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Six of the seven youths fell into the familiar "talking line," and the seventh raised a stick and mirror-drum and commenced to beat out the pulse. As the storytellers fluttered their hands and stamped their feet, it took him a bit to start picking out the phrases from their gestures, because they were not accomplished: "bird flies to mountain" "the wind of ice weights its wings" "falling! falling!" "a cave" "the spring fountains, an overflowing wine cup carved into the stone" "caught in the current!" "the tumbling water spills into the hidden valley"…

This was the familiar Tale of Indiyabu, but he had never seen it performed so crudely. And at such length! Every hamlet and village had a girl or boy who had been trained in the Lady's garden and could entertain visiting dignitaries with a more graceful rendition; any member of the guild of entertainers would be shocked by this display. He yawned, caught himself, and forced a cough. Two of the older reeves were snoring softly. The woman watched her hands; her fingers twitched, as though they knew the gestures and wished to speak. Broken Nose stared at the marshal as if awaiting a signal, but if expressions were anything to go by, there was no love lost between him and the hall's master. Joss scanned the tables again, but the young man with the scarred chin remained absent. No one made a move to leave. Indeed, the audience seemed lulled into a stupor. By the Herald's Gate! Now they meant to repeat the entire thing for a third time!

It was a relief when the drumbeat ended, the marshal rose, and the company was allowed to depart. A row of tiny cells lined the southern exterior of the guest loft. Each cell had a sliding window built into the wall above the pallet to let the reeve check on his eagle at any time during the night. A slave indicated the cell he was meant to inhabit. The rest were obviously empty, doors ajar, pallets bare of mattresses, even. It appeared no visitors had stayed here in many months.

He made his last check of Scar for the night, finished his own ablutions, and paced out the cell to get his bearings in the wavering light of a small oil lamp. Four strides from door to pallet; four strides diagonal to the corner to the right of the door where a square chest, hip-high, could hold baggage and, with its lid closed, might also serve as a writing table; side to side the cell was three strides wide. There was a double shelf at the base of the pallet and some hooks set into the wall on which to hang clothing and gear. He slid the window open. The loft was dark and silent. Scar would alert him if anyone came through that way. Still wearing his leathers, he took off his boots, placed his quiver and staff on the floor just to the left of the pallet, and tucked his short sword between him and the wall. He hung the lamp from a hook and blew out the flame. Then he lay down, resting his head on his rolled-up cloak.

Maybe the food had been contaminated with sleeping herbs. Once he closed his eyes, he dropped so fast into slumber that he had a moment of disorientation before he was inexorably dragged under.

The dream unveiled itself in the gray unwinding of mist he has come to dread. He is walking within a forest of skeletal trees, and by this knows he is dead, awaiting rebirth. He is a ghost, hoping to wake up from the nightmare twenty years ago, but the dream has swallowed him and he walks in a world both sleeping and waking that has no Marit in it.

Foolish. Foolish. Let her pass through Spirit Gate so she can rest. But he cannot let her go any more than he can unbind the harness that ties him to Scar. The Ox's heart seeks in the heavens that soul which fulfills it. He has romanced, enjoyed, liked, and parted with many women-probably too many-in the second half of his life, but he has never loved any of them.

The mist boils as though churned by a vast intelligence. Here the dream twists into nightmare. As the mist parts, he will see her in the unattainable distance, walking along a slope of grass or climbing a rocky escarpment, a place he can and must never reach because he has a duty to those on earth whom he has sworn to serve.

The door opened.

Out of the darkness a woman's figure emerges into what is not light but a supernatural glamour. Marit pauses on the threshold. She is so close to him! She is dressed in an undyed linen wide-sleeved jacket whose front panels overlap and are tied off along one side seam. Her trousers are of the kind that herdsmen wear, loose and comfortable, stained at the knees. Her hands and feet are bare, yet as if it is cold, she wears a death-white cape flung back from her broad shoulders. Her gorgeous black hair is braided into a single widow's spine almost as thick as his arm.

It hurts to look at her.

She does not move forward. She cannot. She cannot speak or act, because she is only a spirit that he dreams as part of his torment. She is not even a ghost, only a shadow to mark his desire.

"Be warned, sweetheart," she says. "You are in danger. Beware the third blow."

His heart lurches. It is her voice, her very own, never forgotten! He tries to sit up, but he is paralyzed in truth, sleeping and awake at the same time, unable to shift his limbs.

"Marit!"

"I have broken my oath once already to warn you. Wake now!"

He jolted awake, jarringly alert even though only his eyes opened as the barest sound scuffed the matted floor. He grabbed his sword and sat up so fast that the shadow froze.

"Who's there?" he said in a low voice.

A cough gave him distance and placement, two strides forward from the door and one to the side.

"I had to come see." She was taller than Marit. "If it was true what you said."

"What did I say?" He eased the sword onto his thighs, hilt toward the room and point toward the wall, holding it underhanded in his left hand.

"That you were slow only when you wanted to be. A woman can look a long time before she finds a man who can really take his time."

Her voice had that drawling tone that teases a man and causes him all manner of comfortable distress. She changed position, and he saw suddenly that she was naked from the waist up, wearing only that short kilted wrap around her hips. She was all suggestive curves. He felt a stirring through skin and flesh, and in that instant of distraction, because men can be so easily distracted, she struck.

She was fast, but he was wide awake and ready. He ducked under her lunge and extended his arm in one stroke, catching her under the arm with a sharp blow from the hilt. That was enough to stagger her, and he looped his lower arm around and over and slapped her hard on the side of the head, catching her cheek with the flat of the blade.

She collapsed onto the floor with a grunt. Her weapon rattled against the pallet and rolled onto her body. He scooped it up by the handle, rolled it in his fingers, tried its weight. It was light, slender, deadly, an assassin's knife. He knew it as surely as he breathed.

He fished for the chain at his neck and drew up the two treasures that hung there. His fingers brushed the whistle, and for an instant he considered blowing it, to alert Scar, but the pitch would wake other eagles as well. Now was not the time.

Instead, he untied the tiny bag in which he carried his flint. Striking and nursing a spark with the flint, he lit the lamp. Her body was sweetly formed, enticing him. Her braid was wrapped tight and pinned atop her head. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing shallowly, full breasts rising and falling… He forced himself to look away, to examine the knife. A sigil was carved into the handle, the four-petaled mark of Ushara, the Merciless One, the Devourer, mistress of life, death, and desire. They had found a similar tattoo on the body of that Devouring girl, twenty years ago.

The Devourer eats women and men both, and both women and men serve her, but only women served in her innermost sanctum. There, it was rumored, assassins might be bought who had trained in Ushara's courtyards, equally adept at seduction or murder, but even a reeve of long standing like Joss had never been able to fix the blame for any mysterious killing on the Merciless One's secretive hierodules. He had never been able to prove anything.