“It is about different ways of thinking. That is why I asked. Yes, the sun is on your neck. Yes, we are traveling west. Some things are more slippery than you think they are.” She reached out and patted his arm, her touch light as a bird’s wing, then sped her pace again. Morgan could only struggle to keep up.

•   •   •

What seemed a good part of the afternoon had passed when they finally reached a quiet lake hidden among the trees, a blue gem darker than the sky. Sithi dressed in pale green and gray waited there, tending a tiny harbor complete with what looked to Morgan like a very flimsy dock and several flatboats made of woven willow branches.

Morgan, Eolair, and all the Sithi climbed into one of the boats and were soon poling themselves silently across the lake. On the far side they slipped into a hidden river where Morgan had seen nothing but reeds, then made their way up it for some time. At last they began to pass strange structures made of willow branches and thorns that had been raised on both banks, like defensive walls but impossibly fragile. As they moved farther upstream the walls occasionally rose to join over the top of the water, so that he and his fellow passengers seemed to float through tunnels of gray wood and black thorn. Not long after that, Morgan began to notice more Sithi crouching behind these structures, watching their boat pass from expressionless golden eyes. Most of these wore colorful wooden or bone armor. Their spears and swords did not seem made from metal either, but Morgan felt sure from the cold faces watching them pass that the weapons would prove as deadly as any steel.

At last they came to a wide place in the river with a willow-wood dock and an enclosure beside it on one side that was roofed with an even more complicated arrangement of willow limbs thatched with broad leaves. A figure stood on the dock as if it had waited there years just for this moment. As they drew closer, Morgan could see this was another Sitha, with the same blaze of red hair as Yeja’aro. He wore no helm, but was armored in pale green painted wood, with a sword hanging in a scabbard on his belt. Something about his face seemed unusual, but Morgan was still too far away to make out what it was. At least a dozen Sithi warriors stood behind him in attitudes of calm expectancy.

“S’hue Khendraja’aro!” called Jiriki as he leaped lightly from the boat to the dock. “I see you have heard of our coming. We left H’ran Go-jao quiet and secure.”

“You have brought mortals,” said the red-haired Sitha, his arms crossed on his chest. Hearing the harshness in his words, Morgan thought that this man and Yeja’aro had more in common than just the color of their hair, their thin, prominent noses, and their high brows. Could this one be Yeja’aro’s brother? Father? Morgan had already learned from quiet conversation with Count Eolair that it was nearly impossible to guess a Sitha’s age.

Aditu helped Eolair from the boat to the dock, then stepped across herself, nimble as a squirrel leaping from one thin branch to another. The other Sithi followed, but did not move forward to greet or mingle with those on the dock. Morgan wondered what that meant. Something invisible seemed to hang between them, as if these two groups, all but identical to Morgan’s eyes, were somehow from quite different tribes.

Jiriki turned to Morgan and Eolair. “S’hue Khendraja’aro is our mother’s brother.”

“More importantly,” said Khendraja’aro, “I am the Protector of the Zida’ya.”

Now that he was closer, Morgan could see that the protector’s face was scarred. Something had cut him from the left edge of his mouth up almost to his cheekbone, and it had not healed well. Not only did the scar give him a persistent and disturbing half-smile, but at the top end it pulled his eyelid down into a squint.

“We have news, Khendraja’aro,” said Aditu.

The red-haired Sitha raised his hand. “And this news meant you thought it appropriate to bring mortals here? To me?”

“We did what—” was all Jiriki had a chance to say before Khendraja’aro interrupted him, taking a step toward Count Eolair.

“Know that it is only the old alliance between my people and yours, Hernystirman, that prevents me from killing you both on the spot.” His voice was not loud, but something hard in it carried right to Morgan’s ear, like a shout. “As it is, honor demands that you two be allowed to leave this place. But that is all. Whatever knowledge you seek, whatever bargain you hope for, it is denied before you even ask. Now go, leave this forest now, or even the old, hallowed memory of your noble Sinnach and the battle of Ereb Irigú, when our people fought together, will not save your miserable lives.”

49 Blood as Black as Night

Jarnulf and the Hikeda’ya had climbed well beyond Urmsheim’s broad skirts, but although they had been pulling themselves upward for days now, until even the tallest of the nearby peaks lay below them, the bulk of the great mountain still towered high above.

“We shall have to go roped together soon,” he said as they rested at the end of a hard day’s labor, deep in a vertical crevice in the rocky mountain face.

“I decide what we do or do not do,” Makho told him. The wounds the Norn chieftain had received at the hands of the Skalijar had made him even colder and more unpleasant. Jarnulf did not have the strength for an argument, though or even for a shrug. For the hundredth time, he wished he could have encountered the chieftain alone in the wilderness, so that he could have treated with the cold-eyed murderer as he deserved. He had been traveling with the Hikeda’ya so long now that sometimes he actually forgot what they had done to him, how much he loathed them all.

The crevice where they sheltered was deep enough that Jarnulf actually had room to lie down. He had long believed himself all but impervious to heights and cold, but was now wishing that he could just stay here in this place and never move again. His legs and arms throbbed from the day’s effort so that he did not think he could fall asleep, and he knew that at first light their climb would begin again. The only small solace was that Makho and the other Hikeda’ya had agreed it would be safer to climb in daylight, since there was little fear of their mission being discovered now that they had traveled so far above the world.

Aching and exhausted, Jarnulf himself no longer had any true idea of what he was doing here. His great goal, his sworn purpose, had not changed, but this seemed more and more like an almost ridiculously bad way to go about achieving it.

I should have stuck to killing them off in ones and twos. Not only did it give me a certain pleasure, but I also had a lifelong vocation. Now I have risked everything on a single throw of the dice, all or nothing. Father would not have approved.

But was that true? Father had been cautious by nature, but he had also often said, “God does not lean down to give us His hand, whatever the Church may say. He waits for us to climb as close as we can to Him first.” Certainly Jarnulf was doing as much climbing as even God could wish, but the rest of his motivations had become obscure to him, lost in the day-to-day ordinariness of traveling, even traveling with the hated Hikeda’ya. And there was Nezeru . . .

What was it about the halfblood woman that puzzled and fascinated him so? It was nothing so simple as attraction, he had told himself many times—his devotion to God and his loathing of her kind assured him of that. But he had come to care about her in some way he did not completely understand, perhaps because he saw in her unthinking slogans and stunted emotions another victim of Hikeda’ya slavery. Or perhaps because she was young he could still sense something of what she could be, before the cold, cruel ways of Nakkiga froze her forever. Whatever the case, Jarnulf could not deny the truth of his feelings. In moments of daydream he even imagined sparing her alone, out of all of them, and bringing her into the hands of a loving God—something she had never known and, without the intercession of Jarnulf White Hand, would never glimpse.