Magister

The cat creature was lithe and muscular, but its slight frame weighed less than a human female; Garric's furious strength could've overmastered an opponent twice as heavy. When this one realized it couldn't resist the pull, it twisted in the air and leveled its delicate spear at Garric's face. Garric's club brushed the light shaft out of the way and smashed the Corl's left arm and ribs.

The cat man slammed to the ground, instantly curling face-up despite its injuries. Garric kicked at its face with his heel. He missed because the Corl ducked its head aside faster than a human could've thought.

Garric spun the net widdershins. Despite its speed, the wounded creature couldn't completely avoid the spreading meshes. It yowled again and-Gods! it was fast-stabbed Garric in the thigh with its spear. His club stroke had broken the flint blade straight across, but this thrust was a strong one and tore into the muscle.

Garric swung the club a second time. The Corl would've dodged but Garric scissored his arms, tugging the net toward him at the same time he brought the club down. The cat man's skull was large to give the strong jaw muscles leverage, but the bones were light and crunched beneath the powerful blow. The creature's saw-edged scream died in the middle of a rising note.

There were glowing eyes to right, left and center. Garric flattened and heard the spiteful bwee! of a thorn-barbed line arcing through the air above him.

He started to roll. A Corl landed on his back and looped his neck with a garrote.

Garric's throat was a ball of white fire. He gripped the Corl's calf with his left hand, then swung the creature like a flail into the ground beside him. It bounced with a moan of pain, losing both ends of the garrote.

Garric stabbed with his pole, using it as a blunt dagger instead of a club. Ribs cracked under the Corl's brindled fur.

Garric's arm went numb; he saw the post drop from his hand though he couldn't feel his fingers release. The Corl standing above him raised its stone axe for a second blow like the one that'd already stunned his right shoulder.

Garric kicked sideways. The Corl leaped over the swift attack with no more difficulty than Garric would've made in hopping from rock to rock in crossing a stream. Garric had saved his skull for a few moments, but perhaps only that.

Soma threw her rushlight at the Corl in a blazing whirl. The cat man wailed, its eyelids blinking closed and its arms crossing in front of its face. The pithy stalk bounced away in a shower of sparks.

Garric lunged upward, still seated but his torso straight and his left hand spearing out to grab the Corl by the throat. It struck clumsily with the axe, but he jerked its face down onto the anvil of his skull. A fang gouged Garric's forehead painfully, but the Corl's nose flattened with a crackling of tiny bones.

Garric tried to lift his right hand to twist its neck like a chicken's; the muscles of his bruised arm didn't respond. He shook the Corl one-handed, showering blood from its ruined face for the instant before the world flashed in negative: charcoal shadows on a sepia background becoming white on pearl.

I've been hit on the head....

Garric turned and rose like a whale broaching from the depths. His world was silent and without feeling but he could move, did move. A Corl half again the size of the others faced him with a ball-headed baton lifting for another blow. This creature had a lion's mane and prominent male genitalia. Behind him Soma was being born down by another cat man.

Garric lurched toward the big Corl, stumbling from weakness. The club's shaft rather than the knobbed end cracked him across the head.

Light flashed. Garric saw the mud rushing up, but he didn't feel the smack of it against his face.

Then there was nothing at all.

* * *

Cashel stood on shore beside Tenoctris and Ilna, waiting for word to board. Chalcus walked down the line of oarsmen, chatting in friendly fashion but looking each man over as carefully as Cashel would the sheep walking out of the byre past him in the morning.

"Is he worried about the men?" Tenoctris said. "They're his regular crew, aren't they?"

Ilna looked at the older woman but didn't speak. Cashel nodded in understanding. His sister wasn't one to repeat things that she and Chalcus talked about in private, not even to a friend like Tenoctris.

Cashel had only what he'd seen and what he knew from experience. Tenoctris was very smart, but she'd lived in a different world from that of men whose work took them into places they might not come back from. Cashel understood that sort of thing better.

"I don't guess he's worried about the men, rightly," he said. "But they've been on shore and living pretty hard, I guess. If anybody's so hung over he'll be dragging on his oar, or he's got his head cracked in a tavern, Chalcus'll leave him ashore this time."

He cleared his throat. "It's not the men, he's worried about," he added. "It's where we're going."

"Ah," said Tenoctris. "Yes, I see that. I regret to say that I share his concern."

They all three looked where the sailors were determinedly not looking, at King Cervoran standing alone with a case of age-blackened oak on the sand beside him. Cervoran's complexion was so waxen that Cashel had a vision of him melting in the bright sunlight.

"He's bringing objects from the collection in his workroom," Tenoctris said quietly. "Nothing of real power or significance, except for the diadem. There isn't anything else really significant in the palace."

"He brought the big topaz?" Ilna said as her fingers knotted and picked out patterns. She glanced out through the mouth of the harbor to where a plume of vapor rose on the horizon.

"Yes," Tenoctris said. "He said it was necessary... the way he does, you know."

She shrugged and added with a faint smile, "I'm not sure what the stone is. It's important, but I can't find the key to how to use it. I've been reading the documents in Cervoran's library. I've learned many interesting things, but thus far nothing about the topaz."

"All right, buckos!" Chalcus called in a cheerful voice. "Let our fine passengers board and we'll take them to visit a hole in the deep sea."

He turned and flourished his right arm toward Cervoran and beyond. "Master Cervoran, Milady Tenoctris, and my dear friends," he said. "If you'll cross the gangplank and stand steady, we'll be shortly under way."

Cervoran was stumping forward at the first words. Cashel was ready to help him across the narrow boarding bridge that ran from shore to the bireme's central catwalk, but he shuffled along without hesitation.

That didn't mean he wouldn't fall off, of course. The Heron was pulled up on the beach, and the catwalk was a full man's height above the sand.

"A man could break his neck if he fell from that," Cashel murmured.

"Yes," said Tenoctris. "And perhaps Cervoran could also, though I'm by no means sure that's true."

She paused and added, "I may be being unjust."

"We can go aboard now, I guess," Cashel said quietly.

Ilna looked at Tenoctris. "Do you think I shouldn't have saved him?" she asked with a touch of challenge.

"I'm not sure Cervoran is an enemy," Tenoctris said. "He's certainly not our only enemy at present. You did what was right at the time."

Ilna gave a little dip of her chin in acknowledgement. "I'm sure some of the people I hurt when I was doing evil's will were evil themselves," she said. "I suppose it's only fair that I save a few of them now to make up for it."

She was joking but completely straight-faced. Well, maybe she was joking.

Cervora'd reached the deck and gone forward. It was intended for the steersman, the ship's officers, and seamen handing the sails when they were set.

Chalcus had told Cashel that although the Heron didn't carry marines, the oarsmen had swords or spears and wicker shields under their benches. The Heron had a ram, but if they found themselves locked to an enemy vessel the crew'd leap over the other's gunnels with wild cries and their weapons out.

Chalcus said that was how the pirates fought; and from the scars Cashel saw on the fellow's body, he should know. Cashel smiled: Chalcus was good for Ilna, and that was all that mattered now.

Ilna led the way up the gangplank. Tenoctris followed, one hand gripping Ilna's sash. The older woman wasn't prickly about doing everything for herself; she knew she could lose her balance. Cashel was last in line, the satchel and quarterstaff in his left hand so that his right could grab Tenoctris if she slipped.

The plank wasn't much, but even so it was for the landsmen only: Chalcus and his sailors would swarm aboard like so many monkeys. Cashel would just as soon of done that himself-he wasn't a sailor, but with his strength and the quarterstaff to brace him he could climb a sheer wall twice his own height-but he'd come for Tenoctris' sake, and that meant staying close to her.

When the passengers were on the central catwalk, Chalcus shouted an order. A double handful of men scrambled onto the outriggers and thrust their oar looms down to brace the narrow hull. The steersman loosed the hawsers tying the sternpost to the mast and yard, rammed into the sand as bollards while the ship was out of the water. Chalcus was leaving the sailing paraphernalia on shore since the Heron was going no farther than they could see on the horizon.

When the men aboard were set, Chalcus called, "Pay me or go to jail!" in a sing-song voice. "Pay me my money down!" The crew on shore surged forward, lifting and shoving the Heron into the harbor.

"Pay me master sailorman!" Chalcus sang and the men ran the ship the rest of the way out. "Pay me my money down!"

The Heron bobbed briskly, light without the weight of her crew to steady her. The oarsmen swung themselves over the outriggers from both sides, balancing the hull and sliding quickly onto their assigned benches to unship their oars.

Cashel put an arm on Tenoctris' shoulder. It seemed to him the old woman was gripping the rail harder than the pitching really required.

"All the sailing I did in the age in which I was born...," Tenoctris said. She was standing between Ilna and Cashel on the narrow deck, so she turned to touch both of them with her wry smile. "Was on merchantmen, and generally old tubby ones besides. I sometimes thought how much nicer it would be on a sleek, swift warship."

She didn't put the rest of the thought into words, but she didn't have to. Cashel and his sister grinned back.

The flute player in the stern with Chalcus played a pretty farandole as the rowers fitted their oars into the rowlocks. Then at a quickening two-step from the flutist, they began to stroke in unison. The Heron slid forward, steadying as she moved. The wobbliness of the raised catwalk became a slick, slow yawing as the hull moved into and through the swells.

Tenoctris relaxed slightly. Cashel took his hand off her shoulder, but he stayed ready to grab her any time.

The Heron passed between the jaws of the harbor and into open sea. The surface was a bit choppier, but the rowers had the beat and the short hull didn't pitch. Chalcus walked forward, whistling a snatch of the chantey he'd sung to launch the ship.

"Milady Tenoctris," he said with a bow that was affectionate rather than mocking. "I have them on an easy stroke, one the boys could keep up all day needs must-which they won't, given how close the thing is."

He nodded toward the plume of vapor off the bow. A light breeze bent the column eastward to thin and vanish, but already Cashel could tell it was rising from a single patch of surface.

"A volcano under the sea, do you think, milady?" Chalcus added in what somebody who didn't know him well might've thought was a nonchalant voice.

"I don't know," Tenoctris said simply. She smiled for fellowship, not because there was anything funny. "I don't think so, but I really don't know."

"Ah, well," said Chalcus, putting his arm around Ilna's waist and hugging her close for a moment. She didn't respond, but she smiled and didn't pull away either. "We'll all know shortly, will we not?"

Cashel followed his eyes, not toward the vapor this time but to Cervoran standing motionless in the bow.

"That one knows, though he won't tell us, eh?" Chalcus said.

Ilna continued working her knots as she looked at Cervoran. She looked coldly angry, but for Ilna that didn't mean a lot.

"He thinks he knows," Ilna said. "For most wizards, that isn't the same thing as knowing."

Chalcus nodded curtly. He set his hands on his hips and stood arms-akimbo. "Master Cervoran!" he called. "I'm going to halt a bowshot short of the smoke and bring us around."

Cervoran turned, giving Cashel again the feeling that the bits and pieces of the wizard's body weren't working together quite the way they ought to. "I must be close," he said. "It is necessary."

"You'll be as close as I'm willing to come and pretend the ship's safe," snapped Chalcus. "Which is a bowshot out!"

He walked back to the stern, moving more like a cat than a cat does. Cervoran didn't do anything for a moment. His eyes remained fixed on where Chalcus'd been instead of following the sailor away.

The cloud of steam was getting close. It covered a considerable patch of the sea, enough to swallow the Heron if they'd gone into it. Cashel was just as glad they weren't going to, but he'd trust Chalcus on something like that if he'd said it was all right-or Tenoctris did, of course.

Tenoctris hadn't argued with Chalcus.

Chalcus shouted an order that didn't mean anything to Cashel. The stroke oars on both levels called something too, and the flute player changed his rhythm. The rowers all lifted their oars together; then the ones on the port side backed water with a measured stroke while those to starboard pulled normally. The ship began to slow and turn like a fishhook.

"That isn't steam," Ilna said. "The water's not boiling, and besides the color's too yellow."

They had a good view of the column now. Cashel could even see it wobbling up from the depths, twisted by currents but curling back like a corkscrew for as far down as he could follow it. Far below even that was a speck of light. It must be really bright and big to be seen, but it didn't have any more detail than a star does.

Cervoran opened his oak case. First he placed the topaz crown on his head, then he brought out a small brazier made of filigreed bronze. He pointed at the brazier and spoke an unheard word. A scarlet spark popped from his finger, striking the sticks of charcoal instantly alight.

Cashel moved a trifle to put himself between the two women and the man in the bow. Cervoran took a bowl out of his case and held it out to Cashel. "Fill this with sea water," he said. "At once."

Cashel glanced at Tenoctris; she nodded. Cervoran opened his mouth again as Cashel handed his staff to his sister to hold. He didn't often speak sharply, but this time he said, "Don't say that, if you please, Master Cervoran. I don't care if it's necessary or not, I'm coming t' do it!"

Cashel took the cup. It was bone, mounted in silver but the top of a human skull beyond doubt. He'd handled dead men's bones, and he'd cracked bones to kill men if it came to that; but Cervoran having such a thing for a toy wasn't a thing to make Cashel warm to the man, that was a fact.

He gripped the railing and swung himself over, feeling the narrow hull rock. Chalcus shouted in a voice like a silver trumpet, "Bonzi and Felfam, get to port now!" The two men closest the bow on the starboard outrigger jumped from their benches and shifted to the other side as Cashel let himself down where they'd been.

Only a few men on either side were rowing now, slow strokes to keep the ship from drifting back into the column of smoke. It smelled like brimstone. There were fish floating on their sides around it, a lot of them kinds Cashel had never seen before. There should've been gulls and all kinds of seabirds, but the sky was empty.

He bent over the outrigger and dipped the skull full. The sea looked pale green, but the water in the cup was just water, nothing different to the eye from what bubbled up in the ancient spring-house where most of Barca's Hamlet fetched its water.

Cashel stood and raised the cup in his hand. Cervoran had taken the crown off and was looking into the topaz again. His lips were moving, but no sound came out.

"Master Cervoran?" Cashel said. He couldn't climb up holding the cup, not without spilling the most of it. Didn't the fellow see-

Tenoctris took the skullcap from Cashel and held it out to Cervoran. He didn't react until she raised it so that it was between the topaz and his eyes; then he took the cup and replaced the crown on his head. As Cashel lifted himself onto the catwalk-the sturdy railing squealed and the Heron bobbed violently-Cervoran held the cup over the charcoal fire and chanted, "Mouno outho arri...."

Cashel took his staff. He didn't exactly push the women back, but he kept easing toward them and they in turn moved down the catwalk to the middle where the mast'd have been. They could hear Cervoran chanting there, but as a sound instead of being words.

"Do you know what he's doing, Tenoctris?" Ilna asked. She seemed curious, not frightened, and she spoke like she didn't have a lot of use for the fellow she was asking about. Pretty much normal Ilna, in fact.

"He's gathering power to him," the older woman said. "And channelling it onto the surface of the sea. I don't know why or what he intends by that. And I don't know what the thing in the abyss is, though it's more than a simple meteor."

She smiled. "We knew that before we came, I suppose, didn't we?" she added.

"Could you say a spell yourself and learn, ma'am?" Cashel asked. He kept his face half toward the women, but he made sure he could watch Cervoran out of the corner of his eye.

The water in the cup was bubbling, which it shouldn't've been without the bone charring-which wasn't happening. No man Cashel knew could've kept holding the cup like that close above a charcoal fire. No matter how brave you were, there was a time that the heat was too much and your fingers gave way. Cervoran's seemed to be sweating yellow fat.

"Perhaps I could," Tenoctris said, her eyes on the other wizard, "but I think I'm better off seeing what my colleague is doing. If I concentrate on my art, I'd be likely to miss things. I'm also concerned that-"

She met Cashel's eyes. "I'm afraid that if I sent my mind down to that light," she said, "either I wouldn't be able to get back or I'd bring something back with me. Cervoran may not be our friend, but I'm quite sure that the thing he's fighting, the Green Woman, is our enemy and mankind's enemy."

"Kriphi phiae eu!" Cervoran shouted. The sea was suddenly glazed with red light. The ship jolted upward. When the light faded, the surface had frozen to ice the hue of the wizard's topaz crown.

The rowers shouted in terror and jumped from their benches. The Heron trembled as the floor of an inn would when men were struggling on it, but it didn't heel and pitch: the hull was set solidly in the ice.

Cervoran dropped the skullcap. Still chanting, he lifted himself over the railing and slid down the bow's outward curve to the ram. He landed like a sack of oats, but he got up immediately and stepped onto the ice.

"Iao obra phrene...," he chanted as he walked stiffly toward where the smoke had risen.

The light in the depths shone through, despite the thickness of the ice.

* * *

While Ilna watched the former corpse stumping across the yellow ice, her fingers knotted lengths of twine and her mind danced along the vast temple of connections that her pattern meant. People thought that things stood apart from each other: a rock here, a tree here, a squalling baby here.

They were wrong. Everything was part of everything else. A push at this place meant a movement there, unimaginably far away; without anyone knowing that the one caused the other.

Ilna knew. She saw the connections only as shadow tracings stretching farther than her mind or any mind could travel, but she knew. And she knew that the pattern of action and response centered on this point-on Cervoran, on the thing beneath the sea, and on Ilna os-Kenset-was greater and more terrible than she could have imagined before this moment

Cervoran stood in the near distance with his hands raised; the jewel on his brow pulsed brighter than the pale sun hanging at zenith. The rhythm of his chant whispered over the ice like the belly scales of a crawling viper.

The frightened oarsmen shouted angrily. Ilna could see the men brandishing swords they'd taken from beneath their benches. One fellow jumped out of the ship and began hacking at the ice. He'd have done as much good to chop at a granite wall; the ice was thicker than the Heron was long. The oarsmen couldn't tell that, but Ilna knew.

Chalcus spoke to calm his crew, then asked Tenoctris a question with a flourish of his hand. She answered and Cashel said something as well, calm and solid and ready for whatever came.

Ilna's ears took in the sounds, but her mind was focused outside the ship, outside even the universe. She saw the shadows merge and link. The light in the depths swelled and wove its own pattern across the cosmos. She understood what Cervoran was doing, and she understood that he would fail because what he faced was more powerful than he knew or could know.

Ilna understood. Cervoran was a part of the pattern created by the light and the thing within the light. Very soon it would be complete.

She couldn't block the play of forces any more than Cashel could stand between two mountains and push them apart. She and her brother were powerful in their own ways, but the present battle was on a titanic scale. All Ilna could do was protect herself, wall herself off from the struggle.

She raised the pattern her fingers had knotted, holding it before her eyes. Then-

A flash of blue wizardlight penetrated the sea and sky, clinging to and filling all matter. Motion ceased, and the universe was silent except for the voice of Cervoran shrilling, "Iao obra phrene...."

He was trapped in his own spell, weaving the noose to hang him and hang all the universe with him. Everything was connected....

Ilna tucked the cords into her sleeve and climbed over the railing. The pattern was fixed in her mind, now. She no longer needed the physical object, and she didn't have time to pick out the knots.

The oarsmen stood like a jumble of statues, frozen by the spell and counterspell. Ilna hung on the outside of the railing for a moment to pick a spot to fall. She dropped to the outrigger between a man caught shouting desperately to Chalcus and one praying to the image of the Lady he held in his hands. She touched stepped down to the ice.

"Akri krithi phreneu...," Cervoran said.

Ilna walked toward him, taking short paces on the slick footing. The ice humped and cracked the way the millpond in Barca's Hamlet did during a hard winter.

"Ae obra euphrene...," Cervoran said.

The ice groaned in an undertone that blended with the wizard's voice. He'd been a fool to match himself against the thing beneath, but Ilna had been a fool herself many times in the past... and perhaps now. She loathed fools. All fools.

As the light flooding up through the ice grew brighter, the sky blurred gray and the scattered clouds lost definition. Ilna wasn't sure whether the spell had formed a cyst in time around Cervoran and those with him, or if the whole world was being changed by the pattern woven in words of power.

"Euphri litho kira...," cried Cervoran or at least Cervoran's lips.

Ilna was wearing suede-soled slippers because city custom, court custom, demanded that she not be barefoot. Nobody could've ordered her to wear shoes, but people might have laughed if she hadn't.

Part of Ilna would've said that she didn't care what other people thought, but that wasn't really true. The truth was that she'd do what she thought right no matter what anyone said or thought; but it was true also that if it was simply a matter of wearing shoes needlessly or being laughed at, she'd wear shoes.

That was a fortunate choice now. She'd walked barefoot on ice in the past when she had to, but the layer of suede was less uncomfortable. She hadn't dressed for deep winter this morning.

The light beneath the sea throbbed in the rhythm of a beating heart. As the syllables fell from Cervoran's lips it glowed brighter, faded, and grew brighter yet.

"... rali thonu omene...."

Ilna reached the chanting wizard. She was a weaver, not a wizard. She could do things with fabric impossible for anyone else she'd met, perhaps impossible for anyone else who'd ever lived. But any bumpkin in the borough could slash across one of Ilna's subtle patterns, destroying it and its effect completely.

Ilna grasped the golden wire and twisted the topaz diadem off Cervoran's head.

The wizard shrieked like a circling marsh hawk. His hands fell and his body went limp. She caught him as he slumped, then pulled his arms over her shoulders and turned, dragging him with her toward the ship. Cervoran was silent and a dead weight, but she'd done this before.

Breaking the spell had freed the crew of the Heron. Ilna heard the men shouting and praying, all at the top of their lungs for the joy of being able to speak again. Someone called her name, but she saved her breath for what she had to do.

The ice was breaking up, crackling and groaning underfoot. A great slab tilted vertical close by Ilna's left side, then slipped back with a moan. Salt water shot up from the fissure in a rainbow geyser; the whole ice sheet undulated in a web of spreading cracks.

Water as warm as blood sluiced ankle-deep across her feet. She paused, then stamped onward when the flow ceased. The ice, already slick, now glistened mirror-bright and smooth. She paced on because there was no choice and no other hope.

The snapping grew to a roar and the ice began to shiver. A chasm was opening, rushing toward Ilna faster than she could walk away from it. She didn't run because she couldn't run with Cervoran's weight to carry; and if she tried she'd fall; and if she fell, she'd fail.

She was blind with effort. Her breaths burned as she dragged them in through her open mouth.

Ilna had no God to pray to because she didn't believe in the Gods, and no one to curse because her own choice had brought her to this. Curses would be as empty as prayers, and anyway she wouldn't curse.

Cervoran lifted away from her. Her eyes focused. Cashel was beside her, striding for the ship again with the once-dead wizard over this shoulder. Chalcus caught Ilna around the waist and snatched her overhead with an acrobat's grace and a strength that belied his trim body. Together the men ran the last few steps back to the ship and handed their burdens aboard. A burly crewman took Ilna and lowered her to the hollow planking beneath the outrigger.

She turned. The ice sheet was pulling apart in a torrent dancing with great yellow chunks. The split reached the Heron, lifting the ship and shaking it like a dog before dropping it to wallow freely in open water.

"To your benches, buckos!" Chalcus shouted. "Panshin, give us the stroke on your flute! On your lives, my lads!"

Ilna stepped up to a bench and jumped, catching the railing around the raised deck. Chalcus was mounting in a single smooth motion, swinging his feet over with a twist of his shoulders. Ilna wasn't an acrobat or a sailor, but she heaved herself onto the rail, balanced, and rotated her body to stand upright. Tenoctris was beside her, holding the quarterstaff vertical in both hands.

Cashel, methodical as always, lifted Cervoran to the deck like a sack of grain and pulled himself up. The ship pitched and yawed, but that always happened when oarsmen shifted back to their places.

Cashel took his staff with a smile and a murmur of thanks. He looked past Cervoran toward the island.

Tenoctris said, "May I look at the diadem, Ilna?" In a warmer tone she added, "You saved our lives, you know. At least our lives."

Ilna looked down in surprise. She was holding the crown in her right hand, the gold wire twisted into a knot by her grip. The big topaz winked, reminding her of the ice now shattered about the Heron.

"I...," said Ilna. She wasn't sure what to say next so she just handed the crown to Tenoctris. It wasn't really damaged. Pure gold was nearly as flexible as silk, so the band could easily be bent back into its original shape.

The ship was getting under way. Only half the oars pulled water on the first stroke, but the remaining rowers were sliding onto their benches and picking up the rhythm. Chalcus called, "Aye, lads, your backs or your necks. Put your backs in it, sailors!"

Tenoctris was examining the crown, turning it by the band but eyeing the play of light in the heart of the stone. Ilna wondered if she should've thrown the jewel into the sea, but if she'd done that.... It must've had something to do with Garric's disappearance, so it was the best chance they had for returning the prince to his kingdom and Garric to the friends who needed him just as surely as the kingdom did.

Cashel kept his back to the two women; his quarterstaff stood upright like a supporting pillar. Cervoran sprawled ahead of him on the catwalk, his eyes open but unseeing. He might have been dead, Ilna thought; and smiled grimly. Dead again, that is.

The sea leaped with violent ripples centered on the place in the near distance where Cervoran had stood to chant. Violent blows hammered the Heron's keel. Oars clattered as a few of the rowers lost the stroke, but they picked it up again almost instantly. When Ilna looked down on the benches she saw faces set in fear and stony determination.

Water bubbled, mounded, and finally climbed to the sky in the Heron's wake. The rowers faced backward, so all of them could watch. This time they kept the rhythm, taking themselves farther from what was happening behind them with every stroke.

The roar filled the sky and flattened the chop. The sea mounded in a huge circle, spreading outward from the rising dome. Fish and flotsam and yellow foam danced in the churning water.

A gleaming, turreted crystal mountain rose from the surface, throwing shattered sunlight back in as many shards as the stars of a winter night. The sea heaved, exposing or distorting three legs that shimmered into the depths.

The deepest trench in the Inner Sea, Chalcus had said. And this thing came out of it.

"The Fortress of Glass," Tenoctris said wonderingly. Ilna remembered the words from Cervoran's mouth as he rose from his trance in the depths of the topaz. "There's nothing in any of my records, but here it is."

Ilna put an arm around the older woman's waist and gripped the railing with her other hand; Cashel knelt and grasped a handful of Cervoran's collar. The spreading wave lifted the ship and flung it forward, but neither wizard went overboard.

There was confusion on the benches but at least half the crew kept their oar looms and at least a semblance of the rhythm. Blades cracked together, but not badly; the men who'd been thrown down returned to their seats and their duty. They were trained men, picked men; men fit for a leader like Chalcus.

The Heron drove back toward harbor. Chalcus gestured to Panshin; the flute-player increased his tempo. They were drawing away from the fortress, but it was high enough to be seen even from the island's shore.

Things slipped from the crystal battlements and splashed into the sea. Flotsam, Ilna thought. Scraps of seaweed and muck from the abyss, lifted when the fortress rose.

Instead of bobbing at the base of the crystal walls, the blobs moved outward. They were hellplants like the one that had attacked the palace, and they were swimming in the Heron's wake.

"Captain Chalcus!" Cashel called. He'd gotten to his feet again and was looking over the bow. "Look ahead of us, sir!"

Ilna bent outward to look also. Ahead of the ship, rising from the depths like foul green bubbles swelling from a swamp, were more hellplants. They moved toward the Heron on strokes of their powerful tentacles.

Chapter 6

Chalcus snatched a boat pike from one of the stern racks; the shaft was half again his height. Using it for a balance pole, he jumped to the rail. Looking out, he called, "Hard aport!" sharply. The steersman leaned into the tiller of the port steering oar.

The Heron heeled toward the oar, making the blade cut deeper into the water and tightening the turn. Chalcus shifted his footing slightly, leaning further for a better view past the hull; the pike in his hands moved inboard to balance him.

The show was as good as any troupe of the acrobats who'd entertained at palace dinners, but here it was in dead earnest. The rail was the only place where Chalcus could both conn them through the gauntlet of swimming monsters and be sure the steersman could hear his orders instantly in the likely tumult of the next minutes.

"The plants ahead of us must've been going to attack the palace," Tenoctris said, pursing her lips. She spoke loudly enough for to be heard, but it seemed to Ilna that she was organizing her own thoughts rather than informing her friends. "The person, the thing in the fortress must really control them to send them against us instead."

"The Green Woman," Ilna said, though the name was only a sound without meaning. Did even Cervoran know what she was?

"Tenoctris, can you do something?" Cashel said. "To fight the plants, I mean."

He gave the staff a trial spin overhead where he wasn't going to hit anybody, then lowered it. They'd all seen the plant attacking the palace. A quarterstaff wouldn't be much good against more creatures of the sort.

Ilna's fingers had been busy with the cords while her mind was on other things, hopeless things. When she looked at what she'd knotted, her lips pursed with surprise. She knew her patterns were useless as weapons against the hellplants, but this was no weapon.

"I'll try," Tenoctris said. She grasped the railing with one hand and lowered herself to the catwalk. "I don't have a great deal of power, though."

Cervoran was extremely powerful. He hadn't been able to destroy the fortress in the depths, but saving the Heron from the creatures attacking was surely a smaller thing.

"Cashel, let me by," Ilna said. "To get to Cervoran."

Cashel stepped aside with the powerful delicacy of an ox lowering itself onto the straw. He didn't ask what she planned to do; he knew she'd tell him whatever she thought he needed to know.

Ilna smiled, though the expression barely reached her lips. Her brother had more common sense than most of the people who thought they were smarter than he was. In fact, thinking Cashel was stupid proved you didn't have common sense.

There was a sucking thwock from forward; the Heron staggered. A swatch of vegetation spurted up from the ram's curve before falling back into the sea.

"Stroke, lads!" Chalcus shouted. "A cable's length and we're through the devils!"

Ilna squatted at Cervoran's head and spread her knotted pattern before his staring eyes. For a moment nothing happened; then a shudder trembled the length of the wizard's body. The design had penetrated to his stunned consciousness and wrenched him back to the present.

Cervoran closed, then opened his eyes again. His irises were muddy and stood in fields of pale gold. The swollen lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Stroke!" Chalcus shouted. As the word rang out, oars on the port side clattered together and the ship slewed toward them.

Ilna glanced to the side, continuing to hold the tracery of fabric in front of the wizard. The Heron's hull had cleared the nearest hellplant, but the creature grasped an oarblade as the ship drove past. The tentacle held, dragging the oar back into all those behind it in the bank.

"Overboard with it!" Chalcus bellowed, springing from the deck to the outrigger. "Shove it out, we don't need the bloody oar!"

Chalcus' dagger, curved like a cat's claw, flashed; he bent and cut through the twist of willow withie that bound the oar to the rowlock. The rower pushed his oar through the port, but the hellplant's tentacles had grabbed more blades. The Heron wallowed: the starboard oars were driving at full stroke, but half those on the other side were tangled. The hellplant's bulk tugged at the ship like a sea anchor.

Cashel stood amidships. He'd picked up the pike Chalcus dropped when he jumped from the deck railing. Some of the shepherds in the borough carried a javelin instead of a staff or bow, but Ilna didn't recall having seen her brother with a spear of any sort in his hand before.

Cashel cocked the pike over his shoulder, then snapped it forward as though it was meant for throwing instead of having a shaft thick enough to be used to fend the ship's fragile hull away from a dock. The pike wasn't balanced: the rusted iron butt-cap wobbled in a wide circle.

The point and half the long shaft squelched into the hellplant, tearing a hole the size of a man's thigh. The barrel-shaped body quivered, but the plant continued to pull itself up the oarshafts toward the ship.

Half a dozen more oars slid through the ports as crewmen jettisoned anything the plant's tentacles had caught. The Heron was under way again, limping but moving forward. The steersman had his starboard oar twisted broadside on, fighting the ship's urge to turn to port where the hellplant lashed the water in a furious attempt to renew its grip.

"Where is the jewel?" demanded a voice that drove into Ilna's mind like a jet of ice water. "I must have the topaz from the amber sarcophagus."

Ilna looked at Cervoran, whom she'd forgotten for a moment. He'd raised his swollen body onto one elbow. His eyes had returned to the febrile brightness that'd been normal for them at least since she brought him off the pyre.

"I'll get it," Ilna said. She put her knotted pattern in her left sleeve; it'd served its purpose by bringing the wizard out of his coma. Now the question was whether Cervoran would serve his purpose, and they'd know the answer to that before long.

Tenoctris had set down the crown when she started her own spell. Ilna leaned past the three-cornered figure her friend had drawn in charcoal on the pine decking. Grabbing the wire band she drew it to her, trying not to disturb Tenoctris.

The stone was awkwardly heavy; she couldn't imagine wearing such a thing herself. Nobody was asking her to, of course. She gave the crown to Cervoran with a cold expression.

Oars rattled. The Heron twisted, then shuddered to a stop. Two more hellplants had swum close enough to grab the leading oars on either side, binding the ship to them hopelessly. A third creature, the one that they'd struggled clear of moments before, swam up in the Heron's wake and would catch the stern in a matter of seconds.

"All right, lads!" Chalcus cried. "Swords out and show these vegetables what it means to play with men!"

Cervoran rose to his feet. The great topaz winked on his forehead as if it was alive too. He picked up the silver-mounted skullcap that lay where he'd dropped it after the earlier spell froze the sea into yellow ice.

A sailor screamed. A flat green tentacle started to lift him from the ship. Chalcus scampered down the outrigger like a squirrel, slashing with his incurved sword. The slender blade slit the tentacle neatly, leaving only the leafy fringe remaining. The sailor twisted with desperate strength and tore that apart also, tumbling back aboard the Heron.

"Master Cashel!" Cervoran piped. "I have need of you!"

* * *

Cashel was frowning, not because of the situation but because there didn't seem to be anything for him to do. The quarterstaff was no use on plants, though it felt good in his hands. It reminded him of the days he sat with his back against a holly tree, watching the sheep on the slope below him and listening to Garric play a pipe tune. Cashel couldn't sing or make music himself, but he loved to hear it when others did.

Feeling good wasn't going to beat these plants nor would happy memories. The spear he'd thrown didn't seem to have done much good either. Besides, the plant that'd attacked the palace had looked like a pincushion from the soldiers' spears by the time he and Cervoran came up from the cellars, and it didn't even slow down till the fire got burning good.

Regretfully, Cashel laid his staff on the catwalk. The wicker mat hanging from the rail would keep it there unless the ship sank. Until the ship sank likely enough, but the crew'd fight till then and Cashel sure would be fighting.

A sword'd really be the best thing, but Cashel was hopeless with them. He hadn't seen any call to learn to use one despite not liking them the way he'd done with other things.

A broad-bladed hatchet with a square pein stood in a hole in the mast partner-the piece where the mast would be stepped. Cashel drew it out. He'd rather have a full-sized axe, but the hatchet would do. The haft was short but it'd let him grip with both hands; if he had to get close, well, he'd get close. He'd been in fights before.

Hellplants pulled themselves toward the bow from either side, using their grip on the leading oars like men crossing a span hand-over-hand by a pole. It wouldn't have done any good for the crew to cast the oars loose the way they'd done before, since this time the monsters were in front of the ship. Backing water wouldn't help either, since the plant they'd gotten past was swimming up in the wake.

The one behind was the one Cashel'd probably try to deal with, seeings as Chalcus was in the bow-one foot on the outrigger, the other on the ram-waiting for whichever of the front pair came in range of his sword first. Cashel stayed where he was for the time being. He figured his job was to protect Ilna and Tenoctris the best way he could, and just now he wasn't sure what that'd be.

You didn't win fights by being too hasty. Of course this time Cashel didn't expect to win, but he wasn't going to change ways that'd served him well so far.

"Master Cashel!" Cervoran said. That high voice was as nasty to hear as a rabbit screaming, but like the rabbit it sure did get heard. "I have need of you!"

Cashel hadn't thought about the wizard since he'd carried him aboard. Cervoran was holding out that piece of skull again. "Fill this with sea water," he said when he saw Cashel was looking at him.

Ilna nodded agreement, but Cashel hadn't been going to hesitate anyhow. Nothing he'd come up with for himself to do was going to be much good. The first plant he got close to would've known it'd been in a fight, but the monsters were the size of oxen. They didn't have a head or a heart you could split with an axe, either.

Cashel took the cup and dropped it down the front of his tunic. He could climb down one-handed, but just now he figured the other hand had better be holding the hatchet.

He swung over the railing, pushed a couple standing crewmen aside with his feet, and dropped. The bench he came down on creaked angrily and threatened to split; he'd landed heavier than he'd meant.

The Heron dipped like a lady doing a curtsey: a hellplant had grabbed the outrigger with more tentacles than a hand has fingers and was pulling its huge body out of the water. Chalcus slashed, his sword twinkling like lightning in the clouds. Feathery tufts of green fluttered up.

The ship's bow lifted, but another tentacle snaked around Chalcus' ankle from behind. Without seeming to look, the sailor jerked his leg up against the plant's strength and flicked his dagger across. The plant's tough fibers parted, and the curved sword whirled in an arc of its own through a couple more gripping tentacles.

The plant behind them had reached the stern. Crewmen there started hacking at it. Most used swords, though one fellow shoved in a pike. He was still holding the shaft when two tentacles lifted him screaming into the air and pulled his limbs off one by one.

In the bow, chips flew from the outrigger as oarsmen swung their swords with more enthusiasm than skill. Somebody was bound to cut a friend's hand off the way they were acting, though Cashel didn't suppose it'd matter much in the long run.

Cashel fished the cup out, then dipped it full. He turned to lift it to Ilna's waiting hand. His sister was one of those people who didn't wait around wondering what was going to happen next. Cashel could never figure why there were so few folk like her, but that made him happier for the ones he did meet.

With one hand on a deck support and the other holding the hatchet against the top railing, Cashel lifted himself up to where the women were. Tenoctris chanted over her little triangle on the decking. Cashel could see an occasional rosy gleam of wizardlight in the air, but anything else happening was beyond him.

Ilna had her paring knife out. Its blade was good steel, not like the knives forged from strap iron that every man back home in the borough carried. Cashel figured the tricks Ilna did with twine didn't work on the hellplants or she wouldn't have taken the knife from her sleeve. That was too bad, though he didn't doubt she'd give as good an account of herself with the little knife as any of the sailors would with their swords.

He grinned at her. She sniffed, looking peevish but resigned to a world that didn't work the way it ought to. That was so much his sister's normal expression that Cashel guffawed loudly. It took more than a whole army of plants to change who Ilna was.

Cervoran held the cup over his brazier and started chanting again. The charcoal hadn't gone out with all the tossing around it'd gotten, though the sticks were just ghosts of what they'd been, nested in a mound of white ashes.

Cashel couldn't figure how the wizard stood the heat that rippled the air above the cup in his hand. Maybe he just didn't have any feeling in his fingers.

Cashel looked down at the fight. He was itching to mix into it, but he knew there'd be time aplenty. They'd all get their bellies full of fighting today....

Timbers were crackling and the Heron rode way deep in the water, but it was next to impossible to make wood really sink. Chalcus cut like a very demon. He was bloody in a dozen places and'd lost his leather breeches; pulled clean off by a tentacle, Cashel supposed, but it hadn't slowed him a mite. Ilna'd found herself a man and no mistake.

From the height of the deck Cashel saw plants in all directions. There was a lot of seaweed floating in the Inner Sea. Once back home when the winds and currents were just right, he'd seen the whole bay on the other side of the headland from Pattern Creek filled with slowly turning greenness. This was the same, only the green swam toward them.

Cervoran's eyes were open but they weren't focused on anything, as best Cashel could tell. Thinking about previous times he'd seen the wizard, he wasn't sure there was a difference. Cervoran was alive, no question about that; but Cashel got the feeling he was riding in his body instead of living in it the usual way.

A hellplant dropped away from the starboard bow. Chalcus had hacked its tentacles off, however many there were. That was a wonderful thing, but the plant on the port side was struggling with the crewmen there. Chalcus sat on a bench with his head bowed forward to make it easier for him to drag breaths in through his open mouth.

Cashel knew better than most what fight took out of you, even when you won. Chalcus'd be back in it soon, but nobody could keep up for long what he'd been doing.

Cashel looked critically at his hatchet. The blade was straight and as broad as his palm; it had a good working edge, put on with a stone some time since it was last used. Rust flecked it, which pleased him. Steel rusted quicker than iron did, he'd found.

The haft was hickory like his quarterstaff. He grinned. Hickory was a good wood for tools, hard but with more spring to it than cornelwood or elm. Besides, he liked the feel of it.

The sea around the Heron was solid green, a mass of waving fronds and bodies like fat barrels. There were more plants than Cashel could count with both hands, many more. Chalcus was back in the fight. Men cut and screamed and died in the grip of arms stronger than any animal's.

A hellplant had grabbed the outrigger to starboard. It'd driven the sailors back, and now a tentacle waved toward the raised deck. Cashel couldn't wait any longer. Instead of cutting at the arm-the plant had who knew how many more?-he lifted one foot to the railing. He'd leap on top of the plant and with the hatchet-

"Phroneu!" Cervoran cried, his voice stabbing through the ruck of noise. Cashel glanced instinctively toward the wizard. The water in the skull was at a rolling boil, frothing over the silver lip.

Cervoran's case was open at his feet. In his free hand he held a small velvet bag, the sort of thing a woman used to store a fancy ring or broach. Cervoran shook the contents, a dancing and glittering of metal filings, into the water. They burned with a savage white glare, and around the Heron the sea burned also.

Cashel slitted his eyes and turned to cover Tenoctris. The brightness was beyond imagining; it was like being put next to the sun. Beyond imagining....

The blaze-it wasn't flames so much as hot white light-mounted higher than the mast would've been, higher than the tallest tree of Cashel's memory. Hellplants shrivelled. Bits of them lifted and spun into the air, black ashes disintegrating into black powder and vanishing.

The hammering glare stopped abruptly. Cashel opened his eyes and lifted his body off Tenoctris. He'd supported most of his weight on the railing, but he was still glad when she looked up and him and said, "Thank you. Thank you. Are you all right, Cashel?"

While the light blazed Cashel hadn't been aware of any sounds, but now people were screaming or praying or just blubbering in terror and pain. The air stank with a combination of wet straw burning and cooked meat. The sea as far as he could tell was black with drifting ash.

Men who'd reached over the side of the ship had burned too. Most of them'd been dead already or next to it, snatched out of the Heron by a plant's crushing tentacles. Some had probably been pushing forward to fight, though.

Well, it'd been quick. And it was done, so that was good.

Tenoctris was all right. Ilna was down in the bow, wrapping a bandage over the torn skin on Chalcus' right forearm. Cashel looked at Cervoran, not exactly his business the way the women were, but maybe Cervoran too.

The wizard stood like a wax statue, neither smiling nor concerned. The empty velvet sack was in his left hand, but he'd dropped the skull to the deck again.

Cashel bent and picked up the cup. There was no telling when they'd need it again.

* * *

Garric's head hurt. The blinding surge of pain every time his heart beat was all his universe could encompass just now. He wasn't sure how long he lay like this, he wasn't sure of anything but the pain.

Then he noticed that other parts of his body hurt also.

"It means you're alive," noted the ghost in Garric's mind with amused dispassion. "There came a time I couldn't say that, so be thankful."

I'm not sure I'm thankful, Garric thought, but he knew that wasn't true as the words formed. He grinned and immediately felt better. Carus, who during a lifetime of war had been hurt as often and as badly as the next man, grinned back in approval.

Garric opened his eyes. He was being carried under a long pole, lashed by the elbows and ankles. His head hung down. Two women from the village had the back of the pole; when he twisted to look forward he could see two more in front. It was raining softly, and there was only enough light for him to tell there were people in the group besides the women carrying him.

A Corl warrior bent close to peer at Garric, then raised its head and yowled a comment. Other Coerli answered from ahead in the darkness. The women supporting the front of Garric's pole stopped and looked over their shoulders.

The cat man slashed the leading woman with his hooked line, held short and jerked to tear rather than hold. The woman cried out in pain and stumbled forward again.

Two Coerli walked toward Garric from farther up the line, a female wearing a robe of patterned skins and the maned giant who'd knocked him unconscious. The male was twice the size of the ordinary warriors, taller and about as heavy as the humans in this land. The female was as big as the warriors but unarmed. A crystalline thing sat on her right shoulder. It was alive.

"Can he walk?" the big male asked. Garric's ears heard a rasping growl, but the question rang in his mind.

"You!" said the female Corl, looking at Garric. She had four breasts, dugs really, under the thin robe. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk," Garric said. He wasn't sure that was true, but it seemed likely to get him down from the pole. With his legs freed and maybe his hands as well, who knew what might happen? "How is it you can speak my language?"

"We can't," the female said. "The Bird speaks to your mind and to ours."

The crystal thing on her shoulder fluffed shimmering wings. Well, they might've been wings. It wasn't really a bird, but Garric supposed that was as good a name as any.

"Where do you come from, animal?" the big male demanded.

"My name is Garric," Garric replied. "I'll answer your questions as soon as you've let me down from here to walk on my own. Otherwise, there's not much you can do to me that'll hurt worse than I feel already."

"That's not entirely true," noted Carus. "But a little bluster at a time like this can be useful. It's the best you can do till you've got a hand loose, anyway."

Now that Garric was fully awake, the jouncing ride was excruciatingly painful. The Coerli must have better night vision than humans; they moved with complete assurance, avoiding puddles and trees fallen across the trail. The women carrying Garric couldn't see much better than he did, though. Somebody slipped at every step, and once both of those in front fell to their knees. The jerk on Garric's elbows made his mind turn gray.

"All right, put him down," the big male said. "But keep him tied. Nerga and Eny? Walk behind the big animal and kill him if he tries to run."

"Female animals, put the male Garric down," the female Corl said. She looked at Garric and added, "I am the wizard Sirawhil, beast Garric."

The carriers stopped abruptly. Presumably they'd heard the big male just as Garric had, but they hadn't reacted till they got a direct order from the wizard. Now they more dropped than lowered Garric onto the muddy ground.

The big male glared at Garric, fondling the knob of his wooden club. "I am Torag the Great!" he said. A warrior cut Garric's ankles away from the long pole. "No other Corl can stand against me!"

A flint knife sawed Garric's elbows free. His wrists were still tied in front of him by thin, hard cords, but one thing at a time. He rolled into a sitting position and looked at his captor.

Let me get my hands on you and I'll show you what a man can do, he thought. Aloud he said, "Why have you attacked me, Torag? I was not your enemy."

Torag looked at him in amazement. He turned to Sirawhil and snarled-literally from his own mouth, and the tone of the words ringing in Garric's mind was equally clear, "What is this animal saying? He's a beast! How can he imagine he's an enemy to the greatest of the Coerli?"

"You hit him on the head," Sirawhil said with a shrug. "Perhaps he's delusional. Though-"

She glanced back; Garric twisted to follow the line of her eyes. Women from the village carried the bodies of two warriors. The cat men's corpses were light enough that a pair of bearers sufficed for either one.

"-while he's only an animal, he's a dangerous one."

"Resume the march!" Torag ordered. In a quieter though still harshly rasping voice he added to Sirawhil, "We can't get back to the keep by daylight, but I'd like to put more distance from the warren we raided. Just in case."

He prodded Garric with the butt of his club. "Get up, beast," he said. "If you can't walk, I'll break your knees and have you dragged. Maybe I ought to do that anyway."

Garric rolled his legs under him, rose to his knees, and then lurched to his feet without having to stick his bound hands into the mud to brace him. He wobbled and pain shot through his body-ankles, wrists and a renewed jolting pulse in his head-but he didn't fall over. He began plodding after the Corl warrior who was next ahead in the line. Torag and the female wizard fell in beside him.

"He's not a great thinker, this Torag," Carus said. "He's too stupid to hear

a good plan even when it comes out of his own mouth."

He's not really afraid of me, Garric thought.

Carus laughed. The king's good humor was real, but it was as cold and hard as a sleet storm.

"Why are you so big, beast?" Torag said. "Are there more like you back in the warren where we captured you?"

"Its name is Garric," Sirawhil said to her chief. "Sometimes using their names makes them more forthcoming."

Garric looked at the Corl in amazement. Didn't they realize that he could hear what they said to one another?

"The Coerli think only what they say directly to you will be translated," said an unfamiliar voice in Garric's mind. "It's never occurred to them to test their assumption. They're not a sophisticated race."

Neither of the Coerli had spoken. The Bird on Sirawhil's shoulder fluttered its membranous wings again.

"I don't come from around here," Garric said. "I'm a visitor, you could say. All the members of my tribe are as big as me or bigger."

Torag looked at Sirawhil, his face knotting in a scowl emphasized by his long jaw. "Is the beast telling the truth?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Sirawhil said. "Usually they're too frightened to lie, but this one does seem different."

In a sharp tone she added, "You beast women! Is the male Garric a stranger in your warren?"

"I know where he comes from," called one of the woman carrying the dead warriors. "My husband Marzan brought him. Make somebody else take the pole and I'll tell you all about him."

Garric turned. He understood the words only because the Bird translated them in his mind, but the tone of the speaker's voice identified Soma more clearly than he could see through rain and darkness.

"Nerga, discipline that one," Sirawhil said off-handedly to the nearest warrior. Nerga lashed out with his line. Soma tried to get her hand up, but the Corl was too quick: the hooked tip combed a bloody furrow across her scalp.

Soma wailed in despair but didn't drop the pole. Head bowed and her left hand clasped over the fresh cut, she stumbled on.

"Speak, animal," Sirawhil demanded with satisfaction.

"My husband sent men out to find the stranger," Soma said in a dull voice, no longer bargaining. "The stranger is a great warrior and was supposed to protect us."

She raised her head and glared at Garric. "Protect us!" she said. "Look at me! What protection was the great warrior?"

"Does she tell the truth, animal?" Torag said to Garric. He wore a casque of animal teeth drilled and sewn to a leather backing. As he spoke, he rubbed them with his free hand.

From the chief's tone he was trying to be conciliatory, but he hadn't taken the wizard's suggestion that he call his prisoner by name. Indeed, not a great intellect... and the fact Torag rather than somebody smarter was in charge of the band told Garric something about the Coerli.

"I told you the truth, Torag," Garric said. "I'm a visitor here. Why did you attack me? My tribe has many warriors!"

Walking had brought the circulation back to Garric's legs. That hurt, of course, but he'd be able to run again.

If there'd been anywhere to run to. And he knew from seeing the Coerli move that at least in a short sprint they could catch any human alive.

"Where does he come from, Sirawhil?" Torag asked, scowling in concern. "If there's really many like him...."

"I can do a location spell," Sirawhil said. "We need to stop soon anyway, don't we? It's getting light."

"I'd like to go a little farther...," Torag grumbled. Then he twitched his short brush of his tail in the equivalent of a shrug. "All right, if he's alone. If there was a whole warren full of them close, I'd keep going as long as we could."

"I'm hungry, Torag," whined Eny, the second of the warriors told to guard Garric specially.

The chief spun and lashed out. He used the butt of his club rather than the massive ball, but it still knocked the warrior down. Eny wailed.

"You'll eat when I say you can eat, Eny!" Torag said. "Watch your tongue or I won't even bother to bring your ruff back home to your family!"

Eny rolled to his feet almost before his shoulders'd splashed on the muddy ground, but he kept his head lowered and hid behind Nerga. Torag snorted and called, "All right, we'll camp here till it gets dark again."

He looked at Sirawhil. "Learn where the animal comes from," he said forcefully. "And learn how many there are in his warren. That could be important."

"Sit here, Garric," Sirawhil said, pointing to a hummock: a plant with fat, limp leaves spreading out from a common center. "You and I will talk while the warriors make camp."

It looked a little like a skunk cabbage. The best Garric could say about it as a seat was that it wasn't a pond. He didn't have any reason to argue, though, so he squatted on one edge facing the Corl wizard squatting opposite him.

"If they call this light," said King Carus, viewing the scene through Garric's eyes, "then they must see better in the dark than real cats do."

Garric nodded. The eastern horizon was barely lighter than the rest of the sky, but even full noon in this place had been soggy and gray. Dawn only meant it was easier to find your footing between ponds.

Warriors began trimming saplings for poles and stripping larger trees of their foliage. The Coerli hands had four fingers shorter than a human's; the first and last opposed. They looked clumsy, but they wove the mixed vegetation into matting with swift, careless ease.

After staring silently for a moment, Sirawhil opened her pack of slick cloth and took out a bundle of foot-long sticks polished from yellow wood. They were so regular that Garric thought at first they were made of metal.

"Don't move," she said. She got up and walked around the hummock, dropping the sticks into place as she went. Only once did she bend to adjust the pattern they made on the ground, a multi-pointed star or gear with shallow teeth.

The Bird shifted position slightly on her shoulder to keep its place. Its eyes, jewels on a jeweled form, remained focused on Garric as Sirawhil made her circuit.

Garric watched for a moment, then turned his attention to what the rest of the party was doing. He wondered how the warriors were going to build a fire on this sodden landscape. Perhaps there was dry heartwood, but most of the trees he'd seen were pulpy. They'd be as hard to ignite as a fresh sponge.

"The Coerli don't use fire," said the Bird silently. Its mental voice was dry and slightly astringent. "They don't allow their human cattle to have fires either. In the villages the Grass People keep fuel under shelter to dry out and light their fires with bows."

"Do you come from here, Bird?" Garric asked. He flexed his legs a little to keep the blood moving. He was used to squatting, but being trussed to the pole had left the big muscles liable to cramping.

Sirawhil looked up as she finished forming her pattern. "We captured the Bird when we first came here to the Land," she said. "Torag and I are the only ones who have such a prize. The other bands can't talk to the Grass Animals they capture, so it's a great prize."

"I am Torag the Great!" the chieftain roared, looking over at Garric and the wizard. "I've torn the throats out of two chiefs who thought they could take the Bird from me!"

Nobody moved for a moment. His point made, Torag surveyed the camp. The warriors had raised matting around a perimeter of a hundred and fifty feet or so. Though the sun still wasn't up, it'd stopped raining and the sky was light enough for Garric to count a dozen Coerli and about that number of captive humans. All the latter were females.

Torag gestured toward a plump woman. She'd been one of those carrying Garric when he was tied to the pole. She moved awkwardly; she seemed to have pulled a muscle in the course of the raid and march.

"That one," Torag said.

The woman looked up, surprised to be singled out. Eny grabbed her by the long hair and jerked her into a blow on the head from his stone-headed axe. The woman's scream ended in a spray of blood. Her arms and legs jerked as she fell.

Eny and two more warriors chopped furiously at her head for a moment, sending blood and chips of skull flying. The rest of the band growled in delight. The Bird didn't translate the sound; it was no more than hunger and cruelty finding a voice.

The three killers stepped back. Another warrior threw himself on the twitching corpse, his flint knife raised to slash off a piece. Torag roared and lifted his club. The warrior looked over his shoulder but hesitated almost too long. He leaped sideways with a despairing snarl; the chief's club hissed through the air where the warrior's head had been. It made a sound like an angry snake.

Torag knelt, raised the dead woman with his left hand, and tore her throat out without using a weapon.

Garric stared at Sirawhil to keep from having to look at the butchery. "You eat people?" he said in disgusted disbelief. He saw it happening, but part of his mind didn't want to believe what was perfectly clear to his eyes.

"Torag doesn't usually let the warriors have fresh meat," Sirawhil said nonchalantly. "They begin to mature if they do, and he'd have to fight for his position. In the keep they eat fish or jerky. Here on a raid, though, there's no other food so he'll share the kill."

The big Corl leaned back. His muzzle was red and dripping. He stared around the circle of longing warriors with a grin of bloody triumph, then took a flint knife from his belt. He stabbed it into the woman just below the left collarbone, drawing the blade the length of the chest. The edge ripped through the gristly ends of the ribs where the joined the breastbone. Placing one furry hand on either side of the incision, he tore the chest open.

"Flint's sharp, that's true," Carus said, grim-faced. "But he's a strong one, Torag. I wouldn't mind showing him how much stronger I was, though; or you are, lad."

In good time, thought Garric. He'd seen women and children killed by beasts-and by men, which was worse. There was a particular gloating triumph to the way Torag tore out pieces of the victim's lungs and gulped them down, though. In good time....

Sirawhil squatted on the hummock opposite Garric, within the figure of sticks. She began chanting. The sounds weren't words or even syllables in human terms, but Garric recognized the rhythms of a wizard speaking words of power.

The spell helped to muffle the crunches and slurping from the other Coerli. Torag had eaten his fill and allowed his warriors at the victim. The sound was similar to that of a pack of hunting dogs allowed the quarry of their kill, only louder. The captive women huddled together, whimpering and trying not to look at what was happening to their late companion.

Garric closed his eyes, feeling a wash of despair. A lot of it was physical: he was wet and cold, and his body'd been badly hammered. But this was a miserable place and situation. He didn't see any way to change it, and especially he didn't see any way out. What had brought him here?

"The wizard Marzan summoned you," said the Bird's voice. Garric's eyes flew open. "Summoned one like you, that is. He knew the Grass People, his race, can't stand against the Coerli, so he used his art and the power of the crystal to bring a hero to help them."

I haven't done much good thus far, Garric thought; but the weight of hopelessness had lifted. He'd killed two cat men, and so long as they kept him alive there was a chance of doing better than that. Ideas were forming below the surface of his mind. His experience and that of his warrior ancestor were blending to find solutions to a very violent problem.

"Where do the Coerli come from?" Garric asked. He spoke aloud though he obviously didn't have to. It didn't seem natural to look at something, someone, close enough to touch and talk to him without moving his lips.

"This place," the Bird said. "This Land. But from the far future. There's a cave in a chasm some fifteen miles from where we are now. It's a focus for great power. Coerli wizards have learned to use it to carry them back to this time to hunt."

"They're trying to conquer their own past?" Garric said, hoping to gather enough information that he'd be able to make sense of it... which the fragments he'd heard thus far certainly didn't permit him to do.

"The Coerli don't make war," the Bird said. "They skirmish over boundaries with neighboring bands, and they hunt. They've hunted out their own time, so they come here for game. Torag and other chiefs have built keeps in this time. Many more will follow as their own world becomes more crowded, but they don't think of it as conquest the way your people would."

Torag wiped his muzzle with a hand which he then licked clean. He and the other cat men were lost in their own affairs, though some of the captive women watched in puzzlement as Garric talked. Unless the Bird translated them, his words were as meaningless to them as to the Coerli.

"They have no reason to overhear," the Bird said. "Don't think that because you're the same species that your fellow slaves are your friends."

It stretched one wing, then lowered it and stretched the other. They were small, no bigger than Garric could span with one hand, but when he looked into the light that shimmered through them he had a momentary vision of infinite expanses.

Garric grinned. "I'm not a slave," he said quietly.

He lifted his hands slightly to indicate his bound wrists. "For the moment I'm a prisoner," he said. "But they'll never make me a slave, Bird."

Sirawhil stopped chanting and slumped forward. Garric was so used to helping Tenoctris that he reflexively reached out to catch the exhausted wizard. Even without full use of his hands, he kept her from rolling off the hummock as she'd started to do.

The motion drew Torag's attention. He was on his feet, raising his club with the sudden snapping movement of a spring trap releasing.

"I'd wondered what would happen if we jumped him while he was full of food and relaxed," Carus observed with a wry smile. "Your knees broken is what'd have happened, I suppose."

In good time, Garric thought. Aloud he said, "Your wizard worked a great spell, Torag. Should I have let her drown in a puddle?"

The warriors looked up also. They'd finished their meal for the most part, though one was still gnawing a rib. The corpse was reduced to scattered bones and a pile of offal on a patch of bloodstained ground.

Instead of replying to Garric, Torag growled, "You, Sirawhil! What have you learned?"

The wizard lifted herself upright, but she splayed her legs on the hummock instead of making the greater effort to squat. She rubbed the back of a hand over her eyes and tried to focus on the chieftain.

"I'm not sure, Torag," she said. "He comes from very far away. There's a great deal of power involved in his presence."

"There's no chief in the Land more powerful than I!" Torag said.

"It's not that kind of power," Sirawhil said wearily. "It's wizardry, Torag, and it's greater wizardry than I can fathom. It isn't-"

She glanced toward Soma, who tried to burrow out of sight behind the other captives. The women had learned what it meant to be singled out in this company....

"-anything that the wizard in the warren we raided could've done by himself. I think we should take him back home for the whole Council of the Learned to examine."

"Are you mad, Sirawhil?" Torag said. He sounded more amazed than angry, the way he had when Garric treated him as an equal. "If I leave here, some other chief will take my keep. Or-"

And here the growling threat was back in his tone.

"-do you think I'll let you and the Bird go back without me? And take a valuable animal?"

"Torag," said the wizard, "this thing is too big for me. We need to take this Garric to someone who can understand him, even if there's a risk."

"It's not too big for me," Torag said complacently. "We'll go back to my keep and I'll decide later."

He looked at Garric, his ruff lifting slightly. "Nerga and Eny, tie him up again. Tie all the females too, just in case. I'm not taking any chances till I have him in the pen with the other animals."

You're taking a big chance, Garric thought as the warriors came toward him with coils of hard rope. You're taking the last chance you'll ever take. But in good time....

* * *

Sharina stood on the sea wall of Mona harbor, watching the Heron ease toward the quay on the stroke of ten oarsmen. The trim bireme that'd rowed off at mid-morning was now a shambles, the outriggers broken in several places and the hull scorched by the sky-searing blaze Sharina had seen leap from the sea about the ship.

She'd been ready to die when she saw the fire, but it'd vanished as suddenly as it'd appeared and the Heron, though at first wallowing, still had figures on her deck. Cashel, big and as solid as a rock, was obvious among them, and Sharina'd breathed again.

Admiral Zettin had manned and led out ten ships as soon as he saw something was happening to the Heron. They now passed back and forth at the harbor mouth.

You couldn't keep warships at sea for long periods-there wasn't room for the crews to sleep aboard, let alone food storage and a place to cook. For now, though, it was important to Zettin to be seen to be doing something; a notion that Sharina understood perfectly. She only wished there was something she could've done besides wait and pray to the Lady-silently, because it wouldn't do for the Princess Sharina to show herself to be desperately afraid.

She smiled. Attaper, leading her personal guard at this dangerous moment, saw the expression and grinned back. Did he realize that she was smiling at the fact her duty was to be seen to be unconcerned? Perhaps he did; but maybe even that experienced, world-wise soldier thought Princess Sharina really had been confident, no matter how confusing and dangerous the situation seemed to others.

Lady, make me what I pretend to be, Sharina prayed in her heart; and smiled more broadly, because she seemed to be fooling herself as well.

Cashel used his staff to jump ashore while the Heron was still several feet out from the quay. It was a graceful motion but completely unexpected, though Sharina'd seen Cashel clear gullies and boggy patches that way frequently in the borough. Here it called attention to him, which Cashel never liked to do; but Sharina stepped toward him and he folded her in his arms. At last she could fully relax for at least a few moments.

"Tenoctris is all right," Cashel said in a quiet rumble. "Ilna's sitting with her on the deck because she's so, you know, tired; and maybe you couldn't see with the wicker matting in the way."

"I knew they were all right," Sharina said, simply and honestly. "Because you are."

She stepped back and gave the battered bireme a real examination. The crew was climbing out, some of them helped by their more fortunate fellows or by men waiting on the dock. The benches and hollow of the ship were splashed with blood-painted with blood on the port bow where the fighting must've been particularly intense. It seemed to Sharina that nearly half the crew was missing, and many of the survivors had been injured.

Cervoran was trying clumsily to get down from the deck. He held his wooden case in one hand.

"Your pardon, mistress," Cashel said with impersonal politeness. "I better get that."

He jumped from the quay to the Heron's outrigger and took the case in his left hand. "Careful or you'll fall," he said to Cervoran. "Would you like me to lift you-"

Sharina supposed he was going to say "down," but the former corpse simply let go of the railing and dropped. He landed on his feet but toppled forward. He didn't raise his arms to catch himself, but Cashel shifted to put his body in the way as a living cushion.

Cervoran steadied himself, then stumped to the ladder up to the quay without speaking. Several sailors who'd been waiting to climb up made way for him, though with respect rather than the frightened hostility Sharina'd seen in their expressions previously.

"Plants like the one that came here yesterday attacked us," Cashel said, looking from Cervoran to the crewmen, then back to Sharina. "There was any number of them, swimming all over the sea. Master Cervoran made the water burn and saved us."

The Heron hadn't been backed onto the beach in normal fashion: the surviving sailors were too few and too tired to accomplish that. A replacement crew was boarding to handle the job. Ilna'd started to help Tenoctris down from the deck, but fresh men under Chalcus' direction grabbed the old wizard and passed her hand-over-hand to their comrades on the quay.

Sharina's face stayed calm, but her first notice of Chalcus since the Heron left harbor explained why he hadn't carried Tenoctris to land himself in the sort of flashy, boastful gesture he was used to making. He'd lost most of his clothing in the fight, and the hooked tendrils that'd torn it off him had gashed runnels across the many existing scars. He must've bathed himself in the sea since the fight because otherwise he'd have been completely covered with blood, but many of the fresh wounds were still leaking. The worst'd been bandaged with swatches cut from Ilna's own tunics, but the wool was now bright scarlet.

Chalcus hadn't bothered replacing his trousers, but he'd twisted a length of sailcloth around his waist for a sash. That gave him a place to thrust his sword and dagger. He'd lost the sheath for the latter, and the point of patterned steel winked like a viper's eye.

Tenoctris, looking weary but determined, joined Sharina. She nodded to the glitter on the horizon and said, "That's the Fortress of Glass that I was wondering about. What you see looks like crystal, but it's really the intersection of many planes of the greater cosmos."

She took a deep breath. "I've never seen such a nexus of power, Sharina," she added. "I never imagined that anything like it could exist. I've seen so many marvels since I was ripped out of my time and brought to yours."

Sharina took the older woman's hand in hers. "If you keep saving the world as you've done in the past," she said, "I'm sure we'll be able to show you still more wonders." Her tone was affectionately joking but the words the simple truth.

Cervoran had climbed the short ladder, moving one limb at a time instead of lifting a leg and an arm together. He walked toward Sharina with the awkward determination of a large insect. Cashel, who'd followed the wizard off the ship, now stepped past him. His presence forestalled the pair of Blood Eagles who'd otherwise have put themselves between Cervoran and Princess Sharina.

"Princess," Cervoran squeaked. "In her fortress, the Green Woman is too strong for me. I will enter by another path, but to do that I must take her attention off me. At dawn tomorrow I will go to the charnel house when they bring the fresh corpses and pick the one that best suits my needs."

Liane stood at Sharina's elbow. She'd stayed at a discrete distance while Sharina was praying for Cashel's safe return. Liane, better than most, understood what it meant to wait for the one you love....

"People of property here cremate their dead," Liane said, speaking to Sharina with the same unobtrusive precision that she'd used to inform Garric in the past. Her finger marked a passage in a slender codex, but she didn't need to refer to it. "The poor in Mona are placed in a cave at the eastern boundary of the city. In rural districts they throw the bodies into the sea with stones to weight them."

"It is necessary," Cervoran said. "She is too strong in her fortress, so I must deceive her."

Ilna and Tenoctris joined them, the older woman leaning on the arm of the younger. "Tenoctris?" Sharina said. "Master Cervoran wants to use a fresh corpse for, for his art."

Tenoctris looked at her fellow wizard with the sharp, emotionless interest that she showed for any new thing. "Does he?" she said.

Cervoran didn't look around or otherwise acknowledge the newcomers' presence. Tenoctris shrugged and gave Sharina a smile tinged with sadness. "I've practiced necromancy myself, dear," she said. "When it was necessary. When I thought it was necessary."

"Yes, all right, Master Cervoran," Sharina said. "Tenoctris will accompany you on behalf of the kingdom."

She raised an eyebrow at the older woman, since she hadn't actually asked if she was willing to go. Tenoctris nodded agreement.

"She may go or stay," Cervoran said. He took off the diadem he was wearing and concentrated again on whatever he saw in the depths of the topaz. "It makes no difference. She has no power."

Tenoctris nodded. "That's quite true," she said, "in his terms."

Her voice was pleasant, but there was the least edge in the way she spoke the words. Tenoctris was both a noblewoman and the most accomplished scholar Sharina had ever met. There were various kinds of power, but knowledge was one kind-as Sharina knew, and as Tenoctris certainly knew.

Chalcus, limping slightly but wearing his usual expression of bright insouciance, sauntered up from the ship. He'd tied a portion of sail into a linen breechclout, and he'd found a red silk kerchief to twist into a replacement for the headband he'd lost in the fighting.

Cervoran looked up from the topaz. He pointed a fat white finger at Cashel. "You will come with me, Cashel," he said. "At dawn, as soon as the night's dead have been brought in."

He rotated his head toward Ilna, though his pointing hand didn't shift. "And that one, your sister," he said. "Your name is Ilna? You will come, Ilna."

Chalcus didn't seem to move, but the point of his curved dagger hooked into Cervoran's right nostril. "Now I wonder," Chalcus said in a light, bantering voice, "what there is about common politeness that's so hard for some folk to learn? There's places a fellow'd get his nose notched for treating Mistress Ilna in such a way, my good fellow... and you're in one of those places now. Would you care to try again?"

Ilna smiled faintly and placed her fingertips on the hand holding the dagger. "I sometimes fail to be perfectly polite myself, Captain Chalcus," she said. "But I appreciate your concern."

"Master Cervoran?" said Sharina. When the wizard spoke, she'd had an icy recollection of white fire enveloping the sea where the Heron was floating. "You don't give orders to my associates."

She paused to consider, then went on, "Nor, I think, do you give orders in the kingdom I administer in my brother's absence. Your ignorance has already cost the lives of citizens and endangered the lives of all those accompanying you on the Heron. I'll arrange for an escort of soldiers-"

"That's all right, Sharina," Cashel said. He was rubbing the shaft of his quarterstaff with a wad of raw wool, working the oils into the pores of the wood. "I don't guess that thing-"

He dipped the staff toward the glitter on the horizon, the Fortress of Glass.

"-was Master Cervoran's fault. And anyhow, he was a big help out to sea. We wouldn't've got back without him."

"Master Cervoran was the reason we were at sea in the first place," Ilna said waspishly. "Still, I see no reason why I shouldn't go with Tenoctris and Cashel in the morning. I can't imagine what I could do that would be more useful."

She looked out at the fortress also. "And it's obvious," she added, speaking as crisply and precisely as she did all things, "that something has to be done."

Chapter 7

Torag roused his band and their captives at dusk. It'd rained at least three times during the day, and the shelter of twigs and brush the warriors'd woven was meant for shade, not to shed water. Part of Garric's mind doubted that he'd slept at all, but he knew he was probably wrong. The pain of his injuries, the drizzle, and the growing discomfort of his tight bonds kept him from enjoying rest, but there'd doubtless been some.

Growling among themselves-Coerli voices sounded peevish to a human, even when they weren't-four warriors set off in the lead. Torag and Sirawhil paced along beside Garric, with Eny and Nerga on guard immediately behind him. The women, bound together by the necks, followed. Two warriors were with them, more to guide than to guard them: they obviously weren't a danger to anyone.

That left four warriors. Garric supposed they were the rear guard, though he was well out of sight before they'd have left the temporary camp.

"What are they worried about, do you suppose?" Carus wondered mentally. "I didn't see anything in the village that'd concern me-nobody even able to lead a rescue attempt except maybe Scarface. Do these cat-creatures prey on each other?"

The Bird on Sirawhil's shoulder turned its glittering eyes toward Garric. "Every band is a potential enemy of every other band," it said silently. "They only attack if they have an overwhelming advantage, which isn't likely when every band is always on their guard against every other."

You hear my ancestor, then? Garric asked, this time silently. As well as hearing my thoughts?

The Bird said nothing. Garric grimaced. That'd been a stupid question, but he wasn't in good shape.

They slogged on in the sopping darkness. Garric's wrists had been tied since capture, and when they camped the Coerli had lashed them to his waist as well. Garric worked at his bonds for want of anything better to do, but apart from wearing his wrists bloody he didn't accomplish anything.

Because he couldn't throw out his arms for balance as he instinctively tried to do, he stumbled frequently and occasionally fell. The Coerli didn't help him. Once when he was slow getting up-he'd braced his hands on a log which collapsed to mush, skidding him on his face again-one of the warriors kicked him with a clawed foot.

Garric heard the captured women whimper occasionally, but they seemed to be having less trouble than he did even though they were tied together. They couldn't have night vision like the Coerli, but at least they were used to starless nights and constant overcast.

"That makes these cat beasts easy meat in daylight, lad," Carus noted. His image had a quiet smile. "Even what passes for daylight in this bloody bog."

Meat, perhaps, Garric amended, but he smiled too. Perhaps he and Carus were being wildly optimistic, but it was better than resigning himself to a gray future ending in butchery.

A plangent Klok! Klok! rang across the marsh. Torag lifted his great maned head and roared a coughing reply.

"Are we being attacked?" Garric asked Sirawhil sharply.

Too sharply, apparently. A guard slapped him across the head with the butt of his spear and snarled, "Silence, beast!"

It wasn't a serious blow-the spear shaft was no more than thumb-thick-but Garric's head still throbbed from the stroke that'd captured him. He staggered, dropping to one knee in a blur of white light; his skin burned. With an effort he lurched forward and managed to keep going so that the Corl didn't hit him again.

In its own dry voice, the Bird said, "We're approaching Torag's keep. The warriors left as a garrison have given the alarm, and Torag has announced himself in reply."

"The Coerli can see any way in this?" Garric said. He spoke aloud but without the harshness that'd gotten him swatted a moment earlier. He couldn't be sure of the distance, but the gong note was dulled by what seemed like several hundred yards of drizzle and darkness.

"The distance is close to a quarter of one of your miles," the Bird said, answering both the question Garric had asked and the one he'd only thought. "While the tower guard might have seen movement, it's more likely that he heard the party returning. The Coerli have keen hearing, and you humans make a great deal of noise in the darkness."

I can't argue with that, Garric thought. I wonder if I'll get to be at least as good as the Grass People are?

"I hope we're not here long enough to learn, lad," said the ghost in his mind. Carus grinned, but there was more than humor in the expression.

Garric heard a gate creak, followed by the scrape and slosh of people doing something in the bog. The ground here was wetter than most of what they'd marched through on the way from Wandalo's hamlet; the Coerli were sinking to their fetlocks because there were no firm patches to step on.

Instead of a stockade, a high wicker fence loomed out of the night. A number of warriors were pushing what Garric first thought was a fascine, a roll of brushwood to fill a gully. In fact they were unrolling a coil of wicker matting to cover the ground up to the open gate. It served the same purpose as a drawbridge.

"There's six of them," Carus noted, always professionally detached in assessing an enemy. "That's sixteen warriors we know about, plus Torag. And Sirawhil, I suppose, though I don't count her as much."

"Torag left six warriors to guard the keep and control the existing slaves," the Bird said. "He has three sexually mature females in his harem as well, but female Coerli do not fight."

Garric looked at the Bird. There was a great deal about the situation that he didn't know and which he suspected Torag hadn't even wondered about.

"The Coerli are not a sophisticated species," the Bird said, repeating an early comment. It turned its sparkling eyes toward the compound without speaking further.

Torag led the procession through the gate. Garric glanced at the wall as he entered, expecting to find it was double with the interior filled with rock. Well, filled with dirt: he'd seen no stone bigger than Marzan's topaz in this whole muddy world. In fact the wall was a single layer of heavy basketry, sufficient for a house but certainly not a military structure in human terms.

"It's to keep animals out, I'd judge," said Carus. "Cat beasts like the ones that built it. They wouldn't know what a siege train was if it rose up and bit them on their furry asses. Which we may be able to arrange, lad."

He chuckled and added, "In good time."

Torag raised his muzzle into the air and sniffed. The interior of the compound was ripe with the sharp stench of carnivore wastes, but that was only to be expected.

"Ido!" said Torag. "You've butchered an animal while I was gone!"

Five of the six warriors who'd been left to guard the keep edged away from their chief. The remaining one, taller and visibly bulkier than the others, straightened. He held a spear, but he kept its bone point carefully toward the ground as he growled, "We were hungry, Torag. We didn't know when you were coming back."

Torag snarled and leaped, swinging his club. Ido hesitated for a fraction of a second between thrusting and jumping away. The knot of hardwood crushed his skull, splashing blood and brains across the surviving members of the garrison. They scattered into the interior of the compound with shrill cries; some of them dropped their weapons as they fled.

Torag roared, a hacking, saw-toothed challenge that echoed through the night. The Coerli warriors hunched, their long faces toward the ground. Sirawhil stood silent, and the captive women huddled together. Several were blubbering in despair.

Garric got down on one knee, keeping his eyes on Torag's short, twitching tail. He hoped his posture looked submissive, but he'd chosen it to give him the best chance of grabbing Torag if the chieftain swung around in fury to strike again.

Breathing in short, harsh snorts, Torag did turn, but he lowered his blood-smeared club. The fighting was over-to the extent there'd been a fight.

"Sorman, Ido was your sibling," the chief growled. "Throw his carrion into a pond where the eels will eat it."

A warrior, bending almost double, squirmed from the fringe of the gathering and gripped the corpse by the ankles. The victim had stiffened instantly when his brain was crushed; one arm stuck out at right angles. Sorman dragged the body through the gate and into the darkness. He didn't lift his gaze from the mud, at least until he was out of Torag's sight.

Torag raised his head and roared, but this time he was just sealing the reality that everybody around him accepted. Garric half-expected him to urinate on the gatepost, but apparently the Coerli were a little less bestial than that.

When Torag turned, he'd relaxed into his usual strutting self. Licking the head of his club absently, he said, "Get the fresh catch into the pens. And see to it that they're fed and watered. I don't want them dying on me after they cost me so much."

"What about the big one?" Sirawhil asked as the escorting warriors used spear butts to prod the captives toward the back of the compound. "I'll need to examine him further. Though I wish you'd let me take him home to the Council."

"Faugh, the Council," Torag said. "I don't care what happens at home any more. This is my world, Sirawhil. Put him in the same pen as the rest of them."

He looked at Garric, the club rising slightly in his hand. Garric kept his eyes on the leather belts that crossed in the middle of the chief's chest; he didn't move.

"If he breaks out," Torag said after obvious consideration. "he'll give us good sport. That's probably the best use for him anyway."

"Torag, he's important," the wizard said, then cringed away before the chieftain even raised a hand to strike her. In a less forceful tone she went on, "He could be valuable. We need to know more about him before, before...."

"As breeding stock, you mean?" Torag said. "Well, we'll see. Get him in the pen and we'll talk about it after I eat."

Either Nerga or Eny-the pair was indistinguishable to Garric-raised his spear as a prod. Garric stepped forward quickly, joining the coffle of women being marched through the compound by their escorts.

A thought struck him. He turned and called, "Sirawhil? If you want me to settle in properly, you'd better come along with your Bird. I can't speak the language of the villagers here."

By chance he was near Soma. She put her arm around him and called in a loud voice, "Garric is my man, you women! I will let you share him, but I am his first wife."

Garric shook her arm away. "Soma," he said, speaking to be heard by the entire coffle. "I am not your man, and you will never be my woman. Your shamelessness disgusts me!"

That was more or less true, but Garric had better reasons for speaking the words. He wanted allies for whatever plan he came up with, but Soma was the last person of those he'd met in this world whom he'd be willing to trust.

Sirawhil joined them. She glanced over her shoulder to see that Torag was entering the longhouse and no longer looking at them, then whispered, "Garric, you must not run! Torag and his warriors will hunt you down easily. If you'll stay quiet and not anger the chief, I'm sure I can get you home with me soon. Whether or not he agrees! You can live your life in safety, then."

"I don't want trouble," Garric said. That was a lie or the next thing to one. "If you'll help me, Sirawhil, I'll do what I can to help you too."

And that was a flat lie. Garric didn't make the mistake of thinking the Corl wizard was his friend just because she wasn't as likely to kill and eat him as her chief was.

The longhouse had a thatched roof. Its walls were wicker, waist high for two thirds of its length but solid at the back except for small windows covered with grills of some hard jointed grass like bamboo. Three Corl faces were crowded at the nearest window, watching Garric and the other prisoners file past. That must be Torag's harem.

"Yes," said the Bird's silent voice. "If Torag allowed his warriors to eat fresh meat regularly, they'd become sexually mature and he'd have to fight every one of them. Just being close to females in estrus may bring males to maturity. That's what was happening with Ido and why he risked killing meat for himself."

To either side of the longhouse were circular beehives big enough for two or three warriors apiece. Members of the raiding party split up among them, growling to one another and to members of the garrison who were coming out of hiding now that Torag's temper had cooled.

A single Corl climbed a tower supported on three poles, disappearing into the thick darkness. Garric couldn't imagine how a watchtower was of any use in these conditions, but the fact the guard had called the alarm at Torag's approach proved otherwise.

Behind the Coerli dwellings was another woven fence, this one only half the height of the fifteen foot wall surrounding the compound. The gate could be barred, but at present it stood open. A human male and female stood in the gateway watching the newcomers. Patterns of deeper darkness behind the fence suggested others were looking out through gaps in the wicker.

The man in gate was squat and burly; his arms were exceptionally long for his modest height. "I am Crispus!" he shouted. "I am the slave of great Torag! All other Grass Beasts are my slaves! Bow to me, all you who enter my domain!"

The coffle of women stopped. Garric stepped forward. Sirawhil was speaking, but though the Bird translated the words in his mind, they were a meaningless blur.

Garric had met his share of bullies at the borough's annual Sheep Fair: merchants' bodyguards, muleteers, and sometimes one of the badgers who'd drive off the sheep that a drover had purchased. He'd learned that you could deal with the bully immediately or you could wait, but waiting didn't ever make the situation better. Therefore-

"I'm Garric or-Reise," he said, his voice rising. "I don't need to be your master, but I'll never be your slave!"

Crispus raised the hand he'd held concealed behind the gatepost; he held a cudgel the length of a man's forearm. Garric lunged forward and smashed the top of his head into Crispus' nose. Crispus bellowed and staggered backward. Garric drove at him again, catching Crispus with the point of his shoulder and crushing him against the gatepost. Garric felt the air blast out of Crispus' lungs, but he didn't hear ribs crack as he'd hoped he might.

Crispus went down. Garric kicked him twice in the face with his heel. He'd been wearing boots or sandals since he became prince so his feet weren't as callused as they would've been when he still lived in Barca's Hamlet, but the blows would've broken bones in a less sturdy victim. As it was, Crispus' head lolled back and his body went limp.

Garric was breathing hard. He hadn't had anything to eat since the evening before he was captured; that was part of the reason he was suddenly dizzy.

He bent and picked up Crispus' cudgel. It wasn't much good to him with his wrists bound together and tied to his waist on a short lead, but he didn't see any point in leaving it for Crispus when he woke up.

"Does anybody else think he'll make me his slave?" he shouted into the darkness beyond the gateway.

The woman who'd been standing with Crispus stepped forward and touched the cords binding Garric's wrists. She held a hardwood dowel no thicker than a writing stylus. She thrust the point into the knots and worked them loose with startling ease.

"I am Donria," she said. She was young and shapely. "Until now there were no men here except Crispus."

She looked up at Garric and added, "Now that I've seen you, I don't think there were any men here at all-until now."

* * *

Cashel figured the road to the charnel house wasn't any worse than the one that led west out of Barca's Hamlet, but nobody tried to take a carriage down that one. He, Chalcus, and Ilna had gotten out and were walking with the escorting soldiers, but Tenoctris stayed in the open vehicle of necessity.

Cervoran stayed for reasons Cashel wasn't sure about. Maybe Cervoran didn't notice the bumping around.

"Sister take this track!" said the Blood Eagle stumbling along beside Cashel. The guards had their equipment to carry besides watching out for enemies. "You can tell from the ruts how much traffic it gets. How come they don't grade it smooth, hey?"

As soon as the party'd got into the valley north of Mona, the road'd become limestone-living rock, not crushed stone laid over mud. That sounded better than it was: some layers were harder than others, so the carriage's iron tires bounced and skidded from one swale to the next. It made a terrible racket and must've felt worse, though Tenoctris didn't let it show and Cervoran, well, he was Cervoran.

"I don't guess it bothers most people who ride this way," Cashel said after thinking about it for a little while.

They came around a corner. The valley floor widened here, not much but enough to turn a wagon if you swung the outside wheels up onto the slope. The entrance to the cave was a man's height up the east wall. A heavy wooden frame'd been built against the limestone to support a double-leaf gate.

A slate-roofed hut stood above the cave mouth where the slope flattened into a ledge. An old man sat on the hut's porch, cutting an alder sapling into a chain of wooden links. He must've heard the carriage far back down the route, but it wasn't till he saw it was a carriage with the royal seal instead of a wagon carrying corpses that he jumped to his feet. He half-ran, half-scrambled down meet his visitors. He dropped the shoot he was whittling, but he was waving his short, sharp knife until one of the Blood Eagles stopped him and pried it out of his fingers.

"May the Sister help me, dear sirs and ladies!" the fellow said. He spoke the name of the Sister, the Queen of the Underworld, as a real prayer rather than the curse it'd been in the mouth of the soldier a moment before. "Has something gone wrong? Was the delivery this morning not a pauper after all? Oh dear, oh dear!"

"We're here for other reasons," Tenoctris said as Cashel helped her out of the carriage. "There has been a recent interment then?"

"Why yes," the caretaker said, backing slightly. "A woman, it was. I didn't hear the cause of death. They found her dead in the night, was all I was told."

Cashel handed Tenoctris off to one of the soldiers and stepped quickly around the back of the vehicle to get Cervoran. The Blood Eagles knew Tenoctris well enough that they treated her like a friendly old woman instead of a wizard, but the recently dead man bothered them.

Cashel didn't blame them for feeling that way, but Cervoran'd showed how useful he was when he made the sea burn. Cashel wouldn't say the fellow was necessary; nobody was so necessary that the world was going to stop without him. But Cervoran knew more about the present trouble and how to fix it than anybody else Cashel'd met, Tenoctris included by her own words.

"I must have the body," Cervoran said, tramping toward the gate. The slope'd been cut and filled into a ramp instead of a flight of steps. That'd make it easier for fellows carrying a body. The weight wasn't much, not for two men, but you were likely to trip on steps for not seeing your feet.

"Ah, may I ask why, sirs and ladies?" the attendant said. He stood stiffly, wringing his hands together. He wasn't as old as Cashel'd thought first off, maybe no more than thirty. It was hard to judge with bald folks.

Cervoran ignored him, not that, "It is necessary," would've helped much if the fellow'd been what was for him talkative. Tenoctris followed on Ilna's arm, with Chalcus behind looking as tense and alert as an eagle.

"There are dangers to the kingdom, sir," Tenoctris said. "Perhaps you heard about the fortress that rose from the sea? The body will help us, help my colleague that is, deal with the threat."

Cervoran turned on the platform at the top of the ramp. "The Green Woman's creatures are landing even now," he said. "Human weapons may delay their advance, but I alone can defeat the Green Woman."

He paused, then added at a pitch even higher than his usual squeak, "I am Cervoran!"

The attendant looked at Tenoctris and blinked three times quickly, trying to get his mind around the thought. "King Cervoran?" he said in disbelief.

"It seems so," said Tenoctris, not putting any opinion into her tone. Cashel grinned. He'd probably have said, "I guess so," and meant the same thing: that they weren't sure.

Cervoran took hold of one of the doors' long vertical handles. The panel quivered when he tugged, but it didn't open. Something buzzed a loud, low note.

"I'll get it," Cashel said, stepping past the two wizards and gripping the handle. The door didn't have a bar or even a latch; nobody was going to break in or out, after all.

Cashel pulled. The door was heavy and fit tightly, but it swung sideways with a squeal.

A flood of flies curled out of the cave and back, like sparks when the roof of a burning building collapses. The stink was the worst Cashel'd smelled since the summer the body of a basking shark cast up on Barca's Hamlet, so rotten that the lower jaw had fallen off, the cartilage of the gill rakers had rotted into what looked like a horse's mane. He was used to bad smells, but he stepped back by reflex because he hadn't expected this one.

Tenoctris threw a hand to her face, then turned and bent over. "Tenoctris, are you-" Cashel started to say, but right then the wizard opened her mouth and vomited. She retched and gasped and tried to throw up again. Cashel stepped toward her but his sister was already there, supporting Tenoctris by the shoulders so she didn't fall on her face from sheer weakness.

It didn't affect Cervoran. Well, Cashel hadn't expected it would. He stepped into the cave and said, "I will use this body. Remove it from the cave for me."

Cashel pulled the other panel open to give better light than there'd be if his body blocked the half the doorway that was already open. Flies were whirling around like anything, brushing Cashel's face and even lighting on him. It was pretty bad and the stink was still worse, but he didn't let any of that show in his face.

From the entrance the cave sloped down for as far as Cashel could see. The stone floor was covered with bodies, bones, and the slick, putrid-smelling liquids that a body turns into if you just let it rot. The corpses near the entrance weren't as far gone as the ones further in, which'd probably slid or leaked downward as they rotted. The one just inside the door was a middle-aged woman who might've been asleep if you didn't know better.

Cashel squatted beside the body, judging how best to pick it up. It'd stiffened since she died, which'd make it easier to carry. It was a good thing the carriage was open, though, because with her arms spread like this he'd need to break something to get her in through the usual little carriage doors.

"Where d'ye want me to set her, Master Cervoran?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

It'd have been a side-panel of the carriage that got broken if it'd come to that. The woman wouldn't mind and what nature was going to do to her body shortly was a lot worse, but Cashel would still've broken the side-panel.

"Carry her outside and put her on the ground," Cervoran said. "The presence of so much death aids my work, but I need more room."

Cashel glanced toward Tenoctris; she lifted her chin just a hair's breadth in agreement. Her face was tight and would've been angry if she'd allowed it to have any expression.

"All right," said Cashel, sliding his hands under the shoulders and hips of the corpse and lifting it. The dead woman wasn't heavy, but she stuck to what'd soaked into the stone. He had to rock her back and forth carefully so that he could pick her up without tearing her skin. He stood, turned, and set her down just clear of the arc the doors swung through.

In the cave it didn't bother Cashel that all the bodies'd been stripped before being thrown there. The sun was high enough now to shine on the little entrance plaza, though, and the woman looked different. It made Cashel feel like a bully to treat her this way, even though she was dead.

He shrugged, but his expression didn't change. Well, it had to happen.

Ilna stepped past and swung the doors shut. She didn't have any difficulty moving the heavy doors, though some of that was just knowing how to use your weight. Still, she was stronger than most people would guess.

Cervoran followed her with his dull eyes. "There was no reason to close the cave," he said.

"I choose to close it," Ilna snapped. "Just as I chose to pull you off the pyre. You may call it my whim, if you like."

Cervoran looked at her for a further moment, then bent and opened his oak case. He had no more expression than a carp does, sucking air on the surface of a pond in high summer.

Cashel grinned. Ilna was a lot of things that most people wouldn't guess. She hadn't said, "Tenoctris is a fine lady, not a peasant like me'n my brother, so the smell bothers her." That might've embarrassed Tenoctris, and Ilna wasn't one to lay what she did on somebody else anyway.

Cashel was proud to have her for a sister. She felt the same way about him, which made it even better.

Cervoran put on the topaz crown, then took other things out of his case. He hadn't started chanting a spell, but Cashel could feel his skin prickle the way it always did around wizardry. That was what they'd come here for, after all.

Cashel looked at his friends: Ilna and Tenoctris and also Chalcus, who'd backed against the rock face so he could look all the other directions without worrying that somebody was coming up behind him.

The sailor flashed Cashel a grin in response, but he was tense and no mistake. Chalcus wasn't afraid of wizardry, exactly, but he was nervous because he knew his sword and dagger were no use against it.

Cashel checked to make sure he had space, then started his quarterstaff in a series of slow circles, first in front of him and then over his head. There was a lot of power around this place. The ferrules on the ends of the hickory shaft twinkled with sparks of blue wizardlight.

Cashel smiled as he moved. This quarterstaff had saved him and those he was watching over lots of times; and some of those times he'd been facing wizards.

* * *

Ilna watched Cervoran draw a knife from his box and turn toward her. She knew it was an athame, a wizard's tool used to tease out incantations. The curving symbols cut into the blade were words written in what educated people like Garric called the Old Script. Ilna could recognize them as patterns, though she couldn't read them any better than she could the blocky New Script folk used today to write in.

Wizard's tool it might be, but this athame was a real knife also. The hilt and blade were forged from a single piece of iron, and the double edges were raggedly sharp.

"You, Ilna," Cervoran said. He stepped toward her, raising the athame. "I must have a lock of your hair for the amulet which controls my double."

Chalcus flicked his sword out and held it straight. The point didn't touch Cervoran's right eye, but if it would run the wizard through the brain if he took another step forward.

"Let's you take a lock of somebody else's hair, my good friend," the sailor said in his falsely cheerful voice. "A lock of your own, why not? You'll not want to pay the cost of raising that ugly blade of yours to Mistress Ilna."

"Do you think your steel frightens me, man?" Cervoran said. His head turned toward the sailor. "There must be a lock of my hair in the amulet to animate the simulacrum. The hair of Ilna is to control it. Do you think to build a double of me and free it uncontrolled?"

"Why hers, then?" Chalcus said. "Take hairs from my head if you like!"

He was angry in a way Ilna'd rarely seen him. Normally anything that disturbed the sailor as much as this did would've given him the release of killing something. The humor of the situation struck Ilna, though nobody seeing her expression was likely to know she was smiling.

"The clay was female, therefore the control must be female," Cervoran said. "And there are other reasons. If the clay had been male, I would have used Master Cashel as my control."

His tone was always peevish, but perhaps it was a little more so just at the moment. Despite the way the wizard had sneered at the sword, Ilna noticed that he hadn't tried to move past it.

"Tenoctris, is this true?" Chalcus demanded. He flicked his eyes toward the old woman, then locked them back on Cervoran. "Does he need Mistress Ilna's hair as he says?"

"It may be true, Chalcus," Tenoctris said carefully. "To be sure of that, I'd have to be a much greater wizard than I am."

"You'll do," said Ilna. She stepped forward and plucked the athame from Cervoran's pulpy fingers. He tried to keep hold when he realized what she was about, but she had no desire to let Cervoran's hand hold an edge that close to her throat. She shook him free easily and raised the blade to her head.

Ilna pinched a lock of hair from in front of her ear with the other hand, then sawed the athame through it. Though the iron hilt had been in Cervoran's hand, it remained icy cold. She didn't like the feel of the metal, but she used the athame rather than her own paring knife because it might have a virtue she didn't understand herself.

Ilna's mother Mab had been a wizard or something greater than a wizard, her mother and Cashel's. Ilna'd never met Mab, only seen her at a distance, and she wouldn't have understood much more-about Mab or about the things she herself did with fabric-even if they'd spoken, she supposed. But as Tenoctris said, there were reasons a wizard might use Ilna or her brother to increase the power of his spell.

"Ilna?" said Tenoctris. "I'm sure you realize this, dear, but there are dangers to the person whose psyche controls the simulacrum of a wizard."

"Thank you, Tenoctris," Ilna said. It felt odd to realize that she had friends, that there were people who cared about her. "There's danger in getting up in the morning, I'm afraid. Especially in these times."

She handed the pinch of hair to Cervoran; he took it in the cup of his hand instead of between thumb and forefinger as she offered it. Ilna rotated the athame to put the point up and the hilt toward the wizard, and he took that also.

Ilna watched Cervoran use the athame to draw an oval around the corpse, leaving more space at its feet than at its head. His point scored the soft stone only lightly, but he never let it skip.

She was glad to be shut of the athame; she'd rather put her hands in the stinking muck of the charnel house than to touch that cold iron again. But she'd do either of those things and worse if duty required it.

Ilna smiled and, without looking, reached out to the back of Chalcus' wrist. He'd sheathed his blades again, but the hilts were never far from his hands. She wouldn't pretend she was happy, but she was glad to be the person she was instead of somebody too frightened or too squeamish to do things that had to be done.

Cervoran stepped into the figure he'd drawn, standing at the corpse's foot. He pointed the athame at the woman's face. Someone had closed her eyes, but her mouth sagged open in death. She'd lost her front teeth in both upper and lower jaws.

"Ouer mechan...," Cervoran said. Azure wizardlight, a blue purer than anything in nature, sparkled on the point of the athame. "Libaba oimathotho."

Ilna looked dispassionately at the woman's corpse, wondering what her name had been. Cities were impersonal in a way that a tiny place like Barca's Hamlet never could be, but Mona wasn't large as cities go. People on the woman's street, in her tenement, would have known her by name.

Now she had nothing. Even her corpse, her clay as Cervoran put it, was being taken for another purpose. It was that or the maggots' purpose, of course, but perhaps the maggots would've been better.

"Brido lothian iao...," Cervoran chanted. The topaz on his brow flamed with more light than the sun struck from it; his athame sizzled and chattered as though he'd pent a thunderbolt in its cold iron form.

Ilna's fingers were working a pattern. She didn't recall taking the yarn from her sleeve, but for her it was as natural as breathing. The dead woman had no name, and shortly there would be nothing at all left of her....

"Isee!" Cervoran said. A crackling bar of wizardlight linked his athame to the bridge of the corpse's nose. "Ithi! Squaleth!"

The dead woman's features slumped. Melting away, Ilna thought, but instead they were melting into the shape of Cervoran's own face. Wizardlight snarled and popped, molding flesh the way a potter's thumbs do clay. The clay is female, the wizard told Chalcus, and he'd meant the words literally.

Cervoran's mouth moved. Perhaps he was still chanting but Ilna couldn't hear words through the roar of the wizardry itself. The woman's mouth, now Cervoran's mouth, closed. The eyes blinked open, filled momentarily by a fire that was more than wizardlight. The corpse folded its hands and sat up slowly as the spluttering light spread down through its changing body.

The blue glare cut off so abruptly that for an instant the sun seemed unable to fill its absence. Cervoran staggered, out of the oval he'd scribed. He might've fallen if Cashel-Ilna smiled: of course Cashel-hadn't put a hand behind his shoulders.

What had been the corpse of an unknown woman stood up with the deliberation of a flower unfolding. It was no longer dead, it was no longer female, and in every way but size it looked exactly like Cervoran. He was a bulky man though of only average height, while the corpse-the clay he'd molded his double from-had been both shorter and slighter.

The only thing the double wore was the bag hanging from its neck. Cervoran had put the locks of hair and probably other things into it, to judge from the way it bulged. Both the bag and cord were linen rather than wool. Ilna was far too conscious of the powers that fibers held to think the choice of vegetable rather than animal materials was chance.

Ilna turned and pulled the door of the charnel house open a crack; she tossed the pattern she'd just knottted inside, then pressed the doors closed.

It was a monument, of sorts; a distillation of the woman's presence. It wasn't much, but it was what Ilna could do.

Chalcus cursed savagely under his breath. His cape was sewn from red and yellow cloth in vertical stripes. He unfastened the gaudy garnet pin clenching it at his throat and laid it over the double's shoulders.

"Cover yourself, damn you!" he snarled, his face turned away from the creature and the wizard who'd created it.

"We will return to my palace now," Cervoran said. "I have work to do."

Ilna couldn't be sure, but she thought there was a smirk on his purple lips.

* * *

A horse takes up as much room on shipboard as a dozen men, so when Garric embarked the royal army he didn't take horses. The courier panting in front of Sharina had run the whole distance back from the battle. He'd stripped off his armor and weapons before setting out, but he still wore military boots. He was bent over with his hands on his knees, shuffling slowly to keep from stiffening as he sucked air into his lungs.

The tablet's wax seal was impressed with a bunch of grapes: the crest of Liane's family, the bor-Benlimans, not Lord Waldron's two-headed dragon. Sharina broke the tablet open, unsurprised. That's why she'd sent Liane along with the army, after all; or better, allowed Liane to accompany the army. Lord Waldron regarded reporting back to be somehow demeaning, and in the present instance he probably had his hands full.

Waldron definitely had his hands full. The note inked on white birch in Liane's neat uncials read: APPROXIMATELY 300 HELLPLANTS ASHORE IN CALF'S HEAD BAY SEVEN MILES WEST OF MONA. NO MORE APPEARING AT PRESENT. ATTEMPTING TO FIGHT PLANTS WITH FIRE BUT WEATHER DAMP. LBB FOR LD WALDRON.

"Your highness?" said Attaper. "Lord Cashel and the others're back."

He'd formed the available Blood Eagles around Sharina in the palace courtyard. That was about a hundred and fifty men, scarcely a 'regiment' even with the addition of the troop in Valles guarding King Valence III and the troop who'd escorted Cashel, Ilna and Tenoctris to the charnel house. The royal bodyguards had taken heavy casualties ever since they'd begun accompanying Prince Garric. There was no lack of volunteers from line regiments to fill the black-armored ranks, butt selection and training took more time than Attaper'd had free.

Sharina looked up. Her brush was poised to reply on the facing page of the tablet, using red ink because she was the acting ruler of the kingdom whether she liked it or not. She'd been so lost in organizing a response to what was happening miles away that she hadn't noticed the return of Cashel with Tenoctris and the others. Things had been happening so fast....

Her friends were coming toward her one at a time through the narrow aisle the guards had opened for them. Cashel was in front. Seeing him made Sharina feel calmer than she had since the woman ran into the palace screaming that something had happened to her boy. The child, a nine-year-old, had been chasing crows out of the family barley plot. When hellplants crawled out of the sea and began crushing their way across the field, he'd tried to stop them by flinging stones.

The boy's mother had come out of their hut in time to see the boy snatched by a tentacle. Fortunately she'd been too far away to comprehend what Sharina knew must've happened next, and she'd run to Mona for help instead of going out into the field to join her son.

Sharina'd dispatched Lord Waldron with the three regiments billeted in the city to deal with the attack. She hadn't gone herself because she wasn't a warrior like her brother. She couldn't lead an attack the way Garric might well have done, so rather than being in the way of the fighting men, she'd stayed in the palace to command the whole business.

The rest of the army and fleet was scattered across First Atara so that no district was completely overwhelmed by the numbers of strangers it had to feed and house. Those units had to be alerted, and somebody had to make decisions if a second attack occurred while Waldron was involved with the first.

It was possible that a second or third or twentieth attack would occur. Sharina knew their enemy was powerful, but not even Tenoctris could guess how powerful.

Cashel smiled as warmly as an embrace, but instead of putting an arm around her he stepped to the side and let those behind get through also. Tenoctris followed, then Ilna and Chalcus with his usually cheerful face looking like a thunderhead ready to burst forth in hail and lightning. Cervoran was the last.

Sharina's eyes widened in surprise. The person immediately behind Chalcus wasn't Cervoran-it was a slightly smaller copy of Cervoran, dressed in a rag breechclout and the short cape that Chalcus had worn when the group left in the morning. Cervoran, the real Cervoran, was in back of his double.

"I will create the necessary devices in my chamber of art," Cervoran said. The other members of the party were tensely silent, but the soldiers who'd escorted them talked in muted voices to colleagues who'd stayed at the palace. "I cannot breach the Fortress of Glass directly, so I will enter it from another place."

Sharina glanced at Tenoctris who sucked her lips in and shrugged. "I can't judge what Lord Cervoran can do or should be permitted to do, your highness," she said with quiet formality. "I'm trying to follow the various currents of power about us, but I haven't been able to do so as yet."

"You have no choice, fools," Cervoran squeaked. "The Green Woman has sent her servants against one place at present. She will attack other places, all the places on this island. Unless they are stopped, her creatures will advance until they have killed me. Then they will conquer this island and all islands. Only I can stand against the Green Woman, and I must have my chamber of art!"

"Yes, all right," said Sharina calmly. She didn't like Cervoran's tone, but she didn't see any useful result from trying to teach him manners. Whatever he'd been in his earlier life, since Ilna dragged him off the pyre he'd acted less like an adult than like a child-or perhaps like a storm, howling and whistling and sizzling with ungoverned power.

"Cashel must help me," Cervoran said. "And Protas, who is clay of this clay."

"Prince Protas?" Ilna said, the words coming out clipped and hard. "Your son, the child?"

"It is necessary," Cervoran said. "His clay, his flesh is of this flesh."

All the time Cervoran was speaking, the near copy of him stared at the original with cold black eyes. Sharina wondered what the double's voice would sound like if he spoke.

Aloud she said, "I won't order a child to help in wizardry. I won't order anybody to help your wizardry!"

She looked at Cashel, opening her mouth to repeat her words in a more personal fashion, but Cashel was already giving her a slow grin. "It's all right, Sharina," he said quietly. "If I can do something to help, I will. And I guess Lord Protas feels the same way. He's a good boy, though he's, you know, younger than I was or Garric was."

"Find him and ask him, then," Sharina said, suddenly tired from making decisions for other people that meant life or death; for them, perhaps for everyone in the kingdom. "But I won't order him!"

She knew Protas would go anywhere that Cashel was willing to take him: the boy would've accompanied the group to the charnel house if Tenoctris had permitted it. And Sharina understood that more than the life of one boy hung on Cervoran's wizardry. The child who'd been watching the field at Calf's Head Bay had been younger than Protas was when he fell victim to the hellplants.

But as she watched Cashel leave with Cervoran and the lesser copy of Cervoran, she was glad Liane wasn't here to listen. Liane wouldn't have allowed Cervoran to use Protas, no matter how critical the boy's presence might be to the survival of the kingdom.

Liane's father had been a wizard too; and in the end, he'd been ready to sacrifice his daughter's life to complete an incantation.

Chapter 8

Cashel opened the door of the chamber and stepped through first. He held his staff at the balance in his right hand. He wasn't exactly poised to bash anybody waiting inside to attack them, but-

Well, if somebody inside was waiting to attack them, Cashel would bash him. There were people who jumped at shadows and that was silly, but recently some shadows had been doing the jumping. Cashel wasn't going to let anything happen to his friends because he hadn't watched out for them. That's what a shepherd did, after all.

There was pretty much nothing inside, just the cases of books and oddments along the back wall. The windows were shuttered and the door to the rest of Sharina's suite was closed. Light bled through the cracks, but not enough to properly see the figures laid into the floor. The tapestry on the west wall was a square of shiny blackness.

While the others came in, Cashel walked across the room to throw back the shutters. Protas had scooted up right beside him, which was all right now. The boy'd had the good sense to stay out of the way when Cashel got ready to open the door, though, which not every adult would've done.

"Leave the windows as they are!" Cervoran said. His voice didn't get any deeper in here, but it echoed in a funny way. "There is light enough for my art."

Cashel didn't say anything, just turned. "Light enough" he'd grant; but that was different from saying more light would be a bad thing. Creatures that scuttled when light fell on'em generally weren't good company in darkness, either.

He didn't like this room. There wasn't anything specific wrong, it just felt like all sorts of things were pushing for space. Which was funny since it was near as empty as a barn in springtime, but Cashel guessed that meant there were more things here than his eyes were seeing. That stood to reason.

Sharina came in with Attaper and a double handful of guards standing so close that Cashel could scarcely see her through all the black-armored bodies. What did they think they were going to do that I couldn't of?

But Cashel held his tongue. That was something he'd learned young and never forgotten, even after he'd got his growth and pretty much could say what he pleased.

Cervoran raised his hand. He wasn't holding the athame, but the topaz crown winked in a way that made him look bigger than he had in full sunlight.

"Stop!" he said. "No one may be present while I build a portal. I and Cashel and the clay will perform the rites without interference."

"What does he mean, 'the clay,' Cashel?" Protas whispered.

Cashel touched a hand to the boy's shoulder to reassure him, but he kept his eyes on Cervoran. The way the wizard talked wasn't much to Cashel's taste, but words weren't enough to get upset over.

"Lord Cervoran?" Tenoctris said quietly. A couple of the soldiers were probably her guards, but they gave her more space than Attaper did Sharina. "I would-"

"No one!" Cervoran said. He always sounded angry or at least out of sorts, but there was more than usual of it now. "I and Cashel and the clay Protas, no one else!"

Sharina must've said something testy to her guards, because a couple of them moved sideways to let her step between them and face Cervoran directly. "Milord," she said, "I remind you again: you do not give orders in this kingdom."

She looked at Cashel. He drew himself up another fingertip of straightness. Sharina was so very beautiful. His Sharina....

"Cashel," she said. "I know you're willing to do this. I want your opinion as a friend: should I allow the ceremony to go ahead with only the three of you present? I'm asking because I trust your instinct."

Cashel thought for a moment. "Ma'am," he said, formal because it was a real question she was asking. "I don't see how it could hurt. I mean, it may go wrong but nobody else being near could help, right Tenoctris?"

Tenoctris gave a quick dip of her chin. "I agree," she said simply.

"We must be alone," Cervoran said shrilly. He didn't bother to turn to look at Cashel behind him. "It is necessary!"

"All right," said Sharina. Cashel felt the emotion that she kept out of her voice. "We'll wait in my suite."

There was a shuffle as folks, mostly soldiers, got turned around and shuffled into what'd been the Queen's bedroom. Chalcus, smiling on the surface and as angry underneath as Cashel'd ever heard him, said, "And your copy that we went to the tomb to get you, Master Cervoran? Does that one go or stay?"

"I go," the double piped, sounding exactly like Cervoran himself. "My time is not yet come, but soon."

They left the room. Sharina turned in the doorway and said, "Cashel? May the Lady be with you."

Then she shut the door behind her. She's so very beautiful....

"Come here," Cervoran said, walking heavily across the room. He stopped and bent, placing the crown on the floor.

Cashel's eyes had adapted well enough he could see the lines inlaid on the stone floor. The jewel was in the center of a triangle, and a circle scribed the triangle's three points.

Cervoran shifted so he was standing in the scoop of floor between the inside of the circle and one flat side of the triangle. He pointed-with his hand, he still wasn't using the athame or another pointer-at the side to his left and said, "Cashel, go there. Protas, clay of this clay-"

He pointed with his other hand.

"-go there. Kneel, Cashel and Protas, and put your fingers on the talisman."

Protas hesitated. Cashel squatted, keeping the staff against the floor as a brace. He didn't ordinarily kneel and he wasn't going to now unless Cervoran said he absolutely had to do it that way. If Cashel had a choice, he wasn't going into this business in a posture that made him uncomfortable.

He smiled at Protas as he touched the topaz with his fingertips. It felt warm, which surprised him a little.

Protas squatted also, then had to bob up and pull some slack in his trousers to give his knees room. The boy wobbled for a moment, then had to touch the floor to keep from falling backward.

"Just go ahead and kneel, Protas," Cashel said, trying not to smile. "I'm used to squatting, but you ought to do what you're used to."

Protas knelt. He looked doubtful, but Cashel knew that the boy would try if he told him to stand on his hands. He touched the back of Cashel's fingers, then slipped his fingers down onto the topaz.

Cervoran dropped to one knee, then the other. He moved like a doll on strings. Cashel didn't flinch when the wizard reached out, but he was just as glad their fingers didn't touch.

"Horu wo awita...," Cervoran chanted. "Siwa sega sawasgir...."

The room went completely black, as black as soot on fire irons, but the topaz kept the same slight glitter as before. Cashel could see the tips of his own fingers and the others' too, but he couldn't tell where the windows were except from memory. Protas' hand trembled, but the boy didn't whimper or jerk away.

"Phriou apom machri...," said Cervoran. "Alchei alchine cheirene...."

The topaz blazed with yellow fire that didn't light anything. Cashel couldn't see his hands any more; he couldn't feel Protas or the staff. His body tingled all over.

MONZO MOUNZOUNE, thundered a voice. It wasn't Cervoran speaking because Cashel was completely alone in a universe of pulsing yellow light. IAIA PERPERTHOUA IAIA!

The light was sunlight. Cashel fell onto his side in a meadow because he'd lost his balance during the incantation. Flowers growing in the short grass scented the air.

"Cashel!" Protas cried, jumping up from his sprawl. The crown lay between them. The topaz was its usual yellow color with muddy shadows from the flaws inside the stone. "Cashel!"

Instead of answering, Cashel rolled to his feet and slanted the quarterstaff crossways before him. In a grove of trees nearby a woman with a horse's skull for a head played the harp. Accompanying her on a lute was a rat standing upright; it was the size of a man. Their music screeched like rocks rubbing hard against each other.

A winged demon with tiny blue scales for skin and a tail as long as its body faced Cashel. It was standing where Cervoran had been in the room during the incantation, but Cervoran was nowhere to be seen now.

"You are Cashel and Protas," the demon said. It was so thin it looked like the blue hide had been shrunk over a skeleton, but its voice was a booming bass. "By the decision of one who has the power to command me, I am to escort you to the next stage of your journey."

The demon threw its head back and laughed thunderously. "I would rather tear the flesh from your bones!" it added, and it laughed again.

Protas had jumped around behind Cashel, closer than he ought to be if there'd been a fight; but there wouldn't be a fight. Cashel raised the staff upright in one hand and put the other on the boy's shoulder.

"Better pick up the crown, Protas," he said.

"Cashel?" said the boy. The demon had stopped laughing, but the lute and harp continued to make their ugly sound. "He said he was going to eat us?"

"He said he'd like to," Cashel explained. "But somebody bigger 'n him is making him help us."

"All right, Cashel," Protas said. He ducked down and grabbed the crown, but he didn't look at the demon again till he'd skipped back to Cashel's side.

"Anyway," Cashel said, speaking for the boy's sake and not just to brag, "what he means is he'd try to eat us. Folks've tried that in the past, and some of them-"

He smiled at the demon, the sort of smile he'd used lots of times just before a fight started.

"-were a good bit bigger than that fellow is."

* * *

Donria took Garric through the gate while the neck-bound women waited uncertainly. Beyond was a single long hut and, in the gray distance, either a number of larger buildings or more likely raised beds like those the people of Wandalo's village used to drain the roots of their crops.

"You lot, pick up the other male and drag him in with you!" one of the escorting warriors said as the women started through after Garric. The line shuffled to a stop.

"Bend down!" Soma said. "Bend down, you fools!"

By half-dragging the women nearest her in the coffle, Soma got enough slack in her neck ropes to get her arms under Crispus. She rose, holding the groaning man's right arm over her shoulders and clasping him about the waist with her left hand. The line resumed moving.

Soma's strength was impressive, though that didn't surprise Garric since he'd grown up in a peasant village. Women in Barca's Hamlet worked as hard as the men did and often for longer hours.

Women who'd been waiting inside the wall crowded around Garric. He couldn't be sure of the number in this foggy darkness, but there were at least twenty and perhaps half again as many. They chattered among themselves and threw comments and questions at him as well: Where did you come from, Garric?/You're so big, I've never seen such muscles/Oh, your hair's all bloody, did Crispus hurt you? Fingers plucked at him, testing and caressing.

The last of the coffle moved through. The gates groaned shut on their rope hinges. A bar squealed into place on the other side, where Nerga and Eny stayed. Sirawhil was outside also, but the Bird gave a chirrup and flew from her shoulder to settle in a glitter of wings on the ridgepole of the longhouse.

"It wouldn't take much to open the gates," Carus observed. "Just cut the hinges. Even without a proper knife that wouldn't be hard to arrange. Of course there's the guard in the watchtower...."

He was just thinking aloud, not planning anything for the time being. It wasn't idle speculation, though. Garric had learned that the way Carus always thought about the military possibilities of a situation meant he reacted instantly to threats that would've taken most generals completely by surprise.

"Give us room here!" Donria said. "Newla, if you touch him again, I'll break your fingers. Do you hear me? Move back!"

The women moved a little, enough that Garric could shift into a wider stance without stepping on somebody. Donria's authority had to be based on more than the physical threat she'd just made: she was a small woman, and though she was obviously fit it would've been remarkable if that weren't true of most of the others. He'd seen in Wandalo's village that the Grass People didn't have enough surplus to keep fine ladies in pampered leisure.

"Here, Newla," Donria said, giving her pointed dowel to a rawboned woman half a head taller than she was. "Get the new arrivals loose, won't you? You know what it's like when you're first brought here. And Brosa? You and the other girls in your section, start dishing food out. Bring Garric's to the headman's room, he'll stay there now."

"What about Crispus, Donria?" asked a woman Garric couldn't see in the crowd.

"Well, what about him?" Donria said sharply. "You saw, didn't you? Garric's our headman now!"

Garric let Donria walk him along, guided by her hand on his shoulder. He wasn't sure that he wanted to be headman of this slave community, but he was very sure that he didn't want Crispus to be headman over him.

The longhouse was similar to the houses in Wandalo's village, built of thatch instead of shakes, wicker, and a floor of puncheons-logs flattened only on the top side. The construction was cruder, though, and the design was nothing like what the Grass People built on their own. This was a copy of the Coerli chieftain's hut, constructed by slaves from common materials.

Donria led him inside. Garric hadn't been able to see much in the open air; here he was stone blind. The floor had been roughly shaped with a stone adze but smoothed only by those walking on it. Garric's feet didn't pick up splinters, but it felt as though he were stepping onto the shingle beach of Barca's Hamlet.

"Donria, I can't see inside," he said, stopping where he was.

"Your room is right here, Garric," Donria said. She pressed against him, a reasonable way to direct him to the left. More was going on than that, of course, but Donria seemed considerably more intelligent than Soma was.

But-Donria had to be aggressive or she wouldn't be leader here, and she knew she wouldn't remain leader without the support of the headman. Garric smiled faintly. The ram of the flock. The concept wasn't new to him, but its application to human beings certainly was.

Donria opened a door and led him into a separate room. His eyes must be adapting a little, because the open gable was noticeably brighter than everything around it. There was a flutter as the Bird landed there, a blotch of shadow and highlights.

"Here's the couch," Donria said. He heard withies creak as they took her weight. He eased himself down also, then regretted it. The bolster was damp; probably damp with the former headman's urine, judging from the smell pervading the room.

Garric jumped up. He wasn't fastidious by the standards of city folk, but his father had kept a clean inn. Besides, well-rotted waste from all animals was the best manure you could put on a field: Crispus was not only a pig, he was a wasteful pig.

"Get this out of here!" he said jerking the bolster off the bed. It was coarse sacking stuffed with straw. Donria'd gotten up when he did, backing slightly away till she learned what was bothering him. "If there isn't a clean one, I'll sleep on the slats."

Donria pulled open the inner door and hurled the bolster into the main hall. "Newla, bring our headman a fresh mattress. Quickly, before he gets angry!"

"I'm not angry," Garric said quietly. "Well, not at you. This is a terrible way for people to live!"

There were slave pens in the Kingdom of the Isles too. Not officially, but the lot of a tenant farmer on Sandrakkan or in the east of Ornifal could be very hard if he fell behind to the landowner... and they all fell behind to their landowners in a bad year, which meant forever after. That was something he'd deal with as soon as he got back....

A pair of women appeared in the doorway with a wooden bucket and a platter. Either could've carried the load by herself, but the way other women crowded behind them in the open hall showed that Garric was a matter of general interest.

Garric wondered how long it was till dawn. He couldn't get a feeling for his surroundings till there was more light.

"The sky will brighten in three hours," said the Bird silently. "Full sunrise is another hour beyond that. It still won't be as bright as you're used to, of course."

Of course, Garric agreed, but I'll never accomplish anything if I wait for perfect conditions.

Which left open the question of what he planned to accomplish. Well, getting out of this slave pen as a start, and then getting back to his own world as quickly as possible. He didn't have any idea how he was going to accomplish that, but he'd find a way or die trying; which wasn't a figure of speech in this case.

"Let me past!" someone called. "Make way or I'll make one!"

The big woman, Newla, shoved her way through the spectators with not one but two bolsters to lay on the bed. They had the smell of fresh straw, a hint of sun and better times in Garric's memory.

"Donria?" she said, a hint of hopefulness in her voice. "Could I stay tonight too? For after you, I mean."

"Please," said Garric, trying to be firm without sounding angry. He could only hope that the Bird translated tone as well as it did words. "I want to be alone. I need to be alone. I've got to rest. And I will rest."

Donria had taken the food from the women who'd brought it. She looked at Garric, though he couldn't read her expression in this light.

After a moment she said, "You are our headman, Garric," and put the pail and platter on a ledge built out from the interior wall. "Your will is our will."

She motioned Newla out of the room, then added quietly, "But Garric? Torag won't keep a headman who doesn't service his herd. The Coerli will eat any of us, but they prefer infants."

She closed the door behind her.

Garric took a deep breath, then sampled the food. What he'd thought was porridge was a mash of barley bruised and soaked but not cooked; the Coerli didn't allow their herd to have fire. The fish on the platter had been air dried.

And the Coerli ate their own food raw.

I'll find a way out, or I'll die.

"Aye, lad," said the warrior ghost in his mind. "But right now I'm more interested in killing cat beasts first."

* * *

Wizardlight as red as the heart of a ruby shot through Ilna's soul and the universe around her. She'd been squatting as she knotted small patterns. She wished she'd brought a hand loom, since it was hard to judge how long they'd be.

The light and the thunderclap which shook Cervoran's Chamber of Art jolted her to her feet. She folded the fabric back in her sleeve and uncoiled the noosed cord she wore in place of a sash.

"Cashel!" Sharina cried.

Lord Attaper and the under captain with him kicked the connecting door together, as smoothly as if they were practiced dancers. It was a light interior door whose gilded birch panels were set in a basswood frame. The hobnailed boots smashed it like a pair of battering rams. The soldiers rushed through, drawing their swords.

Impressive, Ilna thought dryly, but scarcely necessary. The door hadn't been locked or barred.

The interior was still dark. As Ilna and Chalcus slipped through in the midst of more soldiers, Attaper wrenched a set of shutters down with a crash, frame and all. The guard commander was angry and taking it out on the furnishings. Garric had disappeared, fighting was taking place a few miles away while Attaper's duties kept him from the battle, and three more people had vanished more or less under his nose.

Because there was no doubt that the room was empty. Cashel, Protas, and the wizard who'd said he was 'opening a portal' were gone.

Guards in the foyer opened the other door. "Did they go out past you?" Attaper shouted at them, and their blank looks were proof of the obvious.

The air had a faintly sulfurous smell. Ilna touched the floor in the middle of a triangular inlay where the stone looked singed. It was warm, at any rate.

"Do you see anything, Ilna?" Sharina murmured. Her face remained aloof, but she'd wrapped her arms tightly around her bosom.

"Nothing useful," Ilna said straightening. "What do I know of wizardry?"

She cleared her throat. "My brother doesn't know anything about wizardry either," she said. "But I'd trust him to take care of anything that could be taken care of. He's proved that many times."

"Yes of course," said Sharina and hugged Ilna, hugged her friend. In their hearts they both knew that it wasn't really 'of course' that Cashel would come safely through wherever Cervoran was taking him.

The copy Cervoran had made of himself entered the chamber, walking with the same hitching deliberation as the wizard himself had done. He silently stared around the chamber. Men edged away from him and dropped their eyes to avoid his gaze.

Ilna deliberately glared back at the fellow, angry even at the thought that she might be afraid of him. The copy's lips smiled at her, though his eyes were as flat as mossy pools.

"Where is the topaz?" he said. "Where is the amulet that Bass One-Thumb found?"

Nobody else seemed disposed to answer, so Ilna said, "Cervoran had it with him when he came into this room. He and it both have vanished, so common sense suggests he still has it."

The copy smiled again, this time toward a blank patch of wall. He turned his head to Sharina and said, "You are the ruler. You will take me to where the creatures the Green Woman makes from seaweed are coming ashore. I must see them to defeat them properly."

"The Princess doesn't take you anywhere, creature!" Attaper said sharply. "If she decides you can go, we'll arrange an escort to get you there."

"Milord?" Sharina said. "I'd already decided to view the invasion for myself. We'll set out as soon as I've arranged a few details with Lord Tadai. And if the...."

She paused, her face expressionless as she looked at the copy.

"... person here wishes to accompany us, I can see no objection."

"As your highness wishes," Attaper said. He looked away and shot his sword into its sheath with a squeal and a clang.

Tenoctris appeared at the door behind Cervoran's double. Instead of rushing into the chamber of art with the rest of them, she'd remained in Sharina's bedroom. Apparently she'd worked a spell there, since she was holding one of the bamboo splits she used for her art. She tossed it to the floor when she noticed it.

"What is your name?" Tenoctris said.

The copy turned to face her. "Who are you to ask?" he said.

"I am Lady Tenoctris, once bos-Tandor," Tenoctris said clearly and forcefully. "My line and my very epoch have perished utterly. What is your name?"

"Do you think I fear to tell you?" the copy said. "You have no power, old woman. I am Double. I will be Cervoran."

Double gave a horrible tittering laugh. He said, "I will be God!"

* * *

Tenoctris couldn't ride as far as Calf's Head Bay on horseback and arrive in any kind of condition, so Lord Martous had found her a light carriage. Tenoctris could drive the single horse herself, though-that was a proper accomplishment for a noblewoman, along with fine needlework and accompanying her own singing on the lute.

Sharina rode with the old wizard. Horses had been rare visitors in Barca's Hamlet when she was growing up, and the training she'd gotten since then didn't make her either a good rider or a comfortable one.

"I smell smoke," Tenoctris said as the gig climbed a track meant for hikers and pack mules. She gave a quick twitch to the reins. "It's making the horse skittish."

"They'll be burning the hellplants," Sharina said. "That's all they can do, I suppose. I wonder if-"

She started to glance over her shoulder at the similar gig following theirs, but she changed her mind before her head moved. "I wonder if Double will be able to help?" she went on quietly. "Is he really a wizard himself, Tenoctris?"

A second gig followed theirs, driven by Attaper's own son. The Blood Eagles were a brave and highly disciplined body of men, but Attaper hadn't been certain that any one else in the unit would've obeyed an order to drive the vehicle in which Double rode.

The guards who'd watched Double being created had described the experience to their fellows. The story had gotten more colorful when they'd passed it on, though the bare reality that Tenoctris described was horrible enough.

"Yes, dear," Tenoctris said. "Easy, girl, easy. Lord Cervoran created a true duplicate of himself to hold his enemy's attention while he himself left this world. Double has to be a wizard to succeed as a decoy; and besides, I can see the way power trails from him."

It took Sharina a few heartbeats to realize that, "Easy girl, easy," had been directed to the horse. Nervous from the smoke and perhaps other things-the hair on the back of Sharina's neck had begun to rise-the animal was threatening to run up the backs of the soldiers immediately in front of them on the narrow track. The hills framing Calf's Head Bay weren't high, but they were steep.

Three troops of Blood Eagles marched ahead of the gigs, and another troop brought up the rear. The soldiers were on foot but trotting along the rutted track double-time. Sharina hadn't thought that they could keep up the pace with three miles to cover, but with a few exceptions-men recently wounded and not fully recovered-they did. The royal bodyguards had been trained to be soldiers equal to any they might meet, not just a shiny black backdrop for the king on public occasions.

Sharina looked at the older woman. "I don't trust Cervoran," she said. "That means we can't trust Double either, if he's the same as his creator."

"They each have their own agendas," Tenoctris said, her eyes on the bay mare she was driving. "And as you say, their purposes aren't ours. But when I said Double was the same as Cervoran, I didn't mean they're allies. Double is as surely Cervoran's rival as each of them is opposed to the Green Woman. That gives us some...."

She let her voice trail off, then glanced at Sharina with a wry smile and went on, "I was going to say that it gives us some advantage, dear, but that isn't correct. It gives us a certain amount of hope, though."

Sharina laughed and squeezed her friend's shoulder. Despite the situation, she felt more comfortable than she had for longer than she could guess. She'd changed into a pair of simple tunics under a hooded military cape, and she wore the Pewle knife openly in its heavy sealskin sheath. At the moment, being able to move-and fight if necessary-was more important than impressing people with the majesty of the Princess of Haft.

The leading guards disappeared over the top of the ridge. A man shouted. Sharina touched her knife hilt, but the cry had been startlement rather than fear and there was no clash of weapons with it.

Tenoctris clucked the horse over the rise. They drove out of bright daylight into a dank gray mist and the smell of rotting mud; the change was as abrupt as going through a door. No wonder a soldier had called out in surprise.

"Hold up!" somebody called angrily. "Hold up! And by the Lady, what're civilians doing here!"

Tenoctris was already drawing the horse around to get the gig off the track. A Blood Eagle ran back to them and called, "Your highness? Lord Attaper says not to take the cart any closer, if you please."

Attaper was talking to-shouting at-one of Lord Waldron's aides. The topic probably involved the respect owed to Her Royal Highness Sharina, Princess of Haft. That wasn't fair: the mist blurred details, and she and Tenoctris really were civilians, after all.

"Milord Attaper!" Sharina said, jumping down from the gig while Tenoctris was still maneuvering it. "As I've heard my brother say, worse things happen in wartime. Where is Lord Waldron?"

And where's Liane, who'd be more forthcoming and probably more knowledgeable. Liane and the army commander were probably together; if not, Sharina could make further inquiries.

The shoreline and the barley field a hundred double-paces inland crawled with hellplants. Liane's estimate of three hundred seemed reasonable, but the gray undulations of mist prevented certainty.

A hundred fires burned on the curved plain below; some had dimmed to red glows. All had bodies of troops behind them. Through the swirling mist Sharina saw thirty men march forward carrying what'd been a full-sized fir tree, possibly one of those whose stumps grew in a circle where Tenoctris had halted the gig.

Under other circumstances the tree would've made a good battering ram. This one had a torch of oil-soaked fabric, probably a soldier's cloak, wrapped around the small end of the pole. On command, the troops slammed their weapon into a hellplant. The flames billowed, then sank beneath a gush of black smoke roiling from the point of contact.

The hellplant staggered back. Two of the tentacles that curled to wrap the pole shrivelled in the flame, but a third gripped closer to the men carrying the weapon. Squads of waiting infantry darted in and hacked the tentacle to green shreds.

Hellplants advanced with greasy determination on either side of their smoking fellow. The troops holding the pole retreated; the flame had sunk to a sluggish ghost of what it had been. Other soldiers came closer and threw hand torches which bounced off the barrel-chested plants. The creatures changed their course to avoid torches burning on the ground, but they continued to advance.

For a moment, the injured plant remained where it was, the wound steaming and bubbling thick fluids. Then that hellplant too advanced, though it was slower than its fellows.

Like trying to fight the sea, Sharina thought. Her guts were tight and cold.

"Your highness, my sincere apologies!" the aide said. "I didn't see-"

"Understood, Lord Dowos," Sharina said. The name had come to her unexpectedly, but at a particularly good time. "Now there are real problems. Where's Lord Waldron?"

"Lord Drian," Dowos snapped to one of the boys at his side to carry messages. Drian was probably Dowos' relative or the relative of some noble friend. "Lead her highness to the commander immediately."

To Sharina he added, "They're down by the pile of timber, your highness. Well, what used to be a pile. Most of it's been burned, I'm afraid."

The second gig pulled in beside the first. Double sat next to the driver, who was as stiff as the statues of the Lady and Shepherd which priests from Valles drew through the borough during the annual Tithe Procession.

Tenoctris joined Sharina, her arms over the shoulders of the two soldiers who were carrying her. Their shields were strapped to their back and they used their spears butt-down in their free hands as walking sticks. That wasn't necessary here, but it would be as they descended the slope which thousands of cleated boots had already chewed to slippery mud.

A third man, Trooper Lires, carried the satchel with the wizard's equipment in it. Sharina beamed at him and said, "I thought you'd been discharged wounded, Lires. After the fight in the temple in Valles."

The Blood Eagle grinned, delighted to be recognized. "Well, ma'am, I'm on light duty," he said. "But I figure a sword, that's not very heavy; and I guess Captain Ascor, you remember him, don't you? He felt the same way. Because he's here too."

In truth, she'd thought Lires had been killed in the wild slaughter while the guards protected Tenoctris as she closed the portal from which creatures would otherwise have overrun the Isles. It was amazing that a man could survive such serious wounds, but that he'd willingly return to the same dangers was more amazing yet.

Thank the Lady that men did. And thank especially the Shepherd and all the human shepherds, with their swords and their quarterstaffs and their courage.

Laughing in relief, Sharina followed the impatient Lord Drian, a thirteen-year-old who showed signs of growing out of his gold-inlaid armor. The situation was just as bad as it'd been when she was in despair a moment ago, but if ordinary men soldiered on cheerfully, how could their leader do less?

The slope wasn't as bad as Sharina'd feared, though she was glad Tenoctris was being carried. The mist smelled of salt and decay, like a tidal flat but worse. It didn't get thicker as she went down the way she'd expected, and the whorls and openings in it didn't seem to be connected with the light breeze off the water.

"Your highness!" Waldron said. "Your highness, I don't think this is a safe place for you. Though we're holding them at present, as you see."

"I've given directions in your name to Lord Tadai, your highness," said Liane in a cold, flat voice unlike her usual pleasant tones, "to scour building sites in Mona for quicklime and to start burning any limestone he can find. Marble statues as well."

"Will quicklime be more effective than using the same fuel in open flames, the way you're doing here?" said Sharina.

She kept her voice calm, but she couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret at the notion of statues being reduced to the caustic powder that was the basis of cement. The only statues in Barca's Hamlet had been simple wooden ones of the Lady and the Shepherd in the wall shrines of the better houses. Sharina's first view of lifelike humans carved in marble was a treasured memory of her arrival in Carcosa.

"We can use pots of quicklime in our ballistas," Waldron said. He nodded at Liane. "It was her idea. Stones don't do much, and we can't shoot firepots at full power or it blows out the flame through the air holes. Before now I haven't had much use for artillery except for sieges, and I haven't had much use for sieges either; but quicklime driven into those plants to where they're full of water, that'll take care of them!"

"Admiral Zettin is taking the ballistas from the ships and sending them here also," Liane said. "The problem's transport, getting enough wagons and baggage animals together in Mona Harbor."

Three fit-looking men in civilian tunics stood nearby, separate from the aides and couriers around Waldron. Lady Liane bos-Benliman was the kingdom's spymaster. She alone controlled the movements of the agents and received their reports. She'd based the operation on her father's banking and trading contacts, and she paid for it entirely out of her considerable personal wealth.

When something more than information gathering was needed, Liane had men-and perhaps women for all Sharina knew-to accomplish that too. The trio waiting here looked like they knew as much about weapons as any soldier.

In anybody else's hands, the spy apparatus would be a huge potential danger to the kingdom. Under Liane, it along with the army and Tenoctris were the three pillars on which Garric's rule rested.

And on which Princess Sharina's rule rested, for what Sharina hoped would be a very short time.

"Why can't the warships stand offshore and bombard the plants?" Sharina said. She frowned. "In fact, why weren't there warships here before the attack started? I'd have thought there'd be a squadron at least on the beach, it's so close to Mona."

"There's a mud bar at the mouth of the bay, your highness," said a young soldier Sharina didn't recognize. The short horsehair crest on his helmet was dyed blue, indicating he was one of the fleet officers under Admiral Zettin. "We're looking into dredging it so that warships could get through, but with the creatures swimming...."

"I see," said Sharina. She looked at Liane and Lord Waldron, feeling her guts freeze tightly again. "That means the person sending the hellplants knows the terrain, and knows at least something about war."

Double joined the group, helped by Lord Attaper himself. The guard commander had no expression as he withdrew his arm from the wizard's grasp.

Another time Attaper would be able to order one of his men to perform the service-because they'd seen him do it this once. Sharina knew that Attaper would rather face death than touch a wizard, but he'd done his duty regardless. Courage came in many forms.

"The Green Woman knows the shape of this world because she intends to rule it," Double said. "She will fail, because I will defeat her."

Waldron looked at Double with distaste, then said to Sharina, "Your highness, I've summoned a section of the phalanx from where they're billeted on the east coast. Ordinary spears don't do any good against the creatures, but I hope that the mass of long pikes will kill them, destroy them. Fire works to a degree, but there are so many of them that we're forced back when we attack one."

"I saw that," Sharina said. She took a deep breath. "What do you need from me?"

"Your highness?" said Liane in a careful voice. "I carry Prince Garric's signet, as you know, and I've been giving orders in what's now your name. If you acquiesce-"

"Yes," said Sharina, "I do. Lord Waldron, do you have any requests?"

"They've stopped coming out of the sea," Waldron said, getting to the question indirectly. "We can take care of the ones here in the bay if that's all there are. It'll cost men, but that's what an army's for."

"She will send more of her creatures," Double said. His voice was a sharper-and if possible, more unpleasant-version of Cervoran's own. "She will send her creatures till they have killed me, or I kill her, or weed stops growing in the sea, and the weed will never stop growing."

"Then we'll keep on killing them!" Waldron said. He was partly angry and partly afraid of the wizard; and because he hated fear, especially in himself, he was becoming more angry.

"Look at the land her creatures hold," said Double, stretching out his left arm toward the bay. "The sea swallows it down. Every day more hellplants will attack, and every morning this island will be smaller with fewer men to protect what remains. Only I can defeat the Green Woman!"

Sharina followed the line of the wizard's arm. Knots of soldiers battled hellplants with fire and their swords, trying to destroy the creatures by force of numbers before the lashing tentacles could destroy them all. Occasionally they succeeded, but the hills behind the plain echoed with despairing cries. Sharina saw bodies and body parts fly into the air.

Close to the shore... Double was right. Rows of barley were sinking into the marsh. Sharina had never seen Calf's Head Bay before, but she knew that even salt-resistant barley couldn't have grown with sea water gleaming in the furrows as it did now. The hellplants were a material enemy, but they weren't the only threat the Green Woman posed.

"Tenoctris?" Sharina said. She tried to keep her voice neutral, but she was afraid that there was a hint of pleading in the word.

"No, dear," said the old woman. "Though I'll try, of course."

"I must go back to my chamber of art," Double said. He touched the amulet hanging around his neck. "I must have the help of Ilna os-Kenset and her companions. I will defeat the Green Woman."

"Liane?" Sharina said. "Lord Waldron? Is there anything I can do here that you want me to stay for?"

Liane shook her head minusculely. Her face was as still as a death mask of the cheerful, smiling woman she had been.

Waldron said, "I have a regiment throwing up earthworks on the slopes. I'm not worried during daylight, but if they attack at night, I, well, I want a barrier even if it takes time to shift troops to the point that's threatened."

Double looked at him. "Her creatures will not advance in darkness," he said shrilly. "They will wait in the marsh and attack again when the sun rises."

They're plants, Sharina realized. With the weaknesses of plants as well as plants' lack of a vulnerable brain or heart.

She nodded. "All right," she said, "we'll go back. Tenoctris, will you come or...?"

"Yes," Tenoctris said. "I have a manuscript that might be useful; I'll read it carefully."

She smiled wistfully. "It's a manual of spells and potions to aid crops," she said. "There might be something."

Double laughed. He turned and started up the track toward the gigs.

Sharina felt an urge to slap the creature and keep slapping him until she'd worked off the wash of anger and frustration that suddenly filled her. After a moment she sighed and said, "Carry on, Lord Waldron. Tenoctris, we'll return to the palace."

At least there'd be sunlight as soon as they got out of this accursed plain.

* * *

Garric awakened slowly. He ached in many places and this bed was the most comfort he'd felt since he came to wherever he was now.

He opened his eyes. The sun was well up, making the room reasonably bright. Though the roof thatch was opaque, the walls were wicker without mud and plaster to make them solid. The eaves sheltered the triangular vent at the top, but quite a lot of light-as Garric was learning to judge things here-came in that way.

The wall separating his room from the hall was woven bark fabric on a lattice of finger-thick poles. Garric heard women speaking in normal tones on the other side of it. With a smile at the incongruity realized that he couldn't see through the inner wall the way he could through the much thicker outer ones.

He carefully raised his torso, then swung his legs out of bed. He wrapped the coverlet around him and stood.

His head didn't throb as badly as he'd expected, but it felt odd. He touched his scalp, expecting to find hair matted with his blood, and found instead a linen bandage holding a pad where Torag's mace had cut him. The nurse-Donria beyond reasonable question-must've sponged him clean while he was asleep, because he remembered his face'd been crusted with a mixture of mud and his own blood despite the frequent drizzle he'd marched through.

"Not all of it your own blood," said King Carus. The balcony on which the smiling ghost stood might never have existed in reality, but for now its sunlit stone was a memory to cherish. "Some of the other folks in those fights were bleeding pretty freely, remember."

Garric reached for the latch, a simple rotating peg that held the frame of the door panel to the jamb. There was no lock. It bothered him that he'd been so exhausted that he hadn't thought to try to lock it, though. He had Crispus for an enemy here and no certain friend except Donria.

"She's your friend while it suits her purposes," Carus said. "That may not always be true."

I think she's my friend regardless, Garric said firmly. As it is with Cashel, or Ilna; or me.

The ghost laughed, but there was more sadness than humor in his voice as he said, "The only thing I ever trusted was my sword, lad. You're in a better place; you are, and the kingdom is with you ruling it."

A flutter behind Garric threw highlights over the room. He spun, realizing what'd happened even before he saw the Bird perching in the vent as it had the night before. By daylight-and it wasn't even raining-the Bird looked more like the scrap pile at a glass foundry than it did anything living. This time the creature balanced on one glittering foot and grasped a cord and some wood in the other.

"It's midday," the Bird said silently. "You've slept long. Are you able to fight and run, Garric?"

"I'm able," Garric said. "I don't expect to do either of those things for at least another day or two, until I have a better idea of the circumstances."

The Bird made an audible Cluk/clik/clik/clik with its beak. In Garric's mind it said, "Wait and learn, then."

Garric didn't know where he'd run to. All he could think of now was to run away from Torag's keep. That was all very well, but Torag had captured him once and could quickly capture him again. Unless, of course, he happened to stumble into the arms of another band of the Coerli who were spreading into this land.

Sirawhil wanted to take him to the place the cat men came from. It was at least possible that Garric'd find it easier to get home from there than from this gray swamp. Aloud he said, "Where is Sirawhil, Bird?"

"The Coerli are asleep, all but the guard in the watch tower," the Bird said. It fluffed its wings into a rainbow shimmer like the play of light on a dew drop. They were thin crystal membranes, not really wings like a bird's or even a bat's. "Torag slaughtered another of the recent captives. His folk feasted except the warriors who were here with Ido. They had to eat fish, and they're keeping watch today while Torag and his raiders sleep with full bellies."

Was it Soma who'd been eaten? Garric thought. The whole business of the cat men butchering people for food disgusted him, but since it'd happened he could hope that Marzan's wife was the victim. That might make his life in Torag's keep-and escape from it-considerably simpler.

"The victim was named Jolu," the Bird said. "She was seventeen, plump, and had a high laugh. She was unmarried, but Horta whose wife had died in the Spring planned to ask her father for her. Horta died in the raid, though Jolu never knew that."

Garric felt a wash of dizziness. Jolu was a complete stranger to him. Hundreds of people like her must die every year back in the Kingdom of the Isles: drowned or carried off by fevers, dead in childbirth or any number of other ways. Death wasn't horrible in itself; it was part of life.

But Jolu had been eaten by catlike monsters. If somebody didn't stop them the Coerli would eat many more people, until they'd eaten all the people there were in this world....

"I'm going to get something to eat," Garric said, reaching for the door latch again. He needed to know more before he could act, because based on what he knew at the moment there was nothing he could do. Except, he supposed, throw his life away with nothing to show for it except taking a few Coerli with him.

"Killing cat beasts isn't a small thing," Carus murmured. "And maybe we could get more than a few of them."

The latch turned before he touched it. "Garric?" said Donria, pulling the thin panel open. "Did you call?"

"Thanks for cleaning me up last night," Garric said. It was disconcerting to hear the woman's words clearly in his mind while at the same time seeing her lips form completely different sounds which came to his ears in the same tone as those in his mind. "Ah, can I have something to eat? And I'd like to see things outside."

He had only the vaguest notion of the compound's layout. It'd been dark, he'd been woozy from the fight and the march, and when he arrived murderous violence had pretty quickly absorbed his whole attention.

Donria took his hands and pulled him gently toward the door. "Whatever you wish, Garric," she said. "Newla! The headman wants food! Bring him porridge from the smaller tub. I put the herbs in that one."

Half a dozen women were in the open hall of the large building. Two were villagers Garric had seen in the coffle captured with him in the raid. Newla was watching as they cleaned the far end of the hall where the food was prepared. The new arrivals went to the bottom of the pecking order, here as in any society.

Though here the hierarchy could be disrupted at any moment by Torag's choice for a meal. Which, thinking about it, was how chickens lived in the inn yard too.

Garric's whole youth had involved the care and feeding of domestic animals, but he was getting a different view of the process now. He smiled, because his discomfort wasn't primarily because of the risk he'd be killed and eaten.

They walked outside. Behind them, Newla shouted gruff directions to the slaves she was managing.

It surprised Garric to see thirty or forty women sitting or lounging in the relative sunlight. Many were weaving on handlooms, but it looked to him like a friendly activity rather than work imposed by the Coerli.

There were a number of children as well, girls of all ages but no boys old enough to walk on their own. Behind the first longhouse was a separate building. Pregnant women and mothers must be relegated to that one, explaining why Garric hadn't seen children the night he arrived.

Soma sat at the kitchen end of the first longhouse. She met Garric's eyes without expression. He didn't see Crispus. That was good in itself, but it made him wonder where the other man was.

Fishnets hung beneath the eaves, just as they had in Wandalo's village, and a separate thatched shelter covered hoes, rakes and sickles set with chips of clamshells. Nobody seemed to be working in the raised fields north of the dwelling, though, nor fishing in the surrounding moats.

Donria followed Garric's glance. "We get a holiday when the masters feast," she said. "We take one, anyway. They're all asleep except the one in the tower. And anyway, they're not hungry."

"I see," said Garric. The mud in front of the gate to the Coerli side of the compound had been raked since the rain stopped. Blood still showed at the edges of the patch. The cat men must've killed and gutted Jolu there before carrying the carcass out to be devoured.

Garric looked up at the watchtower, a platform on thirty-foot poles. Two of the three poles were supports for the fence dividing the Coerli from their slaves. A warrior glared down at Garric.

When Garric held his eyes, the Corl snarled and shouted, "Go on about your business, beast!" He looped his thorn-toothed cord down and up again in a quick arc.

"Come this way, Garric," Donria said, leading him around the end of the longhouse. Under the eaves they were out of sight of the tower, and vice versa.

Garric squatted with his back to a support post, breathing deeply and trying to wash the anger out of his system. There was nothing to be done at the moment. Maybe there'd never be anything he could do!

He balled his fist to slam it into the wall, but he realized how silly he was being. He opened his hand and laughed instead. The sun was shining-all right, above the overcast, but it was shining-and so long as the Coerli kept him alive he had a chance of escaping and maybe even doing something about the plague of monsters overrunning this land.

Women congregated around him and Donria in a polite arc, the way students did in Valles before their teacher. There were no schools in Barca's Hamlet. Most children learned basic letters and how to count from their mothers, but the only books in the community were those Reise had brought with him from Carcosa.

Reise perhaps would've been willing to teach other children while he taught his own, but none of the other parents valued the sort of education he was giving Garric and Sharina. What did it matter who were the rulers of the Old Kingdom and what wars they fought?

It mattered to Reise's son, who'd become ruler of the Isles. It mattered not only because Garric didn't have to repeat mistakes thousand years old, it meant that he could relax with the simple beauty of, "Oh Bandusian spring, shimmering like glass; worthy of being mixed with sweet wine at a party...."

Garric laughed, suddenly able to focus on what he had: youth, strength, friends, and a good mind. And also he had the Bandusian spring, gleaming as clearly in his mind as it had in the eyes of the poet Celondre a thousand years before. As long as Garric lived he'd have the Bandusian spring, one of Reise's greatest gifts to his children.

"Donria," said the Bird from the transom above them, "come to the headman's room immediately."

Donria jumped up, looking around in amazement. "Who said that?" she cried.

"Donria, what's wrong?" a spectator called. Other women were getting to their feet, looking surprised and fearful. Surprises in Torag's compound were generally going to be unpleasant, Garric supposed.

"The Bird spoke, Donria," Garric said, wondering if he should get up too. "Haven't you heard him before?"

From the look Donria gave him, that was one of the sillier things Garric had said since he came to this place. "The Bird?" she said, looking up and gaping at the glittering distortion.

"Yes," said the Bird. Its mental voice was a mechanically crisp as the tick of a metronome, but Garric thought it held an undertone of impatience. "Come into Garric's room immediately. Newla can feed him without your presence."

"I didn't know...," Donria said, staring at Garric again. "Headman, did you make it do this?"

"Do as it asks, mistress," Garric said. "The Bird isn't one of our enemies here."

He grinned at the Bird. "I don't think so, at any rate."

The Bird clucked audibly again. "I do not have friends or enemies," it said in Garric's mind. "Only purposes. Your present survival benefits my purposes, Garric."

"Go along with him," Garric said, giving the trembling Donria a gentle pat. She bolted around the corner of the building, almost colliding with Newla and her two flunkies holding pails and a trencher of dried fish.

Did Donria think the Bird was a God? Hmm; was the Bird a God?

The Bird had hopped with its assortment of sticks and cord into the interior of the building. Though unseen its words rang with tart clarity in Garric's mind: "I am not a God."

Garric stood out of courtesy for the women bringing the food, then settled again. The pails were cut from the stems of a jointed grass-bigger than bamboo from the island of Shengy, but something like that. The smaller pail held a sour fermented beverage. It had a reddish cast, so he supposed it was wine rather than beer. His lips puckered when he sipped it, but it was better than water polluted by run-off from human slaughter.

Crispus stepped around the corner. He held a wrist-thick log the length of his forearm. It was cruder than the cudgel that he'd tried to use on Garric the night before, but it'd do.

Garric scrambled to his feet, holding the pail. He'd left the cudgel behind in the headman's room. He thought of shouting to Donria to throw it through the vent to him, but the chances were he'd lose the fight if he turned away from Crispus to grab a wildly flung weapon.

The women scattered like frightened chickens, though Garric saw them only as motion at the corners of his eyes. He didn't blame them. This wasn't their fight, and he was a stranger with no claim on their loyalty anyway.

Crispus shuffled forward, holding the club vertical in both hands. He hadn't spoken. His nose was purple and swollen, and his eyes were bloodshot.

What would happen if I ran? Garric wondered. He wouldn't, though. There was the risk his leg'd cramp because of the way he'd been tied on the march from Wandalo's village, and anyway he didn't like the thought of running.

In the back of his mind King Carus weighed options with the cold skill of a born warrior. Crispus wasn't going to get a third chance to kill the man who'd supplanted him as headman....

"Hey, what's going on down there?" the tower guard called. The Corl couldn't see him or Crispus either because the building was in the way, but he'd noticed the women fleeing and could guess what it meant. "Torag will decide when you'll be allowed to fight!"

Crispus ignored the guard, edging closer by a dragging step. Garric smiled disarmingly. He was crouching, but instead of tensing he let his body rise slightly as though he'd relaxed.

Arms clutched his torso from behind and lifted him off the ground. "Now, Crispus!" Soma screamed. She was as strong as an octopus.

Crispus strode forward, bringing his club down in a whistling arc. Garric kicked back at the post he'd been leaning against, throwing himself and Soma both to the right.

The club smacked the woman's shoulder hard enough to stagger Garric too. Soma shouted and lost her grip. Garric sprang up, grabbing Crispus' left wrist and the shaft of the club.

Crispus bawled in fear and tried to pull away. Garric let go of his wrist and used both hands to wrench the club free. Crispus turned and ran around the corner of the building. Garric sprang after him.

The gate between the slave and Coerli portions of the compound was open. The guard stood in it; he'd come down from the tower to end the fight. His weighted cord curled around Crispus' neck, choking him silent.

Garric's left hand jerked Crispus back by the hair as he raised the club in his right. Crispus gave a strangled bleat. The Corl snarled and leaped the ten feet separating him from Garric, furious that the beasts were continuing to fight even after he'd immobilized the nearer one.

Garric's club slashed down. He wasn't quick enough to follow the cat man's action, but King Carus' instinct had allowed him to anticipate it. The business end of the club cracked the Corl's skull.

Garric jerked the stone-headed axe from the warrior as he convulsed. Crispus began to thrash also; the cord in the Corl's right hand was tightening on his neck. Garric didn't have either the time or the inclination to worry about that. He hadn't been thinking, just reacting as Carus would've reacted. That was the reason he was still alive.

He drew in a deep breath and sneezed violently: the longhouse was on fire. Flames curled out of the transom, and the wet thatch was gushing smoke.

Donria ran out of the front door of the building. She held the sticks and cord the Bird had appeared with. Linked as they were now, Garric recognized a fire bow. He'd seen others light a fire by friction when flint and steel weren't available, though he'd never had occasion to do it himself.

"Come, Garric!" she cried. "There's a hole at the back of the stockade!"

"But-" Garric said, then turned to follow Donria. Action might save him; argument certainly wouldn't.

A glitter at the corner of his eye drew his attention as he ran. The Bird whirled out of the smoke with a tag of burning mattress in its claws. It dipped to set the fire under the eaves of Torag's longhouse, then sparkled through the white billows to join Garric and Donria as they fled.

Chapter 9

The sun was just below zenith when the gigs and the soldiers guarding them pulled up in the plaza behind the palace. Tenoctris hadn't spoken on the way back except for brief, vague replies to the few questions Sharina'd asked. Though the wizard's eyes were on the horse and the road before them, her mind was obviously other places.

Sharina'd ridden in silence most of the way also. It seemed likely that whatever Tenoctris was considering was more important than answering questions about Double and the hellplants that Sharina suspected didn't have real answers.

A groom gripped the horse's cheekpiece. Two Blood Eagles reached up for Tenoctris, but Sharina helped the old wizard dismount herself. She was a princess and for the moment regent of the kingdom, but that didn't mean she couldn't lend a hand to a friend.

"Your highness!" said Lord Martous, bustling toward her-and stopping at the line of guards. "Lady Merota and her caretakers were nowhere in the palace, nowhere at all! One of the servants thought they'd gone down to the harbor so I've sent for them, but they're not here yet!"

"I'm sure they're coming," Sharina said. "When they arrive, direct them to my suite. Double-"

She used the simulacrum's name for itself. It was accurately descriptive, and they had to call the creature something.

"-will be in the adjacent workroom."

"I wouldn't want you to think I'd disobeyed your request to summon the parties!" the chamberlain said. He put enough high-pitched anxiety in his voice to make it sound as though he were reporting a disaster. Just as well he wasn't delivering dispatches from Calf's Head Bay. "As soon as your note arrived, I-oh! Here they come!"

"Yes, thank you, milord," Sharina said, turning to smile at her friends as they approached the paved walkway beside the palace. Chalcus smiled back and gave Merota, hanging from his arm, a delighted twirl. Ilna's lips curved slightly, which was quite cheerful for her.

"We're loyal citizens of the kingdom here on First Atara!" Martous said determinedly. "You have but to request-"

By the Lady's mercy, will the man never shut up? Sharina thought. Aloud she said sharply, "Milord, speaking of requests-I requested that the remains of the pyre be cleared off the plaza here. The work doesn't appear to have been started."

When the pyre collapsed, some of the hurdles had fallen clear of the flames and broken open when they hit the ground. That was merely messy, but the ashes swirling from the great pile in the center smutted everything. If it rained, they'd mix with the dirt in a gray, clinging mass.

"Ah," said the chamberlain in a muted voice. "Ah, the truth is, your highness, that since King Cervoran, ah, regained consciousness on the pyre, the common people have tended to keep their distance. I'm afraid they're a superstitious lot, you know. Perhaps your soldiers could take a hand?"

"I'm afraid the kingdom has better use for the royal army just now," Sharina said, feeling a sudden chill as she heard her own words. It put Double's equation too clearly into focus: the kingdom would run out of soldiers before the sea ran out of weed.

Chalcus shifted Merota to his left hand, putting her between him and Ilna at the same time he made sure Double would have to go through him to get to the women. The sailor was still smiling, but he's survived by being a careful man.

"The Heron's been repaired, your highness," he said with a sweeping bow that kept his eyes on Double, hitching his way toward them from the other gig. "Just a matter of replacing some scantlings and cleaning her, you see. Would you have called us to take her off somewhere?"

"I have need of you," Double said. His swollen lips were formed in a smirk, though that might've been a chance of his condition like the unpleasant voice he shared with Cervoran. "Ilna, you will come with me onto the roof of the palace and view the sea."

"We'll all view the sea, then," said Chalcus heartily. He set his knuckles on his hipbones and stood arms akimbo, grinning falsely. "I dare say I've more experience of looking at the sea than any two other folk within bowshot, not so?"

Double looked at him. "I have other uses for you and the child Merota," he said. "There is a tapestry in my Chamber of Art. There are animals woven into the pattern of the maze. You must count those animals, both of you, and come to me on the roof when you are sure of their number."

"That'll be easy!" Merota cried, looking up at Chalcus in delight. He was exchanging glances with Ilna; both of them showed hints of concern under studiously blank expressions.

"I don't need a chaperone to look at waves," Ilna said with sudden brusqueness. "Tenoctris, will you be with us, or...?"

"I was planning to examine Lord Cervoran's library again," the old woman said. "Though I could join you if-"

"No," said Ilna. "I'd rather you were with Merota and Master Chalcus. I haven't had time to look over that tapestry properly, but it does more than just keep drafts from coming through the walls. I'm not sure...."

"Count your waves, dear one," said Chalcus. He leaned forward, miming an attempt to kiss Ilna's cheek. She jerked back in scandalized surprise as he must've known she would; that broke the tension in general smiles. "Lady Merota and I will count woven beasts the while. We'll see who has the more fun, will we not?"

Quite a number of clerks, aides, and couriers were gathering just beyond the line of guards, waiting to talk with Sharina. The number was growing the way a lake swells behind a dammed stream. Lord Tadai was keeping the civilians in his department under tight control, but a number of the military personnel-particularly the younger nobles-would start raising their voices for attention shortly.

"Lord Tadai," Sharina said. "I'll begin seeing petitioners in my suite as soon as I get up there. Please determine the order of audience among civilians at your best discretion. And who's the ranking military officer present?"

Three men-a cousin of Lord Waldron, a regimental commander, and the deputy quartermaster-all spoke at once, then stared at one another in confusion. "Very well," Sharina went on, jumping in before the soldiers could sort matters out, "Lord Tadai, take charge of the ordering all the petitioners."

She grinned at Tenoctris and said, "Let me give you my arm. I'm going to be regent for the next I-don't-know-how-long, so I'd like to be Tenoctris' friend Sharina till we get up to the second floor."

Tenoctris laughed as they walked along in a cocoon of Blood Eagles. The petitioners-the smarter ones, anyway-had turned their attention to Lord Tadai so the guards didn't even have to shove their way through a crowd.

Sharina grinned at human nature: some of the black-armored soldiers probably regretted not having the chance to knock civilians down. That didn't make them bad men, exactly, but it was fortunate for the kingdom that they'd been smart enough to find duties where external discipline controlled their aggressiveness.

On this side of the palace a broad staircase led to the royal suites. Sharina helped Tenoctris up the left-hand flight to the king's apartments and into the Chamber of Art, then walked through to the suite she was using. Tenoctris glanced at the tapestry on the shaded wall before going to the bookcase. Her steps were as purposeful as those of a robin hunting worms in the grass.

Several of Lord Tadai's ushers were already in the Queen's Suite, arranging tables and notebooks for the influx of petitioners who'd be coming up the interior stairs. They nodded respectfully to Sharina but went on with their work. Tadai had sent them ahead with his usual efficiency. He and Waldron were as different as two rich male aristocrats could be-save in their ability and their sense of honor.

"Shall I close this, your highness?" said a Blood Eagle officer at the door to the Chamber of Art.

Sharina opened her mouth to agree, then heard Chalcus and Merota calling back to Ilna as they entered the chamber. A recent brick extension continued the outside stairs to the roof. The palace didn't have a roof garden but Cervoran must've found the tiled surface useful, perhaps for viewing the stars.

"Leave it open," Sharina said. "In case I need to say something to my friends."

"Your highness?" Tadai announced from the door to the foyer. "If you're ready?"

"Yes," said Sharina, settling on a backless stool in front of a table arranged as a barrier between her and the enthusiasm of those who wanted, needed, something from the regent. "Send them in."

Three clerks took seats to the right and slightly behind her, ready to write or locate information as needed. All together they probably weren't the equal of Liane, but Liane was better placed with the army.

Sharina felt a sudden twist of longing. She hoped Cashel was where the kingdom most needed him to be also, but she desperately missed his solid presence. Lady, she prayed silently, let my Cashel serve the kingdom as he best can; and let him come back safe to me.

The first petitioner was a middle-aged female clerk, part of the financial establishment under Tadai. She had a series of cost estimates for damage done in the course of Liane's lime-burning operation. The figure was astoundingly high-fees for stone, transport, and particularly the fuel which Liane had ordered to be gathered with minimum delay. That meant tearing apart buildings for the roof beams in some cases, and cutting down orchards that would take over a decade to grow back to profitable size.

Sharina suspected Tadai wanted her to rescind some of Liane's more drastic measures. Instead she signed off on them. The cost was very high, but the cost of failure would be the lives of every soul in the kingdom. Liane thought speed was of the first importance, and nothing Sharina'd seen made her disagree.

"Oh, look at this one, Chalcus!" Merota called happily. "It's a unicorn!"

Her voice was as high-pitched as Cervoran's, but Sharina found it as cheerful as birdsong. It wasn't a surprise to realize that timbre wasn't why she found the wizard-and his double-unpleasant.

The second petitioner, an officer with the blue naval crest on the helmet he held under his arm, opened his mouth to speak. In the next room Merota screamed, "Chalcus, I'm-"

"What're ye-" the sailor cried. His voice cut off also.

Sharina was on her feet and through the connecting door, slipping by the guard who'd turned at the shouts. The table she'd bumped with her thigh toppled over behind her.

Chalcus was a flicker of movement, reaching for something with his left hand and the curved sword raised in his right. She didn't see Merota, and as Chalcus lunged his body blurred into the tapestry on the wall. Then he was gone also.

"Ilna!" Sharina shouted, running toward the tapestry. "Ilna, come here!"

* * *

Double stood on the parapet chanting words of power, his face to the sea and his pudgy arms spread out to the sides. He'd thrust an athame from Cervoran's collection under his sash, an age-blackened blade carved from a tree root, but he wasn't using it for the spell.

If there really was a spell. Ilna, standing to the side as Double had ordered her, felt if anything angrier than usual. She couldn't understand the words the wizard was using-of course-but she did understand patterns. Double's chant was as purposeless as a snake swallowing its own tail.

She grinned slightly. Double reminded her of a snake in more ways than that. But if the fact she disliked a person doomed him, the world would have many fewer people in it. It wouldn't necessarily be a better place, but it'd be quieter.

From here Ilna could see the waves beyond the harbor mouth. Double'd said they were coming to the roof to do that, to watch the waves, but she suspected that was a lie. Certainly his incantation wasn't affecting the sunlit water, and yet....

And yet there was a pattern in the waves. Ilna couldn't grasp the whole. It was far too complex, for her and perhaps any human being, but it was there. Perhaps she was seeing the work of the Green Woman spreading from the shining fortress on the horizon, but Ilna thought it was greater even than that.

Ilna's smile spread a little wider; someone who knew her well might've seen the triumph in it. She was glimpsing the fabric of the cosmos in the tops of those few waves. She saw only the hint of the whole, but no one she'd met except her brother Cashel could've seen even that. That didn't make life easier or better or even different, but she granted herself the right to be proud that she almost understood.

She felt herself sliding deeper into contemplation of the waves, following strands of the cosmos itself. Things became obvious as she viewed them from nearer the source. Double had brought her here: not to work a spell but to trap her the way a clover-filled meadow traps a ewe. The sheep could leave, but the pleasure of her surroundings holds her for a bite, and another bite, and just another-

Merota screamed.

Ilna's concentration was a knife blade, smooth and clean and sharp. The pattern of the waves and the cosmos was for another time or another person. She jumped from the parapet to the stairs directly below her, though that meant dropping her own height to the bricks. To start down the stairs where they opened onto the roof, she'd have had to go past Double.... He stopped chanting, but he didn't try to restrain her.

Chalcus called something, his voice blurring with its own echo. He sounded as if he'd stepped into a vast chamber.

Ilna reached the marble landing and the entrance to the king's suite; the guards there jumped back to let her by. Her hands were empty. If she needed knife or noose or the cords whose knotted patterns could wrench any animate mind to her will, she would take that weapon out. First she had to learn what the threat was.

"Ilna!" shouted Sharina. "Ilna, come here!"

The entrance to the room where Cervoran did his wizardry was by a full-length window. The casement was open. Ilna stepped through, looking not at Sharina but to the tapestry on which Sharina's eyes were focused.

It was a panel as tall as she was and half again as long. Warp and weft both were silk; they'd been woven with a sort of soulless perfection.

Normally a room's rugs or hangings would've been the first thing Ilna examined, but this piece had been an exception. Bad workmanship merely made her angry, but the coldness of this undoubtedly artful tapestry had caused her to avoid it the way she would've stepped around the silvery pustulence of a long-dead fish.

If she'd looked at the panel carefully, Chalcus and Merota might be at her side right now. If.

Sharina and some soldiers were speaking, explaining that the child and Chalcus had vanished into the tapestry. Ilna ignored them, concentrating instead on the fabric itself.

The design was of a garden maze seen from three-quarters above. Greens and black shaded almost imperceptibly into one another, just as foliage and stems do in a real hedge. There were fanciful animals: here a cat with a hawk's head, there a serpentine creature covered in glittering blue scales, many others. They were what Double had sent Chalcus and Merota to count, but Ilna realized that they didn't really matter. What mattered was-

The maze had no exit: the outer wall formed a solid cartouche around the whole. The inner hedges twisted and bent, creating junctions and dead ends which seemed to blur from one state to the other as Ilna shifted her attention. In the center was a lake fed by tiny streams that zigzagged from the corners of the fabric; in the lake was an island, reached by a fog-shrouded bridge; and on the island was a circular temple whose roof was a golden dome with a hole in the middle.

But the temple was only the end. Ilna needed the beginning, and she found it in the shape of the hedges. Their twists gripped the mind and souls of those who looked hard at the tapestry, making them part of its fabric. Ilna could've stepped back, but she knew now what had happened to her family, her real family, and she had no choice but to join them.

"Double, what do you know about this?" Sharina shouted in the near distance. "Chalcus and Lady Merota walked into the wall! I saw it happen!"

"Why do you ask me?" said the wizard's double, a wizard itself.

Ilna had no time for Double at the moment. He'd laid a clever snare. He'd known he couldn't catch her in it, but he'd known also that she'd follow those she loved. Loved more than life, some would say, but Ilna'd never loved life for its own sake.

She saw the pattern. She took a step forward, not in the flesh but between worlds that touched at a level beyond sight.

"Ilna!" Sharina said.

As Ilna's fingers brushed the prickly branches of densely-woven yew, she heard the wizard pipe from a great distance, "I was Double. Now I am Cervoran."

And then very faintly, "I will be God!"

* * *

Garric remembered how depressing he'd found this land when he first arrived in the rain. It was raining again, generally a drizzle but off and on big drops slashed across the marsh. Nonetheless his spirits were as high as he ever remembered them being.

He laughed and said, "Donria, we're free. That's better than being an animal on somebody's farm in sunlight, even if we're kept as pets rather than future dinners."

Donria gave him a doubtful smile, then looked at the Bird fluttering from stump to branch ahead of them as a bright moving road sign. "Where are we going, Garric?" she asked.

"We are returning to Wandalo's village where Garric has friends," the Bird said in its dry mental voice. "The Coerli will track us, but not soon. Smoke blunts their sense of smell and anyway, fire disconcerts them. It will be days before they pursue."

And what next? Garric thought, suddenly feeling the weight of the future again. It'd felt so good to escape that he hadn't been thinking ahead.

A tree had fallen beside the route the Bird was choosing. A dozen spiky knee-high saplings sprang from its trunk. As Garric trotted past, he became less sure that it wasn't simply a tree which grew on the ground and sent its branches upward. Several blobs-frogs? Insects?-slid from the bole into the water. If they hadn't moved, Garric would've thought they were bumps on the bark.

"Bird?" Garric said aloud. "Where do you come from?"

"I come from here, Garric," the Bird said. "My people are coeval with the land itself, created when the rocks crystallized from magma. We lived in a bubble in the rock, all of us together. When the rock split after more ages than you can imagine, we continued to live in what was now a cave. We could have spread out but we did not, because that would have meant being separated from our fellows."

He laughed, the audible clucking sound Garric had heard before. It sounded like a death rattle in this misty wilderness.

"Was the cave near here?" asked Garric. He didn't care about the answer; he'd spoken instinctively because of the sudden rise in emotional temperature. He was asking what he hoped was a neutral question to give the Bird the opportunity to change the subject. Garric would've done the same out of politeness if he were speaking to a human being he didn't know well.

"I was the different one," the Bird said, apparently ignoring the question. "The daring one, a human might call it; but we are not human. To my people and myself, Garric, I was mad."

The rain had stopped and the sun was a broad bright circle in a dove-gray sky. The Bird fluttered above a creek too wide to jump. The water was black and opaque. Garric tried it with his foot; Donria simply strode across.

Garric followed feeling a little embarrassed. The water was mildly cool and only ankle deep. Well, I didn't know what might be living in a stream like that.

"I went into the depths of the cave," the Bird continued. "This is the shape I wear now-"

It fluttered its gauzy wings.

"-but I can take any shape I choose. I followed the fracture into the rock until I was a sheet of crystal with granite pressing to either side. I wanted to experience separation, you see. I was mad."

Garric's lips shouldn't have been dry in this sodden air. He had to lick them anyway.

"I could barely feel my people," the Bird said. "They missed me, but they did not object to my choice. My people did not coerce: they were part of the cosmos and lived in their place and their way. They had no power because using power would have been out of place and therefore mad. As I am mad."

"Were," Garric said. He didn't amplify the word or put any particular emphasis on the way the Bird had used the past tense in referring to his people.

"Before I decided to return to the bubble and my fellows, my birthmates, my other selves," the Bird said, "two wizards arrived. My people ignored them, continuing to contemplate the cosmos and their place in it. The wizards killed them and took away their bodies to use in their art."

Garric licked his lips again. "I'm very sorry," he said. When you're told of a horror, words may not be any real help to the victim; but words, and the bare truth, were all there was. "Who were the wizards?"

"They were not of this world," the Bird said. "They were not human; they were not even alive as humans judge life. They came and they killed my people, then they left with our crystal bodies. I wanted to sense separation. For five thousand years now I have known only separation."

He gave his terrible rattling laugh again. "Is it a wonder that I am mad?" he asked.

A breeze bringing a hint of cinnamon rippled the standing water to either side, clearing the air briefly. Ahead was a solid belt of cane waving ten or twelve feet in the air. The stems were as thick as a big man's finger, and the bark had scales. We'll have to go around, Garric thought; but the Bird fluttered into the cane, weaving between the closely spaced stems.

Donria continued forward without hesitation, plowing into the wall of vegetation, breaking the canes like so many mushrooms. Either there were no windstorms in this place-and Garric hadn't experienced any, now that he thought about it-or these plants grew to full height in a day or two. Perhaps both things were true.

"Bird," he said aloud. "You've helped me escape from Torag. If I can help you, I'll do my best."

"I have purposes, Garric," the Bird said. "Your survival suits my purposes. I am not human."

A stone's throw down the path was a plant whose trunk looked like a pineapple with four leaves crawling from the top and across the ground. The Bird lighted on it and rotated its crystalline head to face back at Garric.