Page 4

"I'm real." He held out his hand for her to touch. Her fingers were long and slim, and they flinched away from the armour of his gauntlet. "I'm very real. Who are you, Lady?"

She looked at him as though she still could not believe it. "Who am I...? Does my name really matter? I don't even remember if I ever had a name, but I must have, I suppose." She sat down on a block of stone, and leaned her head on her hands. "Will you take me away?"

He looked at the boat and back at her. "Can you tell me how you came to be here?"

She looked up at him. "It's a fairly long story. Sit here beside me and I'll tell you."

The book lay heavy against his stomach, and the block of stone was small. Besides, sitting down he couldn't look at her. "I'll stand, Lady."

"Well, then." She looked down at her hands. "I remember some of it, not everything. I lived here, you know."

"Here?"

"Yes, it wasn't as you see it now. Back then, it was a staging point on the river, and there were people here, soldiers and traders and the like. My husband was here too."

"Your husband?"

"He was the officer in charge of the soldiers here. We were very happy together, were thinking of having a baby." She looked up at him and down again. "It seems funny to think of all that now.

"The stories came, of bandits, out on the plain. Entire caravans destroyed, wiped out with no survivors. Nothing was left. Do you understand?"

"Nothing?" he asked. The way she had said it seemed to have some special significance to her.

She nodded. "Nothing. Nobody knew who had done it, but the scourge was moving closer. Each day it crept closer to this place, until the traders began to demand that my husband and his soldiers do something about it.

"The night before he left, my husband came to me. 'Put this on,' he said, handing me an amulet. 'Before I left home, my mother gave it to me as a charm against danger. Wear it next to your heart, and it will keep you safe while I'm gone.'

" 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'You're the one who will need to guard against danger.'

"But he only laughed. 'With my strong right arm and my men, I'm well enough protected,' he said. And before daybreak, he had left along with his men. I never saw him again.

"Two nights later, this place was attacked. I was asleep then, and woke to find the walls already breached and the air filled with fire and smoke and screams. But the screams did not last long.

"My first thought was to flee for my life. There was a way out through the back, a narrow passage my husband had shown me. It was only known to the soldiers, as an emergency exit. I only paused long enough to snatch up my husband's charm, and then I rushed towards it. But something must have happened to me - maybe I breathed in too much smoke. I must have fainted.

"And when I woke up, I saw them. Gathered around me, looking down, watching."

There was a pause. "They weren't just bandits, were they?" he asked, gently. "Something much worse?"

She looked up with desperate eagerness. "You understand, then. When I saw their faces, the fangs dripping blood and their monstrous faces, I would have fainted again. And when I saw what they had done to the rest, to the traders and the servants and the others, I wanted them to kill me. But they would not kill me, and after a while, I understood that theycouldnot."

"The charm," he said.

"Yes, of course it was the charm. Can you imagine what I went through after that? Can you imagine my being amongst those...things...knowing that them being here meant that my husband and the others must be dead? That everyone was dead, except me?" She shook her head. "If you could only imagine that, you would understand what I had to do."

"You threw the charm away," he said with complete certainty.

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