The mechanical birds trilled tunes as golden as their own flashing wings. That was the only soothing thing going on in the audience room this morning.
Garric sat grim-faced at the head of the conference table. Lord Tadai, Lord Waldron, and Master Reise ('representing the Vicar') were arguing over the size, make-up, siting, and especially the funding of the garrison which would remain in Haft when the royal army accompanied Prince Garric to Sandrakkan, the next stage of his progress. The army commander was heated, the acting chancellor was suave, the former palace servant was self-effacing-and none of the three of them would move a hair's breadth from his initial mutually-exclusive position.
"There's no perfect decision!" Carus said. Garric was dizzy with silent frustration but the ancient king was in a livid rage. "You should just do it, doanything, and be done!"
Before Garric could make any response beyond the first twitch of a smile, Carus realized what he'd said and guffawed loudly. "Aye, lad," he said. "You should decide by throwing knucklebones and let the kingdom go smash. The way I did, because I wouldn't spend time on anything that didn't involve a sword."
Each of the principals had several aides carrying document cases. A staff captain and one of Tadai's section heads, both junior members of the Ornifal nobility, snarled at one another beside the silver birdcage; if they'd been allowed to carry swords in the presence of the prince, they'd have been using them. The pair of Blood Eagles on duty watched with superior smiles.
Liane sat demurely beside Garric with a waxed notepad in her hand and a rank of part-opened scrolls laid on the table before her. To look at her she was wholly focused on her documents, oblivious of the discussion going on. Garric was quite sure that if asked, Liane could repeat verbatim any portion of the argument and counter-arguments; which was more thanhe could do, and he'd been trying to follow it.
The door opened. A guard outside whispered to one inside, then a nondescript man entered. He walked around the room against the wall to Liane, then stooped and whispered to her lowered head. Garric smiled again. He didn't know the details-yet-but he knew that if the fellow'd been allowed in now, something more important than a council meeting was about to occur.
Liane nodded to the messenger-one of her spies, obviously-and stood expectantly. Nobody but Garric paid any attention.
Garric stood also and slapped the table. Everyone jumped; Lord Waldron reached reflexively for the hilt of the sword which he wasn't wearing.
"Gentlemen," said Garric. His tone and expression were stiff, just short of angry. "Lady Liane has an announcement."
"An emergency requiring Prince Garric's presence with troops has arisen at the Shrine of the Sister," Liane said. As she spoke, she set her scrolls back each into its place in her travelling desk, then closed the inlaid lid over the cavity.
"Right," said Waldron, no longer angry. To an aide he went on, "Alert Lord Tosli. We'll take the whole palace regiment, so go next to the camp and tell Lord Mayne or whoever's on duty in his headquarters to bring his regiment at once to replace Tosli's men."
"But about the point we're discussing…?" said Tadai.
"For the time being…," Garric said. "That is, until I give different orders, Lord Insto's regiment-" which had the highest number of sickness-related casualties; they'd suffered badly on the voyage from Valles and hadn't recovered yet "-will be billeted on the northern arm of the harbor-" which the troops could easily fortify with a short wall across the base of the peninsula before they had time to build a proper fort. "They'll cause less irritation to ordinary citizens there than if they were living in the middle of the city. They'll be concentrated, but they can deploy either by land or sea to wherever they're needed."
Reise nodded; Waldron shrugged, impatient to get moving. Garric knew from Liane's phrasing that this wasn't an emergency in which seconds counted, so he could use the summons as a way to finish a discussion that would go on for many further hours if merely adjourned.
"But the source of the regiment's pay hasn't been decided," Tadai said. "I-"
"If I may?" Liane said sharply, looking toward Garric. She reopened her notebook but didn't glance down at it.
"Speak," said Garric, curtly formal.
"Two-thirds of the regiment's pay might come from the Vicar's revenues," Liane said, "with the remainder from the royal treasury in acknowledgment of your right to withdraw the troops without notice should the need arise."
"Done," said Garric. "Lord Tadai, prepare the decree for my signature. Lord Insto will be under the command of the Vicar until and unless I recall the regiment to the royal army."
"I don't like the idea of my legates taking orders from civilians, your highness!" Waldron said, frozen in the middle of his stride toward the door.
"Mylegates, if you please, Lord Waldron," Garric said coldly. "And I prefer that system to having two competing authorities in one jurisdiction."
He broke the chill rebuff with a smile. "Since the Vicar, Lord Uzinga, is your wife's nephew and the man you recommended for the post, Waldron, I think you ought to be able to work things out. Now, let's get moving."
"Well, but there's the principle…," Waldron was muttering as he and Garric stepped into the hall together. It was a silly enough comment that the old warrior choked off the rest of the thought before he embarrassed himself further.
His aides and Garric's-Lord Lerdain was carrying Liane's travelling desk; from what Garric could tell the youth was besotted with Liane, but he was too much in awe of her to get himself into trouble by saying the wrong thing-were right behind them. The rest of the guard detachment formed around them in the hallway. The captain on duty handed Waldron his sword; during military operations the rules changed, even for the Blood Eagles.
The door slammed, leaving Reise and Tadai behind to wrestle with the problem of converting Garric's decision into the legally appropriate arrangement of words. The whole entourage started down the corridor in an echoing crash of hobnailed boots and jangling armor.
"Your highness!" Liane said, shouting to be heard.
"Eh?" said Garric, gesturing her forward into the space between him and Lord Waldron. "What is it that's going on at the Shrine of the Sister?"
"Nothing, your highness," Liane said, not quite so shrilly as before. "I want to call on the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock, but I didn't want to say that in the room with the mechanical birds in it."
"The birds?" Garric said, frowning. "The present from the priests of the Shepherd, you mean?"
"Yes, in a way," said Liane. "But it occurred to me that just as Lord Anda didn't know about the urn, so the birds you were given in the name of the Shepherd may not have been what Lady Estanel and her colleagues thought they were sending you. I've just received information that my guess was correct. That doesn't tell me why someone wanted to put that cage of birds close to you, but one of the possibilities is that they were listening to what was said in their presence."
"Can't say I'm sorry," snapped Lord Waldron, who'd heard as well. "I don't need anything to do with the Sister except send the kingdom's enemies to greet her!"
"Can't say I do either," agreed Garric. And, as they burst out of the side entrance to the courtyard where the duty regiment was already drawn up, he lifted Liane with his left arm alone and kissed her.
Cashel looked about the windblown waste to get his bearings. To tell the truth, that didn't put him much ahead of where he'd been at the start. The sun was a bright blur beyond veils of fine yellow dust. Since he didn't know the time of day, all that told him was which direction wasn't north.
"Walk toward that boulder on the right," Evne said in a muffled voice, crouching on a fold inside his inner tunic. This must be an awful place if you were a toad. It wasn't a good one even for Cashel, who'd gotten used to most kinds of weather.
Cashel obediently turned and started walking, though he couldn't see any boulder. He was headed into the wind now, so he had to close his eyes to slits to see anything.
"This doesn't seem much like a ship, Evne," he said.
"The Visitor doesn't use a ship of the sort humans build when he goes from world to world," the toad said. "His device, if you prefer that word, already exists in all of the places where he makes his home. He merely changes his present reality to appear in one place or another."
She paused, then added, "Well, I see you haven't understood a single word that I've said."
"Ma'am," corrected Cashel, "I understood all the words, I think. I just don't see how they fit together; but that's all right because you understand."
He didn't see the boulder till he was just short of clacking it with the ferrule of his staff, slanted out in front of him. "Where do we go now, Evne?" he asked.
A thing with a hard gray carapace and many legs stood up on the other side of the boulder. It was far the biggest thing in the landscape. For a moment it towered motionless over Cashel; then a jointed proboscis with two savage fangs at the tip unfolded toward him.
"It's an illusion!" warned the toad. "Touch the boulder with your bare hand. If you back away, you'll never be able to leave this place, nor will I!"
Cashel pressed his left palm against the warm, wind-scoured limestone. The creature's fangs sure looked real. They were as white as old bone, and the ends had a slight corkscrew shape.
The rock didn't so much give way as suck him in, turning inside out and engulfing Cashel. He gasped with surprise; the part of his mind that he didn't control had been expecting the fangs, so the shock of sudden change seemed like the fatal stroke. Realizing how he'd tricked himself, he burst out laughing.
"I'm glad you're so pleased," Evne said sourly as she crawled out onto his shoulder again.
Cashel looked around. They were on a rocky slope. Besides tufts of short grass, there were bushes and some good-sized pine trees scattered among the outcrops. The wind was noticeably cool, though not enough to be a problem, and wisps of clouds trailed across the pale blue sky.
Cashel shook his tunics out as much as he could, sending a pall of yellow dust down wind. He blew his nose with his fingers. That helped him breathe, but the back of his throat still tasted like alkaline mud.
"Well, this is a nicer place to be than where we just left," he said reasonably.
"Do you think so?" said Evne. "Thatisn't an illusion."
Ah! She meant the cat that had risen from the shelter of a ledge half a furlong up the slope from her and Cashel. Its coat had a mottled black-on-gray pattern. Cashel's first thought was that Ilna'd really like to see the creature… and could you turn the fur into yarn?
The cat flattened. Rather than relaxing out of the wind, it faced Cashel and pressed against the rock like a bolt in a cocked crossbow. Its tail began to twitch; the tip was a tuft of black.
"Where is it we want to go from here, Evne?" Cashel asked. The outcrop behind him looked exactly the same as the one he'd seen in the yellow wasteland, except that this one had gray-green lichen growing on it and blowing dust had scrubbed the other clean.
He rotated the quarterstaff in a slow figure-8 before him, working kinks out of his muscles. If the cat charged, he'd want to meet it with one ferrule and then the other.
"You see the ledge the cat is standing on?" the toad said. "You'll need to touch the rock face below her. Or not, of course, if you want to stay here for the rest of your life."
"No, that's not what I want," said Cashel with a sigh. He'd hoped that all he'd need to do was turn around and push against the rock behind him, leaving the cat to its-to her, apparently-own devices. He'dhoped that, but he hadn't expected it.
He started toward the outcrop. It was one step uphill for every two steps forward, and the footing wasn't the best either because of loose rock. He didn't guess it'd slow the cat down much, though; she must be used to it.
She watched Cashel coming toward her with tilted green eyes. Her head twisted; then she opened her jaws wide and screamed. The sound was metallic and so loud it waked echoes from the slopes for a mile down the canyon.
The cat's long fur made her look bigger than she was, but Cashel had lifted enough animals out of trouble on his shoulders to know that shewas big. He judged she'd weigh more than a ram though probably less than a yearling bull; as much as two men of Cashel's own size, which wasn't very many men.
Her eyeteeth were longer than his index fingers. They'd stab to his vitals if once they closed on his torso.
"You're just going to walk straight up to her, master?" said the toad. "That's your whole plan?"
"Yes'm," Cashel agreed. "I'm surely not going to turn my back, and I don't see any gain in waiting for her to decide how she wants to best work things."
The cat jumped to the slope beneath her ledge. Cashel's staff quivered. Part of his mind judged the path she'd trace to his throat: a leap tothere, and a second leap-spraying back pebbles and an uprooted clump of grass, arrow straight, black claws splayed out before her The cat stopped and screamed again. It was an awful sound, worse than the cry of a rabbit in a leg snare. She turned, as supple as a great gray-furred serpent, and bounded back uphill. She'd vanished over the crest before Cashel had time to let out the breath he'd been holding without knowing it.
"Well, I'm glad to see that," he said as he continued to walk up the slope, breathing more normally now. Mind, he wasn't letting down his guard.
"She could have killed you, you know," Evne said sharply. "You're strong, but she's stronger still, and she has claws and fangs."
"Yes'm," Cashel said. "I was worried about the way things were going to work out."
"Why did you just go walking on, then?" the toad demanded.
"Well, Mistress Evne…," Cashel said, frowning as he tried to understand the question. "She was between us and where we were going. I had to keep on."
The toad laughed shrilly. After a moment she said, "My first thought was that so complete a simpleton wouldn't remember to breathe. Then I recalled that you had, after all, taken the correct course and that 'simple' isn't necessarily the same as 'simpleton.'"
Cashel couldn't see anything useful to say, so he said nothing. Evne hadn't asked a question, after all.
As he came to the outcrop, he saw where the cat had been sharpening her claws on the pine tree a little way to the side. She'd torn the bark into fuzzy russet shreds for near as high up the trunk as Cashel could've reached with his quarterstaff. He guessed she'd been bigger even than he'd thought.
"Do I push on this the way I did the other one, mistress?" he asked, standing a little back from the rock and looking around him instead of staring in front. A slab of limestone wasn't ordinarily much of a threat, but other things in the valley besides the cat might be.
"Yes, touch the patch of white lichen," said Evne. "These are all worlds-"
Cashel set his palm on the blotch; it looked like a face. The world folded in and spat him out the other side of it, just as it had before.
"-where the Visitor dwells part of the time."
Cashel was standing in a forest of moderate-sized hardwoods. The trees were nowhere near as thick as the biggest ones in the common forest of Barca's Hamlet-he could've circled the largest of these with his spread arms-but a tap with his staff confirmed what he'd guessed: the wood was very dense, probably as hard as dogwood.
He looked behind him. Instead of a natural outcrop, he was in front of an ancient stone wall built from squared blocks without mortar. A patch of lichen much like the one he'd seen before spread across two layers.
Cashel frowned. "Evne?" he said. "There at the first place, in the dust; did the Visitor put that mirage there to scare off people like me?"
"Are there other people like you?" the toad said in a mocking tone. Then, answering the question, she said, "No, the race that used to live there used the illusions to drivetheir enemies away from nexi of power. It didn't work with the Visitor, of course; but it angered him."
"Ah," said Cashel. That explained what she meant by 'the race thatused to live' here.
Cashel judged it was early spring, though it felt as warm as summer in the borough. The trees hadn't leafed out enough to stunt the lush undergrowth. There were grasses, but lots of soft-leafed plants as well.
Sheep would love this forage, though woods were apt to hide dangers. Hide them from the shepherd, that is; if there was anything so obviouslydangerous that a sheepwouldn't walk into it, Cashel hadn't found it.
"In a moment!" Evne said peevishly, though Cashel hadn't gotten the question, "Which way do we go now?" beyond the tip of his tongue. "This is a maze, a very complex maze, and neither of us want me to misjudge."
Cashel smiled faintly. It wasn't the first time he'd been snapped at for asking a question somebody else wasn't ready to answer. Though it might have been the first time anybody'd snapped at him for what he hadn't gotten around to saying.
Instinct or maybe the sound made Cashel look to his left. For a moment there was nothing to see; then a clump of small-leafed stems growing from a common base disappeared. Where the clump had been was a round head near as big as a horse's, attached to a body covered with brown fur. It was a good-sized creature, though it didn't have any legs Cashel could see. It chewed sideways.
"Yes, in that direction, I believe," the toad said. She sounded-not hesitant butguarded, extremely careful in what she said. "Past that family of herbivores. Be careful; they can be dangerous."
At the sound of her voice half a handful of other brown heads rose through the undergrowth like sheep when they're alarmed. They didn't look like any animals Cashel had seen before. They reminded him a bit of huge caterpillars, but they had hides like cows.
The first one hissed like a kettle on the boil and lifted a row of spines from the mane down the middle of its back. Those just back of its head were as long as Cashel's forearm. The whole family did the same thing. The others didn't have spikes nearly as long, but they weren't anything Cashel wanted poking into him either.
"The spines are poisonous," Evne said. "They won't kill you outright, but you may get gangrene when the wounds start to fester."
"I'll try not to let that happen," Cashel said calmly. He touched the top of the wall beside him. It wasn't as high as he was; he could vault to the top with the help of his staff if he had to, though he'd rather avoid that.
"Now, I'm going to leave you to your business, sheep," he said, walking slowly to his left. He kept one ferrule out between him and the animals, but he didn't point his staff so close at them that they'd take it for a threat. "I'm headed off where I'll never trouble you again."
They turned together to keep facing him as he moved, hissing louder than before. They were more like a sounder of hogs than a herd of sheep; he might have to get up on that wall "There was a wealthy merchant…,"sang the toad. "In Valles town did dwell…"
The animals went silent as suddenly as a hen when her neck's wrung.
"He had an only daughter…," Evne continued. "The truth to you I'll tell…"
Cashel sidled along a little faster, always keeping his face to the animals and his staff out. He put several good-sized trees between them and the herd.
"Lay the lily oh, oh lay the lily oh," sang Evne.
Cashel couldn't see any of the creatures. He'd just reached the end of the wall when he heard a thumping rush-diminishing. They were going in the other direction. From the sound, they were hunching along like so many inchworms.
Cashel grinned. That was something he'd like to see, but not so badly he was going to chase after the herd.
"Thank you, Evne," he said. "I'd just been thinking that if Garric was here, he could've played them a tune on his pipes like he did the sheep sometimes when they were spooky from a storm coming."
The toad sniffed. "Don't mention it," she said. "I certainly didn't want to walk the rest of the way to the nexus myself. Not to mention deal with what happens after that."
She pointed with a hind leg again and added, "A little to the right here. It shouldn't be very-"
Cashel saw the stone and nodded his staff toward it.
"Yes, that's it," said Evne brusquely. "Touch the bust of the god Ruhk there on top."
Cashel hadn't realized it was a worked stone. Now that Evne told him, he could see it was built from several layers rather than a single block, but he still couldn't imagine how she knew the lump was supposed to be anything or anybody.
He took a last look around the forest. It'd been a nice place compared to some, and it reminded him of home. If Ruhk didn't have a fancy statue, well, strangers seeing the scratches on the stone above the pasture south of Barca's Hamlet probably wouldn't guess the shepherds left offerings to Duzi there.
Cashel laid his palm on the stone. He felt himself sucked into a waste of blinding light and his own mirrored image infinitely repeated.
"He's trapped us!" Evne said from Cashel's shoulder. She spoke in a distinct voice, a little louder than usual. "I don't see a way out from our side."
The mirrored walls were flowing closed like cold honey. Cashel tried to swing his quarterstaff, but the ferrules were already fixed in the matrix. He couldn't move his feet, and the glittering pressure moved up his calves.
"The Visitor may keep us alive for a time," said Evne. She was still free on his shoulder, not that there was any place for her to go. "Or of course he may not."
Cashel twisted his staff again. The thick hickory flexed, but even he couldn't make it move any more than that. The mirrored faces crawled toward his hands, engulfing the wood on their way.
Cashel reached into his wallet and removed the last of the rubies Kakoral had given him. It wasn't much of a hope, but it was the best one going.
"Another thirty seconds, I'd judge," said Evne. "A little longer for me if I hop onto your head, but I don't know that I'll bother."
Cashel didn't trust the walls. They were hard enough where they held him, but he guessed that they'd suck in anything he threw at them. He held the red jewel over his head, squeezing it between his thumbs. Nobody was strong enough to break a ruby with his bare hands, but this wasn't exactly a ruby…
A thought struck him; he laughed.
"Yes," said Evne, "the Visitor knows he's in a fight this time."
And as she spoke, there was a red flash and the stone powdered between Cashel's thumbs.
The clumsy raft touched while it was still several yards out in the fjord; a length of driftwood had sagged out of its lashings to drag beneath the surface. Sharina roused herself as men from the shore splashed out to pull them onto the beach.
The fur she'd been lying on was soaked, but it'd kept her from being splashed from between the logs every time the paddlers slopped the raft forward. Scoggin glanced at her with concern; Franca was huddled in a ball with Neal's short cape over him. He doubtless would've been concerned, but he hadn't recovered from his own dip into the water.
"I'm all right," she said, and managed to stand up to prove it. 'All right' didn't necessarily mean 'good', but she was certainly feeling better. She thought she'd be able to keep food down shortly, and that should help a lot.
Sharina walked across the wobbling raft and hopped to the stone beach without stepping into the water again. Doing that was pointless except as an exercise, but proving that she had her strength and balance back was oddly more satisfying than the fact she'd retrieved the Key of Reyazel. Part of her wondered if the world wouldn't have been better off with the key remaining at the bottom of the fjord.
She grinned as she pulled her shift on, transferring Beard from one hand to the other so that she never had to put him down.
"You've got a right to be happy about what you've done, mistress," Neal said. He was helping-carrying would be a more descriptive word-Alfdan to dry land. The wizard's efforts had cost him as much as diving had Sharina, though Alfdan had a blankly beatific expression and was mumbling. Hs hands were clasped together over the key; he looked down at it through the opening between his thumbs.
"Do I?" Sharina said. "Perhaps. But what I was thinking is thatthis world can't be harmed very much by me bringing up the key."
"Get the mistress another fur!" Neal shouted, still supporting the trembling wizard. "By the Lady, don't any of you have sense?"
"I'm all right," Sharina said. "But get something for Franca."
Several men grabbed robes from their packs and trotted over to her. Sharina handed the first to Franca-he took it with a grateful smile-and wrapped a sheepskin around her shoulders wool side inward. It felt good, though she really hadn't been cold without the cover. She wondered if that had something to do with holding Beard; he was certainly more than an axe that talked.
Alfdan began hobbling up the slope toward the ruined tower. Neal followed him, protesting, "Sir, I think you should rest before you do anything more. You're not-"
"No, you fool!" the wizard snarled with more animation than seemed likely in his weakness. "I have the key now and I'm going to use it!"
Neal looked over his shoulder at Sharina, raising an eyebrow in question. Sharina laughed. Why not?
"Yes, all right," she said, starting after Neal and the wizard. " I may as well see what the thing does. Beard and I worked hard enough to get it."
She wasn't surprised that the whole band trailed along as soon as she said she was going with Alfdan. Nor was she surprised to hear the axe protest, "Oh, mistress, it wasn't work, it was the greatest pleasure Beard has had in all the ages of his life. You're a wonderful mistress to bring Beard an Elemental's life to drink! And there'll be more, Beard knows there'll be more before the ice takes all!"
Sharina smiled wryly. Beard was probably right about her having to kill additional things that she'd rather never have known existed. And he might be right about the ice too; but if he was, well, she'd have died long before it happened.
Alfdan had straightened and was taking quick, short steps like an old man who'd gotten into his stride. He held the Key of Reyazel out in his left hand as though it were a talisman. It flashed warmly as it jerked back and forth in time with his steps.
"What's the tower for, mistress?" Scoggin asked politely. He and Franca walked on either side of her, staking their claim to her authority as well as being protective. "It doesn't make any sense to build a fort halfway up a hill, does it?"
"I don't know either," Sharina said. It was flattering that everyone here thought she was an authority, but it also seemed silly; she wasn't even from this world! Though "Beard," she said. "Do you know about the tower?"
"That?" the axe said dismissively. "A customs post, that's all. It was on the shore before the sea fell."
Beard sighed and went on, "Nothing there to kill. Nothing anywhere around here to kill… unless we go back into the fjord?"
"No," said Sharina firmly. "We're not going to do that."
The slope became abruptly steeper. Alfdan dropped onto one hand and the knuckles of the other, still clutching the key. Neal bent to help, but the wizard gained strength as he neared his goal. He stood upright again on the flat apron before the tower's door. It was on the landward side so storm surges wouldn't batter it.
"But it's open," a man said doubtfully. "By the Sister, it's only hanging by the one hinge!"
Sharina stepped to side of the wizard as he contemplated the door. It was thick oak, cross-braced with more oak, but the last occupant to leave the tower hadn't latched it. Years of wind battering the heavy panel back and forth had broken the upper hinge, leaving the door half-open and askew.
"I'd like to see the key," she said quietly.
"No!" Alfdan cried, hiding the golden sheen in both hands and clutching them tight to his breast. "It's mine!"
"It's yours," Sharina agreed, calm-voiced but frowning. "I'd like to look at it, though. I had other things on my mind when I saw it before."
"My mistress killed an Elemental to fetch the key to the surface," said Beard in an eager singsong. "A wizard's blood isn't much for taste, but Beard would drink it down regardless."
"Let her see the thing," said Layson. "Let us all see it! She fetched it up, and the rest of us have a right too."
With the desperate eyes of a rabbit searching for escape, Alfdan looked at Neal on his other side. Neal gave a dismissive jerk of his head. "Let Mistress Sharina see it," he said.
Terrified, his mouth working, Alfdan held the key out between his left thumb and forefinger. He turned his head away so that he wouldn't have to look at it or Sharina. She took it, feeling him resist for a moment.
Save that it was gold instead of brass, the Key of Reyazel was much like what Sharina's mother used for the lock of the inn's pantry in Barca's Hamlet. The shaft was flat on one end and flared into four pins of varied length at the other. The user stuck the pins into the curving slots of the lockplate and rotated the key to open the latch.
The door of the abandoned tower had a lock, but its key would've been a huge iron thing with a pair of hooks to engage holes in the heavy bar on the inside. It was no more like the Key of Reyazel than it was like an oil lamp; and as the man had said ago, the door was open.
Turning, Sharina offered the key to Neal. He shook his head, flaring his auburn hair. "Layson?" she asked. "Anyone?"
"That's all right," Layson muttered, scowling at his boots. "But we got a right to see it, that's all I meant."
"Yeah, let's get on with it," said a man at the back of the crowd. There wasn't room for everybody on the apron, so some of the band had climbed up the slope for a better view of what was going on.
Sharina returned the key to Alfdan. He took it, smirking at her. The pause had settled him back into his normal personality. That wasn't entirely a good thing, but Sharina supposed it was better than wondering what a dazed, half-mad wizard was going to do next.
Alfdan thrust the Key of Reyazel into the latch opening. Holding it there, he raised his whalebone staff over head and said in a low voice, "Herewet," He twisted the key in his left hand.
A door opened; not the door of the tower but a half-glimpsed thing of light and surfaces reminding Sharina of what she'd seen when she dived into the fjord. Beyond was a beach flooded with warm sunlight. The wizard cried in triumph and stumbled through, leaving the key in the lock.
Sharina hesitated, but not long enough for anyone outside her mind to notice. She'd rather not have entered the world through the door at least until she'd had a good look at it from this side, but she and Beard needed to be close by Alfdan to protect him.
If anything happened to the wizard, the rest of them were probably marooned here for the rest of their lives. Given how barren the region was, that might not be a very long sentence.
Within the portal, the ground was sandy clay: dry, cream colored and as solid as rock beneath Sharina's bare feet. Alfdan was walking toward the sea with the same short, quick steps that had brought him to the tower. She dropped the sheepskin and caught up with him in a few long strides, holding the axe in both hands.
The sun was hot. A strong breeze blew from the sea, pulling the wizard's robe and Sharina's shift back in the direction they'd come. Her feet scuffed into the surface, pure sand now.
"Wait, mistress!" Franca called; she looked over her shoulder. He and Scoggin were trotting toward her. The rest of the band were now on the beach also, looking around with cautious pleasure. The doorway was a slot of emptiness in the bright air.
They were at the end of a semicircular bay. The sea beyond stretched north and south to the horizon, swelling and subsiding with slow majesty. The water was a chalky green near the shore but pale ultramarine where it met the sky.
"It's here," Alfdan said. "Somewhere close, it must be…"
He wasn't looking at her; Sharina wasn't sure that the wizard knew he was speaking aloud. "What's here?" she asked. "What are we looking for?"
"Mistress…?" said the axe. Beard's tone was diffident, unlike anything she'd heard from his steel lips in the past. "I don't think you should stay here. If I could see the thing, I would try to eat its soul, but I'm not sure…"
"Whose soul?" Sharina said sharply. She was suddenly angry, though she knew she was overreacting. Exhaustion and hunger had stripped away her normal patience. "What is it that's here?"
"Mistress, I don't know," said Beard. "And I'm not sure we can kill it, you and Beard."
What had been merely a swell in the open sea rose into a great curling surge as it swept into the bay. It licked the shoreline with a roar and a trail of foam, washing thirty yards up the beach in a thin sheet, then spun its way back out to sea. The water was shockingly cold, but it splashed no higher than Sharina's ankles.
Alfdan gave a gasp of wonder. He poked the firm sand with his wand, then squatted to dig with both hands. Sharina watched him, holding Beard ready.
"Ah!" the wizard cried. He rose holding a ring set with a tiny amethyst, barely a wink of purple against the narrow gold bezel. "The Pantropic! The specific against all poisons, here!"
He slipped the ring onto his left little finger and turned gleefully to the company. "No venom can touch me now!" he cried. "I'm safe! I'm safe!"
"Who wanted to poison you before?" Franca asked, frowning.
"You're not such a fool as some wizards I know, boy," said Beard loudly. "It's a toy that does nothing except add to Master Great One's collection. None of them mean anything to him, nor to the ice that will have him and them all in no great time."
"Look!" cried a man standing at the sea edge. He'd suddenly dug in the sand with his spear butt. "Look at this diamond!"
"I don't much like this place," Layson said, holding a nocked arrow to his bow. He'd walked slowly toward Sharina and her companions, looking around watchfully.
"You're right not to like it," said Beard. "But it likes you all very much."
"We've found what we came for," Sharina said, aware that she sounded harsh. "Now let's get back."
She touched Alfdan's sleeve. She didn't have to pull hard as she'd thought she might: he came with no more than guidance.
"Oh!" cried Franca, rising from the sand where he'd knelt, holding up an object. "Oh! My father's charm! I thought it'd been…"
Sharina looked at it, a disk of porcelain with a relief of the Shepherd leaning on his staff between a pair of fruit trees. It was pierced to be hung from a thong. Priests sold them when they came through Barca's Hamlet with the Tithe Procession; several people in the borough had similar ones, more as talismans than for deeper religious reasons.
It hadn't brought much luck for Franca's father; but then this was one of thousands of identical disks and might have nothing to do with the man…
Franca turned it over and showed Sharina the name clumsily scratched on the back. "Orrin!" he said. "My father!"
She felt cold. "Let's get out of here!" she said, loud enough they could all hear. Most of the band was now digging at the sea's edge and chirruping in delight.
"The currents sweep things into this bay and leave them," Alfdan said, looking around with a critical eye. "There's probably more things here. Things of unimaginable value!"
"You think the sea brought you that ring, wizard?" Beard said. "Do you really think that?"
"I didn't say the sea!" Alfdan said. "There's more currents than those in the water, axe!"
"So there are," said Beard. "And who controls them, do you know? I don't; but I don't want my mistress to learn!"
"Leave him if he wants to stay!" Layson muttered. "I'm going back."
"Come!" said Sharina, pulling the wizard's arm. She stepped and her toe stubbed something. A bit of driftwood, she thought as she glanced down reflexively; but she'd flipped up the weathered back to expose a surface of fresh yellow pine with a crude carving.
Sharina picked it up. She was trembling. "Mistress?" said Scoggin in concern.
Somebody'd carved a figure of the Lady on the scrap of wood; the sort of thing that a traveller might make when he wanted to pray of an evening in a distant place. You had to know what the scratchesmust be to identify the image, and you couldn't possibly tell who'd made them.
But Sharina knew. "Nonnus…," she whispered.
With sudden certainty, she turned and flung the scrap toward the sea. "Come!" she said. "Now!"
She strode toward the doorway, no longer concerned whether Alfdan and the rest followed her or not. Scoggin and Layson were quickly at her side. Franca trotted along after when he saw them leaving. The wizard was coming, and the others as well.
"What was that, mistress?" Scoggin asked, now more concerned about her than he was for their surroundings. "That you found?"
"The man who carved that died for me," Sharina said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but everything was still a blur. "Died for me and the world, I suppose; but for me. I don't know why it was here, but I know that whatever rules this place isn't a friend of mine. So I gave it back."
She stepped through the doorway, into chill air and a sky in which the sun was already hidden beneath the high cliffs. She'd forgotten the sheepskin but she didn't care; the relief was as great as what she'd felt when she breathed again after her third plunge into the fjord.
Neal walked back to the doorway with a stunned expression. He held something cupped in his left hand, but he wasn't looking at it or even toward his hand. Alfdan followed, reaching for the key as he passed through. He stopped when he realized that a handful of men were still on the beach side of the portal.
"Come along!" the wizard shouted peevishly. "You won't be able to return after I take the key out!"
That brought them at a shambling run. Two were chattering toward one another with animation; toward, not to, because neither could've been listening to what the other said. The rest were in a state of numb concern, their expressions much like Neal's.
Alfdan twisted the key. "Wait!" said Neal, putting his right hand over the wizard's. He flung the object in his left hand back through the opening, then turned away. Sharina caught a glimpse of something spinning in the sunlight; a miniature painted on ivory.
Alfdan withdrew the key; they were all standing before a gutted tower, its door sagging inward. Neal caught Sharina's eye and muttered, "What did I want with that? She's been dead all these years!"
"Yes," said Sharina. "I understand."
She turned to the wizard and said, "I've carried out my part of the bargain; now it's your turn. Take me to the farthest north. Take me to where She is."
"Are you mad?" Alfdan said. "You'd find nothing there but your death!"
"I'll die anyway," Sharina said. "Sooner or later. If we kill Her, perhaps it'll be later."
"Go, then," Alfdan snarled. "But you'll go alone. When I said I'd carry you where you wanted to go, I didn't mean I'd commit suicide. I'll not take you to Her!"
"If he'll not keep his bargain with us, mistress," said Beard in a coyly musing tone, "then there's no reason for him to live, is there?"
The wizard backed away and stumbled. "There's no need for that," Sharina said sharply to her axe.
"There's no need for threats," Neal said in near echo. "Master Alfdan, you and Mistress Sharina made a bargain. She kept her part; and you'll keep yours."
"Are youall mad, then?" Alfdan said, looking around the circle of his followers. "Do you want to die? That's all you can possibly do if you go to Her!"
"I don't…," Burness began in a small voice.
"Shut up, old man!" Layson snarled. "We didn't make a bargain with the wizard, butshe did; and he's going to keep it or she won't have to kill him. I will!"
Alfdan rubbed his forehead; the amethyst on his finger winked like a fairy's eye. "It'll take days," he said. "Even in the Queen Ship."
"Oh, days are fine," said Beard. "We have days and weeks and months before the ice covers all."
He tittered like a steel skeleton. "Days and weeks and months, yes," he said. "But not years, no, not if you don't kill Her very quickly. For She'll have drained all warmth and all power from this world and there'll be no blood left for Beard to drink!"
Blue wizardlight flared in a roaring sphere around theBird of the Tide. When it vanished, Ilna had the momentary impression that she was blind and seeing stark black and white images of the Hell inside her mind.
TheBird tipped to its left, crunching on cracked rock. The vessel's hull was shallow so she didn't go all the way over on her side, but the mast now tilted at an angle halfway between the horizon and the roiling yellow sky. The air stank fiercely of brimstone, making Ilna's eyes water and her bare skin sting.
Pointin had fallen against the port railing hard enough to knock the breath out of him. That kept him silent, the one good thing Ilna could find in this situation.
No! She was unharmed, Chalcus and the crew were unharmed-and they were all in the place they'd chosen to go in order to do their duty. She had no reason whatever for complaint.
Ilna braced her left foot on the railing and squinted to save her eyeballs as much as she could while she looked at the landscape. It was an awful place.
Spikes of rock, cut deeper where layers rested on one another, rose from flat, cracked terrain. The wind that had ravaged them whipped around theBird now, rocking her violently. Chalcus and the men leaped to the lines, bringing the spar clattering down; there was no time to furl the sail properly.
Ilna hadn't noticed any orders passing. The sailors all knew what had to be done and did it. She could learn to like sailors; competent ones, at any rate… though the only problem she had with competent people inany walk of life was that she found so few of them.
There was little in the landscape but rock and heat and the sulfurous wind. On the horizon something pulsed orange-red, possibly a volcano. Except for that, Ilna couldn't see anything farther away than she could fling a stone. The sun was a huge dull blur through clouds ranging from sepia to a yellow so dark it could scarcely be called a color.
Something shrieked in the distance; or maybe it was just wind through the rocks.
"What happens now?" Tellura asked, his voice muffled. He was holding the bosom of his tunic over his mouth and nose to breathe. "Are they going to smother us? Is that it?"
Ilna doubted that a layer of coarse wool would help much with the brimstone; besides, she needed her hands for other things. Her fingers formed knots in yarn with the flawless certainty of raindrops falling on a pond.
"Not that," Chalcus said. He held his incurved sword in one hand, the dagger in the other. "There'll be company, have no doubt, my friends."
Hutena was the only crewman who'd seen the fragments of human bodies on theQueen of Heaven. Bad though this air was to breathe, no one could imagine it had causedthat slaughter.
Chalcus gestured toward the higher railing. "Kulit and Nabarbi," he said, "keep watch to starboard side. We don't know which direction it'll come fr-"
Pointin screamed piercingly. Ilna turned.
A huge thing shambled out of the swirling darkness. It walked on two legs and had two long arms as well, dangling near the ground as it hunched forward. Nothing else about it was manlike. Hard, smooth plates like insect armor covered its limbs and body.
Shausga drew his bowstring to his right ear and loosed. The arrow cracked against the creature's narrow chest and glanced off.
The creature raised its arms, opening the pincers in place of hands. It came on, gurgling like the last wine from a bottle.