"We'll see."

Odiana stamped her foot on the ground and folded her arms, scowling. "Aldrick!"

The big man went to her, taking off his cape and absently slipping it over her shoulders. The fabric could have wrapped around her twice. "Quiet, love. You know I'll let you have what you want."

She smiled up at him, winsome. "Truly?"

"Don't I always." He bent to the woman and kissed her, one arm pressing her against him. Her full lips parted willingly to his mouth, her body arching against his, and she reached up a hand to rake her nails through his hair, evidently delighted.

Fidelias rubbed at the bridge of his nose, where tension had begun to gather into a headache, and walked a short distance away. The horses arrived a moment later, nudged into a calm walk by Vamma and subtly guided over the ground. Fidelias called to the other two, who broke from their embrace only reluctantly, and the three saddled and mounted without further discussion.

As he had predicted, the ride passed uneventfully. Etan bounded along

before them through the trees, the wood fury taking the form of a large, silent squirrel, always just far enough into the shadows to be seen only in faint outline. Fidelias followed the bounding, flickering shape of his fury without the need for conscious effort; he had been using Etan to track for him and guide him since he had been barely more than a boy.

They crossed the Crown causeway and rode north and east through barren woodland filled with ragged pine trees, brambles, and thorns, toward the glowering shape of mountain rising up several miles before them. The mountain, Fidelias remembered, as well as the pine barrens around it, had a bad reputation for being hostile to humans. Little wonder the Marat had wanted a meeting near to what would be a safe area for his kind.

Fidelias flexed his right foot in the stirrup as he rode, frowning. The boot didn't fit correctly without his knife in it. He felt a faint and bitter smile stretch his lips. The girl had been brighter than he'd given her credit for. She'd seen an opportunity and exploited it ruthlessly, just as she'd been taught to do. As her -patriserus, he felt an undeniable stirring of pride in her accomplishment.

But as a professional, there was only a cold, tense frustration. She should have become an asset to his effort, and instead she had become a dangerously unknown factor in the play of events. If she was in the valley, there was no limit to how much havoc she could potentially wreak with his plans-and even if she wasn't, the distraction of guarding against the possibility was nothing trivial in itself.

How would he disrupt the plan in motion, were he in her place?

Fidelias considered it. No. That would be the wrong approach. He preferred short, brutal solutions to such matters, the less complicated the better. Too much could go wrong with finesse in a situation like this.

Amara thought in a far less linear manner. The simplest solution would be to get to the nearest Steadholder, declare her status, and dragoon everyone she could lay her hands on into spreading word through the valley that some sort of mischief was abroad. In that event, he'd have several dozen woodcrafty holders roaming about the valley, and one of them would almost certainly see something and know it for what it was.

If she did that, identifying herself and her location, matters would be simpler. A swift stroke would remove her from the equation, and he could then muddy the waters until it was too late for the holders to stop matters from proceeding.

Amara would realize the danger of such a course, naturally. She would need to be more circumspect than that. Less linear. She would be improvising as she went along, while he would by necessity play the hunter, beating the bushes to force her to move and then acting swiftly to cut off anything she might attempt.

Fidelias smiled at the irony: It seemed they would both be playing to their strong suits. Well enough, then. The girl was talented, but inexperienced. She wouldn't be the first person he had outmaneuvered and destroyed. She wouldn't be the last.

A flicker of motion from Etan warned Fidelias that the three riders were not alone in the grey shadows of the woods. He drew his mount to a stop at once, lifting his hand to signal the others to do the same. There was silence there among the dimness of the evergreens, broken only by the breathing of the three horses, the drip of rainwater from the trees to the forest floor, and the soft sigh of cold northern wind.

Fidelias's mount threw back its head and let out a short, shrill sound of fear. The other two horses picked up on it, heads lifted high and eyes wide and white. Odiana's mount threw its head about and danced to one side, nervous and spooky. Fidelias reached out to Vamma at once, and the earth fury acted upon his will, spreading to the beasts around him the soothing calm of the deep earth. Fidelias felt the earth fury's influence expand like a slow wave, until it rippled over the horses, stealing away the restless agitation and letting their riders bring the beasts once more under control.

"Something watches," the water witch hissed. She drew her mount close to Aldrick's side, her dark eyes glittering and agate-hard. "They are hungry."

Aldrick pursed his lips, then put one hand on his sword. He didn't otherwise straighten from the relaxed slouch he had maintained during the whole ride.

"Easy," Fidelias murmured, putting a hand on his horse's neck. "Let's move forward. There's a clearing just ahead. Let's give ourselves some open space around us."

They eased the horses forward into a clearing, and though the mounts were under control, they still tossed their heads restlessly, eyes and ears flicking about for some sign of whatever enemy they had scented.

Fidelias led them to the center of the clearing, though it scarcely gave them thirty feet on any side. The shadows fell thick through the trees, the wan grey light creating pools of shifting, fluid dimness between branch and bough.

He scanned the edges of the clearing until he spotted the vague outline of Etan's form, the squirrel-like shape flickering around the edges of a patch of dimness. Then he nudged his horse forward a step and addressed it directly. "Show yourself. Come out to speak beneath the sun and the sky."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a shape within that dimness resolved itself into the form of a Marat and stepped forward into the clearing. He stood tall and relaxed, his pale hair worn in a long braid across his scalp and down the nape of his neck. Dark, wiry feathers had been worked into the braid. His wore a buckskin belt and loincloth about his hips and nothing more. He bore a hook-shaped knife in his right hand, gleaming like dark glass.

At his side paced a herdbane, one of the tall predator birds of the plains beyond. It more than matched the Marat in height, though its neck and legs were so thickly built with muscle as to seem stumpy and clumsy. Fidelias knew that they were not. The bird's beak gleamed in tandem with the Marat's knife, and the terrible, raking claws upon its feet scratched through the bed of damp pine needles covering the forest floor and tore at the earth beneath.

"You are not Atsurak," Fidelias said. He kept his voice measured, clear, his speech almost rhythmic. "I seek him."

"You seek Atsurak, Cho-vin of the Herdbane Tribe," the Marat said, his own guttural voice in the same cadence. "I stand between you."

"You must stand elsewhere."

"That I will not do. You must go back."

Fidelias shook his head. "That I will not do."

"Then there will be blood," the Marat said. His knife twitched, and the herdbane beside him let out a low, whistling hiss.

From behind Fidelias, Odiana murmured, "Ware. He is not alone."

Fidelias followed Etan's flickering, unseen guidance. "To our left and right, at right angles," he murmured back to Aldrick.