Ilna hugged her brother, feeling a terrible sense of loss. She hadn't realized how much she... Well, she hadn't depended on Cashel because Ilna didn't depend on anyone but herself; but how much she'd grown up  expecting  the  presence  of Cashel's  calm strength. Having him back made her aware of what she'd missed. Having him back temporarily. Ilna didn't suppose Cashel's life would lead him to Erdin, where she'd decided her own duties lay.

Halphemos and Cerix were talking to their monkey. .The bearers had lowered Cerix's litter to the pavement. Halphemos and the monkey squatted alongside; the monkey scratched his belly with a hind foot. The three displayed the wariness of separated associates who each think the others may have reason to reproach them.

Robilard had gotten out of his litter. At the dock he'd tried to hire a third vehicle for Ilna, but she'd refused it contemptuously. The baron would probably have dismissed his own Utter then, except for a justified fear that Ilna would scorn him as indecisive as well as a pampered fop.

She smiled slightly. Robilard wasn't a bad fellow, for a noble. Someday he might grow up to be a man.

Cashel looked at Halphemos. He asked, “Did that wizard tell you how Sharina's doing?”

Ilna shook her head. “They were separated just after you left Pandah,” she said'. “Now that I've found you, we can look for her. One thing at a time.”

She cleared her throat. “I was wondering what you might have heard about Tenoctris and... and the others.”

“Nothing,” Cashel said, shaking his head. “The last I saw, they were being swallowed down by...”

He shrugged. “By whatever it was that ate the ship,” he went on. “A storm, I thought, but that fellow Halphemos said it was something else.”

The troops accompanying Robilard were oarsmen equipped with helmets, javelins, and short, curved swords. They were trained for sea fights, not as heavy infantry, but they still formed a barrier that civilian traffic, no matter how angry, couldn't push aside. For the moment the men waited for their commanders to make up their minds. Judging from their nonchalant demeanor, it wasn't a new experience.

Lord Hosten had marched at the head of the column because he knew Valles. Now he led a middle-aged civilian back through the ranks. “This is Master Talur, our agent for the port and the southern districts. Baron,” he said to Robilard.

Talur, whose complexion seemed darker than usual in Valles, bowed to the baron. “I didn't expect to see you, milord,” he said. “Ah—things are quite unsettled now, to be frank. I might almost wish you hadn't chosen this moment to visit.”

The agent wore layered tunics cinched by a broad silk sash and covered with a short cape embroidered in geometric designs. Ilna knew the garb was in the latest Valles style, but she was sure she heard a touch of a Haft accent in the man's voice. The thought gave her an unexpected twinge.

“A matter of honor brought me here,” Robilard said stiffly.

“But we're interested in the local situation so that we can avoid needless danger,” Hosten put in. When he saw his young master start to frown, he quickly added, “Consistently with honor, of course. Obviously we want to spare Mistress Ilna from unnecessary risks while she's under our protection.”

Ilna felt a smile tug the comers of her mouth. She didn't imagine her opinion of humanity as a whole would ever change, but in the course of her travels she'd met a surprising number of individuals she could respect. Lord Hosten was one of them.

“Yes, of course,” Talur said, noticeably relieved. “The riots that expelled the queen are over, but there's rumors of Admiral Nitker invading Valles with the Royal Fleet and also that the queen plans to retake the city by wizardry.”

“But these are only rumors?” the baron said. “Certainly I was treated courteously when we docked. Not as a potential enemy.”

“Rumors,” Talur agreed, “but very credible rumors, both of them. Still, the new government has the city in a posture of defense, and as for wizardry—well, they ousted the queen to begin with.”

He looked around reflexively, then added, “And not before time. If she hadn't been stopped—”

He turned his hands palms-up.

“Yes, well, none of this changes our plans,” Robilard said. “I have to pay my respects to King Valence, of course, and then I'll see if he can help me locate the friends for whom Mistress Ilna here is looking.”

He nodded to introduce Ilna to the agent. Ilna found herself frowning; she knew the baron was trying to help, which rubbed her the wrong way. What prevented Ilna from objecting aloud was her knowledge mat Robilard's access to the king might well help locate Tenoctris and Liane... and Garric... faster than Ilna and her wizard companions could do unaided.

“And we'll want to discuss quartering the crew, sir,” Hosten added.

“Yes, of course,” the baron agreed. “It would scarcely be courteous to march into Valles and put up a hundred armed men in the local inns without informing King Valence.”

“We'll be in sight of the palace when we pass the temple of the Lady of the Boundaries,” Talur said, nodding agreeably but with a slight frown. “That's just ahead, as you see.”

He nodded toward the squat, sandstone building with pillars on the sides as well as along the stepped front face. “But you'll probably be treating with representatives of the new government. Valence remains king, but he's delegated many of the duties of office to his heir presumptive, Prince Garric.”

Ilna didn't speak. She felt the threads of the pattern coming together, but the human part of her couldn't accept what was so much to her desire.

Cashel didn't have any such hesitation. “Garric?” he said. “Garric or-Reise from Barca's Hamlet, is that who you mean?”

Talur turned to look at Cashel for the first time. He said, “Prince Garric was Garric bor-Haft before his elevation. That's what the palace clerks put around, anyway, though I'll admit my concerns were more what his elevation meant in the future than where the gentleman came from.”

“Is he with an old lady named Tenoctris?” Cashel continued. “And a girl named Liane os-Benlo? She's near as pretty as Sharina.”

Ilna winced at her brother's delight and certainty. Both of Kenset's children saw things in simple patterns, but Ilna could only look from a distance on the sunlit beauty of Cashel's world. She saw clearer than her brother did, of that she was sure; but sometimes Ilna thought it would be a relief occasionally to lose sight of the truth in happy illusions like Cashel's.

“Why yes,” Talur said in amazement. “Do you know Prince Garric, good sir?”

“We used to,” Ilna said decisively. “We were on our way to the palace anyway, and—”

She smiled, half in self-mockery. “—I think we should get on with our business.”

 

“Mannor was Earl of Sandrakkan when Vales the Fifth was King of the Isles...,” Liane said as she re-pinned Garric's brown cape closer at the neck than he had. “He used to go out at night in disguise along with his chancellor to learn what his subjects really thought about his rule.”

The two of them stood with Tenoctris in a ground keeper's hut near the main gate of the palace. The compound had a dozen lesser entrances, postern gates as well as spots where the wall had crumbled or been dug away by servants who wanted a quiet route for their own purposes, but so long as Garric was disguised there was no reason not to use the formal one. Tenoctris was too frail to pull herself up a rope to a tree branch, after all.

“That was the story he told for an excuse,” said Garric. “Ill bet what he was really doing was hiding so that he could get a meal or a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, which he knew wasn't going to happen so long as there was anybody who knew where to find him.”

Liane stepped back and surveyed Garric's appearance, critically but with final approval. She smiled and said, “A young drover from Haft, sightseeing in Valles after bringing a selection of blood stock to Ornifal.”

Liane's expression grew more somber. “Are you sure you're up to this, Garric?” she said. “You look awfully tired.”

Tenoctris was going through a case of powders: minerals, herbs, and animal products as well, all ground to the finest dust and segregated within copper-mounted containers made from the tips of cattle horns. She looked up and said, “Garric, someone else could—”

“I don't trust someone else!” Garric said. He blushed. He really was close to the edge when he let his temper out that way.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Anyway, that isn't really true about me not trusting a couple Blood Eagles to tend you just as well as I could, Tenoctris. The truth is, I just need to get away and feel that I'm doing something instead of—”

Garric's smile spread. “Instead of talking to people about maybe something being done by somebody, someday,” he went on. “Which I know—”

His left hand tapped the coronation medallion on his chest in ironic salute to the king in his mind.

“—is really important and I'm not going to stop doing it. But I'm not going to do only that, because I'll start babbling and dance naked in the street. I need to get away from being king once and a while.”

“Come back safe,” Liane said with a smile that didn't fully conceal the real concern behind it. She'd never argued against Garric and Tenoctris going out unescorted, but she'd wanted to go with them as the three of them had done in the past.

“We'll do that,” Garric said. He hung Tenoctris' satchel over his left shoulder and offered her that arm for support. His right hand remained free—just in case.

Things were different in the past. Now someone in the palace had to know where Prince Garric was in case a real crisis occurred. Liane was the only person Garric could trust to summon him from the queen's mansion if it was a real crisis, but not to disturb him simply because an envoy from Blaise had arrived or a northern landholder had rolled a royal justiciar in a manure pile before expelling him from his domains.

They walked toward the gate, though Liane let herself fall behind the other two. There was always a bustle at the entrance. The business of government required staff and supplies, including the staff's food and drink. Besides that mundane traffic, more people than Garric could have imagined—though Carus, laughing, had warned him— wanted royal justice or royal monopolies or royal appointments.

At Liane's suggestion, both Tadai and Royhas had provided clerks to screen visitors: the jealousy between the households made it unlikely that a would-be office-seeker would succeed in bribing his way to access. A detachment of Blood Eagles guaranteed that those refused entry took no for an answer.'

Besides people trying to enter the palace on business, there were any number of folk who were simply spectators. They in turn .attracted small-scale entrepreneurs whose barrows sold everything from meat pies to silver amulets in the shape of the winged monster on which the queen had made her escape (an infallible remedy against violence and defeat in lawsuits, according to the hawker). A woman as lovely as Liane got attention. If Garric was at her side, he was likely to be recognized.

The sun had fallen below the horizon, though the sky still brightly silhouetted the compound's western wall and the tallest of the buildings beyond. The gates were open, as usual; servants had just finished hanging oil lamps from brackets on either door valve so that the entrance clerks had light to work by.

There was more man the usual commotion in the street, though. All twenty Blood Eagles were on their feet. As Garric neared the gate, the officer in command sent a runner back for instructions from higher authorities.

Just outside the gates stood a large body of troops. They'd forced their way through the normal crowd of idlers, but the men in civilian clothes at their head were speaking politely to the commander of the guard detachment. The foreign troops were escorting dignitaries who waited in their litters for the underlings on both sides to reach a conclusion.

“They're from Third Atara,” Liane said. When Garric slowed to take in the situation before getting involved in it, she'd come up beside him again. “See the seahorse and the blue borders on their tabards?”

“I saw them,” Garric said, “but they didn't mean anything to me.”

Reise had given his children an excellent education in the classics, but he hadn't bothered to teach them the details of current precedence and politics. He'd known them, certainly. Reise had been an official in the king's palace and later at the court of the Count and Countess of Haft. Such matters weren't part of a general grounding for life as Reise saw it, and they had no bearing on running an inn in Barca's Hamlet.

The commander of the guard detachment, an undercaptain named Besimon, noticed and recognized Garric standing nearby. The fellow's lips tightened in frustration, but he didn't call out and uncover the incognito prince.

It wasn't fair to leave Besimon in a situation obviously above his rank, however. “I've get to take care of this,” Garric muttered as he stepped forward. He wasn't surprised that Tenoctris and Liane followed him, the older woman leaning on the arm of the younger.

“I've asked that the chancellor come to the gate, ah, sir,” Besimon said, giving Garric another chance to conceal his identity if he wanted to. The undercaptain was in his early thirties, a younger son from a noble family in the north of Omifal. “The Baron of Third Atara has arrived with some guests who claim to know Prince Garric.”

“Garric!” Cashel boomed. He pushed his way to through the intervening soldiers like an ox plowing under stubble in late fall. “Oh, I thought I'd maybe never see you again!”

Garric hugged his friend, cocking his head sideways so that the quarterstaff in Cashel's hand didn't rap him alongside the ear. It was a measure of Garric's own sturdiness that Cashel's full-hearted delight didn't completely crush out his breath. Cashel knew his own strength, but when he was excited he sometimes overvalued the strength of other people.

“We didn't see you in the Gulf!” Garric said, shouting because of his own joy and the babble of other voices. “I was afraid...”

He didn't say what he'd been afraid of. Garric hadn't let himself think about what had happened to Cashel and Sharina until this moment when—

When he knew Cashel wasn't a drowned corpse whose flesh was bloated and whose features had been nibbled away by fish. That was the image that had flashed behind Garric's eyes every time he looked at the sea since the moment he'd awakened on the muddy shore of the Gulf.

Other figures were working then- way through the avenue Cashel had cleared. “And Sharina's all right?” Garric said, stepping back and leaning sideways to see past his friend's massive, form. He saw a woman's slim form, streaked by the shadows which the high-mounted lanterns threw across it. “Shar—”

Garric's delight stuck in his throat. “Ilna!” he said, trying to recover and seeing Ilna wince at the obvious falseness of his reaction.

He stepped toward her. She flinched away. Garric put his arms around Ilna and picked her up, despite her struggling.

“Ilna, I thought you were safe in Erdin,” Garric said. He felt her relax; Garric wasn't as strong as Cashel, but in his father's stables he'd brought refractory horses to their knees with bare hands and a grip on their bridles. “I was worried about Sharina, but I never knew you were in danger yourself.”

He set her down. Ilna tilted her face up to look at him. She tried to force a smile.

“Cashel’s safe, and you are,” she said. She tugged a cord from her sleeve and began knotting it to keep her hands occupied. “We'll find Sharina, Garric. We'll find her.”

From somebody else it would have sounded like a pious hope. From Ilna the words were much more.

A young man in travel-stained red brocade wriggled rather than pushed his way to Ilna’s side. He stood with his hands behind his back, glaring at Garric. Garric didn't remember ever having seen the fellow before.

Ilna noticed Garric's bemused glance. She turned, saw the youth, and said, “Garric, Master Halphemos here and his friend Master Cerix are wizards. They saved my life and came with me to rescue Cashel at great cost to themselves.”

She gave Garric her familiar wry smile. “Cashel didn't need much rescuing, but that doesn't affect the price Halphemos and Cerix have paid.”

Garric bowed to the young wizard. He'd have offered to clasp hands, but a glint in Halphemos' eyes suggested he just might have refused. Garric didn't need that kind of awkwardness, especially not right now.

“Anyone who's helped Ilna is a friend of mine,” Garric said. He couldn't imagine what Halphemos had against him. Did the fellow think he'd deliberately left Ilna behind?

“Your Majesty?” Liane murmured at Garric's side. He understood why she thought she should be formal in public, but it was so contrary to the easy relationships of Barca's Hamlet that each “Your Majesty” from a Mend felt to Garric like a slap on the cheek. “Another location might...?”

“Yes, of course,” said Garric. He'd known that too, but he couldn't find the place to say so when his friends had arrived. He surveyed the milling crowd.

Royhas and a pair of senior aides were coming up the flagstones, preceded by the runner Besimon had sent to summon them. The chancellor was still cinching his cloth-of-gold sash over the beige court robe he'd thrown on when the message arrived.

Outside the gate with the soldiers, a young man with gilded armor waited stiffly in company with the older aide who'd handled the initial discussions with Besimon. His plumed helmet was under his arm. “Ah—” Garric said to the young man.

“Baron Robilard,” Liane muttered in his ear. Either she'd known the ruler of Third Atara from when she'd been in school in Valles in past years, or—more likely— she'd memorized the names and stylings of the Isles' potentates as part of her current duties.

“Baron Robilard,” Garric said, “my chancellor Roy-has bor-Bolliman will see to you and your men.”

He nodded toward Royhas. The chancellor was already opening a wax tablet on which to jot orders to stewards and quartering officers.'“! hope at some time of greater leisure—”

Garric's smile was disarmingly politic, but it was an honest expression also.

“—which could have been almost any moment of my life before the past week, you'll let me honor you as you deserve for your kindness to my friends.”

“Brave beyond doubt,” King Carus said in cold assessment. “Not really stupid either, though that won't keep his kind from acting like fools. He's too hag-ridden by honor to take good advice unless it's honey-glazed.”

The civilian dressed in Valles style leaned close and whispered into Robilard's ear. The baron's eyes widened. He bowed low, bobbling the helmet which he'd almost dropped in his surprise. “Your Majesty!” he said as he straightened. “I had no idea!”

Garric remembered he wore an unadorned cape with a simple, sturdy tunic under it. “Yes, I was off on private business,” he said. The Lady knew what Robilard would make of that, but the varied possibilities would prevent him from pursuing the matter. “But if I may suggest, my friends and I will adjourn to my quarters while Chancellor Royhas attends to my honored guests from Third Atara!”

 

Zahag climbed up Cashel's side, planting his feet on the youth's left hipbone and wrapping a long arm around his shoulders to hold himself in place. “What're you doing?” Cashel said. He didn't mind the burden, but 'it surprised him.

“I'm not staying here without you, chief,” the ape said. “I told you, there's something hanging over this place and I'm noticing to face it alone!”

Ilna prodded Cashel in the ribs. “Get Cerix,” she said, nodding to the cripple, who'd just loaded himself onto the wheeled chair that had shared the litter with him. The soldiers watched but didn't get involved one way or the other. They didn't have orders to, Cashel supposed.

“My sister told me to help you, Master Cerix,” Cashel said politely, transferring the quarterstaff to his left hand. Zahag was holding on for himself, after all.

Cashel bent and reached over the wheeled chair, lifting it and the man together. Cerix snarled “Put me down!” but he didn't struggle. That might have tipped him headfirst onto the pavement.

Waddling a little from the weight of ape and man together, Cashel started through the gate. His sister gave him a look of disgust and said, “You're bragging. You don't have anything to prove to this lot.”

“Well...” said Cashel. Women—females, better— didn't always see the world the way males did.

“You!” said Ilna, fixing Zahag with her eyes. “Get down immediately. Carry the chair while my brother brings Cerix.”

It didn't really surprise Cashel mat the ape hopped to the ground and gripped the little vehicle in both hands. Cerix held Cashel's shoulder for a moment while Cashel shifted his arm to support the legless man as a mother would an infant.

The Blood Eagles within the gate closed ranks when Ilna followed Zahag and Cashel into the compound. The fellow Garric had called his chancellor was talking to the baron who'd brought Ilna here.

Garric's chancellor; Prince Garric. Cashel shook his head in wonder.

Zahag walked with a rolling gait, holding the chair high over his head. It looked comical, but the ape wasn't putting on a show deliberately. His short legs just didn't work the way a man's did.

Garric and Liane guided the party into what looked from the outside like a flat-roofed windowless building. Within there was a colonnade around an open court where purple and white pansies were planted in the pattern of an eagle. Lamps hung in shades of colored paper.

Cashel looked around. Tenoctris was talking to Halphemos. If she'd seen anything in the young wizard to worry her, she'd have been polite but wouldn't have chatted in such friendly fashion. Halphemos must be all right.

Zahag set the chair on the terrazzo pavement, then caught the gutter with one hand. He swung onto the inward-sloping tile roof. Besides the ape and Ilna’s two wizards, it was just Garric and people he'd known in Barca's Hamlet present. None of the soldiers and officials bustling about the grounds had followed them inside.

“1 can't get used to all these people being up after sunset,” Cashel said, shaking his head. He'd seen the same thing in Erdin but it still felt wrong to him, as if they all sat on the ceiling instead of the floor. “It's not as though they have sheep in the open to watch, after all.”

“That's very much what we do have to do, Cashel,” Tenoctris said with the familiar quick turn of her head and quick smile. “Or what comes with the darkness will be worse than ever wolves were.”

“Sorry,” Cashel muttered, feeling silly. He couldn't get his head around the notion that so many people were working on the same thing. Working together.

“I don't know how much you've heard about what's happening in Valles,” Garric said to the whole group. Cashel noticed that though Garric didn't rest his left hand on the pommel of his sword, he hooked that thumb in familiar fashion over the belt beside the scabbard. “The queen is a wizard and very evil.”

“Consciously evil,” Tenoctris said. “When the forces increase the way they have in these days, a careless wizard can do harm without meaning to. The queen isn't careless, and she's done a great deal of harm.”

“We drove her out of Valles,” Garric continued, “but we expect her to come back. And there's another....”

He looked at Tenoctris. “Is he a wizard?” Garric asked. “The Beast, I mean.”

“No,” said Tenoctris. “The Beast is...” She too paused. Very carefully she went on, “The Beast was worshipped as a god in another time and place.”

Garric nodded. “Valence—or anyway, the wizard Silyon, who served Valence—summoned the Beast. Tenoctris is trying to find a way to send him, it, back. Before that we have to deal with the queen. She and I were going to the queen's mansion tonight to see if we could get closer to that.”

“I know about the Beast,” Cashel said. He did, but it still surprised him to be talking about something of that sort here in Valles when he'd just arrived. “I even know about Silyon, I think. At least I met his sister Silya.”

“And she's not going to be tricking anybody else the way she .tried with the chief,” Zahag said from the roof.

The ape squatted over the tile pipe that led down into a ceramic pond. Little fish glittered in the lamplight.

“That's right,” said Cashel, trying to remember exactly what Silya had said about her brother. '“He's got a stone that he stole from her to talk with the Beast.”

Tenoctris looked at Cashel sharply. “Does he indeed?” she said. “Is it—”

She turned to Garric with another quick motion. When they'd entered this miniature courtyard, Tenoctris took the satchel of scale-patterned leather that Garric had been carrying, apparently for her. Now it lay on her lap. “Garric?” she said. “Can I talk with Cashel aside? There are things he may know that could help me, but I don't want to take over the discussion when there's so much else to explain.”

Garric grimaced. “There's too many things to say and do,” he said, “and all at the same time. I don't want to keep you from searching the queen's mansion, but I don't see how I can go with you tonight.”

“I'll go with Tenoctris,” Cashel said. He caught himself in sudden embarrassment. “Unless it's something that, you know, somebody has to read. If it's just carrying the bag, though, I can do that.”

Tenoctris looked from Garric to Cashel. “It's more than just carrying my materials,” she said with a growing smile, “but it's nothing you can't do for me, Cashel. If things go in the particular fashion I think they might, I would be very glad of your strength beside me.”

Everyone looked at Garric. He blushed, though his deep tan would have made that hard to tell in this light for anybody who didn't know him well. “I don't give orders to Cashel,” he said. “I don't give orders to any of you. You're—”

Garric turned his face toward Halphemos. “You're my friends,” he said. “All of you, I hope. This is a time that the kingdom needs friends, and I need friends especially.”

Halphemos looked at the ground in embarrassment, fie nodded fierce agreement.

“We can go now if you like, Tenoctris,” Cashel said. He checked the satchel's buckles, then lifted it to his shoulder. It was pretty heavy; too heavy for Tenoctris, certainly.

Zahag dropped to the ground. He didn't speak but he bared his teeth slightly as he looked, around, obviously daring anyone to tell him that he couldn't come too. Cashel rubbed the ape's bristly scalp with a knuckle to reassure him.

Liane had been writing with a brush on a thin beech-wood board. “I'll tell Maurunus to prepare rooms for our new arrivals,” she explained as she stepped to the door.

Liane thrust the door open, her mouth open to call for a runner to take the chit she'd just composed. A group of agitated men led by Royhas stood just outside. The chancellor had already raised his baton of gold-capped ivory to rap on the door panel.

“Your Majesty?” said Royhas, looking past Liane to Garric. “I've summoned Attaper and Waldron, but I'm afraid I have to interrupt you as well.”

The group with Royhas included civilians in court robes and four Blood Eagles. The soldiers guarded not the chancellor but a man wearing an ornate jeweled cuirass over a tunic of gold-embroidered silk. His scabbard was decorated like his armor, but the sword had been removed before the guards brought him into Garric's presence.

“Admiral Nitker has arrived with the three surviving ships of the Royal Fleet,” Royhas continued. He spoke with a stony lack of inflexion to cover what Cashel suspected was disgust. “The crews are understrength, the officer of the harbor watch informs me. The good admiral appears to have lost half the men on the few ships he saved.”

“Do you think you could have done better?” Nitker snarled. He was nearer forty than thirty, though it was hard to tell with nobles. Besides, the terror on his face had aged him considerably. “You couldn't, and you'll learn that quick enough if you try to make a stand here! The only reason I came to Valles was to give you a chance to get out in the next few hours.”

“If that's the only reason you came here, the oarsmen on your ships don't need to eat or sleep,” said the stern-faced man in gilded armor who'd just arrived from deeper within the palace compound. The newcomer gave Cashel a look that stiffened the youth slightly; not precisely hostile, but appraising in a fashion that Cashel understood very well. “It's surprising that such paragons didn't sweep all opposition before them.”

Nitker flushed and groped at his empty scabbard as he turned. Two of the guards grabbed his elbows and bent his arms back.

“Enough!” Garric said in a crackling voice. “Lord Attaper, I didn't want to fight the admiral before, and I certainly don't think it's a useful occupation now. Can we agree on that?”

The hard-bitten soldier lost all expression for an instant He bowed. “I apologize, Your Majesty. I've gotten... lax in the past few years.” He straightened and went on, “And I apologize to you also, Lord Nitker. We need your information about the threat and your strength to help us meet it.”

Cashel eyed Garric with new interest. He'd always respected his friend, but he'd never guessed Garric could snap a fellow like this Attaper to attention with a command. Break Attaper's head with a quarterstaff, maybe, though that wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world either. Cashel smiled and slid his hand down his own polished hickory.

“You can't meet it, I tell you!” the admiral blurted. Cashel judged him to be somewhere between tears and a tantrum, utterly undone. “There's hundreds of thousands of them, all the monkey men on the island of Bight, and they're floating down on Ornifal on a raft. They'll kill everybody in Valles. They'll eat everybody in Valles, I tell you!”

“They're not monkeys!” Zahag said. “And they're not apes either; if any of you know what either one is.”

Cashel tapped his shoulder, not hard but enough to remind the ape of his manners.

“Ah,” Zahag said. “Sorry.”

Garric glanced at Tenoctris and raised an eyebrow. The old wizard nodded. “That could be,” she said.

“The Hairy Men of Bight...,” she went on, focusing for a moment on her memories. “They've been used for wizardry often enough because they are men, but there isn't so much concern about what happens to them as there is when children start disappearing from the neighboring villages.”

She smiled without humor. “Wizardry of a sort I don't practice, obviously,” she said. “To direct large numbers of Hairy Men would require a great deal of power. Even more than raising an army from the undead or the never-living.”

“Power which the queen has?” Garric said. He sounded interested but not concerned; the tip of his index finger traced the three rounded tiers of his sword's pommel.

“Yes,” Tenoctris said. “It appears that she does.”

Garric shrugged. “Well, we knew we'd have a fight,” he said. “Lord Attaper, get all the details you can from the admiral here. Weapons, numbers—”

He grinned bleakly.

“Which are considerable, I gather. Tactics, command, supplies, the usual things. I'll direct Waldron to put the city militia on alert. Right now, I think, I'd best visit the Arsenal and tell Pior that the Duke of Eshkol—”

He smiled again. The smile came from the Garric Cashel had grown up with, but this talk of armies and tactics was as unlikely as it would be if Garric floated off the ground.

“—has returned with his fleet to the royal service, so it's time for the regular army to do the same.”

Cashel glanced at his friend's-feet. They were solidly planted—and his sandals were the sturdy, simple affairs that a youth from Barca's Hamlet wore in the winter or on a long journey. Cashel grinned.

“You're not listening to me!” Nitker said. “You can't fight these beasts! In a few hours or a day at most they'll be landing on the shore of Ornifal and killing everyone they meet. All you can do is run!”

“I've listened to you, Lord Nitker,” Garric said in a voice that could have come from the outer dark. “I just don't agree.”

He smiled and went on, “We couldn't get all the people of so large a city out in time, and we have the walls and some organization here. That might help.”

“You can't run from evil,” Ilna said without emotion. She was knotting and unknotting the length of cord, but her eyes rested most often on Liane. “You can't run from yourself?”

“Attaper, Admiral?” Garric said. “I think we'd better go to the Arsenal together.”

He frowned. “Do you suppose I ought to throw on something that glitters more, or will Pior listen to sense from a brown cloak?”

“If he listens to sense at all, we're luckier than I expect,” Attaper said in a grim tone. “I'll rouse a couple regiments of Waldron's men while you change, Your Majesty. It's worth adding a threat to the scales at this point. Since the fool may not believe in the real threat.”

“Tenoctris?” Cashel said. “Do you still... ?”

“More than ever,” Tenoctris said, rising from the couch where she'd been sitting during the discussions. “There's so dazzlingly much power layered over the queen's mansion that I'm having difficulty finding the stratum that I need.”

Her smile was bright, though her eyes were pinched with concern. “And there's very little time, Cashel. For us, and for the Isles.”

 

* * *

 

The queen raised her staff of clear crystal. She smiled at Sharina, then said “Eidoneia neoieka!” and struck it on the floor. Red fire pulsed through the staff. Something unseen shattered.

Sharina stood in a ruby sphere. Beyond the walls was mist in which only her fancy formed images. The queen stood beside her.

The concave surface of the floor tilted them toward each other. Sharina tried to move aside, up the wall's curve.

“Don't move!” the queen said. She touched the floor again. There was a crackling sound. She walked around Sharina, drawing a circle less than four feet in diameter. The staff's tip left a line across the ruby the way a knife scribes cheese. The wizard was on the other side of the line.

The queen began writing characters in the Old Script around the inner margin of the circle. “Where are we now?” Sharina asked.

“Don't speak until I tell you to,” the queen said coldly.

Sharina laughed. She wasn't so much resigned to what was happening as detached from it. Though her fingers touched the Pewle knife, she knew that she couldn't harm the queen. If the angry queen killed her, then Sharina didn't have to worry whether or not helping the wizard was the right decision.

She looked around her but found little of interest. The sphere in which they stood was perhaps twenty feet in diameter, though it was hard to be sure. The luster of the polished ruby walls reflected the figures within it as a myriad of diminishing images.

“Where does the light come from?” Sharina said. If the ruby itself glowed, there shouldn't be reflections on the walls... or so she thought. There was no source of light within the sphere, of that she was sure.

The queen looked at her. Sharina said, “I told you I'd help. I didn't say I'd be your dog.”

The queen resumed marking the ruby. The rise of the walls made her movements awkward but she didn't slip on the smooth surface. Sharina couldn't see the queen's feet because the flowing robe concealed them.

Some of the reflected images were of Sharina and a figure that could not have been human, no matter how distorted. Sharina's lips tightened.

The queen had finished writing around the inner circle. Now she resumed the circuit, this time writing outside the line. Each time the staff touched, flashes subtly different in hue from the ruby walls spat within the crystal.

Sharina started to mouth one of the syllables. The queen flicked the staff upward and tapped the girl's chin. A chill greater than what lay at the heart of the Ice Capes froze Sharina's lips and tongue.

“Don't,” the queen said. “Not because I care what might happen to you, but because I want to avoid the effort of reanimating your corpse to speak my incantation. But I will do that if I must, girl. Believe me!”

She lowered the staff. Feeling returned to Sharina's mouth. The underside of her chin prickled as though from frostbite.

The queen completed the words of power in the second ring. She looked at Sharina with lips quivering in the semblance of a smile.

Sharina faced the wizard expressionlessly, as Nonnus would have done-—had done—in similar crises. The queen could kill her and perhaps could do worse things, unguessibly worse things; but she couldn't make Sharina show fear.

“I will read the words of the outer circuit,” the queen said. A catch in her honeyed voice suggested that Sharina's refusal to quail irritated her. “I may have to read them a number of times to reach the result I desire. When I finish, you will read the words within. The scene beyond us will become a vision of an ancestor of yours—”

The queen's smile was terrible, even to Sharina in her present detached state.

“—or mine, at the moment of conception.”

The staff in the queen's hand tilted as if moving of its own volition. The tip rapped the wall at eye height. There was no spark within the crystal, nor did the contact mark the ruby surface.

“We will repeat this until we have reached the time of King Lorcan, who founded your line and the Kingdom of the Isles,” the queen said. “As though human reigns could matter! Then your task will be complete.”

Her cold smile became mincing. “I may well spare you.”

“King Lorcan and his wizard ally hid the Throne of Malkar,” Sharina said calmly. “You think you'll gain the throne through me.”

It was a joy in Sharina's heart to see a flash of bestial fury replace the wizard's sneering smile. “Don't speak of things you don't understand, girl!” the queen said. “Or I'll cut your belly open and force your dead lips to speak the words I desire!”

Sharina crossed her arms as if facing a child. She was fearful, about what the queen might do to Cashel and about what she herself was doing to prevent harm to her friend. Her face was as cold and unmoved as the sharp steel blade of her Pewle knife.

How much did the queen understand? Not as much as she thought she did, of that Sharina was certain. Because the queen had great power, she thought she had great wisdom. The wisdom Sharina had learned from Tenoctris was that there are powers so great that to use them is to destroy oneself. If the queen did reach the Throne of Malkar, the focus of all evil, she doomed herself.

“Ousiri aphi mene phri,” the queen said. She paced slowly around the circle, her steps sure despite the slanting, slippery surface. “Katoi house...”

Nothing but brief shapes of mist appeared beyond the ruby walls. Sharina looked at her own feet and the words of power she would read when the time came.

“Bachuch bachachuch bazachuch,” the queen said, though the sound seemed to come from the walls themselves. “Bachazachuch bachaxichuch...”

Sharina tried to think of the Lady, but the rippling tentacles of a great ammonite filled her mind instead. She stood, silent and stem. The fear that filled her heart had no echo on her face.