TWO

AS THE CRISP late-summer afternoon faded to evening, the shadow of the God’s Teeth mountains stretched to the east and swallowed first the mines, erasing their billowing towers of smoke, then wiped across the Northwest Road and engulfed Thorncleft, the tiny Transdeian capital city.

The Monastic Ambassador to Transdeia, a young man the world named Raithe of Ankhana, sat in a straight-backed, unadorned, unpadded, and exceptionally uncomfortable chair, staring out at the shadow’s grope with blank unseeing eyes.

Most unsettling, those eyes were: the pale blue grey of winter ice, set in a face as dark and leathery as that of a Korish desert tribesman. The startling contrast made his stare a disturbing, almost dangerous thing; few men could bear to match his gaze. Fewer still would care to try, if they knew just how deeply those pale eyes could see.

Late in the afternoon, five elves had come to Thorncleft. Raithe had seen them first from this very window: dusty, in clothing travel-worn and stained, mounted on horses whose ribs showed even under their mantles of green and black. Those mantles had been embroidered with the star-browed raven that was the standard of House Mithondionne.

Raithe had stared at them, memorizing every discernable curve of shoulder and tangle of hair, every faded patch where the sun had bleached color from their linen surcoats, all the details of posture and gesture that made each of them individual, as the elves walked their horses up high-sloping Tor Street. He had stepped from the shadow of the half-built Monastic embassy into the street, shielding his eyes against the lowering sun, had watched them answer the challenge at the vaulted gate of Thornkeep, had watched as the gate swung wide and the elves led their horses within.

Then he went back into the embassy, into his office, and sat in this chair so that he could see them more clearly.

He held himself perfectly erect and controlled his breathing, timing it by the subtle beats of his own heart: six beats in, hold for three, nine beats out, hold for three. As his heart slowed, so did the cycle of his breath. He built their image in the eye of his mind, drawing details of their backs from his trained memory, since their backs were what he had seen most clearly: a spray of platinum hair pricked through by the barest hint of pointed ears, a diagonal leather thong to support a waterskin, the inhuman grace of stance, the way shoulders move when hands swing in small, light gestures.

Slowly, slowly, with infinite patience, he fed details into the image: the dark curls hand-tooled into their belts, the lace of scar tissue across one’s forearm, the sideways duck of another’s head as he whispered to one of his companions. These were details he had not seen, could not have seen; these were details that he created in his powerful imagination. Yet as he refined them, and brought them more vividly before his mind’s eye, they became plastic, shifted, and finally organized into plain, visible truth.

Now ghosts of their surroundings materialized in his mind: the marble floor, deeply worn but highly polished, on which their boots made almost no sound, the long tongue of pale blue carpet that entered the doorway before them. He got a vague sense of huge, high-vaulted space, oaken beams blackened by years of smoldering torches below.

He hummed satisfaction under his breath. This would be the Hall of State.

He had been inside that hall many times in the few months since he’d been posted here from Ankhana; using his recollection of the details of the hall brought the scene inside it into sharper and more brilliant focus than he could have seen with the eyes of his body—from the glittering steel of the ceremonial weapons that bedizened the walls to the precise color of the sunlight that struggled through the smoke-darkened windows. There before the elves was the Gilt Throne, and upon it lounged Transdeia’s lazy, spineless puppet lord: Kithin, fourteenth Duke of Thorncleft. Raithe could see even the stitching on Duke Kithin’s shirt of maroon and gold; with that as a mental anchor, he swung his perception to see the room as Kithin saw it. Now, for the first time, he could get a good look at the faces of the elves.

He didn’t trouble to study these faces too closely; elvish features lack the creases that time and care paint upon human physiognomy, and thus reveal nothing of their character. Elves, in Raithe’s experience, looked very much alike.

He was rather more interested in what had brought them to Thorncleft, and so he studied the silent motions of lips and tongue; though he spoke little Primal, they would be conversing in Westerling for the benefit of Duke Kithin, and lipreading is easy, when practiced through the pristine vision of his mindeye.

His mindeye had always been one of his most useful talents.

Raithe had been only a boy when he’d discovered his gift: thirteen years old, barely into adolescence. One golden morning he had lain in bed, in his room above his father’s tiny smithy, slowly awakening from a dream. In the dream, he’d kissed Dala, the raven-haired sixteen-year-old girl who sold sticky buns on the corner of Tanner and the Angle; as he lay in bed fingering the erection this dream had given him, he’d imagined her rising for the morning and pulling her nightdress off over her head, imagined her round, swelling breasts bouncing free, her nipples hardening as she splashed herself with water from the pitcher beside her bed. In his mind, he saw her stand naked before the mirror, braiding her hair in a new way, coiling it into a gleaming black helmet instead of the long strands she usually allowed to trail down her back; he imagined that she chose her oldest blouse to wear that day, the one he loved the best, its fabric so worn and supple that it clung to her curves and gave a hint of the dark circles of her nipples.

Sheer fantasy, of course: the vivid daydreams of an imaginative boy in lust.

But when he’d gone that morning to buy buns for his father’s dinner, blushing so that he hardly dared even to look at her, he’d found that she was wearing that very blouse, and she had chosen that morning to coil her hair up in a new style, tight and shining around her head—exactly as he had imagined it.

That had been Raithe’s first hint that he was destined for greatness.

Mastering his gift had not come easily. In the days and weeks that followed, as he spied on Dala’s naked body at every opportunity, he found that his vivid imagination was more hindrance than help. Too often, his mental image of her would lift hands to breasts, to fondle and squeeze them as he wanted to do. Too often, he would fantasize one hand creeping down to the silky nest between her legs . . . and the vision would scatter into the random eyelights of total darkness. He discovered that clear imaging required a certain coldness of mind, a detachment; otherwise, his sight became murky, clouded with his own desires, with ghosts of wish-fulfilling fantasies.

Those wish-fulfilling fantasies had a power of their own, though, as he discovered one day when Dala met his eye with a shy smile, when he gazed at her while he held a perfectly formed mental image of their naked limbs entwined in a tangle of sheets—and she reached out, took his hand, and led him to her room on a clear, hot summer’s afternoon, and took his virginity with exactly that same shy smile.

That had been the sweet brush of his destiny’s lips, as well.

He’d entered his novitiate at fourteen, using the advanced education available only at the Monastic Embassy to sharpen his powers; the Esoteric training of both body and mind gave him the self-discipline to ruthlessly strangle those desires that crippled his gift. Now he used his mind as another friar might wield a sword: as a weapon, sworn in the service of the Human Future.

At twenty-five, he was the youngest full Ambassador in the Monasteries’ six-hundred-year history—and not even the Council of Brothers could guess how much their decision might have been influenced by the subtle power of a young friar’s dreams.

Now in Thorncleft a haze began to obscure his vision, as though he peered through a twisty veil of gauze, while the great doors of the hall swung wide and in marched a double column of the Artan Guards, their curious springless pellet bows held at ready aslant their scarlet-armored chests. They spread out into the wide arc of an honor guard.

The elves gazed at them with bald curiosity, not yet aware of their import. Lord Kithin, for his part, sprang hastily from the Gilt Throne and dropped to one knee, inclining his head to welcome the Artan Viceroy, Vinson Garrette. Lord Kithin could be trusted only to handle situations of purely ceremonial nature. No business of import could be conducted in Transdeia without the presence of the representative of this land’s true rulers.

Raithe’s heart began to pound.

Garrette seemed to speak cordially to the elves as he walked among them. Raithe felt a surge of anger at the mental haze that prevented him from fully experiencing the meeting—if he could only hear what Garrette said, perhaps he could understand the import of these legates. He burned for that understanding.

With a need as sharp and immediate as hunger to a starving man, he ached to understand where, in all this, was the connection to Caine.

But his sudden swell of desire ruptured his concentration and scattered his vision; now he saw only the view from this window in the half-completed embassy. He snarled at himself, then shut his eyes, laid his hand across them, and forced himself to concentrate once more. He slowed his breathing, a measured count of nine to inhale, hold for three, exhale for twelve, and the Hall of State began to coalesce once more inside his skull.

“Headache, Master Ambassador?” asked a greasily solicitous voice nearby. “Would you like a cup of willowbark tea? I’m having one.”

Raithe’s view of the hall vanished as he opened his eyes and glared at Ptolan, the fledgling embassy’s Master Householder, a fat and perpetually befuddled Exoteric who seemed perfectly content to pass his fading years humming tunelessly to himself and tending the last few strands of his unruly steel-spring hair. Ptolan stood in the archway, not too far from the small iron stove he kept lit beside his desk for warmth—his sluggish nature made even this late summer afternoon too chill for his sagging, repellently pale flesh. He smiled at Raithe expectantly as he poured water into a teapot from a small brass carafe.

“Thank you,” Raithe said icily, “no.”

“It’ll put a little color in your cheeks,” Ptolan said, in what the fat fool must have imagined was an encouraging tone. His own cheeks sported blotches red as a whore’s mouth. “Two brew as easy as one, y’know. It’s a, well, a sharing, y’know? Brotherhood and all that. I know you began as an Esoteric, but we in the public services do things a bit differently . . .”

Instead of a reply, Raithe gave him a chilly stare—one of those steady bleached-out gazes that he used to intimidate weaker men. Ptolan swallowed and looked away, chuckling nervously in the back of his throat. “Please yourself, haha, you usually do, I suppose. I’ll, ah, I’ll just—” He rubbed his hands together, and chuckled some more. “I’ll just, ah, go ahead for two, and if you change your mind—”

“Don’t bother—” Raithe began.

“Oh, it’s no bother—”

“I was saying—” He bared his teeth. “—don’t bother me.”

He set his head against the uncomfortable scrollwork of the chair’s high back and shut his eyes. “Go away.”

For a brutally long moment, the only image he could summon was of Ptolan standing in the archway, his slack thick-lipped mouth opening and closing with the soundless dismay of a hungry chick. Then hesitant footfalls faded toward the outer chamber, and Raithe regulated his breathing; soon, the interior of the Hall of State took hazy shape once more.

Though Garrette stood beside the Gilt Throne, where Lord Kithin sat, there was no question as to who was the true ruler of Transdeia. The Artan Viceroy projected a calm authority that was unmistakable; Lord Kithin himself never spoke without first glancing to Garrette to search his long gaunt face for any sign of disapproval.

Still Raithe’s concentration was too scattered to pick up their words, but his hazy perception of Garrette’s face let him read one word from the Viceroy’s lips: Diamondwell.

Raithe nodded to himself and let his vision dissolve into a random scattering of eyelights. So the Mithondionne legates had come about Diamondwell; he had warned Garrette that Mithondion would respond—all subs stick together, in the end—but the Viceroy had firmly refused to worry about that possibility until it presented itself.

Diamondwell had been a dwarfish reservation in the Transdeian hills that had styled itself, with typical subhuman arrogance, as a “freehold.” The trouble had begun nearly a year ago—before Raithe had been posted here as Ambassador—when the dwarfs’ children and elderly began to fall ill. Having been born and bred to mining, the dwarfs had soon recognized the symptoms of metals poisoning. Viceroy Garrette himself had generously—overgenerously, in Raithe’s considered opinion—ordered an investigation, using Artan resources to find the cause. When this cause turned out to be runoff from Artan smelters leaching into the Diamondwell groundwater, Garrette—again overgenerously—had offered to resettle the dwarfs in a new reservation, higher in the mountains and farther away from the Artan mining operations.

The dwarfs had refused, citing some sentimentalized twaddle about their ancestral lands. They had instead chosen, foolishly, to begin a guerrilla campaign of sabotage against the Artan mining machinery and smelting plants, hoping to make mining and smelting in those hills so expensive that the Artans would move their operations, instead. They had failed in the most basic principle of warfare: Know your enemy.

Artan military technology was even more advanced than their mining technology; to march into Diamondwell and arrest the entire population turned out to be much less expensive than moving the mining operations would have been. Those who came peacefully had been rewarded with tasks in the mines, clean food and water, and comfortable cots on which to rest; those who resisted had been slaughtered like the animals they were.

It had been a messy situation, one that Raithe privately believed could have been much more simply resolved: merely adding a more potent poison to the Diamondwell groundwater would have settled the issue with great swiftness and economy. Garrette’s pretense of good nature and helpfulness, the facade of concern for the dwarfs’ troubles he had presented, had only made the situation worse: it had emboldened the dwarfs, and allowed them to wreak considerable havoc upon the mines before they were finally contained.

Raithe imagined that something similar was going on in the Hall of State even now. Garrette was probably hemming and hawing, trying to allay any suspicions the elvish legates had developed; he couldn’t understand how much trouble he was already in. He had no conception of the power that Mithondion still could wield if a war should come—of course, conversely, neither did the Mithondionne elves have any idea of the power of the Artan rulers of Transdeia.

It seemed to Raithe that there was a vast opportunity here—but opportunity for what, and how should he approach grasping it?

Once he understood how all this related to Caine, he would know what to do.

2

ANYONE WHO IS of a thoughtful, philosophical cast of mind will occasionally be struck by the appearance of certain organizing principles of history. The form these principles seem to take inevitably depends upon one’s specific obsession. For a monarchist, history might be a story of the clash of great leaders; for a socialist, history is a struggle of classes in economic civil war. An agriculturalist sees the dynamic of populations, land, and availability of food; a philosopher might speak of the will to power or the will to synthesis; a theologian of the will of God. Raithe was not by nature a thoughtful man, but the events of his time had conspired to make him aware of one of these vast organizing principles, one so powerfully obvious that he was consistently amazed that no one but him seemed aware of it.

A lifetime ago—when he had been a young, hopeful, passionately dedicated friar, just entering the Esoteric Service in Ankhana—that governing principle of history had intervened and shattered Raithe like overfired pottery. Piece by piece, he had rebuilt—reforged—himself; but the man who emerged from that crucible was no longer Raithe of Ankhana, though he still answered to that name.

In those days, Creele of Garthan Hold had been the Ambassador to Ankhana. Raithe could still see him as clearly as though he stood before him now: a man of grace and beauty, eyes constantly sparkling with his extraordinary wit, a brilliant thinker, an intellect like fire leaping from root to branch. Ambassador Creele had taken an interest in young Raithe, had made clear that his career was upward bound. Creele had encouraged Raithe in his study of the Esoteric arts of fighting and espionage, and the skills of mind that were now his greatest weapon.

Raithe had watched in helpless horror as Creele had died by Caine’s hand.

On that day, Raithe had sworn to Caine’s face that there was no place the murderer could hide to escape Monastic vengeance. But after Creele’s murder, the Ambassadorial post had been taken by that plodding hypocrite Damon, who had muddied and confused the issue before the Council of Brothers—not that it had mattered, in the end; for by that time, Caine was widely supposed to be dead.

Creele’s murder had been the opening tap of Raithe’s destruction; like the first rap of a carpenter’s hammer, it had seated the nail firmly for a single, final blow. Because Creele had died that day—because the embassy had been in great turmoil—Raithe had been on extra duty on that fateful noon five days later. He had been sitting at a writing table in the scriptorium, surrounded by spineless Exoterics, while he painstakingly lettered the fifth copy of his report on Creele’s murder.

If Caine hadn’t murdered Creele, Raithe would have been in Victory Stadium: beside his father, the honest, pious blacksmith, who’d been proud of his position as the house farrier at Janner’s Livery; beside his mother, the quiet, faithful wife and homemaker whose loving arms had always circled Raithe like a mystic ring against the hurts of the world.

His parents had been early converts to the Church of the Beloved Children; his mother, especially, had been passionately devoted to Ma’elKoth. And so of course they both had stood cheering in the stands, when Ma’elKoth’s procession had entered Victory Stadium. Cheering—until the riot had begun, and the cheers had turned to screams.

If Raithe had been there, he would have fought for them. He would have saved them. But he wasn’t there. Because of Caine.

His parents died in the riot. Slaughtered like animals.

Because of Caine.

Because of Caine, he had reforged himself into a weapon.

In the years that followed he had devoted himself to the study of Caine and his people, the alien race of Aktiri. He became the Monasteries’ leading expert not only on Caine, but on the Aktiri and their world. It had been Raithe himself who had discovered the origin of the mysterious Artans, the outlanders who ruled Transdeia; shortly thereafter, Raithe had persuaded the Council of Brothers to make him the first Ambassador to the Artan court.

The world believed what the Church told them, that Caine had died on the sand at Victory Stadium. Raithe knew better. Somewhere, somehow, the murderer of his parents lived in the smug enjoyment of his rancid victory; Raithe could see him in his dreams. And in every dream, Raithe renewed his promise.

I will teach you my name.

He would teach the world his name; but the name he would teach it was not Raithe. The name Raithe was now a mask, a costume he wore to conceal his true face. Raithe had been brittle, fragile enough to shatter under a single sharp blow—a bit of pottery, no more. The man who now wore his face was a weapon, a blade of tempered steel gleaming from the forge. Only in his deepest, most cherished dream of dreams, in the stories he whispered to himself in the darkest midnights, when his ghosts all crowded round his heart, did he dare to call himself by his true name.

He had become the Caineslayer.

Childish? He knew it was—but he had been a child when he’d sworn himself to it. Now, seven years later, he could make his cheeks burn merely by imagining the humiliation of anyone ever learning how much he still cherished this adolescent melodrama . . . but that only made him clutch it ever more tightly to his heart.

In swearing himself to that name, he had made a vow that would never be broken. Now he kept perfect vigilance, waiting.

In comparing Caine’s history to those of others in the Monastic Archives, he had discovered what he’d come to think of as Caine’s defining characteristic. In each of his recorded endeavors, from the smallest assassination to the epic undertaking that had crushed the Khulan Horde at Ceraeno, there would always come a fulcrum, one defining point of balance, where a mere shift of Caine’s weight toppled history in an unexpected direction.

Caine was, somehow, behind every twist of history in Raithe’s short lifetime. This lesson had been burned into him like a brand upon the inside of his skull.

How had the Empire come to be? Caine saved Ankhana at Ceraeno, and Ma’elKoth triumphed over the superior forces of Lipke in the Plains War. How had Ma’elKoth come to be? Caine delivered up unto Ma’elKoth the crown of Dal’Kannith. How had Raithe come to be the Caineslayer? How had the Caineslayer come to be the Monastic Ambassador to the Artans?

The answer to every question led back to Caine.

Raithe had made it his personal rule of thumb, as private as his darkest fantasies, never to act until he understood how an event was connected to Caine. This rule had been his guidepost of destiny for nearly seven years. The connection might be distant, tenuous, tortuous—but it had always been there. This was how he maintained his perfect vigilance.

This was no longer a matter of vengeance; oh, certainly, he had started along this path seeking revenge, but revenge was a crippling desire, one of those that he had sloughed away like a snake shedding its skin. Caine need not be punished. He must be extinguished.

It wasn’t personal, not anymore.

After all, was not Caine as much a pawn of destiny as Raithe himself? Caine had not intended to kill his parents; it had been purely an act of fate: as though all the universe conspired to create the Caineslayer.

Raithe thought of himself, of his mission—of his dream of the Caineslayer—as a metaphor, now; just as Caine had become a metaphor. To the Church of the Beloved Children of Ma’elKoth, Caine was the Prince of Chaos, the Enemy of God. He had become a symbol for all of humanity’s basest instincts of low selfishness, greed, and aggression; a symbol for everything against which stood the Church. He represented that part of human nature that set man against man, woman against woman, the self-destructive bloody-mindedness that was the single greatest threat to the Human Future.

This was the fundamental error of the Church: by elevating Caine to the status of the Enemy of God, they gave power to his legend. Raithe was a loyal elKothan himself, as his parents had been; he found it astonishing that the Church would admit of anyone or anything that could oppose the power of Ma’elKoth. Though it was Church doctrine that Caine’s opposition to God had, against his will, served the greater glory of Ma’elKoth, Raithe sometimes suspected that it might be the other way around.

Caine was slippery that way.

So all this led to a single, simple terminus. To act properly on this matter of the Mithondionne legates, he had to know: Where was the connection to Caine?

For one awful, dizzying moment, he wondered if perhaps there might not be any connection to Caine at all; black doubt yawned beneath him, and only a frantic mental scramble brought him back from a lethal fall. There was a connection. There would be. And he would find it. He had to.

It was his destiny.

3

“MMM, MASTER RAITHE?” The greasy voice of Ptolan once again shattered his concentration.

Raithe opened his eyes; full night stared back at him through the open window, spangled with hazy stars. How many hours had he sat here, dozing away his opportunity? He twisted, rising from his chair, suddenly red-faced with fury. “Rot your guts, Ptolan—I told you not to bother—”

“Sorry, uh, sorry, Brother, really I am—but Brother Talle has come up saying the lamp on the Artan Mirror glows, and your instructions were that, no matter what you’re doing, or what time of day it might be, or—”

“All right,” Raithe snarled. “Jhantho’s Faith, can’t you shut up? I’m on my way.”

4

DAMON OF JHANTHOGEN Bluff, the Acting Monastic Ambassador to the Infinite Court, looked out over the teeming ballroom and allowed himself to feel moderately pleased. The orchestra played with spectacular skill; across the broad expanse of dance floor hundreds of couples swayed, while through the crowded fringe and the smaller side rooms wove dozens of young, white-robed friars bearing trays of cocktails and appetizers. The general light came from no specific source, making the air itself seem to glow and pulse gently in time with the rhythm of the waltz, casting a glamour subtler and more enticing than mere lamp flame—making the men more dashing, the women more beautiful, the setting absolutely flawless.

Over Damon’s six-year tenure as Acting Ambassador, the Monastic Ball had become the premier diplomatic event of the Ankhanan social calendar. Damon himself was a stolid, pragmatic man, with little time for social niceties and no liking for parties at all, but the value of an event such as this could not be denied. The Monasteries formed a sovereign nation, but it was a nation without borders, one that spread across every known land. On this most neutral of all neutral ground, representatives of every government across the civilized world could meet and partake of each other’s company without the interference of protocols of national precedence and the like.

Here within his view stood two perfect examples: the Lipkan Ambassador traded slightly sodden jokes with his Paqulan counterpart, as they leaned on each other in drunken friendship despite the ongoing privateer raids between Paquli and the Lipkan Empire; and on the dance floor, the jel’Han of Kor in his outlandish gold-embroidered bearskin roared with laughter as Countess Maia of Kaarn lowered him into a very competent dip. Damon’s normally expressionless face bent into a small grim smile of satisfaction; he reflected that he would never know how many wars and assassinations and diplomatic conflicts of all descriptions had been averted by parties just like this one.

He had not sought this post, nor did he enjoy it—but the job was his to do, and he could take some satisfaction in having done it well.

Faintly through the music and laughter, Damon heard voices raised in anger. They seemed to be coming from beyond the ballroom, perhaps from the Gate Hall, outside the thrice-manheight doors, and were angry enough that they might signify violence. The friars who served as the embassy’s security staff were all blooded veterans and experts in unarmed combat; they could stop any fight without unnecessary injury or insult to the participants, and so Damon was not overly concerned—until the orchestra fell silent in a chaotic tangle of flattening notes.

A man in the gold-and-blue dress livery of the Eyes of God stood beside the conductor, gesturing emphatically. The ballroom poised momentarily in apprehensive silence.

A white-robed junior friar had forced his way through the press, and now he bowed jerkily to Damon and spoke far too loudly, his breathless words ringing in the quiet. “Master Damon—the Patriarch, he—the Eyes, the Grey Cats, they’ve arrested Hern, and Jento, and, and, and Vice Ambassador t’Passe!”

A bitterly cold shock went through Damon, and for a blank instant he could neither move nor speak.

The ballroom burst into uproar as Ambassadors and delegates and entourages from every nation sought each other, gathering themselves into self-protective knots. The orchestra struck up the Imperial anthem, “King of Kings,” and as the first strains entered the general roar, the ballroom doors swung back. Through them flooded hard-faced men in grey leather, swords in hand. Behind the leather-clad warriors walked a dozen Household Knights in their full blood-colored battle armor, escorting a small group of Eyes of God.

In their midst limped the stocky, dark-clad figure of the Patriarch of Ankhana.

Damon’s paralysis broke. “Summon Master Dossaign to my office, boy. Tell him to get on the Artan Mirror to the Council of Brothers, with the word that we have been attacked, and the embassy has been occupied by Imperial forces.”

The young friar hesitated. “But I don’t understand! How could even the Patriarch dare—?”

“You need not understand,” Damon snapped. “You need only obey. When the Master Speaker has sent the message, have him disconnect the Mirror and hide it, so that it is never seen by unsworn eyes. Now go!”

He jumped like a startled rat and scampered away.

The Grey Cats fanned out through the crowd, their ready blades persuading all and sundry that the wisest course would be to wait silently, and watch, and hope that the Patriarch had not come for any of them.

Damon caught the eyes of several nearby friars. They moved toward him, opening a path through the press. Damon stepped into the gap and waved to the orchestra, which now fell silent. In the breathless quiet, he met the colorless gaze of the Patriarch of Ankhana.

The Patriarch was a man of somewhat less than average size; his face was pale and heavily scored by the burdens he bore. Damon was personally aware that the Patriarch never spent less than twelve hours a day laboring at the business of the Empire—and those twelve-hour days often extended to twenty. The hair that strayed from beneath his flat cap of soft black velvet was the same neutral, undefinable grey brown as his eyes—eyes that now gazed upon Damon with the same expressionless dispassion they had held in the days when the Patriarch had been the Duke of Public Order.

That had been before the Assumption of Ma’elKoth; in the chaos that followed the Emperor’s transfiguration, the Duke of Public Order had seized the reins of power, bullying the nobility into confirming him as the Steward of the Empire. Shortly after solidifying his Stewardship, the former Duke had proclaimed the Doctrine of elKothan Supremacy and had named himself the first Patriarch of the Church of the Beloved Children of Ma’elKoth.

By acting always in the name of the Divine Ma’elKoth, the Patriarch had gathered to himself greater political power than the Emperor Himself had wielded; Damon privately considered that Toa-Sytell, former Duke, now Steward and Patriarch, was the most dangerous man alive.

“Your Radiance,” Damon said in a tone of flatly correct courtesy. He did not genuflect, or even offer the slightest incline of his head for a bow; he was the sovereign of this tiny nation bounded by the embassy walls, and he owed no deference to any invader. “I presume there is some explanation for this outrageous conduct. Your armed invasion of these premises, and your detention of Monastic citizens by threat of force, are acts of war.”

Toa-Sytell’s only response was a slight preliminary compression of the lips.

Damon drew himself up and said with clipped, ominous precision, “You are not the first ruler to delude himself into believing he had the power to violate Monastic sovereignty.”

“I apologize,” the Patriarch said blandly. “No one has been harmed, and it was not the Empire’s intention to give offense. The Empire does not invade. The Empire does not attack. Those detained will be released, once it can be established that they are Monastic citizens in truth, and not terrorist criminals engaged in high treason against the Empire: offenses against God Himself. The matter will be explained fully in Our formal apology to the Council of Brothers. Perhaps we could continue this discussion in your office, Excellency?”

“Perhaps His Radiance could explain now, in the presence of all here,” Damon said grimly, “how he could come to believe that one of my Vice-Ambassadors might not be a Monastic citizen?”

The Patriarch did not so much as glance at the breathless crowd that hung upon his every word. “The woman calling herself t’Passe of Narnen Hill,” he said imperturbably, “has associated herself with Cainists, and has herself been heard to espouse political views tantamount to Cainism.”

This brought gasps and indignant whispers from the assembly—the astonishing effrontery of this man, Patriarch or no—and a number of outraged and disbelieving looks directed both at the Patriarch and at his attending Grey Cats.

Damon’s face remained impassive, but inwardly he raged at his underling for her foolishly idealistic nature, and at himself for forbearing to beat that out of her. He said calmly, “This would be disturbing, if true—but only disturbing, not criminal. To the best of my knowledge, holding Cainist views does not constitute high treason.”

“The best of your knowledge,” the Patriarch said, with a quiet exactitude that touched on subtle irony, “is sadly out of date.”

He let those words fall into the silence for a long, long moment.

“On this, the Eve of Saint Berne, let it be known: There is no safety for the enemies of God. Traitors and terrorist criminals cannot take shelter behind diplomatic convention. When the welfare of the Beloved Children of Ma’elKoth is threatened, even Our well-known respect for Monastic dignity must give way. Monastic sovereignty is temporal; the power of Ma’elKoth eternal. Ma’elKoth is supreme!”

The Patriarch, the Household Knights and every Grey Cat struck their chests with closed fists, as though each drove a dagger into his own heart, and then opened their hands as though offering their hearts’ blood to their Lord: the primary gesture of their faith.

Toa-Sytell nodded briskly to Damon and limped beyond him toward the doors that led into the embassy’s interior, rocking from side to side on his crippled leg. As he passed, he said softly, “Your office, Damon. Now.” Four Household Knights trailed in his wake.

Damon stood motionless for an endless second, his mind boiling; finally he pulled himself together enough to speak.

“This matter,” he said, not loudly but with a crisp, penetrating tone so that all could hear, “is between the Empire and the Monasteries, and shall be settled as such. Let it not interfere with your evening’s entertainment.” He waved to the conductor, and the orchestra struck up a sprightly reel. Without waiting to see if anyone would actually join the dance, Damon turned and followed the Patriarch.

Before he left the ballroom, he signaled to six of the embassy’s security staff. All six were Esoterics, each man a specialist in personal combat against an armored opponent. He had no illusions that he or his embassy could survive a violent encounter with the might of the Empire—but he intended to ensure that the Patriarch would not survive it either. If he could not settle this matter peacefully, it would be settled in blood.

5

TOA-SYTELL EASED HIS aching joints in the high-backed chair at Damon’s enormous, scarred writing table in the Ambassador’s office. One hand massaged his crippled knee, while with the other he held a snifter of fine Tinnaran brandy he’d found in a chest beside the table. He took a long, delightfully aromatic sip and gazed across the snifter’s lip at Damon, a slight tilt of his head taking the place of a smile. “Are you certain you won’t join me?”

The Acting Ambassador only stared at him stonily.

Toa-Sytell sighed. “Oh, unbend a little, Damon. I’m sorry for the show in the ballroom. That was only to make a point—it’s a tale that will spread far beyond the Empire’s borders before the week is out, as was intended. Meanwhile, I’ll let your people go, and the Church will pay whatever reparations the Council requires. All right? I will exonerate your underlings, and deliver a formal apology for the affront to your office—with the codicil that had your people been found to be Cainists, they would have received the same Imperial justice meted out to all enemies of God. But that’s only a detail. Have a drink.”

Damon released a long breath, shaking his head, but he stepped over to the liquor cabinet, took a glass, and poured himself three fingers of Korish cactus whiskey. “I cannot say what the Council’s response to this will be,” he said, “but they have ever been open to reparations; they will want war no more than does the Empire.”

Toa-Sytell nodded approval and waved his snifter at the furnishings of the office: an expensive array of delicately carved hardwoods, in the light and airy open style that defined recent Ankhanan craftsmanship. “I see you still have Creele’s furniture.”

Damon shrugged. “I am only Acting Ambassador. I have no authority to make changes.”

“Mmm, yes—no one really trusts you, do they? None of the Council factions has the power to get their own toady in here, and so they leave you in place: perhaps the only honest man in the Monastic diplomatic corps.” Toa-Sytell found himself chuckling at the thought of an honest ambassador. “I’ve always admired you, do you know that?”

His friendly tone had its effect: the tension began to drain out of Damon’s face, and the Acting Ambassador lowered himself onto a lovely embroidered settee. The wariness was still there, but wariness was acceptable, so long as Damon was relaxed enough not to do something foolish—such as order those friars outside to attack the Household Knights who guarded the doorway. Toa-Sytell wondered in passing if Damon might be feeling as much disappointment as relief; the Ambassador had clearly nerved himself up for a noble martyrdom.

“Honesty is not such a virtue,” Damon said tiredly. He took a sip of his whiskey and went on. “I tell the truth because that is my nature. I don’t incline to the lie. It’s like the color of my hair, or my height: neither good nor bad. It simply is.”

“Mm, you just do what you do, is that it?” Toa-Sytell murmured, mildly amused. “That makes you sound like a bit of a Cainist yourself.”

Damon grunted, and shook his head. “I’m not political.”

“Neither are they, to hear them tell it. They’re philosophical.”

Damon’s mouth set into a grim line. “You should tell me why you’ve come here. I shouldn’t think it’s to discuss the finer points of Cainism.”

“Well, my friend, there you would be wrong,” Toa-Sytell said. He drained his snifter and poured himself another drink before continuing. “Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Berne. Assumption Day is only three months away, Damon. This will be the seventh Festival of the Assumption, by the will of Ma’elKoth.”

He lifted the glass to the small elKothan shrine that occupied one corner of the office and drank to his god. “It will be the single most important day of my Patriarchy. There are those, among the more gullible of Our Beloved Children, who expect Ma’elKoth Himself to return on that day.”

Damon nodded. “I’ve heard this tale.”

“It is only a tale,” Toa-Sytell said. “The Ascended Ma’elKoth will not return in the body; He is transcendent, immanent, omnipresent. He has no need of a physical form. But the Empire, on the other hand—the Empire has a great need for a flawless Festival of the Assumption, do you understand? It is crucial symbolism of the doctrine of elKothan supremacy.” Glass in hand, he made a gestural sketch of offering his heart’s blood toward the shrine.

“I begin to see,” Damon said. “You expect that Cainists will attempt to interfere.”

“Of course they will,” Toa-Sytell said wearily. “How can they not? The opportunity is too good to resist. To disrupt the Festival seems a small enough matter—but to make the Imperial Church appear weak and foolish threatens the very existence of the Empire.”

Once again, he drained his glass. He told himself he should not have another; he was so tired the brandy was already making his head swim. The room seemed to press in more closely around him, and the air became thicker, harder to breathe.

“By the Festival, Cainism will be only a memory; whatever Cainists who survive will be too worried about living out the day to risk embarrassing the Imperial Church. I’ve been lax, Damon. I’ve let them go too far, and they have become bold. Now they must be crushed before they do us real harm.”

Damon’s response was a grim stare. Toa-Sytell often surmised that the Ambassador had personal reservations about the value of the Empire in the pursuit of the Monasteries’ overall goal of ensuring the permanent ascendance of humanity; he was consistently silent on the subject. The Council of Brothers openly supported the Empire as humankind’s brightest hope. Damon’s steadfast devotion to the Monasteries wouldn’t let him publicly disagree with the Council, but his fundamental bedrock of honesty wouldn’t let him pretend to agree—and so he never said anything at all.

Toa-Sytell sighed and poured himself another brandy. It was unexpectedly relaxing, to sit here with a man who—though not quite a friend—was someone he had no need to manipulate, with whom he was not required to maintain his exhausting facade of Patriarchal infallibility. He decided that once he finished his business here, he would go straight back to the Colhari Palace and sleep until dawn. “Do you know,” he said slowly, “that it was in this very room that I first met him? Caine. Right here.”

“I recall,” Damon said grimly.

“Of course, of course. You were here, weren’t you?”

Their eyes met, and they shared a glance that skated across the open expanse of carpet between them. Nearly seven years ago, they had stood in this room and watched Ambassador Creele lie on that carpet as the light slowly faded within his eyes: as his heart failed, after Caine had broken his neck.

Toa-Sytell often wondered how the world might be different today, if he had done the wise thing that night: ordered Caine shot down like the mad dog he so obviously was. “It’s because of him that you have this post,” he mused. “You took the Acting Ambassadorship after he murdered Creele—”

“Executed him,” Damon said firmly.

Toa-Sytell ignored the correction. “In fact, it’s because of him that you still have it. When you testified on the murder before the Council, neither Creele’s friends nor his enemies liked what you had to say. You ended up in the middle, with both sides against you—a precarious position, but you have proved to possess exceptional balance.”

“I told the truth,” Damon said with a shrug; then he cocked his head curiously. “How do you know of my testimony? Proceedings of the Council of Brothers are—”

“Secret, yes, yes,” Toa-Sytell said, waving the question aside. “I simply find it a subject for curious contemplation, from time to time. Caine himself truly was the precise definition of evil, as he is named by the Church: an indiscriminate slaughterer who cared nothing for the lives he shattered in the pursuit of whatever happened to catch his fancy of the moment. He betrayed Our Lord, yet it was through his betrayal that Ma’elKoth was transfigured. He crippled me—shattered my knee beyond even magickal repair, so that I am reminded of him by the pain that wrenches my every step—yet gave me rulership of the Ankhanan Empire. He sparked riots that nearly burned the city to the ground, civil war—the First Succession War as well as the Second, in fact.”

Toa-Sytell’s chest clutched with suddenly remembered grief; Tashinel and Jarrothe, his sons whom he had loved beyond all measure, his only children, had died in the First Succession War. He shook this aside—it was an old, familiar pain, flooding back now on a rising tide of alcohol—and went on. “Yet he also saved Ankhana at the Battle of Ceraeno. His murders were countless . . . but one cannot forget that he also did our land the very great favor of killing that madman Berne.”

“It’s your Church that names Berne a saint,” Damon pointed out.

“Not mine. Ma’elKoth’s.” Toa-Sytell made another sketch of a salute toward the corner shrine. “You forget: I knew Berne. What we celebrate tomorrow is his sacrifice for God, not his character. As a man, he was a rapist and a murderer—worse even than Caine, and I don’t mind saying so. Privately.”

Damon smiled painfully, as though bending his lips made his face hurt. “You sound a bit like a Cainist, too.”

“Ah, it’s the brandy,” Toa-Sytell said, tilting his glass high to catch the last drops before pouring himself another. “It must be made clear, Damon. Cainism is treason. Adherents of Cainism openly declare themselves the enemies of society, and of God. It will not be tolerated within the Empire’s bound—not even from Monastic diplomats.”

Damon frowned. “You cannot expect to dictate the politics and philosophies of Monastic citizens,” he said stiffly.

This, too, Toa-Sytell waved aside with a weary pass of his snifter. “I don’t. What I do expect is that the Council of Brothers will find it expedient to post holders of such views elsewhere—to avoid the appearance of deliberate offense to the Empire and the Church. After all,” he said reasonably, “the Cainist heresy can’t be very popular with the Council, either; if Caine had not died at Victory Stadium, I’m sure you would have found it necessary to kill him.”

Damon stared gloomily down into his glass and swirled the whiskey within it. “There are some who say that Caine survived—that he waits beyond the world, and that when Ma’elKoth returns Caine will as well, for their final battle.”

“Primitive superstition,” Toa-Sytell snorted. “This kind of ‘final conflict’myth will always be popular among the ignorant—and it is the Cainists who spread it, no doubt. I intend to ensure that the Cainists never get the chance to fulfill their false prophecies. This is why I now speak with you privately, here in your office, Damon. I want you to understand that what I do is in the same service of humanity to which you and every friar are sworn; Cainism is our common enemy, and it can only be defeated by our common effort.”

The wariness he had earlier seen in Damon’s face now returned with redoubled force. “I am not yet convinced that Cainism is our common enemy,” he said. “What common effort do you expect? What is it you want from us?”

“From you, specifically, Damon,” Toa-Sytell said easily. “Time grows short; I do not have the month or six weeks to spare as couriers travel beyond the Empire’s borders and return. I wish to converse with Raithe of Ankhana, the current Ambassador to the Duchy of Transdeia.”

“Speak with . . . ?” Damon stiffened. “How do you—”

“You have a device—the Artan Mirror, I believe it’s called—that you acquired from these Artans who now rule Transdeia. It’s generally used here in this room, your office. I don’t know how it is operated; if you would be so kind as to use it to make contact with Ambassador Raithe, I would be most appreciative.”

“But, but, it’s impossible that you should—”

“Know of this secret device?” Toa-Sytell sighed and drained his snifter one last time. “After a lifetime spent in the gathering of secrets as a profession, I find it has become something of a relaxing pastime in itself—a welcome diversion from the heavy cares of church and state.”

He allowed himself a rare, lazy smile as he fisted his chest then spread his hand before him. “The Eyes of God see all, you know. Ma’elKoth is supreme.”

6

TOA-SYTELL WATCHED ATTENTIVELY as the Artan Mirror was set up for use. He’d had report of this device, but he had never seen it, nor did he know how it worked.

The Artan Mirror was a valise-sized box that the Master Speaker, Dossaign of Jhanthogen Bluff, situated upon Damon’s writing table. The Master Speaker then attached a thin, flexible cord of some kind to another that came unobtrusively in through the office window. It was faced with a very ordinary-looking mirror that appeared to be merely silvered glass, and on its side was a ring-shaped handgrip that seemed to be made of gold. Having joined the cords together in some fashion Toa-Sytell couldn’t quite appreciate—he seemed to simply jam the end of one into the end of the other, like a branch grafted onto a fruit tree—the Master Speaker retired. One of his assistants—called a Speaking Brother—took hold of the handgrip and briefly closed his eyes.

A long, long moment passed in silence, then the Speaking Brother opened his eyes and said, “I am received.”

Damon took the seat, facing into the Artan Mirror; the Speaking Brother took his hand. “Greetings from Ankhana,” Damon said. “Ambassador Damon calls upon Ambassador Raithe.”

Toa-Sytell shifted his weight forward, peering at the box-shaped device; to his eye, it seemed that Damon looked solely at his own reflection, and spoke to himself.

Another long moment passed in silence, then Damon said, “Not well, Master Raithe. This is not a personal call. I have with me here His Radiance the Patriarch of Ankhana, who wishes to converse with you.”

After a pause, Damon said severely, “But he does know. And it would serve you well, Raithe, to remember that the Patriarch once directed the King’s Eyes. I chose not to insult him with disingenuous pretense, and I suggest that you follow my example . . . Very well. Yes, I recall, and you may be certain that the Patriarch does, as well. Bide a moment.”

He let go of the Speaking Brother’s hand and turned to Toa-Sytell. He said with quiet irony, “Master Raithe bids me remember how busy he is, in his duties as Ambassador.” He rose, and offered his seat to Toa-Sytell.

The Patriarch sat down and regarded himself in the mirror. The deepening creases that accompanied the developing slackness of jowls along his jawline, and the near-black swipes of exhaustion under his eyes, made him wince and promise himself to take a long-needed vacation once the Festival was safely and successfully complete. He sighed—it seemed that he had been promising himself a vacation for seven years.

He forced his attention back to his purpose. “How is this used?”

The Speaking Brother extended his hand. “Your Radiance need only join grips with me, and speak as though Brother Raithe is here within this room.”

Scowling, Toa-Sytell took the Speaking Brother’s hand. His scowl deepened further when his face in the mirror blurred and faded into greyish mist, which then coalesced into a new image: a thin, sharp-faced man with a pointed chin and skin like tight-stretched leather, a nose like a knife blade dividing rather close-set eyes as penetrating as an eagle’s. His tonsured head sprouted a fringe of lank brown hair, and he wore the rich blood-colored robes of a Monastic Ambassador. And those eyes—they were decidedly disturbing: pale, almost colorless blue grey against his swarthy skin, flat and clouded as chips of ice set into his skull.

He could not have been more than thirty years of age, was perhaps only twenty-five or -six.

Astonishingly, Toa-Sytell recognized him; though he could not say when, Toa-Sytell knew that he had seen this intense young man before, perhaps years ago—and for a moment, he could only wonder at the tangled web of lives that touch each other again and again, for no discernable reason.

Ahh, bugger it, Toa-Sytell thought. I must be getting drunk.

“Your Radiance?” The title had a slightly testy edge—it was Raithe, speaking to him through this device, from hundreds of miles away. The room where Raithe sat could not be seen; it was as though the Ambassador floated within a dense grey mist. “How may I be of service?”

Toa-Sytell huffed a sigh through his nose. He could think of no reason to waste breath in polite chatter or to speak with less than absolute plainness. “You, as a Monastic citizen, are not an Imperial subject, and so I do not command you. The Council of Brothers does, however, require that the Empire be given aid and support to the fullest power of each and every friar; therefore, think of my request as proceeding from their lips.”

Raithe’s pale eyes narrowed. “Please continue, Your Radiance.”

“Give this word to your Viceroy Garrette. Today, to expound—or even privately hold—Cainist ideas has been declared to be treason against the Empire, and an insult to God,” Toa-Sytell began.

At this, those eyes seemed to catch inexplicable fire, as though a winter sun had burned through their permanent overcast. “This is a great day, Your Radiance—but, to tell the Viceroy? I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do, Raithe,” Toa-Sytell said irritably. “It is known that you are not a fool. It is also known that you received your current post for the sole reason that you are the Monasteries’ leading authority on the Aktiri.”

Raithe’s gaze focused like sunlight through a glass; Toa-Sytell would have been unsurprised to find his face blistering under its heat. “You cannot possibly—!”

“Spare me.” When he continued, Toa-Sytell endeavored to recover his customary dry precision of speech. “Our message to Garrette is simply this: To support the actions of these Cainist traitors will, from this day forward, be considered an act of war.”

“His Radiance,” the young Ambassador said, “is making a terrible mistake.”

“This is not a discussion, Ambassador. Tell Vinson Garrette that he is known to the Infinite Court; from the mortal arm of Ma’elKoth, nothing can be hidden. Tell him, We know that he and his so-called Artans are in truth Aktiri. Tell him, We know the Aktiri have aided the spread of Cainism. And tell him that if he and his Aktiri masters continue their campaign of Cainist terror against the Empire, their tiny foothold upon Our world will be utterly destroyed.”

Raithe snorted with open insolence.

“We will cry a crusade,” Toa-Sytell said. “Do you understand?”

Raithe appeared to swallow, twisting his head as though his throat pained him, then nodded. “Yes, Your Radiance. I understand.”

“Make certain that Garrette does, as well. We know that the Aktiri wield potent magicks—but We also know that they die as easily as any other men. The Artans and the Empire do not have to be enemies; tell him this, too. The path is for him to choose: friendship, or death.”

“Your Radiance, please—” Raithe’s young face worked as though he chewed upon broken glass. After a moment, he seemed to master himself, and he said thinly, “Though not of your Empire, Your Radiance, I am of your flock. I am, as I have been since the very birth of the Church, a Beloved Child. I passed through the Womb of Ma’elKoth under His own direction, and my devotion to the Church has never wavered. In the name of that devotion, I ask you to reconsider what you require of me. I know Viceroy Garrette too well—a threat this bald may spark the very war we all would wish to avoid.”

Toa-Sytell grunted his unconcern with this possibility. “Should Garrette wish to continue his Cainist games, We may turn to the solution Caine himself would employ, in the hope that Garrette’s successor will prove more reasonable.”

“Your Radiance, you cannot.” The young Ambassador spoke with clinical certainty. “You have no conception of the powers you confront—you would never be safe. There would be no-where you could hide from Artan vengeance.”

The words echoed in Toa-Sytell’s mind, and in their echo they subtly altered: You will never be safe, Caine of Garthan Hold. There is nowhere you can hide from Monastic vengeance. “Ha!” he barked, snapping his fingers and pointing at Raithe’s image in the mirror. “I know you now—I remember!”

Raithe’s brows drew together. “I’m sorry?”

“You were here, in this room!” Toa-Sytell said triumphantly. “That night—that night Caine killed him here on the carpet. You were one of the guards—”

“I was,” Raithe confirmed grimly. “But I do not see how this relates to your business with the Artan Viceroy.”

“Well, of course it does . . .” Toa-Sytell frowned; of course there was a connection here. Wasn’t there? He felt sure that the connection was an important one, a point that must be made, though now he couldn’t remember why. He reached for his brandy snifter, but found it to be empty; he felt a bit dizzy, and he decided he had drunk enough for the night. “I, ah, the point is . . . I was only thinking,” he said lamely, “about the way lives seem to cross each other, for no reason . . .”

At this, Raithe stiffened as though he’d taken a shock, and a vein bulged, pulsing, around his right eye, but Toa-Sytell was too light-headed to attach any significance to this. He wiped his free hand across his eyes and said, “Give my message to Garrette. Now. Tonight.”

Before Raithe could begin another protest, Toa-Sytell released the hand of the Speaking Brother, and Raithe vanished. Toa-Sytell blinked at the mirror, somewhat surprised to find himself staring at the reflection of an aging, exhausted drunk. Time to go home, he thought, and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

From a seat beside the writing table, Damon stared at him, white faced, appalled by even the half of the conversation that he had heard. Toa-Sytell shrugged and shook his head to indicate there was nothing to worry about, though he could not bring himself to form the words.

“Sorry about the ball, Damon,” he said thickly. “Hope the rest of it goes well. I, ah, I’m going home now.”

He lurched toward the door, thinking Well, that should have gotten things rolling.

7

RAITHE SAT FROZEN before the Artan Mirror, his hand upon the golden grip.

Me, he thought in wonder. It’s me.

He saw it now: his entire life lay unfolded before him, all its twists and turns laid bare. Here at this crux of history, standing on the nexal node of conflict between the Empire and the Artans and the subhuman House Mithondionne, he had found the connection he had sought. He had found the hand of Caine.

He had found it in the mirror.

Caine had made him; Caine had driven the quest for power and knowledge that had ended with Raithe being right here, right now, where history was so delicately balanced as to topple according to his slightest breath. Caine had put Toa-Sytell upon the Oaken Throne. Caine had inspired the heretic terrorists who had sparked Toa-Sytell’s use of the Mirror, to bring those words to him: . . . the way lives cross each other, for no reason . . .

But there was a reason. Caine was the reason.

He saw it now: saw the possibility, saw the opportunity. He saw what Caine might do here—if Caine served the true dream of One Humanity. He saw the opening for a Cainelike stroke: a balance upon which he could throw his own weight. On this whole continent, perhaps the whole world, there was no greater threat to the future of humanity than the elves of House Mithondionne. With one elegant gesture, he could bring against them the unguessable power of the other great threat to the true dream: the Aktiri—the people of Caine.

And let the two most powerful enemies of the Human Future destroy each other.

He rose.

“Ptolan,” he said calmly, distantly amazed at how serene and normal his voice sounded to his ears. “Master Ptolan, attend me.”

Only the scuffle of a step or two preceded the voice; Ptolan must have been eavesdropping. “Yes, Master Raithe?”

“Summon the Speaking Brother; wake him, if need be.” Raithe had the Mirror skill, to send this message himself, but he had urgent business within the walls of Thorncleft Castle above the town—business that could not wait the minutes such a message would require.

“The Council must be informed,” he said. “There exists a state of war between the Artan overlords of Transdeia and the elves of House Mithondionne.”

“War?” Ptolan asked breathlessly. “War now?”

Raithe’s lips thinned; he stared far into the night sky. “Let us say, within the hour.”

As Ptolan scurried away, Raithe slowly turned to the corner of his room, to strike his chest and offer his heart’s blood to the shrine of Ma’elKoth.

8

THE ELVISH LEGATES stood in Vinson Garrette’s drawing room with indifferent poise, as jarringly out of place as ballerinas in a slaughterhouse. Administrator Garrette gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the sweat that trailed down his ribs from his armpits.

He had designed the room’s decor himself, modeling it loosely upon the Cedar Room of England’s Warwick Castle. Darkly polished, intricately carved, and interlocking wall panels stretched fifteen feet to the elaborate, gold-leafed plaster of the ceiling, which was done in the massive baroque style of Italy’s seventeenth century. The fireplace was an astonishing edifice of rose-veined marble, half again Garrette’s height; upon the mantel stood an enormous mechanical clock, its bejeweled pendulum scattering multicolored fire. Five enormous crystal chandeliers blazed with the light of three hundred candles. The carpet had been hand woven in a single piece, its design mirroring that of the ceiling above, and everywhere on that carpet rested furniture of unparalleled grace in design.

This potent combination of wealth and taste would give any man pause, would place him in his proper relationship with the Artan Viceroy, starting all dealings off with the proper note of deference to Garrette’s power and discernment—which, of course, had much less to do with his own vanity than with his devotion to the Company. As Viceroy, he was the public face of the Overworld Company—of what the natives believed was the Kingdom of Arta—and, as such, it was his duty to present an image that commanded the respect the Company deserved.

These damned elves, though—

They had minced around the room, muttering among themselves, occasionally giving out that tinkling wind-chime laughter of theirs. Now and again one would turn to ask him a courteous question on the origin of this fabric or the history of some particular type of scrollwork upon the furniture—questions of the sort that no one could have answered except some bloody interior designer, certainly not a man engaged in the important business of running this duchy. And they had seemed privately amused by his ignorance.

He had hated them on sight.

Those alien faces sketched in a cartoon of hauteur, the inhuman poise that underlay their polite interest in the furnishings—everything about them made him feel like some bloody yokel, a bumpkin displaying his backwoods sty as though it were a palace. They made this magnificent room feel like something an infant might fingerpaint in his own shit.

He could dismiss the insult to himself, but disrespect to the Company was unforgivable. They made a joke of his entire life.

And it was more than that, as the Administrator was not ashamed to admit. Those overlarge, overslanted cat eyes of theirs, their misshapen skulls, brought to mind the child-stealing bogymen that had haunted his dreams even through his teens: they looked like the villains of a thousand childish terror tales.

They looked like Greys.

Garrette cleared his throat. “On the matter of, ahmn, Diamondwell, gentlemen—ah, gentle, mm, gentlefolk . . . ?” Damn this bloody Westerling! Had he insulted them? The blasted language was purely clumsy. He was an Administrator, not some damned diplomat. He was uncertain as to the actual relationship between Diamondwell and House Mithondionne—weren’t dwarfs and elves supposed to hate each other, or something? He couldn’t remember if that idea came from Overworld history, or some damned fairy tale his mother had made him read as a boy.

And now they were staring at him, all five of them. Garrette’s face began to heat up. The damned elves stared at him like they could read his mind.

“Ah, yes, Diamondwell,” one of them said—Quelliar was the name Garrette had been given, and he’d taken this elf for the leader. “It was lovely. I guested there, mmm, perhaps it was in the second decade of Ravenlock—that would be, oh, nine hundred–odd years ago, as you humans reckon, Your Highness. Spectacular, it was. Caverns that gleamed of travertine, and a jolly, sturdy folk: fine cooks and uproarious dancers.”

“Though no ear for music,” another put in.

“Ah, but the rhythm,” Quelliar countered. “For their taste, rhythm outweighs pitch.”

“Hmm, true,” a third said. “The stonebenders of those days did not speak of an ear for music, but rather of a heart for dance.”

Garrette’s face remained attentively blank, while inwardly he struggled to keep his frustration from boiling down to fury. This was some kind of damned game for them, he was sure of it.

A lovely place indeed, he sneered inside his head. He had seen those caverns: dark, dank, airless holes in the rock, their only real value lying ignored in the stone. Those dwarfs had been no better than savages, bowing down before their tribal fetish while the very walls around them gleamed and glittered with untold mineral wealth. The Company’s geological survey still explored the caves, and each new report was more exciting than the last; stoping had begun around the first two drill sites, and the extracted ores had been found to be rich beyond imagining.

What a waste, Garrette thought, as he always did when he imagined all the centuries those dwarfs had squatted in the caves. Diamondwell was the latest example of one of Garrette’s primary rules: If you don’t know how to use something, you have no call to complain when it’s taken by somebody who does. The stunted little troglodytes didn’t even really understand what they had lost.

But—as always—it seemed that the solution had constructed a problem of its own. These damned elves—

One had to respect their power, though. Every report had made that clear. Elves can reach into your mind; they can make you hallucinate on command. This was why every door to this room was posted with Overworld Company secmen—the “Artan Guard”—wearing the latest magick-resistant ballistic armor and bearing chemically powered assault rifles. At the very first indication that Garrette saw something in this room that didn’t belong, one shout would bring six heavily armed men through those doors, and they would come in shooting. He would not take the slightest chance.

And if the damned elves could read his mind, let them read that there. Maybe then they’d give him his due respect.

He forced the thought away. That was nothing but a conflict rehearsal. He did this too often; it was a bad habit that he’d been trying for years to overcome. Rehearsing a conflict brings that energy into your life, he repeated to himself. It was another of his primary rules.

Back to business: He took a deep breath and tried again. “The, ah, Diamondwell resettlement camp is not far from Thorncleft. Perhaps in the morning, I might take you to it? You could see for yourselves how well they are cared for.”

Quelliar’s eyebrows slanted even more. “Like pets?”

“Like partners,” Garrette corrected firmly, but Quelliar seemed not to hear.

“Humans and their pets,” he said, impenetrably patronizing. His voice chimed with alien laughter. “Who owns whom?”

“Valued partners,” Garrette insisted. Two could play that I-don’t-hear-you game, he told himself. “They have been of such very great assistance in our mining—”

“Perhaps our difficulties arise from language,” Quelliar said graciously. “In Mithondion, the sort of partners that must be confined by fences are called cattle. Do you not know that word?”

Garrette pasted on his professionally blank Administrator’s smile while he strove to guess at an appropriate response. He was rescued by the opening of a door. A secman, assault rifle slung, took one uncertain step inside and closed the door behind him; then he came to attention and saluted, his right hand to the brow above the silver-mesh face shield of his antimagick helmet.

“Apologies for interrupting, Administrator,” he said in English. “The Monastic Ambassador is in the hall.”

“Raithe?” Garrette said, frowning. What on Earth would the Ambassador be doing here at this hour?

“Yes, sir. In the hall outside.”

“What does he want?”

“He wouldn’t say, sir. But he insists that it’s extremely urgent.”

For that matter, how the devil had the Monastic Ambassador gotten this far into Thornkeep without Garrette having been informed? Garrette gave his head an irritable shake. “Very well,” he said crisply. “Tell his Excellency that as soon as I have completed this business . . .”

His voice trailed off as the door swung silently inward to reveal Ambassador Raithe standing patiently in the hallway beyond. The Ambassador stood very straight and very still, his robes of crimson and gold draped like folds of stone. He held his hands clasped before him in an unusual manner, his fingers knotted in a way that Garrette’s eyes could not clearly resolve.

“Oh,” Garrette said faintly. Relief and gratitude flooded through him. “Oh, thank God . . .” Raithe was here! At last! Garrette hadn’t realized how much he had missed Raithe, how much he had needed the simple reassurance of his friend’s presence. “Raithe!” he said, brightening. Now that he was here, Garrette could breathe again. “Please, come in, come in. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.”

The Monastic Ambassador paced into the room. “And I am grateful to have arrived in time. Send your guard back to his post.”

“Of course, of course.” Garrette gestured to the secman, who went back to join his partner in the hallway. “And shut the door, you idiot!”

“No need,” Raithe said quietly. He stared at the door, and the door swung closed.

By itself.

Garrette’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

Raithe gazed down at the lock, and his colorless eyes narrowed. The lock gave out a flat snikt that echoed in the silence like a rifle being slowly and deliberately cocked.

“What?”

From the door opposite came a similar click; Raithe glanced at the third door, and its lock clicked. One by one the siege shutters banged closed over the windows, and their locks secured as well.

“Raithe?” Garrette ventured uncertainly. “Raithe, what are you doing?”

Raithe compressed his lips slightly and met each pair of eyes in turn. He offered them all a narrow smile. “I am preventing the escape of these assassins.”

Quelliar turned with the inhumanly deliberate grace of a cobra seeking the sun. “Human child,” he said. The chime of his amusement became the toll of distant bells, ancient and cold. “I am the Eldest of Massall. The petty tricks you display? I taught them to ten generations of your ancestors, a thousand years before your birth, when humans were no more than our—” A dark glance at Garrette. “—partners. Do not force us to demonstrate that your elders are also your betters.”

Though the elf neither moved nor even changed expression, he was somehow the source of a chilling wave of awareness that broke over Garrette and drenched him with dread. It was as though Garrette suddenly awoke from some inexplicable dream: he stared at the Monastic Ambassador in growing horror. Friends? How had he believed they had ever been friends? He barely knew the man, and privately considered him a tiresome fanatic, a borderline personality who wavered between earnest dullness and freakish monomania. And the look Raithe gave Quelliar, an unblinking stare of expressionless, psychopathic fixity, began to transform Garrette’s sudden dread into actual physical fear.

“I am Raithe of Ankhana,” he said, and struck his hands together: a rasping, scraping clap as though he dusted sand from his palms in Quelliar’s direction.

Nothing happened.

The elves still stared at him curiously. Garrette barely dared to breathe, praying that this was some ungodly prank. Raithe folded his arms, a tiny smile of grim satisfaction wrinkling the corners of his eyes. Quelliar coughed, once. His companions turned to him.

Garrette flinched, afraid to look, unable to resist.

The elf’s feathery brows drew together in astonishment; his head cocked like that of a puzzled puppy. He sank slowly to his knees. Still looking only surprised, not even alarmed—much less in any kind of pain—Quelliar vomited a gout of black blood that splashed across the carpet. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, to Garrette. “I’m very sorry.”

Then he pitched face first into the spreading pool of bloody vomit. He convulsed, writhing, gagging up great scarlet-laced chunks that plopped from his lips, as though something had diced his stomach, his liver, and his intestines and now forced pieces of them up his throat. A spray of cherry-black droplets splattered across the delicate embroidery of a Louis XIV couch.

Finally, he made only fading aspirated grunts—“hghkh . . . gkh . . . gkh . . . ghhss”—and lay still.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Raithe said serenely. He raised his eyebrows at the other elves, but their leader’s sudden death seemed to have astonished them into immobility. Garrette drowned in terror, shaking, unable to breathe, certain that the elves somehow communicated with each other without word or gesture, planning some unimaginable alien vengeance; Raithe, on the other hand, turned aside as though they could be utterly dismissed.

Once again he folded his hands in that unusual way, and Garrette’s fear vanished; even the memory of having been afraid shredded like smoke and blew away. “Call your guards,” Raithe said. “Have these murderers shot.”

And because Raithe was, after all, one of Garrette’s oldest friends, that was precisely what he did.

9

THE RAILHEAD ONCE had been a square, a plaza in the midst of Lower Thorncleft; the buildings that faced and surrounded it still stood beneath a ceiling that was a graceful arc of steel beams and armorglass—like a medieval street preserved in an Earthside tourist trap—and armor-glass formed the walls that sealed the streets that once had led into the plaza. Only the steel ribbons of the railways entered unhindered. Massive steam-powered locomotives hauled laden freight trains into the Railhead five times an hour. Little sunlight could enter through armor-glass blackened by near-constant coal smoke; gas lamps illuminated the Railhead’s interior twenty-four hours a day. Even at noon, all within took on a greenish moonlit cast. Now, at night, everything became pale and alien.

The Overworld Company offices occupied a large building that once had been the town home of a prosperous merchant. It stood adjacent to the warehouse that had been converted to hold the Overworld link of the transfer pump, and so a trace of ozone and sulphur always hung in the office air: it smelled like Earth.

In what had been the merchant’s basement was the true nerve center of the offices: nestled snugly below ground, within an Earth-normal field powered by the transfer pump next door, was the Data Processing Center. Here, where the EN field protected sensitive electronics from the randomizing effects of Overworld physics, lay the computers and Earthside communications equipment that were the brains of the Company.

Crossing the threshold of the DPC awakened Garrette with a shock like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on his head. He staggered, gasping, reaching blindly around himself for something, anything, to hold on to, to support himself against a shattering surge of panic.

A strong hand took his; then a muscular arm enfolded his shoulders with comforting warmth. He found himself staring into the ice-colored eyes of Ambassador Raithe from close enough to kiss.

Garrette screamed.

But only a muffled moan came out past the hand Raithe clamped over his mouth. “Shhh,” Raithe murmured soothingly. “It’s all right, Vinse; I won’t hurt you. Shh.”

Garrette trembled with shock, too frightened to struggle. He tried to swallow, failed, and panted harshly through his nose until Raithe finally took the hand away from his mouth. “What—? How did you—? My God—”

He remembered it all: the death of Quelliar, the roar of assault rifles as the secmen had broken down the doors of his drawing room and shot the elves to rags. He remembered inviting Raithe to accompany him while he made his report on the incident to his superiors—remembered sitting in the carriage beside him, chattering like a schoolgirl, all the way from Thornkeep to the Railhead—

Remembered ordering everyone out of the DPC—

Oh, my God, Garrette moaned inside his head, and his eyes rolled wildly in renewed panic. All that returned his gaze were the mindless patterns of screen savers flickering across the screens in empty cubicles. Oh my God, I did it, I sent everybody out of here—I’m alone with him!

Raithe gazed into his eyes as though his heart could be read there like a book. “Vinse,” he said slowly, cajolingly, “Vinse, Vinse, Vinse. Calm yourself. I’m on your side. We’re partners, now.”

“But, but, but, what did you do to me? How did you make me bring you in here? And why? Why?”

“We’re here, Vinse, because as soon as you left my presence, you would have realized that you had acted under my influence. We came here to speak because I wish you to be persuaded, not controlled. Here—” His gesture took in the cubicles and the glowing deskscreens. “—as you will understand, given only a moment’s thought, no power at my command can force your mind against your will. For our partnership to prosper, I must reach your reason.”

“My reason—? Partnership?” Garrette squirmed and pushed himself away from Raithe’s encircling arm and turned to face him, livid with terrified anger. “My God, man! Partnership? You’ve started a war!”

“No, Vinse,” Raithe said calmly. His lips bent in a smile both warm and sad. “You started the war. All I’ve done is give you the chance to strike the first blow.”

Somehow that smile stifled Garrette’s urge to bluster. Instead, he turned away and sank into the nearest chair. He swiveled around so that he could lean on the desk and rest his face on his hands. “You’re talking about Diamondwell.”

“Of course I am. The Diamondwell stonebenders have been allied with House Mithondionne since before the Liberation. More than a thousand years. If those legates had returned to T’farrell Ravenlock, having seen what they had seen, war would have come whether you willed it or no. The war began when you poisoned the Diamondwell aquifer.”

“Oh, my God,” Garrette whispered. He dug his thumbs into the corners of his eyes, struggling with a sudden suicidal urge to jam them in, to gouge his eyes right out of his head. “Oh, my God. Why didn’t you tell me? You were here—you knew, you could see what was happening. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Raithe shrugged. “Why should I?”

Garrette lifted his head to stare at the Ambassador. His face felt raw and numb, as though he’d been scalded by boiling water though the pain had not yet hit.

“Stop a war between the limitless power of Arta and the greatest enemy of Humanity?” Raithe said reasonably. “I would be mad to do so. Why should the Monasteries care what losses you take? To rid the world of elves, no price is too high—and war between the two of you costs us nothing at all.”

“Then w-why—” he stammered, “what are you doing . . . ? Why . . . ? I mean, you said, partnership . . . ?”

“Oh yes, Vinse. I am not blind to one vital, essential, overwhelming fact: Artan or no, you are as human as I am.”

I’m a lot more human than you are, you crazed savage, Garrette thought, but he kept his expression perfectly neutral. Right now his situation was so impossibly desperate that he’d take any help, from anyone—even this fanatical psychopath.

“And I know, too,” Raithe went on, “that you are not a warlike man. I know that you prefer negotiation to violence, and that is admirable, Vinse; it is truly—so long as there is a chance that negotiation will succeed. But there can be no peace between species, Vinse; negotiation would only give the elves more time to mass their forces and organize their campaign. That is why the legates had to die as they did. Now, war is inevitable. It is your sole remaining option. And it may be weeks, even a month, before House Mithondionne learns the fate of its legates. Now, you are the one with time as an ally. Use it wisely, Vinse. Prepare your strike.”

“But, but you don’t understand,” Garrette said hopelessly. “I can’t just declare a war! I don’t have the authority . . . I have superiors, to whom I am accountable—and even they are accountable to the, to the, er, the nobility of Arta. Most of the, uh, the nobility would never accept a war—I would be ordered to pursue a purely diplomatic solution.”

Raithe shrugged. “Can you not merely appear to do so? I may be able to offer you clandestine allies to do the actual fighting.”

Garrette squinted at him, calculating. He imagined himself speaking before the Leisure Congress, cloaked in statesmanship; he imagined offering the Company’s services as a peace-maker, an arbitrator, a go-between seeking an end to the violence between two of Transdeia’s valued neighbors—

Not only might he be able to protect the Company, his own career might yet be saved.

“Allies?” he said.

“Mm, yes,” Raithe replied judiciously. “I should think allies would be very possible. What would . . . your superiors . . . say to an alliance with the Ankhanan Empire?”

“Ankhana?” Garrette was dazzled by the sheer boldness of it. “You could arrange an alliance with Ankhana?”

“Very likely. Oh, to be sure, it would be informal—even secret, at first—but I should think that the common interests of Arta and Ankhana could only serve to bind them together more and more closely as time passes.”

“How—how would we go about this?”

“First, as a gesture of good faith,” Raithe said crisply, “you and your Aktiri brethren can stop supporting Cainism within the Empire.”

Garrette gasped and left his mouth hanging open.

Raithe smiled thinly. “Do you forget how I came to be here? I have seen into your mind. I know that Artans and Aktiri are one and the same. I know that Caine was an Aktir, and that the Aktiri fight in the Cainist cause.”

“I—I—”

“I also know—I should say, I believe—that the ultimate goals of the Empire, the Monasteries, and Arta finally coincide. We all serve the Human Future. Is this not so?”

“I, well, I suppose—”

“Once we’ve established normal relations between Arta and Ankhana, you can sell Artan military magick to them—those springless repeating pellet bows would be ideal—and I’d imagine they’d be more than happy to use them in the wholesale slaughter of elves.”

Garrette bit his lip. It was an attractive idea, audacious, powerful, but . . . “It’s not that simple,” he said. “There’s no way we could keep it a secret, and the nobility would resist even that.”

“The nobility, the nobility,” Raithe spat. “Does your king live in fear of his nobility?”

“We have no king,” Garrette said. How was he supposed to explain the Leisure Congress so that Raithe’s feudal mind would understand? “We have a . . . a ruling council of nobles. And my ultimate superiors form only a small fraction of that council. Should the majority decide against us, we would be forced to give way. We can’t be seen to even prepare for war until we’ve already been attacked.”

“You have been attacked,” Raithe said virtuously, “and treacherously—in your own chambers. Were it not for the alert action of the Artan Guard, you would have been killed.”

“Mmm, maybe,” Garrette said, “but some will find that a bit too convenient, and a bit less than convincing. No, we can’t do it that way.”

Raithe gave him a hard smile and reached out to put his hand on Garrette’s arm. Garrette met his gaze curiously, and then he realized why Raithe looked so suddenly gratified: Garrette had begun speaking—and thinking—of Raithe and himself as a we.

As a partnership, with a common goal.

And he found, too, that he felt gratified as well. He had never realized how lonely he had become, how burdensome had been the weight of protecting the Company’s interests day after day, year after year. Raithe didn’t seem to be such a bad sort, after all, not really a psychopath, only a hard man—a violent man, certainly, but he came of a violent culture, one not really advanced enough to recognize the sanctity of human life—

Not that elves are actually human, anyway.

Garrette was always careful to remind himself that an enlightened man does not judge others by his own cultural standards; this was one of his primary rules.

“We should be looking for some way to win the war before it even starts, but by accident,” Garrette said. “We have to make it look like we never meant them any harm.”

“I know that you—Artans, I mean—are an expansionist people,” Raithe said thoughtfully. “You must have found yourselves in conflicts with hostile native populations in the past; I’m sure you’ve developed some kind of strategy for dealing with them—some way of eliminating the threat that doesn’t arouse the resistance of the more fuzzy-minded among your nobility . . . ?”

Garrette stared at him, his mouth slowly opening as he remembered another story from his childhood, one of those whispered legends that Administrator kids tell each other. It had to do with an Amerindian tribe . . . the Su? Something like that. It didn’t matter.

Suddenly he was electrified by a jolt of possibility.

He could do it. Right now. Right here. The master stroke that would save the Company, and save himself.

My God, he thought. He rose, his hands fluttering with jittery energy. “Raithe, I’m brilliant—I’m a genius, by God, I’ve got it!”

He clapped the Ambassador on the arm, and shook his hand, and barely managed to stop himself from maiming his dignity by doing a little dance. He couldn’t make himself sit down; he swiveled the nearest deskscreen to an upward angle and stroked it to life. As the screen saver vanished, he accessed the telecom program and gave his identity code.

English, he reminded himself. Have to speak English with these people.

The screen cleared to the cheerfully pretty face of a young man in Artisan dress. “San Francisco Studio Central,” he said happily. “How may I help you?”

“I am Administrator Vinson Garrette of the Overworld Company. This is a Priority One Confidential call to your Chief of Biocontainment. Prepare for encoding.”

The young Artisan’s eyes widened sharply. He swallowed hard and said, “Yes sir, Administrator! Preparing . . .” Through the speaker came the sound of fingers flitting over a keypad. “Prepared.”

“Engage.”

My God, Garrette thought as he waited for the Biocontainment chief to answer. My God, you must love me after all.

THE DARK ANGEL waited in bondage within a prison he had built, shackled by chains of his own making. For a span of years, he had no food but his own body. He fed upon himself: gnawed his own bones, sucked out his own marrow.

He did not know for what he waited, but wait he did, nonetheless.

On one black day, there came the faintest whisper of distant trumpets, and the dark angel stirred within his prison.