PRINCE OF FIRE AND ASHES by Fantasy Novelist Katya Reimann

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Prince of Fire and Ashes

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Fifty Years Later

As twilight dropped over the mountains, the mist lifted, revealing a shattered landscape of white stone. Day faded quickly in the high Lanai massif, but there could be no rest for the Dramaya. Their pursuers had pushed them away from the watchtowers' trail onto this rocky side-path; now all that was left was this insane retreat, ever higher up the hardscrabble into the mountains, following the line of the thin—and in some places nonexistent—trail.
After so many hours of climbing, Vidryas had come to accept that this retreat could end only at the edge of an impossibly high cliff, or huddled at the back of a blind canyon. Either way, there would be no escape.
Listless with fatigue, the young warrior stumbled on, near the back of the war party. More than a quarter of the Dramaya were dead or abandoned, picked off by their Lanai pursuers during the first hours of climbing. It had been dawn when they'd left the safety of the main Bissanty camp. Now, at twilight, they were adrift in this desolate limestone valley. There was no question that even the small glory of finding—let alone destroying—the Ocula-Koinae watchtowers had eluded them. They were too high now, too lost.
For hours, the nothingness of cloud had enclosed them. How Ochsan had managed to keep them moving through the featureless mountain limbo no one knew; whether he had truly managed to keep to any trail no man dared question. All anyone knew was that retreat, which had begun miles down the valley, had to continue. If the Lanai tribesmen caught them, they would mercilessly cut them down to their last man.
This was Vidryas's first campaign, his first chance to prove himself. But he could no longer conceal his tiredness, no longer hide his fear. He was going to die, and die badly, every man around him recognizing his cowardice, his weakness.
The man in front stumbled, then pulled to a halt. Vidryas, distracted, walked into him.
"Llara's Eyes!" the aggrieved man snapped. "Do you want to kill us both?"
"Sorry," Vidryas muttered, craning even as he spoke to see what called this halt.
"'S all right. Just watch yourself," the man muttered back. Then, "What can you see?" somewhat more politely.
Vidryas, half-Bissanty, half-Dramaya, was tall enough to see over every man's head to the front of the line. The deference the man gave him for it a little revived him. "Ochsan's stopped. He's looking for the way on."
Up ahead, the Dramaya leaders stood with their heads together, shuffling sheepskin scrips and arguing in soft voices. Vidryas despised his uncle. If not for Ochsan, Vidryas would not have been assigned to the Dramaya detachment. He would have been back at the Bissanty camp, readying himself to fight in a real war, with proper lines of men and battle and glory. Not running up an empty mountain, his hopes of honor crushed.
"What else?"
"Markal is with him." Markal-the-daggerman was Ochsan's wizened second. "They're taking readings from their scrips."
The man nodded, satisfied. "They'll see us through," he said confidently. "The gods smile on Ochsan, and he'll take us to glory with him. Don't you worry, first-timer."
Vidryas, staring up to the head of the line, pretended not to hear. To the Bissanty, the Dramaya were barely-human figures of ridicule. The rich Dramcampagna land supplied the Empire with huge reserves of grain and fat beef cattle, but it had been ruled for so long as a subservient Princeship, its people had lost their pride along with their independence. Melancholy swept through him, thinking on the ill-fortune his birth had dealt him, forced to plod with cattlemen when he could have marched with real soldiers.
Livening wind touched the boy's upturned face, and with it fresh rain. Ahead, beyond Ochsan, the mist continued to dissipate, exposing more bald rock and an ominous ceiling of storm cloud. The way onward was a horrible traverse on slick, rain-wet stone. Where Ochsan and Markal stood, the track dwindled to a crack that cut at a rising angle across a massive, tilted slab of limestone.
Vidryas leaned against a boulder, easing the weight of his pack. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, trying to remember what it was to feel safe.
A slap to the ribs shocked his eyes open. Advey, Ochsan's point man for the end of the Dramaya line, had come up behind him. Vidryas remembered him cheering Ochsan the night previous, back when they were all happy and drunk, nested in the safety of the Bissanty camp. Unlike Vidryas, who could have passed for pure Bissanty, this man looked every inch full-blood Dramaya, and unlike Vidryas, he had volunteered for this detachment. He was short and bull-throated, with wiry, close-cropped hair and a muscular barrel of a chest. His temperament, equal parts stoicism and hardheaded zeal, was also typically Dramaya.
"They've moved," he told the boy. "Push on."
"The fog won't cover us much longer," Vidryas said, doleful. "Why don't we make our stand here? We're finished, either way."
Advey laughed. "Finished? Not while Ochsan lives. The Lanaya missed their chance in the lower vale." Vidryas could not help but notice that Advey called the enemy by their old name, as if Dramcampagna was still a free nation, and their equal. "If they didn't catch us below, they'll never reach us here. There's not a commander alive who can marshal numbers across terrain like this, and Achavell will take their arrows in this wind. The sky's shifting. Can't you feel it? There's a big storm coming up."
"Is that what's making the mist rise?"
"The mist isn't rising. It's running. Can't you smell it? Llara Storm-Queen has followed us into the valley."
"A storm?" Vidryas's heart dropped.
"They're moving!" someone interrupted. "Twelve alive! Don't stand there as if night and Llara weren't coming!" Ochsan and Markal were already across the limestone slab. Now they were urging the others over, almost at a run.
Too soon, it was Vidryas's turn. The rock he faced was sheeted with running water. He hated the slick limestone, so alien, so harsh, with its rain-carved funnels and treacherous surface.
Ochsan waited at the far edge, his jowls set in an expression that he might have intended as encouraging. "Move faster, Viddy," he called. "Don't leave time to fall."
Vidryas took a tentative step. Then another and he slipped. Both hands windmilled against the rock before he caught his balance.
A flash of lightning lit the valley walls, followed by a crack of thunder. Then a second flash came, almost on its heels, the crack of thunder almost on top of it. The Storm-goddess, Llara Thunderbringer, strode below them in truth, hurling her white-fire spears. Boxed between the towering limestone cliffs, the lightning clashed off one wall and then bounced back again off the other.
"Move, boy!" Ochsan shouted. "You're not the last one!"
Hating his uncle more than ever, Vidryas forced another reluctant step. The rain was falling hard now, creating thin waves of water on the slab's surface. It pooled in the trail-crack, then washed on downward. Where the crack was deepest, the water took on a faint whiteness. His heart leapt at the discovery—those whitenesses would show him where to put his feet. He took one step forward, then another. It was better if he did not look up, better if he did not do anything but focus on the white.
He stumbled off the stone and fell against Ochsan's burly chest before he even knew he had reached safety.
"Go on then," the war-leader said gruffly, pulling the boy past with a pat of approval. "Make room for Advey."
Advey was quick. Ochsan gave him a short nod, then pushed along to the front of the party. There he scrambled onto a plinth of rock and turned to make an address.
"Llara will be with us soon," he said solemnly. The rain had lumped his hair into odd-looking knobs on his temples, but his dark gaze was intense, even compelling, as it settled on the exhausted men. "If we meet her tonight, we will surely die." A flash of lightning momentarily illuminated his stocky figure.
"But for the green hills of Dramcampagna, I swear on Llara's great name, I have not brought you here for death.
"There will be shelter ahead. Where vale meets crag, there will be shelter. We must reach it before the storm catches us. The Bissanty sent us here to find our deaths—but we will show ourselves men, and return safely to camp with unexpected glory. We must move to shelter—at a faster pace than any we have yet put forward in all today's toil. But follow me, and we will persevere. Dramcampagna lives in our bravery!"
A single man dared groan.
But to the last man, at Markal's whistle, they clapped fist to chest, and shouted Ochsan's name. Vidryas, fear almost gagging him, joined them.
Ochsan jumped down from the stone plinth, and then there was no time for thinking. He set a new, brutal, reckless pace, jumping forward from stone to slippery stone, almost at a run. Vidryas, riven with fright, tears mingled with the rain on his cheeks, had no choice but to hare after him with the others. The pace—it was faster than the wind that swept around them.
Turning a hairpin corner, Vidryas glanced downwards. The cloud parted and he caught sight of the great limestone slab, gleaming whitely, already far below.
In the split second of his hesitation, a spear of lightning jabbed to earth, shattering the stone to a thousand pieces, destroying the trail's thread. The wind howled, a great horrible howl like laughter, and once again the cloud closed in.
Vidryas ducked his head, pretending he had not seen the death of their last hope of retreat.
In his terror, he almost wished for the Lanai archers and a swift end.

# # #

Flash upon flash of lightning, clash upon clash of thunder, shook the tall trap of the valley below her. The old woman, standing at the cliff edge, studied the Dramaya soldiers in their scrambling flight: the squat, bullock-bodied leader and his men, spread behind like frightened sheep.
Her features were impassive, but her eyes were ablaze with triumph. Fifty years of wandering had passed and gone. At long last the stars were near aligned to reform the future; at long last, Tielmark would be free of Bissanty chains. In a final cruel justice, it would be the Bissanty themselves who supplied the tools and means for doing it.
She had planted five men with the vision, knowing that only one would be destined to fulfill it. She had never expected it would be the Dramaya-man. When she had last seen the Dramaya leader, he had been a dark and ornery calf, troubled by dreams of rebellion, barely capable of comprehending the vision of crushing victory she set before him. But perhaps—perhaps where wiser men had questioned her augury, he had lowered his head and eagerly stuck it in her noose.
Far below, the bullock leader glanced skyward—was he canny enough to sense her? No—he was gauging the storm clouds, judging where Llara Thunderbringer would next strike.
She allowed herself to smile. It would not have been surprising if he had sensed her. The cattleman had surprised her in so many ways, following the path she had laid for him.
A crack of lightning crumbled a stone just below the scattered warriors.
"Quickly now," Richielle murmured. "Quickly, or Llara will have you." She glanced tensely at the thunderclouds. So many things could still go wrong. Perhaps, if little black bull and his men did not run, the Grey Goddess would shatter them, and with them her plotting. There were branches still in the prophecy, despite all she'd done to close them. In just one month it would be midsummer, and God-King Andion would rise in the sky over Tielmark. She had to be ready, and she had to ensure that Tielmark would be ready. If these soldiers did not crush the Lanai here, driving the tribesmen to retreat into Tielmark for a season of war, the seat of Tielmark's power would remain in the midlands, where Richielle's power to act would be limited. No—she needed this war in Tielmark's western outlands, drawing the Prince himself away from the center. She had followed the omens, the cards, the auguries. Surely even Llara could not stop her now! Staring down at the men, she willed them to run faster.
The Dramaya leader, bless him, redoubled his pace and crested the last rocky saddle. From there he would be able to see the black line where the cave mouth lay, promising safety—
The storm, ruthless and unmerciful, swept upward, obscuring the rest.
The woman stepped back from the edge of the cliff, satisfied. Though fog-blinded, her footsteps were secure and steady—she had prepared the path before the vigil began.
The Dramaya bull at least would reach the cave, and perhaps some of his men with him. In the morning, whatever were left would rise and follow the path she had laid to the edge of the great gorge.
There she would meet them, and offer the choice.
For decades, she had prepared for this moment: the beginning of the end for Bissanty. No longer would it be an Empire of five bound Princes, five subject peoples. Tielmark would be free. Great fruit had grown of little seeds, great changes would be wrought by these ignoble Dramaya cattlemen, subject for so long to Bissanty's rule. Perhaps their own freedom would follow.
By the Rhasan cards of prophecy, by the ruling Gods, by the Dramaya-man's own belligerent nature, she was certain that Ochsan's choice would be the right one.

# # #

Vidryas hardly slept. Last night, just barely, they had outrun the thunderclouds. Ochsan had brought them to the protection of a shallow inclined cleft, moments before the lightning came stabbing up the valley. The last yards of running, of slipping on the wet rock, had been sheer panic.
Ochsan had them up before sunrise. There was a queer restlessness to him. Though their mission lay completely in ruins, Ochsan behaved not at all like a beaten man. But neither did he address his troops, and this odd aloofness much demoralized them. They had rallied to him the night before—and they needed him once again to rouse them.
Morning stretched into a misery of wet equipment, harsh sun, and a relentless march, ever upwards. They crossed a broad, empty bowl of limestone, heat rising off the white stone with eye straining intensity.
At noon, they came to the edge of a vast gorge, a breathtaking chasm between two towering mountain massifs. Down below—far, far down below—a thread of green marked a river's course, cascading along the gorge's bottom, giving the harsh land brief, vivid life. Through the heat, across the vast descending distance, the land seemed to shiver, the river to twist.
Vidryas and Advey were trailing at the back of the line, when Ochsan called a halt. Half the men threw off their packs and went for a closer look at the chasm.
"Look." Advey pointed. Within the gorge, toward the horizon, the mountain river from the gorge's floor ascended a series of cascades, like giant's steps of running water. At the top was a jeweled V of green. "Llara in me, who could have dreamed it! There's Ochsan's plan! Viddy—do you see it? That's the Lanaya High Pastures."
Vidryas's stomach almost turned over.
The entire Imperial army dreamed of the Lanai's mountain stronghold, the hidden pastures where the tribesmen's cattle were kept safe while their warriors descended to war. The High Pastures lay at the top of the great Fini-Koina valley, with Lanai tribesman dug in all the way down to the piedmont, and the Bissanty battle camps. The pastures themselves were unguarded. With such natural protections, there was no need.
"Imagine us, up there," Advey said. "Forty Dramaya cattlemen, and a thousand head of Lanaya cattle. What do you suppose we could do?"
His eyes lit with enthusiasm. Vidryas could see what he was thinking: Cattlemen knew how to start a stampede. Starting it would be simple. Keeping it going, simpler still. Animals, especially in panic, instinctively move for the easiest course. Vidryas could not help but picture it: The cattle, moving slowly at first, would gain speed—and increase in panic—as they descended onto the steep slopes of the Fini-Koina. They would reach the first Lanai outpost. They would flatten it. And then the next, and the next, all the way down to the rear guard of the main Lanai force.
The Lanai warriors would not know whether to kill their own cattle or to run onto the waiting Bissanty spears.
Vidryas took a step back from the sheer cliff. "Imagine it—certainly. Do it—never. We're not birds," he said bitterly. "How would Ochsan propose we get over there? It's impossible." Taking another step back, he looked to see what the others were doing.
Ochsan had scrambled out onto a spur of rock and pulled out his surveying scrips.
"I don't see why he's bothering." Vidryas picked up his pack and readjusted its laces. "What's the point? We're above the Lanai watchtowers, and we'd never make it across to those pastures."
"What would you have him do?" Advey asked dryly. "Sit down and die in the sun?"
"What can we do?" Vidryas said bitterly. "There's nothing we can bring the Guarda now."
Advey shot him a curious look. "You think your uncle brought us all this way for some skinny Bissanty Guarda's sake?"
"If we want to bring Bissanty glory—"
"Screw Bissanty." Advey spat. "We're Dramaya cattlemen. Do you imagine Ochsan's putting us through this for Empire's glory? Not likely, by Llara's grace. And as for you—if Bissanty had ever truly wanted you, half-breed, they would have had you long before now."
Vidryas glanced around, half-frightened, to see who had been near enough to overhear Advey's treason. "What do you mean, Ochsan brought us here? The Guarda sent us."
Advey laughed. "I'm sure that's what the Guarda thinks."
Vidryas's mind reeled. "Ochsan wanted this? Wanted us to lose ourselves in the mountains? You knew that, and you volunteered?"
Advey shook his head. "I'd like to be at home with my stock," he said, "in my own mountains. But when Ochsan spoke, I knew I would go with him."
"I don't understand."
"What's to understand?" Advey said. "Bissanty holds Dramcampagna for her riches, but what does it offer in return? We've suffered a Bissanty Prince on the Dramaya throne too long, with too little care returned to us. Ochsan's going remind the Bissanty what Dramaya men are made of."
"But—but the Emperor is Llara's Heart-on-Earth," Vidryas protested. "Gracious Sciuttarus's line traces to her directly. His Princes on our throne—that puts Llara over us."
"He's an Emperor, not a god," Advey said, amused. "And not even Sciuttarus takes the Princely thrones seriously. Look how he plays with them, popping one man on, then pulling him off again. No one even pretends Llara's hand is in that."
Vidryas went silent. He knew the matter to which Advey referred—at just the last hustings, the Emperor had deposed his half-wit brother and raised an upstart cousin in his place. Rumor had it that the new prince, Tullirius Caviedo, had not even been formally presented at the Imperial court. "It's a game, then?" he asked, his voice almost quivering.
Advey shook his head. "For them it's a game. For us it's our lives."
"'Ware!" a man called. "Something's coming."
On the spur of rock, Ochsan bundled the survey scrip back in his pack.
"Close up," Markal hissed. "Advance to me and follow Ochsan."
The uneven terrain made it impossible to form ranks. Vidryas, near the back, had to reach the spur's crest before he could see anything.
Ahead lay more shattered white stone, leading away to a short white peak. Between the spur and the peak, on a craggy dome of rock, a single figure emerged from the waves of heat.
It was a woman. It was, Vidryas had no doubt, a witch.
A tall, lean witch, with ragged grey robes that streamed down her lank body. Her face was weathered teak. "Little black bull!" she greeted Ochsan, raising wide her hands. "How far you have come to find me!"
Around her, the rocky dome shimmered with movement. Hairy shapes, at first invisibly merged to the color of the rock, gaining form as cloven hooves struck stone. "A goat-herder," Vidryas whispered.
All around him, men sketched Llara's god-sign for protection.
Ochsan pushed forward, his hand at his hilt. "Woman!" he called boldly. "What is your business here?"
The woman smiled. Her teeth were a grim bridge of yellow ivory in the sun-dark skin of her face. "I think you already know, my little black bull. You have seen it in your dreams. What do you think my business might be?"
"We have come far to find this place." Ochsan pointed across the impossible distance of air to the cascades that led down from the green notch. "There lie the Lanaya Pastures. But the passage over to them—it is closed to us. We need the key to open it."
Vidryas shivered. It would never happen. The cascades—perhaps they were climbable, but there was no possible way to reach the valley floor. This back door, if such it was, was bolted and locked.
"A key?" her tone mocked up. "Perhaps better a sacrifice to the gods, that they should show you the way."
"I sacrifice only to Llara," Ochsan answered.
"Very well," the old woman replied, as if that had been what she'd expected. "Then my business here today must be to provide you with a sacrifice." Darting down among her goats, she kicked them aside in her impatience. No definable stiffness or fragility betrayed her age, but watching her, Vidryas could not help but think she was very old.
Passing many animals, she paused before a black nanny, a lean old thing with a bulging milk bag that sagged below its scabby knees. Trapped under the woman's scrutiny, the nanny bleated and tried to back away, but the old witch, swooping down, was too quick. When she turned back to Ochsan, she clutched a pair of tiny goatlings, one to each hand.
"Choose, black bull," the witch said. "Choose your sacrifice, and make your future."
One of the kids was pale orange, the other mottled black and grey. Both were tiny, perhaps prematurely delivered. Behind the witch, the old nanny bleated in protest.
"Will you have Beleaguer?" the witch asked. She held up the orange-furred kid. It fought her, tiny hooves dancing in the air. "Or will you have Demstar?" The black and grey was gentle, even passive. Its bulging yellow eyes were mournful, as if it had accepted the inevitability of fate.
Ochsan made Llara's sign. "I will not choose for my men," he said. "My choice is only for myself."
The witch let out a harsh laugh. "Then you are more stupid than I believed. A man who leads soldiers to battle never chooses for himself only."
"I am no fool," Ochsan said coolly. "Whether I die or live, I see that the choice with which you tempt me will far outlast this battle. I know those names, witch; they call upon an ancient magic, and dangerous. Beleaguer and glory, or Demstar and peace. What if I won't choose, woman? You are here alone, and I see others in your flock that might please Llara better."
One old woman, thin enough for the winds to dash into the gorge, against two score men. She should have been more frightened, but she was not.
"If you are no fool," she said dryly, "you will gladly seize on that which will be offered to you but once."
"Beleaguer, then," Ochsan said, casting aside hesitation. "For Dramaya's glory, and for mine."
"He is yours—if you can catch him."
Before Ochsan could prevent her, she flung the orange-colored kid away, down the dome of rock. It landed, in a sprawl of legs, at the top of a rocky chute. By some miracle, it was uninjured. Recovering, it gave an angry bleat.
Markal cursed and raised his bow to drop it, but Ochsan called him to hold. "Not that way," he said. "Llara will not accept a sacrifice cut down like hunter's quarry. I must kill it with my own hands. Fetch it to me, and we will light the goddess fire together."
Ochsan's daggerman glanced doubtfully toward the little goat, perched so precariously at the top of the rocky chute, and then at his master.
Firming his mouth, he made Llara's sign and started after it.
The kid, suspicious, would not let Markal approach. Emboldened by its distrust, it darted downward onto the skree. The breath of every Dramaya caught as it slid, bleating, toward the brink, but it gave a scrambling hop at the very limit of the edge and scampered sideways, its delicate feet finding footholds on an unlikely slanted ledge. Markal, once again making the goddess's sign, gave a last unhappy glance at the impossible gulf of the chasm, then stepped after in pursuit.
When he had almost reached it, it once again skipped beyond him.
Already Markal was forty feet below the edge of the cliff, trending downward on a previously invisible line of footholds across an otherwise featureless stone wall. The goat was another twenty feet below, safe—for the moment—on a small flat place on the rock.
Markal, unnerved, turned back to Ochsan. "I'll never catch it," he said. "One step more, and I'll not be able to come back, either."
Ochsan stroked his beard. He surveyed his men. Then he looked again at the witch.
"It is a long way to the bottom." Doubt colored his voice.
She laughed. "Where is your faith, black bull? You seek the key, and that animal will be your sacrifice to lead you to it. Have you not planned all your life for this moment? You want success—but what are you willing to risk to attain it?"
"I am willing," Ochsan said fiercely. He rounded on his troops. "Glory on the head of the man whose hand first holds that kidling!" He loosed a cry that echoed out into the gulf.
The little goat, already agitated, fled. Miraculously, it ran, but did not fall, trending always downward. Markal, clinging to a narrow rock edge, shouted in dismay, cut short as Ochsan descended the skree chute and aggressively pushed past him.
For a moment, no one but Ochsan and the goat moved. Then Advey, breaking the stillness, pushed his way to the front. "Glory on my head!" he cried, striding to the chute. "I call to Llara for it!" Scarcely minding where he put his feet, he flung himself downward.
Vidryas could barely contain his horror. His uncle intended to chase the little kid until he caught it, or until he lost his footing and fell to his death. Already Ochsan had passed the safe flat where the kid had stood to look back. He was traversing an even unlikelier thread, down and across the rock, the kid always keeping a little ahead of him. Advey, above him, was fast closing on Markal's narrow perch.
"The trail will close!" Markal shouted urgently to those who remained safely above. It was clear he meant to move on rather than risk letting Advey pass him. "Swear yourselves to Llara and follow! This madness will not stay to help us long!" His face a picture of frightened concentration, he turned to follow Ochsan's line, out onto the pure white rock.
Ochsan's warriors, doubtful but resolute, began to move for the edge.
If Vidryas did not join them, he would be stranded alone in the high massif. He started to cry, first single tears, and then a blinding torrent.
Somehow the witch was near him. "Tears!" she cackled, reveling in his humiliation. "A fine soldier boy you are!"
Driven by blind, terrified passion, he put up a hand to push her away. Her arm was surprisingly hard and strong, and he could not move her. Mistaking him, or choosing to mistake him, she seized him by the wrist and turned his palm upward.
"Shall I make a future for you, boy?" Her grip was like a human vise. Her breath smelled sickly sweet like fermented grain, the flap of her robes against his arms like the harsh brush of a goose's wing. "I can read it into you, if you will let me. I did it for your master, you know, when he was a boy not much older than yourself. And see how finely it has served him!"
Goaded beyond fear, he hit her. She had not expected that. She dropped his wrist, freeing him.
"This is not war!" he cried. "This is not the glory I wanted!" Running, he reached the chute as the last man disappeared into the precipice.

# # #

The goat-herder strode to the edge. The men's retreating backs were already far below her, the strange Bissanty boy laboring at the rear.
"This is war, boy!" she shouted after him, laughing crazily. "Believe it! Bissanty and Tielmark will be forever changed!"
The boy ran like a rabbit—the last in the straggling line of the descent. More fool he. The terror that possessed him would make him clumsy. She doubted he would reach the gorge's bottom whole.
But the others—the Dramaya cattlemen would gain the High Pastures, and they would decimate the Lanai herds. The mountain tribesmen would be forced into Tielmark to recoup their losses, and Tielmark would once again know strife and war and change. She would be there, in the middle of it, seeing that the Prince of Tielmark too, like Ochsan, made the right choice—or had it made for him, if that was how the cards played.
She glanced back at the domed rock. Her goats were scattered—the black nanny, the oldest fertile female, was in a foul mood for having one of her twins stolen. With her grey and black kid safely returned, she had charged back in among the younger nannies, separating them from their own in reprisal. Cursing, the old woman turned to round them together.
A god had prevented her from reading the young Bissanty's hand. What god, she did not know. She was old enough not to care. But she had read the young man well enough for her own purposes. If there was hidden mettle in him, it would not rise in time to affect the outcome of his uncle's campaign, or, more importantly, any part of her own plot.

# # #

For the first time since he had begun his wild descent, Vidryas turned his face outward. Wild elation swept through him.
The sparkling river was still far below, but they had descended beneath the most perilous of the cliffs. Upriver—Vidryas was low enough now that there was an upriver—he could see where the cascades began their ascent, a secret, water-covered stair. In the far distance, on the high horizon, the Lanai High Pastures lay silhouetted against the sky.
How Ochsan must have laughed beneath his stolid façade as the soft Bissanty Guarda had sent him to decimate his warriors beneath the walls of an impregnable Lanai watchtower. He had accepted the miserable, hopeless mission because it had given him a chance to impose a real defeat. To gain glory. A real soldier's glory.
It would be the greatest triumph in decades of summer campaigning. A decisive Dramaya victory over the Lanai would change everything—not least Bissanty attitudes toward his homeland. Bissanty would be forever changed, and perhaps Dramcampagna too.
Vidryas hastened onward, suddenly eager to join with his uncle.
In his excitement, he did not think of the witch, did not wonder, did not query why her last words had been of Tielmark, the rebellious lands that lay just over the other side of these mountains.

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Last Modified: February 22, 2002