"Yes, look there," Donar's deep voice said from behind him, "and understand why we are hereIf we lose tonight the field in which we stand will be desolate as those hills next year when we come backThe Others are down into these grainlands nowWe have lost the battles of those hills over the past yearsWe are fighting in the plain now, and if this goes on, one Ember Night not far from now our children or their children will stand with their backs to the sea and lose the last battle of our war
"And?" Baerd's eyes were still on the west, on the grey, stony ruin of the hills
"And all the crops will failNot just here in CertandoOf hunger or of plague
"All over the Palm?" He could not look away from the desolation gucci faux that he sawHe had a vision of a lifeless world looking like that
"The Palm and beyond, BaerdMake no mistake, this is no local skirmish, no battle for a small peninsulaAll over this world, and perhaps beyond, for it is said that ours is not the only world scattered by the Powers among time and the stars
"Carlozzi taught this?"
"Carlozzi taught thisIf I understand his teaching rightly, our own troubles here are bound up with even graver dangers elsewhere; in worlds we have never seen or will see, except perhaps in dream
Baerd shook his head, still looking out at the hills in the west"That is too remote for meI am a worker in stone and a sometime merchant and I have learned how to fight, against my will and prada fairy inclination, over many yearsI live in a peninsula overrun by enemies from overseasThat is the level of evil I can grasp
He turned away from the western hills then and looked at DonarAnd despite the warning they'd given him, his eyes widened with amazementThe miller stood on two sound legs; his grey, thinning hair had become a thick dark brown like Baerd's own, and he stood with his broad shoulders straight and his head held high, a man in his prime
A woman came up to them, and Baerd knew Elena, for she was not greatly changedShe seemed older here though, less frail; her hair was shorter, though still white-gold despite the strangeness of the lightHer eyes, he saw, were a very deep blue
"Were your eyes that black fendi spy same color an hour ago?" he asked
She smiled, pleased and shy"It was more than an hourAnd I don't know what I look like this yearIt changes a little for me every timeWhat color are they now?"
"Blue
"Well then, yes, they have always been bluePerhaps not extremely blue, but blue"Shall I tell you what you look like?" There was an incongruity, a lightness in her voiceEven Donar had an amused expression playing about his lips
"You look like a boy," she said with a little laugh"A fourteen-or fifteen-year-old boy, beardless now and much too thin and with a shock of brown hair I would love to cut if we had but half a chance
Baerd felt his heart thud like a mallet in his breastIt actually seemed to stop for an instant tiffany and co necklace before beginning again, laboriously, to beatHe turned sharply away from the others, looking down at his handsThey did seem differentAnd a knife scar he'd got in Tregea five years ago was not thereHe closed his eyes, feeling suddenly weak
"Baerd?" Elena said behind him, concernedHe tried to speak but found that he could notHe wanted to reassure her, her and Donar, that it was all right, but he seemed, unbelievably, to be weeping, for the first time in almost twenty years
For the first time since the year he had been a fourteen-year-old boy forbidden to go to war by his Prince's orders and his father'sForbidden to fight and die with them by the red banks of the River Deisa when all the shining had come to an black chanel quilted bag end