Naldeth wasn't about to let the argument go. 'What you have to understand about wizardry is—'

'Just hush.' Velindre had lost her taste for debate the same as Risala. 'Go to sleep, Naldeth, or you'll be in no fit state to do anything useful tomorrow.'

The younger mage's chin jutted belligerently, though he didn't say anything further. He settled himself against the wall as best he could and shut his eyes with a huff of irritation.

Velindre sighed and her eyelids closed, her angular face softened just a little by the sinking firelight.

Kheda was still too exasperated to think of sleep. 'I'm going to find more firewood.'

Risala nodded resignedly. 'Don't go too far.'

'I won't.' Kheda scrambled up the steep slope towards the entrance. Out in the dark night, the breeze was chill after the warmth of the cave.

This whole day has just lurched from confusion to chaos time and again. Why did I ever come on this voyage? What are we going to do? What are we going to do with that old

woman? What if we have to make a run for it, to escape that wizard in the beaded cloak or anyone else on this side of the river? Do we abandon her to her fate? If we don't, is she going to be the death of us, deliberately or all unwitting? And Risala expects me to find the answers in the heavens.

He looked up angrily at the blithely twinkling stars.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When she woke, the old woman had no notion where she was. The walls of the painted cave were a meaningless blur in the half-light, while the smell of old wood smoke stirred confused memories of the village she had left behind. Then someone close at hand stirred and murmured, the sound like a brooding bird.

Stealthily, she rubbed her eyes to wipe away the stickiness of morning. As her vision cleared, she looked covertly around, bony fingers clutching her bundle of precious possessions. Satisfied that the strangers were all still asleep, she sat slowly upright, biting her lip against pain and stiffness. Moaning would bring no relief and might wake the strangers.

So they hadn't been some fever dream as she lay senseless somewhere, her only hope that she would be wholly dead before scavengers found her. Who were they? Where had they come from?

She studied the two closest at hand. The girl was lying on her side, her knees drawn up like a child. The man was slumped against a ridge of stone running down from the roof to the floor of the cave, one hand protectively resting on the sleeping girl's shoulder.

The old woman reached out, careful not to touch the sleeping girl, though. She saw that the skin on her own arm was only a little darker. The girl's flesh had all the silkiness of youth and good feeding while the old woman had long been half-starved, but they were not so different.

w

Apart from the girl's hair. Short as it was, the old woman could see it was as straight as falling water. She ran an unconscious hand over her own tight-curled, matted locks.

Quite the strangest thing about the girl was her garb. The old woman risked a feather-light touch on a fold of the loose stuff that covered the girl's arms and body. It wasn't hide, of that much the old woman was certain. Looking more closely, she concluded it was somehow akin to the ropes everyone twisted out of grass and tree bark, but try as she might, she couldn't imagine how the two things were related.

She gazed at the garb. The most wonderful thing about it was the colour. It was the pink of a sunrise sky or a cliff-bird's breast feathers, and patterned with silver leaves. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Not even the most favoured women of the most successful hunters had ever had anything so glorious to wear.

The man stirred in his sleep and the old woman hastily withdrew to crouch beside her bundle, feigning sleep. She didn't hear him wake, so she opened her eyes again and studied him. His skin was a familiar hue but he had hair as brown as a tree scurrier's, even if it curled as tightly as her own. She recalled the reddish-brown tint that sometimes appeared in children's hair when the end of a long dry season left them with swollen bellies and shrunken limbs, their cheeks hollowed by hunger. But like the girl, this man was straight-limbed and well fed and showed no sign of having ever gone hungry.

The old woman looked at the man's long knives, hidden in their hide casings. Whatever were they made of, that could be crafted into so long and narrow a blade? A niomentary pang surprised her. The old man would have been fascinated by these people and their strange knives.

As the strangers slept on, the old woman shifted to sit

cross-legged and considered the other two newcomers. She had never seen anyone like either of them.

The older one, with the golden hair and light-brown skin, was fast asleep in a niche, knees drawn up and head uncomfortably canted to rest on one shoulder. The face was softened in sleep and lacked any hint of a beard, so the old woman concluded this one was most probably a woman, despite her lack of curves at breast or thigh.

She clenched her hand tight against the desire to creep over and touch the golden stranger's hair. It was as straight as the dark-skinned girl's but cut shorter still. Would it feel like the pelt of some animal or like the sun-dried grass it so closely resembled? What lay beneath the stranger's dusty garb? The old woman could see the brown skin end and creamy pallor begin where the fibrous stuff the stranger wore had slipped awry around her neck. Was she parti-coloured like some lizard? Did she have stripes or patterns beneath her strange garments?

The other man — and he plainly was a man, judging by the stubble shadowing his jaw - was as much of a puzzle as the golden stranger. His hair was the brown of leaves at the end of the dry season, his skin a sandy colour with an underlying reddish cast on his nose and forehead. Had he come from the same place as the golden stranger? Where could that be?

They were evidently both painted people with all the power that implied. The old woman watched them sleep on. There was no point in being afraid of them now. They could have killed her last night if they had chosen to. They could just have left her on the other side of the river to take her chances between the lizards and the followers of that painted man with the horned skull. Instead, they had helped her cross over the river. They had even invited her to share the cave's shelter instead of killing her there and then for profaning it. Why had they done that? Were

they keeping her to make an offering of her? Much good it would do them. There wasn't enough flesh on her bones to impress a beast, not if she was offered up alone.

She debated whether or not she should creep away while they were all still asleep. But if she ran away, she still risked being captured by the followers of the painted man with the horned skull. Or by those other people she had seen last night. The skull wearer evidently didn't rule everyone in this valley. No, she concluded, leaving was just too dangerous a prospect.

On the other hand, if she stayed, just possibly, these painted strangers might protect her, for a little while at least. She had made herself useful to them, even if it was only by bringing them firewood. Everyone knew that painted men showed most consideration to those who made themselves useful or held precious knowledge. Besides, now they knew her, they would find her if she ran away. Everyone knew there was no escaping a painted man's power.

She frowned as she considered a new puzzle. She had found this cave easily enough, even in the dark. The moonlight had shone on the scores cut into the trees and on the arrangements of stones that warned of its presence. Since her life was forfeit to whoever caught her anyway, and she had hidden in other painted caves on her wanderings without her skin catching fire to melt the flesh from her bones, she had been ready to risk it again, to escape a night so full of dread.