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Leshya saw his expression and raised her eyebrows.

Fighting down the paranoia, Aspar pushed the eldritch blade back in, unhooked the scabbard, and held it out toward her.

“This is yours,” he said. “I should have given it back to you days ago.”

“You make better use of it than I would,” she said.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Neither do I,” the Sefry replied. “It’s a sedos thing.”

Aspar proffered it for another few breaths, but she didn’t reach for it, so he hooked the sheath back on his belt.

“Let’s keep Fend’s offer to help us quiet for now,” Aspar said. “Until we cann what he’s up to.”

“It could confuse things more than they already are,” she said.

He couldn’t tell if it was a question. “Yah.”

They found Emfrith’s bunch setting up camp in a field not too far from the road. Winna came running up as they passed the watchmen. She was flushed, and though she seemed excited, it was hard to tell if it was from a good or a bad cause.

“He found us,” she said. That sounded happy.

“Stephen?”

Her expression fell, and then she shook her head.

“Ehawk.”

Aspar felt a slight lift of his shoulders. “Really? Where is he?”

“Sleeping. He was nearly falling out of his saddle. I don’t think he’s rested in days.”

“Well, I reckon I’ll talk to him later, then.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m glad the lad’s alive,” he said. “But I reckoned wherever he was, he was all right. Ehawk can take care of himself. Not like—” He stopped.

“Not like Stephen,” she said softly.

“Stephen’s fine, too,” he said gruffly. “Probably holed up in a scriftorium someplace.”

“Right,” Winna agreed. “Probably.”

Early the next morning, Aspar found Ehawk crouched around the coals of the fire. The young Watau grinned when he saw Aspar.

“You were hard to find,” he said. “Like tracking a ghost. Lost you before the cold river up there.”

“The Welph.”

“I don’t like those trees. It’s like always being at the snow line in the mountains.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “Different. Anyway, you should have just waited like Winna. I would have just come to you.”

“I couldn’t do that,” the Watau boy replied. “Winna didn’t wait, either. She made Emfrith look for you, but once her belly started swelling, he wouldn’t go far.” He stirred the embers with a stick. “He didn’t want to find you, anyway.”

“Yah, I conth that,” he said.

Ehawk nodded and pushed back his pitch-dark hair. His face looked leaner, older. His body was catching up with the man inside.

“So where are we going?” he asked.

“Mountains of the Hare. The western ranges, near Sa Ceth ag Sa’Nem.”

“Ah.” The boy shook his head. “You’re seeking the Segachau, then.”

“What?”

“The reed-water-place,” the young man said. “The well of life. The hole everything came out of at the beginning of time.”

“Grim’s eye,” Aspar swore. “You know something about it?”

“My people have lived in the mountains for a long time,” the Watau replied. “That’s a real old legend.”

“What do they say?” Aspar asked.

“It gets pretty complicated,” Ehawk said. “Lots of tribes and clan names. But really, when you simple it, the story spells that in the ancient times everything lived beneath the earth: people, animals, plants. There was also a race of demons under there that kept everything penned up. They ate us. So one day a certain man got out of his pen and found a reed that went up into the sky. He climbed it and came out here, in this world. He went back down and led everyone else up here, too. That man became the Etthoroam, the Mosslord—him you call the Briar King. He stopped the demons from following, and he made the sacred forest. When he was done, he went to sleep, and he told the people to worship the forest and keep it from harm or he would wake and take his revenge. And the place where he came up is called Segachau. They say you can’t always find it.”

Aspar scratched his chin, wondering what Stephen would make of that story. The Watau didn’t have writing or libraries. They didn’t follow the ways of the Church any more than his father’s Ingorn