She had turned her back on him that night on the Flow. A strong sense of invading his privacy had made her walk the gelding along the Floating Bridge to its anchorage on the southern shore. Even in darkness, across the width of a river, she could feel the weight of his loss. Mal Naysayer was close to seven feet tall, with densely muscled shoulders and a back as straight as a lodgepole pine. To see him bend was to see his grief.

I am on Sull territory now, she had told herself as she stepped from the bridge onto the road of crushed quartz. Surety I can make it to the Heart Fires on my own? It had made sense to leave him; that way he would not be burdened with the task of bringing her to his home. The decision whether or not to follow her would be his own. Perhaps he might come after her, but she could not rely on it. The first person to call her daughter had taught her that men could not be relied upon. So where was Penthero Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis, this night? Was he deep within the Blackvault plotting to kill those who would take his place? Did he miss the daughter he'd found as a newborn and adopted? Or did he miss controlling the Reach? Ash opened her eyes. The stars were cold and blue. Crushing layers of pine needles and old, yellow snow beneath her boot heels, she returned to the dry camp. The Sull horse watched her with anticipation, his tail raised, his ears forward, standing on the exact patch of ground where she'd unsaddled him. Ark and Mal had used him as a packhorse and a spare, and he had muscular legs and a deep chest. Stony white and dappled, with shaggy patches on his neck and withers, he wasn't nearly as elegant as the Far Riders' mounts. Yet all Sull horses were beautiful. It had something to do with the intelligence biding in the center of their eyes.

Ash felt a rush of pleasure as he snuffled her bare palm. It made thinking about her foster father easier. Would he have really gone through with his plans to imprison her? Surely not. She was his daughter. All she'd ever wanted to do was please him.

Leaning against the gelding, Ash tried to warm away the hurt. Iss had never loved her, she had to remember that. He had adopted her because she satisfied the requirements of a prophecy foretelling the birth of a Reach: a newborn left to perish in the snow outside Vaingate. Your little hands were blue, Iss had been fond of telling her. And when I picked you up and tucked wu under my cloak you barely mmLe a sound.

Why had her foster father wanted her so badly? If she hadn't run away from Mask Fortress what would have become of her? She knew Iss had planned to imprison her, but how had he intended to use her? What had Heritas Cant told her in Ille Glaive? 'You will be able to walk the borderlands at will, hear and sense the creatures that live there, and your flesh will become rakhar dan, reachflesh, which is held sacred by the Sull" It made about as much sense now as it did then. Yet she did not think Cant's words were false. Mistaken perhaps, but not false. And why had Ark insisted she become Sull? "If you are not with us you are against us, and as such no living, breathing Sull will let you live." What did she possess that filled them with such fear?

Thoughtful, Ash rocked her weight back onto her feet She was a Reach, and she did not know what that meant.

Leading the Sull horse by the cheek strap, she guided him toward the section of riverbank where rye and wild carrot had seeded between the scree. He deserved a treat. Once he'd eaten his fill he would head straight back to the camp. He would not stray, and if he heard anything that alarmed him he would immediately return to her side. Ash didn't know what she would have done without him these past six days. He knew the way home. With a loose hand on his reins he headed east, following a subtle path along the rivershore that Ash could only occasionally discern. Together they had passed vast beds of ice-rotted bulrushes humming with black flies, sulfurous tributaries that dumped mustard-colored ore into the Flow, hedge of spiny bushes that formed defensive walk around beachheads, salt ponds ringed with game paths, and long stretches of shoreline where ghostly forests of needle-thin birches grew from the frozen mud.

She wasn't sure how far she'd traveled from the Floating Bridge. Sometimes she rode, but more often she chose to walk. Awake before the first cock crow each morning, she was on the toil before dawn. It was easier to keep going than stop. If she had been traveling alone she would have walked all day, swigging from her water bladder as she wove between the trees, only halting to catch her breath and pee. The gelding needed to graze though, and she was forced to stand and wait for long intervals as he cropped last year s grass.

Waiting was a kind of torture. It gave her time to think. Katia, her little wild-haired maid, dead. Ark dead. Raif gone. All three had risked their lives to help her, and she had not paid them back. Ash filled her lungs with night air, punishing herself with its icy sharpnest. She lived in a world where she had not paid them back.

Camp was little more than a circular patch of kick-cleared ground twenty feet north of the treeline. Out of habit Ash had raised a guide-post, and now began laying stones for a fire ring. She had no tent hides and feared lighting a fire in this strange land, but it gave her something to do. The river stone was green traprock reefed with fool's gold, and it was cold and sharp. Ash had lost her gloves along with her supplies so she had to lay it bare-handed. Darkness rose as she worked, snuffing the wind and pulling up mist.

Intent on building the fire ring, stacking the stones in overlapping layers as Ark had taught her, she id not hear the gelding approach. When it pushed its nose against her back in way of greeting, she jumped in fright

"Bad horse," she scolded, feeling foolish. Suddenly everything seemed foolish: the guide post and the fire ring, Traveling alone— to the Heart of the Sull without even knowing why.

"What am I doing here?" she asked aloud, hearing the tremble in her voice and not liking it. "What am I good for except getting people killed?"

Nothing answered. Along the treeline the cedars swayed in long, rolling waves. The gelding watched her, its head cocked, straining to read her mood. Abruptly Ash sat. She was tired and hungry and quite possibly going insane. Frowning, she glanced at the near-perfect circle of rocks, thought about it for a moment, and then leaned forward and knocked it over with her fist. Feeling a bit better, she spoke a command to the horse.

The gelding moved closer, swinging about to present its flank. Ash reached into her coat, located her gear belt, and drew her knife. Two weapons Ark had given her: a sickle blade with a weighted nine-foot chain attached; and a slender handknife made of the rare white alloy that was more precious to the Sull than gold. Platinum. Case-hardened with arsenic and other strange metals, the blade was so fiercely edged that when it first sliced your skin you felt no pain. Angus Lok had possessed a similar weapon, also Sull-wrought, that he lovingly called his "mercy blade." Ash had never seen him use it, for although it had both the form and dimensions of a standard handknife it was not the sort of blade that lent itself to spearing meat or picking dirt from fingernails. It was too formal and deadly for that.

Ash held the knife as she had been taught; thumb on the riser, index finger on the dimple, edge out. The handle was lightly hollowed for balance, and a Crosshatch pattern of overlapping flight feathers had been etched into its surface to form a grip. The metal was shockingly cold, and she waited for her body heat to warm it before she spoke. "Ishl xalla tannan."

I know the value of that which I take. Ark Veinsplitter had taught her the words: the first of the Sull prayers.