By the time Alberich and Kantor got to the front of the mob, Laika was engulfed in children, all babbling in that strange polyglot tongue she had told him about. He remembered what else she had told him as they rode on the way—that these poor children were starved for adult attention, that she used to tell them stories, and had made herself a kind of extended grandmother to a great many of them. The dry, bare bones of her narrative did not prepare him for seeing this, and he felt his eyes stinging with tears. At least he had had his mother, lonely though his childhood had been—

He felt a tugging at his sleeve, and looked down at a little girl who had the features of one of his own hill folk. “Aunty Laika says you were of the people of the Sunlord,” the child whispered in Karsite, peering up at him hopefully. “And that you are of the White Riders of the Ghost-Horses now—”

“I am both,” he told her, immediately dropping to the ground to put his eyes on a level with hers. “This is my Ghost-Horse; his name is Kantor.”

:Ghost-Horse? Where did she come up with that? I like that a great deal better than “White-Demon” or “Hell-horse,”: Kantor said, lowering his nose to touch the hand she stretched out to him.

“Have you really come to take us somewhere safe?” she asked, as he marveled that a child of Karse should ever reach toward a Companion without fear.

“We have—but who told you of all this?” he asked, trying to make sense of the puzzle. “Who told you about Ghost-Horses and White Riders?”

If it was Laika, he was going to have a few choice words with her. That sort of story could have gotten her killed and the other three Heralds exposed.

“Oh, it was Kantis, of course,” the child told him blandly, in a tone that put the emphasis on of course. “Kantis has told us about the White Riders forever, and he promised us that some day they would come and take us where there are always good things to eat and a soft bed to sleep in, and no one would make us walk when we’re tired, and that we’d all have a mum and a da, though we’d have to share—”

Before he could ask her who Kantis was, much less where he was and how he had come up with this unlikely tale and convinced them it was going to be true, she caught sight of something past his shoulder, and with a squeal of glee, ran off.