They reached the outskirts of Alathy just before dusk. A quaint-looking farmhouse sat up ahead, a field of butter-milk cornfields stretching out on one side and a small orchard whose trees had not yet borne fruit on the other. A row of small hillocks tucked in neatly behind.

In the garden to the side of the house, Fara could make out a woman folding white sheets into a basket while a small child ran around, wildly thrusting out a wooden stick like a sword. Behind the house the sun sat low on the horizon, spilling a warm purple haze out across the farm. It was a picturesque scene to Fara's mind.

'What colour would you say are the leaves of those trees over there?' Elyon asked her, pointing in the direction of the orchard.

'Brown,' she said, absently. 'But Sunalven will soon turn them, and they'll produce the sweetest Arula fruit.' She could already feel the chill of Moonalven beginning to lift from the trees and the air around them.

'Arula fruit; and what colour is that?' He asked it as though he already knew the answer but merely required her confirmation.

Arula fruit was akin to sweetbutter or honeyspice in hue. 'Yellow,' she answered for simplicity.

Elyon made a noise, satisfied. 'And the cornfields, they too will turn yellow, yes?'

She looked at him then, quite bemused, while continued to study the large rows of corn which spread all the way to the farmhouse.

'Yes.''Then it is the place,' he said and urged the Varveh out of the shadow of the trees. As he spurred towards the house she clutched at him in panic.

'Elyon you cannot!' She cried. 'There is a child! A Leoth riding at them will terrify them!'

It was as though she had not spoken at all for he sped on towards the farmhouse, slowing only when they were almost upon the low wooden fence which skirted the garden. The woman had halted her task and moved out from behind the sheet to watch them approach. She called out to her child --a boy Fara could see now, with nut-brown curls that danced as he ran --and ordered him inside the house. When the boy did not immediately obey, she rushed toward him and herded him inside.

When they were upon the house, Elyon halted the Varveh with a word and climbed down from the saddle. Some cold terrible fear crept over her as he strode toward the woman, her mouth drying. He would not hurt them, a mother and child. He would not. Surely? Frightened and uncertain, she moved to fumble with the harness.

'Na'as di Wyndoveia,' said Elyon to the woman.

There was a pause, the woman swallowed, and then replied: 'Na'as di Wyndoveia.'

Fara blinked, shocked. Leothin. The woman, this farmers wife, spoke Leothin? It could not be...

'Ik,' Elyon said.

'My husband is not here,' the woman told him, her voice rattling like glass.

'The debt is still owed,' said Elyon.

'Yes.'

Fara could only stare, open-mouthed.

'Are you alone here but for the child?'

The woman nodded, a little hopelessly. 'Yes.'

'I require food, water and a stable out of sight for my beast until I return,' he told her. 'And the loan of a horse, strong enough to carry us both.' He gestured at Fara.

'That... that is all?' The woman asked, disbelieving.

'That is all,' Elyon confirmed and relief flooded the woman's features. 'Do any soldiers make their camp upon your land?' He asked. For some reason the woman hesitated, prompting Elyon to say, 'Lie and I will know it. I shall make you watch first while I devour your son.'

Fara turned to him in horror but he did not acknowledge her, his dark eyes fixed hard upon the woman.

She shook her head, mouth pressed into a firm line. 'No, there are no soldiers here. But the King's army... they are...' she trailed.

'They occupy the castle at Alathy,' Elyon supplied. 'We know of this already.'

As the woman led them toward the large barn, a wealth of questions swam around her head. How and where had this woman learned the Leothin tongue? What debt could the wife of a Calatian farmer possibly owe a Leoth soldier? How had such an arrangement even been made?

The woman pushed open the doors of the barn and Elyon came to assist her down from the saddle, taking care not to meet her eye as he did.

Only when he proffered out his hands to her did he meet her stare. Fara narrowed her gaze, searching, accusing.

'If I told you that it is best you do not know, would you heed the suggestion?' He asked, quietly.

'This is my realm, Elyon, and this woman my subject,' she hissed back in a whisper. 'I would know what debt she owes you, for surely it is mine too?'

Elyon shrugged. 'Her debt is to Leoth, not I.'

'What is 'Na'as di Wyndoveia'?'

He smiled. 'Ah, I see all you needed was some patient tutelage. It seems Theo was correct --you do have a proficiency for the Leoth tongue after all.' His tone was suggestive and as he licked his tongue over his lips she felt heat rush to her cheeks.

'You think to mortify me into disinterest?' She leaned her head closer to him. 'Well, it shall not work. You will tell me of this debt and how it came to be.'

Challenge glinted in Elyon's dark eyes. 'Perhaps you should ask your subject? It is her obligation, after all. I am merely the collector of it.'

The woman had returned within earshot and so Fara bit her tongue and let Elyon lift her down from the saddle. He led the Varveh inside and she turned to find the woman watching her carefully. Fara offered her a weak smile but the haunted look did not leave the woman's face.

'Your son, how old is he?' Fara asked, in an attempt to loosen the tension between them.

The woman did not want to answer, but she cast a glance in the direction of the barn. 'Four namedays.'

Fara had thought the boy older, around six perhaps. 'He looks tall and strong for his age.'

The compliment did not soften the hard edges of the woman's mouth or stance. Misgiving and fear lingered there, but something else too, something Fara could not understand at first. Several long moments passed where Fara considered asking the woman about the debt but the chill seeping from the woman forced her mouth firmly closed. She would demand Elyon told her when they were alone again.

'You're one of them, then?' The woman asked quietly.

Fara frowned, confused. Surely she could not think her a Leoth? 'One of who?' 

'A whore of Asalla,' hissed the woman, a curse. 'You lay with them for coin.'

Fara blinked, rearing back slightly as though she had been struck. The insult burned her. Guilt and shame as she recalled ascribing the same word to Iaria. Pain and sorrow at the sight of Iaria's broken and bloody body at the barbaric hands of the Zybar. The hot prick of tears at hearing how Iaria's father had sold her to a merchant for a small price. The relief at knowing she had gone on to find a home in Leoth, and a protector in Theodan. How lucky Iaria was. How blind Fara had been.

Burning through her then was rage, rage at the ignorance and arrogance of this woman standing before her. The ignorance and arrogance that she had once worn. Theodan had been right to have her whipped - for she wanted to whip this woman now.

'You have not earned the right to call any woman a whore whose plight you have neither lived nor understand,' snapped Fara. 'Do you not stand here now because you have traded with those we are supposed to call our enemy?'

'I.. I had no choice.'

'There is always a choice,' Fara flared. 'Though I suppose it is comforting to tell ourselves otherwise.' Fara knew just how comforting such words could be.

'Any mother would do the same! Any mother would do anything to save the life of their child!'

Fara gasped quietly. 'Leoth saved your child? How?'

The woman looked frightened again. Hopeless, she shrugged. 'Leoth medicine... I do not know.'

'You do not know?'

'I did not witness it. My husband procured it. Two days they were gone into the mountains,' the woman said desperately. 'I was afeared they'd been robbed or killed, that the Leothine themselves had finished them off. I could not lose both of them, would not survive it. I was saddling the horse when I heard the hooves... then the sound...' tears glimmered in the woman's eyes. 'He was singing and talking. Ivyn. You must understand, he had not opened his eyes in days, had been feverish and close to death - no healer could help us. He was going to die, I felt it - the way only a mother can feel it. But here he was, alive again.' The woman spoke in a rush as though she had kept the secret within her too long and had to release it now or go mad. 'He ran to me and began to tell me all about his adventure in the mountains.'

'Thus was borne your debt...' mused Fara.

'Arion said they'd taken no payment - told him only that one day one would come to collect upon it. That whatever was asked should be given, or what had been given would be taken back.'

Fara could only stare in disbelief. How could she have been unaware of such a thing happening in her own realm? How many similar trades had been made with Leoth to save dying sons or daughters? How many debts remained unpaid throughout Calate? Did it stretch beyond her borders to Azura and Zybar too? Had Theodan known such an arrangement existed? That some unnamed Lakaari performed cures upon the sick and dying humans of the realm in exchange for unnamed payments? She could not judge the woman for doing all she could to save her child... but she could also not help but wonder what Leoth sought to gain from such a thing.

'I see the truth of it now,' whispered the farmer's wife. 'Why we've truly been taught to fear them... for they carry the power of Gods with them... the power of life and death. This war shall see us crushed to dust.' The woman's eyes lifted over Fara's shoulder as the sound of Elyon's footsteps grew louder behind them.

oOo

They rode the borrowed horse along a flattened dusty road, deep banks cut into each side, the shadows of giant roundleaf trees spilling wider as the moon began to rise behind them. She could see the high walls of Alathy's castle not too far up ahead. She had been here once before, for the wedding of its Lord and his much younger bride. Father, Valdr and Panos too had been in attendance. It was not long after Cassi had gone to the gods, and she had begged her father to let her remain at Prissia. Of course, he had refused, for Lord Dacian was to be in attendance and already the formal talks of betrothal had begun. She would make a rare appearance by both her brothers' side to remind the Lord of the Isles of what his loyalty would secure him. She had been thankful for the veil that night, for her eyes had wept for her sister and her wrists had burned from the blade.

It was of Cassi she thought again now.

Could this leothine cure have healed her? What had Theodan said that night with all the arrogance of certainty?

He did not send to Leoth. If he had would Cassi be alive? She almost did not want to consider it, for the pain was too great.

Yet she forced herself to meet the weight of the loss and ask Elyon the question laying in wait upon her tongue.

'The cure the woman procured,' she said. 'Tell me of it.'

Elyon let out a soft sigh, as though he had been waiting for her question and was relieved that it had finally arrived.

It was the first words she had uttered since he had returned from the stable. Elyon had returned wearing the clothing of the largest deserter he'd slain. It was tight around his chest and thighs but it fit him well. With the hood of his cloak pulled up she could not see why, at a distance at least, any Calatian soldier would see a Leoth beneath it. She also understood now why he'd swapped his winged Varveh for a black mare.

'I did not myself administer it,' he said.

'But you know of it.'

'Yes, princess, I know of it.'

'Then tell me what you know.'

Another sigh. 'I know that humans are weak. As are the afflictions that so easily destroy your feeble bodies .' There was some odd note to his words - he was hiding something, she was certain of it.

'Are there any... there must be some afflictions... some your Lakaari cannot cure?' She held a breath of hope.

'I do not know, though I am certain not all have been brought before us.'

She let out the breath. It did not comfort her, not at all.

'You are worried your entire realm is filled with Leoth's debtors..' he said after some moments.

'It was not what I was thinking.'

'No?'

'What of other realms?' She asked, turning to him. 'I presume it is not just Calate's men and women who bring their sick before your Lakaari?'

'You presume correct.'

'So Leoth possess medicine that no other realm does, one that can return the sick to full health?'

'Yes, I suppose we do.' That strange tone again, the burden of deceit woven through it.  She could not understand it for she knew he did not lie. Leoth had saved the boy Ivyn from the clutches of death.

'Why trade it like this? For a shadowy unnamed price? Why not sell it through normal channels? For we would pay you richly for it.'

'Because you have nothing we need and little that we want,' he said simply.