Everyone knew there would have been a war with Friesland if Erief had had another summer to finish uniting all of Andoray. The Kings of Friesland claimed Andoray too, despite Neche's Reach.

The old men stared at Pulla. The old women, Borbjorg and Vidgis, too. None agreed with the godspeaker.

Pulla shook his head. "Maybe I'm wrong. But that's what I think."

Trygg observed, "Erief was a great one." Speaking no ill of the dead. "Maybe so great the Walker himself wanted him. Who else would send the Choosers? Did anybody see His ravens? No?"

Pulla said, "I'll throw the bones and consult the runes. There may be something the Night wants us to know. But first, we have to decide what to do with the outlanders."

The law had been observed. But tempers were no cooler than when the murder had been discovered.

* * *

PULLA SENSED A WRONGNESS BEFORE THE TORCHLIGHT revealed the prison pit. He barked, "Stop! Something huldrin has been here." Huldrin literally meant "hidden." In this instance huldrin meant a creature of Faerie, spawn of me Instrumentalities of the Night and the Hidden Realms. Huldre people, the Hidden Folk, while seldom seen, were part of everyday life. You disdained the Hidden Folk only at great peril.

The priest stopped. He shook his bag of bones overhead. Their clatter would intimidate the things of the night.

Still rattling the bones, Pulla moved forward. He stumbled after a dozen steps. He asked Briga to lower his torch.

He had slipped on a stick as thick as his wrist. Had he fallen forward he would have plunged into the empty prison pit.

"They're gone." Briga was a master at stating the obvious.

The outlanders had come to Snaefells and Skogafjordur three weeks earlier, peddling some absurd religion from the far south, where the sun burned so hot it addled men's brains. They seemed harmless enough at first. Their stories were so ridiculous they were entertaining. No grown man with the smarts to scratch his own lice would buy that nonsense. Physically, they were bad jokes. A half-grown girl could thrash mem. Except that they refused to get that close to anyone female.