Unknown

The View from the Mirror is a tale of the Three Worlds, Aachan, Tallallame and Santhenar, and of the four human species that inhabit them: Aachim, Charon, Faellem and old human. The setting is Santhenar, a world where wizardry - the Secret Art - is difficult, and doesn’t always work, and every using comes at a price - aftersickness.

* * * *

Long ago a whole race was betrayed and cast into the void between the worlds, a Darwinian place where life is more desperate, more brutal, more fleeting than anywhere. In the void none but the fittest survive, and only by remaking themselves constantly. A million of that race died in the first few weeks.

The terrible centuries ground on. The exiles were transformed into a new human species, but still they could not survive the void. Reduced to a handful, they hung over the abyss of extinction. Then one day a chance came, an opening to another world - Aachan!

They gave themselves a new name, Charon, after a frigid moonlet at the furthest extremity of the void. Escaping it, they took barren Aachan from the Aachim, reducing them to servitude. The Hundred, as the remaining Charon became known, dared allow nothing to stand before the survival of their species.

Despite their efforts, they did not flourish on Aachan.

One of the Hundred, Rulke, commissioned the golden flute, an instrument that could open the Way between the Worlds. Before it could be used, Shuthdar, the old human who made it, stole the flute and fled with it to Santhenar. Unfortunately Shuthdar blundered. He opened all the paths between the worlds, and the four species scrambled to get the flute for themselves. Rather than be taken Shuthdar destroyed it, bringing down the Forbidding that sealed Santhenar off completely. Now the fate of the Three Worlds is bound up with those marooned on Santhenar. They have never ceased to search for a way home, but no way has ever been found.

* * * *

Volume 1

A Shadow on the Glass

Llian, a brilliant young chronicler at the College of the Histories, presents a new version of an ancient Great Tale, the Tale of the Forbidding, at his graduation telling, to unprecedented acclaim. But Wistan, the master of the College, realises that Llian has uncovered a deadly mystery - evidence that a crippled girl was murdered at the time the golden flute was destroyed. The crime must have occurred to conceal a greater one, and even now such knowledge could be deadly, both for him and for the College.

Llian is also Zain, an outcast race despised for collaborating with the Charon in olden times. Wistan persecutes Llian to make him retract the tale, but Llian secretly keeps on with his research. He knows that it could be the key to a brilliant story - the first new Great Tale for hundreds of years - and if he were the one to write it, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest chroniclers of all time.

* * * *

Koran, a young woman who is a sensitive, was at the graduation telling when Llian told his famous tale. She loves the Histories and is captivated by the tale and the teller. Karan returns to Gothryme, her drought-stricken and impoverished home, but soon afterwards Maigraith appears. Karan owes an obligation to Maigraith, the powerful but troubled lieutenant of Faelamor, and Maigraith insists that she repay it by helping to steal an ancient relic for her liege. Faelamor is the age-old leader of the Faellem, exiled on Santhenar by the Forbidding. Desperate to take her people back to her own world, she believes that the relic may hold the key.

Yggur the sorcerer now holds the relic in Fiz Gorgo. Karan and Maigraith steal into his fortress, but Karan is shocked to learn that the relic is the Mirror of Aachan, stolen from the Aachim a thousand years ago. Being part-Aachim herself, she knows that the Aachim have never stopped searching for it. Either she must betray her father’s people or refuse her debt to Maigraith - dishonour either way. And Karan has a dangerous heritage: part Aachim, part old human, she is a blending. Blendings, though prone to madness, can have unusual talents, as she has. They are also at risk: sometimes hunted to enslave the talent, as often to destroy it.

Maigraith, captivated by something she sees on the Mirror, is surprised by Yggur. Finally she is overcome but Karan flees with the Mirror into the flooded labyrinth below the fortress, pursued by Yggur’s dreadful Whelm guards. Karan is clever and resourceful, and eventually escapes, but is hunted for weeks through swamp and forest and mountains. The Whelm, who are also sensitive, are able to track her through her nightmares. In a twist of fate, Karan saves the life of one of the Whelm, Idlis the healer. She heads towards Chanthed, a place of haunting memories for her because of Llian and his wonderful tale. Pursued by the Whelm and their dogs, she thinks of Llian as a saviour and reaches out to him in her dreams.

* * * *

Mendark, a mancer who is Yggur’s bitter enemy, hears that the Mirror has been stolen and sends out his lieutenants to find it. Learning from Tallia that Karan is heading for Chanthed he asks Wistan to find her. Wistan, who would do anything to get rid of Llian, orders him to find Karan and take her to Mendark’s city, Thurkad.

Llian is terrified to be cast out of his secure world, yet knows that if he does this task well, Mendark’s name will open any door, and he will surely solve the murder and make his Great Tale. He travels into the mountains in a romantic dream.

At the tiny village of Tullin he dreams that Karan is calling for help and wakes to find two Whelm at his throat, trying to trace her sending. Llian is rescued by Shand, an old man who works at the inn but is more than he seems. After asking Shand for help but being refused, Llian heads out into the snow to find Karan. Eventually he does, after many perils, but crashes into her hiding place and knocks himself out at her feet.

* * * *

At first Karan feels that Llian is a dream come true, but the great teller is revealed to be callow and awkward. Worse, he does not take her seriously, and when he tries to get her to go to Thurkad with him Karan grows angry. Sith is her destination, and to pay her debt she must give the Mirror to none but Faelamor. That night the Whelm find her again and, full of mixed feelings about Llian, she flees with him into the high mountains.

After a number of narrow escapes they lose their pursuers, but Llian gets mountain sickness and they begin to run out of food. Karan has no choice but to head for Shazmak, a secret city of the Aachim, where she grew up. She is afraid to go there with the Mirror, and more afraid to take Llian to a place forbidden to outsiders.

Eventually she talks the Aachim, among them her cousin and friend Rael, into allowing Llian in, but soon learns that Tensor is on his way to Shazmak. The leader of the Aachim is so dominating that Karan knows she can never keep the Mirror secret. Karan agonises over whether to break her vow and give it to the Aachim, but realises that the Mirror would be too great a temptation. They are proud but not wise, and their history is littered with disastrously pursued follies. Rulke the Charon was the architect of all their misfortunes, and though he has been imprisoned in the Nightland for a thousand years, Tensor has never ceased to search for a way to exact revenge on him.

As it happens, Tensor has already heard about the Mirror from Mendark. Tensor sends a message to Shazmak, to Emmant, a cunning blending with a thwarted lust for Karan. While Llian searches Shazmak for evidence that will help him with his quest, Emmant shows him a book of Aachim Histories, but he has put an enchantment on the book and Llian reveals that Karan knows about the Mirror.

Tensor returns and Karan is brought to trial, for the Mirror cannot be found. It is impossible to lie to the Syndics, but Karan, in a desperate expedient, plants a false dream in Llian’s mind, and through a link with him, reads it back to the Syndics at her trial. Because Llian believes it to be truth, it is truth, and despite Tensor’s protests she is freed. However, Emmant is spurned by the Aachim for his dishonourable act, and this drives him into madness.

That night, with Rael’s aid, Karan and Llian escape from Shazmak, hotly pursued by the Aachim. Stealing a boat, they flee down a wild river. Rael and several of the Aachim are drowned in the chase, and Karan is devastated. Despite the trial they were her friends.

* * * *

In Yggur’s stronghold, Maigraith is tormented by the Whelm, who have an instinctive hatred of her. Later, under Yggur’s relentless interrogation, she gives away Karan’s destination, the city of Sith.

Yggur is desperate to get the Mirror back, which he needs for his coming campaign. However, as the weeks pass a bond grows between them, Maigraith finding in the tormented Yggur the complement to her own troubled self. She also sees that, though the Whelm serve Yggur faithfully, they despise him, especially for the relationship with her which to them is a fatal weakness. But the Whelm are born to serve, and they lost their true master so long ago that they have forgotten him.

Now readying his armies for war, Yggur is torn between his growing regard for Maigraith and his need for the Mirror. One night the Whelm come for Maigraith when he is away, and under their torment she betrays the truth about Karan’s origins. The Whelm are exultant - now they know how to attack her.

The same night Faelamor appears, using her mastery of illusion to get into the fortress. Overcoming the Whelm, she snatches Maigraith away. However, Faelamor is furious when she learns that Karan has escaped with the Mirror. Faelamor hates Karan because she is a sensitive and a threat to her plans, and threatens to kill her if they ever meet again. Inwardly Faelamor despairs because the Mirror, that she has sought for so long, has eluded her again. Once before she almost had it, but Yalkara the Charon, her greatest enemy, defeated her. Yalkara used the Mirror to find a warp in the Forbidding, the only person ever to escape from Santhenar. Now Faelamor’s own world, Tallallame, cries out for aid and she is desperate to return. What Yalkara could do, Faelamor must do, and she has corrupted herself trying to. She has been hunting for the Mirror, one vital part of her age-old plan, ever since.

Faelamor and Maigraith set off towards Sith. Maigraith is reminded that whatever she does, Faelamor is never satisfied. She falls back under Faelamor’s domination.

Yggur returns to find Maigraith gone. He feels her loss keenly but he can delay his plans no longer. His armies march on the east.

* * * *

Karan and Llian flee through mountains and caverns, hotly pursued by Tensor and his Aachim, and down into the forests of Bannador, Karan’s own country. At a forest camp she has a terrible nightmare and wakes to find that the Whelm have tracked her down again. This time she is helpless for they know she is a blending and how to control her. Desperate, Karan seeks out with her mind and finds Maigraith not far away. But the link is captured by a terrifying presence, who uses it to speak directly to the Whelm, reminding them that they are really Ghâshâd, ancient enemies of the Aachim. Karan sends Llian away but is captured herself, though the Whelm are unable to find the Mirror.

Maigraith feels Karan’s link but by the time she gets to the camp Karan is gone, and the Mirror too. Faelamor is furious. Maigraith rebels, abandoning her. Faelamor is captured by Tensor and sent to Shazmak, where to her horror she learns about Karan’s Aachim heritage. Faelamor already suspects that Karan has Faellem ancestry as well. If so, she is triune: one with the blood of three worlds. A terrifying prospect - no one can tell what unpredictable talents a triune might have. Faelamor decides that the risk to her plans is too great - Karan must die. She sends mad Emmant to hunt Karan down. Through him the Ghâshâd find a way inside Shazmak and butcher the Aachim there, but Faelamor escapes.

Llian recovers the Mirror from Karan’s hiding place, eventually finds her and tries to smoke the Whelm out of the house where they hold her prisoner. The building catches fire; Karan and Llian are lucky to escape. Llian hires a boat and Pender, a magnificent boatman who has fallen on hard times, takes them down the river to Sith. On the way, Karan and Llian find that they can deny their feelings for each other no longer.

Reaching Sith, they discover that Yggur’s armies have taken all the lands to the south and are massing on the other side of the river. The city cannot stand against him. Nor is Faelamor there to take the Mirror. Karan collapses, unable to drive herself any further. She is wracked by nightmares about the Whelm, who since she was captured seem to have grown more powerful. As the invasion begins she is betrayed, but escapes with Pender, a perilous journey where Karan is so tormented that she casts herself into the sea. Llian and Pender drag her out again. Now there is nowhere to go but to Mendark. Karan is afraid of him too.

They reach Thurkad not far ahead of the war. Llian goes to the citadel, not realising that Mendark has been overthrown by Thyllan. A street urchin, Lilis, guides Llian to Mendark’s refuge. Mendark and Tallia offer to take Karan in, but angered by Mendark’s imperious manner, she refuses him.

Not long after, Maigraith comes to Thurkad. Karan is overjoyed and tries to give her the Mirror, but Maigraith asks her to keep it one more day. Before she returns, Emmant appears in disguise and attacks Karan in a murderous fury. She stabs him dead but is driven into madness; then Thyllan captures Karan and the Mirror.

As all the powers gather in Thurkad, Mendark realises that the only way to recover the Mirror is to call a Great Conclave, which even Thyllan must obey. During the Conclave they all put their case, and Karan tells her story. As the Conclave ends, a messenger bursts in with news that the army is defeated and Yggur is at the gates of the city. Faelamor shatters Tensor by revealing that the Whelm are actually his ancient enemies, the Ghâshâd, one-time servants of Rulke, who have taken Shazmak and slaughtered the Aachim there. She lies, blaming Karan for this treachery.

Karan is sentenced to death, while the Mirror is given to Thyllan to use in the defence of Thurkad. Seizing the moment, Faelamor calls forth Maigraith, whom Tensor has never seen before, and Tensor knows by her eyes that she is descended from the hated Charon.

Tensor breaks and uses a forbidden potency, or mind-blasting spell, that lays the whole Conclave low. Only Llian the Zain is unaffected. Thinking Karan dead, in grief and fury he attacks Tensor but is easily captured. Tensor sees a use for someone who is immune to the potency. He flees with Llian and the Mirror.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

PART ONE

<<Contents>>

* * * *

The Waif

he Great Hall was dark. The glow from the burning city did not penetrate the velvet drapes. The shouts, the screams, the clash of weapons up the hill - all just a murmur from far away. In the room there was no conscious being, no intelligent life. The broken door banged in the wind, the hinges bawled, striking a dreadful lament, crying to the dead to rise. The members of the Conclave lay silent.

Hours passed. In the darkness one man dreamed. Dreamed that he lay cast down and senseless while the army of his mortal enemy poured through the gates of Thurkad. Get up! he screamed. Only you can save your city. But he could not wake.

The tramp of marching feet echoed in his dreams - they were hunting him! He gave a wrenching groan that tore through the fog in his brain and woke, bolt upright in the dark. His heart was racing. Where was he? Hardly knowing his own name, aware of little more than a growing terror, he felt around him. The things he touched were blank pieces. He could not put a name to the least of them.

A horn blasted, not far away. Panicking, the man clawed himself to all-fours, sagging across the room like a rubber-kneed crab, tripping over bodies, cracking his head against a table leg. Something smashed under his weight, the shards stabbing into the palm of his hand. He picked out pieces of curved glass, feeling the blood run down his arm. Smelling spilled oil on the floor, he felt around for the lantern but his numb fingers snapped the flint a dozen times before it lit. He lurched in swaying arcs back and forth along the rows of benches, then fell down in front of a tall woman who lay on the floor like a fallen statue. Yellow light bathed long limbs, dark hair, skin as rich and smooth as glazed chocolate. Her eyes were open and her lips wet, but the woman made no sound, gave no sign that she saw anything.

With shaking hands he brought the lamp down to her eyes. It registered nothing. The light showed him clearly - a slim man of average height and uncertain age, with blue eyes and thin, wild hair. His sallow skin was sunk into deep creases; his scanty beard was lank.

The man’s face was wracked. ‘Tallia!’ he sang out, a wail of pain. ‘For pity’s sake, wake!’ He rocked on his haunches, overcome by the magnitude of the disaster, shuddered and bent over her again. Putting his bloody hands around her head, front and back, he tried to force open the blocked channels of her brain, straining so hard that his breath came out as a series of little groans.

In his head the tramping grew so loud that it blocked out all thought. He closed his eyes but the images shone out brighter than before, row after row of soldiers. The mind that directed them - his enemy - was as cold and unstoppable as a machine.

‘Tallia,’ he screamed. ‘Help! Yggur’s coming for me.’

Tallia’s pupils, which had imperceptibly contracted to points of darkness, expanded in a rush and she knew him. ‘Mendark!’ she whispered.

Mendark threw his arms around her. Tears starred his eyelashes. They struggled to their feet, swaying together, then Tallia’s eyes rolled and the room tilted in slow-motion confusion. He clung to her until she was steady again.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘I don’t remember anything.’

Mendark held the lantern high. It showed the hall in chaos: tables and benches overturned, lamps smashed, papers and people scattered like hay.

‘Tensor violated the Conclave,’ he said, grim-faced.

‘Conclave?’ Tallia rubbed her forehead as if she could stir her brain back to life.

‘I called a Great Conclave,’ he replied, ‘to recover the Mirror from Thyllan the usurper, and to free Karan.’

‘I can’t remember,’ said Tallia, shaking her head.

‘Yggur’s not far away. I can sense the hate in him.’

Tallia did not ask him about that. Mendark was a sensitive. He knew. She squatted down, rocking back and forth on her heels.

‘Tensor struck down the Conclave with a mind-blasting potency,’ Mendark went on. ‘A terrible spell.’

‘Tensor betrayed us?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, and fled with the Mirror. What’s he going to do with it? I’m afraid, Tallia.’

‘It’s starting to come back!’ Tallia slumped on the chair. ‘Oh, my head is bursting!’

‘And mine, but we must get going.’

Mendark handed her a jug, a tall, wasp-waisted vessel of dark-blue porcelain. Tallia drank from it greedily, spilling water down her chin and her shirt. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, nodded, which made her wince, and said, ‘What do we do now?’

‘I can’t think. The Council is in tatters.’

The Council was an alliance of wizards and scholars, of which Mendark had been Magister until his recent overthrow. He ticked the members off on his fingers. ‘Tensor’s gone, Nelissa is dead. Thyllan is my enemy and will never be otherwise. Old Nadiril is far away in Zile; he hasn’t come to a meet in years. Wistan is likewise out of reach in Chanthed. That only leaves me, Hennia the Zain and Orstand between us and ruin. Where’s Orstand?’

Tallia looked around. ‘I can’t see her.’

‘Find her and Hennia. Protect them at all costs! I’ve got to get to the citadel. If Yggur learns that they lie here helpless . . . Ahh!’ he wailed. ‘There’s no time!’

Mendark looked as bad as she felt. They were both wracked by aftersickness, the by-product of using wizardry, the Secret Art, or being too close when someone else did.

Outside, where all had been silent, they now heard shouting and screaming. Mendark wobbled his way to the door. The street lamps still burned. The street was wet, though it was not raining now. People streamed past, clutching pathetic treasures.

‘What news?’ cried Mendark, but his voice went unheeded. He picked up a spear that lay on the road and stepped into the path of the refugees, blocking their way. ‘I am Mendark!’ he thundered, though it took most of his strength. ‘What news?’

‘The enemy has come through the northern gate,’ said a bearded man, grey hair plastered to his head. He cradled a whimpering baby in the crook of one arm. Little blue toes stuck out of its sodden blanket, curling and uncurling. ‘It’s said that Thyllan is dead. Who leads us now?’

‘I lead!’ Mendark cried. ‘I am Mendark. Magister once more! Go, tell everyone that the real Magister is back. We will defend the walls of the Old City and strike outwards until the whole of Thurkad is free again.’

The crowd, which was growing every minute, stared at him in silence. He raised the spear above his head. ‘Go, you fools!’ he roared. ‘I am your only chance.’

As they scattered he heard a few thin cries of ‘Mendark! Mendark has returned!’ though whether they went in hope or in fear of him Mendark could not tell.

‘Poor fools,’ he said under his breath. ‘What chance is there for Thurkad now?’ He lumbered back up the steps.

‘Tallia,’ he shouted, and she came running, awkwardly, as if her knees had frozen solid.

‘There are . . .’ she began.

‘No time!’ he snapped. ‘You must do as best you can. I will rally our armies, what’s left of them. Bring the Council to the citadel, and anyone else who can help us. I’ll try to send aid, but don’t wait for it.’

‘But Mendark . . .’

‘Whatever it is, you must deal with it.’ He stood there for a moment, his face haggard, then ran out. His unsteady footsteps echoed on the stones.

‘But most of the people here can’t even walk,’ Tallia said softly. ‘Important people, vital for our defence. How am I to deal with them, alone?’ Thurkad was the greatest and oldest city of Meldorin. If it had fallen so quickly, where could they hope to find refuge?

She went to the door and looked out, but now the street was empty, silent. Misty rain began to drift down. What could she do? Hesitating in the doorway, Tallia noticed a movement in the alley across the street. Someone had put their head around the corner and quickly pulled it back again. The little thin face was curiously familiar.

It was the street urchin who had guided Llian to Mendark’s villa several weeks ago. Llian had so charmed her that she had refused a silver tar in payment, a fortune for any street child. What was her name?

‘Lilis,’ Tallia called softly. ‘Lilis, come forth.’

The head peeked around again. It belonged to a hungry-looking girl who seemed about ten, a long-faced waif with platinum hair. Her ratty clothes were spattered with mud up to the waist.

‘Come here, Lilis, I need you.’

Lilis emerged onto the street, looked this way and that and slunk across to Tallia. In the light from the doorway she looked even shabbier than before.

‘What does you want?’ she squeaked, looking tremulous.

‘Come inside.’

‘Into the Great Hall?’ The squeak became a horrified whisper. ‘Could be whipped for that.’

‘Nonsense. The old Magister is back and I am his chief lieutenant.’ Tallia took Lilis’s thin wrist and led her inside. ‘Look,’ she pointed. Many of the richest and most powerful people of Thurkad: justices, legislators and wealthy merchants were strewn about like carcasses in an abattoir. ‘We’ve got to get them to the citadel.’

Not far away a tall man twitched and shuddered. He was mean-faced, with a misshapen cudgel of a nose and a swollen gash across one cheek. His pale, almost colourless eyes stared unseeingly ahead. It was Thyllan, who had ended Mendark’s tenure as Magister not long before the Conclave.

Lilis’s eyes bulged. ‘The Magister!’ she said.

‘No more! The usurper is overthrown. Mendark is back - the real Magister. Help me.’

Tallia hurried around the room, checking for signs of life. The guards had recovered and fled, save one who lay in a puddle of blood on the far side. He was dead - had fallen on his sword and bled to death, by the look of it.

As she turned away to the next, Lilis caught sight of a small bare foot protruding from under the guard’s billowing cape. She lifted the cloth to reveal a small woman with a pale face surrounded by a wild froth of fiery red hair.

‘It’s Karan,’ said Tallia, ‘Llian’s friend.’

Various emotions crossed Lilis’s face: concern, envy. ‘Is she dead?’

Tallia bent down swiftly. ‘No, but without help she could die.’

Karan’s face was set in an expression so sad that it made tears spring to Tallia’s eyes. If only I had helped her, she thought, none of this need have come about. She rolled Karan over. Her shirt was bloody from breast to hip. Tallia tore the shirt open, expecting to see a mortal wound, but there was none. It was the guard’s blood.

Tallia looked around. ‘That’s strange,’ she said, furrowing her brow.

‘What?’

There had been many people at the Conclave but a lot were gone, including several faces that she was looking for: Faelamor, Maigraith, Llian. ‘Where’s Llian? He would never have left Karan.’

‘Llian’s gone,’ said Lilis. ‘The big man took him.’

‘Big man?’ Tallia asked, checking Karan’s vital signs. The pulse was erratic, her skin clammy, and her eyes flickered back and forth under her eyelids. Tallia lifted one. The eyes were deep green; the pupils hardly reacted to the light. She was probably not in immediate danger though, if kept warm and dry. Tallia tore the cape off the guard, wrapped Karan in it, round and round, and then put her out of the way against the wall. Nothing more could be done for her at the moment. She turned to the next casualty.

Beneath a window was a mound of fallen drapes, half-covering a huge jelly of a woman swathed in the scarlet and purple gown of the High Court. The dignity of the office was marred by a red mouth sagging open and dentures hanging out. Her face was as round as the moon, with eyes that looked tiny in their pouches of fat. Yellow-grey hair was cut straight across at the level of her ears.

‘Who is she?’ Lilis piped up.

‘Justice Orstand,’ said Tallia, greatly relieved. With Orstand on their side there was always hope. She was the most powerful intellect on the Council, a friend that Mendark relied on greatly. ‘Water, quickly!’

Lilis scurried away to return with a blue jug, which she promptly poured on the judge’s face. Orstand shuddered and tried to get up, but wobbled on her legs. Tallia hurriedly thrust a chair under her.

Orstand looked around the room. ‘Is Nelissa - ?’

‘Dead!’ Tallia said harshly. She explained their situation.

‘Oh!’ said Orstand. ‘But Mendark’s right - the Old City is our only refuge.’ Its walls were high and strong and the citadel inside it stronger yet. Though surely not enough to resist Yggur.

‘Can you walk, Orstand?’

Orstand gave a smile of sorts. ‘See to the others, my friend. When they’re ready to go, I will be too.’

Embracing the old woman, Tallia went on with her work. There were other dead, quite a few, mostly the old and the frail. Too late for them, but several people were on their feet already after Lilis’s rough ministering with the water jug and a wet cloth.

Tallia remembered something Lilis had said earlier. ‘What did you say about Llian?’ she asked, but before the child could answer there was shouting, screaming and sounds of battle nearby. Dread shivered down Tallia’s backbone. They would be trapped!

‘Lilis,’ she cried. The waifs eyes showed the fear they both felt. ‘Go and see what is happening. See how close the enemy is.’

The girl hesitated, staring at her with those huge eyes. Tallia, thinking that she wanted payment, fumbled for the purse that hung at her waist. Lilis struck her hand aside; then, realising that she had hit the chief lieutenant of the Magister and might be slain on the spot, leapt away saying, ‘I go, I go!’

‘Lilis!’ Tallia called. She came back warily. ‘Be careful.’ Tallia embraced the grubby little urchin. Lilis looked astounded, then a tiny smile broke across her face. ‘You will come back?’ said Tallia. Normally so capable, she now felt overwhelmed.

‘I come back,’ Lilis said, her eyes shining, then she was gone.

Tallia hurried across to Orstand, who was bent over another of the bodies, trying to bring it back to consciousness. She looked about to collapse again; every breath rattled in her massive chest.

‘I can’t decide who to take and who to leave,’ agonised Tallia. ‘Is a judge more important than a doctor? A wealthy merchant more valuable than a young woman?’

‘You can’t choose that way,’ said Orstand, looking up. The flesh sagged off her face like overly wet dough. ‘The group must come before the individual. Anyone who can’t walk, or falls down and can’t get up again, must be left behind. And that includes me.’

‘I could never leave you behind,’ said Tallia, staring at the old woman.

Orstand wheezed with laughter. ‘I’d like to see you carry me!’

Tallia smiled at the thought. Soon seven people were more or less ready to walk. They included Thyllan, his hair sticking out in all directions as though electrified, and Hennia the Zain, the other member of the Council, an old, saggy woman whose eyes had gone blank. A badly bitten tongue hung out the corner of her mouth. There were also two members of the Assembly, the puppet government of Thurkad, long dominated by the Governor on one hand and the Magister on the other. The other two were strangers, though they both looked important.

They were in much the state that she had been in before Mendark woke her, but she did not know how to do the same for them. Several more were in worse condition, flopped over chairs and benches like dolls stuffed with grass. If they could be roused she might be able to get some of them to safety too. And there were quite a few like Karan, who might live or die, but would have to be carried. Worthy people all.

Save for Orstand, her seven could have been senile. Thyllan was wandering aimlessly around the room, but most of the others just stared at the wall, mumbling to themselves. Hennia kept saying, ‘I don’t want to go. Mendark is finished!’ Tallia was almost in despair by the time Lilis came running back.

‘Soldiers coming!’ she cried. ‘Must go now!’ Grabbing Tallia’s hand, Lilis tried to pull her toward the door.

Tallia resisted. ‘We’ve got to take them with us. Give me a hand.’

Between the three of them they got the able-bodied into a shambling line at the door, but it took all of Lilis’s efforts to keep them there while Tallia tried to rouse the other group. Outside, the shouting and noises of battle grew louder.

‘Must go now!’ Lilis screamed.

Tallia looked back at Karan, torn between her feelings and her responsibilities. It was not just that she liked Karan. She was a sensitive too, a priceless talent, especially in time of war. Anyone left behind was probably condemned to death, but not everybody could be saved. She ran back to Karan and took her hand, then laid it down again, unable to choose.

‘Go on, Lilis. I’ll catch you.’

Karan moaned, flinging her head from side to side. Suddenly coming to a decision, Tallia bent down to pick her up, then one of the comatose sat up, a short, rather stout man called Prathitt, a wealthy merchant and legislator. A fussily trimmed spade beard drew attention from his rapidly receding hairline. He staggered towards the door, waving his arms and shouting gibberish.

Tallia caught him just outside and slapped her hand over his mouth and nose, cutting off the racket. A small knot of people ran past, shrieking and moaning, then a signal horn called from up the street. Another answered it from around the back of the Great Hall. She looked about frantically, to see Lilis shepherding her crew into a mean alley. Orstand, at the rear, moved with the tottering, wide-legged gait of a toddler.

‘Hurry!’ Lilis screamed.

Tallia agonised in the doorway. There were about a dozen people left and she knew most of them. Some would die without help. Maybe all of them, if the enemy found them. Her patient began to thrash about again. If she carried Karan, this fellow would give them away. Then someone attacked the back door of the hall, the hammer blows echoing inside. Too late! Pulling the door closed, she hauled Prathitt across the road.

The rain was falling more heavily now. Within the alley it was almost as black as tar and slippery underfoot. Another clot of people ran down the street. Behind them Tallia heard the rhythmic tread of a squad of marching soldiers. She moved up the alley, slipping and skidding on what felt like decaying leaves. There was an odour of rotten cabbage, and the further up she went, worse filth.

‘Lilis,’ she whispered hoarsely.

There was no answer. Tallia heard the sound of falling water and the next second walked right under a torrent discharging from the roof. She wiped her eyes and stared uselessly into the darkness. The mouth of the alley was a lighted rectangle, partly obscured by mist. The tramping grew louder.

Prathitt, roused by the soaking, shouted an obscenity and flung up his arms. One fist caught her a painful blow on the cheek. Tallia struggled with him, making more noise than she liked. He was very strong, and when she eventually got her hand over his mouth, he bit her so hard that he drew blood. Cursing, she struck him on the side of the head, knocking him down.

Someone yelled behind her. Yggur’s soldiers were moving back and forth in the road. One approached the alley, holding up a blazing torch. Her patient began to stir. Tallia put her foot on his back, pushing him down into the mud. The torch went away, though the soldiers could still be seen in the street lights. The rest of the squad must be checking the Great Hall, she supposed, feeling her failure very strongly. Where had Lilis gone with her lot? Probably abandoned them as soon as the soldiers appeared. Who could blame her? There was no one to look out for her but herself.

Tallia heaved Prathitt to his feet, hauling him backwards up the alley, when without warning he put his muddy hands on her face and shoved. She overbalanced and fell backwards against a water barrel, hitting her head. For a moment she stared into a whirlpool, like being back in her earlier trance, then her head cleared and she sat up, trying to clean the muck out of her eyes. Reeling footsteps disappeared up the lane.

The light appeared again, and the silhouette of a soldier. Tallia bowed her head, praying that he would not come up. After a long interval the light faded. She crept back to the mouth and saw a squad of soldiers standing guard up the street. No chance of going back for Karan now. Nursing her bruises, Tallia headed up the alley to find her sick.

Two hours later, in pouring rain, she reached the gates of the Old City, having been hopelessly lost in the back streets. Not only had she failed to find Prathitt but she had not come across Lilis or any of her seven either. She felt like an utter fool and was tempted to go back to the Great Hall, but Mendark’s guards summoned her to the audience chamber.

The large room was crowded with splendidly garbed officers and aides, while twenty clerks sat at a row of desks along one wall, writing orders furiously and passing their strips of paper to the messengers who ran in and out. Mendark stood before a large canvas map of the city, arguing with an officer gorgeously attired in the Magister’s colours, scarlet and blue. That put Tallia in an even worse mood.

It was Berenet the dandy, Mendark’s other chief lieutenant, his magnificent mustachioes freshly waxed and coiled. His garments were silk and velvet; he wore a ruff of purple lace at his throat that helped to conceal a sunken chest. Tallia wondered where he had been lately. What with her own travels, and his, she hadn’t seen him for half a year. She nodded curtly. Grinning, Berenet inspected her from head to toe.

Mendark looked haggard, though she noticed that he’d had time to bathe and change his clothes. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked more brusquely than usual. ‘Don’t drip mud all over the carpet. Oh, what does it matter?’ as Tallia stepped to one side.

‘I lost them,’ she said, feeling like a schoolgirl caught out in some childish negligence. Berenet smirked.

‘What are you talking about?’ Mendark asked, his brows knitting together. He was furiously angry about something.

‘The survivors of the Conclave. I got some of them out but I lost them in the alleys.’

‘They’ve been here for an hour!’ said Mendark. ‘Some street brat brought seven of them to the gate, all looped together like a camel train.’

‘Lilis brought them?’ Tallia was amazed. ‘How is Orstand?’

‘Not too good.’ He waved a hand.

Tallia saw the big woman sagging at a table on the other side of the room. ‘And Hennia the Zain?’

Mendark lowered his voice. ‘I think her nerve has broken. We may have to replace her on the council, after this. What else have you to tell me?’

‘I had to leave the rest - I was lucky to get away myself. I lost Prathitt. He hit me and ran away in the dark.’

‘Not one of your greatest successes,’ said Mendark sourly. ‘Thank heavens for Berenet. He has come back with vital intelligence about Yggur.’ An aide tugged at his sleeve. ‘Just a minute!’ he snapped.

‘I left Karan behind,’ said Tallia. ‘The soldiers came before I could get her out

Mendark swore. ‘A sensitive like her would have been useful.’

Tallia took that as another criticism. Sensitives could be invaluable, to sense out danger and to advise what an enemy might do. Some could even relay messages by means of a mind-to-mind link. Karan had that rare talent. But they were a terror to control and often an emotional liability.

‘I suppose she’ll be dead in the morning,’ Tallia said unhappily. Everything she’d done today had been a failure.

‘We might all be! Why did you send Thyllan back?’

So that’s what the problem was! ‘How could I leave him behind? He’s on the Council.’

‘How could you miss the chance to rid me of my enemy?’ Mendark raged. ‘No one could have blamed you. Now everyone knows he’s here and I don’t dare allow any harm to come to him.’

‘Do we obey the rule of law or not?’

‘In this case your judgment is faulty. Berenet would not have been so scrupulous.’

‘I’m sure of that!’ she said acidly.

‘Aah! Get something to eat; I need you to look at the situation on the north side.’ The aide attacked his sleeve again. Mendark turned away to the new problem.

Tallia remained where she was. ‘I’d like to go back to the hall with a squad and get the rest of them.’

‘Impossible,’ Mendark barked over his shoulder. ‘I need you here. Anyway, Yggur holds that part of the city now. Forget them!’

Tallia knew that he was right, but it still hurt. She turned away, then swung back. ‘What happened to Lilis? I didn’t even pay her.’

‘The brat? The guards gave her a couple of grints before they chased her away. Now stop pestering me!’

Again the smirk from her rival, Berenet. Tallia gritted her teeth and ignored him, though it took all her self-control. She stopped by Orstand’s table for a moment to enquire about her health.

‘I don’t think I’ve felt worse in my entire life,’ said Orstand, though she found time to ask about everyone by name, and was dismayed at Lilis’s shabby treatment.

Snatching food and drink from a tray, Tallia hurried out to spend hours more reviewing the reports that streamed in, doing the rounds of the walls and relaying orders in the desperate defences of the night.

* * * *

In the early morning of that bitterest of all days for Thurkad - the first time that an enemy had come within the gates in more than a thousand years - Tallia learned that Yggur’s First Army had been beaten back from the quarter where the Conclave had been held. Several small victories gave hope of larger ones to come, so instead of snatching a few hours’ sleep, she took a small detail down to the Great Hall to find Karan and the other wounded if she could, and bring them to safety.

She picked her way through streets strewn with valuables discarded in flight and not yet taken by the looters - here a red cloth bundle, burst open to scatter silver cutlery in the gutter; there a carved wooden donkey with one ear broken off; a jacket embroidered with silk and garnets; a rolled tapestry that could have come from a bawdy house. Further on there were bodies and the marks of war - blood and broken weapons; men and beasts, women and even children dead of terrible wounds or sometimes no wound at all. And everywhere she saw the smoking shells of houses, once homes. Nearer to the Great Hall there were no signs of war; perhaps it had swept around that place.

By the time she arrived it was late morning. Tallia regretted bitterly her failures of the night, Karan especially. It felt like a personal betrayal. As she approached the hall there was smoke and the smell of burning wood. Closer, the odour of burning flesh, too. Black smoke groped for the sky. Tallia ran up to the pyre.

‘Nothing else to do, lar,’ said a tall, lean man with a little round pot of a belly that looked so incongruous it might have been pasted there. His grey hair was shaved to stubble. He wore the leather apron of a butcher and there was blood on the front of it. ‘If we leave them there’ll be plague.’

There were a lot of bodies on the pile and as she stood there staring, two men came up, carrying another between them, and heaved the corpse up onto the fire as if they were leading sacks of coal onto a wagon. The flames were too hot for her to get close enough to recognise any of the faces, and she did not care to watch the burning or to smell the stench. She went into the hall. It had not yet been ransacked; indeed the chaos inside was as they had left it the previous night, save that the dead were gone, and the dying.

There was a huge bloodstain on the floor where the dead guard had lain, and drag marks away from it. Over against the wall, where she had left Karan wrapped in the bloody cloak, she found a tiny smear of blood. Near the far wall was Nelissa’s stick, broken in two. Tallia ran outside, back to the pyre, calling out to the butcher with the grey hair.

‘What of the dead in the hall? Are they burnt?’

The man thought for a moment, scratching the end of his nose with a bloody fingernail. Tallia found the mannerism particularly offensive.

‘There were five, perhaps six, that we took from there,’ he said, frowning. ‘I can’t remember now; so many dead! We did that place hours ago. I remember the old one - we knew her, of course, even if she hadn’t been in robes. Nelissa the Sour! Who will mourn her, I wonder?’

‘Was there a young woman with red hair?’

‘Can’t remember, lar. There were several women, that I know, and one very striking, but after a while you don’t look too closely at them, except to be sure that they’re dead. No matter how beautiful they are, once they’re gone, their dreams are finished. No use having your own over them.’ It seemed he needed to talk about his experiences. ‘Remarkable the gap between life and death - at first you can hardly tell it, but as the day wears -’

Tallia was not interested in his philosophy. ‘Are you sure you haven’t burnt her? She was little, about so tall; red hair, pale skin, blood all over her shirt, but not her own. You would have noticed her hair, a fiery red. She was still alive last night.’

‘Then you should have taken her last night,’ he said, scratching his nose again. ‘That was a bitter night to be dying alone. The women we burned from there had no blood on them, as far as I remember, nor the men either, save one. One woman was tall and dark, not unlike you. I don’t remember the other. But we didn’t burn any live ones. There were only two breathing this morning, both men, and we sent them away to be nursed. That’s all I know.’

The others must have recovered or been taken prisoner in the night, thought Tallia. If only I had carried her with me. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

The Underbelly of Thurkad

hen by perilous ways Tallia returned to the citadel she found that the defence was already failing. Yggur’s forces now surrounded the city’s armies on all sides but the east, forcing them back towards their last bastion, the walled Old City, which was not even a tenth part of Thurkad. She ran to the audience chamber but Mendark was not there, and after a long search, for not even his officers seemed to know where he was, she found him on one of the wall towers, directing the defence of the southern wall.

‘It’s hopeless,’ he said wearily. Grimy with soot and spattered with blood and mud, he was quite as exhausted as she was. Berenet stood beside him, as beautifully groomed as ever. Weeping, Mendark swept his arm around the smoky horizon. ‘Look at the destruction. The Gallery is on fire from end to end; all that remains of the Old Stockade is ash. Four thousand years of history gone! The longer we fight the more will die, and defeat is inevitable. But how can I surrender Thurkad? I love my city with all my heart.’

‘Where’s the Governor of the Assembly?’

A messenger hurried up with the latest despatches. Mendark tore open the seal.

‘That treacherous cow!’ Berenet spat. ‘She’s fled with her barges loaded to the waterline.’

‘The whole Assembly is in disarray,’ Mendark added. ‘They couldn’t govern a playground! There’s only me!’ He bent his head to the papers.

‘Then your duty is clear,’ said Tallia. ‘You must defend Thurkad and do what you can for the people, whilever there is hope.’

‘That I will do, though a higher duty becomes pressing: to uphold the purpose of the Council. Never was that needed more, with Tensor amok with the Mirror.’ He stared down into the city, where Yggur’s flag, black crucible on a white circle, was hoisted over a hundred buildings. It looked more like a raised fist; the townspeople called Yggur’s soldiers the blacklists.

‘I have a plan you may be interested in,’ Berenet said, polishing his silver buttons.

He looked smart and efficient. Tallia was uncomfortably aware that she was still covered in mud.

‘It’d need to be a good one,’ Mendark grunted, not looking up from his despatches.

‘It is,’ said Berenet smugly. ‘Look!’

He unrolled a map of the city on the paving stones, tracing the irregular line of the walls with a manicured fingernail. ‘According to the latest intelligence, Yggur now holds five of the eight hills of Thurkad - the whole of the southern and western districts and most of the north. Now he presses towards us in the east.’ Berenet marked the areas that Mendark’s forces still held - the eastern hills area and, at its centre, the walled Old City. ‘But he is vulnerable!’

‘How so?’ Mendark muttered.

Berenet flipped hair out of his eyes and spread a series of gold coins - a display of wealth that Tallia found vaguely offensive - across the map.

‘He has his First Army, headed by Drossim, the most capable of his generals, here holding the centre of the city. The Fourth is stationed in the south, here, controlling the western and southern gates. Morale is not so good in the Fourth Army. Yggur has overstretched himself - his other three armies are sorely pressed to hold the lands he’s conquered and cannot come to his aid.’

‘Mmm!’ Mendark said indifferently.

‘He’s brilliant in the field, no doubt of it, but he’s never fought for a city this big before. Look!’ cried Berenet, moving his golden markers. ‘The Fourth Army is barracked all through here.’ He marked an area of tenements and labyrinthine alleys. ‘And the First Army sleeps here, also in the labyrinth.’

‘Get on with it!’ said Mendark, still writing furiously.

‘See how narrow the roads are, here and here and here. If there was an emergency in the night, the streets full of people, he’d never move his troops through.’

Mendark looked up. ‘Go on.’

‘Half a million people live in the slums. Another fifty thousand in the wharf city. Suppose we were to fire the labyrinth here and here and here.’ His finger traced a line from the northern gate down to the wharf city. ‘Everyone would panic, and the streets would be blocked. That whole area is built with timber - walls and floor and roof. His troops would never get out.’

‘It would burn all the way to the western wall, even in this weather,’ Tallia exclaimed.

‘All the way,’ Berenet exulted. ‘No stopping it! And there’d be so many people in the streets he’d never move his army. The only way out would be through the western gate, so if we brought a battalion of archers around outside in the night and moved your other forces here and here and here,’ more gold glided across the map, ‘we could finish him in a stroke. His superior numbers would be a weakness rather than a strength.’

‘He could go into the wharf city,’ said Mendark, standing up and beginning to pace back and forth.

‘This battalion would stop him if he got that far,’ said Berenet, caressing a gold piece. ‘Besides, the Hlune are vicious fighters when they’re defending their own.’

‘It might succeed,’ said Mendark, tapping the map with a pencil. ‘Though I don’t like it overmuch.’

‘It’s desperate!’ Tallia retorted. ‘If the wind shifted, it would burn us out instead of him.’

‘No worse than what we presently face,’ said Berenet. ‘Utter defeat!’

Tallia could scarcely believe what she was hearing. ‘Burn the labyrinth and thousands will die. Tens of thousands!’

‘It’s worth the sacrifice,’ said Berenet. ‘If you lose the war, which is almost certain, many of them will die anyway.’

‘I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this, Mendark,’ said Tallia urgently. ‘It’s a shocking betrayal of trust.’

‘She’s right, Berenet,’ said Mendark, shaking his head.

‘How can I serve a fool who doesn’t want to win?’ cried Berenet.

Mendark went very still. ‘If you no longer wish to, you know where you can go.’

Berenet clenched his fists until they shook. ‘Damn you!’ he whispered. ‘You question my loyalty?’

‘Not your loyalty, only your judgment.’

‘I offer you the chance of victory, and you choose certain defeat.’

‘Enough,’ said Mendark, shaking. ‘I cannot do it to my city.’

Berenet picked up his gold, rolled the map and, without saying another word, walked away.

‘You made the right choice,’ said Tallia.

Mendark’s pencil snapped. He looked up at Tallia and his eyes were like windows into a torture chamber.

‘Did I? I’ve just given up my city and my people, and maybe more will suffer than if I had burned Yggur out. And for what?’

He stalked along the wall in full view of the enemy, not noticing as an arrow tore through his cloak. Tallia ran after him, urging him to shelter.

Hunched down in an alcove, she broached another issue. ‘The Mirror is, perhaps, more important than the fate of Thurkad. And it was Tensor’s in the first place.’

Mendark buried his head in his hands. ‘Yes, but what is he going to do with it?’ Arrows whizzed close overhead, but he ignored them. ‘We even spoke of Tensor’s quest once or Twice, while we were still friends and held to a common purpose. But the ruin of Shazmak has driven him to despair. What more can he lose? He has no honour in his own eyes anymore.’

‘All the more dangerous for that,’ she said.

‘Where can he go?’ he went on after a pause. ‘My spies have learned nothing. How can we find him in this chaos? There’s only myself between him and ruin.’

Tallia put her arm across his shoulder. ‘Since you are the Council now, and Thurkad is finished, better we go after him.’

‘We must. But he was my friend for a long, long time. The bonds still tug at me, Tallia.’

Tallia had a sudden thought. ‘Llian was gone too.’

‘What?’ Mendark roused slowly from his reverie. ‘What?’

‘When we recovered last night, Llian was already gone.’

‘And there is no trace of him?’

‘Nothing -’

‘Llian would not have abandoned Karan.’ Mendark paced the wall, looking very agitated. ‘This is very bad! Did Tensor take him? I must know.’

‘Why would he want a chronicler?’

‘I haven’t got the faintest idea.’

A rock flung from a catapult smashed into the battlement, peppering them with chips of stone. They ducked down hastily. Mendark put his hand to his cheek, where a curving gash began to ebb blood. Tallia fished out a rag but he pushed it away. ‘It’s nothing! What were you going to say?’

‘Remember the night Llian arrived? The guide who brought him to us was Lilis, the street brat that you cast out so ungraciously.’

‘There are thousands like her in Thurkad. What of it?’

‘Llian offered her a silver tar in payment but she refused it. She said he had paid enough already. What street brat would refuse a tar?’

‘He has charm enough,’ said Mendark grudgingly, but intrigued for all that.

‘Later that night I saw her in the street outside. And last night she was hanging around just after you left the hall. She said that the “big man” took Llian.’

‘The big man! Tensor? You think she followed them? You’d better track her down. Orstand knows everyone; she’ll find you someone who knows the streets. Dear Orstand! Where would I be without her? Without her, the Council is a hollow shell.’

‘There is also Hennia the Zain,’ said Tallia carefully.

‘The Zain measure their loyalty as sparingly as a moneylender his coin,’ Mendark spat. ‘Speaking of which, better go to the treasury - it could cost a pocketful of gold.’ And, suddenly remembering something else, he said, ‘Oh, Tallia!’

She was already walking away. ‘Yes?’ she asked absently, thinking about the new quest.

‘I came across some things of Karan’s this morning while I was going through the rubbish that Thyllan left in my office. A diary, a knife, some trinkets.’

Tallia came back, raising a deliberate eyebrow. Surely he wasn’t feeling remorse?

‘Well, do you want them?’ he asked roughly.

‘I’ve got enough to carry. She’s gone. What does it matter?’ Then, suspicious, ‘Why do you care?’

‘Llian might want them.’

‘You mean he might do what you want in exchange for them,’ said Tallia. ‘Don’t you ever do anything out of altruism? Oh, never mind, where are they?’

He told her, then she put it out of her mind and went to find Lilis. She was given the name of an old soldier named Blustard, a reprobate and drunkard who lived in one of the squalid lean-tos that festered against the western bulwalk of the Old City. Eventually she tracked him down on the wall, for such was the necessity that even he was doing his duty. After speaking to his officer, Tallia took Blustard aside.

He was one of those people who knew everyone and everything, and he recognised her at once. He was drunk, of course, but for him that was normal. If he knew anything about Lilis she would get it out of him.

Blustard had once been a handsome man, tall and slim with a ripe red mouth and high cheekbones, a noble forehead and a mane of black hair billowing down over his collar. But now the forehead and the hair, rusty grey, were all that was left of him. His hands and fingers were twisted and scaly, his nose a swollen, bulbous, red-veined horror, and his flaking lips were grey. His breath stank, his teeth were rotten and his arm trembled even when he rested it on the table. He was afraid of her, as well he might be. Even more afraid than of the enemy outside.

She questioned him but soon realised that he could, or would, tell her nothing. He was too afraid, not drunk enough.

‘Come,’ she said at last. ‘This is no place to talk. Let’s step down to The Barrel,’ naming a soldier’s inn nearby.

Blustard was only too happy. They found the inn to be almost deserted, with only a few old men, too ancient to serve on the walls, drinking in a corner. The barmaid, a plump old woman with the hairstyle of a girl, a froth of golden ringlets, was rinsing mugs in a bucket. She stood up as the door chimed.

‘Get out and do your duty, you craven sot!’ she screeched as Blustard stepped into the room.

He stopped just inside the door so that Tallia had to push past him. After a word in the barmaid’s tiny ear, she banged a large jug of black beer and two mugs on the counter and moved away smartly, triple chins jiggling, wig slightly askew. Blustard scooped up the jug and the two mugs and set off before she fumbled a copper out of her bag. She turned just in time to see him catch his toe in the rug, crashing to the floor so hard that the windows rattled in their frames. He slowly climbed to his feet. One of the mugs was chipped but he had not allowed a splash from the jug.

‘Not a drop spilled! Look at that!’ He grinned his black-toothed grin at her, wiping a dribble of blood from his nose across the back of his hand. ‘You can rely on old Blessie, eh!’

Tallia was astounded. The sot was actually proud of himself! ‘Very good,’ she said curtly. ‘No, this table,’ pointing to one in the darkest corner of the room.

Blustard sat down with a thump, filled both their glasses to the brim and with great cheer raised his. She clinked mugs with the best grace she could muster and took a sip. The beer was strong but sour, as if the barrel had not been cleaned properly. Blustard drained his mug in a single swallow, belched and poured another. His ghastly nose still dripped blood into grey stubble. Tallia looked into his eyes.

‘The street child, Lilis,’ she reminded him. ‘You know her?’

He mumbled. ‘What?’ she said.

‘I can’t remember!’ He was looking down at the table. He would draw it out, to get whatever he could out of her.

He raised the mug toward his lips. Her hand shot out and caught his wrist. Despite his appearance, he was very strong, Tallia discovered. But she was a master of the Secret Art and of unarmed combat, too, and few in Thurkad could match her will to will, or wrist to wrist for that matter. She couldn’t let this street bully defeat her. Though he terrorised the poor and the weak, she knew that he was rotten at the core, a coward when faced with someone stronger.

Blustard forced back, and for an instant she thought he was going to overpower her. She imagined little Lilis in his hands, and that gave her the strength she needed. She twisted hard; after a short struggle the mug fell from his fingers. Beer flooded his lap. She twisted his wrist harder.

‘I’ll break it. Don’t mess around. Lilis?’

The drenching of his trousers did not bother him. He was used to that one way or the other, but he looked down mournfully at the wasted beer. She twisted further, the wrist bones creaked then his resistance was gone. ‘Yes, I know her.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Live! They don’t live anywhere, those kids. They sleep in a barrel one day, up a drain the next.’ Blustard looked toward the jug. ‘I need my drink,’ he whined.

‘It’s my drink,’ she said, applying more pressure, wondering if she would have to break his wrist to get what she needed, ‘and you don’t get any more till you tell me.’

‘Easy to find her if there was no war. But everyone is hiding now.’

‘You must know who to ask.’

‘They disappear all the time. Taken! Sold.’ Blustard spat on the floor.

Sold! I thought I knew Thurkad. ‘Find out!’ she said curtly.

‘When you ask, they vanish.’

That was entirely understandable, but she knew he could find Lilis if he wanted to. For all his drunkenness, Blustard was a powerful man in the alleys. How could she motivate him? What promise would he not break, once he was away from her?

Tallia tightened her grip on his wrist, looking coldly into his bloody eyes. ‘Tell me exactly what I must do to find her,’ she said, emphasising each word. ‘Who I talk to, what I say to them. Then you are going into the dungeon cells with nothing but water until I return. If I don’t come back, or I come back without her, Mendark will forget that you are there. You know what a vengeful man he can be.’

Blustard did. He stared back at her, seeing her utter resolve. His eyes strayed to the jug.

‘After you tell me,’ said Tallia softly.

Again he hesitated, lusting for the drink, looking down at his clamped wrist, anywhere but into her eyes. He wiped his nose with the back of his other hand, smearing blood halfway across his cheek, and then it suddenly burst out of him.

‘I can’t find her!’ he moaned. ‘There is only one person that can, in the war. S’Courcy!’

Tallia shivered despite herself. S’Courcy was a diseased spider at the centre of the web of wickedness and corruption that made up the underworld of Thurkad. No one ever saw him, but everyone knew that he was there. This was more than she had planned on. But when you served Mendark you did whatever it took. He did not accept excuses, nor would Tallia think of offering them.

‘Tell me how to get an audience with S’Courcy,’ she said. ‘And how to get out again safely, or you will die a sad and sober man in the bottommost level of Mendark’s dungeon.’

Blustard would do anything to avoid that. She listened, noted, clarified, and when she was satisfied, let go his wrist and poured him a mug. He drained it in a swallow then she stood up, caught his wrist again and led him to the door. On the threshold she whistled, a sound that made him clutch his ears. Up the street two of Mendark’s personal guard looked up. One of them she knew, a very reliable fellow, fiercely loyal.

‘Torgsted!’ she yelled.

Torgsted was short, curly-haired, with a smile to roast chestnuts and a line that could charm the most jaded barmaid. He was exercising those talents in animated conversation with a very pretty girl a full head taller than himself, but he broke off and ran up, saluting Tallia.

‘Take this man to the lowest cells and put him under guard there. He is to have no drink but water till I return. And hold him tight on the way.’

Torgsted saluted her again, the two stepped forward and, gripping Blustard tightly, led him away whining and sniffling to the citadel.

There was no getting out of the Old City secretly until dark, so Tallia went about her other affairs until the late afternoon, snatched a meagre sleep, little more than an hour, exchanged her finery for street drab, oiled cloak and hood, and, not willing to risk any of the secret ways, lowered herself over the wall with a rope into the unlit alleys. From there, consulting only the map she had memorised, she worked her way into the squalid labyrinth of unpaved lanes and passages, tall rotting tenements and tiny market squares where more than half the people of Thurkad existed. It was a place which only a mighty army could command, so Yggur’s troops wisely kept to the wider streets, the more lighted ways. Though they controlled who went in and out they did not interfere with what went on within. Not yet.

Tallia went where Blustard had told her to go and spoke to a man there, saying precisely what she had been told to say. She gave the correct tribute, a tar. The man led her through the streets to another place, she gave the woman there another tar, the woman looked at Tallia through glazed eyes, nodded, flicked a glance at the man and led her again through the lanes. He goes the direct way, thought Tallia, to tell S’Courcy I am coming.

This process passed through several more stages. Finally they went inside a stone building, up six flights of steps, down a hall and into a large room which was undecorated, though partitioned by screens into a number of smaller spaces. The walls were water-stained; there were no windows and the air was smoky and stale. Round a partition she was led, into a larger space where there were rugs on the floor, and in the centre stood a large square bed with gilded posts and a canopy of painted silk. It was also stained and had a tear in the middle. In the bed lay the man she had come to see.

He was very fat, with pallid skin but remarkably thin arms and legs and a small head. His sharp lips were pursed. Had he twice the number of limbs he would have greatly resembled a spider, she thought. No, not fat at all, his body was bloated by disease. His shiny eyes fixed on her.

‘Tallia bel Soon! Right hand of Mendark. Welcome. Show yourself. I am S’Courcy.’

His voice was soft, sibilant, but might easily have become venomous if he was thwarted. He waved a stick-like hand and a servant took her cloak and hood. Tossing back a river of black hair, she stepped toward him and put out her hand. He screwed up his lips. She stopped at once.

‘I do not touch,’ he said. ‘Ah, but you are indeed even more beautiful than it is said.’ She inclined her head. ‘And most expert in combat without weapons, I hear. Please do not be insulted, but stay well back.’ S’Courcy’s voice went hoarse and he broke into a fit of coughing that went on and on. Finally he gasped it to a close. ‘This is the end of the Magisters in Thurkad, I think? We must all reach new accommodations.’

‘The situation is fraught,’ Tallia replied.

‘But you did not come here to talk about the war. How can I possibly help the Magister? You want someone found, I believe?’

‘A street urchin. Her name is Lilis. She guides, from the eastern waterfront.’

S’Courcy gestured to an aide. ‘Find out about this child,’ he said, and the aide bowed and ran out.

‘And why do you want her?’

‘We think she saw something last night.’

‘Saw something?’ His eyes closed momentarily and he looked down at his hands.

Tallia knew what he was thinking. Maybe this was something that Yggur would pay for. Maybe he would pay more than Mendark. Maybe at a time such as this it would be better to do the conqueror a favour. The situation looked hopeless for Mendark. But then, he had been Magister for an age and he was wily beyond belief. And it was said that Yggur was a law-maker, a regulator, an upright man. Perhaps he would not do business.

The aide came back in, bowed and stood waiting. S’Courcy looked up.

‘The child who came out of the citadel yesterday, before dawn,’ said the aide.

‘Ah! The one who led the Council to safety after the Conclave. The price has gone up.’

‘Where is she? And what is the price?’

‘The price. That is something to negotiate. Ah!’ He examined her with glittering eyes.

He wonders how desperate we are. He knows we have little time. The price will be outrageous.

‘My price is one hundred gold tells.’

More outrageous than she had imagined - a colossal fortune. But her face showed not a twitch. ‘A hundred!. With that I could pay a hundred spies for a year. She was not the only one with her eyes open last night.’

‘Ah, true. But a hundred spies cannot tell you what you need to know today.’

‘Ten tells,’ snapped Tallia, ‘and I want her now. Where is she?’

‘Not far. We have been instructing her in her responsibilities. Perhaps we can make a compromise. Fifty tells.’

Tallia’s eyes narrowed. His words gave her a cold feeling inside. ‘Twenty tells, as long as she is in good health. Otherwise she is no use to me.’

‘There will be a small wait. Take this chair; let me offer you refreshment.’ He waved at an orderly but Tallia shook her head.

‘I will stand, thank you.’ She moved back slightly, turning so that no one could come behind her. Two guards lounged in the doorway, apparently at ease, but their eyes never left her.

‘As you will’ Aides came in and out. S’Courcy busied himself with his ledgers, broken with frequent coughing fits that left him white-faced and hoarse. Finally the first aide returned, speaking briefly with the spider.

‘They bring her,’ said S’Courcy. ‘She is ... a little damaged. Perhaps I can compromise. Twenty-five tells.’ He drew back his lips in a travesty of a smile. ‘Shall we agree on it now?’

‘I will see her first,’ said Tallia coldly, already wondering what her options were and whether she would get out of here alive.

Another aide appeared, carrying a bundle of bloody rags from which thin legs and arms hung limply. He flung the bundle down in front of Tallia. She went to her knees, smoothing the hair away from the pinched face, though not forgetting the guards behind her. It was Lilis, and she had been savagely beaten some time ago, for she was covered in purple bruises and newer swellings that were yet to discolour. There were fresh welts on her legs. One eye was black. She was unconscious.

Tallia stood up and her face was cold as stone. ‘Instructing her in her responsibilities?’

‘All coin earned on the street comes here,’ S’Courcy said with a sickening smile. ‘For her deeds she must have been rewarded handsomely, yet she yielded none of it. So we taught her her duties, as we would any who so failed.’

‘She was never paid, only a few coppers by the guards before they drove her off. And she is but a child.’

‘Never paid? Is that the quality of the Council who protect us? Even on the streets we pay our debts. But what is one child, anyway, out of the teeming thousands in this city? Her life-price is only half a tar.’

Tallia wanted to smash him through the wall, and could have, in spite of the guards. But where was the profit in that?

‘And that is what I should pay you,’ she said. ‘But I, too, pay my debts. Because she is damaged, and has been beaten since I came here, I will pay only my initial offer.’

Pulling a handful of coin from her pocket, Tallia counted ten tells and threw them on the end of the bed. Then she tore her cloak out of the hands of the waiting servant, wrapped Lilis in it and heaved her over one shoulder. Her eyes met those of S’Courcy. ‘Let me give you this warning. Mendark is down, but still powerful, and he never forgets an injury. Ensure that we get back to the citadel, or one day when you least expect it he will burn the labyrinth to brick dust and ashes.’

She whirled and stalked out of the room. Mendark doesn’t even know where I’ve gone, she realised on the way down the stairs, fearing a knife aimed at her back, or a stone dropped from above. But by the time she reached the bottom one of the aides was beside her, leading her. On the streets pragmatism was all. S’Courcy had ten tells for nothing; why make an enemy unnecessarily? And he was very vulnerable.

Still, it was not until she was back at the side gate and calling out the password that she could relax. The gate opened a crack, a lantern was directed onto her face, up and down the street, and she slipped wearily within.

Shortly she strode up the stairs of the citadel and found Mendark once again in the audience chamber, as frantically busy as before. The atmosphere was not as gloomy as it had been earlier; evidently Yggur had suffered a setback. That explained why she’d had such an easy passage back.

‘Beaten!’ she said savagely to Mendark’s inquiring glance, ‘because she did not hand over the reward for saving the Council.’ Mendark’s eyes slid away from hers. ‘I will take her to my room. You can question her later, if she lives.’ She strode away, sweeping people aside with one arm and calling for a nurse.

Upstairs, Tallia and the nurse cut off Lilis’s rags, bathed her thin little body, washed her hair and cleaned and bandaged her wounds. They found her left shoulder to be dislocated, and some ribs cracked. Basia the nurse, the most wrinkled old woman in the world, though still nimble, soon put those injuries right. Finally they slid Lilis into a nightshirt and rolled her into Tallia’s bed. She was breathing shallowly and her skin was cold.

‘What do you think, Basia?’ asked Tallia. her heart going out to the waif. ‘Will she live?’

The nurse, who had come from her rocking-chair and her hearth to aid the war, said, ‘Oh, I think so, if she survives the night. The injuries would soon mend if she were well, but she is frail - listen to her chest rattle. That’s the hazard of life on the streets. I’ve some herbs that will help her, though.’

‘Tell me what you need and I will run for it,’ said Tallia, unclenching her fist and kneading the taut sinews.

‘I have to make the medicines first,’ said Basia. ‘I’ll go. Why are you so worried?’

‘She’s just a child!’ Tallia did not understand what Basia was getting at.

‘I can see that. I care for her, as I do for all my patients. But you are one of the powerful, with great responsibilities. Why do you care so much?’

‘Perhaps I’m trying to make up for past negligence,’ murmured Tallia. ‘Go for your medicines. I’ll watch her.’

Tallia pulled up a chair and sat by the bed. She felt so tired. Time passed, an hour. She took Lilis’s hand, felt her feet. The urchin was cold, too cold. Tallia threw off her own clothes and slipped into the bed, taking Lilis in her arms and enfolding her with the warmth of her body, comforting her and even drawing a little comfort from her, and finally slept better than she had in more than a week.

When. Basia returned in the early morning, Lilis was sleeping peacefully in Tallia’s arms, her face serene. Basia looked down at them with a smile, then touched Tallia on the shoulder. She woke instantly. ‘It’s morning,’ said Basia. ‘Already the child is better.’

Tallia was out of bed in a flash, water splashed in the adjacent room, then she was back, dressing hurriedly. She sat down beside the bed to pull on her boots, and at the creak of the chair Lilis opened her eyes. The most beautiful golden smile that Tallia had ever seen spread across her thin face.

‘I dreamed about you,’ Lilis said in a scratchy voice. ‘You held me in your arms and made all the hurts go away. It was so warm, so wonderful that I was afraid to wake up. Where am I?’

‘You are in the citadel, child,’ said the wrinkled old dame. ‘Tallia went into the labyrinth and took you from that evil spider and brought you here. You owe your life to her.’

‘I did,’ said Tallia, ‘but you helped me too, Lilis, and were beaten cruelly for your trouble. Let us not talk of owing.’

Lilis stared at Tallia for ages. ‘T-Tallia,’ she said finally. ‘Where do you come from?’

Tallia smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You look different, and you talk different to everyone else in Thurkad. And you are nicer.’

Laughing, Tallia kissed her on the nose. ‘I am from Crandor, halfway across the world. When I was your age, old Mendark found out that I could do ... things. He sent me to a special school, then brought me to Thurkad to work off my debt.’

‘Do you have a mother and a father?’

‘I do, in Crandor, but I don’t see them much these days.’

Lilis sighed heavily and lay back down. ‘Now,’ said Tallia, ‘I want you to rest and grow strong, and after that the Magister himself will ask you some questions.’

Tallia went up to Mendark’s offices and collected the little bundle of Karan’s gear. There wasn’t much. A small knife with a plain soapstone handle, the blade a good, rather dark steel with worn patterns chased into it. The trinket, as Mendark had called it, was a globe the size and shape of a plum, made of some polished mineral, grey in colour, with silver leaves at the big end. It was a curious ornament, rather too big to be worn on a chain.

Examining it more closely, Tallia saw that there was no provision for that, for there was no way of attaching it. Then she noticed something quite remarkable: in the dark room her fingers left glowing marks on the surface, faint patches that slowly faded. It must be a lightglass! Tallia knew of such things, but only as ancient artefacts that had long since failed. Mendark had one, quite different to this, though five hundred years had passed since it last gave out any light. A wonder he hadn’t realised what it was. Where had Karan got such a thing?

The other item was a small book of many pages, carefully wrapped. A beautiful, costly volume with the soft feel of rice paper. The handwriting was tiny. There were occasional dates scattered through it, the earliest more than six years ago. It was a diary or journal, though the intervals between entries were irregular, sometimes weeks apart. The last was dated two weeks ago, just after she’d reached Thurkad.

Tallia did not care to read Karan’s private thoughts. There was an inscription inside the cover but she did not know the language. It ended with a single word - Rael. A gift; a precious book; a valuable record. Karan’s family would certainly want it. Karan came from Gothryme, a poor place in mountainous Bannador, Tallia recalled. Llian would want to see it too, if he ever returned. Wrapping the items carefully, she went down to carry out her next task.

From each of the seven that Lilis had rescued Tallia extracted (in one case extorted) the proper ransom for their lives. Converting that to gold, she put it away for Lilis. The child would need it to live on, if they survived, though the way the war was going that was looking less likely every day.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

Aftersickness

aelamor tried to sit up but found that she could not; her arms had no more strength than string. Tensor’s potency had drained her cruelly. Nonetheless she had to find Maigraith. Faelamor had never been physically strong, but now just dragging herself up the stairs to the balcony exhausted her. She lay on the floor for an hour before summoning the strength to raise her head again. As she did, a lantern flared and she heard voices.

Maigraith had not stirred. One arm hung through the balcony, her glasses still clutched in her hand. Faelamor eased the arm back lest someone see it and remember her. However, in the confusion and haste downstairs, and the shouting and clangour outside, no one did. Someone banged on the back door, then all was silent.

A lamp still guttered below. She crawled back down the stairs, finding quite a few people still alive, though none stirred when she touched them. So tired. She lay down for a moment, then snatched herself out of sleep. Among the wavering shadows of the lamplight she saw a bundle against the wall. It turned out to be Karan, wrapped in a cloak, her eyes racing under their lids. Not long ago, Faelamor had uncovered a secret that even Karan did not know: that she was a blending of three different human species, a triune. Triunes were incredibly rare, mostly mad, but could have remarkable talents. What might this one be capable of? Deadly, treacherous creature! Faelamor thought. She put her hand to Karan’s throat but lacked the strength to squeeze.

Suddenly Karan groaned, a horrible endlessly drawn-out wailing cry of terror, cut off by a shuddering inward gasp, and flung her head from side to side. The hairs stood up on the back of Faelamor’s neck. She found herself backing away involuntarily, filled with such a bleeding horror that she could not find the courage to approach again. She was as weak as if she had no bones. Ahhh, I will die here, and the hopes of the Faellem with me, she thought despairingly.

The Faellem were one of the three off-world peoples marooned on Santhenar by the Forbidding, but unlike Aachim and Charon they had never made a new life here. They were so bound up with their own world, beloved Tallallame, that any other planet could be no more than a dimensionless shadow. Here they lived, and sometimes died, but they made no home. They could not. They knew themselves to be the greatest and noblest of the four human species, and nothing but Tallallame would do for them.

The broken front door creaked open. An officer and a pair of Yggur’s soldiers put their heads in cautiously. Faelamor tried to fashion a concealing illusion, but found that her powers of the mind were quite gone. She lay on the floor like a corpse on a slab. The soldiers held their weapons out while the officer inspected the room, then made some notes on a sheet.

‘No danger here,’ he said in a clipped accent. ‘But something is not right. We will come back when the quarter is secure.’ They went out, someone shouted outside and the street was silent again.

Must get help! Faelamor thought. She crawled out onto the wet steps. There was no one in sight. The air was smoky; flames were visible beyond the rooftops. Shortly there came running footsteps. Two men appeared, a tall, very fat one whose flabby belly and thighs jiggled as he ran, and another with stumpy legs and a chest as big as a barrel.

‘Help!’ she cried, lying helpless in the rain.

They did not break stride. ‘Help yourself,’ said the tall man, breasts as big as a woman’s dancing beneath his water-sodden shirt. Stumpy said nothing; he did not even look at her.

Faelamor willed their feet out from under them but nothing happened, their wooden-soled sandals clapped on the cobbles and they were gone.

I am the Faellem! she told herself. I do have the will.

Soon another man appeared, limping badly. ‘Help!’ she cried again.

‘I am useless,’ he said dismally.

‘You will aid me,’ she gasped, trying to force strength out of a vacuum.

The man stopped. He was a short fellow, young and slender, with a bloody rag wrapped around his right foot. Half of his ear was missing too, leaving a raw hole, and his torn coat was daubed with blood.

‘I have gold,’ she whispered. Oh, to be so helpless that she must beg a gah, as the Faellem derisively termed the old human species.

‘Gold!’ he choked. ‘Can I eat it? Will it bring back my father? Will it help my mother now?’

‘You live!’ she said. ‘Gold will repair your injuries, buy food, pay for a room.’

‘I have all that,’ he said indifferently, staring through her. His hair was a coarse black mat, his face broad, the cheekbones high and prominent. There was just a trace of fuzz on his chin. Not quite a man - an appealing youth, save for the vacant eyes.

Faelamor found a new approach. ‘I am older than your mother,’ she said, and felt it. Lying in the rain with her hand reaching up to him, she felt like an aged crone.

The grey eyes focussed. ‘So you are, ‘he replied respectfully, and that struck her even harder. ‘I will take you to my mother’s house.’ Reaching down, he lifted her to a sitting position.

‘My friend needs help more than I do,’ she said, holding herself upright with her arms. ‘She is inside, at the top of the stairs on the balcony.’

‘Is she older than my mother?’

‘She is, though she does not look it. Bring her glasses too. Go quickly, please.’

He limped inside, leaving blood on the stone with each step. The rain washed it away.

‘Is this your friend?’ asked the youth, lurching through the door with Maigraith over his shoulder. He slipped and fell heavily. Maigraith’s head flopped back. Raindrops spotted her cheek, smooth as marble. Her eyelids flickered but she did not rouse.

‘It is.’ Faelamor felt a little stronger now, though she was growing very cold.

‘She doesn’t look as old as my mother,’ the youth said dolefully, staring at Maigraith.

‘She is old, boy. Now do as I tell you. Take her to your mother’s house, then come back for me.’ She spoke as a woman to a child.

‘All right!’ he said, as a child to a nagging parent. He eased himself out from under Maigraith, lifted her awkwardly, shrugged her into a more comfortable position and hobbled off. Faelamor watched him out of sight.

‘What have I done?’ she said aloud. ‘The boy has lost his wits and I am no better.’

The rain intensified. The sound of marching came down the street. More soldiers! Faelamor felt strong enough to stand, though as soon as she did so found that her knees would not support her. She flopped her way back into the hall and crawled behind the door. There she lay in a daze, taking no account of time, until she was aroused by a plaintive voice outside.

‘Old mother? Where have you gone, old mother?’

‘Inside!’ she gasped.

The youth, a shadow against the dark, felt around until his hand touched her shoulder.

‘Is it you, old mother?’

‘It is. Take me to your mother’s house, boy, and be quick.’

He lifted her easily and carried her back out into the drenching rain. It was quite a distance, and his gait grew more uneven with every step. Faelamor lost track of time. Once he skidded, fell and dropped her hard on her bottom, but even that did not shock her out of the creeping lethargy.

‘Sorry, old mother. Very sorry.’ It was the last she knew.

* * * *

Maigraith’s eyes fluttered open. She was exhausted and dull-brained as if she had slept for a week. Her cheek felt tender too, a big lump from some fall that she could not remember. She focussed on a plaster ceiling decoration, painted in many colours and touched with gilt. She lay in a huge cedar bed in cream linen sheets, though they were damp and her clothes were too. The room was a long, high-ceilinged rectangle, with curtains of blue velvet and a blazing fire at the further end. Beside the bed was a table with bread, fruit and a painted flask of yellow wine.

Maigraith slowly came to her senses, bewildered by the gaps in her memory. Fate conspired to play cruel jokes on her, flinging her from one terror to another, snatching her friends away as soon as she found them, never allowing her to know what was happening and never permitting her any control over her existence. Each time she felt she understood the world it would turn topsy-turvy again.

She reached for a piece of bread. Her head throbbed and she groaned. The moving hand seemed not part of her. An answering groan came from the armchair by the fire.

‘Faelamor!’ Maigraith cried. ‘Was it you brought me here?’

‘In a fashion.’ The voice sounded even more lethargic than Maigraith felt. ‘How are you?’

Maigraith sat up. ‘I ache in every part, and my head is all fluffy inside. If this is aftersickness it is the worst I’ve ever felt. I can’t even remember . . .’

‘We have much the same troubles then.’

Maigraith looked across at her liege. Faelamor had led the Faellem to Santhenar in the hunt for the golden flute, long ago. The Faellem were smaller than old humans, with translucent skin that showed pink flesh beneath, and the blue nets of veins. Normally they concealed their differences by cosmetics or illusion, but now Maigraith could see Faelamor’s blood flowing under the skin. Even Maigraith, who had served her for many years, had never seen her looking so Faellem. The greatest illusionist on Santhenar, Faelamor’s voice could be anything she wanted it to be. Now it was just a choked little whisper.

Her colourless hair normally had an almost luminous glow about it, swirling about her like a restless cloud of static electricity, but today it lay on the chair back like sodden noodles.

Maigraith was distinctly different. She was of average height but willow slender, with perfectly straight chestnut hair that hung down to her shoulder-blades, and skin as smooth and amber as honey. She would have been beautiful except that she always looked melancholy, and but for her eyes, which were an unnerving colour between indigo and carmine, depending on how the light caught them. Lately she concealed the colour with tinted glasses.

Maigraith wondered, as she was wont to do, about the differences between her and the Faellem. She knew she was different; she looked old human save for her eyes. But where she came from, who she really was, were unknowns. It was the greatest torment of her life, but she could not find out. Her parents were dead, a secret so shameful and shocking that Faelamor refused to talk about it.

Now Faelamor was speaking again. ‘Tensor has taken the Mirror. Do you recall that?’

‘I remember that you called my name at the Conclave. I went to the balcony, and after that my mind is empty.’

Thurkad is taken!’ said Faelamor. ‘Yggur’s troops are everywhere. We are in great peril. Especially me, especially like this.’ She meant her inability to disguise herself.

‘What about Karan?’ Maigraith asked. Karan was the only person who had ever treated her as a friend. Would that she had done the same. Maigraith had dragged Karan into this business in the first place, and she could never stop feeling guilty about it.

‘Dead by now, I would say,’ said Faelamor coldly.

Maigraith did not even cry out, just stared sightlessly up, knowing that she was to blame. The hollows of her eyes flooded with tears, filled eventually to overflowing and washed down her cheeks. Not wanting Faelamor to see her in her misery, she turned over and pulled the sheet across her face. The pillow grew wet.

After a while the emptiness in her belly forced her up again and she took a little bread moistened with wine. Faelamor had not moved. ‘Where are we now?’ Maigraith asked.

‘A young fellow has taken us into his home, but he is a very strange one.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know. I woke up in the next room, yesterday. Everything was as you see it now - the fire, the food - and I heard him coming and going, but I did not have the strength to get up. The Conclave drained me to the dregs. I slept the day and the night away.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I cannot think. We are trapped. My powers are gone.’

The Faellem, in whose civilisation machines of any sort were frowned upon, and use of magical devices utterly forbidden, had developed their powers of the mind, of deception, confusion and concealment, to a high art. To lose those powers was worse than going blind.

‘You can’t do anything at all?’

‘Nothing. I have failed my people. I want to die.’

This was a new experience for Maigraith. Faelamor was normally so dominant, her every action so carefully planned. Now Maigraith felt the bonds breaking, one by one. Interesting possibilities arose, and the most interesting of all was Yggur. He had held her prisoner in Fiz Gorgo last autumn, but after weeks of talking, a kind of friendship had developed between them, as each recognised the pain that the other was in. Subsequently his frightening servants, the Whelm, had taken Maigraith and tortured her. Had they done so at Yggur’s orders or on their own behalf? Maigraith still agonised about that. She could not believe that he would do such a thing to her, after what had grown between them. But then, he had been desperate to get the Mirror back.

Not long before the Conclave, Maigraith had gone to Yggur’s encampment to meet him, to lay this demon to rest one way or the other, but he had not been there. Now the very mention of his name set off a great yearning in her. She was afraid of Yggur, but she longed for him too. She said nothing about that to Faelamor, of course.

Just then the young man limped in. The stained and tattered clothes of the other night were gone. He was dressed in fine cloth of sombre brown. The bloody remnant of ear was cleaned up and bandaged, the black thatch oiled flat to his skull in the formal Thurkad way, and knee-high black boots were polished to a brilliant shine. His eyes were fever-bright but he spoke very courteously.

‘Good morning, old mother; young mother.’ He bowed to them in turn. ‘Did you sleep well? When you are ready, come down the hall, where I have prepared a hot bath for you. After that, I have laid your breakfast out. Usually our honoured guests are invited to the jade terrace, but it is cold and wet there today. However, you will find the old parlour very comfortable.’

Maigraith and Faelamor looked at one another, wondering if there was some jest. He became an anxious boy again.

‘I hope everything is to your liking. My mother . . . Hospitality was a sacred duty to her. She would be sorrowful if I fell below her standards.’

‘Thank you,’ they said together.

‘We will come directly,’ Faelamor went on. ‘We are very tired.’

‘I could carry you to the bath . . .’

‘Not necessary,’ said Maigraith. He bowed once more and disappeared.

‘This is not right,’ said Faelamor. ‘I am uneasy. Yet I do not sense violence in him.’

‘Then let us humour him and be on our way. A bath is something I had not even dreamed about.’

The bathroom, a weary walk away at the end of a long hall, was grander than anything Maigraith could have dreamed: a vast room walled and floored in black calcite, with a square tub the size of a cart, half-filled with steaming water.

‘Wealthy folk indeed,’ said Maigraith as she scrubbed herself with soap perfumed with rose petals. ‘But even so he must have laboured half the morning to prepare this.’

Soon they were sitting in the parlour, clean and refreshed, eating a magnificent breakfast. Maigraith normally cared little what she ate, but she had a passion for hot chocolate and a huge jug of it was put before her.

When they had done, and even the jug was drained, the youth came back. ‘You are satisfied?’ he asked. He seemed to be under some strain.

‘Thank you. We could not have asked for better hospitality.’

‘Then please to come with me.’

They followed him silently down another hall and into a room of similar quality to Maigraith’s, with a bed equally grand, though larger. A fire glowed near the door; there was a barrel beside it.

‘Come in,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Please pay your respects to my mother.’

Maigraith stepped inside and almost fell down. Even Faelamor felt the stab in her breast.

A woman of middle age, small and slender, was laid out on the bed in a gown of rose-coloured silk. There were embroidered slippers on her tiny feet, and her black hair was brushed until it gleamed, braided many times and the braids spread fanwise on the pillow. The wound in her side had been carefully bandaged, though the bulge was visible through the silk. Folded one in each arm were the bodies of her sons, twins about the age of nine, and they were as carefully dressed as their mother, even the wounds, the black hair oiled, the. eyes closed.

‘Come, pay your respects, old mother, young mother. Give her thanks for her protection and hospitality.’

Maigraith was struck dumb. Going forward, she touched the woman on her hand, which held a single night-black, trumpet-shaped moonflower, and thanked her. Faelamor was moved despite the hardness of her heart and her lack of empathy for any species except her own, and she also thanked the dead woman and laid her hands upon her brow.

‘She would be proud,’ said the youth, tears quivering on his lashes. ‘How beautiful she was, my mother.’

‘How did they die?’

‘My father went to the war seven days ago. I promised him that I would look after my mother and my brothers. He went bravely, and he was killed in the first hour of battle.’

They stared at the burden on the bed.

‘I promised. Look how I kept that promise!’ he wailed, tearing at his ruined ear until the blood flowed. ‘Beloved father, I failed us all. The soldiers came and my mother and brothers were slain. I’m sorry, father. I’m sorry, mother. I’m so sorry, Tasie and Ben.’

He turned to Maigraith and Faelamor. He was quite calm. The tears were gone. Maigraith had never seen such dignity in one so young.

‘Go now,’ he said simply.

They turned away at a loss, thinking to leave him to his grief, but scarcely had they reached Maigraith’s room when a high-pitched cry pierced through the whole house. The silence was devoured by a roar and a crackle.

Maigraith ran stiff-legged back to the room but could not get inside. The barrel lay on its side in the middle of the carpet, a burning brand smoking beside it. The room reeked of burning oil and the whole of the bed was enveloped in yellow flame, flames licking to the ceiling, dripping onto the floor, and highest where the youth lay across the bodies of mother and sons, enfolding and protecting them with his arms.

Maigraith turned away. Faelamor took a step through the door but the heat forced her back. She bowed her head. ‘I never knew his name,’ she said.

* * * *

They took refuge in a rotting shed among the shrubbery at the far end of the garden while the mansion burned until there was nothing left but the stone of the walls. No one came to watch the fire or to see if help was needed, except a pair of soldiers, and they soon went away again. Neither Faelamor nor Maigraith could bear to stay but they had nowhere to go, and Faelamor, lacking the strength to defend herself against even the most miserable ruffian on the street, dared not try to find a better place.

They spent the rest of the day in the shed, huddling as best they could among the spiders, out of the rain and the wind and the drips, for the walls were just timber slabs put vertical with a gap between each, and the roof mere cracked and rotting shingles. The shed was small, four paces by three, with an earthen floor that was a bog. One end was full of stacked firewood, while the other held broken furniture and the oddments that accumulate in the lifetime of a house: a small table with a cracked top, pieces of a rosewood bed that spiced the moist air of the shed, a cupboard filled with chipped pots and plates and cups with their handles broken, a child’s wooden horse with the inscription ‘Dearest Ben’ underneath.

The next day they went out onto the street, clinging together like two old women in the constant rain, for, as the youth had said, they could not eat their gold. Maigraith had conjured an illusion of sorts to disguise Faelamor and herself, but it was a miserable effort that even an apprentice scryer would have seen through.

They did not get far. Their part of the city had been fought over for days but had finally been taken by Yggur. His soldiers were on every street corner.

‘Name?’ demanded the lanky guard a bare two blocks away. His eyes, as blue as sapphires, watered constantly from the wind, crusting his cheeks with ice.

‘Telliuliolellillallamammamor,’ said Faelamor, which was not true but might have been, for that was the way names went in the part of the world where her people now lived. She had to write it down for him.

‘From where?’ He rubbed crackling strands of ice off his cheek.

‘Mirrilladell,’ which was true. The Faellem dwelt in that vast land of lakes and bogs south of the Great Mountains, months’ journey east across the Sea of Thurkad.

The guard shivered, stamping his feet in a futile attempt to warm himself. ‘Where is your pass?’

‘Was not needed when I came to Thurkad, weeks ago.’

‘Where do you live now?’

Faelamor gave another street, another place.

‘And your business today?’

‘To find something to eat,’ she said tersely.

Finally, after more questioning, the guard consulting a list, scrutinising her carefully and making notes on a slate, he waved her on. Faelamor waited, sick and sick at heart, while Maigraith went through the same interrogation. She passed through as well.

Two blocks away they did it again, and again later, but not for money could they find any place to take them in or any food to buy. The market stalls and shops were all closed and shuttered, as were the inns and the private homes, and mere was never an answer to their knocking. Neither could they leave that quarter, for no one was allowed in or out.

‘I can’t do this,’ Faelamor gasped. ‘I am weaker than ever. We’ll have to go back.’

It was late afternoon by the time they got home. Faelamor was staggering, Maigraith supporting her. They splashed past the charred rubble to their shed.

‘Look,’ said Maigraith, pointing. In the winter-ravaged remnant of a vegetable garden, pillaged of everything edible, a few turnips had been exposed by the rain.

‘I loathe turnip,’ Faelamor replied, and while Maigraith gathered three or four of them, Faelamor sat down on a lump of wood out of the rain and cried. Her failure seemed absolute, her loss of powers permanent, their discovery inevitable. For one who had for the whole of her very long life been a leader, this inability to control her destiny was a devastating blow.

It grew dark. The rain came down heavier than ever. Maigraith washed the turnips clean under the torrent from the roof. They were long gone to seed, wrinkled and wormy. She handed the larger one to Faelamor.

‘Enjoy your dinner,’ Maigraith said with a rare smile.

The turnips were fibrous and pungent, almost as hot as a radish. Maigraith gnawed hers thoughtfully. She was beginning to recover. For most of her life she had felt the powerlessness that Faelamor suffered now. She was not happy, but neither was she in despair.

Faelamor took nothing but water and wasted away visibly. Maigraith endured the shed for another day, eating the turnips and a few other roots dug from the garden, but she knew that each day Yggur’s control of the city grew tighter. The opportunity to escape was already gone. Hunger was weakening her. In another day she wouldn’t have the strength to help herself.

In the morning Faelamor lay curled up in her cloak in the only dry corner and would not get up. She looked very frail and refused the offered turnip, though she sipped a little water when the battered cup was held to her lips.

Maigraith had come to a decision. She had one chance left in the world, if she had the courage. And even if it failed, it must be better than this.

‘This is impossible,’ she said. ‘I am going out. Will you come too?’

Faelamor flopped a transparent hand at her. ‘Do what you will. Nothing matters.’

<<Contents>>

* * * *

A Reconciliation of Sorts

aigraith placed food and water by Faelamor’s hand, then covered her with a tatty rag of carpet. Putting on her glasses, which made her eyes a washed-out blue, she went cut. She did not go far, just to the nearest guard post. ‘I am Maigraith,’ she said simply. ‘You will find me on your list. I would be taken to Yggur himself.’

Well-trained as he was, the guard seemed shocked at her approach. He looked her up and down, consulted the list and sent a messenger at once, a small, timid, black-haired woman called Dolodha. Maigraith remembered her from the time of her captivity in Fiz Gorgo. Within minutes Dolodha returned with an officer, two guards and a Whelm that Maigraith also knew, for he was the one she had struck down at her very first interrogation in Fiz Gorgo last autumn. His name was Japhit. He was gaunt even for a Whelm, with long grey hair and a face that was all planes and angles, a mirror to the inside.

These people, Yggur’s terror-guard, were an angular race, often so thin that they seemed to be no more than grey skin over club-like, knotted bones. Unless they swore to a master and a purpose they were incomplete. But having sworn, as the Whelm had to Yggur, they would do anything to ensure that their master’s goals were met. Recently, however, many of Yggur’s Whelm had repudiated their oath to Yggur, reverting to their ancient name, Ghâshâd, and swarming into Shazmak. In ancient times the Ghâshâd had served the Charon prince, Rulke.

The officer checked the list, inspected Maigraith carefully and took Japhit aside. ‘Yes, it is her,’ he said. The guards stepped forward to take her.

She raised her hand. ‘Put your shackles away,’ she warned. ‘I go of my own will. This Whelm has felt my sting.’

They hesitated; the officer looked to the Whelm once more. ‘Allow her,’ Japhit rasped, with a shiver that he could not suppress.

Maigraith relaxed a little. Her bluff had not been called. Even when fit she seldom used her powers, mindful of the warning Faelamor had driven into her over a lifetime: ‘The Secret Art must be used sparingly: the more it’s used the blunter it gets.’ Maigraith always felt self-conscious when using it, and her timing was always wrong. In spite of her strength it was always too little too soon, or too much too late.

It took several hours, questionings at progressively larger posts, more messages and changes of guards, before she found herself outside Yggur’s headquarters, an ancient, grim bastion of grey stone that looked down on the walled Old City and the Magister’s citadel inside it. It was nearly dark. They ushered her inside. A different Whelm made the mistake of gripping her arm. Maigraith raised her fist. The first Whelm flicked his fingers at the second, who let go. They tramped on.

Now they stood outside the big double doors. Her skin tingled; her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure he would hear it knocking. The call came. They brought her up a long room to a table set on a dais of one step. The table was stacked with papers, maps and charts. Yggur sat behind it.

He stood up, seeming even taller than she remembered, and limped around the table. His raven hair was longer than before. The frosty grey eyes were set in sockets dark as bruises. He looked stern and commanding, a relentless machine. Maigraith grew afraid. Thousands had died during his march through Iagador; thousands more in the assault on Thurkad. She had given herself into his hands and he would treat her with no more mercy than any other prisoner.

What was she doing here anyway? How could she have built a castle of dreams on the few tiny kindnesses he had shown her when she was his captive in Fiz Gorgo? At that time each had seemed to find in the other the complement to their own crippled selves. Yggur was obsessed by fear of Rulke, who had driven him mad before being imprisoned in the Nightland. Maigraith was a creature of Faelamor’s will, but trapped by her own desperate longing to know her identity. Surely his kindness had been just a ploy. How could he care for someone as unlikeable as her?

‘Why did you come?’ he asked. His mellow voice was rigidly controlled.

‘Because I wanted to.’

‘Then why not before? Why only now, when I was within hours of having you?’

She wanted to ask how he really felt about her. Getting the words out was like trying to leap a chasm. She stalled at the edge; the words froze in her mouth.

‘Me?’ she said with feigned scorn. ‘I think not! I tried to see you even before the war began. I went right into your camp, disguised as a ... camp follower.’ Maigraith was a modest, reserved woman, brought up that way by the prudish Faelamor. Even the euphemism was embarrassing for her. ‘That was hard: your camp was well-guarded, well-warded too. But when I reached your tent you were not there, and the Whelm were eyeing me. I went away again.’

She stopped abruptly, reminded of the consequences of that trip. Karan had begged Maigraith to relieve her of the Mirror, but Maigraith had not dared to take it into Yggur’s camp. She had broken her promise, had not been there when mad, depraved Emmant attacked Karan. And all this has come of it, Maigraith thought.

‘That’s a long time ago,’ said Yggur.

‘Since the Conclave I would not go against Faelamor.’

‘And now?’

‘She is sunk in a sickness of the heart.’

Dolodha came running in to whisper in Yggur’s ear. He looked up at Maigraith, searching her eyes. ‘We’ll soon know,’ Yggur said coolly. ‘Bring her in!’

Maigraith could not conceal her shock. ‘How did you find her?’

‘My dear!’ he replied with a thin-lipped smile. ‘Knowledge is my business.’

Shortly Faelamor was carried in on a litter. She raised her head with an effort and her eyes flicked past him to Maigraith. ‘You have betrayed me,’ Faelamor said bitterly. ‘I will never forgive you!’

Maigraith had expected such a reaction but it hurt her nonetheless. ‘You are alive. That is the best I could do for you.’

‘Yggur and I are rivals for the Mirror,’ Faelamor said, looking absolutely deathly. ‘We always will be. And you have put me in his power. How long before you share his bed as well?’

‘I only did what was inevitable,’ Maigraith replied stonily, so mortified that she did not dare look at Yggur.

Faelamor laid her head down and the litter was taken away by two Whelm. Maigraith began to follow her but Yggur growled, ‘Stay! We are not finished, you and I. Your liege will be taken care of and not harmed, whilever you please me.’

Maigraith could not help wondering what lay behind his carefully chosen words. What did he want of her? It did not bear contemplating. Her dreams were now laughable.

‘Faelamor claimed that Karan was dead,’ Maigraith said, desperate to get onto safer territory. ‘But I cannot believe that. Do you know anything about her?’

‘I have also been looking for Karan,’ he said with an ominous smile. ‘Chaike!’

Chaike was a thin, nervous man who, whenever attention was on him, went into a fit of rapid blinking that twisted up his forehead and made his eyebrows dance.

‘What do you know about Karan Fyrn?’ Yggur demanded.

Chaike blinked nervously.

‘The sensitive!’ roared Yggur. ‘Where are your wits, man?’

‘I spoke with those pr-prisoners who survived the Conclave,’ stuttered Chaike, his eyebrows oscillating furiously. ‘One of them remembered seeing her alive. I also questioned the men who burned the dead the next morning. Someone else asked after her that day; but they had not burned her body.’

‘Who asked?’

‘It was T-T-Tallia bel Soon.’

‘Mendark would want Karan,’ said Yggur, dismissing Chaike. ‘As do I. I remember her well - a remarkably clever young woman. Not even my Whelm could catch her.’ He spoke admiringly. ‘I can use her. Sensitives don’t last long, alas! I’ve burned out half a dozen this week. Then again, perhaps she did die, and her friends buried her.’

Maigraith turned away, chilled by his words. But Karan had only one friend in Thurkad, she thought, and he is missing too. No, I will not give her up.

‘If she were dead I think I would know it,’ said Maigraith, ‘because of the link that was once between our minds. I must find out what happened to her, dead or living. If anyone can find her it is you. What do you know about her friend, Llian of Chanthed?’

‘For a prisoner, you question me very boldly,’ he said, but answered nonetheless. ‘The teller? Rumour says that he was taken by the Aachim. We are pursuing them at this very moment. When we catch them I will have him brought here. But as for Karan . . .’ Yggur considered the means. ‘If her fate can be learned I will learn it. Who can I send though?’

‘Not a Whelm!’

‘No, they failed last time. It requires a particular kind of person. Sitala? No, she has gone to Bannador. Pran took an arrow in the eye. If he lives he will probably never see again. Ah, Zareth the Hlune! He is reliable and tenacious. After we take the citadel I will give him an unlimited warrant.’

Maigraith had done everything she could. What was going to happen now? She looked up and met Yggur’s eyes. They were hard as chips of agate. Impossible to raise the question that was in her heart. Then he took a quick gasping breath, as if he was troubled too. Perhaps he wasn’t as hard as he pretended to be. Maybe she bothered him as much as he did her. Get on with it, she told herself. If you don’t, you’ll regret it forever.

‘Yggur,’ she began, but just then a pair of messengers ran in without knocking. Their faces were alight with eagerness.

‘Be so good as to go over there,’ said Yggur, pointing to a chair and table on the far side of the room.

Maigraith did so. She sat at the table, wondering what was going on, for she could hear no more than a murmur. The messengers spoke in an excited rush of words, and at the end Yggur let out a whoop and pounded one fist into the other palm. Good news about the war, Maigraith presumed.

A long discussion ensued. At the end of it she saw broad grins on their faces. The messengers hugged one another, bowed low and ran out. Truly his people love him, she thought. He is not as black as he is made out to be. Perhaps I have made the right choice after all.

Yggur did not call her back, so she sat at her table watching him at his work, taking the reports of scouts and spies and generals, conferring with his advisers, then issuing a string of orders.

Maigraith was hungry; thirsty too, for no refreshment had been offered her. Indeed, in the excitement, Yggur seemed to have forgotten all about her. Then, hours later, he looked up and, catching her eye, abruptly waved her across. She went slowly, feeling her status as a prisoner.

‘Leave us,’ he said to the guards, the Whelm, the clerks and messengers, and silently they filed out, closing the door behind.

‘What am I going to do about you?’ he asked softly. A muscle spasmed in his cheek. ‘Tell me the truth - why did you come?’

‘You treated me kindly in Fiz Gorgo,’ she replied. ‘I felt that you ... cared for me, a little.’

‘I did, then!’

Why don’t you help me? she thought in anguish. Must I bare myself to your humiliation? ‘And I care - cared for you, then. There is one thing I must know -’ she hesitated, afraid. ‘Why did you send the Whelm to torture me, that last night in Fiz Gorgo? That was not a deed of the Yggur I knew.’

‘I warned you - I must have the Mirror!’ Yggur stared down at her from his great height, intimidating her. ‘Nothing has changed!’

‘I did not think you would do that to me.’

He stooped down to her level. ‘And I never did. I can be very harsh when I must, but not against you.’ He spoke the word with soft emphasis, and his eyes were glossy. Yggur’s eyes followed the curves of mouth and chin and breast and hip with heart-quickening terror. Woman, so mysterious that she might as well have been another species. How she could hurt him, if she had a mind to.

‘I had to go away,’ he went on. ‘The Whelm acted in defiance while I was not there. They tortured you cruelly!’

‘They hurt me,’ she said, though without emphasis.

‘When I returned, you were gone.’ He paced back and forth, limping badly. ‘Faelamor had taken you away. I tried to forget you after that, but every night and every morning you were back in my mind.’

‘So it was for me,’ said Maigraith, ‘though I could do nothing about it. But the chains of duty that bound me are fractured now. I am lost between one world and another.’

‘Ahhh! This talk chases its own tail,’ he cried. He drew away from her and he looked uncertain, even afraid. The side of his face began to go rigid, the speech became halting, as it had been on their first encounter. He paced across the wide room, his limp growing worse and worse. At the table he turned abruptly, almost fell and had to prop himself up. His face twisted, he tried to take another step but his leg had locked like a log of wood. ‘I cannot . . . endure it,’ he said thickly.

Maigraith felt his pain now, and it was worse than her own. She pitied him. She began to walk towards him, looking down at the floor, unable to bear the pressure of his staring eyes. Keeping her gaze fixed on his feet she paced the distance between them. Finally she stopped, just two steps from him, still looking down.

‘Maigraith,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Look at me.’ She looked up. ‘Will you . . .’

She felt just as anxious. What did he really want? She could never know; the feelings of other people were blank to her. ‘I will stay,’ she said, ‘. . . if that is what you want.’

She put out her hand, and after a hesitation he took it in his own.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

The Fall of The Old City

endark had taken heart from Tallia’s earlier advice and rallied what was left of the city’s forces. Even the people who had turned against him before the Conclave were glad to see him now. During the night there had been further small victories, parts of the city taken back, and there was even talk of driving Yggur out of Thurkad. Mendark knew that this was just a temporary reprieve, perhaps meant to give them false security, but he kept his thoughts from all but Tallia.

‘Is it hopeless, Mendark?’ They were climbing the stairs to her room to talk to Lilis.

‘Utterly! Yggur is just waiting until everything is ready. He doesn’t want to waste good soldiers, good lives. We’ve days at most. Fortunately I’ve already secured the secrets of the Council, those we were unwise enough to commit to print, and my meagre war chest.’

Tallia knew that he dissembled. Long before his overthrow Mendark had begun moving the Council’s secrets and its wealth, to say nothing of his own, out of Thurkad in the custody of those lieutenants that he trusted, and on solitary missions by himself. Did he forget that she had participated in several of those trips? Any war chest that he now had to dispose could only be a fraction of his wealth.

Lilis was sitting up in Tallia’s bed, chattering non-stop to Basia, though she went quiet as soon as Mendark entered the room. It was impossible that the Magister would even deign to notice a street child.

But Mendark could, if the humour chose him, make himself seem small and humble, so as not to intimidate. Taking the chair vacated by Basia, he hunched down with his head resting on his hands, looking like a kindly old gentleman. Lilis was disarmed.

‘I’m glad that you are better,’ he said in his kindliest old-gentleman tones. ‘I’m afraid your beating was partly my fault. I should have taken you in the first time. But the war, you see. I have so many things to think about that I can’t do them all.’

He touched her cheek below the black eye. She flinched.

‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she said. ‘That is yesterday. On the streets we only think today.’

‘That is the trouble with being Magister,’ said Mendark confidentially. ‘I have to count the yesterdays, the todays and, most of all, the tomorrows. And that is where I need your help.’

‘My help!’

‘Yes. I must know what you saw at the Great Hall, before Tallia met you.’

‘I saw lots of people coming and going, all day. Important people: councillors, judges, rich merchants.’

‘No, just before you saw Tallia.’

‘Nothing then. I had just come back.’

‘But Lilis, what did you see before you went?’

‘A soldier ran in, a messenger. It was raining. Then there was shouting inside. Then it went quiet. Then I heard a tremendous noise and a bright light. Then it went very quiet.’

‘What happened after that? That is what I must know.’

‘A great big man came out; his beard was black. There was blood on his face. And he had my friend Llian, my other friend,’ she said, looking sideways at Tallia, ‘by the arm, and dragged him down the steps. I was so afraid.’

‘Ahh,’ said Mendark. ‘Just as I thought. And then? Did you follow them?’

‘I tried to. At the bottom of the steps Llian fell down but the blackbeard picked him up and took him away. They went up Bellmaker’s Street, north then west. On the way the man saw me. After that they went too quickly for me.’

‘Where did you lose them? What streets?’

Lilis named a street, and another that crossed it.

‘Yes,’ said Mendark. ‘Tensor once had a villa down that way. You have been a great help. A great help,’ he repeated, taking Lilis’s hand. ‘You are a clever child.’

He got up, gesturing to Tallia. They walked to the door together. ‘Though not enough,’ he said. ‘They’ll be long gone by now and you are stuck with her.’ He looked old and mean-spirited.

‘Sometimes you shame me!’ she replied. He grunted and she changed the subject. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Take charge of our escape. Make sure all is ready by the morning.’

‘It’s in hand,’ said Tallia.

‘And the boat?’

That was his greatest anxiety, she knew. ‘It’s there now. What about the Assembly?’

Mendark spat out the window. ‘That pathetic lot! We’ll have to give them the opportunity to get away, I suppose. At least the people will know that I cared to do my duty - unlike our miserable Governor.’

‘And Thyllan?’ she asked tentatively, recalling his previous temper.

‘Don’t remind me of your stupidity!’ He sighed heavily. ‘Even Thyllan must be taken, though it is against my inclinations. Keep watch on him. He will be my greatest trouble.’

* * * *

Almost immediately they suffered a series of stunning reversals. Tallia was in the war room with Mendark when a messenger came clattering in, a tiny woman dressed in black tunic and ludicrously big boots that almost came off with every step.

The messenger reeled up the room. ‘Dabys reporting, Magister,’ she gasped out, trying to salute but unable to lift her arm. ‘We’ve lost the East Hills quarter!’ She fell on her face.

Tallia ran down and lifted her under the arms. Dabys moaned, for there was a savage gash in her armpit, so rudely dressed that the bandage was falling off. Tallia shouted for a nurse. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘They knew our battle plan,’ Dabys said through clenched teeth. ‘Surely they did, for they were waiting for us and prepared for everything we did.’

Mendark looked shaken. ‘I expected to lose the Hills district,’ he said, ‘but not so quickly.’ He bent over Dabys. ‘How badly are we defeated?’

‘The whole army is lost,’ she said. ‘I am the only one to get away.’ She slumped down, breathing noisily through her nose.

It was not long before the next blow fell. A dozen soldiers appeared at the door, battered and bloody. They were all that was left of the army that had held the south-east sector, and they too had a tale of unexpected defeat, of an enemy who seemed to know every detail of their battle plan.

An unpleasant suspicion began to take shape in Tallia’s mind. How many people knew such details? Only the leftover rump of the Council - Mendark, Orstand and Hennia the Zain - and herself and Berenet. Not even Mendark’s commanders in the field knew each other’s orders.

Tallia had always disliked Berenet for his strutting, boastful ways, his ostentatious display of wealth and his arrogance, but she had never found cause to question his loyalty before. But who else could it be? Only Orstand or Hennia. That either would betray them was ridiculous.

She remembered Berenet’s face after Mendark rejected his earlier plan. Such rage she had seen in his eyes! It had to be him. She said nothing, having no evidence, but went about more watchfully than ever.

By the end of the day they had lost everything outside the Old City. They held that fragment through the night, for the walls were strong, though it seemed that Yggur was playing with them, just testing their defences or their resolve. He would send out a foray against first one wall, then another, and while each was beaten off easily, it kept everyone on alert night and day.

The following evening Tallia had just lain down on her bed, hoping to snatch a few hours’ sleep, when an explosion of fire lit up the night like a harsh blue-white sun. She sprinted back to the wall, hearing the sound of sword clashing on sword. As she raced up the steep stairs another spark soared into the sky, and another, and each burst with brilliant light like the first to drift slowly down.

Reaching the top of the parapet she saw that there was a melee down at the corner watch-house, four defenders against two of Yggur’s soldiers, but even so they were being beaten back. All along the wall, guards stared up like wooden soldiers at the descending flares. Tallia looked over. Scaling ladders rattled against the wall in their dozens, and the enemy were swarming up them. There must be a thousand below this section of the wall, to face less than a hundred above. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Where was Mendark? Where was Berenet, for that matter? He had come down earlier to take charge of this area, but there was no sight of him.

A flight of arrows whispered over her shoulder. Tallia ducked, snatched a round stone from a stockpile and flung it at the shadows on the ladder below her. Not stopping to see what happened, she sprinted along the wall, sword in hand, rallying the guard as best she could. They were already defeated - she could see it in the way they stared at the uncanny flares, in the listless way they fought and fell.

A spike-helmed head appeared further along the wall. She slashed as she ran, but he merely ducked and bobbed back up again as soon as she went by. Tallia shouted orders, getting a detail armed with stones above each ladder. The falling missiles relieved the pressure somewhat. At the watch-house three of the guard had fallen to the two intruders. That’s our lot, Tallia thought. In five minutes we’ll all be dead. What will happen to little Lilis then?

She leapt into the air, crashing into the back of one of the enemy. His head cracked against the wall and he lay still. At the same time the remaining guard skewered the second intruder in the thigh and he collapsed, blood pouring from his leg.

‘Where’s Mendark?’ she screamed over the din of exploding flares, clashing weapons, and the wails of the wounded.

The guard pointed down the wall with bloody sword. His chest was heaving, his teeth bared like the skull of a racehorse. ‘Tower!’ he gasped.

Tallia climbed into a watch-post, trying to see through the confusion of battle. Just inside the eastern wall was an ancient watch-tower, smoke-stained and grimy, one of the oldest buildings in Thurkad. It was taller than the topmost dome of the citadel, with a view over most of the city, and Mendark occasionally used it as a refuge or a place for contemplation. An aerial bridge connected it to the wall of the Old City. As she watched, half a dozen enemy came over the wall and sprinted for the bridge.

More flares soared into the sky. One failed to ignite, falling as a glowing spark that went out as it struck the parapet. To Tallia’s dismay she saw Mendark’s white face in the doorway of the tower. He seemed to be trying to work some defence with his hands, but whatever it was, his attackers must have been protected against it. He ducked back inside.

‘Mendark, go down!’ she shouted, though he could not have heard. Then she saw that the enemy were already inside the wall, swarming around the base of the tower and setting up defensive formations there, while others attacked the lower door. They were Yggur’s finest, and they fought with a deadly purpose. They knew he was there, Tallia realised. We are betrayed! And Berenet was not at his post.

Tallia climbed down, leaning against the ladder for a moment with her eyes closed, trying to think what to do. Ahead, the way to the bridge was being defended desperately, but the defenders were falling under the weight of numbers. Mendark was in desperate danger. They all were, for if he fell the city must, and none of them would ever get out. Worse, Mendark held Council secrets that would make Yggur impossibly powerful.

‘What’s the matter?’ someone cried, shaking her arm. It was curly-haired Torgsted, the guard who had taken Blustard away. He was one of Mendark’s most loyal soldiers.

‘Torgsted!’ she gasped. ‘Mendark’s trapped in the tower.’

‘Then you’d better work one of your tricks, lar, otherwise we’re all dead.’

‘I’ll need help!’

‘Osseion was beyond the guard post a while ago.’

Tallia felt a little encouraged. Osseion was the captain of Mendark’s personal guard, a huge, dark man, a tireless fighter, always reliable. ‘Get him here - if he’s still alive!’

Torgsted ran off. Tallia agonised about what to do. She had no little skill at the Secret Art, though it did not extend to blasting people with her fingertips or conjuring sprites out of the ether. Her frantic gaze centred on the aerial bridge. There was no one on it yet - the defence was occurring on the wall beyond. She concentrated hard, building an illusion in her mind, of the bridge tearing away and crashing down against the watch-tower.

That wasn’t difficult. She’d had long training in such things. What would be hard, though, would be to send the illusion to all the attackers and defenders alike. If she failed to convince a single one, the illusion would fail.

Little Torgsted came running back. Osseion pounded behind him, one shoulder wrapped in a blood-stained bandage.

‘Get rid of those ladders, Osseion!’ she snapped.

Tallia released the illusion. Nothing happened. Strange things were going on in her mind - the image of the bridge stretched like rubber then broke into pieces. She could not get it back. Yggur must be using the Secret Art too. Of course he would be.

‘I can’t do it,’ she gasped, clinging to the wall. It felt as if one of the flares had gone off inside her head.

Torgsted appeared out of the smoke and dark with the fallen flare in his hand, a swollen cylinder about the length of his forearm, swathed in red and gold fabric. A stub of unburnt fuse hung out one end. As he walked he was binding cord around it, end to end. Tallia watched in bemusement.

He finished his work. ‘Light it,’ he said, holding the flare back over his head.

‘It’ll burn your arm off,’ she said, afraid.

Osseion had rallied the stone-dropping teams, temporarily cutting off the flow of enemy up the ladders, but at the bridge the last of the defenders fell. Yggur’s soldiers began to swarm towards it.

‘Do it!’ said Torgsted.

Snatching a lantern off its pole, she slid up the glass and touched the flame to the fuse. It caught and Torgsted instantly flung the flare towards the enemy. ‘Look away!’ he yelled, dropping flat.

The flare soared, bounced on the parapet, before skidding along the stones into the group at the end of the bridge. Tallia peeked through her fingers. The fuse winked out. Then the flare burst with a light so bright that it turned the soldiers into black stick-figures flying through the air. The explosion made her ears ring.

‘Come on!’ Torgsted shouted, dragging her by the arm. Tallia still felt strange in the head. For the moment she was glad to be told what to do.

All the soldiers were down, though several were crawling around, blinded by the flash. Part of the flare was still revolving on the path, emitting brilliant light and white smoke. Mendark leaned listlessly against the door of the watch-tower, not trying to defend himself. What was the matter with him?

When she got closer she saw a long bloody gash on the side of his head. His hair and neck were wet with blood. Tallia tore the coat off a fallen soldier, threw it over her shoulders and snatched up another. It was singed black, but at least Yggur’s colours showed. Several enemy were on their feet now, staggering towards them. ‘Hold them!’ Tallia cried, and ran out onto the bridge.

Mendark did not even recognise her when she took his hand. There was blood on the leg of his trousers too.

‘Mendark!’ she screamed, right in his face. His pupils hardly reacted. More soldiers were coming over the wall. It was hopeless.

Tallia wrapped Mendark in the cloak. He was dazed, one arm listlessly clawing at the cloth. She strained to lift him over her shoulder. Her head, still throbbing from the explosion, shrieked at the effort. Staggering across the bridge, she looked around for the best way out.

Osseion and Torgsted stood back to back, fighting like dervishes. Suddenly Osseion slipped on the bloody stone and landed hard on his knee, awkwardly trying to protect himself with his upraised sword. He was attacked wildly, the sword smashed out of his hand. The big man scrabbled forward, going bare-handed at his opponent. Tallia held her breath - Osseion was doomed. But somehow he ducked under the flailing sword and caught his opponent’s leg. The man reversed the sword, raising it to stab down. Desperately Osseion tried to stave off the blade with his bare hands.

Torgsted, who had despatched his opponent, hurled himself at the other soldier. The man turned to defend himself, but Osseion lifted him by the legs and he toppled backwards over the side.

Tallia stood on the bridge, looking down. The battle was far from over. The yard below was full of Yggur’s troops, fighting in dozens of little melees. Torgsted was staggering, Osseion not much better.

‘Come on!’ she roared, stripping the cloaks off two more of the enemy.

Tallia’s voice rang through a sudden quiet. The two donned the cloaks, Osseion threw Mendark over his shoulder and ran for the stairs. The enemy were swarming over the far end of the wall. She could not bear to see lives lost in something that was utterly hopeless. ‘I’ll sound the surrender,’ Tallia yelled, snatching up a trumpet from a dead signaller.

She blew three rising notes and three descending, the day’s code for what up to now had been unthinkable, then they dashed down the steps. The yard was already thick with Yggur’s troops. Ahead was the citadel gate.

The cloaks concealed them just enough to get to the gate a few steps ahead of a mob. Torgsted must have found a second wind for he propped, his sword working like a weaver’s shuttle. They leapt through, he followed, the gates slammed shut and the bars banged home. Safety, until Yggur attacked again. Defeat was inevitable. In twenty minutes of bloodshed and terror the defences of the Old City had been overwhelmed.

And Tallia could not help feeling that they had been betrayed - that the enemy had known exactly where to find Mendark. She knew just who to blame for the betrayal.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

Betrayal

endark, you’ve got to listen!’ Tallia yelled. ‘There’s a traitor among us.’

He was still suffering from concussion, while the citadel panicked around him. Yggur’s siege engines were methodically reducing the walls to rubble.

Mendark turned his head away. Tallia shook him. ‘Look! Yggur knew the battle plans of both armies. And he knew you were alone in the tower. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence. Only five people knew all that. You, me, Orstand, Hennia and Berenet.’

‘No!’ he said. ‘It can’t be Berenet.’

‘Look at the evidence.’

‘No!’

‘Then who? Me? Orstand -’

There was another terrific crash outside. The walls of the citadel shook. They could not last another day.

Berenet came in, limping. His clothes were torn to shreds and he was daubed with blood, but he did not seem to be carrying any injuries.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Tallia said savagely, sure that he was putting on an act. ‘Mendark was almost taken. You were supposed to be supervising the south wall.’

He ignored her. ‘I’ve been on the east wall, Magister,’ he said to Mendark, panting hard. ‘Had to take command; all your officers are dead.’

‘Yes, yes?’ cried Mendark. ‘How did you fare?’

‘We fought hard but it was hopeless. No one else got away. I’m sorry!’

‘How convenient,’ Tallia said under her breath.

‘Go on then,’ Mendark waved tiredly. ‘Get ready. We go within the hour.’

Berenet nodded curtly, gathered his rags about him and swept out. Mendark groaned, demoralised by his near capture and the implications behind it, that he could not face up to. ‘It hurts, to abandon my city like this. You can never know how it hurts.’

Tallia understood what he was going through. Mendark had been Magister for a thousand years, and dwelt in Thurkad all that time. She gave him a minute, then began again. ‘We must escape, so we can fight for the city.’

‘Give me a little longer. I have some tasks to do before we go.’

‘What tasks?’

‘Things that are the Magister’s responsibility!’ he snapped. ‘Make sure that Orstand and Hennia are ready - the Council has to escape no matter what. Now get out!’

Tallia busied herself with her own frantic arrangements. She saw Mendark a few times, limping around with a cane, looking like death. Around midnight they met again in the library.

‘We’ve got to go now!’ she urged. ‘The guards are beginning to believe Thyllan’s lies: that the downfall of Thurkad is your fault. You must put him down.’

‘He should be put down,’ Mendark said bitterly, ‘but I cannot be the one to do it. I’ll take him and the others as far as the wharf. There they can make their own arrangements. The boat is ready?’

‘It’s waiting. But -’ Tallia clenched her fists. She hesitated. ‘I don’t know what to do about Lilis.’

‘Lilis?’

‘The street child. You can’t have forgotten her, surely?’

Mendark pressed his hand to the bandage around his head. Blood stained the cloth above his ear. He inspected a bloody fingertip. ‘My head aches shockingly!’ he said. ‘What were you saying? Oh, her! Leave her, she’ll be all right!’

‘Lilis comes with me.’

Mendark screwed up his eyes against the pain. ‘Are you mad?’

Tallia’s dark face flushed. ‘I can’t leave her here. It was you who taught me the price of loyalty.’

‘I have a city of a million people to safeguard. Likely she’d be safer here than with us.’

‘Perhaps, but it makes no difference.’

‘Well, bring the little scrag, but keep her out of my way,’ Mendark said irritably. ‘Let’s go while we still can.’

Tallia made allowances. Mendark was not as hard-hearted as he pretended. At least, she hoped he wasn’t.

‘I’ll give the order to surrender at dawn,’ said Mendark. ‘That’ll give us a few hours. Meet me by the escape way.’

Tallia ran, soon to return, followed by Thyllan, his scarred face thunderous, all traces of the madness gone. There were chains on his wrists and ankles. Mendark signed for the ankle chains to be released. Thyllan was flanked by six of the citadel guard. After them waddled the other refugees: merchants, lawyers, legislators. Men and women, fat and thin, but all mourning the loss of everything they owned.

Hennia the Zain walked by herself as always. She was a saggy, jowly, large-breasted woman of advanced years, full of resentment at the world, and at Mendark for being trapped with him. Her feet were so tiny that they might have been bound as a child. Berenet, who had changed into his finest, followed, aping her small shuffling step. Mendark kept giving him dark looks but said nothing.

‘Are you coming or not?’ Mendark yelled at Hennia, who had squatted down over her pack, taking things out and putting them back again.

‘What a mess you’ve got us in,’ Hennia grimaced.

‘I might have done better with a bit of support.’

‘I gave you as much support as anybody,’ she said.

‘I know!’ he said coldly. Hennia twisted words to suit herself.

Osseion, the captain of Mendark’s guard, was tall, broad as a tree, black as coal. One of many scars lifted a corner of his mouth to show large square white teeth. Ugly, fearsome Osseion, gentle as a kitten.

Lilis, close behind Tallia, was a scrawny, well-scrubbed, big-eyed, silent shadow. She had recovered rapidly, though her eye was still yellow and black, and the dislocated shoulder was supported in a sling. She wore new trousers of good woven cloth, a coat slightly too large for her, and the first pair of boots she had ever owned, judging by the clumsy way she walked. Lilis kept looking down at her boots as if what had happened was not possible. Her platinum hair shone in the lantern light. The little canvas pack on her back contained undreamed-of possessions - two more sets of clothes, underwear, socks, soap, a brush and even a knife!

Hennia turned the corner and stumbled over Lilis in the gloom. ‘Look where you’re going, you little wretch!’ she said, swatting at Lilis’s head.

Lilis evaded the blow with practised ease and moved back under Tallia’s wing.

Another huge missile shook the walls. The glass pieces of a chandelier clashed together. Torgsted came racing in, skidding on the tiles. ‘They’re inside!’ he shouted.

Mendark reeled, dropping his pack. His face went the colour of dough. ‘They can’t be! Orstand, can they have broken our protections and we not know it?’ He swayed as if he was going to faint.

Orstand sniffed the air like a bloodhound, and looked like one, too, with her sagging dewlaps. ‘They must have if they’re inside, though I can’t imagine how. Where are they, Torgsted?’

‘The advance guard came up through the cellars. They must’ve tunnelled in.’

‘Ah, I can feel it now,’ said Orstand. ‘Mendark, are you all right?’ Catching him as he fell, she lowered him to the floor. ‘Osseion, seal all the corridors and stairs into this part of the citadel. Make a stand at the top of the stair outside. Tallia, water!’

Tallia dabbed Mendark’s brow with a wet rag and shortly he began to revive. ‘My head,’ he said.

‘Maybe the escape way is compromised now,’ said Tallia, helping him up.

‘Impossible!’ snapped Mendark. ‘Only the Council and I know about it.’

‘No one else?’

‘And Berenet,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Take charge, Orstand,’ not realising that she already had. ‘Tallia, come with me.’ He limped the other way.

‘If they’ve been underground, making tunnels,’ said Tallia, ‘their scryers might have traced ours.’

‘Not this one! It’s protected! Not all the scryers in Iagador could trace it.’

‘The citadel is protected too, but they got in.’

He stared at her. Sweat was pouring out of his forehead. ‘Better check it, I suppose.’ He pressed a stud on the wall next to a bookshelf. ‘Hold this in!’

Tallia put her finger on it. Mendark went behind another bookshelf. She heard his fingernails scratching on the timber, then a sound like steel marbles rolling over each other. The panels of the wall moved apart to reveal a locked door made of metal. He unlocked that and went through into a dark passage.

‘Close the door behind you. There must be no light at all!’ He put his ear to an identical metal door in front of him.

Tallia closed the door. It became perfectly dark. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he whispered. ‘Get your knife out and be ready with the lantern.’

The lock clicked; the door was eased open. Tallia sensed Mendark moving forward. His hand felt around in the dark, caught her arm and felt his way up to her ear.

‘Careful,’ he said, his breath tickling her ear. ‘There’s a steep stair in front of us.’ He edged forward to peer down into the dark.

‘It’s safe,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t sense anything. Let’s get going.’

As Tallia turned to go back there came the faintest rattle a long way down, like a pebble knocked down a set of steps. Mendark ground his teeth and prodded Tallia painfully with the staff. They went back through the doors, locking and barring them carefully. In the library, Mendark cursed fluently. ‘How could Yggur have found it?’ He smote his fist against the wall. ‘How?’

Treachery, Tallia thought. ‘Can’t we take them on?’

‘Yggur knows me too well. He’ll have hundreds down there. We’re trapped.’

Tallia felt her own panic rising. ‘You don’t have another way out?’

‘Not from here. It’s right across the other side of the citadel, at the top of the eastern stair. I don’t see how we can get there, now.’

* * * *

Yggur had just taken Maigraith’s hand when there came a persistent rapping at the outer door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said irritably. ‘The war is at a critical stage.’

‘Can Mendark still win it?’

Yggur’s smile was close to a sneer. ‘Win! He’s holed up in the citadel with only a few hundred soldiers left. As soon as the news comes from my delving team, we go in.’

Yggur opened the door. A swarm of messengers were waiting outside. Yggur listened to each then snapped a series of orders. Maigraith sat silently, watching and listening, remembering his military efficiency.

The message came not long before midnight. ‘All is ready,’ said the messenger.

Yggur smiled, showing clenched teeth. ‘Come, Maigraith. I want you to witness this.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To take my enemy.’

* * * *

Maigraith stood behind the front line, waiting with Yggur for the final attack on the walls. She was weak from hunger, having had nothing but turnip for days. The mail coat was incredibly heavy. She wanted to go to bed. There was plenty of time to dwell on her own failings.

Faelamor had required her to steal the Mirror in the first place, but she had lacked the courage to do it by herself and had forced Karan to go with her to use her sensitive talents. That had been Maigraith’s first failure. Had she done her job properly Faelamor would have had the Mirror months ago, and none of the other disasters need have happened. But Maigraith had looked at the Mirror and been captivated, as though it was the door to a whole new life for her. That was how Yggur had caught her.

There was a clamour ahead of them. The assault was beginning. ‘How I’ve waited for this day!’ Yggur said, grinding his teeth.

Shortly a tall, dark-haired man came running in. He was lean with big feet and hands, and he wore his chin-whiskers plaited, the plait ending in six small braids.

‘Zareth reporting, sir!’ he said briskly, giving a four-fingered salute.

Yggur raised an eyebrow.

‘We’re ready. The citadel wall is breached in three places!’

‘And every possible way out is watched?’

‘Those that we have been able to identify,’ said Zareth. ‘Each is monitored by a pair of illusionists, and the scryers are sensing out hidden escape ways. Wherever he goes, we will find him.’

‘I hope so,’ Yggur replied grimly.

Maigraith knew, because Yggur had told her the story in Fiz Gorgo, why Mendark was Yggur’s enemy. Yggur held Mendark responsible for the failure of the Proscribed Experiments long ago, the Council’s scheme to trap Rulke the Charon. Though the Experiments had failed disastrously, eventually Rulke had been hurled into a specially made prison, the Nightland, a place separate from the reality of the world. But before that, Rulke had possessed Yggur, taken control of his mind and left him crippled and mad. Even now, centuries after he had recovered, Yggur still suffered the memory of Rulke, like the sting of a giant scorpion.

‘Go!’ Yggur said. The guards surged forward. ‘This place should be called rat city,’ he muttered to Maigraith, who had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. ‘There are a thousand grubholes under the Old City - I’ve spent more time tracing them these last four days than I have fighting the war. And still my enemies escape me. But not this one!’

They raced through the main gate of the citadel, across a courtyard swarming with Yggur’s troops.

‘Where is he, Zareth?’ he said to the officer running beside him.

‘The south-western corner, high up,’ Zareth replied, ‘as far as our scryers can tell. It is . . . not an exact art.’

‘I know that!’ Yggur snapped. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard to confer with his officers.

A messenger came running out the front door of the citadel, the same young woman who had been at the guard post when Maigraith surrendered. She wore a dark cowl and drab robes, and her thin face had a pinched, underfed look.

‘What is it, Dolodha?’ cried Yggur. ‘Mendark is taken?’

Dolodha skidded to a stop, almost tripping over her long robes. She bowed to Yggur, edging away from the Whelm on his right, a bony woman whose name was Vartila. She had also been at Fiz Gorgo. Maigraith was afraid of her.

‘We broke into his workroom but he was gone. Not long, though.’

Vartila gave a menacing growl. Dolodha skipped sideways out of the way.

‘I don’t believe he’s yet escaped,’ said Yggur. ‘Run, do the rounds of every squad and report to me.’

Dolodha looked uneasy, but ran back inside. Shortly Yggur and Maigraith followed. Other messengers reported as they pounded down the main corridor of the citadel. They passed a pair of Whelm, who were beating captured soldiers with their knotty staves.

‘Enough!’ cried Yggur. They clattered up flights of broad steps. Maigraith had a stitch in her side. ‘I can’t go on,’ she gasped, but Yggur did not hear.

‘The library,’ sang out a different messenger, running up. ‘This way!’

They turned right at the top of the stairs, down another corridor and burst into a large space panelled in rare timbers and filled with tall bookcases. It was a beautiful room, built in the shape of a short-armed cross. In the centre was a long table, bare of paper or ornament. The ceiling rose up in a twelve-sided steeple panelled in pale wood. The room was full of the scent of books and fragrant wood.

There were soldiers everywhere, milling about, trampling mud and blood into an exquisite carpet of knotted silk. Three illusionists, robed in black or white, huddled in a corner, broken by the strain. A sensitive, a pretty, violet-eyed girl about fifteen, wept beside them. ‘I want to go home.’ She had been snatched from her family a few days ago and was quite bewildered. ‘Please let me go,’ she wailed.

‘Where is he?’ Yggur cried furiously.

No one spoke. No one knew. Maigraith felt pity for the girl. All was not perfect in Yggur’s empire after all. Everything had run clock-like for months, but now something had gone wrong and he could not work out what it was.

Finally Zareth came running back, his chin-plaits whipping from side to side. ‘He was here, in this room,’ he said. ‘He can’t have got far.’

‘Drag my chief scryer up here,’ Yggur shouted.

Zareth stuck his head out the door and bellowed. A little round ball of a man puffed in, carrying a green leather bag in one hand.

‘Damn you!’ Yggur roared. ‘Find him or you’re finished!’ With a scrape of steel, one of the Whelm drew a curved blade. The sound made Maigraith shiver.

The scryer fumbled a circular blank of glass out of the bag, almost dropping it. It was concave on the upper side, like the mirror of a telescope. He set it on the library table on a brass stand, warmed a flask on a candle, unstoppered it, then poured a quantity of quicksilver into the hollow. From another flask he dribbled spirit onto the quicksilver, touching it with the candle. A pale blue flame spread across the surface, burned for a minute, then went out. Immediately the scryer threw a cloth over his head and began to sway and mumble.

He looked up at Yggur, puzzled. ‘It’s strange. It’s as though he’s here, and yet not here. His aura is very faint.’

‘Of course it’s faint,’ Yggur snapped. ‘He’s using a charm of concealment, but it’s not strong enough to hide him from me. Quickly, man, or you’ll suffer their fate!’

The scryer darted a glance to the corner where the illusionists and the sensitive crouched, and bent to his glass again. After a long silence he spoke. ‘He’s close by; not a dozen steps from us! That way!’

‘At last!’ Yggur exulted. ‘Take the place apart.’

* * * *

‘Isn’t there a secret stair up to the top floor from here?’ cried Tallia.

‘Yes,’ Mendark said, ‘but his scryers will track me and he’ll be waiting when we get there.’

‘I’ve an idea,’ said Orstand. ‘What if we were to make a simulacrum of you and hide it here. That would confuse them. They won’t know where to look.’

‘He can’t be more than a few minutes away. He’d break it the instant he got here.’

‘But in a few minutes, with luck, we can get to the other escape way.’

‘How would you do it?’

‘Principle of similarity,’ Orstand replied. ‘Whatever happened to the portrait of you that used to hang in the library?’

‘It’s in the storeroom next to the privy,’ scowled Mendark, ‘where I don’t have to look at it.’

Tallia ran and brought it back. It was a miniature done in sombre brown, an unflattering portrait that imbued Mendark with a look of greasy, rat-like cunning. And depending on the light, he could be looking in one direction or the other.

‘I see what you mean,’ she said, smiling. ‘Two-faced.’

‘But ideal for our purpose,’ said Orstand.

Together they worked a charm on the portrait to give it the faintest life-aura of Mendark, then put it between two locked doors. Immediately they hurried to the secret way. It was a steel ladder that ran up inside a wall right to the top floor, a terrifying climb for many.

Tallia was grimly amused to see the differing ways that they took the climb. The refugees were ill-at-ease, more used to their counting stools and their couches. Flabby Malkin, who had been elected leader of the Assembly after the flight of the Governor, was splendid in his furs but he had to be coaxed up each step. Hennia looked more angry than terrified. Still scowling, Thyllan followed, but more quickly than any, in spite of his hampering chains. He reached the top, shouting down at the others to hurry, as if he was in charge. As if he soon would be again.

Berenet came next, with almost exaggerated confidence, but his was the confidence of one seeking to impress in everything he did. Mendark watched him with narrowed eyes and never turned his back. Then the citadel guard, some assured, some uncertain, but they were elite and well-trained, and whatever they felt it did not show on their faces. Osseion followed, an expert climber, with Lilis scuttling up after, hindered by her sling. Finally came Tallia, moving slowly under her heavy pack, the lantern held out to one side, the black hair concealing her face.

She stepped lightly off the last rung. Mendark’s gaze lingered on her flushed face in the golden lamplight. When all had passed through he heaved on a lever and a counter-weighted slab swung down with a squeal, sealing the shaft behind them. They emerged next to a stairwell. Now they had to get right across the top floor of the citadel, the length of a city block.

‘Quick, Tallia, scout out the best way.’

She ran and was back again in a minute. ‘The passage along the southern side!’

A crash came echoing up the stairs, hammers being used on the secret door below. They took off, knowing that a minute could mean the difference between escape and capture. In the first cross-passage they ran right into a pair of Yggur’s soldiers. There was a short, sharp melee, but Berenet’s sword, wielded expertly, accounted for both of them. They broke through, slipping on the bloodstained floor as they hared off down the hall.

Halfway down, Hennia swayed on her tiny feet. ‘I’ve had enough!’ she gasped, sitting down where she was.

‘You must,’ cried Mendark, taking her arm. ‘The Council -’

She snatched her arm away. ‘The Council is damned,’ Hennia said limply, ‘and it’s all due to you, Mendark.’ She got up and plodded back the other way.

‘Useless Zain!’ Mendark cursed, then kept on. He soon caught Orstand, who was lurching down the corridor, every part of her great body in wobbling motion. Her face was scarlet, but though she was working hard she was going slower and slower.

‘Come on, old friend,’ Mendark said, taking her arm gently. ‘Hennia has abandoned us. We need you desperately.’

‘I won’t let you down,’ she replied, trying to smile. ‘But this mistreated old body might. My chest is burning.’

Osseion ran back and gave Orstand his shoulder. With Mendark supporting her on the other side they staggered down to the end of the corridor. Someone roared behind them. A fireball whizzed over their heads, bursting into coloured sparks that skidded down the wall. ‘It’s Yggur!’ Mendark groaned.

They crashed through a swinging door, crushing a guard on the other side. Finally the staircase was in sight. They milled about there while Mendark fumbled with concealed buttons on a massive stone column that descended through nine floors of the citadel. Again there was a roar behind them and more fireballs splattered on the end wall, setting a priceless tapestry alight. Flames dripped off the tasselled fringe. Now they could hear running feet behind them, and others coming up the stairs. Lilis cried out.

Tallia looked around frantically. The guard took up their defensive positions, though there was no hope of defending against so many. ‘Where’s Hennia?’ she cried.

‘Gave up!’ Berenet spat.

‘I have it!’ Mendark shouted. He wrenched open doors in what had appeared solid stone. Inside were folding gates of wrought-iron. He flung them apart, revealing a dark metal cage with a big wheel at the back. ‘In!’ he screeched. Then, at their hesitation, ‘Or stay behind!’

They squeezed in. The cage swayed dangerously, tilting down on one side. ‘Come on!’ he shouted at the guard. They fought their way in. Huge Osseion sprang in last of all, his weight sending the cage rocking wildly, and forced his way through them to the wheel.

Just then a dozen soldiers hurtled up the stairs. Twice that number appeared round the corner from the passage they had just run down, Yggur at their head. Mendark slammed the iron gates closed. ‘Spin the wheel, Osseion,’ he cried, almost choking on his fear.

The wheel creaked into motion. The cage did not move. Mendark and Yggur stared at each other, then Yggur smiled and slowly raised his hand. ‘Come out,’ he said, ‘or I will grill you alive.’

Mendark stared him down. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered, ‘The other way, Osseion, you bloody fool. Knock the brake right off.’

The wheel clacked but still they did not move. Yggur’s face hardened. ‘Is there no one that you value, Mendark? The child perhaps, or faithful Tallia? I’ll make a lesson of them that you will never forget.’

Tallia pushed Lilis behind her; Orstand gathered the child in her arms. ‘That won’t do any good, Tallia,’ said Yggur. ‘From here I can burn the lot of you. Come out!’

Still nothing happened. Yggur ever so slowly raised his hand. Mendark sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, reaching for the gate. As he did so, something snapped behind Tallia and the cage fell so abruptly that she tasted her dinner. They plunged headlong down a black shaft.

‘Not so fast!’ Mendark roared.

‘Brake’s broken!’ Osseion shouted back, forcing his boot against the whirring wheel.

The sole began to smoke; they slowed a little. The ropes screeched, the cage swaying from side to side in its tunnel. Through the wrought-iron roof they saw a fireball high above, dripping glowing sparks down at them. ‘If he burns through the rope, we’re finished,’ Mendark muttered.

‘How far to go?’ shouted Osseion.

‘A few floors,’ Mendark replied. ‘Slow it right down.’

Fire licked against the sole of Osseion’s boot. They slowed slightly, then fireballs rained down all around them and the cage fell free, accelerating. It ground against the stone wall with a shower of sparks, bounced off and struck the other wall. Lilis, who had pulled back her fingers only moments before, gave a frightened yelp. Tallia took her under her wing.

‘Slow it!’ Mendark screamed.

‘I can’t! Rope’s gone.’

There was a bang high above them and a shower of metallic sparks. Something clanged on the roof of the cage. In the weird light from Osseion’s boot Tallia caught sight of Mendark’s face. It was absolutely stark. ‘We’re going to hit the -’

They struck hard, hurling everyone off their feet. A roaring corona of water burst up the walls of the tunnel and poured in through the sides of the cage. Osseion’s boot went out, plunging them into darkness, then the water went over their heads.

‘Light!’ Tallia shouted, fighting her way upright. Standing up, the water was only breast deep. She felt around among the press of bodies. ‘Lilis, where are you? Light, dammit!’

A dim light came from the end of Mendark’s staff, barely enough to see. She reached down, hauling up whoever she touched by the first handhold - hair, shirt, nostrils in one case. ‘Lilis!’

Her questing fingers caught a tiny wrist. She dragged Lilis out from under someone, clinging to her as if she were her own daughter. ‘Mendark!’ Tallia said urgently. He was hanging off the metal gate, looking dazed. ‘Mendark, I don’t know where to go from here.’ She smacked his face. ‘Quick! How do we get out?’

He staggered, righting himself. ‘There’s a door that leads out of the shaft,’ he said, wrenching the gates open. ‘Here, somewhere. Orstand, where are you?’

Tallia felt around again. Fat old Orstand was floating facedown, quite dead. Her heart had given out. ‘Mendark . . .’ Tallia began, then fireballs began to fall around them, fizzing in the water. Someone screamed; the group stampeded out through the gates, and she could not find Mendark in the dark and the crowd.

In that chaos it took ages to find the door, and longer still after the fireballs stopped, to force it open against the weight of water. Tallia could see the shadows of soldiers coming down the shaft on ropes. She and Osseion dragged the last sodden, battered and dazed people out of the cage, now almost fully submerged, and through the door just as the first soldier dropped onto the roof. Orstand’s body was left behind, along with the corpse of a lawyer whose name Tallia could not remember. Osseion slammed the door closed then Mendark pulled a lever that dropped a slab of stone behind it, blocking the tunnel.

Mendark looked over his party, counting under his breath, then frowned. ‘Where’s Orstand?’

‘She’s dead,’ Tallia said softly. ‘Her heart couldn’t take any more. I’m sorry.’

Mendark put his head in his hands and wept. They watched awkwardly.

‘We must go,’ said Tallia after a long interval.

‘I know, I know. But of all people to lose, why her? How are we going to manage without her? She had the best mind on the Council. She was my oldest friend.’

No one answered. They proceeded along to an open shaft. Brass rungs went down, five to a span. The light did not show the bottom. Mendark went First, gingerly, for he was heavily encumbered and his injuries still troubled him. When he reached the bottom, about twenty spans below, he set the lantern to one side and moved hastily out of the way, as if afraid that someone might fall on him.

‘What about the gold?’ asked Tallia.

‘It’s hidden further down. I had a feeling we might be leaving in a hurry. A trek to get to it from here, though.’

They pursued a wandering way through a rat’s nest of tunnels, terrified that they would run into Yggur’s guards. But they did not, and eventually found the gold where Mendark had hidden it. The guards lifted the chests. Stony-faced, Mendark led the way down the tunnel.

‘This tunnel comes out in the sewer, I believe, though it hasn’t been used during my term,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’m not sure of the tide. If it’s high we may have a wait. We’d better hope that it takes Yggur a while to break through and trace us.’

‘The tide is falling,’ said Tallia. ‘We’ll be gone before he gets here.’

They went along at a steady pace for more than an hour, zig-zagging through many cross-tunnels, before Mendark splashed into water that was deep and foul-smelling.

‘We must be near the old shore,’ he said, working his way around the edge of the pool, and shortly they reached the exit, a thick round iron door with a double row of bolts circling the rim, but rusted through in the middle. They heaved at the door but the hinges were immoveable. Osseion smashed the centre out with a hammer. They climbed through.

Outside they found themselves in a huge tunnel, one of the main sewers of Thurkad. Down it a current was running swiftly, the tide being at full ebb. They moved cautiously along the edge, over sloping slippery stone, then Malkin skidded and was swept off his feet into the flood. He would surely have drowned in the horrible muck, had not Thyllan, who was further downstream on the edge of the water, grasped him by the tunic as he whirled past and hauled him out.

Malkin made quite a spectacle in the yellow light and the vapour that had come up from the sea. His fine robes of office hung lank and stained, the once-white fur at his throat was ratty and dripping, and blood ran down his face from his nose. The man burst into tears, his dignity completely gone.

Thyllan stared at him a moment in silence, then turned away and continued picking his careful path along the side of the sewer. To some it seemed that he had taken over the leadership of their little group.

They continued without further incident, eventually reaching a place where iron rungs climbed the side of the tunnel to a circular porthole on the top. Beyond this inspection point the passage plunged down and was full of water. A guard climbed up, drew back the well-greased lever and the lid fell open.

‘Just a few minutes more!’ Mendark said. ‘Ah, Orstand, if only you were here.’

Tallia felt an overwhelming sense of relief. For the last five days she had lived with the dread of being taken and tortured. And there was Lilis to think about. Being an only child, Tallia could hardly describe her feelings for the waif. She loved Lilis more than she had ever loved anyone and knew what a dangerous emotion that was. If they could just get away from Thurkad, though, there was a chance.

They emerged on a stone jetty in a tiny cove between two parts of the massive wharf city, which here towered more than three storeys high - four platforms of tarred timber supported on piles half a span through, viciously crusted with barnacles. Nothing could be unloaded from a boat in Thurkad without the say-so of the wharf city, uneasy symbiont with Thurkad. And that was a right that the wharf people, the Hlune, guarded jealously.

The jetty, and the cove, were empty.

‘Where is the boat?’ cried Mendark in dismay.

Behind them, Thyllan brayed with laughter.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

The March of Folly

ar-annnnn!’ Llian wailed, looking back as Tensor dragged him to the door. She was just a sad little bundle on the floor between the guards, one fist clenched, her hair red against the white marble. Blood had pooled on the tiles beside her.

‘I won’t go,’ Llian muttered. ‘I won’t go!’ he screeched in Tensor’s face, but he might as well have been talking to a rock. The hand embracing his hand was like stone, and Tensor’s face was as dark and hard as obsidian.

Llian sagged down into a crouch and when Tensor jerked his arm he came up like a spring uncoiling, butting the Aachim under the jaw so hard that his teeth snapped together. Tensor staggered backwards then Llian ran, leaping over bodies and benches, to fall to his knees beside Karan. He took her hand in his and it was icy cold, yet under her eyelids her eyes flicked back and forth. She lived! Llian took her in his arms and kissed her eyes, as gentle as a butterfly at a flower.

Tensor hauled Llian up by the collar and shook him, his face to Tensor’s staring face. The potency had hurt the Aachim terribly. His whole body was wracked with tremors that he could not control, while blood leaked from his mouth to drip through his black beard. Then his granite hand clamped Llian’s wrist again, Tensor’s eyes looked through Llian’s eyes into his skull and turned everything there to mush.

The doors of the Great Hall crashed shut. Tensor scanned the street but it was empty. Llian was once more in his thrall, powerless to disobey, for the Aachim’s power over him was irresistible. They went down the steps into the dark and the driving rain, and the few people on the streets hurried by with lowered heads, too immersed in their own woes to look his way. They went in haste through the wet streets of Thurkad and were not challenged, for death and doom were written all over Tensor’s face.

That was an ugly night, one of the worst, and the first time that the violence and horror of war had really been brought home to Llian. It quite shook him from the romantic view of the Histories that his training had given him.

Only a few blocks away from the Great Hall a battle had been fought in the street, the dead greeting them all the way. Just in front of Llian, a tall young man was dragging himself along the gutter, moaning. Something trailed behind him, catching on the cobbles. It was his leg, completely severed, attached only by the seam of his trousers. His blood spurted into the flooded gutter.

‘Help me,’ he cried pitifully as they passed, his once handsome face a mask of pain.

Llian stopped, not knowing what to do, only that no one could pass by such a tragedy.

Tensor was unmoved. ‘He will be dead in five minutes, chronicler,’ he said roughly. ‘And us too, if Yggur catches us.’

Even as he spoke the young man slumped face-down into the gutter and the flow from his stump ebbed to a trickle. Tensor jerked Llian’s arm, hurrying him on, though after eight or ten steps he fell to his knees crying ‘Shazmak! Shazmak!’ at the stones of the road.

Llian stood by, still held by the wrist. Glorious, beautiful Shazmak lay in ruins, its people slaughtered. Tears coursed down his cheeks. What a waste. ‘Karan! Karan!’ he cried.

Tensor gained control again and they hurried on. ‘Forget her, chronicler! She can’t survive.’

Shortly they passed by a row of terrace houses all in flames and to Llian’s horror someone leapt from a high window, screaming and trailing flame like the wedding train of a princess, to crash into a manicured rose garden. The scream was cut off; the flames lingered. Looking up, he saw other stick-figures at the windows with the flames roaring yellow behind them, then Tensor dragged him on. When Llian closed his eyes he could still see the burning rose bushes.

‘We’re being followed,’ said Tensor a while later. Llian was indifferent, numb. Tensor wrenched him around a corner and pressed them both against the wall. A waif-like figure went past, looked around then stared up the alley. Tensor raised his fist. Llian was roused from his torpor. There was something familiar about the way it walked.

The child stopped, then began to step cautiously toward the alley. Llian could feel a pressure in his skull as if Tensor was willing her to come to him. The same urge gripped Llian too - another aspect of Tensor’s power over him. Now he realised who it was. Another few steps and Tensor would smash her to the ground.

‘Lilis!’ he screamed. ‘Get away! Go back!’

He lunged at Tensor so hard that the Aachim’s head struck the wall with a thud. He went into a fit of trembling, slid down the wall and Lilis darted off. Before Tensor recovered, she was gone. Llian ran too, but had not gone ten steps before he was cuffed across the head, knocked down on the wet cobbles.

‘So much honour,’ sneered Llian on hands and knees, ‘to lie in wait for a child.’ He spat on Tensor’s boot.

Tensor dragged him up effortlessly and Llian’s only defiance was over, the iron control back stronger than ever. ‘Come,’ Tensor said, tightening his grip.

* * * *

In the western part of the city they stopped at a secluded villa set back from the street. It was surrounded by an iron fence and a dense thorny hedge spotted in red berries. Tensor pushed on the tall gate with the flat of his hand, the latch gave a double click and the gate swung open. He knocked once on the door, which was opened by a woman about Llian’s height, with bright red hair. Other Aachim stood behind her. Llian slumped on the veranda, too dazed, shocked and weary for rational thought. The breaking of the Conclave was imprinted on his mind. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw that final scene again - Karan’s mouth wide in horror, her hair standing up in a red halo as Tensor worked his potency and killed Nelissa stone dead.

‘Malien . . .’ began Tensor, for the first time showing his distress. ‘I never thought to see you here.’ He held out his arms.

‘I came west to visit my son,’ she said, stepping back to avoid him. ‘Just today I learned that I am too late.’

‘Too late!’ he echoed hollowly. ‘My son, my son! Ah, Malien, I have not borne such evil news since Tar Gaarn fell.’ He swayed in the doorway, the light catching the tears that quivered on his lashes.

Malien, a mature woman of austere beauty, looked up at Tensor. Something about her, other than her hair, reminded Llian of Rael, who had drowned in the escape from Shazmak. She resembled Karan too. He’d heard Malien’s name before - at Shazmak, he supposed. Her features were not unlike Karan’s: pale skin, rather round face, grey-green eyes; though she was older. That brought the image of Karan back again, lying pale and cold between her guards, her would-be executioners. Llian choked.

Malien glanced at him. Her face set rigid, utterly without expression. She put a small hand, with beautiful long tapering fingers, on Tensor’s arm and drew him toward her.

‘Come within,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Evil news needs be shared, though I think we few will prove insufficient for yours.’ She inspected Llian. ‘But what is this?’

Llian started, then he remembered the Aachim habit of referring to the other human species as things, at least until some kind of relationship had been established.

‘It is a treacherous Zain,’ Tensor replied. ‘I may have a use for it, if matters turn out a certain way. I don’t think it will cause any trouble now.’

Someone escorted Llian to a small room at the back of the villa and shut the door, though courteously. There was no light. He lay down on the floor in his wet clothes. That became uncomfortable for the house was cold, so he got up and, trying the door, found it unlocked. He went quietly up the hall. Beyond, in a long, high-ceilinged room, on a precious wool carpet, Tensor stood dripping, telling the tale of the Great Conclave.

‘. . . Shazmak is taken and ruined, Faelamor said, and all our people dead.’

The Aachim were statues, expressionless as slabs of marble in a quarry, so great was their grief. It gave Llian the opportunity to examine them. Aachim, this different, long-lived human species, originally from the world of Aachan but marooned here on Santhenar after the Forbidding. Many were tall, but could have been mistaken for old humans like himself, for the obvious differences, such as the little round ears, the ridge across the top of their skulls, the vestigial tail, were concealed by hair or clothing. Where necessary they hid their yellow or green, oval-pupilled eyes with glasses. The exceptionally long fingers were harder to disguise.

Llian knew most of them from his stay in Shazmak. Blase was tall with dark-grey hair hanging in ringlets about his shoulders and a great arching plough of a nose. Beside him stood two women, tall Iennis with close-cropped hair and a golden ring around her small ear, and Thel, an engineer, compact and powerfully built. Next to her was a slender young man of Llian’s height with a spiky shock of black hair. His luminous yellow eyes had elongated pupils like slots in a door. Llian had not met him before.

Next were the twins Xarah and Shalah, quite small women, the first with yellow hair and a pale, freckled face, her sister a darker version. They were the youngest of all the Aachim. Standing apart from them was a fine-boned man with arms and legs as slender as a child’s. He looked fragile, his face sagging in grief. This was Trule. The news had quite broken him.

Malien broke the silence. ‘How did this come about, Tensor? How could Shazmak have fallen?’

‘They were Ghâshâd!’

Even Malien let out an involuntary cry of fear; the other Aachim wailed. ‘Ghâshâd,’ she repeated, needing to sit down. ‘Where have they come from after a thousand years?’

‘No one knows,’ said Tensor. ‘I only heard the news last night. Yggur found them and made them his servants, the Whelm. But now they have rebelled, or been turned, back to what they were before.’

‘Who showed them the way in?’ Malien’s voice was hard as metal.

‘It is a long tale, Malien. Karan came to Shazmak two months back, with this chronicler who now spies on us.’ He gestured at Llian. ‘Then they fled again with Rael’s aid.’

The mention of Karan’s name brought tears out of Llian’s eyes. He desperately wanted to run back to her, even tried to take a step toward the door, but Tensor’s control over him was as tight as ever.

‘So I’ve heard already,’ said Malien, barely controlling her anger, ‘and that in chasing them you captured Faelamor and sent her prisoner to Shazmak. The most powerful woman on Santhenar, with all the Faellem behind her! How could you do such a senseless thing?’

‘We came upon her, watching as Yggur’s Whelm killed our own people. I was sure that she was in league with them.’

‘A more unlikely alliance can hardly be imagined,’ Malien said in cold fury. ‘I see it now - Faelamor corrupted Shazmak from within, like a termite.’

‘Faelamor said that Karan betrayed us.’

‘I cannot believe that,’ said the young man with the spiky hair.

‘Nor I, Asper,’ said Malien. ‘Where is Karan now, Tensor?’

‘She fell at the Conclave,’ Tensor said sombrely.

‘You abandoned her!’ Llian shouted. ‘She was still alive!’

Malien’s face was anguished, but her voice, when she turned back to Tensor, was frigid. ‘Is this true?’

‘Yes,’ said Tensor, ‘but she could not have lived.’

Malien struck her breast with her fist, then the Aachim made a mourning circle around her, close but not touching, while Tensor stood with his clenched fists hanging at his sides. Finally the circle broke apart.

‘And what did Karan say to Faelamor’s lies?’ hissed Malien.

‘She said that Faelamor seduced Emmant and that when he left Shazmak he showed the Ghâshâd the way in. But to that Faelamor said -’

‘Faelamor said, Faelamor said -’ her voice rose in fury. ‘You preferred her word to Karan’s? Tell me it is not true.’

‘Karan kept the Mirror from us, even deceiving the Syndics.’

‘Bah!’ said Malien. ‘Faelamor is a prodigious liar. To the Faellem, truth is the weakest illusion of all.’

Llian was fascinated by what he was learning about the Aachim, and Faelamor too. All this he would use in his Tale of the Mirror, which he hoped would one day be among the Great Tales.

Llian was a master chronicler and a teller too, the youngest to have achieved both honours in many a century. This was just as well, since he was clumsy and inept at most other things. The Histories were his life, as they were vital to the culture of Santhenar. Every family kept its own records and everyone yearned to be mentioned in the Histories of the world, or even, impossible dream, in one of the Great Tales. To add another to the twenty-two Great Tales was a wonderful dream.

‘There was truth there,’ Tensor went on, rousing Llian from his romantic fancies, ‘though whether it was all truth, maybe not even the Syndics could have told. I realise now that Faelamor is a foe beyond me.’

Malien’s reply cracked like a whip barbed with iron. ‘Your folly that you would not see what every Aachim knows. Our folly for allowing you your way. Why did you send her there, defying all advice? You have destroyed our world and our life, and made us outcasts. You must take a new name. Call yourself til-Pitlis - lower than even Pitlis of accursed memory.’

Pitlis had been one of the greatest Aachim leaders of all time, Llian recalled, and the architect who had designed Tar Gaarn, their greatest city. But he had been proud to the point of folly and would not listen to advice. His foolish alliance with Rulke the Charon led to the fall of Tar Gaarn and the utter ruin of the Aachim. Even now, more than a thousand years later, they had never recovered from it. Llian knew the Tale of Tar Gaarn well.

‘I am dreadfully afraid,’ Tensor said. ‘Look at this!’

He brought a tubular black metal case out of his pocket and slid something from it that uncoiled into a flat sheet of its own accord. The Aachim surged forward to stare at the precious artefact - the Mirror of Aachan. They had not seen it since Yalkara the Charon stole it from them at the fall of Tar Gaarn.

It was made of a single brilliant leaf of black metal. On one side the edge was raised to form a frame, within which was set a flexible material as clear as glass. That enclosed a shiny fluid metal, like jellied quicksilver, which the light caressed with a thousand ripples and swirls of luminosity. The border of the frame was written with finest silver characters, glyphs that even to Llian’s educated eye were unfamiliar. Impressed in the top right-hand corner was a symbol, three golden bubbles grown together, enclosed by touching crescent moons in scarlet, all set within a circle and infilled with fine silver lines twining and intertwining.

Tensor held the Mirror up so that its face caught the lamps. Someone gasped - fragile Trule, Llian thought. The Aachim stared at the Mirror as one. The scarlet moons caught the light and, for an instant, flames burned there. The surface of the Mirror shimmered as if about to burst with light. Llian felt his scalp prickle.

Tensor fingered the symbol. ‘The Mirror is transformed - Yalkara’s work.’

‘I don’t like the look of it,’ Asper said in an awed whisper. ‘What can it mean?’

‘I don’t know. And since you will ask, I have no idea what she did to it.’

‘In which case I wonder why you spent so much time chasing it,’ Malien said acidly.

‘Is this the end?’ interrupted a man standing in the shadows. Clean-shaven, craggy of face and woolly of hair, he was quite the tallest person Llian had ever seen, Aachim or otherwise. ‘Had not even the Conclave an answer?’

It took a long time for Tensor to respond. ‘It is profaned, Hintis,’ he said in accents slow and drear. ‘Faelamor had another shock for me. Surely she planned it.’

‘She is a cunning one,’ said Hintis, shaking his woolly head.

‘Her lieutenant Maigraith suddenly appeared on the balcony,’ said Tensor, his face frozen in remembrance, his lips drawn back from his teeth. ‘How arrogantly she stared down at me. I felt she sneered at my agony. And her eyes were Charon eyes, that I had never thought to see again. I could not bear it. All the world was against me.’

‘You struck her down!’ cried Malien. Her eyes shone as she looked up at him. ‘That was a bold stroke!’

‘Ahhh! If only I had. I was sure that Faelamor and Maigraith conspired against me.’

No one spoke. The eyes of the whole room were on him. Llian crept closer but no one noticed or cared.

‘I had no courage left. I used the hakasha ka-najisska against Nelissa. She is dead and the whole meet laid low.’ Tensor’s huge hands fell against his sides. ‘It was awful. I can still feel it ringing in my skull.’

‘You violated the Great Conclave?’ cried Malien, trembling in her rage. ‘You struck down our defenceless allies with a forbidden spell that has destroyed more of the Aachim than ever it did our enemies? That potency was created for one purpose only, and even there it failed.’

For an instant Llian thought that she was going to strike Tensor, then she whirled and ran out of the room. One by one the others followed, their heads hanging low, until only Tensor remained, still dripping on the carpet.

Llian stood against the wall, staring, ignored. He could hear the other Aachim speaking among themselves, but not what they said. Then they came back, one by one, Malien last of all. Llian might have been part of the furniture.

Malien walked right up to Tensor. ‘My feelings for you are expunged!’ she said bitterly. ‘As though we never met. I have forgiven your follies over and over again, but I cannot allow this . . . corruption! You have profaned everything we ever had or made together. I cleave you from me forever.’

So saying, she took the front of her blouse in her hands and rent it asunder, baring her breasts, then cast the rags of silk on the ground at his feet. She tossed her red hair so that it covered her face, turned and walked slowly away.

Tensor shrieked, a piercing wail of agony. The glass lamps on the walls shattered, tinkling on the floor. He fell down on his face and slowly drew in his legs and arms, balling up the torn silk in one hand. The other Aachim followed Malien, so stiffly that they might have been going to a child’s funeral.

The pressure of Tensor’s will, which had sapped Llian of free choice ever since the breaking of the Conclave, vanished. He was free, if he had the courage. He crept to the door. There was no one in sight, nothing to stop him from just walking out. The front hall, as he edged down it, was dim. The door opened easily under his hand. He slid through and stood on the veranda, looking for the path and the gate through the hedge, wondering how to find his way back to the Great Hall through the foggy dark of an unknown city at war. He hesitated too long.

Click-click! The sound was clear even over the rain on the slates, water running in the gutters, wind in the eaves. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It might have been a sentry at the gate but he did not think so. A shadow congealed out of the gloom. Forward or back? Either choice was doom-laden. The shadow blended into the dark again. Surely he was invisible against the door. He edged backwards.

Something thudded into the door frame. Llian tried to dart back inside but was brought up sharply, caught by the sleeve. He struggled, before realising that the spear had gone through his coat.

He wrenched the sleeve free but before he could move something struck him hard, a pain as sharp as ice seared through his right side and he was pinned against the door. The lights went out inside the villa. Llian cried out, then a warm hand went over his mouth and Malien said, ‘Shut up!’ in his ear and wrenched out the spear. Llian screamed. She hurled him back through the door, banging it shut. Another spear shook the door.

His cry had quite transformed the Aachim, who were at the doors and windows so quickly that he did not see them move, lowering metal shutters and clamping them in place. Malien, still without her blouse, struggled with the long bolts as something struck the door a blow that shook the walls. Another blow forced it partly open against Llian’s shoulder, then Tensor threw himself at the door, it crashed shut and they forced the bolts home. Malien caught Llian under the arms, dragging him back to the main room.

Llian tottered, sweating but freezing cold. Someone held him up while Malien tore off the bloody shirt. Abruptly his legs folded up under him and they laid him out on the floor. Malien’s breast and side were bloody with his blood.

‘Are we secure?’ she yelled.

‘Almost,’ someone shouted.

Tensor ran up. The spear had cut a deep furrow under Llian’s right arm between the seventh and eighth ribs, angled through the muscle and out the back. Blood was pouring down his side.

‘A bad flesh wound, no more,’ Tensor said. ‘Bind it tightly and bring him.’

He disappeared. Llian closed his eyes and drifted away. The wound throbbed and pulsed. Something burned, his eyes flashed open and he beheld Malien sponging him with a steaming cloth. The heat felt good on his skin. He closed his eyes again, barely following the progress of her ministrations: the cleaning of the wound, the ointment, the pads. Cloth ripped in his ear - his shirt - and she bound the wound so tightly that he could not take a deep breath. Then he was lifted up and another shirt put on him - it was soft as silk, one of hers evidently - and wool garments over that.

‘Who are they?’ Llian groaned.

‘The spear had Whelm markings on it,’ she grunted.

Now the doors were being attacked with axes or mattocks. Someone, the very tall Aachim, took Llian up again. He felt himself being carried down a long set of stairs.

‘Burn it,’ he heard Tensor shout.

Llian’s eyes fluttered open. He saw a torch flung into a pile of waste timber and oil-soaked rags, already prepared. Yellow flames licked up.

They continued down the steps, through a trapdoor into a cellar. The trap slammed shut. Through the cellar they went, crammed with barrels and cheeses the size of wheels, then into a wet tunnel. The engineer, Thel, hacked wedges out of a cheese with an axe and passed them round. Tensor had a huge pack on his back and the others the same. He watched everyone through, pulled a lever, the keystones fell and the roof caved in for three or four spans. Earthy air rushed past. When they could see again, nothing was visible but a wall of earth. A few minutes’ walk away they emerged through a featureless door into another cellar then out into an alley like thousands of Thurkad alleys. The rain pelted down.

‘Xarah!’ Tensor said to the young woman with the mustard-coloured hair. ‘You will go to our secret refuge and wait. If any of our people come -’ he put his lips to her ear and Llian did not hear the rest.

Xarah darted a glance at her sister, who stared back at her, frozen-faced. ‘I can’t spare both of you,’ Tensor said. Xarah nodded, embraced her sister, then with a show of reluctance turned away. Shalah watched her out of sight, wiping her eyes.

Llian had come from the Conclave with nothing but the wallet on his belt that held his purse, journal and the notes tor his Tale of the Mirror, which he carried everywhere. Tensor flung a cloak over Llian’s shoulders. Llian pulled it around him with one hand, Asper did the other side for him and pulled the hood down.

They went out into the black of night. The wind still flung rain at them from the south. There were sounds of battle from there too. Then they were off via a secret way, a concealed door in the city wall, well inland from the harbour. But evidently the secret had been discovered, for when there were still two to pass through a voice challenged them.

‘Who goes?’

Leaping forward, Tensor struck the guard down. He barked a command and the Aachim scattered. Llian knew a few moments of jolting agony as the man who carried him sprinted away into the dark. There were shouts and what seemed like the whiz of an arrow past his ear. His bearer slipped in the wet, dropped Llian and landed on top of him. Pain flared, obliterating his consciousness.

* * * *

The rest of the night was torn to fragments with each shred of wakefulness containing only one sensation, the fire in Llian’s ribs. But now it was morning, he could tell without even opening his gummed-together eyelids. His side throbbed. From the pounding he knew that whoever carried him was almost running. Just then the man stopped, thumping Llian down on cold ground.

Llian opened his eyes. The sky was growing light, just visible through interlacing branches and narrow leaves. They were well out of Thurkad. He’d never find Karan now. He sank back into misery, into a dream that was no better.

Thirst roused him. His hand grasped snow. Fingers pinched it up, pressing it into his mouth against a dry tongue. He tried to move his other arm but it hurt too much. His whole side was burning, and his shoulder, and the muscles of his back.

Away to the left the tall Aachim was standing against a tree staring down a rough track. His chest still heaved. Llian did not remember his name.

‘Hey,’ he cried. His voice was feeble, a ghost on the wind. Nonetheless, the man looked across at him before staring back down the path.

Llian tried to sit up but could not. Rolling onto his good side, he levered himself to his knees. Blood trickled down his belly. He forced himself upright, staggered a few steps to the nearest tree and promptly fell down again.

‘Kwoit!’ said the Aachim.

Llian puzzled at this as he prised himself off the ground. Perhaps he meant ‘Quiet!’ Llian slumped against the knobbly base of the tree and rested his chin on his knee. His head was spinning. Where was he? And where were the other Aachim?

In the growing daylight Llian saw that he was just to one side of a steep, rather overgrown path, but the trees closed off the view beyond. The Aachim kept to his watch, motionless as before. A morning breeze whispered in the treetops; light snow began to fall again. Eventually the man seemed satisfied and picked up a big pack.

‘You wook?’ he said to Llian.

Llian frowned, then placed the accent. The man was from the far east, presumably the Aachim city of Stassor. ‘I think I can walk,’ he said at length. ‘If you don’t go too fast.’

The Aachim turned up the slope. ‘Come,’ he said.

Llian stood upright with the aid of the tree, felt for his wallet, which still hung heavily from his belt, and followed. Soon the path became too steep and he had to sit down lest he faint. The Aachim heaved him over a big shoulder and they continued.

Llian’s head whirled again and for the rest of the day he knew only a confusion of jolting, painful travel, intermittent rests on snow that grew ever deeper, and the heavy breath of his porter. Finally the man stopped, propped Llian against a tree and disappeared.

Llian again tried to ease his thirst with handfuls of snow. It made his teeth hurt but the thirst was unabated. He leaned back and endured. He could do nothing more. There was nothing to be seen but snow and wind-writhen pines, and stark outcrops of shiny grey schist feathered with lichen.

It was not so cold, nothing like the journey to Shazmak had been, but Llian’s feet were frigid blocks. His body could not seem to make any warmth. Snow continued to fall. He had no idea where they were. At dusk, which at this time of year was around five o’clock, the Aachim unwrapped a packet and shaved slices off the black lump inside. He shook the slices onto a broad leaf, which he presented to Llian.

‘Thank you, Hintis,’ Llian said. The name had come back to him after a struggle. He must indeed have been in shock to have forgotten a name, for it was part of a master chronicler’s training to remember things spoken or read, perfectly. He gnawed at the black slice. It was a kind of pickled meat, hard, hot and spicy, and before he’d finished the first slice he felt sweat break out on his forehead. Another handful of snow cooled his burning mouth. The meat was delicious. He took a second piece.

‘Where are the others?’ he enquired with his mouth full.

‘Don’t know,’ Hintis replied in his thick accent. Then, evidently to forestall Llian’s next question, ‘They will find us!’ He shaved another edge of the black lump, cut the slices into neat strips and ate them one by one with the point of his knife. For the second course they had chunks of flaky cheese. When the meal was finished Hintis said to Llian, ‘Sleep now, I watch,’ and walked away into the gathering night.

It was too cold to lie down. Llian sat on a pile of sticks, the best chair he could make, leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes. The night was still, overcast and dark. There were no insects to annoy him. The irregularities of his seat were only a minor irritation.

His side flamed. Having dozed most of the day, now he could not sleep. Once there was rustling from the forest some distance away. It might have been Hintis, or just a forest creature. He ached for Karan, but she was lost. He had failed her. The miserable night passed more slowly than any he had ever spent.

* * * *

Yggur did not have enough soldiers to completely encircle Thurkad - it was too large and there were too many ways out, especially through the rugged hills on the north side. But not far away, a company of his finest troops lay watching, waiting for their Whelm scouts to come back, alerted by signals that someone important had slipped through the net.

Finally one of the scouts appeared, a woman swathed in coarse grey robes and baggy hood. The Whelm were slow, clumsy, but for all that, dogged and relentless. Yet they had a weakness, one that Karan had identified in her long pursuit by Idlis. Originating in the frozen south, they were oversensitive to the sun and had to protect their eyes with slitted shields, their skin with all-enveloping robes.

The scout’s name was Yetchah - the woman who had followed Llian from Chanthed last autumn. She was young, more attractive than the other Aachim, her eyes huge but black as midnight. Her coarse black hair hung in irregular hanks, hacked off with a blade. Yetchah saluted the captain of the company, looking very satisfied. He waited for her to speak, knowing that the Whelm could not be hurried.

‘It is our enemy, Tensor,’ she began. ‘The Aachim who fled from the Great Hall of Thurkad the night before this night. He carries a great prize, the Mirror of Aachan itself. There are another eight or nine with him but they do not appear to be heavily armed. To take him would be almost as great a deed as the capture, of Mendark the sorcerer.’ She spat his name through fleshless grey lips.

‘Then let us make a plan. What do you know about these Aachim, Yetchah?’

They huddled close to the fire, talking softly and tracing routes on a map with their fingers. Finally the captain nodded.

‘Signal the other squads. We will try to drive them up this ridge, for there is a precipice on the other side. If we can corner them there, they will have to fight or surrender. And if they fight - then we are five to one, and better armed!’

* * * *

Woken by the sound of voices, Llian saw two more Aachim: tall Iennis with cropped black hair, talking to Hintis, and a smaller woman with red hair - Malien surely.

She turned; it was Malien. She was explaining something to the others with her hands, pointing to the forest, then Hintis nodded and set off in that direction. Iennis began to remove things from her pack. It was just coming dawn.

Malien squatted down beside Llian and looked him over carefully. ‘How are you this morning?’ she asked with a smile that reminded him of Karan.

He was cold and hungry and cranky. His side throbbed. He gave her a pallid smile. ‘Sick,’ he said.

She unfastened the green silk shirt. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, sighting a jade amulet that he wore about his neck.

‘Just a keepsake my mother gave me, before I was sent away from home.’

‘Sent away!’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Were you a troublemaker?’

Llian managed a laugh. ‘The reverse, actually. I was a clever child, and came to the notice of Mendark, who offered to sponsor me at the College of the Histories. I was only twelve.’

‘Chanthed is a long way from Jepperand, where the Zain live,’ she said, sitting back on her haunches and frowning at the amulet.

‘Too long! My parents were poor and it was an opportunity that would never come again. I went to Chanthed sixteen years ago and haven’t been back. I wish I could go home.’

Malien seemed struck by the amulet, though Llian knew its value was only sentimental. ‘There seems to be some kind of a charm on it,’ she said. ‘Is your mother . ..?’

‘No! Faelamor did something to it so that Emmant could trap Karan with it. It’s tainted now, but for all that I could not throw it away.’

‘I’ll have a look at it. I can remove the charm at least.’ Malien slipped it over his head. ‘Now, let’s see to your wound.’ She inspected the bloody bandage and the stains down his side. The bandage was glued to the wound with blood.

‘Does this hurt?’ she asked, touching the wound and several places around it. Llian was hard-pressed not to scream. She frowned again, ginger eyebrows almost meeting above her nose. How like Rael she was!

That brought back a whole cascade of memories. Llian wondered if they were related. She could have been an older sister. He did not know how to tell the age of the Aachim.

Malien sat back on her haunches, pursed her lips and gathered sticks for a fire. Iennis spoke a warning but Malien shook her head and struck sparks into the tinder. The first sparks caught, growing into a little yellow flame, then to a small, almost smokeless fire. A pot began to trail steam.

Washing her hands, she soaked off the bandages and cleaned the wound. ‘You were lucky,’ she said. ‘The spear just opened you up along the side and poked a little hole through here. It’s a good clean wound, a little red but not poisoned.’

‘It hurts like blazes,’ said Llian, sweating.

Malien laughed. ‘Of course it does,’ she said, ‘though many have endured far worse with no complaint.’

‘I can tell you a thousand tales of heroes too stupid to feel pain,’ Llian muttered, looking more like a sulky schoolboy than a great chronicler.

Malien shook red powder onto the gash from a small ebony vial, stoppered it again and then took up a needle and thread.

Llian was alarmed. ‘What are you going to do with that?’

She showed her perfect teeth in a cheerful grin. ‘I’m going to sew you up, chronicler. You can write a new tale. Call it The Thousand and First Hero, or The Boy Who Screamed.’ She laughed.

‘No!’

‘It has to be done.’ She went two steps to the fire and warmed her hands. The needle passed through the flames. She threaded it without looking, tested the point with the tip of a finger, then put it to the flame again, careful of the thread. ‘Though, if you prefer ... I could leave it to Tensor.’

‘No! - I mean, do it then!’

The wound took a lot of stitches and it was not just the pain of it, or the sight, or the anticipation. As she drew the long bloody thread through his flesh it made a most unpleasant raspy ache, a horrible feeling. Slowly the gape drew closed, the skin puckered up into ridges around the black stitches, and Malien put two more stitches into the neat slit in his back where the spear-point had come out and pinned him to the door. Then she bandaged all up and helped him on with his shirt and coat.

‘Maybe I should bind your arm to your side,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘in case you burst the stitches.’

‘No!’ Llian repeated, but she did it anyway.

Just then Tensor appeared with the rest of the Aachim, running up the hill with their heavy packs.

‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘We are pursued.’

The fire was stamped out and covered with snow, Tensor glanced at Llian, nodded and they were off. All that night they ran but they could not shake their pursuers, who hunted them as tirelessly as a pack of hounds. Llian slowed them greatly, whether he ran or was carried. Just after dawn Tensor called a brief halt for breakfast.

‘Who are they?’ cried the woolly-haired Hintis in his difficult accent, gulping water and bread.

‘I very much fear that there are Whelm among them,’ said Tensor, ‘to have tracked us so easily through the dark.’

‘Whelm or Ghâshâd?’ Hintis bared his teeth. ‘Where did they come from after all this time?’

‘That is a question we would all like an answer to,’ said Malien.

‘Then I say we stop and lie in wait for them. Let us tear the truth out of them to avenge Shazmak. It is like a thorn in my breast running before them.’

‘Indeed we will avenge Shazmak,’ said Tensor softly, putting his arm around Hintis. ‘But the master first, then the servants. Would you jeopardise that?’

‘This Zain of yours slows us unbearably,’ scowled Hintis, ‘and there is a stench about him that I can’t abide, something that niggles at me. What say you I dash his brains out against yonder rock? Then we will show the Whelm our legs.’

Llian blanched, but his fate still had some way to run, for Tensor said, ‘You must endure him, Hintis, for I need him. Endure, as we Aachim have always done, for as long as it takes.’

Hintis spat right next to Llian’s boot but said no more. They raced up a steep ridge, that grew ever steeper and fell away to right and left into country so precipitous that it could only be climbed down, and any climber would be defenceless.

‘I don’t like this,’ gasped Malien as they clambered among boulders and fallen trees. ‘They are driving us into a trap. Where does this way lead?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tensor replied. ‘This country is foreign to me.’

‘Well, if they have enough troops they can be right around the bottom of the mountain before we labour to the top.’

‘A few squads spared from the war cannot keep us from our destination,’ said Tensor, swinging the labouring Llian over his shoulder and striking out up the hill faster than ever.

Shortly they reached the top of the ridge, emerging out of forest onto a dome covered in heath and spiky grass, all littered with cracked rock. No refuge here! They ran across the clearing then stopped abruptly. Ahead the ridge was cleft by a gorge hundreds of spans across; beyond which they saw a cliff of black rock four or five spans high, and below that a steep scree slope, the latest of many landslides, running ail the way down to a rushing river. Looking down they realised that their side was much the same. They were trapped.

The Aachim looked at one another. No one spoke.

‘Do we die here, like this?’ said Tensor. ‘We can take many of them with us.’

‘I have no stomach for it,’ Malien replied. ‘I will go over the cliff first and take my chances with the landslide and the river.’

As she spoke, soldiers appeared on the other side of the clearing. Tensor looked down again. ‘Who will volunteer to try it? You, chronicler! Make up for all the trouble you have caused us.’

So saying, he slashed the bandages that bound Llian’s arm to his side.

‘What are you doing?’ Llian cried.

‘Throwing you down the, cliff. If you survive, run across the slope or the landslide will catch you. Ready?’

‘No!’ Llian squeaked, then Tensor held him out and dropped him over.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

Dream Sharing

lian fell like a stone, grazed a buttress of black rock and crashed onto the steep slope below, skidding and sliding down on his backside. A searing pain told him that the wound had torn open again, but soon he was too terrified to feel it, for the slope began to move under him. Scrambling to his feet, he took a step and fell over again. He sprang up, scrabbling on hands and knees, the broken rock crackling all around him.

Suddenly he was sliding down, terribly fast, out of control. He looked up and the whole slope seemed to be moving above him, a flood of rock. What had Tensor said? Run across the slope. Then he understood. The landslide was shaped like a fan - if he could stay upright and move fast enough he might be able to keep out of its path.

He found that to be easier said than done, for as soon as he put any weight on the scree it slipped under his feet, unbalancing him and throwing him down. Time after time he came to his feet only to fall again. Once he rolled over and kept rolling, falling faster and faster, pebbles smacking him on arms and face and hands, knowing that beginning to move above him were bigger rocks that would grind him to pulp.

Then Llian’s feet found a purchase, he stayed upright and found that it was much easier to keep his balance if he ran. So Llian ran until the stitch in his left side hurt almost as much as the spear wound in his right, until blood from the wound ran down to soak the waistband of his trousers. A rock the size of a grapefruit smacked him behind the knee, collapsing it and sending him skidding down the slope. Forcing himself up, Llian saw a boulder bouncing right at him. He threw himself flat, the rock went over his head, then Llian scrambled out of the way of the ones following, put his head down and ran as fast as he had ever run.

The landslide was now a, smashing, crackling roar in his ears, a wild animal thing at his heels. Ahead Llian saw a little cusp between this slide and the next one further round the hill. He dived for it, landed just short on his injured side, shrieked soundlessly and clawed towards it on his hands and knees. The landslide battered at his legs, trying to drag him under. He swam over the rubble, gained the cusp and threw himself head first over it onto the next scree slope. Llian rested on that dangerous perch for a moment, afraid that it would also begin to move, then when it did not he picked his painful way down to the river.

Behind him the other Aachim leapt over the cliff, one after another, plunging feet first into the river of rubble and coming up running, roaring with glee amid the danger. They made it look so easy, all save the third-last, the delicate, sad-eyed Trule. He landed awkwardly and his ankle went right over, breaking with a crack that Llian heard over the roar of the landslide. The pack pulled Trule down, he fell into the slide and did not get up again. After that came Malien, and last of all Tensor, running the slide expertly all the way to the bottom and skidding to a stop beside Llian.

‘Trule?’ he asked.

Malien had gone as close to the end of the landslide as she dared. ‘Alas, he is dead,’ she said softly. Tensor bowed his head. They all did, for a minute: yet another Aachim fallen.

The landslide rattled into silence. Heads appeared over the top of the cliff. Half of the rubble was gone into the river now, leaving a steep bare slope below the cliff, too dangerous for their hunters to do what they had done, even had the Aachim not been waiting at the bottom.

Tensor turned and approached the river. They had gained half an hour at the most.

* * * *

Their pursuers were cunning and hard as iron. They followed all through the day and the succeeding night, never getting close enough to attack, but never being far away either. Once Llian actually saw them, a dark band at the bottom of the range he was just cresting. The snow had stopped though it still lay calf-deep on the hill, and it was impossible to move without leaving tracks. But that was all he saw, for the torn-open wound became infected and he spent the day in a fever where all he remembered was pounding, pounding and the anxious faces of Malien and Asper staring down as they did things to his side.

By late in the afternoon of the following day the Aachim had crossed the range of hills and passed into the tall trees of Elludore Forest. Before the trees closed off their view they spotted their foes again, seemingly closer than before.

‘Are they more tireless than we are?’ Tensor cried, his dark face darkening. ‘Away!’

One Aachim threw Llian to another, who hurled him over his shoulder and they ran. Here the snow was less, just a veneer of white, and by nightfall it became patchy then disappeared completely. They continued all that night, stopping neither to rest nor even to eat, walking up streams and across rocky outcrops, doing everything they could to throw the enemy off. The following morning, to Llian’s terror, they swung across a steep gully on a vine.

‘Never fear, chronicler,’ sang out Malien with a merry laugh. ‘You go over the easy way.’

So saying, she seized the end of the vine and bound him to it, hand and foot. Another Aachim drew him back then pushed, a great buffet in the back. Llian swung out across the ravine, but unfortunately with not quite enough force to be caught at the other side.

He let out an undignified squeal as the pendulum swung back and forth finally coming to rest, leaving him suspended over the creek. Below were small pools and threads of water, a long way down, surrounded by boulders big as horses. It wasn’t really that far, but a fall would have broken every bone nonetheless. The Aachim roared with laughter, even Tensor, and they hurried to get a line on him in case the enemy were still close behind.

‘Ah, it does me good to hear you squawk, chronicler,’ said Tensor, wiping his eyes as he caught him and swiftly unlashed the cords.

They stopped at dawn for a hasty breakfast of shaved meat, hard bread, flaky cheese, dried fruit and water, then pressed on in the same way.

* * * *

By nightfall even the Aachim were exhausted and had to rest. Tensor sent the watches far out into the forest. They were changed every few hours, but they saw nothing and heard nothing, so a small fire was dared for their comfort and to heat water.

Another day and another night they marched, and the morning after, when they were relatively certain that they had lost their pursuers, they stopped by a rushing river to eat, to bathe and to sleep. When the bandages were removed Llian found that his wound was beginning to heal, though there was still an angry red welt along the ridge of stitches, and a thicker lump where they had been redone while he was in the fever. Asper, who was a healer, bathed the wound and dabbed more of the red powder on but did not bandage it. Llian was too tired to care. He washed his feet and hands, gulped down hot tea and bread, fell on his couch of bracken and slept.

But he did not sleep soundly. His dreams were pregnant with foreboding, a nameless, bodiless dread of approaching cataclysm. He slipped into blessed dreamless sleep for a while, but that twisted into another nightmare where he dreamed of Rael in his room in Shazmak, playing a threnody to someone that Llian could not see. The scene shifted and Llian realised that Rael was playing to Malien, a warning about Tensor, and about Llian himself. Llian was an engine, the dream warned, a bringer of doom to the Aachim. Then Rael was dead, drowned white, but still he played, and when he sang green water and clotted weed came out of his mouth. That dream faded, another horror jerked him awake and Llian was too afraid to sleep again.

Several of his companions were wrapped in their cloaks, asleep. Llian took a mug of tea, strong and bitter from long stewing, and a crust, then wandered down to look at the river. As he picked his way along the bank through tall trees, some undercut and fallen to expose their twisted roots, the sounds of two people in a fierce argument came to him.

‘- never agree!’ was said with vehemence. It sounded like Malien.

‘Then what would you do? Do not reject my plan unless you can put a better.’ The rumble was unmistakeable - Tensor!

‘I would go back to Stassor, whence I came. Would that I never allowed you to drag me from my home.’

‘Then go, though I will miss you sorely.’

‘Ha!’ she cried. ‘Our partnership failed long ago; I have cast you off. Never did I mean a tithe to you of what your own schemes and follies did. I disgraced my family and my house when I bonded myself to you. How Elienor would have wept to see the way her line is ending.’

‘Elienor would weep,’ said Tensor in brittle tones, ‘and then she would get up and strike back to preserve her family and her people.’

‘Ahhhh!’ she cried. ‘Get away from me. Never approach me again!’ She flung herself down upon a boulder, wrapping her arms around the smooth rock and pressing herself against it. Tensor stalked away.

Llian stood among the trees, watching Malien. She did not move. He crept down across the gravel, trying not to make a sound, but when he was a few steps away a pebble slipped underfoot and he fell on his knees with a grunt of pain.

‘What do you want, teller?’ she asked, without looking up.

He did not know what to say. ‘Who was Elienor?’ he asked eventually.

Malien sat up. ‘You, a master chronicler, ask me that?’

‘Even our own Histories have many gaps. But where I studied, at Chanthed, there was nothing about the Aachim for the last thousand years.’

‘Elienor,’ she said softly, and her eyes took on a faraway look as she reflected on that ancient tale. ‘She lived and died long before that, before my ancestors came to your world. She was the founder of my line, and Karan’s too.’ She stared at his face. ‘We both carry . . . carried her name.’

Her words struck him like a spear in the chest. His wound sang out as though that spear carved him afresh. Tears like stars of frost formed in his eyes but did not fall.

‘Karan is dead? How did you learn of it?’

‘From what Tensor said it seemed . . .’ Malien broke off at the look on his face. ‘Hold! I was not there, but you were. You saw as much as he did. You did not see her dying?’

‘No! When I held Karan I saw her eyes move under their lids but she lay on the floor as still as death, and she was icy cold.’

‘That is what the potency does, but most of your kind would survive it if they were healthy. It hurts us Aachim more than it does the folk of Santhenar. That is one of the reasons why it is prohibited. Karan only being part-Aachim, it might affect her badly or only a little.’ She was struck by a curious thought. ‘How is it that you were able to see?’ There was a ragged edge to her voice.

‘I don’t know. When Tensor used the potency, the pain was awful. I went blind, but only for a second. I felt something close in my head, like a gate. Then it opened again, the pain had disappeared and I could see.’

She took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes, long and carefully. When she released him the edge was gone. ‘Take heart. Though Karan has Aachim blood, I do not think it would have killed her.’

Little comfort there, but better than none. ‘Tell me about this potency of Tensor’s,’ he said. ‘Why is it prohibited?’

‘We have used it just twice before. Each time it did us more harm than our enemy.’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘We made it after the Forbidding closed the way back to our own world. When we realised that Aachan was lost to us, we rebelled against being the slaves of the Charon. Trying to make a weapon that would be proof against them, we developed a mind-blasting spell, a “potency”.

‘The first time it was used was a disaster. Ten of us (I say “us”, chronicler, though you realise it was more than two thousand years before I was born) waylaid Rulke. He would not accede to our just demands, so one of us blasted him with the potency while the others stood back with their own spells, just in case. Rulke was badly hurt, but we had not reckoned with our own sensitivity to the spell. It triggered all the other potencies, setting off an uncontrollable reaction that left four of us dead and the others brain-stormed and helpless. Rulke recovered before we did and made a brutal example of the survivors.

‘But we are slow learners, Llian. We devised a better potency but by then Rulke had a defence, his Gift of Rulke that he gave to your Zain ancestors. The Gift reflected the potency back on those who made it. That was much later, at the beginning of the Clysm. Many of us died that day and the potency was outlawed. And even now some of us don’t like the Zain overmuch,’ she said, but smiled to show that she did not hold to the prejudice.

A sound like a horn came faint on the wind. Malien jumped up and began to gather things into a leather bag.

‘Elienor!’ he said.

‘No time for that tale, or any of the tales about her,’ she said, pulling the drawstring tight.

‘Who was she? At least tell me that, as we walk.’ He used a little of his voice on her, that seemingly magical ability of great tellers to move their audience - in this case, to make her want to tell him what he wanted to know. Malien gave him an amused look, but answered anyway.

‘She was the one who gave the warning when the Charon appeared out of the void and took our world away from us. She rose up from the slaughter, the only one of her family to survive. Were we more like her, the Charon would have been cast back into the void and we would be masters of beloved Aachan still.’

They were scrambling up through the tangled roots of fallen trees. ‘She struck Rulke a killing blow, one no one else could have survived. No other Aachim ever laid weapon on him, or even dared, yet Elienor was the smallest and most timid among us. How we have declined!’

‘How did the Charon take Aachan? How did they come to be in the void, and how did they get out of it again? The Histories are silent on such matters.’

‘Another time, chronicler. Each of your questions would take a night to answer.’

He subsided, greatly dissatisfied.

‘Why do you not sleep?’ she asked as they neared the camp. ‘The march just completed is nothing to what lies ahead.’

‘My dreams were terrible. I was afraid to go back to sleep.’

‘What dreams?’

‘Awful dreams. I can’t remember anything about them.’ A fragment came to him. ‘Except…’

Malien sprang up an outcropping of sandstone that was shoulder high, and onto the terrace above. The outcrop, crusted with lichen, moss-covered at the bottom, was like a wall across Llian’s path. There was a seep at the base of the rock. Water began to puddle around his feet. He scrabbled at the sandstone.

Malien reached down lazily to pull him up by his good arm. She smiled as though she liked him.

‘Except?’ she said.

‘The only concrete thing I remember about my dream is that you were in it.’

The smile disappeared. ‘I, in your dream?’

‘Yes, and Rael too.’

Malien frowned, looked at him slantwise from her grey-green eyes, then strode ahead. No further word was spoken. Soon they reached the camp and found a smokeless fire and a hot drink but, whatever the horn signal had been, no crisis.

Llian slept the afternoon away and did not dream. That night they were off again and he had no chance to question Malien further.

* * * *

Their pursuers had drawn near again, so they spent two days hiding in the forests of the northern part of Iagador. Then fortune favoured them with foul weather, wind and later sleet and driving rain. Under its cover they fled north, walking night and day (almost at running pace for Llian) through the roughest country they could find. They waded waist-deep through freezing swamps and shallow rivers, clambered up rocky gullies and down jagged cliffs, fought their way through thorn forests. By the end they had reached uninhabited places where the mountains ran right down to the sea.

One day they came to a foaming torrent, a cataract set in a deep gorge like the mighty River Garr of Shazmak, only smaller. Crossing that was a hazard which took all day. Afterwards Tensor climbed to the highest point of the ridge, looking down to the coast. There was a sizeable town at the mouth of the river far below. North of the town the mountains drew back from the sea again.

‘This river must be the Gannel,’ he said, ‘and that is the town of Ganport. Good progress, in this country, but we must do better.’

* * * *

They moved in single file, winding up the mountain track, the last of them dragging a branch to smear their prints into the mud. It was raining again and it grew heavier as they neared the top, mixed in with drifting bands of mist.

At the summit the rain stopped momentarily but they looked up through the treetops to leaden skies, a deluge waiting to burst down on them. The trees here were twisted by the gales into eerie shapes and the wind sang in their leafless branches. The ground was broken by arching oval outcrops of grey granite. They splashed out of the trees into an alpine bog meadow, where the moss grew in mounds like giant cushions among the mushroom shapes of the granite, and the water underfoot was the colour of beer.

Asper stopped suddenly. The most cheerful of the Aachim, even he looked depressed. ‘I feel like I’m running on a treadmill to nowhere,’ he said, wringing the water out of his hat.

No one answered. After a fortnight on the road, their spirits were as sodden as their clothes. Even Tensor was worn out from the slog up the mountain in the mud. Llian fell down on a moss cushion.

‘I say we rest here,’ said Malien, ‘unless you want to kill your prisoner, and the rest of us too. We cannot run forever.’ She jerked a thumb at Hintis.

Hintis was suffering worse than the others, as if his extreme height robbed him of stamina. He sat with head hanging between his legs, breathing in quick ragged breaths that gurgled in his chest. His frizzy hair hung lank. Tensor looked impatient, but Hintis rolled over and lay on his side in the slush. ‘My chest burns,’ he said hoarsely.

‘We’ll camp here,’ Tensor replied.

They found a campsite back between the trees, where a great curving plate of granite sat like the cap of a mushroom on three smaller outcrops. The space underneath provided shelter of a sort, though the ground was wet and the sleety wind blew right through. Malien dosed Hintis and the rest of them with medicines from her pack. There was enough dry stuff caught in the crevices of the rock to kindle a fire, but though they built it up until the rock shadows danced like dervishes, Llian could not get warm.

He dozed on the ground, wrapped in cloak and blanket. His dreams were haunted by ghostly voices calling out to him, holding out welcome cups and begging him to drink, but each time he reached for the fragrant liqueur it vanished in his hand. Later he dreamed he was back in Thurkad, dragging a severed leg along the gutter, begging for help, but no one would aid him.

Llian woke thrashing. The fire had died down and the Aachim were sleeping, all but the sentries out in the forest. What was that? Something had fluttered just at the edge of his vision. It was gone. No, there it was again, a white thing flitting from boulder to boulder. The hairs rose on his arm, but as soon as he looked directly at it, it vanished.

It was a waste of time trying to sleep - he was wide awake now, cold and depressed. Llian tugged soggy boots onto numb feet, dipped a mug of stewed prune tea from the pot and wandered away from the firelight toward the moss meadow. The clouds had thinned, outlining the full moon. It was yellow, barely any of the dark side showing, and gave just enough light to guide his way among the boulders. The mountain air had the faintest whiff of brandy.

He sat on a rock, sipping the sweet tea, the mist thickening his eyelashes, and took stock of his miserable life. He had lost Karan, Tensor was dragging him to a horrible doom and he was helpless to do anything about it. Through the racing clouds he glimpsed the scorpion nebula, a red-shadowed ill-omen that had first appeared the night of his Tale of the Forbidding last summer. He shuddered, then cloud covered it again.

Once more something flickered at the edge of vision. That was strange, for it was totally dark now. At the same moment he was prodded in the back and he leapt off his boulder, stifling a gasp.

‘Calm yourself, chronicler,’ came Malien’s amused voice. ‘Our enemies are far away.’

‘Your enemies!’ he said bitterly. ‘Mine are all around me, taking me away from everything I ever cared about, to use me and throw away the rubbish afterwards.’

‘Think of it as an opportunity to see what no other chronicler has ever seen and tell tales that no one has ever told.’

‘I did, before I realised that I am a hopeless, useless failure, and better off dead.’

‘Pah! Of all human emotions, self-pity is the most contemptible. Get up and make something of yourself.’

Her words were like being whipped across the face. Llian’s rage flared, such that he could have ripped boulders out of the ground. He struck back, intending to hurt. ‘Then I am contemptible,’ he said softly. ‘But not so contemptible as you Aachim, whining and wringing your hands about lost Shazmak and every other setback. Look at your own Histories! You are attracted to hubris like maggots to dung. You give power to fools and then follow them blindly into the abyss, because you are too proud and too afraid to cast them aside and think for yourselves. And now you are doing it again. Only days ago you wailed and cursed Tensor for his folly, yet already you are closer to him than a leech on a dog’s balls.’ He stopped suddenly, shocked at his crudity.

‘Yes,’ said Malien, ‘we have two fatal flaws and you’ve put your finger on them. We are overly proud, but our courage falls short at the sticking place. That is why we lost Aachan. That is why we fail, in the face of an enemy who never gives up.’

‘Well, I won’t give up either. I will make the tale my life again. Nothing will stand in my way. Nothing else matters anymore.’

‘Never say that nothing ever matters, chronicler. Your people . . .’

‘Sort out your own affairs before you lecture me! Nothing matters now but the tale.’ He brushed past her, splashing through the bog, trampling the delicate cushion mosses, into the black and ghost-ridden night.

Malien watched him go, shivering, uneasy. Still, what harm could a chronicler do? It was the end of her watch, so she went back to the fire, the hot prune tea and her blankets.

Eventually Llian’s rage died down but the resolve only grew stronger. He had drifted too long. He would use this opportunity, that other tellers would have killed for, and do whatever was necessary to follow the tale.

A spectral something fluttered on the edge of his vision again and suddenly he realised what it was. This was Tisane Mountain - there had once been a monastery here, famous for its waters and its brandies, filtered through purest moss peat. But the plague had come to Tisane, hideous eruptions of black boils that burst with a vile stench, slaying half of the brothers and sisters within a week. The rest took a vote, locked themselves in the distillery, even the ones who voted against, and burned it to the ground with barrels of their finest brandies. The place reeked of spirits for weeks afterwards and had been haunted ever since.

A ghost drifted up to him, a pretty young woman in tunic and cap. She held out a goblet; the tang of cherry brandy was overwhelming. Llian reached out for the cup and suddenly the place swarmed with lonely spectres, each whispering the delights of its own liquor, desperate to attract his attention. They had not had a customer in centuries. But they were shades, while blood ran through his flesh. Each time he touched a cup it vanished and the spectre with it. The miraculous cordials were gone forever; their customers as well. The air reeked of spirits and regret.

Harmless ghosts! Llian thought, sighing for the brandy. He turned, stepping light-footed through the shades and the mosses back to the camp. He felt that he had found himself again.

* * * *

After that they literally ran for a day and a half. At the end of it they stopped for three or four hours to rest, to sleep briefly, to argue about the next course, but Llian was too weary to listen. As soon as they stopped he fell to the ground, clutching his heavy cloak around him, and slept where he lay. Then they were off again, running and running until it seemed that he had never done anything else, had never felt anything but the thud of blistered feet against hard ground, the shock travelling all the way up to the back of his head, had never taken any breath that was not a gasp and a burning in his good side, and a throbbing in his injured side even though it was healing well. Llian grew stronger every day but he was never anything but exhausted, for as time went on the Aachim seemed to lengthen their stride, taking a grim pleasure in the flight and the pain.

The weather was still miserable: rain, wind and sleet, and at first they made slow progress. Some days went by with only four or five leagues added to their tally, no more than an army might have achieved on a good road, though not the rugged way they went. But by the time the wind turned around to the west, bringing warm clear skies with it, their pursuers were far behind. Perhaps there was no longer any pursuit, and in the tall forests at the foot of the mountains there were days when they made twelve leagues, and once, fifteen. If it had not been for Llian they would have gone much further.

This day they held a conference - whether to go back into the mountains to hide or head east across the sea to Lauralin. Tensor did not speak at all yet it seemed that he had a destination in mind. In the end they did neither, just kept on.

In their race north, Llian had no time for anything but running and sleeping, and at the end of each day he fell onto his bed of bracken or boughs and slept - too drained even to dream. Only once did he have that dream again, or at least wake knowing that he had. It was on the night before they were to reach Siftah, a fishing town on the north-eastern tip of Meldorin. Where was there to go after that but across the sea?

They had come down to the coast again, and for want of a better camp had installed themselves under the overhang of a low cliff, too shallow to be called a cave, which was open on either side to the rush and ebb of the wind from the sea. The damp wind made it unpleasant, though it was not really cold - not to someone who had walked to Shazmak in the winter.

A screen was woven of dry sticks and hung in front of the fire, enough to conceal a small blaze from view. Llian sat motionless inside the niche, while Aachim prepared food, and other Aachim made camp. Malien inspected his wound for the last time, for it had healed to a scabby pucker along his side.

Llian pulled up his shirt, once Malien’s silk shirt, now sadly stained and coming apart at the shoulders.

‘And does it yet trouble you?’ she asked, still squatting before him.

‘A little, when I stretch or move suddenly; and after a long day.’

‘That is all? Then you are fully healed. My ancient bones feel as much every day.’

‘Ancient! I thought that you Aachim lived practically forever. I know that Tensor has.’

‘Some do, if accident or disease don’t prevent it,’ Malien said.

‘How does that come about?’ Llian wondered.

‘I don’t know. We just live for a long time.’

‘As do the Charon and the Faellem,’ Llian reflected, ‘and those masters of the Secret Art, like Mendark and Yggur, who have learned how to lengthen the brief lives of us old humans.’

‘Just so. But the span of my line was never that long and I have passed my midpoint. I can’t say that it troubles me.’

‘How old are you then?’

She stared into his eyes so intensely that even Llian became embarrassed and looked away.

‘In my culture, as in your own, that is an ill-mannered question. Even from a prying chronicler.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Llian, mortified to realise that his cheeks were hot.

‘But I will answer it, against a time when we Aachim may exist only in tales such as yours. I have lived more than two of your life spans, and if I will it, and fortune allows, I might live another two. That is enough.’

‘Have you children?’

She looked up at the waning moon. ‘Only one, so far. I doubt that I have the heart for another.’

‘I would have thought -’ Llian broke off.

‘Is there no end to your curiosity?’ she said, but she was smiling. ‘We Aachim are different to old humans in many ways, Llian. In fertility too. It is not continuous, as in the women of your species. I have had three brief fertile periods in my life, the last being thirty years ago. I may have one or two more. Ah, my son!’

‘What happened to him?’

‘I should ask you that. You saw him die.’

‘Rael!’ The back of his neck came out in goosepimples.

‘Rael,’ she echoed.

‘H-he was helping us escape from Shazmak.’ Llian had to force himself to speak without stammering. ‘He delayed, cutting the rudder of the other boat so that they could not follow us. Then, when he tried to get aboard, the current was too strong. It pulled him under.’

‘He was a powerful swimmer,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was his way of escape from an impossible dilemma.’

‘I remember ... just before we fled. He looked so sad. Alas! he said to Karan. You have your other house and your unspoken purpose to comfort you. For me there will be no return.’

‘Karan cared for him so much.’

‘Theirs was a great friendship.’

‘Rael was the noblest person I ever met,’ said Llian.

‘Ahh! No greater sorrow! I cannot talk about him to you. Come with me.’

He followed her over the rocks down to the water. She stood in the cold wind at the sea’s edge, where the crashing waves meant that there was no chance of being overheard.

‘Tell me about the dream,’ said Malien. ‘Have you had it since?’

‘Just once. It was a very brief dream: Rael was in his room in Shazmak. He played music for me there one day. But in the dream he was playing a melancholy song to someone I could not see. Then it changed, to a terrible warning, I saw you there and -’

‘That is my dream!’ said Malien, covering her face.

‘Your dream?’

Malien’s hand slid down. She went all remote, closed up, and Llian thought he must have touched on a taboo. Then evidently she realised that some explanation was owed. ‘I can hardly speak of it to an outsider,’ she said in a whisper. ‘It is one of our greatest intimacies.’ She looked him in the eyes and hers were wet.

‘Sometimes we Aachim, if we have been very close, can still share communion for a while after one has died. But how can it have come to you?’

‘He was playing to you,’ Llian said. ‘A warning. You were as still as death; I think that you were weeping. That is all. It was the same both times.’

She shivered; her face froze. ‘Dream sharing! Doom! Doom!’ she whispered, then walked away up the shore.

He did not see her again that day and she did not speak to him at all for a week, though several times he caught her staring at him as if she sought some sign in his face. And he knew what she was looking for, the stigmata that would show that the Gift of Rulke was developing in him. He grew deadly afraid, and knew just how fatally he had erred when he hesitated in the doorway back at Tensor’s villa in Thurkad. What would they do to one who bore those marks, in this of all times?

<<Contents>>

* * * *

In The Wharf City

t was the first day of endre, mid-winter week, by tradition a cursed, haunted, ill-omened time when sensible citizens stayed indoors and made no decisions. Only three days to go till hythe, mid-winter day, the ugliest day of the year.

Mendark and his company hid back in the tunnel for some hours, until Tallia, after much searching, found a labourer on a nearby wharf to tell them what had happened. Their boat, in fact every stray boat in Thurkad, had been impounded by Yggur’s troops during the night. They had left their departure a day too late.

Mendark could scarcely speak, so great was his rage and fear. ‘This came about because I did my duty,’ he choked. ‘I’ll have to beg the Hlune to take us in. What a humiliation! What if they refuse me?’

He paced back up the tunnel, splashing heedlessly through the stinking water, then came running back to where Tallia stood talking to Torgsted. ‘Tallia, I must have a boat tonight. Get to work and find one. Torgsted!’ He lowered his voice. ‘You have always been loyal - what I must ask you now will test you to your limits. Keep an eye on Thyllan for me. If it comes to a break, are you prepared to go with him and keep watch for me? Pretend to betray me? I know how much I am asking.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Torgsted said vehemently. ‘However long it takes.’

Mendark shook his hand, then turned to the rest of the group, who were perched uncomfortably on a slime-hung buttress some distance away. ‘Well, it can’t be put off. Come on.’

They followed him into the massive wharf structure. It was as big as a city, three and four and sometimes even five storeys high, and nowhere less than a thousand paces wide. The labyrinth of the wharf city stretched around the shore of Thurkad for more than a league, slowly sinking into the mud of the harbour, forever built anew on top of the old.

It was near midday. Mendark led them into a maze of huge, tarred timbers, most divided into wood-walled warehouses and cells, and all dripping from top to bottom. Almost immediately they were accosted by two of the lanky Hlune, the toga-clad, sharp-featured, mud-complexioned people who ruled the city within the wharves and controlled everything that was loaded or unloaded there.

The first Hlune, distinguishable as a woman by the absence of pigtailed chin-whiskers, gripped Mendark’s arm. He stopped at once. She looked gravely discomfited, shaking her head from side to side and making a clucking sound like a hen on a nest. Hlune speech was punctuated with a variety of such sounds, which made it hard to follow.

Mendark looked her in the eye, speaking in a richly resonant voice, unlike his normal soporific tones. ‘Honourable Hlune! In the name of our long alliance and mutual interests, I beg refuge for myself and my people. Just one day.’

She stared at the group, still clucking, and her eyes grew wide in alarm. Then she let out her breath in a plosive pop. ‘Refuge, now? No, no, no!’

She swung around to the man, who was clicking his teeth together nervously. His eyes darted over Mendark’s shoulder. ‘Come quickly,’ he cried, grabbing Mendark’s arm and dragging him into a bare room, just a cube of black timber. ‘Hurry, all of you!’

The walls were made up of slabs that barely touched, the wood crumbling with rot. The floor slabs were awash with the rising tide. Dark rainwater leached through the tarred ceiling onto their heads.

‘Stay here,’ the man hissed when they were all inside. ‘Do not open the door!’

‘Put this on, Magister,’ the woman said, handing him her hood. ‘Come with me.’ Mendark pulled it down and followed her out.

Peering through the cracks in the wall, Lilis saw Mendark hurried off by the woman while the man stood guard outside. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked Tallia.

‘We’re in bad trouble, child,’ Tallia replied. ‘Yggur has shut the city up tight; we don’t have any way of escape. Taking us in can only make things worse for them.’

Lilis pressed her new pack to her chest, afraid that it would be confiscated. ‘What will they do?’

‘They may refuse us. Mendark can be very persuasive though, and he has done business with the Hlune for a long time. Let’s wait and see.’

Finally Mendark was led back. ‘Phew! I was quite worried there. They have agreed to give us refuge for a day. That should be enough.’

Tallia thought he was putting on a very brave face, but she said nothing. They were taken to a better room, a chamber high up, and for the Hlune so luxuriously appointed as to have beds, though they were dreadfully dank. When the escort was gone again, and the door shut, they held council.

‘The Hlune offer us sanctuary, not exile,’ said Mendark. ‘We must make what plans we can. What is your view, Malkin?’

Malkin was the leader of the group of merchants and lawyers, but after falling in the sewer the man was far gone in misery. His fellows, though now they felt nothing for him but contempt, deferred to him and kept their silence.

Thyllan was not shy. He flung out an arm at Mendark, his face red with wrath. ‘How many times did I warn you of this man? He was Magister for a thousand years and look at the result! The treasury is bankrupt, our armies debauched and Thurkad lies crushed beneath Yggur’s boot. Now the Conclave, our most precious tradition, is violated by his friend, Tensor.’

Tallia made to interrupt the theatrics, but Mendark closed his hand on her arm. ‘Let him speak,’ he said.

Thyllan continued in a booming voice, more suited to addressing a rally than their shabby little group. ‘Hear me! Out of ruin I see a ray of hope, if we have the courage to seize it. The past is dead, but I see the way into the future. The Council holds secrets that have not been used for a thousand years - the Proscribed Experiments!’

‘The Council swore never to use those powers again,’ cried Mendark, looking alarmed.

‘The oaths of that Council are not binding. The past cannot fetter the present, for no one can see the perils of the future, or the needs. We must use what secrets the Council preserved against such a crisis. We have nothing else.’

Tallia was watching the rest of the room, trying to gauge their reactions. It was going badly. Just as Thyllan had swayed the Conclave, making Mendark appear old, weak and selfish, so did he here. He was a dangerous opponent, and if he convinced the guard they would be in deadly danger.

‘The old Council is broken!’ Thyllan roared, striking the wall with his fist. ‘We must cast out the traitor and forge a new one. And we must have a place of safety from which to build our strength. Somewhere nearby, difficult to conquer, easy to defend. We will go to Nilkerrand, across the sea.’

The merchants stirred. Whatever their failings, they were not fools. Their interests were the interests of Thyllan; their lusts his lusts. Even Tallia felt a twinge of admiration for the man, who could rise from the bed where he lay witless and, in less than a day, without a single retainer and in wretched sanctuary under the nose of his foes, plot the conquest of his world.

‘Nilkerrand!’ Mendark said. ‘And you call me a fool.’

Berenet twirled his mustachioes, staring at Thyllan with an enigmatic smile. Impossible to tell what he was thinking.

‘But first,’ Thyllan cried out, ‘we must discard the dross from the old world - the treacherous Mendark, who shall be known as the Old Fool. What say you?’

‘This is not legal,’ Mendark said weakly. ‘The Council may not be dissolved while its purpose remains incomplete. This pathetic remnant cannot even empower you as Warlord. But what do you know of honour, of our ancient codes? The only law -’

‘Law has failed,’ Thyllan interrupted. ‘We must draw strength from our own ideals to remake the world, and finally, the laws that bring us harmony.’

‘Follow him at your peril,’ Mendark said to the group. ‘His reign will be as brief as snow in summer. Support this folly and you set back our cause -’

‘The old fool!’ Thyllan sneered. ‘The one who was Magister for an age, the age that Thurkad fell. The one who did nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing to offer but the delusions of the past. Better to try and fail than to die knowing we were afraid to try.’ His voice was ripe with disgust, so that even Mendark’s personal guard looked troubled. ‘Cast him out!’

The vote was tallied, and the merchants took side with Thyllan. Tallia and Berenet abstained from the farce but Mendark’s guard turned their coats, all except Osseion. Torgsted joined the rebels, though Tallia hoped that he followed Mendark’s plan. So it was settled. Illegal though it was, the Council was dissolved and reformed, with Thyllan as Magister.

Mendark turned to his little group, who were huddled together, shocked at the sudden reversal. He was remarkably calm. ‘Well, nothing more we can do. You have no objection if we go our own way?’ he asked Thyllan.

‘Begone!’ said Thyllan, ‘or feel my wrath!’

Mendark smiled, and Tallia suddenly realised that he was up to something. Berenet and she took up one of the chests and Osseion the other.

‘Put them down!’ Thyllan ordered. ‘Guards -’

Mendark raised a clenched fist. Thyllan went pale and clutched his head, unable to complete the sentence. ‘Better get back your strength before you take me on,’ Mendark said grimly.

He led his little group - Berenet and Osseion, Tallia and Lilis - outside. Thyllan’s curses followed them. ‘That went better than I had hoped,’ Mendark said with a chuckle, as soon as the door closed behind them.

‘You intended to break with them?’ asked Tallia.

‘Safeguarding that lot was like carrying a corpse on my shoulders,’ he said, dripping scorn. ‘Let them go to Nilkerrand! I’ve got other things to worry about.’

‘The Council!’ said Tallia.

His good humour vanished. ‘What am I to do? Orstand can never be replaced. I can’t do it on my own.’

‘You have me,’ said Berenet, a pleading tone in his voice. ‘We can form a new Council.’

Tallia snorted. Mendark glared at her and tried to smooth things over. ‘The Council is more than a title. The experience lost these last few days can’t be replaced in five hundred years -’

Berenet turned away abruptly. As he did so a Hlune guard came marching up. She listened silently as Mendark explained what had happened, her mouth curving further down with each word.

‘What you want?’ she snapped at the end.

‘I beg sanctuary anew for myself and my companions,’ he said patiently.

The woman pointed back into the room they had just left. ‘There is your sanctuary,’ she said.

‘No good,’ said Mendark. ‘They are my enemies now.’

‘You begged us to take them in. You must stay with them.’

‘I cannot!’

Her brown eyes flashed sparks at him. She stamped her flat foot on the wet deck, making a fishy slap. ‘Go back inside,’ she cried, but Mendark did not budge. A swarm of children appeared out of the gloom, thin grubby urchins with staring eyes. Seeing herself in them, Lilis clutched Tallia’s hand.

‘Are they going to throw us out?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know, Lilis.’

The guard glared at Mendark. He was immoveable. Finally she gave a warbling whistle and another Hlune appeared. The two chattered together, their speech punctuated by tongue clicks, cheek pops and nasal honks. The second Hlune shook his head, then the woman led Mendark away by the sleeve while the others waited.

An anxious half hour passed before she returned alone. ‘Come!’ she hissed.

They were taken on a long, exhausting walk, up and down again, hauling the chests as well as all their other gear. The new accommodation reflected their lowered status - a bare room just above the high-tide level, and the water stank. Mendark was waiting there.

‘They are not pleased!’ said Tallia.

‘During my time as Magister, not all of my dealings with the Hlune were happy ones,’ said Mendark. ‘I had to threaten them. Now we must really be on our guard. They are terrified that Yggur will burn them out. It will not take much for them to betray us. And Thyllan knows that without a treasury his plans are hollow. Tallia, come with me.’

She followed him outside, just out of earshot of the watching Hlune.

‘What are you going to do, Mendark?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking haggard. ‘You do your job - find us a way out. Have you gold?’

‘Some,’ she replied. Then, realising that the hire of a boat now might cost a hundred times the normal tariff, ‘Though perhaps not enough.’

‘Take this. It is the one commodity I still have in plenty.’ He took a purse from inside his robes. ‘Take the scruff with you, and if you get the chance, leave her behind.’

Tallia slid the purse into her pocket. It was the weight of a half-brick. ‘Your generosity is limited to Thurkad’s gold,’ she said, turning away.

Before she’d gone ten steps a furious guard put her upraised hands against Tallia’s face. ‘Where you going?’

‘Into Thurkad,’ said Tallia politely.

‘Go back!’ The guard fingered her knife.

Tallia put her hands up and backed inside. ‘You heard?’ she said to Mendark.

‘I’d better speak to her,’ he sighed.

* * * *

It took much argument before the Hlune were convinced that the only way to get rid of the unwelcome guests was for Tallia to find a boat. By then it was late in the afternoon.

Now Tallia and her little shadow were waiting beside one of the main support piles of the wharf city, a trunk so big that they could not have linked hands around it. They could go nowhere without an escort but the Hlune was slow in coming.

‘Have you been in here before?’ Tallia asked the waif.

Lilis shivered. ‘This is a forbidden place. Once I came with a message, though only to the bottom of the steps.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘On the streets we’re always afraid. But not now, not with you.’

‘Well, I am.’

‘You?’ In Lilis’s mind Tallia was all-powerful. ‘Everyone says how clever you are.’

‘Oh? What do they say?’

‘That you are the best fighter in the world. That you can beat armed men with your bare hands.’

Tallia chuckled. ‘That’s just bar talk. I can defeat one or two; perhaps even three if I am lucky, or if they are unskilful or drunk. More than three, I would be just as helpless as you.’ Lilis did not reply to that, only held Tallia’s hand more tightly. ‘And I prefer not to fight at all, if I can help it. What else do they say?’

‘That you can do magic even better than the old Magister.’

Tallia laughed aloud. ‘I bet they don’t say that in front of Mendark. That’s not true at all.’

‘You can’t do magic?’ Lilis sounded rather let down.

‘I - I can, Lilis, and if things come to a tricky pass you may see some of it. But we don’t use the Secret Art if there’s any other way, and we don’t talk about it at all.’

‘Oh!’ said Lilis.

‘Now we have to find a boat and a great sailor.’

‘I don’t know any sailors,’ said Lilis, smoothing her hand along the rough surface of the pile. ‘I kept away from the wharves. Sailors frighten me.’ There was a long silence. She examined her fingers, which were brown with dust. ‘But there are people who can find anything, if you can pay them.’

‘I can pay, but are they trustworthy?’

Lilis shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Have you ever heard of a boatman called Pender?’

Lilis shook her head.

No, why would you have, Tallia thought. Pender came from Narne, a long way away. He brought Karan and Llian here, and did a remarkable job by all accounts. An outsider, an outcast - that’s what we need.

Just then the escort appeared, looking very edgy. ‘Very well,’ Tallia said aloud, ‘take me to these people of yours, Lilis.’

* * * *

The light began to fade. It was still raining. Lilis and Tallia were now crouched at the edge of the wharf city beside an old stone dock, long abandoned and built over. Tallia wore grey robes, and had lightened her face and hands, but was otherwise undisguised.

They were waiting for the dark. The waterfront was one of the most closely watched places, and Tallia would certainly be on Yggur’s list. She might have gone veiled, as some of the peoples of Faranda did, but they were few in Thurkad at any time, and the veil now would be an invitation to look beneath. She did not want to use illusion either - Yggur was a famous master of the Secret Art and no doubt had minions trained to sense such things. If he did, it would be like walking around at night with a torch on her head. Better the dark and the alleys, and her excellent guide. And the weather was in their favour, cold and rain and wind an incentive to the guards to be a little less thorough.

‘I’m frightened,’ said Lilis. ‘Look, there are guards here too.’

‘I see them now,’ said Tallia, blessing the child’s eyes, which were even keener than her own. ‘We’d better try another way.’

They found every way out of the wharf city to be guarded as thoroughly as the first. ‘Yggur must suspect that we’re here,’ said Tallia. ‘Do you know any secret paths up into the city, Lilis? You know the streets better than I do.’

‘There are sewers and stormwater drains and old smuggler’s tunnels,’ said Lilis.

‘Take me to one that goes further up the hill. One that no one knows about. Maybe it’s not so well guarded away from the waterfront.’

Lilis’s cold little hand took Tallia’s warm one and they followed a wandering way until it was completely dark. Lilis stopped by a stinking drain. ‘We go up here, a long way. It comes out behind an inn - The Mother Pearl, a smugglers’ place.’

‘Good, I’d like to keep to the back streets. I don’t think Yggur’s patrols go in there yet.’

‘Probably too afraid,’ said Lilis, shivering.

The drain was a waist-high, stone-lined channel that had been paved over long ago. It stank of every rotting thing that a city of a million people could generate. Lilis, who had left her new clothes and boots behind, splashed off. Tallia followed cautiously, over broken stone slimy with weed. By the time she reached the other end she was soaked in stinking water to the knees. Lilis showed Tallia how to wriggle out through a rusty grating and put back the rubbish caught there so that the gap was not evident.

Their trip through the alleys to the back of the inn was uneventful since there were enough people on the streets for them not to attract attention. But when they arrived they found no sign of life - no lights, no sounds and the back door was barred. Lilis went carefully around the front, coming back almost at once.

‘I saw a watcher just down the street. The door is closed with boards, and there’s black writing on the wall. I couldn’t get close enough to read it.’

The inn must have been shut down. Doubtless, most such haunts were closed and the others watched, all those that Yggur knew about. Tallia edged back up the alley. But there was another curious thing to think about.

‘You can read?’ she asked Lilis.

‘A bit,’ said the child. ‘Street signs and posters. Sometimes I help if there is a letter to be ciphered.’

They were now clambering through the labyrinth of rubbish-choked alleys behind the waterfront promenade, a roundabout way to get to their next possibility. The few burning street lamps were surrounded by foggy haloes. The people on the streets had a hungry look.

‘Is that common among you?’ asked Tallia.

‘What?’

‘Being able to read?’

‘No,’ said Lilis, ‘but a few of us can. I’m the best. My father had a book. He used to read me stories and show me the letters and the sounds they made. I dream about that book, almost as much as I do about him.’ She sniffled in the dark.

‘What happened to your father and mother?’

‘My mother got sick and died. I don’t remember her. I lost my father. I lost him.’ Her voice was full of grief and melancholy and childish guilt.

‘How could you lose your father?’

‘We came to Thurkad when I was five. We were walking along looking at the ships. I had a toy, a little wooden bear. I dropped it in the water and it floated away. He jumped in after it.’

Tallia could imagine the rest. It was too pathetic. ‘Oh, he drowned right in front of you!’

‘He was a very good swimmer!’ said Lilis scornfully. ‘He got it, and all the people were talking about him. Then some men came up, sailors or smugglers. They hit him on the head and dragged him off to their ship, and sailed away. He never came back.’

‘They pressed him? Here, in Thurkad?’ Tallia was incredulous. ‘And no one did anything?’

‘Hist!’ said Lilis, her head darting this way and that like an animal on a scent. She took her guide duties very seriously. Darting at Tallia, she pushed her hard towards the shadows. ‘Get down!’

They crouched down. Nothing happened for ages, then a pair of guards appeared, walking quickly down the centre of the street. They kept looking over their shoulders. Near the other end of the lane something splattered against one of the soldiers’ helmets. They went into a defensive crouch, spears at the ready, but nothing further happened and shortly they disappeared in the mist.

‘They’re just as scared as we are,’ said Tallia as they set off again.

‘Good!’ said Lilis.

‘So no one did anything after your father was taken?’ Tallia asked.

‘I didn’t know anyone. No one would speak for me. I had nothing but my clothes and my little bear. I cried for a day and a night and another day. I slept in a barrel in the alley.’

‘Does that happen often?’

‘The press-gangs? It happens. Especially to sailors and people who can swim. I’m sure he must be dead, else he would have come for me. Seven years he has been gone. Seven ... years.’ Suddenly she was crying, great choking sobs, weeping for the whole world that she had lost.

Tallia took her in her arms, sat down on a wet flagstone and held Lilis tight while she sobbed and sobbed until it seemed her little frame would just dissolve away with the tears and the heartbreak. Eventually the sobs gave way to great shuddering gasps, and these to a trembling, then all at once she stood up.

‘I am twelve and a half. I have no father. There is no one but me. Come, The Student Prince is still a long way.’

Twelve! thought Tallia. I thought you were much younger. Well, you have me now. If he can be found he will be. ‘What was your father’s name?’

‘His name was Jevander but I called him Jevi. He had another name too, but I don’t remember it, our family name. I just called him Jevi, and he called me Lilis.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Gentle and kind. He was hardly ever cross with me, even when I was very naughty. I remember one day -’

‘No, I meant - what did he look like? Was he tall or short, what colour was his hair, that sort of thing.’

Lilis did not speak for a long while, though her face was alive with memories. ‘His hair was like mine,’ she said eventually. ‘And his eyes. I can remember him holding me up to a mirror so that my face was beside his, and saying how alike we were and how lucky we were to have each other. He often said that. I don’t know if he was tall or short. He always seemed big to me. But he wasn’t fat.’

Tallia took her hand and they walked slowly along without further speech. Twice more they had to slip into the alleys to avoid patrols. Tallia felt strangely uncomfortable, sneaking about in her own city. The Student Prince turned out to be a two-storey affair of drab-grey stone, announced by a cracked signboard depicting an androgynous youth with cropped hair sitting dejectedly on a thick tome. Other books were stacked haphazardly before the student and a flask teetered on top.

Lilis looked both ways but there was no one to be seen. The door was closed, but opened to Tallia’s gentle knock and after a careful inspection they were allowed in to a dark room that was nearly empty. The room was lit by a small fire. They took a table right beside it. Tallia sat down with a great outrushing sigh.

‘Are you hungry, Lilis?’

There was a despairing look in the child’s eyes as she shook her head. ‘I have no money. In Thurkad if you cannot pay, you cannot eat.’

‘Nonsense! You work for me now, my little guide, and guides earn ten times the price in time of war. Order everything you want, for there may be a long march on short rations after this.’

Tallia debated whether to tell Lilis about the ransom money from the people she had rescued, but decided to keep it for a safer time. They ate well, but did not find what they were looking for, and eventually went back out onto the cold street.

As they turned the corner, a lamp was unshuttered in an upstairs room across the street from the inn. The front door opened and the watcher slipped into the street, following like a ghost.

* * * *

They searched into the night, at all the haunts that Lilis knew about, but did not find anyone who could provide a boat. Most places were closed, boarded up, while several had been burnt to the ground. Everyone was in hiding, and perhaps the news had got around that Lilis was no longer one of them, no longer ‘of the streets’. Tallia began to despair. They would never find a boat. What was she going to say to Mendark?

Lilis looked over her shoulder again. She’d done it a dozen times in the past few minutes. She began to walk faster, tugging at Tallia’s hand. Tallia could not resist the urge to look, but saw nothing. She was becoming infected with her guide’s unease. Her city was not hers anymore, and she did not like it.

‘What’s that?’ whispered Lilis. They were now creeping through a mean alley not far from the wharf city. She cocked her head.

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘I did. There’s someone behind that fallen-down arch.’

Tallia felt for her knife. ‘Lilis,’ she whispered. ‘Get ready to run.’

Lilis said nothing.

‘Lilis, listen to me. When I say the word, run and hide.’

‘I’m your guide!’ Lilis said fiercely.

Tallia did not press it. ‘Very well; pretend that nothing has happened, but keep your eyes open.’

They continued. ‘Someone’s behind us,’ said Lilis. Then, a few minutes later, ‘They’ve gone - I think.’

‘That might be worse,’ said Tallia, glancing over her shoulder. The drifting mist made it impossible to tell if anyone was there. The alley seemed to run forever. There were no lamps here, and though the buildings hung over the street, every window was shuttered, shedding only stray bands of light. ‘Do you know any other way out of here?’

‘No!’ said Lilis in the barest wisp of a voice.

A shadow crossed the end of the alley in front of them, then another.

‘There’s someone behind us again,’ said Lilis.

‘Ahead too,’ Tallia muttered. ‘It might be nothing. And then again - Lilis, if I am taken, make sure to run all the way to Mendark, because no one else will be able to get me free.’

Lilis did not answer, but Tallia could imagine the look on her face. Back on the streets, but no longer accepted there, her life would be brutally short.

They kept on. The mouth of the alley was illuminated by a lamp in the street beyond. Two guards appeared, staring in their direction.

‘Hide!’ said Tallia.

Lilis slid behind a heap of smelly refuse. Tallia crouched down in the darkness, praying that the guards would be gone before whoever was behind caught up.

The sentries moved into the alley, muttering and prodding the shadows with their spears. It was a determined search; no option but to attack first. Taking the chance that there were only two, Tallia exploded out of concealment. The first guard was poking around behind a water barrel. She landed behind him, thrust one long leg between his legs and with a tremendous heave up-ended him into the barrel. He flailed on the rim before she slammed his legs upright, plunging him head first into the water.

Tallia snatched up the fallen spear, whirling as the second guard thrust his weapon at her, lightning fast. Weaving out of the way, she stabbed the butt end of her spear into his belly. He gave a winded cry and doubled half over. It turned out to be a ruse, for he lunged, driving his spear into her thigh with a piercing cold pain. Tallia whacked desperately with her spear butt, catching him at the base of the throat. He dropped his weapon to stagger around, choking. She wrenched his spear out, cursing her carelessness. It was a deep gash, blood pouring out of it. So much for my boasting, she thought ruefully. I could bleed to death here. She tried to staunch the flow with the heel of her hand.

Behind her the other guard was still thrashing in the water barrel. He got one foot against the wall and managed to tip the barrel over. Her assailant was beginning to recover too, feeling around for his spear. Tallia watched him helplessly, then something shot through the light and struck him on the temple, sending him sprawling senseless in the muck.

Lilis was beside Tallia in an instant. ‘What was that?’ Tallia moaned.

‘Half a brick! Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not.’

She hacked off the trouser leg and pressed a pad over the wound while Lilis stood by the two guards, prepared to defend her with a spear. The man from the barrel flapped listlessly, too far gone to offer any threat.

‘Come on,’ said Lilis, trying to support Tallia. ‘There’s someone coming the other way.’

The cloth pad was already saturated. ‘I’ve got to get a bandage on,’ Tallia groaned.

‘No time!’ said Lilis. ‘Quick, lean on my shoulder.’

Lilis led her out onto the street and immediately back into the shadows of a lane not much wider than Tallia’s shoulders. Tallia could feel the blood pumping out of her leg with every step. Someone shouted behind them. Looking back she saw a bony rat licking her blood off the cobbles.

Lilis dragged her up another lane, no wider than the first, across a courtyard, through a broken stone wall and into an overgrown hedge which showered them with icy drops.

Tallia felt quite dizzy. ‘Stop! I can’t go any further.’

‘I have stopped,’ said Lilis.

It was absolutely dark under the hedge. Lilis cut Tallia’s trouser leg to strips and bandaged the wound by feel, pulling the bandages tight until the flow stopped. Tallia lay back in the mud, wondering how they were going to get home again. Endre was living up to its reputation.

The short trip back to the wharf city was one of the worst nights of pain and terror she had had in her life. She staggered the whole way, leaning on Lilis’s shoulder, which was about the height of her waist. After crawling down the drain, eventually they did get back inside the wharf, not long before dawn. Lilis was a white-faced, red-spattered ghost, barely able to walk.

Just inside, Tallia collapsed. A mob of Hlune appeared out of the darkness, silently staring. Lilis drew Tallia’s long knife and stood over her, waving the blade at any who came too near. ‘Call Magister!’ she screamed, and kept repeating that until a message was sent. Tallia’s leg was scarlet from one end to the other. Finally the messenger reappeared with Mendark and Osseion.

Mendark inspected the wound, then Osseion lifted Tallia in his arms and carried her back to their cell.

Tallia woke to find the wound had been stitched and was being bandaged. ‘Where’s Lilis?’ she whispered, looking around frantically.

‘Sleeping,’ said Osseion, pulling the bandage tight while Mendark held a dressing. ‘Ah, what a brave, loyal friend you have there. No one could get near you until we arrived.’

‘But you failed!’ said Mendark. ‘What are we going to do now? We’re trapped!’

* * * *

Mid-winter week dragged on endlessly - miserable days of foul weather where Tallia lay helplessly in her hammock waiting for her wound to heal enough so that she could walk. Berenet had gone out into Thurkad the night after her injury, but with no more success than she’d had. Since then he had not been able to get into Thurkad at all, for all the secret ways were watched now. The Hlune were incredibly hostile. Mendark expected to be thrown out onto the street at any moment.

Three days later Tallia was able to walk, though very painfully. ‘I can’t just sit here and let us be taken,’ she said to Lilis. ‘Do you know any other way at all?’

‘Today is hythe, mid-winter’s day,’ said Lilis with a shudder. ‘The worst day of the year.’

Tallia was not superstitious, but she did not like the idea either. ‘I know, but I have to try.’

Lilis thought of one or two forgotten smuggler’s tunnels that were worth trying, so with their stone-faced guide they set off for one last attempt. The trip was fruitless, for both ways were now watched by Yggur’s guards. Tallia knew that her leg was not up to the job anyway.

After midnight they turned back, but halfway home saw an orange glow in the distance and heard the crackle and roar of fire. As Tallia began to hobble that way, a child ran out and spat on Lilis’s boot. An old woman cursed them from a doorway, making warding signs with her fingers. The Hlune were a deeply superstitious race - no doubt that was why Yggur set his fires this day. A pair of Hlune with spears forced Tallia away.

They were escorted back to their room at spear-point, and every step of the way they were spat upon and abused. Near the doorway a jellyfish splattered against Lilis’s jerkin; Tallia was struck on the back and head by rotten vegetables. Lilis was shaking with terror by the time they reached their room. Neither Mendark nor Berenet was there so they cleaned themselves up and Lilis went to bed. Tallia sat up in a chair with a blanket around her. Sometime later she was woken by Mendark, shaking her violently.

‘Tallia, Tallia!’

Tallia wanted to tell him to go to blazes, but of course she did not. She pulled the blankets back up. ‘I’m listening.’

‘There was a fire earlier,’ he said, very agitated.

‘I saw it,’ she said. ‘Did it do much damage?’

‘Considerable - it was a warning! The Hlune are hysterical with fear. Yggur knows we’re here!’ He twisted his stringy beard in his fingers.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure! He is threatening to burn the whole wharf city if they don’t give us up.’

‘It could be just an idle threat. How can he know?’

‘Yggur doesn’t make idle threats.’

‘What do the Hlune say to him?’

‘They deny ever seeing us, of course, and threaten to burn Thurkad in retaliation.’

‘Would they?’

‘Oh, they can be ruthless. But if I were Hlune, I would be going through the easier options first. I am no further use to them; better to betray me and get back to business.’

‘Loyalty must still count for something.’

‘We’ve tested its limits. Find a way out, damn quick, or we’re finished.’

* * * *

That night Tallia was woken by voices just outside the door. It was Mendark, speaking to one of the Hlune, and Mendark was uncharacteristically humble.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Just a few more days.’

‘No!’ The Hlune’s voice was rather like the honking of a gander. ‘The fate of our city lies on the toss of a coin.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mendark, dropping his voice, ‘if I were to offer a little more compensation for your inconvenience ...’

There was a long silence, so long that Tallia wondered if they had moved away. Then she heard a dull clink and the man honk-honked. ‘I’ll try to sway them. We want to help you, but Yggur is not predictable. Our city cannot be risked, not for all the gold in your chests.’

‘How long?’ cried Mendark, then realised that he was shouting. ‘How long can you give us?’ he whispered.

‘Three more days. If you cannot find your way out by then, we will have no choice but to put you onto the street.’

‘Three days!’ Mendark gave a cry of despair.

Tallia eased her leg over the side of the hammock. It hurt terribly. Though it was impossible, she had to try again.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

Articles of War

olodha climbed back up the shaft. Her tatty robes were saturated. Yggur was waiting on the floor above the basement where the cage had crashed, peering down into the gloom.

‘The lower door is jammed,’ Dolodha said, shivering. ‘They’re trying to free it.’

‘And Mendark?’ he asked in a deadly voice.

‘He’s got away!’ She bowed so low that her hair swept the floor. ‘A secret door. Two drowned but the rest escaped.’

Yggur raised his fist and she skipped sideways out of the way, right into the path of Vartila, who cracked her hard over the ear with her rod.

‘Bad tidings!’ Vartila snapped as the girl crawled off, blood running from a cut ear.

Maigraith expected Yggur to curb the Whelm, but he said nothing. She caught the messenger by the shoulder, intending to help her. The girl kept darting her head away as if expecting more punishment. Her thin body knew only obedience. ‘Stop!’ Maigraith shouted. Dolodha froze. She was dazed, appearing to be suffering from concussion, but as soon as she recovered she insisted on going back to her post.

Yggur climbed down the shaft into the basement. Shortly he returned in a cold fury. ‘Gone!’ he raged. ‘A secret tunnel that we failed to find. The scryers will pay for this!’

‘I’m sure they did their best,’ Maigraith said softly. Yggur’s rage after finding the simulacrum of Mendark had been terrible. She did not want to see it again.

‘That isn’t good enough!’

Maigraith began to feel most uneasy. What had she gotten herself into? ‘Yggur,’ she said, running beside him again, ‘that poor messenger was treated very unfairly. Do you ...?’

‘She knows my Articles of War!’ he said curtly. ‘They are read every week. Succeed and you are rewarded! Fail and you are punished! What could be fairer?’

‘How did she fail?’

‘She bore bad tidings. Her group let me down and they must all suffer for it. And next time everyone will try harder.’

* * * *

By the time they returned to Yggur’s fortress it was morning. Maigraith, exhausted, lay down on a couch while Yggur paced back and forth. Try as he might, he had not been able to trace Mendark’s escape way. ‘Where can he have gone?’ he said wildly. ‘Can Mendark have got out of Thurkad already?’

‘I think not,’ said Zareth, stroking his chin-plaits. ‘Though ... he might have had a small boat hidden.’

‘Find out!’ Yggur raged. ‘Has he got free? By land or by sea? Or is he still in the city, holed up somewhere in the slums, or the wharf city? Should I try to burn him out? What say you to that, Zareth?’ Yggur spoke with mischievous intent, for Zareth was Hlune, of that race which dwelt within the wharf city and controlled all seaborne commerce with Thurkad.

‘My advice is not impartial,’ Zareth said calmly. ‘But you must know this: we Hlune have prepared defences against fire, for it is our greatest fear. They may not succeed, but if the wharf city goes, be sure that Thurkad will be razed to the ground.’

‘The whole city is a fire trap,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ll send embassies to the wharf city, and to that monster S’Courcy too, to cajole and threaten. We’ll find him!’

‘Faelamor is sick,’ said Maigraith, feeling duty neglected. ‘I must go to her.’

‘Good idea.’ He shouted orders and two Whelm accompanied Maigraith up the stairs. ‘Don’t let her die. There is much she can teach me.’

She found Faelamor much as she had been before - quite apathetic, lying asleep or, when awake, staring at the ceiling. Occasionally she rose to stumble around the room for a few minutes before collapsing on her bed again.

When Maigraith returned to Yggur’s command centre he was still working furiously. He had not slept for days and was by now an automaton, totally obsessed with the hunt for Mendark and the securing of the city. Maigraith found this obsession disturbing. Nonetheless she sat beside him, saying nothing as he issued orders for the control of Thurkad and the punishment of those of his servants who had failed.

Finally, that afternoon, he looked up and noticed Maigraith slumped in a chair, desperate for sleep. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not even smiling. ‘I cannot rest until my enemy is taken. Dolodha!’

The messenger, a drab bundle on the floor, sprang up. The side of her head was swollen and her split ear scabbed with brown blood.

‘Show Maigraith to my apartments,’ he said. ‘Make her a bath and a bed. Attend all her needs.’

Dolodha led Maigraith away through long corridors to a large door that was guarded by two Whelm. Dolodha relayed the orders; they were admitted inside. A bath was run.

‘It’s cold!’ Maigraith exclaimed, testing it with her toes. She was by no means accustomed to luxury, but a cold bath in winter was less than she expected.

‘You want a hot bath?’ whispered Dolodha, with such astonishment that Maigraith did not insist.

‘This will be adequate,’ she replied curtly, and was in and out in record time. Her dirty clothes had already disappeared. She put on the robe that Dolodha held out for her and was shown to a large though spartan room that quite clearly was Yggur’s. Maigraith was dismayed. Whatever the relationship with Yggur might eventually turn out to be, this was impossible.

‘I can’t sleep here!’ she said.

Dolodha shrugged, continuing to turn down the bed. Maigraith went to the main door and opened it. The Whelm guard outside barred her way.

‘Let me through!’ said Maigraith.

The man shook his head. ‘I have no orders to allow you out until the morning.’

‘Then go and tell Yggur it is not my wish to sleep here.’

‘I cannot leave my post!’ he said woodenly.

Normally Maigraith would have hurled him out of the way, but the past days had drained her dry. She stumbled back to the bathroom to sit down on the edge of the bath.

‘Bed is ready,’ said Dolodha, standing beside her.

‘I can’t sleep there,’ Maigraith repeated, looking through the other rooms.

‘Master has given orders,’ said Dolodha fretfully, touching her scabbed ear.

Maigraith had no wish to see the girl punished again. She tore the covers off the bed, to Dolodha’s distress, and curled up on the floor of the living room. Her last sight as she drifted off to sleep was Dolodha standing watch, frozen-faced, in the doorway, and the girl’s red and bloody ear - only the first punishment for the failure of her group.

She woke in the morning, realising that her worries had been groundless. Yggur had not come up at all. Dolodha lay on the floor asleep, but the instant Maigraith rose she ran to fix breakfast.

Afterwards Maigraith went to see Faelamor again, whom she found too listless to speak. Maigraith spent the morning sitting beside her, preoccupied with Faelamor’s declining health. What if she died? In spite of her feelings about Faelamor, the chains of duty and obedience were still strong. Her life would have little meaning without her liege.

* * * *

Following Mendark’s escape from the citadel, Yggur was so frantically busy that Maigraith barely saw him. Confined as she was to the fortress, surrounded by Whelm that she could never see without the horrors of her previous torment rising up, she began to brood and to think that she had made a fatal mistake by coming here.

She spent most of her time in Yggur’s command centre, watching him, though they seldom exchanged more than a few words. What did he want from her? He was so preoccupied, so turned in on himself that it was impossible to find out. What did she expect of him, for that matter? A companion, a friend, a lover? Faelamor had never allowed her to have a friend in all the time Maigraith had served her. Duty had been her only friend and Maigraith had no idea how to begin with Yggur.

‘Yggur,’ she said tentatively that afternoon.

He turned a blank face to her. His hands shuffled the despatches on the table, impatient to get back to work. The officers and servants watched her, as still as insects. She stared into his sunken eyes, becoming more confused, more self-conscious every second. He had vital work to do and she was an unwelcome interruption.

‘Nothing,’ she said, then crept back to her seat.

A dozen more times she tried to speak to him, but never managed to get out what she wanted to say. His face went blank whenever he looked at her. She could glean no idea of his thoughts, and this inhibited her from speaking her own lest she totally misunderstand him.

Maigraith fell into a fit of brooding, a smouldering resentment. After starting out with such timid hopes, and having those hopes dashed, then raised when Yggur said he cared for her, the past days had been terrible. He said not one kind word to her, nor even a harsh one - Yggur totally ignored her. Maigraith tended to hide her feelings rather than speak them, and finally they would burst out in a blaze of fury. If this was what friendship was like, she was better off alone.

Then I will be alone! she thought furiously. I’m not going to hang around, begging like a puppy. I will leave this very day, if he will allow it, and if he doesn’t I will create such fuss and fury that he will wish he had never met me.

‘Damn you!’ she shouted, shaking her fist at him as he went into yet another meeting with his generals. ‘What are your plans for me?’

The blood rushed to Yggur’s face; the pen in his hand gouged the paper. Abruptly he rounded on his soldiers and servants. ‘Out!’ he roared.

When the room was empty at last, he said softly, ‘Be so kind as to keep your personal problems to yourself when I am working.’

‘I will, in future,’ she raged. ‘I’m leaving!’

‘Leaving?’ He looked puzzled.

‘You won’t talk to me. I’m like a prisoner who is never told what she is in prison for. I was better off alone.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Anything!’ she screamed. ‘What are your plans for me?’

‘I do not presume to have any plans for you,’ he said quietly. ‘Your company is - it pleases me. That is all.’

‘What about me? I’m not your puppet, to grin when it pleases you and say nothing the rest of the time.’

He just stared at her, uncomprehending.

‘By allying myself with you I go against Faelamor and everything she has worked for. I can’t do that on a whim. I need more!’

‘Maigraith . ..’ he began, then froze. ‘I ... I can’t . . .’ He spun around, his back to her, letting out a muffled groan. When he turned back, his face was a mask of control. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and led her up to the top of the old fortress and out onto the battlements. Sleety wind blasted into their faces.

‘I can’t.. .’ he started to say, then turned and paced away from her. ‘Perhaps you should go. I don’t have anything to offer you. I ... I know myself, Maigraith, and what I know is not very ... likeable. You know my history!’

She followed him. ‘You were young, brilliant,’ she said. ‘You had everything. Then the Council - Mendark! - begged you to help them in their quest to banish Rulke from Santhenar.’

He shivered with the memories. She extended him her hand. ‘You worked the Proscribed Experiments for them,’ she continued, ‘But Rulke was too strong. The Council broke, abandoned you, then Rulke possessed your mind and drove you mad, before he was finally imprisoned in the Nightland.’

‘I feel it still,’ he said, eyes staring into the past. ‘The pain of possession, the terror of it happening again. Revenge on those two, Mendark and Rulke, has driven me ever since I woke from my madness. I remade myself into a machine. I am empty inside, Maigraith. A shell that contains nothing but hate and fear.’

This confession struck Maigraith more deeply than anything he had ever said. His whole body was quivering. She could feel it through his hand. ‘You are not unfeeling,’ she said, ‘else you would not be hurting now. You care, and I care for you for knowing it. I also hurt inside - you know why.’

He clutched her slim hand in his hands, enveloping it completely. There were tears on his lashes.

‘Maigraith,’ he said. ‘You are good for me. I don’t know if I can do the same for you - I am frozen over.’

‘I don’t need much,’ she whispered, walking beside him. ‘But I do so long to be shown a little kindness.’

‘Has no one ever treated you so?’

‘My first teacher,’ she said, ‘but that is long, long ago. She would be dead for ages, poor Hana. And Karan - she tried her best to be my friend but I drove her away, abused her cruelly and let her down when I should have been a friend to her.’ She looked up at his dark visage through mist-thickened eyelashes. ‘I am well suited to you. I am cold inside; timid. I can’t bear people to see my feelings. But perhaps ...’

They walked along the length of the wall, through an empty guardhouse, and turned onto the next section. Suddenly he stopped and gripped her arms at the elbows.

‘Perhaps? Are you making an offer? Speak plainly - I cannot abide talk that goes nowhere.’

‘I am afraid to speak plainly in case I am mistaken,’ she said. ‘But I will! I am making a suggestion that might become an offer. If you are willing.’

‘Perhaps you and I could teach each other something?’

‘Yes!’ she whispered.

The wind whirled out from the other side of the guardhouse; a freezing blast. Maigraith, shivering, drew closer into the shelter offered by his big body. Some emotion rippled across his face; a struggle taking place. ‘Would you...?’ he whispered into the wind, moving his hands out then springing them back again.

‘What?’ she asked softly.

He shouted it across the battlements. ‘Would you - embrace me?’

He spread his arms. Maigraith edged towards him. She put her arms out, sliding them under his. They stood in that awkward pose for a minute, close but not touching, then some inhibition broke in Maigraith. Sighing, she squeezed him tightly, and Yggur folded her in his arms.

* * * *

They talked, when Yggur had time over from the war and his obsessions. They walked on the rooftop late at night, when all the work was done, or in the pre-dawn hours before it all began again. They touched, but only hands or arms. Occasionally they hugged. But that was all. Their relationship could not advance beyond that. And at every step she had to coax and cajole, for he knew even less about the matter than she did.

However, after a day or two Yggur fell back into his obsession with Mendark. Since taking Thurkad, things had not gone well - there were rebellions all over his realm, and quelling them stretched his resources and armies to their limit. He was sure that Mendark was in the wharf city, but did not dare invade that trap.

‘I’m sorry, Maigraith,’ said Yggur. ‘I - since I came here I’ve begun to lose control. My powers are less than they used to be. My sorcerous tools barely answer me here - as you saw when we tried to scry Mendark out. I must remake them to suit the aura of this queer place, but what then? And what happens once I leave?’

Almost a week had gone by since she had arrived here. Maigraith suddenly knew that their friendship was going nowhere; that though a part of him wanted more, it was all too hard. He was incapable of going further. Having come so far herself, Maigraith could not contemplate their relationship freezing at this point.

Yggur was too repressed, too fearful, too narcissistically bound up in his own torments. Unless she did something dramatic, they would fall apart as inevitably as the petals dropped off a flower. And having gone through such agonies, and having found a friend, even such an inadequate one as Yggur, Maigraith was not going to slide back into her previous desolate state.

She wished there was someone she could go to for advice, but the idea of asking any of the Whelm was laughable, and poor Dolodha - no less preposterous. There might have been many ways to lift their relationship out of this abyss, but only one occurred to her.

‘There is nothing for it,’ she said to herself. ‘I will have to take him to bed.’

That was an unthinkable step for her, for in all her long life Maigraith had never lain with any man, nor indeed ever had the urge to. She knew no more about the act than was told in the classics and the manuals of animal husbandry that she had studied during her schooling. In short, she knew everything that could be written down and nothing that needed to be understood.

Her objective, once stated, was not so easily achieved. Maigraith was as innocent of the art of seduction as a newborn babe. Moreover, even had she known such arts, the idea of actually employing them was mortifying to contemplate. Her oblique suggestions glanced off him like paper darts off armour - he simply did not get the message at all.

Forced to become bolder by his lack of response, she began to drop hints about the ways of a man and a woman together. He looked at her so blankly that Maigraith began to wonder if that part of him had not been destroyed in his earlier troubles.

Mid-winter week was finally over. Today was the first day of Talmard, the last and coldest month of winter. Another night approached. They sat down to dinner, late, and Maigraith called for wine. She intended to drink as little as possible, for wine had had disastrous consequences for her once before. But she poured for Yggur with a heavy hand, topping his bowl whenever it was half-empty. That was not often, for he was abstemious as a rule, but after he had taken a couple of bowls she felt that she must speak now or not at all.

The words stalled in her mouth, the first few times she tried to speak them. Rising to top up his already full bowl she knocked her chair over backwards.

He put his hand over the bowl. ‘Enough!’ he said curtly. ‘What is it you want of me?’

It exploded out of her, as her repressed feelings tended to do. ‘I want you!’ she cried, her face as red as the wine in the bowl. ‘Will you not come to bed with me?’

Yggur’s mouth fell open in astonishment. ‘Bed?’ he said.

Maigraith was mortally embarrassed. Had she made the worst mistake of her life? But to back down now would be far worse than going on.

‘Are you not . . . capable?’ she asked delicately.

He frowned, seeming to be trying to recall what the word meant. ‘I am a man,’ he said. ‘I am capable. At least, I used to be.’ He looked up at her. ‘I have not wanted to for a long, long time.’

‘Oh!’ she said, unsure what he was telling her.

‘This is something that you need?’ he asked.

‘I have needs,’ she said ambiguously. ‘I thought ... if we were to embrace each other . . . intimately ... it is a bonding of the body and the soul. It would be good for us both.’

Yggur contemplated the idea. ‘But we have not so much as kissed.’

‘We have not,’ she replied, staring at his mouth. ‘But I would like to.’

‘Come here.’

Suddenly their roles were turned about. Maigraith did not even know how to kiss. She moved toward him very tentatively and found that the kiss was not unsatisfying, though his thin lips were hard and his beard scratchy. After a few seconds they separated. She rubbed her mouth with the heel of her hand, looking at him wonderingly.

‘If you would care to go up,’ he said, ‘I will follow directly.’

* * * *

Maigraith bathed, undressed, then slipped into Yggur’s bed. The rough sheets set her naked flesh afire. She had given herself into his power. What was going to happen to her now? What would he require of her? And what would he do if she did not come up to his expectations?

Yggur reappeared, smelling of the bath. He snuffed the lights out one by one.

‘Leave a light burning, if you please,’ she whispered.

‘Oh!’ he said, but left the lamp beside the bed. He stood there for a moment with his head bowed, then abruptly slid off his cloak and slipped under the covers.

He lay still for such a long time that she was afraid he had gone straight to sleep, but when she finally touched him he rolled over and embraced her awkwardly, barely touching.

The wire frame of her glasses dug into her ear. Maigraith took them off and the light caught her carmine eyes. His own eyes showed shock and dismay. He clutched at her, his chin resting on the top of her head, and for a moment there was a look of horror in his eyes.

Yggur knew more about Maigraith’s heritage than she did herself, for while he had held her prisoner in Fiz Gorgo last autumn, she had been unable to take the drug that Faelamor had given her to conceal the colour of her eyes. They had slowly begun to change back to that strange colour, indigo and carmine, that had identified her to Yggur at once. Only Charon, or those who had much Charon blood in them, had eyes of such colour.

That had not seemed to matter in Fiz Gorgo, but now, with the Mirror gone and the Ghâshâd returned, and turmoil beyond his control everywhere in his realm, it mattered more than ever. Just to look into Maigraith’s eyes reminded Yggur of his enemy, the greatest Charon of all. Yet he knew that the Charon blendings had been ruthlessly hunted down after the fall of Rulke. Who was she?

She lay in his arms for some time, wondering about his unnatural stillness. Finally she put her lips right against his ear. ‘Yggur,’ she whispered. Her hot breath roused him.

Maigraith found their lovemaking a strange affair, for he kept moving so that she always had her back to the light. The business was soon over, and scarcely satisfying to either of them, but she had not expected much from it. However, the embrace, the sense of being held in his arms and of being one with him, was a new and wonderful thing for her. Rolling over, she looked into his eyes, smiled dreamily and fell asleep.

But as she did so, the lamplight shone in her eyes again, making them glow carmine, and Yggur felt a spasm of terror. Charon eyes! He wanted to leap out of bed and run all the way back to his swamp-bound fortress, to forget everything about the Mirror, his empire and his long-planned revenge. But he could not.

He gazed down at her face. Maigraith was indeed lovely, for in repose the downcast look that always marred her features was gone. He stroked her slender throat, then the image of those eyes came back and he felt an overpowering urge to dig his thumbs into her windpipe and rid himself of the menace that she represented. But he could not do that either.

He laid his head down on the pillows and groaned. In her sleep Maigraith reached out and held him to her, but Yggur did not sleep all night.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

PART TWO

<<Contents>>

* * * *

A Case of Amnesia

ong she lay there, too weak to be anxious; safe in her lassitude, enfolded tightly in warmness, unusual but pleasant. Drifting, dreaming, all fears and terrors, all memories gone. Nothing left but ghosts of long ago. She was walking in the snow, in the moonlight, watching the creeping stars, the bloodstained moon. Calling excitedly as a meteor spark carved the sky. The cry of a mountain cat soared on the wind. She gripped the huge hand more tightly, despite the danger feeling utterly safe, protected, held.

Later, a familiar old room, the fire crackling, the crook of one big arm enfolding her. The wind sobbed outside, coming down the chimney with gusts of flame and smoke. She snuggled up against her father’s chest, eyes closed, surrounded by the rumble of his voice, living the tales of ancient days, pictures so clear that they might have been painted on the inside of her eyelids.

A red-haired girl was walking in the snow. Was that her, or another of his winter-night stories? She sighed an inward sigh, then the pain in her head came back. A terrible ripping pain, steel barbs being drawn through her forehead. Pain that was the echo of earlier pain. Oblivion.

At last a faint creaking penetrated her semiconsciousness. She did not stir; could not even will it. The silence resumed its timeless beat. She dreamed again. Or relived. Or lived!

Creak-squeak - there it was again! Wood on wood, she realised. It surprised her, that she had passed from dream to thought, was able to think, had an identity. Creak-squeak. A little thread of curiosity tugged at her and she woke at last. She opened her eyes cautiously, lest she betray herself, though she could not have told why.

The room was small and dark. The wall beside her was stone, the smooth blocks gleaming with dampness. Her eyes roved along the wall. The part of the room that she could see was empty. No; beyond the foot of her bed a fire burned smokily in a little grate. On the mantelpiece above, a thick stub of yellow candle gave off a guttering light. Beside the candle was a large round green pottery flask. On the other side of the fire sat an old man. He had his feet on the wall and rocked back and forth, the chair creaking. The old man was dressed in dark, shabby clothes and brown boots. His short beard was grey; his hair grey and thin. Only the side of his face was visible.

Creak-squeak. The old man stirred in his chair. He looked to be studying a map drawn on bark paper. She closed her eyes and lay still. The chair scraped along the floor. The old man grunted, then liquid gurgled. She opened an eye cautiously. He poured the remainder of the flask into his bowl, replaced the flask on the mantelpiece and, settling back in his chair, sipped from the bowl.

She closed her eyes again. A single droplet of memory came back - a great meeting! There had been chains on her ankles. Moving one foot under the covers she touched the other ankle and winced. It was still tender from the shackles. Karan! she thought. That’s me! Then came a gush of remembrance - a messenger bursting in: Yggur at the gates, the armies of Thurkad destroyed. Another trickle: Tensor mad, desolate, despairing, putting out his fist. Then nothing, absolutely nothing.

How had she ended up in this damp, shabby room? Who was the old man who sat at the end of her bed? Her head ached desperately. The Mirror was gone! Taken far away. All that she had suffered, all those who had died because of it, had been for nothing.

No, it was not her responsibility anymore. I can go home, Karan sighed. The memory of her battered, time-worn Gothryme appeared, pink granite walls glowing in the afternoon sun. Home at last! A mist began to rise inside her head again, the image faded and gratefully she abandoned herself to the darkness.

* * * *

There was pain in her head such as she had never felt before, in the splinters of time that made up her awareness. Pain like aftersickness, but far worse. Between the pain she was wracked by nightmares more real than life, more violent, more horrible. Better the pain than the nightmares. She cried out; shrieked, sweated, burned, then sank back into the ocean of pain.

All she could smell was red iron. Red behind her eyes. Blind-red. There was shouting and crashing. Her fingers caught a thick stickiness, skinned like boiled milk, and brought it to her nose. Blood! She lay in a puddle of congealed blood. Now the hairs on the back of her neck rose, as though someone stood looking down at her. Chilly fingers touched her throat. Gathering the dregs of her strength, Karan screamed out her agony and her terror.

A long time later she bobbed to the surface again, sensing movement in the room. A flare in the dark. Cool on her brow. Cold rasping her face, her neck, her back, sponging all of her. Dark.

Shrieking, sweating, burning. Lips aflame, gullet searing. Choking, retching, gasping. Darkness darker than dark.

* * * *

Much later Karan was awakened by a presence looming over her. She lay unmoving, willing him away, and the old man resumed his chair by the fire with a scrape and a creak. Opening her eyes, she saw that another candle stub flickered in the puddle of wax on the mantelpiece. She turned her head, the movement hurting only a little, to inspect the other side of the room. The wall had once been rudely plastered though most of the plaster had fallen off long ago. The door was made of thick planks and securely barred.

‘Karan! I thought I’d lost you yesterday.’

Karan started. The man lowered his boots onto the hearth with a thud, then stood up. She shrank back into the pillow. He was old though not ancient, shorter than middle height, with a big chest and shoulders. Up close he was vaguely familiar. He looked of no account; sounded it too, with his slow country voice and his broad face tanned to leather. Once he would have been nothing to her, but now she felt so weak, so shattered in self-confidence and worth, that he represented a great obstacle and a threat. She did not know what to do.

‘Who are you?’ The syllables rasped her throat like a bladder full of sand.

‘I am your healer. Your guardian for a time,’ he replied.

‘My gaoler!’

He shrugged. ‘As you will. Without me you would be dead. But I am no friend of Yggur. I do my own business. My name is Shand.’

What is your business with me, Shand? she wondered. The name was vaguely familiar. Had Llian mentioned him at some stage? Llian! Instantly Karan felt such a tightness in her chest that she could hardly breathe. What had happened to Llian? She jerked herself upright in her bed and a barbed spike seemed to plunge right through her temple. Slowly Shand came into focus again. ‘Where’s Llian? Is he . . . He’s not . . .’ She could not bear to say it.

Shand leaned over her. ‘Llian?’ There was an edge to his voice that she could not identify.

How bright his green eyes were, how penetrating. He did not look of no account now. Suddenly she felt afraid of this stranger.

‘We came to Thurkad together,’ she said. ‘We travelled together for more than a month. He saved my life. I must know where he is. Please.’ She put her hand on his wrist.

Shand looked annoyed. ‘Thurkad is in chaos. Pointless to look; impossible to find.’

She snatched her hand away. The life was coming back into her green eyes, the colour to her pallid cheeks. Shand bent down, and what he saw in her eyes appeared to move him.

‘Almost impossible,’ he said, more kindly. ‘There has been great bloodshed, great destruction. Yggur holds most of the city now. Half the population of Thurkad are refugees. But I will try.’

He pushed her gently but quite firmly back on the pillow. ‘Just now you need rest more than anything. Lie down.’

‘Someone must know where Llian is.’ Tears came to her eyes. She had no strength to wipe them away. ‘But don’t tell him about me.’

‘Him?’

Mendark! she thought, sitting up again. The name had come back to her, driving her into a panic. I remember him. ‘Mendark! Say nothing about me, if he asks. Mendark is my enemy.’

Shand sighed. ‘You don’t have to worry about Mendark. He’s trapped in the Old City.’

‘Please,’ she whispered.

‘I’ll ask where I can.’

The pain in her temple was excruciating. It was impossible to think. Karan’s arms were trembling from the effort of holding herself up. She flopped back down, suddenly realising how weak she was.

‘Where .. .’ She scarcely had the energy to speak. ‘Where am I? What happened to me?’ The room wavered before her eyes. ‘What do you mean to do with me?’

‘I don’t know what happened to you,’ Shand replied in the soft voice that was somehow younger than his weathered face. ‘When I found you, you were in great peril: delirious, dying. I brought you here to safety. There will be time later for questioning, and answering.’ Taking her limp wrist in one hand, he put the other over her eyes. ‘Sleep!’

The warmth and the dark were so comforting that her fears slipped away. With a little sigh Karan slid into sleep and did not even dream.

Shand stood looking down at her for a moment, then when he was sure she was asleep he quietly unbarred the door, locked it behind him and made his way out onto the street.

* * * *

When Karan woke again it was morning, a pale grey light slanting across the room from gaps below and above the door. The old man was not there. The fire had gone out and the room was frigid. She sat up slowly. The room swirled. After the dizziness had passed she eased her legs out of bed and stood up, leaning on the edge of the bed for support. Her feet cringed away from the cold stone. She looked down at herself. Her only garment was a worn grey shift, more like a singlet in length. Once Karan’s form had been inclined to roundness; now she was shocked to see that she was gaunt, as if she had woken in someone else’s body. The bones of her hips protruded; her legs were thin, her ribs outlined against the shift. How long had she been unconscious?

She had forgotten the latter part of her journey to Thurkad, erased it from her mind, and did not know that she had lost all appetite at Sith, weeks before the Conclave, and since then had taken just enough to sustain herself.

Her clothes were nowhere visible, so Karan wrapped a blanket around her. Step by cautious step she made her way along the edge of the bed then across to the fireplace. There she sank onto the chair, shivering, staring at the ashes. After a while she realised that she was ravenously hungry, a hunger so intense that she was almost ill as soon as she became aware of it. She could not find anything to eat, though a half-full water jug sat on a chest beside the door.

Cracking the ice on the top with her finger, she gulped the water. It was so cold that it made her teeth ache, and as it hit the pit of her stomach she doubled over with cramps and lay retching and gasping amid the ashes. Eventually the spasm passed but Karan was too weak to move.

The lock clicked. The latch lifted. Shand’s grey head thrust through the door. His back was bent under a large bundle of firewood - panels from a front door, charred on one side, blistered green paint on the other, smashed to splinters on either end. There were smaller pieces in complementary colours, mouldings and bits of fluted architrave. It had been someone’s home. That made her heart ache again for Gothryme.

Karan looked up dully. There was ash in her hair, a black smear on one cheek. He took her small hand. It was very cold.

‘Why didn’t you get back into bed, little cinder girl?’

‘I couldn’t,’ she whispered. ‘I’m starving! How long have you held me here?’

‘I haven’t held you here, as you put it,’ he said with a trace of irritation. ‘I found you three days ago in the Great Hall.’

‘Great Hall? I don’t understand,’ she said, as Shand lifted the lid of the chest and rummaged inside. The recollections of the previous day were quite gone. ‘No. Yes, Nelissa! Arbitrating? Is that the right word? The Mirror. A messenger . . .’ She trailed off, confused. It was as if her memories had been rent into fragments and mixed together like shreds of paper in a basket. Nothing seemed to connect to anything else.

The lid of the chest banged. Shand came back with half a loaf of stale grainy bread that might have been made from flour swept up from the floor of a mill. It was full of husks and hairs, grit and little dark pellets the shape of mouse droppings. There was also some dried-up cheese with flecks of mould inside the cracks, a couple of onions and, from a chipped brown jar, scraps of pickled vegetables so soft and colourless that they might have been left over from the impeachment of the last Autarch of Thurkad. He cut the food into pieces on a metal plate and put it in her hands. The blanket had fallen to one side, exposing small feet and slender ankles. Shand bent down and tucked them back in. He did not look threatening today, just worried.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly fit to eat but all I could get. I picked a poor time to come to Thurkad. Eat only a little at a time otherwise you will be sick. Your stomach is unused to food.’

‘My stomach is unused even to water,’ Karan said ruefully, taking up a piece of the brown bread. She inspected the morsel, picked out the most suspect particles and nibbled at what remained. ‘What happened to me?’

Shand explained what little he knew of the ending of the Conclave. Karan struggled to remember, but there was nothing there apart from the names, a few islands of memory in an infinite sea.

He made a nest of kindling in the fireplace and in barely a minute the fire was blazing, filling the room with the smell of burning resin.

‘How came I here then?’

‘I went to the Great Hall - I hardly know why - and found you, barely clinging to life. I carried you here.’

Karan looked down at her plate, selected a fragment of pickled root. ‘What happened to the other people at the Conclave?’ she asked, gnawing the sour, fibrous and tasteless vegetable.

‘I don’t know and I can’t find out. Yggur holds most of Thurkad, and soon he will have it all. Mendark is still defending the citadel, but it must soon fall.’

The names meant nothing to her; she had forgotten them again. ‘What about... Maigraith?’

‘I don’t know her. Perhaps she is one of the unidentified dead.’

Karan shook her head, which still hurt. ‘I would surely know it.’ Then she regretted speaking. Shand might work out that she was a sensitive and sell her to whoever would pay most for her talent. That was a common fate of sensitives, especially in wartime.

‘Perhaps she fled from the war,’ he said.

‘Perhaps.’ She hesitated. ‘Did you learn anything about Llian?’

‘I spoke to one of the people who took away the dead. He was not among them.’ Shand poked the fire with the end of a billet of wood. It spat little sparks back at him.

‘Why did you bother with me, Shand? I keep asking, but you do not answer. Where have you taken me?’

‘We are in an old part of the city,’ said Shand. ‘So labyrinthine and poor that none come here except those who can find nowhere else to live. Even Yggur’s armies have kept out, though that will change after the citadel falls. You’re not safe here - you stole his Mirror!’

‘How long do I have?’

‘No way to tell. Perhaps only hours.’

Karan’s head lay on her arms like a great slug. She realised that Shand had been talking for some time, but she had not heard a word. She closed her eyes. Shand lifted her easily and carried her to the bed. She crawled within, still wrapped in her blanket, and fell into sleep.

* * * *

Shand laid down his map and automatically reached for the wine. No! he said to himself, but a minute later had it in his hand again. Settling back in the chair, he put the flask to his mouth. The fortified drink was a comfort but there was not enough left to give him what he wanted - hazy oblivion, temporary absolution for his sins.

You’re a fool, Shand! You should have stayed in Tullin where you couldn’t do any harm.

He had once been one of the great, matching power and wits with the leaders of nations, but a personal tragedy had caused him to abandon all that. A long time ago he had retired to the mountain village of Tullin, about as far from the seats of power as it was possible to get. There for many years he had chopped wood and done chores at the inn for his living. Then one day the world had come to Tullin.

Late last autumn Llian had appeared there, sent out of malice on an errand he was ill-suited for: to find Karan and the Mirror of Aachan and bring them safely to Mendark. Shand could shut out the world no longer, but he found that the power and strength he had once taken for granted were gone - he had grown old.

He was in trouble now, helpless and afraid. The power that had frightened the Whelm away from Llian that night in Tullin had just been show, like a lizard puffing out its frill. All show, and if his enemies saw through it he would be as helpless as Karan on her sick-bed. He took up the map again. Shand had always been fascinated by maps and spent his spare time studying and making them, but he could not concentrate and laid it aside in favour of the wine.

As he sipped, he stared into the flames, musing. He had known Karan’s father, Galliad, well. Look out for the child, if something happens to me, Galliad had said long ago.

Shand had laughed at that. Galliad had been a capable, clever man. ‘What could possibly happen to you?’

‘I have enemies but few friends. That does not bother me greatly, for myself. I have had a long life. But Karan is special.’

Shand had smiled and Galliad did too. ‘Yes, every child is special but she is very special. She is sensitive, but she is more than just a blending of human and Aachim, as you might think. I will tell you the story sometime. If anything happens to me, keep an eye on her. I ask no more than that.’

Soon after Galliad had been killed in the mountains and Shand had never learned what he had to tell about Karan. Her mother took her own life and the child went to her mother’s people. Later Karan had disappeared, and though he eventually traced her to Shazmak, his oblique enquiries received the curt response that she had come back to her own. And there Shand had left it, returning with some relief to his own life.

Then, two months ago, Karan had appeared near Tullin, a grown woman, hunted by the Whelm, and he had done less than he should have to help her. He felt ashamed and responsible for what had happened afterwards. He had to amend that, no matter the cost to himself.

There came a racket down the hall. Shand jumped. A random act of violence in this war could wipe them both out. Karan groaned in her sleep. He sprang out of his chair, but it was just another of her nightmares. He put the bottle away and sat beside the bed, stroking her brow until she grew calm again and her eyes ceased their racing.

Karan the woman was not so different from the child he had met long ago. She was nothing like her big dark father and not much like her beautiful blonde mother, who had been as petite and fragile as a bird. Karan was striking too, unusually so, for she threw right back to a minor branch of the Aachim of old. She was small, pale of skin, her eyes the deep green of malachite and her hair as red as sunset. She was round of face, with wide high cheekbones and delicate features.

Shand went back to the bottle and the fire, remembering what he had seen in the Great Hall. The violence that had been done there shocked him, seasoned to war though he had once been. He’d walked among the bodies, finding several that he could rouse with a touch and a tot from his flask, and sent them staggering out into the rain. Shand had been about to follow them, for the sounds of war were all around and he was afraid of being trapped, when he saw the bundle against the wall with the unmistakeable hair.

Karan! What was she doing here? He was faced with the result of his dereliction in Tullin, not just for Karan but for the whole world. She was still alive, but for how much longer? What could he do? He had not been in Thurkad for many years. Most of his old contacts were dead. How would he ever find the surviving ones in this chaos?

Throwing Karan over his shoulder, Shand went out into the rain, walking the alleys for hours, trying to find a place to hide. Every door was locked and no one would let him in for any amount of money. In the end, afraid that Karan was dying, he smashed the lock of a shabby tenement with his staff, forced his way in, found an empty room, paid the terrified landlady a week in advance and set to work, to bring Karan back to life.

A door slammed nearby, bringing Shand back to the present. Outside, the war continued as deadly as ever. He had hidden from himself for too long. He was old, with nothing but his rusty wits between them and the enemy. Just carrying her here had shown him how feeble he was. He took up the bottle again.

* * * *

Karan woke with an effort, like swimming upwards through a lake of mud. She realised that it was not the whole room shaking, merely her shoulder.

‘Get up! They’re looking for you. We’ve got to go now!’

She sat up, staring at Shand, who turned away abruptly, busying himself in the far corner of the room. What did he want from her? Experience had taught Karan that most people wanted something. Was there a price on her, or did he want to make use of her sensitive talents?

Shand looked up from his packing. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said roughly. ‘There’s no time for dreaming.’

‘Where are my clothes?’ she said crossly. ‘I can’t go out in a blanket.’

He stooped, reached beneath the end of the bed and pulled out a small cloth bundle. ‘That’s all you had. Hurry!’ He unbarred the door and stood there, listening intently.

The bundle was tied with a knot. She fumbled at it with strengthless fingers. The door clicked. Shand was gone. She felt, suddenly, very afraid.

Karan heard shouting down the hall; then fists beating against a door. Her scalp crawled. To her surprise the knot came apart; she hadn’t known that her fingers were still working on it. She shook out the bundle. Her familiar baggy green trousers fell out. Dropping the blanket, she pulled the dirty shift over her head and drew the trousers on. Just doing that exhausted her.

The shouting and banging resumed down the hall. Karan listened with mouth agape as a door was assaulted, seemingly with an axe. Soldiers were searching the building. The axe crashed into the door, one, two, three, four smashing blows, then a scream so high and piercing that it hurt her ears. She burrowed under the covers but nothing could block out the sound.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

Rat City

utside, all was silent again. Karan looked down at the rag in her hands - her faded olive shirt. No boots, no undergarments, no hat, no coat. The shirt must have been torn off her - it was rent right down the front. How could she go out in that? And it had been washed hastily or carelessly, for it was mouldy and had a bloody stain down one side.

She put the shirt on with a shudder. Outside the screaming began again. At that moment Shand leapt through the door. ‘Where are the rest of my clothes?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know - don’t ask stupid questions! Quick, get your boots on!’ He ran back and forth in a panic, picking things up and throwing them down again.

Bending down to look for her boots, Karan felt so weak and dizzy that she almost passed out. She had to cling to the side of the bed to save herself from falling. ‘I have no boots,’ she said, remembering that she had been taken to the Conclave barefoot and in chains.

Shand cursed. ‘Then you will have to go without!’

He dragged her through the door. Helpless as she was, his coldness and anger struck her. Outside, the warmth she had brought from the bed was gone instantly. Halfway down the gloomy corridor they passed a splintered door and looked into a room as shabby as their own. A woman clutched a dead child to her breast screaming uncontrollably. Shana dragged the staring Karan away.

At a corner he put his head around cautiously, then ducked back. ‘Guards!’ he said, jerking her arm so hard that her head spun.

‘Where…going?’ Karan asked thickly. She could feel her head lolling on her shoulders; feel the madness not far away.

Shand dragged her the other way at a fast walk, then down a narrow stairway. ‘To the cellars,’ he said.

They went through a door into darkness. Shand lit one of his candle stubs and picked his way through a filthy storeroom to a damp basement that looked empty but for rows of barrels. ‘All these places have their bolt holes and their ways out,’ he said, walking along the wall holding up his light. ‘In the olden days they used to store water for the whole building here.’

Karan sat on the floor while Shand worked. She felt a little better now. ‘How did they get it in?’ she wondered. Ever since her days in Shazmak, Karan had been keenly interested in matters of plumbing; she was always looking for new ways to improve Gothryme. Home - the thought dropped her into a well of loneliness and longing.

‘I’m looking for a trapdoor into the alley,’ Shand continued. ‘I saw it from outside yesterday.’ There was a fresh uproar, not far away. ‘Farsh!’ he swore. His hand shook, splashing warts of hot candle wax on his nose. He dashed them away. ‘Quick, put your back to the door.’

Karan did so, feeling around in the dim light for bolts or locks. There were none. She sagged against the door, watching Shand running back and forth with his light, knowing that they must be caught and it would be worse than if they had stayed in their room. Since they were running away, they had to be guilty.

‘Here it is,’ said Shand, holding his light up to the wall.

Karan’s brief hope was dashed as she felt the door move behind her. She braced herself, her feet slipping on the slimy floor. Over at the wall Shand was struggling with rusty bolts.

‘Door’s stuck,’ she heard distinctly from the other side. ‘Don’t think anyone’s been in here in a long time.’

‘You want to explain that to the Whelm?’ another man rumbled. ‘Get it open!’

Karan felt the panic rising. She wanted to lie down on the floor and scream out her terror.

‘Hold it!’ hissed Shand.

There was a tremendous smash in her ear and something stung her cheek. An axe blade was protruding through the door beside her ear - a couple of fingers the other way and it would have gone into the back of her head.

Karan moaned, staring at the blade. Shand snuffed the candle. The axe was wrenched out, then the door smashed open so hard that Karan was sent flying across the room. Fireworks went off behind her eyes. Someone sprang through the door and another followed him.

‘There’s someone in here,’ shouted the first man. ‘Quick, the lantern!’

The light dazzled her. She lay where she was, too dazed to move.

‘Doesn’t look like anyone on the list,’ the first man said, ‘but we’d better take her in anyway. Go and check behind those barrels.’

He bent over Karan and lifted her head up. She gave him a vacant stare.

‘Name!’ he demanded. He was the hairiest man she had ever seen, his face almost completely obscured by a matted brown beard. Karan was terrified.

‘Melius,’ she squeaked, a name like one of her middle names.

‘Where from?’

‘Go -, Go -’ Gothryme almost came out, despite herself.

Where?’

‘Goss - Gossior,’ she choked. ‘Across the sea.’ With her blend of accents, Karan knew that she could have come from anywhere.

Just then there was a scuffle down near the barrels. The light went out. The soldier let Karan fall and ran back that way. There came a meaty thump. They’d killed Shand - she knew it. A shadow appeared behind her.

‘Come on,’ said Shand. He picked her up, carried her over to the wall, felt for the trapdoor and lifted it up with one hand. Awkwardly he heaved her up with the other. ‘Get hold! Stick your head out and see if anyone’s looking. Quick!’

Karan put her head out into the rain. ‘Can’t see -’ she said.

Shand thrust her through, a great heave on her backside, and she fell into the wet alley. He followed, grunting.

‘What did you do?’ she asked, picking wood splinters out of her cheek.

‘Whacked them with a barrel stave. I feel better already. Come on. They’ll be after us shortly, and they’ve seen your face now.’

* * * *

They emerged onto the street beside an anonymous grey stone building. Black clouds overhead promised more sleet. The wind clubbed Karan in the back, striking through her shirt like cobweb. The cobbles were coated with slush and ice. She staggered along, holding her shirt together at the front, weeping with the cold and the pain. The street was nearly deserted. Those few who had been forced outdoors hurried past with heads low and eyes downcast: three pinch-faced men in maroon gowns and hoods (unlikely that Yggur would tolerate that cult); a boy with a basket of scabby vegetables; an old woman, limping.

Karan stubbed her toe on a broken cobble, slipped and fell on her face in the freezing slush. To lie there hurt less than to try to get up. Shand heaved her to her feet. Swaying, she saw that her toe was pouring blood onto the grey snow. Shand was off again. Karan staggered after him. She had never felt so weak.

‘Shand!’ she called, a little squeak of a voice.

He turned back, almost running. ‘I can’t go on,’ she said.

He put his arm around her waist, holding her tightly, almost lifting her off the ground. They rounded the corner of the building. Straight ahead were four soldiers, interrogating a middle-aged man. Shand hesitated for a second, but a soldier beckoned. Karan had no courage left.

‘Be yourself. They are only soldiers,’ he said under his breath. ‘Say nothing. Pretend you are dumb or witless.’

That won’t be difficult, Karan thought. But these were veterans, tough and old. There would be no fooling them. As they approached, Shand put her down. She stood in a puddle, trembling as in a fit.

One of the guards, an unshaven giant with a bandaged shoulder, twisted the man’s arm behind his back and pushed him to his knees in the slush. For a horrified moment Karan thought that they were going to execute him on the spot. The prisoner evidently thought so too, for he put his free arm up over his head in a pathetic attempt to protect his neck from the sword. His expensive coat tore at the shoulder, showing a white flag of stuffing. He gabbled out something, one of the soldiers laughed and the prisoner was hauled away at spear-point. The giant gestured them forward.

Shand spoke to the guards in a deferential way, tugging at his beard while pointing back the way they had come. He had a trick of making little circular gestures in the air as he spoke. The soldiers turned to look that way, then back at Karan. She stepped forward a half-pace, sure that the guards from the cellar would come running any minute; equally sure that she would be sick if it lasted much longer. Surety that would show them that I am harmless, she thought ruefully. It wouldn’t have mattered if the guards had questioned her, for she had forgotten it all again.

Shand said something to the soldiers and they laughed. Karan bent and poked her bloody toe. The foremost guard hauled her upright, staring at her as if committing her face and form to memory, then she realised that her torn shirt was gaping open to the waist. She pulled it together hastily, someone chuckled, her stomach heaved and she retched into the slush at his feet. The soldier stepped back hastily, gesturing them on. Shand put his arm around Karan’s waist again and led her away.

‘That was a near thing,’ he said, with strange cheerfulness. ‘They’re definitely looking for you. But of course they were looking for a woman with red hair.’

Karan stared at him as though he were mad, then caught a strand of her hair and pulled it in front of her face. It was the colour of soot. Her beautiful red curling hair, her only vanity, was a lank ugly black. Tears burned her eyes. She began to weep and once started could not stop.

* * * *

Several times more they encountered soldiers and were questioned, but each time Shand talked his way through. Eventually, after many rest stops, the last in a part of the city so squalid it was impossible to endure the stench for a minute, he dragged her out of a lane to the top of a narrow, steep stair. There was water at the bottom. Without a word Shand began to descend the steps. Had he not been there, Karan would have lain down in the muck and never got up again. Her toe had stopped bleeding at last, had even stopped hurting, her feet were so cold.

‘Where are we going?’ she gasped, falling down on the top step.

‘Hurry! We can talk later.’

A shout came from behind them. Looking back, she saw soldiers at the other end of the long lane. ‘Halt!’ one shouted, then they broke into a run. To Karan’s right was a blank wall; to her left a narrow alley ran between decrepit warehouses. She forced herself to her feet, stumbled down the alley a few steps, hesitated then ran back, crying with frustration. Where once she would have made the right decision instantly, now she could not make any. There seemed to be nothing inside her head.

‘We can’t get out that way,’ cried Shand. ‘Quick, down the steps.’

Karan froze in indecision. Shand heaved her over his shoulder and literally ran down the stairs, skidding on the steep treads. At the bottom he slipped on the slimy step, dropping Karan into the water. It was numbingly cold. She raised her hand; he hauled her out and propped her against the stone rail. His breath came in wheezing gasps.

They were surrounded by the massive, decaying piles of the great wharf city, stretching in all directions beyond sight. The sight of it made her skin creep. Karan had been lost on the waterfront of Thurkad once as a child. She had wandered into the wharves, with their strange inhabitants peering at her from behind every pile, saying nothing. It had only been a few hours before she was found again, but she had never forgotten the sight of it, or the stench, or the mad terror of her mother when she recovered her.

The steps ran down steeply between two stone abutments and continued beneath the water. Only ten spans away, partly submerged, was the lowest platform of the wharf, but directly in front of them it was gone - rotted away or sunk in the mud. Shand jumped up, probing the dark water with a stick.

‘Come on,’ he called. ‘We can get across this way.’

He stepped in, feeling in front of him like a blind man. The water came up to his thighs. Someone shouted behind them and Karan started. A soldier stood at the top of the stair, pointing at them. Shand seized her wrist again and hauled her out of view as arrows thunked in the timbers above their heads.

* * * *

Keeping the line of piles between them and the end of the steps, Shand led Karan into the wharf. The deck was warped - one minute the water was up to their waists, the next just a film on the slimy surface. Inside it was dark, humid and ripe with the smell of salt water and rot. Chinks of light slanted down here and there, spotlighting curtains of algae or brown fungoid growths.

There was a gentle splash behind Shand. He called out. ‘Take care, the deck’s all rotten here.’

He moved slowly forward, probing the dark water. The platform felt spongy underfoot. In one place it broke under his weight and he had to flounder backwards to safety. He looked over his shoulder for Karan. She was nowhere to be seen. Where had she been standing? Across there, where a ray of light shone down on the water. Shand picked his way across the crumbling deck but could not see her. Then, remembering that faint splash, he looked down.

The water was clearer here. Karan was below the surface, drifting with her arms wrapped around her body and her knees tucked up, revolving slowly. Her eyes were open and staring, but she made no attempt to help herself. Shand prodded her in the side with his staff. She seemed surprised, then caught hold of the stick, and even after he pulled her out and she lay on the decking streaming and shivering, she still clutched it. He examined her carefully but there was no sign of any injury and she said nothing.

Increasingly worried about her state of mind, Shand went more carefully and always held her hand. In this fashion they made their way steadily into the heart of the great wharf city.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Karan asked dully, as they rested on a fallen beam. She began to shiver convulsively. Her feet and hands were bloody from the shells and barnacles that covered every surface; in the dim light her face was a ghastly green.

‘There are places in the wharf city where not even Yggur would follow us. However the people who live here, the Hlune, will tolerate us for a time, if I ask it of them.’

‘They must,’ said Karan faintly, ‘for I cannot go another step to save my life.’

‘You’ll have to. We’re yet on the inner fringe, where only the most degraded ones live, for the waters are putrid with the wastes of Shazmak. Sit here! I’ll find somewhere for you to hide while I negotiate with the Hlune. I won’t be long.’

So saying, he took off his pack and laid it at her feet on the platform, which at that point was above the level of the water and relatively dry. He set off, soon returning.

‘There’s a place nearby that’ll do for tonight.’

Karan limped after him, leaving smears of blood on the timber. After a minute they found an empty storeroom, a space about five paces by four, enclosed with planks and having a rude plank door. There were others like it nearby. The wharf city contained half the warehouses of Thurkad, though these ones had subsided below the high-tide level long ago and were no longer used.

They went in and Karan sank down on the wet floor. It was quite dark inside, Shand just a shadow moving about. She began to doze off but he shook her awake.

‘You can’t sleep yet, and not on the floor at all - the tide will come up in a few hours. You must try to avoid the water here; it’s full of the foulness of Thurkad.’

Too late, she thought. He felt around the walls and identified shelves, planks of raw wood. They were covered in a brown growth that powdered under the sweep of his hand, filling the air with choking dust. On one shelf he made a bed with blankets then lifted her up. Karan wrapped the blankets around her, breathing shallowly, her mind numb, her belly empty, her feet hurting. She was faint from hunger. Shand shrugged the pack onto his back and turned to the door.

‘Shand,’ she squeaked, close to panic. He turned. ‘Don’t go!’

He stood with his hand on the door frame. ‘I must. I won’t be long.’

‘Please, I feel like I’m going to die. I’m so cold.’ Her teeth chattering, she slid off her perch, landed on her feet then crumpled to the floor.

He ran across, thinking that she’d relapsed into madness. Her hand was icy; she was shivering in spasms, on the edge of hypothermia. ‘Shand, you’re a fool,’ he said to himself. ‘Look what you’ve done to her.’

He stripped off her wet clothes, dried her and chafed her limbs until the shivering stopped, then wrapped her up in all the blankets they had. She sighed and opened her eyes.

With a knife as long as her forearm Shand shaved wood off one of the beams into a pot. He chopped food into tiny pieces into a smaller pot, filled it with water and balanced it over the first pot on a pair of spoons.

‘More!’ came a whisper from Karan’s blankets, whence only a pair of eyes could be seen. ‘I’m starving to death.’

He cut another onion, crumbled another piece of bread into the pot, struck sparks into the tinder expertly, blew on the tiny glow and in only a minute there was a lick of flame in the fire pot. That was such a cheering sight that Karan crawled over to the fire, warming her hands and feet at the small blaze.

‘Now let me have a look at your feet.’ He cleaned the long gash on her toe, dabbed a waxy salve on and bandaged it. ‘How could I have forgotten that you had no boots?’ he said to himself, shaking his head at her tattered feet. ‘To drive you so through the snow. How feeble my wits have become.’

He worked carefully, neglecting not the least scratch. Karan was silent all the while - grateful for his attentions, but scarcely noticing what he did. She was lost in the past, reliving childhood nightmares about being trapped in the wharves of Thurkad.

Though he twice replenished the fire pot there was not enough fuel to boil the stew, but it was soon hot enough for Karan. Shand lifted her back up onto her bunk, quenched one of the spoons in the pot and passed it up to her.

‘Eat it all, if you can,’ he said. He threw the coals out the door into the water, washed the fire pot and repacked it.

The stew was watery and had little flavour, but Karan didn’t care. She spooned down the hot mush until her belly was so full that it hurt. A delicious warmth began to spread through her. The cheese had melted into a stringy lump at the bottom of the pot. It was rubbery, with a strong smell and a rich ripe flavour.

While she ate Shand watched her and, finally, was satisfied that she was well enough to be left alone. ‘Now I must see the Hlune or there will be trouble. We are trespassing in another country, Karan, and the owners are jealous of their privacy. I hope to be back before tomorrow, but I’ll leave the rest of the food, just in case. No soldiers will come down here, not yet. Stay inside! Sleep.’ He went out, closing the door behind him.

Soon the pot, which had contained enough for two hungry people, was empty and still she wanted more. Even her feet were starting to warm up. Karan lay down on her side, curled up and tried vainly to sleep. There were too many distractions. She was afraid of the dark and the fierce, strange people that dwelt here. The rough planks pressed against her hip, on which it seemed there was no flesh left. The dust rose with every movement and drifted in the air, making her sneeze, her nose run and her eyes water. It was very dark, only a few pale-greenish chinks coming in through gaps in the wall, high up. Later they faded too, as darkness fell. But the place was unexpectedly noisy.

Karan lay with her eyes closed, making a catalogue of the noises. The longer she listened the more there were. There was the constant lap-lap of wavelets beneath her, though this place must be a long way from the seaward side of the wharf. The wharf creaked constantly, a dozen different kinds of sound, from low, barely perceptible vibrations that seemed to be the whole structure shuddering like a great organ pipe, to smaller local shivers and shakes, creaks and groans. The water rose and fell gently beneath her with the swell from the sea, and over the hours the tide came flooding in until it rose up through the slotted floor of her little room.

Several times a heavily laden wain rumbled across the wharf platform far above. Children leapt from beams into the water at their play - they must have been quite close - and the vermin that were everywhere in Thurkad skittered across the timbers, squeaking and scratching. The rats were so bold that she had to constantly chase them away from the food bag, finally tucking it under her blankets.

And one time the whole structure shuddered wildly, with a rending of timbers and a wailing that continued long after the shaking had stopped, as one of the ancient foundation piles, rotted beyond its capacity to bear, collapsed and all that it supported fell with it. But by then Karan was asleep.

Early the following morning she was woken by a thunderstorm over the city. The pitch blackness of the night was riven by blue-white flashes that came in through every crack and gap in the structure, and the light made her look sicker than ever, though only the rats staring at her an arm’s length away could see it. Karan kicked out and they scurried away, but later dreamed that they were creeping under her blankets.

The thunder sent little sympathetic shivers and shudders through the wharf, and the pegs of ironwood that held it all together slipped and squealed. Then the rain came, pelting down like the roaring of surf upon a lonely beach. It trickled down the massive beams and posts and piles, running across the platforms and floors and all the layers of the wharf, until eventually it seeped through the gaps in the roof of her cell, sometimes overflowing in a continuous stream, at other times falling in a dark curtain over the length of one warped plank.

No use huddling there under the drips. She must have slept better than she’d thought, for Karan was no longer sleepy, and standing did not exhaust her quite as it had the previous day. Her toe was sore and red, though the other scratches were healing. She was starving again. She ate an onion and some bread, both showing suspicious gnaw marks, and looked for a drink.

Over in the corner water was dripping into water, where a pipe diverted run-off into a rainwater barrel. She reached in to scoop out a hand of water and her fingers sank into a mat of fur, a pulpy decaying mess of flesh and brittle bones. A loathsome smell came up. She dredged it out, holding it as far away as she could. It was a rodent, rather larger than a rat, and so rotten that the flesh was weeping from the bones. She flung it away then went outside to wash off the putrefied, jelly-like stuff that clung to her fingers. Back inside the smell was ripe, and the floor under her bare feet now felt so unpleasantly slimy that she had to abandon her refuge.

Her clothes, which Shand had spread out to dry the previous night, were still wet and covered in mud, just like her. Salt itched in her armpits. Nearby, the rainwater showered off the edge of a huge beam. Karan got under the shower, so cold that it took her breath away, and scoured herself with her shirt until her skin was pink and tingling. She scrubbed her hair with her fingers for as long as she could stand the cold water, and though a little of the dye came off, the colour of her hair seemed to be unchanged.

Then she sat down on the decking and washed her clothes in the dark water. The bloodstains on her shirt had faded a little. She hung the garments up on long splinters thrust into cracks between the planking, though with little hope of them drying in the cold humidity of this place.

The tide was rising again, the water ankle-deep already. She found a roost that was above the reach of the tide, and dry as well. There she perched, completely wrapped in the blankets, only her face peeping out, munching the last of Shand’s bread. Her skin glowed from the cold and the scrubbing. The coarse wool irritated her sensitive skin, her feet were blue, yet she felt better than she had at any time since she had come to Sith and found no one there to take the Mirror.

The Mirror! That was the past, ancient history. Another Karan entirely. Whatever had motivated her to carry it so faithfully and for so long? She had no idea.

A long time she sat there, slowly growing warm again, and even dozed a little. When she woke the slanting light told her that it was mid-morning. Shand had been gone almost a day, longer than he had said. Something must have happened to him.

Getting down from her perch, Karan padded across the decking, peering each way as far as she could, which was not far. There was nothing to be seen. She filled the pot from a dripping plank and drank her fill. The water was good, though with a tarry taste.

What if Shand never came back? She had no money, no food, no shoes. Yggur held all the city. She knew nothing of the people that lived within the wharf, except that she feared them. What would they do with her if they found her?

She felt the vaguest unease, just the faintest tickle of danger. Karan would have ignored it once, but it set her to wondering what had happened to her sensitive abilities. After her horrible experiences on the way from Shazmak to Name, Karan had closed off her talent, suppressing the memories, and since then she had not been able to find either again.

Almost as she had those thoughts, a figure materialised in front of her. It was tall and lanky, clad in a single piece of dun-coloured fabric looped around its waist and knotted at the shoulder. The face was partly obscured by a head bag, a crumpled mass of cloth that sagged down to the shoulders on either side. Just the jut of a big thin nose was visible, a wispy pigtail on the chin, a bony hand. The long arm reached out, the hand took hold of her blanket and jerked. Karan grabbed the blanket before her nakedness was exposed and pulled it around her.

The figure made a deep noise in its throat and reached out again, this time taking hold of her arm. Surprisingly, its hard fingers were warm against her skin. It pulled her effortlessly. There was no point in resisting.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

A Vat of Jellyfish

aran had no idea where she was being taken, though it must have been towards the sea, for she became aware of waves breaking against the platform underneath. Eventually she was led into a large room, a meeting chamber almost ten spans across and six high. The light of the lamps struck her blind for a moment, though they were not very bright by the standards of the outside world.

The room was lit by a myriad of tiny lamps and stank of fish oil, raw and rancid, burning and burnt. People like the man who had brought her here - tall and long-limbed, with huge flat feet and hands, and skin with the granular texture of sand - crowded the chamber. All were talking furiously about the war and the fall of Mendark. They must be the Hlune that Shand had gone to see. They were congregated on a large ironwood platform that comprised about a quarter of the room, built out from the far wall above the level of the high tide.

Swathed in their togas, the men and women looked quite similar. The men were distinguishable only by a greater breadth of shoulder and by whiskers twisted into a rat’s tail below the chin, the length of the tail seeming to be proportional to the status of the man. The women wore their hair in a long plait at the back, rank being denoted by the number of subsidiary braids at the bottom.

In the centre of the platform, on matching carved chairs of red cedar, sat two elders, a man and a woman, both naked to the waist. They looked better fed than the rest, though not fat. The woman’s plait was flung over one shoulder, a hundred braids spread like a fan between her breasts, while the man’s chin-whiskers were plaited down to his navel.

Her captor conveyed her to the base of the steps that led onto the platform. There he stopped, still gripping her arm tightly. The wait was nerve-racking. Just to stand was exhausting and Karan’s head throbbed almost as badly as it had on her first wakening.

One time a Hlune messenger ran in, his robes flying, and leapt up high on the platform. He skidded on the damp wood, recovered, then burst out in furious chatter in which several times Karan heard Mendark’s name.

Both elders rose from their cedar chairs, looking grave. The other Hlune gathered around them but now, in the chorus of voices, Karan could not make out anything at all. Finally the messenger was despatched with instructions, the elders sat down again, the man nodded to the woman and she put her hand out in Karan’s direction.

Karan was brought before the elders, but again the process was delayed by a messenger. Hlune language seemed to be the common speech of Meldorin, but they spoke so quickly and with such a strange accent, punctuated with tongue clicks and cheek pops, with clickings of the fingers and rapping on kneecaps, that she could barely comprehend one word in a sentence. She did understand, however, that Thurkad had fallen and the Hlune were terrified that Yggur would torch the wharf city to drive out any enemies who might have taken refuge there. Several times she heard them exclaim, ‘The horesh! The horesh!’ which she took to mean, ‘The burning! The burning!’

That was their most deadly fear. Long had they lived within these multi-storeyed wharves of old Thurkad in an uneasy partnership that suited them, and Thurkad too, but never before had the city been taken and they did not know what to expect.

While she waited, Karan examined her surroundings. The ceiling was held up by huge beams of ironwood, the intensely hard and durable wood that made up the skeleton of the wharf. Here the ironwood was smoothed and polished so that in the light of the lamps it had the look of priceless red-black ebony. The roof of the chamber, and the walls, were panelled with red-brown cedar wood down to the high-tide mark. Below that the room was also panelled but in timber of a paler brown, heavily varnished against rot.

Now she realised that there were another, smaller folk here as well. They were her size, with paler skin and more regular, pleasant features than the Hlune, with slender shoulders but round jutting buttocks. These people appeared to be a toiler race for they ran back and forth all the time she was in the room, bearing food and drink, carrying messages, moving furniture or simply cleaning and repairing. They were dressed alike, men and women both, in just a winding of drab cloth that covered them from hip to knee.

Karan caught the words ‘red hair’, and realised that it was her turn at last. There followed a lengthy debate as to whether she was the one that Yggur sought. The elders inspected her carefully, especially her black hair, and rubbed a few strands between their fingers, remarking at the stain that resulted. That provoked more chattering, then the woman gestured and the blanket was stripped away. Karan stood naked under their gaze, red with mortification. Evidently they were satisfied about her identity; Karan was beckoned to one side while the elders held a long discussion.

‘What’s happened to Shand?’ Karan interrupted. The elders ignored her.

‘Shand, yah!’ said an old Hlune woman whose hair was done in many braids. She nodded vigorously, showing her toothless gums.

‘Where is Shand?’ Karan asked again. ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘Shand, yah!’ the old woman repeated. No one else took the slightest notice.

The debate continued, fast and furious. Karan hardly cared, the cold had made her so lethargic. Her blanket had disappeared. She squatted down, concealing her nakedness as best she could, not that anyone showed the least interest in it. Karan could feel the madness, never far away over the past few weeks, rising to the surface again. If she stayed here much longer it would burst out and drown her, wash away all the memories yet again, leaving her empty and defenceless. She realised that today was the first day of endre. Things could hardly get better until after hythe.

She was just about to lie down on the floor and give up when the elders came to a decision. Orders were honked out, the man who had brought her here gripped her arm then led her to a small room nearby, there presenting her to a group of the smaller people.

‘You stay,’ he said. ‘Work hard and Telt will feed you. No work, no food!’ Then he hurried away.

Karan wanted to burst into tears, she felt so humiliated and abandoned. The toilers, the Telt, clustered around, staring at her in the dim light. They did not know what to make of her either. Physically she was like them, and her hair was a sooty, uniform black much like theirs. But her eyes were green, her nose narrower, her hands and feet smaller and more slender, her features more delicate. She was like them, and yet unlike.

‘Where’s Shand?’ Karan whispered weakly.

‘Chard!’ exclaimed a young man with very black eyebrows. ‘No chard! Work!’

‘Not chard,’ she said. ‘Shand!’ But the name did not seem to mean anything to them.

One of them touched her - his hands were also warm - and exclaimed: ‘Caudid!’

Cold! She was freezing, shivering convulsively. Someone flung her a piece of drab cloth. She wound it around her hips the way they wore it, and that seemed to solve the problem of her identity for them, though it did little to warm her and it smelled mouldy. Now the young man, no taller than her, led her to the corner of the room and with gestures set her to work. They must think I don’t understand their speech, she thought, for they said nothing more to her all the while.

On the platform in front of her was a large barrel, full of something like small jellyfish, though tougher and more leathery than any she had ever seen. They were coloured the palest aqua, with stubby tentacles that had tiny purple spots in rows along them.

Her job was to pick a jellyfish out of the barrel, cut off the tentacles which she must put to one side, hollow out the body and stuff the cavity with a mixture of aromatic herbs, then pack the creatures in layers in a smaller barrel, interleaved with layers of salt and another pungent, coarse-leaved herb. Finally the barrels were topped up with clean sea water brought in from outside in special barrels, and the top hammered on. That was the easy half of the job.

When each barrel was full Karan began again on the tentacles. She had to scrape each with the back of a knife until the stinging spots were removed, then slit the tentacle down the middle and flatten it by pressing and beating, for the flesh was tougher than it appeared. When the flattened tentacles formed a large pile she must feed them one by one into a press, placing each across the previous one, and finally heaving down on the lever until it would go no further. A quantity of thick jelly oozed out of the bottom of the press, and this was caught in large oval bladders, sealed and sent away. The other product of the press was an opaque, rubbery, layered brick which she shaved smooth with a knife and stacked in a corner of the platform.

As soon as she started on the tentacles Karan saw why it was a job for the lowest of the low. They were tough, more like rubber than jelly, and the stinging spots almost impossible to scrape away without being stung. And she was, repeatedly, until her fingers were so swollen and painful that they could barely hold the knife.

After some hours of this the others suddenly stopped work, climbed up to a rotting platform above the water level and began their evening meal. Karan went to join them, rather tentatively, for she did not know what was expected of her, but one of them, a woman taller than the others, gestured her back to her pile.

‘You not work hard,’ she exclaimed, shooting out her arm so hard that her breasts jiggled. Her belly was big in the middle stages of pregnancy. ‘No work, no eat!’

Karan splashed miserably back to her corner. The pile of tentacles still to be done was enormous, and the tide had risen so that she was standing up to her knees in cold water. Her fingers were swollen like fat little bladders. Climbing up on a bench out of the water, she bent down and picked up another tentacle. Her face was as white as a cloud, and once she almost fainted, only saving herself by dashing sea water into her face.

By now she was desperate with hunger and thirst. Even the brown sponges that grew on the piles were beginning to look edible. And what had happened to Shand?

Well, whether Shand returned or not she could not stay here. In this society the small ones were low, and she, a stranger, an oddity, the lowest. She would submit to that while she had to, but not an instant longer.

Hours later she finished the job. The tide was at its highest now, almost up to the level of the bench, so she dangled her legs over the side and washed them clean. Her back was locked from bending over so long, her legs spattered with jelly, her feet swollen from a myriad stings. But it was not as bad as the swamps and leeches of Orist. She could bear it, for there was no enemy here. They wanted nothing from her but hard work and Karan had been used to that at Gothryme.

Karan realised that the others had finished their work and were gathering on the platform again. An oil stove glowed underneath an urn. The stove smoked, filling the air with the reek of half-burnt fish oil, but before the water boiled someone pointed to the oil level and pinched out the flame. The pregnant woman scattered dried herb - the coarse, large-leaved kind that was used in the jellyfish barrels - on top of the water in the urn and stirred it gently until the water became the colour of dead grass. Wooden mugs of tea were handed around. Karan went forward tentatively and, after a moment’s hesitation, she too was given a mug. How grateful she was for it!

She took the mug in numb fingers and put it to her lips, allowing the steam to drift over her closed eyelids. The tea had a rank odour. The mug grew warm between her fingers. She took the smallest little sip. The feel of the hot liquid in her mouth was indescribably wonderful, the only warmth she’d felt all day, though the taste was indifferent, like wet straw. Karan drank it slowly for the warmth.

The others were eating thin slices cut from the compressed bricks of jelly tentacles, taking them raw. The idea was nauseating but she must eat. Karan reached for a slice of the pan, as they called it. But the man with the knife gestured her away, pointing toward the small heap that she had made, by which she understood that she must eat from her own pile.

Karan sat down by herself, cut a slice from a brick with her knife and nibbled at it. It was slimy, with a soft texture rather like rotted cheese intermixed with strings and layers of rubber, but it had no taste. She chewed her pan mechanically, swallowed and took another bite. A blinding pain struck the tip of her tongue. She spat the mess back out on the floor, poking through it with a finger, and there in the middle was a purple stinging spot that she had missed. In the slice that she’d cut off there were more - when she held it up to the light - tiny spots that were barely visible. Every eye in the room was on her but the Telt soon turned back to their own dinner.

Karan cut a slice from the other end of the brick, examined it carefully, and put it in her mouth. She chewed and bit into something so foul that she instantly threw up.

A young woman, her hair so glossy that it must have been freshly oiled, took the remains of the slice from her hand. She spoke rapidly, but all that Karan caught were the words ‘foul-jelly’. Karan looked blank. The woman went across the room to come back with something in her hand, a small jellyfish that had been put to one side. She showed it to Karan, shaking her glistening hair, which had an overpowering aroma of fish oil. The jellyfish was almost identical to the others, except that the colour was pale grey instead of pale blue. She put it under Karan’s nose - it was not rotten but a sickening smell came from it.

‘Foul-jelly,’ she said again, putting it to one side.

Karan threw the remains of the pan in the water. The woman inspected another of the bricks, sniffed it and handed it to her. Karan thanked her with her eyes but by now she had lost all appetite.

‘I am Karan,’ she said. ‘What is your name?’

‘Karan!’ the woman said, tinkling with laughter. ‘I am Cluffer.’

Cluffer touched the tip of her nose to Karan’s, took the mug from her swollen hand and filled it again from the urn. Karan carried it back to her workplace, nursing the hot fluid, savouring the rest and the quiet for however long it lasted.

Sometime later, work was finished for the day. Over in the corner the man with the black eyebrows was embracing Cluffer with a passion that Karan had rarely seen in public, burying his face in her hair and sniffing as though she wore a rare perfume, while she caressed him from head to foot. The others looked on with smiles and words of encouragement.

It must have been well after midnight. ‘Come!’ said another young man to Karan. ‘Time to sleep.’

The Telt, who numbered about ten, went out in a group. Karan followed them to their living quarters nearby. This room was sparse in the extreme, a mere box with a wide communal sleeping platform high on one side. The platform also served for eating and working, though it was unfurnished but for some blocks of wood for stools and a shelf that held ironwood carvings.

They washed themselves in sea water, hung up their loincloths, climbed up on the platform and bedded down together, covering themselves with blankets made of long strands of oiled seaweed roughly woven together. Karan sidled toward them but it was soon made clear to her that she was an outsider, not one to share warmth with. Cluffer, who had helped her earlier, picked up one of the blankets and pointedly carried it over to the farthest corner of the platform.

Karan curled up on the cold platform, wrapping herself as well as she could, but she still shivered all night. That night was one of the most miserable of her life. She would have fled, had there been anywhere to go, had they allowed it, but in her present condition she knew she would not last five minutes on the streets of Thurkad. What a come-down from her strength and independence of a few months ago! No, she could do nothing but remain here and hope to find Shand again, hope that when she did there was somewhere to flee to.

In the early hours there came a muffled giggling from the other side of the room. The seaweed rustled, then she heard more giggling and other kinds of movements. Someone laughed aloud and, in her misery, Karan was sure that they laughed at her. She groaned. The giggling stopped at once and it went quiet again.

Up to this point there had been no room in her head for anyone but herself. Now, lying on the damp planks, the weedy blanket hugged around her, her heart began to ache for Llian. She had hardly thought of him these past days, except in those brief conversations with Shand. Had he really left with Tensor? Had he gone willingly, or captive? Why would Tensor want him? Where had Tensor taken him?

The blankets provided no warmth at all. Karan brooded about Llian, remembering the many nights they had spent together on that trek through the mountains to Shazmak, and escaping afterwards. The nights had been much colder than this one, and once, she remembered, they had been near to freezing to death. Though then they had been well-clad and had the warmth of each other too.

I had meat on my bones then. You corrupted me, Llian, weakened me. I came to depend on your being near. How I long for you now, for the warmth of you. Once I would have lain here alone and damned the cold, dared it to touch me. How I long for your beautiful voice, the best part of you. What a fool I am to have sunk for a fool such as you.

Yet you taught me about loyalty - at the end you were the only one to believe in me. I saw you trying to defend me. What a sight - a sword in your hand. It might as well have been one of these jellies. She laughed at her warped humour.

Well, Llian, wherever you are, I will find you, and extract you from whatever disaster you have got yourself into, and take you home to Gothryme. You can write the rest of your tale there. That will be my only goal and purpose, and nothing shall distract me from it.

That decision marked the beginning of her mind’s recovery. The night passed, as even such nights eventually do, and the pitch black was replaced by the pale-green gloom of day. Karan woke bewildered, having no idea where she was or how she had ended up lying naked in a pile of seaweed. It was not until the Telt stirred, soon after dawn, that the memories began to come back. For a while she wondered if she was going mad again.

For breakfast they ate jellyfish cake and several kinds of cooked weed. One was soft and grey like her blanket, another fleshy and leathery brown, a third like lettuce but with little bladders that popped in the mouth.

Karan expected to be summoned back to her vat. But instead they drank more weed tea, then some of the Telt wandered off, while others lay down on the platform staring up at the ceiling or down into the dark water. One or two played on hard little wooden pipes. Often she caught their eyes on her. Once, when she was shivering with her head in her hands, ravenous and wracked by stomach cramps, her fingers and toes throbbing and her head too, so pale that her skin looked transparent, Cluffer sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. Again she seemed surprised at how cold Karan was and came back with a big wooden mug of tea even though it was not teatime. Karan was grateful for the warmth of her shoulder and hip and thigh, but more grateful still for the tea.

During this rest time two or three of the Telt took down partly completed carvings and worked at them carefully. The carvings were mostly of the beasts of the seas, but usually the small, subtle and insignificant ones, like the small pipefish that cleaned the piles of the wharves. There were also carvings of themselves, all the ages of them, from newborn babies to withered crones, but none of the Hlune.

* * * *

Several days went by, and each was the same as the one before: she would rise soon after dawn, sometimes with no memory of the previous day; eat jellycake and weed, drink straw-flavoured tea; sit for a while, reflecting, or walk around, though not too far, else she was sent back by the Hlune; then go to the preparation room to clean jellyfish from midday till midnight, until her back throbbed and her fingers were numb. If this was the price of food and shelter she would pay it no matter how it pained her, and no shirking, though she was wracked by cramps the whole time.

At the end of each day she washed herself in the chill sea, and her loincloth too, otherwise by the morning the stench would be unbearable. She ate more jellycake and drank more tea, lay down in her nest of weeds and shivered until the dawn. And often in the night, and sometimes even during the day, she would hear that tinkling laughter and imagine that they were laughing at her.

Hythe came and went unnoticed - no worse than the previous days, but no better either. Karan made several attempts to recover her sensitive talent, but where she had once been able to sense danger instinctively, had been able to make sendings almost at will and occasionally even link and speak into the mind of another, now there was nothing in her head at all. Her talent had never been reliable, and using it gave her terrible aftersickness, but it was better than being without it.

Four days after her arrival, in the afternoon of the day after hythe, Karan was working away quietly at her vat, feeling desperately ill, when she became aware that the incessant chatter of the Telt had stopped. Looking around she saw a deputation of the Hlune staring at her. They called Cluffer’s lover over and spoke long and fiercely to him. Voices were raised, the young man shouted back, spun around to his people and a series of questions tumbled out so rapidly that Karan had no idea what he was asking.

‘No!’ said Cluffer abruptly.

The young man turned back to the Hlune, throwing out his arms. To Karan’s astonishment the other Telt also spread their arms and made a line across the room between her and the Hlune. A furious argument ensued, clearly about her, then the leading Hlune stamped a big flat foot.

‘Tomorrow!’ he said ominously. He whirled and disappeared, the others following.

The Telt looked at each other and at Karan but did not go back to their work. Instead they lit the urn for an unscheduled tea-break, and when it was ready they called her over to join them even though her work was not nearly done.

‘What was that about?’ Karan asked the man beside her.

‘Guest-right!’ he said, but would say no more.

Karan drank her tea in silence. This was an alarming development. For the rest of the day and all night she expected the Hlune to appear in strength, to cast her into the streets of Thurkad, or betray her to Yggur.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

A Zealot’s Reward

ixty leagues away, a meeting was taking place in Shazmak, the magnificent Aachim city now occupied by those former Whelm who had become Ghâshâd. They had been the servants of Rulke in ancient times, until he was taken by the Council and put in the prison of the Nightland.

The Ghâshâd milled around like mechanical sheep in the vast meeting hall, a cavern whose roof was an oval dome supported by curving walls. The great iron doors at either end were shut fast. The walls were covered in murals of the world of Aachan: iron towers on icy crags; mountains crusted with sulphur, yellow and red; black-leaved, tormented jungles. The dome was painted as an alien green sky with a sullen orange moon glaring down.

The floor sloped as in a theatre. Down the lower end was a dais on which stood a semicircle of high-backed wrought-iron seats, most of which were occupied by Ghâshâd. Just off the centre of the semicircle was a pedestal of stone, around which spiralled a black iron stair of twenty steps. The pedestal was topped by a dock of iron lace, surmounted by a railing of veined red marble. Karan had stood there during her trial some months ago.

A squat, stout man addressed the Ghâshâd. His name was Jark-un. ‘Thassel has come from Thurkad with tidings of the war,’ he said. ‘Disturbing tidings.’

Thassel, a skin-and-bone man even among the other stick-figures, stepped forward. ‘Thurkad must have fallen by now,’ he began in gravelly tones.

‘Three days ago,’ said another, an old woman called Quissan. ‘We had word by skeet just yesterday. But no more than that, so we anxiously await your tale.’

‘Our enemy Tensor fled north from Thurkad nine days ago. He has the Mirror of Aachan. He used a terrible potency, killing many people.’

‘That wakes a disturbing memory,’ said Jark-un. ‘A danger to our master.’

‘Indeed it does.’ They listened in silence while Thassel finished his story.

‘So,’ said Jark-un at the end. ‘This was a wonderful thing that we did, seizing Shazmak for our master. But what are we to do now?’

‘I, too, am confused,’ said another.

‘Our master needs us,’ said a smaller, younger Ghâshâd, an albino with pink eyes. ‘I can sense his troubles.’

‘But we cannot reach him, Rebban!’ cried the old woman, Quissan, in a passion. She clenched her fists and smote her breast. ‘What does he require of us?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Jark-un. ‘We just don’t know.’

‘We don’t even know if coming here was the right thing to do,’ said another, a younger woman with black hair shaven to stubble and a wild look in her eye. ‘Were we right to have cast Yggur off? Maybe we were meant to serve our true master through serving Yggur.’

This was a discussion that they’d had almost every day since taking Shazmak, but there was no way to resolve it.

A tall man with a scarred face spoke up. ‘I would hear again the awakening,’ he said. ‘Would that I had been there.’

Jark-un sighed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you were ever meant to come with us, Idlis. Tell it again, Rebban.’

‘We did our work well,’ said Rebban, ‘that night in the forest near the town of Narne. Karan was so afraid that she began broadcasting her fears without even knowing it. But when she made a link to Maigraith - and what a powerful link it must have been, that the master could catch it from the Nightland - ah, what a glorious moment! We all cried out as with one voice: “Oh, perfect master! At last! At last!”’

He spoke as a teller would have, precisely the words and the tone that had been used that night. ‘And then he called. The master spoke to us for the first time in a thousand years.

‘Oh, faithful servants,’ Rebban’s voice was now a vast, foreboding boom. ‘The crisis approaches, and so much to do. Listen, and obey. Already the link fades. Do you remember yourselves?

‘Now we remember. We are Ghâshâd, master.

‘I have an enemy, Ghâshâd!

‘We know him, now.

‘Torment him. Goad him. Drive him to folly. But do not harm him. Call together the Ghâshâd, and when the opportunity comes, seize it!’

* * * *

‘That is all,’ gasped Rebban and fell down panting with the strain. His skin was blotched red all over, the colour even visible through his hair.

Idlis’s eyes had grown moist as he listened, and his coarse hair stood up on his head. ‘I weep to hear the master’s voice,’ he cried, bowing his head, ‘though I have heard it many times now. Oh, perfect master!’

‘We seized the opportunity, but did we do the right thing?’ asked Quissan, irritated by his fanaticism.

‘I don’t think we did,’ said the young woman with the shaven head. ‘What use is Shazmak to the master? It’s a hiding hole, not a fortress to strike at his enemies from. It’s too far from anywhere. The master would not cower here like the cowardly Aachim.’

‘There are several things we must do,’ someone else said. ‘First we must try to scry out Tensor’s path and his purpose. Likely we will fail, but we must not falter, for this potency hurt our master badly in ancient times. We must find a protection against it.’

‘That is one thing we can do,’ Jark-un agreed. ‘Let us form the circle and begin the sensing and the scrying at once, though I am afraid that the distance will defeat us.’

‘There is another thing,’ said Idlis.

They did not pay him much attention, for Idlis was the least of them and known to be something of a zealot, but after their other business was done, to no avail, Jark-un came back to humour him.

‘What is this idea of yours?’ he asked.

‘I am thinking of the woman, Karan of Bannador, that I hunted before,’ Idlis replied. ‘Is it known what happened to her?’

‘I did not hear,’ said Thassel.

‘She is a blending of human and Aachim,’ Idlis replied. ‘That is how we found power over her before. And she is a sensitive too, for we tracked her through her dreams. And she can link - that is how our perfect master found us. We must track her down again, use our power over her and force a link through her so that we can speak to our master again. That is the only way to find out what he requires of us.’

The room was silent, then they let out a harsh roar like a flock of crows cawing, and lifted Idlis onto the dais. ‘The least of us becomes the greatest!’ cried Jark-un. ‘We will hunt Karan down and compel her, and Idlis shall lead us to her.’

Greatly heartened, the Ghâshâd began to form their scrying circle anew.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

No Entry

fter Shand left Karan he went straight to the Hlune, whom he had befriended of old. Despite his words to Karan, he was worried, knowing that after so many years the Hlune might not remember him. He was taken into the great meeting chamber and brought before the two elders. Shand tried to remember how to pronounce their names, as any mistake would be offensive. The man was Chraif, spoken with a coughing sound. The woman’s name was Isout, spoken as two distinct syllables with a stop in between, and the second syllable accented with a nasal honk.

The man with the long braided whiskers got up from his cedar chair. ‘Shand!’ he said, holding out his hand.

The woman nodded but did not rise, a worrying sign.

‘I am sorry to have trespassed in your city, Chraif,’ Shand began uncertainly, putting too much cough into the name. ‘I was forced here by the war.’

‘The war!’ said Chraif tersely, resuming his seat. ‘Everything is different now. How may we help you?’

‘If you could offer a friend refuge for a day or two,’ said Shand, ‘it would greatly assist me.’ He explained Karan’s situation guardedly.

‘This is a difficult time to be asking such favours,’ said Isout coolly.

‘I would not have, I’sout,’ said Shand, pronouncing the name perfectly. ‘But I had no recourse.’

Isout smiled, nodded to Chraif, and sat back.

‘On the other hand,’ said Chraif, ‘you helped us sometime back, and we do not forget our friends. Your companion may stay here in safety for four days, but no longer.’

‘Where is she now?’ asked Isout. ‘We are sorely pressed with the war.’

Shand told them.

‘We will keep watch on her,’ said Chraif.

With that worry taken care of, Shand did not go back to check on Karan. The wharf city was abuzz with rumours, among them that Yggur was looking for a sensitive with red hair. Besides, Karan had to learn to rely on herself again, and the sooner the better. He hurried back into Thurkad to find a way out of the city.

That would take a deal of organising; every day he saw people being dragged off by the guards. Thurkad was rigidly controlled by Yggur, and what before the war would have cost silver tars must now be paid for in gold tells, twenty times the value, if it could be done at all. Shand had gold but it was not unlimited. He set out to renew his contacts of long ago.

After tramping the streets for days, interrogated on every street corner by Yggur’s blackfists, he was in despair. His old contacts were all dead or in hiding. Finally, when Karan’s four days were nearly up, he gave up and headed back to the wharf city. He did not want to overstretch the Hlune’s friendship.

He could not get in. All the paths were guarded by Yggur’s soldiers and they were quite the most officious he’d ever met. There were other ways, of course, and after some searching he found one - a covered-over drain, though it was half a league away from where he’d left Karan.

Shand crawled down the stinking drain for half an hour but found the exit was guarded by equally watchful Hlune. The instant he appeared, their spears came up at his chest. Their faces were hostile.

‘My name is Shand,’ he said. ‘I have a safe conduct from Chraif.’ In his anxiety he grossly mispronounced the name.

The lead Hlune scowled but held out his hand. ‘Show me!’ he said curtly.

‘I have no paper,’ said Shand. ‘It was a verbal agreement.’

‘All agreements terminated,’ said the Hlune, prodding Shand in the chest with the spear. It was needle sharp; he could feel it pricking through his coat.

‘But you can ask -’ he began.

‘Get out!’ said the leading Hlune. The guards behind growled menacingly. They looked so agitated that Shand did not dare press them any further. He backed away and crawled up the drain again, sitting halfway along in the darkness trying to work out what had gone wrong. Why were they so changed? More importantly, was Karan all right?

He tried another way but met with an even more aggressive response, and had no option but to go back. Today was hythe, mid-winter day, a sleety, windy, utterly depressing day. By now desperately worried, Shand headed for the last contact on his list, feeling glum and useless and old. It was a cellar bar that had always been run by a plump woman called Ulice, but even twenty years ago she had not been young.

He checked the alley and gave the secret knock. Nothing happened, but he became aware that he was being watched through a spy-hole. Shortly the door bolts rattled and he was ushered inside by a child, to a parlour where a round table was set with a blue and white checked tablecloth. Shand took the offered chair and waited.

After a minute a woman put her head around the door, inspected him, then ducked away. Finally a very fat, white-haired old woman appeared, wheezing as she walked.

The old woman knew him at once. ‘Shand!’ Ulice beamed, flinging out her arms. Shand sank into them like a baker’s fist into dough.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ she said, propelling him into the chair, bustling mugs out of a cupboard, and from the back, a flask of a kind that he knew very well.

‘This is the very last!’ She cracked the wax. ‘The best batch of gellon liqueur you ever made. I’ve saved it these past five years, hoping that you would come by. Surely you haven’t been to Thurkad without visiting me!’

‘I’ll send you another crate when I’m back in Tullin,’ he replied. ‘In truth, I’ve not been here for many years. My bones are old now.’

‘They don’t look it,’ said Ulice, ‘but let us drink for I will be gone when next you come. This is my daughter, Asrail. Do you remember her?’

Shand vaguely recalled a noisy girl with scabs on her knees and no front teeth. This quiet, brown-haired, buxom beauty was nothing like her, but a lot like her mother had been thirty years ago. He said so.

Ulice laughed. ‘Lucky she looked down and thought she recognised you, my friend. That knock is years out of date. Here is the new one.’ While Shand practised the new sequence on the tabletop, she continued. ‘Asrail is more beautiful than ever I was and better with the customers too. But I see hard times ahead. This Yggur is a moral man, very bad for business. And the war - terrible!’

Shand sipped his liqueur, agreeing that the war was indeed a horror.

‘But you did not come so far just to drink with me, old friend. What can I do for you? Whatever is in my power.’ She spoke only the truth. Ulice’s power was considerable and she could arrange almost anything - for a price.

‘I need a boat and a rare good sailor for a day or two. Can this be done?’

‘Of course, though this is the worst of times to ask. Every plank has been impounded to stop the Magister from escaping, but Mendark is too wily for them. He will never be taken! How long can you wait?’

‘A few days only.’

Ulice frowned. ‘Then you must come back tomorrow. I don’t promise, but I think I can satisfy you.’

Shand was profoundly relieved, for Ulice never promised. ‘What price?’

‘A few tells, I should say, but your credit is good here, if you are short.’

‘Tells I can manage.’ He hesitated.

‘There is something else. Spit it out, my friend.’

‘Several things! I left... someone in the care of the Hlune but now I can’t get back into the wharf city.’

‘Someone?’ she said sharply. ‘Not Mendark?’

‘Not Mendark!’ he replied with an ironic laugh. ‘So that’s where he’s hiding?’

‘I can’t talk about that even to you. A conflict of interest.’

‘No matter! I must get back in, though, and meet with the elders. And I’d better see Mendark as well.’

‘I will find a way for you to do both. That is all?’

‘One final matter, but it is highly confidential.’ She said nothing to that, of course. All her clients’ affairs were confidential. ‘A woman went missing from the Conclave, by name Karan Fyrn.’ He hesitated; but then, Ulice must be told everything. ‘She is a sensitive; rather special.’ He described Karan. ‘It is vital that I know who is looking for her.’

‘Get her out at once! Yggur has already taken a good number of the sensitives in the city. And broken half of them.’

‘There could be others looking for her as well.’

Her old eyes scanned him, reading all his secrets. ‘I will enquire,’ said Ulice. ‘Now, if the business is done -’

‘It is,’ said Shand. ‘Ah, it is good to see a friend again. I have been in despair this last week, but you have given me hope.’

‘That is well, for you were my very first customer, Shand. You took me on when no one else would and I do not forget that!’ There were tears in her eyes.

‘Those were the days,’ said Shand, feeling sentimental too.

‘Come closer to the fire and bring your bowl with you. This will be my farewell, old friend, for my heart is giving out and it is time to pass the business down. Let us finish the bottle and smash the glasses in the fire afterwards.’

* * * *

In the early hours a Hlune pushed his way in past Osseion and shook Mendark awake. ‘Come. A visitor!’

‘Who is it?’ Mendark asked irritably, for he had been lying awake for hours in a lather of depression and hopelessness and had just got to sleep. The Hlune did not reply, only kept tugging at his arm, an irritating habit that he had to endure in silence.

‘Well, bring him in then,’ Mendark said, grimacing.

The Hlune continued to pluck at his sleeve until Mendark gave up and followed him out into the night-dark wharf. Several times they encountered other Hlune who gave Mendark foul looks. Once a rotten onion came hurtling out of the dark to splatter on the wall right next to him with a disgusting stench. They walked for ten minutes along a right-of-way through the wharf city, used by ship’s crews, suddenly coming to an open space at the outer edge of the structure. The nearest navigation light was some distance away, leaving the deck dimly lit. It was windy here; rain spat at him. On a plank bench a shadowed figure sat, indistinguishable in weathercloak and hat.

The man stood up and took off his hat. He was short but well-built, with iron-grey hair and a grey beard a few weeks old. Mendark was quite taken by surprise.

‘Shand!’ he cried. ‘Things must be worse than I imagined if the war has reached even to your retirement village. What reminded you of your dereliction? Are you not provided for?’

Shand ignored the sarcasm, the venom. ‘No wonder you are cast down for the second time in weeks, if this is the way you treat your allies. As it happens I told Tallia, when she came to Tullin a couple of months ago begging my assistance in your name, that I would come to Thurkad. Here I am.’

‘If you come to counsel me I’m not interested. It’s much too late for that.’

‘I do not. I come merely to talk, to tell you what I know and learn what you have to say. Or not. Please yourself.’

The Hlune reappeared, carrying a small brass urn and burner on a tray with bowls and tea-making equipment. He put it down beside Shand then stepped back into the shadows. Shand wet the wick with spirits, struck the flint at it until there was a small flame and turned up the oil. Blue flame turned to smoky yellow, shadow fingers danced on the wall, then he returned to his bench.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Mendark asked, looking around fearfully as if his secret was revealed.

Shand chuckled. ‘I’m not going to give away my sources. Where else could you have gone without a boat?’ He was quite different from the scared old man of a few days ago. He was back in control again.

‘Very well,’ said Mendark. ‘I will humble myself. I do need your counsel, if that is what you are offering. In a thimble, this is the situation and it is a disaster in every respect.’ He told the sorry tale of the Conclave, the war and his own troubles since. Shand listened in silence.

The flame guttered in the breeze. The stench of burning fish oil was very strong. Mendark squatted on the decking, fidgeting, looking out to sea and waiting for the urn to boil. At last it bubbled and he flung in an overgenerous hand of weed. He stirred the pot with his bowl, holding it by the rim so as not to scald himself, then scooped out a bowl for Shand and another for himself.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mendark cried abruptly. ‘I can’t find a boat, and tomorrow the Hlune are going to throw us out on the street. Shand, I don’t know where to turn!’

* * * *

Shand took a sip, finding the tea too hot and too strong, and put the bowl down carefully on the deck. He was silent. All this trouble might have been avoided had he acted when first Llian begged him for help, back in Tullin at the beginning of winter. Shand could guess why everyone wanted the Mirror of Aachan. It was not apathy that had prevented him from helping then, or world-weariness, or the futility of striving against the twists and turns of fate. Those meant less to him than the awakening of bitter memories that he had hidden from, an age ago.

‘I wonder if Tensor might not have gone north,’ he said.

‘North?’ barked Mendark. ‘East is where their other cities lie.’

‘Would the other Aachim welcome one who brought only strife and the probability of ruin? No, Tensor is an outlaw now, without duty or honour. Tell me more about Llian.’

‘What’s that got to do with my problem?’ Mendark said, balling up his fists.

‘Humour me,’ said Shand. ‘We’ll get to you in time.’

‘Well, in one day he undid all his good work of the past months.’ Mendark ran through the tale of Llian’s misadventures in the citadel cellars before the Conclave, the fruitless search through ancient files for any document that could shed light on what had happened at the time of the Forbidding, the abortive rescue of Karan and her subsequent recapture by Thyllan.

‘Unfortunately, Karan was lost after the Conclave,’ said Mendark. ‘I could have used her.’

Mindful of Karan’s fear of Mendark, Shand did not enlighten him. ‘Why would Llian go with Tensor?’ he wondered.

‘Go with him! Llian was terrified of him and with good reason.’ Mendark told how Llian had defied and humiliated Tensor at the trial in Shazmak.

Shand was astounded. ‘More to him than I thought.’

‘More fool! Anyhow, let us apply ourselves to the larger question. If Tensor did go north, why? And where?’

‘Anywhere is good enough if you seek to trifle with the Nightland, for it touches all places equally.’

‘I can’t search half the world.’

‘Then go to Zile, to the Great Library, and speak with Nadiril the sage.’

‘You’re right; I’ve even been thinking that myself. Where else can what I need be found? Who better to know than Nadiril? I will go to Zile - if I ever get out of here.’

Mendark’s tea had grown cold while they talked. He threw it down on the deck and took another. The previous had been a straw colour but this was red and very strong. He sipped, grimaced, sipped again.

‘Tell me about Faelamor,’ said Shand. ‘Her reappearance disturbs me greatly.’

‘What she said at the Conclave had the ring of truth,’ said Mendark, staring into his cup. He told that story, of the fall of Shazmak and Faelamor’s advice about the Mirror, that it held no power at all, only secrets. ‘I was absolutely convinced.’ He looked up at Shand, scratching his straggly hair. ‘But she is master of all forms of illusion. The tale she told about the fall of Shazmak was a lie. It was she who betrayed Shazmak, not Karan. I’ve checked the details of both stories.’

‘The Mirror disturbs me!’ said Shand. ‘When it was lost I’d hoped that it would stay lost forever.’

‘You know about it?’ Mendark asked, intrigued.

‘Indeed,’ said Shand, ‘though I don’t propose to tell you, so don’t bother to ask.’

‘No more than I would expect of you,’ Mendark sneered, but it was a half-hearted effort. His own problems were too immediate. ‘It is hard to come down to this, Shand, begging for shelter in these stinking wharves.’ He looked haggard and old.

Shand stared at him unblinking. That is how your subjects have always managed, he thought. And you have a fortune to ease your passage. Yet, you are better than the alternative and I will help you if I can. ‘How did it happen? You always have an escape route.’

‘For my faults, none of which I am blind to despite what you think of me, I do love Thurkad. I would not abandon my city while there was any chance to save her. But I fought one day too many and my boat was taken. Tallia and Berenet are taking terrible risks looking for another boat and a reliable sailor. Every time I send them out I dread that they won’t come back. I’m desperate!’

‘Well you might be. Perhaps I can help you there. But now I must go.’ Shand cast the dregs over the side, put the bowl down beside the urn and walked away. The sky was just beginning to grow pale in the east.

‘Shand,’ cried Mendark unsteadily, running a few steps after him. ‘I’ve got to have a boat. Can you do anything?’

Shand stopped, grimly amused. This was a turnabout, the great Magister running after a village woodchopper. ‘I’ll try,’ he said.

‘Where will I find you?’

‘I’ll find you, at need,’ Shand said over his shoulder. He walked off.

Behind him, Mendark went slowly back into the wharves.

Shand was not quite as carefree as he made out. A day and a half had gone by since his first meeting with Ulice and he still had no idea what had happened to Karan. He had sent three messages to the Hlune elders but none had been acknowledged; presumably they hadn’t been received. The Hlune allowed him access to the public right-of-ways through the wharf city, but not inside, and none of the guards had any interest in his problem. The news that Yggur was hunting down all the sensitives was particularly alarming.

* * * *

It was growing light when Tallia and Lilis returned, having once more failed to get out of the wharf city. Lilis was too tired to eat, but she washed herself carefully with a tiny amount of fresh water and crawled into her hammock. She humped around a few times, pulled the blankets around her ears, smiled sleepily at Tallia and was instantly asleep.

Tallia pinched out the light and left her there. Lack of sleep had made her thoughts muddy; she needed to talk to someone to clarify them. Osseion, cheerful as always, was standing guard outside their room. His shoulders were broader than the door and he had to bend his head to get inside. She asked where Mendark was.

‘He was called away to see a visitor - he went toward the south-west side a couple of hours ago. Any luck with the boat?’

‘No! I’ll go and find them.’ She set off and said to the first Hlune she saw, ‘Take me to Mendark, if you please.’

The woman shook in rage. ‘Go back inside,’ she hissed.

Tallia’s leg was incredibly painful. She was in no mood to be trifled with. ‘Take me to Mendark!’ she roared, shaking her fist in the woman’s face.

The guard gestured to another Hlune. They spoke together in whispers. The woman then took Tallia’s sleeve and led her on a labyrinthine passage through the wharves, finally emerging onto a rainy deck on the seaward side. It was windy here, only partly shielded by the upper levels from the spitting rain. Suddenly Tallia caught sight of a vaguely familiar figure turning a corner up ahead. In the dim light it was more a matter of posture and rolling gait.

‘Shand?’ she cried, limping after him.

The figure turned and it was old Shand, whom she had not seen since Tullin. He laughed and held out his arms.

‘What a pleasure it is to see you again,’ she said. ‘I thought you had decided not to come after all.’

‘I nearly didn’t, even though I’d promised. But here I am! And what a disaster!’

‘Yes, Mendark must be losing his wits. When can I talk to you?’

‘Right now, if you like. Have you breakfasted?’

Tallia had not and she was famished.

‘There’s a place up the hill that still has good food, if you dare to go that far.’

Tallia looked uneasy. ‘Every way is watched.’

‘I know a secret path,’ he said. ‘You’re after a boat?’

‘Desperately!’

‘Well, I might be able to help you. There are fortunes to be made in this war, for those bold enough. I’ve also been looking for a boat these past few days and I’ve found one. I’m going to meet the fellow now. Come with me.’

‘How did you get in here?

‘A contact.’

‘Can I ask you a personal question, Shand?’ she asked as they walked.

‘Of course, though I won’t guarantee to answer it.’

‘When we first met in Tullin and I asked why you had not helped Karan, you made an excuse about being too old. Yet here you are, right in the middle of the war.’

He paced steadily beside her. ‘I’m a fool!’ he said after such a long interval that she was afraid he wasn’t going to answer at all. ‘I could have prevented all this, but I was afraid of waking the past. I love my life in Tullin, chopping wood and serving in the inn, and when all the work is done, sitting in the sun on the veranda with a mug of wine. I am very old, you know, too old for this.’

Near the edge of the wharf city they climbed off the right-of-way, went down steps right to the water, passed through a cleverly concealed door and, after a lengthy walk underground, emerged in the alleys of old Thurkad. Soon Shand stopped outside a brown door in a stone wall. No one was looking; he gave a triple knock then four single raps, and the door creaked open. A scrawny old man inspected them carefully, especially Tallia, finally allowing them in. Steps led up and down. They were conveyed to a basement hall, through two more doors and into a large, low room with a fire in one corner. The room was smoky, dark and warm. There were many small tables but few were occupied. Shand spoke to the barman, a scarlet-faced sot by the look of him, who shook his head.

‘He is not here yet,’ said Shand. Then to the barman again, ‘What is the menu today?’

‘Horlash!’ said the barman. ‘Horlash today, horlash tomorrow, horlash till the end of time.’ Horlash was a red spicy stew of seafood and vegetables, its ingredients varying according to what was cheap at the markets.

‘Then bring us two servings, with bread and hot wine,’ said Shand, walking over to the fire and holding out his hands to the blaze.

Tallia sat down at a table beside the fire. The horlash came, large bowls nearly full. It smelled wonderful, though she ate the whole bowl without tasting it, too immersed in her problems.

‘The war has turned Thurkad upside down but you see some places are already back in business,’ said Shand with his mouth full. ‘Here, anything can be arranged if you can pay the tariff.’

‘What is this place?’

‘No Name!’

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s called No Name. Always has been. It has been here for half a dozen lifetimes.’

‘What contacts you have!’ Tallia said with admiration. ‘I’ve been in Thurkad ten years and never heard of it.’

‘Had. They are nearly all gone now. I’ve been out of business too long.’

Tallia mopped her brow, took off her coat and hung it over the back of the chair. Two stone goblets of steaming wine appeared: dark red, sweet and aromatic with cloves and curls of cassia bark.

‘One of these in your belly and you’ll be hot for a week,’ said the barman, with a casual leer at Tallia’s bosom. She gave him a cold stare, he went even redder, swiped at the table with his cloth and slouched back to the bar.

Even Shand’s goblet was still half-full when a fat man came in, took a drink and followed the barman’s pointing finger to their table. He looked them over carefully before pulling up a chair.

‘Pender is my name,’ he said, staring at Tallia and frowning. ‘I know your face.’ She said nothing. Shand sipped his wine.

‘Two years ago, it must be, eh! You came to Sith with the Magister. I was unloading at the passenger wharf. They ordered me out of the way. You were wearing crimson and black. I thought you were his dolicha, his concubine.’

‘This is Tallia bel Soon, once of Crandor, and now Mendark’s chief lieutenant,’ said Shand sternly.

Pender was not easily embarrassed. ‘Crandor! There is a place! It would cost buckets of gold if you want to go there, eh!’ He rubbed bristly jowls, smiling with the kind of dreamy greed generally associated with winning the Thurkad lottery.

‘I am Shand,’ said Shand. ‘First, my business! It will take two days, beginning tonight, if you can manage that.’

‘I can,’ Pender said.

‘And immediately after that, Tallia has a commission that will make your fortune.’

Pender positively glowed. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I -’ Shand began, then changed his mind. ‘No, settle Tallia’s first, she needs to get back.’

Tallia was in no hurry to return but evidently Shand’s business was private.

‘Where can I take you?’ asked Pender.

‘Zile, and possibly further,’ she said.

Pender grunted, his eyes narrowed. The greed was internalised. ‘Just you?’

‘There are others.’

‘The Magister perhaps?’ Despite his recent overthrow, Mendark had held that position for so many lifetimes that the title was not readily transferable to another.

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

He calculated. ‘A month there, a month back. No doubt there will be a lot of waiting around, earning nothing. Supplies for . . . about how many people?’

‘Say, five or six.’

‘Six, plus myself and crew. I must pay ten times over the rate at the moment. Supplies alone will cost ten tells.’

‘No doubt you’ll buy most well away from Thurkad, at not much over the normal rate.’

‘Some maybe, though who knows where the war will be in a month, eh! And spare canvas, cord, spars . . .’

‘I understand all that,’ said Tallia, tapping the table impatiently. ‘Name a figure!’

‘A two of hundreds to Zile,’ said Pender in a gust of words, as though if he said it fast enough it would not sound so outrageous. ‘Tells, that is.’ Then, growing bolder at her lack of reaction, ‘Double that if the Magister comes. Plus all damage, tolls, customs charges, bribes and other expenses will be to your account. After Zile we’ll negotiate again.’

‘We could buy our own boat for that,’ said Tallia. The figure was higher than her most pessimistic expectations.

‘Before the war you might have, if it were old and rotting to pieces,’ exaggerated Pender, ‘but now, my little skiff would fetch that price. And who would you have crew it? I give you the best. Besides, if we are caught I lose my head, a precious thing, eh!’

‘Remarkable!’ said Shand ironically.

Pender glared at him. ‘Anyway, I will have to find a bigger boat on the way. Mine is too small for the stormy gulf. That will take your entire fee and every grint of my savings as well.’

‘Let me consider,’ said Tallia. ‘Five minutes, if you please.’

Pender took his drink and waddled back to the bar.

‘Is he reliable?’

‘He’s all we’ve got!’ said Shand. ‘But I gather he’s more reliable than most and, as a sailor, one of the best.’

‘I had heard that, too. And the price?’

‘It’s a scandal, but you don’t have any choice. Today, boats are scarce as donkey eggs. Besides, even if it were a thousand tells Mendark would scarcely notice, given the riches he has secreted across Meldorin against such a time as this. Yggur will find the Magister’s coffers as bare as Shag’s Rock.’ He referred to the guano-crusted pinnacle guarding the entrance to the harbour of Thurkad.

‘I know. I hid a lot of it myself these last few years.’

‘A little of it. He has been putting it away for more than a hundred years.’

‘Oh!’ Tallia actually looked surprised. ‘One last thing. We’ve worn out our welcome. I don’t suppose you could consider letting us go first?’

‘I don’t suppose I could,’ said Shand. ‘My business is urgent. I dare say the Hlune will be more accommodating once they know you’re going.’

‘Well, thank you for your help.’ She waved at Pender and drained her goblet.

‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘We meet at the north-eastern corner of the wharf an hour before dawn three days from now. Half the fee then, the rest in Zile.’

‘A quarter now, a quarter then, and the rest in Zile,’ said Pender. ‘There are a lot of expenses.’

‘Very well.’

He held out his hand, which she crushed to seal the contract. Pender winced. Tallia counted out a quarter of the fee in her lap and passed it to him. Shand stood up and she embraced him. ‘I hope we meet again,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘We will,’ said Shand. ‘Go back the way we came.’

When she had gone Shand and Pender sat down again. The waiter refilled their goblets.

‘You can trust her,’ said Shand.

‘And Mendark?’

‘Make sure your interests always coincide.’

Pender grunted. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

‘I want to go north tonight, as soon as it is dark.’ Shand pulled a map out of his pocket and they huddled over it, talking winds and currents and tides, where supplies were to be had in the war, and many other things. Finally, their bowls empty, Shand nodded and they shook hands on the arrangement.

‘And your fee?’ he asked.

‘Two tells,’ said Pender absently.

Shand handed over the fortune at once. He had expected it to be more. Now all he had to do was get back into the wharf city and find Karan. But Shand had his confidence back - he knew he could do it, now. First, better make a last call on Ulice.

<<Contents>>

* * * *

A Sea of Troubles

erenet oiled his stone and glided it down the sword blade yet again. The wait had been nerve-racking in the extreme, the Hlune so hostile that Mendark feared betrayal at every moment. No one had been allowed out of the dank room for days. Mendark started at every creak and groan of the wharf structure, every footfall outside the door.

‘What if Pender doesn’t come?’ he muttered, pulling at his hair. ‘What if it’s a trap?’

‘Then we’ll take a good few of them with us,’ said Berenet. As natty as ever, he seemed unfazed by the week in close confinement, though he sharpened his sword unceasingly.

‘Will you put that damned thing away!’ Tallia shouted.

Berenet looked up at her from under black brows and rasped the steel up the other side.

On the third morning after Tallia’s meeting with Pender, the door was thrown open before dawn and six grim-faced Hlune ordered them out. They were led on a labyrinthine passage through the wharf.

‘Where are they taking us?’ Lilis whispered.

‘To a boat, I hope,’ said Tallia, though she rather thought they were being led to their deaths. Finally they reached the seaward side of the wharf, where the wind howled in their faces. It was just getting light.

‘Go down!’ said one of the Hlune.

Far below the waves crashed violently. ‘Down?’ said Mendark, like a man required to walk the plank.

Lilis peered over the edge. A none-too-secure wooden ladder extended several storeys below, to a little jetty stepped off the wharf city.

‘Move! Your boat is coming!’

Mendark looked all around. There was no sign of a vessel in the white-capped waters. A crowd of Hlune had assembled in the gloom, a thicket of spears in their hands. He bowed to the Hlune and held out his hand but the toga-clad figure dashed his arm aside. The man’s face was as dark as the stormy seas.

At that moment a galley appeared, cruising along the edge of the wharf city. They retreated into the shadows until it was gone. They’ve betrayed us, Tallia thought. She glanced at Mendark. He was past reacting.

‘The ladder looks a bit suspect,’ said Tallia. ‘Let me go first.

She climbed down carefully, her cloak writhing and crackling in the wind, and her little shadow followed her. Just as they reached the bottom a wave burst over the jetty, sweeping Lilis off her feet toward the edge. Tallia stretched and grabbed her, holding herself with one foot hooked through the lowest rung. They held onto the ladder while the others crept down.

Lilis braced herself against the wind and pulled the hood close about her ears, squinting into the spray. Still no boat! Tallia was sure that Pender had taken the money and informed on them; that this was a trap.

Behind them the massive piles of the wharf city stretched in lines like temple pillars. Here, on the seaward side, even the lowest deck was high above the water. A freezing, sleet-laden south wind howled through the piles, coating everything in a crust of grainy ice. It had been blowing for days down the whole fetch of the Sea of Thurkad, driving the waters up into wild, crashing waves as high as the masts of a small ship. Another wave broke over the jetty, wetting them to the knees.

A second galley appeared, cruising at the limit of visibility, then disappeared into the mist.

‘They’ve abandoned us,’ said Berenet, wiping the water from his face. His mustachioes hung limply, dripping with water.

Lilis was the least concerned of any of them. She had her new boots, her warm clothes, a full belly, and that was more than she had been able to hope for in the last seven years. Tomorrow was too far away to worry about.

A funny-looking, shabby boat appeared out of the rain. ‘That’s it?’ Mendark said incredulously. It was not much bigger than a skiff, with a little stubby mast. Pender was upright at the tiller, shouting towards the wharf, though the wind took his words away.

‘We’re going to Zile in that?’ Mendark repeated, appalled. He looked up. The spears were angled down over the ladder. He gestured behind him and the others came up to the edge.

Lilis, who had a healthy fear of boats, grew afraid. The boat approached, backing up on its oars. The nearside pair were shipped just in time, as the side of the boat crashed against the jetty. By the light of the lantern she saw a name painted on the bow, The Dancing Goose, and a rudely carved figurehead that might have represented that species, orange of beak and wild of eye.

The figure at the bow flung a rope. Osseion caught it and took a half-turn around a pile, swaying back and forth to keep the tension even as the boat rose and fell. Another rope was flung from the stern; Berenet looped it twice around a post and tied it with a lubber’s knot as Mendark, Tallia and Lilis scrambled in. Berenet jumped, landing on the piled bags. Something smashed inside. Last of all Osseion sprang in, the oarsmen took up their oars and pushed the boat away.

A crewman heaved at Berenet’s rope, thinking it caught, but it was tied fast. Suddenly they were in deadly peril. The water shrank down in advance of a huge wave and the rope began to lift the stern up out of the water. Lower sank the bow. Even Lilis knew that the following wave would swamp them or dash them to pieces against the side of the jetty.

Pender leapt up, knife in hand, to slash the rope free. The stern crashed down; the wave flung them into the side of the jetty. Someone shrieked. There was a creaking and a cracking of timbers until it seemed the boat must capsize. Water gushed in through the side, then the surge spun them around, past the jetty and beneath the wharf city into quiet water, the mast rattling against the high platform above.

The rows of great piles, faintly outlined in the gloom by patches of phosphorescent weed, stretched beyond sight. The oily water rose and fell. Drips cascaded down from above. The crew shipped the oars and manhandled their boat further under the wharf. In a place where the piles were thickly clustered, supporting some great structure above, the crew baled the water out. Pender calmly lit a lantern, stepped to the middle of the boat and took Berenet by the front of his coat.

‘You incompetent fool!’ he cried, shaking him. ‘You nearly killed us all.’

Berenet tried to push him away. The beautiful coat tore down the front. ‘Damn you,’ he screeched, ‘you’ll pay for that.’

‘You’ll pay! Look what you’ve done to my new boat!’

‘Call this a boat!’ Berenet sneered. ‘You couldn’t sail it across a bathtub.’

Pender was used to insults but he was inordinately proud of his new vessel. ‘It’s got too much ballast,’ he roared, and as the boat rolled in the swell he tipped Berenet neatly over the side.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ cried Mendark.

Berenet disappeared under the oily water, then surfaced, spluttering and swearing.

‘Damned fool,’ said Pender. ‘I won’t have him. Swim to the ladder,’ he shouted, pointing. Berenet thrashed toward the nearest pile.

Mendark lurched forward. There was a long gash across his forehead.

‘Do you want to sail to Zile, or walk?’ Pender asked icily.

‘You’ll regret this!’ Berenet screamed as he pulled himself up a decayed plank ladder.

‘Pick him up!’ Mendark said furiously.

‘Damned if I will!’ cried Pender, staring him down.

‘We all go or none,’ said Mendark, but his voice cracked as he spoke.

‘As you please,’ Pender replied. ‘I’ll refund what’s left of your advance, of course. Chert, bring my strongbox.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mendark in a low voice, ‘we can negotiate.’

‘I say who travels on my boat,’ said Pender, ‘and he doesn’t!’

Mendark wiped blood out of his eyes. His bluff had been called. He was not prepared to do the same, especially for someone under suspicion of treachery.

‘Pull me across,’ said Mendark.

He clung onto the ladder for a moment, speaking in a low voice. Berenet pushed him away, shouting, ‘Hennia was the traitor, you fool! I’ll never forgive you for this.’

Mendark froze. ‘Hennia? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I wasn’t sure until she left us, and then there was no point. I do not accuse without evidence, unlike some!’

Mendark glared at Tallia but she was lying on her back, blood running from her nose. He tried to climb up the ladder, speaking urgently. Berenet pushed him away with his foot.

‘It’s too late, Mendark! I served you faithfully and you judged me on hearsay, and hers!’ He spat in Tallia’s direction. ‘I’ll do everything in my power to bring you down.’ He dragged himself up the ladder with a face that would have curdled beer.

Mendark dropped back into the boat. The blood on his cheeks looked like the war paint of a savage. ‘You had better be worth your price,’ he said coldly to Pender.

‘I am,’ said Pender just as coldly. ‘Sit down, eh! Hey, Chert, get that gear tidied up.’

The shorter of the two sailors, a solid, short-legged man with muscles bulging through his jerkin, made signs with his fingers to the other. They stowed the packs and the chests. The passengers huddled in the covered area at the bow and took stock of themselves. Osseion had three fingers badly lacerated and crushed between the side of the wharf and the boat. Tallia looked dazed, with a welt on the side of her head and blood all over her face. Lilis had fallen under Tallia; apart from a bruise on her chin she was unhurt.

Mendark lifted Tallia awkwardly, with her head back; there came a gurgling sound in her throat. Lilis hopped up and down, tears on her cheeks, thinking that her friend was dying.

‘She’s choking, you fool.’ Pender thrust Mendark roughly out of the way and pulled Tallia toward him. She slid off the seat onto her knees, then he put his fingers in her mouth to free her tongue. She began to choke and cough up blood onto the bottom of the boat.

‘Water!’ Pender shouted. Osseion passed a full dipper across, his mashed fingers leaving red streaks on the side. Pender turned Tallia’s head sideways and gently washed her face clean with his thick fingers. He lifted her back on the seat, inspecting her with the lantern.

Cleaned up, they saw that she was not hurt that badly after all. Her nose was swollen, the bone possibly cracked, and the left side of her head was bruised and bloody in two places. Tallia opened her eyes. Lilis exclaimed her relief.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

Lilis was afraid of Osseion, for he looked so big and fierce, and his bare arms were scarred to the shoulders with clan markings. ‘Yes,’ she said in an insignificant squeak and set to work, looking all the time back at Tallia. The fingers were rent to the bone from the barnacles, but not broken, and they were soon salved and bandaged, and Mendark’s head too.

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

They rowed the boat hard onto a beam that was just awash, then got a line onto a pile and heaved until the warped planks rode up out of the water. Pender stripped down to grubby underwear and slid into the oily water, inspecting the damage with care. Lilis, leaning over the side, was awestruck by the vast globe of his belly and his mighty hams.

The side of the boat, near the gunwale, was splintered and broken. Further down, below the waterline, the hull was sound but some of the planks were sprung and threads of water trickled in, even in the calm conditions. Pender frowned.

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

While that was being done, Pender worked from the inside with hammer and chisel, levering the planks back in place as best he could. Mendark was up and down a dozen times, staring every way, agonising about the time the repairs were taking. Finally the canvas was tarred and nailed down over the planks from the outside, and the cracks tarred on the inside too. A green, misty light began to spread around them.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

Just as they started to move, aont-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif"">‘Water!’ Pender shouted. Osseion passed a full dipper across, his mashed fingers leaving red streaks on the side. Pender turned Tallia’s head sideways and gently washed her face clean with his thick fingers. He lifted her back on the seat, inspecting her with the lantern.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Pender said to Lilis.

‘Lilis.’

‘Well, Lilis, get the dipper and bring some water from that barrel. No, look, there’s a tap. Good. Wash his hands and clean all the muck out of these cuts. Can you do that?’

‘Now let’s see what damage the Goose has taken,’ said Pender. ‘Hey!’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Put her up over that beam so I can get a look underneath.’

‘Chert! Cut me a bit of canvas, this size.’ He made a shape with his hands.

‘It’ll hold for a while,’ Pender said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘But it’s going to be a big risk at sea in this weather...’

‘Come on!’ said Mendark, looking panicky. ‘Every minute puts us in greater danger.’

‘Then move!’ said Pender. ‘Up front!’ he shouted. ‘Bale with this,’ passing a wooden bucket forward.

‘Oh!’ Tallia said thickly. ‘What happened?’

‘Rest now.’ said Pender.

Mendark helped her to the covered area at the bow, onto a folded canvas. Pender turned to Osseion, who sat stoically at the end of the seat, staring at his lacerated fingers.