Jareen drifted awake to a slow rocking motion. When she opened her eyes, she glimpsed forms above her. Her face was cold. Something heavy lay atop her, and it took her a few moments to realize it was a blanket. The tramp of feet surrounded her, and all at once she realized the forms were quth, their grey hair blowing in a cold wind—cold like she had not felt since the Noshian winter.

"Do not be frightened."

Jareen turned her head, her vision swimming with the movement. The vienu who had interrupted the gathering at the tir rode alongside Jareen on a black vaela. The vaela was massive, with three sweeping horns of deepest violet. They swayed side by side in the center of a whole column of quth, the vienu looking down on her.

"What happened?"

"I abducted you," she answered.

"Who are you?"

"I am called many unflattering things, but I would appreciate it if you called me Vireel."

"Where is Coir?"

"He awoke long ago," Vireel answered. "It would seem that humans are far less sensitive to herbcraft."

"I want to see him."

"He is near the rear of the column. If you don't mind, I'd like to leave him there a while. His questions began to irritate me, and I would rather make your acquaintance without interruption."

"Did you kill them? Yelti and. . ." Jareen didn't know the name of the sentry.

"No," Vireel answered, then added: "Don't mistake me. My quthli would have tried if necessary, but the drug was sufficient."

Jareen tried to sit up, even though she still felt dizzy. She was being carried on a litter by four massive quth, and the rocking motion did not aid her sense of stability.

"What is it you want?" she asked.

"Purpose. Love. Union with the ineffability of beauty. For right now, I will settle for satisfied curiosity."

"Curiosity?"

"You are the most interesting thing that has come across my path in hundreds of years. And. . . I pity you. Lie back and rest, Child of Vah. I will not harm you."

Jareen stared at her. Vireel looked down and smiled.

"Nor your babe," she added. "Those fools in the tir might not believe it, but I at least still hold to the ways of Isecan."

Jareen could not rest with the horrifying forms of the quth towering above her. The creatures were deep of frame, hunched forward even at the walk, their long arms as thick as her thigh. Long grey fur covered their whole bodies, appearing to continue beneath their garments of boiled leather. From her years in Nosh, she recognized the hardened skin of living creatures. The humans used leather as well, but she had never grown fully used to it. Each of the four quth holding an arm of her litter held a short spear in their off hand. The rest of the marching quth—there appeared to be hundreds—bore a wide array of cleavers, axes, knives, and more of the short one-handed spears.

As her head continued to clear, she made more sense of her surroundings. It looked as if this land had once been a forest, but many of the trees were dead, their crooked trunks stripped of branches as they leaned into the sky. A harsh, cold wind blew. The trees that yet lived were stunted and malformed conifers. Grey lichen grew on exposed boulders and rock ledges. The quth appeared to be following a trail, and from what Jareen could tell by the slant of the sunshine they were headed north. If it was morning, at least.

"I want to walk," she said. Vireel still rode beside her.

"I brought another vaela," she answered. "If you wish to ride, instead."

Jareen hesitated, but the desire to be stubborn did not win out. She nodded in response. Vireel twisted around and motioned somewhere behind her. A quth jogged up, leading a vaela by a rope halter cleverly looped behind its ears. Vireel sung her vaela to a halt, and the whole column halted with her. Tentatively, Jareen sat up, swinging her legs from the litter and setting her feet on the ground. She felt groggy again, but it passed and she rose to her feet, stepping toward the vaela. She realized there was no way she could pull herself up to its back, but the quth who had led the beasts stepped in front of her and bent over, placing its hands upon the ground and offering its back as a step. Jareen gaped at the crouched beast, not moving.

"Do not be frightened," Vireel said. "If you prefer, I can have him set you atop."

Everything Jareen had ever heard of the quth had described vicious killers and eaters of flesh. She did not relish the idea of being picked up by one, and so she grabbed the vaela's mane, hitched up her Canaen gown, and stepped on the quth's back. Before she could swing her leg over, Vireel interrupted:

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"Ride sideways," she said.

"What?"

"Sideways." Vireel swung her own leg over the vaela to demonstrate, letting both her feet hang down the same side of the vaela. The movement revealed the press of a sword hilt beneath the enchantress' robe. "It is better for the babe."

Jareen twisted to sit sideways upon the vaela's back, and as she did the quth lifted up his back beneath her feet, setting her in place. She wasn't sure if Vireel was being honest with her, but she would not risk it. Perhaps it was true; in Nosh, pregnant women did not ride. In her left hand, she clung to the vaela's mane. Vireel sang a couple quick notes, and Jareen's vaela stepped up beside Vireel's.

"There," Vireel said, and as if with one will, the entire column of quth and the two vaela set off again. Jareen turned and looked back, searching. She caught a brief glimpse of Coir's reddish-blond hair near the rear of the column. So Vireel hadn't lied about that, at least.

"Where are you taking us?"

"Home," she said. "My home, at least. We will enter the Mingling soon."

"The Mingling? Where is your home?"

"In the north. The Mingling is wide there. Wider than in the south. Each Wellspring sends its Current out in great arcs. Further north, the Mingling is diffuse, spread over more ground. It is the same in the south, except it is over the sea."

"You live in the Mingling?"

"Oh yes."

"How? How can that be safe?"

"I did not seek it for its safety," Vireel answered.

Jareen looked back again to see if she could spot Coir, but the sway of the vaela gave her a pang of nausea. She returned her gaze to the fore and placed a hand on her belly.

"We will be there in the morning," Vireel said, "and then you can rest."

Jareen didn't respond. With more energy and patience, she might have asked a hundred questions. No doubt Coir would have been incessant. Yet she was sick of needing to ask, and of being at the mercy of strangers who did not care for her or her babe. Whatever this sorceress had in store, Jareen was as helpless as before. There was nowhere she could go where she would not be at the whim of others. As they rode, she nurtured her anger and held her tongue.

Nevertheless, in the afternoon she asked for the blanket from the pallet that the quth still carried and wrapped it about herself to guard from the wind that whipped through the blasted landscape. Up on the vaela, she was more exposed than down among the quth.

"It will grow warmer as we reach the Mingling," Vireel said.

Night had fallen before the temperature rose and the air grew moist again. With the warmth came the smell of smoke, irritating Jareen's nose again. They passed through areas that had burned, but these were narrow swaths like fingers reaching from the south. Somehow, the fires had not raged unimpeded in that region. In between, they rode through dense forests of thorny trees that Jareen did not recognize, with the sound of unfamiliar birdcalls loud in the darkness. The Mingling was known for its danger, but she supposed that riding in the center of a column of quth was about the safest place for her. She felt some bemusement in that.

***

The Synod stood around the Wellspring pool in the twilight of the grove.

"The humans captured two kelp harvesters along the Talanael coast."

"They landed upon the shore and laid in wait."

"The company is spread too thin, and the humans scour the waters even this late in the season."

"We must send another company at least, and two more to fill the gaps in the front. There are wide breaches. Quth were seen in Miret."

"The commander of our shore company is not wise, and Sholrodan grows resistant in the east."

"It may be time to replace him.

"Can we not direct the companies without these intermediaries?" It was the Liel of Namian who asked, newer to the Synod even than Tirlav.

"The will is not the same as the mind."

"Those who have not grasped the Current walk in ignorance. They must hear with their ears and perceive with their mind for their wills to obey."

"But we hold their wills even from here."

"All within the embrace are born into obedience, wills nursed on it like a mother's teat. Their souls have known nothing else. But it costs us dear to hold them in the Mingling, and some minds cannot bear its horrors."

Tirlav struggled to keep memories from bubbling out of his heart and into the minds of the others.

"We run short of steel."

"There is enough for three companies, and maybe a fourth."

"Not for mail."

"For blades, at least."

"And then what?"

"What about the stunted men in the east?" Tirlav asked. He had learned much about their dealings with the humans and trade to other lands, but there was much he did not know. Many of the old members of the Synod were lost to the Malady, and not all knowledge was preserved. "Do not the humans get much of their ore from them?"

"They do, but the journey is far in the east—by sea and then by land."

"Into mountains that scrape the sky."

Images flashed before him: fields of white, waves crested with ice, and rocky mountains rising barren to a pale sky. Across the expanse, small figures moved in a line. He had grown used to the sharing of knowledge in this way. Yet this was not the east that he saw.

"Stunted men dwell in the north, beyond the broken bay. Sailors there have seen them. "

"Those in the islands are few, and the stunted men are crude. They live in holes like badgers and subsist on a diet of flesh. They are little more than beasts. Their speech is indiscernible grunting. So say the few representatives sent before. Those in the east have greater wealth of metal, but it is easier to trade through the humans at ports than to send our people over land."

"Yet will the eastern ports agree to trade, or will they enslave our crews?"

"It is not known."

"We can send a show of force."

"Our ships do not compare with theirs. Such force would be in vain, and may spark anger."

"We need steel for the war, and the silversmiths already cry out for trade. Our people have grown addicted to it."

"It is our doing. It would be better to have no contact with the outside."

"And what happens when the humans tire of taking slaves and land an army?"

"We repulse them."

"We should not be so confident," Tirlav willed. He remembered things that Coir had told him, and he impressed it to the others. "The Noshian cities held countless souls."

"If we do not open relations with the humans, Isecan might. To isolate is to invite attack, and we must open embassies in the east."

"We can do what was done with Nosh. Cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, frankincense, and myrrh. The same things the Noshians lusted after. We send a ship with samples and offers of trade."

"Some of the vien recalled from our embassy in Nosh know the Noshian tongue and some of the human ways. We will send them."

"Let it be."

Their will was decided.

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