“You say Estcarp wars?” She had never really thought of venturing through the wild band of outlaw territory between Verlaine and the southern border of Estcarp, but with one of the witches of that land as a riding companion it might now be the best choice of all.

“Yes, Estcarp wars, blank shield. But have you thought of Kars, lady duchess? Would you look upon your realm in secret and see what manner of a future you have tossed away?”

Loyse, startled, almost kneed her mount into a trot unsafe for the way they threaded.

“ Kars?” she repeated blankly.

Something in that worked in her mind. Yes, she had no mind to be Yvian’s lady duchess. But on the other hand Kars was the center of the southern lands and she might find a kinsman or two there if she needed help later. In so large a city a blank shield with money in his purse could lose himself. And should Fulk manage to discover something of her trail he would not think to search for her in Kars.

“Estcarp must wait yet awhile,” the other was saying. “Trouble stirs through the land. And I would know more of it, and of those who do the stirring. Kars is a starting point.”

She had been managed; Loyse knew that, but there was no feeling of outrage in her. It was rather that she had at long last found the end of a tangled cord, one which, if she dared to follow it through all its coils, would bring her where she had always wanted to be.

“We shall ride to Kars,” she consented quietly.

PART III: VENTURE OF KARSTEN

I

THE HOLE OF VOLT

Five men lay on the wave-beaten sand of the tiny cup of bay and one of them was dead, a great gash across his head. It was a hot day and shafts of sun struck full on their half-naked bodies. The smell of the sea and the stink of rotting weeds combined with the heat in a tropic exhalation.

Simon coughed, bracing his battered body up on his elbows. He was one great bruise and he was very nauseated. Slowly he crawled a little apart and was thoroughly sick, though there was little enough to be ejected from his shrunken stomach. The spasm shook him into full consciousness, and, when he could control his heaving, he sat up.

He could remember only parts of the immediate past.

Their flight from Sulcarkeep had begun the nightmare. Magnis Osberic’s destruction of the power projector, that core of energy supplying light and heat to the port, had not only blown up the small city but must have added to the fury of the storm which followed. And in that storm the small party of surviving Guards, trusting to the escape craft, had been scattered without hope of course keeping.