“Gods! How can those people live?”

“I don’t know,” Kieri said. “But we must be ready to listen and try to understand if we do not want fires in our land. I’m sending to Halveric to come as soon as he can, house or no. I need whatever trained troops all of you have, as well. Untrained won’t do: the Pargunese army is not a bunch of farm lads with sticks.” He looked at the elves. “You must also help, if it comes to that. He has sworn to burn the forest to the mountains; I do not know enough yet about the taig to prevent it, without your aid.”

“The Lady could convince him,” one of the elves said.

Kieri shook his head. “I don’t think so. His ideas are so fixed—he would believe it was all magery and not listen to her reasons.”

“And you think he will listen to yours?” the elf asked.

“He may not,” Kieri said. “I will do what I can to persuade him … I don’t intend to let him kill me … and I do not know if he will return home if he doesn’t.”

“It seems incredible that he would come alone, in disguise.”

“Yes. I don’t know why he did that, either. Everything they’ve done—sending the old lady, sending Elis without warning, his appearance—makes no sense to me. Yet he is not a stupid man, or insane; we were enemies across a border, and everything he ordered there made sense, inconvenient as it often was.”

“He’s had an illness? He’s had an injury?”

“Not that I could tell. It must be, as with this thing about women soldiers, that he thinks very differently … and he thinks we have the same ideas, just different values.”

It did not escape Kieri’s notice that he felt much more competent preparing for an invasion than he had in planning for peace. He set in order the movement of supplies, of reinforcements, pored over the maps … realizing that for the first time in his life he must trust distant field commanders rather than take the field himself.

Regular couriers brought word of the Pargunese king’s progress toward Chaya. Orlith and other elves wanted more time to teach him more about the taig; he could spare very little. What he wanted was someone who could teach him more about the Pargunese, but Orlith knew little more than he’d said before.

“We left those eastern shores long ago,” he said.

“To come here?”

“No. To Aare, most of those who had been east of the water. We did not like it. Too far from our people here in the west, and too full of rockfolk. Mountains come close to the sea there, north and south both, and they were not pleased if we did not stay on the coast. The Seafolk then were farther south and avoided us; we knew them little.”

Interesting history, but what he needed now was some useful information, something that would help him persuade the Pargunese not to attack Lyonya.