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  'Do you really want to know?' Kheda challenged the youth. 'I won't lie to you if you ask me those questions. Do you want the burden of such knowledge?'

  'No. I don't think I do.' Sirket looked away before snapping back, face accusing, 'What about Itrac? You're going to abandon her with two infant daughters, just like you abandoned us?'

  What is that note in your voice? Was there some truth in those rumours I heard when I was travelling without a name that you were looking on her with growing affection,

  when she and Chazen Saril were given sanctuary in Daish waters?

  'Itrac married me, above all else, to safeguard the Chazen domain.' Kheda drew a steadying breath. 'I'll tell her I am going away to be certain we are all safe from any new threat. She won't ask any more of me than that. I'm asking you to be a friend to Chazen in any dealings you have with other domains. Rally your triremes and warriors in her defence if it comes to it. I hope it won't. Ulla Safar looks to have plenty of concerns to keep him close to home. Redigal Coron seems absorbed in his own affairs, while Ritsem Caid is busy extending his domain's influence to north and east. But you said it yourself — a lot has happened that no one's foreseen.'

  'When will you be coming back?' Sirket asked with growing apprehension.

  'As soon as I can, but there's always the chance I won't return. I chose that risk when I sought the means to save Chazen and Daish the last time and I must choose it now.' Kheda studied his son's face intently. 'I wish these days had never come upon us and that I had been able to see you married and grown, inheriting Daish from me in the fullness of time. If it was my choices that have made that impossible, forgive me.'

  'I don't blame you, not any more.' Sirket struggled for words. 'I did, I mean, at first. I mourned you and everyone was so upset. When I learned you weren't dead, I was so angry, and my mother Janne wouldn't tell me—' His Voice broke and a glistening tear ran down his face. 'Then she did tell me, but not all of it, I could tell, and that made me more angry still

  'My lord.' Telouet appeared in the entrance, a darkshadow foiling between them.

  'Yes.' Sirket and Kheda spoke in the same breath.

  'I can see your steward going into your pavilion, Kheda,' the slave said quietly. 'He's looking for you.'

  The warlord pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and found his own face was wet. He drew a deep breath. 'Then it's time to smile, Sirket, and make believe we haven't a care in the world. We'll go and enjoy whatever intricate follies Itrac's musicians have rehearsed for us and then we'll come and read the new-year stars with my lords of Redigal and Ritsem, and Ulla Safar if he deigns to join us.'

  And I will be lying through my teeth as I pluck spurious justification from the stars for what I intend to do regardless. And tomorrow will be the last day I'll feign and mislead anyone like that.

  'Yes, my father.' Sirket's voice was unwavering as he wiped tears from his own cheeks.

  'I am so proud of you.' Kheda laid a hand on the youth's shoulder as they stood in the open doorway. 'I want you to know that.'

  'I won't fail you,' Sirket promised fervently. The moonlight gilded his determined face, unexpectedly strengthening his resemblance to Janne.

  'I won't be long.' Kheda encouraged him with a gentle push. 'I have to write a note for one of my shipmasters.'

  Sirket strode away, Telouet at his heels. Kheda slipped back into the vestibule and took the lamp from its niche. He carried it carefully into the black shadows of the western hall. Chazen Sard's collection of star circles gleamed dully on the walls. 'Velindre?'

  'He didn't see me.' Her voice came out of the darkness. 'I was ready to disappear but he stayed by the stairs.' She emerged into the dim light, indistinct in her loose grey clothes. 'I heard you tell him you'll be leaving with me. I'm glad you've come to your senses.'

  'We'll see about that. I need to write a note for the

  Brittle Crab'sshipmaster.' Kheda set the lamp on a table and opened a drawer, searching for reed paper, pen and ink.

  'What's so urgent?' Velindre came forward another pace.

  'I want a hawk-handler to bring down one of Ulla Safar's courier doves. I'm not going with you until I have some idea of what he's intending.' Kheda began writing. 'You can carry this for me and stay out in the lagoon on the Reteul when you're done. Then stay away. I don't want you here when we come to read the stars at midnight.'

  'Ulla Safar is planning to leave here at first light, him and his whole retinue.' Velindre surprised the warlord with her ready knowledge. 'One of your mariners came here looking for you earlier, from the Green Turtle. He'd overhead Safar's men whispering on the beach. He recognised me from last year, so knew I could be trusted with the news.'

  'Did he?' Kheda stared at her, not overly pleased.

  'So I bespoke my associate to ask Risala if she had any idea why Ulla Safar is sailing north,' the magewoman continued. 'She says there's rumour that the people want Ulla Orhan to overthrow his father.'

  'Yes, I know,' Kheda said tersely. 'You worked magic, here, with so many visitors in the residence? Did anyone see you doing anything suspicious?'

  'No.' Velindre shrugged. 'Trust me, Kheda - I've no wish to give up my skin to decorate your doorposts. The important thing is that Ulla Safar is going to be far too busy with his own affairs to threaten Chazen or anywhere else. Now you just need to find some justification for your departure and we can go. I've found endless obscure divinations for you to play with.' She gestured into the darkness and Kheda saw the faint reflection of gold

  tooling from a slack of books.

  'We'll see.' Kheda finished writing and folded the reed paper. He found a stick of sealing wax and held it carefully in the flame of the lamp. 'Take this to the shipmaster of the Brittle Crab and then make yourself scarce. Meet me back here at dawn.'

  If Safar is rushing back to scour all the Ulla islands for Orhan, I could call that a sign, to reassure Sirket. After all the conversations today, I know I can trust Daish and Redigal and Ritsem to be more concerned with their own affairs than with Chazen's, if I can only find some unexceptional reason for a brief absence.

  'I am yours to command, my lord.' Velindre's reply was sharp with sarcasm.

  'For the moment you had better be, for both our sakes.' Kheda let a blob of wax fall on the paper and used a sapphire seal ring he wore next to the uncut emerald to press it flat. 'And don't you dare work any more magic until we're well away from here. I'll come with you just as far as I must to find out if savages or dragons are threatening me and mine again from this wild isle beyond the horizon. As soon as we know what we're dealing with, you can use your magic to bring me straight back here. Me and Risala.'

  And I might just believe in signs again if we find there's no threat and I can end my association with you and your magic once and for all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was a hunting party. They weren't hunting her but that didn't matter. If they caught her, she was fodder for whatever beast soared over these thorn-covered hills, to be taken bound hand and foot to whatever painted man held sway here. She needed to get back to the thorn scrub that cloaked the dry, broken slopes. It didn't offer the easy concealment of the dense green forests she had left behind but she could find somewhere to hide herself.

  At least she had heard the men shouting to each other, their words punctuated with laughter. If they had been silently slipping through the grasses in pursuit of some quarry, they would have come across her digging in the dry river bed, forced down from the undulating ridge by her burning thirst. If they were intent on tracking some prey, they would have wondered who had disturbed the sand and followed any footprints she might have left. Scrambling to hide beneath the crumbling overhang of the river bank, the old woman drew in her scrawny arms and legs and crouched behind her mottled bundle of scurrier hide.

  Earth pattered down in front of her face, falling from the underside of the overhang. A voice sounded loud above her head. It was a boy, his shadow long across the pale Itretch
of sand between her and the darkness where she had been digging, drawn by the treacherous promise of water hidden from the devouring sun beneath the flood-carved channel. The boy shouted again. His

  words sounded strangely made to her ears. She had never met anyone from this dry face of the crumpled hills where she had discovered that the giant forest trees couldn't sustain a foothold. She had never known anyone who had ventured this far.

  The boy was still calling back over his shoulder. He had seen the darker upheaval out in the middle of the river bed and thought lizards had been digging there. He had hopes of newly buried eggs. The old woman heard scorn in the reply ringing back to the boy and allowed herself to breathe more easily. It seemed this hunting party had no need to dig for lizard eggs. The boy petulantly kicked a clod of earth threaded with grass roots off the overhang and rejoined the men of his village. Gradually their voices faded away into the distance.

  The old woman's shrunken stomach griped with hunger at the thought of rich, meaty lizard eggs. Her mouth was as dry as the sand that clung to the crusted wrinkles around her sore, reddened eyes. She dared not return to the hole she had been digging. Faintly on the breeze she could hear the hunting party raising a hoarse, triumphant song. They were leaving the perilous grasslands for the comparative safety of the thorn-covered hills.

  She waited for a long while, ignoring the pain in her cramped arms and legs. Finally, she crawled out from beneath the overhang, brushing the sandy earth off herself and looking warily around. The boy was no fool. There could well be lizards coming to dig in the sandy river bed. A hunting party could afford to shout out to each other and sing heedless songs. They had slings to deter attackers and clubs and spears to deal with anything that chose not to be deterred. Her digging stick wouldn't stop a big lizard making a meal out of her. All the same, she clutched it in her gnarled fist as she began walking cautiously upstream. She bent low to keep below the level

  of the crumbling bank. There might be more hunters around, not singing their songs.

  The river bed narrowed and sloped more steeply as the land rose up ahead of her. Tall grasses waved on either side and she halted more frequently, straining her ears to try to determine if the wind was chasing her or whether something more dangerous was stalking her unseen through the rustling clumps. She decided it was the wind but moved more quickly all the same. On the high banks to either side, the dark-green thorn scrub was growing more thickly now. She picked her way through a tumble of broken and dusty rocks scattered across the river bed by the last torrent of rainwater to scour this cleft. Some were as tall as she was and she could not have reached round any of them with both her arms. She kept a wary eye out for anything lurking in the shadows.

  Lesser lizards watched her from the tops of the rocks as they basked splay-footed in the westering sun. She scowled back at them, their dark eyes glittering in the black stripes that ran down their blue hides from their noses to the tapered ends of their tails. One wasn't watching her, though, its eyes half-closed as its head bobbed up and down in mindless enjoyment. It was on a low rock that she could reach. Lizard meat was as good as lizard eggs. The old woman bent slowly down and found a heavy rock that fitted her fist. As she straightened up, her protesting knees gave a loud snap and the sun-drowsed lizard darted away with all the rest.

  She closed her eyes tight, furiously begrudging the trrtiH forcing themselves out between her sparse, gritty lashes Opening her eyes, she hurled the useless rock viciously at an uncaring boulder. It bounced back to strike Another ruck and rolled over a bed of broken rubble. The rattling crack of stone in the sunken river bed startled her buck to her senses. That had been a foolish thing to do.

  She couldn't risk drawing unfriendly eyes or ears this way, of man or animal.

  Hampered by her unwieldy bundle, she hurried upstream, the empty gourd in its sling bouncing on her hip. Her breath was rasping in her throat and her heart was pounding. Unreasoning panic threatened to overwhelm her. She had to force one trembling, dusty foot with its cracked and flaking toenails in front of the other. Finally she reached the steep wall of the dry cataract she had come across earlier, which had tempted her down into the flatter land, tormented as she was by thirst.

  The thorny forest grew thick on either side of the crumbling banks. Knife plants flourished in bushy clumps of green and brown blades. Fat, fleshy spine plants sprawled among the rocks of the cataract, pale yellow-green and studded with thick black barbs, smug and impenetrable. Thorn spikes rose up from their nests of tangled roots and immature stems. Dark green and glossy, twice as high as a man was tall, they were scaled like the leg of a monstrous bird, each flat leaf tipped with a vicious prickle. Here and there, one was topped with long, narrow flowers that clawed at the sky like talons, crimson as blood.

  The sun was sinking. She had to get out of the river bed before night fell and more dangerous creatures than the blue and black lizards emerged from their lairs with the darkness. She had to get up into the thorn forest to find herself a thicket to hide in while she still had enough daylight left to weave its branches around herself. She had to do that without pricking herself with spines that would catch in her flesh to fester and poison her. She must avoid the slicing leaves that would scent the night air with her blood and draw predators that could rip apart a thorn thicket.

  The old woman realised she was whimpering.

  Something rustled up above and she smelled a damp,

  musky odour. The old woman ducked behind a trailing mass of roots hanging over the edge of the cataract where a thorn spike had been half washed away by a wet-season downpour. The noises up above faded as whatever creature it had been took some unseen path away through the ferocious landscape.

  As she clung to the roots, the old woman realised that the thorn spike was in no immediate danger of falling into the dry cataract as it waited out the endless days of the heat. The half-exposed roots clung grimly to the earth supporting them, offering hand- and footholds. She choked on a sob of relief and began climbing painfully upwards, her bundle awkwardly crushed between her chest and the dry, dusty earth. She scrambled, panting, onto a small barren expanse of the river bank between two sprawls of yellow spiny plants and forced herself to consider what she must do next.

  If she stopped, she would die - and more quickly in this harsh landscape than she might have done in the green forest. So she was determined not to stop, not to die, not until lack of food or water left her too far gone to care.

  She saw a way through the low malice of the fat spiny leaves and edged along, sliding her feet through the dust to avoid treading on some crippling barb. Beyond the spread of yellow spiny plants she found a well-worn track and saw that patches of thorny brush had been stripped for firewood here and there. There was a village somewhere close by. Perhaps that was where that hunting party hud come from. She followed the path unwillingly, looking for some lesser track that might lead her away from discovery and capture and death.

  The track curved along the hillside, the tall tips of the thorn spikes level with her head on one side where the ground fell away so steeply. Parched rock broke through the dusty soil and curved up like a wave on her other

  hand, its crest bristling with knife plants. The old woman strained her ears for any sound of people, her eyes darting in all directions.

  The path divided at the end of the stretch of rock. One fork led downhill, threading through clusters of truly enormous thorn spikes. Little yellow birds fluttered around the crimson flowers, perching lightly on the blooms as they feasted on the nectar. Deft russet birds with forked tails pursued the clouds of insects drawn by the heady scent.

  The other path led uphill through clumps of knife plants and spiny sprawls of fat yellow leaves and disappeared around another blunt shoulder of rock jutting out from the starveling ground. The shadows were lengthening and darkening. It would soon be night.

  The old woman looked nervously from one route to the other. Going downhill would offer more immediate concealm
ent among the thorn spikes, but that path looked dangerously well trodden. Safety lay in solitude. Gritting her teeth against the hot agony in her shoulders, she wrapped her arms around her bundle and scrambled along the upper path. She rounded the rocky outcrop and stumbled to a halt, her bare feet slipping in the slick dust. The rock had concealed a deep gash in the land and she had been lucky not to fall from the ledge she was standing on. Below, a mass of thorny forest lurked in tangled green shadows. She had no hope of reaching it.

  Voices floated up from the gloom beneath and firelight flared. The old woman's heart pounded in her bony chest as she shrank back against the rock. She stumbled, falling backwards into a dark void she hadn't thought to look for. Biting her lip against the pains shooting through her back, she lay still on the stony cave floor and watched sparks drifting up from the fire below. She heard wood and dead thorn spikes being tossed into the makeshift hearth and the firelight strengthened.

  The rocky ledge's shadow cut a black line across the cave wall. Above it, figures danced in the flickering light. The old woman pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle a moan of despair as she gazed at the fierce faces and dread beasts drawn out of the curves of the rock with charcoal and ochre and stains of coloured clay. She had fallen into a painted cave.

  Down below, some amicable dispute arose over who precisely had played the greater part in the day's successes. The succulence of roasting meat floated up on the night air. The smell set the juices in the old woman's mouth running where it had been dry with dread. It was a hunting party, she realised. Was it the hunting party who had nearly run across her earlier? Did it matter? She sat upright and waited, silent, biting her dry and cracked lips as the good-humoured conversations were replaced by the muffled intensity of eating, broken only by brief exchanges.

  She closed her eyes to the stark, accusing gaze of the cave paintings and concentrated on the muted sounds of the men at their meal. They were alive and relishing their food. She was still alive. She would be dead if anyone found her in this painted cave, but her life was forfeit anyway if she was captured. While she was alive, she could hope for another day, and another after that.