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"There’s soround back there," said Brother Breschius "A defile, a few drops where the ground falls away This palace was built to take advantage of the high ground They ht have If so, it is unlikely in this darkness ill find them We’ll search at dawn"

She looked at Sister Rosvita After a reed Hanna looked past the toe seated and was fussing to get her to drink broth out of the stewpot

Princess Sapientia stared into the flickering fire She did not look as if she had lost herand cursing and flailing her arms in theand frothing at the ht a soul possessed by a demon She just did not speak and did not respond and seemed to have cut the thread that binds one person’s actions to those of her companions, which threads are all that stitch the world of living things into a single fabric of being She acted as if she were already dead

"Pull the two cargo wagons across the open side," Bertha was saying "Fix shields to cover what they can Set ht of the wall on the other sides Yes, even up there, in those rafters that can take their weight"

"Eagle" The sergeant addressed her "First watch, if you will, out at the second line of wall Keep a particular eye out for will-o-the-wisps, any strange glaht Listen hard"

The other Stephen joined her about fifty paces out fro of the chapel, where a low stone wall ood dozen or more years older, pale-haired, blue-eyed, steady, sh

They braced theet the broadest view of the slope of the fore hill and the lower ground, all lost in night In good weather theyof time by the rise and fall of the stars, but as it was they just sat, watching and listening Now and again a shimmer of rain passed over, but it always faded It was silent and cool He shifted occasionally, feet scraping on the ground For some reason her hands ached, and twice she inhaled a curious scent of charred wood melded with the acrid flavor of juniper

Stephen said, "did you hear that?"

"No"

Night noises, nothing more: a brief hiss of rain, the crackle of branches where the wind stroked the of the earth as it cooled A cold breeze poured out of the heavens, seeht of the sky

We are alone in the world, she thought

And then: All things are alone, yet nothing is alone, it is all tangled together, woven as in a weir to create an obstacle or diversion or as in a tapestry to reater whole

She felt Stephen’s presence, how he shifted to find a ht knee, how he stifled a cough by turning it into a grunt She felt the pool of air beyond where the land sloped away doard She smelled the sparks and ash of the wood fire and the arohed, back in the shelter of the chapel

She yawned, swaying, and slipped into that se nor sleep

The wind picked her up as if she were a downy feather, and she spun away across the ruins, across a river, across forest and distant hamlets and stretches of meadowland and woodland farther and farther still, uncounted leagues flashing beneath her until the landscape that fell away under her feet was grass and only grass, pale in the dailight There co sun tinted blue behind a veil of dust as it shoulders up over a golden-green horizon of grass A procession e folk with almond-shaped eyes and eastern cos attached to their armored coats; some are women whose hips flow into and become the bodies of horses One is a shaman stippled with the tattoos of his kind, the spirit coic he can call on at need She follows theo

Where a silver river ribbons in long looping curves across the golden landscape, the land sinks into awater Beyond, paler grass grows in clouds likein the wind The cains to roup that approaches them

Far above, a shrill cry reverberates A wo to her companions to warn them, then raises her bow and releases an arrow into the sky It burns, and Hanna tuold and one silver, flying east toward the dark spires of distant mountains They pass over her, and she twists and finds herself wading in ankle-deep water, pressing through reeds, scratched by blades of grass as she pushes up out of the shallows onto dry land that at first sinks beneath each step and then dries and stiffens to dusty earth and a sheen of green-gold grass so fresh and new that it s