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By Root 1097 0

left the city and rode north, rejoining his allies some three hours past dawn only to find the toad still asleep. They were camped some twelve miles outside the city walls of Wylinth with the small caravan that provided the rationale for their traveling around the islands. Although Pirrallo sometimes claimed to be a slave trader, keeping actual slaves with eyes to see things and mouths to blab them would have been far too risky; instead, they had a string of twenty-odd horses for sale or trade and two stock handlers who were in fact lesser initiates of the Hawks. Gwin himself was supposed to be Pirrallo’s property, just because owning one barbarian gave the toad a reason for asking to buy another, a ruse that rankled, because the stigma of having been born into slavery stuck to him wherever he went, even among those who followed the dark paths. Until the summer before he’d faced or fought it down when he could and took a perverse pride in it when he couldn’t, but his brief trip through Deverry had turned his views on life and his self upside down. He’d spent a long time thinking about this change in himself, and he decided that simply living among free men had brought it about, but, of course, deeper levels of the soul and memory were working on him, more deeply than he could know. Although Gwin was no true barbarian—his father had been a Bardek man though his mother, a Deverry girl—he’d felt in some odd way that Deverry was home, that he’d been trapped all his life unknowing in a foreign exile, and that, of course, the exile would continue without hope.

His one comfort these days was knowing that the other two Hawks hated Pirrallo as much as he did. After all, Brinonno and Vandar stood to die, too, if their toad-spy turned the Hawkmaster against them. That morning, the three of them sat at the cold campfire and ate stale bread and last night’s vegetables while Pirrallo snored in his tent on the other side of the campground. Vandar even said aloud what all of them were thinking, that he hoped the fat fool would do something stupid and get himself killed or arrested when they reached Wylinth.

“Not too likely, unfortunately,” Gwin said. “He knows his work, all right.”

“You don’t suppose he’s scrying us out right now, do you?” Brinonno said with a start. “And listening to what we’re saying?”

“I doubt it very much.” Gwin allowed himself a twisted smile. “You know what his big flaw is? He loves himself so much that it never occurs to him that other men hate him.”

“I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have much power for scrying, anyway,” Vandar put in. “Always bragging, yes, but why are we wandering all over, playing out this elaborate hoax, if he can really scry for Rhodry? I know he’s never seen the barbarian himself, but you have, and a real master can work through someone else’s eyes.”

“Only if that someone’s willing to let him crush his will.” Gwin felt his voice turn flat. “By the Clawed Ones themselves, if he tried to put his toad’s paw on the back of my neck, I’d knock him halfway to Hell, and I think he knows it.” Then he laughed in self-mockery. “Not that it’s fear of me that’s holding him back, mind. No, when he arrived, he announced that there were fresh orders from the Hawkmaster. He had reason to think that it would be dangerous to scry too much, or use much dweomer for anything, for that matter. Pirrallo didn’t tell me why.”

“Probably the master didn’t tell him,” Brinonno said.

“Maybe not.” Vandar stood up, stretching. “But the little pig-bugger was probably lying, too. Well, I’m going to water the stock. It’s shaping up for a warm day, now the rain’s gone.”

When the two walked off together, Gwin sat by the fire and considered them. Doubdess they would tell the Hawkmaster everything he’d said, especially if it would save their own skins later, but he was sure they’d let nothing slip to Pirrallo. Since in his own way Gwin was a good judge of men, he knew honest hatred when he saw it.

“Salamander?” Jill said. “Can you tell fortunes?”

“I can, but I wouldn’t use true dweomer for such a stupid game.”

“I was wondering