"Shairn is sure of everything, and herself most of all." The man had been drinking, but he was not even slightly drunk. His tone was serious. "Now listen to me, my friend. I've stood around a long while in the rain watching for you when I should have been attending to my business, and I'm breaking a very important law right now. No one else has seen you. Take your horse and ride like hell away from here, and I'll forget that I have." He laid an urgent hand on Trehearne's shoulder. "This may be hard for you to believe, but I'm offering you your life." The voices of the men rang down the wind, and Trehearne thought of the crates and cases they were bringing up from below as though preparing them for loading, and suddenly an answer came to him. "Smuggling," he said. "You could land planes out here, and nobody would ever know it." "Smuggling is precisely it. Now will you go? I haven't any right to do this, but I hate to see a man die just for a woman's amusement." "Why are you so sure I'll die?" "Because you're not true Vardda, and more than that I can't tell you. Just please for God's sake go!" Trehearne thought, He's sincere, he means it, and smuggling isn't all the answer, these aren't common criminals. Something strange, very strange, and maybe he's right.... The fear that he had had before rose up in him and it was of the body now as well as the mind, a chill premonition of the unnatural. He hesitated, and the ugly man said softly, "Good! I'll get your horse." There was a creak and a bang and a burst of sound as the great oaken door of the keep swung open. The stranger pressed Trehearne flat against the wall. The doorway was just out of sight, but Trehearne could hear the voices clearly. They were speaking their own unfamiliar tongue, so that what they said was lost to him, but he knew they were talking about him. He heard his name, and the voice that spoke it was Shairn's. Then she laughed. She didn't need to laugh. The sound of her voice would have been enough. Trehearne flung off the stranger's restraining arm and stood away from the wall. "You fool!" whispered the stranger furiously, and caught at him, but Trehearne was remembering things, words, looks, and the anger in him burned away the fear. He walked out into the light that spilled across the courtyard from the open door. Kerrel and a number of others, mostly women, were standing there, but the only one he saw was Shairn, girdled with jewels and wearing a tunic the color of flame, holding in her hand a goblet of wine. A silence fell, and Shairn's gaze was fixed on his. Even so, he could not read it. She smiled and said, "Thank you, Michael. I've won my bet." FOUR