'How did you -- '
He silenced her with a wave of his hand.
'I read what is written for me to see, nothing more,' he replied, rising with the same swift grace he had shown before. 'Remember what I have read, both of you. As you are two-made-one, so your task will be one. First the binding, then the finding. For the hearth, for the meal, my thanks. For the future, my blessing. Lady light thy road -- '
And as abruptly as he had appeared, he was gone.
Kethry started to say something, but the odd look of puzzlement on Tarma's face stopped her.
'Well,' she said at last, 'I have only one thing to say. I've passed through this forest twenty times, at least. In all that time, I must have met Hawkbrothers ten out of the twenty, and that was extraordinary. But this -- ' she shook her head. 'That's more words at once from one of them than any of my people has ever reported before. Either we much impressed him -- '
'Or?'
'Or,' she smiled crookedly, 'We are in deep trouble.'
* * *
Kethry wasn't quite sure what it was that woke her; the cry of a bird, perhaps; or one of the riding beasts waking out of a dream with a snort, and so waking her in turn.
The air was full of gray mist that hung at waist height above the needle-strewn forest floor. It glowed in the dim blue light that signaled dawn, and the treetops were lost beyond thought within it. It was chill and thick in the back of her throat; she felt almost as if she were drinking it rather than breathing it.
The fire was carefully banked coals; it was Tarma's watch. Kethry sighed and prepared to go back to another hour of sleep -- then stiffened. There were no sounds beyond what she and the two saddlebeasts were making. Tarma was gone.
Then, muffled by the fog, came the sound of blade on blade; unmistakable if heard once. And Kethry had heard that peculiar shing more times than she cared to think.
Kethry had lain down fully-clothed against the damp; now she sprang to her feet, seizing her blade as she rose. Barefooted, she followed the sound through the echoing trunks, doing her own best to make no sound.
For why, if this had been an attack, had Tarma not awakened her? An ambush then? But why hadn't Tarma called out to her? Why wasn't she calling for help now ? What of the Hawkbrothers that were supposed to be watching out for them?
She slipped around tree trunks, the thick carpet of needles soft beneath her feet, following the noise of metal scissoring and clashing. Away from the little cup where they had camped the fog began to wisp and rise, winding around the trunks in woolly festoons, though still thick as a storm cloud an arm's length above her head. The sounds of blades came clearer now, and she began using the tree trunks to hide behind as she crept up upon the scene of conflict.
She rounded yet another tree, and shrank again behind it; the fog had deceived her, and she had almost stumbled into the midst of combat.
The fog ringed this place, moving as if alive, a thick tendril of it winding out, now and again, to interpose itself between Tarma and her foe. It glowed -- it glowed with more than the predawn light. To mage-sight it glowed with power, power bright and pure, power strong, true, and -- strange. It was out of her experience -- and it barred her from the charmed circle where the combatants fenced.
Tarma's eyes were bright with utter concentration, her face expressionless as a sheet of polished marble. Kethry had never seen her quite like this, except when in the half-trance she induced when practicing or meditating. She was using both sword and dagger to defend herself --
Against another Shin'a'in.
This man was unmistakably of Tarma's race. The tawny gold skin of hands and what little Kethry could see of his face showed his kinship to her. So did the strands of raven hair that had been bound out of his face by an equally black headband, and ice-blue eyes that glinted above his veil.
For he was veiled; this was something Tarma never had worn for as long as Kethry had known her. Kethry hadn't even known till this moment that a veil could be part of a Shin'a'in costume, but the man's face was obscured by one, and it did not have the feeling of a makeshift. He was veiled and garbed entirely in black, the black Tarma had worn when on the trail of those who had slaughtered her Clan. Black was for blood-feud -- but Tarma had sworn that there was never blood-feud between Shin'a'in and Shin'a'in. And black was for Kal'enedral -- three times barred from internecine strife.
