Chapter 1

The wind that brought the messenger was full of strangeness. For several days it had blown, no different from the wind that always blew at this time of year, loaded with subtle perfumes from the spring-awakening grasses and flowers that coloured the lower slopes of the mountains, and woven through with the whispering sounds of high, tumbling streams and the home-building clamour of the birds and animals that dwelt amid the towering peaks.

Yet, for Ibryen, the wind was different. It carried at its heart a faint and elusive song that possessed a cloak-tugging urgency during the day and reached into his sleep during the night, bringing him to sudden wakefulness. Thus roused, he would lie, still, silent, and expectant, with anxious magic hovering, black-winged, about him in the darkness that spanned between his sleeping world and his solitary room. But nothing came to explain this mysterious unquiet — no sudden illumination to show a way through the uncertain future before him, no new tactics to outwit the growing power of the Gevethen, no new words with which to encourage his followers. Nothing.

You expect too much, he thought irritably, on the third night of such an awakening. Or was he perhaps just tormenting himself with imaginary hopes? Was this disturbance no more than his clinging to some childish fancy that all would be well in the end? Was he deluding himself that somewhere, something was preparing to come to his aid, rather than face the dark knowledge within him that he and his cause, and his men, were probably lost?

No. Surely it couldn’t be that! Doubt was an inevitable part of leadership, he knew. It underscored his every action and he deemed himself sufficiently aware of his own nature not to have such a foe lurking in the darker recesses of the mind waiting to spring out in ambush.

Yet...?

He growled angrily to end the questioning. Then, though it was some three hours until dawn, he swung aside his rough blankets and, draping them about his shoulders, went to the door. As the night cold struck him, he took a deep breath and pulled the blankets tight about him. There was no moon, and the stars shone brightly through the clear air, as familiar and unchanging in their patterns as the mountains themselves.

And as ancient and indifferent, Ibryen mused, shivering despite the lingering bed-warmth in the sheets.

All about him, the camp, or, more correctly, the village, which is what the camp had developed into over the years, was quiet. Yet it would not be asleep. Around the perimeter and on the nearby peaks, eyes would be staring into the darkness, ears would be listening, waiting for that movement, that sound which would indicate the approach of some spy, or even the Gevethen’s army. Briefly, his old concerns surfaced again. Practical and tactical this time. How long could such vigilance be maintained? How long could he keep up the spirits of his own followers? How long before the Gevethen discovered this place and launched a full attack? How long...

Frowning, he dashed the thoughts aside and turned his mind back to whatever it was that had wakene