Corlath was not trying to strike at once for the center of the northern mountains and the Bledfi Gap. After the Hill army crossed the narrow range behind which the City lay, they worked their way around the curve of the mountains, trotting through the sandy sour grass and broken rock at their feet. At first this made them ride almost due north, then in an increasing arc to the west; and the sun moved across the sky before them. Often in the mornings when the mist was still lying around them, trailing from the mountains' shoulders into their camp, a little group of riders, or even a solitary figure on horseback, would loom up at them from nowhere; but Corlath always seemed to be expecting them, and they always knew what to say to the guards that they might pass; and in this way the army a little swelled its ranks. Occasionally Harry heard a woman's voice among the strangers, and this made her glad; and often she'd rub a finger over the blue gem in the hilt of Gonturan and think of the sword no man could carry. Mathin said to her once: "We did not think to see so many women—few have fought with us within any man's memory, although in Aerin's day it was different. But I think many fathers are letting their daughters join us who had not thought to till they heard of Harimad-sol, and that Gonturan went to war again."

Many of these women she met; particularly after Mathin had spoken to her, for then she began to feel a little uneasily responsible for them. Senay she saw several times—and saw too that she was wearing a sewn-together sash as if she were proud of it. Harimad-sol asked the names of the women when she had a chance, and they answered gravely; and they often gave her the back-of-hand-to-forehead gesture of respect, and none ever asked her her name, even when she was not carrying Gonturan and ought to look—she thought—like any other disheveled soldier. Most of those who came thus late to join Corlath's army did not carry a sword, and wore no sash; these were men and women who had spent their lives in their own villages, on their own farms and in their own shops, and had never attended laprun trials, nor felt the lack that they had not.

One evening they rode into a hollow where nearly a hundred strangers, all mounted, and with several pack horses and hunting-beasts besides, waited for them; and Corlath rode forward with a great hearty cry of welcome, a sound nearer happiness than any Harry had heard from him since they began their march north. A rider at the head of the group rode to meet him, and they seized each other by the shoulders while their horses bumped uneasily together and rolled their eyes at each other. A third man then detached himself from the new group and joined Corlath and his friend.

"Murfoth and his son, Terim," said Mathin in Harry's ear. "Murfoth was one of the old king's friends, though he's not much more than ten years older than our king. He might have been a Rider, had he wished, but he chose instead to stay at home and look after his lands; and a good job he's made of it too. Some of our best horses now come from him, and grain to feed many more."

"We Riders," said Innath from her other side, "as you may have noticed, tend to be fourth sons or otherwise penniless—or incurable wanderers like Mathin here—but Murfoth now, when he comes to ride with his king, can bring eighty men with him." Innath's voice, for all its careless pride, sounded almost wistful. Harry found herself remembering her father's words to her—it seemed decades ago: "You haven't a penny, you know."

Terim was Harry's age, and when he and his father came to sit at the king's fireside he came to her and sank down beside her, folding up his long legs as all the Hillmen did. She looked at Terim and he looked at her; his look was eager and a little, to her embarrassment, reverent. "I was First at my laprun trials three years ago," he said; "but when I took my turn against Corlath my sash was on the ground before I had a good grip on my sword." He thumped the hilt of his sword, which jangled as it bit into the ground. "My father gave me Teksun here anyway, he said no one ever got a grip on a sword against Corlath. You did, though." His eyes shone in the firelight.

Harry ran a meditative finger over the careful seam in her sash, which she had put in under Mathin's promised tutelage. "I didn't know it was he—I never thought. And he allowed me to cross swords with him; and when I realized how much of it was allowing, I got … mad." She paused. "I was surprised too." She frowned, remembering the awful headache she'd had for most of that day, and then the more awful sick lurch that seemed to start behind her eyes, where the headache was, and quiver all the way through her body, when she saw the face behind the scarf she had just removed. No one had called her baga for the cut at the corner of Corlath's mouth, though. She met the boy's eyes somewhat ruefully and said, "It wasn't as pleasant an experience as you might think."

Terim gave a little snort of laughter and said, "Yes, I believe you," and Harry looked across to where Corlath sat with Terim's father and found him watching her. She wondered if he had heard what she had just said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In the hollow where they met Murfoth they set up their first proper camp. The hunting-beasts all went out that night, and everyone, not just a few Riders, had good fresh meat for dinner. The king's zotar was put up, and it was obvious that it was the king's, for it was the biggest, but this one was plain, a dull dun color, and the door was just a tent flap, and inside there were a few carpets, and hooks on side poles for lanterns, but that was all; although the black-and-white banner still flew bravely from the peak of the roof. She and the king and Murfoth and most of the Riders—Innath and Mathin among them—slept within it; but she lay awake a long time listening to the others breathe. You didn't hear the person next to you breathing if there wasn't a ceiling over you to keep the noise closed in. She missed the stars.

The next morning there was breakfast at a long table similar to the one where she had first met the Riders; they were all there again, with a few others of those who had joined them over the last few days. Corlath explained what was immediately ahead of them: how they would climb into the mountains again—the range was widest where the curve west was sharpest—to meet the high plateau where the Lake of Dreams lay, and where Luthe lived. Luthe? thought Harry. Most of the army would not climb all the way to the meeting-place, but fade into the forest in little groups and pretend to be invisible; for, so far at least, Corlath and the outriders believed they had not been sighted. Harry blinked and wondered if the morning mists that seemed to continue all day long every day as a kind of dull haze had after all been more than a curious local weather pattern. Luthe himself—Mathin told her this during an interval while the household folk brought in hot malak—had ways even Corlath did not understand of seeing things, and Corlath wished to see and speak to him. But Luthe never left his lands, and so it was necessary to seek him there. "Luthe claims that lowland air confuses him," Mathin said, and shrugged the uneven Hill shrug. "It is not for us to know." He picked up his cup.

"Yes, but who is Luthe?" said Harry.

Mathin regarded her with his inscrutable expression. "No one knows," he said. "Luthe is … someone who lives in the mountains, who sees things—things something like what some of us see when we taste the Meeldtar. He has been there a very long time. No one can remember when Luthe came, or when he has not lived on his mountain."

"And the Lake of Dreams?"

Mathin stared into his cup. "There is a spring that runs into the Lake of Dreams, and it is where the Water of Sight is found; but sometimes the water from the spring is only water, and no one knows why; although it is believed that Luthe knows. Water drunk from the Lake of Dreams does not give the Sight, as the true Meeldtar does; but it is not quite like drinking … water."