Sasha

peel once the fruit was eaten. She couldn't believe it.

Kessligh sat forward on his chair, his expression intense. 'Sasha, think!' he demanded. 'Of all the serrin teachings I've told you, of all the things you know! Broaden your vision, Sasha! The important thing is to stop this damned war from happening! I can do that! In Petrodor!'

'If civil war takes Lenayin,' Sasha said with difficulty, 'countless lives will be lost. Towns like Baerlyn will be destroyed, perhaps Baerlyn itself, and all its people killed. I know enough Lenay history to know what our civil wars look like. You would just abandon them to this fate?'

'Damn fool, you're not listening to me…'

'It'll be too late!' Sasha yelled at him, coming abruptly to her feet. 'You go off to play your power games in the alleys of Petrodor

… there's trouble brewing here now! You may save the serrin, and you may save the Nasi-Keth, but Lenayin shall be ashes! What were your last thirty years here for, if you just run away when Lenayin needs you most? What were your last twelve years with nae for?'

'You are my uma,' Kessligh said simply. The firelight cast his features into rumpled, hard-edged shadow, an animation they could never acquire on their own. 'You must come with me to Petrodor.'

Sasha felt something snap. This betrayal was too much. She could have struck him. 'Damned if I will!' she yelled. 'I promised Krayliss I'd be at Rathynal, and I won't give him free rein in Baen-Tar to cause trouble without me! You go to Petrodor! You go there, and you rot there, with your beloved Nasi-Keth! Me, I'm Lenay, and I'll never abandon my people! Never!'

Eight

'But Daryd!' Rysha complained. 'Mama said we're not allowed beyond the trees!'

Daryd ignored her, as was an elder brother's right, his eyes searching through the forest. Essey's breath plumed in white clouds, brilliant in the golden sunshine that fell through the treetops. Sunlight gleamed on wet trunks and undergrowth, low and bright in the early morning. To the right through the trees rose the Aralya Range-Hadryn lands, and a barrier before the lands of Valhanan. Essey found her way easily enough, nimble hooves picking through the bracken.

'Daryd!' Rysha protested from her seat at his back. 'We'll get in trouble!'

'We've picked all the good stuff from the treeline,' Daryd replied. 'There'll be more growing along the river.'

'But we'll get lost!'

'How can we get lost?' Daryd asked in exasperation. 'The river's just over on the left, the mountains are on the right, how can anyone get lost?'

He'd been feeling very confident of late, ever since he'd bested Salyl Wyden in the Hemys Festival contest. Salyl Wyden had twelve summers and was a bully. He, Daryd, had only ten summers, but he was good with a stanch. The best his age in all Udalyn, his father claimed, with obvious pride. It made Daryd's chest swell to think on it. Perhaps at the Festival of Rass, he could prove it. The Udalyn Valley was long, and many families lived there. Rass was a bigger festival than Hemys and all the valley would attend. Then, surely, he could prove his father's claims. Until then, he would settle for being the best his age in the town of Ymoth beyond the valley mouth. Better than the bully Salyl Wyden, anyhow.

'But Daryd,' Rysha resumed after a thinking pause. Daryd rolled his eyes. 'The Hadryn live this way. I don't want to meet any Hadryn.'

'Look Rysha, I told you. Up ahead is Lake Tullamayne. Lake Tullamayne lies right up against the Aralya Range. There's no way around it on this side. We have scouts there who spy on the Hadryn in case they come across the fields on the other side of the river. They'd have told us if there were Hadryn here, and there aren't. Okay?'

He had his hunting knife at his side and, for a ten-year-old boy, that was as good as a short sword. Essey was his father's horse, but now that he was ten, Daryd's father allowed him to take her over the southern and eastern fields, looking for the various mushrooms and herbs his mother and aunts used in their cooking and medicines. There were farmers all across the fields who would keep an eye on a boy on his horse, so it was not really as dangerous as Daryd liked to imagine. But riding now into the forest toward the lake that marked the eastern-most boundary of Udalyn lands, he could almost imagine himself a full-fledged warrior, riding proudly upon his steed, his braids flowing down his back and his face bearing the ink-marks of Udalyn manhood.

'Oh look!' said Rysha then, removing one hand from his sides to point. 'Butter flowers! Look how big they are… Daryd, I want to pick some, then I can take them home to Mama!'

'We're looking for much more important stuff than butter flowers,' Daryd told her sternly. If only Mama hadn't insisted that he take Rysha with him this morning! He could hardly feel like a true Udalyn warrior with his seven-yearold sister clinging to the back of his saddle, complaining all the way.

'I want to pick some flowers!' Rysha insisted, indignantly. 'If you're going to go into the forest, I'm going to pick some flowers! Or I'll tell Papa where you went!'

Daryd scowled. 'You're such a pain, Rysha.'

'You're a pain!'

The forest and the undergrowth became thicker, so Daryd steered toward the river. Soon enough, the great Yumynis appeared through the trees, wide and broken with rocks, its level low in the late summer.

Daryd rode along the grassy verge above the riverbank. Below, where erosion bit into the earth, a gravelly, rocky bank ran perhaps fifteen strides until the water's edge. Daryd made the spirit sign to his forehead and, behind him, Rysha did the same. The Yumynis was the lifeblood of the Udalyn. It had sustained them in the Catastrophe, a century before, when the Hadryn had tried to kill them all, and nearly succeeded. It had sustained them in the century since, locked in their valley, surrounded by the vilest of enemies. And it would sustain them in the future, as the Udalyn rebuilt their numbers and their weapons, working for the day when all that had been taken from them would be theirs once more. The great spirit of the Yumynis had given birth to the Udalyn countless centuries before, and now it kept them alive in all their struggles.

Soon Daryd found a grassy meadow and dismounted. While Essey grazed happily upon the grass, her tail swishing, Daryd and Rysha looked for herbs and mushrooms. Which was not such an unmanly thing, he assured himself as he peered beneath a large, mossy log for flashes of telltale colour. The wise ones of Saalshen loved herbs and mushrooms also, it was told, and made magical potions from them. The wise ones had not visited the Udalyn since the Catastrophe, but many stories were told of them still. And their disciple, Yuan Kessligh Cronenverdt, had come to the valley, when he was liberating all the north from the Cherrovan warlord Markield- Daryd's grandfather had told him that story many, many times. Kessligh Cronenverdt fought just like the wise ones, and he was the greatest warrior in all Lenayin. He'd even trained one of the princesses of Lenayin to fight like them too, it was said.

Soon, Daryd's hessian bag held a small weight of herbs and fungi. Absorbed in his searching, he suddenly realised that he did not know where Rysha was. He was about to call, but stopped himself. Not that the forest was unsafe-he'd told Rysha the truth about that-but if he was going to become a great warrior, he needed to learn to think like one.

Feeling pleased with himself for thinking of it, Daryd retraced his steps on sodden undergrowth and mossy roots toward the meadow, where he had last seen Rysha. Rysha could be annoying, but she wasn't stupid. She knew not to wander and was usually far more cautious than Daryd was. Even so, Daryd moved at a crouch, scanning through the trees as he'd seen his father and uncles do on a hunt, a hand on the hilt of his knife.

The forest grew lighter as he approached the meadow… and then, he could hear a new sound, above the calling of birds, and the gentle rushing of the river. A deep, distant sound. Like thunder, only steady, not rising or falling. Daryd had never heard anything like it before in his life.

Still creeping, he made his way to the edge of the meadow and peered out. Essey's head was raised, no longer chewing on the grass. Her ears were pricked, her attention turned toward the river. Beyond the fringe of trees where the meadow opened onto the riverbank, Daryd saw a dark mass moving. Atop the dark mass, sunlight glinted on metal. Occasionally a banner rose, flying as it moved. Horses, he realised in shock. The dark mass was