Читать книгу Fire Angels - Jane Routley - Страница 9

It was only after we had been travelling for two hours that I started to feel we had got away and stopped looking back for pursuers. That afternoon I rode behind Tomas, in order to give Parrus' horse a spell. Parrus' sulks did not last long and he began pointing out interesting sights and chatting to me which I knew he meant, and I accepted, as an apology.

The rain has stopped though the sky was still cloudy. The country we were travelling through was not so very different from the area of Gallia we had left behind. Low rolling hills were topped with stands of mountain ash and sweet oil trees. I had never travelled in this part of Moria before. I had spent most of my life in the north near the capital Mangalore were the countryside was far less fertile and my foster father and I had left Moria by travelling through the wild and sparsely settled mountains there into the Tyronic Duchies. Here in Middle Moria the wide valleys were full of villages clustered round churches or monasteries and small neat farms surrounded with great wheat fields and fruit trees covered in blossom. The Morian houses were noticeably neater and whiter than Gallian houses. In fact they were noticeably neater and whiter than I remembered them being up north too. It did not take me long to realize why. Almost everyone we passed on the road wore the grey and black of the Church of Burning Light. The presence of so many of these aggressively respectable people had affected the whole look of the countryside.

We passed troops of Militia men, all of them in grey and black, marching along the road or assembling in the fields. After we had passed the fifth or sixth group, I asked Hamel.

"Surely there were not always so many Burning Light worshippers in these parts. I'd thought it was a northern sect."

"Ah, but they have made many converts since the Revolution. The Hierarchs have seen to it that the monasteries hereabouts favor Burning Light believers as tenants. No doubt it is the Hierarchs' plan to have as many loyalists as possible here to act as a bulwark against Gallian influences, but rents are low and it has been an opportunity for many of the landless. And the countryside looks well for it, doesn't it. It's never been so prosperous or heavily settled."

"Aye," said Tomas. "But don't be fooled by the fact that no one seems interested in us. Their beady little eyes are watching. The local Witch Hunters will have a very good idea of our movements."

His words took the shine off the pretty country side. I could not help thinking of the Witch Hunters peering out from behind the shutters of the neat little villages we passed though, like hungry cats peering through the bars of a bird cage.

The Church of Burning Light. They were a sect of extreme Aumazites who believed we could bring about the Holy City of Tansa on earth, by following his teachings to the letter. They wore only black and grey and lived strictly and simply, avoiding finery, drinking and other forms of wild living and attending church several times a week. More importantly they believed that all magic not used by the church was evil. When they had come to power five years before, they had forbidden all non-church mages and healers to practice magic of any sort and had arrested and burned those who had disobeyed. Eventually the only sensible course of action had been to go into exile. What a bitter time that had been. Even when we were refugees in the city of Gallia in the days when it still welcomed members of the Burning Light, they had made my life difficult. When they realized I was a Morian mage they spat at me or cursed me. One or two of them had even sought my death.

This made me think of Darmen Stalker and something he had said.

"What was it that that priest said about reclaiming the Plain of Despair?" I asked Hamel.

"Apparently the Church of the Burning Light have a project to make it fertile land again," said Hamel. "I wish them luck with it. I don't doubt it must be a hard task. Have they got very far with it, Tomas?"

"I can't say. I asked about it when I was down South. Supposedly they are building a monastery out there on the site of Ruinac, the old capital. I've never met anyone who went there by choice. Its one of the things they do with all the prisoners the Hand of Truth takes and in the South they have surely taken a lot."

"Hand of Truth?" asked Parrus

"Aye, the branch of the Witch Hunters that deals with blasphemy that is not necessarily related to magic."

"This Great Waste, this is the place they also call the Plain of Despair, isn't it? The place where Smazor's Run occurred?" asked Parrus. "Why haven't they tried to reclaim the land before? It was the best part of Moria before that disaster, wasn't it?"

Even though Parrus was a Gallian he knew all about Smazor's Run. It was the single most important fact of Moria's history. A little over a hundred years before, two necromancers had been involved in a magical battle on the bleak northern coast of Moria. The White Magical Colleges of the Osteradd Peninsula had joined together to kill these two terrible men and had done so successfully. Unfortunately no one realized that one of the necromancers had a slave demon called Smazor, a demon that had been bought through into our world so that he actually had a physical existence here. Andre/Bedazzer had existed on this plain in just such a way.

The necromancer's death had set Smazor free. Free on this plane. A demon is savage hunger made flesh and Smazor had achieved the ambition of every single one of them - to be set free among food. In the few hours it took for the United White Colleges to the realize their mistake, capture and dispel Smazor he laid all of Moria between the Red Mountains and the Sea waste and killed around half of the population. That had been the most populous and fertile area of Moria and much of Morian history since then, its poverty, its backwardness, its dislike of mages, even the rise of the Burning Light stemmed from that dark day.

"Well it's the worst part of Moria now," said Tomas. "After a fire, plants grow back in the ash but after Smazor's Run, though it's been over 100 years since then, there is still nothing but ash in the Great Waste, great clouds of it blowing in the wind. They say Smazor sucked the life out of the very soil and it needs magic to put it back in. It's a fearsome place. Only ghosts and nightmares live there."

"In Gallia I heard the Duke intended to try to reclaim the Wasteland when Lady Julia regained the throne," said Hamel. "I will be glad if he takes that on."

"Yes I heard about that too," said Parrus.

I heard Tomas laugh in his chest. "That'll be interesting. I'm sure that cunning Leon Saar will feel no shame about taking credit for something that the Burning Light has started for him."

It was almost dark and we were already talking of stopping for the night, when we came upon a disturbing sight. On a lonely stretch of road a young woman had been taken with a fit.

I will never forget how helpless I felt as I sat beside her watching her, thrashing the ground with her arms and legs, bashing her head back and forth on the cloak I had placed under it. Grit and blood flecked the foam at her mouth. Her basket lay tumbled at her side and broken eggs littered the ground.

'One spell,' I thought sadly. 'One little spell would lift this.' I did what I could to lessen the fit, preventing her from hurting herself too much and holding a phial of soothing oil under her nose, but all we could really do was wait for the fit to run its course.

Hamel had gone to see if he could get help, but Tomas stood beside me.

"Watch yourself," he said warningly. "Don't get any smart ideas about doing a quick healing spell. It'll just bring the Witch Hunters down on us."

"I hate this," I said. "I wish I could do something more."

"I know," said Tomas. "But don't, please. The girl's probably lived with this for the last five years. She can surely live with it a few more weeks."

"Aye," I said miserably.

Five or six treatments with a specialist healer and the woman might never have another fit again. She would certainly have less of them. It would be useless suggesting it to her however. She wore black and grey and no doubt her family would never hear of such a thing. I wondered if there was any priest in Moria capable of performing such delicate healing.

"Isn't there anything more you can do?" said Parrus in a distressed voice. He was holding the horses nearby. "Honestly," he went on. "This is an insane country. What sane person would choose to have Falling Sickness?"

If it had been Tomas who had said that I would have agreed whole heartedly, but somehow I felt a need to defend my countrymen to Parrus.

"They haven't turned their back on healing completely," I said. "Its just that they believe that all magics should be performed by priests or nuns and there are not enough priests with the right training to go around yet. In time it could be a workable system."

"And in the meantime, people suffer from curable things. Great!"

Just then the woman began to come out of the fit. She was weeping and distressed to find strangers leaning over her. I did my best to reassure her as Tomas and I wrapped her in a blanket. I dosed her with a little herbal sleeping potion and she soon fell into an exhausted post-fit sleep with her head in my lap.

"Morians have got their reasons for disliking mages," Tomas said to Parrus. "Half of Moria died in Smazor's Run, all because mages were careless. It brought home to people just how much harm mages could do."

"And King Jennow too," I said remembering a story my foster father had told me. "He was a King who had magical powers and he used them to make people do things against their wills, to sign over land to him, to seduce women and to send reluctant troops into hopeless battles."

"But that's an exception," said Parrus. "I agree that magely power shouldn't be allied with political power, but otherwise mages are no more or less capable evil than other people."

"But they have more power to express it," said Tomas, "When the Church of the Burning Light started saying that magic should only be practiced with the moral authority of the Church to guide it, they found a lot of sympathetic ears. Though I wonder what people would say now."

He looked at the sleeping woman and changed the subject.

Hamel was soon back, bringing with him a tall man driving a light pony cart.

"I met the lady's brother coming to look for her," he explained.

The two of them gently lifted the woman onto the cart.

"Mortality here, has offered us lodging for the night," said Hamel.

"Well thank you," said Tomas. "We would be very glad of that."

"What?!" I hissed in Gallian. Parrus looked horrified. Tomas squeezed my arm warningly.

"Have a heart, sister,” he said cheerily in Morian. "It's growing dark and there's more rain coming."

I could equally cheerily have strangled him.

Mortality Genez was a gentle, dreamy man. Not at all the sharp-tongued sharp-eyed zealot I usually associated with the Burning Light. I could not imagine him cursing or spitting on anybody. He insisted I ride on the cart with him, fussing over my warmth and comfort and showing a genuinely sympathetic interest in my journey to the bed of my sick sister.

He lived in a big rambling farmhouse set around a courtyard. As we turned into the courtyard, a group of women came rushing out of the house, exclaiming over the woman in the back of the cart.

"My mother Juba, my sister Mercy of Thy Hands, my brother's wife, Great Light Shall Return," said Mortality, by way of introduction.

His sick sister's name was Voice of Grace. His brother, Obedience, carried her into the house with the mother fussing around her like a hen around a chick, but the other women waited to draw me down from the cart and took me into the kitchen to stand before the fire, where they took my damp cloak, plied me with refreshments and food and asked me all about Gallia, forcing me to elaborate on the story we had worked out. I wished I could be with the men in the stable yard where I could see them unsaddling the horses.

It was not to be however. Men and women among the Burning Light seemed to lead even more separate lives than normal people did and so I sat in the kitchen with them until it was time for dinner. Even then we did not sit with the men, but served them at the table, waiting till they had finished before eating ourselves in the kitchen.

Parrus was highly amused by the situation. Had I dared, I would have kicked his shin several times during the meal for he winked and carried on, ordering me about and calling me "woman."

"My wife has a servant," he told the others. "No doubt she thinks such tasks beneath her."

"The care of men for women, finds its echo in the care of women for men," quoted Mortality as if from a holy book. After that gentle criticism Parrus toned it down. The Burning Light men were unfailingly polite and addressed all the women with the honorific Enna.

Though the conversation flowed over dinner, oddly enough the invasion, a topic which must have been on everybody's mind, did not come up. The Burning Light people probably thought and quite rightly, that we were from the part of the Morian population which would welcome the return of Julia Madraga with open arms. Although references were made to the fact that Mortality, Obedience and the two hired men had been training for several hours a day in one of the Parish Militias which would be defending Glassybri, most of the talk was of crops and the price of good horses. I had a sense that they were not sure when, or even if, the invasion would come.

Despite my bitter past, I could not help liking them very much and I found myself wishing that they all lived in Cardun where the invasion of Moria was so irrelevant that we had not even known of it last week. After dinner, when we women sat in the kitchen again, several people came to the door begging and were all given a warm welcome. Juba washed and dressed the wounds of an old man. I had not thought of Burning Light people as being capable of being good and kind like other people. I could not help feeling guilty at deceiving them. I had to keep reminding myself that any moment now I would surely make some deadly slip that would turn all that warmth into vitriol.

Voice of Grace, having been ill, was to sleep with her mother. I was offered Voice of Grace's bed in a room she shared with her sister. I dreaded sharing a room with one of the Burning Light and wondered whether I should insist on sleeping with my husband in the hay loft, but I found that they had placed a screen between the two beds so that I had my own private little cubicle and I was able to undress for bed without fear of my iron necklace being seen.

Next morning as we were leaving, Voice of Grace came to bid me farewell and to thank me.

She was a pretty young woman, but she was probably doomed to be the unmarried sister in the households of her brothers. Only a very committed man would have wanted to marry someone with falling sickness.

"In Gallia, they have healers who could cure your condition," I said softly to her leaning down from my horse.

Her face lit up for a moment, than it dropped. "Healers," she murmured.

"We pray often for my sister," said Mortality sadly. "It seems to be the will of Tansa that she suffers so. Perhaps she bears the burden of some family sin. Perhaps Tansa will release her one day."

"Mortality," said Tomas suddenly. "I saw the Gallian army of invasion when I was in Gallia. It was a very big army. It's a hard fight you'll be facing. I urge you to get your women folk as far away from here as you can and soon. They expect the army at the border in a few days."

"I thank you brother," said Mortality. "But the Church has taken steps for the care of our women folk already. When the invaders reach the border, they will be setting out for South for Sanctuary."

"Sanctuary," cried Tomas. "Good God! No! Please don't send them there. We have heard rumors of Sanctuary that bode ill," Reports from one who had been there. Statues that spoke and the sign of demons. If you want to send them somewhere safe send them to me. My family has an inn in Annac called the Inn of the Holyhands. I swear to you I'll try to keep them safe for the sake of your generosity to us."

"Necromancy," smiled Mortality. The word had relived rather than worried him. "Those who wish to discredit people always cry necromancy at them. I have seen no such thing in our Church and I doubt it exists. Do not be afraid for us. Our faith has never let us down. God and his Holy Son will protect us as is best for us."

Although Tomas repeated his urgings, he would not be swayed.

"Religious fanatic!" muttered Parrus. "What a fool!"

Yet I could tell that like the rest of us, his heart was darkened with forebodings for these kind people.

The following days travel was uneventful. The weather cleared. Rain was replaced by soft spring sunshine. The country became wilder. There were fewer farms and more woodland and the houses we passed were not as pristinely white washed. We saw fewer and fewer Burning Light followers and more and more ordinary Morians.

The low rolling hills continued. Except for the mountainous region around Mangalore, which formed a strong barrier against the Papal States and the Tyronic Duchies, most of Moria was low rolling hills. Then the Red Mountains formed a kind of spine down the middle of the country and beyond that was the great coastal plain that had once been the richest and most populous area of Gallia and was now the Great Waste.

It was such a clear night that we did not stay in an inn, but stopped under a low spreading pine tree by the roadside. We built a large fire and ate the food that Juba had given us that morning. I for one was glad of the privacy. Though there were fewer Burning Light people about, plenty of ordinary Morians disliked mages. Here we could talk about things. For the first time I showed Parrus my amazing iron necklace. He handled it gingerly, but with fascination.

"Do you think it could have some magic?" I asked him.

"I don't sense anything," he said. "Have your immensely superior senses felt anything?"

I stuck my tongue out at him.

"It's Wanderer make," said Tomas. "Look at these runes on it."

I had not really looked at the runes before. Most of them were completely new to me.

I asked Tomas if he knew the meaning of them, but he shook his head and said "I never learnt anything of runes."

"Marnie used to say that Wanderer magic works completely differently from ours," said Hamel. "She said they used more runes and that it was more powerful for that."

"Rune magic?" said Parrus looking skeptical, but nonetheless interested. "What do you mean? The Wanderers are just fairground fakes or hedge mages at best. They wouldn't have the skill to use runes. And magic is magic. What on earth do you mean by different magic?"

"More runes I suppose," said Hamel looking uncomfortable. "Look I don't know much about it. All I know was that Marnie told me Wanderer magic was much more powerful than we gave it credit for."

"Oh come on, that's just a legend, isn't it?" said Parrus. "Like that story about Wanderers being a great race of Mages who sat at the right hand side of the old Kings of Moria. Where has that magic gone then? You never see Wanderers at the White Colleges."

I'd heard those legends too and was still unsure whether to believe them or not, but Tomas seemed to have no such doubts.

"That's no legend," he said. "Anyone who has studied history will tell you it's a fact. When our people came to the Peninsula from Aramaya, the Wanderers were here. They were a tribe called the Klementari, a tribe of very powerful Mages and the New People as they call us, could not defeat them so the kings of Moria were forced to deal with them. The Madragas sometimes formed marriage alliances with them. There's a lot of Klementari blood in the Madragas. You can see it in their features. The Klementari in their turn helped the Madragas to forge a kingdom where all the other rulers on the peninsula could only control small dukedoms and principalities. 400 years of continuous rule is quite an achievement for one family. As a symbol of this alliance, it became the custom for the Klementari to place the crown on head the ruler, using iron regalia that they had made for the Madragas. This custom has survived Smazor's Run. Up until the Revolution of Souls, the fact that the greatest mage of the realm always crowned the Duke always caused trouble with the Patriarch."

"Presuming you are right," said Parrus. "What happened to these wonderful Klementari to make them the drunken layabouts you see nowadays?"

"Smazor's Run is what happened," said Tomas. "See, the Klementari had a very special relationship with their homeland Ernundra. Some say there was a race of spirits who lived there and guided them. Ernundra was on the other side of the Red Mountains along the Basane River. It was destroyed by Smazor and most of the Wanderer race with it. Some of those who survived killed themselves. The rest wandered bereft and became called Wanderers. Since then many of them have tried to forget their heritage and become like the rest of us. You see Morians with Wanderer faces all over southern and Central Moria - the product of marriages or of people who settled down and tried to become Morians.

Tomas nodded at me.

"It must have been what our Grandmother hoped for when she left the six year old Marnie with Joesph Holyhands. But the old people say bloodlines will show and it was certainly true of Marnie. She never really managed to become one of the New People and in the end she turned her back on trying."

He turned back to Parrus. "I've spoken to learned men who've see this in books. It's not just legend. And don't think that because the Wanderers don't go to your White Colleges that they have no powers. I've seen Wanderers do things that would surprise you."

"Fair enough," said Parrus, uncomfortable at Tomas' intensity. I could see he was still unbelieving, but fortunately he was too polite to say so. A slightly strained silence fell on the group.

After a few minutes Hamel thoughtfully brought up a new subject. "I suppose with the Madragas back on the throne, things will be back the way they were with magic in this country," he said.

"That can only be a good thing," I said, but I was interrupted by Tomas who said a little grimly, "It won't be the Madragas, brother. It will be the Saars of Gallia on the throne."

"Surely the Duke will just be a consort," said Hamel. "He won't actually rule. He's a foreigner. The electors would never stand for a foreigner."

"Well it's unlikely that they would put a woman on the throne," said Parrus. "And believe me, Leon of Gallia is not going to spend all that money and manpower just to give a present to his betrothed. He's not a man who shares power."

"There have been women rulers of Moria before," said Hamel.

"There always seem to be women rulers in legend," said Parrus gently. "But can you see the Lords of Moria nowadays minding a woman ruler. The Lords of Gallia mind Leon Saar well enough though and the Lords of Moria will too."

"Parrus is right," I said. "Duke Leon is good at keeping the peace and that is the most important thing a ruler can bring a country. What do any of us know about Julia Madraga?"

Parrus grinned at me and patted my cheek.

"Bless women," he said. "They see things so simply and practically."

We did not set a watch that night.

"We'll be safe enough," said Tomas. "Now that you need to have a travel pass to move around the countryside, most of the robbers are in Burning Light prisons. It's about the only good thing the Burning Light has done for this country."

Yet when I awoke with a start later that night, Tomas was sitting awake.

I had woken feeling uneasy, out of dreams I could not remember. Someone was watching. Someone was looking for me. I lay as still as possible for some moments looking for the watcher. I was glad when I saw Tomas awake. He wasn't even looking at me. He was staring grim faced into the fire.

"Is all well?" I asked.

He started. "Oh Aye! I could not sleep."

"Did you dream?"

"No nothing like that," he said. "In fact I could almost wish I had. At least when I dreamt of the stone woman, I knew Tasha was alive."

It was difficult to answer this remark.

"What kind of woman is Tasha?" I asked him thinking it might comfort him to talk of her.

"Difficult," said Tomas. "Sometimes she was very difficult to care for. Once Karac left, and there was the child ... She was often angry, often in black despair. She drank. Yet when she was in a good mood ... Oh Dion she sparkled. Even in her cups she was a fine healer. She might have been a fine mage had she had your opportunities. If only she'd been more lucky." He was silent for a moment.

"But there was something about her, something that seemed to almost grab on to ill-luck, to magnify it. To be an estranged twin, to have a bastard child, to have powers of magery when such things were forbidden - they are all things that can be got over or lived with. They are things other people lived with. But they tormented her and the torment was what made her so difficult. I knew it and it used to make me crazy. If only I could have been more patient with her. Maybe she wouldn't have gone."

Three years of being a healer attending the grieving and guilt-stricken living as much as the sick and dying, had made me familiar with such monologues, but not hardened to them. I still felt a terrible inadequacy in the face of others mental anguish. I suspect it is inevitable. I did my best.

"Don't blame yourself," I said. "Do you really think you could have made her happy? You can't make other people be happy."

"Aye you're right. Of course. But I can't help feeling ... I am the oldest brother. The head of the family, for what its worth."

His voice trailed off.

"So why did she go after this Stalker man?"

"All that unused magic was becoming a torment to her. She said once that it was like having your spirit filled with congealed porridge. In the last year, I've thought several times that she was loosing her mind. I think she did too. Sometimes it was as if she didn't know where she was. She went of into the forest once and after two days I found her hiding in a foxes den, covered in dirt and dead leaves, out of her mind babbling something about angels of vengeance made of fire. I should have found some way to send her into Gallia, but, somehow ... Well she wouldn't go anyway. I never understood that."

"Sounds like you did what you could."

"You know, she joined the Sisters of Light at one stage," he went on. "That's right, your sister was a Burning Light nun at the convent in Lammerquais. They work as healers, so it seemed like a good place for Tasha. At first. That was a year of troubles, well not a year she only lasted there eight months. She was always being given penance for disobedience. It was a very strict place and she just couldn't seem to knuckle under."

"What happened?"

"What happened? She got pregnant that's what happened. And they threw her out, of course, because chastity is one of their watchwords. Oh Tasha. I mean I would have thought it took real effort to get pregnant in a convent, but Tasha... Sweet Tansa she was infuriating sometimes. Of course she must have wanted to do it. To escape. She didn't want to disappoint me by just leaving, I see that now. I was worried about her and I pushed her to stay. I thought the discipline might give her some sense of place. What a fool I was."

"You did what you thought was best Tomas."

"I should have done better Dion. Then she might not have gone."

"No," I said "I'm sure not."

He shook his head and went back to staring into the fire.

I judged it best not to push him. There seem to be times when it is better to leave people with their own thoughts.

I got up and ducked out under the low hanging branches. It was chilly beyond the fire light, but clear and crisp, sparkling on the skin. The pale white moon shone high and full in the black dome of the sky. There was a small track leading past our campsite. I wandered down it a little way and stood staring back at our campfire through the trees. The moon was so bright it was almost like day.

"Was I not right, Enna Dion?"

I almost jumped out of my skin.

Beside the track where I stood was a high tree stump. A man sat perched upon it. I jumped back so that I was well out of reach.

"Who...?"

"So you don't remember me Enna Dion? I told you that we would be returning to Moria and here we both are."

The raven. The Wanderer on my wood pile. Yes it was that same old, young face.

"What's going on?" Tomas had come out from under the pine and was coming towards us, his hand on his knife hilt. "Who the hell are you?"

The man jumped lithely down from his perch. He drew himself up and pushed the great dark cloak he wore back over his shoulders.

"I am Symon," he said "I am the Raven."

I was startled by the strange coincidence of it but Tomas reaction was even more startling.

"Aumaz!" he cried. He caught my arm and tried to whirl me round at the same time as pushing me behind him. Naturally I stumbled and almost fell.

"What business has the Lord of Ill-Times with us?" cried Tomas, pushing me back towards the cover of the tree.

"My, my, Tomas Holyhands," said the voice of the Raven in the darkness, admiringly. "You are knowledgeable."

"What's going on?" I cried. "He wasn't hurting me, Tomas. I'm sorry about my brother, Ren Symon."

"Don't speak to him, Dion," said Tomas. "The living should not speak to those defiled by blood."

"It's too late for either of you," said the man. "Those people you spoke to at the border crossroads were not ordinary Wanderers, but a group of the Dead. And Enna Dion is most certainly defiled. She has killed two men."

By the Seven! He knew about Norval who I had obliterated in a moment of angry fire. And about that assassin. But how?

"How do you know that?" I cried.

He tossed back his cloak again. It flapped like the wings of a great black bird.

"I am the Raven," he said simply. "I know many things. Among them, I know that it is cold and I have travelled far and you have fire and food over there and yet you have not invited me to share it."

I could feel Tomas' tension beside me. He looked nervously around at the darkness.

"What are you doing here?" he said. I could not get over how unfriendly he was being.

"Just passing," said the Wanderer. "Calling upon Enna Dion who is an acquaintance. Don't be afraid, Tomas. If I wished to call down my hoards upon you, don't you think you would be already dead?" He turned and smiled at me and his eyes glittered in the moonlight. "I could not hope to take Enna Dion except by surprise."

And then he was moving past us and towards the fire.

Tomas looked anxiously back into the darkness and hurried after him pulling me behind him.

In the firelight I saw that, amazing as it seemed, it was indeed the same man who had spoken to me outside my hut. The same ancient boy's face. It was not that he was young. The skin stretched over his cheekbones was soft with age not youth and there were wrinkles around his eyes. He simply had a guileless quality about him like a boy does, except that his guilelessness seemed at the same time to speak of great cunning.

Hamel was already sitting up not showing any surprise at the sudden appearance of this strange Wanderer. He just watched. I suspected he was armed beneath the blanket round his waist, for I noticed that the sheath of his sword was empty. Parrus too was tensely awake.

I opened one of the packs.

"I remember you liked cheese."

"I dote upon it Enna Dion" said Symon. And I will have a little bread this time, if you have any."

He tore the pieces of bread and cheese off with long white fingers that reminded me of claws. He was a tall thin man, but he sat hunched in a way that disguised his size. His stance reminded me of a raven. Was he some kind of shape shifter? But I felt no frisson of magic in his presence.

"Who's he?" hissed Parrus in my ear as I sat down.

"I am the Wanderer Raven," said Symon.

"What...?"

"The Raven is the Wanderer war leader. A defiled bird of ill omen and destruction," said Symon calmly.

Parrus blinked.

"Surely the Wanderers don't ... They are a peaceful people. Everyone knows that."

"And that is what they would have you think. But since your people came to the peninsula, War bands have always existed among the Wanderers. They live separately from the families, so that they might not pollute them with their knowledge of violence. They are called the Dead, because only the dead should live among death."

"But a Raven is only ever elected to the Council of Six when the Wanderers are at war," said Tomas. He offered the Wanderer a cup of ale. "Are the Wanderers at war?"

"The Wanderers are moving to return to our homeland. We will fight anyone who dares to try and stop them."

"Surely you can rely on the Duke of Gallia to fight the way back into Moria?"

"No, Tomas Holyhands, you do not understand. We are going back to Ernundra, our true homeland in the place you call the Plain of Despair. We have been Wanderers long enough. Only the homeland can cleanse the sickness in our spirits and make us back into the Klementari."

"But isn't that place a wasteland?" I said, too fascinated to be formal with this obviously important person. "It's barren. Nothing lives there."

"Oh, things can be made to live there with enough work and power. That is not the point. It is our homeland. We should never have abandoned it. All this ... wandering, living like fairground fortune tellers, the exile, even from Moria, it is punishment for our wrongdoing. To be blessed again we must cease to be disloyal to our country. We must return to it."

It was difficult to know what to say to this.

"So what are you doing here?" asked Parrus. He too was fascinated, too fascinated to be his usual sarcastic self. "Won't they burn you for a witch?"

"If they can catch me. If they can spare the time from Duke Leon Saar. He will be across the border in a few days time. And they won't catch me before he comes. The Wanderers were once a great people, Parrus Lavella, though I know your kind doubt it. We still have the seeds of greatness in us. Once, the New people married us, became our allies and relied on our power. That time is coming again."

He stood and his shadow fell darkly over us.

"I thank you for your hospitality Enna Dion and look to the day when I shall be able to repay you."

He shrugged his great black cloak over himself and turned to Tomas who had risen with him.

"You are worried for your sister, Tasha. But you shall not have to worry much longer."

He stepped away from the fire, out through the branches and was gone.

"Raven," cried Tomas pushing out after him. "Tell me! Wait!"

But there was nobody out beyond the branches.

Tomas was searching around the tree. I stood looking out over the empty field still white with moon-light. A dark bird was flying low across the trees. Was that ... No. This was Moria under the Witch Hunters. Nobody could cast that kind of magic here.

"Impressive exit," said Parrus at my elbow. "Fellow should have been an actor. That was really peculiar. Where did he come from? And what did he come for?"

"He said he was passing by," I told him.

Just dropped in for a chat, did he? said Parrus wryly.

"It was as if he came to tell us those things," said Hamel. "He left when he finished."

"Do you think he meant it as a foretelling? What he said about not needing to worry about Tasha much longer?" said Tomas.

I caught Parrus grinning at Tomas's remark and scowled at him. He dropped his eyes discreetly, but I could tell the whole incident amused him. Typical superstitious Morians was what he'd be thinking now. I couldn't say I blamed him. I had heard of the Klementari and their powers as a child, but my foster father, even though he had been a Morian, had told me they were the stuff of legend, not something educated people believed in.

Yet when I lay down by the fire again, I could not sleep. I was conscious of a certain exhilaration. It wasn't just the way he had talked of returning to their homeland, of fighting anyone who attempted to stop them, though there was a sense of heroism in his words that caught my imagination. I felt as if I had seen something strange, as if I had been touched by the weirdness that is a proper part of magic but too often dispelled by the White College of Mages and all the mundane rituals of everyday life. While I knew it was ridiculous, I kept thinking of that great black bird flying across the moon.

We travelled hard for the next two days, starting early, finishing after dark and staying at inns which gave Parrus and I the joyful opportunity to make the most of our supposed status as a married couple. By this time I was almost certain that Tomas hoped that Parrus and I would eventually make a match of it despite our considerable social distance. I didn't let myself worry about what he thought. I knew perfectly well that Parrus would never care for me that much. Tomas would find out soon enough, foolish fellow. For the moment he was too concerned about Tasha to try anything embarrassing.

I couldn't help being glad Parrus had come and not just for physical reasons. I'd known him for much longer than my brothers and sometimes it was good to have someone to roll your eyes at. Sometimes Tomas could be very bossy and as for Hamel, he finally revealed that his beloved wife, Radiance, was a member of the Burning Light and that he had given permission for her to bring up his son Shine in her faith.

”But what does she say about your family background?” I said. He'd just shrugged and said there was a lot to be said for having the church control magecraft.

The last morning of our journey Tomas was in a fever. Only the strongest arguments had persuaded him to stop for the night. He would have preferred to have continued through the darkness to Annac which was only half a day's journey away and he roused us out of bed well before dawn the next morning.

It availed us nothing, however, for halfway through the morning we became caught up behind a prison caravan and were forced to follow it for several miles. Tomas was bitterly impatient, but there were deep ditches on either side of the road and beyond stretched muddy fields of new wheat that would have been even slower going. The heavily guarded wagons where impossible to pass and whenever we went through a village, people gathered by the road to watch. Sometimes small groups of people, most of them Burning Light, but some of them not, would start singing hymns about Holy Tansa and his healing fire, but mostly people just stared with fearful eyes. The sight of those white faced prisoners with heavy iron manacles round their necks and wrists filled me with dread. I was glad when we came to the turn off to Annac.

As we came closer to our journey's end, I scanned the countryside trying to recognize things. Nothing looked particularly familiar. I had expected to feel excited at returning to a place so long in the past, but my main feeling was apprehension. It was not just that I would soon have to do that searching spell. It was Annac itself. What would it be like? Perhaps I would hate it. Maybe the rest of my family were terrible people. What if they didn't like me?