Then Blade became aware that one of the five men was taking off his helmet and bowing his head. «Lord Blade,» he said. «Your Chosen Woman Lorya has been of our band these past months. It was not her belief that she would see you again. Is it your wish that she return to you?»

Blade shook his head. He wasn't sure what was going on here, but he knew Lorya was not coming with him this time. «No. I have business with the Wizard himself.» Instead of staring, the men nodded as if they understood perfectly what Blade meant. He went on. «I cannot take a woman with child into such danger. No, Lorya has found worthy protection here among you. Let this continue.»

«We are honored, Lord Blade,» said the leader. «Will you honor us further by spending the night at our camp?» Blade looked at Lorya for some clue as to what he should answer and saw her nod. She seemed to be trying not to burst out laughing. He would come to the camp, all right-and the first thing he'd do there was get Lorya's story from her. He'd never quite accepted the idea of her being dead-but he'd certainly never expected to find her alive, well, and giving orders to armed men.

That night, over beer and fresh-killed venison, she told him her tale. When the fifteen days of Peloff were over, she waited five more. Then she rode west to a farm. The people there took her in, and believed her tale of being under the protection of a great wizard, the Lord Blade, who had come from a distant land to meet the Wizard of Rentoro.

This tale did more than gain her good treatment at the farm. It prepared the farmer and his neighbors for the events that followed. When the rumors ran across the land that the Wolves were on the march and Morina was rising against the Wizard, they knew what was happening. The Lord Blade and the Wizard had fallen out, and their great duel would bring the Wizard's rule in Rentoro to an end.

By now Lorya had taken the farmer's second son as her lover, and she persuaded him to organize the young men of all the nearby farms as a band of warriors. It did not matter who won, she said-they would have to protect themselves, and neither side could punish them for that. It took some time for a century of fear of the Wizard to vanish, but in the end the job was done.

So now Lorya's lover commanded forty men, half of them mounted, and they patrolled the country for many miles in all directions. They kept the Wolves and the bandits out, and collected some taxes of their own. Lorya herself had learned to use a sword until she was a useful member of the band. Of course, in another month or so she would have to start saving her strength for the baby-

She saw the question in Blade's eyes and nodded. «It is yours."'

«Does your lover know?»

«Yes. I made him swear a mighty oath to treat the Lord Blade's seed as he would treat the Lord Blade himself.»

«And if he breaks that oath?»

«He is not the only protector in Rentoro. If I find a man who is traveling to Dodini, I may go with him anyway. I do not know what is happening in Dodini, but I do not think anyone there will now punish me for defying the Wizard!»

«That seems likely enough,» said Blade. «Lorya, you've done rather well by yourself. I wish you luck-«

«No, Blade,» she said with a smile. «Wish that I go on making my own luck. That is what you told me to do when you sent me to Peloff. That is what I have been doing.»

Blade couldn't argue. He only hoped she could go on making this kind of luck as long as she needed to-long enough to get home to Dodini, long enough for Rentoro to settle down. She deserved to live, and Rentoro needed more cool heads like hers.

Chapter 24

The next morning Blade kissed Lorya farewell, thanked her lover for his hospitality, and rode off to the south. With him as he rode was the knowledge that before dark tonight he might be confronting the Wizard.

In Peloff he saw again what might have happened to Lorya if she hadn't done so well making her own luck. There was no Peloff now, only ashes, charred timbers, and blackened stone, Bodies lay in the streets, most so badly charred that neither decay nor scavengers had touched them. Blade skirted the edge of the town and kept on to the south.

The village on the border of the Wizard's land still stood, but there was not a living human being in it, or a dead one either. Only flies on the garbage heaps and a scavenger dog or two moved among the houses and inns. The people might have evaporated, like dew at sunrise.

Blade climbed to the top of one of the inns and scanned the countryside to the south. He could see no one at work in the fields and no Wolves patrolling the roads, but neither surprised him. The Wolves and everyone else who could get clear of the Wizard's land must have long since done so.

If they could get clear. Everyone he'd met on the road spoke of something terrible and violent happening in the castle. Rumor and panic could exaggerate, but Blade wondered if they could make up such a tale out of thin air. He'd hoped he was through with mysteries in Rentoro, yet here he was, faced with one more!

Blade went downstairs and found dry bread and stale cheese. The water in the well was still clean. He drank and filled his water bottle. Then he mounted his heuda and rode south, past the white posts into the Wizard's empty lands.

In all the miles to the castle Blade did not meet a single living human being. The Wizard's lands seemed to have been depopulated as completely and as mysteriously as the village on the border. Blade began to hope for the sight of a burned house or a sprawled body, anything to tell of ordinary human violence. He had the feeling that he was riding down the road under the eyes of a thousand watchful ghosts.

Whatever had happened to the Wizard's people, it had happened some time ago. Kitchen gardens were rank with weeds. Livestock wandered aimlessly, browsing on the standing grain, while unmilked cows bellowed in agony.

Mile after mile without a sign of life, with all the defensible points abandoned. The bridges were intact, the fortified houses empty, not a single sentry visible anywhere. Now an army of ten thousand men could march up to the walls of the castle in a single day. Did the Wizard care?

By the time the castle loomed on the horizon ahead, Blade was almost certain his journey was in vain. The Wizard was dead. He had to be. He'd driven his people off, or perhaps killed them, and then ended his own life somehow. He was gone and all his secrets with him.

Yet Blade was not going to accept this idea until he'd explored the castle and seen the Wizard's body with his own eyes.

Blade rode up to the same gate he'd entered before and found it standing wide open. He rode straight in through the gateway and turned to the right. That led to the normal route into the castle. The booby traps and other devices along the route that had tested him and trained the Wolves might have broken down-and they might not have. Blade wasn't going to take any unnecessary chances, this close to his goal.

He found two half-decayed bodies on his way in. They lay on the path side by side, a Wolf and what must have once been a young woman. The Wolf's skeletal hand clutched the hilt of a sword driven through the woman's body. Apparently she'd been fleeing when the Wolf overtook her. Fleeing from what? And why was the Wolf dead beside her? There was no sign of violence on the body or on the rusty armor that still encased it.

Blade rode on, and shortly before dark tied his heuda to the knocker on the innermost gate. Then he tied his pouch with the sky-bridge crystals to his belt. He didn't want to leave anything as valuable on the heuda, just in case the castle was not as deserted as it looked.

The gate was closed but not locked. Blade pushed it open and slipped inside. A few feet beyond the gate he nearly stumbled over another body. This one was almost fresh, and wore the robe of one of the Wizard's assistants. A faint gleam of metal caught Blade's eye. He bent down and saw one of the Wizard's own jeweled daggers thrust up to the hilt in the young man's back. Blade pulled it out and added it to the pouch on his belt