The Gold Falcon. Katharine Kerr

curls as she ran to greet him – so clearly that it seemed he could reach out and take her hand, but only empty air returned his grasp. She’s dead, he reminded himself. She died before you found them. He leaned his head back against the cold stone and wept.

      Dallandra smothered her little fire, then left her tent, which stood on the edge of the encampment. When she turned towards the sea, she could see the tidy whitewashed buildings of the new town, Linalavenmandra, a name that meant ‘sorrow but new hope’, though most often its inhabitants merely called it Mandra, ‘hope’. From her vantage point, its whitewashed square buildings seemed as pale as ghosts against the night-time sea. Even though returning refugees from the Southern Isles had built the town over twenty years ago, it still amazed her every time she saw it: a proper town, sheltering not Deverry men but her own folk, with a town square and straight streets, trees and gardens, a town fountain and a holy spring. Beyond it, out of her immediate sight, lay farms. All her long life she’d known only wild sea grass in this spot, sea grass and rock and the winter waves that crashed and boomed on the long pale beach. The waves still crashed, but onto a rocky sea wall now, jutting out into a new harbour, where a wooden pier offered docking for elven longships.

      With a shake of her head, Dalla turned away and strode through the camp. Despite the new town, most of the People, as the elven folk called themselves, still spent every spring and summer travelling in small groups, or alarli, following their herds of horses and flocks of sheep. In this alar two dozen round tents sprawled across a meadow near a stream. Out in the grasslands behind them, a herd of over four hundred horses, guarded by armed riders, grazed at tether.

      In among the tents, the adults stood talking together in twos and threes or sat around small fires, finishing the evening meal. Children ran around, playing with leather balls, chasing each other or their dogs. Occasionally Wildfolk materialized to join the games. Warty little gnomes wandered between the tents; translucent sylphs and pale sprites flitted after the children or teased the dogs, who couldn’t see them but who could feel their pinching fingers. The dogs would bark and snap, and the Wildfolk would disappear, only to pop up smirking somewhere nearby.

      On the surface the camp seemed no different from the elven camps Dallandra had always known. The tents were just as brightly painted, the fires just as warm. The People lived their lives as noisily as ever, in a society of ever-shifting relationships that made Deverry folk shake their heads in bewilderment. But here and there Dalla saw the signs that everything had changed.

      In front of every tent, like guests at the meal, stood longbows and quivers. Mail shirts and other pieces of armour lay close at hand as well. Most of the men and some of the women wore swords, even when they were merely chatting with old friends. At the cry of birds passing overhead the camp would fall silent; hands on sword hilts, a few men would look up, judging whether or not the birds were ordinary creatures or magical spies, mazrakir, as the Horsekin called shape-changers. Sooner or later, everyone knew, the same raids that were bleeding the human farmlands were bound to ride their way.

      In the middle of the camp Dallandra finally spotted the Banadar, or warleader, of the Eastern Border, to give Calonderiel his official title. He was sitting by himself on a dead log in front of his tent, the second largest in camp. In the flickering firelight the deer painted upon the tent walls seemed at moments to fling up their heads, ready to run. Calonderiel’s hair gleamed, so pale it was almost white, but shadows hid his violet eyes.

      ‘I’ve spoken to Ebañy,’ Dallandra said. ‘And I see trouble coming.’

      Calonderiel looked up, startled. ‘What’s he done now?’

      ‘It’s not what he’s done, it’s what he’s found.’

      Calonderiel moved over to give her room to sit beside him on the log, but after a moment’s hesitation, she knelt on the ground nearby. At the gesture he winced; he’d fallen in love with her all over again, and as it had before, his devotion annoyed her. Before he could speak of his feelings, she brandished Salamander’s news like a shield.

      ‘The Horsekin are raiding in Arcodd again.’

      ‘Bastards!’ Calonderiel paused to spit into the fire. ‘I wonder if Cengarn’s going to call in our alliance?’

      ‘I don’t know, but maybe Ebañy can find out. He thinks the Horsekin might be trying to hide something, a fort or armed camp, he said, near the border.’

      ‘And they’re using the raids as a distraction?’

      ‘Well, that’s what he suspects. He doesn’t know. I take it that seems logical to you.’

      ‘It’s the first thing I thought of. If his suspicions are right, we’ll have to mount some kind of attack. A Horsekin fort nearby? Ye gods, it’s like a dagger at our throats!’

      ‘That’s rather what I thought, too.’

      ‘We might be the ones to call in our alliance with Cengarn, not the other way round. At least we have Mandra now. If things get desperate, we can get the prince and his family to safety there and fortify the place. If it looks like the town’s going to fall, well, they have boats.’

      ‘Do you think things will get that desperate?’

      ‘Who knows?’ Calonderiel shrugged. ‘But we might as well plan for the worst. Which reminds me. We need to send messengers to Braemel. We’re going to need every ally we have. Huh!’ Cal paused to shake his head and smile. ‘I remember how angry I was, when that Horsekin woman – Zatcheka wasn’t it? – arrived to visit you.’

      ‘You were even angrier when I went to Braemel to visit her daughter.’

      ‘Yes, I was. Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I?’

      ‘You?’ Dallandra laid her hand on her forehead and feigned shock. ‘Wrong?’

      ‘I deserve that, I suppose,’ Cal said, glowering. ‘But I’m glad now that you know the Gel da’Thae and their ugly language, too. Think Braemel will send us aid?’

      ‘Yes, I do. They’re as afraid of the wild Horsekin as we are. Never forget that. They may all look alike to us, but the Gel da’Thae see themselves as very different from the tribal Horsekin.’

      ‘Good.’ Calonderiel stared into the fire, his mouth working as he thought things through. Eventually he looked up. ‘Did Ebañy have any other news?’

      ‘Yes, but only of a personal sort.’

      Calonderiel waited expectantly. When she said nothing more, he picked a stick up from the ground and began shredding the bark with a fingernail. Dalla longed to tell him her news, that two powerful dweomermasters had been reborn close at hand, that perhaps they might recover the lore and the power it gave them quickly, in time to aid the People in their battle with the Horsekin. But he knew nothing of the great secret, that souls lived many lives, and she was forbidden by her vows to tell anyone unless they asked her outright.

      Eventually Cal tossed the stick onto the fire and looked up.

      ‘Do you remember Cullyn of Cerrmor?’ he said.

      ‘Jill’s father? I never met him, but I certainly know who he was. Why?’

      ‘I was just remembering a time long long ago, when Cullyn was the captain of another lord’s warband, and we were drinking together. I saw an omen, or felt it, or something like that.’

      ‘And it was?’

      ‘That someday we’d ride together in a war, an important war, the most significant one we’d ever fight.’ He tossed the stick into the fire and looked at her. ‘When he died, I realized that the omen must have been some silly imagining on my part.’ He paused to glare at the fire as if it had offended him. ‘It’s a pity, too, because I’d love to have his sword on our side now. Ye gods! We’d better go tell the prince.’ Calonderiel stood up. ‘Trust Ebañy to be a bird of ill omen!’

      But I’ll wager you were right about Cullyn, Dallandra thought. The pity is that I can’t tell you so. Suddenly she felt so cold, so frail,