The rider was fully worthy of the horse. He sat her well, and I sensed a man in harmony with his mount. His garments were black, trimmed in silver, as were his boots. It sounds a somber combination, did not the silver run riot as embroidery around his summer cloak, and silver edge the white lace at his cuffs and throat. Silver bound his fair hair back from his high brow. Fine black gloves coated his hands like a second skin. He was a slender youth, but just as the lightness of his horse prompted one to think of swiftness, so did his slimness call to mind agility rather than fragility. His skin was a sunkissed gold, as was his hair, and his features were fine. The tawny man approached silently save for the rhythmic striking of his horse's hooves. When he drew near, he reined in his beast with a touch, and sat looking down on me with amber eyes. He smiled.

Something turned over in my heart.

I moistened my lips, but could find no words, nor breath to utter them if I had. My heart told me one thing, my eyes another. Slowly the smile faded from his face and his eyes. A still mask replaced it. When he spoke, his voice was low, his words emotionless. “Have you no greeting for me, Fitz?”

I opened my mouth, then helplessly spread wide my arms. At the gesture that said all I had no words for, an answering look lit his face. He glowed as if a light had been kindled in him. He did not dismount but flung himself from his horse toward me, a launch aided by Nighteyes' sudden charge from the wood toward him. The horse snorted in alarm and crowhopped. The Fool came free of his saddle with rather more energy than he had intended, but, agile as ever, he landed on the balls of his feet. The horse shied away, but none of us paid her any attention. In one step, I caught him up. I enfolded him in my arms as the wolf gamboled about us like a puppy.

“Oh, Fool,” I choked. “It cannot be you, yet it is. And I do not care how.”

He flung his arms around my neck. He hugged me fiercely, Burrich's earring pressing cold against my neck. For a long instant, he clung to me like a woman, until the wolf insistently thrust himself between us. Then the Fool went down on one knee in the dust, careless of his fine clothes as he clasped the wolf about his neck. “Nighteyes!” he whispered in savage satisfaction. “I had not thought to see you again. Well met, old friend.” He buried his face in the wolf's ruff, wiping away tears. I did not think less of him for them. My own ran unchecked down my face.

He flowed, to his feet, every nuance of his grace as familiar to me as the drawing of breath. He cupped the back of my head and, in his old way, pressed his brow to mine. His breath smelled of honey and apricot brandy. Had hefortified himself against this meeting? After a moment he drew back from me but kept a grip on my shoulders. He stared at me, his eyes touching the white streak in my hair and running familiarly over the scars on my face. I stared just as avidly, not just at how he had changed, his coloring gone from white to tawny, but at how he had not changed. He looked as callow a youth as when I had last seen him near fifteen years ago. No lines marred his face.

He cleared his throat. “Well. Will you ask me in?” he demanded.

“Of course. As soon as we've seen to your horse,” I replied huskily.

The wide grin that lit his face erased all years and distance between us. “You've not changed a bit, Fitz. Horses first, as it ever was with you.”

“Not changed?” I shook my head at him. “You are the one who looks not a day older. But all else ...” I shook my head helplessly as I sidled toward his horse. She highstepped away, maintaining the distance. “You've gone gold, Fool. And you dress as richly as Regal once did. When first I saw you, I did not know you.”

He gave a sigh of relief that was half a laugh. “Then it was not as I feared, that you were wary of welcoming me?”

Such a question did not even deserve an answer. I ignored it, advancing again on the horse. She turned her head, putting the reins just out of my reach. She kept the wolf in view. I could feel the Fool watching us with amusement. “Nighteyes, you are not helping and you know it!” I exclaimed in annoyance. The wolf dropped his head and gave me a knowing glance, but he stopped his stalking.

I could put her in the barn myself if you but gave me the chance .

The Fool cocked his head slightly, regarding us both quizzically. I felt something from him: the thinnest knifeedge of shared awareness. I almost forgot the horse. Without volition, I touched the mark he had left upon me so long ago; the silver fingerprints on my wrist, long faded to a av, pale gray. He smiled again, and lifted one gloved hand, the finger extended toward me, as if he would renew that touch. “All down the years,” he said, his voice going golden as his skin. “You have been with me, as close as the tips of my fingers, even when we were years and seas apart. Your being was like the hum of a plucked string at the edge of my hearing, or a scent carried on a breeze. Did not you feel it so?”