slings unloaded.
Nonetheless, I did not fancy a long engagement.
As we reined in our horses in front of him, the tall Plainsman set down his weapons and gestured to a dry spot amid the surrounding rocks.
'Dismount, commander,' Shardos muttered to me. 'It's an insult to them if we talk centaur.'
'Centaur?'
'What they call talking downward to them while you're on horseback.'
'How, Shardos?' I asked in exasperation, turning to stare at him across Lily's rump. 'How do you see silent gestures, having no eyes?'
The juggler chuckled.
'Lore, my lad,' he replied. 'Simple Plainsman lore. For the story makes up for the eyes and the senses. It is their way. It is how they have greeted visitors since the Age of Might.'
'If you know so almighty much about Plainsman protocol,' I snapped, 'why don't you conduct this meeting?'
Shardos smiled merrily. 'You might want to dismount, Sir Galen. That is, unless you have another strategy.'
What could I answer? I dismounted and followed the big Plainsman toward the dry spot, where his followers had spread skins for our comfort.
Longwalker-for that was the Plainsman's name-cut an impressive figure. Que-Nara he was, which you could tell, supposedly, by the robe's design, by the feathers of raptors and eagles woven into the tough horsehide.
Not that I knew him from Que-Shu, or Que-Teh, or Que-anything, not until I had asked his tribe and received the answer-in surprisingly fluent Solamnic. I knew only that he was a Plainsman and far north of his customary country. Even with the sudden change in the weather wrought by the rainstorm, Longwalker was dressed too warmly for our balmy country. The smell of horsehide garments unsettled our horses, and as a result, they were leery of the Plainsmen, so Shardos had to tether them to a half-rotten oak that had sprouted, grown, and died unexplainably, all in this hard and merciless terrain.
Then the two of us joined Longwalker on the dry campsite, where his followers moved about quietly and gracefully, building a fire in our midst. The lookout boy came down from the high ground and began to help in the gathering of kindling. A lone woman produced dry grass from nowhere and, striking flint, ignited wood I thought too wet to burn.
For a long time, 1 watched her. It seemed… unusual, a woman in the midst of all this hardship and endurance. I had heard that the Plainsmen were like bandits in this, making no difference between men and women in the tasks and duties and adversity. I thought of Dannelle at Plainswomen's business and for some reason found it hard not to smile.
Then I felt Longwalker's eyes on me, and I looked into the green, unreadable stare of the Plainsmen leader.
He was older than he had seemed from a distance-on the edge of sixty years-but as dark-haired and straight-backed as a man half his age. Angular and lean, he was, as though years of travel and fasting had burned all softness and leisure from him, leaving only what was necessary.
I could imagine him looking through rock and darkness.
Around his neck, he wore animal teeth and claws, the feathers of hawk and falcon and raptor, not to mention some I had trouble naming. About him was the smell of woodsmoke and endless grasslands, and something beyond that-of memory and dream and deep imagining.
What was more, a blue light, almost like corposant fire on the masts of ships at sea, lingered about his shoulders and face, upon the leather pentagons and circles tied to the braids in his hair. It was like an aura, that light, and he looked like a damaged god in an old painting.
All of which made our meeting even more eccentric, more unsettling. I had heard that some of these Plainsmen had one foot in the spirit world to begin with, especially the Que-Nara, and chances were that anyone appointed to lead such a visionary band would be downright at home in the ether.
A faint smile flickered across the face of the Plainsman, then lost itself again in the strange, impassive gaze, which grew suddenly focused and intent, as if Longwalker had been searching for something on the horizon and at last had found it, faint and maybe undefined, but present nonetheless.
I shifted cautiously as his stare settled upon me and softened.
'We met in a night of stones,' he declared quietly, and at once I knew that he was speaking of the opals and the visions. Longwalker's eyes appraised me as though he were sighting me down the long shaft of a nocked arrow.
I glanced at Shardos, who was suddenly poised and alert.
If Longwalker meant what I was sure he meant, if somehow he was friends with those who, pale and unsubstantial, walked through the walls of Castle di Caela and those who had killed Alfric, then the danger was most certainly mine. If I was right, we knew the same ghosts. But he evidently was on first-name basis with the lot of them.
'The stones,' he urged, leaning toward me, his largeness menacing in the deceptive firelight. Instinctively my hand went to my throat, covering the brooch. I had not come this far and lost my eldest brother only to hand these stones to the first Plainsman that reached for them. I saw no Brithelm in this camp, and my price for the stones was my remaining brother's safe return.
Quickly I moved away from Longwalker and stood up, my hand moving rapidly toward my sword. In an instant, the rocks were alive with a dozen Plainsmen, who stood silently about me, bows and slings at the ready, like hunters when the quarry is brought to ground.
'Let him see the stones, Sir Galen,' Shardos advised from his seat by the fire. For a moment, I thought that the worst had happened, that the amiable blind man who had followed me into the camp had turned traitor or coward, siding with the same fiery brigand who had kidnapped my brother in a cruel attempt to gain these very jewels.
'Nonsense, boy!' the juggler snapped, as if he had heard my thoughts. 'Look about you! Do you think that if the man wants your jewelry that a single sword will stop him?
Let him see the stones, I urge you. They will return to you made more powerful by your trust.'
'I've no fondness for mystery at the moment, Shardos,' I replied. 'Especially if I'm about to be stripped of my wherewithal. No, if Longwalker intends to take these stones, he'll have me to reckon with, because the death of one brother and the life of the other are wrapped up in that reckoning.'
'These words are power to me,' Longwalker said, still crouched and staring into the heart of the fire. 'These words are a sign that the stones are in trustworthy hands.'
Flattered, I let my hand uncover the brooch. Longwalker lifted his eyes and regarded the stones from a distance. They seemed to glow under his gaze, as they had in the rainy dark of the woodlands.
'Yes,' the big Plainsman pronounced. 'There are six of them. It may be all Firebrand needs.'
I returned to the fireside, glancing once over my shoulder in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of Ramiro, Dannelle, and Oliver, who waited somewhere in the high foothills. Instead, there was the sun descending, blazing red and obscuring everything westward but the mists of night rising on the nearby lowlands and the play of sun and long shadow. Throughout the bare countryside, the cries of birds rose into the darkening air- birds stunned by the downpour of rain, who took to the wing now, seeking high wind and drier lodging.
I had not realized how late it was. Suddenly I felt cold, vulnerable. I leaned toward the fire, extended my hands to warm them.
'I'm sorry, Longwalker. I'm perilously at sea when it comes to the spiritual. I have no idea who this 'Firebrand' is, or how many stones he needs or what he needs them for. I'm not quite sure what worth these opals are to begin with, but I've seen things in the bottom of them, and I know there's more to them than the adorning of a cape.'
The Plainsman nodded. He smiled faintly, picked up a branch, and stirred the fire. The blackened kindling at the heart of the flame broke at his touch, hurling red sparks and ashes harmlessly into the air.
'You have never seen the bottom of them, Solamnic. For the bottom of them lies with the gods, since the Age of Dreams. So has been the story since that time,' Longwalker said as the boy-the lookout-approached us quietly, handing each of us a cup containing a clear, fiery liquid that made Thorbardin spirits taste like weak tea. I
