Mila's first thought was of her farm. The white palace loomed above the meadowlands, a hodge-podge of towers and buttresses glinting in the sun, the ramparts adorned with fell beasts and clinging vines of stone. The land's flag, a single green flame on white silk edged with gold, fluttered and snapped against its pole in the breeze. To be queen of all that would be…..she didn't know what. What was expected of her ? Would she wear silks and brocades and do nothing but watch her husband hunt and sit at council ? Would she spend her days with ladies she did not know, sewing the banners and the bed-hangings and the fine linens ?

She couldn't imagine it. In her farm, there was nothing she was expected not to do. She could see, in her mind's eye, the dark rust of the flagstones scrubbed clean, and the bleached wood of the old oak table with years of knife-scorings and the green stains of herbs. She could smell the tea-roses that climbed the porch haphazardly, clinging where they could, and the scent of the herbs baking in their sunny bed, and she could hear the contented cluck of chickens scratching a meal for themselves out of the earth, and the burble of the nearby spring, set under a leafy bank and walled off with damp stones.

"I can't," she said, "My farm - I have to return home."

He looked stunned. "Home ? You are home, Mila ! This is your home now."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "here is not where my memories are, Arianlach. I have to….."

"And your heart isn't here either ? I don't believe that, not from a girl who's been to the Wastes and back, for me. Return to the farm, hand it over, do whatever you must, and then come back and marry me !"

She refused, stubborn to the last, and appalled at how simple he thought it was. He knew what she really wanted, but he wasn't prepared to give up the kingdom he'd lost for so many years.

Mila looked over the meadows, the grasses bending in the wind, showing their silver sides to the sun. Then she looked at the man who stood by her side, waiting for an answer that he wanted to hear. She touched his arm, and he caught her against him.

"Perhaps in one year," he said into her hair, "you might give me a different answer ?"

Could I ? she wondered as she breathed in his warmth. She'd only thought of being with him when she'd gone to the Wastes, only thought of making him live. She'd never expected to be asked to give up all that she'd known and be queen of a strange land. And yet, to leave him….

"At any rate, I must return to Brookwater," she said finally, "I cannot leave the farm to the woods and the weeds."

"One year, then," he agreed, and took her back to the palace.

He would have sent many fine things with her, but most she refused saying she did not need such things as gold candlesticks and silk tablecloths on a country farm. He pretended to be offended, but he knew that she would never care for such things. After all, she'd freely given gold to be with him for one night. He could not understand her.

"One year," he said, and kissed her, and stood back and watched as she stepped through the doorway and into her own village.


"You have done nothing to earn this," said the voice of the Weaver, and Arianlach sat up and tried to focus on his surroundings. They looked suspiciously like the other side of Laiharth's river, and he wondered how he'd got there – he certainly hadn't tried, and as far as he could tell he had taken no wounds on his hunting trip. Did I fall and break my neck ? he wondered, puzzled. He squinted across the river but could not see any trace of either himself or his companions. Someone blew a stream of warm golden air into him, and he found himself looking into the grass-green eyes of Arnoth.

"Why am I here ?"

"Because I brought you."

He should have expected such an answer, he supposed, unhelpful as it was. He got to his feet. Arnoth was watching, waiting, a secret smile on his lips. Arianlach sighed.

"I take it I have a lesson to learn ?"

A nod, a broader smile. He scowled. "And if I don't learn it ?"

"Then you don't get your reward."

"Blackmail !"

"Life !"

It never did to argue with the Weaver. He held out his hands, a gesture of submission.

"You show," said Arnoth, "a surprising lack of gratitude to one who died to save you. Think you that she existed solely for that ? In two words, you disregarded all her life, all her memories – all of who she is – and offered nothing in return."

"I offered a kingdom !" protested Arianlach. "Could I have given more ?"

When he woke, he found himself back in his own world, on his back in the tall golden grasses by the bank of a river where he and his hunting party had stopped to rest. Words, silken and chiding, echoed in his mind: you could have offered yourself.

"She gave up much to be with me, and I would give up nothing," he muttered, startling a hunter who had come to see if his lord was ready to move on. He aimed an angry kick at his sword belt and the man veered away, reluctant to come within kicking distance of the king when he was in that mood. Arianlach barked the orders to pack up and move on and berated them all for a pack of lazy dogs basking in the sun, and no matter that he'd been one of them, if they wanted venison they had better hunt it ! His captain, a slender man with black hair and a white face and eyes like midnight, repeated the orders and omitted the curses, and brought Arianlach's horse forward.

"A young buck was spotted, over near the wood," he said, "shall we ride that way ?"

"We ride east of the moon, west of the sun," muttered Arianlach bleakly, and his captain sighed and jangled his bridle, hung with silver bells.

"As you say," he said, wondering what on earth had got into his king and yet knowing better than to ask. He hoped the hunt, and a fine haunch of venison, would dispel his lord's strange mood.


Arianlach found the farm little changed, though the first gold of autumn touched the leaves and the fields were full of ripe wheat and barley. It prospered, and grew green, and he felt lighter as soon as his horse's hooves touched golden sparks on the road, baked hard in the heat of the summer. Behind him, silver bells sounded as his retinue followed him into Brookwater. They'd come the same road he'd sent Mila by, and they paused a moment to shake stardust from their hair and brush it from their horses' manes, scattering a shower of diamonds onto the road where they lay as raindrops sparkling in the sun.

"Here ?" said his captain, drawing rein alongside him. Arianlach nodded, and turned down the path to Mila's courtyard. He rode slowly, and let the scents of the farm come to him – a whiff of burnt grass, a hint of the cow byre, and the sweetness of roses that bravely faced the heat, wilting a little. He leaned down and touched his finger to a trailing vine, then dismounted as they reached the courtyard. A large mackerel cat opened both its eyes and gave him a baleful yellow glare, then turned its back and ignored him.

"Hello, Finch," he said, bending down to tickle the animal's ear. Finch flicked the ear away from the annoyance and pretended to be asleep. Arianlach straightened as Mila emerged from the house, her arms dusty with flour and her hair caught back in a bright blue cloth. He bowed.

"It's not been a year," she said sternly, but she smiled as she said it.

"I will wait out the year here, with you," he said. Behind him, his riders shifted restlessly. She looked at them, tall men with hair black as nothing, or pale as moonlight, riding steeds that seemed formed of winds and mists and river-fogs when she tried to look at them directly, yet solid as real beasts when she did not.

"And them ?"

"They will also stay," he said. He turned to the host, spoke a few words, and they dismounted and bowed to her.

"Tell them to stop it," Mila protested, embarrassed. The host laughed, a silvery whisper of wind, and merged themselves with the shadows among the roses, or spiralled into the light that cascaded to earth between the willows. Arianlach followed Mila into the kitchen, breathing in the scent of rising bread and green apples stewing in a copper pot on the fire. There was delicate lace still on its hook on the table, and the beginnings of a small coverlet on the chair that had once been occupied by Mila's grandmother. He did not have time to wonder about them, for Mila gave him a cup of wine and a kiss, then snaked out of his arms just as swiftly as she'd come into them.

"You will lose much, if you stay," she said, giving the apples a stir. He shrugged.

"I run that risk whichever way I turn," he replied. "I would rather gamble, and lose, than never know if I was right or wrong to do so."

She didn't understand, but did not say so, and as he shrugged off his fine cloak and laid it over the back of a chair, she knew it didn't matter.

"I gambled," she whispered as she stepped once more into the warm circle of his arms, "and I won."