ROD SAT ON a fallen log by his campfire, plucking minor chords from his lap-harp and chanting (because he knew he couldn't stay on key) of a wanderer grown old searching for the woman he had seen once, then lost—but as he sang, he saw a low branch sway at the side of the clearing where there was no breeze and heard an owl call a challenge. Wondering why the elves hadn't warned him, he laid aside the harp and came to his feet, hand dropping to his dagger-hilt, and called, "Who lives?"

"A friend." The branch swung aside, and a tall young woman stepped into the firelight—very tall, more than six feet, with a staff even taller. "A friend seeking counsel."

Rod breathed a sigh of relief, then frowned. "The forest is scarcely safe for an attractive young woman. What in the name of heaven did you think you were doing, out alone in the woods at night?"

Alea's eyes flashed at the word "attractive," but softened amazingly as she smiled, seeming oddly pleased. "You need not worry for me, Lord Warlock. Your son has taught me well how to take care of myself."

"Has he really!" Rod smiled, proud all over again. Then he nodded at the staff. "I suppose you do at that. A healthy young woman doesn't really need an oaken pole to lean on."

"Not when I have Gar—I mean Magnus."

Rod laughed softly, then gazed up at her a moment in wonder. How had Magnus ever found a woman so right for him?

The same way Rod had, of course—by searching half the galaxy.

"I really am a friend," she said, "or would like to be."

Rod smiled and held out a hand. "Come sit beside me, friend, and share my fire." Then as an afterthought, "There's still tea in the kettle."

'Tea would be welcome." Alea came to sit by him. "The evening is brisk."

Rod took the second mug from his pack, filled it from the camp kettle, and set it in her hands. As he sat, he said, "You choose a strange place to look for advice—or have you lost your way?"

Alea was slow in answering, staring at the fire. "I thought I had, for several years—but it was really scarcely two months."

"Something horrible happened," Rod said with concern.

"What could make a young woman lose her sense of direction so?"

Alea was silent, clearly torn.

"You don't have to answer," Rod said gently, "and don't worry, I won't read your mind. It doesn't come as naturally to me as it does to some others."

"Magnus doesn't either," she said quickly, "no matter how badly he wants to. He has never betrayed me for an instant, not in the slightest way."

She was silent, staring at the fire again. Rod decided she needed prompting. "You had expected him to betray you?"

"Everyone else had," she snapped. "There was …" Her words dried up.

"A seducer?" Rod said gently. "A young man who said he loved you but left you?"

She turned to him, glaring. "How did you know!"

"It's too common a story for young women," Rod said with a sigh. He turned away, admitting, "I tried it myself, once."

"Tried?" Alea was intent again. "It didn't work?"

"No," Rod said, "because I really had fallen in love with her. Took me a while to realize it, though."

"I can't understand anyone not realizing they were in love right away," Alea said.

"Can't you?" Rod looked directly into her eyes until she caught his meaning, then blushed and turned away.

"Not first love, though," Rod said softly. "You can ask yourself day and night, 'Is this love?' but it isn't. When it is, you know it—you find yourself saying, 'So this is love!' But if that love ends badly and hurts you terribly, something within you will equate love with hurt and deny romance forever after."

"Not 'forever,'" Alea said slowly. "For a long time, yes, but not forever."

"If you meet a man who's worthy of your love?" Rod smiled. 'Tell me, lady—how did he prove his worth?"

Alea sighed and tilted her head back. "By patience. Time and again I lost my temper with him, but he never yelled back at me, only nodded and looked very serious. Mind you, I'm not saying he didn't argue—but it was more a matter of trying to persuade me to explain myself, of seeking to understand what I meant."

Rod felt another surge of pride in his son but asked nonetheless, "When he understood, did he still argue?"

Alea sat still a moment, frowning and searching her memories. Then she said, "He usually ended up agreeing with me." Then, "I don't suppose we ever argued about anything really important. Looking back on it, I'd have to say those quarrels were really his explaining his ideas to me three different ways and telling me all his reasons for them—and once I understood why he wanted to do a thing, I found he always made sense. Well, almost always," she amended, "but the other time or two, I was willing to go along with him and let him find out for himself how mistaken he was."

Rod's smile fairly glowed. "But you didn't realize you loved him."

"No, just that he was my shield-companion" Alea turned to him with a frown. "You don't mean that kind of patience can only come from love!"

"Not always, no," Rod said, "but usually. How long did it take you to realize it?"

"Four years." Alea's gaze strayed back to the fire. "It was only a few months ago, really. We were on a planet where the colony had deteriorated into a set of warring clans. I realized that I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, to …" She broke off, blushing. "I still wasn't willing to call it love, though. That didn't happen until his little brother… until Gregory sent him word that…" She remembered why Rod was out in this forest and changed her wording. "… That his mother was ill. He became so worried then, so sad and solemn, and I knew that it was no time to pick a fight, that all I could do for him was to be quiet and wait for him to talk—then listen." She frowned, puzzled by her own behavior. "I suppose that was the first time I'd been so worried about him that I only thought about his needs, not my own—and he had done it for me so many times!"

She was silent, staring at the fire. Rod sat and waited.

"Yes, that was the first time," Alea said. "Come to think of it, it was the first time I'd ever been sure that he was so preoccupied that I didn't need to be on my guard, that I let myself be really open to him. He was so vulnerable, hurting so badly, and it would have been so very wrong to do anything that might have wounded him then."

Rod waited again, but she stayed silent. At last he said, "So you finally caught a glimpse of him as he really is."

"Yes." Alea nodded. "The inner Magnus, the little boy inside the man, the very young man who'd been hurt so badly by love." She turned to Rod with a slight frown. "That's why I had to come find you, you see—to learn why Allouette hurt him and how the hurt could have stabbed so deeply that the boy inside would have been afraid to love again, no matter how fearless the man might have become."

Rod gazed at her a minute and longer, then closed his eyes and nodded. "There are others who know him well enough to tell you that."

"Not any longer," Alea said. "His brothers and sister told me that themselves. He's changed so much, they said, that they don't really feel they know him any more."

"But they do know who hurt him, and why," Rod said gently.