Zaranda noted that the watchers in the gallery kept casting covert glances to the sheer heights above; the cliffs dropped a hundred sheer feet before they gave way abruptly to foothills.

One of the spectators, clearly dissatisfied with the spokesman's polemical talents, called out, "This road belongs to the people."

Zaranda flashed a smile. It was a smile with considerable flash to it, too, which smoothed away the years and the cares and made her seem a maiden girl again. When she wasn't angry.

"Just so," she said. "And we're people, aren't we?" The halflings bunked at her.

From behind strode, or rather waddled, Father Pelletyr. Even a noncombatant clerk of Ilmater had a hard time taking this lot as a serious threat. All the same, he held his holy symbol prominently out before him. Half-lings were reputed to have a wicked way with stones of the slung or flung varieties.

"Let us remain calm, my children," he said in a sonorous and only ever-so-slightly quavering voice. Zaranda had to remind herself that in fiend-haunted Thay of the Red Wizards, not so very long before, she had seen this man face rank upon rank of ghouls and animated skeletons without flinching, and make mighty specters flee his wrath. The father was a man of enormous and sincere piety, and, well, death to the un-dead. It was living threats he could use some stiffening on. "Surely we can settle this matter in amicable wise."

"Surely we can, Father," Zaranda said.

"Pay us!" several halflings offered helpfully.

"And while it goes against my principles as a merchant to pay tribute to casual banditti on the high road, I was about to ask my comrade-in-arms, here, to provide an entertainment to our hosts. Stillhawk?"

Quick as thought, the dark man had an arrow from his quiver and nocked. He aimed his longbow skyward, scarcely drew back the strength. Yet when he released, the shaft shot a good two hundred yards straight up toward the puffy white cumulus mounds overhead.

When it reached the top of its trajectory and fell sideways to begin its return to earth, Stillhawk's second shot struck its shaft in the middle and transfixed it. The conjoined arrows fell to ground not a score of feet from Zaranda.

The halflings goggled. "Is that not an elven bow?" one asked in wonder.

"That is indeed an elven bow," Zaranda replied. Still-hawk walked over to retrieve his arrows. His soft-booted feet scarce made impressions on the earth. "Made for him by the elves of the Elven Woods, who raised him and taught him archery."

The dark man plucked the razor-edged broad head from the shaft, licked the ash-wood arrow lightly, and ran a scarred thumb across it. When it passed the arrowhead, the split shaft was mended.

"And sundry minor magics as well," Zaranda added. "Kindly forgive my answering for him. He cannot speak; an orcish raiding party cut out his tongue when he was a boy."

Stillhawk nodded in satisfaction and returned both arrows to his quiver. The halflings made oohing sounds.

"Wasn't that nice?" Father Pelletyr said, beaming. "Now, if you splendid little fellows could pull this tree aside-"

The spokesman began to sidle and roll his eyes at the heights. "Well, with all respect due a man of the doth, Father, it ain't perhaps so simple as that. No, not at all."

Zaranda stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

Something arced out from the top of the cliff, something round and initially dark against the clouds. It showed a glint of metal in the sun as it fell, rebounded from a rock with a clang, and rolled until it almost touched the tips of the spokesman's hairy toes.

It was a helmet. He gaped at it in dismay.

"Don't fear, my friend," Zaranda said. "Your comrade's head is not within. Your fellows above are as safe as if they were home hiding behind their mothers' skirts. But they won't be pelting us with boulders from above."

The halflings stared upward. A figure appeared, leaning precariously out over the rim, and gave them a jaunty wave of his hat.

"Permit me to introduce the noted bard Farlorn Half-Elven," Zaranda said. "A man whose skills go quite beyond his gift for the making and playing of songs. Now, if you'd be so kind as to remove this barrier, gentlefolk, you and ourselves might be about our respective businesses in peace."

2

"It is a long and dusty road we ride, Zaranda," Father Pelletyr said. "Surely a more direct route to Zazesspur might be found?"

The dust was more metaphorical than real. It was the month of Mirtul, called the Melting, with the feast of Greengrass a few days past. Despite that, and the fact that snow still glittered like silver plate on the highest of the peaks behind them, most of spring's runoff had flowed into the flat Tethyr lowlands a fort-night since. This far south, the climate was temperate, with mild seasonal variations. Tethyr was an "Empire of the Sand" by courtesy of the overworked imagination of northern cartographers influenced by the Calim Desert to the south. The grass was green, and rain had touched the land recently enough to lay the dust, and long enough ago that mud was blessedly absent.

"Indeed, Father," Zaranda replied, "but in Tethyr the most direct route is not always the quickest."

"And there's truth for you," added Farlorn Half-Elven, who rode near Zaranda on his dappled gray mare. Tethyr's a land of anarchy. No one rules, since the royal family was destroyed years ago."

"Rather, I'd say Tethyr suffers a surfeit of rule," Zaranda said. "Behind every hedgerow lurks a would-be duke or baron, each determined to enforce his will on whomever he can catch-and his taxes too."

"Our circumspection availed us little, sneaking through that secret pass in the Snowflake Mountains, if one so humble may be forgiven for pointing out the fact."

Farlorn put back his head and laughed. His laughter had a pealing edge, like a golden bell ringing. He was a bit over average height, slim and supple as the rapier he wore at his belt. His hair was black and wavy. In his features the admixture of human blood had created not coarsening but leavening of a sort; the literally inhuman beauty of the elven-kind was softened, mitigated, rendered more accessible, more mortal. Instead of being forbidding, his good looks were almost magically appealing, at least to most human women he encountered-and not a few elfin women had been known to agree.

He was that rarest of rarities, a wild elf-human hybrid. His features were as dark as Stillhawk's, but with a faint greenish cast, like patina on copper. When he laughed, his teeth flashed like silver mirrors.

"Do you truly think, Father," he asked, "that those poor foolish halflings were as great a danger as we might have faced? Indeed, they had even mislaid the pry bar intended to lever their boulders down upon your heads, and were all crowded together at the cliff edge on hands and knees, rapt with the spectacle. 'Twas child's play to take them unawares."

"Mountains are trickish places," Father Pelletyr said with a touch of petulance. "Who knows but that we might have blundered into a hill giant or a manticore, straying so far from the beaten path?"

"Such things are predators," said Zaranda absently, They stay close to where prey's most readily found-as their human kindred do."

She was riding along in a reverie, trusting Goldie to make her way on her own. The mare often made resentful noises about her occupation as a mount, but actually displayed great pride in her craft. The caravan was meandering along a trail that was no more than two parallel ruts left by generations of wagon wheels, vaguely following a sluggish creek toward its eventual meeting with the Shining Stream. The sun had fallen low along their back trail and seemed poised to plunge into the jagged if not particularly lofty Snowflakes, still prominent behind them.