PROLOGUE by l lp

now he is here."
    Her hand rested on the curve of his shoulder. He had a young man's thighs and buttocks, but she could not quite bring herself to accept that he was truly a male. Yet her heart pounded loudly. Wind sighed through the stones, scattering the mist as the sun's hard face rose higher in the sky.
    It was hard to speak when hope battered so harshly against her fears. Her voice broke on the words she finally forced out.” Will he stay with me until my death, Holy One?"
    "He will stay with you until your death."
    The calm words hit her like grief. She wept, sitting back on her heels to steady herself, and didn't notice that he stirred until he heaved himself up onto his forearms to look at her. He looked no less startled than she did, yet he also seemed as dazed as if he had taken a blow to the head. His skin had the pallor of one who has been ill. A small red blemish in the shape of a rose marked his left cheek, like the brands the Horse people used to mark their live stock. Despite the blemish and his paleness, he had a pleasing face, expressive and bright.
    Before she understood what he meant to do, he brushed a finger gently along the scar that fire had left on her cheek, lifting a tear off her skin. The moisture surprised him so much that he exclaimed out loud and, reflexively, touched tongue to finger, tasting for salt.
    "Who are you?" she asked.” What is your name, if you can share it?"
    His eyes widened with surprise. He replied, but the words that came out of his mouth sounded like no language she had ever heard. Perhaps this was the language spoken in the land of the dead, incomprehensible to those who walked in the middle world known by the living.
    He pushed unsteadily up to hands and knees, sat back on his thighs, and suddenly realized that he was naked. He grabbed for the tangled cloth lying an arm's length away, but when his fingers closed on a patch still wet with blood, he recoiled with a cry and scrambled backward, looking around as if to seek the aid of the Holy One.
    No trace of the Holy One remained within the stone loom. Her owl, too, had vanished.
    "Come," she said, extending her hands with palms up and open in the sign of peace.” Nothing will harm you here."
    The dogs had not moved, so he settled down cross-legged, hands cupped modestly over his lap. To show that she was a human woman, she took off the golden antlers and unbound the bronze waistband, setting them to one side. He watched her with a wary respect but without the fear that dogged every glance thrown her way by the villagers she had grown up with and lived beside for the whole of her life. Either he was still confused, or he was simply not afraid. Yet if he had walked the path that leads into the land of the dead, then perhaps he no longer feared any fate that might overtake him in the land of the living.
    The smell of blood hung heavily in the air. The garments that lay in a jumble in the grass were stained with bright-red heart's blood, just now beginning to dry and darken. The dogs showed no sign of injury, and although he bore a fresh pink scar under his ribs, quite a nasty wound, it was cleanly healed and wasn't weeping.
    Where had the blood come from?
    "Do these belong to you?" she asked, cautiously reaching out to touch the closest garment. The wool shone with a brilliant madder gold, and when she shook it out, she recognized under the bloody stain the image of a spirit fixed to the gold garment: a lean and powerful lion woven of black threads set into the gold.
    He jerked away from the sight. His face was so expressive, as if his soul permeated all of his physical being from the core to the surface rather than being lodged in some deep recess, as was true for most people. Perhaps he wasn't a person at all but the actual soul, manifest on the physical plane, of the warrior who had once worn these garments and who had died in them. Perhaps he had killed the man who had worn them, and now recoiled from the memory of