Not master—mistress, Barrick reminded himself. And suddenly, as though everything had been tilting and threatening to tumble because of a single missing support, he saw the warrior-woman again in his mind’s eye and his thoughts grew more stable. Gyir the Storm Lantern was not a monster, but not his friend, either. Barrick could not afford to trust so much. The Qar woman, the Lady Yasammez, had held him with her bottomless stare and had told him amazing things, although he could remember very few of them now. What had she said that had sent him so boldly across the Shadowline? Or had it been something else, not ideas but a spell to enslave him? She told me of great lands I had never seen, the lands of the People, as she called them—of mountains taller than the clouds, and the black sea, and forests older than Time, and…and…

But there had been more, and it was the more that he knew had been important. She said she was sending me as a…a gift? A gift? How could he be a gift, unless the Qar ate humans? She sent me to…Saqri, he remembered, that was the name. Someone of importance and power named Saqri, who had been sleeping but would awaken soon into a world that had moved farther into defeat. Whatever that might mean. Like any dream, it had begun to fade. Except for the fairy-woman’s eyes, her predatory eyes, watchful and knowing, bright as a hunting hawk’s, but with ageless depths—what he might have imagined the eyes of a goddess to look like, when he had still believed in such things.

But if I don’t believe in the gods and their stories, he asked himself, then what is all this around me? What has happened to me if I haven’t been god-struck like the ones in the old stories, like Iaris and Zakkas and the rest of the oracles? Like Soteros who flew up to the palace of Perin on top of Mount Xandos and saw the gods in their home?

Barrick realized that he had found, if not answers, a kind of peace with his predicament. Reasoning in the way his father would have had helped him. He looked at Gyir now and saw something fearful but not terrifying, a creature both like and unlike himself. They had spoken with their minds and hearts. He had felt the faceless Qar’s angers and joys as he talked about his homeland and about the war with the humans, and had almost felt he understood him—surely that could not all have been lies. Could someone be both a bitter enemy and a friend?

Barrick felt sleep stealing over him again and let his eyes fall shut. Whether they were friends or enemies, as long as the Qar woman’s enchantment drove Barrick on he and the Gyir the Storm Lantern must at least be allies. He had to trust in that much or he would go mad for certain.

With a last few flicks of his spur Ferras Vansen finished currying his horse, then bent to strap the spur back on. The one good thing about this cursed, soggy weather was that the beast seemed to pick up few brambles, although its tail was a knotted mess. He paused, eyeing the strange dark steed that had carried Prince Barrick away from the battle. The fairy-horse looked back at him, the eyes a single, milky gleam. The creature seemed unnaturally aware, its calm not that of indifference but of superiority. Vansen sniffed and turned away, shamed to be feeling such resentment toward a dumb brute.