“You don’t run like that in the house,” she said to the children as Dorrin came nearer. “And you don’t dirty up the floor with muddy feet. There’s a scullery passage back here for a reason.”

Now Dorrin could see the whole bedraggled group, nursery-maids in the rear and excited children jumping up and down. “Thank you, Gwenno,” she said. “If you get the mud off their feet, they may walk upstairs to change.”

“Yes, my lord,” Gwenno said. “It’s my fault, really. I saw the curtain of rain coming and said we should go through the garden to beat it, but we weren’t fast enough. If we’d gone through the stables, they could have shed all the dirt there.”

“No matter,” Dorrin said. “While you younglings get your feet cleaned, I’ll fetch the runaways.”

Farin was already dragging them back down the passage when Dorrin turned.

Once the children were upstairs, Gwenno came padding back down the passage in her sock feet, holding her boots in one hand. “We almost made it,” she said.

“So you did—and a good job, too.” The rain still pounded on the roof, falling so hard it made a mist on the stable court. “This will bring the river up…”

“And make the grass grow, my da always says. Never mind the rain; it’s the dry you have to fear.”

“The dry…” The words caught Dorrin’s mind, and she had a sudden vision of barren rocks and waves of sand as vast as the sea. Old Aare … Ibbirun’s curse, the Sandlord’s domain now and forever.

No. Not forever. Come to us. Take us …

She shivered.

“Are you all right, my lord? Are you taking a chill?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “I just thought of Old Aare, and the thought of that desert here, in this green land … horrible.”

“It wouldn’t happen here,” Gwenno said with the confidence of youth. “Tsaia has always been forest and field. The Honnorgat has flowed from the memory of men.”

“There are older beings than men,” Dorrin said, and wondered where that thought had come from. “And it’s said Old Aare was green once.”

“But not as green as this, I would wager,” Gwenno said. “And besides—if Ibbirun’s curse has not gone beyond Old Aare in all this time, why would it now?”

“You know the legends,” Dorrin said. “Some great evil was done that set Ibbirun free. Are we so free of evil these days and in this place? Consider my relatives, who cursed trees and wells. Could such as they not have invited Ibbirun here?”

Now Gwenno shuddered. “My lord—that’s horrible. How could anyone—”