“Anhira panton phrougi,” Tenoctris said; then, jabbing her little wand down into the center of the figure, “Atithe!”

A whirlwind spun upward, swifter and carrying more material than the thin air of this desert could have lifted. The vortex scavenged down to the pavement beneath the drifted sand, then dug deeper yet as it expanded.

Azure sparks spun among the sand grains. Garric leaned backward, putting a hand on each of the women as the walls of the vortex swept over them. The hole at their feet plunged down to—

Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris crouched at the mouth of a tunnel, not a pit toward the center of the world. The walls had a fiery blue translucence, sometimes sagging inward as though something heavy constricted the tube.

Tenoctris slumped forward; Garric caught her. “We have to go on,” she whispered, her eyes closed with exhaustion. “Help me if you can.”

If I can! Garric thought. He scooped the old woman up in his arms, resting her head on his right shoulder. Liane gave him a nod and a tight smile. She'd already shouldered the satchel holding the paraphernalia of Tenoctris' art. Side by side, they started down the glowing tunnel.

The air was dry and without character, but at least it was thick enough to breathe. Garric felt as though he'd surfaced after too long underwater. He didn't understand how Alman could choose to live the way he did.

He glanced back over his shoulder, but the tunnel stretched infinitely far in that direction also. Liane saw the gesture and said, “It wouldn't have been right to drag Lord Alman back against his will.” Then, “Would it?

“I didn't think so,” Garric said. He shook his head. “He's safe where he is, I suppose.”

“He could be safer still,” said Carus, “if he hanged himself. I can forgive a lot in a man, but not cowardice. That one's afraid to life!”

Garric thought of the times he'd been frightened. The most recent occasion had been while he waited at the Valles riverfront, while Tenoctris spoke her spell and the bridge glowered behind them as a symbol of uncanny power.

Garric could follow the line of memories back to when he was three if not younger. He'd trembled as he waited in the common room for his father to learn he hadn't done the reading lesson he'd been set....

All the memories had the same thing in common: Garric hadn't been able to act, or it was too late to act. So long as there was something for him to do, he was fine.

Garric let out a peal of honest laughter as King Carus laughed in his mind. Liane glanced at him. Tenoctris, barely conscious on Garric's shoulder, murmured something unintelligible.

“I was just thinking,” Garric said to his friends. “It's good that I'm, well, Prince Garric now. That means I won't run out of things to do any time soon.”

Liane blinked. She reached past Tenoctris to grip Garric's hand and said, “I don't know if you're joking or serious, Garric. I—You confuse me. But I'm glad I'm with you.”

She sounded half-desperate; not afraid, but confused almost past bearing. Garric squeezed her hand and said, “Mostly serious, I guess. I'm fine if I don't have to sit still and wait for something to happen.”

He cleared his throat. “I'm glad we're together too,” he added.

The tunnel's walls were becoming either thinner or clearer as the three continued. At first Garric thought the speckles and lines he saw were flaws in the blue translucence itself, but the spots had motion of their own. By the time Garric and his friends were another hundred paces down the corridor, he could see images moving alongside them.

Liane eyed the tunnel walls, her face serious but calm. She glanced toward Garric.

“Yeah,” he said, “I see them too.”

He bent his head slightly to look at Tenoctris, but the old wizard had fallen back into the sleep of exhaustion. The visit to Alman had made physical demands on all of them, and Tenoctris had the effort of the incantations besides.

“I think there's something ahead of us,” Garric said, resisting the impulse to start running. All he could see was a change in the featureless azure light. The tunnel didn't constrain them tightly—Garric couldn't have jumped high enough to reach the curved ceiling—but its smooth emptiness was as confining as the desert outside Alae's ruins.

The walls were now a thin shimmer; Garric felt his feet sinking deeply into the floor as he strode forward. If he'd been walking on the log bridge, he'd have thought the wood was rotten and likely to give way at any instant. He glanced at Liane, but she didn't seem to notice anything. She didn't weigh half what Garric and Tenoctris did together, of course.

Garric grinned wryly. Besides, noblewomen didn't have much experience of walking on rotten logs.

“Umm?” said Liane, smiling in response to Garric's smile.

“I was thinking that some folk's education is sadly lacking,” Garric said cheerfully. He didn't intend to lie to Liane, but he didn't see much good in spreading gloom either.

A barrier of scintillant gold closed the tunnel ahead of them. Garric's stomach drew in, wondering whether it would open or recede or—

Or maybe neither of those things.

The tunnel walls had become as clear as the isinglass curtains of a wealthy traveler's carriage. Marching beside them were men in armor, cavalry and footmen alike. The troops shambled forward silently, holding their ranks but moving with a lack of interaction that surprised Garric and amazed the king watching through his eyes. The figures were as shadowy as those of an army seen at twilight, but they were human beyond doubt.

“They're walking on the bridge,” Liane said quietly. “The bridge we see in Valles.”

She was right. Garric had been more interested in the soldiers, but the structure on which the army marched had the same filigree railings, the same twisted, multi-spired finials as the bridge that glowed at night over the River Beltis.

The same bridge by which the dreaming Garric had crossed to Klestis.

“I can see their standard,” Liane said in an urgent undertone. “It's a crab, I think. I don't know any principality that uses a crab for its symbol, though.”

“Tenoctris?” Garric said. He didn't want to disturb the old wizard, but he didn't know what would happen if he touched the barrier.

Tenoctris murmured in his arms. Her eyes opened and quickly focused on the figures marching alongside, paying no attention to the wall of light. Garric took another step, the last before they'd reach the barrier.

“Should I keep going?” he said urgently.

The tunnel dissolved like chaff in a bonfire. Garric stumbled forward on hard pavement, catching himself on one knee without dropping Tenoctris. Liane gasped beside him, and the detachment of Blood Eagles crashed down the street toward them at double time.

Garric and his friends were on the Valles riverfront again. False dawn had brightened the east, though the sun would still be a finger's breadth below the horizon.

The bridge of wizardlight was fading. On it, becoming gray and transparent with the structure, the army continued to march. It was going toward Klestis.

“I can tell you about the Crab, lad,” King Carus said grimly. “It's the standard of the Dukes of Yole. But the army of Yole drowned when I did, a thousand years ago.”

 

Sharina squatted beside the slab. There wasn't any question which block the Dragon had meant: this three-foot length of hard white granite looked nothing like the crude limestone ashlars that made up the rest of the foundation layer. Identification aside, though, she couldn't imagine how she and Dalar were going to remove it.

Dalar stood between her and the street, facing forward and back over his shoulder blades in quick succession. He looked like an extreme example of a spectator watching both sides of a game of netball. Sharina was afraid that the bird's movements were going to attract more attention than they'd help, but she was too unsure of what she was doing to tell him to stop jerking his head around.

“Well, he said...” she murmured, trying to grip the stone with her fingertips. To her amazement, it did have a greasy willingness to move; but whatever had happened to normal friction, the stone still weighed twice what she and Dalar did together.

Sharina drew the Pewle knife and thrust it into the gap between the altar stone and the block to its left. She didn't like to use her only physical reminder of Nonnus as a prybar—but she needed a prybar, and this was what she had. Nonnus himself had trained her to remember that objects were only objects, and that human beings alone were worthy of real concern. Sharina's memory of her friend and the lessons he'd taught her were important; his knife was just a tool.

She worked the blade gently sideways. Bits of mortar cascaded from the joints as though she were moving a block of ice, not stone. Sharina set a pebble in the crack to brace the stone, then slid the knife into the opposite joint. The steel was thick and of the best quality. It wouldn't snap under Sharina's careful use, though there'd be scratches to polish out as soon as she had a chance.

The stone pivoted out a full two fingers' breadth. Sharina wiped grit from the blade unconsciously before sheathing it. “Help me, Dalar,” she said as she set the fingers of both hands against the left side of the stone.

Dalar knelt on the other side of the block. Sharina pressed hard, sliding the stone forward at an angle. As it straightened, Dalar pressed and pulled also.

The block scraped half its depth out into the alley before Sharina had to shift her grip. They could use their palms now. She'd wondered how strong the bird's thin arms really were. The answer appeared to be “Quite strong enough.”

“Hey, what're you doing there?” someone shouted from the alley mouth. His shadow blocked half the dim light from the street.

“We're fixing the foundation so the wall doesn't fall in!” Sharina shouted back. She made eye contact with Dalar and murmured, “Now.”

They heaved, scrambling backward as the block slid completely clear of the wall. Sharina's hands were on the verge of cramping from the strain. The edges of the granite were sharp. They didn't cut flesh, but they clamped off circulation in fingers pressed hard against them.

“Fixing the foundation?” the voice said. “Hey, that don't make any sense. Leimon, come here and look at this.”

If Sharina had to, she'd fling a handful of silver ingots into the street.

That should prove an adequate distraction to let her and Dalar escape.

Though “escape” probably wasn't the right word.

“Once more,” she said, and gripped the back edge of the altar stone for a straight pull outward. They tugged together. The stone's weight resisted while Sharina's biceps bunched and the bird made a faint wheezing noise through his closed beak.

When the block moved, it was with a frictionless rush that made the pair of them jump up quickly to avoid being crushed. Foolish! Sharina thought. As silly as cutting vegetables against the palm of my hand, and a good deal more dangerous!

“Hey, you guys got no business here,” the speaker said, coming a step farther into the alley. Two friends had joined him. The fellow didn't sound angry—or drunk, which was much the same thing. He was simply a busybody.

“Go!” Sharina muttered, gesturing Dalar to the opening. The wall above was holding together for the time being, but she wouldn't bet it would stay that way forever.

Dalar slid through the rectangular hole, leading with his clawed feet. “Hey, what's he doing?” whined one of the strangers.

“See here, my man,” Sharina said, trying to sound as snooty as she could in a foreign dialect, while squatting in the filth of an alley. “You go check with the building's owner and he'll tell you that he's hired us to do this. And he'll probably put a flea in your ear for nosing into his affairs!”

She took off the belt with wallet and sheath. The rig was under her cape, so even though she'd slung it over her shoulder she had to unclasp the buckle first. It was carved from the dense bone of a sea mammal.

“I don't believe a word you say!” the first man said. He glanced back at his companions before he decided what to do next.

Sharina drew the Pewle knife, then slung the wallet and harness through the opening. “By the Lady!” a man cried. All three of them backed hastily, stumbling on one another's feet. “Hey, what is this?”

Sharina thrust her feet through the opening, then pushed herself backward with her left hand. The knife wobbled, not a threat unless one of the men decided he ought to stop her. They'd run back to the street, though, shouting for help.

Rain dampened Sharina's feet. She tensed her belly muscles against the lip of the wall and dropped to the ground no more than a foot beneath her. “Oh!” she gasped, glad of Dalar's hand bracing her.

They stood in the ruins of a city. It was early afternoon. The warm drizzle must have been falling all day, because puddles filled every hollow and indentation.

Dalar handed Sharina her belt. She sheathed the knife and took stock of herself. She'd scratched her thighs—nothing serious—and hiked her tunic up to her navel. Her cape had caught on something as she went over the edge. The wing of the cloisonne butterfly pin had bitten at her throat, but when she rubbed herself she found the skin hadn't been broken.

“I see what you meant about coming from far away,” Dalar said. He clucked with laughter. “Is it possible, do you think, that you could go to Rokonar?”

Sharina noticed that as the bird spoke, his short fingers manipulated the chained weights in his right palm. He surveyed the landscape in quick jerks of his head.

“I don't think so,” she said. She fitted the belt again over the snakeskin sash, concentrating on the task so that she didn't have to look at Dalar. Not that she'd have been able to read pain in the bird's expression. “I go where the person I serve sends me. All I know is that I'll continue to move until I'm where he wants me to be.”

She met Dalar's eyes. He nodded; she didn't know whether that was a gesture of his own race or something he'd learned to do in human society. “A warrior of the Rokonar doesn't question where his lord takes him,” he said. “It was a matter of personal curiosity that might better have remained unspoken.”

Sharina took her first real look at the landscape. Behind her was a wall, limestone except for the granite slab she and Dalar had removed in Valhocca. The hard stone was noticeably worn, and half had split off on a ragged diagonal.

“I saw you crawling over it,” Dalar said, nodding to the slab. “Your feet appeared, then the rest of you. Out of the air.”

The granite was on top of the remaining portion of the wall, but the building of which it had been part must have been enormous before it collapsed. Probably a temple; at any rate, the stone drums of fallen pillars line what should be the front of the structure.

Dalar waited silently. He occasionally spun a weight between two fingers on an inch of chain, perhaps implying that he'd like his mistress to direct him. Sharina would like somebody to direct her, too.

“I have no idea where we are,” she said. “Or where we should go next. The Dragon—the person who, whom I serve—appears as you saw.”

She smiled. “Well, you saw me,” she corrected. “I had no warning the first times he came to me with directions, and I doubt it'll be different in the future.”

The ruins could have been of Valhocca, but the destruction was so complete that it could have been any city in the Isles—centuries after a cataclysm. “The legend of my time,” Sharina said evenly, “was that a wizard destroyed Valhocca and cursed it so that it was never rebuilt. That was in the mythical past of my age, however. No one could really have known.”

Dalar clucked. “Indeed, you're from very far away, mistress,” he said.

His downy feathers slicked as the rain wet them; the warrior looked like a larger version of a chicken that Sharina had scalded and plucked for dinner. To keep from giggling—and because they had to do something—Sharina said, “Let's see if we can find some cover. And do you suppose there's anything to eat in this forest?”

It was past berry season and Sharina didn't see any nut trees on a quick survey of their surrounding. The vegetation was mostly broad-leafed and succulent, quite different from the woods she'd been chased through on her way to meet the Dragon.

Something hooted raucously from the forest south of them. Sharina couldn't guess how far away it might be. She started to say, “Probably a bird,” but she closed her mouth again without speaking.

That would have sounded like she was hoping away danger. She simply didn't know what had been calling. And while anything could have made the sound, it hadn't really sounded like a bird.

She grinned at Dalar and drew the Pewle knife. “We'll go this way,” she said, nodding northward along the line of a boulevard separating rows of ruins.

“It might be edible,” the bird said. His head flicked in tiny movements as quick and uncertain as light wobbling from faceted glass.

“So might we,” Sharina said.

They started off, moving parallel on either side of the street's centerline.

The trees were just as large here as elsewhere in the ruins—many were too thick for Sharina and Dalar to have spanned if they linked arms—but the footing was easier than if they'd had to clamber over piles of rubble which once had been buildings.

The drizzle made it harder to concentrate on anything that was more than an arm's length ahead. Sharina repeatedly reminded herself that she had to be aware of her wider surroundings, but she kept finding her eyes focused on the ground just ahead of her feet.

She giggled. The bird glanced at her and said, “Mistress?”

“It isn't fair we have to be uncomfortable and in danger both,” Sharina aid.

“I've been contemplating a severe complaint to the Gods about just that situation,” Dalar agreed with a straight face. “All that's holding me back is deciding precisely which God is primarily responsible for the conditions. My race has ten thousand separate deities, you see, so it's difficult to correctly apportion blame.”

Sharina giggled again. Not that the bird had much option about the straight face, since instead of mobile lips he had a beak as rigid as cow horn. It pleased Sharina to see that her companion not only had a sense of humor, it was a sense of humor that agreed with her own.

They heard the call again and both paused. “It sounded farther away than before,” Sharina said. She spoke instead of swallowing her words because this time she could make a truthful statement instead of expressing a frightened wish.

“Yes,” said Dalar, “and well to our right. Whatever it is.”

A ghoul with yellow tusks and skin the color of lichened rock stepped out of the ruined building beside Sharina. It walked on two legs like a human, but it was eight feet tall despite its slumped carriage. Its broad hips were cocked back to balance the weight of its canted forequarters.

Sharina shifted slightly, settling both feet for a good grip on the soil. Dalar stepped around her right side so that they were both facing the creature.

The ghoul lifted its head and hooted to its fellows who'd been calling in the distance. Close up the sound was deafening, like a bull roaring through a crude iron trumpet.

The ghoul's arms were long enough to touch the ground, but at present it held a headless rabbit in one clawed hand and picked bits of flesh from its teeth with the other. Six teats flapped against the creature's belly; it was a female.

The ghoul grinned and dropped the remains of the rabbit. Sharina raised the Pewle knife, gripping the hilt with both hands. Her only chance was to chop into the creature's rush with all her strength. Running would be useless.

She heard a whistling sound from the side, but she didn't dare take her eyes off the ghoul. If her timing was perfect, they might surv—

The ghoul leaped. The mushy choonk of impact sounded like an axe hitting a melon.

The creature's hairless skull twisted sideways and deformed. One of Dalar's bronze weights froze momentarily in the misty air, having transferred all the momentum of its spin to the misshapen head.

Dalar snatched the weight back into his palm and set the other one spinning on six feet of chain. After two quick twists of the bird's wrist, the bronze was a shimmer in the air rather than a discrete object. He tilted the weapon slightly so that it was safely above Sharina's head on that side of its circuit.

The ghoul hit the ground at Sharina's side, hopped backward with its arms flailing—she jumped away but wasn't quick enough to avoid a claw-slash on her left calf—and finally flopped on its back and continued to thrash. Each of its four limbs jerked in a different rhythm.

Its jaws opened, displaying interlocking canines as long as Sharina's little finger. The tongue and lining of the ghoul's mouth were white, streaked with blue veins. It said, “Kuk kuk kuk,” and stopped. The long body arched in a convulsion that made it wheeze. The limbs drummed briefly; then the ghoul went flaccid.

Sharina let out her breath. Her hands were trembling so badly that after two failures to sheathe the Pewle knife, she continued to hold the weapon as she examined the scratch on her leg. It normally wouldn't have been serious, but given the condition of the ghoul's claws she'd better clean it immediately.

She looked up at her companion. She said, “That was good work, Dalar.”

“I am pleased to have been of service to my mistress,” the bird said. A tone of crowing delight colored the neutral simplicity of the words. He added, “The creature was new to me.”

“And me,” said Sharina. “I want to rub this cut clean with a dock leaf and then see if we can find some spiderwebs to pack it with. Nonnus—”

A ghoul called in the middle distance. Another responded from farther away. Before that cry ended, at least a dozen more of the creatures were giving tongue. All of them seemed to be south of where Sharina and Dalar stood, but some sounded very close.

“Or again, the cut can wait,” Sharina said. Together they began jogging northward out of the ruins.

 

Elfin sang somewhere nearby, though not so close that Cashel could make out the words. That was just as well, he guessed.

He thumbed the last of the pine nuts into his left palm, then dropped the stripped cone on the ground beside him. He rose to his feet, chewing the little nuts. Cashel didn't know if he'd be able to get used to them as a steady diet—they had an aftertaste of turpentine, though he didn't notice it when each mouthful was going down—but for keeping him fed here in the Underworld they were fine.

“The woods here seem really quiet,” he said to the ring. “Except for Elfin, I mean. Is it always like this?”

“The other inhabitants on this level are afraid of you,” Krias said. “They're still here, never fear. They'll come out when you're gone.”

“Ah,” said Cashel, nodding. “But you mean they're afraid of you.”

“It's all the same, sheep-boy,” the ring said.

“No,” said Cashel, “it's not.”

He smiled at the ring to show he wasn't angry or anything. He wasn't going to leave stand a false statement that touched him, though.

Cashel stretched and gave a quick spin of his staff. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the singing and called, “Hey Elfin! Come here if you like. I won't hurt you.”

The music stopped, then resumed. It wasn't coming closer.

“He didn't, you know, attack me the way the rest of his people did,” Cashel explained to the ring. Not that he had to answer to Krias for the company he kept. “And he sure can play and sing, can't he?”

“The rest of his people?” Krias said. The little demon cackled with laughter. “You're Elfin's people, sheep-boy. The People stole him from his cradle as an infant. Didn't you listen to what he was singing?”

“Well,” Cashel said. “Songs don't really mean anything, Krias. Granny Brisa used to sing about her love across the sea or the gray-eyed lad who loved her, all sorts of things like that. Nobody'd loved her since her husband died back before I was born.”

The ring demon gave a sigh that wasn't as theatrical as his usual. “Well, that's not what the People sing about,” he said. “They made that song when they killed the nurse and stole Elfin—not that his name was Elfin, of course. And they've got a thousand more songs like it, every one of them true.”

“Duzi!” Cashel said in amazement. “Why, that's terrible!”

Krias cackled. “They weren't singing when we last saw them, were they?” he added gleefully.

Cashel made a trumpet of his hands, leaning the staff in the crook of his right elbow, and bellowed, “Elfin! Come to me! I'll take you back home as soon as I'm done with my business here!”

The boy didn't even pause in his singing. It was awful to think that those words were real.

“Well, maybe he'll catch up with us later,” Cashel said. “And anyway, we'll be coming back this way, won't we?”

“I'm a magic ring,” Krias snapped, “not a fortune-telling ring. I don't have the slightest idea what you'll be doing, sheep-boy, except that it'll be stupid.”

“Well, we may as well move on,” Cashel said. He couldn't help smiling at the ring's fussiness.

“You know?” he added. “Back in the borough boys poke straws into an anthill and watch the ants run around in circles. I guess it doesn't hurt anybody, and sometimes it's pretty funny to watch.”

Krias spluttered like a kettle on the boil Cashel continued to grin as he walked on.

Cashel had been seeing a rocky hill ahead every time the trees overhead were thin. He stepped through a copse of beeches—almost beeches, anyway; the leaves were the right saw-edged shape but they were way too big for adult trees—and saw it rising right there, a stone's throw away.

He'd seen it before, or near enough. “This is the same place where I met Landure,” he said. “Did we just go around in a circle, Master Krias?”

“Look at the portal, sheep-boy,” the ring said. “Does that look like where we came through before? No! Because this is the gateway to the second level.”

“Yeah, I see it now,” Cashel said, walking around the spur of rock that pretty well hid the opening from the angle they'd approached. The door was wood, not bronze, true enough.

He didn't bother telling Krias he hadn't seen the door at first. The demon already knew that, and excuses weren't worth much even when they were better than “I didn't see what was in plain sight.”

It was a big, heavy door, all oak and fastened with trenails instead of iron. The workmen had been more interested in weight than craftsmanship. The staves weren't dovetailed, so despite how thick they were Cashel could see light through the cracks.

The light was a sickly green. Well, it'd be a change from the red he'd been walking under since he came through the bronze door. Neither one was a color Cashel much cared for.

“So I go through this?” Cashel said to the ring.

“How do I know what you do?” Krias snarled. “You're free to wander like a fuzzy animal with just about enough sense to wake up in the morning. You don't have to ride on some boob's finger like I do!”

“Master Krias,” Cashel said, “you're not going to get me mad, so you may as well stop trying. Besides, I guess you want Landure alive again the same as I do. Now, is this door on the way to find Landure's new body?”

“Yeah, this door and another one like it, if you get that far,” the demon said. “That's if, remember.”

He sounded peeved—well, he always did, except when he'd been talking about things Cashel wished hadn't happened, even to the People—but he was a little more subdued than usual too. It couldn't be a lot of fun being cooped up in a little ring the way Krias was.

“Thanks,” Cashel said as he gripped the handle, a horizontal pole long enough for three men to hold at the same time. When Cashel pulled, the panel creaked and groaned instead of opening.

Cashel was beginning to think that it was barred on the other side when he thought to lift as well as pull. That worked and he backed up, holding the panel off the ground. It was too heavy and saggy for its hinge pegs. For all its size, it wasn't made any better than a stable door.

The terrain through the open doorway was pretty much like what Cashel had seen when he opened the bronze door earlier. The vegetation, though, was like nothing he'd ever come across.

Just inside grew something more like a young willow than anything else familiar, but it didn't look much like a willow. Its limbs were snaky like a weeping willow's, but they didn't have any leaves at all that Cashel could see. It hadn't lost them for winter, either: the breeze coming up from below was warm and wet, like a summer noon in the marshes.

Cashel hefted his quarterstaff and sighed. “Do the People live down here too, Master Krias?” he asked.

“Them?” said the ring demon. “No, not them, but there's worse things, sheep-boy. Much worse!”

“Well, let's hope we stay clear of them,” Cashel said mildly. He stepped through the doorway.

“You're not going to close it?” Krias said. “What's the matter—are you so worn out already that you don't think you can move the door again?”

“No, I'm all right,” said Cashel, stroking the smooth hickory. He wished Garric could be here with him, but the quarterstaff itself was a friend from home. “I just thought I'd leave it in case Elfin wants to come with us anyway. I don't think he could open the door if I was to close it.”

Krias sneered. “Somehow I doubt that you're quite up to Elfin's cultural standards,” he said.

“Still, he might be getting lonely,” Cashel said. He walked into the vast green-lit cavern. As with the place he was leaving, there wasn't anything overhead that looked like a cave's roof. He might have been standing under an open sky.

The trees on the slopes below quivered gently, like a barley field in an autumn breeze. It didn't look like the trees were all blowing in the same direction, though. Each one shook to a little different rhythm.

“That's funny,” Cashel said. He was about to ask the ring about what he saw. As his mouth opened he heard in his mind the string of insults that'd be all he got from that quarter. Instead, Cashel stepped over to examine the little not-willow. The sapling's trunk was about three fingers' breadth across and as supple as a bamboo fishing pole. The bark was smooth.

“You'll be sor-ree!” Krias piped.

The tree's long, whippy limbs wrapped around Cashel. It was like being caught in a net.

“Call on me!” Krias said. “Call on me, sheep-boy!”

Cashel let go of his quarterstaff; it wasn't going to help him now. The tree limbs squirmed over him like so many snakes.

He tried to pull back, not seriously but to test what would happen. Limbs interwove themselves between Cashel and safety, forming a barrier of living wickerwork. He grinned, because that was what he'd expected. The tree didn't meet many wrestlers, he guessed.

“Are you a lunatic?” Krias shrilled. “Use my name!”

Cashel hunched down and stepped toward the tree. He gripped it low around the trunk, the same way he'd have gone for the ankles of an opponent who'd fallen for his initial feint.

No man living had ever broken free once Cashel had got his grip on him. He slowly straightened his flexed knees, letting his leg muscles do the work. As he did so, he leaned back slightly, putting tension on the trunk.

For some moments the branches pulled at Cashel—hard, hard enough to leave welts where they wrapped his arms and torso. The tree didn't know anything about a fight. Everything it did was just helping its opponent!

Cashel's teeth were bared and his gasping breaths blew spit from his lower lip, but he could feel the roots start to give. The tree must have known what was about to happen. Its branches stopped tugging and instead lashed at Cashel like a drover with a stubborn mule.

Cashel tucked his face into his left armpit to save his eyes, and for the rest—well, whip-cuts weren't going to change anything. Not when he could see the taproot pulling up from the soil, fat and yellow and covered with little broken tendrils twisting like earthworms cut with a shovel.

The tree made a sound. It wasn't a scream, really; it was more like the rattle of a pot at a roiling boil. The limbs stopped whipping Cashel and the trunk went as limp in his hands as the tongue of a dead sheep.

Cashel let go of the tree and straightened slowly, breathing in gasps. His head was swimming and he knew he had to be careful not to fall straight down the side of the bluff. “Oh!” he said.

“And what do you think you proved by that?” Krias said, sounding more puzzled than petulant.

“I didn't prove anything,” Cashel said. “The tree started a fight and I finished one.”

He stretched his arms out carefully and looked himself over. He hadn't pulled any muscles, but he stung all over and he was bleeding in a few places from the tree slashing at him. He hoped there'd be water in the valley below so he could wash off.

Cashel didn't know what he was going to do for clothing, though. The tree had torn off the right sleeve of his tunic, and he'd split the back all the way down to his belt when he flexed to pull out the root. He wished Ilna was here to mend it.

Truth to tell, he wished any of his friends were here. Well, he'd be back with them soon enough. First Sharina, then they'd rejoin the others.

“/ could have taken care of the problem a lot easier, you know,” Krias said.

Cashel picked up his staff and twirled it, being careful to keep it clear of the bluff behind him. “I won't always have you around,” Cashel said. “Anyway, I'd rather scotch my own snakes.”

He chuckled. “Or trees.”

Cashel leaned over the slope, picking a route. It shouldn't be any worse than the first climb was. He braced his staff a long step down.

“Sheep-boy?” said the ring.

“Umm?” said Cashel.

“You could eat the root of that tree you killed,” Krias said. “It's supposed to be tasty, even. If you're the sort of lower life-form that needs solid food.”

“Ah,” said Cashel. He straightened and drew his belt knife. “Thank you, Master Krias. Those pine nuts were starting to get old.”

Cashel whittled just below the line of the bark. Somewhere back of him, still on the other side of the open door, he heard Elfin singing.

 

Vonculo gripped the hilt of his broad-bladed sword in both hands, though the weapon was still sheathed. He was holding it for a lucky charm. His bearded face looked like a beast's in the lamplight.

“Keep the child out of trouble,” Ilna said curtly to Chalcus. She stepped toward the sailing master.

“We can—” Chalcus said, nodding toward Vonculo and the others.

“Take her into a crowd of frightened fools?” Ilna snapped. “I think not!”

Half the crew had pressed toward the bow and their leaders, desperate for information. They squeezed aside for Ilna just as they'd have made way for a viper crawling down the deck.

There wasn't any information, a point that should've been obvious to anybody with the brains of a pigeon, but this lot seemed to be hoping for a miracle. A miracle seemed the most likely source of salvation to Ilna as well, given that the ships had been caught this way.

“Well, Mistress Merota,” she heard the chanteyman saying, “I'll teach you the woman's part of 'The Gambling Suitor' and we'll sing together.”

“All right, mistress,” Vonculo said. “You're a wizard, and if that we heard on shore isn't wizard's work, then it's demons'. We need you to make us safe!”

He and the men around him were frightened enough to do anything. Ilna kept her empty hands in plain sight, knowing that if she touched her cords she'd be clubbed—or stabbed—by one of the sailors behind her. There wasn't enough light, anyway, for her to bind all those present.

“I'm not that kind of wizard,” Ilna said. “I can weave patterns that have an effect. My art isn't of any good to you.”

“By the Shepherd's tool, mistress!” the sailing master swore. “If you're no help to us, then you've been a -waste of the rations you've eaten. You and the girl both!”

Ilna sniffed. “I can't weave you safety, Master Vonculo,” she said. “I'll go ashore and use my senses to find out what's going on, though. The same as any of you could do—”

She turned and raked her eyes across the men behind her. They flinched as she'd expected they would.

In the silence, Ilna heard Merota sing, “ 'Sir, I see you've come again—' “ Chalcus met Ilna's eyes over the girl's head. The chanteyman grinned like a hook-bladed knife.

Ilna turned to Vonculo again. “—If there were men among you!”

“You mean... ?” Vonculo said. He blinked. The answer had gone in a direction he hadn't been expecting, so his stunned mind had to pause before it could interpret the words.

“I mean that I'll wade ashore and see what really did happen to the men from the other ship,” Ilna said contemptuously. “Personally, I don't see anything supernatural about a man screaming. You're ready to do the same yourself the next time a fish jumps.”

“Sure, that's all right,” the helmsman said. “We'll have the girl here, so—”

“No, Tias,” said Chalcus in a voice clear enough to carry to the island; “Merota will be accompanying Mistress Ilna and myself as we go view the land.”

“I'm not taking Merota into that!” Ilna said, turning as quick as a squirrel.

“There's no risk we'll find there, mistress,” Chalcus said, his left hand on the child's shoulder, “that's so great as leaving her by herself with folk I wouldn't trust to pour piss out of a boot. Not sparing yourself from the description, Master Vonculo.”

Chalcus was angry; this Ilna could see despite the chanteyman's grin and pleasant voice. But there was still more to what he was doing than that. There was a streak in the fellow which, if pushed far enough, might lead him to do absolutely anything regardless of consequences. The present situation, the result of the mutineers' stupidity, brutality, and fear, had brought Chalcus to that point.

Ilna didn't recall ever having seen a more dangerous man—except possibly when she glanced into water clear enough to give a reflection.

“But...” said a sailor hidden in the crowd. “How do we know they'll come back?”

“Now that's a fine question, Skogara,” Chalcus said with a friendly smile. “Do you want to come along and keep watch on our wizard?”

There was a muffled curse from the sailor but no other response. Chalcus grinned even more broadly and continued, “I thought not; but never fear, we'll be back. What I saw of the island by daylight didn't encourage me to pick it as a place to retire, that I can tell you.”

Ilna's mind slid like a shuttle through choices. Chalcus was right about Merota being better off with the two of them than alone, and Ilna wasn't fool enough to think that she could force the chanteyman to stay aboard with the child. Indeed, they might all three be safer ashore than in the midst of fifty frightened fools.

“We'll need a float of some sort for Merota and what we carry with us,” she said loudly. “I'm not trusting the child to this mud.”

“We'll use Lord Tadai's mattress,” Chalcus said with a cheery lilt. “It's feathers in a waxed linen cover. And think how the poor man must be suffering without it, Vonculo.”

“By the Lady's tits!” Vonculo said. “You're a madman, Chalcus. Mad!”

Ilna agreed completely; but the chanteyman wasn't stupid, not at all. And unless she missed her bet, Chalcus had survived in circumstances when many others had not.

He turned and slashed twice across the baggage in the belly of the ship, severing the cargo net. The feather bed, on top of other gear as a cover and compressed by the tight-drawn net, sprang up as though volunteering.

Chalcus had slid the sword from its sheath as part of the same motion as the double cut. It was quite as pretty a movement as those of mountebanks juggling for coppers at the fair.

He sheathed the weapon. “If you'll get over the side, Ilna dear,” Chalcus said at the other sailors watched nervously, “I'll hand this down to you and send the child after it. If you've got anything more to carry, I'll take care of that too.”

Ilna tossed her slight bindle to the chanteyman, then stepped onto an oar and walked herself into the water. “I'm not your dear,” she called over her shoulder without particular emphasis.

“And how would you know, mistress?” Chalcus said. Laughing, he handed her the mattress to lower into the water—it floated like the ducks whose feathers filled it—and then stuck his left arm out like a beam by which Merota lowered herself onto the float. Ilna nodded with approval: if Chalcus had held onto the child, his grip would likely have bruised her.

The seawater was cold and was sticky with salt. It came waist high to Ilna or a little deeper; nothing dangerous, but wading in it was a thoroughly unpleasant business.

Ilna grinned tightly. Like so much else about this journey.

She didn't mind the squelch underfoot, but her bare toes stirred gases out of the ooze. The stench of ancient death was choking, far worse than the margins of Pattern Creek in the borough after the tide slunk back.

“Oh,” Merota gasped as she bobbed on the float. “Oh, what smells so awful, Ilna? Oh, I can't breathe!”

Chalcus slipped over the side with as little stir as a goose bobbing. “We'll get to shore, child,” he said, “and we'll hope that the air's better there... though I don't promise that, nor anything else good about this island.”

“Your sword will get wet,” Ilna said as she started shoreward, tugging the float along with her left hand. The girl's weight made the mattress sag in the middle, letting a stream of water dribble over her knees. Merota winced but didn't complain.

“Aye,” said Chalcus, “and the steel's so good that it'll rust if it hears the splash of a woman's tear... but it's a seaman's blade, Ilna, and I've a swatch of raw fleece in my wallet to wipe the salt off it as soon as we reach land. If I don't have other use for the blade, that is.”

He laughed. To Ilna's surprise, Merota giggled along with him. Chalcus' good humor made even Ilna want to smile, though she restrained herself.

Though the sea wasn't dangerously deep, it remained at the same awkward depth for step after step. The mud slid around Ilna's toes and didn't give a good grip when she tried to push forward. Water sucked at her garments.

Ilna chuckled. Well, the mud and water weren't going to prevent her from carrying on with her plan, such as it was; and discomfort was merely a part of life. The greater part of life, she'd found, though others might have another opinion.

“Mistress?” said Chalcus, responding to her chuckle. He and Ilna towed the float like a yoke of—what? Not oxen, surely. Carriage horses, perhaps; not a nobleman's team, but certainly a healthy, well-kept pair. And by no means ill matched.

“I was wondering,” Ilna said aloud, “how Lady Liane bos-Benliman views life.”

“A friend of yours, Ilna?” Chalcus said; pressing, but with a tone of mild disinterest that would permit her to ignore the question without creating a problem. Ilna wondered what if anything the chanteyman knew of her, beyond what he'd seen and what he'd seen in her eyes.

“Liane has always acted as a friend to me,” Ilna said carefully. A tag of Celondre's poem ran through her mind as she spoke: Follow a proper goal, for it's doom to wish for what the Gods have placed beyond your grasp. “And I hope I've been a friend to her this past while as well.”

They'd gotten inshore of the other trireme, a glitter of lamplight and curses well off to their right, and the muddy bottom had finally begun to shelve. There was nothing to see on land, though a thin line of foam and debris marked the shore now that they'd gotten this close.

Chalcus pulled the float in exactly Ilna's rhythm; setting his pace to hers, she was sure, since he was stronger and likely more familiar with the sort of task chance had set them. Ilna noticed that she hadn't been thinking about the stench, the slime, and the cold.

Working with another person was surprisingly easy, if the person had the same habit of fitting tasks into the most efficient pattern. That wasn't very many people, of course.

“If I can ask question for question,” she said aloud, “why were you aboard the Terror, Master Chalcus?”

He chuckled. “A question I've asked myself often,” he said. “The short of it, mistress, is that I'd left my former employment and thought I'd put some distance between myself and the region as well. The Royal Fleet, such as it was, was hiring... and bless me if my first voyage out of the Pool of the Beltis isn't right back to the southern waters I'd left!”

Chalcus gave a loud, caroling laugh that echoed from the shore ahead. Ilna imagined the nervousness on the triremes as the mutineers heard the sound and mistook its source.

“That sort of luck makes a fellow wonder if he's been sacrificing to the wrong Gods, doesn't it, mistress?” Chalcus said. “That, or sacrificing the wrong things!”

“Chalcus?” said Merota. “Do you mean you don't want to meet your former master?”

“My associates, you mean, child,” the chanteyman said with a careful mildness. “And I won't be meeting any of them this side of the grave; though on the other there'll be some looking for me, I have no doubt.”

In a different tone he went on, “I think it's time for you to walk the last cable length on your own legs, child, though hold Ilna's hand if you please.”

He dropped his corner of the mattress. The water was only ankle deep, but Ilna's feet sank that depth again into the muck.

Chalcus drew his curved sword; the steel gave a vibrant sigh. “And myself,” he said, “I'll go on a little ahead to make sure there's no hole here at the shoreline that you might fall into, hey?”

“Yes, go ahead,” Ilna said. “Hold on to my tunic, Merota. I need both hands for a moment.”

Splashing inshore had dampened the noose she carried in her right sleeve.

She ran it between thumb and forefinger, squeezing it dry or dry enough. The white silk would flow like poured milk if she had to cast it.

Chalcus grinned approval, then started walking directly ahead of them. His feet lifted in and out of the soup with scarcely a splash.

“Not too far, Chalcus,” Merota called.

“Not far at all, child,” Chalcus replied cheerfully, but he didn't turn his head to look at her. The area behind him was for Ilna to deal with.

The water became shallower, the soil underneath firmer and finally dry. Chalcus' tunic, a blur in the starlight ahead of them, halted.

“We're coming up behind you, Master Chalcus,” Ilna warned.

“Why did you say that, Ilna?” Merota asked.

“Because Ilna knows I'm nervous as a cat,” the chanteyman said with a grin, “and we'd all be very sorry if I whacked your head off because I mistook a noise, wouldn't we, child?”

He chucked Merota under the chin, though all the time his eyes were scanning the vegetation which grew to the line of the spring tides. There weren't any tall trees, but shrubs and saplings in profusion interlocked branches.

“Well, the rest of us'd be sorry,” Chalcus added.

“Shall we strike inland?” Ilna asked. She didn't see an obvious route through the vegetation, but she felt exposed on this muddy beach.

“Now that we're together again,” Chalcus said, “I thought we'd walk down to where the others landed. All right?”

“Yes, of course,” Ilna snapped. “Merota, stay between me and Master Chalcus, if you please.”

Chalcus paused. “The thing is, Merota,” he said, “Ilna and I don't know what's going on any better than you do. That comes out different ways, but nothing either of us does or says means we're mad at you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Chalcus,” Merota said. She looked from him to Ilna and went on, “I'm not afraid when I'm with the two of you.”

“Oh, so young and such a liar!” the chanteyman said with a peal of laughter. “But I will say that in the past it's been the wiser choice to be standing with us than to be on the other side.”

He cocked an eyebrow at Ilna. “Not so, mistress?”

She snorted. “More true than not, I suppose,” she admitted. “That doesn't predict the future, you know.”

“Ah, we've had that discussion already,” said Chalcus as he strode forward, checking the sea to his right as well as the foliage at the edge of the tideline to their left as they followed the shore.

Ilna watched also. She didn't spend much time in the raw countryside, but anything that violated the normal pattern would be as obvious to her as a bonfire.

She smiled. Although... what was normal in this place might be dragons with mouths large enough to swallow the triremes. Still, dragons that big should be obvious enough even though they did fit in.

The smell was the first -warning. “Merota,” Ilna said, “something's been killed here and the chances are it was a man. Maybe several men. Don't scream when you see it.”

“Keep the girl back!” Chalcus said.

“We can save her life if we keep our minds on our work!” Ilna said J sharply. “But we can't hide the kind of place this is, and if we try to do that, we'll make mistakes we can't afford!”

“It's all right, Chalcus,” Merota said. “I saw my parents. After the fire.”

They walked the three steps to where Chalcus stood. “That's far enough,” he said. “Or you'll trip on his guts.”

The corpse hung upside down from the crotch of a sapling, its fingers touching the ground. One of the sailors, Ilna supposed, though she wouldn't have been able to identify the victim even in better light. Besides his having been stripped and gutted like a trout, something had bitten his face off.

The skiff was smashed to bits on the mud, with pieces lying thirty feet from the main pile of wreckage. Ilna hadn't heard the boat's violent destruction. Perhaps the laughter had masked the crackling wood.

The mixed odors of blood, feces, and fear made the beach stink like a slaughter yard. Back home the blood would've been sopped into a bowl of ' oatmeal for sausage and puddings. Of course, back home the cadaver would have been a sheep or a pig.

Though the lungs and intestines had simply been dragged out across the sand, the heart and liver were missing. “Ah!” said Ilna.

Both her companions were looking at her. Ilna made a moue of displeasure—she shouldn't have made her surprise public—and said with scrupulous honesty, “I was just thinking that the killer's tastes didn't run to puddings and sausage.”

Chalcus laughed and squeezed Merota's shoulder with his left hand. “You'll be all right with us, child,” he said. “I swear you will!”

Merota looked at the chanteyman. “Was he a bad man, Chalcus?” she asked.

“Three-finger Sinou?” he said, looking at the victim. “He's a lazy bugger who couldn't keep stroke if his life depended on it... which it didn't, not when he was rowing for me, but I was glad when they moved him to the Ravager and made him Plestin's problem. Maybe Plestin's discipline is tighter than mine, do you think?”

He laughed. Ilna wasn't sure whether he really thought his joke was funny or if he was just trying to jolly the child along. Both, she suspected; and she found she was smiling also.

“There's a gap in the woods here,” Chalcus said, gesturing with his sword. “The others likely went off through it, since we'd see their tracks in the mud if they'd gone up the beach. My thought is that we wait here till we get some light and then head inland.”

“Instead of going back to the ship?” Ilna said.

“Every decision Vonculo's made has put us deeper in the muck, Ilna-darling,” the chanteyman said. “I think we're better on our own.”

“I suppose you're right,” Ilna said. “Particularly since the locals appear to have had dinner already.”

She found a hollow at the roots of a fig whose stems would make a springy rest for her back. She wouldn't sleep, but she might as well be as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

“Come here, Merota,” Ilna said. “Put your head in my lap and get some sleep. It's been a long day.”

“Indeed it has,” Chalcus agreed cheerfully. He positioned himself at the head of the track through the vegetation; moonlight danced as he wiped the blade with his wad of fleece, again and again as he waited.

As Merota settled herself, Ilna heard the chanteyman sing in a low, lilting voice, “ 'So I will marry who I please, as you can do as well.' “