undressing.
The freshening breeze stabbed into them like daggers of ice; the guards on the bare stone battlements of Tabbrar Castle drew their weathercloaks more tightly around their shoulders, cursed softly, and started tramping toward each other, the better to keep warm.
'Any marauding dragons your end?'
'Not just now. Yours?'
'Not a one. It's the invading hosts of lorn that's scared them off, that's what it is. Lorn painted pink, dancing with each other.'
'Lorn? I dream of seeing a few lorn. Just to pass the time. Watching the castle wall crumble away with age gets old after a time. If you take my meaning.'
'I do, Jorduth. Indeed I do.' The older guard leaned on a lichen-spattered merlon and peered over the lip of the rampart, looking out at the moon-drenched and utterly empty road below, winding up out of Arvale past the castle walls and then over the lip of the stone ridge, to begin the long descent into the kingdom of Galath.
Jorduth rested his elbows in the next embrasure, stared down at the same serene expanse of road, and said slowly, 'The Dooms alone know who Lord Tharlark thinks will come galloping up here at this time of night-in either direction. Fair freeze your bones off, to be out riding just now.' He lifted his head to stare at old Blaurin, more to goad an answer out of the veteran than for any other reason.
Blaurin shrugged and spat thoughtfully over the edge with the easy aim of long, long practice. They both paused to watch his offering land.
The cold almost seared his hand. Rod snatched it away from the wall, turned to Taeauna, and shook his head. 'Wherever my 'right place' is, this isn't it. I knew there was a castle here, but come to think of it, I don't remember having ever heard of Tabbrar Castle before. It must be Holdoncorp work.'
The Aumrarr shook her head. 'Older. Far older.' She drew the dungeon key back out of her scabbard again. 'Come. Some journeying yet awaits us, this night.'
Rod wearily followed her back into the secret passage. As they left the dungeons, Taeauna carefully locked up behind them again.
Blaurin's spittle landed with a
'Seems to me,' he ventured, 'that as long as we watch, no one will come. The moment we nod off, or go down off the walls, that's as when smugglers will come through the vale and down into Galath, or an army will come up out of Galath.'
'The latest noble fleeing the Mad King. They'll want to get far and fast, not tarry here.'
'Oh? If all that dooms them are his orders, so all as hunts them-half-hearted, like-will be other nobles. Why not stop here, one boot over the border out of Galath? Only a noble house that has a feud going with whoever took this castle would bother to break blades outside the king's writ.'
'Well, isn't that most of them? I mean, aren't they all feuding with each other, every last one of them?'
Blaurin shook his head. 'Not anymore. The old families, with all their chests full of good gold broons and blood-kin beyond counting, are all dead or fled; they were the ones as saw feuds as daily entertainment. All that's left now are the younger houses, and a few survivors.'
Grimacing against the cold, Blaurin lurched upright and started walking again. 'Not that I 'spect we'll be seeing any armies this night, nor slave-takers or the like, going either way.'
'Oh? Why not?'
Blaurin pointed down into Galath. By night, to guards on the wall, it was just the vast darkness beyond the reach of the huge, chain-hung castle lanterns in one direction, as opposed to the lesser darkness of Arvale in the other direction.
'You can't see them now, but earlier on I marked six banners at the Galath guardpost. Double strength tonight, for some reason. Usually it's the king thinking some poor hunted fool is going to try to crawl past the guards and escape his clutches. There's not a silent cat as will manage to slip in or out of the Realm of the Rothryns this night.'
Rod yawned and stumbled again.
'God, Taeauna, if it wasn't so damned cold, I'd have fallen asleep walking an hour ago!'
'Quite likely.'
Jesus, she sounded more like a primly disapproving schoolteacher than ever.
A tireless, deadly, magnificently beautiful schoolteacher who had scrubbed Rod's backside, as firmly and briskly as if he'd been a pig or a pony she didn't think much of. And she'd been completely unconcerned about her nakedness while his face was flaming.
She went on into the darkness, drawn sword in hand, ducking and weaving among the low branches and brambles that kept whipping across Rod's face as if she really could see them. The only time she'd slowed was when he'd really torn his face open, and she had turned to lick and suck it distractingly. She wasn't slowing now.
'Taeauna, where are we going?'
'Into Galath. Whose folk aren't deaf, so be still!'
'Are we going to walk all night?'
'If we must. Now shut up, lord.'
That at least made Rod snort in wry amusement. Ah, yes, always address the Lord Archwizard of the world politely, after you've snapped an order at him.
He managed to keep silent for most of the way down a difficult hillside of rocks and thorny vines and trees whose gnarled, many-jointed branches grew damnably low to the ground, before he fell down an unseen drop about the length of his own legs to land bruisingly on a jutting rock.
'Where are we heading, anyway? Galath, yes, but where in Galath?'
Taeauna whirled around so swiftly that he almost shrieked, her sword-tip glinting back moonlight right beside his ear.
'Rod Everlar,' she said softly, leaning forward to fix him with solemn eyes from less than a hand-length away, 'if I answer you now, will you promise-and keep your promise, by the Dooms! — to not speak again until I bid you to? We are very close to being discovered, now, and slain out of hand.'
Rod swallowed. 'I promise,' he whispered, so softly that he could barely hear himself.
Taeauna nodded approvingly, leaned even closer, and breathed into his ear, 'A particular haystack.'
'A-?' Rod swallowed the 'what' even before her finger came up to tap him sternly on his lips.
The Aumrarr dropped her hand down his chest to his arm, and trailed down that arm to his wrist, which she pulled on, gently, and led Rod into deep, branch-tangled darkness.
He concentrated on ducking and weaving as best he could, to avoid shattering every branch, and kept his mouth shut, even when Taeauna lost her balance and sat back hard on his shin and the boot below. She patted his knee by way of apology, and towed Rod on into the night, leaving him smiling at nothing and thinking about how he'd been alone and quite happy about it three nights ago, and now couldn't properly recall how he'd never had Taeauna the Aumrarr in his life.
He blinked. He didn't even know her last name. If she even had one. No, he hadn't ever given the Aumrarr surnames, had he?
Or to put it more honestly, he'd never even thought about it.
Quite suddenly, they came out of the woods, and over a low stone wall made up of boulders and smaller stones, all heaped together in an overgrown ridge, and into a field that was like a bright blanket of silver under the moon.
And there, halfway across it, was a haystack.
It was a heap of hay bigger than some of the cottages they'd walked past, leaving Hollowtree. Taeauna took firm hold of Rod's hand, pointed down and gestured until he understood what she was indicating. He was to walk between the rows of whatever crop had been sown here, following her lead.
There was even a ladder waiting for them, leaning against the huge, shaggy mound. Taeauna stopped him, shaped the haystack with her hands, then moved one hand to indicate that the stack was hollowed out like a bowl on its top. Then she mimed sleeping, her head on her hands. Right, they'd sleep up there. Then she pointed at Rod, at the ladder, and then up.
