I cringed where I stood. Just as I thought I could not stand it any more, Ryshad beckoned to us and I breathed a silent oath of relief.

We picked our way through tangled saplings below the lip of a rise sheltering the village, and I realised Ryshad was heading for a small cluster of standing stones. We had to do the last bit on bellies and elbows but once we were among the dolmens we had a degree of cover and, more importantly, we could see the whole village, the way we had come in and the other road out of the settlement. Aiten moved to cover the far approach and Ryshad crossed to lie next to me.

'Make out that map again, will you? They may lose us for a while but we need to have some idea of where we're going.'

'We should head for a coastal settlement when it gets dark.' Shiv said softly, looking back from his vantage post. 'If we can get hold of one of those whale-boats, I can get us home.'

'Couldn't you just magic us out of here?' I tried and failed to keep the pleading note out of my voice and scowled at the map I was scoring into the turf.

'Can you?' Aiten looked over hopefully but Shiv shook his head regretfully.

'If I'm not forced to perform any other enchantment between now and dusk, I might be able to send one of you back.'

Aiten looked uncertainly at Ryshad, who shrugged.

'It had better be Livak,' he said simply.

'No!' I exclaimed incautiously, blushing, furious with myself, as the others hushed me.

'You're the one with the information Planir needs.' Ryshad fixed me with a stern eye and I swallowed my confused objections. To be truthful, the long-held instincts of looking after myself first and last had leaped for joy at the prospect of getting out of this mess, until the more recent habits of working in this kind of team had kicked me in the shins. I couldn't decide if that made me a callous bitch or a sensible agent for Planir, but I did know I hated the idea of leaving these three behind to Poldrion only knew what fate.

Still, time enough to worry about that when Shiv was sufficiently rested to regain his strength for the magic, which was not something I was going to offer good odds on. I couldn't think what to say so I moved over to survey the village from a post between two of the great sarsens. The tension eased away but I knew relaxing would be a seriously stupid idea. I forced myself to study our surroundings in detail to keep myself alert. Script was carved into the stone and I wondered what significance this enclosure had, that such good land was set aside in such a poor country. After a while, deciphering the letters in between keeping watch on the village, I decided they were lists of names. A horrid suspicion grew in the back of my mind until it could no longer be ignored. I felt around the turf I was sitting on, running my fingers under the tangle of dead summer's growth, crawling round on hands and knees. Sure enough, I found the regular lines of cutting and lifting which gave a rounded outline about man length and half as wide. I threw up a quick prayer to Misaen, hoping no one in the village had a sudden urge to come and commune with an ancestor today.

I realised Ryshad was looking at me with open puzzlement and I crept over to sit next to him.

'We're in a grave circle,' I said quietly.

He looked momentarily perplexed and I remembered Das-tennnin's followers bury at sea rather than burning their dead like the rest of us.

'Peculiar people.' His face mirrored my own distaste; Saedrin grant I die somewhere civilised and get a good hot pyre and a pretty urn in a shrine for whatever's left while I find out what the Otherworld has to offer.

CHAPTER NINE

Taken from:

The Lost Arts of Tormalin Argulemmin of Tannath Lake

Chapter 7: Priestly Magic

Before the fall of the House of Nemith brought the Dark Generations to our unhappy world, many and wondrous were the arcane arts of Tormalin priests. While we may lament the loss of much that brought grace and beauty to the life of the lost Empire, such arts as these are best left hidden in the darkness of the Chaos.

It is said they could look into a man's mind and read his very thoughts. Most could do this face to face and, more terrifying yet, some adepts could do this from rooms apart from their target, or even, hard though it is to believe, from some leagues away. What the priests could read was dependent on their level of proficiency. A novice might gain merely the sense of his victim's mood, his fear or pleasure. One more skilled could see where such emotions tended and identify the object of terror or lust. The most accomplished priests could pick the very words out of their hapless subject's heads, repeating their innermost thoughts and secrets back to them. Some could even invade a man's dreams, searching his memories and desires, leaving their victims sickened with pain.

By such methods, the power and influence of the priesthoods, particularly those of Poldrion and Raeponin, grew and spread. When brought to answer charges of some crime, few men would have the hardihood to deny evidence given by a priest and if one should, how was he to be believed, when all present knew the powers

of their magics? Can we believe that this power was never abused, that false witness was never given when no man could be believed if he gainsaid a priest? Alas, the fallibility of human nature is one thing that has not changed through the generations.

Once a youth had joined the priesthoods, his life was lived at the commands of the higher priests. Dreadful oaths were sworn in rites now lost to us, doubtless so terrible that no record was kept lest it should be revealed to profane eyes. Fasting and privation was used to purify the body and to break the spirit, bending the will of the acolyte to his master's behests. Should a youth repent of his decision and seek escape, the priests had many magics with which to weave a net around him.

It is said they could speak with each other over many leagues, from shrine to shrine. That which one priest was seeing could be revealed to another, and the face of a man sought by the priesthoods could be carried across the Empire in days. His very steps could be traced by sorcery immune to the vagaries of weather or attempts at deception. The emanations left by his very spirit would be revealed by mysterious means, an unbreakable trail. Small wonder that so few left the priesthood in those days.

Islands of the Elietimm,

2nd of For-Winter

The sun rose higher and we saw no sign of our pursuers which was a relief and also something of a puzzle. The village buzzed with activity and luckily it seemed the demands of living in this place outweighed honouring the dead. This close to Solstice and this far north the days were shorter than any I had known. As noon came and went sooner than any of us expected, I began to wonder if we might be able to wait until the early onset of night and scout out to find a boat. We sat and watched teams of men dragging ploughs across the stubborn ground beyond the village and I realised I had seen no sign of any beast larger than the goats anywhere. No wonder the men attacking us back home had had no horses. Groups of women were gathering what I thought was spite nettle, apparently oblivious to the stinging leaves, and dumping it in a long stone trough. Others were emptying a similar trough and I observed they were retting the stuff in the same way we would treat flax to make linen at home. There was something disquieting about seeing such industry devoted to making cloth out of a weed that everyone at home simply ignored or hacked down as a nuisance.

The children, even the very smallest, were busy — cleaning, fetching, carrying. I could see down into the neat yards behind one group of houses and every one had a pen for some sort of furry animals, not coneys but something about the same size with long bushy tails. Cisterns for rainwater were being skimmed for leaves and the like and every dwelling had a small patch of yard where I could just make out older girls and boys tending greenery. These gardens backed on to each other, separated by thick walls with flues running through them, wisps of blue smoke rising into the sheltered air in lazy curls. No wager, but they weren't growing exotic flowers like the fiercely competitive botanists of Vanam. These people weren't spending fuel to flower lace-purples a week earlier than anyone else, this was survival. Thinking about Vanam brought my ever-present worry about Geris charging to the front of my mind and our inactivity began to press still more heavily on me, the more irritating because I knew it was the most sensible thing to do. The sun marched relentlessly across the sky and I began to worry that I might be forced to go back alone after all.