Prophecy, Child of Earth by Elizabeth Haydon

depths of her soul. "What do you mean by that?"
    'Nothing," he said quickly, "nothing at all. This was a misunderstanding." A wry tone came into his voice. "Possibly brought on by that skunk urine, as you so charmingly have named it."
    Rhapsody sat back down by the fire. "You know, Ashe, most people have misunderstandings on a slightly different scale. They argue, they call each other names. My neighbor once threw a plate at her husband. They don't usually draw weapons on each other. Generally I don't think what just happened qualifies as a misunderstanding."
    'I'm very sorry," he said. "Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you. I swear it won't happen again. I know you may not believe this, but it was an overreaction to what is happening across the land. War is coming, Rhapsody; I can feel it. And it makes me suspect everyone, even those without any hand in it, like you."
    She could hear the truth in his voice. Rhapsody sighed and considered her options. She could drive him off, refusing to spend another moment in his presence, which would leave her alone and lost in the woods. She could agree to go on with him but remain wary, setting up precautions to avoid further mishap. Or she could take him at his word.

    She was too tired to do anything other than the last. "All right," she said finally.
    "I guess I can get past this, as long as you promise not to draw on me ever again.
    Swear it, and we'll forget this happened."
    'I do," he said. There was amazement in his voice, and something else that she couldn't put her finger on.
    'And throw away that coffee. It addles your brain."
    In spite of the grimness of the situation, Ashe laughed. He reached into his pack and drew forth the sack.
    'Not into the fire," she said hastily. "We'll have to evacuate the woods. Bury it in the morning with the waste."
    'All right."
    She tossed another handful of sticks on the fire. It was burning low, apparently tired, too. "And you take the first sleep rotation."
    'Agreed." Ashe crossed to his spot within the camp and pulled out his bedroll, slipping into it rapidly, as if to show his trust that she would not retaliate on him in his slumber. "Good night."
    'Good night." In spite of everything that had happened, Rhapsody felt a smile come over her face. She sat back and listened to the nightsounds of the forest, the music the wind made and the song of the crickets in the dark.
    cursed and spurred his horse again. The Orlandan ambassadorial caravan was several days ahead, and he was not making any gains in his quest to catch up with it. Shrike had no need of their company nor any desire for it; by and large he considered the ambassadorial class of Roland to be a pathetic collection of doddering old men incapable of forming a direct statement, let alone a coherent thought. Puppets , he mused sourly, every one of them. Off to pay homage to the new Lor A of the Monsters .
    His master's words came back to him as he galloped along the muddy pathway that in drier times was the trans- Orlandan thoroughfare, the roadway built in Cymrian times bisecting Roland from the seacoast to the edge of the Man-teids.
    Anything and everything you can find out about Canrifand what manner of insanity is going on there. Everything, Shrike . The depth of the voice made the inherent threat in the words even more obvious.
    Shrike could feel that threat in the wind as well, despite the sweetness that filled the air at Spring's return. Canrif was a ruin, the rotting carcass of a long-dead age; it should remained that way, left to the scavenging monsters that roamed the peaks and the wind that had not cleansed the memory of what had happened there, even all this time past. He was uncertain as to what he would find when presented at the skeletal court of Gwylliam the Abuser and Anwyn the Manipulator, but whatever it might be, Shrike was fairly certain he would not like it.

    < ir Francis Pratt, the emissary from Canderre, blinked several times and swallowed nervously.