They made the long climb up the valley's steeper side and stopped to water the horses at the village with the olive grove, some five miles out from Porifors. This shade was mercifully free of bloodsucking insects. Pejar went off to inquire of the villagers for word of the wagon they pursued. Ista found herself standing and stretching next to Foix in the shadow of a huge olive bole as the sweaty horses gulped from the stream.

"Still playing with flies?" she inquired softly. "I saw that trick. No more, please, or I shall report you to the divine."

He blushed. "It was a good deed. Besides, I wanted to please Liss."

"Hm." She hesitated. "Take my advice, and do not use magic to court her. Most especially, do not yield to the temptation to use it directly to induce her favor."

By his embarrassed grin, he knew precisely what she implied—and this wasn't the first time the notion of some sort of aphrodisiac spell had crossed his mind. "Mm."

Ista's voice dropped further. "For if you do, and she finds out, it will destroy her trust not only in you, but in her own mind. She would never again be sure if a thought or a feeling were truly her own. She would be constantly halting, second-guessing, turning about inside her head. Madness lies down that road. It would be less crippling and more loving if you should take a war hammer and break both her legs."

His smile had grown fixed. "As you command. Royina."

"I do not speak as your royina. I do not even speak as one god-touched. I speak as a woman, who has walked to the end of that road and returns to report the hazards. If you still possess half the wits you started with—and if it is indeed love you seek and not just your gratification—you will listen as a man."

His little bow, this time, was visibly more thoughtful, his smirk wiped clean.

Pejar came back with the news that a wagon and team had indeed stopped at the grove earlier, lingering in the shade long enough to unhitch and water both pairs of horses; the wagon had left again not half an hour before. Foix grimaced satisfaction and cut their own rest short.

Another four miles of trotting brought them to the top of a long rise. They at last saw their quarry rumbling down the road, small in the distance, the wagon's canvas top, painted with the sigil of Porifors's garrison, bright in the sunlight. Foix waved his troop onward. They had largely closed the gap before someone from the wagon spotted them. The invisible driver whipped up the team, but the lumbering dray horses, burdened by the load they towed, were no match for the pursuers' faster mounts.

Men of Foix's company galloped up on either side of the noisily bouncing vehicle to lean over and seize the lead pair's reins. As she in turn urged her horse up and around, Ista could hear Cattilara's voice crying out in protest. The wagon slowed to a halt.

Cattilara, dressed in an elegant traveling costume of gray and gold, was crouched on the driver's box berating a terrified Goram, who hunched down with his eyes nearly shut, clutching his team's reins in clenched and shaking hands. Ista narrowed her eyes against the light of the world and tried to extend her inner vision to its fullest sensitivity, to directly perceive not spirits hidden in matter, but spirits alone. Was this how the gods saw the world? Cattilara's demon was not, to Ista's relief, expanded and dominant, but curled in on itself within her again. Another male servant, one of Cattilara's younger ladies, and Arhys's page cowered together in the wagon's back.

Two nearly extinguished forms lay side by side within. With the blockage of Ista's corporeal vision by the canvas and wood, it became almost easier to see what she was actually looking for. A wispy line of white fire, sluggishly drifting from one body to another; at a level of perception even below that, a net of violet light running three ways, the spell-channel.

She tightened her fingers, and Feather stopped and stood in a placid obedience. She let the reins fall to his withers and stretched her hands, letting her spirit follow along with her body. And then, for the first time, flow beyond her body. Bastard, help me. Curse You. She did not, did not dare, try to break the underlying lines of the demon's spell yet, but she set her ligatures and summoned soul-fire. The white line from Illvin to Arhys blazed up like a thatch catching alight in a distant dark.

Arhys's deep voice sounded from within, irritable as a man waking from sleep: "What is this? Illvin... ?"

Cattilara's screaming abuse abruptly stopped. Her head drew in, and she shrank in her seat. Panting, she glowered at Ista.

Movement sounded within the wagon: a creak, boot steps on the floorboards. Arhys poked his head out and stared around. "Bastard's hell! Where are we?" A glance at the familiar landscape evidently answered the question to his satisfaction, for he turned his frown on his weeping wife. "Cattilara, what have you done?"

On the wagon's other side, the tensed Foix breathed relief and sent a small salute of thanks in Ista's direction. The mauve flicker waiting in his palm died away.

Cattilara turned in her seat and threw her arms around her husband's thighs in wild supplication. Goram ducked out of her way. "My lord, my lord, no! Order these people away! Tell Goram to drive on! We must escape! She is evil, she wants to encompass your death!"

Automatically, he patted her hair. His rolling eye fell on Ista, watching grimly. "Royina? What is this?"

"What is the last thing you remember, Lord Arhys?"

His brows drew in. "Cattilara sent me an urgent message to attend upon her at the garrison's stable yard. I walked in and found this wagon standing at the ready there, then—nothing after that." His frown deepened.

"Your wife took it into her head to carry you off and seek healing for you elsewhere than Porifors. To what extent she was encouraged in this by her demon, I know not, but it certainly assisted her in it. Illvin was brought along principally, I suppose, as your commissary."

Arhys winced. "Desert my post? Desert Porifors? Now?"

Cattilara flinched at the iron in his voice. Her collapse in tears before him failed, for once, to have any softening effect. When he turned her face up to his, Ista could see the tension in the tendons of his hands, standing out like cords beneath his pale skin.

"Cattilara. Think. This desertion dishonors my trust and my sworn oaths. To the provincar of Caribastos, to the Royina Iselle and Royse-Consort Bergon—to my own men. It is impossible."

"It is not impossible. Suppose you were sick of, oh, any other illness. Someone else would have to take over then all the same. You are ill. Another officer must take your post for now."

"The only one I would trust to take over at a moment's notice in this present uncertainty is Illvin." He hesitated. "Would be Illvin," he corrected himself.

"No, no, no—!" She fairly beat on him with her fists in a paroxysm of frustration and rage.

Ista studied the pulsating lines of light. Can I do this? She wasn't sure. Well, I am sure that I can try. So. She folded her fleshly hands quietly in her lap and reached again with her spirit hands. Again leaving the demon's underlying channels undisturbed, she tightened the ligature between Illvin and Arhys nearly to closure.

Arhys fell to his knees; his lips parted in shock.

"If you want him upright and moving," said Ista to Cattilara, "you must keep him so yourself, now. No more stealing."

"No!" screamed Cattilara as Arhys half collapsed across her. Goram grabbed at him to keep his heavy body from toppling from the seat. Cattilara stared down at Arhys's pale confused face in horrified denial. The fire of her soul roiled up from her body and collected at her heart.