The mare, who could not really read Zaranda's thoughts but often seemed to, swiveled her ears briefly back to bear on her rider in her own equine equivalent of a wink.

The man with one arm was clearly on point, here, with no graceful way to weasel out. He looked down at the rusty broadsword in his hand as if unsure how it came to be there, thrust it through his leather belt, provoking a twitch at the corner of Zaranda's eye at the heedless way he put various of his parts at risk. Then he turned to the orog and cleared his throat.

"Uh, pardon me, ahh-" a sidelong glance at Zaranda "-Sir Orog, and would you mind telling us what business you have coming into our country?"

The orog turned his two small bloodshot eyes to bear on him. The blond-bearded man quailed but held his ground.

The orog thrust his swords into gleaming bronze scabbards crossed over his back and threw back his cloak. The crowd gasped. Beneath he wore a steel breastplate, enameled white, with the sign of Torm worked upon it in gold.

"Passing through it, nothing more," he said in a voice like a blacksmith's file on a horse's hoof. "I am a simple pilgrim on a holy quest. I ask nothing of you save that you let me walk in peace."

"Who are you… pilgrim?" Zaranda asked. She found the word fit strangely on her tongue, and was shamed.

"I hight Shield of Innocence," the orog said.

Farlorn cocked a sardonic brow. "And were you born with that name, friend?" The word friend dripped sarcasm as a Shadow Thief s knife dripped poison.

The great orc shook his bulldog head. "What I was called before is of no consequence," he said, his speech slow and measured as if somehow painful. "The god remade me when he called me into his service. I am Shield of Innocence now. I am Torm's paladin."

Paladin! The crowd gasped again-an effect Zaranda was getting mightily sick of. Father Pelletyr gasped as well and clutched at his Ilmater medal. Stillhawk made no sound, showed no reaction in face or posture, but the knuckles that gripped his bow showed white through his boot-leather-dark skin.

"Oh, really," said Farlorn with acid sweetness. "And here all this time I thought only true men could be paladins."

"I know little of such things," Shield of Innocence declared. "I was unworthy-all are unworthy. Yet the god chose me. His hand lifted me up and remade me. Perhaps because I was unworthiest of all. I cannot question the will of Torm, praised be his name."

The crowd found articulate speech again, or at least as dose as mobs get:

"Lies!"

"A trick!"

"The monster seeks to deceive us!"

"Blasphemy!"

The gold-bearded man stood taller, more from swelling with outrage than straightening with courage.

"The only meet penalty for falsely claiming to be a paladin," he declared in a choked voice, "is death."

"If it is Torm's will that I die," the orog said, "I die. I will not raise my hand to smite you."

Zaranda swung down off her mare.

"Are you leading with your chin again, Randi Star?" Goldie asked.

"My nose," the warrior woman said.

"That's how it got broken the first time."

She patted her steed on the neck and walked up the hill toward the tree. Yellow-beard stared at her with eyes bugged as she walked within arm's reach of him, but made no move to stop her. The crowd shifted uneasily behind him.

Zaranda stopped a pace away from the orog and stood facing him. Though she kept her face calm, inside she was vibrating like Stillhawk's arrow after it struck the tree. It was easy for her to talk about tolerance and forbearance, but she had had extensive dealings with orcs, none of them pleasant. Now she stood near enough to the great orc to smell his breath, and her impulses were to vomit, flee, or run him through.

So what are you, Zaranda? she asked herself. Animal or woman? Do you follow your instincts heedlessly, or do you follow where your reason leads?

There was a time to be ruled by instinct, she knew, and had survived tight situations accordingly. But now was the time she must master herself, or lose all form.

She forced herself to look the orog in the eye. They were blue and surprisingly clear. Like a pig's eyes-but no. And a pig was no evil thing, nor unclean left to its own devices… but these were not the eyes of an animal. Nor were they the eyes of a creature of filth and darkness. They seemed to shine with inner purpose.

Can you really read a soul through such windows? she wondered. You know better, Zaranda.

His carriage, though erect, was not orc-chieftain haughty. Rather it seemed… noble. His breath, surprisingly, was not foul. It was as clean as any man's, likely cleaner than any of his tormentors'. She raised a hand to his face.

And stopped, as if an invisible shield repelled her. His skin was orc's skin, gray-green and coarse, almost pebbled in texture, although it was scrubbed cleaner than the skin of any orc she'd seen. Her fingers trembled like small frightened animals longing to flee.

The question now isn't what he is. If s what you are.

She touched his cheek.

The crowd gasped a third time. "Zaranda!" Father Pelletyr exclaimed.

"Zaranda," Farlorn said, in tones suspended between regret and disgust.

With mongoose abruptness the creature caught her hand in both his claws. Now you've done it! she thought as her free hand darted to her dagger-hilt. She could feel Stillhawk drawing his elf-bow behind her.

The orog dropped to his knees, still clinging to her hand. The great head hung.

"You are my mistress," he said. "I shall serve you."

"What?" Zaranda said.

He raised his hideous face. Tears glistened in his eyes. "You have been sent to me by Torm," he said. "You are the one I must serve."

7

"Tell me," Farlorn said. The light of the campfire shone in his eyes and his fingers played like glum children on the strings of his yarting. The great orc stared at him with dog fixity. "You say the god Torm named you Shield of Innocence and set you to protect the innocents of this world from unjust attack."

The great tusked head nodded.

They were camped, with the owner's permission, in an olive grove half a day's journey at a pack mule's plod from the walls of Zazesspur. They might have pressed on and arrived after dark; there was traditionally little effort made to seal the city after sunset, and anyway the outer walls had suffered many breaches after the fall of the royal house.

But the travelers they met on the high road from Ithmong had shadow-haunted eyes and unsettling tales of nighttime Zazesspur. Zaranda could not have said why she, who had faced the darkest magic and hordes of undead in Thay, should be so fearful. The darklings were fearsome enough to normal folk, but by all accounts, nothing she and her comrades could not handle – though they were said to be growing stronger in nature as well as numbers. But the dreams kept coming, and they were getting worse. Zaranda decided not to drive weary men and mules on to their destination, and that was the end of it.

She had chosen the grove for poor Stillhawk, who languished in cities as a free spirit might in a cell. He could use a final night beneath sky and trees. Also, camping off the road rather than staying at an inn would give strangers small scope to look at the cloaked figure of the warrior who bore two curved swords across his back.

Now Stillhawk sat as far away from the orog as he could, across one of the two fires they had built – the other being for the muleteers and guards, who were given to muttering darkly and keeping hands near hilts when Shield of Innocence was around. Father Pelletyr sat on Zaranda's far side from Shield, protectively near, though whether to shelter her or be sheltered by her in the event of trouble Zaranda could not say. For once he showed small interest in his food.