She had jewels. The Old Dark Man had left jewels in the Old Dark House. Her father had given her jewels. Mirami had many and wore many; she often glittered, so Alicia thought, like a parade horse. Though most of the women at court would consider going without jewels to be an admission of failure, Alicia had observed something interesting about gems. Gems were sexually enticing only to women—or boys—who were being bought and paid for. When a man saw gems on a woman, he knew the woman could be or had been bought—or had merely been well paid when she was younger, as Mirami had been. Women really wore gems in order to impress other women.
Alicia did not care how other women regarded her. She did not want the king to look at her jewels. Alicia preferred that the king should look at the skin of her bosom, delicately rouged; at the depths of her eyes, enlarged and enhanced; at her willow-slender waist, the delicacy of her hands and ankles. She would not blind him with the hard glint of gems attesting to former owners or masters. No. No jewels. She would definitely make him look elsewhere.
If Precious Wind had used the ul xaolat, the thing master, to summon a transporter, to move herself, she could have gone from one place to another in an instant. It was one of the things the device could do, allowing its holder to escape almost any danger. One had to have a clear mental picture of where one wanted to go, however, and that place had to be within a half a day’s travel by ordinary means. She could not use it to go to Tingawa or to Woldsgard unless she could concentrate on a chain of locations in between. It would be impossible to use the device to cross an ocean! One wave looked like every other wave. She could not even use the device to get to Merhaven, for the terrain ahead was totally unfamiliar to her. Besides, she did not intend to leave the wolf pack behind.
All of which did not mean the device was useless! The ul xaolat could also be used to summon a hunter, which meant the time normally used for hunting could be used for travel. Each morning of their journey she had placed one finger on the device in her pocket and spoke to the air, directing the ul xaolat to summon the hunter and have it find a legitimate prey animal—it would not attack anything that looked even remotely human—and leave it where she and the pack would arrive by the time dusk fell.
Each day she had driven until the sun went down, stopping only once to rest and water the horses. As dusk fell this evening, as on every other, she and her pack came upon their evening meal lying near the road. Last night had been deer. Tonight it was pig. She pulled the carriage off the road and called to the wolves. The hunter stood at the edge of the trees, visible only as a wavering of the air. If one knew what one was looking at, one could make out the evasive shimmer of manipulating talons and penetrating lances. One might see a faint haze surrounding it when it lifted into the air and went off on whatever hunt had been ordered. Mostly, it went totally unnoticed, but the wolves knew it was there. She walked among them, soothing them. Precious Wind wanted the wolves to recognize the servants of the ul xaolat—the hunter, the carrier, the transporter—and to know these strange things belonged to her, that they would not, could not, harm the wolves.
While they feasted, she unharnessed the horses and gave them their evening oats. The wolves still made them too nervous to eat. They shifted and swiveled on their picket lines until the wolves had eaten their fill and she had sent the pack away.
For some things, horse senses were keener than those of mankind. For some things, wolf senses were keener than those of mankind. A man would not notice the smell of a wolf pack; a man would not notice the slight glimmer of the hunter, except for one man perhaps, one man on this side of the sea.
As a child, Mirami had lived in the Old Dark House, supposedly with the Old Dark Man. From what was said about him, he may well have known about such ancient devices. However, the Old Dark Man had disappeared before Mirami left the place, and Mirami was not known to have used any ancient device. However, Alicia had used them. She had used an ancient device to kill the princess. That fact had caused much puzzlement and argument in Tingawa. How had she obtained it? How had she learned to use it? They were forced to assume Alicia had found the thing and its instructions in the Old Dark House. However she had found and learned how to use the other devices, Alicia’s usual mode of travel proved she had not used a thing master. Even if she had, the ul xaolat would not have killed humans for her, and Alicia was not interested in a weapon she could not turn upon humans.
The problem of Alicia deferred, the problem of wolf feeding solved to her satisfaction, she had turned to another. Day after day she had ruminated over it: what was she to do about Bear? The problem had been bothering her since the first evidence of his betrayal, back at the abbey. She would not have thought him capable of dishonor, even impatient as he was to get home to Tingawa. Considering everything Precious Wind had learned and now suspected about Alicia, Duchess of Altamont, however, it was possible his betrayal had been forced upon him. In that case, killing him would be an injustice. If the woman could use genetic material to make mirrors, to send killing clouds, she could
