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found himself alone and
undefended, with the black pony rearing over him; he bolted without a sound.
    Here and there on the grass huddled shapes clad in mottled
green. A red stallion stood over one in green as dark as evening, with a
bloodied sword clutched in the lifeless hand. The senel nuzzled the bright
tumble of hair, snorting at the scent of blood upon it.
    Sanelin’s legs would not yield to her will. Slowly, with
many pauses, she dragged herself toward her son. He had fallen in a heap, his
hand outflung, a long shallow cut stretching red from elbow to wrist.
    The palm flamed as if it cupped molten gold. She fell beside
it and pressed her lips to it. It was searing hot, molten indeed, brand and
sigil of the god, with which he had marked his son.
    And with which he had struck down the exile. Her anguish
shuddered in the earth.
    oOo
    Elian shuddered with it, and gasped. Wind whispered
through the grass. The red senel had dropped its head to graze; no proud
stallion horns crowned its brow, no sorely wounded prince lay at its feet.
    No slain men, no boy and no pony, and no dying priestess.
Elian was alone and awake in the place where the holy one had died; where her
father had come close to death, and lived only through Mirain, who coming to
his senses had given the prince what healing the god vouchsafed, and brought
him back to the city.
    That was Elian’s earliest clear memory: the prince bloodied
and unconscious on the stallion, and the boy riding behind him to steady him,
and the pony following like a hound. And bound to the pony’s back with strips
of mottled green, the body of Avaryan’s bride.
    Elian sat up, shaking. The vision fled; yet in its place
grew one that made her cry out. The face of the slayer, terrible in its beauty,
like a skull of bronze and silver. Its eyes were human no longer, great blind
demon-eyes, pale as flawed pearls. Even in their blindness they hunted, seeking
the one who had destroyed them.
    “No,” Elian whispered. She hardly knew what she denied. The
hate, yes; the threat to Mirain, and through him to Han-Gilen and its prince.
And perhaps most of all, the dream itself.
    Such dreams were from the god, his gift to the princes of
Han-Gilen, shaped for the protection of the realm. But she had forsaken it. She
could not be its prophet.
    Her mouth was dust-dry. She knelt to drink from the pool,
and recoiled with a gasp. Visions seethed in the clear water. Powers,
prophecies; fates and fortunes and the deeds of kings. They drew her, eye and
soul, down and down into depths unfathomable save by the trueborn seer. So
much—so much—
    Through the spell’s glamour pierced a dart of rage. Gods and
demons—how dared they torment her?
    She bent, and with her eyes tightly shut, drank long and
deeply. Almost she had expected the water to taste of blood and iron, but it
was pure and icy cold; it quenched her terrible thirst.
    Cautiously she opened her eyes. No visions beset them. There
was only the glint of sun on water, and through its ripples the pattern of
stones on the bottom of the pool.
    She sat on her heels. The sun was high in a clear sky, the
air warm and richly scented. Her mare grazed calmly, pausing as Elian watched,
nipping a fly on her flank. Whatever power of light or darkness had led her to
this hidden meadow, it had left her unperturbed.
    A small portion of Elian’s mind gibbered at her to mount,
ride, escape. But cold sanity held her still. Even at this distance from the
city, any Gileni peasant would know both mare and rider for royal, and any
pursuit would mark them. They were well hidden here where no one ever came;
when darkness fell, they could ride.
    Elian prowled the glade. Its beauty now seemed a mockery,
its shelter a trap. Like Han-Gilen itself, enclosed and beset; like herself.
    She made herself sit down, crouching on the grass well away
from the pool. The sun crawled across the sky. “I cannot go back,” she said
over and over. “Let Father see visions, or Hal. I