"That might explain it." Nylan gave a half laugh.

   Istril set the bow by the stairs, and they walked to the tables.

   "Testing the engineer's bow?" asked Gerlich politely.

   Ryba's eyes flicked to Nylan. "You forged a bow?"

   "Finally," the engineer admitted. "It's been difficult."

   "I hope you didn't spend too much power on it," Gerlich added from his seat in the middle of the first table. Selitra sat beside him.

   "You have to spend power to create anything," pointed out Nylan. "We need good longer-range weapons."

   "Your blades are more effective," countered Gerlich.

   "I don't think so," said Istril firmly. "I tested the bow, and it's perfect for a mounted guard."

   "For a guard, perhaps, but I can put more power into the great bow," answered Gerlich.

   "I'm sure you can," responded Istril politely. "But the engineer's bow works much better for a mounted guard, and I'm more than glad to use it. So will the others, I'm sure, since it's much easier to carry on horseback, and far more accurate than that monster you carry."

   "It doesn't have the pull." Gerlich's voice carried an edge.

   Ryba's eyes flicked between the silver-haired guard and the dark-haired man.

   "It has enough power to go through a breastplate at combat range and that should be enough for anyone," snapped Istril.

   "I thought we were talking true long-range weapons ..."

   "Enough," said Ryba quietly. "The engineer's weapons will be sung of long after we are all gone from Westwind. So will your great bow, Gerlich. There's room for both in history. It's been a long day, and we don't need an argument at dinner. In fact, we don't need arguments at all. We need to work together to get through the coming winter."

   Nylan slipped into his seat quietly, glancing at the scattering of ashes in the cold hearth. "No fire?"

   "It's not that cold yet, and it takes work to saw and split logs, even the dry deadwood," said Ayrlyn from across the table. Beside her, on the side closest to Ryba, sat Hryessa. Relyn sat on the other side.

   "You're wearing a jacket."

   "I'm not a Sybran," conceded the redheaded healer. "You're half Sybran, at least."

   Nylan grinned and shook his head. "The wrong half, probably."

   Dinner consisted of long strips of meat, clearly beaten into tenderness, and spiced with the hot dried peppers that Kyseen had found somewhere, then covered with an even hotter red-brown sauce. With it were lumpy noodles, some almost as thick as small dumplings, and some form of sliced root.

   Nylan forced himself to take several circular root slices, but he ladled the sauce over everything except the bread. The bread seemed to get better.

   The only beverage was water. They had a choice of bitter tea in the morning and water at night. The engineer wondered how long it would be before they might have something else.

   Hryessa looked blankly at the barely smoothed wood of the tabletop while conversation continued. As Nylan started to eat, the local woman helped herself to another hefty portion of meat and dumpling noodles. She ate slowly, as though she were full, but could not believe that she would eat the next day.

   Nylan refrained from shaking his head and took a second bite. By the time he had swallowed the mouthful of meat and dumplings, the sweat had beaded up on his forehead.

   He drained his mug and refilled it, then blotted his forehead.

   "The bread works better than the water," said Ryba dryly.

   Across the end of the table, Ayrlyn nodded.

   He took a mouthful and chewed. They were right. The burning faded, and he took another mouthful. After more bread and some water, he asked, "Is this the latest way for Kyseen to stop complaints about the food? How can you complain if it's too hot to taste?"

   "I think it's good," offered Gerlich.

   "He never had any taste to begin with," suggested Ayrlyn in a whisper.

   "He still doesn't," muttered Nylan, adding more loudly, "You always liked things hot and direct."

   A wave of laughter rolled down the table. Hryessa ignored the humor; Relyn frowned slightly, still struggling to eat with his left hand; and Nylan reminded himself that he had wanted to craft something for Relyn's stump.

   "Better than cold and indirect," countered Gerlich.

   Only a few chuckles greeted his remark, then small talk resumed around the two tables, especially at the end away from the hearth where Huldran and Cessya sat.

   Nylan overheard a few of the phrases.

   ". . . bathing when there's ice on the walls ..."

   "... better than stinking . . ."

   ". . . cares? No one but the engineer, and you know how dangerous that'd be ..."

   Nylan glanced toward the corner of the first table where Narliat sat beside Denalle, who was attempting to practice her Anglorat on the armsman. Narliat's face was bland, although Nylan sensed the man was fighting boredom.

   Nylan concentrated on finishing his meal, although he required two more large chunks of bread to get him through the last of the spiced meat.

   "No sweets?" asked Istril, her voice rising above the murmurs around the tables.

   "What kind of sweets?" replied Gerlich.

   "Not your kind, Weapons. You're as direct as that crowbar you carry. That's hard on a woman." Istril stood and walked toward the steps to reclaim the composite bow.

   Relyn, sitting beside Ayrlyn, watched the slender marine. He pursed his lips, opened his mouth, then closed it. "How . . . ? No man would accept that in Lornth."

   "This isn't Lornth, Relyn," said Ayrlyn. "This is Westwind, and the women make the rules. Gerlich crossed the marshal once; she took him apart. She used her bare hands and feet to kill a marine who crossed her."

   The young noble glanced at Nylan. "What about you, Mage?"

   "Gerlich is better at the martial valors than I am, I suspect."

   "You're better with a blade," said Ryba, "for all of his words about his great sword."

   Gerlich's eyes hardened, but he turned and smiled to Selitra, then rose and bowed to Ryba. "It has been a long day, Ryba, and we will be hunting early tomorrow."

   Ryba returned the gesture with one even more curt. "May you sleep well."

   Gerlich smiled, and Nylan tried not to frown. He liked the man less and less as the seasons passed.

   "You are a strange one, Mage," said Relyn slowly. "You are better with a blade than most, yet you dislike using it. You can wield the fire of order, and yet you defer to others."

   "Too much killing leaves me unable to function very well."

   "But you are good at it."

   "Unfortunately," Nylan said. "Unfortunately."

   Later, in the darkness, Nylan and Ryba walked up from the great hall, slowly, the four sets of steps that led to their space on the sixth level.

   "Some nights, I get so tired," said Nylan. "It's easier to chop wood and do heavy labor than to use the laser these days. It's beginning to fail."

   "Can you do any more of the bows?"

   "I did six. I might be able to do some more, but I haven't cut all the stone troughs for the bathhouse and showers. I did get the heater sections done."

   "A heater?" asked Ryba.

   "It's not really a water heater, but I figured that I could put a storage tank with one side on the back of the chimney for the heating stove, because not many people will bathe in ice water in a room without heat. It probably won't get the water really hot, but it might make it bearable, and the back stone wall is strong enough to hold a small tank."

   "You're amazing."

   He shrugged in the gloom of the third-level landing, almost embarrassed. "I just try to make things work."

   "You won't always be able to, Nylan."

   "Probably not, but I have to try."

   "I know." She reached out and squeezed his hand, briefly, then started up the steps again.

   When they reached the top level, Nylan paused. Framed in the right-hand window, the unglazed one, was Freyja, the ice-needle peak faintly luminescent under the clear stars and the black-purple sky. Nylan studied the ice, marveling at the knife-sharpness of the mountain.

   Ryba kicked off her boots and eased out of the shipsuit. Nylan turned and swallowed. Lately, Ryba had been distant, oh - so - distant. He just looked.

   "You don't just have to look," she said in a low voice. "Today is all that is certain."

   He took a step forward, and so did Ryba, and her fingers were deft on the closures of his tattered shipsuit.

   "You need leathers," she whispered before her lips touched his. "Leathers fit for the greatest engineer."

   "I'm not-"

   "Hush ... we need what is certain."

   Nylan agreed with that as his arms went around her satin-skinned form, still slender, with only the slightest rounding in her waist, the slightest hint of greater fullness in her breasts.

   Later, much later, as they lay on the joined couches that they still shared, Nylan held her hand and looked at Freyja, wondering if the peak had a fiery center like Ryba.

   "I'll be back," Ryba whispered as she sat up and pulled her shipsuit over her naked form. She padded down the stairs barefoot, after picking up an object Nylan could not make out, night vision or not, from beneath the couch.

   As the cold breeze sifted through the open windows- both the single window with the armaglass and the one with shutters alone were open-the engineer pulled the thin blanket up to his chest, and waited . .. and waited.

   His eyes had closed when he heard bare feet, and he turned and asked sleepily, "What took so long?"

   "I ran into Istril, and she wanted something," Ryba said. "I'm never off-duty anymore, it seems. I was able to help her, but it took a bit longer than I'd thought. She thinks a lot of you."

   "She's a good person," Nylan said, stifling a yawn and reaching out to touch Ryba's silken skin, skin so smooth that no one would have believed that it belonged to an avenging angel, to the angel.

   "Yes. All of the marines are good. That's one reason why I do what I do." Ryba let Nylan move to her, but the engineer felt the reserve there, the holding back that seemed so often present, even at the most intimate times.

   And he held back a sigh, only agreeing with her words. "They all are good, and I do the best I can."

   "I know." Those two words were softer, much softer, and sadder. "I know." But she said nothing more as they lay there in the cool night that foreshadowed a far, far colder winter-as they lay there and Ryba shuddered once, twice, and was silent.

   Hryessa's words ran through Nylan's mind, again and again. "But she is the angel."

   Darkness, what had they begun? Where would it end?

 

 

XXXVIII

 

SILLEK. GESTURES TO the chair closest to the broadleaf fern that screens the pair of wooden armchairs from the remainder of the courtyard and from Zeldyan's family and retainers.

   "You are most kind, Lord Sillek," murmurs Zeldyan as she sits, leaning forward, the husky bell-like tones of her voice just loud enough to be heard over the splashing of the fountain.

   "No," says Sillek. "I am not kind. I am fortunate. You are intelligent and beautiful, and ..." He shrugs, not wishing to voice what he thinks. Despite the apparently secluded setting of the chairs and low table between them, he understands that all he says could be returned to Gethen.

   "Your words are kind."

   "I try to make my actions kind," he answers as he seats himself and turns in the chair to face her directly.

   "Necessity does not always permit kindness." The blond looks at Sillek directly for the first time. "Necessity may be kind to you."

   "You speak honestly, lady, as though I were a duty. There is someone else who has courted you?"

   Zeldyan laughs. "Many have paid court, but none, I think, to me. Rather they have courted my father through me."

   "I would like to say that I am sorry."

   "You are more honest than most, and more comely." Her hand touches the silver and black hairband briefly, and a sad smile plays across her lips. "Have you not courted others?"

   "I am afraid you have the advantage on me, lady, for I have neither courted, nor been courted-until now."

   "Why might that be?" She leans forward ever so slightly.

   "Because"-he shrugs-"I did not wish to be forced into a union of necessity." He laughs once, not trying to hide the slightly bitter undertone.

   "You are too honest to be a lord, ser. For that, I fear you will pay dearly." Zeldyan's tone is sprightly.

   "Perhaps you could help me."

   "To be dishonest?" She raises her eyebrows.

   "Only if dishonesty is to learn to love honestly."

   "You drive a hard bargain, Ser Sillek." Her eyes drop toward the polished brown stone tiles of the courtyard.

   Sillek reaches out and takes her right hand in his left. "Hard it may be, Zeldyan, but honest, and I hope you will understand that is what I would give you." Another short and bitter laugh follows, then several moments of silence. "I would not deceive you with flowery words, though you are beautiful and know that you are. But comeliness and beauty vanish quickly enough in our hard world, especially when courted for the wrong reasons."

   "You are far too honest, Sillek. Far too honest. Honesty is dangerous to a ruler."

   "It is, but to be less than honest is often more dangerous." Sillek frowns, then pauses. "Is it so evil to try to be honest with the lady I wish to join?"

   "You might ask her if that is her wish."

   The Lord of Lornth takes a deep breath. "I did not ask, not because I do not care, but because I had thought it was not your wish. I have appeared in your life from nowhere, and there must be many who have known and loved both your visage and your soul." He laughs softly. "I had not meant to be poetic, here, but my tongue betrayed me."

   Zeldyan's eyes moisten for an instant, but only for an instant, before she turns her head toward the broadleaf fern.

   Sillek waits, the lack of words punctuated by the splashing of the fountain. His eyes flick toward the end of the courtyard where he knows Gethen and Fornal make small talk about crops and hunting while they wait, and where, in another room, the lady Erenthla also waits.

   When Zeldyan faces Sillek again, her face is calm. "What would say your lady mother?"

   "Nothing." Sillek wets his lips. "Her thoughts are yet another thing. A fine match, she would think. She would say to me that the Lord of Gethen Groves has lands, and his support will strengthen Lornth and your patrimony, Sillek."

   "You court strangely, My Lord."

   "So I do. Say also that I court honestly." He offers her a head bow. "Would you be my consort, lady?"

   "Yes. And I will say more, Lord. Your honesty is welcome. May it always be so." Zeldyan bows her head in return, then smiles ironically. "Would you wish my company when you deliver my consent to my father?"

   Sillek stands. "I would not press, but I had thought we both might speak with your father, and then with your mother."

   "She would like that."

   Sillek extends his hand, and Zeldyan takes it, though she scarcely needs it to aid her from the chair. Their hands remain together as they walk past the fountain and back toward the far end of the courtyard.

 

 

XXXIX

 

NYLAN USED THE tongs to swing the rough bow frame into the focal point of the laser, struggling to keep the power flows smooth and still shape the metal around the composite core.

   On the stones he used for cooling after the quench lay a circular cuplike device with a blunt-very blunt-hook and two bows-most of a morning's work. He hoped the metal cup and hook would serve as an adequate artificial hand for Relyn; he was tired of the veiled references to one-armed men.

   His eyes went back to the two bows. All told, the engineer had made twelve over the eight-day before, each a struggle sandwiched between limited stone-cutting and building the heating stove for the bathhouse, and welding the two laundry tubs. Ellysia, relegated to laundry as a collateral duty because her obvious and early pregnancy had limited her riding, had immediately commandeered both. According to what Nylan had overheard, though, she refused to launder anything of Gerlich's.

   Nylan permitted himself a smile at that, before he forced his concentration back to controlling the laser, and smoothing the metal around the cormclit composite core of what would be another bow.

   As the tip of greenish light flowed toward the end of the bow, the energy flows from the powerhead fluctuated more and more wildly, and Nylan staggered where he stood, trying to hold the last focal point.

   Pphssttt! Even before the faint sizzling faded into silence, Nylan could tell from the collapse of the flux fields around the laser focal points that the powerhead had failed. The engineer slumped. The other cutting powerhead was in little better shape. The weapons head, although scarcely used, would squander power, depleting the cells in a fraction of a morning-without accomplishing much, except destroying whatever it was focused on.

   The last powerhead might last long enough to finish another handful of the composite bows.

   He frowned. First, he needed to cut the shower knife plates. Then, if the second powerhead lasted that long, he could go back to the bows. At least, the black tower was finished. That is, the basics were-roof, floors, the hearth, chimneys, the stove and the furnace itself, and the water system from the tower wall to the lower-level cistern.

   Everyone had needed something. Ryba had wanted weapons; everyone had needed shelter; the horses had needed stables; the tower had needed some windows ... the list had seemed endless.

   He disconnected the powerhead from the wand, glancing toward the uncompleted bathhouse behind him. Huldran, Cessya, and the others were raising the roof timbers on the stables.

   The single clang of the triangle announced the noon meal, and Nylan took the artificial hand and the broken power-head. He dropped off the powerhead in the tower, then found Relyn by the causeway. The mahogany-haired man sat on the stones watching Fierral and Jaseen spar, his eyes narrow.

   "Greetings, Mage."

   "Greetings. I brought you something." Nylan extended the device.

   "What. . . might that be?"

   "What I promised the other evening when I measured your arm." The engineer extended the artificial hand and mounting cup, measured to fit over the healing stump.

   "It might be better than nothing, ser." Relyn took it in his good left hand.

   Nylan felt himself growing angry, and the darkness rising within him, but he bit back the personal anger and chose his words carefully before he spoke. "It is no evil to lose, either a battle or a hand, to someone who is better. It is a great evil to refuse to struggle against your losses. I offer you a tool to help in that struggle. Are you too proud to use that tool? Does an armsman refuse a blade when his is broken?"

   Rather than say more, Nylan turned and left. He was one of the first at table for the midday meal, rather than the last, but he refused even to look in Relyn's direction.

   After he ate, Nylan excused himself and trudged back to the north side of the tower, where he set up the laser with the remaining powerhead.

   On the other side of the tower, in the fields, the field crew-Selitra, Siret, Ellysia, and Berlis, who still complained about her thigh wound-were gathering the beans, and digging up some of the bluish high-altitude potatoes. The potatoes that didn't seem ready could wait, but with the threat of light frosts growing heavier, the last of the aboveground produce had to come in.

   Between the carcasses dragged in by Gerlich and salted or dried, and the wild roots, and crops, and the barrels of assorted flours gotten in trading, Westwind might get through the winter-on tight rations. The food concentrates were almost gone, far faster than Ryba or Nylan had anticipated.

   Clang! Clang! The triangle sounded twice.

   Nylan looked up from reconnecting the second power-head as Istril led four other riders uphill toward the ridge. Another set of would-be crop raiders, no doubt. There wasn't the swirl of the white chaos-feel on the local net that happened when large numbers of armsmen showed up. Why his senses worked that way, he didn't know, only that they did.

   Since they didn't seem to need him, he turned his attention back to the work at hand. With the goggles in place, he studied the sheets of metal taken from lander three and the lines chalked on them.

   Finally, he triggered the laser and began to cut the knife plates, quickly and without much smoothing. All eight went quickly, and he took a deep breath when the long-handled plates were completed. The rest of the "valves" could be worked out with local materials, if necessary.

   He moved the leftover metal and laid out the three rough bow forms and the three composite cores he had already cut.

   Maybe... maybe... the laser would last through all three.

   At the sound of hooves, Nylan looked up. Istril led a mount, over which was a body. So did two of the marines who followed. Seven mounts, and three bows in all, and no obvious casualties for the marines. Nylan took a deep breath, then noticed that Istril had turned toward him.

   She reined up well short of the laser.

   Nylan checked the power and pushed back the goggles. "No casualties?"

   "No." She smiled broadly. "The bows work well. Very well." Then the smile became a grin. "Gerlich doesn't know what the frig he's talking about. He couldn't have sent an arrow as far as your bows, even with that monster of his. It's technique."

   Nylan nodded. "With most things, it's technique."

   "The bows may save a lot more lives than the blades, ser. Ours, anyway, and that's what we're worried about." She paused, then flicked the reins. "We need to take care of these."

   Nylan offered her a vague salute, watched as she turned her mount, then lowered the goggles.

   The energy flows tumbled through the powerhead like green rapids, and Nylan felt he was using all his energy just to smooth them, and it took even more to begin to shape the rough metal bow frame around the composite.

   Once more, his face was a river of sweat as he struggled with the laser and the shaping. And once more, he was drained, arms lined with internal fire and legs shaking, by the time he finished the bow and quenched it.

   The powerhead was failing, yet, after what Istril had told him, the bows might be the most important thing he could make before the laser system collapsed. So he rested on the cracked stone he used as a seat, trying to catch his breath and regain his strength before beginning the next bow.

   "So ... the mage is working hard." Relyn ambled into the north tower yard. He carried Nylan's creation in his left hand.

   "The mage always works hard." Nylan wiped his damp forehead.

   "You sweat like a pig. Yet I see no weapons, no hammers, no hot coals."

   "This is harder than that."

   "What? You work the fires of the angels' hell?"

   Nylan stood and walked toward the firin cell bank and the laser wand. "Watch. Then you can decide."

   Relyn's lips tightened, but he said nothing as Nylan lowered the goggles. The engineer inserted the composite strip in the groove of the bow frame, then picked up both with the tongs and the laser wand with his right hand.

   Again, the greenish light flickered, and Nylan wrestled with the fluctuating power levels as he molded metal around composite. Sweat streamed into and around his goggles. His arms and eyes burned, and his legs felt rubbery even before he quenched the bow and set it aside.

   He pushed back the goggles and blotted his face dry, but his eyes still burned from strain and the salt of his sweat. His tattered uniform was soaked. For a few moments, he just sat there, doubting whether the powerhead would last through another bow.

   "Worse than the fires of the angels' hell," Relyn finally offered.

   The words startled Nylan since, with all the concentration required, he had forgotten that the young noble had been watching.

   "It's hard, but I wouldn't know about the angels' hell. I've only seen the white mirror towers of the demons."

   "You look like men and women, but you are not." Relyn shook his head. "You bend the order force around chaos and form metal like a smith, and the fire you use is hotter than a smith's. Yet all the other angels say none but you can wield that green flame."

   "I won't be able to do that much longer. The flamemaker is failing," Nylan conceded.

   "That is why you work so hard?"

   The engineer nodded.

   Finally, Relyn bowed his head. "I have not been gracious, or noble. This ... it is a work of art, and you were generous to create it for me, especially when you have so little of the flame left. And you put some of your soul in it. That I can see. I will use it, as I can, but I would not wear it after my last words when we ate-or yours."

   Nylan understood that the statement was as close to an apology as he was ever likely to get, and that the words had cost the younger man a great deal.

   "It is yours to use." Nylan paused. "I only ask that you use it for good, not evil."

   Relyn lifted his eyes. "You.have not.. ."

   "No. I would not compel," Nylan said, mentally adding, Even if I knew how, which I don't. "The choice is yours. I don't believe in forcing choices. People resent that, and their resentment colors their actions and their decisions."

   Relyn studied the smooth metal. "Now ... I must think."

   "About what?"

   The younger man gave Nylan a crooked smile. "About what I have seen and what I must do."

   "I wouldn't stay here," Nylan said bluntly.

   "But you do."

   "That's true, but I'm an angel. You aren't." As he spoke, Nylan found himself thinking that he was only half angel, assuming pure Sybran equated to pure angel.

   "Even angels have choices, Mage." Relyn lifted his remaining hand, then turned and walked uphill toward the ridge.

   "What was that about?" Nylan asked himself, walking back to the bucket by the wall. He drank and splashed his face before returning to the last bow.

   He shouldn't have worried about the last bow. The entire powerhead fused solid when he triggered the power. He looked at the day's work-five bows. Seventeen bows in all. Not enough, but better than none.

   He began disassembling the laser, and he had returned all the components, useless or not, to the tower, all except the bank of firin cells and the five bows, when Ryba rode down from the ridge and reined up.

   "Both the cutting heads for the laser are shot," Nylan explained. "They're totally fused."

   "What were you doing?"

   "It doesn't matter. The total cumulative flow was the issue. The heads are only made to last so long. I got five more bows done."

   "That's almost enough. Can you modify the weapons head?" asked Ryba, almost idly, leaning forward on the roan, her fingers touching the staff of the composite bow Nylan had given her-one of his better efforts.

   "Not really. It's designed for maximum power disbursement in minimum time-that's a weapon configuration." The engineer unfolded the carrying handle on the right side of the firin cell frame.

   "What about your . . . abilities?"

   "I can channel the flows, shape them, but I can't hold back that kind of power flow. With the industrial heads, they're designed to be choked down, except it's not choked. They draw power at any level . . ." Nylan shrugged. Explaining how things felt with a new ability he couldn't adequately describe even to himself was difficult. He unfolded the other carrying handle.

   "How much power do we have left?"

   "Fifty percent on one bank of cells. The emergency generator might last long enough to get that bank to full power. Then again, it could quit any time. The bearings are nearly shot."

   "That could power the weapons laser, couldn't it?" Ryba smiled again, almost cruelly.

   "For a while. The cells might hold for a year."

   Ryba straightened in the saddle. "You've done well, Nylan. The great smith and engineer. You built a tower, a bathhouse, stables, figured out how to heat them-and still left the weapons laser. I'll see you at dinner."

   As she rode off, with the way she spoke, he almost wished he hadn't accomplished so much.

 

 

XL

 

"SER GETHEN OF the Groves!" announces the young armsman - in - training, "accompanied by Lady Erenthla, and Zeldyan, of the Groves of Gethen."

   The single horn plays a flourish, and Sillek, concealing a wince because the horn player is off-key, hopes that Gethen is not terribly musical.

   Through the opening doors of the great hall step the three, walking up the green carpet toward the dais where Sillek and his mother stand. The lady Ellindyja remains slightly back and to his right, but close enough that Sillek can read her face.

   In the hall are nearly threescore landowners and others of prominence in Lornth, there to witness the formal betrothal.

   Zeldyan, eyes downcast, walks behind her father and side by side with her mother.

   "She'll do for a consort," opines the lady Ellindyja. "Good lands, good blood, good manners, and good looks. And Ser Gethen will back you on the campaign to take Rulyarth?"

   "That was a deciding factor in announcing the betrothal," Sillek lies. "But I would have no more speech on that. The fewer who know, the better."

   "I will keep silent, but I rather doubt that her father's support was the deciding point," suggests Lady Ellindyja. "She took your fancy, and you'll tell me that her father will support you to soothe me."

   "I felt him out before I ever saw Zeldyan."

   "If he knew you cared, he would have driven a harder bargain."

   "He only has one son," Sillek says quietly, his lips barely moving and his face impassive as Gethen and Zeldyan approach.

   The lady Ellindyja shrugs. "All ventures are a gamble. Had young Relyn taken back the Roof of the World, Ser Gethen would have doubled his lands and influence. Now he must support you more. Sometimes luck is as important as skill."

   "Your advice was the deciding factor, Mother dear," whispers Sillek just before he steps down off the dais platform to greet Gethen.

   Gethen inclines his head.

   Sillek offers a half bow. "Welcome to Lornth, Ser Gethen." He turns to Erenthla. "And to you, lady." His last bow, and his deepest, goes to Gethen's daughter. "And to you, Zeldyan. I am honored."

   Although Zeldyan's face displays a polite smile, a tinge of a flush colors her cheeks as she curtseys in response.

   "Not so honored as we are," responds Gethen formally, and loudly enough so that those even in the back of the hall can hear.

   "You do offer me honor in entrusting your daughter into our family and care, and I assure you that she will in turn be honored and cherished," responds Sillek, turning his eyes from the father to the daughter.

   Both Gethen and Ellindyja frown momentarily at the words "and cherished," while the white-haired Erenthla smiles briefly.

   Zeldyan momentarily raises her eyes to Sillek, and they sparkle, before she drops them so quickly that not even Ellindyja sees.

   "As a pledge of my trust," Sillek continues, "I offer you the seal ring of a counselor of Lornth."

   A dark-haired youth, an armsman - to - be, steps forward with a small green pillow on which rests the golden ring.

   "It is a token of my faith." Sillek's eyes are clear and direct as he faces Gethen, so direct that the older man pauses momentarily.

   "You do me, and my daughter, great honor, Lord Sillek."

   "Only your due, ser. And hers."

   This time, at the untraditional reference to Zeldyan, Gethen does not frown, although the lady Ellindyja swallows.

   A second young armsman approaches, with another pillow on which are two matching silver rings, each with a square emerald set in the center of a miniature seal of Lornth.

   Sillek takes the smaller ring. "With this ring, I ask for your hand, lady, and with it, I pledge both my hand and my honor."

   She extends her left hand, and Sillek slides the ring in place, adding quietly, "And my devotion."

   Then it is Zeldyan's turn, and her voice is cool and firm, without bells, without brassiness, without softness. She lifts the larger ring, and Sillek extends his hand. "With this ring, I give you my hand, and accept your hand and your honor." As she slips the ring in place, her fingers tighten around his hand briefly, and she adds, "And give you the respect you deserve."

   Gethen's eyes widen but fractionally, and then they cross with the lady Ellindyja's.

   I Sillek's and Zeldyan's hands remain locked for several instants, before Sillek finally says, loudly enough for all in the hall to hear, "Two hands promised in honor."

   "Two hands promised in honor!" the onlookers chorus.

   Sillek steps onto the dais and draws Zeldyan up beside him. After a moment, he gestures, and Gethen and Erenthla join them. All smile except the lady Ellindyja.

 

 

XLI

 

THE DULL RUMBLE of thunder echoed across the Roof of the World, and a line of rain slashed at Tower Black. Water dribbled through the closed shutters of the great room, but not through the armaglass windows. The coals left from the morning fire imparted a residual warmth . . . and some smokiness, because Nylan had added the hearth after the walls had been started.

   Nylan sipped the cup of leaf tea slowly, lingering past breakfast. With his head still aching two days after the laser had failed, he wondered if the bows had killed the power-heads earlier than necessary. He massaged his neck again and looked around the empty room. The guards had left the table and were working, either in the lower level of the tower, or in the stables, out of the cold rain that had fallen for two days straight.

   The inside tower drains were working, at least, and water seemed to be filling the outfall, from what he could see out the front door. Nylan smiled, but the smile faded as he thought of the uncompleted bathhouse and unfinished outside conduits to the cistern. He should check those drains before long.

   He wished he'd been able to roof and finish the bathhouse before the rain. The heating stove in the bathhouse was only half-built. With the laser gone, he'd have to mortar the plates for the water heater in place, but he couldn't do any more brick and stonework until the rain stopped, and the clouds outside were so dark they were almost black.

   Nylan took another sip of the hot tea that tasted almost undrinkable, but seemed to help relax rigid muscles and relieve the worst of the headache, and massaged the back of his neck with his left hand once again.

   The main tower door opened and then closed. A single figure stomped wet boots, then headed toward the tables.

   "You look like manure." Ayrlyn slid onto the bench across the table from the engineer. Her short red hair was wet and plastered to her skull, and rivulets of water ran down her cheeks.

   "Manure feels better. You look wet."

   "The joys of trying to locate logs and timber before the weather turns really nasty. We need more deadwood for the furnace and kitchen stove. It cuts easier." Ayrlyn wiped the water off her face, but another rivulet coursed down her left cheek right afterward. "There's a lot of internal work this place needs. That means green wood, and it's a mess to cut."

   Nylan's eyes rose to the blank stone walls, the unfinished shelves, and the lack of interior walls. "You could say that."

   Ayrlyn studied Nylan. "You look like a worn-out engineer."

   "You look like a soaked and worn-out artisan and singer." Nylan paused. "I never did tell you how effective that Westwind guard song was."

   "It's a terrible song," protested Ayrlyn.

   "That's why it's effective. Every anthem ever written is terrible, either melodically or because it's lyrically tear-jerking."

   "You've made a study?"

   "No . . . but the Sybran anthem . . . you know, 'the winters of time... the banners of ice...' Or how about the Svennish hymn to the mother? Or 'The Swift Ships of Heaven'? Have you really listened to the words?"

   "Enough." Ayrlyn laughed. "Enough."

   "All right... but what about the Akalyrr 'Song to the Father'?"

   "Enough! I said enough."

   Nylan sipped his tea, trying not to grimace.

   "That good?"

   "It helps. That's all I can say about it." He set the mug down again. "Have you learned anything new from our friend Relyn?"

   Ayrlyn glanced toward the end of the great room. "He's learning how to use that hand, but he still feels crippled- and angry. He's confused, too, because he owes allegiance to this Lord Sillek, yet he feels he was tricked. He also doesn't think much of Narliat... or of Gerlich, for that matter."

   "He has good taste," Nylan said. "Has he told you anything new that we didn't know about this planet?"

   "It's hard to say." Ayrlyn frowned. "He pretty much agrees with Narliat's story about the landing of the demons, and so does Hryessa. She's taken to Saryn, by the way. She sees Ryba as a goddess, and she can't relate to a goddess. Saryn's merely a mighty warrior. Hryessa also tells the demon story a little differently-the demons are the patrons of men and of the wizards, and white is the color of destruction here."

   "Why wouldn't it be?" asked Nylan. "The demons of light are white."

   "In a lot of cultures, especially low-tech ones, white means purity. It was in ancient Svenn, and in Etalyarr. Here, darkness is pure, and there's not much emphasis on cleanliness. All wizards are men, obviously."

   "Wonderful." Nylan glanced toward the door and the stairs, but the great room remained empty save for them.

   "Black wizards are rare. That's why Hryessa will look at you."

   "Because I'm rare?"

   "Because they all think you're a black wizard." Ayrlyn smiled.

   "How would they know? I don't even know why what I do works."

   "For Relyn, Hryessa, and Narliat, it's simple. White wizards throw firebolts without using tools or weapons. White wizards destroy people and things. Black wizards build things, like towers, tools, and weapons. Or heal. You build. So you're a black wizard." Ayrlyn shrugged. "You also have silver hair, and none of the white wizards do. They aren't sure about black wizards, since there aren't many."

   "If I have to be one or the other, I guess it's better to be black." Nylan took another sip of the tea, trying not to make a face, then set the earthenware mug-a recent addition from Rienadre and the brick kiln-down and massaged his neck. "Your healing makes you a black wizard, too."

   "I don't know that I'm any wizard ..."

   "You're a healer."

   "A minor black wizard, then. Very minor."

   Ayrlyn offered a quick smile, then continued. "Relyn seems to think that this Lord Sillek has his hands full. His western neighbor, a charming fellow named Ildyrom, has been trying to take over some grasslands. Young Sillek also is being choked by his northern neighbor. Relyn doesn't understand the government there, but it sounds like a form of council run by big traders. They hold the river near the Northern Ocean and all the ports."

   "So he's got trouble on all sides?"

   "According to Relyn. Narliat says it's not that bad, and all Hryessa knows is that food has gotten scarcer. Oh, Relyn also says that no one likes fighting the westerners-Jeranyi, I think they're called-because the women fight alongside the men."

   "Rather chauvinistic culture."

   "I'd say that's the rule, mostly. It's a warm planet."

   "What does warmth have to do with male chauvinism?"

   "It doesn't necessarily, except that women handle extreme cold better than men. Look at Heaven, where women have more than half the government. Some anthropologists theorize that cold tolerance is the whole basis of the Sybran culture." Ayrlyn spread her hands.

   "Do these Jeranyi come from a cold culture? I didn't recall any mountains there."

   "No. Maybe there's some other reason."

   "Anything else?"

   "He's given me a lot about local customs, trade, that sort of thing, but it's background. Helpful, but background. The other thing is that this Lord Sillek doesn't have an heir, or any surviving siblings. That bothered Relyn."

   "Probably civil war if Sillek dies," mused Nylan. "Two out of three says this Sillek's definitely got his hands full." He looked down at the rapidly cooling tea and wondered if he could force himself to drink any more.

   "That's my reading, but we're only going on what we've seen, and that isn't much, plus the in-depth reports of three locals, and the offhand remarks of traders." Ayrlyn blotted a thin line of water from her neck below her right ear. "Rain looks like it's never going to stop."

   "It's probably snowing on the mountaintops." Nylan looked toward the windows, then swung his feet over the bench. "Time to check the drains."

   "Drains?"

   "The little details, like keeping the tower from being washed away. The things that get forgotten in the sagas of heroes and heroic deeds."

   "Still bitter about that?"

   "A little." He snorted. "But it's time to go get wet."

   "I'm going to dry off some before I go back out there."

   "I haven't been out, and I should have been." The engineer stood and carried the mug down to the north door of the tower, where he washed it in the one bucket, rinsed it in the other, and racked it in the peeled-limb framework leaned against the stone wall. The second slot in the upper left was his.

   Then he closed his jacket and eased open the north door, which not only squeaked, but scraped against the floor stones. A blast of rain slewed across him, but he hurried out and closed the door behind him.

   The water resistance of his ship jacket wouldn't last long, but he wanted to check the drains in the uncompleted bathhouse. The last thing he wanted was the rain undercutting the walls or their foundation.

   A roll of thunder followed another line of what seemed solid water that hit Nylan just as he ducked through the half-covered archway and into the unroofed bathhouse.

   "Oh . . . frig!"

   The water was already ankle-deep. Nylan plodded forward toward the first drain where he could sense some drainage. He pushed back his sleeves and thrust his hands into the water, ignoring the chill, feeling around, and finally finding a chunk of brick. He pulled that out of the mud, only to have something sharp scrape the back of his left hand. He heaved the fragment over the wall and bent down again, fishing through the muddy water and coming up with a long shard of slate. He threw that outside the walls and looked at his hand.

   The rain washed away the blood from the thin cut as fast as it welled out, but the cut was only skin-deep. The water started to swirl down the drain, then stopped. The engineer sighed and went fishing again, this time coming up with a round stone just the right size to plug the drain.

   He watched the water swirl and start to drain, and again stop.

   After repeating the process nearly a dozen times, the drain seemed to be flowing freely, and he slogged through the instep-deep water to the other end of the bathhouse and the second drain-also plugged.

   After four tries, he got the second drain running freely, but the first drain had become plugged again-with several more stone fragments.

   All in all, Nylan slogged back and forth between the two drains nearly half a dozen times before the area inside the walls was drained, although several depressions remained as ankle-deep puddles.

   Then he circled the tower, checking the rock-lined drainage way on the lower east side of the tower. While the drainage way was a narrow rushing stream that seemed to divert the deluge from the tower foundations, beyond the stones the water had already dug a trench knee-deep through the lowest point of the makeshift road to the ridge.

   Nylan shook his head. They would need a stone culvert, or something, to keep the road from being washed out with every heavy rainstorm. He took a deep breath and headed back to the north door of the tower, his shipboots squishing with every step.

   Water-resistant or not, Nylan's jacket was soaked, as was everything else. But the drains were working, and the water from all around the tower was flowing freely into the outfall he had designed. Beyond the outfall... He just winced.

   His head ached again; his neck and shoulder muscles were tight, and his eyes burned, and he trudged back to the north side of the tower. He turned the heavy lever, and the latch plate lifted. A strong push and the door swung open, barely wide enough for him to squeeze through sideways, before it stuck.

   Nylan edged inside and checked the door. The hinge pins were solid, and the strap plates hadn't moved. He bent down, then nodded. With the moisture, the wood had swelled, and perhaps the latch end had drooped some with the extra weight and usage. Whatever the exact reason, the end of the door was wedged on the stone.

   He grunted, and half lifted, half shoved the door back closed.

   After closing the door, he took off his jacket and wrung it dry, letting the water spill on the stones by the door. Then he stripped off his boots and the shipsuit and repeated the process with the shipsuit, ignoring the fact that he was standing near-nude by the door. He turned his boots upside down and poured out the remaining water.

   As he set them down, the north door eased open, then stuck once more.

   Siret squeezed inside, barely able to maneuver her thickening midsection through the narrow opening. Her deep green eyes fixed on him. "Ser?"

   "Trying to wring out the worst of the water," he explained.

   Siret said nothing, her eyes still on him as he redonned the shipsuit, and he could feel himself blushing. Once he had the damp suit back on, he shoved the door shut, barefoot, his feet sliding on the cold damp stones.

   "I'm sorry, ser," Siret finally said. "I should have helped, but I ... I just... I don't know what happened." Her eyes did not meet Nylan's.

   "That's all right." He slowly pulled on the damp boots. "Thank you." Siret turned and headed toward the great room on the other side of the central stairs.

   Nylan followed. Even before he was two steps into the great room, he felt the heat, from the hearth, more welcome than the odor of fresh bread coming from the grass baskets. He spread his damp jacket on the shelves beneath the stairs, then walked toward the warmth, glad that his seat was close to the hearth.

   The two tables were nearly filled with damp marines. Narliat's dry leathers stood out, as did Kadran's and Kyseen's. The dryness of the cooks' clothing, Nylan could understand, but Narliat sat beside Gerlich, who looked like a drowned rodent, with his damp chestnut beard and longer hair plastered against the back of his neck. Relyn, across the table, was soaked as well, but he offered a smile.

   Nylan returned Relyn's smile and nodded when he passed Gerlich, and then eased into the seat at the end of the bench closest to the hearth.

   Saryn sat on the end of the table with her back to the windows, across from Nylan. Between her and Ayrlyn sat Hryessa in dampened leathers. Relyn sat to Ayrlyn's left.

   "The fire feels good," Nylan observed.

   "Since everyone's soaked, it seemed like a good idea." Ryba smiled faintly. "Our resident healer and communicator pointed that out."

   "The damp is worse for health than snow would be. So I suggested the fire," Ayrlyn said.

   Nylan turned on the bench so that the heat from the hearth would warm his back. While the shipsuits were thin, the synthetics did dry quickly.

   The big pot in the center of the table held a soupy stew, to be poured over the bread. Saryn passed him a basket of bread, and he broke off a chunk, then stood and ladled stew over it.

   "How did you get soaked?" Ryba asked.

   "Cleaning out the drains in the bathhouse so that the foundations wouldn't get washed away. I also checked the other drains and the outfalls."

   "It's snowing on the higher peaks," said Ayrlyn. "I wouldn't be surprised if we got snow here within an eight-day or two."

   "I hope it holds off. We've still got a bunch to do to get the bathhouse finished."

   "Will it take that long?" asked Ryba.

   "Long enough," said Nylan, pouring the hot root and bark tea into his mug where, when the hot liquid hit the clay, the mug cracked in two, as if a magical knife had cloven it, and the tea poured across the table.

   "Friggin'. . . !" Nylan nearly knocked over the bench as he lurched sideways to avoid the boiling liquid that had started to drip off the table onto his legs. As he stood beside Ryba's chair, he looked around for something to wipe away the tea.

   "Ser!" Kyseen stood and tossed a bunched rag toward Nylan, which opened and dropped onto Hryessa's bread and stew.

   Hryessa's mouth opened.

   "These things happen," said Ayrlyn calmly, as she reclaimed the rag and spread it on the tea puddle.

   Hryessa looked at her stew and bread, then at Ayrlyn.

   Saryn grinned, shaking her head. "It doesn't look like it's been your morning, Engineer."

   Nylan reached forward and gathered the tea- and stew-soaked rag, carefully wringing the liquid into the inside corner of the hearth where the heat would evaporate it. Then he mopped up more of the tea and repeated the process.

   In time he sat back down, glad at least that the split mug hadn't poured bark tea over his bread and stew.

   "Here's another mug, ser." Rienadre set one in front of him and retreated. "Some of them don't fire right. I'm sorry."

   "Would you pour the tea?" Nylan asked. "I haven't had much luck." Rienadre took the kettle and poured. The mug held.

   "Thank you." Nylan took a small sip, marveling that the tea wasn't bad. That alone told him how bedraggled he felt. He took a mouthful of bread and stew, then another, trying to ignore the bitterness of the tubers and onions. From the corner of his eye as he set down his mug, Nylan could see Gerlich bending toward Narliat.

   "Finishing the bathhouse with hand tools is going to take time-and dryer weather," the engineer added.

   "Cannot a mage do anything?" asked Narliat. "You have builded a tower that reaches to the skies, and you cannot make a few channels in stone?"

   Put that way... Nylan frowned. "Perhaps I can, after all." The real question was the timing of Narliat's question. Was Gerlich thinking up the nasty questions for the armsman, or was Narliat that disruptive on his own?

   "You are a great mage, and great mages do great things," Narliat added.

   Nylan wanted to strangle him for the setup. Instead, he turned to the armsman. "I have never claimed to be a great mage. But I have done my best to accomplish what needed to be done, and I will continue to do so." His eyes locked on Narliat until the other looked away.

   Then he took another chunk of bread and ate more of the stew, trying to ignore the gamy taste Kyseen had not been able to mask with salt and strong onions.

 

 

XLII

 

AS HE WAITED for Ryba, Nylan stood in the darkness at the unshuttered, unglazed window and looked at Freyja, the knife edges of the needle-peak softened but slightly by the starlight and by the snow.

   His stomach growled, reminding him that the spiced bear stew-that was what Kyseen had called it-had not fully agreed with his system. Would it be that way all winter, although he could scarcely call it winter, since only a few dustings of snow had fallen around the tower? Not all of the scrub bushes and deciduous trees had shed their gray leaves, although it was clear most kept about half, shriveled against the winter.

   Meals were enough, so far, to keep body together, but not much more, and it wasn't that cold yet.

   Nylan leaned forward and looked to the north side of the tower and the half-roofed bathhouse. Almost instinctively, he curled his hands, and his fingertips rested on the callused spots at the base of his fingers. He had far too much to finish, far too much, and, as time passed, fewer and fewer cared, except for the few like Ryba, Ayrlyn, and Huldran, and the guards with children.

   He turned toward the stairs as he heard Ryba's steps-heavier now-approaching.

   "Dyliess hasn't been kind to my bladder," said the marshal.

   "I'm sorry about the tower design," apologized Nylan. "I just wasn't thinking about waste disposal."

   In a rough-sewn nightshirt of grayish beaten linen, Ryba sat down heavily on her side of the twin couches. "Narliat and Relyn think this tower is luxury, the sort of place for lords and dukes or whatever. Neither wants to leave. They'll have to, by spring at the latest."

   "If they have to leave, why are you letting them stay?"

   "I don't want the locals to find out much about us until we've got things in better order. So far, the only people who have left have been those who have fled our weapons, mostly in terror, and traders who have never seen things closely. I'd like to keep it that way for a while longer. And we can learn a few things more from Narliat and Relyn." Ryba shrugged. "Relyn might end up fathering a child or two, and he seems bright enough."

   The engineer pulled at his chin, "You're pregnant, and so are Siret and Ellysia. Isn't that a lot for the numbers we've got?"

   "Three or four out of sixteen-not counting Hryessa- that's only about a third, and most will be able to fight by late spring. Most children will be born in winter or early spring in Westwind, anyway."

   The calm certainty in Ryba's voice chilled Nylan more than the wind at his back, but he asked, "Four?"

   "I think Istril is, also," said Ryba.

   "Istril? She doesn't strike me as the type to play around."

   "I could be wrong," Ryba said. "I'm not always certain about these things, but she will be sooner or later."

   "But who?"

   "I can't pry-or see-into everything, Nylan. Right now, I'm just fortunate enough to be gifted, or cursed, with glimpses of what might be. That's bad enough. More than enough."

   "I'm sorry."

   "Do you know what it's like to see pieces of the future? Not to know, for certain, if they're what will be or what might be? Or whether you'll bring them into being by reacting against them?"

   Nylan cleared his throat. "I said I was sorry. I hadn't thought about things quite that way."

   Ryba looked at the stones of the wall beside Nylan. "You deal with stone and brick and metal-the certain things. I'm wrestling with what will sustain life here for generations to come. What do I do about men who are killers? Or those who will leave? Or may leave?"

   "I don't like the implication that I'll leave." Nylan sat down beside the dark-haired woman and touched her shoulder. "I don't have any pat answers. I do what I can, everything that I can think Of, as well as I can."

   "I know, Nylan. You work like two people. You've done things I don't think are possible, and Westwind wouldn't be without you. But a place isn't a community without traditions, values, that sort of thing, holding it together. That's why we need your tower, Ayrlyn's songs-"

   "And your ability to teach and create military strength?"

   Ryba nodded. "It's going to be tough."

   "It's already hard."

   "It's going to get harder," she predicted, looking out at the cold shape of Freyja. "A lot harder."

   In the end, they lay skin to skin, and, after a time, Ryba was passionate, demanding, and warm. Predictably, before they had even relaxed, she had to get up.

   "You just went," he protested sleepily.

   "There are some things, especially now, where I don't control the timing." She pulled her gown down and padded down the stone steps.

   Fighting exhaustion and sleep, Nylan tried to analyze the subtle wrongness behind her words . . . but nothing made sense.

   Before either solutions or sleep reached him, Ryba padded back up the steps and slipped into the couch. Her cool hand stroked his forehead for a moment. "You're a good man, Nylan. No matter what happens, remember that." She squeezed his shoulder.

   He squeezed her hand in return and murmured, "Know you try your best, for everyone."

   She shuddered, and let him hold her, but she would not turn to him as she sobbed silently.

 

 

XLIII

 

IN THE NORTH yard outside the bathhouse, Nylan picked up the hammer and chisel. Behind him, on the roof, Denalle and Huldran spiked roof tiles onto the cross-stringers mortised into the main timbers to provide a flat surface.

   Overhead, the clouds were white and puffy, like summer clouds, but the chill in the late autumn wind belied that. To the west, the clouds seemed evenly spaced, and Nylan hoped that they would stay that way. His eyes dropped to the pair on the roof-Cessya had ridden off with Ayrlyn.

   ". . . damned gourds, whatever they were, never ripened .. . bitter in the stew, worse than that rancid bear meat. . ."

   "Just keep complaining, Denalle, and I'll spike your hand right under the next tile," snapped Huldran.

   "Potatoes are good ... hope they last..."

   "More spikes, Denalle."

   Nylan let his eyes drop from the unfinished roof to the dark stone before him that would be a water-conduit section.

   "And you cannot make a few channels in stone?" Narliat had asked, at Gerlich's prompting. And Ryba had just left Nylan hanging.

   His choices were simple. Abandon the idea of showers. Finish the trough pipes in wood, which would need continuous maintenance, or try low-tech stone-cutting methods. In a low-tech culture, cleanliness was important for health and survival, and if he didn't make it easy or halfway convenient, cleanliness would go the way of the Winterlance. Besides, abandoning anything would cause problems with Gerlich. He was coming to like the big man less and less. Was that because he was coming to trust his feelings more? And Ryba-how much was she deceiving him, just to ensure that Westwind would survive?

   He moistened his lips. In some ways, it didn't matter. He was stuck finishing the bathhouse the hard way. He took a deep breath and studied the chunk of dark stone, letting his senses drop into the heavy mass, following the lines of stress and fault. If he nudged that line... and boosted that... then, just maybe, the stone would break ...

   He brought the hammer down on the chisel. Clung! The impact shivered up his left arm. There was a technique to chiseling stone, and he had no idea of what it was. He raised the hammer again.

   Clung! A flake of stone the size of his thumb flew from the chisel, but the reverberation still numbed his arm. A dozen strokes later, he had learned a better angle and not to grip the chisel so tightly. He also had only chipped out a narrow groove in the stone.

   The clouds had almost disappeared, leaving the sky a bright green-blue, but the wind seemed stronger, and colder.

   Even before he heard the hooves, Nylan could sense the approaching horses, knowing that they were marines-and Ayrlyn. There was no sense of the white disorderliness that seemed to accompany the arrival of locals.

   The five horses, and the cart acquired from Skiodra and since rebuilt, headed over the ridge and down the track to the tower. The clay remained damp enough from the previous rain that there was no dust. Riding pillion behind Istril was a woman in tattered leathers, with long brown hair. Another refugee? wondered the engineer. And Istril? She wasn't riding any differently. Was that another of Ryba's foresights? Something that might be?

   Nylan shrugged, wondering how many more women would arrive at Tower Black before the winter closed in. Given the attrition the angels had suffered, more bodies would be helpful-if there were enough food. They had the sheep and the chickens, but how would they feed livestock through the winter? Didn't that mean more grain? Or grass or hay? Or something?

   As the horses passed and he saw that Ayrlyn was safe, he picked up the hammer once more, ignoring the numbness in his fingers from the wind and the impact of iron upon steel.

   By the time the triangle by the main south entrance to the tower clanged for the midday meal, Nylan had completed rough channels in two stones, each the length of his forearm. His fingers were cramping, and his arms were scratched from the rock fragments that had split and ricocheted. No wonder not much got built quickly-or with any complexity-in a low-tech, culture.

   Nylan set aside the hammer and chisel and stood stretching as Denalle and Huldran climbed off the roof. The eastern side was more than half finished. "Looks good," he offered. "Except we have to mortar it or it'll be dripping melted snow inside all winter," pointed out Huldran.

   "Doing the roof's friggin' hard on the knees," added Denalle.

   "You want to wash clothes in the snow?" asked the older guard.

   "The way things are going," said Denalle, looking down at her threadbare and tattered working shipsuit, "we won't have anything to wash."

   "The healer just brought in a cart of some kind of cloth, and more barrels of flour, it looked like. You'll be spending part of the winter sewing up your kit for next year." Huldran smiled at Nylan.

   "I didn't sign up for sewing."

   "Neither did the rest of us. Do you want to fight with your bare breasts hanging out?" asked Huldran.

   Denalle glared at the ground.

   "Let's go eat," suggested the engineer.

   As Nylan neared the lower table, Relyn, sitting beside Jaseen, raised his right arm, and the artificial hand, and nodded. The engineer smiled back.

   "You made that, ser?" asked Huldran. "Why?"

   "So he wouldn't have any excuses to mope around," Nylan said dryly. "You'll note that I made it blunt. Very blunt."

   Huldran laughed.

   The newcomer was seated between Saryn and Ayrlyn, near the head of the table on the window side. For some reason Narliat was on Ayrlyn's right, with Gerlich on the other side of the former armsman. Nylan surveyed the two tables and found that Hryessa was seated near the foot of the second table, beside Istril and across from Relyn and Jaseen. Istril looked down at her trencher, and her lips curled. Had Ryba been right? Was she pregnant? The engineer glanced toward the hearth and kept walking until he reached the end of the table.

   "How is it going?" Ryba asked as Nylan waited for Huldran and then slipped into his end seat beside the marine.

   "Huldran and the others are doing well on the roof. Maybe two days before it's tight."

   "Could be three," Huldran said, "if we run into trouble."

   "And you?" Ryba asked Nylan.

   "I'm getting the hang of the stone-cutting, but it's slow."

   "The weather will hold for at least several days," Ayrlyn said.

   "Good." Nylan poured some of the hot bark-and-root tea and waited. The mug did not crack. He picked it up and took a sip, waiting for Huldran to help herself to the bread in the grass basket. "Another refugee?" The engineer turned to Ayrlyn as he took a chunk of bread and handed the basket to Ryba.

   "Thank you," said the marshal.

   "This is Murkassa," said Ayrlyn in Old Anglorat. "She's from Gnotos. That's a little town in Gallos, just east of the Westhorns."

   The round-faced girl, and she seemed more a girl than a woman, nodded, her long hair so thin that it fell in a cloud over her shoulders.

   "This is Nylan. He is an engineer and a mage," Ayrlyn explained, still in Anglorat.

   Murkassa's brow furrowed at the word "engineer." She turned to Ayrlyn. "What kind of mage?"

   "Black, I'm told," Nylan answered before Narliat could open his mouth and create trouble. "I make things."

   Narliat had his mouth open, but Ayrlyn's elbow caught the former armsman in the gut, and he closed it.

   "Nylan is-" Gerlich started to speak, then stopped as he realized Murkassa did not understand him.

   "How was your luck with the traders, Ayrlyn?" asked Ryba.

   "They had some of what we needed, but it cost me three blades and a gold." She glanced at Nylan. "I'm not quite as good as the engineer."

   "Any spikes?" Nylan asked, knowing that Huldran wanted to know.

   "A small keg-those were half a gold, and they wouldn't budge on that, but you and Huldran put them high on the list."

   "We can't finish the bathhouse roof without them," said the marine. "Not without taking all winter."

   "What else?"

   "Heavy wool cloth. Rough as a new recruit. Some tanned hides for winter gloves, another eight barrels of flour and two of dried fruit. A bag of salt for drying whatever we slaughter or bring in from hunting. Another big kettle for Kyseen. A half-dozen needles-another half gold, but how can anyone sew without needles?-and a roll or spool of heavy thread that's almost twine. And a bunch of little things, some spices, and a big bag of onions and two sacks of potatoes, and a barrel of dried corn for the livestock." The redhead shrugged. "That doesn't leave too much in the Westwind treasury. They said they'd be back in an eight-day, if it doesn't snow."

   "After that, we'll probably be on our own, I guess," said Ryba. "The snow line is creeping down the peaks around us." She turned to Murkassa and switched to Anglorat. "How .. . did you .. . come to Westwind?"

   "I was sold to be the consort of Jilkar. He is a hauler in Gnotos, and a strong man. He beat his first consort to death because she angered him. She gave him only daughters, and then she ran away with a trooper from Fenard. Jilkar found them and let the man go." Murkassa shrugged. "He would have beaten me. He beats everyone. I heard of the tower of women, and I ran. If I did not find you, I would die in the Westhorns. But I did find you." A fleeting smile crossed her face.

   "You are welcome to stay as long as you wish."

   "Can I stay forever?"

   "If you follow our way," Ryba answered. "No one said anything to Jilkar?" Ayrlyn's tone suggested she knew the answer.

   "No. He is the hauler. He takes the wool to Fenard. He is stronger than any two men, and he has a house on the hill with guards."

   As the others drew out the sordid social structure of Gnotos, all too familiar a pattern, from what Nylan could tell, he sipped the tea and ate.

   After the midday meal, Nylan returned to the north tower yard, and the cold wind out of the northwest. Huldran, Cessya, and Denalle worked on the roof, with Cessya lugging up the stones, Denalle placing them, and Huldran spiking them in place.

   Nylan studied the stone that he was supposed to turn into a conduit. There had to be a faster way to cut the stone, didn't there? For a long time, he let his senses range over the oblong of black rock before him. He'd already discovered that he felt uneasy, so much that his head ached and his stomach twisted, if he even came close to mimicking the white lines of fire that the local mages effected.

   After concentrating on the stone for a time, he finally placed the chisel and lifted the hammer. The reverberations seemed to be less when he didn't worry so much about precise chisel placement, but the order of the stone.

   His progress was better with the new technique, not anything to boast about compared to the laser, but by the time the triangle clanged again, he had five more lengths of conduit bottom.

   After he stacked the conduit in the corner of the bathhouse, on the eastern side under the completed roof, he flexed his sore and increasingly callused fingers-only small blisters.

   "You really got that in place," he told Huldran, looking up at the expanse of completed roof tiling.

   "Thank darkness that the healer came up with another keg of spikes." The marine reached out and knocked on the side of the crude ladder-pole she had just climbed down. "I never thought so, but you might get your bathhouse and laundry, ser."

   "I thought you wanted the showers," Nylan joked.

   "Choosing between stinking and bathing in ice water isn't a choice I'd want to make." Huldran lowered the ladder-pole, and she and Denalle laid it down under the completed roof, then gathered the spikes they had dropped.

   Every single spike was valuable, Nylan realized, especially in a low-tech culture where each had to be fashioned by hand. He walked around the tower to the stream, hoping it wouldn't be too long before he could use the bathhouse. After washing his hands and face, he walked back around the tower and, as he neared the almost-completed archway from the bathhouse to the tower, he whistled a few notes. What were the words?

   "... an engineer's work is never done, / not even after the long day's run . . ."

   He smiled to himself as he opened the door, which no longer scraped the stones-although it had taken Saryn and Selitra most of a morning to plane and carve it back into shape.

   "You seem cheerful, Engineer," said Gerlich. Narliat just bowed.

   "The stone-shaping's coming better, and Huldran's got the roof in place."

   "Good." Gerlich offered a quick smile, and he and Narliat turned, leaving Nylan as he closed the north door.

   The engineer wondered why neither had looked pleased. Did they want to stink or bathe in freezing water? Or was it because each of Nylan's accomplishments boosted Ryba's authority and the satisfaction of the guards with her rule? And it was rule, Nylan knew full well, and there wasn't that much doubt in Nylan's mind that Gerlich would rather be the one doing the ruling-or that having Gerlich in charge would be a disaster. Ryba did what had to be done, but Nylan knew it wasn't always easy for her. Gerlich would end up like every other male tyrant on the planet.

   He pulled at his chin, wondering why so many men had to dominate. Then maybe women would be just the same, given the chance. With a shrug, he walked toward the hearth of the great room and the aroma of fresh-baked bread and cooked onions.

 

 

XLXIV

 

HISSL PACES ACROSS the small room, then peers out the window toward the river and the stubbled fields that lie beyond. Although the sun glints off the puddles in the fields, the sky is turning the bluer green-blue that presages winter. The wizard looks away from the distant points of glare and paces back toward the table.

   "Nothing! We sit here and wait. And Terek meets with Lord Sillek while I rot here."

   He paces back across the small room, passing the table and the screeing glass again, then back to the window. The distant puddles still throw glare at him.

   Finally, he seats himself at the table that holds the flat mirrorlike glass. He concentrates. The white mists swirl. He concentrates until the sweat beads on his forehead, although the room is pleasantly cool, filled with the scents from the bakery up the street, and the hum of conversations.

   At last, the image appears-that of a black tower, with a second, and lower, building rising beside it, already roofed with the same black slate tiles that cover the taller tower. A short, stone-walled causeway leads to the tower and to a heavy door banded together with strips of metal-not iron, but some metal Hissl does not recognize, though it feels like iron through the glass.

   Farther uphill, the angels, some in black and others in leathers, are digging a long ditch in a line that leads toward the tower. On the uphill portion of the ditch, the black mage and an angel are placing lengths of stone in the trench. There is a trough filled with what might be mortar beside the stones.

   Hissl squints and tries to focus the image, but the best he can do is catch a glimpse of a section of rock that appears to have a deep trench gouged in it. He slumps back into the chair.

   "Black angels and a black mage." He shivers for a moment. No lord he knows could have built a tower like that, and not in a mere two seasons. Yet the black mage who lives with the angels has done so, and the mage has done other things, as well, things that Hissl does not understand.

   "Still, they have not felt the winter, and the number of cairns grows. By spring . . ." He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

   In the spring and early summer, Ildyrom and his people will be busy planting. Hissl nods to himself.

 

 

XLV

 

A LOW FIRE burned in the bathhouse stove, but the building- still open inside except for the three jakes stalls at the north end-remained chill.

   Nylan washed and shaved his several days' worth of beard in one of the laundry tubs. He looked wistfully to his right, at the unfinished showers, and at the piles of slate stone and powdered mortar heaped in the middle of the room. While there was water to the ceramic nozzles, he and Huldran still had to finish the stone floors, or all they would have would be frozen clay. He took a deep breath and splashed away skin, whiskers, and blood.

   After washing, he rinsed his waste water down the floor drain, with a breath of relief as the water gurgled out of sight. He hoped the combination of deeply buried drain lines and the outfall covering-and oversizing-would be enough to get them through the winter.

   Wearing just a tattered pair of trousers-spoils, again- he walked the length of the bathhouse, along the already packed clay of the east side, and through the archway into the tower and up the stairs, all four flights to the top level.

   Ryba had already dressed, and was pulling on her boots as Nylan stripped off the leather trousers and donned his working shipsuit. She stood and straightened the blanket as he struggled into the leather boots.

   "It looks like a storm is coming in hard," she said. "Can you finish the bathhouse?"

   "The inside will take a day or two more. We've got the jakes and the laundry area finished." Nylan walked over to the sole armaglass window and looked up at the dark clouds boiling out of the northwest, cloaking Freyja in blackness, with snow thickening and dropping to shroud the lower parts of the western peaks and the heights behind the tower.

   A thin layer of ice covered the window ledge outside the casement, and the engineer watched as one flake, then another, dropped onto the ice, melding with it and turning transparent, the black-gray stone showing through.

   The flakes thickened, and even the lower sections of Freyja disappeared in the snow that seemed so white near the tower and so dark in the distance. The ground remained brown, with a few white patches.

   Nylan closed the armaglass window, and the shutters. When he looked down, he realized that he had stood before the open window long enough for a small pile of flakes to accumulate, but as he watched, the whiteness faded into a damp splotch on the roughly smoothed plank floor.

   "Why did you close the shutters?" asked Ryba, fully dressed in her shipsuit, and even wearing a black ship jacket. "It looks like midnight in here that way. I can't see in pitch-blackness, the way you can."

   "We're going down to the main level, and no one's going to be here." He walked around the couches toward where the marshal of Westwind stood.

   "That makes sense, but it still bothers me when it's so dark."

   "It's going to be a long and dark winter."

   "You are so cheerful this morning."

   "I try," he answered.

   They walked down the long stone steps, the sounds of their boots echoing away from the stairwell and into the open levels they passed. Several marines were still dressing on the third level, but none looked toward Nylan and Ryba.

   The tables were largely full, and even Murkassa sat at the end, on Istril's right, while Hryessa sat on the slim trooper's left. Istril looked at the bread on her trencher, but had not lifted it.

   Did she look pale? Nylan smiled, getting a quick and faint smile in return as he followed Ryba toward the head of the table and the hearth.

   After he slid onto the bench, Nylan poured the bark-and-root tea into the dark brown mug. The tea's taste was still bitter, but warming. He reached for the dark bread.

   "A storm like this won't last," predicted Relyn, sitting at the last seat on the window side of the first table. "The snowflakes are too large."

   "The snow will bring a long rest," pronounced Narliat. His cloak was wrapped tightly around him, and he glanced toward the cold hearth.

   "I'm glad for the rest," announced Huldran.

   "You don't get one. Not yet," said Nylan. "We've still got the shower floors and partitions to install."

   "Cessya can help."

   Cessya looked at Huldran, her eyes dark.

   "It's easier than clearing and packing snow," intervened Nylan.

   "What are you talking about?" asked Gerlich.

   "We still have to keep the area around the doors, the outfalls, and the trails to the stables and down to the forest open." Nylan pulled at his chin, then looked toward Ayrlyn, then Ryba. Both nodded.

   "We'll need to have ways the horses can travel. They'll need some exercise," pointed out Ayrlyn. "We'll need them to bring up more wood." She cleared her throat "Hryessa, Siret, and Murkassa need to gather more cones."

   "Cones?" asked Nylan.

   "They have seeds, and they'll help feed the chickens," Ayrlyn said.

   "Your chickens, they will taste like the pine trees."

   "I'd rather have live pine-tasting chickens than dead tasty ones halfway through the winter. We don't have near enough food for the livestock, and that will help," answered Ayrlyn. "If the traders come back, they're supposed to have some more dried corn. If they come back . .."

   "We can't have people sitting around all winter," added ' Saryn. "They'd be at each others' throats."

   "They can't sit around anyway," said Ryba. "We'll need some additional food, something from hunting, and probably more firewood."

   "A lot more firewood," predicted Nylan. "We probably ought to require dragging as much up here as we burn."

   "How?"

   "If we keep doing it, we should be able to keep a path clear to the forest at the base of the ridge. Ayrlyn-you said we could drag trunks with the horses, and cut them outside the causeway."

   "The guards can only stay out so long, and we don't have enough cold-weather clothing for everyone," pointed out Saryn.

   "We have wool and thread and needles," said Ayrlyn.

   Nylan cleared his throat. "We could dry some of the wood near the furnace, and we need a lot of furnishings-tables, even dressers."

   "We don't have that many nails," said Ryba.

   "They used to put things together with pegs. We can do that," Ayrlyn pointed out. "It takes more time, but we're going to have a lot of time."

   "You can make glue," added Relyn. "The crafters dry and grind hooves, I think, and some parts of the hides and boil them."

   "Arms practice. For everyone. I don't want a tower full of crafters come spring," added Ryba. "They'll have to be better than any of the locals when the battles resume."

   "I think archery is out," said Nylan.

   "Because of the weather? No. There will be enough clear days . . ."

   "The clear days are cold enough to a freeze a man's lungs," said Relyn.

   "Woolen scarves would help," Ayrlyn said, "but you'd have to hold down heavy exertion and mouth breathing."

   "We'll take it as it comes." Ryba broke off a chunk of bread. "There's a lot we can do to get ready for next spring and summer."

   "How are we going to get around in this stuff?" asked Huldran, with a gesture toward the window. "We don't have skis or sleds or sled dogs."

   "Slowly," says Hryessa. "In the lower Westhorns, the snow gets deeper than a horse's head."

   "Snowshoes," Ryba said, "and old-fashioned wooden skis with leather thongs, just like Gerlich and Saryn have been making."

   Nylan frowned. Would he have to learn to ski? He didn't look forward to that at all, not at all.

   "Have you ever skied?" Ayrlyn asked him.

   "No. I never saw the joy of slogging through powdered ice for fun."

   "I can learn it, and I'm not even Sybran," insisted Ayrlyn. "I'm mostly Svennish. You're at least half Sybran, aren't you?"

   "About half and half. It gets complicated. But my grandfather Weryl was a Svenn. He came to Heaven as a boy. Does that make me more Sybran than if he'd come as an adult?" Nylan laughed. "He didn't ski, either."

   "Was he a blond, too, ser?" asked Istril. "Like you used to be?"

   "I think so. He died when I was little."

   "Just because he didn't ski doesn't mean you can't," pointed out Ayrlyn.

   "Especially since you'll have to if you want to go anywhere in the wintertime," added Ryba.

   "You make it sound so attractive. I'll have to." Nylan frowned. "Either freeze or be stranded in the tower."

   "It's not that bad," said Saryn.

   As Nylan thought about a response, he saw Istril hurry from the table, toward the north door, and disappear. Her bread was untouched.

   "You'll like it," added Ryba.

   Ayrlyn gave a quick grin.

   Nylan took a sip of tea, warm tea, and wondered just how badly he would freeze learning to get around on wooden slats.

 

 

XLVI

 

IN HER GREEN tunic and trousers, her hair bound back in a green and black enameled hairband, Zeldyan steps into the tower room. After closing the door, she bows deeply to the lady Ellindyja. "Honor and greetings to you, lady."

   "You are now the Lady of Lornth, and I am honored," answers Ellindyja. She does not rise from the cushioned bench in the alcove, but lowers the embroidery hoop to her lap. "Your grace in coming to visit so soon shows great respect for your lord, and I am pleased to see that."

   "I respect Sillek, more than most would ever know. You are my consort's mother, and, out of my deep respect for him, always to be honored and respected," says Zeldyan, inclining her head to Ellindyja again.

   "I am so pleased to be included in your respects, dear, especially since your mother has always been one of my dearest friends." Ellindyja knots the yellow-green thread with deft motions, and takes up the needle.

   "She would count you among her dearest and most trusted friends," answers Zeldyan, stepping toward the alcove where Sillek's mother begins an embroidered leaf on the white linen. "And a wise woman."

   "Wise? I would think not," says Ellindyja as the needle completes another loop of green comprising the leaf. "For my son has less of his heritage than his father."

   "I am confident that situation will change, my lady, and that the greatness of Lornth will increase."

   "With enemies on three sides, Lady Zeldyan?"

   "While I would certainly defer to those who understand arms and other weapons far better than I do, I have great faith in my lord Sillek." Zeldyan pauses. "And great faith that you will offer counsel to him."

   "I have always attempted to be of service to the Lords of Lornth, to his father, and to Sillek." Ellindyja completes the small leaf, knots the thread, and rethreads the needle with crimson.

   The faint whine of the late fall wind rattles the closed tower window, but neither woman looks to it.

   "And you have," responds Zeldyan. "You surely have."

   "Thank you, my dear." Ellindyja knots the crimson thread and makes the first stitch in the small segment of the linen that will be a drop of blood. "I understand that your father has remained here in Lornth for a time."

   "He plans to leave for Carpa tomorrow, now that he has seen me safely joined to Sillek."

   "And your mother?"

   "She will arrive to see you presently. I prevailed upon her to allow me a few moments with you to convey my respects."

   "You know, my dear, Sillek may have been even wiser than I had thought. Together we might be of great assistance to him." The crimson stitches bring the hint of arterial blood to the linen.

   "My lord Sillek respects you greatly, Lady Ellindyja, and I would prefer not to intrude upon that bond or that trust. I would be most happy for any and all advice that you might have."

   "As I said, Lady Zeldyan, Sillek chose wisely." Ellindyja's voice is dry, but she holds the needle still for a moment. "I would trust that you might pay some heed to the possibility of ensuring the succession of Lornth."

   Zeldyan bows slightly. "I would like nothing better, my lady."

   A muffled thrap sounds on the door.

   "That would be your mother, I presume?"

   "Yes, my lady."

   "If you would be so kind as to bid her enter?" Ellindyja's needle flashes again as Zeldyan steps toward the door.

   "But, of course. She has looked forward to seeing you for some seasons." Zeldyan smiles and opens the door.

   "Cakes and sweets should be arriving shortly," announces Ellindyja, "for the three of us. I had hoped we might converse." She stands and sets aside the embroidery hoop. "Erenthla!"

   The heavier white-haired woman bends forward and brushes Zeldyan's cheek with her lips before stepping fully into the room and responding. "Ellindyja, I am so pleased to see you."

   Zeldyan closes the door and, with a faint smile, stands, waiting.

Part  II - THE WINTER

 

 

XLVII

 

As HE WALKED back from the bathhouse, and the jakes he was getting gladder and gladder about having completed, Nylan pulled down the ship jacket that had a tendency to ride up over the lined leather trousers. The lining consisted of the synthetic material left from his tattered work shipsuit, inexpertly stitched in place. The combination was warmer than the shipsuit, and certainly less drafty.

   In the archway between the bathhouse and the tower, just before the closed north door, ice was already forming on the walls, from the collected and frozen condensation of the breath of those who passed through, and from the moisture coming from the completed showers.

   "Too far from the furnace or the water-heating stove." The engineer opened the north door and then closed it behind him, his fingers tingling from the chill metal latch-not quite cold enough to freeze skin to it.

   He could sense the residual warmth from the furnace ducts as he walked into the great room, although he could tell from the lack of air motion that no logs had been added to the firebox recently.

   He stopped at the staircase when he saw Ayrlyn bent over her lutar. For a time, he listened to the soft words which she half-sang, half-hummed.

   On the Roof of the World, all covered with white,

   I took up my blade there, and I brought back the night.

   With a blade in each hand, there, and the stars at my boots,

   With the Legend in song, then, I set down my roots.

 

   The demons have claimed you, forever in light,

   But the darkness of order will put them to flight.

   Will break them in twain, soon, and return you your pride.

   For the Legend is kept by the blade at your side.

 

   The blade at your side, now, must always be bright,

   and the Legend we hold to is that of the right.

   For never will guards lose the heights of the sky,

   And never can Westwind this Legend deny...

   And never can Westwind this Legend deny.

 

   The words echoed softly in the great room, and the wind that hurled the snow against the shutters and windows supplied a backdrop of off-rhythm percussion.

   The four armaglass windows in the great hall provided the only exterior light, and that illumination was diminished by the storm and the snow that had gathered in the outside window ledges and half covered each with snow. Snow sifted through the windows that had but shutters and built into miniature drifts on the stone ledges, drifts occasionally swirled by the gusts that forced their way around the edges of the shutters and sent thin tendrils of freezing air across the room.

   Nylan waited until Ayrlyn stopped and looked up before he spoke. "That's a haunting melody."

   "It should carry the words well enough." Ayrlyn's voice was cool, measured. "That's what she wants."

   "Ryba?" Nylan eased himself onto the bench on the other side of the table from the redhead.

   "Who else wants songs? Most people work on firewood, food"-she laughed softly-"or bathhouses and towers. I still have to do other things. Skis are what Saryn and I have been doing, but the song comes first, or, at least, not last." Ayrlyn paused. "You haven't made your skis or even tried skiing. That's going to make it hard on you. Even Siret's been out, and in her condition, balancing isn't easy."

   "Do I have to?"

   "Of course not. You can stay inside all winter or walk the two trails we can keep packed. Anyway ... I wish I could have spent more time learning the skiing, but Ryba wanted the songs."

   The engineer frowned. "She's trying to build a culture, in a hurry."

   "I don't object to that. Songs have always been part of any culture, and we need some sort of verbal reminder..." Ayrlyn paused. "I just don't know that I like what I'm doing. The words are as much hers as mine, and ... I just don't know."

   "The guards seem to like them."

   "Do you?"

   The directness of the question stopped Nylan, and he pulled at his chin, then licked his lips. Finally, he answered. "They're too harsh." Then he shrugged. "But people only respond to strength, or force, whether that force is in song or a blade."

   "Whether they're angels or demons."

   Nylan nodded.

   "So the great marshal will use every tool offeree necessary."

   "I don't see that we've had much choice. Mran, Gerlich, Relyn, bandits ... all of them wanted to force things their way."

   "That's a sad comment on so-called intelligent beings." Ayrlyn glanced toward the stairwell. "So... I'll sing this one tonight, after the evening meal. It should please the marshal."

   "You're angry."

   "It doesn't matter, does it? She's right. This world needs changing. Even I see that. What if I'm just a tool in the process?"

   "We're all tools."

   "You like that?" asked the redhead.

   "No. But you have to survive before you can get beyond being a tool. I just haven't figured out how to get that far."

   Ayrlyn shook her head. "I'll see you later, fellow tool. Now that this task is done, it's back to the mundane business of crafting and carving skis." Ayrlyn stood. "You too should join us."

   "In what?"

   "Making skis and learning to use them."

   "Me? I've never skied."

   "If you don't want to be walled behind these stones all winter, you'd better learn, and you can't learn if you don't have skis." Ayrlyn picked up the lutar. "It might make it less necessary for you to be a tool."

   "That's a great choice. Be imprisoned for half the year or learn to do the unnatural in the middle of powdered ice so cold that walking over it will freeze your breath into ice crystals."

   "It's a choice." Ayrlyn lifted her eyebrows, before heading toward the stairwell.

   It was a choice. Not the best of choices, but a choice, like all the other choices that seemed to face Nylan.

   As Ayrlyn carried her lutar down the stairs to the lower level, another set of steps sounded, coming from the bathhouse. Nylan waited, watched, until Relyn stepped into the great room.

   "I hoped I would find you, mage."

   Nylan gestured to the table. "Sit down." He sat without waiting for Relyn to do so.

   Relyn eased onto the bench, actually using the blunt, half-hooked end of the metal hand to balance, although Nylan caught the wince as the other put too much pressure on the still-tender stump.

   "That replacement will take getting used to, I'm afraid," Nylan said. "And it will probably be cold outside unless you cover it. The metal will pick up the chill. I didn't think about that when I crafted it."

   Relyn waited for a moment, saying nothing. As the wind rattled the shutters, and more snow sifted onto the inner casement ledges of the windows, he finally spoke. "The hunter ... he says that you are not really a mage. Is that true?" Relyn struggled with the Sybran/Heaven Temple tongue.

   "Gerlich?" Nylan shrugged. "That depends on what you mean by a mage. Can I throw firebolts the way your wizards can? No. Can I tear apart things? No. If that's what you mean by a mage, I'm not, and I never said I was."

   Relyn pursed his lips. "You made those devil blades that cut through armor, did you not?" Half his words were Old Anglorat. "And you used the flame of the angels?"

   "I did, but that's a form of machine, not magic."

   "The singer, she says that you used magery to twist the flame in a way that no one else could."

   "I suppose that's true," Nylan admitted. "And I can use that ability to chisel stone a little more easily."

   "I saw you carve that hard black stone like it might be wood. No stoneworker I have seen could do that."

   "Does a name matter?"

   "Names are important," insisted Relyn.

   "Are they?" asked Nylan. "Substance lies in what is, not what people say."

   Relyn frowned. "Words cause people to act. If someone calls you evil angels, then that gives others a reason to destroy you."

   "That's true," Nylan admitted, "but only when you talk about inspiring people to act. Their actions cause destruction, not the words directly. All the words in the world will not make me into a white wizard. All the words in the world will not bring back your hand."

   "I do not know about that..." Relyn muses. "Do not the white wizards whisper incantations to bring about their actions? Did I not hear you talk to yourself when you guided the green flames of order?"

   "Did you not talk to yourself when you practiced with the blade?" countered Nylan. "The actions matter, not the words which surround them . . . although words can certainly inspire actions." He cleared his throat, then paused as a violent gust of wind rattled the windows and shutters and shivered the great south door on its heavy iron hinges. "That's often the problem with rulers. They move people with their words, and because they do, they believe that they can use words to change the physical world. They can change people's minds and feelings, but unless those people use shovels and some form of power, the words will not move the mountains." As he finished, the engineer looked down at the table. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk so much."

   "You are a mage, a different mage, but a mage, and how will I learn about what you do if I do not listen? I can see your actions"-Relyn lifted the artificial metal hand-"but not your thoughts."

   "I'm not sure that my thoughts are terribly important." Nylan laughed. "The marshal's perhaps, but not mine."

   "She thinks great and terrible thoughts, I fear."

   Nylan thought the same of Ryba's thoughts, but he only answered, "She does think great thoughts, and she will change this world."

   "So will you, Mage."

   "Me? Only so far as .. ." Nylan stopped. "I do not think so."

   Relyn laughed. "More so than you think." He stood. "But I must think more. Thinking is harder than the blade."

   Nylan frowned. "There's no reason why you couldn't re-learn the blade with your other hand. Saryn could certainly teach you."

   Relyn paused. "A left-handed blade?"

   "No worse than a black mage," countered Nylan.

   Relyn laughed harshly, then turned.

   As the former noble walked toward the stairwell and up the steps, Nylan glanced back at the now-empty tables and the cold hearth. After a moment, he crossed the great room and headed down to the tower's lowest level.

   In the kitchen, the heat radiated from the stove where the long loaves of bread baked. Nylan took a deep breath, enjoying the aroma. Kyseen and Kadran worked at the blocky worktable, its surface already marked with the imprints of knives, slicing potatoes into circles and dropping them into the largest caldron. Both wore rough shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Kyseen set down her knife and, taking a pad made of rags, opened the stove grate, easing in two chunks of wood, one after the other.

   "We'll need to saw some more small stove wood," Kyseen told Kadran, checking the coals in the stove, with the door open.

   More heat welled out into the lower level, enough that Nylan, even by the foot of the stairs, could feel himself getting warm and dampness on his forehead. He unfastened the light ship jacket.

   "It's your turn," Kadran said back to Kyseen.

   "All right."

   Cloaks wrapped around them, Narliat, Hryessa, and Murkassa stood in the alcove between the side of the stove and the central stairwell.

   "Narliat, and you two-you could do some woodcutting," suggested Nylan. "It might even warm you up."

   "Friggin' right," whispered Kyseen to Kadran, who nodded.

   "Kyseen will show you what to do," Nylan suggested, before heading toward the other side of the lower level and the rudimentary carpentry which awaited him. Carpentry? He really didn't have that much of a feel for wood, but he had no real tools for working metal. By the next winter, he really should think about building another structure, a small smithy where he could learn, one way or another, more traditional metalworking. Even with his ordering ability, he suspected it would be a long summer and hard work, but there were too many tools and items that Westwind needed-and too few coins to purchase them. On the other hand, with the lander shells, there was metal, even if it did take his strange ability to work it.

   Ayrlyn gave him a crooked smile as he stepped toward the planks.

   "Where do I start?" he asked, repressing a shudder at the thought of trying to cross deep powdery snow on a pair of carved boards.

 

 

XLVIII

 

WITH A NOD to the guard in the corridor, the Lord of Lornth closes the tower door and crosses the room to the alcove where the lady Ellindyja sits.

   "Good day, my lady mother."

   "Good day, Sillek. You are kind to continue to visit me."

   "Since I have a consort? You will always remain my mother, and a woman from whom I have learned much." As the wind whistles, he turns and eases back toward the window. "The wind is stronger than usual, this time of year."

   "It may be a cold winter. It's not been this cold in several years." Ellindyja's eyes drop to the embroidery hoop. "I hope it will not be too chill for your consort."

   "Zeldyan? Carpa is almost as close to the Westhorns as Lornth, and farther north. I'm sure she's used to winter. Her father did teach her to hunt and basic blade skills."

   "She is rather accomplished." Ellindyja pauses, but Sillek's eyes drift back to the window. She clears her throat. "Sillek, your Zeldyan has been such a dear... so solicitous and so faithful in paying her respects to me."

   Sillek turns from the fitful flakes of snow that dance outside the tower window and crosses the room, dropping into the chair across from his mother. "She knows that you are very wise. She's told me so."

   "She loves you, Sillek. That is very dangerous." Ellindyja lifts the embroidery needle like a scepter and points it toward her son.

   "Dangerous?"

   "She cares so deeply that she may counsel you against what is best for Lornth out of her fears for you." Ellindyja deftly secures the end of the thread, then begins the first stitch of the sword blade that will be golden.

   "I am sure that there are many who will seek to counsel me otherwise," Sillek responds. "It might be refreshing to have someone actually interested in my health. Not necessarily good for Lornth, but refreshing."

   "What would be good for Lornth will be good for you, Sillek."

   "I would hope so." The Lord of Lornth stands. "I would hope so." His eyes turn back to the window. "Perhaps a long, cold winter will rid us of the evil angels on the Roof of the World."

   "Do you believe that?" The embroidery needle flickers through the linen, trailing gold.

   "Evil isn't usually dislodged by weather. Still... one can hope, and, since spring comes late to the heights, that will give us time to increase our resources before dealing with that problem."

   "I am pleased to see you have not put that loss from your mind."

   "Neither from my mind, nor from my plans, Mother dear. But I have no desire to leave my back unshielded while venturing into the Westhorns." Sillek studies the dancing flakes beyond the window. "Yes ... a long, cold winter might be helpful for many reasons." He walks toward the door.

   "I am pleased that you are doing well, that you have chosen not to be cloistered, and that Zeldyan pleases you." He smiles as he holds the door ajar. "And I am also pleased that I took your advice and journeyed to Carpa." With a last smile, he half salutes Lady Ellindyja and closes the door.

   The north wind rattles the tower window, and the snowflakes dance.

 

 

XLIX

 

CARRYING THE SKIS and the fir poles with the leather straps at one end out through the south door to the tower, Nylan followed Ayrlyn and Saryn up the beaten path toward the stables for several hundred cubits. Where the ground dropped away from the path on the south side, there was a ramp packed through the waist-deep snow, rising gently from the path for perhaps fifty cubits before the ramp merged with the snow. Beyond that point, the snow, swirled in drifts, generally dropped away toward the east.

   The cairns down in the south corner of the snow-covered meadow were white hummocks with drifts extending almost to the drop-off that overlooked the forest far below. A light wind blew across the snowfieid, lifting and swirling the top powdered snow under a bright sun that gave no warmth and a clear green-blue heaven that seemed to suck the heat out of the engineer, despite the two jackets and heavy woolen scarf he wore.

   Nylan set the skis on the flat part of the packed snow ramp, following Ayrlyn's example, and looked along the ramp that sloped gently upward through the walls of snow. A half-dozen dual ski tracks fanned out from the end of the ramp onto the snowfield.

   "Who's been out already?" Despite the scarf around his nose and mouth, Nylan's breath formed white clouds in the air, and he could feel the ice forming on the wool of the scarf. As he watched, the ice crystals that had been Saryn's breath fluttered to the powdery surface of the packed snow.

   "Gerlich, the hunters," answered Saryn, "and Fierral, Ryba, and the scouts."

   If Gerlich could master old-style skis, then Nylan could, he decided, as he bent down and fastened the leather thongs around his boots, boots lined with wool scraps and bulging somewhat at the tops. He had to take off the outer layer of his gloves because they were really leather mittens covering woolen gloves, and he couldn't handle the leather thongs with the fingerless mittens. Neither mittens nor the gloves beneath fit terribly well, since he'd done the cutting and stitching himself.

   "Ready?" asked Saryn.

   Nylan straightened and pulled the leather mittens back over his gloves, then took a pole in each hand.

   "If I can do this, you can," said Saryn, slowly gliding up the ramp.

   "Let's hope so," Nylan muttered, but he followed her example and, one pole in each hand, slowly slid the left wooden ski forward. Each ski felt like a building timber, but Ayrlyn had insisted that the skis needed to be wide and long because the snow on the Roof of the World was light and powdery.

   As he tried to slide the right ski after the left one, he could feel himself lurching forward, and he leaned back to compensate. Then his left ski started sliding backward, and he jabbed a pole into the packed snow of the ramp, wobbling there before catching his balance.

   "Start with slow movements," suggested Saryn, "and keep your weight forward-not too forward-on the skis."

   "I've always tried not to be too forward," Nylan retorted, ignoring the cold air that bit into his nose, throat, and lungs.

   "Slow movements, one ski at a time," ordered Ayrlyn.

   Nylan inched the left ski forward, then the right, then the left until he had crept up the ramp to where the packed area ended. Squinting against the brightness of the sun, he looked out over the nearly flat and powdered snow that covered the meadows more than waist-deep.

   "Just follow in my tracks," Ayrlyn instructed.

   Nylan edged after the redhead, though her hair and most of her face were well swathed in a gray woolen scarf.

   Despite his best efforts, his skis skidded out of the tracks Ayrlyn had made, then sank to knee depth. As the snow piled up in front of his shins, he slowed to a stop. When he shifted his weight, the skis sank even farther until the snow reached his knees.

   "Making the first trail is the hardest," called Saryn from beside him, "especially if you're moving slowly. Speed helps-until you fall, and then it's a mess."

   Looking at the snow that covered his skis completely and most of his lower legs, Nylan decided it was already a mess. "Just put one ski in front of the other. Make it a sliding sort of walk."

   That Nylan could understand, and the process seemed to work, enough so that he actually had covered several hundred cubits, mostly staying in the trail Ayrlyn had cut through the snow.

   "That's it," the singer called. "Just keep up that motion." At that moment, Nylan reached too far forward with his right pole, lost his balance, flailed, and went down in a heap, his entire upper body plunging through the powdery white crystals until a gloved hand slammed against something hard.

   He lay in the snow, his feet pinned together by the skis, breathing both chill air and snow crystals that had oozed around his scarf.

   "Straighten your skis."

   "How?" he mumbled through the snow. Finally, he levered his upper body sideways, since his skis would not move, until his legs could separate slightly. Then he bent his knees and curled up into a ball as close to the skis as he could. That allowed him to rock himself over into a half-crouching, half-kneeling position. From there he struggled upright, his snow-covered face finally emerging into the glare, the snow almost chest-deep.

   His skis felt mired, but he lifted each in turn, letting snow filter under each, climb-packing his way up until he stood on the skis-merely knee-deep in the powder that leached the heat out of his legs and feet.

   "See . . . you can get out of it," said Saryn.

   "This time," snorted Nylan, trying to brush the snow off himself, snow that clung to everything but the leather trousers and packed itself into every bodily crevice.

   He started after Ayrlyn even more cautiously than before, then stopped as he saw a pair of figures sweeping from the ridge line above the tower.

   Istril and Ryba skied slowly downward, a rope tied to a bundle they towed. As they neared, each leaving a graceful dual line of ski traces in the snow, Nylan could see the bundle consisted of a pale-coated winter deer.

   He also marveled at their grace, doubting that he would ever match it. Part of him never wanted to try as the snow melted in cold rivulets down his neck, back, and legs. He forced a wave to the two skiers.

   "There's the engineer!" Istril returned his wave.

   As he started to follow Ayrlyn's tracks again, in a turn that would carry him back toward the packed trail the horses used, Nylan found himself again wobbling on the skis, conscious that the leather thongs provided no real support. He jabbed his poles back down to balance himself and let himself slide to a halt.

   "Watch your balance," said Saryn, nearly beside the engineer, making her own track, the powdery snow nearly to her knees.

   "That's easy to say. Doing it is a lot harder."

   Istril and Ryba had towed the deer carcass to the tower, unfastened their skis, and lugged their kill and skis inside long before Nylan struggled the few hundred cubits back to the tower.

   "That's enough for today," he declared. Maybe forever, he thought, as he gathered skis and poles and trudged back across the causeway. He left a trail of snow and water down to the storeroom beside the furnace, and on the steps on his return trip back up to the great room for the midday meal.

   Nylan slumped onto the bench before the hearth, aware that he was sitting in damp trousers. His upper cheeks were nearly flaming red, and his ears ached as they warmed. They hadn't been out in the cold that long-except it appeared that the Roof of the World was even colder than a Sybran winter-and that was cold, indeed.

   Although there was no fire in the hearth, the great room was warm by comparison to the frozen wasteland outside, and the bark-and-root tea helped. He poured a second mugful.

   "You drank that quickly," said Ryba. "You would too, if you'd dived into a snowbank and gotten stuck there."

   "You wouldn't have had that problem," pointed out Ryba, "if you'd started trying to learn earlier."

   Nylan took another sip of the tea. Ayrlyn had already told him as much, far earlier, and he supposed he deserved the reminder, but skiing was a pain, however necessary it might prove.

   Ryba raised her eyebrows.

   "How were the bows in the cold?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

   "The bows are really good in the cold," Istril said from the foot of the first table.

   Nylan nodded. While he hadn't thought about that, both the composite and the endurasteel had been designed to handle the chill of space and the heat of high-temperature reentry, which would make them ideal for the chill of the winter on the Roof of the World.

   "Gerlich's already snapped one of his great wooden bows in the cold," Istril added in a lower voice, after looking around and not seeing the hunter. "I'll bet the new bows would be really good in cold-weather warfare."

   "Is anyone else crazy enough to be out in this weather?" asked Nylan.

   "Well . . . they're good for hunting, too. Even Fierral thinks so, and she's pretty hard on everything."

   "Is there that much out in the woods?"

   "More than you'd suspect, from the tracks, and that's good for us. You saw the deer. That's a couple of meals, at least, even for twenty of us. There's also a snow cat, almost all white, with big spread paws and claws. I don't know how good the meat is, but I'd bet the fur is warm."

   Nylan nodded. After his brief excursion, a warm coat sounded better than wool or a ship jacket, a lot better.

 

 

L

 

NYLAN FASTENED THE ship jacket and pulled on the crudely lined boots that he wore everywhere, even inside the tower. His fingers crossed his stubbly chin, but the chill was so great, even with the heat from the bathhouse stove, that he had not shaved, but only washed his face and hands, before hurrying back up to the tower's top level to dress for the cold day ahead.

   The heat from the furnace removed the biting chill of the wind that howled outside the tower's walls, but Nylan's breath turned into a frosty cloud when he stepped away from the heated center of the tower and up to the sole top-level armaglass window to check the sealing. He half rubbed, half scraped away the frost to look outside, but cold air rolled off the glass, and frost re-formed almost as fast as he removed it. Through the little area he could keep clear, he could only see white-white and more white.

   For more than two days, the white barrage had continued, and Nylan wasn't certain how much of the snow was new and how much just snow picked up by the roaring wind and flung-and reflung-against the walls.

   Most of the exterior tower walls had a spotty coating of ice on the inside stone, except in the kitchen and the furnace room. Kyseen and Kadran had plenty of guards-especially the newer ones-ready to saw and split wood in return for a place around the stove. The number of people willing to work on partitions and stools, or other wooden necessities, in the workroom off the furnace had never been higher. Could it be the warmth? Nylan grinned at the thought, even as he readied himself to head down to join them.

   Ryba was below somewhere; she hadn't said where she was going, but, with the storm still going, she was somewhere in the tower.

   A figure huddled by the furnace duct on the fifth level. Nylan paused on the steps. "Relyn?"

   "Ser?" The red-haired man stood with his cloak wrapped around him. "A man can never get warm here. It's too cold to do anything except be miserable, and just warm enough so that you never quite freeze." He jerked his head toward the single shuttered window. "I can't even leave. Twenty steps in that, and they'd find me frozen in a block of ice come spring."

   Nylan sat on a step, and Relyn sat on the other edge.

   "Why are you up here?" asked the engineer.

   "It's the only place where I can be alone. Sometimes . . ." Relyn shook his head.

   "I'm surprised that you haven't gotten close to one of the guards."

   "It is ... hard ... to think about, as you put it, getting close to someone who could kill you with one blow."

   "Why?" asked Nylan. "Anyone you sleep with anywhere could kill you."

   "You always bring up disturbing points, Mage. At home, when I had a home, should anyone have killed me, they would have been tortured and then killed."

   "If anyone killed you here, she'd be punished. What's the difference?"

   "It is different," pointed out Relyn.

   "I suppose so. Here you have to trust someone else, under a ... ruler . . . you don't know. I think that means you've never really trusted anyone." Nylan stood up.

   "Mage . .. were you in Carpa, I would challenge you."

   "For what? Is the truth so terrible? Most people with power always say they trust people, and what they mean is that they only trust them so long as they control them. True trust occurs only when you have no control."

   "I'd rather have control."

   "We all would . . . but even that's an illusion a lot of the time." Nylan recalled Ryba's struggle with her visions. "Even for rulers. If a ruler taxes his people too heavily, some will revolt, and he must kill them."

   "As he should," declared Relyn.

   "But dead men pay no taxes, and now the ruler must tax the others more heavily to pay the soldiers because there are fewer men to tax. And he will need more soldiers because people will be even more unhappy. More soldiers require even more taxes, and that makes people even less happy. Do you see where that leads?"

   "But. . ." Relyn looked up at Nylan.

   "Control is not what it seems, young Relyn. If you kill a man, you make an enemy out of his family. How many enemies can a ruler afford? Do you see the marshal eating better food than her guards?"

   "No."

   "Does she wear jewels or great trappings of wealth?"

   "No."

   "Will her guards follow her anywhere?"

   "I think they would."

   Nylan smiled. "Think it over." He walked down the steps, wondering why he had bothered. What he had said would certainly have upset anyone in Relyn's position, and the young noble was probably very upset. But what good had it done? His head throbbed slightly. Why? Because what he'd said wasn't quite true? Ryba did have one thing the others didn't-power. It might be power out of necessity, but it was power. Nylan shook his head. He couldn't even present provoking thoughts that might be misleading without getting a headache, or so it seemed.

   Nylan rubbed his forehead as he walked down the steps past the great room, empty.except for Ayrlyn, gently strumming the lutar-probably refining or working on another song. He paused for a moment, watching the redhead struggle with a chord or a phrase, but she did not look his way.

   He turned toward the south door, where chill winds seeped through the cracks, and a fine layer of snow covered the stones behind the door, shifting with each gust that buffeted the tower.

   Nylan resumed his descent, thinking about the cradle he was crafting. But Dyliess would need somewhere to sleep, and a cradle made sense.

 

 

LI

 

FROM THE INNER corner of the room wells the warmth of a well-banked fire, though Terek still wears a heavy white woolen vest over his robes. The white wizard's face is red with strain, but Sillek ignores the wizard's effort and studies the image in the glass on the table.

   In the center of the swirling white mists is a dark tower, rising out of the snows. A beaten path runs uphill from the tower toward a canyon in the base of the higher western slopes. Thin spirals of smoke rise from the twin chimneys in the pyramidal roof of the black tower.

   A pair of figures in black coats walk briskly uphill, their breath leaving a thick trail of white. The snow on each side of the path rises above the heads of either.

   The flat of the snow before the tower is crossed with sets of flat tracks, ski tracks that spread in all directions, with some circling back to the short causeway before the tower. A second packed-snow trail leads to the ridge separating the tower from the forest below, and a pair of horses drag a tree trunk up the ridge. Beside them walks a figure bearing a pack.

   "It looks normal," observed Sillek.

   "Have you seen enough, ser?" asks Terek.

   "I think so."

   The wizard relaxes, and the mists collapse, leaving a blank glass. "It's too normal, ser. That snow is over their heads, and there must be three cubits more packed underfoot. The air is so cold that their very breath falls like snow itself, and they walk to check their mounts-those are stables up in that canyon. Could your armsmen do that?"

   "Not for long." Sillek turns to the wizard. "What is your meaning, Ser Wizard?"

   "They are evil angels, ser. They must be destroyed, or they will destroy us. No one else could walk the Roof of the World without freezing into ice."

   Sillek nods without agreeing. "Thank you, Ser Wizard. If you discover anything new, please let me know."

   "Will you destroy them, ser?"

   "Ser Terek, as you pointed out, we can do nothing until the snows melt, and it becomes warm enough for normal men on the Roof of the World."

   "Yes, Lord Sillek."

   "Then we will see what we can do." Sillek nods once more as he leaves the warm quarters of the wizard. His face is impassive as he walks the long corridor and climbs another flight of stairs.

   The guard opens the door to his quarters, and he closes it, stepping quietly past the sitting room to the bedchamber where Zeldyan sits in a chair, knitting a small blanket.

   She smiles and stands, setting aside her work. "You look glum, Sillek."

   The Lord of Lornth hugs his consort, feeling the beginning of a gentle rounding of her figure against him. "How are you doing?"

   "Fine. I can feel him kick." Zeldyan smiles as they separate.

   "How can you? You're not that far along."

   "I can. It's gentle, but he does kick."

   "You always call the child 'him.' "

   "That's because he is, and we'll call him-"

   "Hush. That's bad luck, to name a child before he's born."

   "As you say." Zeldyan grins. "Why were you so displeased?"

   "I had asked Terek to scree the Roof of the World. My mother has again pressed the issue. Now Terek is pressing me to attack the Roof of the World. No one else but evil angels could survive that cold." Sillek shrugs. "No one else built a huge stone tower with hearths up there, either, but he says that those women must be destroyed, that they're too evil to live."

   "Are they?"

   "What do you think?" he counters, glancing back toward the closed doors.

   "They're probably no more evil than anyone else. They come from somewhere else, and they have nowhere else to go." Zeldyan smiles momentarily before continuing. "Like those who have nowhere else to go, they will fight to the last to keep what they have. That will make them very dangerous."

   "It already has," he points out, looking toward the window and across the light blanket of snow that has already begun to melt, even though the clouds' have blocked the winter sun.

   "You have already committed to undertake the expedition to Rulyarth." Zeldyan points out. "Though we must say nothing publicly."

   "And so I will. If I am successful, though, the wizards, the believers, and everyone else will be pushing me . .."

   "And your mother," Zeldyan adds gently.

   "I know." He sighs. "Rulers are always ruled by everyone else's expectations."

   Zeldyan steps close to him and takes his face in her gentle hands. "Even I have expectations, love." Her lips brush his.

   "Yours I can handle," he whispers and returns the kiss.

 

 

LII

 

DESPITE THE HEAVY woolen blanket that covered the thin thermal blanket and the crude but heavy woolen nightshirt he wore, Nylan was cold. A thin layer of crystals from his own breath scattered off the blanket as he sat up. The room was dark, with only the hint of gray seeping through the thoroughly frosted single armaglass window, although Nylan knew, alerted by the sounds drifting up the steps from the great room, that it was late enough. Another storm had descended upon the Roof of the World, with yet more snow.

   As if to punctuate his conclusion, the wind provided a low howl, and the window casements rattled. A few fine flakes sifted around the iced-over shutters as Nylan sat on the edge of the couch and stared at the peg holding clothes he knew would feel like ice against his skin.

   "Don't take the covers," said Ryba. "It is cold up here."

   "Another furnace day."

   ."It's been a furnace day every day for the last eight-day, and we're running through wood all too fast. Fierral's coughing out her lungs because she spent too much time in the cold. Istril's not that much better, and I worry because she's pregnant."

   "Ayrlyn helped them both."

   "There's a limit to what she can do, though."

   "Just like there are limits on the way you seem to be able to see pieces of the future," Nylan pointed out.

   Ryba sat up on the couch and swirled the covers around her. "I hate feeling this awkward."

   "You don't look awkward," Nylan pointed out as he struggled into his clothes. He'd wash later. That bothered him, too, that even for him cleanliness was falling behind the need to keep warm.

   "Dyliess is already affecting my balance. My bladder already went." The marshal of Westwind slipped to her feet. "I hate wearing this thing like a tent. At least I can still get into my leathers. Darkness knows how long that will last."

   "I'm headed down," Nylan said. "It might do your image good to arrive before me."

   "Thank you, gracious Marshal."

   "Oh, Nylan ... it's just that you're always too busy to be punctual. Go get your tea." Ryba pulled off the woolen gown. Her midsection was only slightly rounded, and the engineer wanted to shake his head. Ryba would feel huge while she was slimmer than most women who weren't even carrying a child.

   Nylan pulled on his boots and went. He had not even set foot on the stones of the main level when Kyseen greeted him.

   "Ser, the cistern's not filling. It's half-full."

   "It'll wait." Nylan walked to the table, looming out of the gloom like a rock out of the fog of a harbor.

   "Amazing," whispered Gerlich, just loud enough for most to hear. "The engineer arrived before the marshal."

   "Amazing? I suppose so." Nylan wished he could think quickly enough for a clever comment.

   "What magic will you create, Mage, to return the waters to the tower?" asked Narliat.

   "It's not magic, Narliat. It's a stone conduit that's probably frozen solid because I didn't get it buried far enough below the frost line." Nylan snapped off a piece of bread and dipped it in a brown sauce that was left over from dinner the night before. "I haven't lived here before, and I had to guess. No one around here could even build a tower."

   "But you are a mage."

   "You said that. I didn't." Nylan took a bite. Both bread and sauce were cool. Even the tea was lukewarm.

   Across the table from Nylan, Ayrlyn offered a faint smile of condolence, but said nothing as she sipped her own tea.

   The insides of the shuttered windows were masses of ice, created from drifted snow and the condensation from the guards' breath. The four true windows were so heavily frosted that they were solid white. With a shiver, Nylan took a second sip of the warm tea that didn't help all that much, then another mouthful of bread and sauce, followed by the last dried apple slices in the wooden bowl. The single fat candle on the table shed as much greasy smoke as light.

   "I'll be getting a few more apples for the marshal, ser," said Kyseen, "and you can have a few, too."

   "Thank you," said the engineer, although he wondered why he should be thanking her because the early birds had eaten everything.

   The fruit had not made its way up to the table by the time Ryba sat down heavily in the chair with her back to the cold hearth.

   "You seem tired, Marshal," offered Gerlich.

   Narliat smiled. From the middle of the second table, both Hryessa and Murkassa looked at Ryba and then at Gerlich. Ayrlyn frowned.

   "I am tired," Ryba admitted. "I'm especially tired of your superficial cheerfulness, and I'm almost tempted to send you out hunting at this very moment. So don't push it."

   Nylan held in a grin.

   "I beg your pardon," Gerlich responded.

   "No, you don't. You just say you do," said Ryba politely. "Snakes have more integrity than you do, Gerlich. So do the demons."

   Beside Istril, at the far end of the second table, Relyn paled.

   "You could even say, behind my back, that I'm in a bitchy mood. That's a mildly polite way of putting it." Ryba smiled. "So the next time you attempt to patronize me, you might have to eat steel or ice. You can take your pick."

   Kyseen hovered behind Nylan, holding the small bowl of dried fruit, waiting until Ryba turned to the cook and nodded. Kyseen set the bowl between Ryba and Nylan.

   "Thank you, Kyseen," said the marshal.

   "Thank you," echoed Nylan.

   Nylan glanced at Gerlich and caught the under - the - breath "Thank you, thank you-it makes me puke . . ." With a forced smile, Nylan looked at the hunter and said, "Why, Gerlich, I thought you had better digestion than that. By the way, the reason I'm usually late is that I have better things to do than to sneak around and complain about how things are run around here, or make snide remarks under my breath. Or go out and hide and sulk in the snow while pretending to hunt."

   Narliat turned pale; Gerlich opened his mouth, and then shut it.

   "You know, Gerlich," added Ryba. "You always did underestimate the engineer. In the end, it's likely to prove fatal."

   "Might I be excused?" Gerlich asked quietly.

   "Of course." Ryba smiled.

   Gerlich stood and bowed, but not too deeply.

   "Your timing was excellent, Nylan. That should stop his plotting for a time," said Ryba. "A day or two, perhaps."

   "Are you going to kill him?" asked Ayrlyn.

   "No," said Ryba. "There's been enough death, and that sort of thing wouldn't play well with the guards. Not yet." Her face held a bitter smile. Then she took a sip of tea. "This is almost as bad as liquid manure. Almost, but not quite."

   Nylan took several of the apple slices, but left most of them for Ryba. She needed them, and so far, he didn't. He did refill his mug from the steaming pot that Kadran set on the table. The bark-and-root tea tasted better hot, or perhaps he couldn't taste it so well when it was hot.

   He munched another piece of bread.

   Ayrlyn rose and nodded to the marshal, then to Nylan. "We'll be doing a lot of woodwork for the next few days, ser, and I need to see to the space, and the glue."

   Ryba nodded, as did Nylan, since he didn't have much choice with a mouth full of dry bread.

   "We have problems with the water, I understand," Ryba said after Ayrlyn had departed.

   "I'd guess the frost line is lower than I'd calculated, but I'll have to check now that I've eaten and have some strength."

   "You made such a to-do about the water..."

   "I know. I know. It's all my fault." With a groan, Nylan rose and headed down to the lower level and the cistern, Kyseen following closely.

   All the guards in the kitchen area watched as he neared the cistern. He opened the cover and peered inside. His eyes saw almost nothing, but his senses could feel that the inlet pipe was mostly filled with ice. The water level had dropped to the half-full point, a good two cubits below the stone inlet conduit. A few drops glistened on the ice-coated inlet spout.

   Nylan extended his senses, attempting to hold the feeling similar to the neuronet. So far as his senses could follow the water back up the conduit, he could sense only ice. Finally, he stepped away from the tower's cold south wall, leaving the cover open and turning to Kyseen. "It's frozen. Keeping this open might help, but make sure everyone stays away from it."

   "Ser?" asked Kyseen.

   "The air here is warmer. It might help thaw the ice inside. The piping wasn't deep enough. I'm pretty sure it's frozen outside as well."

   "What do we do? You can't fix it now, can you?" Kyseen made a vague gesture up the steps toward the heavy lower outer door, which continued to vibrate, despite the southern exposure and the heavy windbreaks beyond.

   Beyond the stone walls, the wind howled.

   "We may not be able to fix it until spring, and that's a long time," answered Nylan. "For now, take the extra caldrons and fill them with snow. Put them by the furnace. When they melt, pour the water into the cistern and start over. If we can get the water level up, and warmer, it might help."

   "Should we put some on the stove?"

   "Not until after meals are cooked, and don't add any wood to the fire. We really don't have enough wood as it is. The tower's warm enough down here to melt the snow."

   Up in the room he and Ryba shared-that was another story. The center space was warm enough, thanks to the furnace ducts, but only when the furnace was burning. The shuttered window had become a mass of immobile ice.

   "What about boiling water?" asked Kadran.

   "That won't do any good until the water level's up near the inlet spout, and that means melting a lot of water."

   "Now what are you going to do?" demanded Kyseen.

   "I still have to check the bathhouse," he answered as he crossed the kitchen and headed back up the steps to the north door. "That might tell me where the freezing's happening."

   The north archway was cold, as usual, but the bathhouse was tolerable, perhaps because Huldran had a fire going in the stove. Nylan climbed up the brick steps beside the wall- designed for just such a purpose-and checked the water warmer-which was three-quarters full. A thin stream of water trickled into the warmer's reservoir, but only a thin stream, even with the knife gate wide open.

   "How long have you had the fire going?" he asked Huldran.

   "Not long, ser. Colder than a winter deer's rump in here earlier."

   Nylan sighed. "Maybe heating the stove will increase the flow more. If not, we can use the stove to melt snow, and perhaps the heat from that will also keep some water flowing." He paused. "Once the storm lets up, I'll check the outfalls."

   "Hope the stove helps, ser," offered Huldran.

   "So do I."

   He shook his head as he passed through the ice-covered cave that the archway between the tower and bathhouse had become. Chronologically, they weren't quite at midwinter, from what he could figure, and everything was freezing. Maybe more heat would help . . . and maybe not.

   Another blast of cold air shivered through the archway following a long low moan from the gale outside, and a short icicle hanging from the bricks overhead broke loose and shattered across the stone floor, several pieces skidding against the tower door.

   The unheated archway was better than an open space between tower and bathhouse, but not much, reflected Nylan, as he opened the tower door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him. He stopped shivering when he started down the steps to the almost comfortable lower level of the tower.

   On the side of the lower level away from the kitchen- opposite the furnace-Ayrlyn directed a half-dozen marines in their efforts to turn rough wooden slabs and planks into furnishings for the tower-wall partitions, stools, an occasional chair, and several cradles.

   Nylan stepped toward the group.

   "How is the water going, ser?" asked Siret.

   "There's enough in the bathhouse for some washing, a few quick showers, and maybe more as the stove warms things up," Nylan said, inhaling the aroma of baking bread that never quite seemed to leave the kitchen area. Did Kadran and Kyseen do all the baking as much to keep warm as to feed the marines?

   "What about the cistern?" asked Istril.

   "I can't do much about that now. We'll see if Kadran can get the water level up. That might help." He shrugged. "If I can't fix the water, at least I can do something useful." Nylan picked up the dovetailed section of the cradle that was beginning to resemble a headboard. Carving and fitting the pieces was slow, even with the glue Relyn had developed from ground deer hooves and boiled hide and who knew what else.

   After studying the design he had scratched on the wood, he set the headboard down and took out his knife, borrowing the common whetstone to sharpen it.

   "Can I follow the same pattern?" asked Istril, as she stepped up beside him, no longer nearly so slim in the midsection as she had been in the summer and early fall. "For the cradle, not the design." Then she covered her mouth and smothered a cough.

   "Of course," answered the engineer. "Is there anything I can explain ... or help with?"

   Istril flushed.

   So did Nylan, although he didn't know why, and he stammered, "With the woodworking. I'm not an expert. That's Ayrlyn."

   "That cradle looks very good, especially for the tools we have," commented Ayrlyn.

   "I've had a lot of time," said Nylan. "And probably even more to come."

   "He's safer down here," whispered Berlis.

   Both Siret and Istril turned toward the mouthy guard, and Berlis stammered, "The marshal... she is a little touchy ... right now . . ."

   "You'd be touchy, too," said Saryn, looking up from where she smoothed a curved backpiece for what looked to be a chair. "She has to think of everything and put up with idiots like the great hunter." Saryn glanced toward the corner where Ellysia quietly worked over another plain cradle. "I'm sorry, Ellysia. I didn't-"

   "No offense taken, ser. He's a lying cur. I just hope he's got good genes." Ellysia showed broad, even teeth, then looked down over her swollen midsection at the sideboards she" was painstakingly rounding.

   Nylan studied the design again, the sole tree twisting out of the rocky hillside, then let his senses take in the wood before he lifted the knife.

   ". .. everything he does is beautiful..."

   The engineer tried not to flush.

   "Not quite everything," quipped Ayrlyn quietly. "You haven't seen him ski, obviously."

   Nylan grinned in spite of himself, thinking about the considerable additional practice he would clearly need in that area. Then he slowly drew the knife over the line that represented the right side of the rocky slope, deepening the groove gently . . . gently.

 

 

LIII

 

AS HE WATCHED Saryn shift her weight on the ungainly skis, Nylan wanted to shake his head, but he had little enough time for that. Just following the former pilot's tracks was proving hard enough even after his determined efforts over the past eight-days. To navigate and shoot a bow on skis remained an effort, but he wasn't plunging headfirst into the snow or leaning backward until his skis slid out from under him and left his shoulders and rump buried in the white powder.

   With a passing cloud, a shadow fell across the trail, and Nylan's eyes squinted to adjust to the change in the midday light, but the relative relief of the cloud passed, and the glare returned.

   The snow around and across the Roof of the World was more than seven cubits deep, and twice that in drifts. That was deep enough that Nylan could fall into one of those pits and never make his way out, not without turning into a knot and cutting the thongs. There was no way to untie them hanging upside down in a mass of powdered ice or the equivalent. His fingers twitched around his poles as he thought about the knife at his waist.

   He blinked as a clot of snow thrown up from Saryn's skis and carried by a gust of wind splattered above his left eye.

   Saryn held up a hand, and Nylan coasted to a stop right behind her, proud that he neither hit her nor fell into the deep snow beside the semitrail that the guards had created through the lower forest.

   As he caught his breath on the level stretch before a steep descent through the trees, trying not to breathe too deeply, Nylan put off thinking about the climb back up the ridge that would follow the trip.

   "I think there are some deer, and maybe a snow leopard, downhill and to the right. The wind's coming uphill here, and I might be able to get close enough," whispered Saryn.

   "If I'm not stamping along?"

   She nodded.

   "Go on. We're always on the verge of running out of meat."

   "Can you just wait here?" asked Saryn, her voice still low. "With your bow ready?"

   "I'll wait with a bow handy. How much good it will do I'm not sure." Nylan tried to keep his own voice down.

   As the wind whispered through the evergreens, clumps of snow splattered around them, leaving pockmarks scattered on the once-smooth white surface, depressions that the wind seemed to begin to fill immediately with feathery white powder that scudded along the snow.

   The engineer glanced back uphill. Already, sections of the packed trail they had followed had begun to disappear beneath the drifting snow. Another shadow darkened the Roof of the World, and he looked up at the white cloud that scudded across the sun.

   "You'll do fine. Just don't let our supper get away." Saryn raised her left hand and then slipped down the steeper section of the partly packed snow trail ahead. In moments, she was out of sight in the trees, gone as silently as if she had never been there.

   Nylan shrugged and unlimbered the composite bow, wishing that he had practiced more with the weapon. The shadow of the cloud passed, and for a long time, nothing moved in the expanse of white beneath the overhanging firs, nothing except snow scudded between trunks by the light wind that rose and fell, rose and fell.

   A gray-winged form plunged from nowhere into a swirl of powdered snow, and a quick geyser of white erupted, then died away as the gray-hawk flapped away, a small white-coated rodent in its claws.

   As the hawk vanished, Nylan inched forward on the skis, mainly to shift his weight and keep his hips and knees from cramping in the cold. He looked back in the general direction of the tower, but could see nothing but snow, tree trunks, and the white-covered green of the fir branches.

   A rhythmic swishing, almost a series of whispering thuds, rose, just barely, over the hissing of the wind.

   Nylan squinted, looking downhill, when the snow cat bounded across the hillside toward the trail where he stood, moving so quickly that what had seemed a small figure swelled into a vision of knife claws and glinting teeth even as Nylan released his first arrow and reached for the second, triggering reflex step-up. The second arrow flew as the leopard reached the snow beside the flat section at the crest of the trail.

   Both Nylan and the snow cat seemed to be moving in slow motion, but the engineer forced his body to respond. The third arrow left the bowstring as the cat stretched toward Nylan.

   Bow still in hand, he managed to dive into the snow at the side of the trail as the snow cat lunged at him. A line of fire slashed down his shoulder as he half twisted away from the mass of fur and claws. His skis linked together, and he toppled like a tree blasted by a microburst into the deep snow, a heavy weight on his back.

   That weight did not move, and, in time, Nylan levered it away from him and, through a combination of rolling, twisting, and gasping, finally struggled into the light.

   His knees ached. One leg burned, and the other threatened to cramp. Half sitting, half lying in the snow, he managed to reach one of the poles he had abandoned to use the bow, and with it, to retrieve the bow itself. He laid it on the edge of the harder snowpack of the trail. Then he looked at his boots and the mass of snow and ice around the thongs.

   With a groan and more rolling he finally managed to totter erect.

   The claws had sliced through the heavy leather shoulder of the hunting jacket he had borrowed from Ayrlyn, but blunted the impact enough that the wound was little more than a thin line skin-deep.

   He looked at the snow-covered leopard, then downhill, but the forest was silent. After prodding the cat with one of his poles, he took a deep breath, regretting it instantly as the chill bit into his lungs, and then edged his skis toward the dead leopard.

   Nylan knelt and removed the first arrow shaft, wiping it clean on the snow, then replacing it in the quiver. Then he searched for the second.

   The sun was well past midday when Saryn trudged uphill, pulling the carcass of a winter deer behind her. By then, Nylan had dragged the snow leopard out onto the trail and worked out the three arrows.

   "I'm sorry, Nylan, but... we do need the meat, and it took me longer-What happened to you?" Saryn stopped and stared at the bedraggled engineer, her eyes going from his shoulder to the body of the snow leopard.

   "It decided I'd make a good dinner. I tried not to oblige."

   "You were lucky."

   Nylan nodded. His jaw still chattered, and his knees were wobbly, especially as he looked at the stretched - out length of the cat.