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TheBird of the Tide was anchored near the harbor mouth, as far from the docks as was possible in the enclosed waters. The vessel undulated slowly as the current out of Terness Harbor tugged at the anchor line.
Commander Lusius, dressed in fur-trimmed velvet, stood in the shadows of the quay. With him hunched three men; their clothing would've been nondescript were it not for the swords they wore.
TheBird was as silent as death; there was no sound from aboard her save the creak of the line working against the scuttle as she moved. A lantern hung from the mast, arm's length below the furled sail. It guttured on the last of its oil, but the faint glow showed what the men on the dock wanted to see.
One of the vessel's crewmen sprawled in the bow with an arm over the railing. Three more lay amidships; two on their backs, the other face down. The man who'd begun the night on watch leaned against the sternpost, utterly motionless. The woman's legs stuck out of the small deckhouse; she hadn't moved either.
"There's two I don't see," muttered one of the nondescript men. "And the fellow from the merchantman, he must be aboard too."
"They're in the hold, Rincip," Lusius growled. "The supercargo is, at any rate. And they're just as dead as the others. The poison doesn't care whether you can see the bodies or not."
"Let's get it over with," muttered another of the men as he climbed into the skiff tied to the stern of the nearest fishing vessel. "The moon'll be up in an hour. I don't want an audience of rube fishermen while I send corpses to the bottom of the harbor with their bellies filled with ballast."
"Yeah, all right," said Rincip. He and the third Sea Guard boarded the skiff and unshipped the oars. Lusius watched with his arms folded across his chest as his men rowed toward theBird of the Tide.
The harbor was quiet. The fishermen couldn't rake belemites from the shoals during darkness, and nothing about Terness-neither the Commander and his men, nor the Rua who now ruled the region's skies-encouraged simple folk to be out at night. The water carried the slight thump of the skiff touching the larger vessel's side to where Lusius stood.
Two of the Sea Guards gripped theBird 's gunwale while the other scrambled aboard carrying the painter. He looped it to the rail. Rincip had just followed his man over the railing when the woman in the deckhouse sat up. There was a shimmer in the dim light; Rincip squawked and jerked forward, clawing at his neck.
The vessel's crewmen were all moving-fast. The Sea Guard on deck got his hand to his swordhilt before the captain made a quick swipe with his own slim blade. Lusius swore as the Guard toppled backward over the rail in a spray of blood. His head hit the water some distance from the rest of the body.
"Don't or I'll-" theBird 's bosun shouted as the Sea Guard in the skiff tried to cut the painter with his sword. The rest of the sentence probably would've been "-kill you!" but he didn't bother finishing it after he thrust down with a boarding pike.
The Sea Guard went over the side and sank as soon as the bosun managed to jerk his pike free. The two-handed stroke had driven the spearhead the length of a tall man's forearm through the Guard's chest cavity.
Lusius swore in a monotone as he ran back toward the castle, trying to stay in the shadows. Oars scraped and squealed as theBird of the Tide got under weigh.
He'd almost shouted to rouse the tower watch, but he caught himself in time. He'd seen what Captain Chalcus could do with a dagger and now a sword. Lusius didn't intend to prove with his own body that the fellow was just as skilled with a bow.
And besides, there was a better way to deal with Prince Garric's spies…
The faces of men, each announcing his own name, jostled one another through Garric's mind as he lay in bed. He was tired, desperately tired, but he couldn't sleep because the literal army of men he'd met and inspected today wouldn't let him.
"It's part of the job, lad," Carus said in his mind. "Just like going over tax assessments is part of the job; though that one I never could do, not even to keep my officials honest."
Iron clanged against stone in the garden below. Garric tensed, ready to leap for the sword hanging from the rack by the bed; glad at a chance for action but so tired that he was afraid he'd stumble over his own feet.
A soldier cursed; his officer snarled him to silence. Garric relaxed with a smile. A guard had dropped his spear; Prince Garric wasn't the only tired person awake tonight in the palace.
Smiling, Garric dropped off into the sleep that frustration had denied him. When he realized that the dream had him again, it was too late to rouse himself… and he was so tired, he might not have wanted to return to that restless consciousness anyway.
He was in the garden as before. The moon must have been full; branches stood out against the sky even though it was drizzling. The air was cooler than on the previous times he'd been dragged into this place, though the blossoming pear trees meant it must be late spring.
Carus wasn't with him. Garric was alone on a dank, chill night, and something waited for him beside the altar at the back of the garden. He walked forward because hehad to: the great figures beyond the sky were again forcing him to.
The compulsion wasn't necessary. There was no place to flee in this dream and besides-Garric was the descendent and successor of King Carus, the greatest warrior the Isles had ever known. He wasn't going to run from the thing that rose onto its hind legs and snarled at his approach.
He couldn't get a good look at the creature. The diffused light hid as much as it displayed, but Garric also had the awareness that things didn't always stay the same even while he looked at them.
The creature had a bestial head with great tusks jutting from the upper and lower jaws, but except for a bristly mane down the middle of the back its body was as hairless as a man's. It had short legs and a long, broad torso; on its hind legs it stood as tall as Garric. Its arms were half again the length of his own.
Garric had been looking for a weapon from the moment he realized the situation. He saw fallen branches, but they were probably rotten and wouldn't be effective clubs against so large a creature anyway.
The ape growled. He was going to call it an ape, though part of Garric's mind feared that it was nothing of the sort.
The ape gave a rasping bellow and hunched onto the knuckles of its hands. Other beasts watched and waited in shadowed corners of the garden. They chittered quietly among themselves.
Garric grabbed the edge of a stone planter which roots had fractured. The ape grunted explosively and lunged forward. The slab resisted; the weight of dirt held it where it was. Garric screamed in frustration and tore the piece free, bringing it around in both hands. As the ape dug its clawed fingers into his shoulders, he smashed the stone into three fragments against its forehead.
The beast flung Garric away with a started cry. His right thigh slammed the trunk of pear tree, a numbing blow.
He got up, using his hands and left leg to raise his body. His right leg was barely able to hold him upright, but he didn't think the bone was broken. The ape staggered backward, apparently dazed. It patted doubtfully at its forehead with its left hand. The pressure cut was bleeding freely; blood dripped from the deep brow ridges.
The fractured planter lay between Garric and the ape. He might have been able to lift the stone shell, three-quarters of the original object, if he had time to empty the dirt from it. He doubted the ape would give him the time, and anyway he wasn't sure his leg was up to walking just yet. Much as he'd have liked to charge while the ape seemed dizzy, he guessed he was going to wait for it to come to him.
The ape rose onto its hind legs. It stared at its great left hand, black with blood in the moonlight, and gave another snarling roar.
Garric seized the branch above him, then jerked down with all his strength. The brittle pear wood broke where the limb met the trunk. As the ape charged, Garric brought the long branch around as a spear tipped with jagged splinters.
He meant to thrust it into the ape's throat, but the long crooked brush of twigs and blossoms tangled in the branch above and fouled his stroke. The ragged tip gouged the beast's shoulder as its clawed hands closed on Garric's neck. He drove both bare heels into the ape's belly, but it was like kicking an oak.
The beast raised him overhead. Garric's vision blurred and turned red. He tried to pull the ape's hands apart, but he wasn't sure his fingers were gripping. The ape swung him like a flail into the pear tree. He felt his ribs crack.
Red shifted toward blackness and the world went dark. Garric felt himself moving again. He was vaguely aware of another shock; then it was over, except for pain beyond anything he'd ever imagined.
He woke up in his bed.
Liane breathed softly beside him; sleeping dreamlessly or dreaming ordinary human dreams. Garric grinned despite himself; his heart was hammering and all his muscles were tense, but this time he hadn't leaped out of bed with a shout. His mind hadn't expected him to be able to move after all the bones of his torso had shattered against a treetrunk.
"Now that was a hard one, lad," Carus murmured. The image of the ancient king was the same as always, dressed in trousers and tunic with a long sword at his side; the way he'd generally been when he went about the business of government. "They're trying to break us to their will, I'd guess. Make us say we'll serve them."
I won't, thought Garric. His hands gently explored his rib cage and right thigh as he convinced himself that he wasn't really a cripple dying in agony. No matter how often they kill me.
But a part at the back of his mind wondered how much longer this could go on without affecting him, no matter how brave he was consciously.
I fought an ape, he thought. It beat me to death against a tree. Was it the same with you?
Carus smiled. "It was an ape, I guess," he said. "But I killed it instead of the other way round."
How? thought Garric, touching the medal he wore on a neck thong. It had been struck for the coronation of King Carus; he wore it at all times. I mean-were we in the same body? Or did you have a weapon?
The ancient king's smile became rueful. "A weapon?" he said. "Not exactly, lad. You see…"
He paused, smiling again in real embarrassment. "You see," Carus went on, "I've been places that you haven't been. I tore the thing's throat out with my teeth. I don't have much recollection of it while it was happening, but… it wasn't the first time it'd happened to me, lad. And the other time it wasn't a beast's throat when my sword had broken."
I see, thought Garric. Well, your highness, I'm glad the Good has folk like you to defend it.
He breathed deeply, then added, Maybe between us we can arrange that other people don't have to learn how to fight monsters without weapons.
Liane awoke to Garric's laughter. She turned to him with a warm smile.
Sharina sat wrapped in the fur of some large animal she didn't recognize, drinking mulled wine and looking down into the waters of the fjord. She didn't want much in her stomach before she dived, but the warmer she started out, the longer she'd be able to continue.
Neal had supplied both the fur and the hot drink. He appeared to be the generally accepted leader while Alfdan recovered from the strain of his art.
The band's driftwood fire crackled with flashing enthusiasm. Rainbow-colored flames spurted whenever heat opened a pocket of sea salt. Franca and especially Scoggin, sitting on opposite sides of her, glanced nervously at the blaze. They'd survived the decade of Her rule by creeping through the shadows. They saw an open fire as a frightening beacon drawing in terrors, known and unknown.
"I suppose they know what they're doing," Sharina said to the men; her men, beside but not part of the wizard's band, the way oil lies on water. "Alfdan's protected them so far."
"Alfdan isn't protecting them now," Scoggin muttered, glancing sourly toward where the wizard lay on a bed of furs. He was beginning to stir: Layson helped him sit upright while another man waited with a mug of soup. It'd be some time before he was ready to use his art again, though.
Some of the men had tied driftwood into a raft using ropes from their stores. It was a clumsy-looking thing and didn't have a real deck, but it'd do as a fishing float… or a diving platform.
"There's nothing on land here to fear," Beard said. "Anyway, they have me and my mistress, don't they?"
"What about the water, axe?" Franca said. "That's where Mistress Sharina has to go, isn't it?"
"There are things in the fjord," the axe said. "But the mistress will have Beard, so the danger will be greater for the other things. If they come to the mistress and Beard, there will beso much blood!"
Sharina wasn't clear on how useful an axe would be under water, but Beard's enthusiasm seemed genuine and he was the expert in killing things. She grinned. Everybody ought to have a talent…
A slab of stone wrapped in fishing net sat in the middle of the raft. It was heavy enough that the man who brought it aboard had waddled with it cradled against his chest. Sharina would ride it down, saving time that would be too short anyway. The raft's crew could draw the stone up by the rope attached to the net's lines in case she had to dive again.
This was going to be very unpleasant, but she'd said that she'd do it. Besides, the bargain would get her the opportunity that she wanted.
Which would be even more unpleasant.
Alfdan rose with Layson's help and stepped carefully to Sharina. Scoggin started to get up but settled back when he realized Sharina didn't intend to do so.
"So, mistress!" the wizard said. "Are you ready to carry out your promise?"
"Yes," said Sharina. She smiled. Beard had been across her knees. She turned the axe upright, its butt on the ground and the pointed steel face glaring at Alfdan. "Of course. What is your plan?"
Until she knew in detail what was expected of her, she had no intention of shrugging off the fur and standing. She'd move when it was time to; until then she'd wait.
"We'll go out to the center of the inlet," Alfdan said, taking what looked like a stream-washed pebble from an ermine purse. Sharina remembered what Neal had said about the Stone Mirror. "I'll guide you. Then you'll swim down to the key where Lady Sodann cast it and bring it back to me."
Except for Neal and another man finishing the raft, the band had gathered quietly around Alfdan and Sharina. They listened openly but in silence; they weren't part of the business nor did they want to be, but they knew their future might depend on what was said.
"If the key's so valuable," Scoggin demanded with deliberate hostility, "then why did this lady throw it away?"
"'This lady' as you call her," Alfdan said with a look of irritation, "tried to dispose of the Key of Reyazel because Baron Hortsmain, her beloved, used it to enter a place from which he could not return. This is scarcely your concern, my man, as I'm the one who'll be using the key. And both Sodann and Hortsmain have been dead these five thousand years!"
Sharina looked at the fjord, then toward the raft. She set down her empty mug. "Is that ready?" she called to Neal.
"Yes, mistress," Neal said, eyeing the slope above them his bow ready. It seemed to Sharina that only a bird could come down on them from the heights.
"Then so am I," said Sharina as she stood, pinching the fur closed at the throat with her left hand. "We've got the light, and I don't suppose things will change for the better if we wait."
Beard gave a ringing laugh. "In ten more years the water'll be barely half this depth," he said. "Of course the ice will have come down from the hills to cover it by then, too."
Rather than reply, Sharina started for the raft. Scoggin and Franca fell in beside her. The youth clutched the section of spear he used for a dagger. "We're coming too!" he said to Alfdan with more vehemence than Sharina'd thought he was capable of.
"All right," said the wizard nonchalantly. "You two can paddle. Neal, I'll want you along also."
The big man nodded glumly. "Colran, lend me your spear," he said, holding out his bow and five arrows to a blond spearman in exchange. "This won't be much use if something comes up from the water."
"Nothing will threaten us," Alfdan said in irritation.
Neal ignored him. With the spear in his hand he said to the circle of his fellows, "Come on, carry this into the water."
The band leaped to the task, grunting and muttering as they gripped the lengths of wood lashed together in a thick mat. Beard tittered disconcertingly. "They're all afraid if there's a delay, Master Wizard will decide some of them should come along as well."
"There's no danger!" Alfdan said.
The axe sniffed. "Is that what you think, wizard?" he said.
"We're allies now," Sharina said quietly, holding the axe so close to her lips that her breath fogged the steel. "Don't bait Alfdan. It's not polite."
"Polite!" Beard said. "Polite to what?"
But he spoke in a tiny voice and subsided after that slight protest.
Sharina took off her rabbitskin sandals and left them on the shore before she stepped into the water. The fjord had an eerie chill, as though she were walking in a basin of frozen knife blades. The raft swayed and rippled as she and the others boarded; water slapped and squirted through the openings between the interlaid logs.
Sharina squatted at the side, her hip braced against the stone that she'd use for her descent. Franca and Scoggin moved them out in a wobbly, half-circular course; their paddles were almost as crude as the beams from which the raft was woven.
Alfdan's men watched at the shoreline with expressions of morose anticipation. Some of them were rubbing their legs dry. The walls of the fjord were as sheer as the sides of an axe cut…
"So much blood!" Beard chortled.
Sharina laughed. Scoggin looked at her in amazement. "It's nice that somebody's looking forward to this," she explained.
Alfdan remained standing, staring into the pebble. His lips moved, but Sharina couldn't hear words if he was even speaking. Neal sat on the stone with his spear between his legs; he held the wizard steady.
"Downstream!" Alfdan said. "Another twenty feet or so. We're far enough out already."
The raft began to rotate; even the most experienced boatmen would've had trouble controlling so clumsy a craft, and neither Scoggin nor Franca were that. There was very little current in the fjord, but that little complicated the business.
"Here!" Alfdan called. He continued looking at his pebble, facing off at an angle to the far shore. "This is far enough. Stop here!"
As if it were that simple, Sharina thought as she stood; but to some people, the wizard apparently among them, itwas that simple: they gave orders and other people carried them out at whatever cost to themselves. She dropped the fur and stripped off her tunic before squatting again to grip the stone against her belly.
"How far down is the key?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter!" cried Alfdan. "We're drifting past! Get down there!"
Sharina lifted the stone slightly, using her left hand and three fingers of her right. The raft billowed; water sloshed over her feet. She turned and straddle-walked two steps to the edge, then rolled over the side. The water was a quick, unpleasant shock; then she was aware only of the weight crushing in on her as she plunged downward.
She let go of the stone with her right hand as soon as she was over the side. The fingers of her left held the netting firmly, while her right hand now gripped only Beard's helve.
The water was blue and clear and at first empty; bubbles dribbled from the net fibers as the depth squeezed them. Sharina began to see crystalline planes jutting up past her, as steep as the cliffs of the fjord. It was as though the water had compressed itself solid. Perhaps the pressure was affecting her sight…
The rock she clung to was covered with bubbles that'd been trapped in cracks when she went over the side. Water swirled about it as they dropped, distorting her sight, but beyond that the planes of a separate world were growing more real. She couldn't see the bottom, but things of pulp and blubber crawled up slabs of crystal from an unguessibly deep abyss.
The rock crunched onto the bottom of the fjord, kicking out a spray of stream-washed quartz nuggets the size of walnuts or smaller. Sharina couldn't see the key; she couldn't see anything but a blurred, dim waste of stone. She let go of the weight and breast stroked over the plain. Beard's narrow blade winked; she thought she heard him singing.
No more! Sharina drove upward for the surface. Her lungs were burning and her sight had blurred from lack of air. The crystal walls had vanished but she felt the creatures continuing to crawl toward her like huge gelatinous ticks; out of sight but still present. She couldn't see the raft and the light was dimming Sharina broke surface, gasping and blind. She blew a roar of froth with her lips. She couldn't see anything until she realized that her eyes were tight shut.
She was arm's length upstream from the raft; it thrashed and rocked. Neal was hauling the rock up hand over hand as Franca coiled the line behind him. Scoggin slashed the water furiously with his paddle to keep the clumsy craft from drifting farther.
Sharina kicked herself to the raft and caught the end of a branch in her left hand. She didn't feel cold, but her lungs were a mass of fire that subsided only slowly as she dragged in great breaths.
Alfdan looked up from his pebble. He glanced around till his eyes lit on Sharina. "It's still there!" he cried angrily. "You haven't brought it up!"
"Shut up, you fool!" Scoggin snarled. Neal looked over his shoulder; he nodded. He'd raised the netted stone to the surface and belayed the line around the end of a log near where Sharina clung. The raft tilted toward it; neither Franca nor the wizard had sense enough to move to the opposite side for balance.
"I'm getting my breath," Sharina said. The words didn't want to come; her throat was stiff. "I'll go back in a moment."
"Mistress, do you want to try another day?" said Neal.
"No, I'll-" Sharina said.
"She must get it immediately!" said Alfdan. "If I wait-"
Beard actually twisted in Sharina's hand, lifting his razor-keen edge above the water like a shark breaking surface. "I'll kill him!" the axe squealed, raging instead of speaking with his usual sanguine anticipation.
Sharina gripped the netting with her left hand. "I'm ready," she said. Neal loosed the rope; she plunged again into the depths of the fjord.
Sharina had thought the crystal planes were a hallucination and perhaps they were, but they were back again as she drove deeper. When she'd looked down from the surface Sharina had been able to see the quartz bottom, wavering and faint beneath the filter of blue water. Now she no longer could: as when she dived the first time, the depths slid all the way to the center of the world. The things that lived there were climbing toward her again, and this time they were closer.
The stone hit and scattered pebbles. The other world shifted out of sight the way a reflection disappears when a mirror tilts; but it was still there and its creatures were still there, sliding closer, ready to grip and suck and drain her not only of blood but of her very soul.
Sharina couldn't see the key, but Beard was pulling to her right. She frog kicked in that direction. The plain of shimmering pebbles jerked by beneath her, fading as her breath failed. There was no key She saw it, golden and the only warmth in a waste of white and blue. She didn't know how far away it was-a foot, a yard, a furlong; it didn't matter.
Too far. Sharina broke for the surface, thinking she'd left it too long till the instant her control failed and she sucked in not seawater but air after all. She collapsed and lay still, scarcely aware that somebody was cradling her head to allow her to breathe.
"Mistress?" a voice begged. "Mistress, are you all right?"
Sharina opened her eyes. Franca was beside her, kicking to stay in place as he supported her head. Neal had taken the other paddle and with Scoggin was thrashing the raft toward her against the slight current. The men's expressions were grim.
Alfdan squatted to keep from falling over. He seemed angry, but he was pointedly not looking at Sharina or his other companions. The tableau made Sharina smile-and that brought her back to sudden full awareness. Alfdan had his own view of the world, but he'd learned this wasn't the time to try to impose it on angry, armed men who hadn't liked him very much to begin with.
"Get her aboard!" Scoggin said. "She's done for the day!"
Alfdan started to rise, then settled back on his haunches looking even angrier than he had shortly before. The raft was close, now; Sharina could no longer see Neal on the opposite side. Franca grabbed a projection with one hand and drew her in.
Funny that she'd never realized that Franca could swim. A good thing that he could, although she was all right now; or would be shortly…
"Neal, help me lift her," Scoggin said as he leaned over the side to grasp Sharina's right arm. The raft shuddered and tilted again, though not so much. Neal had raised the stone and snubbed it off at the back of the craft where it counterweighted the crew.
She must have been under water a long time if Neal had been able to lift the stone. She smiled faintly. I must have been under water as long as it felt.
"Get back," she said. "I'm all right."
Scoggin continued to tug; Neal was reaching down also.
"Stop that!" Sharina said. She hadn't thought she had enough energy to get angry, but she'd been wrong; Beard twitched hopefully in her hand, though he didn't speak. "I'm going down again! I know where the key is, now."
"Mistress, you shouldn't…," Neal said, then straightened back abruptly. The axe had lifted without Sharina's conscious volition.
"You've seen it?" Alfdan said eagerly, turning toward her. "You can get it up, then?"
Sharina lay on her side, fully in control of her body again. Franca held her shoulder, but he was shivering violently and seemed barely able to keep himself above the surface now. He was the one they ought to be pulling onto the raft…
"It's on the bottom, just lying there," Sharina said. "I just need to be in the right place. Beard, will you guide me?"
"I will guide you, mistress," said the axe. "I think they're afraid of Beard. They haven't come quite close enough; but perhaps when you take the key they will."
"Well, friend axe," Sharina said, "we both have something to look forward to. Though it's not the same thing."
She looked up at Neal. "Bring the rock around to me," she said. "I'm ready to go down. And then get Franca up before he freezes to death!"
Sharina didn't feel cold. In truth, she didn't feel much of any thing. She viewed her body as she might have viewed a horse, considering the work it had done this day and deciding how much longer it'd be able to go on before it dropped in the traces.
Long enough, she thought. Long enough.
Neal straddle-walked across the raft with the stone in his arms; the wooden fabric wobbled and groaned at each step. He squatted at the edge. Alfdan, startled into awareness of his immediate surroundings, gave a sharp cry and hopped to the other side as the raft tilted.
Sharina reached up and caught the netting in her left hand. "Ready!" she said, drawing in a deep breath.
Neal shoved the weight outward into the water. It streamed downward, trailing bubbles and Sharina's lithe body.
She was no longer conscious of the water. In her mind she flew down canyons of planes joined at right angles. Creatures squeezed out of the cracks where they'd been hiding while Sharina was on the surface. Others creatures, mountainously huge, continued up from the depths of time toward her.
Beard trilled a warsong that sliced through the water like the point of an arrow. Sharina could see the things poise-things of no shape or a thousand shapes, filled with the mindless malevolence of spiders. But they did not, would not, dared not launch themselves onto her while the axe sang.
The stone weight crunched onto the bed of the fjord. Beard tugged her to the right again.
Sharina breaststroked over the quartz. The key congealed into focus from a distant blur; it was gold and ornate but not large, no longer than her little finger. She snatched it in her left hand and kicked upward.
The metal tingled against her palm. She wondered if the key was burning into her, and clutched it more firmly so that she wouldn't drop it if it was.
A thing came at her, dropping like a jumping spider at the end of a train of its own substance. Sharina twisted and slashed out with Beard. There was no water to resist the blow; the place they fought in was not the fjord whose icy depths enfolded her body.
The axe slid through the creature and beyond, dragging a gelatinous trail behind the steel. The creature folded in on itself. Sharina brought the axe back around in a figure-8. Her head broke the surface and she was sucking in cold, clean air again.
The water about her was clear. There was no sign of the crystal canyons nor the monsters which infested them, but Beard was caroling in delighted triumph.
Cashel got up slowly and carefully. He ached all over, but the bird actually hadn't touched him. The way he felt was entirely what he'd done to himself.
"That would cover most people's problems," the toad said. "Ithink."
Cashel frowned as he considered. "I just meant I'd pushed pretty hard while I was fighting the bird," he explained. " I'm feeling the strain."
He paused. "You must have been hearing me think," he said.
The toad sniffed. "If you want to call it thinking," she said. "And yes, you made a great effort, physically as well. What do you do when your greatest effort isn't enough, master?"
Cashel frowned again, thinking back as carefully as he could. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't remember that ever happening. I just don't know."
"Well, pick me up," said Evne, "and I'll take you to another chance to find out. Life with you is certainly more colorful than it had been for the previous seven thousand years."
Obediently Cashel put his right palm flat on the ground in front of the toad. She hopped onto his fingers and he lifted her to his shoulder again.
"Thanks for drawing the bird's eyes off me, Mistress Evne," he said. "It helped a lot. And it was a brave thing to do."
"It would only have been brave," said the toad with her usual tartness, "if I'd thought you might be too slow to deal with the phoenix before she snapped me up. I'm not that unobservant."
Evne pointed with her left hind foot, a gesture that made Cashel grin with surprise. He had to squint to see her, so close to his eyes as she was. "Cross this bog and go through the belt of fir trees. I'll show you what to do then."
Cashel resumed his way over the meadow with his staff out before him. The ripples were disconcerting at first, but they spread in a rhythm. By the third step he'd suited his pace to how the bog was going to react. It gave him no trouble from then on, though he was still glad to reach firm ground.
That meant forcing his way through the prickly, steep-sloping branches of firs growing too close together for their own good, though. He edged through with his right side leading so he wouldn't risk brushing Evne off. The toad shifted closer to his neck, but she didn't seem terribly concerned.
It struck Cashel that he didn't hear birds among these trees. There was a funny buzzing sound, something like swarms of cicadas at a great distance. It was the wrong season for cicadas, though, and besides He pushed through the last of the firs. It wasn't a wide belt, probably no more than he could've spanned with his staff laid out twice, but it'd been so dense that he was beyond the trees before he realized they were ending. Before him shimmered a purple dome covering everything for as far as he could see to right or left. A belt of bare ground, no wider than he could reach across with his arm, bordered the dome and separated it from the firs.
"If you touch the barrier," the toad said, "it will kill you. It'll probably kill me too, as I deserve for serving a fool."
"I won't touch it, then," Cashel said politely. "That'd be a poor way to repay a friend who's been so much help, Mistress Evne."
The toad snorted. "Walk to your left along the barrier," she said. "We'll come to a slough shortly."
Cashel walked carefully; his shoulders were broad enough that he'd bump the dome on his right if the fir branches didn't scrape their dark green needles along his left arm. Evne walked to the front of his collar and clung there, a clammy bump against his throat. He didn't say anything.
The buzzing sound came from the dome. Cashel thought he could see things inside it, but that might just have been the play of the sun falling on a solid surface through patches of mist.
The shiny violet color gave him a nasty feeling, and the hair on his right arm prickled. He probably wouldn't have touched it even without the toad's warning.
A furlong from where he'd started, Cashel saw open water in front of him. The water was brown/black under a gray film of dust and pollen; it sizzled where the base of the dome cut across it. Just as the fir trees grew only so close to the violet curve, the water's surface within an finger's breadth of it was clear of scum.
"Now," said Evne, "set me down and swim under the barrier just as I do. It's no thicker than one of your Sharina's hairs, but it'll fry you to ash if you come up beneath it. Do you understand?"
Cashel squatted at the edge of the still water and lifted the toad from his shoulder. "I understand, mistress," he said. "But I can't swim."
"Well thencrawl, you fool!" the toad snarled. "The water's barely deep enough to float a rowboat! Or if you prefer, jump straight into the barrier and blast your huge gross body to atoms!"
"Crawling sounds fine, mistress," Cashel said quietly. He probed the slough with his left hand instead of using his quarterstaff. The water was warm-blood warm, it seemed-and he was pushing his fingers into soft mud before half his forearm was wet.
"Then do it," snapped Evne. She leaped, a clumsy, splay-footed motion. For a moment she paused beneath the water's grimy surface; then her long hind legs kicked again and she vanished beneath the edge of the dome.
Cashel settled himself carefully in the water, on his belly after taking time to consider it. He didn't like the thought of squirming under the dome without seeing for sure how close he was, but he guessed he'd have an easier job digging down into the mud if he went face first.
Cashel slid his staff forward, keeping it well down in the muck. The last thing he wanted was to have it burned out of his hands before he even got close to the Visitor. He figured things were going to be tough enough as it was.
The staff was under the barrier. He pushed it with the heels of his hands, then sloshed his head under and hauled himself forward using his hands and elbows both. He didn't like water and he hated not being able to see, but nobody'd forced him to be here. Anyway, he wasn't one to complain about his work.
Cashel crawled till he couldn't hold his breath any longer. At last he jerked his head up, blowing the air out of his lungs and gasping in more. He shook himself violently, then rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand to clear some of the mud away before he opened them and looked around.
The place where he'd crossed under the dome was twice his length behind him, marked by the trail of mud spreading back to it. Evne was behind him also. His quarterstaff floated just above the surface, and she sat in the middle of it.
"Have you decided to come back for me and your staff?" she asked. "Or are you going to swim to the center of the Visitor's lair on your own? I don't recommend that, but you're the master."
"I wouldn't care to be without either one of you, mistress," Cashel said as he sloshed to the toad.
The landscape on this side of the dome was a bit different from what Cashel'd come through to reach it. On the dry land there was grass, mostly blue-stem, instead of trees. Reeds grew in the water. The air was clear instead of warm, gray fog, and the light had just the least bit of something strange. Rather than a color, there was an oddsharpness to objects. He didn't see anything like the great glowing hill that'd flown over Manor Bossian while he'd been dining there.
When Cashel looked back the way he'd come, he was scarcely aware of the dome. The air shimmered the way it might do above a hot rock in the summer sun; that was all.
With Evne back on his shoulder, Cashel wiped down his quarterstaff. The wallet's waxed leather kept its contents dry under any conditions short of floating alongside a dead whale, and the lanolin in the wool shed water anyway.
"There!" said the toad with satisfaction. She was peering at a perfectly ordinary patch of air, so far as Cashel could tell. "I was beginning to think that we'd have to get in by our own efforts."
She swiveled her little head toward him. "I don't say we wouldn't have done so," she said. "But I prefer to avoid the labor if I can. We'll have plenty of use for our strength later on."
Cashel squeezed the wool dry and put it away. He'd need it again, he figured, if things worked out.
The air just beyond his staff's reach started to twist and turn gray. Images were forming in it. Cashel had the feeling that he was looking at a rolled tapestry where both the base and the figures were woven in transparent thread. He could almost see what was there…
He stepped onto firm ground, a better place to use his staff. It also put him closer to where the air was changing: not much closer, but enough.
"Do you want to get down, Evne?" he asked, his voice husky.
"No," she said. "We'll need to move quickly in a moment."
"You're right about that," said Cashel.
The distortion vanished; a man in white robes stood in its place. He was over the water, but his gilded sandals didn't dimple the surface. In his right hand was an athame, a wizard's knife. His was forged from metal of the same violet hue as the dome seen from the outside; words of power in the Old Script wrapped around the blade in bands.
Cashel smiled in pleased surprise. "You're Ansache!" he cried. "Did you come to get your daughter free too?"
"I am Lord Ansache, seneschal to the Visitor," the man said, obviously startled. "I have no daughter, and as for why I came here-"
He raised his athame so that it pointed straight up.
"I came to cleanse the Visitor's park of the monkey that crawled in under the barrier!"
Cashel thrust the butt of his staff at Ansache's face.
"Iaththa" Ansache cried. A bolt of red wizardlight sprang at Cashel from the peak of the dome. It met a bubble of blue fire expanding from the tip of his staff and vanished.
Cashel staggered, then thrust again. Ansache screamed and flung himself backward. He turned and ran, changing angle to Cashel with every step.
"Follow!" Evne shouted. "Don't let him get away!"
"He's not," Cashel grunted as he stumbled after the running man. "He won't!"
He wasn't in the marshy landscape any more. He ran down a tunnel with mirrored walls, seeing himself on all sides and multiple copies of Ansache in front of him. The reflections crowded him, constantly warning that somebody was coming at him with a quarterstaff from the corners of his eyes.
Cashel's arms tingled all the way back to the shoulder. They felt like he'd slammed his staff into a cliff face instead of having it stop in a flash of wizardlight. His legs didn't work quite the way they should've; he rocked from side to side as he ran, as if he'd been carrying a heavy stone all the past hour.
Ansache wasn't in good shape either, though. He staggered like a drunk, flailing his arms. The purple athame seemed to be dragging him to the right. Wizardry, even failed wizardry like Ansache's, took a lot out of the fellow using it.
Ansache disappeared. Cashel was in a grove of fruit trees. And animal that looked like an armored possum stood on its hind legs to lick branches clean with a long tongue. It was as big as an ox. When it saw Cashel, it turned and raised its forepaws with blunt, black claws as long as Cashel's fingers. It uttered a hissing squeal.
"Through it!" Evne cried. "That's the pathway!"
Cashel sprang toward the beast, his staff slantwise across his body to beat aside the claws when they swung toward him. The scene-the beast and the grove both-vanished.
Cashel was in the mirrored corridor again. Ansache gave a cry of horror and despair, then lurched another step onward and disappeared.
Cashel followed. He'd follow till he died. It wasn't a conscious decision any more, it was just the way things were going to be till the business ended one way or the other.
He stepped onto ice and skidded. He chopped his staff down; the ferrule gouged a purchase from the slick black surface. It was blazingly cold, freezing his feet because his calluses had been softened by tramping through the bog. The only light came from the sullen red flare that silhouetted ruined buildings on the horizon.
The ice was clear. Beneath it, staring up at Cashel through fans of stress marks, was the face of a giant. His mouth, large enough to swallow Cashel whole, opened in a bellow that made the world vibrate.
"Down his throat!" said Evne. "You'll have to break the ice!"
Cashel swung the staff in a half arc. An azure glitter trailed the ferrules the way sparks stream from a quickly-spun torch. The opposite buttcap slammed into the ice in a silent, mind-numbing blue glare. A thousand tiny cracks shivered across the surface, clouding the face beneath it.
The mouth shouted again. The ice blew apart like seafoam shredded by a gale. Cashel jumped or fell-he wasn't sure which, just that he'd managed to get through-down the roaring tunnel beneath him.
He was in the hall of mirrors again. Ansache, sobbing with terror, stabbed his athame into the wall beside him. Instead of shattering as Cashel expected it to do, the world itself curled back from the point like a sheet of isinglass touched by a hot spark. An edge of reality coiled over the wall and the wizard together, leaving a different universe expanding into the place where the corridor had been.
Cashel stood on a hot, windswept plain. In all directions were hills eroded from the yellow, chalky earth. He raised his left arm to breathe through the sleeve of his tunic and filter out the dust.
"Which way is Ansache?" he said to the toad on his shoulder.
"Ansache doesn't matter any more," Evne said. "To save himself he opened a passage for you onto the ship. Now we'll find the Visitor."
Hutena was on the port tiller; Kulit in the bow as lookout again. The other four crewmen were on the oars, pulling hard. They wore the set expressions of men who knew that they'll be at the task for a long time-but that the faster they worked, the better off they'd be.
Rincip knelt facing sternward, his wrists and ankles bound to the bitts holding the mainstay. Chalcus had stripped him, cutting his tunics off with long strokes of his dagger. It would've been as simple to undress the prisoner normally, but Ilna supposed the dagger-and the nudity itself-was for its effect.
That seemed scarcely necessary; Rincip was terrified, both of what had happened and of what he feared would be next. He looked ready to offer his mother's soul if his captors demanded it. But Chalcus wasn't a man to take unnecessary chances, probably because his life had involved so many risks that hehadn't been able to avoid.
Pointin had gotten out of the hold, for the first time since theBird of the Tide came in sight of Terness Harbor after his rescue the night before. He sat against the starboard gunwale and stared at the captive Sea Guard. His face showed no emotion, no expression at all.
"So, Master Rincip…," Chalcus said. He sat cross-legged facing the captive. As he spoke, he stropped his curved dagger on the ball of his callused foot. "I've some questions for you. If you answer them promptly and honestly, we'll put you into your skiff and you can wait for your friends to pick you up when they come chasing us… as they surely will and as surely will fail, for in the hours it takes the Commander to get a crew together, I'll have theBird across shoals where yourDefender can't follow without ripping her bottom out."
"You're lying," Rincip whispered through dry lips. "You'll kill me whatever I do."
Despite the words, Ilna thought she heard hope in the Sea Guard's tone. Until Chalcus made the offer, Rincip hadn't even imagined that he might survive this night.
Chalcus laughed merrily. "I've killed too many men to count, my friend," he said. "Men, and it might be women and children too; I was a hard fellow when I was younger. I don't need to add to the number, though it won't bother me greatly if that happens. Regardless, we're towing your little boat behind us, which we would not do except I'm willing to set you free on it."
"Ship your oars and raise sail!" Hutena shouted. The four rowers lifted the sweeps from the oarlocks and pulled them aboard.
Ilna glanced over her shoulder. The castle's watchtower was now below the horizon, but she'd seen it a few minutes earlier when she last looked. She didn't doubt that it'd take at least an hour before Lusius could muster enough of a crew to take the patrol vessel out, but that didn't matter. Everybody aboard theBird of the Tide knew that Lusius would choose wizardry rather than swords to solve this problem. That way it couldn't be traced back to him.
"If you don't talk willingly," Chalcus continued in the same playfully cheerful tone, "Mistress Ilna here will weave you a pattern that brings the words out regardless. Then too you'll go over the side; but bound as you are and without the skiff. You may be floating when your friends arrive; but you won't, I think, be in any different state than if I'd slit your throat to give you a quick end… which I will not."
"What do you want to know?" Rincip asked in a guarded, hopeful tone. "I'm not… I mean, the Commander plays things pretty close. I don't know much."
"But you know that Lusius is behind the attacks on shipping, do you not?" Chalcus said. "TheQueen of Heaven and others before her, a dozen ships or so?"
"Yeah, he must be," Rincip said. "Admitted" would've been the wrong word to use since the Commander's deputy was so determinedly separating himself from the business. "He knows to take us out in the barges before anything happens. But it's that demon Gaur who does it and I don't know how. He stays back in the castle, down in his rooms where the dungeons were. I'm not sure even Lusius knows what Gaur does."
Nabarbi loosed a line; the sail slatted down. Ninon and Shausga drew it taut by adjusting the footropes. Ilna hadn't noticed enough change in the breeze to justify switching to sail now, but she wasn't a sailor and these men certainly were. Sure enough, theBird continued on its way; as fast or perhaps a trifle faster than the oars had driven it.
Rincip licked his lips and glanced longingly at the skin of wine which the crewmen were passing around now that their hands were free of the oars. Ilna said, her voice harsher than she'd expected, "We said we'd spare your life. We didn't say that we'd treat you as a friend. Tell us about the attacks!"
"All right, all right," Rincip muttered. "It's always the same. Lusius knows where to go. We wait; the sea's empty, there's nothing there, and then there's a flash and the ship is on the sea rocking and stinking of sulphur. Always the same."
He closed his eyes, moving his head side to side as if he was trying to clear something from it. "I try not to look when I know the light is going to come, but it doesn't help," he said. "It comes right through you. You see it in your brain even if your eyes're covered."
"And when the ship appears…," said Chalcus mildly, ignoring Rincip's trembling terror. "Do you board and slay the crew?"
The captive laughed harshly. "There's no crew!" he said. "There's nobody, not a soul alive ever till that one there-"
He jerked his chin toward Pointin since his hands were tied behind him.
"-hid in the iron chest just now. There's parts of bodies, torn parts and chewed like shrews that a cat brings back. We throw them in the sea to Our Brother, but it's not us who kills them."
"You've been training the seawolf for the whole time, then?" Chalcus said with a broad, hard smile. "A clever man, our Lusius."
"You don't know the half of it," said Rincip. "Did you think it was chance the beast is named Our Brother?"
"Go on," said Chalcus; still smiling, his right index finger playing with the eared pommel of his inward-curving sword.
"Lusius and his twin Ausius bribed Lascarg to send him here as Commander of the Strait," Rincip explained. "They were as much a pair as your two hands are. The first night Ausius fell into the sea and a seawolf ate him before we could get a line over to draw him up. Ever since then the seawolf's followed whenever Lusius puts out, in theDefender or the barges either one. And Lusius never goes aboard one of the fishing boats, because Our Brother is big enough to capsize them… and he thinks that's what he'd do."
"Did Lusius throw his brother to the beast?" Ilna said. "Stab him and throw the body in?"
Rincip shrugged. "It was night," he said. "They were in the far bow of theDefender. Lusius says his brother leaned over holding a stay to look at the seawolf and his hand slipped. Maybe that's what happened."
He scrunched up; if his hands had been free, he'd have been covering his eyes with them, Ilna was sure. He said, "I wish I'd never got into this. We're all afraid, we'd all like to quit. I think the Commander's as scared as the rest of us, but what can we do?"
"You can get very rich, I'm thinking," said Chalcus pleasantly. "From the shell alone, a tidy sum; and with what comes out of the bellies of the ships you loot-richer yet. I know better than most how quickly that gold flows away, but having it means a fine time while it lasts."
"You don't know," Rincip said, shaking his head miserably. "Sure, I've seen bodies before, but just pieces, always pieces… And I kept thinking, what if it gets loose? What if it comes after me?"
"What 'it'?" Ilna said. "What's the thing that does the killing?"
"I don't know," Rincip said, his voice rising. "I don't know, I don't want ever to know. But I'm afraid!"
Which surely was the truth, given that where he wasnow didn't frighten him as much as Gaur's monster did. If the thing was Gaur's at all…
"What do you think, dear one?" Chalcus asked her.
Ilna pursed her lips but it was a moment before she decided how to speak. At last she said, "He's telling the truth, surely, but I don't see that he's any further use to us. Except as a witness, I suppose, but you said we'd let him go."
Chalcus grinned and pulled his dagger from his sash. "So I did," he said. He reached out; Rincip flinched as far away as the cords twisted from his own silk tunic allowed, but Chalcus slipped the dagger behind him.
The bonds parted; Rincip sprawled on the deck, dragging tags of severed cord. Chalcus had cut him loose without seeing the knots or touching the prisoner's skin.
He sheathed his dagger and grinned at Ilna. She grinned back. His was a personality very different from hers, but he showed an equal attention to craftsmanship.
"Get in your skiff, Master Rincip," Chalcus said, gesturing toward the painter tied to a stern bitt. "Go over the side and I'll cast you off. There's oars in the boat, but you may as well wait for the Commander to come by."
"It wouldn't bother me to knock him in the head first," said Hutena, speaking for the first time as his hands gripped the tiller fiercely. He glared at the man who'd talked so casually about aiding in the slaughter of hundreds of sailors much like Hutena himself.
"Nor would it bother me, bosun," Chalcus said with a merry laugh, "but we'll not do that, not just now."
He gestured to the cowering Rincip with the finger that a moment before had been playing with his swordhilt. "Get over the side, my man," he said. "I won't make the offer a third time."
Scrambling and looking back toward Hutena, Rincip tripped over the low railing. He bellowed with shock and fear in the moment he splashed into the water. He must have caught the painter, though, for it jerked violently.
Chalcus cut the skiff loose with a single swift motion of his sword. He sheathed the weapon and said, to Hutena and perhaps to more than the few souls aboard theBird of the Tide, "If every man were hanged who deserved it, friend bosun, I greatly fear that you'd be serving a different captain now."
"You're not like Rincip, captain," Hutena growled. "He's not a man, he's a jackal without the balls to kill for himself. But I guess we can leave him for others if you say so."
Chalcus looked back over the stern, his lips in a hard, bright smile. Ilna followed his gaze; the skiff was almost lost in the slow swells in theBird 's wake.
"They'll be following in theDefender," Chalcus said musingly. "The barges 'll still be loaded with what they took from theQueen of Heaven. And they know theDefender can't catch us before we make the shoals where she can't follow…"
"I just want to get away," said Pointin, staring at the deck between his knees. "I don't care where. Just away!"
There was a cyan flicker in the night sky. If Ilna hadn't known what it really was, she might have guessed it was heat lightning.
"And so we shall, I do hope," said Chalcus. "But first we'll make a detour to a place Master Gaur wishes us to see."
"Captain?" called Kulit from the bow. The sailor's face was carefully composed to hide the fear inside. All the men held weapons, but they clearly shared Ilna's doubt as to how useful that would be.
"Aye, lads," said Chalcus. "It's now that we earn our pay, I'm thinking."
Azure wizardlight flared again, this time as a continuous solid bowl pulsing across the sky directly above theBird of the Tide. It pulsed, and Ilna felt herself falling though nothing around her changed.
For a moment she heard Pointin's terrified screams. Then the roar of wizardry overwhelmed every other sound.