'These look like grapes," said Ilna doubtfully, using her left thumb and forefinger to pluck one of a bunch of purple fruit. It hung from the large-leafed vine which wound about the Osage orange forming a stretch of the hedge on their right side.
"Theyare grapes, Ilna," Merota said in surprise.
"Indeed, dear heart," said Chalcus. "What else is it that they would be?"
"Oh," said Ilna, squeezing the fruit against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. "I thought grapes grew one by one; the ones I've seen in the borough. These are in bunches."
"Oh, muscadines," said Merota dismissively. "These are much better!"
And perhaps they were. At any rate, the skin wasn't as thick as what Ilna was used to and the juicy pulp was even sweeter than she'd expected. She'd have willingly accepted a tart mouthful to've avoided being embarrassed by not knowing something that "everybody knew". Everybody knew but Ilna os-Kenset, the peasant from Haft.
"Wild grapes are tasty things, to be sure," said Chalcus, twisting off a small bunch with his left hand alone. "These are the kind they grow for wine in great plantations, good as well. And it's no surprise that they'd be the planted sort here rather than the wild, not so?"
"We drank beer in Barca's Hamlet," Ilna said, her voice expressionless. "Bitter beer at that, since we brewed it with germander instead of hops."
If she'd never left home, she wouldn't have been constantly embarrassed by her own ignorance. She'd The anger swirling in her mind-but only her mind-subsided. If she'd never left home, she wouldn't have met Chalcus and Merota. It was hard to remember how life had felt before they'd come into it, because the only details in that gray expanse were the frequent flashes of blazing, frustrated fury.
"We've got our pick of fruits and nuts, surely," Ilna said aloud. "Perhaps if we continue searching we'll find a field of barley? I'd say 'wheat,' but as you know, I'm not an optimist."
"Or we could see what roast chimaera tastes like," said Chalcus. "Assuming we can build a fire, as I trust we could manage."
Ilna smiled faintly. The sailor was probably joking as she'd been joking-more or less-but the question of food did concern her. She didn't need meat-she'd almost never eaten it as a child-but bread or at least porridge would be good. Exploring the entire maze on their own would take months or years if it was even possible. The little folk who lived here should know its ins and outs…
While her companions ate grapes and talked with the ease of long acquaintance, Ilna's fingers worked. She could feel eyes on her, though she knew from experience that if she snapped her head around she'd see only a blur before the watchers vanished. One of the little folk was staring at her from the holly to her left at this very moment.
Ilna turned slightly to the right. "Chalcus?" she said in a calm, pleasant tone. "Merota; I want you both to close your eyes now."
"Why-" Merota said. The child must've seen the cold anger on Chalcus' face-not at her, but at what she'd done-because she instantly screwed her eyes shut.
Ilna used both hands to spread her knotted pattern toward the holly. There was a tiny squeal and a thrashing within the hard leaves.
"All right," she said to her companions, hiding the fabric in her sleeve without taking the time to unpick it. She stepped quickly to the hedge. "You can look now."
She paused for a moment, then reached through the tangled branches with her left hand and pulled out the little man whom her pattern had paralyzed. He was as wiry as a squirrel; even Chalcus, the most tightly muscular man Ilna had ever seen, carried more fat under his skin.
The little man-Ilna refused to call them the Prey, though she didn't doubt that was their place in the garden's society-was as wide-eyed as a hooked bass; he'd been caught with his mouth half open. Ilna laid him on the ground and quickly trussed his arms behind his back with her noose.
She gave the free end of the silken rope to Chalcus. "I'm going to wake him up now," she explained. She brought the fabric out of her sleeve and undid several knots in a precise sequence. "He may try to run."
"There's never been such a wizard as you, dear heart," the sailor said; half jesting, but only half.
"It's no more wizardry than what I've seen you do with your sword," Ilna said sharply. She didn't like talking about her skills, in part because talk reminded her that she'd gained them in Hell. It would've been closer to the truth to call her a demon than a wizard…
She spread the revised pattern before the little man's staring eyes. He gave a convulsive leap before he even blinked. In mid air, halfway to the holly, the rope snapped tight and jerked him down to the grass with a thump.
"Sister take him!" Chalcus shouted, quickly wrapping the silk around his left hand. He'd been holding it with his fingers alone. If he'd been even slightly less quick or less strong, the little man would've jerked free and escaped into the hedge with the rope.
The little man jumped again, this time in the opposite direction. Chalcus threw his right arm in front of his face, expecting the captive to go for his eyes or throat. His sword winked in the unchanging sunlight, point upward where it wouldn't spit the little fellow by accident. Instead he sailed over Chalcus' shoulder, trying to escape to the Osage orange.
Again the noose snubbed him up. When he hit the ground this time he curled into a ball and lay there. His breath hissed, and small bubbles of foam formed between his lips.
"I had him, dear one," Chalcus said with a hint of reproach. "You needn't have done that."
"I did nothing!" Ilna snapped, unreasonably angry at the situation. "Did he hit himself too hard on the ground?"
Merota knelt by the little man and stroked his cheek. "He's afraid, Ilna," she said. "He's shivering here! Feel him."
The little man's eyes were open but there was no more mind within them than in a pair of oysters. "We aren't going to hurt you," Ilna said, more harshly than she'd intended. "We just want to ask you some questions."
The little man didn't speak or even move, unless you counted his violent trembling as movement. Voices chittered in the hedges on both sides.
"Please," Merota said. "He's really frightened. Can't we let him go, please?"
"Yes, of course," said Ilna, bending over the little form. Standing he wouldn't come up to more than her waist. She was furious-at the little man, at herself, and at life.
Mostly at herself, of course; as usual. She'd used her skills to throw a harmless creature into numb terror for no benefit to herself. That was the kind of monster thatshe was.
When Ilna'd loosed the bonds she straightened and looped the rope back around her waist. The little man stayed where he was, still trembling.
"You can go now, sir," Merota said in a tone of stilted formality. He trembled.
Ilna's cheeks were stiff with disgust and rage. The part of her that'd grown up with normal people wanted to damn the little man to the Underworld for making her feel this way And the other part of her was sick, knowing that by trapping him that way shehad sent him to a Hell which'd consumed him as completely as the place a misstep had taken Ilna os-Kenset. She hadn't meant to do that to him any more than she'd meant to do it to herself; but she had, and the consequences were her responsibility.
Ilna picked up the little man in both hands and carried him back to the hedge from which she'd taken him. This time the holly jabbed her because she wasn't trying to avoid the sharp leaves. Sheneeded to be punished.
"There," she said, turning to her companions. "Let's get on from here, shall we?"
She'd left her former captive in a crotch among the scaly branches, his head higher than his feet. He'd come around in his own time or he wouldn't; she'd done what he could.
There was a scrabbling in the hedge; Ilna looked back. The holly twitched and the little man was gone.
If I could believe in the Great Gods, I would thank them now.
"Aye, there's nothing here to hold us," Chalcus said easily. "Is there a direction in particular-"
"They let Dee go," peeped a tiny voice. Then, in a chorus like frogs in springtime, "They let Dee go!"
Little faces were staring from the hedges on both sides. There were more than Ilna could count on both hands.
Chalcus lowered the point of his sword to the ground. Merota put her right hand in Ilna's left and edged closer.
"Princes?" said the little woman peering from the place in the holly where Ilna had snatched her captive. "I am Auta. Have you come to save us?"
"Get the firewood up here!" Donria shouted. "We're going to burn down the gates!"
"I don't think we'll need that, lad," said the ghost in Garric's mind. "The gate leaves don't close so tightly. You can get your axe through and lift the bar if they were in too big a hurry to pin it."
And what's the chance of that? Garric thought, but that was just a gasp of exhausted despair. Nothing seemed very practical at the moment, but that wasn't going to keep him from trying. He knew-heremembered -that Carus had won a good number of his battles by pressing in just this fashion, for the opportunity that the enemy shouldn't have given him-but had regardless, because people make mistakes and frightened people make even more mistakes.
"Come on," he muttered to Metz. Duzi! but his right shoulder hurt, hurt like fire! There was nothing better for the wound than using it, though, and there wasn't any choice besides.
Garric stepped into the bog. He sank to his knees as expected but slogged on. It wasn't but ten feet-two double paces-to the gate, though he'd often run a mile with less effort than this took him.
"What are we doing?" Metz asked, wheezing between the words. He was at Garric's side, moving a little more easily than Garric did since he was more used to this accursed swamp.
'We're going to open the gate," Garric said. Then he added, "The ground's solid inside but we've got to get there."
Metz' uncles had followed also. One'd been badly bloodied on the right side of the head and his ear was in tatters, apparently from a Corl's teeth. He saw the surprise in Garric's expression and grinned broadly. "That was before I broke his back!" he said proudly.
They were supposed to be watching the rear, Garric remembered.
"Don't worry about what's behind you," Carus said with a grin full of murderous delight. "If Torag knew how to fight a battle, you wouldn't have gotten this far."
The ghost laughed and added, "Says the man who lost his life and his fleet because he underestimated his enemy. But not this time, lad. Not this time."
Garric reached the gate. Each leaf was a mat of wickerwork, folded vertically to double it. The interwoven fibers would've been harder to cut through than boards of the same thickness even if he'd had a steel axe, but Carus had correctly seen that the crossbar was the weak point.
Garric reversed his axe, stuck the butt end into the crack between the gate leaves, and shoved upward with all his strength. Duzi it hurts!
The bar didn't move. A warrior thrust his spear through the gap; Garric ducked away, warned by the shadow moving inside. Metz grabbed the shaft just below the delicate flint head and jerked the weapon out, though his uncle Abay's return thrust was vain also.
A troupe of eight women including Donria were half carrying, half pushing a raft of brushwood. It was already burning. Somebody "Donria or I'm a priest!" said Carus. "By the Lady, what I could've done with her beside me!"
– had realized that it it'd be much easier to get the fire going on the relatively firm matting than in the mire at the base of the wall. The women shoved the mass hard against the stockade at the right edge of the gate and staggered away. Already the hard, oily stems were crackling and stretching their flames higher.
Metz put a hand on Garric's left arm. "Not so close," he said, tugging gently. "When a house burns in the village it'll sometimes light the next one just by heat, without even sparks touching. This wall if it gets going…"
"Right, back to the mat," Garric mumbled. He was suddenly so tired he could barely get the words out. If the Coerli sallied now…
"If they sally now, we'll deal with them," said Carus, smiling like a torturer. "But they won't, lad. Their world's turned upside down, and they're not the folk to roll back onto the top of it."
Light glittered in the clouds overhead. Lightning, Garric thought, but the flash was a vivid red: wizardlight. The gray mass of sky, paler this morning than generally in Garric's experience of this sodden land, began to swirl widdershins. As it turned, it thickened like butter forming in cream.
A raindrop smacked Garric; it was the size of his thumbnail. More drops slammed down, sending up high spouts from the bog. The fire which'd been roaring toward full life began to splutter gouts of black ash.
Garric paused, looking from the struggling fire toward the sky. Sirawhil, of course. Torag and his warriors had lost their heads in the disaster, but she had not. If she could keep the humans from winning by daylight, darkness and the pause to regroup would give the battle to the Coerli.
Give the humans over to slaughter by the Coerli.
"…semimenaeus damasilam laikam…"
Sirawhil chanting-but it couldn't be, it was frombehind.
Garric turned swiftly. Marzan sat on firm ground a short distance from the mat which bridged the bog. He wore his headdress of black feathers and held a separate feather, longer than the others, as a wand. He chanted over the topaz, "Iesen nalle nallelam…"
A wind was rising; cat's-paws fluttered puddles and chilled the sweat on Garric's shoulders. Somewhere in the mid sky a much greater force awoke with a low howl.
"Malthabeth eomal allasan…," chanted Marzan. The young girl who'd been helping him walk now stood behind him with a fire-hardened stake. She glared fiercely, turning her head to watch everything around them. It seemed to Garric that she was more concerned that another villager would bump the wizard than that the Coerli would attack.
Marzan's face showed the strain of his art, but Garric recognized also a hint of smug triumph in the wizard's expression. Carus and he hadn't considered Sirawhil's powers when they planned the attack, but neither had they remembered that Marzan was on their side.
And Marzan had the topaz. Within the jewel was an azure spark around which whirled the cloudy flaws.
The rain built to a thunderous downpour; to Garric it seemed more like standing at the base of a waterfall than being caught in an ordinary storm. The blaze that'd started to devour the stockade slumped back into steam and angry spittings.
A fist of wind shrieked out of the sky and whirled a hollow dome above the fire. In it glittered azure wizardlight; the rain splashed and runnelled away as though from a rock. The fire quickly regained its enthusiasm, carving into the fabric of the wall. Rain quenched the curtains of sparks swirling up beyond the shield of wind, but within its heart the blaze swelled into an inferno.
Garric turned his face away, watching through the corners of his eyes. The heat was too fierce for his cheeks to bear.
The flames roared so loudly that Garric couldn't hear Marzan's chanting, but the wizard's feather continued to tap to the rhythm of his moving lips. The rain lashed him and his helper just as it did the other gathered humans, but Garric noticed that the drops falling toward the topaz disintegrated in blue flashes a finger's breadth above it.
The upper gate hinge, a flat wicker rope, burned through. The lower hinge held for a moment, but when the leaf tilted inward it tore also. The gate fell open with a gush of sparks. Several Coerli sprang away from the ruin with despairing wails. The rain noticeably slackened, then stopped.
"Fellow humans!" Garric shouted. Carus had been right-of course: Garric was ready to fight now, and he'd havebeen ready if Torag had led another sally. "We'll go in as soon as the fire's burned back enough from the gap. Remember, we're deciding today whether this world belongs to men or cat beasts!"
"There's only one rule here," said Carus, watching through Garric's eyes but seeing more than Garric would ever see in a battle. "Don't stop, don't slow down; don't quit while there's one of them standing. Never quit!"
"Come along, Leto!" Donria said. "Mirza, you're next, and where's Keles?"
A woman carrying a bundle of brush that hadn't gone into the fire now threw her load off the end of the matting. It sank slightly in the bog, but buoyancy and the way its weight was spread kept it high. It didn't submerge even when another woman stepped onto it to drop her similar load a full stride closer to the stockade.
A third woman was struggling forward with what was more of a tangle than a bundle. The withies that'd bound the brush together had come untied at some point in the march or the recent fighting, so sticks kept dropping out.
The fire was burning in both directions from where Donria's raft had kindled it. It advanced through the stockade at the speed a man could walk. The wicker had been rained on daily for as long as it'd been up, but the core of the withies was dry and sapless. Heat sufficient to sear through the surface layer brought a return of many times greater flames, though these burned down quickly to white ash.
Garric looked at the gap, then at the waiting villagers. Some were apprehensive, but to his surprise more of them watched the destruction of this symbol of Coerli dominance with awed delight. The fight wasn't over yet, but that was a better mindset than fear.
Garric grinned. Though fear was certainly justified.
The third bundle of brushwood went into the bog; two other women had helped the bearer tie it back together. Where the stockade gate had been was now a hole you could drive a team of oxen through if you could convince them to step in hot ashes. Garric couldn't see any cat men.
"Nets ready!" Garric shouted. He raised his axe; he didn't have a minnow net any more himself. "Come on, fellow humans! The world for mankind!"
With Metz at his side and behind them Abay and Horst, Garric charged the opening. Smoke stung his eyes, but he noticed with pleased surprise that the pain of his wound had subsided to a dull ache. "The world for mankind!"
The last bundle of cut brush rotated slightly as Garric jumped from it. He landed short, on firm ground but tilted forward and about to fall on his face. He dabbed his left hand down and bellowed; he'd put his weight on a live coal hidden under the ashes. His callused feet might not have minded it, but his palm certainly did.
"It's on fire!" Metz shouted. "It's burning!"
Of course it's burning, we started the fire ourselves! Garric thought, but the snarl-really over his blistered hand, not anything Metz had said-didn't make it to his lips. Fortunately, because otherwise he'd have had to apologize.
The slave barracks was ablaze. The damp thatch gushed a pall of choking white smoke. The slave women-the cattle, as they'd been-had opened the gate in the cross wall. They were pouring into the Coerli portion of the compound, each bearing a torch and generally a weapon as well: a stake, a club, even a bag with enough wet dirt in the end of it to knock a man silly.
To knock a cat man silly. Garric saw Donria's raw-boned deputy Newla, but she seemed to be leading rather than commanding the revolt. The slaves' only future had been to become cold dinners for the Coerli, later if not sooner. All they'd have needed to riot was an opportunity. But where had they gotten the fire?
"When you and Donria fled…," said a voice in Garric's head. It was the first time since the attack began that the Bird had spoken to him directly. "Soma concealed the block and fire bow I'd brought you. She lit a fire when the attack began. By the time the Coerli realized what was happening, she'd begun distributing torches among the other women."
"Somadid?" Garric said in amazement. The only Coerli he saw were one who'd been wounded in the fighting outside the stockade and had apparently died from the gaping hole in his chest while crawling toward Torag's longhouse, and a dead warrior close to the gate from the slave quarters.
"Yes," said the Bird. "She led the attack on Sirawhil here in the courtyard. She killed the warrior guarding the wizard by thrusting a torch into his mouth. Not before he disemboweled her, of course."
"Half a dozen of you pick up that burning hut!" King Carus shouted, taking control of Garric's tongue while Garric was too stunned by what he'd just heard to be fully aware of his surroundings. "We're going to throw it into the longhouse. That's where the cat beasts have laired up!"
One of the half-dozen beehives that housed the warriors in groups of two or three was burning with the same sluggish determination as the slave barracks. The blanket of white smoke it spewed out hovered at waist height, drifting slowly westward now that Marzan's whirlwind no longer ripped through the compound. Though the fire didn't look enthusiastic, it'd devoured about a quarter of the thatch dome.
"Right!" said Garric, puzzling nearby villagers who thought he was talking to himself. "Come on, five of you! Metz, you and your uncles guard us. Come on, grab a post!"
Garric deliberately put himself closest to Torag's longhouse, at the edge of the pall of smoke. He gripped one of the hooped poles supporting the frame and tried to lift it with his left hand only. The pole was sunk too deep for him to pull it out of the ground that way.
He dropped the axe and shoved both hands through the thatch to seize the pole, then straightened his knees. His vision blurred. Duzi it hurt!
"Put your man in it!" old Cobb used to say when he'd hired Garric at fourteen to grub a drainage trench through a boulder-studded field. "Put your-"
Garric came up with the pole in his hands. The hut shuddered, spewing sparks and rising all along its circumference as villagers lifted their poles also when Garric had broken the weight free to begin with.
"Let's go!" Garric bawled, barely able to see for the tears and pain. He staggered forward, in the direction memory told him the longhouse ought to be. If the cat men made a sally, he'd be dead before he knew it. This wasn't strategy or even tactics, it was a buzzing determination of a horsefly which is willing to die so long as she can drink blood first. "Let's go!"
"It's the way to win battles," growled the king in his mind. "Never flinch, never quit."
"Torches!" Donria screamed. "Throw your torches! Throw them, Newla!"
Garric more felt than saw the brands whickering past in smoky arcs, bouncing from the roof and on the porch boards. A Corl, perhaps Torag himself from the volume, shrieked in maddened fury. If they'd been preparing to rush, the rain of torches made them hesitate.
Garric's foot stubbed against the porch. "Now!" he cried. "Throw the-"
He lifted and heaved, twisting his body out of the way. The burning hut slid past him under the grunting effort of the villagers still pushing the load.
Garric landed on his side and arm; the left arm, thank the Shepherd, but it wouldn't have mattered. it wouldn't have mattered if he'd torn his whole arm off because he'd succeeded. They'd beaten the Coerli.
The hut, fanned to brighter flames when they moved it, crunched into the porch of the longhouse. Smoldering bits of thatch broke off, but a considerable quantity must've gone through the central door. Almost at once white smoke curled from the windows at either end.
Metz helped Garric up and slapped the butt of his stone axe into his hand. Garric's fingers closed over the weapon thankfully, ready to meet the rush of Coerli warriors that he knew now would never happen. The fire had beaten them; and more than fire, the shock of facing men who understood war and who carried the fight to their enemies.
Metz pulled him back. The walls of the longhouse crackled more fiercely than damp thatch as the flames mounted. "Is there another way out?" Garric asked hoarsely.
"I sent my uncles around the building with nets to cover any doors they found," Metz said. "The cords'll burn, but they'll hold till the fire finishes the business."
"There are no other doors," said the Bird with crisp authority. It landed on Garric's left shoulder, a gossamer weight and a comforting presence. "Besides, the Coerli would not run."
"Then they'll die," said Garric, lifting the axe slightly. His arm felt as though it belonged to somebody else, not so much painful as a vividly described pain.
He remembered watching the Coerli kill and devour a woman with slavering gusto. "Either way they were going to die," he added.
The ridgepole broke; the roof of the longhouse collapsed on the interior in a shower of sparks. A handful of thatch lifted in a spiral, then fell apart twenty feet in the air. It dribbled back as scattered smoke trails. Garric thought he heard a cry of agony, but it might've been steam squealing from a burning log.
"I have brought the hero who freed us from the Coerli!" quavered a voice.
Garric turned, feeling the heat of the burning longhouse on his back. Marzan stood where the gate of the stockade had been. His right arm was over the shoulders of the girl aiding him, but his left held the topaz out before him.
"I have conquered!" the wizard cried. "I am Marzan the Great!"
"You know, lad?" said King Carus. "I think I'd have to agree with him. But he sure picked the right sword for his fight.."
Around them the flames hissed, and a plume of smoke climbed into the gray skies.
Cashel rocked a little as he felt coarse soil under his feet. He and Protas didn't move-it was more like the world moved under them-but each time it happened Cashelfelt like he ought to be falling on his face.
It was night. The moon in its first quarter hung low in the west and the stars were bright but unfamiliar. One constellation looked a little like the Widow's Donkey, but just a little. Something wailed dismally at the back of the cold, dry wind.
"Umm," said Cashel, pulling the slippers out from under his belt where he'd stuck them. "Here, Protas. They're still wet and muddy, but you'll probably be better with them on."
The boy stood on one leg to pull a slipper on the opposite foot. When he started to topple he caught Cashel's arm.
"Best sit down," Cashel said, disengaging himself without being too harsh about it. Protas thumped to the ground, and Cashel resumed looking all around them.
A new guide ought to be picking them up, and there might be other things looking for them besides the guide. It was hard to tell what was howling in the distance, and there was no way at all to know how big it was.
He and Protas were on a mound of dirt dried to crumbly stone. Around them were more mounds, bigger or smaller, their sides carved by the rain that must fall occasionally. Not any time recently, though. Spiky bushes and clumps of grass were scattered widely. Each stood on the pedestal which its roots protected from the scouring wind.
"Hello?" called a voice. "Hello, are you there?"
"Sir?" said Cashel, turning the direction the sound came from. The bigger mounds were clearly banded, though he couldn't tell colors in the faint moonlight. Here and there what looked like big bones were weathering out of the dirt. "Lord Protas and me're this way, sir!"
He wasn't completely sure it was a man calling, the voice was that thin and squeaky. Well, if it was a woman, he'd apologize.
"What's that?" the voice said. A yellow light bobbed around a pinnacle as tall as a man but not much wider than the quarterstaff was long. "All right, I see you now. Don't move!"
"Move where, Cashel?" Protas said in a low voice. The boy was looking at the landscape too, though there wasn't much to see. That wasn't the worst thing they could've found, of course.
"I think he's just talking," Cashel said. "But in case the ground's going to swallow us whole if we step off this little hill, we'll stay right where we are."
"Oh!" said Protas with more enthusiasm than Cashel's comment warranted. He'd probably read books the way Garric and Sharina did, all full of wonderful things that hadn't really happened or didn't happen much.
Sometimes they did happen, though, so Cashel was staying where he was. A shepherd learns to be careful. There's nothing so unlikely that some ewe, some day, won't manage to get herself in trouble doing it.
"Yes!" said the man with the lantern. He was as tall as Cashel but thin as a rail. "There's two of you, then. Well, come along, we mustn't waste time outside. It's quite dangerous, even this close to my dwelling. And we can't possibly try to go on at night, that would be hopeless, completely hopeless! I don't know why you came here at this time of day!"
"Who are you, sirrah?" Protas said sharply, making his voice seem to come out of his nose in that way he had. "I am Protas, son of Cervoran, and my companion is Master Cashel, the great wizard. We are not men to be ordered about by some nameless flunky!"
"What?" said the guide, drawing himself up full-height and holding the lantern closer to Protas' face. It was just a candle, likely tallow, behind horn lenses and didn't do much to aid the low moon. "I'm Antesiodorus, that's who I am. A scholar and a man who deserves respect even from ill-mannered boys."
"I don't mind standing here," said Cashel. "But if you've got water in your place, Master Antesiodorus, I'd appreciate a drink."
Cashel was smiling, more on the inside than with his lips. He'd been ordered around by no end of angry little people who thought they were more important than the world thought. He didn't make a fuss about it; he didn't fuss about much of anything. If Protas wanted to bring somebody up short for being impolite, though, that was all right with with him. The boy was being a lot nicer about it than Ilna would've been, that was for sure.
Protas raised his left hand and touched the topaz crown.
"I'm not afraid," said Antesiodorus, this time with a kind of stiff dignity. "I have my duty and I'll do it. If you'll come with me, sirs, I'll provide such hospitality as I have available."
Cashel heard rustlings around them as they traced a winding path between the cutaway mounds, but it didn't seem there was anything big or anything particularly interested in them, either one. What he thought at first was a bird swooped close, but it flew more like a bat as he watched it flutter away.
A low house was built between a couple of miniature buttes ahead of them. Light, probably from a single candle, winked through chinks in the walls.
"Are those logs?" Protas asked. "Where did you find trees so big here, sir?"
"They are not logs, they are bones," said the guide. "I didn't find them, they were found by those persons who built the dwelling I am forced to occupy. And while I can only conjecture, it seems reasonable that they dug the bones out of the hills. Similar ones are weathering out even now."
The house was long and rambling. Instead of going through the doorway covered with fabric pinned to the transom, Cashel walked to the southwest corner to look at the place in the moonlight. They were bones all right, thighs mostly but with big shoulder blades slid in sideways between layers and chinked with mud. The roof trusses were ribs, covered with sod. Well, dirt anyway, and Antesiodorus must keep it wetted down because coarse grass grew all over it instead of just tuffets here and there like the landscape in general.
"Sir?" Cashel said. He tapped a bone with his knuckle; it made aclock ing sound like well-cured oak. "What did these come from? Giants? Because there's never been an ox so big."
"They came from mastodons," Antesiodorus said, pausing with the door curtain lifted. He looked sour, but Cashel guessed he was the sort of fellow who looked sour more times than he didn't. "Are you any the wiser, Master Wizard? They're animals and they're obviously bigger than oxen; or they were, because so far as I know they've been dead for more ages than there've been men. At any rate, all I've seen around here are bones."
"Thank you," said Cashel quietly. "And I'm not really a wizard, sir."
Antesiodorus cleared his throat in embarrassment. "Now, if you're quite done out here," he said, "would you care to come in? The bones look much the same from this side, and the things that might decide to eat you can't get through the walls."
"Sorry," Cashel said. straightening. "I've never seen a house built like this."
He nodded Protas inside and followed the boy; Antesiodorus pulled the curtain across the door behind them. The walls were solid enough to keep out wolves or whatever it was the guide worried about, but just a cloth hanging in the doorway didn't seem like much.
It was a cloak of black velvet, covered in symbols embroidered in silver thread. Cashel felt the hairs on the back of his hand tremble when he touched it.
Antesiodorus was looking hard at him. The lantern in his hand and the yellow-brown tallow candle on the table lighted the long room surprisingly well.
"You recognize it, then?" Antesiodorus said in a challenging tone. "The Cape of Holla?"
"No sir," Cashel said. "But I see why you don't worry about things coming through the door to get you when it's hanging here. My sister could probably tell you more, but I see that much."
"Then youare a wizard," Antesiodorus said, putting just a hair of emphasis on "are". He sounded puzzled.
"Not like people mean," Cashel said, embarrassed to talk about what he didn't understand. He looked around for a place to sit and didn't see a good one. "Ah?" he added. "If I could have a mug of water-or beer if you have it-I'd find it welcome."
"I don't have beer and the water's alkaline," said Antesiodorus, shuffling to the corner that seemed to be his pantry. He was barefoot and his clothing, a tunic and a short cape, was of some coarse vegetable fiber that wasn't much better than sacking. "It suffices for me, and I'm afraid it'll have to suffice for you."
Cashel didn't answer. Antesiodorus wasn't the old man he'd thought him when they were outside. Oh, sure, he must be forty-but Lord Attaper was forty, and he could give a fight to most men half his age. The guideacted old, though, and very tired. That was what was in his words, age and tiredness this time rather than anger.
Protas was stepping briskly around the room, looking first at this thing and then at that. The only real furniture was the table, a slab of yellow limestone that might've been local supported on either end by a tusked skull with huge eye sockets. The top was piled high with books and scrolls, some of them open.
The bone walls of the house wouldn't keep out a driving rain, but here in the center of the long room was probably safe. The roof wouldn't leak; or anyway, wouldn't leak quickly. Cashel knew storms in this climate could be fierce, but he didn't imagine that they'd last long.
Protas glanced at the books, but mostly he was looking at the things along the walls. They'd been put on trays made by sticking bones from smaller animals end-on into the cracks between the mastodon thighs. There were boxes of shell and alabaster, and one little casket was made of some purple metal like Cashel had never dreamed of. There was a rusty iron helmet that looked like scrap to be turned into horseshoes, and a dagger with a moonstone the size of a baby's fist in the pommel. The boy was fascinated.
"Here," said Antesiodorus, offering Cashel a cup. "I have flat bread and goat cheese if you're hungry."
Instead of being terra cotta or a simple wooden masar, the sort of thing people who dressed like Antesiodorus generally drank out of, this was glass clearer than the water that filled it. Gold-filled engraving on the inside showed hounds chasing an antelope, a nice picture and very well drawn-except that the antelope had six horns, not two.
"I only have one cup," Antesiodorus said. "I've never had visitors."
Then, angrily, "Ishouldn't have visitors! I should be left to my studies! I don't ask for much, do I?"
Cashel drank instead of answering. He wouldn't have spoken anyway, since their guide wasn't asking a real question. The water was all right, though it had an aftertaste that seemed to coat Cashel's tongue and the back of his throat. He'd drunk worse, but it made him miss the days when he could walk down to Pattern Creek and fill his wooden bottle from the cold, clear current just above the stones of the bottom.
The thought made him smile, and smiling made him think of Sharina; he smiled wider. He handed back the cup.
"Thank you, Master Antesiodorus," he said. "I'd like some of the bread and cheese you offered, if you would. And if you've got a few scallions, that'd be better still."
"Yes, of course," said their guide, stepping back to the pantry. "And more water? It's simple fare, but I believe it cleanses my body and helps me think."
"Water, please," Cashel said. With a grin in his voice he added, "I don't know how much this sort of food helps me think, but it's what I've eaten pretty much all my life."
"Master Antesiodorus," said Protas, holding what looked like a sand painting that'd been glued onto its backing. "Where did you get this? Where did you get any of these things?"
The boy gestured at the wall he'd been walking along. From the bone core of a bison's horn hung an amber necklace; one of the pieces was near as big as the topaz, and it had something inside. Beside the necklace was a wax tablet, and besidethat was a set of doctor's tools with gold handles and blades of bright sharp steel. There were more things than there'd been sheep in the largest flock Cashel had ever watched.
"Would you like food also, Lord Protas?" Antesiodorus said, coming back with cheese and bread wafers on a silver tray.
"My father had things like this," Protas said, challenging and talking through his nose again. "Only not so many or so fine. You're a wizard, aren't you?"
"I'm a scholar!" Antesiodorus said. "That's all I ever wanted to be. Can't we leave it at that?"
"Only if you're so great a wizard," Protas went on, back to sounding like a nervous boy, "why is it you live this way, sir? We… we have to depend on you guiding us, you see."
Cashel broke a piece from the wafer and a piece from the hard, flat cheese, then munched them together. It seemed to him that the boy had a point, though it wasn't one that he'd have thought of himself. There wasn't anything unusual about the way Antesiodorus lived-by the standards of a poor boy from Barca's Hamlet.
"I choose to live like this," Antesiodorus said. Cashel couldn't read the emotion behind his expression, but it was a strong one. "I made a mistake. That's all it was, just a mistake. I didn't mean the other things to happen!"
He lifted his hands in a broad gesture. "I've agreed to help someone in exchange for being allowed to live quietly," he went on. "I find things for him. I'm a scholar, I can use the books and manuscripts I gather in ways that others could not. And he provides…"
Antesiodorus gestured again. "I don't need much, I don't want much!" he said. "Just to be left alone with enough food to live and water drawn from the well I dug myself. Why can't they let me have that and leave me alone?"
"It's good cheese," said Cashel. "Thank you. Where is it that the goats are at, sir?"
If Antesiodorus kept animals, Cashel would've smelled them. Besides, he didn't see the scholar making any better of a goatherd than Tenoctris would. Talking to the wizard's servant might tell them things that Antesiodorus himself wouldn't.
Antesiodorus looked at him. "Yes, of course," he said pettishly. "Why would you care about my troubles? The food is delivered to me. Sometimes the items I've located in my researchs are taken-I won't say in exchange, just at the time the food arrives. Sometimes they're not taken at all, as you see."
"I'm sorry for your troubles, master," Cashel said. "But I don't know how you came to be here or what it was you did. I couldn't say much without knowing more."
He looked Antesiodorus in the eye and smiled again, not quite the same expression as before. Cashel didn't look for people to fight, but he'd had plenty fights in his life and he guessed he'd have more.
"What Ican say," he went on, "is that it's good cheese and I appreciate you sharing it with me."
Antesiodorus swallowed and seemed to sink into himself, hunching and looking even thinner than he'd been. He picked up a little silver pin on a shelf beside him and looked at it hard; a fish, it seemed to Cashel, but mostly it was just a glitter in the candlelight.
"I didn't mean for the other things to happen," he muttered. "I was young and it was just a mistake."
"Master Antesiodorus?" Protas said. The boy stood stiffly, formally, but he wasn't putting on airs like he did when he was angry. "Are you here to work off a debt, or are you serving a sentence?"
"Is there a difference, milord?" Antesiodorus said, smiling faintly. He held the pin against his chest, his fingers covering it completely. "If a debt, then it's one I'll never be able to pay; and if a sentence, it's a life sentence. That was how I made the mistake, you see. I thought it was important to save my life."
He shrugged. "Have you both finished eating?" he said. "Then we'd best get some sleep. We'll need to set out as soon as the sun comes up in the morning. I have some wall hangings that'll have to do for bedding, though I'm afraid there's nothing but the floor to sleep on."
Antesiodorus looked up. "Or my couch," he added sharply. "But that's stone."
"The floor will be fine," said Cashel. "Won't it, Protas?"
But the boy was holding the topaz in his left hand, and his eyes were far away.
"Your highness," said Lord Tadai forcefully to Sharina, "you have no business being here. You should be in Mona where you can have proper control of the government."
The troops in the fortifications around Calf's Head Bay were standing to arms. Reinforcements who'd been billeted on the north end of the island had arrived during the night, clanking and muttering. They'd cursed the mud and the darkness, called for the liaison officers who were supposed to guide them to their new positions, and argued among themselves over location and rations and who had precedence on the paths. Blood Eagles guarding Princess Sharina had prevented tired soldiers from stumbling over the guy ropes and bringing her tent down on top of her, but they couldn't make the night quiet.
That was all right; she'd seen what the troops had faced the day before. A disturbed night's sleep was little enough to suffer by comparison.
"Milord," Sharina said, "I'm exactly where I need to be. Initially I thought as you did, that I'd be in the way. I'm not in the way. Messengers can reach me here, and I can sign documents just as easily as I could back in the palace."
"It's a very inefficient way to rule, your highness!" said Tadai. "The clerks-"
"The clerks will cope," Sharina said. "You will cope. Because the soldiers out there-"
She gestured to the south wall of the tent. Beyond the canvas wall was the slope to the battlefield and then to the sea from which they could expect more hellplants at sunrise.
"-are coping with something much more difficult than a seven mile journey over a bad road. So long as they're here fighting, I'll be here too. Just as my brother would've been. As you know well."
"You can'tdo anything, your highness," Tadai said, but his protests had lost their fierce edge. He didn't agree with her, but he knew by now that she wasn't going to budge.
"I can be seen, Tadai," Sharina said. She smiled; it wasn't something a man like Lord Tadai could understand. "The troops can see me watching them as they fight to save the kingdom."
Though salvation was in Double's hands, at least for now. If the wizard failed, the army would at best delay the attacking plants.
More wood, brush and heavier timbers as well, had been brought up during the night; it filled the trenches in front of the breastworks. That would hold for a time, and the soldiers' swords would hold for a further time. The phalanx had marched across the island; perhaps its twenty-foot pikes would prove more useful than the shorter spears of the regular infantry.
But after that, human resources were exhausted. Without Double, it was simply a matter of how fast the hellplants could walk and how many more would come out of the sea. Not that there was any reason to fear failure after the wizard's triumph the previous day…
"If you'll excuse me, milord," Sharina said, stepping out of the tent past the nobleman. "It'll be dawn shortly, and I want to talk to Tenoctris beforehand."
She and Tadai had discussed everything there was to say about her location. In truth she didn't have any important business with Tenoctris either, but the old wizard was a friend in a fashion that Lord Tadai-smart and skilled and completely loyal though he was-could never be to someone who never forgot she'd been raised as a peasant.
Tenoctris was a noble also, but all she'd ever cared about was her studies. She'd spent much of her life in garrets and the dusty basements of libraries, oblivious of her surroundings and completely untouched by notions of birth and family. Tadai was plumply sleek and studiedly cultured. Like Waldron, a noble of a very different sort, Tadai was brave and hard working-but neither man could look at another person without first determining where that person ranked in the social order.
Friends are equals. Sharina was no more comfortable with Tadai's deference than she'd have been with with him ignoring her if she were waiting tables in her father's inn.
The tent didn't have a charcoal brazier, but the dozen candles for lighting and the watchful Blood Eagles-present by Attaper's order no matter who was talking to Sharina-must've warmed the interior more than she'd realized. The dank sea wind was stronger than she'd expected. She hugged herself and started back inside for a wrap.
"Here you go, Princess," said Trooper Lires, one of the guard detail. He swung the cape he must've brought from the wardrobe in the tent's curtained anteroom. "I figured you'd want this, so I grabbed it."
"In the Lady's name, my man!" Tadai protested. "Show some respect for your ruler."
"He's keeping me warm, which is better," Sharina said, letting the soldier help her on with the garment. Blood Eagle officers were noblemen, but even they weren't courtiers. It hadn't occurred to Lires that it wasn't more important to give Sharina the cloak than to do so in a properly subservient way And Sharina agreed.
It was a formal garment, black velvet with a lining of crimson silk. That didn't prevent it from blocking the chill breeze as well as cruder, cheaper fabric could've done. Sharina walked to where Tenoctris sat cross-legged on the ground. . One of the wizard's guards had spread his half-cape beneath her, though Sharina was sure Tenoctris hadn't thought to ask for it. She'd drawn a figure in the dirt; in this light Sharina couldn't describe its shape, let alone the words of power drawn around it. The older woman looked up as Sharina approached.
"Have you learned anything?" Sharina asked, squatting beside her friend.
"I feel like a mouse between a pair of granite mountains," Tenoctris said with her usual cheerful humility. "I can see the-"
She gestured with the bamboo split in her hand.
"-structures, call them, which Cervoran and the Green Woman are preparing, but until they act I have no way of judging their intent."
She grinned. "Except that it's unlikely that the Green Woman plans anything that will benefit humanity," she added. "And I'm more than a little doubtful about Cervoran as well."
Sharina looked to where Double stood with his head down at one end of where he'd raised the mirror. The post-and-canvas form remained, shuddering in the wind, though the silver had vanished into the ground.
"Has he moved since the battle yesterday?" Sharina asked quietly. Then she added, "I haven't seen him eat."
"No," said Tenoctris without being specific as to which comment she was replying to. "He'll be rousing soon. It's almost dawn, and I can-"
She looked at the sky, faintly gray though the brightest stars were still visible.
"-feelthe balances shifting. I wish I could really describe what I see, Sharina, but I suppose it doesn't matter since I don't know what it means myself."
"Here they come!" a soldier bellowed. Horns and trumpets blew Stand-To in shrilly. So far as Sharina could tell the whole army was already in position behind the earthworks. She hugged her friend again and stood up.
The tide was coming in and with it dark ugly lumps. More hellplants bobbed farther out to sea. They stretched so far into the distance that Sharina couldn't tell the shapes from those of the waves. Spume flew inland, driven by the sea breeze.
Double shook himself like a dog coming out of a high wind. He gave Sharina a fat-lipped grin, then pointed his athame at the ground.
"Eulamon," he said. "Restoutus restouta zerosi!"
As the words of power sounded, blue wizardlight twinkled coldly along the ground before him. The wind, already strong, picked up. It drove dust and leaves and mist.
"Benchuch bachuch chuch…," Double chanted, the same words as on the day before. He lifted the point of his athame; silver rose from the soil into which it'd sunk at the end of the previous day's battle. The sun, just above the horizon, flared red on the film of metal. "Ousiri agi ousiri!"
Some of the soldiers began cheering. The sound was scattered, but there was no misgtaking what it was.
Tenoctris looked down the slope. The sun spread the shadows of the oncoming hellplants in long blurred masses.
"I think that's the first time I've heard laymen cheer a wizard," she said in a musing tone.
"It's only the troops who were here yesterday," Sharina said. "The ones who survived the battle."
"Yes, well…," Tenoctris said. She gave Sharina a wry smile and shrugged. "I started to say that I hope there'll be even more cheering tomorrow, but I think instead I'll just hope for the best result."
Sharina opened her mouth to ask what that would be. "Ah," she said instead, nodding. If Tenoctris had known what the best result was, she'd have stated it. Looking at Double, his face waxen and grinning like a badly molded doll's, she understood why Tenoctris would be unwilling to hope outright for that creature's victory.
The mirror was complete, a silver shimmer as precise as the edge of a sword. Even as low as the sun still was, the metal waked a dot of light that tracked the plant on the southernmost end of the attacking line. The creature began to smoke, but the fog was thickening.
Something swirled past Sharina on the breeze. Spider silk, she though; gossamer; one of thousands of strands drifting from the sea. She'd seen its like often in springtime: egg sacks hatched and tiny spiderlets sailed across the meadows, lifted on long threads of silk. But this A strand, many strands draped themselves on Sharina's arms and hair. They were blowing up the slope in numbers beyond any hatching in her memory. They didn't support spiders, and they seemed to be of coarser vegetable material rather than silk. The breeze carried them onto the mirror where they clung, squirming across the metal and linking as though the wind were weaving them.
The silver film deformed as the threads squeezed wrinkles into the surface. The dot of light searing the distant hellplant blurred into a vague brightness quivering harmlessly through the fog.
The initial line of monsters squelched closer. A second battalion was already marching up from the sea.
"Olar akra!" Double shouted, suddenly agitated. "Zagra orea!"
The mirror shook violently and smoothed itself, bursting vegetable fibers and flinging them aside. For a moment the dot of light steadied again on a hellplant, but more threads wriggled through the air and took the place of those which'd been broken.
Though Double continued to chant, the fibers poured up on the wind in ever-increasing quantities. First like chaff on a threshing floor, then thicker yet and knotting into a mat which covered the silver. Only when the fabric was opaque did it begin to squeeze again, this time inexorably.
"Audusta!" Double snarled. The mirror collapsed, though the vegetable mass continued to twitch and tremble where it'd been. Double turned away and clumped back toward his ancient oak work chest.
On the plains below the mist grew thicker, and the plants marched on.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Auta," said Chalcus with a sweeping bow. "Who is it that you're to be saved from, if I may ask?"
The sailor's gestures were always excessive by anybody else's standards, but somehow he carried off what would've made a courtier look absurd. If I made the world, Ilna thought, gray and brown would be all the colors needed, and people would behave as if they too were gray and brown. There'd be no Chalcus in that world… and very little for me, despite that's what I think I'd want.
"Why, from the Princes!" said another little man. He'd edged into plain sight, sitting cross-legged on a holly branch near where Ilna'd caught and released his fellow. Therewere differences among the little folk: this one's hair rose in a pronounced widow's peak, for example. Because they were so small and quick, distinguishing marks were hard to catch.
"From the other Princes!" Auta said instantly, shooting the man a fierce glance. "Prince Ilna, did the One bring you here to rid the garden from those who have preyed on us from time out of mind?"
"We're here because someone wanted us out of his way," Ilna said. "I doubt he intended to help you or anybody besides himself. He may not even know that you exist."
She hadn't snarled, but she'd probably frowned as she considered the situation. She hadn't meant anything by it; she generally frowned when she considered the world and the things that happened in it. Auta'd taken the expression personally, though, so she'd shrunk back toward the hedge.
"Our main concern's to get out of this place and back to the world of our friends, that's so, little lady," said Chalcus. "We're glad to meet you, but no one sent us to be saviors."
Ilna walked to a birch tree growing out of the Osage orange, taking out her paring knife. She hadn't seen the little people use tools, but there were rocks in the soil of the hedges. Even without skill the little people could hammer stones together till they chipped an edge on one.
"Is Dee all right?" Merota asked, squatting on the grass. "Really, we weren't going to hurt him."
Two of the little people, a man and a woman, dropped to the ground instead of watching from the hedges. Their heads were just on a level with the kneeling child's.
Ilna pulled down a branch and nicked it. She peeled away the papery outer covering-it was of no use to her-and stripped off four strands of the fibrous brown inner bark.
"Dee, come show yourself!" Auta called commandingly. "Our Princes think they've hurt you. Come out!"
Ilna could understand the little people's language, but besides having very high-pitched voices because they were small, they had an accent that reminded her of the clipped way people spoke on Cordin. She wondered who'd woven the tapestry and how long ago that had been. Perhaps when she got back to the room where it hung in Mona, she'd have time to examine it properly.
The couple who'd left the hedge minced over to Merota. The woman reached out with one hand, holding her male companion's wrist with the other. More of the little people stepped onto the grass.
"Go ahead," Merota said soothingly. "You can touch me, little person."
Ilna wiped the blade of her knife and slid it again into its bone case. She returned to the gathering, now crowded around Merota like doves feeding on grain beneath their cote. The woman who'd first come forward was running her fingers through the child's fine hair while the others watched admiringly.
"Prince Merota," Auta said, though Ilna noticed that her eyes were really on Chalcus. "Can you not help us, great Prince? The Princes, the other Princes, take us one at a time or several together. We who escape hear screams and then the bones of our friends breaking. We are helpless, but you are strong and can save us."
"You can save yourselves," Ilna said sharply, moving to Merota's side. The little people skittered away, again like doves; their behavior made her angry. Unreasonably angry, she knew, but she felt the flush regardless. She held out the four ribbons of bark. "Watch what I do with these."
As Ilna spoke, she began to knot the strips into a grid. She forced herself to let her fingers move slowly and deliberately so that the little people could see exactly what she was doing. When she'd completed the demonstration, she had a neatly woven net no bigger than the palm of her hand.
Ilna held it out to Auta; after a moment, the tiny woman took it and bent close to puzzle over the joinings. They were simple reef knots, easy for even the untutored to make.
"But what is this, Prince Ilna?" said the man sitting on the holly branch.
"It's a net," Ilna said. "A very small one, of course, but there's trees enough in this garden to make a net any size you please. Now, how many of your folk are there? All of you together."
Auta looked at the circle of her folk in consternation. "Great Prince," said the seated man, "we are simple folk. We couldn't answer such a question."
"Many and many," said Auta. "The Princes prey on us every day, but still we remain."
"So I thought," said Ilna with a crisp toss of her head. "Well, it's time for you to prey on Princes. I've seen you crawl through the hedges like fish swimming. You can hang nets before and behind these so-called Princes, then drop another net on top of them. Catch them one at a time."
"Oh-h-h!" said the crowd, gasping as a single tiny person.
"There's rocks here," Ilna continued, grim-faced. "You can kill the creatures with rocks."
"Aye," said Chalcus with grinning animation. "And as a hint, tying a thong the length of your arm onto a rock for a handle'll give enough speed to your blow that you'll break bones instead of just bruising the devils when you hit them."
"Oh, we could never do that, great Princes!" said Auta. She dropped the net and backed as if it was soaked in filth. "You're so brave and strong, but we are small."
"You'll save us, Prince Merota," cooed the woman stroking the child's hair. "You're great and strong. It would be nothing to you to save us from the other Princes. You'll save us, won't you, great one?"
"So many of us are gone," said a little man, his head bowed low. "A pounce and a crunch and then gone, nothing but a splotch of blood on the grass."
Merota looked at the sailor. "Chalcus?" she said. "We could, couldn't we? You and Ilna could, I mean?"
Chalcus laughed, but Ilna saw the veil go up behind his eyes. Talk of killing brought not only wariness to his expression but also a degree of professional calculation: Chalcus had always been a sailor, but for part of life he'd been one of the Lataaene pirates. He had a great deal of experience with killing, and from the scars on his body he'd repeatedly come close to learning about being killed as well.
"We're not here for hunting, dear lady," he said with his tongue and his lips; not with his eyes, though, not so that Ilna couldn't tell the truth. "We're here only till we leave; and the sooner we leave, the better for ourselves and our friends back home. Though perhaps if Mistress Auta can tell us where the way out of the garden may be, we could do her and her friends a favor or two before we left, eh?"
Chalcus grinned broadly. "And who knows?" he added. "Would Garric like a chimaera pelt to stuff for a throne cushion? That'd be a fine thing for the King of the Isles to sit on, would it not?"
"There's no way out of the Garden, Prince Chalcus," said a little man.
"No way at all," said another. "Except…"
He looked around, frightened to have spoken-though hehadn't really spoken.
"Except?" repeated Ilna, her voice harshly insistent. Hearing people talking around a problem, refusing to face it baldly, angered her more than a personal attack would. "Whatis the way out?"
"Prince Ilna?" Auta said. The little woman laced her hands together, then held her arms out from her body and wriggled the fingers while looking down. The shadow of her hands hirpled on the grass as Ilna remembered another shadow-the Shadow-doing while one of the little folk screamed and vanished.
Auta clenched her fists when she saw that Ilna'd understood the gesture. "That way only, Prince Ilna," she said in a small voice. "No way except for that: death or worse than death."
The man in the holly hopped down and gripped Merota's knees. "Mighty Prince Merota," he cried, "please! Of your goodness save us, for we cannot save ourselves."
"Chalcus?" the child said, her voice a mixture of pleading eagerness. "We could, couldn't we? It wouldn't take so very long. And we're here anyway, you know."
Chalcus drew out his dagger, probably without thinking about it. The little people gave a collective gasp, but they didn't flee.
Chalcus spun the dagger up in the air and caught it by the hilt when it dropped, without ever looking at the bright steel. His eyes were on Merota and the little people; and at last on Ilna.
"So," he said. "What is it that you think, heart of my heart? There's something to what the child says, don't you think? Weare here for the time being, and it wouldn't hurt me to do a bit of hunting in a good cause."
"They will save us," Auta whispered. Her assembled fellows sighed a wordless prayer of thanks.
"We will not save you," said Ilna. She bent and picked up the miniature net she'd knotted as an example. "You can save yourselves. Look at this!"
"Oh, no!" said Auta. Around her echoedno-no-no-no in piping whispers.
"We cannot do that, Prince Ilna," said the man still bowed before Merota. "Youwill save us. Great Merota, tell your-"
"No!" said Ilna in a fury. The little people scattered back from her like children frightened when a banked fire suddenly flares. "People who won't try to save themselves don't deserve to be saved. The world isn't meant to be safe for those who don't care!"
Chalcus sheathed his dagger with a motion as smooth as the sun on still water. "Aye," he said. "I take your point, dear one."
He made a sweeping gesture. "Since our little friends here don't know the way out," he went on, "and we've no other business with them, we'll take our leave. My sincere best wishes, Mistress Auta, to you and your fellows."
The little people vanished, leaving the three of them were alone in the clearing. Ilna smoothed the net between her palms, then set it on the grass in case someone, some day, came back to look at it. People can learn; sometimes at least. Ilna os-Kenset had learned certain things, about people and about herself, in the course of her life.
They weren't always things she was happier to know, but that couldn't be helped.
"It seems to me," said Chalcus as he sauntered toward the next turning of the maze, "that though the little people don't know the way out of this place, those who prey on them may. At least if we put the question to them the right way."
"Yes," said Ilna. Her face was rigid and her mind was a pit of burning rock. "I wouldn't mind convincing some of these Princes to tell us things they prefer to hide."