Cashel sat on a dried tussock, polishing his quarterstaff and watching airboats from many different manors arrive. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen so many people in one place before, even when Garric was addressing the biggest crowds that could hear him in Valles. They just kept coming in, boat after boat from all directions.
Kotia'd taken charge of things. Every time a new group arrived, the lord of the manor came over and talked to her before doing anything else. Nobody at all came near where Cashel sat, but every time he looked around he saw eyes staring at him.
"That's Lady Raki," said Evne, perched as usual on Cashel's shoulder. She was rubbing herself down with one hind leg, then the other; grooming, Cashel guessed, though it wasn't a subject he wanted to get into with a toad. "She's mistress of Manor Rakon on the north side of the basin. It's suspended on threads over the Frozen Sea."
Initially Cashel'd been worried about whether Kotia was going to have trouble being surrounded by her world's most powerful people. He relaxed almost at once. Kotia didn't need his support to take care of those folk or anybody else.
"And my goodness, there's Lord Bossian," said Evne, pointing her long foot at a particularly ornate airboat approaching from the west. It looked like three hulls joined together and the whole thing covered by a canopy of rainbow-colored fabric. "I was wondering when he'd decide to show his face."
Cashel watched the big airboat slanting down at a majestic pace. "I wouldn't have guessed Bossian wanted to come around," he said. "I'd have thought he'd be embarrassed, to tell the truth."
Evne sniffed. "Embarrassed? Him?" she said. "Anyway, he's just as much afraid of you as he was of the Visitor. He's coming to see what he can do to keep you from destroying him."
Her long tongue licked out. She chuckled and added, "From squashing him like a bug!"
The airboat settled to the ground close enough that Cashel could've thrown a rock to it if he'd had any need to. It held more people than Cashel could count on his fingers. He recognized a few of them from dinner at Manor Bossian all that time ago, though he didn't recall their names if he'd even heard them. Except for Lord Bossian, of course.
"He doesn't need to be afraid of me," Cashel said.
"Doesn't he?" said Evne. "No, I don't suppose he does. But he needs to be very much afraid of your friend Kotia, master."
Lord Bossian got out of his airboat. He looked a good ten years older than he had when Cashel last saw him, worn and gray. He was wearing clean clothes, but he had a line of angry blisters on his left cheek: something hot had splashed him in the recent past.
Bossian looked at Kotia, then deliberately turned and started walking toward Cashel. A man and a woman followed, but the rest of those from the airboat hung back.
"Lord Bossian!" Kotia said. The nearly spherical Lady Raki and two lords of manor were standing near Kotia. They quickly shifted so they weren't between Kotia and Bossian.
Bossian glanced over his shoulder. The man and woman with him stopped where they were.
"Lady Kotia," Bossian said in a loud voice. "I'm going to offer my congratulations to Lord Cashel, the great wizard who has conquered the Visitor!"
He took another half step. Kotia stretched out her right hand and spoke under her breath. A ring of crackling fire, bright as Kakoral's heart, roared up around him.
Bossian screamed and stopped where he was. The vividly-dressed crowd gave a collective gasp and fled outward. Some people threw themselves into airboats or behind them.
Cashel got up and walked toward Bossian, leaning his staff over his right shoulder so it wouldn't look like he was planning to do anything with it. He'd been really tired after all the business in the Visitor's ship, but he figured he was back in shape now. That was a good thing, seeings as Kotia was her full prickly self.
The ring of fire vanished in an eyeblink, just as it'd appeared. The ground it'd sprung from wasn't scorched.
"The girl formed an illusion rather than real flame," Evne said in a tone of appraisal. "As she could easily have done, of course. Her father and the Visitor between them have awakened what was already in her."
Maybe the fire hadn't been real, but even after it disappeared Bossian couldn't have been more afraid if he'd had a knife point pricking his eye. He stood trembling, unwilling even to turn his head to look squarely at Cashel.
Kotia was walking over from the other direction. "Indeed, Lord Cashelis master here, Bossian," she said, plenty loud enough for others to hear even after they'd scrambled back. "Therefore politeness dictates he not be disturbed unless he requests to be; and if politeness fails, his friends have other means!"
"It's all right, Kotia," Cashel said. "Bossian, you can relax. Nobody's going to hurt you."
He gave Kotia a friendly smile. He didn't care for people talking about him like he wasn't there, but Kotia had a right to be angry. Bossian hadn't owed anything to a stranger like Cashel, but he'd taken Kotia under his protection-until there was something to protect her against.
"He isn't worth anybody's concern, is he, milord?" Kotia said. She stepped to Cashel's right side, looking at Bossian with the kind of expression you'd give a scrawny ewe who wasn't worth pasturage even until fall. Cashel noticed that Kotia was being a lot more deferential to him than she'd been when it was just the two of them and Evne.
The toad padded softly around Cashel's neck and squatted on his right shoulder; he shifted the quarterstaff. Evne's feet tickled, but this probably wouldn't be a good time to laugh.
Bossian cleared his throat. The two people who'd started toward Cashel with him were now with the rest of the group behind the big airboat. "I came to congratulate you, milord," he said. "Ah, to thank you for driving away the Visitor."
"Drive the Visitor away?" Evne said in rising incredulity. "Is that what you think? You worm! Master Casheldestroyed the Visitor. As though he never was!"
"Well, it wasn't really me…," Cashel muttered, but he didn't try to make himself heard. It was all pretty complicated, and he didn't guess he needed to explain things to Bossian. 'Worm' was a good enough description for the man, though it occurred to him that when a toad used the word it might mean something a little different.
"I beg your pardon, Lord Cashel," Bossian said, licking his lips and looking about as nervous as he had when Kotia looped the fire around him. He was staring at the air between Cashel's right shoulder and Kotia without meeting the eyes of either of them. "I didn't mean… that is…"
He cleared his throat and tried again, this time looking straight at Cashel. "The collection of objects of power here in the Basin is quite remarkable," he said. "I suppose they were gathered by the Visitor?"
"Of course they were gathered by the Visitor," Evne said in a mocking falsetto. "On some twenty worlds besides this one, I might add. Perhaps more-I haven't had a chance to do a proper inventory yet."
Bossian stared at her. For the first time he seemed to have taken in the fact that a toad was talking to him.
"Her name's Evne," Cashel said. "You gave her to me in the lump of coal."
He paused, then added, "Thank you. I wouldn't have gotten very far without her."
"With the objects I see here…," Bossian went on, looking to one side and then the other reflexively. "You'll be able to raise an impressive manor-"
"A unique manor," Kotia corrected. "A manor beyond any other in the world!"
Bossian grimaced. "Yes, I'm sure that's so," he said. "A unique manor. With these objects, your power is greater than that of all of us combined."
"I should've thought that became obvious when my master destroyed the Visitor," Evne said, rubbing the back of her head with her forefeet. "Even a worm should've realized that."
"I'm not going to build a manor," Cashel said. "Even if I knew how, I mean. I just want to go home."
He shook his head, trying to clear the nonsense out of it. He didn't see why he had to explain stuff like this. It was bad enough any time when people jumped to conclusions about him, andthese conclusions didn't make a bit of sense. Why would he want to stay here?
"Look, when I first got here," Cashel continued before any of the others jumped in with another comment, "Kotia thought you could send me back home, Lord Bossian. Is that right? Can you?"
"Ican, Lord Cashel," Kotia said. Her face was unreadable. "If that's what you really want."
With a sudden, fierce expression, she put her hand over the back of Cashel's right hand. She said, "There's nothing in this world that the man who conquered the Visitor can't have, you know. Nothing!"
Cashel shook his head. He didn't pull his hand away, though Kotia's touch made him feel uncomfortable. "There's nothing here that I want, mistress," he said. "Except to go home."
Kotia met his eyes for a long moment. She stepped back, perfectly the lady. "Yes," she said, "I see that. I'll take care of the matter as soon as you wish, milord."
"Since you won't be able to take away all the objects that you, ah, fell heir to," said Lord Bossian, "I suppose those of us holding existing manors should divide them among-"
Evne laughed incredulously. Her voice was really a lot louder than ought to come from a little toad.
"No, I am not going to divide Lord Cashel's property with you, Lord Bossian," Kotia said with sneering emphasis. She looked around the huge gathering. It seemed to Cashel that there were more airboats than he'd seen of anything except wavetops in a storm. "Nor with the others. Some of you are cowards andall of you are weaklings compared to Cashel. And compared to me!"
"Where will you build your manor, girl?" the toad asked. "Right here in the middle of the Basin, I suppose?"
"It won't be my manor!" Kotia said. "I'll build it for Lord Cashel. If ever he chooses to return, it'll be waiting for him. Everything will be waiting for him!"
"He won't come back, girl," said Evne. There was more in her voice than a simple statement, but Cashel couldn't be sure quite what it was. "You know that, don't you?"
"Do I?" said Kotia bitterly. Then, glaring at Bossian, she snapped, "Go away, milord. Go back to your manor. If I have need of you here, I'll summon you." She sniffed. "As well I may."
Bossian blinked at her, then backed away. When he was half the distance to his airboat he turned and trotted the rest of the way, calling to his companions.
"You could do better," the toad said, looking at Kotia.
Kotia shrugged. "No doubt," she said. "But the thought amuses me."
Her face went grimly blank again. "What about you, Mistress Toad?" she said. "I can return you to your own shape now, of course. Is that what you want?"
Evne stretched one hind leg, then the other. "I've been a toad so long…," she said. She turned her head toward Cashel. She was so close that he could only see her out of one eye.
She looked back at Kotia. "The emotions aren't as fierce in this shape," she said. "All I ever got from human emotions was to be locked into a block of coal." She laughed, only partly in amusement, then added, "Thank you, girl, but I think I'll leave things as they are. I'd miss the taste of flies, and my neighbors would speak harshly of me if I didn't give up the sport of catching them."
"I can see the advantage," Kotia said, smiling wryly as she looked from Evne to Cashel himself. "Well, if you change your mind…"
People were gathering the various bits and pieces that'd fallen to the ground when the ship burned. Now that Kotia wasn't flinging around flames and angry shouts, folks came up in groups with what they'd found. Kotia must've given orders when people talked to her as they arrived.
Even parts of things that'd broken seemed worth gathering up. The big glasssomething that hadn't missed Cashel by much when it fell was arriving in any number of fragments, carried reverently in the lifted skirts of servants' tunics.
There was a lord or lady at the head of each group, but they weren't doing the work of carrying things. Well, Cashel hadn't expected they would be.
"I guess I'm ready to go, mistress," Cashel said. He raised an eyebrow. "Unless there's more I need to do here?"
"No, we may as well get on with it," Kotia said. "The lingering ambiance of the ship will aid the process-not that it should be very difficult."
She looked at the assembly. The gold disk she'd taken before the Visitor's defeat was in her right hand. Cashel hadn't seen it there a moment ago, but he wasn't sure whether it'd appeared, enlarged from a seed of itself, or if he just hadn't noticed it.
"Return to your manors for the time being," Kotia said. The disk spun, lifting out of her hand. She didn't raise her voice, but Cashel heard her words echoing back faintly from the circle of distant hills. "I'll invite you back when it's safe to come, but right now I have work to do. What's about to happen will seriously endanger anyone who's too close to it and who lacks the power to protect himself."
"Which means all of you," said Evne. As with Kotia-but without any help from the disk-she was speaking to the whole huge crowd. "That's especially true for you who fancy yourself as wizards. Don't stay around or you may not even have time for regrets."
No question about everybody being able to hear the two, well, females. Even at the back of the crowd, ordinary people ran for the airboats. The lords and ladies with their courtiers started out being more dignified about their leaving, but the panic spread like fire in dry grass. Lady Raki running with her skirts hiked up was as comical as a fat lamb gamboling in springtime, and some of the other nobles were even funnier.
"I know you would've avoided them when you raised your manor, girl," Evne said, looking at Kotia. "But I wanted to see them scamper."
Kotia ran her left index finger over the rim of the disk, now at rest in her hand again. "Do youknow that?" she said nonchalantly. "Perhaps you're right, then."
She looked up, nodding to Cashel but then focusing her hard gaze on Evne. "You're welcome to stay with me, you know, Mistress Toad," she said.
"I'mwelcome to stay wherever I choose, girl," Evne said. "Don't mistake me for one of those."
She lifted her body on three legs to sweep the right hind leg in an arc across a portion of the spectators rushing off more quickly than they'd arrived.
"There was once one who could gainsay me," the toad continued. She spoke with certainty and an absolute lack of emotion. Again she reminded Cashel of his sister when she was very, very angry. "But not, I think, for seven thousand years."
Kotia stared at her, balancing the disk in her palm. "Yes, I believe you're correct," she said, as calmly as the toad. "But I don't intend that we should ever become certain."
She smiled. "Lord Cashel?" she continued in a wholly different tone. "If you're ready, we can proceed."
"Sure," said Cashel. He cleared his throat. "Ah, do we have to find a mirror?"
"Yes," said Evne. She extended her hind leg again. There was aspat ! of blue fire. A circle of grass and dried mud nearby became as smooth and clear as the surface of a dew drop.
"Stand in the center, if you would, Lord Cashel," Kotia said quietly. "Mistress Toad, what is your will?"
Evne walked down Cashel's forearm to the back of his hand. "I'll accept your offer of hospitality, girl," she said. "I expect it to be interesting. If not-"
She turned her head to look up at Cashel.
"-quite as interesting as the past two days."
Kotia stretched out her left hand. Evne hopped to it. The toad looked graceless in the air with her four legs splayed in different directions, but she landed precisely in Kotia's palm and tucked herself back together.
Cashel cleared his throat again. "I guess I'll be going, then," he said. He nodded-twice, once to each of them, though with them both together it didn't make much difference. He stepped carefully onto the circle. He expected it to be slick because it was perfectly smooth, but his feet didn't slide at all. He felt like he was standing in empty air, but the surface was faintly warm as well as being solid.
Cashel turned, holding his staff crosswise. You never knew what you were going to run into when you were dealing with wizards.
"I'm ready!" he said, meeting the two sets of eyes. Kotia and Evne looked as cold and hard as crags in the winter sea. It was a really good thing they weren't his enemies.
"Ene psa enesgaph," they said, speaking together. "Selbiouth sarba…"
Cashel's surroundings began to spin, though he himself didn't move. Evne and Kotia faded from sight, all but their eyes; their eyes remained fixed like the constellation of the Seven Oxen in the northern sky.
"Thaoos sieche thur…," the voices said. Blue fire danced soundlessly about Cashel, concealing everything else but the eyes. "Spanton kwilm!"
Cashel was falling into himself. Everything vanished, light and sound and feeling.
In his mind someone whispered, "Farewell, Lord Cashel." He wasn't sure, but he thought it might be both women speaking together.
Garric's steps had been soundless from the moment he entered the lens of light in the garden; now his boots clacked on ice so cold and hard that it was dry. He saw the twins running ahead of him-or perhaps it was only one of them, his/her figure multiplied by reflection in the ice walls.
The ceilings were as high as those of the audience chamber in the royal palace in Valles, ribbed and coffered with ice. Ropes of blue and red wizardlight twined in helixes at the core of each beam and plate; at any distance the ice looked purple.
The walls were sometimes clear, sometimes mirrors that might throw back either a perfect image or a distorted mockery of the original. When the man-shaped monster shambled out of a side-aisle Garric hadn't seen till that moment, his first thought was that he was seeing the reflection of a man, perhaps even himself.
The creature gave a high-pitched laugh and raised its club, the trunk of a fir tree split and slain by a frost beyond what even its cold-adapted fibers could bear. High as the ceiling was, the tree struck it: the monster was real and just as huge as it seemed.
"Haft and the Isles!" Garric shouted, rushing before the creature could come to terms with what for it were narrow confines. Its forehead sloped sharply from thick brow ridges. It was naked except for a coat of coarse reddish hair, incrementally thicker on its scalp and in a mane along its spine; and it was almost twenty feet high.
The creature swung a slanting blow at Garric. He flattened against the wall. The club struck the ice behind him and rebounded, scattering a haze of splinters. Garric cut upward, catching the monster's wrist with the sweet spot of his sword just a hand's breadth from the tip. His steel crunched through cartilage and small bones.
The monster jerked its arm back. When the fingers lost strength, the club slipped and flew against the opposite wall of the corridor. Garric hacked at the inside of the creature's right ankle, cutting deep again.
The creature screamed, grabbed at Garric with its left hand, and toppled forward when its leg gave way. It twisted in the air, still trying to seize him, but Garric jumped past, beyond the creature's reach.
He looked down the range of gleaming, branching corridors. It would've been a maze even without the reflection, but as it was…
He couldn't see the twins. Another of the gangling monsters came down the corridor toward him, doubled by the mirroring walls. It raised its weapon, a crudely-forged iron trident. The reflection was carrying a simple spear, point down as if preparing to gig frogs.
There were two of the creatures, each as tall as the first. There'd be more following them, and still worse things besides. Garric looked over his shoulder for the soldiers who'd come through the portal with him.
The creature he'd crippled was squirming after him on its belly. Beyond it a tunnel of light twisted toward the world Garric came from. He remembered how the distance between him and the twins had seemed greater than it should have been. The portal wasn't a simple hole in space, and there wasn't a regiment of infantry rushing to their prince's support.
But Tenoctris was there, and also Liane supporting the old wizard with her left arm while holding the satchel of paraphernalia in her right. Tenoctris seated herself cross-legged on the ice. Liane dropped the bag beside her and ran on, reaching into her sleeve.
"Watch-" cried Garric, starting back to deal with the monster he'd thought he could leave for the soldiers behind him. It reached out with its uninjured left arm; its fingernails were blunt and black, like a dog's claws.
Liane grabbed the shock of hair at the peak of the creature's scalp and drew her right hand and little dagger around its throat. The arc of the blade was as quick as a ripple shimmering on a pond. The ghost in Garric's mind gave a shout of delight.
Blood, brighter than a man's, gushed out. It steamed as it pooled on the ice. Liane's dagger had an ivory hilt and a gold-chased blade no longer than Garric's index finger, but the steel was so good that it held a wire edge even when slicing corded muscles. The great veins and arteries near the surface of the creature's neck let its life out even faster than a thrust through the heart could have done.
Tenoctris dribbled a triangle of black dust-powdered charcoal or maybe iron filings-on the ice before her. She began chanting even before she'd completed the figure.
"She'll guide the troops through!" Liane said, gasping for breath. Her right forearm and her tunic from the waist down were covered in orange-red blood. "We have to hold back the Hunters a few minutes more!"
"Right," said Garric, turning to face the things that Liane called Hunters. He supposed that Tenoctris had named the creatures; they were nothing Liane would've found in the classical literature that was one of the joys that the two of them shared. "We'll hold."
The Hunters came toward him at a loose-limbed gait, giggling and apparently unaware of each other's presence. They didn't seem to be hurrying, but their long legs covered a considerable distance with each stride.
Garric drew his dagger with his left hand. For the most part the shorter blade was only there on his belt to balance the weight of his sword, but this time it might be useful. "Keep back," he muttered to Liane. "I may have to move-"
The creature with the trident cocked his arm back. Liane gripped her cuffs and spread her outer tunic wide, shouting, "Here! Here!"
Garric sprang forward as both Hunters thrust at Liane. The one holding the spear was on the left, nearer him, so he cut through the back of the creature's wrist. The spear came loose from the Hunter's nerveless fingers and clattered down the corridor. It ripped Liane's tunics, nicking her right thigh as she sprang back to safety from the expected spear thrust.
The Hunters collided with one another and recoiled, grunting in surprise. Garric sank his dagger into the knee of the creature he'd already wounded. As it bent to grab him, he leaped upward, using the imbedded dagger like a climbing iron to give his outstretched sword a few extra inches of reach. He stabbed the Hunter in the belly and jerked the blade back as he fell. When the point withdrew, coils of intestine and dark, stinking fluid spilled onto the ice.
The creature gave a despairing wail and batted Garric into the wall with its good hand. His head hit the ice; his ears rang and he could see things only in black and white. The Hunter reached for him again but vomited a great flag of blood and slowly collapsed on the ice.
The uninjured Hunter had chopped the ground where Liane stood taunting it. It raised its trident again and stamped toward her. Garric tried to get between the creature and Liane but his foot didn't rise as much as he intended it to; he stumbled on the faintly-twitching arm of the Hunter he'd killed. Liane poised between the slavering monster and Tenoctris. She was unable to move without exposing the old wizard-and therefore unwilling to move.
"Hah!" grunted the Hunter. There was a meat-axethwock! The creature arched backward. A spear-shaft stuck up from the middle of its face; the steel head had penetrated the thin bones at the bridge of the nose and grunched into the back of the skull.
"Garric and the Isles!" Lord Waldron said, holding his long cavalry sword high as he ran past Liane and Tenoctris. He hadn't thrown the spear; that had come from the Blood Eagle skirting the women on the other side. The soldier was tugging his own shorter blade from its scabbard.
A line of crimson fire led from Tenoctris' drawing and down the twisting tunnel. Scores of soldiers, a mixture of the bodyguard regiment and regular infantry, packed the opening between worlds, following the light the old wizard had sent to guide them.
"Your highness!" Waldron said. "I sent Lord Valser back to the camp with orders. The whole army will report to the palace and follow Mayne's regiment through that wall of light. Was that right?"
Garric looked down corridors shimmering in a pattern as complex as that of the veins of a hazel leaf. The Hunters were dead; soldiers had just finished hacking the one he'd crippled early into a mass as bloody and shapeless as a cow's afterbirth. But in the distance, from a score of mirrored branchings, came an army of half-men and not-men; some with swords, some with fangs and claws as long as daggers.
"Yes, milord," said Garric. He wiped his blade clean with the skirt of his tunic because the monsters he'd slain with it didn't have clothing he could use for the purpose. "That was a very good idea indeed. And I only hope that they don't waste time in getting here!"
"Nowwill you wake, mistress?" Sharina dreamed Beard was saying to her in a cave of glowing ice.
Sharina came alert, throwing off the bearskin and raising the axe to strike in whichever direction danger appeared. She was breathing hard, shocked to have slept so soundly and frightened by the threat that lowered over her unseen.
The night was as peaceful as night ever was in this world. The ice walls glowed with wizardry and from far down the tunnel the sea moaned, but at least there was no wind in the cave.
Several of the band besides Scoggin and Franca were sleeping outside. The others were in the bone cabin, but the rasp of snoring through the open doorway indicated that all was well there too. Nothing moved but the wizardlight, and its pulses were as slight and sluggish as the steps of an old man.
"What…?" Sharina began in puzzlement.
"The reason you should be concerned," said the axe waspishly, "is that Alfdan removed the Key of Reyazel from your sash and has re-entered the world it unlocks. Unless you find this an attractive place to spend the rest of your life, you might consider fetching him back."
Sharina stood, weighing the axe in her hand. She was coldly furious. The cabin door had been lying on the stones where the beetle's violence had flung it. Now it leaned against the bone wall, and the ground which it'd covered was a hole into the sandy beach.
Sharina started for it. "I don't see how I could've missed him taking the key away," she said.
"Heis a wizard, mistress," said Beard, "and one of his toys is the eyestone of a sloth. It let him cast a sleep spell deeper than even I could wake you from until he'd taken himself away. Did you suppose all these folk were sleeping naturally-that none of them would be wakeful inthis place?"
Sharina hadn't thought the cabin door had a keyhole; nor did it in the ordinary sense, but the flange of the gold key stuck up from the notch through which the latch cord had been led. She glared as she paused at the doorway in the ground; but there'd be time enough to decide how to deal with the key for once and for allafter she retrieved Alfdan.
The sun was setting on the beach beyond. Beard said, "If you're afraid to enter, then you may as well go back to sleep, mistress. You'll need your strength for when the beetle comes or something worse does."
Sharina stepped into the sunset. She didn't bother responding to the axe's gibe. He was right, after all.
Alfdan stood at the tide line; the oval sun threw his shadow far up the sand. The sea had drawn back, but a great swell was lifting beyond the jaws of land.
"Alfdan!" Sharina called. She started toward him. The air felt warm and the dry sand was very warm in contrast to the ice cave. "Wizard!"
The sea rolled into the narrow bay, curling and foaming. Sharina didn't suppose Alfdan could've heard her calling over the sound of the surf, much less that he'd have returned if he had. She began to run, her feet sinking deeper as she reached sand that hadn't been compacted with clay.
Beard pumped back and forth in her hand. She'd have to be careful when she reached Alfdan lest she slice the wizard open in an accident that her anger wouldn't completely regret.
The surf carved another curving slice across the strand, washing Alfdan's legs and springing up in droplets of spray. As it withdrew, the wizard bent and lifted something large from the sand.
"Alfdan!" Sharina shouted. "Leave it!"
The wizard heard her and turned. The object in his hands was a helmet whose rim spread into fanciful flares. The metal shone in the sunset like fresh blood.
"Leave it!" Sharina repeated, still twenty feet away. She felt Beard rise in her hand, but whether that was by her will or by the axe's she couldn't be sure.
Alfdan set the helmet over his head, just as she'd known he'd do. The flaring rim framed his narrow face. He took his hands from the metal and his eyes brightened in beatific delight. "This is…," he said. "I can see everything from the beginning of-"
Sharina halted. She was within arm's length of the wizard. His eyes suddenly lost their focus though he didn't look away. "That's odd," he said. "It's almost as if…"
"Mistress," said Beard. "You should get out of this place. Now."
"I don't-" said Alfdan. His face went pale; then he screamed like a hog when the butcher clamps its nose for slaughter. He grabbed the helmet with both hands and tried unsuccessfully to lift it.
"Alfdan!" Sharina said, seizing the broad rim with her free hand. It burned her; she jerked her fingers away, leaving bits of skin sticking to the metal.
"Mistress, getout," the axe said with an urgency that she'd never heard in his steely voice before. At the moment she was too concerned with the wizard to appreciate Beard's tone. "Get out now. He's already dead!"
Alfdan lowered his hands. His expression was blank. Though his eyes were open, the corneas had become featureless and silvery.
"Help me!" the wizard screamed. He stuck out his tongue but it wasn't a tongue, wasn't flesh: a tendril of shimmering metal waggled toward Sharina.
"Get out, mistress!" Beard shrieked as Sharina swung at the extending tentacle, gripping the helve with both hands. Beard's edge had sheared bone like butter, but it glanced off the tongue without marking it. The shock threw Sharina backward onto the sand, her arms numb to the elbows.
Alfdan-the thing that had been Alfdan-took a tottering step toward her. The metal tongue continued to lengthen, moving with the circular, questing motion of an ivy shoot but immeasurably faster.
Sharina scuttled backward on her feet and left hand. When she'd lengthened the distance between her and the creature enough to risk it, she got up and ran. She didn't look over her shoulder; that would've slowed her down-and besides, she was afraid of what she might see.
Only when Sharina jumped through the portal with a cry of triumph did she look back. The creature was staggering after her. As best as Sharina could tell in silhouette against the red sun, the helmet had closed over Alfdan's face. The tendril continued to elongate; by now it stretched half the remaining distance to the opening.
Sharina slammed the door flat on the wet stone. The echoing crash roused sleeping men with shouts of fear and surprise. She reached for the key winking in the wizardlight, but as her fingers closed on the flange she paused.
"Mistress!" cried Neal, his bow strung and an arrow nocked. "Where's Master Alfdan? I can't find him!"
Instead of withdrawing the Key of Reyazel from the door notch, Sharina pushed it inward. It shouldn't have moved; there was nothing on the other side of the thick panel but a slab of smooth rock. Nevertheless the key slipped downward and vanished.
"Where's Alfdan?" Neal shouted. "Where?"
He was a big man, holding a weapon and utterly distraught. At another time he would have frightened Sharina.
Not now. Neal was merely human.
"I suppose Alfdan's in Hell," she said calmly. "He was so determined to go there that I couldn't stop him."
"But…," said Neal, staggering back as though she'd stabbed him through the body. "But how…?"
"Then we're marooned here," said Burness, hugging his broad-bladed spear to his chest. "We'll never leave. We'll freeze or we'll starve, but we'll never leave!"
Franca began to whimper. He extended the hand that didn't hold his dagger, pointing toward the wall of the cave. A lens of violet light was forming in the ice.
Sharina watched the opening, waggling the axe to make sure that her hands had their strength back. They seemed to be all right, though her left fingertips burned like the fire itself.
"I don't think we'll freeze or starve either one," she said with cold detachment. "We can't go to Her without Alfdan's art, but it seems that She is coming to us."
"Many lives to drink," whispered Beard, shivering in her hands with anticipation.
Ilna settled her tunics neatly as theBird of the Tide brushed to a halt against the stone quay. The watchman in the tower had vanished as soon as he was sure that theBird had entered Terness Harbor alone, not in company with theDefender.
Hutena and Shausga jumped to the quay with ropes while the oarsmen stowed their long sweeps. "I guess they'll be waiting for us, eh, captain?" said Ninon, careful not to look at Chalcus because he was afraid his concern would show.
"You mean because I waved to the watchman, lad?" Chalcus said with a grin. He set a tip of his bow on the deck and bent it with his knee, then slid the thick cord into the upper notch. "Ah, no, we couldn't help him seeing us, could we? What I was doing was giving what few folk are left in the castle, servants most like, time to vacate before our arrival. I don't think they'll want to greet us, especially when they hear their Commander's bound to our mast."
He gave Lusius an appraising glance. "Most of their Commander, that is."
The sailors laughed. "Hey, Kulit would've jumped in and got the Commander's leg back from that seawolf, wouldn't you, Kulit?" Nabarbi said, ruffling his friend's curly hair. "You should've asked him."
Ilna smiled coldly as she stepped onto the quay and looked back at Lusius. He was unconscious; in shock, she supposed, and very likely to die… but he'd die shortly in any case. They'd never promised Lusius his life, only that they wouldn't feed him to the seawolf; and that was more of a concession than he'd granted to his brother, after all.
"Master Bosun?" Chalcus said to Hutena as he hooked a quiver of arrows onto his sash. "I'm leaving the rest of the lads here while Mistress Ilna and I visit the castle, but I'd be grateful if you'd come along with us with the maul. I don't expect to meet anybody there till we get into the cellars, but it may be there's locked doors in the way."
He hefted the powerful bow with a grin. "I may have my hands full, you see."
"I can carry the maul," Ilna said with a frown.
"Your hands, dear heart," Chalcus said with an edge in his voice, "may be a great deal fuller than mine. Not so?"
Ilna nodded, her lips tight with irritation at herself. When she'd left Barca's Hamlet for the wider world, she'd often found men who treated her as though she couldn't do real work because she was a slim girl. That wasn't a mistake anybody'd made in the borough; nor made twice nowadays either, but Ilna was always on edge expecting what to her was an insult.
This was Chalcus. And even if it hadn't been-if some foppish courtier had made the comment-there wasn't time now to feel insulted!
"Sure, I'll go," the bosun said, his voice calm if not precisely eager. He patted the head of his axe to make sure the helve was thrust firmly under his belt, then leaned down into the hold and came up with the maul Ilna'd used to set the mast wedges. The massive head was from the root of a white oak, banded around both faces with iron.
"Captain?" said Ninon. "We'll all go. You know that!"
"I know you would, indeed," Chalcus said with his easy smile, "but this time you'll serve me and our prince better for waiting here by the ship. Who knows how quickly we'll need to put off again, eh, lads?"
"Aye, that's not half the truth," said Kulit. He'd taken another bow from the deckhouse and was stringing it. As he spoke, he looked up the hill toward the castle.
"Dear heart and bosun?" said Chalcus. His left index finger tapped his quiver, the hilt of his dagger, and last his sword. "Shall we be off?"
"Yes," said Ilna, striding up the street and wishing it was dirt rather than cobblestone, even though she'd worn boots. She hated stone…
She smiled. Reminding herself how much she hated stone was a better thing to do than worrying about what they'd find in the dungeons of Lusius' castle; and what might find them there.
"Stone's hard for feet used to a deck," Hutena said, putting words to Ilna's thought. He slanted the maul's shaft over his shoulder, then changed his mind and carried the big tool in both hands. He was on the right side as they walked up the twisting street abreast; Chalcus was on the left and Ilna, smiling broader and letting her fingers knot the pattern they found appropriate, was in the middle.
Nobody was out on the street. Occasionally Ilna caught a glimpse of eyes through the crack in a shutter. A baby cried desperately behind the counter of a used clothing shop as they passed, but neither it nor the mother hushing it were visible.
"What're they afraid of?" Hutena said, frowning with anger and frustration.
The same thing you are, Ilna thought, but instead of that she said, "They don't know what's going to happen any better than we do. The difference is that they've decided to hide and let it happen to them, whereas we're choosing to deal with it on our own terms."
"Yeah, I guess so," the bosun muttered. He gave her an appreciative smile and hefted the maul. "I'd rather be us."
"Yes, me too," said Ilna with a wintry smile of her own. Perhaps she was learning to tell the truth in a way that other people didn't find offensive. That'd be a useful skill, though she'd use it to supplement her instinctive responses rather than replace them.
The street grew steeper and switched back; the only buildings this high up the hill were three-story structures whose upper floors were laid back along the slope. The castle loomed like part of the crag. The outer gate was open.
"Do you know, 'The Single Girl,' Master Bosun?" said Chalcus cheerily, his right middle and index fingers touching the nock of the arrow on his bow string. "When I was single, I went dressed so fine…"
"Aye, I know it," said Hutena. "But we'll sing another time if you please, sir."
Chalcus laughed. They'd reached the gate. Nothing moved but the wind.
Chalcus slipped through the gateway, drawing the bow to his cheek in the same sweeping motion. A cat yowled and sprang from a trash pile. The bow string went back to Chalcus' ear; then he relaxed with a gust of embarrassed laughter.
"I'm not the man I once was if a little cat makes me jump," he said as Ilna and the bosun joined him. He was smiling, but the comment wasn't altogether a joke.
"We're none of us the people we wish we were," Ilna said, sharply because she understood perfectly the thing Chalcus hadn't been willing to put in words. "We never were. As for what matters-you'll do for this."
She smiled, coldly because in a crisis she was always cold; but with enormous affection. "And you'll do for me."
Chalcus set the bow against the inner side of the curtain wall, dropped the arrow back into his quiver, and set the quiver beside the bow. He drew his sword, keeping his left hand free. "I think from here on I'll not worry about what there might be beyond the reach of my blade," he said with a grin.
The buildings around the ancient watchtower were empty-abandoned, not just closed around their cowering inhabitants. "I figured there'd be servants still," Hutena said. "Are they that scared of us?"
"It's not us they're worried about," Chalcus said. "It's what they think we'll let loose that scares them, eh?"
Ilna sniffed. "Then we'll have to be careful not to let it loose," she said.
The tower's outer door was closed. Hutena raised his maul in anticipation, but when Chalcus pulled on the great iron ring, only its weight resisted. The interior was dank and spartan, a military post whose thick walls filled most of what seemed from the outside to be interior space.
A stone staircase ran around the walls. Every fifth step-the thumb of Ilna's hand-was broader and had an arrow slit. The only light came from the slits and from the open trap door that gave onto the roof platform.
Set into the base of the staircase was a small, heavy door with a peaked arch. Chalcus tried it with his left hand; the panel had no more give than the stone jambs that held it. Chalcus moved back and nodded to the bosun.
Hutena stepped to the side of the doorway and eyed it for a moment as he waggled the maul to work his shoulder muscles loose. The panel was hung to open inward. There were staples for a bar on this side from the days the cellars were a dungeon, but they'd rusted to nubs.
"Huh!" the bosun said as he swung, stepping into the blow so that his whole body drove the massive oak head. It crashed into the lock, smashing the plate loose and splintering the internal bolt out of the panel.
Hutena backed away, breathing hard. Chalcus shoved the door open with the toes of his left foot. Air puffed out, chill and stinking of ancient slaughter. The stairs leading down were lighted faintly from below.
"I'll lead," Chalcus said, speaking quietly. He drew his dagger.
Ilna looked at Hutena. The bosun had leaned the maul against the jamb and was trying to slide the short axe from his belt. His hands trembled and his eyes were fixed on a damp patch of wall across the circular room.
"Master Hutena," she said crisply. "I'd like you to wait here and keep people from coming at us from behind. I don't like stone walls, and I certainly don't want to be blocked into this place while I'm busy with-"
She smiled with about as little humor as she felt; she wasn't joking about her dislike of stone.
"-other matters."
"Sir?" the bosun said. He tried to keep a strait face, but his relief was obvious to anyone.
"Aye, and I should've thought of it myself," Chalcus said, shaking his head in feigned irritation. "Indeed, that's all we'd need-locked in a dungeon with no company but a dead wizard."
To Ilna, in a faintly thinner voice, he went on, "Ready, dear heart?"
"Yes," she said; and she followed her man down the narrow steps.
The staircase was steep, but its flights were straight and reversed at landings instead of spiralling like those of the tower above. The treads had been cut from the rock of the hillside, and they were so old that the feet of those passing up and down them had worn them concave.
Ilna couldn't imagine what would have justified such an amount of traffic. Perhaps these steps were much older than the tower built over them, though it dated to the Old Kingdom of a thousand years ago.
There were two handsful of steps in each flight. Looking over Chalcus' shoulder as she turned onto the third flight, Ilna saw a doorway at the bottom. The iron door hung askew; the upper hinge had rusted away, and the lower one was a red mass which would've crumbled if anybody tugged hard enough to swing the door closed.
Chalcus paused three steps up from the bottom. Ilna could hear the wind whispering, and a slight breeze traced her ankles.
"Eh?" murmured Chalcus. He didn't turn his head.
"Go on," said Ilna, also in a quiet voice. Smashing down the door'd made enough noise to wake the dead, but it still didn't seem right to talk loudly.
The pattern Ilna'd woven was in her left hand, the silk lasso in her right. She didn't know which she'd need-or if either would help-but she was as ready as she could be.
Chalcus jumped a double pace into the room below, as smooth as water flowing down the steps but much, much faster. He poised, motionless except for quick movements of his head.
"I'm behind you!" Ilna said sharply, halting an arm's length back of Chalcus. Her eyes swept the circular room beyond.
Its width was four or five times her height. Its illumination came from slots in the upper walls which must've been cut through the crag on which the tower stood. Ilna wouldn't have guessed that any useful amount of light could trickle through such long narrow passages, but in what otherwise would've been total darkness her eyes quickly adapted to see shapes if not colors. Nothing was moving.
The ceiling had been hollowed into a natural dome. The builders had trusted the strength of the living rock without adding supporting pillars. Ilna smiled faintly. Given how old this room must be, they'd been right.
There was no furniture except chests of wood and metal around the walls. Some were covered with animal skins to make adequate benches, and other furs and skins were heaped in several places on the floor.
The room stank like a tanyard. The light slits ventilated it, but even so the stench of death and rotting blood squeezed Ilna's lungs like a pillow over her face. More than just the smell went into the oppressive atmosphere; foul things had happened here. Utterly foul.
Chalcus started edging sunwise around the periphery, the sword in his right hand waggling like a snake's questing tongue. Ilna remained where she was, waiting for the pattern to change.
A slab of basalt lay in the middle of the room. Crude tools had shaped it more or less into a rectangle. There was a groove down the center and a hole in the stone floor beneath it for a drain. Blood coated the slab and the floor both. The latest outpouring gleamed in the faint light; it looked fresh enough to be tacky to the touch, which Ilna had no intention of testing.
She saw no sign of the bodies of the sacrificial animals. Human sacrifices, she supposed.
Two thin, mirror-polished sheets of stone-one of banded agate, the other something bluish and translucent, perhaps topaz-stood upright on either side of the basalt. Ilna frowned, trying to determine what waswrong with the stone mirrors. She felt there was movement in them, but her eyes saw them only as stone.
Chalcus neared one of the piles of furs. He was grinning faintly. His right foot slid forward in another slow step. Without warning he lunged instead, his curved sword stabbing down like the sting of a spider-killing wasp. The point clicked against the stone floor and withdrew as smoothly as it had gone in.
Chalcus shook his head, still smiling. He resumed his slow shuffle.
Ilna had turned her head minusculely when Chalcus thrust; she saw the change in the agate mirror at the corner of her eye. From this slightly different angle she was looking at the hellworld theBird of the Tide had dropped into. A pool of molten sulfur, yellow as bile, bubbled beneath the window of stone; she thought she could see one of the pincer-armed monsters hunch between spikes of rock in the near distance.
"Chalcus," she said in a quiet voice. "These plates are doors of some kind. Gaur may not be-"
Gaur stood up from the heap of furs and bullhides to her right, across the room from Chalcus. The wizard was taller than she'd remembered, raw-boned and powerful. For an instant she thought he was wearing animal skins hair-side out, but that was a trick of the dim light: Gaur was nude and covered with fur like a beast. He growled softly.
Chalcus shifted his stance to face the wizard. Gaur was unarmed, but so big a man could be dangerous regardless. He'd sent a ship and crew from this world to another, though. That would be exhausting for even a very powerful wizard, and from the look of him Gaur hadn't had time to fully recover.
Ilna dropped her knotted pattern back into her sleeve. There wasn't enough light down here for her to trust its effect.
Chalcus sidled toward the wizard, his sword advanced and his left hand not far from the hilt of the slender dagger. Gaur hunched, his eyes fixed on the swordsman. He growled louder, then Gaur's body slumped inward, not shrinking as Ilna first thought but changing: the face flattened into long jaws, the chest grew deeper, and the arms formed into forelegs. For a heartbeat Gaur crouched on his bed of skins as a huge black-furred wolf; then he sprang at Chalcus' throat.
Ilna arched her noose over the thick beast neck, tightening as she pulled with all her strength. The wolf outweighed her by twice or more, but even so she jerked its head around even as the beast snatched her off her feet.
Chalcus' sword slipped in behind the wolf's shoulder blade, grating on ribs as it sliced through and out the other side. Gaur crunched sideways onto the stone floor. Chalcus tugged his blade free; there was a gush of blood.
Ilna'd fallen onto her knees and left hand. She started to rise, still holding the noose tight. The beast was twitching.
The wolf rolled, getting its legs under it again. This time it glared at Ilna. The wound through its chest had closed, though a flag of blood still matted the dark fur.
Gaur snarled and leaped. Ilna threw herself backward, knowing there was no escape. Chalcus caught the wolf's hind leg with his left hand and hacked at the beast's neck, using his edge rather than the point this time.
Gaur twisted in the air and slammed onto the floor again. The inward-curving sword had cut deep into his spine. Still holding the wolf's ankle, Chalcus lifted his sword to repeat the blow; a line of blood drops curled off the blade.
The gaping wound started to close as soon as the steel withdrew. Gaur turned his head toward Chalcus and snarled loud enough to make the stone mirrors vibrate.
Ilna lunged backward, pulling on the noose with both hands. She tripped over the basalt slab and sprawled, doubling her knees up to her chest.
Gaur leaped at her, his beast strength pulling his hind leg through Chalcus' grasp. Chalcus gave a cry of fury and stabbed, driving his point up through the wolf's diaphragm into its chest, but the beast completed its pounce. Its forepaws, each the size of Ilna's hands with the fingers spread, jolted her shoulders down on the basalt.
The pattern was complete.
Ilna kicked upward as she rolled in a backwards somersault. She couldn't have lifted Gaur's weight but she didn't have to: the wolf's own inertia carried him over and past her, through the sheet of agate sullen with the light of another world. The growl turned midway into a scream.
Ilna looked into the agate window. Gaur, his head and torso again a man's, plunged into the pool of boiling sulfur. The thick fluid plopped as it closed over the body and then blasted outward. The wizard's flesh had cooked to vapor in an instant.
Ilna ducked as a blob of molten sulfur spat from the pool to splash over the basalt. It hardened into a thin sheet whose dry reek cut through the stench of old blood.
Ilna straightened, breathing hard. The agate was a smooth mirror again; only from one narrow angle was it a gateway to Hell.
"I lost my noose," she said in a shaky voice. "I've had it for a long time."
"Dear heart, dear love," Chalcus said. He was ignoring Gaur's blood drying on his sword, though he usually kept the steel as scrupulously clean as the bright curve of the waxing moon. "There'll be a thousand cords, there'll be all the silk on the island of Seres now that you're safe. I almost lostyou."
Ilna walked around the upper end of the slab, wiping her hands on her tunic. "I didn't think…," she said. "All the strands had to be placed just so…"
She smiled weakly at Chalcus. "That's true of any pattern, of course. But when it's yarn, the strands don't fight your placement."
As Ilna stepped past the sheet of blue topaz, she caught the hint of movement again. She glanced to the side. What she'd thought was clear stone had shadows in it: man-sized, growing Chalcus shouted. She tried to draw back but she was too late. The clawed fingers of a pair of Rua, fine-boned but strong as steel, closed on her upper arms, pulling her toward them into the topaz mirror.
As Ilna fell, she heard Chalcus shout again.