Alec smiled. "I was just thinking how nice your life must have been, being in one place all the time. Still, I know what you mean. My father and I wandered around in the same forests my whole life. Then along comes Seregil with his tales of far-off places, wonders I could hardly imagine—I guess I didn't take much convincing."

"You're lucky, being with him the way you are," Beka said with a trace of envy. "He and Father—all they've done together? Someday I want to ride with them, but first I need to make my own way. That's why I wanted so badly to join the Queen's Horse."

They rode for a moment in silence, then Beka asked, "What is it like, anyway, being with him?"

"You'd like it. It's never the same from one day to the next. I don't think there's anything he doesn't know at least something about. And then there's Nysander. I've tried telling Elsbet about him, but it's hard to explain how someone can be so powerful and so ordinary at the same time."

"I've met him. Do you know it was he who first suggested I join the Guards? Then he laughed and made me promise never to tell Mother he said so. Isn't that odd?"

Alec thought he could see what the old wizard had been up to; Beka would make a fine Watcher.

The swans had abandoned the frozen stream. Turning upstream, they rode a mile or more without seeing any sign of game. Giving up the hunt, they challenged each other at clout and wand shooting. Beka's grey-and-white fletched shafts seldom came closer to the mark than his red ones.

"Come on," she said at last, noticing how low the sun had fallen, "we'd better gather our arrows. I want to show you my surprise."

Following the stream again, they reached the wooded hills and rode into the trees. At a bend they dismounted and Beka led the way to a broad, half-frozen pool. Signing for Alec to keep quiet, she settled behind a fallen tree and pointed across to the other side.

Two otters were playing in the open water. Paddling to shore, they humped up the snowy slope and launched themselves back down again, sliding merrily on their smooth bellies into the water. Clucking and grunting all the while, they repeated the performance over and over while Alec and Beka watched in silent delight.

"They remind me of Seregil," Alec whispered, propping an elbow on the tree trunk. "Nysander turned him into an otter once when we were at the Orлska House. There's this special spell—I can't remember what he called it—but Nysander says the kind of animal you turn into has something to do with what kind of person you are."

"An otter, eh?" said Beka, considering the matter. "I would've taken him more for a lynx or a panther. Did he do it to you, too?"

"I turned into a stag."

"I guess I can see that. What do you suppose I'd be?"

Alec considered the matter. "A hawk, I bet, or maybe a wolf. A hunter, anyway."

"Hawk or wolf, eh? I'd like that," she murmured.

They watched the otters in silence, each one savoring the sense of companionship that had grown up so easily between them.

"Well, come on, we'd better get back," Beka whispered at last. As they headed back to the horses, she turned to him and asked, "You're fond of him, aren't you?"

"Who? Seregil?"

"Of course."

"He's been a good friend?" he replied, puzzled by the question. "Why wouldn't I be fond of him?"

"Oh." Beka nodded as if she'd expected a different answer, then, "I thought maybe you were lovers."

"What? his Alec stopped dead, staring at her. "What put that in your head?"

"I don't know," Beka bristled. "Sakor's Flames, Alec, why not? He was in love with Father once, you know."

"With Micum?" Alec leaned against a slender alder. The tree swayed under his weight, sifting snow over the two of them. It dusted Beka's hair with a veil of sparkling crystals and filtered down the neck of Alec's tunic to melt into points of coldness against his skin.

"How do you know that?" he demanded, flabbergasted.

"Mother told me ages ago. I'd heard things growing up and finally I asked. It was pretty one-sided, according to her. Father was already in love with her when he and Seregil met, but Seregil didn't give up for a while. He and Mother didn't care much for one another in those days because of it, but they're friends now. She won out, and he had to accept it. Still, I remember once when I was very young, hearing Mother and Father arguing. Father said something like, "Don't make me choose, I can't do it!" Mother told me that it was Seregil he was talking about. So I guess he loves Seregil, too, in his own way, but they were never lovers."

Alec chewed over this unexpected revelation; the more he learned of southern ways, the more incomprehensible they seemed.

Watching the girls trying to teach Alec a country dance in the hall one snowy afternoon toward the end of the week, Micum realized he was going to miss the boy when he was gone.

Just as Seregil had predicted, Alec had settled in well with his family and already seemed a part of it. Kari's heart had gone out to him at once, and the girls treated him like a brother. He'd picked up swordplay damn fast, too, without Seregil's impatient jousting to contend with.

Kari stole up behind Micum and clasped her arms around his waist as she watched the progress of the dance lesson. The steps were complex and there was a lot of good-humored chaffing as Alec jostled to and fro between Beka and Elsbet.

"I wish I'd given you such a son," she whispered.

"Don't let Beka hear you say that!" Micum chuckled.

Kari was doing her end-of-the-week mending by the kitchen window when Alec wandered in with his bow.

"Do you have any beeswax?" he asked.

"It's there on that shelf by the herbs," she said, pointing with her needle. "There are some clean rags over there if you need them. Why don't you put the water on to heat and sit with me awhile. You go home tomorrow and I haven't had you to myself all week."

Alec swung the kettle hook into the fireplace and sat down on a stool beside her, bow across his knees.

"It's good having you here," she said, her needle flashing in the sunlight as she stitched up a tear in one of Illia's kirtles. "I hope you'll come back to us often. Seregil doesn't come out as much as we'd like. Perhaps you can influence him for me."

"I don't think anyone influences him very much," Alec said dubiously, then added, "You've known him a long time, haven't you?"

"More than twenty years," Kari replied. "He's part of the family."

Alec rubbed wax into his bowstring and smoothed it over with his fingers. "Has he changed much since you first met him? Being Aurлnfaie and all, I mean."

Kari smiled, thinking back. "It was before we'd married that I first met Seregil. Micum came and went as he pleased, just like now, but always alone. Then one fine spring morning he showed up at my father's door with Seregil in tow. I remember seeing him that first time, standing there in the kitchen door, and thinking to myself, "That's one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen, and he doesn't like the looks of me one bit!" his Kari took up a new piece of mending. "We got off to a rather rough start, Seregil and I."

"Beka told me."

"I thought she might have. How mature he seemed to me then. I was only fifteen. And now look at me." She smoothed a hand over her hair, where scattered strands of silver were mingled with the dark. "A matron and mother of three girls, and Beka older than I was then. Now he looks so young to me, still the handsome boy. In the reckoning of his own people he is young and will be long after I've been tilled into these fields."

She looked pensively down at the vest on her lap. "I think it troubles him, to see Micum getting older, knowing sooner or later he must lose him. Lose us all, I suppose, except perhaps Nysander."

"I never thought of that.