A crude loincloth and the leggings held to it by thongs were his only clothing. For the rest he was an unexceptional man, perhaps in his twenties though looking older with his shaggy hairiness and ground-in dirt; the hair and beard were brown, the eyes a hazel green. Scrawny and not very tall, but that was to be expected.

The High Seeker held up his personal amulet, worn on his left wrist and studded with amethyst, symbol of the Seventh Ray. He murmured something: Graber caught the name of Djwal Khul, a great lord of the Ascending Hierarchy who dealt with communication and knowledge. ?Possibilities increase exponentially,? the High Seeker said… in a normal conversational tone, but as if to himself.?Capacity to affect foam linkages and tap base energy is greater but so is need.?

Good that he is not talking to me, Graber thought. I do not understand and do not wish to. Hail Serapis Bey! I serve the Fourth Ray. The Church also needs those who can deal with the material. ?But amplification and modulation are necessary. Interaction requires perception. Contaminated. So many possibilities.?

He smiled at the prisoner, and the man screeched like some small animal caught in a trapper?s toothed steel. His hands went out to grip either side of the captive?s face, forcing him to meet his eyes, and the troopers stepped away. ?I… see… you… forever,? he said.

The prisoner screamed again, and the guards stepped back farther in involuntary recoil, like men who find themselves clutching something in the dark and feel the wriggling of too many legs. After a moment Dalan screamed back at his victim, in the same pitch of hopeless pain. Graber swallowed as trails of blood started from the corners of the Eater?s eyes, trickling like red tears into the scabrous beard, glittering in the firelight. After a time that seemed to last forever Dalan?s sound became words: ?Bitch! Bitch! Deva, die without dying! You and your he-whore! And the One who sent you!?

He released the prisoner and staggered away, moaning, clenched fists slapping at the sides of his head; yet he was grinning, licking his lips. When the shuddering ceased he straightened. ?They are traveling north. Water. Intention is to the east. I see forests, ice, wolves. Beasts. Beasts. We will pursue. Now it must rest. There is no replacement and it must not be stressed beyond failure point.?

The High Seeker turned and lay down on his bedroll, and closed his eyes. What followed did not look like sleep; it was more as if the adept had been suspended, somehow. The troopers remained shock-still, because the captive was moving now. Not trying to escape; instead he knelt by a stretch of frost-heaved concrete and began to beat his head against it. The tock… tock… tock sound was like a hammer on hard wood, as regular as a carpenter?s. Graber made a gesture with one hand; the man who?d used his shete to control the prisoner stepped forward, set his hand to the hilt and stripped the steel free of the leather. It swung in a brief glinting arc, and there was a final sound-heavier and wetter than bone on stone. ?Get rid of this carrion,? Graber snapped.?Vender, Roberts,? he went on to his two chief surviving lieutenants.?The maps.?

They joined him where he sat on a log; a trooper brought them plates of stew and wheat cakes as they discussed distances and times. ?We?ll need horses,? Roberts said, tracing the length of what had once been Illinois from south to north.?It?s an impossible distance to cover on foot in any useful time.? ?It could be done,? Graber said; though few men from the High West would think so.?But the tribes around here have some mounts and those in the prairies to the north have more. Say a week to accumulate what we need to start with…?

He paused.?What is the date?? ?October first, sir.? ?Ah.? He smiled, an expression that softened the iron slab-and-angle of his face for an instant.

The other two men looked at him, puzzled. He explained briefly: ?My eldest son?s birthday. He will be ten today, in Corwin.?

They nodded.?Old enough to begin training in the House of the Prophetic Guard, as we all did, if he?s found worthy,? Roberts said.

His voice was a little wistful. He had nothing but daughters, and all those were very young. ?He will be. My wives are women of excellent character, and Peter studies hard,? Graber said firmly.?Now, if we can acquire two remounts per man, we can begin. The horses will be of low quality.?

TheSwordoftheLady

?Getting close,?Ingolf said, rubbing a hand down the neck of his mount.?Soo, Boy, soo,? he said to the horse.?You?ll get a good feed here, even if you were foaled in Nebraska.?

Rudi Mackenzie nodded, tactfully ignoring the slight hoarseness in the other man?s voice, as if he were choking back unexpected tears; Ingolf?s face was an iron mask locked against a surge of feeling.

A Mackenzie-any who were Changelings, at least-would weep, returning home after so long, Rudi thought. But customs differ from land to land, and so do the stamp they set on our souls. Wouldn?t it be a duller world, if they did not, so?

It was a bright fall afternoon, comfortable but with an underlying nip to it. This was farm-and-forest country, but you could tell that the North Woods started not so far away, and that the Wheel of the Year was turning towards the Crone?s dominion, in a land harsher than Oregon Than Montival, he reminded himself; it was growing natural.

As they rode north along the valley of the Kickapoo from the hamlet at Soldier?s Grove the fields had quickly gone back to scrub and saplings, the usual story of more land than the survivors of the Change had means or reason to till when they no longer used machines to feed cities far away. But for the last hour or two the signs of human habitation had grown thicker again, first the chewed look of land used for rough summer grazing, then fields and the odd farmhouse behind its berm and ditch and barbed wire or palisade.

Often there was a wary twinkle of spearheads from the defenses or a fighting platform built atop an old silo, or the sight of livestock being driven up the slope of the land towards the woods; just what you?d expect from sensible folk when scores of armed strangers passed by. That alarm diminished as they went, until men and a few women came out to watch them pass with no more than a little caution… and weapons in their hands.

Then Ingolf laughed aloud as they came upon a man-high oak stump not far from the road. It was roughly carved into the shape of a naked big-nosed troll, but despite the crude work you could see a look of ineffable self-satisfaction on its face and in the way its hands folded across a swag belly; from the weathering and moss, it was at least a decade old and perhaps more. In Mackenzie or Bearkiller territory Rudi would have thought it a roadside shrine, but he doubted that was the purpose here and looked a question at the Readstown man. ?I did that,? Ingolf said, a chuckle still in his voice.?Well, me and Bert Kuykendall and Carl Heisz and Will Uhe, when we were all about twelve. It?s the spitting image of old Bossman Al, Al Clements. He came up from Richland Center that year, doing a tour of his Sheriffs? homeplaces. We snuck out and worked on it after dark, kept it under a pile of brush until the day, and he went right past it and turned… what?s that color, sort of like purple…? ?Puce,? Mary Havel put in, sharing her man?s good humor. ?Yah, puce. Dad wore out a hickory switch on Bert and Carl and Will, and two more on me for setting a bad example, but it was worth sitting down careful for a while. Surprised Ed didn?t have it cut down; he isn?t… wasn?t… much of a man for a joke.? ?Why didn?t your father do just that and take an ax to it, if he was angry, and it annoyed his overlord?? ?He wouldn?t give Clements the satisfaction. Never liked the man. I think he laughed about it to himself, despite the merry hell he gave all four of us. Dad was a hard man on his sons, but he expected us to push back at him. Wanted it too, I think.? ?Ah, and are you also thinking those three friends of your youth will be there to greet you?? Rudi said.