22

Derg pointed one long blue arm toward the ruined castle. "There," he said. "We've reached the place where I'll grant your wish."

Cashel rubbed the cuts healing on his chest. At first he'd thought they were approaching a natural hill. He could see squared stones now beneath the foliage but trees grew even on portions of the wall that roots hadn't pried to rubble.

"All right," he said. "What do I do?"

Cashel didn't see much in this ruin worth looking for, but he trusted Derg. And of course Mellie would tell him if anything was wrong....

He smiled at the sprite. It was vaguely disconcerting that Mellie was normal size now. She smiled back, but there was none of the usual joy in her expression; she reached out and squeezed his hand in reassurance.

"It's inside," the demon said, leading the way around the circuit of the wall. "One of the towers still has its roof, and what you want is there."

From on top of a block of masonry, a spotted deer no larger than a goat stared at the three companions. Tree roots wrapped the stone the way water flows about a boulder. For a moment the deer's jaws continued to work, drawing in the remainder of a large leaf with the russet tinge of young vegetation; then it snorted, tossed its tiny spike horns, and leaped deeper into the forest.

Cashel wondered what he did want. Not money, certainly. The weight of his purse was already enough to make the thong cut his neck. He'd tied it instead around his waist, outside the breechclout to which he'd reduced his shredded tunic. No one was going to steal his silver in this jungle; and if they did, Cashel wouldn't much care.

If Derg was leading him to a chest of gold or jewels...he'd take them, he supposed, but for sake of courtesy. It wouldn't be polite to refuse a gift, even one he didn't need.

The gate had collapsed, though the posts and lintel were three of the largest worked stones Cashel had ever seen. The wall was built of fine-grained sandstone with a faint bluish cast, a dense stone that had weathered very little despite the untold ages it had lain exposed. There'd been nothing wrong with the castle's workmanship. Time had simply defeated it, as time defeated all things.

They climbed the ruin of the gateway. Mellie hopped lightly from one bit of bare stone to another. Some of her footholds were upturned corners, still square despite their age. It was like watching a bluebird perch on the spike of the mill's lightning rod.

What do I want? Derg knew better than Cashel himself did, Mellie had said. That wouldn't be hard. Cashel couldn't think of anything, any object at least. People talked about happiness but he didn't know what that could be, not really. Nor did other people, most of them, from what he'd seen.

Mellie moved with all her usual grace, but she hadn't been skipping and playing with the world about her since, well, since they'd come to this place, really. It was as if when she'd grown to full size—or Cashel had shrunk, he wasn't sure which—she'd gotten staid like ordinary people.

If anybody'd asked him before they came to this place, he'd have said the sprite was happy. Now he didn't know.

The castle's courtyard had been paved with blocks of the same hard stone as formed the walls, but they lay in a jumble among the trees. Roots had found cracks between the pavers, then expanded to lift them.

People thought that rocks were eternal. Life, with all its changing cycles, that's what was really eternal. Rock was all well and good, but Cashel'd take a seasoned hickory pole any

He thought about the sword Garric was wearing when they met in their dream. It looked like it belonged with him, belted around his waist.

"Derg?" Cashel said. "Are you taking me to a sword? Because really, I wouldn't want—"

Derg and even Mellie dissolved in laughter, the first real joy Cashel had heard in the sprite's voice in far too long. "Oh, silly!" she said. "What would you do with a sword? You!"

"It's right over here," Derg said. "Inside."

The stables within the courtyard had fallen in or been buried by the col- lapse of the outer wall. The building across from the gateway still stood, or at least the walls did. Judging from the vacant window openings there had originally been three stories. Roofing tiles were a ruddy litter on the ground inside and out of the structure, and the floors hadn't long survived the roof.

At the left end of the house—the palace?—stood a tower two levels higher than the rest of the structure. Its sharply peaked roof remained, though many of the tiles had dropped away. Birds, not the swallows Cashel would've expected back home, flew in and out of the windows on quick, twittering courses.

Derg led the way, going as often on all fours as he did on his hind legs alone. When the demon put his hands down he walked on his knuckles with the claws tucked up into his palms. Mellie skipped like a bird; and Cashel walked as he always did in bad terrain, choosing his footing carefully because a rock that seemed solid might well turn under his weight. He wished he had his staff, but he wasn't too proud to dab a hand down.

He didn't guess there was much of anything he was too proud to do if that's what it took.

Derg led them up a pile of rubble to the door that must originally have been entered from the second floor of the main building: the tower's whole base was a foundation course.

Cashel laughed. Derg and Mellie looked at him. "I was thinking it was a good thing the rubble made a pile for us to reach the door," he explained. "But then I thought, if the roof hadn't fallen in like that we'd have gotten in the regular way. Things have a way of working out, don't they?"

Derg looked puzzled. The sprite smiled at Cashel. "Yes they do, Cashel," she said. "For some people."

The staircase leading to the top of the tower was made of stones sticking out from the inside of the wall. A passionflower vine ran up the long circuit, sending spiky purple blooms out each slit window and the hole in the roof besides.

Against the tower's curved inner wall, protected by the staircase as well as what remained of the roof, hung a tapestry. It seemed as out of place here as it would have been on the wall of the mill where Cashel and his sister grew up.

"Oh..." he said, touching the edge of the fabric with one careful finger. "Ilna would love to see this."

The light in this nook wasn't good, but the woven scene was nevertheless alive. A city of fairy towers rose from the forest in the middle distance. Walkways of crystalline delicacy leaped from tower to tower or sometimes spiraled down into the treetops. The sky was a dome of pastel beauty in which great birds sparkled.

"I dreamed about this!" Cashel said. "I saw this hanging, only I was living in it!"

Derg raised an eyebrow in question, but he was looking at Mellie. The sprite hugged Cashel and said, "Yes you did. But it was only a dream, remember."

The foreground at the bottom of the tapestry was meadow separated from the forest by a broad river. A bridge spanned the swirling water. At the near end the piers were stone with timber decks like the bridges Cashel had seen on his way to Carcosa, but at midstream the span became shimmering glass and swept into the city with no further support.

He couldn't tell what fabric the tapestry was made of. He didn't think it was silk, and even the threads that shimmered gold and silver had a translucence that meant they couldn't be metal.

"Am I to take this to my sister?" Cashel asked. A gift for Ilna, that was something he'd like to have.

"No," said Derg. "Step through the doorway behind it. That will take you where you want to be."

Cashel kept his face expressionless. He lifted the hanging a little ways out and found behind it more smooth, slightly curved sandstone blocks like the rest of the the tower's wall.

He looked at his companions.

The demon's long jaws smiled. "The doorway is there," Derg said. "When you step behind the hanging, you'll find it there."

"He's right, Cashel," Mellie said. Her smile was nothing like the cheerful grin he'd grown used to. "That will take you to the place you want most to be."

Cashel shrugged and clasped arms with the demon. "I don't suppose you're coming with us," the youth said. "I'm glad to have met you, Derg. I like you better for a friend than I do an enemy."

The demon's grip was firm on Cashel's biceps; his muscles moved like heavy ropes.

"Friend?" Derg said. "Well, you're human, you understand those things better than I do. May you have success in all your other fights, Cashel."

He stepped back.

"I'm not going either, Cashel," Mellie said.

Cashel frowned. He didn't understand what she'd just said. That happened to him a lot, being told things he didn't understand by people who assumed he would....

"You've brought me to a place where I can go home safely," Mellie said. "I could never have gotten here myself, Cashel. You're very strong."

"I didn't think you'd leave, Mellie," he said. "I've..."

He didn't know how to put it. He hadn't gotten used to the sprite, that made her sound like the ache in his left knee every time the weather changed, a relic of a tree that fell the wrong way when he was twelve.

"I'll miss you," he said.

Mellie stepped close and kissed him. She felt like a rabbit, all softness and hard muscle in the same form. "May you have success with others as you've had with me," she said.

"Mellie," Cashel said as she backed away.

"Go!" the sprite said. "Go now! It's what you really want!"

Cashel turned quickly because her tears embarrassed him. He lifted the hanging aside and stepped forward as if there wasn't a stone wall before him.

There wasn't a stone wall, only darkness. He took another stride. He'd started this course, so there was nothing for him to do but finish it.