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tents, learned about horse pickets. At the campfire they sang a marching song and a chant for good fortune.
    Now they rode out every day from their camping places, drilled with Druda Strawn, cared for their horses, practiced
archery. Gael did well with the short Chyrian bow and the crossbow. One of the Naylor twins, Leem, had a natural gift, hardly wasted an arrow or a bolt. Jehane rode very well and, together with Bretlow Smith on his charger, showed them all simple exercises in dressage—walk, trot, canter, counting steps, and turning closely. Once, in the stableyard of the great inn called the Halfway House, Gael felled one of the lads to the ground for beating his pony—after that all the kern recruits respected the strength of her arm.
    It was fifteen years since the end of the Great King’s War; Ghanor, the so-called Great King, had died in his bed at his Palace Fortress on the inland sea, the Dannermere, in the year 334 of the Farfaring, as time was reckoned in Mel’Nir. As they followed the roads built on the plateau since the war, Druda Strawn tried to teach his uncouth band about the lands of Hylor, and, closer to home, of the internal strains that lay upon Mel’Nir. They knew well enough that peace reigned between their own liege, Knaar of , Lord of the Westmark, and Good King Gol, son of Ghanor; but the Southland, under the Lords of Pfolben, was almost an independent state. What of the Eastmark? Huarik, the Boar of Barkdon, last of the Eastmark’s Lords, had died during the Great War, in single combat with a hero of Mel’Nir—no less than Coombe’s own champion, Yorath Duaring—and no other lord had arisen in his place. King Gol still held many of the Eastmark lands. Recently much clamoring had arisen among the houses of the East that these, and a Lord for the Eastmark, should be restored.
    Gael was shamed to discover how little was her own learning of the lands beyond Mel’Nir’s (or even Val’Nur’s) borders—even the Naylor twins were better taught. The Druda smiled—assuredly Gael was not the only member of his troop whose knowledge was lacking—and he spoke to them in vivid pictures, deep into the night, as the campfire blazed before them.
    First came the wide Chameln lands across the inland sea, those lands which always had two rulers, the Daindru, and, nine years past, King Sharn Am Zor had been done to death by savage tribesmen. Now the Chameln were ruled by two queens: Aidris Am Firn, the old Witch-Queen, and the beautiful young
Tanit Am Zor. Mel’Nir had held these lands for a time, in the years before Gael was born; as the tale was told, the old Witch-Queen Aidris had spent those years in hidden exile, training for a kedran, awaiting the moment to strike.
    Aidris in those distant days had been an enemy to Mel’Nir, but in the stories as the Druda now told them, the Queen of the Firn was a figure to admire, particularly for an impressionable kedran just taking up her training.
    True also, Aidris Am Firn had been an enemy with a sense of honor. In the slaughter of Great King’s Red Hundreds at Adderneck Pass, she had humiliated Old King Ghanor, but once she had retaken her land and her throne, once the border of the Chameln had been reaffirmed, Aidris had kept within her boundaries. The part of the story those around the fire found most impossible to believe—the Witch-Queen was a dwarf, a creature of the Firn, a tiny, slender-figured race. Even mounted on a Chameln steed, she stood no taller than the shortest of the Melniros. How could such a woman ever have gone for a soldier?
    Then there was far-off Eildon, the magic land, with its knightly orders and reclusive Priest-King. There was quiet Cayl, where once there had been no lords—until Lien had swallowed them up, reinstated the old aristocratic lines, and—so it was claimed—brought back to light Cayl’s lost honor and glory. There was gentle Athron, land of the magic Carach tree, its prince and highest lady claimed for the