Silver hidden in the greedy soil,' “ Garric read from the volume of Celondre, “ 'has no luster, my wise friend Kristas. Only in wise use does the metal gleam.' “

He sat with his back to one of the four pillars across the front of the little temple. Inside, Tenoctris examined the carvings just below the roofline. If there had ever been a cult statue, it had vanished in the ages since the temple was built.

Liane sat cross-legged against the base of the next pillar over, facing Garric. She listened with a relaxed smile.

Garric believed Tenoctris that this land wasn't part of the world from which the Gulf had sucked them, but it obeyed the same rules. The sun rose and set, creeks ran downhill and breezes blew, and the tension he'd felt beneath the brooding green sky was absent. He was glad to have a few days of quiet; and glad also that he had someone with whom to share Celondre's Odes.

He was glad to know Liane. For most of Garric's life he'd never have dreamed of meeting a noblewoman. Now he was reading poetry to one, and she smiled at him.

“ “The man who masters his own appetites,”“ Garric read, “ 'has a kingdom greater than if he joined Haft to Bight and ruled far Dalopo besides.' “

In Garric's mind, King Carus laughed boisterously. Garric lowered the codex and grinned at his companion. “Of course,” he said, “it's easy to say that if you're a poet with a country house in Ornifal and nobody would ask you to command a single trireme after the way you botched things the first time you tried.”

“And if half the stories about Celondre's private life are true,” Liane agreed, “he wasn't notable for mastering his own appetites either. Naked women posing in every room of his house in case the whim struck him!”

She giggled. “Of course we weren't supposed to read the Lives of the Poets” she added. “Mistress Gudea said each lyric should be appreciated for what was in its words alone. To import other considerations undermines a poem's innate ethos.' “

“How can it be wrong to get as much information as you can in order to understand something?” Garric said in amazement. He grinned, wondering how much the next thought that drifted through his mind had to do with the ancestor in his mind. “Of course, it gets harder to decide when you know a lot. The easy choices are the ones you make when you don't know enough to see how complicated things are.”

Liane nodded, but the direction of her eyes led Garric to peer around the shaft of the column behind him. Graz had arrived, accompanied by the two females Tenoctris had sent as messengers to find him.

“Tenoctris?” Liane called as she rose gracefully. “Master tjraz is here.”

There were human structures scattered throughout this landscape. None was particularly large—this fane, a rich man's private chapel rather than a community temple, was typical. All showed the lichens and weathering of great age. Tenoctris' art had led her to this particular site, but it was Liane who'd identified it.

Tenoctris came from the building with a smile of satisfaction just as the Ersa leader reached the slab on which the structure rested. The chapel had been modeled on a full-sized temple with a three-step base, each layer so high that it would be cut by several human-sized steps to the central doorway.

This was a toy like copy and, to Garric's untrained eye, it looked ill-proportioned. Part of his mind wondered if real aesthetics had anything to do with academic pronouncements like the one Liane had just repeated.

He put the volume of Celondre away in his belt wallet and rose also. He smiled as King Carus would have done.

The humans bowed to Graz. Bowing didn't seem to be an Ersa custom, but the way Graz's ears flattened against his round skull was perhaps an equivalent.

“There was a connection between your First Place and the hillside where we entered the present world,” Ten-octris said with her usual lack of small talk before getting down to business. ' “The temple here has a connection to a known part of the world which my companions and I left. Known to Mistress Liane, that is.”

She nodded to the younger woman. Garric gave Tenoctris his hand and helped her to the ground as an excuse to step down himself.

There was an inherent challenge when an armed male stood above another, and the Ersa were inhumanly attuned to body language. Garric wasn't sure he'd have been quite so aware of that without Carus' guidance—but he was aware.

“The ruins of the palace of the Tyrants of Valles are outside the city of Valles,” Liane said to the Ersa leader. “My teacher, Mistress Gudea, took us on a day trip there. She said that the study of history was just as important as that of literature.”

She grinned. “Not as important as etiquette, of course, but very important. There was a temple exactly like this one in the grounds of the old palace, though the honey suckle had grown over it.”

Tenoctris touched the sandstone pillar. “This is a node that leads back to my world, our world,” she said.

She gestured to Garric and Liane, but her eyes remained on Graz. “There are other nodes here also. I don't know where they lead. Some of them probably terminate in places which none of us would choose to see.”

With a smile as hard as sunlight winking from the edge of a stone knife Tenoctris added, “We wouldn't want to live there either, but in many cases survival wouldn't be an option anyway. This is the only portal which I think it's safe to open.”

“Valles is the capital of our world,” Garric said. His words blurred over the chaotic political situation—there'd been no true King of the Isles since Carus drowned in a wizard's cataclysm a thousand years ago—but this was close enough for present purposes. “I won't say you'll be welcome there, but I don't know of any reason why you shouldn't be.”

As if people had ever needed reasons to hate or kill!

“Anyhow,” he concluded, knowing he sounded lame, “I don't know of a better spot you could come to. And the three of us will do all that we can to help you.”

“I will look inside this place,” Graz said. “There are more of them in your world?”

“Many,” Liane said. “We live in buildings like this and much bigger.”

Liane too was only hinting at a situation that was more complicated than words could explain. The Ersa had no concepts for what lay behind human descriptions of politics or artificial structures. Was the weather of the Ersa home world as changeless as that in the Gulf, or had they lost the knowledge of building when they exiled themselves into a place where the need was absent?

Graz and Tenoctris entered the little temple. The Ersa females walked silently to a nearby pine tree and began opening cones for the tiny nuts within.

“Mistress Gudea wanted us to remember that Valles had been a great city during the Old Kingdom,” Liane said to Garric in a low voice. There wasn't enough room in the nave to hold four with “comfort, nor did the younger people have any reason to join the senior pair inside. “She was particularly determined to drive that home in me, since I was from the upstart island of Sandrakkan.”

She looked at Garric and added with a twinkle in her voice, “And unlike Carcosa on Haft, Valles had rebuilt after the Old Kingdom fell. Not that Mistress Gudea had any students from so backward as place as Haft.”

“The great men of Ornifal...,” Garric said. The voice was his but the memories behind the words were not. “The landowners, the rich merchants—they didn't try to break the kingdom the way nobles did on some other islands. But they didn't help to hold the kingdom together, either.”

Liane looked at him, her face suddenly without expression. She didn't back away, but he knew the cold anger in his voice had surprised her.

Garric couldn't help it. He tried, but his control meant only that he trembled with emotions that he couldn't release in the physical action they demanded.

“The great men just wanted things to stay quiet,” he said. “They paid any shoeless usurper who demanded their support because they claimed it was cheaper than getting involved. Cheaper to stand aside and watch the Isles break up in chaos!”

Graz stepped out of the temple. His ears were extended so fully toward Garric that the Ersa looked as though he had three heads on his narrow shoulders. Tenoctris followed him.

Garric lifted his empty hands and managed a laugh. All the fury had washed out of him, but it left him weak with its passing.

“I was talking about ancient history,” he explained, “Nothing that's worth getting angry about at this late date.”

Graz fluttered his ears; they shrank to normal size. “My people will stay here,” he said. “We have shared a world with humans in the past. I think it is better that we not do so again.”

Tenoctris nibbled her lower lip. “Master Graz,” she said. “I can understand your decision, but I think you're making a mistake.”

She spread one hand in the direction of the meadow rolling away from the little temple. “This seems to be a lovely place and of course it is... but it's more than that too. A location where so much power comes together isn't a proper home for living beings.”

“Nevertheless,” Graz said, “we will stay here. I wish you well on your journey, humans. But do not return.”

The Ersa leader walked away with his stiff-legged, mincing stride. His people wouldn't have an easy time on Omifal or anywhere in a human world, Garric knew; but Garric knew also that when Tenoctris gave advice, the path of wisdom was to accept it. Still, the Ersa had the same right that humans did: to make their own choices, and to live or die by them.

“If you two are willing...,” Tenoctris said. She plucked a twig from the pine tree and stripped the needles off between her fingers. “I think it'd be a good idea for us to leave immediately. Graz has drawn a lesson from what happened in the Gulf, but it led him to a belief that I regret.”

Garric and Liane exchanged glances. “Of course,” Liane said. “We're ready now.”

“You know...” Garric said, returning to the train of thought that he'd been following when Graz and Tenoctris returned. “The ordinary people on Ornifal wanted the Isles to stay united. They wanted to sleep safe in their beds and not have to take a spear with them when they went plowing for fear pirates would sweep the district. The people would've been willing to help hold the kingdom together, I think, if their leaders had let them.”

The two women watched him in concern. His left hand squeezed a fold of his tunic and the medallion hanging beneath it.

Garric laughed. “Well, maybe this time their leaders will have better sense' he concluded in a voice shaky with emotion.

“Indeed they will, lad!” echoed a voice in his mind. “Even if we have to knock that sense into their heads!”

The false Nonnus crouched in the stern, talking with the steersman as they both eyed the shore forty paces off the dispatch vessel's port side. The oarsmen rested, adjusting their kit and swigging water from the basin the coxswain carried back between the pairs of benches.

One man stood and urinated on his left hand. A rower had told Sharina that urine toughened cracked skin so it healed as calluses.

She supposed the crewmen would know. They were a dour lot who didn't volunteer information and gave only short answers to direct questions, but they were skilled oarsmen.

This island was a shallow cone made of black basalt instead of the usual limestone or coral sand. It was bigger than most of the islets Sharina had noted as the dispatch vessel crossed the Inner Sea on the ceaseless labor of its oarsmen. The low sun illuminated occasional clumps of spiky grass, but most of the vegetation seemed to be groundsels shaped like huge cabbages, and giant lobelias whose shaggy flower columns stood taller than a man.

She stood in the bow as if to stretch. The vessel was designed for swift transit with no concession whatever to the comfort of its crew or passengers. The false Nonnus had landed the mast and sail, depending instead on the oars even when the wind might be fair. Sharina tried to visualize how crowded the ship would haye been if the lowered mast and yard filled the narrow aisle between the benches.

“All right, we'll go on,” the false Nonnus said in a carrying voice. “I don't like the shore here.”

Oarsmen muttered and looked to the coxswain. He squared his shoulders and said, “I don't like being out at sea at night in a cockleshell like this.”

The false Nonnus didn't stand—he didn't have thfe Pewieman's sense of balance, Sharina realized. Scowling, he said, “There's a sandy beach on the horizon. We can reach it with the light we have left.”

The sun was fully down. The western horizon was still pale, but stars were already visible in the direction the vessel was heading.

“And don't ever argue with my orders again!” the false Nonnus added in the real man's voice but not his manner.

Sharina went over the railing in a clean dive and stroked “for the volcanic island. Nothing she'd seen there looked edible. There might not even be freshwater, but she had to get away.

Her tunic dragged at her. She would've alerted the false Nonnus if she'd removed the garment before she dived, and she didn't dare struggle in the water at the vessel's side while she stripped it off. She didn't think the crew would shoot arrows or javelins after her, but one of them might well have knocked her silly with an oar.

The thin wool fabric wasn't a serious impediment. Her powerful crawl stroke had brought her most of the way to shore before the men could organize their response.

The real Nonnus swam like one of the seals he'd hunted as a youth on the islands north of the main archipelago. The man who wore Nonnus' semblance only shouted orders while the coxswain bellowed a conflicting set. Both men were trying to turn the vessel after the escaping girl, but they were going about the process in different fashions.

Few sailors could swim. If one of the oarsmen had been the exception, and if he'd had the initiative to dive over the side after Sharina, well—

She had memories of how Nonnus coped with danger. And she had his keen-edged Pewle knife as well.

Because Sharina lifted her face between strokes only enough to gasp a mouthful of air, her fingers touched the shore before she saw it. She scrambled out of the water on all fours, dodging lobelias as she ran uphill. Her tanned limbs and the wet brown wool of her tunic were invisible against the background in this light, though her blond hair would be a beacon once the moon rose.

Sharina stayed below the crest as she worked to the left around the island. The shrubbery didn't have thorns. Basalt fractured with sharper edges than, say, limestone, but Sharina's feet hadn't been in the water long enough for .her soles to soften.

She'd have run across knife blades if that was what it took to escape from the monster wearing her friend's face.

The dispatch boat was a dark mass between two lines of oar-foam. It had turned in its own length and was putting in to shore. The false Nonnus was ordering the crew to fan out across the island as soon as they grounded.

When Sharina saw open water to the north she realized that the island was a narrow spine rather than the quarter-mile circle she'd hoped for. The twenty oarsmen could form a sufficiently tight cordon to find her by sweeping from one narrow end to the other.

They'd have to get organized first, of course, but the false Nonnus had shown he was capable of intelligent planning. And he was a wizard as well....

The dispatch vessel grated onto the island. They must have touched parallel to the steep shore instead of driving straight in. For the sake of speed, the vessel's hull and frames were as thin as possible. Sharina had hoped they might break the ship's back when they landed, but she knew better than to expect that from a trained crew.

“Brace her to starboard!” the coxswain cried. “Use your oars!”

What Sharina expected was that she'd be recaptured. They'd carry her bound in the bottom of the vessel the rest of the way to wherever they were going.

The only chance she saw now was to get away from the island. Swimming outward would probaWy be suicide, but if she had a float of some sort for support there was at least a chance that she could reach another miniature landfall unseen in the gathering darkness. By now only the stars distinguished the sky from the sea below.

As the shouting sailors formed a line on the other side of the island, Sharina began to comb” the northern shore for driftwood. The groundsels grew within a few feet of the water, though the lobelias seemed to be less resistant to salt. Fleshy leaves brushed her like dead men's fingers. She jogged through them, bent over to scan the ground more closely.

A figure stood in front of her. Her first thought was that a basalt outcrop had gotten to its feet, but it was a man—a huge man, holding vertically a spear whose blade was a hand's breadth wide. A weapon like that would let a victim's life out as swiftly as the heart pumped.

Sharina had the Pewle knife in her hand. She slashed upward. The big man's right foot moved in a smooth arc to meet her wrist, spinning Sharina away. Her forearm was numb, but she didn't drop the knife.

Sharina hit on her right side, half-cushioned by a giant groundsel. She twisted to get her feet under her as she tried to take the knife in her left hand.

The man planted the steel-capped butt of his spear in Sharina's solar plexus, paralyzing her diaphragm. She doubled up, unable to breathe.

She tried to hold the knife, but the man knelt beside her and plucked it from her fingers. He wore garments of leather with an unfamiliar, reptilian smell.

“Where'd you come by a Pewle knife, missie?” the man asked as he examined the weapon. His tone was conversational, but he pitched his voice too low to be heard more than a few feet away.

Sharina still struggled to breathe. “From a man who'd have you for supper if he were still alive!” she gasped.

The big man chuckled. “Then he was a right good man,” he said without rancor. He handed the knife back to her, hilt first.

“My name's Hanno,” he went on. “Now, it doesn't seem to me that the folks on the other side here are any friends to you. Is that so?”

“I'll die before I let them take me again,” Sharina whispered. She put the Pewle knife back in its sheath, though she had to use both hands to do so. She trembled from exertion and the shocking blow to her abdomen.

“Now, missie,” the stranger said. “I'm on my way back to Bight from Valles where I sold my horn. If you don't choose to stay here, you can come with me—but I warn you, you'll be living in a hunting cabin and I won't make another trip to Valles for six months or better.”

“Let's go,” Sharina said as she tried to stand. “One of the men's a wizard.”

Hanno picked Sharina up in the crook of his left arm and strode down the shore. A twenty-foot dory, slimmer but otherwise similar to the two-man fishing boats that put out from Barca's Hamlet, was drawn into a notch in the basalt. Hanno set Sharina aboard, laid his long spear beside the crossed oars amidships, and shoved the vessel out to sea with a lurch and a grunt.

Hanno was carrying six months of supplies with him. The dory's hull fore and aft was packed with parcels wrapped in oilcloth and fastened securely with a web of horsehair ropes. Sharina could only guess at the weight the big man had just shifted into the water, but it must be on the order of three or four tons.

Hanno splashed after the boat for several paces, then climbed in over the upswept stern when they were out far enough that his weight didn't ground the keel. Sharina had her breath back. She squeezed aside as Hanno walked over the cargo and dropped onto one of the two thwarts amidships. The dory continued to bob away from the shore.

Hanno was an agile man—not just “agile for his size.” Sharina didn't remember ever having met a man bigger than this hunter: He was taller than Garric and almost as massively built as Cashel.

He set the oars in the rowlocks. Sharina pinned them before Hanno could do so himself. He nodded in approval and perhaps surprise, then stroked outward.

“They have a twenty-oared ship,” Sharina said in a low voice. She could hear sailors calling to one another and the false Nonnus trying to shout orders to all of them.

“They do for now,” Hanno said. He sounded amused rather than concerned. He turned the dory parallel to the shore. His oarstrokes were powerful, but they made no more sound than the ordinary slap of water against itself.

They were far enough out that Sharina saw the island as a black mass rather than a place. Lights began to bloom on the other side of the spine. The false Nonnus was passing out rushlights, pithy reed stems soaked in wax and ignited. They gave a pale, flaring illumination.

Sharina hunched instinctively. Hanno chuckled and said, “That's just made us safer. Them lights won't show anything beyond arm's length and it'll waste the fools' night vision besides. If they knew what they were doing, they'd spread out and hunker down to listen for you moving.”

He chuckled again. “Of course, that wouldn't help them now neither,” he added.

Hanno turned the dory. They'd rounded the tip of the little island and were headed back up the south side, staying about a bowshot from the shore. Sharina could tell land from sea only by the faint margin of foam where the two met.

Hanno rowed effortlessly, maneuvering by backing water with the one oar while the other took a full sweep. The dory didn't have a mast or even a mast partner on the false keel. He must row all the way from Bight to Ornifal and back.... Perhaps he set a triangular boat sail in the bow to run when the wind was dead astern.

A line of rushlights winked across the spine and over it. The lights began to move together toward the east end of the island, leaving the west for a second pass if necessary.

The crew had lit a small bonfire on the beach, just inshore of the dispatch vessel. Sharina saw one man or perhaps two tending the fire before the vessel's long hull blocked her vision.

Hanno grunted and pulled the dory's bow toward the island again. Sharina watched the hull of the silhouetted dispatch vessel loom past the oarsman. She could hear the voices of the men ashore, but only rarely was a word intelligible.

Sharina rubbed her aching abdominal muscles, then rested her fingers on the hilt of the Pewle knife. Starlight gleamed faintly on Hanno's teeth as he grinned at her.

Only at the last moment did Hanno glance over his shoulder. He backed water with one oar, then both, and brought the dory alongside the stern of the grounded dispatch vessel. He shipped his oars and touched a finger to his lips for silence. Sharina nodded curtly.

The false Nonnus' ship was tilted with the keel in the water and the port side lying along the shore. Because the ground sloped upward, any kind of a breeze could have flopped the vessel to starboard and possibly capsized it, but the air of the Inner Sea was normally dead still at sunset and sunrise.

The anchor hung from a rope stopper in the dispatch vessel's stern. The stock was iron, but the shank and arms were cypress wood bound with lead hoops for weight.

Hanno stood. The dory quivered, but the big man kept his weight centered. He gripped the anchor with one hand and severed the salt-encrusted stopper with a thrust of his spear.

The anchor's weight—as much as Sharina or perhaps even a man of middling size—dropped into Hanno's hand. The dory bobbed furiously, banging its starboard gunwale against the larger vessel's hull. Sharina held steady, knowing that if she tried to damp the oscillations she'd interfere with Hanno's own adjustments. The big man knew what he was doing.

A sailor on the other side shouted. “I'll take the spear!” Sharina cried.

Hanno slammed the anchor's lead-wrapped crown through the dispatch vessel just above the keel. The planks were pine and thin for a seagoing ship but were still two fingers' breadth thick. They splintered like glass hitting stone.

Hanno tossed the spear sidearm to Sharina. She was braced for the weight, but it still felt like she'd caught a falling tree. The seven-foot shaft was oak, and a long steel butt-cap balanced the weight of the broad head.

A sailor carrying a rushlight came around the stern of the dispatch vessel and gaped at them. “What are you doing?” he shouted. He wasn't armed.

Sharina waggled the spear, holding it with both hands. “Get back!” she said. She had no quarrel with the sailors; they were obviously hirelings, not enemies for their own sakes. If the false Nonnus had stepped toward her...

Hanno dragged the anchor out of the hull, then swung it again into the siding like a mace. Frames as well as planking broke at the impact. The dory splashed like a whale broaching, but her beam and the weight of cargo kept her from going over.

The steersman stepped around the dispatch vessel. He carried a short, stiff bow with an arrow already nocked. “Hold the light up!” he ordered the other sailor.

Hanno threw the anchor at him. There was a wet crunch. Man and missile tumbled out of sight. The cable reeved through the anchor ring followed like the body of a striking snake.

Hanno took the oars, facing now toward what had been the stern. Sharina anticipated him, clambering out of the way without losing the big spear. The dory was double-ended and had neither rudder nor sail to impose a direction of movement.

They got under way gradually, the way a rock begins to fall. The weight of cargo made the vessel too massive for even Hanno's strength to accelerate quickly, though fewer than a dozen paired strokes were enough to get them out of sight of the shore.

Rushlights clustered around the dark line of the ship. Sailors shouted. Once Sharina thought she heard the voice of the false Nonnus. She smiled grimly. If he repaired the dispatch vessel's damage in less than a day, he was a wizard indeed.

“I don't much like to travel at night,” Hanno said as he rowed, now without the devouring effort that had taken them offshore, “but this time it's the choice. At least I'd had my supper before that lot landed on the other side.”

“Thank you,” Sharina said. She wasn't ready to explain what had happened—she wasn't really sure what had happened, what was happening—but Hanno didn't seem the sort of man who required explanations.

The moon had just come out of the sea over the big man's shoulder. Sharina felt the smile that she couldn't really see because of the darkness. He said, “You'll do, missie. You'll surely do.”

“A forest!” Zahag cried enthusiastically. It was the first emotion besides peevish anger that Cashel had heard in the ape's voice since they'd escaped from the dissolving tower. “A forest at last!”

Zahag charged toward the dank, moss-draped trunks at a hobbling gallop. He looked remarkably clumsy because his forelimbs were so much longer than the back ones. He still covered ground pretty well.

Come to think, peevish anger had been the ape's usual attitude everywhere else Cashel had known him too.

“Have we come home?” Aria said as she twisted against Cashel's chest. Even she sounded hopeful for once. He'd been carrying her in the crook of one arm or the other since midday. It was mat or drag her, and it was obvious the girl had been doing her pitiful best to keep up.

“Ooh!” Aria said in disgust as she took in the landscape ahead of them. “Oh, how could you bring me here?”

She started to cry.

“Well, it makes a change from the desert,” Cashel said uneasily. The trouble was, he couldn't convince himself it was a change for the better.

“Oh, what a change from the rocks that were wearing my knuckles bloody!” Zahag called as he followed the trail out of sight. “And say, that's a lizard! That'll make a change from berries and more berries!”

“Can you walk now?” Cashel said, setting Aria back on her feet. “The going ought to be a little easier, and we'll be out of the sun.”

The sun had been an unpleasant factor every day since they arrived in this place, but Cashel wasn't sure he wouldn't miss the glare before long. The light seemed hostile, but it didn't hide anything. This forest had a greasy, behind-your-back look to it, much like Cashel's uncle Katchin in Barca's Hamlet.

He grinned. The forest didn't have Katchin's windy pride, though. Maybe things were getting better after all.

“I wish I could die,” Aria muttered, but she followed under her own power when Cashel started down the trail.

The trees weren't giants. They ran to ten or a dozen paces—double paces from left heel to left heel—in height, about as tall as you could expect for anything growing in boggy ground.

Cashel couldn't understand why the soil was so wet. They'd gone from grit and spiky bushes to trees draped in moss that dripped on the sopping ground. His footsteps squelched and the line of prints gleamed behind him like so many little ponds.

He tossed his straw umbrella away. It clung to a branch, wrapped in tendrils of moss. The dry grass began to soak through.

Cashel felt obscurely bothered. He tugged the umbrella out of the soggy veil and carried it back to the edge of the forest, where he threw it onto dry sand. If a breeze returned it to the bog, that was none of his doing.

“What on'earth did you just do?” Aria said.

“Well, the umbrella did a pretty good job for me the past few days,” Cashel said. “I didn't figure it deserved me to leave it here.”

He resumed walking down the trail at his easy, shepherd's pace. He carried his staff at a slant across his chest, one hand above and the other below the balance.

He could feel the girl staring at him in amazement. Well, let her. Nothing Cashel had seen in his life had caused him to lose his belief in justice. Deep in his heart was the thought that a fellow who treated things badly was likely to be treated as a thing himself one day; and treated badly.

“Zahag, are you up there?” he called.

“What are you waiting for?” the ape replied. His voice sounded faint. The chirrups of unseen frogs and insects smothered ordinary speech over even modest distances.

The desert had been deathly still, except once and a while during the night when something howled in the distance. That sound had been pretty deathly too.

Branches twisted and forked. It was hard to tell which leaves belonged to a tree and which were on a vine or some lesser plant growing in a crotch.

The moss covered everything. Cashel used the staff to push through it, but even so dank strands brushed his shoulders.

“I don't like this place,” Aria said in a small voice. It was an honest statement for a change, not an accusation. She must be really scared.

“Just stay close and you'll be fine,” Cashel said.

Saying that made him feel so much better that he started to grin. “You'll be all right, Princess,” he said. “This is what I do, you see. I'm a shepherd.”

There was a plop! back the way they'd come. It sounded too loud to have been a drip hitting the ground, but who knew? Maybe a broad leaf had turned inside out and spilled a firkin of water all at once.

Zahag shrieked. Something crashed and splashed through the forest toward Cashel and the girl. Cashel slid his hands a span outward and lowered the staff slightly to a guard position.

Zahag threw himself at Cashel's feet and cried, “I didn't see anything! I didn't see anything!” Aria screamed too as she hugged Cashel from behind. Duzi! Didn't either of them have any sense?

The forest had grown silent. The normal volume of squeaks and chirping resumed. Nothing had pursued the ape.

“I think we better go on,” Cashel said. Aria had already taken her hands away; Zahag twisted his head to look back the way he'd come. “I'd sooner be someplace else before we lose the last of the light.”

They started on. It had been dark enough when they entered the forest. Cashel figured when the sun went down they'd might as well be deep in a cave. Aria walked right behind him, and Zahag stayed awkwardly close to his left side.

.Cashel didn't suppose it was worth asking the ape what had frightened him. Out of sight, out of mind was pretty much Zahag's whole life. Whatever he'd seen or thought he saw in the dripping moss was nothing he'd be willing to call back to memory.

“I see things glowing,” Aria said. “Out—there.”

“Right,” said Cashel, trying to sound hearty. Duzi knew he'd spent enough nights out in thunderstorms talking to sheep. Otherwise they might panic and smother themselves by piling up in a corner of the fold. “Foxfire, just like at home. I think we can keep on going a ways by it lighting-the trail.”

They were going to walk until Cashel dropped under the, weight of both his companions if it came to that. There was no way he was going to suggest they bed down anywhere he'd seen since they entered the forest.

The path had a gray sheen. Tree trunks stood as greenish or yellowish ghosts across which other almost-colors wound themselves. It was hard to judge distances with nothing but fuzzy glows to go by. The moss was the only thing in this place that didn't seem to have its own light. Cashel couldn't keep it from dragging across him now.

Aria was crying softly. Cashel couldn't blame her. At least he didn't have to look back as he'd been doing during daylight to make sure she was still with him.

Trees rustled. At first Cashel thought that something—or perhaps many lesser somethings—was above him, but when he looked up he could watch bare branches writhe against the unfamiliar stars. During daylight he hadn't been able to see the sky through the canopy of leaves.

Aria cried louder.

“Look!” said Zahag, tugging the hem of Cashel's tunic. He spoke with a desperate need to believe, a tone far removed from that of real belief. “Up ahead there—it's a real light. We're safe now, we just have to get to the light!”

“Well, we'll see when we get there,” Cashel said quietly, scanning both sides of the trail as they ambled onward. He thought he'd seen the winking flames of a fire through the trees also, but there was too much strange in this forest for him to take anything for granted.

Cashel grinned. He was walking along with a talking monkey and a princess, but he wasn't sure the light he saw ahead of him was a real fire. People back in Barca's Hamlet would think he was crazy.

He didn't let the smile build to a chuckle. Aria and Zahag would think he'd gone crazy too if he started laughing now.

The branches whispered above them. A wave of undulating phosphorescence had paralleled their track almost since the sun went down. Cashel couldn't be sure how far out in the night it was, but it seemed to be drifting closer.

He was probably seeing a layer of marsh gas finding its level in the air. Nothing to worry about.

“It is a fire!” Aria said. “Oh, I can see it now!”

In a choked voice she added, “Oh, please, Mistress God, may it be a fire!”

They'd reached a clearing. Before them stood a tower of honest, lichen-stained blocks of stone—not pink confectionery that dissolved if somebody stumbled down the stairs.

And there was a fire, as well, a beacon of wood burning in an iron basket lifted on a spike above the tower. Its flaring light silhouetted figures manning the battlements.

“Hello the house!” Cashel said as he stepped beyond the last clinging branches. Should he have said “tower” instead of “house”? He was so glad to see human habitation that he'd called as if he'd stumbled onto a farmhouse after being benighted.

“Go away, monsters!” a voice shrilled. “Or we'll kill you!”

The beacon dribbled a line of sparks; it sank to a throb of orange and rose. The fire had nearly consumed itself. The wood you found in this forest would be either too wet to burn or rotted into punk that didn't give a good bed of coals.

Cashel stepped forward. “We're not monsters!” he called. He held, his staff upright at his side so that it didn't look threatening—not that anybody could make out details from the top of the tower. “We need a place to sleep for the night, that's all.”

And maybe an explanation of where this place was. That would be nice.

“Go away!” the voice repeated.

Cashel heard a clicking sound from the battlements. A gear, he thought. A ratchet and pawl—

Somebody using a windlass to crank a powerful crossbow!

“Hey!” he bellowed, striding forward. He didn't pause to think about what he was doing. “You stop these silly games or I'll pull this place down around your ears. By the Shepherd I will!”

He slammed the butt of his quarterstaff on the ground before him. The staff flared blue fire, bathing Cashel in a moment of cold brilliance. Hairs prickled all over his body.

“He's a man!” somebody in the tower cried hurriedly. “What's a man doing out there?”

“Let me and my friends in right now,” Cashel said, vaguely embarrassed at both his anger and the flash he'd created. The light had surprised him, but at least the folks in the tower had seen that he wasn't any monster. “We just want a place to sleep.”

The beacon gave a last gulp and died. The bones of light that remained were scarcely enough to display the bars of the cage, let alone anyone beyond it

“We're putting down the ladder,” the first voice called. “Don't waste any time, though. They'll attack any moment now.”

Something rustled and clacked down the wall of the tower. Cashel judged its location by starlight, then reached out It was a ladder with rope stringers and wooden battens for steps.

“Come on!” he called over his shoulder in what he hoped was a carrying whisper. He hadn't wanted his companions close to nun if somebody started shooting arrows, but he didn't want them left behind either.

He could well believe there were monsters in this forest, that was a fact.

Zahag scrambled past and grabbed the ladder; Cashel caught his hairy arm and held him back. The ape screeched with frustration”but didn't quite try to bite.

“Can you make it by yourself, Princess?” Cashel asked. Instead of answering, Aria snatched the ladder and began climbing strongly. She quickly faded to a blur of pale fabric against the stone.

Cashel released the ape. “And don't try to climb over her!” he warned.

Though at the rate Aria was going up, that wasn't the danger Cashel had feared it would be. Her tower's steep steps had given her a lot of exercise. They hadn't done anything for her politeness, but that was probably true of a lot of princesses.

“It's a woman,” a different voice on the battlements said. “Oh, is it really a woman?”

Cashel started to climb. He held the staff before him in the crooks of both elbows, making it a slow, clumsy job. If he'd kept the rope he'd used to climb Aria's tower, he wouldn't have to wobble up like an old man with pains in his joints. He didn't have the rope, and he surely wasn't going to leave his staff on the ground.

“Hey, a monster!” a man screamed. Steel clanged red sparks from the battlements.'

Zahag was jabbering twenty to the dozen somewhere in the darkness, so he must be all right. It sounded like he'd jumped from the ladder to the side of the wall. The stones were so weathered that Cashel figured that in a pinch even a human could find enough hand- and toeholds between the courses to climb this tower.

“Hey!” he bellowed. He held the quarterstaff in one hand as he snatched his way up the last of the climb in a fashion that wouldn't have been safe if he weren't in such a hurry. “Stop that! He's not a monster, he's my friend!”

Cashel went over the battlements. The top of the tower flared out a little from the shaft so for the last two upward strides his toes weren't touching the wall anymore. It was good to have stone and not a wavering ladder under his feet; especially since the battens hadn't been meant for somebody Cashel's size in a hurry.

“Now you quit that!” Cashel said. “Who's the master here?”

He slammed his quarterstaff on the floor. The brass ferrule didn't spark on the stone the way the iron caps of his usual staff would've done, but the whock! was loud enough to get the attention of the dozen or so men present.

A squat, mustached fellow with a helmet and halberd cleared his throat. “I'm Captain Koras,” he said. “You say that fellow with you's a true man? He looked pretty hairy to me.”

“Hairy?” Zahag shouted in fury from close below the battlements. “I'll pull your scraggly whiskers off if you hate hair so much you'd take an axe to me!”

“Zahag, be quiet!” Cashel said. He cleared his throat and went on, “He's an ape, not a man, but he isn't any monster. And like I told you, he's my friend.”

It was funny to think of Zahag as a friend. He guessed it was pretty much true, though.

Aria came out of the crowd and squeezed against Cashel's side, apparently uncomfortable with the soldiers around her. She'd be in the way if he had to use his quarterstaff, but he didn't think it'd come to that.

“We ought to get the ladder up,” a man muttered. “They're going to attack any time, I'd guess.”

Koras held his fist to his mouth and gave a rumbling cough. “Not to doubt you, sir,” he said, “but it sounded like the creature was talking. Your friend, I mean.”

“Right,” said Cashel. There was no light but that of the stars, so the men facing him were merely dim presences. “He talks, but he's an ape. He used to belong to a wizard.”

A man stepped close to Cashel, reached past him, and began pulling up the ladder. The battens tinkled on the blocks of the wall like a xylophone. A mummer, one of a trio who'd visited Barca's Hamlet during the Sheep Fair a few years ago, had played the xylophone. Cashel had been amazed that wooden tubes could make sounds so richly musical.

“Well, since you vouch for him,” Koras said. “It's the first time I'd met an ape who talks, is all.”

“Come on up, Zahag,” Cashel said. “They're going to let us sleep here.”

He stuck his staff down over the wall so that the ape wouldn't have to struggle with the top's flare. Zahag instead gripped an arrow notch with the fingers of one hand and flipped himself over by that contact alone. The ape was really strong for his size.

“Sleep?” said one soldier. “We only sleep during the day here, stranger.”

“They'll be attacking soon,” Captain Koras agreed. “You coming the way you did probably confused them, but—”

“Here they come!” cried a soldier.

Hideous screams came from the forest all around. A soldier resumed cranking his crossbow; another man drew an arrow from the quiver at his side and nocked it in his hand bow.

Cashel peered over the battlements. He could see motion on the ground but with no more details than if he'd been watching the tide on a moonless night.

A rosy flash danced through the soil to light the night like a thunderbolt. Against it Cashel saw the creatures attacking the tower. The angle foreshortened them, but it wasn't mat which made them monsters.

Some had beasts' bodies; some had beasts' heads. They wore scraps of armor and human clothing, and their weapons ranged from long swords to stones gripped in one or more hands. They went on two legs or four; and one monstrosity undulated on more legs than a centipede and had a torso whose four arms waved axes.

Some carried scaling ladders.

The flash was there and gone, leaving only the impression of movement behind.

“Aria, get down inside if you can!” Cashel said. He slid his hands along his quarterstaff, getting the feel of it while he waited for the first of the screaming horde to climb to a level he could reach.

The plaza where three roads met near Ilna’s tenement had a fountain that didn't work. She intended to get the water line repaired as one of her next projects, though she hadn't as yet determined whether to use bribery or extortion to bring city officials to her way of thinking.

Even without water the plaza was generally busy; it was as close to a park as the Crescent could boast. The magic act being performed there today would have drawn a crowd in any district of Erdin.

Ilna was at the front of the spectators. Folk in the Crescent knew Mistress Ilna and made way for her. If they didn't, one of their neighbors taught them proper courtesy with an elbow—or a brick. Ilna didn't encourage that sort of thing, but she couldn't have stopped it if she tried. And anyway, there wasn't enough courtesy in the world.

The young man wearing red silk muttered a word that Ilna heard but didn't understand; he struck down with his. athame. A flower of ruby light grew, opened, and expanded into a sphere that Ilna couldn't have spanned with both arms outstretched. In its heart was a city of light— low houses and a harbor with ships moving on the water. Ilna could even see people walking along the streets.

“Oooh!” sighed the spectators.

“That's Pandah!” cried a man in the wide pantaloons and bright silk sash of a sailor ashore. “By the Lady's nose, that's Pandah or I'm a farmer!”

The image sucked in on itself and vanished. The young man stepped back and wiped his brow. He was sweating like a stevedore and looked tired.

As well he might. Most of the crowd probably thought they were watching an expert illusionist. Ilna had seen enough wizardry to recognize it when she saw it again.

Voder had said the young man's legless helper was named Cerix. He propelled his little cart into the crowd with thrusts of one hand on the right wheel while his left held up a wooden bowl. “While the great Master Halphemos rests before his stunning climax,” the cripple said, “it's time for you good people to show that you appreciate his art. Give to the master who gives to you!”

To call the Crescent a poor district was to praise it; half the residents were probably planning to flee at the end of any given week to avoid the rent collector. Despite that, several folk dropped coins into the bowl. Copper, of course, and in one case the clank of a wedge-shaped iron farthing from Shengy—but more money than any street entertainer had seen in this plaza since the mud was bricked over.

It wasn't a fraction of what the show was worth. Halphemos—and his helper, who'd drawn the circles of power before each incantation—could have performed before the earl himself for a fee paid in gold.

The cripple shoved his cart up to Ilna.  “Will the wealthy lady show her appreciation of Master Halphemos?” he said as he .rattled the bowl.

Ilna nodded curtly. Her clothes were clean and hadn't been patched; in the Crescent, that made her a member of the elite.

She dropped a silver coin in the bowl. Several of those nearby gasped when they heard the unmistakable chime. The cripple snatched it out and put it in his mouth for safekeeping, giving Ilna a look of amazement as he did so.

“I'll see you after the show,” Ilna said. “I believe you're looking for me.”

The cripple skidded his cart back to Halphemos even though he'd only worked half the crowd. The two whispered. Ilna smiled grimly at them. She didn't know why a wizard should be looking for her; but one was, and she saw no reason to delay learning.

It was probably bad news. There was never a reason to delay getting bad news. That was cowardice.

The cripple quickly scratched a new pattern on the bricks, using a bit of charcoal as before. During the performance the “stage” on which Halphemos performed had moved steadily to the right so that his helper had unmarked bricks on which to write the next time. Ilna didn't think the symbols were actually legible even to someone who could read, but they were apparently necessary for the incantation to have effect.

Halphemos stood and made a slight bow of acknowledgment to Ilna. He still looked tired, but there was a nervous enthusiasm in his voice as he began to murmur sounds that were not words to human beings.

Light swelled from a ruby-colored bead in the air. For a moment, Ilna thought there was nothing but swirling mist. A serpent of bloody light struck outward—

“No!” shouted the crippled helper. He reached for the circle of power to smudge the words out of existence, but Halphemos had already thrown down his athame.

The image vanished like blood soaking into dry sand.

Ilna’s fingers had twitched her lasso out by reflex. She tucked the silken coil back beneath her sash.

The crowd reacted with screams', gasps, and—when the image vanished—cheers and foot-stampings of applause. They'd been frightened, but they thought the shock was all part of the entertainment. When it passed, they were delighted.

Halphemos sat. Ilna winced to see his silk robe on the filthy pavement. His athame, a length of spiral horn or possibly tooth, lay before him. He reached for it absently, then jerked his fingers away before he touched the tool.

Cerix was gray-faced. He waved to move the spectators away and cried, “The show is over! Master Halphemos must rest now!”

A prostitute with a room in Ilna’s tenement leaned forward to drop a coin in Cerix's bowl. The cripple glared so fiercely that she backed away in surprise.

“What in the name of all gods did you do?” Cerix said to Halphemos, his voice harsh with fear. He felt Ilna’s presence and jerked his head around to snarl before he recognized her.

“Let's get him into Anno's” Ilna said. “That's the tavern behind you. We can use the room in back.”

“It should have been King Valence in his palace,” Halphemos said, as much to himself as to Cerix or Ilna. “I'd used the Earl of Sandrakkan when we opened, so I just switched the names to have something different for the close.”

“Come,” Ilna said, putting her hand on the young man's arm. She gave it a tug when he didn't react quickly enough.

Halphemos was wobbly, but he rose obediently to his feet. With her free hand she picked up the athame.

They staggered the few steps to the tavern. Four pewter mugs were chained to the stone counter facing the street. The back was the family's living quarters, but Anno would set up a table and stools whenever somebody was willing to pay three coppers instead of two for his wine.

Anno's wife—or perhaps sister, Ilna didn't choose to inquire—flopped the wooden gate in the counter back to let them through. She must have been listening.

A man wearing broad gold rings on both his thumbs plucked Halphemos' sleeve as he started to follow Ilna within. “My good young sir!” he said. “With a man like me who knows local business conditions as your agent, you can become richer than you dream!”

Ilna looked at him. “Get out of here, Mangard,” she said. “And while I think of it—don't ever let me hear about you threatening one of your girls with a knife again. If I do, I'll put a knot in a place you'll notice more than if it was your throat. Do you understand?”

“I, ah...” Mangard said. He thought the better of whatever he'd planned to say, which meant he probably did understand.

Ilna scowled as the pimp scuttled away. What she thought she'd seen in Halphemos' last vision must have disturbed her more than she'd realized. Normally she didn't make threats of the sort she'd spoken to Mangard. Not because she couldn't carry it out; rather, because now that she'd used the words she'd have to carry it out. The thought disgusted her.

Halphemos sat, though he seemed still to be in a daze. When Cerix wheeled his cart close, his chin rose just above the level of the table. It made for an awkward way to carry on a conversation but a practical one.

“Wine for the two men,” Ilna said. She took a pair of coins from her purse. They were silver-washed bronze, minted in Carcosa a generation ago. Here they passed at three Sandrakkan coppers each.

“You don't have to pay, mistress,” the tavern-keeper said.

Ilna smiled. “On the contrary,” she said, “I do. And I wish I had nothing worse to pay for than two mugs of your wine.”

“You're Ilna os-Kenset, aren't you?” Halphemos said, accepting the athame which Ilna handed him without comment. He'd gotten his color back; when the wine arrived, he drank normally instead of the greedy slurping Ilna'd expected.

He didn't choke at the taste, either. Halphemos might wear silk now, but it wasn't the first time he'd drunk watered lees in a dockside tavern.

“Yes,” Ilna said. She probably wouldn't have been any good at small talk even if she'd seen a purpose in it. “Why were you looking for me?”

Cerix frowned slightly, considering how to respond to Ilna’s bluntness. Halphemos simply nodded toward his mug—they weren't chained here in the back, though they didn't appear to be washed any more frequently either— and said, “Mistress Sharina, that's Sharina os—”

“I know her,” Ilna said without inflection.

“Sharina said we should come to you,” Halphemos said. “I made your brother vanish by mistake. She thought you could—”

“It wasn't your fault!” the cripple said furiously. “I keep telling you, you've never made a mistake like that. Look how you stopped yourself today!”

“I spoke an incantation, and your brother Cashel vanished,” Halphemos said in a self-damning tone that Ilna had heard often enough in her own voice. “With your help Cerix thinks we can find him again. And be sure he's in a place of safety.”

In the Crescent, taverns didn't waste money on the rushes or bracken which more pretentious inns spread on their floors. There were some strands of rye straw which had broken from the truckle beds on which Anno and his family slept, though. Ilna picked a few of them up and began plaiting them, only half conscious of what she was doing.

“There should have been three other people with my brother and Sharina,” Ilna said. “Garric or-Reise, an old woman named Tenoctris, and... a girl my age. Quite an attractive girl.”

“The ship Cashel and Mistress Sharina were on was swallowed by a monster,” Cerix said. “Anyone with them must be dead now.”

Ilna looked at her sash, the twin of the one she'd given Liane. It remained precisely as she'd woven it. “I doubt that,” she said, “but it needn't concern us now. What do you want of me?”

She looked at what her hands were doing. The straw was filthy. She slapped the pattern she'd woven down on the table, wondering if there'd be a rag here that wouldn't make her fingers dirtier than they were already.

“If you have an object of your brother's—” Halphemos said.

“Wait!” the cripple interrupted. He picked up the twists of straw so that he could see them squarely, then looked at Ilna in wonder and surmise. He said, “Why did you write 'Valles' this way, mistress?”

“I didn't write anything,” Ilna said, controlling her anger with some difficulty. “I can't write. Or read either, if you think that's any of your business.”

“You wrote the word 'Valles;' mistress,” Cerix said. He held the straw pattern out to Ilna in the palm of his hand. “In the Old Script.”

Halphemos quirked a smile toward her. “I can read,” he said—admitted? “But I still have to sound out the words, and I don't know the Old Script.”

“I don't know anything at all,” Ilna said, glaring at it in irritation. But she had woven the straw into its present pattern.

“Are you a wizard yourself, mistress?” the legless man said softly.

“I never thought so,” Ilna said. She grimaced. “I don't know.”

“Nevertheless,” Cerix said, “I think we should go to Valles. I wish the notation had been a little fuller so that we knew what we were looking for there, but perhaps it will become clear in time.”

Halphemos nodded three times, as though he were batting his head against an invisible wall. He looked at Ilna.

“Will you come with us, Mistress Ilna?” he asked.

He had a pleasant smile. It seemed a natural expression for him.

“Yes, I suppose I have to,” Ilna said as she stood. “I'll make arrangements to take care of my responsibilities here, but I should be ready to leave in a few days.”

Cerix cleared his throat. “There's a question of finances,” he said. “The boy and I saved enough to—”

“I can take care of our passage,” Ilna said. “He's my brother, after all.”

She nodded a cold farewell and walked out of the tavern. She'd spent most of her life caring for Cashel, so it was easy to keep her duty to him at the front of her mind.

And that was good, because otherwise Ilna knew she'd be thinking about Garric, in the belly of a sea monster.