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V

Lyra's pony scampered on Caldane's hairy heels. The litter swayed wildly behind her, its postilion urged on by Gran's excited, bird-like cries from within. Foxkin dived around it. The Kendar vanguard kept pace, but didn't look as if they were much enjoying themselves.

They could all see Mount Alban now, over the broken wall that ran beside the road. Figures moved on the college's hill, under a passing mist bank. That slim one in black might be Jame, Lyra thought. Oh, splendid! Father seemed to think so too. He gave a hoarse shout and flailed his mount into an earth-shaking canter. Here was the front gate . . . .

. . . and suddenly from around the wall's southern curve came a masked lady on a blood-lathered horse. It skidded into Caldane's massive steed, staggered back, and stopped splay-legged, trembling.

Lyra almost didn't recognize her half-sister. She had always admired Kallystine's beauty and cool poise, both noticably lacking in this disheveled creature shrilly demanding that Father avenge slights which she had suffered at the Highlord's hands. There Torisen was now, going up the hill. Hadn't she followed him here all the way from Gothregor, he running before her like the yellow cur he was? Was she to be thwarted of her revenge at last by Caineron cowardice? No, dammit, that was not Jameth!

Father insisted that it was, so that he might finally have the pleasure of tearing the wretched brat limb from limb.

He and Kallystine were shouting at each other now. The raw, undisciplined power in their voices shoved the Kendar back as if from the heat of a pyre. The little postilion fell off his horse and lay motionless at its feet. Lyra retreated, frightened.

She glanced up the hill. The dark figure, whoever it had been, had disappeared into the glowing mist, followed by what looked like a huge dog. Other people were gathering around a man incongruously clad in desert gear who had just emerged from a wooden shed on the hill's north side. Why, that looked just like old Lord Ardeth. How very peculiar.

A stifled exclamation made Lyra look down. Out of the bushes growing by the front gate, a thin, familiar face stared up at her in horrified surprise.

"Why, Gricki!" she exclaimed, but softly: even as she had recognized her former servant, she had remembered what sport Father had made of him in the tower at Restormir—because he couldn't lay hands on Gricki's new mistress? Now Jame had escaped again. Father would want to make someone suffer for that, horribly, but what could she do?

"Psst!" hissed Gran through her leaf-patterned curtains. "Psst, boy! I never forget a voice. Get in."

Gricki shot her a doubtful look.

"Go on!" whispered Lyra, almost faint with this, the first time she had even obliquely defied her father. Nonetheless, it must be done. She might have treated Caldane's Southron bastard like the excrement after which she had named him, but he belonged to Jame now; and Jame, not Kallystine, was the sister of her choice. What had she renamed the wretched fellow? "Graykin, go!"

He looked up at her, astonished, then suddenly grinned. Her dancing pony gave him cover as he darted across to the litter and dived into it, head first. Lyra expected him to shoot straight through it, out the other side, but he didn't. He, Gran, and the Ear must be sitting on top of each other.

Kallystine gave a startled cry, abruptly cut off. Lyra looked up too late to see her vanish, but there went Father, swallowed whole by a rolling patch of mist. It billowed up over her like a cresting wave. As she stared, too frightened to move, the Ear's strong, grimy hands plucked her out of the saddle and pulled her into the litter.

She expected to fall on top of someone, but instead found herself sprawling on a cool, yielding surface, with loam under her hands. Weirding threw into relief the foliate pattern woven into the curtains. Foxkin dove in through the leaves. In the dim light, she saw them hanging upside down from the litter's framework . . . or were those branches? Graykin crouched near her, staring open-mouthed about him. Gran sat on a puff of pillow moss, grinning toothlessly at their amazement. The other end of the litter was occupied by the Ear, on a throne of roots, canopied by leaves. She loomed as big as a bear, indistinct except for the gleam of her eyes. Weirding sighed around them. The foxkin rustled furry wings and then were still.

"All gathered up?" asked Gran.

"All," said the Ear's deep, gruff voice, a sound licked together out of darkness. "Now, let's go to a fire."

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Framed