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Cullyn answered.
    “And now you live here alone?”
    He nodded, and she asked, “Is it not lonely?”
    He shrugged and shook his head. “Sometimes, perhaps, but not much.”
    “I doubt I could survive it,” she said, smiling at him so that his heart warmed to her as it had not to Elvira. “I think I must be too content with life in the castle. Is it not uncomfortable in winter?”
    “It’s cold,” he said, “but I can build a fire.” He laughed, charmed by her easy manner and her beauty, and gestured at the trees. “I’ve enough wood.”
    She smiled and he was entranced.
    He asked, “And what is life in the castle like?”
    But before she could answer, her stepmother interrupted.
    “Enough, eh?” Vanysse glowered at her stepdaughter. “We’ve taken sufficient of his time.”
    “And hospitality,” Amadis added. “So let’s be on our way.”
    He reached into his sabretache and tossed two coins to Cullyn.
    Cullyn watched them fall, insulted. A pig came to investigate the downfall. He kicked it away as Abra blushed. Her stepmother smiled as Amadis helped her astride her horse. He watched Abra mount, and then felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.
    “He knows no better,” Laurens said. “Take the coin and no insult, eh?”
    “He’s …” Cullyn struggled to find the right word.
    Laurens swung astride his horse. “Arrogant? Rude? Presumptious? Name it, lad—I know it. But take the coin—the gods know, he has enough to spend. Use it, eh? And if you ever think of being a soldier, come see me in the keep.”
    “I don’t think,” Cullyn said, “that I’d like soldiering.”
    “There are worse lives,” Laurens answered. “The gods know, but I’ve been at the trade for forty years and more. Think about it, eh?”
    Cullyn nodded and watched them ride away, all set up on great, grand horses, bound for the keep where servants would prepare them baths and set their food before them, cooked and ready to eat, and after take the plates away and clear the tables, while he must butcher the deer he’d taken and trudge afoot into Lyth if ever he hoped to own a horse.
    He sighed, and carried the deer to the outhouse; itwas dark before the butchering was done and he washed and settled to sleep.
    Which was disturbed by the insensate notion that he was still being watched.

    H E WOKE UNEASY , the smell of strangers in his nostrils and the memory of odd dreams in his head.
    It was as if Abra had imprinted her scent on the cottage. Then he recalled the coins the captain had so casually tossed him and found them in the pig-grubbed dirt outside as he went to the well. He grinned wryly as he scooped up the silver discs—they’d go some good way to buying his horse—before he drew a bucket from the well and bathed. Then he fed the animals and watered his small vegetable garden before making himself a simple breakfast; and all the while he thought of Abra and Elvira, and weighed the proven charms of the one against the untasted charms of the other, and thought that both were unobtainable.
    He checked the butchered carcass of the deer and found it sound, so he took up his bow again and went out to hunt another.
    He realized that he wanted to wait no longer to purchase his horse. It was as if his unwelcome visitors had started up some desire he had not previously known, so that he was now consumed with impatience. He would, he decided, take a second deer and go straight back to Lyth, not wait for the Summer Horse Fair, but buy an animal as soon as possible.
    He was firm in his purpose as he stalked the deer trails through the forest, and equally uneasy, for he felt he was still watched. It was as if some shadow trailed him, unseen amidst the bracken, and although he wouldhalt and glance around and sniff the breeze, he could not see his follower.
    It was like chasing a dream: a thing perceived on the edge of vision, shapeless and unfocused. Sometimes he thought he caught a glimpse of some shifting shape that crouched inside