They awoke together, their minds functioning completely as one. When they sat up, moving away from each other on the bed, there was no sense of two individuals separating. The thoughts of one were the thoughts of both as they sought for any hint of attack. They reached out together to contact Bay, Bosc, and Braf Goleg to make sure that none of them had also come under attack. In union, they were able to speak with their companions as clearly as they could have if they had been physically together.
Only when it was clear that there was no physical assault against any of them did Silvas and Maria retreat to their separate personas. They blinked, stared at each other, then turned to look to the doorway of their bedroom in Mikel's palace. Satin was standing there watching them, obviously aware that something had gone wrong. Velvet was still guarding the other door, the entry to the suite.
"It's all right now, kitten," Silvas said. Satin turned and headed back to her mate.
"What was it?" Maria asked, though she knew that Silvas had no better idea than she did. But now that she was back and aware of herself, she had to speak, had to ask.
"I'm not certain," Silvas replied. "I can't even say if the threat was real or merely some nightmare."
"Or an omen?"
Silvas shrugged. "Our fears speaking, perhaps. But I think that it must have been real, even if it was only to test how strong we are on that plane."
"Then why did it end just when it did?"
Neither of them had an answer to that either.
"And the other things, what went before?" Maria asked after a moment.
"Those, I think, were most definitely real."
"Even about Carillia being seen as Mother Mary?"
"Especially that."
They spoke aloud, more for the comfort of hearing each other's voices than for real need. When they moved to get out of bed, on opposite sides, the movements remained almost precisely in unison. They met at the foot of the bed, reaching out to each other, hands grasping for hands. They embraced briefly, and only then did their movements cease being mirror images.
Silvas went to a window and looked out. Maria went to the sitting room to see to the cats. Then she looked out into the corridor outside the suite, careless of her nakedness. There was no one visible in the hallway. There were no sounds of activity. Maria hardly noticed the difference between seeing in the darkened suite and seeing in the torchlit hallway. Her eyes adjusted quickly. She closed the door again and crossed the sitting room to look out one of its windows. She was standing there when Silvas came out of the bedroom.
"It may have been meant as a warning," Silvas said. His voice indicated that he had no great confidence in that hypothesis, but that he did not consider it impossible. "Or an omen of something that someone considers inescapable."
"Or something we ate?" Maria asked with mild sarcasm.
Silvas smiled. "You begin to sound like Bay. No, there was danger in what happened, but I didn't feel mortal peril. It was more as if we fenced with bated blades. Hurt was possible, perhaps even great hurt, but death an unlikely outcome."
He walked to the divan and sat. Satin and Velvet pawed over to him and Silvas spent a moment scratching their necks. "You felt it, too," he whispered, and they looked up at his eyes, not blinking. "Yes, you feel it."
When Silvas finally tired of scratching them, the cats went over to Maria and she gave them a moment's attention. Finally, Satin and Velvet went back to their posts at the suite's entrance.
"A warning to leave right away?" Maria suggested.
Silvas took a moment to consider that. His mind touched Maria's again, and they examined the idea together. Both shook their heads.
"Nothing so simple," Maria said.
"When morning comes, we'll breakfast normally and prepare to leave. Unless something more arises," Silvas said. "Bay and the others will know to expect that we will leave then."
"Particularly after we went to them tonight?" Maria suggested.
"Bosc always seems to know when it is time to leave."
"Morning seems still a long way off," Maria said.
– |When that morning came, Silvas and Maria were both dressed before a servant came with a breakfast tray for them and a platter of raw meat for the cats. They all ate with good appetite, but without undue haste.
"This place offers fare as good as the Glade," Maria said, grinning slyly.
"But no better," Silvas countered, and she agreed.
"Shall we take a walk?" Silvas asked after all four of them had finished eating.
Maria stood. The cats were already on their feet. When they left the suite, the servant who had brought their breakfast was waiting in the corridor.
"We'll be leaving shortly, I expect," Silvas told him. "If you would be so good as to see to our things?"
"Yes, Lord Silvas, immediately." The servant bowed quickly, and headed into the suite. Maria, Silvas, and the cats headed toward the stairway in the rear tower.
"The message will get to Mikel quickly enough," Silvas said. "We'll see if he has any parting message."
"You don't expect that he will ask us to extend our visit?" Maria asked, opening her eyes wide in playful amusement. In the light of a new day, the night's worries seemed far removed.
Silvas laughed, which seemed to drain most of the tension from his face. "That would be a right surprise."
When they reached the courtyard in front of the stables, Silvas and Maria found the rest of their party assembled and ready for departure. The team of whites was hitched to the wagon. The mourning draperies had been folded and stored under the drover's bench. Bosc was making a final check of the team's harness. Bay and Girabelle were saddled and harnessed. Braf and his soldiers were standing or squatting in the shade, waiting patiently, well-trained soldiers maintaining discipline despite the surroundings. Bay stood off to the side looking as if he were supervising the preparations-as he almost certainly was. In the land of the gods, Bay had made no attempt to conceal his gifts. Even the mortal servants here were used to greater wonders than a horse who could talk and reason.
Koshka scurried to Maria as soon as he spotted her. "They treated you well, mistress?"
"Well enough, but not so well as you care for me," she said with a smile that seemed to light Koshka up from within. He trotted at her side as she went with Silvas to the others.
"I was right in thinking that we leave as soon as possible?" Bay asked as Silvas and Maria approached.
"You were right," Silvas said. "Has there been any word from our host?"
"Not a sound," Bay said. "Breakfast was ready with the dawn, but no one came to converse or to deliver messages. The rest of your night passed quietly?"
"Peacefully," Silvas said. "And yours?"
"Undisturbed, save by you. Have you identified the assailant?"
"No, and I'm not even certain he was a true assailant."
"His actions don't sound like those of a friend."
"Perhaps it was a warning," Silvas said, lowering his voice. "And perhaps better not spoken of at length here."
Silvas spoke with Bosc, and then with Braf. He spent several minutes discussing security with the warrior. Braf professed himself ready for anything, even the off chance that they might need to fight their way through the Citadel and the rest of the Shining City.
"I don't think it will come to that, Braf," Silvas said, "but between us, I think we could give a fair accounting of ourselves before it ended."
Two servants came out of the palace with the things that Silvas and Maria had brought. Their bags were stowed in the back of the wagon. Neither servant had any message from their master. After they started back toward the main building, Silvas looked at Maria, smiled, and shrugged.
No more than I expected. They'll all be happier once we've left.
Maria returned his smile. Once we're gone, perhaps they'll be satisfied to forget all about us, maybe even deny that we exist.
"As long as you two are certain that the rest of us don't need to know what you're talking about," Bay said, moving between the two of them.
Silvas and Maria both looked at him. Silvas was more surprised than Maria that the horse seemed to know that they had been conversing.
"Anyone looking at the two of you might have guessed that you can read each other's minds," Bay said, answering the question in the wizard's stare.
"It's not quite that simple, Bay," Silvas said. "But, again, it's something I don't feel comfortable talking about in this place."
"Then let's put this place behind us as quickly as we may," Bay said.
"Braf, are you ready?" Silvas called.
"Aye, lord, whene'er you say."
"Bosc? Koshka?"
Both esperia bobbed their heads and scrambled up to the drover's bench of the wagon. Satin and Velvet took up positions in the wagon's bed, behind them. Silvas helped Maria to mount her horse, then he climbed aboard Bay.
"I hope you remember the way out of the city," Silvas said to Bay. "I doubt that Argus will come to show us."
"I remember the way," Bay said. "You think the road will remain open from the city to the Seven Towers?"
"If it isn't, I'll find our way from gate to gate," Silvas said. "But I think that it will be there. Our hosts will be too glad to see the last of us to make the leaving difficult."
The gate of Mikel's palace grounds was open. The guards flanking the gateway scarcely showed that they noticed Silvas and the others leaving. They did not stop them, or offer any message. Mikel did not come to say farewell.
Bay picked his way surely through the Citadel, moving somewhat more rapidly than they had traveled the day before, but not showing undue haste. He alternated a rapid walk with a trot.
"Not too abruptly," Silvas cautioned Bay at one point. "We don't want anyone to get the idea that we are fleeing for our lives."
"I do know how to calculate such things," Bay replied. "We will make the best time that is seemly. Look. Girabelle and the team pulling the wagon are in a comfortable rhythm. Even Braf and his men are not straining."
"Just a reminder, Bay," Silvas said easily. "The folk of this place will be much finer in the way they reckon such things."
Bay did not bother to reply. Neither did he slow his pace. Silvas smiled and relaxed, looking to Maria. She reached out to him, and they rode hand in hand for a moment-not for long, because the difference in size between their horses meant that it was an uncomfortable stretch.
The people of the Citadel, and of the larger city beyond its walls, paid no more attention to the group from the Glade than they had the day before. If anything, they were ignored even more completely than they had been on their arrival. Competing traffic seemed to flow easily around them. There was no glowing way in the Shining City to show Bay the path, but he never hesitated. The gate of the Citadel, and the city gates, were open. The drawbridges were down, and free of traffic, when they reached them. Silvas and his companions went straight on through the city without stopping, and once they were across the moat that ringed the Shining City, the road was there before them, retaining the soft ivory glow that had led them into the land of the gods.
Silvas and Maria paid less attention to the landscape in the land of the gods than they had on the journey to the Shining City. An occasional scan to make sure that it held nothing new-and potentially threatening-was sufficient. They had more than enough to keep their minds occupied without frivolous sightseeing.
"There's so much, it's hard to know where to begin," Maria complained after they had transversed half of the plain.
"For me as well," Silvas said. "I reach out and take in everything that seems to be close, then reach out a little farther the next time. I can't even begin to anticipate the farthest edge yet."
"Like being at the center of ripples in a pond," Maria suggested.
As they approached the edge of the valley of the Shining City, Silvas and Maria watched the road ahead of them with more interest, waiting to see if the way lay open all of the way to the Seven Towers. The gentle grade finally peaked, and they started down again, on an equally gentle slope. The road continued to stretch out in front of them, absolutely straight. In the distance, a mist kept them from seeing the long bend in the road or the Seven Towers at its end.
"We couldn't see all of the way to the Glade when we were at this point coming out," Bay reminded the others.
"True," Silvas conceded, "but the vista does look different. The mist appears to be glowing now."
"Doubtless we'll know more when we get closer," Bay said.
When they resumed their travel, they seemed to move more rapidly than their actual pace warranted, as if the road were in a hurry to get rid of their weight. The auroral glow over the far end of the road seemed to swell, mostly a peach color, with many different shadings of pink and orange visible, softly radiant.
"Quite different," Silvas commented. He reached over to touch Maria's arm and, together, they reached out with Silvas's telesight to investigate the visual mystery.
But they could not penetrate it.
"Someone has done something," Silvas decided, but he could not fathom it yet. "I'm anxious for a closer look. Now that we are beyond the valley of the Shining City, more speed would not be amiss."
Bay nodded and picked up his pace a little. Girabelle and the team pulling the wagon immediately accommodated themselves to Bay's increased speed. Silvas glanced back to make certain that Braf and his men weren't distanced, but Braf showed no sign that he found the new pace the least discomforting. His gurnetz soldiers picked up the tempo without complaint.
"If our valley lies under that glow, then the Seven Towers is either under attack or someone has somehow isolated it," Bay said.
"Let's hope it's not an attack, Bay," Silvas said, beginning to get anxious about the mist hanging over the far end of the road.
"It may be nothing serious at all," Maria said. "We don't know yet. Can you feel danger from the glow?"
Silvas reached out with his mind to test that before he shook his head. "I feel nothing at all from it, one way or the other. Stay with the others, Maria. I think that Bay and I should ride ahead to see what we can learn." Are you with me?
Closely, Maria assured him.
"Bay?"
The giant horse needed no further urging. He stretched out into a canter that looked effortless despite its speed, then into a hard gallop that could cover a three-mile league in three minutes, a pace no normal horse could match. It was rare enough that Bay found the opportunity to extend himself in this fashion.
Silvas had no difficulty maintaining his seat. He was even able to continue projecting himself forward, straining his telesight for some definition within the pastel shadings of the strange mist or aura that spread out across the road in the distance.
At first, Girabelle wanted to run with Bay, but Maria held her back until she settled down.
Braf came trotting around the wagon. "What's the trouble?"
"We don't know if it's trouble or not," Maria said. "You see that light over the road?"
"Aye, my lady."
"Silvas is going to see if there's any threat to it. Stay close to me. I'll know the instant he does."
Maria split her awareness as easily as if she had been doing it since birth. Her mind, and vision, rode with Silvas, far ahead. At the same time, she was fully aware of Braf and the others with her. She could even spare thought to guess that even a three-way split would pose no special difficulty, should that become necessary.
As Silvas drew closer to the pastel shroud, it was clear that it was a diffuse light, not a proper fog or mist. There was no dampness to it, and once he passed through its border, it no longer blocked his vision. The glowing road took its long bend into and under the light. The valley of the Seven Towers was there, completely covered by the light, a veil over the valley. Within it, he could see the Glade. He stopped Bay, just within the veil.
The Seven Towers still stand, Silvas told Maria.
I see. There's no sign of damage or danger. Will you ride on to the Glade?
Silvas hesitated for a moment. He moved Bay until they were right at the edge of the veil, where Silvas could see both into the valley and back out at the others on the road, still more than two leagues away.
No, I'll come back to you, Silvas told Maria. He turned Bay away from the valley, and they galloped back to the others.
"There's no special feel to it at all," Silvas said, looking at Braf and then at the two esperia on the wagon. "It shows no nature of evil or good. It merely is."
"Nor any idea of what it is," Bay added, sounding almost confused. "I know not what to make of it."
"We'll have to investigate it fully," Maria said.
"But first, we have to get home," Silvas said.
"We can bear a somewhat faster pace," Braf assured Silvas before he dropped back to rejoin his soldiers.
Bay took the gurnetz at his word. The group covered the remaining five miles to the edge of the aura in little more than twenty minutes. Then, within the edge of the glow, they stopped for a short break, more to give everyone full opportunity to see what lay before them than for any real need to rest.
"This lane from the Shining City permits no detours," Silvas said after trying to get off of it with Bay. "We'll have to go on home before we can investigate."
"Perchance this aura will disappear once the road does," Bosc suggested. "It may be no more than part of that phenomenon."
"It wasn't here when we left," Bay reminded him. "Yet, I must confess that what you say is possible."
The road led them right to the gate of the Seven Towers. Once the group had crossed over the drawbridge and through the castle's gate, the spectral road did vanish.
But the glow overhead remained.