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freedom; not until she wore the crimson robes of a Keeper would she ever have this much liberty again. She was
    resolved to savor it.
    The moment the tents were erected, the young Hastur lord gave orders for a fire to be lighted, and for braziers to be carried into the tents to warm them. He guided Leonie through the thickening darkness to hers, holding her hand to keep her from falling when the sodden hem of her cloak wrapped around her ankles and threatened to trip her.
    “Here we are, then. I still think you’d be more comfortable in the inn in the
    village, and I know perfectly well Melissa would be,” he sighed patiently, “but here is your bed under the stars—not that you’ll see much of either stars or moons this night. I can’t imagine where you get these notions, Leonie. Do they spring from some logic that only you can see, or simply from a desire to see us all bend to your will?”
    Leonie divested herself of her wet cloak, flung herself into a nest of pillows, and lay gazing up at her brother. Candlelight from the lantern hanging on the center pole of the tent revealed his handsome face clearly. It gave Leonie the unsettling feeling of seeing herself looking back down at her. “I think often upon the moons,” she said without preamble. “What do you think they might be?”
    If the abrupt change of subject startled him, he gave no sign. “My tutor tells me that, regardless of the old legends about chieri marrying into the Domains, the moons are no more than immense pieces of rock circling our world,” Lorill said. “Dead, deserted, airless, cold, and lifeless.”
    She thought that over for a moment. This did not match with the recent uneasy
    feeling she had been experiencing. “And do you believe this, Lorill?”
    “I do not know.” Lorill shrugged, as if the matter were of no importance. Perhaps, to him, it was not. “I am not a romantic like you, chiya. I see no reason to doubt it; I don’t really care much what they are. They cannot affect us, after all, nor can we affect them.”
    “I do care about them.” Leonie frowned suddenly. This was the only time she
    might have to talk with her brother in person about her premonitions. It might not be the best time—but there would be no opportunity once she was inside Dalereuth. “I feel that something is coming upon us from the moons— that our lives may never be the same.”
    She turned on her back and stared at the tent ceiling, as if she could look through it and the clouds above to see the moons. “Truly, Lorill, don’t you feel that something very important is about to happen?”
    “Not really,” he said, yawning. “Nothing but sleep. You are a woman, Leonie; you feel the influence of moons, perhaps it is no more than that. Even though it is raining and you can’t see it, Liriel still pulls at you. Everyone knows how sensitive women are to the moons—and how dramatic their influence can be.”
    Leonie knew the truth of Lorill’s words. “With the present conjunction,” she
    pointed out, “they all pull at me. I wish the sky were clear tonight. But quite apart from that, I feel—”
    “Come, Leonie, don’t go all mystical on me.” Lorill interrupted, seeming
    somewhat worried. “Next I’ll think you’ve turned into Melissa, all vapors and nonsense, and you will be having visions of Evanda and Avarra!”
    “No,” she said. “You may tease, Lorill, and you may doubt as you like. But I say something is coming to us—some great change in our lives—and nothing will ever be the same again. I mean that for all of us, not just you and me.”
    She spoke with such conviction that Lorill looked sharply at her, and stopped his teasing. He nodded, quite soberly. “You are a leronis, sister, Tower-trained or no. If you say something is going to happen, well, it may be that you are gifted with
    foreknowledge. Do you have any notion what this great event will be?”
    The vagueness of her feeling gave her a headache. “I wish I did,