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cannot go back!”
    The water laughed at her. Prophet, it said. Prince’s
prophet. You have the gift. You cannot refuse it.
    “I can!” She scrambled to her feet, fumbling for bridle and
saddle.
    Han-Gilen has had no prophet since the priestess died. Her
mantle lies upon the Altar of Seeing over the living water. Go back. Forsake
this child’s folly. Take what is yours.
    The mare skittered away from Elian’s hands, eyeing the
bridle in mock alarm. It was an old game, but Elian had no patience to spare
for it. She snapped a thought like the lash of a whip. The mare stopped as if
struck.
    So too must you. The soft voice was a water-voice no longer.
Deep, quiet, hauntingly familiar. You
play at duty. Yet what is it but flight from the path ordained for you?
    Elian slipped the bridle over the mare’s ears, smoothing the
long forelock. Her hands were trembling, but her smile mocked them all. “It is
not,” she said. “It is anything but that.”
    Is it?
    She knew that voice. Oh, yes, she knew it. She hated it.
    Hated? Or loved?
    She flung pad and saddle over the mare’s back, and after
them the bags of her belongings, and last of all herself.
    Elian.
    The voice crept through all her barriers, throbbing to the
heart of her.
    Elian.
    She struck at it. “ You sent the vision. You tried to trap me. But I won’t be held. Not by a lie.”
    It is no lie, and well you know it. The god has stretched
out his hand to you and laid you open to me.
    Hands reached for her. She kicked her senel into a jolting
trot. The shadows were black under the trees, the sky blood-red beyond the
branches.
    Elian, come. Come back. Behind her eyelids a figure stood,
tall, dark, crowned with fire. Daughter, it is madness, this that you do. Come
back to us.
    “To my oath’s betrayal.”
    To those who love you.
    “I cannot.”
    His thought had borne a hint of sorrow and a promise of
forgiveness. Now it hardened.
    Whatever her mother might say, Prince Orsan of Han-Gilen was
far from besotted with his daughter. He had raised her as she wished, as a boy,
not only in the freedom but in the punishments, meted out to her precisely as
to her brothers. Elian . She trembled in the saddle, but urged her mare
onward. This is no child’s game. Will you come back, or must I compel you?
    Walls closed in upon her mind. There was but one escape, and
her father filled it. Even yet, his eyes held more sorrow than wrath. He held
out his hands. Daughter. Come home.
    With a soft wordless cry she backed away. Her body rode at
breakneck pace through a darkening wood. But in her mind she huddled within a
fortress made of defiance, and her father towered over her, clothed in the
red-golden fire of his magery. He was far stronger than she.
    You are of Han-Gilen, blood and bone. This venture is a
bitter mockery of both your lineage and your power. So might a child do, or a
coward. Not the Lady of Han-Gilen.
    “No.” There was no force in the word. Yet somewhere deep
within her, a spark kindled. “No. I have sworn an oath. I will keep it, or die
in the trying.”
    You will come home.
    His will was as strong as a chain, its links of tempered
steel, drawing her to him. In a madness of resistance she clung to the
stronghold of her mind. Earth; three walls of will; her father. But above her
the open sky. She hurled herself into it.
    The mare shied. Elian clutched blindly at the saddle. Her
body ached; her fingers could barely unclench from the pommel to take up the
reins, to guide her mount.
    She could not see. For an instant she wavered on the edge of
panic; but her eyes, straining, found the shadowy shapes of trees, and through
the woven branches a twilit sky.
    The mare had settled into a running walk, smooth and swift
as water. The footing was good, soft leafmold on the level surface of a road.
Without guidance, the mare had found the northward way through the wood.
    Elian tensed to quicken the senel’s pace, but did not
complete the movement. Her father knew surely where