Ilna made her bed on the shop level of Ascelei's dwelling in a cupboard with a slatted door. It had previously been used for extra storage, but the tags of cut rolls removed to make room for her should have been used long since for garment edgings or to stuff pillows.
She recognized the clatter of iron tires on the stone doorstoop. Rising immediately, she donned a daytime tunic over her sleeping garment of fine linen. She'd have gotten up soon anyway; and the anger Ilna felt now was primarily because she knew she'd driven Halphemos to do something stupid.
Ascelei's doorkeeper was supposed to sleep between the inner and outer doors, but he and the cook—a widow—had paired off. He spent most nights in her hut attached to the oven behind the main house. That left Ilna as the real doorkeeper, and Ascelei would never have a better one.
Cerix hammered on the front door. "Open up!" he shouted. "I have to speak to Mistress Ilna!"
The inner panel was of larchwood planed smooth and decorated with rosettes of copper nails. Ilna jerked it open and stepped into the narrow alcove that separated it from the outer door of iron-bound oak. Servants were already chattering in alarm. She heard one of them wonder in a loud voice, "Should someone rouse Master Ascelei?"
Their racket would raise the dead. "Be silent!" Ilna said toward the upper hallway. "I'm taking care of this."
It was her fault, after all. She'd treated Halphemos like a child, and quite naturally he'd acted childishly as a result. You can weave humans into a pattern as surely as you can wool; but you can't use the same technique, for humans balk at direction in a fashion that threads do not.
Cerix fell silent when he heard Ilna's voice within. When she threw out the latch cord he rolled his little cart aside so that the outer panel didn't hit him when she pushed it open.
Cerix looked at Ilna. His fear was so intense that it overcast the scowl of physical pain that usually dominated his features. "The baron's men came for him, mistress," he said. "He'd made an amulet for Lady Tamana to use on Robilard."
Cerix rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then went on, "Tamana used to be the baron's favorite, but he's got another friend now."
Someone tried to open the door Ilna had closed behind her. She slammed it back with her heel. "I'm handling this, if you please!" she said.
Cerix had thrown a rough wool blanket as a wrap over the tunic he'd slept in. In the confusion of Halphemos' arrest, the cripple had managed to make off with part of the inn's bedding. Well, his host probably considered that a cheap price for getting rid of an associate of the criminal.
"Halphemos made an amulet to harm the baron?" Ilna asked without inflection. If that was the case, then Robilard could pull the boy's guts out and drag him through the streets before Ilna would stir a finger to help her former companion.
"He wouldn't do that, mistress," Cerix said chidingly. "Alos may be a fool, but you know he wouldn't harm anyone."
He rubbed his mouth again and mumbled, "He might have made a love charm, though. He watched me do that in former days."
Cerix's chin bobbed in a quick gesture to his stumps.
"And the Lady Tamana would have offered a great deal for a path back into the baron's affections."
If it weren't for love, there would be far fewer fools in the world, Ilna thought. As I well know.
Aloud she said, "I see. Halphemos sold the pearl pendant to a jeweler. He recognized it, as who on Third Atara would not? The jeweler told the baron a vagabond had a pearl belonging to the baron's former mistress; and the baron asked the lady about the matter in a fashion that brought the truth from her."
"I saw Tamana when she first came to Halphemos," Cerix admitted sadly. "I wasn't worried. I thought she just wanted her fortune told or, well, he's a good-looking boy. It's not my place to object to him having a good time."
Ilna sniffed. "No doubt," she said. Her tone would have suited a response to someone who'd admitted that he liked to rob blind beggars. "Will the Lady Tamana have told the truth, or will she say that the idea came from Halphemos?"
"That one might have said anything," Cerix said with a grimace. "I don't imagine Robilard even had to slap her before she started blubbering whatever first came into her head."
"Yes, there are women like that," Ilna said without emphasis. "Well, I'll see what I can do."
She pulled the latch cord, but someone pushed the door open from the inside before she started to tug on the ornate iron handle. Ilna's tongue was ready to snap a comment until she saw Ascelei silhouetted against the rushlights the servants behind him held.
"Master Ascelei," she said with a contrite nod. She'd been about to snarl at her host. "I apologize for this disruption. I have to go out and I don't know when I'll be able to return."
"I heard," the mercer said gravely. "Ilna, I have a cousin with an inn on the west of the island, a quarrying village. If you'd care to stay there for a few days until you know more about the situation, that would be all right. No one would have to know your real name."
"Hide, you mean?" Ilna said. "It hasn't come to that, thank you, nor will it while I'm still alive."
Ascelei stiffened. Ilna heard her angry words play back in her memory. She knelt on the threshold, took the mercer's right hand in hers, and said, "Master Ascelei, your offer was meant as a kindness and I behaved as my uncle Katchin might have done. I apologize."
She rose to her feet again and added, "If you knew my uncle, you'd understand how sincere that apology was."
The mercer gave a nod of satisfaction. "I never doubted your sincerity, Ilna," he said. "And while I don't apologize for making the offer, I should have known better than to imagine you might accept it."
Ilna glanced down at the cripple. "Ascelei," she said, "could you shelter Master Cerix while I'm gone? This is none of his doing, but I doubt he'll be welcome at his lodgings."
"I should go with you," Cerix said in surprise. "I can help—"
"No," she said sharply, "you can't. I'll have enough to worry about without you to push around also."
Ascelei winced. "Yes, of course," he said. "Cerix, if you'd care to come in...?"
The cripple looked stricken. Ilna wasn't going to apologize for her comment, though. Cerix would have been in the way, and if the older wizard hadn't shown the boy how to make love charms then none of this would have happened. Love charms were abominations.
Ilna smiled. Ascelei had stepped out as Cerix poled himself into the dwelling without further comment. "Mistress?" the mercer said, surprised at Ilna's expression.
"I'm tempted to say that love itself is an abomination," Ilna replied; an honest answer if not a particularly informative one. "But this isn't the time to talk philosophy—if there ever was one."
She took a deep breath. "I'll be off to the palace, sir," she said. "I appreciate your actions on my behalf and wish I were able to better repay them."
"There's money owing you," the mercer said as she turned. "And would you care to use my litter? It won't take a moment to rouse the bearers."
"An honest woman like me would look a complete fool riding in a litter," Ilna said, more tartly than she'd intended. "You can give any money I'm owed to Cerix. Or keep it yourself, Ascelei."
She reached into her sleeve to check that the hank of yarn was there. "I have everything I need," she called over her shoulder as she strode along the Parade.
Servants were up in most of the houses, sweeping and emptying slops. The majority of buildings had a residence above and shop below; from these, night soil was carried out to the central gutter. Folk who didn't expect customers to be entering their front doors were less fussy about what their servants dumped where.
Ilna's nose wrinkled in disgust—at the practice, not the smell. In a decent community like Barca's Hamlet where folk kept house gardens, manure wasn't wasted.
She walked briskly. There were other pedestrians out already. The sky had grown pale enough to tell black from white, so folk who didn't care to pay for lantern light were on the road.
Baron Robilard's palace was half a mile south on the Parade; no distance at all to walk, though Ilna found the gravel unpleasant. Folk in Divers wore slippers with soft leather soles, adequate for this coarse crushed limestone.
It amused Ilna that she and Ascelei had been talking as though Ilna wasn't coming back from her meeting with the baron. Anything was possible, but Robilard didn't have a reputation for wanton cruelty. The baron had every right to be furious with Halphemos, but in her heart of hearts Ilna was sure that she'd find some way to buy the boy free. They'd have to leave the island, of course, but they'd been planning to do that anyway.
The palace of the Barons of Third Atara was a more modest structure than Ilna had expected. Oh, it was more building than the ego of any one man should have needed, but she herself had lived in a larger mansion in Erdin during the days when evil had no more skillful craftsman than Ilna os-Kenset.
A porch with huge columns of striped marble was under construction. If Robilard ever got around to rebuilding the rest in scale with his new porch, he'd have a residence larger than that of the Earl of Sandrakkan.
She turned down the semicircular drive to the porch. Here pavers of patterned limestone replaced the gravel. Grit clinging to Ilna's soles crunched against the slick, chill surface.
She grinned. Not as slick or as chill as the mud of early spring at home in Barca's Hamlet, though. Things weren't necessarily better simply because they were familiar.
There was light and bustle within the palace. The glass in the small-paned windows wasn't clear enough to show details, but figures moved by lamplight with more agitation than Ilna imagined was the usual thing at this hour of the morning.
Beneath a lantern fashioned in the form of a three-headed dragon, two soldiers guarded the door. The lamp's appearance made Ilna's guts tighten for no reason she could fathom; she scowled at herself.
The soldiers watched Ilna long enough to be sure that they didn't recognize her. One of them then knocked on the wicket set into one of the huge, bronze-plated door leaves. An officer came out, settling his plumed helmet on his head as he and the men murmured among themselves.
Ilna drew the hank from her sleeve, measured a sufficient length of yarn, and snapped it between her index fingers. That left the ends frayed, but this was no time to flash a knife even for the purpose of cutting thread.
The officer's breastplate was molded into the form of a demigod's muscled torso; the dawn light gleamed on it and on the tips of his waxed mustaches. He stepped forward and said, "Sorry, mistress. There's no peddlers being admitted today."
"I'm not a peddler," Ilna said as she walked to within arm's length of the man. "I'm here to talk to the baron about the wizard he's arrested. I think that after he talks to me he'll be willing to release the boy."
"Especially nobody sees the baron about the wizard, mistress," the officer said in a noticeably colder tone. "And if you've got anything to do with him, then I suggest you use what time you've got to leave the island. Swim if you don't find a better way."
"If she wants to come back after midday when we're off duty," one of the soldiers said, "I might find the price for what she's got."
The other soldier and the officer laughed. Ilna's expression didn't change as she worked the yarn among her fingers.
She raised her eyes. "Look at me," she said crisply.
"What?" said the officer, turning toward Ilna again. She spread her hands, drawing the yarn into the pattern she'd chosen. The officer gave a smothered "Urk!" and went stiff.
"Take me to Baron Robilard," Ilna ordered. The officer bowed, turned, and marched toward the wicket. He'd left it open when he came out.
"Hey!" said the soldier who'd joked about enjoying Ilna's favors. "What's happened to the captain?"
The soldier snatched at the halberd he'd leaned against the marble doorframe. He fumbled the weapon, which fell with a ringing crash on the lintel. He knelt to pick it up.
"Nothing that will harm him," Ilna said. "If you act the fool by getting in my way, I'll deal with you in a different way. Do you understand?"
The soldier stared up at Ilna as his fingers felt for the halberd shaft. The other guard gripped him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way. Neither man spoke as Ilna followed their officer into the palace.
The anteroom was empty except for the chair where the officer had sat with his back to the door, watching events in the audience hall. The latter was a room of some pretensions, rising the full height of the building to a vaulted ceiling. The pillars along both sidewalls were decorated with bands of low reliefs portraying scenes from the island's history.
Ilna assumed it was history, in any event—there were no obvious deities among the figures. The carvings were very ably executed, a fact that made her feel better-disposed toward Robilard. She knew it was foolish to assume that decency was connected with appreciation of craftsmanship—but emotionally she did assume that.
Dawn streamed between the support pillars on the east side of the hall, but oil-fed sconces flared on the walls as well. Servants were still lighting the last of these. The scores of people present didn't fill the large room, but their shuffling and whispers echoed like cicadas on a summer night.
Baron Robilard sat on a throne of patterned marble. It looked uncomfortable but old, and Ilna could appreciate the value of tradition. This morning Robilard had dressed in a doublet and trousers of velvet, well-cut and worn with a flair. Even though the emotion that animated him was anger, the baron looked far more attractive than he had as a supercilious statue in the procession of the day before.
In his left palm Robilard bounced a small wash-leather sack; he glared at the dark-haired woman who knelt between two soldiers before the dais on which the throne stood. Tamana, past a doubt. She was blubbering, and her broken sentences were scarcely intelligible anyway.
To the left of the baron's throne sat his wife, Cotolina. During the procession she'd ridden directly behind Robilard's chariot in a chair with an azure awning. Her hair was pale blond, and her perfect features remained composed as she pretended to watch the twins under the care of a nurse beside her.
Lady Regowara, a buxom brunette in the same mold as Tamana but younger by five years, stood with her left hand on the throne's armrest in a gesture of ownership. She watched Tamana with an expression of greedy delight. That showed Ilna that the baron's current mistress was as great a fool as the former one had proved herself. A woman with any sense would have seen her own future in Tamana's present. Few women had any sense—and fewer men, so far as Ilna could judge, at least as far as their taste in women went.
The folk in the hall were soldiers, servants, and courtiers, in equal proportions. They watched with nervous anticipation. The soldiers flanking Tamana had the grace to look embarrassed. The poor woman seemed barely capable of standing, much less posing a threat that required her to be guarded.
The soldiers who held Halphemos were much more serious about their job. The boy's arms were tied behind his back, and he'd been knocked about enough to blacken one eye and cut the cheek below the other.
The guard captain pushed a path through the spectators, though the crowd wasn't so dense that Ilna couldn't have made her own way to the front. The slight commotion caused Halphemos to glance around. "Ilna!" he cried. "You shouldn't have come here!"
One of the guards hit the boy in the pit of the stomach. Halphemos doubled up, gasping, and would have fallen except for the soldiers gripping his arms.
Ilna looked at the man who'd struck Halphemos. The soldier opened his mouth to snarl at her, then got a good look into her eyes. He turned his head abruptly.
"Snuggles," Tamana whimpered toward the floor on which her tears were dripping, "it wasn't to harm you, it was just a little something so you'd love me the way you used to. And I wouldn't have taken it, only he bewitched me to get my pearl pendant. You know I'd never have parted with any of the jewels you gave me except for a wizard's spell!"
"Lift the wizard's face up," Robilard ordered in a voice of cold anger. A guard seized a handful of Halphemos' hair, but the boy had already managed to straighten despite the blow to his stomach. He met the baron's angry glare with a quiet pride that did something to redeem him in Ilna's opinion.
Robilard dropped the amulet onto the dais and stood to grind it under his heel. Objects within the wash leather crunched. "You polluted my court with your wizardry," the baron said. "I'll put you where the fish will end your pollution forever."
He gestured to one of the front rank of courtiers, an older man and the only noble wearing a breastplate as well as a sword. "Lock him in an iron cage, Hosten, and dump him into the sea. Well beyond the harbor mouth."
The courtier bowed in agreement. The cicada-rustling of whispers rose to nearly a roar.
Ilna stepped forward and said, raising her voice to be heard, "Baron Robilard, I understand and share your anger, but we both know that Master Halphemos is guilty of nothing more than being a fool. If you'll release him to me, I will see to it that he works no more wizardry here—and I'll provide you with something of value in return. Certainly greater value than fish food."
"Who is this?" Baron Robilard cried into the sudden tumult. "What's she doing here?"
"She is Ilna os-Kenset," said the guard captain in a toneless voice. "She has come to see you."
Ilna smiled faintly. The captain staggered as he completed her injunction, then looked around him in growing incomprehension. He had a horrified expression, as though he'd found himself in court wearing nothing but a ribbon on his private parts.
"In a week," Ilna said across the shocked babble, "I can weave you a panel that will force everyone who comes before you to speak the truth."
And so she could, though the reason she didn't think such a pattern was a work of evil was her certainty that Robilard would destroy it after a few days. The only folk who thought they wanted to know the truth were those who had no experience of it—and those few, like Ilna os-Kenset, who were willing to live with the consequences.
"Or another pattern that will benefit you and those around you," Ilna added. "I realize that Halphemos misused his power, but you might take that as a warning not to make the same mistake yourself."
Offering a pattern that compelled truth was a compromise between what Ilna thought Robilard would want and what he should want. She would much rather provide the baron with a panel like those she'd been spreading about Erdin before Cashel's disappearance called her away. The value of cheer and feelings of well-being wasn't as immediately obvious to most people as sex, wealth, and revenge. Those last were things Ilna wouldn't provide.
Wouldn't provide any longer.
"You're a wizard," Robilard said. His voice rose with each syllable.
"I'm a weaver," Ilna said. "I'm a decent woman of Barca's Hamlet on Haft, and I will do what I say."
The buzz in the hall had silenced, though folk shuffling to get a glimpse of the newcomer raised rasping echoes of leather on stone. The guard captain had skulked around the edge of the hall to vanish outside again. Other soldiers looked confused; those who held polearms shifted them from one side to the other as they waited for orders.
"Another wizard," Robilard said, his voice returning to normal. Cotolina looked at Ilna with cool appraisal; Lady Regowara had moved behind the throne and was fingering an amulet of her own. "You must be mad to have come here. Well, the same cure will do for both, I suppose. Hosten—"
"No!" Halphemos shouted. "She has no part in this!"
Halphemos tried to pull away from his handlers. They had a struggle to hold him but they didn't, Ilna noted, begin hitting the bound prisoner again.
"Halphemos, be quiet," Ilna said. "I'm taking care of things now. You've caused enough trouble already."
"She's completely innocent!" Halphemos shouted at the baron. "If you harm her, I'll—"
The Gods only knew what the boy thought he could do. Make empty threats, she supposed, and make the situation still worse.
She stepped in front of Halphemos and jerked the pattern of yarn taut. "Stand silent till I release you!" she commanded.
Ilna was furious, with herself and with the injustice of the universe. The boy had good instincts—and all the trouble he caused stemmed from those good instincts. It wasn't fair that someone like Halphemos should do so much harm!
The soldiers had flinched back when Ilna spoke. When she faced Robilard again, he spread a hand before his eyes. Ilna sneered and flung the length of yarn onto the dais.
"Baron," she said, "I come to you for justice, not mercy. Release Halphemos to my custody and I will pay any reasonable price."
It crossed Ilna's mind that she and Robilard might mean different things by "reasonable." Well, he'd learn her definition quickly enough if they varied excessively.
Robilard lowered his hands. He was trembling with fury—because he'd been afraid, and because this girl wizard had seen his fear.
"All right, weaver!" he said. "This is what you can trade me for the freedom of your friend, here. Tonight I'll celebrate the anniversary of my rule as Baron of Third Atara. Go to my ancestor, the Elder Romi, and ask him to grace my dinner. If he comes, I'll release—"
Robilard gestured toward Halphemos, struck mute and motionless between his guards.
"—that one, who thought to aim his wizardry at me. Otherwise, you'll join your friend if you haven't managed to get out of my kingdom by that time."
"All right," Ilna said. She was furious: at Robilard, at Halphemos, and not least at herself for what she'd committed to do. She didn't fear death, but she knew that doing what the baron demanded would bring her very close to the boundaries of evil and darkness which she'd sworn to avoid. "I'll need a guide."
Hosten, the soldier, looked up at his baron with a worried expression. "Milord," he said, "were you serious about...?"
Robilard glared at the noble imperiously. "Make it so, Lord Hosten!" he said. "Unless you're afraid?"
Ilna smiled faintly to hear the youthful bravado. It settled her own fear. She might be doing the wrong thing, but she'd said she would do it. Therefore the discussion was over.
Hosten's lips tightened. He turned to the nearest guards and said, "You four, come with me," in a colorless voice. He walked over to Ilna, bowed, and said, "Mistress Ilna os-Kenset? We'll escort you to the Tomb of the Elder Romi."
"Yes," Ilna said. Ignoring the rest of the gaping, whispering crowd, she touched Halphemos' forehead and said, "You can awaken now, Alos. Don't cause any more trouble. I'll be back."
She took two steps toward the door before she paused and turned. "On my honor," Ilna said to Halphemos and the rest of the gathering, "I will be back."
Cashel stepped onto the walkway behind the palace. Back in the room Zahag grunted and complained about the hour. In a world where servants provided food, the ape saw no reason to get up before noon.
Cashel wasn't forcing Zahag to rise. The ape wasn't quite sure of his safety on Pandah except when Cashel or Aria was there to protect him, though. He might be right, but Cashel wasn't about to change his own schedule because an ape was lazy.
Silya sat cross-legged on the railing, bowered among the grapevines. Because she was in public she had clothing on, a light cotton tunic instead of the richly decorated robe that she'd worn when Cashel fell back into King Folquin's court.
He stopped. "I said I didn't want to see you," he warned.
Silya spread her empty hands in a gesture of unconcern. "I understand, Master Cashel," she said. "Still, you're going to be dealing with my brother, whom I have no reason to love. I can give you some advice on that. It won't delay you since the ship won't be ready till the middle of the afternoon. But of course if you're afraid...?"
She gestured again. Whatever the wizard's age, she was remarkably agile to be able to balance on the narrow railing while shifting her weight as she spoke.
Cashel grinned, imagining Silya as a wren. They were pushy, quarrelsome birds apt to use their strong beaks on the eggs of their neighbors....
But Cashel wasn't an egg, and he wasn't afraid of Silya or anybody else on earth. "What do you want to show me?" he asked, holding his quarter-staff out to the side so that he wouldn't seem to be sheltering behind it.
"Come down into my quarters," Silya said. "Don't worry. You proved you could leave easily enough, and I've only hung some matting for privacy instead of replacing the wall."
"I wasn't worried," Cashel growled.
He lifted himself over the railing, feeling as awkward as a hedgehog in comparison to the wizard's birdlike motions. Still, hedgehogs got where they were going, and so would he.
The palace cooks were already at work on the tables behind the main building. Stewards were chaffering with peddlers, mostly women, carrying fruits, vegetables, and some fish in baskets.
Cashel hadn't seen meat being eaten on Pandah. Here at the palace, at least, it couldn't have been a matter of cost alone.
He followed Silya into the basement. She hadn't brought a lantern, but light came from the rooms she'd closed off in the far corner. That was illumination enough to show Cashel where the pillars were. Sometimes his foot splashed in an unseen puddle, but he wouldn't have gone out of his way to avoid so minor an inconvenience in broad daylight. Mud and worse were so much a part of rural life that Cashel didn't really notice them.
"Hey!" he heard Zahag call from somewhere. "Wait for me!"
Silya had rearranged objects in the chamber where she'd kept Cashel; where perhaps she'd helped him recover. He didn't much care for the wizard, but he knew that when he fell back into Folquin's court he was about as wrung out as he ever remembered being.
Now the slab on which Cashel had lain supported a large tray covered with colored sand. Triple lamps of simple, unobjectionable design hung from all four of the pillars framing the chamber. As Silya had said, she'd provided a grass mat to replace the timber wall Cashel had wrecked. When Cashel entered behind her, she drew the mat across the opening.
"Or I can leave it open if you're...?" she said.
"No," Cashel replied curtly. He knew Silya kept hinting that he was afraid so that he wouldn't back out the way he knew he ought to do; but her trick worked anyway.
"Very well," Silya said. She shrugged out of her tunic, then took the bone rattle from the equipment rack. "I'll call out the incantation that I've written here."
She gestured with her empty left hand toward symbols drawn in white sand against the tawny background. Cashel couldn't read anything beyond his own name and that with difficulty. Garric talked of the differences between Old Script and modern squared characters, but they were both hen tracks so far as Cashel was concerned.
"Occasionally I'll stop and ask you a question about what you see. You'll answer the question in your own words, and then I'll go on."
"Why should you do that?" Cashel said. The many burning lamp wicks filled the air of this enclosure with a thick warmth he found disquieting. "And why should I?"
"This will protect you against my brother's wizardry," Silya said. "He'll try to bind you to do his will."
Cashel grimaced. Silya said, "You can leave any time you want to. You may not need my help. I can't be sure of the future, though. I don't see how you know what you'll need when you reach Valles either."
"Go ahead," Cashel muttered. "I'll watch for a while."
Silya bobbed the rattle down. Dried peas rustled in the brainbox. "Barouch ino anoch," she said. At each syllable her rattle indicated another of the sand-written symbols. "Uoea eanthoukoia..."
The room grew warmer. The heat shouldn't have been enough to bother a youth who'd plowed in the summer when the furrows quivered, but Cashel found himself getting a little dizzy. It was probably because he'd been so tired from, well, the way he'd come back to Pandah from wherever it was that he'd been before.
"Arthaemmiem," Silya said. She walked slowly around the long table, never looking at Cashel. "Thar barouch maritha."
The sand in the center of the tray humped as though a hidden breeze had caught it and swirled it upward. There was a face in the moving specks. As the wizard continued to chant, the features of the sand image sharpened and became as clear as those of a real person standing before Cashel. "Garric!" he said in amazement.
"Cashel or-Kenset," Silya said in a voice taut with strain. "Is the figure before you your friend?"
"Yes," said Cashel. "Where's he now?"
The whirling sand collapsed into a mound, then smoothed like water poured into a pan. The wizard resumed her walking and chanting. "Uoea eanthoukoia, arthaemmiem...."
Cashel felt very warm now, though his body wasn't sweating. He rubbed his thumb against the dry wood of his staff, reminding himself of its reality and of his past life in Barca's Hamlet.
The sand rose again, this time in the image of Tenoctris. The glint of lamps on tiny whirling crystals was exactly like the twinkle in the old wizard's eyes when she looked at Cashel.
"Cashel or-Kenset," said Silya. "Do you entrust yourself to the craft of the figure before you?"
"Yes," said Cashel. He was feeling dazed, but he knew what he was saying. "I trust her. I wish she was with me now."
The sand blurred. The table's surface was now in constant motion. The writing itself shifted without losing definition. The white symbols spun about the margin of the table. Silya continued to chant, her rattle striking down at signs that rotated past her instead of her walking to reach the signs.
"Thar barouch maritha..." the wizard said.
Lamp flames guttered as the mat behind Cashel moved. He didn't look around. He heard Silya's incantation, but the words no longer came from her lips. The dog-skull rattle twitched up and down in seeming silence.
An image was forming on the sand table. Blond hair, flowing the way honey rolls from a comb; laughing blue eyes, a high forehead, and the mouth from which came the sweetest voice in all the world.
Cashel started to whisper Sharina's name.
"Cashel or-Kenset," Silya said. "Do you pledge your life to the figure before—"
Zahag hopped chattering onto the table. The tray was wider than the stone bier it rested on and tipped, spraying sand across the floor.
Silya shrieked and swung her rattle at Zahag. The ape, gibbering back at her, leaped to a lamp hanger on the opposite wall.
A welcome chill washed over Cashel's frame. Everything was in focus again. The tray had fallen with one edge on the floor and the other leaning against the bier. The colored sands were still shifting to reach a natural contour. The edge of the spreading pile covered Cashel's toes.
On top of the bier where the table had hidden it was a painting on silk. The toppling sand tray had rippled the fabric but Cashel could easily make out the remarkably good likeness of the wizard Silya.
"Yield to the figure!" Silya screamed in empty desperation. "Yield to me, Cashel or-Kenset!"
"I warned you!" Cashel shouted. He thrust his quarterstaff like a spear, not at Silya but at the wizard's silken portrait.
The staff's iron ferrule clashed against the hard stone and skidded off, throwing sparks onto the thin cloth. The fabric ignited with an unnatural violence; red flames rose and twisted as they devoured the silk.
Cashel braced himself with his staff before him. This chamber wasn't big enough for the full spinning dance of an expert with the quarterstaff, but solid hickory thrust by solid muscle could crush its way through any foe Cashel expected to meet. His hands tingled from striking the unyielding granite, but he could still grip his weapon.
Zahag shrieked, "There was nothing there! You weren't seeing anything that was really there, chief."
Silya screamed on a rising note. A black blotch had appeared around her, not in the air but in the cosmos itself. Cashel saw both the wizard and the wall beyond, but he was seeing as though with different pairs of eyes.
Tentacles of red light emerged from the darkness. They fastened about Silya like the arms of an octopus pulling open the shell of a clam. Where the tentacles touched her, Silya's flesh turned black and shriveled.
"Say you yie—" Silya's voice wailed from the infinite distance; then the sound too was gone. The chamber was lighted only by the quivering lamps. The one the ape had swung from still gyrated wildly, splashing oil onto the stone floor.
The fire had completely devoured the silk portrait; not even ash remained on the slab. The mat Zahag had pulled aside to enter dangled askew from the remaining hooks.
"Let's get out of here," Cashel muttered. He could see the gleam of daylight creeping through the forest of pillars. "Maybe the ship will be ready earlier than they said."
"What was it that happened to her, chief?" the ape asked as he hunched through the cellar, keeping very close to Cashel's side. He sounded chastened. "Was it something you did?"
"I don't think so," Cashel said. "I don't know what happened."
He stopped just short of the outer door and took the ape's long hand in his. "Zahag?" he said. "Thanks."
Cashel didn't remember daylight ever feeling better than it did as the two of them left the cellar.
A warmth that was more than physical flooded through Sharina, melting the frozen lethargy in which she'd been held since the smoky hand snatched her from the waking world. She turned. The slit window to her right was sweeping toward her, swelling to become her whole environment.
She stood in a windowless room of white marble. Before her was the board set with pieces of varicolored tourmaline. Even now that Sharina was alert, she couldn't view the full array of counters.
The queen stood across the board from Sharina. Her smile was as perfect and cold as every other aspect of her appearance.
"Good evening, Sharina," the queen said. The voice was as Sharina remembered it from what now seemed the dreamworld in which she'd been held: a rich contralto that covered all feelings the way a velvet drape can cover the door to an execution chamber. "It's time for you to help me now. I'll have no difficulty in recovering my position against physical opponents... ."
The walls of the room were marked only by minor imperfections. Faint gray flecks lurked within the whiteness, though the surfaces were polished to such a sheen that the play of light across them varied more than the stone.
The queen gestured minusculely with an index finger. The walls, floor, and ceiling faded to shadows, then became as transparent as a flawless diamond. Sharina gasped. Her feet rested on an unseen hardness fifty feet above the slow swells of an ultramarine sea.
She and her captor looked down on a raft as tangled and formless as the mats of seaweed that drifted slowly around the seas south of the Isles. More of the surface was open water than was timber, but the downed trees spread over an expanse too vast to encompass even from Sharina's high vantage point.
Twists of vine and interlocked branches bound the floating trees together. Some parts of the mass separated from others, only to merge with similar fragments into a larger mat again.
It was like watching water spread across the furrows of a flooded field. Individual rivulets might follow different tracks, but the whole was as surely one as an open-meshed net. All the portions moved on the same currents, at the same slow rate; and with the same certain destination.
The raft swarmed with Hairy Men in numbers that Sharina couldn't begin to count. They crawled over the branches, nursed their infants on the trunks, and shrieked at one another across the open sea in spats as fierce as those of two-year-olds.
The queen remained silent. Sharina refused to call the folk Monkeys even in her mind, though their antics on the raft made the hunters' term more innocent.
The Hairy Men were eating fruits, nuts, and tubers they'd brought with them. In some cases they plucked food still hanging from the branches of trees floating as part of the raft itself, though generally that source had been exhausted by this point in the sluggish voyage.
"What do they drink?" Sharina asked. In her wonder, she almost forgot whom she was talking to.
"They've brought along trees that store water in their trunks," the queen said. "I intended the migration to take place during fall when they could suck rainwater from their fur, but this is satisfactory."
The smile she gave Sharina could have frozen a bonfire. "They'll be thirsty enough to drink blood by the time they reach Valles," she added. "That suits me quite well."
Occasionally a Hairy Man and a gull wheeling above the raft screeched insults at one another. Sharina and the queen remained invisible from the raft even though they themselves could see for miles in every direction.
Sharina imagined the raft and its occupants landing on the shore of Ornifal. She'd seen the savagery with which the Hairy Men attacked and she knew what the results of those attacks would be on the stunned population of Valles. She'd buried the gnawed remains of Hanno's partner, after all.
With that image in her mind, Sharina lunged for the queen's throat. Before the thought had even reached Sharina's muscles, her body stiffened into stony rigidity. She was back in the marble room and the queen, with her usual faint smile, had her index finger on a game piece of carven tourmaline.
"As you see," the queen said in her smoothly pleasant voice, "I've made arrangements to deal with my physical enemies. There's another problem, though. The king's wizard looked for a servant and managed to summon a master. That master will not be easily put down."
She lifted her finger from the piece. Sharina could move again, but she rubbed her arms instead of attempting another vain attack. Her skin twitched and prickled as it had after lightning struck a nearby pine when she played in the woods as a child.
The queen's smile widened like a cat's claw slipping from its sheath. "You're going to help me, Sharina," she said. "You're going to lead me to the Throne of Malkar, which your ancestor concealed in a place only his blood can find."
"I'll die before I help you," Sharina said quietly. Her fingers kneaded her forearm muscles.
For an instant, something happened to the figure facing Sharina over the game board. The queen's perfect features became translucent. Beneath the flesh was another visage, this one snarlingly inhuman.
The image was gone as suddenly as sun flashing from a gull's white wing. Everything was as it had been before, except for Sharina's doubtful memory of the moment.
"I could make you beg me for death, Sharina," the queen said in tones that flowed like honey. "I plan to take another course instead. But you will do as I require, of that you may be sure."
Sharina felt the chill pervade her body. The white room was receding; she stood frozen at the hub of the windowed chamber again, watching with detached interest as scenes evolved in the distance.
The game board remained beyond the sixth window, but the room was otherwise empty. The queen's clawed smile still hung across Sharina's mind, though.
"I've heard people say that the only difference between the regulars and the Blood Eagles," Attaper said disdainfully to Garric as they rode up to the Naval Arsenal and their meeting with Admiral Nitker's envoy, "is that we have better officers."
A hundred soldiers from Harker's Regiment of what had been the Ornifal standing army stood with their commander, Pior bor-Pirial. The adjacent quays, normally used by vessels bringing naval stores which for one reason or another couldn't be accommodated within the vast brick shed of the Arsenal, were empty now. All ships that could sail had done so when the riots started, and Nitker was blockading Valles from his base on the island of Eshkol close offshore.
Attaper spit past the polished toe of his left boot. "That's crap," he added flatly. "But I'll agree, having decent officers might help some."
A grinning figure at the back of Garric's mind murmured, "Officers and training will take you further than just recruiting will, lad. But recruiting on Haft or the northern counties of Ornifal, that'll take you a ways."
Garric and the eight Blood Eagles escorting him were mounted, but the horses were just transportation. Like Garric himself, the royal bodyguards were most comfortable on their own feet. Ornifal's military strength had always been in its heavy infantry. The nobility swanked it on horseback, but when it came to fighting the troops who covered the flanks of an Ornifal army were hirelings, either cavalry or light infantry who could break up a cavalry charge.
The River Beltis was at its greatest width here; the far shore was barely visible through the haze sucked from the water's surface by the late-afternoon sun. The warship hanging a bowshot off the end of the quay was a trireme with nearly two hundred oars in three banks. A few dozen men stroked to keep its bronze ram pointing into the slow current.
A skiff with seven men aboard put off from the trireme's stern. The rope ladder by which they'd descended dangled there; at the railing above, officers in red cloaks watched along with off-duty oarsmen.
"Here they come," Garric murmured. He gripped the saddle pommel and swung his right leg over the cantle, settling thankfully to the ground. Two Blood Eagles held the horses while Garric and the other six strode up the quay to meet the incoming skiff.
Garric noticed to his amusement that his stride, that of the Haft phalanx of the Old Kingdom, put him a finger's breadth farther ahead of his escort at each double pace. Attaper gave a muffled curse, then growled, "Route march, Sister take you!" to his men.
Garric had used Pior, still holding neutral in the Arsenal with his regular troops, to broker this meeting with the admiral's representatives. Pior would like to think of himself as holding the balance—perhaps even being a kingmaker.
He was nothing of the sort. As Attaper said, the troops of the regular regiments were, if not a joke, at least no threat to Garric and his new government. Waldron could crush them or ignore them, pretty much as Garric chose.
The six marines accompanying Nitker's representative were much more impressive. They wore bronze helmets and cuirasses of stiffened linen that could turn a sword slash or even an arrow sent from a distance. Four of them rowed despite their armor; the other pair held the squad's spears cross-ways on the thwarts, long boarding pikes rather than javelins designed for throwing.
The Blood Eagles sized up their potential opponents as the skiff reached the end of the quay; and behind Garric's eyes, King Carus did the same. "I could always use more of that sort, lad," the king's voice whispered. "They'll be planning to snatch you if they think they can get away with it...."
"They can't," Garric said.
Attaper said, "What was that, sir?"
Garric didn't realize that he'd spoken aloud. "Stand back for a moment," he said instead of answering. He took two strides ahead of his escort and waited, arms akimbo, for Nitker's men to climb the stone steps from the landing stage to the top of the quay.
The envoy was a balding, middle-aged man who looked as though he was more familiar with court robes than the cuirass of iron scales which he wore for this occasion. The fact he was in armor underscored Carus' warning. Attaper realized the same thing and said, "Sir, be careful!"
Garric drew his long sword. The marines instantly formed a close rank, their pikes facing out in a lethal hedge. "What is this?" the envoy cried from behind his men. "This was to be a peaceful parlay!"
Garric tossed his sword spinning into the air. The burnished steel caught the afternoon sun to flash like a deadly jewel. Garric glanced up, judged his moment, and raised his hand. The sword hilt slapped into his palm. Light trembled for a moment as the blade moaned softly back to silence.
Garric shot the sword home into its sheath and grinned at the marines. "Don't even think about it," he said to their officer in a lilting voice. The shadow of an ancient king laughed with gusto in his heart.
The trick was Carus' own, though Garric and Cashel had practiced similar displays with quarterstaves as they chatted and watched their sheep in the borough. A sword was shorter and lighter than a staff, but it spun faster and the edges added an element of danger to the embarrassment of a missed catch.
Garric didn't intend to make a mistake, and the effect of such flashing skill did more than any number of threats to insure that the parlay would be peaceful.
Raising his hands to shoulder height, palms out to demonstrate that they were empty, Garric said, "I was told to expect Matoes bor-Malliman. You're Lord Matoes?"
The envoy snarled something in a low voice to his escort; the marines parted so that he could face Garric directly instead of peering over the armored shoulders of his men. "I'm Chancellor Matoes," he said, giving himself the title Garric had withheld. "Duke Nitker sent me to receive your proposals of alliance, ah, Prince Garric."
One of the Blood Eagles muttered in disgust at Nitker's airs. Garric's mouth twitched in a smile. The admiral probably thought he was being moderate not to claim the throne of the Isles.
"Admiral Nitker stepped into what he thought was a vacuum in Valles," Garric said, speaking calmly and crossing his arms before him. "That was the action of a patriot, and neither I nor the king who adopted me could blame the admiral for what he did. But for the sake of the Isles, Matoes, Admiral Nitker has to make it clear immediately that he's a loyal subject of the government of King Valence. Otherwise he can only be considered a traitor."
Royhas had suggested that he or perhaps Waldron should represent the new government, since Nitker was sending an envoy instead of coming in person. For Prince Garric to attend the meeting would confer too much status on the admiral's minions.
Garric wasn't interested in status. He alone of the new government really understood the danger that faced Ornifal and the whole Isles, so he was the one to treat with the envoy.
As for the risk that Matoes and Nitker would think Garric was weak because he'd come to the meeting himself—Garric and the king within him laughed at the thought. Whatever tale the envoy and his bodyguards took back to Eshkol, it would not be that they'd met a foolish young lout just off the farm.
Matoes bumped the man to either side as he stepped through the rank of marines. He wasn't allowing for the bulk of his unfamiliar armor. The marine officer frowned slightly, then spread his men with a hand gesture. He'd have liked to keep his charge behind the line of guards, but he didn't have the authority to order that.
Matoes stopped a pace from Garric and fumbled absently at the side lacings of his cuirass, now unnecessary. The armor had been to protect him if he ordered his men to kidnap Garric; the government would gain nothing by grabbing an underling like the self-styled chancellor.
Matoes was clearly not a stupid man. Instead of posturing with statements about Nitker's lineage and mandate from heaven to rule the Isles, he said, "Eshkol—the Duchy of Eshkol, shall we say?—could quite easily retain its independence, Prince Garric. There's no naval force in the Isles to match the Royal Fleet—"
Garric smiled. The envoy grimaced when he realized he'd used the old term for the ships which Admiral Nitker commanded.
"The fleet, that is," Matoes resumed. "You may not believe that Duke Nitker could capture Ornifal from you, but you certainly can't invade Eshkol successfully with the forces at your disposal. The obvious solution is an alliance of equals. King Valence has wisely adopted a son. He might well—"
Matoes held out a hand and appeared to examine his perfect manicure. Garric noticed that the envoy was watching from the corners of his eyes to see how his next statement was received.
"—adopt another prince and cosuccessor."
"And sheep might well learn to fly, Lord Matoes," Garric said pleasantly. "But not in Admiral Nitker's lifetime, or my own."
One of the marines stifled a snicker. The envoy spun in fury, but his escorts were all straight-faced by the time he met their eyes.
"The reason that Admiral Nitker should return to his allegiance," Garric said, "isn't that the kingdom will crush him if he doesn't—though assuredly the kingdom will crush him if one of our common enemies doesn't do it first."
Matoes opened his mouth to protest. Garric flicked his left hand up to cut off the objection. "The reason Nitker should rejoin the government is the same one that caused him to rebel, Lord Matoes: the Isles face enemies greater than at any time since the fall of the Old Kingdom. We decent men—men who oppose chaos—all have to join together or evil will destroy us severally."
Gulls wheeling over these waste-laden lower reaches of the Beltis called shrilly. On the quay, the only sound was creaking equipment as the men of both escorts moved slightly. Matoes stroked his left cheek with his index finger as he considered what next to say.
"Admiral Nitker was adamant that he would accept nothing less than a coregency," the envoy said at last. "You need him and the fleet to enforce your rule."
"Lord Waldron was just as adamant that he should be king in Valence's place," Garric said mildly. Noble courtiers like Waldron and Matoes had certainly known each other before the current troubles, so the envoy would understand what Garric was saying. "In the end he realized that the threat to the Isles was too great to ignore for the sake of personal ambition. Waldron became commander of the Royal Army, just as Admiral Nitker will remain as the honored commander of the Royal Fleet."
In the plaza two blocks away, the regiment which accompanied Garric and his immediate bodyguards at a distance was going through evolutions. One company at a time advanced, wheeled, and countermarched while the remaining troops stood ready in case the admiral's men attempted something.
The supporting regiment was made up of household troops from a dozen of the northern landholders commanded by one of Waldron's noble friends. Attaper had provided each of the new regiments with drillmasters from the Blood Eagles.
The nobles supplying—and paying—the troops had complained, some louder than others, but in the end they'd accepted Waldron's insistence that the mixture and joint training of troops from individual households was necessary. Garric had King Carus' memories of usurpers' undisciplined levies breaking before the steady precision of his royal army.
Waldron had something more vivid than that: the old warrior had been with King Valence at the Stone Wall on Sandrakkan. There, when the Ornifal militias panicked, only the Blood Eagles' steadfast courage and the atrocious ruthlessness of Pewle mercenaries who butchered women and children within the Sandrakkan camp had saved the throne for Valence. Waldron had no intention of allowing indiscipline in the forces he commanded.
Matoes looked toward the drilling troops. At first Garric thought the envoy was simply staring into the distance while his mind worked, but Matoes' eyes were really focused.
"I'll carry your message," he said to Garric at last. "I don't know how the admiral will respond. He's quite rightly confident in the strength of his position ... for the time being, that is."
"Lord Matoes," Garric said, fixing the envoy with his eyes, "I'm not nearly as concerned about the time being as I am about the entire future of the Kingdom of the Isles. The future, or the lack of future."
He turned and pointed to the troops going through their exercises. "Tell the admiral," he said, "that it isn't about rank, his or mine or anyone at all's. It's about the survival of civilization. And very shortly he'll realize that there aren't any neutrals."
Matoes nodded. "I'll tell him," he said. "But I'm very much afraid—"
He laughed without humor. "I believe you, Prince Garric," he said, "though I can't imagine why I do. And I really can't hold out much hope that I'll be able to convince the admiral, but I'll do what I can."
Matoes turned and nodded to the commander of his escort. The envoy and four marines started briskly down the quay. The other two stood where they were long enough for the envoy to reach the steps to the skiff.
"We all have to try," Garric whispered. The setting sun painted the clouds piling up on the eastern horizon into a wall of blood.
"And this time," said the king in Garric's mind, "we're going to succeed, lad."