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By Root 1281 0

came running to help lead the horses into the compound while keeping them away from the floral borders and the appetizing lawn. Although Salamander and Rhodry plunged into the middle of the confusion, grabbing halters and yelling at balky stock, Jill made her way clear and stood just inside the gates out of the way. She was so tired that she felt that all her muscles had turned to water, sloshing inside her skin, and she yawned, leaning back against the wall for support. Until, that is, she saw Gwin. He was leading in the last few horses, or rather, trying to, because every time he approached the threshold, he would suddenly stop, hesitate, then back up to try again. From the look on his face he was near tears, like a tiny child who, summoning all his will, tries to turn a somersault as deftly as his older brother but falls every time.

“What is it?” Jill called out.

“I don’t know. Ah horseshit, I do know. They’ve got wards against the likes of me. I’d have been better off slitting my throat, Jill, back at that cursed farm where you found me.”

“What do you mean?” She pried herself off the wall in a sudden rush of energy. “Is someone waiting for you inside?”

“Oh, never that. The men I’m afraid of won’t be going into a place like this. It’s just that I can’t either.”

As she hurried out the gates, her gray gnome appeared, pointing with one skinny finger at the air above the outer wall. When Jill looked up, she saw nothing at first, but if she squinted she could discern what might have been a shimmering distortion, as if she looked through glass. His mouth slack, Gwin was staring at the same empty spot. Jill suddenly realized that she could use this excuse to get rid of him, send him off with the horses to an inn or stable, perhaps, where—where what? she asked herself. Where he’ll be easy prey for his old guild?

“Salamander!” she yelled. “Somewhat’s wrong!”

Accompanied by a flurry of priests Salamander came trotting out, saw Gwin, looked up, and cursed in a most irreligious way under his breath. Brother Merrano apparently shared his understanding of the problem if not his taste in language.

“By the oars of the Wave-father! Now I wonder what’s causing the trouble? Is this a slave of yours?”

“No, a freedman. He’s been marked by—well, let us say some bad company of his youth, or so I’d guess.” Salamander was giving Merrano a look of intense significance. “He’s reformed. I’ll swear it to you on the altar if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary. The question is how we’re going to get him inside.”

Gwin turned sharply away, and although his face betrayed nothing, Jill could guess that he was fighting back tears.

“We can hardly do a ceremony right out here in the public street,” Merrano went on.

“Why not?” All at once Salamander grinned. “We shall dispense with the billowing incense, the chanting, the fine linen robes, and the booming gongs, but a ceremony we shall have none the less. Come here, turtledove, and take my right hand. Good. Now put your left on Gwin’s shoulder, just casual like, as if you were going to tell him somewhat private. Now I put my other hand on his other arm, likewise and in a corresponding manner, and there we are!”

As soon as Salamander closed the circle by touching Gwin, Jill felt a rush of power flow round and round the three of them. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose and prickled; Wildfolk swarmed into manifestation and dove into the current of force like swimmers in a river; Gwin tossed his head back and caught his breath with an audible gasp. This time, when she glanced up, Jill could see the ward, a glowing sphere of force capping the temple compound, all marked with strange sigils and flaming pentagrams.

“Aha, there’s the trouble,” Salamander murmured. “The rotten bastards have scarred his aura!”

When Jill considered Gwin again, she could see an inverted pentagram floating in the air above his head. There was something so sour and crabbed about that blackish, murky mark that she could have sworn she could smell it as a foulness in the air. All at once it caught fire