Ilna stepped over the railing, lowering herself carefully to the ground. She could've jumped, but she wasn't sure of the footing-and she wasquite sure that she couldn't afford to fall on her face at this juncture.
"It's twenty feet tall!" Ninon cried. "By theGods, it's a demon from Hell!"
Ilna smiled faintly. The creature might or might not be a demon, but it wasn'tfrom anywhere: it had stayed home. TheBird of the Tide and her crew were the ones who weren't where they belonged. She walked forward, holding the knotted pattern between her hands.
Another arrow, then two in quick succession, struck the creature. Two skidded away like rays of light from polished steel; the thirdwhack ed the ridge between the creature's bulging, faceted eyes. The shaft shattered and spun off in the wind like a handful of rye straw.
Ilna kept walking. She hoped there was enough light for the creature to see her pattern. Animals didn't see things the same way humans did.
She smiled more broadly. It would be-briefly-a pity if this thing's eyesight wasn't good enough to slip into the trap she'd so skillfully woven for it.
The air had been hot, but the ground was oven hot. Ilna almost stepped on one of the cracks zigzagging across the rough stone; heat radiating up from it struck her callused foot a punishing blow. When she glanced down, she saw a tremble of orange light at the bottom of the narrow crevice: molten rock flowed between the solid plates.
The creature rubbed its elbows against the sides of its torso, making a shrieking sound like that of a cicada hugely magnified. It stretched a jointed arm toward Ilna's face, the pincers opening fully. Each curved blade was as long as a sickle's.
Ilna spread her knotted pattern above her head. If it didn't work, she didn't want Chalcus to think that her last act had been to hide her eyes from the sight of death reaching toward her.
The creature staggered. Its arm froze in mid air and its mouth opened slightly; the jaw plates spread sideways, not up and down. Its breath reeked like a tanner's yard, rotted foulness and the savage bite of lye.
Ilna didn't move; her eyes were blind with tears from the brimstone. Behind her Chalcus shouted words that the wind whipped in the other direction. Men ran past Ilna on either side; they were blurs of movement, not individuals.
An axe rang; Hutena gave a high-pitched cry of triumph. Ilna blinked; bringing the scene into sudden focus. She realized she'd been afraid to take her eyes off the creature for fear that it too would look away and break the binding spell.
The creature began to topple sideways. The bosun wrenched his axe out of its right knee in a wave of syrupy blood. The other sailors hacked with their blunt-tipped swords, aiming at the knees and ankles. Their blades generally clanged and bounced back, leaving lines scored across the creature's hard casing.
The creature hit the ground with the point of its shoulder, cracking the rock. It continued to stare at Ilna, its eyes like those of a landed fish. Chalcus stepped close, judged his victim, and stabbed through the creature's open mouth with the quick skill of a wasp paralyzing a spider.
The creature leaped like a beheaded chicken, both legs spasming; the right one flailed sideways at the broken knee. Chalcus wouldn't let go of his sword, so it pulled his feet off the ground. He kicked at the creature's chest with a great cry and jerked his blade free.
The creature toppled again. It half turned, its eyes sightless when the brain behind them died. It crashed into a needle of wind-carved rock, wavered there for a moment, then flopped onto its back. Its limbs waggled like a dying beetle's.
"Back to the ship, my lads!" Chalcus called, hoarse from the searing atmosphere. "We don't want to be left here when Lusius and his fellows call theBird home, as they surely will."
Ilna lowered her hands, bunching the pattern together between them again. Hot as this place was, she'd felt a chill as the creature died. She hadn't killed the thing with her art-she doubted that she'd have been able to kill it or she would have tried-but there'd been a link between her and her giant victim there at the end.
Everyone was all right. Chalcus and the six sailors were, at least; she didn't see Pointin, but the supercargo would be in the hold out of sight unless he'd become a different man from the one who'd survived the attack on theQueen of Heaven.
"You took no harm in the business, my dear one?" Chalcus said, suddenly at her side. He'd sheathed his dagger so he could wipe the swordblade with the tail of his silk sash. The creature's blood had congealed to a tarry smear.
"No," Ilna said, "though I'll be glad to leave this place. I wonder if Lusius and his wizard know where they're sending ships or if it's just that they're ready to be looted when they come back?"
"Sir!" cried Shausga, pointing with his sword toward an arch which the wind had carved from the surrounding rock. He was left-handed. "Mistress Ilna, there!"
A monster like the first came through the arch. In the whirling shadows Ilna thought it was smaller, but once clear of the rock it rose onto its hind legs. Tall as the first creature had been, this stood half again as high.
"Right, well, we know the job now, lads, so it won't be so hard," said Chalcus. He hacked to clear his throat, then whipped his sword in a shimmering figure-8. The steel was as clean as it'd been when he boarded theBird in Carcosa. "But I think we'll wait here close by our good vessel, as we know now how the business will go."
Another shrilling cry sounded, very close though Ilna couldn't tell the direction in this waste of rock and fire and darkness. The creature walking toward them hadn't made the terrible sound. Its arms were lifted, the elbows splayed out to the sides.
"What's that?" Kulit said, his voice rising. "Where is it? What are we going to do?"
"Master Chalcus!" Ilna said. "Take this, if you will. You've seen how to use it."
She held the pattern to him, bunched; Chalcus sheathed his weapons with quick understanding, then reached for the fabric. Ilna placed it in his hands deliberately, making sure the correct side would be outward when he spread it to the monster.
"All right, lads," Chalcus said, turning with a grin that might well be genuine. "We know the drill, so Mistress Ilna is letting us handle it ourselves. Let's get on with it, hey?"
The ground shuddered; Ilna turned. She'd thought the sheer rock to the left was a butte. Now she saw that it was two walls standing close together; between them lurched a third monster.
Ilna walked toward the creature, smiling faintly. She'd taken more lengths of yarn out of her sleeve and was knotting them. At worst, devouring her might delay the creature long enough that Chalcus and the crew could dispatch their opponent and turn their attention to the new threat.
"All right, boys!" Hutena snarled behind her. "You heard the captain!"
Ilna'd thought of giving the fabric to the bosun or another of the crewmen, freeing Chalcus to do whatever was most important But holding the pattern steady before the oncoming monsterwas the most important thing, beyond question. The sailors' courage went beyond the standard even of brave men, but Ilna knew from her own experience just how heavy the weight of the creature's eyes felt. Chalcus wouldn't fail.
Whether Ilna would succeed in knotting a second pattern in the time she had-that was another matter. If she didn't-her smile was broad-she wouldn't have to worry about listening to reproaches on her performance.
The creature walking toward her wasn't as tall as the other two, but it looked as broad as both of them together. Its chestplate was flat instead of having a keel down the center. A different breed or simply the other sex? She didn't suppose it mattered.
The thing's arms unfolded toward her with the smooth certainty of a pair of bluefish driving their prey together for the kill. The pincers clacked open; the inner edges were black and undulating.
Ilna raised the new pattern high. For an instant she didn't know whether the figure her fingers had knotted was complete, only that she'd run out of time to do more.
The creature froze. If Ilna'd believed in the Gods, she'd have thanked Them. Smiling wryly, she whispered a prayer of thanks anyway. She'd much rather seem a fool for thanking nonexistent beings than she wanted to seem ungrateful.
There were shouts and cries behind her, then the clang of steel on armor that was very nearly as hard. Ilna's eyesight blurred from the rasping sulphurous wind. She blinked repeatedly but didn't notice much improvement. Well, there was very little in this place that she wanted to see anyway.
She felt the ground shake through the soles of her feet. There was a tremendous crash, then a lesser shock and crash. The sailors had brought down the creature Chalcus held for them. It had hit the rock like a felled tree and bounced.
"Come on, boys!" Chalcus croaked in a voice scarcely his and scarcely human. "If anything happens to the mistress, then Sister take my soul if I'll bother to go back!"
Ilna felt herself swaying. She continued to stare at the monster, but it'd become a pulsing haze whose color shifted from orange to purple and back.
Polished swordblades flashed brighter than the yellow light they reflected. The creature lowed like a bull, the first sound Ilna had heard come from the mouth of one of them.
"Get her clear!" Chalcus shouted. "Don't let the green devil-"
Hutena caught Ilna around the waist and dragged her back. "You numbskull!" she shouted, her voice trembling an octave higher with fury. "You've killed us-"
The monster fell forward, smashing the rock. Had Ilna not moved-had Hutena not moved her-she'd have been pulped as surely as a fool of a woodsman who trips in front of the tree he's toppled.
The bosun set Ilna on her feet again. "Aboard theBird!" a voice called from a great distance. " Quick! You can feel it coming!"
Ilna took a step, wobbled, and felt Hutena lift her again in his left arm. He had the axe in the other hand, its head black and gummy with the blood of the monsters it had brought down.
Now that Ilna no longer focused on her own art, she felt the ripples of power which'd warned Chalcus that Lusius' wizard was at work again. Once she even thought she saw an azure flicker, but that could've been a trick of her eyes or mind rather than Gaur's doing.
Hutena lifted Ilna over theBird 's railing, passing her to Kulit. She felt a flash of anger at being treated like an invalid when she could've boarded by herself And so she could've done, but the men hadn't been sure and therefore hadn't taken any chances. There wasn't time for a mistake, and there wasn't time for the pride of Ilna os-Kenset either. There was never time for that!
Chalcus brought up the rear, his sword and dagger out. He'd wrapped Ilna's loose fabric of knots around his waist. The sash fouled with monster's blood lay crinkled on the ground behind him.
Chalcus caught Ilna's eyes and grinned; but he stumbled as he jumped to the railing and had to catch himself. "I've a better appreciation for your work now, dear heart," he said, not whispering but in a voice few others could hear. "And I'll take all day as stroke oar on a trireme before I'll play at being you again."
She smiled in acknowledgment, but the comment made her imagine being at a warship's oar all day. It was an absurd notion… and yet she'd do it if she had to, poorly beyond question but do it regardless.
Another wash of power made Ilna's skin prickle. The blue quiver on the masthead and the tips of the spar couldn't have been her imagination this time.
"Into the hold, lads," Chalcus ordered, his voice gaining strength as he returned to his familiar occupations. "No sound, now, till I give the word."
Nabarbi slid the hatch cover away; it'd lain part open when the crew returned to the vessel. "Captain!" he shouted.
Pointin lay on his back beside the iron-bound chest that was theBird 's only cargo. The smell of camphor filled the hold, strong enough to be noticed despite this hellworld's brimstone stench.
Ilna had seen many dead men, and no few corpses of men who'd died horribly. She had never seen a look of more consummate agony than that on the supercargo's distorted face.
"May the shepherd save us if he's let them out!" Hutena cried.
Chalcus hopped into the shallow hold. "He didn't," he said. "He reached in to empty the chest for his own use, but he got no farther. And if he had, we'd still have no choice but to take the risk. Briskly, lads! There's not much time."
Ilna helped herself into the hold by her arms. She could still see the ravaged landscape over the portside railing. A pair of creatures, similar to the others but half the size, had come out. They were tearing chunks of flesh from the last one slain. She wondered if they were the dead monster's cubs.
"Shall we throw him out?" Hutena said, prodding Pointin's corpse with his foot.
"He's not in our way," said Chalcus. "Given what he paid to avoid being eaten by our demon friends here, I think we can carry him back for a burial in the sea he knew."
Two sailors lifted the hatch cover overhead and set it back askew on the coaming. Ilna could see wedges of the burning sky on all four sides.
There was a roaring azure flash. Ilna was falling again, gripped by wizardry.
"Ah, the great wizard is landing," said Beard, jarring Sharina out of her reverie. Her eyes passed over the seascape and occasional islands which the Queen Ship sailed by, but the view meant nothing to her. Images struck her mind and glanced off like reflections from the surface of a pond.
"What?" Sharina murmured. Directly ahead was a gravel island which before the sea level dropped would have been only a few yards in diameter. It was several times as large now, but vegetation hadn't had time to spread far from the small birches on the original rocky peak. Brush straggled downward in a ragged ring, and sea oats nodded in the easterly wind.
"Why?" Sharina said, correcting herself now that she'd really looked at the islet toward which the ship was dropping. "There isn't anything here."
"That's safer, mistress," said Neal. "For us just stopping, I mean. We'll sleep here and go on in the morning, when Alfdan's had a chance to recover."
"Oh," said Sharina, looking over her shoulder. "Of course."
The wizard stood upright by the help of two of his men. His features were as tight as a skull's. Sharina knew how much effort went into wizardry, but because she wasn't a wizard herself her unconscious mind discounted it unless she really thought about the matter.
She grinned. Maybe she could trick herself into thinking of wizards as people swimming long distances through a sea of power. She understood swimming.
The Queen Ship grounded with a soft crunch. Alfdan's men were already on their feet. Franca remained asleep, rolled as tightly as a pillbug and muttering under his breath. Scoggin shook him.
"Wakey, wakey, lad," Scoggin said. "It's dry land for a while, which I don't regret."
Franca jerked alert as the ship tilted onto its side, but Scoggin still had to keep a hand on the youth to keep him from slipping onto the gravel. Sharina noticed the interplay with a slight smile. The disaster that was destroying this world seemed to be making men-these men, at any rate-behave better than she'd have expected of villagers during an ordinary winter in Barca's Hamlet.
"Tasleen, get a fire going," Neal ordered with nonchalant authority. Tasleen, a small, dark fellow from Dalopo, had an almost magical skill with a fire-bow. "Some of the rest of you gather driftwood."
Franca grabbed the gray, salt-dried trunk of a tree whose bark had weathered off in the distant past. Scoggin gripped the piece by another stub branch and said, "There's a righteous plenty ofthat here, even if there's bloody little else."
"Mistress lend me axe to split kindling?" Tasleen asked, reaching out to take the axe in anticipation of her agreement.
"Mistress split stupid savage's skull so Beard eat brains!" the axe said indignantly. "Chewyourself some kindling, buckteeth!"
Tasleen's face darkened with fury. Then he looked from Sharina to the axe and remembered who it was who'd spoken. He backed away, muttering a protective charm under his breath.
"The idea!" Beard huffed. "Using me to chop driftwood!"
"Hey!" said Layson, who'd walked toward a lump farther down the beach. "Here's a sea chest. What do you s'pose it has in it?"
Nothing of the least possible interest to any of us, would've been Sharina's guess; but there was no need to guess. The chest had a keyhole covered by a sliding panel, but either it wasn't locked or the lock had corroded away over the years. Layson jerked the lid open: the chest was empty.
"Tranek and Coffley, get your lines out," Neal ordered. "With luck we can catch some fish before we lose the sun."
He looked at Sharina and added, "We're all right for provisions, but I don't know how things are going to be if we keep going north."
He and Sharina both eyed the sun. It was higher above the horizon than she'd have expected for as many hours as it'd been since sunrise. It was summertime, and they were already at high latitudes.
"Do you think we can really defeat Her, mistress?" Neal asked in a near whisper, his eyes on the horizon.
"I don't know," said Sharina. "I hope so."
A seagull screamed in the western sky. It sounded like a lost soul.
"I really don't know…"
The Arcade of the Shepherd was a large rectangular precinct with colonnaded shops on the lower level. The priests' offices and living quarters were on the upper two floors. If the gates at the north end were closed it would become a blank-walled fortress.
As Garric and his troops clashed up the cobblestone street toward the Arcade, a pair of priests and a trumpeter trotted out of the watchtower into the gateway. The trumpeter blew a brassy summons. One of the priests prostrated himself in greeting while the other-a priestess, Garric thought-ran into the precinct to deliver a detailed message to the High Priestess.
"Huh!" said Lord Waldron. He'd rather have been on horseback, but when Prince Garric insisted on walking the old nobleman had refused to ride as a matter of military etiquette. "I thought maybe they'd try to keep us out."
"Lady Estanel's far too intelligent to do that," Garric said. "And I'll be very surprised if there's a weapon more dangerous than a fly whisk in the hands of a priest. The lady knows better than to fight battles she can't win."
"Though she's not one I'd push into a corner, lad," noted King Carus. "If it's go down fighting or simply give up, the lady's one who'd fight like a demon."
The troops with Garric at their head entered the gateway eight abreast. Liane in a sedan chair followed Garric, Waldron and their military aides. Four tough looking men, one of them the fellow who'd brought Liane the message in the council meeting, walked beside the chair.
The Arcade was a fashionable shopping district and fairly busy at this time in the afternoon. Civilians gaped as the soldiers appeared. Some of them were entertained but most looked frightened and ducked within shops in hope of hiding.
Garric grimaced. There was no benefit to him or the kingdom in scaring citizens needlessly, but hewas going to need the troops. There wouldn't be any trouble from the priests, but he might have to react instantly to the information they gave him.
At the south end of the plaza stood the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock itself, a shapely structure built narrower than the available space so that it would seem higher. The capitals of the six tall, slim columns across the front were more ornate than anything Garric had seen before, except perhaps for the tangle of multiflora roses which seemed to have been the sculptor's inspiration.
"Your highness," said Liane, jumping out of her sedan chair. "While you greet Lady Estanel, my associates and I will sequester Lady Panya, the priestess who brought the gift."
She and her four men trotted into the arcade on the right and up the open staircase leading to the priestly quarters. Garric glanced at Lady Estanel and a gaggle of aides coming out of the low building beside the temple, detached from the arcade itself. They could wait.
"Waldron!" he said. "Tell the high priestess to join me in Lady Panya's quarters!"
Garric and the platoon of Blood Eagles guarding him followed Liane. He heard Waldron pass the order along to a junior officer and fall in behind.
Garric grimaced, stopped, and gestured the army commander to his side. "Lord Waldron," he said. "I was in haste and may have seemed impolite. That was not my intention."
Waldron's narrow face had been a mass of hard planes. It broke into an expression of pleasure. "I accept your apology, your highness," he said.
One part of Garric's mind was astounded at the arrogance that allowed the old man to believe he'd had a right to be angry at his prince's brusqueness. But Garric also knew that the same stiff-necked pride meant Waldron would sacrifice his life and whole household to guard Prince Garric, his sworn liege. People weren't simple, and it was Garric's business to treat every one of them as an individual-for the sake of the kingdom.
They went up the stairs together. Liane and her spies had gone into the first suite off the stairhead. The Blood Eagles ahead of Garric were binding three temple servants who lay on their bellies on the floor of the third-level portico.
The higher-ranking priests of the Shepherd lived just as well as those of the Lady. Garric strode into the suite, through the reception room and the bedroom to the small water garden at the rear where Liane and two of her men stood with Lady Panya bos-Parriman.
Garric had only a vague recollection of the priestess who'd brought the cage of mechanical birds; she'd been a face among hundreds, another person whose opinions were more important to her than they were to the kingdom. She'd been good looking in a slim, severe fashion; the sort of woman who strove to be imposing rather than enticing.
Now Panya looked like a browsing ewe with her neck caught in the crotch of a sapling. She twisted furiously in the grip of the men bending her arms back and lashing her wrists with a rawhide strap.
"She was climbing over the wall," Liane said, gesturing toward the parapet. It was only five feet above the terrace floor, but the drop to the ground beyond was a good thirty feet. "I don't know if she was trying to escape or if it wa a suicide attempt."
"Let me go!" Panya shouted. Her eyes twitched in all directions; they didn't seem to focus. "I'm a priestess of the Shepherd! He'll strike you down for blasphemy!"
"I'm sure Prince Garric is acting in accordance with the will of the Shepherd in seeing to the needs of the kingdom, Lady Panya," said Lady Estanel, startling Garric with the unexpectedness of her voice at his elbow. In between phrases she breathed in half-suppressed gasps. "Obey the prince and know that you're obeying the Great Gods who work through him."
The high priestess was red-faced with exertion. She must have run half the length of the plaza and then up two flights of stairs to arrive so quickly, but her expression was a calm as that of that of the statue of the Shepherd in the temple below.
"Who told you to bring the cage of birds to Prince Garric in place of the gift the temple sent you with?" Liane asked. She didn't raise her voice, but she spoke with cold hostility. No one who knew her socially would've imagined the words came from sweet-natured Liane bos-Benliman.
"The temple gave me the cage!" Panya said. "I did what I was told!"
"We sent you an Old Kingdom manuscript of Celondre'sOdes, your highness," the high priestess murmured. She frowned at Panya. "With an inscription in Celondre's own hand."
"Mistress?" the spy who'd entered the council chamber said to Liane. She nodded but turned her head, biting her lip.
The spy gripped Panya by the hair and kicked her feet out from under her. His fellow stepped out of the way.
Panya cried out as she fell forward. The spy thrust her face into the basin of the fountain and held her there in a flurry of froth, then lifted her again. He didn't release her. The priestess gasped and spluttered, crying uncontrollably.
Liane turned. "Mistress," she said, "your head will go under water each time you refuse to answer me. Each time will be longer. Eventually you will answer or you will die with your lungs on fire. Who sent you with the cage of birds?"
"I can't-" the priestess said. The spy thrust her forward.
"I'll tell!" she screamed. "I'll tell you!"
"Talk," said Liane. There was more mercy in a flash of lightning than in her voice. "Quickly."
"Count Lascarg's twins came to me," Panya said. She closed her eyes; her neck muscles were taut so that her head didn't hang painfully from the spy's grip on her hair. "Monine and Tanus. They said I had to help them or they'd, they'd say things about me."
Garric nodded in grim understanding. His enemies had corrupted Moisin, the priest of the Lady, with money, but they'd used blackmail to control the Shepherd's emissary.
"Go on," said Liane. Garric was glad she had enough stomach to conduct the interview. He wasn't sure he could do it himself.
"There wasn't any harm," Panya said desperately. "The birds would sing, that's all, and nobody would tell, would say that I…"
She closed her eyes again, her lips working silently.
"Do the birds report what they hear to Monine and Tanus?" Liane asked. "Is that why you were to give them to Prince Garric?"
"I don't know," Panya said. She or her conscience must have felt the spy's hand twitch. Her eyes opened again and she screamed, "I really don't know!"
"It doesn't matter," said Garric. "We'll learn from the other end. Lord Waldron, I'd like you to take charge here with Lord Tosli's regiment while I return to the palace. It's crucial that no one leave the precinct to get word back to Lascarg's spawn."
"Tosli can take care of that," Waldron said. "He's a good officer, for all that his family's bloody Valles merchants. And if you're worried that this is a lot of running back and forth for an old man like me-"
That wasexactly what Garric was worried about.
"-then don't be. I can march the legs off you and half the Blood Eagles, even if I do prefer riding a horse!"
"Let's go," Garric said, starting for the stairway. Lord Waldron was exaggerating-probablyexaggerating-but if he said he was ready to jog back to the palace, Garric wasn't fool enough to call him a liar.
"Your highness?" Liane called to his back. "What would you like done with Lady Panya?"
"She doesn't matter now!" Garric said. "Let her go, for all I care."
He was out of the suite when he heard Lady Estanel say, "The temple will deal with the traitor, milady. Because I assure you, we care very much about her actions!"
Garric didn't laugh the way the king in his mind did; but neither did he go back to insist on mercy for a woman who'd been a traitor to her God and the kingdom both. Monine and Tanus, the dimly glimpsed puppeteers who'd toyed with him and Carus in dreams, were his present concern.
"Aye, lad, it'll be a pleasure to see them dance on a rope instead of us for a change," growled the king through a savage smile. "Assuming we take them alive, which wouldn't be my choice!"
A crimson flash from the jewel shattering between Cashel's thumbs, turned the walls gripping him transparent. He still couldn't move, but he could see where he was. That didn't make him comfortable, exactly, but at least it was a change.
The demon Kakoral stood in front of him, laughing with a sound like a thatch roof ablaze. His body was a thousand shades of red, but now that Cashel saw the demon close up he got the impression that the skin had no color at all-that instead it reflected the light of a different world.
The room was vast beyond anything Cashel had seen-except the sky from the deck of a ship at sea. Girders of light slanted from unguessible heights to the walls and floor. Cashel instinctively grasped their pattern, though his conscious mind couldn'tunderstand it at all.
"Well, Master Cashel," Kakoral said. "I thought I'd come myself this time, since you've proved to me that Kotia is not only Laterna's offspring but mine as well."
Besides the structural members, a spiderweb of fine lines trailed through the interior space. Where they intersected, objects hung. Some were tiny, no bigger than a pear, but others seemed the size of large buildings. Kotia hung nude in a transparent enclosure like Cashel's own, slightly higher and a half bowshot away.
"I didn't prove anything," Cashel said, frowning as he tried to puzzle out the question. "I just came to get her out."
He paused, frowning harder. "If I could."
"He means that Kotia found you for her champion," said Evne on Cashel's shoulder. "Did you think that was a little thing, master?"
A gray globe was forming in the middle of the room. Cashel was good at judging sizes, but this thing tricked his eyes in a fashion he didn't understand. If he had to guess he'd have said it was large; very large, too large even for this huge space. But he also felt he could've spanned it with his arms if he'd been free to climb the cobwebs of light to where it hung.
"I don't think finding me counts for much, seeings as I'm trussed here like a chicken at market," Cashel said.
Kakoral roared with laughter. His body seemed to swell to the scale of the room. "You brought me through the Visitor's defenses, Master Cashel," he said. "That was enough to suit me. It will suit him too, like a hemp collar!"
The demon reached out a foreclaw toward Kotia. The crystal cage exploded in a crimson flash, leaving the girl sprawled in the air. She rubbed her biceps; she'd been spread-eagled in her prison like a hide pegged out for drying.
The globe was now a perfect solid with the glint of steel. It stabbed a needle of blue wizardlight toward Kakoral.
Toward where Kakoralhad been. The bolt ripped a deep furrow across the floor, mounding material like smelter slag up on either side. The demon was a furlong high in the air, his hands spread.
Axeblades of red fire chopped at the globe and glanced off with ripping sounds. One sheared a girder and the other sparkled through a swath of the fine cords crisscrossing the interior. A second blue needle stabbed and missed.
The demon and the Visitor's globe rose in alternating pulses, leapfrogging one another and blasting wizardlight as they went. Neither of the opponents seemed to exist in the spaces between their successive stages.
Cashel followed the battle until even the searing flares of azure and crimson twinkled like the stars seen through horsetail clouds. He lowered his head, sighed, and gave a tentative pull at the quarterstaff. He'd hoped he'd find that the invisible substance binding him had softened since last he tried moving. It hadn't.
"I wish Kakoral had cut me loose before he left," Cashel said, as much to himself as to Evne. He smiled. "I guess he had other things on his mind, though."
"So do you, master," the toad said, pointing with her right leg. "I rather thought we'd be seeing that one again."
Cashel turned his head. Ansache was walking toward him, down a line of light that seemed to have no more substance than the sun's reflection in a pond. The wizard held his violet athame vertically in front of him like a ceremonial mace.
Cashel strained again. It didn't help any more than he'd thought it would. "Ah, Evne?" he said. "Can you stop the fellow? Because I can't, not tied up like this, and I don't think he has anything good in mind."
"While the Great Lord of All Worlds deals with your pet, vermin…," Ansache said, pointing the tip of his athame at Cashel. "I will rid his domain of you!"
"Oh, I don't think either of us need to exert ourselves, master," the toad said, rubbing her pale belly with a forepaw. "Let Lady Kotia do it, why don't we? She's had time to rest."
"Brido ithi lothion!" Ansache called, looking along his athame like a soldier sighting a catapult.
"Phrene noumothili!" said Kotia from behind Cashel. A web of red wizardlight wrapped Ansache. It looked like the dazzle of a faceted jewel in full sunlight, but there was a roaring crackle as well. Ansache screamed.
Cashel turned his head. Kotia was walking toward them from the place where she'd been confined. In front of her, spinning in mid air, was a golden disk-one of the objects Cashel had seen suspended from threads of light.
"Oba lari krithi!" Kotia said. The golden disk slowed perceptibly; from it shot scarlet sparks that danced down over Ansache and tightened the bonds already in place. Ansache screamed again, but on a diminishing note. His shroud of red light collapsed to a point.
Ansache's athame clattered to the floor, blackened and smoking. Kotia frowned at it. "Rali thonou bo!" she said. The shimmering metal vanished in a thunderous crash, leaving motes of soot dancing in the air where it had been.
The disk settled with a hum that grew deeper as the spinning slowed. When it finally stopped with a liquid chime against the floor, the hum stopped also.
Kotia rubbed her forehead with both hands. Cashel waited till she'd lowered them and her eyes had cleared of the fatigue of the wizardry she'd completed.
"I'm glad to see you again, mistress," he said. "Would you get me loose from how I'm held here? If you can, I mean."
"What?" said Kotia, frowning. She looked at him closely, then gave a warm smile. "Yes, of course."
She bent to raise the golden disk, then waved a dismissive hand at it. "Faugh, there's no need," she said. She touched the quarterstaff, apparently hanging in the air, with her index finger.
"Boea boa nerpha," she said in a firm, quiet voice.
The staff dropped into Cashel's waiting hand. His legs and lower body were free, and he felt like he'd just set down a heavy weight. It'd bothered him to be trapped that way; bothered him more than he'd realized till it was over.
"I see being a guest of the Visitor has brought you more in touch with your father, girl," Evne said as she walked down Cashel's left arm and perched on the back of his hand where it held his staff. Her tiny claws prickled but her feet had a clammy stickiness that he found oddly pleasant.
"And who are you?" Kotia said, her eyes hardening as they focused on the little toad.
"She's my friend Evne," Cashel said, surprised at the hostility in Kotia's tone. "I wouldn't have gotten here without her, mistress. I wouldn't have come close."
"And I suppose you think she's a toad?" Kotia said to Cashel, raising an eyebrow.
"Iam a toad, girl," Evne said in a tone every bit as cold as Kotia's. "Unless you insist on having things a different way."
Kotia laughed with a mocking undertone. "No, of course not," she said. "I don't suppose it matters."
"Not for me, it doesn't," the toad agreed. "Nor for you either, I would judge."
Cashel had heard every word of the exchange. The girl and the toad might've been chanting gibberish for all the sense he made out of it. He'd been around people-and especially around women-enough to know not to ask them to explain what was going on, though.
Kotia looked in the direction of the ceiling. The flickers of wizardlight were too distant for Cashel's excellent eyes to make out, though he still felt the tremble of the accompanying roar through his soles.
"There's no way to get out before it's over, I suppose?" Kotia said to Evne.
"No," the toad said. "But it shouldn't be long now."
Cashel saw the light again as she spoke: glittering, then glaring; blue and red intertwined in a savage purple rhythm, spinning around the edges of the vast room. The battle was descending as swiftly as the opponents had risen out of sight.
Not long.
"Mistress Evne," he said. "Get back on my shoulder, if you please. Or get down so that I won't hurt you if I move."
"You're going to fight the Visitor if he defeats a demon, master?" the toad asked in a mocking tone.
"Yes, ma'am," said Cashel. "I am."
"Of course," said Kotia in a quiet voice. Evne hopped to Cashel's neckline in a single motion, the most graceful thing Cashel had known her to do.
The thunder of the downrushing combat filled the air. Not long at all…