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fog rolling out of marshy ground beside which she glimpses the pitched tents of the centaur folk. Sorgatani walks through the reeds at the shore of the marsh. The fog conceals the world, and she knows that something massive is creeping up on her, or on the Kerayit princess, but Hanna cannot see it, nor does she sense from what direction it means to attack.
    A woman appears, shifting out of the fog as though a mist has created her: she is as much mare as woman. Green-and-gold paint stripes her face and woman’s torso.
    Sorgatani cries out in anger. “I have fulfilled all the tasks you set me! I have been patient! How much longer must I wait?”
    “You have been patient.” When the shaman glances up at the heavens, her coarse mane of pale hair sweeps down her back to the place where woman-hips meet mare-shoulders.“That lesson you learned well. The elders have met. Your wish is granted.”
    “We will ride west to seek my luck?”
    The centaur shifts sideways, listening, and after a moment replies. “Nay, little one. She must suffer the fate she chose. But we are weak and diminished. We cannot fight alone—”
    She rears back, startled by a sharp noise, the crack of a staff on rock. “Who is there?”
    The hot breath of some huge creature blows on Hanna’s neck, lifting her hair. She feels its maw opening to bite. Whirling, she strikes out frantically with a fist, but when her hand parts the mist, she stumbles forward into the salty brine of a shallow estuary, water splashing her lips and stinging her eyes as reeds scrape along her thighs.
    She is alone, yet she hears a confusing medley of voices and feels the press of hands as from a distance, jostling her.
    “It’s the lung fever. She’s very bad.”
    “Hush. We’ll see her through this. She’s survived worse.”
    A woman’s voice: “I’ve boiled up coltsfoot and licorice for the congestion.”
    “I thank you, Frederun.”
    Each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log, she swears, as though she’s trying to chop fury and grief out of herself, but she will never be rid of it all.
    Better if she lets the tide sweep her onward through the spreading delta channels of the lazy river and out onto a wide and restless sea. Yet even here, the horror is not done with her. Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over a vast whorled city hidden in its depths. Corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again as the sea floor rises.
    A phoenix flies, as bright as fire. Or is it a phoenix at all but rather a woman with wings of flame? Delirium makes the woman-figure appear with a familiar face. Is that Liath, come back to haunt her? Is she an angel now, flying in the vault of heaven, all ablaze? As the creature rises, she lifts the slender figure of a man and two great hounds with her. But their weight is too great and with a cry of anguish and frustration the Liath-angel loses her grip on them and they fallaway, lost as the fog of dreams rolls across the sky to conceal them.
    Hanna falls with them.
    “How is she?”
    “She’s delirious most of the time, Your Highness.”
    “Will she live?”
    “So we must pray, Your Highness.”

II
THE ACHE OF AN OLD WOUND

1
    “HANNA?”
    Someone held a light close to her face. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned away from the harsh glare.
    “Hanna.” More insistently.
    She smelled horse on his tunic. A breeze tickled her ear, and she cracked open one eye and realized that it was not lamplight but sunlight that lit the chamber. She lay in a neatly appointed chamber with a second rope-frame bed opposite hers, a table and bench, a chest for clothing, and several basins set here and there about the room, five on the floor and two small copper ones on the table. Through open shutters she glimpsed an apple tree in bloom.
    Ingo knelt beside her bed. “Hanna?”
    She grunted, reaching out to grasp his shoulder, not sure if he were