where the grass grew as high as her waist, but narrow paths ran through them. She followed one a little ways down the road, stopping often to look back at the towered hill to keep within its sight, but she woke before she’d gone far. Over the next few nights she would walk a little way through these meadows, then rush back to the city before it could disappear. She had learned, just lately, that things you loved could disappear without warning.
Eventually, as she walked through the grass she saw far off to one side something gleaming like fire in the green, but no smoke rose. She left the road and struggled through the grass under a sky growing dim with twilight. Off to her right a huge purple moon trembled on the horizon as night deepened. When she looked back, the city walls still rose nearby, with here and there a point of lantern light upon them. The sight gave her the courage to keep going toward the fire-gleam, a strange red glow like a beacon in the grass.
Two huge five-pointed stars, each taller than a man and twined of stranded red and gold light, hung in the air just above a stretch of beaten-down grass. Between them the earth opened into the mouth of a tunnel sloping down into some unseeable darkness. On the other side of the stars someone was standing in the grass – a woman, judging from her long ash-blonde hair, but she wore tight leather trousers and a tunic rather than dresses.
‘Here!’ the woman called out. You’re not Raena.’
‘And I do thank every god in my heart for that,’ Niffa called back. ‘Who be you?’
The woman walked around the stars and stood looking her over with her hands on her hips. Niffa had never seen anyone so beautiful, or so she thought at first glance. She had silver blonde hair with silver eyes that matched it. Her features were even and perfect – but her ears! They were long and strangely furled like a new fern in spring.
‘My name is Dallandra,’ the woman said at last. ‘And I made these wards to keep Raena away from a thing she seeks. Who are you?’
‘Niffa be my name.’
‘Jahdo’s sister!’
‘And is it that you know our Jahdo?’ In her joy Niffa forgot her fear. ‘Fares he well? Oh please, do tell me.’
‘Well and safe, truly, and you’ll be seeing him in the spring.’
The joy rose like a wave of pure water. All at once Niffa lay awake, tucked into her blankets with a ferret asleep on her chest and grey dawn flooding the window.
‘Tek-tek, whist!’ She shook the ferret awake, then picked her up and put her down on the bed next to her. ‘It’s needful I tell Mam straightaway.’
She found Dera awake, kneeling by the hearth and laying twigs upon blazing tinder. In the big bed at the far side of the room Lael still slept, wrapped around a pillow and snoring. Dera was concentrating on the fire, but she’d apparently heard her daughter approach.
‘Early for you to be up and about,’ Dera said.
‘Mam, I did have the most wonderful dream, and it be one of my true ones, I do know it deep my heart. I did meet a woman who does know our Jahdo. He be safe and well, she did tell me, and he’ll be returning in the spring.’
At that Dera did look up, and the warmth of her smile glowed like the spreading fire.
‘I’ll look forward, then,’ Dera said. ‘It does my heart no good, all this looking back.’
‘I’ve got somewhat else for you to look forward to, Mam. I’ve not had my monthly bleeding.’
Dera rose, studying Niffa’s face.
‘Now here, don’t you be getting your hopes up, lass. Grief will do strange things to a woman; it well might dry her up for a while, like.’
Niffa felt tears rise, choked them back, and turned away. She felt her mother’s gentle hand on her shoulders.
‘I know how much you did love your Demet,’ Dera said. ‘Mayhap the goddesses will bless you after all. There be a need on us to wait and see.’
When Dallandra woke in the morning, she lay in bed for a while, considering Jahdo’s sister. How had Niffa got into the Gatelands of Sleep, and why did she seem so at home there? Later in the day Dallandra tracked Jahdo down, finding him at the servants’ hearth in the great hall with Cae, an orphan boy who worked in the kitchens. On the smooth stones in front of the fire, they were playing with little wooden tops. For a moment she watched as each boy set his top spinning with a flick that bumped it against another. She waited until Jahdo had lost a match, then called him away. They stood to one side where they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘I want to ask you somewhat about your sister,’ Dallandra said. ‘And it’s a very odd question.’
‘Very well, my lady,’ Jahdo said. ‘Niffa be a very odd lass, so fair’s fair.’
‘Odd? How do you mean, odd?’
‘Oh, all the folk in Cerr Cawnen, that’s what they did always say. Our Niffa, she be an odd little soul.’ Jahdo thought for a moment. ‘She did see things. And she had dreams.’
‘Tell me a bit more about that.’
‘We’d be sitting at our fire, and you’d look at Niffa, and her eyes – they’d be moving back and forth, and she’d smile, too, at whatever it was. Or in the lake, she’d be seeing things. And the clouds sometimes too. And then there be her dreams. Mam stopped her from telling them after a while, because when they did come true, our neighbours and townsfolk would be ever so scared by it.’
‘No doubt! Well, my thanks, Jahdo.’
‘But my lady, what be your question?’
‘You just answered it, lad. Now run along, go back to your game. The other lads are waiting for you.’
Only later did Dallandra remember that Jahdo was desperate for news of his family. How selfish of me! she thought. I’d best see what I can find out from Niffa – well, if I ever see her again! A girl little older than a child, with a raw gift for dweomer, wandering unknowingly around the astral plane – she might never stumble upon Dallandra’s vigil again. And yet, as she thought about it, Dallandra realized with an odd certainty that she would see Niffa again in the lands of sleep. The thought was so clear that she knew it must be a message from the Great Ones. Why they’d sent the message was a question of the sort they never answered directly, but Dallandra could venture a guess. No doubt Raena was continuing to work her evil magicks. And no doubt, Dallandra thought, it’s fallen to me to stop her.
‘And just where, pray tell, have you been?’ Verrarc felt his voice catch and growl.
In the pool of lantern light Raena half-crouched against the wall. Her cloak dripped wet snow onto the floor.
‘As if I knew not!’ Verrarc went on. ‘Up in the ruins, bain’t, with that cursed Havoc creature?’
‘And what’s it to you?’
‘What be it to me? Ye gods, have you gone daft? If the town should find out – you up there, consorting with evil spirits – ye gods! I could be ruined! And you – think, woman! They love you not as it is. If they thought you to bring evil among them –’
With a toss of
