Sharina poised on the pile of rubble, analyzing the situation for a heartbeat. If she tried to crawl through the roof, the creature already hunching in the skewed doorway would grab her ankle with a hand the size of a bear ham and drag her back for a club stroke. Instead she twisted like a cat and leaped down, swinging the axe overhand.
"Blood!" screamed the steel mouth. "Blo-" and the edge sheared through the heavy-browed skull as easily as sunlight penetrates crystal. The rest of the word choked off in a gurgle.
Sharina landed with her feet under her. The axe moved easily; it was balanced like a dream. The creature whose skull she'd split convulsed violently, flinging its arms out to its sides; the club smashed into a sidewall hard enough to shatter into a fibrous broom.
A second creature stuck its arm down through the laths of the roof. Sharina pivoted, almost without thinking, and slashed through the creature's humerus. The bone was thicker than her own whole forearm, but the axe sliced it like gossamer.
"Yes, that's the way to feed Beard!" the axe cried in a throaty treble. "More blood! More blood for-"
The creature jerked back, tearing a barrel-sized hole in the latticework. The lower portion of its arm flailed on the triceps muscle which the narrow axe-blade hadn't severed. The roofbeams shifted with a squeal. Sharina leaped, catching a beam in her left hand and pulling herself up.
The roof trembled like a ship's deck. The whole battered structure was shifting toward collapse.
"-Beard to drink!" cried the axe.
The third creature was trying to crawl over the thrashing body of the one with the split skull. The doorway wasn't big enough to hold both giants. The creature with the dangling arm saw Sharina, screamed, and swung its club at her. Before the awkward blow landed, she leaped down onto the back of the third creature. It lurched, dragging its shoulders out of the doorway and glaring at Sharina with eyes further reddened by the firelight.
"The throat!" screamed the axe. "Let me cut her-"
Sharina brought the axe around in a backhanded arc. She was a strong woman and the axe was scarcely more than a hatchet with an unusually long helve, but even so she marveled at how smoothly it moved. It was like watching light shimmer on smooth water.
"-throat!" the axe said.
Sharina didn't feel the blade touch and slip through the creature's neck, but the gush of blood bathed the wall where the frescoes had weathered off. The gout slowed, then spurted again as the creature rose to its feet, lifting its club overhead. The second creature had retrieved its weapon from the pall of dust and splinters raised when it smashed the roof. The dangling arm seemed to be affecting its balance.
Sharina scrambled sideways around the fire and tripped over a human body trussed with bark cord. She was breathing hard and didn't get her feet under her as easily as she expected. The creature whose throat she'd cut toppled slowly backward into the alcove holding the loot, completing the room's destruction with a crash and a pall of debris.
"Feed me!" the axe cried. "Feed me! Fee-"
Swinging the axe with both hands, Sharina leaped toward the only creature still standing. Its left-handed club blow wobbled past like a treelimb whirled in a windstorm. Even stretching to her full height Sharina couldn't reach the creature's skull, but she buried the axe to the helve at the top of the breastbone where the biggest blood vessels lift from the heart.
She dragged her weapon out with a sucking sound and a geyser of blood. The creature cried out and swiped its club sideways. Sharina jumped but the club caught her anyway, lifting her onto the ruin of the room from which she'd emerged. She lay stunned, choking on the dust but unable to move.
The creature dropped its club and staggered forward, clutching the gurgling hole in its chest. Blood welled from between its massive fingers and foamed through its yellow tusks, choking the cries it would otherwise have uttered.
Sharina got her left sleeve over her nose and tried to breathe through it. That didn't help much, but now that she'd started moving she crawled off of the shifting rubble. She still held the axe, though she didn't think she'd be able to swing it.
The creature fell face-down onto the fire, flinging sparks out to the sides. Burning hair added its stench to that of the woman which the trio had been roasting. Sharina worked her way on all fours around the smothered fire, trying to get upwind.
"Help me," a voice whimpered. "Please. Help me."
Sharina opened her eyes; she hadn't been aware that they were closed. Her stomach roiled with the horror of what she'd just done. She kept remembering the startled expression on the face of the creature as her axe sheared its throat, and then the curtain of blood spraying in all directions…
"Please…"
The tied-up figure was a hollow-cheeked youth; moonlight turned his hair and his sallow complexion much the same color. His simple garments were filthy; but then, so was Sharina's sleeping shift, and she hadn't lain bound by maneaters for an unguessibly long time.
"Hold still," she croaked, reaching for the cord binding his wrists and ankles together. "If you squirm, I may cut you."
"He's no use to you, mistress!" said the axe. "Come on, let me finish him for you. Look how his throat is just waiting for Beard to cleave it!"
The captive flinched and began to cry soundlessly. Sharina looked at the axe for the first time since she'd drawn it carefully from the pile of rusty trash. The steel was as bright and clean as plate polished for a palace banquet, though its shaft and Sharina's whole right arm were sticky with congealing blood.
"Be silent," she said in a rasping whisper. She short-gripped the weapon and carefully touched the edge to the rope.
"But Beard is still thirsty, mistress," the axe said. Quivering reflections on the back of the blade looked like a mouth there was speaking; maybe it was. "Please, mistress, let Beard drink his blood!"
The tough bark fibers parted without effort on Sharina's part. Though she knew the axe had just split through heavy bones, the edge remained as keen as thought.
"Axe," she said in a deadly whisper. "If you don't shut up now, I'll give you all the water in Carcosa harbor to drink. Be silent!"
She paused but heard nothing except possibly a…thirsty… so faint that it might have been the wind through the ruined palace. She cut the youth's ankles free, then his wrists.
"You can move now," she said, leaning back. "What's your name?"
Lady help me, it's so cold… But she wasn't sure it was the wind that chilled her as much as her reaction to the few minutes just passed. Only a few minutes.
"I'm Franca," the youth said without meeting Sharina's eyes. He massaged his wrists with the opposite hands; the skin was worn away into a crust of blood. "Franca or-Orrin, but mostly mother called me Franca. And now she's gone."
He started to cry again. His hands stopped rubbing and he clamped his skinny arms tight to his chest.
"Your mother was…?" Sharina said, nodding toward where the fire had been; the woman's feet stuck out from beneath the dead monster's body. Franca's eyes were closed, so she said, "The monsters killed your mother?"
"Of course the Hunters killed the silly woman!" said the axe in a clear, piping voice. "She and her whelp here came right down into Carcosa where the Hunters know every hiding place. But you killedthem , mistress! Ah, those were fine strokes!"
Sharina looked sourly at the axe, but it was giving her more information than the weeping boy so she didn't snarl again. She needed to learn a lot more if she was to survive, let alone get back to where she belonged.
"Get up, Franca," she said. "We'll roll this Hunter out of the way and then bury your mother."
"Bury mother?" the boy said. He stared in horror at the creature with the severed arm, then looked squarely at Sharina for the first time. "But why?"
"Because we're human beings," she said, "and that's what people do!"
She set the axe on the base of a fallen column where she could grab it quickly if she had to. It was mumbling to itself, recalling with gusto the slaughter just completed.
All three of the creatures-the Hunters, Sharina now knew to call them-were females. The one she had to move weighed as much as a heifer, but Sharina threw her weight against one of its long arms to roll it off the human corpse. Franca helped without complaint; he was stronger than he looked.
The Hunters had run a broken pike the long way through their victim for a spit. Sharina thought about the situation and decided to leave the shaft where it was.
They carried Franca's mother down into what had been the garden in Sharina's world. Debris choked it, but she'd seen a hollow where they could lay the body and mound a cairn over it. They didn't have the tools to dig even a shallow grave.
"We had to come to the city," Franca muttered, finally responding to the axe's gibe. "Hail flattened our crop and there was nothing to scavenge in Penninvale. Mother thought that maybe in Carcosa there'd be something left, because it was the first place destroyed when She came."
"We'll set her here," Sharina said, wincing as blackberry canes scratched her calves. "Who's the She you say came?"
The night noises were only half-familiar, but the Hunters had probably kept other dangers at a distance. Unless the male of the pack had been off on his own for the night…
"She's God," Franca said. "She came to the world ten years ago. Now She rules everything."
"Everything is better now!" called the axe from the ruined palace above them. "Beard was scarcely alive before She came. Now there's so much more for him to drink!"
"Start covering her," Sharina said, looking around. Most of the roof tiles had poured into the garden when the palace collapsed, and there were manageably larger chunks of rubble as well. She picked up a stone barrel from one of the slim paired columns which had framed the window of her reception room.
"We heard about Her from the people fleeing Carcosa," Franca said. "Horrible monsters tearing down buildings and eating people. We didn't know what to do, so we stayed in Penninvale and for a year everything was all right. Except the winter storms were bad, very bad."
He used a pole, part of a casement, to lever tiles and a decade of windblown dirt over the body. The rotten wood cracked before he'd made much headway.
"The storms will get worse!" the axe called. "The storms will last longer until there's no longer a thaw and the whole world freezes. But until then there'll be plenty of blood for Beard to drink!"
"There was an early storm that Fall," Franca said, lifting handfuls of debris over the corpse. He worked steadily though without enthusiasm. "Out of it came a creature bigger than three houses, all covered with armor, and a pack of Hunters. Mother and I hid in the root cellar and the monster smashed our house down over us. We couldn't see what was happening, but we heard things. And after a week we couldn't hear anything more, so we dug ourselves out. Everyone was gone, except for the bits that the birds and foxes were eating."
Franca squatted. Sharina thought he was about to lift a larger block, but instead he put his face in his hands and resumed crying. She pivoted a length of stone transom without speaking. It was too heavy for her to lift, but when it shifted dirt and broken tile cascaded down to cover the woman's face. It wasn't a real burial, but Sharina hoped it was enough for decency in this hellworld.
She stepped back. "May the Lady cover you with Her mantle," she whispered. "May the Shepherd guard you with His staff."
Franca looked up. "They didn't come back," he said. "There was no one left in Penninvale but mother and me, and the monsters stayed away. But we had to leave because there was no food."
"We'll stay here until dawn," Sharina said crisply. "There were some tapestries in the room where I-came here. Maybe we can dig them out for blankets. In the morning we'll go west toward…"
She didn't say the words, "Barca's Hamlet," from a sudden fear of what she might call down on the place that had been her home. That was superstition, ignorant foolishness; but the night was cold and she was very much alone despite Franca's helpless presence.
"May the Lady help me," she said.
"There's no point in praying to the Lady inthis world, mistress!" trilled the axe. "And you needn't pray to Her either, for She's a God who hates Mankind. But with Beard in your hand, ah, there's an ocean of blood to drink before the ice covers us!"
Moonlight streamed through the windows of Garric's suite as the mild breeze cleared the fumes of the recently-snuffed lamp. He was briefly aware of the linen sheets and the warmth of Liane beside him; then he slept and, sleeping, dreamed.
He stood in the ruins of a garden. Usually Garric was alone in his dreams; this time Carus shared his mind as the king did all Garric's waking hours. Phlox and trillium covered the ground, crowding the fallen statue of a winged female which some architect had placed here for interest.
"No place I've ever seen before," Carus muttered, his sword hand flexing. His image in Garric's mind wore a sword; but that too was only an image, an immaterial phantom like the ancient king himself.
"Nor me," said Garric. In the dream he wore the simple woolen tunic he'd gone to bed in. The air was muggy, but the stones underfoot felt cool.
At the back wall stood an altar; around it knelt a dozen or more figures. Men, Garric thought, but they slunk off toward the colonnades to either side, still hunched over. Apes, then, or perhaps bears.
Garric walked toward the altar. He wasn't sure his own mind guided his motions. Water pooled on worn flagstones and formed a marshy pond in the corner where cattails grew. Frogs trilled from the darkness, their calls punctuated by the coarsely strident shrieks of toads.
The altar was spotted with lichen and miniature forests of blooming moss; no sacrifice had been burned here in a human lifetime or longer, perhaps much longer. On it were heaps of apples, peaches, and a soft, fleshy fruit that looked vaguely like a catalpa pod, unfamiliar to Garric.
"Bananas," Carus said. "They grow them on the south coast of Shengy, but they don't travel."
Garric looked around. An ancient dogwood shaded the altar; its roots had forced apart the sides of the stone planter in which it grew. A stand of elderberries sprouted nearby. Was this Shengy? It seemed much like Haft, though warmer than normal for the season.
The odor of the shambling beasts hung in the air. It was musky; not unpleasant, but strange and therefore disquieting.
"The moon's closer than it ought to be," Carus said. "Or maybe it's just that the air's so thick. I've been in swamps that didn't seem so muggy."
On the altartop was a small ewer, perhaps a scent bottle. Originally it had been clear, but long burial in acid soil gave the glass a frosty rainbow patina. Garric touched it with his fingertip; the surface had the gritty feel he would have expected in the waking world.
Half-concealed behind the ewer was a four-sided prism the size of a man's thumb; Garric picked it up. It was so heavy that he wondered if it were metal rather than crystal, but his fingers were dimly visible through it.
When Garric looked into a flat, it returned a murky reflection of his own face. He rotated the prism slowly. For a moment he stared at an edge as sharp as a swordblade; then his life and his soul scaled off, separating him from Carus and from himself… and yet He was Garric or-Reise, son of the innkeeper of Barca's Hamlet. His sister, Sharina, was a leggy blonde girl who caught the eye of a drover from Ornifal who came to the Sheep Fair; the next year, when Garric and Sharina were eighteen, the drover returned and married her. It was a good match. Sharina wrote once or twice a year, though she never returned to Haft let alone the tiny community in which Garric remained.
When Garric was twenty-three, his father Reise slipped on ice in the inn yard and cracked his head on the pump. He lingered over a month but never recovered his senses. His wife Lora died not long after, apparently pining for her husband. It was a surprise to everybody; Lora was a shrew who'd seemed to dislike Reise even more than she disliked everybody else.
At his parents' death, Garric became master of the inn. It had prospered under his father; it flourished for the stronger, more active, and far more personable Garric. That summer Garric married the daughter of a wealthy farmer on the Carcosa road, and the next spring the first of their twelve children was born.
Garric continued to read the classics. He taught his children to read and write; and if none of them became the scholar he was, they were probably better wives and farmers because they didn't have so many romantic notions confusing them.
When Garric died, full of years and honor, four generations of his descendants attended his funeral. Representatives of the Count of Haft and both priesthoods came from Carcosa, and drovers from distant islands paid their respects at his grave when they arrived for the Sheep Fair in the fall.
He was long remembered as the greatest man ever to live in Barca's Hamlet.
The prism slipped from Garric's fingers. For an instant he was back in the ruined garden; the moon was near the horizon and the eastern sky was pale enough to hide stars. Two figures, immense but unseen, hovered beyond the heavens Garric was awake, stifling his shout behind clenched teeth. His muscles were taut and sweat soaked his sheets.
Liane murmured and shifted in the bed. Garric would have gotten up to rinse his face in the wash basin across the room, but he was afraid to waken her. He'd have to explain his nightmare, and no words he used could convey thehorror of what he'd just lived.
"What did they do to you, lad?" King Carus asked, a wild look in his eyes. His fists knotted and opened, dropping to his hilt and coming away again. "Did you see them? I did. There were two of them, and they were playing me like a puppet!"
I was innkeeper in Barca's Hamlet, Garric said in his mind. Immediately he began to relax. He wasn't alone; and even if he had been, the memory of Carus reminded Garric what a man very like him could face and had faced. But that life couldn't have been. The forces that we've been fighting ever since I left Haft would've overwhelmed Barca's Hamlet and the rest of the Isles long before I died in bed in my old age!
"Aye," said Carus, smiling at a grim memory. "I commanded the bodyguard of King Carlake. He put us where it was hottest, and we never failed him. The day an arrow struck me down during the siege of Erdin, my boys went over the wall and took the city. They buried me under a pyramid of ten thousand severed heads!"
His eyes met Garric's eyes in his mind; both men shuddered. "Lad," Carus whispered. "A thing like that could have happened. But it never did, I swear that."
I don't remember King Carlake, Garric thought. Was he a usurper?
"Carlake was the elder brother of Carilan, the King of the Isles who adopted me as his heir," Carus explained. "Carlake might well have made a better king for hard times than his brother did, but the same fever carried him off as did their father and left Carilan king in his place. That world couldn't be, inourworld."
Garric rolled out of bed carefully. He was calm now, able to reassure Liane if she woke, but she continued to sleep soundly.
I saw the figures you're talking about, Garric thought as he poured cool water into the tumbler on the wash stand. Felt them, at any rate. Who do you suppose they were?
"They're not Gods, of that I'm sure," Carus said. "I don't believe in Gods, and there's enough trouble without Them meddling too!"
I believe in the Great Gods, Garric thought as he drank greedily. But I don't believe They were who I saw. I believe we saw something verydifferent. And very evil.
The banquet had more courses than Cashel had fingers to count them on. All the food was good and most of it was better than that, though he found often enough that he was happier if he avoided looking at stuff before he ate it.
There was wine, too. Cashel had drunk ale when he and Ilna could afford it and water when they couldn't, which was often enough. He'd never had so much as a sip of wine till he left home and he hadn't much liked it when he did… but what Lord Bossian served was different, sparkly instead of tasting like juice that'd gone bad in the heat.
Syl and Farran pretended that Cashel wasn't at the table. They ate with their right hands only and kept their left raised at funny angles that they adjusted with each new course. Cashel supposed it meant something; to them at least, and the gestures were no more empty than their silly chatter.
Kotia talked to the others with an easy reserve. Cashel guessed she didn't have much use for Syl and Farran-he couldn't see any reason she ought to-but she was polite when she spoke to them and really friendly to Bossian.
The problem was that when Kotia said something to Cashel, Bossian puffed up like a cat when a strange dog comes into the room. She noticed it, all right, and while it didn't seem to make any difference to her, Cashel got uncomfortable. It made him want to pick Bossian up by the seat and scruff, then toss him a few times into the stream till he came to a better understanding of who he was glowering at…
And that wouldn't be right, seeings as Bossian was the host here and he wasn't doing anything wrong, just sort ofoozing the fact that he'd like to. Cashel started avoiding Kotia's eyes and concentrating on his food. And the wine, of course.
There was music playing, soft pipes and bowed strings; Cashel couldn't tell where the musicians were, but they made a lovely sound. The sky had grown dark but the palace itself glowed with light of the same color as the walls themselves: silver and rose and the pale green of drying hay. The water purling down its channel was steel blue; Cashel could see fish the length of his arm swimming in it.
He was content. Oh, soon he'd start wondering about how to get home, but Lord Bossian had said he'd take care of that. Cashel didn't figure there'd be much delay, what with the choice being to have Cashel for a guest until he did.
It felt good not to be hiking over bare rock and good to have a full belly after a day of hard work and fasting. Cashel swigged his wine and looked up at the stars, wondering if he'd be able to recognize any of the constellations tonight.
The stars began to vanish slowly from one side of the sky to the other, the way an eclipse devours the moon. Cashel blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his free hand, wondering if the wine had been even stronger than he thought. He felt a vibration too low to be sound; it trembled up throught the chair legs and the soles of his feet, and the walls of the manor shivered with the deep throb.
Syl rose to her feet and screamed. She pointed at the blank heaven, screamed again, and fainted. Cashel lurched up to grab her, knocking over the table as he reached across it. He grabbed the diaphanous sleeve of the woman's tunic, but it tore like spiderweb and left him with wisps as she fell face first on the pavement.
Farran clutched his throat with his left hand, perhaps to choke off a scream of his own. Diners were reacting in various ways, all of them fearful. The raised terraces emptied as they fled babbling, stumbling blindly over one another and the furniture.
Kotia rose and put her hand on Cashel's shoulder, standing close to him. "The Visitor has arrived," she said. "As I'm sure you realized."
Cashel lifted the quarterstaff that he'd laid on the ground behind his chair for want of a better place. He'd been afraid servants would kick it as they attended the tables, but they'd danced around the length of hickory nervously like it was a snake with a bad temper.
"What do you want me to do, mistress?" he asked Kotia quietly.
The blankness overhead flared with azure wizardlight. The stars hadn't disappeared: they'd been hidden behind vastness, a flying mountain passing overhead. But not a mountain either, for the whorls and ridges outlined in light were as surely artificial as the crystal magnificence of Lord Bossian's manor.
The light faded, leaving an afterglow like the smell of decay. The vast darkness passed on and the stars returned. The rumble continued long after the visible cause was gone.
Only Kotia and Bossian remained in the courtyard with Cashel; the three of them and Syl, sprawled unconscious among the tangle of dishes which spilled when Cashel knocked over the table. Kotia trembled, squeezing Cashel's shoulder fiercely. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved silently.
Bossian looked at Cashel. "Our first business must be to send you home, sir," he said. "If you'll come with me to my workroom, we'll set about the matter immediately."
Kotia's eyes opened. She stepped partly away from Cashel but left her fingertips on his arm.
"Don't you think that perhaps Master Cashel should stay, Bossian?" she said. She gestured toward the now-empty sky with her right hand. "Until we know…?"
"He should not!" Bossian snapped. "Without suggesting your Master Cashel is in any sense responsible for the Visitor's arrival, Ido insist that he's out of his time and place. That makes him a point of stress at a time when we have very little margin. Besides, if you're really grateful to him for the help he provided you, why would you wish to subject him to the Visitor's attention?"
"Look, I'm not afraid of the Visitor," Cashel said. He felt extremely uncomfortable. Given the chance to fight something instead of standing here in a conversation where so many currents flowed, he'd have fought-anything. "Just tell me what it is I ought to be doing!"
"You're right, of course," Kotia said with a crisp nod to Bossian.
She took her hand from Cashel's arm and met his eyes. She said, "Go with Lord Bossian. He'll be able to help you return if anyone can. I'll leave you here, as there's no point in me becoming involved in a business where my skills would be of no service. Good day, Master Cashel; again, my thanks for your efforts on my behalf, and my good wishes for the success of all your future affairs."
Kotia bowed stiffly, turned, and strode in the direction of the silvery building. Bossian called after her, "I told the servants to ready the suite at the top of the tower. If they haven't, pick any rooms that suit you."
Kotia didn't bother to acknowledge the comment. Cashel guessed that a girl who'd slept out in the mountains with what she could carry wouldn't be too concerned about which room of a palace best suited her.
"Come along then," Bossian said gruffly. "Master Cashel."
He gestured Cashel to stand close to him on the tiled pavement where the table had been set. Cashel obeyed, feeling his guts tighten. He supposed they were going to fly away somewhere. He didn't want to fall off, and he especially didn't want to show Bossian that it bothered him.
Instead of lifting, the circle of pavement around them dropped straight into the ground.
Duzi, wasIwrong! Cashel thought, and he started to laugh. Streaks of deep red lighted the shaft they slid down, plenty to see Bossian's disgruntled expression by. That made Cashel laugh the harder.
He glanced up. The circle of sky became oval, then closed, so they weren't going quite straight down after all. He thought of asking Bossian how far they had to go, but it didn't matter enough to give his host the satisfaction of thinking Cashel was worried. He wasn't, after all; just curious.
The platform stopped. They didn't enter a room, theywere in it: where the stripes of red light down the sides of the shaft had been, now there was a dimly-yellow hall of great extent. The ceiling was low enough that Cashel could almost stretch up and touch it with a fingertip, but thick trefoil columns supported it at frequent intervals.
"Come this way if you will," Bossian said, the words polite but nothing in his brusque tone suggesting he cared whether Cashel wanted to obey. The echoes were funny. They made sounds muzzy, and they went on for a very long time.
Bossian led the way around a series of columns. There were benches and tables of various sorts built into the floor. When Bossian passed close, tables lit with one or another of the pastel colors of the crystal towers. The light held until Cashel too had stepped past, then faded. On each were instruments and other items, few of them anything Cashel recognized as a part of his world.
"Here," Bossian said, gesturing to where three curved tables were spaced to form a circle with openings. They glowed the same deep red as the shaft that led down to this place. Each section was crowded with objects: books, tools, and things that might either have been sculptures or trash dug from a midden. "Stand in the center here while I speak the incantation."
He reached into the seeming litter on the nearest table and withdrew a scroll of some shining material. It opened as he lifted it.
"You can send me back?" Cashel said as he walked between two of the raised islands. From what Kotia and Bossian himself had said earlier, he hadn't thought it'd be so simple.
"No, no, not that," Bossian said in irritation as he peered at the scroll. His index finger marked his place, but the winding rods on either end curled through the roll by themselves. "If I could do that, I could send the Visitor away! Iwill provide you with the tools to go by yourself, however."
He glared, at the scroll but not because of what he saw there. "Assuming that there are such tools. As I very much hope there are."
Cashel stood where Bossian told him to. The floor was glossy black, but a many-pointed star had lighted on it. Words in the curving Old Script appeared around the margin, changing as the wizard's finger moved across his scroll.
Cashel didn't like Bossian, but he trusted the fellow to do what he said. To do the best he could, at any rate, and that was as much as you could ask. There were plenty of guys out there who'd be willing to dump a rival in a bad place because of anger and envy. Bossian wasn't like that, and it wasn't just because he was afraid of what Cashel would do to him if he failed-or what Kotia would do if he succeeded.
Not that Cashel was any kind of rival, whatever the wizard might think.
Holding the scroll in his left hand, Bossian extended his right. A wand appeared in it, its color the now-familiar red verging on black. Cashel wasn't sure whether the wand was solid or simply a brief shaft of light.
Bossian pointed at the figure surrounding Cashel and said, "Bittalos isti bakion…"
Words on the floor flared and vanished. The scroll shifted, one rod taking up its portion of the roll while the other spooled more out. Cashel heard echoes from a place vaster and less cluttered than the room in which he stood.
"Zogenes rake bakion," the wizard said as the light and sound expanded to fill Cashel's awareness. He couldn't see Bossian any more, but there were other figures beyond the wall of light as deep as a dying coal. He wasn't sure they were human, or at least wholly human.
…chuch bain bakaxi… the throbbing redness echoed. The sound no longer seemed to have anything to do with a human throat. Cashel's skin prickled as it always did in the presence of wizardry. There was a freezing flash.
Cashel was back in the cellar, dark now save for wisps of rosy foxfire that outlined Bossian. "Iosalile!" he shouted.
A thread of pulsing scarlet linked the fourth finger of Cashel's left hand with the table behind which the wizard stood. "There!" Bossian cried, dropping the scroll. He thrust his wand down where the thread touched the array of objects.
The room shone with a soft yellow light that had no source Cashel could locate. The thread of light, the symbols on the floor, and all other signs of wizardry had vanished when the room brightened. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his left hand.
Bossian reached out, but reaction to the spell he'd just worked caught him. He sagged, his out-thrust arms barely able to keep him from sprawling across the table.
Cashel picked up the object the thread had indicated. It was a lump of coal the size of his fist. As the wizard's dizziness passed, his eyes focused on the coal. He glared with what looked like the same puzzlement that Cashel felt.
"What does it do?" Cashel said, handing the lump to Bossian. People in Valles heated with coal, so he knew what it was. Everybody on Haft burned wood or charcoal.
"It has a virtue," Bossian said, turning the piece as he peered at it. "Every item in this hall has been gathered by me or an ancestor of mine because of the power that our art has shown to lie in it. This particular piece was found in the tomb of a great wizard from the time before the Visitor's first arrival."
The coal was smoothly shiny top and bottom, with jags and facets on the sides. The image of a leaf which flared like a trumpet was pressed into the top. The all-directional light cast no shadow, making it hard to get a real feeling for the shape. Cashel frowned, wondering if there was anything somebody like himcould see; maybe you had to be a wizard.
"But what does itdo?" Cashel repeated. It was good-quality coal; gleaming black on all surfaces. There were none of the gray speckles of shale he'd seen in cheap stuff.
"To be honest…," Bossian said in a muted voice. He set the lump back on the tabletop. "To be honest, I haven't been able to determine that."
He gave Cashel a defensive glare. "But itis an object of power, and there's no question that the spell marked it out for you. Why, you saw that yourself!"
"Yes," said Cashel, "but I don't know what it means."
He took the coal again between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it without learning anything more than he had the first time. It was coal; it had a slick feel, and it was lighter than a flint of the same size.
"Well, you're the best one to determine that, sir," Bossian said. He made a gesture with his bare right hand; his wand had vanished. A pastel yellow tunnel suddenly twisted away through the vast hall, while the rest of the room went dark. "I was unable to divine the object's powers when I had leisure to try, which assuredly I do not at this time."
He gestured down the corridor of light. "The path will take you to an exit from the manor," he said.
Cashel looked at Lord Bossian, the coal in his left hand, his quarterstaff in his right. He weighed the lump in his palm, silent as he decided what to do. He didn't like Bossian's attitude, but Bossian grimaced. "Master Cashel," he said in a raspy voice, "if I were in a position to help you further I would do so. I am not. I suggest you leave here and work out your own destiny, while we determine ours. And I tell you with all sincerity that I wish the task facing me were as simple as the one facing you-howeverdifficult it may seem to you!"
Cashel nodded. "All right, I see that," he said.
The lump was too big to fit in his wallet. He pulled out the neck of his outer tunic and dropped the coal inside; it slipped down to where the sash cinched his garments to his waist, leaving both hands free for the quarterstaff.
Nodding to Bossian, Cashel turned and started down the lighted pathway. His bare feet shuffled on the pavement; that sound was his only companion for a long time, longer than he was sure of. He was glad he'd eaten, but he wished he'd taken a round of bread with him when they left the outdoors banquet.
While Cashel was wondering, not for the first time, how long this was going to last, a stride put him abruptly out on a moonlit slope. He looked across a broad valley. Judging by the vegetation around him, it was better watered than the one where he'd met Kotia.
He turned. In the far distance was a shimmer of light. That might be the gleaming towers of Lord Bossian's manor, or it might not.
Cashel thought for a time, leaning on his quarterstaff. Then, smiling faintly at his recollection of Kotia insisting they save the gems Kakoral had thrown down, he rummaged one out of his wallet.
Quite a lady, Kotia was…
He hurled the ruby into a ledge of rock.
Ilna stood stiffly upright, one hand on the tiny deckhouse asThe Bird of the Tide eased to an empty quay. As usual on shipboard, her major concern was to keep out of the way of the sailors while they were busy. Four of the men worked the long sweeps; Kulit stood in the bow, looking straight down, and Hutena held a boat pike to push off with if necessary.
"Port side up oars!" Chalcus shouted from the tiller. "Ninon, a dab now-just a dab, laddie, and pat us in."
The harbor at Terness was tight, and the passage between lava cliffs to enter had been tighter yet. The largest vessel Ilna saw was a two-deck warship like theFlying Fish; the other ships were part-decked fishing boats.
"Now it may be you're wondering why I didn't sail in, dear heart, rather than stretch the lads' backs by sculling," Chalcus said in a conversational tone as they slid slowly as cold honey toward the quay on the gentle push of Ninon at the starboard bow oar. "It's the way the winds eddy and the entrance, you see, and me being a stranger to these waters. OurBird is a fine, sturdy ship, but I wouldn't care to knock her against those rock walls-"
He crooked a finger back over his left shoulder, toward the harbor narrows.
"-and think of the embarrassment I'd feel with all those folk watching us, eh?"
"Yes," said Ilna, "I see those folk."
The quay was crowded with as many people as it would hold, most of them either servants with scarlet sashes as livery or soldiers in bronze caps but padded jerkins instead of metal body armor. There was a party of their betters as well, folk who thought themselves better, at any rate-a double handful of men in silk and furs and gilded metalwork. In the center of these last, wearing a silvered cuirass set with red stones that might possibly be rubies rather than lesser gems, stood a tall man with black hair and a full pepper-and-salt beard.
"Commander Lusius, as I recall," Chalcus murmured. "And there's no greater rogue unhung, unless it be myself."
Ilna stepped closer to him, reaching instinctively into her left sleeve for the hank of cords she carried there. "Will he recognize you, do you think?" she asked, her voice calm but her mind dancing over possible ways out of the situation if it turned bad.
"I think not," Chalcus said. "I was only one of Captain Mall's crew, many years ago; and when Mall's ship and crew became mine, we did no more business in the Haft trade. But if he does-"
One of Lusius' attendants blew his trumpet and the crowd cheered-half-heartedly, it seemed to Ilna. Hutena'd racked his pike by the mast; he dropped a leather fender stuffed with straw between stone and the hull while Kulit positioned a second fender at the bow. TheBird of the Tide thumped the quay without needing the men on shore to draw them in by the mooring ropes.
"-it'll only mean that we each know the other man."
"Captain Chalcus!" Lusius cried, standing arms-akimbo as he looked down into theBird. "Welcome to Terness. I'm Lusius, and I hope you and your lovely companion will accept my hospitality while you're here."
The Commander gave Ilna a broad grin. She tented her fingers very carefully; if she hadn't, they'd have knotted a pattern that-some time in the future-she'd regret having used even on this man. Her mind recalled with satisfaction the greasysnap of a chicken's neck as she twisted.
Ilna smiled back at Lusius. The Commander's grin melted away.
"Well now, Commander Lusius…," said Chalcus nonchalantly as he fitted a rope loop over the tiller to keep the steering oar from flapping in a current. Shausga and Kulit handed hawsers to attendants on the quay who'd bend them around bollards. "The crew and I will spend our nights aboard the few days we're here fitting a new mast, but I thank you for your offer."
"But you'll dine with me tonight, surely?" Lusius said. "We flatter ourselves that we eat well on Terness, though the food may not be up to the royal banquets you're used to."
He looked around the men close about him, the sneering grin back on his face. Though Terness was a small place by any standards beyond those of Barca's Hamlet, this handful of courtiers was dressed with as much expense-if not taste-as those crowding Garric's receptions in Valles.
"Indeed," said Chalcus easily, standing in a relaxed posture. "I'm a student of the world, Commander; always pleased to meet new folk and sample new fare. What time would it be that you'd wish us to arrive?"
Lusius threw back his head and laughed, resting his left hand on the pommel of his short curved sword. Ilna had learned much about weapons since she left the borough; the Commander's was a real sword with a sturdy blade, capable of lopping off limbs with a strong man swinging it. The sword and the scar trailing down Lusius' neck proved that he hadn't been-and probably wasn't-a man who let others handle all his violence.
He fingered his beard and measured Chalcus with his eyes. "Well, then, shall we say at the eleventh hour, Captain?" he said. "The castle's at the head of Cross Street, that's the one that stretches south from Water Street here. We're simple folk in Terness, so two named streets are all we need."
Lusius turned on his heel and stalked off. His underlings must have been used to his abrupt habits for they instantly leaped aside to form a passage, then fell in behind him.
TheBird 's crew relaxed as the local delegation strode away. Ninon set down the short axe he'd been holding behind the mainspar. Hutena had been leaning against the mast; now he wiped on his tunic the hand that'd rested against the boarding pike he'd just racked.
Ilna began plaiting a complex pattern of cords, with no other purpose than to occupy her fingers while she thought. Lusius had a bull neck, but a noose thrownjust so and twisted would snap it as surely as that of a chicken in the dooryard.
"They know who we are then, cap'n?" Hutena said. He looked uncomfortable speaking, but the eyes of the other men were on him; the bosun's rank meant it was up to him to ask the question that worried all of them.
"Aye, but I never expected to fool Lusius," Chalcus said, watching the last of the Commander's entourage disappear around the corner. Ilna couldn't see up Cross Street from where theBird was docked, but the battlements of a structure on the hill to the south loomed over the roofs of the buildings fronting Water Street. "The only question I had was how he'd react to our arrival; and open acknowledgment of who we are isn't a bad way to react. Not a fool, our Lusius."
"But you'll take him down anyway, cap'n," Hutena said; his words neither quite a statement nor really a question.
"Oh, aye, we'll do that thing," Chalcus said cheerfully, dusting his palms together briskly. "I will; and you will, my fine lads…"
He turned and laid a fingertip on Ilna's cheek. "And Mistress Ilna will with her art, which I much expect will be the greatest help of all in the business!"