Harry roused and shook her head, which felt thick and heavy. "No; he has just told me something that bewilders me even as it makes all plain."

Senay said softly: "Sol, might we know what it is?"

Harry tried to smile. "He has said that my mother's grandmother was a Hillwoman, and thus the blood of your Hills runs in my veins."

The two looked back at her with the sort of surprise and consternation she was sure was still plain on her own face. Terim said: "But we know you must be one of us, or the king's madness would not come to you, and everyone knows that it does: already there are tales told of Harimad-sol at the laprun trials. The Water of Sight shows you things, and Lady Aerin speaks to you, and your eyes turn yellow when you are held by some strong emotion. In fact, they are yellow now."

Harry laughed: a little laugh and a weak one, but still a laugh, and she said to Jack, "My friends are not the least surprised by this intelligence, for all that it shakes me to my soul and makes my heart beat too fast—with fear or joy I am not quite sure. They say they have known me for a Hillwoman all along."

"I've no doubt that's true," Jack said dryly. "You may be sure Corlath would have made no Outlander his Rider, even if the Lady Aerin ordered him to."

"But why was I never told?" Harry mused, still trying to collect her thoughts together in one place so that she could look at them. Perhaps she was a better-constructed bridge than she had realized; and she thought of beams and girders, and almost laughed; how Outlanderish an image that was, to be sure. And as she labeled that bit of herself Outlander she then was free to label some other bit Damarian; and she felt a little more like herself all over, as though she were fitting into her skin a little more securely. She still was not sure what she was, but at least she need not be unhappy for not knowing: and now, perhaps, she had the missing pieces she needed to begin to learn.

"I think," Jack said slowly, "that I have an idea about that. I had assumed that you did know, but I remember now how Richard and I talked about you when you were to come out here—he seemed to think it would be bad for you in a particular way—" He frowned, trying to remember clearly. "You were evidently a little too, um, bohemian for him, and he obviously thought living in the land of your grandmother's mother was going to aggravate the tendency. But I never thought he would, er … "

"Protect me from myself by keeping me in ignorance?" Harry smiled ruefully. "Well, I didn't know, but I'm not surprised. Angry maybe—how dare he?—but not surprised. He takes the man's responsibility toward his frail female relations very seriously, does Dickie. Drat him. Where is my inestimable brother? Here?"

Jack was smiling at her, as she sat with her sword hilt touching her shoulder when she gestured. "No," he said, "he's off being diplomatic, which is something he shows some brilliance at, for me and Sir Charles. We'd like some extra men here, just in case this silly tribal matter gets out of hand, and I would only get red and froth at the mouth, while Richard can look earnest and beseeching, and may even have some effect." He looked gloomily at the table. "I torment myself, now and again, wondering whether, if Corlath had given us a bit more warning about what he had in mind, if Peterson and I could have brought Charles around—even a little—this mess we're in might have been, even a little, less of a mess. But it is not, as we say when we are being diplomatic, a fruitful source of inquiry."

Harry was thinking, For that matter, why didn't Mummy or Father tell me about my mysterious inheritance? They must have known, to tell my wretched brother—indeed, it must have been generally known to some extent; that explains why we were never quite the thing—I always thought it was just because we didn't give the right sort of dinner parties and spent too much time in the saddle. She went hot and cold, and her last shred of doubt about whether she had chosen wisely when she chose the Hills over the country that had raised her dissolved; but she had loved her family and her home, and she was without bitterness.

She yanked her attention back as Jack began to speak again: "It's been a little anxious here lately. There is something, or there are somethings, hanging around the town and the fort; and twice my men have gone out scouting and found signs of battle; and once there was a corpse." His face was drawn and old. "It wasn't quite human; although from a distance it would probably look human enough."

Harry said softly: "I have been told that much of the Northern army is not quite human."

Jack was silent for a little, then said: "In simple numbers I can't promise much. I don't want to risk forcibly anyone's neck but my own, as we will be going against orders, but there are a few men here I know who have the same attitude toward the Northerners that I do. I will put it to them."

Harry said, "So, how many and how quickly?"

"Not very and very. Those of us who will go have been quivering like so many arrows on so many bowstrings for weeks; we'll be grateful for the chance to snap forward. Look: you and your friends can have a bath and a nap; and we should be able to march at sunset."

There had been something obscurely troubling Harry since she entered the fort so precipitously; and at first she had put it down to the confusion, to her first sight of Outlanders since she had ceased to be one herself; and the troubled reflections that this recognition had brought her. But the sense of not-quite-right, of a whiff of something unpleasant, or a vibration in the air, increased as the rest of her relaxed. She looked around her now, able to think about this specific disturbance, to focus on its cause if her kelar would point the way. She turned her head one way and another; it was much worse in the small closed space that was Jack's rooms. It was as she put her hand over the blue stone on Gonturan's hilt that she finally understood what it was. "One last thing," she said.

"Yes?" said Jack, but it took Harry a little time to put it in words.

"No … guns. Rifles or revolvers, or whatever it is you use. They'll only, um, go wrong." And she shivered in the proximity of Jack's hunting-rifles hung on the wall, and two revolvers on belts hooked over the back of an unoccupied chair.

Jack tapped his fingers on the table. "Not just rumors, then?" he said.

Harry shook her head. "Not just rumors. It's not something I've seen, about guns—but I know. I know something of what the Hillfolk do, or are—and even if we could stop whatever it is we do, and I can't, because I usually don't know what I'm doing in the first place—I know too that, whatever it is, it will ride with those that we will be facing. And—and the presence of yours in this room," and she waved her hand, while the other one still rested on the blue gem, "is making me feel … edgy. It's the sort of thing I'm learning to pay attention to."

The room was suddenly smaller and darker than it had been before Harry spoke; Jack stared at her, seeing his young friend and seeing almost clearly the outline of the thing she had taken on in the Hills; and then an unexpected ray of sunlight fell through the window and the blue gem of her sword hilt blazed up as her hand slipped away from it, and her cheek and hair were lit blue. But the outline of her burden was gone. Jack thought, I am going to follow this child, to my death perhaps, but I am going to follow her, and be proud of the opportunity.

"Very well. I believe you. It's rather pleasant to have one's favorite old-wives'-tales borne out as truth. You'll not want infantry anyway; and our cavalry is accustomed to its sabers."

"Now, about that bath?" Harry said. Ted was told to provide the baths and beds required; she and Senay were led to Jack's bathroom first, and Harry sank gratefully into the water in the tall tin tub, sliding down till the water closed over her face and she looked up at a wavering circular world. She had to come up at last to breathe, and the world opened out again. Senay unbraided and combed her long dark hair, which fell past her knees in well-ordered waves; Harry watched with envy. Her own hair was nearly so long, but it liked escaping whatever it was put into, and bits were always getting caught in things and snapped off; so while Senay's hair smoothly framed her face and smoothly twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, Harry always had unrepentant tendrils launching themselves in all directions. Senay bound her sleek mane up again as Harry climbed, dripping, out of the tub. Senay slipped into the water with her own grateful sigh, and Harry put on the oversized nightshirt Ted had laid out for her and stumbled into Jack's bedroom, where two cots had been set up by the bed. Narknon finished investigating all the corners of Jack's rooms, while Jack and Ted eyed her warily, soon after Harry finished her bath; but when the cat tried to squeeze herself next to her sol on the bed, Harry was so deeply asleep already that she refused to make room and Narknon, with a discontented yowl, had to sleep humped over her feet.