Seregil shrugged. "Stay with him, I expect, though it may be in chains. If I have my way, he'll set sail back to Skala directly."

"Then I'll see you both there," she said brightly, fighting back a surge of foreboding.

Alec gave her a wry smile. "Luck in the shadows, Watcher."

"And to you both." She sat her horse as they started up the. road. Seregil disappeared around the first bend without a backward glance. Alec paused to wave, then followed.

"Luck in the shadows," she whispered again. Leading her string of horses on up the main road, she set her face for the mountains.

The road got no better as Alec and Seregil went on, but it was open enough for them to canter single file. Several miles on, they came to the remains of the first village, and Seregil paused to make a quick circuit.

Some of the cottages had burned down; the rest were slowly falling apart. Small trees and weeds were encroaching rapidly on the broad clearing, sprouting up in disused garden plots and doorways.

Looking inside one of the houses, Alec found only a few bits of broken crockery. "Looks like the villagers picked up and left."

Seregil rode over and passed him a dripping water skin. "No trade, no livelihood. At least the well's still clear."

Alec drank, then rummaged in his pack for a strip of dried meat. "I wonder if we'll be able to find fresh horses along the way?"

"We'll manage," Seregil said, studying the clouds. "If we hurry, we can make the second village before nightfall. I'd rather spend the night under a roof, if we can manage it. It's still early enough in the year for it to be damn cold at night up here."

Just beyond the village they struck a broad outcropping, steep and treacherous with loose rock and threaded with little rivulets from a spring above it. A few cairns still marked the way to several trails that continued on from here.

They gave their horses their heads, letting them pick their way carefully up the slope. Looking back over his shoulder, Alec saw that the animal's unshod hooves left almost no marks in passing. It was going to take one fine tracker to catch them, he thought with satisfaction.

"I don't have it! I destroyed it, burned it up in the fire," Amali sobbed, cowering back against the bed. She'd started out defiant but quickly dissolved into tears. It made her seem even younger than

she was, and Rhaish hesitated, wondering if he had the resolve to strike her if it came to that.

"Don't lie to me! I must have it," he said sternly, looming over her. "If my fears are correct, you may already be found out. Why else would Seregil not have come by now?"

"Why won't, you tell me what this is about?" she sobbed, instinctively shielding her belly with both hands.

The gesture broke his heart, and he slumped down on the bed beside her. "For the sake of Akhendi, and for our child, you must give me the rest of it if you still have it. I know you too well, my love. You would never destroy another's handiwork." He fought to keep the rising desperation from his voice. "You must let me protect you, as I always have."

Amali stifled another sob as she crawled off the bed and went to a workbox on her dressing table. Opening it, she lifted out a tray of charm-making goods and reached beneath it. "Here, and may you make better use of it than I did!" She threw the woven bracelet at his feet.

Rhaish bent to pick it up, recalling a similar moment four nights earlier. He pushed the thought away with a shudder, knowing himself damned.

The knot work on this bracelet was simple but well done; some magic still lingered despite the loss of the charm, strong enough to hold both the memory of its maker, a peasant woman from one of the mountain villages, and that of the young man it had been made for. Alec i Amasa's khi had permeated the fibers as surely as his sweat.

Amali was still weeping. Ignoring her for the moment, Rhaish sat down in a chair by the bed and pressed the bracelet between his hands, speaking a spell. The bracelet throbbed against his palms. Closing his eyes, he caught a glimpse of Alec and his surroundings, saw dripping boughs close overhead, distant peaks just visible through a break in the trees. Saw Seregil riding beside him, gesturing at something—a large, oddly shaped boulder that Rhaish recognized immediately.

Realization knocked the breath from his lungs, and he fell back in his chair. They did know! Klia must know, or why else would she have sent them, of all people, for the northern coast?

Cold hands clasped his, and he looked down into Amali's tear-streaked face as she knelt before him. "You must return home, talia. Say nothing of any of this, and go home."

"I only meant to help," she whispered, picking up the fallen

bracelet and looking at it in horrified wonder. "What have I done, my love?"

"Nothing the Lightbearer has not ordained." Rhaish stroked her cheek gently, glad of her warmth against his thighs. He was cold, chilled to the bone despite the sunlight that had broken through the clouds. "Go on now, and prepare our house for my return. Your wait will not be long."

His legs shook as he stepped out into the deserted garden, heedless of how the wet grass soaked his slippers and the hem of his robe. Sitting down in Amali's arbor, he pressed the bracelet between his hands again, stealing glance after glance at the runaways as long as his strength allowed, until he'd seen enough to guess where they were headed.

Folding his hands, he rested a moment, feeling the comforting power of Sarikali seeping into him from the ground and air, replenishing him. He cupped his hands, picturing a distant village and the men he trusted there, while an orb of silvery light formed in the cage of his fingers. When he'd thought his message into it, he touched it and it whisked way, carrying what he hoped were the right words to the right ears.

Watching him from behind the window hangings, Amali dried her tears and prepared to send out a similar spell. "Aura protect us," she whispered when she finished, praying that this time she acted rightly.

40 GAMBIT

Despite all Thero's precautions, the storm broke far sooner than he'd hoped. He was helping Mydri change Klia's dressings at midmorning when Corporal Kallas hurried in, looking worried.

"There's trouble next door, my lord. I think you'd better come."

A small crowd had gathered outside Adzriel's house. She stood in the doorway with Saaban as she faced the Haman khirnari. Beside him stood the formidable Lhaar a Iriel, her face a mask of righteous indignation behind her tattoos.

"He would never have left without speaking to you!" Nazien i Hari said, leveling an accusing finger at her.

"You know as well as I that the ban of exile cut him off from clan and family," Adzriel retorted coldly. "There is no claim of atui on Bokthersa in this. Even if there were, I can tell you nothing of where he's gone or why, for I do not know. I swear it by Aura's own light."

"There's the wizard!" someone else shouted, and the unfriendly crowd turned its collective glare on Thero.

"Where is Seregil of Rhiminee?" Lhaar demanded, and he could see a faint corona of power glinting around her. His heart sank;

she might not read thoughts, but no simulacrum of his was going to fool those sharp eyes.

"He's left the city," he replied tersely. "I don't know where he's gone." That was true enough after a fashion. Seregil had purposely not revealed his route.

"Why did they leave?" demanded the Akhendi khirnari, stepping into view for the first time accompanied by the Silmai and Ra'basi khirnari. Thero quailed inwardly, all his precautions useless. How could they all have found out so quickly?

He scanned the crowd, seeking one more familiar face beneath a Ra'basi sen'gai. Nyal was nowhere to be found.