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CHAPTER FOUR

Borderlands

Someone began shouting just as Anne and Austra reentered the ruined city of the dead. Anne whipped her head around and saw two fully armored men on horseback charging down the hill.

'They've seen us!' she shouted unnecessarily.

She ducked behind the first building, practically dragging Austra with her, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.

Death or capture lay in every direction'the orderly rows of grapes on either side of the valley offered no real protection; they might elude their pursuers for a little longer, but in the end they would be run down.

Hiding posed the same problem, of course, and there really wasn't anyplace to hide.

Except the horz. If it was as thickly grown as it looked, they might be able to squeeze into places where larger, armored men couldn't follow.

'This way,' she told Austra. 'Quickly, before they can see us.'

It felt like forever, reaching the walled garden, but as they passed through the ruined arch, the knights still weren't in sight. Anne got down on her hands and knees and began pushing through the gnarled vegetation, which if anything grew more thickly than in the horz Austra and she used to haunt in Eslen-of-Shadows. The earth smelled rich, and slightly rotten.

'They're going to find us,' Austra said. 'They'll just come in after us, and we'll be trapped.'

Anne wriggled between the close-spaced roots of an ancient olive tree. 'They can't cut their way in,' she said. 'Saint Selfan will curse them.'

'They murdered sisters of a holy order, Anne,' Austra pointed out. 'They don't care about curses.'

'Still, it's our only choice.'

'Can't you'can't you do something, like you did down by the river?'

'I don't know,' Anne said. 'It doesn't really work like that. It just happens.'

But that wasn't really true. It was just that when she had blinded the knight outside the coven and hurt Erieso in z'Espino, she hadn't premeditated it, she'd just done it.

'I'm frightened of it,' she admitted. 'I don't understand it.'

'Yes, Anne, but we're going to die, you see,' Austra said. 'You've a point there,' Anne admitted. They had gone as far into the horz as they could. They were already lying flat on their bellies, and from here on, the plants were woven too tightly.

'Just lie quiet,' Anne said. 'Not a sound. Remember when we used to pretend the Scaos was after us? Just like that.'

'I don't want to die,' Austra murmured.

Anne took Austras hand and pulled her close, until she could feel the other girl's heartbeat. Somewhere near she could hear them talking.

'Wlait in thizhaih hourshai,' one of them said in a commanding voice.

'Raish,' the other replied.

Anne heard the squeak of saddle leather and then the sound of boots striking the ground. She wondered, bizarrely, if anything had happened to Faster, her horse, and had a painfully clear flash of riding him across the Sleeve in sunlight, with the perfumes of spring in the air. It seemed like centuries ago.

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Austra's heart beat more frantically next to hers as the boot sounds came nearer and the vegetation began to rustle. Anne closed her eyes and tried to work past her fear to the dark place inside her.

Instead she touched sickness. Without warning it swept through her in a wave, a kind of fever that felt as if her blood had turned to hot sewage and her bones to rotting meat. She wanted to gag, but somehow couldn't find her throat, and her body felt as if it had somehow faded away.

'Ik ni shaiwha iyo athan sa snori wanzyis thiku,' someone said very near them.

'Ita mait, thannuh,' the other growled from farther away.

'Maita?' the near man said, his tone hesitant.

'Yah.'

There was a pause, and then the sound of something slashing into the vegetation.

Anne gasped as the sick feeling intensified.

Austra had been right. These men showed no fear of the sacred.

She pressed herself harder against the earth, and her head started to spin. The earth seemed to give way, and she began sinking down through the roots, feeling the little fibers on them tickle her face. At the same time, something seemed to be welling up from beneath her, like blood to the surface of a wound. Fury pulsed in her like a shivering lute string, and for a moment she wanted to catch hold of it, let it have her.

But then that, too, faded, as did the nausea and the sensation of sinking. Her cheek felt warm.

She opened her eyes.

She lay in a gently rolling spring-green meadow cupped in a forest palm of oak, beech, poplar, liquidambar, everic, and ten other sorts of trees she did not know. Over her left shoulder, a small rinn chuckled into a mere that was carpeted with water lilies and fringed by rushes, where a solitary crane moved carefully on stilt legs, searching for fish. Over her right shoulder, the white and tiny blue flowers of clover and wimpleweed that were her bed gave way to fern fronds and fiddleheads.

Austra lay next to her. The other girl sat up quickly, her eyes full of panic.

' The Charnel Prince

Anne still had her hand. She gripped it harder. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I think we're safe, for a moment.'

'I don't understand,' Austra said. 'What happened? Where are we? Are we dead?'

'No,' Anne said. 'We aren't dead.'

'Where are we, then?'

'I'm not sure,' Anne told her.

'Then how can you be certain'?' Austra's eyes showed sudden understanding.

'You've been here before.'

'Yes,' Anne admitted.

Austra got up and began looking around. After a moment she gave a start. 'We've got no shadows,' she said.

'I know,' Anne replied. 'This is the place where you go if you walk widdershins.'

'You mean like in the phay stories?'

'Yes. The first time I came here was during Elseny's party. Do you remember that?'

'You fainted. When you woke, you were asking about some woman in a mask. Then you decided you had been dreaming, and wouldn't talk about it anymore.'

'I wasn't dreaming'or not exactly. I've been back here twice since then. Once when I was in the Womb of Mefitis, another time when I was sleeping on the deck of the ship.' She gazed around the clearing. 'It's always different,' she went on, 'but I know somehow it's always the same place.'

'What do you mean?'

'The first time it was a hedge maze. The second time it was a forest clearing, and on the ship it was in the midst of the forest, and dark.'

'But how? How did we come here, I mean?'

'The first time I was brought here by someone,' Anne explained. 'A woman in a mask. The other times I came myself.'

Austra folded down into a cross-legged position, her brows knitted. 'But'Anne,'

she said, 'you didn't go anywhere, those other times. I wasn't there in the womb of Mefitis, but you were still on Tom Woth, that day. And you were still on the ship.'

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'I'm not sure of that,' Anne said. 'I might have gone and returned.'

'I'm not certain about Tom Woth,' Austra granted her, 'but I am sure about the ship. I didn't take my eyes off you. That means, wherever we think we are'or wherever our shadows have gone'our bodies are still there for the knights to find and do with as they please.'

Anne raised her hands helplessly. 'That may be, but I don't know how to get back. It always just happens.'

'Well, have you ever tried? You brought us here, after all.'

'That's true,' Anne conceded.

'Well, try.'

Anne closed her eyes, trying to find that place again. It was there but quiet, and seemed in no mood to stir.

Austra gasped.

Anne opened her eyes, but didn't see anything immediately. 'What is it?'

'Something's here,' Austra said. 'I can't see it, but its here.'

Anne shivered, remembering the shadow man, but there were no shadows now. A warm wind was picking up, almost summery, bending the tops of the trees and ruffling the grass. It had a scent of festering vegetation about it, not exactly unpleasant.

And it blew from every direction, toward them, forcing the trees, ferns, and grass to bow as if she and Austra were lords of Elphin. And at the edge of her hearing, Anne heard the faint, wild music of birds.

'What's happening?' she murmured.

Suddenly they came, over the treetops'swans and geese, fielies and swallows, brieches and red-Roberts, thousands of them, all swirling down into the clearing, clattering, cawing, and screeching toward Anne and Austra. Anne threw up her hands to cover her face, but a yard away the birds spiraled around them, a cyclone of feathers whirling up to cloud the sky.

After a moment, the fear faded, and Anne began to laugh. Austra looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

'What is it?' Austra asked. 'Do you know what's happening?'

'I've no idea,' Anne said. 'But the wonder of it'' She needed a word she didn't have, so she stopped trying to find it.

It seemed to go on for a long time, but the winds finally subsided and went to their quarters, taking the birds with them, leaving only the crane, still fishing for his catch. The sound of the birds faded last.

'Anne, I'm sleepy.' Austra sighed. Her panic seemed to have left her.

Anne found her own lids suddenly very heavy. The sun was warmer now, and after the rush of events, natural and otherwise, she felt as if she had been awake for days.

'Faiths, are you here?' she asked.

There was no answer, but the crane looked up and regarded her before going back to his task.

'Thank you,' Anne said.

She wasn't sure whom she was speaking to, or what she was thanking them for.

She woke in the horz with Austra beside her, still clutching her hand. They were both covered in severed limbs and foliage. The knights had done it'they had defiled the sacred garden. She and Austra lay at the terminus of their destructive, sacrilegious path.

Well, she thought. We're not dead. That's a start. But if Austra was right, and the land of the Faiths was just a sort of dream, how could their assailants have missed them?

She listened quietly for a long time, but heard nothing except the drone of an occasional insect. After a time, she woke Austra.

Austra sat up, took in their return, then mumbled a faint prayer to Saint Selfan and Saint Rieyene. 'They didn't see us,' she said. 'Though I can't imagine why not.'

'Maybe you were wrong,' Anne said. 'Maybe we didn't leave our bodies behind after all.'

'Maybe,' Austra said dubiously.

'You stay here,' Anne said. 'I'll go out and have a look.'

'No, let me go.'

'If they catch you, they'll still come after me,' Anne said. 'If they catch me, they'll have no reason to come in after you.'

Austra reluctantly consented to that logic, and Anne went back Borderlands

out of the horz, walking this time through the torn and trampled vegetation.

Near the entrance she found a pool of dark, sticky liquid which she recognized as blood. There was more outside, a trail of it that abruptly stopped.

She poked around a few of the ruins, but the horsemen seemed to be gone. They weren't on the road, either, when she climbed the hill and looked down.

Cazio, z'Acatto and the horsemen were gone.

'We have to find them,' Austra insisted desperately. 'We have to.' Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Anne couldn't blame her. She'd had her own cry before going back to the horz to collect her friend.

'We will,' she said, trying to sound confident.

'But how?'

'They can't have gone far,' Anne pointed out.

'No, no,' Austra said. 'We might have been in there for a year. Or ten years, or a hundred. We've just been in Elphin, haven't we? Things like that happen.'

'In kinderspells,' Anne reminded her. 'And we don't know that it's Elphin, anyway. I've never been gone more than a bell or so. So we ought to be able to follow them.'

'They might have already killed Cazio and z'Acatto.'

'I don't see their bodies, do you?'

'They might have buried them.'

'I don't think those men are the sort likely to do such a thing. If they don't fear the consequences of murdering an entire coven or cutting up a horz, they wouldn't pay much mind to leaving a couple of bodies on the road. Besides, the knights had them all bound up, remember? They're probably taking them back to their ship.'

'Or Cazio told them some clever lie about where we'd gone,' Austra suggested, sounding calmer now, 'and they're waiting to see if he told the truth before they torture him.'

'That's possible,' Anne said, trying not to think about Cazio being tortured.

'So which way do we go?' Austra asked.

'Their ship sailed north past Duve,' Anne said. 'So it seems reasonable that they came from farther up the road, the direction we're going.'

'But Cazio would have sent them south, to keep us safe.'

'True,' Anne agreed, staring at the road in frustration, wishing she knew the tiniest thing about how to follow a trail. But even that many horsemen made little impression on such a well-traveled road, or at least none that her untrained eye could find.

But then she saw it, a small drop of blood. She walked a few paces north and found another, and another after that.

There were none to the south.

'North,' she said. 'One of them was bleeding by the horz, and I guess he still is. Anyhow, it's the only sign we've got.'

In some distant age, the river Teremene had cut a gorge in the pale bones of the countryside, but he hardly seemed the sort of river to do that now. He appeared old and sluggish beneath a wintry sky, hardly troubling the coracles, barges, and sailboats on his back.

Nor did he seem resentful of the impressive stone bridge that spanned him at his narrows, or the massive granite pylons that thrust down into his waters to support it.

Anne switched her gaze to the village that rested beyond the stone span. She vaguely remembered that it was also called Teremene, and they hadn't stopped there during their last trip on the Vitellian Way.

'Austra,' Anne asked, 'when we crossed into Vitellio, there were border guards.

Do you remember?'

'Yes. You flirted with one, as I recall.'

'I did not, you jade,' Anne protested. 'I asked him to be more careful inspecting my things! And never mind that anyway. Were there border guards here?

This is the border between Tero Galle and Hornladh. Shouldn't there be guards?'

'We weren't stopped,' Austra confirmed, after a moment of thought. 'But we weren't stopped when we crossed into Hornladh from Crotheny, either.'

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'Right, but Hornladh is a part of father's'' She broke off as grief bit. She kept forgetting. 'Hornladh is part of the Empire. Tero Galle isn't. Anyway, it looks like there are guards there now.'

Austra nodded. 'I saw them inspecting the caravan.'

'So why the sudden vigilance?'

'The caravan is going into Hornladh, and we were leaving it. Maybe the Empire cares who comes into its territory, and Tero Galle doesn't.'

'Maybe,' Anne sighed. 'I should know these things, shouldn't I? Why didn't I pay more attention to my tutors?'

'You're afraid it's the horsemen?'

'Yes'or they may have offered a reward for us, like they did in z'Espino.'

'Then it doesn't matter if they're legitimate guards or not,' Austra reasoned.

'We can't take the risk.'

'But we have to cross the bridge,' Anne said. 'And I was hoping, once in the Empire, we might find some help. Or at least ask if anyone has seen Cazio and z'Acatto.'

'And get something to eat,' Austra added. 'The fish was tiresome, but it was better than nothing.'

Anne's stomach was rumbling, too. For the moment it was just unpleasant, but in a day or two, it would be a real problem. They didn't have even a copper miser left, and she had already sold her hair. That only left a few things to sell, none of which she cared to think about.

'Maybe when it gets dark,' Austra proposed dubiously.

Something moved behind them. A little rock went bouncing down the slope and past their hiding place. Gasping softly, Anne swung around to see what it was and discovered two young men with dark hair and olive complexions staring down at them. They wore leather jerkins and ticking pantaloons tucked into high boots.

Both had short swords, and one of them had a bow.

'Ishatite! Ishatite, ne ech te nekeme!' the man with the bow shouted.

'I don't understand you!' Anne snapped back in frustration.

The shouter cocked his head. 'King's tongue, yes?' he said, coming down the slope, arrow pointed squarely at her. 'Then you are the ones they look for, I bet me.'

'There's one behind us now,' Austra whispered. Anne's heart sank, but as the two moved closer her fear began to turn to anger.

'Who are you?' she demanded. 'What do you want?'

'Want you,' the man said. 'Outlanders come by yesterday, say, 'Find two girls, one with red hair, one with gold. Bring them or kill them, make no difference, but bring them and get much coin.' Here I see me girl with gold hair. I think under that rag, I see hair is red.' He gestured with the weapon. 'Take off.'

Anne reached up and removed the scarf. The man's grin broadened. 'Try to hide, eh? Doing not so good.'

'You're a fool,' Anne said. 'They won't pay you. They'll kill you.'

'You say,' the man replied. 'I think not to trust you.' He stepped forward.

'Don't touch me,' Anne snarled. 'Eshrije,' the other man said.

'Yes, right,' the bowman replied. 'They say red-hair is witch. Better just to kill.'

As he pulled back on the bow, Anne lifted her chin in defiance, reaching for her power, ready to see what it could really do. 'You will die for this,' she said.

A brief fear seemed to pass across his face, and he hesitated. Then he gasped in pain and surprise, stumbling, and she saw an arrow standing from his shoulder.

He dropped his bow, groaning loudly, and the other man started shouting.

'Stand away, Comarre, and the rest of you, too,' a new voice said. Anne saw the owner, farther up the hill'a man in late middle age, with a seamed, sun-browned face and black hair gone half-silver. 'These ladies don't seem to like you.'

'Damn you, Artore,' the man with the arrow in his shoulder gritted. 'This no business of yours. I saw first.'

'My boys and I are making it our business,' the older man replied.

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Their attackers backed away. 'Yes, fine,' Comarre said. 'But another day, Artore.'

At that, an arrow hit him in the throat, and he dropped like a sack of grain.

The other two had time to cry out, and then Anne found herself staring at three corpses.

'No other day, Comarre,' Artore said, shaking his head.

Anne looked up at him.

'I'm sorry you had to see that, ladies,' he said. 'Are you well?' He stepped closer.

Anne grabbed Austra and hugged her tightly. 'What do you want?' she asked. 'Why did you kill them?'

'They've had it coming for a long time,' the man said. 'But just now I figure that if I let them go, they'll go tell that pack of Hansan knights, then they come looking for me, burn down my house'no good.'

'You mean you aren't taking us to them?'

'Me? I hate knights and I hate Hansans. Why would I do anything for them? Come, it's dark soon, and I think you're hungry, no?'

Anne numbly followed the man named Artore along a rutted road delimited by juniper and waxweed, into the hilly country that stretched beyond sight of the river. There they were quickly joined by four boys, all armed with bows. The setting sun lay behind them, and their shadows ran ahead in the subdued dusk.

Swallows cut at the air with crescent wings, and Anne wondered once again exactly what had happened in the horz, why the knights hadn't seen them.

They strolled past empty fields and thatch-roofed houses built of brick. Artore and his boys chatted amongst themselves and exchanged greetings with their neighbors as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

'This is Jarne,' Artore informed her, patting a spindly, tall young man on the shoulder. 'He's the eldest, twenty-five. Then there's Co-tomar, the one with the chicken nest in his hair. Lochete, he's the one with the big ears, and Senche is the youngest.'

'I didn't thank you,' Anne said guardedly.

'Why should you? Figured we were going to take you to town, just like Comarre planned. Eh?'

'Are the knights still in town?' Anne asked.

'Some of them. Some of them are out in the countryside, and three of them went east with a couple of fellows they had all tied up.'

'Cazio!' Austra gasped.

'Friends of yours, I take it.'

'Yes,' Anne said. 'We were following them, hoping for a chance at rescue.'

Artore laughed at that. 'I wonder how you thought you were going to manage that.'

'We have to try,' Anne said. 'They saved our lives, and as you said, they are our friends.'

'But against men like that? You're braver than you are smart. Why do they want you?'

'They want to kill me, that is all I know,' Anne said. 'They've chased us all the way from Vitellio.'

'Where are you trying to get to?'

Anne hesitated. 'Eslen,' she finally said.

He nodded. 'That's what I figured. That's still a long way, though, and it's not the direction they're taking your friends. So which way will you go?'

Anne had been thinking about that a lot, since Cazio and z'Acatto had been captured. It was her duty to go back to Eslen, she knew that. But she also had a duty to her friends. As long as their captors had been headed north, she hadn't been forced to choose. Now she was, and she knew without a doubt which choice her mother'and the Faiths'would call the right one.

The thing was, whichever way she chose, she didn't have much chance of surviving, not with Austra as a companion.

'I don't know,' she murmured.

'Anne!' Austra cried. 'What are you saying?'

'I'll think of something,' she promised. 'I'll think of something.'

Artore's house was much like the others they had passed, but Borderlands

larger and more rambling. Chickens pecked in the yard and beyond, in a fence, she saw several horses. The sky was nearly dark now, and the light from inside was cheerful.

A woman of about Artore's age met them at the door. Her blond-ish hair was caught up in a bun, and she wore an apron. Wonderful smells spilled through the doorway.

'There's my wife,' Artore said. 'Osne.'

'You found them, then,' she said. 'Daje Vespre to you, girls.'

'You were looking for us?' Anne said, the hair on her neck pricking up.

'Don't be frightened,' the woman said. 'I sent him.'

'But why?'

'Come in, eat. We can talk after.'

The house was as cheery inside as it looked from the outside. A great hearth stood at one end of the main room, with pots and pans, a workable, ceramic jars of flour, sugar, and spices. Garlic hung in chains from the rafters, and a little girl was playing on the terra-cotta-tile floor.

Anne suddenly felt hungrier than she had in her life. The table was already set, and the woman ushered them to sit.

For the next half bell, Anne forgot almost everything but how to eat. Their trenchers were sliced from bread still hot from the baking. And there was butter'not olive oil, as it always was in Vitellio but butter. Osne ladled a stew of pork, leeks, and mussels onto the bread, which in itself should have been plenty, but then she brought out a sort of pie stuffed with melted cheese and hundreds of little strips of pastry and whole eggs. Added to that was a sort of paste made of chicken livers cooked in a crust, and all washed down with a strong red wine.

She felt like crying with joy'at the coven, they'd eaten frugally' bread and cheese and porridge. On the road and in z'Espino they had lived near starvation and eaten what they could find or buy with their meager monies. This was the first truly delicious meal she had eaten since leaving Eslen, all those months ago. It reminded her that there could be more to life than survival.

When it was done, Anne helped Osne, Austra, and the two youngest boys clear the table and clean up.

When they were finished, she and Osne were suddenly alone. She wasn't sure where Austra had got off to.

Osne turned to her and smiled. 'And now, Anne Dare,' she said, 'heir to the throne of Crotheny'you and I must talk.'

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