Wizard and Glass

horse was such a beauty, perhaps because the horse was a stranger .. .

Perhaps because the horse's owner is a stranger, she thought, and fair.

That was nonsense, of course . . . and potentially dangerous nonsense. Yet it was also true. He was fair.

As she opened the poncho and spread it over her legs, Dearborn began to whistle. And she realized, with a mixture of surprise and superstitious fear, what the tune was: 'Careless Love.' The very lay she had been singing on her way up to Rhea's hut.

Mayhap it's ka, girl, her father's voice whispered.

No such thing, she thought right back at him. I'llnot see ka in every passing wind and shadow, like the old ladies who gather in Green Heart of a summer's evening. It's an old tune: everyone knows it.

Mayhap better if you're right. Pat Delgado's voice returned. For if it's ka, it 'II come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than my da's barn stood before the cyclone when it came.

Not ka; she would not be seduced by the dark and the shadows and the grim shapes of the oil derricks into believing it was. Not ka but only a chance meeting with a nice young man on the lonely road back to town.

'I've made myself decent,' she said in a dry voice that didn't sound much like her own. 'Ye may turn back if you like, Mr. Dearborn.'

He did turn and gazed at her. For a moment he said nothing, but she could see the look in his eyes well enough to know that he found her fair as well. And although this disquieted her—perhaps because of what he'd been whistling—she was also glad. Then he said, 'You look well up there. You sit well.'

'And I shall have horses of my own to sit before long,' she said. Now the questions will come, she thought.

But he only nodded, as though he had known this about her already, and began to walk toward town again. Feeling a little disappointed and not knowing exactly why, she clucked sidemouth at Rusher and twitched her knees at him. He got moving, catching up with his master, who gave Rusher's muzzle a companionable little caress.

'What do they call that place yonder?' he asked, pointing at the derricks.

'The oil patch? Citgo.'

'Some of the derricks still pump?'

'Aye, and no way to stop them. Not that anyone still knows.'

'Oh,' he said, and that was all—just oh. But he left his place by Rusher's head for a moment when they came to the weedy track leading into Citgo, walking across to look at the old disused guard-hut. In her childhood there had been a sign on it reading authorized personnel only, but it had blown away in some windstorm or other. Will Dearborn had his look and then came ambling back to the horse, boots puffing up summer dust, easy in his new clothes.

They went toward town, a young walking man in a flat-crowned hat, a young riding woman with a poncho spread over her lap and legs. The starlight rained down on them as it has on young men and women since time's first hour, and once she looked up and saw a meteor flash overhead—a brief and brilliant orange streak across the vault of heaven. Susan thought to wish on it, and then, with something like panic, realized she had no idea what to wish for. None at all.

4

She kept her own silence until they were a mile or so from town, and then asked the question which had been on her mind. She had planned to ask hers after he had begun asking his, and it irked her to be the one to break the silence, but in the end her curiosity was too much.

'Where do ye come from, Mr. Dearborn, and what brings ye to our little bit o' Mid-World … if ye don't mind me asking?'

'Not at all,' he said, looking up at her with a smile. 'I'm glad to talk and was only trying to think how to begin. Talk's not a specialty of mine.' Then what is. Will Dearborn? she wondered. Yes, she wondered very much, for in adjusting her position on the saddle, she had put her hand on the rolled blanket behind . . . and had touched something hidden inside that blanket. Something that felt like a gun. It didn't have to be, of course, but she remembered the way his hands had dropped instinctively toward his belt when she had cried out in surprise.

'I come from the In-World. I've an idea you probably guessed that much on your own. We have our own way of talking.'

'Aye. Which Barony is yer home, might I ask?'

'New Canaan.'

She felt a flash of real excitement at that. New Canaan! Center of the Affiliation! That did not mean all it once had, of course, but still—

'Not Gilead?' she asked, detesting the hint of a girlish gush she heard in her voice. And more than just a hint, mayhap.

'No,' he said with a laugh. 'Nothing so grand as Gilead. Only Hemphill, a village forty or so wheels west of there. Smaller than Hambry, I wot.'

Wheels, she thought, marvelling at the archaism. He said wheels.

'And what brings ye to Hambry, then? May ye tell?'

'Why not? I've come with two of my friends, Mr. Richard Stock-worth of Pennilton, New Canaan, and Mr. Arthur Heath, a hilarious young man who actually does come from Gilead. We're here at the order of the Affiliation, and have come as counters.'

'Counters of what?'

'Counters of anything and everything which may aid the Affiliation in the coming years,' he said, and she heard no lightness in his voice now. ' The business with the Good Man has grown serious.'

'Has it? We hear little real news this far to the south and east of the hub.'

He nodded. 'The Barony's distance from the hub is the chief reason we're here. Mejis has been ever loyal to the Affiliation, and if supplies need to be drawn from this part of the Outers, they'll be sent. The question that needs answering is how much the Affiliation can count on.'

'How much of what?'

'Yes,' he agreed, as if she'd made a statement instead of asking a question. 'And how much of what.'

'Ye speak as though the Good Man were a real threat. He's just a bandit, surely, frosting his thefts and murders with talk of 'democracy' and 'equality'?'

Dearborn shrugged, and she thought for a moment that would be his only comment on the matter, but then he said, reluctantly: ' 'Twas once so, perhaps. Times have changed. At some point the bandit became a general, and now the general would become a ruler in the name of the people.' He paused, then added gravely, 'The Northern and West'rd Baronies are in flames, lady.'

'But those are thousands of miles away, surely!' This talk was upsetting, and yet strangely exciting, too. Mostly it seemed exotic, after the pokey all-days-the-same world of Hambry, where someone's dry well was good for three days of animated conversation.

'Yes,' he said. Not aye but yes— the sound was both