Sharina awakened. The stars were dim points in a sky pulsing crimson and azure with light as cruelly cold as icebergs. She didn't know what had aroused her. The night was silent, save for the sighing wind.
"The great wizard has gone off again, mistress," said the axe her cheek rested on. "I wouldn't care what happened to him, of course; but if we're abandoned here, there'll be only your companions for Beard to dine on."
"Gone?" said Sharina, jerking upright and throwing off the bearskin wrapping her. "He took the ship?"
She leaped to her feet, then felt a surge of relief. She could see the Queen Ship's mast through the branches of a birch tree, on the other side of the little island. She and the rest of the band had moved to the western edge to sleep out of the constant wind.
"Not the ship," Beard said disdainfully. "He's using the Key of Reyazel again."
"But there's no-" Sharina said.
"Is there not the sea chest, mistress?" the axe snapped. "Do you think it matters what the keyhole opens in this world? It does not! Only that there be a keyhole."
All those in the camp were asleep in their furs. At Sharina's side Scoggin and Franca shared the mantle of a huge bison; they hadn't awakened during her conversation with Beard. She thought of shaking Scoggin alert, but there was no point in that: the only threat was that Alfdan would get himself killed, and with Beard she was as well able to prevent that as all the rest of the band combined.
Sharina strode to the crest of the island, directly into the wind's cold buffeting. The birches rustled like malicious whisperers as she passed. She wondered if she'd have thought that in another place, or on a night that wasn't lighted by ripples of wizardlight. Perhaps one day she'd be at another place again and thereby able to answer the question…
The lid of the sea chest had been flung back. The key winked in the gutted lock, gleaming red or blue as the light washed across the heavens. The chest's interior was a shimmer of alien moonlight, a leprous white contrast to the present sky roiling with wizardry. The chest had become a passage.
Sharina hesitated. The world she stood in was an evil twin to the one where she'd been born, but her memory of the treasure-strewn beach was so powerfully unpleasant that even these surroundings were preferable.
"You're right about the danger," Beard said morosely. Then in a more cheerful tone he added, "Of course, if something happened to you there, somebody might come to the beach later and take me out with them. I'm a greater prize than any foolish poison antidote!"
"I'm glad you're comfortable on that score," Sharina said with a wry smile. "It's good to have a companion who looks on the bright side."
The chest was sunk almost to its lid in the gravel; she stepped over the slight lip and stood at the edge of the curving bay, under the light of a moon like none she had ever seen. It was huge, and instead of the familiar craters and seas the looming face was banded like the wall of a sandstone canyon. This wasn't the world she knew, even in the distant past or future.
Alfdan walked slowly along the edge of the water, poking his wand into the sand in front of him like a woodcock probing for worms. A swell moved toward the shore, breaking into froth and fury as it reached the shallows.
"Alfdan!" Sharina called. The wizard turned and looked, then resumed his course.
"May the Lady help me!" Sharina muttered, furious and frightened both. She jogged toward Alfdan as the wave combed up the sand, spurting high as it struck the wizard's legs.
Sharina splashed through the shallows, listening to the sea growl. Alfdan jerked his head toward her, raising his wand. "Get away from me!" he snarled. "It's here and I'm going to find it!"
"Oh mistress, if Beard only could…," the axe whimpered miserably. "When we leave the island, then can Beard kill him? Please, mistress, please let Beard kill him?"
"Silence!" Sharina said, speaking to the wizard or the axe or perhaps to her own angry desire to split Alfdan from pate to navel. She caught the whalebone wand with her left hand, then jabbed the butt of the axe into the wizard's belly. He gave a despairing cry and fell to his knees. The last of the surf foamed seaward past him.
"Get up!" Sharina said. Alfdan dropped his wand when she punched him, but she held it. Her first thought was to throw the dense bone into the sea, but the wizard needed the tool for his art… and all the rest of them needed the wizard if they were to get off this barren islet, let alone reach Her dwelling.
Alfdan ignored her, bending over. Sharina thought he was going to vomit; instead he began to scrabble in the hard sand. She stuck the wand upright in the ground and grabbed the back of his collar.
"Here!" the wizard cried, rising to his feet without her having to pull him. "I knew it was here!"
He held a strip of vellum, curling but apparently undamaged despite the sand that clung to it. There was a drawing on one side, a map as best Sharina could tell by moonlight.
"It's part of Master Amoes' record of his travels through the world he found under the surface of the moon!" Alfdan said triumphantly.
Sharina blinked. "But you're not going there, are you?" she said.
"Of course not!" Alfdan snapped, rolling the parchment without bothering to brush off the last of the sand. "The moon's been dead for all the ages since Amoes' day."
Beard tittered mockingly. "It'd be an act of mercy for Beard to drink his blood, mistress," he said. "But he'll take us to better pastures, so we will let him live."
Sharina shivered. "Come!" she said, tugging Alfdan's sleeve. He came without protest, pulling up his wand when he passed by.
Sharina stepped on something hard and square. She didn't look down; her face was as rigid as an executioner's. Whatever the thing was, it belonged to this place; and humansdidn't belong here.
The door to the world they'd left was a rectangle of gravel and flotsam, the beach where the sea chest lay. She motioned Alfdan through ahead of her: she'd come to bring him back and there wasn't room for both of them to leave together. When she stepped onto the opening, the bay vanished and she was standing on the rocky island. The wizard reached for the key.
Sharina batted his hand away and took the key herself. Alfdan yelped in surprise.
Sharina was trembling with relief beyond anything she could put in words. "I'll hold this till we're done with you," she said, putting the small golden key into a fold of her sash. She didn't have a proper purse in this place, in this world.
Alfdan grabbed for it. She held Beard in front of her, the edge outward in a glittering warning more effective than a spoken threat. "It's mine!" Alfdan said, recoiling.
"Yes," said Sharina. "And when you've delivered me to Her palace, I'll give it back to you. I won't care what happens to you then."
She started back to the sheltered side of the island. "But I warn you, wizard," she added over her shoulder. "As bad as the place you're taking me may be, you'll be going to a worse one if you use the Key of Reyazel again!"
"Master?" said Evne, back on Cashel's shoulder where she seemed to prefer to ride. "There's a cauldron near the wall to the right, a hundred feet up. Do you think you could turn it upside-down if it were on the floor?"
Cashel looked upward. Kotia extended her index finger and muttered words Cashel didn't catch. A red spark from her finger snapped to a great bronze curve.
"Oh," said Cashel. He'd been looking in the right place, but he hadn't realized anything so big could be a cauldron. He'd been thinking of something like the inn's washing tub, the largest vessel in Barca's Hamlet. That wouldn't have been a shadow of the huge thing hanging from cobweb strands of light.
"Yeah, I guess so," Cashel said. It depended on how thick the metal was, but even if it turned out to be a lot thicker than he expected… "I guess I can, sure."
Evne extended her left hind leg; a delicate pink membrane webbed the base of the three toes. Azure lightning crackled at the tip of the middle claw, just that; no more than the sound a man makes popping his fingers. The cauldron was on the floor instead of high in the air. It hadn't moved, it justwas.
"I don't think we should wait," said Evne, looking up at the descending thunder.
"Right," said Cashel. He didn't like to run or often do it, but now he broke into a lumbering trot. The cauldron was deceptively far away. The size of the room was really amazing.
The demon and the globe were in sight again, swirling in tight circles around a common center as they ripped at one another with weapons of light. Blasts that missed their targets tore across the room, as little affected by objects hanging in the way as arrows are of dustmotes.
Red wizardlight slashed a knot of crystal curves. Half the structure vanished in glare and molten gobbets; the rest-itself the size of any building in Barca's Hamlet-crashed to the floor not far from Cashel and his companions.
He ducked instinctively. The jagged chunk that would otherwise have brained him sailed overhead.
Kotia stayed at his side without running; she'd picked up the golden disk on her way by. Her long legs scissored as quickly Ilna's fingers moved when she was weaving, but her face retained a look of faint amusement.
Especially, Kotia never looked at Evne. The toad for her own part was singing what sounded like, "Send a flea to heave a tree."
Cashel thought they were both being silly, but it sure beat screaming and carrying on about what was happening the way a lot of people would've done. He hadn't been around toads enough-socially, that is-to know how they usually behaved.
Not all the blows the pair battling downward struck at each other missed. A spear of blue light stabbed Kakoral square in the chest. For an instant the demon gleamed translucent purple; then he was crimson again, carving at the Visitor with blades of hellfire from both clawed hands. The vast room pulsed with the echoing combat.
Cashel reached the cauldron. He could just touch the rim if he stood on his toes, but his weight wouldn't be enough to make it move. It sat on its broad bottom, not on legs.
"I guess then…," Cashel said as he considered the problem. He thrust the quarterstaff out to Kotia without bothering to face her. "Hold this for me."
He squatted, placing his hands under the base where the curved sides met the flat bottom. He was counting on the cauldron to be heavy enough that he wouldn't have to chock the opposite side to keep it from skidding along the floor, but that seemed a safe enough bet…
Something exploded not far overhead. A rain of greenish pebbles cascaded down, rattling on the bronze and making Cashel's skin prickle wherever they touched.
"Now!" he shouted, straightening with the strength of his legs and shoulders both. The cauldron lifted smoothly. Cashel walked forward, placing his hands farther down the bottom as the inertia of the bronze helped to rotate it.
"Yes!" cried Kotia. The cauldron teetered past its far edge and began to fall onto its rim.
The globe rapped out blue spears as quick as a woodpecker taps, striking Kakoral in repeated thunderclaps. Cashel looked up. The demon swelled and thinned into a figure of fiery cloud; the girders of light and dangling objects were clearly visible through his body. The Visitor's globe shrank and shimmered into a ball no bigger than a melon.
The cauldron hit with a bell note so clear and loud that Cashel could hear it through the cataclysm tearing the air apart just overhead. Kotia's lips were moving, but no sound a human throat could make would be audible now.
"Under the cauldron!" Evne said. She didn't shout; instead her words clicked out in pauses of the blasting chaos.
The cauldron's near edge rocked waist high on the inertia that'd carried it over. Kotia ducked under; Cashel followed a half step behind. The bronze lip hung for what seemed a long time, then rang down again. It clanged back and forth repeatedly till finally coming to rest with only a tingling hum to remind Cashel of its presence.
With the cauldron's rim flat on the smooth floor, there was no light at all inside. The roaring battle was a vibrating presence but no longer noise in the usual sense. There was plenty of room inside, so Cashel didn't expect the air to get stuffy till long after something good or bad had happened to change things.
"Shall I provide a view?" Evne said in an arch tone.
"Don't strain yourself!" said Kotia. Her golden disk suddenly appeared in mid air. Its light didn't touch anything else, though: the hollow bronze was just as dark as it'd been before.
"Mecha melchou ael," Kotia said. The disk began to spin, accelerating rapidly. "Balamin aoubes-"
The disk was a shiver of light, a golden reflection instead of a solid object. It made a high-pitched sound-or at least something did, raising the hairs on the back of Cashel's neck.
"Aobar!" said Kotia. Beyond where the disk spun, the bronze became transparent. The crackling flames of the battle lit the interior. Kotia had a pinched look, though she seemed not so much weak as worn to Cashel.
The Visitor stabbed a jagged trident of blue fire, missing Kakoral because the demon was suddenly above the globe. The blast splashed the cauldron, igniting the bronze with quivering brilliance. The flash made Cashel blink, but he didn't feel anything unusual.
"The uses this vessel's been put to over the ages," Evne said, "have… hardened it, let's say. I won't say that it's indestructible, but I don't think anything we'll see today could harm it."
"Did the Visitor make it?" Cashel asked, frowning. He'd gotten out his wad of wool to polish his staff. Touching the hickory always steadied him.
"The Visitor makes nothing!" Evne said. She was angry; Cashel had never heard her angry before. "The Visitor takes and destroys, only that."
"Until now, I think," said Kotia, looking upward with a faint smile. "Until he met my father."
The toad laughed appreciatively.
It didn't look that way to Cashel. No longer did the Visitor jump nervously about the room: his globe was a diamond-bright glitter, hovering and unmoved. By contrast Kakoral had spread into a crimson fog, too thin to have shape. The Visitor's bolts lanced through the demon's substance unhindered, ripping whatever other objects they touched. Many girders had been severed, and the whole structure was beginning to shift around its axis.
"Yes," said Evne. "He has him now."
The red mist sucked down. Being swallowed, Cashel thought, but instead Kakoral coalesced again out of the vapor. For an instant he stood as a giant in whose belly the globe sparkled with evil fury; then the demon shrank again to the size of a man and the solidity of a blazing crimson anvil.
Cashel heard a muffled pop. Kakoral shook with titanic laughter. He raised his head and opened his mouth wide. Flames shot out, momentarily purple but shifting quickly to the same rose red that Cashel saw winking across the valley when the demon first appeared to him.
The jet of fire spread into a channel of Hell-light as broad as a mill flume. The objects suspended throughout the enormous space tumbled downward, untouched themselves but released when the threads supporting them flared away. The walls of the ship began to burn.
Kakoral closed his mouth. He turned and bowed to the overturned cauldron, his arms spread back like a courtier's. Above the demon-unthinkably far above him and racing higher-scarlet flames continued to blaze in the portion of the Visitor's ship that they hadn't yet devoured.
Kakoral straightened; and, straightening, vanished.
"Oh!" said Cashel. He cleared his throat, then ran a hand along the rim of the cauldron. It wouldn't be hard to get enough purchase to lift it again.
"Ah?" he said. Evne and Kotia were still looking upward. "Would you like me to lift-"
"Not unless you want us all to die," said the toad.
"You'd better cover your eyes," said Kotia. She closed hers and folded the crook of her elbow over them. Cashel did the same.
The world beyond the walls of the cauldron went crimson. The light was as cold as the depths of the sea, streaming through Cashel's flesh and soul together.
Thought stopped, everything stopped. Cashel didn't know how long the light lasted; the flooding glare had the feel of eternity. He was squeezing the quarterstaff; if nothing else existed, that did and Cashel or-Kenset did while he held it.
Kotia touched his wrist. "It's over," she said. Her voice came from far away. "The power that drained into this basin over the ages has been voided back to where the Visitor came from."
Cashel opened his eyes. He, Kotia, and the toad on his shoulder were in the middle of what'd been bog like what he'd seen on his way to the Visitor. The rushes were sere now, and tussocks stood up from cracked mud rather than marsh.
"The process involved heat," said Evne. She gave a grim chuckle. "Not nearly as much heat as on the other end of the channel, though. I don't think there will be more Visitors to trouble us."
Kotia turned to Cashel. He couldn't read her expression. "Now, if you would please lift the cauldron again, milord?" she said. "We'll have callers shortly."
She saw his expression and quirked a smile. "No, not that kind," she said. "The display will summon folk from all the manors to see what has happened. Airboats can safely fly into the basin now."
Cashel handed the girl his quarterstaff again, politely this time because he wasn't in a hurry to get them all under cover. He squatted and positioned his hands under the curve of the rim.
"I wonder if Lord Bossian will be among those arriving?" the toad said.
"Yes," said Kotia. "I've been wondering that too."
They both laughed. It was the sort of sound that made Cashel glad the two of them weren't his enemies.
"Nobody's entered the Count's wing since Lady Liane sent the warning, your highness," Attaper said as he and a company of Blood Eagles met Garric at the west entrance to the palace. "A few servants came out on normal business, but we're holding them as ordered."
"As ordered?" said Garric, frowning in surprise. "Lady Liane?"
"Yes, her messenger arrived with your orders that nobody should enter or leave Count Lascarg's quarters," Attaper said, frowning in turn. "By the Shepherd, your highness! Were the seal and signature forgeries?"
"No, milord!" Liane herself said as she hopped from her sedan chair. Her bearers must've run all the way from the temple: they were covered in sweat but grinning. The coins Liane spun them winked gold. "Say rather that Prince Garric was too busy to be aware of all the details he was taking care of in the crisis."
Garric grinned. That was a charitable way of putting it. In truth it hadn't crossed his mind to send someone ahead to put a discreet guard on Monine and Tanus. Well, he didn't have to think about that sort of thing. He had Liane, praise be the Shepherd!
Garric took the steps two treads at a time. Guards trotted ahead of him. Lord Mayne, the legate commanding the regiment that'd just arrived from the camp on the harbor, had linked arms with Lord Waldron to exchange information as they both pounded along immediately behind. A pair of palace ushers holding silver-banded wands high led the procession down the branching corridors. The household staff was no longer the proper concern of Master Reise, the Vicar's advisor… but as he ran past, Garric saw his father watching alertly from an alcove, pressed between the wall and a statue where he wouldn't interfere with the Prince's haste.
The double doors to the wing of the palace which Count Lascarg still occupied were closed. In the vaulted hall outside waited a squad of Blood Eagles instead of a doorkeeper from the count's household.
"Get us in!" Garric ordered as the guards straightened to attention. He hoped the raid would take Monine and Tanus by surprise, but there was no time to waste.
The non-com of the guard detail pushed at the panels where they joined, seeing whether they were barred from the inside. They didn't give.
Four men of Garric's escort were already carrying an ancient statue from a niche down the hall. It'd been a caryatid, a woman's torso with a fish-scaled base, which might once have supported the roof of a loggia in an Old Kingdom water garden. As the non-com stepped clear, the men carrying the statue jogged forward and with a collective grunt smashed its flat head into the door.
The panels sprang open; the heavy oaken bar ripped out of its staples and crashed to the floor. The right-hand panel banged into the servant dozing on a stool at the side. He fell off with a cry of pain.
"This way!" cried one of Liane's spies, charging through the anteroom and down the corridor to the right. He wasn't the man who'd led the way into the Temple of the Shepherd. Soldiers, Garric, and Lord Waldron-who'd kept up just as he'd said he would-clashed after the spy in their cleated boots. A group of female servants-three or four of them-gossiping in a side hall squealed and ran the other way.
Lascarg's rooms looked dingy and had a smell of neglect. Garric wondered if that was a change or if the rest of the building had also been dirty and rundown before his own staff took over. He'd been too busy to care, but thinking back he remembered squads of servants working in the hallways with stiff brushes and buckets that breathed the biting tang of lye.
It wasn't just dirt creating the oppressive atmosphere, though. One side of this corridor gave onto a courtyard, but shuttered blinds closed the portico despite the pleasant weather. Only through cracks between warped panels did Garric see sunlight or foliage.
A servant in tawdry finery-his tunics stained but hemmed with cloth of gold-heard the crashing footsteps and peered from a doorway. He stared for an instant at what was coming toward him, bleated, and ran down the hall in the other direction. He carried a writing case until it brushed the wainscoting and flew free, scattering documents, quills, and rushlights unnoticed on the floor.
Garric didn't blame the fellow. He supposed Lord Mayne's entire regiment was following down the hallway. Maybe the whole army was; Duzi knew how Lord Waldron's orders might have been garbled!
The spy reached the door the servant had run from and jumped inside. Garric followed, slamming a hand against the door jamb so that he didn't skid on the worn stone flooring. He wasn't wearing hobnails like the regular soldiers, but his boots had hard soles.
Count Lascarg sat at a table with a top of colored marble on massive wooden legs. Before him was a mixing bowl, a water pitcher, and an ornate gold cup whose stem was in the form of a couple making love. The pitcher was full: Lascarg had been drinking his wine undiluted, and drinking it in considerable quantity from the look of him.
A servant-a girl of no more than twelve years-stood beside him with a wine dipper. She stared at the doorway, her eyes so open they seemed to fill her white face. The dipper shook violently in her hand.
"You've come to kill me!" Lascarg said, lurching to his feet. His tunic hadn't been changed in days, perhaps longer. He fumbled at his side where the hilt of a sword would've been if he were wearing one. He wasn't.
"Where's your children?" Garric said. "Where's Monine and Tanus?"
"Go on then, just do it!" Lascarg said. He swayed and fell forward, knocking over the bowl and pitcher. Clinging to the table, he began to cry.
The girl pointed her dipper toward the small arched door in an alcove. Garric thought it was to a service staircase. The nearest soldier took two strides and kicked it down, staggering backward at the impact. Garric lunged through the opening.
He hadn't been conscious of drawing his sword, but it was out in his hand. The image of Carus watched through Garric's eyes, grinning and poised.
Garric grinned back. With a friend like that sharing his mind, he never need worry about being unprepared for battle.
He'd burst into an overgrown garden: the garden of his dreams, his nightmares. To the right was a pavilion which ivy was taking over; that was the building the ape men had shambled from. Seen by daylight, the altar was an ancient stone bench supported by stone barrels from a fallen pillar.
Moisin, the priest who'd brought the urn to Garric, lay naked across the altar. His back was to the stone. His wrists and ankles were tied to the barrels so that his chest arched.
Behind the altar, two chanting teenagers poised silvery knives over the priest. Their dark hair was cut to shoulder length, and their faces were identically androgynous.
The tabard of the twin on the left showed a hint of breasts, so that was probably Monine. Tanus wore a similar garment, embroidered in colored swirls. Garric could see the twins' faces clearly, but something about the tabards blurred his vision when he tried to place the figures in context with their surroundings.
"Samanax asma samou!" Monine and Tanus shouted together. They drove their knives down, Monine slashing Moisin's throat while her brother ripped his blade through the cartilage joining the victim's ribs to his breastbone. Blood gushed in fountains that seemed too huge to come from a single human being.
"Keep back, your highness!" somebody behind shouted as Garric ducked under a tree branch on his way toward the altar. The pears were done blooming, but the fruit hadn't set yet.
Moisin jerked against his bonds and fell back, his eyes staring and his mouth slackly open. A lens with an icy purple rim formed where previously there'd been only the brick wall at the back of the garden. The opening was big enough to drive a wagon through. Within it, muted walls of the same color as the rim shimmered.
The twins turned toward the lens. Garric slashed at their backs: honor had no more place in this business than it did in dealing with ticks and leeches. The tip of his patterned steel blade zinged against the bricks well to the side of where he'd been sure Monine was standing. Those tabards…
The twins stepped through the lens. They remained faintly visible as they ran down the tunnel of light beyond.
"Get them, lad!" shouted King Carus, but Garric didn't need anybody prodding him to follow. He leaped to the top of the altar, the ball of his foot on the stone but his boot touching the priest's flaccid corpse.
"Your highness!" a soldier behind him cried. "Don't-"
Garric leaped into the lens. He felt a shock as though he'd dived through a hole in a frozen river. Monine and Tanus were ahead of him, their figures shrinking more than a few seconds of distance should have caused.
From behind in the waking world Garric heard, "Follow your prince!" He didn't know how much use a regiment-or the whole army-would be in whatever business there was on this side of the gateway, but Prince Garric had lost the right to object to other people's decisions when he jumped into the portal alone.
He raised his sword high and shouted, "Carus and the Isles!" He wasn't sure if his men could hear his words, but they made him feel better and that was worth something.
"Garric and the Isles!" cried other distance-muted voices. "Forward!"
For an instant Ilna felt herself suspended in the crackling blue limbo. Then theBird of the Tide slapped water thunderously, sloshing from side to side. The hatch cover which they'd deliberately left askew jounced half off its frame.
Nabarbi snarled, "Sister take it!" and reached up to grab the cover.
"Leave it!" Chalcus said. He continued more mildly, "TheDefender 's not so tall a ship that we need worry that they'll be peering down on us as they approach. Hutena, you and Ninon ready the jug if you will. Or perhaps I-"
"No, we'll do it!" the bosun said, though he didn't look happy. Well, there was little enough to be happy about in the present situation; save that it was the one that Ilna and her companions had worked very hard to bring about.
Hutena and the seaman together swung back the lid of the iron-bound chest. The odor of camphor flooded the hold. Ilna turned to Chalcus and said in a conversational voice, "You brought reef snakes from Sidras' store."
"We broughtall the reef snakes from Sidras' store, dear heart," Chalcus said with a grin fit for a crocodile. "Seventeen of them; and I have great hopes for the result when they go to join the Commander's crew."
When theBird wallowed to starboard, Ilna could see the patrol vessel thrashing toward them with both layers of oarsmen rowing. She supposed theDefender 'd reached this stretch of sea not long after Gaur's wizardry had sent theBird into his fire-shot Hell. Lusius would've lain to until his prey returned to the waking world so he and his gang could loot it.
Ilna smiled as she ran her noose between her fingers. The night was too dark for her to be confident that her patterns would be effective, but a silken cord tight around an enemy's neck wasalways effective.
Muttering insructions to one another, Hutena and Ninon gripped the rim of the stoppered ceramic jug nestled in a bed of sand and camphor within the strongbox. The jug had a line of holes at the neck-so that the serpents within could breathe, Ilna realized, but a man with small hands like the late Master Pointin might have stuck his fingers through them when he tried to empty the chest so he could hide. The camphor fumes had kept the snakes relatively sluggish during the voyage, but the jouncing and heat of their translation to the Hellworld must've aroused them enough to respond when the supercargo offered them his fingers.
The sailors lifted the jug out of the box. They kept as clear of the openings as they would've done so many live coals.
TheBird of the Tide had steadied after it splashed back into the waking world. Now the vessel began to roll again on the bow wave of the approachingDefender. "Back water!" shouted a hoarse voice with an Ornifal accent.
TheBird rocked more violently; a pair of grappling irons thumped onto her deck. "Snub them up!" ordered Lusius' voice. "Casadein, get that pitch ready. After we've seen what they were carrying in their hold, we'll burn her to her waterline!"
Chalcus rotated his head to meet the eyes of everyone in the hold with him. He grinned and said, "Now!" emphatically but without shouting.
Tellura and Kulit threw the hatch cover back the rest of the way. Chalcus, Shausga, and Nabarbi leaped up onto the deck; Chalcus had his sword and dagger both ready, while the ordinary seamen leaned back into the hold and grasped the rim of the jug Hutena and Ninon were raising to them.
A Sea Guard with a sword in one hand and a lantern in the other had just jumped from theDefender 's deck to theBird 's. He screamed with angry frustration at the men coming out of the hold. Chalcus thrust through his eyesocket and into his brain.
The Sea Guard sprang backwards convulsively, toppling over the gunwale as the ships recoiled from their first contact. As he fell, Shausga and Nabarbi hurled the jug onto the patrol vessel with all their strength. It shattered among the oarsmen rising from their benches.
Ilna followed the men, holding her noose slack in both hands. Many of theDefender 's crew held lanterns as they prepared to board. In the bow stood a pair of Guards with a large wooden bucket and a flaring torch: the pitch Lusius had mentioned, ready to destroy theBird of the Tide as soon as his men had looted her.
A pair of Sea Guards wobbled on the patrol vessel's railing, swords in their hands. Nabarbi snatched the boat pike from its socket on the mast. As the nearer of the Guards jumped, Nabarbi thrust him through the chest, shoving him back into his comrade.
Both Guards fell into the sea. Our Brother rose in a fountain of spray to meet them. The big seawolf's jaws clopped shut, tossing an arm which still clutched a sword back aboard theDefender.
At least a dozen Sea Guards screamed simultaneously, sounding like they were being disemboweled. The lower rank of oarsmen wouldn't normally have risen until their fellows in the upper rank had cleared the walkway. Now the deck lifted like the ground during an earthquake as men lunged upward to escape the death slithering down through the ventilators onto them.
Chalcus jumped aboard theDefender, his sword and dagger gleaming in the lanternlight. The men with the bucket and torch went down, as suddenly dead as if they'd been lightningstruck. The torch fell to the deck; Chalcus kicked the bucket of pitch over beside it, then sprang backwards onto theBird. He moved with the formal grace of a peasant dancing with ram's horns bound to his feet at a borough fete. The pitch roared into flame, spreading as it burned.
Hutena hacked at a grappling iron with his axe. The leader was chain, but a clean blow using theBird 's gunwale as a chopping block parted it in a shower of sparks. The vessels began to swing apart, though the grapnel farther astern still bound them.
"We're afire!" a Sea Guard screamed. "We're afire! Oh Lady help us!"
Ilna noted that she hadn't heard Rincip's voice. Perhaps Lusius hadn't bothered to pick up his former second-in-command in his haste to run down theBird of the Tide. That might have been the best luck yet in Rincip's whole miserable life…
A group of Sea Guards-more than a handful; in the confusion and scattered light, numbers were even more doubtful than usually-leaped from the patrol vessel to theBird. Chalcus and his crew met them. Ilna stayed back, letting the fight weave into her consciousness. When the pattern required her action, she would act.
Shausga and Ninon were cutting at the remaining grappling iron. Their cutlasses didn't have the authority of the axe and, they were getting in each other's way besides. At least one of the would-be boarders missed his footing and went straight into the sea boiling with the blood-maddened violence of Our Brother.
Nabarbi had dropped the pike and was wrestling with a Sea Guard. Ilna twitched her noose back to throw, but as she did so Nabarbi slammed his dirk to the hilt in the Guard's chest. He flung the dead man from him with one arm, clearing his weapon by tugging on it with the other. The great seawolf leaped so high to meet the victim that Ilna glimpsed his wedge-shaped head over the gunwale.
Chalcus was killing with single thrusts, using his dagger to block his opponents' strokes. His slim, curved blade didn't seem sturdy enough to stop the Sea Guards' stout swords, but Ilna saw Chalcus lock one of them in a shower of sparks. When the Guard fell back, his neck cut through to the spine, the sword flew out of his hand. The dagger had cut a deep notch in the heavier blade.
TheBird was free of boarders again, all but the man who sprawled half into the open hatch. Convulsions had thrown him there when Hutena crushed his skull with the axe. Ninon's two-handed blow had finally severed the grapnel's line, and the ships were drifting apart.
TheDefender 's bow was fully ablaze. The roar of the flames was louder even than the screams of men still trapped on the lower deck with the reef snakes.
Lusius climbed out on the bitts holding the steering oar; he'd thrown away his helmet but his silver breastplate gleamed in the light of his burning vessel. He looked down at the sea, then up again at theBird already ten feet distant. He was clinging to the end of the steering oar, leaning forward but unwilling to risk the leap.
"Jump, man!" Chalcus shouted. "I'll spare your life!"
He reached out with his free hand, but not even the outstretched boarding pike would've touched his fingers. "Sister take the fool," Chalcus said in a voice of calm disgust. He sheathed his sword and dagger with a skill that was far more remarkable than the way he drew them. "We've questions for him, though, so-"
As Chalcus stepped to theBird 's gunwale, Ilna cast her noose with a side-arm motion. It dropped neatly over the Commander's head and outstretched arm.
"Jump, you fool!" she shouted in a voice that would've pierced bronze. When Lusius still hesitated, Ilna braced her right foot on the gunwale and jerked back with all her considerable strength. Lusius gave a despairing cry as he flew toward her.
More hands grasped the silken rope-Chalcus took it in front of her and at least two of the sailors grabbed the end trailing behind. The Commander splashed into the sea.
"Pull!" Chalcus bellowed, tugging upward with the whole strength of his back. His tunic ripped as the muscles bunched under it. Ilna sat down on the deck-the deck and Hutena's legs as the bosun fell down behind her.
Lusius grabbed the gunwale with both hands and started to lift himself over. His polished breastplate was flopping loose: he must have tried to take off the heavy armor when he realized he had to abandon theDefender.
Chalcus dropped the lasso and grabbed the Commander's right wrist. As he did so, Lusius gave a terrible scream and slid backward. Nabarbi stepped to the gunwale, holding the pike overhead in both hands. He stabbed straight down.
Lusius screamed again but Chalcus lifted him over the side and flopped him belly first on theBird 's deck. The Commander's right leg had been severed raggedly above the knee; blood spurted from the big artery which had been pulled several inches free of the torn muscles.
The men were shouting. The dead Sea Guard from the first attack had worn a waist sash as well as carrying his sword and dagger on a leather belt. Ilna freed the sash with a quick pull, then looped it over Lusius' right thigh and tightened it for a tourniquet.
"I'll take it, mistress," Hutena said. He laid his axe helve across the simple hitch, then knotted the free ends of the sash over the wood to give him leverage. He twisted, squeezing off the blood that still dribbled from the open artery.
Ilna rose, swaying slightly. Lusius was a heavy man and for a moment she'd supported his weight by herself. She had the strength to do it, but that didn't mean her body didn't have to pay for her exertions.
She glanced over the side. The two vessels continued to drift apart. TheDefender was burning from bow to stern. She saw a man, his hair and clothing ablaze, try to climb over the railing. He fell backwards instead.
The flames hammered reflections from the sea. Debris floated between the vessels, mostly bodies and body parts. Our Brother swam in tight circles, his tail lashing from side to side. The pike shaft slanted up from his neck, waving in counterpoint to the movements of the tail.
"And now, Commander Lusius," Chalcus said in a bantering tone, "we've some questions about your tame wizard and his lair. I hope you'll choose to answer them, because-"
Chalcus laughed. The sound was as ominous as the clop of the reptile's jaws when they took Lusius' leg off.
"-I believe your seawolf friend has already eaten as much as is good for him. I wouldn't want to give him indigestion by sending the rest of you to join your leg!"
Sharina'd been lying with her head over the bow of the Queen Ship, peering into the depths. The water was gray but clear, like the sky before the first color of dawn.
She could see to the bottom, miles below. On it crawled monsters, and through the water swam greater monsters. The teeth of the creature peering out of a deep trench must themselves have been as long as the ship; its ribbon-shaped body pulsed with azure and crimson wizardlight.
"Oh, they're real," Beard said, answering a question that hadn't gotten beyond the surface of Sharina's mind. "You're not seeing them with your ordinary eyes, of course. Although those eyeswould show you the ice sheet ahead."
"Mistress?" said Scoggin. She jerked her head around. Scoggin and Franca wore worried looks, their eyes flicking from her to the horizon.
"What's…?" Scoggin went on, gesturing with the hand he'd stretched out to touch Sharina's shoulder if she hadn't responded. "That we're coming to?"
The men of Alfdan's band, all those who weren't sleeping, stared toward the dark line ahead also. The wizard himself stood in a capsule of his art, speaking words of power through his tight lips.
"Beard says we're coming to the ice sheet," Sharina said, turning again and sitting up so that she could look at what she'd just identified to the others. A jagged boundary separated the pale gray sea from the sky washed with wizardlight. It was the charcoal shadow of a vertical edge where the ice met open water.
To the north were humps and hillocks and glitter, white except where ice threw back the sky's reflections in a form harsher than the original. The sullen sea was almost as still as the frozen waste beyond, but bits of debris moved in slow circles at its margin.
"What'll we do now, Mistress Sharina?" Layson asked, speaking with the touch of belligerence that meant he was nervous.
"Do?" repeated Beard with a metallic sneer. "Why don't you do exactly what you're doing now, my man? Nothing! Squatting on your haunches, waiting for the Great Wizard to call a halt. This ship makes no more matter of sailing over ice that it does over water-or over the heads of fools like you, I suppose!"
Layson grimaced, but he didn't look too put out by Beard's insult. The men seemed to regard the axe and Sharina herself as their best hope of survival. They might be right… which was either frightening or amusing, depending on the mood Sharina was in when the thought recurred to her.
She glanced at Alfdan in the stern. Neal stood nearby, but the wizard didn't need anyone to support him at the moment. He'd been gaining strength as the Queen Ship coursed northward.
Despite the power of Alfdan's art, he provided only temporary respite, not long-term hope, for the men gathered around him. To the wizard they were only tools to help him achieve his ends; and those ends were as ultimately trivial as those of a child picking up shells on the seashore.
The ship had seemed to sail just above the swells of the sluggish sea. Without appearing to rise the bow slid over the sheer edge of the icepack, though it was a yard or more higher than the water at the point the keel crossed. Men murmured to one another, looking out nervously.
"It's awful," Franca said quietly. "It's empty, it's just a desert."
"It's the same sea," Sharina said. "Freezing didn't make it real land."
"Or make it a desert," said Beard. The axe had been cheerful in his waspish fashion ever since they set out for Her residence. "There's life here too, you know. In the ice and beneath it."
"What?" said Sharina. She lay flat again, looking down as she had previously. For a moment all she saw was white and the evil shimmer of the sky, picked out occasionally by a tree trunk or some other flotsam that the ice had engulfed. Then, slowly, she began to see deeper.
"Franca!" Sharina said. "Scoggin? What do you see…?"
She pointed with her left hand. She was holding Beard tight against her chest with the other, as if he were a kitten instead of an axe.
The two men leaned close, peering at the ice. Sharina looked from one to the other; both wore puzzled expressions.
"Mistress?" said Franca. "I see ice. Is that what you mean?"
Sharina swallowed. "No," she said, gazing into the depths again. "But it doesn't matter. I thought I saw animals below the ice, that's all."
Sheknew she saw animals below the ice. The ship passed over an ammonite, one of the Great Old Ones who'd been Gods before there were men to worship them. The coiled shell of this one was the size of Count Lascarg's palace. Rather than eight arms like an octopus or the ten of a squid, the ammonite waved more tentacles than Sharina could count in her brief glimpse. They interwove like a tangle of brambles, forming a pattern that was obviously evil even though it had no meaning for her.
"Beard?" Sharina whispered. She didn't want the others to hear her; she was afraid she was going mad. "What is it? Why am I seeing things when the others don't?"
"Did the others dive for the Key of Reyazel?" the axe asked ironically. "Why no, I don't suppose they did! And you weren't diving through water, mistress. You know that, don't you?"
"I guess," Sharina said, clutching the axe more tightly. "I guess I do."
"It changed you," Beard said. He giggled. "You should be thankful: you see the truth where others see only the surface."
Sharina stared at a school of fish, their bodies bright with bands of wizardlight. No one of them was as long as her arm, but there were hundreds in the school. They moved together like the scales of a snake, and their teeth were like daggers.
The Queen Ship was a world of its own, neither hot nor cold; the air was motionless though always breathable. Outside in the world through which the ship voyaged, however, winds swirled snow so hard it carved the ice into shapes from nightmare.
Alfdan muttered words of command. The vessel changed course slightly, taking it up a valley where the ice had lifted in long ridges to either side. The wizard seemed to be keeping his part of the bargain. It would've been nice if he'd been a person Sharina could like or even respect, but-she grinned-she'd learned long before leaving Barca's Hamlet that you couldn't expect that in life.
Her smile faded. She'd been looking at the gleaming surface but found her vision entering the crumpled ridges. Great worms gnawed tunnels through the ice; their jaws were like the toothed bronze rams of warships. Black armor covered their segmented bodies, but Sharina saw their long coils of intestine pulsing as the worms digested something…
"Algae grows in the ice," Beard said in his mockingly superior tone. "Algae of a sort, that is. And the worms eat it."
"There's enough light here for algae?" Sharina said, frowning.
"Light?" said the axe. "Of course there's light! Look at the sky."
"Oh…," said Sharina, glancing up reflexively. The washes of evil color were so constant and vivid now that they hid the stars completely. For an instant she began to see shapes in the wizardlight, but she looked away quickly. What she saw in the water and ice was bad enough.
"I wouldn't have thought that sort of light would make things grow," she whispered.
"Makethose things grow?" Beard said with a laugh. "Oh, yes, mistress. There are many things that flourish in this light and this place. They just aren't things that have any use for men."
Sharina sat up. Franca and Scoggin were on either side, watching her with concern. They hadn't broken in on her dialogue with Beard, but they must have heard at least part of it.
"I'm seeing things beneath the surface," she said to them in a deliberate voice. "I hope this won't go on forever."
Beard laughed again. "Never fear, mistress," he said. "Not even I will go on forever."
Scoggin forced a smile. Neither man spoke.
The wizard muttered another command in a harsh, clipped tone like that of a squirrel complaining. The ship slanted to the right and mounted the ice ridge without slowing. In the distance ahead gleamed orange-red light, a harsh color but a natural one in contrast to the sheets of crimson covering the sky.
Layson pointed. "A volcano!" he said. "We saw volcanoes on the coast of Laut when Alfdan was getting that medallion."
"We're nearing the Ice Capes," said a man. His left cheek and forearm were tattooed in a complex spiral pattern, but Sharina didn't know his name. "Where they used to be, I guess. That must be Mount Yanek."
The Queen Ship raced over the ice field, now banded with stretches of black ice where leads had opened and refrozen. Once Sharina thought she saw eyes staring at her from the solid mass; the head of a monstrous thing, motionless but not dead. Perhaps it had been an illusion, shadows distorted by the rippling ice.
Beard laughed. She didn't ask him why.
The volcano grew from a lump and glow on the horizon into a mountain streaked with orange flame. Tentacles of lava touched the ice encircling its base. Great bubbles of steam rose and whirled southward on the wind.
The ship began to slow; the tone of its progress changed to a deep thrumming instead of a scream like that of chorus frogs in springtime. Sharina and the men glanced back at Alfdan. The wizard began to sway, so Neal quickly gripped him by the shoulders.
The Queen Ship touched the ice with a skirling vibration. Azure wizardlight crackled about them in an egg-shaped pattern, the broader end toward the bow. Mt Yanek covered the northern horizon, though its slopes were still a half mile distant. The volcano's rough stone absorbed the rippling glare of the sky instead of reflecting it the way the ice did; Yanek stood as a black wedge detailed only by its own savage orange veins.
"Mistress?" Layson said, his voice rising between the syllables. "Why is it we're stopping here? There's no shelter!"
Nor was there. The ship coasted to a halt and overbalanced onto its right side. When the vessel lost way, the wind ripped across them. The flecks of snow that'd merely given the gusts visual presence to those inside the cocoon of Alfdan's wizardry now cut like a sandstorm.
Sharina tugged the bearskin close, but the wind lashed her legs and the rabbitskin sandals were little protection against the ice underfoot. She and the others dropped to the ground and hunched in the lee of the Queen Ship. It was slight protection but there was nothing else in this landscape.
Neal lifted Alfdan from the ship. The wizard was mumbled. Neal, bending his ear close to Alfdan's lips, frowned in incomprehension. Alfdan waved or pointed to the east.
"What he's trying to say…," Beard said in a loud, piercing tone. "Is that if you dig into the dip there in front of you, you'll find that it's a hole filled with windblown snow that you can go through in time not to freeze. It leads to a tunnel in the ice that'll shelter you for the night."
The axe laughed. "Assuming that the beetle who dug the hole doesn't come back, of course," he added. "The grubs eat the algae, as you saw-but the adults need more nourishing fare to breed."
Sharina stamped across the frozen terrain. Even with her feet numbing, she could feel the change from solid ice to the crunch of grains barely cemented by contact and the pressure of the driving wind.
"Here, start digging!" she shouted. "Neal, get them digging!"
Scoggin and Franca had come with her. They bent and chopped at the ground with their spearpoints, sending ice up to sail away on the wind in flurries. The rest of the band joined immediately, except for Neal who-holding the wizard in one arm like a half-empty grain sack-took charge.
"Moster, Dalha, and Toldus!" he said, raising his voice against the wind. "Lay your capes on the ground. The rest of you, dump the spoil on the cloth. Dalha you idiot, lay your cape on the downwind side!"
Sharina nodded approval. The band didn't have proper digging equipment, so without an expedient like the one Neal'd chosen they'd just shove the ice around in the hole rather than removing it. The men he'd told to take off their warm coverings had done so without argument. They trusted Neal to act in all their benefit.
And they trusted Sharina as well, because they were men with a desperate need to trustsome body. They hadn't lost their faith in God, exactly, but it was all too clear that She was against them.
"Wah!" Burness shouted as he and another man slid out of sight. The rest of those in the pit either scrambled out or thrust whatever they were digging with into the side to hold them steady.
"Hey, we're in a tunnel!" Burness cried, his voice a deep echo of its normal self. Those outside the pit bent over the edge to listen, while the men clinging to the sloping walls cocked their heads. "Hey, there's ahouse down here!"
"If you all plan to stand here and end your miserable lives by freezing," said Beard loudly enough for the whole band to hear him distinctly, "then I won't try to change your minds. But otherwise, don't you think it'd be a good idea to get under cover now that you're able to?"
Sharina pointed to the hole with the butt of the axe. "Franca!" she said. "Go."
The youth's jaw dropped slackly, but he jumped into the hole without hesitating. She expected him to go feet-first, but instead he dived with his arms out before him as if he were entering the water.
As soon as Franca had disappeared, the rest of the band slid or scrambled to follow him. Shouts and complaints reverberated. Sharina, Scoggin, and Neal holding the comatose wizard were the only ones who remained in the wind.
"Go!" Neal said to her. "Scoggin, you follow and I'll hand Alfdan to you through the hole, all right?"
Sharina set her bearskin on the ice and slid to the bottom of the slope. She spread her feet to either side of the opening to catch herself, then dropped through holding Beard overhead. She didn't want to open somebody up when she hit the ground.
Actually, she landed on Layson, on all fours and trying to get up. He snarled a curse, then realized who it was. "Here, mistress!" he said and whisked her out of the way before Scoggin dropped where she'd been.
The roof of the tunnel was about six feet high. The floor was stone, an ancient lava flow; it was warm beneath the skin of water trickling over it. The frozen walls shone azure and crimson in concert with the sky; instead of filtering the wizardlight, the ice seemed to amplify the glow into evil brilliance.
At the inland end of the tunnel was a house, just as Burness had said. It was a low, dome built from the rib bones of whales; feathers of baleen chinked the interstices. It must have dated from well before She came: a shelter for whalers trying out their catch on shore and perhaps wintering over if they were caught when the seas skirting the Ice Capes froze early.
"The ground's warm!" one of the men said. He must only now have noticed it. "Why's that?"
"The volcano, Bayber," Layson snapped as he helped Scoggin bring Alfdan up the tunnel. They transported the wizard with with his arms over their shoulders. His toes dragged. "There's a vein of lava under the rock here, I shouldn't wonder. What we saw up on of the mountain had to come from somewhere, right?"
"You mean we're sittingon lava?" a short, shaggy man demanded. "Hey! What if it breaks out?"
"If you had nothing worse to worry about than the volcano," said Beard in a clear, cutting tone, "then you'd live longer than I expect to be the case."
The axe chortled metallically and added, "But oh, it will be a splendid time! Thelives Beard and his mistress will drink, oh! Splendid!"
"Can't you shut him up?" Burness muttered, but it wasn't a serious complaint. Sharina recalled that he'd been with Alfdan the longest, which meant he'd seen more of the wizard's companions die than anybody else in the band. The others might pretend to themselves that Alfdan would save them, but Burness couldn't do that.
"Hush, Master Beard!" Sharina said in the crisp voice she'd have used to an affectionate drunk when she was serving drinks in her father's taproom. "You're discourteous."
The axe sniffed, but he subsided.
Several of the men had already entered the building. It was fairly large, twenty feet by ten on the long and short axes. "Hey, there were people here," Offlan said. "The ashes in the hearth still have the shape of the wood!"
"That's not wood," said Beard. "There's no wood here. They were burning bones, and of those there's no lack "
Looking at the edges of the tunnel, Sharina saw that the bottom of the ice had been chiseled out for some distance along the former shoreline. The strand would've been covered by the debris the whalers had left. The bones' fatty marrow would make them excellent fuel once they'd been chopped from the ice.
"Where'd they go, then?" Neal said. He'd followed Scoggin and Layson, nervous about leaving Alfdan in their care but unwilling to insist that they let him carry the wizard instead. "There's nowhere but the other way in the tunnel, is there?"
"There's down a beetle's belly," said Beard. "Which is where they went, all three of them, and only last night. They'd lived here ten years, ever since She came and the ice locked in their boat; and now they're gone. Mostly."
"Oh," said Sharina, glancing at something glistening in the water, half hidden where the ice had been dug out. It was a right foot, shoeless and filthy looking, severed raggedly at the ankle. "I see what you mean."
"The tunnel goes down to the water," called one of the pair of men who'd gone in the other direction without anybody telling them to. "There's a trotline out to sea on driftwood floats."
"All right," said Neal, forceful again once the wizard had been laid on the stone floor wrapped in a sheepskin robe. "We'll stay here tonight. There's room in the hut for all of us, I think. In the morning… when Alfdan gets his strength back, anyway, we'll go on. I guess were pretty close by now to where we're going."
Sharina looked at the building. Its sturdy door had been fashioned of ships' timbers, but it'd been smashed off its jamb; the splintered wood was still fresh. The sealskin latchcord still dangled from a hole near the top of the panel.
"The beetle dug down through the ice," Beard said, "but its body was too large for the tunnel. It extended its jaw-it's hinged, you see-and plucked them out of the house one and one and the third. And then it went away… for a time."
"I think…," said Sharina, looking around her. The stone was wet everywhere, but that was true within the hut as well as outside it; and the water wasn't cold, not really. "I think I'll sleep out here. The rest of you can have the hut, if you like."
"Don't you like the decor, mistress?" Beard asked mockingly. "I think it's quite attractive, in its way."
"I don't," said Sharina, squatting to pat the rock where a natural hollow looked like it might cradle her hip.
Sharina didn't fear death, but she'd never regarded it as her friend, either. The dismembered foot proved that the house of bones was no protection… and the structure was too clear a symbol of this world that She ruled for Sharina to want to sleep in its false shelter.