Kheda wasn't smiling. 'Are you sure you can do this? Overconfidence killed Dev just as surely as that fire dragon's egg.'

'We should be able to repel any dragon if we can draw

the other elements into a nexus antithetical to its own affinity.' She sounded confident.

'Then we have to recover the Zaise,' Kheda said determinedly. 'And I can find good uses for the rest of that cargo. Our best chance of doing that is if we take the fight to the tree dwellers while they're still reeling from this defeat. Can you undertake to keep that dragon away, and curb their mage's power?'

Velindre nodded slowly, frowning. 'I'd like some time to think through a few ways of constraining that wizard's magic without killing him outright.'

'We should discuss this theory of nexus magic' Naldeth didn't sound quite so sanguine as the magewoman.

'As long as we're not attacked, we can wait a day or so.' Kheda looked around. 'These people need time to recover a little.'

'What then?' Risala was gazing at Kheda, unblinking.

What are you expecting me to tell you? I'm sorry, my love, but I won't lie to you.

'Then we will have the Zaise and its cargo and we can decide how to make best use of both.' He swallowed unpalatable truths that he could not bring himself to voice just yet. 'Now, let's teach these people a few things that will give us the advantage in the fight.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The old woman was inexpressibly relieved when she finally saw dusk sweeping swiftly across the sky. After keeping the whole encampment busy all day, the strangers had finally gone back to the painted man's hut. The old woman accepted a piece of peeled vine from a shyly smiling child and spared the little girl a brief smile of her own. As the child scampered back to her mother, the old woman chewed on the sweetness coating the fibrous core, mindful of her sparse teeth. It soothed the qualms in her belly.

Was something wrong? The strangers had been harsh and curt as they spoke to each other ever since they had come back from defeating the men from across the river. Then the golden stranger and the red-faced one with the powers of painted ones had spent long periods just talking to each other, sitting in the hut, heads close together, murmuring like brooding birds. The tall stranger had been stirring all the men to action, making himself understood with wordless gestures and a frown that brooked no dissent. His woman had offered her helping hands to the women setting everything to rights again after their abortive flight to the uncertain safety of the thorn scrub.

People were still busy about their huts and enclosures. One or two smiled at her as they passed by. The old woman nodded obsequiously to acknowledge the mother of a healthy brood who'd earlier offered her shelter for the night. She knew why they were being so solicitous.

They wanted answers to their questions. How would they react when she finally had to admit that she had precious few answers? Would they still be as kind?

At least it still looked as if she didn't have to fear being tied up, to be kept barely alive with meagre scraps and water until some painted man demanded food for his beast. Everyone was still talking about the tale that the men had brought back from the battle. Neither the golden stranger nor the ruddy one had waited to woo a beast with the carrion. Instead they had shown the bodies of friend and foe alike the courtesy of fire. Of painted fire, at that.

She realised she had sucked the purple vine tasteless and her stomach growled with hunger. Welcome as it was, the sweetness hadn't filled her empty belly. She noted that the few men and women of her own age were sitting by the embers of the fire so they might warm their bones against the encroaching chill of the night. Perhaps they would be willing to share whatever softer food there might be, as long as she could conceal the full extent of her ignorance about the strangers.

As the old woman skirted the hearth, she watched some of the men of the village adroitly gutting and skinning a pair of the great grassland lizards with well-made blades of black stone. Emboldened by their victory over those who'd come from across the river, the hunters had ventured out to return with the scaly hissing creatures slain and slung on their spears. They were still boasting to each other of their prowess as they worked. Two men grasped the creature's clawed feet and lifted the naked carcass while another pulled the loosened hide down and slashed at the last webs of tissue along the lizard's backbone.

The village women were hacking the succulent meat from the first lizard. Dark lumps were already skewered on branches wedged with stones and propped with sticks

to hold the meat safely above the flickering flames. Dripping juices spat in the embers while the hunters gnawed freshly flensed ribs and discussed whose valour had won the choicest pieces of the lizards' hides.

As she approached the elders, the old woman noted a young girl still with maiden hips kneeling where the hunters had carefully spilled the lizard's guts onto a length of bloodstained hide. The girl cut the convoluted bowel into slippery, pungent rings and dropped hand-fuls into a series of gourds. As she chopped up lungs and stomach, one of the hunters sat with a stone in his fist and obligingly smashed open the lizard's long bones so the maiden could scoop out the marrow and add it to the gourds. Topping each one up with water, she pushed them carefully into the embers around the edge of the fire, smiling at the grandmothers sitting a short distance away who querulously warned her not to let them burn instead of merely seething in the fire's heat.

The old woman sat slowly down, careful not to infringe on the elders' gathering. One old man and a couple of grandmothers, wizened as berries at the end of the dry season, eyed her keenly.

There were always more old women than old men. There were fewer ways a woman could die, as long as she survived childbirth. Men risked their lives every time they went out to hunt. Even a bite from a spotted scurrier cub could suppurate and kill the strongest spearman. So many men were lost in the painted men's battles. Women inevitably found themselves the playthings of the victors but they seldom died of it, even if they might wish it, at first. By the time the bruises and torn flesh had healed, most decided life was still better than walking out into the night to meet whatever death lurked in the darkness.

The old man and the grandmothers decided to notice the newly arrived old woman. The old man closest to her

shuffled backwards and two women drew aside a little. Now she was more or less included in their erratic gathering. The old woman blinked away tears and nodded her gratitude.

As she sat quietly, she realised many of the elders were cherishing discreet excitement and not just because there was more than enough food for everyone to eat their fill tonight. The painted man who had worn the mountain-climber's skull was dead. These new painted strangers had shown no interest in offering up the dead of the battle to his blue beast. Indeed, the blue beast hadn't returned since it had flown away in pursuit of the white beast that none of them had seen before. Nor had the white beast come back. These painted strangers hadn't fed it with the dead of the battle against the men from across the river. What did all this mean?

Dark eyes shining bright in the firelight slid towards the old woman. She shook her head regretfully. She couldn't say where the white beast had come from, or where it had gone. She couldn't say, and she would keep her suspicions to herself.

The two wrinkled grandmothers who had made room for her, similar enough in features and mannerisms to be sisters, dismissed the question of the white beast with flapping hands. The blue beast was what they had feared and now it was gone. It hadn't even returned when the painted man's women were fighting with the red stranger.