“Wait a moment, Lukl.” The second rider, a man in a black cloak, with long black hair that blew in the wind, had been listening from the back of his horse. Now he dismounted and came over to where the others were standing. He was taller than his companion, and he walked with a limp that made his body twist slightly as he moved. He stooped and gave a swift look at Nora’s face, and then turned to the other man. “She’s human, this one. She’s not one of them.”
“Human?” The other man, the one called Lukl, looked disbelieving. “Where did she come from?”
The second man shrugged and looked to Nora. “Where are you from?”
She had to stop and think. “New Jersey,” she said tentatively.
Lukl shook his head impatiently. “New Jersey?” He pronounced it
The tall man in black looked thoughtful. He had a lined, battered-looking face—it came as a shock, Nora thought, to see people who looked old and ugly or had an injury like the one-eyed man’s. Everyone in Ilissa’s circle was young and beautiful. “What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Nora.” Less confidently: “Nora Fischer.”
“Nora is your given name?” he asked, and she nodded. “Are you living with Ilissa now?” the other man asked. She nodded again. “How long have you been there, Mistress Nora?”
She could not say, exactly. “A little while.” To impress them, she added: “I’m going to marry Ilissa’s son. They both must be very worried about me by now. You should let me go.”
“You’re going to marry Ilissa’s son,” the tall man repeated, curling one side of his mouth. “Raclin.”
“Yes.” She tried to return his smile, if it was a smile. “Raclin.”
The tall man turned to his companion. “Well, it’s clear enough what’s going on.”
Lukl nodded. “She’s found another wench to breed her cub to. I wonder where the cold hell she got this one.”
“You haven’t lost any women from your villages?”
“I would have heard about it,” he said, shaking his head. “There was that girl from Orimist village who disappeared last summer. But then we heard that she was living in Bruekl market town with a cavalry officer.
“Anyway, you can tell from her speech that this one isn’t from anywhere nearby,” he continued, gesturing at Nora. “Now Jarsey. That could be the other side of the world.”
The tall man grunted deep in his throat and looked back at Nora. “When does this marriage take place?” he asked.
“It’s—um, soon,” Nora said.
Lukl sighed and rubbed his chin. “Well, I don’t see why we should keep her,” he said to the other man. “It’s one thing to work over one of their females and send her back. It’s another thing to take Ilissa’s prospective daughter-in-law with us. That’s tossing the rock in the beehive.”
Frowning, the other man said: “What if he gets an heir on her?”
“They’ve tried before, and nothing. And it would take years for them to multiply.”
“If they did, you’d have far worse problems than a few lost cattle.”
“That may be, but if we keep her, Ilissa and her people will be swarming out of their lands and into mine in a day’s time. This girl’s a tempting little thing, but I’m not prepared for a war just now.”
“You’d have my assistance, of course.”
“Yes, I know.” Lukl folded his arms across his breastplate. “And I’m grateful for your help today and every other time you’ve come. But no, I won’t risk it. Let the Now Jarsians come rescue their own girl. She wants to go back to her damnable bridegroom, anyway. You heard her.”
“I doubt she understands the reality of her situation.”
“They never do,” Lukl said with a shake of his head.
The tall man wheeled around and came back over to Nora. Taking hold of her chin and tipping it up, he looked at her steadily for a long minute. His eyes, meeting hers, were pale as ice water; Nora wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Still holding her chin, he pulled her head from side to side, glancing into each of her ears, and then pushed her head up and looked quickly into her nostrils, too. It was like being examined by a doctor, but there was something disturbing about it, too, as though he were seeing things that no doctor could see. Taking off his right glove, he touched his finger to her temple and held it there until Nora suddenly had to close her eyes, the light was so bright. Nodding as if satisfied, he removed his finger, and Nora could see again.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded, still squinting.
“How many legs does a horse have, Mistress Nora?” he asked.
“What?” she said, incredulous.
“A horse. Like those horses over there,” he said, with a jerk of his head.
She spat out the answer. “Four.”
“What color is your dress?”
Nora looked down at her skirt. “Blue.”
“How many legs does a horse have?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it when she realized that there was nothing to come out. “I don’t know,” she said finally.
“How many legs does a horse have?”
Nora looked over at the horses, who were standing side by side, their reins held by the youngest of the soldiers. “I don’t know.”
“How do you feel now, Mistress Nora?”
She felt helpless and scared, and any minute now she might burst into tears, but she was trying her hardest not to let these men see that. “I’m cold, I’m very cold,” she said as loudly and fiercely as she could. “Why is it so cold? It’s summer.”
The tall man fixed her with his nearly colorless eyes. “It’s cold because it’s the middle of winter. The eighth day of the second month, to be exact. So you want to go back to Ilissa and your fiance?”
“Yes.
“Do you realize that you have several very powerful enchantments on yourself? That your mind and body— and your heart,” he said, raising one black eyebrow, “have all been reshaped and rearranged and adapted to someone else’s liking? I discern at least four major spells on you strong enough to bind a regiment, plus a half- dozen smaller ones—which are probably just to make you sit up straighter or to turn your eyes a different color or whatever happened to strike Ilissa’s fancy.”
“That’s absurd! What are you talking about? I feel fine. Except a minute ago, when you confused me somehow. I don’t know what you did to me, but if I’m under any kind of spell, you must have put it there.
“Of course, there’s no such thing as magic spells, anyway,” she added.
The tall man smiled, his mouth as taut as a wire. “I have put no spells on you, other than performing a few simple tests for enchantment. I have no idea, Mistress Nora, what manner of person you were before you were put under these spells, but if you’re a girl of any cleverness whatsoever, you might wonder why people who profess to be your friends would subject you to their magic—and so much of it.”
Nora shook her head. “I feel fine,” she said again. “Nothing’s wrong with me. In fact, I feel better and happier than I ever have been in my entire life.”
“That’s what Ilissa wants you to think. But that much magic is dangerous. Eventually it will wreck your health, or drive you out of your mind, or both.” He paused for a moment, watching her narrowly. “And your prospective husband—”
“What about him?” said Nora.
“How much do you know about him?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s usually a good idea to know more about the man that you’re going to marry than that he has a handsome face and a charming manner.”
“Raclin is none of your business.” Obviously he knew something of Raclin, even if only by repute, but these insinuations were stupidly misguided. She and Raclin had a bond that couldn’t be explained to a rude, prying stranger or put into words at all. There are things that you know about a person as soon as you look into his eyes or touch his hand, and what more do you really need to know? she thought.
Deep inside her mind, another thought stirred feebly.
