Across the valley dawn had begun to touch the peaks, but the hillside above Cashel was still in darkness. A breeze rustled the leaves of the stunted birches, sounding like distant water.
"Mistress," Cashel said. "It's going to be light enough to see our footing soon, and I think we ought to be on our way."
He'd gone hungry for longer than this, but an empty stomach isn't a good companion on a cold night. He thought of asking how far was it to Lord Bossian, but he didn't suppose it mattered; they'd get there when they got there…
The shimmering cocoon twitched, then split open as Kotia sat up with a worried look on her face. "How late is it?" she demanded, then stared up at the sky. "Oh, Demons of Hell! I never thought I'd sleep so long! He'll be on us soon, I'm sure of it!"
Kotia hopped out of her shelter and gathered it into a bundle with a few quick movements. She popped the tiny bundle into her satchel again.
Cashel wished Ilna could see the fabric; she'd be fascinated, he knew. That was the worst thing about travel. Cashel was seeing wonderful things, but his friends weren't around to tell about them.
"I can take that," Cashel said, reaching for the satchel. It didn't look heavy, but he was so used to carrying Tenoctris' paraphernalia that the words were a reflex when he was around a female wizard.
"No, you fool!" Kotia said. "Didn't you hear what I said? He'll be on us in a moment! You'll have to fight!"
"Well," said Cashel as he surveyed the landscape, "we may as well start walking until he comes. Which direction is Lord Bossian, mistress?"
He didn't see any sign of a trail. The forest of birch and larch-whose needles were beginning to turn bright yellow-was sparse enough that it wouldn't be an obstacle, but the slopes were steep and there was a lot of loose rock. The girl might dance over it with no problem, but Cashel knew that unless he was careful his weight would start a landslide that could take him with it. Maybe the other side of the valley…
He looked to the west, and as he did so there was a glint of vivid red light from the peak opposite. The sun reflecting from mica in the granite, Cashel thought.
The glare lit the whole opposite slope, then shrank again to a vivid dazzle. It capered on the peak for a moment, then flashed like lightning to an outcrop halfway to the valley floor. A clump of waist-high larches, stunted by the poor soil, exploded into flame.
"He's coming," Kotia said. Her voice had lost its edge of anger. "Now he'll kill me."
"Get into the cave," Cashel said, starting his quarterstaff into a slow spin in front of him. The broad ledge in front of the cave was the closest thing to flat ground anywhere in sight. "I won't be able to look out for you when things get moving."
Kotia said something, protested probably, but Cashel wasn't listening any more. He didn't want to clip her with a backswing of the staff, but there wasn't time to argue.
Kakoral flashed to the base of the valley, momentarily out of Cashel's sight among the slender willows. Steam gushed with a sound like rocks cracking.
Cashel placed hand over hand, spinning the staff gradually faster. The ferrules began to blur. He wondered if the demon would leap over him to the slope above and attack from behind. If the fool girl hadn't gotten into the cave, she'd be in serious danger…
The demon flared into view on the slope just below Cashel. He didn't move. There was nothing and then he was there, hunching forward; red and orange like light glinting from jewels, not the warmer color of fire. He stood in a tangle of wild roses; they shriveled away from his clawed feet.
"I am Kakoral!" he said. "I've come for my daughter!"
"If you mean the girl Kotia," Cashel said, speaking in the rhythm of his spinning quarterstaff, "then she's with me now."
The demon was the size of a man when he first appeared-rangy, tall despite his stoop, and with arms so long that his knuckles struck sparks from the ground. His form was of light, not flesh. In the blazing shimmer as Kakoral moved, Cashel glimpsed buildings and forests and spider-limbed monsters.
"With you?" Kakoral thundered. "Did my daughter tell you what she has done?"
"I don't care what she's done," said Cashel. He wasn't shouting, but his voice came out as a husky growl. "Go away and we won't trouble you!"
Without moving, Kakoral was suddenly the height of the peaks which hedged about the valley. His legs were the trunks of great trees, and his clawed fingers reached down from the heavens to pluck Cashel out of the way.
Cashel brought the staff up and around, still spinning. A buttcap smashed into the demon's index finger with a blast of azure wizardlight. To Cashel the shock was like hitting the side of a cliff, but he was used to that. He let the impact reverse his sweep from sunwise to widdershins, punching the other end of the staff into Kakoral's thumb.
The demon gave a great crackling roar. He was man-sized again, glaring at Cashel with a face like a burning skull. Diamonds of blue wizardlight dripped from the ferrules of the spinning quarterstaff and bounced across the landscape before slowly dissipating.
"She is mine," Kakoral said. "She ate the flesh of her mother, and for that I will have her!"
"Go away!" Cashel snarled. He was panting, but he could keep this up for a while longer. Maybe long enough; he'd know when it was over. "She's with-"
Kakoral leaped for Cashel's face and met a ferrule in blue fire and a thunderclap. The demon zigzagged downslope: a flash that disintegrated the trunk of a larch; a flash that cracked a boulder, leaving half standing and the rest a slump of jagged pebbles; a flash that split willows leaning over the streambank, their bark sloughing and the slender whips of their branches drawn up in coils like singed hair.
Kakoral screamed like trees breaking under the weight of winter ice. He flashed toward Cashel and the quarterstaff met him again. The blast shook loose rock from the slope for as far as a good archer could shoot an arrow.
Cashel stood unmoved, rotating the staff before him, sure of himself and now sure of his opponent. The demon caromed downhill again, then in an eyeblink stood where first he'd spoken. Dew wrung from the night air sizzled beneath his feet.
"Tell me your name, champion," Kakoral said, "and I'll give you a gift. Tell me your name, unless you're afraid to."
"I'm not afraid," Cashel growled. He could barely understand his own words; his voice rasped like the sound of nothing living. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset, and I don't want anything of you but your absence!"
The demon laughed like flames chuckling beneath a cauldron. "Perhaps not, Cashel or-Kenset," he said, "but I offer my gift anyway."
He reached into his pulsing chest and came out with what looked like a handful of fire. Cashel braced himself to dodge or bat away the missile, but instead the demon laughed again and opened his hand to let rubies spill onto the ground at Cashel's feet.
"My gift, champion," Kakoral said. "When you're in doubt about your course, break one and let it guide you. They will do no harm to you or my daughter, unless you're afraid of the truth."
"I'm not afraid of you, and I don't need you for a guide," Cashel said. He shuffled a step toward the demon, spinning the quarterstaff faster. "Go now, or I'll speed your way!"
Kakoral laughed; and, laughing, vanished as if he never was. Where moments before the demon had stood hunching, dustmotes spun in the first rays of the sun slanting down from the peaks behind.
Cashel let the quarterstaff slow to a halt, then butted it firmly on the ground and leaned onto it. He was shivering so badly that for a moment he was afraid that the staff wouldn't be enough support. Well, he'd sit if he had to.
Kotia walked in front of Cashel and faced him. "I chose well," she said. Her face was set, but a vein in her throat throbbed and her nostrils were flared. "At least if it was me who chose you, I chose well."
"I didn't have anything to do with it," Cashel said. His voice was coming back, but his throat was as dry as flaked granite. "I was fighting a snake and then I was here."
Kotia bent and began picking up the rubies, dropping each into the palm of her left hand. Cashel frowned, then said in more of a snarl than he'd intended, "Leave them! We don't need anything that comes from him."
The girl stood, facing him again with the same still expression. "Are you afraid of the truth?" she said, once again the imperious wizard who had dragged Cashel from the cave of choking fire.
"No!" he said. "Of course not!"
"Neither am I," said Kotia. She eyed an outcrop to the right of where she stood.
"Direct us to Lord Bossian's manor!" she cried, and hurled one of the rubies into the rock.
The jewel shattered in a sizzle of light. Cashel instinctively brought his staff across his body and stepped between Kotia and the flare of red. A tiny simulacrum of Kakoral capered on the outcrop, then spread its arms as though holding up something far bigger than its body. In the air, but as real as the rock and trees and sunlight, appeared a woman and the demon Kakoral. They stood in a workroom lit only by the coals of a great hearth.
"My mother Laterna," Kotia whispered, gripping Cashel's forearm. "That was her laboratory beneath our manor. She was a wizard."
The demon stood arms akimbo, his shimmering form brighter than the coals behind him. He lifted his head back in laughter which Cashel's memory supplied to the silent image. Laterna touched the broach on her left shoulder; a shimmering shift like Kotia's slipped from her body. She stepped toward the demon. He remained motionless except for the way his throat worked as he laughed.
Gripping Kakoral's shoulders with her hands, Laterna lifted herself onto him, then lowered her sex onto his. The demon's fiery arms encircled her while he continued to laugh.
The image faded slowly. The simulacrum on the rock grinned and pointed with one arm. A line of rosy wizardlight streamed along the slope to the north, then vanished behind the high ground.
Kotia stepped a pace back and met Cashel's eyes. "Here," she said, holding out the remainder of the jewels. "Put them in your wallet. We may want them again."
"Right," said Cashel. His skin pickled with the desire to say something to the girl, but he wasn't sure what the words should be. Instead he said, "We'd best be going, then."
The track of wizardlight remained though the imp had disappeared. They started to follow it. Neither of them spoke.
"You've missed the meeting with Vicar Uzinga that was scheduled for the fourth hour," Liane said, holding the four-leafed wax tablet on which she kept Garric's appointments. "And the meeting following it with Lord Waldron about integrating the Count's Household Troops into the Royal Army. We can take the vicar in place of dinner, but I suggest you tell Waldron to consider his recommendations to have been approved. He'll be more flattered by the tacit approval than offended that you've cancelled a meeting with him."
Garric frowned. "Frankly, I'd rather see Waldron than the vicar," he said. "I don't have anything to tell Uzinga except to take Reise's advice on every matter where Reise makes a recommendation-and that if he doesn't, he'll be lucky if heonly loses his office as vicar."
The doors of the reception room were open, waiting for the start of Prince Garric's afternoon levee. The presence of the usher standing in the doorway might not have been enough to keep back the would-be petitioners who packed the hall beyond, but those waiting knew that the detachment of Blood Eagles on guard would take up where the usher's authority left off-with naked swords if necessary.
"I think it's necessary that you-that Prince Garric-say just that to Vicar Uzinga," Liane said. She grinned. "Well, with a little more tact, perhaps."
She sobered and continued, "Remember that Lord Uzinga is a noble. No matter what other people have told him, he won't in his heart believe he's supposed to do what a commoner like Reise suggests. If you tell him that he's to obey yourfather Reise, then there's a much better chance that youwon't have to remove him from office."
Garric grimaced. "Right, Vicar Uzinga during dinner," he said.
With a sudden smile he added, "Liane, I've suddenly realized something. In any kind of governmental business, the correct choice is always to do the thing you least want to do. Now that I've found the formula, perhaps I can hand my duties over to somebody else and do something I'd like to do instead?"
The crowd in the hallway was noisy. Individually the petitioners spoke in hushed voices, each to his neighbor and supporters. In sum, the noise was like that of gannet rookeries on the spikes of rock off the east coast of Haft. Garric looked at the first hopeful faces in the open doors, sighed, and said, "I suppose we'd better start running them through. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish."
Though in his heart he knew he'd never finish, that even if he listened to complaints, prayers, and suggestions till midnight, there'd still be people waiting with more of the same. But he was more afraid of being cut off from the reality of ordinary citizens' lives the way King Valence had been than he was of being ground down by the minutiae of government.
"I miss you being able to read Celondre to me in the evenings," Liane said with a soft smile.
"I miss being able to get a good night's sleep," Garric muttered, rubbing his temples. He'd said what he meant without thinking, and he cringed even as he heard his response to his lover's gentle romance.
Acting quickly, he turned to Liane and took her small, shapely hands in his. "Liane," he said, ignoring the guards and petitioners and officials andeverybody else watching. "Tonight I'll read you Celondre. Maybe getting back into old habits will help me sleep without dreams that tell me to make a fool of myself, besides."
Liane looked at him with a shocked expression. What did I say now ? Garric thought, frustrated and a little angry that he didn't seem to be able to do the right thing even when he tried his hardest.
"Garric?" she said. "You mentioned your dreams. Did you suggest using the Shrine of the Prophesying Sister because of a dream?"
"Well, not that shrine, I didn't even know about it," Garric said, trying to call back the memories. "But yeah, it was a dream that made me think of the Sister at all!"
He could see where Liane was going-where she'd gotten ahead of him-and excitement had washed away his depressed lethargy of moments before. This was progress, this was a way forward that might lead past the wall between Cashel and his friends!
Garric stood. The usher at the door watched eagerly, ready to let through the first of the petitioners.
"Citizens of the Isles!" Garric said in the voice King Carus would have used to bellow orders through the clamor of the battlefield. "I've been called away by a sudden opportunity-"
He'd started to say "emergency" but he'd changed the word as it started to roll off his tongue. A prince can start a panic by an unfortunate choice of phrase.
"-greatly to the benefit of the kingdom! This audience is cancelled!"
"Close the doors!" Liane called to the guards. They probably couldn't hear her over the sudden uproar in the hall, but they got the idea. The usher squeaked, pressed between the door and the petitioners, but the soldiers put their backs into it. They slammed the valves closed, then slid the bronze bar through the staples to make sure they stayed closed.
Liane had already snapped shut the travel desk in which she carried important papers. She was at Garric's side as they turned to the door at the back which opened onto the courtyard. "To Tenoctris?" she said, less a question than an affirmation.
"Right," said Garric, stepping through the door which one of the guards on the portico had already thrown open. He took the desk out of Liane's hand into his own, his left. She could carry it, but they were moving fast and to him it weighed almost nothing.
Keeping his right hand free for his sword was a reflex from King Carus. It came to the surface when Garric was excited, even at times-like this one-when it wasn't necessary.
Though you never knew for sure when it would be necessary.
All the suites around this small garden were held by Garric and his immediate entourage-his friends, not members of the staff. The guards looked surprised but properly held their posts while Garric and Liane ran up the stairs that led to Tenoctris' suite on the second floor. The six guards from the reception room followed, their equipment belts and studded leather aprons clattering.
The noise-meant to frighten enemies when the royal army charged-brought Sharina out onto the landing with the Pewle knife in her hand. She and Garric both had learned hard lessons since they left Barca's Hamlet.
Garric thought of Ilna and Cashel. They'd changed as well, perhaps even more.
"It's all right," he said, stepping into the study as his sister hopped back from the doorway when she saw who was coming. "Liane had an idea and we need to tell Tenoctris."
"Yes?" said the wizard, looking up from the tile floor. She sat on a cushion, probably Sharina's idea because Garric had never seen Tenoctris pay attention to comfort when she had work to do. She'd drawn a large six-pointed star in cinnabar, then written words of power around its margin. On the floor inside the figure were codices, scrolls, and a few loose manuscripts.
"Tenoctris," said Liane, closing the door in the face of the guards following, "it was a dream that led Garric to suggest going to the Shrine of the Sister. I think it was a sending."
"I thought it was just…," Garric said. He was embarrassed because the idea hadn't occurred to him immediately. "I'd been worried about the two priesthoods and looking like I was taking sides. And I had a dream of the past, a fantasy I know-the sort of Golden Age that Celondre or Rigal would describe, a sunny day and happy peasants worshipping the Great Gods. But the priest of the Sister was there too, and I thought…"
"There's only one active temple to the Sister in Carcosa," Liane said, taking out a notebook that she didn't need. "Someone who wanted Garric-or Garric's friends-to enter a temple of the Sister wouldn't have to specify any particular temple."
"Wonderful!" said Tenoctris. She started to get up, then changed her mind and sank onto the cushion again. Leaning forward she started to shift the books out of the hexagram but paused again.
"I think it would be better for me to do the directional spell from where you were when you had the dream, Garric," she said. "Could we-"
"Yes," said Garric, hoping he didn't sound curt. "What do you need with you?"
"Well, my satchel," Tenoctris said, "and-"
Garric snatched up the satchel and the pot of cinnabar sitting open beside it.
"-perhaps Cantorf'sDream of Scio, which should be-"
"I have it," said Sharina, reaching under an open scroll and coming up with the small codex which had been completely hidden beneath it.
"Then let's go," Tenoctris said, rising with Liane's help. "I wasn't able to trace the attack, but a wizard of my limited powers should be able to determine the source of the dream."
"Power's the easy part of any job," said King Carus, watching as Garric jerked open the door to the inner hallway and his own suite beyond. "Directing it to the right point is what wins battles-and saves kingdoms, if our luck's in!"
"The Bird of the Tide," said Chalcus, beaming at the ship lashed to the quay on which he stood with Ilna and Merota. "She's old, I grant you, but still tight as you please. In her day they built with pegs and tenons instead of just trenails holding the strakes to the frames. I'd trust theBird in storms that'd swamp any of the light-built coasters being tacked together on this coast in the past thirty years!"
Six solid-looking men stood together in the stern. They'd stopped murmuring among themselves when Chalcus and the three females appeared, but none of them had spoken to the visitors. Mistress Kaline stood two paces back in prim disapproval.
"She looks trim," said Ilna, which was closer to a lie than she liked to hear come from her mouth. "And of course I trust your judgment on ships as far as I do mine about fabrics, Master Chalcus."
That last was the simple truth, and why Chalcus made her say something as obvious as sunrise was beyond her. "Men!" she was tempted to say; but it wasn't men, she'd heard women as often being fools in the same way.
As for the ship-The Bird of the Tidehad a deck, which was something, and a single short mast in the middle of it holding a yard that was longer than the vessel itself. At sea the yard would be raised at a slant to spread the triangular sail to the wind. There was a tiny cabin in the stern, enough to hold a tile hearth but no shelter for the crew. In bad weather Ilna supposed they'd all need to be on deck anyway, doing things with sail and ropes and anchors.
TheBird was indeed old, so old that the grain of the deck stood out in ridges above the softer, paler sapwood. Four oak planks ran the length of the vessel's sides, sticking out from the pine hull. They were there to rub against stone docks, as they were doing now. They'd been patched at several places with fresh timbers, but the patches were themselves badly worn by now.
And the ship stank. The Bird of the Tide had carried generations of men and cargo. They'd left residues which had decayed into her timbers and still remained as faint, foul ghosts. But Ilna didn't have a delicate sense of smell-few peasants do, not with firewood too dear to waste heating bath water four months of the year-and this stench, though unfamiliar, wasn't a matter of concern.
"Oh, Ilna," Merota said. She was clinging to Ilna's hand like a child much younger than she was. "I do wish I could come with you. Really, I wouldn't get in the way."
"Ah, child," said Chalcus, stroking the girl's hair gently with a hand whose calluses were like sharkskin. "When Mistress Ilna and I finish our business in the Strait, I'll sail you clear around Haft in this fine vessel as a treat. But for now, it's us alone and you with our friend Liane till we return."
"I just wish…," Merota said sadly, but she wasn't arguing. The child had a right to wish for things, but she was already enough of a lady that she didn't whine and embarrass herself trying to change Ilna's mind.
Ilna rarely argued. If the decision was hers to make, she made it; and if not, she accepted the choice someone else made-or fate made, often enough.
"Come aboard and I'll introduce you to the crew, milady," Chalcus said. Now at low tide the deck was more than Ilna's height below the level of the quay, but instead of going down the ladder Chalcus hopped aboard.
He turned and raised his hands. Before Ilna could protest, Merota gave a squeal of delight and leaped into Chalcus' arms.
Frowning as much at what she was doing as what Merota had done, Ilna pinched the sides of her tunic at mid thigh and jumped lightly to the deck. She told herself she was proving to the crew that she wasn't a lady whom they had to coddle, but a part of her mind was afraid she was showing off. Nobody else would think less of her if shedid show off, of course, but she wasn't somebody who needed other people to censure her.
"Mistress Ilna," Chalcus said, "let me introduce the crew to you. Our bosun's Hutena, he was a file commander in the Third Regiment until today."
Hutena bowed. He was short and stocky, nearly bald though probably only in his mid-thirties. His limbs were so hairy that the dragon winding up his right arm from wrist to shoulder seemed to be crawling through thickets.
"Nabarbi, Tellura, and Kulit," Chalcus continued. "They're cousins, Blaise fishermen originally but for this past year they've been deck crew on the triremeStaff of the Shepherd."
The cousins bowed. They were tall men whose weather-beaten complexions had originally been pale. Kulit wore a fluffy blond moustache; the others were clean shaven.
"And maybe you remember Shausga and Ninon from theFlying Fish?" Chalcus said. Ilna did remember them, their faces anyway, from the voyage north on the patrol vessel. Ninon had been the lead oarsman, she was pretty sure.
"Boys," Chalcus said to the crew, "all the cargo's aboard, so we'll be sailing before dawn with the tide. Up to three of you at a time can go ashore if you need to wrap up your affairs-"
"We don't," said Hutena. "We can sail now if you need us to."
Chalcus nodded approvingly. "I shouldn't wonder if a time came on this voyage when we did need to get under weigh in a fingersnap," he said, "but not tonight. I'll be back aboard with my gear in an hour, and Mistress Ilna will follow…?"
He cocked his head toward her with an eyebrow raised.
"I'll come aboard with you," Ilna said. "I have nothing more to bring but a heavy cloak, and I could do without that if I needed to."
She was showing the sailors she was one of them, just as quick an adaptable as they were; or perhaps she was bragging again. Like so many things, it was a matter of how you viewed it.
"Then in an hour, lads," Chalcus said. He lifted Merota to his right shoulder and, holding her there with one hand, climbed the vertical ladder to the dock as the child laughed happily.
Ilna followed with what was for her a warm smile. Chalcus was bragging also, but doing it with a verve that she could never imagine in herself. And it was a good thing to tell a crew of strong, skilled men that their new captain was even stronger andmore skilled.
Over Merota's protests, Chalcus set the girl down on the pavement and sent her a few steps ahead in the company of Mistress Kaline. "So, dear heart…," Chalcus said with a sidelong glance at Ilna. "Do you have any questions before we set off on the tide?"
"I'm surprised at the crew," Ilna said frankly. "I'd expected…"
She paused to search for a word. Chalcus laughed merrily beside her and said, "Cut-throats and pirates, bloody-handed killers with one eye and an evil leer?"
Ilna laughed also, but with a touch of embarrassment. "Well, not that, exactly; but something closer to that sort than to the men there."
Sobering, Chalcus said, "Those are hard men, dear one, men who've given strokes and taken them in their time. But they'll take orders when they've agreed to, and they'll do their duty because it's their duty, not when it suits them. I sailed with pirates when I was a pirate, but now that I serve a prince, I want men with me as sure of their duty as that prince himself is."
He laughed again and put his arm around her waist. As a rule Ilna didn't like that sort of display in public, but at the moment it seemed appropriate.
"We're honest folk doing the kingdom's business, dear one," Chalcus said. "That strikes me as a more wonderful thing than perhaps it does you, but if it means I can sleep nights without worrying about my bosun cutting my throat-it may be that I can get used to it!"
The balconied windows of Sharina's large bedroom overlooked a courtyard with a large cedar tree and stone planters which had been allowed to grow up in weeds. In the center of her suite was a reception room, it opened onto the inner hallway and also to stairs from the courtyard. The maid's cubicle was curtained off from the reception room and had its own door to the hall.
When Sharina first awakened, she thought she was home in Barca's Hamlet and a hungry puppy was whimpering. When her head cleared, she realized she was hearing the maid.
"Beara?" Sharina called, feeling for the sandals she kept at the side of the bed. "Are you all right?"
Her bedroom had a real wooden door instead of a curtain. The lamp in the reception room leaked light around the panel, but it took a moment for Sharina's eyes to focus through the veil of sleep. She opened the door.
The cryolite urn sat on a claw-footed bronze stand between the windows of the reception room, replacing the black-figured Old Kingdom vase which had been there previously. Hanging from the room's ceiling was a triangular lamp whose corners were molded into grotesquely sharp-chinned faces. A wick lay on each extended tongue; normally one provided a night-light after Sharina had gone to bed.
Tonight a lamp flickered within the urn instead, suffusing the stone's gray-on-gray pattern. It lit the wall paintings showing scenes from the Shepherd's wooing of the Lady. Under its illumination the murals became journeys through Hell: bleak, cynical, and inexorable.
The Shepherd leaned on his staff, his face twisted in demonic glee as he contemplated the future. The sheep around him were pustulent and as terrified of the certainty of their death as so many pox-ridden harlots.
In the next painted cartouche, the Lady reclined on a divan in Her garden. The fruits hanging above were surely poisonous; the doves on her fingertips whispered envious gossip about the whole world else; and the Lady's face was a mask of lust so fierce that neither man nor beast could hope to slake it.
The final panel should have been the couple's holy marriage. Sharina was neither prudish nor more of an innocent than any other peasant raised in daily contact with nature. Even so she felt her breath suck in when she saw the scene as lighted through the stone.
Beara stood by the urn, hiding her face with her raised left arm and trying to reach down inside with the other hand to snuff the lampwick. It was too deep for her to reach. The girl sobbed bitterly as her arm flailed.
Sharina closed her eyes. The patterns on the ice stone were soothing when the sun lit them from the outside, but they had a wholly different significance when light streamed through them from within. She felt the mottled patterns eating away her flesh like huge cancers.
"Push it over!" she cried. She grabbed the urn's rim and twisted, trying to roll the urn off its stand. In her present hysteria she should've been able to lift the urn overhead and smash it down on the floor in a thousand harmless fragments, but it didn't move. It was as rigid as an iron post driven down to the center of the earth.
Sharina looked for a tool, a spear or a poker that would reach farther into the urn than a human arm. There was nothing in the reception room. She ran back into her bedroom, thinking that the tongs on the charcoal brazier there might serve her need.
The bedroom was decorated with a frieze of birds and vines on a trellis. The light flickering through the open doorway touched them as it had the decoration of the reception room. Sharina felt her stomach tense as she glimpsed what had been a pleasant design: now it made her feel like a corpse watching as the crows and vultures descend.
She reached for the tongs from the cold grill, but they were too short to reach the flame. She could throw them down at the lamp No, much better! On the bedside table was a clear glass water pitcher, etched on the inside with a hunting scene. Sharina grabbed it and ran back into the reception room.
The evil glare from the urn repelled her like the door of an open lime kiln, but she'd faced other hard things in her life. Flinging away the tumbler upended to cover the pitcher, Sharina shouted, "Get out of the way, Beara!"
The maid, frightened beyond hope of reasoning, continued to whimper and vainly grope. Sharina grabbed her left shoulder and half-lifted, half-pulled, the girl out of the way. She smashed the pitcher into the mouth of the urn, shattering the glass and releasing its contents in a single gout.
The flood of water shattered the hot earthenware lamp and lifted the oil up the sides of the urn. For an instant there was darkness and peace in the suite. Then a spark from the glowing wick ignited the thin sheet of oil in a flash thousands of times brighter than the original flame.
The light enveloped Sharina. She hung suspended in a chamber of ice that sucked all warmth and all life from her body. Cold squeezed her to a spark and began drawing that into itself.
Sharina thought she heard the maid screaming through the gray hellfire, but perhaps she was screaming herself. Then she was gone.