Sherif led his horse out of Bellis Wood with a woman on his mind. Uncharacteristically self-conscious, he started to hum softly, but the only lyrics that came to mind were marching cadences and drinking songs, too crude to voice in this wilderness. He held the bridle lightly, knuckles rubbing along Varin's soft cheek, crunching through drifts of fiery red maple and golden ash leaves.  Bellis Wood, the setting of countless boyhood epics, reproached him with long shadows and creaking trunks.  Knobby-fingered oaks clacked their disapproval in the crisp evening breeze, but their bare branches could not hide the shingled roofs of White Falls, the mill run, and the high pasture trail far below. He fell silent.

Sherif led his horse out of Bellis Wood fifteen years after he had walked out of White Falls to win a woman's heart. He was ten years late. Maybe twelve.  If she were still alive, she was surely married to Maro, having inherited the mill from his father, with boys grown to near men. Or perhaps to Nerice, a farmer's wife. On the other hand, she might have been taken by disease or passed in childbirth. Even as he catalogued her probable fate, he never managed to imagine Beh as anything other than the scant prankster of his youth, taunting him with her delinquent dares.

Sherif had not intended to stay away so long, to return an old man of thirty two unkind years. His shoulder ached in this cold, so he flexed and windmilled his arm to warm it. There was always one more season, one more campaign. The longer you're away, the harder it is to go back.  So declared Nils, who promised every battle would be his last, but was always the first to sign on to the next. Stay the winter, the pay is good and the food is hot. Stay the spring, big campaigns, big wins, big spoils. Stay the summer, the fights are short and the days are long. Never leave in the fall, the cold screams East and there's nowhere to shelter. They buried Nils in Tramendene, just as the ground was thawing. He died in a tent on a muddy plain, feverish and wasted.

That spring saw the siege of Nath. The Earl's son Aebrard sallied against the encampment just before dawn. Sherif leapt to bolster the line and buy them time to repel the charge. He was in the thick of it, Aebrard's calvary mixing it up. Tents were aflame, Legionnaires dying in their cots.  He cocked his sword arm back for a thrust, and drilled the attacker behind him square in the face with his elbow. It was dumb luck, the kind that cheated on you the second you embraced it.  As the man stumbled back stunned, he was dispatched by a frenzied Legionnaire. “Sargeant!” shrieked the young soldier in salute. Sherif had stared after him wordlessly as the wave broke and lost its momentum. 

It was not the brush with death that bent him that day. It was that green recruit, with his callow abandon to rage and ecstasy, who served a disturbing reminder of his own youth. He sat out the pillage, his thoughts on Nils. Of course the commander shorted his portion, but he took it without protest, walked away.  The last spark of the fire that had driven him out of White Falls winked out, leaving the charred frame of a life that could have been. He woke from that long night to bewilderment and the foretaste of regret.

Sherif released the bridle, but Varin kept his head high.  Like his master, he was past his prime, but still strong, still proud, still taut as a bowstring.  The long, will-breaking marches and the reckless, raucous rush of war were still fresh in his memory. His shoulder twitched with recollection. Let his swollen, tender joints thrum from age and abuse, he would yet plunge unhesitatingly into a wall of iron if his rider directed. But they had traded the burden of barding and mail for soft leather and wool, a choice Varin neither understood nor complained of.

They picked their way down the gravel road that switch-backed the Hollow to meet Roaring Spring and meander side by side into town. White Falls was not on the way to anywhere, it was the end of the road.  It boasted no inn or church, no tavern, and no wall.  Two score buildings, every one of which he knew by heart, defined it.  He saw the ghosts of himself and Reece running through the paddock after the calf, playing at war, a lifetime ago. Beh ran behind with Ane, his younger sister, calling to them to wait up - but then, too, he had been too self-conscious to stop. The memories faded like shades into falling night. In the dimming light of evening, White Falls seemed diminished.  Disrepair and poverty overcame his childhood memory of warm hearths and endless chores. He drew unwelcome comparison to the splendid manors of Calavika and the wealthy farmsteads in Kordika. No, the patchwork houses and collapsing sheds of home reminded him instead of the firing of Tenin Fields, and he snapped his head away to deny the memory and the shame. The guilt had been growing since Nath, and now he was grateful for never penning a line home in ten years, for sending only three letters in the five before that. 

How many of his brothers and sisters still lived?  Surely his father had long ago been laid to rest, though perhaps his mother still baked and stewed in the old kitchen where he had warmed himself in the dark winter months, struggling to learn the secret of letters and numbers. None of this disturbed him, though. It was only the dispassionate seasonality of life, the patient, inexorable rhythm that would one day cover every frenetic achievement of men with ivy and moss. At least this was left to him: his lack of remorse was untainted by cruelty.  The detachment that had distanced him from regret had preserved him from depravity.

There were no immediate signs of life in White Falls, no smoke or early-evening storm lamps. He had a chill moment of foreboding, but the barking of dogs and the lonely bleat of a goat relieved him.  White Falls, untouched by the world, unsullied by the grime that tarnished his vocation, seemed immune to the ghosts that followed at his back.  His heart raced when he thought on whom he might see first, and what their reaction might be. What welcome or hard-eyed rejection awaited? He was unrecognizable even to himself. He soldiered on, approaching his unguessable reunion with ambivalence.

Sherif saw the young boy first, Maro's dark curly hair unmistakable on his lanky frame. The lad soon noticed the sound of Varin's hooves and then caught sight of Sherif's dark green coat. The boy froze, but Sherif flowed on toward him without ripple or pause, favoring him with a smile. "Hi," said little-Maro shortly, and ran off toward the Maro homestead. Sherif heard more sounds of life: dinner pans on the iron stove, the rush of steam as water struck the fiery surface.  A voice called and another answered, too far to understand or identify.  He continued to his father's house as a door banged open under the insistence of a fast-moving child.

He threw a glance at Beh's old house through the conifers that ran the length of the mill run, as he had day after day on his way home from Maestro Liro's lessons.  It was dark and shuttered. He led a clopping Varin up the familiar stone path to their porch, hop-stepping the blue and red slate unconsciously, and flipped the reins over the porch rail with lazy ease. The sounds of dinner preparation inside continued as a voice neared the front door to see who approached.  He started up the three steps to meet a stunned Ane, who drew in a quick breath  and started backwards.  

He heard a woman call from inside, "Who is that?"

"Sherif," she whispered.

Ane stood framed by the door of the house, hands frozen in her apron. So much time had passed since she had laid eyes on this man, herself barely more than a child when he had walked forever out of her world. Yet every freckle and hair of him was known to her as intimately as she knew herself.  She fixed her hair every morning in the mirror above the wash bowl, but it had always been his face gazing back. Sherif, her hero of legend, her vagabond traveler of fabulous lands, her dark and troubled soldier, was home.  Hadn't she always held him close to her heart? Hadn't she dreamt of him last night?

Ane broke his quizzical gaze when Idiopat her cat twined his golden tiger-stripes between her bare ankles, meowing sweetly after the fresh bread and rich cream that she had been handling in the kitchen.  Idiopat was accustomed to hunting nocturnally, and though he had just risen for his nightly sortie, he was not above a fattening handout first.  If Ane's distraction vexed him, his feline pride would never allow it to show.

She stepped aside slightly, checking quickly to make sure that Sherif was still there and not some phantasm that her subconscious had summoned on a melancholy fall night.  "Who's that?" repeated their mother, now making her way out of the kitchen to see what delayed her daughter.  She caught sight of her son, smiling warmly and standing on their porch like a small boy come home past his curfew.  "Sherif, Sherif," she gasped, falling heavily upon her daughter's shoulder so that Ane reached out to catch her for fear she would collapse.

Ane longed to throw her arms around her brother's neck as her mother soon did, rest her face against his his shoulder, and breathe deeply the scent of earth and leaf which clung to his woolen coat.  She settled instead for shyly taking his hand, calloused and strong, and leading him into the home of his youth.   Their mother nearly tripped over her grandchildren as she called out, "Lomil, Lomil, he's home!  Our Sherif is home!"

She settled him into a chair by the stove and pressed a mug of hot cider into his hands while their brother's kids swarmed him.  Without a word, without needing to ask, she knew what he liked, knew it better than her own indifference. She found hard cheese in the back of the cellar, pulled links of dried sausages from the ceiling, and arranged then with warm rolls on the cutting board. She set it in front of him while her father practically cooed.  He was healthy, he looked good, he had been away so long.

Ane faded back, taking up the dinner preparation with one ear to the conversation and one filled with a torturous silence.  She ladled the soup into wooden bowls and formed the hot corn cakes with wetted hands; she cut the sausages and arranged them around the vegetables on the platter; placed the stack of plates on the sideboard and gave her nephew a stern gaze to warn him away from the pickles.  "Call your father," she admonished, and began setting the table.

She was the last to sit, smiling through her brothers' reunion, serving all and shushing the children as her father said grace.  Ane noticed Thec’s sadness that his brother had never gotten to meet his wife, buried these past three autumns.  She knew how to comfort him with a kiss on the cheek and a word to his daughter, the very image of her mother.  Thec smiled gratefully at her, rejoining the conversation.

She could not speak through most of the meal, and could not look directly at Sherif, but kept stealing glances on the sly as she passed food.  She occupied herself with a near-officious governance of the children, as the adults talked about her siblings who had moved to Oak Ridge and Bokingdale.  She somberly nodded when they talked of the epidemic of twenty-nine that had taken their uncle and cousin, and how they had been spared in White Falls.  The reunion was a dream come true for Ane, but one that she knew had to end in sorrowful awakening. Her father finally caught her eye as the main course wound down and the children began to fidget for dessert.

Ane looked down at her folded hands, heart racing, unable to bear what must be said.  Her father just asked it so flatly, a question to which everyone already knew the answer.  Silence fell when Sherif answered with prompt candor, unaware of the abrupt change in mood that settled on the room like a quiet thunderclap.  "What brought you back to White Falls, then?" Lomil asked without asking.

"Beh," Sherif replied.

Beh had taken to a life of seclusion, high in the mountains that buffered White Falls against the winter wind and cast premature shadows across the vale below.  Early afternoon on the following day, Sherif found himself clambering through brambles and fallen trees on a near-invisible trail, unused for a decade and a half. She had mourned his leaving barely a month, they told him, locked in her father's house, before retiring forever from roads trafficked by men.  Children had turned her name into a byword and an epithet, used in dares and threats when they thought parents were not listening.

She had grown wild, they said, unkempt and incomprehensible, reduced to living like the beasts with whom she shared the lonely summits.  His brother tried hardest to dissuade him. She was surely dead, one woman in fifteen cold winters, or rendered so haggard and crazed that she could be no more than a troll or hobgoblin.  His mother had worried quietly, immersing herself in chores. It was because her mother had died in childbirth, she claimed. Her father did not know how to keep three unruly girls, and had never remarried.  Now the house stood rented by a stranger, Beh’s sisters maintaining ownership from Bokingdale but rarely venturing back.

Beh had no brothers and no husband to chase her down and lead her home, to forgive her for the coquettish diffidence that had sent her one infatuation beyond her reach.  And go he had, convinced he could win her admiration and confident in his quest for the virility she craved, though he knew no trade.  It turned out he was good at one thing that came in high demand: staying alive.

She vanished abruptly from Sherif's thoughts when, stumbling over a trunk hidden in the undergrowth, he came face to face with a snowy owl roosting close by the bark of a dead oak, its miniscule perch hidden entirely by its downy breast. With piercing, unblinking eyes it stared down this intruder, so obviously far from home.  The owl was not accustomed to seeing men this deep in the wilderness, not in these lands shunned by the villagers for many years. This one in particular was so startled to find himself here that the owl perceived no threat from him at all.  Doubtless he was looking for the little stone house inhabited by his mistress.

Obligingly, the owl winged over to it, coming to rest on a roof covered in brown pine needles and dark green vine.  It spun its head smoothly, regarding the man who, mesmerized by its silent flight, could no longer recall whether the bird had moved or if it had always been where it now sat.  So closely did the house upon which it alighted resemble the tree and stone around it, that at first Sherif did not recognize it as a dwelling. The furred skin that hung in its short and narrow entrance gradually communicated its purpose to him.

Beh emerged without call, slipping lithely between skin and stone like liquid.  She was spare and beautiful, with long hair the color of autumn tamarack cascading about her tanned face in abundant ringlets.  She smirked suggestively, dark eyes dancing with anticipation as she slid her hands down her thighs to rest between her knees and leaned forward with impish invitation.  Her dress was of one piece, royal blue, in fine cotton the likes of which could only be had in Mathllir or farther. It draped from her arms and shoulders to dangle flirtatiously from her hips, lightly caressing her bare ankles.

Beh was indescribable. She knew it, she worked it with single-minded conviction. Here she was through force of will, against all hope, impossibly real.  But for all her effort, for all her calculated preparation, she could see that Sherif knew something was wrong. He was wary, but even more mysteriously, distracted by a nagging call that she could not understand and of which he was not even aware.  Sherif was enthralled, but passionless.  

“Beh,” he murmured vaguely, eyes vacant, trying to grasp what he saw. His heart was hammering. Was it possible? For a brief moment, he saw Ane instead, and shook his head sharply.

Beh furrowed her brow slightly.  "You brought me gifts?" she inquired softly, her rich voice echoing down the long halls of his memory to reach the oubliette in which he drowsed.  He had, a fact that surprised him slightly, although when he pulled the strange items from his bag he did remember acquiring each in far off lands as spoils of war.  He set them down on the ground wordlessly and turned away, confused, stumbling back down the trail it had just taken him a half-day to ascend.  "Who is calling him?" Beh wondered aloud at the owl.

"Ane," the bird replied clearly.

Sherif stumbled blindly back down the steep mountain path as vines and branches clutched at him, hawthorn raked his hands, and serpentine roots snared his feet. It defied logic that she should be as she was, as he imagined, as he desired.  He stumbled and slid over moss-slickened rocks. A dull but rising panic impelled him, convinced him that he was running against time.  He pictured White Falls nestled in its shadowed vale, finishing another harvest day.  Beyond Bellis Wood, darkness burst from the ground like tar and oozed toward the village, leaving decay in its wake.

Ane stood abruptly in the kitchen, casting the pot of potatoes lately located in her lap to the floor.  A chill fear gripped her, and she cried out, reaching blindly for support.  The room darkened as her father’s silhouette filled the door frame.  "Get everyone," he grumbled without preamble, knowing that she understood without further elaboration.

Beh studied the little wooden houses she had set up outside her hovel, sprinkling them with the blood of a recently dead woodchuck.  "Little Ane," she whispered.   She gritted her teeth and set her jaw angrily, pouring the remaining blood in a continuous stream on one little stick pile until it crumbled under the liquid that seemed to flow without end from the bowl.  "You won’t keep him from me," she hissed venomously.

Varin smelled them long before anyone could hear them.  It was a smell he knew well - the roaring chaos of men.  He snorted and pawed the ground, snapping against the tether that kept his head next to the wall of the barn.  Lomil turned at the sound, unable to place it at first.  An eyebrow shot up when he realized the source, and he stepped out back to release the horse. “Go to him," he breathed.

Idiopat shot into White Falls in a flash of fur, gliding with unnatural speed along the edge of the road.  He darted from house to abandoned house, crisscrossing the village in an intricate and deliberate pattern, according to his mistress’ instructions.  Mission accomplished, he trotted back to the farmhouse and curled up in the late afternoon shadows to wait.

The Snowy Owl stopped preening itself when Beh smashed the model village with her bowl in a storm of rage.  Her face was twisted with bitterness and hate, and she knifed the cotton dress off of her body in a single vicious stroke, nicking herself in the process. Raising her clenched hands to the darkened pine boughs that roofed them against the pale blue sky, she let her frustration and vitriol out in a deafening shriek.  "Go!" she commanded hoarsely, after she had spent her breath, "I want to watch."  The bird took wing without comment.

Sherif saw Varin galloping up the slope toward him, and his heart calmed. Breaking forth from the last of the groping undergrowth, the path seemed to melt open to meet his war horse's hooves.  Varin wheeled next to him, breathing hard with excitement, and he rolled smoothly onto the steed's bare back.  Hanging around Varin's neck was his sword, scabbard dangling along his right front leg.  Sherif reached down and unbuckled it, fastened it around his own waist.  "Hah!" he urged quietly, with calm determination, and touched the horse lightly with his heels.  Varin sprang powerfully into motion.

Ane stroked Idiopat anxiously, keeping watch on their front porch for her brother.  As the cat purred softly, a web of power thrummed quietly around the still village center.  Ane combed the mountain for any sign of her brother. But the reassuring presence of him, so intimately close within her mind for fifteen years, was gone as surely as when he first set foot on that mountain path this morning.  And for that, she hated Beh with cold fury.

Beh saw through the owl's eyes, four horsemen in dark fur and mail, pounding through the wood and cascading over the hill into White Falls.  Their black helms overshadowed their faces, and the hollow rush of their maces haunted the crevices of the silent valley.  Beh smiled as the owl swung low, back over the village roofs.  It was then that she saw Sherif leaning over his steed's neck, skillfully and inexorably threading the fields and low stone walls of the high pastures.  She could feel his resolve as he plunged into the town, and she nearly cried out in warning.  The owl shrugged it off and alighted remorselessly on a roof peak to wait in clear view of the farmhouse.

Sherif pulled the leather lashing around his wrist tighter with teeth and free hand, feeling the reassuring brace seize the tendons.  He fulfilled the rituals, reciting the Litanies in his head and under his breath as he heaved up with Varin, clearing a rill.  The steed flowed smooth as fog over the nap of the earth while his master flexed and shook his sword arm.  Both could see the four dark forms on the south hill, crashing down headlong, disdaining the switchbacks.  They would arrive first.  He set his will and refused to speculate, concentrating instead on staying as close to his mount as possible and allowing Varin to move unrestrained.

Ane felt the riders entering the web at the edge of White Falls like a boot on a delicate flower.  Idiopat hissed, standing and arching his back, and then leapt from the porch rail and shot off toward one of the nearby houses.  Lomil was at the door, hands on either lintel, hesitating.  "Ane," he began, his will wavering for the first time in her life.  "Seal it," she replied evenly, and stepped off of the porch.

Beh watched the black riders with apprehension through the owl's eyes.  She could no longer see Sherif; perhaps he would be too late, or maybe wise enough to know that engagement was folly.  He was strong, but they were four. And young. The riders wheeled suddenly to the left, charging the open door of a milk shed.  The owl tracked them as they bore down on the waiflike form of Ane standing in the shadows beyond the doorway.  The lead rider gave a raucous howl and plunged within, chain mace whirling.  The other three reined in and pranced outside, until the first returned.  The weapon was bloodless, and leader roared again, suddenly spurring his mount across the street toward where Ane stood on a farmhouse porch.

Ane and Idiopat led the dance from building to building while Beh raged in frustration.  "Idiots!" she snarled, urging the owl to take flight.  It glided low in front of the lead rider, hooting once to capture his attention, then winged over the farmhouse at the edge of town.  Ane watched the owl with anxiety, and the riders confirmed her fear, suddenly ignoring her and making for her home.  "No!" she cried, willing herself with a rush onto her porch.  She steadied herself to take as many down as she could before she fell.

Sherif bellowed his own battle cry as Varin thundered down the paddock road, windmilling his broadsword once. The riders wheeled their mounts in unison to meet the new threat. Here was an enemy they understood.  The leader stood high in his stirrups, wheeling his spiked flail above his head and keening.  The other three spread wide to flank Sherif, swords resting on their shoulders.

Ane stretched out instinctively, trying to join with her brother to guard him as she had so many times before, but to her panicked frustration he was still unreachable.  She held her breath and clutched the porch rail as Sherif rode straight at the leader, sword upraised, to take him on the right side, weapon to weapon.

Sherif’s eyes narrowed as he watched the rhythm of the mace. One of those behind the leader moved wide to take him from the left if the flail didn't complete its work, but Sherif ignored him.  With less than three strides to go, the horseman bunched himself against the stirrups and swung the chained ball back, preparing to launch it into Sherif’s chest.  Sherif ducked low against Varin’s neck, directing his mount abruptly across the path of the oncoming steed to pass it on the left.  The startled beast reacted predictably, rearing in surprise.  As the warrior fought to keep his balance, the chain mace flew into empty air, nearly yanking him from the saddle.  Deftly passing his sword to his left hand, Sherif drove the point into the breast of the horseman as he flew by.  

He released the hilt lest the impact take him off the bare back of his steed, and let his forward momentum carry him toward the flanking rider. The other was just a little too far left, and too surprised by the sudden change in movement, to get in a good strike.  He leaned hard to take a swipe at Sherif.  As the blade passed harmlessly by his right shoulder, Sherif lashed out and snagged his opponent's wrist.  He pulled it downwards, continuing the arc his opponent had begun and twisting his sword arm down and behind him. Leaning forward while gripping Varin with his knees, Sherif used his horse’s power to pull his unbalanced enemy from the saddle.  Sherif relaxed slightly, letting his hand slide up to the crossguard of his enemy's sword, and jerked it swiftly from his grasp. Rearmed, he wheeled expertly and let Varin trample the downed horseman.

The remaining two circled back warily, looking for an opening, but Sherif continued to ignore them.  Riding by the fallen leader, he reached down to extricate his own sword, protruding from the leader’s chest.  The two took the opportunity to drive forward again, one on either side of him.

Sherif turned Varin left across the two riders, and they veered together to intercept.  Amateurs.  Cutting back right, he took them on his left side, so that the nearer blocked the farther.  Sherif caught his opponent’s two-handed cut high with his left sword and rammed the right under his upraised arm.  It was not a kill, but good enough to take the enemy from the saddle.

Sherif wheeled and kicked Varin into a gallop to bear down on the last horseman.  He caught the black rider as the latter was still turning his mount, crossing swords only twice before finding the opening that took first his enemy's right arm at the elbow and then his throat just above the gorget.  His eyes were fixed on Ane as he rode past the injured barbarian and plunged the black sword into his back without mercy.

"I'm sorry to have caused such a mess," Sherif replied with true remorse. "This has been my fault."

Ane had the rail in a death grip, gazing at him, ecstatic.  Her regard sent an unexpected shock through his chest.  For the briefest moment, he saw Beh.

Lomil emerged from the house with a small crowd of men at his back, breaking the spell.

"Shoot the horses," Sherif advised his father, watching some of them walk over to the fallen invaders. "They are trained warriors, too, and they'll take a man down with them before they come under the whip."

Lomil nodded, reaching out his hand to help his son up the steps.  "They know what to do."  As Sherif preceded him into the house, he caught Ane's eye and motioned her in as well with a nod.

Ane looked around distractedly, before starting back up the porch steps.

"Idiopat?" Lomil murmured quietly. "He'll come in his own time. Cats are wise."

Ane turned resignedly and passed him on her way in.  Lomil gave one more look around, and then closed the door behind him.

The townspeople were crowded into Lomil's kitchen, children jockeying for a view from the doorway to the larder.  Miss Carmen shushed them and arranged the taller ones behind and the smaller in front, keeping one ear to the conversation around the table.  Hano wanted to head up the mountain and hunt the witch, confidence boosted by Sherif's heroism, but Ane flatly refused: it would be too easy for Beh to separate and destroy them.

Nira and Otas came back in a half hour later and headed wordlessly to the washbasin where Sherif's mother hurried to add a ladle of hot water from the cauldron to the pitcher.  There was silence as the men washed thoroughly up to their elbows, and then stood by Lomil, unwilling to sit despite the generous urging of their sons.  "We started a fire," Nira announced laconically, clearing his throat.

"Out at the dump?"

The two nodded curtly, then deferred to Lomil.

"Nira, Otas, you two, Aru and Dan will go to your posts, just like we practiced."

Carmen let a small cry escape from deep within her breast as her father's name was mentioned.

Lomil turned to her compassionately.  "No one needs to be afraid; we succeeded against her father and we have grown stronger since," he said, looking pointedly at a shocked Sherif.

"So has she," Ane reminded him with a hint of cynicism.

Lomil nodded acquiescence, but Sherif was staring at them open-mouthed.  "Her father?" he repeated, uncomprehending.  Kuwen had been a drunkard and a misfit from what he recalled of his childhood, and had disappeared down the Bokingdale road one day with a bottle and his coat and had forgotten the way back.  It was hard to imagine he could have brought any more mischief to White Falls than three orphaned girls and a dilapidated farm.

Lomil hung his head, but set his face.  "Kuwen was never what he seemed; he took Lilly to wed so that he could pass along the curse, just as he has been doing for centuries." He sighed.  "I was to watch him." Here he looked up at Nira and Otas, who returned an impassive gaze.  "We were to watch him, moved here when he first married Lilly.  We knew it would be by Lilly."  He looking comfortingly at Otas, but the latter seemed indifferent.  "But we grew lax when he left," continued Lomil, "believed that we had foiled him.  Beh left to her self-imposed exile, and no one could believe that either of her daft sisters could be a concern."

"The power hadn't been passed yet," Nira suggested softly, by way of excuse.  Sherif looked at the old farmer with new eyes.  "It wasn't what we had been taught to look for," Nira finished, meeting Sherif's gaze.

"That's not quite true," Lomil replied, and all eyes slid back to him, including the two men and Ane's.

"What are you talking about?" she practically barked at him.

"Beh was already under the curse," Lomil reminded them, looking meaningfully at Sherif.  "My son left at her command."  Lomil chose his words carefully and met no one's eye.  "Kuwen was shaping Beh to follow in his footsteps from the start."

Otas' face was contorting through conflicting pain and anger. "Then, why we’d have her--”, he paused looking at the children present -- “why take the last child?" he thundered, finally finding voice.  He looked over at Ane's mother, the village midwife.  But she did not look up from her methodical cleaning of the washbasin.

Lomil came to his wife's defense.  "We agreed that the risk still existed," he replied firmly, then sweeping the room with his gaze, continued, "we all agreed. Masarette did what we asked," he nodded in her direction, but she just poured out the rinsing water calmly and carried on.

Otas' eyes were brimming with tears, "And did we agree to my sister's death, too?" he cried angrily.

Sherif's mother abruptly slammed the basin down on its stand with a resounding clang at that, her face red. "Lilly died, Otas!" she retorted through clenched teeth.  "In childbirth. How long has this been rotting your heart?"

Otas hung his head but did not respond, and Masarette clenched the edges of the basin, eyes closed.

Ane's brow was furrowed, her face pale, and she spoke hesitantly into the embarrassed silence.  "I thought Lilly died when Beh was born.  I mean, I just assumed..." she trailed off. She struggled to keep her voice from wavering, to not think about what they might have asked her mother to do.

Lomil shook his head. "There was another..." he began, but shook his head, considering Otas in his peripheral vision.  

Sherif stood slowly, breaking the awkwardness.  "Where should I stand?" he said, pulling the scabbarded blade from the back of his chair where he had hung it.

Lomil moved again, as if freed from a trance.  "With your sister," he replied, nodding toward Ane.  "We will hold the town."  He brushed past Nira and Otas and headed outside without glancing back.

Sherif strode out of the only place he had ever called home with two women on his mind.  He had long ago resigned himself to the inscrutable purposes of kings and generals, and so he felt no alienation at discovering that he had always been a pawn or that his father harbored dark secrets.  He could even bear the revelation that an ancient evil infected his most cherished memories. What spun the last compass left to him was instead his increasing incapacity to distinguish between his sister and his childhood sweetheart.  Ane and Beh contended for a single place in his memory.  Did his sister wear the blue dress?  Whose face had he dreamt on the plains of Rath Cemryn, while a third of the camp wasted away from dysentery and starvation? 

Sherif preceded his sister out of his father’s house with fifteen years of procedure, duty, and the absurdity of soldiering animating him like a marionette.  It quenched the heat of confused emotion with cold calculation.  The mountain, the Bokingdale road, the paddock: he enumerated the approaches. How many would come, how armed?  Lomil used to be deadly with a bow; should he be on a rooftop?  Who else could shoot?

He whistled once to Varin, refusing to turn around and face Ane, to confirm her features, for fear that he would find Beh following him.  His mount trotted to him without hesitation, trembling with anticipation.  He knew the sounds and smells that led men inevitably to the roaring chaos.  It had been absent from his master’s life these many weeks, and he hungered for it with eyes already wild.  Sherif checked the bridle and saddle, adjusted them slightly.  White Falls untouched by the world?  He snorted out loud.  “Where do we stand?” he called back without so much as turning his head.

Ane watched her brother’s back with a fierce love that she could not separate from her hatred of Beh.  She had chosen a life of loneliness, of clucking tongues, so that she might always be at his side.  His detachment was devastating, and she raged against the woman who seduced him away.  She cursed Beh, naming her witch and worse.  Ane sank into a miasma of despair, hatred, and guilt.  She won't have him, she swore to herself, bunching her hands fitfully.  But she feared that was a lie. 

Idiopat slunk from nowhere and twined between her ankles.  One of his eyes was swollen half shut and bloodied, but he purred with loud satisfaction.  He distracted Ane from her darkness and she smiled, burying her resentment, and returning to the oath she had agreed to long ago.  “You smirking little hunter!  Catch you a birdie, did you?”  She looked up from stroking the proud feline, saw Sherif’s hands resting on Varin’s withers, shoulders powerful, ready, relaxed.  “We draw her out, away from the town,” she assured his back with finality.  “Pa and the boys will stay here.  They know what to do.”  He nodded once, and flowed leopard-like up onto his saddle.  He stopped briefly, immobile, then turned deliberately to face her and hold out his hand to help her up.

Ane broke his gaze when her eyes started to burn and her throat tightened.  She stepped close, reaching up as Idiopat stepped lightly away, tail high like the Siamese.  As Sherif pulled her up effortlessly,  she caught the flatness in his eyes.  She slid into place behind him, leaning against his back, and encircled his waist with her arms, as if she could love him into being the brother of her dreams.

  Sherif's stiffness demanded answers, but he did not pull away or shrug off his sister’s embrace.

“Varin,” he said, touching his mount into motion.

“Beh is strong,” she said hesitantly.  “She sent you away, she calls you back. You brought her gifts.” She ignored the flare of jealousy, listened carefully to her brother's strong heartbeat instead, one ear pressed against his shoulder blade.  His head was cocked back attentively, but he did not reply. “Beh wants a child,” she confessed at last, almost choking on the admission. She heard his pulse quicken.  Varin’s ears pricked forward as he sensed the change, but Sherif kept him steady.

“Beh loved me,” he said tightly.

Ane closed her eyes at his accusation.  She felt his anger through the leather, felt him make a choice. She had to grip tightly as he wheeled Varin decisively toward the mountain, urging him into a canter. “We loved you,” she cried out, breathless from the sudden acceleration.  “I loved you!”

“She sent me?” he yelled back furiously, randomly,  pushing Varin to a gallop. “I rode for Mabyn! I’ve done things!”

Ane shrieked once in terror, struggling to keep her balance.  “I know, I have always been with you!”

“Beh was with me, you were with me,” he mocked sarcastically, adjusting his broadsword.  Varin took fence and stream with exhilaration, and Sherif reached back with a strong arm to hold his sister close as he hugged the horse’s neck.  They rode for what seemed to Ane a nighttime, headed for the steep, narrow and overgrown path that led to Beh’s hovel.

“Varin can't make it up the mountain,” she gasped in a moment between leaps. 

Sherif grudgingly agreed, but pulled up more sharply than necessary in his irritation. Varin danced in a circle under the tight rein and Ane clutched at his chest to keep upright.  He jumped down, pulling Ane after him, then grabbed the horse's bridle to bring its head close to his face.  “Home Varin!” he commanded, still holding Ane tightly in his other arm. “Defend!” He tossed the steed's head back down the mountain, and the horse took off like an arrow.

Sherif turned to the darkened mountain.  He released his sister, but she lingered next to him, eyes downcast. “Ane,” he urged, tugging her arm.  She glanced briefly down toward White Falls before turning with reluctance to face the summit.  She refused to look upon his questions, following in desperate silence as Sherif picked and broke his way up the overgrown path in the black of night.

Ane saw the light of Beh’s fire first, winking through the trees, while they were still far down the mountain.  “She's waiting for you,” she announced sullenly, coming to a halt.  Little by little, the truth was forcing itself upon her, filling her with dread. Time had caught up with her.

Sherif drew up as well, peering through the blackness.  “Must be some blaze,” he said noncommittally. He started walking again, but paused when Ane made no move to follow.  “Let's finish this,” he said, mustering his most reasonable tone, but it was without conviction and they both knew that was not his plan.

“I am,” began Ane, coughing. “Forsworn...from this mountain.” She gasped out the last quickly, as if saying it caused her pain.

Sherif stared at her mutely, but could make out nothing of her expression in the pitch dark of the wood.  “Then go back, Ane, or wait for me here,” he said after a few seconds, in annoyance.  His condescension stung.  He heard her move again as he turned wordlessly to continue.  

Beh waited for them between the fire and the door of her dwelling, all in white.  The high collared blouse and elegant brocade better fit the courts of Arondraka than the wilderness at the top of a mountain too small and insignificant to even bear a name.  The bonfire, though somewhat diminished, still dazzled them.  Beh stood behind it and to the side so that her dress shone with brilliance and the fire illuminated her face.  The three regarded each other across the clearing for only a second until Beh realized that Ane was there.

Beh's welcoming smile froze and her face darkened in anger. “You!” she hissed, fixing fiercely on Ane.  “You are under oath!” She strode around the fire, high leather boots flashing from under the hem of her skirts. Pointing a finger rigid with anger, Beh spit out her words like acid.  “You have taken everything, everything that was mine! Thief!”

Ane flinched, but did not retreat. 

Sherif was utterly confounded, but he couldn't let it go on. “Beh!” he called sharply.  “We came to talk and set things right.  The horsemen-” 

“Sherif, yes!” she cut him off breathlessly. “I'll explain everything, but first send her back!” Ane gurgled once, but Beh plowed on, ignoring her. She spoke in a soft rush, lowering her voice just for him.  “We can leave here, go anywhere. You loved Tramendene, so peaceful, I was there with you after Rykskräg, I'm always with you. Don't believe their lies, it was your sister who sent you away!”

Ane cried out in protest, but Beh spun back to her, snarling. “You had your chance to poison him against me.  Don't pretend you haven't sat for hours alone, practicing what you can say! Sherif,” she wheedled, all honey again, “send her away, or let’s leave here together. We never have to come back.”

Beh furrowed her brow, took a deep breath, and then she staggered, her voice coming in heaves, as if a great weight were upon her. “She can’t...tell you… what-she,” she grunted with enormous effort. “Did!”

Ane shrieked in frustration.  “No! I,” she gagged.  “I,” she tried again, falling to her knees, red-faced, with eyes bulging. “I,” she whimpered. “O-only,” she groaned. “Agreed!”

Sherif broke out of his hesitation as his sister collapsed on the ground.  He covered the space to her in one stride, crouching to gently lift her shoulders. “Ane!” Looking back at Beh he asked accusingly, “What's happening to her?”

Beh stared at him dully, abruptly falling to her knees, her own shoulders heaving with labored breathing.  Tears streamed down her face, but she made no sound. 

Sherif cradled his sister’s head in his arm, but his heart went out to Beh.  “What have you two done?” he murmured quietly.

Beh cried freely at last, deep, inconsolable, frame-wracking sobs punctuated by intermittent wails.  Sherif held Ane silently, pulling her close to him and rocking back on his heels.  When she had recovered enough to crawl on hands and knees, she pulled away from Sherif to try and wrap her arms around Beh’s shaking shoulders, but Beh just howled anew and pushed against the embrace. 

“I hate you!” she screamed.

Sherif had to carry Beh on his shoulders, grunting with sweat and effort as he picked his way back down a path that was hard enough for one person to twist and wend through. Ane did her best to clear the way, but the wood was still bundled in pre-dawn blackness and her face and arms were whipped and torn from dry, unseen limbs.  Beh struggled constantly to free herself, reaching once or twice for the hilt of Sherif’s sword.  He batted her hand away and shifted the belt around to the front so that the scabbard tangled constantly with his legs and threatened to trip him.  Ane was unreachable. He gave up questioning and concentrated instead on firm footing and controlling Beh’s spasmodic heaves.

Ane slowed incrementally as they descended, but Sherif noticed her reticence before long.  “Don’t want to go up, don’t want to go down,” he muttered to her back.  She knew he was angry that she would not explain, but the oath rendered her speechless.  When she finally did speak, it was not to him.

“Sherif loves you,” she said dully, as they emerged into the high pasture.  “There is still a way for you to be happy.”  Through the trees they could make out the winking lights of fires in White Falls, fed through the night by the tired defenders, but when they reached the mill road she turned south instead.

Beh writhed with sudden desperation.  “No!” she shrieked.  “No! I won't!” And then, with icy deliberateness, “You can't do it alone!”

Ane walked ahead like a woman condemned.  “It’s not what you think,” she assured her, but Beh would not stop.

Sherif slowed, full of doubt. “Where are we going?” he asked Ane’s back. She kept walking, not turning back.  

“To undo a mistake,” she grunted painfully.

Sherif shifted his grip as gently as he could without releasing Beh.  “I don’t know what you two are doing,” he whispered to her urgently, “but one of you has to start talking.  Who hired those men?”

Beh gritted her teeth, groaning. “I’ve done...things,” she confessed with a whimper.  He gave her time, but she went back to her grimacing silence. “Don’t let her do this!” she begged plaintively when he started walking after Ane again.

Ane reached an old tree, a cedar of enormous, twisted roots and low, spreading branches. “In here,” she indicated emotionlessly, holding a bough aside.

Sherif set Beh on her feet, but kept a steady arm around her waist, enduring her nails in his wrists as she fought to free herself.  “No. First tell me what is going on.”

Ane again responded not to him but to his prisoner, choosing her words carefully.  “Lilly didn't die giving birth to Beh,” she said at last.  “She had a fourth child.”

Beh froze, looking at Ane for the first time since they had descended the mountain.  “What,” she asked flatly.

Ane kept on, working out what she could say without effort.  “In case the curse hadn’t been passed.  They told mom to get rid of it, but can you imagine Masarette strangling a baby?” she barked one joyless laugh.  “Absurd. She kept it, of course,” Ane said as a matter of fact, but there was an edge to her voice now, a touch of hysteria.  “She kept it as her own daughter.”  Her voice picked up both strength and despair.  “Little Ane.”

Beh and Sherif were utterly still. “So you see,” she continued at last. “Ane isn’t Lomil and Masarette’s daughter.  She’s Beh’s sister.”  She cast about listlessly for more words and came up with silence.

Sherif went cold, thinking through the implications.  He could not imagine Ane as other than his sister.  And yet... He could feel the calculations in Beh’s mind without seeing her face, as she came to the same conclusions.  “I will always think of you as my sister,” he assured Ane, but Beh jerked her head around to look at him in sudden alarm.

Ane clenched her teeth hard and groaned in protest.  Her face reddened, but she managed to shriek, “I...am...not...your...sister!”  She turned wheezing to look into the cavernous bower below the cedar, angry and impatient.  The feral wildness in her demeanor and the intensity of Beh’s reaction disconcerted Sherif.  This time, when Beh pulled at his wrists, it was without nails and he let her go. The two women disappeared into the depths under the silent tree.

Lomil found him around noon, sitting stoically in the autumn sun, the occasionally gusty breeze kicking the dry leaves up around him, all gold and red. He had kept much more demanding watches than this, but he accepted a long drink of water gratefully from his father without rising. He shook his head dumbly at his father’s searching look, gesturing helplessly at the unrelenting tree.  “Ah,” began Lomil. “Your sister,” he announced, clearing his throat and pausing for words.

“Ane is not really my sister,” finished Sherif blandly. “She told us.  Guess she figured it out after what you said last night.”  His father’s shoulders tightened for the briefest moment, then relaxed. “How did you hide it?” Sherif asked him suddenly, the improbability of it all hitting home.

Lomil looked sideways at him, then back at the tree, giving a small chuckle.  “Of course she did.  Well. You and Thec were too young to care.  Ane was just your new, little sister. The others.” His hand waved involuntarily.  “They wanted to believe, they made it easy.  It was even easier to let them forget.”

Sherif shook his head in bewilderment.  “There is more going on here, though,” he said after a moment.  “I saw something like it, once.  Up in Interdict.  A man survived the Paratoi.  Impossible,” he said with flat finality. “But he couldn’t tell us how or even talk about it; some kind of witchery.  We figured that was why the sickness didn’t touch him.”  He stopped a moment, guiltily, but Lomil just listened patiently.  “Anyway,” he continued, wondering how much his father could guess of his life.  “There is something those two can’t talk about.  Some oath.”

Lomil nodded briefly, then looked toward the cedar.  “In there?” he asked carefully.  His son returned the nod, so he grunted and sat next to Sherif.  Staring calmly at the impenetrable conifer, he said laconically, “All men do things, Sherif.”

Sherif dropped his face into both hands, held it for a long minute, then pushed his fingers resolutely back through his hair, wishing he could rake it all out of his mind, erase the shame.  His father’s acceptance gave him hope.  “Thank you,” he said at last. Glancing back to the tree, he asked,  “Do you know what is going on?”

Lomil did not reply at once.  “I can guess,” he said after a moment.  “I guess,” he went on with a touch of self-recrimination, “that the daughter we have been raising is not Ane after all, or not exactly.”

Sherif stared at him, but his father did not turn to him.  “They were very close, the girls.  We encouraged the friendship, because, after all, they were sisters! And we hoped it would protect Beh.  I took Ane as my own, taught her all I knew.  I suspect she thought she could save Beh by taking her place.”

Sherif looked at his father, uncomprehending. “Take her place?” he repeated doubtfully.  “How is that possible? I know what my sister looks like.”

Lomil nodded vigorously in agreement. “It's not a perfect exchange.  Minds and hearts are not dresses and boots to be swapped at a whim.  But if there is almost one heart, it can be done.”

Sherif closed his eyes.  His memory of White Falls proved more myth than biography.  The easy  illusion of a simple life lived in harmony with the seasons sloughed away. “The gods of peace crave as much blood as those of war,” he quoted cynically. The enormity of Ane’s oath chastened him. He could barely remember offering a brother in arms to take an extra watch. 

Ane came out an hour later. She was haggard and weak.  Apprehension chased hope across her face as she watched Lomil rise stiffly, joints creaking. He took a step toward her.  “Ane,” he breathed her name, stretching his arms to her.  She collapsed into him, crying anew.  “Papa,” she sobbed.  “I’ve done things.”

Lomil shushed her gently.  “Brave things,” he murmured quietly.  “Terrifying things.”  He held her fiercely, eyes glistening , looking over her shoulder at Sherif.  He had also risen, but was looking back at the tree.  Nothing more moved beneath that enigmatic canopy.

“Beh,” he began, but turning back to see Ane shaking quietly in his father's embrace, said no more.  

Ane sighed at length and pulled away, drying her eyes.  “Ugly things.  Where can I go?” she asked in despair. 

Lomil spread his arms in mock surprise. “Home! Where else?”

Ane flushed, deliberately avoiding eye contact with her father and brother.  “I don't remember how to be Ane,” she admitted.

Lomil grasped her hand. “It will take time, but the curse follows the flesh. And it feeds on despair, so take courage! Beh will need our help very soon,” and here he looked pointedly at Sherif.

Sherif looked back at the cedar,  taking one step toward it. “Why won’t she come out?”  

Ane kept her eyes down.  “She's gone. Back to the mountain.”

Sherif set his jaw.

Ane looked hurt by the implied betrayal.  “When she worked out who my mother was, she thought you and I could-” but she stopped in denial, unable to articulate aloud what the curse had worked in her heart for more than a decade.  “She released me from the vow,”  she finished inadequately.  She hesitated briefly, steeling herself to look up.  When she did, she shook her head, no.   “You could never be other than my brother,” she whispered in apology. A sheepish smile of relief came uncontrollably to his face.

“Ane,” he said. At last, he was home.

Sherif walked back into White Falls fifteen years after he had left to win a woman’s heart.  He hummed softly to himself following behind his father and sister on the old mill run, kicking occasionally at the crisp ash and maple leaves that lay drying on the cool autumn ground. Despite all that reason and experience had predicted, Beh was more exquisite in person than his most daring dream, though perhaps just as unattainable. He harbored no illusions that they could share a normal life together, but who could say? He was not yet an old man, and the fire that had driven him from home fifteen years ago was not ashes after all. He laughed aloud. White Falls was not on his way to anywhere, it was the end of the road.