Maybe a training accident. They were not uncommon and not that difficult to arrange. Something that would make them empty the classroom or the entire school for a watch or two. In two years here, she had learned more than just her lessons.

It might look suspicious if Hert was the one involved in the accident. Then again, the girl bullied many students, not just Raven. Frowning with concentration, Raven continued to review her options. Only one thing was certain. Absolutely nothing was going to stand in the way of her earning her father's love.

BKYCK (2)

HE KEPT THE grey at a calm lope, even as he spied the soldiers ahead at the entrance into the city. He had gained some practice in exuding the cool of a seasoned wanderer, though in his previous life he'd done little traveling—and when he had, he'd been .moved about in appropriate style. With an entourage, in the comfort of an enclosed coach; certainly not rambling alone on horseback, a bedroll beneath the stars more often than not his berth for the night.

Many days' determined riding had brought him deep into the territory of the Felk. Now he was at the entry into Callan, the first of the cities to have fallen in mis war.

He shifted the vox-mellifluous slightly with a shrug of his shoulders. He was by now rather accustomed to having the instrument strapped across his back. It twanged faintly with each step his horse took, knocking softly against his backbone.

He'd bought the instrument at a roadside inn. As a part of his daily routine, he made sure to practice. It wasn't just a matter of reacquainting himself with music-making and

the lyrics that went along with the songs he knew; it was acclimating himself to this particular instrument.

A troubadour and his implement should seem as one, Bryck knew.

Since he had started moving north, he had played the stringbox at several inns along the way. It was one thing to play for his horse, which was courteous and attentive; another to play for an audience. The first time he'd started cranking the winder and fingering the strings, he was nervous, aware that he had everyone's ear in the place. Once that would have been the natural state of things.

Bryck of U'delph, playwright and noble, was often the focus of any gathering of people—be they guests to his villa or companions at the taverns he frequented. His store of anecdotes and witticisms was effectively inexhaustible, and his ability to keep people laughing in the flesh was perhaps as keen as his talent for amusing the audiences of the theatricals he penned.

But Bryck of U'delph was, figuratively, no more. Just as U'delph was quite literally no more.

The city-state had originally been laid out in a spiral, a single uninterrupted chain of structures that started at the east end and wound continuously inward. During Udelph's long, proud history, many other buildings had been erected, jostling for space as the city prospered and grew. That original fanciful spiral was all but eradicated and made sense only when one studied a map, eliminating every structure put up during the past hundredwinter or so.

The city had been built on a broad prairie. With each and every multistoried building and tower now out of the way, Bryck had seen the spiral traced out clearly in the scorched foundations that were the

blackened bones of his home.

He had made the return journey in something near to half the time it had taken him to get to Sook. He had run his horse brutally for home, stopping only for a single watch when his vision had come over white and he fainted, exhausted, in the saddle. He'd encountered no Felk along the way—perhaps miraculously, perhaps merely due to blind luck.

Rain had come, and no smoke rose in the windless mid-day. There was nothing left down there to burn anyway. The smell was terrible.

. Six days of safety before the Felk arrived. Six days, the scouts had said.

His villa was down there on the blackened prairie as well. Involuntarily his eyes strayed toward the spot, in the city's affluent westward quarter. Yes, there it was, with scarcely one stone standing atop another. Ashes and rubble.

He could have searched that debris. He could have entered that maze of rubble and sifted the wreckage. He could have uncovered, surely, tiny fragments of memorabilia, items scorched beyond recognition to any eyes but his. He would find remnants and shards. He would pick out pieces of furnishings and know what the articles had once looked like. He would find bones and, with some effort, likely be able to identify their owners.

His wife, Aaysue. His children, Bron, Cerk, Ganet, little Gremmest.

U'delph's population had been roughly twenty-five thousand. By the madness of the gods, such a slaughter. Slaughtered and abandoned, for the Felk had moved onward.

Atop his horse and upon the mild rise at Udelph's south end, Bryck was given a fine view. A lone thought beat in his skull. Actually it was less a thought, more a raw naked impulse. Unrelenting. Potent. Vengeance.

Against the Felk, who had taken everything from him. Vengeance, because nature demanded it of him. Were this a drama and he a player, he would be overwhelmingly propelled into the role of avenger. He would not disappoint. What he required was a suitable vengeance, something worthwhile, something that both matched his natural talents and would inflict the greatest damage on his enemies.

It was now half a lune since the fall of Udelph. Rumors along the road said the Felk had camped some while south of the devastated city-state, then moved against Sook, which had unequivocally surrendered. Evidently Udelph was an object lesson, and the people of Sook, led by that gaggle of ministers he'd once found so amusing, had learned that lesson well.

Such thoughts evaporated as he neared the small unit of soldiery waiting ahead. Beyond lay Callah, an impressive expanse of streets and buildings, though not as imposing as, say, Udelph, which was something near to twice this city's size. It wasn't a walled city, but no doubt each connecting road was guarded, and its perimeter probably patrolled as well.

He saw only one damaged structure, at the outskirts, a building whose roof had been burned off. A demolition crew was at work on it, salvaging its usable stones. Perhaps it was left over from the Felk's original assault against the city.

Bryck had been in Felk territory some while now. One could almost feel it, like a dark disquieting weight. Territories and state borders did occasionally shift, but rarely so dramatically. The Felk had advanced substantially south-ward. What had relatively recently been only a large city-state was now more the size of an empire. And still no one seemed to know what the Felk ultimately intended with these aggressive military actions. There were those Bryck had met or overheard during his travels who believed the Northerners meant to conquer the entire Isthmus. Others speculated that the future held more atrocities like Udelph's annihilation.

When Bryck had first encountered a detachment of Felk soldiers, they had interrogated him. Their job was to see that all who used the particular stretch of road they guarded had license to do so. Their real task, of course, was to make sure no fugitives fled southward. They were a bit perplexed by Bryck, who was riding north, into the new expanded Felk territories. He explained that he was a roving minstrel, that he hoped to continue northward, as this was his habitual route. He made it clear that he cared nothing about the war.

That attitude had precedent. Troubadours were traditionally neutral. Music knew few national

boundaries. For hundredwinters, even during the Isthmus's most notorious strife-filled times, musicians of this ilk had moved unmolested. In some regions it was considered severe bad luck to interfere with a troubadour.