I might not be horse-mad like some girls, she thought. But I’ll take a horse over alone with Mama right now, any day! And I don’t even have to take an escort, with men so short.

She finished off her workout by taking the bridle path northeast along 99E, up to the tangle of vines and quick growing sumac, poplar and hemlock and sapling oak that was rapidly obliterating the burned-out site of old Woodburn. Her father and later her mother had supervised the stripping and destruction of the deserted town. She could just remember watching the foresters fire the controlled burn when she was five, and the quickgrowing trees planted for fuel and coppice were already fifteen or twenty feet tall in this moist mild climate.

She circled north on the edge of the raw young forest. Only the castle folk used South Boones Ferry Road, so she shook the reins and galloped over the familiar winding path, spurring Iomedea around the bend into Parr. A man stepped into the path and snatched at the bay’s bridle. Yseult gasped but there was no time to be afraid, or to think. Horsemaster Johannsen’s voice rang in her head.

“Wait for it, wait . . . four, three, two . . .”

Iomedea reared and crow-hopped, obedient to the signals she sent. She raised her quirt . . .

Thee may not need it, little Mistress, she heard Johannsen say in her mind, But nonetheless, I’ll be teaching thee a few maneuvers. The mare’s a nice girl and will learn well, and it never hurts to know.

Even as she brought the quirt down, cutting at the ragged man, her eyes met his. He started, dodged the whip and jumped back into the trees. Yseult gasped and set Iomedea forward at a hard gallop, her heart pounding.

I didn’t think I would need a groom here! On my own land! Who was that? she wondered. I thought I knew him, just for an instant . . . I’d better tell the guard captain right away.

Anxiety and fear rode with her as she hurried back to town at a trot. She pulled up at the edge of the built-up area; Gervais wasn’t big enough to rate a city wall. A Tinerant caravan was setting up as she did, their barrel-shaped house-wagons grouped in a square and a wild music of violins and guitars sounding; the ragged, gaudy figures made extravagant bows . . . one of them still juggling cups and daggers and apples while he did. A storyteller was declaiming to an audience of village youngsters and youths: “Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars . . .”