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another, larger intent she did not know.
"Who do you think you are?" The screech almost sent Britta straight out of her skin. Fenris barked his
surprise. Her own yelp was strangled in her throat. Who could be here in this wasteland of water, mud,
and clumps of sedge mottled brown and green in the deepening twilight.
"Who will you become?" the voice cawed again. Hope surged. Who could this be but the very one she
had come so far to see? Still Britta couldn't pinpoint the voice. It was like the calls of the countless birds
that wheeled above the marshes, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
"I mean no harm," she returned in a soothing voice. "I look for a great wicce."
"What do you want? Everyone wants something," the voice said. But it didn't shriek.
"Are you the wicce?" Britta asked. "I want only to learn."
The silence stretched. Finally, the sedge right in front of Britta parted. At first she was not certain what
she saw was a face. It looked like brown leaves in the dim light, wrinkled and creased, with slitted eyes
and a slash of a mouth. The face adorned a stooped and wizened creature the color of mud from head to
toe, including a gray-brown robe and stringy hair, so old that its sex was indeterminate. Was this the
great wicce who taught her mother?
A piercing cackle cracked the silence. Fenris barked sharply and Britta tried to still him. "Learn what?"
the witch asked after she had contained her mirth. "What I am, you can't learn."
Britta swallowed. This was not a monster, she told herself firmly, but simply a woman so old as to look
like a different kind of creature altogether. "I want to learn to control the magic."
The witch went very still. The silence stretched, and Britta was afraid to break ü. "You must first have it."
The witch's glare was baleful. "Do you have it?"
Britta nodded slowly. "Or rather, it has me. Please teach me."
The witch looked from Fenris to Britta, speculation and a certain slyness in the mud-brown eyes. "You
can be more useful than I thought."
Britta fingered Fenris's muddy fur for comfort. She felt the low growl in his throat. Steady, she thought,
for both of them. She was about to say something, anything to break that calculating stare, when right
before her eyes, the witch took a step back and melted into the fens.
"Where did she go, Fenris?" Britta cried. Her only hope to learn the secrets of the magic inside her had
just disappeared. Then she heard a cackle off through the mist ahead. In the darkening fog, she saw a
brown lump that might be a stump, or might be the witch, a dozen yards away. She shared the feeling that
made Fenris whine his protest at such sudden dislocation.
"Prove you have the magic. Follow me home," Britta heard, drifting over the mud and the sedge. Then
the lump melted from view.
"God's breath, Fenris! Her magic serves her every day, not like Karn's berserker." Britta searched the
sedge. "How can I follow when she moves like water through these fens?" If she could follow, what? This
crone was no kindly teacher. She might as likely slit Britta's throat in the night and serve her as stew as
teach her about magic. But there was magic here, for certain.
So Britta focused her attention on the humming of the fens and stepped after the witch, Fenris in her
wake. She had no choice. She could not turn back now.
Offa stood at the rear of the hall and watched the milling thegns find their seats at the great tables as
Edmund's pages pounded the wooden floor with their staves for quiet. The hall inside the fortress at
Thetford was richly hung with tapestries. It exuded the mustiness of the dried rushes that rustled on the
floor, the sweet stench of mead, the acrid tang of too many men, and smoke from the lamps that burned
in their sconces. Meat roasted somewhere. There would be a feast shortly, and the charred haunches of
hogs and hinds would join smoked fish and huge bowls of beans and cracked grain flavored with herbs
and berries.
Offa purposely did not sit with the others. He wanted Edmund to feel his presence, know he had come
only by his own choice. He did not pay tribute in return for the protection of the loose association of
lords who did likewise, and therefore made up the kingdom of Anglia. No, Offa brought the loyalty of
many thegns and his own base of power. All the east of Suthfolc followed his lead. His men were trained
fighters whom he paid to keep, not some hastily assembled rabble like the other contingents. Alone
among the thegns here, his forces were a rival for Edmund's royal guard. That made him dangerous, and
both knew it.
Slowly, Offa let his eyes circle until they lighted upon the one who claimed Anglia. The word king did not
come easily, applied to Edmund. The man dressed like a king, certainly. Edmund's robe was the finest
blue, his tunic edged with tapestry braid woven of gold threads. The rings on his hands and the gold chain
and medallion hanging nearly to his waist were so heavy, they looked to weigh him down. But that was
just the problem, to Offa's mind. Edmund was possessed of weak, watery blue eyes, a slight figure, and a
sparse beard. He was a weakling, a whining babe who mewled about his health. A king should be a
warrior. A warrior would never seek out sickness, as Edmund seemed to do. The two mages who
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