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"Just stay calm," said Eidhal, quietly. Safe advice which he must have received already. No father would remain wholly silent, despite the tradition. "Keep your head, stay where we put you and be resolute."

The boy nodded, unconvinced, and Eidhal remembered something else. An older brother who had failed to return-no wonder the lad was scared.

"Up," he ordered briskly. To delay now would be cruel. Fear was contagious. "Up and on our way!"

Beyond the crest, a fan of cleared thorn ran up a gentle slope which rose abruptly into a mass of slender pinnacles of jagged stone. They ran in an uneven curve for the distance of a mile, the remains of an old ridge which had been shattered and eroded in eons past. Rocks were heaped at the foot of the spires, clumps of grass and scrub clinging to the detritus. A section had been cleared-the high places of the ordeal.

Eidhal led the way towards them, walking straight, seeing the figures of Armand and his men looking small as they quested among the rocks.

Dumarest watched them come. He leaned against a pinnacle, the woman slumped at his feet. Iduna was close to exhaustion, her hair soiled, her clothing grimed, her eyes bruised hollows in the pallor of her face.

"Earl!" she muttered. "Earl?"

"Men," he said. "Men and boys." He added, comfortingly, "It's all right, Iduna. We're safe now."

"Safe? With animals like the Candarish?"

"With people."

He moved, feeling the nagging ache of bruises, of muscles overstrained. The laceration on his scalp was a festering burn. Despite his reassurance, he was being cautious. If these men were from the valley he had searched for, they could have a short way with strangers. A people who wanted to remain secret could not afford to arouse curiosity. He stepped behind the pinnacle as Iduna rose to stand beside him.

"Boys," she said wonderingly. "Why are they here, Earl? What are they doing?"

The party had halted before one of the cleared fingers of stone. As they watched a boy climbed it, reaching the top to cling awkwardly to the jagged summit. Once settled, the others moved away to another pinnacle well away from the first.

"Earl."

"A rite," he said. "An initiation. Those boys will have to stay up there all night. They will have to stay awake, hanging on, wait until the dawn. They could be up there for days."

"But why?" She had spoken without thinking, too tired to correlate facts into an answer. "What is the point?"

"A tribal custom. Once they have passed the test, they will become men." Dumarest glanced at the party, the questing scouts. As yet they were unobserved. "We've arrived at a bad time."

"Will they kill us?"

It was possible. Strangers, in a sacred place, observers who did not belong. It would be better to hide, to wait until night. But even so, there could be guards and certainly there would be predators of one kind or another. Beasts waiting for tired hands to slip, young bodies to fall, easy feeding in this savage wilderness.

"Madness," she said, too numb to follow her question, to demand an answer. "To treat children like that. Why do they do it?"

To weed out the unfit, to test courage, to make manhood a prized estate. A crude method, perhaps, but one which worked. Dumarest had seen it before, tests by fire, water, the ability to go without food and to live off the land. A means to ensure physical stamina, to eliminate destructive genes from the line.

No small community could afford to carry the burden of the handicapped. No sensible culture would permit destructive variations in the gene plasm to survive.

Had Leon refused to participate? Running, a victim of his own terror? It was possible-if he had come from the valley which lay beyond. If the valley was Nerth.

"Earl!"

He spun at Iduna's cry, seeing a multilegged thing, spined tail upcurved, mandibles champing. A scorpion-like thing a foot long, which scuttled forward towards her foot. It squelched beneath the impact of his heel, but the damage had been done.

"Eidhal! Here!"

Armand came running, spear leveled, men at his back. Dumarest stooped, picked up two stones, fist-sized rocks which he held in each hand. He threw one to either side, waiting until they fell, their rattle distracting the guards. Then, as they hesitated, he stepped forward, hands uplifted, palms forward in the unmistakable sign of peace.

Armand threw his spear. It was a slender shaft five feet long, the tip cruelly barbed. Sharp metal which glinted as it flashed, straight and fast towards Dumarest's chest. His hand dropped, caught it as he turned, continuing the movement so that he spun in a complete circle, running as he faced the man before him.

"Eidhal!"

Armand stepped back, caught his foot on a stone, and fell as Dumarest lunged towards him. He saw the face, tense, smeared with dirt and dried blood, the vicious tip of the spear flashing towards his throat. He felt the sharp prick as it came to rest touching his windpipe.

"No!"

"Hold!" Eidhal came running toward. "Don't kill him! You men there! Hold your spears!"

He halted close to Dumarest, looking at the man on the ground, the drop of blood showing beneath the point of the spear.

"Press on that shaft and you die! I swear it." His eyes lifted, saw Iduna, took her for a man. "Both of you die."

"You would kill a woman?"

"A woman?" Eidhal looked again, caught the swell of breasts beneath the stained tunic, the curve of the hips. "She too, if you kill Armand. You hold three lives in your hand."

Neatly put-and he meant it. Dumarest looked at the ring of guards, the scared and wondering faces of the boys yet to climb the pinnacles. They were well-trained, not one had moved, and guards had remained at their station.

"I came in peace. I showed empty hands, yet he tried to kill me. Why?"

Armand swallowed as Dumarest lifted the spear from his throat a little.

"I saw movement. There are predators-and you wear gray."

The mark of a ghost, he was not to blame. Eidhal glanced at Dumarest, saw his face, remembered the incredible speed with which he had avoided the thrown spear. No ghost this, no matter what he wore.

One of the guards cleared his throat.

"Varg, the boys?"

A timely reminder, already shadows were gathering in the hollows. Unless the initiation was canceled, they would have to move fast.

"Continue. Split up the men and work at speed." Again Eidhal studied Dumarest and the woman. Strangers-and the rule was clear. But the boys would be watching and, as yet, they were not men. "Where are you from?"

"That way." Dumarest jerked his head as he stepped back, still holding the spear.