The clean wind rippled, swishing the wayward lock of hair across Mordred's forehead. He reached up, absently, to sweep it out of his eyes, and checked in his path from barn to house, gazing over the muted half-light and the dropping slope of the mountain, letting the cool, slippery air wave past him and murmur in his ear. How wonderfully alive the air felt so early in the day, he thought with quickening blood.

He set down the pail and braced his arms against the door before stepping over the threshold. "Water for the morning, little bird."

Lethira's hair fell girlishly about her as she blew the fire alight in the ashy hearth. "Too soon, Mordred."

"Sunrise is less than an hour off – up so late? Where are the little ones?"

She laughed merrily and got up to face him. "Everyone is awake save for Derek and Leon. You can get them up if you like."

Mordred caught her around the waist. "Not too fast," he teased, nuzzling her head. "I have not kissed my fair wife yet this morning."

"Now you have." Lethira tilted her head up at him. "And breakfast will still not cook itself, for all that."

Laughing, Mordred kissed her once more and released her. His long strides carried him to the bedroom.

Leon was half-on and half-off the straw tick he shared with Finley, his head pillowed blissfully in the dirt of the floor. His woolen shirt, soft from wear, was riding up his round stomach, and his black hair fell in feathery disarray against his cheek.

Mordred watched him for a moment, his eyes soft with silent fondness; then he stepped in, knelt down, and nicked Leon gently under the chin with one finger. Leon's eyes opened, wandering, and his mouth opened in a yawn. "Da-a?" he uttered sleepily.

"Time you were up, my wee Fenris," said Mordred, patting his youngest child's head. "Don't forget, it's the horse sale today."

Derek was not in the room.

Mordred came back out into the living-room and studied the five children therein, singling out the one most likely to know the answer. "Douglas?"

Douglas' tousled head snapped up, his questioning eyes round and innocent.

"Where's Derek?" Mordred inquired. "Your mother seemed to think he was sleeping."

William looked up and snorted. "Derek? At this time of day?" He rubbed sleep-heavy eyes with the back of his hand and jerked savagely at a carroty, sun-bronzed curl.

"Unsurprisingly," said Mordred, disregarding William, "she was wrong."

"Derek said he was going out to check a snare," said Douglas with an indifferent shrug. "He promised to be back for breakfast."

Mordred's eyebrow sprang up. "He'd better keep that promise this time."

Derek was back before Lethira had finished laying out the bowls on the table, grin flaring irrepressibly, eyes bright and snapping with satisfaction as he swung a rabbit by the ears. "Nothing in the snares, but I brought this down with my knife. Had to wait an hour for it to get close enough. Can I skin it before we leave, Mother?"

"Take that thing out to the barn," said Lethira distractedly, manuevering around an energetic Finley with a laden bowl in each hand. "And no, you can't. This evening will be soon enough."

"Cleaned your knife, Derek?" asked Mordred.

"Yes," said Derek and went whistling out the door with a careless swing of the shoulders.

"I'll go on ahead, Lethira," said Mordred, moving after his son, "and meet Fenris. He wants to know whether he ought to sell the yearling filly or not."

"Not till you have eaten something, you're not," said Lethira.

Mordred dropped into a chair with defeated mien. "I thought I had shaken off female oppression when Laufeia got married..."

~

"Mordred!" They met one another in a swift, welcoming embrace and stepped back under the dazzle of the morning sun.

"Fenris." Mordred looked on his brother in something of the same way he had watched young Leon sleeping, except that the tenderness was more pronounced, more intense, and sharpened with a certain sadness that had never quite disappeared in all the thirteen years that they had dwelt in Ceristen.

Fenris had grown from a slight, thin boy to a spare, grave-eyed man. The scar traced up his forehead in a faintly defined ridge, turning up the edge of his eyebrow and giving him an almost quizzical look. He smiled seldom, and spoke less, but no-one could call him an unhappy man; the quietude in his face was too strong for that.

Mordred reached down to fondle the dark head of Fenris' four-year-old son, near Finley and Elaina's age, as the boy bumped against Mordred's leg like an overeager dog. "How are you, young Cale?"

Cale grinned and ducked his head. "Why you here, Unca' Mordred?"

Mordred arched both eyebrows, grinning back. "To help your father with a very important question, though why he should ask my advice is beyond me."

Cale knew. "'Cause you smart."

Mordred turned dismayed eyes on Fenris. "What have you been teaching these children?"

~

Derek vaulted off the back of the cart, gaze roving over the already crowded green. Douglas wriggled after him with more difficulty.

"I wish I were tall like you," he said, coming up breathless by Derek's side.

"You're only six," said Derek. "You'll grow."

"Nearly seven," said Douglas. "Just another two months. And I'm small for my age, everyone says so."

Derek shrugged. He was powerless to make Douglas grow. "Where should we go first?"

"The animals, of course," said Douglas.

"Is Mr. Stafford selling his pigs?" asked Derek, searching for the man's tall, grizzle-bearded figure. "He can't be meaning to keep all eleven."

They found the pigs and hung over the slats of the pen, watching the pigs scratch their massive, bristly backs against the shaky boards and prod the weakest parts of the contraption with their broad snouts, until Edrach Stafford shouted at them to get down. Then they went to the horses and climbed up the more stable fences as men milled about inside the corrals and checked teeth and hoof with critical eye.

"I like that one," said Derek, "– the bay, see."

"I like the one behind it," said Douglas. "He's almost the same colour as Smoke."

"The bay has better hindquarters, though," said Derek.

"The grey has a finer head," Douglas argued.

"Douglas, see that one over there, on the left!" Derek leaned out, his eyes shining. "He's almost black, and look at the way he tosses his mane. What a beauty! If I had him, I'd call him Thunder."

"I'd call the grey one Sleet, then," said Douglas. "Look, there's Mr. Fred Thorne – he's checking out the bay."

Derek peeled his eyes reluctantly off the dark Thunder. "It's too bad their old one died. I liked him."

"How many queer people there are at a horse sale." Douglas propped his elbows on the fence. "That man over there, for instance, in the black cloak. See his darting eyes?"

"Where? I can't tell where you're pointing. Wait, Douglas, look – look!"

"What?" Douglas hauled himself up further, peering along Derek's pointing finger.

Standing in the midst of the corral, running his hand along the withers of a dappled mare, was a tall man of refined bearing, clad in foreign, flowing garments of red and golden that caught the light with their sheen. His sharp, thin-boned face, dark as weathered hickory, creased in a look of pleasure, and his deep eyes narrowed with calculating intent as he turned to the seller.

"An Arahadian," breathed Derek in ecstasy. "Up here?"

"The horses in Orden City," the Arahadian merchant was saying, "are priced too high; nor is the quality desirable." He spoke in a lisping accent, each r trilled over in a light purr, each k and t pronounced with wicked precision. Derek and Douglas hung avidly on every word.

"So," he continued, "they say, there is a festival for the selling of horses on the mountain, and so I have come up the mountain. What I see in this one pleases me. How much will you accept?"

The boys continued to trail the Arahadian across the horse sale until they finally lost him in a maze of pedlars' stalls, and decided it was not worth the bother to find him again. Instead they went down to the lakeshore and sat on the bank.

"I am going to Arahad someday," declared Derek, lying on his back and looking up into the branches of an overhanging willow.

"With me," said Douglas.

"Of course."

"Father says they make fine cloth in Arahad, you know. We could get some for Mother and the girls."

"Why not?" agreed Derek lazily. He rolled over and began splitting blades of grass.

"Derek," said Douglas' voice quietly. "Remember how I was trying to show you someone before we saw the Arahadian?"

"Aye. What about it?"

"He's standing nearby us right now. He's so queer, Derek. Look at him."

Derek sat up. The man was standing some yards down the bank from them, his great black cloak bulging behind him in the wind, looking back towards the activity of the horse sale.

"What's so odd about him? I mean, other than that he's hiding out here like someone in a sulk."

"Look at his skin, Derek," said Douglas.

Derek looked again. "It's very pale. It's as – as pale as a corpse. He looks as though he hadn't any blood in him at all!"

"Shh!" said Douglas, his eyes wide and frightened as the man stirred and looked their way. "I don't want him to come over here. I think – we ought to go back to Father – or someone–"

"It's all right, Douglas." Derek frowned at him. It was unlike his younger brother to be so nervous, especially on such a childish basis. "What do you think, that he would kidnap us? Just because his skin happens to be white doesn't mean–" He broke off; the stranger was approaching them. "Do you need something, sir?" he called out, hoping to head him off quickly for Douglas' sake.

No answer came. The man halted a bare few feet from them, and Derek felt an odd prickle crawl down his neck, because, after all, the dead, slack whiteness of his skin was eerie. And the eyes in that white face shifted and darted endlessly, side to side, up, around, never settling – eyes of insanity, Derek wondered, and his stomach felt cold.

"Do you need help, sir?" he asked again. He wondered what he would do if the man did attack them. He had his knife, he always had his knife. But he was only eleven, and all he had ever done was pin rabbits, squirrels, and deer.

The man said nothing. His lips were shut so hard that it looked as if he were biting them together.

"What do you want?" Derek asked, edging back a little and drawing Douglas after him.

The man snuffed in a breath through his quivering, pallid nose. He opened his mouth the barest crack, his lips sucked back, hiding his teeth. "Boysss," he said, not as though he were addressing them, but labelling them as being indeed boys. And that frightened Derek more than anything else that had happened so far, because it made no sense at all.

He wanted to bolt, but didn't dare. Douglas couldn't possibly run fast enough. Some instinct kept him talking instead, covering his fear, because maybe the man could smell it, like a dog–

"You can tell us if you need something, sir. We live around here. Shall I get my father?"

The man continued staring around emptily at first, and then, as though the words had penetrated all at once, his face altered and he looked down at Derek with a snarl wrinkling his brow and flaring his nostrils. "No," he said with that same intensity.

Douglas was trembling, hiding his head under Derek's arm, no longer the self-possessed, unusually articulate boy he ordinarily was, but very much a frightened six-year-old child.

"So–" Derek fell silent helplessly, his mind dashing into a blank wall, starting to panic. The man took a step forward, and he took another back, and his foot sunk into the mud of the lake bed. All that was behind him was water. This was stupid, people weren't supposed to die at horse sales–

Then a hand came flying into the man's white face, snapping his head to the side. He twisted away in a fluid spring and spun around, his lip curling back from sharp, glistening teeth.

"Get out of this place," said Berethar Mycraí, and the creature shrank back like a frightened animal from his anger. For Berethar Mycraí was very angry; it flashed out of his eyes, roiled under his quivering, braced shoulders, converged in the fist clenched furiously at his side.

"Get out, or I will kill you."

The man-beast whipped about and fled, running in strangely light, loping strides toward the east slope of the mountain. And yet Derek thought that before he quite disappeared, the shape seemed to shift, and was running on all fours as it slipped from sight.

~

Jedediah Crayes leant on the barn wall, listening to Mordred's account. He had listened in silence ever since Mordred began telling him of what happened at the horse sale three months before.

"Oh yes; it was definitely a shapeshifter," he said as Mordred fell silent. "The colourless skin and his strange behavior would be enough, not to mention the way he was hiding his teeth, but since your boys actually saw those teeth, well, there's no doubt at all. And as long as there haven't been a great many livestock deaths lately, he's probably gone."

"But why was he here?" asked Mordred, his brow drawn and troubled.

"I don't pretend to know that, Mordred. If I must say so, it's very odd that a shapeshifter would come out into the open like that, and even try to mingle – because that's what he was doing, of course, though it was a hopeless try." He fell silent, his dark, narrow eyes sober and a little grim. "I don't know, Mordred. It's not just this. There are strange things creeping out of the dark places in the world."