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How had Hugh of Austra come to be allied with the Ashioi?

She round until its cool blade came under her hand Good iron, this The hilt bore an embossed crest which she read by touch: the letter ‘A’ surrounded by a circle

"Liath, you ripped the rope, and looked up The rock clouded her vision, and the vision that lay beyond those things seen with the open eye Rock was heavy and slowthere, a presence It was as if she could s a perfume: lavender for beauty, wolfsbane for deadliness, and soible, twisted and rotten

She could not quite grasp hih as she could reach up the rope to a place where it tightened against a curve in the ceiling, perhaps a narrow vertical tunnel There, where the rope receded into oblivion, she kissed the sleeping fire within it, and told it to burn

His shout woke fire The rope burned hard, far above her, just out of her sight The red glow spit flakes of ash, and she yanked The rope tu end s at the tip

"Ai, God! Liath!"

No need to answer She had what she wanted The glow gave just enough light for her salamander eyes She coiled the rope over and under around shoulder and torso like a bulky sash, holding the slowly burning end out away froeainst her body It would hold

She pushed into the darkness When she approached the black spire, she found what she had prayed for: a stairway into the depths

10

IN the late afternoon he rode into a clearing ringed by stately beech trees just cole ofsideways or fallen to the ground and slender saplings and a thick layer of shrubs grown up in a profusion that blocked all lines of sight An ancient wall for the as h, but it provided a barrier of sorts where otherwise theythe erected and fires burning and the deer being skinned and butchered and prepared for spit roasting over the re dogs, to keep thee such fare would have been served up as a stew Alain had put aside soe and Sorroed on while he walked through the ca here and there to servants and soldiers

He cath to the cloth screens set up on poles that divided the main portion of the camp frouards patrolled this gate, situated where a second inner ruin lay within the first

Servants and soldiers ered where the nobles sat on stools at their leisure while waiting for their roasting supper The lords and ladies laughed and chatted, at their ease He went to pee, leaving ca under the trees for a little privacy The dogs lifted their heads and beat their tails one two, growling to warn hireeted Duke Conrad, who came accompanied by a swarm of nobles, servants, and faithful soldiers Half of the a piss, a social activity on any noble’s progress, but when the duke was finished, he waved his retainers away and gestured toward a rown about with honeysuckle and crocus

"A pleasant bench," Conrad said amiably, but in his smile Alain saw the expectation of obedience

They sat, and considered the woods around the of ash and this one proud circle of beech, obviously planted decades ago for an unknown purpose Ivy had worked its way along the shadowed folds Sorrow and Rage settled at Alain’s feet, staring fixedly at Conrad

"You’re a quiet one," said the duke, "most of the tihtly, and thethem a oad whips your mount? Do you envy lanced away froain "It would be natural to envy the man who holds the treasure you once possessed yourself"

Alain waited Conrad, by all appearances a restless and energetic man, had the unusual ability to sit without the least appearance of beco impatient Men walked out in the woods, and over by the unseen fires singing broke out, a lewd song relating the a man peculiarly afflicted with aon the weather "But when the sun came out, oh! When the sun came out!"