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back. I don’t want your bones cluttering up my house.” She shuddered again at the loss of a tiny life to feed her friend. He’d dragged a carcass back only once. Every crunch of a bone felt like her own limbs breaking. His sensual pleasure at the noise stabbed her through the heart. Since then she reminded him to eat his hunt in the woods. He’d never disobeyed again.
    “And if you get muddy again, you sleep outside tonight,” she called after his retreating tail. “Shayla may have given you a princely name, Darville, but you get too dirty and disheveled to be a royal pet.”
    A flusterhen dashed out from the cover of saber ferns at the edge of the clearing. Her sisters followed. They pecked at Brevelan’s feet, and she shooed them away. “I’ll feed you later. When the sun sets,” she promised them.
    As she went about the mundane chores of digging and milking, feeding and soothing, Brevelan sang. Music flowed and swirled around her, reflecting the beauty and serenity she found in her isolated clearing. Trees and plants, ground and hut seemed to hum in harmony with her song. She lifted her voice a note higher into a descant to the natural sounds. As she reached the apex of her voice she sensed the clearing sealing itself against intruders.
    Less than a year ago her life had been devoid of music, just as the solitude she craved had been denied her.
    Households were large in her home village. Many generations lived in each house. Excessive noise, like singing, was banned, lest it disturb the elders or the babies, or the fathers concentrating on their work. Girls were married off early to make room for the brides of the younger men. Babies abounded everywhere.
    She missed the babies. Memories of Shayla’s dragon-dream returned. A compelling delusion. Once more she felt milk-heavy breasts ache for a baby’s suck. She shook it off. If she hadn’t run away last summer, she’d have a child of her own by now. A soft, small creature with her own ruddy hair and pale skin. Her imagination would never allow her to supply that unborn child with the coarse black hair and angry disposition of her husband.
    Sometimes in the night, when she was alone and her body ached for contact with another human being, she wondered what her life would be like now if she had stayed.
    That was the trouble with dragon-dreams. They seemed so real it was difficult to return to the light of day. A day when she must be alert to word from the village. Maevra was close to her time and might deliver early.
    Brevelan just wished the villagers would accept her help without the frequent use of garlic and gestures meant to ward off evil. She had never told them how much she liked garlic.
     
    Jaylor followed the road as it curved and dipped into a hollow. He jumped a narrow creek where it crossed his path. Green meadows spread out around the road in all directions. A little farther along the stream, away from the road, would be a good place to camp.
    As if he’d conjured an encampment, Jaylor found several tents nestled beside the water. Traders usually welcomed strangers. This far south, the traders could come only from Rossemeyer. Those stalwart desert dwellers were even more suspicious and insular than Coronnites.
    He paused behind another protective oak tree. From its shadows he surveyed the scene ahead of him. In the creeping twilight he should be invisible until he decided to be seen.
    Sturdy pack steeds grazed behind a picket line. Wary dogs zigzagged around cook fires and brightly colored tents. Purple, red, black, and blue shelters for unseen campers.
    Who but Rovers would live in such garish tents? Certainly not traders from Rossemeyer who sought to blend into their environment. Rovers were homeless wanderers who worked no honest trade, were beholden to no lord, and obeyed few man-made laws. And they fascinated Jaylor.
    The Council of Provinces had outlawed Rovers when the Commune of Magicians established the magic border three hundred years