271 him as a template for how to put it all to proper use. "These weapons, and with them, a chance to set things right." "Why did you ask," he queried with genuine curiosity when she was done. "He's dead; it doesn't matter what you do, he cer- tainly can't stop you." 'Why did you?" "It's not the Demon way. 77 "Am I a Demon?" He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with the clack of teeth brought smartly, sharply together, because he had no true answer for her. There was an eerie stillness about the gate, and he realized it flowed outward from the guard post, as countless tens of thou- sands of eyes-none of them human-turned to him in mute ex- pectation. Within the room, "hope" had simply been a word; here, it was a person. "Neat trick, Peck," called Havilhand. "To say the least," Thom replied, watching the animals scuttle aside to clear a path for him. "How's the child?" "Still asleep, bless 'er. She'll need clothes, an' we ever get clear o'this. What she's wearin', it's mostly tatters. Damnedest thing, I tell yeh, cloth looks like it got scorched an' froze, all inna same breath." 'Something like that. Be ready to ride." "I'm a Pathfinder, little friend. We're s'posed t' be born that way. 'Course, it's always better, havin'somewheres t' ride to, an' yeh catch my meaning." 'Be patient." 'Be quick." 'Drumheller!" Khory, from atop the wall, which made him stare in dumbfounded astonishment: How did she get herself all the way up there, I He would have said the same aloud, but she didn't give him the chance. "Riders, from the land, coming fast." 'How many?" demanded Geryn. 272 "More than we can handle or afford," Thom replied for her, using InSight for a quick glance through her eyes, and waved her down, while he made his way to the gate. There were no niceties to manner, word, or gesture; he was as focused as he was sure the old warrior had been. He slashed the blade across his palm, coating its edge with blood, then slapped the locking crossbar that held the great, looming double doors closed, leaving a blotch of darkness against wood that-like the people in the Elora's hall-had been bleached by the Deceiver's radiance of all color. A link established between the three key el- ements-himself, the blade, the target-he quickly marshaled his will, letting the grief and fury that had raged in him all evening crest unchallenged, unchecked. A tidal wave of force burst out from the heart of his being. Part of him thrust anchors deep into the good earth beneath his feet, so the power he was manifesting wouldn't destroy him when he put it to use; simul- taneously, another, far vaster aspect reached out across the.plaza, drawing strength from the assemblage and using it to add to the force he was bringing to bear. To Geryn, turning his head continuously from Thom to the no-longer-distant flames and back again, the scene appeared to be the height of silliness. A modest little manform, whose head barely reached the Pathfinder'swaist, waving his arms against a pair of gates that dwarfed the average town house in width and height and were said in the bargain to be proof against any as- sault, whether from battering rams or the forbidden black pow- der explosive. He had no idea what Thom intended with his knife, and even less hope for any success. He knew from his own experience how impervious ironwood could be, had seen cross- bow shots that had punched through proper armor with ease bounce off a plank. These doors were thicker than a stout man's body. Couldn't be burned, couldn't be broken. Force and fury came together in a rush as Thom brought his blade up and around in a grand, sweeping gesture of uncharac- teristic flamboyance, to bury it most of the way to its hilt in the center of his bloodstain. As it struck he unleashed a huge shout 273 that to Geryn sounded like a formless bellow. Khory could tell the difference, her nostrils flared, her teeth baring ever so slightly in reflexive acknowledgment of the energies the Nelwyn was manifesting. The sound of Thom's voice echoed across the plaza, and the scene was suddenly gripped by a silence that was as profound and all-encompassing as it was sudden. Not just the absence of sound, but of even the concept Geryn hunkered his head as low as possible between his shoulders and hunched his body in turn protectively over Elora's,, against the shock blind instinct told him was to come. It was a wonder. The doors blew off their mountings, shattering under the im- pact of some monstrous and invisible wrecking ball that sent them flying outward from the plaza. This was a blast whose sound matched its fury, yet the noise was so far beyond human comprehension that Geryn had no true sense of what it was. Asked, he could never describe it. He might as well have been deaf. Beyond, the Maizan riders were thrown and scattered by the titanic shock wave. Horses fell, others cast off their riders, while still others fled in total panic. Only Anakerie remained the mis- tress of her mount, but it did her no good, that skill and deter- mination, as the animals that thronged the inner plaza took full advantage of the open way to freedom. So, too, did Thom and his companions. Khory needed no in- struction; she scooped him into the saddle before the blast had begun to fade; he in turn urged his horse on its way the moment he was in place, with a silent command to Geryn's animal to fol- low. They were seen, but the Maizan hadn't a prayer of stopping them. They simply couldn't be reached through that awesome stampede; it wasn't even worth making the attempt. The riders watched them go, and resolved to catch them later. Anakerie, however, wasn't interested in the fugitives. She leaped from her own horse, once it recovered a semblance of 274 composure, and forged her way along the wall to the gate, plow- ing across the flood of wildlife with grim, implacable determina- tion. She might be slowed, but never stopped. She was exhausted by the time she reached the guardhouse ,r steps. While she caught her breath, back to the wall, hands at he sides, gulping air through a mouth as gaping as a fish's, she sur- veyed the torrent before her. She didn't believe her eyes; there seemed to be no end to it. More animals than she could count, of every shape and description, anything of any size that could walk or crawl or fly, but not a person among them. Beyond raged the fire that drove them, ranging beyond her frame of vision in every direction, from side to side and up into the sky. She stumbled through the door, as much to put a solid wall be- tween her and that awful sight, casting off the fatigue that turned her limbs to lead and restoring their suppleness by sheer force of will. In its own way, inside was no better. She took in the entire setting with a glance, but truly had eyes only for Jalaby. His mail shirt was gone, his leather tunic as well, and all his weapons. He looked strangely small to her, crumpled against the wall with hands and feet splayed, and sadly old. That was the aspect she found most upsetting; she thought it obscene. He'd taught her everything, was more a father to her than the King, and she ex- pected him to remain as eternal and unchanging as the walls themselves. Now he looked like any other man, done suddenly and violently to death. Training made her sheathe her knife, grief pushed her for- ward, body sinking toward the floor, so that she reached him on her knees. She meant to gather him into her arms, as though her tears would wash away his wounds. But gloved hands closed on her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. She knew Mohdri's touch and tried to shake him free, deter- mined to finish what she'd started. He had other ideas. "Damn it, Keri," he cried, presenting a passion that matched her own, "there's nothing you can do here!" "Leave me be!" "There's no time, woman. The flames are in the plaza, we have to go!" 275 She wasn't in the mood to argue, so she hit him, a blow that would have dropped most men. He hit her harder, a pair of punches that took her wind away and left her hanging on to con- sciousness by her fingernails. He pitched her over his shoulder, none too gently, and took hold tight enough to leave a bruise. He cleared the doorway at a run. Anakerie had fought her share of winter campaigns, and roamed the highlands of World's End for as late into the season as she could make a trail, but nothing in her memory prepared her for such a cold as this. She felt the mucus freeze in her nostrils and fumbled a scarf across her face to keep from bum- ing her lungs. The skin of her face stiffened almost immediately and she knew only a few minutes' exposure would guarantee her frostbite and probable disfigurement. She buried her face into Mohdri's cloak and prayed he didn't miss a step, for at the speed the flames were coming, a fall would finish them both. Yet somehow even then the unbearable light flooded her perceptions, as though the whole of her skull had been trans- formed to clearest glass, affording her not the slightest protec- tion. She heard the sound of horses, close and coming fast, and marveled at Maizan discipline-for warriors and their mounts- that allowed them to race to the maw of hell to save their Castel- Ian. Mohdri flipped her onto one's back, Anakerie scrambling with clumsy desperation to right herself, wondering sickly as she did what was the point. How could they possibly outrun so fear- some and impossible a fire? "By the Abyss," she heard in hushed wonderment, and tried to collect herself as the troop reined in their headlong flight almost before they'd properly begun. "Mohdri?" She didn't want to look back; bad enough the landscape be- fore her was lit bright as day yet transformed beyond recognition by the quality of that light. 'It stopped," he said in a ghost voice, a man beholding a mir- acle. "What?" 276 "See for yourself, Highness. The flames reached the city walls and stopped. They've gone no further." She didn't try to turn her mount, but held its reins pulled tight to keep the animal from bolting as she lifted herself on her stir- rups and pivoted at the waist. There were no more flames ' save for stray, residual flickers here and there, yet everything before her glowed. like a campfire that had burned down to coals. She thought of ice and dia- monds, of every image that came to mind associated with win- ter and desolation, and found them all wanting. 'You should have left the Peck to me," Mohdri said. She had a host of replies, but didn't trust herself to give voice to a single one of them. Instead, she sat silent and still, staring. The radiance was easier to take, provided she closed her eyes to slits, as she would under the full desert sun or on a snowfield, but the cold was borderline unendurable. She could see pools of ice forming in the ruts and hollows- it wouldn't be long before the ground itself turned hard as stone. 'We'll need patrols, at the other gates, to see if anyone got out," she said in a tone as unreal in its way as the night's events. "If you hadn't joined me for an inspection of my encampment beyond the walls . . ." At his words, Anakerie seemed to shrink in a little on herself, as though this was the moment of realization that if her worst fears came to pass and the other gates were closed, she was all alone. No family, no people, no home. "Do you think this was Elora's Ascension, then?" She responded with a humorless chuckle. "Whether it is or no, Mohdri, there'll be hell to pay. The Domains were at each other's throats before; this won't make things better. Like Tir Asleen, save that only one King and Court was consumed there; tonight claimed them all. The whole world's just been turned up- side down." "Forgive my presumption, Highness," Mohdri told her gently, out of respect for her loss, 'but I would remind you that you earned your place among the Maizan long ago. As you have in 277 my own heart." She swung a heavy head to face him. "Com- mand us as you would your own, it is our pleasure to obey." 'Let's away from here first, my lord," she replied formally, keeping as firm a grip on her emotions as on her reins. For all his seeming generosity, she had lost everything and both knew it. "We'll wait for the sun; perhaps then we'll be able to see what's been done to my city." 'And those others we saw, Keri?" "Three horses," she recalled aloud, "four riders: two men, two women. One man in Royal Angwyn colors. One Nelwyn." "Keen eyes." 'I don't know the man, I don't know the woman-but before her on her saddle rode the one who called himself Drumheller. She carried Jalaby's sword. The girl was Elora Danan." "Abducted, do you think?" 'Or a party to this holocaust. I want them, Mohdri." "I thought you might." "Alive." It was a pointed command, not what was expected from someone whose city had just been consumed by magical Eames. Some of the Maizan appeared visibly offended and even their Castellan stiffened under the lash of her tongue. 'As my lady commands," he acknowledged in a neutral tone. 'Find a printer. There should be one in Bocamel, the village near where you're bivouacked. I want flyers at every crossroads, posted at every inn and way station, heralds as well the length of the peninsula, with a shipment to go out to all the East Bay cities." 'Reward?" "One hundred thousand crowns." That got everyone's atten- tion; it was literally a King's ransom. "But only if they're alive and substantially unharmed. They're of no use dead." 'You've seen what that damned sorcerer can do, Anakerie!" "And I pray to see him undo it, Mohdri. They may not be slain within the walls, my father, the other Royals, the people; until I know better, I choose to hold to that hope. I need a place to work and one of your household sorcerers; I'll also be sending word to 278 the Realms Beyond. Whoever he is, that cunning little man, whatever he's about, by morning I want him to find every hand turned against him. Wherever he runs or tries to hide, every door and pathway will be closed. Whatever the cost, Lord Castellan, I want Thom Drumheller found." t J"k_ C H A P T E R -I OBODY FOLLOWN!" GERYN CALLED AS HIS WEARY horse labored the last stretch to the crest of the ridgeline. "You don't sound happy,' Thorn told him, from where he was hunkered down by Elora. She was still dead to the world and that was starting to worry him. It wasn't a coma, nor injury of any kind that InSight could tell, but nothing like a normal sleep either. The best image he could find to de- scribe her condition was a state of nonbeing that was too un- comfortably reminiscent of how he'd found Khory. The DemonChild was tending to the other horses, and that, too, was something of a surprise to him. By rights, the animals should have been in a sweat, responding to those elements of Self that made her native kind anathema to more stable I 280 physical forms. Yet they accepted her as they would any ordi- nary person. He fished another carrot stick from his pouch and crunched absently. 'Plenty reasons for't, I s'pose," the Pathfinder grumped, taking a towel from under his saddlebags and using it to wipe the sweat from his horse's neck and breast. "Prob'ly in a mess o' their own, Icause a' what hapn'd." 'It's all right, I don't believe that either." Thom rose and stretched, his sore thigh muscles and backside provoking an ex- aggerated wince and reminding him why he preferred to walk. "If they're not coming after us, it's because they believe they don't have to." 'Can yeh not magic us on our way, then? We've pushed these poor bits hard as we dare for t'night. Fear ate 'em up as much as true runnin'." "Not that simple, my friend, I'm afraid. For one thing, we need to have a place to go." "Far from Angwyn, I'll settle for that." They both turned heads to the north, and a glow that drowned the starshine overhead. It was a crisp, clear, lovely night, without a hint of haze or fog, and stars should have filled the sky, constellations readily marked and the majestic sweep of the nebular cloud spectacularly visible. But only the brightest now could be seen, even toward the far horizon. "Never seen any forest fire cast up such a shine," Geryn said, ending with a deep and breathy sigh. "Don't seem so bright as it was, though. Maybe it's run its course, d'yeh think?" "Anything's possible." 'S'pose I don't believe it either. Damnation, Peck, what the hell happened?-" 'I don't know." 'Are they all dead in Angwyn, dyeh think?" 'I don't know." "Don't know much, do yeh?" Geryn didn't wait for any an- swer. 'I seen the pennants, weren't only-monarchs in attendance, but pretty much all the nobility as well. Not simply of Angwyn 281 alone, neither, but the Realms Beyond. Heard talk in the bar- racks"-he sounded like he didn't want to believe what he'd heard, the enormity was too great to comprehend, like trying to envision the world-"that the population of the city had doubled an' more this Festival Week. Blessed Bride, both head and heart have been cut from the Kingdom." "Anakerie's free," Thom noted in passing, rolling her hair clip between his fingers before putting it once more to use. He'd de- liberately muted any awareness of her; the bond between them was mutual, and even if she wasn't sensitive enough to follow it to him by herself, any wizard could do it for her. Geryn nodded. 'Aye. Saw her standard among tha' troop o' Maizan when we rode out from the city. D'yeh think she was party t' what they did?' 'No." 'Yet she rides with 'em.' "You don't need chains to be a prisoner. Circumstance can im- prison you as easily. As cruelly." "Who are you?' challenged a girl's voice, and the two men turned their eyes to the bedroll where Elora Danan lay. "This isn't my tower, what have you done?" She wasn't at all fright- ened, the dominant tone to her voice was outrage. 'You're safe with us, Elora-" Thom began, but she didn't let him get any farther. "I know you!" He smiled, thinking of the way she burbled happily as a baby when he held her. "You're the Peck who bloodied my nose! Guard! Vizards!" Her cry was shrill and demanding, cutting the night and their hearing like a knife, so keen the sheer noise of it was a right royal pain. 'There's none about but us, girl," said Geryn, who hadn't yet twigged to her true identity. "I am no girl, wretch." She sneered with a haughtiness honed by a lifetime's practice. "I am the Sacred Princess Elora Danan, and the proper way to address me is on your knees." "Bless my soul," Geryn muttered in pure and absolute won- 282 derment, something in the way she spoke making him take her words at face value, without the slightest question or doubt. He was on his knees before he finished speaking, dropping as though the locking pins had been summarily yanked from his joints, folding more neatly than an articulated puppet. "The proper form," she continued, 'is 'Your Most Serene Highness.'And I'll bless your soul when you've earned it. As for you"-and with that, she confronted Thom, who didn't appear anywhere near so impressed-"not a chance, not ever. Find me a gateway to hell, I'll gladly push you in." Actually, Thom was asking himself if he wasn't already there. "Don't you remember?" he demanded of her. "Yeh never told me, Peck," from Geryn, with a sullen and re- sentful undertone. 'The Rite of Ascension? The Deceiver's spells?" 'The only 'Deceiver' I know is the one I see before me." "Stealing the Sacred Princess, are yeh mad?" 'Your precious aerie's gone, Elora," Thom said with flat bru- tality. "And the King's city with it. And the Rulers of the Twelve Domains." "Blessed Bride, they'll be hunting us t' the ends o' the earth an' time t'gether." He rounded on Geryn. "Will you please be silent!" "Only speakin'my piece, is all." "Well, save it till later! And in the meanwhile, Geryn, consider, if you will, Elora's fate if we hadn't taken her!" I "Liar!" she cried, and caught Thorn across the face with her fist to send him sprawling. She was already in motion to leap atop him when the point of Khory's sword persuaded her other- wise. The DemonChild straddled Thorn, features mostly shrouded in darkness, the blade held so steady she might have been cast from steel herself. 'Stop it," Thom cried, appalled as he heard the beginnings of a stammer he thought he'd lost years ago. "The both of you, I mean it, right this instant!" He glared at Khory until she backed away, which she did with a sniff that told him he deserved whatever was coming. Thom 283 then climbed to his feet and right into Elora's face, she surprising him by standing her ground. "You don't know me?" he challenged. "From the tower," she replied, with a slight stammer of her own, shaken by the intensity of his focus but starting to feel the cold as well. "You and those two awful little'-her mouth twisted in disgust, which didn't do wonders for her appear- ance-"bug men." She wasn't concentrating, and even if she was, her defenses were no match for him as he used InSight to peer within her memory. "Bastard," he said with a feral snarl that would have done jus- tice to the most fearsome predator. It made Elora jump with self- conscious fright, as though she was expecting to be struck, which only made him all the more angry. He turned to the north and the horizon's distant glow, to cry again, much more loudly, "Bastard!' Her memory was a mess. Like a chalk pattern on a blackboard that some prankster had attacked with capricious abandon, eras- ing random swathes, so that while the structure as a whole re- mained substantially intact, there were arbitrary gaps among the connecting elements. Even if an image existed, the context was lost, as well as any means to properly access it. She might know his face of old, but have no idea where it came from. Remember an incident, but not who was involved. "The Spell of Assumption," he said, more calmly in voice if not in feeling. "What?" from Elora, dismissively. "Do you remember the flames?" A breeze skirled across the ridge, with a bite all out of pro- portion to the season and its velocity, and Elora reflexively clutched her arms, finding bare skin where she expected layers of ornate cloth. She looked down at herself, and the ruin of her gown, and her face twisted into something ugly. "You are in such trouble," she announced, a judge passing fi- nal sentence. "What I bin sayin' all along, Most Serene Highness," offered Geryn. I 284 "Look at your hand," Thom said. He'd bandaged the wound, the first time they rested their horses, pulling some medicinal herbs and powder from his pouch along with the pristine dressing. 'You did this!" Accusation, not question, and he knew she meant caused the wound in the first place. "The Deceiver-" he began. "What 'Deceiver,' Peck?" "The creature who pretended to be Willow-" "You lie and you lie and you lie and I won't hear any of it! Wil- low Ufgood is my protector! My godfather! My friend!" 'The Spell of Assumption," he told her harshly, 'guts a per- son's soul as a fisherman would his catch. It burns from you all that you were-every memory, every aspect of Self-leaving you a hollow and wholly empty vessel." Of their own accord, his eyes sought Khory's, to find her sitting apart from the others on an outcropping of rock, running a whetstone the length of her blade with a practiced hand. 'I don't believe you. I don't remember anything like that." She spoke bravely, but her lower undertones broadcast the disso- nances of a growing apprehension as she encountered more of the gaps in memory Thom had spoken of. "The Deceiver's doing." His tone moderated, he was thinking aloud. 'He needs a host to anchor him to this world. Which means he isn't at all what he appears; he was casting a glamour from the start. No grand revelation there, that was obvious the moment I saw him. But to ensnare everyone there ... that doesn't just betoken power, but skill. And knowledge, intimate knowledge, of how to beguile each in turn." "I've had enough of this," Elora announced. He faced her without really seeing, still enwrapped in his mus- ings. "That has to be why he kept out of sight until the very end, when he was ready to strike. He had to know of your ability to see through falsehoods. But the same supposedly holds for spells. How could he know so much yet make such an obvious mistake?" 285 "You're taking me back." The force of her demand broke his train of thought, which made his response more than a bit curt. "There's nothing to go back to." 'So you say. And I'm supposed to take your word for it?" 'Doesn't really matter, one way or the other, truth is truth." She stuck out her tongue and turned to Geryn. 'You," she announced. He straightened to attention. "I want to go home. You take me." The Pathfinder took on the air of someone offered a choice be- tween impalement and being drawn and quartered. "S awful late, Highness." 'Most Serene Highness!" "Pardon, beg pardon, Most Serene Highness. But I gotta tell yeh, the horses can't handle that ride, 'specially this late a' night. There's no track t' speak of, they need their rest same as us an' we need daylight." "I heard you ride, that's what woke me." "I was born to it," he told her with a shy, proud smile. "Were you?" He gathered strength from deep inside, and stood plain fact against her desire. "Yeh've not sat a saddle a day in your life, before t'night. Yeh haven't the stamina yourself for a long ride, nor the muscles to stay mounted, much less properly control your animal. You're sure to do yourself an injury before we go a league, or worse do one t' your horse. Forgive me, Most Serene Highness, tomorrow may prove different, but yeh'Il go nowhere in the dark. It's not safe." It was the longest speech Thom had ever heard the young man make, possibly the longest ever attempted in Geryn's life, the words planted like bricks on a foundation, one after the other to form a neat, solid, unassailable wall. "B'sides," he finished, "the Peck's right. Angwyn's cursed." 'You hateful creature," she snarled, as if her words had the power to strike him down. "I hate you both!" Then, in an upspi- raling shriek, "I hate you!' And she cbllapsed to her bedroll in I 40. 286 "I I ~ "Good thing we weren't followed," Geryn noted as he shifted himself closer to Thom, as uncomfortable in speech as posture by what was happening. "Way sound carries in the night, they'd be finding us for sure." 'What have you dopie to meIll Thom barely registered the shriek of almost incoherent rage before the child was on him, flailing away with every limb and voice besides, smashing smashing smashing without the slightest sense of purpose other than to do him harm. He tried to defend himself, but that proved next to useless without the wits necessary to tell his body how to act. His mind was vaguely aware of what was happening, but all the wake-up con- nections hadn't been made; the horses were hitched to the wagon, but he lacked the reins to direct them. Elora's emotions didn't make the task any easier. They pummeled him like mal- lets against a kettledrum, beating a fast-paced tattoo, adding bruises galore to the aches and pains left over from last night's flight. He knew what to do on a horse; he simply didn't have the body for it. Sitting astride made him feel like a wishbone at the Solstice Feast, bowed near to breaking, and he was never sure which part of him would crack first, tailbone or hips. He couldn't reach the stirrups, which meant he couldn't adapt himself to the movement of the beast, which meant a merciless pounding. Nor- mally, a healing cast would have taken good care of it, and left him reasonably recovered when he woke. But Power exacted a physical toll, same as any other kind of exertion; he'd done too much, he didn't have the energy to spare at the last for his own needs. The thought had occurred to him, accompanied by a wisp of desire, but only in the final, fleeting moment before sleep claimed him. He pushed Elora away, hard as he could; she bounced back be- fore he could recover. This time, though, he was a little more ready, and when she crashed against him, he took hold of the front of her gown and pulled as hard as he was able, rolling his own body at the same time in hopes of ending up on top. 287 He felt a smear of icy wetness across his face and, while he p anted his knees on her shoulders to pin Elora in place, took a look around to see what had changed. The escarpment was dusted with a mix of soggy snow that was melting as it touched down-hence, the sodden nature of the ground-but was falling steadily. Clouds had crept in while they slept; the sky was a mantle of sullen gray from end to end, as though some giant had spread his dirty eiderdown across the world. The air was chill, borderline freezing, but Thom knew at that glance it would get no warmer during the day, and tomor- row would be worse. When he looked down at the still-struggling firebrand beneath him, he thought at first she'd managed to knock his sight silly. Or that the Deceiver had reached out to bleach the day of color as he had the night. "Stop," he told her, and she spat up at his face, shrieking inco- herently at him as she had her servants. He'd never seen a baby so out of control, couldn't imagine it in a Royal Princess-or any decently raised child-much less Elora, who'd been the soul of joy, even when circumstances were most dire. "Stop,,' he repeated, using nothing of his Power as a sorcerer but drawing instead on the skills of a father. She gulped, then hiccuped, the chain of her frenzy abruptly broken. The quality of her tears changed as markedly, as quickly, pouring now from her eyes in a desolate stream, while she gulped bellows' breaths whose trembles had nothing to do with the unseasonable onset of winter. "What have you done to me?" she demanded again, in a voice from her belly, eloquent testimony to the depth of her heart- break. He reached down, and felt a twinge in his own heart to see her flinch at his approach, as though his fingertips held knives to cut her to the bone. Gently, he brushed aside a scattering of snowflakes from her silver skin. She was warm to the touch, and her flesh felt as it should. Only its color had altered. He levered himself clear of her, cast- ing a glance across the whole of her body that could be seen 288 through her gown to confirm what he already suspected, that the transformation was all-encompassing. She gleamed, like she'd just come from the jewelsmith, more pure than the metal itself had any right to be. All the gold was gone from her hair as well; if anything, it had turned more pale than her skin, shot through with blue highlights, like the after- image flashes reflected off an ice field. Only her eyes retained their color, a blue grown so intense it was mostly black. They were the wrong eyes for her face, no longer any good for hiding the pain that racked her soul. The Deceiver's doing, but there was no way she'd believe that. A side effect, he assumed, of the Spell of Assumption. Or possibly some interaction of Elora's own Powers with the ener- gies the Deceiver routed through her when he attacked the dragon. But that shouldn't be, he thought. How could he have gained such complete access, such complete control? And if he held such sway, how then was Elora able to cast him off? The false face spoke of knowing me, as though we were friends. Except I have no sorcerous friends, who also know Elora. Certainly none of such Power and malevolence. The De- ceiver's talisman seems to be the moon; both the light and the fire he casts are cold. Perhaps, since his intent was to displace Elora"s soul with his own, this was his way of remaking her psychically in his own image. He shook his head in dismay', because he could see where his logic loop was leading. Except, he finished in frustration, spells aren't supposed to work on her, not to any lasting permanent effect; I thought Fin Raziel and I made sure of that. She was awkward getting up, too much belly, no reserves of strength, and Thom thought of how right Geryn had been last night. She was less able to sit a horse than he. "You'll pay for this," she told him raggedly. "For what you've done to me." He had no answer for her, certainly not one she'd accept, and avoided the moment by casting a look about for Geryn Havil- hand. No sign of the Pathfinder; only Khory, huddled snug under' the lee of the ridgeline, where an umbrella of rock provided a sort of refuge against the snow. ilk, 289 'Khory," he called, annoyed that the DemonChild had left him to struggle alone. She'd been ferociously quick to protect him the night before; now it appeared she couldn't care less. His next thought, which turned him quickstep all the way toward her, was that something had gone wrong. Body and soul had proved incompatible, his spell hadn't forged a permanent bond. He managed a half-dozen steps before the thump of hooves, the jingle of a bridle, announced the Pathfinder's return. Turned out that was true, only not quite the way Thorn as- sumed-as the young man's bound and battered body was pitched over the crest, to skid downslope to Thom's feet. A stranger rode his horse, but he hadn't come alone. A half- score bravos lined the ridge, hefting whatever weapons had come most immediately to hand. Salty lot, a veritable hodge- podge of men and gear, which Thom recognized as whoever must have happened to be in the tavern when Geryn rode in. "Fortunes made, boys," the rider announced, to the rumbled approval of his fellows. 'We're all rich men, sure!" The air inside the roadside ale house was so thick with smoke and the stench of unwashed bodies that breathing was sheer tor- ture, but Thom had learned the hard way the price of complain- ing. He was struck more in reflex than by intent; these were men to whom violence came as naturally as a heartbeat, the kind ever eager to demonstrate their courage and prowess against those weaker than themselves. The only reason they'd made a move against Geryn, it turned out, was that the Pathfinder was too weary from his own travails to realize his danger until the bung starter clapped him upside his head. Geryn was the one most physically like themselves, which in their eyes made him the only credible threat. Thom was too small of stature, useful mainly as the butt of increasingly crude gibes, and Khory, a woman. She hadn't said a word since well before their capture; her basic expression hadn't altered a whit. If prodded, she'd move and keep going until stopped, or she ran into an obstacle; that provoked a round of cruel merriment as she was pointed toward a wall and sent on her way. She'd walk for- 290 ward, an idiot's expression on her face, eyes wide and unfo- cused, seeing without comprehension, right into the wall, and then she'd stand there, face and body pressed against the rough- hewn timbers, without the slightest notion of what to do next. That fun quickly paled and one of the bravos shoved her into a comer, where she sank to a loose-limbed seat on the floor. Thom yearned to reach her with InSight, but he didn't want to risk giving her away if she was shamming and wasn't prepared to deal with the pain of discovering that she wasn't. Elora they gave a wide berth to. None present would touch her; most weren't willing to even approach. They took her from the escarpment in a pole hamess-essentially a lariat loop at the end of a ten-foot quarterstaff, intended to both secure and re- strain an animal. She, of course, was outraged and told the men so in no uncer- tain terms. They turned out to be less patient than Thom. Before the child knew what was about, their captors had slapped in place a leather mask that covered the whole of her head, leaving Elora able to breathe but not to speak or see. A broad belt went around her waist, with buckles to secure her wrists behind her back, and once they'd reached the tavern, she was shackled to a ringbolt on the wall, with a set of hobbles at the ankles as insur- ance. Geryn they hog-tied with two stout lads poised to kick him back to unconsciousness whenever he so much as stirred. As for Thom himself, a neck collar was fastened to yet another ring- bolt, and his hands tied behind his back by leather cords. Much was made on their arrival of a flyer that a post rider had brought during the night, so fresh from the printer that the ink had partially smudged in transit but amazingly comprehensive in its descriptions of the fugitives: a girl, a Nelwyn, a renegade Pathfinder, and an unknown woman. The reward was very im- pressive; more money, Thom knew, than this entire village would see in a score of lifetimes. That was why the prisoners had been humiliated but not substantially harmed, save perhaps for Geryn; none present wanted to jeopardize their windfall. Still, when one of the men wanted to take Geryn's horse, to take word of their capture to the Princess Royal, the leader sent 291 him off on shank's mare, as a runner. Even with a fortune in the balance, he wasn't prepared to give up the horse. 'Mebbe she's a Magick," posed one of the men, tossing a thumb to where Elora sat in an awkward huddle, legs together, knees bent to the side. "Not just silver t' look at, I'm sayin', but the real thing through an' through." "So what if she is?" asked another, burping the foam off his rotgut beer. "Worth a lot more then, I'm thinkin', than what's been of- fered." 'Yer a daft bugger, Mallow," said the leader, with a cautionary shading to his laugh. Mallow got the message. "Jus' thinkin' aloud, is all, Simya, meant no harm.' "I'm as greedyguts as the next, Mallow, but I also wanner be around t' spend the coin, once it's mine. Theard the herald, di'ntcha? Warrant bears the seal of Royal Angwyn, an' the Princess wants 'em all breathin'. " He sucked thick foam from his upper lip and made a great show of waggling Khory's sword, making clear by the demonstration that he had no training and less innate ability. "B'sides, where'dja go t' get tha' kind of price for her? You think the corsairs carry that much cash in their strongbox? An' what's to stop them takin' her from us? Law wants her, law's willin' t' pay, let the law have her. It's our civic duty, am I right?" Gruff round of agreement from the others, thick with amuse- ment at finding themselves on the proverbial side of the angels. Mallow hunched farther over his own stein, projecting a dispo- sition as sour as its taste, while Thom busied himself persuading his bonds they'd be much more fulfilled undone. That was the advantage of working with materials that had once been alive, rope as opposed to iron, for example; they had an inherent mem- ory of animation, which made them that much more open to the right suggestion. Steel had to be reshaped, same as it would in a forge, using the power of will rather than strength of arm; leather moved of its own accord. Unfortunately, personal freedom meant nothing unless he 292 could come up with a means to help the others. He was still tired; that was the main reason he'd been taken unawares; not only were his senses dulled, he hadn't the discernment to pay them proper heed. Moreover, power used here might not be available later on, when truly needed. He felt a pang like a knife slash as he thought of the brownies. This was the kind of situation they excelled in; turn them loose, they'd have this place in such an uproar, he and the others could walk out unnoticed. Mallow was sidling glances toward Khory and not bothering to mask at all the thoughts behind them. 'If'n I don't harm the bitch, Sirnya," he announced, swiveling on his stool to put his back to the bar, resting insolently on his elbows, "who's to object t' my havin' a bitta fun with her, eh?" Simya didn't think the question worth open comment; he simply waved a hand in acquiescence. Thom said nothing; there was no purpose to it since none would listen, and he couldn't af- ford another thump to the head or worse. Mallow had other ideas, reaching down to scoop him up by a handful of tunic till they were face-to-face. The movement yanked Thom to the limit of his throat chain, which in turn left him strangling. 'Got no objections, do ya, Peck?" The man's teeth were rot- ten, his breath enough to kill. Thom put every aspect of defiance and fury under lock and key, presenting as innocuous a front as possible, letting the men continue to believe he was a lamb among lions. "Please, sir, we mean none harm. You don't want to mess with the lass, her wits are gone, she won't know what's happening, you'll get no pleasure from the act." He was gabbling, running one word over the next, like clerks in such a scurrying rush they clipped each other's heels. Mallow's smile was a view that put some sties to shame, the man as filthy within as without. "Wrong there, Peck. I'll be havin' myself a fine old time." He let Thom fall, to a landing that sent a flash of pain across an ankle and brought forth a snarl he had to duck his head to 293 hide. The Daikini hitched up his pants and swaggered the length of the bar to the cheers and applause of his fellows, even Simya joining in by hauling Khory to her feet. Mallow raised his hands in a triumphal gesture and spun all the way around, before he put a hand under her shirt, the other under her trousers, and his lips on hers. It was a long kiss, and when he was done, she looked the rse for it, Through it all, Khory reacted not a bit. Her eyes didn't blink, nor did her expression change; if he gave her plea- sure, or as was far more likely, pain, she didn't appear to notice. There was more laughter, but the humor was directed at Mal- low rather than the circumstance. The Daikini himself looked a bit confused and almost embarrassed. He was almost ready to step away when Geryn's hoarse voice broke through the din. "Leave her be, damn yeh!" One eye was swollen completely shut, the other marginally better, with bloody bubbles on every breath from a rib too badly broken. His minder didn't kick him silent; why bother when a solid nudge would do as well? He poked Geryn's side and the Pathfinder twisted in agony, locking his cry away behind teeth clenched so tight that by rights they should have shattered. His charge was all the motivation Mallow needed. He gave the trooper a leer in return, yanking Khory's shirt open to bare a breast as he hustled her past the bar to the cubicles beyond. Simya dropped down on his heels before Geryn and pulled the young man's head up by the hair, waggling a finger before him and making clicking noises. "Shoulda kept'cher mouth shut, laddie," he said chidingly. "Mallow woulda been,content with what he had; prob'ly have more fun playin' with hisself than the likes of her, daft little bint. But you had to go an' call him on it. Comes a point a' pride then, y'see. He backs down, it's 'cuzza you; he won't stand for that. Hadda spit in your eye. Too bad for her." U,~Md suppose"-Geryn coughed, spat froth and blood to the floor; his broken rib made it hard to draw a decent breath, and the way his head was held made it worse-"suppose ... the Princess wants her ... untouched." 294 Simya hadn't thought of that and clearly didn't like the impli- cation. He dropped Geryn like a stone-Thom had to wince at the clunk the Pathfinder's head made when it hit the floor-and bulled his way to the back of the tavern, bellowing Mallow's name as he went, together with the injunction that he stop what he was doing, right straightaway, or suffer the consequences. He managed a step around the corner to the cubicles before Khory's booted foot took him in a splendid high kick right across the bridge of the nose. He stumble -staggered backward as if he'd been poleaxed by a battering ram, features splashed with blood, face broken beyond easy repair. Khory herself stepped immedi- ately into view, a wriggling, terrified Mallow in her grasp for the few moments it took to pitch him into the crowd closest to her. As they collapsed in a jumbled mess she hopped with feline grace over the bar and grabbed up the bung starter, essentially a broad-headed mallet on a double-handed haft, used to hammer spigots into beer barrels. The first man to follow caught a short jab to the head, the next a full-fledged swing that doubled him all the way over and was sure to leave him with a wicked ache in the belly for a fair while to come. Thom yanked his hands free the moment Khory made her move, tearing open the buckle of his collar and dropping flat to the floor as the nearest thug made a lunge for him. For the instant the man was off balance, Thom shifted into a sideways roll that tripped him up quite nicely. As he landed Thom scrambled onto his back and clamped the collar around the Daikini's neck. One down, but so many more to go. He scooped some powder from his other pouch-where he kept his working tools and materials, as opposed to the necessi- ties of life-and puffed it toward the men watching Geryn. Each tiny dust mote was instantly imbued with a manic life of its own and the combined properties of a burr and a very hot coal. Com- pared with these, hornets were a blessing; by the time Thorn reached Geryn, the Daikini were yelping and hopping like mad- men, slapping at itching little horrors they could barely see, but 295 who gleefully inflicted torments far out of proportion to their size. Thom saw one man clutch his groin, heard another utter a rowlowlowl ululation as a swarm attacked his backside. 'I can't lift you, Pathfinder,' he told Geryn. "I sure can't carry you. I'm sorry, but you'll have to get out of here on your own." 'Not without my weapons," hissed the young man. "The hell with them, it's Elora Danan who's important!" Khory was a marvel. She'd watched the men roughhouse all through the night while they manhandled her, and somehow managed to gather their rude skill unto herself. More impor- tantly, Thom could see her improving with every exchange of blows. She was learning as she went, drawing raw knowledge from the world around her as a sponge would water. Good as she was, though, better as she got, she was still alone. When she aimed a swing at one man, Simya stepped in with sur- prising speed for so bulky a form, especially considering the blow he'd already taken, and put a ham-sized fist into her side beneath her ribs. The force of the blow would have killed any or- dinary person, turned kidneys to pulp; it doubled Khory over, mouth forming an "0" of shock as she struggled for a next breath that refused to come. Thom was out of time and out of altema- tives. He pulled an acom from his pouch, that would turn the floor and every unprotected thing on it to eternal stone, and made ready to throw it. Then, the ceiling fell in and Ryn Taksemanyin crashed among them, in a hail of broken wood and thatch. The Wyr landed be- side Simya in a crouch and, before the big man could react, scooped his legs out from under him and dropped him with force enough to shake the floor. Ryn had claws, but he preferred knives, three in each hand, held between clenched and folded fingers, and used them with wild, madcap abandon. Never to draw blood, Thom saw that from the start; most of the wounds that followed came from one thug striking another by mistake. Their rescuer never stayed in any one place long enough to be seen, much less struck. By the time his foes reacted, the damage was done, their laces slashed, pants about their ankles, cloaks 296 pitched over heads. Clodhoppers against quicksilver, no contest start to finish, in so dazzling a display of agility and charm that Thom couldn't help a smile. He called Khory to help with Geryn and hurried to Elora, wincing in stardement as something hot flicked the back of his neck. At first, he thought he'd run into one of his own mites, but a glance upward told him the situation was far more serious. A torch had ignited the roof, and even though the outside air was damp and thick with falling snow, the bulk of the thatch was tin- der dry. It burned hot and it burned fast and Thom knew they had precious little time before the whole building was engulfed. He didn't waste time with niceties; he freed Elora from the wall, but that was all as he cast about for an exit. Ryn popped up then to point the way. It was only when he was well clear of the tavern that Thom realized he and Elora were alone. "Khory," he cried, and started back the way he came. There was no saving the place; the whole of the roof was in- volved, flames giving a deceptively rosy cast to the snow- carpeted roadside clearing as they worked their way into the walls. Bodies tumbled frantically from every opening, sounding cries of alarm and fright as most hurried to save themselves and only a few whatever was of value within. Among the latter were Khory and Geryn Havilhand, hustled out the door by their Wyr deliverer just as the lodgepole col- lapsed, pulling the bulk of a wall along with it. "Horses!" Thom called ' but had little hope of regaining them. The stables were on the far side of the tavern, with too many folk in between for a successful sally. 'Already taken care of," said Ryn with a smile to his voice to make up for the one the shape of his mouth couldn't seem to manage. "Saddled, ready, and waiting. With as much of your be- longings as I could find." There wasn't much point in riding, Geryn was too badly hurt, so Thom grabbed one set of reins and motioned to Khory to take the other two. He was turning toward Elora to remove her mask when he discovered that their rescuer had beaten him to it, snap- il 297 ping the buckles and unthreading the laces with the uncanny dexterity of a bom sneak thief. They were well into the trees, along a sidebar trail used mostly by woodland creatures, but still too close to the tavem for Thom's comfort; though, from the glow they could still make out through the mist and snow, and the harried cries echoing through the night, they didn't have to worry much about pur- suit. For the moment. That would change the minute the mes- senger from the tavem reached the Princess and her Maizan allies, and Thom wanted to be long gone when they arrived. Elora coughed as the gag was gently pulled free, then her eyes went wide as could be as Ryn placed a hand over her lower face to silence her, a finger bisecting his own lips for emphasis. Thorn expected a tantrum, but she surprised him with a twitch at the comer of her mouth that might have been the beginnings of a le- gitimate smile. An expression he'd seen before, when a fairy had danced on the baby Elora's nose. So, he thought, the world's still a wonder to you, child, no matter how hard you try to deny it. Might be some hope for you yet. "I'm a friend," Ryn told Elora, looking her straight in the eyes, although his words were for them all. 'And we're thankful for it. . . .' Thom replied, ending the phrase with an interrogatory uplift of tone. "I know you," exclaimed Geryn, to Ryn, "from the riverboat." The Wyr nodded, and answered Thom's unspoken query. "Morag put me ashore, a cove a small ways along the coast." "Why?77 "Had a dream, cast a Looker"-a prescient trance-"to see what's what. Best we go, Drumheller." "Geryn needs healing," Thom told him. 'I can manage," protested the Pathfinder, proving the point by hauling himself into his saddle. "Wizard," he added to Thom, "can't yeh magic our trail?" Thom shook his head. "That'll be the first thing the Maizan'll look for. And I'll wager any odds their trackers are Warded so they can see past any glamours. Speed is our best hope, but we won't make any until I make you well." 0 298 "If you can hold till daylight," Ryn said, "we'll call a halt then. At least the snowfall's heavy enough to fill in our tracks; if they want to find us, they'll have to look very hard." "They do," Thom told him grimly, "and they will." They made fair time. Ryn had a knack for finding the easiest, quickest pathways through the forest, but that didn't always mean he'd follow it. If a trail was natural to him, it could be the same for any pursuit, which meant that every so often they'd fol- low a harder route. The best they managed was a brisk walk, fair progress considering Geryn's condition and the comparative ig- norance of the two women. Ryn led the way, while Thom brought up the rear, senses cast wide for the first hint of anyone following. Thus far, he'd had not the slightest contact, but the strain was telling on him. Being that aware, especially while mak- ing sure not to be noticed in the process, was as wearing as any physical exertion and he was nearing the bottom of his reserves. The snow wasn't helping. Pretty to look at, sheer hell to plow through. Even Ryn, stumpy as he looked, had longer legs to serve him. Along the whole of the peninsula-from Angwyn to where it broadened into the mainland proper-the ground was split lengthwise by a series of ridgelines, serrations that rose and fell from a central range of hills that defined the landscape like a spine. Depending on the formations of the slopes, the country- side alternated between forest and open meadow. The trade-off was obvious-speed for cover. Problem was, Thom had no idea which would be the better choice. Ryn found them a small defile just within the tree line, where a jumbled rockfall created a fair shelter about a pool of water that turned out to be unexpectedly warm to the touch. "Hot spring," he told them, which also explained the lack of snow and the richness of the vegetation in the vicinity. Regard- less of the air temperature, the ground would never even grow chill, much less freeze. "This is new," Thom observed. "Hot springs in general," Ryn offered with a burble in his voice 299 to match that of the water coursing merrily through the fallen stones, "or this one in particular." "Both. This was never the country for them." 'Land's been lively lately. Maybe wanting to be part of Elora's Ascension itself." 'There speaks someone who's never felt the earth dance be- neath his feet." "Truth, Wyrm have precious little sense of the earth at all." But even as Ryn spoke, his words struck a discordant note in Thom, and for the most obvious and glaring of reasons: because, for a being far more at home at sea than on the land, this partic- ular Wyr was leading them through the forest like a born woods- man. Still and all, he hadn't lied; he might be the sale exception that proved the rule, that rare sport who walked between both domains. Something else about him was familiar; the pattern of his speech, the way he carried himself. Try as he might, how- ever, Thom couldn't make the proper connections to solve the mystery. Since no element of what he saw or heard with any of his senses, physical and otherwise, suggested the slightest threat or danger to their party, he decided to honor Ryn's privacy and leave well enough alone. Khory lifted Geryn from saddle to ground while Ryn stripped the animals of their gear, rummaging in their packs for some- thing to feed them. They combined the horse blankets to make a lean-to that would give the Pathfinder a dry and fractionally comfortable place to lie, and Thom took advantage of the steam- ing mineral water to mix both soup and poultice. The latter was exclusively for Geryn; the former, he made sufficient for all. Khory pursed her lips, savoring the feel and heat of the rich broth as well as its taste. 'Good," she said. "I had a good teacher.' His words were gentle, the emotions behind them far less so as his mind rolled back to those first weeks on the road. He'd shared the cooking chores at home and considered himself a fairly decent cook-until he met the brownies. Franjean was the worst; a self-styled gourmet of the 300 highest discernment, he never let an opportunity pass to revel in the abyssal depths of Thom's ignorance of the culinary arts. There was nothing Thorn could attempt that Franjean and Rool hadn't tasted better. The hell of it was, when Thom attempted a turnabout and challenged his diminutive companions to try their own hands at a meal, they turned out to be right, that first din- ner a wonder he still remembered. They proved to be foul taskmasters and worse teachers, but he persevered, watching, listening, learning from them as he did from the Powers he was slowly mastering. He knew they'd never consider him their peer, an honor they conferred on no one, but that mattered less with every passing year. It wasn't the goal that mattered to him, he gradually discovered, but the joy of making the attempt. He felt a thumb wipe across the crest curve of his cheekbone and looked up to behold Khory. "My friends," he said, not sure, not really caring, if she under- stood, "I miss them." "Your friends," she said pointedly, 'need you." Two of Geryn's ribs were broken; that was a matter of gen- ding them back into place and reminding them of how they, and the lung they'd butted against, felt when they were whole and healthy. For the rest of the Pathfinder, the damage was mainly cosmetic, bruises and abrasions, the detritus of a determined thumping. Thorn spread the poultice across the whole of Geryn's chest, to buttress the body's natural defenses against any opportunistic infections. With the bulk of Geryn's strength de- voted to the active healing of his wounds, he was especially vul- nerable to any wayward strands of disease that might be lurking about. Thom had seen it happen before, in his early days before he knew better, save a body from the slash of a blade only to lose him after the fact from a bout with ague. The sun was near zenith before he was done, though none could tell from such a gray and formless sky. There was no dis- crimination between earth and air, they blended seamlessly in the distance as though the world had been resolved down to a' globe of fluff. The only way to tell day from night was that dur- ing the day a body could more easily see. 301 am, Thom stretched until he heard his joints pop, then rubbed his face in his hands before moving fingers up to scourge the crown of his head. Geryn was asleep and Thorn wanted to join him. But a prickling sensation deep inside his skull brought his gaze around to Elora, sitting as far from the others as she could man- age and not be under the snow, refusing to respond even to Ryn's most charming approaches. She held her elbows tight to her body, and her legs were so close together they might have been a single limb. He didn't ask "What's wrong~"; the list of her answers would break his heart. "May I help~ " was what he tried instead. "I. . . " she began, after a number of silent false starts. She held her mug of soud as tightly as she did herself; she hadn't tasted a drop. He wondered what she made of this, probably the first night since infancy she'd spent outdoors. He held out a hand to lead her, used the other to set her soup aside for later. 'Where are you taking me?" she demanded, balking as they reached the lip of the overhang that sheltered them. "Trust me," he told her, praying she'd believe him this time. "It's cold, and wet." He swung his cloak off his own shoulders and onto hers, rais- ing its hood to cover her head. 'That better?" "I still want to know where I'm going." Her voice took on a pouty quality that was ferociously unattractive. Probably made her minders want to slap her silly. 'I assume you desire privacy. It's more practical, and more po- fite, for us to move than to require everyone else to." From the look she gave him, Thom understood that was a concept as revolutionary as she found it unacceptable. She was the Sacred Princess Elora, after all; people were supposed to defer to her Part of the natural order of things, Except that the natural order of snow was to fall in winter. There was a little niche below the pool, protected by a shelf of its own. He twisted the air slightly to waft a steady stream Ilk \1P, 302 of warmth inside from the steam rising off the pool. Not an ideal toilet, but far better than they had any right to expect on the run. Elora simply stood there, almost at attention, even the straight parts of her clutched as tightly as her fists, the need to speak as absolute as the determination not to. He wondered suddenly if she knew what to do-Mark of the Maker, he thought in horror, she cant have led that sheltered a life! 'My gown," she said at last, as if those words alone were suf- ficient explanation. When no response came, she fixed him with a basilisk glare. "My gown!" He approached, and with that closer look came comprehen- sion. In some cases, the child had actually been sewn into her costume, far beyond the capacity of any person to dress or un- dress themselves unaided. It was a struggle, and more than once he almost called to Ryn for assistance, certain the Wyr's fingers were far better suited to the task. He'd thought himself dexterous, prided himself on his needlework in fact, but as far as this job was concerned, he'd do better wearing steel mittens. There was another reason he wished himself away. This close to Elora, his InSight was keenly aware, and with each touch of her gown came wave after wave of imagery. To the girl, this cos- tume had been a torment-and he caught recurrent flashes of physical memory from her through their bond, on levels far be- neath those of active thought, of that awful night on the sacrifi- cial altar at Nockmaar, his lips tightening at how her body blended Bavmorda's attempted sacrifice with Elora's own As- cension. Not so, to the crafters who built it. Into every scrap of fabric, every cut, every stitch went the love and prayers of a gen- eration. There was as much art as skill in the making of the gown, all offered with hopeful hearts by folk who saw in Elora the end to suffering. To Thom, they all had faces, and the longer he worked, fhe more real they became. Elora knew none of this and cared less. This was simply a tz 303 dress, one more ordeal to endure in a life that was nothing else but. Her shift was just a pullover; he decided to let her manage that herself. 'Well," he heard when she finished her toilet, in that same in- furiatingly imperious tone. He hazarded a look. She wore the shift. The rest of her gown was where he'd placed it. 'Well?" he repeated back to her. She stared at him as if he was too dumb to live. And when that didn't work, said, "I've wom these." She brandished the gown. "I don't wear clothes twice." Ah, he thought. "You do now," he said, and made the mistake of turning his back once more. She threw her clothes at him and screeched, 'You should be flogged." "You should be better behaved." He picked them up as quickly as he could, before they became too sodden to carry-since some had landed in snow and others in the stream-and wished for a way of presenting Elora with the visions he had seen, the emotions felt. But all her barriers were closed tight, the bond op- erating substantially one-way, and he didn't need InSight to tell him forcing the issue would be fatally wrong. He fished in his pouch, pulling free a spare set of clothes and offering them to her. "Under the circumstances, this is the best we can do for you, Elora Danan." 'You will address me- 77 'By your name, as I always have," he finished, cutting her off more sharply than he'd meant to. The tone of her voice was get- ting to him. 'They're ugly' and to emphasize the point, she made a supremely ugly face. The joke on her, of course, was that it wasn't a whole lot different from the expression she usually wore. "Actually, they're mine. But we're close to the same size 304 Now it was her turn to cut him off, not with words but by thrusting the offered garments back at him with such force that she sent him stumbling off balance; he had to scramble some- thing fierce to keep from a nasty slip to the rocks. "I want nothing," she snarled, 'except to be rid of you for- ever!" She grabbed up her own clothing and made her way up the channel to the main cave. Thorn bit back a rejoinder and tried to do the same with the rage that gave it birth. Suddenly, as he was struggling to his own feet, a charge of energy set his fingertips tingling. He stayed on his knees, splaying both hands to their fullest extension, touching the stone more delicately than he would the most fragile sheet of rice paper that would shatter with a harsh breath. There was a sheen of water between them, formed by a slight hollow in the surface of the rock, and he willed it to be still, the surface growing flat and pristine as a piece of new-hardened glass. There was a constant trembling to the ground, not a move- ment within the earth-some minor temblor or other as the tec- tonic plates snugged themselves together, like a body shifting on its bed in a never-ending quest for the most comfortable spot to rest-but upon it. A puff of his power made the tiny puddle a scrying pool, a window through which InSight could show him virtually anyplace in the Realms, and he cast his vision outward to find the cause. The sight made him gasp aloud; that was sufficient to break his spell. Probably for the best. He saw what was needed; any lingering might lead to discovery by the horde's own enchanters, and a duel was the last thing he could afford. "Geryn, up," he announced as he reentered the main cave, the command in his voice snapping the Pathfinder instantly and completely awake. For the young man, it was like discovering that he was asleep inside a sleeping bag of spikes that were somehow simultaneously poking him both from without and within. It wasn't pleasant and he said so in his most profine manner. Then, realizing Elora was close at hand, he flushed vio- lently and stammered an apology. 305 She took no notice. Thom had no time for this, and less patience, the urgency of his manner so marked that the others almost immediately fell silent. 'Morag," he demanded of Ryn, 'she's waiting to pick you up again. "Yes, why?" "Will they take us as well?" "Wha'thehell?" protested Geryn. 'I'm a Pathfinder, Drum- heller, I don't do boats. 'Specially when we've sound horses to carry us." "Splendid, Havilhand, only we've nowhere on land to go.' 'What'cher worried about, them yobs from the city? The Princess is a lone rider, mate, and I'll stack my skill against them cursed Maizan any day. They'll never find us, yeh've my oath on that." 'Save your breath, Pathfinder, you'd be forsworn from the start." The young man looked perplexed, until Thorn explained. "They don't have to find us, when they have the whole of the Thunder Riders to help. I felt the ground tremble, saw my proof in a Vision Pool. They're coming from the south, sweeping the peninsula from shore to shore. Not just with men and hounds, Geryn, I could taste the forces bound to them. Seekers from among the Veil Folk. We have to find another way. Run or hide, or fight, it makes no difference. If we stay on land, we're done." I C H A P T E R MORAG WASN'T HAPPY, AND SHE WASN'T S14Y ABO proclaiming it. "Damn well shoulda known better,' she said, accent e broad as her shoulders, eyes narrowed to slits against th wind slicing off the cove. There'd been no wind on the Bay side of the peninsula central spine; that began to change as soon as they bega their descent to the seaward shore. It was cold and it wa hard, as though it came straight off an ice cap. Cloaks wer of little use; all of them were shivering by the time the reached the shore. There was no snow, the water in the a turned straight to ice and the spicules struck at exposed fles Llikevicious little blades, leaving the skin unbroken but cas i'ng forth all the sensations of drawing blood. 308 The cove was surprisingly calm, thanks mostly to a curving tail of earth and rocks that acted as a breakwater, the storm man- ifesting itself through the rolling thunder of the surf, with an oc- casional splash of spray over the top for emphasis. There was no cheer to the scene; even the still water had an angry slate quality to it that was a disturbing complement to the darkly clouded sky. Thorn knew where the sun was; by rights, they should have been in the warm lag end of the afternoon, building toward a lazy summer twilight. But lanterns were needed now, not merely for illumination or to provide benchmarks for people trying to get their bearings, but for the simple comfort of something warm against the overarching gloom. 'How bad," Thom asked her, "is it?" Morag snorted, dismay and disgust leavened with black hu- mor. "Got a fair lie here, Drumheller, good cover from both sea an' sky. Only a fool sets sail in weather like this when she don't have to. Better t' ride it out, wait Pr a better day." 'And if that day isn't coming?" 'Damn, y' talk bleak as Maulroon. Tell y' true, y'r better on shore." "We're dead on shore, shipmaster." " 'Fore we're through"-she grinned without humor-'that may be the more desirable fate. Y'r set on this, Drumheller." Believe me, if there was an alternative . . ." His eyes turned north, as though he could see through the lowering cloud base and perhaps even through the fabric of the land itself to the ar- gent glow of cursed Angwyn. 'But there's intent behind all this and cold calculation." He gave a rueful chuckle at the unwitting pun. "Think-since the destruction of Tir Asleen, Angwyn's been the acknowledged seat of Daikini power. Now it's gone, and with it the ruling caste of all the Veil Folk in the bargain. The whole world as we know it, Morag, is up for grabs; we've seen how, we don't know why, nor even who's responsible." Eyes and voice turned bleak as the sea. "Our only hope in this enter- prise, shipmaster, is Elora." "Y' know how much faith Maulroon has in her." 309 'Doesn't matter anymore, she's all we have. We have to buy time, to learn about our adversary, to prepare ourselves for the day when we can face him on fair and equal terms." "Y'r damn daft, is what y'are, Drumheller. As am 1, Fr doin' as y'ask. Shando!" She was yelling into the teeth of the wind; it took two tries for her mate to hear. "Get our passengers properly kitted out. Skins an' harnesses, the lot." 'Do we wait for the tide, Morag?" was his shouted reply. "Damn, no, man, y're talkin' daft as the Nelwyn! Storm surge's pushed up the tide, we should have no trouble wi' draft. Better that risk, I'm thinkin', than trying to tack past the break- water after dark." Shando dropped ashore beside her, sweaters and waterproof oilskins transforming him into a bear of a man, with the bellows' breath of someone pushed close to his personal limits. When he spoke, his teeth bared unconsciously into a silent snarl, as though he was facing a battle, the outcome no more than a toss- up. "Hatches triple -battened, Morag," he reported. "Breakables locked away. Lifelines rigged, crew fed. We're as ready as we'll ever be." "I'm sorry," Thom said lamely. "Ha!" Morag laughed. "Damn Taksemanyin, the fault's his alone Fr talkin' us t' shore, that bastardly charmer. We'll run y' down the coast, if we can, move south as they move north, try t' put some decent distance 'tween you an' the Maizan. But I of- fer no guarantees, Drumheller, not on a day like this, wi' storms blowin' out o' nowheres the like I've never seen." 'I understand." She fixed him square in her gaze, "No," she said, "y' don't. But 'will. Get y'r folk aboard, we'll be off." 'Morag." A panicked cry from the masthead, face and out- stretched arm pointing up and away toward the cliff trail they'd descended along. Eyes followed, narrowing in a mostly vain attempt to discern coherence from shapes that were little better than dark black blobs against a leaden sky. All Thom could distinguish with the 310 naked eye was a sense of movement, but he didn't need Out- Sight to tell him what that meant. For a fateful moment everyone froze as both crew and fugi- tives assimilated the realization that they'd been found. In that moment Elora Danan hammered her heels into the ribs of her horse. The animal reared and bugled, bridle jerking from Ryn's hands, and was running before its forefeet struck the ground again. The girl couldn't ride, but that wasn't necessary; there was only the single path, the horse experienced enough to negotiate it safely. All that was required from Elora was that she hold on. The Wyr was on her heels that selfsame instant, dropping flat to the ground, casting off his human stance in favor of a four- footed scramble that sent him up the sheer face of the cliff with frightening speed. Geryn was barely a heartbeat slower off the mark, ignoring stabs of pain from his still-healing body as he leaped into the saddle and kicked his own mount into pursuit. Elora had the edge on raw speed; she'd so startled her horse, and was projecting such fear of her own that the poor animal couldn't help but respond, panic flooding its system with adren- aline and giving it supernatural strength. But Geryn's skill more than struck the balance; he knew how to take every turn with- out losing stride, when to gallop, when to rein in, making it clear to those watching below that he would quickly close the gap be- tween them. Unfortunately, the'Maizan were descending at a similar headlong pace. He would catch her, that was certain, but there was every chance they themselves would both be caught in turn. That assumption reckoned without the Wyr. Ryn sprang up before Elora's horse well below the Maizan, her animal going up on its hind legs so high, so fast, that Elora lost her grip and was shot from her saddle as though from a catapult. Thom's heart surged to his throat as he watched and only began to beat sensi- bly again when Geryn charged up from behind in time to catch her before she struck the rocks. It was an incredible stunt; the Pathfinder literally plucked her from the air by a hefty clutch of her clothes; without breaking stride, he threw her facedown across the front of his saddle-he had to be counting on the im- _q pact to shock the breath from her body and keep her quiescent for those first critical moments-and immediately wheeled his mount back the way he came. Thom lost sight of Ryn, thought in horror that the Wyr had continued up the escarpment to try to delay the pursuing Maizan, certain both men and animals knew full well how to deal with such foolishness. At the same time Morag was calling the last of her people aboard, slipping all her mooring lines but one. Thom knelt to the ground, reaching out a hand in preparation for calling down a minor mud slide to throw a roadblock in the Maizan's path ... but some instinct made him pause and look again, with InSight, to see if his deceiver was rid- ing with them. Geryn could ride, of that there was no question, as he tore off the trail and along the shore at a breakneck gallop, reaching the ship at roughly the same time as his Wyr companion. 'Bloody foolishness, that was," he stormed, yanking Elora to her feet without the slightest deference or ceremony, too upset to notice or care. 'I'm not going with you," she screamed, mostly at Thom. 'I want to go home!" "Bad as you think we are, Elora," he told her flatly, "that way lies far worse." "Liar! I'm the Sacred Princess. You stole me from my palace. They're riding to my rescue." A sudden shriek from above, as a horse put hooves fatally wrong on the slippery track, pitching beast and rider to the rocks below. The wind stole away the sound of their impact and dis- tance made it hard to see, but Elora stared as though the scene were lit by brightest daylight. "Drumheller," from Morag, by her wheel, a voice of such com- mand she turned all their heads. 'It's now or never!" "Bring her," he said with an inward sigh, because however necessary the decision was, he knew it was wrong. He was tak- ing what should be freely offered, and probably losing her for- ever as a result. Elora struggled in Geryn's grasp, the Pathfinder looking gen- uinely torn. It was a doubt Thorn couldn't afford. I I Ell Whj__- 312 "'Bring her!' he snapped, his manner a match and more for the shipmaster, and Geryn frog-marched the girl over the gunwale. Ryn followed, Thom came last, with a measured look at their pursuers. He slipped the final mooring and sprang for the rail as the swell pushed the ship clear. He didn't move at first, but made himself as inconspicuous as possible by the counter as the crew busied themselves setting sails. This ship lacked the size of the dromond; paradoxically, there was an air about it of much more inner strength and solid- ity. The one built for cargo, this for sheer travel, like the differ- ence between dray horses and Thoroughbred hunters. Long, sleek hull, two tall masts, nothing like the larger vessel's massive freeboard. The sails were different as well, a gaff rig for this schooner as opposed to the dromond's lateen. Thom hazarded a look toward the shore, conscious that the low railing afforded little protection even to him, but the Maizan there weren't shooting. Movement off to the side caught his at- tention, and he narrowed his gaze at the sight of a splinter group of riders racing pell-mell for the breakwater. They were led by a strongly built figure that Thom recognized even from this dis- tance; Anakerie quickly outstripped her fellows, refusing to slow her pace even when the others fell back and finally called a halt in the teeth of the surf. Her horse was equally fearless, plunging ahead regardless of wind, regardless of wave. "Total nutter," noted Morag, eyes ranging from the course ahead to the sails above, fingers light on the wheel as she matched her course to wind and water. 'Mad she may be,' he conceded, and pulled the silver hair clip from his sodden hair, 'but magnificent." He wished there was a way to return it to her, yet found himself strangely reluctant to part with it. "Anakerie, is it?" He nodded, but she didn't see, so he an- swered again, aloud. "The Princess Royal, yes." And then, "Shame we can't bring her with us." "Don't talk daft," Morag scoffed. "We let her aboard, we're all ghosts. Even my best swords'd be no match for her." "It's wrong to leave her with the Maizan.' 'Weather's wrong. Whole face of the world's gone wrong. Why should she choose different?" "You think I'm making a mistake, with Elora?' 'Dunno y'well enough to judge, nor her neither. Maulroon, he trusts y', asks me to do the same, there's the end of that. But that wee bit, she don't seem the kind of lever t' move mountains. Don't seem much of anything, t' tell y' true." 'That's the problem. We're walking a fresh trail, mainly blind- folded. No true notion where it leads, or what we'll face along the way. Only hope. And the certain knowledge that the journey must be made.' "Daft. Not Fr you, Drumheller, wouldn't have the brat as pas- senger." There was a cry of outrage from the cabin below; Elora wasn't going quietly. "Damn sure wouldn't have her Fr crew- tacking I " Morag was all business again, reflections shunted aside by their turn toward the breakwater. There were crashes and groans all about as massive booms swung across the deck from one side to the other, Shando and the two sailors hauling on lines to pull the sails once more taut, water hissing alongside as the ship set- tled on the new tack. The shipmaster held out an arrangement of straps and buck- les. 'We've foul-weather gear Fr the rest," she told him apologet- ically, 'but nowt y'r size." "Not to worry," he told her. "My clothes are proofed against water." And snow, he thought, and sleet, and hail, and grit, and even normal wear and tear. Being a mage, he conceded to himself with an inward smile, occasionally does have its practical uses. "Y'll wear the harness nonetheless. Unless y'r as much a'home V the water as tha' bloody muskrat!" 'No fear, shipmaster," Ryn said with his infernal good cheer, already wearing his. "On a day like this, I'd much prefer the ride. And, of course, the company." Thom pulled the contraption across his shoulders, settling the harness into place much as he would a backpack. A larger strap 314 went straight across his front, locking into place directly over his breastbone. Attached to the lock was a wide-diameter shackle, through which would be threaded any safety lines. "Once we clear the breakwater," Morag told him, spacing her words, careful with pronunciation, to make absolutely sure he understood. He was the last to hear the speech, it had lost not the slightest intensity in the retelling. "Y' make sure y're on a line. Use another shackle, or tie yourself a bowline, so long as y're on deck y' must be anchored. Go over the side, there's not a chance in hell y'll be saved without it." "I understand." "Can y' moderate wind or water, cast us a fair path through t' where it's clear~" "I'll try." "Bugger me wi' a marlinespike else," she fumed in exaspera- tion, 'why's it the likes o' you're never sure o' what y' c'n do, while the opposition has itself a fine old dance?" "No regard for the consequences, generally." "No bloody balls, is more my thinkin'." "Morag," came the call from her mate, 'come up a few points, we're passin' too close to the rocks!" "At least we'll miss 'em, Shando," was her reply. "Another tack'll put us more broadside t' the main swell wi' too little room t' beat free o' the opposite shore.'We'll ha' too little headway t' thread our way through the reefs." "Look!' Thom followed Ryn's cry and outstretched arm, and wasn't surprised to see Anakerie right at the end of the breakwater. Her horse stood right behind her, both as still as statues, as though the rocks had claimed them for their own. In the short time it had taken to cross the anchorage, the storm had visibly wors- ened, surfspray exploding constantly over the breakwater, pre- senting clear evidence that it was only a matter of time, and the still-rising tide, before the mole was wholly overwhelmed. The Princess seemed lit by an inner light, her own variant on the spectral silver that had claimed Elora. To Thom, the contrast couldn't be more marked, or more sad. The child appeared to 315 have been claimed by the otherworldly aspect of her heritage; she had been stripped of the outward portions of her being that marked her as human. Anakerie was like looking at a ghost, someone with the facade of humanity~ who had cast aside all within herself that gave it substance. Each was at a crossroads. The Princess Royal had freely chosen her path; the Sacred Princess was being dragged kicking and screaming down hers. Thom knew she'd seen him, had eyes for no other aboard, and had a presentiment that whenever they met again-in skir- mish or full battle, alone or in the clash of armies-that would al- ways be the case. It was almost as though he was daring her to try her worst, as he stood stock-still at his full height, admittedly even then not so great a target, while she nocked arrow to bow, pulled it to its full extension, and let fly in a single motion that was as smooth as it was deadly. Wind and rain, distance and difficulty notwithstanding, Thom knew the moment she fired that her shaft was destined for his heart. She believed him responsible for the ensorcellment of her city, the loss of her father, the death of all their dreams of peace; she would have those scales balanced (even if only a little) with his life. And he, poor noble clown, thanks to the link forged be- tween them in the dungeon, felt enough empathy to allow her a decent chance to try. The arrow crossed the rail . . . ... and Khory's hand plucked it from the air. Thom blinked. He hadn't been aware of her approach, nor seen her hand make its move. Ryn was impressed as well; the DemonChild's speed and accuracy outstripped his, which he didn't think possible. "Are you daft?" Khory demanded of him, in uncanny mimicry of the shipmaster. "Shouldn't we seek cover," Ryn suggested, "before she tries again? We're still well within range." Another had joined the Princess on the point and it was im- mediately obvious that neither man nor mount was particularly pleased to be there. The Maizan Castellan grabbed Anakerie by the arm and yanked her from her stance, batting aside her re- 11 316 flexive slap in such a way that the attacking arm was pinned in a painful twist behind her back. Thorn found himself wishing for a bow of his own, to teach the Thunder Lord better manners. "Get below,' Morag said, as implacable in her own way as the seas, 'the lot o' y's. If y've any favors owed by the Powers Be- yond, or better yet any Gods who'll answer when y' call, we could use the help." The cabins were far more spacious than Thom would have believed from an outward examination of the hull. The largest was devoted to a communal living and dining area, with separate sleeping compartments farther forward. Storage lockers were at the very bow and stem of the boat and beneath the deck. Thorn was the last down the companionway steps when they fully cleared the breakwater and got their first taste of what lay beyond. The lead swells struck the hull as though they were solid objects more than liquid, shaking the schooner along its whole length with such force that Thom lost his footing and had to make a desperate grab to keep from falling. He ended up dan- gling like a monkey before finding his purchase once more and lowering himself to the marginal solidity of the deck itself. Only a wrenched shoulder for his troubles, which he had to figure was better than a twisted knee or back, or a possibly broken bone, the price he'd have paid for a nasty landing. He couldn't stand erect, couldn't stand at all without bracing himself against an- other object that was bolted to the deck or bulkheads (he couldn't reach the ceiling); the boat's movement had become far too lively. Each wave they encountered hurled itself at the prow like a suicide charge, determined to be the one to smash the boat to bits. The contact threw their bodies forward, as any collision would on land, the shock most keenly felt from the shoulders up, their heads being the one part of their bodies most difficult to re- strain. They suffered from getting bounced every which way; they suffered as keenly from the stress of keeping muscles tensed against the continual series of hard knocks. Bad as it was for the, passengers, Thorn wondered how much worse for the ship her- self, at what point would the stout wood of her hull give way 17 against the merciless battering? They could hear water sluice cross the deck, with the same angry sound it would make cast upon a hot griddle. There was a constant groan from the timbers as the hull flexed and warped from the pressure of the seas. The tumult was just as wild overhead, as every tack sent the booms from one side of the ship to the other with a tremendous crash, followed by the sound of lines being hauled through blocks and chains pulled speedily taut. The wind didn't howl, it roared, which in turn drew wild laments from the rigging which to some sounded like defiance, to others sheerest agony. There was no light, the boat's movement was too violent and unpredictable to risk even a shielded lantern and the air quickly grew too damp to support most flames. There was sufficient am- bient light to see up top, though that would change with sunset, but the cabin was little better than a cave. Elora and Geryn sat together, the Pathfinder doing his best to shield her, and master his own terror at the same time. Of them all, only Khory seemed unaffected by their ordeal; she appeared far more fascinated than upset by what was happening, as she was with everything. Stood to reason, Thom conceded, using analytical thought to keep his fears at bay; a creature born of chaos would be right at home in the middle of such riotous pandemonium. Elora, poor thing, was shivering and sobbing; they were all bitterly cold, the air dank from seepage through the portholes and the seams of the hatches. "Not good," Thom heard from Ryn. "Is that a general observation, my friend, or a reference to something specific?" The Wyr's response was a coughlike bark, offered with a lively bob of the head that Thom interpreted as a laugh, which was good because Thom had attempted a joke. Ryn clambered carefully from his perch at the forward end of the cabin, the attention he paid to every movement eloquent proof of how serious and dangerous their situation was. His steps were accompanied by a shallow sloshing sound, which in turn prompted Thom to lean forward to confirm what that had to mean. The ship chose that moment to go through a wicked 318 corkscrew motion that pitched him forward and down as the bow dropped into a trough, then sharply up again as the wave beyond shoved it skyward. For a frightening moment he found himself airborne, until Khory snatched him to her with a sure- sighted grab of his safety harness. "Water," he squawked, mostly concerned with regaining both physical and mental equilibrium as both mind and belly did flip- flops. His stomach heaved and he tasted bile, barely managing to choke back anything more. Elora wasn't so fortunate. She dou- bled over, vomiting miserably onto a deck awash to the depth of an inch. It was an awful sight-Thom didn't want to imagine how much worse to experience-as the child coughed and sobbed and retched some more, long past the point her stomach was empty. The sudden, gusting stench was indescribable; it proved more than Geryn could bear either and he was just as sick. Air swept down the hatchway with a squeaking clump of rub- ber-soled sea boots as Morag dropped among them. Her face twisted at the sight, but more from the presence of the water it- self than the fetid waste floating on it. A glance evaluated both the situation and the state of the passengers. "You"-she jabbed a thumb at Taksemanyin, then at Khory- 'time Y' made y'rselves useful. One pump for'ard, the other be- hind this panel. Clear the bilges hard as y' can, till y'r hearts split or I say dif'rent. Ryn, show her how." Then she rounded on Thom. 'We can't go on, Drumheller," she told him flat, and behind her words was a string of profanities strong enough to make him blush, had he the color to spare. "Perhaps I can-" he began, but she waved him silent. "Welcome to look, even t' try, wizard, but y'll pardon me, I don't hold my breath. See what I mean on deck." "The others?" She looked actually sorry. "Stay where they are. Safer, believe me." 'Geryn ... ?" 319 'Guard her with my life!' the trooper pledged. "Damn yer soul, Drumheller, for puttin' her at such risk!" He had no words for Elora, and she offered only sobs in return as she huddled herself tight as a drenched kitten in Geryn's arms. Khory hooked his arm. "Look after you," she said. "I'll take care of myself," he snapped. "Elora's the important one." Then he caught himself and moderated his voice. "Do as Morag says, Khory. The boat sinks, we're all lost.' 'Trust me,' Morag assured her. 'He'll be well," For years Thom had lived with spells that blunted the effect of weather. He kept himself dry in monsoons, cool in deserts, sur- viving the worst nature had to throw against him. But he'd never seen a storm like this. The wind was more fierce than he could ever remember, lash- ing at him with such force that he could only moderate its direct effect on him; there was no way to spare the others or the boat. They looked as though they'd been in battle. Cuts and bruises abounded, one of the crew clutching a hand to his chest where a runaway line had sliced it bloody, almost to the breastbone. There were no crests to the waves, the wind blew them flat, sending the tops slicing through the air as spume, the water like oil, blacker even than the sky. Loud as the storm had seemed be- low, it was no comparison to what assaulted him in the open. He thought of all the dragons that ever were, compressed into a sin- gle awful beast and that monster roaring with force enough to crack the world to its core. 'Can. You. Help?" Morag put her lips to his ear and bellowed in a voice already savagely tom. He cast his InSight free, to gain a sense of the tempest. Didn't take long, wasn't a happy answer. "It's wind and sea," he said. "Wholly natural forces, nothing magical, I can't see the end of it." "What I feared." Morag nodded in harsh agreement. 'Wind's against us, water's against us, Not only the wave fronts pushed by the wind, but the ocean current as well. We push into the 320 teeth of it, we'll lose the hull, sure. Seams are flexing by the bow, Drumheller, working themselves more loose with every hit. She's well made, my ship, but it's like being hit again and again by a bat'ring ram. One of us'll have t' give, an' it won't be the waves. We can't cut across the face o' the storm, neither, we're sure to broach. Our only hope's to run before it." 'And that isn't much, is it?" Worse, that would take them back the way they'd come, toward Angwyn, but he didn't need to speak that realization aloud; Morag was as aware of it as he. "I told you, wizard, we're safer on the land. Won't lie, wind like this, we'll have t' reef the sails tight as they'll go, then add a sea anchor t' hold us steady." "I'll do what I can." "Coming about's the bitch. Keep us afloat through that, we'll maybe have a chance. Whate'er hapns, y' canna. let us broach, swell'll capsize us easiern flippin' a coin." They maintained their course until all was ready, enduring the relentless pounding while Thom struggled to hold the wheel and Morag and Shando hauled a sail from its locker and threaded an anchor chain through its gromets. The chain, in turn, was bound to the stoutest hawser aboard, a rope only marginally less thick than Thom's wrist, and finally secured to a pair of bollards by the stem. " 'Nother reason not to get this wrong," Shando told Thom, as he took the Nelwyn's place at the wheel. "Don't want to yank the transom off the stem." The deck was perpetually awash, often to his knees, no prob- lem for the much taller Daikini but a serious one for him as he struggled to establish the focus needed for his spell and keep his footing. The harness might keep him from being washed over- board, but a misstep could still leave him badly hammered. Worse, with all the activity centered about the cockpit, he couldn't help but be in the way. He thought of returning to the cabin, and from his feet below felt as much as heard the rhyth- mic kalumpa kalumpa of the pumps. He shook his head; he couldn't go back into that hole. The hell with pride; he was about to demand some help when I 321 a pair of sodden arms pulled him from his seat and guided him over the cabin roof toward the mainmast. "Thank you, Morag," he gasped, as breathless from his prepa- rations as if he'd run up a mountainside. The actual spell would be far worse, a reality the woman readily appreciated. 'Gave your lady friend my word," she said as she shackled him in place. "Don't y' talk, don't y' worry. Long as there's a mast, y'll stay put. just make sure we keep the mast, hey?" "If there's a way to bring us through, I'll find it." "Damn well better. But I gotta ask, Drumheller, is she worth it? Seems t' me, world did fine before Elora Danan took the stage.' 'Bavmorda-" 'Whole damn world between Nockmaar an' Angwyn, she was nowt t' me." "Whole damn world, Morag, but still only one world. It's a long way from your foot to your heart. Get gangrene in your toe, how long before it kills you? We can't stay apart any longer; we have to find a way to live together or some of us won't live at all." "Y' think she c'n do that?" 'I've seen Tir Asleen, Morag. I've cataloged all the broken places of the world." He waved an arm to encompass the storm. "This is the alternative. Chaos and war and shadows on the land and soul." "Morag!' from Shando. "We're ready!" For all his brave talk, for all the heartfelt beliefs that bulwarked his courage, there was a moment, right at the start, of a doubt so fundamental it nearly destroyed them all. He was a Nelwyn, the smallest of those races not bound to the Veil Folk (as the brownies were), with ambition to match their stature. The essence of Nelwyn life was simplicity in thought and deed. Work in harmony with the world and all its beings. Hard to be arrogant, especially in the ways that came so naturally to Daikini, when you're the size of every predator's fa- vorite prey. Do None Harm, was the rule, Think None Harm. And with that came the codicil, unwritten in any codex of law but passed down from generation to generation with the inex- 11 322 orable force of a glacier moving to the sea: Above All, Never Be Noticed. He'd chosen to involve himself in the larger world, to take ac- tion when any sane, self-respecting Nelwyn would have walked away. As indeed, all of them had, which he discovered when he returned from the ruins of Tir Asleen to find valley and village deserted, family, friends, neighbors spirited away to a safer, se- cret place. Leaving him alone among his kind in all the waking world. He didn't understand why. The urges, the dreams, the de- sires that drove him then, drove him still, and remained mostly mystery. Each time he took a step, he yearned that it would re- turn him to the life he was born to, the joys he feared were for- ever lost. Every moment he thought of Elora Danan, the love he felt for her was twisted by a resentment at what that love, that dedication, had cost. He wanted it to end. In this instant it almost did. He became wind and sea, his sense of self expanding expo- nentially to encompass the forces plunging through him. He stood on the floor of the ocean, in such deeps that nothing swam there remotely resembling any fish he'd ever seen, whose denizens generated their own light because here was a darkness no sun could possibly illuminate. He reared to the top of the sky, a place of extremes, where night turned as cold as day blazed hot, beyond the layer of air that sustained all life below, and into a realm as vast as the stars were numberless. Awareness reeled and he felt a choking gust of terror that he'd somehow been re- turned to the Demon's domain as he beheld the world as a great globe, curving down and away on every side, spinning through an endless void. There was a piece of the Demon in this, as there was likewise a foulness to the weather, a taint that told him that while the storm was natural, its genesis was anything but. A glance showed him the facade of the world-clouds, wind, rain, sea, land-but a blink of the eye transformed his perceptions to re'- veal the elemental forces that generated those effects. Patterns of heat and cold and pressure, affecting the water and the air above. 323 In that flash of terrible transcendence, he understood the way the physical world worked, saw how the energies of the storm could be diverted and moderated. The power was his for the tak- ing, had he the courage to seize it. He hesitated, heard sudden laughter, the Deceiver's voice, mockery leavened by true regret. Recognition that he was un- worthy colored by sorrow that he should come to such a mo- ment. 'Who are you?' he screamed, in the voice of the wind. 'Why are you doing this?' With the power of the wave. Morag threw the wheel hard over, her ship spinning as though mounted on a pole. Shando and the crewmen hurled the sea an- chor over the stem, pulling frantically on the lines in order to open the mouth of the sail wide. From on high, Thom's spirit form saw at once that the maneuver wasn't fast enough, the waves came too close together, the schooner cresting one rank at the head of the turnabout but not completing the maneuver be- fore she dropped fully into the trough. She was still mostly broadside when the following wave swept the hull upward, everyone on deck grabbing frantically for handholds as it heeled close to vertical. Ears presented him with crashes from below as cupboards popped from mountings, a scream that had to be Elora. His moment of supremacy had passed, he knew that. His own hesitation, the ridicule of the Deceiver, had cost him a chance to do the greatest good by moderating the storm as a whole. His poor alternative was to act here, to save Morag's ship, which he did by slapping the waves briefly flat, gentling the swells enough for the shipmaster to regain a measure of control and put her stem square in the face of the sea. He was thankful for the spray and rain; they hid his tears. "Did well," the crewman congratulated him, in ignorance, as he released Thom from the mast. 'Did nothing," was the savage retort, and he saw when he caught Morag's eyes that she knew it, too. For all that, there was no condemnation in her gaze. He'd done his best, and that was all she asked from anyone. 324 He collapsed to knees, to his rump, a forlorn figure at the base of the mast, presence almost wholly forgotten as Shando and the crewman hauled down the sails and lashed the booms tight. The mainmast was bare, its sail fully stowed. Only the barest slivers of canvas showed from foremast and jib, sufficient to maintain headway and no more. "Y'ride a horse up a hill, y'give him his head, don'tcha know," Morag explained when he crawled to the cockpit and asked what they were doing. Shando watched the lines and sails while she held the wheel. The crewman had gone below, to tend his friend. 'Can go as fast as he's able 'cause he's pushin' against the trail, against the weight o' things. Turn around, though, start a descent, it's way dif'rent." They crested a line of swells, the hull rearing so high that the curve of bow to keel could be seen by anyone fool enough to stick a head over the side to look. Morag pushed the wheel, play- ing with the ship's heading, and Thom gasped as they seemed to skate down a vertical wall of water. A moment before, he'd been staring at air; now there was nothing off the side but black ocean, close enough to touch. Morag caught him by the collar, giving him the chance to wrap his hands tight about the rail be- fore she snapped a quick-release shackle through his harness ring. She looked as though she sailed these monster seas all the time, but Thorn needed no InSight to see how concerned she was. There were lines gouged deep in the skin of her face, slashes reaching back from the comer of her eyes to her hairline, and others plunging past her nose and mouth, demarking the toll this ordeal took of her. 'Go too fast," she continued, as though this was a casual evening's conversation in some comfy seafront tavern, 'y' can't negotiate any turns, pitch y'rself straight off the road. Much the same here. Go into the wind, we have lots of control but no hope 0' lastin' through the poundin'. Run before it, we're not hit so hard, tha' pressure's gone. But we have t' work t' stay with the sea, t' control the way we cross the swells, else we broach or worse. Anchor's like a brake, keeps us from goin' too fast, gives me the chance t' ride the surge." "For how long?" "Long as it takes, what'cher think?" "Or as long as we last," said Shando. Thom thought to go below, but there was more water than before despite the efforts of the pumps, and the stench was worse than any privy. The motion of the schooner wasn't as harsh; she moved through the swells in long, sloping curves rather than the continual series of sharp buffets, but the wind had lost none of its force. Quite the contrary. It put a constant pressure on every component of the vessel, testing them all to the utmost. He heard a snap, akin to the breaking of a frozen branch, and Shando swept him down as a wire stay whipped past his head. Morag wasn't so fortunate as the frayed end cut through coats and sweaters with the sinister ease of a multibladed razor. She went down with a cry, taking the wheel with her through a half turn that spun them toward the following sea. Shando placed his hand against Thom's back and literally threw the Nelwyn the length of the cockpit, to collide with the steering assembly. Thom didn't need to be told what was required. He grabbed for the spokes, hissing a curse as he barked a set of fingers on the ice-slick wood, pulling toward himself in a desperate attempt to restore their heading. It was a wild descent down the face of the wave, an even more lunatic climb, water crashing over the gunwale to fill the cockpit to his waist before draining out the scuppers. Shando ig- nored the flood, bracing his wife in place and tearing her oilskin jacket open to see how badly she was hurt. When he turned back to Thom, he looked like a butcher, with blood on hands and arms, smeared wetly across his front. Thorn thought the worst. "No bones broke, thank the fates," Shando told him. "But she's sliced t'hell'n' gone. Not a hope o' patchin' her wi' any kind'a dressing; be there nowt y' can do, mebbe?' They exchanged places, Thom locking his harness to the side rail and straddling Morag as best he could. Her skin was as icy to the touch as the water, eyes disfocused, lips and fingertips blue 326 with a mix of cold and shock. She tried to fix on him, but it was more effort than she could manage right then as he reached through the open coat to the ruin of fabric and flesh beneath. There wasn't time to be pretty and he hoped she'd forgive him the scars he'd leave her with. He sent a charge of energy out his arms, so intense a burst that she spasmed up from where she lay, letting loose a scream that would put any banshee to shame. "Bride's Gift, Nelwyn," she said when he was done, tables turned between them so that he was the one bereft of strength and she holding him close, "y're a useful bod t'have about." "Don't leave port," he returned in like humor, 'without one. My ears hurt, Morag." "Swallow. Pressure within is greater than that without." "Like being on a mountaintop, you mean?" 'Aye, if y' say so. Not much Pr climbin', me, anythin' but a masthead. Storm's doin'. See the glass there," and she indicated a barometer fixed in plain view next to the companionway. "Lower it goes, worse the storm." "It's very low." 'Tell me about it." "Morag." Shando, pointing from the wheel, while Burys-the less injured crewman-did his best to resecure the tom halyard. "See there, tha' glow? Too big f'r a lighthouse.' Thom wanted to stand for a better look, but he had trouble enough simply holding on, and knew as well that he'd have to clamber a goodly way up the mast to get a really decent sight. Even Morag's view was limited to the moments when the stem popped over the crest of a swell. An occasion when he wished fervently for the eagles, and he felt a pang of longing for their God-like outlook on the world, the ease with which they bent the wind to their needs. At the same time he also knew they'd be far smarter than to venture into such a storm; this was a night to snuggle deep into their nest and wait for a decent dawn. "Angwyn, I'm thinkin', Drumheller," said Morag. 'Aye." In tone and taciturn manner, a match for her. "Fair protection, once we're past the King's Gate, from wind and water." "We don't want to go there, Morag." "Thinkin' aloud, is all. North coast's a mess for two, three days' sail at least." Unspoken between them was the truth that, unless the storm moderated about them, they wouldn't last so long. They'd been battling barely a night and they were already exhausted. The schooner might survive the pressures, their bod- ies would not. 'No fair harbor,' she went on, 'wi' the force o' the storm shovin' us ever inward. Many's a rover's cracked on those rocks in decent weather-by the Gods." Her voice dropped to a whis- per, forcing Thom to pluck the words as much from her thoughts as the air. He understood how she felt; his response was much the same. The bulk of the city was hidden by a headland that formed a natural barrier wall for the last stretch of shore before the Gate, as though there'd been a solid phalanx of mountains running all the way along the coast except for this one gap where some gi- ant or other had seen fit to carve out an opening. Estates and housing tracts had gradually made their way toward the water, but they remained minor encroachments in what was still mostly undeveloped land. On a clear day, the tops of the major palaces could be seen from a seaward approach, and of course, Elora's tower; the true glory of Angwyn, however, was saved un- til vessels actually entered the Bay. That had all changed. Imagine a city dipped in silver, or swept by the mythical Winter Queen until every surface was covered by layer upon delicate layer of glittering snowflakes that glis- tened and sparkled with a life of their own. The buildings were ablaze still, glowing from within like coals on a fire, except that these cast off no heat but instead absorbed it. Ice had been spun into gossamer spiderweb strands that linked every structure and, Thom suspected, every being within the city walls, transforming the metropolis into a confection so delicate the slightest tap with a hammer would seemingly shatter it all to dust. Yet the appearance was deceiving. Thom could feel the cold from here, not so much on his flesh but in the marrow of his bones and, deeper still, in that part of himself he knew to be his Soul. A man might well be able to destroy the entire city with a single blow, but he'd be frozen solid himself long before ap- proaching close enough to try. Sapped of purpose and will first, until what remained was an empty automaton plunging forward on sheer momentum. Sapped lastly of life, but more likely turned inside out and filled with whatever malevolent purpose now made its home within those great walls. "Never beheld evil before," Morag said, as hushed and rever- ent in thought as in speech, as though any louder a voice might attract the attention of whatever force had struck down Angwyn- "We can't go in there, Morag." "Damn straight!" Taksemanyin's head popped up the companionway steps. "Drumheller," he cried, "Elora Danan is gone!" 'There!' Another cry, another point, from Shando, to a figure clambering awkwardly up the forward companionway, making her way around the foremast until she was in front, with her back plastered to it. 'Bleeding, bloody hell." A snarl from Morag, that broke into a cry of agony as reflexes sent her after the girl, only to hurl her against the inescapable fact that her healing was far from com- plete. Pinned where he was by Morag's body, and his own har- ness, there was no way Thorn could reach Elora, which left it up to the Wyr as Ryn levered himself fully into view and plunged ahead with wildly reckless abandon. Burys was closer than any of them, but he had his hands full with rigging as Shando guided the ship up the slope of the next series of waves. There was a dif7 ferent feel to these, broader and higher than what had come be- fore, that made Thom pause in his struggle to release his shackles and take a closer look around. A glance over his shoul- der showed him that Morag had a similar realization, as stark on her face as the lines carved by hours of constant exertion and stress. "I am Elora Danan," the child called, thin-voiced against ihe gale, with something to the way she spoke that brought Thom 329 back to her with a start, his own heart pounding fit to break his breast. "A Summoning!" he cried, mostly to himself because none of the others would understand. Without a clue to what she was doing, she was hurling her innate strength and power into the storm as a fisherman would a net. It YY Elora, no! A desperation tactic, a command of mind as well as body, a net of his own to entangle her to silence before she went too far. But she was quicksilver in his grasp, as she had been in the Deceiver's. Her power was wholly her own, an- swerable to none. "I am the Sacred Princess Elora Danan," she said. 'It is my des- tiny to rule the Thirteen Realms. It is your duty to obey! Wind and waves, hear me, I command you to be still!" She was hardly wider than the mast itself, a plump scarecrow in tattered finery, hair blown to hell, stinking of her own vomit, so weak she trembled where she stood. Yet she called the storm to silence, and for that first, wondrous moment Thom thought that the girl-by sheer gall-had pulled it off. Suddenly the scene was gripped by an active silence. Thom thought of the Scar, in those moments before the mountain pow- ers came for him, and of the confrontation with the Deceiver, when even the concept of sound had been stolen away from the world. They reached the crest of the wave. And the mystery was broken by a hollow wail from Shando. "Oh, my God!" I C H A P T E R THE MOMENT WAS FROZEN, AS THOUGH THE WORLD IT- self had been crystallized, just like Angwyn, every compo- nent element etching itself on Thom's brain with the terrible clarity found only at the height of a midwinter day. Before him, Elora stood like a ghost made flesh, her skin more pure even than alabaster, the same spectral silver as the moon. He couldn't see her face, didn't really need to, he thought he knew her well enough to picture the features in his mind's eye. She was gripped by the strength of manic desperation; she had gone beyond her terror to embrace that special courage of the mad, where there was no thought of risk, less of consequences. Action was required; that was all that mat- tered. eryone had forgotten how to breathe, the world in- 332 cluded, and their collective hearts how to beat. His mind was racing faster than he could have imagined possible, yet paradox- ically his body had totally lost the capacity to execute its will. He could no more cry out to the child than move to stop her. Wouldn't matter anyway; their fate was sealed the moment she opened her mouth. They crested the wave, a higher, steeper climb than any pre- vious. Only this time there was no slope to negotiate on the far side. Instead, a sheer drop, as though they'd come to the edge of a cliff. As they reached the top the wave itself began to break, the shoulder withdrawing into a curl, leaving nothing but air between them and the trough, better than a ship length be- low. Shando was the first to break the spell, spinning the wheel hard over in a reflexive, last-ditch attempt to reverse their course, hoping to ride the scend of the wave to a saner patch of water. But he found no resistance under his hands, the crest had fallen away beneath them, leaving the rudder hanging uselessly in the open. The bow pitched forward, and Thom heard a last cry from Morag-raging defiance against an onrushing doom-before they struck. "Hold on' I' Thom had known boats that rolled from side to side, had been aboard some that came within a hair of truly capsizing, but he'd never seen one pitch end over end. The most striking image to come to him as they fell was the utter lack of sound. He knew there had to be noise, they'd been bludgeoned by all manner of it since setting sail, a perpetual crescendo of howls and roars and crashes, wails, creaks, groans, thunder in the air and thunder from the sea, more kinds than he had names for, each deter- mined to supplant the others. Perhaps that was the answer, the storm had simply beaten him deaf. He grabbed for the nearest handhold as the deck tilted verti- cal, saw water on every side as the bow plunged into the trough, like plunging into a black well, or the maw of some impossibfy rapacious oceanic predator. In that flash, the spindrift took on the aspects of teeth, the gusting stench of salt spray became the creature's breath. He saw the foremast break, the shock of impact tearing him loose from the stanchion he was holding and dropping him to the limit of his lifeline with such force that it felt worse than be- ing poleaxed by a sledgehammer. The deck kept turning, and with it came the realization that the ship was being pitched over onto its back, He had a hand on the railing, and he dragged his head out for a clear view behind; for some lunatic reason he had to see what was happening. The wave reared above them like a mountain, only this one was falling after them, like taking a sheet and sweeping it up and over a set of pillows. Only mass and momentum had given this avalanche of water the consis- tency of solid rock, and when it struck it would smash all before it. He had no thoughts for Elora-indeed, for anyone else aboard. The moment refined his awareness down to the sense of single self. I am, about to become, I am not. Arms gathered about him, Morag using her body to shield his as best she could. He held the deck, eyes tight shut, achingly con- scious of how naked and exposed he lay, how weak and in- significant his vaunted "Power" seemed in the face of such elemental fury. He felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the dis- aster; within his head, thoughts flashed and crackled like wild- fire, but when he tried to translate them into action it was as though he'd plunged himself headlong into a tar pit. No amount of effort seemed able to produce an effective response; he needed to be quicksilver and instead was molasses. He thought there would be a final shock to herald his oblivion, but it wasn't like that at all. Multiple impacts set the hull to trembling, InSight filling in the gaps in his perception-no matter that such awareness was the last thing he wanted-as the mainmast snapped like a twig, wrapping the hull in a tangle of massive splinters, tearing sails and cordage. The wreckage struck at the ship like catapult balls and Thom bit back an outcry as something jagged stabbed him through the leg. In another instant they were underwater, the 334 world still rolling all about him, as the riptides within the wave tried to yank him free and the schooner continued through the whole of its somersault. He felt Morag slip, lunged for her har- ness, but couldn't find any decent purchase; the motion of the vessel, the force of the water pulled him in different directions, all of them apart. He cried a protest as fingers were bent free and Morag torn away, one of her buckles-its tongue bent into a wickedly curved hook-scoring the curve of his scalp right to the bone. She was hurled against the coaming of the aft companion- way hard enough to bend her double, then dropped below from one end of the cabin to the other like a broken rag doll, one leg twisted back on itself in that awful way that meant her hip was broken. He couldn't see anymore with eyes, didn't need to, howled because of it, as InSight danced from mind to mind, tantalizing him with flashes from everyone save Elora. Hatches and port- holes gave way under the tremendous impact, water bursting into the cabin with the force of fire hoses, solid wood visibly flexing like sheets of tin, so that even cubbies thought stoutly se- cured were sent flying. There was no sign of Burys; Thom had a faint residual flash of him being swept away with the masts. There was little sense to be made of the images from below; the thoughts of Morag and Geryn were as knotted and shredded as the equipment above, dominated by ever more intense spikes of fright and pain. The cabin itself was like a bowl filled partway with water being fiercely sloshed about. There was air to breathe still, but each attempt to reach it put the body at risk of being slammed against some bulkhead or other. Taksemanyin held on like grim death, eyes fixed on Elora, the Wyr's anguish plain as hot steel at not being able to reach her. Of them all, only Khory viewed the disaster with any equanimity, the Demon- Child too unused to the life she'd assumed to fear the loss of it. Like any newborn, the wonder of being transcended all other concerns; and since her heritage was purest chaos, the concept of death had even less meaning. He didn't know how he survived, knew even less how the ship managed, but that was what happened. His lungs lost their t*12N /_TN breath with that first shock, and he was certain he'd never draw another when a blast of wind slapped his bloody scalp, the salt in the spindrift making him hiss with pain. "We're alive," he said aloud, as though the act of speech, and the hearing of it, made it real. The schooner was a shambles. Even to his untutored eye, its survival was the most extreme of miracles; by rights, the boat should have gone straight to the bottom. The masts had been shorn away at less than a man's height above the deck, and with them pretty much every piece of gear on that deck, no matter how thoroughly tied. jagged holes in the planking, along the gunwale, marked where lashings may have held but the ship itself, not. Inexplicably, the sea anchor hadn't given way. It alone gave a semblance of order to their bedlam universe. But that was only a transitory respite. The waves were as monstrous as ever, and the transom had developed a nasty crack that made its ragged, uneven way past the waterline. It wouldn't be long before a combination of wave motion and the drag of the anchor itself tore the whole stem loose- then, even Thom knew they'd sink in a matter of racing heart- beats. The deck was mostly awash, the schooner reduced to a few handspans' worth of freeboard that no amount of work on the pumps would improve. Thom coughed salt water, coughed blood, choked, and finally heaved forth the roiling nothing that remained in his belly, with spasms so brutal it was like someone had hooked a fishing line through his middle and then bounced him continuously from a height. A stretching cat couldn't bend its spine through so extreme an arch. Shando was yelling, but to Thom the man sounded very far away, with hardly any voice to him. He wanted to help as the Daikini struggled forward to the companionway, but the best he could manage was a roll onto his backside, with his shoulders propped high enough along the rail to keep from drowning. It was Geryn who pulled Morag free, both their faces pale as sheets of new-pressed parchment, only his was from lack of warmth and hers, lack of life. The men had to hurt her, bringing I I 336 her onto the deck, she was broken in too many places for them not to, but she didn't make a sound or even a twitch to show that she'd noticed. Shando loomed, managing to hold himself erect despite the logy, wild-ass motion of the ship. "My wife needs you, wizard," he said in a flat-toned demand that allowed for but a single outcome. Thom didn't respond quickly enough to suit the mate, so Shando scooped him up by the harness and deposited him be- side the locker where Morag lay. The Nelwyn collapsed where he was dropped, which brought Shando a glare of preternatural rage from Khory, so intense it made the man back off a step and once more take his post at the wheel. "We're a pair, Peck," the shipmaster offered with wry humor, in a voice as deathly as her appearance. "We really must stop meeting like this," was his retort. "No more worries on tha' score, I'll wager." "Save your strength, Morag," he told her, scrabbling for bal- ance as a sudden lurch sent the deck into a steep upward tilt. He didn't believe it possible to feel colder than he was, but when the boat began to move, his first thought was that they were going to roll again- it was as though a specter had taken lodging within him, coating every organ with hoarfrost. 'S all right, m' wee friend." She smiled, setting a finger trem- bling in cruel mockery of the intended pat on his hand. 'Tha's a wave we can ride." "Don't try to talk." " 'S all I've left me. Canna feel anything, 'cept bein' so cold. S'pose I should be thankful ... small favors, eh?" He wiped her face clear of blood, feeling the crack to the skull just beyond her hairline. "Toren?" She meant the other crewman below. Thom looked to Geryn, caught an image from the young man's memory that he thrust as quickly from his own thoughts. Morag caught the flash behind his own eyes and her lips tightened in sorrow. "Burys, too," she said. "Saw the rigging take him." a 337 "Hush, Morag," Thom implored. "Please." "Hush, y'rself, Drumheller." She spoke with a pinch of her normal asperity. "Whereaway are we?" He didn't need to look; he could feel Angwyn's infernal chill burning into his back more intensely than the sun. She gripped his hand, with more strength than he thought left her, tight enough to make him wince as she gave him entry to her knowl- edge of the sea. To his mind came a vision of the scene in large, as though he'd once more assumed his God-like perspective to gaze down on the world from among the stars. He beheld the storm as an enormous swirl of clouds, racing toward and around Angwyn as though the city had become an open drain, sucking in the air; and, as with any such circle, the closer one came to the center, the faster one spun. A stationary cyclone, brought into being by the cold flames that had claimed Angwyn, with the city itself paradoxically safe in its eye. He looked more closely, his perceptions sharpening accordingly as he incorporated the ocean currents into the view. He saw a great river of water sweeping along the coast from south to north, casting off lesser tributaries just as its landlocked counterparts did. One such curled through the King's Gate ' At the last, he saw their schooner, mostly adrift, its base course defined by the joint movement of wind and wave. They were fast approaching a junction in the stream, that would either take them on up the coast or sharply east and into the Bay. Al- ready, eddies were snaking about the keel, drawing the hulk ever farther to the side, making it that much easier to be ensnared. With a start, he found himself back in himself, his bright-eyed stare of wonderment and dismay mirrored by Morag's. He thrust himself to his feet, floundered a few steps forward to brace himself on the stove-in roof of the cabin, eyes slitted as narrowly as possible as he strained to see what lay ahead, beyond the next wave. Khory took him by the arm, a relaxed grip but also one that left no doubt that the arm itself would be torn from her body before she let him go. There was a tremen- dous reservoir of strength in her and he partook of it with the 338 care of a man dying of thirst, desperate for succor yet painfully aware that too much of a good thing would be as damaging as too little. 'Duatha Headland," he said when he once more crouched be- side Morag. Her nod was even more tremulously weak than the earlier twitch of her hand. There was no pulse that he could feel; life was pouring from her faster than warmth from the world. 'It's like a breakwater," he went on, mixing her certainty with his own inspiration, "acting on both sea and sky, splitting the force of the storm. Part goes up the coast, the rest into the Bay." Another nod, the brightness of her eyes belying the ongoing fragility of her flesh. "The main current stays without, the wind pushes us in. We have to stay with the current." He saw what had to be done and shook his head. "There must be another way. The schooner won't hold together." "Long enough, with your strength." "My strength is a shadow of what's needed. And casting an active spell is as good as raising a flare to tell the Deceiver pre- cisely where we are." "An' he's sure t' come Fr us, hey?" 'With all the Powers at his command. I'm not sure I can match him." "Damn you, then!" She took a hard breath, as deep and force- ful as she could manage, to restore a semblance of normal vigor to her voice. Her breast hardly stirred. "Damn him more! That infernal city makes shadows of us all. Bums out of us what's true, leaves only the shade, form without substance. Elora's the best of us, y' say; look what it's done to her." 'Morag . . ." he began, but she willed him to silence. "What, Thom?" she muttered in a rushing outbreath of impa- tience. "Canna save my boat and save me? Y' wee damn, daft bugger, don't save the boat, there's no point what y' try wi' me? Make some sense, will y'?" 'I brought you to this. I made you sail." "Y're worth it." She jutted her chin weakly, vaguely in the di 339 rection of Angwyn. "If tha's wha's ahead Fr us, wizard, she sure as hell better be.' "Khory," he called, marveling that his voice could still make it- self felt over the surrounding violence. "You stay by Morag, un- derstand? Whatever comes, you're to save her. My wish, my orders." The DemonChild flashed defiance, as though his was the only life that would ever matter. 'Please." "Damn you, Peck," said Shando, 'what's happening?" He couldn't look at the man. He ached enough already, lives pouring away like sand through his fingers, friends he couldn't save. His mouth twisted as desire swept over him like the great wave that had smashed their boat, not for an ending, because he was sure that would come soon enough, but for there never to have been a beginning. 'The Great Mystery," he'd heard the High Aldwyn announce in days that came as rarely to him in memory as in dream, "is the bloodstream of Creation. And the way we divine that mystery, the path by which we become One with All, is called sorcery," Being a Nelwyn, the challenge Thom faced had been to dip his finger into that mythic "bloodstream." Now he felt like he was drowning in it. He looked at his hands, and saw them bleached of all color. There was no light to their world, this small patch of existence, as lost on the wild sea as the globe seemed amidst the stars. The cry was a wonder. It boiled out of some deep and hidden place within, that he had never before encountered, transcending the limits of flesh and even imagination, casting itself up and out as though by sheer volume it could cow the storm. The image came to him once more of that frightful wave, only this time he stood alone atop its crest, giddy with delight, terror mixed in equal measure, as the trough dropped away before him, far be- yond the depth of any abyssal canyon. He danced along the edge of disaster, flush with Power he no more truly understood than desired. He didn't know how to hold on, he didn't dare let go. Khory had seen a danger the others had missed. The transom had developed a nasty crack that made its ragged, uneven way past the waterline. It wouldn't be long before the combination of wave motion and the drag of the sea anchor tore the whole stern loose; then, even -rhorn knew they'd sink in a matter of racing heartbeats. Unbidden, the demon child sprang to the stern, to release the anchor the only way she knew how, her booted foot lashing out against the broken transom before Shando or any of the others were even aware she'd moved. With a sickly pop, the top of the weakened panel gave way, which in turn placed far more pres- sure on the remaining coupling than either wood or iron could endure. After a moment's resistance, the cleat exploded free. The schooner shot forward like a bolt from a crossbow, Shando screaming the foulest of curses as he struggled to keep control of the wheel, bracing himself in place with spread-eagled feet as the hull hissed diagonally down the face of the swell. The wave began to form a curl overhead, threatening to overwhelm the boat, but they had too much speed to be caught, making an easy transition from trough to scend. Thorn knew they wouldn't be so fortunate much longer, but took the opportunity to shunt them squarely into the heart of the primary current. He couldn't overmaster the storm; these were primal forces, they didn't much care for dictats, as Elora had discovered. The trick was to manipulate the elements, to do with bands of energy what Shando was attempting with wheel and rudder. The danger was that Thorn's display of power would mark their position as surely as any beacon. He had no idea of what else the Deceiver was capable of, and no desire to learn, but they likewise had no alternative. The risk had to be taken. The hull broke clear of the wave for better than a third of its length, crashing down with a spectacular burst of spray. It was a magnificent sight, as impressive a ride, though Thorn would rather have a Death Dog by the tail as he cast ahead for the course that would carry them past the Gate. "Doing well, little wizard," Morag said, lips unmoving, sound barely stirring the chords of her larynx. He marveled at her tenacity, the will that continued to bind spirit to flesh long past the point when flesh could do no more. He started to offer some of his strength, telling himself it wasn't too late, there was still a 341 chance to save her, but she spoke before the desire was even fully formed, as though their thoughts were twinned. "No." There was no force to her voice, that didn't matter. She spoke to him with all the authority of a shipmaster and expected to be obeyed. "I can manage," he protested. "No," she said again, and there wasn't a hint of weakness to the glare in her eyes or the set of her features. "Trust me, Drum- heller. I know my ship. I feel how she moves. Y' have precious little strength left y' as 'tis, none at all to spare for me." "I'm the best judge of that, Morag.' 'Not on my deck." 'We have a problem." This from Taksemanyin, fur so plas- tered to his skin that it gave him gleaming, sculpted lines, as though he were some polished statue come to life. His proxim- ity was to Thom and Morag, but his words were meant for them all. He'd brought Elora with him, the child apparently unhurt, her face slack with shock. Ryn had tethered their harnesses to- gether, on a short enough lead so that she was always within reach; she wasn't giving him any trouble, initiating no action, moving when bidden, staying where put. Thom had seen more animated sleepwalkers. 'I couldn't go below to be sure," continued the Wyr hurriedly, 'but I think the water's rising. Each time the bow goes under, when we cross a swell, it doesn't come up as high or as quickly as before." "Told y'." Morag smiled at Thom. "Prob'ly cracked the keel when we flipped,' Shando offered from the wheel. "Not an outright hole, thank the Makers, else we'd be swimmin'a'ready." 'Pumps?" Morag's head twitched fractionally from side to side, the pain of that acknowledgment far worse than any of her body. Her love for the boat was a tangible thing, as intense as any Thom had known, colored with an undertone of true regret because it was more than Morag's love for her husband. She would miss him, but miss her schooner more. "No more subtleties, then," Thom said. "I'll push us to the shallows as hard and fast as I can and hope both hull and luck hold." "What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Shando. Thom took a last sight of where they wanted to go and where they feared, then reeled in momentary shock as Morag's hand grasped his-in a grip as firm as ever he'd felt from her-and a charge of energy swept through him as she cast over the last of her life. She gave him no chance to protest or refuse, by the time he turned about her eyes were glassy. His suddenly burned with tears, his heart wrapped tight with hot wire, branding another scar alongside all the rest, his own private memorial for those he'd loved and lost. He gripped his chest, unable to speak, hardly to breathe, mutely waving aside any offers of concern or assistance, con- scious of Khory's eyes on him. She alone kept her distance, re- specting his need for momentary solitude. She had strength to spare, that he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to ask for it. He felt tainted enough by the process of her birth; he thought of her like a vampire or a were, and feared what repeated contact would do. Without straightening, he clenched one hand into a fist and punched down at the air before him, his face twisting darkly as emotions manifested themselves in concert with the blow. About them, the storm reacted as if it had been physically struck. The wind seemed to hiccup-had they been under sail, they'd have been in real trouble, as gusts roamed the compass, whirling in on them from every direction and every intensity, from breeze to gale. The sea was no less outraged, but it was a denser me- dium and thereby far more ponderous in its response. Swells grew visibly in size and number, with less time between for a re- covery, which quickly taxed Shando's abilities to their limit and beyond as he struggled to maintain proper headway. Before, they'd simply been running ahead of the storm, wherever wind and current would take them. Now they had a goal, and as the helmsman played with his wheel to keep them from being over- 343 whelmed ' so, too, did Thom shape each wave in turn smooth ing the best slope for ascent and recovery. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done It was magical. It didn't last. His last coherent recollection was a sullen mutter from Shando. The headland was marginally visible, a more solid dark- ness against the murk of the sky, and he was wondering where they were going to come ashore, a fairly relevant concern along a coast mostly noted for the shi s that ended u smashed on its rocky, inhospitable shore. He felt a surge up the length of his back, as if someone had reached within to twist his spinal cord into a corkscrew. He tried to cry a warning, but the moment be- tween thouaht and execution was too lone. Doom was u-oon them all before the words were sDoken. It was a Spell of Dissolution. Not the one that attacked Elora's soul, but a purely physical assault, a savage attempt to reduce them all to their component atoms. In sensation, the image came to him of an infinite number of fishhooks, all cruelly barbed, sunk deep into every particle of his being, tugging outward with the kind of strength necessary to topple mountains. His response was as auick matching strength for strength countering bv 7 wrapping everybody in swaddling cloth that snugged them back together while also muting the worst of the pain. For this assault wasn't simply meant to kill, but hurt them as much as possible in the process. He wanted to protect Morag as well, but there wasn't enough of him to stretch that far, not if he was to do a proper job of protecting the living. Her flesh spiked outward, un- til gaps began to appear, not because the skin had been tom; it was like a piece of fabric expanded to the point where one could see between the constituent threads of even the finest weave. From Shando came a hoarse wail that mingled measures of grief and rage, but above all, the shame of utter helplessness, at this desecration of his wife's body, and Thom realized with horror that the mate didn't know she was already dead. He thought he was witnessing her murder Exposed to view, Morag's internal organs became subject to attack. Blood sprayed them all, immune to the action of wind or wave, turning the cockpit into an abattoir as separate strands of muscle, tendon, ligament, and ultimately nerves were torn from her. Thom watched them braided into a foul rope, a barbed strand for every life aboard, and then the whip used to lash him across the face and body. In sensation, it was like being flayed to the bone, but while the vision was true, the feelings were not. The Deceiver, true to its name, was trying to break his concen- tration and thereby allow the spell to attack them as it had Morag. Thorn heard retching from beyond the frame of his vi- sion, wished he could indulge in the same, as a joking semblance of the shipmaster took form in the air. She was being stripped to nothingness and then rebuilt. The cry burst from him again, without warning, throwing him forward in a galvanic movement to send his clenched fists ham- mering down on gleaming skeleton that was all that remained of Morag. He struck her on the breast, but it was as though he'd struck every inch of her, so completely did she shatter. In less than an eyeblink, clean bone was powder, and that, Thom made sure, whirled far and away on the harshest gust of wind he could manifest, scattered across her beloved ocean beyond the De- ceiver's power to resurrect. But the bastard had a final card to play, as Morag's skin popped back together before him, a dangling pennant of flesh until air puffed it full as life and gave it a coarse form of anima- tion. She took the whip made of herself in one hand, beckoned with the other in a crude parody of sexual invitation, lips stretch- ing into a smile that Morag never made, lids opening to reveal Shadow where eyes and soul had been. Thom felt something hard, sharp-edged in his hand, realized without looking that he held an acorn, couldn't help a smile of remembrance as he recognized the High Aldwyn's gift to him, when he left on that first, fateful adventure. He charged the seed with power and tossed it, all in the same motion, to strike Morag fair, right over where her heart had 345 been. In that twinkling contact, she was both transformed and condemned. Flesh became stone, of far more weight than any wind could support. And down she went, beneath the surface without a splash to mark her passing. A small victory, in the scheme of things, and all the Deceiver was in a mood to allow, as the same force that attacked them now turned on their vessel. In its way, the schooner was as near the end as its mistress had been; when the Deceiver struck, there was too little left for Thom to save. Nails flew from planks, another assault to shield against, and then the wood itself tore, one piece from the next, as the glue that bound them-and the enchantments and blessings that re- inforced the physical connections-were torn asunder. None of them went easily, the ship had far stronger wards binding it than those who sailed her, and the stresses quickly found release in a ferocious burst of energy, an explosion that created a false sun- rise through a globe of light that reached all the way to the ocean floor. When it faded, the storm rushing with renewed, almost manic, fury to fill the space where it had briefly reigned, there wasn't the slightest sign of the schooner. It was as if ship, crew, passengers had never been. He knew it was dawn, though you couldn't tell by the sky. Clouds formed an impenetrable wall across the vault of the sky, so darkly aspected they had no shape to them, they were simply manifestations of Shadow. The wind was polar, worse ashore than afloat, tearing at the land as though its most fer- vent desire was to scour it down to bare and bloody rock. Waves, too, attacked with a rage he'd never seen before, and as he blearily blinked his eyesight into focus, he saw a prom- ontory off the coast give way, a towering slab of rock calving free as an iceberg does from a glacier, undercut beyond the ability of the main body of the pillar to support it. The basalt split partway up its length, bowing outward like a piece of paper being folded, tumbling to the surf in that eerie slow motion that truly massive 346 objects seem to have, landing one atop the other in a jumbled pile that was almost immediately swept by another legion of waves, as determined to do the same to the rest as the tower was to defy it. There was a natural rivalry between the elements; wind and water and land were always in opposition to each other in an eternal struggle that none could win. But here and now the battle was joined with a blinding hatred, a desire for mutual annihilation, that took Thom's breath away. Not that he had much to lose. He lay beyond the tide line, in sand made soggy by rain alone, pummeled so hard his body had to be a single awful bruise. Every part of him was sore, to the ex- tent that lying brought as much discomfort as moving. There was as much noise as on the ocean, the crashing surf vying with the rolling thunder of the wind to such an extent that he doubted even shouted voices could be heard. He levered himself up, realized with the first movement that he'd made a major mistake, but persevered nonetheless until he'd regained his feet. His stomach was a knot, probably from hunger, though the very thought of food filled the back of his throat with bile. Starving he may be, there was no way he'd keep down even the smallest scrap. He saw a figure staggering along the seafront, a scarecrow man whose rags and tatters made Thorn feel ashamed of his own clothes, protected by spells, left dry and unmarked despite the hurts inflicted on their wearer. It was Shando, his voice even more of a ruin as over and over again he screamed Morag's name. "Shando," called Thorn, the Daikini pivoting as if his back had been stroked by a hot lash, staggering stiff-legged to maintain his balance. "Bastard Peck," was the retort, raw with grief, "you killed her!" Thom should have expected the blow. Perhaps he did, in some secret inner part of himself, and chose to accept it as par- tial atonement for their mutual loss, he really didn't know. Hadn't the energy to care, as the man's fist caught him across the cheek and stretched him full length on a dune that wouldn't be there on the morrow. Shando put both knees to the Nelwyn's back, landing on him with his full weight, using his hands to press Thom's face into the sand. He was ranting, words that made no sense except as a mad expression of his loss. Thom thought of dying there, but his own conscience wouldn't allow him the indulgence. Sand was far more porous than stone, and there wasn't the ad- ditional obstacle of any binding spell. In less time than it took to tell, permission was asked and granted and he felt his substance flow into the earth, leaving behind a dim wail of frustration as Shando saw his prey sink out of reach. The man tore at the dune face with such fervor that nails ripped and his hands turned bloody in a vain attempt to follow, but Thom was already push- ing himself laterally along the beach, senses questing for sign of any other survivors. One in particular. He thought that would be Elora. But the lifelight that drew him once more into open air was Khory's. He knew his surprise showed as he pressed hands to earth to push the whole of him into view, but she didn't seem to mind. Hellsteeth, she didn't seem to notice. He wondered if she really hadn't a clue, or was simply being courteous. She still held the sword she'd taken off the slain old Lion in Angwyn, and he had the wry sense that the weapon had bound itself to her in much the same way as she had to him. 'We need to find the others," he said, receiving a solemn nod of acknowledgment in reply. Turned out not to be so hard an accomplishment. A shout came whizzing along the shore on the wind, a hawk-eyed look n that direction revealing Taksemanyin waving both arms up- raised in greeting. He and Geryn had joined forces to save Elora-though once they were in the water, it was the Wyr who'd done most of the work. On the beach, it was Geryn who insisted on offering her the shelter of his arm, despite the fact that the Wyr's fur would have proved more useful in that regard. Shando approached while they were clustered at the head of the beach, where dunes sprouted sea grass and sand began its transition to proper earth. Khory met him with drawn sword. 348 He was calmer, in appearance and manner, but the set to his jaw, the way he carried himself when he related to Thom, most especially the dangerous gleam from behind his eyes, bespoke a wound that would never heal. Thom knew the words would sound hollow, but had to say them nonetheless. "I'm sorry." The Daikini blinked. His expression didn't change. He couldn't come any closer, not with Khory's point an inch from his throat, but neither did he back a step away. "You're a welcome sight, Shando," said Geryn, rising to step around Khory and pointedly offer his hand. Shando blinked again, released a huge breath as though laying aside some monstrous burden, then angled his body to face the Pathfinder and shake his hand. 'Where d'y' go from here?" he asked. 'Only way we can," Thom said. "North beyond the end of the peninsula. Same basic plan as before, only a different direction." 'Won't they follow?" 'How? Weather's near as wild within the Bay as without, cer- tainly more than any ferry can manage. To catch us, the Maizan'll have to circle near the whole circumference of the Bay; even walking, we should be well clear before they come close." "Not the Maizan I'm thinkin' of, wizard." The way he said the word, it became as cruel a gibe as 'Peck" often was. "This is sacred ground. First-growth forest, Shando, that dates back to when this land was bom, consecrated to Cherlindrea. I don't think the Deceiver can touch us here." Unbidden, though, came the remembrance of that Faery Queen, snared by the De- ceiver's Web within Elora's hall along with all the rest, her per- fect features stretched into an idiot's grin, eyes lost in a wonderland that left her helpless while her power, her very essence, was stolen by her captor. 'If y' say so." Subtext, as clear as if he'd shouted it: But you've been wrong before, Peck. "Me, I'm thinkin' I'll be makin' my own course." And doing so alone, that too was made plain. 349 'Don't be bloody daft!" The heartfelt protest came from Geryn. 'I'm no lander, lad. I'll follow the shore till the weather slips, try my hand with a signal fire or maybe a skiff, make my way home." "You'll be missed." 'Better this way." 'Is there anything we can give yeW Geryn asked, upon the realization that Thom wasn't about to speak. Shando returned a small grin, that actually encompassed the Nelwyn, accompanied by a sidelong glance. Personable enough on the surface, but with jagged, bloody edges beneath, man made shark. "Nowt y'll be willin' t' offer, am I right, Peck?" 'I would have saved her if I could." 'Y' should ne'er ha' put her in harm's way at all." "Food,Shando?" "I'll find my own, Pathfinder. Same as I'll make my own way." Thom watched him stride away, with the exaggerated gait of a man used to walking on loose sand. Geryn said nothing, but there was condemnation in his eyes as they flashed back and forth from Shando to the Nelwyn. Khory didn't relax her stance, sheathe her sword, until the man was out of sight beyond a nat- ural jetty formed by an age-old rockfall. Geryn's back was hunched, arms wrapped snug about himself, the quintessence of chill, thanks to a cold that had to reach his bones. Elora wasn't much better; she was just too far gone to show any sign beyond a bluish cast to her skin that gave her the appearance of dulled chrome; Taksemanyin tried as best he could to wrap himself about the pair of them, tucking both deeply into his chest and belly fur, combining the mass of the dune plus his own body to blunt the wind. Alone among them, Thorn was dry, his clothes fresh as the day they were made. Most embarrassing. He cast his eyes upward, following the rise of the cliffs to their f "Time for us to go as well," he told the others. "We need rest, Peck!" snapped Geryn. "Agreed, but this isn't the place for it." "We're well above the tide line, we'll be safe enough." 'Against a normal surge, a normal storm, perhaps. It's a risk I refuse to take." "Suit yehrself." The young man wasn't willing to move. "Have you no wits whatsoever, Trooper?" Thom spoke with nearly a snarl, surprising himself as much as his companions with his vehemence as Geryn became the lightning rod for a whole host of pent-up rage and frustrations. As the words boiled from him Thorn scrambled within his skull to regain at least a semblance of control, lest rage manifest itself with a tangible dis- play of power. He needed the Pathfinder as he was, not trans- formed into a newt. "There are Powers at play here far beyond our comprehen- sion. Believe me, I saw it happen. So did she," his arm lashing out to indicate Elora, who visibly flinched, which in turn prompted warning glares from both males. "I don't really care"-he spaced his words with deliberation, as much to gain time to restore his own inner equilibrium as for ex- ternal effect-"how you feel right now, Pathfinder. About me personally, or my decisions. All I require is obedience. If that's beyond your desire, then by all means join Shando." "What gives y' the right t' decide for the Sacred Princess Elora, hey?" "A debt. A vow," "Whether she wants it or not? Shouldn't that be her choice?" "Elora Danan?" 'She won't hear,' Ryn said cah-nly. "Is she hurt, then?" Geryn, concern plain in his voice as he shook free of Tak's grasp and knelt before her. The Wyr shook his head. His ears were never at rest, they re- acted independently to every wayward sound, no matter how slight. His eyes responded only to those'sounds that merited closer scrutiny. At the moment their focus was shared by Geryn, Thom, and Khory. The Nelwyn had his sorcery, the Demon- Child a good sword, but Ryn had fangs that would do any preda- tor proud, with claws to match and a speed and grace that demanded respect. Should a battle flare between them, a victor might well emerge, but that triumph wouldn't be worth the price. To remind the others of that, Ryn bared his teeth, ostensi- bly in a yawn, stretching his lips up and away until his canines were exposed to the gum line. 'Nothing bruised, nothing broken," he reported. "I wager she came out of the water in better shape than the rest of us com- bined. Except"-and here, he indicated Khory-"perhaps for her." She had her back to the gathering, her eyes roving what passed for a horizon, sweeping a constant circuit of trees and sea and shore. "I don't much like you, wizard," Ryn continued, to Thom, 'but you have a point. Staying in place is asking for trouble. And while I like a good scrap more than most. . ." He let his voice trail off; nothing more needed being said. Geryn, true to talent and training, found them a way up the cliff, a narrow switchback trail that, fortunately, soon gave way to a sloping meadow. It was a hard climb, as much due to the steepness of the pitch as the distance they had to travel, and there were frequent rest breaks. Their pace was defined by the slowest among them, Elora, and there was no change in her withdrawn manner as grassy, windswept fields gave way to groves made up of dwarf trees, stunted and twisted by the con- stant blasts off the ocean. If anything, the land here was even more folded than the southern peninsula, forcing them to traverse a series of deep rills that created a topography most akin to an accordion bellows. It was a trek that soon reminded Thom of an early conversation he had with Maulroon, on his first visit to the Islands, when he wondered how far it was from one village to another just down the coast. "As the crow flies, as the boat sails," the big man had said, in all seriousness despite the gleam of humor in his eyes, 'not so 352 far. Following the shore trail, though, y're talkin' near a hunnert mile, easy." In direct line, over the space of the whole day, Thom knew they hadn't come more than a couple of miles, yet it felt like ten times that as they trudged up one murderous slope and down the next, in an extreme slow-motion repetition of what the schooner had gone through at sea. After the first ridge, which acted as windbreak for any weather blasting in off the water, there was a marked evolution in ground cover. Grasslands along the crest became true forest once they began their descent on the far side, the trees growing in height and breadth as they continued inland. They were in a spectacular stand of timber, that was obvious from the very start. Thom and the others stood on the meadow, looking up country toward the mountain fastness of Doumhall- the ancient peak that dominated the entire Bay, one that wouldn't have looked out of place among the continental spine-taking in the level plain of treetops that filled the space between, not realizing until they proceeded onward that many of those trunks stood hundreds of feet tall and that their journey was in no way going to be as easy as it first seemed. The sole saving grace was the realization that it would be just as difficult for anyone trying to follow. Thom soon gave up trying to sightsee. Not that he was jaded or uninterested, quite the opposite; he simply couldn't endure the cricked neck from constantly bending his spine near double in vain attempts to see what soared above them. The trunks themselves were powerful things, he saw more than a few so big around that all five of them with arms linked and outstretched couldn't surround it, larger in fact than the floorspan of many a Nelwyn house. They rose up bare of branches for half to two thirds their length mainly because the trees were clustered so closely together that too little sunlight reached past the inter- laced canopy of leaves and nettles. Occasionally, they came upon a tree that had been over- thrown by some combination of circumstances-say, whose lo- cation on a slope had been undercut by erosion to the point where it could no longer be supported, especially in any sort of wind. There was little sense of the tempest they all knew was still raging, both trees and the ridgelines provided a more than adequate bulwark, but there was likewise a constant agitation across the crowns of these forest giants. In this instance, when the wind pushed hard, there was no foundation left to with- stand it, and so, down the tree went. The trunk formed a mon- strous bridge across the ravine, which they happily used to save themselves time and effort, and discovered along the way that it was still very much alive, sprouting a whole line of fresh branches that over the centuries might well become full-fledged trees in their own right. The contrast between Elora and Khory couldn't be more striking. Geryn's focus was the trail, finding them the easiest, quickest route to get them where they wanted to go; to his dis- may, that left Elora in Taksemanyin's charge, and the Wyr proved as solicitous of her well-being as a border collie, save that he always let her rest when he sensed the need. She pro- gressed in much the same manner as a cow or sheep; when nudged along her way, she went. No questions, no problems, in a stolid, plodding, functionally mindless gait that never really vaned. Khory, on the other hand, couldn't stay still, or on the trail. Her vitality appeared as boundless as her reserves of strength; she would spend some time pacing Geryn before sashaying up the ridge, or down a ways, to closely examine some piece of flora or fauna that caught her gaze, before drop- ping back to Thom to ask him about it. She was nothing but questions-what is this, where did this come from?-blud- geoning him with a barrage as infuriating as it was genuine, to the point where he would as cheerfully throttle her for her en- thusiasm as he would Elora for her equally total lack of it. There'd been little change in the degree or quality of the light. It was much like a winter day in the far north, where time was measured by levels of murk. Thom's internal clock told him it was late afternoon when a concerned Geryn took advantage of the latest rest stop to hunker beside him for a quick conference. 'Know this country, does yeh, Peck?" he asked. 354 "By reputation. The only maps are too superficial to do us any good, I'm afraid. Beyond that, it's my first visit. Why?" 'The forest's somethin' special, am I right?" Thom noticed the Daikini couldn't keep wholly still; in his own way, Geryn's senses were as alive and questing as Taksemanyin's, save that he used eyes as his primary receptors, where the Wyr preferred ears, searching the gathering dusk as though some attack were long overdue. 'It's the trees themselves, the oldest of old growth. They're consecrated to Cherlindrea. Said, so story tells, to have been first planted by her own hands." "Too darrm quiet, an' yeh ask me." "I was wondering about that," Thom agreed. Geryn gathered and released a slow and steady breath, delib- erately taking his time, repeating it twice more before he spoke again and using the opportunity to sweep his gaze through the arc of a full circle around their resting place. "Not a sign of life. Not among this world, nor the Veil Folk. Not deer, not lizard, not dryad nor nymph. Not a case o' them havin' moved on somewhere's else, it's as if they'd never been." He held out a leaf. There was a dusting of glitter along its edge, a crystallization that had barely begun on high but hadn't faded in his grasp. "Frost," Geryn wondered, 'am I right?" Thom touched his tongue to it, nodded. "All the wet in the air behind us, won't be long afore we'll see snow." 'In a land that's never before known winter." "So you say. Ain't speakin'f'r the trees, my point's if we're still in these ravines when it starts, tha's as far as we go." He puzzled a long moment. "Think tha's why everyone's skipped, mebbe? Seekin' warmer climes, like any other migratin' critter?" "Might explain the animals. The Veil Folk aren't like that." "Can yeh light us up a'night, so we can continue on our way~" 'I think we'd do better with some proper rest." "I got an instinct says yeh're right, another shriekin' that's a mistake." 355 Thom nodded, extended his hands. "Close your eyes," he told the Pathfinder, and touched both lids with fore and middle fin- gers, casting a spark of Power across the way to his companion. 'MageSight,' he told Geryn, when they moved apart again. "Better vision than a cat, in anything less than absolute dark. More suitable than a torch. I'll offer the same to the rest so we'll each be on equal footing." "Damn," Geryn responded in wonderment. "Damn! When this fades, it's be like goin'mostly blind." "I'm sorry for that, because it will fade. The charge is tempo- rary, and there's a limit to how often I can reenergize it. The body has a finite capacity, it can be taxed only so hard before it begins to break down. Superhuman strength will eventually bum out the muscles or shatter the bones; enhanced sight will make you blind. Each Gift has its price. The more you desire, the more you pay." 'Yeh go well enough." 'And it's cost me dear." He spoke with an edge that hadn't been intended and Geryn's face twisted a little, as though the Nelwyn had suddenly brandished a knife. "Do best, I'm thinkin'," he said, brushing his trousers as he rose stiff-boned to his full height, "breakin' a trail along the cen- tral crest till we're past Dournhall. Rather stay high along the ridgeline than low, an' keep to the lee side of the range." "Agreed. You're still not happy." "Bein' watched we are, Peck. An' not by friendly eyes. Sooner we're clear o' this place, safer I'll feet. We ain't welcome here." "That shouldn't be. There are no strangers in Cherlindrea's Groves. That's true the world over. Nothing of Shadow can en- dure here, nor any harm be done.' "Everything else about the damn world's dove straight t' hell, why should here be any different?" Food for thought, as fatigue curled in about the muscles of his legs, the joints of his hips, like tendrils of a fog bank, despite his best efforts to banish it. The others were in considerably less discomfort, once he'd worked a small Dismissal to immunize them against the effects of fatigue. Unfortunately, the same i 356 rules of cause and consequence applied here as with the en- hanced sight he gave them all- his enchantment allowed them to use their physical instrument to its fullest extent. When it wore off, the need for recovery would be just as dra- matic. Thom's problem was that he was starting from a far lesser plateau, well into reserves of strength and spirit the oth- ers had only begun to tap. His senses were as acute as ever, but the orbits of his eyes burned with strain, his joints cast off a constant ache, he moved with the gingerly grace of an ancient. In a way, he was the axle that kept their wheel turning, but there was less and less oil to grease the mechanism; metal had started grinding on metal, wearing it gradually but inexorably away. His challenge was to find them a place of refuge before that happened. Geryn's right about the silence, he thought as he tried to find even a semblance of beauty in the perpetual twilight. He had walked such stands as these often; Cherlindrea planted them where she pleased and they flourished in spite of local conditions. Normally, there was a humid warmth to the groves, as the sun warmed the air beneath the overhanging canopy, which in turn prevented it from slipping away as day progressed toward nightfall; in addition, heat was given off by the decaying matter scattered across the floor, everything from fallen leaves to fallen logs. Sound carried a goodly distance and it wasn't uncommon, if a visitor walked with care, to hear evi- dence of the creatures who dwelled within. Many was the night when sprites and spirits themselves would come to visit, drawn to his power as a moth to a candle flame. He'd danced at his share of their circles, helped them be bom, and helped them gen- tly die. These were among his favorite places, because in atmos- phere they most reminded him of home. They were places where he felt at peace, finding a simple joy that brought renewal to his soul as the rest restored his body. Here, though, he found desolation. A semblance of what was, form without substance. To the surface eye, his Otit- Sight, all the elements seemed as they should be: the trees were as sturdy as ever, the earth as firm beneath his feet. Yet they were hollow. It wasn't a case of the Veil Folk hiding from strangers; as Geryn said, it felt to him, too, as though they'd never been. He wasn't aware that he was whistling, until he caught looks that mixed amusement and surprise directed his way from the others. He couldn't help a weary smile-weary because even the muscles of his face felt overburdened, as though he were re- shaping soft lead-at being caught. It was something he did when he was lost in thought, drove the brownies positively wild, made them join in themselves, which in turn, because their voices were in no way a match for their desires, sent the eagles winging for maximum altitude, well out of earshot. It was a measure of his profound fatigue that not only was he beyond an emotional response to the memories of his lost companions, but also that he didn't notice. Simple tune, at least at first. Descending thirds, and he paused a moment to listen to the notes rebound through the gullies, echo fading past echo until the air was once more still. It was no tune he remembered hearing, but something that seemed to flow naturally from him as he grew into a life as a sorcerer. Like sor- cery, the melody built on what came before, growing in com- plexity with every refrain. And like magic at its best, it was wholly extemporaneous, an expression of purest intuition, leav- ened by his deepest feelings. A somber cast to this recital, reflecting a mood as sunless as the sky, that absorbed him so completely he put a foot wrong and came near to tumbling off the trail. With a start, he recovered wits and balance, to find Elora Danan standing before him, a doughy waif, with a haunted as- pect to her eyes that was starkly at odds with the well-fed flesh that encased it. She had no notion of how her clothes were meant to be wom; Thom had the sense from her that she blanked while being dressed, standing before her maids nearly naked and emerging properly and exquisitely outfitted, without the slightest clue as to how it was managed. Still, she'd tried to arrange them as best she could. Not terribly successful, from the perspective of either comfort or aesthetics. 358 Her eyes were very large, the only burst of color on a body that was a casting made ff esh. "Yes, Elora," he said gently, flicking his gaze past her to Taksemanyin and Geryn, watching concernedly. This was the first time the child had taken the initiative since they'd come ashore. "I know that music," she said. Her voice was broken, with a huskiness reminiscent of Shando, her larynx as cruelly and thor- oughly savaged as her spirit seemed to be. "Something I used to whistle," he conceded, "when you were very young." "It's my fault," she said, bleakness spreading like oil across the sea from her eyes to her voice. 'I should have given Willow what he wanted. If I hadn't fought, none of this would have hap- pened." "Stop it," he said. "Look at me," she cried, her tone disconcertingly as deep as his, 'I'm cursed, the world's cursed, I never meant for anything bad to happen, I was just so scared!" 'There's no shame in that." He took her by the shoulders. A mistake; she broke his hold as though his hands were coated with acid. "What do you know, Peck?" and she made that last word as foul an obscenity as any he'd heard, so harsh in speech and in- tent that he actually flinched. 'Don't you dare touch me," she cried with a large portion of her own imperiousness. "You brought me to this, nothing about my life was wrong until you showed yourself." Everything was wrong child, he thought, though it would have been better to have spoken it aloud. He was about to, but he never got the chance. He heard a scream from above, and was gripped by a stagger- ing discontinuity of vision as he was wrenched from himself and cast into the raging consciousness of Bastian, glaring cold-eyed at five people below, frozen in place by the suddenness of the ea- gle's attack. I ~ 359 "Oath-Breaker," he heard Rool cry, from his perch on Bastian's shoulders. 'Betrayer." This, from Franjean, riding Anele. "Demon!' they cried together, even more of a curse than Elo- ra's "Peck" had been, a word meant to hurt worse than any weapon. His vision bifurcated. In the same moment he saw himself as the eagle's back arched, her great wings belling outward to break her madcap descent, and beheld through his own eyes Anele's extended claws, lunging for his face. I C H A P T E R la:w IORN DROPPED AND ROLLED. REFLEX TOOK H[M down, wits sent his hands scrabbling for a hold as he dropped over the lip of the trail. He had no doubts that the eagles were trying to kill him; that was clear from the man- ner of their approach and the furnace fury in their minds, but he had no intention either of giving them that satisfaction or harming them in return. He snagged a sapling, second-year growth, scraping layers of skin from his palm as he used the momentum of his fall to pivot him back toward the trail, working hands and feet like a hedgehog to get him there, try- ing to protect himself while keeping track of the unfolding fight. Geryn sprang to Elora's defense, but Anele executed a magnificent turn over the tip of one wing and used the other V I 362 to swat the charging lad aside. Their bones may have been hol- low, but the eagles were a match and more for Thom in size of body and they could strike with the force of a respectably sized bludgeon. Anele would have dropped on the Daikini, stabbing for his face with claws and beak to maim him, but Khory leaped from her perch on the slope, sword leaving an afterimage in its wake as she aimed a double-handed slash for the bird. Anele backpedaled furiously, making yet another impossible midair maneuver to avoid the blow. She saw at once the DemonChild's speed, so Anele made no attempt to climb to safety; she broke off the engagement by wheeling toward the ravine and jinking away through the trees. Ryn wasn't so fortunate. He scythed Elora's legs out from un- der her to bring her down, and clear her out of harm's way~the child had neither his reactions nor his experience; she stood frozen by the intensity of the ambush, dumb and upstanding as a post, the perfect prey. But when the Wyr turned from her to Bastian, he was met by an arrow from Rool's bow. No ordinary dart; that was obvious from an impact that threw him from his feet as though he'd been roped from behind. Brownies, too, had their secrets, generally choosing weapons that stung and an- noyed, preferring to harry and humiliate a foe rather than do him actual harm. But when presse,d, they could be as deadly as any, striking with poison that could drop a Daikini in a matter of steps or, as now, imbuing their missiles with a portion of their own life force, to give it a striking power far exceeding its diminutive size. At its ultimate, a brownie could trade his life for that of a foe, and Thom had no doubt that was where this en- gagement was meant to end as Bastian's claws opened bloody stripes across Tak's flank before the eagle surged skyward for a second attack. Thom lashed out with a gust of wind, using it as he would a punch, Bastian squalling in surprise and dismay as he found him- self pushed away from his quarry. Rool, always better at a phys- ical scrap than Franjean, managed another shot ' but Khory usid her sword to block it, her blade slicing the thom in twain and thereby dissipating its force. She didn't stop there but charged 363 forward herself, compelling Bastian to follow his mate's example and flee down the ravine. 'Damnation," Geryn cried, clambering sloppy-legged to his feet, with huge snuffling noises as he tried to stem the flow of blood from his nose. 'Those birds, Drumheller, they were the ones traveled wiyeh!" 'Yes," was the flat reply. There was no hint of a geas, or a glamour, not the slightest whiff of entrancement. They came at him of their own free will, possessed by a rage that bordered on hatred and allowed not the smallest hint of mercy. Not for him, nor for Elora. 'What has happened?" he breathed. But the question was rhetorical, for InSight had already presented him with the an- swer, embodied in that one awful word both brownies and eagles had cried at him: "Demon!" He had become one with Khory's sire in order to bring her into the world, accepted that Bonding fully and freely and thereby branded himself as cursed and outcast in the eyes of all the Veil Folk. It would be the same with the Daikini, if they learned what he'd done, for those who willingly consorted with DemonKind were considered the most wicked and damnable of creatures, wholly beyond forgiveness or re- demption. They attacked Elora because they feared he had cor- rupted her as well. There was nothing he could say to persuade them differently, because a signature of DemonKind was their mastery of the arts of deception; for their own survival, they would assume his every word a lie, and every gesture a trap. At least, the brownies had escaped Elora's tower; that was something. But it hadn't been a clean getaway, for one of Fran- jean's arms was wrapped tight to his body-that was why he didn't use a bow against them-and there was a wicked scar across Bastian's back that hadn't wholly healed. Likely wouldn't, from the stench it left behind him. They weren't clean wounds; they cast an infection deep into the bodies that would quickly consume them. He didn't know if he could heal them. Worse, he knew that if he called them back, he wouldn't get the chance. If they saw him, they would kill him. 364 He snuffled himself, nostrils taunted by the faintest tang of smoke on the air. His mind was on other things; he didn't notice. 'Very nice," he told Khory as he passed her. "Sword knew what to do," she replied, "I just helped." He stopped and stared, truly looking at her for perhaps the first time. She was right-handed and that sleeve had suffered from all their travails, to the extent where she'd finally tom it off at the shoulder. The lines of her arm were smooth; this was a body that had always been healthy, and then honed to its keenest edge; that was clear from the easy movement of her muscles. There was a knotwork tattoo about the biceps, deceptively simple at a glance, representing the endless life cycle of birth and rebirth. To- ward the wrist, covering the lower half of her forearm, a far more complex and delicate filigree, as though the engraver had sought to replicate a pattern of black lace on her skin. A startling contrast, to find so overtly feminine a decoration on such a de- terminedly strong figure. Whoever the woman had been, she had defied easy typecasting. In that, she and the DemonChild were disturbingly alike. Khory spoke out of the side of her mouth, offering only a frac- tion of her concentration while devoting the rest to sentry duty. She lounged loose-limbed against a boulder, her sword lying at the ready across her lap, positioned so that she had a clear view of the scene below while remaining protected by a tight clutch of trees from any attack from behind. She might be over- whelmed, but Thom doubted she'd ever be taken by surprise. It was a comforting thought. Ryn had shifted sideways where he lay, to clear himself from Elora. That was all he could manage. Thom could see from the shallow, tender way he breathed that the impact of Rool's bolt had broken bones, and he knew from experience that Bastian's slash would be bad. Elora was on her knees, close beside the Wyr, a smear of darkness-the neutral twilight stole away even the scarlet of fresh blood-across her front, in stark opposition to the argent purity of her skin. 'He's hurt,' she said lamely as Thorn approached. "Any pain?" the Nelwyn asked as he hunkered beside Ryn. 365 Eyebrows raised in an apparently universal expression of in- credulity. But his answer was as to the point as Thom's question. "Hurts to breathe, hurts to move-those parts of me that still can, I mean. Leg's numb below where I'm cut. Probably loss of blood, I've no sense of poison. Think I'm leaking like a sieve." Thom placed a hand gently on the wound, shook his head in relief. "It's a mess, but he missed any of the major vessels. Your fur ate up most of the force of the blow; Bastian hadn't accounted for that when he struck." "Lucky me." "Very much so, Wyr. Any of the rest of us'd be holding our guts in our hands and wondering how to put them back inside." "Nelwyn ... F Ryn hissed warningly, with an urgent flash of expression toward the side where Elora knelt. "Was that supposed to be me, then?" she asked, in a very small voice. "Very likely. As was I, for Anele and Franjean." 'He knows 'em," said Geryn, joining them. "Traveled with him, those gobshite lamb swipers." There was a metallic thick- ness to his voice that told Thom he was still bleeding, so the sor- cerer fished about in his pouch for a vial and a clean square of cloth. A drop of liquid, a hurried incantation, and he handed the dressing up to the Pathfinder, telling him to hold it over his nose and breathe deeply. "Same for me, please," requested Ryn, good humor belied by the evident weakness of his voice. 'I wish." "Oh joy." "Not to worry, I can pull you through. I'll need some time, is all.' 'Drumheller, we may not have any." 'Say again, Geryn? What are you talking about?" 'Take a breath. Couldn't smell before, 'cause o' the crap in my nose, but it's plain as death now." He didn't comprehend what the Pathfinder meant at first, as he took in a heady mix of evening scents. Grov,,ing things, old 366 and young, sprouting from a rich, loamy earth, touched-faintly at this point, thank heaven-by the salt tang of ocean air. "Someone's lit a fire," he said without thinking. "Tha's a fack." Thom rose to his feet, wondering if his face had gone as pale as Elora's. 'That can't be," he said. "What's happening?" Elora asked. 'Torch, perhaps?" he wondered, knowing that was hopeless. 'Close enough t' smell, close enough t' see. I'm thinkin' this is a ways off still. Thank the Maker." 'But comin Geryn shrugged. "Can we afford to assume dif'rent~" 'It can't be," Thorn repeated, as though his words alone would make it so. "Bugger that, Peck," scomed Havilhand. 'I seen the greatest city of the coast turned t' ice an' spun crystal, an' a fair, decent woman tore inside out b'fore my eyes. If nothin' else holds true no more, why should this?" "What does he mean?" Elora, again, fright skittering across the body of her voice. "Hopefully, nothing," Thom told them both, "but it's best we move." 'I can't," Ryn said matter-of- factly. His senses were keener than Daikini; Thorn needed only a glance to see that he knew the truth. 'Khory," Thom said, "once this dressing's applied, he's all yours." "If the eagles come again, Drumheller?" 'One crisis at a time, please. You can manage him, none of the rest of us can." "I'll carry the sword," offered Geryn, to back away with up- raised hands and an apologetic mien when Khory thrust it em- phatically into its scabbard and tightened the sling that bound it across her back. "My apologies, swordsmistress," Ryn said with unaccustomed formality, and a turn of phrase Thom associated more with a 367 Princess like Anakerie, 'for the inconvenience. And"-accented now with a shrug that was quintessentially him-"for bleeding all over you." 'Your blood, fuzzy," she said, slinging his arms forward across her shoulder, "keep it to yourself." It hurt the Wyr when she rose, there was no way he could hide it, his choked grimace sparking a tiny outcry from Elora, as though his pain had struck a resonance in her. 'We have to move fast," Geryn told them. "We might as well put a blade through Ryn's heart right here and now," Thom snapped back at him, "and have done with it!" "Jus' sayin' what's what, is all!" "High ground, bare ground, that's the drill. Find us the quick- est way." Geryn took off at a log, moving as easily through the growing night as he would in bright sun. "And don't thank me," Thom muttered beneath his breath, "for the MageSight." "Thank you," a voice said softly from the side. 'You're most welcome, Elora Danan." "I told the sea to stop," she said, after they'd walked awhile. 'I was wondering about that. What gave you the idea?" "It was so awful below. I was so sick, I thought I'd heave out my insides. Still sore." She rubbed herself across the belly, leav- ening the memory with a wan smile until that brought her hard up against the memory of Morag's end. She blinked very rapidly, until Thom handed her a cloth for her tears. 'I can imagine." 'I wanted it to stop. Suddenly this way came to me. Next I knew, I was on the deck, screaming my head off. Is that how things are supposed to work?" she asked with sudden urgency and a sense from her that it wasn't how she wanted it to be. 'I don't know," he answered honestly. "No one does, really, I suspect. Some powers, like some people, don't like being told what to do." Elora flushed a little, at the memory of how she'd treated her own servants. "They prefer to be asked. Pride of place and being are not exclusive to the Daikinis, or to brownies, or I 368 any single race." He smiled. 'Not even Nelwyns. We each have our wishes, our imaginings, but they're all colored by experience and prejudice. They're right for one, not necessarily for another. There's craft to magic, as there is to monarchy. You start with the gift, as you might a claim to a throne; the trick is learning to use it properly. Mastering energies," he waved a hand, leaving trails of languid rainbows from the tips of his fingers, "mastering peo- ple, mastering yourself. "The Twleve Domains are ruled by prideful folk, on both sides of the Veil; none among them are comfortable with the idea of an overlord, no matter how sacred. That's the trouble with prophecy," his smile turned ironic to point the comment, "al- ways too damn ambiguous!" 'You never used to curse." "You never saw me in a bad temper." "You're the one who made me laugh." There was a sense of quiet discovery to her words, a pale echo of the wonder Khory had exhibited earlier, as she labored to make connections be- tween the decimated images in her memory. Thom was im- pressed, as much by the effort she was making as by her success. "We all did, in our way. You made it easy." "Why'd you leave me?" The ache of loss was naked in her tone, as it was in his when he replied. 'I thought"-a shrug-'my work was done. I had a h 'me, 0 family, responsibilities. I'm a Nelwyn. The adventure may be a great one, but the parts we play in it are supposed to be small, like us, that's the way it's always been. You were where you rightly belonged, among those best able to protect you." 'Good thing you left, you might have shared their fate." "Or saved them. Elora, what happened that night, do you re- member?" She shook her head, slowly, purposefully, considering the question, truly seeking an answer. "I was warm, snug abed, then I was burning. The fire that claimed Bavmorda had come for me, that's what I thought. I couldn't move, not any part of me." She held out her arms and gazed at the transformed skin with a sad smile. 'My skin was 369 cast metal, I couldn't even speak. I was thrown through sky, through sea, through the heart of the world, through stars in the heavens; I became a star myself. Everything I was, was tom away. . . . " Her voice trailed off and she was silent for a time. Thom didn't try to press her, but wondered instead how closely the truth of her journey resembled his brief fusion with the Demon. If that was so, if she'd also encountered those unworldly crea- tures, that would explain why the brownies were so ready to be- lieve the worst of her. Frustration was a sour, bilious taste in his mouth; it was like being blind and trying to visualize the face of the world from a handful of random snot-flash imapes But why should I expect it to be anything else? he thought. We're rational beings, how can we make sense out of chaos? Even the way we frame the question invalidates it. 'Then," she said at long last, her voice as remote as the mem- ory, "I was cold. Freezing. Screaming. I was hungry, I was hurt, I was scared. I was so scared. My bed was gone, Tir Asleen was gone. I was somewhere different, someplace strange." 'The palace in Angwyn." "The courtyard, actually." She nodded. "They built me a house, then they built me the tower. Elora's Aerie. They were al- ways nice to me ... but they were always afraid. All things con- sidered, I guess they had good reason." "Bollocks." They'd been climbing all the while, along a track whose shal- low grade made it seem far easier than it turned out to be. Thom's legs felt held together by rubber bands, and those badly frayed; he doubted Elora fared much better and didn't want to think about Taksemanyin. Even Khory was showing the strain. 'Your friends are angry," Elora said suddenly. "I saw them with you in the tower." She flushed, which had the effect of un- derlying her silver skin with a hint of rose gold like the promise of a sunrise. "I called them 'bug men.' " " 'Awful little bug men/ to be precise." Then, more seriously, after a small sigh's pause: "I placed them in harm's way, and left them there." 'To save me." "Things happened too fast, I couldn't do both." 'Why am I so important?" 'Blessed if I know. But I think you are." "Nobody ever asked me if it was what I wanted." "I'm not sure our approval is required." "That isn't right, Drumheller." He looked at her. "No offense, but that never seemed to bother the Sacred Princess Elora," A small smile touched the corners of her lips. 'No," she conceded slowly, stretching out the "n." "It didn't." They were traversing a middling ridge, a subordinate offshoot of Dournhall Mount that ran along the peninsula to its end at Duatha Headland, and as they neared the top none had any no- tion which way to go next, whether it would be better to walk the crest for a time or descend the far side. Geryn was waiting. He was scratched all over, bark scrapes and nettle cuts from climbing a tree. Whatever he'd seen hadn't made him happy. "Yeh have to run," he told them without preamble, puffing like a bellows. "F'r yer lives!" Thorn followed the angle of his body, and beheld a roseate glow that reached from shore ' to shore across the peninsula. "No," was all he could say, in absolute denial. "It's burning, Peck. Fast as a wildfire, trees candling like they was soaked in pitch.' "No." With a terrible violence, born wholly from fear, the Daikini yanked him off his feet by the shoulders, till their faces were level. 'I've seen it, damn yer maggoty eyes! Don't matter that this is s'posed t' be impossible, that nothin's s'posed t' torch these woods, they're burnin' jus' the same! An' us with 'em, we don't go now! Fast as we're able." "Where?" He swung around, shoving Thom bodily toward the looming peak. I- I 371 "Crest line's good the whole way," Geryn husked. "Made sure o' that myself. It's a bear of a climb, but there's a bulge in the rocks, forms a natural break, more stone than trees beyond, no fuel for a decent bum. Reach that wall, then the slopes o'Dourn- hall beyond, we're good Fr another day.' There was sound now, that hadn't been heard from within the ravines. A crackling that boot soles make striding across a bed of dry nettles and twigs. Smoke was thickening as well, reminding him of autumn nights in the village, with the scent of a score of hearthfires spicing the breeze. "Can you manage, Khory?" Thom asked, after shaking him- self free of the Pathfinder's grasp. Geryn was growing more agi- tated by the moment, as though his body were shot through with lightning, so full of energy that he could hardly contain himself. He wanted to run, he couldn't abide the delay. "I run," she said flatly, "he dies." 'So set him down," Geryn snapped, 'do him quick, as a mercy, an'let's be off. Damnitall, the time!" 'No!" This cry came from Elora. 'He risked his life for us," she protested further, rushing to help as Khory eased her burden down. "I owe him mine! We can't just leave him." "He can't go, Highness, we can't stay, simple a' tha'!" 'He's right," agreed Ryn. Thom knew that, had rationality marshaled like a conquering horde inside his head to provide all the arguments and justifica- tions needed for the decision. But there was a wild giddiness within him as well, a residue of the Demon's chaos that flew in the face of presumed common sense, a resonance of the healing madness that gripped him up on the Scar. He felt as though he'd walked away from so many friends and companions, always for good and noble and necessary reasons, he couldn't bear another such. He wanted the fight. "Bollocks," Elora said, closing the subject as far as she was concerned, though Thom knew he could probably overrule her. She was trusting him to save them, trusting him to give himself the chance to try. Wi 372 Geryn tried to make the decision for them, by yanking Elora by the arm and tucking her close. "Be daft an' die, if tha's yer will," he told them. "I'll not weep for fools. An' I'll sure not let the Sacred Princess bum with yeh!" ,He got the words out but didn't make it farther than a single step before Elora wiggled her legs between his, in a move she'd seen Khory make, and tripped him up. They sprawled together, but she planted a foot against his flank and heaved him clear. His recovery was quicker, but she had a knife, drawn from the deep folds of her bundled gowns, which she'd been carrying like a tal- isman since coming ashore. "Don't do this, Highness,' he implored. "I beg yeh!" "Don't touch me like that. Ever." "I'm sorry, I just want to keep yeh safe. Please." He was edg- ing fractionally closer, a crabwise sequence of tiny motions that Thom recognized too late to be of help, as his warning cry coin- cided with Geryn's lunge for Elora's weapon. She flinched and slashed wildly; he got a hand on her but also caught a shallow gash along the opposite forearm for his trouble. Had it just been the two of them scrapping, he likely would have, overmastered her, but Khory's sword hissed clear of its scabbard, the reinforcement prompting an immediate backpedal from the Pathfinder as he scrabbled beyond their reach, tumbling ass over teakettle to the base of a small depression. ,Does she mean so little," he raged, recovering his feet, "that yeh'11 let her bum?" 'She means so much," Elora answered, surprising them all, "that they'll let her make her own decision, and accept the con- sequences." "Fools!' The Pathfinder turned full face on Thom, dark emo- tions plain as he worked himself into a violent state. 'T' place yer trust in the Peck when all he does is leadja from disaster t' disas- ter! Yeh saw what hap'ned t' the shipmaster; d'yeh want the same fer yehrselves? If there's evil come t' Angwyn, by the Blessed Bride, I say it's him! Aye, Peck,- it's yer doin, all the hor- ror tha's fallin' on the land, damn me fer not seein' tha' from the start an' stoppin' yeh when I had the chance. Yeh say yer tryin' t' save the Sacred Princess; well, I'm askin' if stealin' her ain't what brought down curses on all our heads? Shoulda figured yeh were in the dungeon fer good reason an' by God left yeh there! Yeh care nothin' fer Angwyn, yeh care nothin' fer her!" In any other situation, they'd be at blows by now, the Pathfinder trying his best to beat any and all foes to bloody pulps. But his rage could find no such release so long as Khory blocked him with her sword, which left him nothing to turn on his foes save parting words, and with them he was gone. "Demon yeh were named, it's Demon yeh are an' I pray yeh burn fer it!" "You're wrong," Elora cried as Havilhand pumped himself for all he was worth along the steepling rise. "He's wrong," she said again, to Thom and the others. "We won't bum, then?" From Ryn, all naive innocence, with intent to amuse. Thom looked him in the eye, having already decided to stop their hearts before the flames claimed them. 'No," he said simply. "Well, that's a relief. Nor die neither?' "Can't promise that, I'm afraid," was Thom's response, and now he smiled, 'Now you tell us!" The Wyr rolled his eyes for dramatic em phasis. "Into the hollow," Thom instructed them, all business. As Elora passed he touched fingertips to her arm, the barest brush touch. 'Thank you," he said. 'Truly." Traditional fire sounds now, like drum heralds before an ad vancing line of battle, bringing with them the first flashes of heat. All the humidity was vanishing from the air; Thorn could feel the skin of his face tighten as the scene was sucked dry of ambient moisture. The stand of trees was still too thick, the trunks stood too tall, for them to get a decent view of the ap- proaching conflagration; by the time they saw it in full, it would be upon them. Conditions were changing with dramatic speed, as though the hurricane that was battering the coast had turned its attentions full on the land. 374 The hollow wasn't so terribly deep, Thorn could see over the top simply by standing erect, but there was nothing better avail- able. Khory set Ryn in the deepest part, taking up position on one side, with Elora lying beside him on the other, both snug- gling as close to the Wyr as they were able. An explosion caught Thom's eyes, downslope in the neigh- boring ravine, and he watched a sinuous, serpentine shape-col- ored as though blood were made molten and leavened by pure gold, so that it gleamed from within with an intensity to shame the sun-dive into the trunk at its base. His eyes followed its progress up the heart of the tree, although at first nothing could be seen by the naked eye, until the wood itself began to glow. Every leaf burst alight and then dollops of raw fire leaked into view, the way a smithy might use a white-hot bar to sear his way through a plate of metal. Fountains of flame rocketed from the ground, as the roots were consumed, and with a tremendous whoumpf of expanding gas the tree itself instantaneously com- busted, brilliantly ablaze from floor to crown. "Bastard," Thom snarled, yet again in helpless rage as the fire- drake leaped to another target. He was sweating. In the matter of seconds it had taken the tree to die, the fire had pumped the temperature a score of de- grees, from autumn to summer. He pulled a bottle from his pouch and upended it over the hollow, not so much to drench anyone lying within or the ground beneath but primarily to re- mind them what it felt like to be wet. A pool wouldn't save them, when the smallest breath of that superheated air would scorch their lungs worse than a cauterizing iron, and the water itself would be heated to a rolling boil. His cloak wasn't big enough, so he borrowed one of Elora's, shaking it out to cover the whole of the depression; a spray of water went on it as well. One big advantage in a fast-moving fire such as this, he knew. Its intensity made it a horror almost beyond imagining, but its very speed made it one that didn't have to be endured long, where a more leisurely blaze might be around awhile. On the one hand, speed and intensity were the hallmarks of a brush fire; 375 they didn't occur in oldest-growth forests. On the other hand, Cherlindrea's Groves didn't bum, period. Fact of nature, like the rising of the sun. Presumably, that was where the firedrakes came in, happy to consume what a match couldn't possibly ig- nite. Which meant, ultimately, that all bets were off. The Deceiver's doing, of course, his actions gradually estab- lishing a recognizable pattern as he took what was normal and violently twisted it back upon itself. Casting order into chaos, setting one natural force at deadly odds against another. Fire- drakes represented one of the primal forces of creation; accord- ing to one legend they were bom with the universe and swam in the molten hearts of the stars themselves, while another belief held that it was they who burned the holes in the fabric of the sky that allowed the heavenly radiance to shine through to the waking world below. Kin to dragons, some theorized; but where the one was considered to be the quintessence of thought and reason, these were beings of raw and untamed passion, quicksilver emotions to go with their protean flesh. It wasn't known if they were intelligent; like Demons, their minds worked in ways neither Daikini nor Veil Folk could comprehend. The only surety was that they were a power to be reckoned with. Only a first-rank mage would even consider summoning one, because only the most absolute and all- encompassing of wards could contain their tremendous heat; the problem was, firedrakes apparently hated in equal mea- sure being confined. From the moment of manifestation, they were reputed to fight like berserkers to break free, with con- sequences to the world if they did couched in the more dire and fearsome terms. Among all the sorcerers Thom had ever met, the histories he'd ever heard told or read himself, these terrible creatures were considered without exception to be the bear best left sleeping in its den. To be ever avoided and never disturbed. Yet the Deceiver had summoned and unleashed, not a single such horror, but an entire clutch. 'Madness," Thom breathed because he still couldn't believe it was actually happening. "Madness!" Nothing gentle about sight or sound any longer. He knew it was time to get under cover, but the sight held him with the at- traction of a cobra for the mongoose. There was no way to see far, the forest grew too tall around, preventing the spectacular vistas that should be the stock-in-trade of such a vantage point, but what was in sight before him was rapidly becoming an in- femo. Wind hotter than the breath of a dragon, more appropri- ate to a desert where the only scrap of moisture is what lives within your own body. A roar like an avalanche, as though all the furnaces that ever were had been brought together in this one spot and stoked hot enough to consume the world. A hand tugged his trouser leg-Elora-and he ducked beside her, the child hurriedly brushing stray sparks from his hair before they had a chance to do some mischief. 'I can spell you all to sleep," he said. 'That would make this easier." 'If it's not an essential requirement," Ryn answered, for them all, 'I think I'd rather watch." Thom lay on his stomach and sank his fingers into the soil, al- ready warming to the touch. There were root networks below, winding around the rocks that composed the ridge, and he knew the firedrakes would happily try a jump from them to the peo- ple above, given the opportunity. He went to work on their clothes first, recalling what it was like on Morag's schooner, with the wind howling, the seas booming over the deck. They'd been soaked to the skin, soaked, it seemed, through the skin, every particle of their beings satu- rated with water. As then, so now. Remember the wet, was his injunction, cast into the earth as well as their clothes. This was a place of generous weather, it had to be to support such luxuriant growth. The sea air created an environment of near-perpetual dampness, and when there weren't actual storms to soak the landscape, the fog did its best. He chanted of winter, cool time, rainy season, showers falling every day, saturating the earth, a time that was rich with both the promise and actuality of life. He didn't neglect the air in this, but reminded it of how cool it wa~ on a spring mom, possessing more than a bite still of the winte 377 just past, crisp and invigorating, far removed from the oven with- out. He didn't speak, there was no point as the leading edge of the blaze swept over them. He'd seen battles where thousands had come together in a clash of arms that rivaled the heavenly thun- der; they were nothing compared with this. He'd stood on the slopes of the continental divide, with titanic explosions of thun- der tearing at the sky so close above it seemed like he could reach out and touch the cloud base, where the shock of the dis- charge was felt as much as heard. Also nothing. They were caught up in a reverberating barrage, where the ordnance was trees being blown to bits by the resin that was their lifeblood be- ~ng instantly heated to vapor-like the pops made by a log on the household hearth, magnified a millionfold, beyond the capacity of ear or mind to accept. He felt a trickle of warmth along his back, as though a line of hot wax had been dripped the length of his spine, and he redou- bled his efforts, calling forth visions of the great waves that smashed the boat and the desperate struggle to survive after the schooner's destruction. He could feel Elora shake beside him; the lesser trembles may have been fear but mostly he was certain it was remembered cold, her garments so sodden they plastered themselves to her silver skin. His were no better, as this en- chantment shunted aside the one that normally kept him dry. Problem here, if his teeth chattered he'd lose the rhythm of his spell and that would be their doom. There was no margin of safety, they were in the heart of a true holocaust, balanced on the most razor-thin of margins. As Geryn counted on his legs to save him, so were the rest dependent on Thom's will. He was weeping with effort, taking enough breath to get through a single repetition of the spell, each cycle leaving more of a hollow sensation in his chest. Nelwyns didn't run, weren't built for it, that was a Daikini affectation, but he'd seen the Tall Folk when they met for games, especially those who attempted the distance races. He looked worse than they. ... and thought of the time he crossed the Roof of the World, 11 378 the greatest of mountain ranges, with peaks so high no living thing could reach the summit. Rashly, he'd given it a try and found himself driven back when he reached a point where the deepest of breaths still left his lungs starving for air. Strange, he remembered thinking, with a scholar's detachment and a war- rior's frustration (then as now, he didn't like losing), to feel like you're drowning when you're a continent removed from any decent body of water. Same sensation now, as he worked himself ever harder to less effect. Ultimately, he would reach the point where his dia- phragm had no more strength to expand his lungs, or his heart to manage another beat. His gamble had been that the fire would blow past them long before that moment. Only it seemed to have stalled. He wasn't surprised. Elora swiped his arm. There was a faint glow beneath the surface of the sand that put him in mind of a foundry, where a forger had trickled a cur- rent of molten metal into a mold. A more fierce, actively hungry radiance than he'd see from a volcanic lava flow, because that liquid rock began to cool the instant it emerged. There was no cast-off heat from the firedrake; the wards Thom cast were holding fine. The opposition was merely mak- ing its presence felt. "This is different from the ocean," Elora said in his ear. She spoke in a normal tone, which meant he shouldn't have been able to hear a word-he could barely make proper sense of his own thoughts-but he understood her fine. "Yes," he said, not trying to be rude but not having the voice or breath to spare. 'That was natural, this is something else." YY 'Yes. 'Willow's doing." 'The Deceiver's doing, Elora. Whatever face that creature wears, it isn't Willow. It was never Willow." He had to pause every few words to chant the next passage of his spell, which made his speech halting and disjointed. He couldn't even spare the effort to project his half of the conversation through mind- speech; too much of his focus was required to sustain his work. "But the deception worked. On me. On those who possessed the power to know better. Cherlindrea above all would have known a lie. If she accepted him, some part of it-some part of him-must have been true." "Impossible!" But beyond that protest, he had no argument to refute her logic. The both of them watched the gleaming sinuosity beneath them, while it in turn cast enough of a glow to highlight all their faces in turn. 'You never answered my question, Nelwyn." Another mystery defying simple solution. "Nothing to say worth the speaking of it. I'm sorry," he added. Or, he thought, the sparing of the breath. "It must be nice to be a piece of gold," she mused. "At least then you'd have some sense of why you were valued. Do you think this fire means Wil-" She caught herself, offered a shy demi-smile of apology. "I mean, our adversary"-and Thorn tossed a look her way at the deliberate choice of the plural pro- noun, her smile broadening a fraction more in retum-"has given up on taking me alive?" 'No," was his flat reply. "But you'll forgive me for not putting your supposition to an empirical test." 'You don't look well, Drumheller." He had no energy to spare for a shrug, much less a spoken re- ply. There was a burning in his body that had nothing to do with the fires outside, hot wax turning to acid, coursing along the pathways of his heart and nerves, lacing itself between the cords of muscles until every act of living was accompanied by its own special lash of pain. It was endurable, but it was also getting worse. "Is there anything we can do?" she asked. " Ve'?" She met his gaze, without attempting to hide the fear behind her eyes, but also without taking back a word of her offer. 'I'd like to try." 380 "As you wish, most Royal Highness." She clutched his arm and at first he assumed it a burst of sec- ond thoughts. "I'm Elora Danan," she told him, and he responded with a grin of approval, taking a last breath before flinging aside the cloak and rising into hell. The world was fire. On every side, seemingly close enough to touch, flames rose to form a roof above them- the ground cracked and seared as badly as any slab of meat. Trees remained mostly as residual afterimages, defined by the ever-shifting shapes of the firedrakes that consumed them, those that hadn't yet been blown to bits radiating shimmering bands of heat, up the visual scale from golden yellow with scarlet highlights to a brightness so intense it was wholly bereft of color. Amidst this inferno, Elora was likewise transformed. Her skin was an ideal reflecting surface and the fiery elements around them restored a warmth to her appearance that had been lost, painting her in wild mixtures of the hottest colors until it seemed to Thom that she was herself composed of living flame. Through the fire moved the firedrakes, as serpents would through water, with the boneless sinuosity of eels, kept at bay by the boundaries of Thom's wards but never straying far, al- ways returning to press here, nudge there, testing, ever testing, for that fatal hint of weakness- that would allow them entry. Elora couldn't help herself, her hand leaping forward of its own accord to touch the nearest one, Thom's reacting as quickly to snap her back. "You hurt me," she said, rubbing her wrist where his fingers had left their mark. 'I'm sorry." His head was pounding, the glare like spikes through his eyes, and he despaired at the arrogance, the madness, that had put him in this place, in this hopeless fight. Of their own accord, Geryn's accusations sounded in memory. Peck, he heard, a chorus of voices, slippery and melodious, caressing with warmth, Peck Peck Peck Peck Peck The catcalls rose and fell, gaining in mockery as the words themselves crashed against him like hurled stones. He'd heard 381 the diminutive his whole life; it was part and parcel of a Nel- wyn's lot, whether as gentle derision or true insult. 'Stop saying that," cried Elora, only to have her own words thrown back at her in the same dissonant musicale. Foolish little fleshling, and before their eyes a number of the creatures flowed together to briefly form the image of something much greater, whose true nature was achingly beyond their abil- ity to comprehend, before dissolving again to their normal state. "What was that?" Elora asked, more entranced than afraid. 'Tales tell of a monstrous celestial Unknowable-some beliefs refer to it as the Phoenix-alpha and omega, beginning and end and beginning of all, the fire that consumes yet brings forth re- birth." "It's so beautiful, it's all so beautiful." He had to concede that was true. To pit your mortal strength against us, they heard further, with chitters of laughter. "Got that right," he said, and Elora heard the effort in his voice. "No," she said to him, and then she turned back to the flames to repeat herself, "'no!' It wasn't a command, he realized, she wasn't imposing her will on the flames as she'd tried to do with the water. Instead, more of a statement of opposition. 'This is wrong," she continued, "why do you wish us harm when we've done none to you?" Our nature. 'To bum the world to ash?" Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes The firedrakes were giddy with delight at the image, swirling so fast and brightly across the field of Thom's vision that even dosing his eyes didn't help, scarlet and gold stripes branding themselves across the inside of his lids. The heat was so intense here that the last of his strength couldn't wholly shield them any longer; he felt baked, and didn't want to think of how Takse- manyin felt under his fur. Around them, the fire had coalesced into a whirlwind, a vortex of unbelievable proportions that no longer needed any outside wind to push it along- here was a L.- 1. 1 EJ 382 monster that created its own, a juggernaut engine of absolute de- struction that pulled air to its center just like a hurricane, stoked it hot enough to vaporize steel, and spat it away to carry flames to new tinder. Such a blaze as this would cast a glow to rival the icy radiance of Angwyn, and hurl its superheated poison to the top of the atmosphere, along with smoke sufficient to blot out the day. "Then you would cease to be," Elora noted simply. "For what would sustain your fire, once there's nothing more to bum? If even the hope of life is gone, where then the promise of rebirthe " As she spoke she held out her hand once more and to his shame Thom found he hadn't the strength left to hold her back. She passed the boundary of the wards as though they weren't there, without disrupting the matrix in the slightest. The barest tip of her finger touched the nearest firedrake, stroking its back as it slipped past the way she might a cat, and it arched with a rapture of its own at the attention. Another twisted knotlike and came straight for her, diving into the child's body as if flesh itself were no barrier between them. Thom's heart near to stopped as he believed he was witnessing in her what he'd seen destroy the tree earlier. Worse, by passing through her, it circumvented the wards as well, which meant the rest of them were likewise condemned. Elora began to glow from within as the firedrake slid beneath her skin as it did beneath the earth. The child swayed in time to a music Thom couldn't hear, suddenly possessed of a boneless grace that had to come from the creature within. Her hair radi- ated out from her skull, as though she were moving underwater, to burst alight, separate strands of flame that miraculously burned without consuming. Only Elora's smile, the one he re- membered from when they'd first met, kept Thom from a reac- tion that would have destroyed them all. She was silver before; she'd become the essence of sungold, flush with the majesty of the dawn. When she looked at him, there were no more whites to her eyes; all he saw were cobalt pools against a background of flame. She held her hand before her, as if seeing it for the first time. Fist clenched, then released; in its hollow was a tiny shape with wings, and Thom felt an awe that hadn't touched him since the birth of his first child. Now his hands moved forth with a will of their own, forming a cup beside Elora's, unspoken invitation for the tiny fire eagle to step from her to him. And so it did, clawed feet leaving sizzle marks on his flesh with every step, as though to make plain a dif- ference between him and Elora. He looked into the creature's eyes. Somehow, that wasn't hard; though the little thing could be enclosed within the globe of his hands, its head smaller than his thumbnail, when he raised it up before him, the sight of it seemed to fill the field of his vi- sion. One eye was sorrow, the other joy, both brought forth their share of tears. He held his father's hand at the moment of his death, and his son's the moment after birth. His nostrils filled with the scent of wildflowers, the bouquet he'd made for his wife when they met on Courting Day; and tasted the acrid tang of ozone and sulfur that reeked in Bavmorda's sanctum. He felt an ache that swept out from his heart with such force that he thought it had broken and this was the final moment of being before the Dark claimed him, for all that had been won and lost before, and what remained to be. He blinked, because the bird was no longer where it was; it had slid back to stare at him from Elora's eyes, and bid sad, smil- ing farewell with her lips, its crest encompassing her head to give it a gravitas and maturity that no span of human years could equal. It had touched him, but been one with her. He stood in darkness, and thought he'd gone blind. Elora stood before him, lambent silver in the night, which thankfully proved his fears wrong, but brought forth a whole new host of horrors in their turn once he realized she was stark naked. That was about all the time allowed him for that set of worries, because he took a reflexive breath to fill his lungs to bursting ... ... and dropped to all fours like a man accursed, more sick 384 than any living being had a right to be as he found himself flooded with the stench of charred wood and ravaged earth. Khory held him till the spasms passed while Elora fumbled in his pouch for water. He tried to tell her that was no use, the bags' special properties worked only for him, but the shape of the bot- tle on his mouth, the cool spring flow across his tongue, made crystal clear how pointless that was. 'It went away," Ryn said in wonderment. "The fire. just like that." "Elora?" Thom husked. "I have no idea," the girl told him. Her mouth worked, her eyes alive with a twinkling brilliance that was a fair match for the merry light in Ryn's eyes; she gestured with her hands, using all the tools of her physical being to pound her thoughts into something she could express, only to end in a sigh of defeat. "I have no idea," Elora said again helplessly. The words, the very concept, made her laugh. She couldn't stop herself, she was too ridiculously happy just to be alive. 'Makes us a pair, then,' he tried to say, to comfort her, but her laughter was infectious although his came brokenly, chortles separated by huge gasps of breath. Ryn joined in as well, al- though he winced almost as much, as the movements of his chest tweaked his wounds. Only Khory stayed silent, watching the three of them in puzzlement while the paroxysm of relief ran its natural course. Thom tried to explain, but he couldn't find space or breath to get the words out between guffaws. To his amazement, as the echoes of their laughter faded in the distance, her lips creased upward in a small smile. He reached out to her and, when she hesitated, unsure of what was being asked of her, took hold and pulled her into his arms, holding her close as tears flooded his cheeks. He'd laughed so hard he was crying. And not alone, either, as he felt himself and Khory gathered into Elora's embrace. Blindly, because he knew the Wyr couldn't rise, Thorn reached out a hand to Ryn. And there they stayed, a circle of life, of hope. Of victory. It didn't last, it wasn't meant to. Thom found his spirit will- ing, albeit under protest, but his flesh, far weaker, and he needed 385 in hand as he rose, and held them out to Elora. Khorv's assistance to once more stand erect He had both cloaks It ctually," Elora said in a smallish voice as she wrapped the water-and-smoke-sodden wool about her. "I wouldn't obiect to those clothes vou offered earlier." The view from the reef was desolation, to match the bleakest soul. Only a few trunks had survived the holocaust; they stood like cenotaphs in a random scattering across a starkly barren landscape. It was a moment when Thom wished he had no use of MageSight, and knew the others felt the same. The slopes had been seared to the bare rock, in some places layered with ash as deep as a Daikini knee. The ground was cracked and blistered, burned free of moisture down to bedrock; about their hollow it had been fused to gleaming glass, in a circle of false ice that fell away from them on every side for a score of body lengths. "What stopped it?' Ryn asked. They were all speaking in hushed tones, as if in a church; it seemed like sacrilege to make a sound in such a wounded place. "Elora did," Thom replied, all joy fled from him, as it had when he beheld the ruins of Tir Asleen. "Then I guess you really are the Sacred Princess," Ryn said to Elora. In the midst of tucking shirt tails into her trousers, she gave him a look that would have made a firedrake quail. "I'm Elora Danan," she said. "For what that's worth." "Tonight, gentle friend," Ryn said with considerable charm, 'it's worth the world, at least to me." "They would have done this to the whole of the world, Drum- heller," Elora said as she took in the enormity of the destruction and compared it with what might have been. "Outside and in." He nodded agreement. "Cracked it to its core, burned everything they could, that's a surety. That's"-a re- flection on his face of what the snake had told them-'their na- ture.' 'Where's the sense to that?" she demanded of him. "To utterly destroy the world you mean to conquer?" "Well," Thom considered, "they wouldn't stop of their own 386 accord. So either the Deceiver assumed himself capable of doing the job, or. . ." "That, my friends," noted Ryn from where he lay, "is a dis- turbingly ominous pause.' ". . . he assumed we would." "Helluva way to take the measure of your opposition, Nel- wyn, an'y'ask me." "Our foe is a creature of extremes, Ryn. Mad without ques- tion, but in no way stupid." "We're not safe here, Drumheller," Khory told them. A point he readily conceded. "But we can't move till Tak- semanyin's able." "Have you the strength for a healing?" "Each time I think not, I discover there's more in the reservoir yet. Besides, Khory, a trek along this ridge to the top of Dournhall won't make me any stronger." "Think the Pathfinder made it?" Ryn wondered aloud, speak- ing the question that Elora had feared to ask. "Well, we formed something of a firebreak," Thom told him while setting out some food for the others, and the tools and medicines needed for the healing. "The blaze swept around us on both sides like a tidal wave of flame, claiming everything be- low this crest and as far up the south slopes of Doumhall as there was fuel to bum. If he stayed to the reef and climbed as hard as he ran-" 'Oh!" A strangled gasp from Elora interrupted him, accompa- nied by a clutch of her hand on his shoulder so tight he winced and worried of a powdered bone. A stag stood beyond the smoothness of the fused earth. It was a magnificent beast, standing as tall at the shoulder as Khory, with better than a dozen points to each of its widespread antlers. It appeared immovable, feet planted wide apart, head bowed un- der what must have been some impossible weight. There was a majesty about the animal that was matched only by an in- domitable will. If the forest had a king, this was truly he. 'Stay," Thom told the others, but he might as well have saved his breath, because Elora took flight with that very word, as 387 though she'd been waiting for its cue, only her trousers in place as she raced to their visitor. Khory held out the shirt that had been left behind. Thom snatched it from her and strode after the girl. He knew what he would find. Elora stood so straight and still she might have been a statue, or someone who'd just felt the lash of a whip. She was crying. He wished he had tears enough left to join her. "I wanted to spare you this," he said. "That's why I told you to stay." The stag's whole body had been swept by the breath of the Devil incarnate. Not enough to kill, not quickly, not decently. It had been seared from crown to hooves, skin made raw, black- ened flesh, meat fresh off a grill. There was no pain, beyond that awful, initial caress of flame, because the neural receptors had been burned away. That would quickly change as infections leached into the muscles and sinews and organs beneath. Its blood was probably already thick with poison, far beyond the ability of liver and kidneys to process. The shock would wear off, the euphoria fade, and in the madness of its pain, the animal would dash itself to death. As if she heard those thoughts aloud, Elora said once more, 11no," in that same, strangely still and resolute voice with which she'd addressed the firedrakes. "There's nothing to be done, save put the poor thing out of its misery." "You're a sorcerer." She rounded on him. 'You're a healer. You mean to do it for Ryn, why not for the stag?' Because I'm alive, he wanted to say, because I have limits. I'm tired and I'm weak and I'm not even sure I can save the one, much less both. But nothing emerged save a slow nod of acquiescence, be- cause when he came right down to it, the bedrock of his being, he didn't want to make any such choice. He wanted to save them both. Gray dawn, gray day, another in a series of monotonous dawns more suited to the polar realms than once-temPerate Angwyn. The air had a bite to it that heralded snow, but Thom knew even a proper sheeting of the stuff wouldn't make this land look any less wretched. Light brought no improvement, only more evidence of how primal a catastrophe this had been. Thorn held out an apple slice and the stag's broad tongue snatched it into his mouth. There was rage in the beast's eyes as he beheld the ruin of his domain, and a resolve that boded ill for those responsible. Thorn sat because he had no more strength to stand, with a body held together by strings like some badly constructed pup- pet. If someone else did the work, he could perform a semblance of major movements-walking, for one-but initiative was be- yond his grasp. The stag nuzzled his nose against Thom's ear, his ragged hairs making the Nelwyn tickle, and was rewarded with another piece of fruit. He wasn't a pretty beast, by any standards; Thorn drew the limit at cosmetic work, preferring to let Nature herself finish that job. His coat was a frazzled patchwork of old growth and new, the skin beneath as tender and pink as a newbom's. He'd be in a really rotten mood for the next while or so, as the regen- erated nerve endings grew accustomed to their new envelope of flesh; every sensation would be amplified to the point where the brush of a branch along his flank would seem more like the lash of a barbed whip. Nothing to be done for that, especially in the wild, part and parcel of the natural process of healing. Thorn hadn't given the stag any guarantees with his work, only a de- cent chance. Ryn wasn't much better off. His bones were set and healing, the great wound itself closed, but he moved with an evident care that was at odds with both his normal demeanor and his physi- cal grace. Thom heard the hiss of Khory's sword being drawn, sensed the sudden tension in his companions, but he didn't care as closed eyes presented him with a wholly different view of the scene. Anele cocked her head, tightened her turn, to grant hiin a better view, and their breath seethed in unison at the sight. "We do appear a pathetic bunch," he spoke aloud. 389 "Leave you on your own one damn minute," Rool groused from ahead and below him, 'you just go straight to hell." 'You," Franjean offered haughtily as Thom restored vision to his own eyes, "smell." "It's been a busy night," was the Nelwyn's deadpan reply. 'We've not had time for our toilet. Or breakfast, for that matter." "Is that to imply some obligation on our part, hey?" "Perish the thought. Khory," he called over his shoulder. "Sheathe your blade, we're among friends." He turned a more baleful gaze back on the brownies. 'I trust." 'So did we." Rool didn't back off a step. 'You left us, remem- ber?" 'You, as I recall, ran from me." 'What did you expect, with the stench of Demons about you?" Franjean took a delicate step forward, followed by a snort that would do an elephant proud. "Still there, thick as ever. Risk our souls simply by talking with you." "Then don't." "See if we care." "Then go!" There was a silence. There were some shrugs. 'Eagles won't let us." This from Rool. "And why is that?" Rool cast him a sour look, a streetwise hustler before the mag- istrate. 'They seem to feel we did you wrong. We saw you with the stag. Anele, she could see how done in you were, none of us thought you'd last through a single healing after standing up to those flaming whatchits, much less two." 'There were moments last night when I'd have agreed with YOU." "Could have turned her down." He gestured toward Elora. 'Had every reason.' 'It wasn't a matter of reason, Rool." 'Yah. That's the point, they say. You chose from your soul. If that hadn't changed, the Demon taint didn't matter." 'You disagree?" The brownie's voice and manner turned deadly serious. 390 'Drumheller," Rool said urgently, "use your InSight, look through our eyes, with our hearts-" 'I have.' "Then you see, you know! Franjean's too kind when he says there's a stench of Demon on you, its nature's tied tight to yours, as yours is to that one's!" He jerked a thumb at Khory. 'Damnedest thing, she's as much yours in spirit as any natural child. It marks you, and not kindly. On the face of it, none of the Wee Folk will take you in, nor heed your entreaties-nor ours, for that matter, should we stay with you. Figure our reaction was extreme, you've seen nothing yet! Outcast and anathema, you've made yourself, across all the Realms. Among the Veil Folk, they'd as soon kill as look at you; that's the way it's ever been with Demons." "They're wrong." "They won't listen, they'll care less." "Ever stop to think," Franjean interjected, "you and the De- mon weren't no accident? Big, empty dungeon, coulda chosen any cell, why that one, hey? Maybe the Deceiver, he pushes you down a path intended to cut you off from every natural ally?" "I've thought that." From the very first. "Ever think, maybe, he plants a seed of Shadow in you-" 'There's a seed of Shadow in us all." "Don't talk platitudes with me, Peck, you know blessed well what I mean! Demon Shadow is different." 'So is this child, Franjean," and he indicated Khory. "The De- mon's impulse didn't come from the Deceiver, it grew from Elora. I choose to believe that what's of me, and her, in Khory is stronger and more lasting than what's of the Demon. I choose to have faith." "Brownies!" "Elora Danan," Thom said, by way of polite introduction in answer to her outcry of delight, "may I present my sometime compardons, Franjean and Rool.' Franjean offered a courtly bow, Rool a nod of the head. She folded herself into a switchback of calf and thigh and body, drop- ping her backside to her heels and resting her chin on her knee nl~ hor_~ I 391 with that jointless, ease so common to the very young, even when they're a bit plump. 'I saw you in my aerie." "And we, likewise, lady." 'I spoke harshly, to you and of you. For that I ask your pardon. And as well for not knowing you sooner. My memory may be a sieve now, but then I had no such excuse. I owe the pair of you so much, you deserved much better. But then"-and her eyes turned hooded-so did everyone in Angwyn." "Point to you, Drumheller," Rool told him after raking his eyes across the girl, "she may be worth the effort after all." "Thank you," she said with a twist of her old asperity. "I think." "Should I assume the eagles won you free?" Thom suggested. "Damn near thing it was, too. Hey!" Rool roared suddenly in his biggest voice, jumping and waggling his arms like a pip- squeak dervish. 'Keep your damn distance, you damn, hom- headed lummox!" And the stag, appropriately startled, backpedaled a few steps with a snort of surprise. He'd been in- trigued by the little animates and stepped over to investigate fur- ther, to see if they might prove edible. Another downside of so fast and ferocious a healing, it left all concerned, physician and patient, ravenous. 'Thought we were done when the Night Herons rolled out of their roost." "My stick-leg birds!" Elora cried. 'Are they all right?" "The Night Herons?" Thom was unsure whether to be aston- ished or aghast. "Yours, Elora?" She was genuinely puzzled. "Well, they rocked in the tower. No one seemed too eager to shoo them away. . . .' She paused until the hoots of derision from the brownies ran their course. "That's a game worth seeing." Franjean chortled. "Get thee gone, wicked wingie." Rool affected a high-pitched voice and fey manner, flicking a hand at the wrist as though brushing off a dust mote. "Be off, we'll have none of your rough sort about." "How long have they been there?" Thom wondered. :11 392 "As long as I have, I guess-what's so funny, you two?" She got no satisfaction from her demand, as it sent the brownies into even greater paroxysms of hilarity. Ryn and Khory exchanged a glance of confusion and decided to stay well clear; this was a confrontation best left to the principals. 'Certainly," Elora fin- ished to Thom, deciding herself that her best course was to ig- nore the little perishers, 'as long as I remember. We'd roost in my garden together. I'd feed them in my tree. I think I sort of liked them because no one would come near when they were about." "None would approach, Princess," Rool said in his matter-of- fact way, "because herons are known to favor the taste of human flesh." 'They're creatures of evil, Princess," Franjean told her in his most schoolmasterish tone. 'Not mine." "It isn't as if they have any bloody choice in the matter, you know. They're born that way!" "Which condemns them forever, Franjean? You were wrong about Drumheller..." "That remains to be seen." 'But you're willing to take that risk. The herons can't learn a different way, they can't change~" The brownie struck an attitude. "I don't believe my ears. I can't talk to the child, she's impossible." "They did me no harm, ever!" 'Some of us, missy," and Franjean waggled his sling for em- phasis, which reminded Thom of healing work still left to do, 11weren't so fortunate!" "Who looked after them?" Ryn asked suddenly. 'Never thought of that," Rool conceded. "They're predators, they live for the hunt. All I've ever seen or heard of 'em, they only eat what they've fresh killed." 'Not in Angwyn," Elora told them. "Not the ones in my tower." 'Must've given the locals pause, I'm thinking," Rool contin'- ued, letting his thoughts choose their own path, "to see their 393 Savior Princess consorting with such abominations. Why didn't anyone do anything about it?" "Actually," Elora said, "I don't believe anyone knew, outside of my Vizards. From a distance, to anyone looking from the ground or even the palace itself, they're just birds. They only came to visit when no one else was around." "No one else," Ryn prompted, 'besides the Vizards." Elora nodded. "They knew," the Wyrrn said. 'But they didn't tell." "Can't be certain," from Franjean. 'Given Elora Danan's position at Court-and what happened to his wife and son-the King would have acted immediately to protect her from even a hint of threat." "You speak like you know him." 'Not necessarily," Franjean interjected, saving Ryn from any reply. "Your precious king sanctioned the presence of the Maizan in Agnwyn, why not the herons as well? Maybe he believed they'd protect her." "Nobody," was Rool's retort, 'is that naive. Present company excepted." "Enough," Thom said quietly and, to his amazement, was obeyed. He tried not to let the unexpected achievement go to his head. "We need shelter, we need food, we need rest. Find those, and you can all argue to your hearts' content." The stag huffed, pawing the ground with a forehoof before using his homs to shunt Thom around until he was facing the mountain fastness of Dournhall. 'Returning the favor, are you?" he asked the stag, who offered another sharp exhalation that might have been agreement, might even have contained a breath of amusement. 'It is the easiest road," Thom noted. "Too easy, do you think?" asked Ryn. The Nelwyn shrugged. 'Prudence dictates we assume the worst, namely that the Deceiver must know we've survived his holocaust. We can't afford to wait for his next move, whether he comes for us himself or uses more surrogates. There's no decent 394 path along the shore, and following any other route means slug- ging our way up and down these gorges. Anybody here feel up to that?" The silence included even the wind, which chose that mo- ment to pause. "Right, then, it's decided. To Dournhall we goF And with stately tread, the stag led them on their way. C H A P T E R THEY THOUGHT THEY'D HAVE A VIEW ONCE THEY reached the Dournhall heights, the opportunity to properly gain their bearings, but the whole summit of the ancient peak was occluded by the storm. The cloud base settled'in about a third of the way up the main slope, and if the winds below were any indication, there was no going any farther. As it turned out, the stag had no interest in leading them high but picked his way instead along a track that mean- dered around the broad eastern flank of the mountain. The fire had flowed as Thom had surmised, cresting across the valleys like a storm surge against a beach, though its greatest intensity appeared to have been concentrated on the hollow where Thom and the others had taken refuge. The stag set a e pace, for his own comfort as much as theirs, but it was I 0 : i 396 soon apparent that had they followed Geryn's lead, only Khory could have possibly escaped alive. They had to stop more than once, and well before the end, the DemonChild had placed Thom across her shoulders. He hadn't complained before she picked him up, but he didn't protest ei- ther; in truth, his hips were an ever-tightening knotwork. of pain and not even spells could keep away the surety that bone ground on bone. Elora looked to Ryn, who lamented being denied the option of switching to a purely four-footed incarnation to make his journey easier. She wasn't in much better shape, devoting her focus mainly to placing one foot safely and surely before the other. She hadn't been hurt, but she was as exhausted as any of them and the stresses of the past days were beginning to make their presence felt, oozing through cracks in the walls she'd built to protect her inner self. 'According to story," the Wyr said, to pass the time, "the world has two ways of ending, in fire or in ice." "I'm done with endings, I want no more of them," Elora said, refusing to be cheered. "No problem there, Highne-" He caught himself before she could cast a rebuke. "Elora. Since you proved yourself so adept at chasing away the one, all that's needed is to banish the other." "I didn't chase anything, you nit! I just talked to them." De- spite herself, she flashed a smile of remembrance. "I wish you'd seen them as I did. There were so many textures to their flames, it was if a piece of the sun in the sky had been brought among us and given life." "Who's to say it wasn't?" "Who, indeed? They weren't ... of us, do you know what I mean? Not Daikini, not Nelwyn, nor Waking World, nor Veil Folk. We speak so casually of Gods and Powers, yet when I touched them I felt a kind of purity that we can't even dream of." "An essence transcending mortal physicalit),C' "You've seen them." She clapped delightedly, losing all her hard-won maturity and reminding them all she was still very much only a girl, on the merest cusp of adolescence. "You know!" "Know, perhaps. Seen them, not what you have, nor the way I I Jwan', 39 you mean. They're a Mystery, that's why the word in this con- text has a capital. What?" he asked suddenly, at the stark alter- ation in her expression, as though an inner torch had been doused. "You're talking like a tutor." "Knowledge does that. Ask the brownies, sterling exceptions that prove the rule.' 'I don't think so," scoffed Franjean, from his perch on Thom's pouch. "All the airs but none of the leaming?' asked Elora. "That isn't very nice. Or, I think, very true." And Rool made a very rude ges- ture he'd picked up on a military parade ground. 'Stop a moment, Khory, will you, please?" Thom asked. A moment later he was riding behind Anele's eyes, enjoying once more her superb view-even circumscribed as it was by the lowering roof of storm clouds-of the world below. "There's something about this place. . . ." he mused, sharing his thoughts with the great eagle, as always. "Good, bad, indifferent?" "Not sure. You?" UI'm definitely good"-beat-"when I'm not bad. But indiffer ent, never!" "You're developing a far too human sense of humor." "Ah, Forgive me, mage, I had no idea 'humor' was the sole prerogative of you two-leg walkers. Or, for that matter, what you call 'humanity~ ' " "Weill it is. The one, anyway." 'And as for the other?" "I stand suitably corrected." He sighed, sobriety restored. "Not see what you want?" "Can't see what I want. The perspective's not right, I need more altitude." "Not here, not while that city glows and these winds howl. 'How bad do you think it is in there, Anele?' Now it was her turn to sigh as she measured the power of her wings against that of the storm. She didn't like to come out wanting, but she liked dissembling less. id X 1~1111, 398 "Franjean says you stink of Demon-not because you shared a cage with one; he says the taint's a part of your soul." "I can't deny it, much as Id wish to." "Smell much the same to me, old duffer, for what that's worth. But then I key off visuals mainly. Far as Bastian and I are concerned, that wind, that's a demon. It's a whirlpool of air, drawing anything it snares to the heart of that damnable city. We heard some wing-bom"-and her voice took on a coloration of sorrow-"crying as they were swept past. For help, for mercy. For death. Couldn't offer any of it. 'The vortex sweeps you in, tighter spirals, faster winds, takes all you have just to hold position, there's nothing left to maneu- ver. Try to go sideways, you end up being swept along until you're right back where you started. You get tired, you lose a lit- tle more air, eventually, there's nothing left. And you're lost. 'Going to play hell with migrations, Drumheller. This mael- strom lies smack across one of the major flyways." "When you and Bastian broke away, when I came to Angwyn, did you mark anything of this peak?" "All who fly the Bay 'mark' Dournhall, Drumheller, same as the mariners and seafolk do. It's the clearest landmark on the en- tire coast." 'Have you a distinct memory, Anele, may I see?" The eagles had been much higher that day, the last full day of sun, and her keen gaze found for him in an instant precisely what he'd been searching for. "Thank you," he said, as he returned wholly to himself. "As always. And apologies to the Wyr, from me and Bastian both." "He'll be more receptive, I think, when he's full healed." "Fair enough." 'Blessed Bride," he said in a marvel, after Khory set him on the ground, so beside himself he was talking more like Rool. "It's no mountain. I mean, no natural mountain. It's a fortress!" 'Drumhelle;" Ryn asked incredulously, "are you saying some- body made this place?" "Looks that way, yes." 399 "I thought it was a bedtime story," Ryn was shaking his head in wonder, "something passed down by the Kings in Angwyn to make them seem better than they were." Once upon a time, he told them, as they continued on, con- tent for the moment to follow the stag's lead-since he, of them all, appeared to have a destination-Gods walked the world. It was a far wilder time, so the story went, and the Powers in play more elemental, composed of utterly primal forces. No subtlety to being or deeds, they displayed a raw, untamed strength that boggled the mind. Wherever they strode, they left their mark, but they were giants in stature as well as accomplishment and those who came after too small in every dimension to comphre- hend the wonders they had wrought. This was one such place. "Dournhall Mount," the Wyr proclaimed, once the varied, good-natured comments concerning peoples' stature, or lack thereof, had run their course, 'seat of the ancient fortress of Angwyn." Thom picked up the tale, relating what he'd seen in the eagles' memories. "You can't tell from the ground; even looking at the mount from out to sea isn't much help because of all the growth that's gone on about it, obscuring the clean lines of the structure. But from the air, from high above, the look of the place suddenly comes apparent. It's the symmetry, you see. The slopes fit too neady together, they drop too smoothly to the water-hells- teeth, take the mountain itself! You have to go all the way to the continental spine to find anything near as big. Sure, it looks much the same as the rills and ridges that make up the coastal range, only it's three times their size." The stag picked up its step, to a faster walk, and they hurried to keep pace as it led them through a series of folds in the rock that turned out to be far wider in actuality than first appearance. The whole mountain was an artful blend of optical illusions, and Thom grabbed at a firefly of memory, of an early voyage with Maulroon when the big man showed him twists and turns in the rivers where it seemed that the water ahead simply. S~ 400 For mile upon mile as they approached, rock walls loomed be- fore them, forming a barrier none could pass. Until they found themselves rounding a sharp bend to discover the stream contin- uing on as broad and powerful as ever. No wall, merely a chimera of the eye, and it was much the same here. Folds in the rock that, to the distant and casual observer, might be taken for the natural deformations were transformed on closer scrutiny to passages and sally ports, ramparts that stood so tall they put Cherlindrea's woods to shame. "Is this a door?" Thorn asked in wonderment, bending back so far to see its lintel that he nearly toppled onto his back. "No moat," commented Ryn, gazing at a parade ground be- neath arching drapes of stone that could hold the whole of the Maizan Horde, with room to spare. " Of course there's a moat, you lumping ninny of a hairball." Franjean was in rare form. 'You just call it the Bay." "How old do you think this place is, Drumheller?" Elora asked, as they passed within. Franjean beat him to the reply-Rool stayed with the eagles, who despite the magnificent space preferred to remain outside- and delighted in it. 'Might as well ask, milady, how old's the world." As they progressed, earthen floor gave way to flagstones, each spanning greater dimensions than the foundation plan of a good- sized Daikini town house. 'Is the whole mountain hollow, d'you think?" Ryn wondered. "Very likely." "Must be hell to heat." "Quite easy, I'd wager," and all eyes went to Khory, as this was the first she'd spoken since coming near the peak. 'You can feel it in the bedrock stone, lava streams relatively close beneath the surface." 'Makes sense," agreed Thom. "Probably thermal springs as well, scattered through the interior." "What," Ryn exclaimed, "are you saying this is a volcano?" "All of the assets, none of the liabilities," Thom told him cheerfully. "If it had any tendency toward eruption, I suspect people would have heard by now." "Wouldn't be the first time a builder screwed up his location." "Whoever they were, Taksemanyin, they're long gone-from this place, from the world." "No offense, Drumheller, but I suggest we follow their exam- ple." "Something wrong?" "Perhaps I'm like the eagles, I've never been very comfortable under a roof." 'We need the shelter, Ryn, and the rest. Our friend didn't bring us here by accident," and he indi ' cated the stag, standing patiently to the side. "I say, let's have faith in him, as he did in us to save him." He cast his thoughts to Bastian. "Weather's lowering. Fair day, wicked night. 'Have you a place to rook?" Bastian made a dismissive noise. 'Not close by, thanks to those firedrakes. Safe haven in a tree places us too far up the coast to do you any decent service. If there's any shelter on these crags, here on Dournhall proper, it's above the cloud line. I can taste the ice forming. We go there, we'll freeze." "Doesn't leave much in the way of options." 'Rool feels much the same." "Will you come inside, then?" "Don't look for us, trust us to find you." "Take care, my friend." 'Always. You, the same." He returned to himself to find Khory watching him intently, hunkered down on her heels so they were on the same level. In the distant background, Ryn and Elora busied themselves finding fuel for a fire. 'The eagles aren't happy," Franjean told her, tucked in close to Thom's side and hoping the information would satisfy the De- monChild enough to make her stroll away. "What's your problem?" she asked him levelly, at which point the brownie went spectacularly ballistic, a fireworks display of 402 arms and legs and speech, all working wildly at once as he charged forward, uncaring of the size differential between them. 'You!" he squawked. 'You you you! I know you for what you are, dissembler, and where you rightly belong-which isn"t in the company of decent folks." 'Odd," Thom couldn't resist interjecting, "I've heard much the same said about you, Franjean." "Oh"-the brownie turned the most exaggerated look of dis- missal on Thom-'how droll. I am so struck to the quick!" "Would it were so, that we might have ourselves a little peace." "You-you're standing up for this, this thing?" "Khory is quite capable of 'standing up' for herself. But she's as much my friend as you are and deserves the same respect and courtesy." The brownie's mouth gaped as he struggled to find an appro- priate, preferably lethal, rejoinder. Gaped wider (in appearance, like a fish gobbling for food) as nothing came, not the slightest flash of inspiration. His teeth came together with a sharp and re- sounding clack and he spun on his heel to stalk stiff-legged away, muttering determinedly that he'd have no more truck with such foolishness and ingratitude. "Why do I suspect that I will pay for this, in full measure?" "What else are friends for, mage?" "Surprised me, too, saying that," he told her honestly, face turning into a frown that betokened mostly confusion. "Did you mean it?" Took a deep breath before replying, because he still wasn't wholly sure. And decided, in that breath, to cast rationality away, as he had with the deer, and let his instincts speak for him. The High Aldwyn, he thought, would be proud. "Wouldn't have said so, otherwise." Since none of the others knew how, Thom had to light their fire, and in any other venue it would have been a most impressive blaze. But they were crouched in a hearth that stretched wider than a jousting pitch and stood half as high as a cathedral. The chamber itself was beyond superlatives. Elora's Aerie fell far short 403 of the ceiling and the King's Palace could have been lost in a cor- ner. The walls rose in a gentle arch, but the scale of construction was so huge that Thom couldn't easily tell which elements were due to the ravages of time and which were ornamentation; it was too hard for the eye to wholly encompass the scope. A single glance wouldn't do; too often, he was forced to scan from side to side to take it all in. He heard a jest from Ryn about what it would take to light the room-one of the towering trees from Cherlin- drea's forest would do nicely, with a firedrake to set its crown alight-but the truth appeared both more prosaic and breathtak- ingly beautiful. As the comparatively minuscule fire they'd laid in the hearth cast its glow outward, that light was caught by crys- talline threads in the very fabric of the rock. This wasn't simply a reflection, the light was somehow absorbed, each thread ener- gized throughout its length in the same way that heat flows down a strand of metal until the entire piece is warm to the touch. The threads cast no direct light-the shadows were still primarily cast from the fireplace-but that was because the source was too weak. For Thorn and his companions, they established a back- ground ambient texture that sparkled like a starlit sky, an ever- changing panoply of color and intensity. Were the hearth in proper use, the room would have been awash in brilliance. "Hoy, Franjean," called Ryn as Thom sliced vegetables for cooking (under the circumstances, with the stag close by, he thought it inappropriate to serve any kind of meat), "you Wee Folk are supposed to know all there is-' "About everything worth knowing, yes,' the brownie deigned to reply, from his distant perch midway up a fireplace cornice. 'Anything about where we are?" 'There's the obvious, that one could fit the whole of the Royal Angwyn kitchen into this single hearth.' "We know they built big." "Gods don't like to think about the Gods that came before. You Daikini are supposed to have the exclusive market on mor- tality." YY "And I'm sure, Elora interjected smoothly, "if Ryn were Daikini, he'd feel properly humble." 404 "Ever wonder, though," Ryn went on, 'about what comes af- ter? In their day, think of those who dwelled here. Were they the ones who made the world? What were they like, to make their homes of mountains? Where'd they go? How would they feel to be forgotten? How will we, when it's our turn?" "Brownies, cretin, are never forgotten, so long as the memory of one of us lives, so live we all!" "My point, exactly. What happens when even the memory dies?" "Somber thought, Ryn," Thom said, "for so generally merry a folk." "It hasn't been a merry few days, mage. People lived here, now they don't. Same was said of Nockmaar and Tir Asleen and now Angwyn. The world turns, but where does it go?" He shrugged, suddenly, disarmingly, disturbingly human in stance and gesture, as though another had stepped forth to live for a time within his skin. "I swim, I hunt, I play," he said, "I try to do none lasting harm, and think nothing amiss in asking much the same in return. How many folk in that city across the way walked their waking days by the same rules? How many of my brethren will suffer from the storm that killed Morag? Mortal I may be, Peckling"-and he rounded on Franjean as he spoke, with a thread of real anger laced through his words, "but does that give Gods and God- desses the right to rip my life to shreds as though I was no more than a piece on their game board? If they want a war, let them find a place to do it that leaves the rest of us the hell alone!" He finished with a shout that boomed and echoed off the stone rafters and took a long time to fade away. "Bavmorda was no God," Thom said simply. 'She was a woman with tainted dreams-and the desire and ability to make them real. And for all the fanfare, Elora's no God, either." "No God," the girl said, trying for humor but coming up short, because her description of herself was what she believed to be the truth, 'no dreams, no desire, no ability." "I don't know," Ryn continued helplessly, waving away the plate of food Thom offered and a cup of steaming broth as well I-All"Wi", 405 while he paced back and forth before the fire, as though he were in a cage. 'I've heard the stories. If this Bavmorda was such an abomination, why'd the Great Powers have to drag that Nelwyn into it? What's'isname?" ,,Willow Ufgood," Elora told him softly, and then, more softly still, her memory of the tower haunting her features, fading the rich, dark blue of her eyes, which turned inexorably toward Thom, 'my protector." 'Why any need for a Sacred Princess at all? Why didn't they simply slap Bavmorda down and have done with it?" "Why not ask them yourself?" Thom said, draining the last of his own cup. Ryn looked puzzled a moment, before noticing that Thom was looking past him, as was Khory. Even Franjean had fallen silent. Only Elora, staring into the heart of the flames as though she might find the transcendence she'd touched oh so briefly with the firedrakes, paid not the slightest heed. The great, vaulting hall was empty no longer. Throughout their trek up from the beach, they'd remarked on the emptiness of the forest, not an animal to be seen or heard, as though none had ever been. Now they knew why. All stood before them, from the smallest bugs and lizards to full-grown mountain cats and highland rams, Birds and beasts to- gether, hunters and prey, amongst their own kind or mixed in with others, some standing alone, others with families clustered close by, the very old and the barely bom. They stood and stared, with an air of patient expectation, and the thought came to Thom that he had come into some fantastical court, with this multitude the jury. Dead center-in the room, in the gathering-was the stag, and as Thom rose to his feet and started forward, so did he. Only the beast's aspect changed with every deliberate step, flesh and sinew running like wax or mercury, turning him to fox and owl and raven and mouse and spider, so that by the time he finally came to stand before the Nelwyn he had manifested the form of every creature present. In u ing, at the last, a passable imitation of a Daikini. 406 He was tall and he'd seen better days; the one constant throughout his ongoing metamorphosis was the legacy of his bums, and in each instance he wore them as a badge of honor. The hair of his head had been reduced to scrappy stubble, his beard the same. The day's travel had weathered his skin some, but it still possessed the roseate pink of a baby's flesh and he held himself as though the very touch of the air was an irri- tation. He still wore homs, though not so huge on a human head as when he was a stag. They formed a sleek curve up and back from the flanks of his skull, each with three nasty, sharp points. 'Why?" he demanded, without preamble or introduction. 'I don't know," was all the answer Thorn could find. 'This was a blessed place," the man said, his voice as raw as his flesh, and there was a pain in it that had nothing to do with his wounds. "All within lived in peace and harmony." 'I know. I'm sorry." 'The balance is broken. The land screams because its spirit is no more." He saw Cherlindrea, as silver in her way as Elora had become, that glow dulled, the bright glory of her eyes as ensnared by the Deceiver's lies as her body was by his web of evil. "We are all of the world," Thom said, with a passion of his own. 'In our way we have all suffered. But we survive, we per- severe. As Franjean said, about his own folk-so long as one of us lives, there is hope. From that hope, rebirth." 'Words!' the StagLord shrieked, hand flashing up and down faster than the eye could follow, changing as it swept across Thom's face to grow a brace of claws in place of fingers. He felt a sting and saw blood fly but otherwise took no notice of the strike as the StagLord raised his hand-truly a human hand once more, as normal in appearance as Thorn's own-to show its scarlet fingertips to the assemblage. 'Is that what you'd prefer?" he asked of the taller man, after quelling Khory with a silent glare. She'd crossed almost the- whole distance to him, starting the instant the StagLord raised his hand, gathering speed with every loping step in a charge that 407 would have ended with her plunging past him, her sword slicing across him level with his shoulders to claim his head, and into the heart of the gathering beyond. 'That there be war where once was peace," Thom continued, without making any effort to stem the flow of blood down his slashed cheek. If the StagLord was bothered by Khory's aborted attack, as Taksemanyin placed himself bodily in her way and pressed her-gently, insistently, inexorablyw-back toward the wall, it didn't show. 'If such is your hope," the StagLord replied, 'it comes too late." And a rustle of agreement made its way across the assem- blage. "We come as friends!" 'What was once given freely, manling, must now be earned." He thrust out his right arm, and Thom's blood leaped forth from outstretched fingers, becoming the rough-braided body of a whip, to rake diagonally across Elora's back from shoulder to hip. 'If you would regain your rightful place amongst us," the Stag- Lord thundered, "you must prove yourselves worthy." This time his cry was echoed by a susurrus of voices from the assemblage, redolent with a rage and a hunger for vengeance that allowed lit- tle chance for mercy. The fire was blazing more brightly, far beyond the capacity of the combustibles that had been found for it, reaching up and outward to the side as though the hearth were remembering the way things were when it was young and well used. Too late, Thom saw that Elora sat too close; he couldn't go to her; he dared not turn his back on the StagLord, sensing he'd be impaled within a brace of steps, but aware as well that it was too hot for Ryn or Khory to try either. The whip slash left a wicked trail across her shirt, and should have cut her to the bone-but as they watched, the stain faded away, until there wasn't a mark on her shirt. The cloth was as pristine as when it first was woven and by implication the skin beneath as well. "She is the great Betrayer,' accused Cherlindrea's forest con- f mg! I mrj!ll 1 408 sort, taking her immunity to his attack as proof positive of his in- dictment. "Not so," denied Thom, with passion to match. "All came to pay her homage." "And were deceived. As was she." "More words." "True words!' "Spoken by one who would say anything to save her!" 'I saved you!" "And that has earned you the right to be heard, and judged fairly." The blood whip came now for him, his vision flooding scarlet as tendrils stabbed through his eyes and poured fury into every particle of his body. The StagLord thrust himself forward, hands grasping Thom beneath the armpits and lifting him high over- head until he was poised on the tips of the man's horns. The en- ergies of the blood whip arced around and through them both, spread-eagling Thom and stretching his extremities to their ut- most until joints began to pop from their sockets; his mouth had likewise gone wide as flesh would allow, teeth bared to such an extent he thought all the component parts of him would tear apart, his expression twisting into a rictus of unbearable agony that he knew was but a fraction of what the StagLord had en- dured running through the fire. He and the StagLord had shared blood, now they shared life, the skeins of their pasts rising from every orifice, right down to the pores of their skin, and Thom found himself in the depths of the primeval wood, moving with stately grace on four hoofed feet, secure in his speed and strength, and the deadly prongs that tipped his antlers, to keep him safe. Wherever Cherlindrea had a grove, there was he able to roam, moving with the ease of thought from one to another regardless of the distance between them. On solstice and equinox he and his lady met for a moon- lit dance, casting through a myriad of forms in celebration of the diversity of life within their realm. Sprites and fairies streaked the air with rainbows that were in turn lit from within by an ar- ray of cascading sparkles, creating the same riotous patterns of 409 glittering diamonds that could be seen watching the moon cast its glow across the ocean surface. Even in the depth of winter, their bower was bedecked with garlands, and from the elemen- tal passion of their love came a surge of renewal for both the woodland and the creatures who dwelled within. When Cherlindrea was ensorcelled, it was as though the heart had been cut from both her consort and the land he nurtured. It had been a struggle to shift halfway across the world to this grove, and he arrived to find the firedrakes already at work. He'd wasted no time, but rushed to the defense of its inhabitants. There'd been none of the Veil Folk to rescue, trees were empty of dryads, ponds and streams of nymphs; no elves, no fairies, no pixies, nor nixies, brownies, or trolls. Only the denizens of the waking world, and those he herded with increasingly reckless desperation to the hoped-for refuge of ancient Angwyn. The firedrakes tried to stop him, for the sport of living prey excited them even more than the joy they found in simple burning, but here his strength stood him in good stead. And to the surprise of the elemental fire creatures, his rack proved as formidable against them as any corporeal foe. But the woods about him had become a hollow place, bereft of any aspect of the divinity he worshiped, and far poorer for the loss of her. He wasn't the first to share her arbor; his desperate fear was that he would be the last. "l," Thorn cried, each word a hoarse shout, like a man utter- ing his last testament. "Fight. For. What. I. Believe!" "And what is that, manling?" Pain vanished; with it, all support, as the StagLord cast him to the stone floor. He'd been pulled so taut that nothing about his body felt like it fit together any longer, not jaw, not teeth, sen- tences emerging as though he had marbles in his mouth. "Elora Danan spoke for your life," he said from all fours, as though he were the beast here. 'Doesn't that count for some- thing?" "You speak with passion for the Betrayer, mortal. Say you nothing for yourself?" "She's no more your betrayer than I am." 410 "Have a care, lest you condemn yourself." "Slain by friends or foe, the end's the same. I'm sorry for the damage that's been done here. But you're not the first to suffer Sic), nor-heaven have mercy-the last, and of a certainty no- where near among those who've suffered worst! I don't know why the patterns have been broken, perhaps that was necessary to re-form them in a new and better way. But it's done. Wish all you please for something different, the world is as it is, we have to make the best of it. "For myself, that means I'll fight. For Elora Danan, against the Deceiver. You've seen my heart"-and he regained his feet to confront the StagLord full in the face, as though there was no longer a size difference between them-"both when I healed you and now, with this judgment. And through me, my friends. That is truth. We are not your enemies, lord, and that child is all the hope of the world!" "How noble a sentiment, Peck," intruded the Deceiver's voice, too familiar by half, the sound of it stabbing at Thom like a dag- ger, as resonant here as it had been in Elora's tower. At the same moment a shape flashed past the comer of Thom's vision and he sprang toward it seconds too late to catch Bastian and Anele before the eagles' broken bodies, bound cru- elly in a barbed capture net, bounced on the flagstones. He had his knife out by the time he reached his friends, and he used a dollop of Power to add keenness to the blade, strength to his swing, as he slashed at the mesh. All he saw was blood, and the eagles' rapidly dimming eyes; all he could think of was the an- guish of losing another that he loved, and how much their strength was needed for the coming battle. He never stopped to consider why he'd felt no hint of any attack over the link he shared with the two great raptors, if not from them then surely from Rool. He saw what he was supposed to see; out of fatigue, out of fear, out of love, he never turned to InSight to make sure it was real. 1~ Too late, as he touched the net, he realized he'd been tricked- and the sight before him, an intentionally cruel illusion. The strands flowed out and up and over him, the barbs reversing 411 themselves to stab through clothes and skin and fill him with a poison that numbed his limbs and flooded him with an agony that far surpassed even what the StagLord had just put him through. In the meantime the eagles' forms altered as well, legs and necks elongating, bills stabbing outward into something best resembling a rapier, bodies swelling to twice their original size, with wings whose span surpassed the height of a tall Daikini. At first look, Night Herons appeared black, but it was really the darkest of blues, noticeable only as highlights at the tips of their feathers, or when sun or firelight touched them just so. Their accent colors were an equally dusky red. They were the essence of sorcerous power cast into a semblance of flesh. One of the pair stooped for the StagLord, who used his whip to fair effect, raking it across the body of the creature. The heron staggered in flight, a raw lesion opening across its breast, but that blow had taken all that remained of the whip's power and it siz- zled to nothingness in the StagLord's grasp. He'd meant it only as a delaying tactic, however, and took the moment's grace to shift back to his cervine form. Without the slightest hesitation, he stabbed forward, catching the heron across the throat with crown and royal antlers, before finishing the job with his brow set in a lifting strike that opened the predator from abdomen to throat. He belled his challenge as he cast the already decaying carcass aside, but the triumph was brutally short-lived; as he reared up on his hind legs to rally all his domain, he was struck from every side, by so many crossbow quarrels that it seemed in that one appalling instant as though he'd been turned into a liv- ing pincushion. His legs collapsed as he landed, folding at knees and shoulder and sending him crashing partially to ground before Thorn, who fought against his own bonds in a futile attempt to go to the stag's aid. Somehow, the beast twisted a foot into place and be- gan to struggle upright. There was a tumult toward the rear of the huge chamber, and a pair of horses burst into view, one black, the other white, the same color as their riders. The woman reined in her mare as the i 41 scene came fully into view, but her companion spurred his own mount into a full charge, sending animals scrambling frantically from his path. Some snarled defiance, a very few made reflexive moves to attack, but snipers from hidey-holes scattered high along the walls cut them down with ease. Panic swept the as- semblage with the consuming ferocity of a wildfire, and here and there across the vast space some of the animals broke for free- dom. Thom was bawling defiance, it was all he could do, make these idiot sounds; the poison had severed the linkages between mind and voice, stripping him of the ability to express himself with any coherence. The StagLord knew what was coming and he was determined not to be found wanting. The Castellan lev- eled his spear, his stallion eating the distance between them. It seemed so easy. The stag stood much as he had atop the reef, legs splayed, chest heaving-only in this instance, each pump of his heart sent another helping of his life pouring through a skin festooned with iron quills. There was blood on his muzzle and streaming from his mouth, together with a crimson froth that meant his lungs had been punctured. He was angled away from his attacker, preferring in this last moment to share his glance with Thom. There was no regret in his dark eyes, only a grim an- ticipation. At the moment of contact, the StagLord spun with a speed and strength that none suspected were left in him. The spear was bang on target, punching through the solid bone of the beast's shoulder, through both lungs and the noble beast's indomitable heart. Simultaneously, though, the stag raked its crown the length of the horse's flank. The stallion screamed like a woman, a high-pitched ululation that resounded through the hall, freakishly gaining in intensity before it began to fade away. There was a cry from the Castellan as well as the animal reared and pitched itself aside, allowing no chance for its rider to leap free before crashing down atop him. It was as though that fall was a signal. The archers lay down an indiscriminate fire, as quickly as they could reload, choosing i what they saw as the most dangerous targets among the gather- ing, namely the great, fanged predators. But neither cats nor wolves-nor anyone else, for that matter-stayed still to be mas- sacred. The whole floor began to move, in every conceivable di- rection, as though it were a pool of water suddenly unleashed down an open drain. Through that living chaos surged the Princess Anakerie, urging her mare with more care than the Castellan had shown but no less determination, reaching him more quickly than any of his men. The StagLord was dead, as was the horse, and Anakerie's ragged cries went unheard at first, amidst the howling, rowling cacophony of roars, yips, squeals, squawks, and chitters, not to mention the scrabble of every kind of foot upon the stone, as the animals all fled. And the more than occasional scream, as each side took its toll of the other. Stillness returned to the room without warning. Looking about herself, Anakerie could see a fair share of bodies, but less than nothing compared with the multitude that had been, and she couldn't help a shudder at the memory of the exodus of an- imals from Angwyn only a few nights before. 'I need a healer!" she roared again, hooking her arms beneath the Maizan's shoulders- and bracing a foot against his saddle, the better to heave him free. He was a mess, one leg slashed multi- ple times to the bone, a wicked gash along his flank as well, so sodden with blood that she was sure a major vessel had been severed, while the other leg was visibly broken above and below the knee. She stripped a belt from her harness, wrapped it tight about his thigh, as snug to the crotch as it would go, then twisted it again and again until the pulsing stream slowed to the merest trickle. "Damn you, Peck," she snarled at Thom, making no attempt to hide the raw fury on her face, 'for what you've done." 'No fear, my dear," called the Deceiver from the hearth, 'twill soon turn out aright." 'Mohdri's dying, wizard, can you do something about that?" 'At the moment, regretfully, no,' the Deceiver said. I I 414 Thom cursed the fact that he was draped away from the hearth, with no idea what was happening there. The poison had crippled his InSight, he couldn't see through his friends' eyes. It had been years since he'd last been headblind and it wasn't a treat. "But your Peck's a healer, brought stag and Wyr both back from the brink. Make him an offer he can't refuse, I'm sure he'll see his way clear to offer you similar service." She took Thom by his bonds, hauling him hard and high, ig- noring the grimaces as its barbs stabbed him. 'Fair deal, Peck," she said, "the Castellan's life for yours." He wanted to ask why she cared so much, for someone who had to be her deadly enemy, and ask as well what force her pledge had in a room full of Maizan. So it was probably for the best that he couldn't say a word. Instinct once more spoke for him, with the only movement he could manage, the barest nod of his head. Once released, he tried to take a moment on the floor to gather his wits, but a rough hand grabbed him by the scruff and set him upright. It was Geryn Havilhand, in the leathers of a captain of the Red Lions. Khory and Taksemanyin had been separated and moved to opposite ends of the great fireplace, there lashed in place against the massive andirons and watched by guards with ready swords. Elora hadn't moved from where she knelt before the fire; only now that blaze stretched from one end of the hearth to the other, the tips of its flames vanishing above the lintel. Before her, in the heart of the infemo, stood the Deceiver. As tall as before, as beautiful, the picture-perfect hero-and yet ... to Thom's eye there were pieces missing. A softening around the edges, as though the figure were somehow losing definition, the way an object might look to someone with weak eyes. Thom's were perfect (bless his powers); the wrongness wasn't his, but the Deceiver's. His eyes looked a fraction more hollow, as did the drape of skin below his cheekbones, and the A 1 r, skin itself had lost a measure of resilience. Whatever had hap- pened since the aerie had visibly diminished him. "For what it's worth, Nelwyn," the Deceiver said, "I meant fo none of this." care~- 'Is this some plea for absolution?" He spoke slowly, rounding his words as though he had trouble speaking. 'Am I supposed to "Always, you judge me," the face remaining no less perfect in fury. And he understood his foe meant more by "always" than these past days, another piece for his mosaic, making no more sense than the rest. "As the StagLord did you. Have a care, lest you share his fate as well.' Then, calm returned, the mask slipped once more back into place. "Do your work little sor- cerer," the Deceiver said dismissively, "while I do mine.' Thom turned to Anakerie. 'Let Elora Danan go, I'll save your prince." 'Waste of breath, Peck," the Deceiver said over its shoulder, throwine the words directlv into Thom's mind w ere no one else could hear them, 'She's not. the power here." "What's this then?" Thom asked of Gervn as he was escorted to the fallen warrior. "I'm a soldier of the King. I swore an oath," the lad replied proudly, as if that explained all. "And you, what's your excuse?" he demanded of the Princess as she unlaced Mohdri's helm. Geryn cuffed him soundly. 'She's Princess Royal," he admon ished, "an' veh keep a respectful tongue in yer head, Peck, or suf- fer for it!" "I'm Princess Royal of the Realm," Anakerie replied, with a formality of speech Thorn hadn't expected, at odds with her brusque, matter-of-fact battlefield manner, "and I too swore an oad, " She pulled Mohdri's helm free-and therein, Thom thought, lay perhaps part of the answer. It was a haunting face, defined by planes and angles so sharp they might have been cut by a mas- ter stonemason, as many edges to his features as to his personal- i 41 ity; in feature, in body, here was a man distilled to his quintes- sence, pale of skin, with hair of white gold. As little color to his eyes, even allowing for the significant loss of blood. He"s not good enough for you, he thought, shifting his gaze from one to the other, and wondered if Anakerie read that in his face because she flushed and turned her hawklike gaze away. But I can see why you might think otherwise. Because for all the cruelty and calculation that swam in the turbulence of the Castellan's spirit, there was also true feeling, a regard for this woman, pos- sibly even love, that surprised the Maizan above all. ,,Please," she said, and he knew it cost her to say so, 'he's dy- ing.7y "Stop stalling, Peck!" snapped Geryn, with a not-so-gentle clout to the shoulder. "And yeh'll na' be needin' these!" With a thrusting twist of his short sword, he severed Thom's belt and quickly sidekicked the pouches out of reach. No matter. Thom's offside hand came out of his vest pocket closed about a pair of acorns: one for each of them, followed by a solid punch to shatter them to bits. He kept them as keepsakes, to remind him of a time when both the power and the ability of a sorcerer were still mostly dreams. But they served a practical purpose as well. The acorns were a very basic magic, not the sort of thing any foe worth the name would expect. For the same rea- son, he practiced his old sleight-~of-hand tricks; every scrap of knowledge, no matter how seemingly trivial, was an asset, never to be discarded. Because a body never knew when it might come in handy. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do with the snipers, or the guards watching Khory or Ryn, or most especially how to deal with the Deceiver. His only certainty was that once he began his work on the Castellan, Elora was doomed. 'I'm glad you've found your heart's desire, Geryn," he said. "I pray this lays your ghosts to rest." The Daikini's blade lightly touched his lips. "No sweet words, Peck," Thom was warned, "lest yeh lose the tongue t' speak 'em, get my meaning?" "It's your destiny, Elora Danan," he heard in his mind from the A 1 7 hearth, and knew the Spell of Dissolution was once more being woven. "To reach out your hand across the Domains, and know your will is Law; that's not so horrible a thing? To wipe away hatred, fear, greed. They are prideful folk, they require a strong will to master them. Not yours, I'm sorry to say"-and there was true regret in the words-"but every prize of value has its price." Thom couldn't help himself; he turned and saw the two fig- ures separated by a boundary of cold flame. The Deceiver had a small advantage of height on Elora, though in manner he seemed much taller, with a commanding presence that matched the Castellan's. His hand was outstretched, his body curved forward along the back in eager anticipation, Elora's matching him in every gesture, every expression. Fire rippled in the Deceiver's grasp and leaped. across to hers. "I won't beg, Nelwyn," said the Princess. 'But I won't let Moh- dri die unavenged." He faced her. 'That's not salvation happening over there, Highness, it's doom!" "Your word against his, and he's her protector." And in an un- dertone she cast toward him over the link they shared, And the power, Drumheller. Both here and in Angwyn. He took another look, without a care for the blade that Geryn lay across his throat hard enough to draw a line of blood. Elora had her arms wrapped about herself, the Deceiver's wrapped about her, as though the one were enclosing the other, and about them all swirled a nexus of flame, become a living being all its own. Thom heard the chatter of teeth, clamping his mouth tight upon the realization they were his own, and used a portion of his own magic to stoke the hearthfire within his flesh against the growing cold. There was an air of tension about Geryn, shared by the Maizan Thom could see, bom of the sudden fear that they were all to be frozen now as Angwyn had been. "The way of the world is so hard, Elora Danan," crooned the Deceiver, almost as though he were speaking more to himself than to another, with a wilding change to his voice that struck i 418 Thom with that same disconcerting sense of familiarity he felt in Elora's hall. He knew the face of Willow was a mask, but won- dered more than ever about what lay behind it. "So much pain. So much grief. You want none of that. Accept the pattern laid out for you, let things happen as they were ordained. Embrace the fire, let it bum away all troubles, all cares; be one, little spirit, with the oblivion that should have been yours at birth. Let us be One." They all watched, even Mohdri with the last scraps of con- sciousness and life left him. Thom had never seen so artful a se- duction, never imagined such a thing possible as the Deceiver spoke longingly, lovingly, of all the secret places in Elora's heart. It was as if that abomination knew the child better than she did herself, as it wove a glorious tapestry of desire with thread drawn from Elora's soul. Another figure came into being before them both, facing the fire, a gossamer frame at first, whose gen- eral size and proportions approximated Elora's. But with each ca- ressing phrase, with each new strand drawn outward from the child, the simulacrum grew more real, taking on shape and form and substance until it seemed as though the hearth had become a mirror. It was then that Thom, with blinking eye and shaking head, realized that the Deceiver had nearly faded away. The outline of the creature still remained, but it had lost almost all substance, to the point where it had become as translucent as a pane of flawed glass, through which could be seen only the infemo that it had created, making it the embodiment of living flame. The same delicate threads that had been drawn from Elora now emerged from the Deceiver's own flesh, striking forth like cobras to claim their prey. Thom's mouth opened, to cry a last denial ... ... but it was Elora who spoke. It was the voice that came to her on Morag's schooner, her legacy of the storm, erupting from the bottom of her belly with a strength none present, and the child most of all, ever suspected- she possessed, a cry of defiance coupled with a fierce lunge for- ward from the flames. She smashed through her likeness, the 419 creature combusting at her touch, momentum and a lack of bal- ance sending Elora tumbling to the floor. A fortunate fall, be- cause right on her heels came a terrible gout of flame that spewed forth from the Deceiver's outstretched hands like the Wrath of Ages, incinerating with cold whatever lay before it. The bodies of the StagLord and the castellan's horse were most notably in the way; they twinkled under an instant coating of hoarfrost, like objects frozen beneath a cloudless winter moon. Then their own weight proved more than their fragile, crys- talline substance could bear, and they shattered. A cry from above announced the fall of a sniper, blown from his perch as though shot from a catapult, with force enough to send him to a landing better than halfway across the immensity of the hall. That same moment Anele stooped for Geryn's eyes, dropping from the roof with wings folded tight to her side in a classic attack, throwing them wide at the last possible instant, using both the sound of wind slap and the shock of the air to dis- orient her target for the moment she would need to strike. He'd have lost them for sure then, had Anakerie not been a fraction faster than the eagle and kicked the young Daikini's legs out from under him. Anele scored his helm, and one claw left its mark across his forehead, but he got away with his sight, with his looks, with his life. And the knowledge that his princess had saved him. He was up in an instant, cloak rolled over one forearm as a shield, sword in hand to give better than he got, but the eagle was gone. He turned to lash out at Thom, but the Nelwyn had followed her example. After that, he had more pressing con- cems. Khory was free, Franjean's doing. Taksemanyin was loose as well (accomplished all by his lonesome). Geryn looked to the sniper posts along the wall, called for suppression arrowfire, but heard only echoes of his own voice in reply. 'Elora Danan," Anakerie screamed as the sounds of battle built upon themselves, until the resonant shell of the hall made it sound as if an army was engaged within, "find her, you'll find the Nelwvn! I want him alive.1" 420 Thom had already reached her, skibbling along the floor like a bug to keep from being noticed in the confusion, praying with all his heart that Elora hadn't been caught in the eruption of icefire. She had much the same idea, going the other way. Neither knew the other was so close at hand until they had a sudden meeting of minds. "Ow!" in unison. Thorn felt as though he'd been clonked by a hammer and was sure his skull had been cracked right straight through to the brainpan. He was also starting to suspect that Elora's silvery ex- terior wasn't just looks anymore. She gave the lie to that by grab- bing his hand-his was chill as ice, hers surprisingly warm-and hauling him bodily toward Khory, leaving eagles and brownies to cover Ryn. "You should have stayed a farmer, Nelwyn." He knew what was coming, the Deceiver's voice was that of a magister pronouncing sentence of death. He moved to break Elora's hold on him and give her as hard a shove as he was able to throw her well clear, but she proved herself a step ahead of him, pivoting one way as he went the other to place herself be- tween him and their foe. In that instant, as he realized what she'd done and cried out in futile protest, another gout of flame exploded from the Deceiver's hand. He thought they were both dead. But the flames passed her by, and him as well since he stood right behind her. "Bless my soul," was what he said. What he did was pitch his acom up and over, as he would a ball, right into the heart of the inferno. There was a tiny, brilliant, absolutely blinding pop of light, and the flames stopped. They became solid, in an ongoing cascade of petrifaction that rushed headlong back the way they'd come to engulf the whole of the magical fire that filled the hearth. The Deceiver had time for a look of true astonishment, and then, with a congratulatory tip of the head to Thom, that false face began to laugh. The echoes of it lasted long after the entity itself had turned to stone. It was as though, for a moment, when the duel was done, Thom had become the only living thing in the room. He heard no other sound but his own breath, was aware of no other real- ity but the thunderous beating of his heart. Too easy, he thought. We're not done yet, are we, you and Y He cast about for a weapon, anything that inspiration would bring to hand as a hammer to smash the statue to powder. What came instead was Geryn, and Thom dropped flat in a diving roll that tripped up the Daikini and sent him sprawling. Trained fighter that he was, Geryn was on his feet before he stopped rolling. Unfortunately, he found himself facing Taksemanyin. The Pathfinder made a fair try, but while he had training and heart, the Wyr far overmatched him in skill. Geryn lunged, to find his sword batted aside, then had to scrabble desperately aside to avoid Tak's counterslash, the spike blades missing by the proverbial hair. Dumb luck worked in Geryn's favor then, as his clumsy tumble brought his sword around faster than Ryn had anticipated; this time, it was the Wyr who had to hurl himself through a wild evasion in order to avoid impalement. In the heat of the engagement, Geryn had forgotten about Thom. The Nelwyn had a blade of his own, but he and the boy had been good companions on the trail and he couldn't bring himself to use it. Geryn saw the knife, thought for that instant he was done, but it was Thom's fist that dropped him. Ryn scooped up the Pathfinder's sword, grasping it with the awk- ward grace of one long and well trained in its use, but who hadn't held the damn thing in an age, using the threat of it to keep the Maizan cautious while he and Thom made tracks for their friends. Whether from anger or exertion, Elora's sweat-damp skin seemed to have developed the ability to glow. It made for a star- tling visual, the child's hair streaming like a silver pennant as she scopped up a cudgel and laid into the nearest Maizan with a vengeance she must have been storing up for years. Her problem 422 was, enthusiasm and desire were no match for training and ex- perience. She got in one good swing, regrettably blunted by the warrior's body armor, and then another Maizan looped her about the legs with his whip. Ryn took care of him, whipping his blade two-handed across the man's belly with force enough to lift him off his feet and bend him double. Thom caught the other one struggling up, and stroked the man's throat with his blade-no mercy for the Maizan as he'd had for Geryn-springing clear with Elora before the blood could fountain. Khory faced a pair, and they were very good. For the ini- tial exchange, she had just enough skill to hold her own. She used the andiron for cover, sliding back and forth between her foes, touching one blade, then the other, calling on the agility of her body to save her when the sword couldn't man- age. What she saw, she learned; what she learned, she put to immediate use; in a brace of heartbeats, the Maizan realized they were facing a woman who would soon be a match for both. They were brave, they weren't fools. Pressed suddenly from two sides, they scrambled clear and cast about for either rein- forcements or weapons to drop their foes from range. The same applied to Thom. He swept the room as the Maizan formed themselves into a double line of skirmishers, spreading wide enough to block the fugitives away from any exits. There were pikes among them, and bows; their losses thus far had been mostly due to surprise; they weren't about to let that happen again. Someone among them spotted Anele as she soared across the scene; arrows were in flight before the warning shout could form its first echo. Deadly shots, too; she avoided being hit only by tucking herWings tight and turning herself into a feathered missile, booming out of her madcap descent behind the cover of Khory and Tak's bodies. The DemonChild took a silent cue from Thom and plucked the eagle from the air, tucking her close to her side, both arms wrapped tight about her. Anele didn't like beirtg carried, but she saw the wisdom of the moment and held her peace: 'Lay down your weapons," called Anakerie. "I won't offer twice." For emphasis, one of the Maizan loosed a shaft for Khory's leg to cripple her, but Ryn, with the blistering speed they'd come to take for granted, slapped it down with a sideswipe of his own blade. Thom had sidled behind the two taller figures as well, drawing Elora with him, until his back was to the wall; he had no idea whether what worked in the dungeon would apply here. There, in addition, he'd had the Demon's strength to help. But there was also nowhere else to go. "Elora." He was gulping breaths, working himself into a state of mindless terror. "Do you trust me, girl?" "I think so, yes." 'Step behind me, then." And when she'd done that: "Wrap your arms about me, and hold tight." 'I'm afraid, Thom." It was the first time she'd called him by name. He gave her clasped hands a comforting squeeze, adding a sideways kiss to her cheek snugged right beside his own, a burst of tears sliding from her face to his as though there were no separation between them. "So am 1, little moonshade." "Now what?" 'Remember the tower?" Her jaw dropped, his hands lashed out to grab Khory by the belt and Ryn by his back fur-a hefty handful of both-and Thom heaved the lot of them backward with him into the wall. I Saginaw ~ I I , I m C H A P T E R ARE WE SAFE?- ELORA ASKED, WHEN AT LONG LAST they emerged into an upper gallery. In that initial surge, as they were immersed completely in the ancient rock, they were almost lost, as everyone pan- icked at once, only to be swiftly, ruthlessly cowed by a grim- edged snarl from Thom. 'Be still!' he'd told them, mandating absolute obedience. "Cue your movements to mine, let me take the initiative. The stones here are far older than the palace and a lot more hard of hearing; they didn't answer when I asked for per- mission to move through their domain. They may not ap- preciate trespassers. But if we don't make too much of a Lrumpus, I think we can pass in safety.' "A nd if you're wrong?" Ryn had to ask. 426 "Then let's pray we never know what hits us." Their sanctuary was close to the mantle walls of the fortress, the shell of the mountainside, and from the exterior sounds not terribly far beneath the mantle of storm clouds. The cold was piercing, and this time Thom was without his infinitely stuffable pouches to provide them with food or clothing. "Depends on your perspective," Ryn said, in answer to Elora's question, ruffling his fur from top to toe to rid it of any residue of their passage through the rock before dropping into a bearlike seat and reaching out to gather the girl close to his body, where she'd be warmest. She folded herself into a tight little huddle, burrowing so deep it seemed she wanted to disappear. But she was really too big for that, and he, for all his height, not big enough. "We're loose, Princess," he finished, "but we're freezing." "I'd say no," Thorn replied to them all, 'not so long as the Maizan have Geryn to lead their hunt. As a Pathfinder, he knows his business." "False friend," Khory condemned him. Surprisingly, Elora spoke up for the lad. "I don't think so," she said. More surprisingly, Thom agreed. "He said it, he swore an Oath. He's a soldier of the King. And by Royal Proclamation, I'm a wanted man. His duty's plain, es- pecially when it's the Princess Royal who tells it him." "Now there," noted Ryn, 'is a piece of work." "Y "-Thom nodded-'she is." ow Do you do that often," wondered Ryn to Thom, "strolling through solid rock?" "I'm learning as I go," he confessed, 'much like Khory and her sword." "Demon skill," accused Franjean, having clambered down from Anele's shoulder. "Decent folk should have no truck with it! 11 "Care to shout any louder, shrimp? I'll lay odds the Maizan didn't hear you that time." "I need no lessons in etiquette from some overstuffed baby toy in need of a major haircut!" "How about some lessons in common sense! We're on the run here, Peckling, the goal is not to advertise our location!" 'Enough,' Thorn told them, "the pair of you! Anele, take Fran- jean, would you please, and find us a way off this rock?" "What then?" Elora asked, a tad plaintively. 'That's your choice, isn't it, Princess?" Once more, from Ryn. A gusting backdraft-with a squawk of protest from Franjean that he wasn't properly secure, plus an announcement that he would be in charge of their mission-proclaimed the eagle's de- parture. 'I'll keep watch, Drumheller," Khory said, and was acknowl- edged with a nod, though Thom's eyes never left Elora Danan. Recent days hadn't been kind to her, throwing her physical tri- als that sorely tested folk in far better shape. She sat against Ryn with back and shoulders slumped, too weary to hold herself erect, hands clutching nervously together between legs that had no idea where comfortably to go. She tried sitting with them straight out before her, bent knee up in the air, bent knee flopped out to the side, cross-legged. She even considered amputation. 'I'd rather run," she said, the raccoon circles under her eyes so pronounced, as were the hollows of her sockets, that she looked like she'd been soundly punched. "Sensible girl." "Don't feel it, Wyr." "Like unto died, my girl-' 'I'm not your anything, thank you very much." "Figure of speech, do you mind? Like unto died anyway, when I saw you face that flame." "She wasn't the only one,' added Thom. 'Elora Danan, what- ever possessed you?" 'I'm immune," she said matter-of-factly. 'At least, so you've said. To spells and such. I think." Thom let out his breath in a great gust. "Quite possibly," he conceded. 'But that was no time for an acid test,' i 428 "You'd have died, otherwise. Besides"-she groped for words - "it was the only answer that made sense. If I'm so important to this Deceiver, he can't very well kill me. Where's the sense?" 'Gods," Thom whispered, simultaneously aghast and awestruck by what she'd done. "You have no idea, not the slight- est conception." Ryn understood as well, but his way of expressing himself was to enfold her in a snuggly hug. "It worked, though, didn't it?" Elora asked them. "Yes and no," Ryn replied when it became obvious that Thom wasn't able to. "I saw through your masking spell, right off, Drumheller," she said. 'You did. Forgive me, but that's like striking a match and com- paring it to the sun, thinking that because you can puff out the one, the same goes for the other." He held up a hand to forestall any objections. "It may well be you can, that's not what I'm say- ing. Elora, the Deceiver caught you twice, in your own aerie and in the hearth below." "And I broke free of him twice!" "Through you, he slew a dragon. They make legends of feats like that and he did it"-snap of the fingers for emphasis, the sound so sudden and sharp, so close to her eyes, that the young girl jurnped-"as easily as that.'He ensorcelled the heart and soul oJothe Twelve Domains, and they didn't even know it was hap- pening. He called up firedrakes and turned them loose on Cher- lindrea's Grove. And very likely is the force that destroyed Tir Asleen." He leaned toward her, his voice supernally still. "There is strength in him, and knowledge, and cunning, beyond all be- lief. Bavmorda wanted you dead. This one means to put you on, body and soul, like a suit of clothes. Your saving grace, even af- ter all that's happened, is that he thinks you are nothing. That's your salvation, child, not some precious 'immunity."' Thom turned away, rolling in a circle on the balls of one foot as though searching for an open window, a possible sight of sun, the taste of fresh air. There was a haunted, hunted quality to his voice and manner, and the image touched Elora, resonating off 429 his own thoughts, of the Nelwyn once more riding that impossi- ble wave of Power, dancing above the Abyss. As though she'd been called by name, Elora found herself rising to her feet and striding clear of Ryn's embrace. "The true horror,' Thom told her without looking, pulling off Anakerie's silver clip and shaking loose his hair, 'is that if we sur- vive this day and make our escape, the Deceiver won't be played for such a fool again. You'll have to learn to face him on his level, there'll be no going back." 'You'll save me," she said, meaning that simple declaration of faith to be a reassurance and a comfort. She didn't expect a look from him as though she'd thrust a spear through his heart. He smiled, nodded, put the face she'd seen deep away, so quick a transformation of his features she told herself she could have been mistaken. 'What are you doing, Drumheller?' Ryn asked as Thom dropped to one knee and rubbed a palm gently across the stony floor, brushing aside the layerings of dust, newer films of frost, and stray patches of snow, to feel the primordial rock directly. 'The thing about wielding magic," Thom said, in a sudden and deliberate change of subject as he cast forth his InSight into the depths of the ancient fortress, 'particularly on the magus level where the Deceiver appears to operate, is that the actions have reactions. More intense the one, likewise the other. Drop a stone in a pool, it's much the same-the ripples bounce off the shore and return to you. One set of interactions. But there's an- other, equally critical, which is ^at the devil's happening on shore. Could be nothing. Could be an earth movement that'll bury your stone under an avalanche. 'You're quite right, though, Elora," he noted suddenly. 'You did break the Deceiver's glamour.' 'Twice," she reminded him, prompting an answering grin. She stood very straight, with hands clasped beneath her chin, big- eyed and very young. "What made you do it?" She worked her hands, roving her gaze anywhere but toward his face. His never moved. "First time, it hurt. It just felt ... wrong. "And now?" Her eyes swam with tears, but she fought to master them and the sobs that went with. "You worked so hard, you gave so much of yourself to save the stag." "You asked me to." "You'd have done it anyway. "So?" Y7 'It was a giving thing, a healing. When I stood on Morag's deck, in the storm, I was so charged up inside; I was being hit, I wanted to hit back, for all the times I couldn't when I was grow- ing up. I was the Sacred Princess, but nothing I said or did mat- tered! Go here, do this, wear that, speak the lines written for you, be our puppet!" "You hit your servants." She blinked furiously and her back went even straighter than before, as though she'd been called to account and it mattered very much how she responded. "They didn't like me," she said. It was a reportage of fact. The sorrow came after. No tears or sobs or trembles about the mouth; dramatic, yes; histrionic, not at all. She'd discovered within herself a kernel of true pride-This is me, it said, warts and all. This is a wrong thing that I did and I must take responsibility for it-and it gave her a center of being she'd never known before. "I did it because I could," she went on. "And because no one told me different. In the tower, in the hearth, I was weaker. The Deceiver didn't ask what I wanted. He told me-this is what you are, this is your destiny, take it. I order, you obey. It was like he offered glory without price. I speak, the world trembles, it costs me nothing. It's no wonder his fires bum cold, Drumheller, there's nothing of warmth, nothing of true life in that abomina- tion. "Can't I just run away and hide somewhere?" she asked in sudden desperation. She thought she knew that answer, but he surprised her. 'Of course." She knew he meant it, knew as well that he'd yield up his life if that was what was necessary, because it was what he once wanted most of all. "Drumheller," asked Ryn in a strange voice, picking up the hair clip from where Thorn had set it aside, 'where'd you get this?" "It's the Princess's," he replied absently. 'Anakerie's. She left it in my cell, back in Angwyn. If not for her, I'd have likely died there, or been consumed by the Deceiver's ChangeSpell. Why, Ryn?" 'I-" the Wyr began, then broke off as Thom's expression changed markedly, as though the Nelwyn had heard an alarm bell beyond the comprehension of his companions. "What?" Ryn demanded, rising to join them, one arm going protectively across Elora's body while he gathered his muscles for a fight. His other hand took up his sword. 'Something's afoot." 'Maizan?" Thorn shook his head, crouching himself low to the stone, fin- gertips caressing its scrabbly surface as if it were the most deli- cate piece of rice parchment, ready to crumble at the slightest puff of breath. 'Firedrakes started it," he said, so quietly they had to strain to hear. 'They're distant cousins-from the rough-'n-ready, side of the neighborhood-of the rock silkies who live within the worldcore. Those resonances I spoke of." This, to Elora. 'The mountain's beginning to stir.' In that moment Thom found himself called to Bastian's eyes. The eagle was high in the stone rafters of the great hall, very quiet, very stiff, as he and Rool had been from the start. Nothing had moved below since Anakerie led the Maizan in headlong pursuit of the fugitives. She hadn't wanted to leave Mohdri, but since Thom was the only one wi4 even a prayer of saving the Castellan, finding him was of the utmost necessity. A pair of guards were left to guard their fallen commander. Through Bastian's eyes, Thom watched as both warriors were speedily, silently slain. The Deceiver did his work well. A call from within the hearth brought both men close, weapons at the 432 ready; they'd seen their quarry disappear into stone and were quite prepared to see them reappear from same. Tough men, confident men, the kind who survived by never making mis- takes. They made none here, by their lights; their loss was that they were playing far out of their league. They gave the petrified tableau what they thought was a de- ,Cent berth. It wasn't enough. Two puffs of frigid flame in both their faces, a reflexive breath of air turned cold as naked space, their lungs instantly freeze-bumed, so that even if they managed to overcome the paralysis of their diaphragms and draw another breath, the bronchial membranes would be so badly seare& that no oxygen could be transferred to their bloodstream. They suf- focated, gasping for air in a room that was rich with it. Mohdri saw, and to his credit tried his feeble best to avenge them. There was no change to the icon, unlike a decade before when Bavmorda burned herself free of the same trap. Whatever lay imprisoned within simply passed into view, in much the same way that Thom and the Demon moved through walls. On emergence, it had no form, it looked to be a random coruscation of energy from someplace far beyond human ken; with each step forward, though, it coalesced into a more presentable figure un- til once more the Deceiver had reclaimed the face of Willow Uf- good. Anakerie had left a blade by the Castellan's side; with the last of his strength, Mohdri thrust up and out with it, straight through the center of Willow's chest. The Deceiver wasn't both- ered in the slightest as he took a couple of steps backward to clear the rapier from his body. Then the slightest of taps shat- tered the Hash-frozen blade to glittering dust. 'Ah, Mohdri," the Deceiver said in false sorrow, the words possessing a cold so awful it seemed to those watching like they came from somewhere beyond the lights and warmth of cre- ation, some pitiless realm that long ago forswore gentleness and mercy. "Never deceive a Deceiver. I thought so much better of you. Was I notaclear in my commands? I wanted-I want-the Nelwyn alive. As whole in mind as body. Did you think without him, I'd be more easily controlled? Or even banished? Wheels 433 within wheels, was I to be your cat's-paw, as you were mine? The means by which the Maizan could seize Angwyn without a battle? I should have kept you on a tighter rein. Now I sup- pose"-and the smile was terrible to behold-1 shall." Mohdri tried to call for help, but the Deceiver's hand across his mouth put a stop to that. There was none of the delicacy that was used against Elora Danan-there wasn't time, for either of them-the filaments burst free of the falseling's flesh like raven- ing wolves after fresh meat and plunged immediately the Castel- lan's, burrowing deep into body and soul. The big man began to glow, a lambent radiance that lit his skin from within, his eyes going wide as he found himself lifted from where he lay until he and the Deceiver floated face-to-face. And from there into a last embrace. The watchers thought, from what they'd seen before, they knew what to expect. Between themselves, Bastian and Rool agreed on a course of action: They would wait until both princi- pals were deep into the spell, then the eagle would stoop and Rool hurl a bolt with all the strength left in him. If that didn't do the trick, Bastian's claws would either slay the Castellan, thereby depriving the Deceiver of a corporeal host, or at the very least leave him one that was a maimed cripple. They had no illusions of their own fate in this enterprise. For them, it seemed a fair ex- change. Only the past turned out not to be prologue. Whether from desperation or some sense of impending danger, the Deceiver acted with ruthless efficiency. At his touch, Mohdri stiffened into death; within another heartbeat, there was nothing left of the shape that called itself Willow Ufgood. Hale and healed, Castellan Mohdri filled the chamber with laughter, as resounding in its contempt as in its triumph. Then he looked straight at Bastian. Flame shot from his eyes-nowhere near as impressive a blast as what they'd seen before, more than able to finish them nonetheless-but all it did was strike naked stonef The eagle dropped like a rock, throwing sense and caution to the winds as he fought to avoid destruction. How Rool managed to hold on, 434 the brownie never knew, much less how in the bargain he was able to empty his quiver, sending shaft after tiny shaft straight for their foe. Here, the Deceiver's overconfidence worked in their favor, for the first impact blew him off his feet and the sec- ond sent him crashing through the crystallized shell that had been his prison. It shattered as if he'd been a wrecker's ball, and he dropped in a boneless heap. Bastian wheeled over wingtip and pumped into the hearth af- ter him, Rool standing to his full height on the eagle's back, arm at full extension, bow drawn taut to his ear. A good day, a good way, to die. It didn't happen. Bastian's approach was so extreme he needed an equally fran- tic evasion to keep from smashing himself on the cold stone. That, in turn, nearly precipitated his passenger to disaster, as Rool found himself taking flight; fortunately, another wild twist of the body and quick stabs with both feet managed to save both the brownie and his weapons. The Castellan was gone. Into the wall, dancing himself through the stone as Thorn had done. Only his passage wasn't so courteous as the Nelwyn's and the mountain didn't like it. Not so much a rumble, but a low, tearing groan, felt more than actually heard, that made Thorn scramble bolt upright, face al- most as pale as Elora's ensorcelled skin. "He's coming for me," Elora cried, face stamped with the shock of a girl faced with death and worse. Then her expression hardened with resolution and she said, in a much older voi "I'll run, Thom, but I won't flee." He understood the difference and gave her the best smile could (not much, sadly, because he thought he knew the odds) as encouragement. This battle would be his. Ignoring Khory's outcry, he stepped away from the others and iThat's when Geryn and the M?izan found them. e It was a wild fight abo~ ess so below, as the Pathfinder bulled forward into a collision that bounced Ryn clear of his 435 charge. Geryn lunged after him, determined on a different out- come than their earlier duel, with a pair of wild sword swings that struck sparks and gouged chips out of both stone and steel. Elora Danan was on his back before he could go farther, latching on like a monkey to do what damage she could with voice and fists. He was well armored and well schooled; it wasn't much. But the distraction allowed Ryn to recover his own blades and he came back for Geryn without hesitation. At the same time the leading element of Maizan and Khory entered the fray them- selves and the battle was joined with a vengeance. There was nothing pretty about the free-for-all; it was a bloody, brutal business, more on the order of a street brawl, with kicks and punches being exchanged far more often than swords were crossed. There was no room to be fanciful with a blade, for fear of hitting one of your own, which in turn proved a further disadvantage to the Maizan. True, they had numbers on their side, but that meant Khory and Ryii could stand back-to-back- with Elora between their legs-and strike pretty much as they pleased. The eagles broke the battle open. Bastian and Rool were the first on the scene, with the brownie unleashing yet another en- hanced shaft, so supercharged it left a burning trail through the air in its wake, to hurl a Maizan bodily into the mass of his fel- lows. The last sight, for one was Bastian's claws before his eyes, the last sound for another the eagle's hunting cry before an aw- ful tearing sensation stole away his life. Anele, striking from the opposite direction, took as deadly a toll. From her sanctuary~ Elora had no decent sight of the melee; for her, it was mainly a matter of avoiding stray kicks, until Geryn took himself a nasty header after the confluence of a misstep on some blood and Ryn's fist to his face. Strung from his belt was Thom's knife and, most importantly, his pouches. The girl was off like a ferret, staying low and moving fast, ig- noring the thumps and bumps collected along the way as she scrambled for her prize. A slain Maizan dropped on her; she shoved him over on top of Geryn without a second thought, skipped her plan ahead a couple of steps as she ran eyes across 436 his struggling body as he tried to muscle free. Decided to forgo any attempt at the knot, went for the main belt buckle itself, with the hope in passing that maybe the Pathfinder's pants would fall down at a critical juncture. The buckle was easy, get- ting the belt was not; Elora had to use both her own feet as a brace and haul with all her might. Had Geryn's help in that re- gard, for the moment he shoved the corpse on top of him aside was when she found clearance to yank the belt, and the pouches, into her arms. She'd gotten turned around in the struggle-or the body of the fight had moved on without her-and found herself on the fringes of the scrap, with the whole troop of Maizan between her and her companions. Geryn had figured what she'd done, he blocked one way, and a fast flash over the other shoulder brought Anakerie into view, at the head of a whole new band of black-clad warriors. Which was when a pair of leather-clad arms rose up from the floor to yank her into the body of the mountain. Mohdri to her left, one hand clutching her by the hair. Drum- heffer to her right, but she had no notion how to move to him. For her previous jaunts, the rock she'd passed through had been an all-enveloping glob of nothingness, Like swimming underwa- ter, only without even a hint of light to show the way. Strange, how something so fundamentally solid on the outside should have no sense of it from within. There was a resistance to shifts of her body, the only indication that she was in a medium more dense than air or water, but infuriatingly nothing of substance for her to brace herself against or function as an anchoring point. Now, however, the blackness had grown color, brilliant strands of energy sizzling outward from the two sorcerous com- batants as though they were weaveW in a race to see who could craft the more eloquent tapestry. Mohdri completed one, a small patterning of knots and sigils, and radiance flared from it to Thorn, who thrust out with his hands in a forward-pointing steeple to form a wedge to break apart the force of the Castel- Ian's attack. Without-coming to Elora as rippling waves through the rock, the way a gusting breeze might stir chop on still water-this ex- change manifested itself as a line of powerful explosions, bulging and fracturing the wall above the battling warriors, turning the attention of all from one mode of survival to another as shards the size of houses calved from the face. Within, Thom wove a reply of his own, a double hand's worth of strands that seemed to take a winding, leisurely course through the brightening dark toward their target. Mohdri ap- peared not to notice as he unleashed yet another bolt of force, and Elora couldn't help an outcry as she saw this one wasn't to be deflected so easily. Thom hissed with shock as a portion of it broke past his defenses to turn near half of him to ice. Elora had seen the images from Bastian; she knew what that awful cold could do, and feared she'd see Thom's body split asunder. But he proved to be made of sterner stuff and cast off the scourge. Elora felt her head twisted, her body forced to follow, the Castellan's hand, as used to breaking horses as warriors in battle, drawing her hair so taut she was sure it would tear loose from her scalp as he made sure she had to look at him. 'Yield," she was told, with a force that had never been denied. Not an offer, a command. 'No." She wanted to sound braver, but couldn't find it in her. "Elora Danan, you know not what you do. This is for the best for the world as it stands and for generations yet unborn." The horror of it was, in that blinding moment of contact, breaths mingling, eyes so close her own hand couldn't fit be- tween them, Elora believed him. Every word rang true, the pro- nouncement as immutable a fact as the dawning of the world. This was no place for her,. no role she could play. The Castellan, and the Deceiver who wore his shape, were the personifications of Power- what right had she to stand against them? So much easier to give up. It was what she wanted, with so much of her heart she was certain she would not survive the breaking of it. She couldn't do it. Not out of contrariness, or some sense that she was tired of being pushed around. But because this was wrong. As the Deceiver was wrong. She knew this the way she 438 knew the fact of her being. This was Evil before her, and she could not be a party to it. A part of it. So, in the barest whisper, her reply was, "No." She stood at the gates of her own soul, and gaped with awe when, at his first onslaught, they shook, they splintered, they cracked-but above all, they held. A small measure of her worth, but enough to give her heart, to give her hope. The Deceiver had no chance to try another. This was the op- portunity Thom had been waiting for and his tendrils caught Mohdri by the extremities, to bind him fast, and in that moment came the inspiration Elora needed, that there was indeed a mass within this ephemeral solidity for her body to push against. It stood right before her. Legs came up, and she was thankful for her ability to fold as she placed her feet flat against his armored chest. He still had a hand on her, the other tearing at Thom's strands as though they were composed of acid, burning through to the unseen parts of him without doing a whit of harm to his corporeal flesh. Her first heave brought no joy; she wanted to bite him on the wrist to make him let her go, but the steel facing on his gauntlet would have broken her teeth. So her next kick put both heels in his eyes. He was human enough to reel at that impact, and that was all she needed. She Railed wildly, without a proper sense of direction, but Thorn was too occupied to come to her aid. Elora gaped as the texture of his features began to change, losing4ll sense of flesh as they took on the aspect and then the fundamental nature of the ancient stone that surrounded them. She could still discern his features, but only as striations within the rock. At the same time a great and terrible sound came to her, a basso profundo note that seemed to originate in the core of her own being, as though she was a chime that had just been struck. Accompanying it was a modest radiance, the same kind of glow she saw when for fun she would hold her hand before a candle flame to see how it lit up her skin. She remembered Thorn's analogy about the match and the sun because that was how she felt now, comparing herself to him as he blazed unbearably bright. The shape of him was a mold that was now being filled with metal heated beyond incan- descence. She could bear the sight, Mohdri could not. He snarled and struggled frantically in his bonds. Elora knew they wouldn't hold him long, and as well that they wouldn't have to. 'We know you, Deceiver, "" she heard issue from Thom's mouth, but it was nothing that approached human speech. She thought of rocks the size of continents grinding together to shape raw sound into words and felt the faintest itch at the back of her own throat as a resonance of the Power that gripped Thom prompted her to speak as well. "As you have marked us, so shall we you!' In the blink of an eye, the stone around them was trans- formed, the whole heart of the mountain changing state from solid to liquid, as though some monstrous grate had been re- moved, to allow the fire at the heart of the world to claim this new territory. Elora cried out with startlement, but there was no fear in her, any more than there had been on the hillside when the fire- drakes came at her behest. She swept an arm across her front, ar- gent immersed in golden glory, and grinned delightedly at the eddies and swirls of flame left in its wake. She thought this might be a place to stay and play forever ... . . . but Thom caught her by the arm. Another columnar slab of stone crashed free, taking them with it, pitching them from an immaterial realm to one that was all too tangible, and Elora cried out as a chunk of basalt clipped her leg. The mountain wasn't groaning any longer; it had woken with a roar to shake the heavens and the earth. The floor split before them, one side cast up, the other down, two voices lost in the shriek of shredding stone as Thom and Elora were carried apart. What had been a level passage was remade in a twinkling as a flight of jaggedly uneven steps, more appropriate to the giants who built this place than those who roamed it today. At the same time huge sections of the wall fell away at the sides, ad- mitting the tempest on the one, and giving a view straight to a roiling lava flow below the other. 440 The main body of Maizan were a fair way below, cut off from their prey by a wide crevasse of granite that the lava was rapidly filling. All thoughts of the chase had given way to a quite natural instinct for self-preservation. Elora herself was on a fair-sized platform that curled off out of view in the direction of the man- de wall. So far as she could see, she was alone; there was no sign of any of her companions, not Khory or Ryn, the eagles or the brownies. "Drun-d-ieller," Elora called, a genuine fear for the Nelwyn ac- centing her girl's falsetto. 'I'm here!" was his reply from above. He cast his gaze over the drop and as quickly ducked back until his heart slowed its snare- drum cascade. He hated heights. Not when he was riding the ea- gles, that wasn't the slightest problem, but looking out over such a precipice ... He shook his head angrily, a bulldog of a man, and lunged a shoulder forward with his head this time, for all the good that did. With both their arms outstretched, there were body lengths between them. "I'll find a way up," she cried. The devil you will, he thought. And then: Why am I always doing this? Finally, aloud: "Stay where you are. It's just a plug of rock here, your ledge is the way to safety. I'll come down." He'd forgotten the other heron. He was hanging by his fingers, scrabbling with toes for a flaw in the facing he was sure he'd seen before committing himself, wondering if Elora could catch him should he simply drop, the air gusting thick with sulfur from the rising lava, which in turn was making it too hot to breathe, when a brace of knifepoints stabbed him in the back. He had no words for the pain; even the luxury of a scream was denied him as the bird tried to pluck him from his perch. He didn't dare let go, even to defend himself, but was rapidly losing strength enough to hold on. It stabbed with its beak, to punch through the back of his skull, but he ducked his head aside and got a face full of rock splinters instead. The eagles saved him. There was nothing left in Rool to power his bolts; he could only hold on, with Franjean spread- WK 441 eagled on top to hold him in place, while Bastian and Anele tore at the heron with beak and claws. It was a suicide charge. The essence of those accursed birds was so foul that drawing their blood was tantamount to a sentence of death; being wounded by them made that a certainty~ But their intervention gave Thom the opportunity he needed. He had one acom left to hand. With a feral grimace, he popped it right into the Night Heron's mouth. It shattered quite nicely on the step below. So would have he, in his own way, had Elora not answered his unspoken query. Not a catch, in the proper sense of the word, since the impact carried them both to their backsides, but he wasn't about to complain. His only regret was an inability to re- turn her heartfelt hug when she near squashed him with happi- ness. 'Well," he said with a wild smile at odds with his deadpan de- livery, "that was exciting.' "You could have been killed," she raged back at him. "Every day, in every way.' She thumped him in the shoulder, not seriously but hard enough to be noticed. "What happened here?" she demanded. "What's happenine." He spared a look around them at the growing conflagration. "There's a soul and spirit to these mountains, just as there is to each of us. The Deceiver is their enemy as much as ours; I told them he was here and asked for their help against him." 'Drumheller," she cried, aghast, 'you've set off a volcano!" 'Some tigers, little Princess, aren't ridden quite so easily as others." "Is he dead, then, the Deceiver? Is this over?" When he didn't reply, she had her answer. "At least we're safe, Thom offered. "That's a start." "You call this safe?" "If we go quickly, the mountain will do us no harm. I made sure when I opened the crevasse to put our foes on one side and friends on the other. The Maizan can escape, but they can't fol- low." "I thought the herons were my friends,' Elora said softly. 442 'And so they were, child," he responded. 'Yours, not mine." Then they heard Geryn's voice. "Elora " was the call, thready with physical stress and not a lit- de fear. 'Elora Danan!" He'd evidently been caught on a separate outcrop, as Thom had, only his had dropped away from their step; worse, it had begun to separate from the main rider, opening a gap wider than Geryn was tall. He must have leaped for the wall when he felt the ledge split loose beneath his feet- he'd found some hand- holds but the rock above offered no decent purchase to continue his climb. And since it was a straight fall to the lava flow below, a descent was wholly out of the question. "Damn!' Thom snarled at the sight. "There must be something we can use to save him," Elora cried, burrowing frantically into his pouches. 'Why don't you have a rope in here!" There was, of course, and because it was what she truly de- sired, it came to her hand complete with a grappling hook. "Elora Danan," came Geryn's call again, audibly weaker than before, "help me!" Thom reached for the rope, but Elora wrenched it from his grasp. "It's my fault he's down there, Elora," Thorn told her. "I thought I'd controlled the temblors better, to leave us all in safety." 'Do you want to argue, Drumheller, or save the man? You're fighting off the Night Heron's poison, you're not strong enough for this. Will the rope hold him?" she asked. 'Don't worry about that," Thom said as he jabbed the hook into a crack on their step, and Elora pitched the line over the edge. "The stone will sp* before one of my ropes breaks." She didn't know how to climb, she certainly hadn't the mus- cles for it; what she managed then was slightly better than a con- trolled collapse, leaving rope bums on hands and feet and thighs as she dropped to another jarring landing on Geryn's ledge. She held fast to the end of her line while warping a length of it close enough for the Daikini to catch hold; afterward, it was a simple matter for him to swing over to join her. 'Are yeh mad, girl?" Her smile was a mix of bravado and stark terror. 'Aren't we all?" she replied. "Drumheller,' he called out, 'I have the rope. Haul up the Sa- cred Princess, I'll follow after!" 'He can't, Elora told him. 'He was hurt by the heron, he's too weak.' "Where the hell are the others, then?" UI don't know. But I do know that this promontory is too un- stable for us to wait. I thought I could manage on my own," she confessed; "I was wrong, I'm sorry. So either you go first or we go together." 'I'll have yer heart, Drumheller," Geryn hissed, as he secured the line snugly about Elora's torso in a harness hitch, 'for allow- ing the Sacred Princess to place herself in such danger." 'It was my choice, trooper," she said with surprising formal- ity. "Yer too important," he told her sternly, to her face. 'Yeh should know better." That said, he pulled her snug to his back in a rescue carry~ with her legs wrapped about his waist and her arms around his shoul- ders. "Hold tight," he told her. "Thom's rope'll break before I let you go." He paused a mo- ment at her words, for there was something in them that made him believe that she was speaking an absolute truth. 'Perhaps yeh are 'Sacred' after all," he muttered, and let the rope take the strain of their weight as he stepped off his ledge and swung toward the wall. & There were cries from far below as a new figure joined the Maizan, perfect features stricken with concern as he beheld the tableau, a hoarse cry echoing over the crackling growl of the stone as the Castellan called for a bow. 'We hurt him," Elora cried exultantly as she looked over her IN 444 shoulder to see Mohdri sway and nearly collapse, held erect by a Maizan at each shoulder. 'Drumheller, we hurt him!" "Hush, girl," Geryn snapped, propriety cast aside as her ex- cited wrigglings set the both of them to spinning on the line, "or you'll hurt us in the bargain." He tightened his grip, braced his boots once more on the sheer wall, but never got the chance to start climbing on his own, as he found himself being drawn speedily upward. A glance upward showed him Ryn and Khory on the rope, while Anakerie stood beside Drumheller, visible over the crest of the precipice. Anakerie was staring at Mohdri, lips parted in horror at his miraculous recovery. None of the Maizan with him had been in- side the Great Hall when he fell; none knew how badly he'd been injured. "I tell you true, Keri," Thom told the Princess, for her ears alone. "Don't call me that, Peck, only my brother's allowed to call me that. Goes for you as it does for Mohdri. . ." She stumbled on the Castellan's name. "He is not what he seems, Anakerie. He is no friend." She turned her face to him and he felt an irrational desire to wipe away the giant bruise that discolored a fair piece of it. "I'm sorry." "I shouldn't be here." "You'd rather be with them?" Thom refused to believe that. "My place is with my people. I'm the Princess Royal, Drum- heller. The King no longer sits his throne," she couldn't bring her- self to say aloud what she most feared, that her father was dead. "I must take his place. Especially since the only political or mili- tary force worth the name that's left in the land is the Maizan." "You know what leads th e-m." "It's because of what leads them that I'm needed most." "Thom," Elora called as she and Geryn cleared the lip of main riser. "Drumheller!' The second cry was full of startlement, as Geryn's hand locked on one of her wrists as tightly as any vise and he swung her swiftly, smoothly around into a painful harnmerlock. 04 445 His voice rang out: "Release the Princess, dogs!" Thom was the first to find voice enough for a reply. 'Geryn, what are you doing?" 'Fair exchange, wizard; one Princess for the other." "You deceived us!' Elora's young voice cracked with outrage. "It worked, didn't it." 'You were never in any danger!" 'I learned to climb afore I learned to ride. Hush now, an' it please you. I'll do none harm if I get what I came for.' 'Another lie? It gets easier as you go along." "Stop this foolishness, boy," Ryn told him. "There's no other way off this rock, without you come with us. And whatever you may believe, Keri's no prisoner here." it I thought you pledged to serve me," Elora spat at her captor, with more than a flash of her old imDeriousness. Then her vell turned into a squealed yelp as Geryn tightened his grip. Ul pledged to serve Angwyn, Sacred Highness. And the per- sonification of Angwyn is the Princess Anakerie." "Over to you then, Keri," Ryn called to her. "Tell the young CaDtain to let her go." Elora chose that moment to make her bid for freedom, at- tempting a hammer kick to Geryn's knee that she'd seen Khory use on occasion to good effect. She wasn't a trained fighter, though, and Geryn was; he blocked her attack and hurled her bodily away from him, into a stumbling spin that sent her crash- ing full-tilt into Ryn. In that same movement, he had his own blade clear of its scabbard and swung it in a wide, sweeping arc to make Khory keep her distance as well. 'What I believe," the Pathfinder cried as he launched himself towards Thom, 'is that yehlre the cause of all this misery. All was right with Angwyn-an' the world-till I brought yeh within its walls!" "Geryn, no!" The cry came from Anakeri, her movements as auick as his as she three herself into his ath The young man stared in horror as his Princess crumpled to his feet, the act of falling pulling her body clear of the blade that had impaled it. He'd run her right through. I 446 "Put down your sword, Geryn," Ryn said, in the calm, im- placable voice that he boasted of using to scare off killer whales. Instead, the Daikini lunged for him, hard and fast, presenting a whole series of roundhouse swings with his saber that drove the Wyr quickly back to the wall. The Pathfinder had good strength and speed, and he swung with a near-berserker inten- sity that would not be denied. He gave Ryn no opportunity to duck underneath his guard and reach him without being cut. Strangely, Ryn didn't appear to mind. 'Let it go, Pathfinder," Ryn offered a final time, 'and we'll all leave this place alive." "I swore an Oath," Geryn said. "And you've made me betray it! 11 When the Wyr finally chose to move, he was a blur of ma- hogany, using one shoulder to deflect the blade hand while the other caught Geryn in the chest. By rights, the Pathfinder should have been bowled over, but instead, it was Ryn who reeled a step or two away, with a fresh wound in his flank. Geryn bran- dishes the sword that had stabbed Anakerie, streaked crimson with her blood and Ryn's, as was the hand holding it. The Pathfinder lunged forward, using sword and a knife drawn from his belt to drive his opponent further back. Despite those best efforts, he found himself unable to reach either point or edge past Ryn's defenses. He'd drawn his last of the young Wyr's blood. Ryn moved once more to the attack, this time taking no chances, striking at Geryn as he would a shark. His muscles and skiffs had been honed in the great deeps, against pressures that would crush a Daikini, his claws (the natural ones) sliped and sharpened to breach skin that served as well as armor. Alpinning side kick took Geryn down the first time, with force enough to jar his belt knife loose from his grasp. Elora as quickly grabbed it out of his reach. The Pathfinder had another though, this one from his boot. Didn't make a difference. Another lunge, and a willingness to suffer a superficial slash that barely broke the- flesh, brought Ryn in close again, to deliver a murderous succes- sion of blows to the body, and leave his foe only the blade that had done the initial damage. Ryn offered him his life a final time. "I'm a Captain of the Red Lions," was his reply, "we don't sur- render to the likes of you.' With a speed that would have done Ryn himself proud, Geryn slashed through the rope binding Elora, then sprang from his fallen Princess, using the same movement to disengage the grap- nel and take it with him; Ryn's outcry was matched by those of his companions as the two figures disappeared over the edge. Ryn threw himself after them, stretching himself full-length on the slab, with his head extended past the edge, though he dreaded what he'd see below. Geryn and Anakeri had landed on the small outcrop. "You son of a bitch!" Ryn raged, which got himself a roguish grin from Geryn in reply. "I'm a Pathfinder," he said, brandishing the rope. "We climb as well as ride." 'Throw back the rope then, I'll haul you up." 'Now where's the sense o' that, I ask yeh?" 'We're not your enemies, damn you! It's the Maizan you should be fighting!" 'Made my choice, furball. Swore my Oath. I'll be true to both." He tied the rope expertly about Anakerie's torso, then an- chored the grapnel in a seam in the rock. "Keri," Ryn roared, "don't let him do this!" "She's beyond hearing," Geryn said. "My doing. Saving her life's how I'll make amends.' 'Drumheller's a healer, you've seen him work!' 'Yeh. Truth, I don't know anymore what I've seen. He tells me Elora's protector is the enemy; my own kind tell me the reverse. Yeh say the Maizan're the enemy, yet my Princess, she rides with 'em. Back in the forest, them brownies what attacked us, they called Drumheller, 'Demon.'" 'They were wrong. 11 I I 448 'So yeh say. Me, I've seen the Princess ridin' with the Castel- Ian. She loves him true." He dropped her off the ledge, control- ling her descent by looping the line about his own body. "The King's gone. Angwyn's hers now ta rule. With her people, that's where she rightfully belongs." He started a small swing, moving Anakerie through a gradu- ally increasing arc, that took her well out over the lava field in one direction, but ever closer to the waiting Maizan and their Castellan in the other. 'There's a proper order ta the way of things, Drumheller," he said as he worked. "Yeh've cast it into chaos, an' the whole world besides. Whatever fate comes for you, it'll be as well earned as well deserved. So far as I'm concerned, Anakerie is well rid of yeh an' my only regret is I can't save the Sacred Princess in the bargain." Above, Rhy turned to Thom, demanding another line. "That perch isn't big enough," was the Nelwyn's reply, "and far too unstable." 'I don't care, I have to help her!" 'Then leave her!" Thom's expression was as fierce as the larger, bulkier Wyr's, neither figure willing to be swayed. "Geryn's her best chance, her only chance. By staying, you put our lives at risk as well!" 'He's right," Elora said, placing herself between them. "The mountain's awake, and angry beyond Drumheller's ability to manage it. I can feel that. So could you, Ryn, if you took the mo- ment to care." "They have her," Khory announced casually. 'Bless the Maker," Ryn said thankfully, then looked aNund sharply as Elora plunged to her knees at the edge of the slab. 'Geryn," she called, "throw us the rope, we'll pull you up!" Again, that wild smile from the young man. "I don't think so, Sacred Highness. But I thank you for the thought." 'Drumheller!" she cried, full-voice. "There's nothing I can do." Sorrow was stark on his face, and fatigue as well. Sorcery wasn't an option any longer; he stood by 449 act of will, his body could do no more, his reserves had been drained dry, as had the Deceiver's. The ground shook again and with another awful crack the face of the slab opened before them, calving clear as cleanly as if it had been quarried. Against such a terrible noise, Elora's scream should have been a little thing, easily buried, but all present heard her nonetheless. As though she'd passed a portion of that strength to the man below, Geryn's voice came back to them just as clearly, with a smile to it that made Elora wail and turn away to bury her head on Thom's shoulder. "For the Princess Royal," the Pathfinder cried as the cliff gave way around him. His last words, before the fire claimed him: "For Angwyn!' To the ear, Dournhall's death throes sounded like a game of bowls, with balls the size of mountains. To the eye, it was a great, glowing cauldron of raw fire as the elemental heart of the world fountained into the sky. The peak itself had collapsed in the night to form a monstrous caldera, easily a mile across canted upland from Duatha Headland and the King's Gate-and frozen Angwyn beyond-and lava poured from the summit to complete the destruction of Cherlindrea's forest begun by the firedrakes. The molten rock filled in the serrated rills and spread mostly to the side as though to form a wall. Of the Maizan there was no sign, which was hardly a surprise since they'd been on the south side of the peak when it blew, a comparatively safe venue but one that allowed them no chance of pursuit. Thom sensed the Deceiver wouldn't be following ei- ther, at least not right away. Too much had happened too quickly; the fiend had actually been hurt, as well as his host form; he'd have to recover before making another move. So would Anakerie. So would he, though he prayed everyone around him would stay healthy for the immediate future. He had his limits, too. Ryn was hunting, Khory sitting sentry near the cave wherein they'd taken refuge. They'd traveled far enough north to pass the 450 fringes of the storm. There were clouds above, turned to scat- tered streamers by the high-altitude winds, and beyond them he could see the sky itself and all its welcome stars. This was still primeval land, they wouldn't find settlements for another few days; once they crossed that threshold, Thom knew they'd have to move as hard and fast as the wind. It was a hard climb to find Elora, perched atop the hill where she had a decent view south of burning Dournhall. The effort quickly left him breathless and he was huffing long before he reached her. He brought a steaming mug of broth, fresh from the cookpot, and she wrapped her hands around the mug to warm them before hazarding a sip. She sat as huddled into herself as she could manage, back to a standing stone, legs pulled close to her chest. "I wish I had the opportunity to return this," he said, mostly to himself, fingering Anakerie's silver hair clip. Elora gave him a sidelong look, then returned her eyes to the distant burning mountain. 'No more use for it?' she asked. "I have use for it." "You like her, the Princess." Elora didn't wait for his reply; she was already certain of the answer. Instead, she said, "I never had the chance. She ran away from home right after I arrived." 'Her father wanted her to be the first of your vizards." Elora's face twisted. "I'd have rather had a friend. She ran away. By the time she returned to Angwyn, the patterns of our lives were both set." "Not anymore. Patterns, I mean," when Elora cocked a ques- tioning eyebrow. "Yours and hers both are broken." "Mine, hers, the whole wide world's. So everyone's fond of telling me." 'We've all been humbled, Elora. It's what comes next that matters. The order of the world-the fundamental way of things-has changed. Perhaps permanently. We either accept it, or try to set things right. )7 "I bet you'd rather be home, tending your beets." "Corn, and barley, thank you very much. And wheat. Bur- glekutt grew beets." "Is she a friend, Drumheller, or foe?" Elora asked after another cautious sip of soup and a lick of the lips at its delicious taste. 'Yes." 'That's no answer." "No. She gave him a look to see if he was making fun of her. His in return told her that was as good as she was going to get on the subject. 'I hope she's all right." 'So do U' "It's my fault," she said. "If I hadn't tried to break loose-" Thom took a long breath, then let it out as slowly. 'Geryn chose his fate when he left us on the reef, before the firedrakes. You trusted me with your life, Elora, wholly and without reser- vation. He couldn't. Not then. Not later. He'd marked a path for himself, built himself a structure to define the shape of his days; he couldn't bear to tear it down, nor conceive of how he'd sur- vive the aftermath of such destruction." "Will we? Survive?" she asked after a time. uWe'll try." 'Will we win?" 'I don't know." 'Any idea how?" He considered for a bit, then said, 'Not the slightest." She laughed aloud. "Then how can we fail?' Her laughter faded and she sniffed, very much a girl who'd hardly begun the journey of her life. "I miss my bear," she said, with true sadness. "I beg your pardon?" She shrugged, tried to cover her sorrow with a smile. 'My bear. I had it in my arms when I came to Angwyn. The only thing that came with me from home." Her voice broke on the word and she sniffed loudly. "Wasn't much to look at. Singed all over, poor thing, one eye gone, an ear tom. to shreds. I didn't know better, I'd say it had gone to war." Her smile broadened. 'I used to look at him, in bed at night, and think to myself-you figure this is some- thing, Elora my girl, you should see the other guy! " mw'~ 17 452 An impulse drew Thom's hand to his pouch. Even as he reached inside he had a flash of InSight about what would be waiting. And remembered as well that last exchange with the Demon. "Evil abides," he had said, in despair. Silly little mage, had been the reply-so does good. The bear did indeed look the worse for wear. The fur had been brushed and dean-he knew from the touch that it had been by Elora's own hand, this was a treasure she entrusted to no one-but soot had been baked into its fabric, making him a very dirty blond. The fabric over one foot had wom away and been replaced. From the odd shape-it no longer matched its fel- low-it was clear that new stuffing had been added as well, by a seamstress with more desire than skill. It was indeed missing an eye, and an ear had been savaged, with companion scars down the side of its head. But the eye that remained looked back at him with the rough-and-ready confidence of a survivor. "Bear!' Elora said in a whisper, not daring to believe the sight. He handed it to her and she cradled it with the gentle passion of one true friend for another. 'How?" she asked Thom. "You've Khory's sire to thank." "The Demon?" "I think it snuck it into my pouch before our escape." "What a world"-she marveled-"where Demons offer kind- ness." Then she looked from bear to Nelwyn. 'He's yours, isn't he? You made Bear for me." He nodded. "I couldn't be with you, so I left him in my place. I thought it was a dream. I suppose'-and he looked skyward, letting mem- ory sweep him along like the wind-'where dragons are con- cemed, dreams are reality and reality a dream.' "You know, I always told myself that it was Bear who saved me." "Well, I asked him to look after you." "Thank you, Thom. With all my heart." Her eyes turned once more to the newborn, ancient volcano in the distance. 'Why is there always fire?" she wondered. 'That which cleanses, that which consumes, been a part of your story from the start, I'm afraid. One of the Realms. Fire, I mean." Her head turned a fraction to her left, looking past Dournhall toward the glow that could no longer be seen thanks to the vol- cano's fury. 'The ways the world ends, that's what Ryn said-in fire or in ice. Ancient Angwyn claimed by one, young Angwyn by the other." "The world's far from dead, Elora. Both fire and ice have their role in the preservation of life as well as its destruction.' 'What the StagLord said, is everyone's hand against us~" 'Very likely, I'm afraid. New relationships, new alliances. It'll be a time before the dust settles, while new heads claim their re- spective crowns. Afterward, everyone's going to choose up sides. Some might join the Deceiver willingly, others may well be over- thrown. Some will decide the safest place is on the sidelines and wrap themselves in neutrality. The best, I hope, will cast their lot with you." "Itys a war, then." 'Against the Shadow, yes.' Her eyes were blinking very rapidly, the distant glow of Dournhall giving her tears the aspect of the raw lava flowing down the mountain's flanks. 'I didn't want Geryn to die," she said softly, after a silence. "Nor I. But that's the way of things sometimes." "I keep seeing his face-not the way he was at the end, but when we were friends, on the boat and on the beach, when he kept trying to keep me warm." "Good. So long as you remember, the good in him lives on.' "Like the brownies said?" 'Like the brownies said." 'Thank you for saving me." He stretched his arm across her shoulder, and drew her close. 454 She snuggled like a cat again, like his own daughter, fitting her- self as best she could to his lap, and he stroked her gleaming hair. "I did my part," he told her, "as did we all. But when it counted, Elora Danan, you saved yourself." Then, for what felt like the first time in a lifetime, he let a smile of true joy crease his weathered features, and he sang the hope of the world to a deep and gentle sleep. 1"'W GEORGE LUCAS is the founder of Lucasfilm. Ltd., one of the world's leading entertainment companies. He created the Star Wars and IndianaJones film series, each film among the all-time leading box-office hits. Among his story credits are THX 1138, American Graffiti, and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones Rims. He lives in Marin County, California. CHRIS CLAREmoNT is best known for his seventeen-year stint on Marvel Comics' The Uncanny X-Men, during which it was the bestselling comic in the Western Hemisphere for a decade; he has sold more than 100 million comic books to date. His novels First Flight, Grounded! and Sundowner were science fiction best- sellers. Recent projects include the dark fantasy novel Dragon Moon and Sovereign Seven', a comic book series published by DC Comics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. I (Continued from front flap) To answer these questions and escape from the castle's labyrinthine dungeon, Thorn will have to strike a devil's bargain. He must perform a dangerous and forbidden rite of necromancy to resurrect a powerful warrior from her soulless sleep ... and try to rescue a child. But even if he succeeds, they are alone in a world of blood and horror, where shadows have declared war on the light, where old loyalties have been cast aside and trust means nothing. The world is tumbling toward the abyss. Only one person can save it. And she couldn't care less. GEORGE LUCAS is the founder of Lucasfllm Ltd., one of the world's leading entertainment companies. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, each film among the all-time leading box-office hits. Among his story credits are THX 1138, American Graffiti, and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. He lives in Marin County, California. CHRIS CLAREMONT is best known for his seventeen-year stint on Marvel Comics' The Uncanny X-Men, during which it was the bestselling comic in the Western Hemisphere for a decade; lie has sold more than 100 million comic books to date. His novels First Flight, Grounded! and Sundowner were science fiction bestsellers. Recent projects include the dark fantasy novel Dragon Moon and Sovereign Seven~, a comic book serie- published by DC Comics. He live- "i I Brooklyn, New York. TM and @ 1995 LucasP,- Rights Reserved. Used unrl, ization. Jacket illustrafl- Jacket dr - Aelo Cabral S. Warren Youll ,pectra Book Bantam QWks I r-11,0 BOWway York, New York 10036 _,jao Arin ed in the United States of America NEWCASTLE REGION LIBRARY 3 2300 00059032 9 arl US $22.50 / $31.50 CAN ISBN 0-553-09596-X