akin, but you're surely not Mathom.  You haven't copied all his ways, and you're the better loved for it."

Rood knew his expression was sardonic.

"Oh, Aval says it's because your mastering more mysteries make you yearn to roost with others rather than fly alone save for your kin, even if you do caw or peck at us from time to time.  And Ohn claims your friendships with those not of your blood let the lords believe they know who your favorites are, which makes them less nervous."

"What do you think?" Rood asked, voice mild.

"I think I couldn't imagine Mathom riding on someone's shoulder.  You, though—  When you – if you – delve deep enough to follow your father and don plumage, I expect you'll find reasons to have poor fellows like me do some of your walking for you.  That's warming."  His smile was diffident, faintly wistful.  "Even if you would dig in your claws."

Rood tilted his head.  He was surprised how easy it was to say, "When I do, you'll likely deserve it.  Did you know that if a crow goes with you on a journey or in front of you, and it is joyful, your journey will prosper and fresh meat will be given to you?"

Dar's face brightened.  "Dinner."

"And not," Rood added with great satisfaction, "Map Hwillion's mutton.  Fresh venison instead, and deep-felt thanks to the noble-horned donor."

They were camped in the heart-forest of the oaks of Gwen, hard by both Madir's woods and the abstract point where all Three Portions converged.  No single lord had held this land until Rood's ancestors swept across the entire realm, uniting three kingdoms within one land law.  The struggles before that year long past, the raiding and the feuding, had left these woods unmolested save for the occasional hunt or windfall harvest.  Since then, they had been held for the crown, all in an effort to lessen the inevitable arguments about the exact location of the border between the Portions.  Rood had deliberately planned their circuit to grant them one night here with nothing more tangled than wilderness around them.

Outside their tent, the afternoon sun hung low in a sky like blue lacquer, its bright, slanting light glinting off veins of quartz in the great, grey boulders that loomed around the small clearing they had chosen for a camp. Years ago, some ancient giant had fallen here, opening the canopy of green next to a small stream.  Tall and mossy trunks rose all around them, their foliage flickering and glinting as the lowering sunlight caught subtle shifts in air not quite still.  As Rood's riders carried water and tended to their fire of fallen branches, their voices and laughter sounded clearly against the slight noises of the woods.

Rood sensed no threat, not even this far off the trader's trail.  These trees did not trip or trick like Madir's but only grew and mused, content in their enduring strength.  He could understand why the old kingdoms had strived, each in turn, to claim this beauty for their own.  They should have seen that the woods would prevail in the end.  None of the restless dead of the Three Portions were buried here.

Dinner was easy and full of laughter, and even Rood did his share of carrying fodder and cleaning the caldron.  Afterward, they swapped tales as the darkness fell until the lies grew too obvious.  Then Aval played his flute for them, and four of the riders danced a measure of Ruhn marked by tossing heads and high steps like those of the wild horses that had once roamed the Ymris plains.  A wineskin went around, but Rood took one draught and passed it on.  He was pleased to see that none of the men numbered off for guard duty indulged, either.

He had no problems nodding off.  Dar's snuffles, Ohn's snorts, and Aval's occasional soft, whistling snores were all familiar from the nights of their progress.  Even now – especially now – no sensible prince slept alone in a strange household.  Here, surrounded by nothing more frightening than oaks and night creatures, the sounds around him were soothing.  Rood slept deep.

He awoke from his dream, heart pounding, knowing who would come.  "Up," he said into the dark.  "Up, and arm, and quiet."  He was not surprised, as he exited the tent, that Dar was hard on his heels.

Outside, all was darkness except for the banked fire.  The sentries were looking outwards, as they should, into the night.  When Rood emerged, he was distantly pleased to see the man nearest come alert and approach.  Blessing the lore that hadn't quite died out during the centuries since the Three Portions warred, Rood said softly, "Wake all.  No noise."  Then he walked past the fire and stood to the east of it, listening.

They came with a sound of horses, but their steeds were strangely silent, with none of the nervous snorting or jingling of tack that should have accompanied a night ride.  The steeds of Rood's band were also quiet on their line, as if they had slept through the arrival of their fellows.  When the noise of horses ceased, no crunch of leaves or cracking of twigs marked passage through the trees.  Only a soughing of foliage, a faint hint of brine and ice on the air, and a mantling of the shadows deep within Rood, hinted the shape-changers were near.

"What do you do here?"  Rood asked harshly, as they entered the clearing.

There were three, and they seemed to bring their own light with them, pale and nacreous like the white foam on waves glowing underneath the moon.  The first walked farthest into the clearing, to stop four sword's lengths from Rood.  He wore his foam-white hair long and clubbed back; pearls were scattered across his fine clothes, which were otherwise faded and stained as if he'd taken them from the body of some drowned ship's captain.  He said, in a voice that sang and cut like the wail of wind in a gale at sea, "We seek the Star-Bearer."

"Seek elsewhere.  You trespass."

"All places are ours as all shapes are ours."

"All lands are the High One's, and these lands are my father's to tend."

"Do you think so, son of the crow-king, full brother to Raederle?"  For a moment, there was a faint, cold resemblance to Duac's amusement around his sea-colored eyes.

Rood wanted to strike down this chill imitation where he stood, but his own men surrounded him, still and silent as statues, vulnerable to these shape-changers' whims.  Instead he tilted his head and eyed the intruders as if deciding what gobbet to pluck first.  "The Star-Bearer is not here.  Feel free to depart."

"Perhaps we will stay."  He felt his mind seized, and shaken like a purse upended. Fragments of his life tore free and swirled past his mind's eye: memories of childhood, endless riddles, small secrets that chafed or were cherished, unspoken hopes of his heart that fruited sweet or bitter in turn.  Deep within, suddenly stripped free of this thicket of memories and desires, a soot-feathered shadow surged up even as the warrior released him and said, "Perhaps we will take you and see who comes to contest our possession."

"Perhaps – no, certainly – you will leave."  The words that fell from Rood's tongue seemed as dark as Raban ink.  As he said them, he saw the future reflected back from his shining, jet-black sentence.  "You will leave, you will learn who contests your possession, and you will then have all that will ever be yours."

The trio of shape-changers flickered, shifting stances like hounds that had caught the scent of prey.  Although the night breeze had stilled, the woods suddenly groaned and creaked around them as if seized and tossed by the first winds of a storm.

As the trees groaned, Dar also spoke.  "You will leave."  His words did not sound human; they rustled and sighed like foliage.  "You are not still.  You always change.  Beneath your waves, you forgot us and our nature.  We are not yours."

One of the pair who had yet to speak, lean and hungry of looks and manner, said to the night around them, "You think you can stand against our flames and waves, trees trapped by dirt?"

Dar was the one to answer, his rustling tones both placid and forceful.  "While you forgot, others began to learn."

There was a bright, metallic "shing" as Rood's entire troop drew their swords as one.  When they walked forward and inward, converging on the shape-changers, a rooted strength about their movements, a calm certainty about their aspects, made it seem as if the trees themselves were striding into battle.

"Is that the way of it?  Then let there be fate for fate."  The pearl-speckled warrior leapt forward, his sword flashing like green lightning during snow, lunging toward Rood even as he and his fellows shimmered into light.  But Rood had also shifted, reaching within for the shadow of a crow he had dreaded, and embracing it.

With a furious cry, wings flapping, slashing at the shape-changer with claws and beak, he broke free and erupted upward into the dark.  While he thrashed across the moonlit night sky, the treetops below him waved and surged, still moving in a wind that did not exist, obscuring the landscape and his passage over it from his pursuers.  He feared what he sensed followed him; he did not fear the trees.  As if they had called his name, he abruptly dove down beneath the canopy of their leaves and sought refuge in the lightning-blasted heart of an elder oak.

Battered by what his vision had shown him, unable to disentangle his spiraling thoughts from his crow-self's bitter warnings, he roosted in darkness.  After he had stropped the shape-changer's blood – sweetly salt, singing of power, enthralling and repellent – from his beak against blackened wood, he slept.  The trees enfolded him.  His sleep was dreamless.

He awoke when a familiar voice cried out, "Rood!"

Although he had half-forgotten how to use his wings, he managed to fumble out of the hollow trunk and flutter down to where Dar stood with Aval and Ohn flanking him, the whole band and their horses clustered a short distance away.  Provoked by a memory of speech, Rood landed on Dar's shoulder, dug in his claws, and said, "Grawk."

"Don't bother.  I padded the shoulders of my tunic," Dar said, the smile flickering onto his lips and off again without ever reaching his pale brown eyes.  They were flecked with gold now, like a pool in an oak forest dappled by autumn leaves.

"Grawk," Rood said once more, and tilted his head to regard Dar sardonically with one crow-black eye.  Then he sidled along Dar's shoulder to get a better view of the riders.

"We're fine," Aval said, and, "Fine, if you don't mind feeling a little barky and leafy," Ohn put in.

"I think I saw Car say 'thank you' to his tinder this morning," Aval finished, blithely.

"If that's so very funny, I want to be around when you don't say please before perching on a log over a stream to do your business in these woods," the rider in question called out.

"Good point," Aval conceded.  "The thought of splinters down there..."

Their banter, if strained, was also soothing:  likely what they intended.  Rood launched himself into the air and then stumbled forward next to Dar, who caught his shoulders and held him upright.

Stepping back, Dar said, "They left when you lured them off.  I could tell—" even under the tan, Rood saw his slight flush "— I was told by the oaks that you were safe and where we would find you."  Then, seeing Rood's countenance, his expression shifted from sheepish to concern.  "What's wrong?"

"What did I do to that shape-changer?"

"Pecked him right in the eye and raked those pretty cheeks," Ohn said.  "He won't be forgetting you any time soon."

"There will be blood spilled in return for that blood," Rood heard himself say.  He wasn't surprised by the gleaming, jet-black certainty behind his words.  He only wondered if the others could hear it, too.

Later that day, Rood and Dar rode next to each other, talking in a space that was neither public nor private.  As long as Rood could choose, he would not be forced into opaque secrecy and its isolation.  He asked Dar, "Was that the trees speaking, last night?"

"Trees don't use words.  Men use words.  If I had been an oak myself—" Dar shrugged and kneed over his horse a little.  "I think I understand some of Yrth's hints now.  I found words for the trees as iron finds form for the smith who hammers it.  This was a mystery of men and the earth they live upon, not of shape-changers and sea-lords."  He seemed to deflate a little.  "At least, that would be my guess."
 
Rood sighed, wishing he could enjoy speculating with Dar rather brooding over the future now haunting him.  "More study."

"I suppose we had better each go through both books again.  Maybe some of it will make more sense after last night.  Although I'd wager a great deal of it still won't."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

He also wasn't surprised, when they entered Hel's halls two days later, to find Mathom waiting for them along with a band of his guards, all in An's battle colors of purple and blue edged with the black of sorrow.  After a nod to Hel, Rood walked straight up to his father and said, "I saw a future as I spoke, when I would rather have been blinded first.  I know now."

As he hadn't since Rood had reached his manhood, Mathom opened his arms and, before all his lords, ladies, and warriors, wrapped Rood in a close, hard embrace.  Rood tightened his own arms around Mathom's armored back, comforted.

When he next saw Duac, it was almost more than Rood could bear.

IV

In the spring after the final battle on Wind Plain, Rood found himself standing in his mother's garden, staring at another year's tangle of dead vegetation while wondering what to tell Anuin's gardeners.  The sun was brilliant and warm in the blue sky above him, the bees were humming confusedly while they sought for something other than weeds, and Rood was realizing that he knew nothing about flowers.

Without warning, Raederle appeared on the slate flagstones before him.  He eyed her coolly before asking, "Do you know what flowers might have pleased mother without being the same seven sorts she always planted?"

"I'm not really sure.  Why don't you ask Dar Raban?"

"If I left it to Dar, this place would be nothing but apple trees and yew hedges."  He turned to examine Raederle.  "You look better.  Different, but better."

"The same applies to you."  She touched the sleeve of his tunic.  "Are you settling within the new order of things?"

"As deeply as I wish there was no need to do so, I am."  His voice a little gruff, he asked, "Morgon?"

"He'll come to me when he's ready."

Rood shook his head, unsurprised.  "You two."

"You're one to talk.  It seems you're studying riddles again.  And other matters."

"A prince needs his distractions."

She smiled at him.  "I suppose, given that you've forsworn taverns.  Would those distractions include Dar?"

"Are you having a sisterly moment?  This is the second time you've mentioned his name."

"Since I found him talking to an ash tree just outside of Anuin's walls, I think that's understandable.  He says he's not returning to Lungold even though Aloil, Iff, Nun, and Talies speak of reopening the wizard's college there."

"He doesn't believe he needs to, not being greatly gifted.  After all, there were two hundred and twelve men and women of power attending Lungold at the end, but only twenty-nine wizards."

"Mathom taught me that riddle.  'What was the balance of Lungold?'  But what if Dar is wrong?  What if you are?"  She sounded more curious than hectoring.

Rood couldn't blame her for wondering.  Sometimes he did, too, when he wasn't busy enjoying the luxury of not knowing the answers to those particular questions.  "Oddly enough, I've considered the chance.  If either of us is wrong, I suppose we'll have the years to find out, just as Suth the wizard and Har the wolf-king did.

"In the meantime, Talies spent centuries as a falcon, caught time and again to fly for the kings of An.  I hand-fed him raw meat myself.  Now that he's human once more, he told me it would be a pleasant change to visit Anuin from time to time and ride out on a saddle while wearing breeches instead of on a pommel while wearing jesses."

Her lips twitched.  "There's also Nun."

"Oh, yes.  She's in Hel even now, fussing over some pregnant sow.  We may see another speaking pig yet.  If that's the case, it can talk of the future for a while instead of my having to do so."

"Good."  She rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek.  "I'll see you again. I'm not sure when."  With a distracted wave of her hand, she disappeared.  Deliberately, he didn't search to be sure she was gone with anything other than his eyes.

Just as Rood returned to staring at dead plants, Dar trotted into the garden and stopped short.  "Raederle was outside the wall, but she vanished."

"She was here, too, and likely elsewhere in the household as well.  Do you think she disappears in the way she does on purpose?"

Obviously hiding amusement behind a considering look, Dar said, "Not unless she enjoys seeing that particular expression on your face.  She might.  My cousins certainly do, as does Ohn.  So do the lords of—"

"How soothing to know I provide abundant amusement for all those who know me instead of striking them mute with trepidation and awe."  It was soothing knowledge, in point of fact.  "Now, what about those measures you three thought might suffice to repair and extend the coast road?  Since you'll be here long enough to see the job through—" Placing a hand on Dar's shoulder, Rood steered him back in the direction of the King's hall while pressing him for more details.

There was no need for others to know how much his grip on Dar sheltered and warmed Rood, in the way that a crow might roost in an oak after being torn irrevocably from his flock by a storm.  At least, with all else scattered by the winds, this one friend of his deepest heart still remained.

"Whatever are you thinking?" Dar interrupted his lecture about crown drainage to ask.  "You have the oddest look on your face."

"I'm thinking that, however I got here, I now know who I am and what I should be doing.  Even when that means being the man told off to address Raith of Hel's serious and heartfelt qualms about anyone expanding the trade roads, ever."

Stopping, Dar looked alarmed.  "No pecking."

Rood had a place, he had his people, and he still had Dar.  Losses or no, these gifts would suffice.  Or, at least they would suffice, given enough time.

Dar ran a large hand through his hair, leaving it hopelessly mussed.  "I'm not sure you should let Ohn anywhere near Hel's horses, either, not after last council and what Lord Raith said about immature, impulsive, and hopelessly naïve younger kinsmen, all while wearing that indulgent smirk."  

Suppressing his own smirk, Rood rolled eyes upwards instead.  "No pecking.  And no behind-the-stables horse-trading to the detriment of Hel.  Even if both are roundly deserved."  Renewing his grip, he started walking Dar down the corridor again.

Dar glanced at the hand on his shoulder and then over at Rood.  Surprise yielded to thoughtfulness, and both gave way to a warm, slow smile, before he spoke once more of road drainage.

Happiness, unexpected, rose within Rood like a leaf carried aloft on a new spring's breeze.