She hesitated. “I would ask him not to. But it would be very hard for him. He’d want to know why I had it and how I’d come by it, and all sorts of things that I’d have a hard time explaining. But, yes, I think he’d be honorable about leaving it unread, if that was what I stipulated. It’s a book that should be preserved. And it would be safer in the Burvelle library than in the back of my cupboard.”

I scarcely heard her words. My mind was busy with another thought. “What have you told your father about me?”

She bit her lower lip. “Nothing. And that pains me, Nevare, but there it is. I cannot think what I could tell him. Or your sister, or your father. Or your poor old sergeant teacher. And so I’ve kept silent, and now that winter is closing in, no one will expect to hear anything from us until spring. I pity your little sister, left in an agony of waiting and wondering. But I just couldn’t think what to write to her. Do you think that is awfully wicked of me?”

“No worse than what I’ve done.” I felt something, a tugging, a weakening in me. I felt a peculiar recognition. Soldier’s Boy slept restlessly. He might even now be waking up.

“You’re fading,” she said mournfully. “Come to me again tomorrow night, Nevare. We must be able to find some solution to this. You cannot simply vanish into him!”

“I don’t know if I can come again.”

But before I had even finished my words, I was gone from her dream. I felt the pull of Soldier’s Boy’s awareness stirring. With every passing day, we became linked more tightly. Now it seemed that when he was wakeful, there was not enough left of my awareness for me to dream-walk. For a moment, I felt my dream superimposed on his. “Lisana,” he groaned, but he dreamed only. Not even in his dreams could he reach her.

He shifted in the moss bed. The only part of him that felt warm was where Likari slept against him. In his sleep, Soldier’s Boy scowled and then used a bit of magic. It warmed both of them, settling over them like a good bear rug. He sank into sleep. I waited then, waited until his breathing was once more deep and steady. I was tempting my luck and I knew it, trying to slip away from him twice in one night. But my concern for Amzil was such that I felt I had to risk it. This time, when I tugged at his magic, pulling free what I needed, he stirred slightly and scowled. I dared take only a little. Now or never, I challenged myself, and fled with it, arrowing straight to Amzil. Finding her was effortless; I had only to think of the sole kiss we had ever shared, and I was with her, holding her, tasting her mouth, smelling her skin. I found her, and for one wildly joyous instant, I broke into her dream. “Amzil!” I cried and reached to pull her into my eager embrace.

“No!” she shrieked. She sat up in her bed and I felt her fight wildly to break from her sleep. “No more dreams of you. You’re gone, and I’m here, and I have to live with that. No more foolish dreams. No more foolish dreams.” She sobbed on those final words, and then leaned her head on her arms. She sat in her bed and wept. I hovered near her, but found a wall so tight and so strong that I sensed she had been building it for a long time.

“Amzil, please. Please let me into your dreams,” I begged her. But even as I spoke, I felt the magic dwindle away. My vision of her faded. Suddenly I was back in my body, trapped like a fly in an overturned glass, alone with the rest of the night to ponder my fate.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HOARDING

Soldier’s Boy arose the next morning before Likari did. He brimmed with sudden purpose, as if the night’s sleep had infused him with life and meaning. Moving quietly, he went to an unused corner of the lodge where a bench had once stood. The moss had eaten it. He peeled back a thick layer of it to bare the splintery fragments of the old bench. Then, making many trips, he transferred Lisana’s treasure to this new hiding place. When he was finished, he rolled the moss layer over it again. Only keen eyes looking for such a hidden cache would have noticed it.

He left the lodge and walked down a short slope to where he had remembered a stream. It was still there, but it had changed. Once it had run swift and clear. Now it meandered widely over an area thick with reeds and ferns. With his hands he scooped a deeper place, let the silt swirl and clear, and then cupped handfuls of water to drink and then rub over his face. He shook his hands clear of the cold, shining drops and then turned and looked up the rise to Lisana’s lodge. For a time, he was silent. Then he spoke aloud.

“There is a lot to do in a very little time. Winter approaches. I will need a stout door, window coverings, a firewood supply, oil for her lamp, bedding, clothing for myself, and a store of food. Yet the key to all those things, Nevare, is not the hard work that you immediately think about. No. The key to those things is that I must eat and grow as fat as I can, and I have only a few days in which to do it. And only one small boy to help me provide for myself. We’re going to winter here rather than at the kin-clan’s village. That will not please Olikea, I think, but I do not care. She thinks only to use me as her key to power and status in her kin-clan. Her ambition is too small. I will not be the Great One of her kin-clan. I will be the Great One of the People, the Great One of all the Great Ones. But before I confront Kinrove, I must look like a man full of power and capable of wielding it.”