LITMIR.BIZ

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excellent reason for not going straight to the castle. If my uncanny trip from Tarn to here was any indication, it’ll be at least three days before I recover enough to function – even marginally. But I won’t be struck down helpless the moment I arrive. There’ll be a very brief interval during which I’ll be able to move about and find shelter.’

      ‘When you used Gateway to transport you and your companions on the search for Princess Maude, you were smitten nigh unto death.’

      ‘I overreached myself. Asked the sigil to carry me too far with too many companions and too much baggage. And I did it again, having no choice, when I carried all of us to safety from Skullbone Peel to Donorvale. This time the power I demand will be much less.’

      ‘Still…Perhaps you should take me with you. I weigh very little and I could make myself useful. I’ve hardly had time to tell you anything of events in Blenholme while you were away.’

      ‘I’ll learn soon enough,’ he muttered. ‘You are not going with me into the middle of a sorcerer’s war. It’s bad enough that you had to make this long sea voyage alone.’

      ‘But you might have great need of my healing arts or magic.’

      ‘You’re staying here.’

      ‘What if you should arrive badly disabled?’ she cried in growing desperation. ‘If I were there, I could once again share my soul’s substance with you. It would cure you at once –’

      ‘At the cost of your own wellbeing!’ He took hold of her upper arms, drew her close, and kissed her hard on the lips. When he finally broke away, she saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Twice you made that terrible sacrifice for me, shortening your own life God only knows how much in the process. You won’t do it again. I won’t allow it! We must both face the fact that this journey is likely to be one that I won’t return from alive.’

      ‘No!’ She clung to him. ‘The Source wouldn’t be so cruel. And he never forbade me from accompanying you to Didion. How do you know what kind of place the capricious Lights will set you down in? It could be next to a tundra-lion’s lair!’

      ‘And you’d rescue me from the ravening beast?’

      ‘Yes! Why not?’ She broke free and suddenly held a small ball of crackling flame in her hand. She flung it with a powerful overhand lob into the dark waters of the canal, where it was quenched with a loud hiss.

      He showed her a small smile. ‘You’ve learned new tricks, I see.’

      ‘Deveron, take me!’ she pleaded. ‘I love you so much. We’ve only just found one another again.’

      ‘Do you think I want to leave you? It’s for your sake that I go! For you, Duna. Don’t ask more of me.’

      Replying not another word to her continuing entreaties, he finished loading the skiff, lashing down both a sheathed broadsword and a crossbow to the packs wrapped in oilskin. When he finally spoke again, his face was haggard and grim.

      ‘Do you have gold enough for your voyage home?’

      She touched the purse at her belt. ‘More than enough.’

      ‘Later in the day, a victualer’s scow will make its weekly stop at my dock. You can get a ride back to town from him. Stay at the inn called the Golden Cocodrill. Mention my assumed name, Haydon, to the landlord. He’ll see you safely aboard a ship sailing north. And now I must go into the house and change my clothes.’

      ‘Deveron.’ She held out an imploring hand. ‘Is there any hope, before you leave me forever…if you could but find it in your heart…’ She looked away. ‘It’s not for a Tarnian woman to ask such a thing.’

      ‘What is it? If there’s anything I can do to ease our parting, then tell me.’ He took her hand and drew her close, but as the heavy golden case holding the moonstones pressed against the flesh of her bosom she pulled away with a small cry.

      ‘If we could only…But no, it would be an unfair request with you facing such a dreadful ordeal. Go, put on your traveling clothes. I’ll wait here and pray for us both.’

      ‘I could prepare breakfast –’

      He didn’t understand and she could not tell him. She hung her head and the tears began again. ‘I have no appetite for food.’

      ‘Nor have I.’

      He went into the house, emerging later clad in stout hunting gear, with a dagger at his waist and gauntlets tucked into his belt. The Great Stone called Subtle Gateway, which was actually a very small and delicate carving of a door, now hung naked on its chain in the open neck of his wool shirt where he could grasp it easily and pronounce the incantation.

      ‘But where’s the Concealer?’ she asked. ‘Won’t you make yourself invisible before departing? Wouldn’t it be safer?’

      ‘No doubt – but using both sigils together would also prolong the period of agony and helplessness.’

      ‘I see.’ She was still kneeling beside the boat. Sunrise lit the sparkling canal and tropical flowers were blooming on every hand. To a native of subarctic Tarn, the scene might have been one of paradise; but Induna’s eyes were too full to see anything but his blurred features looking down on her with a doleful smile.

      He embraced her as a brother might, kissing her on the forehead. Then he climbed into the beached skiff and knelt on the bottom, bracing himself. He had organized the packs so there was plenty of room in the elongated craft, and three paddles were well secured beneath the thwarts so they would not be lost.

      ‘Farewell, Duna,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet again.’

      ‘I’m sure of it,’ she replied in a strange soft voice.

      Taking hold of the moonstone, he pronounced the incantation and gave instructions on where he desired to go. But as he uttered the last words and the stone flared green she flung herself into the boat on top of him, clutching his neck, and they disappeared together in a soundless annihilation.

      She dreamed of that crashing downpour of rain, the deeper roar of the boreal river in flood, the gale-lashed willow saplings like stinging whips flailing her face. The skiff lay at an extreme angle, trapped among rocks and tilted nearly on its side, atop a gravel bar in the midst of a foaming brown torrent. She had been thrown clear onto muddy stones among the dwarf trees; but Deveron was still in the boat, caught between the thwarts and the oil-skin-covered bundles of cargo, with his eyes closed and uttering piteous groans. The Gateway sigil on its chain blazed like an emerald star against his throat.

      Bruised over half her body, hampered by sodden skirts and the spiky willow thicket, she crept toward him on her hands and knees. When she was clear of the wretched little trees at last, she pulled herself to her feet and stood swaying, buffeted by wind and rain. She was already beginning to shiver, even though the air was not very cold.

      What had happened to them? How had the magical transport gone wrong? It almost seemed as though the skiff had been flung onto the gravel bar from a considerable height. Had the Lights only reluctantly provided the sorcery, because it was somehow against their best interests?

      The heavily wooded banks of the river were nine or ten ells distant on each side of the islet. The water was opaque and swirling. There was no way to tell how deep it was, but the current flowed with ominous swiftness, carrying all manner of broken vegetation and floating branches. The gravel bar itself was spindle-shaped with pointed ends, perhaps four ells wide where they had landed. Most of the willows that had taken root on it were already partially submerged. She’d fallen into the last patch that stood above water.

      ‘Deveron!’ she cried, taking hold of the front of his jerkin and shaking him. ‘Can you hear me?’

      He only moaned. A trickle of blood seeped from beneath his woolen cap. She pulled it off and found a large lump and an oozing scalp cut. Cautious probing of the skull on either side of it reassured her that the bone was yet solid and the wound superficial, for

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