the great hall, and torchlighting was hours away.
'What happened?' he croaked. He discovered he was lying in the rushes on the floor. When he tried to sit up, he felt as if he'd forgotten how to use half his muscles.
Among the faces peering down at him was Rihwin's. 'Would that you could tell us, lord Gerin,' the southerner answered. 'You fell asleep, or perhaps your spirit left your body-however you would have it-in the middle of the spell you were using. We've tried from that time to this to rouse you, but to no avail till now.'
'Aye, that's the way of it,' Drago agreed. 'We didn't know what in the five hells to do next-stick your foot in the fire, maybe.'
'I'm glad it didn't come to that,' Gerin said. From Rihwin, the suggestion might have been a joke. Drago, though, had neither the wit nor the temperament for jokes. When he said something, he meant it.
That odd, unstrung feeling was fading. Gerin managed to get to his feet. Van, ever practical, gave him a jack of ale. 'It's not enchanted, Captain, but it's pretty good,' he said.
Gerin gulped down half the jack before he choked and spluttered. ' That's it,' he said. 'That's what went wrong. This time, the chap who wrote the grimoire was smarter than I am. He warned that Baivers' influence on the spell was soporific, and that's just what he meant.'
'The Elabonian pantheon is so dismayingly stodgy,' Rihwin said. Like many of his educated countrymen, he preferred the Sithonian gods to those native to Elabon.
But Van said, 'Honh! Remember how much joy you had of Mavrix.' Rihwin flinched but was honest enough with himself to nod, acknowledging the justice of the hit.
'Never mind any of that,' Gerin said; his wits were beginning to work more clearly again, and his body to seem as if it might be fully answerable to him after all. 'I've learned something from this escapade, which may in the long run make it worthwhile.'
'What's that?' Van asked, a beat ahead of the rest.
'That whatever magic I can do isn't going to let me find my son. And find him I will.' Gerin counted stubbornness a virtue. If you kept hitting at a problem, sooner or later it was likely to fall down. He went on, 'Using ale for wine in the spell might have knocked me out, but, by Dyaus, there are eyes that never sleep.'
'Not by Dyaus,' Drago said. 'By Biton, you mean, or do I mistake you?'
'No, you have the right of it,' Gerin said. 'I'll fare forth to the Sibyl at Ikos. Her verse will tell me what I need to know.' He hesitated, then added, 'If I can understand it, of course.'
III
After the Empire of Elabon conquered the land between the High Kirs and the Niffet, the Elabonians pushed an all-weather highway, the Elabon Way, north from the town of Cassat to the river so they would always be able to move troops against invaders or rebels.
No large numbers of imperial troops had been seen in the northlands for generations before Elabon severed itself from its province north of the Kirs, but the highway remained: far and away the best land link the northlands boasted. Even barons who did little else maintained the stretch of the Elabon Way that ran through their territory: if for no other reason than to make sure they collected tolls from travelers along the road.
'Hard on the horses' hooves,' Van remarked as the wagon rumbled onto the flag-paved roadbed.
'So it is,' Gerin said. 'Nothing to be done about it, though, unless you want to throw away the road whenever it rains for more than two days straight. Getting a wagon through hub-deep mud isn't much fun.'
'Can't argue with that,' Van agreed. 'Still, we don't want the animals lamed or stonebruised, either.'
'No. Well, we won't push them hard, not when it's a five days' run to Ikos,' Gerin said. 'As a matter of fact, the horses aren't what worries me most.'
'You always have something to worry about-you'd be worried if you didn't,' Van said. 'What is it this time?'
'Ricolf the Red's would be a logical place to stop for the third night,' the Fox answered. 'Or it would have been the logical place-' His voice trailed away.
'-if Ricolf weren't Elise's father. If Elise hadn't up and left you,' Van finished for him. 'Aye, that does complicate your life, doesn't it?'
'You might say so,' Gerin agreed dryly. 'Ricolf's not my vassal. When Elise was with me, there seemed no need, and afterwards I hadn't the crust to ask it of him. Nor has he ever sought my protection; he's done well enough on his own. When Elise was with me, I had a claim on his keep once he died. Now that she's gone, I suppose Duren is the rightful heir: she's Ricolf's only legitimate child, and none of his bastard sons lived.'
'Which means Duren is Ricolf's only grandson, too,' Van said. 'He' ll need to know about the boy disappearing. Or let me put it another way-he'd have cause to quarrel with you if you rode by without saying so much as a word.'
Gerin sighed. 'I hadn't thought about it quite like that, but I fear you're right. I'm his guest-friend from years gone by, but it'll be bloody awkward just the same. He thinks Elise never would have run off if I'd done… Dyaus, if I'd known what I should have done, I'd have done it. He won't think better of me for letting Duren be kidnapped, either.'
'Captain, you feel bad enough about that all by yourself-you won't hardly notice anyone else piling on a little more.'
'Only you would think of making me feel better by reminding me how bad I feel now.' The method was, Gerin admitted to himself, nicely calculated to suit his own gloomy nature.
Sitting beside him on the wagon's bench, Van stretched and looked about with an almost childlike delight. 'Good to be out on the road again,' he said. 'Fox Keep's all very well, but I like having new things to see every minute or every bend in the road-not that the Elabon Way had many bends in it, but you take my meaning.'
'So I do.' The Fox looked eastward. Quick-moving Tiwaz, now a day past first quarter, had raced close to Nothos, whose pale gibbous disk was just rising over the tree-covered hills. He shook his head. Just as Tiwaz gained on Nothos, so troubles seemed to gain on him with every day that passed, and his own pace was too slow to escape them.
'There's a pleasant thought,' Van said when he spoke his conceit aloud. 'Tell you what, Fox: instead of sleeping in the open tonight, what say we rest at the next serf village we come upon? They'll have ale there, and you'll be better for drinking yourself drunk and starting off tomorrow with a head that thumps like a drum. Then at least you'll know what ails you.'
'I know what ails me now,' Gerin said: 'Duren's missing. What I don't know is what to do about it, and that eats at me as much as his being gone.' Nevertheless, he went on reflectively, 'Headman at the next village south is Tervagant Beekeeper. His ale doesn't have the worst name in the lands I hold.'
Van slapped him on the back, nearly hard enough to tumble him out of the wagon. 'The very thing. Trust me, Captain, you'll be better for a good carouse.'
'That's what Rihwin thought, and he ended up with his robe round his ears and his pecker flapping in the breeze.'
Even so, the Fox reined in when they rolled up to Tervagant's village. The headman, a nervous little fellow who kept kneading the front of his tunic with both hands as if it were bread dough, greeted the arrival of his overlord with ill-concealed alarm. 'W-what brings you so far south, l-lord prince?' he asked.
'My son's been stolen,' Gerin answered flatly. Tervagant's eyes widened. The news, the Fox saw, had not reached the village till this moment. He set it forth for the headman and the crowd of listenersmostly women and children, for the men still labored in the fields-who gathered round the wagon.
'Lord prince, I pray the gods give you back your boy,' Tervagant said. Everyone else echoed his words; noble and peasant shared the anguish a missing child brought. The headman's hands fell away from his tunic. His face, which had been pasty, gained color. Another one who's glad I'm not looking into his affairs, Gerin thought. He wondered just how many village headmen had little schemes of their own in play. One of these days, he'd have to try to find out.
Not today, though. Tervagant ducked into his hut, came out with a ram's-horn trumpet. He glanced at Gerin for permission before he raised it to his lips. The Fox nodded. Tervagant blew a long, unmusical blast. Some of
