Should he secure the talismans he may use them to return our own strength against us—that very linkage we establish might well open the way for the god to strike at Estrevan itself!”

  The others paused, contemplating her warning. Jara said, “Gerat is still Paramount Sister—do you question her clear instructions?”

  “Mayhap Gerat is too close to the problem,” Porelle replied. “Mayhap she had failed to see the awful potential should her plan fail.”

  “I doubt that,” said Lavia.

  “But,” murmured Reena, glancing at Porelle, “it is still possible that this is a part of Ashar’s fell design. Mayhap he seeks this very channel to attack us.”

  Lavia sighed, ducking her age-streaked head in reluctant agreement. “Mayhap,” she acknowledged. “But to do that he must first secure the talismans.”

  “Therefore all our hopes rest on the integrity of Wynett and Kedryn,” Porelle responded.

  “Indeed,” said Lavia, “and it is Gerat’s opinion that we may best lend aid by taking this chance.”

  “It is a tremendous gamble,” Porelle protested.

  “Aye,” confirmed Lavia, “it is. This game is riddled with snares, but I see no other way than to comply with Gerat’s instructions.”

  “Nor I,” said Jara. “Let us gather the Senders.”

  “Can we rely on Kedryn alone to save Wynett?” asked Reena.

  “We face terrible consequences should he fail,” said Lavia.

  Reena nodded, smiling apologetically at the young woman beside her. “Then I must vote in favor.”

  Porelle sighed, shaking her head in resignation. “I fear that we play into Ashar’s hands, but let it be done.”

  “Let us place our faith in the Lady,” Lavia suggested, “and in Gerat’s undoubted wisdom.”

  She rose, allowing no further opportunity for debate, and hurried from the chamber with the others close behind. Soon all of Estrevan’s Senders were gathered, their faces grave as she explained the nature of the task before them. She saw fear flicker in some eyes, excitement in others, for all there knew that what they were asked to do might well leave them mad, or destroyed by Ashar, and that no such thing had been attempted in the history of Estrevan. But none demurred, and by nightfall the wagons were lumbering across the plain carrying Sisters to the Morfah Pass and beyond.

  Kedryn savored the roast venison won by Brannoc’s marksmanship as he stretched before the fire. Across the blaze, over which a haunch was spitted, Tepshen Lahl sat whetting his blade, his sallow (ace a mask of concentration. Brannoc squatted cross-legged, chewing on the succulent meat with evident pleasure.

  “Did we but have a skin of wine,” he remarked, “this would be perfection.”

  Kedryn grimaced, recalling the effects of the Caroc liquor, more than content to forgo such vinous pleasures and still embarrassed by the results. Long days had passed since their encounter with the woodlanders, and they had met no others, although numerous tracks had been found, at first those of Caroc bands moving east and south, then more recently, those of Drott. They had avoided contact, aware that the time of the Drott Gathering drew steadily closer, impressing upon them an ever greater urgency as they approached Drul’s Mound.

  “How long?” he asked the half-breed.

  Brannoc wiped his mouth and shrugged. “A day and a half; perhaps two. No more, unless we are delayed.”

  Kedryn nodded, his thoughts on the increasing signs of tribal activity. “Shall we be delayed?”

  “If the Lady favors us and my woodscrait holds good, no.” Brannoc’s face was innocent of expression, which to Kedryn indicated doubt. “These tracks we have seen,” he began.

  “They meander,” said Brannoc.

  “They appear to move toward the mound,” Kedryn argued.

  “If they are there, they are there.” Tepshen’s sword slid into the scabbard, punctuating the sentence.

  “And will oppose us,” said Kedryn.

  The kyo stared at him, saying nothing, his very silence lethally eloquent. Kedryn shook his head: “I would avoid bloodshed.”

  “It may not avoid us,” the easterner said flatly, “and so it is time to speak plainly—you seek Wynett and it would seem the only path to her lies through Drul’s Mound. If Drott are there they will not permit that desecration and therefore bar our passage. Do you forbid us to slay them?”

  Kedryn stared across the fire at his friend, aware for the first time of the change in their relationship. He had grown accustomed to look to Tepshen for guidance, no less than he sought and accepted the advice of his father, yet since that morning—so long ago, it seemed!—on the high roof of the White Palace he had formulated his own decisions, looking not to them but inside himself for the answers. It had been so natural a process it had not occurred to him that he no longer turned to Bedyr or Tepshen, or that the kyo followed his lead with unquestioning loyalty. Until now.

  He frowned, his eyes troubled, for Tepshen presented him with a quandary. “You know my belief,” he said slowly. “We go on the Lady’s business and she does not welcome the careless shedding of blood. I would not jeopardize the success of this quest with the taint of casual killing.”

  “Casual?” Tepshen asked softly, his jet eyes hooded. “What if it is the only way to the mound?”

  Kedryn sighed, shaking his head. “I do not know. I can only trust in the Lady.”

  “This is Ashar’s domain,” Tepshen said gently. “Might it not be that the god seeks to oppose your coming by the presentation of human obstacles?”

  ‘Then to kill would be to take his path,” Kedryn responded.

  “Which may prove the only path. Again I ask: do you forbid the use of blades?”

  Kedryn studied the flat planes of the easterner’s face. Firelight threw shadows from the high cheekbones, the dark eyes gleaming within the darkness. It was an impassive visage, intractable, and it offered no solution to his dilemma.

  That came from Brannoc, who said, “If we are lucky—if the Lady rides with us—it may not come to that.” He glanced up at the filling moon that showed through the latticework of branches. “The time of the Gathering is yet four, perhaps five, days distant and Drott custom has it that the ulan must come first to the mound, on the first day of the full moon. Until then none may approach. The clans come slowly, scattered, and the tracks we have seen are those wandering toward the place. If we ride by night and day we should have time—so long as we avoid all contact.”

  “The digging will not be easy,” said Tepshen.

  “No,” Brannoc agreed, “but were we to forgo sleep tonight and ride throughout the morrow we should be at the mound by dusk, with time enough to force our entry.”

  Tepshen nodded, then voiced a thought none had so far dared: “And after? When the Drott come to find the hole?”

  Brannoc shrugged.

  Kedryn said, “Let us worry about that when the time comes. If we are successful it must surely prove a small enough problem. If we are not ...”

  The kyo smiled, briefly and grimly. Brannoc chuckled. "It would be a sad end, would it not? To defeat a god and find ourselves given to the blood eagle.”

  “Mayhap you should not accompany me,” said Kedryn. “Rather, bring me to the mound and help me enter, then hide or return to the Kingdoms.”

  Tepshen studied him for a moment, not deigning to speak, then rose.

  “Douse the fire and let us be gone.”

  “I would not. . . ,” Kedryn protested, interrupted by Brannoc, who grinned and finished for him, “Leave us behind. I shall hear my name in a ballad yet.”

  There was no more to be said and they saddled the horses and packed the remains of the venison. Kedryn kicked soil over the fire. “Ware noise,” urged Brannoc, “and take my lead—Drott hospitality is our enemy now.”

  They rode out a trail so narrow one had perforce to follow the other, Brannoc first, then Kedryn, Tepshen bringing up the rear, the pack animals strung behind. The night was clear, moon and stars illuminating their path, the natural debris of the forest muffling the hoofbeats as the half-breed picked up speed. He brought them swiftly to a widening of the trail, a round of bare earth circled by looming beeches, five paths joining, and crossed to follow a slightly wider avenue.

  Before long he raised a hand in warning, halting them, then motioned to his left, cursing softly as his stallion forced a way through the encroaching thickets. Behind them a dog barked and Brannoc dismounted, clamping a hand over his horse’s nostrils as he motioned for his companions to do the same. The dog barked again, joined by others, and Brannoc threw back his head, emitting a piercing screech such as a hunting cat would make. The hounds proceeded to bay and the halfbreed screamed again, as if in challenge, then mounted and urged the gray to a canter, taking them away from the unseen camp.

  Thrice more they were forced to circumnavigate groups of Drott and it seemed to Kedryn that their progress toward the mound was become more evasive then direct. They left the trails, taking deer paths and whatever routes were available among the dense timber, riding as swiftly as caution and the undergrowth allowed, and as the sky grew pearly with the approach of dawn they halted beside a stream.

  The horses drank thirstily, the stallions irritable, and as the sun broke through the early mist to spread roseate light across the eastern skyline they mounted again, Brannoc leading the way along the stream bed.

  They splashed through the water until the heavens were lit by the rising sun, blue arching above, and white clouds, birdsong loud about them, then Brannoc quit the stream and struck out across a meadow that revealed a small herd of the wild forest cattle. The heifers lowed protest and the bull bellowed a challenge, lowering the saber-sweep of his horns and stamping the dew-wet grass. They were gone before he made up his mind to charge, galloping over the sward into the surrounding trees as the cattle milled behind them.

  The terrain began to rise and at noon, when they topped a ridge, Brannoc called a halt to rest the animals and eat. From the crest of the chine they were able to survey the shallow valley that lay before them. The downslope was thinly wooded, though the timber grew thick across the bottomland and the farther slope; columns of smoke rose from the forest to indicate Drott camps. Kedryn counted thirteen.

  “We are lucky,” Brannoc murmured. “They favor the northern reaches, so few camp here. And Drul’s Mound lies over that far rise.”

  Thirteen camps—and the concomitant likelihood of wandering hunters—seemed to Kedryn to lend a euphemistic note to the statement, but the proximity of his goal inflamed his patience and he fretted to be gone.

  “Soon,” Brannoc promised, “let the sun take its toll and the camps sleep in the heat, then we shall be on our way.”

  It was hard to wait out the noonday warmth, though both Tepshen and Brannoc stretched on the grass and dozed as

  Kedryn kept watch, unable to snatch that small opportunity to rest. He was grateful when the half-breed woke and nudged the kyo, announcing that they might attempt the crossing.

  “Should we be spotted,” he warned as they prepared to mount, “ride for the farther slope and trust in speed to save us. Should we become separated, continue northward: the site of the Gathering lies directly ahead.”

  Without further ado he swung astride the gray stallion and urged the beast over the crest, riding hard and fast for the shelter of the lower timber. Kedryn followed, nerves tingling in anticipation of encounter, feeling unpleasantly exposed on the sparsely wooded descent.

  Luck, or the Lady, was with them, however, and they entered the denser timber unnoticed, trailing Brannoc as he veered west and then east, cutting a zigzag route that brought them around the barbarian encampments and onto the summit of the northern chine.

  The sun was westering as they topped the ridge and halted, the eastern sky already darkening into twilight, the moon, fatter now, hanging low and large above the horizon. A scarp descended before them, shadow pooling where it ended in a wide valley, vee-shaped, the mouth toward them, to Kedryn immeasurably enticing for he knew it held Drul’s Mound. He studied the terrain ahead, seeing no sign of fires, and voiced silent thanks to Brannoc for the half-breed’s knowledge of the woodlanders and their ways.

  “We need hide no longer,” Brannoc declared, and they went down the ridge.

  The moon rose as they entered the valley, patterning the trees with silver light. A cat screamed and a bull lowed, but they met neither animals nor men as they urged the tiring horses onward, their own fatigue ignored as excitement gripped them.

  Then Brannoc halted, turning in his saddle to smile to Kedryn as he gestured at the bowl that lay before them.

  It was located close to the center of the valley, a massive indentation like some natural amphitheater of gargantuan proportions. Trees stood sentinel watch all around, though the lip of the bowl was bare, great stumps showing where the timber had been cut back to accommodate the lodges that would fill the hollow when the Drott gathered. Grass had made a patchy footing on the earth, though mostly denuded soil showed, blackened from countless fires and stamped hard by innumerable feet. At the nub, placed like the hub of a wheel whose spokes would be the alleyways running between the lodges, sat Drul’s Mound. Its rise was dark under the moon, the circumference scorched by the fires that had ringed it over the years, its apex soot-black from the great sacrificial bonfire that would soon once more be lit. It appeared forbidding, a brooding presence that defied entry, and Kedryn felt a chill prickle down his spine as he studied it.

  Without speaking, he heeled his mount forward, going down the slope and across the floor of the bowl until he sat beneath the shadow of the monticle, staring up at its smooth surfaces. The dirt that packed the slope looked hard as rock, and for a moment he wondered how they hoped to broach its solidity, the chill becoming the icy tingling of despair. Then he touched the talisman and felt its warmth, the feint vibration against his fingertips, and flung himself from the saddle, turning to seek the pack horses and their burdens of tools.

  “Eat first,” advised Tepshen, dismounting beside him. “This will be hard labor.”

  Kedryn nodded reluctantly and they set to establishing a camp.

  The horses were stripped of their loads and tethered among the trees where they might forage for themselves and find water in a nearby stream. A small fire was built and the dwindling store of venison spitted over the flames. Brannoc filled their canteens. They ate hungrily, then, as the moon approached its zenith, took the picks and shovels Rycol had provided and surveyed the mound.

  “It was built long and long ago,” Brannoc advised, “after Drul was slain on the walls of High Fort. It is said the Drott spent a year on its construction, quarrying stone in the north and transporting dressed blocks here. My guess would be they raised a dome and they layered it with earth, so the entrance is likely to be found either at the foot or atop the hummock.”

  They paced around the mound, finding no indication of any portal.

  “Mayhap they built it as they do their lodges,” Kedryn surmised. “In which case there would be something akin to a smoke-hole.”

  “The apex is as good a place as any to start,” nodded Brannoc.

  They scrambled up the sides to stand within the great fire-ring. “Here,” Kedryn decided, driving a spade against the hard-packed earth, and gasping as the blow reverberated back, jarring his shoulders.

  Tepshen motioned for him to stand aside and swung a pick. For all his wiry strength his effort had little impact on the rocklike soil, making no more than a pin’s prick. Tepshen grunted and swung again. Kedryn tossed the spade aside and took pick in hand, Brannoc likewise, and they developed a rhythm, each striking in turn until the night was filled with the steady thudding of their labor, as if Drul’s Mound was some gigantic drum on which they beat a cadence.

  Soon they had shed their tunics, and despite the coolness of the night wind their shirts were damp with sweat. Shoulders and arms, unaccustomed to this labor, began to ache, and hands more used to wielding swords or holding reins to blister. But atop the mound the earth gave slow way, and as dawn broke the beginnings of a hole were formed.

  They rested, chilled by the cold gray mist that filled the bowl, and fortified themselves with venison and a tea brewed from the herbs provided by High Fort’s Sisters, then returned to the excavation. Shovels were needed now, to clear the rubble of broken earth and pebbles, and then the picks again, the rising sun revealing a shallow pit little more than a hand’s length deep. For the numb ache that pervaded his back and shoulders, it seemed to Kedryn little enough, but he clenched his teeth and set to digging once more, unpleasantly aware that the burgeoning day brought the Drott a little closer, the movement of the sun across the sky eating remorselessly into the time he had left.

  Fire and the passing years had transformed the upper layers of the mound to the consistency of hard-set mortar and it took the remainder of the day to break through that crust to the more malleable soil beneath. By then their hands were wrapped in strips of tom cloth, blisters raised and burst, but as the sun set and twilight filled the valley the dirt they shoveled out and was darker, more friable, and the excavation deep enough that Kedryn stood knee-deep within it. They slept a few hours and commenced to dig, driving the shaft steadily deeper, two standing inside the hole, the third clearing dirt from the rim.

  They labored on throughout the day, knowing that the moon, when it rose, would be a little broader of girth, their time a little less. Then, when the blue-silver orb was almost to its zenith, Kedryn’s pick jarred in his hands, striking something far harder than earth. He tossed it out and took the spade Brannoc handed him, scraping at the soil to reveal grey stone. He cursed, flinging the shovel from him in frustration.