both from the unearthly foes.”
Outside the safehold, the lords of the forest gathered, with their death-bright faces. Ilbran started to turn his head. “Do not look at them!” Kallan said sharply. He continued to talk.
“As you said, I was not one of the ones who laughed. Nahil was my liege lord; he saved my life and I swore to him. And it did not begin the way you saw it.” Kallan looked at the fisherman, desperately anxious to justify himself to someone. “In the north, he was a gentle lord.”
Ilbran spoke slowly, grudgingly. “Which way do you travel when you leave the forest?”
“I meant to go to Oreja, the fair land where I was born, to see how lightly the king’s hand lies on the land. What of you?”
“I am not accustomed to planning for the future,” Ilbran said. “This place held me in its jaws for seven years. I meant to follow where my feet led me.” He looked at Kallan curiously. “Why did the king turn against you?”
“Because I was there the day he took power. The day Andiene escaped. He grew to hate us, for we had seen his helplessness, his shame. And one by one, there were excuses, and false charges; I was loyal to him longer than I should have been. I did not realize, until there were none left but me. All the brave men, the valiant comrades, all dead, all gone … ”
Ilbran broke into his lament. “I cannot find it in my heart to grieve for them.”
Kallan saw the younger man’s eyes, as cold as ice. The fisherman was not the soft fool that he had seemed. “I am sorry,” he said. “You have your own song of grief, if you could find the heart to tell it.” He looked at Kare. “But you have raised a brave child. When she wakes, you can tell her that she is as valiant as the princess Andiene, who held us all at bay while she walked out unharmed.”
“Then the stories were true?” Ilbran asked in wonder.
“All true,” Kallan said. “It was a sight out of a minstrel’s proudest song, though it froze me with fear.”
“What became of her? Was she ever taken by your men?”
“She vanished like bubbles breaking—at a touch they disappear. There was no way to know which of the stories were true.”
“Maybe she died unknown?”
“The rightful heir still lives,” Kallan said. “Nahil knows it; the city has never answered to him. Maybe we will never know what became of her, but I think so strange a story could not begin and have no ending.”
Chapter 16
“Touch not a leaf,” Lenane said to her companions as they entered the dim green light of the forest. “Though the paths are safe from the greatest evil, still they are perilous. Easy for the trees to gain their revenge, if we mistreat them.”
“All things are perilous,” said Andiene.
“Did I not see you break down boughs to make our beds, over on that other shore?” Syresh asked her. “And I watched my men hew down trees by the score, and we went untouched.”
“And where are they now?” Her gray eyes met his. “Do the tides trouble their slumber?”
They walked a little ways apart; she lowered her voice, so that Lenane could not hear her. “I have been thinking of my power, of its limits. It is not as great as I thought it would be. Those ships came to my call easily, only because of the grudge they bore your men, and even so, I did not gain my heart’s desire.
“As for the boughs that you saw me break, they were from the lesser kind, like dumb beasts. Even then, I asked their pardon.”
She looked up into the gray-branched darkness that roofed them over. “These ones—though I have never entered the forest, I recognize their breed. They are older than our race, and stronger, and wiser.”
Her tone convinced him, as Lenane’s warnings had not. He did not stray from the middle of the dark-earthed path, nor did he set a hand to any of the trees.
Before noon they came to a safehold, like a heap of children’s blocks. Wide shallow steps led up to a three-sided shelter, roofed with another dark slab of stone.
“What are these?” Andiene asked, pointing to the ridges of stone that went out from the entrance. Then she looked again and answered her own question. “The dragon’s paws … ”
“City or forest, you cannot escape it,” said Lenane.
Syresh glanced at the sun. “Do