The attack had taken place seven days ago and they'd been traveling hard ever since. East and then south, through ancient forests overgrown with moss and ghostvines, along worn stone roads that ran alongside icy green rivers and blackwater lakes, through hills milky with pale winter grasses, and past the valley of blasted trees. That had been the only day when they had seen other people, when they had ridden along the valley's rim and looked down upon square leagues of flattened and blackened pines. The valley was a perfectly shaped bowl and the trees had fallen in a radial pattern as if blasted from a central point. Their trunks were black and greasy and some had crumbled into sections like fallen pillars. An open mine was being worked in the valley's center, and Ash saw the distant figures of men and women digging with picks and working machines. The chink and rumble of their labors was amplified by the valley's steep walls.

She could smell the stale char of the trees. "What's happening down there?" she had asked Lan.

Lan had been maintaining a brisk pace along the ridgeline and did not slow to answer her. "It is Scara'il Ixa. A Hole Made By God." He would say no more.

Ash had the sense that he wanted to be gone as quickly as possible. He did not acknowledge the faces that turned upward to look at them, or the two horsemen armed with longbows who patrolled the head of the valley. She wondered if he had been nervous. He held the reins more closely than normal and his gaze continually scanned the spaces between the trees.

"Where are we going?" she had asked him later that day as he crouched by a stream os snowmet to fill his waterskin. " The Heart Fires are to the south." She didn't know this for a fact but she stated it like one anyway. "And we are heading east."

"Tommorow we turn south," he had said.

She had decided she would leave him if thev did not head south in the morning.

That night she did not sleep in the tent and had bundled in her blankets by the fire. The sky had been diamond clear and crushed with stars. As she watched the constellations turn, the horses wandered over to check on her. The stallion held itself at a companionable distance and began nosing the snow for grass, while the gelding stood right over her and blew on her face. She'd had to push him away in the end, but it had felt good to know that both horses had offered their company.

As she settled down to sleep, she glanced over at the wolfhide tent. The entrance flap was moving back and forth. Ash watched it come to rest, and then waited to see if a stray gust of wind might sat it into motion. It did not. Had Lan been watching her? Or had he simply heard the horses stirring and put out his head to check on them? Uneasy, she had fallen asleep.

Her dreams were of the gray, unsettled place, and the armies of creatures that suffered within it. They roiled with the smoke, hissing, arching their spines, jerking back their heads and clawing at each other and themselves. To be there was a torture. And they wanted out. Something dark and infinitely evil moved along the edge of her perception. It was the calm in the rage, the master of the chaos. Mistressss, it warned. Do not come here m the flesh.

Ash snapped awake. Cold sweat had pooled in the hollow of her throat and it totted down her dress as she sat upright. Dawn was a a silver line on the horizon, and woodcocks were performing their strange slow mating flights above the trees. The horses were asleep; their elbows and stifles locked in place, their eyelids fluttering but not com pletely closed. Ash knew that if she were to stand she would wake them.

Smoky red coals were all that was left of the fire. Reaching for a stick to poke some air in them, she glanced at the tent. The hide was to remember their movements last night. The stream was behind the tent. They had come in from the north. The footsteps led south.

She stood. The horses' ears tracked the movement and their heads came up. Cutting toward the trees, she felt for her sickle knife. She was still sweating, and when she blinked she saw images from the dream. Claws uncurling. Limbs writhing. Eye sockets filled with the cold black substance of space. It occurred to her that she should call Lan's name and look inside the tent, but she did neither. She had some knowledge of path lores and once she saw the footprints close up she decided they were fresh. The surrounding snow was icy, but the little lumps kicked up by the boot heels were soft. They would have hardened if they'd been left overnight.

Camp had been made in a small depression in a sloped woodland of mixed hardwood and pine. Old and swollen oaks lay dormant beside ladders of purple hemlock. Ash headed into the trees, following the path created by the footsteps. It never occurred to her that Lan might be in danger; later she would think about that.

As she waded her way through a tangle of burdock and cloudberries, the Far Rider appeared on the path ahead. His bow was braced and he was carrying a lean and bloody coari by its ringed tail. When he saw her he blinked in surprise. Ash felt heat rush to her face. It looked as if she was spying on him. Silently, he held up the coati for her to see. There was a smear of blood on his forearm, but it was probably from the animal. She backed out of the bushes, feeling ashamed.

Later that morning they'd headed south.

Ash watched Lan Fallstar as he rode ahead of her on the causeway. She suspected she did not know enough about the Sull to accurately judge him. Ark Veinsplitter and Mai Naysayer might have appeared more forthcoming, but they had kept their silence on many things. Neither one would tell her what it meant to be Reach. She recalled Ark warning her once that she was in danger unless she became Sull. He had not told her why. Perhaps this was the way it would be with all of them. She was an outsider, not to be trusted with their deepest secrets. The color of her eyes might have darkened from gray to midnight blue that night in the mountain pool, but nothing else on the outside had changed. She did not look Sull, so how could she expect Lan Fallstar to treat her as an equal? She had known all along the Sull believed themselves to be superior to men.

Reaching the end of the raised path, Lan slowed his stallion to a walk. Without any signal from Ash, the gelding followed his lead. Wind moaned in her ears as the horses climbed up a narrow— and crumbling stair cut into the bluff. Pale weeds grew in the cracks in the steps, and icy streams trickling along their edges had deposited streaks of green algae and calcium salts. The horses moved slowly, placing their hoofs with care. Ash spotted a footprint stamped half in the snow and half in the algae. Did Sull still come here?

Light faded as they passed into a tunnel mined deep into the crenel-lations of the cliff. Water dripped and plonked in the darkness. Ash smelled tree roots and the faint tinge of sulfur. Quite suddenly she realized she had never opened a vein and paid a toll for passage; she did not possess that Sull instinct. Yet as she moved through the tunnel something within her thought, Now would be a good time to let blood. When light from the exit came sliding along the walls, she saw marks tattooed into the rock. Star maps, tailed comets, meteor showers, eclipsed suns and the moon in alljmts phases had been carved into limestone and filled with a cloudy whitetsubstance that was slowly moldering to green. Seeing the markings Ash had a sense that finally she was drawing close to the heart of Sull. They had fought and lost major battles here. Khal Hark'rial. The Fortress of the Hard Gate.

They emerged on a circular stairwell whose ancient Ane floor was speckled with calcium deposits and lichen. The patches looked like bird droppings. A spring gurgled over the raw rockwall before passing into an underground channel. Lan headed up more steps and Ash followed him. She could see the sky again now. Clouds were fleeing west with the sun.